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The United Nations International Narcotic Control Board (INCB) has attacked one of the few progressive drugs reforms introduced by any British government since the disastrous tide of prohibition began to roll across the world in the 1960s. The downgrading of cannabis – a drug which more than half of all British citizens under the age of 30 have tried – from Class B to Class C, earmarked for this Easter, was the barest minimum that could be done in a country where even The Daily Telegraph, Peter Lilley and The Economist support legalisation. Yet the INCB has condemned it as a move made by a government "intimidated by a vocal minority that wants to legalise illicit drug use". This "vocal minority" includes, according to a 2001 ICM poll, more than half of all British people when it comes to cannabis.

The INCB is among the world's most hardline exponents of drug prohibition. Whenever a country moves in the direction of greater tolerance and reducing harm, the INCB is there to beat it with a big stick. Despite its disingenuous attempt yesterday to claim to speak on behalf of African nations, it is effectively a puppet of the United States, a nation whose drugs record speaks for itself. The latest US Department of Health found last year that despite endless "crackdowns" over two decades, 87 million Americans have used illegal drugs, and nearly a million regularly use the most hardcore of all, crack cocaine.

The intellectual poverty of the prohibitionists is so obvious that it no longer merits serious discussion. They are not interested in evidence from the real world; they are simply blinkered ideologues. Yet the INCB still tries to enforce the catastrophic US model across the globe. Any nation that tries to liberalise its drugs policy finds itself, as Britain has, under intense US/UN pressure.

Through the INCB, they oppose even the most basic harm-reduction tactics, such as injecting rooms where heroin addicts can inject under supervision in case they overdose; needle exchanges (to avoid HIV infection); heroin prescription (proven to reduce property crimes, because addicts no longer need to steal to fund their habit); and ecstasy testing in clubs, combined with education about the drug (which could save the lives of the few people who do die using ecstasy).

As Danny Kushlick, director of the increasingly influential Transform Drugs Policy Institute, explains: "There is now a serious tension emerging between the US approach to drugs – which is being aggressively forced on the world – and the European harm-reduction philosophy which is gradually emerging. Portugal has effectively decriminalised personal possession of all drugs; and in Spain and Italy, personal possession is now only a civil offence."

At the moment, the European approach remains – just – within the boundaries of the international drug-control treaties, regulated by the UN, that were set up in successive waves in 1961, 1971 and 1988. Even these changes are achieved mostly by exploiting clauses about medical necessity. For example, needle exchanges, which test the ultra-prohibitionist spirit of the treaties, are justified by the Dutch with reference to the clauses about individual health. But no European country can move towards full legalisation of production and supply while remaining within the treaties' constraints. Sooner or later, there will be a blatant challenge to the treaties by a European country that wants to travel this path, although massive diplomatic pressure will be exerted to rein it back.

The US-imposed constraints on South America are even greater. In Colombia, 40 per cent of the national economy is based on the international trade in drugs. The distorting effect on the entire country is immeasurable, with billions sloshing around in illegal funds, corrupting both politics and the administration of law. This is exacerbated by a US policy of mass-spraying, with noxious herbicides, of fields suspected to be used for cocaine-related crops. Tens of thousands of acres of land belonging to poverty-stricken small farmers have been destroyed, the environmental damage is devastating, and yet the policy is so ineffective that since it began the cocaine yield from Colombia has trebled.

The idea that the drugs market can be stamped out is a fantasy. A kilo of cocaine is worth £1,000 in Colombia, but, because of the massive inflationary effects of prohibition, it is worth £30,000 by the time it reaches the streets of London. Wherever there is a 3,000 per cent profit margin, people will be prepared to take extraordinary risks. This market will not die.

Legalising the supply and distribution networks of drugs, however, would put the huge sums of money generated by this industry into the hands of legitimate businesses and – most importantly – through taxation into the hands of governments that urgently need more money for the provision of basic health and education.

The INCB approach, in contrast, is a guarantee of poverty in South America and mass property crime in Britain. The Government has unflinchingly taken the condemnation of this unaccountable body for even its very moderate change. This should embolden it to confront the prohibitionists again and move faster towards the European model that will – one day soon – replace the current

Cannabis law sends 'wrong signal'
The decision to relax UK laws on cannabis is sending out the "wrong signal" to the rest of the world, according to a UN panel responsible for drugs issues.
Home Secretary David Blunkett's decision to downgrade cannabis from a Class B to a Class C drug may also damage British people's health. According to the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), relaxing the rules on cannabis may prompt an increase in its use. The INCB's Nigerian president, Philip Emafo, said: "It is important that consensus prevails in international drug control.
"No government should take unilateral measures without considering the impact of its actions and ultimately the consequences for an entire system that took governments almost a century to establish." He added that young people were confused over "mixed messages" about drugs. "On one hand you are telling them not to go to clubs and use ecstasy because it is dangerous, but on the other hand you are not doing anything about cannabis," he argued. In a 90-page report published on Wednesday, the INCB also suggested that the policy on cannabis could lead to increased cultivation of the drug destined for the UK and "other European countries". Last September a conference in Nairobi heard the UK's decision would "undermine the efforts of governments of African countries to counter illicit cannabis cultivation, trafficking and abuse".
Cancer
Mr Blunkett's initiative had led to "worldwide repercussions ... including confusion and widespread misunderstanding." Critics of the government's stance say cannabis can cause cancers, heart disease and mental health problems. Professor Ghodse, a former INCB president and in charge of studies into addictive behaviour at the University of London's St George's Hospital, said: "It's quite worrying that we might end up in the next 10 or 20 years ... with our psychiatric hospitals filled with people who have problems with cannabis.
"Recreational use of cannabis is something that any government and any community should think very seriously about." A recent study by the British Lung Foundation suggested that smoking three joints had the same impact as 20 cigarettes.
But the chief executive of drugs charity DrugScope, Roger Howard, argued that control of cannabis caused "disproportionately more harm to society than the harm caused by the substance itself". He added: "The credibility of the INCB is thrown into doubt when its criticism of the UK Government's sensible proposal to re-classify cannabis is based on dubious science and misleading conclusions." Professor Ghodse refused to be drawn on the specific issue of cautioning people found to be in possession of cannabis.
Illegal
"The board does not dictate to the countries how to deal with penalties," he said. "Penalties are a national issue providing they are not in violation of the conventions." Although he welcomed Mr Blunkett's statement last July that all controlled drugs are to stay illegal. The government will make the final moves towards downgrading the classification of cannabis later this year. When that happens people found possessing small quantities of the drug will only be arrested in "exceptional" circumstances such as blowing smoke in a policeman's face or causing a disturbance.

Nurses on a government advisory body drafting minimum requirements for care homes have backed health secretary Alan Milburn’s decision to water down standards.

The nurses agreed with him that strict standards were partly to blame for the closure of thousands of beds at homes that could not afford renovations. They also said that ‘environmental’ standards, such as those demanding single rooms of a minimum size, often have only limited impact on care quality.

