Prohibition

The legalizing cannabis debate is one that has been around for nearly a hundred years, yet it is one that has fallen victim to countless attacks of propaganda, slander and miss-information. The law on cannabis in the UK currently states: (sourced from: http://drugs.homeoffice.gov.uk/drugs-laws/cannabis-reclassifications/);


As a Class B drug, penalties for cannabis are as follows:


Penalties for supply, dealing, production and trafficking :
The maximum penalty is 14 years imprisonment.


Penalties for possession
The maximum penalty increases from two years to five years imprisonment.


Adults in possession of cannabis
If caught in possession of cannabis, as well as considering arrest and confiscating the drug, police are likely to: give a cannabis warning for a first offence of possession give a Penalty Notice for Disorder - this is an on-the-spot fine of £80 for a second offence make an arrest if it is the third offence of having been caught with cannabis - this could lead to conviction and a criminal record.


Young people in possession of cannabis
A young person found to be in possession of cannabis will be arrested and taken to a police station where they can receive a reprimand, final warning or charge depending on the seriousness of the offence. Following one reprimand, any further offence will lead to a final warning or charge. Any further offence following a warning will normally result in criminal charges. After a final warning, the young offender must be referred to a Youth Offending Team to arrange a rehabilitation programme. This police enforcement is consistent with the structured framework for early juvenile offending established under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998.


Those are the facts, although those among us know that it doesn't quite work that way. Ask any police officer what they find to be one of the biggest wastes of their time, and they will probably tell you that it is enforcing ridiculously far-reaching cannabis prohibition laws. As it stands, there are an estimated 160,000,000 cannabis users currently using the "drug" worldwide. "Although cannabis can have a negative impact on health, including mental health, in terms of relative harms, it is considerably less harmful than alcohol or tobacco." A conclusion reached recently by respected medical journal "The Lancet", which found nicotine and alcohol to be far more of a social issue in terms of real harms caused, than cannabis, heroin or cocaine. "The current system of cannabis regulation is not working, and ... there needs to be a serious rethink if we are to minimise the harms caused by cannabis use," which would back up former ACMD Chairman Professor Sir Michael Rawlins and the recommendations he gave at the request of the Home Secretary back in March 2008. According to a joint poll run in conjunction with the United Nations and the World Health Organisation recently, almost half the population of the United States (41%) admits experimenting with cannabis, and yet psychosis statistics in the US run close to those in the UK at around 1% of the population. which disproves the Home Office and its primary reason for upping the classification of cannabis. "Historically, there have only been two deaths worldwide attributed to cannabis (citation needed, if that tells you anything about the relevance of even that small a figure), whereas alcohol and tobacco together are responsible for an estimated 150,000 deaths per year in the UK alone," and this according to governments own figures.


So, taking into account that the Home Office's main reasons for reclassification of cannabis, and maintaining its illegality, are largely unfounded, this leads us to ask the question: Why is it still illegal? Well, many people have many different answers to this, blaming everyone from the tobacco industry, to the alcohol industry all the way to the man-made fibres industry, but from what I can surmise, the answer is much simpler. I have never heard of anyone growing their own tobacco or distilling their own alcohol. Not in this country anyway, and certainly not to the same degree that cannabis is cultivated by the home gardener, and I think that there is more to this than the substances being available in shops, rendering home manufacture pointless. After multiple Google searches, finding the materials to undertake these activities proved a lot more difficult, and costly than growing cannabis, whereas, the equipment required to grow cannabis is available at any local garden centre, and the seeds available online and in head-shops around the world from as little as £20 for 10 sensei seeds. And by this, I am not just talking about low quality product, like bush weed or whatever you would prefer to call it. I am referring to what is commonly known as skunk, which contains up to 16% THC, over 10% more than is found in resin or other variants of the herb. THC being the psychoactive chemical contained in cannabis, which gives it its potent high, or stoned feeling, whichever ever name you would prefer.


According to a report published by the TDPF (Transform Drug Policy Foundation) a legalised, regulated market could save the country around £14bn. The report considers all aspects of prohibition from the costs of policing and investigating drugs users and dealers to processing them through the courts and their eventual incarceration. Aswell as the potential savings highlighted above, also to be taken into consideration are the potential revenues avaliable through taxation in a regulated market. The report focused on four potential scenarios, ranging from no increase in drugs use to a 100% rise as they become more readily available to the public. "The conclusion is that regulating the drugs market is a dramatically more cost-effective policy than prohibition and that moving from prohibition to regulated drugs markets in England and Wales would provide a net saving to taxpayers, victims of crime, communities, the criminal justice system and drug users of somewhere within the range of, for the four scenarios, £13.9bn, £10.8bn, £7.7bn, £4.6bn." The report, titled; Comparison of the Cost-effectiveness of the Prohibition and Regulation of Drugs, uses home office and No 10 strategy unit reports and government figures on the costs of crime to assess the potential benefits and disadvantages of change. It finds: "The government specifically claims the benefits of any move away from prohibition towards legal regulation would be outweighed by the costs. No such cost-benefit analysis, or even a proper impact assessment of existing enforcement policy and legislation has ever been carried out here or anywhere else in the world."


In Amsterdam, the enforcement of drug laws presents a very interesting model, for contrary to popular belief, cannabis is still considered a controlled drug by Dutch authorities, and both possession and production for personal use are still misdemeanours, punishable by a fine. Surprisingly, Coffee shops are also illegal according to the statutes. However, a policy of non-enforcement has lead to a common reliance upon non-enforcement, and courts have ruled against the government when individual cases were prosecuted. This is thanks to a gedoogbeleid (policy of tolerance), applied by the Dutch Ministry of Justice, with regards to soft drugs: an official set of guidelines telling public prosecutors under which circumstances offenders should not be prosecuted.

The drug policy of the Netherlands is based on two principles:

1. Drug use is a public health issue, not a criminal matter.
   
2. A distinction between hard drugs and soft drugs exists.

This is a pragmatic policy: Most policymakers in the Netherlands believe that if a problem has proved to be unstoppable, it is better to try controlling it instead of continuing to enforce laws that have shown to be unable to stop the problem. Most other countries take the point of view that drugs are bad and must be outlawed, whether that course of action yields any results or not. I can imagine that any users of cannabis reading this paragraph just gasped with shock that a legal system can be so tolerant, when their own government seems so short sighted. The American sociologist Craig Reinarman once wrote: “U.S drug control ideology holds that there is no such thing as use of an illicit drug, only abuse.” But drug use patterns in the Netherlands show that for the overwhelming majority of users, cannabis is just one more type of genotsmiddelen (food, spices and intoxicants which bring pleasure to the senses) that the Dutch have been importing and culturally domesticating for centuries. New Mexico governor Gary Johnson once talked objectively about the War on Drugs, stating, “Holland is the only country in the world that has a rational drug policy. I had always heard that Holland, where marijuana is decriminalized and controlled, had out-of-control drug abuse and crime. But when I researched it, I learned that’s untrue. It’s propaganda. Holland has 60% of the drug use-both hard drugs and marijuana- the United States has. The have quarter the crime rate, quarter the homicide rate, a quarter the violent crime rate, and a tenth the incarceration rate.”

It’s going to be a long time before any such measures are even considered for implementation in the UK. With the Conservative Party’s takeover of parliament at the next general election almost inevitable, we can expect things to get worse before they get better, but the more people that are aware of the true nature of the plant, it’s effects, and it’s press, the closer we are to having a pragmatic system that truly demonstrates understanding of an ever apparent problem.

Until next time.....

Peace