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UK: Confused about cannabis? You bet
Philip Johnston The Telegraph, Opinion
Monday 09 Jan 2006 A headline on the health pages of this newspaper last week probably summed up the views of many about drugs. "Confused about cannabis?" it read. Well, I am, for one. It is possible to take a fundamentalist position and say smoking a joint is morally wrong. But why is it any more so than smoking a cigarette? Cannabis is illegal, of course, but what is it about the hemp plant that makes the inhalation of its fumes intrinsically more unacceptable than those of the tobacco plant? Smoking a spliff may lead to mental health disorders; but smoking tobacco causes lung cancer and a host of other ailments. Which is worse? Yet many of those who would defend to the last an individual's right to smoke tobacco are often appalled by cannabis, possibly because they associate the latter with a louche culture. This question of relative harms is one of many perplexing conundrums in the debate about drugs. The Government is currently agonising over whether to put cannabis back in class B under an index set out in the Misuse of Drugs Act 1970. Will this make any difference? Do users consult the categories before lighting up? True, the category in which a drug is placed makes a difference to the penalty for dealing and possession. But one of the purposes of downgrading cannabis to class C two years ago was that the Government felt it should take up less police time and wanted to make possession a non-arrestable offence. But after a furore over the liberalisation, David Blunkett, then the home secretary, mystifyingly decided to make possession of class C substances an arrestable offence as well, thereby defeating the point of the exercise. Recently, another law has made all offences arrestable, so we are back where we started. In the meantime, the Government has managed to convey a message, to some at least, that cannabis is safe, which it isn't. Putting it back into category B will still suggest it is less harmful than other drugs, such as cocaine, which it may or may not be, depending on the scale of consumption. If there is confusion about cannabis, it is of the Government's own making. History is now being rewritten to make out that, when the decision to reclassify was taken, the evidence linking cannabis to schizophrenia and other mental illnesses was not there. This is not the case. The high THC content of modern cannabis makes it far more potent than in the 1960s and 1970s when today's policy-makers may have puffed on the odd joint. But they knew that when they took the decision to reclassify; so why contemplate a U-turn now? There are a host of anomalies in this area. The Government recently banned ketamine, a horse tranquilliser that has increasingly taken the place of ecstasy as the favoured drug of young clubbers. But it has been given a category C rating, while ecstasy remains in category A, even though the former is considered more dangerous on most objective tests of relative harms. What is the message? Switch to ketamine? Of course, the message should not be anything of the sort. It should be quite emphatically: "Don't touch any of it." When it comes to tobacco, the Government screams its health warnings and plasters them all over the packets of cigarettes. When it comes to drugs, it issues advice about how to take certain substances safely. The "Talk to Frank" website, sponsored by the Home Office, includes tips on how to mitigate the effects of taking particular drugs and is also open about what they do to you. Of ecstasy it says: "E makes people feel in tune with their surroundings. Sounds and colours feel more intense. A certain track of music can suddenly take on a spiritual significance. E makes emotions feel more intense. "Users often feel great love for the people they're with and the strangers around them. E taken on its own is not a drug that makes people violent." It says of ketamine: "It is very dangerous when mixed with other drugs or even alcohol. It can lead to unconsciousness with depressant drugs or alcohol. "It can cause panic attacks, depression and in large doses can exaggerate pre-existing mental health problems such as schizophrenia. If high enough doses are taken, the anaesthetic effect can result in death from inhaling vomit." Why, then, should ecstasy be class A and ketamine C? Whether we like it or not, many millions will continue to take illegal drugs whatever category they are in. People have always taken psychoactive substances and probably always will, and some are more predisposed to addictive behaviour than others. On the other hand, it is known that powerful health messages can have dramatic results in reducing addiction, as they have with nicotine over the past 30 years. A combination of state and peer-group nagging, an almost daily diet of scientific evidence about the dangers of smoking, health warnings taking up virtually the whole of a packet, punitive taxation pushing up the price of cigarettes and a culture emphasising well-being and fitness have encouraged millions to quit. Many who continue to smoke wish they didn't. So why can we not do the same with cannabis? Why the confusion over the message? One reason is that the supply of cannabis is in the hands of criminals. It cannot be taxed or its sale regulated. The principal means of controlling its consumption is through the criminal justice system, which can be a pretty blunt instrument. Is Charles Clarke seriously going to restore a five-year prison sentence for possessing a few ounces of weed? Instead of toughening up the criminal sanctions, surely the time has come for a different approach, one that is unequivocal about the dreadful damage cannabis can do to the brain and that invests the same effort in weaning users off the drug as has been expended in reducing tobacco smoking.
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