Cannabis
Letters: The case for legalising cannabis
Paying the price Sir: Lionel Shriver’s piece about university standards rang true to me (‘University is supposed to be hard’,…
My brief career as a marijuana farmer
The latest heatwave reminded me of my brief career as a marijuana farmer. This wasn’t in the summer of 1976,…
Too close to home: Nonfiction, by Julie Myerson, reviewed
Julie Myerson has, somewhat confusingly, written a novel called Nonfiction. The confusion of course is the point, because this is…
Our mental health is going up in smoke
As we creep back into the open, as the Covid wards empty and the mental health clinics fill up, how…
Marching against racism is too easy
When I first saw the footage of George Floyd being asphyxiated by a policeman’s knee on his throat, my reaction…
Would my success in growing cannabis plants translate to nasturtiums?
In a cave once used as a stable and now abandoned, I found a wooden crate containing a dozen tiny…
Letters: We must grasp the dangers of cannabis before it’s too late
On judging the judges Sir: The spectacle of judges questioning essentially political decisions is not an edifying one. But we…
How Canada failed to smash the cannabis black market
I had forgotten how much I disliked cannabis until I found myself under its influence, in the rain, trying and…
Letters: why are we paying so much attention to vegans?
Vegan excess Sir: As a lifelong vegetarian I am heartily sick of vegans and of the amount of attention that…
The scent of London has changed: all I can smell now is cannabis
Fewer people are smoking cannabis these days, down to 1.4 million from two million, they say. I say, if you…
Data breaches show we’re only three clicks away from anarchy
An IT glitch afflicting BP petrol stations for three hours last Sunday evening might not sound like headline news. A…
The bad science of cannabis oil
Was there ever a more fatuous contribution to a political debate than Lord Hague following up the case of 12-year-old…
LA used to be fun – dope has just made it dull
Los Angeles stinks. Not just of the usual things: sex, money, suntan oil, hipster food, surfer wax — odours that…
Portrait of the week
Home In the Budget, George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, kept talking of the ‘next generation’. He outlined cuts…
There’s one real way to stop gang crime: legalise drugs
Brutal, needless stabbings on our city streets will never cease until drugs are legalised
My 2015 pharmacopoeia: ecstasy, decapepyl, abiraterone, tamsulosin, cocaine...
For me, last year started with an appalling whitey outside a pub after swallowing a second ecstasy tablet because I…
The truth about me, David Cameron, drugs and Supertramp
This week I woke up shocked to find myself on the front page of the Daily Mail. Apparently I’m the…
Why I’m sick of slippery-slope arguments
Good laws and valuable scientific discoveries are being blocked with the laziest argument in the book
Outstrip Jeremy Clarke’s worst excesses and win an invitation to his Low life book launch
On 26 June there is a party at the Spectator office at 22 Old Queen Street to launch a paperback…
Let Greece leave the eurozone
To listen to Greek government ministers addressing the outside world during their breaks from negotiations with eurozone leaders this week,…
Let’s appoint a Ministry of Scandalous Ideas
My children have a phrase called ‘fomo’ — which stands for ‘fear of missing out’. It is a constant, mildly…
Bob Marley: from reggae icon to Marlboro Man of marijuana
From reggae icon to Marlboro Man of marijuana
I may not know much about khat, but I know banning it is crazy
Khat is a leafy stimulant chewed mainly, I gather, by Somalis. This week the government banned its possession and sale.…
The only way to end the war on drugs is to stop fighting it
It’s surprisingly boring, legalising weed. In Colorado, where recreational doobie has been utterly without censure for, ooh, about a week…
