Archive for the ‘Health’ Category
Life Is A Rollercoaster
When you’ve been through as much shit as I have in my life, this is just another downward swoop on the rollercoaster. And let’s be honest, if there wasn’t a slight chance that you wouldn’t make it, it wouldn’t be half as much fun!
How To Win The Coronavirus War
Closing things down will not protect us. Only by developing herd immunity will we win the Coronavirus War. So we should be careful to try and slow the rate of infection and vulnerable people need to be in strict hygiene conditions.
In areas where everything is shut down, when people start mixing again the infection will just come back.
We have to accept it in a controlled fashion, then we will develop antibodies and scientists will develop vaccines against it.
The Root Of All Britain’s Drugs Problems Is In Marsham Street, London, SW1
The Home Office describes its role as “to keep citizens safe and the country secure”. Its lead role in drugs policy achieves exactly the opposite of this.
It is a scandal encompassing successive governments for more than 50 years that the UK’s approach to drugs has been so utterly disastrous that our policy has caused far more harm than it has prevented.
Currently, the two issues of major concern are the rate of drug deaths and difficulty in accessing cannabis as medicine. It’s no surprise most people now recognise that drugs policy should really be a matter for the Department of Health. The only reason for keeping it in the Home Office is if you believe it is primarily a security issue and about enforcing the law to stop people using drugs and interventions to stop production and importation. This is an outdated view based on misguided thinking. The Home Office’s own research shows that laws, enforcement and penalties make absolutely no difference to drug use. There is no justification for keeping drugs policy in Marsham Street, particularly when we consider the way this focus on security and enforcement has made all our drugs problems so much worse.
Famously, before the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, it is said there were about 3,000 problematic drug users in the UK. Today, the effect of this law, administered by the Home Office, is that figure has exploded to more like 350,000 problematic users. It has been a disaster of unparalleled scale.
Victoria Atkins and Theresa May. The drug barons of Britain.
And everything about Home Office drugs policy makes the problems worse. The only purpose of drugs policy must be to reduce harm but the Home Office is obsessed with a moral crusade of reducing drug use and the level of use is not the same as the level of harm. Most of the time, the Home Office’s attempts to reduce use cause more harm than the use of drugs itself. This is particularly true with cannabis where a criminal record, even a caution, causes far more harm to an individual than the use of cannabis. The Home Office already knows that criminal justice measures do not reduce drug use, so enforcement is largely futile and it causes harm.
It is dreadful that the Home Office is strongly resisting efforts to introduce drug consumption rooms (DCRs) which have been shown, conclusively, to reduce drug deaths. In Glasgow, the local council and the Scottish government are backing the proposal but the Home Office is intransigent. What is truly appalling and demonstrates a criminal standard of corruption at the highest level is the way that Victoria Atkins, a Home Office Minister, has lied and misled Parliament and the public on the evidence for DCRs. She, of course is also a rabid anti-cannabis campaigner while her husband makes his living from cannabis production, licensed by the Home Office! This conflict of interest and hypocrisy well illustrates the fundamental corruption and dishonesty that is the Home Office culture. The ‘hostile environment’ towards immigrants, first introduced by Labour but enthusiastically pursued by Theresa May when she became Home Secretary in 2010, is central to the way that Home Office officials conduct themselves, not only about immigration but every area of home affairs. The ‘customer’ is the enemy in Home Office terms, someone to be distrusted. This is the way officials treat those who they are paid to serve.
Against this background, it’s astonishing that the new regulations enabling access to cannabis as medicine were introduced while Theresa May was PM. No one is more strongly prohibitionist, nor, during her six years as Home Secretary, more in tune with the Home Office’s interfering, repressive culture. It’s more than ironic that on leaving Downing Street she has purchased a flat in, you guessed it, Marsham Street! This, the scene of her most shameful actions in government, is where she feels at home.
The introduction of the new regulations while she was PM shows that with a big enough media outcry , even the most stubborn bigot can be forced to concede. Though now the media spotlight has moved on, the desperately ill children, some having hundreds of seizures a day, have been forgotten. With just a couple of exceptions they still aren’t getting the medicine they need on the NHS. For them, the new regulatiions mean that they can now get their medicine legally but it has to be paid for privately. Typically this means expenditure of thousands of pounds per month which the families simply cannot afford.
