Prohibition supporters must be aware of one thing by now; if cannabis were not included in the war on drugs, it’s quite possible there would be no serious opposition to the whole approach, or at the very least the opposition would be very different. But cannabis is included and to a large extent underpins the whole approach, without cannabis the massive police and enforcement industrial complex, invasive laws, public relations advertising campaigns and much more besides would never have happened. In short, the war on drugs simply wouldn’t have become what it has today had cannabis not been included in the arbitrarily constructed list of “immoral” intoxicants, but we are where we are, so what can be done about it?

The war on cannabis was originally a racism based suppression of cannabis using cultures (Blacks and Latinos) in the USA, coupled with industrial forces seeking to destroy the hemp industry all dressed up as a social health issue which have become enthusiastically enshrined in international treaties – you can check out the whole sorry story here on UKCIA if you’re sceptical of that claim. Cannabis, it has to be remembered, was never banned because of any serious health or social problems caused by its use, most if not all of the scare stories we’ve seen relating to cannabis use since have been little more than hype. That of course doesn’t imply that cannabis is harmless come hell or high water, but it is true that most of the harms have either been greatly overstated or – worse – created by the prohibition regime in the first place.

Another examination of the evidence has come along to try to find a way out of this madness of cannabis prohibition, this time from the Beckley Foundation entitled The “Global Cannabis Commission Report”, written in 2008 is now online here. It yet again presents the case for cannabis law reform, all the usual logical arguments we’ve heard before, but what makes this report perhaps different from those which have gone before is that this one takes stock of the effort over the past 50 or so years or so and it goes on to suggest alternatives to the failed war.

The situation has however, been fundamentally transformed over the last half-century since its prohibition, due to cannabis having become firmly established as part of the youth culture, particularly in developed countries. Large illicit markets have emerged to supply the demand. The strenuous efforts to enforce prohibition through policing and quasi-military operations against illicit growing and sale have failed.

That, really, is the hard truth which must be faced eventually by governments; prohibition of cannabis has not prevented it from becoming pretty well mainstream amongst young people. When prohibition supporters argue that 4% of the population is low compared to legal drugs they quietly ignore that fact that the 4% is highly skewed towards young people – it’s not a 4% spread evenly throughout the population. If we take “young people” to mean “up to early 20′s” cannabis use is well over 50% in some communities and is pretty well the norm in most, yet the war on drugs is sold to us on the basis of “protecting young people” .

The report spends some time examining the health and social effects of cannabis use, it doesn’t come to the conclusion that cannabis is the “harmless herb”, instead it acknowledges concerns about the health risks of smoking, the mental health scare and the impact of cannabis use on young people. It also examines the claims of higher levels of THC in some strains currently on sale these days and correctly apportions blame for the to the economic environment created by prohibition.

Increases in potency have probably resulted from a combination of selective breeding of higher potency plants and a shift to indoor cultivation using the sinsemilla method. All of these trends have been encouraged by the illegal status of the product, which favours the production of more concentrated forms.

The core of the report acknowledges that we are in the situation we are in due to international conventions and seeks to map out pathways for change

In this Report, the aim has been to draw on the available evidence to offer some possible paths forward to a more realistic and effective global regime for cannabis control.

This is, ultimately, the sort of debate we should be having, indeed it’s one the LibDems acknowledged some time ago before they got into power

Seeking to initiate a European level review of the drugs problem and the range of policy responses with a view to securing renegotiation of UN Conventions on Drug Trafficking. (this is very important)

So, what do the Beckley Foundation suggest? The report looks at reforms that are possible within the existing conventi0ns, which it calls “Softening prohibition”, which we will call “bending the law” because that’s what it is.

It describes the control regimes which have departed from a standard approach of full criminal prohibition, and reviews the evidence of the impact of these alternative regimes on cannabis use and other indicators. The first problem they come across is the most obvious – the law is not enforced evenly within jurisdictions

The alternative cannabis use control regimes that have evolved in different jurisdictions in recent years are characterized by considerable heterogeneity in their key characteristics. This complexity makes their analytical examination challenging. As in any analysis of law enforcement, one critical difficulty is that there are numerous discrepancies between the ‘law on the books’ and the ‘law in action’.

Cannabis law enforcement under the current regime is patchy and very much a postcode lottery, something which shouldn’t really be news. So in trying to find ways forward it’s helpful to define the options clearly. This should be easy, but of course it’s not:

In this chapter, we follow Pacula et al. (2005) by using the term ‘depenalization’ to refer to any change of cannabis use control provisions in the letter or practice of the law that reduces the severity of the penalties – whether criminal or civil – imposed on the offender. The label of ‘depenalization’ therefore could include reforms that retain the criminal status of cannabis possession as an offense, yet remove or shorten the periods of incarceration, or reduce fine amounts, as possible sanctions. The term ‘decriminalization’, then, will be used only to refer to reforms which change the status of cannabis use from a criminal to a non-criminal (e.g. a civil) offense. Thus, reform measures of ‘decriminalization’ can be viewed as usually a sub-category of ‘depenalization’, although it can be that the civil penalties are more onerous than the criminal. Since ‘decriminalization’ in turn has often been misunderstood, the term ‘prohibition with civil penalties’ has been seen as preferable to ‘decriminalization’. The removal of all punitive sanctions from cannabis use is often described as ‘legalization’. However, alcohol Prohibition in the US never included criminalization of possession or use of alcohol, and it is not usually thought of as a “legalization” regime. Furthermore, it is likely that even if cannabis sale were legalized it would still be governed by different tools of regulatory law (e.g. public health, commercial or workplace laws).

All clear? Good. No it’s not clear is it? To be honest, what this chapter is discussing in plain English is how the law can be bent  so as to become less harsh. It’s all about finding ways around the failed policies, putting sticking plasters over gaping wounds. But of course, this is what has happened, it’s how the Dutch “coffeeshop” system works and it’s what’s lead to decriminalisation in Portugal and to an extent in Germany and The Czech Republic. The range of fudge options is examined in western countries around the world and it seems that nearly everywhere – with the exception of hard line Nordic countries, the law is bent to some extent or another, even in the USA. The real problem with this approach of reducing penalties for possession or use is supply, every small amount of cannabis the law turns a blind eye to originally came, via a dealer, from a larger amount

In cannabis control reform regimes where cannabis use is depenalized or even permitted on a de facto or de jure basis, as in the reform systems in the countries outlined above, the supply and availability of cannabis for the purpose of personal possession and use inevitably becomes a key practical matter. This is an especially challenging issue, since most standing drug control laws in these reform systems strictly prohibit and provide for heavy punishment for any cannabis supply activities (and in some instances have been strengthened further in exchange for more liberal control approaches to dealing with possession or use), and thus by default may expose most users to considerable criminal enforcement and consequences which the alternative use control measures are aiming to reduce or avoid.

The law can only be bent so far, eventually we hit the practical problem of supply. If you are to allow even small amounts of low level use, in practice you also have to accept some level of supply, it’s a rock and a hard place situation.

The report than looks at the impact of this range of law bending fudges (it doesn’t use that term incidentally) in various jurisdictions and, whilst it goes to some lengths to acknowledges the problems with data collection and interpenetration, finds little if any evidence that bending the law in these ways increases cannabis use.

Impacts On Prevalence Of Use
There does not appear to have been any large increases in cannabis use in countries that have maintained the de jure illegality of cannabis but implemented reforms which, either at a national or subnational level, have reduced the penalties to civil or administrative sanctions.

and

Regarding impacts of reforms on prevalence of cannabis use, it is also apparent from a number of the studies that, at least as long as the illegality of cannabis is maintained, the laws and sanctions which apply seem to have, at most, a relatively modest impact on rates of cannabis use.

A finding supported by several other studies.

So having looked at the options for bending the law to reduce the problems caused by cannabis prohibition, what about the real options, for cannabis control regimes under a new international regime? Firstly, the changes needed in the treaties are examined along with the option of totally trashing the treaties. The report concludes sadly

None of these three methods of removing cannabis from the 1961 Convention seems likely to succeed in the foreseeable future, although it would be a interesting first step to try to delete cannabis from Schedule IV of the Convention. Accordingly, they will not be further considered here.

Which is probably realistic, so what about withdrawing from the conventions? Of course the UK could do go its own way:

Denunciation and reaccession with a reservation is thus a viable path for a state which wished to remove cannabis from its adherence to the 1961 Convention, though it would certainly draw adverse comment. However, under present circumstances there might well be objection by one-third or more of the parties. In general in international law, objections to a reservation simply mean that there is no international agreement between the reserving state and the objecting state for the matters covered by the reservation, unless the objecting state is “specifically denying
the reserving party’s status as a party”. This would presumably pose no problem for a state reserving cannabis out of its obligations under the treaty.

If only a politician would have the guts to do such a thing! It’s the “nuclear option” and no-one really knows what would happen if a state tried to do this. Perhaps equally daring would be to use

“Error” and “fundamental change in circumstances” as grounds for withdrawing from a treaty or suspending its operation.

