SOFTENING OF ATTITUDE PROMPTED LAW U-TURN

DAVID BLUNKETT executed one of the Government's biggest U-turns when he
announced a major relaxation of the law on cannabis yesterday.

Almost two years ago Labour, fearful of being portrayed by middle England
as 'soft on drugs', rejected most of the findings of a review of drug laws
carried out by Viscountess Runciman of Doxford. Her investigation into the
1971 Misuse of Drugs Act, the legal template for defining the social
disapproval and addictive nature of certain drugs, recommended moving
cannabis from a category B to a category C drug.

However, with cannabis the most widely used drug in all age groups, the
existing law was increasingly seen as having little credibility. The 2000
British Crime Survey found that 44 per cent of 16 to 29-year-olds had used
cannabis at some time in their life; 22 per cent had used the drug in the
last year, and 14 per cent in the last month.

Chief constables, particularly those with large inner city areas, were also
complaining that huge amounts of police time was devoted to dealing with
cannabis offences. In 1999, 120,000 people were dealt with for drugs
offences; 68 per cent of them were up for possession of cannabis. Police
who arrest someone for possession of cannabis take between two and three
hours to process them.

By recategorising cannabis as a class C drug, officers will no longer have
to spend hours dealing with offenders. Someone found in possession of
cannabis will either be cautioned, given a formal warning or issued with a
summons to appear at court.

It is likely that police will only arrest people found with cannabis if
they are discovered to have a large amount or are persistent offenders.
Under an experiment in Lambeth, South London, drug users found with small
amount of cannabis are no longer arrested but are let off with a formal
warning, a process that only takes ten minutes of an officer's time.