 | Cannabis Inquiry '98: First Select Committee Hearing |
 The first hearing heard testimonies from the Drug Policy Forum Trust director David Hadorn, Dr John Marks, Capital Cost Health’s drug and alcohol unit, Dr Nick Judson, the Ministry of Health’s deputy director of mental health and Ria Earp, the Ministry of Health’s deputy director of Maori health.
DPF criticism of drug education programs
Dr John Marks:
Cannabis use has little effect on mental illness
Health Ministry admits Cannabis does not pose a big health risk
Drug has 'calming effect' and 'makes people violent' according to NZ Police
The Week in Parliament Broadcast extract
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DPF criticism of drug education programs
Radio New Zealand News, Wednesday 29 July 1998
A Parliamentary select committee probe into cannabis use has been told some drug education programmes actually increase drug use.
A group of medical professionals has told the health select committee that research studies show education programmes promoting zero tolerance of drugs result in more experimentation by young people.
Drug Policy forum trust director David Hadorn says that includes programmes such as DARE which is widely used in New Zealand.
His comments have been rejected by the assistant police commissioner Ian Holyoake, who told the committee he was staggered at the criticism of the DARE programme.
©Copyright Radio New Zealand
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Dr John Marks:
Cannabis use has little effect on mental illness
New Zealand Herald, July 30, 1998
WELLINGTON - Cannabis use has little effect on mental illness, apart from a small group of people suffering from schizophrenia or predisposed to the disease, MPs were told yesterday.
Dr John Marks, who heads Capital Cost Health’s drug and alcohol unit, told the health select committee that cannabis use caused no significant harm.
The committee is holding an inquiry into the mental health effects of cannabis and will report to Parliament and make recommendations to the Government.
Dr Marks, a member of the Drug Policy Forum Trust, a doctors’ group that supports decriminalising the drug, said cannabis use could worsen the condition of some schizophrenics - about one in 10,000 of the population.
Dr Nick Judson, the Ministry of Health’s deputy director of mental health, said cannabis caused fewer problems than tobacco and alcohol.
People who used cannabis occasionally had few health problems. Long-term and heavier users could suffer subtle cognitive impairment.
Research had not shown that cannabis use damaged the brain structure, he said. But in high doses it could cause acute psychosis.
Cannabis did not cause schizophrenia, but it might trigger the illness in people at risk, said Dr Judson. No more than 3 per cent of the population was at serious risk.
He said research showed cannabis could be therapeutic, particularly for pain and stress relief.
The select committee announced its inquiry in April amid calls for the drug to be decriminalised.
The inquiry will look at the effect of cannabis on people’s development, the role of the drug as a trigger for mental illness, the effects of cannabis on Maori mental health, and the adequacy of services for those with drug-related mental illnesses.
Ria Earp, the ministry’s deputy director of Maori health, said more research was needed on the effects of cannabis on Maori mental health. More appropriate drug and alcohol services were needed for Maori.
The committee was told that about 10 per cent of cannabis users had a dependency problem which was a similar level to other drugs but much less than tobacco.
Dr Hadorn, who heads the doctors’ trust, said the pharmacological effects of cannabis were relatively benign. It had been used for centuries and was well accepted for stress relief.
He said it was important to consider the research, rather than be distracted by anecdotal evidence about the small number of people who had problems.
"The research evidence shows that cannabis is at most a small contributor to the development and exacerbation of mental illness throughout the world."
People who dealt only with those who had problems with cannabis - such as police and health workers - had a very narrow view, he said.
A trust member, Dr Peter Crampton, of the Wellington School of Medicine, said the criminal status of cannabis made the mental health consequences worse.
Cannabis use had decreased or remained the same in countries or states where its use had been decriminalised.
Dr Hadorn said anti-drug campaigns aimed at children increased drug use because they stimulated curiosity. Children needed to be told at a young age they should not smoke cannabis.
Dr Marks said studies of cannabis, dating back to last century, had all exonerated the drug.
It was therapeutic for diseases such as glaucoma, multiple sclerosis, cancer and HIV.
NZPA
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Health Ministry admits Cannabis does not pose a big health risk
The Dominion, 30 July 1998
By Helen Bain
Cannabis does not pose a big health risk, the Health Ministry yesterday told a select committee inquiry into the mental health effects of the drug.
The ministry's submission to Parliament's Health Select Committee says most New Zealanders who used cannabis used it only occasionally, and reported few health problems.
"Overall, the current public health risks of cannabis use are small to moderate in size, and are less than the public health risk of tobacco or alcohol use," the ministry's submission says.
Studies had failed to demonstrate any evidence that even acute cannabis use caused brain damage, and suggested that even long-term heavy cannabis use caused only subtle impairment of cognition, the submission says. High doses could produce short-term psychosis, and could exacerbate schizophrenia in those already affected by the condition, and about 10 per cent of users were dependent on cannabis, the ministry said.
"Beyond that it is difficult to draw any sort of definitive cause-and-effect relationship between cannabis and mental illness."
Deputy director of mental health Nick Judson said no more than 2 to 3 per cent of the population were at serious risk from cannabis.
The ministry also acknowledged that in many parts of New Zealand mental health and drug and alcohol services had not been well coordinated, so failed to meet the needs of many with mental health and substance abuse problems.
Drug Policy Forum Trust director David Hadorn said that research had largely exonerated cannabis as a cause of mental illness.
