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ECSTASY & COCAINE OK AT WEEKENDS, SAYS TOP COP
Police chief suggests that criminalising ravers is a "waste of valuable police resources".
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Senior police officers in the UK have indicated that they'd like to see ecstasy downgraded to a Class B drug. Such a move would take the dance culture drug out of the same group as heroin and crack cocaine, placing it instead alongside barbituates and amphetamines.
The senior police officer in charge of the south London pilot project in which cannabis users are let off with a caution said that arresting people for possession of ecstasywas a "waste of valuable police resources". He suggested that attention should be focused on harder drugs.
"If I felt my officers were going into nightclubs looking for people who were in possession of ecstasy then I would say to them, and I would say publicly, that they were wasting valuable police resources," Metropolitan Police Commander Brian Paddick told MPs. "There are far more important things which cause real harm to the community in the way that ecstasy does not." Paddick suggesteed that he would support the downgrading of ecstasy to a Class B drug if medical and scientific evidence recommended it.
In indicating that he wasn't interested in recreational drug users, Commander Paddick also said: "People buy those drugs with money they have earned legitimately. They use a small amount of these drugs, a lot of them just at weekends. It has no adverse effect on the rest of the people they are with - they go back to work on Monday morning and are unaffected for the rest of the week."
MPs are currently looking at the UK drug laws via the Home Affairs Select Committee. Meanwhile, drug reform group the Dance Drugs Alliance are inviting people to sign up to the Angel declaration to revamp the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act. Copies can be obtained from DDA, PO Box 29692, London E9 7YD.
