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PRESS RELEASE - 29th DECEMBER, 2003
 Edition
25.
Cannabis News Items From Around the World
U.S. House of Reps. Approves Bill to Censor American Citizens
from Voicing Opposition to U.S. War on Drugs
http://www.commondreams.org/news2003/1209-03.htm
WASHINGTON - December 9 - A little-known provision buried within
the omnibus federal spending bill that the U.S. House of Representatives
approved yesterday would take away federal grants from local and
state transportation authorities that allow citizens to run advertising
on buses, trains, or subways in support of reforming our nation’s
drug laws. If enacted, the
provision could effectively silence community groups around the
country that are using advertising to educate Americans about
medical marijuana and other drug policy reforms. Meanwhile, this
same bill gives the White House $145 million in taxpayer money
to run anti-marijuana ads next year.
“The government can’t spend taxpayer money promoting
one side of the drug policy debate while prohibiting taxpayers
from using their own money to promote the other side,” said
Bill Piper, Associate Director of National Affairs for the Drug
Policy Alliance. “This is censorship and not the democratic
way.”
The provision raises both constitutional and political concerns.
Courts have generally ruled that public transportation authorities
cannot legally discriminate against any political viewpoint. Thus,
local and state authorities could soon be put in an impossible
position: if they reject advertising in support of drug policy
reform they risk running afoul of the First Amendment; but if
they accept drug reform advertising they lose federal money. Civil
libertarians warn the provision also sets a dangerous precedent.
Special interest groups could lobby for federal bans on advertising
with pro-life or pro-gun messages, or in support of or against
gay marriage or abortion.
The provisions in the omnibus spending bill are part of a growing
controversy over the use of taxpayer money to influence state
and federal drug policies:
Court records show that Members of Congress created the federal
government’s first anti-drug advertising campaign in 1998
as a way of using billions of taxpayer dollars to influence voters
to reject state medical marijuana ballot measures.
In 2000 it was discovered that the White House Office of National
Drug Control Policy used financial incentives to get newspapers
and magazines to editorialize in favor of the drug war and get
TV and movie producers to change their scripts to reflect pro-drug
war views.
Current Drug Czar, John Walters, and his staff have used taxpayer
money to campaign against local and state ballot measures and
legislation they disapprove of. After Walters spent taxpayer money
to defeat a 2002 ballot measure in Nevada, the Nevada Attorney
General complained, “The excessive federal intervention
that was exhibited in this instance is particularly disturbing
because it sought to influence the outcome of a Nevada election.”
Earlier this year, Members of Congress tried to give the White
House the ability to spend over a billion dollars in taxpayer
money on negative attack ads against medical marijuana ballot
measures and Congressional candidates that support drug policy
reform. Although a public outcry stopped the legislation, existing
federal law may already allow the White House to use taxpayer
money to influence elections.
The Drug Policy Alliance is urging Congress to remove the anti-free
speech provision from the omnibus spending bill, eliminate taxpayer-financed
anti-drug advertising, and prohibit the drug czar from using federal
money to campaign and lobby against reform.
“The drug policy debate is the only one in which federal
bureaucrats are allowed to use taxpayer money to influence how
taxpayers vote,” said Piper. “This is a dangerous
precedent. Congress needs to enact a firm ban on using our money
in this way, before this becomes the rule instead of the exception.”
Sanctions Possible if Jamaica legalises personal use.
Pubdate: Thu, 11 Dec 2003
Source: Jamaica Observer (Jamaica)
Copyright: 2003 The Jamaica Observer Ltd,
Contact: mailto:editorial@jamaicaobserver.com
Website: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com
Author: Balford Henry
'DECRIMINALISATION OF GANJA COULD HURT JAMAICA'
Solicitor General Warns That Country Could Face Sanctions
If Drug
Allowed For Personal Use
Solicitor General Michael Hylton yesterday warned parliamentarians
studying the ganja issue that Jamaica would breach international
obligations and face tough US sanctions, if the drug is
decriminalised.
Hylton told a meeting of the Joint Select Committee of Parliament
studying the National Ganja Commission report, that although Parliament
could pass amendments to remove the constitutional bar to decriminalisation
it would, in all likelihood, breach international obligations
in respect of drug control.
