Call for drug legalisation by Police Chief [Long boring post alert]

[Ðeadßoy]

there is some sense out there this i totally agree with this get rid of all the political footballs

Drugs policy has become a 'political football', threatening public confidence in politicians, a former government adviser on drugs warned today.

Roger Howard, chief executive of the independent UK Drugs Policy Commission, is calling for a major overhaul of drug classifications that could see ecstasy downgraded. He said it was time to take decisions about how illegal substances were classified out of the hands of ministers and base them on science, rather than political and public opinion.

The former Home Secretary Charles Clarke is understood to support such a shake-up, while Professor Sir Michael Rawlins - outgoing chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, the Home Office's advisory body - is also said to be concerned about the way political and media pressure has clouded the debate over cannabis.

Rawlins will deliver a report to ministers tomorrow, which is expected to defy Gordon Brown by dismissing the Prime Minister's calls to reclassify cannabis as a Class B drug with tougher penalties. It is the third time in five years the advisory council has been asked to review cannabis and the third time it has concluded that the risk to mental health is unproven.

The Home Office said the cannabis review, and the government's response, would not be released until after Thursday's local elections.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/apr/27/drugspolicy.drugsandalcohol

 

[Ðeadßoy]

Drugs agency warns Government over reclassification of cannabis​

The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) will set itself on a collision course with the Government tomorrow when it seeks to persuade the Home Secretary that cannabis should remain at its current status as a class C drug.


The council's refusal to go along with the Government's commitment to crack down on cannabis may count against it when it comes under scrutiny as part of a review later this year. A Home Office spokesperson reiterated last week that the council's role is confined to providing advice on classification.

But one ACMD member, Professor Les Iversen, a pharmacologist at Oxford University, has warned that if its advice is ignored "it would call into question the whole function and future of this group". And Dr Richard Pates, a clinical psychologist and member of the body until last December, said: "I suspect there is political influence being put on the ACMD, but it has a great deal of integrity."

Politicians remain divided on what has become a fiercely fought issue that has propelled the use of cannabis and its impact on mental health to the forefront of the drugs debate. David Blunkett, who as Home Secretary was responsible for downgrading cannabis in 2004, is unrepentant and has said: "Classifying cannabis as class C is a much more honest approach, both politically and in terms of how the drug is policed." David Cameron, the Conservative Party leader, who recommended reclassifying cannabis to class C when he was on the Home Affairs Select Committee, is now more in line with Gordon Brown. He has admitted: "I think on reclassification we got it wrong ... the sort of cannabis now being smoked is so strong and there is such a link to mental health issues that it should be class B."

Pressure on the Prime Minister to take decisive action and override the wishes of the ACMD is growing. Professor Robin Murray, one of Britain's top experts on schizophrenia and cannabis, will warn MPs of what he says are the real dangers of the drug at a meeting tomorrow of the All Party Parliamentary Committee on Cannabis and Children. "Education is much more important than classification," he said. "The problem is that education costs money, switching the classification doesn't."

 

[Useless]

But one ACMD member, Professor Les Iversen, a pharmacologist at Oxford University, has warned that if its advice is ignored "it would call into question the whole function and future of this group".

I doubt this group was set up to always be right, so what if their function is called into question? Maybe they expected the government and everyone else to accede to their every suggestion, but they can forget that.

I dunno how cannabis can be possibly defined as Class B ffs - if it isn't C then what the hell is? Aspirin? And if it's now so strong and so concentrated (is it the concentration or is it new ingredients or treatments?) then surely it's a new drug.

 

[Ðeadßoy]

A,B,C

Easy as 1,2,3

Or simple as do, re, mi

A,B,C

1,2,3

All the same to me

 

[Useless]

Don't encourage me ^

 

[Martz]

Still don't understand why they care so much. Links to mental health, so freaking what? It's not going to stop people smoking it, so allow it's sale through proper channels, regulate it, tax it... make it safe.

I don't see any sensible reason for arguing that reclassification will make any difference or reduce any mental health problems.

What is their agenda, it can't be to just piss people off..

