In This Article
30-Second Summary
Headline Links: Reclassification ‘fuels crime wave’ and parental complacency
Background: Police supported the move to relax legislation
Opinion & Analysis: Should the police be more tolerant of cannabis use?
Reference Material: U.K. drug classifications and U.S. laws
History: Hemp production to recreational use in the United States
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British Courts Regret New Leniency of U.K. Cannabis Laws
by
findingDulcinea Staff
Studies suggest that Britain’s decision to lessen the legal punishments for cannabis possession has backfired; crime rates are up and research points to serious psychological side effects—America may take note.
30-Second Summary
In 2004, with the backing of British law enforcement, the U.K. government relaxed the laws prohibiting the use of cannabis.
The drug moved from “class B,” which it shared with amphetamines, to “class C,” a category that includes certain painkillers.
Although possession is punishable by a maximum two-year prison sentence, down from five, the change in legislation has been followed by a rise in use and a drop in arrests, according to British newspaper The Independent.
In fact, counter to government expectations that “cannabis use was unlikely to motivate crime,” one study shows that in the English city of Sheffield 25 percent of young offenders turn to crime to pay for their habit. Of the 51 U.K. courts that specialize in underage offenses, 50 have signed a petition to the British government requesting that cannabis be returned to its previous classification.
These developments coincide with new research, published in the British medical journal The Lancet, showing that the drug increases the risk of psychosis among users by 41 percent.
The results of the British experiment will be chewed over in the U.S. by advocacy groups and legislators alike.
However, British writer and former doctor Theodore Dalrymple raises a point that the new statistics fail to highlight: “Far from being expanders of consciousness, most drugs severely limit it. One of the most striking characteristics of drug takers is their intense and tedious self-absorption.”
The drug moved from “class B,” which it shared with amphetamines, to “class C,” a category that includes certain painkillers.
Although possession is punishable by a maximum two-year prison sentence, down from five, the change in legislation has been followed by a rise in use and a drop in arrests, according to British newspaper The Independent.
In fact, counter to government expectations that “cannabis use was unlikely to motivate crime,” one study shows that in the English city of Sheffield 25 percent of young offenders turn to crime to pay for their habit. Of the 51 U.K. courts that specialize in underage offenses, 50 have signed a petition to the British government requesting that cannabis be returned to its previous classification.
These developments coincide with new research, published in the British medical journal The Lancet, showing that the drug increases the risk of psychosis among users by 41 percent.
The results of the British experiment will be chewed over in the U.S. by advocacy groups and legislators alike.
However, British writer and former doctor Theodore Dalrymple raises a point that the new statistics fail to highlight: “Far from being expanders of consciousness, most drugs severely limit it. One of the most striking characteristics of drug takers is their intense and tedious self-absorption.”
Headline Links: Reclassification ‘fuels crime wave’ and parental complacency
In November 2007, The Independent published an article under the banner “Reclassification of Cannabis ‘Fuels Youth Crime Wave.’” The U.K. paper reported that since the punishments for possession were lessened in 2004, cannabis use among the nation’s young offenders had gone up 75 percent in some areas. That news was combined with findings that showed that domestic production of the drug had shot up, so that for the first time Britain had become a cannabis exporter.
Source: The Independent
In October 2007, an association of British police chiefs warned that parents are often unaware of the possibly serious health risks of the new, more potent strains of cannabis. The warning followed a widely publicized British case in which a mother was caught supplying cannabis to her children to dissuade them from buying from street dealers.
Source: The BBC
Background: Police supported the move to relax legislation
In 2002, The Police Foundation, a U.K. research charity, and London’s Metropolitan Police both backed the move to make the laws prohibiting cannabis use more lenient. The police were encouraged to support the change by an experimental initiative tried in one London borough where officers warned rather than arrested cannabis users.
Source: The Independent
Opinion & Analysis: Should the police be more tolerant of cannabis use?
Contra tolerance
Theodore Dalrymple is a British author, essayist and former doctor staunchly opposed to the legalization of drugs, a matter he considers in a long disputation on the philosophical implications of liberalized legislation. “The consumption of drugs has the effect of reducing men’s freedom by circumscribing the range of their interests,” writes Dalrymple. “It impairs their ability to pursue more important human aims, such as raising a family and fulfilling civic obligations. Very often it impairs their ability to pursue gainful employment and promotes parasitism. Moreover, far from being expanders of consciousness, most drugs severely limit it. One of the most striking characteristics of drug takers is their intense and tedious self-absorption; and their journeys into inner space are generally forays into inner vacuums.”
