Govt to toughen legal status of cannabis

LONDON (AFP) - The government is to raise the legal classification of cannabis due to the growing prevalence of the potent skunk form of the drug, despite expert advice against doing so, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said Wednesday.

Smith told parliament she would press for cannabis to be re-classified in law as a Class B drug compared with its current, less serious, Class C classification.

Smith said the government wanted to act because around 80 percent of cannabis seizures were now of the stronger skunk strain, which she said has been linked to mental health problems.

"There is a compelling case for us to act now rather than risk the future health of young people," she told lawmakers. "I am not prepared to wait and see."

The move comes despite a report for the government from the independent Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), which concluded that the health dangers from cannabis did not justify its inclusion in the higher category.

The report said scientific evidence pointed to a "probable, but weak, causal link between psychotic illness, including schizophrenia, and cannabis use."

Smith said she agreed with all 21 recommendations made by the ACMD except its recommendation that cannabis should not be upgraded.

Smith also said she would hold discussions with police on tightening laws relating to cannabis possession.

The minister was last year forced to admit she had smoked cannabis on a handful of occasions while a student at Oxford university, saying she thought it was "wrong that I smoked it when I did. I have not done for 25 years."

The decision to reclassify cannabis upwards into the more punitive Class B category -- which includes amphetamines -- is a U-turn for the Labour government. Cannabis was downgraded from Class B when Tony Blair was prime minister, but Gordon Brown announced a review of its status soon after taking over last year.

An earlier review of the cannabis classification, at the time of the 2005 general election, resulted in it remaining Class C.

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