PRESS RELEASE - 16th JANUARY, 2004

Edition 26.

Cannabis News Items From Around the World

TOMMY CHONG'S IN THE JOINT

Pubdate: Wed, 10 Dec 2003
Source: San Diego City Beat (CA)
Copyright: 2003 San Diego City Beat.
Contact: editor@sdcitybeat.com
Website: http://www.sdcitybeat.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2764
Author: Dean Kuipers
http://www.mapinc.org/media/2764
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Tommy+Chong
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/ashcroft.htm (religious jihadist John Ashcroft)

TOMMY CHONG'S NEW JOINT

Serving nine months in federal prison for putting his face on a bong, one of America's most beloved comics contemplates the war on stoners, thoughtcrime and reuniting with Cheech.

The joke, of course, is that this is Sgt. Stadanko's revenge. The arch-nemesis of every Cheech & Chong film, actor Stacey Keach seemed like he'd play the greasy, bumbling narc forever, but now U.S. Attorney General and religious jihadist John Ashcroft has taken over the role, and he's not playing it for laughs.

Sitting in the visitation area inside Taft Correctional Institution, a privately run federal prison plunked in the Iraq-like oilfields of California's Central Valley, Tommy Chong found out the hard way that Ashcroft's Department of Justice is now busting thoughtcrime. The 65-year-old writer and director of some of America's most beloved comedies is astonished to find that his movies, in part, earned him nine months in the federal pen.

"They came after me because of the movies, Up in Smoke, Cheech & Chong, and because of my act since 1968," says Chong. "They took my character to be my real persona."

Is that your real persona? I have to ask.

"No," Chong chuckles. "It's a character. It's like the Furry Freak Bros. Cheech & Chong are like comic-strip characters. Everybody knows that the real Cheech isn't the Cheech from Up in Smoke, and the real Tommy Chong isn't the Tommy Chong from the 'Hey man' dude.

"But I was selling bongs with my picture on 'em. And they said, 'Well, this is Tommy Chong.' But I was like Christopher Reeve doing a Superman promotion. [U.S. Attorneys] never saw it that way. And they wanted to make an example of me. Really, what they wanted to do was to shut down the whole culture."

Clearly, Chong's playing both sides. He's not the headbanded, acid-guitar-wielding ur-stoner from the movies, but he is sometimes indistinguishable from that character, and he has embraced that image in public. Just like a lot of other performers. Arnold Schwarzenegger, for example, used quotes from his ultra-violent Terminator movies, like "Hasta la vista, baby," when campaigning for governor. Chong was right to assume that this was not a crime.

Until now. The current U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), unlike any in the last 30 years, has changed the rules. Since 9/11, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) has run ads equating marijuana use with supporting terrorism, and the DOJ has taken that outrageous pronouncement to the next level, equating glassware sales with drug dealing.

On Feb. 24, federal agents launched two simultaneous national sweeps for purveyors of drug paraphernalia, Operation Pipe Dreams out of the U.S. Attorney's office in western Pennsylvania, and Operation Headhunter out of the Northern District of Iowa. Under an apparently little-used 1980s federal law, they scooped up umpteen thousand bongs, pipes, roach clips and even rolling papers from mail-order and Internet suppliers whose shipments crossed state lines. One of those
was the Gardena, Calif., business run by Chong's son Paris, called Nice Dreams Enterprises, doing business as Tommy Chong Glass.

Fifty-five individuals and companies were busted across the country that day. A few others got prison time. The one who got the longest sentence was Tommy Chong. He reported to prison on Oct. 8, and he'll be there until July 2004. A judge recently rejected requests for home detention or early release.

"Tommy's the only one that's gotten a federal sentence," says Allen St. Pierre, spokesperson for the National Organization to Reform Marijuana Laws, or NORML. "He had no prior arrests. He was no flight risk. He is a cultural icon and a taxpayer, probably higher than most of us. And certainly did not fit the basic criteria of who should go to jail for paraphernalia."

But there's one criterion he fit just too neatly. Every burnout in America would hear about it and get scared.

"[Chong] wasn't the biggest supplier. He was a relatively new player. But he had the ability to market products like no other," said U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan at Chong's sentencing.

