News

With the 5 May general election date now set, it seems increasingly unlikely that the Drugs Bill, at least in its present form, will be passed. Due for its second reading in the Lords during the first week of April, the bill is stalled behind several other important pieces of legislation and looks destined to fall by the wayside before parliament is dissolved in the run-up to the election.

Few drugs campaigners will lament its loss. In fact they are hoping that a more meaningful debate on drugs can take place once all the pre-election posturing has subsided. Despite receiving cross-party backing, the bill has been widely condemned as too focused on law and order and too light on prevention and treatment measures. Many feel the bill has been used more to beef up politicians' anti-drugs credentials than to address the complex issues behind drug abuse.

"The problem is that with an election coming nobody wants to look 'soft on drugs' so you get this pre-election pantomime in which each party competes to show who has the toughest policies," says Steve Rolles, information officer for drugs think tank Transform.

"When you are using the rhetoric of war you don't want to say anything that looks like you are not up for the scrap, so even those who might not agree with the bill have been reluctant to criticise it. Hopefully, after the election we can have a more rational examination of the issues and come up with a much better bill."

The bill, published in December, proposes measures to break the link between drugs and crime and compel drug-takers to undergo treatment. The more contentious proposals include:

• A new drug intervention order to run alongside antisocial behaviour orders to address drug misuse by people committing antisocial acts.
• A presumption that anyone found with certain quantities of given drugs has an "intent to supply".
• Powers to allow police to use X-ray or ultrasound scans on individuals suspected of swallowing illegal drugs, to hold individuals suspected of swallowing drugs in detention for 192 hours before charge, and to test suspected offenders for class A drugs on arrest for a "trigger" offence. Refusal to take the test will be a criminal offence.
• Making drug dealing near a school, or using children as couriers for drugs or drug-related money, an aggravating factor in sentencing.
• Classification of fresh "magic" mushrooms as a class A drug.

Critics of the bill claim that it does little to address the needs of drug users who have not committed a crime, neglects the health and welfare dimensions of hard drug use, and risks stigmatising all drug users by focusing solely on the links between drugs and crime.

Many users' support groups and drugs campaigners feel their views have neither been sought nor taken into consideration during the bill's formulation. Users' rights organisation Release, for instance, has expressed particular disappointment at "the lack of consultation with key stakeholders in relation to this bill which, we believe, has led to a number of ill-thought through, and potentially damaging, provisions being put forward".

This lack of consultation has not discouraged Turning Point and drug information group Drugscope from presenting their own alternative drugs bill that highlights the need to improve current treatment programmes and increase the effectiveness of services.

Their alternative bill's proposals include:

• Treatment services that meet complex needs, such as those of people who have both substance misuse and mental health problems.
• Better co-ordinated pathways through treatment to prevent people dropping out, and support as they move out of treatment to prevent them returning to drug or alcohol misuse.
• A pilot programme of safe injecting rooms to reduce the risks of overdose and to ensure needles are safely disposed of, and an expansion of heroin-prescribing to support the most chaotic drug users.
• More support and training for GPs working with drug users.

The most widespread concerns about the drugs bill, however, relate to its provisions to extend police powers and potentially to erode the rights of those arrested for a drugs-related offence.

"We'd like to see parts of the bill dropped," says Natasha Vromen, campaigns and public affairs officer at Drugscope. "The burden of proof required for 'intent to supply' seems to go against the principle that you are innocent until proved guilty. We also have concerns over allowing the police to conduct drugs tests at the point of arrest."

Such views were recently given heavyweight backing when the Joint Parliamentary Human Rights Committee published a report that concluded the bill "does not inspire confidence that human rights compatibility has been a matter of central concern in the formulation of the policy and the drafting of the legislation".

In particular the committee criticised the bill for not stipulating the exact amounts of drugs that will trigger the assumption of "intent to supply"; and its lack of safeguards to ensure that refusing an intimate search, X-ray or ultrasound scan is not used against a defendant in court. It also raised concerns that compulsory drug testing on arrest and compulsory intervention orders might contravene an individual's right to refuse treatment.

"Our concern is that people who have been compulsorily drug-tested on arrest are effectively coerced, by threat of criminal sanction, into agreeing to treatment before being charged with any criminal offence and without prior judicial authorisation," states the report.

Unfortunately, the report was not published until after the bill had already passed through the Commons - timing that Steve Rolles regards as "rather bizarre".

"It is certainly very convenient for the government that this legal scrutiny emerged only after the bill had been debated and voted on," he says.

But with the bill's destiny now dependent on the result of the forthcoming election and then on the autumn schedule for legislation, it looks as though MPs will have the chance to peruse the report at their leisure.