Why cannabis is not a Class A drug
A Home Office threat to reschedule cannabis to Class A is equivalent to the reversal of Roe v Wade for the hundreds of thousands of British people who deserve access to medicinal weed
This week The Sunday Times reported that the British Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, was considering upgrading cannabis to class A, where it would sit alongside cocaine, heroin, ecstasy and all the psychedelic substances, including mushrooms. Her rumoured concerns are the old saw that weed and hash are a “gateway” drug for more harmful substances.
Braverman’s old school prohibition stance, popularised by President Nixon and his wildly successful (sarcasm alert) War on Drugs and a whole slew of other politicians who cry, ‘Down with this sort of thing’, is the very epitome of reactionary, and leaves me wondering how she ever got to be a QC in her previous life.
Her reported belief that weed is a gateway drug has some evidence but it is limited. QCs are quite used to arguing for things with shit evidence so bad people can get away with things.
There are two serious things that this reported opinion of hers belie
First, a total ignorance of the reasons people might develop problem use in the first place. Studies show that problem use of all the drugs, legal and illegal, come from a root cause of stress and trauma, either in early life, or more recent. This is from US’s Centre for Disease Control and Prevention on the causes of problem use of cannabis : Family history. Having a mental health illness (such as anxiety or depression). Peer pressure. Loneliness or social isolation. Lack of family involvement. Drug availability. Socioeconomic status.
All things that at the root might be fixed by a compassionate state not one that gives tax cuts to the rich while reducing state support for less lucky people, and proudly with it.
The drug issue is an extremely complex society and world wide issue and it is accepted that to eradicate their use from society is impossible. It doesn’t get any more definite than that. The heroin problem in Iran is pretty bad, and that insane state has a total prohibition on everything except fags and tea. Even women’s hair is haram. If you want a sensible science led idea about the relative benefits and dangers of cannabis you can’t do better than two hours of Andrew Huberman on the subject.
However, the big thrust of what I want to say here is not about liberalisation of the drug laws. Yes, her beliefs betray a babyish simplification of a matter that increasing numbers of progressive politicians have totally rejected. In Portugal and Uruguay drugs have been decriminalised or legalised, as of July 2022, 38 American states have legalised medical marijuana use and 19 states have legalised recreational use. Even Thailand, where you hang for drug trafficking, has legalised cannabis and is likely to follow several American states with deregulation of psychedelics according to investors in the space I have spoken to.
By regulating cannabis you edge out some of the purposefully contaminated and high in THC product that is popular with criminal growers and that are the root of most cannabis psychosis. More wholesome product has a higher CBD content which is actually an anti-psychotic. This is how nature made psychoactive cannabis. Man made, strong street strains are the wackiest of the baccies. I actually don’t really smoke much weed, and the current vogue for pure THC weed pens among some of my peers give me the willies.
This is not a post about the pros and cons of psychoactive substance use. This is a post about Braverman’s biggest and silliest error.
Should our Home Secretary fulfil her dreams and reclassify cannabis back to Class A we would be in the strange position of sick people walking around with prescribed cannabis that they take for medical reasons being both patients of medical doctors and criminals in the eyes of the law.
Class As have no therapeutic use. It would be like saying, “Oh, you mean this crystal meth officer? Why I take it for my Multiple Sclerosis, it helps relieve pain and muscle spasms.”
A drug cannot be considered of no therapeutic value, which is what Class A means, and be evidentially and legally classified as of therapeutic value. That’s a logically impossible as any fule know. And Braverman is no fule. She went to Cambridge, and studied law. She’s much cleverer than me. I wish she would explain her rationale to the nation. Go on, persuade me Suella.
Her stance is all the more utterly babyish because the UK is currently a global hub for both medicinal cannabis and psychedelic research and psilocybin production. British Sugar (on behalf of GW Pharmaceuticals, now Jazz Pharmaceuticals) are one of, if not the biggest, medical cannabis growers in the world. Construction just started on Jazz Pharma’s new manufacturing facility. Their synthetic and green green grassy produce goes into medicines that are distributed around the world, but are jolly hard to get your paws on here.