Under the new regulations, cannabis-based products for medicinal use (CBPMs) are supposed to be available on prescription from specialist doctors as unlicensed, schedule 2 medicines. It’s proving difficult enough to get a doctor to prescribe, such is the lack of understanding amongst doctors and the incredibly restrictive guidelines that professional bodies have put in place. On top of all that, the Home Office is doing all it can to obstruct access. Clearly its duty is to facilitate implementation of the new regulations but it is hostile towards the people that seek access to cannabis. It is and always has been institutionally opposed to cannabis.
For years there has been a procedure in place for those who are prescribed schedule 2 medicines containing controlled drugs to bring up to three month’s supply into the country without requiring a licence. For cannabis this has been swept aside without any explanation or reason. The process involved in importing CBPMs is tortuous and complex as the Home Office shows no flexibility, no compassion and places obstacles at every turn. And there is no accountability at all. All Home Office policies, decisions, actions and processes are opaque. They see no reason to explain themselves. They do what they want, irrespective of the needs of the people concerned, or even the law. Marsham Street considers itself above the law, exempt from any judicial or democratic accountability. Ultimately, the prospect of applying for judicial review of its actions is completely out of reach for everyone except the super rich.
The other crucial aspect of delivering on the new regulations is to develop a UK-based cannabis industry where we are producing ourselves what our people need. The Home Office has failed entirely to grasp this nettle. Reports are that dozens of applications have been submitted for licences but so far, a year on, the best information I can get is that only one, highly restricted, research-only licence has been issued. So even it doesn’t allow for porduction of CBPMs, all of which have to be imported at huge expense.
It remains the case that the only company licensed for commercial production of cannabis is GW Pharmaceuticals and its subsidiary/supplier companies. A company in which Home Office minister Victoria Atkins and former Home Secretary and PM Theresa May both have a personal financial interest. The depth of this corruption and the failure to hold these two crooks to account is surely one of the biggest political scandals ever in British history.
Home Office ministers have a great deal to answer for but also the officials who have restrained those few ministers, such as the Liberal Democrat Norman Baker, who have even dared to consider reform. The prejudice and bigotry on drugs policy runs so deep it is difficult to see how it can change. But change it must. Britain desperately needs a PM and a Home Secretary with the courage and intelligence to grasp this nettle. Until those people emerge we are destined to stay in a very dark and destructive place while more and more deaths, misery and serious violent crime are caused by those who are failing us so badly.
An Update On CBD, the Novel Food Scam and the Fatcats Who Plan to Take Over the Market.
The CBD Market Has Been Built By Small British Businesses.
It is About To Be Stolen By Government-Backed Big Business.
Over about the last five years, small British businesses have built the CBD market from zero to hundreds of millions in annual sales. It’s been driven by rapidly changing attitudes towards cannabis and a realisation that many of its medicinal benefits could be available legally by using traditional hemp extracts.
Big business, the established supplement and health food companies weren’t interested. They saw the stigma around cannabis before they saw the changing attitudes.
Now it’s all very different. Millions of people are using CBD. All the big multiples are stocking it. It’s become a media fascination and many people say they gain great benefit from it. Suddenly, big business and all the regulators are interested. Suddenly those who weren’t bothered previously are cautioning about all sorts of dangers and concerns. They don’t actually have any evidence of CBD products causing any harm but clearly they don’t think these small, independent businesses can be trusted anymore. Of course, the truth is they want a slice of the action – or preferably all of the action if they can get their chums in government and the bureaucracy to step in and assist with their plans.
In fact the British CBD industry has been a model of responsible self-regulation. Two trade associations, the CTA and CannaPro, represent virtually all the leading UK suppliers and maintain high levels of quality control and trading standards, including regular reporting of non-compliant businesses to the MHRA.
But in June this year, the Centre for Medicinal Cannabis (CMC) published a sensational report alleging that most of the CBD on the market was very poor quality, contained illegal levels of THC and some contained no CBD at all.
