by Tomas Hinton
In the last couple of weeks, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has faced a dilemma in the classification of the drug Marijuana. At present, the drug is a Class C drug, and if caught with enough marijuana to deem for personal use, it will simply be confiscated. Having any cannabis in your possession can however, get you arrested depending on your age and the circumstances. Furthermore, having enough cannabis to suggest distribution or Drug Dealing can land you with up to fourteen years in prison. Now, as if this isn’t enough of a charge for a drug that does no serious damage to people in moderation, Gordon Brown wants to make the classification tighter, and wants to “clamp down” on the use of Cannabis, despite advice from the Drug Advisory Committee to allow it to remain the same. In order to make a judgment on this decision; let’s have a look at Cannabis as a case study. Comparisons for political and legal context will be made with a popular illegal drug; Alcohol.
Cannabis is a Class C drug, which we have already pointed out, can have you arrested for possession, and land you with fourteen years in prison for intent to supply. Cannabis, or Marijuana, is a plant that grows naturally on our planet. Marijuana grows naturally on the planet and is harvested and thus distributed to other countries as a drug. The main legitimacy for the fact that Cannabis is illegal comes from its dangers and health risks to the body. The negative effects of Cannabis is the very small risk in the development of cancer through smoking, and the psychological effects that the drug may have on sufferers of serious mental illnesses. If Cannabis was made legal, the taxation could pay for such small sections of society as the mentally ill to receive treatment, in the same way as cigarettes and alcohol are taxed. The idea that Cannabis can have a negative effect on the mentally ill is true, but is also true of all drugs. Surely, any drug could have a negative effect on a person with serious mental illness, including nicotine, alcohol and various prescription drugs.
Cannabis is a drug that in its effects, tends to expand peoples perceptions, opinions and attitudes to a more relaxed and tolerant state of mind. There has never been a case of a person under the influence of marijuana feeling any forms of aggression or anger, or disrupting the social equilibrium in any way whatsoever. As for alcohol, aggression, fighting, anger and exaggerated emotions are a classic effect of the drug, and most “Friday night” mishaps and social disturbances are down to Alcohol directly. I am not suggesting that Alcohol should be made illegal, nor am I against the use of Alcohol as a drug; but it is obvious and logical to me that if Alcohol is made and distributed freely in our society, then so should other drugs that cause equal, or less negative effects. Brown's classification dilemma with marijuana is not a single issue; it is not a concentrated debate over the legality of Marijuana, but a larger issue of drugs over all, and the human rights behind our freedom in drug use.
LSD is another perfect example of this. LSD is a Class A drug; and you can do as much research as you like into the drug, but it cause little or no negative side effects whatsoever. The only negative side effects to LSD, just like Alcohol, Cannabis, and any other drug, are its effects on the mentally ill, and its effects when used to excess over a long period of time. Again, this can be said for all drugs, especially illegal ones. On a positive side, LSD has proved to be extremely helpful in science, and has advanced psychology to a whole new level in research. Patients in LSD experiments have experienced levels of psychology previously uncharted by scientific research, and the drug has an apparent “link” between the user and a theoretical stream of information, inaccessible by the natural human mind. By making LSD a Class A, the government are saying it is as bad as Heroin or Crack Cocaine- and it simply is not. This “pick ands choose” attitude of the government in drug classification is far more unacceptable than Mr. Brown deems the use of marijuana.
It is in these various different types of advantages of drug use by scientists that we can see the lack of logic behind Mr. Brown’s decision. The fact that he has ignored the advice of 20/23 of the drug advisory committee members is disturbing. Politically, this could be an embarrassment to Gordon Brown, and also, the idea that one (unelected, might I add) man can deem what is “acceptable” to British society is highly disturbing, and Gordon brown should consult his committees and take their advice accordingly instead of following his agenda regardless, which by doing so, he will laugh in the face of democracy. It also disturbs me that Gordon Brown is taking such a moral standpoint on wanting to "crack down" on the use of Marijuana. He seems to use his apparent moral omniscience to legitimise his decision- a morality coming from the same man who was part of starting the illegal war in Iraq, so we should be sceptical at very least about this mans judgement.
