cannabisnews.com: Cannabis Arrests Down by a Third 





Cannabis Arrests Down by a Third 
Posted by CN Staff on July 28, 2004 at 20:52:42 PT
By Alan Travis, Home Affairs Editor
Source: Guardian Unlimited UK
Arrests for cannabis possession have dropped by a third in the five months since the drug law was relaxed in January, according to early estimates published by the Home Office yesterday. Ministers say the estimates show that 180,000 hours of police officer time will be saved in a year as a result of the reclassification of cannabis from a class B to class C drug.
The change is intended to encourage police officers to confiscate the substance and issue an on-the-spot warning rather than make an arrest in cases of simple possession. The latest published figures show that as many as 97,000 people a year were being arrested for cannabis possession before the change. The Home Office also published British Crime Survey statistics suggesting that cannabis use among teenagers had started to decline for the first time. The figures show that just under 25% of 16- to 24-year-olds said they had tried cannabis during the 12 months to March 2004, compared with 28% in 1998. The Home Office minister Caroline Flint said: "These are encouraging figures, but we are not complacent. The police are spending less time arresting people for possession of cannabis and filling in the paperwork that goes along with it. "This enables them to concentrate on class A drugs which cause most harm to society." The Home Office said it did not yet have detailed arrest figures for cannabis possession but had based the estimate on early returns from 26 of the 43 police forces in England and Wales outlining the trend in arrests between February and June this year compared with 2003. The claimed success for the change in Britain's drug laws comes as the European Union's "horizontal working party on drugs" proposed that ministers should ban internet sites that provide information on the cultivation and promotion of cannabis. At the initiative of the Swedish and Spanish governments the working group is pressing EU ministers to adopt a draft resolution on cannabis to tackle the use of the drug and the higher potency of some marijuana, and to introduce tougher international law enforcement against the trade. Its proposal to urge EU governments to take action against pro-cannabis internet sites has angered campaigners. The British Legalise Cannabis campaign said it acknowledged that the drug was not harmless, but was adamant its website provided information on cannabis rather than promoted its use. It said the proposal amounted to censorship, and suggested it could lead to the suppression of any website featuring a cannabis leaf. The EU group is influential because it reports directly to the council of ministers. Its draft resolution says cannabis is the illegal substance most commonly used in all the EU states, and is growing in popularity among young people in most of them. Special Report: Drugs in Britain: http://www.guardian.co.uk/drugs/0,2759,178206,00.htmlSource: Guardian Unlimited, The (UK) Author: Alan Travis, Home Affairs EditorPublished: Thursday, July 29, 2004Copyright: 2004 Guardian Newspapers LimitedContact: letters guardian.co.ukWebsite: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Related Articles & Web Site:UKCIAhttp://www.ukcia.org/Extra-High Cannabis Theory Goes Up In Smoke http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread19066.shtmlBiggest Shake-Up of Britains Laws in 30 Yearshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread18261.shtml 
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Comment #5 posted by Kegan on July 29, 2004 at 12:33:05 PT
Dan Garner in National Post
Dan Gardner 
National Post 
Website: http://www.nationalpost.com/ With Paul Martin's announcement that the government will reintroduce legislation decriminalizing the possession of marijuana, the old debate has resumed. On one side are the hardliners who say that any softening of the marijuana laws puts the nation at risk of becoming the world's biggest hippie commune. On the other side are those who think it's absurd that a 16 year old caught with a joint should be saddled with a criminal record -- or that an adult should be threatened with jail simply because he chooses to relax on a Friday night with a puff of marijuana instead of a belt of scotch. Every poll shows a clear majority of Canadians endorses the government's plan -- which would make possession and use of small amounts of marijuana a non-criminal offence, like a speeding ticket. And a good many within that majority, including the National Post's editorial board, would go further: As a Post editorial put it last week, decriminalization should be "only a first step" toward the full legalization of marijuana. My sympathies are entirely with the Post's editorial board. But I'm afraid I cannot share its enthusiasm for decriminalization: Contrary to what the government likes to say and just about everyone thinks, decriminalization will not mean less persecution of midnight tokers. In fact, it will lead to more enforcement and punishment. Indeed, that's what the government expects and wants. In January, 2003, I used the Access to Information Act to request all Department of Justice files relating to decriminalization and marijuana policy. After a series of delays and missed deadlines, I finally received a thick stack of paper last February. Leafing through the documents, several facts quickly became apparent. First, in deciding to make reforms, the government did not conduct a serious review of marijuana policy. Nor were options other than decriminalization mentioned, except in passing. This omission is particularly bizarre because: In 2002, a Senate special committee delivered a comprehensive 650-page report calling for the full legalization of marijuana possession and the licensing of marijuana producers. International experts, those who agreed with the conclusions as well as those who didn't, lauded the report as one of the most rigorous studies ever produced. Yet the government ignored it. The few references to the report in the Department of Justice documents I examined consist mainly of talking points, which advise government figures to tell the media: "The Senate report will be a very helpful contribution to the development of Canada's drug strategy." There's no discussion of the report's arguments and conclusions. No analysis of its voluminous evidence. No substance at all. When I told Senator Pierre-Claude Nolin, the chairman of the committee, that the report had been ignored, he was shocked. He said he had personally briefed then-justice minister Martin Cauchon. According to Mr. Nolin, "he told me he was to ask his department to review the report and give him an 
