The northlondonhippy

Archive for the ‘cannabis’ Category

Some­times, this blog just writes itself and the fol­low­ing entry is ripped straight off the front page of today’s Guardian newspaper.

The head­line reads “Cannabis use down since legal change” and it was writ­ten by their Home Affairs Edi­tor, Alan Travis, based on the lat­est report by the British Crime Sur­vey. Mr. Travis has con­tin­ued to pro­vide fair, bal­anced and respon­si­ble cov­er­age of this very impor­tant issue. That can’t be easy in the cur­rent cli­mate of fear and false infor­ma­tion and I would like to pub­licly thank him for that. Please take the time to read HIS REPORT.

A few key quotes:

1) “Gor­don Brown’s plans to tighten the law on cannabis by increas­ing the penal­ties for pos­ses­sion suf­fered a fresh blow yes­ter­day as the lat­est offi­cial fig­ures showed the deci­sion to down­grade the drug had been fol­lowed by a sig­nif­i­cant fall in its use.

British Crime Sur­vey sta­tis­tics showed that the pro­por­tion of 16– to 24-year-olds using cannabis slumped from 28% a decade ago to 21% now, with its declin­ing pop­u­lar­ity accel­er­at­ing after the deci­sion to down­grade the drug to class C was announced in Jan­u­ary 2004.”

2) “…the BCS fig­ures pub­lished yes­ter­day showed that cannabis is begin­ning to lose its allure with teenagers. The pro­por­tion of fre­quent users in the 16–24 age group, who were using the drug more than once a month, fell from 12% to 8% in the past four years.”

3) “The decline in cannabis con­sump­tion prompted a call from the inde­pen­dent UK Drugs Pol­icy Com­mis­sion to take deci­sions about drug clas­si­fi­ca­tion out of the hands of min­is­ters. Dame Ruth Runci­man, the commission’s chief, said: “We do not believe the cred­i­bil­ity of the cur­rent sys­tem or the clar­ity of mes­sage has been enhanced when, in just the space of seven years, five home sec­re­taries have sought one way or another to address the clas­si­fi­ca­tion of cannabis.”

Good pol­i­cy­mak­ing had been over­shad­owed by “pol­i­tick­ing”, and much of the con­fu­sion among pub­lic and politi­cians stemmed from mis­un­der­stand­ings about the clas­si­fi­ca­tion sys­tem. The com­mis­sion also says there is no evi­dence a drug’s clas­si­fi­ca­tion deterred use, and sug­gested that instead of tin­ker­ing the whole clas­si­fi­ca­tion sys­tem should be placed out­side the direct con­trol of politicians.”

4) “Claims that “super­skunk”,.. (is) dom­i­nant were also under­mined by police and cus­toms seizure fig­ures.… (with skunk mak­ing up) less than one-third of the (UK) market.”

The sig­nif­i­cance of this report can­not be under­es­ti­mated. It con­tra­dicts absolutely every lie com­ing from the gov­ern­ment on their jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for pos­si­ble reclas­si­fi­ca­tion of cannabis. It pisses all over much of the bull­shit we’ve been read­ing the news­pa­pers over the last few months too.

I think Dame Runci­man is onto some­thing when she says the deci­sion should be taken away from min­is­ters. She is so right. Drug use is mainly a health issue, and should not be con­fused with legal or moral arguments.

The Guardian wasn’t the only news­pa­per to cover this story, as you can see for your­self in The Times and the Inde­pen­dent. The truth always finds a way!

I’m look­ing for­ward to this Sunday’s “Inde­pen­dent on Sun­day”, to see how they can spin this one into some silly-assed shite.

Yes, IoS, you print a hell of a lot of silly-assed shite when it comes to my beloved cannabis and I am really get­ting bored with it. I’m guess­ing a senior edi­tor there must have a teenage son or daugh­ter who got into trou­ble and decided it was eas­ier to blame weed, then take responsibility.

The IoS cam­paign smacks of per­sonal inter­est, bor­der­ing on vendetta. As jour­nal­ists, you’re sup­posed to be the dis­pas­sion­ate observers, you’re not meant to fur­ther your per­sonal agenda with lie after lie. I have an agenda as too, but I back it up with the truth and per­sonal expe­ri­ence and am try­ing to do some gen­uine good. If the IoS con­tin­ues like this, they will be exposed and no one will trust any­thing else they publish.

Is the rep­u­ta­tion of your news­pa­per worth back­ing los­ing horse? The hypocrisy you’re show­ing will do you no favours. You can’t con­tinue to ignore the hard facts and it would be much bet­ter for you to come out now with an edi­to­r­ial, explain­ing you got it wrong and revert back to your pre­vi­ous and long run­ning cam­paign to legalise weed! We’d for­give you if you did!

I don’t see how any­one can ignore these hard facts and reli­able sta­tis­tics, but I’m sure our gov­ern­ment will find a way. If they can avoid the truth to jus­tify the war in Iraq, it will be a piece of piss to do the same thing with weed. Both of those things make this hippy very sad.

