We Canadians love our bud. We lead the Western world in marijuana use.

More than 10 million of us have inhaled at some time or other, and nearly 17 per cent of us partook in the past year.

In B.C. – where entire towns have turned to cultivating cannabis – the economy would suffer without it. Among all illicit drugs, it is by far the most benign. It wrecks far fewer lives than alcohol, and medical marijuana may do some good.

So why not just go ahead and make it legal?

More than half of all Canadians think we should. “Legalize, then tax the hell out of it,” says Senator Larry Campbell.

Sounds swell – until you think about it. Then the problems start. Here’s one. What about the kids? Do we really want a lot more 15-year-olds getting stoned? Okay, we could prohibit pot for minors. Can you explain why that would work any better than it does with booze and cigarettes?

That’s just one of the vexed questions raised by UCLA professor Mark Kleiman, one of the more thoughtful experts on drug policy today. Basically, he’s a liberal. “Criminal punishment of marijuana use does not appear to be justified,” he maintains. But legalization has big problems too. “Full commercial legalization of cannabis, on the model now applied to alcohol, would vastly increase the cannabis-abuse problem by giving the marketing geniuses who have done such a fine job persuading children to smoke tobacco, drink to excess and super-size themselves another vice to foster,” he argues.

Legalizing pot would surely drive up use – and abuse. That’s why rates of alcohol abuse are so high. Alcohol abuse – and rates of liver disease – hit bottom during Prohibition. Nor is pot completely harmless, even though I am sure that you, dear reader, handle it just fine. It’s three times stronger than it used to be and, for a minority of people, it’s very bad indeed.

Okay, so the government could regulate it. And how would that work? Would we have CCBOs or B.C. Cannabis Stores?
Would they hand out a glossy magazine with alluring product shots? Would unionized clerks dispense advice on the best bong for your buck? Or maybe they’d run it like the lottery, and hire really good ad agencies to produce compulsive gamblers.

“What you might call the political economy of drug legalization is a bigger problem than the legalizers seem to grasp,” Mr. Kleiman has said. “Either we will have a private industry whose profits depend on creating and maintaining addicts, or we will have a public bureaucracy whose revenues depend on creating and maintaining addicts.” We could always lock it up behind the counter and plaster it with warning signs. But there’s still the problem of supply. Who gets to grow it? How much THC content should it have? What should the profit margins be? If we tax the hell out of it, why won’t illegal dealers sell it cheaper down the street?

Legalizers contend that marijuana laws do far more harm than marijuana does. They love to conjure up an image of prisons stuffed with innocent kids who were caught with a J or two. But that’s a myth. Simple possession has been decriminalized in practice, if not in law. Under the Young Offenders Act, no kid gets a record for a drug offence. And cops don’t bother to lay possession charges against adults, unless they also catch them doing something else.

Yet legalizers love ranting about the prison-industrial complex and George Bush’s failed War on Drugs, as if that’s our only alternative to the corner pot store. Many also argue that all drug laws should be repealed, as if cocaine were no worse than weed. Mark Kleiman has a middle view. He thinks people should probably be allowed to have and grow small amounts of pot for their own use, and that the cops should direct their efforts toward the most violent criminal dealing groups.

Which is about what we do now. Somehow, we’ve got it kind of right.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com

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Last week, the court of appeal overturned the convictions of three people working in a business selling hydroponic growing equipment, on charges of "conspiracy to aid and abet the production of cannabis". You can be forgiven for not recognising this offence for one simple reason – it does not exist. However, such was the anti-cannabis zeal of the judge in Derby presiding over the original case, he happily sent one of the men, David Kenning, to prison for nearly two years.

Cannabis is a certainly a harmful drug that can cause dependency and exacerbates existing mental health problems. But since David Blunkett's pragmatic decision in 2004 to regularise drug laws with the existing police practice of issuing warnings, the media have deliberately and wildly exaggerated the dangers of "weed". The government has abandoned its reason and thrown its lot in with hysterical and largely ignorant commentators. The figures used by the home secretary Jacqui Smith in May to justify "popular support" for a volte-face to class B concealed that 32% of the public support making it a class A drug alongside heroin and crack.

