Cannabis Culture

[poliphilo]

Gordon Brown wants to regrade cannabis from a Class "C" to a Class "B" drug. In response members of his cabinet have been falling over themselves to confess their own past drug use. I don't know if they're doing this to pre-empt future revelations or in an attempt to head him off at the pass, but the effect is to highlight just how mainstream cannabis now is .

If you're under seventy (and not Gordon Brown) you'll have been around the stuff and probably used it.  I don't smoke tobacco, so I don't smoke grass- simple as that- but I did try it once (it made me cough) and I've been in houses where the fug hung so heavy I was getting the full benefit. By the way, does that make me an accessory?

The criminalisation of cannabis criminalises us all. I think it's daft. 

Upping the penalties for cannabis use isn't going to squash the cannabis culture.  We should decriminalise it for the same reason we haven't criminalised alcohol- a far more dangerous drug- because it's entrenched, it's here to stay- and a law that isn't going to work- that can't be properly enforced, that goes against the grain of what's socially accepted- is unjust and brings all law into disrepute.

Comments

[solar-diablo.livejournal.com]

NPR was doing a story on marijuana vendors in California, which are legal under their state medicinal laws but they still occasionally run afoul of the federal government. It got me wondering why marijuana is still classified as a drug no less dangerous than cocaine or heroin by the feds. The thought struck me that perhaps it might be due in part to how easily it can be grown by the everyday citizen if it were legal, as opposed to other drugs. Grandma might not want to be bothered with a meth lab in her basement even if it were legal, for example, just because of all the fuss involved. But how hard is it to grow pot alongside your petunias? So maybe there's a fear on the part of the government that a recreational drug so easily grown would be completely untrackable (and therefore impossible to regulate and tax)?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think you could be onto something there.

Cannabis is a weed and absurdly easy to grow. The police in greater Manchester are always discovering and breaking up indoor marijuana "farms".