WHAT MATTERS IS WHAT CABINET PLANS TO DO ABOUT DRUGS NOW

The Cabinet Cannabis Confessions Are A Stunt. What Matters Is How
Ministers Tackle The Scourge Of Drugs Now.

One of the more surreal developments of recent days has been the
serial confession by government ministers that they smoked cannabis
in their youth.

Hardly had we got over the shock of seeing our stolid Home Secretary
Jacqui Smith suddenly announce that she had puffed the odd joint at
university than no fewer than nine more ministers - six of them her
Cabinet colleagues - lined up to say 'me too'.

So why have we been treated to such a cabaret turn by this Cabinet
cannabis chorus line? The clue lies in Gordon Brown's announcement
that he has asked the Home Secretary to consider reclassifying
cannabis back up from class C to its original category of a class B
drug. Mr Brown therefore wants to pre-empt the inevitable question
about whether any ministers ever took the drug themselves. Better to
get that out of the way now, since 'spontaneous' confessions will
almost certainly defuse any fall-out from such youthful indiscretions.

It also has the added potential advantage of wrong-footing David
Cameron, whose own refusal to elaborate upon his veiled allusion to
taking prohibited substances at university leaves him vulnerable to
taunts that there is a drug-stupefied skeleton about to tumble out of
his closet.

This will, in turn, sharpen the political knife Mr Brown intends to
sink into the Tories by presenting himself as tough on drugs. Along
with his declared intention to stop the Manchester super-casino, this
is part of his pitch for the responsibility agenda, moving adroitly
into the political terrain that the Cameroons have vacated by moving
to the let-it-all-hang-out left.

The pressing issue, however, is not what ministers may have done in
their mis-spent youth, but what they intend to do now to tackle the
scourge of drugs. It is hard to believe that Gordon Brown was ever in
favour of reclassifying cannabis as a less dangerous drug. From
everything we know about his moral principles, it is fair to assume
that - beyond political point-scoring - he now genuinely wants to
undo the harm it has done.

But the question is whether the signal Mr Brown has given signifies
that the Government's disastrous drug strategy now really will be abandoned.

The re-classification of cannabis to the softer class C category has
been ruinous. The mixed messages it gave about drug law fuelled a
huge jump in drug use way beyond cannabis.

Although some official figures seem to show that cannabis use is
falling for certain age groups, others tell a very different story.
The number of people who have ever used it is increasing; Britain has
one of the highest rates of cannabis use in the world; and it is
being used by younger and younger children - who don't even appear in
the official statistics - and leading young people on to other drugs
such as cocaine, whose use is exploding.

The evidence of the terrible harm cannabis does to both users and
society has become impossible to ignore.

Studies have shown a huge jump in cases of cannabis-induced psychosis
and schizophrenia, and medical researchers have demonstrated the way
marijuana destroys the brain's safeguards against insanity.

More and more cases are being reported in which cannabis is being
blamed for crimes of the most barbarous violence.

Even some erstwhile proponents of cannabis legalisation have been
having second thoughts on the basis that - in the form of 'skunk' -
the drug is now vastly stronger than it used to be.

This, however, misses the point by a mile. It is certainly true that
'skunk' is much stronger. But this is not the main reason why
cannabis is doing so much harm.

It is because so many more people are now using the drug, so much
more often and for so much longer. That is because it is so freely available.

And that is the direct result of the lethal irresponsibility of the
drug legalisation lobby in taking off the law-enforcement brakes.

The fact is that the terrible effects of cannabis on the brain were
known when it was reclassified as relatively harmless. But those
effects were simply brushed aside or denied by an establishment
comprehensively hijacked by the drug legalisation lobby which
operates under the cover of advocating 'harm reduction'.

It is not clear whether Mr Brown or Ms Smith fully grasps the extent
to which the entire administration has been compromised by this
sinister movement.

The Advisory Committee on the Misuse of Drugs - the group of experts
which the Home Secretary is asking to reconsider the classification
of cannabis - is riddled with 'harm reduction' advocates who will die
in the last ditch before admitting the harm that cannabis does.

Indeed, only last year, the ACMD refused to recommend an upgrading of
the risk posed by cannabis on the grounds that its strength had
altered little over the past 30 years.

It refused to acknowledge that the issue was not the prevalence of
'skunk' but that it had itself ignored the evidence of the harm
cannabis does to the brain.

The 'harm reduction' lobby is determined above all else to avoid
using the criminal law to control drug use. But experience from
around the world shows that it is only by using the criminal law in
tandem with treatment and education that society delivers the
consistent signal that all drug use is wrong - and without which
attempts to curb its use are doomed to failure.

Instead, 'harm reduction' advocates would have us believe that
widespread drug use is inevitable and so the only thing to be done is
to minimise the harm it does.

But, in fact, those advocates are - cynically and wickedly - trying
to make drug use itself socially acceptable.

In a report published earlier this year, for example, the Royal
Society of Arts suggested that choosing to use cannabis or cocaine,
along with drinking and smoking, was as 'normal' as deciding whether
or not to eat fast food, avoid exercise or have unprotected sex.

Another report by the newly formed UK Drug Policy Commission - yet
another unaccountable group of the great and the good which is simply
riddled with covert drug legalisers - similarly claimed that most
drug use was harmless. Accordingly, it proposed that heroin use
should be dealt with by an administrative rather than a criminal
penalty, thereby making it equivalent to a minor motoring offence.

In a study soon to be published, Neil McKeganey, Professor of Drug
Misuse Research at Glasgow University, predicts that the Government's
'harm reduction' strategy will actively encourage young people to use
drugs seen as less harmful, and lead inescapably to drug legalisation.

Dismayingly, a large number of people who should know better -
including some senior police officers - have come to believe that
drugs should indeed be legalised. The socalled 'war on drugs', they
say, has failed.

But the fact is that there never was a coherent 'war on drugs' but
instead a muddled and incoherent strategy of targeting hard but not
soft drugs, and dealers rather than users.

No wonder it failed. Drug use can be tackled successfully only if the
message is clear, consistent and totally uncompromising: all drug use
is totally beyond the pale because no society can tolerate the harm it does.

Legalisation would vastly increase the numbers addicted to drugs. No
amount of Cabinet confessions or political pointscoring alters the
fact that 'harm reduction' is taking us down that catastrophic road.
Mr Brown must unequivocally change direction.