No less than 97,000 people were arretsed in that year, for cannabis related offences. Now is the time to legalise cannabis, cut crime, relax the workload of an overstretched, understaffed police force, and separate this much maligned herb from the addictive drugs such as heroin which need to be treated as a medical issue and not wait until the addict turns into a crime problem. Failed policies need to be changed. The current polices are causing an upturn in addictive drug use thereby turning a small but growing percentage of our youth into thieves and prostitutes and affecting the safety and civil liberties of us all.
Cannabis smoking is essentially a victimless crime.
People with conditions such as MS find it relieves their suffering. Yet doctors can't prescribe it and we instead overload our judicial system with what are trivial offences. The Government must go down the same road as Holland and Switzerland and stop it being a crime to smoke Cannabis. From a MORI opinion poll published in The Economist, January 2000. Green Party policy calls for cannabis to be available through Dutch style 'coffee shops' and allowing people to grow their own.