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INSIGHT
Drug Reform in Britain
Aired March 20, 2002 - 17:00:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JONATHAN MANN, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Roll Britainnus (ph). The Blair government considers a new legal status for marijuana. Casual users would have much less trouble getting high.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Hello and welcome.
The Anglican Bishop of Hereford is asking aloud that the British government should decriminalize marijuana. It is an unusual thing to hear from a senior cleric, but you'd be surprised who else is saying it.
The home secretary, the man responsible for law enforcement, is of a mind to do something close to decriminalization. There was an important signal last week from a government medical panel that the minister had asked to investigate, a signal that makes reform an easier step to take.
Belgium, Italy, Spain and Germany have all eased their laws or their enforcement.
On our program today, is Britain too going to pot?
First, though, a look at the hour's headlines.
Italy is blaming an offshoot of the militant leftist Red Brigades for the killing of a top adviser to the Italian government. Labor Ministry adviser Marco Biagi was killed outside his home in Bologna Tuesday night by two unidentified men on a motor scooter. Italy's interior minister says an initial analysis of evidence at the crime scene shows possible links with the 1999 political assassination of another Labor Ministry aid.
Biagi was the co-author of proposed government labor reforms that have prompted Italy's major unions to call a general strike.
Zimbabwean opposition leader and former presidential candidate Morgan Tsvangirai finds himself under additional government pressure. He has answered a court summons in Harare to face treason charges over an alleged plot to assassinate President Robert Mugabe.
Tsvangirai was named in the probe prior to last week's presidential election, which the government says Mugabe won. Also charged in the alleged plot, shadow agriculture minister and opposition party member Renson Gasela.
Both men were released on bail. No trial date was set. The court summons came just a day after Zimbabwe's suspension from the Commonwealth Councils on grounds that last week's presidential election was not free or fair.
Cease fire talks are underway, just hours after a Palestinian suicide bomber struck an Israeli bus. Eight people were killed when the bomb went off as the bus traveled from Tel Aviv to Nazareth. The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the act, but the cease fire talks resumed, mediated by United States envoy Anthony Zinni.
United States Vice President Dick Cheney says he will return to the region within days to meet with Chairman Arafat if the Palestinians begin implementing a cease fire plan.
They've declared victory in Operation Anaconda, but coalition forces in Afghanistan found the fighting is not over. They were attacked in the eastern town of Khowst. The United States central command says one American soldier was wounded in the fire fight, but he will be OK.
The coalition forces were fired on machine guns, rocket propelled grenades and mortars. The forward operating base at Khowst is a logistics and supply area for United States special forces and coalition units in eastern Afghanistan.
Security is tight, meantime, in the Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif amid a visit by interim leader Hamid Karzai. He'll be joining in celebrations for the Persian New Year. He was personally greeted by Gen. Rashid Dotsum, one of the major powers in the area.
Dotsum is a deputy defense minister in the interim government. The celebrations Thursday are to be the largest since the Taliban left the city more than four months ago. Peace among the factions in the city is seen as a test of unity for the country as a whole.
It has been a long time, some 30 years, since Britain changed its drug laws. It has not been a long time since the Blair government promised zero tolerance in enforcing them.
But when even a member of the royal family, Prince Harry, admits to having tried marijuana, the British landscape has changed, even if the law hasn't.
Now within the government, the advisory council on the misuse of drugs is suggesting the law should change, too.
Julian Rush has the story.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JULIAN RUSH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It is unquestionably harmful, say the government's advisers. What they've done, though, is assess the degree of harm. And it confirms the anecdotal experience of millions, it's not much.
So, yes, it raises the heart rate and the blood pressure, but no more than normal exercise. So the only people at risk are those with heart disease. And yes, it effects the brain, that's the point of recreational use. So you shouldn't drive or fly a plane.
But compared with alcohol, it relaxes rather than triggers aggression, and it rarely contributes to violence.
It's true, too, some people do develop dependence. But in small numbers, they say. Well below alcohol and nicotine.
