Pubdate: Sun, 11 July 1999 Source: Scotland On Sunday (UK) Contact: Amelia Hill A MATTER OF SUBSTANCE IS CANNABIS smuggling four times worse than rape? The question, posed yesterday by Lord McCluskey, fanned the flames of an already heated argument and bought yet more pressure to bear on a government reluctant to enter into a head-on collision with an increasingly rebellious public. Over the past two years, campaigners fighting for the legalisation or decriminalisation of cannabis have won camp after respectable camp around to their way of thinking, leaving the government exposed at the centre of the row, posturing from behind paper-thin defences with its argument for inaction teetering on shaky foundations. Last week, the chair of the British Medical Association's Scottish public health committee called for a Royal Commission and said it was only a matter of time before the BMA voted to decriminalise cannabis. The BMA has already accepted that cannabis could help people suffering a long list of ailments, including epilepsy, multiple sclerosis and hypertension. The previous week, 18 Labour constituency parties urged the government to legalise the drug and the month before that, the Scottish Liberal Democrat leader and Deputy First Minister Jim Wallace indicated his support for decriminalisation. In April, Tom Wood, one of Scotland's most senior police officers, supported calls for legalisation - although he later insisted his statement was made in a personal capacity only - and in March, Keith Hellawell, the drugs tsar, admitted cannabis smoking is so commonplace among British schoolchildren its use is no longer regarded as an act of rebellion. Even the Conservatives have broken ranks over the issue: last February, Peter Bottomley, the former Northern Ireland minister, and David Prior demanded that the law be changed to enable cannabis to be used for medical treatment. "At present, doctors can prescribe everything from heroin-derived products to drugs such as aspirin, yet they cannot prescribe something in the middle like cannabinoid substances," said Bottomley, pointing out that 2,000 people died from aspirin last year in the US. "That is anomalous." The issue over whether to legalise cannabis entered mainstream public imagination two years ago when the government appointed Hellawell as its first US-style drugs tsar to co-ordinate the anti-drugs efforts of the police, customs, intelligence services and social services. At the time, surveys revealed that 80% of the public was in favour of legalisation - a point of view supported by the EU commissioner Emma Bonino, one of the most prominent people to raise her voice against the current impasse. More than 16,000 protesters marched through London shortly afterwards in protest at the government's refusal to listen to their views, pointing out that even the General Synod of the Church of England had agreed to debate the case for allowing medical experimentation with a substance accepted as fundamentally harmless. Last May, 44% of prison warders agreed that the personal use of cannabis could even contribute to "good order" in jails. Yet still the government's failure of nerves is doing more harm than good by encouraging them to stop their ears to the litany of facts and figures. Jack Cunningham, minister for the Cabinet Office, insisted last week that the government still had "no intention of decriminalising any illegal drugs" and said that the government's decision to allow testing of cannabis that could lead to its use for medical purposes in five years' time was as far as they were prepared to go. Under the current law, importers of cannabis can be sentenced to up to six years in jail - a sentence four times as severe as most handed down to convicted rapists - and those using the drug for medical purposes or personal recreation can also face hefty prison sentences, often leading to incarcerations of a type considered inhumane by all but the most hardened law-abiding citizen. Take the case of 55-year-old Eric Mann, a severe arthritis sufferer who smoked cannabis rather than have steroids injected directly into his bones. While steroids could have caused death or serious injury, cannabis enabled Mann to leave his wheelchair and even to start playing the guitar again. The price of clawing back some quality of life was a one-year jail sentence. Five million people now use cannabis for medical or recreational purposes - 8% of the population - and experts and laymen are now asking how this can be a just law when so many people are prepared to break it. Despite the power of public opinion, the police are not turning a blind eye - implementing their own, unspoken form of decriminalisation: the number of people jailed for drug offences rose by 19% last year to 117,000, with almost 90% being possession cases, most of them for cannabis. It costs A326,000 a year to keep each person sentenced for using cannabis in jail: wasted money, maintain those who point out that 85% of all those charged with cannabis offences have no criminal record. "We're making our children criminals because they prefer a safer euphoriant substance to that chosen by middle-aged men," said Dr George Venters, chairman of the BMA's Scottish public health committee. "People with criminal records find it much more difficult to get jobs, and unemployment is closely linked to ill health and early death. Why should we impair people's ability to have a decent income and decent health?" Last year, 29,500 Scots were charged with possessing or supplying drugs, the majority for cannabis. "Criminalising young people for cannabis is a waste of police time, the courts' time and public money which would be better used in getting resources in place to help those with a real drug problem," said Keith Williamson, drugs spokesman of the Scottish Socialist Party and the author of a book calling for the legalisation of cannabis. The approach of parliament to the question of cannabis legalisation is ostensibly inflexible but is actually riven with inconsistencies: a character reference from Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the Exchequer, helped save one of his constituents from jail last April - even though the accused had been found growing almost A3 10,000 worth of cannabis. On the other hand, the Body Shop ran into heavy criticism from former Home Office minister Ann Widdecombe for its range of skin products which contain hemp oil. The Conservative MP accused the Body Shop founder, Anita Roddick, of being "wholly irresponsible" and of "making a joke of drug-taking" - a claim which Roddick easily sloughed off by pointing out that if Widdecombe honestly believed "the sight of a hemp plant will drive Britain's youth to drugs then she must also urge the British Legion to drop their Poppy Day appeal in case everyone starts taking opium". At present, campaigners maintain that the government is trying to fight the war on drugs on too many fronts. They believe that by redefining the problem and reprioritising resources and determination, money currently spent on pursuing cannabis users could be spent on creating detoxification and rehabilitation facilities for addicts. Recent research found that at least 50% of today's young women and 70% of young men take or have taken cannabis. It is inevitable, therefore, that many of the next generation of politicians will have used cannabis personally and will probably be more disposed to legalise it. But why wait that long? If the government agrees to hold a Royal Commission, the minimum demand of all campaigners, both sides of the debate would have a proper social audit at its disposal and a debate based on the facts rather than prejudice could then be held before more young people are criminalised and more money is wasted. - --- MAP posted-by: Derek Rea