The northlondonhippy

Archive for July 30th, 2007

I feel like a proper foot solider in the bat­tle over cannabis. The government’s recent announce­ment that they would review its cur­rent sta­tus in the UK as a “Class C” drug is crazy. They say and I quote, that this review is “likely to result in reclas­si­fi­ca­tion back into “Class B””. That’s even madder!

I don’t feel I can let this hap­pen with­out at least putting up some sort of fight. Even though the media would like you to think oth­er­wise, there is actu­ally no gen­uine case to reclas­sify cannabis. In fact, if the argu­ment is pre­sented objec­tively, then the smart con­clu­sion to reach is that full legal­i­sa­tion is the cor­rect move.

I’m hardly the first per­son to call for cannabis to be legalised and I’m not likely to be the last. Many peo­ple feel the same, as wit­nessed in count­less opin­ion polls.

In response to the siege on cannabis, I’ve put together sev­eral entries which put forth a much more bal­anced view, based on gen­uine sci­ence and per­sonal expe­ri­ence, espe­cially, my own per­sonal expe­ri­ences with cannabis, which I will briefly share with you now.

I’ve been a daily cannabis smoker for over 26 years. For 25 years of that, I’ve been smok­ing mainly “skunk weed” as it has come to be known, so I have some degree of author­ity on the subject.

For the record, what is known as “skunk weed” is not new, but has been around and avail­able for decades. All it really is, are par­tic­u­lar strains of cannabis, that have been selec­tively grown and bred for their pos­i­tive qual­i­ties, be they taste, yield or potency. The tech­niques used are no dif­fer­ent from those used by farm­ers everywhere.

“Skunk weed” is not genet­i­cally mod­i­fied, as I have seen reported in the press, because that would be ridicu­lous. Can you imag­ine some white lab coat wear­ing sci­en­tist aban­don­ing his research into cur­ing can­cer, or AIDS in favour of genet­i­cally engi­neer­ing stronger weed? It’s just ludicrous!

These stronger strains of cannabis, are in real­ity 2 or 3 times stronger than weed grow­ing wild, and not 25–30 times stronger, as reported recently. Also, they have been com­mer­cially avail­able for a very long time, decades in fact. I first tried it in 1982, some 25 years ago.

Peo­ple who smoke cannabis should not be crim­i­nalised. It’s a plant, for fuck’s sake. For most users of cannabis, the high is pleas­ant, relax­ing and enjoy­able. If it doesn’t agree with you, then please, don’t smoke any more, but don’t try and pre­vent those of us who do enjoy it, from doing so!

Ask any police­man if they agree with the cur­rent cannabis leg­is­la­tion and most will tell you that “Class C” doesn’t go far enough and they would pre­fer to see it legalised fully. Then ask them if they would rather deal with some­one under the influ­ence of weed or alco­hol and once they stop laugh­ing, they will tell you that a drunk is always the most dangerous.

Alco­hol, is legal and freely avail­able, yet is a hor­ri­ble drug, with mis­er­able side effects and can be directly linked to many of soci­eties ills. From anti­so­cial and vio­lent behav­iour on the streets, to domes­tic vio­lence in the home, and the loss of pro­duc­tiv­ity in busi­ness and indus­try, alco­hol is at the root of all of this.

But is any­one call­ing for a ban on booze? Of course not! And besides, they tried that in Amer­ica in the early decades of the last cen­tury and do you know what it resulted in? Organ­ised crime and the mafia tak­ing hold all over the country.

Let’s get the crim­i­nals out of the cannabis sup­ply chain. Let’s turn it into the reg­u­lated, com­mer­cial indus­try it deserves to be!

I’ve posted a series of pieces today, which puts forth the pos­i­tive argu­ments for cannabis. I’ve also put out a pub­lic offer to be the pos­i­tive voice of cannabis smok­ers, to redress the bal­ance in the cov­er­age and com­ment on the sub­ject, which is tend­ing towards hys­te­ria, rather than truth.

Here is a list of handy links to today’s cannabis series, please expect more on the sub­ject to follow:

- The northlon­don­hippy offers to be the voice of rea­son, truth, san­ity and expe­ri­ence regard­ing cannabis (534)

- Don’t just take my word for it (535)

- That Lan­cent cannabis study, the Daily Mail and truth (536)

- It’s not as black and white as they want you to believe (538)

- Demand and sup­ply – another angle on the sta­tus of cannabis (539)

Please take the time to read all of it. You deserve to inform your­selves, so you can all bet­ter inform others.

If you smoke cannabis, or you’ve ever smoked it and you’ve enjoyed it, then your voice needs to be heard too!

The most basic prin­ci­ple of busi­ness is that demand influ­ences sup­ply. If peo­ple want some­thing, what­ever it is, then some­one will be there to pro­vide it. Demand cre­ates the mar­ket econ­omy and is the basis of capitalism.