"If recommendation one is implemented, and the Dangerous
Drugs Act is amended to decriminalise the private, personal use
of marijuana in small quantities, Jamaica would, in all likelihood,
be in breach of certain international obligations in respect of
drug control," he said. Recommendation one of the Ganja Commission's
report asked that, "the relevant laws be amended so that
ganja can be decriminalised for the private, personal use of small
quantities by adults."
The statement landed like a spanner in the works of the parliamentarians
who seemed on track to some sort of consensus on, at least, decriminalisation.
Committee members Senator Trevor Munroe; Dr Patrick Harris (Northern
Trelawny) and Mike Henry (Central Clarendon) sought loopholes
around the conventions and the threat of sanctions, but Hylton
could only offer them the consequences.
Questions were also raised by Dr Ken Baugh (West Central St Catherine);
Sharon Hay-Webster (South Central Clarendon) and Senator Shirley
Williams.
"Jamaica would, in my view, be in breach of its international
obligations if Parliament were to implement recommendation one
of the Ganja Commission's recommendations," Hylton insisted.
"The country could conceivably decriminalise marijuana use,
but as the relevant conventions require possession, purchase,
cultivation and the supply factors to be subjected to the criminal
law, it is not clear how the recommendation would work in practice,"
he added.
Henry suggested that it may be best that the committee sign off
on its report, immediately, and move to a "conscience vote"
on the issue in Parliament as soon as possible. But chairman Morais
Guy, and Dr Munroe felt that it would be better to seek a consensus
that could guide the
final debate.
Hylton said that the problem was with the three recommendations
for decriminalisation. The other two concerned decriminalisation
for personal use, except by juveniles and in premises accessible
to the public, and for use of ganja as a sacrament for religious
purposes.
The United States Government is opposed to the decriminalisation
of ganja. Embassy spokeswoman, Orna Bloom, has been quoted as
saying that iit could create "the perception, especially
to our youth, that marijuana is not harmful, which could lead
to an increase in its use".
Hylton, in explaining decertification in this context, said that
the United States Government policy under the Foreign Assistance
Act of 1961, requires the president to take steps to decertify
countries categorised as major illicit drug producing and/or drug
transit countries. He noted that Jamaica was already listed among
the major Illicit drug producing and drug transit countries.
"Thus, if Jamaica were to decriminalise marijuana for personal
use, there would be a distinct risk that the country would be
subject to the sanctions associated with decertification,"
he said,. The
sanctions, he added, would be significant.
The solicitor general also told the committee that Jamaica is
currently a party to three international conventions concerning
illicit drugs:
* The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961, as amended by
its 1972 Protocol (the Single Narcotics Convention). Jamaica acceded
to that treaty on October 6, 1989 and today over 155 states are
parties thereto.
* The Convention on Psychiatropic Substances, 1971. Jamaica acceded
to this treaty on October 6, 1989. Today, over 160 states are
parties thereto.
* The United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic
Drugs and Psychotropic Substances, 1988. Jamaica acceded to this
treaty on December 29, 1995. Today more than 150 states are parties
thereto.
Hylton said that all three conventions adopt a restrictive approach
to marijuana use and, in the interest of brevity, illustrated
how implementation of the Ganja Commission's first recommendation
would cause Jamaica to be in breach of the Singles Narcotics Convention."
He said that the convention, which lists ganja as a prohibitive
drug, seeks to expressly "limit exclusively to medical and
scientific purposes, the production, manufacture, export, import,
distribution of, trade in, use and possession of drugs".
Language, which he said, clearly indicated that ganja use was
not encouraged by the treaty.
The convention, he added, states that subject to constitutional
limitations, each party must adopt measures to ensure that cultivation,
production, manufacture, extraction, preparation, possession,
offering for sale, distribution, purchase, sale, delivery, transport,
brokerage, dispatch, importation and exportation of drugs is punishable
when committed intentionally, "and that serious offences
shall be liable to adequate punishment, particularly by imprisonment
or other related penalties of deprivation of liberty".
On the question of international human rights, Hylton said that
this was the second legal consideration which had influenced the
Ganja Commission in favour of the recommendation for decriminalisation.
However, he said that even with the recognition of fundamental
human rights, the conferences which formulated the three treaties,
still sought to ensure, "in unambiguous terms", that
ganja possession, purchase and cultivation, even for personal
use, are to be subject to criminal sanctionss.
