Irresponsible Journalism

The Brits really seem to like this sensationalistic stuff.
The BBC magazine has a feature:

Out of joint: Here, one father tells the traumatic story of how cannabis turned his bright and promising teenage son into a wreck.

Gives you a sense of it right there doesn’t it? Standard Reefer Madness stuff

My son James was always a popular teenager. He had masses of friends, was good at sport, and was also intelligent and handsome. Like many boys in their teens, he was constantly going out to meet friends, arrange football or cricket games or see his long-term girlfriend. … I remember thinking one sunny day seven years ago that life was good, and couldn’t get much better.

With that setup, you know something dark is going to happen…

But I hadn’t reckoned on cannabis.

Aha! I knew there had to be a villain in this story.

It was as though someone had stolen my lovely James overnight. He was talking weirdly, his thoughts were all over the place, he was having hallucinations, and was totally paranoid. He thought people and vampires were after him. But it was going to get a lot worse, and I’m still waiting for my son to fully return to me.

That demon cannabis.
Then the story gets strange. They get him off cannabis after six months and onto a bunch of anti-psychotic drugs. A year later he loses weight, loses his friends, becomes violent, stops taking his medicine and starts drinking, becomes more violent, and finally has to be subdued by 10 police in riot gear.
All this due to cannabis?
But finally his son saw the light…

It took another trip to hospital a year later, before James finally realised he needed to take some sort of medication to stay stable. That was over four years ago, which I’m told is a hopeful sign. Since then he has not only given up all drugs, but also cigarettes and even alcohol.

So he has given up all drugs but is staying on his medication. And in addition to giving up all drugs, he also gave up cigarettes and even alcohol. Somebody needs to teach this guy what the word “drugs” means.