Posts Tagged ‘cannabis’
There’s No Such Thing as ‘Medical Cannabis’
I am increasingly concerned about the ‘medical cannabis industry’ and its resistance to wider reform. These people, some of them at least, have forgotten very quickly who got them the business opportunity in the first place!
Of course, there is no such thing as ‘medical cannabis’. The more accurate language is ‘medicinal cannabis’ but the preferred term has to be ‘prescription cannabis’. It’s exactly the same product as is sold on ‘the streets’, grown in people’s lofts, in illicit ‘factories’ or in hugely expensive licensed facilities. Often, still, the ‘legal’ variety is of inferior quality.
There’s also no truth in the argument that prescription cannabis is safer or lower in THC. The vast majority of what is prescribed in the UK is what the media would call ‘skunk’. Unless you’re underage or smoking it with tobacco, it is safe, much safer than many other things in your kitchen cupboards.
These divisions in the cannabis sector, stoked by newcomers from the protectionist pharmaceutical industry will achieve nothing for anyone. We need a unified message on the benefits of cannabis. Whether it’s prescribed for chronic pain, anxiety, multiple sclerosis or whether it’s smoked in a spliff with the lights down and some psychedelic music on, it’s all about making you feel better.
This is the universal truth about cannabis.
Germany Legalises Cannabis. The Most Important News in Drugs Policy in Our Lifetimes – So Far!
I’ve been waiting for this moment for 53 years. Since I first experienced the joy, insight and delight of cannabis as a 13-year old back in 1971, there has been no more important development. A nation state of 83 million people has at last made the move that will roll back prohibition, undermine organised crime, reduce harm and restore some degree of precious liberty to its people.
Since 1983, when I first gave evidence to the UK Parliament on cannabis, I have fought, campaigned and struggled to enlighten British politicians about the enormous harm cannabis prohibition causes and the immense opportunities that it prevents. Ironically, Germany’s very welcome move comes as politics in Britain reaches its very nadir. Only this week, the House of Commons embarrassed the whole nation by its disgusting, self-serving bickering on a debate about the catastrophe unfolding in Gaza. Of the many politicians I have met over the past 40 years, only a handful have earned my respect. The majority are concerned only with their own and their party’s short-term interest. My work on drugs policy has brought this home to me and the shameful approach of our politicians to the rabid slaughter of innocents confirms this.
My interest in cannabis reform was entirely selfish to begin with. I was outraged at an interference with my personal liberty that had no basis in science, nor in common sense policy. Quickly though I was consumed with the pressing need of so many who could benefit from cannabis as medicine. It was this that lit a fire within me and has driven my work.
There have been important milestones. California legalised medical access in 1996. The US states of Colorado and Washington legalised adult-use in 2012 and the following year Uruguay become the first nation state to see the light. Canada, with a population of 35 million, became the largest nation to legalise in 2018 and out-of-the-blue, in November of that year, the UK legalised medical access. Not through any rational or evidence-based policymaking but solely because the government suffered severe media embarrassment over the plight of two very young, epileptic children, Billy Caldwell and Alfie Dingley. Although very welcome, since then the UK has only gone backward on drugs policy. Currently we have a nasty, vindictive approach to people who use illicit drugs, yet the police operate de facto decriminalisation of personal possession. Meanwhile, powerful drugs gangs have taken over our streets and our negligent approach to drugs policy drives most crime, violence, exploitation of the vulnerable and societal breakdown.
In Germany, from April, it will legal for adults to possess up to 50 grams at home, up to 25 grams in public and each household may cultivate three plants. Cannabis social clubs of up to 500 members will be able to grow cannabis collectively and distribute it amongst their members. There’s a great deal of room for improvement in these arrangements. The clubs are a misguided response to fear of establishing a commercial market but in fact they are an ideal opportunity for cover of criminal gangs. I have no doubt that eventually a sensible, legally regulated, commercial market will be introduced but today is not the day to complain. Today is a cause for great celebration!
