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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: Blunkett opens the door to increased drug abuse
Melanie Phillips The Sunday Times
Saturday 27 Oct 2001 Journalists are not supposed to be shocked by political decisions. We all understand the rules of the game, that political issues are highly contested with legitimate room for furious disagreements. But the announcement by David Blunkett, the home secretary, that he wants to downgrade possession of cannabis to a non-arrestable offence is profoundly shocking and lowering. It is shocking because as a direct result even more young people will start taking a drug that will blight their health and lives, harm society and lead a significant minority onto something even worse. Moreover, as the drug legalisers have gleefully pointed out, it is illogical to make unarrestable something that is still a criminal offence; nor does it make sense for the police to go after dealers but not possessors. This logic dictates that whatever Blunkett may say, the Rubicon has been crossed and cannabis decriminalisation is on the way. So we are about to repeat the disaster of the Netherlands, where the official blind eye to cannabis has turned a country with virtually no drug use and a very low crime rate into the drug factory of western Europe, with a 50% increase in heroin addiction during the 1990s, the highest rate in Europe of cocaine use among 14 to16-year-olds, increased use of cannabis and amphetamines and soaring drug-related crime. Blunkett, a thoughtful and - until now - principled man, appears to have succumbed to the massive drug propaganda campaign that has twisted the thinking of much of our intelligentsia. This campaign pumps out the message that cannabis is less harmful than alcohol or tobacco, and therefore pursuing possessors is a waste of police time and makes an ass of the law. Wrong, wrong and wrong again. Cannabis is one of the most toxic drugs around - in some ways, even more harmful than heroin. Blunkett concedes that it's dangerous. But how could he put it on a par with antidepressants if he knew of the harm it does? According to Susan Greenfield, the eminent neuro-scientist, cannabis has an enormous effect on the brain and central nervous system. Within six days, she says, one joint can kill about 50% of neurons in the area of the brain related to memory. Some use cannabis with no apparent adverse effects. Like the early cigarette smokers, they use this most fragile claim to rubbish the widespread evidence of serious harm. Increasingly, middle-class parents - the kind represented on the egregiously irresponsible Runciman commission, whose proposal Blunkett has endorsed - want the long arm of the law pulled back from cannabis use because they are petrified that young Harry or Amelia will get a police record, which doesn't go down too well at dinner parties. But law is all about signals and if these point the wrong way more young people will harm themselves through cannabis use. Geoff Ogden, former head of Humberside CID and now the drug action team co-ordinator for Hull and East Riding, says this reclassification gives precisely the wrong signal, with potentially disastrous consequences. Teachers are telling him that there are alarming and rising numbers of teenagers whose performance at school suddenly takes a dive as they become demotivated and drop out through using cannabis. So Ogden has stepped up cannabis education, telling children the facts: that it can permanently damage their brains and cause anxiety attacks, mental illness, depression and demotivation, quite apart from cancer, a decreased sperm count and risking others' lives from driving under the influence. He is also certain that it is a gateway drug: while many who use cannabis don't take other drugs, virtually everyone on other drugs has started with cannabis. Indeed, one study has indicated that about 25% of cannabis users go on to hard drugs. That's an awful lot of people. But now, says Ogden, reclassification will cut the ground from under his feet. Kids already think cannabis is cool because they think it will soon be decriminalised and so the law is an ass. Now Blunkett has effectively told them they are right. And it is these children who will be most harmed as a result, the kids from those council estates that are Blunkett's reason for being in politics in the first place - children for whom the peer pressure to use drugs is so difficult to resist because they feel they don't have anything to lose. It is absolutely vital to give consistent signals that no drug use will be tolerated, period. That's why Sweden, where teachers call in police and social workers if they suspect a child is using cannabis, has a dramatically smaller drug problem. But our signals are disastrously mixed and ambivalent. Blunkett's claim that valuable police time is being wasted on pursuing cannabis possession is laughable. Hardly anyone is arrested for cannabis possession; the police usually stumble across it after making an arrest for another offence. As for cautioning taking two to three hours at the police station, Ogden maintains that it can be done on the spot and takes only a few minutes. The fact is that over the past 20 years, fines, custody and community sentences for drug offences have all gone down while the use of cautioning, the softest option which says, in effect, "This isn't very serious", has shot up. The "war on drugs" has failed because it doesn't exist. The law is indeed an ass because it is not being used. Meanwhile, the Conservatives' response to Blunkett was not just pathetic but culpable. They scuttled for cover behind their "policy review". There should be no more need for a "policy review" on this than if the home secretary had announced that he was going to make assault become a non-arrestable offence so as to allow the police to concentrate on murder. But of course the Tories themselves have form on this issue. Their obsession with liberty produced Peter Lilley's grotesque call for cannabis to be legalised. If the Tories can't even distinguish between freedom and the irresponsibility that harms children, they don't deserve to be given the time of day. So why on earth has Blunkett done this? Government insiders believe that he persuaded the prime minister against Tony Blair's better instincts and deep misgivings. They say Blunkett is seeking dramatic gestures and influential media allies in order to build a power base for an eventual leadership bid. He should note carefully just who is purring over him: the likes of Lilley, The Daily Telegraph and the socially destructive libertarians of the Conservative party, along with sinister drug legalisers and the complacent and irresponsible puffers and snorters of salon society. Is it for this - to be the pin-up of such people - that he has fought so tenaciously all his life? The one faint hope is that the Advisory Council on Misuse of Drugs will put science above politics and advise against reclassification. Last week Blunkett gave a thoughtful speech about restoring civil society. If he is not careful, he will go down in history as the man who administered its final death blow from drugs.
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