Cannabis: it’s time to stop the lies and start a rational debate
Thursday, 5 November 2009
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It doesn't require a Leap of faith to support the growing calls for a radical rethink of policy on drugs and in particular on the decriminalisation of cannabis.
Leap doesn't base its case on faith but on solid experience, hard facts and proven science.
Leap — Law Enforcement Against Prohibition — is a non-profit educational organisation in the US, its membership drawn from former and serving police officers and other law enforcement agents as well as lawyers, including a number of retired judges.
Founded seven years ago by five retired drugs officers, it now claims 10,000 members in a total of 38 states.
It runs a bureau supplying speakers to advocate the decriminalisation of drugs at conferences, rotary clubs, community groups, high school and college debates and so forth. Its director, Jack Cole, served 26 years in the New Jersey state police, including 14 in the narcotics bureau.
These are not left-over hippies or natural libertarians but former frontline combatants in the war on drugs who have learnt that the war is unwinnable and doing more harm than good.
Leap defines its mission: “To reduce the multitude of harms resulting from fighting the war on drugs and to lessen the rates of death, disease, crime and addiction by ultimately ending drug prohibition.”
The emergence of Leap has been a factor in shifting the axis of argument over drugs policy in the US.
Facilities licensed to supply cannabis for medical reasons are increasingly and openly broadening their customer base to encompass an ever-widening range of ailments.
Additional evidence of changing attitudes came last month when the Denver Westword — a weekly with a 100,000-plus circulation — advertised for a critic to write a column, ‘Mile Highs and Lows’, checking out Colorado's hundreds of legalised cannabis dispensaries.
“The reviewer will be expected to rate the service, and ambience in the outlets, and help readers negotiate the often bewildering variety of marijuana products on sale,” explained editor Joe Tone.
Things to do in Denver if you're dead lucky: get the job as pub-spy for pot-heads.
Meanwhile, evidence on this side of the Atlantic mounts — if evidence for a proposition which has already been conclusively proven can be said to mount — of the deadly dangers of alcohol, particularly to young people, compared to the relative safety of cannabis.
Last month Professor Chris Hawkey, president of the British Society of Gastroenterology, introduced new research suggesting that the next decade will see 90,000 people dying prematurely in Britain as a result of |alcohol.
There seem to be no comparable specific figures for Ireland north or south, but we can reasonably assume a similar situation.
He added: “A third of patients on (gastroenterology) wards are alcoholics — and these days many are in their 20s and 30s.”
In contrast, the number of deaths attributed to marijuana in these islands last year was nil. Same as the year before. Same as this year will turn out.
A society seriously trying to get to grips with its drugs problem, especially as it affects the young, would be trumpeting this distinction between a safe and a killer drug.
Instead, day in and day out, teenagers and others are urged to believe that marijuana poses a grave danger, while alcohol, used ‘responsibly’, will make life fuller and more enjoyable.
People are being lied to. It is my experience that many here, including elected representatives, who publicly assert implacable opposition to the decriminalisation of marijuana, will concede in private that the ban makes no sense.
But, they go on to say that to call openly for decriminalisation is to ‘send the wrong message’. But it's the fact that marijuana is banned which sends the wrong message.
When young people realise, as they will, that they are being lied to about marijuana, they are likely to believe that they are being misled about heroin, too. ‘Irresponsibility’ scarcely covers it.
There are powerful forces with vested interests in maintaining skewed attitudes to drugs, most obviously the alcohol industry. If a substance cheaper, less harmful and more enjoyable than alcohol were easily available, the profits of the booze business would be at risk.
In Northern Ireland, in this specific matter, paramilitary organisations, too, have a compelling interest in stifling debate. For as long as communities can be spooked into believing that puffing a joint will lead to personal |catastrophe, for so long will hysteria about drugs persist and punishment shooters-and-beaters have a role.
Would the Derry-based outfit styling itself Republican Action Against Drugs be able to get away with dragging a man from his distraught family at Bluebellhill Gardens and maiming him with bullets in the public street if there was a rational debate under way about how to assess and to deal with the problem of drugs abuse?
The possibility of rational debate was hardly enhanced by the ignorant belligerence of Home Secretary Alan Johnston last week in sacking Professor David Nutt as chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, not for expressing an opinion contrary to the Government's but for voicing facts which the Government — and the main opposition parties — would rather not acknowledge.
Neither the Home Secretary nor anyone who has supported the sacking has challenged the accuracy of the professor's statistics or the logic of the case which he has argued from the statistics. Who among our local politicians will be first to show respect for the people and speak the truth?
