Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:


After you have finished reading this article you can click here to go back.

Editorial: The Drugs Tsar Has Jumped To Conclusions

Guardian, The

Wednesday 08 Nov 2000

---
Website: http://www.newsunlimited.co.uk/guardian/


Through The Wrong Gate

THE DRUGS TSAR HAS JUMPED TO CONCLUSIONS

Beware of shroud wavers. Be doubly wary when the issues involved is the
highly controversial - and complex - issue of drug control. Yesterday
the drug tsar became an overt politician. Drawing himself up to his
full former chief constable's height, Keith Hellawell told a press
conference assembled for his second annual report that he was now
convinced cannabis was "a gateway drug". He said he had always been
reluctant to use the term. But he was now convinced by a new study of
drug-taking habits in New Zealand. It concluded, he claimed, that young
people who smoked a joint once a week were 60 times more likely to
progress to harder drugs. He went on: "The pro-legalisers who have said
that cannabis isn't a gateway drug will have to look at this very hard
and long."

To be fair to the tsar, the new study is not one of those snapshot
surveys showing that a large majority of hard drug users had earlier
used cannabis. These prove nothing, but are regularly interpreted by
commentators who fail to draw a distinction between an association and a
causal relation. Such surveys cannot prove causality. They ignore the
huge proportion of cannabis users who never take up hard drugs. The new
study is "longitudinal" in the jargon, following young people from birth
to the age of 21. It has ben carried out by well-respected social
scientists. It is full of caveats as well as extremely esoteric
statistical analysis. It does not state what the tsar implied: that if
you use cannabis you will invariably progress to regular addictive hard
drugs. It emphasises "harder" not "hard" drugs.

The long list includes prescription drugs and magic mushrooms. hard
drugs, including heroin and cocaine, accounted for mere 4%. Even then,
it was not suggesting this was an addictive move, but merely an initial
taste. Mo Mowlam, the drugs minister, was right to be more skeptical.
But then she, unlike the tsar, is a social scientist and more ready to
resist Tony Blair's hard line.

 

 

 

After you have finished reading this article you can click here to go back. 




This page was created by the Cannabis Campaigners' Guide.

Feel free to link to this page!