Pubdate: Sat, 07 Mar 2015
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Copyright: 2015 Associated Newspapers Ltd
Contact:  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/108
Author: Amanda Platell

WHAT HAS IDIOTIC MR CLEGG BEEN SMOKING?

FACING a wipeout at the General Election, Nick Clegg is busy finding 
ever more desperate ways of appealing to the young voters who have 
abandoned his party in droves. Having betrayed them over his 
manifesto pledge to abolish tuition fees, his latest wheeze is to 
target the druggie vote by reaching out to students who smoke cannabis.

The Lib Dems have pledged that personal possession and the use of 
drugs - not just marijuana, but even heroin - would no longer be a 
criminal offence. Even by Clegg's standards, this is a proposal of 
such reckless imbecility that it makes you wonder what he's been smoking.

Only last month, scientists published research that showed a clear 
and conclusive link between the strong new skunk strain of cannabis 
and schizophrenia among the young.

Smoking skunk triples the risk of psychosis; when used daily, the 
danger is increased five times.

And whose lives are most imperilled by a descent into skunk-addled 
mental illness? Not the children of rich men such as Clegg, Richard 
Branson and their fellow oh-so-trendy pot promoters, who can afford 
to pay for private therapy to bring them back from the abyss, cushion 
their fall and support them when they lose their jobs and relationships.

Others are not so fortunate. For the truth is Clegg has betrayed the 
very people he seeks to win over: children from less-privileged homes 
whose life chances and mental well-being are at risk with every puff they take.

According to Mind, the mental health charity, 54 per cent of people 
with mental health problems have to wait more than three months 
before receiving any treatment on the NHS.

As anyone who has experience of psychotic episodes with young people 
will know, three months can be life-destroying.

Only the privileged, sanctimonious liberal elite can afford to turn a 
blind eye to the damage drugs do to the young. They can look after 
their own. Who looks after the rest?

[sidebar]

How typical that Nick Clegg invited Richard Branson to co-chair his 
discussion about the decriminalisation of drugs.

After all, the Virgin tycoon boasts about smoking pot with his son 
Sam and claimed this week that even skunk 'does no harm'.

Perhaps not in the palm-fringed pampered protection of his Caribbean 
island it doesn't, but what about on the sink estates of Britain?

Still, what else do you expect from the man who's spent a lifetime 
doing anything, no matter how daft, just to grab a headline for Brand Branson?
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom