Assuming the claims about cannabis and mental illness are in any way true, the blame seems to lie with the forms of extreme hybrids developed to give high yields and to grow fast under lights – the type of cannabis which goes by the generic name of “Skunk”. The UK’s massive “skunk” industry was the subject of a BBC 3 documentary last week, a part of the “Dangerous Pleasure” series entitled “Cannabis, Britain’s secret farms”.
UKCIA actually got a wind of this programme back in September last year when the production company sent Debra Bell’s Talking about Cannabis campaign an e-mail from the programme producer, which Debra kindly sent out on her e-mail list. Bruce Fletcher of Century Films wrote:
We have recently been commissioned by the BBC to make a 1 hour documentary about skunk and its increased use amongst young people in the UK. The programme will be fronted by a presenter called Rickie Haywood-Williams and, in part, will follow police units dedicated to investigating and closing down ‘cannabis factories’. More broadly we will also look at the social impact of the drug these factories produce on the lives of skunk smokers and their families.
Having met Debra Bell and read her ‘Cannabis diaries’ I am developing a sense of how a child’s skunk dependency can radically destabilise the family unit. I feel that this is a very important issue to raise in the documentary. With this in mind I am hoping to talk to parents who are currently trying to tackle their child’s skunk addiction and the wider effects this has on the whole family.
So it seemed pretty clear that we were in for another BBC reefer madness programme. I contacted the producer and spoke to one of his assistants and offered a contribution explaining the effect of prohibition on the supply side, but they weren’t interested. They did, however, interview one cannabis law reform campaigner but as he reported on the UK420 forum
The producer phoned me today, the BBC didn’t like my bits as ‘they didn’t support the message of the program’
So it was with very low expectations I watched BBC 3 last Thursday night for a programme that billed itself as an investigation into the cannabis farms of the UK.
As promised the programme was introduced by Rickie Haywood-Williams, club DJ and radio presenter who doesn’t smoke himself but is surrounded by people who do apparently. He had always thought it was innocent fun, but more and more he’s hearing it’s serious business.
Intro snippets featured police comments and shots of doors being broken down, the point is made right at the start that this is big business and the market is now flooded with high strength varieties branded “skunk”.
So within the first minute or so the issue of strength and potency is confused and, indeed, misrepresented. We’re told it’s
Stronger than that used by previous generations
and this is followed by Debra Bell saying
It’s not the stuff you smoked at college, it’s a super strength cousin of cannabis
and, we’re told
There’s an argument raging about the possible dangerous effects.
We’re then told that Rickie will spend two weeks with the Bristol drug squad as they raid cannabis factories, meet people who love to smoke and don’t have problems and meet those who’ve had a nightmare on it. Rickie promises to find out
What’s really going on with Britain’s Cannabis boom
Cue another door being smashed in by police
Now this is not a good start. They made the claim that cannabis is now “stronger” than it used to be, as this blog has discussed at length before concerns are not over strength, but of THC/CBD ratio. Cannabis “back in the day” was just as strong as so-called “skunk”, if there has been a change it’s in this composition issue.
The current debate is summed up by a passing reference to the claim from Prof Nutt that cannabis is less dangerous than alcohol and a far more detailed explanation of the possible dangers. It’s pointed out that the law has recently been “toughened” – another somewhat loaded expression. But they do point out there are three million regular users in Britain and ask
why the big deal now?
First off is a visit to the Hemp Fair in London’s East End and we’re shown the enthusiast side. It’s established – probably correctly – that the industry is worth “billions, literally billions”.
We then follow some Newcastle kids as they go to score and smoke their weed. Actually, this is quite a good section as they point out that one of the lads doesn’t touch cannabis and the group don’t put him under any pressure to do so. Actually one of the toking kids – Carl – is quite articulate and intelligent, this section of the programme is quite realistic.
We are then introduced to “skunk”, which apparently looks, tastes and smells different to oldskool hash and traditional weed. According to the police it can be 4 – 5 time stronger. Again, the term “stronger” is used incorrectly and the police claim is used without critical comment. They do point out that “skunk” is really a specific type of cannabis, but that the term is also used generically.
