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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: Home Office to lead change in drugs strategy
ePolitix
Sunday 23 Dec 2001 The government appears set to shift its policy on drugs in order to focus on the treatment of addicts. The move will bring the UK into line with the Netherlands, where there is a softer approach to drug use. Ministers are shortly expected to announce plans which would see heroin addicts receiving their drugs on prescription and remove laws which make it illegal to grow cannabis for personal use. The new approach is being masterminded by the Home Office minister, Bob Ainsworth, who trailed the move in parliament last week. Under the new approach, the police is to be told to focus its attention on drug dealers rather than drug users. The Home Office says senior officers must "pay the highest regard to the more serious crimes of trafficking and possession with intent to supply". The new package will also change the law to decriminalise growing cannabis at home for personal consumption. The government last week told the science and technology committee that it no longer believed that people should be prosecuted for growing small amounts of the drug. A spokesman for the Home Office denied that the new approach represented a u-turn, saying it was simply an extension of the home secretary's wider rethink of drugs policy.
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