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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: It's time to take the crime out of drugs
Mary Ann Sieghart The Times
Friday 03 Aug 2001 For a man who does not smoke dope, Keith Hellawell has a surprisingly befuddled brain. The retiring drugs tsar, who published his final annual report yesterday, seems to hold wildly inconsistent views on cannabis. He now admits that it does not necessarily lead to harder drugs. He wants to extend the Brixton experiment, in which the police have stopped arresting cannabis users. Yet he still says he is adamantly against decriminalisation. It reminds me of those hazy student evenings, when friends could not remember at the end of an argument where they had started. Mr Hellawell cannot blame intoxication. Instead - bizarrely - he blames the media. We, apparently, have confused everyone by daring to debate the issue of cannabis. If only we had not, he claims, people would realise that the real problem with drugs lies with heroin and crack. Well, hello. Welcome to the cause, Mr Hellawell. That is precisely what we have been saying all along. The issue of cannabis must be separated from that of more harmful substances. Until it is, we shall continue to send the wrong message to young people; to waste vast sums of taxpayers' money; and to enrich the criminal, drug-dealing classes. There is a huge difference between drug use and drug misuse, two phrases that Mr Hellawell uses interchangeably in his report. It is like the difference between the majority of us who drink the odd glass of wine or beer in the evening and the small minority who get blind drunk and assault the barman. The latter is a criminal offence; the former is not. That is a sensible legal distinction, but it does not apply to drugs other than alcohol. Most (though not all) cannabis smokers use the drug rather than misuse it. They take it for fun now and then: not at work, not when driving, not to the exclusion of other things in their lives. It has no adverse effect on their jobs, careers, home lives or families. It may have an effect on their health, although no worse than that of nicotine or alcohol. Although cannabis is more carcinogenic than tobacco, it is smoked in far smaller quantities. Hard drugs are different, both from cannabis and from each other. There are some people who take cocaine, and fewer of those who take heroin or crack, who use rather than misuse those drugs. Cocaine is addictive to only a proportion of its consumers; the others take it occasionally and do not crave it the rest of the time. But heroin and crack, like nicotine, encourage a habit that is very hard to resist. Once the drug insists on being taken, the user becomes the servant rather than the master of it. That, surely, is the definition of misuse. Even with misuse, though, there are better ways of dealing with it than criminalisation. If addicts did not have to find money to buy their drugs, the social harm caused by their addiction would be immeasurably smaller. Think how many fewer muggings, burglaries, robberies and car thefts there would be if addicts could pick up their fix for free from the pharmacy. And think how many fewer new addicts would be created. If junkies do not steal to finance their habit, they deal. In order to make enough for themselves, they have to recruit a whole new army of addicts to be dependent on them for supplies. It is like pyramid selling. If the junkie could get his drugs on prescription, why would he want to enter the criminal underworld and run all the risks associated with dealing? Treatment, not punishment, is the solution to misuse. One of the most encouraging aspects of Mr Hellawell's tenure has been the extra investment in treatment and rehabilitation. Even if these drugs were available on prescription, addicts should be encouraged, every time they saw their doctor, to seek treatment in order to give up. The difference, though, is that two layers of cost and criminality would be removed. There would be no need for the police and criminal justice system to interpose themselves, at huge expense, between the addict and his supply. Nor would there be a market for the criminals who currently traffic in the drugs. This may seem a long way from cannabis, but it is not. The Government's drug strategy aims to halve the numbers of young people using class A drugs by 2008. So far, the numbers have actually risen. This is partly because of the dealing pyramid structure I described earlier. But it is also because of the official association of cannabis with harder drugs. For a start, the lumping together of all illegal drugs suggests to children that hard drugs are safer than they are. If adults tell young people not to smoke cannabis, yet when they do, little harm seems to come to them, why should they believe what they are told about heroin and crack? And, once they have made the foray into illegality, they have already crossed the chasm: the jump to class A drugs may seem somewhat less daunting, particularly since the same dealer who sold them dope will sell them other substances. What is more, the police are still wasting a huge amount of time and money chasing cannabis users. The notion that the drug has de facto been decriminalised is a myth. Last year, 40,000 people were convicted merely for possession of cannabis, more than double the number in 1994. Yesterday, on the Today programme, Mr Hellawell sounded defensive, as well he might. His policies have failed, and the terms of the debate have changed. All the logic now points to decriminalisation, both of cannabis and, in a much more highly regulated form, of hard drugs. If the former drugs tsar now intends to spend more time with his family, perhaps his children will be able to enlighten him where experience in Government has failed.
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