Pubdate: Mon, 27 Sept 1999 Source: Guardian, The (UK) Copyright: Guardian Media Group 1999 Contact: http://www.guardian.co.uk/ Author: Lucy Ward, Political Correspondent POLICE TO GET NEW DRUG TEST POWERS Police will gain sweeping powers to impose mandatory drugs tests on people arrested for criminal offences, under a government drugs crackdown condemned yesterday as an infringement of human rights. Under measures disclosed by Tony Blair and due to be implemented in a crime and justice bill at the heart of the forthcoming Queen's speech, persistent cocaine and heroin users would be denied bail after being arrested in an effort to prevent further drug-linked crime. The announcement, which will be seen as a significant hardening of the government's already tough stance on drugs, took campaigners and civil liberties groups by surprise. Campaigners attacked the proposals as "superficial macho rhetoric" and called for legislative measures to be backed up with further resources. The prime minister, revealing the plans on the BBC's Breakfast with Frost on the opening day of Labour's annual conference, said the planned legislation would cover key problems all governments had "ducked", including mandatory drugs testing. He pointed out that in some inner-city areas 50% of those arrested had drugs in their system. "One of the biggest single problems we have in this country today is crime and drugs." He said: "People are petrified about drugs. I'm petrified about drugs in respect of my own children and other people's children." Home office sources said police would gain powers to test people they arrested, though the intention was that they would use them selectively. "The idea is to find out early whether someone is a regular user of heroin or other Class A drugs related to crime," the source said. Findings from urine tests, carried out at police stations, would be passed to prosecuting authorities. The home secretary, Jack Straw, who will bring forward the new legislation, said the link between drug users and crime was "huge and very disturbing". He said it was estimated that there were up to 200,000 problem drug users in England and Wales, of whom between 50,000 and 60,000 were arrested each year. "Each of those, typically heroin addicts, will have been committing scores, if not hundreds, of crimes each year in order to feed their habit," Mr Straw told Radio 4's World This Weekend programme. "We're looking at the mand atory testing of all arrestees and if it turned out that a man or woman before the custody sergeant was plainly a persistent heroin user, that would argue against bail." The new bill will also enshrine in law a presumption against bail for those who test positive for opiates, such as heroin, or cocaine-based drugs, including crack. That could mean hard drug users are automatically held on remand before trial, or at least that they are freed only with tough bail conditions. Holding alleged offenders on remand will inevitably place increased pressure on already overcrowded prisons. Government sources last night played down the problem, saying: "It may have some impact on the prison population and we are willing to look at that." Another hardline step will see an extension of mandatory testing, already in place in prisons for the last five years , to include offenders on probation. The plans will also provide for a nationwide extension of a pounds 20m drug arrest referral scheme currently being piloted in some police stations. Under the scheme, arrested drug users can gain immediate help and treatment in police stations. Government sources last night pointed to crime statistics as evidence of the link between drug use and crime. According to home office research conducted last year in five inner city areas, including Manchester, London and Sun derland, 61% of all those arrested had taken at least one illegal drug - mainly cannabis - within the last month. Of those, 18% had taken heroin or another opiate, and 10% had used cocaine or crack. A third of the total illegal income gained from crime was spent on drugs - an average of up to pounds 20,000 a year for heroin and crack users. John Wadham, the director of the civil rights group Liberty, said the proposals were wrong in principle and potentially in breach of the European convention on human rights. "The link between drugs and crime is proble matic and needs to be broken, but this is not the way to do it. Eroding rights won't crack crime and this approach misses the point, which is to stop people becoming problematic drug users in the first place. The government should drop the superficial macho rhetoric and establish a royal commission to undertake a radical review of drugs policy." Mark Leech, the director of the National Association of Ex-offenders, said: "Putting in place legislation to deal with drug crime after the commission of offences is hopelessly ineffective, unless it is coupled to the provision of resources to those who want to help themselves." - --- MAP posted-by: Derek Rea