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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: Common sense on cannabis
This Is London
Monday 02 Jul 2001 Today marks the start of an important London policing experiment. As we revealed in the Evening Standard last month, Commander Brian Paddick is launching a new deal in Brixton, designed to reduce tensions between police and the community: people arrested in possession of small quantities of cannabis will be given warnings rather than prosecuted. Commander Paddick's tactics are brave because they fly in the face of government refusal to modify the law on cannabis, despite the strong advice of the Runciman Report. The Prime Minister and former Home Secretary Jack Straw were morbidly nervous of making themselves vulnerable to Opposition charges of 'being soft on drugs'. But out on the front line, the streets of London and other major cities, the police have been wasting an enormous amount of time and energy enforcing the law against cannabis, only to see even those convicted given trifling sentences. How can it make sense for the police to treat cannabis possession seriously if the courts - and society at large - refuse to do so? In Brixton and many other urban communities, black and white, cannabis is rooted in local culture. Attempting to ban it is not only futile, it imposes immense strain on local relations between police and the public. Critics have suggested that the new police experiment is mistaken because it is an attempt to 'legalise cannabis by stealth' when the drug remains illegal under the law of the land. There is no doubt that it is undesirable in principle for the police to enforce the law with different degrees of severity in different parts of the country. But where the government refuses to act in a rational and enlightened fashion, there is no doubt that the police are accurately fulfilling the will of most sensible Londoners by abandoning outright warfare with cannabis users. Let us hope the Brixton experiment is speedily extended across the whole city - and that Mr Blair feels suitably foolish if it is seen to work.
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