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by STEVE DOUGHTY, Daily Mail
12th September 2003
Cannabis users were controversially freed from the fear of arrest yesterday.
As David Blunkett began the final stage in downgrading the drug, police chiefs issued guidelines on how to handle those caught with it.
Officers on the streets will be unable to arrest anyone for possession of cannabis as long as it appears to be for their own use.
They will merely record the incident and confiscate the drug.
Plans for a "three strikes and you're out" system have been abandoned and, crucially, police have been given no guidance over how much of the drug makes someone a dealer.
The Association of Chief Police Officers said anyone caught repeatedly would also be arrested - but gave no figure for how many offences it would take to qualify.
The changes - bitterly criticised by anti-drugs campaigners and MPs - mark the most liberal approach by any Government since cannabis use became common in the 1960s.
Under the new rules, coming into force in January, anyone smoking cannabis in public will still face arrest, as will people under 17 found with the drug and anyone in possession of it near schools, youth clubs and children's play areas.
But hundreds of thousands of others will no longer face prosecution, heavy fines or possible jail sentences.
There were immediate warnings that official tolerance will be seen by millions of young people as an invitation to sample the drug.
Official surveys already show that nearly half of all 15-year-olds have tried cannabis and there are fears that many more will now take the hint that using it is acceptable behaviour.
Critics say many will move on to more addictive and potentially fatal drugs.
There were also warnings that the guidelines are so woolly as to be almost impossible to put into action on the streets.
Shadow Home Secretary Oliver Letwin said: "This is the worst of both worlds. There is a case for legalisation, and there is a case for getting people off drugs. What there is not a case for is making them semi-legal."
He added: "I know I can't easily follow the guidelines and I don't suppose anyone else will. All it will do is cause confusion. That's not the fault of the police. It's the fault of the Home Secretary."
Mr Blunkett's move follows the experiment launched in Brixton, South London, in 2001 in which users were not arrested.
Independent research has since cast serious doubts on its effectiveness, but the Home Secretary and some police chiefs remain convinced that allowing officers effectively to ignore cannabis and concentrate on "hard" drugs helps them tackle more serious crime.
Sir Paul Beresford, Tory MP for Mole Valley and a former council chief in Wandsworth, South London, said: "I feel very worried by this. I would have thought the experience in Brixton and liberalisation in Amsterdam would have made clear that if you have laws against this drug you should enforce them."
He added: "Where cannabis is tolerated, the people who sell harder drugs move in."
Anti-drugs campaigners complained that Mr Blunkett has taken no account of recent research linking cannabis to mental illness and serious physical health problems.
A study by the Institute of Psychiatry last year found that cannabis users were seven times more likely than non-users to develop mental illness. Its authors warned: "The link is now clear. It is something society needs to think about very carefully."
Anti-drugs campaigner Mary Brett, a grammar school teacher, said: "This can only make the problem of cannabis use worse. It will bring other problems like the use of cannabis by drivers."
Mr Blunkett first indicated last year that he planned to downgrade cannabis from Class B, with amphetamines and barbiturates, to Class C, alongside the growth hormones and anabolic steroids that are common among athletes and bodybuilders.
The change was originally scheduled for this summer but appears to have been delayed by worries over how new police rules should be framed.
Yesterday, however, Mr Blunkett introduced a draft order for the change in the Commons. It is scheduled to come into force on January 29.
Simultaneously, ACPO announced its guidelines for the new system.
The Home Secretary insisted that reclassification was not the same as decriminalising the drug.
"The Government is determined to support the police in tackling the problem of drug abuse with an effective and realistic approach," he said. "Cannabis will not be legalised or decriminalised. It is a harmful drug that is illegal and will remain illegal.
"The change in classification will enable the police to target Class A drugs such as heroin and coca1ne which cause the most harm to users, their families and communities."
The ACPO guidelines contained just 600 words, but an additional document explained that setting a "personal use" limit would simply lead to dealers carrying around amounts just below the limit.
It would also be difficult for officers to determine weights or quantities on the street, it said.
The police chiefs insisted that anyone tempted to celebrate the new regime by smoking cannabis in the street would still face arrest.
"The smoking of cannabis in public view is not in the spirit of re-classification," said an ACPO statement.
"Such flagrant ignorance of the law has the potential of undermining the illegal status of possession of a controlled drug."
The Association's spokesman Andy Hayman, Chief Constable of Norfolk, said: "Officers will still have a power of arrest for simple possession.
"But in the spirit of the Home Secretary's decision to reclassify cannabis, the new guidance recommends that there should be a presumption against arrest."
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