Pastor To Challenge Police, Policy on Cannabis Options

[sittingrelaxing]

Pastor to Challenge Police Policy on Cannabis

By Stephen Howard, PA News

A pastor is to challenge in the High Court the police policy on the handling of cannabis smokers since the drug was downgraded.

Police have been told not to routinely arrest users now that cannabis has been reclassified as grade C.

But Pastor Frank Brookes from Brixton, south London, claims this is harmful to young people and wants the policy reversed.

High Court judge Mr Justice Newman has given the Baptist minister permission to take his local police chief and the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) to court, claiming the non-arrest policy was flouting what Parliament wanted.

Permission was granted by the judge on paper without a court hearing.

Mr Brookes, 50, from the Raleigh Park Baptist Church in Brixton, says there should be a clampdown on the drug because of the damage it was causing to people in his community.

He said the police policy gave the wrong message to young people and claimed cannabis was a gateway to harder drugs, including crack cocaine.

Paul Conrathe, the solicitor bringing Mr Brookes’s case, said that when the drug was downgraded from class B to class C, MPs voted for police powers of arrest for class C drugs.

He said: “Parliament has determined that this is a criminal offence and that it will continue to be an arrestable offence. For the police to say they will not arrest is to usurp the rule of Parliament.”

Acpo and the Met backed by the Home Office will argue that the police policy does not contradict the will of Parliament.