RECREATIONAL OR MEDICAL: A DISTINCTION WITHOUT A DIFFERENCE ?

RECREATIONAL OR MEDICAL:

A DISTINCTION WITHOUT A DIFFERENCE ?

What is the difference - how might we distinguish - between the recreational use of cannabis and the medical? This question is bound to be at the forefront of discussion when government representatives debate the issue of legalisation.

According to the law, until 1971 cannabis was a substance of potential therapeutic value: it could be prescribed medically. During that year however, with The Misuse of Drugs Act, its status was re-defined: it ceased to be legal. The Government had performed an about-turn.

This was largely due to British agreement with the United Nations Single Convention on Narcotics of 1961, in which cannabis was classified as a dangerous drug of no therapeutic value. The British Government claimed that cannabis was being misused as a recreational drug.

The justification of the new law has always seemed spurious, and as time has passed increasingly so.

To begin with the negative case against the ruling: cannabis is not nicotine, is not alcohol. It is incomparably less dangerous than these, if dangerous at all.

There has not been a single instance of reported death for which cannabis is directly responsible, whereas, repeatedly, studies have linked tobacco with cancer, with high blood pressure, and with emphysema and a variety of other lethal conditions. Yet it is cannabis that is outlawed, while tobacco, currently, is available in Britain to anyone over 16-years-old.

And as with nicotine, so with alcohol; and intoxication. No study has been able to establish that the 'high' intoxicated state that results commonly from the smoking of cannabis has behavioural consequences of a significantly pernicious kind. Indeed the consequences are by and large benign.

This is hardly the case - to put it mildly - where alcohol is concerned. Alcohol addiction is the world’s most debilitating and destructive disease. Yet in general, in Britain and the Western World, it is alcohol that is the socially approved and permitted option, and the legally endorsed; not cannabis.

We turn now to the more positive argument for reversing the 1971 ruling. What at once needs emphasising at this point is the unbifurcated, holistic nature of our purpose. We are not campaigning for the recreational and medicinal usage of cannabis (to bring ourselves round again to our initial question), for to state the case that way is to presuppose in our argument, or to build into it, a false dichotomy. As far as we are concerned, the recreational very largely is the medicinal, the medicinal the recreational. We are aware, for instance, nowadays, that cannabis can contribute valuably to the treatment of nausea, chronic pain, asthma, multiple sclerosis and various other ailments. Yet to affirm this baldly could conceivably mislead, by obscuring more subtle propositions. We might be truer to our cause if we began with the proposition that cannabis is a mode of self-medication. Animals, we hear, self-medicate by digesting plants and other matter. And so possibly with human beings: many if not most cannabis users (so some researchers believe) are intuitively medicating themselves for stress and / or depression. Which is a way of saying that the cannabis user is not for the most part a person in quest of a 'high', or seeking consciously the cure for an ailment, but a human being searching intuitively for recreation: the re-creating of himself (or herself). This might all seem, and in fact in part obviously is, hypothetical: the jury is still out where self-medication is concerned.

For all that, what is at stake here is an issue we cannot and should not ignore. The cannabis user does himself and his cause no favours - the established opposition being what it is, an embattled force led by people with a propensity to simplistic thought - if he himself understates the complexity and subtlety of his essential purposes.

His theme ought to be that the line between the medical and recreational use of cannabis is blurred, and probably non-existent.

UK prescription cannabis farce leaves out many thousands in need

Whatever happens in the "medical cannabis" campaign, I personally think that some people that want to use cannabis to benefit themselves and their health will be left out and fear that they will still be subjected to arrest and prosecution for growing a few plants at home or possession - until the campaign focuses on equal rights for all. EVERYONE must be allowed their Rights to private life and choice and practice or beliefs, whther they want to use cannabis as a medicine, sacrament or just for fun, inspiration, relaxation, socialisation etc. 

Then, when everyone is allowed to grow their own, the law on medicine prescriptions will be eased. Otherwise we will be in the same position with cannabinoids as we are with opiates.

Cannabis: Medicalisation and Restriction of Rights.

It seems to me that recently more people are saying that they use cannabis solely or primarily as a medicine as if that should give them to right to do something that other people don't have the right to do: many live under the illusions that a "medical cannabis" campaign will lead to legalisation to grow our own cannabis.

 

Take a look at, for example, opium, a class A drug: medical opium = opiates has been available through doctors and pharmacies for many decades, yet the right to grow ones own poppies and make ones own opium, whether for medicine or not, is still ignored by the law.

 

Once the pharmaceutical giants jump on board the medical cannabis bandwagon, there will be plenty of extracts and other products from cannabis available if one can find a doctor willing to prescribe (many doctors in Holland, even, will not). But unlike Holland, we may not have coffeeshops.

 

Then there will be no "excuse", no mitigation, for people that grow.

 

BOTTLE is needed.

 

Groups and individuals need to put themselves aside for a time and all campaign for Justice and equal Rights for all - the right to a private life, to practice our beliefs (alone or with others), the right to property -- for everyone.

 

THEN and only then will those who consider their need to be primarily medicinal relief will be able to grow their own. cannabis.

 

THEN commercial outlets for all adults will follow, with quality control, consumer protection and tax of profits. 

 

THEN doctors will start to issue prescriptions.