"Given the clear language of the three relevant conventions,
the device by which human rights considerations could somehow
trump the rules against drug activity requires further explanation
by those who posit the human rights argument in this context,"
he said.
Senate "Discrimination and Drug Addiction" ad, seeking
submissions
The following advertisement appeared in today's papers….
Discrimination and Drug Addiction
The Senate Legal and Constitutional Legisaltion Committee is
inquiring into the provisions of the Disability Discrimination
Amendment Bill 2003.
The Bill removes the prohibition on disability discrimination
on the ground of a person's addiction to a prohibited drug. The
provisions would not apply to people who are receiving treatment
for their addiction.
The closing date for submissions is 9 February 2004.
For further information phone (02) 6277 3560, email legcon.sen@aph.gov.au
or visit www.aph.gov.au/senate_legal
Cheers
Jason Rostant
Electorate Officer/Researcher
Disability Adviser
Office of Senator Brian Greig
Australian Democrats Senator for WA
1/151 Brisbane Street, Perth 6000
Tel: 08 9228 3133
Fax: 08 9228 3033
www.democrats.org.au
Federal US court rules for medical marijuana use
ABC news (USA)
Last Update: Thursday, December 18, 2003. 10:01am (AEDT)
US court rules for medical marijuana use
A US appeals court has handed a landmark victory to patients who
use marijuana to ease their pain by ruling that the US Government
could not prosecute two women who grew it.
Proponents of medical marijuana hailed the decision by a Court
of Appeals in San Francisco, saying it could set a precedent on
the thorny issue of medical use of the drug.
Some US states have found themselves at loggerheads with the
federal government over the issue of growing and using marijuana
for medical reasons, with liberal states such as California and
Washington passing laws allowing the practice in defiance of federal
laws.
"I am totally ecstatic about what this decision will do
not only for me, but for hundreds of thousands of patients across
the country," said medical marijuana patient Angel McClary
Raich, who brought the successful lawsuit.
"Not too many people get to come up against someone who
is as evil as [US Attorney-General] John Ashcroft and actually
win and that feels very good," she said.
US Government prosecutors have long argued that California's
1996 law allowing the use of marijuana for medical purposes was
superseded by the US laws which ban the use or cultivation of
marijuana for any purpose.
The ruling covers seven western states that have passed medical
marijuana laws - Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Nevada,
Oregon and Washington.
AFGHANISTAN: DRUG WAR YIELDS TO TERROR WAR AS RUMSFELD GLAD-HANDS
DRUG DEALING WARLORDS
Despite all its fulminations about wiping out the global drug
trade, the US government is once again turning a blind eye to
the trade when some of its key allies are the ones overseeing
the drug running.
The country in question is Afghanistan, by far the world's largest
opium producer, and the allies with dirty hands are some of that
violence-torn country's warlords. Despite longstanding allegations
linking warlords including Abdul Rashid Dostum and Ustad Attas
Mohammed to the opium trade, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
publicly embraced the pair at a meeting in Afghanistan early this
month.
The defense secretary was not congratulating the warlords for
their role in supplying Western Europe with cheap heroin.
Instead, he was thanking them for ending armed clashes between
their supporters and allowing the Afghan government led by President
Hamid Karzai to take possession of some of the tanks and other
heavy military equipment they control.
Rumsfeld's interest in the warlords is all about realpolitik.
Since the overthrow of the Taliban government as part of the US
"war on terror" in December 2001, the US has tried desperately
to cobble together a regime that can govern the fractious nation,
and the Afghan warlords are a central component in that plan.
In fact, warlords like areas they control; the central government
headed by Karzai effectively governs only Kabul and its outlying
areas. Dostum has also been rewarded by being named Deputy Secretary
of Defense for the Karzai government.
And if Rumsfeld is interested in dalliances with men who do not
allow scruples to get in the way of political necessity, he has
certainly found his man in Dostum. An Uzbek from Mazar-i-Sharif
in the Afghan north, Dostum rose to power as a Communist labor
leader in the 1970s, forming militias to fight on the side of
the Russians and then their Afghan puppet, Najibullah. But seeing
that Najibullah was doomed, Dostum switched sides, joining the
US-financed mujaheedin in their
jihad against the Communists. During the 1990s, Dostum's forces
switched sides repeatedly, helping plunge Afghanistan into the
chaos that led to the rise of the Taliban in 1995. He fled to
Turkey with the rise of the Taliban, returning to rejoin the US-backed
Northern Alliance as it drove the Taliban from power in late 2001.
