Posts Tagged ‘cannabis’
Bury cannabis farm points to profitable city centre trade
Police have destroyed the cannabis plants they found in a property near Bury town centre. The BBC says the crop of around 1,000 plants had a “street value” of £1m.
Chief Inspector Jamie Collins, of Greater Manchester Police, says: “The removal of this quantity of cannabis from the supply chain is another positive step forward in helping to disrupt the activity of organised criminals who seek to profit from the sale of drugs”.
So legalise it, then, like they do is so many part of the advanced Western world.
You legally grow, smoke and carry 28g of marijuana in Mexico
As lockdowns end, Mexico’s top court has decriminalised the recreational use of cannabis. You can get stoned in Mexico without fear of fine and worse, just as you can in many US states over the border. In an 8-3 decision, the court decreed that adults will be able to apply for permits to cultivate and consume their own cannabis. But smoking weed in public and in front of children is banned.
With a permit, you can hold up to 28g of marijuana and grow as many as eight plants at home for personal use. At present, it is illegal to carry more than five grams.
Looks like we’re edging towards declaring a winner in the war on drugs.
Posted: 29th, June 2021 | In: News, The Consumer | Comment
Stoned tuna: chef arrested for cannabis-infused fish
The Italian newspaper La Sicilia reports on a local chef arrested on suspicion of drugs dealing. The chef claimed he was testing out “new flavours”, and the two large marijuana plants and 1kg (35oz) of Indian hemp in his pantry were part of his dabbling in cannabis-infused wine, olives, coffee and tuna – all items also seized from his home near Catania.
The 50-year-old is a self-billed “agro-food consultant for third millennium cuisine”.
Meanwhile, you know ‘weed’ you bought from the guy who works in the kitchens, well, it’s oregano – probably.
Posted: 29th, September 2019 | In: Key Posts, Strange But True, The Consumer | Comment
Vaping marijuana – don’t panic
A conspiracy can start any number of ways. But let’s consider the Daily Mail’s news on vapes and cannabis and death. The headline is a burp of worry words: “Black market cannabis vapes are found to contain hydrogen CYANIDE amid health panic after 13 die from mysterious illness linked to e-cigs.” This one nearly has the lot: drugs, crime, a health panic and mystery. But what are the facts?
The story is based on a report by America’s NBC. Researchers bought 18 vaping cartridges containing THC, the main psychoactive compound found in marijuana. The three purchased at legal dispensaries were fine. But 13 of 15 bought from unlicensed dealers contained Vitamin E, which causes lung damage when inhaled and myclobutanil, “a pesticide that, when burned, can turn into hydrogen cyanide, a chemical that causes oxygen levels to fall and leads to death within minutes.”
The Mail links that shocker – criminals cheat! – with news that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recorded the deaths of 13 Americans with “vaping-related illnesses”.
“You certainly don’t want to be smoking cyanide,” says Antonio Frazier, the vice president of operations at CannaSafe, the company that tested the products. I don’t think anyone would buy a cart that was labeled hydrogen cyanide on it.”
Don’t be so presumptuous. People will buy anything it it’ll give them a buzz. But before we go, what is Cannasafe? “CannaSafe Analytics is committed to defining consumer safety and quality assurance standards for the cannabis industry.” It’s private concern that will test what’s in weed products – looking for such things as: excreta, hairs, aflatoxinB2, lead, pesticides and bacteria. It will also test how potent your harvest is. There is no kite mark for cannabis, but there could be. So here’s news that the people from the Cannasafe lab found that uncertified products might be harmful.
What might be causing vapers to die is unclear. Patterns are emerging – the same brands of black-market THC cropping up in reports. The black-market THC cartridges could be to blame. Which makes this story not one about am ambitious company or the perils of vaping but the sad state of the war on drugs. But instead of a debate on that debacle, we’re getting more not fewer bans. President Trump announced a Food and Drug Administration ban on flavoured e-cigarettes. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has banned the sale of vaping products at retail outlets. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo imposed a ban on flavoured e-cigarettes on an “emergency” basis. “Vaping is dangerous, period,” he guffed.
