Legalisation for & against
legalisation - the fool's gold
Pot Night - The Book, Channel 4 Television, 1995
Peter Stoker
Cannabis will not be legalised in Briatin, and that's because of one simple fact. Not because Messrs Major, Blair and Ashdown are personally against it. But simply because there are enough ordinary people who are waking up to what a collosal scam this whole pot lobby is. They are not obsessive followers of this subject; rather they tend to vote with their remotes to evince their lack of interest in pot promos. Their real interest (and mine) is in promoting healthy and full lives in people who thus feel no need of chemical highs.
The pot plant is ancient. The pot lobby isn't. It was jump-started in the 1960s by Keith Stroup, an ambitious young American lawyer. Playboy's Hugh Hefner heavily subsidised the cause for a decade. Stroup's tactics are still floating around. Even back then, the strategy of fabricating ways to make pot's image seem more acceptable was in play.
CANONISING CANNABIS
In about 1979, Stroup came up with what was probably his neatest wheeze. The hookline was: 'We'll use the medical marijuana argument as a red herring to give pot a good name.' Everything you see now on the subject of pot for medicine emanates from that tacky piece of cynicism.
What the ancient Hindus or Queen Victoria did witht the stuff is immaterial. The key issue is: will it make a valid addition to our medical repertory in the 1990s? If it were proved so in the future, I and many others - who already utilise homeopathy - would welcome this. But it hasn't been yet: there are other medicines that do the same job better, and with none of the same undesirbale side-effects. Check this out - the following learned bodies have all carefully studied the use of pot and rejected it: the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Great Britain and Ireland, the American Medical Association (AMA), American Cancer Society, plus the Institutes of Ophthalmology and Oncology, the National Eye Institute, the Glaucoma Society and the Institute of Neurological Disorders - all in the United States. In addition, the US Food and Drug Administration has a test schedule which any new drug must pass in all eight areas; pot couldn't manage a pass in one.
Medical pot was, however, only the front swimmer in a veritable shoal of red herrings. Hemp was advanced as the preferred source of cloth, rope, paper, fuel, soap; it would stimulate fashion, save farms from ruin, even protect the atmosphere. None of these, you'll note, gives you a product you can get stoned on - but then that's not the point. Image building is the point, and to hell with scientific veracity. Proper analysis of all these options for pot shows them to be weak contenders. Hemp is inferior in yield to field crops such as corn (which is also a better source of fuel - i.e. ethanol)or alfalfa and no better in root structure; it does not prevent erosion and does not add nitrogen to the soil. Cotton is cheaper, easier to process, and plentiful. As for using the plant for pulp or paper, almost 80 per cent goes to waste, and would consume more energy and cost more to refine than pine or Douglas fir. Claims for higher yields from hemp compared to trees are wrongly, indeed cynically, based on 80-year-old lower-intensity models of forestry. As for 'atmosphere improvement' ploy, hemp plants may well produce oxygen, but unlike trees, they do not 'fix' the large amounts of carbon dioxide we have to contend with, so we would end up with a much less healthy atmosphere - in fact, even more so since hemp produces a highly allergenic pollen.
GENUINE HARM
When it comes to the harmfulness of cannabis on humans, the pot lobby have only been effective in confining the debate within terms of only physical health (including mental stability) - clearly a field rich with possibilities for confusion, gerrymandering and dispute. But health is much wider than this. Take, for example, the World Health Organisation's scope: 'Physical, mental, intellectual, emotional, social, spiritual and environmental.' After nearly a decade in a frontline drug agency, working with users, I can assure you that physical aspects come way down the list of 'presented problems'. Getting one's head straight, sorting the emotions, dealing with messed-up relationships, relocating one's spirit for life are much more common goals. And pot is often implicated.
You need to keep truer and wider definition of health at the front of your mind when considering the total damage which cannabis causes. Some mechanisms are well understood. Consider the cumulative effect of the following:
- Brain energy depleted by 25 per cent during the time of cannabis use.
- The brain's frontal lobe (the learning/deciding area) is a principle destination of pot.
- There is a very long retention rate of the active ingredient THC (as metabolites) in the body, which can be measured in months.
- The accumulation of THC metabolites has been shown to lead to the deterioration or death of brain cells; the animal studies of past years have now been proven in humans, through brain scans.
- There is a lack of motivation and a loss of memory, which obscures learning from mistakes or projecting the future - hence 'living in the now'.
