Christians against hypocrisy

Adele Blakebrough is a Baptist minister in Kingston-upon-Thames who runs the Kaleidoscope Project, a treatment centre for drug-users. Here she responds to criticisms made of our stance on the decriminalisation of cannabis by the Evangelical Coalition on Drugs, which brings together 100 Christian organisations involved in combating drug addiction.

I am not surprised that the Evangelical Coalition on Drugs should express hostility to the Independent on Sunday's campaign to decriminalise cannabis. The churches in this coalition represent the conservative end of Christian opinion on most subjects; they are entitled to their opinion on drugs, but not to convey the impression that their views are based upon any special authority.

My own church runs one of the oldest and largest centres for the treatment of serious drug users in Britain; we have been in business for 30 years and we see 300 heroin users every day in our treatment programme. One thing I can state with total certainty is that there is no connection of any kind between the world of the typical, recreational user of a drug like cannabis and the chaotic lives of the people Kaleidoscope deals with.

When people speak of cannabis as a "pathway to the use of other drugs" they are saying no more than this: cannabis is widely used - a quarter of 16-19 year olds have experienced it - and that people addicted to very dangerous drugs like heroin and cocaine have almost always used any drug they can lay their hands on, from the sort of tranquillisers GPs prescribe to alcohol.

Cannabis is no more a pathway to heroin or crack cocaine than are alcohol or Valium. So when ECOD states that "95 per cent plus of heroin users seeking treatment from us started their drug-taking career with cannabis, never intending to go any further," it would be possible to substitute the word alcohol for the word cannabis without any risk of misleading. Indeed, the statement is probably truer of alcohol than it is of cannabis. To use the argument that cannabis should be illegal because a tiny minority of those who use it also develop addictions to drugs like heroin is like advocating the prohibition of alcohol because a minority of drinkers become alcoholics or banning sugar, because a minority of those who like sweets become dangerously obese.

The strongest argument for banning or controlling the use of cannabis is that all drugs, cannabis included, have negative effects, especially if used excessively. We would all like to see our society consume fewer drugs, though when we express this view we should also be honest about the numerous forms of addictive and escapist behaviour in which we all indulge, whether or not we are drug users.

But when one drug with very few proven ill-effects, like cannabis, is outlawed, whilst others which are more harmful, like tobacco, are sold openly and advertised, those who prefer cannabis are right to detect hypocrisy. It is not sufficiently noted that the law bears down very heavily indeed upon cannabis users: the last government raised the level of fines, and tens of thousands of people have acquired criminal records consuming huge amounts of police and court time in the process. Four-fifths of all drug offences in Britain concern cannabis.

Placing cannabis outside the law has a number of other clearly damaging effects. It means that those who use it must make contact with a criminal underworld, whose raison d'etre is to market a range of illegal products, including more dangerous drugs: an international mafia's interest lies powerfully in making the pathway link between cannabis and heroin a reality. Prohibition also means that public education campaigns cannot be conducted as openly and effectively as they should be - for example, there is no equivalent of the highly effective drink-driving campaigns.

The bottom line is that in an open society, individuals have to be free to make their own, reasonable choices, just as governments have a responsibility to put arguments about public health and to provide incentives and disincentives through taxation and other means.

If cannabis were a lawful drug, many Christians would want to urge abstinence, as some do of alcohol, or sexual relations outside marriage. Christians believe that all human beings are sacred, blessed by divine love and entitled to human respect - we should not be surprised if they aspire to the highest standards of behaviour.

Most Christians, however, are able to recognise the reality that cannabis is in practice almost entirely a recreational drug which causes negligible harm to those who use it, that it is, in the end, just another part of the world's ways. Above all, most Christians shudder at the hypocrisy of the current law. I am pleased to support the Independent on Sunday's campaign.