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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: Column: Sitting on the fence over drugs will not do
Ian Oliver Press and Journal
Wednesday 13 Feb 2002 (Note: Ian Oliver is the ex- Chief Constable of Grampian Police.) RECENTLY, I was invited to take part in a panel discussion at a two-day conference on drugs, run by a well-known charity. This event took place at Regent's College, London, and was called the Release Drugs University. Not long after my arrival, I gained the strong impression hat maybe I was the token opponent of drug legalisation. The conference began with a series of introductory addresses, followed by numerous work-shops which people could choose to attend according to their own particular interests. The vice-chairwoman of Release opened the conference and then left because she was a lawyer who had to attend a trial. However, I did manage to speak to her later to challenge some of the assertions which she had made in her opening remarks. The general tenor of her address was that there had been a sea change throughout the UK in favour of the legalisation of drugs, even among the population group between the ages of 65 and 70. She reinforced her observations by pointing to the experiment taking place in the Brixton police area. This has more to do with a pragmatic approach to the use of police time than it has with the approval of drug use. She then cited Anne Widdecombe's proposals at the last Conservative Party conference, for a compulsory penalty for first use of cannabis, which had been ridiculed as unworkable. Finally, reference was made to the "wise words" of Peter Lilley, a minor Conservative member, who now favours the sale of cannabis in off-licence shops. When I did manage to speak to the vice-chairwoman, she assured me that most senior citizens favoured the legalisation of cannabis, in common with the majority of the population, and when I asked for evidence of this assertion, she merely continued to assure me that she was correct. Indeed, the. whole case for legalisation throughout the time that I was at the conference appeared to he based on assertions reinforced by wishful thinking, and rebuttals of my arguments by the statement: "You are wrong." Even Viscountess Ruth Runciman, who was the chairwoman of the infamous Inquiry Into the Misuse of Drugs Act, 1971, otherwise known as The Police Foundation Report, resorted to similar tactics, SUCH conferences may be the reason why there has been a media-driven campaign recently which seems to be very much in favour of decriminalising so called 'soft" or 'recreational" drugs, particularly cannabis and ecstasy. In one notable case, there were four full pages of assertion in one of the broadsheet newspapers advocating the legalisation of heroin on the spurious grounds that the author considered it a harmless drug. Not one letter in rebuttal was printed in that newspaper, despite the inaccuracies abundant throughout the article. Journalist Nick Davies was due to appear on the panel with me at the Release conference, but failed to attend, which is probably just as well for him, as all the other panel members agreed that his article was misleading. Now it has been reported that a group of Lambeth activists, calling themselves Cannabis Action London, seek to have cannabis cafes in the borough. These people want to introduce cafes along the lines of the Amsterdam coffee shops as the natural corollary to the policing experiment, which issues warnings for possession of small amounts of cannabis for personal use. In the Greater Manchester area, an attempt by another activist to open a cafe at which he intended to sell cannabis as a medical aid was short- lived. A REPORT just published by the Home Office shows that the use of hard drugs is not falling in accordance with national and international targets and this has been seized upon as more evidence that we are losing the war on drugs and that the Government anti-drug strategy is wrong. It is said that resources and efforts are wasted by continued opposition to the abuse of illicit drugs. The alleged, simple remedy is to legalise their use under strict and licensed conditions. What surprises and disappoints me is that the silent majority is failing to react to all of this nonsense in favour of legalisation. Most people in the UK neither use illicit drugs nor want them to be legalised, and yet they remain silent and fail to react to the increasingly vociferous statements in favour of introducing highly dangerous and addictive substances into our communities on a legal basis. There is almost a silent conspiracy to ignore the proposals in the hope that the damage will not occur or, if it does, it will not affect good and decent people. This is what the psychiatrists refer to as "denial". EVIDENCE from the US which has just been released indicates that the drug problem is again on the increase there, particularly in schools. Most American schools are not drug-free, any more than are ours in the UK, and it has been estimated that student substance use costs at least $41 billion a year. The illiteracy and drop-out rates are high, and for many pupils the schools are neither safe nor supportive in helping them to achieve a good education. Nevertheless, some legalisers continue to assert that this is evidence to show that prohibition does not work. All this indicates to me is that maybe the targets are unrealistic and are certainly difficult to achieve. Sending a message of approval for drug use is not the way to remedy the problem. The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University (CASA) has issued a 117-page report entitled Malignant Neglect. This highlights the fact that there has been a complete failure to achieve the year-2000 National Education Goal enacted by Congress in 1994, which pledged that, by the millennium year, America's schools would be "safe, disciplined, and alcohol and drug-free" and that there would be widespread "parental participation". What has happened in many cases has been a blame culture in which the problem has been aggravated by finger-pointing and denial, with parents, teachers and administrators all blaming someone else. The report concludes that the widespread availability of drugs in schools is due to "the malignant neglect of parents, teachers and administrators, communities and students themselves. The two most important factors leading to substance abuse were said to be the availability of substances, and the perception of risk in using them. EDUCATION about drugs alone is of limited value unless the lessons are reinforced by parental engagement with their children in addressing the problem and implementing the knowledge gained. Instruction without the support of parents, family, friends and the whole community are little more than a cosmetic attempt by policy makers to demonstrate that they are "doing something". This last point reinforces my disappointment that there is little apparent evidence that there is a widespread acceptance of this responsibility with either parents or communities. The deafening silence in response to demands for legalisation or decriminalisation of dangerous drugs is nothing short of appalling. Failure on the part of all of us to take part in resistance to such demands is also highly irresponsible. Gradually, the culture of tolerance and acceptance of drugs is gaining hold simply because not enough of us bother to find out the facts. We do not involve ourselves in assisting young people to gain the right information and the strength of character to resist pressures to try drugs as some kind of approved rite of passage to maturity. Where are the voices of the elected politicians and community leaders in resisting this media drive towards legalisation? It is time for them to be much more active in opposing harm and in ensuring that our approach to educating our children is backed up by those support systems which have been found to be absent in many American schools. Soon it will be too late to resist the permissive culture of the minority which is driving us irrevocably towards a harm every bit as serious as terrorist attacks on our communities. It is time to wake up and get wise. Sitting on the fence just will not do. Members of the Government who hide behind the need for debate in the face of irrefutable evidence of a permanent and devastating potential for harm within our communities are failing to give leadership. Any debate must be about the way in which we deal with a pernicious problem, not about the possibility of exacerbating it by giving implied approval through the decriminilisation of demonstrably harmful substances.
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