Subj: Lilley to call for legalisation of cannabis



Source: The Daily Telegraph (UK)



Pubdate: 19 September 1999





Lilley to call for legalisation of cannabis

By David Cracknell, Political Correspondent

 

PETER LILLEY, the former deputy leader of the Conservative Party, is

preparing to call for the decriminalisation of cannabis, The Telegraph has

learned.



Mr Lilley, who was dropped by William Hague this summer, confirmed

yesterday that he has been moving towards a radical position on drug issues

- and is planning to call for legalisation in a series of speeches. Now

outside the gagging constraints of shadow cabinet responsibility, Mr Lilley

is free to make such a radical statement, although it would break Tory

taboos and infuriate his leader. William Hague decided only this month to

toughen up the party's anti-drugs policy.



Mr Lilley's move would also be seen as the act of a man still bitter at his

treatment by the leadership, although he insisted last night that he was

"100 per cent loyalist".



However, he confirmed that he had discussed a radical approach towards

drugs policy with friends. He said they had looked at ways of

distinguishing between people who bought cannabis for their own use and

those who make a living out of hard drugs. "There is a difference between

buying cannabis and selling it," he said. And someone said it would be a

jolly good thing if we could separate people who do a bit of cannabis from

the people who push heroin. Someone mooted the idea that we ought to be

able to break the link between people who buy cannabis and people who push

heroin, which over dinner sounds a nice idea."



Mr Lilley's comments come after the shadow cabinet decided this month to

introduce a policy of automatic life sentences for drug dealers twice

convicted of supplying youngsters. The Tory leadership is highly sensitive

about the decriminalisation of drugs.



One of Mr Hague's front bench spokesmen, Alan Duncan, dropped a chapter on

drugs from a book last year. The section in which he acknowledged that

"prohibition" of soft drugs was not working was removed from the paperback

edition of Saturn's Children.



When Mr Lilley was dismissed as deputy leader, senior Tories made little

attempt to deny that he had been sacked because of criticism of his

lacklustre performance as head of the party's policy review.