The Sun last week told a story of young people leaving school at lunchtime, meeting a drug dealer, and going back to lessons after smoking cannabis.
"Teachers, health workers and police believe the explosion in use is fuelled by ignorance over health risks and confusion over the downgrading of the drug to Class C," it said.
Yet according to the Independent Drugs Monitoring Unit, as reported in The Observer, there hasn't even been a rise. The change in the law has "essentially had no effect at all in user levels of cannabis", said Matthew Atha, the unit's director.
Assessing the part played by a change in the law in causing something that hasn't happened will require some clear thinking. Meanwhile, The Guardian unearthed another research study, albeit 30 years old. It looked at marijuana and hostility, and concluded that smoking cannabis makes people less inclined to be aggressive. It also made a surprise discovery. The researchers reported that: "Marijuana produced a small but statistically significant increase in sarcastic communications." You don't say.
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