WHAT THE NEW CANNABIS LAW REALLY MEANS

IS the reclassification of cannabis as a class C drug sending out the wrong
smoke signals to young people? Will people soon be able to smoke joints
openly in the street? STACIA BRIGGS cuts through the haze of confusion to
find out what the new cannabis laws really mean.

DECRIMINALISE cannabis? Has the country gone to pot?

After coming to power in 1997 with a promise of "zero tolerance" towards
drugs, Labour is set to relax Britain's cannabis laws at the end of the
week, reclassifying the drug from class B to class C, putting it on the
same level as steroids and tranquillisers.

The effect of the change, and the police guidelines issued along with it,
will make it extremely unlikely that anyone smoking cannabis in private
will be arrested.

Repeat offenders or those who smoke in a public place (or outside a school)
could face severe consequences and possession can still result in a
two-year prison sentence. There are also increased penalties for dealing.

The reforms, recommended first in a report by the Police Foundation, the
Commons Home Affairs Select Committee and a council of scientific experts,
will reflect the reality of the enforcement of so-called soft drugs law. In
many parts of the country, police rarely arrest and prosecute 'personal' users.

Much controversy surrounds the changes -- some criticise any move to soften
drugs policies while others believe the changes are not far-reaching enough.

The moves also coincide with a new report by psychiatrists pointing to a
string link between cannabis and mental health problems. The Conservative
Party has already pledged to reverse the reforms to avoid "mixed messages"
being sent to young people.

Seizures of cannabis resin in Norfolk rose from 8.2kg in 2000/01 to 54.73kg
in 2001/02 but fell to 32.45kg in 2002/03. Last year 687 cannabis plants
were recovered, compared to 638 the year before.

Under the new law, cannabis use by those with medical conditions remains
illegal and entrepreneurs will be unable to start up Amsterdam-style
cannabis cafes unless they would welcome a maximum sentence of 14 years in
prison for drug-dealing.

The Evening News spoke to three people with a vested interest in the
reclassification of cannabis -- a user, a dealer and Norfolk Police's drugs
co-ordinator.

The Smoker:

James, 35, from Catton, has been using drugs for the past 22 years. He
began by inhaling correction fluid and aerosol fumes as a teenager, moved
on to smoking cannabis and then moved slowly but surely through the drug
ranks until he was spending up to UKP 100 a day on heroin.

He spent eight years and countless thousands of pounds feeding his
addiction, thieving on a daily basis to afford the small bags of brown
powder that bought him a few hours of peace.

Now free from heroin, James limits his drug use to cannabis.

"Smoking cannabis does not lead you to try other drugs. If everyone that
used cannabis eventually went on to be a heroin addict we'd be a nation of
heroin addicts," he said.

"Buying drugs may lead you to meet people that take other, harder, drugs,
but everyone is different. I'm an experimenter, someone that likes to try
something new, new experiences.

"Some people smoke cigarettes, some don't. Some people drink too much,
others hardly drink at all. I chose a different route to take and it's one
that's really cost me. I've lost my girlfriend, my job, my house and my
friends through drugs, but I have no one to blame for that other than myself.

"For me, smoking cannabis is nothing more important than having a glass of
wine at the end of the day. It helps to relax me and it means that I don't
have such a huge gap to fill that the heroin used to take up.

"People that have never taken drugs don't understand that a big part of it
is the ritual -- going to score, scoring, getting the drugs home, going
through the motions and getting the end result. Take away that ritual from
a drug addict and you take away a huge part of their lives.

"The fact that the drugs I used were illegal made no difference to me. Go
into Norwich today and you're probably only a few feet away from someone
that can get you what you need; it's not difficult to buy whatever you want.

"The bloke I buy cannabis from doesn't really sell anything else. Sometimes
he can get hold of some cocaine, but that's incredibly rare and he's never
offered me any or tried the hard sell.

"He's a normal bloke with a job, a kid and a girlfriend. He doesn't even
know that I used to use brown (heroin) and I'm not going to tell him
because he'd see me in a totally different light -- heroin is a big, bad
drug that bad people take. Heroin addicts are the scum of the earth, that's
how you feel."

James smokes around a quarter of an ounce of cannabis a week -- the average
amount a cannabis smoker uses, according to the Independent Drugs
Monitoring Group - and pays around UKP 35 to do so.

"Other people collect stamps, some go to the pub every night, others save
up for big holidays. This is my hobby."

