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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: I've checked what each cannabis raid costs, and it don't think it's worth it
Devon Live Thursday 29 Jun 2017 In 2015-16 seizures of herbal cannabis in Devon and Cornwall doubled on the year before, according to a report on website CornwallLive, which stated that police had seized more than 30,000kg. Figures compiled by the Liberal Democrats show police in the UK spent more than one million hours on enforcing the ban on cannabis, with 87,247 caseloads opened by the police into drug crimes involving cannabis in 2015, at a supposed average cost of more than £2,200 each. Is it worth it? Does it do the job? Is it difficult to get hold of cannabis because the police and customs seize so much? No, of course it isn't. If you asked anyone who smokes cannabis whether they had any problems getting hold of it, they'd laugh. Cannabis is freely available and widely used. It's not even that expensive. Millions and millions of pounds of police resources are completely wasted on trying to prevent British people from using cannabis in a pointless war on drugs. An insightful and witty person wrote on Facebook in response to the cannabis plant seizures mentioned above: "In other news, council removes pebble from beach and claims victory in war on rocks." I'm not saying that cannabis is harmless, as it affects people differently and can be very harmful to some. It has mildly harmful effects, such as giving someone who smokes it a kind of hangover, like alcohol does. They might not be throwing up or suffering splitting headaches, but they're probably not going to be in a good state to sit an exam, or anything else which requires close concentration, the next day. And, just like alcohol, it is no solution for the desperate. Depressed and lonely people might get an evening of respite from their lives by smoking it, but it offers no remedies to their problems. Smoke more of it to escape your shit life and your life will probably get worse, as you spend more time escaping, and less time doing something to solve, your problems. I speak from experience on that, having spent several years as a regular smoker in a difficult period of life. I don't think it helped and I don't smoke it now. Regular smoking of cannabis earlier in life can also badly affect those predisposed to mental health problems. Cannabis smoking is not something to be done lightly if you're one of them. But cannabis does not cause cirrhosis of the liver, or internal haemorrhage or pancreatitis or brain damage or ulcers or heart disease or, as far as we know, cancer. It does not destroy anything near as many lives as alcohol. Yet alcohol is freely and legally available and its drinking is encouraged in our culture. If you don't really drink, like me, you get some funny reactions from people you out with of an evening. You make the ones with an alcohol problem uncomfortable, like a ghost at the feast. I don't drink much for many reasons, not least because my father was an alcoholic who died of cirrhosis at the age of 70 - to everyone's surprise because no-one expected him to live that long. We really need more education and awareness of the dangers of alcohol. Children need to know what it does - positive and negative. But we also need education about the effects and dangers of drugs, particularly cannabis, as it is so widely used. Keeping it illegal makes that harder to accomplish. Which teacher wants to be seen to be encouraging illegal drug use? If cannabis were legal Devon and Cornwall police wouldn't have to use resources to target people who grow and smoke it. They could use them to tackle more serious crime. The kind which really hurts people. Domestic violence by alcoholics, or driving at excessive speed, for example. If it were legal it could be regulated and taxed. At the moment buyers of cannabis have no idea what they are buying. It could be much stronger than they realise. It could contain toxic materials. If regulated its production could be licensed and controlled, just like alcohol is. Cannabis makes enormous profits for the organised crime networks which control much of its production, importation and sale. Imagine ending that overnight. Legalisation could raise huge amounts of money in tax, which could be spent on ensuring the public, particularly young people, know what they're dealing with and how to make sure they do so in as much safety as possible. http://www.devonlive.com/raids/story-30416656-detail/story.html#RX3Dy7THRCi9LuET.99
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