If you are against the legal­i­sa­tion of cannabis, then you are against the very basic foun­da­tion of cap­i­tal­ism. I’ve said this before. There is a demand for cannabis, which means by virtue of the nature of cap­i­tal­ism there is a mar­ket sup­ply­ing said demand.

The legal sta­tus of cannabis forces this mar­ket to be under­ground, untaxed and unreg­u­lated. I believe the cor­rect tech­ni­cal term for this is a black market.

This black mar­ket in cannabis is respon­si­ble for many of the ills asso­ci­ated with its sale and dis­tri­b­u­tion. From the shitty soap­bar hash that was pop­u­lar in the UK years ago, to the recent “grit weed” plague last year, can all be attrib­uted to the unfor­tu­nate and unjus­ti­fied laws which con­trol cannabis.

Soap­bar, for those of you who don’t know, is a hor­ri­ble con­coc­tion made up of a mix of adul­ter­ants, such as shoe pol­ish, wax, plas­tic and camel dung, with a tiny bit of cannabis. From what I’ve read, you were lucky if what you got was even 3% THC, the active ingre­di­ent in marijuana.

Last year, the UK was inun­dated with a sup­ply of adul­ter­ated herbal cannabis that became known as “grit weed”.

“Grit weed”, involved the ille­gal cannabis grow­ers impreg­nat­ing the buds of the plant with tiny, glass beads. This was done to make the buds appear more resinous and to bulk up the weight and increase prof­its. When you smoked grit weed, as many of us did, you noticed a funny, gritty feel­ing in your mouths. Users were advised to dis­pose of this tainted weed, rather than fur­ther risk their health.

If the sup­ply of cannabis were reg­u­lated and con­trolled, then inci­dents such as those described above, would be a thing of the past. Fur­ther­more, there would be no more street deal­ing and peo­ple under the age of 18 (or 21) would have a much harder time get­ting their hands on some.

At the moment, it is eas­ier for some­one under the age of 18 to score a bit of weed, then it is for them to secure a litre of vodka. Ask any 14 year old to find you some draw and it won’t take them long, but ask them to pur­chase you some alco­hol and they will be far less suc­cess­ful. Booze isn’t sold from your mate’s cousin’s friend’s bed­room, but cur­rently cannabis is.

Again, don’t take my word for it. Here’s a com­ment piece from the Inde­pen­dent news­pa­per, which I will pro­vide in full, as well as a link back to the orig­i­nal. If the Inde­pen­dent objects to this, please con­tact me and I will remove the full text, but main­tain the link.
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http://comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_m_z/deborah_orr/article2788635.ece

Deb­o­rah Orr: An unreg­u­lated, dan­ger­ous mar­ket — that’s the main prob­lem with drugs

Pub­lished: 21 July 2007

“That didn’t take long, did it? It’s now a rit­ual of pub­lic life: a new influx of min­is­ters means a new inves­ti­ga­tion into what ille­gal drugs, if any, they may have tried. The answer is that a lot of them have tried and hated cannabis, includ­ing Jacqui Smith, the Home Sec­re­tary. Gor­don Brown may have pro­vided the ideal oppor­tu­nity to place such a sur­vey on the imme­di­ate agenda, what with his half-baked per­ora­tions about the re-reclassifying of cannabis. But it would all have hap­pened any­way, for some rea­son, at some point, because it always does.

Pub­lic debate on drugs had taken an odd turn this week any­way, with the awful mur­der of Lucy Bra­ham by William Jaggs being touted as proof that dan­ger­ous drugs had now reached the pri­vate school, Har­row, and there­fore the high­est ech­e­lons of soci­ety. The poor, sad spec­tre of Olivia Chan­non, who died of an over­dose at Oxford in the early 1980s, was once again revived as a nec­es­sary counter-argument.

I’m not sure quite who believed the for­mer to be any­thing other than non­sense any­way, since the his­tory of drugs in Britain over the past 30 years has unequiv­o­cally been one of democ­ra­ti­sa­tion. As stu­dent acquain­tances from the Oxford days of Jacqui Smith told The Times this week: “Posh peo­ple had proper drugs and voted SDP. Labour and Tories drank lager and had the odd spliff … [Drugs] was the ter­ri­tory of the posher, more fey places like Mag­dalen and New College.”

I can vouch for this myself. At a Scots uni­ver­sity in the early 1980s I took lots of drugs. But such sub­stances as cocaine or heroin were entirely unheard of, and right out of our finan­cial league any­way. Our favourite was mush­rooms, which grew free in the fields and could be dried for year-round use. We also took the speed that was man­u­fac­tured by a drop-out medic, who was even­tu­ally impris­oned for his pains, and acid was a cou­ple of quid for a 12-hour special-occasion trip. We also grew our own grass, while hash was a pre­cious com­mod­ity, taken in the form of hot knives, which were much less waste­ful than joints. At times of more des­per­ate poverty we could be wit­nessed dry­ing banana skins under the grill (never worked) or munch­ing extremely copi­ous amounts of nut­meg (not worth the effort).