Dostum has been described as a "war criminal" by groups
such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, which cite
not only his role in the Afghan civil wars of the 1990s -- particularly
massive rocket attacks on Kabul in 1994 by his forces that killed
thousands of
civilians -- but also his treatment of prisoners, including the
deaths of hundreds who suffocated or froze to death in the shipping
containers Dostum used to hold them in after the battle of
Mazar-i-Sharif in December 2001. He is also notorious for his
treatment of his own men: He is widely alleged to have punished
troops by tying them to the treads of tanks and driving the tanks
until nothing is left but pieces of flesh.
Dostum and the Northern Alliance, which now dominates the government
in Kabul, have been linked repeatedly to the opium trade.
According to the US State Department, after the Taliban ban on
opium planting in 2001, almost all the opium in the country that
year -- 77 tons -- came from areas dominated by the Northern Alliance.
And since the Alliance-dominated government came to power, opium
production has
gone through the roof, with the area under cultivation more than
doubling over last year and increasing 36-fold from 2001.
And the poppy crop is spreading rapidly, particularly in northeast
Afghanistan, where the ethnic Tajik Northern Alliance is in control,
said Christopher Langton of the London-based International Institute
for Strategic Studies. Warlord Mohammed, one of the men with whom
Rumsfeld shook hands last week, is the man in charge there.
Some of the opium produced there is "leaking" south
to Pakistan, Langston told the Guardian (UK), where the Taliban
and Al Qaeda could be benefiting, he added.
The opium crop is projected to generate a billion dollars in
revenue inside Afghanistan this year, half of the country's Gross
Domestic Product. And the fruits of that harvest are widely shared.
"They're all benefiting: the Taliban, Al Qaeda, some former
commanders, warlords who control their own territories,"
said Abdul Raheem Yaseer, assistant director of the Institute
for Afghan Studies at the University of Nebraska-Omaha, one of
the leading Afghan studies programs in the US. "It is the
higher up administrators and politicians who benefit more than
the common people," he told DRCNet. "The warlords and
commanders have used this to make money for years."
For the United Nations, US support of the warlords is doubly
vexing.
"Why is the international presence in Afghanistan not able
to bring under control a phenomenon connected to international
terrorism and organized crime?" asked Antonio Maria Costa,
head of the UN drug office, in February. "Why is the central
government in Kabul not able to enforce the ban on opium cultivation
as effectively as the Taliban regime did in 2000-01?"
The answer is that the warlords control the opium trade, and
the United States supports the warlords because it needs them
to fend off a resurgent Taliban and its Al Qaeda allies and to
build a strong central government.
On December 9, the UN's top envoy to Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi,
again attacked the warlords.
Many Afghans are angered by their corruption and prominent role
in the government, said Brahimi in a discussion paper. "The
perception that corruption exists... is coupled with the fear
that the rapid expansion of the drug economy will undermine the
nascent institutions of the state," he wrote.
What is worse, Brahimi continued, is that the disaffection, particularly
in the Pashtun-dominated south, home of the Taliban and scene
of increased fighting in recent weeks. "Now, a critical stage
has been reached," wrote Brahimi. "The Taliban never
accepted defeat... They and others are taking full advantage of
the popular disaffection."
It is the threat of a resurgent Taliban that finally roused US
drug warriors to at least pay lip service to their nominally prohibitionist
policy. Late last month, a few days before Rumsfeld met with Dostum
and Mohammed, US drug czar John Walters launched a rhetorical
broadside against the Afghan opium trade. "Poppy cultivation
in Afghanistan is a major and growing problem," said Walters.
"Drug cultivation and trafficking are undermining the rule
of law and putting money in the pocket of terrorists. The drug
trade is hindering the ability of the Afghan people to rebuild
their country and rejoin the international community.
It is in the interest of all nations, including our European
partners, to help the Karzai government fight the drug trade."
A strong US anti-opium effort in Afghanistan would be welcome
news to the US's European partners.
Britain, where much of the Afghan opium will end up as heroin,
has for the past two years tried a limited Afghan eradication
campaign, but with little result.
Britain has not succeeded in getting US assistance in its anti-opium
campaign.
