the times | Saturday June 11 2022 43Wo r l d
The mass legalisation of cannabis has
led to a mental illness “time bomb” in
the United States and scientists are
warning that stronger strains are caus-
ing psychosis among young people.
Rules were relaxed a decade ago in
the states of Washington and Colorado
and voters in California chose to legal-
ise recreational marijuana use in 2016.
In total, 47 states and Washington DC
have softened their laws on cannabis in
some form.
Supporters of these policies point to
the billions of dollars in tax revenue
that states can make each year from
regulating the drug, and argue that
criminalising cannabis disproportion-
ately harms black people.
However, experts have warned of a
possible mental health crisis after the
emergence of super-strength mari-
juana products and states are scram-
bling to study a link between heavy use
and psychosis.
In Washington, which in 2012 be-
came the first state to allow recreation-
al use, high-potency marijuana con-
centrates have flooded the market.
Many have levels of THC, the psy-
choactive ingredient of cannabis, as
high as 90 per cent. Experts say a con-
ventional cannabis joint as recently as
20 years ago would have contained a
THC level of only 5 per cent.
Beatriz Carlini, a research scientist at
the University of Washington’s Addic-
tions, Drug and Alcohol Institute, said
that what voters had approved a decade
ago was not what was being sold on
pharmacy shelves today. “It’s a time
bomb,” she said of the potential effects
on users’ mental health. “We are not
paying attention to this and we should,
because we were betrayed into thinking
we were legalising something and we
are legalising something else.
“I’m not concerned about legalisa-
tion per se, I’m concerned about legali-
sation without regulations that curb
the development of a product into
something different. It concerns me a
lot. It’s like you voted for legalising XO
ver the course of nearly
50 years, Elaine
Kaufman became a
renowned figure in New
York society as the
proprietor of Elaine’s, a restaurant
where the food was nothing to write
home about but the company was
dazzling. Aspiring writers came
nightly to fill her tables, steadilyTale of New York’s smartest restaurant to be served on Broadway
graduating into famous authors
whose book covers were put up on
the walls. They in turn drew actors,
singers and an Austrian-American
weightlifter with a thick accent who
dreamt improbably of making it in
Hollywood.
“What Rick’s place was to
Casablanca, Elaine’s is to New
York,” wrote AE Hotchner, a
novelist and biographer of Ernest
Hemingway and Doris Day who
turned eventually to writing of
Kaufman as well. It had “the same
swirling intrigue, international
celebrities, double-dealing,
jealousies, threats and brutalities,
sentimentality, romance, sex and
redemption”, he wrote. But while
Humphrey Bogart was acting,“Elaine Kaufman plays her own
improbable self ”. Kaufman died in
December 2010, bringing the show
to an end. Now it is coming to
Broadway. Or at least it is staggering
in that direction, with the aid of
three writers and musicians who
were once regulars.
Steven Morris, 53, his twin
brother, Robert, and their writing
partner Joe Shane, 49, began
working on a musical about Elaine’s
after showing some of their ideas to
Tom Meehan, a playwright who
wrote the books for Annie and The
Producers. “He said, ‘Great! I was
there on opening night,’” referring
to the opening of the restaurant in- Meehan told them to get the
rights to Hotchner’s book Everyone
Comes To Elaine’s, and a show took
shape based on a chapter that tells of
Kaufman’s troubled marriage to an
Englishman named Henry Ball, who
tried to take over her restaurant.
Kaufman had started out working
as a waitress at a West Village
restaurant called Portofino, where
she fell in love with the owner. “That
ended badly,” Morris said. “But she
decided to go out on her own. The
only place she could afford was this
strange Hungarian restaurant on the
Upper East Side.” Decking it out
with assorted pieces from local junk
shops — the comedian Alan King
said it was “decorated like a stolen
car” — she built up a clientele of
writers who appreciated her
encouragement, her put-downs andthe way she let them run up a tab
against the hope of a publishing deal.
“The real foundation of her
business became these writers,” said
Morris. “They would be alone all
day, staring at the blank page.”