Well, of course it is. But it’s still less dangers than smoking cigarettes. And as for people smoking illegal, unchecked, imported Chinese cartridges of THC to get stoned – well if marijuana was legal nationwide, would that still be a sensible consumer choice?
Posted: 27th, September 2019 | In: Key Posts, News | Comment
David Cameron: the cannabis years
In 2007, it was reported that David Cameron had smoked cannabis in 1982, when the future Prime Minister and then leader of the Conservative Party was a 15 years old pupil at Eton College. The incident led to the expulsion of seven of Cameron’s peers. He was merely gated.
When asked if he’d taken illegal drugs whilst at Oxford University, Cameron told the Observer: “I had a normal university experience.” Prodded he added: “‘There were things I did as a student that I don’t think I should talk about now that I am a politician.”
That’s not to say they are irrelevant. In 2007, Cameron told media: “If it can be proved that there are real benefits, medicinal benefits and scientific evidence for it, I would be relaxed about that. My decision would be to licence it if it could be proved to have benefits.”
Fast forward to this week and Cameron is plugging his memoirs. When he went to boarding school his mum coped by “taking large dose of Valium”.
A few friends had started getting hold of cannabis. In those days it was mostly in the form of hash, typically dark brown and crumbly, although occasionally some “Red Leb”, supposedly from the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon, would show up. Instead of popping behind the school theatre for a fag, we started going for a joint.
Not everyone is a fortunate as Cameron. If your caught with cannabis you can get a formal (recorded) warning and a police caution. You may also be referred to the police Youth Diversion Scheme. And Cameron believes firmly in upholding the law, stating when eh was PM:
This is criminality pure and simple and it has to be confronted and defeated…If you are old enough to commit these crimes you are old enough to face the punishment”
Unless you’re connected…
Posted: 19th, September 2019 | In: Key Posts, Politicians | Comment
Someone is leaving cannabis biscuits and cakes in England’s parks
Who is baking hash cakes and dropping them on the grass? Sarah Kenny says she was walking her Jack Russell cross Max in St Helens, Merseyside, when he scampered into a bush. Later back at home he fell ill. Sarah says she smelt his vomit. “I could tell that it was chocolate which immediately raised alarm but then I smelt this really distinctive smell and I knew it was cannabis. I hadn’t seen what he’d eaten in the bush before but when he was sick we knew straight away it must have been a lot of cake.”
Meanwhile, over in Leyland, Lancashire, Sarah Eccles is taking Billy, a cavachon (King Charles cavalier and bichon frise cross) round the park. The Metro says Billy “stumbled upon a pile of discarded cookies”. The Indy says the “pile” was “two chocolate cookies lying in the grass at her local park”. Both sources see Billy on a video posted on Facebook looking very unwell. Oddly, the Daily Record delivers its story under the headline: “Mum reveals shock video of ‘stoned’ dog who almost died after eating cannabis cookie.” Not the dog’s mum, obviously, which makes her billing irrelevant. Or are mums more worried about cannabis in the bushes than other women?
The good news is Billy is ok. The bigger news is that the Indy reports “there was no indication it [the cookie] had been tested to confirm its ingredients”. But Sarah says she knew it was cannabis by the smell and “picked up one en route to the vets and returned later that night to dispose of the other”.
The identity of felons dropping space cakes in parks around the north-west of England has yet to be established.
Posted: 18th, September 2019 | In: Key Posts, News, Strange But True | Comment
From Leicester to Galashiels and North Pickenham, cannabis is the drug of choice
Would you hide a 1kg brick of cannabis in a place where it could go up in smoke in one huge hit? Two people in Leicester have bene arrested for allegedly hiding the stash in a barbecue.
In Scotland, a man has been found living with 700 cannabis plants in a former bookmakers in Galashiels town centre. He too has been arrested.
