More Independent on Sunday reefer madness exposed

Back in mid-September the Independent on Sunday (IOS) ran yet another cannabis themed news feature this time under the dramatic headline Re-classification of cannabis ‘fuels youth crime wave’. At the time I couldn’t help thinking that the central claim made in the headline sounded rather implausible even though reportedly having the cred of being based on 'academic research'. In the context of The IOS’s born-again prohibitionist crusade to criminalise half of the nation's youth I almost considered looking into it bit more closely. But I was busy and to be honest weary of the endless stream of self-justifying cherry-picked canna-panic silliness flowing from the paper since March. I figured the public and blog readers of the world probably were to. I had better things to do and lazy IOS cannabis stories are easy pickings.

Then some weeks later I just happened to be lecturing at King College London (as fate would have it, on the subject of drugs and crime), the seat of learning responsible for one of research papers quoted in the IOS cannabis crime wave story, and just happened to bump into one of the research team involved with the very paper used to make the scary crime wave claim. It turned out they weren’t happy with the IOS reporting. So I felt a closer critique of the reporting was probably justified and needless to say I wasn't disappointed.

The IOS coverage opens with

Cannabis use among Britain's young offenders is "out of control", up by 75 per cent in some areas and fuelling a crime epidemic, with youngsters stealing to fund their addictions, according to two studies.

And then, a paragraph later:

Research carried out by King's College London has indicated that 25 per cent of young offenders in Sheffield have turned to crime to fund their habit. This contrasts with previous government research which said that "cannabis use was unlikely to motivate crime".

I have the Kings College London (KCL) research paper in front of me. It's called ‘Young people, cannabis use, and antisocial behavior’ and is an excellent and indeed important piece of work that illuminates a lot of the key issues and concerns around cannabis and young people today, making a series of eminently sensible recommendations. But does it suggest that cannabis is fueling a 'crime epidemic, with youngsters stealing to fund their addictions’ , or specifically that reclassification of cannabis ‘fuels youth crime wave’ as the IOS proclaims?

Well no, actually it doesn’t. There's no mention of epidemics or waves of crime anywhere in the document, and interestingly the ‘fuels youth crime wave’ quote from the headline doesn’t even appear in the IOS news story itself. It isn't even paraphrasing something someone has said; a quote apparently pulled from thin air. I believe the technical term for this is ‘made up’.

And what about the IOS claim that “25 per cent of young offenders in Sheffield have turned to crime to fund their habit”. Well one of the KCL report's authors felt this didn’t very accurately represent its findings and emailed the IOS story’s author to express their concerns. They were good enough to forward me the email sent:

I have just been emailed a copy of your article quoting the research colleagues and I conducted in Sheffield on young people, cannabis use and anti-social behaviour. I just wanted to let you know that your sentence "Research carried out by King's College London has indicated that 25 per cent of young offenders in Sheffield
have turned to crime to fund their habit" is inaccurate. The actual sentence in the report reads:

"Pocket money and work were the most common sources of funding cannabis use. Just over one in ten mentioned committing crime as a means of financing their use".

We did not, as the article suggests, interview all young offenders in Sheffield. In total we interviewed 30 youth offending service clients. Below, I have pasted our main findings. If I can be of any further help please don't hesitate to contact me.

The IOS didn’t go as far as to print a clarification. In fact they didn’t make contact at all, or even reply to the email. I believe this is technically known as 'rude'.

So is the 25% figure made up like the crime wave quote? Well, a closer reading of the KCL report reveals that:

“Only eight young people mentioned committing crime to fund their use, seven of whom were YOS clients.”

This is from a total interview sample of 61, all technically youth offenders purely on the basis of their cannabis use, but of whom 30 were specifically under supervision of the Youth Offending Service. So, if we are being generous to the IOS, you could arguably claim that of the 30 YOS clients interviewed, 7 mentioned committing crime to fund their use, and from that almost derive the 25% figure (well, actually 23.3 reoccurring % to be precise) . But let's have a think about this:

• Firstly, a total sample size of 30 is very small and can therefore only ever suggest very generalised behavioral patterns. Positive respondents in single figures, just 7 on the crime-to-buy-cannabis question, is far too small a number, with far too large an error margin to be the basis of any serious policy conclusions, let alone claims of 'epidemics'. It might suggest the need for further research but as the basis for a ‘youth crime wave’ headline it is faintly ridiculous. The IOS notably fails to mention the sample size, offer a link to the document (which isn't published in a journal yet anyway), mention the title of the research, or -as we have seen- name the authors or offer them a chance to comment (although 11 other experts do get quoted, along with 6 typically narrative re-enforcing IOS vox pops).

• Secondly The fact that certain individuals, (all eight of them), ‘mentioned committing crime as a means of financing their use’ is very different from IOS interpretation that they were ‘stealing to fund their addictions’ or that they had ‘turned to crime to fund their habit’. The fact the 7 YOS clients bought cannabis from crime related earnings is not really surprising. They are young offenders already in the system and likely to be using criminal proceeds to find lifestyle expenses generally from clothes, to big macs, to alcohol. Cannabis is not especially expensive(they are likely to be spending as much or more on alcohol), it is in a different league entirely regards crime creation to heroin or crack use that can run to over £50 a day – even though the IOS evidently uses these addictions as its semantic reference point. The KCL report does not state that the youths were asked how much they spent on cannabis or, for any of the 7 youth crime-tsunami, what proportion of cannabis expenditure was crime funded. It is also worth noting that of the 31 cannabis users who, like the vast majority of cannabis users, were not YOS clients, just one ‘mentioned committing crime as a means of financing their use’. This observation, in contrast to the IOS rather desperate assertions otherwise, doesn't really suggest an epidemic and actually indicates support for the ‘previous government research which said that "cannabis use was unlikely to motivate crime".