British companies and British scientists are leading the world in developing the psychedelic medicine market. Clerkenwell Health has MHRA approval to do a number of psychedelic trials with hallucinogenic drugs and MDMA, if you want legal and carefully administered access to psychedelic therapy get on their books. A company called Small Pharma is researching DMT (the psychoactive compound in ayahuacsca and bufo known as the spirit molecule ) and depression. MAPS, the American Psychedelic study organisation, has a trial running here. Compass Pathways, probably the biggest corporate noise in the psychedelic space is British, with offices in NY and San Francisco. What’s really really mad is, all are boosted by the scientists MHRA awarding their work ILAP status, which effectively fast tracks important medicines of special interest through the regulatory system. Government investment even supports some of these businesses.
This is happening right here, right now. The world is changing. Venture Capitalist, Richard Skaife, invests in the psychedelic space via his Conscious Fund, and lives in Malta where the abortion laws suck but people can cultivate cannabis plants at home. “This government really is bizarre,” he says of the UK, “The MHRA is guided by science. What are the Home Office guided by? The more you criminalise drugs the more money criminals make, the poorer the quality, it funds corrupt police oficers and feeds the illegal drug economy.”
Now I am not discussing recreational use here. I am discussing access rights to cannabis and psychedelics for therapeutic purposes. The Conservative Drug Policy Reform Group’s campaign for Psilocybin Access Rights (#PAR) is not to benefit Terence McKenna worshiping psychonauts and middle class booze hounds trying to find healthier highs. It is for people with terminal illness, servicemen and women with PTSD, it is for people at high risk of suicide with treatment resistant depression or who are broken by addiction to everything from smack to fags to biscuits.
To deny people these medicines is simply inhumane. It goes against their human rights.
Cannabis is Class B, deemed of therapeutic benefit. You can still count the number of NHS prescriptions pretty much on fingers and toes, meanwhile prescribing in the private healthcare sector increased by 935% from 2020 to 2021 with 37,634 items prescribed between January and November 2021. According to a 2019 report from the Care Quality Commission only 6.5% of the total number of cannabis-based medical products prescribed in 2019 were prescribed through the NHS.
An estimated eight million people in the UK suffer from chronic pain, of which the British Pain Society estimate three million could be eligible for cannabinoid medicine. Back in 2019 I wrote about the estimated further 1.4 million people who are buying cannabis products on the black market to self-medicate, and the progressive police forces that allow well run cannabis cafes with healthy home grown produce for sale in Newcastle. Any threat to reschedule cannabis to Class A is kind of equivalent to the reversal of Roe v Wade for the hundreds of thousands of British people who deserve access to medicinal cannabis for conditions that do not respond to more chemically confected treatments.
The British Pain Society estimates that eight million people in the UK suffer from chronic pain, and that three million may be eligible for prescriptions to cannabinoid medicine. The formal line on cannabis is that it has been classed as controlled drug, a Class B, since 2018.Most cannabis medicines are unlicensed. So patients with clinical needs that can’t be met by licensed medicines can now be prescribed cannabis products by a doctor.
I know this is not a complete picture and I am not some pro-drugs let’s all get fucked up loony tune. But people have sought escapism and medicine in psychoactive substances since time began. Assimilate this into our society, like adults. Educate our kids. Help addicts. Reap the tax rewards. Remove an entire profitable industry from the hands of criminals.
The Braverman story of last Sunday was swiftly quashed by Number 10, and most of the broadsheets ran the rebuttal that there were no plans up reclassify cannabis from B to A, it’s just a Braverman position in the Home Office - well, some good news there.
On the very same day though it was not reported in the tabloids, instead The Sun, reported something else. Apparently Kerry Katona wrote in her OK column that she took mushrooms and now sees the future through her third eye.
Below the jump, an secret extra paragraph for my paying guests. Tomorrow I will drop another chunk of Lost God, the story that began in my first paid post.
Maybe see you down there. Either way. Lorra love! Kate
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