Yvette Cooper, the public health minister, said on Friday that she had taken cannabis at university. Mo Mowlam, the Cabinet Office minister, was previously the only government member to have admitted using cannabis in the past. Charles Kennedy, the Liberal Democrat leader, has called for cannabis to be decriminalised and for a royal commission to be set up on drugs policy. Last week the chief constable of Cumbria, Colin Phillips, said the decriminalisation of cannabis was inevitable and he would take no action if he saw someone smoking it at a party. It is exactly the sort of wishy-washy statement which fits so well with the home secretary's policy of giving special early releases to 3,000 drug dealers.
Cannabis remains illegal and as such possession is a breach of the law.
Even if you are just an occasional dinner-party user, you still buy from a dealer and that dealer feeds the system which also involves hard drugs and sale to children. If Mr Blair wants the police to avoid such people, he'll have to change the law. Until then we need him to back us in enforcing the law as it stands. A spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers suggested that any softening of the line on drugs would be unwelcome. We do not believe there is any need to change the current legal framework.