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Drugs reclassification: smoke signals
Tuesday June 24, 2008
To needlessly re-criminalise thousands of citizens is not only wrong, argues James Douglass, it bears no relation to the research
We live in a society where it is perfectly legal, if increasingly ‘unacceptable’, to set fire to one set of dried plant matter and inhale the resultant smoke, but doing so to another could gain you a prison term. If nothing else, that should be enough to demonstrate the utter irrationality, wrongheadedness and stubborn stupidity of our laws regarding marijuana since 1925. Dry dock leaves, burn them, sniff the smoke, and whilst you may be accused of eccentricity, you will not be carted off before the beak. Do the same to cannabis sativa and you are a criminal.
The latest issue of reclassification is simply the latest gambit in a long game of politics. It bears no relation to the research. Not only did the government’s own Advisory Council recommend against it, the figures for cannabis use produced by the Home Office’s Research Development and Statistics division showed that cannabis use amongst 16 to 24-year-olds had declined by seven per cent after the downgrading compared to a decade before.
Potency
For all that the potency of available cannabis is supposed to have increased ‘ten-fold’ since the 1960s – though serious doubts have been cast upon these claims – the council found that reported incidence of schizophrenia, the disease currently used as a forlorn hope for a sustained attack on cannabis, had gone down between 1998 and 2005. The only – scant – justification that the Home Office can find for reclassification is that having cannabis rated as a Class C narcotic “sends out the wrong message” to young people.
Leaving aside the issue of whether government policy should ‘send out messages’ as opposed to taking concrete step to deal with real problems, this is a contemptible decision. To needlessly re-criminalise thousands of your own citizens, flying in the face of all expert advice, is clearly and obviously wrong. The fact that even mental health charities such as Rethink, which agitated after the initial declassification for the links between schizophrenia and cannabis use to be investigated, are not on board would surely make any politician that genuinely had public health at heart think again.
Penalties
But of course this has little or nothing to do with public health, even were that validation for instituting judicial penalties against a pastime. It is little more than a desperate attempt by a dying regime to muster support amongst the Mail-reading classes. Notoriously disorganised when it comes to placing political pressure, and lacking public sympathy, dope-smokers can be gone for with impunity at a time when the executive is desperate to show some – any – gung-ho action.
In any case the steady increase since 1998 in recreational use of cocaine – which has stubbornly remained in Class A – suggests that whatever message the government may be trying to send, drugs users are steadfastly ignoring it. What is it that one does whilst Rome burns? Were it not for the spectre of prison sentences, this could well be Brown’s Cone Hotline.
Introspection
Anyone who has been in a room full of people smoking joints knows that the main symptoms are unenlightened introspection, paranoia, and a near-heroic capacity for talking balls. The only real surprise is that the current administration has failed to spot the common ground. It is too much to ask that cannabis be legalised, that would take political courage beyond the current legislature, but surely the time has come to cease picking at what has become a particularly unrewarding scab.
It is a sure sign of cognitive dissonance to believe that people are capable of choosing their government but incapable of electing when and how to become intoxicated. In an age when government ministers think nothing of confessing their own youthful ‘experiments’ with drugs, one hopes that the Prime Minister can come up with a better message to send than “I’m not listening, and I don’t care.”
James Douglass will be speaking at the Manifesto Club event, “Drugs: where should we draw the line?” on Thursday June 26 at The Old Queens Head, Essex Road, London N1 8LN. He is a contributing editor of Profile magazine, who previously conducted postgraduate research into drug cultures and has written for the Independent, Guardian and Spiked.
Comments
Margot (Tue Jun 24, 11:49 AM)
I’m not much of a fan of cannabis myself and probably hate the smell as much as anti-smokers have been schooled to hate the smell of cigarette tobacco. I’ve led quite a few groups of tourists through the Red Light District of Amsterdam on a hot summer day with all cafe doors open. The sickly sweet smell can be quite overpowering at times and makes me, at least, feel a bit sick.
Similarly, as the above article suggests, I’ve found it a waste of time to have any sort of meaningful discussion with a doped up cannabis smoker.
I was very pleased when it was decriminalised so that the glamorous “forbidden fruits” aspect was gone. Apart from poor old Amsterdam whose sex and drugs industry is much needed for tourism, I honestly believe recreational use of cannabis then became less and less popular.
As, indeed, did cigarette smoking before this damaging ban overturned so many lives and achieved the extremely backwards step of putting it in the “forbidden fruits” category.
Let us make no mistake about it; these measures have nothing to do with health and are there to further disenfranchise and criminalise oppressed citizens all over the world. They also provide new additional revenue from fines.
