Under the new leadership of Michael Howard, Britain’s reliably hopeless Tories have actually been making some progress. They are even ahead in the polls, although by less than they should be at this stage in the British political cycle. Nevertheless, it’s difficult to see that Howard’s stance on cannabis legalization is anything other than a mistake. Tony Blair’s Labour government is currently in the process of downgrading pot from a class B drug (very bad) to class C (just bad), an inadequate and somewhat confusing step, but progress nonetheless. Howard <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;$sessionid$PIAR2ZP33XMH3QFIQMGCFFOAVCBQUIV0?xml=/news/2004/01/22/ucanabis.xml&sSheet=/portal/2004/01/22/ixportaltop.html
“>has now announced that, if elected, the Conservatives will reverse this change. That’s dumb policy (Howard, an intelligent man, ought to have realized by now that marijuana prohibition is a miserable failure, both morally and practically), and dumber politics. The Conservative Party has noticeably failed to recruit many younger voters (by which I mean anyone under the age of 105), and this move will only make that bad situation worse.