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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: It cost one brave JP her job - but we're ALL victims of the Great Cannabis Con Peter Hitchens Daily Mail Saturday 29 Jun 2013 This country is running a covert experiment in marijuana legalisation, which makes Amsterdam look puritan and severe. But officially the law stays on the books. This allows Ministers to make grandiose claims that they are still fighting to protect your children from drugs, when in truth they have surrendered to the cannabis culture. It also allows the Government to claim it is honouring the treaties that oblige us to ban marijuana. This fake law is one of the biggest lies in modern politics, so big that it is almost impossible to expose it. I have many times tried, though my recent detailed and carefully researched book on the subject was ignored or crudely smeared in most of the media. But perhaps this will persuade you. This week a Manchester magistrate, Yvonne Davies, was forced from her job because she pleaded with a convicted cannabis grower, Christopher Duncan, to mend his ways. She did so because her own brother, Glen Harding, died tragically after becoming a habitual cannabis user. Mrs Davies had no doubt that her brother’s disastrous descent was the result of this extremely dangerous and potent drug – crazily viewed as ‘soft’ by our culture. Just as in the years when science first began to link cigarettes with lung cancer, direct causal evidence is lacking. But the correlation is so strong that no responsible person can ignore it. So there was Mrs Davies, enforcing the law as it is written down, trying to do a bit of good by sharing her own grief. And what happened? Peter Reynolds, leader of a campaign to weaken the cannabis laws, lodged a complaint. I know Mr Reynolds. He is a charming, plausible and determined pest. I sometimes get the impression he thinks he is cannabis in person, so sensitive is he to criticisms of it. Actually, he is not a very good advocate for his greasy and dangerous cause, and is easily countered by facts and logic. I and my friend David Raynes (a former Customs officer who knows about drugs) have beaten him in debate, and before an audience of students, too. He has also complained (unsuccessfully so far) against me to the Press Complaints Commission. Yet his attack on Mrs Davies succeeded. The allegedly tough and allegedly Conservative ‘Minister of Justice’, Chris Grayling, and the Lord Chief Injustice, the overpraised Lord Judge, agreed she should be reprimanded, a serious sanction. They said: ‘The views expressed in court were inappropriate. The Lord Chancellor and the Lord Chief Justice agreed and concluded that her combined actions fell below the standard of behaviour expected of a magistrate.’ The complaint from Mr Reynolds was supported by several retired magistrates, who ought to be profoundly ashamed of their behaviour. Mrs Davies said it was ‘astounding that the views of a pro-cannabis campaigner were used to build a case against me. As far as I am aware, cannabis is still very much illegal in Britain.’ But it isn’t really. Like so many kind, dutiful, respectable people, she still has no idea of the depth and fury of the revolution which is still scouring its way through all our institutions. One of its most vindictive and hateful aspects is its worship of human selfishness. And one of the main symbols of this new and ugly faith is the stinking weed called cannabis. Its cult is summed up in the words so often spat out by sulky adolescents of all ages: ‘I can do what I want with my own body. It’s none of your business!’ As Mrs Davies knows very well from her own bitter experience, it is our business, as a society and as individuals. The grief caused by her brother’s sad suicide in a canal, the grief caused to parents, children, brothers and sisters when family members go permanently mad after using cannabis, is real. Many people write to tell me of such things. And a wise society would praise Mrs Davies for trying to hold the line against this evil, to help the young resist the tremendous peer pressure to risk their sanity by drug-taking. But we are not a wise society, and those who sit in the seats of power are not fit to be trusted with that power. Now you have seen how they acted in this case, and which side they took in this quarrel, will you at last believe me? http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2351775/PETER-HITCHENS-It-cost-brave-JP-job--ALL-victims-Great-Cannabis-Con.html
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