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UVSS HEMPOLOGY 101 CLUB LESSON #20 : POT IN POLITICS - Part 2 |
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Prominent among those currently calling for legislative reform - and going further by making constructive proposals - are police chiefs and city medical officers, people who know only too well that the existing policies in most countries are ineffective and unworkable. When the occasional politician raises her head above the parapet - as the British opposition MP Clare Short did recently in calling for a fresh debate on decriminalisation of cannabis - the response is tediously predictable: widespread condemnation from political colleagues and overwhelming support from those who have to cope with the end result of political inertia. In the case of Ms Short, not only was she speedily reprimanded by the party leader, but also party officials claimed that their non-legalisation stance was entirely logical since legalisation of cannabis would "increase the supply, reduce the price, and increase the usage". According to a Home Office report earlier this year, the number of people taking cannabis has doubled in a decade - without any help from "liberal" measures. Perhaps the politicians' real fear was that freedom to use soft drugs would automatically progress to increased use of substances such as cocaine and heroin. If so, they must have overlooked the recent Dutch government review which pointed out that decriminalisation of possession of soft drugs has not led to a rise in the use of hard drugs. If the Dutch approach is so successful, why are changes afoot in The Hague to tighten up that country's drug policy? First Amsterdam's mayor proposed closing down half the city's coffee shops that sell cannabis, and in doing so he rejected a report by his health department in favour of legalisation of soft drugs. Then the Dutch government, which had made an election promise to legalise cannabis, last month issued a discussion paper which mirrored the Amsterdam plan. If, as expected, the Dutch parliament agrees the latest proposals, half the country's 4000 cannabis-selling coffee shops will close and the amount that can be sold to an individual will be cut to 5 g. Since the government's own review provides no ammunition for such a change in policy, the real reason behind the new measures must lie elsewhere. One needs look no further than the Netherlands' neighbours and co-signatories of the Schengen agreement… When France, in particular, threatened to end the agreement, claiming that the Netherlands was the major supplier of Europe's drugs, some action had to be taken and the coffee shops became the scapegoat. Editorial, LANCET, Nov 1995. |
At least 33 members of the clergy have endorsed ballot Question 7 on the November election ballot, which if approved would make Nevada the first state in the nation to allow people 21 and older to legally possess small amounts of marijuana and purchase it at government regulated and state-taxed pot shops. The clergy argued the move would cut down on minors' access to marijuana, reduce gang-related violence and generate money for the state to help finance treatment programs instead of making drug dealers rich. "On its face, our current marijuana laws appear to be moral, but it is a cosmetic morality," said the Rev. Paul Hansen, senior pastor at Holy Spirit Lutheran Church in Las Vegas. NEVADA RELIGIOUS LEADERS MAKE CASE TO LEGALIZE POT, Associated Press, 2006. For a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) increasingly mired in controversies over the politicization of scientific and regulatory decisions, the agency's April 20, 2006 statement regarding medical use of marijuana may represent an all-time low point.[1] Politics, it appears, has now completely trumped science at this once proudly independent agency. The FDA has announced that "no sound scientific studies" support the medical use of marijuana, contradicting an increasingly large body of scientific literature. To those of us who do research in this area, this is a personal affront. Even the federal Drug Enforcement Agency's (DEA) own Administrative Law Judge, the Honourable Francis Young, stated in 1988, "Marijuana is the safest therapeutically active substance known to man..." He went on to say, "The evidence clearly shows that marijuana is capable of relieving the distress of great numbers of very ill people, and doing so with safety under medical supervision… it would be unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious for the DEA to continue to stand between those sufferers and the benefits of this substance." The FDA's announcement is puzzling at many levels. It makes no mention of any recent FDA analysis or investigation, regulatory filing, or any other activity within the normal scope of the agency's work that led to this policy change. Rational, apolitical minds need to take over the debate on marijuana, separating myth from fact, right from wrong, and responsible, medicinal use from other, less compelling usages. Carter, G. MD & Mirkin, B., MEDICAL MARIJUANA: POLITICS TRUMPS SCIENCE AT THE FDA, medscape, 2006 |
