cannabisnews.com: Police To Take Flexible Stance with Cannabis Users


cannabisnews.com: Police To Take Flexible Stance with Cannabis Users





Police To Take Flexible Stance with Cannabis Users
Posted by FoM on April 10, 2001 at 14:04:27 PT
By Jimmy Burns, Social Affairs Correspondent
Source: Financial Times 
Police are being given the go-ahead to adopt a more flexible approach towards cannabis use in order to free additional resources to combat hard drugs. Ministers have not opposed a pilot scheme being developed in south London where police are cautioning people caught in possession of cannabis, rather than arresting them. According to area commander Brian Paddick, one of the Metropolitan Police's modernisers, the policy is aimed at saving time and using more officers on the streets to deal with the threat of more addictive and crime-related drugs such as crack. 
Despite meeting resistance from some Conservative party politicians, Whitehall insiders predict the practice will spread among the police, as the government's drugs policy becomes more focused and area commanders seek to make effective use of their budgets in bringing crime rates down. The government is raising the profile of its anti-drugs strategy, drawing sports stars such as Sir Alex Ferguson, manager of Manchester United football club, into the next phase of its Positive Futures Campaign, aimed at steering young people away from drug dealers. Gordon Brown, the chancellor, Jack Straw, the home secretary, and cabinet minister Ian McCartney on Monday detailed a Ł300m package which will give police commanders and community leaders flexibility over the application of funds. More than 370 police and local authority-led crime and disorder reduction partnerships in England and Wales will get Ł220m from funding announced in last month's Budget to deliver local strategies, capable of generating the support and involvement of the community. Source: Financial Times (UK)Author: Jimmy Burns, Social Affairs CorrespondentPublished: April 9 2001Copyright: The Financial Times Limited 2001Website: http://www.ft.com/Contact: letters.editor ft.comRelated Articles:Police Take Soft Line on Cannabis http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread9172.shtmlEx-Drugs Squad Cop in Cannabis Callhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread8259.shtml 
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Comment #4 posted by kaptinemo on April 11, 2001 at 09:23:43 PT:
But another reason may exist, perhaps?
Let's not forget that a few years ago, Straw's very own son was implicated in the sale of hashish to a reporter. There was a hell of a stink in the press over there about how his son got off scott free and others rot in jail for the same offense.Straw shrugged it off, but not without some major scrapes to his political hide. And his party has been trying to make like the bulldog mouth/puppydog ass on the DrugWar ever since. Lots of DrugWarrior noise up front, quiet re-tooling in the background.I've said it before: when the upper class of any nation are inconvenienced by the laws that they make for the lower classes, the laws are changed. When it's their kids that get pitched in the pokey instead of "those people" who are supposed to be oppressed in such a manner, then the laws get revamped. We are witnessing excatly this kind of social dynamic in operation.
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Comment #3 posted by CannabisMythsExposed on April 11, 2001 at 04:22:28 PT
Hope Dan's "gut feeling" is right!
It should be remembered that this will initially only be effective in one very small area of one city - London. It's business as usual everywhere else in the UK, and just like in the US, the government are doing everything in their power to stall on medical cannabis.We will win in the end but we've still got a long way to go.
!!! PETITION!!! STOP ARRESTING MEDICAL CANNABIS PATIENTS !!!! 
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Comment #2 posted by Dan Hillman on April 10, 2001 at 18:07:43 PT
Call it a "gut feeling", 
but I believe that the UK will be one of the next places in which the drug war will face a major setback. The winds of cannabis legalization are sweeping over Europe and B'liar has less reason to toady to the US since George "Europe? where's that?" Dubyah took office.  When I was in Amsterdam last year, British travellers were one of the two main groups represented in the coffee shops (the other being yanks, natch). And, let's face it, when you can spend a few pounds for a ferry ride across the channel to smoke all you want completely legally, that's edging towards defacto legalization anyway.http://www.cityweb.co.uk/cannabis/
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Comment #1 posted by J.R. Bob Dobbs on April 10, 2001 at 14:48:17 PT
Can't you hassle the people more cost-effectively?
  This is a step towards ending the war, but it is not the end by any means. The full benefits of cannabis - medically and to society at large - will only come with full legalization, when you can buy it like any other legal commodity and not be subject to undue harassment. The only reason the bureaucrats approved the measure in this article is because it is more cost-effective. Well, how about getting the tax revenue that cannabis surely would provide? And all this talk about how one country with legalization would lead to "drug tourism"... the UK, right about now, probably considers any tourist a good tourist. And they sure wouldn't flock to the UK from Belgium, Holland, or Switzerland...
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