Source: City Journal
The debate underway in Britain regarding the downgrading of cannabis recalls an essay by the late New York Senator Patrick Moynihan, titled “Defining Deviancy Down.” In 1993, at a time when the New York City homicide rate had rocketed, Moynihan posited that a society can afford to recognize only a certain number of acts as deviant, irrespective of actual rates of criminality. As a consequence, if there is a boom in deviant acts, “supply” will outstrip “demand,” and definitions of unacceptable behavior will change to accommodate the imbalance. Moynihan writes, “I proffer the thesis that … the amount of deviant behavior in American society has increased beyond the levels the community can ‘afford to recognize’ and that, accordingly, we have been redefining deviancy so as to exempt much conduct previously stigmatized.”
Source: Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture
A July 2007 report, researched and compiled by medical researchers at a number of U.K. universities, concluded that “cannabis could increase the risk of developing a psychotic illness such as schizophrenia,” according to New-Medical.net. The study, funded by the U.K. government’s Department of Health, found that an individual who used cannabis was 41 percent more likely to suffer from some form of psychosis. The risk was shown to rise with increased use.
Source: News-Medical.net
Pro tolerance
The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana, more commonly known by the acronym NORML, is an organization advocating the decriminalization of cannabis. NORML argues that 11 million Americans regularly use cannabis and that “our public policy should reflect this reality, not deny it.” According to NORML, “Marijuana is far less dangerous than alcohol or tobacco.”
Source: NORML
NORML supports its drive to decriminalize cannabis with reference to a 1995 article in British Medical Association journal The Lancet. The first sentence of that report states, “The smoking of cannabis, even long term, is not harmful to health. Yet this widely used substance is illegal just about everywhere.” The article states that the “existing policies of most countries are ineffective and unworkable,” and calls for reform on the model of liberal Dutch laws. The 1995 Lancet article might be contrasted with the one that appeared in that journal this year, reporting in the rise in psychosis among cannabis users (see above).
Source: NORML
In an article titled “Let Them Have Their Pot,” written in January 2007, Manuel S. Klausner argues that federal agents are wasting their time cracking down on medicinal users in the Los Angeles area. Klausner, who founded the libertarian Reason Foundation, highlights what he sees as the failure of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) “to significantly reduce marijuana consumption despite breathtaking increases in arrests and incarcerations.”
Source: Los Angeles Times
Rethinking legislation
In March 2007, a U.K. government advisory group based at Bristol University, presented a report defining alcohol as the fifth most harmful recreational drug, above cannabis, LSD and ecstasy. The researchers considered physical harm, addiction and social harm in compiling their results. Professor Nutt, a psychopharmacologist on the Advisory Council on Misuse of Drugs, said, “The point we are making is that all drugs are dangerous, even the ones that people know and love and use regularly like alcohol.”
Source: The Guardian
Dr. Philip Robson, Director of the Cannabinoid Research Institute, worked under U.K. government commission to investigate the medical potential and possible harmful effects of cannabis. In this interview, he reflects on the “clear consensus” that the drug exacerbates the symptoms of existing mental illnesses, the “emerging literature” that suggests that it could possibly be “an independent risk factor” in schizophrenia, and the paradoxical observation that people who suffer from psychosis appear to find some medicinal benefit in cannabis use. On the subject of teenagers using the drug, Dr. Robson says, “All my instincts are that smoking cannabis or in fact using any psychoactive drug when your brain is still developing is terribly undesirable, and very much to be argued against.”
Source: The BBC
Reference Material: U.K. drug classifications and U.S. laws
U.K. laws recognize three classes of illegal drugs: A, B and C, listed in order of diminishing penalties. In 2004, cannabis was downgraded from class B, which it shared with amphetamines and drugs such as Ritalin, to C, putting cannabis on a par with tranquilizers and certain painkillers.
Source: The U.K. Home Office
The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws features on its site a state-by-state guide to U.S. cannabis law.
Source: NORML
History: Hemp production to recreational use in the United States
In 1619, the Virginia Assembly passed a bill requiring farmers to grow hemp, the plant that produces cannabis, according to the PBS timeline on the U.S. “War on Marijuana.” Hemp was used in the production of rope, sails and clothing. Although the recreational use of the substance as a narcotic became a fad “to some extent” in the 19th century, PBS attributes the birth of U.S. marijuana smoking to the influence of Mexican immigrants who flooded into America after the Mexican Revolution of 1910.
Source: PBS Frontline
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