'DRUGS': THE BRITISH VIEw

The dam burst last weekend.

There had been cracks in the concrete of consensus and growing trickles of
dissent for some time, but suddenly the issue of legalizing the use of
marijuana is on the table in a major country -- and an English-speaking
one, at that.

In Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Switzerland it is already practically
impossible to get arrested for buying or using 'soft drugs' . In the
Netherlands, users may buy up to five grams of marijuana or hashish for
private use at 1,500 licensed 'coffee shops', and they are opening two
drive-through outlets in the border town of Venlo to cater to German
purchasers. Even in Canada, Conservative leader and former prime minister
Joe Clark is openly calling for the decriminalization of marijuana.

But that is still far short of what Sir David Ramsbotham, the outgoing
Chief Inspector of Prisons, suggested last Sunday in Britain.

"The more I look at what's happening, the more I can see the logic of
legalizing drugs, because the misery that is caused by the people who are
making criminal profit is so appalling and the sums are so great that are
being made illegally. I think there is merit in legalizing and prescribing,
so people don't have to go and find an illegal way of doing it," he said.

You will note that he said 'drugs', not just marijuana', and that he talked
of 'legalizing and prescribing', not just 'decriminalizing'. Most British
politicians are afraid to go that far in public yet, but over the past week
former Home Secretaries Lord Jenkins and Lord Baker and outgoing British
'drugs tsar' Keith Hellawell have all called for a debate on
decriminalizing so-called 'soft drugs'. And the new Home Secretary, David
Blunkett, has given his support to a local experiment in the south London
district of Brixton where police will simply caution people found with
marijuana.

No Trial, No Criminal Record

Others, like Mo Mowlam, until recently the Cabinet Office minister
responsible for the Labour government's drug policy, and Peter Lilley,
former minister for social security and Conservative deputy leader, are now
going further. "It strikes me as totally irrational to decriminalize
marijuana without looking at the sale of it," said Ms. Mowlam. "It would be
an absurdity to have criminals controlling the market of a substance people
can use legally."

Peter Lilley began by quoting a recent study in the respected medical
journal 'The Lancet' which concluded that "moderate indulgence in marijuana
has little ill effect on health, and decisions to ban or to legalize
marijuana should be based on other considerations." For Lilley, banning
marijuana is indefensible and unenforceable in a country where far more
harmful drugs like alcohol and tobacco are legal and he went the distance
in accepting the implications of legalization.

Magistrates should issue licenses to local shops for the sale of limited
amounts of marijuana to people over 18, Lilley said. Like tobacco, it would
be taxed and carry a health warning -- and the tax yield on an estimated
annual British consumption of 1,500 tonnes of marijuana a year has been
calculated at about $23 billion if the marijuana were produced and marketed
in exactly the same way as tobacco, enough to cut the standard rate of
British taxes by five percent.

That is a pipe-dream, of course. Many people would grow their own, and
given the pre-existing black market, too high a rate of taxation on
marijuana would simply push consumers back into the hands of the private
dealers.

Most experts think the highest practical rate of taxation would be around
$3-$4 per gram (against a production cost of around $0.75), which would
yield a mere $7-8 billion a year in extra tax revenue.

But it would also cut law enforcement costs -- and it would keep ordinary
marijuana users out of contact with 'hard drug' dealers.

As Lilley pointed out, "By making marijuana illegal, it is only available
through illegal sources, which are the same channels that handle hard
drugs. So we are forcing marijuana users into the arms of hard drugs
pushers." When senior Conservative politicians start talking like that, you
know the wind has changed, and British opinion polls support it.

Opposition to legalizing marijuana has dropped from 66 per cent to only 51
per cent in the past five years, and the nay-sayers are overwhelmingly in
the older age groups.

It is a welcome outbreak of sanity, and even mere decriminalization in a
major English-speaking country would have a profound effect on the debate
in the United States, the heart and soul of the prohibitionist movement.

But actual legalization of marijuana in Britain is unlikely because the
U.S. government strong-armed all its allies into signing three,
international conventions in the 1970s and 1980s that define marijuana as a
dangerous drug.

To break out of those treaties would involve a larger effort of political
will than any government with many other items on its agenda (like
persuading the United States to ratify the Kyoto accord on climate change
and to honour the ABM treaty) would be willing to undertake.

So millions of individual Britons may benefit from the decriminalization of
marijuana and an end to harassment, but the potentially large social and
tax benefits of outright legalization are likely to be lost.