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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: MPs Back Softer Line On Cannabis
Tom Robbins Sunday Times
Sunday 19 May 2002 A report from the cross-party home affairs select committee, due on Wednesday, is widely expected to say cannabis should be downgraded from a class B to a class C drug. This would mean it remained illegal but possession of it would attract a caution or a fine rather than arrest. The committee is also likely to suggest that ministers consider setting up "shooting galleries" where addicts can inject drugs under medical supervision in a safe, clean room. Most controversial will be the report's verdict on ecstasy, the drug taken by an estimated 500,000 young people in nightclubs each weekend. An early draft suggested that it, too, should be downgraded from class A to class B, but some members of the committee are thought to have objected. Last week a coroner described taking the drug as "like playing Russian roulette" after hearing the case of Kirsty Mendy, 17, a student who died after taking two ecstasy tablets. The MPs will strongly endorse the Lambeth experiment where possession of small amounts of cannabis is no longer an arrestable offence. David Blunkett, the home secretary, has already proposed the reclassification of cannabis and with the MPs' backing a change in the law is likely. However, the MPs have rejected calls for Dutch-style coffee shops where cannabis can be smoked freely. The committee is also expected to recommend convicted addicts be offered treatment programmes rather than go to prison and that there be a new legal definition of "social supply", so young people who buy a few ecstasy tablets to share are not prosecuted as drug dealers.
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