THE LAMBETH EXPERIMENT

"The Dealers Think They're Untouchable Now..."

The dimly lit waiting area of the south London cab office is thick with
smoke and the bittersweet smell of high-grade cannabis. The controller,
sitting behind a screen a few paces back from the door, is deep in
conversation with a waiting group of passengers. He turns and beckons me
over, a large spliff dangling from between his lips. 'What do you want?
Draw? Coke? Rock?'

Brixton has long held a reputation for being the drugs capital of London
but the past year has seen a dramatic change in the way the dealers operate
and an explosion in their numbers.

Once hidden away in shadowy corners or dark alleyways and forced to hide
every time a police patrol passed by, they now openly strut around like
peacocks, desperate to outdo one another as they boast to customers about
the greater potency of their particular product.

The triangle bordered by Coldharbour Lane, the Brixton Road and Atlantic
Road is now the narcotic equivalent of a red-light district. Each night,
without fail, as dusk falls, dozens of dealers appear in shop doorways,
railway arches and street corners and it is impossible for anyone to walk
more than a few paces without being accosted.

Since July the London borough of Lambeth has been the subject of a
controversial pilot scheme where those caught in possession of small
amounts of cannabis are no longer arrested or cautioned. Instead, they are
given a verbal warning, the drugs are confiscated and they are sent on
their way.

The radical policy is credited with freeing up hundreds of hours of police
time and allowing them to concentrate on more serious crime, but many
residents say it has given the dealers a new-found confidence and made even
hard drugs more widely available than before.

Bathed in the glow of the lights from local fast-food restaurants,
off-licences and greengrocers dotted along the main shopping strip, the
street dealers openly sell single joints and small bags of grass. Harder
drugs are only a few streets away and two cab firms in the area, both of
which are busy throughout the night, have become notorious as the place to
go to buy larger amounts of marijuana or cocaine and crack.

It is overwhelmingly clear that dealers are now exploiting the law. Buying
enough weed or resin for a couple of joints is easy and takes seconds.
Buying enough to last a few days is a slightly more delicate operation as
the drugs have to be retrieved from a safe hiding place. Having such
precautions in place, none of the dealers I spoke to seemed at all
concerned about the police. Many boasted of having received three or four
separate warnings since the new scheme began.

Few people living in the heart of the drugs area will talk openly about the
trade. One shopkeeper agrees to chat but asks not to be named. 'If people
see me talking to the press, they'll think I'm talking to the police too
and I can't afford them to think that,' he explains. 'In the last few
months, all the dealers have become more confident. They think they're
untouchable.'

The biggest cannabis dealers say they shift a kilo a week, netting them
around UKP800 in profit. Most of the customers are from outside the area,
largely middle-class whites. They are drawn to the area knowing that even
if they are caught buying, they won't end up with a criminal record. It is
good business for the dealers but the real money is made selling crack.
Whereas dealers used to stick to one drug, increased competition means they
are all diversifying and doing their best to accommodate any request.

'These people aren't stupid,' says the shopkeeper. 'They know that if they
sell someone UKP10 worth of cannabis, they won't see them again for a week.
If they sell them UKP10 worth of crack, they will come back in a couple of
hours.'

Although official figures sug gest a slight drop in violent crime since the
scheme was introduced, many believe this is not the full picture. 'There is
trouble all the time. The thing is, most of the victims are dealers being
ripped off by other dealers or customers from out of town. They aren't
going to tell the police about it, but that doesn't mean it isn't
happening. Why take a chance robbing some passer-by when you can see a
dealer and know he will have drugs and money on him. Why do you think so
many of them hang around in groups?'

An internal review conducted by senior officers at Scotland Yard concluded
that over the first six months of the scheme, 1,400 man hours were freed
up. The number of seizures of cannabis rose by a third while seizures of
class A drugs rose by19 per cent.

While the number of man hours liberated is seen as proof of the policy's
partial success, the increase in seizures has left analysts wondering if
more dealers and buyers and coming into the area. The number of arrests for
dealing has remained constant but those figures no longer include those
picked up for small amounts of cannabis. In the six months before the
scheme, 278 arrests for possession were made. In the six months that
followed, more than 400 warnings for possession were issued. For many, this
is proof positive that the area is now a magnet for drug buyers across London.

When he first devised the policy, Commander Brian Paddick admitted that
some people would see Brixton as the place to come and buy drugs. He hoped
to put them off by driving home the message that thanks to a confiscation
policy, they might not be able to leave with them. Either the mes sage has
fallen on deaf ears or users feel it is worth the risk, particularly as all
they have to fear is a formal warning.

Coldharbour Lane traders Neil Kindness, who runs the Dogstar bar, and
Robert Beckford, who runs the Juice Bar, both say the scheme has encouraged
people to come into the area and do drugs. 'Nobody from Brixton smokes
cannabis any more,' says Beckford. 'It's all people from outside the area
and the locals are getting fed up with it.'

The true picture of how the pilot scheme has affected people in the area
will soon be known. A study by the Police Foundation and polling
organisation Mori asking how it has affected the quality of residents'
lives has just been completed but the results have not yet been made public.