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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: Government 'just said no' to drugs advice
Fiona MacGregor and Kate Foster Scotland on Sunday
Sunday 20 Mar 2005 THE government ignored advice about the link between cannabis and mental health problems when it downgraded the drug, experts said last night. Following the announcement by Home Secretary Charles Clarke that the classification of cannabis was to be reviewed just over a year after it was regraded as a class C drug, critics have accused the government of sending out "mixed messages" about the health dangers it poses. They warn ministers face a real challenge in redressing a perception that cannabis is harmless. Clarke announced yesterday that a fresh review of the classification would take place following the publication of new medical research. But one of Scotland's leading drugs experts, Professor Neil McKeganey, of the Centre for Drugs Misuse Research at Glasgow University, said: "This evidence was available at the time. "Research is not done that quickly. It generally takes longer than 15 months to execute, analyse and report research, so these findings were available at the time and were available long before the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs made its decision to recommend rescheduling. "That is a concern because, when he asked them to make the decision, he had virtually made his announcement in the media anyway. "I think that this review is good news but many people think it was a mistake to reschedule cannabis in the first place. The perception is that this is a drug with relatively little risk, but the evidence suggests that is not the case. "We are in a state of considerable confusion now and that is hugely regrettable when we are talking about the health of young people." A spokesman for mental health charity Rethink said: "When the government first proposed [the initial downgrade] we told them there was a whole raft of new evidence due to come out from research being done in Scandinavia and other countries connecting the use of cannabis to severe mental illness. The link has been known about for 10 years. "I do not know why they did not take the evidence on board but I think they were coming under pressure from the police and other organisations to let them concentrate their resources on hard drugs." The review announcement has also led to condemnation from opposition politicians. David Davis, the Conservative home affairs spokesman, said: "The downgrading of cannabis was a dreadful decision which sends out mixed messages to children about the dangers of drugs. The government will now have to clear up the mess of its hasty and ill-thought through decision on cannabis which Charles Clarke himself has admitted could lead people into harder drugs." Senior Scottish police officers said that, whatever the outcome of the review, they would continue to clamp down on cannabis use. Tom Buchan, president of the Association of Scottish Police Superintendents, said: "I don't think it will make a great deal of difference. We never took our foot of the pedal when they changed the law. We have always addressed the issue of cannabis as a hazardous substance which can lead on to the use of more hazardous substances."
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