CANNABIS is now more evil than the Nazis and smoking the drug is worse for the brain than watching Richard Madeley on television, new research suggests.

During the Sixties smoking dope was hardly evil at all, and the drug was more playful and slightly naughty, but in a nice way, a bit like Kenneth Williams.

In the Seventies and Eighties marijuana briefly became totally harmless and could be smoked by future Cabinet ministers up to the rank of Home Secretary without any effect on their brains whatsoever.

However, a massive increase in the strength of the drug since politicians all stopped using it has now made it more nasty and brutish than the combined evil of the Third Reich.

Professor Tom Booker, head of drug research at Glasgow’s Clyde University and the man who conducted the latest lengthy study into the drug, said: “Yeah, whatever.”

A spokesman for the University said: “The Nazi’s were very bad people but even they could not make a middle class white boy adopt dreadlocks for a hairstyle, or make a highly intelligent middle aged man crawl around the floor of his laboratory in his underpants weeping with laughter about nothing at all, and then eat his own weight in marshmallows.”

Following the promotion of cannabis to the top spot in the evilness rankings the top ten most evil things in the world are:

1. (-) Cannabis

2. (2) Tobacco

3. (4) Debt consolidation ads featuring Carol Vorderman

= 5. (1) Richard and Judy

= 5. (3) The Nazis

6. (-) Heathrow Airport

7. (5) Prince Phillip

8. (7) Joseph Stalin

9. (-) Noel Edmonds

10. (10) The Devil and all his minions

(Previous position in brackets)