Die Cannabisstudie der britischen "Police Foundation"
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/runciman/pf7.htm

Die Bericht der britischen Polizeistiftung (Police Foundation) beruht auf der umfangreichsten Untersuchung zur Cannabisprohibition in Grossbritannien seit über 40 Jahren. Der Bericht empfahl, den Besitz und Eigenanbau von Cannabis von Strafe zu befreien. Die Empfehlungen wurden sogar vom Daily Telegraph, der konservativsten seriösen Tageszeitung des Landes, unterstützt.

"Our conclusion is that the present law on cannabis produces more harm than it prevents. It is very expensive of the time and resources of the criminal justice system and especially of the police. It inevitably bears more heavily on young people in the streets of inner cities, who are also more likely to be from minority ethnic communities, and as such is inimical to police-community relations. It criminalizes large numbers of otherwise law-abiding, mainly young, people to the detriment of their futures. It has become a proxy for the control of public order; and it inhibits accurate education about the relative risks of different drugs including the risks of cannabis itself.

[...]

Our recommendations on the law on cannabis and its implementation are:

i) Cannabis should be transferred from Class B to Class C of Schedule 2 of the MDA and cannabinol and its derivatives should be transferred from Class A to Class C.

ii) The possession of cannabis should not be an imprisonable offence. As a consequence, it will no longer be an arrestable offence in England and Wales under section 24 of PACE, and arrests will only be possible under section 25 of PACE where there are identification or preventative grounds.

iii) Prosecution of offences of cannabis possession should be the exception and only then should an offence, resulting in a conviction, incur a criminal record. An informal warning, a formal caution, a reprimand or warning in the case of those aged 17 or under, or a fixed out-of-court fine should be the normal range of sanctions.

iv) The cultivation of small numbers of cannabis plants for personal use should be a separate offence from production and should be treated in the same way as possession of cannabis, being neither arrestable nor imprisonable and attracting the same range of sanctions. Cultivation of cannabis for personal use under section 6 and production under section 4 should be mutually exclusive offences.

v) The maximum penalty for trafficking offences for Class C drugs, including cannabis, should be 7 years imprisonment and/or an unlimited fine. This is broadly in line with those European countries which we have studied and somewhat higher than most of them. Cannabis trafficking offences would, like all such offences, continue to attract the confiscation powers of the Drug Trafficking Act 1994.

vi) Permitting or suffering people to smoke cannabis on premises which one occupies or manages should no longer be an offence under section 8 of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971.

vii) Statutory sentencing guidelines should include vicinity to schools, psychiatric services and prisons as aggravating factors for the purposes of sentencing for trafficking offences.

viii) Cannabis and cannabis resin should be moved from Schedule 1 to Schedule 2 of the MDA Regulations thereby permitting supply and possession for medical purposes. If there is to be any delay in adopting this recommendation pending the development of a plant with consistent dosage, we recommend a defence of duress of circumstance on medical grounds for those accused of the possession, cultivation or supply of cannabis."

Source: Police Foundation of the United Kingdom, "Drugs and the Law: Report of the Independent Inquiry into the Misuse of Drugs Act of 1971", April 4, 2000. The Police Foundation, based in London, England, is a nonprofit organization presided over by Charles, Crown Prince of Wales, which promotes research, debate and publication to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of policing in the UK.

Dazu gibt es einen bemerkenswerten Kommentar des Hausblattes der britischen Konservativen, dem Daily Telegraph:

Daily Telegraph: An Experiment with Cannabis (30.03.2000)