This obstinacy comes at a time when the relevant laws are not even being rigorously enforced. The decision of the police in the London Borough of Lambeth not to arrest those caught with cannabis is a recent example. The situation is absurd. Smoke a joint in Brixton and you will not face arrest. Smoke a joint in Blackburn or Bourne- mouth and you can expect a swift trip down to your local police station. The Government is defending laws that are becoming discredited on the ground, placing the law as a whole in disrepute.

New Labour is looking old-fashioned. The Conservatives are showing signs of a more radical approach – in the rebellious response of the Shadow Cabinet last October to Ann Widdecombe's call for even more Draconian measures against cannabis users and in Michael Portillo's suggestion that legalisation would be part of a policy review. Charles Kennedy deserves credit in calling for a commission to consider the legalisation of cannabis when he first became leader of the Liberal Democrats. But even these relatively bold politicians are too cautious. A commission is a convenient way of throwing the issue into the distance.

The main obstacle to the legalisation of cannabis appears to be that it would provide a gateway to harder drugs. But our poll suggests that the vast majority of people make a distinction between smoking cannabis and taking harder drugs. Nearly all those supporting the legalisation of cannabis still want hard drugs to be banned. Indeed, nearly all cannabis users support a ban on hard drugs.

In reality, legalising cannabis would make a descent into hard drugs much less likely. As Lilley argues in his pamphlet, the current situation "brings the soft-drug user into contact with the hard-drug pusher". A key objective of reforming the cannabis laws would be to break the contact between soft-drug users and the criminals who push drugs. For this reason Lilley is right to propose that cannabis is available in licensed premises. This is a preferable alternative to ad hoc police activities or the reduced penalties suggested in Lady Runciman's report last year. In either of these cases cannabis seekers would still come into contact with those selling harder drugs. Under Lilley's proposal they would come into contact with the owner of an off licence.

Public opinion has shifted towards this newspaper's position over the past four years. Almost certainly, that trend will continue. Our poll finds that support for legalisation is strongest among those groups that have used cannabis or who know cannabis users. They tend to be the young and middle-aged. Soon the Sixties' generation will be pensioners. At that point the young and not so young will be united in their acquaintance with cannabis. Over the next two decades the pressure for the lifting of the ban will be overwhelming.

In the more immediate future, the Government might be tempted to use a royal commission on cannabis as an excuse for doing nothing. The establishment of a commission would look radical without necessarily changing anything – a combination that Tony Blair has found appealing in the past. Mr Blair should also resist an alternative third way of legalising cannabis for medicinal purposes. That is another convenient diversion. It is time for political leaders to face up to reality. Cannabis is used for recreational purposes. While the war on hard drugs should be intensified, the Government must lift the ban on cannabis.

Complete Title: We've Said It Once. We Say It Again: Legalise Cannabis

Source: Independent (UK)
Published: July 8, 2001
Copyright: 2001 Independent Newspapers (UK) Ltd.
Contact: letters@independent.co.uk
Website: http://www.independent.co.uk/

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Is it any wonder why today's bankers are privately very worried about legalization? Over one-third of the money circulating in the system is 'dirty' money from illicit drug transactions. If a major country went decrim, the money would stop pouring in. Banks that are over stretched on their loans (on the expectation that they could keep extending more and more credit if the 'dirty money' would keep flowing in) would have to call in their 'legitimate' loans, starting bank runs and everything that goes with it. Not a pretty scenario.

Actually, it's a combination of propaganda and silence. I have yet to see a news report on TV about Canada, Belgium, or the UK. If a country legalizes it, the only place I've seen it outside of reform-movement websites has been a brief blurb in my local paper. I am, however, making quite a pile of little blurbs from that paper for a scrapbook... But take a look at the BBC website and try to find anything about the movement towards legalization over there. It's on there, but you have to know about it already, and be very tenacious to find it. Now if there was a "study" showing how cannabis grows hair on your elbows, it'd be very very easy to find in any major news outlet. Absurd, isn't it?

But this time, it's make or break. Because there's a Hell of a lot more at stake here than just the 'right' for cannabis consumers to light up in peace.

Given the increasing propensity for law enforcement to use privacy-destroying technology against the very people who paid for it with their tax dollars, things are ripe for tyranny of the worst sort. Given the (Ah-hem!) 'Supreme' Court's tendency to trample on individual rights in favor of a corporate state, that tyranny is almost assured. Remove those factors and the LEO/Judicial establishment hasn't a single leg to stand on vis-a-vis sticking it's bulbous, alcohol-ruptured-veined nose in your business.

I've said it before: it's a race between Freedom and Tyranny, and it's neck and neck right now. Freedom has pulled out ahead in other countries sick and tired of explaining to their own people why they have to follow America's Pied Piper. Especially when people in those same countries have had experience with fascist governments that supposedly operated with 'for your own good' as their guiding principles. They know the truth about where such insanity leads you, because many of those still living have been there.

As the kids say now-a-days: Been there, done that...and no thanks!

But Tyranny has gained a foot-hold on these shores and because most people in America suffer from the "It can't happen here!" syndrome, they don't recognize it for what it is, or how it infects a supposedly free nation with it's toxins. And sadly, some people like Joyce and Frances play right into the hands that will eventually strangle them, despite their earnest assistance that they provide those hands with...

But we here know. We know all too well.

The issues behind the re-legalization of cannabis are far more important than 'just' sick people being able to use their medicine of choice, or you and me enjoying a pipe after work.

Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself; and where they are, they should be changed. Nowhere is this more clear than in the laws against possession of marijuana in private for personal use. . . . The National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse concluded five years ago that marijuana use should be decriminalized, and I believe it is time to implement those basic recommendations.

