The Power of Wishful Thinking

The interesting thing here is that those in the pro-legalisation camp continue to up the ante in terms of what they bring to the table, which is to say a considerable  and ever increasing) amount of credible and verifiable evidence, resulting from credible and verifiable studies conducted by medical, psychological, legal, economic and criminology researchers.

The anti-legalisation camp, on the other hand, continue to basically flounder about, rehashing a combination of the old and nonsensical myths with some new and unlikely ones (of which more in a minute). The thing that simultaneously interests, amuses, perplexes and bothers me is the fact that there is little or no onus put on the anti-legalisers by the government to produce anything even remotely resembling proof of their claims (which is just as well for them really, as there isn't any actual evidence).

Instead, the pro-legalisers are expected to present air tight evidence - something they do - in order to have it treated with scepticism or outright hostility. Really, it's like trying to debate the existence of the dinosaurs with a creationist. And so we have to listen patiently as a litany of half truths and non truths are trotted out yet again.

In those places where weed is legal, they say...crime has gone up...lost work days have gone up, along with the number of accidents at work...the number of kids using has gone up (Note: none of this can be verified because none of it is true). As the above fairy tales aren't working, they trot out..."cannabis related psychosis in the UK has shot up". As far as this goes, on paper it certainly looks as if there might be a case to answer.

However, one does wonder whether synthetic cannabis plays a role in all of this as, after all, it's known that use of these can result in acute psychotic episodes in some people. Where "real" weed is actually implicated (and it's far from clear how often this is actually the case), it could be suggested that this is due to a misguided attempt on the part of some producers to push the THC levels as high as they can, under the misconception that this is what "the buyer" wants.

While it's probably correct that some buyers do indeed want this, in an illegal marketplace, the concept of "a buyers' market" is bogus. Most of the time buyers - and this probably applies even more so to kids - will just take whatever's available. Only legalisation will provide users with a proper choice. It all seems to boil down to the fact that those anti-legalisers not in some way affiliated to the pharmaceutical or alcohol industries just don't like the idea of people being able to alter their own consciousness.

That's one of the things about the Drug Laws (and we could include laws around anything on the pro-choice spectrum here): they allow a particular type of person - intolerant, bigoted - a platform to spout their nonsense. Why should they care if people want to get stoned? Thing is, they do seem to feel really strongly about these sorts of thing for no good reason that I can see.

And that is because there is no evidence at all to back up their arguments. Hell, there isn't even a logical or coherent argument. They don't like it and so nobody should legally be permitted to do it (whatever "it" is). It's just wishful thinking, but unfortunately it seems to work better than hard evidence. This is not the 17th century, and one hopes that the day when evidence and reality take the reins from claptrap is around the corner. Amen. By Dr. Dee