Idiocy is a lesser crime than hypocrisy

July 21st, 2007

In a week where it turned out that most of parliament were pot-heads in their student days, we’ve been reminded that while journalists have a hard time getting things right, they have an even harder time separating meaningful data from nonsense when it comes to drugs. Usually the confusion is understandable – journalists simply don’t take the time to get their facts straight. Far more dubious is the release something that is so loaded with opinion, so utterly without balance, that it can only have been intentionally wrong – a story that was written in spite of the facts, rather than in support of them.

This was the case several months ago with the Independent on Sunday, when a paper that was traditionally level-headed on its approach to science suddenly plunged headlong into Daily Mail-esque ravings of youth corrupted into degenerate axe-wielding maniacs by super-strength cannabis.

You can read a thorough and entertaining debunking of the Independent on Sunday’s cannabis story over at the Transform Drug Policy Foundation. The key point is: even if cannabis is getting stronger, which no-one has proved, “da kids” will only smoke less. Whisky is 20 times stronger than lager, but it doesn’t come in pint glasses, see?

Anyway, now two months on since the IoS whipped its readers into a panic about the demon weed, feast your eyes on today’s story on page 15: “Debunked: politicians’ claim that cannabis has become stronger“. What? Here’s a choice quote:

“There has been a widespread assumption bandied about that the country is in the grip of an epidemic of cannabis-induced psychosis”

Gee, I wonder where they got that idea? Luckily for us, nothing on the internet ever goes away, and the original IoS article is still online. Let’s have a quote.

“Robin Murray, professor of psychiatry at London’s Institute of Psychiatry, estimates that at least 25,000 of the 250,000 schizophrenics in the UK could have avoided the illness if they had not used cannabis.”

Argh! If there’s one thing worse than a paper that intentionally creates a moral panic, it’s one that performs an about-face two months later and blames the furore on someone else. A shameful chapter in the downward spiral of a once-quality newspaper.

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