Posts Tagged ‘The Guardian’
Even The Guardian Is Now On The ‘Skunk Scaremongering’ Bandwagon.
Read The Guardian’s Editorial Here
In the last couple of years, even the Daily Mail has shifted its stance on cannabis as it sees opportunities to sensationalise ‘miracle cures’ from medicinal use – the epileptic child now smiling, the cancer patient whose tumour has disappeared. Truth and balance are irrelevant when a dramatic headline is all you’re after.
The Daily Telegraph has become the new home of ‘reefer madness’ with bad science, nasty prejudice and booze-fuelled fear of a safer recreational drug threatening the massive profits of the alcohol industry.
Now, even the Guardian jumps on the ‘skunk scaremongering’ bandwagon with the exaggerated claim that “the risks of heavy teenage cannabis consumption should frighten all of us”. In a backhanded editorial it suggests legalisation because cannabis is dangerous. It claims the consequences of cannabis “abuse are devastating. Psychotic breakdowns smash up lives and can lead to full-blown schizophrenia.” There is little evidence to support such hysteria. In reality, such effects are so rare as to be virtually unheard of and it’s impossible to prove they are caused by cannabis.
Of course we must protect young people, particularly from the high-THC/low-CBD ‘moonshine’ varieties that are a direct result of government policy. However, we cannot compromise facts and evidence for the illusory belief that buying into scare stories will somehow reduce harm. The only way to protect children is by legal regulation with mandatory age limits.
The Guardian makes much of Public Health England’s (PHE) figure that “there are more than 13,000 under-18s in treatment for the consequences of heavy cannabis use in England”. It neglects to mention that PHE also publishes more than 69% are referred by the criminal justice, education and social care systems while only 17% are referred from healthcare and just 11% by themselves or their family. Thus, more than two-thirds are receiving coercive treatment and only 11% actually consider they have a problem.
It is government propaganda that thousands of young people are suffering from mental health problems due to cannabis. Why is The Guardian promoting this myth? Last year, in answer to a Parliamentary question, Jane Ellison MP, minister of state at the Department of Health, revealed there have been average of just over 28 ‘finished admission episodes’ (FAE) for ‘cannabis-induced psychosis’ in young people for each of the past five years.
Of course, each of these 28 cases is a tragedy for the people involved and nothing must distract from that but it clearly shows that in public health terms, ‘cannabis psychosis’ is of negligible significance. To put it into perspective, there are an estimated 3,000 FAEs for peanut allergy each year but we don’t waste £500 million pa on futile law enforcement efforts to ban peanuts!
For 50 years, the Home Office has systematically misled and misinformed the British people about cannabis. Successive generations of young people know they have been lied to. Such dishonest health information is counterproductive. As a result, many children may think that heroin or crack are not as harmful as they have been told.
Cannabis is not harmless but neither is it ‘dangerous’. If you apply that description to it you also have to apply it to energy drinks, over-the-counter painkillers and hay fever remedies. Similarly, whatever scaremongering there is about ‘addiction’, the scientific evidence is that dependency amongst regular cannabis users is slightly less than caffeine dependency amongst regular coffee drinkers – and withdrawal symptoms are similar in nature and intensity.
What we need is evidence-based policy. Government needs to take responsibility for the £6 billion pa cannabis market instead of abandoning our young people and communities to street dealers and criminal gangs. The benefits to be gained from cannabis law reform are reduced health and social harms, massive public expenditure savings, increased tax revenue and proper protection for the vulnerable, including children.
References
Young people’s statistics from the National Drug Treatment Monitoring System (NDTMS), Public Health England, December 2015
Drugs: Young People. Department of Health written question – answered on 20th March 2015.
Relative Addictiveness of Drugs, Dr. Jack E. Henningfield, NIDA and Dr. Neal L. Benowitz, UCLA, 1994
Cannabis Saves Lives And Cannabis Prohibition Ruins Lives Every Day. All the Media Can Worry About Is Djokovic’s Nose.
