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Ferre
Cannabis Sacrament Minister.
Joined: 14 Apr 2003
Posts: 7295
Location: Amsterdam
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 Posted: Thu Dec 22, 2005 2:20 am Post subject: Cannabis: it's time for a rethink |
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Cannabis: it's time for a rethink
by Dr Thomas Stuttaford
The link between cannabis use and psychosis is proved. The drug must be reclassified
A fear of confusion, loss of memory, a fragmented thought process, the boring repetition of the same thought, swinging moods with laughing or weeping without good cause, paranoia, hallucinations and a preoccupation with their own psyche and physique. These are the symptoms described in an Oxford study on the effects observed in social cannabis smokers — yet they are unlikely to dissuade anyone intent on having a drag on a spliff at a Christmas party.
Nor, unfortunately, is the potential smoker likely to be deterred by the rumour that research recently published in the British Journal of Psychiatry may cause some change in the Government’s approach to cannabis.
This would be the first step to do anything to dissuade people from smoking cannabis since Labour came to power in 1997. The claim now is that they became aware of the potential of cannabis to cause schizophreniform symptoms — or induce an actual psychosis, in those who are genetically vulnerable — only after they realised that modern cannabis is many times more powerful than that circulating in the Seventies and Eighties. Had they sought it, the evidence is that it may not only cause psychotic breakdown in the one in four who carries the genes that gives them a vulnerability to schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, but may do so in those without any family history of psychiatric disease.
It is rumoured that Tony Blair, having read the British Journal of Psychiatry, may reverse his decision to downgrade cannabis to a Class C drug in the light of the evidence it advances. This indicated that half the patients who had mental problems that were not considered indicative of schizophrenia were displaying the psychological symptoms sometimes associated with cannabis smoking, and later went on to develop classic schizophrenia.
Claiming that this evidence is new is less than flattering to the pharmacologists and the psychiatrists who have been giving warnings of the hazards since the 1970s. This evidence would have been available to Blair since his schooldays. When he was at Oxford, the then Professor of Pharmacology was Sir William Paton. He was one of the world’s experts on cannabis. In the 1970s Paton and his colleagues published many papers describing their observations, which had led him to conclude that even regular social cannabis smoking could induce schizophreniform symptoms. He listed these symptoms and they would have made worrying reading for any parent. Paton also drew attention to cases in which schizophrenia seemed to have been precipitated by taking cannabis in people who had previously been apparently unaffected by any form of psychiatric or psychological problems, and in whom there was no evidence that they were carrying a genetic burden that might make them liable to schizophrenic breakdown.
MORE...(Times Online)
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Mystic Power
admin THC-Ministry YahooGroup
Joined: 23 Aug 2004
Posts: 3605
Location: Key West
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| Posted: Thu Dec 22, 2005 6:08 am Post subject: |
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Eight times more powerful. Sure.
...and the media is eight times more phony than then, too.
Ben
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