PIGS - The Enemies of Legalisation?

P is for paranoia and fear of persecution. This prevents cannabis users and non-users with a huge barrier to overcome before they can publicly speak out against prohibition. Users fear raids from the police and arrest, loss of employment and even imprisonment. Many professional people such as Doctors, Teachers, Lawyers, Probation Officers, Social Workers etc, although privately supporting legalisation or some lesser form of change in law, are afraid of persecution from people in power and the press. MP's of all parties can be silenced and pressurised to change their statements, by the Party Whips. Many Doctors quietly advise patients that cannabis is of possible benefit to them but will not make a public statement on the issue. If you are one of those professionals please speak out and help call an end to the suffering caused to hundreds of thousands of citizens of the UK, every year, under the inefficient and expensive attempts at suppressing freedom of choice, in general, cannabis in particular. If you are a user, fear not, for to express an opinion on the law is not an offense and does not indicate that you are a user. Many non-users advocate legalisation too.

I is for indifference and for ignorance. Many non-users and people who are stigmatised or victimised by society through illness, poverty, lifestyle, belief or riches and power, remain unconcerned or unaware of the disastrous social and environmental effects of prohibition. These people need to be awoken. Many of them are on drugs - heroin addicts, alcoholics, Valium addicts, alcoholics and at all rungs of the social ladder; they just don't care. But others do care, they just either don't know or don't know what they can do. It is up to activists to educate and guide these people to the postbox and the ballot boxes. Then, when they do care, we need to reassure them to avoid them slipping into the description of P.

G is for greed. These are the highly profit-motivated suppliers of illegal cannabis, often of dubious quality, and those directors (and their minions) of the multinational corporations that profit by billions from their environmentally damaging synthetic and dangerous alternatives. These include petroleum companies who risk losses if hemp seed oil becomes widely available; pharmaceutical companies who would lose out if people take less of their synthetic drugs and more home grown cannabis and including those that now make massive; profits from cannabis products such as “Sativex”; producers of plastics and synthetic materials - products that could be replaced locally from locally grown cannabis; nuclear fuel and fossil fuel companies whose products could also be replaced by locally grown cannabis, far more efficiently and cheaply than for all modern fuels; timber companies who fear that cannabis would replace wood as a material for furnishing as well as paper and packing materials; breweries and tobacco companies who fear that the use of home grown cannabis would decrease the sales of their highly dangerous legal drugs; national and international criminal and terrorist organisations who profit from illegal cannabis, possibly even the secret services of certain countries (not yours, of course); police, solicitors, barristers, judges and prison staff, with all the associated industry at colossal public expense, who may be out of a job is 250,000 less people are searched and 100,000 less prosecuted, annually.

S is for squabblers and for separation.. Those people who continually insist upon arguing over matters of minor or academic differences which distract from the general cause of delay action towards the consensus aim of legalisation. Such arguments are divisive and unproductive, often originating from personal grievances. Some times such arguments are introduced by insincere campaigners, even infiltrators from corners supporting prohibition, whose aim is to suppress by division and mistrust. Other times the arguments may be prolonged by sincere people. When the squabble, due to personal grievances, interferes with actions of the general movement for legalisation, or any particular event or group, then the squabblers become enemies of the movement.

Don't be any part of PIGS. Wake up, learn, act, cooperate, become involved in this movement which is all about freedom of choice, lifestyle and religion. It is about the very rights granted by the United Nations Charters. Prohibition of cannabis is a prolonged attempt at mis-education and tyrannical control, and must be resisted by the masses.