Such polls serve to underline the public's unqualified confusion about the drug classification system as a whole. Charles Clarke, when briefly home secretary, grasped this point when he commissioned a review of the whole ABC system. His successor, John Reid, dropped the review like a burning spliff, and there is no prospect of this rational approach being entertained by Jacqui Smith. In Jacqui's eyes, "rational approach" reads as "soft on drugs". When she made her U-turn announcement, she lent on the disconcerting coalition of support from the Daily Mail, Telegraph and the entire Conservative party. That alone should have told her something.

Also hidden in the statement was the bizarre and unworkable pledge to attack the "headshops" selling exotic cigarette papers and Bob Marley posters. Such is New Labour's new-found social orthodoxy, Jacqui Smith barked out the ministerial intention "to curtail the sale and promotion of cannabis paraphernalia" – and "where necessary shut the shops down". The sight of bongs, pipes and chillums for sale may offend Ms Smith's sensibilities but this has been shown by several acquittals in the court of appeal as no place for the law. And it is certainly not a justifiable use of scarce police resources.

The police have, in the past, seized cannabis paraphernalia, but that was some years before Britain's problematic drug using population had risen to its current figure of 350,000. There are several of these shops in Camden Town, north London, where there is also a severe crack problem. The government drug strategy since 1998 has been rightly aimed at tackling class A drugs as the overriding priority: cannabis policy is now skewing the strategy.

The police were not properly consulted about this latest crusade, and the Association of Chief Police Officers remains "sceptical" about the policy. A spokesman for the government-funded charity DrugScope said the new enforcement regime "would be unlikely to have any measurable impact on cannabis prevalence".

Last week also saw the futile attempt to outlaw the sale of cannabis seeds. The government is looking kindly on the 10-minute rule bill sponsored by the Lib Dem MP Tom Brake to make possession of these seeds a serious criminal offence. Brake is worried about the proximity of a headshop in his constituency to a primary school although he could not show any corrupting influence. Again, this is law based on outrage and not rational thinking. The MP Paul Flynn, a veteran drugs campaigner, politely pointed out that in making his case, Brake "did not give any evidence of harm".

The other problem in framing this law is cannabis seeds contain no traces of THC, the active ingredient in cannabis. The government could outlaw all cannabis products but that would mean shutting down the multimillion-pound (legal) hemp business making oils, shampoos, maps, ropes and clothing. There are also several thousand multiple sclerosis sufferers who purchase seeds to grow plants solely for their own palliative care. They would all have to seek illegal supply, but most buy over the net in any case.

Of course, this flurry of political activity on cannabis would be more understandable if the government were responding to a rising tide of consumption – but cannabis use, according to the British Crime Survey, has been falling since 1996.

"Wacky" Jacqui Smith's intentions on cannabis enforcement are certainly justifying the media hysteria about the drug. She herself admitted to using cannabis "a few times" at university, but if she had been caught in possession of it, she would have a criminal record and would certainly not now be a MP, let alone home secretary. By January, she will have re-introduced that iniquitous policy.

http://www.guardian.co.uk

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Somewhere in Argentina, a man is growing marijuana on his balcony, with the blessing of the Cámara Federal, a court of appeals. They overturned his conviction, calling it unconstitutional.

In Italy, the Court of Cassation (think Supreme Court) overturned a local ruling that sentenced a reggae musician to 16 months in prison for possessing enough cannabis to roll 70 joints. They recognized the plant as a Rastafarian sacrament, and given the great quantity of weed smoked by members of this religion … well, it seemed a plausible stash for personal consumption.

Austria does even better. There, 22 pounds can be understood as an amount for personal use – a public prosecutor recently dismissed a case against a man who’d harvested that much, in light of a new law decriminalizing cannabis for personal use, regardless of quantity.

The Swiss are voting on a similar initiative in late November.

So when Massachusettians (well, why not? It’s better than calling them Massholes, a moniker I heard more than a few times living in Vermont last year) get to vote on a marijuana penalty reduction initiative on their ballots this November, let’s hope they take their cues from our neighbors to the west and south, and not from the drug warmongers.

http://blog.drugpolicy.org

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Robert George Henry is free on bail for now, but the conditions might be a little hard for him to live with.

