Posts Tagged ‘BBC’
“War On Drugs Has Failed, Say Former Heads Of MI5, CPS And BBC”, The Daily Telegraph, 21st March 2011
The “war on drugs” has failed and should be abandoned in favour of evidence-based policies that treat addiction as a health problem, according to prominent public figures including former heads of MI5 and the Crown Prosecution Service.
Drug availability and use has increased with up to 250 million people worldwide using narcotics such as cannabis, cocaine and heroin
Leading peers – including prominent Tories – say that despite governments worldwide drawing up tough laws against dealers and users over the past 50 years, illegal drugs have become more accessible.
Vast amounts of money have been wasted on unsuccessful crackdowns, while criminals have made fortunes importing drugs into this country.
The increasing use of the most harmful drugs such as heroin has also led to “enormous health problems”, according to the group.
The MPs and members of the House of Lords, who have formed a new All-Party Parliamentary Group on Drug Policy Reform, are calling for new policies to be drawn up on the basis of scientific evidence.
It could lead to calls for the British government to decriminalise drugs, or at least for the police and Crown Prosecution Service not to jail people for possession of small amounts of banned substances.
Their intervention could receive a sympathetic audience in Whitehall, where ministers and civil servants are trying to cut the numbers and cost of the prison population. The Justice Secretary, Ken Clarke, has already announced plans to help offenders kick drug habits rather than keeping them behind bars.
The former Labour government changed its mind repeatedly on the risks posed by cannabis use and was criticised for sacking its chief drug adviser, Prof David Nutt, when he claimed that ecstasy and LSD were less dangerous than alcohol.
The chairman of the new group, Baroness Meacher – who is also chairman of an NHS trust – told The Daily Telegraph: “Criminalising drug users has been an expensive catastrophe for individuals and communities.
“In the UK the time has come for a review of our 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act. I call on our Government to heed the advice of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime that drug addiction should be recognised as a health problem and not punished.
“We have the example of other countries to follow. The best is Portugal which has decriminalised drug use for 10 years. Portugal still has one of the lowest drug addiction rates in Europe, the trend of young people’s drug addiction is falling in Portugal against an upward trend in the surrounding countries, and the Portuguese prison population has fallen over time.”
Lord Lawson, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer between 1983 and 1989, said: “I have no doubt that the present policy is a disaster.
“This is an important issue, which I have thought about for many years. But I still don’t know what the right answer is – I have joined the APPG in the hope that it may help us to find the right answer.”
Other high-profile figures in the group include Baroness Manningham-Buller, who served as Director General of MI5, the security service, between 2002 and 2007; Lord Birt, the former Director-General of the BBC who went on to become a “blue-sky thinker” for Tony Blair; Lord Macdonald of River Glaven, until recently the Director of Public Prosecutions; and Lord Walton of Detchant, a former president of the British Medical Association and the General Medical Council.
Current MPs on the group include Peter Bottomley, who served as a junior minister under Margaret Thatcher; Mike Weatherley, the newly elected Tory MP for Hove and Portslade; and Julian Huppert, the Liberal Democrat MP for Cambridge.
The group’s formation coincides with the 50th anniversary of the United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, which paved the way for a war on drugs by describing addiction as a “serious evil”, attempting to limit production for medicinal and scientific uses only, and coordinating international action against traffickers.
The peers and MPs say that despite governments “pouring vast resources” into the attempt to control drug markets, availability and use has increased, with up to 250 million people worldwide using narcotics such as cannabis, cocaine and heroin in 2008.
By Martin Beckford, Health Correspondent
They believe the trade in illegal drugs makes more than £200 billion a year for criminals and terrorists, as well as destabilising entire nations such as Afghanistan and Mexico.
As a result, the all-party group is working with the Beckley Foundation, a charitable trust, to review current policies and scientific evidence in order to draw up proposed new ways to deal with the problem.
STOP THIEF! £2 Million Banker Robber.
