Subj: Scotland: Opinion: Let's end the reefer madness



Date: 25 Apr, 1999



Source: Scotland on Sunday





Opinion



ubject: Let's end the reefer madness

Amelia Hill on legalising cannabis



BROWNIE Mary, the woman responsible for the recent 

transformation of America's drug laws, died last week. The 

77-year-old grandmother was an unlikely catalyst for the 

partial legalisation, in 1996, of marijuana in California, 

but her influence forced a revolution that we in Scotland 

have yet to confront.



Mary Jane Rathburn was a strikingly ordinary woman who lived 

alone in a small flat in San Francisco. She retired, at 60, 

from her job as a waitress and began baking cakes for the 

young men dying of Aids in her local hosptal.



To this day, no one quite knows when Mary began lacing her 

all-American brownies with marijuana but over the l7 years 

she visited the hospital, her culinary treats became 

something of an institution.



Inevitably, however, she was rumbled: police outside her 

home identified the pungent fumes floating down from her 

kitchen window and Mary found herself facing criminal 

charges. But she wouldn't give up. Eschewing the complex 

pros and cons of the drugs debate, Mary applied good old-

fashioned common sense to the argument and continued baking 

her trademark gifts.



Mary's case attracted a huge amount of public attention when 

it came to court and as her tale filtered down through 

Californian society, it became obvious that even the 

staunchest rnembers of the blue-rinse brigade found it 

difficult to condemn someone using marijuana to ease the 

pain of the dying.



In a wholly unexpected but welcome development, the state 

responded to public opinion and softened its stance. When 

they eventually eased their laws three yearsago, enabling 

doctors to prescribe marijuana to patients for pain relief, 

Washington, Oregon, Arizona and Nevada soon followed suit.



But the success of Brownie Mary was essentially hollow 

because an earlier federal law proscribing marijuana 

continues to ensure that doctors and patients using the drug 

for medical purposes can still be arrested and imprisoned.



Mary's tale is a perfect example of the snakes-and-ladders 

politics that we have perfected here in Britain: despite the 

heat generated by various headlines, no politician in a 

position of power has the stomach to fight the good fight.



Cannabis is classified as a Schedule 1 drug in this country, 

restricting its use to drug research, and the Scottish 

parliament will have no opportunity to question this - it 

lost the battle to make its own mind up when Westminster 

realised the vote-winning potential of an SNP-Lib Dem 

alliance fighting on a pro-legalisation ticket.



Nevertheless, drugs have been earmarked as a key election 

battleground: the call by one of Scotland's most senior 

police officers last Friday in favour of the legalisation of 

cannabis was merely the latest in a long line of geyser-like 

spurts that have characterised our peculiarly British way of 

dealing with the issue - explosion followed by retraction 

and/or silence.



Bold statements such as those of deputy chief constable Tom 

Wood are either followed by retractions or are overshadowed 

by concrete proof that the law has no intention of easing 

up: the pro-legalisation campaign was rocked by the 

Sentencing of Eric Mann to one year's imprisonment by 

Swansea Crown Court three weeks ago for using cannabis to 

alleviate the pain caused by his severe arthritis.



Despite the evidence of its own independent advisors, the 

government continues to justify its ludicrous positon by 

telling us that cannabis must remain illegal in its natural 

state until analyses, taking five to 10 years and leading to 

the development of synthetic, expensive forms of the 

substance, have been carried out.



The government claim to be so concerned for our well-being 

that it is prepared to criminalise and imprison us for using 

a drug that study after study has shown to be considerably 

less dangerous than alcohol.



But this zero tolerance approach is far more dangerous than 

the drug itself: smoking a spliff is not a slippery path to 

smoking crack cocaine. And criminalising young people for 

indulging in this harmless relaxant of choice devalues the 

anti-drug message and undermines the trust young people have 

in official drug warnings.



I was arrested for possession of cannabis when I was 15. 

Caught rolling a joint in a park outside my house with a 

friend, I was given a temporary criminal record and locked 

in a cell for eight hours with a drug dealer, who 

consequently became my boyfriend. But far from being 

terrified by the experience, the event brought home to me 

the lunacy of a legal system which condones alcohol and 

tobacco while demonising cannabis, ranking it alongside 

heroin and crack cocaine.



After my sojourn in confinement, I briefly tested the water 

of a more serious drug culture alongside my new-found 

boyfriend. The novelty soon wore off and my drug-addled 

boyfriend faded away but it was at that point my teenage 

rebellion could have turned into something far more 

destructive and illegal than a quiet smoke in the park.



Almost 30,000 Scots were charged with possessing or 

supplying cannabis last year, all victimised and 

criminilised to no purpose and for no reason other than 

political cowardice. It is time to look anew at this problem 

and Scotland has a golden opportunity to do so: we must 

reject our current unworkable drug laws which, as they 

stand, do far more harm than the drugs themselves.