PRESS RELEASE - 20th SEPTEMBER, 2003

Edition 10.

Cannabis News Items From Around the World

Drug users set to take action –
International conference to end war on drugs

Network Against Prohibition Press Release

This year we have seen more than one million Americans arrested for violations of stale and immoral drug laws, three thousand Thai people murdered in a state sponsored campaign to eradicate drug use from the Thai population and the continuation of the spraying of the Columbian countryside with Roundup by Monsanto, to eradicate coca.

Just some of the human rights abuses faced by people around the world as a result of the US led war on drugs. The USA, a country that now has two million people in jail for drug law violations, continues to actively and aggressively push its war on drugs on governments worldwide.

In countries that follow America’s lead, ethnic and indigenous minorities are targeted, as well as people on low incomes, young people and other minorities, who already face intrusive monitoring and targeting by police and other state authorities.

Where is the real drug law reform? After decades of lobbying and working with government’s to effect change, and countless reports, inquiries and studies advocating the end of prohibition, it appears that those governments in bed with the US are no longer going to come to the table on this issue. Prohibition is genocide on a global scale that Adolf Hitler would be proud of.

Many communities around the world are taking action against the war on drugs. Drug users themselves have been fighting back for some time. In Darwin Australia this month, drug users and activists will gather for the 1st International Conference on Using Direct Action to End the War on Drugs.

The conference will feature direct action training, updates on the war on drugs, reports from demonstrations around the world and will be an opportunity for those opposed to this genocide to share ideas and tactics.

It is hoped that the conference will discuss an international day of direct action against the drug war on November 1, international drug users’ day. The concept of a coordinated global campaign of direct action against the drug war will also be floated.

For more info see the conference website www.angelfire.com/oz/syringefestival

The conference will be held from the 22nd to the 25th of September. It will be held in conjunction with the 2nd Darwin International Syringe Festival.

Conference and Festival organisers – Network Against Prohibition www.napnt.org

Call +61 (0)8 8942 0570 or mobile +61 (0)418 985 701 / +61 (0)415 162 525

Drop the (0) if you are ringing from outside Australia.

On America www.drugsense.org/wodclock.htm

On Columbia www.guerrillanews.com/war_on_drugs/doc53.html

On Thailand http://web.amnesty.org/web/wire.nsf/May2003/Thailand

Mum trusted pot-smoking carer

September 15, 2003 - 3:45PM

The mother of two children who were treated in hospital after eating pasta allegedly laced with marijuana said she had no reason not to trust their carer.

The Adelaide mother of seven today said she knew her former friend smoked cannabis but didn't believe she was a heavy user.

"It wasn't like really heavy, it was only on and off ... so I didn't have any concerns about what she would be like with my girls," the woman told Sydney radio 2GB.

The two girls, aged two and four, were taken to hospital after their parents returned to a friend's house to find one child drowsy and the other almost comatose.

The mother said she was told by the carer that the children had not been feeling well. "She said 'Oh, they have been sick all day, they won't eat, they won't drink'." The mother took the two girls to a medical centre after her sister-in-law commented they "looked stoned".

The pair were then rushed to hospital by ambulance.

"I wasn't sure (that they were under the influence) because I don't have much to do with any of that stuff," she said.

Doctors are currently waiting on the results of blood tests to see how much the pair ingested.
The mother said the four-year-old girl was doing well but her younger sister had been readmitted to hospital suffering fits. "They (the doctors) have said there could be long-term convulsions, hallucinations, things like that," she said.

"I'm still keeping a very close eye on both of them."

Anthony John Patten, 22, and Karen Lee-Anne Anderson, 33, appeared in an Adelaide court last Friday, each charged with two counts of supplying a prohibited substance.

- AAP
This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/09/15/1063478113191.html

First Tokers of Health Canada Cannabis Call It Disgusting

URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v03.n1390.a04.html
Pubdate: Mon, 15 Sep 2003
Source: Canadian Press (Canada Wire)
Copyright: 2003 Canadian Press
Author: Dean Beeby, Canadian Press
Note: As an exception to MAP's posting policy we are providing the press release below that resulted in this story.
Also: Photos of both Health Canada's 'cannabis' and the medical grade cannabis supplied by compassion clubs, along with other research data can be found at http://safeaccess.ca/research/HCvsVICSpics.htm

FIRST TOKERS OF HEALTH CANADA CANNABIS CALL IT DISGUSTING, WANT MONEY BACK

OTTAWA ( CP ) - Some of the first patients to smoke Health Canada's government-approved marijuana say it's "disgusting" and want their money back.