Its report was presented as some sort of independent, academic study that should be regarded as science. It wasn’t. It was a cheap marketing stunt. Sure enough, just a few weeks later it announced that all its members’ products were good quality and there was no problem with them.
Now the CMC has thrown itself in with the EU and is backing the classification of CBD products as ‘novel foods’, meaning that any business selling CBD would have to apply for an authorisation at a cost of at least £250,000 in a process taking perhaps two years to complete. The CMC has also aligned itself with an interpretation of the law on THC levels in CBD products which is completely at odds with the established industry. It has sided with the Home Office that there cannot be any THC at all, whereas the industry relies on a definition of ‘exempt products’ in the Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2001 which permits up to 1mg of THC in each container.
As Brexit approaches, the Food Standards Agency (FSA) is expected to issue guidance on enforcement of the novel foods classification. If it acts before Brexit then the position will be carried over in the Withdrawal Agreement. And now the CMC has launched yet another trade body, the Association for the Cannabinoid Industry, (ACI) which it is implying will enable CBD suppliers to enjoy a ‘grace period’ from FSA enforcement.
It would be unlawful for the FSA to make any arrangements or offer any ‘grace period’ to CMC or ACI members that is not available to any other business. Mike Harlington of the CTA tried this on before, claiming he had made special arrangements with the FSA for CTA members only. None of this is true. These claims are confidence tricks but the CMC/ACI is pushing it with the requirement to sign up to membership at a cost said to be between £10,000 and £50,000 per year, completely prohibitive for the small businesses that have worked so hard to develop this industry.
The Centre For Medicinal Cannabis Is A Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing,
The ‘Big Pharma’ Of British Medicinal Cannabis And CBD.
The CMC appeared sometime in 2018 announcing itself as “the UK’s first and only industry membership body for businesses and investors operating in cannabis based medicinal products (CBMPs) and cannabidiol (CBD) wellness markets.“ This, of course, is nonsense. It’s about the fifth or sixth to set itself up as a trade body in this market and it’s certainly not the only. Between them, the CTA and CannaPro represent hundreds of businesses with millions of satisfied customers. The CMC has only a handful of members.
What the CMC/ACI does have is a great deal of money from its backer, the multimillionaire Paul Birch and a great deal of influence from ex-David Cameron ‘fixer’, Steve Moore, who knows all the right people in all the establishment elites and knows how to pull their strings. In just a few short months it has pumped a fortune into PR and media relations and made itself the go to source for anything on medicinal cannabis and CBD. It has also bought and paid for a large number of highly qualified people with impressive credentials who inevitably carry great weight with the authorities. Its ambitions are clear. It intends to destroy the small businesses that built this market and seize it all for itself and it looks as though it may well succeed.
CannaPro spoke with the FSA earlier this week. For the moment, the FSA cannot act as we are in election ‘purdah’, the civil service can’t really do anything except keep the status quo but that will all change after the election. Then, depending on the new government, it may move rapidly to commence enforcement. What this will mean is impossible to predict but almost certainly the multiples will take stock off the shelves unless some interim arrangements are agreed. Those with retail premises will be in the most immediate danger, online sellers will be in a better position but if Trading Standards officers try to seize stock, they have extraordinary powers and trying to obstruct them may result in arrest.
Of course, the novel foods classification is fake and a lot of evidence has been presented to prove this but it is simply being dismissed. It’s rather like the way the medical establishment dismisses the evidence on medicinal cannabis. If these institutions don’t like evidence they simply ignore it. For obvious reasons, it suits the CMC to get behind the novel food scam but the result for consumers will be a lot less choice and probably substantial price rises. It’s also very bad news for CBD businesses. A lot of people are likely to lose their jobs.
NICE’s Draft Guidelines on Cannabis Prove That Its Methods Don’t Work and It Is Causing Harm to Patients
The draft guidelines produced by the NICE committee are nothing short of ridiculous. There is a complete absence of common sense and an absurd failure properly to consider all the available evidence.
But it’s actually much more serious than this. It is now abundantly clear that this committee, its membership and its conclusions were only ever intended to delay, obfuscate and sabotage the reforms which were introduced in November last year because of a public outcry.
