Drug-Induced Madness

First the Conservatives and now Labour have queued up to pay tribute to that bloc of reactionary idiocy known as “Middle England”. I refer, of course, to their recent pronouncements regarding cannabis. Iain Duncan Smith (yeah, I though I’d seen the last of him too) and Gordon Brown (although in more guarded terms) have called for the re-classification of the drug, generally assumed to mean from Class C to Class B, making possession an arrestable offence once more and hence wasting hours of police time arresting and processing essentially harmless stoners instead of, well, people that actually pose a threat to public safety (like murderers and terrorists, for instance).

This argument is made on a couple of points which are. The first is that cannabis today is stronger than it used to be, and therefore the lower classification is nonsensical. This is simply not true. Studies carried out be the European Monitoring Centre on Drugs and Drug Addiction have shown that “the effective strength of cannabis consumed in Britain has remained stable for the past 30 years” and that high-potency varieties of the drug have always existed, thus rendering the groundless.

The second point is that cannabis poses a health risk. Quite apart from the fact that deaths in this country due to cannabis register at literally zero (compared to the umpteen smokers and drinkers that die each year), the claim that cannabis causes psychosis is greatly exaggerated. While in a tiny minority of cases it can induce psychosis (and then usually in those that were prone to psychosis anyway), for most it does not have this effect. Indeed, one of the chemicals in the drug, cannabidinol (or CBD), reduces psychosis. In fact, it is better at doing this than the legal anti-psychotics currently available on the NHS. It may even be possible to grow cannabis that contained high levels of CBD. However, this is impossible under prohibition and without regulation provided by law, this will not happen.

British drugs policy has always been a mess. Under the current situation, cannabis is illegal while tobacco and alcohol, both deadly, are legal. Indeed, the House of Commons itself, in a report published by the Science and Technology Select Committee admits this. And yet, come the time for re-classification, MPs will, sheep-like, head for the Aye lobby, for they are too afraid of the ignorant, reactionary, conservative horde of Middle England, a dark territory, unknown to reason or logical thought. Such is the way that good policies are destroyed. And, as a result of this, teenagers will be locked up for something that is completely harmless.

None of our Business

Two whole pages of today’s Times were devoted to it and yesterday’s free London papers shouted it from their front pages – the Home Secretary has confessed to smoking cannabis at university. In other news, the Pope confessed some Catholic tendencies… Anyway, despite cannabis being relatively harmless (see above), the papers were full of reports that various cabinet ministers had confessed to this “crime” (although oddly enough not one of them enjoyed it).

First, a point of pedantry – it isn’t a breach of the law to smoke cannabis, or, indeed, take any other drug. Possession is illegal, dealing drugs is illegal, but consumption is not.

Second, a point of principle – it is none of our damned business. Even politicians are entitled to private lives and if it doesn’t effect how they do their jobs we do not have a right to know about it. If Jacqui Smith, or any of her cabinet colleagues, were still taking drugs, it would definitely be in the public interest for papers to report it, but the truth is she isn’t and hasn’t for a quarter of a century. Now, I may not be an expert, but I’m fairly sure you can’t be stoned for 25 years.