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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: Ex-drugs tsar attacks cannabis downgrade
Michelle Green Reuters
Saturday 24 Jan 2004 LONDON (Reuters) - Former drugs tsar Keith Hellawell has accused the government of encouraging drug use among young people by downgrading the legal status of cannabis. Hellawell, who headed the government's fight against drugs between 1998 and 2002, said the initiative caused legal confusion and left young people unsure of the drug's dangers. "The way they have done, it is a nonsense, and it is causing so much confusion in people's minds that it will do this generation and the future generation an enormous disservice," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. Cannabis will be reclassified as a low risk, category C drug next week, making discreet possession of small amounts of it or smoking it in private a non-arrestable offence. The downgrade, while keeping the drug illegal, will put cannabis in the same category as anabolic steroids and growth hormones. Hellawell said there was a real danger the reclassification would mislead the public into thinking the drug was safe. "The real issue is that the government has given a message that cannabis is less dangerous than it was perceived to be," he told the BBC. "They have given that message at a time when every medical institution is saying: 'We are worried about the dangers, we don't know sufficient about it, and we believe the dangers are even greater than we perceive them to be'." Earlier this week the British Medical Association attacked the downgrade, saying cannabis was more dangerous to people's health than tobacco. "People tend to start smoking joints in their youthful years...and they don't appreciate the damage it can cause to their chest, their heart in later life," Dr Peter Maguire, deputy chairman of the BMA's board of science, said. A cannabis joint without tobacco contains a third more tar than a normal cigarette, he said, while the blood of someone who smoked a cannabis joint contains five time more carbon monoxide than that of a person who smoked a normal cigarette. Home Secretary David Blunkett, who introduced the downgrade, has argued that it will allow the government and police officers to focus on tackling the most serious Class A drugs. But Hellawell said he believed Blunkett would "live to regret" the decision.
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