Stop making sense

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

In January 2004 the UK downgraded cannabis from Class B to Class C, which meant lower penalties and fewer arrests for possession. In January 2009 that decision was reversed, even though scientific advice had not changed significantly and cannabis consumption was falling.

Jeremy Sare, former Head of Drug Legislation in the British Home Office and one-time Secretary to the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, looks at the reasons behind this policy U-turn.

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The British Government’s decision to reconsider the classification of cannabis was made in 2001 with a number of aims.

Firstly, then Home Secretary David Blunkett argued that lowering the classification of cannabis would prevent thousands of young people receiving criminal records for what many see as a relatively trivial offence. There would be a presumption against arrest for those 18 and over.

Secondly, the significant resources employed in enforcing cannabis possession laws could be better deployed on Class A drugs such as heroin and crack cocaine.

Thirdly, the Government was preparing to launch a significant drugs education and advice campaign, known as Frank (www.talktofrank.com). Categorising cannabis as a Class B drug alongside potentially lethal drugs like amphetamines and barbiturates undermined the credibility of drug messages. As focus groups showed at the time, many young people who chose to smoke cannabis occasionally or semi-regularly would not consider taking harder drugs.

These are good reasons, and the vast majority of officials, NGOs and police organisations considered lower classification a sensible development in UK drug policy. So what changed and how does the Government justify the policy reversal?

One significant change the current Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, has relied heavily on is the shape and size of the UK cannabis market which, it is argued, has increased crime and the likelihood of mental illness for heavy users.

Imported Moroccan hashish, which used to dominate the market, has given way in large part to local hydroponically grown skunk marijuana, which is much less risky to produce and higher in THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) with very low traces of CBD (cannabidiol). These are the yin and yang of the cannabis experience – the THC is the frantic, paranoid element, whereas CBD provokes the mellow, lethargic features.

Studies indicate the harms from cannabis can accumulate the younger the user starts, the more regular the use and the higher THC content. But in recent years the risks to all cannabis smokers have been exaggerated by the media beyond all proportion. The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), which advises the British Government, has been required to publish three separate cannabis reports in the last six years and each has come to the same conclusion: the causal link between cannabis use and developing psychosis is weak and can in no way justify a re-classification of the drug.

Nevertheless, the Government has decided “it believes” there is a strong causal link between cannabis and the development of schizophrenia. Ministers also announce there is “growing evidence” of this link even though their own scientific advisers say the link is small and unchanging.

The rise of the home-grown market has attracted criminal entrepreneurs and the scale of domestic cannabis production has escalated as imports have fallen. The second justification for the Government’s strategy is to “drive police priorities to encourage them to crackdown on cannabis factories.”

This reasoning does not stand up to scrutiny. Each Chief Constable of Police is operationally independent of the Government and can deploy police resources in his or her force area depending on which drug presents the biggest social problem. In the UK the penalties for producing Class B or Class C drugs are identical – 14 years imprisonment – so changing the classification of cannabis back to B can have no bearing on police priorities.

A third justification is that those involved in growing cannabis are “quite often using trafficked labour.” However, in 2008, Drugs Minister Vernon Coaker was asked in Parliament how many cases of trafficked labour the police had found running cannabis farms. His answer was ONE.

Ministers and senior police now often repeat the mantra of how this legal change is “sending out a strong signal to young people”. However, there is no evidence whatsoever that changing classification or increasing penalties deters use. The All Party Parliamentary Science and Technology Report from 2007, Making a Hash of It, concluded: “We have found no solid evidence to support the existence of a deterrent effect despite the fact that it appears to underpin the Government’s policy on classification.”

So it is a depressing situation we find ourselves in. After a brief period of enlightened policy, we are now re-entering the irrational and ignorant world we spent 30 years extricating ourselves from. How did we get to this position?

In mid 2007 Gordon Brown succeeded Tony Blair and, to demonstrate his different style of leadership, made headline announcements on direction changes on various policies such as cannabis despite opposition from the Government’s own advisory body.

The Government is advised by the ACMD which has now drawn up reports on cannabis in 2002, 2005 and 2007. All the reports had almost identical conclusions; cannabis is harmful, and very harmful to a few, but nothing like as harmful as other Class B drugs such as amphetamines.

Professor David Nutt, Head of Psychopharmacology at the University of Bristol and Chair of ACMD, said in 2007, “The idea that reclassification upwards will do anything to reduce psychosis is naive and runs the risk of perversely inflicting even greater suffering – through increasing criminal sanctions – on vulnerable individuals already afflicted with mental illness.”

When the law on cannabis was relaxed in 2004 there was a £1M media campaign to explain the main changes around presumption against arrest. A sustained media onslaught on the cannabis policy resulted, particularly from papers who had been calling for this specific legal change. For tabloid journalists, the issue is perfect for creating fear through use of anecdotal cases, highly selective application of statistics and outraged opinion.

For example, The Sun reported in November 2008 that two men in their late teens carried out an horrific and seemingly motiveless attack on a pensioner living in South London and implied the cannabis joint they had smoked was to blame, despite also referring later in the article to the men drinking over 10 pints of strong lager and plenty of spirits.

Daily Mail columnists have waged a personal campaign against cannabis re-classification to Class C. They have carried out character assassination on ACMD members and portrayed scientific evidence in a highly partial manner. Over-reaching the bounds of reason, they have even suggested it should be a Class A drug alongside crack and heroin as a substance of equivalent harm.

To bolster this unfounded and dangerous statement one included advice from a child psychologist friend that she would rather her 16-year-old daughter take heroin than smoke cannabis. The logic, if you can call it that, is that there is treatment for heroin addiction available (i.e. methadone), but once you get cannabis psychosis you are finished.

Eventually these assumptions about cannabis psychosis began to be believed at Government level. Our present Home Secretary makes public pronouncements about the growing evidence of a causal link between cannabis and mental health problems despite the three ACMD reports mentioned earlier that said the link is weak.

New Zealand is embarking on a review of its Misuse of Drugs Act. The road to a rational coherent drug policy is a difficult one; there are very many distractions and political obstacles to overcome. But hard as it might be, you must be true to your own convictions and stress the importance of evidence over ideology. A messed up drug policy is more than just an intellectual annoyance. An incoherent strategy allows falsehoods to become established opinion and damages people’s lives too.

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