Cannabis users are no longer third class criminals! Welcome to Class Bspecial.

THUD!

You probably heard it as well, that deep sub-bass note  as millions of Rizla papers hit the floor in unison across the land as the clock struck midnight last night, the shear horror of what the government had done by moving cannabis back to class B finally sank in and people realised that it had actually happened; from today the threat of the law would put them off getting stoned for life, the message had been sent.

Yeah, as if.

At times like this it’s a good idea to look at how we got to where we are now and to do that we’ll look at what happened to a denim clad long haired student back in the early 70’s in a small room in Norwich. At the time the legal threat of getting busted was really serious, these were the days when people would get dragged through the court for “traces” –  a smoked joint roach, or the scrapings from a pipe would mean very real trouble. The law against cannabis back then was serious and as much of a deterrent to anyone thinking of indulging as a law could be. What happened that November night in my bedroom with a couple of friends has happened time and time again to many millions of people since; a joint got passed around and the fear of the law vanished in a cloud of social acceptance. The deterrent effect of the law failed at the first hurdle and having failed, remained failed for a good few years.

That was pushing 40 years ago now and in that time the cannabis culture grew steadily to the point when even the police began to take notice. During the 80’s they had to give up busting people for traces, next came cautions and then later informal warnings and blind eyes became the norm. By the late 90’s police in some areas realised they had to lay off cannabis for the simple fact that the law was making their jobs impossible.

That was with cannabis as a class B drug. The law had been dragged by the contempt of a vast swathe of the population into reform. This was why cannabis was downgraded in 2003, simply because the law as existed before had become unenforceable.

But the government being the government didn’t introduce a real meaningful reform that made any kind of sense, they introduced a reform to make the law workable. Cannabis wasn’t legalised, or decriminalised and nothing really changed. The only change was to allow a level of enforcement they thought they could maintain. It shouldn’t really have been a surprise if a good many people didn’t understand this message, the concept of something being made just a bit less illegal is hard to comprehend.

The move to C made sense to those who supported prohibition, or it should have done, had they been able to understand it. But even they didn’t get the message and shortly after the reclassification the prohibition fightback to reverse the move to C began.

So here we are, back to square one with cannabis as a class B substance legally on a par with speed. Except it isn’t. The law as it will be applied to cannabis is to be totally different to that applied to speed. First bust is a warning, second bust might be a fine and the third might be a prosecution. Cannabis is now in Class “Bspecial”, C+ or B-, take your pick.

The cold hard light of reality shone into those fogged pickled onion eyes of the politicians and forced their hand. They want to be tough but know they can’t be, there are, simply, just too many cannabis users to drag through the courts let alone to lock up. So they “sent out” their message of a clamp down, but in fact created a special regime where by nothing really will change  except the “message”.

Sending this message will cost £50M over the next eight years, will worsen community relations with ethic minorities and divert money and resources from those supporting people with serious drug problems, assuming the move does actually reduce use – especially amongst young people who, incidentally, are unaffected by the change. If it doesn’t, the cost will be higher.

And the logic behind it? A move to class B will encourage people to say “no” to cannabis use just like it used to, except of course it didn’t. It didn’t for me back in the early 70’s and it didn’t for Jaquie Smith, the Home Secretary (and former cannabis user) who introduced the move.

The government’s  justification is the fear of a link between cannabis use and mental illness. Not, of course, the evidence for a causal link because there is isn’t any, but rather the public perception that there is. We know they ignored advice from their own experts and we know they pandered to the worst excesses of the tabloid press. We know this move isn’t based on evidence of any kind.

The move to class B is widely understood for what it is; an attempt to look tough to impress the Daily Mail readers and to counter the noises coming from the Tory party.

Ah but yes, there’s Skunk weed now, this evil deadly new form of cannabis totally unlike the gentle hippy weed I used to smoke* which has come to dominate the market over the past 10 years. Of course, the reason nobody in authority noticed this revolution in the cannabis supply industry happening and that no one noticed CBD levels were dropping is because cannabis is a “controlled drug”, “controlled” by prohibition that is. It’s a very special use of the word “controlled” which only applies to illegal drugs and only means anything to politicians. The possibility that prohibition is the root cause of the problems we see with cannabis is never considered of course.

Unlike the move to class C, this reclassification is understood very well. So raise a spliff (tobacco free, please) to the future where cannabis users are no longer considered third class criminals and the certain knowledge that Gordon Brown’s Labour party has just thrown away millions of votes.

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* Whoops! “Ah but yes, there’s Skunk weed now, this evil deadly new form of cannabis totally unlike the gentle hippy weed I used to smoke…”  was intended to be sarcasm. Perhaps it didn’t quite read like that. Cannabis back then could be just as strong as any “skunks”. A subject for a future blog perhaps.

