Marijuana smokers buying poisoned dope

[Nath]

Marijuana smokers buying poisoned dope

 

28.07.2004

By AINSLEY THOMSON

 

Marijuana users are being warned about poisoned cannabis being sold on the Coromandel Peninsula.

 

A pro-marijuana group says the cannabis has been sprayed by police with a herbicide, a process which turns the drug blue. Unscrupulous growers are disguising the poisoned cannabis with yellow food colouring to make it look green.

 

The National Organisation for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (Norml) said the affected marijuana could cause people to cough up blood and suffer nausea and headaches.

 

Police confirmed that when they found marijuana plots they sprayed them with herbicide.

 

Waikato police spokeswoman Kris McGehan said the police would not disclose any operational information such as when or how the plants were sprayed.

 

Ms McGehan said she had not heard of people getting sick from smoking poisoned drugs "but we are probably unlikely to for obvious reasons".

 

"If you are going to buy or consume illegal drugs that is the risk you take. Obviously it is a criminal activity that we have no control over."

 

Norml spokesman Chris Fowlie said most growers were "legitimate and ethical people".

 

"But there is a section who are attracted just for the money and if they lose their crop through spraying they are going to want to recover it some other way."

 

Mr Fowlie said those growers were disguising the poisoned marijuana by covering it in yellow food colouring to make it look green. They were also turning it into cannabis oil, where the blue colour was harder to detect.

 

Mr Fowlie said the poisoned marijuana was mostly being bought by teenagers who were likely to buy from sources such as tinny houses.

 

"We are getting reports that these kids are buying pot and smoking it and getting sick or coughing a lot. Coughing up blood in some instances."

 

Green Party MP Nandor Tanczos said the police should let the public know exactly what they were spraying so the health risks could be determined.

 

Toxic weed

 

What the marijuana sprayed with herbicide looks like:

 

* Chris Fowlie of the National Organisation for the Reform of Marijuana Laws says the poisoned marijuana is a copper-blue colour.

 

* Some strains of marijuana, such as Te Puke Thunder, are naturally blue, which could confuse people.

 

* But the poisoned marijuana looks like the blue colour has been splashed or painted on.

 

* When the stalk on a poisoned plant is broken, blue dye should be visible down the middle of the stalk.

 

 

Taken from New Zealand News

Link: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm...section=general

 

Damn this must be scary stuff.. coughing up blood.. ewww... BLAME THE POLICE.. hehe.

[free choice]

MORONS ..... MORONS ..... MORONS ...

 

all the better reason to grow your own...