The Irreversible, Profound Risks of Damage from Cannabis -an Expert Speaks

Here’s a fascinating extract from an article in today’s  (23rd February 2013) ‘Times’ magazine, an article about Kuesnacht, a rehabilitation clinic for the super-rich in Zurich, by that interesting writer Robert Crampton. Much of its work involves helping people to stop taking ‘antidepressants’. Interesting, but not the point that leaps from the page.

 

The clinic’s founder, a Canadian doctor called Lowell Monkhouse, is quoted on the subject of cannabis. Alas, Dr Monkhouse uses the  expression ‘addiction’ to refer to habitual use, but let that pass. Most people do, because it is generally accepted and unconsidered in a society which more or less denies the possibility of self-discipline.  

 

One patient is said to be likely to spend the rest of his life in a secure psychiatric hospital. '"He had cannabis psychosis’" says Monkhouse, "We couldn’t help him’".

 

‘The hardest addiction to break, he adds,  is to cannabis. Cannabis - certain strains at least – is also the drug that can cause the most profound and the least reversible neurological damage, often quickly, often in very young and otherwise healthy adults. The drug many people think of as harmless can send you mad, swiftly and permanently’.

 

Note the words ‘most profound’, ‘least reversible’ , ‘swiftly’ and ‘permanently’.  And this from a man whose lifelong trade has been treating drug abusers.

 

And still, a coalition of dupes and cynics campaigns for this drug to be on legal sale.