Branson is wrong on drugs

SIR RICHARD BRANSON has challenged me on the letters page of our sister paper, the Daily Mail.

Sir Richard is peeved because I have publicised the increasingly undeniable link between marijuana and mental illness. I have also pointed out the apparent link between such illness and hideous, crazy violence.

Examples of these mad, futile and savage attacks occur in the media every week or two. Teenage killer Scarlett Jenkinson, who smoked dope at school at the age of 13, is yet another example.

For some reason Sir Richard did not declare any personal interest in the decriminalisation of marijuana, which he calls for, though he once told Piers Morgan that he had smoked it with his son, saying, ‘I don’t think smoking the occasional spliff is all that wrong.’

Yet even Sir Richard now admits there may be a problem with it. He says ‘no serious proponent’ of weakening the drug laws will ‘downplay the risk of potent cannabis strains to mental health’.

Glad to hear it, though I do wonder where and when he himself has actively used his great media power to draw attention to this menace, and would be grateful if he would let me know. But his main claim is that dismantling our defences against this horrible substance will somehow reduce the danger, leading to ‘regulation’ and lower-strength strains.

This claim has been shown to be wrong, and he has no excuse for not knowing this. In Canada, and in the US states where legalisation and ‘regulation’ have been tried, the ‘unregulated’ illegal market continues to flourish alongside legal shops. And I wonder how Sir Richard’s claims that legalisation has not been followed by ‘notable increases in mental health issues or violent crime’ will stand up to serious research a few years hence.

What he calls ‘prohibition’, the actual enforcement of laws against marijuana possession, works well in Japan and South Korea, as it did once here. It is perfectly workable. Sir Richard is wrong. Protect your children from this insidious danger, and ignore him.