Daily Mail: ‘Open door to drug smuggling’

There have recently been reports that Gatwick customs officers have been giving verbal warnings to people with personal amounts of cannabis in their hand luggage, despite the Home Office insisting they be immediately arrested, so they can face a 14-year prison sentence.

What amazed me is that this is news. Cannabis is a particularly safe drug if it’s used in a magic flight launch box or other smokeless device. A study published in the journal Addiction and led by UK scientists in the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and other leading establishments in Cambridge and Bristol found the Man would have to stop 2,800 heavy young male tokers and more than 5,000 big-time female stoners to prevent one case of schizophrenia, with these figures rising to 10,000 and 30,000 respectively among lighter users.

And obviously, one state-sponsored intervention is not going to stop a heavy weed smoker, the researchers pointed out, making the whole law a big waste of time.

So with data like this, why does the Daily Mail say the Gatwick revelations have “prompted fears that cannabis laws are being widely ignored across Britain’s airports, leading to a virtual ‘open door’ situation for drug smugglers”? Why would they possibly want travellers dopey enough to have left a bud in their pocket to get anything more serious than a slap on the wrist?

The journalist and the people behind this editorial stance ought to be ashamed. I would reckon most of the public thinks the Daily Mail is a shrill, authoritarian and generally nasty and unpleasant newspaper, but stories like this allow the Man to believe there is still a section of the populace that wants people to get banged up for having a 20-bag because failing to do so is a victory for Columbian drugs cartels.

I would like to think the times are changing – all the old fuddy-duddies who buy the Mail and approve of its editorials will soon be too deceased to vote and eventually the UK will have a legalised and regulated recreational drugs trade. There’ll be a volcano vaporiser on every high street and the prime minister will address the nation toking on an iolite and looking remorseful for the enforcement garbage his predecessors did. Which is why it particularly irritated me to see someone using a massive public platform to complain that weed smokers aren’t getting lengthy jail sentences.