ONE IN FOUR BELIEVE SALE OF CANNABIS SHOULD BE LEGALISED

The Home Secretary's decision to downgrade cannabis from a class B to a
class C drug has majority support among the public, according to YouGov's
survey for The Telegraph.

The survey reveals that more than half of all adults would be happy to see
its sale and possession decriminalised or even legalised.

The great majority reserve their fear and detestation for hard drugs such as
heroin and crack cocaine. Nearly everyone believes these to be seriously
addictive and almost invariably harmful to users.

The survey also reveals a gap amounting to a chasm between those under the
age of 35 and older generations. Those born in the Seventies and Eighties
share their elders' abhorrence of hard drugs but are much less convinced
that the country suffers from a serious drugs problem or that soft drugs are
a scourge.

The gap even extends to beliefs about which "drugs" are addictive. The
young, by a wide margin, reckon that tobacco, alcohol and coffee are all
more addictive than cannabis and ecstasy. The old agree about the first two
but are not so sure about coffee.

YouGov's survey is one of the most comprehensive to be conducted into the
public's beliefs about drugs.

The pollsters began by asking people to assess the extent of the drugs
problem in Britain. As the figures at the top of the chart show, roughly
half of YouGov's respondents, 51 per cent, believe "there is a serious drugs
problem in this country and it affects practically the whole country".

Somewhat fewer, 42 per cent, agree there is a serious problem but believe
"it is largely confined to certain neighbourhoods and certain kinds of
people". Already, however, the generation gap emerges. As the figures show,
the under-35s are far more likely than their elders to reckon that there is
no nationwide problem.

The young also differ sharply from the middle-aged and older people in
wanting to distinguish clearly between hard and soft drugs. Opinion among
the over-35s is almost evenly divided on the issue. Among the younger
generation a substantial majority, 73 per cent, believe "a distinction
should be made between 'hard' drugs such as heroin and crack cocaine and
'soft' drugs such as cannabis".

Asked which drugs are seriously addictive, people agree on putting heroin,
crack cocaine, tobacco and alcohol at the top of the list and cannabis and
ecstasy towards the bottom, though, once again, older generations are more
suspicious than the young of so-called softer drugs.

On the connection between cannabis use and the abuse of hard drugs, the old
and young are more closely aligned. Both groups broadly agree that cannabis
users are more likely than others to use hard drugs but whereas only half of
the 18-34 age group, exactly 50 per cent, believe cannabis users are "a lot"
or "somewhat" more likely than others to resort to hard drugs, that
proportion among older people rises to nearly two thirds, 63 per cent.

In other words, younger people are considerably more likely than their
elders to see drug abuse as varied and complex rather than uniform.

Asked what they believe establishes any connection that exists between hard-
and soft-drug use, an overwhelming majority of YouGov's respondents, 83 per
cent, appear to be clear that the problem arises not from cannabis creating
a craving for harder drugs but "because some people who use cannabis find
themselves part of a 'drug culture' with dealers pushing both hard and soft
drugs".

The belief that pushers have a financial interest in selling both soft and
hard drugs - and in encouraging soft-drug users to move on to the hard stuff
- - may help explain the widespread support for cannabis being decriminalised
and even legalised. Almost everyone believes that hard drugs harm all or
most of those who use them.

However, there is nothing approaching unanimity on the issue of whether soft
drugs such as cannabis also cause harm. Among the young, 53 per cent reckon
cannabis harms either none of those who use it or only a minority but among
the over-35s, almost exactly the same proportion, 50 per cent, reckon that
cannabis, on the contrary, harms all or most of those who use it.

No one disputes that the sale and use of drugs leads to the commission of
additional drug-related crimes. The main issue in dispute is the link
between the two. As the figures in the chart make clear, the great majority
of YouGov's respondents are in no doubt. Fully 91 per cent believe drug
addicts turn to crime "because they steal to get money to buy drugs". Only a
small minority, seven per cent, attribute drug-related crime primarily to
"mental instability". The section of the chart headed "Drugs and the law"
presents probably YouGov's most striking findings: only a minority of
people, 43 per cent, believe that "the sale and possession of soft drugs
such as cannabis should remain a criminal offence".

A clear majority, 51 per cent, including no fewer than 64 per cent among the
under-35s, believe that cannabis should either become a minor offence
("decriminalised") or even no offence at all ("legalised"). Almost exactly
the same proportion, 52 per cent, applaud David Blunkett's decision to
reclassify cannabis as a relatively harmless class C drug. That said, the
present very hard line on hard drugs remains. As the figures in the chart
show, fewer than 10 per cent of YouGov's respondents favour changing the law
in any respect.

If the laws on drugs were changed, a large proportion - 56 per cent among
the young rising to 67 per cent among older generations - reckon that drug
use would increase. The fact that many of these same people favour relaxing
the existing laws on cannabis probably means that they think the increase
would be mainly among cannabis rather than hard-drug users.

YouGov elicited the opinions of 2,536 adults across Britain online between
Jan 20 and 22. The data have been weighted to conform to the demographic
profile of British adults as a whole.