Henry, 48, of Fannettburg, Franklin County, was arrested in October 2007 on charges of unlawful possession of marijuana with intent to deliver, unlawful possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia, and driving under the influence of a controlled substance.

He argued that marijuana use is part of his religion and therefore ought to be protected, but Cumberland County President Judge Edgar Bayley rejected that approach. Bayley found him guilty during a non-jury trial in May and sentenced him Tuesday to serve up to 23 months in Cumberland County Prison.

However, when informed by Henry’s attorney, George N. Marros, that he planned an immediate direct appeal, Bayley agreed to let Henry out on $100,000 bail, already posted, pending the appeal.

But Bayley had barely issued the order when prosecutor Derek Clepper, Cumberland County senior assistant district attorney, asked if he could make one condition — that Henry not be allowed to use marijuana while on bail.

“That, my friend, is unnecessary, as it is against the law,” Bayley replied. “As he well knows, despite his protests.”

Religious practice

Henry testified previously that he has been using marijuana since he was 13 and that he has long grown his own marijuana organically, starting every day with pot and prayer. In January, he joined The Hawaii Cannabis (THC) Ministry, which claims the use of cannabis as a cornerstone of its religion, he said.

Clepper has pointed out that Henry became a member of the church only after his arrest, but Marros has said he expects the issue on appeal to hinge more on the fact that Henry has been “practicing his marijuana use since the mid ’80s.”

Marros expected the finding from Bayley and has said he did not think a Common Pleas Court judge “would rule on such a serious issue as this.” That is what the Superior Court is there for, he said.

http://www.cumberlink.com

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The police raid on Martin Martinez, a Seattle man who uses marijuana to dull the chronic pain from a motorcycle accident, made the page-one headline last Thursday: “Was Pot Raid Justified?” Martinez’s lawyer, Douglas Hiatt, insists vehemently that it was not.

In Seattle, the topic of medical marijuana and the law leads quickly to Hiatt. A native Chicagoan, 49, this blue-jeaned barrister is vehement often, his deep voice rising quickly to indignant italics.

His cellphone rings. “I gotta take this,” he says. “Hello? Yes … No … No, we’re not going to do that! Look, this is my client … Yes, I’ll be there.” Click.

Originally a public defender, Hiatt is now exclusively a medical-marijuana lawyer. It is not a lucrative practice. His clients are often broke, and typically they are merely trying to be left alone. Hiatt says he has been paid in salmon, and once in an organic pig.

His first client was an AIDS patient stuck in the King County Jail. Hiatt went to Dan Satterberg, then deputy prosecutor, for help — and it was Satterberg who smoothed things over after last week’s raid on Martinez.

To Hiatt, King County’s Republican prosecutor is “Good King Dan,” who follows the law that 59 percent of Washington voters approved in 1998. Most prosecutors around the state don’t, Hiatt says.

“It makes me crazy,” he says.

For healthy folk who think of marijuana as getting stoned, “medical marijuana” may sound like a doper’s deception. Hiatt shakes his head. His clients are in their 40s, 50s and 60s. Typically, they are on disability. Many have cancer, AIDS, multiple sclerosis, Lou Gehrig’s disease or Crohn’s disease.

AIDS patients are using marijuana to control nausea, so they don’t vomit up the 40-odd pills they have to take every day. In 2000, when a judge forbade writer and AIDS patient Peter McWilliams from using marijuana, he threw up his “AIDS cocktail,” choked on his vomit and died.

The word “cocktail,” makes Hiatt bristle. “It’s not a damned cocktail. This is chemotherapy for life.”

McWilliams had been ordered to use Marinol, a drug with one of marijuana’s active ingredients. Hiatt says he has a client right now ordered by a judge to use Marinol.

“It makes my client really stoned, and he doesn’t want that,” Hiatt says. “It’s expensive. It costs $10 to $20 a pill. Why use it when you can grow a house plant?”