The Dealer:

Bradley, 37, who lives in Earlham, has sold cannabis to his friends for the
past 10 years. He has a full-time job, a partner and two children. The sale
of cannabis supplements his income by around UKP 150 a week.

"I read all the time about how cannabis is a gateway drug and I just laugh.
It's a knee-jerk reaction to a situation that most people simply do not
understand," he said.

"Lots of people that I know would happily smoke cannabis but they'd no more
think about tying something round their arm and sticking a needle in their
arm than they would hold their hand in a fire.

"People go out and get totally drunk every night of the week but that's OK,
that's a drug that politicians use so no one gets aerated about it, no one
says that alcohol is a 'gateway' drug or that it can lead to psychosis,
even though it does.

"The only way that cannabis is likely to kill you is if a huge block of it
falls on your head and crushes you to death. The other risks are the ones
that all smokers have to accept -- that you are slowly killing your lungs.
It's a choice you have to make.

"We're very careful. People can't come round to the house while the
children are still awake and we would never smoke in front of the kids
because I don't want them to smoke anything -- tobacco or cannabis.

"I don't sell to anyone that I don't know. I used to let people recommend
me but now I don't even do that. I have a responsible job that I would lose
in the blink of an eye if people knew what I was doing on the side.

"Being called a 'dealer' makes me sound like some kind of underworld king
that wears huge sovereign rings and has minders on the door. It's not like
that at all. I buy my stuff from a bloke I used to go to school from who
gets his from someone he met when he was abroad.

"Of course I realise what I am doing is illegal, but if you're not greedy
then you're not going to get caught. I am not hanging around the school
gates offering 10-year-olds a joint for a quid a time, I'm selling to
people I've known for years.

"We have a little plan if the police come knocking at the door, but to be
honest it's not an eventuality that I ever really think about. I'm not
hurting anyone, I'm not a wicked person, I don't deserve to be banged up
for giving my mates the equivalent of a can of beer."

The Police:

PC Richard Price is drugs co-ordinator for Norfolk Police. He co-ordinates
the drugs activities for the force and provides the link between the police
and other key agencies through the Norfolk Drug Action Team, in addition to
heading various other projects.

"Obviously we will be adjusting the way we deal with people found in
possession of cannabis. They would still have the drug confiscated and
would probably be given a caution, but the drug remains illegal, meaning
that the police would still have the power of arrest," he said.

"Re-classification should make our job slightly easier because it will free
up some resources, the amount of arrests at street level will drop and that
will probably mean less police time, less paperwork...

"It's difficult to assess what the impact will be until the changes are in
place. Regardless of reclassification, we will still be looking for the
dealers who are supplying people with cannabis.

"The police's key concerns, which are in line with the Government's
Strategy, are the drugs that cause the most harm, both in terms of the
generation of crime and the physical addiction which goes hand-in-hand with
individuals using drugs such as heroin, cocaine and crack cocaine.

"This is not to say that we have lost sight of cannabis in terms of law
enforcement because although we recognise that cannabis itself is not
necessarily a gateway drug, we feel that the dealers who people are
visiting to buy their cannabis could introduce them to other, more
dangerous, drugs.

"Some people visit dealers to buy cannabis as their first drug of choice
and find themselves tempted by other substances which the dealer can
provide for them. Dealers tend not to deal cannabis only - they can
potentially offer a whole range of substances and that's what we're
concerned about.

"The drug becomes a gateway to other substances for the simple reason that
the dealer is a gateway to those other drugs. It's environment, it's
culture, it's peer pressure and it's opportunity that tempt people to use
drugs, and dealers offer the opportunity."

Some names have been changed.

History Of A Drug:

Since the first Dangerous Drugs Act of 1945, there have been more than a
million convictions in the UK for cannabis-related offences.

Up to half the cannabis consumed in the UK is home-grown. The rest is
imported: most marijuana comes from Jamaica; hashish comes mainly from
Morocco (80 per cent) and South East Asia.

An estimated 147 million people worldwide regularly use drugs derived from
the cannabis plant.

Most use marijuana -- the leaves -- and hashish -- the resin.

One British adult in 10 has used the drug in the past year, among 16 to
24-year-olds the figure is one in four.

In America, the production of cannabis now exceeds the production of corn
in value by a margin of around $6 billion.

According to the Home Office, the value of the British cannabis market is
almost UKP 1.6 billion -- other estimates put the figure as high as UKP 5
billion.

Worldwide, some 30,000 tonnes of cannabis are produced each year, in 120
countries.

The UN has identified 67 as "source countries" (exporters).