Harms to body and soul: an ideological balancing act for preventing and reducing cannabis use

In their piece for debate, Macleod & Hickman [1] present some credible arguments around the ways in which ideology may shape evidence and policy and describe the inevitable use of select aspects of scientific evidence to advance an agenda and drive funding directions. While the strength of evidence regarding causality in the association between cannabis and schizophrenia may not be incontrovertible, some of their arguments are indeed driven by their own ideology and advancement of their proposition that the main harmassociated with cannabis use pertains to its intimate relation to tobacco use, and that this, and the development of dependence, are the main reasons to prevent cannabis use.Whether this helps the cause is debatable.