Pubdate: Mon, 12 Oct 2015
Source: Guardian, The (UK)
Copyright: 2015 Guardian News and Media Limited
Contact:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/175
Author: Alan Travis, Home affairs editor

LIB DEMS IN NEW PUSH ON CANNABIS LEGALISATION

The Liberal Democrats are to set up an expert panel to establish how 
a legal market for cannabis could work in Britain, paving the way for 
them to become the first major political party in the UK to back its 
legalisation.

The move is backed the party's health spokesman, Norman Lamb, and by 
a former deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan police, 
Brian Paddick. It is in line with a 2014 party conference resolution 
that called for a review of the effectiveness of a regulated market 
in relation to health and reduced criminal activity.

The review panel members will include Prof David Nutt, the founder of 
DrugScience and a former chairman of the government's advisory 
committee on the misuse of drugs; Tom Lloyd, a former Cambridgeshire 
chief constable and chair of the National Cannabis Coalition; and 
Niamh Eastwood, the executive director of Release, a drugs charity. 
The panel is to be chaired by Steve Rolles, of the drugs policy 
campaign group Transform.

Lamb wants the expert panel to look at evidence from the US states of 
Colorado and Washington , where cannabis has been legalised, and from 
Uruguay, and to make recommendations for the party's conference next 
spring. He said any move to a legal cannabis market in Britain must 
be based on international evidence and include effective regulation 
to minimise the harm that cannabis can cause to health.

He said: "I share people's concerns about the health impacts of any 
drug - legal or illegal. But we can better manage that harm by taking 
the money that's currently spent on policing the illegal cannabis 
market and spending it on public health education and restrictions at 
the point of sale. That's the approach we have taken with cigarettes 
and it has led to dramatic reductions in smoking in recent years."

Lamb said the recent emergence of successful legal cannabis markets 
in different parts of the world meant the onus was now on the 
supporters of prohibition to explain why it shouldn't happen in the UK.

"We must end the hypocrisy of senior politicians admitting to using 
cannabis in younger years  and describing it as youthful 
indiscretions - whilst condemning tens of thousands of their less 
fortunate fellow countrymen and women to criminal records for 
precisely the same thing, blighting their careers."

Lord Paddick led a pilot scheme 10 years ago in Lambeth, south 
London, that effectively decriminalised cannabis for personal use for 
a 12-month period. It demonstrated that the police saved resources, 
enabling them to deal more effectively with serious crime, and crime 
fell significantly over the period.

Today, MPs are set to debate the legalisation of the production, sale 
and use of cannabis as a result of a petition to parliament that has 
attracted more than 221,000 signatures.

A briefing for the debate by Transform says four US states  Alaska, 
Colorado, Oregon and Washington  and the capital, Washington DC, have 
legalised cannabis for non-medical adult use.

It says legalisation in Colorado, where retail shops opened for the 
first time last year, has not led to a big rise in cannabis use among 
young people, but has resulted in a large reduction in the criminal 
market, with the state now controlling 60% of sales.

The predicted tax take for 2015 is $125m (UKP81m), of which $40m is 
to be allocated to school building programmes.

The home secretary, Theresa May, has repeatedly ruled out any 
relaxation of the UK's cannabis laws. The Home Office maintains that 
the long-term downward trend in drug misuse is evidence that the 
official drugs strategy is working.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom