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Politicians need to face up to the fact that there is no rhyme or reason in the drug classification system

24.4.06
The Guardian

'It's there because it's there." That was the frank answer from the head of the government's top drug advisory body on why magic mushrooms are in the most dangerous category - with heroin, crack and cocaine. Professor Sir Michael Rawlins was admitting to MPs last month that the UK's drug classification system is stacked with inconsistencies, ad hoc judgments and historical accidents.
His testimony as chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) blew the gaff on government claims that its drug policy is "evidence-based". The reality is that the classification system for illegal drugs is riddled with anomalies and doesn't work.

On Wednesday, there will be another difficult hearing before the parliamentary science and technology committee to probe the evidence base for the entire drug classification system. The answers matter: No home secretary has ever gone against the ACMD's recommendations.

You don't need to be a pharmacologist to realise that heroin is a lot more dangerous than magic mushrooms. Between 1993 and 2000 there was one death in the UK from magic mushrooms, but 5,700 from heroin. The government's Talk to Frank drug education website says: "Magic mushrooms are not addictive in any way."

Putting magic mushrooms into class A is indefensible by any "evidence-based" criteria, but it was refreshing that Prof Rawlins did not try to defend it. Moving it down would be unwise, though, he said, because it might encourage use of what is undoubtedly a dangerous substance.

Another anomaly is the position of methamphetamine or crystal meth, a highly addictive and dangerous dance drug that has yet to take off in Britain. In November, the ACMD reviewed its status in class B and, despite deciding it was more dangerous than other class B drugs, opted not to move it up to class A. "Why?" asked the MPs.

Moving it could have the perverse effect of making it a more desirable product for users and so stimulate demand, Prof David Nutt, a distinguished psychopharmacologist and chair of the ACMD's technical committee told the MPs. So moving mushrooms down might stimulate demand, but moving crystal meth up would have the same effect?

A shift up the scale could well give a drug more kudos, as Prof Nutt suggests. But that undermines one of the key tenets of UK drug laws - that more dangerous drugs are placed in higher categories because of their greater risks. The higher penalties attached to those drugs tell would-be users that cocaine, for example, is more dangerous than cannabis.

Next up is the distinction between cocaine and coca leaves, both placed in class A despite solid evidence that the unrefined plant is far less dangerous. Amphetamines are classed differently depending on what form they are in, so why not cocaine as well? "That's a very good question," said Prof Nutt. But he didn't have an answer. And, asked why ecstasy sat in class A, he replied that it too was "an anomaly".

Drug treatment charities have argued for years that the classification system is inconsistent and is failing to protect the most vulnerable. Why, if it is really designed to reduce harm to the user and to society, do the two most dangerous drugs not form part of it? Alcohol contributes to around 1.2m assaults a year and smoking kills 130,000.

That these are not classified is the biggest anomaly in an antiquated system that has utterly failed to prevent drug use from rocketing. The blame lies not with the ACMD, but with the framework within which it is forced to operate. Only if politicians acknowledge the system's faults will we have any hope of building a legal framework that will protect users and society effectively.

· James Randerson is the Guardian's science correspondent

In just three months, £10m worth of heroin has been intercepted at British ports. The drugs, sent to 'ghost' companies, came from Bangladesh. Here we reveal the traffickers' new tactics - and how they have used one of the Asian country's most respected businesses to mask their deadly trade

Observer: 23.4.06

Rivington House, Great Eastern Street, London EC1, is an unlikely conduit for an operation to smuggle heroin. A nondescript block of smog-stained concrete, jammed among sandwich bars and graphic design studios, it does little to attract attention from the fashionable crowd in London's Hoxton.
But until recently its grey walls concealed the final staging post for a complex campaign to smuggle heroin from Bangladesh. The country was not previously linked on a large scale with the heroin trade and the operation signalled the widening of a quiet front in the drugs war that has alarmed customs officers. The revelation has prompted officials to ask two questions: how much heroin is now reaching Britain from Bangladesh? And what part has one of its biggest companies unwittingly played in the trade?

Up to last year Rivington House, an office block which is home to scores of legitimate small businesses, was also the headquarters of an obscure company called Ocean Line Foods. Then in April last year the firm disappeared.

There is no record of Ocean Line Foods at Companies House. It has no website and left no forwarding address. The company's former mobile phone number - listed on several UK shipping documents - is one that can be rented from Carphone Warehouse by tourists. It is not even clear whether Ocean Line Foods has ever existed, other than on paper. But the company's name can be found in a confidential intelligence report produced by the Bangladeshi Department of Narcotics Control, obtained by The Observer.

The name of another UK-based company, M/S Bengal Bay, also appears in the report. Located above a coffee shop on the Edgware Road, London, the import/export firm shared a building with a range of legitimate organisations, including the Feng Shui Society, a limousine hire firm and a business called Jesus Watches. Then one day the police came knocking. 'There was all sorts of trouble with the company,' recalled Mina Sim, an office administrator at the company which let space to M/S Bengal Bay. 'The police were here all the time.'

Over the past year a series of ostensibly legitimate firms with links to Bangladesh have joined a bulging group of import/export firms that have attracted the attention of the Met: there is the company that specialises in exotic spices, and the firm that sells granite for kitchens and bathrooms. Worryingly, these are just the ones that customs know about.

The consignment labelled 'foodstuffs' arrived at Southampton port on Valentine's Day last year, where it lay unclaimed. A couple of weeks later, another consignment - also from Bangladesh, but labelled 'beauty products' - turned up at the same port, again with no one to pick it up. X-rays revealed the packages - sent by two Bangladesh-based companies, Emdad Trading and Jamil International - contained a total of 21.5kg (about 47lbs) of heroin with a street value of more than £1m.

Then in May, 41.5kg of heroin were found in a shipment labelled 'floor tiles' which had been dispatched to Southampton by another Bangladesh-based company, Green Heaven Enterprise. Usually customs might expect to seize 10kg in any one haul. Similar-sized quantities turned up in legitimate consignments shipped to Felixstowe. In total, some 140kg of the drug - worth nearly £10m once sold on to Britain's 260,000 heroin addicts - had entered the UK from Bangladesh.

Customs officials were concerned: previously they had not considered Bangladesh to be a major conduit for heroin. The total amount of heroin found in just a handful of seizures in three months doubled that acknowledged by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDC) as passing between the port of Chittagong and the UK in the whole of last year, and suggested the smugglers were changing tactics.

'The seizures made in the UK in 2005 relate to an overall pattern where ethnic/language-based groups are moving product within south Asia by making many, many small runs,' said Gary Lewis, regional representative of the UNDC, based in New Delhi.

'The really interesting thing about the Bangladeshi seizures was that the traffickers had managed to amalgamate a relatively large amount of product for the two shipments to the UK, whereas most runs tend to average only around 5kgs.'

It was clear that the Bangladeshi heroin trade was now an urgent threat, one that had caught the UK authorities off guard. The sophisticated nature of the operation was also alarming. The export companies appeared to have legitimate licences and tax identification numbers which had been issued by the Bangladeshi authorities.

The intended recipients of the consignments - companies such as Ocean Line Foods and M/S Bengal - had recognised postal addresses in the UK. Seemingly out of nowhere, a well-resourced and extensive drug-smuggling operation had sprung up on the back of a legitimate trading network.

Amid growing concern at the Foreign Office, the British High Commission in Mumbai wrote to the Bangladeshi authorities asking for its Customs Intelligence and Investigation Department to investigate the trafficking. The Bangladesh government's response in the short term was swift. It set up a secret committee comprising members of its Criminal Investigation Department, the Rapid Action Battalion - the government's specialist anti-corruption squad - and Special Branch to investigate the claims. Over a four-month period the group interviewed scores of suspects, examined box-loads of import/export licences and ploughed through thousands of shipping licences during an exhaustive investigation that produced an extensive picture of Bangladesh's heroin trade to Britain and, crucially, named names.

And then? And then nothing.

With a global workforce of 3,000, BD Foods is one of Bangladesh's most respected companies. Its chairman, Bodrudoza Momen, has been awarded the title of 'Commercially Important Person' by the Bangladeshi government for his 'outstanding performance in export business' for three years running.

Though few Britons will be familiar with the company's name, the chances are that they have sampled its products. Established in the UK in 1996, BD Foods and its sister company, King & Co, export vast amounts of spices, snacks and pickles to Britain's curry houses. Their parent company, BD Group, is the largest exporter of Bangladeshi fresh fish and fruit. Unfortunately for BD Foods, a number of its consignments now lie stranded in ports around the world as customs officials probe their contents.

The freeze stems from the leaking of the special committee's report, which the Bangladeshi government has yet to publish - on the grounds that its investigations are continuing.

The excuse has not stopped some critics in Bangladesh suggesting that the government is trying to protect those accused in the report, which has been obtained by The Observer. It shows that three companies, Emdad Trading, Jamil International and Green Heaven Enterprise, which were smuggling heroin to Britain, were owned by former employees of BD Foods. It transpires that these were in reality 'ghost' companies that were illegally using BD Foods' VAT numbers to obtain export licences so they could ship heroin to businesses in the UK that existed only on letterheads.

Damningly, the report also claims that crooked officials in the port authority and the shipping company were involved in the operation, something which doesn't surprise Bangladeshi traders living in Britain. 'Bangladesh is a poor country,' said Mahmud Hasan, chair of the Consortium of Bengali Associations. 'Corruption is everywhere, it is the history. Developing countries always have these problems. Officials in both Britain and Bangladesh need to work together and be more active on such matters.'

BD Foods categorically rejects any allegation that it is linked to the front companies exporting heroin to the UK and points out that VAT numbers are easy to copy in Bangladesh. In a written statement to The Observer, the company claims a 'vicious circle' of criminals have taken advantage of its good name. 'None of our sister concerns have or had any link with any type of drug smuggling or any of the [front] companies. These allegations are based on a primary report... which was prepared about seven or eight months ago. After the investigation, the related authorities did not find any proof against us and the government did not file any legal case against us.'

The company has now written to the British High Commission to point out that there has never been a problem with any of its consignments exported to Britain. It has also called for 'a proper investigation to find out the culprits' who have been using its tax certificates to obtain export licences. And it has fired one of its employees, whom it believes was orchestrating the operation.

There have been some noticeable successes as a result of intelligence shared between the Bangladeshi and British authorities. Mirza Hamayou Shaukat, 45, is serving 15 years after customs tracked the heroin hidden in the floor tiles from Southampton to his home in Birmingham. This month, a specialist customs team flew to Bangladesh to gather intelligence which may yet yield further arrests. But these are small victories in an unremitting war against the heroin exporters, who have now found a new conduit for their toxic product.

'We are acutely aware of the problem, but it is unfortunate that I cannot say more,' said a spokesman for the British High Commission in Bangladesh.

Close to the 'Golden Crescent' - the remote and far-flung parts of Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, where most of the world's heroin is produced - Bangladesh is well placed to act as a conduit for the drug trade. And the real concern now is that the country's burgeoning business in exporting heroin is symptomatic of a wider problem, one that is about to become increasingly urgent following this year's poppy harvest in Afghanistan.

'Early signs for 2006 indicate that opium cultivation is up in 13 provinces,' the UN's Lewis said. 'Villagers appear to have planted crops on a scale equal to or exceeding that of 2005, and most of the harvesting will be over in about one month's time. It's a natural thing for the trafficking organisations to try to find new routes out to the lucrative markets beyond west Asia. We estimate that about one-third of the Afghan crop exits via Pakistan. Some of this is shipped via northern India and leaves south Asia through Bangladesh. What we saw in Bangladesh in 2005 may well recur if the Afghan crop is again large this year.'

The over-prescribing of the drug Ritalin to children diagnosed with alleged behavioural problems is a growing scandal, a leading scientist said yesterday.

Baroness Greenfield, a neuro-scientist and director of the Royal Institution, said the overuse of the drug should be addressed as a matter of urgency.

In a House of Lords debate on science and education, she said children's inability to pay attention might simply be the result of too much time spent on a computer screen, or watching television where only short attention spans were needed.

"I am not proposing that we become information technology Luddites but we could be stumbling into a powerful technology, the impact of which we understand poorly at the moment," she said.

"The problem with these drugs (such as Ritalin) is that they do not target a single trait such as mood, or concentration or wakefulness.

"Drugs will manipulate in a very 'broad spectrum' way the chemicals in the brain that in turn could have both widespread and also long lasting effects."

She said that with all the new technology in schools and at home, "we must … ensure that the classroom will fit the child and buck the growing trend for the child to fit the classroom".

The number of children being prescribed drugs for so-called behavioural disorders has soared, causing alarm that they are being unnecessarily "drugged into submission".

Prescriptions of methylphenidate - most commonly sold as Ritalin - rose to 359,100 in 2004, a rise of 344,400 since 1995. Figures from the Prescriptions Pricing Authority revealed there had been a 180-fold increase in prescriptions since 1991 when only 2,000 were issued in England.

