Happy Christmas from an old drug warrior

Just say no, etc.

More from the Reagans on drugs

Canada: Free speech goes up in smoke at school

Below is copied a story chronicling just the latest installment of drug war madness in North America, this time from Canada. Discussing the relative risks of illegal drugs alongside legal ones in the wrong environment, a school for example, and apparently you are sending out 'pro-drug' messages. So another triumph of misplaced moral posturing over science and reason then. It is admittedly worse over there than here in the UK, but not by much if the recent furore over cannabis reclassification and 'sending out messages' is anything to go by. I wonder how the distinguished authors of the recent Lancet paper, that made the same point as young Kieran regards relative drug harms, would feel about this?

Young people need to know the risks and dangers of all drugs they may encounter, regardless of legal status. Actually, now I think about it, arguably illegal status is one of the potential harms they need to be warned about aswell, as a criminal record will often cause more harm than the use of the drug itself.

The free speech issues in this story also echo the very wierd 'Bong Hits for Jesus' saga, which recently reached the US supreme court.

Free speech goes up in smoke at school

Saskatchewan student's marijuana research spurs lock down and suspension

JOE FRIESEN

From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

June 20, 2007

WINNIPEG — It started months ago when Kieran King's high-school class heard a presentation about the dangers of drug use.

Kieran, a 15-year-old Grade 10 student in tiny Wawota, Sask., population 600, thought the presentation lacked credibility, so he did some research on the relative health risks of alcohol, tobacco and cannabis.

When he told some of his fellow students that cannabis seemed the least hazardous of the three, he set in motion a series of events that led to a school lockdown, a threat assessment involving the RCMP, a suspension and failing grades on his exams.

"It's all a bit overwhelming," his mother, Jo Anne Euler, said. "It's just totally bizarre."

She explained that her son is a compulsive researcher who tends to go on at length about what he reads on the Internet.

One student at Wawota Parkland School didn't want to hear Kieran's thoughts about marijuana, and complained to principal Susan Wilson.

The principal then called Kieran's mother because she was concerned he was advocating drug use, Ms. Euler said.

Ms. Euler told the principal her son is an A student who doesn't go out, doesn't smoke or drink, and isn't pushing drugs on other kids.

"She said 'Well, if he talks about it again, I will be calling the police,' " Ms. Euler said. "I told Kieran that and he said 'Mom, all I'm doing is sharing the facts.' "

Kieran felt his right to free speech was being trampled, so he enlisted the help of the Saskatchewan Marijuana Party.

Together they planned a school walkout for free speech, scheduled for 11 a.m. last Tuesday, where free chocolate chip hemp seed cookies would be handed out.

But just before 11 that day, the principal announced that the school was a closed campus and that no one was allowed outside.

When several students tried to leave anyway, teachers barred the doors and ordered them back to class, Ms. Euler said. Kieran and his younger brother Lucas defied and joined a ragtag group of five protesters standing across from the school holding placards.

The principal then ordered a lockdown to ensure the safety of students. The RCMP raced to the scene, only to find a small, peaceful protest.

Kieran's mother was again called to the school and told that both her sons had been suspended for three days. Later that day, the school conducted a threat assessment on Kieran with the help of the RCMP and school division counsellors, Ms. Euler said............

read the rest of this sorry tale here

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The Terrible Truth - 50's anti-drug video

Another long lost classic from the Anti-Drug archives. Watch out for Chuck, the sharp-suited drug peddler, who leads the helpless young victim from reefers to helpless heroin addiction and depravity in a couple of weeks.




Things have improved, a bit, on the drugs education / prevention front since then, but it has been 50 years so you would hope so.

Independent on Sunday and cannabis - on it goes

In March we posted two detailed blogs responding to the Independent on Sunday's two-week long canna-pology and retraction of support for their 1997 campaign for decriminalisation of the drug.

