|
We have all seen or heard by now the recent news stories about cannabis being linked to an alarming increase in psychosis. I would like to reveal the truth about the situation, using the governments' own statistics. The government spin that we are seeing regarding cannabis just proves once more that Labour has not changed its tactics one bit. They do not care for truth - they only care to spin lies to meet their own agenda. Until they can provide accurate and unambigiuous figures to back up their claims, we cannot even take their claims with a pinch of salt.
In 2003, the government produced the Strategy Unit Drugs Report - Phase 1 (June 2003) . On page 18, it states that out of a very low estimate of 1,006,000 dependent cannabis users, 674 were admitted to hospital with mental health issues directly related to their cannabis use - although it also states that dependence on the drug was also considered a psychiatric disorder. This means that any medicinal user suffering from the effects of lack of cannabis medication and going to the NHS to seek help, would automatically be diagnosed as having a mental disorder.
Using the above figures, 0.067% of cannabis users were admitted to hospital suffering from mental health issues related to cannabis in 2003. Using a still conservative, but much more realistic figure of 6 million regular cannabis users, that figure diminishes to 0.011%.A 40% increase of such a small percentage is still a very small percentage. These statistics hardly enforce the government stance that cannabis is such a danger to society. Uk health charity MIND state that: - around 300 people out of 1,000 will experience mental health problems every year in Britain
- 230 of these will visit a GP
- 102 of these will be diagnosed as having a mental health problem
- 24 of these will be referred to a specialist psychiatric service
- 6 will become inpatients in psychiatric hospitals.
(Source: based on figures from Goldberg, D. & Huxley, P, 1992, Common mental disorders a bio-social model, Routledge) The government is also neglecting to consider the contaminants in black-market cannabis. Soap-bar (fake hashish) has been rife in this country for nearly 20 years, and is now a mixture containing used engine oil, solvents and plastics with ketamine as the active ingredient to give the recreational high. We are now seeing equally worrying unknown contaminants in commercial herbal cannabis. Everybody knows the dangers of glue-sniffing and inhaling butane - smoking soap bar is no different. Maybe whatever increase health experts are seeing is primarily due to the unknown contaminants in black-market cannabis.
Until the government starts monitoring and analysing the contamination situation with open eyes, rather than concentrating on their bulging pockets from pharmaceutical company party donations, they are ignoring a huge health time-bomb - but not for the reasons that they are trying to spin at the moment.
All in all, the government spin that we are seeing regarding cannabis just proves once more that Labour has not changed its tactics one bit. They do not care for truth - they only care to spin lies to meet their own agenda. Until they can provide accurate and unambigiuous figures to back up their claims, we cannot even take their claims with a pinch of salt. |
