Middle-class drug users threatened with random tests

MIDDLE-CLASS recreational drug users face random tests under a nationwide system of escalating penalties.

Kit Malthouse, the policing minister, said he planned to model the testing on a scheme in Hawaii where known drug users are randomly called in by officers for swabs to check they are clean.

It will be part of a new regime that will also introduce electronic drugsensing tags for recreational users and those convicted of drug-related crimes, he told The Daily Telegraph.

Mr Malthouse said the aim was to establish an escalating scale of sanctions that would create a sense of “pending catastrophe” for drug users in an attempt to change their behaviour.

It comes amid 300 drug-related deaths a year and evidence that 25 per cent of neighbourhood crime is linked to narcotics.

The plans, which are yet to be finalised, will be set out in a White Paper this summer. Mr Malthouse said he intended the system to be self-financing so that drug users would pay for their tests and any courses.