Ritalin, an amphetamine-based stimulant that improves concentration, is nicknamed the "chemical cosh" because of its calming effects.

It is almost entirely prescribed to children under 16 in this country. It has been estimated that one in 20 children suffers behavioural disorders such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder or ADHD, for which Ritalin is prescribed.

Critics of the drug say that doctors give it to children who are merely displaying normal emotional changes.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights, which campaigns against psychiatric violations of human rights, has condemned the increasing prescription of drugs for youngsters.

"Children are being drugged into submission," said a spokesman.

There are no medical tests for ADHD and children are diagnosed on the basis of their behaviour and questionnaires that ask if a child displays symptoms including restlessness, inattentiveness and fidgeting.

But American research found that Ritalin may cause lasting changes to the brain. In a study by the Harvard Medical School, healthy rats given the drug in their infancy were found to have a reduced sense of pleasure and were more prone to signs of despair during adulthood.

Prof Peter Hill, an honorary consultant in child psychiatry at the Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, believes that the concept of ADHD had become popular, "partly because it offers an alternative explanation for antisocial behaviour, other than imperfect parenting".

American experts say the drug should carry a warning that it may increase the risk of fatal heart attacks. There have been 51 deaths among children and adults taking drugs for ADHD in the US since 1999.

The UK licensing authority, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, said yesterday that nine children had died among a smaller population on medication.

A senior civil servant toiled for six months over one page of a No 10 report on drugs, Tony Blair's former adviser Lord Birt told MPs today. The former head of the BBC justified the delay to the Commons public administration committee by claiming that writing government strategy was "hard intellectual work".

Lord Birt worked, unpaid, as a "blue skies" strategic thinker inside No 10 from 2000 to December 2005. Speaking at an evidence-giving session held as part of the MPs' inquiry into "governing the future", he said: "Strategy is hard intellectual work. It can take a very long time and you have to wrap a wet towel round your head."

Lord Birt made his comments after Labour MP Paul Flynn produced a copy of a "confidential" report on the drugs trade produced for the prime minister. The publication was full of pie charts, bullet points and deliberately repeated phrases as if it was written in the style of a junior school teacher communicating with an eight-year-old, Mr Flynn said.

"Is that an appropriate way to communicate with the prime minister?" asked Mr Flynn - who, nevertheless, praised the document's findings. Lord Birt replied: "I can think of a very senior civil servant who spent six months of his life on one page of that report." Lord Birt, who refused to appear before the committee when he was working at No 10, also criticised some Whitehall departments as "laggards", but refused to name them.

He told the MPs: "It's not appropriate that I share with you some of the insights I gained in government. I'm not going to name names; it's quite inappropriate but not all departments are strong. "Not all of them have the right measure of capability. Some are laggards but I'm not going to name names."

Lord Birt was criticised by Tory MP Ian Liddell-Grainger, who complained about his refusal to shed much light on matters despite his six-year tenure as an adviser to No 10. "What have we got out of you? Pitifully little," the MP said.

Lord Birt responded: "I just think it's not appropriate for somebody who worked for the prime minister for six years and was privy to a lot of confidential discussions. I don't want to come out and parade a set of insights."

Policy making was stronger than when he first began work at No 10, said Lord Birt, who disclosed that he met the PM 30 to 40 times a year when he was based in Downing Street.

Lord Birt said he met Mr Blair at a social function "and I think he said to me 'when you finish at the BBC, you must come and do some work for us"'.

Lord Birt said he began work unpaid because, "when I started in 2000 I had a number of commercial responsibilities, some of which remained for a number of years and I thought it prudent that when I worked for government I worked for free".

As time progressed, he worked for No 10 more than the one or two days a week he had begun with, but he had established the precedent that he worked unpaid, and was happy to do so, he added.

Stanton Peele, America's foremost critic of the addiction treatment industry, talks to Patrick Butler about sex addicts, why Alcoholics Anonymous doesn't work, and why the US is obsessed with finding new psychological disorders

The Guardian: 12.4.06

Stanton Peele: 'No one is as addicted to addiction as Americans'

The concept of addiction is rapidly losing all useful meaning, speculates Stanton Peele. Once, addicts were rare: they looked like Frank Sinatra's character in the 1955 film The Man With the Golden Arm: a heroin abuser suffering from the anguish of withdrawal. The image is more blurred these days: anyone, it seems, can be addicted, to almost anything; and millions of us are, apparently, addicts.
Back in the 1950s, addiction more or less meant heroin abuse. Now, the term has branched out to embrace drinking, gambling, shopping, sex, eating, obsessive compulsive disorder, computer gaming, television watching and internet use. The list expands constantly, serviced and encouraged, says Peele, by a growing and hungry treatment and therapy industry.

Britain, I suggest, is following the US in stockpiling neuroses, but he is not convinced; he thinks we are, like most Europeans, still reasonably resistant to addiction disease concepts. "No one is as addicted to addiction as Americans," he laughs. "Americans love that. They say, 'You know you bite your nails? Well, that's a disease, and we've got a drug for it.' Americans will always take that drug. [We] like to medicalise things."

Ironically, Peele himself is arguably responsible for the idea of sex addiction, which he developed in his 1975 book Love and Addiction. The concept has, he says, been cheapened over the years, not least by contrite celebrities who pass off their promiscuity as something they have no control over. Peele is unimpressed: "If a guy is screwing every pretty woman he can see, you sort of think, 'A lot of guys have done that, why is that an addiction?'"

He argues addiction is not defined by excess, but the severity of its consequences. He recalls interviewing a woman, who despite receiving regular beatings at the hands of her partner, kept returning to him. "I say [to her], 'this is bad'. And she says, 'Yeah yeah.' It becomes clear she is just going back to that same guy. I say: 'You can take a lot of heroin if you are halfway smart and not die, but you can get killed doing this.' Her answer is, 'I love him.' That's an addiction. There's no getting around that."

Narcotics

What frustrates Peele is the way the word addiction is returning to its 17th-century usage, when it meant "habitual" (as in "he's addicted to his sherry"). He bemoans the modern tendency in the US to define anyone who drinks or takes drugs as addicts or potential addicts. "Look, people go into hospital all the time and are [given] powerful narcotics, and then they forget about it. Guys take heroin all the time and they just go to work; that's not an addiction." In other words, a man who gambles regularly is not an addict; a man whose compulsive gambling drives him to sell his house and break up his marriage is. It is an important distinction: "You can't define an addiction in terms of the object; you can only determine it in terms of its relationship to the object, and the consequences."

