UK - Home secretary: I smoked cannabis

[Evil GIR]

Jacqui Smith: Smoked cannabis "more than 25 years ago"

Smith interview
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has admitted she smoked cannabis while she was at Oxford University in the 1980s.

Her
disclosure came the day after Prime Minister Gordon Brown said she
would head a review of UK drugs strategy - including reviewing the
cannabis laws.

"I did break the law... I was wrong... drugs are wrong," Ms Smith, 44, said.

She
had smoked it "just a few times", had "not particularly" enjoyed it and
had not taken any other illegal drugs, she told the BBC.

A
number of senior politicians have admitted smoking cannabis in their
youth - including at least one of her predecessors as home secretary,
Charles Clarke.

'Learnt my lesson'

Asked why today's
students should listen when she urged them not to try the drug, she
said that over the past 25 years the dangers of cannabis use had become
clearer.

These included the mental health dangers of cannabis and the increasing strength of the drug.


I hope that my experiences in my life have actually helped me understand that I do want crime tackled
Jacqui Smith
Home secretary

Profile: Jacqui Smith

Ms Smith said she did not think her admission made her unfit to be home secretary.

"I
think in some ways I have learnt my lesson and I have a responsibility
as home secretary now to make sure we put in place the laws and the
support and information to make sure we carry on bringing cannabis use
down, which we are doing," she told GMTV.

"On the whole I think people think human beings should do jobs like this. I am not proud about it, I did the wrong thing.

"One
of the things about being a politician is that you are often criticised
for not knowing what's going on. I hope that my experiences in my life
have actually helped me understand that I do want crime tackled."

Political confessions

On
Wednesday, the prime minister told MPs that laws introduced in 2004,
making possession of cannabis a largely non-arrestable offence, could
be reversed.

Ms Smith, who graduated from Hertford College in
Oxford in 1984, went on to be a secondary school teacher before
becoming one of the so-called "Blair babes" when she was elected
Redditch MP in 1997.


I've never taken any hard drugs. When I was a student, I took one or two puffs of marijuana but that was it.
Vernon Coaker's confession on becoming drugs minister in 2006

Cannabis law reviewed

Her
appointment as home secretary was arguably the biggest surprise in
Gordon Brown's first Cabinet, being promoted from her previous backroom
role of labour's chief whip.

Past cannabis use has become less
of an issue for politicians in the UK over recent years as a growing
number have admitted using, or trying the drug while younger.

In
2000 then shadow home secretary Ann Widdecombe's call for £100 fines
for cannabis possession led to eight members of the Conservative shadow
cabinet admitting to smoking cannabis in the past.

Credible laws

Home
Office minister Vernon Coaker admitted "when I was a student, I took
one or two puffs of marijuana but that was it". Other past or present
Labour ministers who have admitted cannabis use include Caroline Flint
and Patricia Hewitt.

In 2004 the drug was downgraded from Class
B, which includes things like amphetamines, to Class C alongside things
like anabolic steroids, making it a largely non-arrestable offence.

The
then home secretary David Blunkett said it was necessary to make drug
laws credible and focus police efforts on the most dangerous drugs.

But
the following year his successor, Charles Clarke, also considered
reviewing the decision, after a link was suggested between cannabis use
and mental illness.

Ms Smith is now to review whether it should
be reversed in the light of research into links between cannabis use
and mental health problems, and with crime.

A Home Office
spokesman said the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) will
be asked to review reports that danger from cannabis is increasing due
to wider availability of more potent strains such as "skunk".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/6905886.stm

What a bunch of hypocrites and I always notice they always say I tried it an no sir I dont like it.

[Heretic.Ape.]

Edited: if you don't have anything nice to say don't say anything at all

[Bikelbees]

Hmm, certainly evdence that cannabis causes hypocracy.