Then Rickie tells us that
Because skunk is stronger, the high can be greater and so can the possible downsides such as anxiety, paranoia and panic attacks, it’s even been linked with psychotic illnesses such as Schizophrenia
This simply isn’t correct. Because the THC/CBD ratio is greater, the “high” is different to oldskool hash, not “more intense”. It is thought that the increase in THC/CBD is the likely cause of this increase risk of downsides, not the strength as such. As the New Scientist reported this week:
It’s lack of balance that makes skunk cannabis do harm
In one human study, published in Neuropsychopharmacology (DOI: 10.1038/npp.2009.184), Sagnik Bhattacharya and colleagues at the Institute of Psychiatry in London used functional MRI brain scanning to study the effects of THC and CBD on the brains of healthy volunteers. They found that THC and CBD acted in opposition; in brain regions where THC increased neural activity from a baseline, CBD decreased it, and vice-versa.
and goes on to say
As for street cannabis, the Beckley Foundation hopes that this research will be used to make it safer. Skunk, with a typical THC content of 15 to 19 per cent and a CBD content of zero, has come to dominate the street market. Ironically, many consider skunk’s market dominance to be a consequence of prohibition, as illegal drug markets have always tended towards higher potencies.
It is this connection between skunk and the workings of prohibition the programme avoided utterly. Anyway, we are then told that whatever the highs or lows, a massive industry as developed to meet the demand, which is true. We are then shown how the police are doing their best to stop it all, an effort they themselves admit is hopeless. We’re shown how the police take to the air with “borrowed” heat seeking equipment looking for grow-ops and that the grow-ops are everywhere, even leafy suburbs. Closing these grow-ops down is now a major priority for the police and this programme blatantly acted as a propaganda tool for the police because there was zero critical analysis of the effort, instead we see more police camera action shots of doors being smashed in. Perhaps amusingly the way they deal with these dangerous criminals if no-one is in is to leave a letter asking the grower to hand themselves in.
We then get Debra Bell and her son, who are given a large section which takes up a good six minutes of uncritical air time, when Debra Bell is allowed to say how “skunk” is so totally unlike previous forms of cannabis.
Now, the key point here is if this change in the nature of cannabis has happened, why has it happened? What caused it to happen? We aren’t told of course and the programme didn’t speculate, because that would mean questioning prohibition and the police action which didn’t fit the message the programme wanted to get across. It is fair to say though that Debra Bell didn’t come over very well at all, perhaps it’s true that if you give people enough rope they’ll hang themselves and Debra and Will did a good job of at least tying the noose around their necks. She was given the credit for – at least in part – getting cannabis reclassified to class B (which is true), against the advice of many experts. Also in his defence although the programme allowed Debra Bell to state her opinions as fact, Rickie did qualify them as being her opinions.
Cue Amsterdam and a look at an alternative regime for cannabis. For the most part this was an objective look at the Dutch Coffeeshop system and the quality of the cannabis available there is contrasted with that on the streets of the UK. We meet the man responsible for introducing skunk (the strain skunk that is) and the hydroponic industry, his name is Bernard. Whereas in Holland the coffeeshops have contributed millions to the Dutch economy, Rickie points out that over here it’s organised crime that’s cashed in.
So it’s back to the drug squad doing their sterling work. The police explain how cannabis gangs are turning their grow-ops into fortified businesses, with bars on the windows, electric fences and weapons. No mention of the cause of this of course. Another door is smashed open as the police raid another cannabis gang. Then it’s to Wales to talk to a landlord who had a house turned over to growing and refused to take a bribe from the gang. He was lucky that the gang he picked to turn in wasn’t one of the well armed ones with freinds willing to take revenge. The people next door knew nothing about it, but would have had some of the crop if given the chance!
