Police chiefs urge MPs to relax laws on ecstasy

Police chiefs told MPs on Tuesday that users of ecstasy should be treated more leniently. A Scotland Yard commander controversially claimed that arresting people with small quantities of the dance drug was a "waste of resources".

The proposals for a radical shift in drugs policy also include support for setting up "shooting galleries", where addicts can inject heroin under medical care and without fear of arrest.

The Metropolitan Police has become the first force in the country to relax its attitude towards ecstasy possession. In what could become a template for Britain, the south London borough of Lambeth, which includes Brixton, has adopted a low-key approach to ecstasy possession.

Commander Brian Paddick, the borough's senior police officer, told the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee that weekend drug-users who took small amounts of cocaine and ecstasy were "low down my priority list". Mr Paddick pioneered a scheme in which police warned, rather than arrested, people for cannabis possession. This policy is to be adopted nationally after winning the surprise backing of David Blunkett, the Home Secretary.

But only hours after making his comments to MPs yesterday, Mr Paddick was reprimanded by Sir John Stevens, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, for suggesting that officers were not interested in everyone who uses the two class-A drugs.

Mr Paddick had told the committee: "If I felt my officers were going into nightclubs looking for people who were in possession of ecstasy then I would say to them, and I would say publicly, that they were wasting valuable police resources."

He added: "Of course, ecstasy is a more dangerous drug and some people have a reaction to it and end up dying. But I would say there are far more important things which cause real harm to the community in the way that ecstasy does not.

"My view is there are a whole range of people who buy drugs, not just cannabis, but even cocaine and ecstasy, who buy those drugs with money they have earned legitimately.

"They use a small amount of these drugs, a lot of them just at weekends. It has no adverse effect on the rest of the people they are with, either in terms of people they socialise with, or within the wider community, and they go back to work on Monday morning and are unaffected for the rest of the week.

"In terms of my priorities as an operational police officer, they are low down on my priority list." Mr Paddick, 42, stressed that police were more concerned with catching crack and heroin addicts, who commit most drug-related crimes.

Plans for a more liberal approach to ecstasy possession were given further backing by the Association of Chief Police Officers, whose spokesman on drugs, Metropolitan Deputy Assistant Commissioner Andy Hayman, said chief constables backed the downgrading of ecstasy from a Class-A drug to the lower priority Class B, which carries a lesser sentence. The maximum jail term would drop from seven to five years for possession, and from a life sentence to 14 years for dealing.

The question of a more "softly, softly" approach to ecstasy – an estimated 500,000 Britons take the drug each weekend – is controversial, especially after high-profile deaths such as that of Leah Betts, who died in 1995 after taking ecstasy on her 18th birthday.

A Home Office spokeswoman said there were no plans to reclassify ecstasy and said local commanders had to decide which areas were priorities.

A Met statement said: "The Commissioner has reminded Commander Paddick that he is expected to follow and implement the Met's policy in relation to Class A drugs and Commander Paddick accepts that."

Chief constables and the Superintendents' Association also backed setting up drug rooms where addicts can test the quality of a drug and inject under medical care. Drug rooms already exist in several countries, including Germany and Spain.