IN cannabis: Marjorie Wallace, chief executive of the mental health charity Sane, says: “While many people can smoke a joint with no long-term effects, for some young people regular use can double their risk of developing schizophrenia, in which a person may hear voices, and experience strange thoughts and paranoid delusions.”
Such are the, er, some, maybe, can be facts…
Posted: 3rd, February 2008 | In: Twitterings Comments (10) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
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Regular Features
February 5th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
9 Karen
I know this is the popular argument, but how many people are selling or buying alcohol or tobacco in this way. Some certainly, but the market is saturated, and most people like to know that the bottle of yellow liquid they have just bought is in fact Scotch and not something else rather more second hand.
I really don’t think that we would have more users. My whole point is that anyone can get any drugs anywhere NOW. The big danger issues are purity, and strength.
February 4th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
If you made drugs legal you’d have more users, with more health problems and the dealers would still be dealing (at a cheaper price, or in a more potent form).
The only reason to legalise it is if you believe it’s worth getting wrecked for a high or you don’t care what others get up to.
February 4th, 2008 at 9:08 am
It has always seemed obvious to me that the propensity to addiction, of whatever substance, is on a normal distribution within any population. Call it the law of large numbers.
So most people will be normally able to deal with the effects of alcohol, tobacco, and even cocaine and heroin, and will be able to function normally, only using the drug at appropriate times and in appropriate amounts.
But at the end of the distribution you will find the chronic alcoholic, the chain smoker, the pot head, the crack addict and the heroin junkie. People who perhaps through their own particular metabolic system and genetic structure are unable to deal with the substance.
Very similar to obesity actually. Some people argue that it is a lifestyle choice. Others that obese people are simply unable to control their eating habit.
This has been used as a justification to make some drugs illegal, and to tax those which we permit.
But it actually does not prevent anyone from obtaining or using the illegal drugs. Anyone who wants to take cocaine or heroin or pot can do so. Now.
If they are in the lower levels of society they will be punished for possession.
If they are in the higher levels they will be allowed into re-hab and will get their pictures in the magazines. (And later in life may receive awards and knighthoods)
The whole thing depends on a class ridden paternalism. (which may in fact be justified, I do not dismiss the need for paternalism)
What we do about it now is much more difficult. To “legalise’ all drugs and turn the focus from criminal activity to a medical and welfare problem, as we do with smoking and alcoholism has its own problems.
One of the big ones is this, which no politician dare articulate.
IF you make cocaine and heroin “legal” i.e. properly produced, on prescription and at a sensible price for addicts, what are the Taliban and the Columbian cartels going to do. What are the importers and dealers and street pushers going to do ? They are not going to go back onto Welfare Benefit or get a job on the local building site.
The fear of the unknown may be greater than the cost of keeping up the pretence that there is a War on Drugs, and fiddling about on the fringes arguing whether pot causes schizophrenia or the other way round.
I don’t pretend to have the answer. I only suspect that the right question has not yet been put.
February 4th, 2008 at 8:30 am
It’s rather beside the point, Marjorie. The question is: how does the legal prohibition of cannabis protect users from any potential harm?
We spend over £2 billion every year on keeping some drugs illegal. Given the horror stories regularly trotted out by some, Ms Wallace included, does that really look like money well spent? Or is is only the alcohol pushers and pharmaceutical multinationals who derive any benefit?
Prohibition stands in the way of harm reduction. You can have one or the other but not both aims directing policy.
February 4th, 2008 at 7:35 am
There is still no causative link from cannabis to schizophrenia, even though they have been looking , since a gentleman, by the name of Harry Anslinger had been trying to find one.
I would not advise schizophrenics to take the drug alcohol, nicotine or caffeine, as these all play with dopamine levels.
February 4th, 2008 at 12:29 am
Apparently, it can produce a “decompensation” of schizophrenia.
In other words, people who have a schizophrenic structure manage to live normally if they live in normal circumstances and they don’t even know about their schizophrenic structure. The consumption of drug opens the gates to the disease. From what I read, it doesn’t create it, or if it does, it is only temporary delusion. But it can wake it up for good in fragile people.
I don’t know that a pre-disposition to schizophrenia (what I called above “schizophrenic structure”) pre-disposes people to consuming cannabis. I would rather say it is people in the border-line category which would be prone to addictive behaviour. (Anorakian addiction not included).
February 3rd, 2008 at 11:45 pm
2 mary james
Hell if that isn’t a darn good speech. I salute you.
February 3rd, 2008 at 11:09 pm
1 coolandcalm
Why don’t you try it and see honey?
February 3rd, 2008 at 11:06 pm
it’s about time that intensive research was done on the wonderful hemp plant. the papers on mental illness and schizophrenia that are so often quoted are definately inconclusive and need to be repeated. in any case, the newspapers tend to cherrypick reports to support their own point of view, regardless of logic. rupert murdoch rules i guess.
too much big business would be adversely affected by cannabis/hemp legalisation for it ever to be allowed. the shareholders just wouldn’t have it. when the rich elite see the value of their portfolios going down they call their politicians to do something and the rest of us suffer.
February 3rd, 2008 at 5:39 pm
I always wonder at the connection between schizophrenia and cannabis. There may be a connection but to me its a bit chicken and egg…..
Does smoking cannabis increase the risk of schizophrenia or does the pre-disposition to schizophrenia make one more likely to overdo the skunk?