The northlondonhippy

Archive for March 13th, 2007

The media drug story of the day fea­tures our friend cannabis, which is being grown in record amounts here in the UK. The police are appar­ently shut­ting down three fac­tory farms on aver­age per a day. Wow.

Here, check out what the Guardian, my favourite broad­sheet news­pa­per has to say about it RIGHT HERE.

I’ve writ­ten about this before; how Viet­namese gangs are con­trol­ling most of the mar­ket in domes­ti­cally, com­mer­cially grown weed. It’s not a good thing for anyone.

It’s not good for the peo­ple who inno­cently rent these gangs their prop­er­ties, either homes or com­mer­cial spaces. They don’t exactly leave them in the best con­di­tion and around 50 of these fac­tory farms in Lon­don were dis­cov­ered when they burst into flames.

These farms are not good for the peo­ple tend­ing these crops, who are forced into inden­tured servi­tude for safe pas­sage into the coun­try. They’re also forced to live in very sub­stan­dard conditions.

Mainly, it’s not good for us, the cannabis con­sumer. The weed pro­duced in these farms is not very good and accord­ing to that Guardian arti­cle, they choose strains that have high yields and fin­ish quickly, rather than doing it right and grow­ing some­thing for THC con­tent. Their buds aren’t going to be win­ning the Cannabis Cup any­time soon!

And where do you think the whole grit weed thing started? My guess is in these farms! It would explain why it was so sud­den and so wide spread.

I know a really sim­ple way to put an end to these fac­tory farms and their costly and dan­ger­ous con­di­tions. I know a way to put an end to the crap dope they pro­duce as well.

Free the weed!

Legalise it!

Decrim­i­nalise it!

Offi­cially, unof­fi­cially tol­er­ate it!

It can be done, there are ways to insure that if respon­si­ble adults can smoke weed safely with min­i­mal harm. Let’s sort it out!

There is clearly a large mar­ket for qual­ity bud. Being against the legal­i­sa­tion of weed means you are against the free mar­ket and against the very basic ten­nents of cap­i­tal­ism! It means you’re bad for busi­ness! And wouldn’t it be bet­ter if cannabis was com­mer­cially pro­duced, reg­u­lated, clearly marked accord­ing to strength and pack­aged nicely? Don’t you want the VAT? You could buy a few more Tri­dents or pay for the 2012 Lon­don Olympics. The extra tax money wouldn’t go beg­ging, would it?

The cops don’t want to waste their time chas­ing gar­den­ers, but they have to because these fac­tory farms are a blight. If weed were legal, decrim­i­nalised or sim­ply tol­er­ated, Dutch style, think of how much bet­ter police resources could be deployed!

And if you’re wor­ried about under­age kids get­ting their tiny mitts on some weed, think about this inter­est­ing exam­ple that Mrs. Hippy men­tioned to me:

Give a 12-year-old ten quid and ask him to get you a bot­tle of whiskey and chances are he will have a pretty hard time buy­ing you one and will come back empty handed. Then ask the same 12-year old to take the same ten­ner and buy you some smack…I bet he’s back with a pocket full of brown faster than you can say Pete Doherty!

I’m not say­ing chil­dren can’t acquire alco­hol; what I’m say­ing is that the sup­ply is con­trolled, mak­ing it far harder for chil­dren to gain access to booze. If weed were sim­i­larly con­trolled, instead of being avail­able from your mate’s older brother’s best friend’s bed­room for one pound a spliff, maybe less under­age tok­ers would be toking.

It’s just thought; a very sen­si­ble, ratio­nal one. Don’t expect any­thing to change any­time soon.