Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category
Doctors Are Frightened Of Cannabis. It Challenges Conventional Medicine And Threatens Their Status.
Professor Andrew Goddard and Professor Finbar O’Callaghan at the Health and Social Care Committee, 26th March 2019
The British medical establishment is behaving like a spoilt child that doesn’t understand the rules of a new game.
The irony is that it’s actually a very old game that went out of fashion just a century ago despite thousands of years of practice. The wisdom accumulated across those many years has been dismissed by simplistic, reductionist, allopathic medicine and its return is being driven by patients – real benefit that real patients experience in real life, surely the most important criterion of all.
The doctors responsible for drafting the medicinal cannabis guidelines from the Royal College of Physicians and the British Paediatric Neurology Association have failed patients. Either through error or design they have overlooked the evidence of safety and efficacy that is widely available. They say there is ‘no evidence’ when what they mean is there is no evidence that suits them. For some reason they regard medical practice in Canada, the USA, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain or Israel as not applicable to the UK. Their guidelines are not based on evidence but on the disregarding of evidence and they are merely the opinion of doctors who have no experience of cannabis at all.
These doctors who expect their ill-informed opinions to be treated as scientific fact are directly opposing the doctrine of ‘do no harm’. They stand by while scores of young children suffer life threatening seizures, while hundreds of thousands in chronic pain are offered only highly toxic, addictive and dangerous opioids.
Their arrogance, stubborness and self-serving preference for lengthy clinical trials from which they earn fat fees is both damaging quality of life and putting health at risk for millions of us.
Since Finbar O’Callaghan and Andrew Goddard gave evidence to the Health and Social Care Committee, over three months ago, neither of them, nor any of their colleagues in their ivory towers, have done anything effective to improve access to cannabis as medicine. They have decided that their opinion counts above everything else. They have no interest in what patients have learned from experience, sometimes over many years. They choose to ignore the expertise of thousands of doctors from other countries. They will consider the benefits of cannabis only on their terms. They continue to wildly exaggerate the possible harms and side effects and their position is fixed, stubborn and intransigent.
It was notable in the two professors’ evidence that they preferred only to talk about cannabidiol, where they could refer to the evidence of clinical trials. They didn’t want to discuss full spectrum cannabis at all. Why is it that physicians are so risk averse when surgeons are lauded and idolised for the most perilous use of the knife? They will slice into flesh only millimetres away from vital organs, remove sections of the brain which could kill or paralyse with the slightest error. Yet unbelievably, O’Callaghan actually does recommend slicing into a child’s brain rather than to administer a tiny dose of a very low potency version of a drug which 250,000,0000 people worldwide consume regularly with very few problems.
It’s all about ignorance and fear. O’Callaghan, Gardner and 99% of British doctors have received no education at all in the endocannabinoid system through which cannabis exerts its therapeutic effects and this challenges their status. In our culture, doctors have been treated as infallible, almost as Gods, never to be questioned, only to be obeyed. So a medicine that works, that is safer than virtually all the pills you can buy over-the-counter and has powerful, benefical effects for very wide range of conditions is a real threat to doctors’ status. It shakes their world and so they are eager to disparage it, exaggerate its risks, diminish its efficacy.
This is the real issue with cannabis. It gives medicine back to the people, literally for those who grow their own, and with it a great deal of the power and prestige that the medical profession has held over us.
Of course more and more doctors are opening their minds and learning. It’s the establishment that’s the problem, as it so often is in British life. It’s those at the top of the Royal Colleges, the professional institutions and the NHS bureaucrats at the intersection between money and medicine. These are the people that stand in the way of the most inexpensive, multi-purpose, safe, effective, easily tolerated medicine that we have.
The Next ISIS Assassin Will Be A White Woman With Leaflets
She’ll slip past a security cordon, invade a private area and everyone will sit on their hands, terrorised into inaction by the feminazi, left wing journalists and the whining trolls that are the Twitterati.
Next, HM The Queen, the Duchess of Sussex, a musician, movie star or philanthropist will be dead or have acid thrown in their face.