Back to the Bristol police who explain how they use Google street view to find grow ops – despite the images being several years old. This daft claim is allowed without criticism. Then it’s time for another door to be broken down, this time is a personal grow of high quality connoisseur strains, the police acknowledge this but as the law doesn’t differentiate, neither do they. Again, no critical comment on the programme and the police view and the operation of the law is just presented as a given.
The we have a look at a grow shop in Brighton run by the people interviewed in Amsterdam who explain the tightrope they walk with the law and we were shown some of their souvenir seeds and ornamental pips. We were taken to another shop that sells hydro systems you can grow tomatoes with.
Then we met a man called Phil Walsh who is proud to be a cannabis grower and has the record to prove it. He points out that growing your own is the only way to avoid the criminal market and to get weed known to be of good quality. Here we have another example of a non-criminal cannabis grower the police were proud to take out of action. Phil details some of the dangers of black market contamination such as cut glass added to herbal cannabis.
We then hear about the opinion of scientists who disagreed with the move to class B, but are then told of a young man called Guy who smoked cannabis from age 16, developed a psychosis which lead to his eventual suicide. Now it may well be that cannabis made his condition worse, perhaps even caused it, but mental illness, psychosis and even suicide is not a new thing and has always mostly affected young people (mostly men) of that age. The impression given was that this is all new and cannabis is the cause. Again, there was no critical analysis of the claims made and on this, if nothing else, there really should have been.
Then we had a look at the science being conducted into cannabis and psychosis. The point is made that cannabis is similar to alcohol in that most people are OK, some aren’t, but no mention of THC/CBD ratio was made.
It’s pointed out in conclusion that the criminal gangs putting cannabis out on the street don’t care about quality or “strength”, but no comment is made about the working of prohibition in creating this situation. Instead we’re shown a huge cannabis farm busted in Bristol.
In conclusion the mess the law has created is correctly described, but no examination of how the the situation came about is made.
Although this programme wasn’t as bad as some of us had feared, it was in truth another biased example of the BBC carrying the government message. What makes it worse is the fact that the programme from the start set out to give a message and wasn’t interested in an alternative view and in taking this attitude it got some very basic facts wrong.
Watch Cannabis – Britain secret farms on i-player for the next few days.
In Norway, the foremost “expert” on cannabis (paid by the government though) Jørg Mørland says that if you use cannabis often the risk of mental illness is less than infrequent use. Which is contrary to what the UK govt claims!
So the conclusion for me is this is just propaganda. Yes, some young people might get psychological unbalance, usually temporary from cannabis use, but skunk doesnt have anything to do with it, they have to be predisposed. Also, it’s far more dangerous too keep it illegal than to get this into orderly forms. And the government has no right to prevent the 99,9% of people who can handle cannabis fine from having protection under the law just because 0,01% get some mental health problems from it!
The strong skunk scare in Britain is a lie, a crude lie, a myth!
These types of programmes are embarrasing and rather depressing to watch because of their blatant propagandaing (?) and unbalanced and inaccurate reporting.
The government engineered the ‘Skunkweed’ scare. Skunk has been around for years, certainly since I first started smoking cannabis, c1978, and at the time was known as ‘Sensimilla’ and was easily obtained.
Lies all lies. Legalise, regulate and tax all drugs.
A D&A support worker.
i can understand the worry that skunk is causing due to the mental health issues i myself had a physcosis eppisode where i freaked out and threw a rolling pin through my window.
i had a underline mental health problem in depression and anxitey skunk just made it worse .
and i was a heavy smoker up to a oz and a half a day.
so what im saying is if you suffer from a underline mental health problem there is a possibility it can increase due to the high levels of thc and the number of recepters you have
Strut
You say something very intersting there – you were a heavy smoker of up to an OUNCE AND A HALF A DAY??? Wow! That’s going at it somewhat!
I have to say I find that claim hard if not impossible to believe; an ounce and a half a day is a truly huge amount and would have been costing you something over £300 a day.
I would say that if you used any drug that heavily it would cause problems.