How the Independent on Sunday got it horribly wrong on Cannabis

The Independent's born-again war on drugs: Round Two

To summarise: the basis for their new stance was the new evidence they 'revealed' about the increased potency of cannabis today, and its terrible toll on the mental health of Britain's youth. The blogs highlighted how the claims they were making were bad science: exageration, cherry picking and good old fashioned lazy sensationalist journalism, and also how there new editorial position totally misunderstood the issue, confusing the debate around drug harms with the debate around policy responses to those harms. (look, just read them).

The IOS has argued itself into a corner. After making such a big deal of retracting their support for progressive law reform there is no way they can back down now without considerable embarrassment and humiliation (it would certainly prove a poser for the headline writers next time around, although they could arguably reuse the first 'Cannabis: an apology' ). On the other hand, to support their case for prohibition – on the basis of the dangers of cannabis – they now feel obliged to produce a constant stream of shock-horror cannabis coverage which, given that they have very clearly nailed their franken-pot colours to the mast, will inevitably be un-bothered by scientific or journalistic objectivity. And, surprise, surprise, this is exactly what we have seen over the last three of weeks. Here's a quick guided tour:

The April 1 edition saw a front page teaser apparently borrowed from their tabloid colleagues:

Skunk: my son turned into a monster

Inside we learn, from Jonathan Owen, that:

“Academics and doctors say potent skunk is the cause of soaring psychiatric problems in the young; pro-drug campaigners sniff anti-cannabis conspiracies and claim there is no proof of a link”.

I responded to the, now repeated, cheap 'pro-drug' name-calling in the Round Two blog, and despite extensively trawling the extensive blog/web coverage of the IOS canna-panic I haven't seen a single mention of 'conspiracies' anywhere. I believe the key accusation was the one made above regards bad science, reefer madness sensationalism, failure to grasp the realities of public health and drugs policy, and lazy journalism.

What then follows is a depressing and tragic anecdote about a teenager getting into serious problems with drugs – that is then illogically and, Im sorry to say, shamelessly used to bolster the IOS's new cannabis-users-must-be-criminlised editorial position. It's not a review of the published evidence on drug harms, its a single case, one that would probably be more appropriately published in Take-a-break magazine than the news section of a nominally serious Sunday paper.

The son who 'turned into a monster', we also learn, was smoking an eighth of 'skunk' a day from the age of 15. This skunk, apparently, 'can be up to 10 times stronger' than 'conventional cannabis' – down from 25 time stronger as reported on the initial skunk potency panic front page report from two weeks previously. By the time he was 18 he was dealing to fund his use of 'LSD, cocaine, heroin and ecstasy'. So not really a typical teenager then, even of the casual cannabis using variety – and hardly the basis for extrapolating the threat of cannabis to mental health across an entire population of young people.

• Could it possibly be that there was more at play here than the occasional cannabis use that describes the vast majority of users?
  
  
• Do we get any discussion of how the policy of prohibition - the criminal justice approach the IOS now supports - under which this sad tale unfolded, prevented it happening? (No. because it clearly didn't)

The same week we also had a classic bit of old-school reefer madness, also from Jonathan Owen, on cannabis and lung cancer, dressed up as news on the basis of some new un-referenced research apparently being published 'later this year' in New Zealand. Nowhere does Owen mention that almost all cannabis in the UK is smoked with tobacco, or the obvious fact that smoking anything will increase the risk of lung cancer because inhaling burnt stuff of any kind is clearly not good for your lungs. Nor does he mention, as you might hope for responsible reporting, that such lung damage risks can be avoided by users if they either use vaporisers, or consume cannabis by eating it, for example in cookies (I seem to recall the orginal 1997 IOS cannabis campaign providing a recipe). A quick search for 'cannabis lung cancer' on pubmed (the serachable archive of medical journals) may provide you with some more balanced information from peer reviewed academic journals. Something Owen apparently didn't bother with.

The following week, April 8^th, Jonathan Owen, again, reports that 'Cannabis is wrecking lives, says public school head' . This rather odd piece of 'news' is based on an interview with Dr Anthony Seldon, the Head of 'leading public school' Wellington College. His Wikipedia entry informs us that he is known for his biographies of recent prime ministers, but he doesn't seem to have any qualifications as a medical doctor, statistician or drug policy expert. None the less we learn:

The decision to reclassify cannabis from a class B to a class C drug was a mistake and should be reviewed, Dr Seldon, author of a biography of Tony Blair, said. He added: "The reclassification was unhelpful because it sent the signal that it is OK.

