Posts Tagged ‘Uruguay’
Tim Farron. Another Politician Displays Total Ignorance About Cannabis.
It is truly pathetic to see. Farron clearly understands the huge harm caused by cannabis prohibition but doesn’t have the knowledge, the courage or the integrity to speak the truth. Instead he panders to to the scaremongers and says:
“Cannabis causes psychosis”
“Cannabis is dangerous”
“People who use cannabis have a health problem”
“Cannabis is a bad thing”
The Liberal Democrat’s report ‘A framework for a regulated market for cannabis in the UK: Recommendations from an expert panel’ is a re-hash of Transform’s ‘Blueprint’ and its work on a socialist model of cannabis regulation in Uruguay. It denigrates the highly successful commercial model introduced in Colorado and follows Transform’s evidence-free exaggeration of the harms of cannabis and its determination to impose anti-business controls on a legal cannabis market.
There is no evidence that cannabis causes psychosis. The most that can be said is that in a very small number of genetically-vulnerable people, it may be one of many ‘component causes’.
There is no evidence that cannabis is dangerous. The most that can be said is that it does have the potential for harm if used by children, to excess, irresponsibly or by a tiny group of people who may have an allergic reaction. If you describe cannabis as dangerous then you have to describe peanuts, aspirin and hay fever remedies as more dangerous. That’s without even considering comparison with the two most dangerous drugs of all: tobacco and alcohol.
Some people who use cannabis have a health problem and they use cannabis for its remarkable properties to relieve pain and other symptoms. For most people, in moderation, cannabis is actually beneficial, helping to protect against autoimmune conditions, cancer, dementia and other diseases of aging.
For at least 95% of people who use cannabis they do so safely, without any negative consequences and it is a very good thing for their health and wellbeing.
Will Uruguay Be High?
In pursuit of their World Cup ambitions, England must face Uruguay, the only country in the world where cannabis is fully legalised and regulated by the government.
But is cannabis a performance enhancing drug? Will the Uruguay players have an unfair advantage?
In America there is much debate about cannabis in sport. It is widespread in baseball, football and almost de rigueur in ice hockey.
The evidence is that moderate cannabis use probably is performance enhancing, in that it will improve recovery, healing and general health. Used as an intoxicant it will dull the senses for a while but far less than a night on the San Miguel.
Of course, if you’re not playing then both together is also fully acceptable in polite society nowadays, particularly if you also have a doctor’s recommendation. So how can sport regulators deal with that? Is it just medicine?
The ‘Arthur Scargill’ Approach To Cannabis Law Reform Doesn’t Work.
“Anything less than 100% capitulation on the part of the authorities is unacceptable!
Stand together in solidarity brothers. We’ll fight them in the parks, in the streets, we will never surrender!
We’ll smoke cannabis where we want, when we want and we don’t give a damn who it upsets – ‘cos it’s our rights brothers, it’s our rights!
We’ll show ’em, If we keep defying them, keep showing we don’t care what they think, keep on smoking – WE WILL PREVAIL!”
It’s the hopeless, hapless politics of the school playground. It doesn’t work. It’s about defiance, civil disobedience, selfishness and bull-headed obstinacy, always with a simmering undercurrent of aggression and violence. The ‘angry stoner’ is becoming a cliche that is causing immense damage to our campaign.
Progress will be made and is actually being made in small steps by patient negotiation, compromise and hard work. That’s real work that’s often boring, tedious and has none of the appeal of marching in the streets or sitting round in the park with your mates getting stoned. This is what has created reform, firstly for medical marijuana in California, now 19 other US states and most recently a genuine revolution in in Colorado, Washington and Uruguay. These developments have been achieved despite the demos, not because of them. Exactly the same is happening in Britain.
Legally prescribed, legally dispensed, legally imported medicinal cannabis is now in Britain. The greatest progress in the cannabis campaign since the Dangerous Drugs Act 1925 was enacted.