CHANGE IN THE WIND ON DRUG LAWS

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 5 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 pot. But that is
still far short of what Sir David Ramsbotham, the outgoing chief
inspector of prisons, suggested 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 czar" 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 an
experiment in the south London district of Brixton, where police will
simply caution people found with pot.

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

Lilley began by quoting a recent study in the respected medical
journal the Lancet which concluded that "moderate indulgence in
cannabis has little ill effect on health, and decisions to ban or to
legalize cannabis 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.

Magistrates should issue licenses to shops for the sale of limited
amounts of pot 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 tons of cannabis a year has been
calculated at about $23 billion if the pot were produced and marketed
the same way as tobacco, enough to cut the standard rate of British
taxes by 5 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
would simply push consumers back into the hands of the private
dealers. Most experts think that would yield a mere $7 billion or $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 cannabis illegal, it is only
available through illegal sources, which are the same channels that
handle hard drugs. So we are forcing cannabis users into the arms of
hard drugs pushers." When senior Conservative politicians start
talking like that, you know the wind has changed, and British polls
support it.

Opposition to legalizing cannabis has dropped from 66 percent to only
51 percent in the past five years, and naysayers are overwhelmingly
in the older 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 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 cannabis 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 honor the ABM treaty) would be willing to
undertake. So millions of Britons may benefit from the
decriminalization of marijuana, but the potentially large social and
tax benefits of outright legalization are likely to be lost.