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UK: Cannabis should have same legal status as alcohol and tobacco, says Bristol West MP Laura Hughes Bristol Post Monday 16 Mar 2015 Cannabis should have same legal status as alcohol and tobacco, says Bristol West MP By The Bristol Post | Posted: March 16, 2015 By Laura Hughes Bristol West MP Stephen Williams says it's his personal wish to give cannabis the same legal status as alcohol and tobacco Bristol West MP Stephen Williams says it's his personal wish to give cannabis the same legal status as alcohol and tobacco Comments (2) Bristol West MP Stephen Williams says it's his personal wish to give cannabis the same legal status as alcohol and tobacco. He argues that if you look at the hierarchy of harm caused by substances, you could not say cannabis was more harmful than alcohol. "It terms of the damage alcohol does, in terms of domestic violence and crime, it's far more harmful than cannabis," he says. On whether this could lead to an increased culture of drug use, comparable to alcohol, he said that the main problem behind binge drinking was a pricing issue, with supermarkets able to sell alcohol too cheaply. Mr Williams believes that many health problems connected with cannabis are related to the fact that it is sold in an unregulated environment. He says people who buy cannabis cannot know about its standards of quality. "If it was sold in a regulated environment, just like alcohol or tobacco, the state could have quality standards over the strength of it, the source of it, and how much people were buying," he said. "It could be taxed as well. I think it's a win-win situation, for society and the individual, if cannabis itself was legalised." He also pointed to the fact that legalisation is now being tried in certain American states, such as Colorado and Washington. "America is an obvious place where the war on drugs hasn't worked," he said. The Liberal Democrats say their drug reform policies are the most far-reaching ever put forward by a major political party ahead of an election. Under their proposals, those arrested for possession of drugs for personal use will not receive a criminal record and drugs policy will be transferred from the Home Office to the Department of Health. Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson is backing Nick Clegg's pledge to establish a review to assess the effectiveness of cannabis legalisation experiments in America, and enable doctors to prescribe cannabis for medicinal use. Stephen Williams has personally advocated the decriminalisation of drugs for a very long time, after giving an interview in 1999 in Bristol's Venue magazine. Mr Williams says all civilisations have consumed one drug or another "for as long as there are records of what humans do". "I have always thought that criminalisation, just like prohibition in the United States in the 1920, just drives drugs underground and vast profits are made by criminal gangs. "This then leads to exploitation of other people. The whole issue is a disaster from a health and justice point of view, and for the victims of the crimes which finance the guns and everything else that goes with drug trafficking." http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/Joint-initiativeLegalise-cannabis-says-Bristol-MP/story-26176794-detail/story.html
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