"They went after Tommy Chong because he was just what they needed," says St. Pierre. "If you have to think of one individual that would represent the government's efforts to enforce prohibition, or a representative of the negative stereotype, then, out of a country of almost 300 million Americans, there's really only about three or four people who fit that bill: Willie Nelson, Woody Harrelson and Tommy Chong."

Dave's not here, man

If only life really were like the movies. Then Chong and some of the inmates would fashion several pairs of gargantuan rave pants out of sweetleaf and, during a prison foam party featuring a jail appearance by, say, Cypress Hill's DJ Muggs, escape in a paisley Beetle full of girls in fuzzy bikini tops, dank smoke pouring out all four windows. Leaving Stadanko blissed-out in the center of the cafeteria dance floor, having found his new high.

Instead, Chong's new reality is a lot more like some crappy, badly soundtracked episode of Cops.

The investigation into Nice Dreams Enterprises was months in the making, as agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), posing as a head shop in Beaver Falls, Penn., just northwest of Pittsburgh, tried to order glassware from Nice Dreams.

"The reason they didn't indict me until later is because our company wouldn't send the order to Pennsylvania," says Chong. The company was wary of the U.S. Attorney's office in the area, which is one of the country's most conservative. "They faked like they were a head shop,
saying, 'C'mon, man, your stuff's selling so great, we need $6,000 worth.' I heard the tape where they [Nice Dreams] turned 'em down.'

But, eventually, the order was filled. The federal paraphernalia law makes it illegal to transport across state lines any device for the use of illicit drugs. Such laws were common at the state and municipal level in the 1980s, but a 1994 U.S. Supreme Court ruling made a somewhat ambiguous federal law available to DOJ prosecutors.

"The decision was called 'Iowa vs. Poster-N-Things,'" says NORML's St. Pierre. "It basically boils down to this. What would a reasonable person think the product is going to be used for? If you're a prosecutor, and you're gonna bring charges on paraphernalia, you would want to bring forward all of the cultural affectations that the products in question are being sold in."

Which means that bongs for sale in a store might not be protected by California law, which requires they be clearly marked "For Tobacco Use Only." According to the Supreme Court, if there are High Times magazines also for sale, stickers and T-shirts with pot leaves on
them, even NORML pamphlets on the countertop, this might indicate that the devices are to be used with marijuana.

Nice Dreams, being an interstate glassware seller by mail and Internet, was guilty by association with its own products. The company sold Tommy Chong urinalysis kits to test for THC, the psychoactive ingredient in pot, a Tommy Chong Get Clean shampoo and Tommy Chong
Urine Luck, a urine-sample additive that would guarantee a clean test for marijuana. Plus, of course, stuff with pot leaves and Tommy's face on it. Which was taken as evidence that this stuff was meant for The Chronic.

"So you get that before a jury of 12 reasonable people," adds St. Pierre, "and the reasonable person, more often than not, says, 'No, I think that that bong with the big marijuana leaf on it, sold in that place with all these other things around it, with drug testing kits and stuff, that was probably not for tobacco.'"

Assistant U.S. Attorney Mary McKeen Houghton pointed out at the trial that almost a pound of marijuana was seized at Chong's house-but he was never prosecuted for possession. They had a bigger target in mind. The glassware itself-and, strangely, only glass bongs and pipes were
seized, not plastic, bamboo or any other thing-has now been criminalized. It's not about what consumers do with it; it's what they might do with it. That is what's known as a thoughtcrime, a crime that never actually occurs.

As in George Orwell's book 1984, thoughtcrime has now become dangerous. On Feb 24, agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) kicked at the door of Tommy Chong's home at 5:30 a.m., automatic weapons drawn, red laser sights flashing down the darkened halls. Chong and his wife, Shelby, who is also a comedian, were asleep.

"Oh, it was a full-on raid," says Chong. "Helicopters, them bangin' on the door. They come in with loaded automatic weapons, flak jackets, helmets, visors, about 20 agents. They bust in the house. They took all my cash, took out my computers, and they took all the glass bongs they could find."

Down in Gardena at the Nice Dreams plant, a similar raid took place, though it was more civilized. Agents simply walked in and carted away all the glassware, computers and business records.