Peele is perhaps best known in the US as a vociferous critic of the addiction treatment agenda set by the Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) movement and largely endorsed by the US medical establishment. This agenda is based on a number of key myths, argues Peele: that alcoholism is waiting to prey on anyone who has a few drinks; that it is an an inherited, incurable disease to which we are all equally susceptible; that once diagnosed as alcoholic, you remain alcoholic forever; and that you must abstain from alcohol - the only effective treatment - or lose everything.

The AA 12-step treatment approach (which has become the template for treating other addictions) is, he says, based largely on folk wisdom drawn from American spiritual Protestantism traditions and the Temperance movement. "[With AA] you go to God, you recognise you have sinned, that you are powerless, and throw yourself over to him," says Peele.

Research evidence shows that AA outcomes, in terms of treating general populations of alcoholics, are less than impressive, claims Peele. It's not surprising, he says: AA's insistence that members have a disease can become a self-fulfilling prophecy; it makes them prisoners of alcohol, less self-sufficient, less likely to outgrow the problem, more likely to relapse.

Treating the compulsions of modern life as "disease events" is actually a way of avoiding dealing with a uncomfortable truths, he argues. In other words, an individual's alcohol abuse, say, may be the result of complex social factors relating to family disfunction, emotional unhappiness, or work stress. But facing these challenges is hard; it is much simpler for them to regard their excessive drinking as a "disease", to collude with the idea that they are not active agents in their addiction but passive victims of an affliction for which the only answer is medically-prescribed treatment.

Being America's "Mr anti-AA" means Peele is far from universally popular. He gets abusive emails ("what the fuck's the matter with you, you're so inhuman, you should be flayed"); and when he guests on Oprah the audience scream at him. Oddly, perhaps, he gets the hardest time from those who you might think would be most sympathetic."Even though I am a liberal, and I talk about the social conditions [of addiction] - which is really a liberal concept - the liberals really attack me."

Liberals tend to recoil at his insistence that addicts are not victims of a disease, and that if they happen to commit crimes they should be punished: "They say: 'let's not put [drunk drivers] in jail because they have a disease.' You can work that from a liberal standpoint. The problem for liberals then is that they say: 'They've got a disease so they can't possibly decide what's right for them, we've got to force them to go for treatment.' Which is getting a little non-liberal."

Peele's opposition to enforced abstinence makes him none too popular with those on the right, either. The irony is that the AA way tends to corrode the naturally conservative idea that as individuals we are morally responsible for our own actions: "AA gives you an excuse for being out of your mind drunk, because it sort of says [that] once you drink you are unable to control your drinking ... you are going to go berserk."

He attacks the idea that addiction is an "equal opportunity disease" unrelated to class and environment. "If you hadn't heard the scientific theories and someone said: 'Look, we are going to take two guys with crack addiction and put them in treatment. One guy is a doctor with a family and a job; the other guy lives in a neighbourhood where lots of people take crack. We're going to treat them for 30 days and then we will put them back where they came from, I wonder who will do better?' You know, your grandmother would know the answer to that."

That people with reasons to quit addictions - support networks, jobs, families - do so more easily should be self-evident. But America isn't good at coming to terms with the social implications of this, Peele says. He has written how the disease theory of addiction works as a convenient diversion from "the dilemma that addiction is transmitted through ordinary family and societal processes".

His own approach as a therapist is to reconnect addicts to a sense of self-respect, family and society. Most of his clients, he says, "lack sufficient connections with others". His chosen tools are straightforward enough: family therapy, stress management, behaviour self-control and job skills training.

He urges, too, that his clients become neighbourhood volunteers as part of their rehabilitation. He wonders whether as digital age society becomes more atomised, that addiction will increase, particularly among young people. But medication and abstinence are not the answer. Only connect, he says: you cannot beat addiction in a society of isolated individuals.

· Stanton Peele will be speaking at Unhooked Thinking: The Conference on Addiction, on April 19-21, at the Assembly Rooms, Bath.
www.unhookedthinking.com

Stanton Peele's addiction website is at www.peele.net

Curriculum vitae

Age: 60.

Status: Divorced, three grown-up children.

Lives: New Jersey.

Education: BA political science, University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA, 1967); PhD social psychology, University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, 1971); JD Rutgers University (Newark, 1998).

Career: 2003-present: adjunct professor, School of Social Work, New York University; 1994-present: senior fellow, Drug Policy Alliance; 2003: visiting professor, Bournemouth university; 1971-present: various lectureships

Selected publications: 1975: Love and Addiction (with Archie Brodsky); 1985: The Meaning of Addiction; 1989: Diseasing of America; 1991: The Truth about Addiction and Recovery (with Archie Brodsky); 2001: Resisting 12-step Coercion (with Charles Bufe and Archie Brodsky); 2004: Seven Tools to Beat Addiction.

Forthcoming: Don't Panic: Realistic Solutions for Parents to Prevent and Treat Drug and Other Addictions.

Awards: 1989 Mark Keller annual award from the Rutgers Center of Alcohol Studies; 1995 Lindesmith lifetime scholarship award from the Drug Policy Foundation.

Interests: R&B, biking, and film noir.

Kelly praises random drugs testing in schools
By Jenny Booth and agencies

Times - April 13 2006

The Education Secretary today praised random drugs testing schools, calling it a hugely effective way of tackling substance abuse.

In a keynote speech to a teachers' conference, Ruth Kelly said that she had had been impressed after looking at evidence from a scheme running at the Abbey School in Faversham, Kent. She said she was keeping an open mind on whether random tests should be encouraged more widely.

She told delegates at the NASUWT annual conference in Birmingham that new challenges to school discipline were emerging all the time.

"Cyber-bullying, for example, has been in the news recently," she said. "Schools need help dealing with those sort of problems as well, which is why we are putting out new guidance to help schools deal with cyber-bullying.

"Drugs is another issue which is not going away in schools. I was looking at the evidence from the Abbey School in Kent the other day, where they have tried random drug testing and (have) found that a hugely effective way of creating peer pressure against taking drugs in school.

"These are all issues that I think in future we should have an open mind on. I will work with the NASUWT and others in developing appropriate solutions."

The Abbey School saw GCSE exam results rise significantly after introducing the random testing scheme last year. Each week 20 pupils were selected at random by a computer to take the tests, during which they are swabbed by specially trained staff.

The samples are then sent off to a laboratory to be checked for traces of drugs such as cannabis, cocaine and Ecstasy.

Ms Kelly was speaking after delegates at the conference demanded action to tackle violent and disruptive pupils. They passed a motion calling on local authorities to provide specialist units to teach the most disruptive children who ruin lessons for other pupils.