The main prob­lem with drugs now is that, if one dis­counts their total ille­gal­ity, they oper­ate in the most free, the most vio­lent and the most glob­alised mar­ket there is. Dam­age lim­i­ta­tion has to start there, not with the rel­a­tively inno­cent, annoy­ingly stub­born, arro­gantly youth­ful end user.

There are many rea­sons why the focus on clas­si­fi­ca­tion of cannabis is of lit­tle rel­e­vance to any­thing except the response of the local crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem to its use, just as there are many rea­sons why the local crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem can only ever be use­ful in deal­ing with a nar­row aspect of the cul­ture of drugs in our society.

In the case of cannabis, peo­ple buy it on the black, free mar­ket with­out know­ing exactly what they are get­ting. Some cannabis is mild, because it con­tains lit­tle of the main ingre­di­ent, tetrahyr­do­cannabi­nol, and some of it is haz­ardously pow­er­ful, because it con­tains much more of it.

This is a fact of life because it is all ille­gal and all unreg­u­lated, and no amount of reclas­si­fi­ca­tion will get over this dif­fi­culty. For many, this is a no-brainer argu­ment for legal­i­sa­tion.”
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I’m not the only sane, ratio­nal, hon­est per­son, shar­ing the truth about cannabis and the drugs mar­ket. There are oth­ers out there who want to keep you all well informed. You just need to look for the truth, amongst all the men­dac­ity and lies.

I’m not the only one with first hand expe­ri­ence with cannabis. There are oth­ers out there, who are happy to share their sto­ries with us.

One such per­son is Rufus May, a clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist, who works with Bradford’s Assertive Out­reach team. He wrote a piece that was pub­lished in the Inde­pen­dent, that I think is worth shar­ing with you.

I’ll pro­vide a link to the orig­i­nal, as well as the full text.

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http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article2814693.ece

“Rufus May: I smoked cannabis. I went mad. But life’s not that simple

Pub­lished: 29 July 2007

As the review pub­lished in The Lancet last week con­firmed, stud­ies have been find­ing an asso­ci­a­tion between cannabis and psy­chotic expe­ri­ences for the past 30 years. The review­ers looked at 35 stud­ies and sug­gested that cannabis users have a 40 per cent increased chance of hav­ing psy­chotic expe­ri­ences. They also say that 14 per cent of psy­chotic prob­lems in the United King­dom could be linked to cannabis use. But not all the evi­dence sup­ports a sim­plis­tic causal link. For exam­ple, while the use of cannabis has gone up steadily over the past 30 years, the inci­dence of psy­chotic diag­noses has not. Yet the research com­ing out of the Insti­tute of Psy­chi­a­try and this lat­est review from Bris­tol and Cardiff uni­ver­si­ties is putting grow­ing pres­sure on the Gov­ern­ment to recon­sider its clas­si­fi­ca­tion of cannabis as a class C drug.

Cause and effect are dif­fi­cult to unravel. Are peo­ple with a ten­dency to hear voices or suf­fer from para­noia attracted to using cannabis to calm them­selves or is the drug increas­ing the risk of these expe­ri­ences? Per­haps both processes are hap­pen­ing. In my expe­ri­ence, both as a user and as a psy­chol­o­gist, cannabis can be both a tonic and a poi­son. Ulti­mately, like all drugs, it brings prob­lems, but demon­is­ing it will not help.

At the age of 15 and 16 I smoked cannabis pretty heav­ily. It helped me escape the bore­dom of school life and frac­tious rela­tions with my par­ents. It also helped me bury deeper anx­i­eties about impend­ing adult­hood and my iden­tity. I fell in love with the idea that this illicit weed could bring me seren­ity on a daily basis. Its for­bid­den sta­tus made me feel rebel­lious and cool. I became addicted to the cer­e­mo­ni­ous rit­ual of stick­ing the papers together and build­ing the spliff that I hoped would trans­port my mind to a more peace­ful place. But life has taught me that if you sup­press things sooner or later they come back to haunt you. By the age of 18, I was drug free, try­ing to get over my first girl­friend leav­ing me and strug­gling to find a decent job. Instead of get­ting depressed, I slowly drifted into a dream­like real­ity where I was spied upon and felt I had spe­cial spir­i­tual pow­ers. It cul­mi­nated in being treated psy­chi­atri­cally for a year and being given the rather unhelp­ful tag of schiz­o­phrenic. My recov­ery has involved largely steer­ing clear of cannabis and find­ing more healthy ways to relax and stay calm and centred.

