THE newly installed mayor of Truro is at the centre of a controversial debate this week after leading calls for legalisation of recreational drugs such as Ecstasy.

Retired surgeon Connie Fozzard, 70, put forward the motion at the British Medical Association's annual conference taking place in Torquay.

She is calling on the conference to look at selling these drugs over the counter to ensure purity and cut down on drug related crime.

"This is a BMA matter," she said this week. "It hasn't come up with my local government associations, it has come up as a medical matter through a motion put through by one of our members. As the Cornish representative I am bound to bring this forward.

"It is not for me to say what the people of Truro think, it is for them to see when we get the debate. People need to feel safe on our streets. They are fed up to the back teeth with all the burglaries going on and drug habits support this. There is a lot of drug-related crime and it's got to stop. People don't feel safe on the streets or in their homes."

She says legalising the production of the drugs would mean that contaminants, which dealers mix them with, would be cut out, delivering a more pure drug.

"There is an element of ensuring that what is used is purified and standardised.

"And if it goes through licensed premises then it can be taxed just like alcohol. If it were taxed, you could control the quantity that is released on the market. It would take this drug off the street."

The motion calls for the expansion of the "range of legal recreational drugs available beyond alcohol and tobacco which are quality controlled and taxable."

But the officer in charge of Truro police station, Insp Mark Richards, who has had much experience of dealing with drug crime, said he would not support the legalisation of Ecstasy.

"I would say violent crime in Truro is fuelled far more by alcohol than drug problems," he said.

"There is no proven link between drugs and crimes of violence in Truro. Nationally there has been an increase with crack and crack cocaine but we haven't the huge scale of problems other cities have with crack cocaine, although there has been a recent increase in its use.

"We welcome any debate. The issue we have got is, rather than legalise drugs, have much better facilities at clubs and drug referral programmes. I'm not sure we entirely agree with the legalisation of controlled drugs such as Ecstasy.

"We welcome the reclassification of cannabis but the Home Secretary looked at Ecstasy as well and didn't downgrade it from class A and its potential to do damage is enormous."

Ecstasy use was linked to more than 40 deaths in 2001, with research showing it may cause long-term depression.

This is not the first time that Miss Fozzard has courted controversy. She recently called for handouts to be withdrawn from vagrants and drunks who intimidate people in the city centre.

She called for the Government to introduce a welfare for work system after drunks and vagrants were involved in a number of incidents.