First, it’s important to state something boring: This is not legal advice, no-one at CLEAR and especially not me is allowed to give legal advice. What follows is an opinion, nothing more. That said I hope it’s an opinion that includes good advice.
Secondly and perhaps more importantly, it has to be made clear that cannabis has not been legalised, or even decriminalised. You can still have your door kicked in by police thugs in search of a few plants, even if you are a medicinal user.
So why all the cheery headlines a week or so ago? Well the reason is simple, although nothing has changed things are now very different. Obvious really.
What’s very different is the sentencing council has laid down a set of guidelines which courts are expected to follow when people get charged with cannabis offences. Before these guidelines you were in the lap of the gods if you got busted, what happened to you was very much at the discretion of the judge. Although to an extent that is still true, there are now clear factors which have to be taken into account when determining the sentence and the postcode lottery we’ve endured should now be a thing of the past. So although in some places it will make little difference in others it is close to revolutionary. However, they are guidelines, not hard and fast rules: Section 125(1) (a) of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 provides that: “Every court – (a) must, in sentencing an offender, follow any sentencing guideline which is relevant to the offender’s case, and (b) must, in exercising any other function relating to the sentencing of offenders, follow any sentencing guidelines which are relevant to the exercise of the function, unless the court is satisfied that it would be contrary to the interests of justice to do so.”
So if the court decides that there is some special condition attached to the offence that overrides these guidelines, you can still face the wrath of a “hang ‘em and flog ‘em” judge, but it has to be something out of the ordinary for that to happen.
The new guidelines do seem pretty clear: If you are a small time quiet “hobby grower” not involved in any form of supply – especially to children – and no other offences are involved the guidelines for Production/Cultivation are:
Lesser role ‘if own operation, solely for own use (considering reasonableness of account in all the circumstances)’, 9 plants (domestic operation with assumed yield of 40g per plant): the sentence you can expect is in the range of a discharge or possibly a medium level community order.
For possession cases you can expect a discharge or smallish fine.
In addition, medical use of cannabis is now to be accepted as a mitigating factor again.
Now the interesting question is what these guidelines will do to the willingness of the Crown Prosecution Service to actually prosecute someone for a low level offence. It is to be hoped that it will be seen as not being a good use of public money to drag someone through an expensive trial only to result in a discharge. If that is the case, then the police won’t be interested either and if that happens we will truly have seen a worthwhile improvement. Only time will tell though, we’ll have to wait and see how this all pans out.
But make no mistake, this is a massive change in the threat posed by the prohibition law, so it’s worth at least half a cheer even before anything has happened and there’s a good chance it’ll be worth a whole cheer in a few months time when we see the results.
But the sensible advice is not to put your neck on the line, don’t all rush to see who can be the first to get the new improved penalties. Remember, a criminal record – even a minor one – can still mess your life up, making it hard to get a job that requires a CRB check, travelling to some countries or possibly will even exclude you from claiming criminal injuries compensation if those proposed changes come into effect – and more besides.
The one other thing to say about all this is that it’s only happened in this way because it has had to. If it were possible to strongly enforce the penalties as laid out in the legislation, they would do so. Cost is probably the main driving factor behind these new guidelines, they won’t publicly admit it, but the truth is they simply cannot afford to spend £50,000 a year (BBC ) to lock up every grower and user of cannabis in the UK. In reality it’s just another example of tinkering about with a system under pressure, of trying to make a failed law workable.
Note this doesn’t apply to Scotland or Northern Ireland, nor to under 18′s.
For a definitive explanation of the new guidelines, see hereSOURCE By Derek Williams
http://clear-uk.org Cannazine Cannabis News |
Green/Eco/Environment 
