Add definitive subtitle hammering home the legitimacy of the scary headline:
A potent form of cannabis can cause healthy people to develop psychotic illnesses, a new British study has proved.
Proved, you hear? Proved! All right, now deliver the lede that tells us marijuana smokers how we’re destined for the mental ward:
The results appear to confirm a link between psychosis and skunk cannabis, which now accounts for 80 per cent of street seizures of the drug.
Add some related bullet points to raise the reefer madness levels to eleven:
Skunk smokers 18 times more likely to be psychotic
One spliff can mean lifelong mental illness
Mental health charity calls for cannabis study
Don’t worry, by this time few people will notice this little devil in the details:
Scientists at the Institute of Psychiatry in King’s College London made the discovery after running tests on 22 healthy men, aged in their late 20s. They injected them with THC – a major component of skunk cannabis which has been blamed for increasing psychosis among heavy users.
Whoa, hold on! You injected people with straight THC and you’re using that to prove cannabis use can cause psychosis in healthy people?!? I could have saved you the research. Straight THC is highly psychoactive and without other cannabinoids, terpenes, and flavinoids found in herbal cannabis, delta-9-tetrahydrocannibinol metabolizes in the blood into another form of THC that is even more psychoactive!
Oddly enough, while the British worry about this deadly psychotic skunk weed that has risen to (gasp!) 14% THC, their Dutch neighbors won’t even approve of medical marijuana unless it is between 13%-18% THC. Here in America, we approve of a 100% THC, no-other-cannabinoid pill called dronabinol (Marinol) which I will tell you from experience will cause a more profound negative psychological reaction than even the finest 60% THC hash I’ve encountered.
Even the researchers cautioned against making the “Skunk causes psychosis” claim, which, of course, the UK media is required to bury around paragraph eleven:
Dr Morrison said the findings offered “additional evidence that can elicit temporary psychotic-like effects in some people”, but stopped short of suggesting they proved a direct link between psychosis and THC.
He said: “Much more research is needed to clarify if skunk is actually more harmful than traditional cannabis.” More work needed to be carried out on the beneficial effects of CBD in balancing the damaging results of THC.
British reefer madness – just like American reefer madness, except bobbies bust into your flat to arrest you for skunk cannabis, instead of cops busting into your apartment to arrest you for kind marijuana.
Monday, February 16th, 2009 at 12:13 pm | By: Radical Russ
Watch the UK’s latest ‘Talk to Frank’ cannabis ad, where “Simon” is just a typical young male Briton about to light up a joint. He’s happy, because he knows his “Giggles”, “Munchies”, “Happy”, “Dr. Chill”, and “Talkative” personalities will emerge from smoking the reefer. But he really doesn’t want to invite in “Memory Loss”, “Panic Attacks”, “Paranoia, “Pukey”, and “Lazy”. This ad also reminds the viewer that cannabis has been recently upgraded to a scary Class B drug.
I’m waiting for the UK ad with “Pip”, the young male Briton about to quaff a Guiness Stout. Bring on “Happy”, “Outgoing”, “Obnoxious”, “Weepy”, “Confrontational”, “Violent”, “Pukey”, “Mr. Auto Crash”, “Addicted”, “Unconscious”, and “Cirrhosis”.
Thursday, January 29th, 2009 at 4:51 pm | By: Radical Russ
The reclassification of cannabis as a Class B drug has come into effect in England and Wales amid complaints the new laws are “illogical”.
Plans to introduce a “three strikes” system for cannabis possession start with a warning, then an £80 spot fine for a second offence. Scotland and Northern Ireland have opted out of this penalties arrangement for England and Wales, retaining the former system for class B drugs.
Only when a third offence is committed, will the person be liable to arrest and prosecution.
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith decided to reclassify cannabis despite an Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs’ review – commissioned by Gordon Brown – saying it should remain Class C.
