While this is a very good article, it might seem to be be suggesting that things have very much improved in Britain, regarding the departure of the “Legalise Cannabis” madness; but this is not necessarily true, with pro-legalisation lobbyists highly placed in government (remember, in Britain the madness, and badness, mostly comes from the top down) - if Melanie Philips’s article in the Spectator Blog is anything like accurate:
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/725581/britains-drug-wars.thtml

Thanks Barbara for such a well researched artical.  It is important to get the real truth out and for that we need the facts.  One thing I would add is that some reseachers have identified pot use with “erosion of life goals”.  An interesting observation, and very true of chronic pot smokers I have known.  Unfortunately I don’t have the reference to this study.  Keep up the good work!

The imagined increase in cannabis potency is largely propaganda,a myth created by dealers,and used by prohibitionists,each for their own ends,the first to sell more,and the latter to justify their crusade of punishment and prison.Much of the effect of all drugs is from suggestion,not actual pharmacological effect,cannabis included.Cannabis is feared as though it were a magical potion(also desired similarly.)
Those who naively further the myth-making do so for their own ends.
Being raped in prison is a rather high price for the miscreants to pay,don’t you think?But then,sinners must pay,here or in the hereafter,correct?The prospect is chilling.The rate of prison rape is very high,and terriibly under-reported,and almost never prosecuted.Numberlless prosecutors joke publically about the whole matter.
The USA tried a similar crusade against the use of alcohol with roughly analagous rhetoric against demon rum.Go back into the literature.The nonsense is all there.
Imprisonment for self-harm is folly.Do you think accoholics are to be cured by imprisonment or like means?We incarcerate criminals for crimes against persons or property,and not self-harm or folly.
But naive.self-professed experts-a bane of the age-need some cause for reformism,most especially if they’re reforming someone else,particularly if the reformee is not very powerful
A little bit about race:Whites have the highest proportional use of illegal substances,followed by latins and then least among users are blacks.Guess who are most imprisoned?Blacks.And those who are proportionately least likely to face time in jail,or even be arrested?If you said Whites,you get a cigar-at least until the health-police outlaw that cause of CANCER.
Someday reason will return,and we might adopt the regime of 1890,or 1900.Research the history of the various prohibiition movements.Most illuminating-and humbling.

Excellent article on a serious subject although for the past decades the use of pot has become so trendy and boringly hip that the mainstream media would not be open to correction.
And - although anecdotal input is not as helpful as broad-based clinical studies, I can off this as a simple observation:
Back in college days a close friend of mind would often share a bowl or a joint with myself and others, as was our custom at that time. Frankly, it never gave me much more of a buzz than a few shots of legal alcohol, and as the time went by I lost any interest in the stuff. The friend went his way, and I mine, and we were really out of touch for over 30 years.
Well - I had a call from him only a year ago. He had lived all around the USA since then, holding no real job for any length of time, married and divorced a number of times, and when he called me, his aged Mother was letting him live in a guest room on a foldout couch.
He was needing to borrow money as the job he’d landed - driving a delivery truck - had surprised him with a random drug test, which he failed. Of course he lost all of the job benefits as well, insurance, etc.
So we have a man in his mid-50s, living on Mom’s couch, watching daytime television, unemployed, drawing government subsidy, sponging off his Mom’s old age pension… and still smoking pot.
If that isn’t a testimony to the long term usage of the drug, then what is?

Dear Sir,
I am a doctor in a psychiatric hospital in nigeria. please can I have the references for the publications you quoted:
March 2007 Lancet,
Prof robin murray’s work,
February 2008 European Respiratory JOurnal
and Prof Blakemore’s work
I need it for my advocacy.
thanks

Barbara as much as I love your work, I must say “you must not know of what you write.” When was the last time you smoked a joint?  Are you writing from experience, or studies?

Alcohol has caused far more damage than marijuana, far more.  I speak from experience.

I miss this relevant informastion out on the media. I want to see campaigns at least as persistent as the ones we have witnessed about the harms of regular tobacco. And forget about cholesterol for now...., marihuana is causing a lot of psychiatric diseases (I see it daily in my clinic)..., and the main stream media are just silent!!!!

This is absolutely ridiculous. Weed may be stronger, but the only thing that’s changed is you no longer have to smoke as much to get the desired effects. It’s still the same chemical and affects you the same way. “Imagine a glass of wine or beer with a similarly proportioned alcohol content and consider the “rush” it would provide.” Ever heard of hard liquor? Give me a break.

“In 1970, pot contained one per cent THC. Bud contains 20 per cent THC.”
I’m sorry, but this is total BS.

And so is the whole argument raised by anyone who suggests todays cannabis is any different from that of the 1970’s. Here’s some actual facts for you. I need 30-50mg of ‘today’s extremely potent evil skunk cannabis’ to even feel it. 100mg will hit me nicely. Any more than 200mg in one go, and it stops being pleasant.

Now, THC has remained the same substance since the 1970’s. It still gets people high in the same way. So according to your “facts” people in the 70’s would have had to smoke over half a gram to feel it. And about a gram to get any half decent effects. That’d kill your lungs, and thus, it’d be much more dangerous than today’s ‘super potent deadly killer skunk’.

However, the fact of the matter is that people in the 70’s were not smoking entire grammes of plant material. They were smoking roughly the same amounts that we are today. And they felt the effects of the drug. The only conclusion that can be drawn from this is that there has not been a 20x increase in the potency of cannabis. Perhaps, at the most, a 2x increase. But this DOES NOT MEAN that people are getting higher (and thus more brain damaged), all it means is that people are smoking less. Which is GOOD. 

i agree with G..

how could ‘dont bogart the joint’ (take one toke and pass it on) have been the popular image of 60s Hippies smoking marijuana
unless it was of a comparable strength to todays ‘skunk’?

trouble is i think some ppl - especially overly-worried parents of teens - think its OK to exaggerate the dangers to be extra safe…

i would ask them one question:

what are your kids going to do.. when they find out from their friends or other ppl their age that they meet..  that you were lying?

Suggestion - how about if all commenting on the “pro’s” and “con’s” of smoking pot state their age and whether they’re “casual” or “chronic users”!

If they’re “pro” and of college age, are they not naive/inexperienced and if they’re “pro” and have reached mid life, would it not be relative/significant to know what they’ve achieved in life?

Marijuana not only ruined the best part of our lives (my husband and I are at retirement age and we don’t use pot), it destroyed our son’s life and he’s only 24. He had a brilliant mind with a tremendous future. A heavy ganja smoker for 6+ years he ended up being totally psychotic, dropped out of university and jobless and he’s NOT CAPABLE of either. POT ROBBED US OF OUR SON.

Rehab is costly but nothing compared to having our son back ..but for how long remains to be seen.

PLEASE WAKE UP all who smoke pot out there - be WARNED - I’m no expert and had nothing against this plant (I love plants) until I saw with my own eyes how it nearly destroyed our son.

It certainly does make one LAZY, to quote Julian of the USA, “a man in his mid-50s, living on Mom’s couch!”, or as P Stoker of Canada so aptly put it, it’s the “erosion of life goals” or as Marina N Carrillo of the USA says, “marijuana is causing a lot of psychiatric diseases (I see it daily in my clinic)” All I can say is “CHRONIC POT SMOKERS PLEASE BE WARNED”. 

Thank you Barbara Kay, your article was s..pot on!