DRUGS: A RISKY DEBATE

IN HIS call for a Royal Commission on whether cannabis should be
decriminalised, Charles Kennedy, the new Liberal Democrat leader, has
reopened a risky political debate. Paddy Ashdown always shied away from this
commitment, made by the party in 1993. Mr Kennedy has made it his first
policy pronouncement.

He has, no doubt, calculated that the mood has changed in the face of
widespread use and police tolerance, and that the predictable opposition of
both the major political parties will drive young people into the arms of
the Lib Dems.

The tide appears to be flowing Mr Kennedy's way. Last year, a House of Lords
committee called for cannabis to be made available on prescription for pain
relief. The Home Office has licensed one scientist to grow marijuana for the
purposes of medical research. Dutch legalisation may not have improved
Amsterdam's sleazy image, but neither has it caused lawlessness. Of greatest
interest, to a politician, is the evidence of a substantial, mostly
anonymous, minority within Britain - the equivalent of at least one in five
adults - who have at some stage tried the drug. But it does not necessarily
follow that this should precipitate a change of policy.

While it is pointless to deny that the attitude in some quarters towards
cannabis is changing, there is a significant distinction to be made between
medical and "recreational" drug use. Medicine has always used, in controlled
circumstances, drugs to which the public has no, or supervised, access. And
many illegal drugs have no beneficial effects and often cause addiction.
Whether medical use of cannabis is eventually approved or not has no bearing
on the wider debate.

All drugs have psychotic properties which demand their careful regulation.
An early indication of Bill Clinton's highly developed political sense came
when he distinguished smoking marijuana from inhaling. By doing so, he
recognised the important psychotic properties of any drug - which
distinguishes marijuana from tobacco. No politician wants to be seen in the
eyes of his electors as a slave to any addictive or intoxicating substance
which might affect his own judgment.

Mr Kennedy admits that a Royal Commission would quickly become involved in
"the whole drugs issue". There is a great danger that the existence of such
a body would be used to condone wider drug use. This would be supremely
unhelpful to those fighting the crime associated with drug abuse. A Royal
Commission on drugs would undermine the concept of a zero-tolerance regime,
which in many areas has reasserted a clear definition of right and wrong and
more stringent application of criminal law. By blurring this distinction, a
Royal Commission would send the wrong signal to young people, thus pulling
the carpet from under those whom we have tasked to fight crime. In Mr
Kennedy's opening gambit there is a touch of irresponsible populism.