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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: 'Legalise all drugs'
Bill Doult icTeesside
Thursday 25 Apr 2002 All drugs should be legalised because moves to crack down on the problem have failed, a former Teesside MP has claimed. Mo Mowlam, the former government drugs co-ordinator, says present attempts to tackle the problem are not working. Writing in her autobiography, the former Redcar MP and Cabinet Minister says decriminalising cannabis is not enough. The Government should legalise and regulate everything from ecstasy to heroin. Her dramatic disclosure will be made public next week when Dr Mowlam publishes her autobiography "Momentum" which includes a substantial section on her time heading the Blair government's anti-drugs war campaign. In her book she reveals that she tried unsuccessfully to persuade both Tony Blair and the then Home Secretary Jack Straw to agree to decriminalise cannabis. And she rejects the political claim that cannabis is a gateway to harder drugs. The public and the press, she said, had moved on as far as cannabis was concerned but her fellow politicians were still stuck in the past. She writes: "Ministers hide behind 'scientific evidence' that there is a causal link between smoking marijuana and taking heroin. In all my time in politics I have seen no such evidence." Dr Mowlam hit the headlines two years ago when, as the Government's Cabinet enforcer, co-ordinating its anti-drugs policy, she admitted she had smoked cannabis but claimed she didn't like it. Dr Mowlam admitted legalising all drugs sounded a radical policy but that everything else had failed. Drugs, she admits, devastate many lives, and criminalise large areas of society, whether users, dealers, producers or money launderers. "But drugs are popular and people want to take them," she states. "They will pay a lot of money and take a lot of risks to get hold of them. "Legislation would mean that we could regulate the trade, tax the drugs and decriminalise the whole process. Corrosive activity could be replaced worldwide by a huge money-earning business." Dr Mowlam claimed that such a radical change would not only be of enormous benefit in Britain but help clean up governments around the world. "It would reduce corruption and diminish addiction in drug-producing countries where people involved in the trade are often paid in drugs." Dr Mowlam said Britain had tried and failed to get to grips with the problem despite endless initiatives and constant pressure to be seen as "tough on drugs". But many of those initiatives, she said were simply gimmicky or counter-productive.
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