• Thirdly the KCL report does not link the 7 youngster crime 'epidemic’ with addiction as the IOS specifically claims. The report notes that, of the 61 youths interviewed: ‘23 believed that their use had some problematic aspects. Half (12) of them expressed concerns about the frequency of their use and the likelihood of developing addictive patterns of use’. However it does not state that any, let alone all of the 7 who ‘mentioned committing crime as a means of financing their use’ were amongst the 12, and no details are given that any of this 12, or the 7, had been diagnosed as dependent cannabis users or received treatment accordingly. It's possible of course that they were all hopeless cannabis addicts, but the KCL report doesn't tell us this, and actually it strongly suggests otherwise.
  

• Finally, whilst there is much interesting discussion in the KCL report about the confusion resulting from the rather bungled re-classification of cannabis from B to C in 2004, there is nothing in it to suggest that for any of the crime-wave-7 reclassification had anything whatsoever to do with their offending or use, as suggested by the IOS headline.
  

So in just two brief sentences there is a whole series of misrepresentations of the Kings College research, all skewing its findings so as to hype the cannabis crisis and support the IOS's pre-determined narrative about how awful cannabis is. Its an old trick (that even more credible papers can fall foul of from time to time) but in this case it is part of a pattern; the IOS's deliberate and ongoing journalistic shenanigans to justify their born-again prohibitionist editorial position, and indeed its increasingly evident support for a re-reclassification back to B. The same week's IOS leader, dramatically (perhaps in retrospect - ironically) titled 'Our criminal ignorance of cannabis', regurgitates the same distorted reporting, almost triumphantly declaring that:

“Today, we report a further complication. One of the arguments for reclassif'ying cannabis as less serious was that users did not tend to steal to pay for their habit. But disturbing new research suggests otherwise. Our own investigations suggest cannabis use is high and rising among young offenders, and an academic study in Sheffield suggests one in four young offenders has stolen to pay for cannabis.”

And finally it is perhaps worth pointing out one of the KCL report’s recommendations that the IOS didn't mention:

“Strategies that are developed to reduce the negative perceptions that press stories create in the public’s mind about young people should be encouraged.”

More blog coverage of the IOS cannabis frenzy during 2007:

• How the Independent on Sunday got it horribly wrong on Cannabis
  
  
• The Independent's born-again drug war: Round Two
  
  
• The Independent and cannabis: on it goes
  
  
• Cannabis potency update: IOS digs in, ONDCP ‘fess up
  
  
• Independent debunk's itself on cannabis potency
  

SHOCK : non-hysterical cannabis story makes headlines

'Cannabis use down since legal change', the Guardian reports today on its front page. And its true, at least if you believe the British Crime Survey. The report also knocks holes in a number of other recently hyped skunk-cannabis panics perpetuated by various tabloids and the Independent on Sunday (with its road-back-from-Damascus re-conversion to the wisdom of mass criminlisation of young people as the sensible policy response).

The Guardian report, in a welcome break from much of the reefer madness of the last year, highlights the fact that trends in reported cannabis use amongst 16-24 year olds (including frequent users), and 16 to 59 year olds, have declined steadily in recent years.

Of course, the BCS is not without its methodological flaws; it is generally acknowledged to under-estimate total use because it is a household survey and consequently misses out on certain groups – students, and those with no fixed address - with generally higher levels of use. That said, it is at least consistent in its methodology so there is no reason to think the general trends it describes are not for real.

There are, however, a couple of further observations that today's broadsheet coverage miss out on. Firstly, overall prevalence of use is not an especially useful measure of overall harm related to use. If patterns of more intense or risky use are increasing it is quite possible that falling use could be associated with increasing harm. Similarly rising prevalence could potentially be associated with decreasing harm in the opposite scenario – you just don't know without some more detailed research on using behaviours. Some research from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, (also published this week) shows how heavy use can cause real problems, but also highlights the links between such patterns of problem use and social deprivation.

Secondly, the fact remains that the BCS prevalence data shows the downward trend in reported cannabis use predates the reclassification from B to C in 2004, in fact beginning around 2001/2. This rather undermines the suggestion of the Guardian headline that the reclassification might in some way be a factor in falling use, just as many others have suggested it is a factor in rising use (see this blog post from January about a Daily Mail story that reported how 'the "softly softly" approach is contributing to a huge rise in cannabis use.' )

Both of these observations point to a more important analysis: that classification of cannabis appears irrelevant to either overall levels of use, or levels of problematic use. As Transform has long argued patterns of use are determined predominantly by a complex interplay of social, economic and cultural variables, there is no evidence to suggest changing classification has a meaningful impact on deterrence, and enforcement and drug policy more generally can -at best- only have a marginal impact on levels of use. There may well be an increase in problematic cannabis use occurring, but it remains hard to quantify and whatever its true scale the appropriate response should be always be public health led rather than based on an criminalisation /enforcement approach already tried for three decades with demonstrably disastrous outcomes. If, as the research suggests, the key determinants of problematic drug use are related to social deprivation then any long term response must focus on addressing these underlying social causes.

Classification seems to have become a symbolic talisman in the ongoing culture wars, dominating political discourse over the past five years in a fashion that grossly overstates its relevance in practical terms. Should cannabis be B or C has somehow, ridiculously, come to represent an ideological position, namely whether someone is 'pro' or 'anti' drugs. Support C and you are part of a sinister Soros-funded conspiracy to legalise drugs and make crack available in school tuck shops, support B and you are a tireless warrior in the crusade to create a drug free world. Meanwhile in the real world classification remains almost entirely irrelevant to young people, dealers, and indeed the police, who still have the flexibility to enforce the laws regards cannabis as they see fit.

Correction 02.11.07:

In the original posting of this blog I claimed that:

In more than twenty cannabis panic features in the IOS since March the BCS figures have never been mentioned.

This claim is incorrect, as I have subsequently spotted that in this article from July 29th 07: The great cannabis debate: 50 top experts confirm mental health risk it is noted that:

The number of 16- to 24-year-olds who smoked cannabis in 2006 has fallen by a quarter since 1998 – the last time the Government published its drug strategy. And among 11- to 15-year-olds cannabis use is also down: 10 per cent of pupils had smoked cannabis last year, down from 13 per cent in 2003, 2002 and 2001.

So even though the figures aren't sourced (the first being from the BCS and the second from the DoH schools survey - both not without flaws), I retract the specific claim, with apologies to the Independent on Sunday.