In my work, I help oth­ers who have devel­oped psy­chotic expe­ri­ences. Many of us choose to avoid using cannabis, but some feel it is help­ful in deal­ing with anx­i­ety and the side effects of the med­ica­tion they are pre­scribed. My impres­sion is that some peo­ple – and I would include myself in this cat­e­gory – do have a par­tic­u­lar sen­si­tiv­ity to cannabis and need to be cau­tious with it. But I also feel there is a polit­i­cal agenda behind the cur­rent “blame the weed for men­tal ill­ness” cam­paign. Psy­chi­a­trists such as Robin Mur­ray and oth­ers spent many years in the 1990s – described as “the decade of the brain” – try­ing to find a bio­log­i­cal and genetic cause for psy­chosis, but with lit­tle suc­cess. The lat­est focus on cannabis can be viewed as the dying gasp of the “blame the brain” brigade who seek to jus­tify a bio­log­i­cal approach to madness.

Such an empha­sis on chem­i­cal causes suits the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­try and obscures the big­ger truth that men­tal dis­tress is caused by emo­tional trau­mas and trou­bles. Peo­ple who react badly to cannabis but con­tinue to use it are try­ing to sup­press feel­ings such as anger, guilt and lone­li­ness. It is the social sit­u­a­tions that lie behind these emo­tions that we really need to under­stand and address.”
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If this man’s views aren’t wor­thy of con­sid­er­a­tion, then we don’t have a chance. His first hand expe­ri­ence, com­bined with his pro­fes­sional qual­i­fi­ca­tions, make him uniquely capa­ble of putting forth a ratio­nal view on the subject.

Don’t let the truth go unheard! The truth deserves to be shared more than the lies!

I’m an expert on cannabis, mainly through many years of per­sonal expe­ri­ence. While that cer­tainly makes me qual­i­fied to share my thoughts and opin­ions, there are other experts worth lis­ten­ing to as well.

The Lancet report last week and the ques­tion­able meth­ods used in its prepa­ra­tion need to be redressed.

My friends at the Guardian news­pa­per have been very good at find­ing experts who want the truth to be known and are not look­ing at scor­ing polit­i­cal points based on some twisted agenda.

Here’s an exam­ple of that sort of report­ing, I’ll pro­vide a link back to the orig­i­nal, plus the full text of the arti­cle. If the Guardian has any objec­tions to this, please get in touch and I will remove the full text, but main­tain the link.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/drugs/Story/0„2136450,00.html

“Experts dis­miss case for cannabis reclassification

David Batty and agencies

Fri­day July 27, 2007

Drug experts today said there was still insuf­fi­cient evi­dence to reclas­sify cannabis, after a report sug­gested the drug could increase the risk of schiz­o­phre­nia by at least 40%.

The Labour MP Brian Iddon and Pro­fes­sor Robin Mur­ray, of the Insti­tute of Psy­chi­a­try, said there would be no ben­e­fit gained by restor­ing cannabis to a class B drug.

Their com­ments came after a report pub­lished today in med­ical jour­nal the Lancet esti­mated there were at least 800 peo­ple suf­fer­ing seri­ous psy­chosis in the UK as a result of smok­ing cannabis.

The Home Office said last night that the report’s find­ings would be con­sid­ered in a review of the 2004 deci­sion to down­grade cannabis to a class C drug.

The review was prompted by fears that the potent “skunk” form of cannabis was trig­ger­ing schizophrenia.

Prof Mur­ray, an expert on cannabis-induced psy­chosis, said the Lancet study added “very lit­tle” to the under­stand­ing of the health risks asso­ci­ated with smok­ing the drug.

He said: “Politi­cians tend to think reclas­si­fi­ca­tion is impor­tant. It isn’t. Fourteen-year-olds smok­ing spliffs have no idea of the dif­fer­ence between B and C. If it were reclas­si­fied to B, it wouldn’t affect 14-year-olds because it’s already ille­gal for them any­way. What is needed is edu­ca­tion about the risks.”

The study, which is an analy­sis of pre­vi­ous research, esti­mated that 14% of 15–34-year-olds cur­rently suf­fer­ing from schiz­o­phre­nia were ill because they smoked cannabis

Prof Mur­ray said: “Indi­vid­u­als who — per­haps with some mild pre­dis­po­si­tion — would not oth­er­wise have devel­oped schiz­o­phre­nia will do so because of tak­ing cannabis. It’s a bit like how peo­ple with only a min­i­mal pre­dis­po­si­tion to dia­betes will develop it if they eat too much.”

Dr Iddon, the chair­man of the all-party par­lia­men­tary group on drugs mis­use, said the study did not con­vince him it was time to return cannabis to class B.

“I don’t think the causal link has been proved. I think cannabis might — pos­si­bly for genetic rea­sons — trig­ger psy­chosis at an ear­lier age.”

The MP, who is also a mem­ber of the sci­ence and tech­nol­ogy select com­mit­tee, said there was a dan­ger of crim­i­nal­is­ing “hun­dreds of thou­sands of young peo­ple” if the sta­tus of the drug was changed.

“If Gor­don Brown changes the class of the drug, it won’t be evidence-based but for polit­i­cal rea­sons,” he said.

