Billy’s plight is awful – but don’t be duped into legalising dope

PICTURE this. Ten years hence, at the urging of Tory politicians, bishops, churchgoing pseudoconservative columnists, and various other dupes and suckers, Britain has legalised marijuana. It is on sale in the high street. It can be bought in one click on the internet, and at superstores, shopping malls and farmers’ markets. Children smoke it in the street, or eat cannabis sweets.

Politicians have quickly moved to tax it, so filling a large part of the hole in the national finances. But this has had two unintended results.

Everyone in the top level of politics is now irrevocably part of the cannabis lobby, because they dare not lose the revenue which now pays for the NHS. And large numbers of violent and ruthless gangsters are making a good living out of selling illegal dope, at prices far lower than the taxed version.

The police, never that interested, have great difficulty in working out what is legal and what is not, and look the other way as cannabis farms spread into the nicer suburbs.

We know this will happen, in some detail, because of what has already taken place in American states, such as Colorado, which have made the same decision. But there will be more, which is only obvious if you make certain connections which I have been trying to get people to make for some years.

There will be small tragedies, affecting only a child and his parents – a bright teenager whose grades suddenly slide and fail, and who sinks into a life of muttering red-eyed persecution mania, his hopes gone and his life ruined.

There will be more crime, much of it idiotic and ultra-violent, such as the death of Sheffield church organist Alan Greaves, beaten to death on his way home for no reason, some of it categorised as ‘terrorism’ so that its strong links with marijuana are not noticed.

BUT most people in authority, as they do now, will refuse to concede that there is any link. In fact, this refusal will be worse than now, as all the media figures and politicians and police chiefs who argued for legalisation will be most reluctant to admit they made a mistake.

So, though millions will know it was a grave error, it will never be put right. And the country will descend into the Third World, its government and politics together corrupted by a drug that doesn’t just stupefy its users, but also automatically halves the intelligence of its advocates.

But there will be one other interesting development. Once legalisation is achieved, you will hear much, much less about the alleged medical uses of cannabis. These were only ever advanced as propaganda for the drug.

I have never denied that cannabis may have some medical uses. But the truth is that many years of research have yet to come up with much in the way of conclusive evidence for it. And the very few licensed drugs based on cannabis have not been particularly successful or widely used since they were licensed some time ago.

Like everyone else, I sympathise greatly with Charlotte Caldwell, who has struggled since her son Billy’s birth to help him overcome the terrible effects of his epilepsy, a mysterious and deeply distressing thing. I admire her tiger-like, dedicated nurture of her boy and her endless quest for anything that will comfort and succour him.

If I thought that cannabis, in any form, was a proven help to them, then I would say ‘look the other way while she uses it, since Billy’s plight is so bad, and his life so much in peril anyway that practically anything is worth trying to help him. And work day and night to get the drug past the medical regulatory authorities, provided it passes the tests a modern country requires. Then make sure it is widely available to all who suffer in this way’.

With that in mind, I spent a lot of time last week trying to discover the facts of the Caldwell case. My sympathy for Charlotte and Billy remains undimmed.

But I can tell you that I quickly found that this mother and child are surrounded by a high wall of spokesmen, professional PR men, sympathisers and advisers, including one very rich man who has engaged in public campaigns to legalise marijuana for general use. Friendly at first, these sympathis- ers quickly identified that I was not an ally in their cause, which in my view goes way beyond the plight of Charlotte and Billy Caldwell. One simply refused to answer factual questions. One mysteriously stopped taking my phone calls at all. Another brushed me off with a snotty email. Others just fell silent.

But I kept going. I wanted to know what exactly it was that Billy was taking – for there are two quite distinct types of ‘cannabis oil’. One (based on the ingredient CBD) is largely legal. The other (based on the ingredient THC) is not.

I wanted to know who had supplied and prescribed it, and when. This was so I could look up the exact l egal positi on, and t he research, if any, into the effectiveness of the precise oils involved.

IALSO wanted to know about other successful treatments Billy had earlier in his life, when he was largely free of fits for some time. When I submitted my list of questions to one of these spokesmen, he entirely accepted that they were legitimate and reasonable. And so they were.

But the next day I received a gruff and suspicious dismissal from a source I had never even contacted in the first place, claiming Ms Caldwell was ‘very upset by this line of questioning’. So I left it at that. I have no wish to upset her.

But here is what I concluded. This episode has been much more about snake oil than cannabis oil. Charlotte Caldwell is wholly innocent in the matter, but in my view she is being used by others.

They hope that, by associating marijuana with medicine, they can soften its image and soften you up to accept the legalisation they long for. What better evidence for this could there be than William Hague’s sudden decision to support cannabis legalisation? There is absolutely no logical connection between Charlotte Caldwell’s plight and this highly dangerous policy.

The only link is a carefully fanned emotional spasm, in which sympathy for a sick child is skilfully manipulated by PR men into polishing the image of a very dangerous and nasty drug which, if it is legalised, will make this country a far, far worse place to live in.

I admire his mother’s tiger-like quest to help her son. But where is the evidence?