Policy > General > Cannabis reclassification revisited
updated 14.01.06
Background Notes;
This briefing was produced and submitted to the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) consultation on cannabis reclassification in September 2005. A seperate briefing, available here, was prepared before the original descision to reclassify the drug in January 2004. The ACMD is a body of drug experts appointed by the Government to advise Ministers on drug policy issues such as drug classification. They have recommended reclassification of cannabis from B to C for a number of years, reviewing the latest evidence before recommending the move once more to David Blunkett (as Home Secretary), leading to the reclassification from B to C in January 2004. The issue was referred back to the council for a further review by the new Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, two months before the General Election. His letter to the ACMD was released to the media, detailing his concerns about new research into the effects of cannabis on mental health.
Transform representatives also gave oral evidence to the ACMD technical committee in late September 2005.
See also:
Latest news: 14.01.06
Advisory Council (ACMD) recommedations on cannabis reclassification confirmed: no change
Latest news
21.11.05
A report in the Sunday Times has suggested the Council will not be recommending a reversal of the reclassification.
Submission to the Cannabis Reclassification Consultation. Sept 2005.
Transform Drug Policy Foundation is the UK 's leading independent centre of expertise on drug policy and law reform. Transform has been the leading NGO in the public debate on the reclassification issue in the past year, providing expert comment and analysis to a range of media and policy forums.
Background and Introduction
In January 2004 Transform welcomed the Government's interest in reducing penalties associated with cannabis use. It was a step in the right direction, leading to fewer pointless arrests, and saving significant police resources more effectively directed elsewhere.
Our briefing produced at the time was critical of the way in which the reforms have been developed and implemented, and highlighted how failing to fully decriminalise personal possession has made policing cannabis use more confusing (particularly the way in which penalties for class C drugs were effectively upped to the level of class B). However, Transform's most significant criticism was that the reforms do nothing to address the issue of illegal supply and its associated harms to the health of users, and to wider society (in terms of crime creation). This will remain the case whilst cannabis is prohibited under the MDA 1971, regardless of its classification.
The classification debate is essentially a distraction from the bigger debate around prohibition. If the Government is serious about getting rid of illegal dealers and reducing the harm associated with cannabis use the only effective course of action is to have legally regulated and licensed outlets. This would effectively remove the illegal profits, collapse the illegal market, and put the dealers out of business. It would also allow effective prohibitions on sales to minors, enable quality control of the product and health warnings on packaging, purity and strength information, safer use guide, and health warnings made available at point of sale.
Why is the classification of cannabis being reconsidered?
The political context of the decision to refer cannabis back to the ACMD cannot be ignored. It was announced very publicly by the Home Secretary (who unusually made his letter to the ACMD public in a press release) in March 2005 - two months before a General Election. The pre-election period is traditionally one where the main parties showcase how tough they are on law and order issues. The Conservative party had been making political capital out of the cannabis issue, wheeling out the familiar clichés about the Government ‘sending out the wrong message' and being ‘soft on drugs' and by this point they had loudly proclaimed their intention to reclassify cannabis as class B if they won the election. At the same time the Lib Dems had been taking flak for their ‘soft' drug policy (which calls for legalisation of cannabis in the longer term) from both of the other main parties.
Transform views the move by the Home Secretary (to refer cannabis back to the ACMD) as primarily politically motivated rather than as the result of revelatory new evidence of links between cannabis use and mental health problems. The move effectively neutralised any political attacks from the Conservatives, and kicked the cannabis issue off the political agenda until well after the election.
New evidence of links between cannabis and mental health problems?
Research into the effects of cannabis has been ongoing but the new studies cited by the Home Secretary received far more attention than they otherwise might have because of the reclassification debate and the politicisation of the issue in the election run up. The studies received huge media coverage but essentially restated what was already known. The media coverage did not convey the ambiguities in the research conclusions - mostly opting for shock headlines.
All drugs have dangers and cannabis is no exception. It is clear that in a minority of users, primarily younger users, heavy users or those with predispositions to mental health problems (usually all three) cannabis use presents a real risk of causing significant health harms. However, it is worth noting that this was well known and acknowledged by the ACMD in previous reports on cannabis and informed their 2004 recommendation to reclassify cannabis, based on relative harms (Transform understands that reclassification had first been recommended by ACMD as much as twenty years ago). In other words the emerging research contributes to our growing understanding of cannabis use and its effects but does not fundamentally change the accepted conclusions about the risks associated with the drug.
Media coverage also largely failed to acknowledge that authors of one of the papers cited by the Home Secretary were in favour of cannabis legalisation and regulation as a way of reducing its associated harms:
Professor Jim van Os, lead author of the Dutch study (that claimed to identify a doubling of the probability that cannabis use could lead to psychosis (1) ) ,
“told the Guardian that the fact that cannabis could trigger psychosis in a small minority of people was a good reason to legalise it, not ban it. This would allow governments to promote advice and info rmation and control more dangerous forms like skunk. Packets could carry how much THC, the most dangerous compound, the drug contained, along with how much CBD, the compound believed to provide beneficial effects.” (2)
Dr Lydia Krabbendam, another of the authors of the Dutch study;
“I don't think the effects of cannabis can be used as an argument not to legalise it,” she observed in an interview with BBC Radio 4's Today Programme. “It is probably very hard to ban it altogether, and if you legalise it you can regulate the amounts of THC”
These scientists are not alone in their view that legalisation and control is appropriate precisely because of the dangers of cannabis use. Zerrin Atakan, honorary senior lecturer at the National Psychosis Unit of the Institute of Psychiatry has similarly stated:
"I personally believe it should be legalised so it is tightly regulated and it says on the packet how much THC is in it. At the moment it is worse because people think it is legalised and there is confusion and it is in the hands of the dealers. That is not a good situation." (3)
Furthermore, Professor David Fergusson, responsible for the New Zealand Study also cited by the Home Secretary, has noted that:
“Arrest/conviction for a cannabis related offence did not reduce the use of cannabis: of those arrested/convicted, 95% either increased their use or continued with the same level of cannabis use subsequent to their arrest ” concluding that “the law was ineffective in reducing cannabis use”.(4)
Problems with current thinking on drug classification
• Transform maintains that the classification system is fundamentally flawed. Drug harms are mediated by the nature of the user, the dose of drug consumed and the method of consumption. Translating generalisations about harms to an entire population into penalties for individuals is both unscientific and unjust. It cannot be ethical to increase the penalties for the majority because a small proportion of users experience difficulties or mental health problems.