But to your other point I think the claim isn’t so much the amount of THC as such, it’s the amount of THC relative to CBD that’s important.
Firstly as these comments hint there is a level of consumption with anything where it is too much. Orange juice is quite good for you but try drinking 20 litres a day and you will be in trouble. I chose the figure of 20 since that is what we are often told is the ratio between the old style cannabis (Presumably this includes the finest Malana hashish, Thai Sticks etc) and modern day Skunk.
I fail to see the logic in growers suddenly switching to growing stuff that is 20 times more potent since this would mean the users would need to buy less of the product and hit their profits ! Marijuana is not 20 times more expensive than it was 20 years ago (It used to be about £15 for an ‘eighth’ of hash or about £20 for better quality or grass. The highest prices I have heard of work out at about £50 for an eighth – when you allow for inflation this is about twice the price which does not compensate for people using much less.
When I first heard of ‘Skunk’ it was a term for domestically grown weed. Most people were used to poor quality hashish so or almost rotted imported grass so it seemed very strong. Over the years the potency dropped since users found it too much and dealers wanted a product to compete with soap bar that was 100 % profit (with no middle men taking a cut). Most commercial growers focus on maximum yield for minimum effort since this lowers the risks of the police or rivals in the trade shutting down their operation. Since the market for marijuana is not saturated there has never really been a need to compete based on potency – anything can usually sold to some one (even it is soap bar covered in diesel fuel). Even with the best strain in the world potency takes time, effort, money and is often in contradiction to maximising yields. When hash was popular (many years ago) I remember people would often turn down the best quality stuff saying that it was ‘cut with heroine’ or something similar – it was actually harder to sell and sometimes sold for less than the crappy slate people were used to !!
It may be illegal but cannabis is a business that is why dealers deal – to make money. In any business People will actively suppress innovation that hits their profits or ability to do business. So in the light of this it is hard to see the motivation for people supplying children with marijuana 20 times more potent than their parents used a generation before especially if it has a reputation of causing illness. Yes! all drug users consider their health – no one wants to get ill unless they are suicidal (if they do there are quicker and surer ways to do it)
i hear a lot of un educated talk flyin about…lol…
all that 10x’s stronger talk is madness from what ive seen lookin arond the net is its the old strains that are stronger….
its just now it seems that there are 100’s of new strains and breeders out there where as ‘back in the day’ there where few,
aint we as a race selectively bred stuff for ever ???
thats all it is with all these new strains i think anyway…..
and how is it gonna be stronger when those that grow on the kinda scale that we see on that program are in it for the money and are never ever goin to fully mature plants to full ripeness are they…half the time it aint even dry…..
i just think that someone needs to make a program without all bias opinions to give the people the truth……
the cannabis market has got to be worth millons a year…
surely in a resesion with tax from say coffee shops would be loads ….
hello gordon brown wake up…..
they would rather we all got pissed…..
they already got a nice piece of that pie
I love the fact that the whole documentary was spent interviewing police and Debra Bell. I think there was one scientist in the whole program for a five minute window!
Are these people supposed to be the cannabis experts in our country?
If so it would explain an awful lot.
“skunk is a super strength cousin of cannabis”
Eh hello? anyone that uses this skunk term loses credibility imo but thats just astoundingly off the mark.
I sympathise with her for what her son went through but if she would stop telling that story everywhere I look for just a few minutes and do some research and find out what it is that shes talking about it would help
1. “Cannabis of course has many medical uses and could seriously undermine pharm products if legally available.” If legally available cannabis helped destroy the tobackgo empire, pharm companies would lose a huge bizzness in tobacco-illness medicines, blood pressure pillls etc.
2. “1-1/2” oz. a day– that’s 1350 single tokes of #16-sifted herb in a drawtube one-hitter. OR: imagine THREE PACQXS OF $IGARETTES (60 x 700-mg. = 42-g.) John Belushi was doing three packqs a day when he died age 32.
