Police extend soft line on cannabis

Police chiefs are planning to extend the Lambeth "softly softly" approach on cannabis across the country - despite warnings from community leaders that drugs are wrecking children's lives.

Several police forces in England and Wales will adopt the Association of Chief Police Officers and the Metropolitan Police's more relaxed attitude in which people are warned rather than arrested when caught with small amounts of the drug.

However, Julie Fawcett, who runs a tenants' group in Lambeth, which includes Brixton, said: "Our kids are becoming addicted to the lifestyle of having a puff at 11am, not going to school, short-term memory loss, no focus and getting terrible screaming munchies at 1pm and stuffing their faces with Mars bars.

"Because white middle-class people believed smoking cannabis was part of black culture, the police have had this relaxed attitude. It means that when people on council estates, particularly the elderly, complained about groups of young black people smoking cannabis on street corners they were slapped down as being racist.

"But what they were complaining about was the anti-social behaviour." Deputy assistant commissioner Mike Fuller, head of the Metropolitan Police's drugs directorate, warned the Home Secretary that the scheme had encouraged drug dealers to visit the area more frequently.

David Blunkett is expected to announce the Government's decision to relax cannabis laws next month.

Lambeth police commander Brian Paddick, who was suspended in March over accusations that he used cannabis, defends the pilot project. He is still awaiting the outcome of an inquiry into his own actions.

The MP for Vauxhall, Kate Hoey, voiced the concerns of many community leaders in Lambeth when she said the experiment, which effectively decriminalises cannabis, was augmenting the drug problems.

"There are more drug dealers on the streets than ever," she said. "We should never have been experimenting on people in Brixton. Go to Hampstead or somewhere in Islington, but not Lambeth. There is no reason why one part of London should be picked on for this experiment, particularly such a poor, deprived area."