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Cannabis Tax signals psuedo-decriminalisation for Scotland
One of the primary reasons for NOT following Europe and the United States by introducing 'degree's of decriminalisation' for cannabis users has always been the governments inability to work out how to recoup the losses legalising cannabis would inevitably manifest upon big lobbying industries such as pharmaceuticals, petroleum and alcohol.
An American medical marijuana dispensary gives us a good insite into how successful the control and distribution of cannabis can be through a strictly regulated outlet.
The fact is, as soon as cannabis becomes deregulated (for medical use for instance), the pharmaceutical industry stands to loose billions of pounds in over-the-counter sales of popular pain-killers such as paracetamol and aspirin. And they're not about to take such a loss lying down.
In the United States the pain relieving qualities of cannabis have been understood and used for the benefit of mankind for over 30 years. Which coincides exactly with how long the US government have been providing cannabis for patients with a doctors recommendation.
Medical marijuana patient Irv Rosenfeld is a 56-year-old stockbroker from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Irv smoked his 115,000th cannabis cigarette Friday, a possible world record, and he can thank the U.S. government for his supply.
"Yep its true. All of my medical marijuana is provided by Uncle Sam," Rosenfeld told a Miami radio station. "They grow it for me, I find that quite ironic."
Since 1982, Rosenfeld has been a patient in the Federal Drug Administration's Investigational New Drug Program. He suffers from a rare bone disorder called 'multiple congenital cartilaginous exostoses'. To alleviate the pain associated with the disorder he was prescribed cannabis.
And a prescription for cannabis is exactly what the UK government doesn't want its electorate to have access to. Even though the American College of Physicians and the American Medical Association, have BOTH recently reversed their positions on the medical use of cannabis.
So whats the answer?
Bill Stone is a writer with UK based cannabis news website The CannaZine, and he thinks this is the Scottish governments back-handed way of recognising the relatively safe side effect profile of cannabis, by decriminalising and taxing the plant for those who choose to use it.
"Lets face it, for doing something thats supposed to be able to kill you, (Bill refers to Gordon Brown's use of the term 'Lethal' when speaking about cannabis in the run up to reclassification), a £40 fixed penalty hardly seems the deterrent needed to stop people doing it".
"It seems more like a tax which will be enforced and collected by police" he continued.
"The war against drugs in general, and cannabis specifically has been an abject failure in the UK".
"Whilst cannabis use figures drop off amongst the younger generations", Stone continues, "the government are congratulating themselves in the press on this drop in user figures. But its nothing but a pantomime, which is being played out for the Daily Mail reading UK public."
"In the meantime the amounts of our young people who are experimenting with other, far more dangerous drugs continues to rise and the results of this can be read about in the news reports concerning the tragic death of 14 year old Gabi Price, who suffered a cardiac arrest and died at Brighton's Royal Sussex County Hospital on Saturday."
The schoolgirl took a suspected cocktail of (legally available) drugs including Mephedrone (Meow Meow) and ketamine at a house party, and died later after suffering a heart attack.
"With cannabis enforcement making it harder to buy the drug, kids are now realising there are many cheaper ways to get a high and with the UK governments sad reticence to acknowledge this by allowing strictly regulated outlets to sell cannabis and other so called 'soft' drugs where the sale can take place face-to-face, and where we can control access in the same vein as we do with alcohol and cigarettes, they are essentialy writing the orbituary's for heaven knows how many teenagers in 2010."
The pro-cannabis community has always used the mantra "Do you intend to arrest us all"?
A fixed penalty and no court appearance appears to be Scotland's answer to this.
Its cannabis decriminalisation by another name, it offers nothing new in getting a handle on our nations drugs issues and its hard to see how the conservatives will allow this law to come into statute.
Green/Eco/Environment 
