-Caveat Lector-
Britain To End Hunting For
Pot Smugglers
By David Rose, Anthony Browne and Faisal Islam
The Observer
www.observer.co.uk
7-9-1
Britain is to abandon the hunt for cannabis smugglers and
dealers in the most dramatic relaxation of policy on the
drug so far.
Instead the Government has told law enforcement
officers, including Customs officials and police, to target
resources on 'hard drugs', such as heroin and cocaine.
Under the new strategy - part of the most radical shift in
drugs policy for a generation - large-scale cannabis
seizures and prosecutions will now take place only as a
by-product of investigations into Class A drugs.
Last week with the blessing of Home Secretary David
Blunkett, police in Brixton, south London, abandoned their
policy of prosecuting people found with small amounts of
the drug.
The relaxation comes as the law on possession of
cannabis faces its most serious legal challenge. The civil
rights group Liberty will argue in court tomorrow that it is
incompatible with the new Human Rights Act.
The campaign to legalise cannabis gained further
momentum yesterday as Clive Bates, director of the
government-funded anti-smoking group Ash, argued for
the legalisation of the drug.
The decision to give up hunting cannabis traffickers was
taken by the Cabinet Office Committee, Concerted
Inter-Agency Drugs Action (Cida). It consists of the heads
of MI6, MI5, the Customs and Excise investigation branch,
the National Criminal Intelligence Service, the police
National Crime Squad, and the Association of Chief
Police Officers, plus the permanent under-secretaries of
the Home Office, Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence.
'It's not that we plan to stop seizing cannabis when we
come across it,' one senior Customs source said last
night. 'However, the need to focus on Class A drugs
means cannabis seizures will now take place as a
by-product, not as an end in themselves.'
Customs sources say the shift is seen as an 'inevitable
consequence' of the Government's drug strategy, which
sets agencies the target of reducing Class A drug
consumption by half by 2008.
'Overall, the Government strategy is about reducing
harm,' one chief police officer said. 'That has to mean
placing a priority in reducing the supply of Class A drugs.'
He said regional drug distributors often 'blurred the
boundaries' betweendrugs, so that inquiries into cocaine
and heroin dealers might also yield finds of cannabis.
The focus on hard drugs was partly triggered by the first
figures for UK consumption of cocaine and heroin, which
show Britons are now consuming twice as much cocaine
as the previous official estimates for the whole of Western
Europe.
The figures, from a Home Office research project, show
that last year British hard drug users took
28,000-36,000kg of heroin and 35,000-41,000 kg of
cocaine.
Cannabis was in effect decriminalised in Brixton last
week, when police said they would no longer prosecute
people caught with the drug but give them a verbal
telling-off. Last year the Government said that having a
caution for possessing cannabis would no longer carry a
criminal record for life.
The Misuse of Drugs Act, which in 2000 led to 96,000
prosecutions against cannabis users, will be challenged
in Southwark Crown Court this week when Liberty will
claim it is incompatible with the Human Rights Act.
Liberty will be defending Jerry Ham, former director and
founder of a homelessness charity, who has been
charged with possession of small amount of cannabis. If
Liberty is successful, it could make the law unenforceable
in courts.
The relaxation of policy on cannabis follows changing
public attitudes to the drug. This weekend senior Tory MP
Alan Duncan supported Peter Lilley, the former deputy
leader of the Conservative Party, who called for the
legalisation of sale of the drug in licensed outlets.
Ash director Clive Bates said: 'We would legalise
cannabis in its non-smokable forms, such as in cakes, tea
or droplets. There's irrationality and inconsistency in the
policy on tobacco, soft and hard drugs. Even if you
legalised cannabis in its smokeable forms you couldn't
come close to the harm done by cigarettes, because no
one smokes 20 joints a day.'
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