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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: Opinion: Making A Coherent Policy On Drugs
Paul Routledge The Mirror
Tuesday 23 Oct 2001 I AM as surprised as I am pleased that hard-line Home Secretary David Blunkett believes possession of cannabis should no longer be an arrestable offence. This is a step in the right direction and long overdue. People who smoke cannabis are not criminals. They choose a recreational drug that very rarely kills and whose social ill-effects are tiny compared to alcohol and tobacco. In my time reporting from magistrates' courts I never heard a defendant accused of violence plead he was under the influence of ganja. Booze is infinitely more dangerous, so it is right the government has downgraded dope as a threat to society. One day, perhaps, New Labour will go the whole hog and decriminalise cannabis completely. There is something barmy about a law that says you can drink beer but nobody can legally brew it. The change in the law will continue to throw up anomalies of this kind. However, the police will welcome it. Two thirds of drug busts are related to cannabis. It is a waste of their time and our money. Instead of lifting dopeheads, they can get on with the serious business of catching real criminals. The big task now for ministers is to construct a coherent policy on drugs relevant to the world we live in, not the fantasy world of anti-drugs fanatics. Joint-up government, if you like. The Home Secretary should now move on to the next stage of drugs strategy, preparing public opinion for the decriminalisation of cannabis and a more mature policy on heroin. Let's listen to doctors, not moralists.
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