WEEDING OUT THE CANNABIS MYTHS – The Case Against Cannabis Commercialisation

‘The choice before human beings, is not, as a rule, between good and evil but between two evils’ (George Orwell.)

The debate about whether or not to legalise Cannabis & create a for-profit industry on the lines of the alcohol industry can, at first glance, seem akin to whether or not we should stop a runaway train in its tracks, it may well be a good idea to stop such a train but how would one realistically go about it? The train is hurtling down the tracks at great speed, seemingly with a momentum all of its own. The campaign to legalise Cannabis can, at a superficial glance, appear to be like that train, as it hurtles down legislative tracks at breakneck speed. In the America’s, Uruguay decided to legalise the recreational use of Cannabis in 2013, Canada was next in 2018, while Mexico looks set to follow their lead either this year or next. Whilst over in the USA, starting with Colorado & Washington in 2012, a number of states have legalised Cannabis for recreational use with several more set to follow. In Europe, Switzerland have decided to legalise Cannabis for recreational use, Luxembourg too & also Germany. Furthermore, a majority of the British public also favour legalisation.

Why then would anyone argue against the legalisation & commercialisation of Cannabis? (legalisation & commercialisation are not necessarily the same thing but in the real world they often go together) its surely a fait accompli isn’t it? Well, no, that is a myth. The campaign to legalise Cannabis has been erected atop a series of myths like this one which, far too often, have gone unchallenged. The first Cannabis myth is alluded to in the analogy of the runaway train, the myth of progress. Underpinning the idea of ‘progress’ is the belief that history trends in a certain direction irrespective of our own individual efforts. In his book ‘Black Mass,’ philosopher John Gray traced this Whiggish idea back to the Christian belief that human history is a teleological process. This belief was perhaps most popularly encapsulated by Martin Luther King (paraphrasing the 19th century abolitionist Theodore Parker,) when he stated that the arc of the moral universe is long but that it bends towards justice. The idea that there is an inherent arc to history which is bending in a particular direction is drawn directly from Christian theology before being brought down to earth from the heavens, & smuggled into our post-Christian world disguised under a carapace marked ‘progress.’ The proponents of Cannabis legalisation will often present their case as being pragmatic & evidence-based but the passions that are ignited by this issue belie the fact that what animates much of pro-Cannabis activism is fundamentally a moral argument that Cannabis ‘prohibition’ is on the wrong side of moral history.

It has been said that one death is a tragedy but a million deaths is a statistic. This saying perfectly captures the fact that we find personal narratives & relatable stories more engaging than just the trotting out of a procession of factual/statistical information. The progressive moral story of Cannabis legalisation has been cultivated to appeal to this need for narrative. The narrative is one of triumph over prejudice, filtered through the prism of 20th century American history & cast as a battle between the forces of good & evil. On the one hand, marginalised people of colour, & on the other, the forces of reaction & white supremacy. Its a narrative populated by such bad guys as Henry Anslinger, who was the head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics in America in the 1930s when Cannabis was initially banned in the USA, & a notorious bogeyman among pro-Cannabis activists for his lurid anti-Cannabis propaganda film entitled ‘‘Reefer Madness.’ This narrative also includes former Republican Presidents Nixon & Reagan, who are cast as cynically waging an unwinnable war on drugs in order to justify the mass incarceration of African-Americans as a means of assuaging the fears & anxieties of racially resentful white Americans after desegregation. The story also features such underdog heroes as the African-American Jazz musicians & Mexican immigrant farm labourers of the 1930s, who are said to be the initial racialised targets of American Cannabis prohibition.

Framing Cannabis legalisation as an issue that forms part of the arc of moral history which is bending towards (social) justice by virtue of tapping into the wider historical narrative of American civil rights (a narrative with which we are all familiar,) serves to mobilise our sense of anger at racial injustice but also to immobilise us from putting forth arguments which are sceptical of Cannabis legalisation. Firstly, once we imbue an issue with moral conviction it renders us impervious to any cost/benefit arguments or the consequences of our preferred policies. Secondly, if you are brave or foolish enough to argue against Cannabis legalisation (*coughs*) then you risk placing yourself on the wrong side of history & incurring reputational damage, something which, in all times & in all places, most human beings are very unwilling to do. We would rather serve jail time, have our limbs amputated & die than incur the potential cost of reputational damage.