"It's totally unsuitable for human consumption," said Jim Wakeford, 58, an AIDS patient in Gibsons, B.C. "It gave me a slight buzziness for about three to five minutes, and that was it. I got no other effect from it."

Barrie Dalley, a 52-year-old Toronto man who uses marijuana to combat the nausea associated with AIDS, said the Health Canada dope actually made him sick to his stomach.

"I threw up," Dalley said Monday. "It made me nauseous because I had to use so much of it. It was so weak in potency that I really threw up."

Both men are returning their 30-gram bags, and Dalley is demanding his money back - $150 plus taxes. Wakeford is returning his unpaid bill for two of the bags with a letter of complaint.

A third AIDS patient says he's also unhappy with the product, which is supposed to contain 10.2 per cent THC, the main active ingredient.

"I'm still smoking it - I would prefer better, but it's all I've got," said Jari Dvorak, 62, in Toronto. "I think Health Canada certainly should do better with the quality."

All three are among 10 patients who have registered with Health Canada to buy dope directly from the government to alleviate their medical symptoms. Another 39 applications are pending.

Health Canada's Medical Marijuana.

The department was compelled to begin direct distribution in July, following an Ontario court order this year that said needy patients should not be forced to get their cannabis on the streets or from unauthorized growers, who themselves obtain seeds or cuttings illegally.

The marijuana is being grown for Health Canada deep underground in a vacant mine section in Flin Flon, Man., by Prairie Plant Systems on a $5.75-million contract. The department originally intended that the product go first to accredited researchers to demonstrate whether or not cannabis is medically effective.

Health Minister Anne McLellan has said she opposes the direct distribution of government cannabis to patients and that the program will end if the department wins its appeal of the Ontario court decision.

The government dope also came under fire Monday from Canadians for Safe Access, a patients' rights group that is pressing for supplies of safe, effective marijuana.

Laboratory tests indicate the Health Canada product has only about three per cent THC - not the 10.2 per cent advertised - and contains contaminants such as lead and arsenic, said spokesman Philippe Lucas of Victoria.

"This particular product wouldn't hold a candle to street level cannabis," he said in an interview.

But Lucas declined to identify the three labs that did the testing, other than to indicate they're in Vancouver, saying he fears the facilities might suffer repercussions from Health Canada because they were not authorized to possess the cannabis.

He also would not say how the group obtained the sample of government dope.

A spokeswoman for Health Canada said the department can't accept laboratory findings from anonymous facilities.

"We question the validity of the test results because Canadians for Safe Access has been unwilling to reveal who did the testing, and when the testing was done, and under what conditions," said Krista Apse.

She said the Flin Flon cannabis had to meet exacting production standards and was thoroughly tested for its quality.

No patients have complained directly to Health Canada so far, Apse said, and the department will not accept returns or provide refunds.

Lucas, who smokes marijuana to cope with his hepatitis C infection, said the lab results also showed that the cannabis provided at a Victoria compassion club for patients registers at more than 12 per cent and is freer from contaminants.

He said the government cannabis was too finely ground up with stems and leaves, calling it "shwag" or "bunk," street terminology for the lowest grade of marijuana.

Seed Information

http://www.almightyseeds.com

Only by legalising drugs can we avoid sinking into a US-style gun culture

Ann Byfield is another pointless victim in the "war against drugs". This might seem like a perverse conclusion. Wasn’t the 7-year old gunned down this week in Kensal Green by vicious dealers who were after her crack-cocaine-selling father? Isn’t her death yet another argument for
hammering away at the fight against drugs?

No. Ann was killed, clearly and plainly, by our government’s policy of prohibition. This country has made a political choice to place the supply and distribution of some drugs ­ heroin, cocaine and so on ­ in the hands of criminal gangs rather than phramacists and businesses. Anybody with a
legal trade like, say, selling alcohol, has no need for guns, because they have recourse to the police to protect their property rights. The suppliers of drugs do not have this choice, so they tool up to protect their trade from intruders or competitors. It really is that simple.

If the vast market for drugs in this country cannot be met in a legal way, it will inevitably be met like this, in an illegal way. All politicians know this. After years and years of ‘crack-downs’, it is stunnningly obvious to all but the most blinded ideologues that the drugs trade will never be eliminated. The choice confronting this country is not between some people using drugs and nobody using drugs. It is between people using illegal drugs that they buy from gun-wielding criminals, or people using legal drugs and far fewer guns floating around.

The political choice we have made comes with a price tag. You don’t see the people who pay that price in the news too often. They are junkies dying in squalid flats because they have been sold bad heroin. They are black men shot dead in poor areas. We noticed Ann only because she was unusually young; a prohibition-related murder in itself is not unusual at all. They are the invisible, forgotten victims of a war that has never worked.