“Someone is getting high, can you smell it?”
The BBC, The Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, The Guardian, Al Jazeera, countless international publications, blogs and websites have published this ridiculous story.
Apparently, Novak Djokovic felt “dizzy” because he could smell cannabis during his Rogers Cup semi-final win over Jérémy Chardy in Montreal. Now let’s be clear, the smell of cannabis comes from terpenes, not from cannabinoids. It cannot get you high or dizzy.
I’m pleased that Novak recognises the delightful smell of weed. More and more sportspeople are using it as an aid to recovery. NFL and rugby players are advised to use it to protect against the dangers of concussion or brain injury. Stimulating the endocannabinoid system helps to promote healing and growth. Not long before cannabis is ruled out of sport as a performance enhancer, not just because of blind prejudice against a safer recreational drug.
But it is sickening that so much coverage is given to this when across the world there are so many more important stories about the almost miraculous, life saving, therapeutic effects of cannabis. Similarly, there are important but tragic stories of people being incarcerated for growing the plant or treating their illness with it. There are disgusting stories of corruption in governments, parliaments and bureaucracies where lies and misinformation about cannabis are promoted, mainly to protect vested interests in the alcohol and law enforcement industries.
All the media is interested in is this sort of trivial nonsense, unless of course it’s some mythological scare story about mental illness or deranged axe murderers. A free press is a valuable and essential part of our pretence at democracy. We also need freedom from the lies, misinformation and corrupt agendas of press barons and editors.
“Nazi stormtroopers had identified our house as the home of a Jewish family…”. Now Israel Does The Same In Gaza.
Originally published in the Guardian.
“One night, when I was 13, I was woken by the sound of a door being broken down. Boots stumbled up the stairs, there was loud shouting, and a terrifying series of crashes. Nazi stormtroopers had identified our house as the home of a Jewish family, and this was the night of 9 November 1938, when the Kristallnacht pogrom raged across Germany. Our entire home was destroyed before our eyes, with axes and sledgehammers.
I have a vivid recollection of my father, after the monsters had gone, sitting on the one chair that remained and weeping. I had never seen him weep before. I now realise that, but for the presence of myself and my younger sister, my parents might not have survived the raid. It was a brutal demonstration of our situation. My sister and I left Germany on the last Kindertransport from Düsseldorf in May 1939. We have never had a full account of our parents’ fate.
Even now, I sometimes start up in bed, reliving that night. But in recent weeks, it is more often images of devastation in Gaza – of homes and families destroyed in Israeli targetings of such “military objectives” as the homes of officials in the democratically elected Hamas government – that have recalled the terror of the Kristallnacht. For I can hardly believe that a Jewish government is doing these things. How can Jewish people, aware of their own history, undertake a campaign of collective punishment that kills a higher multiple of the casualties cited as justification, than did the Nazi reprisals for resistance in occupied Europe?
Surely we have reached the point where every government not composed of utter humbugs must join in insisting that an Israeli renunciation of ambitions for expansion beyond the 1947 boundaries is a prerequisite for progress towards reconciliation and peace within a two-state solution. The very doubtful prospect of a unified, multinational, secular state in Palestine appears to be the only alternative.”
Karola Regent
Newport-on-Tay, Fife
Farage On Marr. A Towering Performance.
Nigel Farage, The Marr Show, 1st June 2014
This was Nigel Farage at his very best: the man of the people, relaxed but determined, fair minded but firm, tolerant but strong, patriotic but generous. Really it couldn’t have gone any better.
All the vile abuse hurled at him by the small men and women of the media and the political establishment, the disgraceful BBC bias, the blatant hypocrisy of Tory and Labour that ferment conflict within our country every day. Nigel dealt with them all with a smile and good grace.
He is stronger than ever. The UKIP policies that he hinted at seem sensible and popular. Protest votes will be hardening into solid support. Britain now despises the identikit Cameron, Miliband, Duncan Smith, Balls and the rest. The chattering idiots at the Guardian and the BBC and the Bullingdon Club associate members at the Telegraph and the Times. They’re all as out of touch as each other. The Fleet Street Mafia is as disgraced as the members of the cabinet and shadow cabinet. We want none of you anymore!
