Peter Hitchens - Problems of Debate

[edgarshade]

19 September 2012 4:38 PM

With reader comments

I bother with Mr Wooderson because I think he is not wholly beyond reason. But the points I tried to make to him in an intervention yesterday don’t seem to have had the required effect.

I’ll leave it to others to refer to the many studies linking cannabis with mental illness. I don’t myself think it’s in doubt. Neither do I doubt the existence of many studies claiming therapeutic properties for cannabis. The difficulty (for both arguments) lies in the establishment of a causal link so objectively demonstrable that all are compelled to accept it . The widespread acceptance of IQ measurement as an objective science has, for once, made this possible in the case of the recent study. Generally, it isn’t.

I don’t myself rule out the possibility that some ingredients of cannabis may conceivably have some therapeutic properties, though I will not take these claims seriously until those who make them separate themselves from the general campaign for legalisation. How can a serious campaign for the licensing of a medicine have anything to do with one for the legalisation of a pleasure? The question is also whether these supposed benefits outweigh its grave ill-effects enough to justify its treatment as a medicine. Thalidomide was, I believe, highly effective against morning sickness. But the side-effects rather cancelled that out as a recommendation. Is permanent damage to the intelligence serious enough? I should have thought so. Is a general deterioration in mental wellbeing, almost impossible to measure, varying from person to person, a strong enough case against? I should have thought so. Insisting on definitive objective proof of a link between cannabis and mental conditions whose own limits are not objectively defined is not an argument, but a trick played on the ill-informed.

Mr Wooderson finishes with this :’It seems to me to be just as irresponsible to disregard such doubts when advocating imprisoning a large section of society as it would be to dismiss any evidence that cannabis may be harmful.’

Once again, he knows perfectly well that I have no desire to imprison anybody, and that the decisive enforcement of law is not intended to lock up large numbers of people - nor does it generally have this effect, or the jails would be full (as they are not) of drunk drivers and non-seat-belt wearers, and the civil courts crowded (as they are not) with martyred pub landlords who allowed smoking in their bars. The reason why the drug lobby hate my proposal is that they rightly fear that it would scare them into changing their behaviour. And because they value their selfish pleasure above the good of others, and indeed are prepared for other people's sons and brothers to go mad and wreck their intelligence so that these arrogant persons can enjoy their dope, they scream and shout about mass jailings. I have made this point many times before.

Mr Wooderson deals with my argument by ignoring it completely. This must be his last chance to debate seriously. If he will not, then he can join the other contributors to this blog whom I have abandoned as hopeless cases, incapable of serious debate, and relegated to the role of tedious, tolerated background noise.

More...
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2012/09/problems-of-debate.html

 

[sekio]

Why does this bloke even bother to post things about cannabis on his blog? He sounds like a broken record.

Cannabis causes madness, insanity, and is BAD! Everyone else is wrong and I'm right. I don't want to jail drug users, but I want to see them prosecuted for the crime of drug use! By being... errrr... put in prison! Wait, what?

Of course, alcohol with its known ties to brain and other organ damage gets a free pass, because it's been legal for so long, it can't be harmful right? Nobody abuses alcohol!

 

[edgarshade]

...they value their selfish pleasure above the good of others, and indeed are prepared for other people's sons and brothers to go mad and wreck their intelligence so that these arrogant persons can enjoy their dope...

This is quite a puritanical rage-fest.

I can sort of understand where he is coming from given his religious convictions. There is a concept in some religions that seeking any pleasure through the senses is at the expense of higher purpose in life and being selfless. However he is making two fatal mistakes. One, is he is selectively blacklisting activities he personal doesn't approve of and ignoring the all the ways he personally indulges in stuff. And two, he is judging the activity of others where someone following this religious path must only be concerned with their own, and only their own, activity. Otherwise they become a pain in the posterior.

 

[Crankinit]

If he truly cared about the harm substances were causing to society, he'd target alcohol and tobacco. IMO Peter Hitchens has just hitched (heh) himself to the anti-legalization bandwagon to try and draw attention to himself & viewers to his articles. Seems like he has a bit of a self esteem issue and overcompensates with his moralized ranting, probably from being compared to his infinitely more intelligent and admirable brother.

 

[i against i]

^yea i really don't get his whole thing. i mean, his brother literally destroyed himself with alcohol and tobacco and he doesn't seem to care that much about those?

 

[edgarshade]

Just keeps giving!....

The Comment Warriors are Scared

20 September 2012 2:28 PM
With reader comments

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.

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.

They don't scare me. The encourage me.

More...
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2012/09/the-comment-warriors-are-scared.html

 

[trees_please]

This guy is a dicksmoker

 

[Newbierock]

This guy is a dicksmoker

You speak the truth.

 

[edgarshade]

God this is getting tedious. It just goes on and on and on.