And what goes on with Afghani poppies has a huge impact on the
global opium market. According to the United Nations Office on
Drugs and Crime, when the Taliban ban on production went into
effect in 2000, global opium production dropped by 19% to 4,700
tons. Since the end of the Taliban, Afghan production has spurred
new growth in the global poppy crop, with the Afghans producing
nearly 4,000 of the estimated 6,000 ton annual harvest this year.
In its annual survey, Global Illicit Drug Trends, the UN reports
that global production is increasing despite a shrinking number
of acres devoted to the poppy.
Poppy production is decreasing in Laos and Myanmar (see newsbrief
below), but that crop is being replaced by more efficient Afghan
production.
Walters also announced Operation Containment, designed to staunch
the flow of opium from Afghanistan into Central Asia and on to
Europe, but provided few details.
If recent history is any indication, however, Operation Containment
will ignore the warlords allied to the US. More likely to be a
real operation is Operation Avalanche, which with 2,000 US troops
sweeping toward the Afghan-Pakistan border in the southeast, is
designed to root out Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters before the
winter.
It is the largest US military operation in Afghanistan since
the fall of the Taliban two years ago. (As of December 10, Operation
Avalanche has killed 15 Afghan children and two peasant farmers,
but no Taliban or Al Qaeda.)
While Walters talks the prohibitionist talk, Rumsfeld walks the
realpolitik walk, and the US hops in bed with some of the planet's
largest drug dealers. This is not new. In fact, it is not even
new in
Afghanistan. That country became the world's largest opium producer
during the 1980s, when the US, through its intermediaries in Pakistan's
intelligence services, sponsored the mujahadin fighters in their
jihad against the Russian occupiers. Those opium fields helped
overthrow the Russians, and the US turned a blind eye.
Similarly, the US turned a blind eye to cocaine trafficking among
its Contra allies in Central America in the 1980s, opium and heroin
trafficking among its Hmong and South Vietnamese government allies
in Southeast Asia in the 1960s, and to heroin trafficking by French
and
Italian mobsters in Marseilles in the 1950s. (Better the mob than
the communist unions, went the argument.)
"This is not the first time we've had contradictory policies,"
concurred Ted Galen Carpenter, an international drug policy specialist
at the Cato Institute (http://www.cato.org) and author of Bad
Neighbor Policy: Washington's Futile War on Drugs in Latin America.
"The CIA, for example,
at least looked the other way while its allies in Central America
trafficked in drugs," he told DRCNet. "The need to eradicate
drugs collides with the overall US policy of promoting stability
in Afghanistan. I can't imagine the US doing anything that would
promote political instability
there, and trying to crack down on the drug trade would certainly
carry that risk."
John Thompson, executive director of Canada's Mackenzie Institute
http://www.mackenzieinstitute.com),
a free-market think-tank that studies political violence, largely
agreed, telling DRCNet neither the US nor the government in Kabul
can afford to press the effort to wipe out the opium trade right
now. "That would drive the peasants into the hands of the
Taliban," he said. "What is really needed now is to
stabilize Afghanistan, and to do that the best thing may be to
achieve a degree of political stability without tackling the drug
problem.
If you undermine the Karzai administration by waging war on the
opium crop, you will just create a chaotic situation like there
was ten years ago, and that's what gave rise to the Taliban in
the first
place," Thompson argued. "Getting political stability,
getting the refugees home, getting infrastructure repaired --
all of that should be a bigger priority than wiping out opium."
And trying to wipe out the trade probably wouldn't work anyway,
Carpenter said. "In reality, we have little choice but to
ignore it. We are not going to stamp it out. Opium has been a
major cash crop for Afghanistan as long as anyone wants to remember.
As we see with prohibitionist strategies in general, suppression
doesn't work. If there is demand, there will be suppliers. If
we do try to crack down, we will provoke political instability
and probably hostility from the warlords against the occupation,
and that could get American soldiers killed," Carpenter argued.
"Walters will be overruled, although no one will say so out
loud."
Maybe so. But it would also be nice if the US government could
have a drug policy that did not stink of hypocrisy and situational
ethics.
COPENHAGEN: END IS NIGH FOR Christiania COMMUNE
END IS NIGH FOR THE COMMUNE THAT KEPT HIPPIE DREAM ALIVE
The laid-back life of the enclave of Christiania is under threat
from a resurgent Danish Right, reports Jason Burke in Copenhagen
It's Christmas in Christiania. There are trees outside the meeting
house, a Santa near the commune's archives and above the array
of Moroccan, Afghan or Lebanese cannabis resin, are strings of
fairy lights.
