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11. Why do you oppose drug use?
Because it creates severe mental confusions, causes addiction, can lead to mental illness, and can make some people violent in various ways. Too many rehabilitation cases never recover, and undergo agonies. The recent dramatic escalation in the number of young drug users in Britain would alone be reason to oppose this form of “recreation,” but there are other strong grounds for objection also. For instance, advocates of LSD “therapy” exert an underground influence of grave proportions. Hallucinogenic drugs confer an illusion of spiritual experiences, and the promoters of Grof LSD lore are susceptible to the “easy route” option they contract from their basic laziness. Hallucinations caused by certain drugs can be overpowering, but are solely chemical effects on the brain, nothing spiritual at all.
Drugs like cannabis and MDMA (Ecstasy) often lead to cocaine and heroin addiction, which can be fatal, involving strong tendencies to suicide in too many instances. Overdoses have been fairly common. Some victims survive with difficulty, but others die. Even cannabis is now a much stronger drug than it was in former decades; the older versions nevertheless caused a number of injurious side-effects known in clinical literature. MDMA is a stimulant and can have varying effects that include death in cases of biological non-resistance. Even people who come off these “gateway” drugs are often subject to problems like panic attacks for years afterwards.
Cannabis use has caused serious trouble in British schools, and can result in moods of both aggression and lethargy, contrary to the pro-drug propaganda favoured for many years by the residual neo-hippy trend. Long-term users of cannabis can lose all incentive for anything except recourse to this disruptive drug. The British Labour government of Tony Blair failed to cordon the problems involved when they relaxed restrictions upon cannabis in January 2004, reclassifying it as a class C drug (instead of the danger category class B) in relation to the Misuse of Drugs Act. The Home Secretary David Blunkett announced the pending change in 2001, and this was pursued to completion despite objections in 2003 from the International Narcotics Control Board.
In Britain, cannabis use increased dramatically since the 1970s and the estimated number of regular users is now said to be up to five million. There is considerable medical evidence that cannabis causes psychosis. Even mild and short-term use can result in depression. Cannabis can reduce motivation to zero, and is now said to compromise lung function substantially more than tobacco. Dr. Anthony Seldon, the headmaster of Wellington College (a public school in Berkshire), has pleaded in the press for a total prohibition on cannabis, due to the damage created by this drug amongst juvenile users, who risk mental illness and even death.
A big problem is the increasingly popular resort to “skunk,” a recent strain of cannabis which is up to five times as strong as other varieties. Home grown skunk cannabis has been genetically altered by selective breeding. The active ingredient in cannabis is the powerful tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), which is magnified in the skunk derivatives. It is said that just a few puffs of skunk can induce fear and anxiety. There are other strong and undesirable side-effects such as the reduction of concentrative ability. Yet despite the increasing dangers, the number of cannabis dealers being sent to jail in Britain has been drastically decreasing as a consequence of myopic government policy. The Home Office and their advisers have been vainly trying for years to deny the harmful effects of THC. More responsible parties, including senior police officers, magistrates, and medical experts, have supported a recent incentive to reimpose class B status upon cannabis. This disruptive drug is being widely sold.
Tony Blair presided over a government that chose to heed the drug legalisation lobby. That government was insensitive to citizen needs. A revealing UNICEF study of 21 industrialised countries has disclosed that Britain ranks third on the list of national cannabis problems. This study focuses upon the proportion of those in the 11-15 year old age group who have admitted to taking cannabis. The figures stand at 35% in Britain compared with 18% in Germany. Sane by comparison is the 5% falling to Sweden. France is another casualty at 27%. The cost in terms of mental illness and other drawbacks is too high to justify leniency to drug pushers. Drugs like cannabis are a major incentive to crime and can impair or destroy communities.
