The NZ Drug Foundation has published its Briefing Document on Drug reform for the incoming Parliament. The indications are that its approach is one that the Government might favour because while it argues for decriminalisation to remove the worst aspects of our demonic cannabis laws, it also recommends heavy regulation of
“production, consumption and sale”. Decriminalisation opening up to a “health approach” is good as far as it goes, but it has problems. The health approach is good, but the goal of ‘harm reduction’ assumes ‘harm’ and creates an inbuilt bias leading to a highly regulative regime. Decades of demonisation of cannabis ‘abuse’ leads to the ‘harm reduction’ approach to the regulation of production, consumption and sale of cannabis. If that were true, then maybe there is a point to the Portuguese model.
But why not go for what we need without the burden of old negative assumptions of “bad science” that still make cannabis use illegal?
What’s the “good science”?
There is no scientific proof that cannabis causes any serious harm, compared say with the harm caused by underfunding the health system. The frequent citation for such a causal link is the New Zealand Canterbury Health and Development Study (CHDS) led by David Fergusson.
The CHDS claims that cannabis ‘abuse’ is a cause of adolescent psychosis, specifically schizophrenia. Yet it has failed to show that a correlation (those prone to schizophrenia also tend to use cannabis) is also a cause (cannabis abuse leads to schizophrenia) because it has not controlled adequately for other possible ‘confounding’ genetic and social causes.
A metastudy (which evaluates all the work in the field) “Cannabis and Psychosis: a Critical Overview of the Relationship” by Charles Ksir and Carl Hart (Feb 2016) in Current Psychiatry Reports, comes to the same conclusion. In a refreshingly frank debate around this the authors do not shrink from calling other scientists “dishonest“.
“That marijuana causes the onset of psychosis is a claim commonly employed to demonstrate the dangers of the drug, but studies touting the theory often lack the evidence to support it.
In a recent letter to the prestigious journal the Lancet, co-authors Dr. Charles Ksir and Dr. Carl Hart explained how researchers overstate the link between psychosis and cannabis by failing to account for variables that may cause co-occurring substance use and mental health disorders.
Speaking to HIGH TIMES, Hart explained that the Lancet has a habit of perpetuating this theory without the evidence to back it.
“Charlie [Ksir, his co-author] and I are concerned that the Lancet and its subsidiary journals have become the journal of marijuana psychosis,” he said…
Indeed, in their review of the literature on cannabis and psychosis, Hart and Ksir found that the association between cannabis-users and people diagnosed with psychosis was caused by a variety of other factors that put certain populations at an increased risk for substance misuse and mental disorders. Put simply, the THC in cannabis did not cause the correlation between marijuana and psychosis, nor did psychosis cause cannabis use.”
You will find Carl Hart an outspoken critic of how science and drug research in particular obscures the real problems – poverty, unemployment etc – endemic to capitalism, and instead blames people who use (illegal) drugs. Hart’s enlightened view on drug reform can be found on his blog which is subtitled “Where drug myths come to die“.
His biography, “A High Price” is a great story of how he came from a ‘drug culture’ in a black ghetto in Miami to become a prominent neuroscientist at Columbia University in New York, advocating the legalising of all drugs.
Clearly we are not going to get the liberalisation of cannabis production, consumption and sale we need until the “myths” about cannabis causing harm rather than saving lives are debunked.
Dave Brownz is TDB’s guest Marxist blogger, because all left wing blogs should have guest Marxist
Thanks for the references Dave. The psychosis claim is bullshit, and does need to be challenged whenever people raise it as a weak excuse for the current mistreatment of people in the cannabis culture.
However, the realpolitik of pot policy is that governments need to be offered policy prescriptions they have some realistic chance of getting past a majority in parliament. That’s what the Drug Foundation are attempting. If their policy suggestions become law, cannabis users will suffer far less harm from the state than they do now. As the scientific facts about cannabis (eg much less dangerous than alcohol) become more understood, and attitudes change, further changes may become politically possible. But nothing is gained by demanding law change that goes further than the electorate is ready for.
Strypey ‘realpolik’ is self-defeating. Sure the Drug Foundation proposal is an advance. But how did we get there if not by decades of thousands of outlaws fighting for liberation?
How do we ever know that is possible if we don’t do what is necessary? Let’s dump the legacy of lies backed by bad science and fight for a health model where cannabis is a homegrown, natural, affordable product that does not need draconian over-regulation of an illegal substance…
Now is the time to push the Coalition further than the Blairites want to go to stop them giving us a half-arsed deal run by a bureaucracy in bed with big pharma.
“But how did we get there if not by decades of thousands of outlaws fighting for liberation?”
I’ve been one of those outlaws and very publicly, and obviously I endorse civil disobedience against prohibition. But even if it was true that people continuing to smoke weed and “live like it’s legal” is the only thing that has changed public opinion or politicians’ willingness to act, and I think it would be naive to claim that, nothing will actually change without a specific set of policies to change *to*.