Ms Kelly was met with laughter when she argued that behaviour was generally improving. But the audience applauded when she continued: "It only takes a few pupils who are engaged in low level disruption to make life a misery for pupils and teachers. That means we have to do something about it."

The union welcomed the Government’s plans to give teachers a clear legal right to discipline pupils and to confiscate inappropriate items such as mobile phones.

Earlier in the debate, Joy Higgins, a delegate from Chelmsford in Essex, warned that even when unruly pupils were thrown out of school, they could be reinstated on appeal.

She said she was not opposing the right to appeal but attacked the independent appeals panels which she said often overturned sensible decisions.

"There is little regard for the impact that this is having on teachers and pupils," Ms Higgins said.

She described how one member of staff was "struck on the back of the head by a rugby ball". The pupil was permanently excluded but allowed back on appeal.

"This sent a message to the pupils at the school that they had a charter for violence," she said, and three days later there was "a copy cat attack" on another member of staff.

Meanwhile, a survey of 800 members of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers found 71 per cent had considered leaving the profession because of the poor discipline.

The availability and use of ecstasy is increasing steadily despite a fivefold increase in police seizures, according to new research

The Guardian: 4.4.06

The availability and use of ecstasy is increasing steadily despite a fivefold increase in police seizures, according to new research.
The study, published yesterday in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, is the largest survey of its kind, examining official figures for consumption, availability, police seizures, arrests and deaths between 1994 and 2003.

Young Britons are still by far the leading consumers of MDMA in Europe and the second largest worldwide, after Australia. An estimated 750,000 regular users consume about 26m tablets a year, although the researchers concede that this is probably an underestimate. In the EU, only the Czech Republic, Estonia and Spain come close.

The last decade has also seen the age of initiation dropping steadily. While one in 10 of 15- to 34-year-olds has tried the drug, drug charities in some parts of the country are reporting children as young as nine replacing alcohol with ecstasy as a social lubricant.

This trend is due in part to falling prices. In 1994, an ecstasy pill cost £16.50 on average. This had dropped 70% to £5.30 in 2003. Today, the price matches that of a pint of beer, £2.50.

The study also confirms the folklore among drug users that ecstasy pills are getting weaker. The average amount of MDMA per tablet has dropped by a quarter over seven years from 100 milligrams to 74mg; 100mg is generally considered the lowest amount to get the full effect.

The lower strength of pills makes them potentially more dangerous. "Users taking one of today's weaker pills are not happy with the result so they take two pills," says the author of the study, Fabrizio Schifano, an honorary lecturer at St George's Hospital, Tooting. "So instead of taking 100mg they take 140."

MDMA has an effect on the body known as "non-linear pharmacokinetics". This means taking two pills does not simply double the dose. It triples or even quadruples the level of the drug in the blood. "So there will be moment when the blood level will increase massively and unexpectedly," Dr Schifano said. "The user may enter a chain reaction that may prove very dangerous."

One surprise in the statistics is a drop in the number of ecstasy-related deaths. In 2002 there were 78 recorded. In 2003, that fell to 48 and the figure is believed to have dropped further in the last two years.

"It is difficult to say why this is happening," Dr Schifano said. "We need to see how this pattern develops over time."

In mainland Europe, ecstasy-related deaths remain rare, with 26 reported across the continent in 2004, compared with the UK's average of 40 a year. This disparity may be due in part to better recording procedures in the UK.

Effects of ecstasy

MDMA is one of the most intensely studied recreational drugs in history. But despite thousands of research papers and studies, scientific evidence on the side-effects remains inconclusive.

Death by overdose

Undoubtedly, large amounts of ecstasy can lead to over-heating which in turn, in rare cases, can trigger fatal heat stroke. Many factors contribute: number and strength of pills taken, environment, alcohol-consumption, body weight - but women seem more at risk. The bulk of ecstasy-related deaths around the world have been young women.

Water-poisoning

Panicking users, fearing they are overdosing, drink too much water and provoke hyponaetraemia (water-poisoning). Leah Betts died after drinking 14 pints in just 90 minutes. The recommended amount of water to drink per hour is one pint.

Toxic reactions

Much of the reports of toxic reactions are muddled with overdose or water-poisoning deaths. There is no clear evidence that some people suffer allergic reactions to ecstasy. However, around 10% of Western users do lack a key liver enzyme CYP2D6 needed to break down MDMA. This may make them more sensitive to the effects and more prone to accidental overdose.

Depression

Many weekend users report a mid-week mood dip. This is suspected to be related MDMA's effect on serotonin, but hard evidence is lacking. In heavy users, dips can turn to crashes and depression. However studies suggest this effect reverses after a 2-3 month abstinence.

Positive effects

Users still claim "long lasting improvements in self-awareness, self-esteem, openness and insight into personal problems", reports the study from the University Of Louisiana. In the US, research continues into the use of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy to treat Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

The East chews on
The Age, Australia: 5.4.06

The market for betel nut is largely dead, a bygone habit once prevalent among South-East Asians and Indians.

At least, that's the conventional wisdom. But nothing could be further from the truth. Young people in South-East Asia don't use it much now but plenty of others still do. And, like much else, betel nuts are now traded online, on portals such as India's Trade.india.mart.com and China's Alibaba.com, by companies from Singapore to India.

One such company is Erastimix Co, owned by Indonesian Chinese businessman Anthony Setiono. It's based in the Perth suburb of Currambine and offers to ship 200 tonnes of betel nut to anywhere in the world. (The internationally traded price of betel nuts is now about $US800 a tonne.)

Betel chewing is a habit that unites South-East Asia with the Indian subcontinent, parts of southern China and the western Pacific. Whereas alcohol was associated with feasting, betel was the everyday social lubricant - it was offered to visitors to one's home. And, just as the English developed elaborate tea sets, Indians and South-East Asians developed elaborate betel nut sets.

Betel took on symbolic meaning, too, and was a central element of traditional marriage ceremonies. Among Malays, betel would be sent to the parents of a prospective bride and, if they accepted it, it meant they consented to the marriage. And, whereas the regalia of Europe's monarchs included sceptres and orbs, that of Asia's kings and sultans included golden betel nut sets, often set with diamonds.

The actual nut comes from the areca palm tree. Typically, it is sliced, mixed with lime (usually obtained from crushed seashells), then wrapped in a betel creeper leaf and chewed. The lime reacts with compounds in the nut to produce alkaloids for a mild narcotic effect. Large amounts of red saliva are also produced, which chewers spit out.