Hiatt’s typical client is one, like Martinez, with chronic pain. Says Hiatt, “Their doctor puts them on OxyContin, morphine, one of the opiates. Their brain is in a fog because of the opiates. They’re constipated. They’re miserable. They say, ‘I lost my life.’ Then they try marijuana. It allows them to cut their opiate dose in half. Some of them eliminate it. They feel better. Their mind is clearer. They’re not constipated anymore.”

“I’ve heard that story five hundred times,” Hiatt says. “Because it works.”

Hiatt estimates there are 25,000 medical-marijuana patients in Washington. The state law says they can have a 60-day supply, but since 1998 it has been up to local officials to say what that is. The Department of Health will have a public hearing in Tumwater Aug. 25 on a new rule to allow patients 24 ounces of dried plant and six mature plants. And that’s not enough, Hiatt insists.

“Every single medical marijuana patient I have is over these numbers,” he says.

I relate Hiatt’s story partly because I believe in letting these folks alone, but partly also because I had an aunt who was in sharp pain from a pinched nerve. Her doctor prescribed an opiate, which handled the pain but messed up her mind and her gut.

My aunt was the most un-stoned person I ever knew, but she told me she would have taken marijuana, or anything else, if it had killed the pain, and to hell with the government. I would be no different.

Bruce Ramsey’s column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is bramsey@seattletimes.com; for a podcast Q&A with the author, go to http://www.seattletimes.com/edcetera

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com

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An Internet cannabis community has challenged the British government to come up with a cannabis policy which is based around reducing harm, as opposed to using law enforcement as the primary strategy in the war against cannabis. And according to a spokesman for the Canna Zine cannabis news website , the governments reticence to take into account the fact close to 4 million people choose cannabis over other soft drugs such as tobacco and alcohol, is motivated not by any public health concern, but by money.

To illustrate this fact lets use tobacco as a comparison?

Tobacco kills tens of thousands of people every year around the world. If it were invented today tobacco would carry with it the harshest drug scheduling, as its more addictive statistically than heroin or cocaine. Yet cannabis, a substance which is yet to be accounted for a single credible cause of death, is the substance which is outlawed?

In alcohol we have a substance which is sold on every street corner, by convenience stores and petrol stations up and down the country.

In the wrong hands a single bottle of vodka is as dangerous as a loaded gun. It can kill if abused. Yet scientific data proves cannabis would need to be consumed at an impossible rate – thousands of joints an hour, to get anywhere near a truly “lethal” reaction?

All the while teenagers are able to easily source alcohol on the streets as a plethora of news reports have shown recently.

Alcohol has spawned another unhappy by-product of its existence, with the new breed of TV documentaries which trail the special police squads tasked with tackling inner-city street crime. The majority of which is fuelled by alcohol.

Its now nothing unusual to see a police car “lured” to a secluded area, only to be set upon by hood-wearing, petrol-bomb brandishing thugs drinking cheap strong cider, the whole event cleverly orchestrated to facilitate the all-important video footage which is uploaded to YouTube or BeBo within minutes of it happening.

Educate
“The government have been caught up in the look-tough-on-drugs race with the Conservatives as each party jostles for position as the party likely to come down hardest against illicit drugs”.

Meanwhile around Europe our neighbours and close trading allies are moving the other way, as they make allowances for a small percentage of their citizens who consume cannabis.

Spain and Portugal have essentially decriminalised possession of amounts of cannabis deemed “personal”, and Belgium is in the middle of sorting out its position as Belgian group “Trekt Uw Plant” challenges the Belgian government over their right to grow a single cannabis plant per-citizen.

Whilst a Belgian citizen may grow a single plant for his or her own consumption, Trekt Uw Plant believe an association of growers should be able to plant collectively, in a field, allowing disabled citizens to take part alongside able-bodied.

In the meantime, the United Kingdom is threatening to imprison its citizens for upto 5 years for simple possession? It makes no sense.

In a bid to reduce harm, the Canna Zine cannabis forums are giving away a Vapor Snake vaporizer which is proved to reduce harmful emissions from cannabis by upto 95%.

