Pubdate: Mon, 09 Jan 2006
Source: Belfast Telegraph (UK)
Copyright: 2006 Belfast Telegraph Newspapers Ltd.
Contact:  http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/42
Author: Philip Johnston
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?207 (Cannabis - United Kingdom)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mdma.htm (Ecstasy)

Home Front

CONFUSED ABOUT CANNABIS YOU BET

A headline on the health pages of this newspaper last week probably 
summed up the views of many about drugs. "Confused about cannabis?" 
it read. Well, I am, for one. It is possible to take a fundamentalist 
position and say smoking a joint is morally wrong. 

But why is it any more so than smoking a cigarette? 

Cannabis is illegal, of course, but what is it about the hemp plant that makes 
the inhalation of its fumes intrinsically more unacceptable than those of the 
tobacco plant? Smoking a spliff may lead to mental health disorders; but 
smoking tobacco causes lung cancer and a host of other ailments. Which is worse? 

Yet many of those who would defend to the last an 
individual's right to smoke tobacco are often appalled by cannabis, 
possibly because they associate the latter with a louche culture. 

This question of relative harms is one of many perplexing conundrums 
in the debate about drugs. The Government is currently agonising over 
whether to put cannabis back in class B under an index set out in the 
Misuse of Drugs Act 1970. Will this make any difference? Do users 
consult the categories before lighting up? 

True, the category in which a drug is placed makes a difference to the penalty 
for dealing and possession. But one of the purposes of downgrading cannabis to 
class C two years ago was that the Government felt it should take up 
less police time and wanted to make possession a non-arrestable 
offence. But after a furore over the liberalisation, David Blunkett, 
then the home secretary, mystifyingly decided to make possession of 
class C substances an arrestable offence as well, thereby defeating 
the point of the exercise. 

Recently, another law has made all offences arrestable, so we are back where we started. 

In the  meantime, the Government has managed to convey a message, to some at 
least, that cannabis is safe, which it isn't. Putting it back into category B will still 
suggest it is less harmful than other drugs, 
such as cocaine, which it may or may not be, depending on the scale 
of consumption. 
If there is confusion about cannabis, it is of the 
Government's own making. History is now being rewritten to make out 
that, when the decision to reclassify was taken, the evidence linking 
cannabis to schizophrenia and other mental illnesses was not there. 

This is not the case. The high THC content of modern cannabis makes 
it far more potent than in the 1960s and 1970s when today's 
policy-makers may have puffed on the odd joint. 

But they knew that 
when they took the decision to reclassify; so why contemplate a 
U-turn now? There are a host of anomalies in this area. 

The 
Government recently banned ketamine, a horse tranquilliser that has 
increasingly taken the place of ecstasy as the favoured drug of young 
clubbers. But it has been given a category C rating, while ecstasy 
remains in category A, even though the former is considered more 
dangerous on most objective tests of relative harms. What is the 
message? Switch to ketamine? 

Of course, the message should not be 
anything of the sort. It should be quite emphatically: "Don't touch 
any of it." When it comes to tobacco, the Government screams its 
health warnings and plasters them all over the packets of cigarettes. 
When it comes to drugs, it issues advice about how to take certain 
substances safely. 

The "Talk to Frank" website, sponsored by the Home 
Office, includes tips on how to mitigate the effects of taking 
particular drugs and is also open about what they do to you. Of 
ecstasy it says: "E makes people feel in tune with their 
surroundings. Sounds and colours feel more intense. A certain track 
of music can suddenly take on a spiritual significance. E makes 
emotions feel more intense. "Users often feel great love for the 
people they're with and the strangers around them. E taken on its own 
is not a drug that makes people violent." 

It says of ketamine: "It is 
very dangerous when mixed with other drugs or even alcohol. It can 
lead to unconsciousness with depressant drugs or alcohol. "It can 
cause panic attacks, depression and in large doses can exaggerate 
pre-existing mental hea! lth prob lems such as schizophrenia. If high 
enough doses are taken, the anaesthetic effect can result in death 
from inhaling vomit." 

Why, then, should ecstasy be class A and 
ketamine C? Whether we like it or not, many millions will continue to 
take illegal drugs whatever category they are in. People have always 
taken psychoactive substances and probably always will, and some are 
more predisposed to addictive behaviour than others. 

On the other 
hand, it is known that powerful health messages can have dramatic 
results in reducing addiction, as they have with nicotine over the 
past 30 years. 

A combination of state and peer-group nagging, an 
almost daily diet of scientific evidence about the dangers of 
smoking, health warnings taking up virtually the whole of a packet, 
punitive taxation pushing up the price of cigarettes and a culture 
emphasising well-being and fitness have encouraged millions to quit. 

Many who continue to smoke wish they didn't. So why can we not do the 
same with cannabis? Why the confusion over the message? One reason is 
that the supply of cannabis is in the hands of criminals. It cannot 
be taxed or its sale regulated. The principal means of controlling 
its consumption is through the criminal justice system, which can be 
a pretty blunt instrument. 

Is Charles Clarke seriously going to 
restore a five-year prison sentence for possessing a few ounces of 
weed? 

Instead of toughening up the criminal sanctions, surely the 
time has come for a different approach, one that is unequivocal about 
the dreadful damage cannabis can do to the brain and that invests the 
same effort in weaning users off the drug as has been expended in 
reducing tobacco smoking.
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman