Class B cometh, but with legal medicine?

The headline to comment on this week and that was the House of Lords vote to support the reclassification of cannabis to class B and what it means for drugs policy in this country.

At the risk of sounding a bit like a stuck record it is worth pointing out that the move to class C was only a political fix designed to make the law more enforceable, it meant little or nothing to most cannabis users and so it’s unlikely the move back to B will mean anything much either. Not only that but we now know that moving it back to B will mean just as little to the police who have decided to keep the option of issuing warnings for small scale possession, with a laughable plan to impose fines for second time “offenders”.

But the government can claim to be acting tough on drugs, sending out the prohibition message and that’s all that matters to an administration more concerned about the views of the Daily Mail than of its own expert scientists.

It’s a matter of fact that this move back to B is not based on science and it will never be possible to argue that it is again. Drugs advice workers will now have to present a political message to their clients, it’ll be interesting to see how professionals take to that role.

From our point of view the reform movement can now claim as a mater of record that cannabis is not in the category it should be because of any proven harms, but because of a political decision by an unelected Prime Minister.

There is no evidence based reason for cannabis to be a class B drug, and ranking drugs in terms of the harms caused is not any longer the function of the ABC classification system. The whole basis claimed for the Misuse of drugs act has been discredited, so far from moving towards a system which reflects true harms, we’ve moved away from it. But just to set the record straight: Cannabis is not as dangerous as speed – class B – and it’s not as dangerous as Vallium (Class C) or Ketamine (Classs C) either come to that and anyone who bases their use of these drugs on the legal staus of cannabis is taking a big risk.

Quite what message Mr Brown thinks he’s “sending out” isn’t at all clear, but it’s probably not the one people who use cannabis understand it to be.

A question we’ve tried to ask of politicians on several occasions but which we have never got an answer to, is “at what point will you admit prohibition has failed”?  Reason for bringing this up now of course is the reclassification has been done against the background of some interesting figures – not least of all the drop in the number of cannabis users. Now, it’s a fact that cannabis use exploded when it was a class B, so what will they do if use goes back up again? Don’t bother asking because you won’t get an answer, but that must be the nightmare situation for them.

Beyond the reclassification debacle a little birdy has told us we can expect to see Sativex licensed soon, which would make it available on the NHS. Sativex is the cannabis medicine produced by GW Pharms which has been available – just about  – for the past three years or so by a back door arrangement introduced by Charles Clarke when he was Home Secretary, perhaps coincidentally around the time the THC4MS mediweed trial was happening.

Now, the cynics amongst us law reform bods would claim that prohibition is essential for GW’s product to be a commercial success. After all, if people can simply plant a seed of their favourite strain of cannabis in a plant pot on their window sill they could grow enough cannabis to supply themselves for virtually free. GW hope to sell SAIVEX for over £100 a bottle to the NHS, legal recreational cannabis would fatally undermine their business plan.

Now of course a pharmaceutical grade cannabis medicine used under doctors supervision has a place in the wider scale of things, of course it does. UKCIA has heard good things of SATIVEX from medical users, it’s a good, effective medicine apparently.

But cynicism aside, what would be the effect of a legal, highly pure cannabis product being given away (almost) free on prescription? It doesn’t take much imagination to understand that a black market trade in the stuff is ready to kick into gear.

Unless some way of allowing the recreational market to be supplied is found then we can expect the laws of supply and demand to do what they always do and to generate a trade in black market SATIVEX. It’s because of this “high potential for abuse” – in other words a high demand from consumers – that drug warriors argue that cannabis prohibition has to be 100% across the board. The need to ensure prohibition is upheld is the reason people in pain have been made to suffer for so long and is the reason why there is still so much opposition to medical cannabis.

Of course if this illegal trade did develop it would be a disaster for the medical users and put a strain on the NHS, but the way is being paved for it to happen.

If this government thinks that moving cannabis back to class B is going to deter the trade they are suffering from self inflicted collective delusion. There is a huge demand for cannabis – even if the demand were to be reduced by an order of magnitude it would still be huge, so there is big money to be made.

The move back to B will have no effect on the supply side  at all, dealing is something that already carries a 14  year penalty and the change of classification isn’t going to alter that. In any case, if a 14 year threat is no deterrent there really isn’t much more they can throw at it.

What would making NHS supplied SATIVEX available to the recreational users do in terms of health effects? It’s important to remember that it’s a refined product, getting stoned with SATIVEX could be akin to drinking shorts instead of beers.  The effect of such a black market trade could be bad in many ways and we could be about to see another can of big, fat juicy worms opened.

So we’ll see how this all pans out over the coming months and years. But for sure expect to see the hypocrisy of the reclassification  trumpeted by the law reform movement and a general drop in what little respect people might have had for the law. All in all, it’s not good.