Peter Reynolds

Is He A Plant?

As they say, with friends like these, who needs enemies?

Is It A Professor?

Seriously, or not so seriously, who is this bumbling old duffer wheeled out by the BBC for some terribly weak story that cannabis sales should be licensed?  See here.  If the BBC wants to cover this story there are at least a dozen far more expert, more eloquent, more telegenic, better informed, more sensible commentators.

Frankly, I’d rather have someone who can put a coherent argument against instead of this pathetic performance by Prof Pertwee.  Seldom have I seen any argument for any idea advanced so weakly.  I mean, who starts off talking about their proposal by saying “I don’t think it would work”!

It does raise the suspicion that the only people that want the cannabis argument put so badly is the Home Office.  There is, quite literally, no other organisation, connected with a democratic government anywhere in the civilised world that is so backwards, regressive and out of touch with the facts than the UK Home Office.  A cannabis plant would have been a more exciting interviewee than Prof Pertwee.  He must surely be a plant for what Prof. Les Iversen, the government’s most senior official drugs adviser calls “the anti-cannabis brigade”.

Maybe this is a sign that common sense has got the Home Office on the run. Its tired, inaccurate, unscientific, prejudiced  and short sighted attitude is on its very last legs.  This is either an embarrassingly bad effort by Prof Pertwee (thanks for trying) or a desperate attempt to discredit the truth.

The fact is that the argument has already been won.  I’d like to know what the “harms” are that the Professor was talking about in his interview.   There’s the tired old chitchat about mental health problems.   It’s just propaganda.  In Israel, cannabis is now recommended by doctors to help veterans deal with PTSD.  This is fact, reality, what’s actually happening, not what James Brokenshire and his cronies dream up in some bunker in Marsham Street.

I see that the story is also running in the Daily Mail.  It’s remarkable how even it, the home of hysteria, has changed its attitude on cannabis in the last year or so.  This is perhaps a better barometer of  public opinion than anything else.  When the Daily Mail starts talking common sense it must be very obvious indeed!

Even the FT is running the story.  Who knows maybe it will develop into something a bit more sensible.  The BBC just did a particularly bad job of covering it!

I do like Prof Pertwee’s recommendation of the Volcano vapouriser though.  I concur with the Professor on this.  I can tell you that after extensive personal testing I have concluded that it works very well indeed!