Cannabis

What is cannabis?

Cannabis is a durable hemp plant. The cannabis plant can be used to produce a number of products including seeds, pulp, and medicine. The pulp is used as fuel and to make paper, the seed is used in foods, and the oil from the seed can be used as a base for paints and varnishes. The blossoms and leaves of the hemp plant produce a sticky resin, which has historically been used for a variety of medicinal purposes, and for just as long for recreational drug use.

The compound that gives cannabis its depressant and mood-altering properties is known as THC.

Background

Early explorers and botanists placed the origins of the cannabis or hemp plant in central Asia.

The plant was used in the empires of ancient China about five thousand years ago, and has also been used as part of many religious practices.

In more recent history, cannabis has been used by writers and others artists as a source of inspiration and to aid imagination. For example, the books 'Alice in Wonderland' and 'Through the Looking Glass' were thought to be written while Lewis Carroll was using cannabis.

In the early 1900s, cannabis was popular both as a recreational and a medicinal compound and it is rumoured to have been given to Queen Victoria by her doctor to relieve period pain. The development of superior alternatives, such as the invention of the syringe for rapid drug inducement and the development of aspirin, led to the reduced use of cannabis in medicine.

Cannabis was first made illegal in the UK in 1928. The 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act was later introduced to provide guidance on controlled drugs, and cannabis was classified as a 'class B' drug.

There has subsequently been a change in the Government's stance on cannabis, largely in response to changing public perception toward the drug.

In 2001 the Commons' Home Affairs Select Committee carried out a major study into drugs, titled 'The Government's Drugs Policy: Is it working?'. The report called for a major shake-up of the Government's drugs policy, concentrating on education and harm reduction for users rather than criminal sanctions. The report also recommended the re-classification of cannabis to a class C drug. A report by the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee in 2001 recommended the use of cannabis for medicinal purposes.

In 2002, Home Secretary David Blunkett announced that he might permit the medical use of cannabis if clinical trials of the drug are successful.

In January 2004, cannabis was downgraded to a class C drug across the country.

In March 2005, home secretary Charles Clarke asked the advisory council on the misuse of drugs (ACMD) to examine new evidence on the harmfulness of cannabis and consider whether this changed their assessment of cannabis as a class C drug. In a report in January 2006, the council concluded that cannabis should remain a class C drug, and the Home Office accepted this.

However, the home secretary said a programme of public education was needed to raise understanding about the implications cannabis consumption. The campaign was delivered in partnership with the police and also aimed to publicise the penalties for dealing, producing, and using cannabis.

After ten years of liberalising attitudes and policy under the Labour government, the prime minister Gordon Brown signalled in 2007 that he would consider reclassifying cannabis as a Class B drug. Ministers appeared sympathetic to evidence that cannabis is getting stronger, due to the greater availability of skunk, and the reported links between cannabis use and mental illness.

However, in a mark of the changing status of cannabis, the renewed debate sparked a flurry of confessions by senior ministers that they had smoked the drug in their youth. Among them was the woman in charge of the review, the home secretary Jacqui Smith.

Controversies

Whether cannabis should be legalised, decriminalised or reclassified are all controversial issues, as are any Government attempts to reform the law on drug use.

Debates about drugs have often lumped 'soft drugs' such as cannabis together with 'hard drugs' like heroin and cocaine, if not by ascribing the same physiological and social effects to each, then by regarding the soft drugs as a 'gateway' to hard drug use.

Medical opinion remains divided over the effects of cannabis on users' mental and physical health and on its addictive properties.

In 2001, the Government began a major policy shift on cannabis by conducting a trial in Lambeth, South London, for dealing with cannabis possession offences. Officers in the area would no longer arrest individuals for possession but instead issue a verbal warning and confiscate the substance. The rationale was that by relaxing the current procedures police would be freed up to deal with more serious offences.

However, the scheme caused outcry among some religious and community groups who claimed the Government had 'gone soft' on drugs, sending the wrong message out to youngsters and letting dealers 'get away with it'.

But advocates of legalising cannabis say that its widespread use undermines the law and criminalises otherwise law-abiding users. They also call for a change in the law on libertarian grounds and refute the suggestion that cannabis use leads to harder drugs.

Although it is questionable whether cannabis use always leads to hard drug abuse, drug dealers rarely discriminate between the varieties, and many fear that decriminalisation of cannabis will prop up hard drug dealing and associated organised crime.

Statistics

Cannabis is the most frequently used drug, with around 2.7 million (8.7 per cent) of 16 to 59-year-olds reporting using it from 2005-06. For 16 to 24-year-olds, this figure rises to around 1.3 million (21.4 per cent)

Of all 16 to 59-year-olds, 10.5 per cent had taken an illicit drug and 3.4 per cent had used a class A drug in 2005.

In 2003, 53 per cent of all British adults opposed the reclassification of cannabis as a less harmful drug, while 38 per cent supported the move

Cannabis use doubles or triples the chances of developing psychosis for people who smoke under the age of 18

Statistics 1 and 2: (Source: British Crime Survey 2005/2006); Statistic 3: (Source: Guardian/ICM poll, 2003); Statistic 4: (Source: Mental health charity Rethink)

Quotes

"There is no evidence that this activity is causing violent crime or aggression, anti-social behaviour, or is producing in otherwise normal people conditions of dependence or psychosis requiring medical treatment."

Conclusion of 1968 Wootton Report

"We accept that cannabis can be harmful and that its use should be discouraged. We accept that in some cases the taking of cannabis can be a gateway to the taking of more damaging drugs. However, whether or not cannabis is a gateway drug, we do not believe there is anything to be gained by exaggerating its harmfulness. On the contrary, exaggeration undermines the credibility of messages that we wish to send regarding more harmful drugs... We support, therefore, the Home Secretary's proposal to reclassify cannabis from Class B to Class C."

Conclusion of The Home Affairs Select Committee 'The Government's Drugs Policy: Is it working?' 2001

"After a detailed scrutiny of the evidence, the council does not advise the reclassification of cannabis products to class B – it recommends they remain within class C. While cannabis can, unquestionably, produce harms, these are not of the same order as those of substances within class B. Nevertheless, the council wishes to emphasise that cannabis is harmful."

The Advisory Council for the Misuse of Drugs report 2005

"It may exacerbate schizophrenia in some people, may ameliorate some symptoms in other people. On balance there is probably a negative [effect] in schizophrenia."

Professor David Nutt, Bristol University, evidence to the Home Affairs Committee, 2001