Pleas for Sanity From Britain

Forces of common sense are making a last-ditch stand in Britain today. Earlier this year, the British government announced its intention to "upgrade" marijuana from "Class C," the lowest category of illicit drugs, where it's been since 2004, to "Class B": drugs considered more dangerous and subject to stiffer penalties. The move directly contradicted the advice of the government's official scientific advisers, the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs.

Today, a last-ditch effort to delay the change is being debated in the House of Lords, a proposal supported by a group of top scientists in a letter published this morning by the Guardian newspaper. Reclassification, they argue, "would be a sad departure from the welcome trend ... of public policy following expert scientific advice unless there is new evidence."

To Americans, the notion of marijuana policy being actually based on science may seem downright quaint, but the British have, at least until recently, made fairly credible efforts in that direction. If the Lords' motion doesn't succeed, that honorable tradition will be trashed.

And it will be trashed for no good purpose. As Molly Meacher, sponsor of the motion to delay reclassification, notes in her own column about the issue, marijuana use in Britain went down after penalties were reduced in 2004. "The UK experience," she writes, "is strongly supported by several studies of the impact of reduced criminalization of cannabis which show that at a time when cannabis use was increasing across the world the greatest proportional increase in use was in countries with the most severe penalties. We can only conclude that the government's action in upgrading cannabis to Class B will, if anything, lead to increased use of the drug."

And while this drama was playing out, the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs was hearing from another distinguished scientist, Professor Sir Gabriel Horn, who chaired the Academy of Medical Science's working group on drugs, who urged that alcohol be brought under the same classification system as illegal drugs. "It's been recognised that [alcohol] is the most harmful recreational drug you could use," Prof. Horn said.