And the reason for this is really simple

In 1961 [when the Single convention was agreed], cannabis use was largely confined to some enclaves of entrenched traditional use in particular societies, and otherwise to small and marginalized fractions of the population. Almost a half-century later, the situation is quite transformed: in dozens of societies, cannabis use is widespread in youth populations, and is widely regarded as a normalized part of growing up

The world has, indeed, changed. Various other options are presented, but one in particular may now actually happen. In November California votes on “Proposition 19″ to legalise cannabis. If this happens

A method of nullifying an obligation in international law guaranteed to raise considerable controversy would be for a state simply to pass legislation conflicting with the 1961 and 1988 Conventions: for instance, to set up a domestic control regime which legalizes production and sale of cannabis for non-medical use.

There can be little doubt that if the US decides to change its law international conventions can go hang – so the events in California come November could have far reaching implications. However, as of now the situation is summed up

With any of the paths forward outlined above, the basic drawback is that there will be vociferous opposition from a number of quarters – from the INCB, from the United States, and from a number of other countries. The opposition will becouched in terms of the old idealized rhetoric about the need for solidarity among humankind to defeat a common scourge. In practical terms, no country up till now has been willing to weather this storm and actually to denounce any of the conventions.

So given this impasse, what can be done?

The health harms from cannabis are clearly sufficient to justify substantial regulation on its marketing and availability. And it is important that the risks of health harms from cannabis use are communicated to users. On the other hand, public policy should take into account the relative risks in comparison to other common behaviours that carry some risk. In this comparative context the risks are on the low side.

But in all honesty nothing much beyond the bending of rules can be hoped for without significant change at the international level, although this probably has to come about through change at the national or even local level, almost a catch22 situation. The report concludes with

Fifty years after the adoption of an unequivocal international prohibition on cannabis in the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, we face a very different world. The set of international rules and norms which were adopted then have not proven effective in the modern world and they have adverse consequences for those who get caught up in their provisions. Effectively the conventions restrict the ability of signatory countries to adopt cannabis policies and laws which are driven by evidence. Further, in doing so they also restrict the accumulation of evidence to inform the development of new systems of control which may be more appropriate to the modern world. There is a clear need for change, and yet the international drug control system seems increasingly paralyzed and immobile. There is no question that moving forward will be difficult. But it is not impossible. In this report, our aim has been to draw on the available evidence to offer some possible paths forward.

Maybe. With luck California will vote yes to prop 19, it needs something to make the feathers fly.

As the Home Office states on its consultation website – where everyone is invited to make their comments, for what it’s worth. Please do add your comments and treat the whole sham exercise with the respect it deserves.

Ministers have agreed the new strategic vision and broad themes for the Drug Strategy which will set the framework for the future delivery of drugs policy.

So they’ve decided what they intend to do and are now asking for comments. If this all seems a little pointless, well yes it is, it’s clearly no more than a PR exercise of the sort many of us hoped had died with the last government, but seemingly is still with us.  So what can we expect from this all new policy where nothing has changed?

The overall focus and scope of the strategy will be all illegal drugs. However, for those activities where a joint drugs and alcohol approach is appropriate, this is recognised, particularly in the areas of prevention, treatment and recovery. The strategy will take a broad approach to preventing and reducing substance misuse of whatever type.

This statement shows a certain degree of confused thinking right from the start. The term “illegal drugs” is not only pedantically incorrect – they are “prohibited” of course, not “illegal”, but at least they don’t use the totally incorrect term “controlled”. More importantly the term “illegal drugs” covers a huge range of substances each as different as chalk and cheese, yet they are discussed as if they are a single substance.

What is really wrong with this statement is that it continues the false idea that alcohol isn’t really a drug, it promotes the idea that a range of policies is correct for alcohol and a totally different – often totally opposite – range of policies are correct for everything else and just occasionally there might be a few overlaps where the same approach can be applied to “both”. We’re not off to a good start.

Worse, no mention is made here of problem drug use connected with prescribed medication, although it is touched on, briefly, much later.

So what do they have in mind for the new policy? The questionnaire has four main sections, the first being the “vision” thing, which doesn’t seem to see medical drugs at all:

Section 1: Vision for the New Drug Strategy

The Home Office will lead the new Drug Strategy to prevent drug taking, disrupt drug supply, strengthen enforcement and promote drug treatment with the focus on enabling people to become free of their addictions, including alcohol, to recover fully and contribute to society.

So clearly this is firmly rooted in the tired and failed mantra of a war on drugs – drug “control” through “prevention” (a euphemism for criminalisation), supply side reduction and general enforcement. This from a government which is constantly telling us we have a public finance crisis and everything provided by the public sector is facing cuts of 25% or more – including the police, yet there seems to have been no willingness to examine the cost effectiveness of the enforcement approach and – it seems – a strong desire to throw even more money at it. Something doesn’t add up.

Also of interest is the desire to “promote drug treatment with the focus on enabling people to become free of their addictions, including alcohol, to recover fully and contribute to society”. We have heard already of plans to force problem drug users into treatment by withholding benefit payments, it would seem that at the root of the thinking is the prohibitionist philosophy that “recovery” means “abstinence”, all that’s needed to make people recover is to get them to quit all drug (“illegal” drug and alcohol) use. This is naive logic even more faith based than we’ve endured over the past 13 years.

Worse, it makes this statement:

A more holistic approach with drugs issues being assessed and tackled alongside other issues such as alcohol abuse, child protection, mental health, employment and housing.

“Alongside other issues such as alcohol abuse” – just to confirm the idea that alcohol isn’t a drug of course. Is all use abuse? Reading this sometimes it seems so, but surely not?

On the basic issue of forcing people into abstinence based rehab, as Andrew M Brown wrote in the Telegraph on Monday 23rd August “Cameron’s radical drug policy is all very well, but addicts need a reason to get better”

The thing is, it’s easy to sound impressively uncompromising when you talk about addiction in the abstract. But addiction is an unusual medical problem in the sense that in many cases the patient doesn’t want to get better. Kindness and love very often are not enough to “cure” an addict, so it’s hard to see how punishment is likely to fare any better. Addicts may not have a disease – that’s a matter for debate – but they are certainly sick.

He goes on to  say that forcing people into rehab will simply lower the already low success rate and add to the “revolving door” routine of failed clients; of course he is right. Unless the government is planning to spend a huge amount more on residential rehab of dubious effectiveness (in which case which other aspect of drugs policy gets cut?) this whole approach is going nowhere. The idea that you can force people into good health is just plain daft.

The key word is “enabling”, that doesn’t – or shouldn’t – mean “forcing”. Of course it is reasonable that treatment should be available to anyone who really wants it and all too often it hasn’t been, but as Andrew Brown says the only people who stand a chance of success in quitting drugs are those who are deeply motivated to do so. Just providing that level of access to treatment will cost a huge amount of money though, all of it extra money, it simply isn’t going to happen.

“recovery” is a word bandied around a lot in this document, just what does this word really mean? Well, it’s not actually defined anywhere in the Home Office consultation beyond the above, but the policy seems to be based on it. Basing a policy on an ill-defined term is risky to put it mildly and means this whole exercise is little more than tough talking rhetoric.

Of course, the vast, vast majority of drug users – be it illegal drugs or alcohol the-not-really-a-drug – are not problematic users and do not have an addiction. So should the policy apply to all drugs or only those which cause the biggest problems? Amazingly this is actually a question asked in the consultation, although it comes not in the basic “vision” section but in the next part and it’s not even the first question asked there.

Section 2: Prevent drug use – Department for Education lead:

Acting early, particularly with young people, can help stop drug and alcohol problems from developing.

Can it? Well maybe although how you act early with old people isn’t clear.

The reasons that people come to misuse drugs or alcohol are complex, influenced by personal, community and societal factors. And while we know that adolescence is typically the point at which misuse starts, prevention strategies need to consider the full range of these factors

It is reasonable – desirable of course – to have a policy to keep kids away from drugs, that goes without saying, but to assume that keeping “young people” away from drugs will prevent addiction problems later in life is a bit of an assumption and seems based on the “progression” idea of starting with cannabis and escalating to heroin.

What do they mean by “young people”? Again the term isn’t defined, does it mean children, or teens or late teens or early 20′s? Is there a point where a policy designed for children stops and a policy designed for adults begins? This, of course, isn’t discussed.

What do they mean by “misuse”? As they are talking about “drugs and alcohol” here they presumably accept that not all use is misuse. So do they accept people can “use” drugs? If so, is the policy supposed to prevent “use” or just “misuse” in young adults?

Again it’s all so shallow, way too shallow for such a complex issue. As if to acknowledge this we get a real stinker of a question here:

Question B4: Which drugs (including alcohol) should prevention programmes focus on?

* Those that cause the most harm
* Those that are most widely used
* All drugs

This is one of those questions which is easy to ask but produces a real nightmare for the prohibitionist mind, because if the answer is the first or second option efforts need to be focused on alcohol. If the answer is “all drugs” then you have to give the same message to (apparently) two entirely different substances – alcohol and “drugs” and waste a lot of time effort and money trying to prevent something that isn’t going to be a problem.

