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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: Alarm as ministers ditch plan to overhaul drug classification
Ian Sample, science correspondent The Guardian
Saturday 14 Oct 2006 Plans to overhaul the 30-year-old scheme for classifying illegal drugs were ditched by the government yesterday, drawing condemnation from MPs and drugs charities. The scheme, which attaches higher penalties to class A drugs such as cocaine and heroin than less dangerous substances such as cannabis, a class C drug, was savaged in July in a report by MPs, who denounced it as "ad hoc", "not fit for purpose" and "riddled with anomalies". The report particularly criticised the classification of the dance drug ecstasy, quoting research by the thinktank Rand that the drug was several thousand times less dangerous than heroin, yet both are categorised as class A. Professor Colin Blakemore, director of the Medical Research Council, advised the committee that the scientific evidence suggested ecstasy "should not be a class A drug". The former home secretary, Charles Clarke, ordered a review of the classification system in January to ensure that decisions were based on the drugs' wider harm to society and not just a health assessment of the clinical evidence. In its official response to the MPs' report, the government announced it was reclassifying the highly-addictive club drug crystal methamphetamine from class B to class A, but dropping its commitment to review the scheme. Plans to set thresholds for possession, above which a person would be considered a dealer, were also abandoned. The Home Office minister, Vernon Coaker, said: "I have spent the past few months meeting police, victims of crime, drug addicts and others involved in the criminal justice system. None of them have raised [with me] the classification system as a concern that affects them." The MPs' report, by the parliamentary science and technology select committee and entitled Drug Classification: Making a Hash of It, found no evidence that the sliding scale of drug classification deterred users from taking more harmful drugs and claimed it was not based on sufficiently rigorous scientific knowledge of the harm different drugs can cause. Phil Willis, chairman of the committee, said the government had accepted only half the report's recommendations. "It is extremely regrettable that not only have they rejected our suggestion of a more rational scale of harm to inform policy, but the home secretary has reversed existing government policy of reviewing the system of drugs classification. This is very shortsighted," he said. Home Office figures released yesterday revealed use of class A drugs among 16- to 59-year-olds has increased since 1998. Overall drug use, in particular cannabis, has decreased in the same period. Mr Coaker said the government would continue to focus on tackling drug supplies, getting users into treatment and educating young people about the dangers. http://www.guardian.co.uk/drugs/Story/0,,1922369,00.html
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