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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: Walking a fine life
Vivienne Parry The Times
Saturday 10 Dec 2005 Stories behind the news: A dopey government policy on drugs is simply befuddling us all THE RELEASE of government figures that showed that the number of cocaine possession crimes in which offenders were given a caution had quadrupled, prompted headlines this week about the police treading "softly, softly". They were headlines that must have left many people feeling rather confused. Only a month ago the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction reported not only that one adult in ten under 35 had tried cocaine, making Britain the nation with the most users in Europe, but that 10 per cent of all drugs-related deaths were associated with this Class A drug. This echoes the alarming findings of a 2003 study from St Mary's Hospital Paddington, which found that one young man in three attending A&E with chest pain had cocaine in his system. There are similar mixed messages on cannabis. On one level it has been downgraded to a Class C drug, yet there is growing evidence that heavy marijuana use in adolescents triggers earlier onset of schizophrenia in those predisposed to it. And research presented recently at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of America reported structural abnormalities of those parts of the brain concerned with high-level linguistic skills in teenage heavy users of cannabis. This news came in the same week that plans were announced to allow drug users in Britain to carry enough cannabis to make 500 joints before they were charged with dealing rather than the lesser crime of possession. This pantomime farce, with one arm of the Government saying, "It's dangerous", while another arm pops out of nowhere and appears to say "Oh no it's not", is also the hallmark of the smoking debate. Preventing smoking-related disease is a big strand of Tony Blair's health-education policy, but then we have the Government undermining this effort with the ridiculous fudge over smoking in public places. Why is this? It is partly because this Government is determined not to be tarred with a "nanny state" epithet. In the case of drug use, however, there is perhaps a more fundamental reason. The last British Crime Survey, regarded as the primary source for assessing general drug use, suggests that more than a third of people have taken drugs in their lifetime, with 10 per cent doing so in the past year. A third of the population is a lot of voters. It also illustrates the sheer scale required to police the drug law effectively. One might argue that there is no need for mind-bending drugs, when the conflicting messages of government policy and action are enough to banjax any brain.
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