Two years after The Lancet’s dire predictions, a team of researchers at the Keele University Medical School have once and for all put the ‘pot-and-mental illness’ claims to the test. Writing in a forthcoming edition of the scientific journal Schizophrenia Research, they compare long-term trends in marijuana use and incidences of schizophrenia and/or psychoses in the United Kingdom. And what do they find?
Both implied that Parliament’s 2004 decision to downgrade pot possession to a verbal warning was responsible for the influx of supposed ‘triple-strength killer weed.’
Turns out Smith and Brown were full of it.
It is the third time in six years that the Panel has demanded that legislators classify cannabis as a Class C ‘soft’ drug, with minor, if any, criminal penalties.
As always, the first casualty in war is truth — and nowhere is this more evident than in Great Britain, where Prime Minister Gordon Brown appears intent on recriminalizing cannabis over the vehement objections of his own scientific advisory panel of experts and even the police.
Will Brown kowtow to this current (and really bizarre) epoch of British media Reefer Madness or respect the ACDM’s logical and pragmatic recommendation not to increase the penalties for cannabis?
For years now, British police and news reporters have blamed everything from psychosis and suicide to criminal acts like rape and murder on the after-effects of smoking “skunk,” aka allegedly super-potent pot.