Some Straight Dope on Cannabis While Waiting to Inhale on the Road to Enlightenment: Everything a Government Needs to Know About Cannabis

Reefer Madness 2 – The Sequel

Willona Wednesday (On Monday)

Now that the dust has settled on Mr. Brown’s decision to fly in the face of expert advice and reclassify cannabis upwards from class C to class B status (see:http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/brown-will-upgrade-cannabis-to-class-b-substance-despite-advice-of-drugs-experts-804526.html, it is high time (the first and probably not the last feeble pun to be found in this blog) to step back and give the issue of cannabis some dispassionate consideration.

The Prime Minister’s decision is the latest in a long line of similarly politically motivated moves, which have ignored available evidence regarding the alleged harms associated with cannabis use in order to pursue a moralistic, ideological and ultimately futile policy.

The Indian Hemp Commission 1894; the LaGuardia Committee (US) 1944; the Wooton Report (UK) 1968; the Shafer Report (US) 1972; the Le Dain Commission (Canada) 1972; the Royal Commission into the Non-Medical Use of Drugs (South Australia) 1978; the Runciman Report (UK) 2000 – all of these offered research based recommendations with regard to cannabis all of which were rejected out of hand by vote hungry politicians feigning public interest. So our Prime Minister's decision is as unsurprising as it is irrelevant. Who is actually going to make choices about whether to start, continue or stop using cannabis because of an inaccurate and pointless system of classification?

The following conclusions of the 1978 Royal Commission are impossible to argue against:

'The regulation of the non-medical use of cannabis has been the subject of many official inquiries. These inquiries have reached strikingly uniform conclusions on the effects of cannabis use, both on the user and the community as a whole. The failure of legislators to accept these conclusions suggests that legislative responses are affected more by the perceived social status of users and the values and perhaps prejudices of powerful groups in the community, than by a careful evaluation of the pharmaceutical, medical and sociological evidence.'

Of course the new dimension to these old themes comes in the form of skunk cannabis which has triggered a new round of moral panic, extravagant claims and misinformation, but before considering skunk in some detail it might be helpful to provide a potted (pun number two) history of cannabis in order to place the latest concerns in some sort of context.

Cannabis in the 20th century

The demonization of cannabis and those identified as its principal users in the USA (at the time Mexican immigrants and Black people) is, to a large extent, attributable to the machinations of Harry Anslinger who was appointed the US government’s Commissioner of Narcotics in 1932 and was once able to tell Congress with a straight face: “If the hideous monster Frankenstein came face to face with the monster marijuana he would drop dead of fright.” Anslinger’s racist, xenophobic zealotry did much to cement the connection between cannabis use and psychotic behaviour and he was instrumental in the production of Reefer Madness, a ludicrous anti-marijuana propaganda film released by the US government in 1936 depicting the descent into insanity and murder of the lives of a group of young people who experiment with cannabis and listen to jazz music.

Although cannabis use in the UK would not become a significant issue until the 1960s, Anslinger’s offensive and extravagant claims regarding the drug were echoed in some elements of the British press in the 1950s where concerns about the corruption of young white women by West Indian immigrants motivated by sexual desire were freely aired. Chapman Pincher of the Daily Express informed his readers: ‘Coloured men who peddle reefers can meet susceptible teenagers at the jazz clubs.’

The Times concurred in 1957:

‘White girls who become friendly with West Indians are from time to time enticed to hemp smoking…the potential moral danger is significant, since a principal motive of the coloured man in smoking hemp is to stimulate his sexual desire.’

Come the 1960s, cannabis use became increasingly widespread with its combination of hedonism and associations with so-called ‘counter culture’ making it particularly appealing to well-educated middle class youth.