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Comments
44 Comments
Firstly - Decriminalise the stuff
Then - Legalise it
Then - errrm.. where were we
Posted by Blootered | 24.11.09, 18:15 GMT
Eamonn, I think you need to stop listening to the Doobie Brothers!!
Posted by Jonny | 23.11.09, 14:28 GMT
It is beyond dispute that cannabis prohibition has been a social, economical
and environmental disaster, and it is clear that existing polices are failing to
reduce either drugs use or drugs harm.
It has criminalised millions of otherwise law biding citizens, given rise to
organised crime, increased underage usage, diminished freedom, promoted
disrespect for the law, but it has not curtailed usage.
I agree with Eamonn, it's time for rational debate.
Posted by S Spook | 20.11.09, 10:40 GMT
For those saying they live with cannabis addicts and think all stoners are lazy and useless, they are seeing a small anecdotal portion of smokers. The majority of smokers are not lazy and useless, and you wouldn't know a person was a smoker unless you saw them smoke.
If a person becomes addicted to weed or alcohol, it is because they are prone to addiction. It is not because of the drug itself.
I smoke cannabis every day, yet when I go somewhere without it, I am completely fine. I am also working a well paid job as a graphic designer and I am starting my own company only a year out of college.
Am I lazy and useless and stupid?
If you check the background of people saying cannabis can harm you, they are often being paid by interest groups who are biased on the topic. Yet there are hundreds of doctors and medical experts who all say that the harms from cannabis are negligible, particularly if not smoked (THC can be taken as a pill or as a spray or oil).
Posted by Mattan | 19.11.09, 19:52 GMT
Great article. Obviously it is only a matter of time before drugs are legalised. It really depends on which government can come up with a taxation system which can return to them the maximum benefit without seeming pro drugs. Whoa! Tobacco, alcohol, prescriptions etc. Legalise marijuana - tax it - everybody's happy!
Posted by Bert | 19.11.09, 09:01 GMT
Politicians can't speak up against the war on drugs because they are terrified that the media will rip into them and that will cost them their livelyhood/position and acheive nothing.
Only the media can end the lunacy (journalists are forgiven for being radical) - a good article, but it will take mightier publications than the Belfast Telegraph to bring the politicians out of the woodwork!
Posted by P Cameron | 17.11.09, 15:07 GMT
Anyone who has smoked cannabis recreationally, knows that the warnings are pure misinformation.
But indulging to the extreme with any substance will cause harm.
The motives for the war on drugs has as much transparency as the war on terror.
And the the religious comment posters (and to paraphrase Bill Hicks), your god (allegedly) created the cannabis sativa plant. To say it is illegal or immoral is to say that your god made a mistake.
Posted by SB | 12.11.09, 14:20 GMT
Conor - you seem to be confused, have I stated I'm an expert? Have I suggested I've got years of post-grad research in the area of drug use? No strangely I haven't, I read people's posts and try to explain to some where they have misinterpreted data or facts, why? To get people with potentially dangerous viewpoints to use faultless logic to reason the truth.
I don't do medical research, I don't write it, but I do study it. It doesn't take an expert to read a non-biased scientific paper and glean straight forward facts. I very much doubt the anti-cannabis posters have read ALL the facts - otherwise they'd be pro-cannabis. What actually really annoys me is people on here that think they know more than Prof.Nutt - the actual expert.
Perhaps in your case you can't get your head around scientific writings, so you attack people that use logic. Eg. a balant slur at WH in terms of a part-time degree - makes you feel like a big man eh, conor?
Posted by Common sense | 12.11.09, 13:04 GMT
Ever hear of the term "troll" Conor?
Posted by M A | 12.11.09, 12:26 GMT
Common sense- why would I have a chip on shoulder about someone who takes internet discussions seriously and spends all day posting on them?
WH- you really do think you're a big time intellectual with your dogmatic comments.....
How's your part time degree (as you've stated previousy) going?
I wonder if Theologians (eg McGrath), Biologists (eg Collins or Miller), Philosophers (eg Swinburne) or Cosmologists (eg Heller or Sandage) would take you seriously
I doubt even Dawkins would
Nutt's opinion on this is worthwhile as he knows what he is talking about- you dont, thats why you are posting your comment here
Posted by conor | 11.11.09, 21:43 GMT
There are a lot of comments here, some pro-cannabis and some anti-cannabis legalisation.
