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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: Press Review: Cannabis
The Guardian
Saturday 24 Jan 2004 'Drugs damage political health' The government is seen to have made a hash of the change in classification Daily Mail Editorial, January 23 "A week before cannabis is downgraded to a class C drug, Michael Howard's description of this unfolding muddle as 'absurd' seems the gentlest of understatements. Is it now permissible to light up a spliff? Predictably, millions are convinced that it is. So having muddied the waters in the first place, the Home Office spends UKP1m telling users that they still face arrest ... But at the same time, the Association of Chief Police Officers says there will be a 'presumption against arrest'... "So how did the government end up in a morass of contradictions?... The home secretary, David Blunkett ... is right to argue it is more important for police to concentrate on pushers of class A substances such as heroin ... The trouble is, his scheme arguably makes policing harder. Until recently, having class C substances was a non-arrestable offence, so downgrading cannabis would have saved police time. But then he changed the rules. Anyone with such drugs can now be arrested. We are left with a dog's breakfast." Daily Mirror Editorial, January 23 "On the day new figures showed shocking rises in gun crime and violence, the Tories announced they thought it wrong to ease the law on cannabis ... Mr Howard's announcement that a Tory government would make it a serious offence to possess cannabis is out-of-touch and stupid ... "But this government's reclassification of cannabis is not a substitute for a real drugs policy ... The truth is that all drugs can have unpleasant and sometimes dangerous side effects - and that includes cannabis ... [But] the country needs bold, brave and far-sighted leadership to deal with drugs and crime. And it isn't getting it." Simon Jenkins Times, January 23 "Warning. Drugs can seriously damage your political health ... Nothing better illustrates this syndrome than [the] row over the reclassification of cannabis ... Mr Blunkett ... has finally decided to reclassify cannabis, yet has achieved almost nothing ... [He] has the worst of both worlds. People think he has gone soft on cannabis when he has not ... The drugs economy is the single biggest handicap to social cohesion in Britain ... "Most European states have more successful drug policies than Britain ... All are experimenting with solutions that wholly elude Britain ... Tony Blair's radicalism is a sham ... All drugs ... must be removed from criminal distribution and their sale controlled and taxed like nicotine and alcohol. Such a proposal is not ideal, merely vital ... Until then this hugely profitable market will continue to boom. No amount of posturing, law-making or reclassification will make the slightest difference." Sun Editorial, January 23 "With the best of intentions and for the best of reasons, the government has got itself - and the country - into a right mess ... [The home secretary] has put over the wrong message to the public ... Mr Blunkett admits that downgrading cannabis is an experiment that might not work ... We hope he'll be big enough to do an about-turn if it all goes to pot." Johann Hari Independent, January 23 "Sadly, the government ... [has] chosen a mushy third way between legalisation and prohibition ... Yet, the thrust of the criticisms [has been] that the new law is sending out a 'mixed message' to teenagers ... Come on ... I have never met a teenager who looked to the government for moral guidance ... And anyway, the premise behind the 'messages' argument is flawed. Drinking vodka is legal. Is the government sending out a message that teenagers should swig a bottle or two on their way to school? ... "The idea that the day after legalisation, Britain would collectively drop out and disappear in a haze of skunk smoke is [also] absurd ... There might be a small increase in use ... But it has to be weighed against the major downsides of prohibition: the criminal gangs, the mockery of the law, the vast waste of police resources... and the devastation of the countries that supply our drugs but cannot tax their major export. Wouldn't admitting this be better than retreating into stale propaganda about how cannabis will turn Britain into a vast lunatic asylum?" Alice Thomson Daily Telegraph, January 23 "Why not legalise cannabis?... One in four 15 to 24-year-olds smoked it in 2002, according to the British Crime Survey. You don't see thousands of zombified teenagers on the streets. But the evidence on health risks is mounting ... Yale Medical School, after an extensive study, showed that tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the active ingredient in cannabis, can produce a psychotic reaction ... Professor Robin Murray, head of psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, has said that cannabis users are seven times more likely to develop mental illness ... "In Sweden, where the government toughened its line towards cannabis - after deciding that it carried more mental health risks than heroin abuse - drug deaths have dropped for the first time since 1990. Cannabis has muddled minds at Westminster ... Meanwhile the people who suffer most - the addicts and their families - are paying for this government's delusions." --=======123977FF=======--
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