"I thought it was a joke," Chong says. "I thought they had the wrong house. You hear about these guys coming to the wrong house all the time. And then when I found out about the bongs, I was really mad, because my son Paris had just started to make money with the company. I was just outraged."

Sister Mary Elephant

Mary Beth Buchanan, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, is also playing both sides of Chong's publicity. On the press and on the Internet. Comics were among the first to read the writing on the wall. Jay Leno, no friend of the marijuana movement, slammed the government in a monologue, as did Jon Stewart. Lane, an ice-rink marketing director, co-wrote a still-unsold script with Chong about a dope-smoking hockey team, subtly titled Biff Spliff and the Potheads. In November, Lane organized the Free Tommy Chong Brigade to march in Pasadena's annual Doo-Dah Parade, where, he says, he received "a tremendous ovation."

"I think [Chong's arrest] galvanizes the movement, if anything," Lane adds.

"It definitely has a chilling effect," counters NORML's St. Pierre. "High Times magazine would be a very good example. They started to lose a very high percentage of their ad base immediately based on that. So that has an immediate chilling effect on a magazine that, in essence, is the First Amendment vehicle for the drug-policy movement. Paraphernalia is a billion-dollar industry."

Chong is one of them who lost a lot of money selling bongs. The company was still $500,000 in the hole on paper, he says, and he didn't recoup. But his newfound notoriety is creating the ultimate springboard back into Cheech & Chong.

"It all helps," he says. "I'm getting so much fan mail here that I'm going to have to hire somebody to help me answer it. Mail call here is like two sacks, one for me and one for the rest of the people."

Before he went to prison, Chong was already writing a book, The Cheech & Chong Story. Now he's definitely going to write up material about going to prison-and the stories he's heard from other inmates. "Oh, absolutely! I'm definitely writing it. But I'm not going to do anything radical until I'm out of here," he says. "And I got a year of probation to look forward to."

That's time he's going to use for introspection, for his drug-education classes ("I teach them more than they teach me"), for building sculpture and for savoring his new relationship to his old
buddy Cheech. Which already seems to be off on the right foot. "They said on the Internet that part of the reason I got a sentence is because I never gave anybody up, you know?" he deadpans. "But I woulda gave up Cheech in a minute! [Long laugh.] I woulda told on him, man! And I know everything about him! And I still will if they'd give me some time off!"

EDINBURGH'S FIRST CANNABIS CAFE ABOUT TO OPEN

Pubdate: Mon, 15 Dec 2003
Source: Scotsman (UK)
Copyright: The Scotsman Publications Ltd 2003
Contact: Letters_ts@scotsman.com
Website: http://www.scotsman.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/406
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?207 (Cannabis - United Kingdom)

DOORS SET TO OPEN AT EDINBURGH'S FIRST CANNABIS CAFE

The Capital's first cannabis cafe is set to open next month when the drug is downgraded from class B to class C.

The Purple Haze internet cafe in Leith will become a private club where people can bring small amounts of the narcotic to smoke.

It will be the first such establishment to open in Scotland and will test how the new laws are to be applied by police.

Cafe owner Paul Stewart believes turning the former greasy spoon into a private club in the evenings would allow him to operate within the law.

Thirty-seven-year-old Mr Stewart said: "I use cannabis and I'm going to allow people to smoke it. I'm not going to sell it, but I'll allow people to bring their own. "I don't think there's going to be a problem, but I could be wrong. I could end up in jail."

He said the cafe would operate as normal until 4pm then become a nightly club with a UKP5 membership fee to join.

However, a spokesman for Lothian and Borders Police warned that Mr Stewart would face prosecution even if the cafe was run privately.

The spokesman said: "He would be committing an offence. It is an offence if you allow your premises to be used knowingly for the smoking of cannabis."

Cannabis cafes have been operating in England for up to seven months before the owners faced prosecution.

Purple Haze and tobacconists The Pipe Shop, which is also based in Leith, have also started selling magic mushrooms for the price of UKP12 a bag - even though magic mushrooms contain the class A drug psilocybin.

Under the new law, it is thought that people caught smoking cannabis at home will generally not face court action, but receive only a warning or fine.