This should have been the first question in the “vision” section if it is to mean anything, it needs to be a question relating to the whole application of the policy

Section 3: “Joint Home Office and Ministry of Justice lead”

As part of the full assessment on sentencing policy, we will ensure that sentencing for drug use helps offenders come off drugs

Here we go again, using the criminal justice system to enforce a healthy lifestyle. This section is all about how to use enforcement to “control” drugs – it seems to ignore all the experience of the past 40-odd years by basing the plans on the assumption that drugs can be controlled through enforcement, there is no evidence that this is the case of course and much to suggest it isn’t

Interestingly though the first question asked in this section is

Question C1: When does drug use become problematic?

Why is that question asked here? Again, this should have been a question asked early on in the “vision” section. It should also be followed by a question asking whether non-problematic drug use should be the focus of enforcement activities at least in the same way or to the same extent as problematic use, but it isn’t. Why it’s asked here is unclear.

Section 4:  “Rebalance treatment to support drug free outcomes – Department of Health lead” – This is all about enforcing abstinence through the health service, quite scary stuff potentially.

We recognise that drug addiction is a complex disorder that has serious health costs and causes serious harm to the community. Whilst reducing harm is an important component of treatment, promoting and supporting recovery and a drug free lifestyle is the ultimate aim.

Is addiction in and of itself the cause of such problems? This is pure rhetoric; addiction as such doesn’t automatically lead to serious health issues or harm to the community. Addiction to nicotine, although severe for example doesn’t lead to harm for the community and the health effects of nicotine addiction are caused almost entirely by the method the addiction is serviced – ie smoking. Much the same point can be made for heroin and there are plenty of examples of people with a long term medical addiction to heroin living long lives and causing no problems whatsoever. Many of the social and health harms caused by addiction to prohibited heroin are caused by prohibition; there are many issues here, it isn’t as simple and as clear cut as this implies but no discussion of this is allowed.

The phrasing of this is interesting as well: “promoting and supporting recovery and a drug free lifestyle”  would seem to accept that “recovery” and “a drug free lifestyle” are not necessarily the same thing?

Question D3: Are there situations in which drug and alcohol services might be more usefully brought together or are there situations where it is more useful for them to be operated separately?

Again, they really don’t seem to know what to do about this totally false “drug and alcohol” distinction, which only exists because of the legal distinction at the heart of the policy. The only “advantage” in treating “drugs and alcohol” as separate issues would seem be in order to support the drugs policy and to re-enforce this false distinction.

Question D4: Should there be a greater focus on treating people who use substances other than heroin or crack cocaine, such as powder cocaine and so called legal highs?

This question is strange, why are “legal highs” mentioned like this? This is supposed to be a Dept of Health lead section, surely the only issue here should be what to do with people who have a problem with a particular drug?

At least they finally get around to mentioning the issue of other “legal” (un-prohibited) drugs other than alcohol

Question D5: Should treating addiction to legal substances, such as prescribed and over-the-counter medicines, be a higher priority?

That is the only mention of medical drugs, which is really quite shocking for a drugs policy, but that’s what you get when you base your thinking on rhetoric.

Section 5: Support recovery to break cycle of drug addiction – Department for Work and Pensions lead: Another section dedicated to forcing people into a healthy lifestyle.

The coalition government believes in an approach to tackling drug and alcohol dependency that is firmly rooted in the concept of recovery and reintegration, as a process through which an individual is enabled to overcome the symptoms and causes of their dependency, and become an active and contributing member of society.

This is great, apart from the apparent lack of understanding the the person needs to want this outcome as has been mentioned, it really can’t be forced onto people who don’t want it. If we are talking about providing help to people who really want to lead a drug free lifestyle (or at least a life free of a certain drug) then yes, but we’re not really, are we?

This of course comes from a coalition government headed by David Cameron who once said

“Politicians attempt to appeal to the lowest common denominator by posturing with tough policies and calling for crackdown after crackdown. Drugs policy has been failing for decades.”

and

it would be “disappointing” if radical options on the law on cannabis were not looked at.

and Nick Clegg who heads the Libdems, a party which once upon a time (before they got elected) had a radical, sensible drugs policy which seemed to call for the eventual legalisation of cannabis and which was a party proud to issue a document entitled Realism, Responsibility: Proposals for the Reform of Drugs Law (a document which was quietly taken down from the Libdem website a while back, but is still available at Transform). All this proves that politicians aren’t to be trusted if you can see their lips move, but we knew that already.

The final comment to all this is that the one drug not addressed in this “consultation” scam is cannabis, the most widely used and popular of the prohibited drugs of course. Perhaps they hope that if they don’t say anything about it, cannabis will just go away? What do you intend to do about non-problematic cannabis use by adults Mr Cameron, and why?

The British Lung Foundation recommends a public health education campaign aimed at young people to ensure that they are fully aware of the increased risk of pulmonary infections and respiratory cancers associated with cannabis smoking.

Worse

The increased potency of the cannabis smoked today compared to the cannabis smoked twenty-thirty years ago suggests that earlier studies may underestimate the effects of cannabis smoking.

And that

It has been calculated that smoking 3-4 cannabis cigarettes a day is associated with the same evidence of acute and chronic bronchitis and the same degree of damage to the bronchial mucosa as 20 or more tobacco cigarettes a day

Interestingly the reference given to that link is to one Prof Ashton – one of the “usual suspect” in the cannabis debate. If you follow the reference given in “A smoking gun”it takes you to Prof Ashton’s paper you will see she writes:

It has been estimated that smoking a cannabis cigarette results in approximately a five-fold greater increase in carboxyhaemoglobin concentration, a three-fold greater amount of tar inhaled and retention in the respiratory tract of one-third more tar than smoking a tobacco cigarette

And so you can follow other references which quote other studies which claim to have estimated all sorts of things about the cancer causing nature of cannabis – all made worse of course by the increase in THC content in recent years (skunk…)

The average cannabis cigarette smoked in the 1960s contained about 10mg of tetrahydrocanabinol (THC),  …  compared to 150mg of THC today.

The claim being of course that THC was a cancer causing substance. Of course, this rubbish got a lot of non-critical publicity at the time, dire warnings to cannabis users and worried parents make good news stories apparently. The BBC ran a story headed ‘My lungs are damaged beyond repair’ in 2007 (here) which claimed

Dr Kon said he had several other young patients who smoke cannabis and have lung diseases normally seen only in older tobacco smokers.

So the idea that smoking cannabis causes cancer is a well established fact if you believe the British media – and that’s without mentioning the Daily Mail! The problem with this “well established fact” is, well, it isn’t. Actually it’s not only not a well established fact, it’s actually not true – with one big exception which is utterly avoidable.

A paper published recently entitled “Cannabis and tobacco smoke are not equally carcinogenic” by Robert Melamede of the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs, USA. The abstract is pithy and to the point:

More people are using the cannabis plant as modern basic and clinical science reaffirms and extends its medicinal uses. Concomitantly, concern and opposition to smoked medicine has occurred, in part due to the known carcinogenic consequences of smoking tobacco. Are these reactions justified? While chemically very similar, there are fundamental differences in the pharmacological properties between cannabis and tobacco smoke. Cannabis smoke contains cannabinoids whereas tobacco smoke contains nicotine. Available scientific data, that examines the carcinogenic properties of inhaling smoke and its biological consequences, suggests reasons why tobacco smoke, but not cannabis smoke, may result in lung cancer.

it notes

Tobacco has dramatic negative consequences for those who smoke it. In addition to its high addiction potential, tobacco is causally associated with over 400,000 deaths yearly in the United States, and has a significant negative effect on health in general. More specifically, over 140,000 lung-related deaths in 2001 were attributed to tobacco smoke. Comparable consequences would naturally be expected from cannabis smoking since the burning of plant material in the form of cigarettes generates a large variety of compounds that possess numerous biological activities.

While cannabis smoke has been implicated in respiratory dysfunction, including the conversion of respiratory cells to what appears to be a pre-cancerous state, it has not been causally linked with tobacco related cancers  such as lung, colon or rectal cancers. Recently, Hashibe et al  carried out an epidemiological analysis of marijuana smoking and cancer. A connection between marijuana smoking and lung or colorectal cancer was not observed. These conclusions are reinforced by the recent work of Tashkin and coworkers who were unable to demonstrate a cannabis smoke and lung cancer link, despite clearly demonstrating cannabis smoke-induced cellular damage.

This is quite clearly the “wrong” result for the prohibition lobby, yet another wrong result! There are many aspects to this of course, smoking anything involves breathing in irritants and goo which deposits in the lungs, but along with the apparent ability of THC to actually kill cancers it seems tobacco is actually a cause of the disease in its own right

The need to better understand the biological consequences of tobacco compared to cannabis smoke has been underscored by recent studies that demonstrate a unique role for nicotine in the pathogenesis of lung cancer

So far from cannabis smoking being four times worse than tobacco, the opposite is true – only not by just a factor of four!

In conclusion, while both tobacco and cannabis smoke have similar properties chemically, their pharmacological activities differ greatly. Components of cannabis smoke minimize some carcinogenic pathways whereas tobacco smoke enhances some.

So although smoking cannabis may possibly lead so serious lung damage over the long term due to the irritant nature of the smoke and other effects

… current knowledge does not suggest that cannabis smoke will have a carcinogenic potential comparable to that resulting from exposure to tobacco smoke.

