Archive for the ‘The Media’ Category
ISMOKE Magazine Issue 1
My warmest congratulations to my good friend Nuff Said on the first edition of his new magazine, ISMOKE.
Go to the online version here where it is also possible to download and print a hard copy.
The contents of issue 1 are:
- Lead Editorial – Nuff Said
- Cannabis In The News: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly
- Proposition 19 & The Wild West – Jason Reed
- An Interview With Peter Reynolds – Nuff Said
- Cannabis In Cartoons – Nuff Said
- The Politics Of Cannabis – Peter Reynolds
- A Word From The LCA – Alun Buffry
- ISMOKE Would Like To Hear From You
- Stateside: Why Are We Behind Our American Cousins? – Nuff Said
- What Are You Smoking With?
- UK Drug Policy Is A Contradictory Mess, Stuck In The 1970s – David Morris
- Will Somebody Think Of The Children? The Problems Caused By Prohibition – Cure Ukay
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My Story: How I Was Treated As A Self-Medicating Cannabis User – Tina Silva
The Blagger, The Blogger And The Pot Plant.
The extraordinary wit and talent of my friend Cannaseur.
“My Son Played Russian Roulette With Cannabis – And Lost” – More Sensationalist Misinformation From The Mail
Does Peter Wright, editor of the Mail On Sunday, have any interest in the truth, or is he just trying to squeeze the last drop of sensation, hyperbole and panic from anything to do with cannabis?
Last week, Peter Hitchens penned a disgusting diatribe of untruths which has already been sent to the Press Complaints Commission. This Sunday’s paper will be the subject of a second complaint. It is truly appalling, crass and cheap nonsense. See here for the full story.
This is my response. Whether the Mail publishes it is up to them but I and the millions of other cannabis users in Britain have had enough. From now on, no such instance of lies and propaganda will be allowed to pass without being called to account.
My Response To The Mail On Sunday
This is a tragic story but blaming it on cannabis is not justified, nor is it helpful.
Whatever Henry’s story, the data simply does not support the idea that cannabis can cause schizophrenia. In fact, it more strongly suggests that people who have mental illness may use cannabis to self-medicate. It is instructive to note that Henry’s crisis arose when he had deliberately stopped using cannabis. Indeed, there is existing and continuing scientific research into cannabinoids as an anti-psychotic therapy.
This is similar to the recent story about Jared Loughner who shot Congresswoman Giffords in Arizona. He was said to be a cannabis user but, in fact, his friends said that he had stopped using it to self-medicate and since doing so had become more unstable and strange in his behaviour.
The article mentions “Sir William Paton, professor of pharmacology at Oxford University and one of the world’s greatest experts on cannabis” but I am personally acquainted with Professor Les Iversen, a current professor of pharmacology at Oxford University, the current chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs and author of many books on the subject of cannabis. Prof Iversen was also the author of an article in The Times entitled “Cannabis. Why It’s Safe” and he delivered a lecture last month entitled “Bringing Cannabis Back Into The Medicine Cabinet”.
The demonisation of cannabis is a grave mistake and a disservice to young people and their parents. It looks almost certain that cannabis will be legalised in at least one state in the USA either this year or next. Progress will then roll out across the world. It’s about time that the British media caught up to fact that, as Professor Iversen says, cannabis is “one of the safer recreational drugs”, much safer than alcohol. It also has tremendous actual and potential benefit as medicine and Britain is way, way behind in the world in recognising this.
The Mail On Sunday’s scare stories about cannabis should be replaced with facts and information about this valuable and relatively harmless substance.
Professor Glyn Lewis of the University of Bristol said in 2009 that even on the most extreme interpretation of the data on cannabis and psychosis (a review of all published evidence) that 96% of people could use cannabis with no risk whatsoever of developing psychosis.
Six million people in Britain use cannabis regularly. We are sick and tired of the lies that are told about us.
Boris Johnson Dirty Tricks Against Ken Livingstone
Boris Gets It Wrong, Wrong, Wrong
Boris must be worried about Ken. In a snide, nasty and Soviet-style move, Boris’ team has enlisted a herd of tame bloggers to campaign against Ken’s assignment with Press TV.
Now of course, Press TV has very dodgy antecedents. It’s backed by the Iranian government and very probably subject to a degree of control by Allahshandjob and his theocratic Nazis. Inevitably the Zionists are up in arms, manipulating, bullying, bribing and coercing their friends into a disgraceful smear campaign against Ken. It’s really a battle of one Nazi ideology against another. I’m very surprised and deeply disappointed to see Boris getting involved.