My biggest problem with this is that the majority of the audience will take just one message from it. That being that “skunk” is some brand spanking new super drug that is causing mental illness almost as soon as one looks at it. This is bad for two reasons. Firstly, and most obvious here, it affects how people view the drug laws with regard to who they vote for. Thus negatively affecting all that’s being done in places like this. Secondly, and I’d say most importantly, it downplays all the other factors that are directly responsible for causing mental illness. The most important of which is social pressures. If anything is more mentally dangerous to cannabis smokers than the idea that at any moment, 10-20 burly police officers can break down your front door and steal your freedom for nothing more than a plant then I’ve yet too see what it is.
The worlds a crazy place, it’s no surprise it occasionally sends folks over the edge.
I think that you are taking the wrong approach to getting cannabis legalised ukcia…..if you want people to start taking you seriously you need to stop being so one sided…..personally, i love weed its great, i think it is much better for you than alchol and cigerattes and am all for it being legalized. However, it is clear that it can lead to various mental illness in a small group of people, along with a fair amount of other down sides to smoking…… i think that you need to evaluate the evidence you have on marijuana and come up with a balanced argument….i believe that if marijuana is to be legalized one day, the same warnings and advertising of the health risks that come with tobacco and alchol should be administered to weed. Also, the risks of driving stoned should be brought to public attention.
I still do think that you guys are doing a great job and agree with you on many levels. You’re right about all that propeganda bullshit. I had a drugs talk the other day and a person was called up to the front of the audience. He was told to put on a pair of goggles that apperantly give a good representation of your perception when you are stoned (to show the risks of driving whilst high). He then was told to stack 5 cups up like pyramid, a simple task. It took him over 2 minutes to do so. This kind of stuff really pisses me off and is why i support you. Keep on trying and hopefully, one day, we can build a much happier and more peacefull britain. Fuck binge drinkers! If they all got stoned instead we wouldn’t have to deal with those anti-social violent fools!
abcd8671, I suggest you take a deeper look around the site, UKCIA is all about wanting a properly controlled and regulated market for cannabis.
UKCIA doesn’t claim cannabis is harmless, far from it! Indeed, it would be a truly amazing substance if it were totally harmless because nothing on earth is!
Roll on California 2010, its only a matter of time before the government wise up and treat Marijuana smokers sensibly.
Bad bad programming. I wonder what percentage of the population believe what they hear on TV? I would suggest that it underlines and reinforces the unlikleness that legalisation is possible, I for one wouldn’t like to see it totally legalised, I would just rather the Police didn’t waste our money hunting these naughty pot people down or bothering to nick smokers. We’ve had prohibition for so long that I don’t think GB will be ready for freedom for at least a few decades….maybe we’ll be ready for the truth soonish though, that’ll be enough for me. If half the smokers don’t understand how can a straight head. Education is the way, it’ll prevent all the contamination, low CBD strains, tobacco mixing and subsequently the related health problems fuelling media frenzies. Keep up the good work UKCIA.
Bad programming! What we need is proper legislation and taxation of drugs fast. Education is key. On Magicdragonseeds.com and other sites you can find over 900 strains of cannabis. These strains have various amounts of CBD and THC, although illegal to germinate and grow, these plants could be used for various medicinal reasons, helping the terminal ill, Psychological Stressed people etc… Educating about and legalizing marijuana use and growing(for personal consumption) would reduce the impact on the NHS and generate new revenue for the State…
When I saw that this program was on I knew what the BBC’s angle would be. For those that don’t know – the BBC’s remit is to show fair and BALANCED reporting. I didn’t see much of that last night. I only saw the bad side of misuse, which you could apply to any sort of vice, and in fact doesn’t tell the whole story of Cannabis use today.
The only positive thing from that program (I’m not really sure whether it is a positive.) was to actually show how this country is moving towards a ‘Police State’ with the use of thermal imaging and the Police’s use of Google street maps. According to the Police on that program if you have condensation on your windows you are a cannabis farmer.
The government will figure it out no doubt. I watched the same show with the officers in the chopper with the heat guns.. There is always a loop hole..