Cannabis ‘prohibition’ is a fundamental part of the war on drugs & the war on drugs is the main factor driving the growth of mass incarceration & mass incarceration is the new Jim Crow (i.e a racialised caste system,) it’s as simple as that, or so the argument goes. Cannabis legalisation therefore, according to this narrative, is simply the first step on the road to social justice. This is a story of great moral force, which is both simple to understand & difficult to argue against without a counter-narrative of one’s own, but it’s a story with many holes. First of all, this is an American story & not a British story. We are a different country with a different history. Secondly, even on its own terms, this is a story that doesn’t really add up. This is the second myth of Cannabis legalisation, allied to the first, namely that the legalisation of Cannabis can be utilised as a short-cut on the road to social justice.

The idea that Cannabis legalisation can be utilised as a means towards the ends of social justice by virtue of facilitating mass decarceration is a myth. Firstly, only a minority of American prisoners are incarcerated for drug crimes. As Barry Latzer has written: ‘if all drug prisoners, regardless of race, were removed from state prisons, the black inmate population would only drop only 0.36%, from 39.06% to 38.7%,’ whilst only 92 people were sentenced for Cannabis possession in the federal system in America in 2017. Studies have also demonstrated that Cannabis legalisation actually increases the recidivism rate of drug-related criminal offenders as it results in them substituting into the selling of other drugs, which rather undermines the claim that Cannabis legalisation is a sure-fire way to reduce crime-rates. In the United Kingdom meanwhile, even without de jure decriminalisation or legalisation, we appear to be moving towards de facto partial decriminalisation anyway, something which makes a mockery of the idea that the current legal status of Cannabis use is fuelling mass incarceration in this country.

Furthermore, even after the legalisation of Cannabis in parts of America, racial disparities in arrests still remain. Unless one wishes for there to be no parameters placed on Cannabis use whatsoever (i.e unless one is happy for people to drive whilst under the influence, for instance, or for children & adolescents to use, to cite another example,) then Cannabis use & the criminal justice system will continue to intersect, with or without decriminalisation/legalisation, just as it does now for alcohol use. Alcohol use is implicated in around 40% of violent crime in the UK & is a significant factor in the homicide rate too. The idea that Cannabis use & the criminal justice system can be completely decoupled hinges largely on the idea that legalisation will automatically rid us of the black market for the drug, but this is far from inevitable, as I will discuss in more detail later.

De jure decriminalisation (which is not the same thing as legalisation) is one answer to the problem of Cannabis use & the criminal justice system but its striking how few in number the advocates for this position are, given that this particular issue is cited by so many as their primary concern. In any case, decriminalising Cannabis, whilst certainly preferable to legalising Cannabis (on the commercial model of the alcohol industry,) comes with its own set of trade-offs, which should be acknowledged before we consider embarking on that particular policy. Decriminalisation may be our best option, but the point I wish to stress is that there are no perfect solutions without any trade-offs involved & that if the intersection between Cannabis use & the criminal justice system is your primary concern, then legalisation/commercialisation is not your only option.

The progressive moral argument in support of Cannabis legalisation is not the only argument that one must contend with if we are to make the case against Cannabis legalisation/commercialisation, there are also two more. There is the libertarian argument for Cannabis legalisation which emphasises the importance of individual bodily autonomy. There is also a case for Cannabis legalisation which sells itself as pragmatic & emphasises both the supposed economic benefits & also the theorised benefits to public safety. Many pro-Cannabis activists will make a combination of two, or even three, of these arguments at the same time but they are also three discrete arguments which need to be identified separately & tackled in turn.