The nuts were imported into Victorian England in large quantities to make toothpaste, which was sold in small porcelain tubs. The nuts were believed to aid with tooth cleaning. Now they are suspected of being linked to mouth and throat cancer.

But the habit persists across Asia. In Taiwan, scantily clad women (binlang xishi or betel nut girls) sell betel quids to passers-by in the same way that similarly dressed women sell cigarettes at Thai boxing matches in Bangkok.

In Papua New Guinea, usage is so widespread that betel nuts are part of the basket of goods and services that the central bank uses to calculate the consumer price index. The central bank governor in his monetary policy statement to Parliament in January last year even explicitly pointed to an unexpected fall in local betel nut prices as part of the reason for the downwards revision in the anticipated headline inflation rate for the year.

Betel nut usage is spreading into the Himalayas, too, as roads are constructed. And in Bhutan, the habit has received a kick-along thanks to a blanket ban on cigarette and tobacco sales imposed last year by the King.

Betel nuts have even been the subject of recent trade disputes in Asia. Pakistan's betel market is especially big: an estimated 50,000 tonnes of betel nuts - $US40 million ($A56 million) worth - are consumed each year. Accordingly, its neighbours want a piece of the action; much to the chagrin of local producers.

In 2004, Pakistan held up more than 1000 containers of imported betel nuts, mostly from Bangladesh. Pakistan cited concerns about disease under WTO rules for its actions.

Sri Lanka is an important producer of fresh betel leaf. The free trade agreement between Pakistan and Sri Lanka, which came into effect last year, explicitly gives Sri Lanka a 35 per cent preferential concession on the duty that applies to betel leaves imported into Pakistan.

Migration has spread the betel habit to the West. Go to any Bangladeshi-run small grocer in London and you will find betel nuts and fresh betel leaves, imported from Bangladesh for local Bangladeshi migrants to use.

Betel chewing occurs in Australia, too. A paper to be presented to the 13th International Congress on Oral Pathology and Medicine in Brisbane in June finds that about 20 per cent of a sample drawn from Australia's Asian/Indian population chews betel nut.

Antique betel nut paraphernalia is attracting collectors, adding yet another commercial aspect to the habit. A set of southern Indian brass cutters used to slice betel nuts sold at Sotheby's in London last year for £6690 ($A16,196), probably setting a world record price at auction for such an implement.

So, what is chewing betel like? I've tried it once, in Rangoon, with the manager of the investment arm of the Shan State Army. The army fights for independence for the Shan states from the rest of Burma when the army is not involved in illegal gem trading and tending its vast opium poppy fields.

The senior Shan cadre showed me how to chew the betel quid. The effect was dizzying, like when you have your first cigarette, and then mildly relaxing.

As I went to leave, he reached into a large tub of uncut rubies and slipped a generous pinch of them into my hand as a parting gift. A social lubricant indeed.

Drugs baron Abdullah Baybasin faces a long jail sentence after being convicted in London earlier this year. He is the latest member of the Baybasin family to be locked up in Europe. His brother Huseyin, once described as "Europe's Pablo Escobar", is in a Dutch prison.

For years their name struck terror in the hearts of many people in London's Turkish and Kurdish community.They exerted such a malevolent influence that people would refer to them, often in hushed tones, simply as The Family. The Baybasins have their roots in the rural south-east of Turkey.

In the 1970s the clan began refining heroin in remote farmhouses in the Lice district, close to the Syrian border. By 1998 they were making millions from exporting heroin to Europe. Huseyin Baybasin, known as Europe's Pablo Escobar after the late Colombian drug kingpin, set himself up in business in Amsterdam. His brother, Abdullah, had arrived in Britain, via Gibraltar, in 1997.

Abdullah, who uses a wheelchair after being shot by a rival, immediately claimed asylum and in recent weeks there have been reports in the British press that he was given preferential treatment because he was an informant for Customs and Excise.

A spokesman for HM Revenue & Customs told the BBC News Website: "In common with other law enforcement agencies, it is the policy of HM Revenue & Customs (formerly HM Customs & Excise) to neither confirm nor deny the use of human sources of intelligence. HMRC will therefore make no comment on these reports."

The now-defunct National Crime Squad said he was widely believed to have controlled the lion's share of Britain's heroin trade. Baybasin lived in a large house in Edgware, north London, while his asylum application was being dealt with. In July 2002 Huseyin was jailed for life in Holland after being convicted of drug smuggling. But he is believed to have retained most of his vast wealth, which he invested in tourist resorts along the Mediterranean and Aegean coasts.

Both brothers have alleged that high-ranking members of the Turkish government were involved in the £25bn heroin trade. Once in London, Abdullah recruited a gang of young thugs known as the Bombacilar (Bombers) who spread fear throughout the Turkish and Kurdish community. The Bombacilar would force their way into shops and small businesses armed with weapons, demanding money.

On one occasion, a gang of up to 20, armed with samurai swords, metal bars, pool cues and a gun, forced their way into a Turkish cafe in Stoke Newington. One man had his index finger chopped off by the gang and several shots were fired.

Shopkeepers, cafe owners and other small businessmen received death threats and some paid up to £10,000 a year to the extortionists.

One businessman, known as Kemal, told the BBC News website: "They were dangerous people. They had a very bad name in the community."

Some of their victims expressed their resentment to supporters of the powerful Kurdish nationalist PKK/Kadek movement. Matters came to a head on 9 November 2002 when the Bombacilar clashed with their PKK/Kadek rivals. A mass brawl broke out in the Green Lanes area of Haringey, north London, and one man, Alisan Dogan, was killed.

Scotland Yard stepped up efforts to gather intelligence on the Baybasins. In December 2003 they carried out a series of raids and arrested several people. Guns, machetes, stolen mobile phones and counterfeit money were seized and police also discovered what they believed was a torture room.

The legal process began and last month six members of Baybasin's gang were jailed for a total of 68 years after pleading guilty to offences involving guns, violence, extortion and blackmail. Two of his thugs were convicted of the attempted murder of a Turkish man on the forecourt of a petrol station in Tottenham in October 2003. Erdal Ozman, 25, from Wood Green, was jailed for 15 years and Ibrahim Aslan, 21, of no fixed abode, got 13 years.

Abdullah Baybasin himself slipped up. For years he had ensured he was never seen in the same room as the heroin he dealt in. But one day in March 2001, Baybasin allowed himself to be implicated in a deal involving 2.5 kilos of heroin.

Earlier this year, the 35-year-old pleaded guilty to drug importation at Woolwich Crown Court and on Friday he will be sentenced. The court will be heavily guarded by armed police who have appeared at all of his court appearances.