That said, I don't retract or apologise for Transform blog critiques of all the other skewed, misleading and sensationalist reporting of this issue since March, or the shortsighted editorial analysis and comment that has accompanied it.

Independent debunks itself on cannabis potency

In a strange turn of events Saturday's Independent ran a news piece by health correspondent Jeremy Lawrence, titled 'Debunked: politicians' excuse that cannabis has become stronger'

The piece is aimed at the politicians who have recently confessed to cannabis use but have been claiming, as some sort of excuse, that what they smoked 'back in the day' (you know, the harmless hippie stuff) is a world away from the super potent insane-abis which the feral street kids of Britain are being driven mad with today. The article is a fairly comprehensive debunk:

"The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, which examined the issue 18 months ago, will be asked to do so again. It concluded in its report in December 2005 that the strength of cannabis resin (hash) had changed little over 30 years and was about 5 per cent tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). Skunk, it found was 10 to 15 per cent THC - two to three times as strong, not 25 times.

Professor Leslie Iversen, a pharmacologist at Oxford University, said the widespread belief that skunk was 20 to 30 times as powerful was "simply not true".

The biggest change over recent decades has been in the strength of indoor-cultivated herbal cannabis, but even this has only doubled to 12 to 14 per cent THC. Although exceptionally strong skunk can be found on the market in Britain, it always has been available, according to reports from the UN Drug Control Programme."

The weird thing about this is that if anyone has been stoking the fire under the potency-panic furnace lately, it is the Independent on Sunday. Back in March the Independent on Sunday ran its now famous cannabis apology front page, claiming that skunk 'is 25 times stronger than the resin sold a decade ago'. Much more of the same followed over the next 5 weeks with no less than 15 cannabis health-panic news items or comment pieces used to justify their new 'cannabis is bad for you therefore we advocate mass criminalisation' editorial line/ratings booster.

Much of this was diligently and patiently critiqued here on the Transform blog:

• How the Independent on Sunday got it horribly wrong on Cannabis
  
  
• The Independent's born-again drug war: Round Two
  
  
• The Independent and cannabis: on it goes
  
  
• Cannabis potency update: IOS digs in, ONDCP ‘fess up

There was also a good deal of intelligent critique from elsewhere in the media and blogosphere:

• Bad science column in the Guardian: 'Reefer Badness'
  
  
• 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.

So, whilst we might expect a critical view from an opinion writer (Deborah Orr has a piece in the paper aswell for example calling for legalisation and regulation, and Indeed Johann Hari has been writing about all this at length in the daily Independent for ages) , it does seem odd that they would now run a news item that utterly and completely undermines their own position, which they so prominently paraded on the front pages and in leader columns just a few months back.

What exactly is the relationship between the Independent and the Independent on Sunday? Do they share more than a name, logo and website? Has Jeremy Lawrence ever met Jonathan Owen (chief cheerleader of the IOS's canna-panic)? Was Lawrence secretly fuming at all the shoddy reporting being trotted out by his sister paper and lying in wait for his moment to strike back?

Who knows, or to be honest, cares. Its just good to see that poor reporting and populist silliness based on bad science can, apparently, be challenged in house. And fortunately we have seen more of this elsewhere in the past two weeks as the Guardian's withering critique of a populist MMR shock-piece in the Observer demonstrates. Perhaps there is some glimmer of hope yet for improved critical coverage of science stories in the media.

note: non-cannabis blog coverage will hopefully be resuming shortly

thanks to Science punk

SHOCK absence of reefer madness in this week's IoS

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Having been away for the Bank Holiday I had the pleasure of not having having my Sunday sullied by to read the latest installment in the Independent on Sunday's six week born-again war on cannabis (covered extensively elsewhere in the blog), with all its misrepresented statistics, sensationalism, misunderstanding of public health policy and lazy drug-panic journalism.

It was therefore with some trepidation that this morning I reluctantly tapped 'cannabis' into the Independent website search engine to see what would pop up. What would it be this week? Having already recycled most of the usual reefer-madness material from the past few decades (super-strong genetically modified Franken-pot that will make you into a violent, insane, heroin addict with cancer etc..) the only territory left was getting increasingly obscure; infertility, teenage boys growing breasts, mutant six-toed canna-babies, psychotic skunk-zombies storming the IOS offices?

'give us Owen and we'll spare the rest'

But then.....nothing

Feeling slightly robbed, I found myself imagining the front-page splash headline:

AN APOLOGY: NO CANNABIS PANIC NEWS THIS WEEK!



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Cannabis potency update: IOS digs in, ONDCP ‘fess up

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This Sunday saw yet another less-than-completely-balanced cannabis story from Jonathan Owen in the Independent. Head-lined Cannabis harms mental health, scientists warn it features one line interviews with experts at an upcoming conference about how cannabis affects the brain (see guidelines for drug-panic media coverage here). Dr Zerin Atakan is quoted saying "There is a disturbance of the area governing thoughts and emotions and this seems to be related to temporary psychotic symptoms suffered by some of the people that took part." This is interesting in that one of the criticisms of some ‘cannabis causes psychosis’ coverage is that psychosis is never defined (Stedman's Medical Dictionary defines psychosis as "a severe mental disorder, with or without organic damage, characterized by derangement of personality and loss of contact with reality and causing deterioration of normal social functioning.") and also that it is rarely identified as a fairly common temporary symptom of (over) intoxication, rather than a long term mental health issue for most users.

Interestingly the Independent also omits to mention that Dr Zerin Atakan supports legalisation and regulation of cannabis:

"I personally believe it should be legalised so it is tightly regulated and it says on the packet how much THC is in it. At the moment it is worse because people think it is legalised and there is confusion and it is in the hands of the dealers. That is not a good situation."

This notion – that dangerous drugs need to be properly regulated (rather than be left in the hands of criminal profiteers) to minimise the harm they cause still seems to be an alien one to the IOS. That said, following a rather curt email about journalistic integrity, I did manage to have a similar small Transform quote belatedly tapped onto the end of last weeks Cannabis-is-really-bad-for-you item:

But drug reform organisation Transform says that legalisation of cannabis is the way forward. A spokesman said: "It is precisely because drugs are dangerous that they need to be appropriately regulated rather than be left in the hands of criminal profiteers."