The libertarian argument in favour of Cannabis legalisation centres upon the insistence to an absolute right of individual bodily autonomy. It is the most internally consistent of the three main arguments typically made in favour of legalising Cannabis but, perhaps paradoxically, it is also (by far) the weakest. Libertarian arguments in regards to liberalising laws pertaining to Cannabis use (based on the principle that we should have an absolute right to individual bodily autonomy) can also be applied across the board to a range of different activities, including the liberalisation of laws pertaining to immigration, prostitution, pornography, baby selling, gun-ownership, assisted suicide & full-term abortions. This is an argument which may have some kind of purchase in a country in which folk libertarianism is seen as inherent to the national character in some way but it is unlikely to win over many hearts & minds outside of it. Nor is it likely to win over many people who stand outside of the hard-core, libertarian fringe in any country. The belief that we should have an absolute right to individual bodily autonomy in all circumstances (& that this right should trump all our other shared values,) is not a view which is widely held. In summary, the libertarian argument to legalise Cannabis rests upon the myth that we have an absolute right to individual bodily autonomy in all circumstances, which we clearly don’t, there will always be some limitations which are placed upon this right in certain circumstances & the real question is where we draw those boundaries not whether we should have any boundaries at all. We have seen what communities built upon libertarian principles look like & they are not a model that many would wish to imitate, not even by libertarians themselves.

The third main argument that is generally utilised in order to press the case for Cannabis legalisation is based on an appeal for pragmatism. If the moral/progressive case for Cannabis legalisation is the argument most beloved by activists on the left & the libertarian argument by activists on the right then the appeal to a sense of pragmatism is the argument most beloved by policy-wonks & self-styled serious thinkers on both left & right. However, where the left & right differ is in terms of emphasis. The political right tend to emphasise the supposed potential economic benefits of Cannabis legalisation in terms of a putative boost to tax coffers & in terms of newly created jobs. Whereas the political-left tend to emphasise the supposed potential benefits to public-safety that could be achieved by Cannabis legalisation, something which they style as the contrast between the safe regulation of a legal market as opposed to the free-for-all of the black market. The problem with the pragmatic case for Cannabis legalisation however, like all the other arguments that we have discussed, is that it is also based on a myth. The myth of the pragmatic case for Cannabis legalisation is that there are good and bad options & all we have to do is to sift through the bad & rationally choose the good. This is false, when it comes to public policy pertaining to Cannabis, there are only bad options & our task is to choose the least worst.

The pragmatic case for Cannabis legalisation assumes that by legalising Cannabis for recreational use we will easily be able to rid ourselves of the black market for the drug. A cursory glance at the various North American experiments in Cannabis legalisation should be enough to rid ourselves of this quaint notion. Whether in the more tightly regulated Cannabis markets found in the slightly more public-health conscious Canada or in the more loosely regulated Cannabis markets of laissez-faire USA, a substantial black market in Cannabis still persists & in Colorado’s case (a state with a city that has greater Cannabis store density than it does in respect to either Starbucks or McDonalds) it persists after nearly a decade since Cannabis was first legalised (for recreational use) in the state.

There is no iron law which determines that upon the creation of a legal market for Cannabis, the black market will suddenly disappear or inevitably wither away into nothing. If the example of North America is anything to go by, then what you might end up with is two markets for Cannabis, one legal & one illegal, whereas before you had only one &, as a result, instead of solving the problems it was intended to solve, it ends up creating new ones instead. The law of unintended consequences applies here. Furthermore, not only is legalisation miscast as a magic bullet which can guarantee us the removal of the black market (as it is generally advertised to be,) there is even the possibility that legalisation could result in an expansion of the black market & make the situation even worse.

The pragmatic case for Cannabis legalisation is based upon the idea that by legalising Cannabis you are then better able to regulate it more tightly but the problem with that idea is that the more heavily regulated & taxed a Cannabis market is, the less likely it is that the black market for the drug (by definition an unregulated market,) will shrink & disappear, something which completely undermines the pragmatic rationale for Cannabis legalisation. To put it more simply: if loose regulation (once Cannabis has been legalised) is the best way to ensure that the Cannabis black market reduces in size; how then can you argue that we should legalise Cannabis so we can then regulate it more tightly? something which (according to the pragmatists,) is the whole point of legalising Cannabis in the first place.

The pragmatic case for Cannabis legalisation ends up collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions & you end up in a position like the situation that has arisen in the state of California whereby people who were initially persuaded to support legalisation on the basis that it would facilitate regulation & taxation, are then told, only a few years later, that, ooops, we actually need to pursue a low-tax & deregulatory approach to our newly legalised Cannabis market instead because the black market for the drug just keeps on getting bigger & bigger (despite legalisation,) so sorry about that.

