ISSUES
: Drugs
Chapter 2: UK drug laws
21
all unknowns. Estimates of increased use vary between
75% and 289% after legalisation, more if advertising is
permitted.
Invoking fiscal rhetoric to advance legalisation – like
Hannan’s frankly barmy call for a temporary 12-month
suspension of the drugs laws, starting with cannabis –
is not just deceitful, it is downright irresponsible.
I canonly assume that he is unawareof the consequences
of Brixton’s cannabis decriminalisation experiment and
of the later temporary nationwide declassification of
cannabis. I guess he does not know that immediate
rises in consumption of 25% and 30% took place, nor
how long it took for analysis of this to reach the public
domain.
I doubt he knows of Kelly and Rasul’s [2013] testing of
the wider impact of the Brixton experiment. Their key
finding was a dramatic rise in hospital admissions of
15- to 34-year-old Class A drug users. They were 40-
100% more likely to be admitted during the policy trial
– a period in which police were sanctioned to ignore
street-level cannabis offences.
But like the pro-legalising thinktank head I sat next to
at dinner recently, I suspect Hannan’s grasp of the drug
problem is pretty limited. My dinner companion had no
idea how marginal an activity drug use is compared
with smoking and drinking – living as he does among
London’s metropolitan liberals.
He was surprised that fewer than 3% of adults smoke a
spliff at all regularly compared with the 20% who smoke
daily and the overwhelming majority who regularly
drink alcohol. He had no idea that cannabis use overall
had declined in the UK, and so markedly amongst
adolescents – 30% in the last 15 years.
He was unaware that over the same period in the United
States, when 21 states legalised so-called medical
marijuana, teenage drug use doubled to much higher
levels than here and was accompanied by a halving of
teens’ perception of harm. He knew little of the greatly
enhanced cancer risks of smoking cannabis, its effects
on the adolescent brain – on motivation, IQ, psychosis
and schizophrenia – or that cannabis as a coroner-
noted cause of death, although limited, is increasing.
He rolled out the same old cliché as did Hannan: that
it would be preferable, if children are to do drugs, they
do them safely – quality controlled from Boots without a
dealer in sight, of course, and never mind their age. Not
even Professor Nutt personally handing them out would
make it safe, I pointed out, not after they’ve downed
several vodkas and already raided their parent’s newly
legal supply at home.
No matter, in their brave new world, taxation on all
that pot not grown at home, and not leaked onto the
illicit market, will pay for the damage done to the next
generation. The irony is that Hannan and his fellow
libertarians may soon find themselves on the wrong
side of the culture war.
For today’s young people are more, not less, responsible
than before: they drink less, use drugs less, commit
fewer crimes and volunteer more, as a recent Demos
report shows. In these newly competitive times, the
last thing this generation need is a drugs-legalising
experiment foisted on them by ageing libertarians.
Anyway, there already is one – in Colorado. It does not
look good. According to Dr Christian Thurstone, the
director of one of Colorado’s largest youth substance-
abuse treatment clinics, regular high school drug use
has leaped from 19% to 30% since Colorado legalised
medical marijuana in 2009 for adults; teens are using
more higher potency products; school expulsions are
up by a third, and 74% of teens in his drug-treatment
clinic are using somebody else’s medical marijuana, all
of it diverted through somebody who is 18 or older.
Since full legalisation the school situation in Colorado
has got worse. “Kids are smoking before school and
during lunch breaks. They come into school reeking
of pot,” school resource officers say. “Students don’t
seem to realise that there is anything wrong with having
the pot… they act like having marijuana was an ordinary
thing and no big deal”.
Hannan might not mind exposing his children to this
experiment. I think most parents would.
This article originally appeared on ConservativeHome.
20 February 2014
Ö
Ö
The above information is reprinted with kind
permission from
The Guardian
. Please visit www.
theguardian.com for further information.
© 2016 Guardian News and Media Limited