But the big point we all have to look at here - is not the relative harm of cannabis - but the fact that it is my human right to consume a plant, if I so please.
There are many many plants that can be found in our gardens on this island (see: belladonna) which are SERIOUSLY hallucinogenic and SERIOUSLY bad for you.
But why are these not illegal?
I'll tell you why - because there's nothing the government can do about Belladonna plants. They grow wild, here.
I say plant a load of hemp around our open space - let's make more than the man can cut down and then see them squabble over a PLANT.
It'll be hilarious - politicians running around neighbourhoods trying to get votes by trimming some bushes. "I cut down 20 this week! "no I cut down 30!" "but I cut down 40!!!!"
Sounds a bit like politics now.
Legalise it. Give me my human right. And leave me alone.
Posted by P Wilson | 11.11.09, 15:18 GMT
Attitudes are the problem.
There are drug users and there are drug abusers.
If we're not abusing drugs we're abusing booze, if we're not abusing booze, we're abusing food (over-eating junk-food). Of course many do all three. On top of that we're abusing each other.
The drug problem isn't going to be solved by legalising drugs or by prohibition.
Posted by honest Joe | 10.11.09, 13:27 GMT
Eamon McCann's view is spot on, we need more people like you !
Posted by MrDizzla | 10.11.09, 13:22 GMT
Conor - that's an awful big chip on your shoulder there
Posted by Common sense | 10.11.09, 13:16 GMT
Conor,
As far as I can work out, your expertise lies in one field, and one field alone, ad hominem attacks.
You have spouted absolute drivel on here regarding your beliefs on 'theistic evolution'. You have failed on numerous occasions to back-up your ridiculous assertions with just one piece of evidence, not one.
Prof Ken Miller, a proponent of 'theistic evolution', admits that he has no evidence to back up his beliefs. This is a man that you look up to! He is trying to fit an undoubted fact, evolution, around a 2000 year old fairy story in the bible. Is he, and are you, having a laugh?
If you are willing to stand-up for what you believe, then you should be willing and able to provide evidence to back up your claims. Otherwise, you, or anyone else, should rightly be regarded as delusional.
Prof Nutt provided evidence, peer reviewed evidence, and look what happened to him. The government makes an irrational decision based purely on politics and they are applauded. Crazy.
Posted by WH | 10.11.09, 12:43 GMT
McCann, MS, WH, Common sense experts in
Theology
Cosmology
Metaphysics
Marxism
Philosophy
Evolution
Drug abuse
Law
Respiratory medicine
Mental health
Has anyone seen the Mitchell and Webb "I reckon" sketch?
Posted by conor | 09.11.09, 15:49 GMT
Nicky - Your post made me laugh, then I realised you weren't being sarcastic, then I got annoyed!
Your comment is total nonsense and the worst part is you actually believe it. I feel sorry for you, can't you see your being narrow minded? You seem to assume you know more than Prof. Nutt (an extremely educated man in this field!). How can you have the arrogance to think you know better? Oh and if your thinking, 'well he was sacked - you can't trust him', the Chief Medical Officer for Britian agrees with him!!
Posted by Common sense | 09.11.09, 15:37 GMT
Well Mervyn, you construct your irrational explanations for the Universe and let the pot heads create theirs. To be frank, I dont use, I used to, but the Frank adverts make me want to!!!!Think of the savings in the public order budget for the PSNI if Shaftesbury Square was full of 'stoners' on a Friday and Saturday nights instead of violent drunks.
Posted by Sartorius | 09.11.09, 12:50 GMT
A rational debate on drug abuse may achieve very little, when it comes to creating a better and safer society. Today's society in general is growing more tolerant of sin and less tolerant of God's Word. In such a social climate the legalisation of some drugs will only have the same effect as did the licencing of alcohol in time past. Governments may legalise or license all that a sin laden and spiritually degenerate society demands, and then impose a heavy tax burden, to what end? Will society get any better? Will the crime rate fall? The answer to these, is of course, no! Why not introduce the Word of God into today's society and experience the power of the gospel of Christ to miraculously change lives. Only God has the power to break the chains of sin's addictive grip and set society free.(Psalm107:19-20) 'Then they cry unto the LORD in their trouble, and he saveth them from their destructions. He sent his word and healed, and delivered them from their distresses.'
Posted by Rev Mervyn Cotton | 08.11.09, 23:22 GMT
The day is coming! We will see an immediate decrease of drunk driving accidents because of an alternative choice.
Posted by C Roberts | 08.11.09, 17:02 GMT
44 Comments