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LEGALISING CANNABIS 'WOULD BREAK TERRORIST LINK'
by Owen Bowcott,
United Kingdom
The government could afford to take the political risk of legalising cannabis as a first step
to breaking the link between drugs and terrorism, Mo Mowlam said yesterday. Speaking at a London conference on the Colombia
drug problem, Ms Mowlam, who as Cabinet Office minister was responsible for drugs policy between 1999 and 2001, dismissed
the government's reclassification of cannabis, announced earlier this summer, as unworkable.
"[It is] the young
person's drug of choice. It's ridiculous that it's illegal. It's making young people break the law, and not helping
anybody. You can buy it, smoke it, but not sell it. It doesn't make sense."
Last month Ms Mowlam used
an article in the Guardian to explain her conversion to legalising the drugs trade on the grounds that illicit profits fund
paramilitaries in Colombia, and perpetuate conflicts and civil wars around the world. After it appeared, she said, she
received nearly 700 emails - all but half a dozen supportive.
"Most governments have failed in trying to deal
with the problem," she told the conference. "We have to take radical action. There are people who support it in
both [main] parties but there's not enough to get a change. There's a great electoral fear [that legalisation] is not
going to be a vote winner.
"I believe you can go for legalisation of cannabis first of all. If you legalise,
you won't do away with the market immediately, but you dent it severely. It has the advantage that you can regulate
and control it [through tax]."
The outgoing Colombian ambassador, Victor Ricardo, said: "Colombia cannot carry on
this fight on its own. This problem is not only the responsibility of producing countries."
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