Why the Sudden Change?
The Home Secretary yesterday reclassified Cannabis from a Class C drug back to a Class B drug only a couple of years after it was downgraded. The question is why?
There has been much confusion about if Cannabis was legal or what the punishment for having Cannabis was and I was one of the confused many. In actual fact the maximum sentence for possession for Cannabis is 2 years for possession and 14 for supplying. Now its been upgraded to a Class B its 4 years for possession and 14 years for supplying.
The reasons the government has given for this reclassification are the mental health issues associated with Cannabis use, specifically schizophrenia. Their other main argument is that the strands of Cannabis now available were 20 times stronger than that which was available in the past.
All sounds pretty plausible but the government seem to be going against the scientific evidence here. Scientists say that the grade of Cannabis now available is only around 2 times stronger and because it is stronger people are using less. The worries about schizophrenia have also be exaggerated, to stop 1 man from getting schizophrenia 5000 men would have to stop smoking Cannabis and the figure for women is even larger at 20,000. Scientists also argued that Cannabis use had dropped since declassification, and that the evidence they had suggested that the classification of a drug did not effect people's thoughts whether to take a drug or not.
Overall I'm very confused by all this, it seems like after the poor recent election results the government are doing the typical thing of coming down hard on crime to win back some support. I think they've missed a trick here as history has always shown that to stop crime of any sort we need to get to the source, and by punishing the people who smoke the drugs with heavier sentences and leaving the 14 years for possession the same is ludicrous!
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Reply #1 on : Fri May 09, 2008, 15:37:35