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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: We have to reconsider this nonsensical cannabis law
John Humphrys The Sunday Times
Sunday 06 May 2001 It took no more than a couple of minutes to do the deal. The small package and the cash exchanged hands and the dealer and user, who hadn't bothered to get off their bikes, calmly went their separate ways, mobile phones sticking out of their back pockets. One was in his mid teens, the other a year or two younger. It happened in my local park a few days ago. "Why don't we do something?" said the person I was with. "Like what?" "Well, tell the police at least." I tried to imagine the police officer's reaction. "I see, sir, so you witnessed a drug deal in your park. And what would you like us to do about it?" So I went home and read the papers. The front page lead in one of them was the report of another big increase in drug use by young people. A survey by the Adolescent Assessment Services group showed that by the age of 16 almost 9% of boys and 7% of girls are taking drugs at least once a week. Maybe I should have called the police. Better still, perhaps, if I'd called a politician. The reaction would have probably been much the same. At least the police could have argued that they had neither the time nor the manpower to react to every drug deal in London. The politician would have had no excuse. About 18 months ago, one of the first columns I wrote for this newspaper lamented the fact that politicians are so nervous of the debate on drug use. This is odd, particularly when we have an election so close. Politicians chide people like me when we want to talk about such fripperies as the behaviour of MPs or leadership challenges, real or imagined, or even the euro. Why, they say, don't we talk about things that matter to real people? Well, here's something that matters to real people. Is there a single parent of a teenager reading these words who does not worry about drugs? I doubt it. And yet it's not as if politicians are afraid of supporting liberalising measures that are ahead of public opinion. Capital punishment and homosexual law reform are obvious examples. But on this issue the public is way ahead of them and, with one or two exceptions, they react like a shocked Victorian mother faced with an undesirable suitor making indecent proposals to her young daughter. Last year we had at least the start of a debate and it looked promising for a time. The Runciman report was published. It was the result of a three-year study set up by the Police Foundation into the working of the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act and it was chaired by Dame Ruth Runciman. Dame Ruth was hardly a novice in this field. She had spent more than 20 years as a member of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. By all accounts she brought an admirable rigour to her chairmanship and produced the most thorough examination of policy on drugs for a generation. The report was couched in moderate language but it produced some remarkably radical analysis. It concluded that the tough line we have been following on drugs for the past 30 years is not working, in spite of the claims made for it. The number of "problem" users - those for whom drug-taking causes real harm - had increased. The biggest increase over the past five years had been among those under the age of 21. The poll evidence collected by the Runciman committee showed that the law played only a minor part in scaring youngsters away from drugs. The main deterrent was fear of the health effects. So the best approach was obviously to educate youngsters about health risks. But here, according to Runciman, the current state of the law acts as a hindrance and not a help. As the report famously put it: "The most dangerous message of all is the message that all drugs are equally dangerous. When young people know from their own experience that part of the message is either exaggerated or untrue, there is a serious risk that they will discount all of the rest." That message warns, in essence, that if you take a few puffs on a spliff you have begun to descend the slippery slope. Before you know it you will be hooked on heroin. I have known many people over the past 30 years who use cannabis either regularly or occasionally. Not one of them has been attracted to other drugs and become a "problem user". Perhaps that's because all my friends come from the educated middle class, not from broken homes on rundown housing estates, and are less likely to become drug victims. Even if that were true - which it is not - what it would prove is that the problem lies not with cannabis, but with the people using it and the circumstances they are in. Some people can handle alcohol. Some become hopeless alcoholics. So the assumption that underlies the present policy is nonsense, and young people know it. That makes it virtually impossible to mount a credible education campaign to keep them off the drugs that do the worst damage. What Runciman wants to do is reclassify drugs. Her committee concluded that cannabis is less harmful than the other significant illicit drugs and it should no longer be an arrestable offence to possess it. It should be demoted to Class C. The effect would be to abandon the daft idea that we can ever hope to wipe out drug-taking altogether. It would free the police to deal with the real problem and restore some credibility to the message. Not exactly revolutionary stuff, eh? Hardly the same as recommending free crack cocaine for every child above the age of 16. And the response to Runciman was remarkably measured. If "middle England" really has a voice, it seemed to find it. Even the Daily Mail welcomed the report. The Daily Telegraph went so far as to suggest that it might not have been radical enough. The opinion polls were solidly behind it. So what happened? Nothing. We are entering the election campaign with the main parties telling their candidates to take the same old line against cannabis users or to be even tougher. And the debate, such as it is, has been resumed as though Runciman had never existed. Mary Brett, the head of health education at a grammar school in Buckinghamshire, made her contribution last week. She wrote in the Daily Mail that by even hinting at liberalising the law we are sending the wrong message to our children. The experience of Holland should not encourage us to liberalise but should warn us off. Modern cannabis is more harmful than the old stuff. The "just say no" policy works and what has happened in America proves it. So let's get even tougher. I put those points to Runciman and she denied them all. Yes, Holland still has problems, but they are paralleled by the experience of other countries with more repressive policies, including America. The proportion of Dutch cannabis users is lower than ours. Holland has a stable number of problem drug users with a rising average age; we have a rising number with a lower age. Pharmacological experts dispute the claim that cannabis is stronger or more dangerous than it was. Maybe Runciman is wrong. She does not claim to have all the answers. Turning round a nation's drug problem is a Sisyphean task. Changes in the law can be only part of the solution. One significant finding from last week's survey was the growing number of very young people smoking and drinking. If we are looking for "gateways" to drug use, then that might be a pointer. Many believe that a child who starts smoking and drinking early is more likely to turn to drugs at some stage. The choice before us seems clear. We can wring our hands about the dangers facing our children and call for tougher action - even if we have no idea what that might entail - and watch more youngsters doing drug deals in parks and outside every school in the land. Or we can try something new. The Runciman report may not have provided the solution to this fiendishly difficult problem. But at least it threw out a challenge to the politicians to consider a new approach that might, just might, have made a difference. What a pity the challenge was not accepted.
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