Reefer madness
A recent story about a rise in mental health hospital admissions “due to the use of cannabis” has found me mulling the whole thing over recently.
Naturally, there are myriad questions. Most stories like this with simplistic causal models - people doing X also have Y, therefore X causes Y - leave me wondering about the actual complexities involved. What else was going on in these people’s lives? Was cannabis really a direct cause? Was it more of a catalyst for something simmering away due to other factors? How many people out there would be driven crazy by their jobs if it weren’t for them being able to wind down with a spliff in the evening?
There’s no doubt - and cannabis users know this better than any sober politician - that any psychoactive drug, when misused, can cause mental problems. Just as a builder’s tools can, when misused, cause a house to fall down. But leaping from this to questions of legality is more insane than any drug-induced delusion. As Timothy Leary said of LSD, psychoactive drugs can cause psychosis in people who haven’t taken them.
Let’s be charitable to these mentally unsound politicians, and humour them a little, try to calm them down a bit. Let’s say that in a small minority of people, cannabis can actually cause psychosis (even though there’s no evidence for that at all). Let’s also consider the slightly less deluded (but equally susceptible to gross media spin) idea that people with latent mental problems can have them triggered by - among other things - cannabis use.
Then, I ask: how are these poor people served by being criminalized and locked up? I’ve never seen any evidence that persecution and prison helps out with mental fragility.
And then, just as importantly, what about everyone else smoking cannabis, people who really like it and have no resulting mental problems - possibly even positive benefits. I wonder: how are these people served by being criminalized and locked up?
You see, when we talk these things through, it becomes a little clearer doesn’t it?
Bill Hicks
Indeed, so true. As someone who ingested psychoactives on a regular recreational basis, I can say that most of the time my peers lauded my sanity while under the influence - able to carry on lucid conversations, peform normal activities, and largely unsusceptible to hallucinatory perceptions.
The one time I really felt as though I were going to wind up seriously schizophrenic I had eaten some psilocybes with some pergamum harmala seeds, and washed it down with guinness before winding up in a windowless, smoke-filled club basement in Prague. Gripped by the impending sensation that everything was going horribly wrong within and without, I walked home pondering a future spent in white gowns and sponge baths, unable to enjoy them because I was muttering to myself about combing my back hair. When I finally got home, I threw up, and the trip was fine thereafter.
Yep - set and setting. Oh, and I don’t recommend mixing harmala, shrooms, and guinness. Should’ve seemed obvious, but hey.
orgonebox - 13th June 2007 @ 17:23
It’s refreshing to see an article that doesn’t use the “M” word. That’s the language of the oppressor. Now, if only those folks in California would learn to use the principle of “estoppel” while defending the medical movement from federal encroachment…
Rumple Stiltskin - 13th June 2007 @ 20:58
The Bible appears to cause psychosis in a hell of a lot more people but I don’t see any politicians jumping up and down calling for it to be made illegal!
Kirsty - 17th June 2007 @ 13:44
Ah, but they’ll tell you that it’s not the intention of the law to punish the sick users; it’s the intention to deter the potentially sick from ever using in the first place.
Because we all know that if something’s illegal we’re less likely to do it. Which is why countries with strong drug prohibition laws like the UK have lower rates of drug use than those with looser laws like the Netherlands.
Oh no, hang on, that’s completely untrue.
merrick - 17th June 2007 @ 22:11