It is certain that Germany’s move will influence the rest of the world, particularly Europe, the EU and my adopted homeland, Ireland. I am hopeful for at least decriminalisation in the near future. But in Britain, I am not optimistic. The crass stupidity of both Conservative and Labour politicians knows no bounds. With very few exceptions, their desire to posture as ‘tough on drugs’ trumps any evidence, science or common sense. Reform will come eventually in the UK, probably, just like medical access, it will arrive suddenly and not through any rational process but because of grubby politicking. Such is the reality of living under the small minds and self-interests of British MPs.
Reasons to be Hopeful on Drugs Policy
You can be forgiven for a sense of despair if you live under the rule of the Conservative and Labour Party in Britain or the Fine Gael/Fianna Fail/Green Party coalition in Ireland. Our politicians are obsessed with pushing a ‘tough on drugs’ narrative. It’s an easy, cheap, go-to headline-grabber rather than addressing the real issues on drugs policy.
There are a few hopeful signs. But not in Britain. The dullard consensus between Conservative and Labour is depressing and another manifestation of the sickness that pervades all our political discourse. In Ireland, politicians are paying lip service to reform but the recent Citizens’ Assembly on Drugs Use has forced the issue along, despite best efforts to rig the outcome.
The hope comes from the west, that re-scheduling of cannabis in the USA is about to be confirmed and from the east, that Germany seems to have finally resolved its cannabis reform bill and decriminalisation should take effect within a few months.
So Britain and Ireland are getting squeezed. Both countries face elections later this year. Drugs policy will not be an election issue in either country but crime, violence and anti-social behaviour will be. There’s a complete failure, a refusal, to see the link between bad drugs policy and these problems. In fact, it’s one of the principal causes of societal breakdown but not something that politicians will face up to.
Neither rational argument, nor evidence-based campaigning have any immediate effect on drugs policy. Over many years they do have some impact as understanding across society is improved and eventually wiser politicians come into office. While we’re stuck with those brought up with the ‘War on Drugs’; logic, evidence and common sense make no difference. They continue to ‘Just Say No’.
Nothing seems to move politicians except media embarrassment. It was only the tabloid coverage of Alfie Dingley and Billy Caldwell that shamed Theresa May into legalising prescription cannabis. More recently, the UK Post Office scandal has shown that government and civil service are perfectly capable of acting quickly when it suits them but they prefer a life of indolence and procrastination. There’s an almost endless list of scandals that the Conservatives have preferred to ignore: contaminated blood, sodium valproate birth defects, Grenfell, Windrush, etc, etc. Labour will do exactly the same when they get into power.
In Ireland, despite the recommendations on cannabis by the Oireachtas Justice Committee and the Citizens’ Assembly, unbelievably the government has decided they need another committee but they’re going to put it off for nine months by which time the election will be imminent. It really is farcical. ‘Yes Minister’ and the Office of Circumlocution from ‘Little Dorrit’ aren’t fiction, they are factual narratives.
So while we must keep on with our efforts in campaigning and education for the long-term, politicians aren’t really interested in us or in reasoned argument. We’re wasting our time expecting it. We have to find the lever that will cause them embarrassment, show them an immediate personal gain or rely on broader international pressures before they will do the right thing.
Smoking Weed and Watching the West Wing
It’s my new favourite thing
I’ve watched it before, of course but then it was sporadically, just as I managed to catch it. This time, though, I’m going through religously, episode by episode and there are more than 20 episodes in each season.
It’s hypnotic. The characters are wonderful. It’s production values stand up very well for a show that is 20 years old. It has that great appeal of being about real life, real issues and events that I remember clearly but all woven into a gripping fictional narrative. The TV equivalent of a ‘page turner’.
But the thing that has really hit me, assisted by the insight that cannabis facilitates, is that this is a fantasy. A wild, outrageous fantasy that has very little relationship to real life. It portrays politicians and those who work in politics as noble, with great integrity, high ideals, wonderful ambitions, most of all, principled. And this, of course, is nonsense.
It’s taken me more than 40 years working with politicians, mostly in the UK but the last seven or eight in Ireland as well, to finally accept the truth. With a handful of exceptions from the hundreds that I have met, they are sordid, self-serving and worthless. Our political system in the West is a waste of time and resources. It has created terrible wars, injustice and achieved very little. Any good that mankind has achieved is despite politics, not because of it. I see this more clearly now than I ever have before.
