01/02/2008 00:00:00
Letter: Crime and cannabis
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The sole intent of the government’s public consultation on drugs seems
to be to put cannabis back into class B. If the Government goes ahead
with a recriminalisation of the cannabis community, they will discover
why they put cannabis into class C originally.
The report by the Institute for Criminal Policy Research into ‘Policing
cannabis as a class C drug’ shows that not much has changed as a result
of cannabis being in class C. The main difference is that the number of
of arrests for small amounts of cannabis has dropped.
The Legalise Cannabis Alliance (LCA) predicted that cannabis use would
fall if it was downgraded into class C. According to the government’s
own figures, use has dropped by 25%. We based our prediction on the fact
that in Holland the use among the Dutch Nationals is half what it is in
Britain where it is prohibited.
Many people who have used class A drugs have found that cannabis is the
most effective way to break a Class A addiction.
LCA predicts that if cannabis is returned to class B with the attendant
criminalisation of cannabis users, then there will be the following
results: Increase in alcoholism; Increase in street violence; Increase
in Class A drug use, particularly cocaine Increase in the prison
population (at any one time there are 1000 ‘cannabis only’ offenders in
British prisons); Increase in gun crime;
Increased addiction to pharmaceutical drugs; More distrust of the police.
The views of self-confessed cannabis users are once again being ignored
by the government despite the fact that figures suggest as many as 25%
of people have used the plant and so few have suffered from that use.
Steve Barker
Legalise Cannabis Alliance
SteveBarker@lca-uk.org
http://www.lca-uk.org
Source:
http://www.ukcia.org/news/shownewsarticle.php?articleid=13240
Author:
Derry Journal via UKCIA
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