Two points regarding this period are particularly noteworthy: firstly, as those of a certain age can testify, the variety and strength of much of what was available should not be underestimated – the potency of the likes of Afghani black, Nepalese temple balls, Thai sticks, Manali and proper Jamaican or Columbian weed was very much the equal of anything currently in circulation. Secondly, the immediate response from the authorities of the day was a knee-jerk recourse to the criminal justice system leading to the frequent use of imprisonment for cannabis users and culminating in the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act which established the drug classification system recently tweaked by Mr. Brown. It is abundantly clear that neither the Act nor the classification system are currently fit for purpose.

A particularly unfortunate consequence of jailing those involved in the cannabis market who, although guilty of criminal offences, were not archetypal criminals, was the contact they inevitably made with those who undoubtedly were of that ilk. Hardened criminals whose stock in trade was violent armed robberies and whose initial view on drugs was something akin to: ‘Dwugs? Bleedin’ dwugs! Dun some fings in my time, but dwugs? Nah!’ suddenly found that a few puffs on a joint made ‘doing yer bird’ a whole lot easier and of greater interest still was the discovery that a potentially hugely profitable illicit market was being run by hippies who had never seen a gun, much less owned one.

Thus the control of the drugs business shifted from headbands giving credit to head-cases giving grief and nothing would be the same again.

Throughout the 1970s as demand for cannabis increased massively, the variety and quality began to decline and the market was largely dominated by hashish from the Indian sub-continent, which was often cut with ghee or vegetable oil and ‘Katarma Gold’ from Morocco which was mass-produced and of no more than adequate potency. As the grip of ex-pat British criminals residing in Spain’s ‘costa del crime’ tightened on the cannabis trade, Morocco increasingly became the source of hashish destined for the streets of the UK and by the 1980s what became known as ‘soapbar’ (half kilo blocks in the shape of large bars of soap) would dominate the market for the next decade and more (the only real exception being Jamaican grass, the market for which was almost exclusively confined in the UK to Black British and Caribbean communities).

Initially, the quality of soapbar was high grade but very soon the villains organising its importation, with their virtual monopoly secure, began to extract even greater profits by systematically and routinely cutting their product with some sort of wax, a practice that became replicated further down the supply chain. The upshot was that consumers were smoking cannabis that was low in quality and high in adulterants such as wax, boot polish, animal excrement and dyes, all of which must surely have caused considerable damage to users' lungs yet, astonishingly, those claiming an interest in harm reduction in relation to drugs, including all the moral entrepreneurs in both Westminster and Fleet Street, were completely silent.

What must also have been true is that many of those users became so hacked-off with the inability of this low grade rubbish to actually get them stoned, that they would turn to other drugs in order to achieve something resembling the desired effects, which ironically provided a grain of substance to the otherwise debunked 'gateway theory'.

Enter the 'Skunk.'

Against the backdrop outlined above it is hardly surprising that when skunk started to arrive from Amsterdam in the early 1990s cannabis lovers began turning to it in increasing numbers despite its relatively high price - at a typical £25 for an eighth of an ounce it was about double the price of soapbar - because it worked; it worked extremely well in fact. It worked so well that it rapidly became the market leader and as the moral outrage that had been directed at ecstasy began to fizzle out as that drug entered middle-age, the attentions of the tabloid moral entrepreneurs were turned in the direction of skunk and a second wave of 'reefer madness' was ushered in characterised by very similar extravagant claims and misinformation engendered by the likes of Anslinger first time around.

According to which newspaper was being read on a particular day, readers could be 'informed' that skunk was anything from two to twenty times stronger than other forms of cannabis, conveniently overlooking the fact that these 'other forms' of the drug were actually the all but useless soapbar referred to above. It also became received wisdom that skunk was the direct cause of mental health conditions such as schizophrenia and psychosis despite the fact that there was no reliable evidence to support such claims. Such minor details of course could not stand in the way of a good story: 'This new strain of cannabis is so incredibly strong it can bring on the early signs of schizophrenia from a single puff.' So said the Liverpool Echo. While the Daily Express put it readers straight on the issue: 'The killing (of Anthony Walker) by dope smoking Paul Taylor and Michael Barton highlighted the danger of relaxing the law.' But the gold medal must go to the Daily Mail whose readers, as noted by Max Daly in an article for Druglink: '...have been told that cannabis was to blame for a vampire fantasist who drank the blood and ate the heart of his 90 year old victim, a father smothering his baby son, a teenager slaughtering a motorist while dressed as a samurai sword-wielding ninja, a daughter bludgeoning her father to death with a poker, two crack addicted teenagers punching to death a baby and a mental patient strangling his former lover.'

