CLOUDS OF UNREASON

Home Secretary's Proposals On Cannabis Are Confused

David Blunkett plans to change the law to reclassify cannabis as a less
dangerous drug, making possession no longer an arrestable offence.

The home secretary does not have haste as an excuse for legislation that
looks, at best, sloppily framed.

Cannabis has been in the intermediate, class B, category for drugs since
1972. In the intervening years there has been much debate about whether it
should be downgraded to the least harmful, class C, category. Mr Blunkett
believes it should be. He might be right to think that keeping cannabis as
a class B drug sends out the wrong message to young people who believe
amphetamines, also class B drugs, are in the same league. They are much
more dangerous.

Breaking the link with cannabis might make that point.

Cannabis might not inevitably lead to harder drugs, as Mr Blunkett has been
advised.

Among teenagers, smoking and alcohol might be more potent gateways to
dangerous drugs among teenagers.

Keith Halliwell, the former drugs czar who has resigned as a government
drugs adviser over the planned law change, believes, however, that cannabis
users are more likely to end up on hard drugs.

The jury is still out. There are many uncertainties and the law should not
be changed until they have been clarified.

But the home secretary believes he is on firm ground because changing the
law will free up valuable police time that will be better spent tackling
drug dealers and hard drugs.

That might be so in England and Wales, where police can caution people in
possession of small amounts of cannabis. If they comply with the police
they will be able to go on their way.

That will not apply in Scotland, where police do not have the sanction of a
caution. They will still have to confiscate cannabis and file a report to
the procurator fiscal.

As the new law will probably cause more people to use cannabis freely the
likelihood is that it will take up more, not less, police time. The same
will go for the fiscal service, already failing to cope with the burden of
cases needing processed.

The last thing it needs is another burden, particularly a trivial one
compared with the serious criminal cases that do not make it to court in time.

Mr Blunkett also plans to increase jail sentences for convicted drug
dealers to 14 years.

That includes cannabis dealers, despite the fact that, based on the home
secretary's own assertions, it is not the scourge of society heroin and
cocaine are. But, for the purposes of sentencing, it is as big a menace. If
that is the case, why soften the law? Cannabis cafes might have been an
answer, but these have been ruled out. So dealers who sell cannabis and are
convicted face as lengthy a jail term as traffickers who undermine the
country's well-being. Meanwhile, the cannabis purchaser faces only a
caution (because, according to the home secretary's re-classification, it
is only potentially harmful). It does not make sense.

This is bad law, particularly for Scotland.