It’s worth reading Press TV’s perspective on the issue in “Britain trying to halt Press TV”.’
The Mayor Of London’s office flatly refused to comment on this story. In fact they couldn’t put the phone down on me quickly enough. I can tell you though, with absolute certainty, that specific instructions went out from Boris’ office to round up his sheeple and get them all writing the same story – particularly to link the phrase “holocaust deniers” to Ken’s name as often as possible.
Any reasonable person condemns both the Iranian and Zionist regimes. They are both a force for evil and a threat to world peace. We should be encouraging their involvment in the media though, in the ebb and flow of news and information. That is the way towards a more honest, inclusive and peaceful world. The British media is often biased but we would be outraged if any part of it was subject to such a campaign of smear, innuendo and attempted gagging. This is a repressive, anti-democratic campaign. Boris should stop it immediately. It’s a mistake.
Journalists work for Fox News all the time and there’s no more despicable news organisation. Left and right wingers write for the Daily Mail every day, despite its legendary bias, misinformation and scandalmongering. Andrew Gilligan has worked for Press TV. Why shouldn’t Ken?
Probably the worst mistake I’ve ever seen Boris make. This sort of behaviour is beneath him and entirely unnecessary.
Good Riddance To The Tabloid Muck Raker
You live by the sword. You die by the sword.
Never was disgrace or the end to a career more richly deserved. When you play the disgusting game of distortion, propaganda and misinformation that newspaper editors do, then you can expect your karma to get you in the end.
Newspaper editors and media owners sustain the oligarchy with their chums in parliament that oppresses the people of Britain, controls the news agenda and promotes its own self-interest.
He won’t be missed by anyone.
The Cannabis Campaign In 2011
I believe that we can make real progress this year towards ending the prohibition of cannabis.
What we have to do, each and every one of us, individually, is take responsibility.
We have to stop complaining and start campaigning.
However just our cause, however unjust our opposition, no one is going to give us the right to cannabis. We are going to have to take it. Take it back from those who took it away from us.
Many of us can point to years and years of fighting for the cause but it is never enough! We have to keep on. We have to welcome new campaigners and encourage them, not take the view that we’ve seen it all before, done it ourselves and why aren’t we getting the credit? We have to welcome our fellow citizens to the war against prohibition, support them, bolster their confidence, build them up, not knock them down.
If the millions of people in Britain who use cannabis were to join together and be counted, we could make change happen! I don’t know whether there are two million of us or ten million. That’s how widely the estimates vary. The Home Office used to say six millon use cannabis regularly. I don’t know. What I do know is that it is an outrage to democracy and justice that we are denied legal and properly regulated access to cannabis, whether we use it for medicine, relaxation or spiritual fulfilment.
We don’t all have to be campaigners but we do all have to be counted. If we want change, we have to be prepared, at least, to sign petitions, to write the occasional letter, to put our heads above the parapet. It’s so easy nowadays. It can all be done online in the blink of an eye but more of us need to do it and keep doing it until politicians understand that they can bully us into silence no longer.
One of the problems of the online world, of Facebook, the forums and blogs, is that we’re just preaching to the converted all the time. We may feel that we’re getting our message across but it’s to the same people over and over again. When you see the disgusting response that Bob Ainsworth had to his brave initiative just before Christmas, when you see James Brokenshire smugly trotting out his prohibitionist agenda, when you see Cameron and his poodle backtracking on all their enlightened and liberal ideas, then you realise that the forces of darkness are set against us. The war on drugs, which Brokenshire fights so enthusiastically, is another Vietnam. It can never be won because it is, in fact, a war on democracy but there will be many casualties along the way. Brokenshire counts the high level of adulteration of drugs on the street as a measure of success. This is the sort of thinking that we are up against. It is perverted. It is evil. It denies truth and science and justice.
It denies people in constant pain and suffering access to the medicine that they need. Even if a doctor has prescribed cannabis, ignorant, professional political oiks who have never done a day’s real work in in their lives, think they know best. Instead they force people towards expensive pharmaceutical products with horrendous side effects but huge profits for their co-conspirators in the corrupt world of Big Pharma and its self-important regulators. As was seen so clearly in America in the last century, prohibition is fundamentally immoral and self-defeating yet our cowardly politicians hide behind it, preferring inaction, oppression and lies to the truth.
