From tomorrow even minor precautions will be unnecessary, as cannabis smokers in Brixton will be free to light up under the nose of a police officer and escape any form of punishment.

Police in the London borough of Lambeth - which includes Brixton - are trying a controversial experiment. For the first time in Britain, the possession of cannabis will effectively be "decriminalised".

Officially, possession of a class B drug such as cannabis can still lead to a five-year prison sentence. In reality, its use is so widespread that police believe there is no longer any point in trying to stop it.

Instead of arresting cannabis users, officers in Lambeth will confiscate the drug and give a "formal warning" on the spot. This will not result in a criminal record.

Commander Brian Paddick, in charge of policing in Lambeth, says that issuing a warning rather than a caution will save valuable police time - up to 10 man-hours per arrest - and free his officers to concentrate on harder class A drugs and more serious crime.

Michael, 32, who smokes up to seven joints a day, likes the new liberal approach. Although he has often smoked in public, he has been careful to avoid the police.

"A lot of people smoke dope around here," he said. "But it's mostly under the carpet because it's a lot of hassle being taken down the nick. But if all they're going to do is tell you off, people will feel much better about it. There's nothing like smoking a joint and drinking a can of Guinness in the park on a hot, sunny day."

If the Lambeth pilot scheme is deemed successful when it is evaluated at the end of the year, it "may well" be adopted across the whole Metropolitan police area, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Tim Godwin confirmed last week.

Explaining the experiment, Godwin cited "all the underlying problems around drug supply and drug use in London".

He said: "There are definitely some people, more so among the young community, who probably don't agree with the drug legislation. As a result some of the class B drugs are very frequently found by officers in London and as a result they spend an inordinate amount of time processing these people.

"We are not sure that should be our priority. Our priority is to make the streets safer. It's about focusing on class A drugs, the hard drugs, focusing on knives, guns, street robbery and burglary and to maintain our efforts to disrupt that sort of criminality.

"If we take officers off the streets too often to deal with these lower-end offences such as possession of a small amount of cannabis, then we are being denied the opportunity to do the other stuff."

So does this mark the beginning of a new, softer line on drugs in Britain? Officially, Downing Street says no. "We have no plans to decriminalise or declassify cannabis at all," a spokeswoman said.

David Blunkett, the new home secretary, says, however, that the Lambeth experiment fits in with his avowed intention to target traffickers and class A drugs such as heroin and ecstasy. Even Keith Hellawell, the anti-drug co-ordinator who has been sidelined by Blunkett, no longer argues that cannabis necessarily leads to harder drugs.

When Labour was elected in 1997 the rhetoric was "zero tolerance" of drugs. Jack Straw, who was appointed home secretary, took a hard line on cannabis, especially after his son William was cautioned by police for selling £10 worth to an undercover newspaper reporter in a pub.

The prime minister appointed Hellawell as the first drug czar amid much fanfare in January 1998. A former chief constable of West Yorkshire, he was tasked with drawing up a 10-year national anti-drug strategy.

Both Hellawell and Straw vehemently opposed the recommendations of an inquiry into drug policy reform by the Police Foundation, which included downgrading cannabis from a class B to a class C drug. Class A and B drug offences are "arrestable". Possession of a class C drug does not appear on a criminal record.

Hellawell and Straw argued that downgrading cannabis would send out the wrong signals to young people and encourage them to take drugs.

What Lambeth police have effectively done, however, is to accept the Police Foundation proposal to make cannabis a class C drug.

Blunkett's apparent endorsement of this softer line on cannabis may be born of necessity as police concentrate their resources on tackling the more harmful hard drugs.

The daunting scale of this task was revealed last week when Sir John Stevens, the Metropolitan police commissioner, admitted he was losing the battle to stem the flow of hard drugs into London.

Despite a series of high-profile operations to sweep dealers off the streets - in one, 1,600 were arrested - they were just as quickly replaced.

Stevens's report to the Metropolitan Police Authority concluded that the operations - which led to seizures worth £2.3m - had no impact on street supplies or on crime. More thoughtful and innovative policies had to be found, he said, including targeting "social users" and stepping up international efforts against producers.

If, in their efforts to tackle hard drugs, the police turn a blind eye to cannabis, what will the consequences be? In the Netherlands, all drugs are still technically illegal but cannabis is openly sold in designated "coffee" shops.

The Dutch argue that if cannabis is tolerated, its users are not exposed so readily to pedlars of hard drugs.

According to the Police Foundation report, the population of "problem" drug takers addicted to hard drugs has been contained and the average age of addicts has risen to over 30.

By contrast, in Britain the number of problem drug takers has increased and the average age has lowered, with the largest group aged under 21.

In America, despite a "zero-tolerance" approach to drugs, cannabis use continues to rise. During 1998, 18.7m people - 8.6% of Americans over 12 years of age - admitted to using it. Conversely, the war on cocaine and crack cocaine appears to be working. Last year there were an estimated 1.5m chronic cocaine users compared with 5.7m in 1985.

This is attributed to a prolonged nationwide advertising campaign aimed at young children and to the "recriminalisation" of drugs in many areas that had seen social collapse.

If the British government is persuaded to liberalise its drug policy, ministers will also have to consider any possible health risks.