And all that over a period of just 18 months!

These grisly revelations, it seems, actually emanate from defence barristers seeking to convince courts that their clients were suffering from some cannabis induced diminishment of responsibility (don't even start me on the antics of our legal eagles - who will be the subject of a future blog, but suffice it to say for now that rather too many of them couldn't lie straight in a bed!).

It must be acknowledged that there are genuine concerns about skunk and there are many contributions to the debate that articulate these in more measured fashion than the sort of irresponsible political and press drivel outlined above, but the effect of such hysterical nonsense is to confine the 'debate' almost exclusively to the issues of mental health and the drug's correct classification. As such, more radical proposals about how best to address the issue of cannabis use have become so marginalised as to be virtually off the radar. However, this does not alter the fact that millions of people will continue to smoke skunk regardless of anything the law may say or the efforts of the criminal justice system and it is therefore vital that the issue is approached dispassionately and in the round. This should involve careful consideration of the following broad themes: 1. Potency, effects and the market 2. Links to mental health 3. Young people and binge culture.

Potency, effects and the market.

Although, as already noted, widely disparate claims have been made about the potency of skunk based on the level of the perceived principal active ingredient (THC), there is at the same time, almost perversely, a general consensus that this form of cannabis is super-strong. I say 'perceived' because cannabis is a highly complex substance containing some 400 chemicals and there is much to learn about the various ways these work, not least in respect of the drug's undoubted medicinal properties, but for the purposes of this discussion, two are of particular interest - THC and cannabidiol.

While the popular perception sees THC as the element that provides the desired effects for recreational users i.e. 'getting high', it is becoming increasingly understood that in fact, the pleasant feeling of relaxed euphoria (bordering on silliness) and heightened senses (often associated with creativity) which users seek and enjoy, is actually achieved by the balanced combination of both THC and cannabidiol.

There is growing recognition that while THC can produce feelings of anxiety and even paranoia leading in some cases to what might be termed psychosis, cannabidiol contains anti-psychotic properties, thus, like many things in nature, cannabis is at its optimum when containing the appropriate balance between these two ingredients. It may well be the case that the process of modifying the cannabis plant in order to create a version that can be grown quickly under hydroponic conditions i.e. skunk, has resulted in a plant in which the balance between THC and cannabidiol has become skewed in the direction of the former.

It should also be understood that contrary to the impression often created, skunk is not of uniform super strength. It is grown variously by gangs of organised criminals, second hand car dealers from Essex, single mothers and enthusiastic amateurs looking to satisfy their own needs along with a degree of profit. The first named will obviously dominate the market and will prioritise the interests of maximising yield and minimising costs over concerns about quality and in doing so produce what is known in the trade as 'commercial' - a strain of reasonable strength, but rarely spectacular. The quality of product amongst other growers is liable to considerable variation and worryingly there is increasing evidence of street level skunk being adulterated by either the addition of tiny glass globules both to increase weight and the crystalline appearance often looked for by consumers (who will therefore be unwittingly smoking molten glass!), or by squirting the buds with hairspray, again to enhance feeling and texture, but again unlikely to be of benefit to consumers' lungs.

The overall impression then is of a market dominated by organised criminal groups with no concerns about the welfare of consumers - many of whom will be purchasing a product of uncertain strength and purity.

Links to mental health.

As with the presumed super potency of skunk, the inexorable link between cannabis use and mental health problems has become an assumption more the result of tabloid reportage than any considered examination of evidence.