In North Pickenham, Norfolk, police arrested a man who claims the 693 cannabis plants growing in his garden shed were to ease his chronic pain.
In Sixmilecross, Northern Ireland, police found a “cannabis factory”. A local policeman tells media: “We will continue to do everything possible to prevent the supply of drugs and identify those involved while at the same time, make people aware of the real danger posed to their health and their lives by illegal drugs.”
But not all cannabis is illegal. It’s only illegal if the State doesn’t agree that you should have it. Patients can be prescribed medicinal cannabis by specialist doctors.
With moves to legalise the drug afoot across the UK, how long before police stop arresting people for growing the drug and there’s an amnesty for anyone who has been?
Posted: 12th, September 2019 | In: Key Posts, News | Comment
Dentist promises sedation – GPs doll out uppers
Where America leads, the UK follows. Look out, then,. for a dentist advertising sedation. Rob Beschizza saw a sign of the times:
Driving near Pittsburgh, PA, my wife Heather noticed this excellent billboard featuring a woman saying “Scared of the dentist? No, I called and got SEDATED!”.
The chemical cosh is wielded with abandon. A Public Health England review at the end of March 2018 found that half of people prescribed strong painkillers, antidepressants and sleeping tablets had been on them for at least 12 months.
The numbers of people being fed these drugs are huge:
Nearly 12 million people took drugs such as antidepressants, sleeping pills and painkillers between 2017 and last year,
Worrying stuff.
Posted: 10th, September 2019 | In: Key Posts, News | Comment
Legalised cannabis will give police less excuse to target black people
When cannabis is legalised in the UK, it will be, says one writer, “dominated by white men in suits”. Why would big co. marijuana be different from every other industry? UK citizens will get to smoke weed legally when those in power decide it’s worth the effort.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau explained why recreational cannabis is legal in Canada: “To ensure that we keep marijuana out of the hands of children, and the profits out of the hands of criminals, we will legalise, regulate, and restrict access to marijuana.”
The Canadian Government isn’t about freedom of choice. It simply wants to control the industry and the money that comes with it.
UK crime figures for 2017/18 tells us that black people were over 3 times as likely to be arrested as white people. Police recorded 35 arrests for every 1,000 Black people, and 11 arrests for every 1,000 white people. Black people had the highest arrest rates per 1,000 people in every police force area for which there was data. Why? “Black Caribbean people were 9.6 times as likely to stopped and searched as White British people.” Overall, 87.7 of conviction were for drugs.
Release, the ‘national centre of expertise on drugs and drugs law’, tells us in a report: “Across London black people are charged for possession of cannabis at 5 times the rate of white people.”
While tens of thousands of people are being criminalised every year for low level possession offences, it is those from the black community who are a greater risk of criminalisation and harsher sanctions.
An LSE blog post explains the money:
The amount spent by Canadians on cannabis in 2017 was estimated by Statistics Canada to be around C$5.5 billion, with the black market in recreational use estimated to be around 90 per cent of that, or around C$5 billion (the remainder being legal purchases for medicinal use. This compares with spending of around C$23 billion and C$17 billion on alcohol and tobacco respectively. Statistics Canada estimates that legal consumer spending for cannabis will range between C$0.816 billion and C$1.018 billion in the fourth quarter of 2018 (C$3.85 billion-C$4.8 billion annualised), with around 25 per cent of the market remaining illegal.
Smoking tobacco is bad for you. Smoking weed may have some health benefits. The cool kids have heard the message. Estimates suggest the global legal cannabis industry will grow to $66.3bn by 2023.
A poll in the Times found 47 per cent of people living in Scotland support the legalisation of cannabis – 37 per cent were opposed and 17 per cent unsure.
The rewards for whoever controls the marijuana industry are huge. The losers will be many,
Carly Barton’s amnesty – a campaign for legal cannabis
Carly Barton was hit by a stroke in her early 20s. She discovered that cannabis alleviated the continual pain, what she describes as a “ridiculous amount of all-over pain – it just feels like you’re burning from the inside out, like my bones have been replaced by red hot pokers.” But cannabis was illegal in the UK.