(I don’t know about you but gigantic brownie’s infused with prodigious amounts of THC are not what comes to mind when I think of the words ‘public safety’)

This is not the only problem with the self-styled pragmatic case for Cannabis legalisation either. There is a certain naivety (or perhaps disingenuousness) about the pragmatic case for Cannabis legalisation which doesn’t reckon with the messy reality of the creation of a commercial industry whose main source of profit will be heavy users of a psychoactive drug & the subsequent unleashing of what the historian David Courtwright memorably described as ‘limbic capitalism.’ The example of the tobacco industry in the twentieth century, & the lengths that it went to in order to obscure the harms associated with its products, should be illustrative here, but the halo that surrounds Cannabis – as Peter Hitchens has written ‘Cannabis is not merely a drug, it is a cause’ – due, in part, to its associations with social-justice movements (discussed earlier,) serves to protect it from this kind of scrutiny, even as big tobacco invests heavily in the nascent Cannabis industry & hides in plain sight, as it were. Ultimately, if you legalise Cannabis & create a commercial market to sell this psychoactive drug to the public, the industry that will emerge to do so will not be driven primarily by concerns related to ‘social justice’ or to ‘public safety.’ They will instead be driven by commercial concerns and that means, first & foremost, maximising profits, above any other consideration, and, in this context, maximising profits means encouraging problematic use of a psychoactive drug linked to a range of harms.

Cannabis use – similarly to alcohol use & gambling – follows a statistical power-law distribution, i.e a very small minority of people use the vast majority of it, & thus commercial logic dictates that any commercial Cannabis industry that wishes to maximise profits needs to appeal primarily to that group of heavy users, which is exactly what we have seen in places like Colorado & California, where ultra-high potency products suddenly emerged to appeal to those heavy-users, in contradiction to the claim of self-styled pragmatists who maintained that Cannabis legalisation would enhance public safety. The commercial Cannabis industry is therefore incentivised – simply by following the commercial logic inherent to such an enterprise – to create more potent & harmful products in order to appeal directly to that group & then to use their financial muscle to resist any attempts instituted by government to regulate them in the name of public safety, lest it make a serious dent in their profit-margins.

The risk of regulatory capture related to the creation of a commercial Cannabis industry is a very real one but completely underplayed by self-styled pragmatists, despite the fact that whenever & wherever a commercial industry emerges that is reliant upon milking the heavy users of its products in order to maximise profits, it behaves in exactly the same way. One does not need to look very far to find examples of this, one only needs to look at the gambling industry in the UK, an industry which is also heavily reliant on milking heavy users in order to maximise profits &, which has, completely unsurprisingly – yes, you guessed it – sought to use its financial muscle to lobby sitting members of Parliament against the idea of enacting tighter regulation of its industry in order to ensure that they can carry on milking heavy users in perpetuity. One could also cite the two-decade-long American Opioid epidemic which, as recounted in Patrick Radden Keefe’s magisterial ‘Empire of Pain,’ was kickstarted, in part, it is strongly implied, because of regulatory capture of the agency (whose job is was to safeguard the American public) by a pharmaceutical industry driven by the same incentives in respect to Opioids as we have already discussed in relation to the other ‘addiction-for-profits’ industries such as gambling & tobacco.

Why does anyone believe that a commercial Cannabis industry would behave any differently? As Keith Humphries & Wayne Hall put it: ‘In a number of countries, cannabis use has traditionally been associated with left-wing grassroots activism, making it easy to assume that the Cannabis industry is run by altruistic hippies disinterestedly proselytizing the virtues of Cannabis and unconcerned about worldly wealth. In the United States and Canada the industry is, in fact, run by business executives with law degrees and MBAs who are adopting the business practices of the tobacco and alcohol industries.’ As discussed previously, the halo that surrounds Cannabis due, in part, to its associations with social-justice activism on the left, protects it from the kind of scrutiny that is necessary to safeguard the public from its associated harms. Cannabis might be associated in the public mind with harmless figures such as Rastafarians & Hippies but they are not necessarily the groups who are heavily investing in, or stand to benefit financially from, newly created legal Cannabis markets.