Ireland’s Best Chance Ever for Effective Drugs Policy Reform
As the Citizens’ Assembly on Drugs Use meets for the fourth time (2nd, 3rd September), it is at a crucial point which will determine its usefulness. Either it will move on to examine the broad range of drugs use and wider policy or it will continue to ignore and exclude 90% of its subject from consideration, focusing only on problematic use and treatment services.
Whatever recommendations the the Citizens’ Assembly on Drugs Use makes, it is up to the government to decide on them. Same-sex marriage and abortion rights achieved legislative reform through this route but response to the recent Citizens’ Assembly on Biodiversity Loss has been very different. The government and our political leaders have failed to implement any its 150 recommendations to protect nature. It was almost certainly a mistake to make so many recommendations and this has given politicians the excuse they need to turn away and fail to act. It could well be the same on the difficult and controversial issue of drugs.
Yet nothing demands more immediate and urgent action. All the violence, disorder and anti social behaviour about which there is so much concern is driven by criminal drugs markets. Demand for drugs comes from within our communities. It is our families, our sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers that are the customers of these criminal gangs. While in 90% of cases their drug use causes no harm to themselves or others, they enrich and empower the gangsters and government has done nothing to regulate these markets to reduce all the harm they cause.
While politicians refuses to acknowledge and provide sensible and safe legal access for drugs, particularly cannabis, all they do is turn the forces of law enforcement against the communities they are supposed to protect and add to the power and wealth of the drugs gangs.
It is the criminal markets that cause so much harm and only a small proportion of drugs users that suffer health harms. Street dealing, violence, child exploitation, debt intimidation, human trafficking, modern slavery, all these evils stem from the criminal markets which bad drugs policy has allowed to proliferate. And the health harms of drugs are maximised when criminals control their production and distribution, when there is no regulation, quality control, age limits or harm reduction infomation and education provided.
This is Ireland’s best chance ever for effective drugs policy reform and huge responsibility now rests on the shoulders of Paul Reid, chair of the Citizens’ Assembly. In the remaining three meetings, will he encompass the broad agenda which the issue demands or will we continue only to hear about one, narrow aspect?
Clearly, problematic drug use has a terrible impact on those involved and their families but we already know that the answer is properly funded treatment services. Also, problematic drug use drives violent and acquisitive crime as users have no option but to access drugs from criminals at high cost. The answer here is also properly funded treatment services but also regulation of markets, so that legal access is possible but in controlled and safe circumstances.
We need properly funded treatment services, safe consumption rooms, decriminalisation of the user, legally regulated access for adults at least to cannabis, MDMA and possibly cocaine, drug testing services, education and harm reduction services.
Such intelligent, evidence-based and progressive drugs policy will drive the gangsters off our streets. It will stop the violence, the mugging, the anti social behaviour of feral youth, It will reduce health harms, overdoses deaths and all sorts of crime. But it requires courage. It needs politicians to take decisions that will attract the fury of the older, reactionary, authoritarian wing of society but unless we takes these steps then Ireland’s drugs problem is only going to get worse. The demand isn’t going away and unless we find a sensible way of meeting it in safe, regulated fashion then the violent gangsters and everything that flows from their activity will continue.
The Houses of Parliament, the London Drugs Commission and Cannabis
Last week I was invited to give evidence to the London Drugs Commission on the effectiveness of the UK’s drugs laws, focusing on cannabis.
Later that same day I attended the Cannabis Industry Council’s event at the Houses of Parliament where we launched our ‘Protect our Patients’ campaign to enable cannabis prescribing by GPs.
All in all, a good day in London, a city I appreciate much more from afar than when I used to live there!
Dear Lord Falconer,
It was a pleasure to meet you and your colleagues on the London Drugs Commission last week. Thank you for the opportunity to give evidence.
I am writing to summarise the key points that I made.