The advisory group had called for at least 80 per cent of rooms to be single occupancy and at least ten metres square in size by 2007. It also wanted a minimum of 4.1 square metres of communal space per resident and door widths of at least 80cm to aid wheelchair access.

But the government announced last week that existing care homes merely have to maintain the single room provision they had on March 31 last year. The room size and door width minimums now only apply to homes built from last April.

The chair of the advisory group, Kina Lady Avebury of the Centre for Policy on Ageing, called the government’s change of heart ‘disgraceful’. She said: ‘I wonder how Mr Milburn or any other government minister would feel if their parent was compelled to share a bedroom with a stranger.’

But nurses on the panel – RCN policy adviser for gerontological nursing Pauline Ford, former RCN elderly care adviser Hazel Heath, and Linda Nazarko, a nursing home manager at the time – disagreed.

Ms Heath said: ‘I have been in care homes where the environment was not ideal but the care was good and the residents were happy.’

Drafting standards to benefit elderly people while protecting the interests of care home owners had been ‘a very difficult balance to strike’, she said.

Ms Nazarko, now visiting senior lecturer at London’s South Bank University, said: ‘It was crazy asking care homes to spend a fortune getting a door an inch bigger. Sometimes people measure things because they are easy to measure.’

Ms Ford had wanted minimum nurse/patient ratios for care homes, but that demand was rejected by the government. She said that relaxing environmental standards would help smaller homes stay open.

National Care Homes Association chief executive Sheila Scott had been a member of the advisory group but walked out in protest before its recommendations were published. She welcomed the relaxation of standards and urged the government to increase funding to prevent further home closures.

This weekend some 71,000 people are behind bars, just 1,300 short of the maximum number possible - and yet crime rates have fallen. Why? Look to the increased use of heroin and crack cocaine and the 47,000 prisoners who need detox.

David Rose
Sunday February 9, 2003
The Observer

The reception block at Pentonville Prison late one afternoon last week, as the Group 4 security vans arrive from court. In the gloomy yellow corridors, the stench of old vomit, mixed with cigarettes, is overpowering. Thirty men, haggard and bewildered, are already penned in the plateglass-fronted holding pen, queueing to use the two telephones.
In one corner, a scabby-faced man of 28 - he looks much older - trembles uncontrollably: he's at an advanced stage of heroin withdrawal, he says, and deliberately smashed a car window in front of a policeman. He wanted to be sent to prison, because he knows that here he will get a methadone prescription.

'I can't get help outside. I've been trying to come off for two years. I'd rather be doing detox here than out on the streets, using drugs.'

The prisoners wait in the pen for a doctor's examination, for their paperwork to be processed and to exchange their own clothing for grey prison sweatsuits, socks and underwear. 'I know what you're thinking,' says my Prison Service guide. 'It is a bit Hieronymus Bosch.' On an average day, there will be 100 new arrivals. Pentonville - with 45,000 separate prisoner movements in and out of reception each year - is the busiest jail in Europe.

Last week, after a brief dip around Christmas, the result of the Government's extension of electronic tagging, the prison population of England and Wales stood at 71,149, almost back to the all-time high it reached last autumn. It is currently rising by 400 inmates a week. Just 1,300 prisoners below its maximum capacity, the Prison Service is close to breaking point. Its staff and managers are well aware of the consequences: overcrowded cells and worsening regimes; prisoners shipped far from their families; and a much greater risk of violence, riots and suicides.

By the end of March, the doors will open on three new prefabricated wings at existing jails, providing room for another 1,300 inmates. Shortly afterwards, two new prisons, with room for 1,300 more, will open at Ashford, Kent, and Heathrow. Few doubt the extra spaces will soon be filled. Since 1993, when it hit a low of 42,000, the prison population's rise has been relentless. Unlike any other public institution, the Prison Service appears to be an open-ended resource.

The paradox is that, throughout this era of rampant jail expansion, crime rates have fallen steadily: the Home Office British Crime Survey, widely considered the most reliable source, suggests an overall decrease since the mid-1990s of 22 per cent. The numbers of people convicted have also fallen, from 1.5 million in 1991 to 1.35 million 10 years later.

At the simplest level, the explanation for the prison population explosion is that there are more prisoners because magistrates and judges have got much tougher. Although the total remanded in custody has increased since 1993, from 10,000 to around 13,000, the number of convicted prisoners serving a sentence has soared from 31,000 to 58,000, of whom about 4,000 are women. (Contrary to popular belief, women are somewhat less likely to go to prison, and on average receive shorter sentences).

'The biggest thing is the public climate,' says Paul Cavadino, director of the offender rehabilitation group Nacro. 'Whether they're taking their lead from the media, politicians or conversations in their local pub, sentencers clearly believe they're supposed to pass heavier terms.'

Fewer than half those convicted at Crown courts were sentenced to immediate custody in 1993; by 2001 it was 63 per cent. Only 6 per cent convicted by magistrates went to prison in 1993, but 15 per cent in 2001. Average Crown court sentence lengths have also risen dramatically. The average burglar jailed in 1993 could expect to go away for 11 months; his counterpart in 2001 for 16.5 months. Similar increases apply to other crimes.

But why? Some argue that crimes are getting worse. 'I remember as a young barrister being involved in a GBH case,' says a senior northern judge. 'The judge was horrified, because the defendant put the boot in. These days there's a sense of relief if they've merely put the boot in. There's so much anger: road rage, neighbour rage. And people seem much more ready to use weapons.'

The 2001 Halliday report on sentencing, published by the Home Office, disagreed. Tougher sentences, it said, 'do not appear to reflect a more serious mix of offenders passing through the courts... the sentencing of similar offences and offenders has become much more severe'.

Yet, although the last Tory Home Secretary, Michael Howard, famously proclaimed that 'prison works', Labour Ministers have often urged the judiciary to use imprisonment sparingly. Lord Woolf, the Lord Chief Justice, has also warned repeatedly of the negative effects of prison overcrowding. Yet the judges aren't following their leader. Is this simply a matter of media, mood and public perception? Or are there deeper, more intractable forces at work?

The place to begin to look for answers is the nature of the prison population itself. Some penal reformers have argued that the main problem is the increase in people serving short sentences, 12 months or less, and that the jails are bursting mainly because of people whose offences are so trivial - TV licence fee evasion, for example - that they shouldn't be there at all. On closer inspection, however, this argument looks problematic.

On the one hand, it is true that a high proportion of short-sentence inmates probably wouldn't have been imprisoned 10 years ago. For example, 15 per cent of burglary convicts got a community sentence in 1993, but just 5 per cent in 2001. 'There has been a general movement downwards of the boundaries between different kinds of penalty,' says Cavadino. 'Fines are rather less common. A higher proportion go straight to probation-supervised community sentences, and a much higher proportion to prison.'