Personally, I do not use the drug, but as a liberal I believe that people should be free to use the drug as they wish, as long as it is sensibly and socially controlled. Cannabis should be legal for personal usage, but distribution should be limited to licensed sellers in the same way as alcohol. It would be foolish to immediately legalize Cannabis, but initial steps in the freedom and liberty of humans can be taken, firstly by limiting the criminal offences caused by Cannabis. Making Cannabis “more illegal” can only lead to a further conservative society of oppression, and the intrusion of our liberties and choices. Freedom of choice plays such an important issue here, and we are dictated to by the government and the media on what to believe of these drugs. In reality, we should be given the fair, balanced and unprosecuted choice to make our own personal judgments to discover the real effects of drugs if we choose, Marijuana in particular.
Whenever you see a news article or story on the Television that says “scientific study suggests that…” you would not be wrong in assuming that the following story is true, as scientific research is, after all, the study of fact and what is. However, you must observe these stories with a level of logic and observation that the media does not provide you with. These stories are not direct reports on scientific research; they are interpretations, anchored to you by the media to connote a certain message. The way that scientific research is conducted is that a series of tests on something, for example, the effects of marijuana on the human body, are carried out and reported on. These various tests are tested and re-tested and submitted to committees for revision and are eventually reported officially. It has often been the case that scientific research comes out with various, opposing results. For example, it is possible for a study of Marijuana effects to be conducted in comparison to the effects of smoking cigarettes, and in the first result it is shown that Cannabis is twice as likely to elevate the development of cancer, but in another test it could show the opposite. Which result is picked up by the media and the government for usage is up to them.
This would explain why in high school, I was told by a resident police officer that smoking cigarettes was far worse than marijuana, and there had never been a report of someone dying from the use of Cannabis, and yet thousands die from cigarette smoking related illness every year. Alternatively, not one year later in 6th form at a different, more conservative school, I was told by the same officer that smoking one “spliff” of Marijuana was like smoking five cigarettes at once in terms of its damage to the human body. These stories contradict each other all the time and we should take them with a pinch of salt. Some results of the same tests by scientific research will turn out contradictory, and we need to be aware of this as these results can easily be manipulated by the media and the government when trying to anchor a specific message or ideology.
This scientific context is important in relation to drug classification. The government re-classified Cannabis in the opposite way in 2004, declassifying it as the penalty was dropped from five years in prison, to two for possession. Then the classification was reviewed in 2005, and now again in 2008. This “flip-flop” attitude to classification makes it clear that different political ideologies are the deciding factor in these classification debates, and not necessarily the realistic effects. Tony Blair made Cannabis a Class C drug, and now Brown wants it bumped up to Class B as he deems it “unacceptable”. It is also disturbing that mind expanding drugs such as LSD, and perception advancing drugs such as marijuana are illegal to the point of even being Class A drugs; where as Alcohol - a drug that slows down the development of brain cells and causes anger, aggression and violence in our society is plastered all over billboards, TV advertisements and football club sponsors all nationwide.
When are politicians like Gordon Brown going to stop hiding behind the illusion of morality to mask their political agenda, and start addressing the whole issue of drugs from the view of human rights, and our freedom to choose the drugs we use in our lives? I understand that Heroin and Crack Cocaine and various other drugs are socially dysfunctional and harmful, but there are many illegal drugs that simply are not, or certainly less so than Alcohol. Gordon Brown said that he wanted to put across the message that Marijuana is not only dangerous, but "unacceptable". I say to you, Mr. Brown, that it should not be in the mind of one person to decide what is "unacceptable" to our society; certainly when there are far more harmful drugs such as Alcohol that are deemed "acceptable" by the government.
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