A COMMON-SENSE MOVE TO RELAX THE CANNABIS RULES

The home Secretary's announcement that he is asking for cannabis to be
recategorised a class-C drug is a belated concession to reality, but still
very welcome. For the first time in this country, the possession of
cannabis will cease to be an arrestable offence. If the results of a pilot
project in the London borough of Lambeth are now replicated across the
country, this change should have the effect of reducing antagonism between
otherwise law-abiding citizens, young people especially, and police on the
streets. It should also permit the police to concentrate their always
limited resources on more serious offences. These more serious offences
include possession of such drugs as "crack" cocaine and heroin, the use of
which has risen even as drug-taking among the young generally has started
to fall.

Equally welcome is the progress announced yesterday towards legalising the
medicinal use of cannabis. If the drug is found to ease the suffering of
those afflicted by certain diseases in a way that other - legally
prescribed - drugs do not, doctors should be able to prescribe it. Their
patients are often poor and chronically, if not terminally, ill; they need
no further obstacles placed in their way.

It will be several months before the bureaucratic wheels turn and give
David Blunkett's change of mind legal force. But complaints of
inconsistencies in policing from one district to the next will doubtless
decline at once now that the "common sense" approach has the Home
Secretary's official blessing.

The change of policy has its limits. Cannabis will remain a classified
drug. Smuggling and dealing will remain serious criminal offences. No one
in authority is suggesting that cannabis is actually good for you; the line
between legal and illegal drugs is being held. The Government is merely
recognising that cannabis should rank along with anabolic steroids and
certain other drugs as undesirable, but not so socially pernicious that
valuable police time should be spent on dealing with it. The contradiction
between tolerating consumption and punishing suppliers is something that
will have to be addressed in the future.

We are troubled, however, by one niggling question. Was it by chance that
such an eye-catching development was made public towards the end of a day
that also saw the Commons debate on "spin-meisterin' " Jo Moore? It is such
seemingly politicised timing that makes journalists, and the voting public,
so cynical.