by Nuff Said
The cannabis campaign is growing in the UK. More and more people are becoming aware that the Government/tabloid newspaper view that cannabis is a dangerous drug and causes mental health problems is based on propaganda and bad science. New scientific studies and medical testimonies are showing that cannabis actually has a multitude of benefits, although this does not get nearly as much press coverage as the odd pseudo-study claiming that cannabis is somehow bad for you.
The are an estimated six million cannabis users in the UK, a number which will undoubtedly continue to grow. Sir Richard Branson when asked if he had taken drugs recently claimed (addressing mps) that: “50% of my generation have smoked cannabis… 75% of my children’s generation smoked cannabis.” He is the face of an organisation of influential people that are currently campaigning for a more sensible policy towards drugs.
In the UK we live in a society where from a very young age we are warned about the dangers of drugs – we are told how drugs can mess up your life and send you into a spiral of addiction that will have you stealing from your family and living in your own filth. Yet we are not educated about the different levels of danger for each drug, rather just warned to avoid them altogether.
People call cannabis a gateway drug, yet what did they expect to happen:
Children are taught that drugs are dangerous, but most of the facts are left out. They are told to avoid them.
Children sometimes rebel – they might try a bit of cannabis with their mates, and will then realise it’s not such a bad thing. The adults lied.
They get their cannabis from a drug dealer. This dealer happens to be a bit older, but doesn’t care who he sells to. He’s in it for the profit alone. One day, he offers them some harder drugs. They don’t know anything about them, but hey, they were lied to about cannabis. What is to say they weren’t being lied to about everything else?
So the gateway to harder drugs theory is a product of prohibition, and cannot be blamed on cannabis itself. The majority of people who drink don’t use drugs, because they are not legal and readily available. This shows that if regulated, cannabis would not cause a rise in the number of people trying using other drugs, as it would be separated from a market where they were often sold together.
Here are some of the reasons that cannabis should be legalised and regulated in the UK in 2012:
OK, so we are warned to drink in moderation by television ads and writing on bottles, but that doesn’t stop people getting paralytic on a Friday/Saturday nights when they go out. We are the binge drinking capital of the Europe, and alcohol is a dangerous drug. The scary thing is that people don’t seem care, and many abuse their bodies by drinking far too often, leading to many proven health problems.
drinkaware.co.uk states that: “Either on its own or in conjunction with other factors, alcohol is estimated to be responsible for at least 33,000 deaths in the UK each year.”
Alcohol addiction is a big problem, and the site also states that: “More than one in 25 adults are dependent on alcohol, and the UK has one of the highest rates of binge drinking in Europe. An estimated 17 million working days are lost each year due to people missing work due to the effects of alcohol. In young adults, binge drinking is also associated with a range of risky behaviours, including a higher risk of contracting a sexually transmitted illness”
How many fights every weekend can be attributed to alcohol? I’d estimate about 99% of them. How often do you wake up after a night of heavy drinking unaware of some of the events from the night before? Alcohol, for the most part turns people into dick-heads, its plain fact. Have you ever been sober around a group of pissed people? It’s not fun.
Cannabis on the other hand, makes people chilled out and happy. It brings people together. The other day I shared a few spliffs with the man who came in install my new TV Ariel. He was safe as houses – a complete stranger. Can you imagine what the country would be like if instead of going out and getting pissed at the weekend, people had the option to go to cannabis coffee shops to enjoy their evening in a much safer way? Maybe alcohol-related deaths would even drop as people would have a legal and safer alternatives so would not feel as compelled to drink themselves into a stupor. NHS costs may even drop if more people smoked than drunk, as levels of violence and domestic abuse would be reduced.
Yet the government still approves alcohol, while demonising cannabis, which has zero reported deaths directly related to its use in the history of mankind! And as far as irrational reports claiming that cannabis can be linked to schizophrenia (When in fact cannabis smokers have sharply rose in number over the past 15 years with levels of schizophrenia staying stable or even declining) – Alcohol has proven health risks, both mental and physical associated with it. Many alcohol users don’t even consider alcohol a drug, when its levels of danger including that of dependence are up there with the strongest and most despised of the illegal drugs.
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