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UK: 'Legalise cannabis and break the hard-drug link'
Nick Mollet The Guernsey Press and Star
Tuesday 19 Oct 2004 Former cabinet minister Peter Lilley explains his robust views on cannabis. 'It's important to have a rational policy and to recognise the difference between soft drugs and hard drugs, between use and abuse and between punishment and treatment,' the former cabinet minister said in Guernsey yesterday. 'Eighty per cent of the war-on-drugs effort is devoted to cannabis. But in my mind, 90% of the effort ought to be on hard drugs.' But Mr Lilley - the speaker at a Babbe Le Pelley Tostevin lecture lunch - endorsed the States decision earlier this year not to reclassify cannabis from a Class B drug to a Class C. 'Reclassifying while still making the sale of cannabis illegal could be the worst of all possible worlds,' he said. 'Either you have legal outlets where you can get this stuff from a source or you try and discourage it completely, like the Swedes. 'What I'm proposing is breaking the link between soft drugs like cannabis and harder drugs,' said the MP for Hitchin and Harpenden. 'It's not for me to interfere in what the people of Guernsey decide, but I hope they will focus on this key issue of how we stop pushing people who want a bit of cannabis into the arms of people who also deal in hard drugs. 'I want to focus the police effort and war on drugs on hard drugs,' he said, adding that he backed 'reasonably tough' sentencing. 'If people want to grow cannabis in their back gardens, then allow them. 'The use of cannabis has gone up since the [UK] Government started promoting mixed messages,' he said. He dismissed claims that taking cannabis always led people to harder drugs but said that people could get cannabis only from illegal sources in Britain. 'You have to break that link. 'Hard drugs addict you and enslave you and kill you but nobody has ever died from cannabis poisoning,' said Mr Lilley. Heroin and crack cocaine use was on the rise in the UK, he believed. 'We need much more effort on rehabilitation - the bulk of crime is caused by hard-drug addicts.' Under the Tory plans, drugs-rehabilitation places in the UK would rise from 2,000 to 20,000; the party insists that offering addicts rehabilitation instead of prison is no soft option. Guernsey, like elsewhere, needed rehabilitation clinics. 'They should make it easier and speedier for someone who wants to get off drugs. 'The treatment of hard drugs is the most important thing and is a lot cheaper than leaving addicts on the rampage.' He believed that with its messages, the UK Government was still driving cannabis users into the hands of heroin dealers. 'Cannabis will be legalised in Britain in the long run,' he insisted. 'I'm certainly not an advocate of cannabis and have never taken it. I used to be a smoker and I'm not going to start smoking something else. I don't want to encourage anyone to take it, but my main concern is hard drugs.'
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