Smoke signals:
cannabis law
to be relaxed
The Home Office today defended its decision to relax the law on cannabis in the face of criticism from a United Nations anti-drugs panel that it is "sending the wrong signal".
Leading drugs charity DrugScope said credibility of the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) had been damaged by its report, published today, which concluded Home Secretary David Blunkett's policy would damage the UK's health and could increase cannabis supplies on Britain's streets.
In the 90-page report the INCB said it was "concerned" about the move to downgrade the drug so possession will not be an arrestable offence for the vast majority of users.
The board's Nigerian president, Philip Emafo, said: "It is important that consensus prevails in international drug control.
"No government should take unilateral measures without considering the impact of its actions and ultimately the consequences for an entire system that took governments almost a century to establish."
Asked if Mr Blunkett's policy was sending a bad message to the world, the INCB's Professor Hamid Ghodse told reporters in London: "Indeed. That stands to any logic.
"Our young people are confused. On one hand you are telling them not to go to clubs and use Ecstasy because it is dangerous, but on the other hand you are not doing anything about cannabis."
Mr Blunkett is due to take final steps towards reclassifying cannabis from Class B to Class C this summer.
Once new police guidelines from the Association of Chief Police Officers are in place, people found in possession of small amounts of cannabis will only be arrested in "exceptional" cases, such as when they cause a disturbance or blow smoke in a police officer's face.
A Home Office spokesman said: "We do not accept the INCB's statement that the decision to reclassify will lead to confusion and they are wrong to say that this sends a signal that we have decriminalised cannabis.
"Reclassification, based on scientific evidence from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, does not legalise cannabis but does make clearer the distinction between cannabis and Class A drugs like heroin, crack and cocaine - the drugs that cause the most harm to individuals and families, that tear apart communities and turn law-abiding citizens into thieves.
"Reclassification of cannabis enables us to put out a more credible - and therefore effective - message about the harmfulness of different drugs and allows the police to focus its resources on tackling the drugs that cause the most harm and this is a view shared by communities up and down the country.
"Cannabis is a harmful substance that still requires strict controls to be maintained.
"That is why we intend to reclassify it as a Class C drug."
Today's report on the international drug situation said the UK Government's reclassification of cannabis "could lead to increased cultivation of cannabis destined for the UK and other European countries".
A conference in Nairobi last September heard that the UK's reclassification would "undermine the efforts of governments of African countries to counter illicit cannabis cultivation, trafficking and abuse," said the document.
Mr Blunkett's initiative had led to "worldwide repercussions ... including confusion and widespread misunderstanding."
The report said cannabis was "not a harmless drug as advocates of its legalisation tend to portray".
It can affect the functioning of the brain, is linked with heart attacks in young people, lung disease and cancer, it added.
A recent study by the British Lung Foundation found smoking three cannabis joints caused the same damage to the linings of the airways as 20 cigarettes, said the document.
However, leading drugs charity DrugScope said the INCB's credibility had been thrown into doubt by its reliance on "dubious science and misleading conclusions".
When the British Lung Foundation research quoted in the report was published last year, it was wholly rejected by anti-smoking group Action on Smoking on Health (ASH), said DrugScope.
There had also been concerns that the research drew misleading conclusions from research more than 15 years old.
DrugScope chief executive Roger Howard said: "The credibility of the INCB is thrown into doubt when its criticism of the UK government's sensible proposal to re-classify cannabis is based on dubious science and misleading conclusions."
He pointed out that the UK's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs supported the Home Secretary's proposal to re-classify cannabis after a "thorough review of the international scientific evidence".
Mr Howard continued: "Throughout Europe, Australasia and Canada, scientific experts and a growing number of politicians agree that very strict regimes applied to the control of cannabis causes disproportionately more harm to society than the harm caused by the substance itself."
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Source: www.dailymail.co.uk
Law of the Sea Treaty may be improved, but remains deeply flawed - Human Events (blog)
One of President Ronald Reagan’s finest hours was in 1982 when he killed that year’s version of the Law of the Sea Treaty. With the apt acronym LOST, the treaty would have ceded sovereignty and taxing authority over the oceans throughout the world to the United Nations.
