December 27, 2001

By Ian Burrell

Independent 

They may not have much of a memory for dates, but Britain's dopeheads will surely be able to recall 2001 as the year when they could skin up without the danger of being nicked.

Home Secretary David Blunkett's proposal for the recategorisation of cannabis as a class-C drug made its possession a non-arrestable offence. While the idea stopped short of legalisation, it was the most liberal government response to the drug since it was outlawed in 1928.

Some suspected that the gesture was a tactic for spiking the guns of the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, which had ordered an inquiry into Britain's outdated drug laws. But officially, the recategorisation was a means of winning "the hearts and minds" of young people and making government drugs policy credible.

Mr Blunkett's action followed encouraging early signs from a pilot project in Brixton, south London, where police were told not to bother with arresting marijuana users.

While the Met was turning a blind eye to weed-smoking in Brixton, its officers were soon threatening zero tolerance towards cocaine users in fashionable areas such as Soho. And in private homes across Britain cocaine use became more common than ever.

Cocaine was the drug of choice for many in the Cypriot resort of Ayia Napa, which challenged Ibiza as the summer capital of the British club scene but saw drug-possessing Britons falling foul ofan unsympathetic local police.

A spokesman for the National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS) said cocaine was "increasingly fashionable and increasingly affordable" in 2001. In July, NCIS said up to 40 tonnes of cocaine were imported a year and only three tonnes seized. Just two of the 30-tonne heroin supply were being seized and although the war in Afghanistan may cause a downturn in opium cultivation, Turkish traffickers have huge stockpiles in European warehouses.

Difficulties in stopping supply have led the Government to concentrate on tackling addiction. The National Treatment Agency was set up in April, and Mr Blunkett took back control for all drugs policy in May, doing away with Keith Hellawell's position of drugs tsar.