Medics gave her strong painkillers. Over time she developed a tolerance to the effects of the legal opiates – “a cocktail of substances which included morphine and fentanyl.” She says: “I was struggling to feel the world as I hobbled along in a zombified state; this was not sustainable. I started looking at end-of-life clinics online.”
She became the first person in the UK to be legally given herbal cannabis . But with regulation comes increased costs. It cost £2,500 of her own money for three-months of pain relief. Her prescription comes from a private specialist. The NHS won’t provide it. “We are going to be put in a position where the rich are patients and the poor are criminals,” she told the Daily Mirror.
“I am going to openly break the law until I can access my medicine or they give me some kind of exemption,” said Carly in April. “I do not see myself as a criminal. There are two doctors who have prescribed it to me and now there is a vague law which does not seem to see it as a potential medicine.”
Carley’s Amnesty is a campaign she runs which seeks to allow other patients afflicted by chronic pain to use cannabis legally.
Southampton man guilty of growing small amount of cannabis; innocent City boys think bigger
All that talk of legalising cannabis and in the meanwhile people are having their lives damaged by raising a cash crop in their residence. Michael Antony Muirhead was growing a whopping two marijuana plants in his Southampton high-rise flat when police pounced. Local press cites “drug experts” offering their opinion that the ‘farm’ could have earned the nefarious felon as much as £200.
The accused said the plants were for his personal use. He has post-traumatic stress disorder and acute anxiety.
This nonsense reached court, where Muirhead, who pleaded guilty to producing cannabis, was given a 12 month conditional discharge, ordered to pay court costs of £85 and a victim surcharge of £20. Indeed, who the bloody hell is the victim on this heinous crime?
If you’ve acute anxiety and other afflictions that can be alleviated by cannabis, take the official advice: keep popping those addictive pills.
In other news, away from a city gardener growing a tiny bit of weed and doing his bit to combat climate change:
Medical cannabis firm Oxon is talking with investors about raising as much as $15m (£12m) as it prepares to launch a range of products in the UK and eyes a listing in London or the US.
The problem was that the Southampton farmer wasn’t thinking big enough.
Mike Tyson : marijuana marketing and short-term memory loss
Mike Tyson smokes a lot of marijuana. When former boxer told listeners to his Hotboxin’ with Mike Tyson podcast that he and co-host, former NFL player Eben Britton, burn about 10 tons of weed every month at his ranch and resort.
At Tyson Ranch, Tyson sells nine strains of weed, tincture and edibles. There are plans for “glamping” campgrounds. Would you stay at ‘Iron Mike’s’ place?
No idea. But the reporting on what looks a lot like a PR exercise makes no mention – not one – of the fact that Tyson served three years of a six-year sentence imposed in 1992 for raping a teenage beauty-pageant contestant. Not CNN, the Sun or the Mirror mention that. None of them mention that Tyson has convictions for assault and cocaine possession. Maybe it’s down to smoking too much and getting short-term memory loss?
As advocates for weed go, we can get better ones that Mike Tyson.
Posted: 15th, August 2019 | In: Key Posts, News, The Consumer | Comment
UK Government profits from Canadian cannabis smokers
At what point does the Government accept defeat in the war on cannabis? Glasgow food safety business R-Biopharm Rhône (RBR), a subsidiary of German parent company R-Biopharm, will supply test kits to a Canadian cannabis producer. The weed grower wants to rid their products of carcinogenic toxins. RBR makes kits that test for toxins in milk, spices, cereals and animal feeds. So why not put its skills to profit from the booming marijuana industry? Cannabis is legal in Canada. In the UK the law allows some medical use of the drug.