Kemal told the BBC News website he was very relieved to hear that Baybasin's gang had been jailed, but he added: "There are other groups, like the Tottenham Boys, who are still out there and they're very nasty."

Law enforcement has invested much time and effort in reaching out and demonstrating that nobody is above the rule of law
Detective Chief Inspector Robin Plummer

But local councillor Nilgun Canver said the level of violence had gone down since the police moved on the Baybasins and she added: "The police and (Haringey) council have given assurances that we are taking action and working together with traders and residents to improve the area as a whole."

Detective Chief Inspector Robin Plummer, of the National Crime Squad, said: "For years Baybasin and his followers intimidated and victimised members of the Kurdish community in north London.

"Law enforcement has invested much time and effort in reaching out and demonstrating that nobody is above the rule of law."

The Guardian: 8.4.06

Scientists believe they may have found a reason why men are more likely to take some illegal drugs and why women are more prone to depression. A US study has revealed that men produce more "happy chemicals" in their brains after taking amphetamines compared with women.

The neurotransmitter dopamine is three times higher in the brains of men who have taken amphetamines compared with women, according to the research today. Men also reported feelings of being more confident, having more energy and being more sociable than women did.

Scientists believe the findings will help shed light on why men use more drugs, as well as giving new insights into diseases linked to dopamine levels including Parkinson's, memory loss, depression and schizophrenia.

Some 28 men and 15 women aged 18 to 29 were examined for the study at Johns Hopkins school of medicine in Maryland. The dopamine levels in their brains were measured while they were under the influence of amphetamines.

The participants were also asked to rate positive effects such as a high rush and liking for the drug as well as negative ones such as anxiety, dizziness, dry mouth and distrust of others. The responses from men were "significantly higher" for all categories except dizziness, where women rated higher.

Gary Wand, professor of endocrinology at the university, who led the study, said: "The fact that the subjective tests supported the biological ones further supports the hypothesis that men exhibit a higher response to amphetamines than women."

British scientists suggested that the dopamine levels could be due to women's bodies being better at eliminating the drug from the brain, an action which is linked to levels of oestrogen, the predominately female hormone.

David Nutt, a psychopharmacologist at Bristol University, said: "It may be that the male brain doesn't clear away the amphetamine as quickly. Dopamine is involved in schizophrenia and depression. We know there are gender differences in depression.

"It may be that women are more prone to depression because their brains are cleared of dopamine more quickly. The consequences of this could be quite wide-ranging."

Harry Shapiro of the drugs charity DrugsScope said: "This plays into the alpha male stereotype. It's possible this explains that men respond better to something that makes them feel strong and powerful."

Separate research published this week adds to evidence that older women who have one or two drinks a day may be guarding themselves against declining brain functioning. The report was published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

It found that of 3,298 women with an average age of 69, those who regularly consumed lower levels of alcohol scored 20% higher in mental cognition tests than did those who steered clear of alcoholic drinks.

Previous studies have linked moderate alcohol consumption to better circulation and therefore brain functioning. The Columbia University scientists are investigating further.

Bruce Alexander questions an outdated myth about addiction

Telegraph
Although most medieval superstitions have died out, the myth of demon possession lives on. In the 19th century, many people came to believe that anyone who voluntarily consumed distilled liquor became helplessly possessed, having no choice but to feed an insatiable craving for the "demon drink".

This idea continued to be applied into the 21st century, essentially unchanged, to a parade of new drugs, including morphine, heroin, cocaine, marijuana, meprobamate, barbiturates, methylamphetamine, benzodiazepines and ecstasy.

All have been said to take control of the people, just as a demon possesses its victim, and the myth survived modern scepticism because it was (and still is) spread by governments and police, and by medical authorities and journals as scientific fact.

The myth is more believable for illegal drugs, because many addicts, by confessing their initial error of drug experimentation, can claim to be "out of control" and less fully responsible for their behaviour.

Many scientists have set out to expose the demon drug myth, but found themselves overpowered by it instead. In the late Seventies, for instance, my colleagues and I re-examined some simplistic rat research, which was based on a contrivance that allowed rats to inject a jolt of heroin by pressing a lever on the wall. Under certain experimental parameters, these rats would dope themselves silly, not even taking time out to eat. This was taken as evidence for the demon drug myth.

But these rats, a highly gregarious species, were isolated for life and tethered with rubber tubing that catheterised their jugular veins. Such extreme isolation and discomfort might well make euphoriants irresistible. We tested this possibility by building Rat Park, where rats could enjoy the company of their fellows, raise their pups and run around freely.

We gave them unlimited access to morphine and control rats, kept in isolation, were also given free access to morphine. The isolated rats consumed lots of morphine, while the rats in Rat Park took relatively little. We published the results and waited for the myth of demon drugs to disappear as the news of our discovery spread. To make a long story short… nobody noticed.

Now it is 2006, and the myth continues almost unabated. Yet the evidence against it has become overwhelming. Take, for example, very recent studies by David Shewan and Phil Dalgarno of Glasgow Caledonian University and by Hamish Warburton, Paul Turnbull and Michael Hough of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, York. Both teams studied people who have used heroin for years without becoming junkies.

They take their supposedly addictive drug the way the rest of us use our own habits, crutches or "non-addictive" drugs. Most of them work, maintain their families, and stay out of trouble. Inadvertently, they serve as guinea pigs to disprove the demon myth.

Another line of evidence is summarised in my forthcoming book, The Globalisation of Addiction, which is more directly related to Rat Park, although based on anthropological rather than animal research.

Many tribal people have been researched both before and after the destruction of their cultures by European colonisation. After their cultures were destroyed, addiction to alcohol became a feature of these formerly non-addicted people. Why did this occur? There is ample evidence to rule out both the myth of demon drink and that of aboriginal peoples' genetic weakness for alcohol.

An intact culture, whatever its disadvantages, provides a fullness of life that rules out addiction. Aboriginal people lived with a sense of meaning and identity that enabled them to comprehend the world and feel that they belonged within it. When their cultures were destroyed, this psychosocial integration disappeared and they turned to the same artificial satisfactions that sustained their invaders. The life of an alcohol addict, for example, is not one of solitary alcohol infusion - rather, it entails intense interaction with other alcoholics and co-dependents.

Certainly, alcoholic society is impoverished relative to an intact culture. None the less, it is vastly richer than no society at all. Colonised aboriginal people were not isolated in cages, like the residents of Rat Park. Their culture disappeared, even though the people remained.

