Howard launches Tory drugs plan
Conservative leader Michael Howard today outlined a six-point plan to tackle the rising drug use that he says has touched nearly every family in the country.
In a day in which drug policy has taken centre stage, the Government has also launched their drug action programme, with Tony Blair due to speak on the issue this afternoon.
The Conservatives promises that they would increase the number of residential rehabilitation places for drug users tenfold, fund random drug testing in schools, and reclassify cannabis as a class B drug.
They would also give young addicts the choice between rehabilitation and going to jail, and restore sentencing guidelines that say drug dealers must serve at least seven years in prison.
Speaking in Milton Keynes today, Mr Howard said: “There are few families in Britain today that are not touched by the blight or worry of drugs.”
There were one million hard drug users in Britain, and 100,000 13 to 15-year-olds had used cocaine. Surveys showed a quarter of all people believed drug dealing was a ‘very’ or ‘fairly big’ problem in their communities, he added.
Mr Howard promised to send a clear message drugs were wrong that would contrast with Labour’s “mixed messages”.
Although there were over 160,000 hard drug addicts, only 2,400 places were available for them on intensive residential treatment courses. The Conservatives would expand the number of residential rehabilitation places more than tenfold to 25,000 places, allowing them to treat all 50,000 young drug addicts in Britain.
Schools would be helped to randomly drugs test their students through grants to buy testing machines. Children would also be discouraged from taking drugs by a major advertising campaign telling them drugs were dangerous and could ruin their lives.
Mr Howard said he would restore cannabis’s class B classification to resolve what he called ‘the current confusion’ and to send a clear message it was a dangerous drug.
And he would restore a provision he had introduced in 1997 when Home Secretary that made it compulsory for judges to give dealers of class A drugs at least seven years in prison. A Labour amendment to this provision requiring that the mandatory sentence not be imposed if it were “unjust in all the circumstances” had rendered it “worthless”, he said, and would be repealed.
Mr Howard said: “We cannot afford to sit back as drugs ruin more families and destroy more communities.
“It’s time we stopped blurring the distinction between right and wrong. We need to send a clear message: “Drugs are wrong”. No quibbling. No hedging.”
