Wake up and smell the cannabis

Last January 29, after much “soul searching” by Home Secretary David Blunkett, the British government reluctantly downgraded cannabis from a Class B to a Class C drug – which puts hash and grass in the same legal category as anabolic steroids and tranquillisers like Valium.

It was a good day for the UK’s estimated 5.1 million regular cannabis users – roughly the equivalent of Ireland’s population – who can now skin up in the privacy of their own homes without any fear of arrest.
A good day, but not a great day. Reclassification, rather than legalisation, is a lily-livered move by the Home Secretary, more likely to result in confusion about the drug’s legal status than anything else. If you’ll excuse the dreadful pun, Blunkett’s made a hash of it.
Under the new classification, public possession of cannabis remains an arrestable offence but the police now have the (preferred) option of issuing a formal warning to offenders instead. The maximum penalty for dealing is still 14 years imprisonment, though it has been cut from five to two years for possession.
In other words, it’s still an illegal substance – just not as illegal as it used to be. You can still be arrested for possessing it in public but, chances are, you probably won’t be. You can smoke it at home, but nobody is allowed to sell it to you.
This rather Kafka-esque situation is unlikely to worry the various criminal gangs and terrorist organisations who will continue to amass vast profits from the illegal cannabis trade. In fact, they would’ve been far more worried if Blunkett had bitten the bullet and legalised it.
It costs roughly the same to grow a kilo of tomatoes as it does to grow a kilo of top quality cannabis. But you’ve gotta sell a hell of a lot of tomatoes to buy an Uzi or a trailer load of Albanian lap-dancers.
It’s commonly assumed that cannabis is banned because it represents a danger to the public health. Despite the reclassification, the Home Office were quick to stress that it remains, “a harmful drug and an illegal drug.”
There’s certainly some truth in the claim that cannabis can be harmful. Smoking any kind of substance doesn’t do the throat or lungs any good, and may well lead to cancer. People already prone to depression or mental illnesses such as schizophrenia may find that it exacerbates their condition (though there are numerous documented cases of people who claim to have had their depression cured by it).
Prohibitionists also argue that cannabis is a “gateway drug”, which leads onto harder substances like cocaine and heroin. Due to its illegality, users may well be offered other drugs at the point of sale by unscrupulous dealers but, otherwise, there’s no magic ingredient in cannabis that makes people want to stick needles in their arms.
But, while not entirely safe, in this drug-savvy age it’s widely acknowledged that cannabis is far less dangerous than numerous other legal drugs – particularly killers like alcohol and tobacco.
It also has a proven track record of medical effectiveness. Cannabis has been successfully used in the treatment of numerous serious maladies – including AIDS, anorexia, cancer and multiple sclerosis. And David Blunkett, of all people, should be aware of its success in the treatment of glaucoma.
And it’s plusses aren’t purely medicinal. Throughout 10,000 years of recorded use, cannabis has been grown to provide much more than just a relaxed state of mind or relief from pain. It’s unique among recreational drugs in that it’s also one of the most versatile and useful plants on the planet. With the proper light, cannabis can be grown virtually anywhere – from an Afghan mountaintop to an Athlone attic.
A natural fibre, for centuries the plant was widely grown for making paper, sails, armour, clothing and rope. During the industrial revolution, it was discovered that the cellulose hurd which makes up 80% of the plant can easily be turned into environmentally-friendly products such as soaps, oils, engine fluid and plastics.
It’s indisputable that the cannabis plant’s positive properties far outweigh the negative. Yet every year, billions are squandered by governments and their agencies attempting to stamp out cannabis, rather than researching and exploiting its obvious potential.
So why is this? And why was such a medically beneficial plant prohibited in the first place? The answer has nothing to do with any great threat to the public health, but everything to do with big business and the vested interests of a small group of individuals.

