cannabis prohibition - is it actually due to the huge profits

"first a WARNING - to those suffering - posts such as the one below from balogh - do not send money, chances are they are conmen and in any case highly illegal.

"and that is the second problem - why is cannabis illegal to grow and possess even in one's own home?

"Why did Mr Cutler have to risk is freedom by using oil illegally produced, when a pahramaceutical company is allowed to grow the plants to extract all the active constitituents and make an expensive alcohol-based spray called Sativex, mainly for pain and MS, but so expensive that many health authorities refuse to supply it?

"one can of spray costing over £100 - one could grow the plants and make oil safely and efficiently at home for just a few pounds.

"the claim that cannabis can halt or cure cancer has been around since the 1970's, ignored by governments and cancer research charities, whilst people take ineffective treatments that save just a few lives and make many people worse, at great cost and great profit to the pharmaceutical giants.

"why?

"is it actually due to the huge profits?

"People need to demand that the oil be produced and prescribed - and it's already being grown and made to make Sativex, which makes a mockery of the Misuse of Drugs Act schedules that say cannabis has no medicinal uses.

"Corruption leading to premature death - somebody has to answer for that!"

http://www.express.co.uk/life-style/health/490381/Cannabis-oil-cured-my-cancer
Cannabis oil cured my terminal cancer

CANCER patient Mike Cutler yesterday hailed cannabis as a miracle cure for the disease after his symptoms vanished when he began taking the drug.

Mike, 63, was diagnosed with liver cancer in 2009 and was given a transplant. But in late 2012 he learned cancer had attacked the replacement organ.

In desperation he began researching online and found a YouTube video advocating the use of cannabis oil for cancer.

He decided to try it – and claims that three days after taking the banned Class B drug his excruciating pain disappeared. Two weeks later he began coughing up blood, which he believes contained the dead cancer cells.

The grandfather-of-nine went for a biopsy at the Royal Free Hospital in London in May and doctors told him the cancer cells had gone.
Retired builder Mike, of Hastings, East Sussex, recalled: “Finding I could die was terrible, so I began searching for something that could help me.

“I couldn’t accept that I was going to die. And when I found I was cured I was completely shocked.

“I’m a normal family man, not a druggie. But I had a serious illness and this helped. I can’t believe cannabis oil isn’t being used regularly as a treatment. It is a miracle cure. The NHS should use it.”

Mike resorted to illegally buying the substance from a dealer and used it to make his own tablets, taking one a day.

He is now campaigning for law changes to allow medicinal use of cannabis.

He spoke at a debate on the subject with Professor David Nutt and Green MP Caroline Lucas in Brighton.

Mike’s claim came as research published last week by the University of East Anglia revealed the main psychoactive ingredient in cannabis, Tetrahydrocannabinol or THC, can help fight cancerous cells.

Decisions on issuing licenses for safe cultivation of cannabis is a breach of Human Rights law by the UK Home Office

Under Human Rights law it is not legal to differentiate in the way authority treats people due to their property

- so in acting, for example, on whether or not, under the present Misuse of Drugs Act, they issue a license for the safe cultivation of cannabis, the Home Office  cannot legally treat people differently simply because they have different property and that would presumably include company directors and employees of say GW Pharmaceuticals.

Yet the owners of GW are given license to cultivate large crops of cannabis and extract the active chemicals into alcohol, for sale as a medication (Sativex) and at high price and profits, yet a person that does not have any ownership in the company will not be issued a license. That seems to me another discrepency between how the Home Office acts and Human Rights law.

All beneficial use is therapeutic - the difference is in urgency of need - the Cannabis Health Service

think that the decision whether or not to prosecute or punish somebody in possession of or for production of cannabis / drugs should be based upon whether or not the person has done harm or put at risk others or their property or Rights or they have threatened public health - as in fact stipulated in Human Rights law - and not on whether or not the person is injured or ill.

Campaigning for better medical access for those in urgent need is a different matter, of health and not law, and what is needed is for the Government to RESCHEDULE cannabis bud (plant materials) and not only Sativex as they have done.

Then cannabis will be available on prescription in the form of BEDROCAN, sterilised and standardised, through doctors and pharmacies as in The Netherlands, Italy and other countries and as Sativex but beware - that does not mean that doctors will be willing to prescribe it or that it will be free - in Netherlands one has to pay and a little more expensive than coffeeshops.

That would also not mean that it would become legal to grow cannabis even only for own use.

To enable that the campaign must DEMAND that the law respect Human Rights, specifically to a Private Life, to freedom to choose and practice ones belief and to equity of property between cannabis and, for example, alcohol.

