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Cannabis lobby is pushing an authoritarian argument for legalisation of drugs
Only authoritarian regimes use drugs to sedate people. So why is the cannabis lobby promoting the same idea?
Pro-cannabis campaigners are becoming even more authoritarian than the drug-banning officials who would seek to remove the dreaded weed from British society.
This week the government launched another anti-cannabis ad campaign. As many pointed out, including one of the government's key drug advisers, the ads are based on "weak" evidence of a link between smoking dope and mental ill-health, including paranoia, panic attacks, depression and schizophrenia.
For pro-cannabis supporters, the campaign is further evidence that the powers-that-be want to control what substances we ingest.
Radical experimenters? Petty prohibitionists, more like
Yet if there's anything worse than the government's prohibitionism, it's the arguments put forward by pro-dope lobbyists themselves. They now press the case for decriminalising cannabis on the grounds that the drug "relaxes" and "sedates" people, and therefore lessens the risk of public aggression and social disorder.
In short, if you want to keep the masses in line, dope them!
Again and again, the pro-dope lobby talks up the benefits of cannabis in contrast to alcohol. Where booze - or "binge-drinking", as they call it - makes us loud and rowdy, cannabis makes us mild and meek.
The Legalise Cannabis Alliance says alcohol is the real "hard addictive drug". It moans about "drink-frenzied Britain" where every Saturday night the poor old police struggle to cope with "the alcoholic aftermath".
Some of the short-lived cannabis cafes that popped up in Britain in recent years even banned booze from their premises. One had a sign on the door saying: "No alcohol or drunk and disorderly persons on the premises." Another advertised itself as "a social meeting place that is alcohol-free and free from violence". Radical experimenters? Petty prohibitionists, more like.
Pro-cannabis campaigners believe their drug is preferable to the "hard addictive drug" of a round of lagers because it pacifies rather than excites.
The Hempire, a dope-smoking online collective, says "cannabis is well known for its calming effects in healthy people" and can also "help with sufferers from aggressive disorders".
A pro-cannabis petition on the No 10 website pleads with the government to recognise that "cannabis has the effect of pacifying users [in contrast to] the alcohol-fuelled aggression and violence tackled by police in most UK town centres on a weekend".
European officialdom is listening to the dope-heads' illiberal arguments. Governments are now experimenting with cannabis as a drug of "social relaxation".
In 2004, the Portuguese police adopted a 'Here We Blow' policy, allowing English football fans visiting the country to smoke dope on the basis that it would "reduce the chances of a punch-up between rival fans". The Legalise Cannabis Alliance cheered this sinister social experiment. It argued: "If people are drinking they lose control; if they smoke cannabis they don't."
In Holland during the 2000 Euro football championships, the authorities allowed cannabis cafes to stay open late in order to "relax the fans". Roland Dam of Cannabis College, a dope information centre in Amsterdam, declared: "There is always less trouble when cannabis is involved."
Historically, only the most authoritarian regimes - such as the Soviet Union - sanctioned the use of drugs to 'sedate' dissidents, drunks, and other members of the awkward squad. Now, dope-heads would like to do the same. ·
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Peter, for the record I'm pretty sure Brendan O'Neill would legalise weed, he is a libertarian. I am 'pro weed', I've smoked a fair bit, and if all dope campaigners were indeed believers "in individual freedom and everyone's right to choose for themselves" that would be great, BUT as far as I can see they really are an elitist bunch who fantasise about dope's possible therapeutic effect on society, on the great unwashed working class who like booze and football, which I find creepy and not particularly liberal - and unhelpful as an argument to get it legalised in my opinion.
'Strangely self-righteous voices of the drug lobby'? 'supercilious left'? Excuse me, which planet is this?
So people who believe in individual freedom and everyone's right to choose for themselves are strangely self-righteous supercilious lefties are they Rob? No one is adopting the tactics of the authoritarian state, O'Neill just made that up in an attempt to write an inflammatory article, when the opposite is the case; the argument is about freedom, not authoritarianism.
It's good to see Brendan managing to annoy both sides of the debate as usual! I am for all drug legalisation, but he is right to puncture the strangely self-righteous voices of the drug lobby. They are perversely adopting the tactics of the authoritarian state. Instead of pretending that we are all in need of weed, in need of therapy, their point should be that we are free to do what we want, and that drug legislation is a sham. We don't need weed, but I don't want it banned. Brendan has got under the skin of the supercilious left again, well done.
