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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: Mowlam backs softer line on drugs
ePolitix
Sunday 19 May 2002 With a committee of MPs set to back moves to make "medical heroin" available on the NHS, Mo Mowlam has urged the government to go further and liberalise drugs laws. The Observer reported on Sunday that the Commons home affairs select committee is set to back David Blunkett's call for more drug users to be prescribed heroin if it means they are more likely to get treatment for their addiction. The home secretary's call, first made last October, will be endorsed by the MPs when they issue a report on Britain's drugs problem. The committee will also back the establishment of "safe injecting areas" for addicts, says the paper. The Home Office said plans to make greater use of diamorphine were nothing new. The Department of Health said that while there were no plans to make heroin available on the NHS, specialist GPs were currently allowed to prescribe diamorphine. The home affairs committee is also expected to call for ecstasy to be downgraded from a Class A to a Class B drug. But former cabinet minister Mo Mowlam said that would not go far enough to solve the underlying problems. She told BBC1's Breakfast with Frost programme that such a move was a "half way measure" that would "achieve nothing". "The ecstasy move, to bring it down a class, what does that do? It makes it more available. But it doesn't deal with the underlying problems of making sure its clean, making sure that people know how much and that water is available and how much water to drink," she said. "Similarly with cannabis declassifying it...all that does is make it easier to buy but the person you buy it off is still illegal. That is daft. "On both of these what I would do is if they are going to move in that direction decriminalisation is a halfway measure. "I would legalise both. Then you can regulate it, make sure its clean, how it is sold, in addition you could tax it. "Now, if you tax cannabis and ecstasy you could use the tax take to help with the heroin and cocaine problems and the alcohol problems and the barbiturate problems," said Mowlam.
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