Such a demand cannot be a demand only for one type of person for example those that are ill or injured, it must be applied the same for everyone (that is the acknowledgement of Human Rights not access to prescribed cannabis)

Also as we know cannabis has tremendous value as PREVENTATIVE MEDICINE - and as Clark French and previously Granny Pat Tabram, Chris Baldwin, The Late Biz Ivol, and many others that suffer and have found their suffering eased through consumption of cannabis, have said ALL USE IS MEDICINAL.

I agree with them - at best the line between "medicinal benefit" and "getting high" is vague, to my mind it is false. There is only use - therapeutic use. All else is degree of urgency of need.

So I think this campaign will need to focus on:
1) better access - that is through doctors, pharmacies and clinics
2) stopping prosecutions for possession and cultivation for own use

Then look at supply to adults other than through doctors etc, e.g. CSC's, Coffeeshops, Cannabis Clubs - to make that legal too.

Also Colin Davies has set up an enterprise to raise funds to buy / produce cannabis oil for those that cannot grow their own, many not expecting to live long enough to grow and crop their own.

It is called the CANNABIS HEALTH SERVICE and you can read about his cause and make a donation here
http://www.cannabishealthservice.org/

Judge Pugsley described it as a "foul crime" because it led to the risk of addiction to other drugs."

"Judge Pugsley described it as a "foul crime" because it led to the risk of addiction to other drugs."

So is he saying we should punish people that grow or use cannabis because other people that take cannabis later take addictive drugs?

If that is so, then should we not be punishing those that drink coffee (itself quite addictive and certainly a drug) because some coffee drinkers later take more addictive drugs?

Should we not then argue to punish people with toy guns because some of them go on to get real guns and commit terrible crimes - or stop the licensing of guns completely - or punish all drivers because some drive too fast and have terrible accidents?

Or could we not simplify the law and only prosecute and punish those with victims?

http://www.derbytelegraph.co.uk/Derby-judge-s-jail-threat-arthritic-gardener/story-21144213-detail/story.html

Derby judge's jail threat to arthritic gardener who grew cannabis

Derby Telegraph
Monday 26 May 2014

A GARDENER who has smoked cannabis for many years to alleviate pain from arthritis rented a cottage so he could grow the drug. Julian Pinnington started renting the property about a year ago and set up cannabis-growing systems in two of the bedrooms.

The 43-year-old admitted producing cannabis but said that it was primarily for his own use.

However, he accepted that, if there had been a large yield, he would have sold the drug to offset the £350 monthly rent he paid for the cottage.

Derby Crown Court was told that a drugs expert estimated that the potential yield of the operation was 1.5kg to 4kg and could have sold for between £9,720 and £40,500.

Judge David Pugsley handed Pinnington, of Lyndale Drive, Codnor, a 12-month jail sentence, suspended for a year.

And the judge said: "I'm sorry, you don't spend £350 a month on rent, never mind the equipment, if you don't intend to produce a significant amount of cannabis – unless you are a complete buffoon.

"A suspended sentence in your case is not a light sentence as, if you smoke cannabis, you will be sent to prison. My advice is you give it up."

Judge Pugsley described it as a "foul crime" because it led to the risk of addiction to other drugs.

Sarah Allen, prosecuting, said that police found three growing tents and 30 cannabis plants in the property in Oakerthorpe, as well as evidence of a previous crop.

She said that Pinnington's fingerprints were found on the growing equipment.

Miss Allen said: "He was arrested and he admitted he had been a user of cannabis for many years and suffered from arthritis and used it to alleviate the pain from that."

He told police he used about £60 to £70 of cannabis a week.

The court heard that Pinnington, who was self-employed as a gardener, had no previous convictions and was a family and community man.

Nicola Hunter, in mitigation, said Pinnington had started renting the cottage after he received compensation as a result of a car accident.

She said: "He decided to use the money to set up a cannabis grow. "His view at the time was: 'If I grow my own, I can grow a huge supply for myself.'

"He says he has never previously sold any and the previous grow was a catastrophe and produced nothing."

Pinnington will be supervised by the probation service for a year. This supervision includes a drug rehabilitation requirement.

If they do no harm to others, why arrest cannabis users?

Supt Mick Stamper  just about  sums it up "He said: “Cannabis is a harm to the individual, but a cannabis user will rarely cause harm to other people.“A class A user will cause harm to other people. On a societal level this is a big issue.”"

So if the cannabis users rarely do harm to others, why are they arrested?

It is nothing short of tyranny for a Government to interfer with a person's private life or lifestyle without good reason, and those reasons are made clear in Human Rights law - the authorities must be acting to prevent risk to public health, public order or the Rights of others.