Reversing these trends, on the other hand, would not be easy, and even if it happened it would make only a marginal difference to the overall prison population. Last month Woolf was attacked by the right-wing press when he issued new sentence guidelines suggesting that burglars without previous convictions should not normally be jailed. Missing from the furore was the actual number of first-time burglars now serving sentences of fewer than four years. Unpublished Home Office research has the answer: 290 - fewer than 0.3 per cent of total jail inmates.

The research has discovered that 15 per cent of sentenced prisoners have no previous convictions - the same proportion as 10 years ago. However, if one factors out those convicted of violent assaults, sex offences, robbery and drug dealing, the proportion falls to less than 3 per cent, about 1,600 people. At the end of last year Martin Narey, the then Prisons Director-General, asked his staff to discover how many people there were in jail for not paying their TV licence. The answer on the day they looked was: one.

At Pentonville, I ask staff to show me the files of 20 prisoners pulled from their stacks of cabinets at random. They cover almost every type of crime and sentence: an armed robber serving 10 years; a serial rapist-kidnapper on nine; several burglars doing 18 months. All but one have been to prison before, most of them several times, and all had previous convictions - in some cases, 30 or more. 'It's the same people, again and again,' says Jaqueline De Allie, head of inmate administration.

In 2000, the last year for which figures are available, nationally 65 per cent of prisoners had at least five previous convictions. The biggest growth in the preceding decade was in the proportion of inmates with at least 11 previous convictions, which rose from 25 to 32 per cent of the rapidly expanding total. Proof, it could be argued, of prison's ineffectiveness at reducing re-offending. On the other hand, in a sentencing climate in which judges are likely to give higher sentences to people with bad criminal records, mounting recidivism looks very significant.

We need to look again at the nature of the prison population. Much more important than the growing numbers of short-sentence inmates are the lengthening terms for people convicted of relatively serious crimes who would almost certainly have gone to prison anyway. In 1990 there were 16,154 inmates serving sentences of more than three years. By 2000 this had risen to 28,090, and it has continued to increase since. Less than a fifth, 17 per cent, of sentenced prisoners in the system are serving terms of a year or less - and with the spread of electronic tagging, most will be home within three months in any case.

Is this rise in recidivism and longer sentences just a matter of public mood? Or is it possible something real, something long-term and very serious, is happening in the nature of offending, and that the judiciary is partly reflecting it?

The anecdotal evidence is there in Pentonville, where I sit with six inmates approaching the end of their sentences. All but one have used heroin and crack cocaine; of whom all attribute their criminal acts to their habits. 'I was using £900 a day, man!' says Brian. 'If I hadn't been caught and come inside, I would have killed someone. I was smoking crack even when I was taking my kids to school.' He is doing 15 months for wounding: 'I stabbed someone. It was drug-related. I was high when I done it. He was a dealer.'

At 34, Robbie from Liverpool has been to prison 'about 10 times' before. 'I've taken heroin since I was 15. Every single crime I've done in my life has been to support my habit.' This time, he's been jailed for just eight months for shop theft, but his previous convictions include armed robbery and aggravated burglary.

Beneath the surface of official statistics, the increase in class A drug use starts to emerge as a principal cause of the increase in inmates. Last year a staggering 79.8 per cent of prisoners entering Pentonville reception had taken cocaine or heroin within the previous 48 hours.

Dr Ashvin Balabhadra runs the drug detox programme on B wing. 'When I started here in 1999, about 125 a month were coming through reception with immediate, serious substance misuse problems. Now that's up to 275 or 300. We're using the same methods to identify them: urine tests, pupil tests, information from outside and the history taken by our own staff. The local NHS sees fewer patients needing detox in a year than we deal with every month.'

The Observer has obtained national figures for new prisoners requiring immediate detox treatment. They show that they have risen steadily from about 16,000 in 1996 to 47,000 in 2002.

The official statistics for convictions for hard drug dealing and importation confirm this emerging story. Unlike every other major group of offences, where convictions have fallen or remained steady, these totals have vastly increased. In 1993, 1,852 people were convicted for trafficking in class A drugs. The figure for 2001 was 6,551.

Of course, these statistics explain some of the prison population rise on their own: most hard drug traffickers get long sentences - some of them, such as the hun dreds of desperate Third World female 'drug mules', very long indeed. But the knock-on effects will be considerable. Class A drug addicts - like those I meet in Pentonville - are often determined to kick their habit, but enormously prone to relapse, and once addicted again overwhelmingly likely to re-offend. And the biggest growth in the prison population is among the serial recidivists.

So what to do? Drugs aren't the only reason why sentences have got longer and the prison population soared. The legal 'tariffs' for some crimes, such as rape and mobile phone street robbery, are longer. 'If Ministers want to cut inmate numbers, they need to mount a sustained campaign to persuade sentencers to do just that,' says Cavadino. 'Roy Jenkins and William Whitelaw did this, and it worked.'

But this is also a challenge to so-called joined-up government. The fact that a heroin user will try to get into Pentonville in order to get the methadone that will stop his withdrawal symptoms does not betray a logical approach to this large and expensive social problem.

Here and there are glimmers of hope. One success story of the Government's penal policies are drug treatment and testing orders, which give drug-using offenders the chance to avoid prison if they undergo drug rehab and undergo weekly urine tests to prove they are drug-free. Yet in many areas the courts ran out of the budgets within a few months of the current financial year. It gave them no choice but to send eligible candidates to prison instead.

In the Pentonville gym, officer Paul Sandford gestures to his orderlies, trusted inmates rippling with muscle. I ask him the question that has stumped Home Secretary David Blunkett: why has the prison population risen?

'One word: drugs,' he says. 'These guys look pretty well, don't they? They come in here like skeletons - the crack diet, we call it. Here we give them exercise and decent food. It's like a health farm. The problem starts again at the prison gate. I hate to say it, but most of them will be back a few months later, looking like skeletons again.'

Guardian
Monday February 3, 2003

Schools' zero tolerance policies towards drugs may be counter-productive because they encourage children to conceal drug problems, according to Home Office research. Experts who studied the drug habits of 300 hardcore young offenders concluded that low or zero tolerance policies "may not be helpful".

The research was published as the drugs minister, Bob Ainsworth, unveiled a new £40m programme of drug treatment services for young offenders. Mr Ainsworth also announced £30m for drug work in young offenders institutes' secure units, £22m for councils to provide specialist youth workers, and £15m for schemes that use sport to steer young people away from drugs.

He said: "Vulnerable young people need prevention and treatment before the problems escalate."The Home Office report said that zero tolerance policies encouraged "children to conceal rather than deal with their drug use".It warned that those pupils excluded from school as a result of using drugs were not necessarily the only or the worst offenders.

The study's conclusions contrast sharply with guidance from the Department for Education and Skills, which has increased headteachers' powers to expel drug dealing pupils. The charity DrugScope said the research showed that zero tolerance drug policies led to drug problems being ignored rather than dealt with effectively.

