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.

Anthony King is professor of government at Essex University.