UK Drug Strategy 2010 – A Plan To Fail
Mother Knows Best
Gone are the days when central Government tells communities and the public what to do.
Rt. Hon. Theresa May, MP, Home Secretary, December 2010
A slim volume of treacle-like and turgid social worker-speak shot through with a few strands of sharp hypocrisy. See here.
A disappointment? Not really, it’s pretty much what I expected – an authoritarian, moralistic smokescreen behind which the government will do what it wants with no regard whatsoever for the views or the welfare of the people. It stinks.
It claims to be radical in that it turns away from reducing the harms caused by drugs and instead aims to force abstinence. In other words, do as we say or suffer the consequences. It is, in fact, a medieval solution to a 21st century problem. It seems that the British government no longer cares about the harm caused by drugs. All it cares about is that you STOP! This is the ultimate exposition of Nancy Reagan’s discredited “Just Say No” campaign because it really is “just” say “no” – no other option exists. This from a government that advocates giving people methadone to “treat” cannabis use. Can you believe it? That isn’t medieval. It’s prehistoric – or perhaps better described as mid 20th century, a sort of Dr Mengele method.
I give Ms May credit for one thing. She mentions alcohol alongside drugs in the first sentence of her foreword. That is progress but from then on there is little of any value. Nothing that you couldn’t have copied from any out of date A level textbook on social work.
The laughable assertion quoted above that the government doesn’t tell us what to do is just absurd. Never has there been a more hard line approach to the drugs issue. See Edwin Stratton’s article in The Guardian here which reveals just how draconian, anti-civil liberties and severe this government is.
In the penultimate paragraph of her foreword, Ms May acknowledges that there were calls during consultation on the strategy for “liberalisation and decriminalisation”. She dismisses these as not “the answer” but fails entirely to consider the enormous harm caused and crime created by existing policies. I will be making Freedom Of Information requests to determine just how much notice was taken of the consultation.
There is a complete failure to understand or consider the harms of prohibition. Britain now stands as one of the most backward and restrictive countries in the world when it comes to drug policy. We now rub shoulders with those countries that execute people for drug possession. There is no civilised country in the world with a more repressive drugs policy than Britain.
Broken Britain
Emphasis is given to the introduction of elected Police and Crime Commissioners. I support this move. Hopefully, these elected officials, being closer to reality and not ensconsed in Whitehall’s ivory towers, will mitigate some of the damage that this strategy could cause. They will have the impossible job of trying to implement these ideas and will surely give Ms May and her protege James “Broken Britain” Brokenshire some lessons in reality and common sense.
The statistics and figures quoted in the strategy are manifest nonsense. Apparently the economic and social costs of Class A drug use are £15.4 billion per annum while the equivalent figure for alcohol is £18 – 25 billion. Supposedly the total illicit drug market in Britain is worth just £4 – 6 billion per annum while the market for alcohol is £30 billion. There are just 320,000 heroin and/or crack cocaine users but tens of million that use alcohol. These figures just don’t add up. Maybe that’s part of the reason this strategy is so badly conceived and directed.
It’s only part of the reason though. The main problem is that the government’s approach is based on prejudice and an arrogant, moralistic, proselytising stance. See David Nutt’s article here on what the government would do if a completely safe alternative to ecstasy was developed. Prohibition is immoral and evil in itself. When will our politicians wake up to what most of the rest of Europe and the USA already knows?
Powerful Medicine. Gentle Pleasure.
Cannabis, the most widely used illegal drug by a factor of at least 10 barely gets a mention except in passing. This, in itself, exposes the inane content of this strategy. The government apparently intends to deal with cannabis in exactly the same way as it deals with heroin and crack. The medicinal use of cannabis, now a burgeoning industry and source of hope to people all over Europe and America isn’t even mentioned. The crass stupidity of this strategy is almost beyond belief.
