|
Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
|
|
UK: Deborah Orr: People's perceptions of Britain's cannabis laws are as clear as skunk Deborah Orr The Independent Saturday 07 Jan 2006 I'm touched, really, by the infallibility some people are conferring on our legal system. Whole swaths of self-proclaimed and actual experts appear to believe that the dope smoking habits of the nation have been finely regulated, like a radio being tuned to Stoned FM, by the recent incremental change in the classification of cannabis. So persuasive have their arguments been that the Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, is rumoured to be ready to rescind the legislation that two years ago led to cannabis's reclassification from class B to class C. Their position is an odd and contradictory one. While they maintain that the reclassification of cannabis has motivated huge numbers of people to change their habits, they claim also that this attitudinal sea change happened only because people didn't understand what was going on. They argue that people smoke cannabis because they believe the Government has, by making the legal penalty for possession of this illegal drug extremely slight, endorsed it as safe. This, it is claimed, contradicts the research linking cannabis use to mental health problems including the very serious and often untreatable illness schizophrenia, that has been available for years. Though the research remains controversial, I believe it is convincing, especially when the onset of these symptoms is linked to skunk, the high-strength cannabis that in recent years came to dominate the market. For the sake of formal accuracy, therefore, I'd be happy to see skunk and hash given different legal classifications. In fact, I think this would be more useful than a return to the situation we had previously, whereby the legal response to cannabis possession was often farcically out of proportion to the ubiquity of the misdemeanour that had been committed. But that would not address the actual difficulty, which goes far beyond the level of illegality we confer upon certain substances. If campaigners are convinced that people smoke cannabis under the impression that it is safe, then how do they explain the national propensity for risky behaviour such as drinking and smoking that goes far beyond drug use, and had proved only partially amenable to health education campaigns? People don't do any of this because they are under the impression that it is harmless. They do it for all sorts of reasons, from unhappiness to peer pressure, from compulsion to depression. They do it also because they think they are willing to take the risk that it will not happen to them. This latter reason is significant because it is also the reason why so many people are untroubled by the idea of taking part in illegal acts that they perceive as being damaging only to themselves. (Not true, of course, since the international drug trade is so ruthless and pitiless.) The truth is that our criminal justice system is so inefficient at apprehending criminals that making an example of those people they do catch taking part in such widespread activity is simply pointless and too cruel. People understand all of this perfectly well. So the Government can retune as carefully as it wants to. This won't change the fact that the transmitter isn't working.
After you have finished reading this article you can click here to go back.
|
This page was created by the Cannabis Campaigners' Guide.
Feel free to link to this page!