Now, the Law of the Sea Treaty is back, supposedly refurbished so well in a 1994 reworking of the agreement that some say Reagan now would support it. The new version is supported by President George H.W. Bush, Reagan’s vice president, and by President George W. Bush, as well as by five Republican secretaries of state: George Shultz and James A. Baker III, who served in that post under Reagan, Henry Kissinger, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice.
“Flaws in the treaty regarding deep-seabed mining, which prevented President Ronald Reagan from supporting it, were fixed in 1994,” the five secretaries wrote in the Wall Street Journal on May 30. They added that other problems had been dealt with. Some Senate Republicans already have pledged support: Dick Lugar of Indiana, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Olympia Snowe of Maine.
But not so fast. Writing June 5 in the Los Angeles Times, former Reagan Attorney General Edwin Meese III insisted that Reagan would not sign the treaty today because it still poses “a direct threat to American sovereignty.” He added, “President Reagan so strongly opposed the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea that he didn’t just not sign the treaty. He very publicly refused to sign it. He also dismissed the State Department staff that helped negotiate it.” Tough guy.
“Reagan would not support it,” Doug Bandow told us; during the LOST debate 30 years ago he helped craft Reagan administration policy as a deputy representative to the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea, which concluded in 1982. He is now a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute. Seabed mining, in fact, remains a problem in his view, even though changes have made the section “better than it was.”
These seabeds under the world’s oceans—71 percent of the world’s surface—effectively would become U.N. property and the Law of the Sea Treaty would empower a new international bureaucracy, the International Seabed Authority. Only recently was America even granted a permanent seat on the governing council. “But that doesn’t mean anything,” Bandow said, because America easily could be outvoted by 35 other council members.
The authority could tax income and redistribute proceeds from America’s and other developed countries’ production on those seabeds to Third World countries—or, as is so often the case, to Third World despots’ Swiss bank accounts. LOST’s language even says the money could be given to “peoples who have not attained full independence or other self-governing status”—that is, almost anybody.
Supporters cite certainty, China
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce supports LOST, arguing that the treaty “provides certainty in accessing resources in the Arctic and Antarctic and could ultimately enable American businesses to explore the vast natural resources contained in the seabeds in those areas.”
LOST supporters, such as a May 9 editorial in the Christian Science Monitor, also contend that it would help temper Chinese claims to large portions of the South China Sea and other areas. China is one of 162 countries that have signed the treaty. “I am utterly baffled by how they think the Chinese will behave better under the treaty,” Bandow said. “China already said LOST doesn’t apply to the South China Sea. In a real crisis, it won’t matter. These are issues of great power politics.”
Currently, American sea interests are protected by the U.S. Navy, by far the most powerful naval force on earth. Critical shipping lanes such as the Strait of Hormuz or the Strait of Malacca are more likely to be kept open by the U.S. Navy, not by treaty.
Finally, as Human Events’ Hope Hodge reports on page 12, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) proposes a “Madisonian” approach that would retain valuable navigation rights for businesses and the U.S. Navy, but allow Congress to dispense with other provisions that encroached on American autonomy. But, the treaty can’t be split into “good treaty” and “bad treaty.”
Senate 1994 rejection
The treaty was signed by President Bill Clinton in 1994, but he couldn’t muster the two-thirds approval needed in the Senate to make it a binding treaty, and the Senate has not voted on it since. Hearings were held May 23 this year by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, chaired by Sen. John Kerry, (D-Mass.) He said more hearings are forthcoming. But a vote wouldn’t happen until after the presidential election. At that point, even if Republicans take back control of the Senate, the treaty could be approved by the lame-duck Democratic majority joined by renegade Republicans. So, it’s possible a treaty signed by a Democratic president back in 1994 could be approved by a Democratic Senate repudiated by voters in November.
In short, the Law of the Sea Treaty is still LOST, even if improved. It is not the best path, the only path and certainly not a guaranteed path toward America’s energy self-reliance. In fact, relinquishing even a limited measure of U.S. sovereignty to a worldwide organization could precipitate mischief we can’t begin to imagine.
Source: www.humanevents.com
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