Looks like we are going backwards quite fast with drugs reform, some of us thought we would have pot-cafes by now, fat chance of even having a apple-smoke shisha bar with the new mega-pious presbytyranical Brown- watch out for compulsory drug-testing in schools etc and just as it seems as if it couldn't get any worse there will be some mini pseudo liberal concession and everyone will be falling over themselves about how great it is that someone is showing interest in a more liberal classification of certain drugs.

SWIM thinks its all hogwash about super-skunk and new dangers. Its all the same, more THC just means less harmful smoke, mental illness? Thats all caused by the law, yes I believe that, cannabis gets you thinking very acutely, and when you realise phones can be tapped, video cameras everywhere and the police can't wait to smash down the door, society thinks you are ill or a criminal, criminal records, condemnation etc, - hardly surprising people get anxious and mental conditions can be distorted.

Legalise everything, get proper information out there, celebrate the good drugs, caution against the rubbish and free all the prisoners of the war on drugs.

Reputation Comments on this post:

	Yay cannabis causes hypocracy.
	Good post.

[Heretic.Ape.]

This was the day the government felt free to guffaw at the law

Simon Jenkins

Since I never thought the cash for honours scandal would ever stand up in court, I cannot be shocked at its death at the hands of the Crown Prosecution Service. It would be hard to convince even a cynical London jury of the venality of a few reported winks, murmurs and e-mails. Besides, they would conclude, all politicians are corrupt.
That said, the stern Presbyterian, Gordon Brown, must have thought himself victim of a ghastly practical joke last week. He opened his cabinet door and found his colleagues lolling about like a bunch of tattooed fugitives in a Marbella nightclub.
Party chairwoman, Harriet Harman, was passing round the sangria at her gang getting off scot-free on loans for honours and even dumping on the fuzz into the bargain. Across the table the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, and the chancellor, Alistair Darling, were swapping spliff stories about their youth. Smoking cannabis was excusable if you were “sensible but fun-loving” and if you stressed that drugs were wrong and might cause brain damage, like becoming a cabinet minister. At this point six other Brown honchos admitted that they too belonged to Pothead Politicians Anonymous.
Meanwhile Tessa Jowell and her brewery friends were cock-a-hoop at news that nocturnal Britain had stuck to alcohol rather than turned to Blair’s namby-pamby “cafe culture”. Jowell had just pulled off another coup by stinging the charity whingers a full £2 billion for her sensational £9 billion heist, a fortnight’s elite sports party for the International Olympic Committee mob in 2012. In a dark corner, even gloomy Des Browne was quietly cackling at his success in leaning on friends in high places to get the Serious Fraud Office to turn a blind eye to his arms contract bribes to rich Arabs.
What, Brown must have wondered with horror, would John Knox have said?
Having spent 15 years imbibing and implementing Thatcherite discipline as a political programme, he would have to become a Thatcherite social conservative as well. Labour had passed some 50 crime and punishment acts and created 3,000 new criminal offences. Yet Brown’s cabinet felt there was one rule for the political rich and another for mortals. It was laughing at the law. For moral compass the British Establishment had found a fake Rolex.
Corruption in British government takes many forms, of which the sale of titles is ubiquitous and relatively harmless. That members of the House of Lords paid to get there is as old as the hills and no worse than getting there by birth or by grovelling sycophancy. Of all the charges that might be laid against Tony Blair’s regime, the sale of honours (unprovable in court) is hardly the worst. The case was like getting Al Capone for tax evasion.
The police must have known their case was weak when they staged theatrical dawn arrests and when so much was leaked to the press. They might not prosecute, but they could at least humiliate and induce reform. But do not trust these politicians. The case has served their real objective, to get taxpayers to cough up what the now untitled rich will not. This will relieve them of any need to raise money from those on whom they should rely, honest party members.
The drug confessions have a deeper significance. They indicate hypocrisy on a subject of urgent concern to all parents. Why should their children go to jail when half the cabinet was admitting the same crime. Yet on Friday the reaction at Westminster was one of humour. Drug taking is apparently okay if you can get away with it. Drug taking is okay if you pretend you did not enjoy it, or “experimented”, or affirm it to be “wrong” without quite saying why. Lots of things are wrong without being crimes, which is perhaps why nobody last week mentioned the word crime.