The paper end with this potent thought:

It should be noted that with the development of vaporizers, that use the respiratory route for the delivery of carcinogen-free cannabis vapors, the carcinogenic potential of smoked cannabis has been largely eliminated.

So the cancer threat so heavily promoted by the prohibition supporting press is just hype then?

Well, yes but no. There is a huge, juicy fly in the ointment as far as UK tokers are concerned. It’s an issue this site bangs on about time and time again because it is so, so important. British cannabis users smoke tobacco filled joints. There really shouldn’t be any debate over the need for a safer use campaign aimed at cannabis users now. Unlike the hype pushed by the British Lung Foundation in 2002, this and other research has had precisely zero coverage in the media, but that’s to be expected.  However the powers that be know the real situation even if the public are treated like mushrooms (kept in the dark and fed bulls**t). They know that tobacco is the biggest health risk faced by cannabis users, it’s time they did something about it.

We need Tokepure - or something like it urgently.

Take this report from American TV channel “NEWS9 Oklahoma City”

It’s not the only such report either, the for example Hindustan Times reported

The latest ‘drugs’ that keep kids on a high are digital. MP3s and Wired reports are keeping the young generation on a high, called “i-dosing.” In fact, just by putting on headphones and listening to music or rather “a droning noise,” it is said that the user can experience effects similar to those of cocaine, marijuana, peyote and opium.

This report concerns the officials that i-dosing may act as a gateway drug to actual drugs. The most agitating issue is how can one know if the user is simply i-dosing or just listening to a cool track.

All this has come about because a company has been set up to sell these downloads as a legal way to experience prohibited drugs. The company is called “I-doser” and its website is quite blatant about what the product is claimed to do and just what the sub-culture it’s aimed at is. The site not only sells the digital drugs, but also drug use paraphernalia and “legal high” alternatives to the real thing, it’s aimed straight at the stupid druggie market, which of course can only happen because of the huge demand and interest that exists in this sort of thing:

Yes, you too can become an I-doser dealer. No wonder the drug warriors are panicking! Actually, this is beginning to look just a little bit like a con, and that’s certainly what the UK’s Telegraph’s Tom Chivers thought of it:

There have been some hilarious reports going around on the internet about a new drug scare in American schools, and – because we lack any form of originality in our mass hysteria on this side of the pond – I’d bet the Northern Rock bailout to a euro that we’ll soon see it over here. It’s called i-dosing, the “digital drug”.

The “new craze” of digital drugs is seen as a threat to teens because it might introduce them to the idea of getting high – as if they needed something to put the idea into their heads – and thus to taking real drugs. Worse, all you need to do this is the sort of technology every teenager has these days, things like  ipods, computers, internet connections or mobile phones. Of course, along with hoodies such technology scares older people anyway, so there is lots of scope for a shock horror news story here.

So first, what actually are “digital drugs” and more importantly do they work?

Tom Chivers gets it wrong in his blog when he claims

The idea, as I understand it, is the rather timeless one of sensory deprivation.

It’s not anything of the sort, indeed there is a very interesting psychology behind it. The technology isn’t new, it’s been around for a long time, actually having been discovered in 1839 by Heinrich Wilhelm Dove according to wikipedia. Nothing was done with the discovery for a long time however until it became used as a meditation aid. One of the most established concerns offering the treatment is The Monroe Institute (TMI) which offers courses which promise:

Your first highly experiential trek, the The Gateway Voyage, takes you on an incredible six-day intensive adventure with like-minded explorers. Participate in the evolution of human consciousness  and realize your own true destiny!

Which sounds a bit like a drug experience to be honest – a “trek” is, after all, a sort of trip.

What it actually consists of is known as “Binaural sound”  – “binaural” means “two sounds”, the sounds consists of a of tones. Tones are pure musical notes consisting of a single frequency with no harmonic content, on an oscilloscope they look like this:

The important thing about sine waves (which is what this type of tone is called) is that it is impossible to tell where it’s coming from if you hear it because the sound contains no clues as to it’s point of origin and will seem to fill the room. It’s the sort of sound a tuning fork makes if you’re familiar with that.

What the Binaural recordings do is to present two different tones, one to each ear. The tones sent to each ear are close, but not quite the the same frequency and they vary, which means they go in and out of phase at various rates. This trace shows the left ear signal at the top, the right at the bottom.

Click for a bigger image.

These tones merge in and out of a background sea of white noise – hiss – gradually changing as they do so. So what you do is to put headphones on, go somewhere you won’t be disturbed and just listen to the recording at a comfortable sound level.The changing sounds make the brain think things are happening and it does things as a result. This is tricking the brain into instinctive reactions which it does in response to outside events. Because in the real world these sound wave patterns can only exist given certain environmental conditions you will experience things in the sound that aren’t actually happening.

Different patterns of tone variations are claimed to produce effects that mimic different drugs or as TMI would have it, allow you to Participate in the evolution of human consciousness and realize your own true destiny!

The Wikipedia article linked to above has an interesting description of how all this works and the effects it has on the brain.

Binaural beats may influence functions of the brain besides those related to hearing. This phenomenon is called frequency following response. The concept is that if one receives a stimulus with a frequency in the range of brain waves, the predominant brain wave frequency is said to be likely to move towards the frequency of the stimulus (a process called entrainment).  In addition, binaural beats have been credibly documented to relate to both spatial perception & stereo auditory recognition, and, according to the frequency following response, activation of various sites in the brain.

This is sounding even more like drug-type effects, after all what drugs do is to change the flow of brain messenger chemicals which affect perception. By influencing the brains perception then it’s reasonable to assume the natural balance of these messenger chemicals will be altered, so we’ve achieved a drug induced state without actually taking any drugs. A whole can of worms has opened up here, if it’s possible to achieve a form of consciousness changing through this method, is it indeed akin to taking a drug? If so, is it a bad thing? The ethos of abstinence based drugs policies would seem to dictate it is of course, intoxication is, in and of itself, supposed to be “bad”. In which case perhaps they now need to start banning such things as i-pods in case teens are sitting there listening to binaural tones instead of commercial pop pap.

The big question is “does it work”? Well, the internet being the internet of course these virtual drug “doses” are very easy to find so in the interests of investigative reporting this blog writer sat down, cat on lap, to self administer a low dose of MP3 digital cannabis. The result was interesting indeed and – in my experience – it certainly sort of worked. The resulting effect I would class as more than a slight level of “stonedness” and, whilst it’s been a few years since I last tried the real thing, it did remind me of it in many ways. My experience is that this does indeed work and in the same way as instant coffee is a bit like the freshly ground stuff, the claims are true.

It’s only fair to balance that report with the experience of someone else who mailed me to report

I did this stuff 15 years ago – I did not have any significant experience

So there’s only one way to find out really, to see if you can get digitally stoned right click this link and download yourself 60Mb of MP3 binaural sound, plug yourself in and listen to the whole thing without interruption and decide for yourself and do let us know what happens by positing a comment below. It is fair to warn that it’s not a good idea to drive after listening to this download.

Please go to the Your Freedom website and have a look:

In the Restoring civil liberties section  it’s interesting, not to say pleasing, to see that one of the most popular ideas is cannabis law reform. See the cannabis/ drug law reform ideas here and the most commented ideas here and add your own ratings and comments.

In the Repealing unnecessary laws section there are also some drug law reform ideas – see them here, (and add comments and ratings) however the “Cutting business and third sector regulations” is, perhaps understandably, pretty devoid of any suggestions.

Next have a look at Spending Challenge

It looks very much like the freedom site but is different and totally separate from it. A search for “drugs” throws up some ideas that need votes and comments, and there’s this one by someone called “NR23Derek” whoever he is: “Subject all policies to a full cost benefit analysis”

You have to register first – separately for both sites – but then you can vote for and comment on the various ideas. The more comments and votes these ideas get the more they are going to be embarrassed when they ignore them.

OK, advert over. The sites are very badly designed though, the “highest rated” listings don’t take into account the number of votes, so an idea with one 5 star vote is listed higher than one which has 1000 averaging 4.9, so it’s not actually telling us which are the most popular ideas really, so look though the site and find all the ideas you like and boost them by rating and comments.

The other big development this week was to finally see the full Freedom of Information release of the previous government’s plans for reform of the drugs classification system under the Misuse of Drugs Act. This blog has been covering the Freedom of Information request made by the Drug Equality Alliance (see here and here) so we won’t recover old ground, but the newly released information shines a light onto the thinking in the Home Office at a time when the prohibition policy was under serious attack.

You can see the fully released document on the DEA site here

So we now know that the review was ordered by Charles Clarke because of the situation with cannabis which, having been downgraded to the less serious  class C because it was a less dangerous drug than others in class B had confused people who now assumed the the government had accepted it was a less dangerous drug. Silly people.

1.2 Historically, there has been very little movement of drugs between the three classes since the Misuse of Drugs Act was introduced in 1971. However, the classification system, and the way in which it is operated, lacks clarity, and has led to prolonged disagreements over whether certain drugs have been classified correctly according to their relative harms. This has been particularly true in the case of cannabis, the reclassification of which from a Class B to a Class C drug in January 2004 resulted in a degree of public confusion as to the Government’s view of its harmfulness and illegality.