Theresa May makes the wrong call yet again and betrays Mark Field. He is a fool for having apologised. The BBC, now little more than a state-funded sinecure for Remainers and professional victims, ramps up the hysteria and criticism, a rallying call for conflict and division.
If the protestor had been found with a small bottle of acid or a knife, Mark Field would be lauded as a hero. Instead he is villified, castigated and abused. I express my view on Twitter that she was dealt with proportionately and then I’m smeared as ‘a man who supports violence against women’. The world has gone mad.
The person who is really to blame is whoever was in charge of security. It was an appalling failure and must be the end of their career. Absolutely unforgivable.
Given the occasion, the location, the attendees and the sudden, aggressive invasion, a 9mm double tap to the centre of the target would have been fully justified.
Which Conservative Leadership Candidate Has The Intelligence And Courage To Legalise Cannabis?
There are a host of strong, evidence-based reasons why legalising cannabis is a very good idea. It’s also an idea that fits perfectly with Tory principles of free enterprise, small government and fighting crime. In private, most politicians now realise this and that the present policy on cannabis causes far more harm than it prevents. But do any of the Conservative Leadership candidates have the vision to make this policy their own? It would be a massive vote winner at the next General Election and could rescue the party from its terminal decline into old age.
Dominic Raab. He probably understands the evidence well but may feel this is just too controversial a policy to help him overcome concerns about his relative youth and lack of experience. It would do wonders for his brand though and, on a good day, he probably does have the courage.
Esther McVey. Not a chance. If ever there was an anodyne, squeaky-clean, don’t rock the boat candidate for the twin set and pearls ladies at the local Conservative association, it’s Esther. Her candidacy simply isn’t strong enough to sustain such a radical policy.
Rory Stewart. With his background, no one should understand better the counterproductive nature of the war on drugs. He may have tried opium in Iran and he must have come across some the world’s finest hashish in Afghanistan. He has the knowledge and the vision but does he have the courage? His exciting campaign has the energy to take on this policy and make it his own.
Boris Johnson. Famously describing the idea that he had never taken drugs as “an outrageous slur”, Boris has confirmed that he has smoked “quite a few spliffs” and that “it was jolly nice”. But for all the bluster and bravado, he probably lacks the courage and this is a policy that requires diligent and patient explanation, so probably not something he’s well suited to.
Sajid Javid. Credit is due to the home secretary who finally moved on access to cannabis as medicine but this was probably more to do with asserting his new role in the cabinet. It is remarkable though that he achieved this while Theresa May was PM. Not only is she as regressive as they come on drugs policy, she also has a vested interest in keeping cannabis illegal due to her husband’s financial interest in GW Pharmaceuticals. Sadly though, Sajid is more likely to appeal to ‘hang ’em and flog ’em’ Tories rather than those with intelligence and courage.
Andrea Leadsom. Mrs Leadsom is notable as one of the few Tories who treated the late Paul Flynn and his cannabis campaigning with respect rather than contempt and ridicule but she’s unlikely to be the sort of leader who would take forward such a bold policy. Please prove us wrong Andrea!
Matt Hancock. Forever to be defined by his dishonest testimony on the Leveson Inquiry whilst culture secretary, Hancock doesn’t have the balls for anything radical. He’s already punching above his weight at the Department of Health and his loyalty to the Fleet Street barons is unlikely to persuade him to challenge one of their favourite topics for sensationalism.
Michael Gove. Although strong on intellect and fully capable of radical policy, Gove is in serious deficit on sincerity and integrity. With Mrs Gove (Sarah Vine) as a rampaging Daily Mail hack, probably writing about a cannabis crazed axe murderer right now, this is probably a step too far for him and his natural constituency is older people, certainly in attitude if not in years.
Jeremy Hunt. Definitely the choice for conservative Conservatives, Mr Hunt probably understands the arguments but sees this as a policy for the next generation. Undoubtedly a decent man, a one nation Tory, made of stronger stuff than first appears but unlikely to want to put his name to such a controversial policy.