The change "emboldened" thousands of young people to try the drug, with many paying a high price, according to Dr Seldon. "What about all the children whose lives have been wrecked because they have developed psychoses or been unable to cope?" he said. "What about those who have died or reside in mental hospitals? Or the teachers who have had to endure apathetic or aggressive pupils high on dope? The message must be total prohibition."

Both the IOS and Dr Seldon seem unaware that over the last few years, including since the terrible signals sent out by reclassification, reported prevalence of cannabis use, the holy grail of Government drug policy targets, has actually fallen (according to the BCS):

Thanks to Clive Bates at Baconbutty

Could it be that, Government policy, classification, and levels of enforcement do infact have little or no impact on levels of cannabis use? This comparative study of drug use three very different cites would suggest so - but that sort of analysis is far too nuanced for the IOS's overt new drugs-can-be-dangerous-therefore-criminalise-the-sinners-who-use-them editorial line. And who can blame them? Why wrestle with all those pesky ambiguous research findings, that conflicting epidemiological evidence, and confusingly complex multi-variable socio-economic policy analysis when you have the clear cut certainty of an ideological drug war:

drugs are bad > BAN THEM!

Oh thank heavens for that - Its just so much easier for a hard pressed Sunday's writer. Once you're signed up, all you need do is wheel out lots of cherry picked information to hype the drug's dangers (there's plenty of it, and its pre-prepared), pull in a few drug-experts like businessman Richard Branson, political appointee Antonio Costa, and political biographer Anthony Seldon, add some emotionally charged 'annecdata' and BOSH! The paper practically writes itself.

If we were in any doubt where the IOS is going with all this we need only look at the latest edition which two more cannabis panic items, a stat-free prohibitionist rant from Seldon, and a 'loads of people take drugs' non-shock news story. For the record this makes a grand total of 17 news items and comment pieces on cannabis in 5 weeks, all except three either hyping the dangers of the drug or calling for its users to be punished, surely a UK record. The three are: in the first week - an opinion piece by Robin Murray that considers the dangers of cannbis but suggests legal status is irrelevant, a news piece that appears to contradict many of the IOS's arguments (the 'tobacco and alcohol..' one linked below on the lancet drug harms paper ) , and one lonesome pro-law reform piece by Rosie Boycott. Anyone for a debate?

Anthony Seldon: The effects of cannabis on vulnerable young minds can no longer be ignored

One-third of pupils have tried cannabis by the age of 15

Cannabis is wrecking lives, says public school head

Long-term cannabis use raises risk of lung cancer

Cannabis debate: 'I let my son have skunk. It ruined his life'

Antonio Maria Costa: Cannabis... call it anything but 'soft'

So how dangerous is skunk?

UN warns of cannabis dangers as it backs 'IoS' drugs 'apology'

Julie Lynn-Evans: Legalise the old stuff but make the new stuff a class A drug

Leading article: The cannabis debate

Tobacco and alcohol 'are more dangerous than LSD'

Skunk: How the 'safe' drug of choice for the hippy generation became a serious health hazard

Robin Murray: Teenage schizophrenia is the issue, not legality

Leading article: Cannabis: a retraction

Were we out of our minds? No, but then came skunk

Cannabis: An apology

Rosie Boycott: Skunk is dangerous. But I still believe in my campaign to decriminalise cannabis

The most recent opinion piece by the previous week's returning hero, Anthony Seldon, makes it all too clear. Within a few paragraphs we have heard that cannabis is 'sneakily and subtly toxic', is responsible for destroying lives, careers and triggering suicides, causing depression, psychoses and insanity, leads people to 'hard drugs' (its the gateway theory - noooooooooooooooooooo!), makes people 'boring', leads to 'apathy, self-centredness and a lack of engagement with others and the world at large', and is responsible for 'horrific acts of violence'.

