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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: Call for study on regular pot use
Jo Revill The Observer
Sunday 30 Jan 2005 A mental health charity has called for a government inquiry into the psychological effects of cannabis on users. Rethink wants the Commons health select committee to launch an investigation 'to help establish the facts about the link between cannabis and psychosis', particularly schizophrenia. A year after the government downgraded it from a Class B drug to Class C, mental health experts have growing concerns about its impact on young people. Rethink said the reclassification had sent a 'confusing message' to them that cannabis is risk-free. There has been a 60 per cent rise in people who smoked drugs and had mental health problems in the last five years. Most medical experts agree smoking cannabis in itself does not cause mental illness, but say people who are predisposed to psychosis are much more likely to develop symptoms with regular use. 'Cannabis is not risk-free,' Rethink chief executive Cliff Prior said. 'We have known for years that using cannabis makes the symptoms of schizophrenia far worse in people who already have the illness.' The government should 'concentrate on the real and specific mental health dangers, not general warnings that no one takes seriously'. Marjorie Wallace, head of the charity Sane, wants the reclassification reversed. 'The fact that Britain has become the cannabis capital of Europe is an indictment of the way professionals and governments have ignored years of mounting evidence that the innocent spliff in the playground, or chilling out, could trigger a journey of life-long disintegration,' she said. A Department of Health spokesman said: 'We are commissioning an expert review of all the evidence of the link between cannabis use and mental health, particularly schizophrenia.'
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