[420 Girl]

TOUGH action against cannabis users is ineffective and is targeted only at poorer communities, American civil rights campaigner the Rev Jesse Jackson told MPs yesterday.

Dr Jackson said the authorities did not dare raid university campuses because of the backlash from rich parents whose children could be caught using drugs.

Yet poorer neighbourhoods were targeted by police, he told the Commons home affairs select committee on knife and gun crime and drugs.

Asked if he believed UK anti-drugs policy would be more effective if forces turned their attention to campuses, he said: “You can either begin to raid campuses – you go up on a couple of high-profile universities in Britain and you do a drugs raid you will get a huge reaction from people of power whose children are going to be damaged by that process.

“Or you can let the same laws apply to those on the ghetto corners, have the same relaxed notion. At least give the others the same playing field.”

He also rejected a suggestion from Monmouth MP David Davies that there was some evidence from Illinois that longer jail sentences had led to lower crime rates.

“That was a period where we got 22,000 jobs, more night basketball for the youth, more jobs for their parents – the economy is a factor in reducing crime.

“It was not just the threat of jail that was a factor; the opportunities for jobs, I submit, were bigger factors.”


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