- There have been a number of studies and papers published on the costs/benefits of cannabis legalisation and regulation, including the paper by Chris Snowdon of the IEA who was also in our meeting. The IEA, the Taxpayers’ Alliance, Health Poverty Action, the Adam Smith Institute, the Beckley Foundation with the University of Essex and the LSE have all published well-researched analyses. I endorse them all but none is as comprehensive or uses the variety of sources (many no longer available) as the study that CLEAR Cannabis Law Reform commissioned in 2011 from the Independent Drug Monitoring Unit. Although now 12 years old, it remains as relevant as ever. The price of cannabis has, if anything, reduced while all other costs have increased.
‘Taxing the UK Cannabis Market’, 2011, Atha et al, projects a net annual gain to the UK economy of between £3.4 billion to £9.5 billion based on a £1 per gram cannabis sales tax in addition to VAT. See the attached table which neatly summarises this. I have also attached a full copy of the study.
- Cannabis is not harmless and you won’t find anyone serious who makes this claim. However its health harms are systematically and consistently exaggerated. Peanuts and shellfish cause more health harms. Finished admission episodes to hospital for ‘mental and behavioural problems’ related to cannabinoids are at one-fifth the rate of such admissions for alcohol. What appears to be a massive increase in community-based treatment for young people is confounded because 89% of such treatment is coercive. That is, such ‘treatment’ is imposed by authorities such as educational institutions or the courts as an alternative to suspension/expulsion or harsher sentences. (Sources NHS, DHSC)
The University of York estimates the risk of a diagnosis of psychosis associated with cannabis use for regular users is 1 in 20,000. Comparatively, the National Geographic Society estimates the lifetime risk of being struck by lightning at 1 in 3,000.
However, the more harmful you think cannabis is, the more irrational and irresponsible it is to leave the market unregulated and controlled by criminals.
- Cannabis prohibition creates deep and far reaching fractures in our society which affect everyone. With the value of the market at least three times that of Class A drugs such as heroin and cocaine, it is the principal provider of regular cashflow to organised crime. It drives gangsterism, street dealing, underage use, violence, knife crime, intimidation, exploitation, county lines, human trafficking, contaminated products, societal breakdown and authoritarian policing of people’s private lives.
When government finally takes responsibility for the cannabis market and regulates it, the benefits will transform society, making our streets safer and reducing crime of all sorts. Prohibition of this largely benign and very popular substance has turned the forces of law enforcement against the communities they are supposed to protect. This policy was always destined to fail and persisting with it has caused immense, incalculable harm.
If I can be of further assistance please let me know.
Kind regards,
Peter Reynolds
Staffordshire Company, Dalgety, Licenced to Cultivate Cannabis for Medical Use. On the Board of Directors, Jacqui Smith, Ex-Labour Home Secretary.
It’s excellent news that following on from Celadon Pharmaceuticals last month, the MHRA and Home Office have now issued a second set of licences to produce cannabis-based products for medical use (CBPM). Dalgety says it will be producing bulk dried flower, ground and pelletised flower, pure crystallised extracts, blended oils, solids and active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) as powders and extracts.
Reported on Staffordshire Live
But look who’s on the board. Former Staffordshire Chief Constable, Jane Sawyers, who was executive lead for drugs investigation and enforcement but most extraordinarily, Jacqui Smith the former Labour Home Secretary! It was she who was responsible for upgrading cannabis from a class C to a class B drug in 2007 and then famously in 2012 said it had been a mistake. After defying the ACMD’s advice she later reflected that “some people could use cannabis without harm and that education would have been a better option than criminalisation”. Source: Daily Telegraph
Some will cry hypocrisy and it is remarkable how many politicians completely reverse their position on drugs policy when they leave office. What this really shows is that the stupidity of current policy is well understood in government but our so-called leaders are too cowardly to face up to it.
But I welcome Ms Smith’s now wholehearted conversion to common sense. Perhaps it will influence others. I alss welcome this second set of licences. I firmly believe that domestic production is what will improve qualty and service for UK patients and eventually lead to more far reaching cannabis reform.
AUDIO. LBC Radio, 5th March 2023. Clare Foges interviews Peter Reynolds about Prince Harry’s claim that cannabis has helped with his mental health.
Listen Here
I kept my temper and remained polite and civil but this woman is infuriating. This is a defining example of how a badly informed journalist with an agenda can cause immense harm with falsehood and myth.