The trouble is, the science behind these facts isn't new. But ministers and their appointees quote science to justify policy. So in the past, these same facts have been used for the opposite purpose than today's support for declassification.
KEITH HELLAWELL, NATIONAL DRUGS COMMITTEE: There is a myth that cannabis doesn't damage your health, which it does. There's a myth that cannabis isn't addictive, which it is. There's a myth that cannabis isn't very strong and that it is "a soft drug." In certain forms, cannabis is very, very strong. It's hallucinogenic.
RUSH: Or there's this, from the previous home secretary, "The long- term effects include a very severe exacerbation of mental illness and also include cancer. It is reckoned that cannabis is between two and four times as carcinogenic as tobacco."
That's true, but, and it's the science Mr. Straw perhaps chose not to quote, cannabis users smoke fewer joints that tobacco users smoke cigarettes, and many give up in their 30s, so the long-term cancer risks are limited.
And here, too, the findings of earlier reports from bodies as august as the Royal Society, are repeated. There's no firm evidence cannabis causes mental illness, but it can worsen existing problems, particularly schizophrenia.
SIMON JENKINS, "THE TIMES": When a politician says this is based on sound science, I run for the bunker. What you've got to do is look at the science itself, but you've then got to balance the risks of taking the policy that they've drawn from that science at face value.
It was abundantly clear in this case that the risks of criminalizing cannabis were much more serious than the risk of cannabis itself.
RUSH: Today's ministers, unlike their predecessors, welcome the findings.
BOB AINSWORTH, HOME OFFICE MINISTER: Cannabis will remain, if the home secretary accepts the advice he is being given today, an illegal drug, and it will remain a dangerous drug.
Our reasons and our purpose in asking for this report were an attempt to refocus our efforts and those of the police on the drugs that really do do the harm to our society. They are cocaine, crack-cocaine, and heroine.
RUSH: Declassification would mean 70,000 a year would no longer face arrest for possession, freeing up police resources. Penalties for trafficking, too, would be reduced.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MANN: Julian Rush.
The moves to reclassify cannabis are by no means a done deal. Britain's Home Office says it wants to see the results from another official review of drug strategy and a pilot project in South London, where police have stopped arresting people for small amounts of marijuana. Both are expected by the end of the month.
A short time ago, we caught up with Professor Mike Hough of South Bank University, who recently completed a study on police efforts to enforce marijuana laws. He believes police would rather spend their time fighting other crimes.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MIKE HOUGH, SOUTH BANK UNIVERSITY: I think it's partly resource issues. One in seven of the crimes that the police deal with in Britain are offenses of the possession of cannabis.
That takes up a lot of time and money, and there is a growing sense that the money could be better spent on tackling other crimes and tackling more dangerous forms of drug use.
But that apart, there is also a sense that the non-financial costs are very high. People who are arrested, taken to police stations for possession of cannabis feel aggrieved. They feel the law is unfair, and that's harming relations between police and young people.
MANN: Help us out on the law. It comes down to a schedule of A, B and C class drugs. What are the different drugs on this schedule, and what kind of company would marijuana find itself in if it moves from one class to another?
HOUGH: Well, at present the main drugs in class A, which is intended to be the most serious classification, is heroine, cocaine, and ecstasy.
The middle banned, class B, the key drugs are amphetamines and cannabis. And then the lower tier, class C, which comprise non-arrestable offenses, are steroids and tranquilizers, benzodiazepines and so on.
MANN: So if and when marijuana changes classes, would it still be illegal to import marijuana, to grow it, to sell it? Would the rest of the chain of production and distribution remain the same under the law?
HOUGH: I think the proposals that the home secretary is considering are not to legalize, not actually to decriminalize. It's to downgrade the offense of possession to a non-arrestable offense. It would still be an offense on the statue book, and people who are found with cannabis on them would probably be warned on the street, or possibly summoned to court, but they wouldn't be arrested. And that's the key difference.
Supply of cannabis would remain an offense that I suspect would be treated relatively seriously.
