cannabisnews.com: The Case for Small Home Growers 





The Case for Small Home Growers 
Posted by CN Staff on January 28, 2004 at 19:05:03 PT
By Alan Travis, Home Affairs Editor
Source: Guardian Unlimited UK
The new policy of issuing on-the-spot warnings for possession of cannabis, which follows today's downgrading of the drug, should be extended to small-scale home growing, a leading criminologist says. Mike Hough of the Institute for Criminal Policy Research said that as much as half the cannabis consumed in England and Wales was grown in the UK.
Relaxing the penalties for small-scale home growing would mean that fewer people would buy the drug from criminal dealers. The low cost of home-grown might destabilise the criminalised cannabis market and eventually collapse it. Professor Hough told the Guardian that the changes in penalties coming into force today would create a new anomaly whereby it would now be more serious in the eyes of the law to possess a growing cannabis plant than to have the same plant after it had been harvested. He said if you had a growing plant the presumption was that you would be arrested and could face prison, while possessing a harvested plant would probably carry only a warning or, at most, a non-custodial sentence. "Simply to achieve coherence and consistency in the law there are persuasive grounds for treating cultivation for personal use on a par with possession. "Home cultivation would also insulate users from criminal suppliers, a further reason for treating cultivation for personal use as a form of possession," said Prof Hough of King's College, London. He said it would be necessary to define, either by weight or the number of plants, what constituted cultivation for personal use, rather than leaving it to the discretion of the police. If on-the-spot warnings for small-scale home growing of cannabis became the norm, he said it would make sense to treat anyone who allowed their premises to be used for the offence to be punished in the same way. Special Report: Drugs in Britain: http://www.guardian.co.uk/drugs/0,2759,178206,00.htmlSource: Guardian Unlimited, The (UK) Author: Alan Travis, Home Affairs EditorPublished: Thursday, January 29, 2004Copyright: 2004 Guardian Newspapers LimitedContact: letters guardian.co.ukWebsite: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Related Articles:Half of All Cannabis Possibly Grown at Home http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread15953.shtmlHome-Grown Cannabis is Lesser Crimehttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread15951.shtmlProtect Private Cannabis Cultivators http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread15748.shtml
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Comment #1 posted by Virgil on January 28, 2004 at 19:21:36 PT
Well, yeah
They need to get to the conclusion. It is on until it is over. Why create problems? Aren't there enough? 
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