But the people of Christiania, a 30-year-old self-governing
commune in central Copenhagen, are far from jolly. There is a
sense of unease in the chill, damp air that drifts in off the
Baltic and the North Sea.
For the 1,000 strong 'alternative community' knows this Christmas
may be its last.
Ever since local hippies, performance artists and homeless people
seized a complex of old military barracks and refused to co-operate
with the state 32 years ago, conservative politicians have sought
to close Christiania down. Now, for the first time in Denmark's
recent political history, an alliance of the commune's harshest
political opponents has a majority in parliament. A law will be
passed within months in effect ending the commune's de facto autonomy.
Eviction notices will be issued shortly afterwards.
The controversy has split Denmark. Critics of the government
say the right-wingers and their supporters are reacting 'like
Pavlov's dogs' against anything that smacks of traditional Danish
leftism. 'From sustainable power to welfarism to immigration,
they are fighting the battles of the Seventies all over again,'
said Ole Lykke, the editor of Christiania's own newspaper.
This is admitted by Adam Moller, a former special forces soldier
and conservative MP, whose party is in alliance with the hard-right
Danish People's Party. 'We have been too tolerant and too liberal
for too long in this country. No one in Denmark should be beyond
the law.
There is a limit and Christiania is past that limit,' he said.
The main grievance of Moller and his colleagues is that Christiania,
which is a no-go area for Copenhagen's police, has become a haven
for drug dealers. No one denies drugs are on sale in the 840-acre
waterside enclave in flagrant defiance of strict Danish laws.
Last week, 24 hours after a major police raid, The Observer found
a dozen stalls open on 'Pusher Street' in the centre of Christiania.
At each, customers, predominantly young locals, browsed a range
of different
resins and pre-rolled joints. Prices ranged from 20 kroners (UKP2.20)
for joints containing 'home-grown' hashish to 40 kroners for those
made with powerful stuff from Afghanistan. Nearby stalls sold
drugs paraphernalia.
Many of the drugs purchased are smoked in Christiana itself.
The sprawling complex is full of cafes and terraces where, all
year round, Copenhagen's young come to smoke. There are restaurants
with a city-wide reputation where local literati sit down to UKP50-a-head
meals
and have a smoke with their post-prandial coffee. There is a sports
club, with the motto, 'You'll never smoke alone'. Christiana is
also a massive tourist attraction, visited by 750,000 people each
year. In the summer its cobbled streets are thronged with visitors
from all over Europe, some drawn by the drugs, some by the thriving
music scene, some by both.
More than 66lbs of drugs was seized in last week's raid, bringing
the total haul from there this year to 1,543lbs, said Inspector
Lauridson of Copenhagen police. Yet the dealers keep only a single
day's stock in hand.
A self-imposed ban on hard drugs, brought in 20 years ago, has
held, however. All over Christiana are colourful murals and signs
making the commune's opposition to hard drugs clear.
Only residents of Christiania, who have to be admitted by a
consensus vote of its governing council, are allowed by the commune
to sell drugs on Pusher Street. The police claim dealers run multi-million
pound businesses, have links all over Europe and are involved
in hard drugs trafficking. Anti-drugs officers in Norway and Sweden
complain the commune acts as a base for people importing drugs
into their countries.
Police say the Christiania sellers buy their drugs from motorbike
gangs - the rival Hell's Angels and Bandidos - who dominate much
of Denmark's organised crime. Recently gangs from Copenhagen's
new ethnic minorities, have tried to muscle in. 'Turkish, Arab
and Balkan figures
have joined forces and given the motorbike gangs an ultimatum.
That's why the Pusher Street dealers are well armed,' said Lauridson.
He said police raids often provoked a rash of robberies. 'We
take their stock. They are left with debts to the biker gangs.
If they don't pay there is serious violence.'
Even within Christiania, where around 700 adults and 300 children
live, there is controversy over Pusher Street. Many Christianites
say they would be happy for Christiania's role as a haven for
soft drugs consumption to end.
'Let's face it, it would be a far more interesting place if
half the people here weren't centred on drugs,' said Lykke, who
has lived in Christiania for 24 years. Lykke wants a compromise
- maybe the creation of licensed coffee shops, as in Amsterdam.
