It is amazing how many times I am confronted at debates, on the Internet and in discussions with apparently intelligent people, with the same stupid arguments for weakening the drug laws.

It’s plain that those who use them haven’t thought about them. I wonder where they pick them up. Is it at school, in PSHE classes? Or from Christmas crackers? Or have the billionaire drug lobby, Big Dope, found some other way of planting them in the minds of millions, though movies, comedians, celebrity endorsement and so on?

Anyway, I felt the time had come to provide a concise riposte to these thought-free claims, in the hope that those who are capable of thinking will be able to see through them. Many, of course, want to believe any old drivel that supports their personal desires. For them, I have no antidote.

Idiotic argument No 1:'MARIJUANA USE IS A VICTIMLESS CRIME'

Only if you do it on a desert island, quite alone, and nobody loves you. In all other cases, the user runs the risk of doing himself serious harm (see below on correlation between cannabis use and mental illness). And if he does, his family will be terribly grieved and quite possibly forced to look after him, and pay for his upkeep for the rest of this natural life. They are victims.

Alternatively, the user may end up in a mental hospital, expensively cared for at the charge of the taxpayer, who is also his victim. Even so, his family’s grief and distress will last for as long as they live.

'Correlation is not causation, so there !'

No, correlation is not *necessarily* causation. But it is not necessarily *not* causation either. It is the foundation of epidemiology -see the famous case in which Cholera was linked to foul water supplies

https://www.pastmedicalhistory.co.uk/john-snow-and-the-1854-cholera-outbreak/

- and the starting point of investigation. And it is often the best early indication we get of a connection (such as that between smoking and lung cancer) whose detailed operation may take many decades to find and describe. Should we have done nothing to discourage smoking despite the known correlation between smoking and Cancer?

Surely only Big Tobacco would take that view. Those who take the same complacent view about the marijuana link to mental illness are very similar to Big Tobacco, and in some cases have similar motives. It is shocking irresponsibility, especially since legalisation of marijuana, once achieved, will be as irreversible as legalisation of alcohol and legalisation of tobacco.

Many studies, from the Swedish Army survey to the Dunedin study, plus the work of Professor Sir Robin Murray mentioned elsewhere in this article, have shown that cannabis use is correlated with mental illness of various kinds. Mental illness, I should say here, is easy to define as the overthrow or weakening of the patient's reason. But I do not use various pseudo-scientific terms such as 'psychosis' or 'schizophrenia', since these seem to me to lack any objective measure, and cannot be compared to physical diseases which can be reliably diagnosed by objective methods.

Stupid stoners respond to this by saying that breathing and eating bread are also correlated with mental illness. But this is just wilful point-missing. These are not meaningful correlations. Yet it is surely unsurprising if a drug which acts powerfully on the brain is associated with mental disturbance; just as it is not surprising that repeatedly inhaling clouds of smoke from burning vegetable matter is associated with lung and bronchial problems.

The stupidest argument in the world: 'WOT ABAHT ALCOHOL AND TOBACCO, THEN, EH? I BET YOU LIKE A DRINK. HYPOCRITE!' And the next stupidest : 'Are you in favour of allowing smoking, then? Hypocrite!'

Well, what about alcohol and tobacco? Both are very dangerous to their users and do terrible harm. If you support their legal status, or consume either or both, surely you are inconsistent and a hypocrite?

Answer: Not at all. I drink a little wine and the occasional glass of beer. Very occasionally I might drink a small measure of spirits. There is no hypocrisy in this. I break no law. I do not get drunk. If I ceased to do it, it would have no impact on the drinking of others.

My opponents use an illegal drug and campaign for its legalisation to suit themselves. I do nothing of the kind.

If alcohol were illegal I would not buy or consume it, nor would I campaign for it to be legalised. If I did campaign for it to be legalised, I would certainly not break the law I was campaigning to change, as so many cannabis legalisers do.

As it happens, I regard heavy and habitual drinking as scourges and sources of misery, so I favour the tightest legal limitations on its sale which are achievable. I support the reintroduction of the strict alcohol licensing laws which existed until the Tory and Labour parties combined to destroy them between 1985 and 2000. Under those laws, pubs were closed for most of the day, and closed for even longer on Sundays, and a special licence was necessary to sell alcohol anywhere else.

I have no doubt that heavy drinking has hugely increased since these laws were abandoned. I have seen the terrible consequences of habitual heavy drinking, and can see the case for prohibiting alcohol entirely. However, I do not think this is practicable. Banning things which have been legal for many centuries and also in mass use (including TV advertising and open sale in high streets) is impracticable.