 

[Ðeadßoy]

their agenda is more fines, private prisons need customers so to speak, they have nothing better to do and of course a little bit of positive crap in the newspaper for labour

so today we get a caution

tomorrow a criminal record

"And so it goes and so it goes

And s o it goes and so it goes

But where it's goin' no one knows

And so it goes and so it goes

And so it goes and so it goes

But where it's goin' no one knows "

 

[Ðeadßoy]

More sense

Next week, we are reliably told, Gordon Brown will reclassify cannabis as a class B drug rather than a class C. This obscure decision, taken in defiance of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, is a vignette of modern British government. Brown has no evidence to alter what is a pharmacological classification, but is happy to abuse science to "send a message".

Sending messages is the last refuge of the impotent. Nor is the recipient of this message to be cannabis users, long immune to such gestures. It is the editor of the Daily Mail, another amateur pharmacologist who is the prime minister's last friend in an ever-fickle Fleet Street, and whose pages have been obsessed with cannabis for weeks.

I declare an interest as a member of the Police Foundation committee under Ruth Runciman, which proposed widespread drug reclassification in 2000. Though rejected by Jack Straw, cannabis reclassification from B to C was implemented by David Blunkett in 2004, though the effect of lowering the penalty for possession was reversed when a panicky Blunkett promptly restored cannabis to the class of arrestable and imprisonable drugs.

You can therefore still go to jail for two-and-a-half years for possessing it, and 14 years for selling it. Why those in the press who believe in imprisonment as a "message" should publicise the lie that cannabis use is not imprisonable is a mystery. To return cannabis to class B will do nothing except double the maximum sentence for possession, to five years. Since this sentence is almost never used, the effect of next week's announcement will be zero.

In the event, cannabis use has fallen since declassification on every available Home Office count. Though the more widespread herbal cannabis is stronger than the old resin, research in America, Germany, Sweden and Britain has failed to sustain the much-vaunted "link" with mental illness. Schizophrenia rates among drug users have fallen, against an expected rise. Those who take cannabis for a long time certainly have a 40% higher incidence of mental illness. But they also drink, and there is no evidence of causality. That said, few doctors would argue that cannabis is advisable for those with a predisposition to psychosis. (Equally it can help those in acute pain.)

As for the deterrent effect of "messages", a Mori poll for the Police Foundation found this to be near zero in the case of cannabis. Another survey, for the charity Rethink, found just 3% of young people knew what classification meant. Ecstasy is, ludicrously, a class A drug alongside heroin and crack cocaine, carrying a penalty of seven years for possession and life for trafficking. Yet no teenager knows this, and tens of thousands consume ecstasy tablets every week. So much for using the law to "send messages".

Even if the fall in consumption is not due to the 2004 reclassification, there is no evidence that reclassification increased harm. The fall was probably due to more education about the dangers of abuse, as occurs with bad news stories about ecstasy and LSD. Consumption by the young appears to respond to education rather than punishment.

Message laws are a classic Westminster fantasy. Three home secretaries have sought easy headlines by "demanding" a review of classification, wrongly implying thereby that class C was a non-criminal category. The advisory council has commendably stuck to its guns and to science, forcing Downing Street into a public display of stupidity.

Never can a British law have failed so conspicuously to pass the test of general consent as the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act. What is now one of Britain's biggest industries by value is rampant in pubs, clubs, parks, streets and private houses thoughout the land. Roughly half of all imprisonments, a staggering 60,000 annually, are now attributable to drugs. Inside prison, drugs are openly traded, and users are driven to crime on release to repay dealers.

If the Home Office will not enforce the law on those under its supervision, how can it expect parents, teachers and the police to do better? No good is served by incarcerating an illiterate drugs "mule" in Holloway for 14 years for a first offence when she had no clue what she was doing and has left four children on the streets of Jamaica. She will be sent back in seven years, after Britain has spent £250,000 turning her into a drug addict and a wreck. Not since deportation for poaching has British penal policy been so heartless and so stupid.