“Since we reduced the clas­si­fi­ca­tion of cannabis from B to C the usage is going down, so what’s the point of mud­dy­ing the debate again by this yo-yo polit­i­cal policy?”

The drugs char­ity DrugScope also chal­lenged the calls to reclas­sify cannabis, say­ing there was no evi­dence that it would cut use of the drug.

The DrugScope chief exec­u­tive, Mar­tin Barnes, said: “The chal­lenge is to ensure that infor­ma­tion on cannabis use and the asso­ci­ated risks is under­stood by teach­ers and health pro­fes­sion­als work­ing with young peo­ple and con­veyed in ways that young peo­ple will lis­ten to.

“Shock tac­tics alone rarely work, but we need to get across that just because you know peo­ple who appear to be OK using cannabis, it doesn’t mean that they are, or that it will be OK for you.“
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To sum­marise, in bul­let points:

- Labour MP Brian Iddon and Pro­fes­sor Robin Mur­ray, of the Insti­tute of Psy­chi­a­try, said there would be no ben­e­fit gained by restor­ing cannabis to a class B drug.

- Prof Mur­ray said the Lancet study added “very lit­tle” to the under­stand­ing of the health risks asso­ci­ated with smok­ing the drug.

- Dr Iddon, chair­man of the all-party par­lia­men­tary group on drugs mis­use, said the Lancet study did not con­vince him to return cannabis to class B. He went on to say said there was a dan­ger of crim­i­nal­is­ing “hun­dreds of thou­sands of young peo­ple” if the sta­tus of the drug was changed.

- The drugs char­ity DrugScope also chal­lenged the calls to reclas­sify cannabis, say­ing there was no evi­dence that it would cut use of the drug.

The truth is out there, you just need to delve deeper. It’s hid­ing being the shock head­lines and badly researched data. I’ll always bring you the truth, for the truth deserves to be heard!

My friends at the Guardian news­pa­per are giv­ing me hope that the truth in the debate about cannabis reclas­si­fi­ca­tion will be an hon­est one. The gov­ern­ment can’t ignore the facts and only quote the lies.

As you’ve no doubt read or heard, the well-known British med­ical jour­nal, The Lancet, has recently pub­lished a study into the effects of cannabis use. Rather than try to debunk the ques­tion­able sci­ence and research tech­niques used in prepar­ing this report myself, I would pre­fer to share an arti­cle from the Sci­ence sec­tion of the Guardian.

Here it is, with a link to the orig­i­nal and the full text. If the Guardian objects to me post­ing the full text, please feel free to con­tact me, ask­ing for its removal. I will keep the link back to the orig­i­nal though.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/jul/28/drugs.drugsandalcohol

“Cannabis data comes to the crunch

by Ben Goldacre

Sat­ur­day July 28 2007

You know when cannabis hits the news you’re in for a bit of fun, and this week’s story about cannabis caus­ing psy­chosis was no excep­tion. The paper was a sys­tem­atic review and then a “meta-analysis” of the data which has already been col­lected, look­ing at whether peo­ple who smoke cannabis are sub­se­quently more likely to have symp­toms of “psy­chosis” or diag­noses of schiz­o­phre­nia. Meta-analysis is, sim­ply, where you gather together all of the num­bers from all the stud­ies you can find into one big spread­sheet, and do one big cal­cu­la­tion on all of them at once, to get the most sta­tis­ti­cally pow­er­ful result possible.

Now I don’t like to carp, but it’s inter­est­ing that the Daily Mail got even these basics wrong, under their head­line “Smok­ing just one cannabis joint raises dan­ger of men­tal ill­ness by 40%”. Firstly “the researchers, from four British uni­ver­si­ties, analysed the results of 35 stud­ies into cannabis use from around the world. This sug­gested that try­ing cannabis only once was enough to raise the risk of schiz­o­phre­nia by 41%.”

In fact they iden­ti­fied 175 stud­ies which might have been rel­e­vant, but on read­ing them, it turned out that there were just 11 rel­e­vant papers, describ­ing seven actual datasets. The Mail made this fig­ure up to “35 stud­ies” by includ­ing 24 sep­a­rate papers which the authors also found on cannabis and depres­sion, although the Mail didn’t men­tion depres­sion at all.

They also said that “pre­vi­ous stud­ies have shown a clear link between cannabis use in the teenage years and men­tal ill­ness in later life”. They then described some of these pre­vi­ous stud­ies. These were the very stud­ies that are sum­marised in the new Lancet paper.

But what was left out is as inter­est­ing as what was added in. The authors were clear — as they always are — that there were prob­lems with a black-and-white inter­pre­ta­tion of their data, and that cause and effect could not be stated sim­ply. For ongo­ing daily users, as an exam­ple, it’s dif­fi­cult to be clear that cannabis is caus­ing peo­ple to have a men­tal ill­ness, because their symp­toms may sim­ply be due to being high on cannabis all the time. Per­haps they’d be fine if they were clean.

