"Ignore The Experts And Reclassify Cannabis:" Drug War Truthiness In the UK

Transform points to a remarkable op-ed published last Friday in the Telegraph on the subject of whether marijuana should be reclassified in Britain. The piece, by Debra Bell, is titled "Ignore the Experts and Reclassify Cannabis."

(Above: "Ignore the experts" and "stick with your beliefs." A policy recommendation that would make Steven Colbert proud in its commitment to truthiness.)

Bell urges Prime Minister Gordon Brown to "have the courage to stick with his beliefs to get the message across to children that cannabis is not a soft drug and could well ruin their lives for good and destroy their families as well," even though the advisory council that Brown asked to review the question of reclassification has stated that marijuana should not be reclassified.

What a striking argument! Over in the United States, where our president is very good at "sticking with his beliefs" in spite of facts that contradict him, we call this the argument from "truthiness." Wikipedia describes it as "as a satirical term to describe things that a person claims to know intuitively or 'from the gut' without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts."

Brown, of course, set sail for the land of truthiness by publicly stating that he planned to reject the conclusions of the advisory council before the the council had even made its recommendations. Pundits like Bell apparently think that's a marvelous approach, since it's much easier to "stick with" one's beliefs when no inconvenient facts intrude upon them.