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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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Government Cannabis Policies Fuel 'Spice' Faux Marijuana Growth
Canna Zine Saturday 09 May 2009 Why are they so concerned? Its all down to this synthetic chemical which was found in a German sample of Spice. JWH-018 is a chemical recipe which has been synthesized in a laboratory. Yet printed on the Spice packaging is a veritable smorgasbord of natural sounding herbs, leaves, petals and extracts which according to the marketing literature has been used by shamanic societies since time began. But when Spice was closely examined - reverse engineered if you will, it was found to contain not the heady mix of fairy-dust and angel-tears the marketing literature would have us believe. It was found to contain a chemical which although it bears absolutely no resemblance to THC (the active ingredient in cannabis) at the molecular level, it has a profound influence on many of the same human cannabinoid receptors that cannabis "tickles" when consumed. And at a time when the rest of the world is looking at cannabis and how it can be brought more into the mainstream with a view to better controlling it, the British government, (as is their want or so it would seem), is dead set on making a mountain out of a cannabis mole-hill. Basically getting another hugely important public health policy catastrophically wrong. On the one hand we have a substance which, by every available metric and according to every expert asked, has a relatively benign side-effect profile. The fact of the matter is, and whether Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, Police Minister Vernon Coaker, or ex-prime minister Gordon Brown like to admit it, cannabis isn't going to kill anyone as a direct result of consuming the substance itself. Its been around for a gazillion years, and many members of the Legalise Cannabis Alliance in the UK have smoked it for upwards of 40 years with little or no ill-effect. Basically you know what you're dealing with. But in stamping down hard on every street corner teenager in possession of a £10 baggy of weed, the government has inadvertantly driven those same teenagers out of the cannabis dealers place of business, and into the nations head-shops and instead of consuming a substance which we already know isn't going to kill anyone, they're now moving their attentions toward another recipe which was created in a laboratory, as opposed to grown organically in someones garden. So far as humanity is concerned, getting 'intoxicated' has been a part of society since before that most famous of fairy-tale books The Bible was written. Indeed even Jesus was into a bit of DIY when he turned water into wine. So its little wonder the average cannabis consumer would like to be able to grow his or her own. Of course as soon as people are allowed to grow their own its a slippery slope for the petroleum industry as they know better than most that everything which is made as a by-product of drilling holes in the earth's crust and extracting the black stinking mess which has made a few industrialists richer than God, can also be made as a by-product of the much-maligned cousin of the evil cannabis plant; hemp. The pharmaceutical industry too, stands to take a hard hit. Whilst they have the medicinal landscape to themselves, they can take advantage of the fact people are dying of swine flu. Indeed they can "play it" to suit themselves by releasing announcements to the power of "we're not sure if we can create enough swine flu medicine to cope", and if there was ever a company stock worth investing in, its in a company which cannot make enough of its product to meet the demand for it. In the meantime, Steven Kubby, Dr Robert Melamede and good folk over at Cannabis Science Inc, offered to provide a cannabis based lozenge which works against the swine flu not by fighting it with chemical warfare, but by using natural substances to boost the body's immune system , and letting the immune system do the fighting. As sure a case of using "organic" medicine as ever there was. But as far as I'm aware no-one ever took Cannabis Science Inc up on their kind offer. Imagine the hullabaloo if they had and the medicine had worked as well as Dr Bob Melamede Phd had said it would? Hell even Gov. 'I'll be back' Schwarzenegger is getting in on the act, by telling the world its 'high time for a debate on marijuana legalisation' . Elsewhere, news reports today tell of the fact 53% of the United States wish cannabis to be legalised and regulated in a similar vein to how tobacco and alcohol are controlled. And if that is the case, and the pro-cannabis lobby would defeat an anti-cannabis vote, then why, in "the land of the free", a country which proclaims to operate under the auspices of a democracy, isn't cannabis legal if thats what the majority wishes? Because congress, in the same vein as the British government, is run not by politicians, but by the petroleum, the pharmaceutical, and the alcohol industries. 3 industries incidentally which will be hit the hardest when, (and it is a when, as opposed to an if) cannabis is decriminalised. But in the meantime, shady scientists are even as you read this, synthesising the next chemical to replace Spice when its finally outlawed, and the government? Those politicians that cared so much for us as to reclassify cannabis for our own protection? In the same vein as moving cannabis out of the way has opened up the trade in heroin and cocaine, by keeping cannabis outlawed they drive every single one of our teenagers into the headshop, to buy a chemical recipe which to be brutally honest we have no idea what it is doing to them in the short term or the long term. In the meantime Afghanistan is manufacturing over 7000 ton's of heroin a year and to bring that into some sort of perspective it would take around 280 of those big shipping containers we see on our motorways every day just to move it out of Afghanistan. Cocaine is moving around the world in 20 and 30 ton consignments. Thats another one of those shipping containers full. And with cannabis off the streets the price of cocaine has dropped to such a degree that every single college and university, every pub and nightclub in the UK now finds it impossible to find a flat surface or worktop which doesn't have cocaine residue on it. With more NATO troops than ever before on the ground in Afghanistan, or bobbing around in the Caribbean and the North Atlantic ocean, how is it all of these class A drugs are getting into the United Kingdom? Over the last couple of years a distastful trend has come to light. That is, the politician who is only a politician as a result of how deep into the trough he or she can get his or her snout, and with more class A drugs available than ever before it would be fair to assume you need some friends in very high places to move 7000 ton's of heroin from under the noses of NATO forces numbering in the thousands of men and women, a lot of whom have some big-assed guns. Friends in very high places indeed and when you put it like that it becomes clearer why someone may want cannabis out of the way for good as it looks distinctly possible a group of high powered people somewhere are on the take. Involved in the international trafficking of class A narcotics. Otherwise you could never move such vast quantities of drugs across the globe, in a 'theatre of war' in which its possible to 'see' a small rigid inflatable landing a few kilo's of cocaine on a Miami beach. Think about it! CannaZine Cannabis News http://cannazine.co.uk
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