At a conference on the future of prisons at Ditchley Park in Oxfordshire this month, governors and criminologists from Britain and America returned time and again to the drug laws as the cause of social breakdown and its symptom, prison overcrowding. Drugs make prison rehabilitation impossible. They underpin an illicit market on the housing estates and criminalise minority communities. They wreck the political economies of poor countries from Colombia to Afghanistan.

Pseudo-tough, which means unenforcibly lax, drug laws lie at the root of so many social evils. Yet no politician - Labour, Tory, Liberal Democrat - or tabloid editor, is ready to take them seriously. All turn a blind eye. They are soft on drugs.

Ever since as a young reporter I covered the "London drug scene", I have wondered if a government would ever have the courage to get a grip on this subject. None has. Each has left in place the disastrous 1971 act. Each has allowed this poisonous market to permeate every educational and correctional institution, untested, unregulated and untaxed. Narcotics are cheaper, thrill-for-thrill, than alcohol or cigarettes.

There must be a reason for Britain to have the worst drug record in Europe. That reason will be on display next week. It is that while elsewhere policy is treated as a social and medical challenge, in Britain it is a matter of political machismo.

The moral and practical case for controlling a market that has defied suppression for a third of a century is overwhelming. Drugs such as cannabis, cocaine and heroin must somehow be distributed within the ambit of legal and medical regulation, as they were to an extent before 1971 and are slowly being elsewhere. Finding a means of doing this, given the scale of the illicit market, is a mighty challenge; but only cowardice places it beyond the capacity of Britain's politicians. All they can do is bleat out their pathetic "messages". Next week's will be one of abject surrender.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/apr/30/drugsandalcohol.medicalresearch

 

[uZi]

Very good article that deadboy

 

[Ðeadßoy]

So who really supports it

"its just cheap political points"

Police reject tougher action on cannabis
Brown plan to upgrade drug will not change 'confiscate and warn' stance​

Police will not adopt a tougher approach to cases of simple possession of cannabis when ministers upgrade the legal status of the drug to class B, the Guardian can disclose.

The Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) confirmed last night that the current policy of "confiscate and warn" would continue, despite Gordon Brown's determination to reclassify the drug in an attempt to "send a tough message" to young people about its use.

Chief constables are debating whether or not fixed penalty fines should be available alongside cannabis warnings. But the basic approach of saving police time by not making an arrest and taking the offender to the police station to be charged, introduced four years ago, will remain.

Before cannabis was downgraded to class C in 2004, 58% of possession cases formally dealt with by police ended in arrest and formal caution, while 42% were taken to court.

Campaigners for drug law reform last night questioned the relevance of the drug classification system, which dates back to 1971, and its ability to send a message.

Roger Howard, chief executive of the UK Drug Policy Commission, and a former government drugs adviser, said: "There will be no new powers or resources for policing if cannabis is made class B, and cannabis warnings can still be issued instead of arrest."

He said this underlined the muddle at the heart of government over the purpose of a drug classification system which was unlikely ever to be able to "send a message to young people". Since cannabis had moved from class B to class C, the number of schoolchildren who think it is fine to try cannabis had halved, he said.

It is expected that Acpo guidance to police officers will use different language from existing guidelines to stress the discretion that is available to constables to take more robust action in cases involving repeat offenders or aggravating factors such as disorder or evidence of organised crime.

An Acpo spokesman last night: "The key will be the discretion for officers to strike the right balance. We do not want to criminalise young people who are experimenting." However, he stressed that cases involving "aggravating factors" were more likely to see an arrest and prosecution.

When the police announced their support for regrading cannabis as a class B drug this year, Simon Byrne, Merseyside's assistant chief constable and the Acpo lead on policing cannabis, entered a little-noticed but crucial caveat to the police position. He said that since cannabis had been downgraded there had been growing concerns over increased potency, the rise of "homegrown" cannabis farms and a perception that its legal status meant it was seen as a low policing priority.

But he added that the police had supported the decision to downgrade the drug four years ago because of "the disproportionate time spent by frontline police officers in dealing with offenders in possession of small amounts of cannabis for personal use. Should the decision be taken to reclassify cannabis to a class B, Acpo believes the service should retain this flexibility in dealing with instances of possession on the street, including the discretion to issue warnings in appropriate circumstances".