In Britain, the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) has come under strong criticism from anti-drug campaigners and police chiefs. The Council has argued against the perception that rising cannabis use has led to more cases of mental illness. The ACMD was a strongly supporting factor in the political process that led to the reclassification of cannabis in 2004. In 2002 the ACMD was vocal in supporting softer treatment for cannabis users, the declared objective being to give the police more time to tackle harder drugs. In justification for the subsequent reclassification, the Home Office have since cited figures from the National Crime Survey, interpreting these to mean that cannabis use has lessened in recent years. Yet the defensive argument has been contradicted by two Associations of police officers who urge that cannabis can cause psychosis and is damaging to physical health. The Association of Chief Police Officers have repeated their request for this drug to be rescheduled to Class B danger status.
In 2002 a study by Kings College, London, showed that adolescents who began smoking cannabis in their early teens faced a fourfold increase in the risk of schizophrenia during adult life. Five years later, in 2007, a joint study by the universities of Bristol, Cambridge, Cardiff, and London, concluded that heavy users of cannabis are more than twice as likely to suffer mental illness. The innovation of skunk cannabis adds a new dimension to the problem of teenage users.
One of those who gave evidence to the ACMD in early 2008 was Debra Bell, a Londoner who chairs the charity Talking About Cannabis. Her own son was a cannabis casualty. This well educated middle class boy fell a victim at the age of fourteen, and relied upon the government declassification to Class C as a proof of safety. By the age of sixteen he was smoking five joints a day and suffering severe personality changes. He became withdrawn and aggressive, and began to steal money anywhere he could, starting with his mother. He dropped out of normal life. When his mother refused to give him money for the drug habit, he slammed her hand in a door, causing injury. His family were obliged to find him separate accommodation, being unable to cope with him.
Further light was shed on this subject by the BBC Radio 4 reporter Winifred Robinson, who investigated vicinities in South London and Liverpool. She linked gun violence amongst feuding youths with heavy cannabis use. Teenagers can easily become drug dealers in the vogue for skunk. She talked with a fourteen year old in Peckham who had seen his best friend stabbed to death for owing a cannabis dealer less than £200. Peckham (in South London) has become noted for gun crime amongst young people. One fifteen year old victim was shot as he slept. Yet this trend of violence reflects a much more widespread problem of cannabis use, which has dramatically increased amongst young criminals. In some areas, nine out of ten young offenders have been reported to be smoking cannabis. Magistrates have become very concerned at this trend. According to Robinson, fifty out of fifty-one youth courts in England and Wales have written to the Home Secretary requesting that cannabis should be rescheduled to Class B. (Winifred Robinson, “The deadly habit as easy to pick up as a bag of crisps,” Daily Mail, April 4th 2008, p. 11).
Critics of the Labour government say that skunk cannabis has totally contradicted the soft relegation to Class C. The chemically modified skunk variant of cannabis started about six years ago (circa 2002), when a few cultivation houses were found in London. This innovation has since become a nationwide phenomenon. Large scale cultivations of skunk cannabis have been located by the police in many areas of England, Wales, and Scotland. The Metropolitan Police have been reported as raiding 1,500 cannabis farms in the past two years. Elsewhere, two hundred of those farms were closed down in Derbyshire alone. Many of the “farms” are concealed in suburban houses. The police have recently (May 2008) revealed that they are discovering 2,000 cannabis farms a year.
Children as young as ten are reported to be in the habit of daily smoking skunk cannabis. Some close observers have described the effects in terms of irreversible damage to the brain. Skunk is a convincing explanation for the recent growth and intensity of street violence. The problem is not confined to deprived areas, but is spreading amongst middle class youngsters. Parents who once smoked the earlier form of cannabis have been unprepared for the powerful manifestations of skunk exhibited in their offspring.
A recent study (2008) conducted for the Home Office discovered that eight out of every ten samples of cannabis seized on the streets are skunk. This compares to a much lower statistic for skunk in 2002, which has varied from 15 per cent to 30 per cent. The findings were based on samples submitted by 23 police forces in Britain. The official figure for skunk prevalence is now 81 per cent. That means high risk.
Yet the ACMD have been saying that cannabis plays only a “modest role” in creating problems of mental health. They have even asserted that cannabis users adjust their consumption by smoking less if the drug is stronger. Even more recklessly, the ACMD have dismissed claims that cannabis is a “gateway drug” leading to cocaine and heroin abuse. Some academic assessors should live on the streets instead of in well-paid ivory towers.
