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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: British children most likely in EU to try cannabis
Jenny Booth The Times
Thursday 25 Nov 2004 More schoolchildren in England have experimented with cannabis than in any other country in Europe. The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) also said the UK had the joint highest number of cocaine users, alongside Spain. The report by the Lisbon-based agency estimated up to three million people in the EU use marijuana on a daily basis. It said 42 per cent of boys and 38 per cent of girls aged 15 in England had tried cannabis, compared with less than 10 per cent in Greece, Malta, Sweden and Norway. England also had the highest number of 15-year-olds boys who were heavy cannabis users - defined as using the drug on 40 or more occasions a year - just over 10 per cent, compared with about 7 per cent in Spain and Belgium. Between 5 per cent and 7 per cent of people aged 15 to 24 in the UK and Spain admitted to using cocaine recently, with levels in towns and cities likely to be "substantially higher", it said. The gloomy news emerged as the Prime Minister volunteered to be tested for heroin and cocaine by police in Slough, before giving a speech on the Government's plans for a drugs crackdown. "My drugs test was negative," the prime minister boasted as he began his talk, in front of a small audience in the canteen at Slough police station. Mr Blair said that drug dealers who sell drugs near schools or use children as runners will face harsher sentences. Judges will be able to treat such tactics as an aggravating factor when they sentence drug dealers. He said that police will in future be allowed to perform mouth swab drugs tests, like the ones he had just taken, on anybody they arrest rather than only on people charged with an offence. The test results are available within two minutes. The measures will be included in a new Drugs Bill announced in the Queen's Speech this week and expected to be published before Christmas. The Bill would allow courts to assume that anyone caught with more drugs than they would need for their own personal use is a dealer, thus facing tougher penalties. Mr Blair promised a three-month police campaign to close drug dens and confiscate guns, starting in January. In five pilot areas - Manchester, Calderdale, Newham in London, Bradford and Middlesbrough - young offenders will be forced to undergo drug treatment as part of community sentences, he said. Meanwhile, 32 new areas will from April will be able to impose drugs interventions programmes, where anyone charged with drug-related crime can be forced to undergo regular tests for Class A drugs, and be offered rehab treatment if they test positive. The scheme already treats 1,500 new addicts a month and by 2008 will be directing about 1,000 offenders a week into treatment. The Prime Minister said: "We are offering a choice. If you are a drug addict engaged in crime, you will be offered a way out through treatment and help. If you refuse that offer, it will be made more difficult for you at every stage in the criminal justice system." The new Drugs Bill will also give magistrates the power to remand people suspected of swallowing packages of drugs into police custody for up to a further 192 hours so the packages will pass through their system. It also allows anyone made the subject of an Anti-Social Behaviour Order to be handed a drug counselling orders too. And police will be given the power to enter crack houses to issue closure notices, closing a loophole in the Anti-Social Behaviour Act which gave police the closure powers. Martin Barnes, the chief executive of DrugScope, a drugs charity, said that more testing was pointless while there was a shortage of services to help people stay off drugs. Compulsory drugs treatment was not proving a great success either, as too many people dropped out. The charity was "cautious" about plans to assume that people with medium quantities of drugs were dealers, he said. "The balance needs to be got right to ensure that we do not criminalise more casual drug users." Mark Oaten, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman. said: "Diverting addicts into treatment is vitally important, but all too often the treatment they need is not available." Meanwhile, on a visit to Milton Keynes, Michael Howard said of the Prime Minister's record on drugs that "reality has not matched his rhetoric." The Tory leader's policies on drugs include increasing powers for the courts and police to direct addicts to residential treatment courses, and random drug testing by headteachers in schools. The Conservatives also intend to reclassify marijuana as a "class B" drug and impose a seven-year minimum jail term for those convicted of drugs trafficking.
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