It’s often argued that drugs legalisation is a middle class cause. Legal heroin might look very nice in Hampstead, critics sneer, but on Moss Side it looks like another catastrophe waiting to happen. In fact, it’s poor areas that feel the effects of prohibition. Ann Byfield wasn’t gunned down
in Islington. Entire council estates are not dominated by gun-toting criminal gangs in Cheshire. We already have effective decriminalisation in middle class areas: it’s not rich white men who get busted and jailed for cocaine use but the poor black men who supply them. It’s not the rich who
are getting shot yet; it’s the poor.

Every time there is a drug-related gun crime (and they happen across this island every hour of the day), we need to remind ourselves of one thing. We choose to create the conditions in which this happens, and we can choose to change it tomorrow if we have the sense.

Nobody will be shot in Chicago today because of a dispute about alcohol. That is because the supply and distribution of alcohol were brought back into the remit of the legal economy in the United States in the 1930s. The problems inherent to a vast illegal trade ­ and the network of criminal gangs that it necessarily involves ­ quickly disappeared. True, some of the gangs transferred to other criminal activities, like protection racketeering. Most went bust and found their way into the proper economy, sometimes as licensed alcohol sellers. We have travelled so far from that world that it would seem bizarre today to imply there was anything illicit about liquor store or even a recovering alcoholic in the White House. One day, this is how we will think about the legal suppliers and users of drugs.

If we bring drugs into the legitimate economy, we will experience the same benevolent effects that the US enjoyed after the repeal of prohibition. In one fell swoop, we could bankrupt most of the criminals in Britain, and free up the police to deal with burglars, rapists and murderers.

We choose not to do that. Instead, we have chosen a vast increase in gun crime. There are now three million illegally-held guns in Britain, according to the Metropolitan Police, and the rate of increase is dizzying: over 150% in the last three years. The deputy commissioner of the Met, Ian
Fuller, has warned that gun crime is "threatening the fabric of London", and nearly all of it is related to the drug trade. All the other reasons why this has happened ­ the glamourisation of LA-style gangsta culture, for example ­ are trivial compared to the need that criminal gangs have to
protect and extend their trade.

If we do not redress this problem soon by creating legitimate, licensed drug sellers (probably through the existing network of chemists), the whole debate about guns will shift in dangerous directions. We are reaching a point where guns are intruding into the lives of people completely
unnconnected to the drug trade. Last year, Alice Carroll, 70, was shot in the back as a gunman opened fire on another man near her home in a quiet residential cul-de-sac in Longsight, Manchester. A freak occurrence? Tell that to the mother and father gunned down in front of their seven-year-old son; to the 14-year-old shot down with an automatic machine gun; the man
shot in the head during a "road rage" row; the clubbers, including several teenagers, shot as they queued on one of London's busiest high streets last year.

Once ordinary people begin to fear unexpected gun crime like this ­ a moment getting closer every day ­ they begin to believe that they need guns to protect themselves, and a terrible spiral is created. This is the case in the United States, where ordinary people get guns for self-defence and a whole panapoly of social problems are unleashed: their arguments are far more likely to descend into shooting, terrible accidents happen when children discover their parents’ guns, criminals get even bigger guns than everybody else… anybody who has ever watched ER could continue this list in several different ways.

The arguments for ‘gun freedom’ from the US are just as tediously predictable. Already we are beginning to hear these Charlton Heston-style arguments on the fringes of the British right: Richard Littlejohn and Peter Hitchens have recently argued in defence of the ‘right’ for decent, law-abiding folk to have guns for self-protection, and it won’t be long before some Tory MPs get in on the act. The Tony Martin case prefigured how the guns debate will evolve in Britain if gun crime continues to rise at the current rate.

Drugs legalisation ­ the only real way to slash gun crime - seems a very distant prospect at the moment. Danny Kushlick of Transform, the most prominent and eloquent drugs legalisation charity in Britain, says, "We need to prepare the ground so that in ten to fifteen years legalisation seems like common sense. It’s obviously not going to happen in the next few years."

He is undeniably right ­ David Blunkett blanched at even the pathetically limited moves on cannabis that the government unveiled last week. Yet by the time we get around to legalising, we will might have developed a gun culture that is so entrenched ­ with ordinary people demanding that they have the right to own guns too, and with all criminals tooled up rather than just drug dealers - that we can never reverse it.

A Cannabis Odyssey

My improbable cannabis enlightenment began in 1967. I was concerned that so many young people were using the terribly dangerous drug marijuana, so I decided to review the medical and scientific literature on the substance and write a reasonably objective and scientifically sound paper on its dangers. Young people were ignoring the warnings of the government, but perhaps some would seriously consider a well-documented review of the available data.

