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Whatever they may think privately, breaching the unofficial parliamentary law of omerta on the thorny issue of drugs is a gamble few politicians (with anything to lose) are willing to take. And anyway, why bother devoting valuable parliamentary time on a little issue linked to nearly 3,000 deaths a year, huge swathes of taxpayers' money, physical addiction, mental health and incarceration when you can instead resurrect the debate about man's inalienable right to chase and kill foxes for sport, and then spend hours arguing about that?When I spoke to Owen—a member of the youth wing of the Tories, as it turns out—he told me he lodged his petition last Tuesday for three reasons, all of which neatly sum up the various motivations of Britain's diverse bag of cannabis legalization enthusiasts.First, he says, Britain is backward. Why is it that cannabis legalization is gaining credence across America, a land that started the war on drugs, yet in Britain the mere notion of someone buying and smoking weed in the privacy of their own home—an act that affects no one but them—is still illegal?On Motherboard: The Texas Republican Grandma Who Wants to Legalize Weed
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It was money, in the form of taxed cannabis, that proved so influential in the rise of America's revolution in weed laws (a VICE investigation last year found that legalizing cannabis would save the UK billions). Money, or the lack of it, could prove influential in Britain. In July, four police forces, initiated by Durham constabulary, declared that, because they needed to focus dwindling resources on more pressing problems, they would be turning a blind eye to small-scale cannabis possession and cultivation.There may well be rising, de facto cannabis decriminalization on the ground, yet government policy is a different matter. So I asked Harry Shapiro, of the drug charity DrugScope, what the prospects are for cannabis legalization in the short to medium term."Highly unlikely," he said. "There may well be enough signatures to trigger a debate, but I see no signs of any serious political 'drivers' for reform. Not from campaign groups who obviously want reform, nor the occasional comment by a Police and Crime Commissioner or Chief Constable, but, for instance, a consensus across the media, or the National Police Chiefs' Council, or the British Medical Association. Certainly this won't past muster in parliament: drug use is still a toxic area—ask a certain peer."READ ON MUNCHIES: A Recipe for Cannabis-Infused Bulletproof Coffee
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