The 2005 Serious and Organised Crime and Policing Act introduced new criteria for making an arrest which emphasised that it had to be necessary because, for example, the officer doubted whether he had been given a real name or a valid address by the offender. The number of cannabis warnings issued has spiralled to more than 100,000 since its legal status was downgraded; that forms an important part of the ability of the police to meet their national target for the number of offences brought to justice.

In legal terms, the move back to class B means the maximum prison sentence for possession will be increased from two to five years.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/may/01/drugsandalcohol.drugspolicy

 

[Cutter]

Ahh, one of Martz's periodical long posts about drug legalisation. I just couldn't help myself feel compelled to respond to some of his points.

Whilst martz makes some comments which I half agree with, other comments he makes are (to my mind) either wrong, or made where he deliberately chooses to ignore the facts. Whilst the current position in the UK (and my comments are confined to the UK, but might apply to other countries) is far from ideal, legalising drugs (by which I mean chemical substances consumed for no medical reason, but purely for recreation or the "interesting" mental effects they produce) is fraught with problems, some of which others have already touched upon in this thread.

1. Alcohol is currently an aggravating factor in many crimes involving rape or assault. Are we seriously proposing to make additional drugs, many of which have a far greater psychotropic effect than alcohol, widely available?

2. Comments by Martz and others that the risks of cannabis use are "so small as to be insignificant" are either wrong, wishful thinking, or at best naivety, as are comments like "cannabis is much less harmful than tobacco". The simple fact is, no-one has done any proper, controlled, long term studies on the effects of cannabis (or most other recreational drugs) use on the brain or other parts of the body. So we can't just make glib comments like "its basically harmless".

The fact of the matter is, recreational drug use is no-where near as widespread as some people say (or hope?). If herion, crack cocaine, cannabis etc etc were as readily available as alcohol and tobacco, we'd start to see all the same problems (health and social) that we have with alcohol or tobacco, only magnified.

3. If all these drugs were legalised, or made more widely available, expect employers to start introducing regular and mandatory drug testing for all employees. No-one can afford a pilot, bus driver, surgeon, motorist, heavy machinery operator etc etc to be less than 100% sober when on the job. The wider availability of more drugs will result in the rights and freedoms of the non drug taking majority being restricted on the grounds of "safety" by government and employers. Are we willing to accept this trade-off?

4. Taxes will get much higher in "social democracy" countries if more drugs are legalised. Once you have lots more people taking lots more drugs, the health effects on livers, lungs, hearts and brains are going to become obvious, just as they have with alcohol and tobacco. Are the non drug using majority going to be happy to pay ever higher taxes to pay for healthcare for those who do take drugs and end up with health problems?

At the moment, the standard comment by smokers is "I pay my taxes too, which more than covers the cost of NHS treatments for smokers in the UK". This is not true, because there is no "tax hypothecation" in the UK. In other words, whilst tobacco taxes may raise billions of £'s every year, only a fraction of this actually goes to the healthcare budget. If taxes on drugs were hypothecated to healthcare, this might be less of an issue, but it will never happen, so...

Martz made an interesting comment about how people always go for the cheaper option in one of his posts, or something like that. Some might argue that the current methods we use to tackle drugs are the cheaper ones (i.e. more prisons, more police etc). Drugs will never be made available "for free". They might be available "free" to the addict, but somewhere, all those government drug factories, licensed re-sellers, licensing schemes, training schemes for authorised sellers, additional hospitals for the increased numbers of people whose health gets ruined which will arrive with the wider availability of drugs, long term rehabilitation centres (and most addicts will relapse and require multiple long stays in rehabilitation) etc etc etc will all have to be paid for somehow. And that somehow will basically come down to "higher taxes". Are the non drug using majority prepared to pay ever higher taxes so that a selfish few can keep getting their fix?

