Sajid Javid is rising to the top of British politics, an ascent owed in no small part to cannabis.<\/p>\n
It was Javid, the UK\u2019s Home Secretary, who guided the ruling Conservative government through its\u00a0acrobatic flip-flop on medical marijuana over the past week<\/a>. And while Theresa May\u2019s government fumbled the opening, triggering outrage when customs authorities seized a vial of medical cannabis oil from the family of a 12-year-old epileptic boy, Javid\u2019s announcement that the boy\u2019s medicine would be returned to him \u2014 and that the country would reconsider its drug policy \u2014 ensured they stuck the landing.<\/p>\n But resistance is the natural reaction to significant change moving with remarkable speed \u2014 ask any physicist, ask any Freudian \u2014 and now Javid is insisting that he has not put the United Kingdom on the road towards marijuana legalization for all adults.<\/p>\n Whether he\u2019d like to admit it or not, he is wrong, as at least one Conservative leader has publicly declared. And whether or not Javid or his constituencies realize it (or if the opposing, supposedly progressive Labour Party figures it out in time to steal the issue away from their supposedly reactionary foes), this is a good path to follow.<\/p>\n As changes in marijuana policy sweep\u00a0Canada<\/a>, the United States, and most of Western Europe, Britain has so far been a holdout. Though the law is enforced unevenly \u2014 if at all \u2014 cannabis remains a banned substance in the UK, with simple possession punishable by a prison term.<\/p>\n There is an active and healthy medical-cannabis advocacy movement in the United Kingdom, but it took the public suffering of a child \u2014 in this case,\u00a012-year-old Billy Caldwell<\/a>, who has severe epilepsy \u2014 to generate enough shock and outrage to shame the government into action.<\/p>\n Prime Minister Theresa May\u2019s government will now review cannabis policy and recommend some change, Javid told Parliament on June 19 \u2014 while folding in the requisite insistence that just because medical cannabis might be available, legalized marijuana would not follow.<\/p>\n \u201cI have now come to the conclusion that it is time to review the scheduling of cannabis,\u201d\u00a0he said<\/a>, while declaring current policy \u201cunsatisfactory\u201d for everyone involved. But, he added, almost self-consciously, \u201clet me be absolutely clear that this step is in no way a first step to the legalization of cannabis for recreational use.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis government has absolutely no plans to legalize cannabis and the penalties for unauthorized supply and possession will remain unchanged,\u201d he added. \u201cWe will not set a dangerous precedent or weaken our ability to keep dangerous drugs off our streets.\u201d<\/p>\n Javid is doing one of two things. He is either in complete denial, or he is attempting to save face with the Conservative Party\u2019s older voters, who believe such stuff like it is drug policy that is leading to the ills of modern society, and waiting until such time as he feels that such voters could be made to swallow legal marijuana.<\/p>\n As William Hague, a former Conservative Party leader\u00a0wrote in the Telegraph<\/a>, the reversal shows that \u201cas far as marijuana, or cannabis, is concerned any war has been comprehensively and irreversibly lost.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt should now be asked whether Britain should join the many other countries that permit medical-grade marijuana, or indeed join Canada in preparing for a lawful, regulated market in cannabis for recreational use as well,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n As nearly every country that has had that debate has found, once the admission that marijuana is medicine is made, arguments for keeping it out of adults\u2019 hands become untenable.<\/p>\n If it isn\u2019t toxic poison \u2014 and it isn\u2019t \u2014 why should it be treated differently than tobacco and alcohol? The rational answer is that it is not nearly as toxic as either of those favorite legal tonics and should be made even more available.<\/p>\n As the Guardian wrote, Javid\u2019s deft handling of issues like cannabis have put him on an upward trajectory. He could be Prime Minister. If so, he\u2019ll be the prime minister who will have to handle Britain\u2019s forthcoming marijuana legalization debate \u2014 and he is too smart to truly think that once the law is revealed to have been wrong, he can stand in the way of the boulder rolling down the mountain all the way.<\/p>\n TELL US<\/strong>, do you think cannabis legalization is coming to the UK?<\/p>\n The post Britain is on Path to Marijuana Legalization<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Sajid Javid is rising to the top of British politics, an ascent owed in no small part to cannabis. It was Javid, the UK\u2019s Home Secretary, who guided the ruling Conservative government through its\u00a0acrobatic flip-flop on medical marijuana over the past week. And while Theresa May\u2019s government fumbled the opening,Continue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4657,50,216,119,4726,2190],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27252"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27252"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27253,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27252\/revisions\/27253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nRead More: Britain is on Path to Marijuana Legalization<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"