Such laws cannot be enforced, as millions will know that until recently the government and the police took the opposite view, and will regard the change as inconsistent and dubious.

What did 'Prohibition' really involve?

It would also be extremely difficult to prosecute. US alcohol ‘prohibition’ is often wrongly regarded as a model for this It is not a good example. Millions of recent immigrants (wine drinkers from Italy and beer-drinkers from Germany and Bohemia) viewed the prohibition law (mainly the result of lobbying by feminists) as a political attack on their heritage and culture.

Very small resources were devoted to enforcing it. The USA has long, unpatrollable coastlines and borders. It shares its borders with countries which do not prohibit alcohol. It has vast unpoliced internal spaces where smuggled goods can be hidden and illegal brewing and distillation can take place. . Perhaps most significant of all, the USA's law did not punish possession (and therefore use) of alcoholic drinks.

This enfeebled it from the start, as if you do not interdict demand you are wasting your time interdicting supply. This is the basic flaw in our cannabis laws, where the supposedly severe penalties for possession are seldom if ever invoked . The police avoid arresting, the CPS avoids charging and the courts avoid punishing offenders. Where they do act at all, it is generally because it is a repeat offence and linked with another crime, or has been used as an easily proven charge (thanks to unquestionable forensics) against someone the authorities want to punish for something else which they cannot easily prove in court.

A better example of failed alcohol prohibition is modern-day Iran, where a country which formerly permitted drinking now seeks to suppress it. Any visitor to Iran is quickly aware that this law is not effectively enforced, and has utterly failed. And this failure takes place in a police state without any of the safeguards and restraints on authority in the USA.

What about smoking then?

Suppressing smoking has been slow, cautious and late. It had to be. It was legal for centuries, and a mass habit. If it were introduced now, and we knew what we know about cancer, we would make it illegal and keep it that way.

The slow crabwise approach of the authorities, long after it was clear that cigarettes were an intolerable health hazard that should never have been permitted in the first place, shows how difficult it is to act against organised , wealthy, politically-influential greed lobbies unless you have the law behind you already.

To begin with the huge commercial power of Big Tobacco more or less prevented any action at all. When action did take place it was by tiny slow degrees. It is amazing how long cigarette advertising continued after it was well-known that cigarettes killed their users. To this day, product placement of cigarettes in films and TV dramas continues to an astonishing extent.

And it is still legal to sell cigarettes in shops, a freedom allowed to no comparable substance (dangerous when used according to the manufacturers’ instructions). I support the current measures to discourage its use and ban it from public places (measures backed by civil legal sanctions).

These are reasonably effective - though far from wholly successful. This dangerous substance remains on open legal sale and is still legally promoted ( see above, through product placement and other subtle methods). It would have been far better had it never been legal or in mass use in the first place. The idea that , by legalising marijuana, we would make it possible to 'regulate' it is shown by the tobacco example to be false. Once legalised, so allowing open sale and advertising, use is so widespread that it is almost impossible to stamp out. And, however 'regulated' they may be, cigarettes remain potentially lethal to many of those who smoke them. Don't wait for the correlation between dope and mental illness to be confirmed as causation. Keep the laws against marijuana so that we aren't, 50 years hence, struggling to cram this evil genie back into its bottle.

A lesson for legalisers

This must surely be a lesson for legalisers. Imagine, were marijuana to be legal and in mass use, as the Billionaire Big Dope lobby …

(yes, it exists, see the links below)

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/apr/2/billionaire-george-soros-turns-cash-into-legalized/

https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-proposition64-cash-snap-20161102-story.html

want it to be in the Western world, advertised (as permitted in the recent California Proposition 64) and in mass use, instead of (as it still is now) restricted to a comparatively small part of the population – comparatively small set beside the huge alcohol and cigarette markets.

The young think they are immortal

The existing law still restrains many people, especially the young, from using marijuana either at all or habitually. Were it to be properly enforced, it would be a powerful counterforce , set against the immense peer pressure in schools and colleges, for the young to take up marijuana. Young people think they are immortal and laugh at (often exaggerated) claims that drugs will kill them. Many presumably think that the mental illness increasingly correlated with marijuana use….

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/oct/29/cannabis-schizophrenia-classification

….will not trouble them. But the realistic immediate prospect of a criminal record, of being banned forever from travelling to the USA, of limitless career damage (all consequences of criminal prosecution for possession, were it to be reintroduced) would do so, especially if they knew of people to whom this had happened.