As I began to explore the literature, I discovered, to my astonishment, that I had to seriously question my own understanding. What I thought I knew was based largely on myths, old and new. I realized how little my training in science and medicine had protected me against this
misinformation. I had become not just a victim of a disinformation campaign, but because I am a physician, one of its agents as well.

To share my new skepticism, I wrote a book, Marijuana Reconsidered, which was published in 1971 by Harvard University Press. While writing the book I considered trying marijuana, not because I thought it would inform my work, but because it appeared to be an interesting recreational experience. I decided against it in order to avoid compromising my objectivity.

After publication, I began to explore marijuana as a drug for relaxation and recreation, and I was not disappointed. In fact, it soon displaced alcohol altogether. I was 44 years old in 1972, when I experienced my first marijuana high. I have found cannabis so useful and so benign that I have
used it ever since-as a recreational drug, as a medicine and as an enhancer of some capacities.

I am one of more than 12 million Americans who use it regularly. We smoke marijuana not because we are driven by uncontrollable "Reefer Madness" cravings, as some propaganda would have others believe, but because we have learned its value from experience. Yet almost all of the research, writing, political activity and legislation devoted to marijuana has been concerned
only with the question of whether it is harmful and how much harm it does. The only exception is the growing interest in the exploration of cannabis as a medicine, but as encouraging as that development is, it represents only one category of marijuana use. The others are sometimes grouped under the general heading of "recreational," but that is hardly an adequate description of, say, marijuana's capacity to heighten the appreciation of music and art or to strengthen the sense of connection to the natural world. It can deepen emotional and sexual intimacy, crystallize new ideas and insights, and expand one's capacity to appreciate new aspects of life.

Experienced users know that ideas flow more readily under its influence. Some of these ideas are good, some are bad; sorting them out is best done while straight. Now, whenever I have a difficult problem to solve or decision to make, I try to think about it both stoned and straight.

I often wonder whether, if I had begun to use cannabis earlier, I would have avoided making some choices I now regret. The worst career choice I ever made was to enter psychoanalytic training. Although I became skeptical about some aspects of psychoanalytic theory during that time, my qualms were not sufficient to dull the enthusiasm with which I began treating patients psychoanalytically in 1967. It was not until the mid-'70s, shortly after I began to smoke marijuana, that my emerging doubts about the therapeutic effectiveness of psychoanalysis began to make me uncomfortable.

The evenings when I smoke marijuana provide, among other things, an opportunity to review ideas, events and interactions of the day. This cannabis review-of-the-day is almost always self-critical, often harshly so, and its scope is broad. In 1980, the cumulative effect of these stoned
self-critiques finally made me decide not to accept new psychoanalytic patients and then to resign from the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute.

I had been puzzled for many years over one aspect of another bad decision I made, this time as an adolescent. In later years it was not difficult for me to understand why I made the decision to leave high school early in my senior year to enter the Merchant Marine. What I could not understand was why my loving father (since deceased) so readily acquiesced to this plan; he never lifted a finger to try to prevent his promising high school student son from abandoning our shared dream of my going to college. One evening while stoned many yeas later it came to me, and I now understand what had seemed so inexplicable about his behavior. Would I have eventually
figured it out without the subtle alteration of consciousness that cannabis provides? Perhaps.

There is no denying that many people, especially young people, use marijuana mainly for "partying and hanging out". And most non-users (at least until they learn of its medical value) believe that is all cannabis is useful for. This stereotype is so powerful that reactions ranging from puzzlement to outrage greet claims to the contrary. Anyone who attributes more than recreational and medicinal value to marijuana runs the risk of being derided as a vestigial hippie. So it is not surprising that many people who use cannabis do so behind drawn curtains.

If more people in the business, academic and professional worlds were known to be marijuana users, the government would not find it so easy to pursue its harmful and wasteful disinformation campaign. That campaign continues partly because of the widespread false belief that cannabis smokers are either irresponsible and socially marginal people or adolescents who "experiment" and "learn their lesson." These lies are perpetuated when those who know better remain silent. The gay and lesbian out-of-the-closet movement has done much to reduce homophobia in this country. It may be difficult in the current climate where dissenters are intimidated and profiled, but if the many people of substance and accomplishment who use cannabis could find the courage to "come out" in the same way, they could contribute greatly to the diminution of "cannabinophobia" and help to end the harassment, persecution and prosecution of innocent marijuana users.

Dr. Lester Grinspoon is an emeritus professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He is the author of Marijuana Reconsidered and a co-author of Marijuana, the Forbidden Medicine. He currently manages the website www.marijuana-uses.com/.

THAT'S ALL FOR NOW FOLKS!