A deal with the dealers? 
Here they go again. the UK has been debating about the reclassification of cannabis once again. This time, instead of categorizing it as a harder drug like last year, they are now facing relevant arguments for the decriminalization of pot coming from police officers and cannabis experts. This new reform would help targeting important drug dealers and leave on the side the smaller ones.
By Camille Lepage
“If I had to go back to the past, I wouldn’t change anything, I had the best time of my life on drugs” says Adam*, a former cannabis smoker and dealer. Adam, 22 and comes from southern west part of England, he started to sell weed when he was 18 to earn some money and to smoke pot for free. He started with a friend and was selling to his friends and friends of friends, he was only making the deal if he “thought they were trustworthy enough”. He admits that being a drug dealer is a 24/7 job, “ I had to answer the phone every single time, otherwise people wouldn’t come back and I wouldn’t make any money “. He reckons that he was smoking about 1.7 grams per day at that time, not just an addiction, it became a “ritual, a part of his lifestyle”, today he states” people who say cannabis isn’t addictive are wrong”.
He tried almost every single drug but crack and heroine, he explains that “you get in a vicious circle” in which people propose you new drugs all the time. His girlfriend told him one day that he should try to stop for a bit and their relationship might become better. In fact, it did become better. It’s only from that point that he realized he was addicted to it and that dealing was taking up all his life. The first months were hard, he said, “ I couldn’t sleep, was very agitated and angry. My head was working much faster and it really scared me”. He tried to go to the doctor but she didn’t know anything about it and he “put him off”. Now, he only smokes once in a while, he has a job and earns even more money than before, “ I don’t have to deal anymore it’s such a relief, it’s a win-win situation”.
When experts and police officers want pot decriminalized
In the UK, the fight against the s
mall drug dealers, like Adam, is under consideration while the government is reviewing its 10-year drug strategy. In fact, it has been seen that expenses on targeting drug dealers cost a lot of money whereas this money could be spent on prickliest issues, such as coorporated drug organisation. Is it worth fighting against those people, while dangerous criminals are still out on the street? That’s the question asked by one of Britain's most senior police officers, Tim Hollis. According to him, the priority of the police should be about organized criminal networks and not individual carrying drugs for their own use as it is at the moment. His argument is supported by the growing warnings from experts that prohibition does not deter drug use and that decriminalization would liberate precious police resources and cut crime.
The decriminalisation is backed up by Roger Pertwee, professor of neuropharmacology at Aberdeen University, who co-discovered THC in cannabis, the active ingredient in cannabis in the 70s. At the British Science Festival, which took place in September in Birmingham, he declared he favored legalization if the drug was well regulated. His main argument relies on the decriminalization of cannabis, in fact, such legislation would take the drug out of the criminals’ hands and the product could be regulated to ensure its quality and safety before being sold. Nutt, professor of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London, welcomes his fellow colleague to bring about such an initiative, and comments for The Guardian that "alcohol is more dangerous than cannabis and criminalization of people who prefer this drug is illogical and unjust”. He ends by saying that the UK should follow the Dutch model which has been proven to work.
The pros and cons labyrinth
This controversial and redundant subject doesn’t only hit the UK, in fact California is currently having the same debate. The Betty Ford Center, an Alcohol Addiction and Drug Addiction Treatment hospital located in California, evokes that “marijuana is the 1st chapter into their [patients] drug taking history”, to them the legalization/decriminalization is worrying. Pot is associated with ” physical mental illness, poor motor performance and cognitive impairment”. The British government seems to support this theory as a Home Office spokesperson said that: 'The government does not believe that decriminalization is the right approach: “ Our priorities are clear; we want to reduce drug use, crack down on drug related crime and disorder and help addicts come off drugs for good.' The Christian Institute is opposed to this new reform and attempt to thwart the pro-cannabis arguments on their website and demonstrating that there is not that many people smoking it, it has physical and psychological effects on the smokers, prisons might be the solution for addicts and so on.
Those arguments against cannabis decriminalization have to affront its supporters. Professor Joel W. Hay, Pharmaceutical Economics and Policy School of Pharmacy & Schaeffer Center for Healt
h Policy & Economics University of Southern California, who is unconditionally against legalization clarifies his opinion, “legalization of pot would create a nightmare” but yet, he is aware that “de
criminalisation of small amounts of marijuana would free legal resources to go after the drug dealers. This is cheaper and more human than high legal penalties”.
Paul Armentano, deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), declares on the Freakonomics website that it’s time to try another approach as the law prohibiting marijuana has revealed itself out-of-date,overly punitive, and vain policy that carries with it a stunning array of social and economic costs. He denounces false accusations about cannabis, and that “the use of pot by adults is objectively safer to the individual, and to society as a whole, than the use of either alcohol or tobacco, whereas the continued criminal prohibition of pot causes innumerable and far greater harms.” He argues that almost 50% of the American population has used and many continue to use pot despite the imposition of prohibition and asks “Would this percentage be even higher if marijuana were legalized? Possibly, but not likely”.
The UK loses its dunce’s cap
In the UK, the anticipation of young people’s drug use is a crucial element of drug approach, it goes through a better education and intervention and superior public information about drugs. In fact, anti-weed commercials are quite frequent in the UK, they aim at teenagers and young adults, and sensitize them in a witty way to the after effects of pot use (see video). However the pro-cannabis legalization are also widely available online, and their originality is sometimes more entertaining and more powerful than the others (see video).
Advert against legalization
Advert in favor of legalization
A survey realized by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, the lifetime prevalence of cannabis in the UK is 30%, nevertheless the years 2007-2008 reveals a impressive amelioration with a prevalence of cannabis use under 7.4 %, showing a steady decline in cannabis use since 2003 (10.8 %). In comparison, the prevalence of cannabis in France is 8.2%, in the Netherlands 5.4% and in Italy 14.6%. Arrests in possession of cannabis represents almost 52% of the drug related law offences, while 83% in France, 47.6% in The Netherlands and 56.6% in Italy. The highest number of seizures of herbal cannabis was reported by the United Kingdom, accounting for approximately half of the total in 2005 and 2006 but has lowered in 2009/2010. In the UK, every year people are admitted in drug addiction clinics because of cannabis addiction, this proportion represents one out of four new patient in 2007.
The enforcement of a new law about the reclassification of cannabis should take place soon, however, just like Adam says “ this debate has already been on for years, it could take one to 100 year”, and the main problem of decriminalization of cannabis in the UK is that “people don’t know where to stop, so many people would get into trouble”. But in the end if it was to be licensed, Adam would be thinking about getting his own shop because he “like[s] the feeling of buying and selling and because cannabis is a good drug that had good effects on people”.
*His name had been changed for anonymous matters
