Times and Mail re-hash story about Chief Medical Officer taking hash

There's a rather amusing report in the Mail:

Chief medic who called for ban on smoking in parks accused of double standards after she admitted using hash cakes and hallucinating

I was asked to comment but I was keen not to criticise Chief Medical Officer Dame Sally Davies for using cannabis. Each to their own, I say.

I only wish Dame Sally was as tolerant of those who smoke.

Anyway this was my response to her 'confession' which appeared in The Times following her much derided support for a ban on smoking in parks:

Simon Clark, director of the smokers' group Forest, said: 'She was happy to eat hash cakes when she was young. Now she wants to stop people smoking a legal product in the open air where there is no risk to anyone other than themselves.

'The idea that adults have to be role models for the next generation is ridiculous. Let today's youth find their own way, just as Dame Sally did when she was young. Educate but don't over-regulate.

'Unfortunately today's public health industry is driven by control freaks like Dame Sally who want to micro-manage our lives in a way they would never have accepted when they were young.'

What was interesting about The Times' interview was her brazen attempt to spin herself out of the hole she had dug herself earlier in the week.

For example, she told The Times she doesn't want to be the nation's nanny … "The more we can nudge rather than regulate the better."

Laughably the paper fell for this guff. The Chief Medical Officer "is not one to moralise", readers were told.

So when Dame Sally says parents need to be more careful about the example they set, that's not moralising?

Her inquisitors – Rachel Sylvester and Alice Thomson – also swallowed without argument statements such as "The impact of the smoking ban has been dramatic" (yes, thousands of pubs closed) and "The impact in Australia of standardised packaging has been dramatic". Evidence?

It's puff pieces like this that give newspapers a bad name.

Anyway, back to Dame Sally's fleeting experience of cannabis. We've been here before. The CMO's brief flirtation with hash cakes was first reported in August last year.

The Mail for example reported: I've taken cannabis, says chief medical officer: Britain's top doctor admits experimenting at university.

This was duly followed up by The Times (Chief Medical Officer Dame Sally Davies admits: ‘I took cannabis’) and others including Sky News (Medical chief Sally Davies 'ate hash cookies').

So this is literally a re-hash of a story about hash. You couldn't make it up.

Comments

[nisakiman]

Your response was the embodiment of commonsense, Simon. Who cares if she ate hash brownies when she was at uni? What has that got to do with anything? Frankly, if she winds down after work with a couple of spliffs and a glass of wine, that's unimportant, too. That should be her choice. As long as it has no detrimental effect on her ability to carry out her duties, it's nothing to do with anyone else.

That she seeks to impose the morality of a detached clique on the rest of us is presumptuous in the extreme.

[Chris Oakley]

There is absolutely no reason at all for us continuing to pay for the pointless position of Chief Medical Officer. Based on her comments to the Times, this particular incumbent appears to be as intellectually capable and as honest as her predecessor. "Detached clique" appears to sum up the UK's media, medical and political establishments. It wouldn't be quite so awful if they were honest.

[Jonathan Bagley]

Why hasn't she been arrested? There doesn't now seem to a time limit.