I'm not a bleeding-hearted, self-flagellating liberal (some of you may have noticed) but I have just signed the petition to legalise cannabis (not psychosis-inducing skunk, but the good old marijuana that was puffed with little apparent harm during the sixties and seventies). I think Norman Lamb et al have a point. Take the much needed taxes and put them into the NHS, reduce the income of drug barons, let consumers know what they are buying, have Monty Don illustrate cannabis plant growing techniques on Gardener's World and regain some respect for criminal laws that at the moment are a mess in this area. The following is an extract from the Independent: " Legalising cannabis would raise taxes worth hundreds of millions of pounds and produce large savings for the criminal justice system, a private analysis for the Treasury has concluded. It judged that regulating cannabis, which was used by more than two million people in the UK last year, could generate “notable tax revenue” and “lead to overall savings to public services”. The Treasury study, seen by The Independent, was commissioned by the former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg ahead of the general election to help formulate Liberal Democrat drugs policy if the party remained in office. please log in to view this image Legalising cannabis would raise taxes worth hundreds of millions of pounds and produce large savings for the criminal justice system, a private analysis for the Treasury has concluded. It judged that regulating cannabis, which was used by more than two million people in the UK last year, could generate “notable tax revenue” and “lead to overall savings to public services”. The Treasury study, seen by The Independent, was commissioned by the former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg ahead of the general election to help formulate Liberal Democrat drugs policy if the party remained in office. Following David Cameron’s general election victory, the Government has set its face against reform of Britain’s 40-year-old drugs laws and rebuffed calls for a new approach to cannabis use. But his officials’ research underlined the appeal to the Treasury and the courts and prisons system of following the lead of several countries and US states and legalising and regulating the drug. Norman Lamb, the Lib Dem health spokesman, said the study – believed to the first carried out by the government – added to growing evidence pointing to the need for a new approach to cannabis. He said: “This is an important contribution to the wider debate on drugs reform and shows the UK could make savings in public spending and generate notable tax revenues from a regulated cannabis market, probably in the hundreds of millions of pounds, some of which could be spent on better education around the dangers of drugs use. “There are successful cannabis markets emerging in different parts of the world and we should look to learn from these experiences. The burden is now with supporters of the status quo to explain why prohibition should continue in the face of the emerging evidence.” The research drew heavily on a study by the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER) at the University of Essex, which calculated an annual windfall of between £500m and £800m to the Treasury if cannabis was treated in the same way as tobacco. George Osborne’s department agreed that regulating and taxing cannabis had the potential to “generate notable tax revenue, although we expect it to generate less than the c £0.5-0.8bn pa ISER assumes”. It worked on the basis that the highly potent forms of cannabis, such as skunk, would remain illegal and under-18s would be barred from buying the drug as they are with cigarettes. The Treasury said the rate of duty would depend on how much money the government wanted to collect and the extent to which it wanted to drive down use. VAT would also be levied on cannabis if it was legalised. Savings on justice The Treasury's analysis concluded that legalisation could save: £18m to the police £24m to the courts £9m in community sentences £3m to the probation service £2m to prisons It pointed to research concluding that legalisation could have a small impact on the NHS costs. The research speculated on a range of outcomes between a saving for the health service of £16m and a cost of £128m. However, any extra spending is likely to be outweighed by annual savings of between £55m and £147m to the criminal justice system, the Treasury said. If people were no longer charge for possession of cannabis, there would savings of £18m to the police, £24m to the courts, £9m in community sentences, £3m to the probation service and £2m to prisons. It also suggested that the cost of dealing with more serious drugs offences would drop as users switched to the legal market. The Treasury cited research concluding that cannabis use is not closely linked to adult productivity, although it pointed to academic studies pointing to long-term adverse effects for consumption of the drug among under-16s. It said there was a “high level of uncertainty” around that point, but it believed that the impact of negative impact of legalisation on economic productivity “would most likely be towards the lower end of the 0-£3bn range”. In a Commons debate on cannabis legislation, the former Conservative Cabinet minister Peter Lilley said cannabis should be legalised and made available for medicinal use, telling MPs: “Even Queen Victoria allegedly used cannabis to relieve menstrual pain and if it’s a Victorian value then surely it can be made more widely available.” He said: “Prohibition of cannabis drives soft drug users into the arms of hard drug pushers. Only by providing some legal outlets for cannabis can we break the contact between cannabis users and those pushing cocaine, crack and heroin.” "
How could it only save £18m for the police if hanging around trying to catch Assange sneaking out of the Ecuadorean embassy has cost £12m? It's because the police don't spend much effort on it, certainly not on consumers, and haven't for years. They've done this in several relatively conservative US States. You won't reconvert those already used to skunk to milder stuff though. It's a rare night when I don't get a few wafts of weed walking round leafy Leamington Spa, there's plenty of smoking on the street. The lines between alcohol, tobacco and the illegal narcotics are only social convention anyway, legalise and regulate the lot. Or ban the lot.
If you can tell the difference between the smell of skunk and weed Stan, you can call yourself an expert! I have no experience of the former - for me, it's just a little black and white critter that scuttles about the US bush and if disturbed, smells worse than the Ellerlie Road urinals
My problem with this is the smoking bit not the cannabis bit. Legalise cannabis, and sell ordinary weed and not skunk.. Simples
Wasn't meant to, depends on what you are buying Wats, big range in there. Mushrooms, mescaline can be just as stimulating.
There's a good and convincing essay by Theodore Dalrymple, himself a retired GP who worked in a lot of ****hole places through choice to study myriad social issues, that argues against legalisation.
On the basis of that I've changed my mind. Or perhaps not. Strong arguments on both sides but surely the libertarian in you recognises that people can choose to wreck themselves and having laws that aren't enforced is daft.
If there were no drugs in the world and suddenly alcohol and marijuana were discovered, you'd say alcohol is the one that is to the detriment of society.
Just a little info on skunk. It is a genetically modified plant that is based on Jamaican red leaf weed. It's seed was spliced and joined to other high level THC weed seeds to increased the THC levels. (First done in Holland I believe.) The process was repeated many times to keep increasing the THC levels so it is now in far higher quantities. (If your not aware THC is the active stimulant that gets you high.) What is not so well known is normal cannabis (both weed and hashish) has a second active element called CBC. It would seem that without the CBC the THC in such high levels on it's own interferes with the brain in a different way and induces mental health issues. (The CBC seems to restrict this greatly.) So a combination of no CBC, altered high levels of THC and high usage is what makes skunk a health risk. As a smoker myself I am all for the legalisation of cannabis but this must not include skunk as it would have a really damaging effect on people. Hopefully by cleaning up the quality of the non skunk forms would be enough to make up for the lower THC levels. It is also why I hardly ever smoke skunk and would urge anyone that smokes a lot of it to try and find high grade non skunk forms of smoke. To save questions on how I know this, I used to work in a forensic toxicology lab that tested for drugs of abuse. I wasn't on the chemistry side but on the legal documentation side of the lab but had access to all the research being done.
