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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: Attitude to cannabis becoming more relaxed
Michael Holden Reuters
Sunday 08 Jul 2001 LONDON (Reuters) - A poll has revealed a growing number of people are in favour of cannabis being legalised, two days after a senior member of the opposition Conservative Party stirred up controversy by calling for Britain's drug laws to be relaxed. An NOP poll for the Independent on Sunday newspaper reported that 37 percent of Britons wanted the drug legalised with 51 percent opposed. That compares with a similar poll in 1996 when 66 percent of those polled were against legalising cannabis, and just 26 percent in favour, the paper said. Support for change was greatest amongst 16 to 34-year olds with 45 percent wanting legalisation and only 43 percent opposing. The poll comes two days after Peter Lilley, a right-winger who served in the cabinets of former Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher and John Major, said cannabis should be legalised and sold in special outlets. Lilley said current laws, which classify cannabis as a class B drug with a possible five year jail term for those caught in possession of it, had failed. "Nearly half of young people try cannabis and more than a million people flout the law every month," he said. His views ignited huge debate amongst politicians and the media, although Prime Minister Tony Blair's government has ruled out any immediate changes to current laws. However, London's Metropolitan police force, with the backing of the Home Office, recently announced it was launching a pilot scheme in the Lambeth area whereby offenders caught with the drug would be given no more than a verbal warning. If successful, the practice could become more widespread. The issue has dominated the media and it made the front pages of three of Sunday's broadsheet newspapers. Two former home secretaries, now members of the House of Lords, had come out in support of decriminalising the drug, The Sunday Times reported. Lord Jenkins, a Labour minister in the 1960s who was described as "an important mentor to Tony Blair", and Lord Baker, a former Conservative minister during the 90s, both supported a change in the law whereby possession would no longer be an arrestable offence, the paper said. "To fill our prisons with people who are cannabis users is a bum use of the prisons," Baker was quoted by the paper as saying. A third senior peer, Lord Waddington, Conservative home secretary under Margaret Thatcher, was also sympathetic to decriminalisation, the Sunday Times said. Meanwhile the Observer said law enforcement officials had been told by the government to abandon the hunt for cannabis smugglers and concentrate instead on dealers of class A drugs such as heroin and cocaine. However, a Customs and Excise spokeswoman told Reuters: "Priority is given to class A drugs, but we continue to investigate cannabis cases where it will make a material impact and to detect and prosecute cannabis smugglers."
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