Perhaps this view of addiction does not bode well for a globalising world, but it is better supported than the discredited myth of demon possession that has obscured these issues for far too long. Moreover, it points towards fresh solutions to an intractable problem.

The RAC is calling for better police training, higher profile policing and swifter introduction of roadside testing equipment to combat 'drug driving'.

The RAC says research showed that, when carried out by well-trained police officers, the current tests have a 66 per cent success rate in spotting drug-impaired drivers.

The RAC says a significant number of drivers who were stopped by the police on suspicion of driving under the influence of drink or drugs were able to successfully complete the Field Impairment Tests despite having drugs such as heroin present in their system.

Currently, Field Impairment Tests do not test for the presence of specific substances in the body. They test a person's ability to carry out tasks involving balance, judgment, and ability to follow complex instructions. They rely on the judgment and experience of the police officer conducting the tests.

Researchers at Edinburgh University are testing a hand-held electronic test system which could make the test more objective. However, the RAC Foundation believes there is an urgent need to roll out roadside drug-testing equipment to detect drug drivers. The RAC points out that drink-driving levels plummeted when the breathalyser was introduced. The Home Office has not yet formally approved any equipment drug testing. The RAC believes urgent action is needed because, it claims, drug-driving is on the increase across the UK, particularly among young drivers aged between 17 and 24 years.

New crime agency to tackle organisers of £40bn trade in drugs, fraud and smuggled prostitutes

The Observer: 2.4.06

Detectives will start this week to target 1,600 individuals identified as masterminding Britain's biggest organised crime syndicates.
Tomorrow the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) kicks off a series of operations against a list of criminal suspects responsible for orchestrating a £40bn trade in drugs, corruption and human trafficking.

The Prime Minister, Tony Blair, will launch the agency, dubbed Britain's FBI. Its immediate priority will be to target hundreds of suspects whose 'enormous' wealth is believed to have been generated from the proceeds of forgery factories, people-smuggling and drug cartels. Most are understood to be laundering money through seemingly legitimate premises.

One of Britain's biggest drugs gangs was recently found to have laundered £20m a year through two rundown cafés as it smuggled heroin from Colombia via Spain to Britain. Soca will be targeting men like Darren Owen from south Wales, who was recently convicted for running a drugs empire that operated like a legitimate business complete with regional managers. Others include Viktoras Larcenko, a Lithuanian gangster who made up to £100,000 a month smuggling young eastern European women into Britain for prostitution, and Jesús Aníbal Ruiz Henao who laundered millions of pounds of drugs money through a travel agent.
Based in 43 secret locations across Britain, Soca has more than 4,000 officers who will use sweeping new powers to seize criminal assets, bar suspects from Britain and strike Queen's Evidence deals with informants.

Amid intelligence that the proceeds from organised crime in Britain are growing, senior officers are worried about the emergence of potential new markets for gangs. These include the 2012 London Olympics and this summer's World Cup in Germany, both of which could become a focus for criminals targeting markets for prostitutes, drugs and fraud as well as lucrative government contracts.

Alongside tackling human trafficking, Soca's main objective will be targeting international drug cartels. The chairman of Soca, and former head of MI5, Sir Stephen Lander, said narcotics syndicates were becoming increasingly sophisticated. 'We need to learn more on the major drugs industry,' he said. 'It looks like the cocaine, heroin and synthetic drugs market will get worse.'

Detectives for Soca have identified a list of countries responsible for exporting different types of criminal expertise to Britain. Vietnamese gangs, for instance, operate hundreds of marijuana farms across London. Thailand dominates the market in forged documents and passports, while Triad groups from China are mainly involved in human trafficking.

Soca, which will have armed units and electronics surveillance experts, will incorporate the National Crime Squad, the National Criminal Intelligence Service and key functions of the immigration and customs services. One crucial element will be Soca's authority to reach written agreements with suspects who testify against leading crime figures.

A specialist team of 500 officers will have the duty of following suspicious financial transactions. Lander added: 'We will be chasing money, freezing assets.'

Testing on arrest and required assessment went live in the remaining DIP intensive areas at 0001 this morning (31st March). At the same time,
restriction on bail (RoB) was turned on in all Local Justice Areas across England. The expansion, part of the Drug Interventions Programme (DIP), was announced by the Home Secretary on 30th November last year, with Greater Manchester, South Yorkshire
and Nottinghamshire going live the following day. Testing on arrest will now take place in 157 custody suites across England, with an additional 16 custody suites continuing to test on charge, the latter includes those areas where drug testing was originally piloted.

The expansion has also meant that drug testing has been introduced for the first time in the City of London, which has now implemented all of the measures.

Experience, from the three areas that implemented the provisions in December, suggests that the new measures will help the programme
engage with significantly more drug-misusers.

Approximately three times the number of tests are being carried out;
More drug-misusers are being identified;
Required assessments are resulting in significantly more drug-misusers meeting with a drugs worker, many for the first time;
In the three first wave areas, the number of drug-misusers entering treatment has increased by nearly 50% since the implementation of testing
on arrest and required assessment.

Drug testing on arrest now becomes an alternative to drug testing on charge, where those who are arrested for a trigger offence or where an inspector or above believes that drug misuse has contributed to the offence. They will now be tested
as soon as possible after they have been booked in by the police.

If they test positive, the police will also be able to require them to attend an appointment with a drug worker who will complete an assessment of their needs and help them into treatment and other support. The requirement to attend and remain at this assessment will hold, even if the individual does not go on to be charged with any offence.

For those who are subsequently charged, the court if minded to give bail, must consider restriction on bail. This reverses the presumption of bail, unless they agree to undergo an assessment of their drug use and any proposed follow-up (treatment and/or other support). Those who
refuse these conditions should be remanded in custody, unless the court is satisfied that the defendant will not re-offend
while on bail. This is a further incentive for those charged with offences to address any drug misuse or lose the right to be considered for bail pending trial.

The Drug Interventions Programme is currently giving over 2,000 drug misuing offenders a route out of crime and into treatment every month. The programme is changing lives for thousands and is helping to make communities safer.
Drug related crime fell by 12% in the year to April 2005. But the Government is ambitious to go further – it has set a target of driving around 1,000 drug misusing offenders into treatment every week by 2008. The expansion of these
measures will help the Government to achieve these targets.

The Home Office has produced guidance documents for both intensive and non-intensive areas to explain the new measures in detail, as well as
running training courses for police officers and staff and drugs workers. A weekly update has also been sent out since August, including a list of FAQs.
The guidance and updates are available on:

www.drugs.gov.uk/drug-interventions-programme/guidance/tough-choices