Unsurprisingly, the roots of cannabis prohibition lie in America. In 1931, while working for the US Treasury, Andrew Mellon of Mellon Bank of Pittsburgh, had his son-in-law Harry J. Anslinger appointed to the head of the newly-organised Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. Anslinger quickly became America’s most vocal cannabis prohibitionist.
He was effective too. In 1937, having told the American Congress that, “Marijuana is the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind”, he succeeded in having the growth of the plant effectively banned through the Marijuana Taxation Act.
He continued peddling the “violence-causing” line until 1948, when he completely changed tack. By then, America was becoming obsessed by communism and so he informed Congress that cannabis was a Commie plot, designed to turn US soldiers and youths into pacifists, and leave the country’s defences wide open to the Red Threat.
But why did Anslinger want it banned so badly? Essentially, he was doing his father-in-law’s bidding. At the time, natural hemp fibres were in serious competition with the new synthetic fibres like nylon and rayon, which came from the petro-chemical industry. Once cannabis was banned, one of the main companies to take advantage and establish a virtual monopoly on the market was DuPont. Interestingly, the main financial backer of DuPont was the Mellon Bank of Pittsburgh.
Anslinger had been enthusiastically aided in his efforts by William Randolph Hearst. One of the first media barons (he was the model for Orson Welle’s Citizen Kane), Hearst had invested hugely in forestry and wood pulping and paper manufacturing equipment.
However, in 1916, with the war in Europe putting great pressure on American forestry reserves (30 million feet of spruce alone was going into the war effort every month), US Department of Agriculture scientists devised a method of making paper from hemp-pulp on the same scale as wood-pulp.
This potentially much cheaper process posed a great threat to Hearst’s investments and he was only too happy to help demonise the cannabis plant through his tabloid newspapers.
Anslinger was eventually sacked by JFK in 1962 (for unauthorised censorship of opposing viewpoints), but by then the 1956 Narcotic Control Act had been passed. Although it’s an extremely simple process to grow cannabis without any THC (the active ingredient that gets people stoned), growing any strain of the plant remains illegal in the US to this day.
In Ireland, where there are several hundred thousand regular users, cannabis is classified as a Schedule One drug under the Misuse of Drugs Acts 1977 and 1984. The government have no plans to change that.
Under David Blunkett’s new classification, our near-neighbours in the North can now smoke in their homes without fear of prosecution but, down in Dublin or Galway or Cork, the Drug Squad can still kick your door in and totally ruin your life.
Even if you’re caught with just a small amount of cannabis, for personal use, you’ll probably still have to go to court, pay a fine and be named and shamed in the media. This may cause you to lose your job or be refused entry to certain countries.
If you’re caught with a more serious amount, you’ll almost definitely go to prison where, ironically enough, cannabis will be one of the first things you encounter. Indeed, prison officers are on the record as saying that without the calming influence of cannabis, Irish prisons would erupt in violence.
The cannabis policies and strategies of the current Fianna Fail/PD administration are as incompetent, misinformed, hypocritical and criminally complacent as those of all previous Irish governments, but in this day and age the game has gotten much more serious.
In 1997, myself and UCC law lecturer Tim Murphy formed the Cannabis Legalisation Party and ran in the Irish general election. Our intentions were to raise public awareness of the real reasons behind prohibition, stir some debate on the issue and challenge the inane cannabis policies of the main parties.
Amongst the numerous arguments we expressed in our detailed policy document, A Cannabis Manifesto, was the point that, if left unchecked, Irish criminal gangs trading in cannabis would become increasingly powerful and start wreaking havoc on wider society.
Hate to say ‘we told you so’’ but the most recent gangland murder figures speak for themselves. As do the ongoing situations in Limerick and most other Irish cities. It’s a pressure cooker situation and, as things stand, can only get worse.

Watch this space though. Ireland and the UK are currently in crisis over cannabis – with prohibition-caused crime spiralling out of control and millions in tax revenues being lost to the black market. Despite his denials, Blunkett’s reclassification is obviously a tentative first step towards full legalisation. Whether they like it or not, at some point in the near future, the Irish government is going to have to wake up, smell the cannabis, and follow suit.
My prediction is that it will be just ten years before cannabis is fully legalised across Europe, where it will be grown as much for its industrial uses as for recreational purposes. It was big business that had cannabis banned. Ironically, it will probably be big business that has it legalised again. The trade name “Marley” has already been registered for pre-packaged joints.
I’ll leave you with the words of the late, great, American comedian Bill Hicks who summed up the immorality of the current situation up when he said: “Marijuana grows everywhere and serves a thousand different functions – all of them positive. To make marijuana against the law is like saying God made a mistake.”
Amen to that!