Kit Malthouse. One would have hoped that Malthouse’s previous role as London Deputy Mayor for Policing would have given him an insight into drugs policy but it’s a subject he seems strangely silent on. He apparently has no record of any comment on the subject at all. So he may be a dark horse but almost certainly one that won’t be anywhere near the finishing line.
Mark Harper. As an ex-Home Office minister it’s unlikely that Harper is progressive on drugs policy and it certainly isn’t a subject that he has any record on. He’s unlikely to be in favour of cannabis law reform but also unlikely to get anywhere in the leadership race. Hardly a reformer, more of a classic Tory stuffed shirt.
James Cleverly. Clever by name but not too clever in practice, James has confessed to smoking weed in his youth but of course it was all a ‘dreadful mistake’. He showed a terrible lack of understanding as one of the MPs to eagerly jump on the bandwagon of ‘middle class cocaine users being responsible for knife crime’. Not much hope of any insight, intelligence or courage here.
‘Cannabis Law is Simply Criminal’. Letter to the Sunday Times, 26th May 2019
The Sunday Times, 26th May 2019
Thank you to the Sunday Times for publishing my letter about cannabis today.
In fact, it was orginally a comment left on this article: ‘CBD products being rated for tax — but still seized’. I received an email asking for my permission to publish it as a letter which clearly I was happy to agree to.
Obviously I accept that letters will be edited but when this is done to alter very substantially the original meaning, questions have to be asked.
Why is the Sunday Times protecting corrupt, senior British politicians from facts which are in the public domain? In the original the last two paragraphs read:
“Our politicians are incompetent, stupid and in some cases brazenly corrupt on this subject and reform is inevitable, although how long it will take remains to be seen.
While Theresa May and the Home Office drugs minister, Victoria Atkins MP, both continue to make personal financial gain from licensed cannabis production, the UK has a steeper hill to climb than Ireland. Corruption at the very top of government is difficult to overcome.”
VIDEO. After 50 Years of Campaigning for Access to Cannabis as Medicine, at last MPs Have Started to Listen
Sir Mike Penning MP opening the debate on 20th May 2019
For 50 years campaigners have been battering on the doors of Parliament, writing to and meeting their MPs, presenting detailed, cogent arguments backed up with scientific evidence. We have fought. We have argued. We have marched, demonstrated, pleaded, begged and we have been rejected. We have been ignored, abused, ostracised, treated like drug pushers and with contempt by those who are supposed to govern us within a democratic system.
Now at last they are listening. They have opened their eyes and their ears and they finally seem to understand. Of course, now they are all congratulating themselves on ‘their’ efforts and achievements but that is the nature of MPs. We, who have fought this war and see victory in sight will just have to swallow that. History will record the courage and the suffering of those who were in the front line when MPs refused even to speak to us. Never forget, it is less than two years since a senior cabinet minster told me “the settled view of ministers is that the medicinal campaign is just an excuse to take cannabis”.
Yesterday’s debate in Parliament shows that MPs have finally got the message and we can at last be certain that cannabis will soon be widely and readily available to those who need it.
The CBD Market Can Help Drive Cannabis Law Reform But Selling So-Called ‘CBD Flowers’ Could Take Us Backwards
Jim Weathers of Puff ‘n Stuff CBD shop, Cork, Ireland
Compliant businesses operating responsibly within the legal cannabis sector will help to drive reform. Blurring the lines between legal and illegal products will delay progress.
It seems that the crackdown on the open sale of cannabis flowers online and in high street stores is here. Both in the UK and Ireland, several shops have been raided in recent weeks and some people are facing potential charges of supplying a class B drug and a possible jail sentence.
These flowers, sold under meaningless pseudonyms such as ‘CBD buds’ or ‘hemp flowers’ are cannabis and cannabis is a controlled drug in both the UK and Ireland. As CLEAR has been warning for many months, there is no way that these can ever be ‘exempt products’ in the same way as CBD oil. Their THC content makes no difference. The penalty is the same for any type of cannabis whether it contains zero THC or 25% THC.
