Reply to: Govt ignores 200k petition to legalize cannabis

[Eirikur]

How about we petition to sterilise this lot?

Mother and daughter splash out £56,000 on surgery to look like Katie Price | Daily Mail Online

OMFG

[AtW]

How about we petition to sterilise this lot?

Mother and daughter splash out £56,000 on surgery to look like Katie Price | Daily Mail Online

[Zero Liability]

How about we petition to sterilise this lot?

Mother and daughter splash out £56,000 on surgery to look like Katie Price | Daily Mail Online

[ASB]

There is quite a lot of anecdotal evidence between long term cannabis use and certain mental health issues. Particularly those of a paranoic nature.

Does this imply a causal relationship? Possibly, though the jury is dfinitely out.

Where usage started in adolescence then there is a stronger potential link. There is of course a big difference between occasional splifs and being a serious toker. Bit like overindulging on the boozer from time to time and being permanently tanked up.

Long term tokers often tend to become very withdrawn and for want of a better word fragile. A lot of those also started in adolescence. So on the face of it it is a strong link.

I amfar from certain personally. A lot of those (most) I have worked with that started a serious habit in their early teens have a very difficult history of abuse and neglect.

It may, of course, be that neglect which is the root cause.

[SueEllen]

There's a lot of evidence that if you have a propensity for mintal illnesses such as schizophrenia, regular cannabis use, especially the high octane hydroponically produced skunk weed popular among today's youth, can trigger these conditions Moulton bicycles. Conditions that may otherwise have remained latent.

People with the more serious mental health conditions often self-medicate with cannabis and other drugs before their issues are uncovered.

In regards to it staying latent it can't be proven either way as everyday stresses can trigger mental health conditions.

So while the condition wouldn't have been noticed if the person hadn't smoked cannabis at 15 e.g. they would have been regarded as an miserable teenager, going away to university a year later could be the trigger.

[DaveB]

Opium grows naturally too. So what? "You can make money from it" is hardly a great argument.

And we did effectively legalise it and tax it. Fought a couple of (very one sided) wars over it as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Opium_War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Opium_War

[Project Monkey]

Bring back hanging.

[d000hg]

Not just money the government would control the supply for it, the government makes truckloads of cash from tobacco and alcohol. How is this any different?

They're not being asked to legalise tobacco and alcohol.

The government is already trying to control the supply of illegal drugs

[The Spartan]

Opium grows naturally too. So what? "You can make money from it" is hardly a great argument.

Not just money the government would control the supply for it, the government makes truckloads of cash from tobacco and alcohol. How is this any different?

[d000hg]

Exactly this ^

The government could raise extra tax through producing it and selling it through pharmacies etc

Opium grows naturally too. So what? "You can make money from it" is hardly a great argument.

[smatty]

Yeah, right, lot's of agreeing head nods and concerned looks, sound bites and then.....feck all.

Well there's no guaranteeing that they'll take it anywhere or that anyone will listen if they do, but it's far more likely to have an impact than any online petition.

For legalisation I can't see it happening because so many people think that drugs being illegal means nobody takes them, the actual option infront of us is to have a multi-billion pound industry with severe health consequences managed by criminals or have it managed by doctors.

[The Spartan]

It grows naturally...

for me legalise it and tax it

it will then start to make money for the economy rather than costing the economy as the laws need to be enforced.

Exactly this ^

The government could raise extra tax through producing it and selling it through pharmacies etc

[d000hg]

I'd certainly say alcohol is much more a problem to society than tobacco, not due to the number of deaths but just impacting peoples' quality of life and being a general nuisance.

I'm not sure you can really attribute deaths to cannabis, tobacco, alcohol easily though, and there's more to a drug's dangerousness than whether it will kill you.

[pjclarke]

THC, Nicotine and Alcohol are 3 very different drugs. Comparing any of them to the other two is the basis of a poor argument.

Indeed, alcohol kills around 8,000 a year in the UK, THC zero. But point taken, and heroin is different to amphetamine - however we do attempt to classify disparate controlled psychoactive substances into classes (A and B in this case) based in theory on their harmfulness, and these classifications have legal standing.

My chart was from a lecture by Professor Nutt based on work he did in which he applied 9 measures of harmfulness, both to the user and society and came to the conclusion that cannabis is less harmful than our two legal drugs, indeed he argued

the challenges of dealing with the harms of alcohol is probably the biggest challenge that we have in relation to drug harms today.

A truly evidence-based drug policy would look very different to the one we have; people know this, that the emperor has no clothes. This is not a good thing for respect for the law. I like my Sauvignon Blanc, but I'm not an advocate for any particular substance, I think adults deserve to be given the best information we have and allowed to make their own minds up ...

[original PM]

It grows naturally...

for me legalise it and tax it

it will then start to make money for the economy rather than costing the economy as the laws need to be enforced.