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No proof that drugs cause crime‚ convention told

The current government policy of criminalising drug use‚ especially marijuana smoking‚ is possibly causing more harm than marijuana itself.

This was according to health consultant Dr Andrew Scheibem who was speaking at the Department of Social Development event held to discuss the pros and cons of legalising marijuana.

And former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan agrees with Scheibe. Writing for the magazine Vice two weeks ago. Annan said: “As I have maintained in the past‚ drugs may have destroyed many people‚ but wrong governmental policies have destroyed many more. Let us not repeat this mistake.”

Annan argues said the criminalisation of drug use creates a huge burden on the justice system and health interventions are a better way to help users stop taking drugs.

Scheibe said there was a growing recognition globally that treating drug use as a health problem rather than locking users up was better‚ although it also had limitations.

He said policing drugs and locking up users and sellers had not led to reduced drug use or production.

And Scheibe went so far as to compare the criminalisation of selling and using drugs to the period in the US when alcohol was prohibited and gangsterism thrived as criminals made money from the sale of illegal alcohol.

While most of the day was serious‚ Andre du Plessis‚ from the Cannabis Working Group‚ gave all bemused attendees at the government event three free marijuana seeds and told them to plant them to grow their own dagga plants.

Scheibe said researchers including British psychiatrist David Nutt had rated the harm of different drugs by measuring the damage they caused the individual and those around them. They published their results in The Lancet in 2010.

“Dagga did cause harm as the review showed but was rated far less harmful than tobacco. The most harmful drug of all was alcohol‚ followed closely by heroine.”

Scheibe said there was a disconnect between the level of harm drugs caused users and society and which particular drugs were criminalised.

Putting people in jail for taking drugs only made them less likely to be able to earn a living‚ exposed them to tuberculosis and broke up families.

He said: “When police sprayed and destroyed 500 hectares of dagga plantations in the Eastern Cape in February ‚ they wiped out vulnerable people’s only livelihood”.

Scheibe said alternate forms of income needed to be made available before crops were destroyed as crop destruction didn’t stop city smokers getting marijuana but sent poor people further into poverty.

He also said research on drugs is routinely misrepresented.

While it is known that up to 44% of crimes in South Africa are committed by people on drugs‚ it cannot be proven that drugs cause people to commit crime.

The same factors that influence crime‚ such as poverty‚ lack of education and dysfunctional families‚ could encourage drug use and crime at the same time.

“But it was hard to prove the drug use caused crime‚” he argued.

But head of the psychiatry unit at the University of Limpopo Solomon Rataemane disagreed. He said all the patients in the psychiatry ward at university of Limpopo Hospital (Medunsa) tested positive for drugs including marijuana. This showed that drug use could negatively influence mental health

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