Subj: UK: Downing Street hosts drugs summit as crime figures soar



Date: 17 Feb, 2000



Source: The Daily Telegraph, UK







Downing Street hosts drugs summit as crime figures soar

By Jon Hibbs, Political Correspondent



THE Government will give police and Customs chiefs all the

powers and resources they need to fight the drugs problem,

the Prime Minister promised yesterday.



Tony Blair made his pledge at a "drugs summit" in No 10 as

the latest official figures showed a large rise in drug-

related crime. The numbers arrested for drug offences soared

by 13 per cent last year, while seizures of illegal drugs

rose by eight per cent.



In both cases the vast majority of crime was accounted for

by possession of or trading in cannabis, despite the

Government's insistence that it is focusing on the menace of

hard drugs.



Nevertheless, the number and quantity of cocaine seizures

rose by almost one third, with a correspondingly sharp rise

in the number of offenders. The number of heroin offenders

also rose by 30 per cent, though there was a 40 per cent

fall in the amount of the drug seized.



Keith Hellawell, Whitehall's "Drugs Tsar", denied the

statistics showed that his 10-year strategy was not working.

He said: "In one way these figures prove that we are

clamping down on drugs with the arrest of more offenders and

more seizures."



The summit was convened to underline Mr Blair's support for

Mr Hellawell in the face of a Whitehall whispering campaign

suggesting that he was ineffective, and continuing

controversy over the views of Mo Mowlam, the Cabinet Office

minister in charge of the anti-drugs initiative.



After admitting last month that she had used cannabis as a

student, Dr Mowlam recently refused to rule out the

possibility of decriminalising cannabis at some stage. After

what sources described as a "brain-storming" session which

also involved Dr Mowlam and Jack Straw, the Home Secretary,

the Prime Minister asked Mr Hellawell to investigate new

ways of breaking the link between drugs and crime.



One proposal is likely to be the nationwide extension of the

confidential "Rat on a rat" telephone hotline which has

resulted in the arrest of 7,000 drug offenders since it was

launched by the Metropolitan Police. Ministers heard that in

the fortnight following an aggressive poster campaign on

London's buses and street corners, the number of tip-offs

leapt from 70 to 2,000.



Mr Blair also expressed interest in "drug courts" being

tested in Wakefield, where offenders are brought speedily

before magistrates who have become specialists in drug-

related crime.



Mr Blair also requested a special report on investigating

fresh ideas for amplifying the anti-drugs message in

schools. Shaun Woodward, the former Tory MP who defected to

Labour last year, has been asked to assist Mr Hellawell

because of his experience as a former director of the

charity Childline.



The Conservatives denounced the summit as "all talk and no

delivery" and said the Government's drugs strategy was

riddled with confusion. Andrew Lansley, the shadow cabinet

office spokesman, said: "They have focused on reducing harm

from drug abuse for habitual users or those committing drug-

related offences. It is important that they also focus

effort sufficiently on reducing the supply of drugs and on

drug prevention, especially among young people."