The selection of members of the committee is by any standards corrupt. The most highly qualified people have been deliberately excluded. Anyone publicly expressing support for the use of cannabis as medicine has been rejected whereas those selected have frequently expressed opposition. The inclusion of the ‘reefer madness’ advocate Professor Finbar O’Callaghan is both reprehensible and inexcusable. If the man had any ethical standards or conscience he would recuse hismself. The committee is a confidence trick.
The medical establishment, the Home Office and all the various regulators, including the MHRA, the FSA and the Royal Colleges are all institutionally opposed to cannabis and they are doing everything they can to stop it reaching the people who can benefit from it. Cannabis, the more intelligent approach to medicine it both requires and inspires, threatens too many vested interests and the comfortable, self-satisfied and self-serving model of healthcare that prevails in Britain.
But if any NICE apparatchik or fat cat pharma supremo thinks they can stop cannabis they are fooling themselves. From right around the world the overwhelming weight of expert opinion and patient experience reveals that what is happening in Britain is merely delaying the inevitable. But in the meantime it is causing great suffering and unnecessary harm to patients. It is a scandal of the highest order and the people responsible for it must be called to account.
CLEAR has responded to the consultation on the draft guidelines in great detail. Without reproducing our line by line commentary, these are our three general observations.
1. The entire guideline is characterised by a failure to consider observational evidence and real-world experience. Cannabis is the oldest medicine known to mankind and failure to give substantial weight to real-world experience of its safety and efficacy is nothing short of absurd. Given its illegality over the past 100 years, the wild scaremongering about its recreational use and therefore the lack of formal clinical evidence, this is simply setting it up to fail. It is irresponsible in the extreme to fail to consider the enormous benefit at very low cost and the very few adverse events associated with illicit cannabis.
2. There is little evidence of potential for harm for cannabis for any medical condition. Given the enormous numbers using cannabis in its most potent form as a recreational drug and/or self-medicating (estimated at 250 million regular users worldwide) there are far fewer adverse events or incidents of harm than for common over-the-counter medicines.
3. The weight given throughout the guideline to the potential for harm of cannabis is wildly disproportionate. There is no evidence of any significant harm from cannabis when used as a medicine, especially when under the supervision of a medical professional. At least 10,000 years of human experience shows that cannabis is essentially safe. Seeking to evaluate its safety in the same way as a new, experimental medicine, synthesised in a lab for which there is no real-world experience is a fundamentally flawed approach. Unlike potentially dangerous or unsafe medicines, cannabis can and should be offered to patients on a ‘try it and see’ basis. Instead of being over-cautious, clinicians should welcome this approach and can be certain that it will benefit patients whether or not in proves effective in individual cases.
Review. ‘For Ava’. For the Shame of Simon Harris, Fine Gael and the Irish Government
An extraordinary book. Vera’s achievement as a novice author matches her achievement as a novice campaigner. I’ve worked with people who use cannabis as medicine for 40 years and I thought I was pretty hardened to the tragic and distressing stories but the tears were running down my face as I read this.
I was concerned it might be a rather turgid list of events but far from it, it is a riveting read. It is almost like a thriller, beautifully structured, it grabs you and won’t let you put it down as you have to turn to the next page.
The central message is of the inhumanity of bureaucracy and self-serving politicians who are not interested in an issue unless it can bring them easy and positive media coverage. They are impotent in the face of lobbying from vested interests such as the pharma industry and the medical establishment and prefer to do nothing rather than risk controversy, even while children suffer needlessly.
A magnificent achievement and SHAME on Simon Harris, Fine Gael and the Irish government. They will face judgement at the highest level for their inaction, cowardice and feeble conduct.
BBC Horizon to Ramp Up Discredited Kings College ‘Skunk Scaremongering’
Dr Marta di Forti. Scientist or Skunk Scaremonger?
Tonight’s BBC Horizon is going to follow the long-established BBC policy of overstating and exaggerating the potential harms of cannabis.