MANN: Does that make sense? To treat the supply seriously if the actual possession, for most practical purposes, would be ignored? Would the police want to enforce a law that seems to unbalanced, to put it that way?
HOUGH: Well, many countries in Europe take a pragmatic view, where they treat large scale suppliers of cannabis as illegal, and possession for personal use as something that they will not enforce as an offense.
It's a pragmatic approach, I think.
MANN: What do they police say? I imagine there's been some opportunity for individual officers or for higher ranking officers to speak out about this possibility.
HOUGH: The British police generally are surprising liberal on drug reform, and in some senses have led the movement to reconsider the legislation.
And officers at the grassroots level are, by the research that we just completed, for example, are fairly in favor of reform and would go much further than the secretary is proposing.
MANN: Does that suggest that the police don't really think that marijuana is a bad thing? Or simply that they're tired of trying to take care of it because in the universe of bad things, it is the least of the ones they face?
HOUGH: I think there is a sense it is one of the least risky drugs.
Drugs all have costs, but stacked up against heroine or crack, or alcohol for that matter, cannabis is probably to many people's minds here not a very dangerous drug.
MANN: One last question for you: how likely, how quick do you think there is going to be the change that we spoke about?
HOUGH: Well, the home secretary is considering proposals. He's waiting for a couple more fairly key reports. My guess is he will make a decision and announce it in the next few weeks, and that would mean that the legislation could well be changed and enforced by the summer.
MANN: Mike Hough of South Bank University -- thank you so much for talking with us.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
We take a break. When we come back, a loot at whether Britain is setting itself up to be the next Amsterdam.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MANN (voice-over): There are about 800 cannabis cafes in the Netherlands. They're licensed by local authorities and frequented by throngs of tourists.
Lax cannabis laws have helped earn Amsterdam the reputation as Europe's drug capital.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
Welcome back. Sir John Stevens, London's police commission, has been to Amsterdam to see firsthand the effects of their drug laws. His experience there is said to have left him uneasy about the prospect of easing things in Britain.
Britain's own first experience with a cannabis cafe was a mixed one. When a club called The Dutch Experience opened last September, police raided the club and arrested its owner. It has been raided twice since, but still it operates, attracting some 200 customers a day. And there are more such cafes waiting in the wings.
Here's CNN's Hala Gorani.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
HALA GORANI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Chris Baldwin has been smoking the equivalent of 10 cannabis joints a day for the last 33 years. He says Britain's plan to go softer on marijuana consumption makes Dutch- style coffee shops the next natural step up in the UK.
And when he finds a locale, he's opening his own pot shop in the small southern sea town of Worthing.
CHRIS BALDWIN, CANNABIS ACTIVIST: I would like to provide, eventually, ultimately, a full Dutch-style coffee shop menu, which would be a selection of 8 to 10 grasses, you know, 8 to 10 different weeds, 8 to 10 different hashes.
GORANI: Britain's main drug advisory group recently suggested cannabis be downgraded from a Class B drug, like amphetamines, to a class C substance, like steroids. That means pot would still be illegal, but selling and consuming it would become minor offenses, the kind rarely enforced.
Now coffee shop campaigners are determined to take advantage of the government's softer stance on drugs to go into business. And with shops planned across Britain from Manchester to sleepy towns like Worthing, some say Britain is headed for trouble.
PETER HITCHENS, "DAILY MAIL": It will increase crime. It will increase lassitude and sloth. It will increase the general level of drug taking in society, because it will introduce more and more people to the idea that drug taking has nothing wrong.
GORANI: But pot smokers from across Britain, who regularly stage pro- cannabis protests, say their in-your-face tactic will work, eventually turning an unlawful practice into a de facto legal business.
BALDWIN: If they find tings, then they'll come along and bust us. But basically, they'll get fed up with it. You know, they can't -- they haven't got the resources to just keep turning up every day and busting us.
GORANI: Among Baldwin's veteran pot smoking friends, there is also widespread support for cannabis cafes.
