UK Prime Minister at odds with experts panel on cannabis reclassification
Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 at 12:15 pm | By: Radical Russ
Gordon Brown is facing a dilemma over whether to overrule his own panel of experts and increase the penalties for being caught in possession of cannabis.
The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs is understood to have decided at a private meeting that it will not recommend tightening the law on the drug.
The decision presents a potential embarrassment for the Prime Minister, who earlier this week said that he regarded cannabis use as not just illegal but also unacceptable.
It is understood that 20 out of the panel’s 23 experts decided on Wednesday that there was not sufficient new scientific evidence to justify a change.
If Mr Brown decides to press ahead with reclassification, he will risk becoming only the second Prime Minister to over-rule the council, which is a statutory non-departmental public body dating from 1971.
The Government reclassified cannabis as a Class C substance – dropping the penalty for possession from five to two years in jail – in 2004.
Since then it has reviewed the decision twice, in 2005 and 2008.
Conservative leader David Cameron said: “There are all sorts of cannabis on the streets today. Skunk and super skunk are incredibly powerful and can lead to people having all sorts of mental health problems.”
The mental health charity Rethink, which gave evidence to the committee, said Mr Brown should heed the committee’s advice.
Paul Corry, a spokesman, said: “Gordon Brown should put aside his personal views on cannabis and accept the fact that it does not make sense to reclassify.
“Use of the drug has gone down since it was downgraded in 2004 and research by Rethink shows that only 3 per cent of users would consider stopping on the grounds of illegality.”
The committee is understood to have concluded there was no need re-classify after new research found no evidence that rising cannabis use in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s had led to increases in schizophrenia.
This is despite many reports pointing to a links between super-strength skunk cannabis, which accounts for 80 per cent of street cannabis, and mental illnesses such as schizoprenia and psychosis.
The prime minister and the conservatives are completely in the grips of reefer madness. The media in the UK flood the airwaves and newsstands with scare stories of the dreaded “super skunk” causing violent psychosis and schizophrenia, stories that would make American 20th century prohibitionists Harry J. Anslinger and William Randolph Hearst proud.
The reason 20 of 23 of the experts on Brown’s committee on misuse of drugs recommend against upgrading cannabis to a higher class of dangerous drugs is because they pay attention to the science, not the lurid British tabloids that want to peddle reefer madness stories to sell copy and suck up to the conservative government.
Next Wednesday, I’ll discuss this story with Dr. Mitch Earleywine, who has all of the science on these reports of “super skunk” in the UK. Meanwhile, if there are any tokin’ Tories, sinsemilla subjects, or bong-hittin Britons who want to weigh in on cannabis culture across the pond and the crazy reefer madness in the media, please email me at stash ‘at’ norml.org.
Topics: England, Gordon Brown, skunk, UK