So I have asked myself, what can we do to break this stranglehold that politicians have on the truth? How can we counter the crass and appalling propaganda that the Daily Mail puts out? Why does the media love the story of Debra Bell, the mother who blames cannabis for her delinquent and dishonest son? Why is the truth about cannabis so rarely told? Where is the voice of the millions who know the truth?
I return to the divisions there are within our cause. Just as in California, where the growers sabotaged Proposition 19, so we have our own subversive and destructive elements. We have a breakaway group here, an independent campaigner there. We have medicinal users who are eloquent and persuasive on their own account but will not work with others. We have hugely courageous individuals who have campaigned and put their freedom on the line but will not reconcile themselves to co-operation. We have to cut through this. We have to unite, to generate a momentum that means we cannot be ignored.
That is why, just before Christmas, I decided to join the Legalise Cannabis Alliance. I was a member of the original Legalise Cannabis Campaign and I saw how the LCA made strenuous efforts, particularly around the 2005 general election. I believe it was right and effective to put forward our views on the political stage. This is what we must do again.
The LCA is to re-register as a political party and, in due course, I hope to stand as a parliamentary candidate. Realistically, I don’t expect to be elected but I do expect to make our voice heard. I expect our opinions and our views to be respected and given proper consideration. When the Daily Mail or the BBC turns to Debra Bell for comment, I expect them to turn to us as well. When Mrs Bell is on the TV sofa, I want to be alongside her. I want the opportunity to speak the truth in the face of propaganda. If they want to put up eminent professors and doctors as well then I encourage it. Science and independent reason is on our side. The intellectual and scientific debate has been won many times over. Now we must win the political battle and the truth is our strongest weapon. All we have to do is shine the light on it so that the scare stories, the hysteria and the propaganda shrink back into the shadows.
We will be a single issue party with a commitment to de-register once we have achieved our aims. I urge you all to join the LCA. I’m going to do everything I can to make it easier to join. Possibly we need to make it cheaper. Certainly we need to do everything we can to encourage as many people as possible to stand up and be counted. We need to be able to accept card payments, operate direct debits. We need as many as possible to join whether or not they use cannabis. We need to reform the law, regulate supply and distribution and realise the huge benefits as a medicine, as a gentle pleasure and as a new source of billions in tax revenue. That’s the way forward. Reform, regulate and realise.
One of the most repulsive images I saw last year was the fat, conceited Simon Heffer chortling into his glass of wine and saying that we need to “get nasty” in the war on drugs. Well I’ve got news for the pompous, hypocritical boozer and for James Brokenshire and his cronies, nobody’s going to be getting nasty from this side. We’re just going to tell the truth. And we’re going to keep on telling the truth until it drowns out their lies. We’re going to tell the truth again and again and again until we get the right to our drug of choice, to the plant that creates peace not violence, to the plant that heals that doesn’t kill, to the plant that we have a right to use and enjoy as we please.
How Drugs Work – Cannabis
Well done to the BBC for its programme “How Drugs Work – Cannabis” tonight. It was a well balanced and wide ranging examination of the subject. Inevitably it looked at extreme cases and was sensational in parts but I thought it was fair.
I could pick at details. It certainly didn’t provide any comparisons against other drugs. It should have clarified how dramatically more dangerous is alcohol and with many fewer benefits but overall it was a good job, well done.
I am encouraged by this well produced treatment of the subject. We may well be making progress!
BBC Proselytises For The Pope
The Pope's Spin Doctor
Yesterday the Pope made a series of disgraceful excuses for paedophile priests.
Today, the BBC announced that it is to broadcast a Christmas message from him for the first time. This after earlier in the year it granted him extravagant and disproportionate coverage of his vist to Britain.
In a statement the Pope said that he wanted to thank the BBC for its coverage of his visit. I bet he does. For a religious cult that has less than a million regular supporters in Britain he was given saturation coverage on all BBC television and radio for four days.
Mark Thompson, director-general of the BBC is, of course, a hard core Catholic. Surely he has gone too far this time?
What should be happening is that BBC journalists should be probing ever deeper into the disgusting cover up of child abuse that the Pope is responsible for. They should also be tearing apart the sordid and corrupt financial affairs of the Vatican.
Mark Thompson has to go. This is gross misconduct.
Peter Reynolds 