Why not enjoy it the way you've enjoyed it for 30 years? What's wrong with that?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We've enjoyed it, but we've felt like criminals doing it, don't forget. We've all felt like criminals. Why? I want it to be legal, yeah.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If enough people do it, it will be less trouble for everybody.
GORANI: Whether Britain will replicate the Dutch experience will largely depend on British society's response to these coffee shops. If police turn a blind eye and if neighbors don't complain, chances are that in the near future, wherever you are in Britain, there might be a pot shop near you.
Hala Gorani, CNN, Worthing, England.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MANN: We're joined now by a man who likes the cafes so much, he plans to open one.
David Crane leaves for Amsterdam on Monday, we're told, for a course on how to do it. And he joins us now from London.
Thanks so much for being with us.
Let me ask you, first of all, about why you're interested in doing it. Does it seem like fun? Like a lark? Is it a political act, or is it just a good business that you could open, among others?
DAVID CRANE, CANNABIS ACTIVIST: There are two reasons why we think Britain should have cannabis cafes.
One is that it's fundamentally needed. And secondly, because it makes a lot of sense.
We don't think that smoking cannabis is a crime. It might be a questionable choice, but it's certainly not a crime. What is a crime is the way that cannabis smokers are punished. Our cafe is our attempt to do something about that.
MANN: Well, let me ask you about that, because alcohol users are not punished. Tobacco users are not punished. But most people think there is a lot, too much, of consumption of both of those things going on, and that this is only going to make a problem that already exists in society a lot worse.
We heard about someone saying that this is basically going to make marijuana seem like just another consumer product. Do you really want to do that?
CRANE: Well, the experience of Holland is that when you treat drug users with more respect, when you don't punish them, then you end up with less drug problems.
Holland has one of the oldest average ages of heroin users, because basically no new young heroin users are taking the drug. And also, Holland has experienced a rise in cannabis use, but less so than the rest of the Western world.
So it seems there is a very clear correlation between the punishment, the way in which drug users are punished, and the number of drug users a country has. The less punishment, the fewer drug users...
MANN: Intuitively, that seems like the very opposite of what you'd expect. One would expect that a neighborhood with a corner pub would be an easier place to get a beer, and a neighborhood with a corner cannabis cafe would be an easier place to find marijuana.
CRANE: It does seem as if the two things don't stack up. I think what we have to take into account is the idea that drug using has a certain attraction because it is illegal.
Once that illegality is taken away, once people are given cannabis from responsible suppliers, like ourselves, then they're going to have less problems with it.
MANN: Well, let me ask you about the suppliers, because this is clearly something that I don't understand. You're still going to have to buy the drugs from criminals, won't you? It's still illegal to produce or import it.
CRANE: Absolutely right, and I think this is one of the fudges of decriminalization. I should make it absolutely clear that we won't be selling cannabis from our cafe. All we'll be doing is providing a friendly, welcoming and very comfortable environment, and if people want to smoke cannabis, then we won't stop them.
I think what we absolutely need to do is to take a harder look at the law. And one of the reasons why we're opening our cafe is because we don't think reclassification goes far enough.
MANN: We're talking about this on this program as if this basically is just going to happen in the normal course of things, but in the normal course of things, I would think that a landlord wouldn't want to rent you space, that a banker wouldn't want to lend you money, that a neighborhood would not welcome you. What has been the reception? Do you know where you're going to setup shop, and have you told people in the neighborhood what's coming?
CRANE: We've been doing some questionnaires in the area that we have in mind, and the response that we've got is overwhelmingly favorable. It is our intention to work with the council and with the police as far as possible, and in the very near future we'll be engaging them in conversation as to the best way that we can go about this.
We believe that cannabis cafes don't present a problem for society, but they actually present a solution to society, and it's a solution that we very much need.
MANN: OK. On that note, David Crane, of we're told the Greenhouse Cafe. Thanks so much for being with us.
CRANE: Thank you very much.
MANN: We take a break. When we come back, taking it to the streets.
Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MANN (voice-over): The Lambeth experiment, named for the South London borough where the police have gone further than the government, essentially ignoring marijuana use to concentrate on other kinds of crime.
