the Prime Minister indicated his strong support for re-classifying cannabis again as a Class B drug.

It was 2004 when then Home Secretary David Blunkett reclassified cannabis from a class B to a class C substance. At this time Mr Blunkett told the country this action was being taken to free up resources in the fight against class A drugs.

ACPO, the Association of chief Police Officers, were quick to fall into line with the Home Office, and spoke out in support of Mr Blunkett's policy changes.

But in the three years that followed, and in a flurry of schizophrenia and other health issues which sections of the popular press have attached to the cannabis issue, both the Home Office, and ACPO have back-tracked, even though cannabis use in the UK has, according to Home Office figures, shown a marked fall.

Recently, An angry row blew up over proposals to upgrade cannabis to a class B drug, with leading experts from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) accusing the Government of a "deliberate leak" of its plans.

Ignoring a directive not to speak to journalists about reports that the Government has already made its mind up, ACMD member Professor Les Iversen, a pharmacologist at Oxford University, said: "I was not pleased to read what appears to be a deliberate leak about the government's alleged intention to reclassify, regardless of advice received from the ACMD.

"If ACMD were to recommend no change and this were to happen, I believe it would be the first time that any Home Secretary acted against the recommendations offered and it would call into question the whole function and future of this group."

A former member of the influential council also claimed the ACMD was totally opposed to the Government's stance. "There is no way that the ACMD would support any reclassification of cannabis, unless there were some political shenanigans going on," said the Reverend Martin Blakeborough.

Rev Blakeborough, who runs the Kaleidoscope drug abuse charity, said: "There is no significantly new evidence to suggest that cannabis is any more harmful than in the last review we did 18 months ago."

"The only reason that the ACMD is being forced to discuss this matter is because every new Home Secretary seems to want to show how tough they are," he added, which fits in with the present administration attempting to kill Tony Blairs spectre once and for all.

But with the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats reeling the Labour party in daily, Gordon Brown's bloody mindedness could leave him labeled with the shortest Premiership in recent history, if the UK cannabis community decides as it should, to vote with its feet.

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