Helen Wilkinson, director of information and policy at the charity, said: "Research shows drug use among excluded children is much higher than for those in school. "A range of disciplinary and supportive measures is necessary. We should be helping children with problems. Throwing them out simply exacerbates the problem."

But general secretary of the Secondary Heads' Association, Dr John Dunford, said: "We would reject any notion that drug people should not be excluded from school. "I think schools can safely ignore the views of this Home Office research. "Selling drugs is a crime outside school and it has to be dealt with severely inside school as well."

Last May the DfES said children caught dealing drugs at schools should be expelled with no chance of a reprieve, even for a first-time offence.

A fifth of the group studied for the Home Office report had dealt drugs, shoplifted, sold stolen goods or gone joyriding at least 20 times in the previous year. More than 85% had used cannabis, alcohol and tobacco but heroin and crack cocaine use were still comparatively low. "There was no evidence of a progression towards heroin or crack cocaine use or dependence despite the diverse drug use amongst the group," said the report.

The 293 young people surveyed by researchers from Essex University were all being supervised by youth offending teams - 52% were 15 or 16 years old while a handful were under 14. The Home Office today also published reports showing 42% of young homeless people had taken heroin and 38% crack cocaine - about 20 times the average. Young people who had been in care also reported higher than average drug use, with 10% using crack or heroin.

Comment: This issue is highlighting the lack of coordination at a senior level on drugs strategy. Given that action was to be evidence based, the Government would appear to be adopting a policy of either ignoring the evidence or pursuing policy exactly opposite to the evidence. So rather than waiting for the reports on vulnerable people to be produced, the DFES and the Home Office pursue policies contraindicated by both reports. And in the meantime schools are sending in the sniffer dogs. See the Drug News section for a longer commentary on this.

Random drug tests plan for police officers

Feb 2 2003 IC wales

By Hugo Duncandaily Post Staff


POLICE officers could face drug-testing under radical plans being considered in North Wales. At present only one police force in Britain tests its officers regu-larly and that is in Scotland. North Wales chief constable Richard Brunstrom told the Daily Post: "We are considering it here at the moment."

Mr Brunstrom said he did not think there was a problem with drug or alcohol abuse within the force and discus-sions were at a very early stage. "Most people believe we have a very low level problem but we haven't done a great deal yet to try to get it out," he said. "We do tests for a number of our specialist officers, firearms officers in particular, because you can't have a police officer with a gun who is drunk. "But we have a very low level problem."

Police Federation secretary PC Richard Eccles said he would not support random drug-testing. "I would be concerned it would alienate the genuine hard working officer," he said. "Officers are not allowed to go out and breathalyse someone or take a drugs-test unless we have reasonable grounds for doing so, and I do not think police officers should be treated any differently." He said any drug-testing should come under strict legislation from the government which affected every police force in the UK. He said legislation should ensure any testing was targeted and intelligence led.

Mr Brunstrom, 48, said police officers had not always had a good record with regards drinking. "When I joined the police, officers were still drinking and driving - the CID used to do it 25 or 30 years ago," he said. "But they don't now because the culture has changed. "I have always regarded drinking and driving as a particularly serious offence. "The consequences of drinking and driving are that people die." He said the same was true of people of who took drugs and drove. "I have no sympathy for anyone that does and I take a very hard line on that," he said. "Abusing your own body and putting the lives of others at risk are two very separate things."

Mr Brunstrom said there was no way officers would be lenient on each other. "Twenty years ago if you worked for us and you got stopped drinking and driving the likelihood is you could talk your way out of it but you have no chance now. "If I was drinking and driving and one of my officers stopped me I would be arrested just like anyone else because the organisation has no toler-ance for this. "The public can have a great deal of confidence our integrity is intact," he said.

The other emergency services in North Wales have no plans to carry out drug-testing. Fire Service spokesperson Bethan Davies said: "We do not do random testing here and drug and alcohol abuse is not a problem. If someone is not fit for work through drugs or alcohol it may lead to disciplinary action, but that has never happened here." The Wales Ambulance Trust has a similar policy and spokesperson Alison Watkins said no-one had been referred to occupational health since the policy started in December 2000. "There is no problem in the ambu-lance service," she said.

Commnent: Given the extension of drug testing in the workplace, schools, and even in pubs detailed elsewhere on the site, the Police Federation's comments stink of rank hypocrisy. So it's acceptable for the police to enter pubs and schools and randomly screen for substances without warnings. But as soon as it's their membership it's unacceptable. As the public are repeatedy told whenever civil liberties are undermined, "only those with something to hide would object to these measures." Well?

Alcoholics will be forced into detox in bid to tackle crime

Gaby Hinsliff, chief political correspondent
Sunday February 2, 2003
The Observer

Heavy drinkers would be forced into 'detox' treatment or alcohol education courses under Government plans to tackle Britain's alcohol-fuelled yob culture. Draconian powers in the planned Mental Health Bill, which defines addiction as a psychiatric illness, will allow hardened alcoholics to be locked up and compulsorily treated.

But Ministers are also seeking new ways of making excessive social drinkers - who are not addicted to the bottle, but drink too much and then break the law by drink-driving or brawling in pubs - confront their behaviour.

Such so-called 'hazardous drinkers' are typically outwardly respectable people who hold down jobs and families and would never regard themselves as having a drink problem, despite sinking between 30 and 50 units of alcohol a week. Yet they, rather than alcoholics, are responsible for most social problems caused by alcohol.

The Prime Minister's Strategy Unit - which is drawing up a national policy on alcohol - is studying plans to offer medical intervention or classes explaining how to cut down to people whose offending is triggered by drinking. The treatment would not be compulsory, but those who refused help would be likely to face stiffer court penalties under the proposals, forcing them towards treatment.

'I think we will be going further down the road to some kind of compulsory treatment and I don't think the objections to it are strong enough to stop it happening,' said Richard Phillips, director of policy and services at Alcohol Concern, which has submitted recommendations to the strategy unit.

'For drink-drivers, reconviction rates are far lower for people who have done these courses and so you could imagine similar things for people who are violent offenders who consistently are drunk when they get picked up.'

Up to 40 per cent of crime is committed by someone under the influence, while alcohol-related illness costs NHS hospitals £3 billion a year. Alcohol Concern's submission, now being considered by the strategy unit, calls for 'criminal justice interventions providing referral routes into treatment for many of the most problematic of drinkers', adding that alcohol-related offenders 'should be encouraged through formal mechanisms such as appropriate arrest referral schemes and enhanced cautioning provisions to undertake alcohol education courses or alcohol treatment'.

Courts can already send drink-drivers on re-education courses, and Ministers are understood to be looking at extending the principle to other offences.

The Home Office is monitoring two pilot projects in north London under which people arrested for drunk and disorderly behaviour are referred to alcohol counsellors instead of being locked up overnight in police cells.