Amsterdam coffe-shops have adopted the vaporizer wholesale, as the Dutch national smoking ban came into force on July 1st 2008. Since that date you may only consume cannabis in a public building as long as it (the joint, not the building) contains no tobacco.

Proof if it were ever needed, the British drug laws need over-hauling, and it needs to be done soon.

http://pr.cannazine.co.uk

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The CUPID (Cannabinoid Use in Progressive Inflammatory brain Disease) study at the Peninsula Medical School in Plymouth has reached an important milestone with the news that the full cohort of 493 people with multiple sclerosis (MS) has been recruited to the study.

CUPID is a clinical trial which will evaluate whether tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), one of many compounds found in the in the cannabis plant (and the main active ingredient) is able to slow the progression of MS.

This is an important study for people with MS because current treatments either target the immune system in the early stages of MS, or are aimed at easing specific symptoms such as muscle spasms or bladder problems. At present there is no treatment which slows progression of the disease.

The CUPID trial follows an earlier study—Cannabinoids and Multiple Sclerosis (CAMS)—which suggested a link between THC and the slowing of MS. The CAMS trial saw participants take THC for a year—the CUPID trial will last for longer and aims to assess the effect of THC on progressive MS.

It has taken two years to recruit the 493 participants who will each take part in the trial for three years, and in some cases three and a half years. After data cleaning and analysis the results should be available by spring/early summer 2012.

Professor John Zajicek from the Peninsula Medical School, who heads the team carrying out the CUPID study, said: “We are delighted to have achieved the correct number of patient participants for this trial. Patients have been recruited from 27 sites across the UK. If we are able to prove beyond reasonable doubt the link between THC and the slowing down of progressive MS, we will be able to develop an effective therapy for the many thousands of MS sufferers around the world.”

The CUPID trial is funded by the Medical Research Council, the Multiple Sclerosis Society and the Multiple Sclerosis Trust.

Chris Jones, chief executive of the MS Trust, commented: “The MS Trust is delighted to be supporting this study on behalf of people with MS. The ability to halt progression in MS is what we dream of – the Holy Grail for those whose condition deteriorates year on year. This study should give us the definitive answer as to whether cannabinoids will prove to be such an agent.”

Dr Laura Bell, research communications officer for the MS Society, said: “People affected by MS are keen to know whether there’s any truth in the suggestion that elements of the cannabis plant can help ease the symptoms and slow down progression of the condition.

“The MS Society is supportive of safe clinical trials investigating the medicinal properties of cannabis and it’s great news that this trial is going ahead. We look forward to the results of this exciting study.”

http://www.sciencedaily.com

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As I read The Examiner article about grow-ops, I found my head shaking, my tongue tsk, tsk, tsking a lot my feelings moving towards mild sadness and moderate anger. Push back from the situation, and ask yourself, why is this like it is today? What has created this situation with large commercial, illegal, and very dangerous grow-ops in our communities?

In my view, it’s the result of government’s inability to learn both from the past and from other countries, as well as its lack of vision and courage, and simply not understanding human nature. The marijuana is not the problem. The business of marijuana is.

All we have to do is look to the prohibition era of the 1930s. The government of the day responded to the “threat of alcohol” through prohibition, including police resources to enforce it. This didn’t quell the appetite for alcohol. What it did was create criminals out of a lot of ordinary citizens, and the perfect climate for organized crime to step in and make millions. No amount of police enforcement really changed this. When provincial governments began legalizing alcohol, the market for illegal booze started drying up (no pun intended) and organized crime pretty much moved out of the business. Consequently, communities were safer, and police resources could be used elsewhere.

It’s virtually the same today -different time, different substance. If government had learned from the past it would have liberalized the laws for personal consumption and getting pot, while making the penalties for selling even small amounts very severe.

We can learn a lot from the Netherlands. The Dutch have very liberal, open attitudes towards soft drugs. People can legally smoke at home or go to specific cafes and order marijuana and hashish. It’s smoked in the cafe (not allowed in public). Does the Netherlands have a serious problem with illegal grow-ops or organized crime entrenched in the business? No and no. Are citizens perpetually stoned, unmotivated to work, laughing and eating all the time? No. I believe the Dutch have a sound economy and a healthy society.

