Yes, the Tunisian Killer was on Cannabis Too. So What?

Look, I don���t want to go on about it, but I thought I would mention that my own newspaper reported as follows on Sunday morning:

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3141867/The-cannabis-smoking-fanatic-massacred-tourists-cold-blood-Killer-attended-radical-mosques-signing-ISIS.html

 

It contained, in an almost throwaway line, the following fact: ���Last night, a Tunisian Interior Ministry source said that while [the Sousse murderer Seifeddine] Rezgui did not have a criminal record, he was known to authorities for "low level radicalism" and was once stopped by police for smoking cannabis.���

 

Just in case anyone thinks I played any part in this, they are vry much mistaken. The reporter on the spot (we still do that on the MoS) discovered the fact and recorded it, unprompted by me and unknown to me.

 

Now, I suspect you���d have to be pretty dogged about smoking cannabis in Tunisia for the police to bother you or keep a record of it. So I doubt if this was a first offence.

 

So what?

Well, so, there seems to be a bit of a pattern here.

 

Let me just restate: the culprits of the 2011 Tucson massacre,at which Congreswoman Gabrielle Giffords was terribly wounded and six people died,  the culprits of the beheading of Jennifer Mills Westley in Tenerife, of the beheading of Mrs Palmira Silva in London, of the grotesque murder of Lee Rigby in Woolwich, of the Charlie Hebdo and related killings in Paris, of the killings of two Canadian soldiers in the past year, of the bludgeoning to death of Sheffield church organist Alan Greaves, not to mention a large number of other notably violent and deranged, irrational crimes  ( see: http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2011/07/high-and-violent.html  ) have all been revealed to be cannabis users. Now this killer has been revealed to be a cannabis user too.

 

What does this mean? What claim am I making?

 

It means that there appears to be a correlation between the use of this drug and violent, irrational acts, a correlation so strong and so frequently observed in prominent events that it seems to me that we need a proper inquiry to see if it is significant. We know about the correlation because such horrors are much more intensively covered by the media and investigated by the authorities than other crimes. It is reasonable to contend that if other, less noteworthy crimes of violence were subjected to the same scrutiny, similar correlations might well emerge. 

 

It���s not the only such correlation. There is, for instance, a well-established and widely-acknowledged correlation between alcohol and violence, so strong that we all accept unhesitatingly that causation is involved - which is not disputed and which nobody needs to point out. Imagine, though, if the powerful alcohol lobby and its willing dupes waged a campaign against any journalist who sought to suggest such a correlation. That's how it is with cannabis.  Just say this and a howling storm of lies and abuse will gather round your head. 

 

This correlation informs the law���s attitude (criminal and civil) towards alcohol, and the media���s attitude, and our culture���s attitude. But at present there is a widespread belief in our culture that cannabis is harmless, and that it promotes peaceful and indeed passive behaviour. If this were to be found to be untrue, the attitudes of law, media and culture would need to change quite sharply.

 

Above all, the highly successful and well-funded campaign for cannabis legalisation would face a new and serious hurdle, just as it seemed to be in sight of success. This point explains the large number of vituperative and unresponsive comments this information will attract here and has already attracted on Twitter.

 

 

The correlation is significant because the drug is indisputably mind-altering, which is why people take it.

 

It is significant because it is also correlated with mental disturbance in general .

 

This is why such remarks as ���these killers all breathed air���, or ��� these killers all had eggs for breakfast��� are childish obfuscation. Air and eggs don���t alter the mind, cannabis does. That���s why the correlation is potentially meaningful rather than coincidental. 

 

Air and eggs aren���t correlated meaningfully with mental disturbance. Cannabis is.

 

For example : http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/feb/16/skunk-cannabis-triples-risk-psychotic-episodes-study

 

So, am I saying that everyone who smokes cannabis is a mass killer? Of course not, though, again, the cannabis comment warriors will be quick to suggest that this is my case, in the hope of fooling as many people as they can.

 

I am suggesting that these worrying and frightening instances are extreme examples of a general problem which is quite serious in its mildest form: that cannabis is correlated with the unpredictable alteration of the personality of those who use it.

 

This would surely put a stop to any talk of general legalisation of this drug. It would also damage its cunningly-created image as a ���soft��� drug, and as a potential medicine. What���s ���soft��� about a lifetime on the locked ward, or taking powerful antipsychotic drugs?  Nothing. Who���d take a medicine with such potential side-effects? Only a fool.

 

Causation is extremely problematic here for two reasons. The first is that our knowledge of the workings of the brain, and of the relation between brain and mind, are almost unbelievably scanty and crude.

 

Trying(for instance) to draw conclusions about a person���s thinking or mental states from brain scans is like trying to work out what someone is saying in the Dog and Duck in Hampstead by studying a satellite picture of London by night. The brain does indeed alter physically after many experiences, from learning the ���Knowledge���(the London Taxi drivers��� demanding test of their detailed knowledge of London streets) to taking drugs. But that is all we know. The brain alters. We can say *that* this has happened. But we are stuck to explain how, or why, or what it means.

 

And ,as James Davies points out in detail in his book ���Cracked���, the diagnosis of mental illness is amazingly flexible, vague and subjective.

 

It may even be that, in the end, correlation (the basic tool of epidemiology, after all) is what we are left with. Those who wish to claim there���s nothing to be learned from these coincidences will chant ���Correlation is not Causation���, like a brigade of Red Guards singing the praises of Chairman Mao.   

 

But we can say softly back ���Indeed it is not. But correlation is also not necessarily *not* causation, either���.

 

And we can say, after the horrors of Sousse, and the many lesser horrors being played out among young people, in this country whose cannabis use has been followed by many and various disturbing symptoms, that those who listen to warnings are wiser than those who ignore them.

 

And that, with a billion-dollar market about to open up before their eyes, and a huge tax take as well,  those who try to silence such warnings may not have the purest of motives.