Seldon then proposes three possible school responses to this 'sinister' drug:

1. Educating young people about the dangers of cannabis. Seems worth a try, but he describes this as the 'the least reliable' of the three methods. OK, its not had a great track record but that does seem a bit defeatist, for an educator and headmaster of a 'leading public school'.

2. Punishment. Yes! now we are getting somewhere. Bit of punishment: that'll learn'm. Seldon is unequivocal:

"I have never believed in giving children who bring drugs on to school premises a second chance. It means that, for some, to be "busted" for drugs is a badge of honour. This strong line might seem heartless, but it has saved many more pupils than it has damaged. Random drug testing and sniffer dogs are other devices. Nothing is ruled out in the interests of protecting those in my charge."

Anthony Seldon: 'No second chance'

Isn't that just brilliant? Despite official advice and ample evidence that excluding the most vulnerable and needy pupils 'in his charge' is counterproductive, he is resolutely determined not to give them a 'second chance'. Wellington is a Church of England faith school, according to their website:"The values of Christianity - upon which our whole society is built and continues to operate - are the foundation of Wellington and are immensely important to us as a school community, still providing the framework for our daily lives." Values of Christianity like....forgiveness perhaps?

3. 'teaching young people how to live'. Now, at last, a bit I can find some agreement with. Giving kids more attractive options than drug use: fine. Encouraging sensible/healthy lifestyle choices: excellent. "What is the point of schools if they do not help children to learn how to live their lives to the full, how to enjoy themselves and be happy, and how to live intelligently?". It gives the impression of being an outbreak of reasonableness, maybe I have misjudged Dr Seldon....

....But then we have the final insult:

Drugs are not intelligent living. Alcohol is part of intelligent life for many, and with older school children the art is to help them to realise that drink, properly used, can be a significant enhancement to life. With drugs, there is no half-way position. Everyone - government, the media and schools - needs to give the same message: "No."

Now if you will excuse my non-Christian language, but, what the hell? Alcohol apparently is not a 'drug' (er, it is), but rather it is part of 'intelligent life', in fact we need to teach 'school children' how it can be a 'significant enhancement to life'. Maybe they should hand out alco-pops at play-time, before the hurling the empty bottles at those nasty potheads as they are chased out the school by drug dogs? remember - 'nothing is ruled out'. Forgive me (if you can) but what on earth is he talking about?

'life enhancing' booze

It is amazing to me that he would round off this hopelessly emotive and unscientific anti-cannabis tirade with an exultation of alcohol - the drug at the centre of a growing youth epidemic of binge drinking and anti social behaviour, and the cause of 10-20000 premature deaths a year. And Seldon talks about cannabis reclassification sending out the 'wrong signals'.

Just think about this for a moment: How easy would it have been to produce almost the exact same article, but about the 'scourge' of alcohol. Read the article again - change 'cannabis'/'drugs'/'joints' to 'alcohol'/ 'drinking' etc. and you'll see what I mean. The millions of young people for whom the just say no message, dogs, testing, punishment, criminal records and and exclusions dont appear to work need accurate information about the dangers of all drugs and how to minimise the risks of their use.

The Seldon denoument strikes me as utterly bizarre. But this, perhaps, sums up the IOS's whole approach and there will be more to come so buckle up. The Independent on Sunday appear to be digging in for a long war.

For the record: I will be contacting the Independent to see if, in the interest of 'the great debate', they will run an opinion piece from Transform. I dont hold out much hope, since when they rang up and asked me for one a few weeks ago, they then didnt publish it. You can but try.

Some other interesting coverage of the IOS cannabis panic:

Bad science column in the Guardian: 'Reefer Badness' by (Medical) Dr Ben Goldacre

Cannabis - sorry about the apology by former prime-ministerial advisor, and former director of anti-smoking charity Ash, Clive Bates

Do 'Skunk' stats stink? from the George Mason University (Washington DC) statistical assessment service
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Pot 'could turn you into a dickhead'

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The Australian newspaper, the Age, reports on a new Australian Government drugs initiative. Apparently:

"A NSW anti-cannabis campaign will target teenagers as they travel to school and surf the internet.

