|
Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
|
|
OPED: The Joint Is Jumping
Daily Mail
Monday 09 Oct 2000 Website: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/ Author: Alan Travis THE JOINT IS JUMPING Ann Widdecombe's plan for UKP100 fixed penalty fines for possession of even the smallest amount of cannabis looks today like a piece of political roadkill in the race for the future leadership of the Conservative party. But whatever the complex motives that lay behind the decision of seven top Tories to come out yesterday and admit they had smoked dope, we should thank Miss Widdecombe for helping-however inadvertently - finally to break the political taboo against having a grown-up debate about drugs in Britain. Now at last cabinet ministers and shadow ministers might be able to talk about cannabis and ecstasy as drugs that are less harmful than alcohol and tobacco without being hounded by the media until they are in danger of being driven from public life. It happened last year when Mo Mowlam dared to agree with Sir David Frost that it might, just might, be an idea to have another look at our drugs laws. It was also that taboo that drove Tony Blair to denounce a Police Foundation report within an hour of its publication in Maech this year. It dared to argue that the penalties for possession od cannabis in Britain - the harshest in Europe - do more damage than the drug itself, especially sending people to prison, as we still do in their hundreds each year. But that was in the days when the old Thatcherite ortodoxies still held sway in the Conservative party. Only last year Norman Tebbit felt able to respond to a call from the Rev Ken Leach (a man who has worked with the victims of drug abuse for more than 35 years) for the Church of England to back cannabis legislation with the demand that anybody - repeat anybody - involved in the drugs trade should be executed. The last Conservative criminal justice minister, David MacLean, once similarly dismissed all the arguments about drugs by saying that when he was at university the people who smoked cannabis were weedy, pathetic creatures while he got on with his more muscular life in the territorial army. Now the younger generation in charge of the Conservative party are prepared to admit that they shared a spliff at college. As the shadow forein secretary, Francis Maude, put it: "Like many of my generation, it was quite hard to go through Cambridge in the seventies without doing it a few times." At last some politicians, with the Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy in the forefront, are prepared to recognize that 6m people in Britan have been casual or regular users of cannabis and that more than 40% of children have tried it by the time they are 15. It is a fact that many newspapers, including the Daily Mail, have recognised for some time, even though it has not prevented them from attempting to crucify any politicians who dared to acknowledge that there is little point in criminalising such a large section of the population. It was interesting, however, that when the Police Foundation report came out in March the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail were noticeably far more liberal in their treatment of its arguments than were Tony Blair or Jack Straw. Its proposals were fairly straightforward. It recommended ending the threat of imprisonment faced by more than 110,000 people each year for possessing cannabis, ecstasy and LSD. It suggested that cannabis was less dangerous than alcohol or tobacco and should be regraded as a class C drug - warnings and cautions for possession but no criminal record - and that ecstasy and LSD should be reclassified from class A, the most dangerous, to class B. This thinking is based on the idea that it is the health-related dangers of drugs, rather than the fear of being harshly punished that finally turns people away from regularly using illicit drugs. "The most dangerous message of all is the message that all drugs are equally dangerous. When youjg people know from their own experience that part of the message is either exaggerated or untrue, there is a serious risk they will discount all the rest," said the Police Foundation enquiry chairman, Lady Runciman. That enquiry include two senior serving police officers, Denis O'Connor, now chief constable of Surrey, and John Hamilton, chief constable of Fife. Not all senior police officers agree. The current Metropolitan commissioner, Sir John Stevens, maintains a tough line. But there is sufficient serious opinion among the senior ranks of the police to give a government that advocated such a policy of "depenalisation" - effectively decriminalisation - sufficient support to announce such a change without the sky falling in. Tony Blair quickly learned that the idea of marching drunken louts to the cahpoint to pay an on-the-spot fine was doomed without police support. Ann Widdecombe found herself similarly cut adrift when the police denounced her policy for being too tough last week. The police in Britain are not prepared to support the legalisation of cannabis but are prepared to see a radical change in approach. Blair and Straw should realise that the political taboo on cannabis has been broken and announce it is time for our drugs laws to be brought into line with the rest of Europe.
After you have finished reading this article you can click here to go back.
|
This page was created by the Cannabis Campaigners' Guide.
Feel free to link to this page!