If there are no victims but the taxpayers that pay the cost of enforcing bad law, then these arrests must stop.

No Victim No Crime - find it on Facebook

http://www.northamptonchron.co.uk/news/crime/police-chief-cannabis-is-too-easy-to-get-hold-of-in-northampton-1-6078758 

Northampton Chronicle 24 May 2014
A Northamptonshire police chief says targeting ‘hard drug’ use will always be the force’s top priority, despite a charity’s fears that cannabis is now as easy to get hold of as tobacco.

Service manager for the CAN Young People’s Team, Ali Smith, said the class B drug was now too easy to acquire in Northampton and it could have devastating side effects on teenagers.


She said: “Years ago this was so much less of a problem. We saw little bits of cannabis, but not on the regular scale we see now. The stats are that young people are now using more.” 


Mrs Smith said cannabis was the biggest substance the St Giles Street centre – which provides a range of drug, alcohol and homelessness services for young people – deals with.


She said it could be especially harmful because young people were taking it as their bodies were still developing: “There’s a lot going on with young people,when you throw into that a strong hallucinogenic, it has a massive impact.”

Supt Mick Stamper, head of the Northamptonshire Police’s operational command unit, admitted the ‘culture’ of cannabis was a problem in young people, in particularly a misconception that it will cause little harm.


But he said the force will always have to prioritise targeting class A drugs, such as cocaine and heroin over the class B substance.


He said: “Cannabis is a harm to the individual, but a cannabis user will rarely cause harm to other people.


“A class A user will cause harm to other people. On a societal level this is a big issue.”

https://www.facebook.com/pages/NO-Victim-NO-CRIME/257914584389417

I would like to see candidates and parties mentioning cannabis issues in their manifestos, fliers and broadcasts

What I would like to see is candidates and parties mentioning cannabis issues in their manifestos, fliers and broadcasts - I have seen nothing.

AS for the Greens, a couple of years ago I wrote to them - the letter was forwarded with an added comment for somebody to reply and the reply along with comment came back to me - "I thought we'd taken care of the dopers' votes" it said.

For almost 20 years I have been involved in pushing the Greens and I must say that they did change their policy after the LCA became a political party and won votes in 2001.

I offered to finance a local candidate flier if it included the words Legalise Cannabis or something similar - the fliers were printed but the Norwich Green Party told the lady she was not allowed to put them out, so I withdrew my offer, the fliers were binned and she had no flier at all.

My Eastern Region Green Party candidate Rupert Reid and his associate Adrian Ramsey say advertising their "pro-cannabis" policy would lose them votes.

All credit to Caroline Lucas for starting a petition, but in my region, Rupsert Reid (says the cannabis issue is a "no-brainer") will not get my vote.

The next years General Election I will consider voting for any candidate that seems able and willing to represent me and that includes the cannabis issue - an issue that concerns health and medicine, law and Rights, fuel and pollution, the environment, agriculture, industry, employment, trade, tax, education and even foreign policy.

The absence of any mention of cannabis in these elections (in the UK) demonstrates to need for a dedicated cannabis political party - one that will allow the users to represent themselves.

NO VICTIM NO CRIME: Pay £16 Billion but go to jail

The law ought to be about protecting people and society not controlling them for no good reason, not punishing them for their choices even if they threaten or do no harm - and certainly not to prevent people from growing and possessing (using) plants for theor own medicinal benefits.

In the UK it costs the taxpayer about £500 a year each, on average, to finance this failed war on cananbis users, some £16 Bliion a year to "fight drugs" and the policy has failed.

If there is NO VICTIM then there ought be NO CRIME

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.

A Strange Justice That Convicts For Victimless Private Activities

It is disturbing to see Court cases where there are no victims and the only losers are the defendant and the taxpayers and one should be forgiven for thinking such cases to be politically or religiously motivated.

Sadly this is happening daily throughout the country in particular the likes of those prosecuted for possession or cultivation of cannabis for their own use in private.

It is even more shocking when these people are sent to prison for growing plants for medicinal use whilst GW Pharmaceuticals are licensed to grow tens if not hundreds of thousands of the same plants that they use to produce their highly profitable and expensive Sativex.

One incredible distinction made by Government is that Sativex is now scheduled in the UK as a drug with medicinal value whereas the plants themselves are still scheduled as a drug with no medical use.

Incredible to think that a pharmaceutical company is capable of creating a product with medicinal value from a plant with no medical value when the only difference is the alcohol used in the extraction process and the peppermint used in the flavouring.

It's little short of a scientific miracle, magic or alchemy, like turning lead into gold.