Before moving onto far more interesting developments Stateside I'd just like to quote one laughable sentence from the latest self-congratulatory Owen piece.

“All this comes as a ferocious debate continues over the mental health risks of skunk - a potent new form of the drug - first reported in this newspaper last month.”

Now correct me if I’m wrong but I’m fairly sure the mental-health skunk story had been reported before last month.

(The BBC online also cover this conference event in a piece which could almost have been titled psychoactive drug in 'affects brain' shock. )

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Still on the cannabis potency news, if you can bear it, there was an interesting development this week in the States, itself home to a series of marijuana potency panics over the past few decades. It all has some rather eerie echos of the UK experience as chronicled here in recent weeks. As reported on the stop the drug war blog:

"After years of claiming that marijuana is 25-30 times stronger than it used to be, ONDCP [that's the Office of National Drug Control Policy] admitted that marijuana potency has merely doubled’

"Today, the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) released the latest analysis from the University of Mississippi's Potency Monitoring Project which revealed that levels of THC—the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana—have reached the highest-ever levels since scientific analysis of the drug began in the late 1970's. According to the latest data on marijuana samples analyzed to date, the average amount of THC in seized samples has reached 8.5 percent. This compares to an average of just under 4 percent reported in 1983 and represents more than a doubling in the potency of the drug since that time".

Seizure Specimen Potency Trend

Source: Univ of Mississippi Marijuana Potency Monitoring Project, Report 95, Jan 9 2007



Potency of All Tested Cannabis Specimens

Source: Univ of Mississippi Marijuana Potency Monitoring Project, Report 95, Jan 9 2007

They compare this new data to 2002 comments from US Drug Tsar John Walters' statement

"The THC of today's sinsemilla averages 14 percent and ranges as high as 30 percent.

Even stronger stuff is on the way. The point is that the potency of available marijuana has not merely "doubled," but increased as much as 30 times."

The blog notes that;

“It's curious that ONDCP and NIDA are so proud to announce that they've been wildly exaggerating marijuana potency for many years. Apparently, they see value in finally legitimizing their claims that pot is getting stronger, even if doing so raises the question of what the hell they've been talking about all this time.”

“Yet a doubling of marijuana potency hardly compliments the ONDCP's ongoing effort to eradicate the stuff from the planet. Nor does it bear any relationship to the intoxication levels experienced by users, who titrate their doses to achieve the desired effect regardless of potency.”

As has been argued in the various recent blogs on the IOS cannabis potency panic –the almost exact same story is true in the UK; average cannabis potency has risen over the past three decades, but nowhere near as dramatically as the Drugs-Tsar-esq '25 times stronger' scare headlines that have appeared in the IOS recently.

previous blog coverage:

How the Independent on Sunday got it horribly wrong on Cannabis

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

Independent on Sunday and cannabis - on it goes

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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Why 'legalising' Afghan opium for medicine is a non-starter

.
The idea of 'legalising' Afghanistan's opium crop for medical use was back in the news this weekend. According to the Independent on Sunday, Tony Blair is now 'considering' the plan that has been rejected by the US and also by the Foreign Office. Even though the IOS has hardly covered itself in glory for its recent drugs coverage, this story apparently comes from a prime ministerial spokesperson so there's no reason think its not true. Another report
in Pakistan's Daily Times say that apparently NATO are also 'considering' the plan.

Its not surprising they are at least considering it. Afghanistan is as chaotic and war torn as ever: current efforts to deal with the illegal opium trade are clearly failing in dramatic style. Add to this the fact that everyone knows the eradication plans being floated are hopelessly impractical and have zero chance of success, and there may indeed be potential window for more radical solutions to be reviewed. Unfortunately 'consider' is not 'do'. When they do 'consider' it they will find that in its current form the plan is a non-starter. Below is an article which appeared (with a couple of very small edits) in this month's Druglink magazine in which I explain why.

Fields of Dreams

The Senlis Council proposal to license Afghan opium production for medical use has been garnering much publicity and high level support, most recently from the BMA. Could this plan be a 'silver bullet', simultaneously helping to heal Afghanistan and solving the 'global pain crisis'? Sadly not, argues Steve Rolles from the Transform Drug Policy Foundation.

Superficially at least the idea has great appeal. Currently more than half of global opium production is legal and licensed for the medical market (morphine, diamorphine, codeine). This product is not profiting criminals, fueling conflict, or being sold to addicts on street corners. Could we not help Afghanistan on its road to economic and political stability and fill the apparent shortfall in medical opiates for pain control? Unfortunately no – this apparent 'silver bullet' solution faces a raft of practical and political obstacles that render it almost completely unfeasible.

Firstly, the medical opium 'shortage' is an illusory one. Licit opium production currently takes place primarily in Tasmania, Turkey, and India, strictly licensed by the UN drug agencies. The problem is evidently not a lack of opium but rather the under use of current production. The INCB estimated annual global demand for licit opiates (in morphine equivalents) was 400 metric tonnes and that over production since 2000 has led to stocks 'that could cover global demand for two years'. Afghanistan's annual production is 610 tonnes of morphine equivalent (and rising). Flooding an already over-saturated market would potentially cause precisely the supply/demand imbalance the UN control system was designed to prevent. Any first steps would, therefore, have to address under-usage of existing production and the related political, bureaucratic, and licensing issues before any realistic role for licit Afghan production could seriously be entertained.

The second problem is a purely practical one with Afgahanistan's status as a failed state and war zone presenting insurmountable obstacles. Although such an illicit-to-licit transition has been achieved in Turkey and India, this required a high level of infrastructural investment, state intervention and security apparatus, something Afghanistan is entirely lacking in its current chaotic and lawless state. Afghan production would also struggle to compete on the international market, with its unit costs estimated by David Mansfield (1) at almost ten times higher than the highly industrialised output from Australia.