STUDY TO PIN DOWN MARIJUANA DOSES FOR CHRONIC PAIN

Pubdate: Mon, 22 Dec 2003
Source: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (Canada Web)
Webpage: http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2003/12/22/pot_pain031222
Copyright: 2003 CBC
Contact: letters@cbc.ca
Website: http://www.cbc.ca/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1412
Note: Dr. Mark Ware's research ( http://www.ccicht.ca/ware.htm )
Canadian Consortium for the Investigation of Cannabinoids in Human
Therapeutics

STUDY TO PIN DOWN MARIJUANA DOSES FOR CHRONIC PAIN

MONTREAL - After years of delay, a Canadian study on the value of marijuana as a pain reliever is underway in Montreal.

Dr. Mark Ware, a professor of family medicine and anesthesia at McGill University, treats patients with severe, chronic pain. His clinical trial aims to determine the therapeutic value of cannabis for these patients under real-life conditions.

Health Canada had held up the study, but the department has now given permission to a supplier to release its product for the trial. Many of Ware's patients sought prescriptions for medicinal marijuana after other painkillers failed.

Yanick Drapeau injured his spinal cord in a motorcycle accident 18 months ago and is still in great pain.

"It's like electricity on my leg," said Drapeau. "Like a big shock every day."

Drapeau took morphine every day but the side effects were too much for him. Marijuana eased the pain without making him groggy, he said.

Doctors may sanction the use of cannabis as a medical treatment, but they lack scientific facts to pass on to their patients.

"I wouldn't know how to prescribe it because to my knowledge, there have been no studies of smoked marijuana," said Dr. Francois Lehmann, chair of family medicine at the University of Montreal.

To determine the best dosages, Ware's enrolled 32 patients with neuropathic pain. Their skin is very sensitive to touch or temperature, like a sunburn that can't tolerate air flowing over it,
he said.

The patients smoke a pipe, now licenced as a medical device.

"We're specifying that they use a certain amount three times a day for a five-day period," said Ware. Patients will randomly rotate through different strengths of cannabis at home and report back.

Patients hope the study will result in easier access to the pain killer. Early results are expected in early 2005.

Holland: So many smugglers that less than 3kg of cocaine not prosecuted!

From the BBC news website - I had no idea their cocaine policy was this
loose.

URL: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3316547.stm

Drug smugglers tax Dutch justice

By Geraldine Coughlan
BBC correspondent in The Hague

Smugglers arrested with less than three kilos of cocaine at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport will not be prosecuted under plans by the Dutch Government.

The policy is designed to ease pressure on the judicial system due to a rising number of arrests of drug couriers.

They are mostly from the Caribbean islands of the Netherlands Antilles.

Some MPs fear the new policy will make the Netherlands a target for criticism. But the government says it is the only way to deal with the growing problem.

Schiphol is a key transport hub in Europe

About 150 cocaine smugglers are arrested there each month.

Most carry pellets of the drug in their stomachs.

Last year, the government stopped prosecuting drug couriers carrying less than one-and-a-half kilos, but those with larger amounts were sent home with a court summons on the understanding they would be prosecuted in their home countries.

Still, extra courts and prison cells were not enough to deal with the drug traffickers.

Colonial legacy

Most of them come from the Dutch Caribbean and have Dutch passports.

The authorities have begun intensified security controls on so called risk flights from the Netherlands Antilles and Surinam.

The justice minister has threatened to ban them if the influx of drug smugglers continues to increase.

But he emphasised such a drastic measure would be a last resort.

South Australia: ADELAIDE DOCTORS ATTEND RAVES - TO STUDY

Newshawk: http://DrugPolicyCentral.com/bot/pot
Pubdate: Mon, 05 Jan 2004
Source: Queensland Sunday Mail (Australia)
Copyright: 2004 News Limited
Contact: mailto:smletters@qnp.newsltd.com.au
Website: http://www.thesundaymail.com.au/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/435
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mdma.htm (Ecstasy)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/raves.htm (Raves)

DOCTORS ATTEND RAVES - TO STUDY

Ten doctors have teamed up to visit rave parties.