This is the case in both Japan and South Korea, where laws are strongly enforced against drug possession, and use is also much lower. Before 1971, when British drug laws were more stringent and more enforced, drug use was also much lower in Britain. The idea that the Japanese and South Korean difference is ‘cultural’ is fatuous. ‘Culture’ on such matters is greatly influenced by law. Japan’s laws were introduced in response to widespread amphetamine use in the post-war period, a fact which rather undermines the claim that Japan’s ‘culture’ is responsible for its lower drug use. Weak drug laws have hugely changed British culture’ since 1971.

See the November 2014 Home Office study on differing responses to the drug problem around the world

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/368489/DrugsInternationalComparators.pdf

P.46:

'Japan: We visited Japan, which operates a strong enforcement-led approach to drug misuse, often regarded as a ‘zero tolerance’ policy. Substances are more strictly controlled than in many other countries. Some products that are available over the counter as cold and flu remedies in the UK are banned. Possession of even small amounts of drugs is punishable by lengthy imprisonment.'

And p.51, which sneakily admits that tougher enforcement is accompanied by lower use (a conclusion perhaps unwelcome to the sponsors of this particular document)but then asserts, without a scrap of evidence, that this is really because of a different 'culture') It says (my emphases) : ' In Japan, where cultural conformity is traditionally valued, drug use is subject to a degree of stigma. In this context, it is difficult to tell whether low levels of drug use (see how slyly the document admits that there are low levels of drug use) are a consequence of legislation, or a product of the same cultural attitudes that have informed the zero-tolerance approach. This is more or less openly racist, to use a term the authors of this report would well understand. These supposedly 'cultural' attitudes also existed in the Britain of the mid-1960s, when we too enforced our drug laws. NB: The study does not mention South Korea, which has similar levels of enforcement and lower drug use. It overstates the level of enforcement in Sweden which can hardly be described as 'zero tolerance' or equated with Japanese practice.



Note the way the report records a) that the laws in Japan are tougher than elsewhere and b) that Japan does have lower drug use. But this does not fit with the message the report seems to have decided to send anyway. Had the investigators visited South Korea, another free democracy, I believe they would have found the same thing. Would they have dismissed that, too, as the result of 'culture'?

The world’s stupidest argument

All the above make it plain that the ‘what about alcohol and tobacco’ plaint is in fact the World’s Stupidest Argument. (#WorldsStupidestArgument) Not only is there no hypocrisy. Not only am I and other campaigners for stringent drug laws quite ready to concede that these are highly dangerous drugs which should be as heavily restricted as possible. But the ‘US prohibition failed’ slogan is in fact a warning to Western society that, once marijuana is legal, it will be effectively impossible ever to ban marijuana again, even if the warnings of many experts turn out to be true, and the correlation between its use and lifelong mental illness turns out to be meaningful and major.

'WHY ALLOW CRIMINALS TO CONTROL THE TRADE? MAKING IT LEGAL WOULD DRIVE THEM OUT'

This is demonstrably untrue. Alcohol and tobacco (see above) are legal. Yet in Britain, HM Revenue and Customs use huge resources trying to combat the criminal gangs which smuggle illicit cigarettes into the country, or who manufacture and distribute illicit alcohol. This is because they are very heavily taxed, just as legal marijuana would be very heavily taxed if it were on open sale. In fact it is already being taxed in Colorado, one of the US states which has legalised it. Illegal sellers still operate there, trading successfully, at well under the taxed price in legal outlets. Illegal sellers also prosper in Uruguay, another place where marijuana has been decriminalised, and where attempts have been made to limit strengths of marijuana on sale. In Colorado, fear of the illegal market is one of the reasons why high-strength THC products are on legal sale. The same is true in Canada, where criminal gangs, sellng at higher strengths and lower prices, still dominate the trade. Legal sellers fear the competition from the black market. We can safely assume this would all be be the case under general legalisation, as has now been shown in Canada.

All crime is caused by law

In any case, no thought has gone into this argument at all. All crime is caused by law. To have law means to have crime. If you have no law, you will have no crime. But think what this means in reality. If we banned nothing, we’d need no police, courts or prisons. But we’d also live in much worse, more dangerous and unpleasant world. We ban things because they are dangerous or have other evil effects.

Why are cynical businessmen so much better than criminal gangs?

Why exactly are cynical businessmen better than criminal gangs? Dope legalisers back Billionaire Big Dope, while condemning cynical cartels of the same kind - Big Pharma, Fast Food and soft drinks behemoths, the alcohol giants, Big Oil and the arms trade. Such businessmen, following the example of Big Tobacco, can wrap their dangerous products in pretty packets and sell them in shops and on the internet, they can in some cases get health services to prescribe their products to millions, and advertise them on TV and in cinemas. Or they can lobby states into fighting wars for them and helping them sell their dangerous products in unstable places. Why are they so much more desirable than criminals? Criminals cannot do these things, and can reach many fewer people than cynical businessmen.