I’ve read the rubbish she has published on cannabis previously and she is totally sucked in and convinced by the reefer madness propaganda.
I think I completely demolished her. I was also amused that as a professional journalist she doesn’t understand the difference between ‘infer’ and ‘imply’.
Our Streets are Ruled by Violent Drugs Gangsters, Yet Neither Government nor Media will Address our Failed Drugs Policy
Apart from mindless drug war rhetoric, being ‘tough on drugs’, ‘clamping down on dealers’, or. most mindbogglingly-stupid-of-all ‘tackling the scourge of middle-class drug takers’, our so-called ‘leaders’ don’t want to talk about drugs.
Politicians do all they can to avoid the issue. Both BBC and ITV treat the subject of drugs as unacceptable viewing. Reckless use of alcohol is OK but consumers of other drugs are always portrayed as degenerates. Acres of newsprint and hours of TV and radio are devoted to issues such as trans rights, affecting just 0.5% of the population, while 30% of the population consumes prohibited drugs at some time in their lives but we can’t talk about it.
This is the subject that they dare not speak of. Murders, shootings, knife crime, innocent bystanders killed in gang wars, these are almost always driven by criminal drugs markets. It’s not the drugs, it’s the criminal markets through which they are produced and distributed. So while presenters, journalists, MPs and commentators wring their hands in despair, never ever will they discuss why, what can we do about it, how could we do things differently, what would progressive, evidence-based drugs policy look like?
All the Conservatives have been able to come up with is their ‘Swift, Certain, Tough’ idea for harsher punishments including the probably unlawful threat to confiscate passports and driving licences. The word is that the public consultation has delivered almost nothing but withering criticism of the ideas and nobody in the Home Office knows what to do next.
The Labour Party, to its everlasting shame, is just as out-of-touch with the public. Opinion polls show that around half the population supports reform of the law against cannabis and less than a quarter oppose it but baby-faced Wes Streeting is even toying with the idea of prohibiting cigarettes! Keir Starmer, despite his experience as Director of Public Prosecutions, thinks our drug laws are “about right”. He’s way out of step with his learned friends at the bar then, because most of them think our approach to drugs is idiotic, as do most criminal solicitors, court officials and even many judges.
It’s all too difficult for our precious politicians, so they simply ignore it. Our drugs policy continues exactly the same as it has for over 50 years. Drug deaths rise inexorably to record levels. Dealers run rampant throughout our communities, increasingly exploiting children through county lines. Rates of drug consumption are higher than ever.
Cannabis is ubiquitous and the police really can’t be bothered with it unless there’s something else involved or its big time dealing or cultivation. Taking ecstasy on a night out or at a festival is simply normal for most young people and it’s a very good job it’s such a safe drug. Considering it’s completely unregulated, of unknown strength and purity, the death rates are very low, much lower than for over-the-counter painkillers. Millions of tablets are taken every weekend and we get about 50 deaths a year. If the product was properly controlled. with known strength and uncontaminated, probably noone would die at all. It would be as safe as a cup of tea.
Yet consumption of the most dangerous drug of all, alcohol, is celebrated, promoted and politicians use taxpayers’ money to subsides their own consumption of it in Parliament’s bars. They delight in having their photographs taken in drug consumption rooms, otherwise known as pubs but they refuse to allow overdose prevention centres, claiming there is no evidence they work, despite New York’s facilities halting over 700 overdoses in just one year.
This is one of the biggest issues of our time and politicians should, of course, be addressing it. I’m not letting them off the hook but actually I think our broadcasters bear the heaviest responsibility. The press is a caricature of itself on the subject. We can expect nothing serious or balanced from the Daily Mail or the Telegraph and they do rake in £800 million per year in alcohol advertising so perhaps it’s no surprise. But the BBC is letting us down. It is timid to the point of being irresponsible in its lack of coverage and debate. Until the issue is given the prominence it requires, it is easy for politicians to do nothing except tell us how tough they are.
Of course the problem is that any rational investigation of the subject is bound to conclude that legally regulated markets and accessibility based on scientific assessments of harm have to be the answer. While the people are ready for this, our luddite, regressive establishment isn’t.