The report said that “to prevent one case of schizophrenia in men aged 20 to 24 about 5,000 men would have to be prevented from ever smoking cannabis”.
So 5,000 people must be so scared by the threat of an extra three years in jail, (ie, 15,000 man years of jail) to stop one case. Even on these very dodgy numbers, it still doesn’t add up, does it?
In the original figures that started this whole scare, there were 432 extra cases identified as being linked to cannabis (that’s without considering the correlation/causation conundrum) , so to prevent those extra cases we need to hang 6.5 million man years of jail time over the heads to the population.
When police cells are being used to warehouse convicts, that’s really not a very credible threat, nor is it a sensible one.
Fuckwits.
3 responses so far ↓
1 steve_roberts // May 8, 2008 at 9:43 am
What would that same logic lead to in the case of death by road accident ? Prevent 7,000 people from driving to save one life ? Got to be worth it, surely
2 QuestionThat // May 8, 2008 at 9:49 am
Completely moronic.
I liked how Chris Huhne put it:
“Since ministerial policy is evidence-free, why not sack the ACMD and appoint an advisory committee of expert tabloid editors”
3 dearieme // May 8, 2008 at 11:20 am
“linked to” is almost as weaselly as “risk factor”. The latter means just “positive correlate”, whence the fine joke that drinking diet coke is a risk factor for being obese.
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