Just because it’s regulated, doesn’t mean it’s safe.

Does the fact that cigarettes and alcohol are sold openly and ‘regulated’ mean they are safe to use and will not harm you? Don't. Be. Silly.

Why then would 'regulation' of drugs, mean that legalised drugs were safe to use and would not harm you? By ‘regulating’ them, society and the state would be offering a reassurance they were not entitled to give. They would be looking the other way while something inherently dangerous was put on open sale. I can see why a greed merchant might accept this argument. But most marijuana legalisers regard themselves as being opposed to corporate cynicism. Why, I ask again, are they outraged at the sale of sugary drinks and greasy burgers to innocent children, but happy to ally themselves with the mighty lobby of Big Dope?

Oh, and we're told that handing over a lucrative substance to legitimate business means the end of violence. In practice that isn't true, and couldn't be unless the much-touted promise by legalisers of big tax revenues from legal marijuana was abandoned, which it won't be. Western governments cannot make ends meet. they will not ignore any opportunity to raise taxes on pleasures. Could it also mean the state getting (violently?) involved in securing supplies, as it has done over oil. Is this inconceivable? History says no.

'LEGALISING DRUGS WOULD END THE MURDER AND CARTELS IN DRUG PRODUCING COUNTRIES'

I am not quite sure why. Perhaps it might instead lead to international wars, such as those which now take place over oil, for prime drug-producing territory. But the cause of the trouble in these countries comes from the rivers of money, dollars, euros and pounds, which are spent on drugs by spoiled, selfish westerners. Their role is exactly the same as that of those who spend their money on trafficked prostitutes. They finance and maintain a wicked, immoral trade by paying for it.

Meet The Real Mr Big - it’s You

These are the people who seek the dangerous, selfish pleasures of drugs. These are the real Mr Bigs of the drug trade. Without the cash they willingly hand over for their chemical joy, there would be no cartels, no smuggling, no mules, no gang wars.

This is why it is so astonishing that the people at the heart of the drug trade, the buyers and users, are the only ones in whom the law is utterly uninterested. If they were systematically arrested and prosecuted, the drug trade would rapidly dwindle, most of all in the places now enslaved by it.

'BUT YOU CAN’T PUT HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE IN PRISON'

No, you can’t. The point of prison is to deter. Once it is clear that a crime is being taken seriously, its incidence falls (see Japan and South Korea and pre-1971 Britain). A fairly small number of high-profile arrests and prosecutions, and the use by police of informers on a large scale so that nobody knew if they were in fact buying from a police nark, would rapidly persuade most people that drug abuse wasn’t worth the risk. And if everyone had heard of someone who *had* been jailed for drug possession, they’d change their behaviour. Drug abuse is a crime of affluence and choice. Anyone can stop committing it if he wants to. Nobody needs to do it.

Dictators and despots (and any government fond of repression and lying) love having stupefied subjects. They’re easier to fool, and to push around

Self-stupefaction is not some mighty freedom, like the freedoms of speech, thought and assembly. It is rather the opposite. Any tyrant would be glad to have a stupefied, compliant and credulous population, accepting what it was told and too passive and flaccid to resist. See Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’, in which the masses are controlled by the pleasure-drug Soma. Mostly, they just take it and are apathetic and stupefied. But on one occasion a riot is quelled by the police spraying the protestors with Soma.

'But Marijuana is a useful medicine, isn’t it?'

Is it? There have been a few attempts to use its active ingredients in medicines, but they have not been especially successful. It is extremely hard to test it rigorously (in double-blind tests against inert placebos) because the guinea-pigs will instantly know if they have been given the real thing or the dummy.

Also euphoria and numbness are not the same as medical relief, or brandy would be a medicine. Then again, remember that correlation with mental illness. No drug is any safer than its side-effects. Thalidomide was quite effective against morning sickness among pregnant women. But its appalling side-effects made that benefit irrelevant. What ailment is so bad that you would risk lifelong mental illness in the search for cure or alleviation?

Finally, I have yet to meet a ‘medical marijuana’ campaigner who was not working alongside the general campaign for recreational legalisation. No serious campaign for medical use would do this, as it instantly makes it much less likely that anyone will listen or accede. I don’t question the *possibility* that the ingredients of marijuana may one day be shown to have a valid medical use. But I would take it much more seriously of those who make this claim were not allied to general legalisation campaigns.