Ms Smith said stronger “skunk” varieties account for 80% of the cannabis seized on the streets, and that the drug is nearly three times stronger than in 1995.
The advisory council’s report, Cannabis: Classification and Public Health, described the drug as a “significant public health issue”.
But it said it should still remain a Class C drug, saying the risks were not as serious as those of Class B substances such as amphetamines and barbiturates.
Britain and America are so much alike when it comes to marijuana policy. Both have commissioned independent reviews of cannabis policy, both have had these reviews recommend decriminalization, both have ignored the scientists and the pollsters and the doctors and the people in continuing to punish people for their responsible use of cannabis.
The change is due to come into force in January, reversing Tony Blair’s 2004 downgrading, and raising a maximum jail sentence for possession to five years.
This is despite the Council on the Misuse of Drugs recommendation that cannabis should remain a class C drug.
The government’s reclassification order was made in October but is not due to come into force until 26 January next year.
A letter to the Guardian newspaper, signed by former government chief scientific advisers David King and Lord Robert May, says the drugs classification system must be “credible” and that changing it again would give an “ambiguous message”.
“Cannabis use has fallen in recent years, especially following its downgrading to class C in 2004, and it is obviously unwise to risk reversing that trend.”
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said in June that the drug should return to class B because of “uncertainty” over its impact on mental health.
This would lift the maximum prison sentence for possession from two years to five years.
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith needs to review the latest research on cannabis and mental health. Researchers in Denmark have found no validity to the idea of “cannabis-induced psychosis” and concluded that schizophrenics whose bad reactions to pot preceded their mental illness “would have developed schizophrenia whether or not they used cannabis.”
Since the UK downgraded cannabis from Class B to Class C, they’ve seen cannabis use drop to the lowest levels in a decade. So, naturally, in the face of such success, they’ve decided to go back to Class B.
Much of this change can be traced to the UK media hyping the threat of “skunk”. Here in America, they’ll call it “bud” or “Pot 2.0″, but the argument is the same: this new super-pot is nothing like what you smoked at Woodstock – it’s addictive and will ruin your kids’ lives! It’s not true, of course. There has always been super-potent pot and potency is irrelevant; if it’s more potent, you just smoke less of it. Increased potency does not change the effect of the cannabis – you still get high – but it just takes less smoking to get there, which is a good thing if you don’t like smoky lungs.
Wouldn’t it be nice if drug policy was based on science and medical observation instead of tabloid headlines and ignorant politicians?
Thursday, May 22nd, 2008 at 9:51 am | By: Radical Russ
Looks like the UK reefer madness has now spread to Canada – this is an editorial from Canada’s National Post:
Barbara Kay on the new marijuana: Not your mother’s reefer – Full Comment
The words “intoxicate the brain” bring to mind the Post’s 2007 editorial on marijuana, enunciated in response to evidence that Canada’s marijuana consumption was the highest in the industrialized world: “What is really remarkable about Canada’s status as a cannabis capital is that if you were to set out looking for reasons to worry about it … you would have an awfully hard time finding them. Legalizing pot makes sense.”
What was the editorial board smoking when these words were written? In fact, one would not “have an awfully hard time” finding reasons to worry if one were actually open to finding them.
In 1997, the liberal U.K. newspaper The Independent launched a campaign to decriminalize marijuana. …Since then, “skunk,” as Britons call the hybrid form of cannabis in current usage, has offered users a 25-fold increase in tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), cannabis’s psychoactive ingredient. The mental and physical effects of this chemical change have been dramatic.
In March, 2007, The Lancet, Britain’s leading medical journal, declared cannabis to be more dangerous and addictive than LSD and Ecstasy. About the same time, Professor Colin Blakemore, chief of the Medical Research Council (and in 1997, the moral authority behind The Independent’s liberalization campaign) unequivocally reversed his cannabis-friendliness: “The link between cannabis and psychosis is quite clear now; it wasn’t 10 years ago.”