The mental health of New Zealanders was put at greater risk by criminalisation of cannabis than cannabis itself, he said. "Creating a climate of criminality around cannabis ensures that the relatively few people who develop problems are less likely to seek help. This sets off a spiral of alienation, marginalisation and anti-social behaviour, which too often can culminate in criminality, mental illness and violence."
"By driving cannabis use underground, we surely make the situation far worse than would be the case under a controlled, regulated system of cannabis distribution. Creating a flourishing black market for a widely used substance inevitably fosters criminal activity." Dr Hadorn said the only drug proven to contribute to violence was alcohol, and cannabis had the opposite effect. "Honest" education programmes were needed to reduce cannabis use by young people, but the "hyperbole approach" used by New Zealand police just encouraged young people to experiment, Dr Hadorn said. Assistant police commissioner Ian Holyoake said police opposed legalisation of cannabis, but were "not blind to the issues raised by the legalisation lobby".
But till there were better programmes to reduce the harm caused by cannabis, its illegal status "remained a powerful tool", Mr Holyoake said.
"Police take the view that cannabis is an inherently harmful drug with serious health risk to regular and long-term users, especially the young," he said.
Mr Holyoake admitted police had had limited success in reducing cannabis offending, and had failed to halt involvement of gangs in cannabis cultivation and distribution.
He said cannabis had a huge impact on Maori communities, especially in Northland, Bay of Plenty and Poverty Bay.
"Police working in these communities speak of a dead generation or two, and of young people losing touch with their elders and their families. Their focus in life is cannabis -- growing, smoking and the culture -- rendering them blind to life's opportunities.
(Ed. note: Aboriginal societies have many problems with substance abuse, but much of what is being described here is a contraband culture, the consequence of marijuana prohibition. Once again a cost of marijuana prohibition is used to justify it.)
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Drug has 'calming effect' and 'makes people violent' according to NZ Police
New Zealand Herald, July 30, 1998
WELLINGTON - Police acknowledged yesterday that they had not strong evidence to back claims that cannabis made people violent.
But they said they were concerned at the violence surrounding cannabis dealing. (Ed. note: Blaming marijuana for the consequences of prohibition.)
Assistant Commissioner Ian Holyoake told a parliamentary select committee inquiry into cannabis that police did not support decriminalisation.
Mr Holyoake was asked if, as with alcohol, cannabis made people violent.
"Yes. Cannabis, from our practical experience, seems to make people violent," he told the health select committee, adding that it was difficult to measure.
Detective Superintendent Harry Quinn told the committee that statistics showed cannabis was a "factor" in a "large number" of homicides each year.
However, when pressed by MPs he acknowledged that all this meant was that either the victim or the offender had used the drug, or that violence had occurred as a result of a cannabis drug deal gone wrong.
Mr Quinn, in an apparent contradiction of Mr Holyoake’s statement that cannabis made people violent, said it had a "calming influence."
"We don’t have any definitive evidence that says that cannabis use is in itself a violent behaviour - and I think our evidence would be that it has a calming influence in some respects on those who use it."
He said it was the violent criminal activity surrounding cannabis dealing that was of concern.
NZPA
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The Week in Parliament Broadcast extract
National Programme - Radio New Zealand
Sunday, 2 August 1998
Shane Cave
... While Wednesday morning's debate was going on, the Health Committee was sitting at the beginning of its investigation of the effects of cannabis use on mental health.
The Ministry of Health appeared along with a group of doctors with a special interest in drug policy. The overwhelming consensus of all the evidence before the Committee was that cannabis use has almost no effect on mental health.
Recently arrived Capital Coast Health Psychaitrist, Dr John Marks, who has an international reputation for expertise on addiction, told the Committee there have been hundereds of government inquiries covering the mental health effects of cannabis use:
"In each and every one of these exhaustive investigations, the party under investigation, namely cannabis, has been completely exonerated."
Dr Marks gave the Committee a summary of other government studies:
"Considering just government studies we can go back and start with the seven volume Royal Commission of the United Kingdom in 1894, the Indian Hemp Commission, which is often set up by lawyers as the epitomy of a good Royal Commission.
And we can go through the Le Gardia Report, New York, the Wootton Report in the sixties, and the 4 year investigation by the American Drug Enforcement Agency reported by Judge Young in 1988.
And finally (there's many more, all government ones), the French Minister of Health commission from the French Academy of Sciences, an investigation into the effects of all drugs."
He says there are some links between cannabis use and some mental health conditions:
"I will say that it can aggravate already existing schizophrenia. Schizophrenia as one of you said has a prevelance of 1% of the population, and perhaps one percent of schizophrenics get into problems using cannabis. So you're talking about a prevalence of 1 in 10,000, an extremely low instance.
Maybe the apparent rise in mental illess is the modern and very humane, and I would defend it, policy of closing down of the asyla. I think psychaitrists are thinking that the pendulum has swung to its fullest excursion now, and there are undoubtedly people who will need indefinite asylum, but the fact that there are more now at liberty in the community than there were may give rise to the public impression that there are more dangeruously crazy people around."
Another speaker of the group Dr Crampton, a senior lecturer in public health at the Wellington School of Medicine, told the Committee that criminalisation of canabis was a more serious problem than its chemical effects.
The third doctor to appear before the committee, David Hadorn, pointed out the experience of the Netherlands where decriminalisation had seen cannabis use amongst young people decline.
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