Why parents should back legal cannabis
Our descendants will marvel at the fact that we allowed the sale of alcohol and tobacco but not cannabis. All three are potentially deleterious to health, but not equally so. The former prison doctor Theodore Dalrymple, who has made a lifetime study of substance abuse, concludes that alcohol is more addictive even than heroin, in the sense that a sudden withdrawal is more physically traumatic. Tobacco, for its part, is both more addictive and more toxic than pot.
There is a difference, of course, between saying that we wouldn’t do something today and saying that we should change it. A cultural context has grown up around alcohol and tobacco consumption over hundreds of years. Most of us understand, for example, that wine is to be served by the glass and sipped slowly. We occasionally violate that norm, but at least we recognise it. Then again, marijuana is so widespread that it, too, has evolved cultural conventions; indeed, it is less commonly abused than alcohol.
Would legalising cannabis lead to an upsurge in consumption? Possibly. Ending the prohibition would cut prices, which might increase sales. But we should set that against vast benefits: the saving of police time; more tax revenue; a reduction in drugs-related violence; less adulteration with harmful substances; and, let’s not be embarrassed to add, more liberty. We tend to apply a different standard to our children than we applied to ourselves at their age. Like every previous generation, we rationalise that different standard by pointing to supposed environmental changes. We tell ourselves it’s tougher to be a teenager these days, that the peer pressure is more intense, the music more violent, the drugs more potent. Just as our parents did.
Still, if you’re a parent, try to put your finger on what bothers you about the idea of your children smoking weed. My kids range from one to 16, and I’d say I have four main concerns: that they’d fall in with the wrong crowd; that they’d end up ingesting a bad batch; that they might overdo things, becoming withdrawn and dull-witted; or that they might be led onto more dangerous drugs. Now ask yourselves something coldly, fellow parents. Would these possibilities be more or less of a worry in a world where regulated cannabis was sold in Boots?
Back in 1968, Parliament voted to change the clocks for a trial period of three years, so that the country would be on summer hours all year round. In the end, MPs decided not to make the change permanent. They should try something similar with cannabis, lifting restrictions on an experimental basis for two years or so. My guess is that the impact would be far slighter than is often supposed. But there is only one way to find out.