cannabisnews.com: Ecstasy and Cannabis: No Downgrade





Ecstasy and Cannabis: No Downgrade
Posted by FoM on March 26, 2000 at 13:03:43 PT
The report is set to recommend downgrading ecstasy
Source: BBC
The Home Office is denying it plans to downgrade the drug ecstasy or water down penalties for cannabis possession. A police think-tank report this week is expected to recommend the liberalisation of drug laws. 
But minister Charles Clarke said: "We are, of course, prepared to keep on looking at the issue, but I believe the most likely impact of a relaxation in the law in any of these areas would be to increase consumption of those drugs. "I think that would be bad for the people concerned and bad for society." The Police Foundation is expected to call for "depenalisation" of soft drugs and for ecstasy to be downgraded so it is treated in the same way as cannabis at present. The research group's report will also recommend maximum penalties for possession be cut from six months' jail to fines of £200 and for possession of less than two grammes of cannabis to become a civil offence, attracting warnings or small fines. But it also believes harsher penalties should be introduced against dealers to tackle the use of drugs by younger people. Plea for Truth: The Police Foundation - of which the Prince of Wales is president, although he had no input into the report - spent two-and-a-half-years preparing the findings with experts, including Lady Ruth Runciman, former head of the government's drug advisory council. Mr Clarke, who has admitted smoking marijuana as a student, said the drugs debate could be improved by "politicians telling the truth about their own experience and giving their own views frankly and that's certainly what I've tried to do". He said he was aware that despite police guidelines, drug-users were sometimes tackled differently by different police forces and the government was working to achieve uniformity across the country. Extra Money: Mr Clarke accepted there was a shortage of drug rehabilitation schemes and said there would be an announcement on extra resources as a result of the Budget next week. But he rejected any suggestion the problem was caused by soft-drug users "clogging up" the system. Labour MP Ian Gibson has called for a Royal Commission on drugs. He said a wide-ranging Commission would view cannabis as "not being the major problem that we think of it now". Sunday, 26 March, 2000, 17:16 GMT Copyright: British Broadcasting CompanyRelated Article: Soften Law on Ecstasy, Says Police Inquiry http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread4746.shtml
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Comment #1 posted by mrMOTIVATOR on March 27, 2000 at 04:13:04 PT:
Ecstacy downgrading in the UK
I would just like to say that I think that the downgrading of ecstasy from grade status is a ridiculous move to make. I personally are for total liberalisation, that all drugs should be legal, and it should be up to the person whether they want to take them, because who has the right to say what poeple can or can't do in this world? However, giving ecstacy a more kooshy light by moving it down is just a move to stop kids from going to jail for giving their friends a pill. Good reasoning, but still, pills are pretty bloody bad: definitely a million times more mentally damaging than cannabis, I should know. It is just due to their wide spread use (and thus wide spread prosecution for 'dealing' charges) that they have managed to get a more sypathetic view from the people who know nothing about it: those who make the laws.All that this would do, if they were to go ahead with it, is cause more people of a younger age to experiment with a drug which fully deserves a grade A standard.
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