Finally there is the fact that demand for non-medical opiates will not disappear, even if Afghan opium production hypothetically could. A lucrative illicit profit opportunity would remain - a vacuum into which other illicit production would inevitably move - whether in Central Asia or elsewhere. More likely, the demand would be met by increased Afghan production under the same farmers, warlords and profiteers, potentially making the situation worse. The plan has no more hope of getting rid of illicit non-medical production than the decades of failed alternative development and eradication have. The brutal realities of supply and demand economics in a completely unregulated and illegal marketplace will see to that.

There may well be a place for smaller scale licensing of Afghan opium at some point in the future, certainly for their domestic medical needs and perhaps as part of an amnesty plan or transition program for farmers moving into alternative crops. But the Senlis plan as currently envisaged is a non-starter - 'silver bullet fantasies' as the TransNational Institute describes it (2). Sanho Tree (Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC) described the plan as "a mirror image of prohibition – well-intentioned but ill-conceived, just from the opposite end of the policy spectrum". Whilst undoubtedly useful in stimulating debate on licensing opium production, the proposal is now casting a shadow over more thoughtful and cautious policy work being undertaken by other drug policy NGOs. For organisations like Transform there is a danger that an over hyped but ultimately doomed 'legalisation' plan is potentially undermining a reform movement struggling to promote a more nuanced exploration of realistic models for regulated drug production and supply.

1) David Mansfield's website

2) TNI Afghanistan report pdf

Senlis Council website

The Independent's born-again drug war: Round Two

The Independent on Sunday have followed on last week's Cannabis panic front page splash with another front page splash. This time it is 'The Great Cannabis Debate'. Inside we get more news coverage revelling in the faux-controversy they have stirred up, scary brain scans showing how cannabis 'may' melt your brain, two opinion pieces; one by the head of the UN drug agencies Antonio Costa, another by child psychotherapist Julie Lynn Evans, and another leader defending their retraction of support for cannabis law reform (on the basis that it is more dangerous than they thought).

Jonathan Owen from the Independent on Sunday, who is apparently taking the lead on this latest salvo of cannabis coverage, rang me on Friday. He had read the Transform blog critique on last weekend's IOS cannabis 'apology' and wanted a response for this weeks 'Great Debate' follow up piece. This is what I sent in:

"The IOS makes the mistake of confusing their legitimate concern with the health impacts of cannabis misuse amongst a small group vulnerable young people, with support for the failed ideological policy of prohibition. Rather than supporting an evidence-led regulatory response based on public health and harm reduction principles, they advocate a policy that has not only failed to address the problems they describe (and has arguably created many of them), but also one that offers no prospect of sorting them out. The blanket criminalisation of millions of non-problematic occasional users that the IOS has now re-stated its support for, cannot be justified on the basis of a relatively tiny vulnerable population, especially of teenage heavy users, who have serious problems with the drug (even if this group has grown proportionally with the overall population of users over the last three decades). This is akin to prohibiting cars because of a small population of teenage joy-riders.

Cannabis use undoubtedly involves risk, as does all drug use, legal or illegal. But these risks have been well documented and well understood for generations. The debate around our response to cannabis use is not well served by hype and misrepresentation of statistics on potency, impact on mental health, or treatment and addiction – all of which last week’s IOS coverage was guilty of. This was scaremongering in the cause of an attention grabbing headline, very much in the pattern of many previous cannabis scares and precisely the sort of moral-panic the recent RSA report criticised for historically distorting policy priorities. The IOS also perpetuate the misunderstanding that the cause of cannabis law reform is predicated on the fact that cannabis is harmless. On the contrary – the exact opposite is true: Is precisely because drugs are dangerous that the need to be appropriately regulated and controlled by the State rather than be left in the hands unregulated criminal profiteers. This remains true however harmful a particular drug is shown to be.”

Whilst they have printed some similar-ish sensible comments from others in the follow up (in micro print, beneath the massive banner-headlined UN propaganda fest), they haven't included my comments in their 'great debate', which is mildly annoying since they actually asked for them.

Anyway, there's various things that jump out from the coverage deserving of some sort of response:

• Owen refers to 'outrage on pro-cannabis websites and blogs' in response to the IOS's cannapology. Read our blog post: it is not outraged and it is certainly not pro-cannabis, any more than advocates of drug policy and law reform generally are 'pro-drug'. They are pro effective evidence-based public health responses to the obvious failings of prohibition. As the late Eddie Ellison, former head of the met drugs squad and Transform Patron, liked to point out, being anti-drug is entirely compatible with a rational pragmatic position on drug law reform (see here and here). Pro drug / anti drug is a false binary that the IOS deploys as part of its own self justification: drugs are bad, we are anti them, we must be right. Once again, they totally miss the point.
  

• After last weeks 'drugs bad for you' scoop, the big scoop this week is that the UN agrees with them: 'The United Nations has issued an unprecedented warning to Britain about the growing threat to public health from potent new forms of cannabis, saying there is mounting evidence of "just how dangerous" the drug has become'. Actually this is in no way 'unprecedented', and to suggest so is just poor journalism. Costa, his predecessors, and the UN drug agencies saying exactly this, loudly and frequently, for years, especially since UK cannabis reclassification in 2004. Almost every comment in Antonio Costa's article is copy and pasted from these earlier statements.
  

• It is hardly surprising that Costa would say what he does. The UN drug agencies oversee the UN drug conventions to which most countries in the world are signatories. These conventions (1961, 1971 and 1988) enshrine the IOS's beloved criminal penalties for drug production, supply and use into domestic law of over 150 states. They are the legal foundation and ideological bedrock of global drug prohibition. So its hardly surprising that Costa has come out in support of the IOS 's born again war-on-drugs stance. Costa is like prohibition's end-of-level-boss, he is literally the last person on earth you would expect to get a balanced position on drug policy from. Its a bit like an IOS scoop that the Pope sensationally backed their new position on the virgin birth. Indeed, Peter Cohen, in an essay for the International Journal of Drug Policy, titled 'The drug prohibition church and the adventure of reformation', makes a telling comparison between prohibition and religious dogma:
  

