Debug symbols in packages, what's the policy?

[Kaj Ailomaa]

I had someone asking about this on a Ubuntu Studio IRC channel, and myself  
being ignorant on the subject, I got help from the same person on  
collecting some info on debugging symbols being built in into debian  
multimedia packages, and also searched the web a bit to see what I could  
find.

As he suggested, some packages, such as qtractor, have build flags for  
including debug symbols in the rules file.

And what I found while searching the web was that this may be the  
preferred way to build debian multimedia packages -  
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=684035.

So, my question is, is there a policy for including debug symbols with  
debian multimedia packages, and why?

If so, why not split those into additional packages?