NCJ Number
218200
Date Published
2007
Length
16 pages
Annotation
This chapter examines how the British media have detracted from a rational debate about the legal reclassification of cannabis by failing to base its reports on cannabis in scientific research on cannabis' psychoactive effects.
Abstract
A historical view of moral and legal perspectives on cannabis concludes that a regulatory regime emerged in which cannabis was linked with criminality and hard drugs. When cannabis became subject to strict British laws under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 (Class B narcotic substance), the action was based on political, cultural, and moral imperatives that masqueraded as "informed" policymaking. Indifference to accuracy and a preference for simplistic analysis and decisionmaking have pervaded the debate on cannabis since then. The assumption that "soft" drugs like cannabis lead inevitably to "hard" drug use is more than just media hysteria. It has helped support political orthodoxy on the moral virtue of cannabis prohibition from the 1920s through the current decade. The media has consistently portrayed drug takers of all types as "deviant" in contrast to the "normal" and moral general public. Although some media professionals have provided editorial support for reclassifying or legalizing cannabis based on its actual effects on its users, the media in general do not provide objective reporting on cannabis' actual psychoactive properties. Media reporting is inevitably mixed with political and moral arguments that obscure the real issue, i.e., what has research shown to be cannabis' effects on the human body. Thus, the cloud of morality, ambivalence, and uncertainty continues to hang over the cannabis user in Great Britain. 5 notes and 24 references