Subj: UK: Drugs Tsar Defies Spin Machine



Source: The Observer, UK



Pubdate: February 6, 2000





Drugs Tsar Defies Spin Machine

Keith Hellawell is trying to talk sense while walking a tightrope set by

New Labour.

Jay Rayner



It was meant to be a good news day, a way for Britain's drug tsar to

reclaim the political agenda from what he has come to call, with increasing

disdain, 'the spin machine'. Sadly for Keith Hellawell, the spin machine

had not yet finished its cycle.



Before an audience of 100 teachers and drug workers in a motel on the

outskirts of Gloucester last week, the former Chief Constable of West

Yorkshire announced the recruitment of 680 new drug workers. 'pounds

500,000 of government money has been put aside for the recruitment drive,'

Hellawell said. 'And training will be given. I can't say yet what form the

training will take, but it will be paid for out of the seized asset fund.'



He said the same announcement was being made simultaneously by Cabinet

Office Minister Mo Mowlam, to whom he reports. At that moment Mowlam was

appearing on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour, but she seemed to have other

things on her mind. While passing reference to the recruitment drive was

made, she used the broadcast instead for something more pungent: an attack

on elements in Whitehall which, she said, 'were trying to put the knife in'

by briefing journalists that her brain tumour illness had left her unable

to do her job.



Mowlam's assault on her detractors was widely reported the next day. The

announcement about the recruitment of new drug workers was ignored.



Once again Hellawell had seen significant progress in his war on drugs

obscured by fallout from the Whitehall spin machine. Mowlam is well known

to be less than fond of Hellawell, whom she is said to regard as being 'too

Chief Constable'. She has more time for his deputy, Mike Trace, who comes

from the world of field work with addicts. But Hellawell is more likely to

see it simply as part of a growing problem he has in getting his message

across. He has been derided for allegedly suggesting that the Government

should consider buying Afghanistan's entire opium crop to stop it getting

on to the streets as heroin.



He has been lambasted for apparently suggesting the Internet is encouraging

drug use among young people and criticised for failings in pilot drug

treatment schemes he has introduced.



He will also know that the support he has expressed in today's Observer for

the 'depenalisation' of the possession of cannabis - a recommendation of a

forthcoming report by the Police Foundation - will prove controversial.



He is irritated by the way he is portrayed in the media. 'I do get cross

when I read about what I have or haven't done, said or haven't said,' he

said. 'The spin machine looks like it's trying to pin a tail on the donkey

with its eyes shut. They've found me and decided I'm going to be the target

of derision.'



Yet he still does not feel he can afford to ignore the hacks. In Gloucester

he spent 20 minutes talking to the drug workers who had travelled from all

over the country for a conference on drug use among young people with

special needs. But he gave the smattering of journalists present almost two

hours .



'We're actually doing everything we said we would do and doing it on time,'

he told them. 'People from other countries have seen what we're doing in

Britain and they say they don't understand the stick I'm getting. At the

United Nations congress on drug use in 1998 I was given a full session to

present our programme to 190 nations. Even General Barry Mcaffrey, who's

heading up the American drug programme, was surprised at the speed with

which we've got everything going.'





He launches into a list of successes: the reduction in criminality among

offenders who have been part of referral schemes for treatment, the

introduction of drug-free wings in some prisons, the small reductions that

have been seen in the numbers of people saying they have ever tried drugs.

But mostly he wants to talk about the turnaround in official attitudes to

the problem of drugs.



'Successive Conservative governments stated that the solution to the drug

problem lay with the criminal justice system,' he said. 'Now funds are

being shifted into treatment and education.' Hence the need for 680 new

drug workers: the agencies implementing drug treatment and education policy

have the money to do the job, he said, they just don't have the bodies to

do it. Now that problem would be solved.



He has, he says, managed to get more than pounds 250 million of new money

out of the Treasury to fight his war. His list of achievements is indeed

impressive, but there are still problems. More than 50 per cent of

offenders issued with Drug Treatment and Testing Orders, one of Hellawell's

pet projects, piloted in three areas so far, have returned to using drugs.



'Yes,' he says, 'but the general level of criminality and drug spending

among them has dropped.'



There are also increases in the use of cocaine. This, he admits, is a cause

for grave concern. 'In the last British Crime Survey covering 1996-98 we

saw an increase of cocaine use from 1 per cent to 3 per cent among the

15-29 age group, mostly around the club scene in London, Liverpool and

Nottingham. This is a threefold increase.