Among them were Hotchner and
the auteurs of 1960s “new
journalism”, George Plimpton, Gay
Talese and Tom Wolfe, Morris said.
Arnold Schwarzenegger used
Elaine’s as a launching pad for his
acting career. He has said she would
ring him “to let me know when an
influential writer or producer came
in so I could stop in and schmooze”.
She was a vaguely maternal figure,
Morris said, but “she didn’t like it
when you were away for too long.
You would get scolded.”Will
Pavia
new yorkand it later becomes 100X. So it was not
what you voted for.”
Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London,
has established a commission that will
look at decriminalising the drug in the
UK. Carlini said that he should look to
America for tips on how to approach
the issue. “My hope is the UK pays
more attention to what are the limits of
this legalisation if it were to happen,”
she said.
Nora Volkow, the director of Amer-
ica’s National Institute on Drug Abuse,
echoed Carlini’s concerns this year. She
said: “We are seeing a very significant
rise in psychosis associated with the
consumption of marijuana. And the
higher the content of THC, the higher
the likelihood of a psychotic episode.”
Colorado, which legalised cannabis
for recreational use shortly after Wash-
ington, is among the states investi-
gating the effects of stronger forms.
Last year it introduced curbs on the sale
of medical marijuana concentrates.
But Dr Libby Stuyt, an addiction psy-
chiatrist, believes the law is too lax. She
said that in the past decade there had
been a significant rise in mental illness
among cannabis users in Colorado and
that the evidence indicated strong THC
products were partially to blame.
Official figures reveal a sharp rise in
the number of teenagers who took their
own lives in the state who had mari-
juana in their system at the time of their
deaths.Relaxed rules
on cannabis
are ‘psychosis
time bomb’
United States
Keiran Southern Los Angeles10-14
15-19
20-24
25-34
35-44
45-54
55-64
65-74
75+Marijuana present in suicides
By age group 2009-13 2014-18
10% 20% 30%Source: Colorado
Department of
Public HealthD
uring a town
meeting on
Nantucket, a
Boston
businessman
who spends summers on
the island spoke of efforts
to keep up appearances
(Will Pavia writes).
“We talk about making
sure the shingles are
grey,” Matt Tara said.
“That the windows are
the right windows.”
Yet this picturesque
town in Massachusetts
was also considering
allowing women to be
topless on its beaches.
“We are going to create
a major attraction, of
Nantucket being the
topless island of the eastcoast,” Tara said.
Across the crowded
hall a woman
named Eve
Messing
responded. “I
don’t like to be
compared to a
shingle,” she said,
to laughter. “My
breasts are not
shingles.”
The meeting voted by
327 to 242 to allow
toplessness on any beach
“to promote equality”.
The campaign to allow
women to be topless on
Nantucket beaches was
started last year by
Dorothy Stover, 41, a
seventh-generation
islander. “I actually
wasn’t expecting people
to be as supportive as
they were,” she said. But
“people have been going
topless on Nantucket for
ever, on all the beaches”,
including on what is
unofficially known as the
island’s nudist beach.
Though the communitycould be rather
conservative, “historically
we are on the front lines
for equality”, she said.
“When men went off to
whale, women ran the
island.” One of her
supporters, Bee Gonnella,
said equality on
Nantucket dated to its
founding.
The proposal was
raised after a vote to ban
small plastic alcohol
bottles, known as “nips”.
Sarah Alger, a lawyer
who serves as the town’smoderator for
meetings, said:
“So, zipping right
along from nips to
nipples,” to laughter.
Stover told her
fellow islanders: “Men
fought for their top
freedom at the beach.” In
1936 in New York a group
of men, some topless,
held an event that led to
42 arrests. “Men were
told that being topless at
the beach was not
attractive, that people
didn’t want to see their
hairy chests,” she said.
The state passed a law
the next year allowing
men to be topless on its
beaches and other states
followed.
The new bylaw will
take effect once it has
been reviewed by the
state’s attorney-general.Nantucket
dares to go
topless for
equal rights
Women will be able to
go topless on
Nantucket’s beaches
after a campaign by
Dorothy Stover, leftd byeach
y”.
allow could be ratherm
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DALAMY