Can you imagine a time when lead is in fact turned into gold but the process was limited to the rich and powerful and anyone else risks prison for even trying it - even possession of lead is illegal?   I would call that tyranny.

That is what is happening in the UK and Neil Morgan’s recent imprisonment is one example.

Neil had been growing cannabis for his own use for many years and been sent to prisons and fined several times before his most recent case.

In all the cases there was nobody else involved, there were no victims, it was done in private, but despite Neil's attempts to stand up for his Right to a Private Life, Neil was repeatedly punished by the courts.

So it does not take much to see that if Neil was doing no harm to anyone or causing no risk to public health the only reason why he was prosecuted at all - was due to laws made by politicians, law that seem to favour the profits of big businesses.

How much longer will the public vote in these tyrannical prohibitionists that put law above Justice and profits above people?

How much longer will we stand for it?

Maybe people would wake up if it was tea and not cannabis - if the only tea they could get was many times the price from the chemist - of course cannabis and tea are very different plants - for a start tea has less medicinal value and uses and cannabis is less toxic.

FREE NEIL MORGAN: https://www.facebook.com/freeneilmorgan?fref=ts


UK: Cannabis user said prosecution was "breach of human rights" (Neil Morgan)

South Wales Evening Post
Sunday 18 May 2014

A MAN convicted of growing cannabis told a court if he was jailed there would be no-one to look after his dogs.

But a judge said, while he was sympathetic towards the animals, he would not be emotionally blackmailed and sentenced 58-year- old Neil Morgan to a year behind bars.

Swansea Crown Court heard Morgan had changed his lifestyle and switched from the growing of cannabis to producing mead and breeding dogs. He was convicted by a jury after standing trial at the court after denying cultivating drugs.

He had previously told the court he believed the prosecution was a breach of his human rights.

Morgan, from Hillrise Park in Clydach, has a long list of previous convictions for growing or possessing the drug.

His barrister Carina Hughes told Judge Paul Thomas that since his arrest for this latest offence, Morgan said he had broken his 40-year addiction to cannabis and instead turned his interests to making mead and breeding Jack Russell dogs.

Miss Hughes said Morgan had known he faced prison and had, in the time since his conviction, tried to re-home the 17 dogs, but not all had been.

Miss Hughes said: "He has had a significant change in attitude. In my submission, if he is given a custodial sentence then there's a potential here for him to take steps backwards. "

If he comes out of prison destitute, with no home, no dogs and having lost his mead interest he's likely to turn back to use cannabis."

But Judge Thomas then said that any attempt by Morgan to use the dogs to "emotionally blackmail" the court would not work because Morgan had known for more than a year he was likely to go to prison.

The judge told him although Miss Hughes had said everything she could on his behalf, because she did not represent him at trial she had not seen his "unrepentant" attitude throughout.

"Had you decided not to contest this matter, it may be that there would be some scope, although unlikely, for a different outcome.

"The time has come that you must learn that cultivating cannabis is an offence, whatever your personal views.

"I had, and still have, huge sympathy for your dogs but you have had over a year to do something about that," he added.

http://www.southwales-eveningpost.co.uk/Cannabis-user-said-prosecution-breach-human/story-21106957-detail/story.html#Tpk0jaelIEiW1tjx.99

Question to Norman Baker, Lib Dem MP

Mr Baker, I heard you on BBC Radio Sussex this morning talking about medicinal use of cannabis by a man called Kieron Reeves as it seems to have stopped his epileptic seizures, and  a man Clark French that uses cannabis to ease the symptoms of his MS.

You said that government advisors have said that cannabis has limited medicinal uses - so why is it still scheduled as a drug with no medicinal uses and what uses do you acknowldge?

There are clearly some as GW Pharmaceuticals simply extract ALL the active ingredients from cannabis plants using alcohol to produce their peppermint-flavoured expensive spray called Sativex.

Obviously to produce Sativex a medicine by extracting compounds from a plant said to have such limited medicinal value is either magic, a miracle or some sort of fraud

 - and the punishment of people that grow the plant at home whilst allowing a pharmaceutical company to grow tens of thousands of plants to produce medicine for sale, is unjust and suggests corruption.

Please answer a question put to you on the show - Keiron Reeves says he needs cannabis to cope with his illness and that prescribed medication did not work - should he wait for the law to be changed considering that successive governments have stated they will not change it?

That is a direct question, please answer it - should people in desparate need of cannabis for medical reasons break the law or suffer in silence?

How ought the law deal with such people?

https://www.facebook.com/NormanBakerMP

available for a few days after May 16th  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01ylhhz