In an Australian first, the Royal Adelaide Hospital doctors will survey drug users and investigate rave party substances such as ecstasy and fantasy.

The team recently went to its first rave, near Angaston, where five people were admitted to intensive care after taking fantasy.

Many other users were treated for stomach cramps.

RAH research fellow Dr David Caldicott said he had been doing similar work in Europe since 1997 but it was a new thing for Australia.

"It's a very useful thing for doctors to get involved in," he said.

The team's attendance "was primarily for research" but "if push comes to shove" it would help medical volunteers treat overdose victims, he said.

At the event, attended by about 10,000 people, 300 partygoers were voluntarily surveyed about drugs.

"Our job is to make sure this generation does not get maimed by taking pills, Dr Caldicott said.

"The rave community or the pill-taking community . . . is far bigger than conservative middle-class Australia would like to believe.

"About one in four young adults have taken ecstasy.

"The more you can learn about them the more you can go down that line of harm minimisation."

He said the group was cautiously welcomed at the rave after assuring partygoers they were interested in health and not moral issues.

The team, which also attended "schoolies week" at Victor Harbor, will visit more raves after getting approval from event promoters.

Research would be used to monitor usage and frame education campaigns for the "chemical generation".

About 300 people have overdosed in South Australia during the past four years, often after taking drugs at raves.

Drugs such as fantasy, often made by "sharks and bikies", were most likely to kill users, Dr Caldicott said.

Unlike the recent event, many raves had no medical staff to treat potential fatal overdoses.

"Underground raves tend to be very secretive, quite hard core, much smaller events -- much less planning and less sophisticated and more remote," he said.

DRUG USE FUNDAMENTAL TO SOCIAL LIFE OF MOST CLUBBERS

Pubdate: Tue, 30 Dec 2003
Source: Times, The (UK)
Copyright: 2003 Times Newspapers Ltd
Contact: letters@thetimes.co.uk
Website: http://www.the-times.co.uk/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/454
Author: Richard Ford

DRUG USE FUNDAMENTAL TO SOCIAL LIFE OF MOST CLUBBERS

DRUG-TAKING is a fundamental part of the social life of almost half the young people currently using illegal substances, according to a Home Office report published yesterday.

The central role played by drugs in clubbing and partying is highlighted in a report revealing that drug users are experimenting with a wider range of substances than ever before.

A new drug fashion is emerging in youth culture, in which the synthetic substances ketamine and GHB are becoming increasingly popular. Large numbers of young people are also mixing drugs with alcohol and 60 per cent are drinking hazardous levels of beer and spirits, consuming the entire
weekly recommended alcohol level in one night.

Danny Kushlick, of Transform, the campaign for an effective drugs policy, said yesterday: "There are few people in clubs that do not use drugs. Most people who go out to listen to repetitive beats for five to six hours need to have drugs to change their way of thinking just to get through that." He
said the report's findings showed the continuing normalisation of recreational drug use in certain cultures and that their use was seen as a lifestyle choice.

The study found that clubbers have far more experience of drugs than the general young adult population: 80 per cent admitted using a drug at some time in their life, compared with only 50 per cent among those between 16 and 29. "Drug use is far more prevalent among those attending mainstream clubs than among the general population of young people," the report, published by the Home Office, said. "Moreover, among the clubbers sampled, the vast majority considered recreational drug use to be a normal activity."

The study added: "A particularly striking finding is that current drug users had more wideranging drug-use careers than those classified as lapsed drug users."

The study also found that clubbers drank more often and in greater quantities than young adults in general. Many questioned during the survey of six clubs in the South East intended to drink at least ten units of alcohol that night. Eighty per cent of clubbers had tried at least one drug. Three quarters had used cannabis, more than half had used Ecstasy, half had used amphetamines and cocaine and one third LSD and amyl nitrate.

Among clubbers interviewed in 2000 the most popular club drug was Ecstasy followed by cannabis. Young clubbers gave a variety of reasons for using drugs, the most popular being boredom, curiosity and others using drugs. No one said that they had been pushed into using drugs by a dealer and many were dismissive of those who suggested that this was a way of initiation into drug use.

