Clubs 'may offer ecstasy tests'

London nightclubs will be allowed to introduce Amsterdam-style purity tests for ecstasy tablets as a safeguard for clubbers, under ideas being considered by a council leader.

The move, a highly significant step towards the acceptance of recreational drug use, would mean clubbers could test their illegal pills to see if they contain potentially lethal substances.

Camden council's Labour leader Jane Roberts confirmed that the move "is something we would consider very carefully" and she went on to call for the decriminalisation of ecstasy.

Her remarks - to be broadcast tonight as part of a Radio 1 investigation into Britain's changing drugs laws - come after Lambeth's controversial police commander Brian Paddick told MPs last month that recreational drug users who take cocaine and ecstasy at weekends were not a priority for him.

Mr Paddick, who introduced the Brixton experiment where police no longer arrest people caught in possession of cannabis, was also interviewed for tonight's Go Directly To Jail documentary on the Lamacq Live programme. He says: "There's a club in Brixton which has a bit of a reputation for drugs being used and we don't get any trouble at all from that club. There's another club in Streatham where alcohol is the fuel for the people and we get no end of trouble. I know where my priorities lie as far as those two clubs are concerned."

Camden council which has major clubs including Bagley's, The Cross and They contain Palace inside its borders, insists nightclubs make fresh water freely available to clubbers. Asked her opinion on recreational drugs, Councillor Roberts says: " The targeting of intervention should be on heroin and crack cocaine. We've got numbers of clubs where ecstasy is taken and used. It doesn't cause mass community disorder, certainly not."

Asked if Camden would offer facilities inside clubs to test the purity of the drug, she adds: "We're very happy to look at new ways of doing things and I think that is something we would consider very carefully."

In the same programme, however, Home Office Minister Bob Ainsworth rules out re-classifying ecstasy from Class A to Class B.

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