A response to an article by the UK Cannabis Social Club (@UKCannabisclubs)

I have just posted the following comment in response to this article, ‘Shameless: Prohibitionists Exploit Murder To Smear Cannabis Consumers’, on the website of something called the UK Cannabis Social Club.

Ross Grainger here, creator of the offending site, attackersmokedcannabis.com. You seem perplexed by my claim that cannabis does not cause violence, but that certain crimes would not have happened if the person had never smoked cannabis: ‘So he admits that cannabis didn’t cause the actions of the individual concerned, but that the individual would not have taken these actions if he had not smoked cannabis!’ Replace ‘cannabis’ with ‘alcohol’ and perhaps the sentence will make sense. Violence is a voluntary action. Nothing causes it. Or, inversely, no action that is caused by something is voluntary. But just as one can look at many a drunken fight in a city centre and say ‘That would not have happened if the men weren’t drunk’, so one can look at, say, a 16-year-old boy raping and murdering a six-year-old girl in the middle of the night and say ‘That would not have happened if he had not smoked cannabis from age 14 and been, in his own words, “really stoned” at the time.’

I also dispute the following:

• That the evidence consists only of ‘tabloid headlines’: I provide a link to the full story in the original newspaper, many of which (e.g., Times, Guardian, Independent, local papers) are not ‘tabloids’. Furthermore, ‘tabloid’ is a smear by which you mean to suggest the stories are not true. If you think this, you should say so, and drop the snide insinuation.
• The idea that if cannabis were legal a 16-year-old would not be able to obtain it, when the examples of cigarettes and alcohol show that youngsters would acquire it with ease.
• That the number of cases I have compiled is ‘small’. In any case, they are merely the tip of the iceberg, and the result of one man searching online. Part of the inquiry that I petition(ed) for would ascertain exactly how common a factor cannabis is in violent crime and suicide. Bear in mind also that many thousands more cannabis smokers become mentally ill without physically harming anyone, except perhaps themselves, becoming merely burdens to their families and dependent on the state.

Either cannabis is a relevant factor in the cases I cite, or it is not. How about we find out before we think about legalising it?