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.