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Earlier this year the big fuss about cannabis was research that purported to show that it *caused* mental health problems. Or, more specifically, that amongst those people with a predisposition to schizophrenia and other serious mental health problems it somehow lit the fuse that was already prepared.

Then recently the same statistical evidence used to justify this claim was re-examined by another group of researchers who found a more plausible explanation was that people with such mental health problems actually tend to try to self-medicate as their illness progresses. So use of cannabis is the effect, not the cause, of those mental health problems.

Now the Independent reports that 50% of drug addicts and alcoholics (the same thing of course!) have mental health problems for which the drinking or addiction is often an attempt to self medicate and that many are being misdiagnosed because practitioners see the symptom, not the cause - the addiction, not the pre-existing mental illness.

The distinction is of course crucial...

The former research tells us that some natural substances that mankind has used apparently for as long as human history are the cause of terrible illnesses, parents blame the drugs and the drug dealers for their tragically damaged, sometimes terminally, children and the "war on drugs" has a powerful propaganda weapon.

The latter says that these drugs seem to offer some kind of relief for an often undiagnosed condition. Perhaps even that the medical wisdom of the ancients was quite sound. And that the "war on drugs" is possibly little more than a classic moral panic that has been doing more harm than good for the best part of a century.

I know which side I am on. The "war on drugs" leaves more casualties than the drugs themselves. It is that that is immoral. Way beyond the harm that a user of a properly regulated, non-criminal underworld market would suffer.

The bird on the acompanying recording has been singing now for about an hour - ie from 1am onwards. Can anyone tell me what it is?

NB - don't turn it up too loud  - about 1:25 into the clip it gets quite gusty windy!

BBC reports that the police and suggesting that Flag-burning could become crime:

Police chiefs are urging the government to make flag-burning a new criminal offence, as part of a drive to crack down on Islamic extremists and others preaching violence and religious hate, the BBC has learned.

The proposals also include action to ban demonstrators from covering their faces to avoid police scrutiny, and tougher powers to arrest demonstrators seeking to inflame tensions.

It might be funny if the call didn't come a few days before half the country goes out and burns a token Catholic, or, as Lewes sometimes does, an effigy of the Pope.

They seem to find it significant that the call has come from the country's most senior Muslim police officer. So bloody what?

Maybe we should have a National Flag Burning Day tomorrow just to assert our liberties. Some might want to burn a blue flag with some gold stars on it, AA members might burn a Green Flag. It could be any flag. It doesn't need to be personally significant. Perhaps you could burn a flag from somewhere you went on holiday and found your hotel half built and had your wallet stolen. Maybe an old apartheid era South African flag. It doesn't matter.

But do it with a balaclava on. Remember those? I had one. Nothing to do with hiding my face, but Aberdeen was perishing when I was a first year infant school pupil and it seemed like quite a fashionable thing at the time.

Jeez - when will these people learn that if we curb our freedoms, the bastards are winning. We do not "pledge our allegiance to the flag". It's a piece of cloth for God's sake. And I resent the police videoing perfectly peaceful demonstrations, like people coming out to protest their pension cuts - you end up with a "file" and a mugshot for complaining that Gordon Brown's shafted you!