Whatever the origin of the UN Drug Treaties, and whatever the official rhetoric about their functions, the best way to look at them now is as religious texts. They have acquired a patina of intrinsic and unquestioned value and they have attracted a clique of true believers and proselytes to promote them. They pursue a version of Humankind for whom abstinence from certain drugs is dogma in the same way as other religious texts might prohibit certain foods or activities. The UN drug treaties thus form the basis of the international Drug Prohibition Church. Belonging to that Church has become an independent source of security, and fighting the Church's enemies has become an automatic source of virtue

• Picking apart what Costa and prohibition's other high-level evangelists have to say has been done a million times. The UN drug agency's drug war propaganda is as tediously repetitive as it is economical with the truth. He repeats the myth that legalisation advocates claim cannabis is harmless, and blanket misrepresents all of the theory and practice of alternative policies to absolute prohibition as 'vague, laissez fare' or 'libertarian'. He uses a crackpot quote from a random online head-shop as a source of 'truth' regards the real dangers of cannabis, and has a charming line on not being swayed by 'misguided notions of tolerance'. Anything but tolerance!
  
  
• We then get the utterly ridiculous: "People who drive under the influence of cannabis put others at risk. Would even the most ardent supporter of legalisation want to fly in an aircraft whose pilot used cannabis?" OK. Deep breath... Look, no one, literally no one calling for legal regulation and control of cannabis (or any other drug) is saying driving whilst competence is compromised by drug intoxication is OK or should also be legal. I'm also not aware of anyone ever suggesting that flying planes whilst stoned was acceptable. Decriminalising drug use does not give license for secondary offences committed whilst intoxicated - these will obviously remain criminal, as they should. To suggest different is pretty desperate, and from the rational reformers perspective actually quite offensive.
  

• The most egregious nonsense in the Costa piece is where he claims: "drug control works. More than a century of universally accepted restrictions on heroin and cocaine have prevented a pandemic. Global levels of drug addiction - think of the opium dens of the 19th century - have dropped dramatically in the past 100 years. In the past 10 years or so, they have remained stable. The drug problem is being contained and our societies are safer and healthier as a result." Seriously, what can you say to that? How can you argue against that sort of statement that crosses the boundary from shaky institutional propaganda into full-blown Orwellian 'ministry of drug truth' delusion. At this point, I could produce a torrent of graphs, from official government and even UN sources, exposing this statement to be the polar opposite of reality, but hopefully if you are reading this blog, in fact if you can read at all, graphs wont be necessary as you will appreciate that such claims for the success of drug control over the past century are a total joke. It would actually be quite funny - if this man wasn't in charge of global drug policy. If the IOS is relying on this sort of analysis to bolster its case they really have blown it. To find out more about the UN drug policy see this excellent page of TNI publications on international drug policy. See also the recent blog: UN INCB is 'obstacle' to HIV prevention and drug treatment programs
  

• The other prominent drug 'expert' the IOS pull in is none other than music / TV / airline /cola mogul Richard Branson. He talks about 'genetically engineered skunk' suggesting that skunk - the ill defined catch-all term for smelly indoor-grown cannabis - is in fact some sort of sinister new species of franken-pot. Actually it's no more 'genetically engineered' than any other farmed plant, flower or vegetable that has been bred to develop certain properties - i.e. everything in your fridge. Rosie Boycott on Radio Four's Today programme last week, despite elsewhere talking a lot of sense, got it even more wrong when she described 'skunk' as 'genetically modified', which is just flat out incorrect. Breeding plants is very different from inter-species DNA splicing. The worst thing about this is that both Branson and Boycott seem to be buying into the hype of the potency panic (explored in last weeks blog and also examined in this week's Guardian Bad Science column by Ben Goldacre). The Independent also seems to imply that Branson is backing their born-again prohibitionist stance when in fact he is not. He specifically only calls for a debate on the harms of cannabis, and also says that people with drug problems should get help on the NHS 'free from blame'.
  

I could pick more holes in the coverage but I grow weary. Apologies to Julie Lynn-Evans then; its not that your plan to make 'skunk' posession punishable with 14 years in prison, but legalise 'the old stuff' doesn't warrant annihilating, just that I think the point has been made well enough now, and I can't be bothered.

To be honest I'm incredibly bored with the endless recycling of the cannabis debate, the endless retreading of exaggerated claims about the drug itself (either its dangers or its safety). If there is one small mercy in the IOS coverage it is that they spared us the dreaded 'gateway theory'. Most of all I'm bored of the myths, misrepresentations and misunderstandings about people who call for reform of a policy that has manifestly failed on each and everyone of its stated objectives to reduce supply, use or harm associated with the drug.

This has all been going on for literally decades now, in fact generations; bear in mind the original reefer madness film was made in 1936, several decades before the 'good old days' of the flower power era (as Costa calls it) when cannabis was apparently a nice harmless drug used by hippies.

This endless tail chasing has been fuelled by lazy journalists looking for an easy headline and populist politicians looking for a way to score points against opponents. Its just too easy: hype the danger then sound all righteous by coming up with a tough new way to fight it - evidence of effectiveness not required.

At some point we will have to get off this pointless merry-go-round. If nothing else the cannabis debate is a massive distraction from far more pressing issues in drug policy around heroin and cocaine in particular, and the catastrophic impact that those illegal markets have here as well as in Afghanistan, Colombia and elsewhere.

the Independent have changed their position from 10 years ago, and will probably change it again when they realise how the call for a war on pot really isn't the answer to the problems they identify, even if they were half as bad as the make out. Maybe the cycle-time for them changing their minds again will be a bit less than ten years. Maybe next time they will not confuse the debate about drug dangers with the debate about how to deal with them. You live in hope, but this week's spade work suggests they are determined to dig themselves into an ever deeper hole.

It was only last month that the IOS leader was arguing:

"It is true that there is a growing body of opinion that says some of the varieties of cannabis available today, in particular "skunk", are more dangerous than they were in the past. But this does not alter the fact that heavy-handed prohibition is failing."

and

"There are strong signs that the public is far less one dimensional in its attitudes than parts of the media and the political establishment believe. Almost a third of adults in this country have taken some form of illegal drug. There is a growing awareness that present policies are not working."

