The Acrid Stench

Here is a question for Peter Hitchens. Why is cannabis sold in ounces, but cocaine in grams? The dealers with whom I lived at close quarters did not know. It had just always been like that.

There cannot be a “free” market in general, but not in drugs, or prostitution, or pornography, or unrestricted alcohol, or unrestricted gambling. That is an important part of why there must not be a “free” market in general, which is a political choice, not a law of nature.

Enacting and enforcing laws against drugs, prostitution and pornography, and regulating alcohol, tobacco and gambling, are clear examples of State intervention in, and regulation of, the economy. Radical change would be impossible if the workers, the youth and the poor were in a state of stupefaction, and that baleful situation, which has been contrived in the past, is being contrived again today.

Unlike the Conservative Party, which merely thinks that it is and acts as if it were, the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats are constitutionally committed to the “free” market. Richard Tice wants to legalise cannabis, Nigel Farage wants to legalise drugs across the board, and Lee Anderson signed a select committee report in that direction in 2023.

Instead, we need a single category of illegal drug, including cannabis, with a crackdown on possession, including a mandatory sentence of two years for a first offence, three years for a second offence, four years for a third offence, and so on. I no longer believe in prison sentences that include the possibility of release in less than 12 months; in that case, then your crime was not bad enough to warrant imprisonment, which the possession of drugs is. We need to restore the specific criminal offence of allowing one’s premises to be used for illegal drug purposes. And Hitchens’s The War We Never Fought should be taught in schools, as pro-drugs propaganda is routinely.

As Max Pemberton writes:

I've just returned from Los Angeles, where I spent a few days doing research for my next book. Walking around the city of an evening, I was struck by two things. The first was the shocking number of mentally ill people who were clearly experiencing psychosis, languishing on the streets, untreated and uncared for.

While the UK is far from perfect and the NHS has many faults, the things I saw late at night in Los Angeles would never happen here. For example, walking down Hollywood Boulevard – the street where stars of the silver screen and TV have their names embedded in the pavement – I saw an elderly woman, slumped in a wheelchair, wearing an oxygen mask which was not attached to anything. Los Angeles is experiencing a health crisis, with people languishing on the streets, untreated and uncared for

It was about 2am. There were police nearby so I approached them, explaining that I was a doctor and was worried about her. I expected them to call for an ambulance. Instead they asked if she had been harassing me. No, I explained, she didn't appear to be conscious and I was simply worried about her. Their response was chilling: if she was not causing a disturbance, then they would do nothing.

I had only walked a few hundred yards further when I came across a man, entirely naked, looking up at the sky, screaming. He then crouched down and defecated on the pavement.

'What is this place?', I wondered. Time and time again I saw people in the throes of severe mental illness, talking to themselves, shouting, distressed and disturbed, yet there was no help at hand.

I even saw one person who appeared to have 'posturing'. This is a severe symptom of psychosis where the person holds an uncomfortable pose for a prolonged period.

It's quite rare to see this in the UK, as people generally receive treatment before it reaches this stage. In Los Angeles, it's common.

I have worked for years in outreach projects with homeless people, often accompanied by the police, picking up those who were clearly mentally unwell and in desperate need of medical attention. I mentioned this to a doctor I met, asking why the same wasn't happening in Los Angeles. His response: 'Who would pay for these kinds of projects?'

The whole experience was chilling: an edifying lesson in how cruel and uncaring a privatised medical system can be. But the second thing that struck me is surely linked to the above: the stink of cannabis, which has been legal in California since 2016.

People smoke it everywhere and, by the evening, you can't get away from the acrid stench.

Los Angeles hardly seems a good advert for what happens when this drug is legalised.

The link between cannabis use and psychosis is very well-established and it seemed clear to me that California's permissive attitude to marijuana is fuelling an explosion in serious mental illness.

Portugal also saw a huge surge in cannabis-induced psychosis after it decriminalised the drug in 2001.

The more people who use this dreadful poison, the more lives will be ruined.

Of course, not everyone who smokes cannabis will experience psychosis or mental health problems. But research shows that regular use of the drug doubles the risk of experiencing a psychotic episode or developing schizophrenia, which significantly increases the risk of anxiety and depression.

Another doctor I was interviewing joked that legalising cannabis has been a boon for psychiatrists in Los Angeles, as so many people now need medical help thanks to the change in the law.

Now, cannabis may have a role in treating some medical conditions, from MS to arthritis.

It can be useful therapeutically, but the plant's active compounds need to be isolated and turned into medication prescribed by doctors and dispensed by regulated pharmacists.

This is what happens with other medications derived from nature, including the potentially dangerous drug diamorphine (which is derived from poppies).

Recreational use is altogether different. And it's not just about the devastating mental health problems it can lead to.

A study last week found that young people who use the drug have a six times greater risk of experiencing a heart attack compared to those who never or rarely do.

Worryingly, the increased risk was observed in patients under the age of 50 – a group typically considered to be at low risk of heart problems.

I fear that we are far too late to crack down on cannabis use – the horse has bolted. There isn't the political interest in tackling it. I suspect we are heading towards legalising it in Britain, too. At least the drug could be monitored, though; regulations placed on its sale; and controls introduced around who is selling it.

But I still believe we are setting ourselves up for a host of problems due to our increasingly liberal approach to cannabis. Too many people think of weed as harmless when, as my experience in Los Angeles shows, this couldn't be further from the truth.

And Graham Grant writes:

There was a chilling despatch in yesterday’s Mail from Dr Max Pemberton about the ‘hellscape’ of Los Angeles.

