Paranoia

Yesterday, BBC News 24 and Radio 4 news reported the conviction of a young man who savagely murdered two of his friends with a knife. He was defined in the reports as a "cannabis addict" or "heavy cannabis user". The Guardian's report this morning gets onto the same angle and quotes somebody as saying "We now know that cannabis can be a trigger for mental health problems and smoking it under the age of 18 can double people's chances of developing psychosis."

Do we know that? How do we know that? Where's the evidence?

Having a quick shufty in Google scholar just now, this article, a " review of clinical and epidemiological evidence" gets the most hits for a search on "cannabis psychosis". Then you see it's not so cut and dried.

Admittedly "cannabis use can exacerbate the symptoms of schizophrenia."

Just like eating pie and chips six times a week will exacerbate the symptoms of a bad heart.

Comments

  1. dshalockThu Mar 22, 05:45:00 pm GMT

    The media can always be counted upon by the government for a scary sound bite to rally the masses. Fortunately for those in power fear sells, which makes the media more than willing to play along with the game.

    ReplyDelete
  2. StefThu Mar 22, 07:18:00 pm GMT

    As well as being a puff addict, the papers made much of the fact that Mr Stabby was also a big horror movie fan

    Of course, the fun part of profiling people is arbitrarily deciding what qualities of that person are or are not significant.

    The other cool thing to do is to mix cause up with effect. Maybe the odd spliff actually helped take the edge off things. Maybe without it he would have gone really crazy

    ReplyDelete
  3. Garry NixonFri Mar 23, 09:14:00 am GMT

    Indeed. I've known several blokes with a penchant for violence who, in effect, self medicate with cannabis to make themselves less hazardous to passers by.

    ReplyDelete

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