The Evils of Marijuana

Evil terrorists? 

No, they're just solitary drug-crazed losers

Peter Hitchens
Mail on Sunday 

If I ever feel the need to have several nice cold buckets of slime tipped over my head, I point out that most of the supposed terrorist attacks in this country are, in fact, the work of solitary drug-crazed losers.

The drug involved is most often marijuana, though steroids are also increasingly implicated, as are some prescription medications.  But it is mainly marijuana, which is just now the subject of a huge billionaire-backed campaign to allow it to be advertised on TV and sold in supermarkets. Yes, that is what legalisation means.

Within seconds one choir of morons will be yelling that I am ‘an apologist for Islamic terror’. No, I am not. I hate terrorism of all kinds and wish we did not give into it so often. 

As I turn to deal with them, a second choir of morons will begin to howl that marijuana has no links with mental illness or crime, is a valuable medicine, and how dare I damage its chances of being legalised?

They have half a point. It should not be legalised, and I will do all in my power to prevent that happening. But that is because there are mountains of evidence of its connections with mental illness and with violence. This danger is getting harder to contest every day.

So here comes the slime, the dimwit screeches and the self-interested squawks. Because the official claim that the dreadful slayings in a Reading park last weekend were ‘terrorism’ is so absurd that it simply has to be countered.  This belief actually leaves us in more danger, not less, because it means we look in the wrong direction and take precautions against the wrong menace.

The Destructive Dangers of Marijuana

My New Best Pal in the Drugs War? Stormzy!

Peter Hitchens
The Daily Mail

I don’t suppose the rapper Stormzy is a keen reader of my articles, and I have no idea what sort of hideous noises he makes, but we are now shoulder to shoulder, brothers in arms and hand in hand.

For Stormzy, whose real name is Michael Omari, says he has stopped smoking marijuana, after realising the drug was harming his mental health. And because of who he is, his message is likely to reach a lot of people who urgently need to hear it.

He said: ‘I have suffered with mental health problems for the past few years… When I used to feel depressed, I would lock myself away and smoke weed and I would just get worse and worse and worse.’

Professor Sir Robin Murray, a psychiatrist who has warned for years of this danger, thinks the singer’s admission could have a significant impact on young marijuana smokers.  He says: ‘The evidence is very clear that heavy cannabis use can cause mental health problems including anxiety, depression, and psychosis. Young people may be reluctant to believe this when a psychiatrist like me says it but are much more likely to accept it when a star like Stormzy says it.’

It is interesting just how little coverage Stormzy’s confession has had.

See No Evil; Hear No Evil

Read Grace's Story, Then Tell Me 

Is Marijuana Destroying Our Country . . . Or Not

Peter Hitchens
Daily Mail


You probably shuddered when you read about the terrible thing which happened to a young trainee doctor, Grace Spence Green. Her body was smashed when a man jumped off a 120ft-high shopping centre and landed on her. But did you wonder why it even happened? Marijuana was why it happened.

When will we ever learn just how much damage the unrestrained use of marijuana is doing to our society? When will we ever do anything about it, as wiser countries do?

I make no apologies for coming back to this subject, as I remain amazed by the growing support of ignorant politicians and media for the legalisation of this terrifying poison. If they get their way it will take us straight into a nightmare version of the third world, with all the misery but without all the sunshine.

You yourselves may have seen the symptoms, and you will have been appalled by them – but you may not have connected them with their actual cause, because so many media outlets do not report the vital details.

There are many striking things about the case of Ms Green.

When Police Become Social Workers

A Deadly Error... Committed by Cops

Peter Hitchens
The Daily Mail

It’s the way things cease to be shocking that is so fascinating. If, even 30 years ago, a police force had proposed to let off drug dealers and give them free driving lessons and gym memberships, the Chief Constable involved would have had to resign in about two hours.

Now, when Avon and Somerset Police announce this mad scheme, there’s barely a tremor. To me, the interesting thing here is that those targeted for this crime-rewarding programme are drug dealers. For years, police have excused their cowardly, lawless and disastrous failure to pursue criminal drug users by saying this would free them to catch the evil dealers.

I knew they never really meant it.

Changing Opinions

Bob McCoskrie: Don't let Kiwis Go to  Pot Gisborne Herald 23 June 2019 Recently released polls on cannabis have consistently shown a decreasing appetite for the legalisation of recreational dope use. It seems that while we all strongly support a compassionate response to those in real need with a cautious and researched approach around cannabis medicine, when we thoughtfully consider the real implications of legalising the recreational use of cannabis, we completely reject the proposal – and rightly so. Recent polling by Curia Market Research found that 85% of New Zealanders think that cannabis use can damage the brains of young people, 81% think that drivers using cannabis are more likely to cause accidents, 63% think that cannabis users aged under 25 are less likely to get a job, and half of us think that cannabis usage will increase if restrictions are reduced (35% think usage would remain the same). When people think about ‘cannabis’, they probably immediately think about the same overused photos by the media of a marijuana plant and a joint being smoked. Think Woodstock Weed. But legalising today’s marijuana will be far more than that.

Cover Up?

