The smoking of cannabis, even long term, is not harmful to
health. Yet this widely used substance is illegal just about everywhere. There have been numerous
calls over the years for the legalisation, or at least decriminalisation, of soft drugs, among which
cannabis remains the most popular with all social groups. In this highly contentious area, the
Dutch attitude has been often mentioned as the voice of sanity. In the Netherlands, customers of
coffee shops can buy up to 30 g of cannabis for about 10 pounds ($15) although the drug is
technically illegal. The shops are not allowed to advertise, or to sell cannabis to individuals aged
under 16 years.
Prominent among those currently calling for legislative reform - and
going further by making constructive proposals - are police chiefs and city medical officers,
people who know only too well that the existing policies in most countries are ineffective and
unworkable. Meanwhile, politicians have largely remained silent, seemingly afraid of offending
powerful segments of the electorate or merely of being perceived as weak in the face of rising
crime figures. When the occasional politician raises her head above the parapet - as the British
opposition MP Clare Short did recently in calling for a fresh debate on decriminalisation of
cannabis - the response is tediously predictable: widespread condemnation from political
colleagues and overwhelming support from those who have to cope with the end result of political
inertia.
In the case of Ms Short, not only was she speedily reprimanded by the
party leader, but also party officials claimed that their non-legalisation stance was entirely logical
since legalisation of cannabis would "increase the supply, reduce the price, and increase the
usage". According to a Home Office report earlier this year, the number of people taking cannabis
has doubled in a decade - without any help from "liberal" measures. Perhaps the politicians' real
fear was that freedom to use soft drugs would automatically progress to increased use of
substances such as cocaine and heroin. If so, they must have overlooked the recent Dutch
government review which pointed out that decriminalisation of possession of soft drugs has not
led to a rise in the use of hard drugs.
If the Dutch approach is so successful, why are changes afoot in The
Hague to tighten up that country's drug policy.? First Amsterdam's mayor proposed closing down
half the city's coffee shops that sell cannabis, and in doing so he rejected a report by his health
department in favour of legalisation of soft drugs. Then the Dutch government, which had made
an election promise to legalise cannabis, last month issued a discussion paper which mirrored the
Amsterdam plan. If, as expected, the Dutch parliament agrees the latest proposals, half the
country's 4000 cannabis-selling coffee shops will close and the amount that can be sold to an
individual will be cut to 5 g. Since the government's own review provides no ammunition for such
a change in policy, the real reason behind the new measures must lie elsewhere. One need look no
further than the Netherlands' neighbours and co-signatories of the Schengen agreement, which
introduced a border-free zone between the Netherlands, France, Germany, Spain, Luxembourg,
and Belgium. When France, in particular, threatened to end the agreement, claiming that the
Netherlands was the major supplier of Europe's drugs, some action had to be taken and the coffee
shops became the scapegoat.
Leaving politics aside, where is the harm in decriminalising cannabis.?
There is none to the health of the consumers, and the criminal fraternity who depend for their
succour on prohibition would hate it. But decriminalisation of possession does not go far enough
in our view. That has to be accompanied by controls on source, distribution, and advertising,
much as happens with tobacco. A system, in fact, remarkably close to the existing one in Dutch
coffee shops.
Cannabis has become a political football, and one that governments
continually duck. Like footballs, however, it bounces back. Sooner or later politicians will have to
stop running scared and address the evidence: cannabis per se is not a hazard to society but
driving it further underground may well be.
The Lancet
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