It was also inter­est­ing to see how the risk was numer­i­cally reported. The most dra­matic fig­ure is always the “rel­a­tive risk increase”, or rather: “cannabis dou­bles the risk of psy­chosis”, “cannabis increases the risk by 40%”. Because schiz­o­phre­nia is com­par­a­tively rare, trans­lated this into real num­bers this works out — if the fig­ures in the paper are cor­rect, and causal­ity is accepted — that about 800 yearly cases of schiz­o­phre­nia are attrib­ut­able to cannabis. This is not belit­tling the risk, merely express­ing it clearly.

But what’s really impor­tant, of course, is what you do with this data. Firstly, you can mis­p­re­sent it, and scare peo­ple. Obvi­ously it feels great to be so self-righteous, but peo­ple will stop tak­ing you seri­ously. After all, you’re talk­ing to a pop­u­la­tion of young peo­ple who have worked out that you rou­tinely exag­ger­ate the dan­gers of drugs, not least of all with the ridicu­lous “mod­ern cannabis is 25 times stronger” fab­ri­ca­tion so beloved by the media and politicians.

And cra­zi­est of all is the fan­tasy that reclas­si­fy­ing cannabis will stop six mil­lion peo­ple smok­ing it, and so erad­i­cate those 800 extra cases of psy­chosis. If any­thing, for all drugs, increased pro­hi­bi­tion may cre­ate mar­ket con­di­tions where more con­cen­trated and dan­ger­ous forms are more com­mer­cially viable. We’re talk­ing about com­mu­ni­ties, and mar­kets, with peo­ple in them, after all: not mol­e­cules and neu­rore­cep­tors.”
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As you can see, the hype and hys­te­ria is in over­drive, but the truth is there, if peo­ple choose to share it with you.

My pur­pose at the moment, is to bring you all the truth on the sub­ject, in the hopes that we can all make an informed deci­sion. And yes, I’m talk­ing to you, Mr. Politi­cian Man! Do what’s right, not what you think peo­ple want you to do out of mis­placed and ill-informed fear.

As a more than casual observer of all things media related, I’ve been enjoy­ing the lit­tle spat that seems to be going on between the Inde­pen­dent and the Inde­pen­dent on Sunday.

It seems the 2 dif­fer­ent ver­sions of this usu­ally lib­eral news­pa­per are split on their views regard­ing the sta­tus of cannabis.

The Inde­pen­dent on Sun­day, until recently, was quite vocal in their call for the full legal­i­sa­tion of weed. Then, a few months ago, in response to the resur­gent hys­te­ria, they did a com­plete about-face on the sub­ject. Since then, rarely does a Sun­day go by, with­out another unsub­stan­ti­ated scare-story regard­ing cannabis appear­ing in the IoS.

The daily Inde­pen­dent, the Mon­day to Sat­ur­day ver­sion, how­ever, has strived to main­tain a sense of bal­ance and hon­esty on the subject.

I would like to share an exam­ple of this gen­uine report­ing in the Inde­pen­dent, right now and I hope the Indy doesn’t mind if I quote the full text, as well as pro­vid­ing a link to the orig­i­nal. If you do object, please get in touch and I will remove the full text, but keep the link.
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http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article2788634.ece

“Debunked: politi­cians’ excuse that cannabis has become stronger

By Jeremy Lau­rance, Health Editor

Pub­lished: 21 July 2007

In a week in which Gor­don Brown sig­nalled a tough­en­ing of the law on cannabis and Labour MPs queued up to con­fess to smok­ing dope in their youth — a dozen cab­i­net min­is­ters at the last count — there has been a wide­spread assump­tion bandied about that the coun­try is in the grip of an epi­demic of cannabis-induced psychosis.

But there is no evi­dence that cannabis poses a greater threat to health today than it did 30 years ago, and reports that stronger forms of the drug, called skunk, have 25 times the potency are wildly exag­ger­ated. The joint, sym­bol of peace and love in the 1960s, has become a totem of degen­er­ate Britain — increas­ingly linked with men­tal break­down and axe-wielding maniacs.

The Prime Min­is­ter, who has ordered the sec­ond review of the clas­si­fi­ca­tion of cannabis in two years, is said by insid­ers to want to reverse the deci­sion of the for­mer home sec­re­tary, David Blun­kett, who down­graded the drug from class B to class C in 2004.

The Advi­sory Coun­cil on the Mis­use of Drugs, which exam­ined the issue 18 months ago, will be asked to do so again. It con­cluded in its report in Decem­ber 2005 that the strength of cannabis resin (hash) had changed lit­tle over 30 years and was about 5 per cent tetrahy­dro­cannabi­nol (THC). Skunk, it found was 10 to 15 per cent THC — two to three times as strong, not 25 times.

