Now experts say cannabis should be legal
Now experts say cannabis should be legal
Published Date: 10 June 2008
By David Maddox
Scottish Political Correspondent
CANNABIS should be legalised and taxed, an influential Scottish think tank
recommended yesterday, just weeks after the Government hardened its attitude
towards the drug, reclassifying it as a class B substance.
The Scottish Futures Forum yesterday published a report on drugs and alcohol in
Scotland, saying one way to tackle the problem of addiction to harder drugs was
to tax and regulate cannabis.
Forum chairman Frank Pignatelli said studies of San Francisco, where cannabis is
illegal, and the Netherlands, where it is decriminalised, showed that the idea
is worth considering because it breaks the link with class A drugs. In the
Netherlands, only 17 per cent of cannabis sellers were also selling drugs such
as crack, cocaine and heroin, while in San Francisco it was more than 50 per
cent.
The idea was one of several aimed at halving drug addiction in Scotland by 2025.
This included introducing shooting galleries, where heroin addicts can go and
take drugs in supervised surroundings, as revealed in yesterday's Scotsman.
The forum's vice-chairman, Tom Wood, former deputy chief constable of Lothian
and Borders, said that there are "no easy options" and insisted that a different
and sometimes uncomfortable approach was needed to tackle Scotland's drug
problems.
He said: "Where we are now is living in a country where there is one of the
highest prevalences for drugs.
"We're living in a country where we have the highest drug death rate, we're
living in a country which has one of the highest hep C rates in Europe. So we're
hardly in a good place now. A lot of the things we've done in the past clearly
have not worked and so we have to move, and I think we are moving in the right
direction, but we have to move quite radically."
Just last month the Home Office announced it was reclassifying cannabis to class
B, reversing a decision in 2004 to lower it to class C.
The decision was made because stronger forms of cannabis such as skunk are
becoming more readily available and there is new evidence linking the drug to
psychiatric problems.
Both the Home Office and the Scottish Government have made it clear that they do
not support the idea of legalisation.
The community safety minister Fergus Ewing, who last week unveiled a new drugs
strategy, welcomed upgrading cannabis to class B.
There were two failed efforts to open cannabis cafés in Edinburgh. Scottish
Socialist Party member Kevin Williamson almost bankrupted himself trying to open
one in Haymarket and Paul Stewart was forced to quit for Amsterdam after being
fined for selling cannabis at his café Purple Haze in Leith.
The forum's suggestion has been welcomed by the Legalise Cannabis Alliance UK,
which claimed Scotland is leading the way on the issue.
Don Barnard, a spokesman, said: "The Scots seem to have been taking a more
mature view and I hope the recommendation is taken seriously."
The idea has also been backed by the Greens. Patrick Harvie, MSP, said: "The
current approach to criminalising drug users has been one of the most obvious
failures of social policy over the last 50 years, and the Futures Forum should
be thanked for their efforts to move the debate on. We broadly welcome their
report."
But the Scottish Tory leader Annabel Goldie, who persuaded the SNP to produce a
drugs strategy as part of a deal on supporting its budget, described the forum's
report as "flawed".
She added: "The taxing and regulation of cannabis is akin to legalisation. This
will not decrease use of this extremely harmful substance. Fortunately the
long-term consequences of cannabis usage are now universally acknowledged and
there is a consensus at Westminster that the damaging downgrading of cannabis to
a class C substance should be reversed."
http://news.scotsman.com/latestnews/Now-experts-say-cannabis-should.4167260.jp