A Horror Chamber

This country is slowly being choked to death by the ‘rights’ of wrongdoers and the refusal of authority to protect the innocent

By PETER HITCHENS

MAIL ON SUNDAY

+6

Dr Barry Hounsome, 54, was violently killed in his own home on October 29 last year 

Don’t the authorities want to prevent crime? See what you think about this case. Once, the terrible, lonely death of college lecturer Barry Hounsome, like something out of an obscene horror film, would have been so shocking and unusual that it would have occupied national newspaper front pages for days.

But you probably have not heard of it, since such things are far too common in civilised modern Britain.

Dr Hounsome, then 54, was at his modest home in the Hampshire town of Gosport (where I once lived, in another, gentler age) on October 29 last year. He had worked for Southampton and Bangor universities and carried out research into dementia and Parkinson’s disease. He was the sort of person who might have expected to be safe, in the sort of place where he might have expected to be secure.

As far as can be told from the published evidence, he was disturbed by an intruder breaking in through his patio door. But this was no ordinary burglar. The 16-year-old who entered his home was wearing a stab vest and goggles.

His assailant had also equipped himself with electric drills, hammers and knives. An account of the trial describes what happened:

Dying By Degree

Does NZ Want Corporates Producing Potent Cannabis Here?


Is this what we really want for our country? 

Kate Hawkesby
Newstalk ZB

As we edge ever closer to our referendum next year on cannabis, the debate's heating up.

That's a good thing. We need to be as well informed as we possibly can before we vote.
It's easy to come at these issues from whatever your personal experiences or interests are.

But part of living in a democratic society is being able to look at debate from all sides. At the moment with the legalise cannabis debate, I tend to come at it from my standpoint as a parent.

But one angle which pricked my interest this week was that of its move into the hands of big corporates - and with that, it's increased potency.

If we look to overseas examples, which we should, a Colorado native and author of the book "Weed, Inc", Ben Cort has been shedding some light on what's happened in his hometown.  Colorado legalised cannabis in 2012. Since then, commercial interests have taken over sales and they're making millions.

Not only that, the product's been hijacked. The 'natural plant' as cannabis enthusiasts from the 1970s may've called it, is no longer just a plant. It's concentrated and distilled into edibles, eye drops, gum, lollies, nasal sprays, ice cream - whatever you can think of now contains THC – which is the active ingredient in marijuana. The part that gets you high.

Cort says it's so dramatically more potent now than it was back then. Where plants of the 70s may've contained about 4 per cent THC, the levels now are more like 42 per cent.  Why? Because it's now being grown in glasshouses and commercial production facilities, with pesticides, fertilisers and metals added to it.

In his TED talk, Cort cites a mate of his who quit working in one of the cannabis growing facilities due to his fears about the amount of chemicals he was around. Their employers were asking them to wear Hazmat suits – that's how much chemical spraying was going onto these plants.

So with the increase in THC comes of course the increase in addiction. The key factors in terms of addiction are age of onset, frequency of use, and potency. It's said that adolescents who take up cannabis these days have a 50 per cent chance of getting addicted. It used to be around 17 per cent.
The arguments against – that it's a health issue and not a criminal one – I hear that.

But don't we create a bigger health issue for ourselves than we already have with those other legalised corporatised addictive drugs such as tobacco and alcohol?   They're legal: look how that turned out.

Is this what we really want for our country?

A more potent drug than ever before, and in the hands of corporate giants milking it for every cent?

I wouldn't have thought so.

Letter From America (About Marijuana)

My Trip to the Pot Shop

Medical marijuana is quite literally a life saver.

By Michelle Malkin

National Review Online

March 26, 2014

Pueblo West, Colo. – It’s 9:00 a.m. on a weekday, and I’m at the Marisol Therapeutics pot shop. This is serious business. Security is tight. ID checks are frequent. Merchandise is strictly regulated, labeled, wrapped, and controlled. The store is clean, bright, and safe. The staffers are courteous and professional. Customers of all ages are here.

There’s a middle-aged woman at the counter nearby who could be your school librarian. On the opposite end of the dispensary, a slender young soldier in a wheelchair with close-cropped hair, dressed in his fatigues, consults with a clerk. There’s a gregarious cowboy and an inquisitive pair of Baby Boomers looking at edibles. A dude in a hoodie walks in with his backpack.

And then there’s my husband and me.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

Getting Lost in the Deep Weed

Posted on Friday, January 3, 2014  

By Douglas Wilson

Blog and Mablog

I have written before on the sinfulness of recreational marijuana use. In an appendix to Future Men, entitled “Liberty and Marijuana,” I argued that the one use for alcohol that is prohibited in Scripture is a condition remarkably similar to the effects of marijuana — and to the extent that there is a distinction between being drunk and being stoned, marijuana is demonstrably worse. For more detailed argumentation on that issue, I refer you to that place. So it is a sin to get stoned.

At the same time, I have also repeatedly urged us to remember the distinction between sins and crimes. Not everything that is sinful ought to be against the law. Granted that marijuana use is sinful — although many Christians today are muddled enough to not understand that — ought it to remain against the law? I believe so.

Now I say this acknowledging that many of our current penalties for pot use have been draconian, and I believe that our “war on drugs” has been an over-reaching and very expensive joke.