28/07/2007 00:00:00
UK: Cannabis smokers need to be locked up
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After I wrote a small item here last week about the drug habits of the
Cabinet I had a correspondence with a reader who thought I had got it
all wrong.
He couldn't understand why I, as a drinker, was so cross about people
smoking dope when thousands of people die each year from alcohol-related
problems, and thousands of others beat their wives and children while
drunk. I tried to explain the difference but failed.
Perhaps a story we published yesterday, reporting that a reputable
scientific survey showed how people were twice as likely to develop
psychosis if they smoked cannabis than if they didn't, might help
convince a few more sceptics.
As part of the mood-music that the Brown terror is piping out to soothe
the mass of conservative Britain, the Government has said it is
reviewing the downgrading of cannabis from a class B to a class C drug.
Studies such as this one, by doctors in Copenhagen, only make it more
likely that it will be reclassified.
The point of that, though, is not simply so that people might be warned
that cannabis is actually rather bad for them: it is that the range of
penalties available to the courts when someone is found to possess
cannabis or to traffic in it becomes that much more stringent.
Stringent, that is, if the penalties are enforced. How many people did
you ever hear of going to prison for possession when cannabis was a
class B drug, as was the case until the Labour government stupidly
downgraded it three years ago? It was even quite hard to get sent down
for any length of time for pushing the stuff.
Since the 1960s, successive governments simply haven't wanted to enforce
the law against users and pushers of "soft" drugs. And it is because
they haven't that this problem, once confined to big cities, has now put
out its repulsive tentacles to almost every town in the land.
Those who make the glib point that alcohol is worse than cannabis, and
that pot should therefore have the same legal status as booze, do not
just ignore this new medical evidence.
They also ignore the fact that people do not get bopped on the head in
the street and robbed because a mugger desperately needs money to buy
his fix of dry sherry: but they do get bopped because someone wants to
get the cash to buy some drugs.
They ignore, too, the link between using cannabis and going on to use
something harder. Many of us have drunk alcohol for years without
feeling the slightest urge to use illegal drugs as a result.
The spread of cannabis has led to the spread of heroin and crack
cocaine. Around Britain whole housing estates are economically
immobilised because of the prevalence of drugs. I was told that on the
sink estates in the suburbs of Edinburgh it is far cheaper to get out of
your mind on heroin than it is on whisky.
In his thoughtful and intelligent policy proposals a fortnight ago, Iain
Duncan Smith highlighted the devastation caused by drugs and made the
case for rehabilitating those who were addicted to them.
There does of course need to be a strong element of that: but the
Government, for all its rhetoric, shows no sign of pursuing policies
that might stop drug use in the first place.
I have mentioned here before that the Chinese way, of taking out
convicted drug dealers and shooting them, has something to commend it.
Sadly, that won't happen: instead we shall have drugs gangs going around
shooting each other, as happens now in our cities all the time.
But if we are serious about fighting drugs we do need to lock up pushers
and throw the key away; and lock up users too, even if it means future
cabinet ministers going to jail. Otherwise this poison will never be
countered - and it won't matter a jot what class of iniquity cannabis
falls into.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/07/28/do2801.xml
Source:
http://www.ukcia.org/news/shownewsarticle.php?articleid=12741
Author:
The Telegraph via UKCIA
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