CANNABIS
ACTIVISTS TAKES TO STREETS
Source: Yorkshire Post
Pub date: Monday, June 20, 2005
Subj: Cannabis activists takes to streets
Author: Alexandra Wood
Web: http://www.thisisyork.co.uk/
Cited: Chris Baldwin http://www.ccguide.org/chrisbaldwin.php
PRO-CANNABIS campaigners will be taking to the streets of a Yorkshire
city after judges rejected use of the drug to alleviate chronic pain.
This year's Cannabis Education 2005 event is expected to attract
hundreds of people from around the country, at a time when the drug is coming
under increasing criticism.
Last night's BBC Panorama programme explored how cannabis affects
teenage minds and explored whether there is a link between its use and
psychotic illness.
A number of studies have shown that cannabis use roughly doubles the
risk of psychiatric illness such as schizophrenia among young people. Another
showed people with a family history of mental illness were four times at
risk of developing problems as those not considered vulnerable.
Fronting the march in Hull will be wheelchair users who say the drug is
vital to manage their pain.
The rally's organiser, father-of-six, Carl Wagner, who openly sells
drugs paraphernalia from the Divine Herb stall in Hull Market, said: "The
fact remains that the vast majority of people who use cannabis claim no harm
whatsoever from its use; they claim benefit.
"Pretending to be protecting a tiny minority by attacking and
criminalising up to five million people is absolute nonsense. This is corporate
democracy: why let people grow plants for pennies when you can sell pills for
pounds?
"It was first mentioned as a medicine some 4,000 years ago and
cannabis was still being used as a tincture up until 1971 when it was made
illegal per se.
"What the Government is doing is torturing people by denying
effective medication."
Another speaker will be campaigner Chris Baldwin, who used to run two
Amsterdam-style coffee shops in Worthing. He has had a lower back injury for
years and needs a wheelchair to cover longer distances. He said cannabis was
being subjected to a wave of anti-cannabis propaganda.
He added: "Cannabis stops my legs from going into spasms and pain.
I don't care what ruling a judge or a doctor makes: they can't climb into my
body, they can't feel my pain or what works or doesn't work for me."
In May judges at the Appeal Court told four men, including one from
Yorkshire, and one woman, that unlawful actions were not "excused or
justified by the need to avoid a greater evil".
Lawyers for the five had argued that the legal defence of necessity
should treat serious harm from an external source equally with pain, both
physiological and mental, suffered by a sick person.
But the judges ruled that the law could only be broken to avoid
"imminent danger of physical injury" and dismissed appeals by the
five, including Graham Kenny, 25, of Shipley, West Yorkshire.
All had
been given either a fine, community service or a suspended jail sentence for
possessing or importing the class C drug. Mr Kenny said he smoked cannabis to
relieve chronic back pain.