The bottom line of all this is not hard to compute. You don't have to be on dope to mess up - but it helps.
In their rush to sanitise cannabis, many pro-potters will say 'But it's not really addicitve. Well, only psychologically, anyway.' Ask any drug worker which is the toughest addiction to break and you'll get the same answer. Here's a clue: it isn't the physical one. (And, for the record, there is evidence regarding physical addiction.)
Significant harm from pot use has been researched by accredited scientists and medics across the world. Why aren't you experiencing it? Because it develops slowly, stealthily, is often dose-related and potency-related. So maybe you're not affected yet. Or perhaps you're just too wrecked to notice. The potency parameter is even more significant since the high-strength 'skunk' and 'nederweed' cannabis varieties emerged. With a THC strength of 25 per cent or higher, they are some 50 times more powerful than the Mexican grass that fuelled the hippy revolution. A different drug, in effect.
SOME KEYNOTES
More than 10,500 scientifically accredited papers worldwide all indict pot as harmful. Effects include: the faster development of lung cancer than from tobacco; memory impairment; oral (mouth) cancers (with poor prognosis); development of full schizophrenia in the susceptible; organic brain damage; reduce sperm motility; damage the foetus (even via expectant mothers subjected to passive smoking) which can lead to low birthweight, tendency to childhood leukemia, lower IQ on the Stanford-Binet scale, hyperactivity and other behavioural disorders; and immune system breakdown (which makes recommending it to HIV-positive persons an appalling piece of pot politics).
There is much more in this vein. Those who would legalise cannabis have next to no current research to back up their arguments - the few papers they have tabled have been written by themselves or their supporters. As a genus, these individuals are characterised by their ability to ignore inconvenient facts, and they continue to recite 'pot credos'. Indeed, it seems that the American philosopher William James might almost have had pot campaigners in mind when he suggested that truth may be 'that which is ultimately satisfying to believe'. A straw frequently clutched in pot-speak - 'No one ever died from cannabis' - is true simply because chemical overdose is not implicated. In reality, people do die from cannabis use: as many as 48 train crashes in one year in United States; 20 per cent or more British car driver fatalities - and, of couse, stoned drivers can kill other people. Now that we know how pot provokes lung cancer faster than tobacco (but we don't test for it yet), this will become more documented in the future as 'Death by cannabis'.
CRIME CONCERN
Arguably the biggest concern people have about drugs is in their link to crime - crimes carried out to raise money to buy drugs, crimes carried out while 'under the influence', and crimes carried out as a result of associating with criminals when buying drugs. Legalising cannabis would not increase a buyer's income needed to purchase the substance (especially if high taxes are applied, as some legalisers suggest). Nor would crimes when stoned be reduced.
Legalising has done nothing to dissuade the criminals in Holland. Even legalisers accept as fact that the coffee-shops are supplied with cannabis by the Mafia, the Dutch Ministry of Justice has been moved to describe Amsterdam as the 'crime capital of Europe' - and adolescent pot use doubled following decriminilisation. Many other countries, including China, Sweden, Spain, Italy, Japan, and, of course, the United States have found to their cost that relaxation of the laws regarding cannabis can backfire painfully.
When they supported such a proposal in 1975, the police in Alaska thought crime would drop drastically. Other arguments fielded by a well-resourced pot lobby were that the use of pot would not increase, nor would problem use (for a 'harmless' drug?) and neither would the use of any other drugs because, they said, the so-called 'gateway theory' was 'garbage'. (According to this theory, using one drug increases the probability - but not the certainty - that a person will try another.) ten years later, a review of the situation showed that pot use was way up, more than twice the national average. 'Problem' use had also increased severalfold, with massive social/health costs and the use of all drugs was considerably increased. And crime? Up, significantly. This time around, the police were on the 'repeal' bench, and cannabis is now illegal again in Alaska.
That the 'gateway theory' was vindicated in Alaska may come as a suprise, but then nobody ever suggested that everybody who smokes cannabis will inevitably end up on heroin. They suggested what has actually been proved by experience and research: that almost everybody who is now on hard drugs started on the 'gateway drugs' - i.e. tobacco and/or alcohol and/or cannabis. If these are avoided, 99 per cent of the population will avoid the rest.
STRAIGHT THINKING
I would invite anyone studying this subject to reflect upon some simple nuggets of common sense:
- The toxicity of a substance is not determined by debate.
- You have a right to your own opinions, but not to your own facts.