So here’s a renowned business based in the UK making money from weed. R-Biopharm Rhône product manager Claire Milligan tells the Herald: “Just like any other ingestible item, strict consumer protection legislation requires that cannabis products, including oils, cookies and cannabis plants themselves, should be tested for the presence of dangerous toxins. While the legality of cannabis products in the UK is currently the subject of wide-ranging debate, in those jurisdictions, such as Canada, certain states in the US, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands where consumption of cannabis products is permitted, testing for toxins remains of great importance. In the wake of the sale to our Canadian customer we anticipate further demand for our test kits in other regions where consumption of cannabis is legal as well as perhaps, at some stage, here in the UK.”
How do we feel about the UK doing business with companies whose produce is banned here? Any reputable British firm, which RBR certainly is, will pay taxes into the Treasury’s coffers. Some of that money will surely come from the Canada deal. Isn’t it a tad hypocritical of the UK Government to profit from the consumption of cannabis for non-medical use – the same drug it bans and arrests people for selling? How ethical is that?
Posted: 6th, August 2019 | In: Key Posts, News, The Consumer | Comment
Canada’s weed amnesty
Canadians spent $1.6-billion on over-the-counter cannabis in 2018. Free to use legally, Canada conducted a National Cannabis Survey and found that more middle-age people are smoking weed. In the first quarter of 2018, 646,000 people tried cannabis for the first time – half were aged 45 or older.
In 2016 55,000 out of 95,400 police-reported Controlled Drugs and Substances Act offences were cannabis-related. Amnesty now, right? It’s on:
Canadians are now able to apply for no-cost, expedited pardons for simple cannabis possession convictions, the federal justice minister announced on Thursday.
Speaking in Montreal, Justice Minister and Attorney General David Lametti said the measures of Bill C-93 will take effect immediately.
The new law allows people who were only convicted of a crime of simple possession — which is possession of under 30 grams — to have their record suspended, free of charge (the normal fee is $631) and before the 5-10 year wait period after a conviction usually required before applying for a pardon. People can apply even if they have outstanding fines or victim surcharges, which typically have to be paid prior to a record suspension application.
Apply here.
CBD : the fight to regulate the new snake oil
Are all strains of CBD – cannabis extract cannabidiol – of equal worth? CBD is widely used in the UK to treat all manner of conditions, including: anxiety, pain and insomnia. The only US federally approved CBD-based medication is for epilepsy: Epidiolex is taken orally to help control seizures. The BBC says around 250,000 of us in the UK use CB regularly. It’s pretty clear more tests are needed. It’s pretty clear it helps some people.
A recent report by industry body the Centre for Medical Cannabis [CMC]blind-tested 30 products advertising themselves as CBD, bought on the High Street and online. It found almost half (45%) had measurable levels of THC, making them technically illegal in the UK.
Of course, the CMD’s research is intended to inform, campaign an enhance its position as “the UK’s first and only industry membership body for businesses and investors operating in cannabis based medicinal products (CBMPs) and cannabidiol (CBD) wellness markets”. With such a huge market on the horizon, CMD can expect some competition.
The researchers also found the presence in seven products of the solvent dichloromethane, which can cause wheezing and shortness of breath, at levels above food safety limits.
Some CBD products also contain very little of the advertised ingredient.
One sample, bought at a high street pharmacy chain, had no CBD in it at all and was selling for well over £50. Only 38% of the products tested had levels of CBD within 10% of the amount advertised on the bottle.
There is no legal requirement for these products to be tested, though some companies say they have rigorous testing regimes.
This is not about freedom. This is about regulation and profits:
CMC Confirms All its Members Products That Were Tested as Part of Their Groundbreaking UK CBD Market Study Had A CBD Content That Was Within 10% Of The Stated Content On The Label.
Or you could just, you know, buy some weed and smoke it…
Posted: 1st, August 2019 | In: Key Posts, News, The Consumer | Comment
Cannabis is full of good shit, bad shit and the smuggler’s diarrhoea
Anyone buying cannabis in Madrid should know that it contains “dangerous levels of faecal matter”. What safe levels of human shit are in your good shit is unsaid. But the fact is that traces of e.coli bacteria and the Aspergillus fungus were spotted in cannabis tested by experts in such things. Apparently the poo is a byproduct of how the cannabis is brought into the country – the smuggler swallows the stuff and then once in Spain takes laxatives to enact a dose of Montezuma’s revenge. Drugs runners, indeed.