Not long ago I watched an edition of BBC's Question Time in astonishment as arch elitist rabid old-school Tory-boy Norman Tebbitt of all people (that's him pictured right), stated with total authority that smoking cannabis caused schizophrenia; since when did Norman Tebbitt get to know anything about cannabis?

What we can say is that anyone with existing or latent mental health problems, as well as those with a genetic predisposition towards mental ill-health should not take cannabis, nor indeed any mind-altering drug, including alcohol. What we most certainly cannot say is that cannabis is directly causal in producing mental health problems amongst hitherto mentally well individuals, although persistent heavy use over a period of time is likely to increase the risk of such an occurrence particularly if the product is over represented in the THC department.

The fact is that, as with alcohol, most people who use cannabis do so recreationally and, more or less, responsibly. In reality, therefore, the biggest health risk they face from using cannabis is likely to be lung damage, which results from smoking it - usually with tobacco.

Young British people and binge culture.

For most town and city dwellers it is a fairly common experience to see young people, complete with baseball cap at improbable angle and those ridiculous mock belt-less prison-style trousers with arse somewhere round the knees, openly smoking cannabis with apparent impunity - although I somehow doubt whether Prime Minister Mr. 'I'm in touch with the people' Brown (pictured right) has encountered this himself.

This suggests not only the irrelevance of the law (let alone the classification system) regarding cannabis to these young people, but also the impotence of a law that is largely unenforceable. A worrying aspect of such a situation is the distinct possibility that for some of these youngsters, the law in its entirety can be treated with the same disregard.

It might also be asked with regard to the laws on cannabis, how can anyone respect laws that prohibit the possession of cannabis yet permit the purchase of seeds, the equipment to cultivate them and all manner of items to facilitate the consumption of cannabis, including king size rolling papers manufactured by a multinational company that must be fully aware of the use to which these are put?

As with alcohol there can be no surprise that many young people are happy to experiment with cannabis, but the concern in both cases is not consumption in itself, but the extent and volume of that consumption and the great British predilection for excessive, binge consumption, which turns what should be moderate and controlled usage into some sort of competitive event in which excess becomes the ultimate aim. And make no mistake, this culture of excess is not going to be addressed or altered by legislation, much less any tinkering with an outdated system of classification.

There is clear role for education in all of this, yet our education system is in a parlous state for the most part and seems more about getting students through assessments for league table purposes rather than actually educating young people about the world they find themselves in.

Few areas of the system are more parlous than that of drugs education, mired as it is in a foggy-bog of negative, slanted, partial information that is more propaganda than anything resembling true education.

Surely if we want our young people to make sensible decisions about substances that are both enjoyable and potentially harmful, we must be prepared to broach the issues openly and honestly? This lesson was learnt some time ago by the Dutch who have been able to develop a system of controlled access to cannabis which, in harness with honest education and active social policies, has led to lower rates of consumption and far fewer drug related problems than is the case in this country.

And finally.

To anyone prepared to be objective, it ought to be abundantly clear that during 40 odd years of trying to legislate and 'criminal justice' our way out of cannabis consumption, the very thing that was designed to be curtailed has, in fact become commonplace and there is no earthly reason for thinking that change is just around the corner.

Common sense therefore bellows at us: 'TRY ANOTHER WAY'.

Can we not bow to the inevitable and accept that what is needed is a pragmatic response to something that is here to stay so that we might manage the situation far better? Would it be so hard to envisage a system where legal and controlled access to a substance that is quality assured is made possible? A system where safer methods of consumption than smoking, such as vapourisers, can be developed and promoted in order to genuinely reduce harm? And shouldn't it be the absolute right of a young person to be given full and honest information about a drug so widely available and used that almost all of them will come into contact with it in some way?

You tell me. All comments are very warmly welcome.

Will

B.S. Postscript 9th June 2008
Are our young people perhaps merely being fobbed off with lip-service drugs and alcohol information websites such as Talk to Frank http://www.talktofrank.com/home_html.aspx ?
And has research been conducted to determine whether smoking hairspray and molton glass induces psychosis?