Kirklees drugs counsellor: No evidence to link cannabis and mental illness

Feb 4 2009 Huddersfield Daily Examiner

LAST month, cannabis was re-graded from a Class C drug to a Class B.

Since the drug’s ‘demotion’ in 2004 in the opposite direction, from Class B to Class C, there has been a campaign to suggest that cannabis is a much more dangerous drug than its users and advocates care to imagine.

This is the view held by former West Yorkshire Chief Constable and Huddersfield man Keith Hellawell, appointed by the Labour Government as a ‘drugs czar’, a top level adviser.

Some of his advice was taken – a lot wasn’t. In exasperation over Home Secretary Davids Blunkett’s insistence the drug be declassified, downgraded, he resigned.

Most medical authorities back him. They say it is a serious mistake to label cannabis ‘soft’, especially now that the much stronger range of cannabis known as ‘skunk’ is widely available.

Doctors have noted that adolescent dependence on cannabis appears to lead in some cases to permanent cognitive impairment.

Frequent use often precipitates psychosis, schizophrenia, they say.

It is marked by a steady deterioration of social skills, memory, concentration, and can lead to depression, paranoia and suicide.

But Mike Linnell, of Lifeline Kirklees, a voluntary organisation that deals with the effects of drug dependence, says the evidence for all these horrors is minimal.

He described reclassification as ‘awful’.