The Big Drug Con marches on

POLICE, having more or less given up enforcing the cannabis law because they didn’t feel like bothering, have now begun a stealthy campaign to decriminalise Class A drugs by default.

They have been doing this since April last year. The Home Office – then run by Theresa May – were informed. They did nothing to stop the retreat.

This week I learned that Avon and Somerset police in the South West (there may be others) have been operating ‘diversion’ schemes. Those caught with illegal drugs (which in many cases carry a theoretical penalty of seven years in prison) are offered a ‘workshop’ which lasts three and a half hours. If they accept, the case is dropped.

So far, nearly 350 people have taken advantage of the ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ offer, made even to those with past drug convictions. The scheme was devised by the force’s ‘drug strategy manager’, who is not a police officer.

The Home Office were extremely cagey about exactly when they were told, but it is beyond belief to think the force did not keep them informed from the start, or that they couldn’t have stopped it if they had wanted to. They didn’t want to, but they hoped nobody would notice.

They told me testily: ‘This Government has no intention of decriminalising drugs’ – guiltily answering a question I hadn’t even asked. Even that statement is a whopping half-truth. For decades (I’ve written a book about it) the Home Office has been decriminalising cannabis in practice, often while making loud claims that this will ‘free up’ officers to fight the supposedly ‘harder drugs’. Not that cannabis is soft. The law stays on the books. It just isn’t enforced. But if you look at court cases and prosecutions, there’s no sign that this ‘freeing up’ has led to any tougher action there either. The Home Office added: ‘Police are operationally independent and chief constables have discretion to decide within the law how to deal with offenders.’

Another half-truth. A chief constable who offered such workshops to child sex abusers would instantly be in huge trouble. Police chiefs know this Government’s pose of being tough on drugs is just that – a pose. A few noisy raids on dealers are expected to fool the public into believing something is being done. In fact, as my revelation shows, they have surrendered but are too cowardly to admit it.