Well, not really. What caused the confusion was the government didn’t carry out the drug law reform everyone was expecting them to do. As usual it’s everyone else who was at fault for being out of step with the politicians.

As if to demonstrate the “other worldliness” of political perception, Clarke writes the almost delusional claim:

1.5 The Government’s Drug Strategy is beginning to have a real impact in tackling drug misuse; the associated harms are now beginning to reduce.

This was four years ago remember, the harms due to prohibited drug use have not really reduced much if at all over the past decade, but perhaps if you say it often enough people will believe it? Anyway, the aims of  the review are explained:

2.3 The objective of this consultation is to explore alternative ways for controlled drugs to be classified so that there is a greater understanding of their harmfulness and the reasons for their illegality.

All well and good – if you accept that prohibition equates to “control” of course as politicians seem to.

2.5 …  The drugs in the lower class(es) still present significant risk. However placing drugs in the lower category can be construed as the Government indicating that the drug is not very harmful and not a serious matter if possessed or used. It is important that at the end of the review it is clearly understood that every drug within the classification system presents significant harms and that possessing or supplying those drugs is a serious matter.

Well, yes. We are not daft and when we see millions of people using a substance with little ill effect then we do tend to reach the conclusion that it isn’t all that dangerous. This is why the cannabis and mental illness campaign was as effective as it undoubtedly was; it challenged the perception of cannabis the harmless herb in a way classification as a class B drug never did. The fact that “reefer madness V2″ did this with the help of rabid misreporting by the media and on the back of some dodgy science is beside the point.

However when cannabis was reduced to class C against the background of widespread social acceptance – originally in order to make it a “Non arrestable offence” – it is reasonable to assume people would view it as a less serious matter.

2.7 This consultation concerns the system for classifying drugs under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, and the possible case for change. The scope does not extend to the specific classification of individual drugs, nor to the issue of legalisation. The Government has consistently made clear that all drugs are harmful and that those controlled under the Misuse of Drugs Act will continue to remain illegal.

So whatever the findings, the government was unwilling to consider real law reform. At least they were being consistent. The proposals outlined for reform were:

1. A Single Classification

This is what the prohibition camp really wanted and what they are still pushing for, it’s what hard line Sweden has been using for some years now.

2. Integrating the Classification and Scheduling systems into a unified two-tier structure and 3. Move from the current three-tier to a two-tier system.

The distinction between options 2 and 3 isn’t really clear, but they seem to be a sort of half-way house where the distinction between class B and C is scrapped. In effect this has already happened due to the changes introduced with the cannabis debacle when the penalties for dealing class C drugs were brought into line with those for class B, only a minor difference in the penalties for possession remains between classes B and C.

4. Group Classification

By far the most interesting if strange proposal, this would have seen drugs grouped together by their properties:

Class I – Opiates include heroin
Class II – Cocaine and Crack
Class III – Hallucinogens – includes, LSD, magic mushrooms
Class IV – Amphetamines including methylamphetamine
Class V – Barbiturates
Class VI – Cannabis.
Class VII – Benzodiazepines including valium
Class VIII – Steroids.

Of course, the amusing thing about this grouping idea is that cannabis is there in a group all of it’s own.

5. Simple Harm Measurement System

If we make the assumption that prohibition is a form of effective control (which it isn’t) then it makes sense to base the penalties on a measure of harm and this is what Prof Nutt was working on and which ultimately led to his sacking as head of the ACMD. It should be simple really – the more harmful the drug, the more illegal it is, if only life were that simple! The big problem with this approach is that the regime a drug exists under greatly affects its potential to cause harm, so any harm caused by a drug is greatly increased by being prohibited, this factor was not taken into consideration by Prof Nutt’s scale of harm ranking, which still managed to put cannabis lower than alcohol.  So the other big problem Clarke was forced to address was what to do about the legal drugs – especially alcohol and tobacco which are not included in the Misuse of Drugs Act and clearly should be.

The creation of a system to assess the harmfulness of drugs on a more structured and transparent basis, as presented earlier in this paper could be extended to cover alcohol and tobacco but for comparative and messaging rather than control purposes.

But of course a system that openly penalises people for use of a drug which is rated lower than one which is legal would never stand critical analysis. Clarke put it this way:

6.11 This approach would allow for a more logically consistent approach to substance misuse. However most people would not want to see the drugs classification system as a mechanism for regulating legal substances such as alcohol and tobacco. If applied to legal as well as illegal substances, this would conflict with deeply embedded historical tradition and tolerance of consumption of a number of substances that alter mental functioning

That s truly stomach churning political logic. This “deeply embedded historical tradition” of alcohol and tobacco use is the stated reason for not criminalising the use of these two drugs elsewhere in the document; it is, of course, a load of rubbish. The suspicion remains that alcohol and tobacco weren’t included in the MoD act nor the UN Single Convention (which is the root cause of all this misery) simply because it was drafted by people who used alcohol and tobacco and didn’t consider them to be “drugs”. Cannabis, after all, also has a “deeply embedded historical tradition”, just not one that Mr Clarke and his ilk chose to recognise.

Anyway all this was dropped like a hot potato once Clarke was removed from his post as Home Secretary, it will be interesting to see if the new government dares to take it up again, if they do it will almost certainly open all the cans of worms they really don’t want opening.

As it happens, in real life I spend a lot of my time huddled over hot computer screens editing videos and because of this my help was sought by a local MSer and friend of mine who wanted to make a video for newly diagnosed MSers – nothing to do with cannabis, this was to be aimed at people whose lives had suddenly been changed by the words “you have MS”.

To this end she had got a grant from somewhere to make this video provided she got a load of kids to make it, so off she went with a script and a load of video kit supplied by Norwich’s Forum “Voices” project. Eventually I get a phone call asking if I can help sort it all out as perhaps the inevitable had happened and the complex project has overwhelmed everyone involved. So we were up against a deadline of about two weeks to put it together – and it had to be edited by a kid. So it came to pass that “Shifting MS” was finished with about a day or two to spare and Norwich gained a young person with deep end experience of Final Cut Pro, the edit software. There are a few rough edges, but it’s not bad.

The point of telling this story of course is that the subject of cannabis came up in conversation. Now my friend is not a cannabis user herself but of course she knows several MSers who are. What she knew about cannabis I think was limited to the “fact” that these days it’s all “skunk” and it’s illegal. She didn’t seem to realise just what Sativex actually is and it’s no surprise given the way the press has handled the story. As The Telegraph reported on 20th June

Even if you were to track down the location and break into the computer-controlled greenhouse, the cannabis plants you would find at GW Pharmaceuticals’ top-secret farm would be unlikely to give you the high you were hoping for.

“The chances are you’d end up with a plant that has no psychoactive potential anyway. That’s the ultimate irony,” says Justin Gover, managing director of the Aim-listed biotech business, which is understandably secretive about the whereabouts of its marijuana.

But while GW’s genetically unique cannabis plants might leave you frustratingly sober, it is their non-psychoactive properties that are altogether more interesting.

So “everybody knows” Sativex isn’t this nasty skunk cannabis the press has been warning parents about for so long, it isn’t something you can use to get stoned with, it’s a medicine made from the “good” bits of the cannabis plant, with all the hippy mind warping pleasure potential removed.

Perhaps it’s time to set the record straight as to just what this product is: Time for a short reality check.

Firstly the claim that if you were to  “break into the computer-controlled greenhouse, the cannabis plants you would find … would be unlikely to give you the high you were hoping for” is only half true – almost exactly half true to be precise. The thing that makes Sativex different from “normal” cannabis is that it’s a blend of two strains, one being a Ruderalis that produces a lot of CBD and the other being a Sativa that produces a lot of THC – this one certainly will do the business. By growing the plants in properly controlled conditions they can produce a very precise yield of the two drugs. They then mash the plants up, dissolve the resin in alcohol and mix it together and the result is this new wonder drug.

Firstly, what GW Pharms have done is to demonstrate nicely the fact that cannabis can be grown to order regarding strength. One of the claims made by prohibition supporters over the years was that it was a highly variable plant – it is, but only because of its illegality. A consistent product is actually very easy to produce, as any home growing enthusiast worth his salt will tell you.

Second, if so-called “skunk” is cannabis grown intensively using hydroponics from cuttings under sophisticated lights, then Sativex is made from “skunk” cannabis. The grow methods of your average large scale gangland warehouse grow-op use the exact same same methods, albeit without the “computer control”.  Actually, this may concern some people and with good reason; Sativex is not organically grown natural cannabis, it’s a chemical weed that never sees the light of day. It’s also worth noting that this applies to both types of plants used to make the medicine, the high THC Sativa and the high CBD Ruderalis are both grown in the “skunk” way. This just demonstrates that the method of growing is not the cause of the great “skunk” problems as claimed by the prohibition supporters, you can grow any type of cannabis this way and do it very, very precisely.

