CANNABIS: A RETRACTION

Yes, our front page today is calculated to grab your attention. We do
not really believe that The Independent on Sunday was wrong at the
time, 10 years ago, when we called for cannabis to be decriminalised.
As Rosie Boycott, who was the editor who ran the campaign, argues,
the drug that she sought to decriminalise then was rather different
from that which is available on the streets now.

Indeed, this newspaper's campaign was less avant-garde than it
seemed. Only four years later, The Daily Telegraph went farther,
calling for cannabis to be legalised for a trial period. We were
leading a consensus, which even this Government - often guilty of
gesture-authoritarianism - could not resist, downgrading cannabis
from class B to class C.

At the same time, however, two things were happening. One was the
shift towards more powerful forms of the drug, known as skunk. The
other was the emerging evidence of the psychological harm caused to a
minority of users, especially teenage boys and particularly
associated with skunk.

We report today that the number of cannabis users on drug treatment
programmes has risen 13-fold since our campaign was launched, and
that nearly half of the 22,000 currently on such programmes are under
the age of 18. Of course, part of the explanation for this increase
is that the provision of treatment is better than it was 10 years
ago. But there is no question, as Robin Murray, one of the leading
experts in this field, argues on these pages, that cannabis use is
associated with growing mental health problems.

Another campaign run - more recently - by this newspaper is to raise
awareness of mental health issues and to press the Government to
improve provision for those suffering from mental illnesses. The
threat to mental health posed by cannabis has to take precedence over
the liberal instinct that inspired Ms Boycott 10 years ago.

Many elements of her campaign remain valid today, however. The
diversion of police resources into picking up easy convictions for
cannabis possession was a waste. The rhetoric of the "war on drugs"
tended to distort priorities: the current shift towards a strategy of
harm reduction is a long overdue correction. Where we part company
with her is on her view that the legalisation of all drugs is
desirable because it would end the involvement of organised crime. So
it might, but the fact that the possession of cannabis - and other
drugs - is illegal acts as an important social restraint.

In fact, there is a strong case for believing that the present state
of the law and of government policy is about right. The way the
police enforce the law seems to be a reasonable compromise, while the
emphasis of public policy is on information, education and treatment.
The more the facts can be driven home about the differences between
old-style hash and modern skunk, and about the risks to mental
health, the better. And the more that policy towards drugs generally
focuses on the causes of addictive or self-destructive behaviour,
rather than locking people up, the better still.

The growing evidence of the risk of psychological harm posed by
cannabis means that the time has come for us to reverse one of the
positions with which - before the Iraq war - this newspaper was most
identified.

We quote John Maynard Keynes in our defence: "When the facts change,
I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"