As a result, The Independent last year offered its readership a fulsome apology: “If only we had known then what we can reveal today…”
Psychiatry professor Robin Murray of London’s Institute of Psychiatry estimates that cannabis usage is causally linked to a full 10% of the U. K.’s 250,000 bipolar patients.
Indeed, just this past February, the European Respiratory Journal reported on a New Zealand study indicating that long term cannabis use increases the annual risk of lung cancer in young adults by 8% for every year of use.
In 1970, pot contained 1% THC. Bud contains 20% THC. Imagine a glass of wine or beer with a similarly proportioned alcohol content and consider the “rush” it would provide.
Two weeks ago, the Home Office in the U.K. announced: “Cannabis will be reclassified as a Class B drug, sending a strong message that the drug is harmful.”
The verdict on the new marijuana is in, and it’s “guilty.” I would therefore respectfully ask the Post to reconsider its editorial stance on the legalization of “pot,” clearly a superannuated description of cannabis today, and in future commentary on this issue, so critical to our youth’s health, exercise a little more intellectual — ahem — sobriety.
Intellectual sobriety? How about instead, a few facts, please:
Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, announced the reversal yesterday of the Government’s earlier decision to downgrade the drug. But under18s caught with it will not be treated any more harshly, to avoid criminalising them.
Punishment for the over18s will increase from the existing “confiscate and warning” for a first offence to a possible penalty notice for disorder on a second offence followed by arrest and prosecution for a third offence.
Although the new jail term for possession rises from two to five years, it is unlikely that anyone will be imprisoned for simple possession of cannabis for personal use.
Reclassification will not take effect until early next year because Parliament has to approve the decision.
A report from the advisory council concluded that the health dangers from cannabis did not justify its inclusion in the higher category and that it should remain a Class C drug. Professor Sir Michael Rawlins, chairman of the council, said: “Changing the classification of cannabis is neither warranted nor will it achieve the desired effect.”
Ms Smith said that the Government was overruling the council because she was unwilling to “risk the future health of young people”. She told MPs: “Where there is a clear and serious problem, but doubt about the harm that will be caused, we must err on the side of caution and protect the public. I make no apology for that – I am not prepared to wait and see.”
The Home Secretary said she was concerned about the mental health effects of smoking super-strength skunk cannabis, which now accounts for 81 per cent of cannabis seized on the streets. There were also suggestions that young people were “binge smoking” to get the maximum high.
The reefer madness of Gordon Brown continues. The public health and law enforcement experts on the prime minister’s advisory body voted 20-3 that cannabis should remain in the lowest classification of drugs – Class C – and that Britons should not be arrested for its possession.
But politicians love to look “tough on crime” and by treating cannabis use as a crime, they can score easy points in the political arena, despite the overwhelming evidence that cannabis use is not a serious social problem and what few problems it does present are best treated in a public health model, not a criminal justice one.
Jacqui Smith says we can’t afford to “wait and see”, yet since cannabis has been downgraded from Class B to Class C, we’ve found that cannabis use has gone down in the UK. Furthermore, cannabis has been in widespread use since the 1960s – how much longer does Ms Smith need to wait and see?
This is driven in the UK by the tabloid headlines of the dreaded “skunk” cannabis, otherwise known by realists as “quality marijuana”. They trumpet false stats like “skunk is 30 times more potent than regular cannabis”. Since “skunk” tests out at about 12%-14% THC, then they must consider hemp rope to be “regular cannabis”. Actually, “regular cannabis” tests out to 7%-10% THC, so maybe it is at most twice as potent.
However, as we all know, more potent cannabis does not equal more public danger. Cannabis is non-toxic, so smoking more of the more potent varieties isn’t going to cause any more physical harm. Cannabis is self-titrating, which means users smoke to get high, and if the cannabis is more potent, they just smoke less of it to get high. Considering that inhaling the smoke of burning vegetable matter of any kind isn’t the nicest thing for your lungs, smoking less of it is probably a good thing.