Third, Sativex is essentially what is also known as “hash oil” on the street. This is a form of cannabis not too often seen, but it used to be quite popular back in the 70′s. albeit an expensive special treat for stoners. Oil is a concentrated form of hashish, itself a concentrated form of the herbal plant. As described above the plant is mashed up and the oils are dissolved off using solvents. Wikipedia, which is not always to be trusted in every detail, offers this version:

Hash oil is an evaporated solution of tetrahydrocannabinol and various other compounds produced by a solvent extraction of cannabis. Despite the similarity in names, it does not resemble hashish. It can be a very potent drug due to its high THC concentration, which generally varies between 70 – 90 percent

Sativex of course is less potent than this at only(!) 50% THC, but in essence it’s the same thing except that in the case of oil it was generally wiped on a rizla paper and put into a joint, Sativex comes dissolved in alcohol and is sprayed under the tongue. The interesting thing to come out of this is the way Sativex is talked about, the prohibitionist language of potencies isn’t mentioned, instead we hear of doses measured in milligrams. The fact that the medicine is a concentrated version of natural cannabis containing perhaps double the percentage concentration of THC to the normal “skunk” varieties doesn’t even get a mention. This is, of course, because the “potency” approach of prohibition is wrong, what is important is how much THC there is relative to CBD and how much is taken in each dose.

In passing it should be noted that “oldskool” hash like we used to get from North Africa came pretty close to this magical figure of 50/50 THC to CBD according to the government’s research and hash oil made from these plants could have had that sort of ratio.

So in truth Sativex isn’t in anyway new, it’s just a carefully grown blend of specific types of cannabis supplied in a spray bottle that delivers a precise dose.

So are MSers happy? Well, not yet – or at least I have yet to hear of any although I almost certainly will. Cannabis isn’t a cure for MS, but it does help many sufferers. It’s been one of the most shameful aspects of the present policy toward cannabis that people suffering an illness like this have been dragged through the courts simply for using a natural herb to ease their suffering. Now they can get it free on the NHS, in theory, but there’s a snag. Sativex is the product of big pharma and it’s a commercial product – it doesn’t come cheap. It’s estimated according to Reuters

Announcing its launch in Britain on Monday, GW said the National Health Service (NHS) price would be 125 pounds for a 10 millilitre vial — enough to last the average patient just over 11 days.

That compares with about £20 paying over inflated black market prices for street cannabis. Someone is making a big fat profit here. Is this a case of the criminal law being used to allow big business a monopoly over a product that would otherwise be costed in pence per dose? If so, this is pretty shameful.

In the meantime I’m going to re-edit “Shifting MS” now the youth project is over and we’ve had a chance to plough through the tens of gigabytes of interviews, which means we can work from higher quality masters, so “Shifting MS 2 will hit Youtube in the next few weeks. No doubt I’ll be hearing of MSers reaction to their new legal medicine, I’ll report back.

The drug subculture of the 60′s has long been linked  in the minds of the American right with that humiliating defeat in Vietnam and therefore a war on drugs and everything associated with them has had a natural home in Republican philosophy for the past 40 years. So what’s happening?

There is something of a battle taking place in America right now for the heart of the Republican movement and a split unthinkable a few years ago is opening up between the  “traditional values” staunchly religious and the newer “libertarian” wings.

Libertarianism holds that the individual is responsible for his or her self and that the government has no role to play in protecting the individual from himself. It is, perhaps, the logical extension of the free enterprise philosophy, of true, free market freedom. This is of course very compatible with the oft stated intention of Republicans to  want “small government” and to be the promoters of individual freedom. Against this is the “traditional” wing of the party which, although it believes in small government also seems to support big authoritarian government when it comes to drugs, so the potential for an interesting debate is clearly there and it’s beginning to smoulder.

The American right has something the British right wing doesn’t have, a TV channel dedicated to presenting the right wing view of reality, the so-called “news” channel run by the owner of the UK’s Sun newspaper amongst much else, Rupert Murdoch. Fox news is available on (the part-Murdoch owned) Sky TV service and anyone interested in seeing a different take on reality is able to watch it here in the UK, try not to laugh though because Fox news is not a parody, it takes itself very seriously and is very influential. Actually, Fox news isn’t really a news station either, it carries more commentary than news and that commentary has a highly polarised political slant. Fox news is the voice of the American right and it makes no secret of it.

So it is interesting to see one of the main commentators on Fox news coming out in support of drug law reform and calling for the legalisation of drugs. Not just cannabis mind, but all drugs.

John Stossel is “the man who shatters conventional wisdom” according to Fox and he has entered the fray with the libertarian argument virtually alone to very much challenge the views of some of the other commentators and the “conventional wisdom” of the American right. To this end he presented a whole programme dedicated to the issue:  “Time to Stop Fighting the Drug War” – there’s a summary here or you can watch it for the time being here.

British viewers more used to the level of debate we get on the BBC or even ITV will probably be amazed at the shallowness of this presentation, especially the obviously edited “discussion” section, but for Fox news this was quite an event. To be fair it did expose a some of the key issues  to do with the creation of violence and especially the gung-ho way American “SWAT” teams kick peoples doors down and shoot their dogs for tiny amounts of cannabis.

The show is introduced with John Stossel on the streets of New York outside the Fox news studios describing how he often smells marijuana in the city, how 15 million Americans used it last month, how some smoke quite openly and how the police often ignore them, but then went on to describe the SWAT raids. Everyday there are more than 100 of these SWAT raids and he asks “why”?

He introduces the show by agreeing that drugs can cause big problems, but lays out his case that drug prohibition, as with alcohol prohibition – has only served to create violence and the rule of the mob. A straw poll of the small studio audience shows close to 50% support for legalising cannabis, less for other drugs but still quite significant – and this is Fox news remember!

Stossel makes the point that he no longer sees a distinction between hard and soft drugs in that if we either own our bodies and so control what goes into them or we don’t; the basic libertarian argument. He then shows an interview on a couple of fellow commentators shows on Fox who don’t agree and throw stats at him. Harvard economist and fellow libertarian Jeffrey Miron counters these arguments quite succinctly as “grotesque exaggeration of the facts”. End of part 1.

Part 2: The situation in Mexico. The drug war effort is compared to squeezing a balloon and because we displaced it from one place it’s now turned up in another – Mexico. Mary O’Grady and Jeffrey Miron debate the issue and both agree on the cause of the problem, prohibition mixed with high demand. Mary O’Grady of The Wall Street Journal makes the point that decriminalising drugs will only make the problem worse, but she is against legalisation because America is a “welfare state”, an argument that was hard to follow frankly.  Jeffrey Miron points out that driving the market underground has made it violent and that public health campaigns can be effective at reducing use. End of part 2

Part 3 The SWAT raids. The famous shooting the dog raid is shown again. Only a small amount of cannabis was found in this raid which resulted in a $300 fine – and the father was charged with “endangering his child” – although strangely the police weren’t also charged with endangering the child despite breaking into the house all guns blazing,they didn’t apologise either.

This type of police violence has become quite the norm in America apparently, even resulting in a similar raid (complete with dogs getting shot) on the home of Cheye Calvo, a mayor of a small town who was wrongly accused of importing cannabis. This, apparently, is “business as usual” in the USA. End of part 3

Part 4 is the “debate” between Paul Chanbot, a drug war supporting ex-military ex-drug tsar official and LA Narcotics Officer and Neill Franklin from Law Enforcement Against Prohibition LEAP who is an anti drug war former police officer.  This “debate” runs for 5 minutes and 30 seconds, during which time Neill Franklin gets one crack at the whip lasting in total 1 minute, almost all the rest of the time is given over to Paul Chanbot. The “debate” is clearly (and in places quite badly) edited. that’s it for part 4

Part 5 is an “audience grilling” of Neill Franklin, Jeffrey Miron and Paul Chanbot. The “grilling” amounts to one question to each of the guests with no interaction  and then questions from the audience, again which are only answered by one of the guests but a small amount of debate is allowed when Niall Franklin from LEAP counters a frankly unbelievable claim from Paul Chanbot who claimed the American police don’t actually go after small time users. A questioner asks about CIA involvement with the drugs trade which Paul Chanbot finds “offensive”. Is the war on drugs a “job creation” programme does actually fire things up just in time for the end of part 5

Part 6 is left to John Stossel to sum up, which, within the narrow limits of the argument on offer he does quite well including a small vox pop of Richard Nixon declaring “we have turned the corner on drug addiction” back in 1971 or so.

Fox news so often offers us a horror vision of just how bad unregulated TV can be and this show was far from being a jewel in the mud, but this debate being allowed airtime on the station at all is an indication that real change is perhaps not far away.

However, in this country Parliament is sovereign and is free to pass any law it sees fit. If it decides that it is Parliament’s will that rice should be banned in China, it is free to pass such a law; practicalities do not limit Parliament’s law making scope. However, there is a duty on law makers to ensure that laws are applied equally and without bias. There is no scope in UK law for making exceptions to laws based on, for example, cultural acceptance of certain aspects of the issue at the heart of the law.