From clips already released it is clear the programme is to promote as gospel truth the hysterical scaremongering and fanciful statistical projections coming from Dr Marta di Forti at King’s College London’s Institute of Psychiatry. This so-called scientist and her colleagues base all their conclusions on profoundly unscientific methods, false assumptions, bizarre statistical trickery and the misuse of the tabloid term ‘skunk’ as if it actually means something.
This is the way the BBC has always operated – to support the false narrative of the establishment about cannabis, to demonise it, to minimise if not ridicule its medicinal benefits and to cherry pick evidence and biased opinion to support its case.
Anyone with any real knowledge of cannabis who has spent any time properly reseraching the evidence will know that Dr di Forti’s projections and claims are ridiculous. This is a British phenomenom. It occurs nowhere else in the world. Every other nation’s media, scientific and medical community takes a balanced and realistic view and recognises that cannabis is largely benign and for 99% of people, 99% of the time is harmless. Perhaps most instruictive is that virtually nowhere else in the world will you hear the word ‘skunk’ used by real scientists. Originally the name of a specific strain of cannabis it is now merely a scary word used to frighten people and it has no specific or defined meaning. Its use is, in fact, the very opposite of science.
But don’t take my word for it. In a devastating critique of di Forti’s latest 2019 study, read the words of leading scientists from Australia and the Netherlands as they dismantle di Forti’s wild overclaiming and statistical trickery: High-potency cannabis and incident psychosis: correcting the causal assumption
Centre for Medicinal Cannabis CBD Report Confirmed as Cheap Marketing Stunt
Steve Moore, ex-advisor to David Cameron, now leads the Centre for Medicinal Cannabis
At the end of June, the ‘Centre for Medicinal Cannabis’ (CMC) published a report which painted an appalling picture of the CBD market in the UK and has led to headlines and alarm everywhere that consumers are being ripped off and the whole industry is not to be trusted. See: Mischievous ‘Centre for Medicinal Cannabis’ Report Smears UK CBD Industry With Misleading Data
Now, as it publishes what it calls a “further update”, it is confirmed that the report and the extremely expensive PR operation around it is nothing more than a cheap marketing stunt.
The report claimed to have tested 30 major UK CBD products that can be purchased from the UK high street or bought online. It presented alarming results showing that many of the products contained far less CBD than claimed and almost half contained illegal levels of THC and/or CBN. It refused to release information about which products were concerned with evasive answers and excuses that there were ‘legal implications’. Now, in its further update, surprise, surprise, it says that all its members’ products were within 10% of the CBD content indicated on the label.
As CLEAR reported at the time, the report is nothing but a market manipulation exercise. We didn’t expect their preference for their own products to come so quickly and so brazenly, which is why we now christen the whole exercise a cheap stunt. Certainly, there are some rogue businesses and fake products but the impression given by this report is false, misleading and wildly inaccurate. Consumers can be confident if they buy from members of the two trade associations Cannabis Professionals (CannaPro) or Cannabis Trades Association (CTA) they will be getting a quality product which is lab tested and contains exactly what is claimed.
CMC now defines itself as a trade body, although it only has two or three members in the CBD business in the UK, which were formerly members of the long-established trade associations. It should be noted that the so-called ‘independent’ laboratory it used for testing CBD products is itself a member of CMC.
Mischievous ‘Centre for Medicinal Cannabis’ Report Smears UK CBD Industry With Misleading Data
A new report from the Centre for Medicinal Cannabis (CMC) paints an appalling picture of the CBD market in the UK and has led to headlines and alarm everywhere that consumers are being ripped off and the whole industry is not to be trusted.
Cannabis has great medical potential. But don’t fall for the CBD scam – The Guardian
Calling on the UK CBD sector to have better regulation and reform – Health Europa
Centre for Medicinal Cannabis survey finds six million adults used CBD in UK – NHS Executive
CBD oil brands contain little to no CBD, test by Sativa’s UK lab reveals – Proactive Investors
It is true that there are some rogue businesses and fake products but the impression given by this report is false, misleading and wildly inaccurate. For nearly three years the leading CBD businesses in the UK have been engaged in serious, responsible self-regulation and consumers can be confident if they buy from members of the two trade associations Cannabis Professionals (CannaPro) or Cannabis Trades Association (CTA) they will be getting a quality product which is lab tested and contains exactly what is claimed.
