Newsgroups: alt.drugs,alt.hemp,talk.politics.drugs
From: [Stewar t P] at [tuareg.demon.co.uk] (Stewart Parkinson)
Subject: Britains first hash cafe
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1993 21:01:40 +0000

This article is a follow on to the article concerning the opening and 
closing of Britains first hash cafe on October 1st 1993.

The following article is the text of the leading article of the 
_Independent_ newspaper; their opinion of the drugs laws.

_The Independent_ is a mainstream, high circulation national newspaper,
sat firmly in the 'quality' bracket.  It prides itself on having no
political bias.

Text follows:

A DRUG LAW THAT PROMOTES CRIME

This is not an ideal time to persuade politicians to talk about legalising
drugs.  Political parties are not in a modd to take risks.  When they want
to attract attention, they prefer to do so by offering thrusting new thoughts
on the economy and other mainstream subjects.  But crime is now as mainstream
as you can get, and a great deal of crime is related to drugs.  So any
politician who talks about crime without confronting the debate on drugs is
evading half the issue.

Yesterday's police raid on 'Cannabis Cafe' in Brighton is only one example of
police time being wasted on drug-related offences.  How many houses were 
burgled and cars stolen in Brighton while the police were busy with the 
offending cafe ?  Yet the police were not to blame.  The provocative opening
of the cafe had been so well publicised that to have ignored it would have 
signalled that drug offences would now be ignored.  The police are not 
entitled to convey such signals.  They are supposed to uphold the law as it is,
not as it should be.

What is wrong is the law itself.  The criminalisation of cannabis derives from
a number of prejudices and misconceptions.  Although the drug is not entirely
harmless, it is less harmful than tobacco.  It is not addictive, nor dangerous
in moderate quantities, and it does not provoke violent or anti-social
behaviour.  It mostly induces nothing worse than a state of rather happy,
foolish withdrawal.  It was partly this effect that worried orthodox society
in the Sixties, because it became associated with the demotivation of an
entire generation that was exaggeratedly seen as dropping out of the
acquisitive, consumerist society.  Cannabis was felt to be subversive.

Since then, successive generations have responded normally to economic stimuli
and remained as acquisitive as anyone could wish.  But they have continued to
take cannabis.  Almost all 25-year olds in London have tried it, according
to a recent survey by _Time Out_ magazine.

Cannabis should therefore have lost its association with drop-outs and have
come to be seen as a recreational drug, offering much the same sort of respite
from reality as alcohol but with less dangerous side-effects.  It is also
being found to have a widening variety of valuable medicinal qualities,
particularly for the alleviation of multiple sclerosis.

In a period of rising crime, when practically every householder and car-owner
feels vulnerable, and when peaceful citizens form vigilante groups because 
they are insufficiently protected by the proper authorities, it is absurd 
that the police and the courts should have had to spend valuable time
delaing with 47,616 drug offences in 1991, and probably more last year, of
which about 85 per cent concerned cannabis.  Legalising the drug would save
substantial amounts of time and money as well as bringing in tax revenue 
from legal sales.  It would reduce the number of crimes committed to raise
money for cannabis by lowering the price, unless heavily taxed, and undermine
the power of the criminal underworld.

That world, however, is also deeply involved in hard drugs, which pose more
complex problems since they can be dangerous and addictive.  Some experts,
including Commander John Grieve of the Metropolitan Police, believe the 
answer is to license and control the supply of all drugs.  "We need to
undermine the economic or acquisitive base of drugs crime and the economic
base of organised crime," he said at a conference in May.

If the Government wants to be seen to be serious about crime, it must look at
the causes, one of which is drugs.  A legal market in drugs under tight,
selective controls, would not end drug-related crime, and people would
still rob in order to raise money for drugs, but much more of the problem
would be above ground and therefore more manageable.  As suggested by Release
the drugs advisory service, this would be a suitable subject for
examination by a Royal Commission.


Text Ends.
-- 
Stewart Parkinson            'There are only the pursued, the pursuing,
                              the busy and the tired.'
                                               -   F. Scott Fitzgerald