So the battle lines are drawn. Every other civilised country in the world is coming to terms with the fact that the war on drugs is unwinnable, even lost. Theresa May, like some mad first world war general, is blowing her whistle and urging on millions more to go over the top into certain death, or at least misery and degradation. Her slightly fey, sweet boy, Colonel Jimmy is hiding behind her, determined to gain credit for something but definitely not doing anything worthwhile, “Crikey! Not me. I’m staying safe.”
This could be a deeply depressing day but at least now we know where we stand. David Cameron and Nick Clegg have completely turned around on the progressive and liberal ideas they have advocated in the past. Nothing is a better indicator of the integrity and intelligence of a government than its drug policy. Britain is shamed by this effort which will inevitably cause more harm, cost more money and ruin more lives.
SECOND UPDATE On Legal Medicinal Cannabis In Britain
This is the third instalment in this story.
1. Legal Medicinal Cannabis In Britain
2. Update On Legal Medicinal Cannabis In Britain
Eventually The Guardian took some notice. See here.
Despite the pleas of those in pain and suffering, the Home Office was talking to Mary O’Hara of The Guardian but not to them. Dozens if not hundreds of medicinal cannabis users had written to the Home Office asking for confirmation that they could go to Holland for a prescription. Not a word was heard.
Jim Starr, the subject of this story, wrote to his MP, and then he wrote again. He heard nothing. He wrote to the Home Office, chasing up his application for a personal import licence. He heard nothing. He wrote again.
Dilatory
Richard Drax, the first timer, newly elected Tory MP for Dorset South just happens to be my MP too, so I wrote to him on Jim’s behalf.
Jim has heard nothing. Richard Drax asked me not to mention his name in any article about Jim. Jim wrote again. I wrote again. We have heard nothing.
Jim’s medicine has run out. We told the Home Office and Richard Drax that it was an urgent medical emergency. We have heard nothing.
I spent the last week on the telephone and exchanging emails with the Home Office. This is the result:
A Home Office spokesperson said:
The UK’s position is clear – cannabis is dangerous and has no medicinal benefits in herbal form. It remains illegal for UK residents to possess cannabis in any form.
Britons benefit from reciprocal laws which allow EU nationals, in limited circumstances, to travel with controlled medicines. We are working with European authorities to ensure the system is robust and not open to abuse.
The Home Office says you can import cannabis to the UK and use it without restriction provided you “are resident in a country where that drug is legally prescribed”. So it’s OK for the Dutch and the Belgians and the Spanish and the Italians and the Czechs and the Poles (and many others) to smoke weed in Britain but not if you’re British.
We Won't Give Up
This is clearly unequal, discriminatory, unjust and unsustainable in law but the Home Office is not about to give in. The only way to resolve this is that either someone must appeal a conviction all the way to the Supreme Court or there must be an application for judicial review.
Stay tuned for the next exciting instalment.
In the meantime, Jim and thousands like him will manage as best as they can.
He’s still heard nothing from either the Home Office or Richard Drax.
The Guardian Dances To The Home Office Tune
An astonishing article in The Guardian today on the Home Office’s attempts to prevent UK patients gaining access to medicinal cannabis. See here.
The Home Office’s position is no surprise. What is astonishing is The Guardian’s inaccurate and poodle-like treatment of the story. The article is little more than an obedient reproduction of a Home Office press release. It takes no account of the gross injustice and cruelty perpetrated by Home Office ministers. Neither does it challenge a position that is cleary unsustainable under EU law.
No one can have expected the Home Office to give in on this issue without a fight. I think we would all have expected far more courage and support from The Guardian.
The Guardian’s editor is Alan Rusbridger. His email address is: alan.rusbridger@guardian.co.uk. I would urge everyone to write to him now to protest at this weak and rather pathetic coverage of an important story.
This is my email. Feel free to copy, edit or use it as you will.
Peter Reynolds 