We have discussed the three basic sets of arguments that are most commonly used to argue in favour of Cannabis legalisation – the moral/progressive case, the libertarian case & the pragmatic case – & explained their respective flaws. We have also looked at the different myths that underpin each – the myth of progress (history doesn’t trend inevitably in a certain direction irrespective of our own individual efforts) & the myth of the ‘New Jim Crow’ (mass-incarceration has not been fuelled primarily by the so-called ‘war on drugs’) which underpin the moral/progressive case. We have also looked at the libertarian myth that individual bodily autonomy can ever satisfactorily trump all other values & we have also looked at the myth which underpins the self-styled pragmatic case i.e the idea that we have good and bad options to choose from (in regards to Cannabis policy,) rather than the reality of a suite of bad options. We have also discussed that whilst the three arguments are sometimes used in various combinations (depending on who is making the argument,) they are still three distinct sets of arguments. However, what they all share in common is that all three depend on the mythic halo that surrounds the drug in order to press their case to the public that this is a drug we could (and should) safely legalise/commercialise. It is this mythic halo which enables progressives, libertarians & self-styled pragmatists to minimise (& to sometimes out-right reject) the harms associated with the drug & to exaggerate any benefits. It is to this mythic halo that we shall now turn & examine in greater detail.

The perception of Cannabis as a ‘soft drug’ is embedded in much of the public discussion & debate that surrounds its use. This perception also informs much of the debate about what kind of public policy apparatus should ideally be erected to regulate its use. Peter Hitchens, in his book ‘The War We Never Fought,’ has argued that this perception has been informed, in part, in the UK at least, by structural factors such as the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. He writes: ‘Misuse of Drugs Bill would – for the first time in Britain or the world – treat some illegal drugs, notably cannabis, as less serious than others. The main effects of this were considerable and lasting. First, it gave official support to the idea that cannabis was so much less harmful than heroin and LSD that it should be in a separate legal category. This is very hard to justify scientifically, not least because the harms done by various drugs are of totally different kinds and cannot readily be compared on the same scale….the authors of this law could hardly have found a better way to encourage the baseless but widespread belief that cannabis is a ‘soft’ drug with few if any harmful effects. Second, it separated the offence of trafficking from the offence of possession, and made the penalties for possession alone much weaker. As we shall see, this would lead over time to the effective decriminalisation of cannabis possession.’

The perception of Cannabis as a soft drug is also rooted in the fact that, as Psychiatrist Elizabeth Stuyt has written, ‘many people who have voted for legalization thought they were talking about the marijuana of the 1960s to 1980s when the THC content was less than 2%…. the primary problem with the current available cannabis in dispensaries in Colorado is that the THC content is not like it used to be. Prior to the 1990s it was less than 2%. In the 1990s it grew to 4%, and between 1995 and 2015 there has been a 212% increase in THC content in the marijuana flower…. We now have concentrated THC products such as oil, shatter, dab, and edibles that have been able to get the THC concentration upwards of 95%. There is absolutely no research that indicates this level of THC is beneficial for any medical condition. The purpose of these products is to produce a high, and the increased potency makes them potentially more dangerous and more likely to result in addiction.’

The potency of Cannabis has increased considerably since the 1960s when it first truly found a mass-market in places like the USA, where it became associated with the counter-culture of that era. As the potency has increased, so have the harms associated with the drug but, unfortunately, the public image of Cannabis has not changed with those times & remains resolutely & anachronistically stuck in the past. Cannabis activists would, of course, argue that the rise in potency is a result of what they tendentiously describe as ‘prohibition’ but what might be described as the Pareto principle of Cannabis consumption (i.e a minority of the consumers doing the majority of the consuming,) means that a commercial Cannabis market will inevitably produce Cannabis products of ultra-high potency simply by following the ineluctable financial logic inherent to their business. Simply put; commercialising Cannabis is not an answer to the problem of rising potency.