NSW Health launched the $600,000 campaign, which it says is designed to warn the 14 to 19-year-old age group on the dangers of starting the marijuana habit.

Print advertisements, carrying tag lines such as "Pot. It mightn't kill you, but it could turn you into a dickhead", will appear in youth magazines and on bus stop posters."

In Yorkshire this would have presumably been a waste of money as the youths would have been to busy inhaling the the burning bus shelter to read the poster.

Anyway, aside from the the charmingly retro Aussie use of the term 'pot' there's nothing much to get irate about in the campaign. Engaging young people on there own terms is a good start and it certainly seems like a step forward from some of the exaggerated anti-drug silliness of the past, that probably did more harm than good by being so far removed from young people's real life experiences that it ended up alienating them and actually making sensible drugs and health messages harder to get across. Pointing out that people stoned can be boring (especially if its all the time) seems fair enough, as long as this doesn't become focussed on illegal drugs only. Im painfully aware that drunk people can be boring too.

The Age reports New South Wales Health drug and alcohol programs director David McGrath, repsonsible for the campaign saying that:

"There is still a significant cohort of people who think, particularly with the young person's age group, that cannabis is normal"

and that

"There's no safe level of cannabis use."

Neither of these statements seem very useful to me. Firstly, people who use drugs, whatever the legal status, obviously think they are normal. Normalness is, unfortunately for politicians, rather a subjective term. Start calling young people abnormal becasue they use different drugs to you, or because their non-safe drug of choice is illegal (because its different from your non-safe legal drug of choice), and they will stop listening to you altogether for being a hypocrit. And probably start calling you a dickhead. DICKHEAD!

Secondly, if we are going to really pernickety about this, there is no completely safe use of any active drug. However, I'd like to suggest that it would be far more useful to say something along the lines of 'the only way to avoid risk altogether is not to use, but if you do: the more you use the greater the risk'.

I hope the campaign works, but the proof is in the outcomes, and experience shows these sort of efforts are incredibly hard to measure. I'd also like to thank McGrath and colleagues for giving the word 'dickhead' the official stamp of approval for all future serious discourse on drug policy the world over.

Nothing to do with this blog but I wanted a picture and, well he is apparently to address the UK Conservative party conference this year. Hopefully not on the subject of drugs education

thanks to drug war rant

Arnie, Whitney and the Hoff say: "STOP THE MADNESS!"

'Stop the Madness' - a long lost treasure from the mid-eighties 'just say no' drugs campaign in the US has re-emerged on youtube. It is apparently the only ever 'rock' video sponsored by the Whitehouse, and watching it you realise why: It's completely rubbish.




It kicks off with a montage of druggie images: how to chop and snort lines of cocaine whilst in a jacuzzi, people injecting and smoking various things, scary scenes of guns, people being handcuffed and taken into prison cells, people carted off in ambulances and dead in a mortuary - and some plain weird stuff including open heart surgery (?) a trumpeter emerging from a syringe (?) and a dancing monkey.

It then morphs into a 'Band-aid' / 'We are the world' style epic singalong featuring some stars of the day including New Edition, a young looking Whitney Houston, La Toya Jackson and a few other 80's US celebs I didn't really recognise.

Interspersed with the singing are two stories of a girl and boy who get sucked into 'the madness'. The girl gets her drugs from a sinister drug dealer apparently living in her cupboard, whilst the boy buys his from a white stretch limo. As you do. Various celebrities then appear in apparently drug induced hallucinations telling them to 'stop the madness', including Janet Jackson, Casey Kasem, David Hassellhoff, Nancey Reagan, and Stacey Keach (who appears in the fridge). Eventually they do stop the madness, dumping their stashes in a garbage truck driven by none other than Arnold Schwartzenegger himself.

We then have a Kids-from-Fame-style big dance production finale.