Just three weeks ago stablemate, the (daily) Indepedent with whom the Sunday version shares a website, had a leader about the RSA drugs report which argued that:

"Of course, the reason ministers are clinging on to the crude policy of prohibition is that there is still a wide-spread mindset in this country, stoked up by the populist press, that all drugs are "evil" and that, by extension, so are those that take them. The summersaults performed by ministers over the downgrading of cannabis demonstrate just how in thrall to this popular prejudice they remain. The RSA report argues that: "The evidence suggests that a majority of people who use drugs are able to use them without harming themselves or others. The harmless use of illegal drugs is thus possible, indeed common." One can already predict the shrieks of alarm that will emanate from the prohibitionist lobby at this eminently reasonable statement."

Weeks later another leader makes big play of unambiguously calling specifically for prohibition (its an absolutist position, there is only one kind and its always heavy handed), and also stating that the present policy is 'about right'. Its all a bit confused, why, its almost a bit...schizophrenic. Actually I don't really know what they're thinking, and to be honest, I don't think they do either.

How the Independent on Sunday got it horribly wrong on Cannabis

The Independent on Sunday jumped on the skunk-panic bandwagon this weekend with a brash tabloid headline: 'Cannabis - An apology', above a figure of 10,000 in big red letters - which we are informed is the number of teenagers treated for 'cannabis addiction' last year, apparently ten-fold higher than back in 1997. Inside, along with almost five pages of news coverage, there are opinion pieces by Rosie Boycott (the IOS editor who launched their cannabis legalisation campaign 10 years ago) psychiatrist Robin Murray, and a leader in which the they retract their support for Boycott's legalisation campaign - hence the front page headline.

They've totally missed the point.

1. The facts are all over the place. On the front cover Jonathan Owen informs us that skunk today 'is 25 times stronger than the resin sold a decade ago'. In the main feature this has become 'can be 25 times stronger'. A few paragraphs later we later that a cannabis joint 'may contain 10 to 20 times more THC than the equivalent joint in the 1970's'. Rosie Boycott tells us a few pages later that it is 30 times stronger and Robin Murray that the traditional 2-3 % THC of herbal cannabis in the 70's compares to 15-20% (occasionally as high as 30) in today's skunk. Who should we believe?

Actually they are all wrong. In the 70's, as with today, there was a range of cannabis products - herbal and resin - available on the market and they varied in strength from very weak to highly potent. Drugscope reported just last week that most of what was being sold as 'skunk' today is around 10% and that the stronger varieties were comparatively rare because they took longer to grow (increasing production costs) but commanded the same street price. So compare the 'worst' weed from the 70s to the 'best' today and you'll get your scary '25 time stronger' headline. In reality however the average 'weed' from the 70's was probably more like a third to a half the strength of most of today's skunk.

But the true picture is more complicated than this. Skunk is by no means the entire UK market, a large proportion of which is still 'old school' imported weed of the 3-4% variety and a larger proportion being low grade resin (soap bar etc.) also of low single figure % strength. The strongest stuff from 'back in the day' was way stronger than the low grade resin still widely available today. It depends how you spin it.

So lets be clear - the idea that cannabis was weak and harmless in the old days, and has now morphed into super-potent deadly psychotabis today, is just not true. That is oversimplification and hype for sake of a juicy media or political soundbite. An almost identical misleading potency panic took place in the US in the late 1980's : 'Now perceived as a hard drug, marijuana has increased 1,400 percent in potency since 1970' proclaimed the 1986 flyer for a US national marijuana conference.

More potent hydroponically/indoor cultivated herbal cannabis was also already widely available in 1997 , and whilst it is now unarguably more prevalent, the fact that it is mostly UK grown today rather than imported makes no difference to the consumer (if anything the home grown skunk is actually weaker than the equivalent product formerly imported from Holland).

The change in the market over the last ten years is nowhere near as dramatic as the IOS report seems to suggest, and can certainly not account for the 10 fold increase in 'cannabis addiction' that they attribute to it. Indeed this is another extremely dubious statistic (not to mention the reckless and ill defined use of the term 'cannabis addiction'). Not only does the change from 1000 teenagers being treated for 'cannabis addiction' in 1997, to 10,000 last year all seem to deploy conveniently, almost suspiciously, rounded numbers - but as is acknowledged in the papers leader - this rise is significantly due to changes in service provision. It is also due to the way cannabis related problems are diagnosed and counted: of this supposed 10,000 'cannabis addicts' how many are being treated primarily for mental health problems or misuse of other drugs but have also noted cannabis use (practically universal to both groups), or are in treatment as a result of the new and massively expanded arrest referral schemes? We are not told.

2. They fail to understand how drugs are used. The implication of the repeated 'fact' that cannabis today is 10/15/20/25/30 (take your pick) times stronger than it used to be is that people are consuming an equivalent increase in the main active ingredient THC. This is also not the case. Robin Murray describes the comparison between the weed of old and modern skunk as similar to comparing lager and whisky (Owen makes a similar comparison with shandy and brandy). But people don't drink whisky or brandy in pints. If a drug is stronger they consume less, weaker they will consume more - to achieve the desired level of intoxication. In the case of stronger cannabis users will put less in the joint, take less drags, inhale less deeply, smoke less joints and so on. This is called auto-titration and is exactly the same effect seen with low nicotine cigarettes which it was found users smoked more of, inhaled more deeply and so on. The effect was discussed regarding cannabis during the last potency panic in a 1988 paper in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs which concluded that:

"Observations of the real world of marijuana use, where autotitration is the norm, renders the scare tactics of the new marijuana proponents not only inaccurate but irrelevant. There is much published evidence about the availability of highly potent varieties of cannabis from the nineteenth century through the present day"

The idea that cannabis users, even teenagers, are incapable of making rational decisions about the dosage they consume is ridiculous, and the idea that they are getting 25 times more stoned than in the good old days is laughable. This is not to say that increased potency does not equate to any increase in risk, it does, but behaviours adapt surprisingly rapidly and hyping the potency panic or hyping the dangers associated with actual potency changes don't help us come up with rational public health responses that might actually help reduce overall harm. It needs pointing out for example that in Holland where cannabis is effectively (albeit not technically) legal, the licensed premises that sell it offer a wide range of cannabis varieties of differing potencies, and the strongest ones are far from the most popular. And they have a far lower level of youth cannabis use than here in the UK.