Ross Cranston, the former solicitor general now heading the all-party alcohol group, said it was time to reconsider links between alcohol and crime. 'There is an association, and maybe we need to think about this sort of referral mechanism being extended to alcohol,' he said. Ministers are, however, nervous of a heavy-handed approach since alcohol is legal and enjoyed by millions. The Department of Health has repeatedly insisted it had no plans for compulsory treatment.

But Health Minister Jacqui Smith admitted last week that the planned Mental Health Bill will define alcohol dependency as a mental illness - allowing the severest cases to be forcibly detained and treated. The Bill would provide 'a legal framework for compulsory treatment' compatible with policies including 'the Government's commitment to implementing the national alcohol harm reduction strategy', she said. However, alcohol experts say up to one in 13 men are dependent on alcohol. 'We simply do not want legislation that allows that many people to be compulsorily detained,' said Phillips.

He said experts were also divided over pushing more moderate drinkers into treatment to tackle offending, which could be 'counter-productive'. The strategy unit is also understood to be considering more so-called 'brief interven tns' for hazardous drinkers in GPs' surgeries, where practice nurses explain the consequences of drinking and suggest ways of cutting down. 'People see two brackets - alcoholic or normal, and that is quite dangerous because the people in the middle are the most at risk and get into a whole range of other harms,' said Phillips.

The alcohol strategy will be published later this summer.

Comment: So by defining alcoholism within the Mental Health Bill, this will give the state power to enforce treatment. So from there it would be easy to define the habitual use of cannabis, or even cigarettes, in the same light. So the enforced treatment providers should be rubbing their hands with glee over this, as it will create even more business as people are rounded up for treatment under duress.

To remind people how this works for you:

when they came for the heroin addicts, I did not speak out for I was not a heroin addict
when they came for the borderline personality disorders, I did not speak out as I did not have a disorder,
when they came for the alcoholics I did not speak out because I was not an alcoholic,
when they came for me, there was noone to speak out for me.

HOW PRISON WORKS
Private Eye: 24.1.03

LEANNE GIDNEY, an 18-year-old single mother, was found hanging in her prison cell last week after being jailed for stealing £1.
As a heroin addict with previous convictions, she was jailed for such a petty offence not because of the government's "prison works, zero tolerance" drive but because the criminal justice system couldn't do anything else with her.
UK jails, now housing a record 72,500 inmates, are full to exploding. But probation staff, who run the community and treatment-orientated penalties that are supposed to offer an alternative to prison, are about to go on a one-day strike and work-to-rule because they are so overwhelmed by caseloads that have doubled in the past 10 years.
Drug treatment programmes are hugely oversubscribed with offenders waiting anything from six weeks to six months to join one. And there is little point in fining persistent offenders who might be tempted to steal to pay the fine or simply ignore them.
Hence Leanne Gidney ended up where she did for steal ing £1.

Comment: Just to keep all the news about "persistent offenders" and DTTOs in perspective, and to make sure that before we start haring off towards drug courts...

Under fire from the law and politicians, drugs charity Lifeline maintains it must be forthright if it is to help those most in need of its services. Sunil Nair reports

Wednesday January 29, 2003
The Guardian

Ian Wardle insists he is not on the defensive. But the chief executive of Manchester-based drugs charity Lifeline could be forgiven for keeping his head down. In the past 12 months, his team has been "exposed" by the press, condemned by politicians and warned by the police.

A plan to supply a kit of drug apparatus to homeless heroin addicts had to be deferred for fear of prosecution and a code has been drafted for Lifeline's publications to deflect criticism of, among other things, use of explicit sexual imagery and swearing.

And the pressure is mounting. In a climate increasingly hostile to drugs charities, Lifeline seems to be drawing most fire. In the coming months, the charity may be forced to move its needle exchange service from its upmarket Manchester address to a location away from the city centre. A powerful combination of business interests and neighbourhood sentiment may force the city council, which funds much of the charity's work, to arrange an alternative site.

Wardle, however, is relaxed: "We may have to move because of the commercial reasons. This is an area where construction activity is taking place. People coming to live and work here are not particularly keen for a service like this in their vicinity."

His unfazed response may stem from the fact that Lifeline is expanding fast. With an annual turnover exceeding £4m, the organisation is projected to grow 25% in the year to March - much less than the 40% it grew in 2001-02, but substantial all the same. And its activities continue to be at the cutting edge of drug- related care services.

As a port of call for homeless or unemployed drug users, whose only contact outside street culture may be the advisers and nursing staff linked to its needle exchange, Lifeline is able to watch for opportunities when an individual may be ready to break away from the cycle of addiction.

"I have rationalised the problem to myself, but I am able to discuss it with them," says Jim, a 37-year-old who has battled against drug addiction for almost a decade. Having been in and out of "rehab" a couple of times, he is desperately trying again to kick the habit, find a steady job and achieve a reconciliation with the mother of his son. Lifeline's needle exchange service helps him by providing the clean equipment he needs to inject heroin twice a week.

If that seems somewhat contradictory, that is precisely the slippery line the charity walks. Most of the 1,200 people it services from its main unit in Manchester - it has other offices in Lancashire and Yorkshire - have serious problems linked to their drug use, which call for intervention, healthcare and counselling on medical, social and economic issues.

Some of Lifeline's clients are one small mistake away from death. And that, for the charity, is the defining point. Providing assistance and information in a transparent and interactive manner, it ventures into frontier territory very far removed from that of "just say no" drugs leaflets.

Michael Linnell, Lifeline's director of communications, is the creative force behind its ground-breaking and challenging publications. "There are kids out there who use heroin to kill emotional and physical pain," he says. "They are selling their arse for their next fix. You can't preach to them that what they are doing is wrong. Of course, they know it's wrong, but how are you going to help them?"

Linnell takes no prisoners. He believes in telling the truth about drugs, even if it means admitting that "there can be pleasure" using them. With a mixture of humour, counsel and practical tips, publications such as Better Injecting and McDermott's Guide to Cocaine provide easy-to-read material on issues ranging from adjusting to prison life to how cocaine is less damaging than crack.

It was the unsparing nature of this material that was seized on by sections of the media after Lifeline - which also receives Home Office funding - accrued national lottery grants totalling more than £700,000. Politicians weighed in with criticism of leaflets such as Getting Caught With Drugs, aimed at under-17s who are warned to "remember that parents search bedrooms and pockets", and of descriptions in McDermott's Guide that cocaine is "exciting, sexy, enjoyable and slightly dangerous".

The trigger for this press interest was a £450,000 lottery grant toward a Lifeline scheme to tackle drug misuse among south Asians in east Lancashire. The project is very much in keeping with the charity's commitment to work with marginalised groups. "Up north, there is widespread poverty in south Asian communities," says Linnell. "They are easily among the most alienated groups."

The South Asian Community and Drugs - A Guide for Parents has been produced by Lifeline in English and Urdu. It aims to help parents recognise early signs of drug use and shows how to seek help. "You might not be able to stop your children using drugs," it says. "You can, however, make sure they know about drugs and have thought carefully about them."

