Cannabis : a discussion paper.

  • South Australia. Royal Commission into the Non-medical Use of Drugs.
Date:
1978
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Cannabis : a discussion paper. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    9/140 (page 3)
    The reports have consistently rejected theories that cannabis is addictive or that its use leads to violent crime or insanity, or results in progression to other harmful drugs.” These consistent findings point to one of the striking features of the cannabis debate—the gap between the evidence and widely held beliefs. Respondents, in submissions and at public meetings, often stated that far too little is known about the drug and its effects to warrant reconsideration of current legal prohibitions. This approach seems to overlook the enormous quantity of scientific information which is available concerning the drug and its effects on users. (This is not to deny that there are gaps in our knowledge.) Similarly, even a cursory glance at the modern history of cannabis shows a repeated pattern of widely believed myths which often fly in the face of the available evidence. It seems that as discredited beliefs (such as cannabis being an addictive narcotic causing violent crime and insanity) are rejected, they are replaced by new myths (for example, that even casual use carries serious health risks to the user). Nor are myths solely the preserve of opponents of cannabis; supporters are equally capable of extravagant claims (for example, the belief that cannabis, taken in any quantity or any strength, is entirely harmless). Why, then, has the cannabis debate generated such intense feelings? Why have the prohibitions survived the discrediting of many of the theories originally used to justify them? And why is there now an insistent wave of demands for reassessment of the position? There are no easy answers to these HaBsHiinie But it is apparent that the debate has been more concerned with values and community attitudes than with the objective ascertainment of facts. It follows that even the objective ascertainment of facts does not avoid the need, in forming social policy, to make value judgments which will determine how these facts are to be weighed. In Australia there has been no detailed historical study of the regulation of drug use. However, in the United States, as in a number of European countries, considerable attention has been devoted to the events that led to the imposition of criminal penalties and, more recently, to the pressures for reassessment of those penalties. That experience is not directly applicable to Australia, which has had a different social and political history. Nevertheless the well-documented history in the United States illustrates quite clearly how the debate, at least in that country, has had less to do with a rational evaluation of the evidence than with the interplay of complex social forces. In their book, The Marihuana Conviction: A History of Marihuana Prohibition in the United States (1974), which grew from the work of the Shafer Commission, Bonnie and Whitebread point to the factors contributing to the proposals at the turn of the century to impose criminal penalties on certain drug-related conduct which had not previously been illegal. Influential groups then believed in the need for government and law to protect the morals of the nation. Legislation was then (and indeed still is) thought by some to be an effective tool for achieving moral reform