Lambeth is an ethnically diverse left-wing part of the city, but within it is the community of Brixton, known for many things, but among them a lot of drugs.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Welcome back.
Since July, the policy in Lambeth has been this: marijuana is still illegal, but if you're found with a small quantity, it will be confiscated, you'll be warned, and the matter will end there.
An official report on the experience is due any day now, but joining us to talk about the public's impressions is Alex Owolade, a Brixton community activist.
Thanks so much for being with us.
Let me ask you, first of all, why did they choose Brixton in Lambeth?
ALEX OWOLADE, BRIXTON COMMUNITY ACTIVIST: I think it's because essentially there has been a perception of a drug problem in my area in Lambeth. And I think it's been a very positive step forward, a step forward in a rational policy around drugs itself, and I just think it is a positive step forward.
MANN: Well, let me ask you more about that, because obviously I'm a great distance from Brixton, but I was reading a newspaper article that said drug dealers are walking around, openly selling their wares. They're feeling very empowered, very cocky, and that really the texture of life has changed. Is that your experience?
OWOLADE: No, I mean, I think the fundamental problems that inflict our community is discrimination, is poverty, and particularly amongst the young people and I think minority people in our community, they have a sense that they've been given a real future for progressing in life.
And it really isn't a question of policing or criminalization that can deal with the problems in our community. It really is a policy of national and local government, as seen to have a policy of not giving the opportunities of life for particularly young people in our community to progress...
MANN: Well, let me ask you about that, because a lot of people fear that when you make intoxicants of any kind available to young people who don't have a lot of options, who don't have a lot of choices, that inevitably, just out of frustration and boredom, you're going to breed drug use. You're not afraid of that in Brixton?
OWOLADE: No, not really. Because people turn to drug use and abuse drugs when they feel they have no other options in life.
And really, it is not a criminal matter, it's a social question, dealing with what opportunities, particularly young people and minority people, are receiving. And it really is -- in the government, national and local, there is what we call in this country institutionalized racism, which has a policy of keeping people in our communities at a disadvantageous level. And it really is a question of how we can give the opportunities that young people have, so they have real options in life and a real choice to develop.
And it really isn't a question of people -- people take drugs because they feel that nothing else in society has anything to offer them, and that's what we have to deal with. The symptoms rather than the causes.
MANN: I see your point, and it's an important one...
OWOLADE: Yes, it's fundamental.
MANN: ... but let me ask you about what the police are saying. They are saying that really the policy decision here for them is not whether they're going to fight crime or whether they support marijuana. They are going to do the first and they are going to oppose the second.
What they say is that there are just much more serious crimes around and they can fight them more efficiently if they simply spend less time on marijuana.
Well, in Lambeth and Brixton they've had that experiment. Has serious crime seemed to have gone done? Are the police doing a noticeably better job on the other tasks that they have?
OWOLADE: Well, I mean, from the community side, point of view, the real problems around policing in our community is discrimination and stop and search, and where police do pick on people, particularly people from ethnic minority backgrounds.
And the real problems in my community is not necessarily the question. Crime can only be -- there is a problem of crime. There is a problem of social problems in our community. And really, if you look at the fundamentals, which is people's conditions of life, that needs to be addressed.
To be really honest, stop and search, which is a big problem in our community, where police target particularly ethnic minorities, that's still going on ahead, and that hasn't been addressed. And clearly, it is a positive move forward, that there has been a rational policy around drug taking, but it needs to go beyond that and really needs to become a social question, and a question that deals with national and local government in the end.
MANN: Alex Owolade, thank you so much for talking with us.
OWOLADE: Thank you.
MANN: Just one last thing before we go. The Lambeth experiment had one result that probably no one expected. The area's police chief has been temporarily relieved of his responsibilities.
Commander Brian Paddock's former lover told a tabloid newspaper that together they frequently got high.
Paddock has refused to comment.
That's INSIGHT for this day. I'm Jonathan Mann. The news continues.
END
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