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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: Tory leader to learn from toughest drugs policy in EU
Melissa Kite The Times
Monday 22 Jul 2002 IAIN DUNCAN SMITH is visiting Stockholm today to see how the toughest drugs policy in Europe has kept substance abuse at bay. Mr Duncan Smith's trip forms part of a campaign by the Tory leader to find new ways of dealing with social problems by looking to methods used abroad. While David Blunkett has downgraded cannabis to a class C drug, Sweden, by contrast, views the substance as dimly as heroin and drug users are prosecuted with the same vigour as drug dealers. Swedish police, for example, have a wide range of powers to deal with the problem. They can request blood or urine samples and carry out regular raids on places where people might be taking drugs, such as raves and nightclubs. Detoxification and treatment programmes also receive substantial funding and drug-withdrawal programmes in prison are compulsory. Although the sternest sentences are reserved for dealers, drug users are also identified and prosecuted, but not jailed. The fact that Swedish law enforcement does not distinguish between soft and hard drugs has been credited for the low levels of drug abuse. In Sweden only 11 per cent of schoolchildren have tried drugs compared with an estimated 45 per cent in Britain. The Tory leader, who will visit a drug prevention and treatment centre for young abusers in Stockholm and meet the county's national drugs co-ordinator, Torngy Peterson, will be accompanied by Oliver Letwin, the Shadow Home Secretary. Mr Letwin was one of a number of senior Tories two years ago to admit to having tried cannabis in his youth in a revolt against Ann Widdecombe's then policy of giving a criminal record to anyone found using the drug.
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