We need to lobby politicians and law and policy-makers to treat pot somewhat similarly to alcohol; to change the laws so that reasonable, responsible people can indulge in a little pot if they like. If smokers can get and smoke their pot legally, there’s no market for illegal pot. No market, no money, no organized crime, no dangerous grow-ops -just safer communities.

Let’s be safe out there. V. T. PIIPPONEN King George Street

http://www.thepeterboroughexaminer.com

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Cannabis has long been accredited with anti-inflammatory properties. ETH Zurich researchers, however, have now discovered that it is not only the familiar psychoactive substances that are responsible for this; a compound we take in every day in vegetable nutriment also plays a significant role.

People not only rate cannabis sativa L. highly because of its intoxicating effects; it has also long been used as a medicinal plant. Although the plant has been scrutinized for years, surprising new aspects keep cropping up. For example, researchers from ETH Zurich and Bonn University examined a component in the plant’s essential oil that until then had largely been ignored and found it to have remarkable phar- macological effects. The findings open up interesting perspectives, especially for the prevention and treatment of inflammations.

Completely different molecule structure

The hemp plant contains over 450 different substances, only three of which are responsible for its intoxicating effect. They activate the two receptors in the body CB1 and CB2. Whilst the CB1 receptor in the central nervous system influences perception, the CB2 receptor in the tissue plays a crucial role in inhibiting inflammation. If the receptor is activated, the cell releases fewer pro-inflammatory signal substances, or cytokines. The scientists have now discovered that the substance beta-carophyllene, which composes between 12 and 35 percent of the cannabis plant’s essential oil, activates the CB2 receptor selectively.

Unlike the three psychoactive substances, however, beta-carophyllene does not latch onto the CB1 receptor and consequently does not trigger the intoxicating effect. “Due to the various effects of cannabis, we had suspected for quite some time that other substances could come into play besides the psychoactive ones”, explains Jürg Gertsch from the Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences at ETH Zurich. “However, astonishingly we didn’t know what substances these were until now.”

Gertsch finds it remarkable that beta-carophyllene has a very different molecule structure to that of the classical cannabinoids. “This is presumably why no one realized that the substance can also activate the CB2 receptor.” The scientists were not only able to prove that beta-carophyllene binds with the CB2 receptor in vitro but also in animal tests, where they treated mice that were suffering from an inflammatory swelling on their paws with orally administered doses of the substance. The swelling declined in up to 70 percent of the animals, even for deep doses. For mice lacking the gene for the CB2 receptor, however, the substance did not make an impact.

Common substance

The results are encouraging for the prevention or treatment of ailments in which the CB2 receptor plays a positive role. However, Gertsch explains that we are still very much in the early stages on that score. That said, the scientist can conceive that some day the compound will not only help heal certain forms of inflammation, but also be instrumental in treating chronic illnesses, such as liver cirrhosis, Morbus Crohn, osteoarthritis and arteriosclerosis. In all of these diseases, the CB2 receptor and the associated endocannabinoid system play a crucial role.

The beauty is that beta-carophyllene is not only found in cannabis but also often in plants as a whole and we consume the substance in our diet. The non-toxic compound, which incidentally has been used as a food additive for many years, can be found in spice plants like oregano, basil, cinnamon and black pepper. “Whether we have found a new link between the vegetable diet and the prevention of so-called lifestyle diseases in our study remains to be seen in future studies”, adds Gertsch.

http://www.sciencedaily.com

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Researchers in Canberra have helped develop a DNA database for cannabis to help police investigators better track the illegal drug.

The Australian National University and Canberra’s TAFE worked with the Australian Federal Police (AFP) on the project.

The AFP’s Forensic and Data Centre manager, James Robertson, says it has taken more than a decade to develop the technology, which will help detect bigger drug busts.

“An investigator might have a number of cannabis seizures, but no way to show whether they’re related or not and through this technique you’ll be able to compare them and look to see if they’ve had a common source,” he said.

“If there’s other investigative information then that might show that there’s been a conspiracy to grow say a commercial quantity.”

http://www.abc.net.au

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