Home› Politics & Debate
If you need urgent support, call 999 or go to your nearest A&E. To contact our Crisis Messenger (open 24/7) text THEMIX to 85258.
Options

Class b

2»

Comments

  • Options
    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    morrocan roll wrote: »
    If cannabis was made legal ...you'd have to grow your own realy cos you just know the baccy companies would put all manner of crap in there for whatever reason ...possibly nicotine ...get you hooked.

    I'd like to see much tighter controls on the fertilisers and chemicals used on tobacco, so if cannabis were legalised it should have similar laws.

    You can grow your own tobacco, its totally legal, all you need to do is report how much you've grown to HM Revenue and Customs and pay duty.
  • Options
    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    UK drug policy is governed by the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, but scientific resistance to cannabis being placed within the B classification predates even this piece of legislation. The Wooton Report of 1969 successfully separated cannabis from heroin and cocaine, but its advice to transfer cannabis to a class C drug and to make it a non-arrestable offence went unheeded. Since then, criticism of cannabis being a class B drug has been unwavering. The Runciman Report (1997-2001), a major review of UK drug policy, recommended that it be downgraded to class C, that it be removed from the list of imprisonable offences and that penalties attracted by trafficking it be lowered. A report in 2000, (Room for Manoeuvre (pdf)), examining the potential for downgrading within international law, found that our penalties were high compared with other countries, while statistical evidence from the UK Drug Report 2001 suggested that current policy was failing miserably. Finally, the Advisory Council for the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) was asked to consider the issue in 2002.

    To its credit, the Labour government showed in 2004 that its desire to base decisions on "what works" was not an empty promise and listened to the advice its experts had so consistently been offering. Cannabis was downgraded to a class C drug, although the effect was diluted, by the last minute decision to appease the popular press and maintain police powers of arrest in "special circumstances". Since then, the ACMD has repeatedly been asked to verify its decision by successive home secretaries and has always maintained that the decision to make cannabis a class C drug was the right one.
  • Options
    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    More recently, negative stories about the strength of cannabis and its alleged link with mental illness have abounded in the tabloids and are almost certainly responsible for this volte-face by the government. Research based evidence for either of these claims is, at best, limited, yet their championing by papers such as the Daily Mail have ensured them a place high on the political agenda. Never mind that cannabis was downgraded for good reasons - such as freeing up the police to work on more serious drug issues, preventing the alienation of young people (nearly half of whom had tried cannabis) and reflecting its different harm level in comparison to other class B drugs such as amphetamines. Never mind that statistics published since downgrading have consistently shown that fewer people across all age groups have been using cannabis since it became a class C drug.
  • Options
    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Smith's comments today that the government must be seen to be tackling cannabis and must make an effort to ensure that proceedings against adults using the drug will be "escalated" display a blatant attempt to score an easy victory against cannabis and its users, effectively scapegoating them for the wider problems caused by drugs in our communities. As was so eloquently argued by the police themselves in the run up to the 2004 downgrading, while focusing on small scale users and possessors of cannabis provides easy pickings in terms of arrest and clear up rates, it hampers police, in terms of time and resources available, in their attempts to tackle drugs such as heroin and crack cocaine which have much larger societal and personal potential for harm.

    Following his party's low performance in recent local elections, it is unsurprising that Brown would seek to court public opinion, but by doing so, in this instance, he also runs the risk of alienating some of his core supporters within the scientific community. This reactive agenda valuing tabloid driven moral panic over science and reason is nothing new in drug policy - but it does provide a new low for Brown and his government.
    0
    All cut and pasted for you from the Guardian and broken into smaller pieces for the stoners with short attention spans.
  • Options
    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    J wrote: »
    To be honest though, my GP or my psychiatrist didn't ask me if I was smoking weed. I don't think they autoaticaly add it to our record, plus I'm thinking many people would simply lie if they are paranoid (which they probably are if they are seeing the doc for schizotypial symptoms) and are worried the doc might grass them up to the police.
    They were also told that the incidence of new schizophrenia cases reported to GPs had gone down, not up, between 1998 and 2005, indicating a weak link between increased potency and use in the past two decades and mental health problems.


    Nothing to do with how many people are smoking shit or owning up to it or denying it or whatever ...
    the incidence of new schizophrenia cases reported to GPs had gone down, not up,[/B] between 1998 and 2005
Sign In or Register to comment.