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UK: Spliffs and tiffs as the cannabis lobby tears itself apart Oliver Thring Sunday Times Sunday 12 May 2013 Things are changing in Britain as well. A few weekends ago about 2,000 people sat down in Hyde Park, central London, to smoke joints under the convivial auspices of the London Cannabis Club. Police made two arrests and issued a handful of "cannabis warnings" but on the whole left the group alone. Such an event passing largely unmolested might have seemed impossible a few years ago, but the British public is far less concerned about soft drug use than it used to be. A poll in February found that 53% of people in the UK favoured legalising or decriminalising cannabis. Most cannabis users suffer no lasting ill effects. However, a small but significant correlation seems to exist between young people using cannabis and later developing psychotic symptoms. Marjorie Wallace of Sane, a mental health charity, says that skunk - a particularly strong and popular form of cannabis - "can trigger frightening psychotic episodes . . . and bring about mental conditions such as schizophrenia". She argues that "diluting these dangers . . . could cause widespread suffering". Rethink, the largest schizophrenia charity in the UK, says that "jailing people for cannabis will not solve the problem. Money spent on policing cannabis should be spent on health education, services and research." The argument, therefore, is between those who believe that prohibition is more effective at steering vulnerable people from the drug, and those who believe that regulation will better protect them. An extraordinary mix of people now argue for cannabis law reform, including MPs, medicinal users and clear-headed, evidence-based pressure groups such as Release and Transform. The most prominent campaigners, however, are disunited - and some simply hate one another. Perhaps the most visible individual arguing for a change in the laws on cannabis is Peter Reynolds, the leader of Clear, a single-issue political party. He has often debated against Peter Hitchens - perhaps the sternest of the anti-drug moralisers - and appears frequently in newspapers and on television. We meet in a cafe - he had suggested a pub - and he orders a triple espresso while boasting to me about the number of complaints he has made to the Press Complaints Commission. I make a mental note of the implications. You might have thought the "free the weed" crowd would be a relaxed bunch, but Reynolds paints a picture of a cannabis lobby riven by nasty internal politics and mutual loathing. "The movement has a history of divisive infighting and argument," he says. The London Cannabis Club "have a beef against me". Several leading members of Clear have left in the past few years to set up a rival organisation, Norml. Reynolds is suing at least one fellow campaigner for defamation. A number of blogs about Reynolds wrongly allege that he is homophobic and a paedophile. (He admits to having called a woman who maintains one of the blogs a "genetically confused half-werewolf half-woman".) I ask him if he referred to "evil Jews" in a blog post. "I might have used the phrase," he says. He also makes impressive claims about his group's popularity, for example: "We had several 50,000-plus marches last year in London which received no media coverage at all." One leading cannabis reformer says, "Clear are a pretty shady bunch and personally I wouldn't trust Peter Reynolds as far as I can throw him. He's not helpful to the far more serious organisations that are pushing for reform. He has become the figurehead of this movement, and that could potentially set the cause back no end." Reynolds tells me he has tried "most drugs" but "the only time I injected heroin was with a doctor". He uses cannabis "almost every day". One wants to avoid clichés about cannabis users, but Reynolds does sound rather paranoid when he says, "I'm not a conspiracy theorist", before claiming that "agitators" and "subversive elements" are "within the campaign, seeking to disrupt us". I doubt he means Stuart Wyatt, a softly spoken activist who suffers from chronic fatigue syndrome and who says the drug has "made my life worth living again". (He calls Reynolds a "dictator".) Or Ewan Hoyle, a Scottish Liberal Democrat activist with a master's degree in neuroscience and a brother with psychosis. He has never touched cannabis but believes "strict control and regulation" protect young people better than "failed prohibition". Or the long-haired stoners of Hyde Park and popular imagination, none of whom was very good at replying to my messages. Julian Huppert, a Lib Dem MP, favours drug laws that "help addicts to break their addiction rather than punishing people. Poll after poll shows the public doesn't think politicians are doing the right thing on drug laws," he says. The mild-mannered Baroness Meacher sits on the all-party parliamentary group for drug policy reform, which advocates the decriminalisation of all drugs. "I began looking at the evidence four years ago," she says, "especially Portugal [which decriminalised personal use of all drugs in 2001] and the Czech Republic [which decriminalised drugs after strict laws were shown by a study to have failed]. That is how I reached my conclusions. I'm not an ideologue." These campaigners may believe they are "winning the argument", as Huppert puts it. Most polls suggest that they are. But the argument within the cannabis lobby is just as visceral. The pressure may well intensify as changes to the law start to bud and shoot. http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/newsreview/features/article1257862.ece
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