So just how dangerous is cannabis?
This was the topic of an interview I caught on BBC News today, which you can find here .
The guests were Elizabeth Burton Phillips, described in the synopsis as a woman
"whose son took his life after being hooked on cannabis", and Harry
Shapiro from the UK charity Drugscope.
As the clip unfolds it becomes clear that in fact Ms Phillips's son took
his life after a prolonged heroin addiction, with the connection to
his earlier cannabis use apparently obvious because of the famous "gateway
drug" theory.
For anyone who doesn't know, this theory states that an addiction to cannabis will lead you into taking harder and harder drugs, until you eventually become a slave to heroin or crack.
It does happen, of course, but I disagree with the reasoning.
Ms Phillips gave some supposedly supporting evidence to this theory when she quoted the head of admissions at a drugs rehab centre as saying he'd only once in his entire career treated a Class-A drug addict who had not started out on cannabis.
I don't doubt this is true. It is probably also true to say that he treated very few drug addicts who had not watched television, played football or eaten runny eggs, and this proves about as much.
I looked at the website for a drug treatment centre:
"Most people who use heroin will have previously used cannabis (though only a small proportion of those who try cannabis go on to use heroin)."
"Recently a government report has concluded that cannabis does not lead to the use of other drugs. The report by the Home Office states that any gateway factors, where cannabis is seen as the gateway to other drugs, are "too small to be a major factor""
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A rather more pertinent question is: how many Class-A users started out on alcohol?
As Ms Phillips says, "every single drug is dangerous". I don't dispute this. Every single drug is dangerous, to a greater or lesser degree. Alcohol is a drug, therefore it is dangerous both to the individual and to society. The fact that it is culturally and legally acceptable does not make it any safer.
So why was alcohol not mentioned once during this interview?
Let's take a few quotes from the World Health Organisation's Project on Health Implications of Cannabis Use, in its comparison of cannabis and alcohol:
"Alcohol and cannabis intoxication appear to differ in their relation to intentional rather than accidental casualties. Alcohol intoxication is strongly associated with aggressive and violent behaviour ... there is good causal evidence that changes in the level of alcohol consumption affect the incidence of violent crime, at least in some populations ... There is also increasing evidence to indicate that alcohol may play a role in suicide."
"There is little to suggest that causal relationship of cannabis use to aggression or violence, at least in present-day developed societies."
"In large doses alcohol can cause death by asphyxiation, alcohol poisoning, cardiomyopathy and cardiac infarct. There are no recorded cases of overdose fatalities attributed to cannabis, and the estimated lethal dose for humans extrapolated from animal studies is so high that it cannot be achieved by recreational users."
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Harry Shapiro says in the BBC interview that the legal drug classification system (A, B, C) "sets the penalties for possession and dealing and trafficking against different drugs according to their perceived dangers to society." (emphasis mine)
Alcohol, clearly a drug at least as harmful as cannabis, is not even classified according to that system.
Last year the Academy of Medical Science presented a new system of drug classification, in an attempt to more accurately reflect the harm that drugs do. Interestingly, five drugs unclassified by the present system were included as benchmarks.
According to this proposed new system, heroin and cocaine (both currently Class A) are the two most harmful drugs. Big surprise.
Alcohol (currently unclassified) is the 5th most harmful. Amphetamines (Class B) are 8th, Tobacco (unclassified) is 9th, Cannabis (Class C) is 11th, LSD (Class A) is 14th and Ecstasy (Class A) comes in at number 18.
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It is therefore difficult to justify the prohibition of cannabis, LSD and ecstasy, given the acceptance and even commercial promotion of alcohol and tobacco prevalent in our society.
There is, however, one way in which the gateway drug theory holds true - even if its effects are "too small to be a major factor", as the Home Office stated.
If you want to smoke cannabis then you have to buy cannabis, and that is prohibited by law. You will therefore have to meet with someone - a dealer - who is breaking the law in selling it to you.
Since all drugs are illegal, it follows that a person dealing in one illegal substance will have the necessary contacts to deal in others. The financial lure is probably quite tempting, and soon a person who made a contact merely to buy cannabis will find they are dealing with someone who can provide any illegal drug.