“Let’s dump the legacy of lies backed by bad science and fight for a health model where cannabis is a homegrown, natural, affordable product that does not need draconian over-regulation of an illegal substance…”
I totally agree, but I’ve been in enough debates among cannabis law reformers to know that no policy platform is going to be exactly what everyone wants. The relevant questions, as I said above, are; is it a substantial improvement on what we have now, and, will it pave the way for further reform as the public debate continues?
Plus, if recreational sales are legalized, as I believe they should, many of the players making those sales will be venture capitalists, not stoners. The fake weed experience gives us a good preview of the bottom-feeders who will get involved. I believe the regulations on them need to be as stringent as they are on sellers of alcohol, for the simple reason that they won’t give a shit about the quality of their products, as long as they’re making money.
I think that the outlaws who have had the real impact are the green fairies and the 1000s of patients they supply. A do it yourself alternative health system is growing. That momentum means that we cannot afford to delay 3 years.
That’s where the big change in public opinion will come. When patients left by a collapsing health system that couldnt stop their pain demanded medical cannabis that proved the best argument for reform, not the recreational outlaws.
The goal was proven health benefits of CBD, not legal highs. I believe that Rose Renton’s trial, if it goes ahead, will be a national celebration of this health revolution.
The stoner image hasnt moved opinion much even when clearly honest people supplying for need ended up in jail.
In fact it was the govt that used the fake weed to avoid decriminalisation but then scored a massive own goal. They legalised bottom feeders and people paid for their high and died.
So let’s push the medical route as that is where the evidence is undeniable. Its like a health revolution against the failure of our health system. The medical profession and all the lobbyists including the cops cannot hold back an army of terminal sufferers. It busts the lies that weed is harmful.
Back that up with good science and education so that when Peters takes all this on board he may even take a Grey Power bus around the country to launch his referendum.
This gives us three years to use the medical cannabis cause to rally a big majority in favour of legalisation which will by you own argument eliminate the need for “bottom feeders”.
We only know what is possible when we do what is necessary.
Your core argument here seems to be that we can campaign on medical cannabis or recreational cannabis, but not both. I don’t see why. In fact, it seems to me that only be legalising recreational use will patient get legal access to herbal cannabis for medical use, instead of Sativex and other patented Big Pharma corporate welfare.
That’s a gross over-simplification. Public opinion has been shifting slowly but surely towards supporting cannabis law reform for decades. Different events have moved it in favour (eg the Health Select Committee and Law Commission reports), while others have pushed it back towards opposing it. Other events have done both at different times, for example the “synthetic cannabis” debacle increased opposition initially, thanks to a carefully orchestrated smear campaign by the liquor, tobacco, and security industries and the daily papers (esp. the odious ODT). But now, as people wake up to the fact that fake weed kills, and that people only use it because real cannabis is illegal, it’s doing the opposite.
Yes, high profile medical cannabis activism by people like Rose Renton and Helen Kelly have done a lot to increase public sympathy for law reform. So has the growing scientific evidence that high-CBD cannabis is the least dangerous way of treating crippling and potentially lethal seizures in children. But this growth in support came on the back on recreational legalization in Washington and Colorado, and locally, high profile activism around the CannaBus tours and the Daktory. I think *all* of this activity has contributed to the high levels of public support for law reform (for both medical and recreational purposes) that we now see in the Drug Foundation surveys and so on, and the growing willingness of politicians to be associated with drug law reform policy (however timid it may be for now).
Well Labour’s timid Dunne-like Bill is still running scared the of the official Ministry line that Cannabis is harmful until proven not by the ‘evidence’.
So what was your advice again? ‘realpolitik’, that we can do no more than what the majority of MPs will vote for. Well that’s obvious, but how do you educate that majority towards genuine reform? How do we decide how far that change can go before the wider debate happens especially in select committee?
I am not denigrating the resistance of the users over the decades. But it does nothing to challenge the myth of ‘harm’ for the politicians because it doesn’t provide ‘evidence’ acceptable to the Ministry (state bureaucracy).
It is the campaign of patients and their growers and suppliers in select committee and upcoming court cases that will bring sanity to the debate by challenging the ‘science’ of the ‘evidence’.
In my experience the medical professionals are looking for ‘evidence’ but they do not discount the ‘evidence’ presented by their patients. And that includes feedback on any bad interactions with other drugs.
But if we do not challenge Labour’s, the Ministry’s and the Drug Foundations unjustified caution, now and ongoing, we won’t get any momentum for the Greens bill that is also coming up.
As I said in the original post. We won’t get real reform until we destroy the mythology of ‘harm’ and replace it with the truth of Cannabis as a health super-food.
We can both agree that if serious change begins to happen now, than by 2020 we may get a two thirds majority for legalisation. But we have to fight for that big majority going down the medical route of legal self-medication for those in desperate need now.
A Moritorium on growth, supply and use of medical cannabis now!