Tim Newark
cannabis are invariably a gateway to harder drugs – heroin, for instance. But they are also not as soft as advocates like to portray them. The vast majority of cannabis seized by police in recent years is high potency “skunk”. It contains a greater concentration of the intoxicant chemical THC that is very detrimental to young people’s brains, causing devastating cases of paranoia, memory loss, hallucinations and other serious psychotic conditions.
Smoking cannabis is linked to increasing criminality among young people as it impacts on the normal development of their brains.
Just when the nanny state is going into overdrive to stop us drinking, smoking and eating too much, it seems crazy that government should send out the mixed message that it is okay to indulge in another range of damaging substances.
At the moment about six per cent of adults claim they have used cannabis. Do we really want that to increase just when we’re trying to bring down the numbers of hard drinkers and smokers?
For five years under Tony Blair, cannabis was downgraded from a class-B to a class-C drug, but in 2009 this was reversed because of the very real health concerns. Police, however, blame budget
YOUNGSTERS can quite rightly laugh at the hypocrisy of their parents getting pickled on fine wines at a dinner party and then telling them not to indulge in intoxicants.
But that’s just the point. If after thousands of years of our society normalising alcohol it is still a major problem for so many of us, why are we considering broadening the array of easily available stimulants? It is best to keep these other drugs on the margins of society and continued criminalisation is the best way of doing this.
Through effective public education, medical treatment and shocking stories of when drugs go wrong, the use of cannabis in the UK has actually gone down over the past 20 years from above 10 per cent of adults to the current six per cent. We should encourage this downward trend, not reverse it.
In California, its legal consumption has gone up. No surprise there, but those who have tried it and rejected it say they don’t like the way it makes them feel dysfunctional. Surely we want less dysfunctionality in our society not more?
The Golden State might have an enviable reputation for taking it easy but I prefer the English attitude of a bit more selfdiscipline.
To that end I’ll be allowing my children to sample the delights of a few glasses of sparkling wine but will continue to frown on puffing a spliff. That’s enough socially acceptable intoxication for me.