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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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Opinion: Let's End All This Reefer Madness
Independent, The Tuesday 03 Jul 2001 Author: Deborah Orr 'Cannabis, As Any Punk Would Have Told You In The Seventies, Is In fact The Drug Of Choice For Quite Mellow And Gentle Souls' At the start of Labour's last term there was a huge flurry of libertarian talk about cannabis. Various ministers declared themselves to have inhaled when they were young and silly. Various other public servants suggested that maybe the biggest dangers of hashish were first that it was pointlessly criminalising lots of otherwise blameless citizens and second that it was needlessly clogging up an already stressed-out criminal justice system. As the years wore on, the issue dropped further and further down the agenda. A Police Federation report calling for decriminalisation was swept under the carpet, despite calls for a Royal Commission from all sorts of disparate quarters. The special adviser on drugs, Keith Hellawell, decided to take the "gateway drug" line, whereby smoking cannabis sets one on the rocky road to heroin addiction by osmosis (because of a meaningless survey of 100 people in New Zealand). More generally, a refusal by Government to engage with the subject - possibly connected to the revelation of the sumptuary proclivities of then home secretary Jack Straw's son - was so successful in shutting down the dialogue that, despite their ubiquity, their social significance, and their huge influence on our culture's behaviour, come the election, drugs were no longer an issue for debate. Now, freshly post-election, the issue has magically risen again, propelled into the spotlight by an ex-minister who had declared herself a midnight toker the first time around, but who was too isolated in power to make a dent in the war on drugs rhetoric, even when she found herself the cabinet minister responsible for it. Mo Mowlam, now out of parliament, is not alone in speaking out about the nuttiness of our attitudes to pot, and suggesting that things have to change. Mr Hellawell, in his newly downgraded advising role, has now, quite rightly, reneged on his "reefer madness" position. It's not that there aren't connections between using cannabis and using harder drugs, it's just that they are casual rather than causal. Someone game to try one illegal drug, is more likely to be game to try another. Someone already involved in purchasing class B drugs,like cannabis is more likely to come into contact with class A drugs, such as heroin, and so on. It's rather like saying that cereal purchasers are more likely to be ketchup purchasers, simply because they're the guys in the supermarket. =46urther, someone who has listened to drugs education programmes, but has tried cannabis anyway, is likely to have discovered that the sky doesn't fall in after a puff (for that you have to go to the trouble of doing a few big hot-knives). There is then little incentive to believe further rhetoric about the dangers of harder drugs, because if one set of scaremongering about one drug is found to be exaggerated, then why on earth shouldn't all the rest? Borough Commander Brian Paddick of the Metropolitan Police, may or may not see that all this is common sense. He is behind the south London pilot experiment which started yesterday, whereby people found in possession of cannabis will receive only a formal warning and the confiscation of their stash. His logic in taking such a step is governed primarily by what he sees happening to charges made by the police when they get to the courts. "It is an extremely bureaucratic and therefore expensive process to get a conviction. As these figures show, having gone through all that bureaucracy people are being fined between =A320 and =A350 or being conditionally discharged," he said. Mr Paddick is interested in freeing up his force to tackle more damaging drug use, of a kind that can sometimes lead to criminal activity, despair, death and the full gamut of misery and destruction that addiction can herald. David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, is "interested in the experiment" for the same reasons. "This fits in entirely with the emphasis on placing absolute priority on class A drugs," he said. Certainly, the emphasis is not on class A drugs at the moment. While nine-tenths of drugs charges are possession cases, 75 per cent of these involve cannabis. Again, there are purely practical reasons for this. A wrap of cocaine disappears in minutes at a party, while a few Es are swallowed in the queue for the club. Crack and heroin are often consumed with equal promptness. But cannabis users drag their bag or their lump around with them for days or weeks on end, a spliff here, a toke there, a joint's-worth handed over to a friend. There's little voracious greed to keep on using till there's none left and everyone is lit up like Blackpool, but quite a bit more to talk expansively, have a small nap, eat some chocolate buttons, watch Father Ted videos and, in extreme and frightening cases, have a bit of a sing-song. Cannabis, as any punk would have told you in the Seventies, is in fact the drug of choice for quite mellow and gentle souls. In Brixton, the prime location for Mr Paddick's new approach, cannabis use is not even endemic, it's more or less compulsory. Every newsagent has king-size papers by the till, every ash-tray has a roach in it. It's apparently very simple to buy hash on the street, though speaking as someone who one bought half an individually wrapped liquorice allsort for =A310 on Atlantic Road, I've never been too keen on that method. It would be wrong though to dismiss all of the criticism that is made of cannabis. For some people, dope can be a problem, causing paranoia or depression. These people tend to notice this quite quickly and avoid regular use of the drug. For others, the temptation to roll up upon waking up and keep puffing all day long, proves stronger than the need to go out and engage with the world. Like alcohol users or car users, cannabis users are not always in control. But since the illegal market is now so firmly established all over the country, the law as it stands does not protect the vulnerable minority from such pitfalls. And while Mr Paddick may or not believe that his experiment is likely to signal a wider sea-change in the general status of cannabis in our society, his relaxation of the rules has already been embraced with gusto. A couple of days after Mr Paddick's experiment was announced, the annual Free The Weed festival was staged in Brixton's Brockwell Park. Larger than previous festivals, and better organised, it hosted a large crowd stoned off their faces. Having fully embraced the coming relaxation of the law, perhaps a little over-eagerly, the assembled company were imbibing cannabis openly, and as they day progressed, selling it more and more flagrantly. In a large car park next to the park's cafe, a formidable cluster of police vans crouched over the event. Police patrolled in pairs, getting in more practice turning a blind eye than they'd so far had in their lives. According to Mr Paddick, once the dealing in crack and heroin and the related crime is dealt with, the present policy on cannabis will be re-adopted. Already all the signs are that this will be much, much easier said than done.
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