Well after all the rest of the nonsense, ignorance and lies that masquerades as argument against cannabis, this doesn't surprise. The writer wouldn't get a C- if this were submitted as a fourth form essay. The writer can't attempt a logical argument, and instead came up with some of the most overblown hyperbole yet encountered within the rabid anti-cannabis lobby. Soon others will be quoting O'Neill as 'evidence', like they do. But he went too far into the realms of idiocy with his claim that Dutch authorities allowing cannabis cafes to stay open late for the pleasure of football fans was a 'sinister social experiment'. Doesn't he want 'less trouble' from football fans? Fuelled on alcohol, they can do a lot of damage and often do. How ludicrous to use the fact that cannabis doesn't make people want to rape, kill and destroy against it!
Stuff and nonsense. This is the most ridiculous anti-cannabis diatribe I have ever read. Clearly, the agenda of the author is to ensure access to alcohol, while banning other choices, even if those other choices are safer to oneself and to others. Cannabis may relax you, but it also makes you think â?? which is the last thing governments want (though they will never admit it.).
I think the writer of this article was high on something or other.
I'm almost speechless, what a stupid article!
But beyond it's stupidity it's interesting - if not predictable - that the article chose to highlight only one section of the cannabis law reform movement. It didn't describe UKCIA for example, which argues for a controlled and regulated regime for cannabis so as to protect vulnerable people.
The argument that illegal drugs are not controlled drugs and much - if not all - of the problems we see with cannabis today are caused by this unregulated criminal supply side is well made by UKCIA.
On the wider drugs front is the highly respected Transform Drugs Policy Foundation (TDPF) which argues for a wider reform of the drugs laws than just cannabis, but makes a similar case to UKCIA. TDPF argues that drugs should be legalised not because they're safe, but because they're dangerous.
But your story is unfair for another reason. The attraction of cannabis for recreation are its effects which, for most people, are relaxing and do not lead to violence. It is a fact that alcohol all too often does however. It is surely only fair to point that out?
Sorry, but we could do with less of this sort of daftness, much, much less.
The pro-Cannabis lobby's insistence on contrasting their preferred poison to alcohol is just a nauseating bitching exercise. Comparing that botched, hacked, heckle at the policy of criminalisation to the ideology of 'the most authoritarian regimes' is just trying to be clever. The article strikes me as noteworthy in that every discursive theme therein is bullshit: the themes under analysis, and the analysis itself.
What "soviet tactics"?? Show me when the USSR used psychotropic drugs to keep its populace from questioning the Kremlin??
I've been here in Russia on-and-off since 1979 and I've never seen these alleged substances. Even the population's own occasional choice to get off their heads on vodka was sabotaged by the USSR's inability to produce vodka for sale to any except the ruling elite. And Gorbachev's "dry laws" pulled the plug on even that modest production-level.
What a pile of sensationalist twaddle!! A journalistic nose-dive from the usually reliable First Post :((
This plonker totally fails to see the difference between 'legal' and 'compulsory'. But of course, I just figured it out, he must have been completely plastered when he wrote it. Is anyone paying him for this drivel? - - Sack him and get that there roomful of monkeys with typewriters; cheaper input, much higher chance of making some sense of the output.
Brendan O'Neill is badly wrong about cannabis itself: the lastest advertisement significantly underplays the dangers, although it is certainly an improvement on what has gone before; and invoking the Government's drugs "experts" (to whom it mercifully no longer pays the slightest attention) is a sure sign of having lost the argument.
But O'Neill is right that the cannabis lobby, with its vast cultural and still quite considerable political power, wants to stupefy the public into compliance. Where are the Fabian and Christian Socialist pioneers when we need them?
Good article. I know several people who never use any drugs or any alcohol, myself included. We're pretty happy. Sad thing to us is seeing the actions and result of the actions of all the stupid people in the world. It's almost like they couldn't make a decision, formulate a thought, or take any action that's in their own best interest.
What a daft article.
O.k. - so I 'got stoned and I missed it'. So what? People are going to get out of their heads one way or another - every culture in every historical period has had some form of intoxication. Unremitting reality is a bit much for most.
I really can't see this form of 'soma' being used as an element of social control - it's just a lot more civilised than getting throwing-up drunk.