Facts have overtaken the theorists. Britain now has the highest level of drug abuse in Europe. Drug-related crimes, including murder, have been revealed as having increased by almost half since 1997. The ACMD has been in favour of making restrictions only on drug pushers, while being lenient to users. What happens if users become murderers? Some users go in the opposite tendency direction and become suicide cases.
A now well known media case is that of the 18 year old cannabis user (Matthew White) who hanged himself in 2007. He was one of those youths who believed in 2004 that the government downgrading to Class C meant that smoking cannabis was harmless. The drug pundits have caused deaths to an unknown extent. Matthew White was the promising head boy of his school prior to becoming a drop out and then regressing to suicide. Yet what actually killed him were two tablets of LSD. His “bad reaction” to that hallucinogenic substance caused him to run off into the woods, where he hanged himself. (Daily Mail, May 8th 2008, p.11. column 4). The ongoing presence of LSD amongst pushers and users is a subject obscured by academic lore emanating from America, where pseudo-spirituality is a goad for various dramas including the “gateway” transitions minimised and denied by the ACMD.
The International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) is an independent body closely associated with the United Nations (UN). The INCB acts as the control agent for UN drug conventions. The INCB were a prominent and very critical objector to the declassified cannabis policy of the Tony Blair government. They have more recently (March 2008) won acclaim in calling for a tougher line against drug-using celebrities in the public limelight. That report has duly criticised presiding authorities for being too lenient with pop stars, claiming that this laxity sends out the wrong message to teenagers. The President of the INCB is Hamid Ghodse, a Professor of Psychiatry at the University of London. Professor Ghodse has complained at the leniency extended by the judiciary and law enforcement. The INCB report, on behalf of the UN, urges the relevant national authorities to “ensure that public celebrities who violate drug laws are made accountable.”
It is the more ironic, therefore, that UN bureaucracy has to date ignored a British complaint which relates to an evocative LSD promotion issue. See the rather pressing details which are available at www.citizeninitiative.com/letter_of_Kate_Thomas_to_UNESCO.htm. See also no. 10 above. The relevant letter is dated 01/09/2007, and includes reference to the internet elevation by the Scientific and Medical Network (SMN) of “a disciple of Grof who promotes the use of LSD as a spiritual path.” The disciple of Stanislav Grof is here Dr. Christopher Bache, an American academic who is also sending out the wrong message to teenagers and older people via the website of the irresponsible SMN, a British alternative organisation of erratic tendencies. Bache is author of the controversial work Dark Night, Early Dawn (2000), a strongly pro-Grof celebration of LSD “therapy” that is articulated in terms of “transpersonal pedagogy” and “collective transformation.” Cf. Shepherd, Pointed Observations (2005), pp. 6-24 on Grof and pp. 148ff. on Bache.
The SMN are closely linked with the Findhorn Foundation, whose suppressive policy has involved very questionable follow-on tactics in both the SMN and the allied Wrekin Trust (or Wrekin Forum) in relation to an objector to drug use (Kate Thomas). The SMN website has been promoting an article of Bache against Thomas for four years, an article which explicitly recommends LSD as an instrument for spiritual development. That article is still being displayed on the SMN website in August 2008. This issue is now gaining significant proportions, and spotlights some of the hazards evident in so-called “new spirituality,” despite the superficial disclaimer of responsibility on the SMN website. That disclaimer is not convincing in the overall context of the discrepant situation denoted. Sanction of hallucinogenic and psychoactive drug experiences is not admirable in any form, though most especially in the putative context of science and medicine. See also no. 12 below. See also the closing paragraphs on my homepage at www.citizeninitiative.com/index.htm.
