CANNABIS ARRESTS DOWN BY A THIRD

Arrests for cannabis possession have dropped by a third in the five months
since the drug law was relaxed in January, according to early estimates
published by the Home Office yesterday.

Ministers say the estimates show that 180,000 hours of police officer time
will be saved in a year as a result of the reclassification of cannabis
from a class B to class C drug.

The change is intended to encourage police officers to confiscate the
substance and issue an on-the-spot warning rather than make an arrest in
cases of simple possession. The latest published figures show that as many
as 97,000 people a year were being arrested for cannabis possession before
the change.

The Home Office also published British Crime Survey statistics suggesting
that cannabis use among teenagers had started to decline for the first time.

The figures show that just under 25% of 16- to 24-year-olds said they had
tried cannabis during the 12 months to March 2004, compared with 28% in 1998.

The Home Office minister Caroline Flint said: "These are encouraging
figures, but we are not complacent. The police are spending less time
arresting people for possession of cannabis and filling in the paperwork
that goes along with it.

"This enables them to concentrate on class A drugs which cause most harm to
society."

The Home Office said it did not yet have detailed arrest figures for
cannabis possession but had based the estimate on early returns from 26 of
the 43 police forces in England and Wales outlining the trend in arrests
between February and June this year compared with 2003.

The claimed success for the change in Britain's drug laws comes as the
European Union's "horizontal working party on drugs" proposed that
ministers should ban internet sites that provide information on the
cultivation and promotion of cannabis.

At the initiative of the Swedish and Spanish governments the working group
is pressing EU ministers to adopt a draft resolution on cannabis to tackle
the use of the drug and the higher potency of some marijuana, and to
introduce tougher international law enforcement against the trade.

Its proposal to urge EU governments to take action against pro-cannabis
internet sites has angered campaigners.

The British Legalise Cannabis campaign said it acknowledged that the drug
was not harmless, but was adamant its website provided information on
cannabis rather than promoted its use.

It said the proposal amounted to censorship, and suggested it could lead to
the suppression of any website featuring a cannabis leaf.

The EU group is influential because it reports directly to the council of
ministers.

Its draft resolution says cannabis is the illegal substance most commonly
used in all the EU states, and is growing in popularity among young people
in most of them.