It is also worth noting that Keith Stroup, one of the USA’s most prominent and distinguished campaigners for marijuana legalisation, said in 1979 (in an interview with the American university newspaper ‘The Emory Wheel’ of which I have seen the original) that he hoped to use medical marijuana as a red herring to get pot a good name. I suspect he now regrets his candour among friends, but I also suspect that it was true then and remains true now. And until I meet a ‘medical marijuana’ campaigner who actively denounces, and distances himself from, the general legalisation campaign, I will continue to believe this.

Anyway, can anyone tell me why, even if marijuana does turn out to be an effective medicine, that would justify its legalisation as a recreational drug. There is precisely no logical connection between the two. Yet legalisers speak as if there is, and go unchallenged by dim or compliant media and politicians.

But you don't want to ban rock-climbing, mountain-climbing or motorbikes

No, though if motorbikes *were* banned I might well oppose a campaign to legalise them. I know from personal experience that 17-year-olds, for instance, shouldn't be allowed to ride them.

There are two things wrong with this argument. The first is that rock-climbing and motorbikes are and always have been legal, but marijuana is illegal , and legalisation (see above) is almost certainly irreversible if it comes about. Why spit on your luck? Just because some dangerous things are legal, it is not an argument for making another dangerous thing legal. Or if it is, I cannot see why.

The other is that dangerous self-stupefaction is not really comparable to dangerous activities such as these. Climbing or riding are both activities which can be learned and in which experience and dedication contribute to safety and achievement. The better you are at them, the safer you are. I also think they make those who do them better people than they otherwise would be, like all activities demanding courage, dedication, effort and self-discipline.

No such claim can be made for the smoking of marijuana.

'Portugal and the Netherlands have shown that relaxing the law works!'

Have they? How? Holland's limited decriminalisation of marijuana is much less extensive, in reality, than Britain's de facto decriminalisation spread over 40 years and affecting the entire country, and the UK is generally seen as a place with many serious drug problems. Many in the Netherlands hate what has happened and strive to keep cannabis cafes away form their homes. Amsterdam, the centre of this reform, is not exactly crime free.

https://www.iamexpat.nl/expat-info/dutch-expat-news/amsterdam-most-dangerous-municipality-netherlands

The claims made for Portugal are disputed both in Portugal and among researchers outside the country. See

https://dailym.ai/2Hc0ceD

Lifetime drug use in Portugal has actually risen. As far as I know, no work has been done on the incidence of mental illness there among drug users. HIV infection rates among drug abusers are not really a very good indicator of the total success of a policy. It's also worth pointing out that, like many supposedly 'enlightened' states which have greatly relaxed their drug laws, Portugal was not famous for tough enforcement before the change. For years before the 1991 reforms the law had been laxly enforced. The same, by the way, is true of Uruguay. Even now, it's tougher than in the UK. A person caught with drugs in Portugal can have his passport confiscated, be banned from pursuing his profession, and fined heavily.

https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/06/really-want-portugals-drug-laws/

The Mayor of Portugal's second city, Porto, Rui Moreira, called in September 2019 for the recriminalisation of some drugs. https://filtermag.org/portugal-mayor-criminalization-drugs/

As for those countries which offer 'addicts' supplies of substitute drugs, and the claims made for crime reduction following this, people should notice that what has really happened is that the state has become a drug enabler, mugging taxpayers to pay for the drug habits of self-indulgent criminals. Whether you rejoice over this, or do not, will depend on your moral and political opinions. But it can hardly be presented as an ideal solution.

Supposed health benefits following the Portuguese drug law changes also coincided with other changes in Portugal's health services (correlation is not necessarily causation, as I so often point out). Even enthusiasts for the policy will, if pressed, admit this fact.

For a fuller examination of this claim, please see this longer analysis of the alleged Portuguese Drug Paradise :

https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2017/08/the-portuguese-drug-paradise-examined.html

And finally....

A cruel war on drugs is ruining lives'

No it's not . See 'Myth 8' here

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/lists/top-10-marijuana-myths-and-facts-20120822/myth-holland-and-portugal-have-legalized-marijuana-19691231

Also note that the London 'Times' reported on Monday 20th February 2017 that 'Police warnings and fixed penalty notices for cannabis possession have more than halved in four years, leading to claims that the drug is being effectively decriminalised . This follows many reports of UK police forces openly saying they will no longer pursue cases of drug possession.'

And see this:

https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/cannabis-derbyshire-dorset-surrey-police-will-no-longer-seek-arrest-pot-growers-smokers-1513180

*****For full details of these arguments, backed by research, please consult my 2012 book 'The War We Never Fought', published by Bloomsbury, which any library will get for you or (if you prefer) is available to purchase in all formats, including audio. ***