At last, voices against the dope lobby

IT IS a rule of politics that by the time most people know what you are saying, you are sick to death of saying it. It is many, many years now since I started saying that marijuana was a dangerous drug, not a ‘soft’ one, and that the campaign to legalise it was a major menace. You could easily find retired colonels in significant numbers who favoured decriminalisation then.

I passed through several stages: personal abuse, derision, misrepresentation. When I sought to give evidence to a recent Parliamentary committee, they did not call me, though they spoke to plenty who wish to soften the law.

When I debated against legalisers (I did so yet again in Oxford on Thursday) I noticed that they never actually responded to my arguments. Claiming to be in favour of ‘science-based’ policies and demanding ‘evidence’, they discount the great pile of scientific evidence linking marijuana with mental illness. They do not like that sort of science or that sort of evidence.

But perhaps very slowly, the old complacency is beginning to weaken. I think the Police and Crime Commissioners, such as David Sidwick, who want marijuana to be bumped up from Class ‘B’ to Class ‘A’ are missing the point. Until the police arrest, and the CPS prosecute, and the courts pass proper sentences, the severity of the maximum penalty will make little difference. But the false claims that dope is harmless or that it would make our society safer and better if we legalised it are – at last – beginning to meet resistance. Let us have more of it.