Change.org Repeal Cannabis Prohibition

[Cannabis Compassion Australia]

https://www.change.org/p/federal-minister-for-health-the-hon-sussan-ley-mp-repeal-cannabis-prohibition?recruiter=1321260&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=share_facebook_responsive&utm_term=des-lg-no_src-no_msg&fb_ref=Default

 

Petitioning Federal Minister for Health, the Hon. Sussan Ley, MP Repeal cannabis prohibition

Gordon Rowland Pacific Palms, NSW

 

This is important because Australia needs fair and consistent drug laws, allowing adult Australians to use cannabis without fear of prosecution.

I started this campaign, in solidarity with fellow Australians, targeted by unjust laws that serve only to protect vested interests.

By supporting us, you can help usher in a 'fair go' for all Australian citizens

An Open Letter to Federal Minister for Health, Hon. Sussan Ley, MP

Australian drug law reform

I write to draw your attention to the inconsistency and injustice of current drug laws, and to seek your support in implementing equity, justice and improved health for all Australian citizens.

I’ll start with the facts about alcohol, cannabis, pharmaceutical medicines and tobacco.

Alcohol is a central nervous system depressant, addictive and potentially lethal to a significant minority of users. Alcohol is also linked to brain damage, cancer, heart disease and other serious health problems, including foetal alcohol syndrome, caused by women who drink alcohol during pregnancy.

 In the short term, alcohol numbs the higher centres of the brain, prompting some drinkers to acts of violence. Alcohol-fuelled domestic and public violence have become major issues in Australia, yet alcohol is still widely advertised, and legally available for consumption in unlimited quantities.

 Tobacco is even more toxic and addictive, causing disease, disability and death on a massive scale. According to the federal government’s 1980s ‘Drug Offensive’, tobacco then accounted for 81 per cent of ‘recreational’ drug-related deaths in Australia – four times as many as all other ‘recreational’ drugs, legal and illegal, combined. Tobacco cigarettes contain over 4,000 compounds, including some that are carcinogenic and some radioactive. The psychoactive ingredient, nicotine, is the most toxic plant product known to science.

 Tobacco smoking is also linked to cancers of the oesophagus, stomach, colon, liver, pancreas, larynx, lung, bladder, kidney, cervix, lip and oral cavity. It has recently been linked to acute myeloid leukemia, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, atherosclerosis, aortic aneurysm, chronic lung disease, pneumonia, influenza and tuberculosis.

 An overdose can occur if nicotine patches, nicotine gum and cigarettes are used together. As nicotine readily passes into the bloodstream following dermal contact, a high concentration of nicotine spilled on the skin may have fatal consequences.

 Women who smoke or use nicotine gum and patches during the early stages of pregnancy, risk the teratogenic effects of nicotine – an increased risk of babies with birth defects.

 Yet tobacco is also legally available for consumption in unlimited quantities.

 Pharmaceutical medicines – prescription and over-the-counter – are the third-leading cause of death, after cancer and heart disease. In 2014, the Victorian Coroners Prevention Unit stated that pharmaceutical drugs played a causal or contributing role in around 80 per cent of Victorian overdose deaths between 2012 and 2013, twice as many as illegal drugs during the same period.

 In stark contrast, cannabis has never caused a single confirmed fatality, and recent research indicates it is less likely to cause addiction than alcohol, tobacco and many pharmaceuticals, with minimal if any, adverse long-term side effects.

Cannabis is also analgesic, anti-angiogenic, antibacterial, anti-convulsive, antidepressant, anti-inflammatory, anti-metastatic, anti-proliferative, antipsychotic, antispasmodic, anxiolytic and neuro-protective.

 In recent years, the discovery of the endocannabinoid system has revealed the intimate association between cannabis and human health, opening up new avenues of research for the prevention and treatment of many conditions, including Alzheimer’s disease, many cancers, diabetes, epilepsy, glaucoma, multiple sclerosis, stroke and many others. 

 A particularly important property of cannabis is apoptosis – the selective targeting of cancerous cells to self-destruct, while leaving normal cells unaffected. This represents a challenge to the lucrative chemotherapy/radiation model, with its numerous adverse side effects.

 The endocannabinoid system is a central regulatory system that affects a wide range of biological processes including homeostasis (stability of physiological processes), vital to healthy functioning. The system involves a group of compounds, collectively known as cannabinoids, produced within the human body (and in other mammals), with a significantly higher concentration in breast milk. A 2004 study, published in the European Journal of Pharmacology, describes how the endocannabinoids in maternal milk appear to activate the sucking reflex of breast-feeding infants.