He points out that hundreds of thousands of Danes smoke cannabis,
despite it being illegal, and describes Pusher Street as a 'bad
solution to a stupid situation'. Others say that the drugs distract
attention from the true focus of Christiana - community, democracy,
shared property, sustainable development and recycling, social
welfarism and 'peace'.
Such opinions are not welcomed by those who profit from drugs.
One seller on Pusher Street, who was born in Christiania, said
he and his fellow tradesmen would battle to save their livelihoods.
'We will fight peacefully at first,' he said, standing beneath
a board covered in photographs of plainclothes policemen sent
to infiltrate the commune. 'We offend politicians just by existing.'
Like almost everyone in Christiana, the 31-year-old, who refused
to give his name, said that the state was using the drugs issue
as an excuse to grab one of the capital's most valuable tracts
of land. 'They just want more luxury flats for the rich,' he said.
'I built my own house here. I have two young children who are
third generation Christianites. I am not going to give all that
up without a struggle.'
So the battle lines are drawn. The Christianites say they have
rights to the land they took 30 years ago and legal status as
a 'social experiment'. They point to the social work they do with
alcoholics and former junkies. Preparations are in train for the
annual Christmas dinner - free food for thousands of down-and-outs.
Voters are divided. Polls show only 45 per cent back the government's
plan to 'normalise' Christiania.
Eva Schmidt, a law professor at Copenhagen University, says
the row reveals a Danish swing to the right and individualism.
'The traditional Danish emphasis on the social side of society
is being
replaced by a stress on individual opportunity. There is less
of a sense of solidarity with one's countrymen, that supporting
the weak benefits everyone.'
Despite the lights, the trees and the tourists buying home-made
plum chutney, Buddha chill-out CDs and quantities of hash, there
is little seasonal cheer in Christiania this Christmas.
MOROCCO LOSING FORESTS TO CANNABIS
Pubdate: Tue, 16 Dec 2003
Source: Guardian, The (UK)
Copyright: 2003 Guardian Newspapers Limited
Contact: mailto:letters@guardian.co.uk
Website: http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/175
Author: Owen Bowcott
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?420
(Cannabis - Popular)
MOROCCO LOSING FORESTS TO CANNABIS
Cannabis production is expanding so fast in Morocco that it
is causing soil erosion and the destruction of long-established
forests, the UN reported yesterday. The illicit cash crop, which
supplies most of the resin used by Europeans, is estimated to
be worth £7bn a year to
trafficking networks.
As much as a quarter of the agricultural land in the Rif, the
mountainous region where the plant is traditionally grown, is
given over to cannabis cultivation, the UN Office on Drugs and
Crime (UNODC) says.
Two-thirds of the local population - as many as 800,000 people
-depend on the crop.
"Through its expansion, cannabis production threatens the
environment of the Rif," said Antonio Maria Costa, executive
director of UNODC.
"[It] risks corrupting the social and economic structure
and compromising any prospects of sustainable development there."
The increase was partially due to the "spectacular expansion
of drug consumption" in Europe since the 1970s, he said.
The report reinforces previous alerts over the scale of the
country's Moroccan drug industry. Earlier this summer, EU agronomists
effectively abandoned a ?750,000 programme aimed at persuading
Moroccan farmers to cultivate avocados rather than cannabis.
The survey, carried out with the cooperation of the Moroccan
government, shows that 134,000 hectares are given over to growing
what is locally known as kif . As much as 47,400 tonnes is harvested.
"In the past 20 years, cannabis cultivation has spread
from the traditional areas in the central Rif, where it has been
grown since the 15th century, to new areas," the UN report
says.
As much as 1.5% of Morocco's arable land is given over to cannabis,
with the average family income derived from it estimated at ?1,280,
although prices have fallen sharply in the past four years in
Britain, possibly as a result of the rapid rise in homegrown marijuana
production.
The gradual softening of laws against cannabis possession do
not, however, appear to have had any significant effect so far
on demand for Moroccan hashish.
Most of the money from illegal sales, however, does not return
to the farmers, whose combined income is believed to be about
?141m, compared with ?7bn earned in Europe.
An earlier UNODC report suggested that cannabis is the most
widely produced, smuggled and consumed illegal drug in the world.
THAT'S ALL FOR NOW FOLKS!
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