Proof that cannabis does cause violence

FOR a long time, those in medicine and the law have been concerned about a link between cannabis and violence.

This has been largely dismissed by the pro-drugs lobby as an association, not proof of a cause. The difference is important to scientific enquiry, as revealed by a telling example given recently by Professor Robert Pickard, a former government advisor.

He says the rise in deaths of hedgehogs on the roads since the end of World War II mirrors the rise in television sales, but it would be daft to suggest that TVs are killing hedgehogs: it’s an association, not a cause.

The evidence linking cannabis and violent crime is compelling: regular use of the drug doubles the risk of a psychotic episode or schizophrenia.

And time and again, courts hear how people have become psychotic after smoking cannabis and, in the grips of paranoia and delusions, have murdered someone. The gallery of victims should shame those in the liberal elite who insist there’s no definitive evidence of cause and effect.

But a new study has now provided just this. Researchers followed 1,100 patients for a year after discharge from a psychiatric hospital and those who used cannabis were two-and-a-half times more likely to be violent.

So now there’s clear proof of a causative link, have we witnessed a volte-face from the pro-cannabis lobby? Of course we haven’t, because it was never really about the science.

They want to smoke cannabis, and as soon as science brings doing this into question, they simply brush it aside. Particularly frustrating are the smug, ageing hippies who claim that because they’re still here, it must be fine.

They look back on a youth spent smoking spliffs with pathetic, misplaced nostalgia, and fail to realise that, not only did plenty of people not make it through the Sixties and Seventies unscathed, but the super-strong cannabis of today is almost an entirely different product.

How many more lives must be ruined before the pro-drugs lobby admit they got it wrong?