Peter Reynolds

This is very difficult data to track down but it’s a fact that needs to be clearly understood as the hard right, authoritarian press ramps up its anti-cannabis scaremongering this week.

Coercive medical treatment is unethical and possibly, in some cases, illegal but it is the principal route by which people in the UK are forced into GP and community health ‘treatment’ for cannabis ‘addiction’ or ‘cannabis use disorder’ as it is now termed.

Most people are told to go into treatment by the courts in return for a lighter sentence or no sentence at all. Young people are also ordered into treatment by the courts or by their school or college as an alternative to being expelled.

Public Health England’s own data showed that 89% of under-18s in treatment were coerced into it, only in 11% of cases did the patient themselves or their families believe they needed it.

SOURCE: Unfortunately as with so much drugs related information, the government has ceased to collect the data and the archives have been removed. The organisation Public Health England has now been shut down but for the sake of accuracy this was the source of this information: Table 2.4.1 http://www.nta.nhs.uk/uploads/young-peoples-statistics-from-the-ndtms-1-april-2015-to-31-march-2016.pdf