Heedless greed of Big Dope

THE resemblance between the Big Dope lobby and Big Tobacco is astonishing. Both share a heedless greed which allows them to ignore the terrible illnesses associated with their products, as long as they bring in the cash. Both use doctors to claim that harms are exaggerated or even that these things can be good for you. So no big surprise that British American Tobacco has revealed it is moving into marijuana, something the BBC idiotically described as a ‘less harmful product’ in a report last week. I am endlessly fascinated by the way people who eat vegan burgers, prefer bikes to cars, buy organic milk, hate fast-food and soft-drink billionaires, are so often also keen supporters of Big Dope, the worst and cruellest greed lobby in modern human history. Why does cannabis, increasingly associated with the miseries of lifelong mental illness and with violent, crazed crime, get this free pass?