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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: Campaigners call for cannabis inquiry
ITN News
Saturday 29 Jan 2005 Mental health campaigners are calling for an inquiry into the effects cannabis has on users. The Rethink charity wants the Government to launch an investigation into any possible links between the drug and psychosis. It comes a year to the day after it was reclassified from a Class B to a Class C substance. Cliff Prior, Rethink chief executive, said: "Government should concentrate on the real and specific mental health dangers, not general warnings that no-one takes seriously. "There's a clear need for more research in this area. "We believe a health select committee inquiry is needed to help establish the facts about the link between cannabis and psychosis." The charity said the number of people who use drugs and have mental illness has increased by 60 per cent in five years. Mr Prior said that reclassification had sent out a "mixed and confusing message". He said: "There is a strongly-held view that cannabis is risk-free, reflected in the rates of its use among young people. "Cannabis is not risk free. We have known for years that using cannabis makes the symptoms of schizophrenia far worse in people who already have the illness. "There is a rapidly growing body of evidence showing that cannabis can trigger schizophrenia in people already at risk - and probably even in people who should only be low risk." Marjorie Wallace, chief executive of the mental health charity Sane, urged the Government to reverse its decision to reclassify cannabis and back the move with an education and awareness campaign on the dangers of the drug for young people whose brains are developing. "Sane has campaigned for 18 years about the destructive link between cannabis and schizophrenia," she said. "The fact that Britain has become the cannabis capital of Europe is an indictment of the way in which professionals and governments have ignored years of mounting evidence that far from it being a relatively harmless recreational drug for vulnerable people, especially teenagers, the innocent spliff in the playground, or chilling out, could trigger a journey of lifelong disintegration."
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