Cannabis is less harmful than alcohol or tobacco, according to a report by a research charity Thursday, which called for a “serious rethink” of drug policy.

The Beckley Foundation, a charity which numbers senior experts and other academics among its advisors, said banning cannabis has no impact on supply and turns users into criminals.

“Although cannabis can have a negative impact on health, including mental health, in terms of relative harms it is considerably less harmful than alcohol or tobacco,” says the report by the Foundation’s Global Cannabis Commission.

The government is pressing for cannabis to be re-classified in law as a Class B drug compared with its current, less serious, Class C classification.

Authorities are concerned notably by the growing prevalence of the potent “skunk” form of the drug. Around 80 percent of cannabis seizures are of this strain, said to be linked to mental health problems, official figures show.

The Beckley Foundation, a charitable trust, claimed only two deaths worldwide have been attributed to cannabis, while alcohol and tobacco use together kill an estimated 150,000 people in Britain alone.

“Many of the harms associated with cannabis use are the result of prohibition itself, particularly the social harms arising from arrest and imprisonment,” it said.
“It is only through a regulated market that we can better protect young people from the ever more potent forms of dope,” it added.

The decision to reclassify cannabis upwards into the more punitive Class B category — which includes amphetamines — is a U-turn for the Labour government.

Cannabis was downgraded from Class B when Tony Blair was prime minister, but Gordon Brown announced a review of its status soon after taking over in June last year.

An earlier review of the cannabis classification, at the time of the last 2005 general election, resulted in it remaining Class C.  I know I tended to get in more trouble when I was younger from drinking booze than smoking the odd joint.

Health in parts of rural China is deteriorating despite rising incomes, and commercialised care has ratcheted up costs for those who can least afford them, the head of the World Health Organisation said on Thursday. Hong Kong-born Margaret Chan said the cost of health care in China was outstripping income growth and that poor health was a major cause of poverty among China’s hundreds of millions of rural residents.

The costs of seeing a doctor or staying in hospital are out of reach for many in the world’s fourth-largest economy, and the lack of access combined with corruption has made the issue a source of social unrest. China has pledged to provide its population with basic medical care by 2020, but Chan said the government was receiving little return in the form of better health for its investment in the sector.

“When ability to pay determines access, many rural residents will not seek care until a disease has reached an advanced stage when treatment is more complex and costly, if not impossible,” she said. “In short, the health system in rural areas has been given multiple incentives to operate with great inefficiency.”

That could undermine China’s efforts to expand care through its Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme, a plan under which subscribers are funded at a level of 50 yuan per person — 20 yuan from the central government, 20 from the local government and a 10 yuan contribution from the individual.

Chinese Vice-Minister of Health Chen Xiaohong said nearly 85 percent of counties in China were participating in the plan but the funding level paled to that of wealthy coastal cities. China was also facing new pressures in the health sector, from an ageing population and environmental risk factors, as well as the challenge of drawing doctors to practise in its rural interior.  I hope the Chineese government gets its’ act together and starts taking care of some of it poorest citizens.