It’s unclear whether CBD oil is legal at all in Ireland. A more accurate description for these products is low-THC cannabis extracts and whereas the UK makes specific provision for exempt products in the Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2001, there does not seem to be any such provision in Irish law.
In other EU countries an even wider crackdown on CBD products is underway, fuelled also by the extraordinary and clearly unsustainable attempt to deem all cannabis extracts as ‘novel foods’.
Now it shouldn’t need to be said but CLEAR stands for an end to the prohibition of cannabis and all our work is directed towards that end. Some people seem very confused that our efforts to clarify the law mean that we are on the side of prohibition but this is not the case. Through our trade association, Cannabis Professionals (CannaPro) we refuse to certify businesses that sell cannabis flowers. They are cheating their customers by misleading them that these products are legal. They are also cheating all those other businesses operating within the legal cannabis sector who are working hard to remain compliant. They are undermining the very good work that the CBD industry is doing to drive wider cannabis law reform.
Of course, many of us are buying cannabis illegally already. Without our local dealers where would we all be under the oppressive and ridiculous regime under which we live? But our aim and the aim of all responsible cannabis campaigns is to ‘get the dealers off the street’ and move the trade into licensed, regulated outlets. The emergence of the CBD market and high street retailers selling CBD oil has shown how this could work and there is no doubt at all that it has been a very significant factor in increasing public acceptance of cannabis and the recent reforms for medical access.
The people selling cannabis flowers and claiming they are legal are not heroes, campaigners or warriors in the war on prohibition. They are confidence tricksters, seizing the opportunity to make a quick buck by cheating and endangering their customers. No one is going to go to jail for buying cannabis but if you’ve bought low THC flowers and get charged with possession that could ruin you future prospects of travel, a career, even of keeping your driving licence. If you’re going to take that risk you need to do so with your eyes open, with the honest trade of an illegal dealer rather than the dishonest trade of a shop or a website that is telling you lies.
Also, be very careful what you are buying. The ‘CBD flowers’ currently being advertised are most certainly not what they claim to be. The strain names are being misused. White Widow, Lemon Haze or Pineapple Express do not come with 20% CBD and only traces of THC. These products have been doctored. There simply aren’t any cannabis strains that contain these constituents in these proportions. What is probably happening is that they are being sprayed with CBD isolate and possibly terpene extracts to come with what are artificial cannabis buds. Buy these and you are being cheated on many levels and you really don’t know what you are actually inhaling.
We are making steady and accelerating progress towards a rational cannabis policy but this latest development is unwelcome and unhelpful. Trust your usual dealer. If you’re buying cannabis flower, it comes with THC. If you want added CBD take a little oil or vape some CBD crumble. This will give you a far better result than these fake flowers. It will enhance the therapeutic properties of your cannabis if you’re consuming for medical reasons. It will give you a far better buzz if you’re consuming for pleasure.
Nothing good will come from these fake flowers. Compliant businesses operating responsibly within the legal cannabis sector will help to drive reform. Blurring the lines between legal and illegal products will delay progress.
Ignorant Doctors Bring Shame On Their Profession With Foolish Words on Cannabis
What is it in these British Isles that has resulted in a medical establishment that uses prejudice, scaremongering and specious argument to object to the medical use of cannabis?
The astonishing ignorance that pervades the medical profession on this subject is demonstrated once again by a ridiculous letter in today’s Irish Times. In a display of hubris, arrogance and plain stupidity, these people who assume they are due our respect, have conflated the issues of medical and recreational use in the most destructive and confusing way. These doctors are fundamentally failing in their duty to ‘do no harm’ both in undermining progress towards use of cannabis as medicine and in not providing this medicine to their patients immediately.