The SMN are also associated with the promotion of “near death” experiences, meaning the paranormal variety. In view of psychedelic extensions, this subject may be considered a distraction from social realities of deaths caused by drugs. The “actual death” zone can be extended in potential to pseudoscience and quack medicine, and this issue should be viewed with more concern by academics and officials in case they too become LSD users or pushers. As it was, a complaint about Grof lore (and other matters) sent to Tony Blair in April 2006 was detoured to the Department for Education and Skills, who were possessed of such diminishing responsibility in this matter that they failed to reply. See my First Letter to Tony Blair at www.citizeninitiative.com/letter_to_tony_blair_1.htm. Matthew White committed suicide in January 2007, while Tony Blair was preparing to resign and said to be aiming for lecture circuits in America worth millions of dollars. Perhaps he will say a prayer now and again for all the casualties of his regime.
The extent of LSD use is currently a more obscure subject than cannabis dealing. Nevertheless, this is one of the options available to consumers of the gateway drug. Matthew White was an intelligent boy who had gained ten GCSEs, mostly A stars, and he was surely capable of reading web promotions of LSD like that found on the SMN website tended by the “near death” enthusiast David Lorimer.
In May 2008, the British government announced that cannabis would be rescheduled back to Class B status. After a costly delay, the new Prime Minister Gordon Brown was at last prepared to overrule the ACMD. Yet official reclassification of the drug will not occur this year (2008). There has been a reaction from some quarters at the soft stance on punishments that will be retained. Under-18s caught in possession of cannabis will continue to be given a reprimand, followed by a final warning, and will face prosecution only if caught a third time. There is also concern at the modified system of punishments applying to adults, who might similarly receive a mere warning and a fine before being prosecuted. Regional police forces exhibit pronounced differences in applying prosecutions.
Magistrates have been reporting an emergency situation denoted by a large number of youngsters (including 12 year olds) who have turned to crime through cannabis. The statistics in this respect have increased substantially since 2004. These cannabis victims steal in order to fund their drug habit. The reversal of the Class C catastrophe is going to take a lot of implementing. Critics of the delay in legislation by Gordon Brown have estimated that nearly 9,000 cannabis victims in the under-18 age group have been forced to seek treatment during the interim lasting less than a year.
The deficit resulting from over four years of Class C latitude has involved a series of murders strongly associated with the mental illness drawback of cannabis. The most notorious of these instances are very disconcerting. Thomas Palmer, aged 18, was a skunk cannabis smoker who butchered two of his friends during a woodland walk in 2005. He slit the throat of a 16 year old and stabbed to death a close friend aged 14. Palmer was given a minimum 20 years in prison for the double murder. Possibly more famous is William Jaggs, an Oxford University student and prolific cannabis user who graduated to cocaine. Jaggs had become a cannabis addict at Harrow public school, and in that same Harrow vicinity, in 2006 he stabbed Lucy Braham to death. The murderer frenziedly stabbed the victim sixty-six times, and was found covered in blood beside the corpse.
The Jaggs case is an instance of “gateway drug” complications. The cocaine problem has become deep-rooted in Britain. In 2007 a United Nations report stated that more than 900,000 young people in Britain are cocaine users, and that this drug has been sampled by one in twenty people between the ages of 15 and 34. Britain is now believed to be suffering the highest level of cocaine use among young people in the developed world. In April 2008 the British government revealed that one in three offenders tested by the police for hard drugs after committing street violence had been using cocaine. The statistics are further given that a third of these cocaine-influenced criminals had also resorted to heroin or another opiate.
Cocaine was formerly available only to affluent users. But in recent years the price of this stimulant drug has substantially lowered, making it affordable to teenagers and others who have far less capital. That availability applies especially to the variety known as crack, which is particularly associated with violent crime. In April 2008 there were requests for tougher government action against cocaine in Britain; the official approach to the problem has been deemed complacent to a reckless degree. Drug campaigners have urged that drug tests should be carried out on anyone arrested for a violent offence or disorder, an expedient which has been customarily reserved only for serious crimes.
One of the problems has been underlined in terms of drug-using celebrities behaving irresponsibly and yet going unpunished. This social defect is known to have influenced young people. That is why the INCB warning against pop stars was issued in March 2008 as reported above. In general, the large number of celebrities and officials who have betrayed public support is a glaring testimony to the precarious nature of contemporary “civilisation.”
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