Pro­fes­sor Leslie Iversen, a phar­ma­col­o­gist at Oxford Uni­ver­sity, said the wide­spread belief that skunk was 20 to 30 times as pow­er­ful was “sim­ply not true”.

The biggest change over recent decades has been in the strength of indoor-cultivated herbal cannabis, but even this has only dou­bled to 12 to 14 per cent THC. Although excep­tion­ally strong skunk can be found on the mar­ket in Britain, it always has been avail­able, accord­ing to reports from the UN Drug Con­trol Programme.

On the ques­tion of psy­chosis, the advi­sory coun­cil was clear. Cannabis use may worsen the symp­toms of schiz­o­phre­nia and lead to a relapse in some patients. But on cau­sa­tion, it said: “The evi­dence sug­gests, at worst, that using cannabis increases the life­time risk of devel­op­ing schiz­o­phre­nia by 1 per cent.”

It added that more than three mil­lion peo­ple were esti­mated to have used cannabis in the pre­vi­ous year, but “very few will ever develop this dis­tress­ing and dis­abling condition”.

Sci­en­tists led by Pro­fes­sor Mur­ray, at the Insti­tute of Psy­chi­a­try, have argued that cannabis smok­ing can trig­ger psy­chosis in vul­ner­a­ble indi­vid­u­als. A key worry is that young peo­ple are start­ing to smoke the drug ear­lier, in their mid-teens, when their brains are more vulnerable.

But experts led by Pro­fes­sor David Nutt, a spe­cial­ist in addic­tion psy­chi­a­try at the Uni­ver­sity of Bris­tol, said in The Lancet in March that a causal link had not been estab­lished. Even if it were, cannabis could account for at most 7 per cent of cases of schiz­o­phre­nia, he said.

One dif­fi­culty is dis­tin­guish­ing an asso­ci­a­tion from a cause. Mar­jorie Wal­lace, the chief exec­u­tive of Sane, the men­tal health char­ity, was quoted as say­ing evi­dence of the dam­ag­ing effects of cannabis was mount­ing, with psy­chi­a­trists claim­ing “80 per cent of patients have been using cannabis”. Cannabis use is wide­spread among men­tal patients, but their attempt to self-medicate tends to be a symp­tom of their suf­fer­ing, not the cause.”

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Just to sum­marise, in bul­let points, from the above article:

- Cur­rent strains of cannabis are 2 or 3 times stronger old-style strains, not 25 or 30 times, as is often reported

- These more potent strains have always been available

- “The evi­dence sug­gests, at worst, that using cannabis increases the life­time risk of devel­op­ing schiz­o­phre­nia by 1 per cent” – not 40% as is being reported, quot­ing the recent Lancet study of ques­tion­able merit

- Experts led by Pro­fes­sor David Nutt, a spe­cial­ist in addic­tion psy­chi­a­try at the Uni­ver­sity of Bris­tol, said in The Lancet in March that a causal link between cannabis and psy­chosis had not been established.

- Cannabis use is wide­spread among men­tal patients, but their attempt to self-medicate tends to be a symp­tom of their suf­fer­ing, not the cause.

As you can see, the real­ity is noth­ing like the rep­re­sen­ta­tion. If you seek the truth, you will find it. My goal, as always, is to bring you the truth!

I’ve been try­ing to put some­thing together to post here about the ramp­ing up of the false cannabis hys­te­ria in the last week or so, but the whole god­damn thing has me so fuck­ing fucked off, that I’ve been strug­gling with putting my thoughts into a sen­si­ble and ratio­nal form.

Basi­cally, my anger and rage at the lies, mis­in­for­ma­tion and ques­tion­able sci­ence has knocked me off bal­ance. I aim to redress that in the next day or in a series of posts I’m already preparing.

I want to get this one right. There’s too much at stake regard­ing the sta­tus and view of weed in UK soci­ety and some­one has to be the voice of reason.

That some­one is going to be me.

Because of my long rela­tion­ship with cannabis, specif­i­cally “skunk” as the media likes to dub any decent, well-grown strain; I am uniquely qual­i­fied to com­ment on this subject.

And that’s the thing, in all of this “debate”, there has been one side of the argu­ment miss­ing; one voice not heard and that’s the views of some­one who smokes and enjoys cannabis, reg­u­larly and responsibly.

Meet the hippy. That’s me. I’ve smoked cannabis daily for 26 years, around 25 of them, “skunk”. It’s always been avail­able, if you knew where to look.

As well as being a habit­ual and unapolo­getic smoker of cannabis for over 2 decades, you’d also find me a mature, charm­ing, intel­li­gent, respectable, use­ful, gain­fully employed, tax-paying mem­ber of soci­ety. I’m also clever, smart and fun to know. You’ll have to take my word for it.

I’m prob­a­bly no dif­fer­ent from the major­ity of cannabis smok­ers. We’re your neigh­bours, your co-workers, your friends, rel­a­tives; we’re a lit­tle bit of everybody!

