PORTABLE drug-testing kits, which will check whether suspects were under the influence of illegal substances when they broke the law, are to be trialed at three Scottish police stations.
The pilot project, which begins on 12 June, will see suspected shoplifters, house-breakers and fraudsters tested for drugs as a matter of course.
The aim is to encourage more drug users into treatment services to address their problems and drug-related offending.
If the two-year pilot project is successful, then it might be introduced nationwide.
Graeme Pearson, speaking on behalf of the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland, said: "We welcome the opportunity that this project offers.
"The experience in England and Wales, where you have drug testing already, is that it gives the opportunity for people to be diverted into treatment much earlier and success rates are much higher.
"
The test takes the form of a saliva swab and the result can be obtained very quickly.
Mr Pearson, the director-general of the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency, went on: "It is a real opportunity for someone caught on drugs to realise what the issue is, to recognise how to deal with it and to take the opportunity for treatment."
Anyone who refuses the test or assessment will be liable to a criminal charge.
Professor Neil McKeganey, of the Centre for Drugs Misuse Research, agreed with the mandatory nature of the drug testing.
He said: "If you are going to mount a scheme of this kind, it must be compulsory. I think it is absolutely right that the Scottish Executive gets a good measure of a proportion of drug-related crime and targets treatment accordingly.
"Some years ago, I was involved in a project in Glasgow and Fife and we found that 70 per cent of people lifted by the police had used illegal drugs.
"However, only a tiny proportion of them had been in touch with drugs-treatment services.
"We should become accustomed to routine drug testing rather than testing at the discretion of senior police officers.
Only then would we truly get a sense of the scale of drug-use offending."
Hugh Little, deputy-general secretary of the Scottish Police Federation, which represents the majority of officers in Scotland, said: "We would support this pilot scheme and we look forward to its evaluation."
The background to the pilot projects is that about a third of all recorded crime in Scotland is related to drugs.
Further, more than three-quarters of those given a custodial sentence by the courts show signs of drug misuse and drug-related offending.
The powers for mandatory drug testing are contained within the Police, Public Order and Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2006.
Heroin, methadone, cocaine, Ecstasy, LSD, amphetamines (if prepared for injection) and magic mushrooms prepared for illegal use, are all Class A drugs under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971.
The pilot schemes will run in three police stations: Queen Street, Aberdeen; St Leonard's in Edinburgh; and London Road in Glasgow. The Scottish Executive previously set aside £1 million to increase the capacity of the treatment services in the pilot areas.
A further £600,000 has been earmarked for the employment of assessors and further funding will be provided to the police in the pilot areas to meet the requirements of supporting the projects.
During consultation, the Scottish Drugs Forum voiced its opposition to proposals for mandatory drug testing of anyone aged 16 and over arrested for Class A drugs or drugs-related "trigger" offences.
It argued that testing those arrested would not deliver an effective return on investment and that crime could be cut by developing high-quality treatment services instead.
Police in the pilot projects will use portable drug-testing machines produced by the Oxfordshire-based company Cozart.
The company already supplies its Rapiscan equipment to 173 police stations in England and Wales under a similar scheme introduced last year.
Rapiscan is a portable device that can be used to check for the presence of a number of substances in bodily fluids.
The system is used to test nearly 20,000 people arrested in England and Wales each month.
Cozart develops and manufactures drug-testing equipment and sells kits to police as well as employers who operate drug-testing policies.
Ah – what the politicians don’t tell you.
Specifically, it is perfectly legal to be under the influence of illegal substances.
The powers for mandatory drug testing are contained within the Police, Public Order and Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2006.
what other powers have been sneaked in?
call me paranoid but with the governments aim of increasing its dna database and the tests requirement for bodily fluids along with the historical precedent by the met of retaining samples illegally(made legal retrospectively by the home secretary), do you think they may be at it ?
So technically they werent well.
Bail conditions wil be a 4 week trip to marakesh with your social worker and spiritual advisor for the socialy impaired.
Don't have any problems with folk being drug tested.
It is only those who indulge who should perhaps worry. Any spin they like, it is not before time. #5 Wakey Wakey :-) indeed.
Considering the polis are the only who don't know who the drug dealers are the polis station might be a good place to start looking.
Search the drug squad.
if we tested the police/politicians too we would have even less police on street than we have now, andit would explain why politicians talk so much blooming crap all the time,too stoned,lol
Big Brother stretches his tentacles even further.
However, I've seen cops smoking dope quite openly at music festivals, so I've been aware of THEIR double standards for a looooooong time! And MPs have been known to have expensive drug tastes.
If it's brought in for one section of the public, it should be brought in for ALL - if at all!
!
Our police and politicians must be tested on a regular basis for this policy to have any credibility
among the general public.
Cathy Jamieson should be tested for drugs after her absolutelty shocking performance on Newsnight Scotland last night.
Does this stupid woman really think thatb people should vote for her - two short planks would serve us better.
Most of the police that I know indulge in a bit of the old whacky baccy. I do not indulge, but then I drink beer and spirits, which we all know is much worse than all but a few of the other drugs.
Why do we not just start compulsory testing at all places of employment to make sure that people are free of all drugs, alcohol and tobacco included? Sakc anyone who has traces of ANY drug in their system for which they do not have a prescription. That would be a much better and effective way to harrass people?
What is wrong with us Scots?
