Transcript This is whga

This is a journal which has
some articles on drug abuse
This is the online version of
the journal
These are some of the articles in
the Autumn 1994 issue: one is on
drug abuse
This is the summary of what is in
the drug abuse article
These are the contents of a book
on drug abuse
This is a website about drug abuse
A newspaper article about drug abuse
Comment & Debate: So what if politicians smoked a little grass?: All those earnest
confessions last week were a mere diversion from the very real problems of drugs
and crime that fill Britain's courts
The Observer (London); Jul 22, 2007; Mary Riddell; p. 33 Full Text:
(Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited Jul 22, 2007)
Cannabis and political hysteria have a lot in common. Both cause distorted perception
and trouble with thinking. Traces, in the habitual user, can linger for weeks. But, as the
initial fug lifts, the effect of the drug-smoking admissions of the Home Secretary and
eight of her colleagues are becoming clear.
Moves towards raising cannabis from class C will be futile, as demonstrated by
theabandon with which ministers took the drug when it bore the class B status that some
now want to reinstate. The absurdity does not stop there. In other ways, the cannabis
confessions have been a psychedelic experience.
People who look as if they never took anything more mind- altering than Vimto have
declared their sin. At one point the causal links between the Haight-Ashbury experience
and the Gordon Brown cabinet seemed so solid that you would not have been surprised
to hear that pensions policy was being formulated by the Grateful Dead.
More encouragingly for the government, the mental hologram of John Hutton inhaling a
damp spliff may be as powerful a deterrent to the young as a picture of Giant Haystacks
on a dieter's fridge door. Already, since the downward reclassification in 2004, the