A recent study by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (Nida) in the United States concluded that long-term effects of cannabis use included the destruction of nerve cells in the hippocampus - the part of the brain that is crucial for learning and memory. Scientists have also found signs that lung tissue is damaged by cannabis smoke.

Researchers are examining the possibility that long-term cannabis use may create changes in the brain that make a person more at risk of becoming addicted to other drugs such as alcohol or cocaine.

Although there are no definitive studies on whether cannabis use leads to harder drugs, one study by Nida estimated that the risk of using cocaine was 104 times greater for those who had tried cannabis once than for those who had never tried it.

This used to be the type of statistic Hellawell cited as drug czar. Only last November, he said research from New Zealand had convinced him that cannabis was a "gateway" drug. He now puts a more complex interpretation on such evidence.

"I do not believe it's a gateway drug," he told The Sunday Times - and his analysis laid bare the contradictions of the drugs debate.

"The evidence from New Zealand is that if someone smokes a joint of cannabis a week they are 60 times more likely to be involved in harder drugs than those who do not use it at that level," he said. "That is one piece of evidence. That does not mean that everybody who smokes 50 joints a year will automatically be involved in hard drugs. That does not mean that everybody who is on hard drugs started with cannabis."

From the start, his strategy called for the war against class A drugs to be prioritised. In his annual report in two weeks' time, he will reveal an increase in seizures of class A drugs; a reduction in reoffending by drug-misusing prisoners after treatment; and a fall in prisoners testing positive for drugs from 24% to 14%.

Hellawell also stepped up drug education in schools. Two recent studies show the proportion of schoolchildren who admitted taking drugs has fallen sharply. Research by the Schools Health Education Unit in Exeter indicates that the proportion of boys aged 12-15 who tried any illegal drug dropped from about 33% in 1996 to 20% in 1999, and the proportion of girls from 30% to just over 20%. This drop followed a steep rise in drug-taking from 1987.

Another survey of 15- and 16-year-old pupils in more than 200 schools showed the use of drugs such as ecstasy, cannabis and solvents fell for the first time in 30 years. This survey, by Dr Martin Plant of Edinburgh University, showed that from 1995 to 1999, ecstasy use among boys fell from 14% to 6% and from 11% to 6% among girls. Cannabis use fell from 60% to 45% among boys and from 47% to 37% among girls.

Hellawell points out that he has met every target set for him in his 3½ years in the job. He is hurt and bitter at being sidelined by Blunkett into an ill-defined "international" role. He believes he was the victim of a whispering campaign by "dark forces" - "ambitious young political advisers" whom he declined to name - who wanted ministers to take credit for drug initiatives.

It may just be that Blunkett genuinely wants to take sole control of co-ordinating drug policy and feels uncomfortable with Hellawell's previously uncompromising stance on cannabis.

What is clear, however, is that, although drugs permeate the country, there is no clear policy on how to deal with them. The smoke signals from Brixton indicate muddled thinking in government.

Complete Title: Is Tony Blair turning a blind eye to cannabis? Tomorrow it becomes virtually legal in part of London...

Drugs: Criminal But Common

More than 30% of all 15-year-olds in England have tried cannabis, according to the most recent figures from the Office of National Statistics

Stimulants such as a ecstasy and amphetamines have been tried by at least 12% of all 15-year-olds; psychedelics, such as LSD, by 6% and opiates, such as heroin, by 1%

More than half of students are regular users of cannabis, according to a survey published last week

Police in England and Wales issued 57,000 cautions for cannabis use and possession last year

In the Netherlands, which has relaxed its approach to cannabis, there are an estimated 323,000 regular users. In a recent national survey 8.1% of the population admitted cannabis use compared with 5.6% in 1987

Source: Sunday Times (UK)
Author: Rosie Waterhouse and Mark Macaskill
Published: July 1 2001
Copyright: 2001 Times Newspapers Ltd.
Contact: editor@sunday-times.co.uk
Website: http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/

Related Articles & Web Site:

Special Report: Drugs in Britain
http://www.guardian.co.uk/drugs/

Yard Relaxes Approach To Cannabis Offences
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread10056.shtml

Blunkett Backs Soft Approach on Cannabis
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread10148.shtml

Police Take Flexible Stance With Cannabis Users
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread9325.shtml

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companies can be put on trial too, same as philip morris.

[ Post Comment ]

when the war crimes trials start, we're gonna hafta find
enough room to incarcerate all those cops, politicians and
bureaucrats...instead of new prisons, let's let em loose on
the aleutian islands with some swim trunks and a warning
about killer whales...(no, i don't condone feeding
them...the drug warriors, i mean...)

[ Post Comment ]

In short,unlike American police, the British Bobbie can afford to tell the truth. Whereas the narks on this side of The Pond have a very lucrative reason not to.

[ Post Comment ]

The DrugWar bully is finally being challenged by the other kids - which have finally tumbled to the old maxim about there being safety in numbers. Enough such challenges, and Uncle will have only the 3rd world nations dependant upon his foreign aid to sing in his sick little choir.

[ Post Comment ]

Know what I think? I think British commonwealth newspapers are attempting to appease the US police-state by saying "oh, yes, we're tough on drugs, just like you want us to be. Those people standing around openly smoking cannabis? I'm shocked, SHOCKED, I tell you."

[ Post Comment ]