We here at NORML call on all our friends in the United Kingdom to call your member of Parliament and tell them to vote no on the upgrade of cannabis from Class C to Class B.
Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 at 12:15 pm | By: Radical Russ
Gordon Brown is facing a dilemma over whether to overrule his own panel of experts and increase the penalties for being caught in possession of cannabis.
The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs is understood to have decided at a private meeting that it will not recommend tightening the law on the drug.
The decision presents a potential embarrassment for the Prime Minister, who earlier this week said that he regarded cannabis use as not just illegal but also unacceptable.
It is understood that 20 out of the panel’s 23 experts decided on Wednesday that there was not sufficient new scientific evidence to justify a change.
If Mr Brown decides to press ahead with reclassification, he will risk becoming only the second Prime Minister to over-rule the council, which is a statutory non-departmental public body dating from 1971.
The Government reclassified cannabis as a Class C substance – dropping the penalty for possession from five to two years in jail – in 2004.
Since then it has reviewed the decision twice, in 2005 and 2008.
Conservative leader David Cameron said: “There are all sorts of cannabis on the streets today. Skunk and super skunk are incredibly powerful and can lead to people having all sorts of mental health problems.”
The mental health charity Rethink, which gave evidence to the committee, said Mr Brown should heed the committee’s advice.
Paul Corry, a spokesman, said: “Gordon Brown should put aside his personal views on cannabis and accept the fact that it does not make sense to reclassify.
“Use of the drug has gone down since it was downgraded in 2004 and research by Rethink shows that only 3 per cent of users would consider stopping on the grounds of illegality.”
The committee is understood to have concluded there was no need re-classify after new research found no evidence that rising cannabis use in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s had led to increases in schizophrenia.
This is despite many reports pointing to a links between super-strength skunk cannabis, which accounts for 80 per cent of street cannabis, and mental illnesses such as schizoprenia and psychosis.
The prime minister and the conservatives are completely in the grips of reefer madness. The media in the UK flood the airwaves and newsstands with scare stories of the dreaded “super skunk” causing violent psychosis and schizophrenia, stories that would make American 20th century prohibitionists Harry J. Anslinger and William Randolph Hearst proud.
The reason 20 of 23 of the experts on Brown’s committee on misuse of drugs recommend against upgrading cannabis to a higher class of dangerous drugs is because they pay attention to the science, not the lurid British tabloids that want to peddle reefer madness stories to sell copy and suck up to the conservative government.
Next Wednesday, I’ll discuss this story with Dr. Mitch Earleywine, who has all of the science on these reports of “super skunk” in the UK. Meanwhile, if there are any tokin’ Tories, sinsemilla subjects, or bong-hittin Britons who want to weigh in on cannabis culture across the pond and the crazy reefer madness in the media, please email me at stash ‘at’ norml.org.
Thursday, March 13th, 2008 at 12:09 pm | By: Radical Russ
If you haven’t followed the War On (Certain British Subjects Using Non-Pharmaceutical, Non-Alcoholic, Tobacco-Free) Drugs going on “across the pond”, then you’re missing some Reefer Madness reminiscent of the days of Harry J. Anslinger and warnings of marijuana being more frightening than Frankenstein and the devil’s tool to make Negroes kill white men and rape white women.
The tactics are familiar. Anslinger took “cannabis” and “hemp”, which almost every early-20th Century American knew to be a common medication and a source of rope and canvas, and re-branded it “marijuana”. That way he and his buddy, William Randolph Hearst, could spread sensationalist lies about cannabis in Hearst’s newspapers, and the scary, Mexican-sounding word helped frighten people about weed in a way that scaremongering on “cannabis” and “hemp” would not.