He described a place where people with severe mental health problems were left to suffer in the streets without help.

And he linked these dystopian scenes with cannabis - which has been legal for recreational use in California since late 2016.

How many readers saw the striking parallels between Dr Pemberton’s disturbing experience and the reality of everyday life in parts of Scotland?

While it’s true that cannabis remains an illegal drug, it has been effectively decriminalised through the back door by the SNP.

The net result is that its acrid reek is virtually ever-present in swathes of the country – and it’s getting worse.

In the summer months, it will become more prevalent as the weather improves and smokers openly light up in parks or walking in the street.

It’s hardly surprising that such flagrant abuse of the law is so widespread, thanks to the soft-touch approach of police and the wider justice system.

Recorded Police Warnings (RPWs) – a meaningless slap on the wrist – can be dished out for people caught in possession of cannabis.

Now they can also be issued to users of heroin and cocaine - even though they are fuelling Scotland’s spiralling drug deaths crisis.

Remarkably (and shamefully), police chiefs say it would be too costly to figure out how many RPWs are handed out to users of hard drugs.

We do know that 6,610 RPWs were given out for possession of all drugs (31 per cent of the total) in 2022/23, up from 5,558 the previous year - an increase of about 19 per cent.

The SNP government backs the use of RPWs, which are issued on the spot by officers, based on their discretion, and mean the recipient avoids prosecution or even a court appearance, and is spared the inconvenience of a full criminal record.

Anyone who has spent more than five minutes in Glasgow city centre will know there are similarities with Dr Pemberton’s experiences in downtown L.A.

Drug-dealing - and consumption – together with anti-social behaviour, violence and public urination are commonplace on weekdays, in broad daylight, while cannabis fumes are thick in the air.

It’s not the ideal backdrop for the Commonwealth Games, which will be hosted by Glasgow next year.

The harrowing description of people in L.A. in the grip of psychosis – something which Dr Pemberton connects with cannabis use – will also resonate with many Scots.

There is a tangible sense of decline in Glasgow and other cities, and towns, which was accelerated by the lockdown years - and recovery has been either slow or non-existent.

Police officers on foot patrol are a relatively rare sight and even if they were around, how likely is it that they would intervene to stop someone smoking cannabis?

There’s no doubt that badly depleted manpower and budget cuts mean police now struggle to muster beat officers.

More than 12,000 supposedly minor crimes have been ‘written off’ by cash-strapped Police Scotland under a new ‘proportionate response’ scheme.

So you can guess the response if you were to call in to report the stink of cannabis outside your open window, or in the local park – or playground.

People are breaking the law by smoking cannabis in the street because they know that in all probability, there will be no legal consequences.

If the worst that’s likely to happen when you’re found with heroin for ‘personal use’ is an RPW, then most users of cannabis will reckon that being found with the drug, or caught smoking it in public, is a low-risk crime.

There aren’t any cops around most of the time anyway, and even if they did see you, they’d only issue a warning – or ignore it entirely.

You can now be fined for driving your old diesel banger in Low Emission Zones in cities across Scotland – but get off scot-free if you’re found with heroin.

And an officer knows or suspects that if he or she did report someone for smoking cannabis, the fiscal would bin it.

It’s not hard to see why its use is out of control – and all the signs are that top brass and SNP ministers clearly don’t care.

A member of the Scottish Police Authority, the civilian oversight body for the single force, raised the issue of cannabis fumes in 2022.

He was told by now-retired Deputy Chief Constable Malcolm Graham that the evidence was ‘anecdotal’ but that he’d look into it.

One of Mr Graham’s last significant acts in the job was to announce that police would stop fully investigating lower-level crimes in cases where there were no credible lines of inquiry (the proportionate response strategy).

He never did get round to telling us whether his cannabis inquiries, assuming they took place, had borne fruit.

Whatever action was taken to tackle the issue hasn’t worked – cannabis users can look forward to a summer of smoking it with impunity.

Defenders of cannabis argue that it’s harmless, particularly if consumption is moderate, but that’s not a view universally held among the experts.

Sir Robin Murray, professor of psychiatric research at King’s College London, has warned there is ‘quite a lot of evidence that starting to use cannabis in one’s adolescence increases the risk of psychosis’, and it has been linked to several notorious murders.

Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens has painstakingly catalogued any number of atrocities carried out by people, often young men, who had been using cannabis - but the connection, if there is one, is rarely examined by the indifferent authorities.

Meanwhile, some studies strongly suggest cannabis is a ‘gateway’ drug for Class A substances.

None of this has made any difference to politicians and police chiefs who argue that drug use is largely a public health matter.

It’s a way of ignoring the problem but the net result is that it’s getting worse - and law-abiding Scots are having to contend with the fallout from their refusal to acknowledge its scale.

John Swinney and his fellow ministers should get out of their limos now and again - the pungent aroma of cannabis would be unmissable.

As for heroin, Glasgow is now home to a trail-blazing ‘shooting gallery’ for addicts - though there are also plans for a special crack cocaine inhalation room (and for ‘free’ crack pipes).

This is held up by its backers as an innovative game-changer which will help addicts and rid the streets of discarded syringes - even as drugs paraphernalia piles up in open-air drug dens in the surrounding area.

So you can take cannabis to your heart’s content, indoors or outside, and if you then fall into the clutches of heroin addiction the state will encourage you to shoot up in the comfort of a £2.3million ‘safer consumption room’.

For now, the fug of cannabis smoke lingers in our high streets - and all the signs are the stench will only intensify as police, prosecutors and their political masters continue to turn a blind eye.