The booklet reflects the forthright approach of all Lifeline's work. The idea of the safe injection kit for heroin users, for instance, emerged from interviews with addicts and research into their lifestyles. The findings exposed a lot of ignorance about injecting methods and high levels of overdosing. "It's common among those who have been released from prison," says Wardle. "Their tolerance level tends to drop when they stay away from it. But when they use the same amount of heroin they did before going to jail, it causes an overdose."

The charity came up with the idea of a guide to such emergencies, along with paraphernalia such as sterile swabs, cookers and tourniquets to prevent the spread of infection and disease. But the plan ran foul of the law. Greater Manchester police warned it would prosecute Lifeline for intent to supply under the Misuse of Drugs Act, forcing the charity to postpone the initiative until a review of the legislation is completed by the Home Office later this year.

Lifeline has also bowed to what Wardle calls "constructive criticism" of its publications by drawing up a code of practice intended to make clear the aim of each publication, define the audience for whom it is intended, identify the age range for which it is suitable, and provide warning against explicit material.

Kate Griffiths, the charity's senior manager, who drafted the code, says: "The catalogues sent out to schools, drug counselling centres or youth clubs will categorise material on these parameters to ensure the publication reaches only the targeted audience."

The publications, presented in comic-book style with graphic illustrations of drug-taking and its effects, sell more than 1m copies a year across Britain. Linnell says: "We make it clear that we are not taking a moral stance against drug use. That would only alienate the audience. What we do is present the information in a lively style - with street humour."

Don't punish addicts for having a baby. Mums need special care and support

Evening Times, Scotland. 28.1.03

ON THE face of it, it's just another maternity ward. New mums with shining faces and tiny babies who should have everything to look forward to. But behind the smiles, these women are well aware there are people out there beyond this cosy ward who wouldn't hesitate to say they don't have the right to bring a child into the world. For some of the women who are treated at the special reproductive health unit at the Princess Royal Maternity Hospital have enormous health and social problems. Some are addicted to heroin, some are HIV positive, some suffer from Hepatitis B or C. If their babies suffer withdrawal or other difficulties, these women know the blame will be placed firmly at their door. And they are their own harshest critics, says consultant obstetrician/gynaecologist Dr Mary Hepburn . She adds: "They feel very, very badly about what they are doing and the notion that drug using women are more inadequate parents is just a load of rubbish. Some are fantastic mothers."

Dr Hepburn, whose unit treats between 150 to 200 drug-using women a year, is completely non-judgmental and fierce in her defence of the rights of such women to have a family. She moves happily from one patient in the ward to another, radiating warmth and concern. It is obvious she really cares about her patients. She can see these women have a fight ahead of them and is so committed to them that she has set up a fund which takes donations to buy toiletries and extras for them.

"You shouldn't look at people who are disadvantaged and say they shouldn't be allowed the rewards of life that we have," she says, back in her office overlooking the Necropolis cemetery dominated by the disapproving statue of John Knox. She explains: "I think to punish people for their misfortune is completely illogical and it's completely inhumane. Of course, these women should have children. To say to them they shouldn't is to punish them for being disadvantaged. Society ought to provide them with support and compassion. They would like all the nice things that other people want. They have the same aspirations. One of the few things they manage to achieve is to have children and they desperately want to have children."

Dr Hepburn points out that the biggest threat to the future of some of these children comes from their parents' social circumstances and the deprivation they experience. It was back in 1986 that Dr Hepburn set up a pilot clinic in Possilpark where there had been a huge increase in drug use in the preceding years. Four years later, she got funding for a city-wide, community-based, multi-disciplinary service to provide reproductive health care for women with social problems. The unit will be expanding shortly to cater for all Glasgow women and will also be opening more clinics around the city. Most of the women she saw in the 1980s were young. She says: "Now we are seeing a lot more older women, so a lot have been using drugs for a number of years." Sadly, she is also seeing the daughters of some of her original patients.

Dr Hepburn prescribes methadone for pregnant women who are trying to come off heroin. It is the lesser evil. "With heroin, there is a risk of pre-term delivery; with methadone, there isn't," explains Dr Hepburn."While a lot of people condemn the women for taking methadone because it gives the baby withdrawal symptoms, in fact it is protecting the baby from an effect which is much more likely to affect its long-term health." Wine, she adds, is much more damaging in pregnancy. She says: "Alcohol causes low birth weight and can cause withdrawal although the babies don't need treatment. It can also affect brain development.

"Smoking has a bigger effect on birth weight than heroin does. Cigarettes probably cause more direct harm to the baby than heroin does but the difference is that no woman will have her baby taken into custody because she smokes."

Extremely rarely, babies may suffer convulsions, she admits. But she reveals: "Although they are extremely distressing for the mum, there is no evidence they harm the baby in the long term whereas low birth rate and certainly pre-term delivery do."

Mothers are encouraged to breastfeed because that will reduce the severity of withdrawal and protect the babies. Dr Hepburn trained in Edinburgh and is the daughter of a Shetland GP. She seems a happy woman, confident that the work of her team really is making a difference to the lives of families. She says: "You have to be realistic. It can be very sad and stressful because you are permanently having to hunt for resources."

She finds it takes a long time to build up confidence in drug-using women. "They do feel apprehensive about going to services and if there is a gap before funding is carried on, that can disrupt all your good work.

"American literature suggests drug-using women don't go to ante-natal care, or come in to labour late, but here we find on average they attend as regularly as other mothers." She will not hide the fact some cases do turn out badly. "Some mothers die. Some are damaged for life, some end up not being able to care for their babies and give them up for adoption. With women with such major social problems, we can always improve things a bit. But you have to be realistic in your expectations," she says.

For Dr Hepburn, success is a woman who has a good experience in her pregnancy, who is treated as a normal mother with respect, and who has a baby who is fit and well even if it does have problems at first.

"Certainly, we don't condone their problems because they are very harmful, but we wouldn't condemn them," she says.

Sniffer dogs are a class act
19.1.02 TES

Pupils who bring drugs into school are being flushed out as heads invite police in to give drug abuse talks.
GROWING numbers of schools are inviting police to hold drug searches using sniffer dogs in assemblies and classrooms.

Officers in at least four police forces have been piloting the voluntary visits. Officers involved say they have been surprised at the level of interest from headteachers and colleagues in other forces. In Kent, officers visited 10 secondaries and caught 11 teenagers with cannabis, who were then placed on drug-treatment programmes.

[No suggestion that they had a drug "problem" - but straight onto a "treatment programme! Now there's effective use of police and treatment resources...]

Officers start a typical visit with an educational talk to pupils about drug searches. They demonstrate the skills of one of their sniffer dogs on a row of teachers, one of whom has been planted with heroin and cannabis. Other drug-detection dogs are then taken into classrooms and corridors to see if pupils have any illegal substances in their bags or lockers.

