The northlondonhippy

Finally, a gov­ern­ment drug pol­icy I agree with completely…

Ille­gal factory-style cannabis farms should be closed down.

Check out THIS REPORT from the BBC.

Fac­tory cannabis-farms are often set-up in rented accom­mo­da­tion, with the land­lords none the wiser until they receive a phone call from the police telling them their income prop­erty has been trashed.

Ille­gal cannabis farm­ers steal elec­tric­ity from neigh­bours or from the an energy sup­plier; either way its theft and its wrong. Safety is ignored and fires are not uncom­mon. And sad­dest of all, they are fre­quently staffed by ille­gal aliens trapped in a type of hell­ish inden­tured servitude.

Where I split from the gov­ern­ment is their choice of solu­tion; police raids won’t make the prob­lem go away, it will only make it relo­cate to yet another unsus­pect­ing venue. The trade is far too lucra­tive for those involved to give it up. Raids are sim­ply a cal­cu­lated risk bal­anced against a very reward­ing return.

Its sup­ply and demand, the very cor­ner­stone of our cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem. To ignore or deny this very sim­ple truth, is to be blink­ered and ostrich like.

There’s a bet­ter way.

There’s always a bet­ter way, but it would involve our lead­ers shift­ing their cur­rent posi­tion, which is one of dis­in­for­ma­tion and lies, towards a more open and hon­est approach.

Its time to legalise the indus­try and take it out of the hands of crim­i­nals. Its time to reg­u­late and tax cannabis, bring the mar­ket under some sort of control.

To be against a legal cannabis indus­try is to be against the very heart and soul of capitalism.

Don’t let the con­di­tion­ing the media has been force-feeding you colour your view on this. They’ve been sys­tem­at­i­cally try­ing to dis­credit cannabis and per­vert your per­cep­tion of it for quite some time now.

Why?

Its easy to score points with the pub­lic by appear­ing tough on drugs. Also, it diverts your atten­tion from more impor­tant issues, like Iraq, cli­mate change or the economy.

The time is now for this unadul­ter­ated bull­shit to end.

Back when Blair and Blun­kett were in charge, cannabis was down­graded and they even toyed with a police pol­icy of mak­ing arrests for pos­ses­sion of cannabis the low­est pos­si­ble pri­or­ity. Things were finally mov­ing in the right direc­tion, the gov­ern­ment was lis­ten­ing to advi­sors and sci­en­tis­tis and using a bit of com­mon sense.

Mean­while in Amer­ica, the “war on drugs” was still going strong, along with fed­eral raids on med­ical mar­i­juana clubs and impris­on­ment for pos­ses­sion. This wasn’t that long ago.

Under Obama, things have already changed with an end to fed­eral raids and an offi­cial pol­icy that secedes power to indi­vid­ual states with regards to cannabis.

Cal­i­for­nia is now con­sid­er­ing legal­i­sa­tion and tax­a­tion, because the state is nearly bank­rupt. Des­per­ate times clearly call for cre­ative mea­sures, this one will bring Cali an esti­mated annual tidy sum of $1.3 bil­lion (with a B) dollars.

Many other states have decrim­i­nalised pos­ses­sion and have made it the low­est pos­si­ble polic­ing priority.

Our out-of-touch, out-of-step gov­ern­ment is about as un-Obama as possible.

If peo­ple won­der why Obama didn’t make more time for Gor­don Brown, they’re not really look­ing closely enough. They couldn’t be more polar oppo­sites when it comes to gen­uine lib­eral thought and policy.

Legal­is­ing weed would cre­ate legit­i­mate jobs, for legit­i­mate farm­ers and dis­trib­u­tors; jobs that already exist in the black econ­omy, fuelling a rather size­able black mar­ket that exists out­side the tax and social secu­rity system.

A legal and con­trolled indus­try would insure that safety stan­dards were met at the point of pro­duc­tion, for the facil­i­ties, the staff and the prod­uct. You would know the weed you were get­ting was pure and unadul­ter­ated. You would know the per­son who grew it was paid a rea­son­able, tax­able wage.

As much as I wish to see these dan­ger­ous and ille­gal cannabis farms closed down, I’m smart enough to realise that police raids alone are not the answer. If you really want to end the ille­gal cannabis trade, there is only one prac­ti­cal, work­able solu­tion: Legalise!

Even the UN may come to this con­clu­sion as they pre­pare to finalise an agree­ment this week in Vienna, but as this report in today’s Guardian sug­gests, there are still deep divi­sions with some EU and Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries favour­ing a more ratio­nal approach, with the US pre­fer­ring to con­tinue the point­less “war on drugs”.

Oh Pres­i­dent Sav­iour Obama, are you lis­ten­ing? The “war on drugs” has been an abysmal fail­ure and many knowl­edge­able and respectable peo­ple believe its been worse than the actual harm caused by the drugs them­selves. Could you please call your min­ions in Vienna and sort this sorry mess out?

If you want to know more, please check out my Cannabis Truth Series

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