Interviewer
Prime Minister, you are establishing a UK Task Force of experts. Could you expand on that please?
Prime Minister
In the Home Office, which deals with all aspects of drug problems together with the Ministry of Health, we have got quite a lot of professionalism and quite a lot of expertise over the years and we have gathered it together—through customs, through dealing with drug addiction, through supply of drugs, in every single way—and we thought it would be best if, through this unit, we got together several teams so we can offer help to other countries who perhaps have not had quite as much experience as we have—and that is what we are doing. [end p1]
Interviewer
What about more money for Colombia? Is it a good thing to expect Colombia to bear the guilt for the world's drug problem?
Prime Minister
Colombia is being extremely courageous and it is tackling the dug barons and all their big organisations and their equipment head on. Anyone who does that is helping the world as a whole to cut down the use of drugs and therefore they deserve not only the help we have been given but the extra that we are going to give.
Interviewer
Are you confident, though, that the £4.5 million will be spent purely on tackling drug problems?
Prime Minister
Yes, I most certainly am. I have every confidence in President Barco. That money will go directly to cutting down the supply of drugs.
Interviewer
Do you stand by what you say that you would never want to see drugs legalised?
Prime Minister
Most certainly! To put drugs into the hands of young people is to be starting them on the road to a totally demoralised and depraved life. We must never do it. [end p2]
Interviewer
Although many police forces do have a policy of not prosecuting first-time offenders. Isn't that being rather too soft on drugs?
Prime Minister
Prosecution is a matter for the police. It is for them to judge whether they should prosecute to get a conviction or not. They may not have enough evidence to get a conviction.
Interviewer
The National Association of Probation Officers is accusing the Home Office of being too complacent about the amount of drugs in prisons. The fact that drugs are getting into prisons, does that concern you?
Prime Minister
There is no complacency in the Home Office about drugs, wherever they may be found. If they are getting into prisons, yes of course it concerns us.
In prisons, as everywhere else, you have to have a dispensary, like everywhere else where you have health treatment you have to have a dispensary and I believe at Strangeways the prisoners broke into that dispensary and therefore used the drugs they found in there for purposes for which they were never intended. [end p3]
Interviewer
But heroin is getting into many prisons, particularly local prisons like Strangeways!
Prime Minister
They will attempt, then, to do every single thing they can to track down where it is coming in and stop it and to prosecute those people who are guilty of bringing it in.
Interviewer
On the prison riots themselves, do you fear that maybe this is getting out of hand, that you are losing control?
Prime Minister
No, I do not think it is out of hand nor lost control. Yes, we have had some trouble, particularly with Strangeways, but the trouble in the other prisons seemed to be dealt with comparatively quickly and of course, they have not all had trouble, fortunately.
Strangeways was a sudden and terrible case and it is for the people on the spot to decide how to bring it to an end.
Interviewer
Would one of those options be sending in the troops? [end p4]
Prime Minister
They could not do that without asking specifically for that and it is for them to judge whether they need to do so, but of course the police have dealt with it very well up to now.