 Since tetrahydrocannabinol [THC] was first isolated in 1964, over 80 cannabinoids, including cannabidiol [CBD], have been identified. When ingested or vaporised, THC, CBD and other cannabinoids augment or replace the body's own endocannabinoids, damaged or depleted through exposure to environmental pollutants, synthetic food additives and other stressors.

 These compounds work together to produce a synergy of effects. This is known as the ‘entourage effect'.

 Cannabis is thus a truly restorative, ‘re-creational’ herb, a food akin to vitamins and essential minerals, in contrast to alcohol, pharmaceutical medicines and tobacco.

 The real reason cannabis is prohibited, is because it presents an organic, sustainable, non-toxic alternative to powerful vested interests, including alcohol, tobacco and, in particular, the pharmaceutical industry, that Prof. Peter Gotzsche exposes in his 2013 book 'Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime: How Big Pharma has Corrupted Healthcare.'

 The federal government, via the Therapeutic Goods Administration, accepts the aggregated information submitted by pharmaceutical companies seeking approval, without first analysing the raw data. The TGA then allows them to market their often inadequately assessed products in Australia: Pfizer, Novartis, Sanofi-Aventis, GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca, Roche, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Eli Lilly and Abbott Laboratories – Gotzsche's ten companies in his 'Hall of Shame for Big Pharma', have all been found guilty and fined for criminal offences. Bayer, Novo Nordisk, Purdue and several others also have criminal records. Eli Lilly pleaded guilty in 2009 to criminal charges of illegal off-label marketing of olanzapine [Zyprexa], the lethal psychotropic drug implicated in severe adverse side effects and many suicides.

 The world’s largest pharmaceutical company, Pfizer, another repeat offender, was fined US$2.3 billion in 2009 for 'intent to defraud or mislead', and has been charged with further offences since then. Yet the TGA still allows these companies to push their drugs in Australia, yielding to pharmaceutical industry pressure, and following the equally compromised and ineffectual US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

 As Prof. Gotzsche's book reveals, pharmaceutical companies’ sales teams (‘educators’) befriend and bribe influential individuals and organisations, including regulatory agencies, while pharmaceutical company research departments often manipulate trial protocols and falsify research findings. We leave you to make your own inferences, and take appropriate action.

 Meanwhile, many otherwise law-abiding citizens are treated as criminals for choosing cannabis, as safer and more effective in controlling and sometimes curing their conditions, in preference to the synthesized products made by these criminal corporations. Likewise, many recreational users prefer cannabis as safer and more agreeable than alcohol or tobacco.

 We are inspired and emboldened by Thomas Jefferson:

 'When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty'.

 That is why many otherwise law-abiding citizens will continue to resist, to defy, and to assert our rights to make informed decisions about our, and our children's, health and wellbeing.

 Do you seriously expect adult Australians to trust a political establishment with shameful conflicts-of-interest, an establishment that prohibits the planet's most useful, versatile, non-toxic herb, on spurious 'health/safety' grounds; while taking bribes – 'donations' – from the ‘toxic trio’: alcohol, pharmaceutical and tobacco corporations, all with vested interests in maintaining the status quo?

 We deserve and demand better from our elected representatives. Moreover, taxpayers need to know they are subsidising dangerous, potentially lethal drugs made by untrustworthy companies with criminal records.

 In light of the facts we have outlined, may we count on you to take remedial action?

 We look forward to your response, and your answers to our questions.

 Yours sincerely,

 Gordon Rowland, DO, Dip. H. Psych, Assoc. Dip. Applied Science  
Registered Osteopath [retired]
PO Box 132
111 Tarbuck Park Road
Pacific Palms, NSW 2428
tel 02 4997 6444

 plus 251 co-signatories from all States, the ACT and Northern Territory, including:
Dr. Alex Wodak AM,
Emeritus Consultant, Alcohol and Drug Service, St Vincent's Hospital
Visiting Fellow, Kirby Institute, UNSW
President, Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation
Director, Australia21, Darlinghurst, NSW, 201

Lucy Haslam
Retired Nurse, Medicinal Cannabis Campaigner, Tamworth NSW
Louis Haslam
Retired NSW Drug Squad and Police Officer, Tamworth NSW
Oliver Malter, B.Pharm
Pharmacist, Cairns Qld
Paul Lawrence, Assoc. Dip. Sports Science, Bellambi NSW
Gail Hester
Registered nurse [retired], NSW
Jonathan Parkes. Dip. Community Welfare, Wurtulla Qld