Cannabis: the big lie

[Tom]

Skunk may be strong, but it's no stronger than the high-quality hashish that has been smoked in Britain since time immemorial.

 

Virtually half the Brown cabinet have now declared that they once smoked dope but didn't like it. What on earth is wrong with these people? Normal folk use drugs and enjoy them.

 

All this talk of re-criminalising millions of cannabis users is predicated on untruth. That is, politicians and medical professionals are peddling dodgy data which purport to show that currently available strains of so-called "skunk weed" are 10 or more times stronger than anything the new home secretary may have toked while she was at Oxford in the early 1980s.

 

It's simply untrue, and repeating a lie ad nauseam does not make it true. Let me say that again: repeating a lie often enough does not make it true.

 

"Skunk" is a generic name for fast-growing cannabis hybrids cultivated indoors under artificial lights using hydroponics technology. Technically, skunk is a crossbreed of Cannabis sativa and the shorter, bushier Cannabis indica indigenous to Afghanistan.

 

Some of these newer strains are particularly well-suited to rapid, high density growth in confined conditions, and the result is that several crops can be grown every year. The supply chain is a lot shorter than for imported cannabis, and profit margins for the grower/wholesalers can be quite high.

 

The THC content of skunk can be significantly higher than your average imported grass, but it compares with the levels found in the high-quality hashish that has been smoked in these islands since time immemorial.

 

Personally, I cannot stand skunk, and the difficulty these days in obtaining decent hash is the main reason I no longer smoke. Skunk is like poor-quality young wine; it may have a high percentage of the active ingredient, but it tastes foul and gives you a bad head. Like cheap booze, the current prevalence of skunk is symptomatic of our impatient and undiscerning age.

 

I look back with fondness to the 1970s and 1980s when good quality hash was easy to come by. The downside was that some of my money probably found its way into the coffers of IRA and Loyalist quartermasters, and other equally delightful characters. Not all hash smugglers were as nice as Howard Marks.

 

I will not advocate the use of cannabis or any other drug (even coffee), but I would rather that all drugs be legally available, at prices dictated largely by the market. Let the government take its cut, within reason.

 

What worries me more than the widespread and sometimes inappropriate use of cannabis is young people drinking till they drop, and ruining their livers before they have fully stopped growing. If binge drinking doesn't kill the young outright, they will be condemned to lives of constant ill-health arising from irreparable internal organ damage.

 

But only fools and medical professionals think that the solution there is to raise alcohol prices to Swedish levels, and further restrict the availability of booze. Criminalising cannabis users will likewise not make for a healthier society.

 

Prohibition laws make sense only where they can be effectively enforced and have the desired effect. This clearly does not apply to drug use, and we should have learned this lesson a long time ago.

 

And then there's the hypocrisy of it all. A significant chunk of government tax revenue comes from alcohol sales. Taking alcohol duty together with the excise on that other killer drug tobacco, and ignoring VAT on coffee and tea, the government's income from drug sales amounts to some £15bn a year. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

 

Cannabis is not a harmless drug, but the odd panic attack due to over- consumption of strong weed is nothing when compared with the damage that excessive drinking and other poor lifestyle choices do to the human system.

 

Drug control has failed, and it's high time we changed track. Let's now try switching the propaganda focus from illness prevention to positive health promotion, and see what effect that has.

 

Author: Francis Sedgemore

Date: July 20, 2007

Source: Guardian Unlimited

Copyright: © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007.

 

Worth reading the the comments on this one, you can leave one yourself too if you want: http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/franci...he_big_lie.html

 

[freddie]

Great stuff! I would love to see something similar published in Australia.

 

repeating a lie ad nauseam does not make it true

 

This tactic seems to have worked here, sadly.

[WantDaChronic]

that was a great read, shame you wont read anything like that in an aussie paper though

[aussie1]

I really can't understand all the BS about today's cannabis being 10- 20 times

stronger than that of yesteryear. I had some shit back then that would blow

your head off, and I had some crap. Today, I find the same thing.

 

This is an exercpt from various authorities in the US who have been handed the task of monitoring the

changes in THC levels of cannabis.

 

# According to the federal Potency Monitoring Project, the average potency of marijuana has increased very little since the 1980s. The Project reports that in 1985, the average THC content of commercial-grade marijuana was 2.84%, and the average for high-grade sinsemilla in 1985 was 7.17%. In 1995, the potency of commercial-grade marijuana averaged 3.73%, while the potency of sinsemilla in 1995 averaged 7.51%. In 2001, commercial-grade marijuana averaged 4.72% THC, and the potency of sinsemilla in 2001 averaged 9.03%.

 

Source: Quarterly Report #76, Nov. 9, 2001-Feb. 8, 2002, Table 3, p. 8, University of Mississippi Potency Monitoring Project (Oxford, MS: National Center for the Development of Natural Products, Research Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, 2002), Mahmoud A. ElSohly, PhD, Director, NIDA Marijuana Project (NIDA Contract #N01DA-0-7707).

 

As you can see they haven't even doubled, let alone be 10 -20 times

stronger. As I have said before, I think better gardening practices, and the fact the there is more hydro

going on due to the governments hard line on this that is causing the improvement in THC levels. I think

because we have more control over the enviroment in a hydro situation, we are bringing the plant to it's

inherent potential, NOT creating super plants.

 

regards

aussie

[WantDaChronic]

the potency increase can be attributed to a few things, mainly the fact consumers have been demanding buds instead of seedy buds that are leafy as and full of stem. removing the excess leaf, seeds, stems, etc. will give an extreme potency increase, probably on the order of making it twice as strong as it was before being processed. well from my experience 1 cone of properly manicured bud is the same as 2 or 3 cones of the same strain if it is still leafy as, so there is definately a major increase there. then there is the overall increase in potency cause by growers refusing to grow the same old shit and looking for better genetics and the government's lies using a strain that was severly low in potency in the 70s and comparing it to the uber weed of today which can have 20% or more thc by dry weight

 

having said that though, i have been told by many a person that the old day strains like panama red, columbian gold, thai, etc. were all bullshit good compared to the best strains going around today and that if we still had easy access to those unadultered genetics we would be hard up to find anyone growing something different

[Al Fish]

“To err is human. But to persevere in error is theological.”

 

Cannabis is a blessing in that it affords insight into your state of spiritual servitude to false (false to you) idols and ideals. The present laws against the use of drugs in all so-called civilized countries were passed be people totally ignorant of the nature and effect of the drugs concerned, at the instigation of people who were only too aware of the liberating power of such drugs. For the same reason do these people disapprove of free sexual intercourse – they know that the catharsis of orgasm also liberates, even if for one moment, the True Self within.

 

The propaganda against drugs is fostered by religious organisations, by opportunistic politicians and by the traffickers themselves – who would disappear like snow on the water if morphine, heroin, cocaine could be freely purchased by any adult from any licensed physician.

 

Here endeth the sermon.