- The pursuit of liberty is honourable, the pursuit of licence is not.
- Risk-taking for recreation should improve your (total) health, not risk or wreck it.
- Artists now of drugs will admit that their music/paintings/writings show more hope without dope.
- And the harm (whether physical or psychological) which you use does to others must be considered before you can honestly say that your use is your business alone.
Some advocates bleat, child-like, that 'Everyone's doing it so why won't government approve it?' If you credit (and I don't ) the more usual claim that around 2 million people in Britain are drug users, this, to me, just means that 54 million people aren't, and don't want to be victims of the selfish 4 per cent. It is speculatively argued that drug use has become inevitable, therfore legalisation must come soon, as a 'release'. These speculators need to look to other countries where preventative education has been a great success. (That is, once the pro-drug teaching and material is cleaned out of the classroom - which it isn't in Britain yet.) Even in the drug-saturated United States, community prevention programmes have reduced use by a full 60 per cent since 1979. We have no need to sue for surrender.
IN CONCLUSION
The legalisation of pot is a dopey idea. The image-making (a.k.a. 'red herrings') is transparently false. The harm - in physical and psychological terms both for the user and for those he or she impacts - is crystal clear. The links to other drug use and to/from crime are likewise irrefutable. The evidence is unambiguous both here and abroad: law relaxation is a cure much worse than the disease.
Even the pot campaigners (in a candid moment) will admit they don't know how one would run a pothead society. Most duck out of proposing legalisation for all ages, but if the under-18s were to be barred, we would be straight back to criminal supply and use - targeted on our young people. We are starting to make headway with health-promotion campaigns aimed at tobacco and alcohol; introducing a third dangerous substance on the grounds that the other two kill more people would be lunacy, especially since fatality is far from the only criterion. Change in society is nothing to fear, but is something to judge carefully. Putting the lid back on when you find you've made a mistake is at best a dreadful task, and may even prove impossible. As a society, our goals for health deserve to reflect more than the noisy trumpetings of a minority group, however amplified they may be by the media and entertainment industries.
A goal much more worth striving for is the education, skill-training and empowering of us all to live richly diverse lives in which drugs such as pot are, quite simply, irrelevant.
THE GREAT CURE?
The only thing right about cannabis is that it's illegal. Knee-jerk libertarians (not liberals) and others revelling in the wonders of wooly thinking will tell you this is not so; that legalisatin is the Great Cure. Pot smokers will, overnight, be converted into law-abiding pillars of the community, quote they. Make your own mind up after reading the following facts about law relaxation and crime.
The Netherlands
The tax authorities regard the purchase of guns and ammunition, pitbull dogs and scramblers for phones as legitmate business expenses for cannabis dealers, and thus the costs are tax deductible. the Netherlands has suffered a 42 per cent increase in gun deaths since the decriminilisation of cannabis, almost all linked to drug disputes.
Italy
The Mafia's annual revenue exceeds £40 billion, and drugs are the main earner (including supllying the Netherlands' pot-and-coffee shops).
The world
From 1985 to 1991, 500 drug-related deaths were studied by Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. Pot featured in 24 per cent of these, and violence in a suprising number of cases. Twelve cases had no other drug but pot involved.
PEARLS FROM THE TREASURY OF POT LOGIC
The following, culled from legalisation debates, discussions and features, highlight the truly breathtaking logic of the legalisers.
'Pot is a good thing for adults but not for teenagers'
'After legalisation, we will tax drugs heavily and use the money to educate teenagers not to use them.'
'Figures for pot use in the United States, which show growth in use up to the mid-1980s are good, and can be relied on as showing the the "War on Drugs" has failed.
'Figures since this time which show massive decreases in use are a conspiracy by the public to make the government feel good.'
'All research showing harm from cannabis is a conspiracy - all 10,500 papers, or whatever today's number is.'
'We want to promote Responsible Use. This means you can get stoned responsibly and thereafter conduct your affairs responsibly. (No "driving responsibly", of course: we would have laws against that.)'
'Education should be about drugs, not against them.'
'Boundaries and values must not be mentioned; to do so would be to impose your values, which is immoral.'
'Youth must be empowered to make their own "informed choices".'
Prevention seems to have failed, "everybody" is doing it, so we must give up preventive education and teach methods of responsible use.'
'Non-users must not be held up as role models.'
'Users must be de-stigmatised by curriculum content which challenges the attitudes of non-users.'
PETER STOKER