 

Pharmaceutical medical cannabis is:

(a) already here (eg Sativex) and 

(b) inevitable.

 

Let the pharmaceutical companies campaign for their profits and by all means advertise medical needs, but don't call that legalisation.

Legalising "medical" cannabis = high prices, restricted supply, profit for the pharmaceutical giants

Legalising medical cannabis MEANS making a pharmaceutical grade product such as Bedrocan or SATIVEX AVAILABLE ON DOCTOR'S PRESCRIPTION - WHICH IN THE CASE OF SATIVEX IN THE UK, IT ALREADY IS - if you can get a doctor to prescribe it and an NHS region to supply it (as in Wales) or else you pay a massively high price.

In The Netherlands, same, you have to find a doctor willing to supply BEDROCAN and then buy from chemist shop costing more than in Coffeeshops - and many doctors there refuse to prescribe it.

Legalising medical cannabis would mean that one would have to have a "qualifying" medical condition that the doctor may think cannabis may help.

 

Legalsing medical cannabis would not mean that anyone could legaly grow their own, possess or buy cannabis - much like opiates at this time.

Man caught growing cannabis has ‘no intention of stopping’

How can this man be blamed? What harm has he done is he doing to anyone (except the loss of profit to the pharmaceutical companies that would be selling him the NHS, costly, more dangerous and less effective medication that he may well have already tried. How can there be any Justice in punishing him and what justification was there for interfering with his Human Right to a Private Life etc in the first place. Human Rights law specified that there needs to be justification to interfere with our Rights even if the law is being broken, and that justification must be that there is a threat to public health, public order, national security or the Rights of others. I would like to read the police court's justification. They will, no doubt, say that they are just implementing the law, but that is not justification

Hawick News, December 7 2011

http://www.hawick-news.co.uk/news/local-headlines/man_caught_growing_cannabis_has_no_intention_of_stopping_1_1993536

Man caught growing cannabis has ‘no intention of stopping’

A MAN caught growing cannabis claimed the illegal drug helped alleviate a medical condition.
Mark Makin said he had no intention of stopping using the class B drug, and producing it himself meant he didn’t have to buy it on the street.
Makin, 43, of Dovemount Place, admitted having cannabis and producing the drug at his home on September 2.
“His medical condition is relieved by taking cannabis,” explained defence solicitor Matt Patrick, “and that was the motivation behind him growing these plants.
“It also meant he was not having to move in circles he would have had to, to obtain it on the street,” he added.
Sheriff Donald Corke fined Makin, a sales assistant, £120, warning him his activity was illegal and would be closely monitored by police.
“I know that you feel fully justified in doing this, but it is illegal, and I have to uphold the law,” he told the accused.
“Because you have indicated you don’t intend to stop, you should be aware that the police will be keeping a close eye on you,” he added.

Wheelchair-bound 73-year-old 'used cannabis to ease pain in his legs'

How strange and unjust that a UK court will punish a man that has used a plant product to try to ease his pains and done no harm to anyone else .("Wheelchair-bound 73-year-old 'used cannabis to ease pain in his legs', Bristol Evening Post, 2 May)

Euvil Smith from St Pauls was arrested in February at his home in Byron Street for the second time in three years after police executed a search warrant. He pleaded guilty at Bristol Magistrates Court on Wednesday but was given a conditional discharge after the court heard about his medical condition.

In other words, if Mr Smith uses the cannabis plant to ease his pains and gets caught by police again (in his own home), he risks prison.

So, instead, to secure his continued freedom from prison if not freedom from the pain, he is going to have to use doctors and expensive pharmaceutical alternatives - which may or may not be as effective - and which may well be considerably more dangerous with unpleasant side-effects.

So who pays and who profits?

The taxpayer pays - both for the arrest and court procedure and criminal justice system employees and for the pills from the doctor.

Who gains - well of course the police and court officials that get paid - and then the shareholders of the drug companies.

Who loses?   Mr Smith and the taxpayers.

Pot-laced food sickens local middle schoolers

“All of the children are fine,” Brandais said.

Whilst being thankful that no harm was done by the cannabis cookies - which were intended for "medical" purposes - it comes as no surprise, for according to Judge Francis Young, cannabis is one of the safest therapeutic substances, and Prof Grinspoon of Harvard Medical School described it as " remarkably safe".

Seven Serra Mesa middle-school students were taken to a hospital Friday morning after reports they were hallucinating or feeling sick after ingesting a cannabis substance.  Officers were called to William H. Taft Middle School on Gramercy Drive about 9:35 a.m., San Diego Fire-Rescue spokesman Maurice Luque said.
The students told authorities they had eaten a brownie bar laced with marijuana.

The students reportedly ate the brownies on a bus on the way to school in the morning, said Jack Brandais, spokesman for the San Diego Unified School District. All of them had recovered by Friday evening, he said.

“They seemed to be excited about the prospect of going to the hospital,” Luque said.

Cannabis is indeed an almost unique plant that ought to be fully utilised, for it seems to be beneficial for so many medical conditions and yet is far safer than expensive pharmaceutical productions including the cannabis-extract medicine called "Sativex"

Of course we don't want schoolkids taking cannabis, but praise be that it was cannabis that they took and not some pills that may have killed them

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/apr/22/serra-mesa-middle-school-students-sickened-pot-bro/