This is an article taken from the Guardian.co.uk website.

Cannabis users are smoking more of the stronger stuff as skunk marijuana pushes traditional pot to the sidelines of the British drugs market, a government advisory panel heard today.

The highly potent sinsemilla, or “skunk” as it’s known on the street, is now used by up to 70% of cannabis users, jumping from just 15% six years ago.

The evidence marked the beginning of a two-day fact-finding mission by the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD). The information presented will form the basis of the council’s recommendations to the government about whether or not cannabis should be reclassified as a class B drug, after being bumped down to class C four years ago.

Marjorie Wallace, the chief executive of the mental health charity Sane, said she believed cannabis should be returned to class B to combat what she said were mixed messages on its harmfulness.

Rawlins asked: “Are you really wanting people to go to prison for five years for possession? Bear in mind that 3.5 million took cannabis last year - there aren’t enough prison spaces to deal with them all.”

The national director for mental health at the Department of Health, Louis Appleby, told the committee that attitudes towards cannabis had become complacent.

He said health professionals had been “guilty of complacency” on the issue.

Pointing to evidence that implicates marijuana use in the development of severe mental illness, Appleby called cannabis a “harmful drug” that contributed to a cycle of relapse and risk in mentally disordered patients.

Cindy Barnett of the Magistrates Association told the hearing that downgrading “sent out the wrong message”.

“An awful lot of people think cannabis is now legal,” she said. “We feel very strongly it is a question of mixed messages, confusion and increasing harm that is being caused by reclassification to class C and we feel very strongly it should go back to class B.”

Dr Les King, an adviser to the Home Office scientific development branch, told the ACMD several hundred samples seized by police on the streets in just the last weeks showed levels of skunk had rocketed, while cannabis resin, or hash, had slumped to being used by 20% of smokers, compared to over 60% previously.

Traditional herbal cannabis now accounts for just 5% of seizures, compared with 15% six years ago, he added.

“The large increase in the market share of sinsemilla appears to have come about in the last few years,” said King. “It is now clearly the dominant product. It coincides with the rise of these large organised criminal concerns run by the Vietnamese. Traditional herbal cannabis has almost been squeezed out of the market.”

The Vietnamese “concerns” King refers to is the sharp escalation of pot farms over the past couple of years. In the two years up to March 2007, police had raided 1,500 cannabis factories in London alone - triple the amount from the two years previous to that period, according to earlier figures from the drugs charity DrugScope.

David Potter, of GW Pharmaceuticals, who has conducted a separate survey of samples from a number of police forces, told the ACMD he had found a similar swing towards stronger cannabis.

“It’s like a wave moving towards the more potent end,” he said. “People are moving towards sinsemilla, which is a much, much more potent product. This has the potential to change the cannabis scene quite a lot.”

The ACMD heard that skunk contains higher levels of the active ingredient in cannabis, known as THC. But it also contains much lower levels of another ingredient, cannabidiol or CBD, an anti-psychotic substance which may moderate effects of THC on the mental health of users.

The home secretary, Jacqui Smith, has said she would keep an open mind on the issue of reclassification in the face of calls for tougher penalties for possession from the police and the opposition.

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