What are these anti-cannabis people on that distorts their perception of reality?

“Smoking just one cannabis joint raises danger of mental illness by 40 percent,” screeches the Daily Mail.
The Independent on Sunday apologises for having previously advocated decriminalisation, gasping that, “Record numbers of teenagers are requiring drug treatment as a result of smoking skunk, the highly potent cannabis strain that is 25 times stronger than resin sold a decade ago.”
The stories are supposedly based on a report in the medical journal The Lancet.
Meanwhile, the Irish edition of the Mirror frets about a New Zealand study which it claimed has proven that “A single cannabis joint causes as much damage to the lungs as smoking five cigarettes.”
These reports are part of a campaign to keep the ban on cannabis and, in Britain, to force its reclassification from a Class C to a Class B drug.
There is no truth in any of these yarns.  
The propaganda campaign has coincided with the shock-horror revelation that new British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith once sampled the weed. “I think it was wrong that I smoked it. I have not done it for 25 years,” she whinged.
But there is evidence that maybe she still skins up. Asked by the Times whether a woman who’d smoked a joint was a suitable head of the ministry responsible for drugs policy, she replied: “On the whole, I think a human being should do this job.” As opposed to an aardvark, presumably.
Six other members of Gordon Brown’s government then ‘fessed up, each lying that they hadn’t enjoyed it.
The British Tories are the most honest party in these islands about cannabis. Back in 2000, after mad bat Ann Widdecombe proposed on-the-spot fines for possession of even the tiniest amount, eight members of the shadow cabinet recalled putting one together. Seven confessed to having enjoyed it. Said Tim Yeo: “A much more pleasant experience than having too much to drink. I found it agreeable.”
Of course he did. Why else would people have used cannabis for millennia?
Cleopatra and Mark Anthony were accurately depicted in the recent BBC/HBO production Rome stoned out of their skulls as they plotted Octavian’s comeuppance.
OK, that one didn’t work out too well. But it wasn’t the fault of the dope.
The Bible, which a remarkable number of citizens say they believe is the word of God, declares: “Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth... And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.” (Gen. 1:29-31)
He didn’t say every herb-bearing seed except cannabis.
“Take thou also unto thee principal spices, of pure myrrh five hundred shekels, and of sweet cinnamon half so much, even 250 shekels, and of qaneh-bosm [cannabis] 250 shekels,” He instructed Moses. “And thou shalt anoint the tabernacle of the congregation therewith... and the altar of burnt offerings.” (Exodus 30:22-29)
A shekel was 16.37 grams: we are dealing here with half a stone of flowering cannabis. No wonder Moses was found babbling to a bush up a mountain and thinking the conversation really profound.
But still we have disbelievers promoting the delusion that cannabis is more dangerous than alcohol.
No. It. Is. Not.
Take this business of new super-strength cannabis sending rates of mental illness rocketing.
Ben Goldacre pointed out in his Bad Science column in the Guardian: “To get their scare figure, the Independent compared the worst cannabis from the past with the best cannabis of today. But you could have cooked the books the same way 30 years ago: in 1975 the weakest herbal cannabis analysed was 0.2% [active ingredient, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol]; in 1978 the strongest was 12%.”
Which would suggest, according to the Independent’s logic, that cannabis became 60 times stronger between 1975 and 1978.
If it’s 25 times stronger now than it was then, there must be gear on the street today 1,500 times more potent than when Jacqui Spliff was skinning up.
Where can it be found and how much is it an ounce?
The Lancet report did say that there is a correlation between cannabis use and schizophrenia. It did not extrapolate a causal connection. But medical diagnoses of schizophrenia – as distinct from loose media usage – are, anyway, rare. Even if causality were to be established, the 40 percent figure would mean 800 extra cases a year across Britain and Northern Ireland. Goldacre estimates there are six million current or former cannabis users in the UK. It seems to me a very high figure. Let’s halve it. This would mean that one in every 3,750 cannabis users would be liable to schizophrenia in an average year. Not good. But a long, long way distant from what’s conveyed in the claim that “one cannabis joint raises danger of mental illness by 40 percent.”
Or take the claim that one joint is as damaging as five cigarettes – which the Mirror told readers “comes a week after research suggested smoking a single joint increases the risk of psychotic illness by 41 percent.” The New Zealand study suggested that the prime factors explaining this phenomenon included that, “cannabis is usually smoked without a filter... to a shorter butt length... (and) inhaled more deeply.”
Nothing to do with the nature or composition or characteristics of the substance itself, then. Which, again, isn’t at all what the headline conveyed.
That cannabis can be harmful seems to me self-evident. Taking smoke of any kind into your lungs is bad for you. And there are obvious, commonplace circumstances in which the use of any mind-altering substance will be dangerous.
But people are well capable of deciding these matters for themselves if they are given the facts. Mangling the facts for propaganda purposes serves no good purpose.
In 3,000 years of known marijuana use, there has never been a recorded case of death by overdose. Name one other drug of which that can be said.
Has anybody ever seen a gang of people high on hash kicking in somebody’s head?
Is there anybody who hasn’t seen a gang of people high on alcohol kicking in somebody’s head?
Is there anybody who doesn’t have a friend or neighbour or family member who wasted his or her life and perhaps died a pitiable death as a result of addiction to drink?
How many hash-users do you know at death’s door from use of the drug?
So which is the relatively dangerous drug, and which the relatively benign?
The other and most pressing reason for decriminalising cannabis – and other drugs – is that its illegal status is a prime factor in fomenting crime. This is obvious.
What are the gangs in Dublin and elsewhere, which have been slaughtering one another and misfortunate bystanders, feuding about? Control of the drugs trade.
There is no more certain way of drastically reducing violent crime than decriminalising drugs.
When alcohol was illegal in the US during Prohibition, it was associated with gangsterism, murder and vice. When the ban was lifted, the connection was broken.
There is no reason to believe that things would work out any differently with regard to illegal drugs today.
The dangerous, dishonest campaign against cannabis should be countered at every opportunity.