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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: Talking Pot In High Places
Province, The (Canada)
Wednesday 15 Nov 2000 Website: http://www.vancouverprovince.com/ Author: Bruce Wallace, Southam News TALKING POT IN HIGH PLACES MARIJUANA MAYHEM: British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the Opposition Tories are making noises about cracking down on cannabis. The British public is not amused. British Prime Minister Tony Blair has a drug problem. Oh, not of an abusive nature. In fact, Blair may never have smoked a single joint of marijuana or hash in his life - which may, in fact, be the source of his troubles. This month, his government's uncompromising hard line against cannabis use has come under fire, and many of Blair's critics are once again suggesting the prime minister is out of touch with how most people live and think. Despite recommendations to decriminalize soft drug use from a government-appointed, blue-panel commission, Blair and his ministers have continued to insist cannabis use is harmful and should not be tolerated at all. "The government has a firm and consistent view about the harm that drugs do and is opposed to any lessening of controls on currently illicit drugs," Lord Bassam, a Labour minister, said this week. Bassam then cited anecdotal evidence of a young man he knew whose pot consumption had "turned him into a schizophrenic who suffered psychotic tendencies and hallucinations." There is "good scientific evidence" of marijuana harm, the minister insisted. And that costs money, he said, noting an estimated 1.2 million Britons - -one in 50 -- would have smoked dope in the last month, thereby imposing high costs on the public health system. By comparison two-thirds of the British adult population are drinkers. Many observers argue liquor is the country's true health and social scourge. The latest row began as a political problem for the Opposition Tory party. The fuss began at the Tories' annual conference in Bournemouth, where members arrived on a high of their strongest poll numbers since the early 1990s. Hoping to demonstrate their readiness to govern, the Tories thrust Ann Widdecombe, their critic on justice issues, into the spotlight. Widdecombe is a political loner and hardliner on social issues, whose moralizeing tone has given her the nickname the Virgin Queen. And she lived up to billing, announcing a "zero-tolerance" jihad on drug use that included empowering police to levy on-the-spot fines of $225 for simple marijuana possession. With the Tories on their feet cheering the message, party leader William Hague joined her on stage to pop open a bottle of champagne to toast her 53rd birthday, the irony apparently invisible to Tory advisers. But it was quickly clear Widdecombe's policy was in trouble. The party's youth wing rejected it. Police chiefs pronounced it unworkable. And there was soon a parade of her frontbench colleagues confessing to the inevitable question from the media that, yes, in their youth, they had sampled grass or hash. Most mumbled it was just part of adolescent days or university nights, tokes taken in passing to be polite. Finally, Tim Yeo, one of eight Tory cabinet critics to acknowledge having tried pot, admitted he enjoyed it. Cannabis, he told reporters who asked, "was a much pleasanter experience than having too much to drink." Even conservative newspapers sympathetic to the Tories denounced the zero-tolerance stance as untenable. As the list of Tories confessing to "experimentation" grew, Hague declared the issue needed "further consultation, discussion and debate." But Britain has just concluded a three year, government-sponsored inquiry into drugs and the law. Headed by Ruth Runciman, the report issued last March called for Britain to adopt the Dutch approach to marijuana possession: making cannabis kept for personal use a non- criminal misdemeanour. Blair quickly rejected that suggestion. Appearing soft on crime had been a traditional weakness of the Labour party, one that Blair exorcised as soon as he took the helm. Unwilling to lose its law-and- order credentials, the government indicated decriminalization was not in the cards. By promising a response to Runciman this fall, they thought they had safely kicked the issue into the tall grass. Now, drug policy has come back to bite them. If drug use is to remain a criminal offence under Labour, many observers began to ask, who then among the current cabinet may have broken the law at one time or another? For now, the government is refusing to play the confessional game. Deputy Prime Minsiter John Prescott, for example, said he would tell reporters as soon as their editors answered the question. But it was more than a dodge. Prescott added he believed soft drug use does lead to abuse of harder drugs. Jack Straw, the minister responsible for drug laws, said smoking cannabis was "two to four times" as harmful as smoking cigarettes, and said he would not decriminalize simple possession. Meanwhile, Straw continues to try to prosecute people who use marijuana for medical means - without much success in getting convictions. In yet another acquittal last month, a jury freed a weeping Lezley Gibson on possession charges. The 36-year-old mother has suffered from multiple sclerosis for 15 years and smokes marijuana for pain relief. All this has led the British to take another look at their 30-year-old statutes and ask whether they are still credible. Most polls show a majority of Britons do not want soft drug use to remain a criminal offence, a view that cuts across the political spectrum. The public perception that Blair is out of touch with the people got worse last week when he gave a convoluted answer to the Sunday Times about how he would react to his own children's drug use. "I really would prefer my children to have nothing to do with drugs at all and I think most - maybe I don't know, I am wrong in this and other parents feel differently - but that is how I feel." The issue is sensitive for the prime minister since his 15-year-old son, Euan, was arrested this summer for public drunkenness. Blair wasn't divulging his own pot past last week but previously he has denied ever taking so much as a puff. The claim once strained credulity. Blair attended university in the 1970s where he played in a rock band - both environments almost synonymous with pot smoking. But now there are laughs and whispers he may have been telling the truth. If so, the badge of abstinence would once again leave him oddly out of step with a generation that so freely sampled its charms.
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