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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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Ex-top cop joins drug legalisation campaign Giles Elgood Press Association Monday 15 Nov 1999 A former chief constable is set to reveal that he has become a leading member of a group campaigning for the legalisation of all drugs. Francis Wilkinson, who retired as Gwent's top policeman earlier this year and has recently spoken out against the Government's prohibition policy on drugs, tells an edition of BBC1's Panorama to be screened at 10pm on Monday, November 15, that he has become a patron of campaign group Transform. The controversial documentary also reveals results of research showing widespread police tolerance of cannabis, which officers of all ranks say they regard as less harmful and addictive than alcohol or tobacco. Mr Wilkinson joins a former head of Scotland Yard's Drug Squad, Edward Ellison - already a patron of Transform - to call for drug prohibition to be replaced with an effective system of regulation and control. Speaking to reporter Peter Marshall, he says: "The British crime survey shows that over the last couple of years cocaine consumption has doubled. "It will double again in a couple of years unless we do something to manage the supply in a more effective way. "What I want do is to take the criminal out of the market. At present the whole drugs supply business, this whole international industry, is controlled by criminals. "If we look at the social damage caused by the present regime - and I mean all the violence and abuse that is carried on through the fact that it's a criminal business - if we can get rid of that, then the fact that we are supplying the drug through more highly regulated mechanisms locally will probably be a good thing." The programme features the results of a three-year study tracking the changes in police attitudes towards illicit drugs. The study, which looked at the reactions of 95 officers in three different forces to various hypothetical cases involving cannabis, heroin and Ecstasy, reveals police are more tolerant of drugs than they were ten years ago.
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