Mary Kenny writes on the dangers of legalizing cannabis

Mary Kenny is a well known writer and journalist in this article in the Irish Independent weekend magazine she writes about the views of Grainne Kenny, Preda-Ireland board member .

When I open my email, these days,I find it flooded with various commercial offers. And it’s noticeable how publicity around cannabis products has increased recently.

Now is the right moment, I keep reading, to invest in cannabis. It’s getting legal everywhere! It’s a profitable product – and besides, it helps people, medically, with a range of illnesses “including chronic pain, anxiety, arthritis, diabetes, PTSD, strokes, cardiovascular disease, and even cancer.” Justin Trudeau’s Canada has just made it legal all over the country and people can now buy Canadian marijuana with names like “Girl Scout Cookies”, “Green Crack” and “Suicide Girl” (eh?) from government licensed companies. And it’s been legalized in Colorado and some other American states for a while now.

It’s hard to know what to think of this trend. Many people support marijuana and cannabis for medical use (CNN reports that 7 in 10 Americans approve of athletes using it to alleviate pain), and it seems a worthy application of the opiate. People with terminal illness are pumped full of to relieve pain and distress, and why not? And yet, when my sister was dying in New York, I had to sign a waiver saying the family would not sue the hospice for making her a dope addict – an absurd legal excuse.

But when it comes to cannabis, I also know of cases where it has been deeply harmful. The Middle East specialist Patrick Cockburn (who grew up in Youghal – his father was the left-wing writer Claud Cockburn) has written, with his son, Henry, a heart-wrenching book called “Henry’s Demons: Living with Schizophrenia”, which describes how Henry, as a teenager, descended into a hell of schizophrenia triggered by cannabis use.

Time for me to have a renewed conversation with Grainne Kenny, a dynamo of a woman – 80 this year but utterly undiminished in energy – who has campaigned against drugs, in Ireland, since 1979, as a long-time President of Eurad, the European non-profit network against drugs, and now Honorary President. Isn’t there an argument for legalizing cannabis for the relief of pain?

Grainne (who was married to the late Ted Kenny of RTE, but we are not related), thinks that a lot of the campaigning for medical use is a “red herring”. Or, more likely, it’s a soft way of normalizing use for recreational reasons. The adverts that are coming into my mailbox about the wonders of cannabis are more about Big Pharma taking over from Big Tobacco than about compassion for the afflicted.

And, Grainne says, you’d be asking someone with an illness to smoke a joint, because that’s the most practical way of getting the cannabis inside you. Since health advisors are desperate to get people off smoking, it’s hardly a sensible course. What about inhaling it through cannabis oil, which is now much promoted as a healing property – some cancer survivors claim to have been helped by cannabidoil? Grainne is not convinced that any cannabis-based product is without side-effects – it’s an opiate which can affect every cell in your body – and cannabidoil can be much stronger than even ordinary pot. Moreover, cannabis causes cancer – 50 per cent more carcinogens than fags – rather than cures it.

People with a chronic illness who need a relaxant “would probably be better off with a gin and tonic.” Alcohol, though also a serious drug, is not a narcotic and is not psychotropic. And we have been acculturated to alcohol for at least five thousand years.

But what about the trend, all over North America, to be more accepting, now, of cannabis-based products? In this, Grainne sees the influential shadow of the financier George Soros (backed, on this side of the Atlantic, by Richard Branson) who has donated millions to campaigns to liberalise drugs, and who seems to like to being a power in international law.

Besides, some of the outcomes of legalization are already dubious. In Colorado, where you can buy cannabis legally, the dealers have moved in and are trading it elsewhere, and criminally. For similar reasons, the Dutch have pulled back from their formerly easy-going approach to soft drugs: every dope-head in Europe was heading for Amsterdam, and they didn’t like the overall effect on their cities.

The state of Utah, which was preparing to legalise cannabis, is now pausing to reflect, and New Hampshire – in the liberal North-East – has voted against it. Britain has toughened legislation against cannabis possession and the health authority NICE has ruled out funding the cannabis-based medication, Sativex, although it is used in Wales to control muscle spasms. Sweden, which Grainne regards as the gold standard, has held firm and remains solidly opposed to liberalizing drug law.

Many commentators believe that “the war on drugs” is a failure – achieving little besides putting the distribution in the hands of criminals. But there’s no easy remedy to legalizing it. “Who’s going to sell this stuff? Distribute it? Tax it?” Tax it too highly, and there will be a parallel black market anyway. Tax it too low, and the state is irresponsibly encouraging young people to take up the drug habit.

But won’t human beings always seek some kind of opiate? As T.S. Eliot observed, we cannot bear too much reality. Grainne concedes that may be so. Yet you can do an awful lot with drug education – not by lecturing young people but by engaging them. Teenage girls, she says, are so responsive: they worry about their friends. Lads are more likely to guffaw and show off. Surely, that, at least is something that we can all agree on – that serious, engaged education around the drug question is vital to combat the increased clamour for liberalization? @MaryKenny4