|
Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
|
|
UK: Former drugs tsar attacks downgrading of cannabis Christopher Claire Scotland on Sunday Sunday 25 Jan 2004 THE government's former drugs tsar yesterday accused ministers of "encouraging" drugs use among young people by reclassifying cannabis. Keith Hellawell said he believed Home Secretary David Blunkett would come to regret his initiative to reduce cannabis from a class B to a class C drug across the UK. In the run-up to the change coming into effect on Thursday, Blunkett has come under increasing criticism from medical experts who have warned that the drug is more harmful than was previously thought. They were yesterday joined by Hellawell, who headed the government's fight against drugs between 1998 and 2002. He said: "Quite frankly it is a nonsense, and the way that 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. "Some of the dangers of cannabis are far in excess of some of the synthetic drugs. The real issue is that the government has given a message that cannabis is less dangerous than it was perceived to be, and 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." Hellawell said that when he sat on the principal advisory committee on drugs, there was no significant support for reclassification. Reclassification and its effect on police powers in the field had produced "a muddle", Hellawell argued. "Cannabis arrests have been steadily coming down within the confines of the existing law," he said. "Why change it, why cause confusion and why - I am sad to say - encourage in some respect greater drug taking, particularly by young people, who don't know where they stand?" Hellawell said he believed that Blunkett was "driving the agenda" on reclassification. "I do not know why, only he will know, and I suspect he will live to regret it. It's a mystery." A Home Office spokesman said: "Keith Hellawell supported the Home Secretary's view that reclassification was necessary when he was briefed on the proposals at a Home Office meeting with David Blunkett in October 2001."
After you have finished reading this article you can click here to go back.
|
This page was created by the Cannabis Campaigners' Guide.
Feel free to link to this page!