• There is no evidence that changing the classification of cannabis will have any meaningful impact on patterns of cannabis use (note Prof Fergusson quote above). The little research that has been done in this area suggests that policy, law and enforcement are at best marginal factors in drug taking decisions especially for the vulnerable groups, young people and those with mental health problems. Criminal law is supposed to prevent crime, not ‘send out' public health messages. When this has been tried it has been spectacularly ineffective, as the unprecedented ballooning of cannabis use over the last 34 years demonstrates. Moreover it has been actively counterproductive, making drugs more dangerous not less, whilst simultaneously fostering distrust of police and public health messages amongst young people.
Skunk
• The emergence of potent hydroponically cultivated cannabis is itself a manifestation of the illegal market. In a similar fashion to the prohibition-fuelled emergence of crack cocaine, stronger varieties of cannabis (whilst they have always been available) are more expensive and consequently more profitable for the increasing number of small to medium scale indoor growers. In some areas in the UK they have become the only available cannabis products on the market. Users in Holland are presented with a range of products of differing strength and the strongest varieties are far from being the most popular.
• Transform agrees with the analysis in the UKCIA submission to the ACMD regards misunderstandings about what skunk is, how potency and strength of cannabis are measured, and the lack of research into what cannabis users are actually consuming, where and how. Suggestions that ‘skunk' should have a separate classification seem desperately impractical.
• There is also a mistaken assumption that stronger varieties of cannabis mean that users will inevitably consume more of the active ingredients, thus increasing health harms. This overlooks any concept of free will or personal volition amongst users in gauging their level of intoxication. People do not drink vodka in pints any more than they smoke skunk in the same volume as weaker cannabis varieties. The reality is users will consume cannabis as they would alcohol; until they reach the desired level of intoxication - and then stop. This might, for example, involve nothing more complex than putting marginally less cannabis in a joint when mixing it with tobacco, just as one might put more lemonade in a vodka cocktail than one made with Pimms.
Conclusions
The debate around drug law reform remains intimately entwined with the wider populist law and order debate. The question of how cannabis should be policed has often become confused with emotive questions around the harm associated with cannabis use and the moral rights and wrongs of drug use generally.
As mentioned above by the ‘experts', it is precisely the dangers of cannabis that necessitate its strict legal regulation and control (in contrast to oft repeated myth that legalisation advocates do so on the basis that cannabis is harmless); harsher enforcement only serves to increase harm. This is a view held by many medical experts including authors of research cited by the Home Secretary in his March letter to the ACMD.
It is vital that the ACMD, as an independent body of expertise, is not drawn into the political gamesmanship that has cast a long shadow over the UK 's failing drug policy for the past two generations. The aim of drug policy should be to reduce the harm drugs cause, both to users and the wider community. Current policy is demonstrably failing to do this and only by rational consideration of the evidence, both of prohibition's failure, and of policy alternatives that we can take positive steps toward this goal.
Recommendations
Short term
• The ACMD maintain their long held position that cannabis should be a class C drug under the current system.
• That the long promised review of the entire drug classification system be undertaken with some urgency. A call for such a review has also come from been Release, Drugscope and The Home Affairs Select Committee and the Police Foundation .(5)
Medium term
• That the ACMD deliberations consider the specific harms created by prohibition, and disentangle these from the harms created by drug use per se. Specifically; prohibition related crime, the mass criminalisation of young - often vulnerable - individuals, and the exacerbation of drug harms to users (when produced and supplied through illicit channels).
Long term
• That the ACMD actively consider the policies of decriminalisation and legalisation/regulation of cannabis and all other currently illegal drugs in line with its remit in “preventing the misuse of such drugs or dealing with social problems connected with their misuse” and “restricting the availability of such drugs or supervising arrangements for their supply”.
References
1) Henquet et al: Prospective cohort study of cannabis use, predisposition for psychosis, and psychotic symptoms in young people. British Medical Journal, 330, 1st January 2005 .
2) http://www.guardian.co.uk/leaders/story/0,,1442899,00.html
3) http://www.guardian.co.uk/drugs/Story/0,2763,1364392,00.htm
4) Fergusson DM, Swain-Campbell NR, Horwood LJ. Arrests and convictions for cannabis related offences in a New Zealand birth cohort. Drug and Alcohol Dependence,2003; 70(1), 53-63
5) See Transform Briefing on Magic Mushrooms which contains more discussion and references on the classification system, here:. http://www.tdpf.org.uk/Policy_General_Mushrooms.htm
TDPF September 2005
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