Cannabis Factories
To prove his point he revealed that a total of 64 separate cannabis factories were discovered by South Yorkshire Police across 2007 - compared to just seven in 2004.

But Nick Clegg, leader of the lib dems and member of parliament for Sheffield Hallam in South Yorkshire, disagree's and said, ""I have not seen any concrete evidence."

Now hang on a minute. Surely, as a serving member of the Houses of Parliament and a leader of a major party, Mr Clegg is party to the same information that the other party leaders have?

According to David Cameron and Gordon Brown, cannabis will be the death of all who go near it (except those ministers who admitted to using cannabis obviously).

But Mr Clegg says, ""In fact, all the evidence I have seen - and there have been extensive studies on this - have not demonstrated any direct link between the downgrading from B to C of cannabis and increased take up of cannabis."

He also said people had become "obsessed" by the idea that drug recategorisation will change the behaviour of people who use drugs. A fact which the last 80 or so years of prohibition, and at varying levels of "illegalness", has disproven time and again.

Simply reclassifying cannabis will have absolutely no effect on the problem which Chief Superintendent Jon House, and the South Yorkshire Constabulary are experiencing. In fact, doing so will have the opposite effect, creating more cannabis factories as the problem is driven further underground, and deeper into the vice-like grip of the criminal underworld.

We've tried every single possible take on prohibition and year on year the amounts of people who use illicit drugs continues to rise. Fact.

What we haven't tried, is the Dutch system. The Liberal Democrat system, of allowing adults in the UK to make an educated choice over whether they decide to use alcohol, or cannabis.

Lets face facts here. Its a choice 4 million take every single day and regardless of how the law stands.

Cannabis use at a personal level has been decriminalised for 30 years in the Netherlands, and in that time they have constantly languished at the BOTTOM of the league for European drug addicts, and contrary to the best efforts of the United Nations "bookery cookery ".

Furthermore, they have no problems with drug factories setting up in residential areas because if the locals want to buy cannabis they can simply head down to their local "government licensed" premises and buy it, paying tax as they do.

To keep an eye of the consumption of cannabis its becoming more difficult to buy more than 5 grams a day, as coffee shops start to play their part in reducing the harms, both real and "otherwise", associated with cannabis use.

So the problems of the Vietnamese cannabis farms are more "home-grown" than the Police would have us believe.

Perhaps if we could control our borders more effectively, the cannabis farmers may struggle to staff their grow operations?

But thats just cannabis psychosis kicking in again, right?

The government needs to face up to its responsiblity's once and for all, and admit the current British drugs strategy of prohibit and incarcerate, just doesn't work.

Never mind trying to adopt selective American laws in the United Kingdom.

Its about time we had some of our own. Some similar to those advocated by Nick Clegg's Liberal Democrats would be a great starting point.

The Canna Zine is 1 year old this week. Happy birthday to us, and thanks to everyone who visits the Canna Zine to find out whats happening in the world of cannabis, and illicit drugs generally.