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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: Cannabis use soared as Labour softened the law
Steve Doughty Daily Mail
Wednesday 02 Mar 2005 The number of people caught with cannabis soared after the Government announced it was making possession of the drug a less serious crime. In just two years, there was an increase of 23.5 per cent as many teenagers assumed the drug had been decriminalised. The alarming rise came even before police were ordered to stop arresting and taking to court those found with small quantities of the drug, which has now been officially "downgraded". Since then - the first published evidence showed yesterday - use of cannabis has shot up even more. The figures were released by the Home Office on the day the United Nations condemned the Government for going easy on cannabis and warned that it was sending users "the wrong signal". Only last week a study by eminent psychiatrists demonstrated the powerful links between cannabis and mental illness. Teenagers who smoke cannabis are 4.5 times more likely than others to suffer problems, including schizophrenia by their mid-twenties. Yesterday's figures for those caught with the drug show the numbers using it raced upwards as soon as then Home Secretary David Blunkett announced the downgrading of the seriousness of possessing cannabis following Labour's 2001 election victory. Rising figures In that year, some 66,410 people were cautioned, convicted or otherwise dealt with by the courts for cannabis offences - the lowest for a decade. By the following year, numbers had gone up by nearly 12,000 to 78,050. In 2003, there was a further jump to 82,060, a rise of 23.5 per cent in just two years and a dramatic reversal of the decline in cannabis use detected since 1998. There were big jumps, too, in the numbers of people caught using cocaine and crack over the same period. The downgrading of cannabis, from a Class B drug alongside amphetamines to Class C, a category including prescription medicines and anabolic steroids, went ahead in January last year. Powerful evidence of what has happened since then has been supplied by the Metropolitan Police, which said that the number of people caught with cannabis in London in summer 2004 was 33 per cent up on 2003 levels. The downgrading means possession is no longer an arrestable offence. Police are under instructions not to arrest those found with small quantities of the drug but to issue an informal warning and confiscate the cannabis. 'Wrong signals' Yesterday Professor Hamid Ghodse, president of the UN International Narcotics Control Board, said: "What the UK has done with cannabis does not breach international conventions. The problem is that probably it gives the wrong message and the wrong signals. Drug users have misinterpreted what the Government has done." The price of cannabis has dropped by around 40 per cent in five years, other Home Office figures showed yesterday. An ounce of the drug which cost ukp100 in December 1999 would be just ukp61 now. Cocaine fell from ukp63 a gram to ukp51 over the same period while heroin slipped from ukp65 a gram to ukp55. A 200mg "rock" of crack is ukp18, down from ukp20 at the end of 1999, and an Ecstasy pill is now ukp4 instead of ukp11. Asked about the offending figures, a Home office spokesman said: "The reclassification of cannabis has helped police and customs target Class A drugs such as crack and cocaine which cause the most harm to individuals, families and communities. "Early indications are that arrests for cannabis possession have fallen since reclassification."
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