Europe: Britain to Review Marijuana's Classification, Could Be Moved Back to Tougher Drug Schedule

New British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told parliament Tuesday that his government will reconsider whether marijuana should remain a Class C drug (steroids, minor tranquilizers) or should be treated more harshly and considered a more dangerous Class B drug (amphetamines, barbiturates). The move comes as the opposition Conservatives have called for rescheduling and amidst a sustained media scare campaign linking marijuana to mental illness.

The government of then-Prime Minister Tony Blair downgraded marijuana to Class C in January 2004, which largely made marijuana possession a non-arrestable offense. But the move has been controversial since its inception, and has already been reviewed twice before. The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), which is charged with the new review, also reviewed the decision last year, but found the risks were not severe enough to merit reclassification. Similarly, former Home Secretary Charles Clarke commissioned a review of the decision, but decided in January 2005 to keep marijuana in Class C.

"We will be asking the ACMD to review the classification of cannabis, given the increase in strength of some cannabis strains and their potential harm," the Home Office said Wednesday. "It would be wrong to prejudge that review which shows how seriously we take our priority of reducing drug-related harm."

The opposition Tories, who are calling for a harder line on drug policy, said they would support reclassification. "We would welcome the reclassification of cannabis," said Shadow Home Secretary, David Davis. "Drugs are a scourge on society and a major cause of crime which Labor has failed to tackle. We have long called for the reclassification of cannabis based on the science and evidence available which shows all too clearly the real damage this drug can do to people -- especially young people."

While drug policy groups differed in their responses to the Brown government's announced review, none supported reclassification. Instead, such groups called for the review to be viewed in the context of a broader review of drug policy as the British government's 10-year drug plan ends in 2008.

"This announcement is all about political posturing, and has nothing to do with science," said a spokesman 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 back to B."

The review of marijuana classification was redundant, Transform argued. "In reality the potency issue and the mental health issues associated with cannabis are well understood and have not changed significantly since they were last reviewed by the ACMD in 2005. The ACMD will not be happy to have to rake over the coals yet again: there is no evidence to warrant another time consuming review, and even if there were, there is also no evidence to suggest another reclassification would reduce harm.

It is not marijuana's classification but its criminalization that is the problem, the group said. "Classification appears to be entirely irrelevant to levels of use, or associated harms; Since the move from B to C in 2004, cannabis use has continued its slow decline, according to data from the British Crime Survey," Transform noted. "It is the criminalization of cannabis, and the unregulated illegal markets this creates, that is responsible for increasing the harms associated with its supply and use. If the Government is serious about reducing harm they should legally regulate the trade and use their limited resources to educate young people about the risks."

Rethink, an organization that concentrates on mental health issues, didn't call for legalization but for a public health campaign to warn of the mental health dangers of the weed. Paul Corry, Rethink's director of public affairs, says:

"We welcome the review of the government's drugs strategy and fully expect it to endorse the now accepted link between high risk groups using cannabis and the development of severe mental illness," said Paul Corry, the group's director of public affairs in a Wednesday press release "The strategy should look back at past government promises of a high profile, sustained public health campaign on the issue and ask 'what happened to it?'"

But while Rethink emphasized the dangers of marijuana consumption, the group did not see reclassification as the answer. "Although there has been renewed interest in yet again reclassifying cannabis, the experiences of our members tell us that reintroducing tougher criminal penalties for possession and use would do nothing to reduce use," said Corry. "What most people who have experienced the misery of developing mental illness from using cannabis want to see is a properly funded health campaign, not harsher laws that end up criminalizing people who have developed a health problem."

For the past decade, Britain has been one step forward, one step back on marijuana policy. It looks like the political pressure is building for one step back again.