British drug addicts who support their habit by selling substances such as cocaine, ecstasy or heroin will no longer face prosecution if they are caught by law enforcement officers, a senior UK police chief has said.
In an interview with the Mail on Sunday, Durham Chief Constable Mike Barton said that from next month, addicts who would have faced 18 months behind bars when caught selling drugs will instead be offered a place on a rehabilitation programme.
The new policy will make Durham Constabulary the first police force in the UK not to persecute low-level street dealers.
“From next month, anyone caught in possession of any drugs will go on [a rehabilitation programme run by] Checkpoint,” Barton said.
“If they agree, they will not face prosecution or go to court… If they are selling heroin to feed their habit, we do not want to send them to prison.
“They are technically dealers, but if they are sad people rather than bad, we want to stop their addiction. Then we can focus on the really bad people.”
Barton reasons that police resources would be better spent on targeting organised criminal gangs rather than dealing with addicts selling small quantities of drugs to feed their habit.
He said attending a rehab programme run by Checkpoint would have a significantly greater impact on addicts’ lives than a caution or a fine.
The four-month Checkpoint programme is designed to help addicts identify and tackle the underlying problems that lead to addiction.
Under current UK sentencing guidelines, an 18-month jail term should be a starting point for drug dealing offences, rising to four-and- a-half years for harder drugs such as cocaine or heroin.
Elizabeth Burton-Phillips, who founded the charity DrugFam after her son died of an overdose, said Barton’s proposal was “absolutely wrong”, and that drug peddlers should face the full force of the law for “dealing in death”.
Conservative MP Charles Walker said it was not Barton’s place to decide drug policy over the head of UK Parliament, and that criminalising drugs stops people from using them.
A UK Home Office spokesperson said: “This government has no intention of decriminalising drugs.
“It is vital that the police and criminal justice system have a range of measures available to them to prevent drug use. However, they also have the tools to deal robustly with serious and repeat offenders who cause the most harm in our communities.”
Earlier this year, Barton told the Mail that his force would supply addicts with free heroin in a bid to stop them from stealing to fund their habits.
“We need to get over our moral panic about giving people heroin as part of a treatment plan,” he said.
“Police were set up to prevent crime, not to arrest people. Our primary concern is to prevent crime. If we’ve got people who are addicted to… drugs committing crime, it makes good sense to get that person off drugs.
“Addiction is a medical problem, not a criminal justice problem.”
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