The sheer stupidity of the argument advanced by these doctors is breathtaking. They object to progress towards medical availablility by promoting the old chestnut of cannabis in recreational use causing psychosis. Their point is entirely irrelevant, it has nothing to do with medical use. It is no different from denying morphine to patients to control the most severe pain, following an operation, severe injury or at end-of-life, because some people use heroin as a recreational drug. It is a shameful, illogical, irrational and deeply cruel argument that shoud rest heavily on these doctors’ consciences.
And the psychosis argument is nothing but scaremongering anyway. The evidence clearly shows that the risk of cannabis use correlating with a diagnosis of psychosis is one in 20,000. As the National Geographic reports, the risk of being struck by lightning in one’s lifetime is merely one in 3,000.
The letter then descends into further evidence-free scaremongering, again totally irrelevant to the use of cannabis as medicine. The risks of cannabis are vastly and dishonestly exaggerated by doctors who clearly have no real idea what they are putting their names to.
It’s a disgrace that this letter has been composed and submitted to the Irish Times and the doctors’ new campaign group, the Cannabis Risk Alliance, is a fraud.
Shame on these quacks who have brought their profession into disrepute and stand in the way of providing proper medical care to their patients. This must be the final nail in the coffin of unquestioning respect and belief in doctors. They have shown beyond doubt that they do not deserve to be held in such high regard.
Surely it’s Unethical for an ‘Impartial’ BBC Journalist to Switch Instantaneously to a Political Candidate?
Or Does it Just Confirm the Worst Fears About the BBC?
Everybody with eyes, ears and a brain knows the BBC is packed with Remainers from top to bottom. It does its best to pretend to be balanced but it’s always been soft left, pro-status quo and the oily Gavin Esler demonstrates just how corrupt our so-called ‘national broadcaster’ has become. I’m just surprised the BBC’s Europe correspondent, Katya Adler, hasn’t joined him.
The growing strength of the majority, determined to enforce the Brexit vote, defies the power of the BBC. Despite its calculated propaganda and disinformation campaign, the resolution of those who value our self-determination is set to triumph.
Esler is an unprincipled shyster who has destroyed any future journalistic career by his brazen deceit. Such shameful conduct, without the decency of even a short pause, condemns his honour, his integrity and his life’s work. He won’t win any seat anywhere and he can slink off into obscurity. As for Change UK, which has launched on a platform of not changing anything, it’s just a rather silly joke.
When, with the Brexit Party, we ‘Change Politics for Good’, the governance of the BBC and the mafia-like culture that pervades it should be high on the target list for cleansing.
An Outlaw Parliament Against The People. Time To Bring Our Corrupt MPs Down.
It starts at the top and it includes all but a handful of the 650 overpaid, self-serving, complacent, corrupt and useless Members of Parliament. They are, without doubt, subverters of our democracy who arrogate to themselves the right to continue in office when they have manifestly failed to follow the law they themselves created.
Under our constitution Parliament is supreme and it answers only to the electorate. In 2016, by a law which it passed, it delegated the decision of remaining in or leaving the EU to the electorate and we delivered a very clear verdict. Every MP who since then has worked to undermine that decision, delay or even reverse it, is acting beyond their lawful authority. They are nothing less than traitors and while I don’t expect to see them hanged, drawn and quartered, they are unfit to continue in office and they should be removed, by force if necessary.
Yet they have the nerve to complain and whine and whimper about the criticism they are subject to. They have the most privileged position. They are protected by armed guards, cocooned in taxpayer-subsidised luxury with generous expenses and total autonomy over the way they behave. They don’t have to work if they don’t want to and if they fancy a ‘fact finding trip’ overseas there is a queue offering them thinly-disguised bribes for their personal pleasure, entertainment, education and any experience they fancy. If they have an opinion about anything, however ignorant or ill-informed it is, they are gifted time on radio and television, space in newspapers and a willing audience of sycophants in the media. If they get a bit of abuse on the internet the police act, whereas for you and me the police have no time.
They truly are some of the most worthless and wasteful people in the country, contributing virtually nothing of any value and yet it continues year after year, decade after decade and all the time they are reinforcing the system in their interest. They are almost totally unaccountable and their main focus is always preserving their position.