Highwayman Hester
RBS, 83% owned by you and me, lost £1.13 billion last year. Stephen Hester is getting a £2 million bonus – all in shares – with his salary frozen at a paltry £1.2 million.
It’s an inside job. Cameron, Dr Cable and the poodle all have their hand in this. A stitch up.
I wonder what BBC DG Mark Thompson’s bonus will be this year and how easily Uncle Rupert will subvert his way into total British media domination?
This is the oligarchy, cooking its books, flexing its muscles at your and my expense.
Cannabis Causes Tennis Elbow Which Could Lead To Cancer
It Was In The Daily Mail. It Must Be True!
After all the brave and courageous work that the Daily Mail has done in demonising drugs, particularly in explaining how very, very dangerous cannabis is, tonight its editors and journalists gathered in an atmosphere of self-righteous gloom and sanctimonious misery. The BBC has ruined it all.
The headline reads: “BBC Slammed For “How Drugs Work” Show Which Glamorises Illegal Substances”. (Snappy, eh?) See here for the Mail’s valiant and noble defence against this wicked tide of reason and common sense.
Surely something can be done to shut the BBC up?
Can’t James “Broken Britain” Brokenshire come up with some ministerial order or something to stop them telling the truth?
Let’s get the punters back on the booze. That’s where the tax revenue come from. More importantly, that’s where so much of ministers’ jollies, perks and, you know, fun and excitement comes from. I mean there’s Ascot, Glyndebourne, Henley, Twickers, Eton old boys day, Wembley. I mean, all these events are founded on a good old piss up – and the brown envelopes from the big booze companies, well they do come in very handy you know!
That’s what we want to get the hoi polloi back to. That’ll keep em happy and docile. (Don’t tell ’em about Charlie and his snifters. Let’s keep that between ourselves, eh?)
I know the truth has been allowed to leak out. More and more are realising how dangerous alcohol is. You really mustn’t mention it, even alongside heroin and cocaine. We can’t afford the scientific comparison. It doesn’t support our case. We must not allow them to realise how bad it is. All we need to do is come up with some good scare story. The schizophrenia thing doesn’t seem to have worked. What about…what about…what about? Tennis elbow? Yes, tennis elbow!
What do you think? You know, all that picking the spliff up, putting it down. Yes! That’s it! Cannabis causes tennis elbow. Get it out now!
Cannabis causes tennis elbow – which could lead to cancer. Call the press conference now!
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.
Politicians’ Negligent Response To The Drugs Debate
Shamefully Slandered
The Independent in its leader today, says “It is depressing how stale and weary have been the responses” to Bob Ainsworth’s initiative on drug policy reform. See here. As with all the media it has failed dismally to point out that he was supported by Peter Lilley, former deputy leader of the Tory party, Tom Brake from the LibDems and Paul Flynn from Labour.
The BBC, with appalling inaccuracy, stated that “all three main parties at Westminster remain opposed to legalisation”. See here. In fact the LibDems’ published policy is “In the longer term, seeking to put the supply of cannabis on a legal, regulated basis”. It matters little though because almost never has any political party been more irrelevant. The LibDems now command less respect than the Monster Raving Loonies.
The Most Dangerous Man In Britain
The responses of our political leaders are not just depressing, they are grossly irresponsible and negligent. James “Broken Britain” Brokenshire is the most dangerous man in Britain and will be responsible for far more death, misery and degradation in our country than any terrorist. As The Independent says, “such is the hysteria about drugs in Britain that there is no political space for a reasoned debate by those in authority.” The evidence that the war on drugs is an expensive failure is overwhelming but politicians prefer to waste money and lives rather than grasp this nettle.
The cowardly hypocrites, Cameron and his poodle, sit back while they allow Brokenshire, a preppy-faced apologist for gangsters to oppress, pillage and brutalise our fellow citizens.
Brokenshire is doing all he can to break Britain and British society.
He is a criminal of the first order.
Peter Reynolds 