Why on earth do we let these eejits in government and the law enforcement agencies come up with a continual stream of crackpot ideas that do nothing other than use up the taxation raised and keep people in well paid jobs?
Meanwhile, the real problems in society rage on.
You have got to laugh...
..
What a load of politically correct, nanny state bollocks.
Anyone who refuses the test or assessment will be liable to a criminal charge.
This is going to be abused by the Police and the government. All crimes will primarily be blamed on cannabis use in the future.
This is clearly absurd.
14 ..
...
..or take drugs!
Please don't tell me this isn't more and more rapidly becoming a police state.
I have never used drugs myself and hope I would never be likely to be involved in housebreaking, etc., but if I was told I had to take a 'compulsory' drugs test by the police or anyone else I would tell them to stick it (in 3 dimensions).
This is just another lame-duck action to try and prop up the failing drugs policy in the UK and another pathetic excuse to gather DNA info for the new National Socialist Labour party's I/D card programme.
At the next UK general election get Labour out - they stink!
Quite right.
I still can't see why they got in in the first place---twice!
Won't people ever learn that the labour party IN ANY GUISE SHAPE OR FORM is unfit to govern? They had plenty of chances to prove otherwise in the Callaghan and Wilson years but failed to do so.
They had their raison d'etre many decades ago but now, like the unions, they are obsolete and worthless.
Petrol head,
They are really just a crowd of provaricating Tory clones - I wonder if they've got frozen embryos somewhere.
Maybe we should ask the police to check!
!
Cheers,
I've often heard that comparison but I can't say I agree with it. Fair enough, the tories didn't get everything right but at least they believed in freedom of choice and had a respect for the intelligence of the average man in the street.
The labour party have neither.
The Tories only really lied about some of the more close to the knuckle things that ministers got up to in their private lives. Labour lie at every opportunity, cover things up, invent incidents and spread propaganda.
I'll just leave it there on that one.
In addition to this, labour may be attempting to copy Tory policy but they have neither the intellect, leadership or foresight to be able to carry it out. Either that or they go far too far.
Take for example the fuel price escalator. Introduced by the tories in 1996 in order to harmonise our fuel prices with the rest of Europe in a gradual way. The labour party carried it on for over two years after they got to power, making Britain the most expensive place in the world to buy fuel and eventually resulting in the country coming to a standstill in protest.
That was a typical example of how labour consistantly fail to see the big picture and lack the basic intelligence to realise the consequences of their actions.
#21 petrol head,
Back to the business in hand.
My feeling as a non-drugs, etc user is that far too much money and time is being wasted on the detection of drugs and drugs related crime and on repairing the damage caused both to individuals and property.
Little success is being acheived by the authorities for the money being spent.
The situation is now pretty desperate and my view is that we really need to legalise all 'recreational drugs' making them available through properly legally organised channels, that way you can control purity and perhaps volume and also cut-out the ruthless parisities who peddle these poisonous concoctions. This hopefully would remove the need of many addicts to have to commit crimes in order to supply their cravings.
By the way petrolhead, these days I don't have any time for either of the main parties (i.e. Labour Conservative), but I take your point.
However it's not just fuel which has risen, but damned nearly eveything else, consider Council Tax, the present government appears to have no manifesto policies regarding this, for which they will pay the price in both the Scottish and UK elections.
Regards,
Socialism is a dead duck! It has failed in Russia, North Korea, the previous Eastern Bloc, China (is fast becoming economy driven, instead of driven by Socialism).
Yet even with THREE Elections and 10 years, the old faithful, still keep putting the cross in Labour's box. Thousands of posts reviling Labour, from every corner of the UK. What is the betting they might get in again?
Why? because folk never seem to learn. Who are all these idiots?
No one ever seems to say 'I voted Labour', but they did! Liars as well as Socialists? it gets no better than that.
The UK 'deserves it's present plight', YOU elected your government, NO ONE ELSE, little old you!
Another case of the Nanny State, strangling the individuals civil rights.
I will wait and see how the uppercrust ladies going through the menopause react to this legislation.
How will the criminal and DNA record look down the tea shop or at the conservative club, when the hormone imbalance makes some of them act oddly and criminaly(shop lifting nick-naks etc). Or how about the Pop/film stars who in the past have embarressed themselves. Will they make villains of, Ozzy Osbourne, The WHO, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones.
Ah right they already tried that.
The behavior of the wealthy, when thier actions are scrutinized through the courts with suggestions of drug use will be a sight to behold.
David Steele has a son who is partial to the odd smoke of whacky baccy as was David Cameron while at Eton.
This legislation is ballyhoo. Another attack on the intelligence of the people, government want to blame drugs rather than thier policies for the crime we see on our streets.
Put the youth to work and stop thier having time on thier hands.
Idle hands and minds, bring the trouble. Taking drugs is an alternative to compullsory boredom of unemployment as is alcohol.
More double talk by the government to convince you the youth are bad when they are not.
Give the youth the oppertunity of work and they will take it. Give them YOP schemes and slave wages and they will stick up 2 fingers.
Lets not send them into National Service to be wounded or die in illegal wars.
Vote SNP on 3rd of may.
It is time.
I can see your arguement about legalising drugs but I don't agree entirely with it.
As far as there being too much time and money wasted on the effects of drug abuse rather than the cause, I agree 100%.
There is nothing like trying to shut the door after the horse has bolted and most of the efforts seem to be directed in this area. When are they going to actually try to stop people taking the crap in the first place?
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