3. We haven't suddenly 'discovered' that cannabis is related to mental health problems. The IOS report doesn't 'Reveal' anything new at all. You can look at text books and commission reports from the as far back as the 1920s that document symptoms from cannabis use that are actually remarkably similar to those we have today. They say that for most people the risks of occasional use are low (certainly relative to most other commonly used recreational drugs) but that heavy use, particularly for a small sub-set of users with pre-existing mental health problems or certain other vulnerabilities, presents real dangers of exacerbating existing problems or potentially precipitating new ones. These problems include psychotic episodes (occasionally recurring), schizophrenia and so on. These are the same conclusions that have been reached by innumerable studies and reviews over the last hundred years, most recently two undertaken by the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs which came before and after the drug's UK reclassification from B to C: For most people the risks are minimal, but for a few they are very real, particularly for certain vulnerable groups, and particularly when associated with high levels of use. Guess what? Drugs can be bad for you.

The research into cannabis has continued unabated and our understanding is getting increasingly sophisticated, even though establishing the causal links between certain patterns of use and certain conditions remains problematic. The impression that there has been a sudden emergence of new knowledge is more a reflection of the unprecedented attention focused on the cannabis issue since the cannabis reclassification debate kicked off in 2001. Many opponents of the Government or the reclassification have sought to highlight emerging research in the media, often misrepresenting ambiguous conclusions as direct causal links.

Even if it's all true - what exactly is the IOS recommending? Ignore all other tedious witterings above for a moment and let's assume that cannabis really is 25 time stronger than 10 years ago and this really has led to a ten fold increase in teen cannabis addiction (whatever that might be). What does the IOS then recommend in its leader as a response to the policy disaster under which this skunk apocalypse has emerged?

Nothing: They say the the current policy is 'about right'.

Do we get an exploration of policy alternatives or a consideration of progressive policy in other European countries where the problems are markedly smaller? No. Instead we are told that the 'the fact possession of cannabis - and other drugs - is illegal acts as a important social deterrent'. You have to wonder what they have based this on. Could it be the massive rise in use of all illegal drugs since 1971? Could it be the the Police Foundation report of 2000 that concluded:

"such evidence as we have assembled about the current situation and the changes that have taken place in the last 30 years all point to the conclusion that the deterrent effect of the law has been very limited"

maybe it was the 2006 Science and Technology Select Committee that concluded:

"We have found no solid evidence to support the existence of a deterrent effect, despite the fact that it appears to underpin the Government’s policy on classification"

Perhaps it was Professor David Nutt, Chairman of the ACMD Technical Committee when he said: "I think the evidence base for classification producing a deterrent is not strong"

Maybe it was the fact that when challenged by the Sci-Tech select committee the Government were unable to produce a single shred of evidence for such a deterrent effect, and have undertaken no research to find any. I could go on, but needless to say The IOS has similarly failed to produce anything to back this claim up.

This all points towards to the biggest mistake the IOS makes in this whole sorry piece, which is to confuse their legitimate concern with the health impacts of cannabis misuse amongst a small group vulnerable young people with support for a failed ideological prohibitionist policy - rather than support for an evidence-led regulatory response based on public health and harm reduction principles. They advocate a policy that has not only created many of the problems they describe (lets face it, hype), but also one that offers no prospect of sorting them out.

The IOS seem blind to the fact that the emergence of potent indoor cultivated cannabis is itself a manifestation of the illegal market they are now supporting. In a similar fashion to the prohibition-fuelled emergence of crack cocaine, stronger varieties of cannabis (whilst they have always been available) are more expensive and consequently more profitable for the increasing number of small to medium scale indoor growers.

The IOS, despite noting that: 'the rhetoric of the 'war on drugs' tended to distort priorities', then deems it appropriate to maintain the blanket criminalisation of millions of non-problematic occasional users, because of a relatively tiny population of vulnerable teenage heavy users who have problems with the drug. This is akin to banning cars because of a small population of teenage joyriders. It has no legal precedent or ethical basis, it's inconsistent and makes no sense. They don't call for the mass criminalisation of alcohol because of growing teen drinking issues, so what are they doing? If they are so convinced by the deterrent effect of enforcement and if the skunk problem is so awful, why not call for doubling of sentences or show these young'ns the error of their ways by throwing them all in jail?

The IOS also perpetuate the misunderstanding that the cause of cannabis legalisation/regulation is based on the fact that cannabis is harmless - a misunderstanding arguably due in part to the mistaken approach of Rosie Boycott's initial campaign and its rather romanticised view of cannabis use. No serious advocates for drug policy and law reform do so on the basis that any drug is safe (to her credit Boycott's opinion piece reflects the increasing sophistication of her argument ten years on). On the contrary - reformers argue on the basis that all drug use involve risks and that is precisely why they need to be appropriately regulated and controlled by the State, so as to minimise the harms they cause. The IOS apparently wants the multi-billion pound drug markets to remain in the hands of criminal gangs and street dealers. Because that should help protect the kids.

Nowhere in the IOS coverage do they mention the fact that the authors of the key recent studies linking cannabis and mental health problems are advocates of legal regulation for precisely the reason described above (see Transform's 'cannabis reclassification revisited' briefing for more detailed discussion and references on this point). Perhaps there wasn't room for this discussion because all the space had been taken up with noddy-science cross-sections of brains, and lists of unreferenced cherry-picked statistics.

Cannabis use is a real public health issue, and the growing culture of young people misusing it a real concern, even if total numbers seem to have levelled off or even fallen marginally since reclassification. Hyping the problem for the sake of good story, however, is totally unhelpful, and calling for more of the same when the current policy has been such a manifest failure is even less so.

This was a lazy piece of sensationalist journalism and a pathetically weak and ill thought out leader. Dissapointing and mystifying for a supposedly progressive thinking paper.

Read the follow up here: The Independent's born-again drug war: Round Two