I've spent all afternoon reading their report 'Cannabis: Classification & public health' and having considered all the facts and figures, what surprises me is not that they recommended that Cannabis be kept as a Class B substance (possession of which is punishable, in theory, by 2 years in prison); or that our socially authoritarian, meddling gummint upgraded it to Class B (punishable by 5 years in prison), but why on earth it was made illegal in the first place.
The killer fact, the one that the authoritarians will repeat ad nauseum is that frequent use of cannabis doubles the risk of a 'psychotic outcome'. Given that the report also states that "schizophrenia is a serious mental illness affecting about 0.5% of the UK population over the course of their lives" WTF sort of 'message' is that?
"Kids! Don't smoke dope! It increases the risk of you going bonkers sometime in the next half-century by half a per cent!"
Given that today's kids have got an 50% or so chance of being dead in half a century's time, big f***ing deal is all I can say.
While the coin is palmed
1 hour ago
4 comments:
I suppose there must be a good chance that it doesn't so much "cause" schizophrenia as bring it on a bit earlier.
A bit like smoking - it doesn't cause death, it just brings it on a bit earlier.
But we all die; we don't all get schizophrenia.
That's the point - even 99% of frequent users never, ever get schizophrenia.
Post a Comment