The Comment Warriors are Scared

Very soon after the experiences of a cannabis smoker's wife, harrowing and distressing, were posted here, the comments began to fly in, decrying it.

Why? What had I, or the author of the account, said? Neither she nor I made any specific claim. There was no need, actually. Any intelligent, dispassionate person can see the following logic.

A person, kind , hardworking and happy, uses a powerful mind-altering drug over a period of years.

He develops some strange symptoms. Then the events described by his wife take place. She happesn to be the person closest to him, who knows him best (much as Henry Cockburn's parents knew him best).

 

She, reading of the experiences of others, makes a connection between the two events.

But that is all. Neither she nor I make any specific claim. Yet here come the 'Comment Warriors' in their usual swarms (people who in most cases never comment here on any other subject) to screech that there is no evidence of a connection between cannabis and a 'psychosis' I have not alleged ( and which is in any case a word I do not use because I have no idea what it means).

 

Evidence? Who said anything about evidence? What this is , is an indication, which any sensible person would take as a warning, and as a reason to know a good deal more *before* taking the existing controls off this already illegal drug.  Fundamentally, it's a reason to disbelieve the slick advertsising ofthis substance as 'soft' and 'safe'. I don't believe these Comment Warriors would accept anything as evidence that cannabis is dangerous. In this they are like the pathetic remainder of the tobacco lobby, who still argue that cigarettes don't cause cancer. Pleasure trumps thought.

My informant may be wrong about there being a connection between her husband's cannabis smoking and his current state (though I'll be surprised if I don't get other similar testimonies as a result, and though I have now had so many 'anecdotal' communications of this kind, several in private, along astonishingly similar lines that only the most obdurate dogmatist could pretend there was nothing at all to worry about).

 

But what these rapid and vituperative commenters hate ( Are they organised? Was Luther a Protestant? Do mice have tails?)  is the widespread display and broadcast of truthful accounts which cast doubt on their selfish complacency.

 

They know in their hearts that their pleasure is damaging and dangerous, to themselves and to others. Many of them, I would guess, have had quarrels with families and with those close to them over their habit, in which relatives have pleaded with them to stop behaving as they do. They have ignored those pleas, and are guilty about it.

The more intelligent of them may also understand that their demands for a relaxed regime endanger young people who may, as a result, ruin their lives. The stupider ones probably don't see beyond the confines of their basements and attics. 

But in both cases their anger is the genuine, deep, honest rage of the pleasure-seeker who sees his pleasure threatened.

Like all guilty people, they get angry when any outsider draws attention to the reasons for their guilt. Let them. Their anger is the anger of the toddler denied his chocolate. My anger is the anger of the disinterested person fighting to warn the innocent against an avoidable danger because it is his plain duty to do so, come wind, come weather. The two do not compare, in power or in purpose. Let them rage away. They don't scare me. The encourage me.