Not sure why I'm quoting the article. It's the comments that are more interesting.

Mr Wooderson goes on :’…presents him [me]with a dilemma: if psychiatry is an inexact science, and schizophrenia an ill-defined condition, then he can't rely on studies purporting to show an increased risk of schizophrenia from cannabis use as evidence that cannabis is harmful, because they're unscientific by his reasoning.’ If, on the other hand, schizophrenia is well enough defined to be the subject of scientific study, the inconvenient fact that the rate of schizophrenia hasn't increased can't easily be dismissed as a quirk of diagnostics. ***Gosh, Mr Wooderson really thinks he has something here. No he hasn’t. Let me say it again. If I don’t accept the term ‘schizophrenia’, it does not mean that I don’t believe the people involved are *ill*. It just means I don’t think their illness can be objectively defined, as a cancer or emphysema could be. Mr Wooderson, again opening by quoting me : 'Oh, really, And how can they be explained?’ There are a number of theories, most of which are discussed in the scientific literature: self-medication by schizophrenics,

***The first is worthless. The very use of the term ‘self-medication’ is a declaration of bias. Nobody can ‘medicate’ by taking a street drug in unregulated, unmeasured doses, , any more than you can ‘medicate’ by drinking a bottle of gin. No reputable scientists could advance such a claim. It would also have to be tested by the simple device of establishing whether the cannabis or the illness had come first. If the former, then what were they ‘self-medicating ‘ for , before they became ill. This is just stuff.

More...
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2012/09/background-noise-.html

How many Anecdotes make an Anti-Dope Antidote? Another former cannabis user writes

Peter Hitchens writes : "Cannabis Comment Warriors, gird up your loins once more. Another former cannabis user has written to me to share his experience of this dangerous drug, misleadingly promoted as 'soft' and harmless.

"Perhaps after a while they will begin to see that these so-called 'anecdotes' have a common theme that might be worth investigating. Then again, perhaps the Comment Warriors will just get angry at having their complacency punctured by facts."

Here it is. Another 'anecdote'

A former cannabis user writes :' Since in your blog you have expressed gratitude to former cannabis users, or the kin of cannabis users who have reached out to share their experiences, I am moved to share my story with you.

'I smoked cannabis - the strong variety - intensely in my early teens. I started very early, even relative to my friends who were early users of drugs, and I consumed heavily. I remember being encouraged into smoking for a variety of factors: relaxed parents naive about the strength of new strains of the drug, a cool older sibling, hanging out with an alternative group of people, etc. I also clearly remember watching TV as a 13-year-old and seeing the downgrading of cannabis in the drug classifications on the news, and taking this as carte blanche.

More...
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co...dote-another-former-cannabis-user-writes.html

 

[Apostacious]

Christ, Peter Hitchens certainly is running the Hitchens name through the muck. Though his brother was wrong on the Iraq War, he was right on religion and drugs.

Legalize It
Want to defeat the pushers and drug kingpins? Then let's buy what they're selling.

BY CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS | MARCH 31, 2007
The largest single change for the better in U.S. foreign policy, and one that could be accomplished simply by an act of political will, would be the abandonment of the so-called War on Drugs. This last relic of the Nixon era has long been a laughingstock within the borders of the United States itself (where narcotics are freely available to anybody who wants them and where the only guarantee is that all the money goes straight into criminal hands). But the same diminishing returns are now having a deplorable effect on America's international efforts.

Consider the case of Afghanistan. Thirty years ago, it was a vine-growing country, renowned for its raisins. It is now so deforested that a farmer planting a vine would be an optimist, while a farmer growing poppies is assured of at least some income. We burn and destroy what is in effect the Afghans' only crop, while suffering from a shortage of analgesics in the United States. The beneficiaries of this policy are the Taliban. Why not instead buy the Afghan crop, use it to manufacture painkillers, and burn or throw away the rest (if you insist) while simultaneously offering incentives and aid to vine growers? We already pay the Turks to grow medical opium; they don't need the money. The revenue that now goes to drug lords and terrorists could be applied straight to Afghanistan's reconstruction, while weakening those who benefit from an artificially created monopoly. This might be termed "win-win." And this is to speak only of opiates. The usefulness of marijuana in combating glaucoma and in helping to ease the pain of chemotherapy is now well attested.

Decriminalization of drugs could also mean fewer lethal impurities (the result of gangsters "cutting" the stuff) and a decline in the glamour associated with prohibition. The opportunities for the corruption of officialdom, both overseas and in the United States, would decline also, as would the deadly turf wars that inflate the crime rate. One does not have to be an apostle of Milton Friedman’s to realize that any attempt to prohibit a commodity with such huge demand and ease of supply is doomed. It has no place in the policy of a great nation.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2007/03/31/legalize_it