At the end of the talk, pupils are asked to file past a sniffer dog, who sits down in front of a suspect if it thinks it can smell drugs. More than 3,000 pupils in west Kent have been checked using the scheme. Police say they have received only three complaints from pupils' families.

Sergeant Howard Chandler, head of West Kent drugs liaison unit, said private schools had also expressed interest in the scheme. A similar scheme operates in Devon and Cornwall after a widely-publicised incident in January in which one pupil was charged and three reprimanded when a sniffer dog found cannabis at Ilfracombe community college in north Devon.

Thameside Valley and Bedfordshire police have also been offering sniffer dog visits this year. They stress that the talks are educational, although they will punish those caught with drugs. The Association of Chief Police Officers said it was keen to back projects to improve drug education and enforcement, but wanted proper evaluation of the school visits before promoting them nationally.

Linda Wybar, head of Tunbridge Wells girls grammar, received a visit last term. She said: "With the changes from the Government on cannabis, it's still crucial that pupils understand what can happen if they are in possession of drugs."

PC Alan Hibbins, youth crime education officer for West Kent police, said it was just as important to educate the teachers as the pupils on the drug visits. To prove his point he brings with him an elaborately-constructed perspex "bong". The apparatus, used for smoking cannabis, was created earlier this year by a 15-year-old at a Kent school - with the unwitting help of his design and technology teacher.

Drugs sniffer dogs to search school's pupils

Ananova: 27.1.08

A school has announced plans to use sniffer dogs to randomly search pupils as part of a drugs education programme.

[This is not Drugs Education; this is schools adopting a role in drugs enforcement. This is schools as police first, educators second, rather than the other way round.]

Teachers at the Heart of England School in Balsall Common, near Solihull, say the scheme sends out the message that drugs will not be tolerated in schools.

Throughout the year the school, which is working in partnership with Grosvenor International Services, will have several random unannounced visits by the firm's dog handlers.

[Grosvenor International run an appallingly bad wesbite, and present themselves as being the "counter drugs strategists." While they undertake an amount of commercial detection and prevention work they are not know for their drug education work.]

Head teacher Annette Croft says using the sniffer dogs is one way of responding to the Home Office's wish to improve drug education programmes in schools.

[It should be stressed that at no point has the Home Office drugs education strategy advocated the use of Sniffer Dogs in schools; the aim is to improve the quality of drug education, something that this approach will not achieve.]

"This is not in response to any particular incident," she said. "But we intend to send a clear message that drugs will not be tolerated at our school and this is part of our commitment to ensure we maintain a safe environment for our young people."

She added: "Searches of the buildings and screening of people will assist in maintaining a high-profile level of awareness with the purpose of ensuring a 'clean bill of health."

John Franklin-Webb, principal director of GIS, said: "This new initiative is a prime example of supporting the Government's commitment in taking a pro-active stance on an issue that is clearly not going to go away."

GIS works with 14 UK police forces supporting anti-drugs operations and also works with the licensed trade in tackling drug abuse.

Sniffer dogs find cannabis in school

Thursday, 17 January, 2002: BBC
Drugs have become a growing problem for schools

A police sniffer dog has caught four pupils red-handed after it was taken to a Devon school as part of a talk about drugs. As pupils were filing out of the talk at Ilfracombe Community College, the two-year-old dog called Bonnie became excited.

Lockers were searched, an amount of cannabis was found and four boys were arrested. Three were reprimanded but another was charged and is due to appear in court in connection with the discovery.

David Humphries, headteacher of the north Devon school, denied it had a major drug problem. "The college does not have a major drugs problem, but neither as we so naive as to think the college is immune from the drugs culture present in British society," he said. "One student has returned to college and we expect the others to return shortly when they have completed their exclusion."

A spokesman for Devon and Cornwall Police said the arrests were totally unexpected.

Boy on cannabis charge after police search school

A 16-year-old boy has been charged with possession of cannabis after police searched a school at the request of the headteacher. The teenager will appear before a youth court in Bodmin, Cornwall, on Monday, said a Devon and Cornwall force spokesman.

A 15-year-old boy was reprimanded following the operation on Tuesday at Poltair community school, St Austell, police said. The boys were taken into custody after a small amount of cannabis was found during the operation in which three sniffer dogs were used. Twenty-nine other children were searched.

School sniffs out scent of trouble
TES 17.12.1999

Wilnecote high in Staffordshire went to the dogs in a controversial attempt to stop drugs being brought into school. Clare Dean reports.
AFTER rumours that drugs were circulating in his school, headteacher Phil Prettyman took the controversial decision to call in police sniffer dogs - now he recommends other schools follow his lead. Lockers, toilet blocks and classrooms were searched during a joint investigation, code-named Operation Tandem, between county police and Wilnecote high in Tamworth, Staffordshire.

Three bags were identified by dogs and searched. Exciting the dog's interest was one containing a mouldy cheese sandwich, another, a spam sandwich and the other, a pipe. A boy was detained and later released after no drugs were found. Both the police and the school hailed the investigation a success.

But Mr Prettyman said: "It was a risky business as it could have turned up anything. However, I did have confidence in the overwhelming majority of pupils."

Inspector Carl Humphries said he would now consider requests from other schools in Tamworth for help from the police.

"This was not about securing successful prosecutions but more about how the school could take long-term preventative action. It was very positive."

Just one parent complained to the 11-18 mixed comprehensive and around 20 have applauded Mr Prettyman's efforts.

He said: "We have a small number of kids with a drug problem but I don't think we are alone in that. You would be hard pushed to find a secondary school anywhere that doesn't have a problem with a very small minority of pupils."

The police investigation took place during a special assembly for Year 11 pupils and only a handful of the school's senior managers knew about it. It was initiated by Wilnecote after rumours about drugs in the school. Names circulating around the school coincided with those known to police.

"By the very nature of the problem, drugs don't take place when teachers are around, it's taking place in those private corners of the school, if it's happening at all," Mr Prettyman said. "Using dogs takes away any chance of false accusations about individuals. A dog does not have bias."

Mr Prettyman is considering a follow-up operation and said: "It is worth any amount of drugs lessons. I think it is appropriate for schools not to be frightened to do whatever they think right to meet their professional responsibility for the protection of the children in their care."

Comment: In light of this and other stories relating to school searching, KFx will be producing guidance for pupils and parents about their rights wen confronted by such school based drug searches. In the meantime, we will be very vigilant as to the operations of GIS, and their sensitive approach to drugs work.