Looking back now, you realise that many of the bigger names in the video clearly missed the message of the film and actively embraced 'the madness'. A bit of scurrilous tabloid journalist-style web trawling quickly reveals (in ascending order of 'madness'):

• Arnold Schwartzenegger admitting steroid use and on film smoking a 'joint' in his pre Governor years
• David Hasselhoff needing rehab after running into heavy problems with alcoholism
• Stacey Keach getting arrested at Heathrow for cocaine importation
• Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown getting into all sorts of trouble with all manner of drugs.

All together now:

I believe that together you and I can save a life today.
We can stop a killer from reaching into minds and throwing lives away.
Drugs are causing pain and everyone's a loser in this deadly game that's played.
It's insanity.
We know that dope is slavery.
And you know we've got to be free ... come on now, we've got to stop the madness.

Stop the madness now
Stop the madness
Stop the madness now.

Tell me what you're doing trying to get some pleasure from an empty high.
Only fools will tell you using drugs is really a victimless crime.
There are casualties standing at the graves of children.
Feel the tears they cry.
Take a stand today; maybe it's your life you'll save.
You know there's got to be another way; everybody let me hear you say ...

Stop the madness
Stop the madness now
Stop the madness
Stop the madness now.

Brother, we heard your cry for some assistance.
Drugs are making your mind a man-made hell.
You thought that using dope would be a party.
Now you're a prisoner in a cell crying to be free.

You wanna stop the madness.
Stop the madness now
Stop the madness
Stop the madness now.

Its hysterically bad - but there is a serious side to this. This video is a perfect example of the ill informed, self satisfied, and hysterical approach that dominated drugs education and prevention work in the 80s, and unfortunately, to a large extent, right up to the present (even if there have been more recent flickers of improvement).

Drugs education (including prevention and harm reduction) for young people is clearly of great importance in any drugs strategy. If design and implementation is evidence led and based on public health principles, in tandem with other social programmes and life education, it should be able to help delay onset of first use, reduce progression into problematic use, reduce harm associated with use and even reduce overall prevalence. The fact it has historically been so politicised within the broader ideological 'war on drugs' is presumably why its been so historically ineffective. The policy designed to help young people ends up hurting them.

The excellent recent report from the Home Office's Advisory Council for the the Misuse of Drugs, 'Pathways to Problems', highlighted this failure very clearly after an extensive review of the evidence from the UK and US. This is the summary of their eminently sensible findings and pragmatic recommendations:

Findings

• There are many factors which influence whether or not young people will use tobacco, alcohol or other drugs hazardously. The most important of these include early life experiences, family relationships and circumstances, and parental attitudes and behaviour. It is difficult to predict who will develop serious problems.
  
  
• While many young people first use tobacco, alcohol or other drugs in their early and mid-teens, hazardous use often starts in the late teens or twenties.
  
  
• Of all drugs, the use of alcohol has shown the greatest recent growth and causes the most widespread problems among young people in the UK today. It is also the least regulated and the most heavily marketed.
  
  
• Most schools in the UK provide drug prevention programmes. Research indicates that these probably have little impact on future drug use.

Recommendations

• As their harmfulness to individuals and society is no less than that of other psychoactive drugs, tobacco and alcohol should be explicitly included within the terms of reference of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs.
  
  
• The ongoing debate about how best to bring up children should be informed by the evidence that good parenting and stable family life can reduce the risks of hazardous tobacco, alcohol and other drug use by young people.
  
  
• The Government should continue to invest heavily in minimising the number of children and young people in relative poverty and also in protecting and supporting the most disadvantaged and vulnerable young people in the UK.
  
  
• Additional measures are needed to reduce the overall consumption of alcohol in the UK. Among other things, the Government should seriously consider progressively raising the excise duty on alcohol.

• There should be a careful reassessment of the role of schools in drug misuse prevention. The emphasis should be on providing all pupils with accurate, credible and consistent information about the hazards of tobacco, alcohol and other drugs, including volatile substances.

(note the absence of recommendations for anti-drug pop videos emanating from No10)

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The Reagans on drugs

I was outraged to see this seminal 'just say no' film from the triumphant Reagan 'war on drugs' era edited into a spoof pro-drug film (apparently back in 1988) only to re-emerge now posted on the internet as retro-satire for cheap laughs.