DRUG MISUSE - THE WEIGHT OF EVIDENCE

Somewhere in Britain this morning there will be several hundred
worried families. Their children will have been caught with cannabis
last night and they will be charged with either possession or dealing.

The current system is a perilous game of chance, under which, although
the risks of being caught are marginal, for the few who are the
consequences can be ruinous. About 3.6 million people, mostly young,
use the drug at some point in a year, but only 45,000 in the last
statistics (2004) were caught for possession and 2,200 for dealing.

Serious though this situation is, the future looks even
grimmer.

As our home affairs editor reported this week, new tough proposals
drawn up by the Home Office would make drug users caught with even
small amounts of cannabis - sufficient for just 10 joints - liable to
be classified as dealers.

The current maximum for this offence is 14 years.

Drug policy has swung from one extreme to another in the space of just
six months.

Last November the Home Office published a consultation paper under
which thresholds were set, under which there would be an "evidential
presumption" that a drug user was a dealer.

Different amounts were set for different drugs.

The paper concentrated on either frequently used drugs (cannabis,
ecstasy) or seriously harmful (heroin, crack, cocaine). The paper was
severely criticised by drug experts for a variety of inconsistencies.
For example the threshold for cocaine was set at two grams costing
UKP100, but for ecstasy a mere five tablets, costing UKP15. Some ecstasy
users consume 10 over a weekend, making another group of users
vulnerable to dealing charges. But what caused the biggest furore -
particularly in the tabloids - was the threshold for cannabis: up to
500g of resin, sufficient according to tabloids to create 2,400
"spliffs". This, they noted, would be equivalent to six every day of
the year. Now this threshold has moved from the absurdly high to the
ludicrously low - just 5g or one fifth of an ounce.

Equally serious was the confusion which the November document
generated. It was interpreted by many - including the Metropolitan
commissioner - that only people carrying above the threshold would be
liable to prosecution. Those below were presumed to be safe, which was
wrong. People found with dealers' paraphernalia, for example, would be
subjected to prosecution.

The latest Home Office proposals were sent to the Advisory Council on
the Misuse of Drugs, which sensibly rejected the 5g for cannabis -
raising it to 28g - and presumably also raised threshold for ecstasy.
The council, which includes some of the world's leading drug
specialists, has an admirable record of sane advice.

In its 30-year history, no one can remember a home secretary ignoring
a council proposal. Hopefully, then, the latest corrections will be
accepted and the new home secretary can turn his eye to another
dysfunctional directorate in his empire.

Neutral observers may still be concerned by last year's reports, which
suggested regular use of cannabis might have more serious mental
health consequences than previously thought.

These too were examined by the advisory council, which found that this
was true in an exceptionally small group.

But the council insisted that cannabis should remain a class C drug,
to which it was downgraded three years ago. Category C does not
decriminalise the drug, but places more emphasis on cautions and
confiscation. Better still, it freed up more police time to
concentrate on more harmful drugs.

The new Conservative leader sensibly noted this week that "a
succession of very tough-sounding measures haven't really delivered".
Yet Labour, which downgraded the drug in its 2005 act, still seems to
prefer tough rhetoric.

It still has not learned that a war on drugs is a war on the nation's
children.