Drug addicts who steal to feed their habit are increasingly being offered an alternative to prison. Sensible justice - or a licence to offend? Jon Silverman reports

Tuesday January 28, 2003
The Guardian

'Thousands of drug-addicted burglars were handed a get-out-of-jail-free card by David Blunkett yesterday." So wrote the Daily Mail last week after the home secretary announced plans for a 50% increase in the number of offenders to be offered treatment for substance misuse rather than immediate custody. The criminal justice process may deliver no more fairness or certainty than a game of Monopoly. But can sentences which, according to the lord chief justice's controversial guidelines to judges, "will tackle the offender's underlying problems, such as drug addiction," be dismissed so readily?
Lord Woolf might have been thinking of someone like Andrew, a 20-year-old living in Staffordshire, who was convicted at the crown court last autumn of using stolen credit cards to feed a £600-a-day crack and heroin habit. He was no stranger to the law and had briefly served time in a young offender institution for grievous bodily harm. So he could have been looking at a jail sentence. Instead, he was given a two-year drug treatment and testing order (DTTO), the government's newest legislative tool designed to break the link between drugs and crime. Twice a week he is tested for drugs and once a month he returns to court for a review of his progress.

"When I started on the order," he says, "I was drugs-free but I admit I've had a couple of relapses since then, over Christmas, when I met up with old associates and the temptation got too heavy. When I went back to court for my review, the judge set me new targets but, thankfully, there was no warning about going to jail if I didn't meet them."

If you were the owner of a credit card which Andrew had plundered, you might well think that a pretty soft option compared to the rigours of prison. But Andrew pleads for realism. "I never committed any crime before I got on to drugs and this is a really tough life-change for me. I've got to pick up some thinking skills which will help kick the addiction and I need training which will get me a job. Yes, jail would be punishment but it would be no help for someone like me in the long term. "

Among the enthusiastic supporters of the orders is Judge Barrington Black, an experienced circuit judge who sits at Harrow crown court in Middlesex. Those who see the present sentencing regime as a cosy conspiracy between career criminals and an out-of-touch judiciary will only have their prejudices confirmed by his comments. Since the DTTO was launched nationwide in October 2000, 38 have been made by the Harrow bench and, according to Judge Black, only six people have re-offended while on the order, most of whom were sent to prison.

Last week, the judge paid his first visit to see a DTTO session in action and was highly impressed. "I was already an enthusiast about DTTOs because at the regular court reviews I have seen people almost completely transformed from the state they were in when arrested and convicted. That view was underlined when I met the offenders and workers. They are extremely positive and committed about the programme."

Offenders on DTTOs spend at least 20 hours a week at structured sessions which aim to impose discipline on lives that have been in thrall to drugs like crack and heroin, perhaps for many years. The crime reduction charity Nacro is currently evaluating the programme for the Home Office and Dr Marcus Roberts, author of a forthcoming Nacro report on drugs and crime, says there is a conflict between the aims of the order - total abstinence - and the ability of persistent drug-taking offenders to turn their lives around within the time-frame. "Breaching the order often means an automatic custodial sentence and, given the people we're talking about, more flexibility needs to be built in so that whatever good work is done is not lost behind bars," he says.

[Comment: this is an interesting point; as many people who work on DTTOs would confirm, total abstinence is not the aim - and rightly so. Many people will reduce or cease the use of drugs that are most related to their offending behaviour, but many will continue to use cannabis. So the need for flexibility is even greater than is being suggested here.]

The home secretary's announcement last week that the number of drug-addicted offenders offered a DTTO would rise from 6,000 a year to 9,000 was made at a conference organised by Turning Point, the country's largest provider of services for substance abusers. There are 513 people on DTTO programmes run by Turning Point and its chief executive, Lord Adebowale, is surprisingly sceptical about the effectiveness of the orders.

"They are not as successful as we would like them to be," he says. "Inevitably, there is a sizeable dropout rate because by the time people get put on a DTTO, they are fairly intractable drug addicts and difficult to work with. On the other hand, prison is a much worse alternative. I know heroin addicts who have walked straight out of jail into the arms of the nearest dealer and died because they couldn't handle the stuff after being off it. That's a scandalous waste of human life - and of public money."

With the hot breath of the Treasury on his neck, Blunkett can't afford to ignore the financial argument. At £6,000 per offender, the DTTO is the most expensive of any community-based punishment but less than a third of the cost of sending someone to prison for a year. Does the DTTO provide value for money? The Home Office has yet to publish an analysis of reconviction rates of around 200 offenders given a DTTO in three pilot programmes between 1998-2000. Its author, Professor Mike Hough of South Bank University, reckons that "if you can get a third of offenders through a DTTO order without them relapsing into drug-taking or crime, that's good going. But if you have high reconviction rates and a large number of orders are revoked, I can imagine what the tabloids are likely to say about it."

[Comment: so this whole expansion is being put through before the evaluation of the origianl pilot. Is this an example of evidence based policy or a quick reaction to the spate of shootings that have started a new law-and order backlash.]

There is a "third way" alongside the DTTO and prison: the drugs court which has been a staple of the US justice system for a number of years and has been adopted by Scotland and the Irish Republic. It is also favoured by Keith Hellawell, the former drugs tsar who clashed so spectacularly with the home secretary last year, which perhaps explains why the court is not at the forefront of Whitehall thinking.

But that is a shame, according to Professor Philip Bean, director of the Midlands Centre for Criminology and an authority on the link between drugs and crime. "The DTTO is little more than a probation order with bells and whistles attached. It will continue to be a costly failure because the level of supervision is inadequate and the drug testing procedures sloppy. Whereas the drugs court offers something more flexible and pro-active, with a greater range of sanctions and much more status."

In Hellawell's West Yorkshire backyard of Wakefield, there is a drugs court operating, run by specially-trained magistrates. They appear enthusiastic about a project which has been described as "tough love " and so does Lord Adebowale, whose Turning Point provides the treatment service for the court.

"The people we see have a lower level of offending than those on a DTTO which means you can treat them earlier in the drugs cycle," he says. "And this means better outcomes, lower recidivism rates. "

However, Lord Justice Auld, in his review of the criminal justice process, concluded: "There is no compelling case at present for the creation of any specialist courts, in particular drugs or domestic violence. "

The figure of the drug-addicted offender has become one of the most familiar media cliches but although many, like Andrew, steal to feed a habit, the relationship between treatment and staying away from crime is complicated.

Sometimes, even geography can be crucial. Sarah, a 19-year-old addict from Walsall, is on a 12-month community rehabilitation order. Within 50 yards of her probation office is a crack house. Staying away from that is the hardest thing in her life right now.

Comment: Reading between the lines, some of Mr. Adebowale's comments give cause more some concern. He criticises DTTOs because he suggest that at the point where they are issued to people they are "intractable drug addicts and difficult to work with." SO the option that he appears to advocate is drug courts - where there are lower levels of offending, less entrenched problems and allegedly better outcomes. Although as this drug court has not yet been formerly evaluated to demonsrate its "better outcomes" such claims are unsubstantiated.

An alternative interpretation is that by widening the implementation of drug courts, many people with low level offending will be put before the courts, pushed into treatment, and this will create a massive number of new contracts for Turning Point. Well you have to have something else up your sleeve once the system has dealt with the "hard core repeat offenders."