The perception of Cannabis as a ‘soft-drug’ i.e as relatively non-malign, is one thing, but the purveyors of Cannabis legalisation arguments – the progressives, the libertarians & the pragmatists – all benefit from the pseudo-medicalisation of Cannabis too. This takes the public-relations regarding Cannabis one step further and attempts to position Cannabis not merely as non-malign but as benign. The image of Cannabis, especially in the USA, has been successfully laundered in this way via the concept of ‘medical marijuana’ which has served to soften the drug’s image & also proved successful as a wedge issue to open the door to the legalisation of recreational use, a marketing trick which is now being used once again in respect to the psychedelics despite the same paucity of evidence.

The perception of Cannabis as benign is due, in part, to the appeal-to-nature fallacy, i.e some people have decided that because Cannabis is ‘natural’ & because ‘natural,’ in their opinion, means ‘good’ or ‘better,’ by extension, this means that Cannabis is good by definition, which, of course, is silly. Asbestos is natural too, but thats not a very good argument for ingesting it into your body. As one of my Twitter mutuals put it: ‘its the noble savage idea but for medicine. If something is ‘natural’ it must be safe, whereas things that are manufactured are not.’ This belief in respect to Cannabis is doubly ironic, given the role that Cannabis cultivation is currently playing in actually despoiling the natural environment, but despite the clear appeal of the appeal-to-nature fallacy to some, it remains the case that the move to apply the imprimatur of medicine to Cannabis has played an even bigger role in actively promoting the false perception that Cannabis is benign.

(screen-shots taken from a piece written by Theodore Caputi for the International Journal of Drug Policy)

There has been a great deal of exploration into the possibilities of mining for pharmaceutical gold in the hills of Cannabis research but, thus far, the returns on that investment have proven to be pretty limited. That hasnt stopped a range of pro-Cannabis advocates making various claims on the drug’s behalf of course (or using sick children to cynically tap into our emotions) even without the evidence to back it up, but substantiating the evidentiary basis for Cannabis as a clinically-proven therapeutic is perhaps not the point in any case. The concept of ‘medical marijuana’ has served a wider political goal, irrespective of any alleged clinical utility, by creating a wedge that can open the door towards the legalisation of Cannabis for recreational use. ‘Medical marijuana’ has, in effect, served as a moral laundering scheme which has helped to clean up the public image of a drug that had previously been tarred with a range of negative associations.

(screen-shots taken from this 2019 article published by The Lancet)

Medical marijuana is medical in name only but nevertheless it has served a useful purpose for the pro-Cannabis cause by helping to launder the image of a drug linked to a range of differing harms. All three of the main groups who generally advocate for Cannabis legalisation – the groups I have described as the progressives, the pragmatists & the libertarians – have benefited from this moral laundering scheme. The very existence of ‘medical-marijuana’ (whether it is clinically efficacious as a therapeutic or not) has helped to create the impression that Cannabis is a benign drug & in conjunction with a number of other factors – including the cultural lag in the realisation that the rise in Cannabis potency over the last few decades has considerably increased the range/severity of harms associated with Cannabis use, not to mention widespread marketing, advertising & also the spread of deliberate misinformation – makes warnings of the dangers of Cannabis legalisation seem less believable to many. Simply put, the mythic halo surrounding Cannabis, which creates the impression that it is benign (or at least non-malign,) obscures & obfuscates the reality that Cannabis is a potentially dangerous drug linked to a range of different harms & it is to those harms that we shall now turn.

There are a number of harms associated with Cannabis use that we need to take more seriously if we are actually going to give consideration as to whether liberalising laws pertaining to Cannabis use are a worthwhile endeavour or not. The myth that Cannabis is non-malign is exactly that, a myth. Cannabis use is linked to a number of problems including an increased risk of paediatric exposures to the drug, dependency/withdrawal, suicide, self-harm, depression, anxiety, a number of issues pertaining to pregnancy, the perinatal period & child developmental issues more generally, downward social mobility, unfavourable life outcomes generally, altered neurodevelopment, reduced IQ, child neglect, impaired driving performance (even in the absence of intoxication,) pollution, child/adolescent substance use, domestic violence, violence more generally, mania, hyperemesis, GI disorders, cardiac problems, increased propensity to use Opioids, increased propensity to use stimulants, increased propensity to use other drugs in general, increased propensity to smoke cigarettes, cancer, erectile dysfunction, reduced sperm count, lower levels of physical activity, increased pain, testicular cancer and psychosis.

