{"id":7081,"date":"2010-08-16T20:19:57","date_gmt":"2010-08-16T20:19:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/?p=7081"},"modified":"2016-06-30T16:22:28","modified_gmt":"2016-06-30T16:22:28","slug":"opinions-toughen-on-cannabis-users-and-illegal-drugs-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/2010\/08\/opinions-toughen-on-cannabis-users-and-illegal-drugs-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinions toughen on cannabis users and illegal drugs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;\"><br \/>\nSupport for legalising cannabis has dropped from more than a third of people in Scotland to less than a quarter, a study has suggested.<br \/>\nHowever, most people made a distinction between cannabis and other drugs.<br \/>\nThe findings come in a Scottish government study into the public&#8217;s attitudes towards illegal drugs and drug misuse.<br \/>\nIt showed 47% of people knew someone who had tried illegal drugs, up from 41% between 2001 and 2009.<br \/>\nStatistics from the British Social Attitudes Surveys in the 1980s and 1990s, along with the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey 2001, indicated an increasingly tolerant attitude towards the legalisation of cannabis.<br \/>\nThe results from the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey 2009 have now suggested a reverse in this trend.<br \/>\nMental health<br \/>\nSupport for legalising cannabis fell from 37% in Scotland in 2001 to 24% in 2009. Among those who had themselves tried cannabis, support for its legalisation fell from 70% to 47% over the same period.<br \/>\nThe views were accompanied by a hardening of attitudes towards prosecution for the possession of cannabis.<br \/>\nThe report found the trend may be linked to the mental health debate surrounding new stronger forms of cannabis, called skunk, or it may reflect a changing trend in attitudes towards illegal drugs in general.<br \/>\nIn 2008 the government introduced a new strategy to tackle the nation&#8217;s drug problems by focusing on &#8220;recovery and helping people live drug-free lives&#8221;.<br \/>\nIn principle this appeared to be supported by the Scottish public, with 80% saying &#8220;the only real way of helping drug addicts is to get them to stop using drugs altogether&#8221;.<br \/>\nHow this should be done was not so clear, the report found.<br \/>\nThere was widespread support for enforcement, with only 16% of people agreeing that personal use of heroin should not result in prosecution.<br \/>\nAlthough education was generally supported as the focus of drugs policy, only 44% of people believed this &#8220;education&#8221; should involve young people being given more information on how to use drugs more safely.<br \/>\nThe survey also indicated that communities with higher signs of heroin use were more likely to be comfortable living near a recovering heroin user. This may mean that actual contact with such issues helps to allay public anxiety, it suggested. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><em>Source: www.news.bbc.co.uk 25th May 2010<br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Support for legalising cannabis has dropped from more than a third of people in Scotland to less than a quarter, a study has suggested. However, most people made a distinction between cannabis and other drugs. The findings come in a Scottish government study into the public&#8217;s attitudes towards illegal drugs and drug misuse. It showed [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-social-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7081\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}