Most said that they had a regular supplier and a set pattern for obtaining drugs that was part of detailed planning, sometimes weeks in advance, for a night out. A typical night out would start with meeting at a friend's home, drinking alcohol occasionally followed by cocaine. In the queue for the
club, the first tablet of Ecstasy is taken followed by more in the club.

Cannabis or alcohol would then be used to "come down" at the end of the night. Hardly anyone admitted buying drugs from a dealer in a club and most were dismissive of security guards on the doors. Searching on the doors was described as ineffective because it was either not carried out at all or only in a superficial way.

Clubbers believed that drugs confiscated by door staff were then resold by them. None of those questioned had been reported to the police after drugs had been found during a door search.

Last night Caroline Flint, the Drugs Minister, warned young people of the danger of mixing alcohol and drugs particularly over the new year. She said: "Over the party season some young people, who have never taken drugs before, may be inclined to try. All illegal drugs are harmful and no one
should take them. We all know the dangers of binge drinking and drugs, but people often give little thought to the toxic cocktail of alcohol mixed with drugs."

A Home Office spokesman said that the findings of the research had taken four years to publish because of administration. He added: "These things take a long time. It is down to administration in this case".

There are currently 15 research reports awaiting publication by the Home Office, including three from 2002.

A 26-year-old woman was raped after her drink was apparently spiked with an unknown drug, police said yesterday. It is thought that the victim was attacked as she walked home after a night out in Towcester, Northamptonshire, on Boxing Day. She was seen at about 1am, barefoot and in
a distressed state. Police said she accepted a lift from two white men in a dark-coloured car, possibly a VW Golf. Just after 5am the woman flagged down a police car after finding herself in a field near the old Towcester Football Club ground.

FROM EXPERIMENT TO DANGER

Typical British clubbers are employed, in their early twenties and white

Almost all follow a similar pattern of experimentation with drugs. The path starts with alcohol at around the age of 14, followed by cannabis which typically leads on to LSD and/or speed

By the time they become regular clubbers, Ecstasy is the drug of choice. Clubbers often then move on to cocaine and, to a lesser extent, to ketamine, also known as "Special K", and GHB (gammahydroxybutrate) which is also known as "liquid Ecstasy"

TIME TO THINK ABOUT DECRIMINALISING MARIJUANA SAYS MELBOURNES "THE AGE"

Pubdate: Mon, 05 Jan 2004
Source: Age, The (Australia)
Webpage: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/01/04/1073151208185.html
Copyright: 2004 The Age Company Ltd
Contact: letters@theage.com.au
Website: http://www.theage.com.au/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/5
Author: Trish Bolton
Note: Trish Bolton is a Melbourne writer and a tutor in media and
communications at Swinburne and Monash universities.

TIME TO THINK ABOUT DECRIMINALISING MARIJUANA

People who smoke pot don't belong to a subculture, they're part of the mainstream.

Australians don't really need an excuse to have a drink but it's that time of year where you can really drink up, indulge as much as you want; get drunk, smashed, blotto - no one will really mind.

You can start drinking at the lunchtime barbie or picnic, down at the beach or while you're watching the cricket; you can do it in front of your parents and kids and with neighbours and friends.

But if you want to roll one, have a choof or take a toke, you won't find the same warm reception at home, in your workplace or anywhere else. Unless you're in Nimbin, you'll have to sneak away and do the deed in private.

And if word gets out about your nasty habit you'll be called a druggie when your back is turned, families will talk in hushed tones about your wicked ways, neighbours will ostracise you, and better pray no one tells the boss.

If this isn't bad enough, there's always the chance you'll be caught for possession; you might merely be warned or you could end up before the courts; it all depends on the state you're in at the time - and I don't mean how stoned you are.

If you're in the Netherlands you can go shopping for cannabis but in Australia buying it makes you a criminal, and growing it can land you in prison for up to 12 months.

It's all a bit silly really - we encourage and condone the use of one drug and demonise the other.

Sillier still is that we don't just allow alcohol, we push it, and we push it very hard indeed. Marketing booze is big business. What's a sporting hero without a magnum in hand, why have a celebration without alcohol and what's sex without a little drunken abandon to add to its appeal? So surrounded is alcohol by images of success, sexuality and good times that we might as well pour it down the throats of the children we seek to protect.