Spotter: Forensic Science International
Posted: 4th, April 2019 | In: Key Posts, News, Strange But True | Comment
A plea for mirrors and no more weed from Lee Scratch Perry
Lee Scratch Perry has politely requested his fans relent from giving him weed. He has plenty. If you must give anything, give mirrors. The fabled reggae star tweets:
You know what’s coming don’t, you? Yep, mirrors being reclassified as a Class C drugs.
Posted: 15th, March 2019 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts, Music, The Consumer | Comment
Coca Cola cannabis and the volatile world of marijuana investing
Invest in cannabis? BNN Bloomberg says Coca Cola is looking at working with Canadian marijuana producer Aurora Cannabis to create drinks laced with marijuana. “Along with many others in the beverage industry, we are closely watching the growth of non-psychoactive cannabidiol as an ingredient in functional wellness beverages around the world,” said Coca-Cola in a statement. Unlike the cocaine Coca Cola used to put into its products, cannabidiol contains no psychoactive effect. But it can relieve pain.
It follows news that Constellation Brands (US-based producer of Corona beer and a raft of spirits and wines brands) is pumping lots of cash into Canada cannabis producer Canopy Growth.
Released in 1880, this is the very first publicly sold bottle of Coca-Cola. It contained around 3.5 grams of cocaine.
Why Canada? In June this year, the Canadian government pretty much legalised the use of recreational cannabis. Weed should go legal in Canada on October 17, 2018. You’ve got to feel for Mexico, which should fully legalise the drug exported illegally into the US via cartels. The market is there for the taking. And the money is huge.
Yesterday, shares in Canadian marijuana cultivator, distributor and producer Tilray – the first weed company to IPO in the US – reached an intraday high of $300, closing up 38.1 per cent on the day. The surge was based on news that America’s drugs regulator would allow loss-making Tilray to export a cannabis-based medicine to the US. Tilray shares have soared by – get this – 1,288 per cent since the company floating on the Nasdaq stock exchange two months ago. At one point Tilray was a bigger stock than 59 percent of S&P 500. Not too shabby for what is essentially a farming company – even if it does look absurdly overpriced and highly volatile.
But here’s the thing: no-one can be certain what form a legal market in marijuana will take once prohibition ends. Why would a consumer pay a big corporate farmer for their hit when they grow it themselves? Weed isn’t like moonshine – you really can grow a decent crop in your airing cupboard. And if the market for products gets huge and varied – cheap supermarket own-brand weed drinks? – won’t the price for weed fall? Marijuana is just commodity that grows in the ground.
Posted: 20th, September 2018 | In: Money, News, The Consumer | Comment
Yes, let’s legalise cannabis – but not for tax revenue
One of the long running shouting matches out there is over the legalisation of cannabis. It’s worth remembering that it’s only just over a century since it was actually legal. Actually, back in Victorian England everything was legal, yes including the morphine and opium. It was concern over people being able to enjoy themselves which led to both the drugs bans and that idiot Prohibition over in the US.
Given that cannabis doesn’t harm anyone why not undo that historic mistake and make it legal again?
The report from the Institute of Economic Affairs has valued the UK’s black market in cannabis at £2.6bn.
OK, there’s quite a lot of it going on already then.
A report from the Institute for Economic Affairs (IEA) says decriminalising the Class B drug would also lead to savings for the police and other public services.
Well, yes, there’s an awful lot of idiocy that we’ll be able to stop doing.
Margaret Thatcher’s favourite free-market thinktank has called on the government to legalise cannabis, arguing that the move could save more than £1bn generated from extra taxes and other savings in public services.
