The northlondonhippy

Some­times, this blog just writes itself and the fol­low­ing entry is ripped straight off the front page of today’s Guardian newspaper.

The head­line reads “Cannabis use down since legal change” and it was writ­ten by their Home Affairs Edi­tor, Alan Travis, based on the lat­est report by the British Crime Sur­vey. Mr. Travis has con­tin­ued to pro­vide fair, bal­anced and respon­si­ble cov­er­age of this very impor­tant issue. That can’t be easy in the cur­rent cli­mate of fear and false infor­ma­tion and I would like to pub­licly thank him for that. Please take the time to read HIS REPORT.

A few key quotes:

1) “Gor­don Brown’s plans to tighten the law on cannabis by increas­ing the penal­ties for pos­ses­sion suf­fered a fresh blow yes­ter­day as the lat­est offi­cial fig­ures showed the deci­sion to down­grade the drug had been fol­lowed by a sig­nif­i­cant fall in its use.

British Crime Sur­vey sta­tis­tics showed that the pro­por­tion of 16– to 24-year-olds using cannabis slumped from 28% a decade ago to 21% now, with its declin­ing pop­u­lar­ity accel­er­at­ing after the deci­sion to down­grade the drug to class C was announced in Jan­u­ary 2004.”

2) “…the BCS fig­ures pub­lished yes­ter­day showed that cannabis is begin­ning to lose its allure with teenagers. The pro­por­tion of fre­quent users in the 16–24 age group, who were using the drug more than once a month, fell from 12% to 8% in the past four years.”

3) “The decline in cannabis con­sump­tion prompted a call from the inde­pen­dent UK Drugs Pol­icy Com­mis­sion to take deci­sions about drug clas­si­fi­ca­tion out of the hands of min­is­ters. Dame Ruth Runci­man, the commission’s chief, said: “We do not believe the cred­i­bil­ity of the cur­rent sys­tem or the clar­ity of mes­sage has been enhanced when, in just the space of seven years, five home sec­re­taries have sought one way or another to address the clas­si­fi­ca­tion of cannabis.”

Good pol­i­cy­mak­ing had been over­shad­owed by “pol­i­tick­ing”, and much of the con­fu­sion among pub­lic and politi­cians stemmed from mis­un­der­stand­ings about the clas­si­fi­ca­tion sys­tem. The com­mis­sion also says there is no evi­dence a drug’s clas­si­fi­ca­tion deterred use, and sug­gested that instead of tin­ker­ing the whole clas­si­fi­ca­tion sys­tem should be placed out­side the direct con­trol of politicians.”

4) “Claims that “super­skunk”,.. (is) dom­i­nant were also under­mined by police and cus­toms seizure fig­ures.… (with skunk mak­ing up) less than one-third of the (UK) market.”

The sig­nif­i­cance of this report can­not be under­es­ti­mated. It con­tra­dicts absolutely every lie com­ing from the gov­ern­ment on their jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for pos­si­ble reclas­si­fi­ca­tion of cannabis. It pisses all over much of the bull­shit we’ve been read­ing the news­pa­pers over the last few months too.

I think Dame Runci­man is onto some­thing when she says the deci­sion should be taken away from min­is­ters. She is so right. Drug use is mainly a health issue, and should not be con­fused with legal or moral arguments.

The Guardian wasn’t the only news­pa­per to cover this story, as you can see for your­self in The Times and the Inde­pen­dent. The truth always finds a way!

I’m look­ing for­ward to this Sunday’s “Inde­pen­dent on Sun­day”, to see how they can spin this one into some silly-assed shite.

Yes, IoS, you print a hell of a lot of silly-assed shite when it comes to my beloved cannabis and I am really get­ting bored with it. I’m guess­ing a senior edi­tor there must have a teenage son or daugh­ter who got into trou­ble and decided it was eas­ier to blame weed, then take responsibility.

The IoS cam­paign smacks of per­sonal inter­est, bor­der­ing on vendetta. As jour­nal­ists, you’re sup­posed to be the dis­pas­sion­ate observers, you’re not meant to fur­ther your per­sonal agenda with lie after lie. I have an agenda as too, but I back it up with the truth and per­sonal expe­ri­ence and am try­ing to do some gen­uine good. If the IoS con­tin­ues like this, they will be exposed and no one will trust any­thing else they publish.

Is the rep­u­ta­tion of your news­pa­per worth back­ing los­ing horse? The hypocrisy you’re show­ing will do you no favours. You can’t con­tinue to ignore the hard facts and it would be much bet­ter for you to come out now with an edi­to­r­ial, explain­ing you got it wrong and revert back to your pre­vi­ous and long run­ning cam­paign to legalise weed! We’d for­give you if you did!

I don’t see how any­one can ignore these hard facts and reli­able sta­tis­tics, but I’m sure our gov­ern­ment will find a way. If they can avoid the truth to jus­tify the war in Iraq, it will be a piece of piss to do the same thing with weed. Both of those things make this hippy very sad.

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