HOME OFFICE IS COOL ON DRUG REPORT

HOME OFFICE ministers reacted coolly yesterday to a proposal from chief
constables to send heroin and cocaine users for treatment rather than
prosecute them.

As drug treatment charities backed the announcement from the Association of
Chief Police Officers (Acpo), the Home Office welcomed the report but did
not endorse it. Ministers are understood to be unconvinced about the idea
of giving hard drug users a choice between treatment or conviction.

However, they are believed to welcome the general police support for drugs
treatment which chimes with government policy. At present that aims to
offer treatment on charge or conviction for a drug offence. Ministers also
welcomed the decision by chief constables not to call for Ecstasy to be
declassified from a class A and to a class C drug.

However, there was no comment on the decision by chief constables to
recommend a softer approach to cannabis possession which would allow many
users to escape with a simple warning.

Kevin Morris, president of the Police Superintendents' Association, backed
the Acpo statement yesterday. He said: "We have said all along that the
current tactics are not working and have to be a bit more imaginative."

Lesley King-Lewis, chief executive for Action on Addiction, said research
showed that every UKP 1 spent on drug treatment saved UKP 3 which would
have been spent in fighting crimes linked to drugs.

Roger Howard, of DrugScope, said: "We hope that this will lead in the
future to drugs, more often, being treated as a health rather than a
criminal justice issue." Ann Widdecombe, the former Shadow Home Secretary,
said: "We should ask how are we going to protect, particularly, the younger
generation, from the evils of something as serious as heroin which it is
now proposed is no longer treated as a criminal offence. We must be mad."