Is that first shot of heroin so tempting? I can't speak from personal experience, but I'm told the addiction takes hold very quickly.
Of course, if cannabis were legal then you could simply walk into a shop and buy some, as you can in Holland. There would be no contact with individuals pushing other, harder drugs, any more than there is in an off-license.
So if there is any truth in the gateway drug theory for cannabis, then it is actually caused by the legal prohibition of the substance, not prevented by it. If cannabis were legalised, this particular problem would largely disappear.
The other fashionable criticism of cannabis is that it may lead to mental disorders such as paranoid schizophrenia. The link is tenuous at present, but it does give food for thought. It is usually blamed on newer skunk-type variants of cannabis, which are hydroponically grown with various horrible fertilizers to make them more potent.
Of course, the converse implication that the natural cannabis popular in the sixties was safer than what is smoked today is just as tenuous. Hard medical evidence regarding cannabis use is scarce, unlike better-studied, hard drugs like alcohol.
Imagine that alcohol had the lame legal status as cannabis...
In the sixties, the hippies all drank cider and got a bit silly, but by the 21st Century the dealers were only selling vodka. Now those who break the law by taking alcohol are stuck with the more potent variants of the drug, and so have more of the problems.
If you could buy both cider and vodka, you wouldn't have to drink spirits every time you wanted to get tipsy.
Back to the real world, and cannabis users are stuck buying skunk even if they'd rather smoke weed.
Again, this problem is a consequence of the prohibition of cannabis. If the plethora of alcohol-based products on the market is any guide, the legalisation of cannabis would bring us every form of the drug, from the mild and silly to the downright insane.
I won't comment on harder drugs, but I do believe that the regulation of cannabis would ultimately be beneficial to society. It should have a status similar to alcohol - licensed merchants selling measures of quality-assured product, with social and medical measures in place to support and help those who suffer from addiction.
But it wouldn't be without its problems. It would, after all, give the nation three legal-drug problems to tackle instead of two, and given the British people's traditional abuse of alcohol, the initial results of legalisation might not be pretty.
Then again, people who smoke too much cannabis don't start fights and end up in the local A&E. Perhaps the costs would be smaller than the gains.
Ms Phillips suggested that the decriminalization of cannabis would present the message that it's OK to try the drug, and that this would be wrong. Mr Shapiro responded with this rhetorical question: "Should we be using the law as a public health measure?" There is absolutely no evidence that this is an effective strategy. In his opinion, as head of publishing at Drugscope, the way to solve the problem of drug addiction is allocating more funding for prevention and treatment.
While the government is advocated ever-stronger penalties for those who use drugs, it is actually reducing the amount of money going toward measures that could prevent the problem in the first place.
Though ludicrously hypocritical and entirely counter-productive, this attitude is completely in keeping with normal government policy. Does it sound familiar? I think it's quite like trying to counter terrorism by increasing penalties and police powers, while ignoring the fact that most such acts of mass-murder are motivated by Britain's own murderous terrorist activities in the Middle East. Stop the latter, and prevent the former. It's very simple.
I don't want to seem insensitive to Elizabeth Burton Phillips's story. I can't imagine what it must be like to lose a son in such a senseless way, and I can understand her anger at those who would suggest that cannabis - in her mind the reason her son became so ill - should be legalised.
Since I don't agree that cannabis use leads to heroin use, as so many people seem to, I don't see that her story is really about cannabis at all. It was about heroin, and the tragic consequences of addiction to this terrible drug. It was cleverly spun to match the government's present aims, but in reality cannabis's part in this tale was as a symptom, not as a cause.
Ms Phillips's son was a twin. The other twin was also a heroin user, but "hit bottom" after seeing his dead brother, and managed to turn his life around. He is now apparently leading a very positive life, so at least some good has come out of the experience.
I welcome comments from people who have thoughts on this issue. Let's face it, if you've got so little to do today that you've sat and read this entire piece of text, you can probably spare a few more minutes to let me know what you think ;)