Pubdate: Mon, 21 Mar 2005
Source: Times, The (UK)
Copyright: 2005 Times Newspapers Ltd
Contact:  http://www.the-times.co.uk/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/454
Author: Tim Hames
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?207 (Cannabis - United Kingdom)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)

COULD SOMEBODY PLEASE SLIP THE DAILY MAIL A MIND-EXPANDING SUBSTANCE?

Any Official Statement That The Mail Condemns Is Probably In The Public 
Interest

The Debate We Should Be Having Is The Purpose Of The Drugs Classification 
System

IF YOU type the words Tony Blair, Daily Mail, humiliating into Google, it 
will provide you with 9,620 results. The nature of internet search engines 
is such that not all of these will be stories about the Prime Minister in 
that newspaper in which he was indicted with that term but if only 5 per 
cent of them were, then it would represent a striking pattern.

If you repeat the same exercise for Charles Clarke, then a slightly more 
modest range of about 600 references can be culled from cyberspace. The 
latest of these occurred on Saturday when the Daily Mail, echoing the words 
of David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, accused the Home Secretary of a 
humiliating flip-flop by asking for policy on cannabis to be reconsidered.

Being a flip-flopper is a badge that Mr Clarke should wear with honour. As 
a broad rule of thumb, any official statement that the Daily Mail condemns 
or lampoons is probably in the public interest. It strikes me that the Home 
Secretary has been eminently reasonable in pressing the Advisory Committee 
on the Misuse of Drugs to look at fresh reports on the impact of cannabis 
on the brain and to examine whether different strains of cannabis should 
have different classifications. I would also argue that none of this means 
that David Blunkett was wrong to heed previous counsel and in January 2004 
downgrade cannabis from a Class B drug to a Class C one. Information, like 
cannabis itself, is supposed to be mind-altering.

There are those, such as Simon Jenkins, Mary Ann Sieghart and Matthew 
Parris, who have taken an interest in drugs policy for decades. I cannot 
claim such devotion. I rarely think of it at all and am often uncertain 
when I am obliged to give it attention. In this, I suspect, I am, for once, 
in tune with the vast majority of the population.

For confusion appears to be the most rational position to hold on this 
matter. As a matter of general principle, I dislike the thought of banning 
things. Prohibition rarely works effectively and Im thus inclined to permit 
people to weigh up the costs and benefits of a course of action for 
themselves and make their own mistakes if that is what follows. 
Intellectually, when it comes to cannabis  and other drugs  I am a 
liberaliser bordering on an outright libertarian.

Yet theory and practice are often distant relatives. To think of a decision 
to start or continue using drugs in such cool and rational terms is utterly 
unreal. It is not the same as judging the relative merits of a night spent 
in watching television or going to the theatre. Taking drugs is a process 
that often begins under peer pressure, or lubricated by alcohol, or during 
a period of emotional trauma. Once started, the nature of physical or 
psychological addiction swiftly overcomes the capacity to engage in lucid 
calculation as to whether it is wise to keep taking drugs.

How one engages in a cost-benefit analysis of taking cannabis when one 
side, armed with sober medical data, insists that it is the equivalent of 
heroin-lite, while another camp, with its own clinical surveys, asserts 
that it does no more harm than herbal tea, is beyond me.

In the real world the claims that all drugs are bad and must be banned and 
all freedom is good and must be exercised have pretty limited value. In 
these circumstances the best approach for politicians is to appreciate that 
an open mind is not an empty mind (and is better than a small one), that 
the evidence is likely to be fluid and inconsistent, and that the truth 
lies somewhere in the murky middle.

To which, some will retort, Mr Clarkes intervention smacks more of politics 
than an elevated interest in medical science. This might be right, but I 
would put forward three reasons for a less cynical interpretation. The 
first is Mr Clarkes attitude to this subject when he was a junior minister 
at the Home Office from 1999 to 2001. Back then he had his doubts about the 
advantages of cannabis reclassification or decriminalisation.

The second is that when the main threat to the Labour Party at the polls is 
that of middle-class defections to the Liberal Democrats, implying that you 
might reverse one of the policies of which metropolitan leftie luvvies 
thoroughly approve is hardly an obviously cynical tactic.

The third is that indicating that the Government might, in retrospect, have 
made a mistake is to invite the likes of the Daily Mail to crow about 
humiliation.

It is deeply unfortunate that this last factor matters so much, so often. 
We are in danger of creating a Catch-22 in which if politicians refuse to 
switch position in the light of new facts they are accused of being 
arrogant, yet if they do, then they are berated for being feeble, 
inconsistent or weak. The pragmatic U-turn is a much underappreciated 
manoeuvre in the Highway Code of political conduct. It is far preferable to 
driving straight ahead and over a cliff.

The actual debate we should be having about cannabis, and other drugs, is 
what is the purpose of the classification system. It is, currently, 
threefold. First, to indicate to the public the comparative dangers 
associated with various illegal substances. Secondly, to provide a 
rationale for the varied severity of sentences to those who sell or push 
these substances. Thirdly, in my view more dubiously, to indicate a similar 
scale of punishments for those caught possessing these items for personal 
use. At the risk of being slated as feeble, inconsistent or weak, I have 
never understood why it helps any individual who is addicted to drugs, or 
society at large, for there to be a risk of imprisonment for that desperate 
situation.

John Maynard Keynes observed that: When the facts change, I change my mind, 
what do you do? This is not, alas, an approach that the Editor of the Daily 
Mail endorses.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Beth