Pubdate: Wed, 18 Feb 2009
Source: Guardian, The (UK)
Copyright: 2009 Guardian News and Media Limited
Contact:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/175
Author: Zoe Williams, The Guardian
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?207 (Cannabis - United Kingdom)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mdma.htm (Ecstasy)

Mum doesn't know best

The Effect of an Ad That Overstates the Dangers of Cannabis Is to 
Discredit All Public Health Advice

A new UKP 2.2m ad campaign about cannabis targets 11- to 
18-year-olds. Before you decide that's a waste of money, imagine how 
much more it would have cost before the collapse of ad revenues. I 
think the government should take advantage of this to advertise the 
dangers of all drugs. Indeed, so what if ecstasy is only about as 
dangerous as horse riding? Why not have an ad about how dangerous 
horse riding is?

There is some sense in the ads. Cannabis was reclassified last year, 
from a class C drug to class B, and what's the point in making it 
more dangerous without a public health warning? Nevertheless, this 
raised questions - compounded by the government's refusal to 
downgrade ecstasy from class A - about why ministers commission 
reports from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, only to ignore them.

Among the council's reasons against reclassifying cannabis were the 
decrease in presentation of severe toxic reactions to cannabis 
between 2004 and 2007; and research that found the drug's 
characteristics remained closer in impact and strength to class C 
than class B. This is the point of having classes, surely: to gather 
proximal substances, not to create a sliding scale of naughtiness. 
Presumably the government had been expecting a different outcome, 
given a perceived increase in the strength of street dope, attributed 
to the prevalence of skunk - a different creature to the 60s variant 
that politicians all took at university, which had no effect besides 
making them sleepy.

Some may argue that, having braced themselves to step up anti-dope 
campaigning, public health ministers were justified in ignoring the 
science community whose expertise they had sought. Actually, I think 
it is sloppy and childish; but I also think that, if it were only 
this instance, it could be looked on as a blind spot. But, taken with 
the controversy on ecstasy, it is far more troubling: again public 
health authorities wanted the drug reclassified, and again the 
advisory council advised against, on the stated criteria of the 
classification system - to wit, ecstasy is just not that dangerous.

Then came a personal attack on David Nutt, the head of the advisory 
council: a junior minister accused him of being on a personal 
crusade. This seemed vindictive and cast policymakers in a yet poorer 
light - which is some doing, considering they already looked like the 
kind of people who endlessly solicit advice and resolutely refuse to take it.

Naturally, there is some very banal motivation at play, which is that 
nobody ever won votes campaigning for laxity on drugs. But, to give 
the health minister Dawn Primarolo and her ilk the benefit of the 
doubt, they would not overstate the dangers of drugs if they did not 
regard overstatement as a neutral, benign policy, beneficial to some 
hoodlums and harmful to none.

I disagree profoundly with this: public health messages have to chime 
with experience. When they do they have an incredible impact, but 
when they don't, they are not simply a bit less effective: they 
discredit the promulgating authority. An individual who hears from 
Primarolo that cannabis causes "serious and long-term health 
problems" but finds little empirical evidence for the same, stops 
listening to the government - not on those drugs alone, but altogether.

We don't need to see things with our own eyes to believe them; we're 
not Neanderthals. But we do need to be assured that advice is 
evidence-based, that the authorities haven't just ignored the 
evidence and gone ahead anyway. I contend that the negative 
consequences of this mummy-knows-best approach have already gone 
beyond the world of class C drugs. I bet this is why so many young 
people have stopped using condoms and are getting syphilis. 
- ---
MAP posted-by: Richard Lake