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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: Cannabis not risk free, says adviser
James Meikle, health correspondent The Guardian
Thursday 29 Jan 2004 As Blunkett adopts softer line on possession, medical experts seem divided on the dangers to mental health of heavy users of the drug The government adviser who recommended today's downgrading of cannabis in the hierarchy of dangerous illegal drugs has repeated his warning that it is still harmful to health. Sir Michael Rawlins said he had no regrets about the advice which persuaded the home secretary, David Blunkett, to end 30 years of drugs laws which put cannabis on the same footing as amphetamines, with the threat of five years jail for possession. But he rejected any suggestion that he and his colleagues on the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), which he chairs, had underplayed the health dangers from heavy use. Robin Murray, professor of psychiatry at the Maudsley hospital, south London, has recently given several media interviews, including to the Guardian, outlining evidence that cannabis exacerbates the symptoms of schizophrenia-like psychosis, and the British Medical Association feared that the reclassification of cannabis might send the wrong messages about its harmful effects. Sir Michael said much of what Prof Murray had said had "already been available for a long period of time ... That which is new does not really show that cannabis consumption is a cause of schizophrenia in somebody who is not predisposed." He added: "We made it very clear that people with mental health problems were at risk from very serious and unpleasant reactions if they took cannabis. We made no bones about it." And Prof Murray was not against reclassification. "Robin has slightly overegged the pudding", said Sir Michael, professor of pharmacology at Newcastle University, who said he had never tried cannabis, "never been offered it ... such a dull life." The BMA, he said, "seems to have come out rather late in the day and rather ignorantly about it all, too". The association warned that chronic cannabis smoking increased the risk of heart disease, lung cancer, bronchitis and emphysema: a warning similar to that given by the ACMD itself in its advice to Mr Blunkett to move the drug from class B to C. But the ACMD said there were factors that might mitigate the risk, and it was these that Sir Michael focused on. "The carcinogenicity in cannabis is terribly complicated but it is intimately wrapped up in smoking. That is how most people take cannabis. "The interesting phenomenon is actually cannabis smokers tend to smoke less tobacco than ordinary smokers." He also questioned whether the cannabis smoked today was far stronger and more toxic than that filling spliffs 30 years ago. "The police, whom one relies on for this sort of data, say that actually it is so variable you just can't tell." Sir Michael said the ACMD had been unable to establish whether the change in classification would increase the consumption of cannabis, which is thought to have at least been tried by half the 20 to 24-year-olds in 2000. Nor did it recommend the changes in penalties that accompanied its move down the ladder to class C. He said: "This is an attempt to make the punishment fit the crime. Under the current arrangements anybody who has done all right on cannabis would think they might do all right on other class B drugs - that the whole thing was a sort of plot by the establishment to stop them enjoying themselves. "The other class B drugs are significantly more harmful than cannabis. At least this brings some logic and sense into what was a pretty silly arrangement in the past. "It will stop the migration of cannabis smokers into other class B drugs on the grounds they might be just as harmless." In an interview with the Guardian earlier this week Sir Michael revealed that the ACMD was reviewing the classification system, which grades drugs by degree of harm into A, B and C. Members want a more "objective" system to avoid inappropriate penalties or police powers.
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