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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: Drug laws 'destroy more life chances' than substances themselves, says cannabis campaigner after report Ryan Merrifield Worcester News Thursday 24 Oct 2019 Paul Taylor uses the class B drug for largely medicinal purposes after being diagnosed with PTSD and chronic pain after leaving the military, having supposedly found opiate painkillers prescribed to him didn’t work. In a report published yesterday, the Health and Social Care Committee called for a health focused and harm reduction approach, which it believes would benefit users and reduce wider community harm and costs. Mr Taylor said: “How can prosecution ever be a form of protection? Only decriminalisation and regulation can ever reduce harms, protect our vulnerable and respect human rights.” The 49-year-old believes many young people today are turning to “feel good” cannabis anyway after experiencing violence while on alcohol-fuelled nights out. “We have tolerated drunken behaviour for a long time because it’s legal to drink as much as you like when you like,” he said, adding: “Alcohol is your gateway drug.” Initially, Mr Taylor said he and others in a similar situation were forced to source cannabis on the street “where our money would be invested in crime” before he began growing his own. “The war on drugs has cost so many otherwise law abiding citizens their liberty, their homes, their families, their jobs and friends,” he continued. “It has stigmatised a whole section of society – these people have lost respect for the police because they have jumped on the cannabis consumers as it makes for an easy arrest and shift with the financial invested interest in the Proceeds of Crime Act." Two men were convicted earlier this year following an attack on Mr Taylor’s home in 2017, in which a window was smashed and a child showered in glass, before they fled. Mr Taylor was growing cannabis at the home at the time and later accepted charges for supplying and producing the drug. He said rather than “picking the low hanging fruit substance consumer”, police time and taxpayers’ money would be “better spent detecting real crime and criminals whose actions actually cause harm to others”. The HSCC report encourages drug possession for personal use be reduced to a civil matter with the UK having some of the highest drug death rates in Europe to the scale of a public health emergency. https://www.worcesternews.co.uk/news/17988692.drug-laws-destroy-life-chances-substances-says-cannabis-campaigner-report/?ref=fbshr&fbclid=IwAR3g9BQvhovvA01N_LiwLSTMN0pBhLvRfYJNZKzxGplOaQkR2rGO8oV7bTM
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