We’re not demons, we’re not mon­sters, we’re actu­ally a fairly chilled out, relaxed bunch of peo­ple, who would pre­fer to spend an evening reclin­ing on the sofa, watch­ing a good film or read­ing a good book or lost in deep conversation.

We’re not the sort you’ll find in a city cen­tre at mid­night, piss­ing in alley­ways and pick­ing street fights with the old bill.

The prob­lem, with those of us who are both pro­duc­tive mem­bers of soci­ety and cannabis users is we can’t thrust our hands in the air and declare our admi­ra­tion of weed, because of its cur­rent legal status.

We are all forced to remain under­ground and in the shad­ows, for to come out pub­licly as a dope smoker, would be to invite all man­ner of crit­i­cism and scorn which would threaten your stand­ing in soci­ety, per­son­ally and professionally.

And that’s just plain wrong.

For me, the sit­u­a­tion is different.

Not only am I uniquely qual­i­fied to com­ment on the sub­ject, because of my long asso­ci­a­tion with cannabis, but also because of my nom de plume as the northlon­don­hippy and this web­site. I have a forum to express my views as well as share the truth with you all, with­out fear of ret­ri­bu­tion. I’ve been doing it already, for a few years now.

That’s why I am putting myself for­ward as the voice of rea­son, san­ity and expe­ri­ence on all things cannabis related. And I’m not lim­it­ing myself to only this web­site, but I would like to offer my ser­vices as a self-proclaimed expert on the sub­ject to other media out­lets as well.

That’s right, you clever young researchers who man­age to find me, I am avail­able for inter­view on any cannabis related mat­ter and this offer is open to news­pa­pers, mag­a­zines and radio pro­grammes only. I won’t appear on tele­vi­sion, so sorry guys, because I will not be iden­ti­fied as any­thing other than the northlondonhippy.

I’d also be happy to pro­vide com­ment pieces for news­pa­pers, if you would like to com­mis­sion some­thing, please feel free to con­tact me.

But if it is an inter­view you’re after, here are my sim­ple conditions:

1) My real name and any other iden­ti­fy­ing facts about me shall remain secret. Your dis­cre­tion is essential

2) You are free to men­tion and refer to my web­site, actu­ally I would encour­age that.

3) You can ask me any­thing you like about cannabis in gen­eral and my long-time per­sonal expe­ri­ence with it as well. I will answer some per­sonal ques­tions, but oth­ers I will not. And it will be down to my discretion.

4) I’m not look­ing for pay­ment. My reward will come from telling the truth and cor­rect­ing the lies, false­hoods and sci­en­tific mis­in­for­ma­tion passed off as proven fact.

5) While short notice requests for inter­views may be pos­si­ble, some notice will be required. I do have a life out­side of this blog and weed…well, sort of.

6) Ini­tial con­tact via email first is rec­om­mended and encouraged.

7) For any live media out­lets, ie radio, pre-interviews are fine and I promise not to swear or say any­thing slan­der­ous. I won’t how­ever, get into shout­ing matches with the irate and ill-informed. I will only par­tic­i­pate in civilised, ratio­nal debates on the subject.

And here’s a bit of back­ground on me, which you may quote from at will:

“The northlon­don­hippy is the biggest inter­net celebrity that you’ve never heard of, until now. He’s media pro­fes­sional by trade and has been blog­ging under this name for over 3 years.

His blog, www.northlondonhippy.com cov­ers all aspects of his life, but con­cen­trates on the hippy’s long-time love affair with cannabis. The hippy is part philoso­pher, part media critic and a keen observer of society.

As the debate over cannabis heats up, the hippy has decided to put him­self for­ward as the voice of respectable, decent peo­ple who hap­pen to smoke cannabis and don’t believe they deserve to be crim­i­nalised for it.”

For more infor­ma­tion about me; and my per­sonal views, please feel free to dig deeper into this site. It’s all there, if you look hard enough.

I think I might put out an actual, old-style press release, mak­ing this offer and I will tar­get the fol­low­ing media outlets:

- The Guardian news­pa­per
– The Observer news­pa­per
– The Inde­pen­dent news­pa­per
– The Inde­pen­dent on Sun­day
– The Times news­pa­per
– The Sun­day Times news­pa­per
– LBC Talk Radio
– BBC Radio FiveLive

I think that’s a rea­son­able start. I’m seri­ous, I’ll be send­ing out a short press release to them all, offer­ing my ser­vices and cre­den­tials. I want to rep­re­sent you, my fel­low cannabis-smokers. Though we must exist in the shad­ows, we don’t need to have our views go unno­ticed and unheard any more.

If you would like to add your voice to my cam­paign, please feel free to email me. I’ll be very happy to post your views, here on my site.

And my offer to all of these media out­lets is gen­uine and sin­cere. If you strive to pro­vide bal­ance, then both sides of the argu­ment deserve to be heard. I’m mak­ing it that much eas­ier for you to accom­plish this goal.