Subj: Scotland: McLeish promises zero tolerance on drugs



Date: 7 Oct, 1998



Source: The Scotsman





McLeish promises zero tolerance on drugs

JENNY BOOTH

Home Affairs Correspondent



THE Government has headed off criticism that it is going 

soft on drugs by announcing a zero tolerance policy towards 

all forms of illegal drug-taking in Scotland.



The Scottish home affairs minister, Henry McLeish, said 

yesterday that taking an ecstasy tablet in Edinburgh was 

just as illegal and unacceptable as selling heroin in 

Glasgow's Easterhouse.



Both put profits in the hands of the dealers responsible for 

the pills sold at the gates of schools,  said Mr  Meleish, 

speaking at the launch of a six-month campaign against drugs 

and housebreaking in Strathclyde.



The tough line will be backed up today by the Scottish 

health minister, Sam Galbraith, who will announce extra 

money for services to wean drugtakers off their habit. Mr 

McLeish is also expected to reveal plans to confiscate the 

assets of dealers even if they have not heen convicted, in 

line with plans for England and Wales.



"I want a much more challenging line on drugs enforcement 

throughout Scotland," said Mr McLeish. "Taking any kind of 

illegal drug is socially unacceptable in Scotland in 1998. 

It only supplies profits to the dealer and destroys lives."



The new stance follows attacks by David Macauley, the former 

director of the all-party Scotland Against Drugs campaign, 

who resigned this year claiming that Labour had gone soft on 

drugs and did not have a co-ordinated policy.



Criticisms were also voiced by the Mothers Against Drugs 

campaign in Cranhill, founded in January following the death 

of 13-year-old Alan Harper from a drugs overdose - one of 74 

drugs deaths in Greater Glasgow so far this year.



No-one has been charged with supplying the drugs that killed 

Alan, though the police made a number of arrests.



Mr McLeish made plain that he had listened to the Cranhill 

campaigners, adding: "My experience of Cranhill is one where 

the area has major drug problems, and needs collective 

action."



Cranhill has been targeted in the series of drug raids 

carried out by Strathelyde Police in the run-up to its new 

Operation Spotlight campaign against drugs and 

housebreaking.



John Orr, the chief constable of Strathclyde, said that 

police surveillance and action would be focused against 

dealers and traffickers, backed up by hi-tech computer 

profiling and DNA swab technology. The local drug action 

teams and many other organisations were involved in the 

community aspocts of the initiative.



"The public are concerned, worried and sick to death of 

people selling drugs and people breaking into houses to pay 

for drugs," Mr Orr said.



Scottish Gas has paid for a four-week television advertising 

campaign against housebreaking - often committed by drug 

addicts to gain money to feed their habit - and the Scottish 

Office is funding a cinema advert about home and business 

security.



Gaille McCann, a Glasgow councillor who speaks for Mothem 

Against Drugs, welcomed the campaign but criticised the 

Crown Office for allowing drug dealers to plea bargain their 

way to lighter sentences.



Dave Liddell, the director of The Scottish Drugs Forum which 

criticised zero tolerance policies in the past, said the 

Scottish Office should hear in mind that drugs services such 

as methadone  prescribing had also been proven to cut crime.



But the response from at least one member of the public was 

approving.  An  81-year-old Glasgow widow invited to the 

campaign launch after her bedroom was ransacked by 

housebreakers said: "I think this campaign is really good. 

After being burgled I say you're safe no place, it could 

always happen but I find all this very reassuring."