About UKCIA

UKCIA is a cannabis law reform site dedicated to ending the prohibition of cannabis. As an illegal drug, cannabis is not a controlled substance - it varies greatly in strength and purity, it's sold by unaccountable people from unknown venues with no over sight by the authorities. There is no recourse to the law for users and the most vulnerable are therefore placed at the greatest risk. There can be no measures such as age limits on sales and no way to properly monitor or study the trade, let alone introduce proper regulation. Cannabis must be legalised, as an illegal substance it is very dangerous to the users and society at large.

7 thoughts on “Cannabis users are no longer third class criminals! Welcome to Class Bspecial.

  1. Here here!

    Good read. It is a sorry state of affairs when the government bows to pressure from media and bedgering by the opposition despite the government sponsored report into reclassification. I read this report myself and it doesnt matter how they spin it the report advised cannabis proved less of a danger than any class B drug on there yet somehow, as if by magic, sad predicatable magic, we are finally here.

    I’m so angry and disappointed with this government but the unfortunate thing is the only other real electable party (conservatives) have an even more prohibitive view on cannabis. Perhaps this view will permeate into more accepted drugs such as cigarettes and alcohol… But then again, perhaps not. Where will all the ministers go for a pint after parliament?

  2. Elsewhere on the website Derek has a chart showing that as of a recent year cannabis users in the UK were over 2/3 addicted to rolling cannabis together in the same “joint” with tobacco. I think in discourse with politicians (i.e. via publications they are likely to read if they know the public is reading it) this point must be emphasized, with a string of reasons:

    1. Tobacco is the no. 1 character-destroying and insanity-causing drug of all time, with millions staying hooked year after year even though they know about the mortality etc., therefore all considerations concerning cannabis use in the UK and Europe at the present time are affected by this issue of mising with tobacco. Pathologies screamingly attributed to cannabis in the tobacco-sponsored media are to be examined as possibly caused by the tobacco or some special synergy between cannabis and tobacco.

    2. The number one most dangerous thing about cannabis under these circumstances is that it can serve as a “trojan horse”– device for getting kids hooked on tobacco and adding to the yearly worldwide 5.4 million death toll.

  3. I completely agree with tokerdesigner.The link between Cannabis and Tobacco needs investigating.I truly beleive half the fear and paranoia some experience is a direct result of the rush associated with mixing weed with tobacco.Every Toker knows or should know that weed minus Tobacco is a totally different experience.

  4. Brilliant blog, unfortunately I can’t help but feel as though the people who really need to read it never will. Which is one of the major problems with the whole legalization issue. We all sit her talking over these obvious points whilst all those mps and daily mail readers sit around agreeing with the crazy scaremongering that they’re all too used to. Speaking of which, did anyone at UKCIA check out the horizon documentary (The Devils Weed?) that was on a couple of weeks back? I personally was disgusted by the way they seemed to be continuing this ridiculous link to schizophrenia (despite mentioning once that the link can’t be proved!!). The whole show seemed to be trying to enforce the scare tactics that seem to be becoming more and more prevalent in our society.
    Finally I’d just like to point out to Lowryder2 that unfortunately the paranoia thing is actually a weed related problem. It comes from having to much THC (which does cause paranoia) with not enough CBD’s (which are anti-psychotics).

  5. Government ministers who advocate reclassification and draw on some ‘studies’ on schizophrenia
    and cannabis use draw on the expertise of some well respected
    psychiatrists. Lord Alderdice (never
    elected as an Allience Party MP in
    Ulster) is a psychiatrist, and he
    was occassionally asked questions
    on cannabis law reform when he had
    meetings with student audiences.
    He defended the prohibitionist position. Louis Appleby is also
    a well known psychiatrist who has
    written excellent books on the medical consequences of geography, industry, poverty and other forms
    of deprivation. He is also widely
    quoted by the prohibitionists.

    This ‘spurious’ link does present
    some moral problems to members of
    the health services working with
    schizophrenics. Should they help
    the patients to find dealers? Mental health patients are a vulnerable group, and it would
    be good to put them in touch with
    respectful dealers who will not
    run away with the money, and behave in a courteus and decorous
    manner with their customers, rather as a good therapist should do so.

    Louis Appleby is sufficiently astute to know that there are those in the therapeutic profession who disagree with his views and seems not to object to
    tabloid headlines such as ‘Drug
    Dealers Trawl Psychiatric Units
    for Customers’.

    WEIQIFAN

  6. now in poland is like in uk in 70`s . people going to jails for diry pipe or old roach

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