We have waited for 24 years since that statement was made, and all that has happened in the United States is a continual escalation of the war on some drugs. Part of the blame can be placed on Keith Stroup of NORML, whose hotheaded antics caused a rift to form between the Carter administration and cannabis law reformers. But some of the blame must also be placed in the mainstream American public that became so embroiled in selfish ambition during the 1980s and 1990s that the welfare of those less fortunate raised little or no concern whatsoever.

There is a reason why the 1980s are referred to as the "me" decade. In the 1980s, the American public allowed itself to be taken in by Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, and now Bush Jr. Each of the last four presidents have maintained the exact same message: neglect your neighbors in the name of selfish ambition; destroy your neighbors if it means self-advancement. And this message required a scapegoat upon which the country could blame all of the problems associated with its selfish behavior: enter the drug user.

The drug war has not demonized certain drugs as much as it has demonized users of certain drugs. In addition, the drug war has, in large part, fed the modern American economy, filtering enormous profits from a multibillion-dollar illegal industry through all sectors of the economy, stimulating jobs in the prison industry, providing a source of cheap prison labor to a number of other industries, and preserving the jobs of those who benefit from the fact that these drugs are illegal, among them the pharmaceutical, petrochemical and lumber industries.

But I believe we now stand on the brink of a prolonged economic recession, if not an all-out depression. The country is in the same position it was in during the 1920s. Early in that decade, alcohol was prohibited, the economy was booming, violence associated with the alcohol industry increased at an alarming rate, and while the rich could get away with obtaining the illegal booze, the poor suffered the harshest penalties. It didn't take long, however, before the economy crashed (thanks in large part to an over-inflated stock market), unemployment soared (have you seen the latest numbers on unemployment?), and an increasing number of people began to look for a quick sedative to ease their worried minds. Alcohol use had decreased during the first year after prohibition, but it increased with a vengeance every year thereafter, and I believe this was partially due to the growing economic worries among America's working class. If one thing is clear about Americans--perhaps all humans--it is this: we tend to seek out short-term solutions to help us cope with our long-term problems.

During the 1980s, the decade in which the war on some drugs began to take its present form, the economy did, in fact, improve, and some of that good economy carried over into the 1990s, largely because of our recent technological revolution. But technology is now at a plateau, and the economy is slowing down. The people are restless, more are unemployed now than have been for several years (4.9%) and many are once again searching for short-term solutions to help them cope with their long-term problems. This is not a sickness; it is a normal part of the human psyche. And, wouldn't you know it, just as alcohol prohibition began to be called into question during the late 1920s, and increasingly into the 1930s--eventually ending with the passage of the 21st amendment, so the drug legalization question is coming to the fore, and not just in America, but in the entire world.

I believe that the reason we have not felt the upsurge in public support for cannabis legalization in America that is so palpable in other countries is that citizens of other countries are more globally and economically aware. They look to America, see the proverbial handwriting on the wall, and they are looking for ways to change what they see before it is too late.

Meanwhile, most Americans are content to be spoonfed propaganda through their TV sets, never questioning what they hear and willingly regurgitating the utter nonsense their heroes on the evening news tell them. News anchors have become blind guides, puppets for industry, mouthpieces of the New World Order promised by Skull and Bonesman George Herbert Walker Bush and faithfully carried out by every president since Reagan, including Reagan.

But in America, too, we are experiencing a grass-roots groundswell of support for cannabis legalization. Three-fourths of America's citizens believe marijuana should be legally available, and at least a third (and in some states nearly half) believe that we need outright legalization of cannabis. These numbers are increasing as of late, and the more pressure we get from outside the United States, the more likely it will be that the U.S. will have to change its ways.

I don't predict that some major event will suddenly cause the end of cannabis prohibition. I believe that, in fact, we will achieve a slow but steady progression toward sanity, fueled in part by organizations like The Lindesmith Center-Drug Policy Foundation, NORML, MPP, Map Inc., and others, in part by news groups like Cannabis News, but mostly by those who make up these groups and others who, in the face of tyranny, are not afraid to raise their voices above the din of the evening news, are not afraid to speak out not only for their own rights, but for the larger concepts of freedom, liberty, and true justice for everyone.

When we read that some country across the Atlantic is nearing a consensus that cannabis should be legalized; when we read that out neighbor to the north has already in place a system (albeit crude) whereby medical patients can legitimately obtain cannabis for relief of their symptoms; when we read that states are passing initiative after initiative that consistently call for a relaxation of America's war on some drugs; and when we read that politicians in America and in countries afar are beginnning to speak out in the name of freedom from political slavery, it is then that we must not sit back on our laurels and expect the process to take care of itself. It is then that we must push forward, must continue our steady progression, and never forget that many have suffered, many have died so that we might reap the fruits of their labor.

Let's not let their memories down. In 1977 we had almost won, but we let down our guard. This time, we must push forward until the job is complete, never again to be reversed. But let's not count on it. Instead, let's make it happen this time--for our own good, as well as for the good of the country, for the good of the world.

There as here, the people are far ahead of the pols. But the pols are concerned about how this will 'appear' to the public.

The public is speaking. But the pols have stuffed their ears with anti scheisse for so long, they've practically gone deaf.

I read somewhere - here, I believe - that after Custer was taken down at Little Big Horn, the Indian women came out and stuck long needles in his corpse's ears to unclog them so that his spirit could hear what the Indians had been trying to tell him all along.

[While the war on hard drugs should be intensified, the Government must lift the ban on cannabis.]

The dutch (with the most successful policy) have already said that the focus shouldn't be switched to an all out war on hard drugs.

However, I'm glad the cannabis herb (not drug) is getting the treatment it deserves.

Peace.