'In the next two years we are going to see a further increase. It's

becoming cheaper and more socially acceptable. Clearly this is bad news for

someone like me in this job.' But, he insists, the important issue is to

look at drug policy as a whole.



'What I have done is lift the stone on the hidden truth about drugs in

Britain, which is that we need to discriminate between different drugs and

the relative harm caused and then talk openly about the difference we can

make. The focus is going to be on the drugs that cause the major harm.'



This means accepting that cannabis use - and even the recreational use of

Ecstasy and amphetamines - is a low priority and that resources should

instead be concentrated on narcotics such as like heroin and cocaine.



The problem is that to talk of such things is seen by Labour to be

politically dangerous, hence the ridiculing of Clare Short when she said it

might be worth considering decriminalising marijuana and the backlash

Mowlam experienced when she admitted having inhaled.



Tony Blair once said his party would 'campaign in poetry but govern in

prose'. The reality is less romantic. New Labour campaigns in thick black

headlines, which is exactly what it did to sell the idea of its war on

drugs during the 1997 election.



'I believe we need to appoint a figurehead in the battle,' he told a

roomfull of fifth-formers who could not vote for him, during a speech at

Dyce Academy in Aberdeen in April 1997. 'Today I am announcing that Labour

will appoint an anti-drugs supremo, what they call in America a drugs tsar,

to co-ordinate our approach.'



Ever since Hellawell landed the job he has been trying to shake the title,

dismissing it as creating a simplistic image of a problem being tackled

through force alone. He says he has been given licence to think creatively

about the problem. He also says he has received endless support from the

Cabinet for his 10-year plan to shift the bulk of the pounds 1.5 billion of

government money earmarked for dealing with drug issues from the criminal

justice system to treatment and education.





But he has been told nothing in the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act is up for

negotiation. So he can never be heard to utter the word decriminalisation -

even for cannabis.



For Hellawell, this is no problem. His mantra from his days as a copper has

been that anything that might encourage more people to take more drugs,

however soft, is a bad idea. And yet he also accepts that locking up people

for possession of cannabis is a poor idea.



In 1990 the number of people cautioned for possession of cannabis

outstripped those prosecuted for the first time, and the gap between the

two groups has widened since. Any form of words that might allow the

practice to continue, without using language that could make the Government

look soft on drugs, would therefore be welcomed.



The forthcoming report from the Police Foundation looks set to provide such

a wording. It will recommend the 'depenalisation' of cannabis possession,

so the worst an offender might suffer is a fine. As we report today, it

would be of a piece with Hellawell's thinking.



But before he can start putting such complex issues before the public he

has to deal with the negative publicity. Sources have suggested former

Cabinet Officer Minster Jack Cunningham was responsible for most of it.



Sometimes Hellawell says it is simply the media misrepresenting him. He

says the story about buying the Afghan crop of opium is a case in point.

'The issue did arise. I simply asked whether there is any logic to the fact

that the opium crop in some countries is licensed and legal, because it is

used to produce diamorphine for medicinal purposes, and illegal in others.

I just said we might look at this question.'



Hellawell loves talking about studies and reports, to prove how well he is

doing. The journalists in Gloucester who had come to report his visit were

less than interested.



They wanted to know whether he was going to recommend giving more powers to

local police so they could lock up the drug dealers crowding the city's

streets.



These are the questions the public ask. Near the city centre, where the

Starbucks coffee shops and the cosy bookshops and boutiques give way to the

clutter of inner-city decay, is the Vauxhall Inn in Barton Street. Two

months ago the brewery put in a new landlord because of the drug dealing

that was rife in and about the pub.



The windows are now obscured by signs promising immediate police action

against anybody found dealing or taking drugs on the premises. The pub

itself has improved remarkably, but the problem itself still exists.



Around the corner are modern public lavatories which Joe Lynch, the new

landlord, says should never have been built. 'It's a constant menace,' he

says. 'That is the biggest place for taking and receiving.'



Inside, is a yellow plastic box fixed on the wall by the council for used

needles. A general election is expected within 18 months. New Labour will

then seek a second term in government based on its record.



On the doorsteps of Barton Street the small print of Hellawell's successes

is unlikely to be as attractive to the electorate as the headlines

politicians like to use. And the drug tsar knows it.