The coverage suggested a yawning moral hypocrisy. On the one hand are the middle-class young who use drugs and “deal” to each other. On the other hand are the working-class young who “traffick” and should go to jail for a very long time. The children of the rich are decent-at-heart victims of the wicked children of the poor, who are rightly cramming the jails.
If Jacqui Smith were merely a run-of-the-mill public figure, there might be no objection to her using past drug use to display honesty and born-again moral purpose. But she heads a department that has, for a quarter of a century, ignored the disastrous consequences of its own policies and which, under Blair, has delegated them entirely to the right-wing press. Only last month it was announced that cuts in the prisons budget will fall chiefly on education and the pathetic sums as yet spent on prison drug rehabilitation.
The supposed justification for state intrusion into what libertarians call consensual behaviour is where it harms third parties and particularly the young, whether it involves sex, drugs, gambling, alcohol or nicotine. For these reasons, once draconian laws on sexual behaviour have been relaxed over the years, except where they concern children. The same has gone for off-course betting and casinos, despite justified pleas that they wreck the families of addicted gamblers. Drink licensing laws have been relaxed even in the face of evidence that alcohol is the major contributor to social disorder in Britain. But tough laws on smoking have proved acceptable and effective under pressure from offended third parties.
Britain’s Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 has proved neither acceptable nor effective. It is responsible for over a third of the record prison population and an ever cheaper drugs market that is untaxed and virtually unregulated.
The most savage laws imaginable – hapless drug “mules” from Jamaica receiving 10-15year sentences for a first offence – have proved no deterrent. The attempt to eradicate Afghan opium as a way of curbing heroin use in Britain has proved predictably farcical.
There is no “get tough on drugs” policy in Britain, rather a stay-weak one cloaked in hypocrisy. Paying his ritual obeisance to the Daily Mail, Brown has even suggested that cannabis be upgraded from class C to class B, based on research showing psychological damage done by the extra strength of the home-grown plant. This research was available to the Home Office when David Blunkett downgraded the classification in 2004. The recorded 20% fall in cannabis use since then may be statistically unreliable, but it hardly supports the case for upgrading.
When the gambling laws were liberalised and off-course betting permitted in the 1960s, moral conservatives were appalled at such sin being sold in every high street. Yet betting shops, regulated to prevent advertising and exclude minors, wiped out a chunk of criminal activity. Likewise legalising drug outlets and treatment centres is the only way to regulate and thus try to limit drug use and reduce its penumbra of massive criminality.
Every country in Europe now has a drug problem, but all are debating how to reduce narcotic harm through targeted regulation. Britain is in the Dark Ages through ministerial terror of some newspapers. The price is paid by the urban poor whose lives are dominated by the ubiquity and liquidity of the drugs market and the violence of the gangs.
The British Crime Survey indicated last week that the public has lost faith in claims of “falling crime”. This will continue as long as meaningless police figures are allowed to pollute the valid British Crime Survey. But people are not easily fooled. They can see what is happening in their communities at night. They can see rising vandalism and read in their local paper of growing knife and gun crime. They hear the crack houses and see drug dealers operating in their streets. The only crime that is falling is that which they prevent themselves, by protecting their own cars and houses.
The government has successfully tackled one antisocial narcotic, nicotine, but has failed to tackle alcohol or drugs. What the law cannot suppress, it must regulate. Alcohol has been subjected to underregulation, drugs to overregulation. Somehow ministers must find a middle way on both.
The one honest outcome of last week’s ridiculous mass confessional would be a cabinet with guts enough to raise the duty on liquor, license and regulate drug sales and return some dignity and order to the streets of Britain.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/com...cle2116251.ece