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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: Blunkett "hints" at change to cannabis law
Michael Holden Reuters
Monday 09 Jul 2001 LONDON (Reuters) - Home Secretary David Blunkett has called for an "adult, intelligent debate" on whether laws banning the use of cannabis should be changed. Blunkett ruled out an immediate change in the law but his comments were viewed by media commentators on Monday as signalling the government might be willing to reconsider its hardline stance on the drug. The issue has dominated discussion in the media since Peter Lilley, a right-winger who served in the cabinets of former Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher and John Major, called last week for cannabis to be legalised and sold in special outlets. Lilley said Britain's 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. In his first response to the issue, made during an interview with Sky television, Blunkett said: "I am interested in the debate that is taking place, because, I hope, I am an intelligent human being. "I have no intention of making a change in government policy out of the blue and if I have anything further to say on the issue I will do so in a considered fashion in my own time." But his comments were viewed by commentators as a softening of the government's stance. The Independent newspaper said it "signalled a big shift in the government's previously immovable stance" while the Daily Telegraph said Blunkett was "hinting" that he would consider the case for decriminalising the drug. An NOP poll published on Sunday said that 37 percent of Britons wanted the drug legalised with 51 percent opposed, an increase from a comparable poll in 1996 when 66 percent were against legalising cannabis and just 26 percent in favour. Support for change was greatest among 16 to 34-year olds with 45 percent wanting legalisation and only 43 percent opposing. Following Lilley's call, other senior British political figures have come out in support of the drug being decriminalised. Newspapers on Monday said Britain's outgoing chief inspector of prisons, Sir David Ramsbotham, was the latest to do so. "I think there is merit in legalising and prescribing, or whatever, so that people do not have to go and find an illegal way of doing it," the Daily Telegraph quoted him as saying. On Sunday, 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, were reported to be in favour of a change in the law whereby possession would no longer be an arrestable offence. "To fill our prisons with people who are cannabis users is a bum use of the prisons," Baker was quoted by the Sunday Times as saying.
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