| Following
the revelation from CakeMedia that the mass drug testing by laptop was in fact
not going to be used at the V2003 V Festival, UKCIA wrote a letter to the Sunday
Times, asking them to investigate this decision and try and answer some of the
questions that at that point had not been answered. Click
here for the full story
| Last
month you published an article reporting that attendees of the V2003 Staffordshire
festival will be tested for drugs en masse by Staffordshire Police using a new
laptop-based technology ("Festival fans face laptop drug test, 1st June 2003).
A drug law reform group I work with, UKCIA (http://www.ukcia.org) shared the concerns
of Liberty, the Essex Police Force, and others that this could constitute a breach
of human rights and was an unproven, expensive, degrading and ineffective way
to reduce the potential harm caused by drug usage, which did not fit in with the
Government's own drug strategy. However,
recently CakeMedia, the PR company for V Festival, have given us a statement that
Staffordshire Police now have no intentions of conducting such testing. No reason
has been given as yet for this decision and my correspondence so far with Staffordshire
Police has elicited no details of the testing mechanism itself, any proof it works,
nor answered my concerns about the policy with which it was intended to be used.
Perhaps your reporters could follow up this change of story and use your publication's
considerable influence in order establish the above facts, and help stop this
worrying development in drug testing strategies continue in Stafford, or indeed
the rest of this country. | We
enclosed a copy of our original letter for
their reference and to highlight our concerns. Since then, a letter from the Staffordshire
police has claimed that "There is not, and never has been any intention to
mass screen people attending the V2003 festival". This seems at odds with
the original Sunday
Times article, which clearly stated: "Police plan to use the machine
for the first time when the three bands play at the V2003 festival at Weston Park,
Staffordshire, in August." Perhaps, in addition to helping us get the information
about this testing system and policy we want, any response to this letter will
clear up whether the original article was wrong, or the police are covering up
their original plans. |
