Article by Richard Cowan
It’s difficult to worry too much about Royalty in the midst of a pandemic, but Prince Harry has had a bit of experience with a Commoner’s problems.
As a matter of principle, I am strongly opposed to censorship and capital punishment, but I might make an exception for the vile UK tabloids. (Of course, the “quality broadsheets” like the Telegraph weren’t much better.)
Their coverage of Prince Harry has been typically awful, but their coverage of the cannabis issue has been evil. The two combined in 2002 when the then 16-year-old prince got caught with a little weed.
The Daily Mail, the most popular trash sheet, reported “Prince Harry: I took drugs”
Let’s go back a moment. Harry was 16. He was not arrested, so the Daily Mail had no business printing that story. But the Daily Mail is a sewer of reefer madness.
From recently, “Is weed a gateway drug at any age? Frequent users are three times more likely to be heavy drinkers and 20 TIMES more likely to use other drugs – no matter when they start smoking marijuana.”
The same year that Harry got caught the London police suspended arresting people in one (predominantly black) section of London for a six-month experiment to concentrate on street hard drug dealers. The tabloids were hysterical.
See Lambeth cannabis pilot: the facts
I have written a lot about UK cannabis policies over the years, and it has been disillusioning. Now it seems inevitable that the UK will follow the rest of the civilized world and legalize, but they have fooled me before.
See WHY DO THE BRITISH INSIST ON CONFUSING CANNABIS WITH TOBACCO?
Richard Cowan is a former NORML National Director and author of Interesting CBD Facts That You Didn’t Know.
