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U.K eyes tougher pot possession laws
07-22-07|London Free Press|By LEE-ANNE GOODMAN

Bill Clinton may not have inhaled, but several British MPs have confessed in recent weeks that they smoked -- and happily inhaled -- marijuana in their youth.

British newspapers and call-in shows have been abuzz in recent weeks with the not-so-shocking disclosures from seven front-line Labour cabinet ministers, all of them children of the '60s and '70s, about their pot-smoking pasts.

The confessions come as the ruling Labour party makes preliminary moves to toughen marijuana possession laws despite Tony Blair moving his government in the opposite direction three years ago.

Pressured by the opposition Tories, the flip-flop has been prompted by the supposedly stronger strains of cannabis available on the street -- and should be welcome news to Canada's Conservatives, who are steadfast in their refusal to ease the tough marijuana laws that many critics complain are seriously straining the country's criminal justice system.

"I did it just a few times and it was wrong," Home Secretary Jacqui Smith recently told BBC Radio 4, saying she toked up occasionally 25 years ago while in university. "It's right that as a government that we look at the rising strength of cannabis on our streets."

She's been joined in her confession by Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling, Treasury Secretary Andy Burnham, Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly, Business Minister John Hutton, Communities Secretary Hazel Blears and Housing Minister Yvette Cooper.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown says he's never done illegal drugs of any kind, including smoking pot.

The brouhaha has been a big story in Britain. On Thursday, viewers inundated the BBC all-news channel with e-mail about the MPs' confessions, with some saying the formerly toke-happy politicians should be fired while others praised their honesty and wondered what was peculiar about people of their generation having sparked up.

Brown said his government is looking at whether to introduce stronger penalties for the possession of cannabis, reversing a 2004 decision to effectively decriminalize the drug.

Both government and opposition politicians say they're concerned about recent medical research suggesting more links between pot-smoking and mental health disorders than previously believed. Police are also warning that more powerful forms of the drug have been chemically and genetically modified to produce a more intense high.

The change in the classification of marijuana would allow British courts to jail people caught with cannabis for five years instead of the current two years.

Police usually overlook cannabis use in the U.K. -- any stroll down the busy streets of London on a weekend night will reveal young and old openly toking -- and deliver warnings to most people caught with it in their possession.

The move to toughen the laws isn't being met warmly by everyone.

Some drug awareness groups are accusing the government of trying to score political points, since research shows cannabis use among young people is falling.

Police chiefs, who pushed for the original reclassification because they said arrests for possession were taking up too much of their officers' time, are also cautious.

"This announcement is all about political posturing and has nothing to do with science," said a spokesperson for the Transform Drug Policy Institute.

"It follows in the wake of a series of all-too-familiar cannabis health panics, which have been hyped up by certain newspapers and, more recently, the Tory party who have been vocally calling for reclassification."

It's a debate that sounds similar to the one raging in Canada about marijuana laws.

Stephen Harper's Conservative government is insistent that marijuana will not be decriminalized, despite pleas from experts to do something to ease the backlog of weed-related court cases clogging the courts.

"Our government has no intention to decriminalize marijuana," Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said recently.

"It's much stronger than it was years ago and, in some cases, marijuana may be laced with more dangerous chemicals.

"There is also evidence it may lead to experimentation with other drugs. It's not something we want to encourage."

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