This article was first published in July 2007. It is made available online here as part of Scribo Ergo Sum’s backdating process.
Cannabis.Whatever you just thought upon reading that word, discard it. No prejudge. Read the rest of the article imaging you’ve never heard of it. I’ve always hated the term ‘exposé’ – it conjures up an altogether far too pretentious and arrogant image to make me comfortable with it. So I’d call this an article of information - not least because of the large amount of people who already know the facts I’m going to set out.Let’s start somewhere near the beginning of the study of cannabis. When the CIA studied it as a potential truth drug during the Cold War, they discarded it as not fitting for their purpose, concluding, “It may be stated that, generally speaking, the reaction will be one of great loquacity and hilarity.” Their own playful assessment stands in stark contrast to the policy they would later enforce.
The National Commission on Drug Abuse (who submitted their report to Nixon – at his own request - whilst the American Government was considering whether to criminalise cannabis) concluded that, “Considering the range of social concerns in contemporary America, marihuana does not, in our considered judgment, rank very high. We would deemphasize marihuana as a problem.” The report concluded that cannabis should remain legal. The Nixon administration ignored this advice.
Moving to modern times and our own country, the most recent scientific British report placed cannabis 11th dangerous of 20 drugs listed, behind alcohol at 5th and tobacco at 9th – drugs rated not only on danger to the taker, but also criteria such as possible danger to society, potential for dependence etc. In addition, the 2005-6 House of Commons Science and Technology Committee noted the following things, expanded upon below:
- Although cannabis had “real and significant” effects on mental health, “the consumption of cannabis is neither a necessary, nor a sufficient, cause for the development of schizophrenia”.
- [They] have found no conclusive evidence to support the gateway theory.
To explain some of the reasons why Gateway Theory has been discredited – though I know of two studies which support it (both of which have been challenged over flaws in methods), most do not and the facts remain that the vast majority of cannabis users used alcohol and/or tobacco before any illegal drug (thus making them equally viable for ‘gateway’ status) and that the vast majority never actually move on to hard drug abuse.
On mental illness, a 2001 report on the link between cannabis and psychosis written by the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, “suggests that cannabis use does not cause cases of psychosis that would not otherwise have occurred.” I suppose any substance that could trigger latent psychosis obviously cannot be said to be entirely safe, but by the same rationale, one would make nuts and other common allergy causers illegal – around 200 Americans die of food allergy each year, which is 200 more per year than die of cannabis poisoning, which is yet to claim a victim in recorded human history.
In fact, cannabis is, by virtually every medical and social standard, extremely safe. It is not (contrary to popular opinion) physically addictive to any significant degree – being less addictive than caffeine, nicotine or alcohol. Unlike alcohol, which is a factor in around 70% of peak A&E admissions, it rarely leads to violence or property destruction.
On the relative dangers of legal and illegal drugs (in addition to the earlier point that no-one has ever died of cannabis poisoning – it is simply not toxic enough for anything but an almost inconceivably colossal overdose to be lethal), in the USA in 2000, around 17,000 people died because of illegal drugs. This includes overdose, suicide, motor-vehicle related deaths etc. Assuming the estimated 3 million heavy users are the only ones who use illegal drugs in the country, that’s a death rate of 0.57%. In the same year, tobacco had a death rate of 0.725%. So, even assuming the worst-case scenario for illegal drugs, they are half as lethal as tobacco. The death rate for illegal drugs, obviously, would decrease further should they become legal, because of massive decreases in impurities. Again, just as obviously, cannabis is but one (and one of the safest) illegal drug among many and the study also points out that death rates for alcohol can be as high as 1.47% for ‘harmful drinking’, defined as up to 6 drinks for males, 4 for females. How many readers consume that many on nights out, or even nights in?
Surely, though, despite all this evidence, cannabis should remain illegal? After all, it would never have been made illegal in the first place (and continue to remain illegal) unless it really was dangerous. Going back to the start of the article, however, we have one American organisation dismissing at least the short-term effects of cannabis as nothing to worry about, while another conducts a study on the drug and concludes it should remain legal.
Again, bringing the research back to our country and the present day, the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (advisors to the British Government) “found no statistically significant correlation between the Class of a drug and its harm score,” and that, “The current classification system has evolved in a systematic way from somewhat arbitrary foundations with seemingly little scientific basis.” It concludes that, on the basis of harm, “alcohol would be classed as B bordering on A, while cigarettes would probably be in the borderline between B and C.”
So, the scientific study and prevailing scientific opinion (both, as noted, at the origin of drug prohibition and in the present day) believes cannabis is safe enough to be legal, but what are the dangers of actually implementing its legalisation? Well, not many. You may not agree with the idealistic moral view that every person has the right to do whatever they wish with their own bodies, so long as they harm no other individual, but practically, the arguments for legalisation are, if anything, more compelling.
Holland has a lenient stance on cannabis and other drugs, so you’d obviously expect drug use to be quite high there. Which it isn’t – percentage consumption is less than America and 7th in Europe. The theory that legalising cannabis severs ties to hard drug use also finds confirmation in the Dutch model – where hard drug usage is one third of that of the UK. Of course, even such strong correlation is not absolute proof of causation, but it is hard to see how the legalisation of cannabis could make hard drug use worse, given the Dutch model and the fact that many drug abusers attribute their hard drug usage to being able to buy heroin from the same person they bought cannabis off.
Legalisation would all but eliminate the criminal drug market, leading to safer drug use through regulation, a colossal reduction in crime rate and subsequent resource freedom (simple reclassification of cannabis saved over £1million in police wages alone during the first year). Prohibition (of which 75% of budgeted money is spent enforcing the laws, not treating abuse) does not work, on any criteria of judgement. Illegal drug use is more prevalent than ever and drugs are easier to get. Drug use is higher than pre-prohibition times, and heroin (the most dangerous illegal drug of all by a large margin in the aforementioned British report) is 600 times cheaper than pre-prohibition days.
The facts contained in this article demonstrate that prohibition is not working, nor was it ever a valid legal response to the case of cannabis. I’ve tried to pull up short of simply voicing my opinion that cannabis should be legalised, but if you read the article objectively (remember what I asked you to do at the very start), it’s hard for me to see how you could conclude anything different. Please discard any prejudgement and look at the facts – numerous scientific studies and those in positions to advise Government on drugs policy all conclude that cannabis is much safer than people generally think, much safer than currently legal drugs and either implicitly or (often) explicitly endorse its legalisation.