Line up on a Friday or Saturday night at any bottle shop and you'll see parents taking orders from their clearly under-age kids about what their teenagers want for that night's drinking; these same parents would freak if they thought their kids smoked marijuana.

It's OK to get out of it, what seems to matter is the substance we abuse to do it. Who cares that hospital beds are filled with people who abuse legal drugs and that more young people overdose on alcohol than are damaged by a night's bingeing on marijuana.

But people who smoke pot don't belong to a subculture, they're part of the mainstream. Hell, even Homer Simpson got stoned, Bill Clinton almost did and Mark Latham admits to it. The groovy gen Xers in the successful television show The Secret Life of Us regularly pass a joint and advertisers often use drug parlance to market their wares; it's as much a part of life as a having a VB or a chardonnay.

We use drugs for all sorts of reasons but mostly because they're fun - that's why we've been doing it for thousands of years. Of course, it's no fun at all if occasional pleasure becomes habitual abuse, but prohibiting a substance won't change that.

According to statistics released by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, one in three Australians used cannabis in a 12-month period; one-third of the population is getting high, most of them aren't having psychotic episodes and the majority are ordinary hard-working Australians.

This is not to say that marijuana doesn't have both short and long-term side effects. Like all drugs, it does. But tackling those concerns in a health setting rather than in a punitive legal framework will produce more enlightened outcomes than have occurred with prohibition.

Let's bring marijuana use out into the open and liberate wardrobes of the now ubiquitous "grow lights" to accommodate that other fetish - fashion.

Decriminalisation will have many benefits: backyards all over Australia will be free to cultivate an organically grown plant or two, young people won't be exposed to criminals, in what Access Economics have identified as Australia's $4 billion blackmarket, and courts will be freed up.

In the end is there really so much difference between lighting up and pouring a drink, or between chilling a wine cask in the fridge and cultivating a plant in the backyard?

I'll kick back, have a drink, and think about it.

STUDY: MARIJUANA BUZZ LINKED TO 'RUNNER'S HIGH'

Pubdate: Fri, 9 Jan 2004
Source: Reuters (Wire)
Copyright: 2004 Reuters Limited
Author: Paul Simao

STUDY: MARIJUANA BUZZ LINKED TO 'RUNNER'S HIGH'

ATLANTA (Reuters) - The same family of chemicals that produces a buzz in marijuana smokers may be responsible for "runner's high," the euphoric feeling that some people get when they exercise, U.S. researchers say.

High levels of anandamide were found in young men who ran or cycled at a moderate rate for about an hour, according to a study made public this week by the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of California, Irvine.

Anandamide is a cannabinoid, or lipid molecule, that is naturally produced in the body. It is known to produce sensations that are similar to those of THC, the psychoactive property in marijuana.

The study's findings, which were recently published in the journal NeuroReport, fly in the face of those who believe that the release of brain chemicals called endorphins cause the peculiar high that some runners and cyclists claim to feel.

Arne Dietrich, the study's principal investigator and a former visiting professor at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, believes the body releases cannabinoids to help it cope with the prolonged stress and pain of moderate or intense exercise.

"No other study has ever considered this possibility, which is why the results are so significant," said Dietrich, who added that there were no indications that cannabinoids caused any harm when naturally released during intense exercise.

He added that the findings could provide sufferers of glaucoma and chronic diseases an alternative to using marijuana for pain control. Use of the drug for medical purposes has been approved by voters in some states, but remains illegal under federal law and highly controversial in the medical
community.

The 24 young men who participated in Dietrich's study were asked to run, cycle or sit. If they ran or cycled, participants began with a brief warm-up, followed by 45 minutes of moderate exercise and then a short cool-down period.

Dietrich said further studies were necessary to determine the precise nature of the increase in cannabinoids during physical activity and to what degree the intensity, duration and type of exercise affected their release.

The "runner's high" theory emerged in the United States during the running craze of the 1970s, when researchers discovered the brain's opiate receptors, which are proteins located on the surface of nerve cells.

Some scientists, however, say the concept is a myth.

BOLIVIA'S DRUG CRISIS WORSENING

THAT'S ALL FOR NOW FOLKS!