The report is nothing but a market manipulation exercise by the authors. To understand why, it’s necessary to understand who is behind the ‘Centre for Medicinal Cannabis’ and examine their record.
The CMC is the latest front for Paul Birch, a multimillionaire, who since 2015 has been funding a series of ventures in the cannabis campaign. Mr Birch has brought one extremely valuable commodity to the campaign which it had been sorely lacking – money. He has hired a lot of people with the right connections, impressive letters after their name and has thrown a great deal of his cash into expensive PR which, to be fair, has proved very effective. In fact, as with this CBD report, it is characterised by just how much media coverage it has obtained. This, of course, has earned Birch’s cannabis ventures a reputation as leaders in their field. In fact, they are very much followers. The content of their work is either directly copied from others’ work or is just a repeat of what has been done before.
The most high profile success achieved with Birch’s money and PR was the campaign around Billy Caldwell and Alfie Dingley, two children with severe epilepsy, whose stories touched the heart of the nation and under enormous moral pressure forced the UK government into long-overdue reform of its blanket ban on cannabis as medicine. Birch’s money certainly made all the difference. Exactly the same stories and messages had been delivered to the media many times before but it is a fact of life that you only get on to the breakfast and daytime TV shows and in all the tabloids with a very expensive PR operation.
So Birch is at it again with the CMC. It describes itself as “the UK’s first and only industry membership body for businesses and investors operating in cannabis based medicinal products (CBMPs) and cannabidiol (CBD) wellness markets.“, which is as wholly false a claim as has ever been published about anything, anywhere.
The existing trade associations, CannaPro and the CTA, were formed years before the CMC and between them represent nearly 1,000 businesses operating in the legal cannabis sector. Neither of them were consulted before or since the CMC’s report and the fact of their existence and the work they do in regulating the industry has been excluded from the report.
Of course, the CMC won’t name the products which its report showed to be so deficient because this would show that they are not from members of CannaPro or CTA and are therefore not at all representative of what consumers are actually buying. The irony is that PhytoVista, the lab used by the CMC, is itself a member of the CTA and provides testing services to many CannaPro and CTA members.
So take the results of the CMC CBD report with a very large pinch of salt, or perhaps with a tablespoon of hempseed oil containing only a trace of CBD. It doesn’t tell the truth. It paints a false picture of an industry that is actually a model of self-regulation.
Review. Coffee Shot CBD Drops
If I was asked to design the perfect product for consuming CBD, this would be it. I’ve found after much experimentation that taking CBD in coffee is the best way for me. I enjoy the taste it gives to a double espresso and I find it works very well.
Equilibrium CBD has developed a special formulation that includes added terpenes selected for an ideal flavour blend with coffee. Each drop contains 5mg of CBD so it’s easy to add what you want. I use between two and five drops in a double espresso two or three times a day.
Everything about this product has been thought through and worked out in the most effective way possible. Extracted from organic, low-THC cannabis grown outdoors in Colorado, the oil is winterised and filtered to remove all impurities such as chlorophyll and waxes so that it is a clear, clean, highly refined product, nothing like the dark, acrid oils which can be very unpleasant to taste. It’s then mixed with MCT (medium chain triglycerides) oil derived from coconuts to achieve the required concentration and enhance its ability to be easily absorbed.
I don’t take CBD for any particular medical condition but I’ve found that it does stabilise my mood very well. This is supported by the science of the endocannabinoid system which shows that CBD acts to prevent the breakdown of anandamide (AEA), the endocannabinoid most closely related to THC, so there’s more of what has been termed ‘the bliss molecule’ naturally present in your system. It also acts on the serotonin receptor providing a natural anti-anxiety effect. There are also a host of other long term health benefits to be gained by nourishing your endocannabinoid system as a form of preventative medicine.
Equilibrium Coffee Shot CBD Drops cost £59.95 a bottle. That’s enough for at least 40 cups of coffee at about 70p a time. That’s excellent value for money and for me the perfect CBD solution.
Order Equilibrium Coffee Shot CBD Drops here.
