Quite amazing how someone can look at a serious report and then come out with their pre-prepared position: one that is directly refuted by the report.

Smoking cannabis increases the risk of schizophrenia by at least 40%
according to research which indicates that there are at least 800
people suffering serious psychosis in the UK after smoking the drug.

800 people, eh?

Marjorie Wallace, chief executive of the mental health charity SANE, said:
“The Lancet report justifies SANE’s campaign that downgrading
a substance with such known dangers masked the mounting evidence of direct
links between the use of cannabis and later psychotic illness. The debate
about classification should not founder on statistics but take into account
the potential damage to hundreds of people who without cannabis would not
develop mental illness.

“While the majority can take the drug with no mind-altering effects, it is
estimated that 10 per cent are at risk.

10%? There are an estimated 4 million regular users. That would mean that there are 400,000 at risk by SANE’s numbers. Not much of a risk is it, if the actual incidence for those at risk is 0.2%? That’s one in 500.

Given that there are c. 500,000 deaths a year in the UK if we find a cause of death with some 1,000 or so (call it a couple of hundred each way) we’ll have found an activity which has the same sort of risk in the general population of causing death as against this one of pot causing psychosis.

Page 128 here. Alcoholic sclerosis. Ah, but not everyone drinks, so that’s not quite the same, is it.

Car occupant in traffic accident: 1,371. Better make being a passenger illegal then.

(Apologies to the family of the genleman it happened to, but one death from stimluant laxatives…ewwww.)