When will the drug apologists accept the terrifying harm cannabis can cause?
By Graham Grant
IN the 1960s, there was a concerted campaign to legalise cannabis led by the pop stars of the day, including the Beatles and their manager Brian Epstein.
They argued ‘pot’ was harmless – though back then it was a great deal less powerful – and yet many of those musical luminaries later became burnt-out wrecks.
True, the Beatles, perhaps the most vocal champions for change, escaped that fate, though John Lennon progressed from prolific use of cannabis to heroin addiction.
The legacy of that counter-cultural movement is still alive and well today: some of those rebels from the Swinging Sixties became doctors and policy-makers, or at least those who survived.
Successive governments have resisted changing the law, though cannabis was briefly downgraded from Class B to Class C under New Labour, a decision that was later rescinded.
Yet the pro-cannabis lobby is increasingly influential and closer than ever to achieving its goal; indeed, in 2017, Prince William was criticised for discussing the possibility of legalisation.
Now the Scottish Tories are calling for a renewed focus from all levels of government on the damaging impact of cannabis on the young, following the murder of Alesha MacPhail.
Aaron Campbell, 16, was convicted last week of the abduction, rape and murder of the six-year-old girl on the Isle of Bute last summer.
Though his mother insisted he was not a regular drug-user, Campbell began smoking cannabis aged 14, developing a liking for a super-strength strain which he and his friends on the island referred to as ‘pollen’.
Combined with a passion for violent video games, the killer’s indulgence in ‘pollen’ may have altered his psychological state: he had chatted to a friend about his sick desire to kill ‘for the lifetime experience’.
Most disturbingly of all, there’s every chance that Campbell will be able to feed his cannabis habit, and develop new addictions, while in prison, where synthetic drugs are rife, causing chaos for staff who struggle to keep them under control.
In a tragic irony, Campbell’s dealer was Robert MacPhail, Alesha’s father, and Alesha was staying with him and his parents when Campbell came to the house, near his own, probably looking for cannabis; instead he snatched Alesha from her bed.
As Campbell awaits sentence, the debate over cannabis and its risks has been re-ignited.
At the weekend, Sir Robin Murray, professor of psychiatric research at King’s College London – who is heading a study to examine the correlation between cannabis and violence – warned that ‘using cannabis in one’s adolescence increases the risk of psychosis’.
He said there is ‘quite a lot of evidence’ that starting to use cannabis in adolescence ‘increases the risk of psychosis’.
Sir Robin said the use of cannabis has ‘usually been studied in people who started in their adolescence; they start at 15 and go psychotic when they’re 20.’
The academic also pointed out that some ‘bizarre murders’ have been committed under the influence of cannabis.
He said: ‘If somebody is murdered by their spouse after a long period of marital disharmony or gangs kill each other, there’s some sense in this in that you know why they’re doing it.
‘But it’s when people do bizarre things like chopping the head off their victims or senseless killings then it does make you think of cannabis.’
In another case with chilling echoes of Alesha’s murder, Jodi Jones was just 14 when she was murdered in 2003 by her boyfriend Luke Mitchell, who was also 14 at the time of the killing and claimed to have smoked hundreds of joints a week.
At the trial, judge Lord Nimmo Smith said: ‘I do not subscribe to the notion that this is a harmless recreational drug. I believe that, in some instances at least, it can seriously damage the mental processes of those who habitually consume drugs.’
The judge said Mitchell’s cannabis abuse may have rendered him unable to tell the difference between fantasy and reality.
Like Campbell, Mitchell also enjoyed playing ultra-violent video games, further helping to blur those boundaries, with deadly consequences.
Drugs expert Professor Neil McKeganey has also warned of a ‘long list of murders where the perpetrators have been using cannabis both on a long-term basis and just prior to their murderous actions’.
Cannabis, he believes, ‘served to distance these individuals from the horror of their actions and almost certainly contributed to their murderous mind-set’ – and yet we can be relatively sure that those demands for legalisation will not simply fade away.
Kenny MacAskill has said he kept quiet about his support for decriminalisation of some illegal drugs while Justice Secretary at Holyrood, because he worried it would hamper the push for independence (little knowing at the time that it was already mortally wounded).
Last year former Labour minister Lord Falconer of Thoroton confessed he regrets presiding over a system that locked up drug offenders, which he said was tantamount to an ‘attack on the working class’.
Patronising twaddle, naturally, but it was a deeply telling statement from an ex-Lord Chancellor.
There is also a great deal of wilful naivety at the highest levels over the dangers of cannabis: a government adviser once told me that most of us are substance-users, because we regularly ingest (entirely legal) caffeine and alcohol, and recommended the term ‘misuse’ should be dropped in favour of ‘use’.
This would acknowledge that illegal drugs can often be used ‘safely’ – and avoid stigmatising addicts – a change in strategy that would also allow some heroin addicts to continue looking after their children, without fear of social workers taking them into care.
It’s a mind-set that is morally bankrupt, and reckless, but it helps to explain the growth of soft touch policy-making and policing, which stresses that drug abuse should be treated primarily as a public health and not as a justice issue.
Police Scotland allows about 500 people a month to escape prosecution for cannabis possession, giving them Recorded Police Warnings (RPWs) instead – a scheme that was quietly rolled out with the approval of then Justice Secretary Michael Matheson, who didn’t bother to consult the public (or MSPs).
It was understandable that critics, including the Scottish Tories, feared that RPWs were effectively an attempt at backdoor legalisation.
United Nations consultant Dr Ian Oliver, a former chief constable at Grampian Police, said in 2017 that the police warnings were likely to fuel abuse of the drug.
Yet Scottish 15-year-old boys are the most likely in the UK to have smoked cannabis in the past month – and were in the top five among 16 countries.
How many of them are, like Campbell, smoking high-strength cannabis, and quietly incubating similar violent fantasies?
The silence from ministers and police top brass over the mind-warping potential of a drug that has caused immeasurable suffering is deafening.
But don’t expect them to toughen up their approach – they remain entirely in thrall to those government advisers who believe it’s no more harmful than drinking espresso.
*This column appeared in the Scottish Daily Mail on February 26, 2019.