analysis." I found another surprise in a draft Cabinet submission labelled "secret." In a policy backgrounder on decriminalization, the Cabinet submission notes a phenomenon criminologists call "net widening," which essentially means that when punishments are reduced, enforcement typically goes up. That's because police officers often let minor offenders get away with a warning when they feel that a criminal charge and sentence is too severe under the circumstances. Reduce the punishment and fewer offenders are let go. The law's "net" is effectively cast wider. Marijuana decriminalization is likely a classic net-widening policy. Most police officers, like most Canadians, think criminal charges for pot possession are excessive and not worth the associated administrative burden. So they often tell petty offenders to hand over the baggie and go home. Contrary to what ministers like to say in selling decriminalization, it is very unlikely that an otherwise innocent teenager caught with a joint will see the inside of a courtroom, and even more unlikely that he will be saddled with a criminal record. It happens, but it is rare. Decriminalization, by contrast, would introduce a ticketing system that reduces the paperwork involved. And it would bring punishments more in line with what the average cop might accept as fair. Enforcement and punishment would soar. This is no mere conjecture. It's precisely what happened in South Australia when marijuana was decriminalized in 1987. The draft Cabinet submission notes all this, and concludes that decriminalization in Canada "will likely increase enforcement." Quite true. But the astonishing thing is that this conclusion is listed under 
"Advantages." In other words, decriminalization is a fraud. Reformers support it because they think it means easing back the heavy hand of the law. In reality, it will do the opposite -- and the government knows it. This deception is appalling. So is the failure of decriminalization, unlike legalization, to take back the marijuana trade from criminals and gangsters. But perhaps the most destructive aspect of the policy would be the image it creates in the public's mind. Many Canadians already mistakenly believe our drug laws are quite liberal. And if decriminalization passes, that assumption will become universal. Canadians who agree that the status quo is a mistake -- their ranks are growing daily -- would conclude that major reform has been accomplished and the drive for real change would peter out. Plus, you can bet your last dime bag that any bad news about drugs in the future -- rising usage rates, gang wars over the trade, whatever -- would be blamed on our "liberal" drug laws. This is why the Post is mistaken for endorsing decriminalization. Sensible folks who want real marijuana reform should grit their teeth, join hands with the hawks who want to make war on the weed, and defeat the bill. 
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Comment #4 posted by b4integrity on July 29, 2004 at 07:26:34 PT:
 "drugs" versus "the use of drugs"
"This enables them to concentrate on class A drugs which cause most harm to society." Of course neither class A drugs, class B drugs, class C drugs, OTC drugs, prescription drugs, or even tobacco, alcohol, or coffee cause harm to society, whether in Great Britain, the USA, or anywhere else. These dishonest hypocrites in Great Britain make the same error that almost everyone who talks about drugs makes, that is, they are unable to distinguish between the use of drugs by human beings, and the drugs themselves.It is likely that people continue to make this error in talking about drugs and the use of drugs because it is easier to blame the inanimate chemicals than to blame themselves for their own choices and behavior for the harms that often result from one's misuse of drugs. Also, it is a lie that the use of class A drugs "cause most harm to society". Clearly it is the use of tobacco and alcohol that causes the most harm to society when comparing the harm from using drugs. However, the harm to society from the enforcement of the irrational, immoral, dishonest, and hypocritical drug prohibition laws is probably greater than the harm from the use of the hard drugs tobacco and alcohol.
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Comment #3 posted by cloud7 on July 29, 2004 at 07:17:40 PT
New York Press
"I urge them to consider a few things about the Kerry campaign. It has a few features that have been commented on very little in public. For one, it's crawling with narcs."
Just in case you think the status quo will change article:
http://www.nypress.com/17/30/news&columns/MattTaibbi.cfm
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Comment #2 posted by breeze on July 29, 2004 at 06:33:05 PT
AMEN brother
It sounds as if the UK is a step in the right direction. They will eventually notice a reduction in time spent investigating violent criminal cases, and a general reduction in crime overall- given that less paperwork, more foot patrols are allowed. Their country will also be better prepared against terrorist attacks in the long run as well.
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Comment #1 posted by kaptinemo on July 29, 2004 at 05:03:22 PT:
Hey, antis: We toldja so!
*...Home Office minister Caroline Flint said: "These are encouraging figures, but we are not complacent. The police are spending less time arresting people for possession of cannabis and filling in the paperwork that goes along with it. "This enables them to concentrate on class A drugs which cause most harm to society."*And since British police don't have the monetary incentive of forfeiture, they don't have the motivation to spend so much time on non-violent cannabis users while murders, rapes, child molestations and robberies go unsolved and white collar crime is rampant in the corp-rat world.And maybe that's why the idea is so vociferously fought here in the States: the corp-rat big wigs know that more police free to comb through corp-rat records, the more likely that fraud and abuse will be found, so they use the red herring of cannabis to divert attention.
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