|
Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
|
|
UK: Decriminalising drugs
The Guardian Friday 23 Nov 2001 The police have always been ahead of politicians in the field of illegal drug reform. They have been several steps ahead again this week. The two most senior umbrella groups - for chief officers and superintendents - supported the idea of downgrading ecstasy to a class B drug. This is in line with the Police Foundation's independent inquiry into the misuse of drugs laws that reported last year. Metropolitan police commander Brian Paddick, in charge of Brixton, went one step further, noting that it was wrong to label all drug users as problems. Many were sociable, sensible and able to control their habit. Indeed they are. Tonight and tomorrow up to 500,000 young clubbers will use ecstasy. As a Joseph Rowntree Foundation study in 1997 discovered, many take the pills to ensure they get their money's worth from the £20 entrance charges. It gives them the energy to dance through to the early hours as well as feelings of well-being. For the overwhelming majority, the illicit recreational drug is part of the current consumer lifestyle, fully integrated into their social lives. For the police, the drug poses few problems. There are two nightclubs in Brixton. One has a reputation for drug-taking and causes the police no problems; the other provides free alcohol with its entrance fee and involves regular fights and brawls. None of this, so far, has persuaded the home secretary. And indeed ecstasy is not risk-free. It can lead to dehydration and even excessive rehydration if too much water is drunk. There may be damage to the nerve endings in the brain. But to place the drug in the same A category as crack and cocaine is absurd and dangerous. It can lead young people who have used ecstasy into believing crack and cocaine are no more dangerous. With his readiness to downgrade cannabis to C class and promote wider use of prescribing heroin, David Blunkett must have thought he had pre-empted the home affairs select committee's current inquiry. He has been proved wrong. But rarely has there been a more propitious time for drugs reform. A significant libertarian section of the Tory party wants reform, as do the Liberal Democrats. The latter are expected to adopt the Portuguese approach, under which the personal use of any drug is no longer a criminal offence. That is the right direction: serious addiction can be a medical or social problem, but should certainly not be a criminal offence.
After you have finished reading this article you can click here to go back.
|
This page was created by the Cannabis Campaigners' Guide.
Feel free to link to this page!