So it is we have the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 which sets out to control drugs which have the potential to be “misused” – which we can take to mean “used for fun” or other uses politicians don’t approve of including, apparently, therapeutic relief. There is nothing in the act which allows for some drugs to be excluded from the act simply because they are already “misused” by a section of the population (which just happens to include the politicians themselves), yet this is precisely the reason given for not including alcohol and tobacco in the Misuse of Drugs Act and thus treating the users of these drugs differently from the users of other drugs including cannabis.

So it was, perhaps, only a matter of time before someone who was getting a very real benefit from his use of cannabis, who was not causing any problem to anyone else with his cannabis use, should object to having his life torn apart and being dragged through the courts by this selective application of the law. That person is Edwin Stratton, recently convicted of growing cannabis as this blog reported a few weeks ago. This is his story in his own words.

My name is Edwin Stratton and I am challenging the legality of my conviction for the cultivation of cannabis from Snaresbrook Crown Court on 26th May.

I was ‘only’ sentenced to three months in prison, suspended for one year with £500 costs, and prohibited from owning hydroponic equipment for one year. Some people would say this is a ‘good’ result, but it is not the sentence that I am now appealing – it is the fact that successive governments have abused the powers given to them by Parliament under the Misuse of Drugs Act. That law was designed to be fair, proportionate, evolutory, and steered by scientific evidence. Had the law been administered as intended, then people like me ought never to be charged with an offence in the first place.

I was prepared to go to prison to make this point – I was offered a caution on four occasions but refused them all – at no point did I co-operate with my own persecution, accept guilt or any censure of sanction against my behaviour.  Martin Luther King pointed out that it is our duty to disobey authority if it is abusive of our rights, and if laws are unreasonably made that are an affront to equality then to contest such injustice is an expression of the highest respect for the law. So while I am not behind bars, because the law is being administered in an arbitrary fashion, my arrest, trial and sentencing were entirely unjust.

Criminalising amateur, peaceful drug users and exempting tobacco users and drinkers from drug controls is an example of an unacceptable difference in treatment between different cultural groups, every bit as unjust as criminalising racial or sexual differences.  Cannabis can be used responsibly, just like alcohol, and there is no justification for the vast difference in treatment.  As many are aware, including many former members of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, the government’s explanation for the inequality of treatment, the discrimination between different drug users is grounded in ‘reasons’ which are false: ‘historical and cultural precedents’.  Being a user of an ‘incorrect’ cultural choice of drug can cost you your job, house, car, driving license, and even your kids, whereas inviting your boss to a wine-tasting garners respect.

Criminal sanctions in respect of brewing wine or smoking outdoors would rightly be regarded as an assault on civil liberties – yet these are significantly more harmful drugs than cannabis both to the self and society. Hence I don’t accept *any* sanctions applied to responsible adults doing private things to themselves, peacefully. The idea of ‘risk’ to adults exercising an informed choice in cannabis is absurd – just as it would be as applied to the choice of alcohol or tobacco.

By the very same token, ‘straights’ no longer have the right to sentence gays for ‘cultural preferences’, whites no longer have the right to sentence blacks for seeking racial equality, and men no longer to sentence women for trying to gain the vote. By the same token, I demand the right to equal rights and equal protections in regard to my activities with the equally-or-less harmful drug cannabis, as the drinkers who administer the law. I don’t *ask* for it, I demand equality as my right to equality of treatment in a democracy.

Any sentence against any of us for growing or having private cannabis grows constitutes the wholly unacceptable abuse of otherwise entirely innocent people.

During previous court hearings I argued that the government has acted irrationally, unreasonably and unfairly because it misunderstands the law that gives it its powers. The Home Office admits alcohol falls squarely under the Misuse of Drugs Act and is therefore liable to be subject to its controls. I also pointed out that the intention of the Act was to provide proportionate controls relating to the harmfulness of a drug to society, and not exclusively to provide for prohibition: the Misuse of Drugs Act is better than that; it provides for a full spectrum of regulation and control. The notion that it only mandates prohibition is false, and constitutes an error of law. This and two further errors of law were brought up in every hearing, but have not been substantively dealt with.

Thus we still suffer the inequality of treatment. I will not rest until these points are answered satisfactorily. The Court of Appeal is the next stage on the road – I intend to get my conviction quashed as the injustice it is.

This is an interesting legal argument which is quite different from the one usually put forward by drug law reform campaigns including this site which concentrate on highlighting the fact that prohibition  is not in fact a form of control. This is about the application of the law, not the law itself.

Let’s make something very clear before we go any further: UKCIA has a simple message about cannabis; it’s not for kids. Actually that’s a message that applies to all drugs including caffeine, it’s not only cannabis, but it certainly does apply to  mary-jane. As we say in the Risks section

Young people under 18 are best advised not to get stoned – at least not very often – because their brains are still growing and developing. This is good advice not only for cannabis but also for any drug. Getting stoned is an adult thing, don’t give it to young people under 15.

However, it’s no secret that a lot of kids do get stoned, the cannabis trade is totally unregulated of course because of prohibition and there are no controls such as age limits as a result and no dealer will lose his licence for selling to kids. We do have a very real problem with kids and drugs, so in the absence of any protection from the law something needs to be done to influence youngsters in the hope of keeping them away from the drugs trade for as long as possible – there is plenty of scope for cannabis awareness campaigns aimed at kids.

When it comes to teaching very young kids – children – about cannabis, clearly we need a simplified and easy to understand approach which speaks to the kids in a way they can relate to, but it does need to be truthful and factual.

So it was interesting to see a new campaign based in Northampton called ROACH - “Rule out Adolescent Cannabis Harm” which seems to have obtained funding from the Nothamptonshire Community Foundation.

The name “ROACH” is a bit dodgy, hardly something that is likely to appeal to kids (adolescents!?!) but it’s probably as good as any other. However UKCIA hackles were raised right from the start where the aims of the campaign are described:

The education of young people in Northamptonshire aged between 11 and 16 about the long term psychiatric harm that cannabis use can cause.

There are of course a lot of issues regarding cannabis use and young people, but this site seems to concentrate on the fears that cannabis causes mental illness. Now it’s true that this has been a big issue in recent times, but it’s an issue that’s far from clear cut and there’s an obvious danger that if kids are told something awful will happen if they use cannabis and they then find out it doesn’t, all the other issues will be totally ignored.

Reading the description of ROACH, this seems to be the brainchild of Vanessa Turvey

Currently providing NHS mental health support at Princes Marina Hospital, Northampton, she was previously employed for over 10 years in a psychiatric unit of St Andrews Hospital Northampton. She has considerable experience with patients who have developed psychotic behaviour after using cannabis. She also has first hand experience gained when her son was adolescent and two friends suffered psychotic episodes as a result of cannabis use.

Now cannabis and mental health is something we have discussed at great length both in this blog and on the wider UKCIA site. There is no doubt that people with psychotic illness seem to use cannabis and that this use appears to lead to worsening outcomes in some cases, although even that is in doubt. But it’s fair to say that the situation is far more complex than a simple causal relationship. However, that said there’s no doubting the value of a cautious approach and, as we say above, a well founded campaign to encourage kids to stay away from drugs is welcome, so how good is ROACH?

The education programme is based around a Brochure (PDF) for kids which is intended to act as a basis for discussion handed out in a school setting. It contains some graphics which although strange are probably OK, although what relevance some of them have is unclear.

Page 2 is the first page of information, which introduces us to Vanessa Turvey and her son, Fred. Perhaps this isn’t so bad, it creates a personal aspect to the whole thing which young kids might relate to, but of course the risk is the kids might take a dislike to Vanessa when they meet her which, given the programme is so closely identified with her would be totally counter productive. It’s actually very possible that any cannabis using kid would be put off, she makes it quite clear that she takes a stern line with cannabis use

Eventually I spoke to the local policeman who offered me advice and he also spoke to Fred.

Ouch!

The first page of information is Page 4 which contains this gem of information

Cannabis is a natural substance from the cannabis plant.

She then describes in simple terms the action of THC, which isn’t too bad an explanation for  young kids although any 16 year old who’s any good at English might wince a bit at the stilted sentences. But then we get this:

It is said that the amount of THC in cannabis today can be between 5-100 times the amount that was in it in the 1960s.

I don’t think even the Daily Mail has claimed there’s been a 100 – times increase in THC levels since the 60′s. Apart from being a rather meaningless statistic for people who weren’t even born before the mid – 90′s it’s just plain stupid and wrong. Now any education campaign aimed at kids needs to be simplified, but does need to be factual and relevant, this is neither.

It gets worse:

THC causes a psychotic effect only lasting up to 1hr per cigarette. On the average person and as we are all not the same the effects maybe shorter or longer so basically the more you smoke the longer these effects will last.

This clearly hasn’t been proof read, it simply should never have been published with wording like this.

Page 6 lists some of the “myths” about cannabis and it’s confusing to say the least

Myth – Cannabis/ marijuana is harmless.
Fact – Cannabis/ marijuana can cause psychotic problems when smoked as a teenager leading to mental health problems.

Cannabis is not harmless, nothing in the world is. However, the claim that it can cause psychotic problems leading to mental health problems is hardly a fact, although it may be a concern. Why the sudden use of  “Cannabis/ marijuana”, was this a cut and paste job?

