The northlondonhippy

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!

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