CANNABIS SMOKERS NEED TO BE LOCKED UP

After I wrote a small item here last week about the drug habits of
the Cabinet I had a correspondence with a reader who thought I had
got it all wrong.

He couldn't understand why I, as a drinker, was so cross about people
smoking dope when thousands of people die each year from
alcohol-related problems, and thousands of others beat their wives
and children while drunk. I tried to explain the difference but failed.

Perhaps a story we published yesterday, reporting that a reputable
scientific survey showed how people were twice as likely to develop
psychosis if they smoked cannabis than if they didn't, might help
convince a few more sceptics.

advertisementAs part of the mood-music that the Brown terror is
piping out to soothe the mass of conservative Britain, the Government
has said it is reviewing the downgrading of cannabis from a class B
to a class C drug.

Studies such as this one, by doctors in Copenhagen, only make it more
likely that it will be reclassified.

The point of that, though, is not simply so that people might be
warned that cannabis is actually rather bad for them: it is that the
range of penalties available to the courts when someone is found to
possess cannabis or to traffic in it becomes that much more stringent.

Stringent, that is, if the penalties are enforced. How many people
did you ever hear of going to prison for possession when cannabis was
a class B drug, as was the case until the Labour government stupidly
downgraded it three years ago? It was even quite hard to get sent
down for any length of time for pushing the stuff.

Since the 1960s, successive governments simply haven't wanted to
enforce the law against users and pushers of "soft" drugs. And it is
because they haven't that this problem, once confined to big cities,
has now put out its repulsive tentacles to almost every town in the land.

Those who make the glib point that alcohol is worse than cannabis,
and that pot should therefore have the same legal status as booze, do
not just ignore this new medical evidence.

They also ignore the fact that people do not get bopped on the head
in the street and robbed because a mugger desperately needs money to
buy his fix of dry sherry: but they do get bopped because someone
wants to get the cash to buy some drugs.

They ignore, too, the link between using cannabis and going on to use
something harder. Many of us have drunk alcohol for years without
feeling the slightest urge to use illegal drugs as a result.

The spread of cannabis has led to the spread of heroin and crack
cocaine. Around Britain whole housing estates are economically
immobilised because of the prevalence of drugs. I was told that on
the sink estates in the suburbs of Edinburgh it is far cheaper to get
out of your mind on heroin than it is on whisky.

In his thoughtful and intelligent policy proposals a fortnight ago,
Iain Duncan Smith highlighted the devastation caused by drugs and
made the case for rehabilitating those who were addicted to them.

There does of course need to be a strong element of that: but the
Government, for all its rhetoric, shows no sign of pursuing policies
that might stop drug use in the first place.

I have mentioned here before that the Chinese way, of taking out
convicted drug dealers and shooting them, has something to commend
it. Sadly, that won't happen: instead we shall have drugs gangs going
around shooting each other, as happens now in our cities all the time.

But if we are serious about fighting drugs we do need to lock up
pushers and throw the key away; and lock up users too, even if it
means future cabinet ministers going to jail. Otherwise this poison
will never be countered - and it won't matter a jot what class of
iniquity cannabis falls into.