A DEFENCE solicitor today called for the law of the land to be applied across the board and not selectively, after his client had spent 23 hours in custody on a charge of possessing cannabis.

Roger Pickles told Blackburn magistrates that had Abdul Malik been stopped in certain boroughs in London, he would have been spoken to, the drugs confiscated and sent on his way.

"That would have been the end of the matter," said Mr Pickles. "In Blackburn, he has been arrested, interviewed, locked up because of his previous bail record and had his liberty taken away from him for 23 hours.

"To be frank, it is not fair. We are one country and we should have one law applied to all. My client was found with £7.50-worth of cannabis and he has had his liberty taken away from him for over 23 hours."

Malik, 25, of Conway Avenue, Blackburn, pleaded guilty to possession of cannabis and was fined £20 with £40 costs. Passing sentence, the chairman of the bench said that what happens in Lambeth is not relevant to what happens in Blackburn.

Speaking after the court case, Mr Pickles said he did not blame Blackburn Police as they were just enforcing the law.

But he said there should be equal punishment not only across the land -- but in Blackburn as well.

He criticised a new police scheme to be launched in Blackburn, as highlighted in the Lancashire Evening Telegraph this week, where clubbers found with small amounts of drugs will have them taken off them and refused entry. The police will not be informed and no legal action will be taken.

He said: "There has obviously been an injustice towards my client. If he had been found with his £7.50 of cannabis in Lambeth the police would not have even took him to the station.

"And if he had tried to get into somewhere like Utopia, he would have had it taken off him and not been prosecuted.

"But because police found him with it, he spent 11 hours in a police cell. It all seems bizarre to me.

"Cannabis is illegal, but it is viewed differently not only in different counties, but it seems in different areas of the same town."