SELL COCAINE OVER COUNTER LIKE BEER, SAYS MP

Cocaine should be legalised and sold over the counter like wine or beer, a
frontbench Liberal Democrat MP suggests today.

In a proposal which departs significantly from party policy, the
international development spokeswoman, Jenny Tonge, argues that
legalisation would help to cut drug-related crime.

It would also allow VAT to be charged on the drug, which the government
could use to invest in drug treatment programmes, she suggests in an
interview with BBC News Online.

The party leadership last night distanced itself from Dr Tonge's comments,
stressing they were a "personal view and not party policy".

Lib Dems already advocate legalisation of cannabis and the abolition of
jail sentences for personal use of all other drugs in the most liberal drug
policy advocated by the three main parties.

Her package, which also includes allowing doctors to prescribe heroin, went
further than leadership-backed measures when it was recently passed by the
party's spring conference.

Dr Tonge, who has visited Colombia and heard accounts of paramilitary
revenge murders of villagers resettled after being thrown off their land
for refusing to grow coca, suggests cocaine users in the City "think they
are frightfully smart and clever" but do not understand the implications of
their habit.

Accepting that the problem of cocaine use is "a difficult one", she says:
"I would agree with a lot of people that you would actually do less damage
if cocaine was actually legalised and sold at registered outlets, like
alcohol, rather than leaving it to the boys on the street."