Like nicotine itself, cannabis has also been found to have healing properties for certain illnesses. Everything in nature has a place and everything should be left within its place – including the right for people to choose what they do or don’t want to do.
timbone (Wed Jun 25, 12:31 AM)
“It is little more than a desperate attempt by a dying regime to muster support amongst the Mail-reading classes”. Very well put Mr Douglass, as was the whole article. Funnily enough, I was thinking only today that our unelected Prime Minister is like the Captain on a sinking ship, and his cabinet are like the orchestra on the Titanic who allegedly kept playing when they knew that their end was certain.
RTS (Wed Jun 25, 12:38 PM)
I have little doubt that future generations will look back at drugs prohibition and shake their head in wonder.
The one surefire method of maximising the damage a substance does to society is to criminalise it.
The war against drugs has been ragin for decades with the net result of drugs being readily available to anyone who want them – and that costs many billions in taxpayers money EACH YEAR to achieve.
I don’t touch drugs, but that has nothing to do with their illegal status, and purely a matter of personal choice. If they were made legal tomorrow I would not be rushing out to buy any of them.
I view the drugs issue as the thin edge of the puritanican wedge that started over a century ago and has now reached tobacco and alcohol and is poised to move onto fatty foods.
In a truly liberal society drugs would be legal and the tax of them set to offset the social cost (drug rehab programs for example).
Doing so would not only cut a huge slice off each of our tax bills, but also dramatically cut crime and free up space in our prisons (forgoing the need to release violent criminals early).
Whilst I do not condone the use of drugs I do believe a person owns their own body and therefor it is up to them to decide what they do or do not put into it.
Steve (Wed Jun 25, 11:15 PM)
Exactly!! Who has the right to tell me what I can do with my own body? I smoke tobacco, and have had the occasional spliff, and…so what? Who have I harmed? Don’t give me th old balls about SHS being “damaging” to others, because it ain’t! Equally, a spliff now and then has never harmed anyone, other than as stated above, making them rather boring (like booze, really, although dope heads ain’t violent!). I feel that all drugs should be legalised, although as RTS states, I sure as hell won’t go rushing out and stick a needle in my arm. Why? Because I don’t want to, not because Nanny says I can’t! When will these control-freaks realise that it’s no business of theirs what we, the people who elected them in the first place, do to our own bodies. And also don’t give me the old bollocks about “The Cost to Society”. Smokers already pay enough taxes to run the NHS several times over, and what about those pillocks who injure themselves climbing mountains or potholing, or other daft activities?
This sodding “Government” makes me sick to my back teeth! Chuck ‘em out soon, although I don’t think “Dave” will be any different!!
Stephen (Thu Jun 26, 08:32 AM)
There is a curious side-effect of decriminilisation of narcotics and that is that we will have a society in which, provided that you can prove a drug is addictive it does not matter how harmful it is; you must be allowed to use and hence sell it. On the other hand if it is intended to improve the health of individuals, its efficacy and safety must be proved to the satisfaction of the drug regulator in clinical trials costing hundreds of milions of pounds . I imagine the argument. “We can’t understand why the regulator is asking us to prove that this treatment for impotence is effective and safe. Good manufacturing, laboratory and clinical practice are irrelevant. We confidently predict that it can be traded effectively through bars and nightclubs using petty criminals and will be eagerly bought by members of the general public anxious to avoid cognitive dissonance. Hence no license is needed.”
Declaration of interest: I act as a consultant to the pharmaceutical industry but have never smoked dope.
timbone (Thu Jun 26, 10:41 AM)
I attended a lecture once where it was said that if all drugs were de-criminalised, not only would they be cheaper, but far less harmful, as there would be more quality control on their content.
Kin_Free (Thu Jun 26, 08:06 PM)
I wholeheartedly agree with these comments. I disagree with the banning of anything.(unless it is truly criminal). Anything that is banned by government always has adverse unintended consequences. In the case of drugs, the only people who benefit are drug dealers and organised crime. Gun and violent crime are encouraged
Prostitution, often resorted to by drug addicts to pay for their habit, are often exposed to great physical danger, and it exacerbates the modern day slave trade in vulnerable girls. Again organised criminals are the only beneficiaries.
The smoking ban is just another puritanical step towards controlling morals – as seen by a minority of small minded people and expressed in laws enacted by government whos only real interest is maintaining power by satiating what they believe is the majority of the electorate. Guess what this will result in? Yes; an expansion of organised and violent crime
Bans have always eventually failed but the problems they cause can have lasting effects. (one example – 30’s prohibition facilitated modern day organised crime) .
ps. I have neither used drugs, of any sort, nor prostitutes and I have no intention of doing so in the future.
Margot Johnson (Fri Jun 27, 06:49 AM)
Nevertheless, Kin, you should be free to do so if you wish. With such freedoms would come greater personal responsibility.
I have great hopes for Blad Tolstoy’s international anti-prohibition movement, who are preparing a court case to take place in Holland. This is a country which has always been at the forefront of human rights. One court case won would establish a precedent which could have far reaching effects.