In truth, the joke that is ‘British democracy’ is no better than Russia, China, North Korea, Venezuela or any tin-pot, third-world dictatorship. We are oppressed and subjugated by people who care only for themselves. Hundreds of thousands of our children live in food poverty, our old people are neglected, our public services are starved of funds while incompetent ministers fritter away billions on vanity projects. We lock up more people in jail than any other Western nation apart from the USA. They implement polices that are clearly against the public will, yet they decide they know better.
There is no government in Britain and no real politics of the people. There is instead a mafia controlled by the Conservative and Labour parties in league with the media moguls and the big business, mega conglomerates that suck up the wealth we create and use it only for their own ends.
It’s taken nearly 62 years of life for the scales to fall from my eyes so that I see the dystopia in which we live. Time for a revolution and if it requires overthrow of the system, so be it. This is a fight for our liberty, as vital as any in our history.
Asking Politicians to Order Doctors to Prescribe Cannabis is a Futile Quest
Last year, when Sajid Javid introduced the new regulations permitting prescribing of cannabis-based products for medicinal use (CBPMs) he went much further than anyone could have expected.
For 50 years doctors had been told that cannabis was a highly toxic, dangerous drug with no therapeutic value. Then, in the space of few weeks they were suddenly told by the Chief Medical Officer that there was “conclusive evidence” of therapeutic benefit. The truth is successive governments and the Home Office had been engaged in systematic disinformation and lies about cannabis. Suddenly they expected doctors to believe exactly the opposite of what they had been told before.
In fact, what Sajid Javid really did was to pass the buck, so while I have some sympathy for the predicament of doctors and total contempt for our pathetic political class, the buck is now in the right place. However, we have a medical establishment that is so risk averse and so crushed by bureaucracy that it is transfixed by the challenge of getting to grips with cannabis and there is a total lack of leadership from the Royal Colleges or any of the professional bodies. The ultimate demonstration of this is that the British Paediatric Neurology Association wants doctors to consider brain surgery for epilepsy before prescribing cannabis. This is a profession that has lost touch with reality and common sense.
The result is that doctors will not prescribe cannabis but the idea that they can be ordered to do so by politicians is a non-starter. It is difficult to understand what campaigners hope to achieve by marching on Westminster and lobbying MPs.
Eventually, the efforts that are being made in medical education will bear fruit and doctors will start to prescribe but this will take time and many will suffer while they wait for doctors to catch up with what is already well understood in many parts of the world.
So what can be done?
Government can take action on two fronts which will accelerate progress. First of all, improve supply. By its own admission, in response to an FOI Request, the Home Office has done nothing to facilitate production of CBPMs. This could be changed immediately. There is a queue of well qualified and financed companies ready to develop production facilities. While Sajid Javid cannot order doctors to prescribe, he can order his reluctant and backwards officials to issue licences. Within a year we can have a domestic supply of CBPMs and the doctors will have something to prescribe and products they can become familiar with.
The second way government can act is on regulation. Doctors are terrified of cannabis and need reassurance. Everything they have been taught goes against prescribing cannabis.
However, cannabis is safe for 99% of people. We know this from 10,000 years of experience. The hysterical scaremongering from places such as the Institute of Psychiatry are actually aboput a tiny proportion of people using high strength cannabis as a recreational drug, a totally different circumstance to a high quality medicinal product used under close supervision. As a plant-based medicine, cannabis contains 400 – 500 molecules unlike pharmaceutical medicines which are usually a single molecule. It is impossible therefore to regulate cannabis in the same way as pharmaceuticals and given millennia of experience it is unnecessary.
In every other jurisdiction in the world where cannabis has been made legally available for medical use a separate system of regulation for it has been established. Until UK follows this path, the pharmaceutical-funded medical establishment will never accept cannabis as a legitimate medicine.
So what politicans can do is free up the supply chain for CBPMs and regulate them in an appropriate and rational way. This is where we need to be focused in order to make progress and bring relief and a healthier life to millions.
Peter Reynolds 