Feeling Dopey

The Home Secretary has issued guidelines to help courts differentiate between possession for personal use and possession for intent to supply in illegal drugs cases. You're officially not a dealer if you're caught carrying 7g of cocaine, heroin or crack, ten tablets of ecstasy, ten 1g bags of amphetamine, or 20oz of marijuana. According to a B.B.C. reporter, that much grass is equivalent to 500 joints (but he didn't say what size papers he uses or whether he mixes it with tobacco).

Whenever there's a contentious subject like this, it amuses me to compare how different sources report it. The Times displays a modicum of restraint, giving you the facts and only the facts. I can't tell if The Guardian is concerned about wasting police time or the inconvenience the new policies will cause a significant proportion of its readership! And The Sun revealed its agenda with the very first word, relieving the busy reader of the burden of making up his own mind. For once, Ford has no comment on the issue. But that could be because he's too high to form a coherent sentence.