The thing is though that we don’t really want to do it for the tax take. The point being that we’re only here talking about consenting adults. And it’s a basic matter of freedom and liberty that consenting adults should be allowed to get up to what adults consent to. Sure, some of these things will be wasteful – say, Simon Cowell – some will be damaging – Simon Cowell – and yet that’s the whole point of freedom itself. We get to do as we wish, even Simon Cowell. The only truly moral constraint is when our activities prevent others from enjoying those same rights.
So, legalise cannabis just in order to legalise cannabis.
As the report itself notes, if we do legalise it then we can tax it. Actually, we could tax it pretty highly and still have it being cheaper than the illegal stuff is today. And we’ve got to gain our tax revenue from somewhere. So, yes, tax it and collect some money.
But the reason for the legalisation is because there’s no reason it should be illegal.
Posted: 30th, June 2018 | In: Money, News, Politicians | Comment
Top Tories profit from the cannabis they say only criminals sell
Cannabis is a dull drug that induces apathy. Maybe something in the air confused Victoria Atkins, the drugs minister. Her husband, Paul Kenward, is managing director at British Sugar, operator of Britain’s biggest legal cannabis farm. But there’s no conflict of interest between he and she’s jobs. Perish the thought. The Home Office said she had “voluntarily recused herself from policy or decisions relating to cannabis”. It’s all ok because the drugs minister won’t talk about, er, drugs.
The drugs policy is a mess. If you grow cannabis illegally, you can be locked away for 14 years. Kenward’s business is fine because it grows the banned weed for a new epilepsy medicine soon to be approved in the US – it was licensed in 2016; Atkins became a minister in 2017. Sill it all stinks stronger than that nasty skunk crap.
The Sundays Times adds:
[Atkins] She does not declare Kenward’s role in the register of ministerial or MPs’ interests, though she mentioned it in a debate when she was a backbencher. Cabinet Office guidelines say interests held by the “close family members” of ministers should be declared where they “are, or might reasonably be perceived to be, directly relevant to a minister’s ministerial responsibilities”.
Whoops!
Steve Moore, of Volteface, a think-tank on drug policy, tells the paper: “The medical use of cannabis and its wider decriminalisation is rising up the political agenda. But we have the ridiculous situation of the drugs minister being unable to speak in parliament or make decisions on one of the most important parts of her job.”
Ridiculous. Hypocritical. Wrong. Stupid. And useless for people who suffer from conditions that cannabis can alleviate.
Atkins, a barrister and former criminal drugs prosecutor, has been a firm opponent of decriminalising or regulating cannabis, saying its brief downgrading to a class C drug during the Blair government had a “terrible” impact and that the “gun-toting criminals” who control the trade would not suddenly “become law-abiding citizens” if it was legalised.
In 2017, she opined:
“We are talking about gun-toting criminals, who think nothing of shooting each other and the people who carry their drugs for them. What on Earth does my Honorable Friend think their reaction will be to the idea of drugs being regulated? Does he really think that these awful people are suddenly going to become law-abiding citizens? I do not share the optimism of others about tackling the problem through regulation.”
Maybe they’ll all get jobs at her husband’s firm?
The paper adds:
In her first three months in her post, between November and early February, Atkins gave 17 Commons speeches or ministerial parliamentary answers about drugs, including several on cannabis-based drugs known as cannabinoids. In the three months since, she has not spoken about drugs in the Commons and has answered only six written questions on the subject.
And there’s more.
The majority of this “legal” cannabis is produced by one company: GW Pharmaceuticals.
GW made headlines in 2010 after releasing Sativex: a controversial, cannabinoid-based, medication, legal to purchase in the UK.
Sativex is “an oromucosal spray of a formulated extract of the cannabis sativa plant that contains the principal cannabinoids delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD) in a 1:1 ratio.”
GW is legally growing cannabis containing THC despite the British Government viewing cannabis as having “no medicinal properties,” refusing to remove it from Schedule I, the strictest level of drug schedule.