5. Arguments that legalising drugs will make the criminals go away are pure wishful thinking. Will the criminals really give up their profitable trade without a fight? No chance. They will either move to selling the drugs which are not legalised, move to other types of crime, etc. Just because a drug is legalised and available from a government shop, doesn't mean people will buy it there. They may (for example) want to prevent an employer getting hold of the fact that they take drugs from the government drugstore by buying the drugs from the illegal street dealer.

Basically, I will not be easily convinced that legalising drugs will make the problem go away until:-

a. Proper, long term studies are done into the health and other effects of long term drug use by large numbers of people,

b. similar studies are done into the sociological effects of vastly increased drug use, and

c. people think about the restrictions on their civil liberties increased drug availability and use will mean.

Since I don't see any of this being done (and doubt it will any time soon), I won't be convinced of the case for legalisation, no matter what old stoners like Martz think (who seem to want the "cool" or "danger" image of drug taking, but want to be able to buy them cheaper and "cleaner" and with a government guarantee that "this won't fuck you up, honest, and even if it does, we'll give you 100% top of the line healthcare at taxpayer expense until you're better and ready to do it all over again").

PS - another thought which occurred to me. How many people would actually feel comfortable about their government making drugs available to them? That carries far too many ideas of Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" book, with the citizens kept pliant, docile and under control by their government who feed them a drug called "soma"...

Have to say, I agree more with Mym, Supermic and Squirrel (and Useless' first few posts) who (imho) have a far more realistic view of what drug legalisation would actually mean, once you take human nature into account. Although Martz will deny it, and even says "It's not like I want to say "Woohoo! Free heroin for everyone" ", that is exactly what his views will mean, taken to their logical conclusion. And that way lies expense, societal problems and tears on a far larger scale than we currently have.

 

[Cutter]

Please explain the negative consiquences of taking drugs rather than the buying drugs.

No offence Martz mate, but that comment is complete bunk. You can't simply draw an arbitrary line between taking and buying drugs.

If people are addicted to drugs, then, unless strapped down or optherwise phyisically restrained, they will try to get those drugs. If someone has the money, they buy them, whether from a legal or illegal source.

If people don't have the money, they will do whatever it takes to get the money to buy more drugs, whether that is selling their possessions, or turning to crime.

You are basically trying to argue that drug taking can exist in isolation from moral, phyiscal, spiritual, intellectual, societal, economical etc etc considerations and effects. It can't. Taking drugs alters people's characters and personalities, and will always have some effect on someone else, whether that is causing them to ignore their spouse or kids in favour of the fix, running someone over whilst high behind the wheel, making everyone else pay higher taxes to fund the increased requirements for healthcare, rehab, research etc etc etc.

Cause and effect baby. Every action will have an equal an opposite reaction.

Legalising more drugs is not going to lead exclusively to nice, sane, rational people taking small amounts of drugs occasionally as a pleasant wind down on a Friday night only after a rough week in the office. Like with booze, it's also going to mean lots of young people spilling out of nightclubs at 2am in large numbers. It's not just going to mean a few quiet people staggering about quietly talking shite to their mates after a few spliffs. It's also going to mean, amongst other things, young, agressive men and women, totally out of their faces and psychotically violent on crack cocaine.

I don't know if you're deliberately trying to ignore some things Martz, or just don't actually appreciate them. I hope it's the latter and not the former.

Your bottle of bleach analogy is also, if you'll pardon my french, complete and utter horseshit on so many levels, I won't bother to go into them all, but the main one is this. People do drugs because the drugs make them feel good. They will therefore want to keep chasing that good feeling, and will do so singlemindedly, ignoring rational reasons not to do the drugs.

The bottle of bleach does not make people feel good if they ingest it. More likely to lead to agony. So no incentive there to ingest bleach for kicks. Bleach is good for cleaning your bathroom, or committing suicide. The number of non-suicide deaths caused by bleach is likely to be very low in overall terms.

By contrast, I doubt many people set out to take drugs to kill themselves. It's just that, tragically, for many, drug use will lead to death or incapacity, whether or not that was what they intended because in the end, when you are taking drugs, the drugs are in control, not you.