Now tell us something we didn’t already know…

Two stories over the past few days reported as “news” which actually serve to underline how the prohibition of recreational drug use hides what’s really going on out there in the real world.

Before we consider these two reports, it’s perhaps a good idea to remind ourselves that illegal drugs are called “controlled substances” and those who support prohibition claim that policy represents “drug control”. I only mention that (again) because for normal substances and pastimes not subject to this special special form of “control” we can simply survey the population to find out what’s actually going on. Because drugs are illegal it takes special research studies to give us at least a clue as to the truth.

The result is to  let the cat out of the bag in that those people who like to think they are in”control” of the situation really haven’t got the faintest idea of the true extent of recreational drug use, the studies show this by virtue of the fact that newspapers announce with shocked headlines what everyone involved in the culture already knows, which is that despite all the efforts of prohibition, lots of people use drugs.

The first story concerned cannabis and so it was reported in traditional style. It featured a report from Wayne Hall and Louisa Degenhardt from Australia; Wayne is a  name well know to cannabis campaigners as someone prominent in the debate who usually seems to support a strange mix of prohibition and common sense. A few years ago at the Cannabis and mental health conference in London he argued against cannabis law reform on the basis that although it would be a good idea, governments are incapable of regulating and policing anything so it couldn’t be done. Anyway Wayne published his study in the Lancet last week and was reported in many papers including the Independent. Of course, being a report about cannabis the paper had to paint as negative a picture as possible

It is 40 years since cannabis unleashed the “flower power” revolution of the 1960s, encouraging a generation in Europe and the US to “make love not war”. Young people at the time hoped their legacy would be world peace. Instead, it has turned out to be a world of fuzzy dope-heads.

Oh dear, this sort of reporting got tiresome years ago – it’s just pathetic now. Anyway it was LSD that unleashed flower power.  The headline was “The world map of cannabis – Study demonstrates the extraordinary scale of the drug’s global popularity” and hinted at the bones of the story but the anti cannabis theme continued for a bit before preparing the reader for the shocking news to come:

Writing in The Lancet, Wayne Hall of the University of Queensland and Louisa Degenhardt of the University of New South Wales, Australia, say cannabis slows reaction times and increases the risk of accidents, causes bronchitis, interferes with learning, memory and education and, most seriously, may double the risk of schizophrenia. Yet these effects have failed to dent its popularity.

<Sigh> notice the phrase “and, most seriously, may double the risk of schizophrenia” is added for spine chilling effect, even though it’s a meaningless and dubious claim really which obviously includes the possibility that it may not do so.  Anyway they then added an almost grudging  qualifier that

However, they add that the ill effects of cannabis are modest when compared with the damage done by alcohol, tobacco and other illicit drugs.

But it’s still worth emphasising the negative aspects because of the “news” being presented is designed to scare:

Citing figures from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime for 2006, they say cannabis use is highest in the US, Australia and New Zealand (where more than 8 per cent of the population indulge), followed by Europe. But because Asia and Africa have bigger populations, they also have the highest proportion of the world’s cannabis users, accounting for almost a third (31 per cent) and a quarter (25 per cent) respectively.

Note use is highest in the home of the war on drugs – the USA, this correlation wasn’t picked up in the report of course. The “news” contained in this story is the fact that cannabis use is widespread – a real shock horror revelation to almost no-one other than those in “control” – and, it seems – the media.  Journalists of course never take drugs and don’t have friends who do either.

But what is clear is it really doesn’t matter that they continue to feed us this anti cannabis line, the people who matter – those interested enough to try cannabis and those who already enjoy using it simply ignore this stupidity in their millions. One can only speculate how many more users will come out of the woodwork when drug prohibition finally collapses, but few people expect the real number to be lower than crime survey guestimates.

Fact is these crime surveys are no substitute for proper population surveys, the fact that they even show the figures they do is an indication of just how out of control this “controlled drug” actually is.

Interesting a non-story as that item may have been, today’s Times carried a real shocker which no-one ever suspected (sorry, that was sarcasm) : High society: Britain’s drug-taking clubbers – Almost all Britain’s thousands of clubbers routinely take drugs, in particular cocaine , cannabis and ecstasy.

It’s true, the Pope really is a Catholic.

This was a report from Dr Fiona Measham and Dr Karenza Moore and published in the journal Criminology and Criminal Justice which found that

98 per cent of club customers had tried an illegal drug at least once
79 per cent had taken an illegal drug within the previous month
Only half as many bar customers (35 per cent) had taken an illegal drug in the previous month
85 per cent of clubbers had tried Ecstasy at least once
83 per cent had tried cocaine at least once
44 per cent had tried ketamine at least once
40 per cent had tried MDMA at least once

Actually, if this is news to any readers, you really do need to get out more. This is nothing new and the night club scene has been like this for well over a decade at least. Around 2000 – 2001 the government imposed a whole new set of regulations on what it called “The night time economy”, many independent clubs closed down and entertainment areas appeared, featuring  clubs run by national companies which claimed to be “drug free” (alcohol not being a drug of course). The only surprise really is that anyone believed this rubbish.

Unlike the immature report in the Independent  described above with it’s anti cannabis slant, this report in the Times read like a breath of fresh air, calmly reporting the fact that a huge number of people use recreational drugs without causing or getting into trouble(and hence not featuring on crime surveys). The paper reported

To use the phraseology of Russell Newcombe, a drug researcher for Lifeline Manchester, drugs represent “cocktails of celebration” for one group. For the other, they are a “cocktail of oblivion”. And the difference is profound.

Indeed it is, as anyone who has ever been involved in the recreational drug scene will know, and that is an awful lot of us. But the story does contain a really dark message, the trend towards poly drug use is escalating and because drugs are illegal and clubs cannot admit they have drug use on the premises, there is no drug information being provided to these people. Forget Talk to Frank here, this is no job for a prohibition supporting advertising campaign.

The reports authors sum it all up

“We would like to see a sensible debate about drugs without the shock, horror bit — if only because of the sheer numbers we see involved,” says Measham. “People have a desire to get intoxicated on a Friday night — the American pharmacologist Ronald Siegel once described intoxication as the fourth strongest irrepressable human desire after food, sleep and sex.

“That suggests that blanket prohibition is destined to be a disaster. We need a more sophisticated but also more realistic response. If people have a choice they don’t really want to break the law. That’s where the debate needs to take place.”

It really is time to accept the reality of all this; illegal drugs are not controlled drugs, but they are very, very popular. Prohibition is a dangerous, expensive failure and those in charge aren’t.