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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: Top officers fear efforts against hard drugs
Jimmy Burns The Financial Times
Tuesday 23 Oct 2001 The government is facing opposition from some senior police officers over its plans to make possession of cannabis no longer an arrestable offence. The Association of Chief Police Officers said on Wednesday that several of its members believed the proposal risked creating problems for operational officers dealing with the drugs trade. While ACPO broadly accepts the need for police to use their discretion in dealing with young people who may only use cannabis, it is worried that the proposal will undermine the police's ability to take fingerprints and other evidence from people who might have links with hard drug dealing. Critics of the move are thought to include Andy Hayman, deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan police, the ACPO adviser on drugs policy. The government based its decision on the recommendation made last March by a panel of experts reporting to the Police Foundation, an independent research body partly funded by the Home Office. It has also been taking into account a pilot scheme introduced in Lambeth, south London, where the local commander Brian Paddick has told his officers to ignore or only caution those in possession of cannabis. But one of the members of the Police Foundation panel, Denis O'Connor, chief constable of Surrey, has expressed his "enduring reservations" on the workability of new rules on cannabis. Mr O'Connor refused to sign up to the panel's recommendations. Among the potential problems he identified was the difficulty in deciding whether an individual was involved in supply or just possession. Mr Paddick, one of the Met's high fliers and the first in the force to declare himself gay, has been praised by the Home Office for the Lambeth experiment. But it emerged on Wednesday night that the results of the ongoing scheme have been mixed. Mr Paddick believes that the move has freed up some of his officers to focus on more pressing areas of crime, and is contributing to a new climate of community tolerance. However, the pilot scheme has also led to confusion within the community, with sectors of the local population believing that the drug has been decriminalised. Mr Paddick accepts that some of his own officers have found gathering evidence more difficult. It is thought that he believes complete "depenalisation" of cannabis will only work in practice within a far broader reform of drugs policy, with a shift towards education and rehabilitation. Meanwhile, demand for hard drugs continues to far outstrip the police's ability to suppress the trade. "At the moment we know that every time we arrest a dealer, another one just comes along and takes his place," a senior police officer said last night. MPs on both sides of the House of Commons are divided between those who feel the move does not go far enough, and those strongly opposed to what they regard as the government "going soft" on drugs. David Blunkett, the home secretary, was also having to fend off criticism that he had tried to "bury" his controversial move by timing his announcement to coincide with the IRA's statement on decommissioning. He described the suggestion as "ridiculous".
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