How to Turn Anecdotes into Evidence - Take Them Seriously



Some of you may recall the story of  a 32-year-old Sheffield man called Scott Hobson who, on the morning of May 18 last year, killed his own 59-year-old mother, Margaret. The manner of her death is horrible, and in my view such injuries could only have been inflicted by a person who had entirely lost his reason. The fact that they were perpetrated by a son on his mother suggests that the man’s mind was wholly overthrown by some external factor.

 

To add to the wretchedness of the crime, Mrs Hobson had only just completed a course of chemotherapy for cancer and was awaiting a scan for the results.  Sheffield Crown Court heard that Margaret Hobson was found dead just after 7.00am by a neighbour and, before being arrested by the police, Scott Hobson was seen in the street by passers-by with blood-covered clothes and mumbling and staring vacantly.  The killer was a former soldier who had served in Kosovo with the Territorial Army and according to the court report had suffered previous depressive episodes and also drank heavily. He was referred to in court as an out-of-work cannabis addict with "tortured psychotic thinking", was a "long-standing user of cannabis which may have contributed to his schizophrenia".  

 

The story was covered in the Daily Mail here

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2211617/Schizophrenic-soldier-butchered-dismembered-mother-dreadful-grotesque-killing.html

 

 

The judge said there was a "clear risk" of Hobson committing more offences but he was satisfied that he was suffering from a mental disorder which is capable of medical treatment and therefore ordered Hobson to be treated indefinitely at Wathwood Hospital, Wath-up-on-Dearne, and only to be released with the Home Secretary's permission.  In a report, a psychiatrist,  Dr John Kent, said "This was a brutal and bizarre killing, with features which cannot easily be explained, other than they are likely to have formed part of some tortured psychotic thinking".  Dr Kent also said that Hobson had "relapsing severe mental illness which may well have links to the misuse of illegal drugs". Two days before the killing on May 16 patrons in a local pub had noticed him 'laughing manically to himself for no apparent reason' and next morning began 'swearing, shouting and crying uncontrollably' when he took his three-year-old daughter to her playgroup   In the early morning on the day of the killing, Hobson had been behaving strangely and his father anticipated a measure of aggression from him, but obviously no one expected the horrific and tragic events that were to follow.

 

Readers here will know that I am dubious about the value of expressions such as ‘psychotic’ or even ‘schizophrenia’, which suggest more precision and objectivity  than they deliver.  I was contacted by someone who had known someone close to Scott Hobson. From her own background knowledge she is strongly of the opinion that it was Scott Hobson’s cannabis use that caused him to lose his mind. She said :’ ‘The disturbing thing in this whole case is that on the few occasions I met this young man, including when he took us in his car on a day trip to the coast, he seemed quite rational and could hold an intelligent conversation on a variety of subjects.  Obviously the change in his character occurred at a later date when he started using cannabis

 

 

 

‘My opinion is like your own as I firmly believe that the use of cannabis is to blame for turning many people into psychotic killers, and it makes me very angry that the government and the establishment as a whole seem to shy away from admitting the dangers of cannabis which like other hard drugs is causing crime, violence, murders, and destroying people’s lives.’

 

(NB, once again, a court report used the word ‘depression’ , but no effort seems to have been made by the court to establish whether the defendant was also taking ‘antidepressant’ pills. There really should be a rule about this in all cases of violence or suicide, so we could see if there was a pattern).

 

The organised pro-cannabis Comment Warriors who will circulate this posting among themselves and descend on this weblog ( as they always do) like a cloud of bluebottles clustering round a dead dog, will shout (among other things) that there is no proof of a connection, that the culprit also drank heavily and so on. I don’t in fact dispute any of that (though I would be surprised if alcohol, even in great quantities, could alone have rendered anyone so unhinged).

 

Could they for once address the actual point being made here – that such crimes are matters of public concern, that there is at the very least a possibility that cannabis may have contributed to this one and that

a)   While this is unresolved, campaigns to relax the cannabis laws are surely wrong and b) a serious impartial scientific study into the correlation between cannabis use and mental illness is needed. To do this, ‘mental illness’ needs to be quite broadly defined (Before I am accused of inconsistency here, please remember that this is not to provide a pretext for medication, but to establish whether a drug has certain common effects and what they are), and the families, colleagues, fellow-students, teachers (where involved)  and friends of those being studied need to be asked if they have observed changes in behaviour. At the same time all these convicted of violent offences should in future be questioned in detail about their past use of illegal drugs, including cannabis. What possible argument can there be against this? I mention these ‘anecdotes’ precisely because I want to get at the truth. Don’t they? I suspect not. I suspect they fear that the truth will lead not to the relaxing of the cannabis laws, but to their strengthening. That is why they are so angry with me. I threaten their selfish pleasure with a plea for the common good, and on grounds that make them feel guilty. They know the truth about the drug they defend. They just don’t want anyone else to know it.