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Straw Jacks Up Smack Facts

Jack Straw 'off his head' on heroin

Squall Download 1, Oct/Nov 1999, pg. 5.

Home Secretary, Jack Straw, took the liberty of making a drug induced exaggeration during his speech to the Labour Party conference in September.

In a crime and punishment diatribe similar in content to those made by his Tory predecessor, Michael Howard, Straw told a surprised audience that 50 per cent of people arrested by police were currently testing positive for Heroin.

However, according to a recently published survey commissioned by Straw's own department and conducted over two years by Cambridge University’s Institute of Criminology, a national average of only 18 per cent of arrestees were found to have heroin in their bloodstream.

Straw’s deployment of wayward facts was thought to be a crude attempt to curry popular favour for the new mandatory drug tests which are imminently to be enforced on everyone arrested in the UK.

The home office commissioned survey also found that 46% of arrestees tested positive for Cannabis, though the report noted: “Those who tested positive for Cannabis alone were not heavily involved in acquisitive crime.”