And:
GW was granted a licence from the Home Office in 1998 to grow cannabis plants for medical use and in 2010 the UK became the first country in the world to authorise a prescription medicine derived from cannabis.
This site adds:
[Theresa] May’s husband, Philip May works for Capital group, which has a 19% holding in GW through its subsidiary, Capital Research Management Company.
Bit hypocritial?
It’s no what you know, it;’s who you blow…
Ill woman wants stolen illegal medicinal marijuana returned
At her home in Christchurch, New Zealand, Jane, 49, is surveying her loss. “They took my medicine,” she says of her missing marijuana crop.
Thieves broke in and stole Jane’s drug of choice, the one she uses to treat chronic debilitating foot and leg pain after a car accident. “Other drugs upset my system so badly,” she says. “I have tried all the pills, none of them agree with me. Tramadol put me in hospital, damaged my pancreas. I rely on cannabis – it’s the only thing that doesn’t upset me.”
They took her Afghan Kush.
“I can’t have any old stuff. I need the stuff that numbs me,” she adds. “I know that does it beautifully. Other varieties I need to take three times the amount to get the same effect, just so I can walk without screaming.”
But weed is banned in New Zealand. Jane is unfazed: “I have a mother who is 84 years old. She’s seen me on the pills, in hospital. She approves of me smoking. As far as she’s concerned hers is the only permission I require.”
Good on her.
If it helps Jane, why should Jane be made a criminal for helping herself? Whey should the State own her body?
Posted: 5th, September 2016 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
Tory MP: I watch porn and smoke cannabis
“It was either porn and weed or put my knob in pig’s mouth”
Conservative Party MP James Cleverly says he’s watched internet porn and smoked cannabis.
But Cleverly, MP for Braintree, Essex, did not tell BBC Radio Five whether or not he had turned to porn and drugs since joining the Commons.
Maybe its just part of the initiation ceremony?
Posted: 2nd, November 2015 | In: Politicians, Reviews | Comment
Shona Banda: Police rip child who argued school drugs policy from medical cannabis oil using mother
Shona Banda has a problem of location. Her Chrohn’s disease can be legally treated with cannabis in Colorado, where she’d lived for some time. Shona uses cannabis oil. She says it helps. But in the State of Kansas, her current home, using cannabis for the same condition makes her a criminal.
Trouble began when Shona’s 11-year-old was at his Kansas school’s drug education class. She tells Ben Swann that the lad told the drugs expert: “Mom calls it cannabis and not marijuana.” Says Shona: “He let them know how educated he was on the facts.”
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 18th, April 2015 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
Cannabis: non-psychoactive cannabidiol can curn your epileptic seizures
More evidence that marijuana can be good for you. A cannabis extract containing non-psychoactive cannabidiol cut epileptic seizures in half:
The experience of 213 hard-to-treat patients age 2 to 42, including some who were already taking a dozen drugs to fend off seizures, is a promising start for the strawberry-flavored liquid extract [Epidiolex], which may be a potent new therapy for the condition, said lead researcher Orrin Devinsky, director of the New York University Langone Comprehensive Epilepsy Center. The findings released Monday are scheduled to be presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s annual meeting on April 22 in Washington.
And in the UK, cannabis is outlawed…
Devon Man Guilty Of Possessing 9 Pence Worth Of Cannabis
TO North Devon Magistrates’s court, where Christopher Saunders, is answering the charge of being in with possession of nine pence worth of cannabis, roughly 0.09 grams of prohibited drugs.
Tim Hook for the defence, argues:
“If I close one’s eyes and try to imagine nine hundredths of a gram it is a very difficult thing to fasten your mind on. I think it is a quantity that is barely capable of measurement… I am staggeringly surprised it couldn’t have been dealt with by way of a caution at the police station, when so many things are.”
Mr Saunders pleads guilty. He is awarded a conditional discharge.
The war on drugs goes on…
Posted: 18th, November 2014 | In: Reviews, Strange But True | Comment