(screen-shots taken from this article in JAMA by Robin Murray & Wayne Hall)

If you smoke Cannabis daily your risk of developing psychotic symptoms is increased x5. The proportion of transition from drug-induced psychosis to schizophrenia is 25%. The highest rate of transition? Cannabis at 34%. So, in other words, if you smoke (or otherwise ingest) high-potency Cannabis products every day (remember that this is the group any commercial Cannabis industry will rely upon for profits) you are now much more likely to develop psychotic symptoms (auditory hallucinations & paranoid delusions typically) & if you do, you now have a much greater chance of developing Schizophrenia, a life-long psychotic illness/disability that carries with it an elevated risk of premature mortality. When THC (the main psychoactive compound in cannabis) is acutely administered to healthy subjects, psychotic symptoms invariably ensue, which is quite telling. As researchers Albert Reece & Garty Hulse have written: ‘the emerging picture is in fact very concerning and indeed the very antithesis of the supposedly “soft drug image” with which cannabis is invariably associated in popular culture.’

There is no libertarian argument against Cannabis commercialisation – not that this matters much given that very few of us are hardcore libertarians in any case – but the pragmatic argument (see screen-shot above) against Cannabis commercialisation becomes clear once we add the various harms (that Cannabis use is associated with) to the ledger & then start to fully appreciate the probable cost to society & the resulting extra burden that this will likely place on a range of (already stretched) public services & family-support networks. If we treat the many hyped, exaggerated & unproven claims of the self-styled pragmatists (as previously discussed & outlined) with the pinch of salt that they deserve, then the pragmatic argument *against* Cannabis commercialisation becomes even clearer.

The pragmatic argument against Cannabis legalisation/commercialisation rests, firstly, on the recognition that there are no good choices when it comes to Cannabis policy, there are only bad ones & that our task is to choose the least worst. Secondly, that the likelihood of a proliferation in Cannabis-related harms upon legalisation/commercialisation will inevitably result in ballooning costs to mitigate those harms and that these costs will likely out-weigh any putative benefits. Thirdly, progressives may wield a (thinly-veiled) moral argument for Cannabis legalisation but there is a moral case to be made against Cannabis commercialisation/legalisation too & that is: any financial benefits which may accrue from legalising/commercialising Cannabis are not likely to be conferred primarily upon the marginalised & minorities in our society but the harms are likely to be. It will therefore likely widen inequalities rather than reducing them, just as the liberalising of laws pertaining to gambling have done, resulting in the transfer of wealth from some of the poorest in our society to some of the richest.

Where do we think commercial Cannabis retail outlets will generally be located for instance? If the alcohol, gambling & tobacco industries are anything to by then they wont (predominantly) be where rich people live & we know that proximity to such Cannabis outlets predicts later Cannabis use & therefore thats where the majority of Cannabis-related harms will likely be found too. The benefits (i.e profits) of Cannabis legalisation/commercialisation will also inevitably be privatised too – they will accrue primarily to the likes of big pharma, tobacco, alcohol & the other big lobbyists & investors in the newly emerging Cannabis markets – whereas the costs will, in effect, be nationalised. The commercial Cannabis industry & their investors wont be paying for the care/support of people with problems like psychosis that have resulted (at least in part) from the pattern of sustained, heavy, Cannabis use, that they have promoted & profited from, oh no, those costs will be externalised on to the rest of us.

Legalising/commercialising Cannabis doesnt necessarily solve any of our problems but it can exacerbate problems that already exist & potentially create new ones in the process. Thats not a risk that I believe it is worth our while in taking. Once we make such a decision it is very unlikely that there will be any opportunity to turn back the clock, not least because the full extent of the consequences of legalisation will not be revealed until much later (see screen-shots above & below.) At the very least, whatever decision we ultimately make, we should make it with our eyes wide open & not under any illusions created by the various myths promulgated by propagandists for the pro-Cannabis cause.

(You have now reached the end of this blog. Thank you for reading. Below are a few screenshots that provide material which supplement the arguments Ive made)