Pubdate: Tue, 17 Sep 2013
Source: Guardian, The (UK)
Copyright: 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited
Contact:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/175
Author: Melissa Kite
Note: Melissa Kite is a contributing editor at the Spectator
Page: 30

THE ILLOGIC OF LEGALISATION

The Choice Is Not to Ban or Sanction Everything. What We Need Is
Restraint and Protection for Kids

Whenever the pro-cannabis lobby starts agitating for legalisation,
there is one crucial question that is always glossed over. They trot
out the evidence proving that legalisation will hurt the drug cartels,
help the terminally ill and even boost the economy.

I understand the logic behind those arguments. I accept there are sick
people who claim cannabis is the only analgesic in existence that will
give them pain relief, despite there being literally hundreds of
alternatives. I accept that if you taxed drugs you would generate
billions for the economy. I even listen sympathetically to what the
- -"give-a-spliff-a-chance" brigade say about not criminalising
"recreational" users who are, apparently, perfectly normal,
functioning citizens who should not be labelled criminals.

What I don't understand at all is what decriminalisation of drugs will
do for addicts. I mean not only active addicts who are locked in
compulsive drug use, but also those millions of potential addicts,
most of them children, who have not yet picked up their first drug and
could go either way.

Perhaps Amanda Feilding, Countess of Wemyss and March, can explain it
to me. She heads the Beckley Foundation, a thinktank that exists to
change drugs policy and which will this week publish a 143-page costed
analysis of what would happen if cannabis were licensed and regulated
in England and Wales. To me, it jars more than a little that Feilding
sits in an Oxfordshire country house called Beckley Park and tells the
rest of us that she wants to unleash more cannabis on our streets.

I don't live in a stately home built during the reign of Henry VIII. I
live in Balham, south-west London, and I remember very well how in
July 2001 they started a 13-month decriminalisation trial in Lambeth.
During that time, you couldn't walk to the station in the morning
without getting high on the smoke being puffed out all over the place
by every trainer-wearing hoodlum.

It didn't lure me astray - I'm done with my youthful experimenting -
but it did occur to me that it was not all that helpful to parents
trying to warn their kids not to try skunk when they could sample it
just by breathing the air.

But let's give the countess a hearing. The report will call for
cannabis to be taxed at 70%, the level of the mindaltering substance
tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) limited to 10% and a substance that
balances out the THC, called cannabidiol, increased somewhat. This, it
says, would counter the explosion of super-strong skunk, linked to
psychosis.

They estimate the revenue generated for the exchequer would be up to
UKP1.25bn. Feilding says it is all about allowing the state to protect
the young better than the drugs cartels will.

I am sure the countess is right that the move would bring in revenue.
Before long the exchequer would be doing a booming trade in misery,
although at UKP1.25bn that's still only one eightieth of the possible
cost of HS2. I also note what she and others say about the street
drugs that are traded illegally being more harmful than those that
could be sold "safely" over the counter. But I suspect young users
won't want the cannabis they can get legally. If it's a case of buying
something they are allowed or something more illicit, they will still
seek out a dealer to buy the super-strength stuff.

The legalisation lobby is right to point out the inconsistency in some
substances being banned and some not. It is a messy compromise, but it
is the best compromise we have.

It is a misconception to say you have to either legalise everything or
ban everything. What is needed, more than ever in our "everything
goes" society, is a bit of restraint every now and again. If the only
thing we ever achieve with drugs policy is to make sure our kids don't
get the idea to try drugs after inhaling secondhand skunk while they
are walking to school, we can at least look ourselves in the mirror.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Matt