A CRAZY POLICY ON CANNABIS

The Government Policy On Cannabis Is Like Announcing That It Is Legal To
Eat In A Restaurant But The Chef And Waiters Will Go To Prison

It is hard to imagine a crazier government policy than David Blunkett's
decision to reclassify cannabis. Downgrading it to a category C drug is an
unequivocal liberalisation, yet the Home Secretary is also planning to
double penalties for dealers rather like announcing that it is legal for
diners to eat in a restaurant, but the chef and waiters can expect to go to
prison for a very long time.

In parts of the country where the police are following the new Home Office
guidelines and the absence of consistent enforcement is one of the
problems people caught in possession of small amounts will merely be
cautioned, while suppliers are to get much heavier sentences. How anyone
could have come up with such a patently absurd "reform" is beyond me,
although it expresses the Manichean outlook I have come to expect from this
Government.

It is not so much a moral judgment, I suspect, as a pragmatic one: dealers
are very bad people, and can be banged up with impunity, but there is no
electoral advantage to be had by dishing out criminal records to hundreds
of thousands of middle-class kids who use the drug. One of the few benefits
of this preposterous compromise, apart from making it a little less
difficult for people with multiple sclerosis to get hold of a substance
that appears to alleviate their symptoms, is that it has stimulated a
debate about the effects of soft drugs.

The latest voice to be raised is that of Susan Greenfield, Professor of
Pharmacology at Oxford University, who argued at the weekend that relaxing
the law on cannabis is a mistake. Rejecting the widely-held belief that
cannabis is less harmful than alcohol or tobacco, Greenfield suggested that
it may cause lasting damage to the brain. She linked it with schizophrenia,
estimated that half the young people attending psychiatric clinics may be
regular or occasional users, and claimed that it can cause psychotic episodes.

After enumerating these alarming possibilities, she went on to ask: "Do we
really want a drug-culture lifestyle in the UK?" The problem with this line
of argument is that we already have one. Prohibition of cannabis, like the
ban on alcohol in the US in the 1920s, must be one of the most
spectacularly unsuccessful laws ever enacted; anecdotal evidence, and
surveys showing that huge numbers of people in this country have tried the
drug demonstrate that the law has done little to curb supply.

This is not to cast doubt on the proposition that cannabis has harmful
effects. In recent years, I have heard the term "cannabis psychosis" used
more and more frequently to describe mental breakdowns apparently induced
by the drug, and I suspect that Greenfield is right to link it to psychotic
attacks in otherwise healthy people. For the most part, though, we are
talking about heavy long-term use. While the medical consequences may be
different from alcohol and tobacco, they raise similar issues.

All these substances are damaging to a greater or lesser degree. When I
returned home after my first term at university and mentioned that I had
smoked a couple of experimental joints, my father exploded and threatened
to march me down to the local police station. I never developed a drug
habit but he was completely unable to give up cigarettes, succumbing to
lung cancer at the tragically early age of 63.

Cigarette smoking kills around half the people who take it up, but the
habit is so entrenched as to make a ban totally unworkable. In the
circumstances, the proper course of action is to regulate its sale and
impose heavy taxes that go some way towards paying for smokers' treatment
on the NHS. The arguments for criminalising alcohol and cannabis are much
weaker, given that the damage associated with excessive consumption has to
be balanced against the innocent pleasure provided by moderate use, a point
often overlooked by out-and-out abolitionists.

At the moment, the law relating to cannabis in this country offers the
worst of all worlds: contradictory penalties for use and supply, a complete
absence of quality control and almost unlimited opportunities for organised
crime. We already have a thriving drug culture, whether we like it or not,
and opinion is polarised between people who argue that cannabis is
completely harmless and those who see it as the first step towards moral,
physical and mental disintegration.

The truth about the drug almost certainly lies somewhere in between, as it
does with alcohol. There is an urgent need for users to be better informed,
which is why Greenfield's intervention is welcome, even if her conclusions
are flawed. Above all, we need clarity from the government, instead of
ill-judged initiatives from a Home Secretary who does not seem to know
whether he is hard or soft on drugs.