Myth – Kids that smoke cannabis/ marijuana move on to harder drugs.
Fact – 80% of kids that smoke cannabis/marijuana do not move on to harder drugs but that does not mean that they will not get psychotic problems.

Again, this is just strange and it’s not clear what she’s trying to say here, it could be trying to saythat the progression theory isn’t true?

Myth – Cannabis/ marijuana is addictive.
Fact – Cannabis/ marijuana is not physically addictive but you become dependant upon it.

Oh dear, again this is muddled and confused – even for someone who understands the issues let alone for kids, but at least we learn cannabis isn’t physically addictive. It is correct of course, but could be put so much clearer.

Myth – There’s a minimal risk that smoking cannabis will go on to lead to psychotic diseases such as cannabis psychosis and schizophrenia.
Fact – On average cannabis smokers have a 41% more chance of getting these disorders.

It’s hard to know where to start with this one, the 41% figure has its origins in a study by Prof Stanley Zammit who looked at the famous Swedish study which claimed to show that

those who had used the drug were 41 per cent likelier to experience an episode of this kind than people who never smoked

The Daily Mail reported this as meaning

Smoking just one cannabis joint raises danger of mental illness by 40%

Which is not true and seems to be what Vanessa quoting as a fact. Again, this simply should not be on a leaflet aimed at educating kids.

Page 8 isn’t too bad. It talks about the way cannabis affects the ability to study and learn – it’s simplified but just about right for the target audience.

Page 10 talks about the effects of cannabis, again not too bad. It describes the good effects and then says about unpleasant effects:

Around 1 in 10 cannabis users experience unpleasant effects including…
• Confusion
• Hallucinations
• Anxiety
• Paranoia (fear, mistrust, suspicion)
• Dependence

Most kids will work out that if one in 10 experience this, 9 out of 10 won’t, so most of them won’t. Not only that but “confusion” and “hallucinations” might not really be considered bad effects, not that you get real hallucinations from cannabis of course. But what’s this last one: Dependency?

Page 12 explains dependency in a reasonable summary of DSM-IV criteria, but then it goes on to explain “addiction”, which we’ve already learned doesn’t apply to cannabis in the “myths” section. Quite why it does this isn’t clear, what’s really needed is some explanation of psychological dependence and how it works.

I sent Vanessa an e-mail outlining these points in some detail back in April, the reply was short but to the point

Thank you for your email,the booklet is now being updated as i do now know that there are some mistakes. I have been receiving some help to make sure the next copy has more info in it. I welcome your comments .
Thank you again for your advise .

That was nearly two months ago and nothing has changed. If anyone is wondering who she is recieving help from, a clue can be found in the links section of the ROACH website:

Cannabis Skunk Support – 0844 335 1506 www.cannabisskunksupport.com/

This is a website which came about as a result of the split within Debra Bells “Talking about cannabis”, it’s run by someone we’re familiar with here, Mary Brett. We’ll look at CSS in a later blog, suffice to say ROACH is one of the few sites linked to from the CSS website.

The first casts further doubt on the links between cannabis use and and the development of mental illness. The study is called “Are cannabis use disorders associated with an earlier age at onset of psychosis? A study in first episode schizophrenia” by researchers at The Zucker Hillside Hospital of the North Shore Long Island in the USA – read the abstract here.

“Cannabis use disorders” is a term used by psychiatrists defined under a system known as Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) and we are now onto version IV. Strangely DSM-IV doesn’t seem to be online anywhere, but Cannabis use disorders are defined to be:

304.30 Cannabis Dependence
305.20 Cannabis Abuse

Cannabis dependence is a reasonably well understood term and can be paraphrased as existing when symptoms such as cannabis being used to the exclusion of other activities, using it greater amounts (tolerance), failing to stop even when the users desires to do so and so on. Cannabis abuse is defined broadly speaking as using cannabis in such a way as to cause problems for the user, such as causing problems at work, getting stoned when operating dangerous machinery (including driving) or when the use causes personal problems such as relationship issues.

So in plain English, the study looked at problem users. This is interesting because all the reports of cannabis leading to mental illness that caught the newspaper headlines a few years ago concerned just this sort of “problem user”. They were mostly if not all young adults – people in their early to mid teens – who seemed to hammer away at cannabis before developing a psychosis.

The purpose of this study is to determine if an earlier age at onset of positive symptoms in schizophrenia is associated with cannabis use disorders (CUD)

In other words to determine whether early use of cannabis did indeed appear to hasten the onset of psychotic illness. This of course is central to the claims made by RETHINK - the mental health charity which launched the “Cannabis and mental health” campaign, supported by Professor Robin Murray and others from the Maudsley Hospital in South London and so enthusiastically picked up by the rabid tabloid media and the prohibition campaigns. This is the issue the previous government used as the reason for reclassifying cannabis from class C to class B last year.

49 first-episode schizophrenia subjects with CUD were compared to 51 first-episode schizophrenia subjects with no substance use disorders for demographic and clinical variables.

So they had a sample size of 100, with 49 problematic cannabis users and 51 without any problematic substance use, which  admittedly isn’t huge, but the results were interesting none the less:

Although cannabis use precedes the onset of illness in most patients, there was no significant association between onset of illness and CUD that was not accounted for by demographic and clinical variables. Previous studies implicating CUD in the onset of schizophrenia may need to more comprehensively assess the relationship between CUD and schizophrenia, and take into account additional variables that we found associated with CUD.

Cannabis use disorders are associated with such issues as low educational achievement, worse socio-economic status and several other factors, but not the onset of psychotic illness. The final sentence there is actually quite cutting in its way – suggesting other studies which purport to show a connection between problematic cannabis use and the early onset of serious mental illness have looked at the association perhaps  rather narrowly.

The second study, also from the USA is called “Cannabis use disorders in schizophrenia: Effects on cognition and symptoms” – read the abstract here.

We retrospectively ascertained a large cohort (N=455) of SZ patients with either no history of a CUD (CUD-; N=280) or a history of CUD (CUD+; N=175).

So a bigger sample size here and the results are very interesting indeed:

Compared to the CUD- group the CUD+ group demonstrated significantly better performance on measures of processing speed (Trail Making Tests A and B), verbal fluency (animal naming) and verbal learning and memory (California Verbal Learning Test). Moreover, the CUD+ group had better GAF scores than the CUD group.

This defiantly counts as the “wrong” result:

Collectively, these findings suggest that SZ patients with comorbid CUD may represent a higher functioning subgroup of SZ. Future prospective studies are needed to elucidate the nature of this relationship.

So not only – according to these studies anyway – are problematic cannabis users not more likely to develop serious mental illness, but if they do it’s not going to be as bad. That simply isn’t what we’ve been lead to believe. Now of course there is the usual health warning – these are just two studies and they do not represent proof of anything, but for people worried about the claimed links between cannabis use and the development of mental illness they are at least encouraging results.

So does  cannabis protect against the development of mental illness? The authors don’t seem to think so. According to an article in Medwire news

The authors of the study do not, however, believe that cannabis improves cognition per se, but rather suggest that the CUD group has inherently better social skills, making them more likely to encounter the drug.

“Despite the controversy related to the causal relationship between CUD and schizophrenia, several lines of research suggest that patients with comorbid CUD may represent a clinically distinct subgroup of schizophrenia,” say Pamela DeRosse (The Zucker Hillside Hospital, Glen Oaks, New York, USA) and colleagues in the journal Schizophrenia Research.

So it’s Schizophrenia, but not as we know it? It is actually possible of course that the cannabis is having an effect on the development of the illness, CBD is known to have antipsychotic properties and THC is hardly claimed to be neutral.

There was one other side issue to come from these studies however, perhaps it’s a pedantic, trivial observation, perhaps not. These studies were based on “Cannabis use disorders” as defined by DSM-IV critieria. Wikipedia explains DSM:

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is published by the American Psychiatric Association and provides a common language and standard criteria for the classification of mental disorders. It is used in the United States and in varying degrees around the world, by clinicians, researchers, psychiatric drug regulation agencies, health insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies and policy makers.

DSM-IV defines cannabis use disorders (plural) as mentioned above, essentially around the issue of dependence and problematic use. The important point is it isn’t a condition so much as a collection of symptoms grouped under a common heading; cannabis use isn’t a disorder. However, if you do a google for “cannabis use disorder” (singular) you come up with quite a few references to this apparent condition. One of the names which crops up rather prominently is one we’ve encountered before on this blog, that of Prof Jan Copeland who runs the Australian government funded anti cannabis campaign “Cannabis Information and Prevention Centre” a subject this blog covered a little while back. Way back in 2004 Jan Copeland published a paper called Developments in the Treatment of Cannabis Use Disorder: Interventions For Cannabis Use Disorder (Medscape) for example. What makes this interesting perhaps is that DSM-V is being put together now and it will contain a definition of  “Cannabis use disorder” – the draft is here. So what has happened is a collection of different and possibly unrelated symptoms is being collected together under one term after (and perhaps as a result of) it being used as a form of sloppy shorthand. One thing is for certain, the Daily Mail and its ilk  will love this, a medically defined condition caused by cannabis use is just what they want.