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Lothar121

Cannabis 'Led to My Son's Illness'
Ed Nash | Norfolk Eastern Daily Press | 01/10/2006

The father of a paranoid schizophrenic who killed a man after being released from hospital has warned of the dangers of cannabis causing mental health problems.

Ivor King, 62, whose son Richard was sectioned indefinitely after pleading guilty to stabbing John 'Ghosty' West to death in Sheringham in 2004, urged Home Secretary Charles Clarke to have cannabis reclassified as a class B drug. Mr King said the drug, which was downgraded to class C by Mr Clarke's predecessor, David Blunkett, less than a year ago, was the “key” which unlocked schizophrenia in both his sons.

Mr Clarke ordered a review of its classification on the basis of medical evidence forthcoming since Mr Blunkett's decision and he is expected to make an announcement later this month.

Richard, 36, is in a secure hospital near Norwich and his father doubts he will ever be released, while his older brother David, 40, is at another mental hospital in Norfolk.

Mr King, who lives near Fakenham, said both sons were diagnosed as suffering from paranoid schizophrenia in the mid 1980s.

He recalled the night Richard, then 18, first said he was hearing voices.

He said: “I put the video we were watching on pause and he just went crackers about it. I was trying to calm him down, then he started crying. He was begging me to help him and said he was hearing voices compelling him to do things.

“I made a doctor's appointment and he ended up being taken to what was then the David Rice hospital at Hellesdon. It was just downhill from there. Schizophrenia is incurable. It can be contained if you take your medication but there is no cure.”

Mr King said in the early '80s Richard and David were both living in Lowestoft, working as fishermen and spending their spare cash on drink and cannabis. It was then their mental health problems began and both had spent the past 20 years in and out of hospitals as well as taking a cocktail of prescription drugs to help them cope with schizophrenia.

“A psychologist told me the chance of having two sons who just became schizophrenic was 900 million to one,” said Mr King. “I've looked back into my family and my ex-wife - David's and Richard's mother - has looked back into hers, and there is no history of mental illness.

“There is a definite link between cannabis and schizophrenia. I want to say to the Home Secretary - for God's sake don't let cannabis stay downgraded.”

The possibility of a U-turn on cannabis follows the apparent findings of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, the Government's official watchdog, that cannabis triggers psychosis in some users and exacerbates the condition of users who are already mentally ill.

Meanwhile Martin Barnes of DrugScope, the UK's leading independent centre of expertise on drugs, said: “Since cannabis was reclassified there has been more debate about the harms and some indication its use has started to decline. It would be difficult to explain why we have to move it back to B.”

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casketfour

beating your children when they are little does this as well

urania3

Don't confuse correlation with causation. Schizophrenia is a complex illness. The finding of a link between childhood abuse and schizophrenia in later life must not be interpreted as evidence of a cause of psychosis. Childhood abuse may be an additive risk, but all the research available points to people with schizophrenia having a genetic predisposition of one kind or another that is then triggered by one or more stressful life events.

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PotShot

What's more, the age of onset for most symptoms of schizophrenia is 18-24.

Cannabis is not the cause of schizphrenia. If that were the case schizophrenia would affect for more than the 1% of humanity it currently does. The U.K. has not reported an increase in the occurence of schizophrenia in it's population since the downgrading of cannabis, so why would any rational person believe cannabis has any effect on the mental health of a person? I would think that miseducation and decades of lying would be far more damaging.

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killer12382

There's no proof that spanking your kids causes schizophrenia.

 

killer12382

This guy was nuts long before he started smoking weed. These people are just looking for someone to blame and cannot accept the fact that they have bad genetics.

Buzzby

Perhaps he should have spoken with a geneticist rather than a psychologist. If schizophrenia has a genetic component then it is much more likely that close relatives would both have it than two unrelated individuals. For that matter, if schizophrenia randomly hits 1% of the population, the chances that any two people would have it would be 1:10,000, not 1:900,000,000. Apparently basic math is not part of the curriculum for psychologists.

Also, if he had spoken with a geneticist he might have had recessive genes explained to him. It is quite possible that no person remembered in either family line developed schizophrenia but that both Mr. King and Mrs. King carried recessive genes for it. If that's the case, 25% of their children would tend to get both genes. The chance that two children would get both genes would be 6.25%. One in 900 million would be 0.0000001%.


It is difficult for parents to consider that either their genes or their parenting techniques could have caused problems for their children.

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Abomonog

There is also a 900 million to one chance that you'll win the Mega-lotto, yet someone always eventually wins it. Cannabis is proven to aggravate patients with skizophrenia, but never proven to be a cause. Sorry dude, but you gave birth to two loonies.

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Cassius

Not to criticize someone bashing on psychologists (I love doing that too, or any scientist who claims expert knowledge outside of their field), you might want to re-check your basic math before accusing someone else of not understanding it. =P

1:10,000 odds affecting 1% of the population would indicate a population of 1 million. 1:10,000 odds affecting two people with each person having a 1% chance indicates a population of only 500,000, more or less. Which population are you talking about, the city you live in? =)

If you are referring to the US, 1% of about 300 million is 3 million, which gives odds for any two people having it at 1 in (1 - (0.99*0.99))*300,000,000 or about 1:6,000,000. If you are referring to the population of the world, 1% of 6.5 billion is 65 million, which gives odds of 1:129,000,000.

But you're right in that it's hardly 900 million to 1. =)

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king cola

"Mr King said in the early '80s Richard and David were both living in Lowestoft, working as fishermen and spending their spare cash on drink and cannabis. It was then their mental health problems began and both had spent the past 20 years in and out of hospitals as well as taking a cocktail of prescription drugs to help them cope with schizophrenia."

They were spending money on drinks and marijuana. Why aren't they blaming alcohol? It was a drug they were also using besides pot. 2 brothers both have schizophrenia and they are blaming the marijuana, because of what one father claims gave them schizophrenia, are they really going to reclassify pot? I have plenty of friends that smoke pot too and smoke more than i do and they haven't shown any signs of schizophrenia.

“There is a definite link between cannabis and schizophrenia."

Until my pot smokin friends develope schizophrenia i refuse to believe there is a link between that and marijuana. What's really sad is if they reclass pot as a class b drug because a guy had 2 sons with schizophrenia.

He also mentions about his ex wife. Somewhere along the way they had a divorce, were the kids really young when that happend? If they were did they seek counsoling? Maybe they were using pot to deal with their problems but things just got worse.