'One Joint Every Other Day Causes Permanent Brain Damage'

Allegedly.

And that's not the only reason anti-drug campaigners oppose a
softening of the law. Here, we present the arguments against
legalisation.

When coppers, ex-coppers, doctors and cabinet ministers start
muttering that it might be time to review Britain's antidiluvian drug
laws, one might expect the backlash from the decent and law-abiding
folks of 'Middle England' to be vociferous.

It isn't.

The response to the increasing tide of calls for reform has been
distinctly half-arsed. The BBC managed to dig up 'young fogey' James
Hellyer - former chair of the Conservative Association at Cambridge
University.

"As a society, we're increasingly soft," Hellyer told BBC2's Living
With The Enemy. "People say you can't lock all these people (drug
users) up because there aren't enough prison cells. Well build some!"

In a letter to The Times, criminal defence lawyer Andrew Hobson put
forward the argument that legalisation would mean that "a significant
number of people who do not take drugs would experiment with them and
become addicted".

And the Conservative Party hit back against the recent sudden outbreak
of do-gooder reformism with the brilliant idea of establishing "drug
exclusion zones" of a quarter-of- a-mile around all schools while
introducing prison sentences for anybody caught in possession of
cannabis within those zones.

Tory leader William Hague said that a future Conservative government
would impose "not softer policing but tougher enforcement; not making
excuses but locking up offenders".

"Tony Blair's government has clearly given up on a major part of the
war on drugs," continued Hague, inexplicably.

"A Conservative government would move clearly in the opposite
direction - not more tolerance of drugs, but less.

"My promise to every parent is this," he continued. "Those who try to
hook children on their vile products will be pursued, hunted down and
punished severely."

(Bad news, no doubt, for the makers of certain soft-drink
products.)

Meanwhile, Hague's knee-jerk blusterings were supported in the Sunday
Times by Melanie Phillips - the ex-Guardian journalist who is now a
strident champion of "family values".

Citing the recent press hoo-hah over alleged drug usage among Prince
William's social circle, Phillips wrote: "Forget cannabis these kids
are going straight for cocaine."

In true 'voice-of-the-silent-majority' style, Phillips claims that the
"insanely dangerous" chorus of calls for increased tolerance are the
work of a sinister "libertine elite" consisting of "poilticians,
police offtcers, judges, clerics, academics and journalists".

"The fact that middle-class parents are pressuring independent schools
to relax their drug laws says it all," claims Phillips "The greater
the hold of drugs on our society, the more the rates of addiction and
deaths and car accidents rise, the more calls there are to make drugs
legal. This is truly idiotic. It's as if grievous bodily harm, say,
had got out of control and people were urging legalisation of assault
on the basis that all that was really needed was better hospital
facilities for the injured and couniselling for their attackers.

"Legalisation wouldn't end drug taking," claims Phillips, "all it
would do is take work away from the police and make billions for big
business."

The "hard facts," she says, are as follows:

* Cannabis is addictive and, if smoked with tobacco, is more carcinogenic
than tobacco alone.

* There is no such thing as "safe and responsible drug taking".

* There's no such thing as a "harm-free" drug (yet drug 'education' is all
about telling the young how to take drugs 'safely'.").

* "Hash is more harmful than alcohol."

* Cannabis "hits the immune system" and there's evidence that it might
actually harm multiple sclerosis sufferers rather than help them.

* "The marijuana-tolerant Holland has become the crime capital of Europe."

* "In Alaska, where cannabis was decriminalised for ten years, use of soft
and hard drugs soared along with crime, and 2,000 people were hospilalised
with cannabis-induced psychesis."

* "One joint every other day causes permanent brain damage, whereas one
pint of beer or a glass of wine every other day does not."

All of this, of course, must have been music to the ears of Mr Keith
Hellawell, the former police chief turned government-appointed 'drug
tsar'.

But it turns out that Mr Hellawell might be part of the "libertine
elite" that Ms Phillips so despises.

In February he told a press conference: "What I have done is lift the
stone on the hidden truth about drugs in Britain, which is that we
need to descriminate between different drugs and the relative harm
caused and then talk openly about the difference we can make..."

But the government have meanwhile made it clear that nothing in the
1971 Misuse of Drugs act is "up for negotiation". Which means that,
officially at least, we are no nearer a sensible discussion of the
merits of decriminalising or legalising marijuana than we were when
New Labour came to power in May '97.

Soon after Mr Hellawell's press conference, Tony Blair held a
much-publicised meeting with celebrity anti drug crusaders Paul and
Janet Betts whom he told: "There is absolutely no change in the
government's position on legalisation of soft drugs."

So don't hold your breath.