But the British version of this, happening right now in the 21st Century, is to re-brand the popular herb as “skunk”, with the addition of the scaremongering “this ain’t your father’s pot” rhetoric (”’skunk’ is fifty times more potent than the ganja of the 1960s!”). And this time, it’s not the Negroes coming to hurt whitey, but rather the patently false claim that ’skunk’ triggers psychosis and schizophrenia.
Here is a typical article, from The Argus in the UK…
A mother driven insane by cannabis stabbed herself repeatedly through the chest with a carving knife after claiming she was spoken to by a dog.
Julie Cross told friends the animal was “trying to tell her something” before picking up the 5in blade and ramming it at least five times into her chest and abdomen.
An inquest was told the former receptionist, from Goring, used speed and cannabis on a daily basis and in the weeks running up to her death had slashed her wrists and smeared her blood across a crucifix and also hung a noose from her attic.
Cannabis and speed! Do ya think, perhaps, the speed had more to do with the psychosis? That’s a link that has substantial basis in research and plenty of anecdotal evidence that I’ll testify to as a former club musician who’s seen his share of tweekers.
RevRayGreen: I'll post a pic of me and my son....gimme a minute
Missippi Hippy: Guess what... I'm gonna be a new... ummmmm well, my pet piggie Ganja is in labor and they ain't mine in the same sense. See what your wife [...]
RevRayGreen: days they didn't talk back..or act disrespectful..
RevRayGreen: feel so lucky my son is 18 going 19 and my daughter 16 going on 17..relish the days that can't talk back
Urb Age: Congrats Spof thats awesome. My little Clara is about to hit 20 months. Im not the activist I used to be, but its made me a better man.
Urb Age: Heck I was gonna go up there, but just not feeling well this weekend..Dang it, I hate it when that happens..
RevRayGreen: wishing I was hanging at NORML cafe...
JohnH: Just a quick comment about tokin' and sperm motility....been tokin since age 14 and have 8 kids ranging in age from 30 to 9...(what can I say, I found 2 [...]
slash5city: really ..oprah 35 yr or more in the closet toker ...outed ....o my god !!
SneakerPimp: that would be huge news just imagen the headline
RevRayGreen: maybe Oprah smokes and keeps it on the DL...
SneakerPimp: and good afternoon
mr reuben: I could do without seeing Rob K. on tv. But Bruce and Eithan get a big thumbs up from me.
SneakerPimp: waitn for NSL and congrast for spofett.
mr reuben: I don't respect her opinion bluzguy.
Missippi Hippy: Something about the last year in a contract... folks become more ballsey... and Oprah has big ones.
Marijuana-Related Health Costs Minimal Compared To Those Of Alcohol, Tobacco; California Medical Association Says Pot Prohibition Is A "Failed Public Health Policy"; Oregon: State NORML Affiliate Opens First 'Cannabis Café'. […]
American Medical Association Calls For Scientific Review Of Marijuana's Prohibitive Status; Dutch Marijuana Use Lower Than European Average, Study Says […]
"Truth In Trials Act" Reintroduced In Congress; Maine: Voters Approve Medical Marijuana Dispensaries Measure; Colorado: Breckenridge Voters Overwhelmingly Decide To End Pot Penalties. […]
Some of the nation’s top athletes discuss why today's pros are turning to cannabis — and away from alcohol and painkillers — off the field, and question why pro sports leagues are continuing to sanction those who do. Moderator: Steve Bloom, Author, Pot Culture; editor, celebstoner.com * Toby Grear, MMA fighter * Sean Neumann, Documentary Filmm […]
Cannabis Law Reform's Missing Link: Law Enforcement Former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper; LEAP and NORML Advisory Board; Author of Breaking Rank Putting the Mexican Cartels Out of Business Mexican drug cartels now employ over 100,000 soldiers and are responsible for nearly ten thousand deaths per year. Their largest source of income is marijuana. […]
More UK Reefer Madness: Cannabis ‘can cause psychosis in healthy people’
Start with scary headline in British newspaper:
waitn for NSL and congrast for spofett.
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