In Holland, mind altering substances are neither legal nor illegal Instead, they fall into a grey area which is governed by personal choice. As such it is no defense in that country to plead that a crime was committed while under the influence. Their penalties for such crimes are far more severe than here in the U.K. I have worked in that country a lot in the past and have yet to meet a Dutch resident who was either drunk or drugged up – or felt that they needed to be.
Since Victorian times, legal oppression in Britain has been unbelievably ill thought out in so many areas. Take, for example, successive governments’ attitude towards excise duty on tobacco products. To have a higher rate than European countries did not produce more revenue in the long term. It simply caused additional high cost to police and further encouraged black market trading, and therefore crime. The same applies to prostitution and now alcohol is under attack. Tobacco smoking is almost illegal due to restriction on where it is allowed
The list is endless and absolutely no good is coming from it anywhere.
Keith Bradley-Wilson (Fri Jul 25, 03:51 AM)
One other little overlooked point I’d like to raise, if I am not too late to add to this discussion?
The government is so entrenched in laws passed before the plant was more properly understood and tested, and has played the message over and over like a stuck like a needle in a record (or whatever the modern equivalent is these days: I am honestly at a loss for a modern term!?) that the least of its damage is that once you are “hooked”, this will quite naturally lead you onto harder and harder drugs because you will be in the clutches of the dealers and/or so brain-addled because of your addiction to this evil – the craving of the next “high” dominating your normal life – interfering in your function as a normal citizen e.g. having a job, a family, a life – will all lead to the fall of either the Western World or, more scarily even than that, the end of petty, pointless, political control over the populous.
We’re I ever arrested because of having been found with a spliff on me, I would be honour bound to stand in the dock and plead guilty.
Over the last 15 years I have been a smoker; usually 2-5 joints per day depending. I can do no other than admit it – I am an honest man.
Now I will be obliged, for the sake of my Human Rights, to keep challenging each and every sentence, with both myself and the courts knowing full-well that there is no way that I will choose to stop. Nor should I be expected to.
I say “choose” to emphasise that I smoke deliberately, with full knowledge of what I’m doing; I am neither addicted to cannabis nor, as the propagandist “impartial” experts would have us believe, am I “in denial” of my habit i.e. “See! THAT’S what drug addiction does to you, Kids!! Robs you of your senses, it does!!”.
Even so, as I have no intention of stopping, though not wishing to intentionally be in contempt of court, are they not going to be obliged to eventually give me a custodial sentence? And then, where are they going to find accommodation in an ever-swelling prison population? (Could it possible that there are now far too many new “Go to jail. Go directly to jail” laws?)
So how are they to house people like me, and other’s of tens of thousands of MS sufferers in the British Isles? THIS is why I will not stop!
My partner/carer has seen the effects during a “drought”; a lack of supply due to a drugs-bust somewhere.
He has seen me barely able to walk because of the then-encroaching symptomatic weakness in my legs; though still able to spasm quite violently while I sit or sleep,
How I repeatedly drop things,
How I have only worn tee-shirts and jumpers for 20-odd years because I cannot manage little things like buttons and laces.
But other than the MSers, there are also the many people, old AND young, with crippling arthritis, which it can also help. What of the Glaucoma patients? People with crippling back injuries? Parkinson’s disease?
The list goes on.
I would like to ask a question both for myself, and on behalf of the many other gullible people like me, who are not ACTUALTY feeling in much better, and more stable, health, but only THINK the pains, and the spasms, and the stiffness, the insomnia, and all those other little niggles, have eased or stopped.
Whether the effects are real or just wishful thinking or mind-over-matter, in what way does it ACTUALLY matter to anyone else DIRECTLY? Especially as that its effects are purely psychological, apparently?
I have been on steroid treatments in the past, but after my last course 15 years ago, I vowed never to take them again. I became aggressive and angry within an hour – sort of Hulk-like I suppose. It also gave me a pounding headache for days.
The Gateway Drug theory? Perhaps if the government were to actually grow-up for a while and allow limited use, surely unless all the users were ladling coke up their noses within 6 months..? Oops, that would get in the way of the propaganda messages, wouldn’t it?! Same reason the Dutch findings are never considered I suppose?
These days, as with terrorist threats and the current paedophile witch-hunt, propaganda is worth far more than that old-fashioned, pre-technology, “proof” nonsense!
“Protecting the Public” excuse won’t wash either. With both prescribed and over-the counter medicines– piriton, nightnurse, etc – I feel that despite the (apparently?) mushy-brained state I would be in, still I would never even dream of then driving/working heavy machinery/all the usual other advice, based on common sense; the same as laws regarding doing them whilst drunk. Besides, cannabis usually makes people too laid back to bother trying to do ANYTHING you have to think about.
How am I then going to be a danger to anyone else if I won’t even risk doing things to myself?
In my experience, cannabis doesn’t make you feel you’re Superman; you usually just feel hungry.
Bread and water, anyone?
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