I get con­fused, some­times, by all the dif­fer­ent, con­flict­ing bits of infor­ma­tion offered to me on any given day.

I try to dis­re­gard as much of it as I can, but when it comes to the bat­tle over cannabis, my ears prick up, which is markedly bet­ter than a prick up your ear.

The cur­rent lies being ped­dled about weed must be con­fus­ing to a lot of folks out there. The pow­ers that be are not-so-subtly work­ing hard to shift pub­lic per­cep­tion. They want you to think mar­i­juana is the devil’s weed; that it will turn your chil­dren in psy­chotic killers who are only con­cerned with where their next fix of dope is com­ing from.

This por­trayal couldn’t be any fur­ther from the truth if they tried. Oh wait, they are try­ing and they are not in remote prox­im­ity of even a reflec­tion in a pud­dle of piss of truth.

Yet, the news­pa­per head­lines scream with out­ra­geous anger and hyper­bole over the dan­gers of cannabis.

Head­lines can be wrong. Fre­quently, they are. It’s eas­ier to par­rot some make believe fact, if that fic­ti­tious fact cre­ates fear and moral indignation.

Here’s some­thing you won’t be read­ing in any respectable news­pa­per, any time soon. A recent study car­ried out by a respected Dutch uni­ver­sity, com­pared the teenage brains via MRI scans of two groups of teenagers; group A were reg­u­lar weed smok­ers, group B never touched the stuff.

Guess what? There was no dis­cernible dif­fer­ence in the results, between the two groups. Or as it says in the head­line of the arti­cle I’m quot­ing, “Cannabis not dan­ger­ous for young people”.

Could you imag­ine the front page of the Daily Mail or the Inde­pen­dent on Sun­day splash­ing the same head­line across their front page? Nei­ther can I, but a hippy can dream and this hippy does. Far too much.

I’m not really a hippy, but I do play one on the internet.

That con­fes­sion shouldn’t be a huge sur­prise to you, as I’ve said on more than one occa­sion on this very blog that I’m not an actual hippy.

I’m a gen­uine cap­i­tal­ist, not like the peo­ple who run the coun­try. I believe that mar­ket forces should dic­tate what the mar­ket sells; demand should reg­u­late sup­ply. That is one of my biggest argu­ments for legal­is­ing drugs. Peo­ple want them and the black mar­ket steps in where the con­trolled mar­ket fails.

If you’re anti-legalisation, then you’re not a real cap­i­tal­ist and I can’t take you seri­ously over any eco­nomic issue. Are you lis­ten­ing Mr. Brown? And you Tory twats? I hope you all wrote that down!

Gen­uine hip­pies don’t believe in sur­vival of the fittest, they believe in a world where we all help one and other. All you have to do is step out­side your front door for 30 sec­onds and you’ll see how unhippy-like the world truly is in that regard. Peo­ple are cunts and they treat each other like cunts. That, my friends, is a sure thing.

I’m over-generalising, but you get the idea. The more self­ish you are, the bet­ter your chances of sur­vival are. If you put your­self ahead of every­one else, you’re prob­a­bly going to come out on top. Of course, there are excep­tions to this rule as well.

Think about your boss, or bosses in gen­eral. They all tend to share a com­mon belief that they are bet­ter than the peo­ple work­ing below them. This belief doesn’t come from hav­ing the more senior role, I’m sure they all believed they were supe­rior prior to that. If any­thing, that innate belief in supe­ri­or­ity is what got them the job in the first place. But reach­ing that posi­tion of power can come with a price, and the price can be dis­missal from a hot­shot, high pay­ing gig.

I’m not self­ish enough, but then I don’t claim to be the fittest and wor­thy of sur­vival. I wouldn’t last 2 min­utes in the real jun­gle, I don’t have that killer instinct, much as I pre­tend I do. I’m too pseudo-philosophical and too much of a pseudo-intellectual to care about any­thing enough to really fight for it. I’d be chewed up, swal­lowed down and shat out by a big­ger, meaner, scarier ani­mal than me.

And that would be OK. If you believe in the laws of the jun­gle, then you have to accept your fate. I accept mine every day the good lord above sees fit to let me wake up and endure another day.

Like I believe in “the good lord above”! You didn’t buy that shit, did you? There is no god, there’s only hip­pies and occa­sion­ally, once in a gen­er­a­tion, there are hip­py­gods. I am that hip­py­god and have the busi­ness cards to prove it.

Except, I’m not really a hippy. I don’t even own a pair of san­dals, never mind love beads.

What are “love beads” any­way? Could a real hippy let me know? Pre­ferrably one that was older than 6 when the 70s started, I was 6 when 1970 started and I just don’t know what they are.

I bet these peo­ple know. I mean, the peo­ple in THIS REPORT from today’s Inde­pen­dent, which checks up on some for­mer hip­pies to see if they are still liv­ing the dream.

I guess the Indy left me out of that list because they think I am cur­rently a hippy and they prob­a­bly already know I was 6 when the 60’s ended. It still would have been nice for them to phone me, you know, just to say “hi”.

I know you guys at the Indy are com­ing here, hang­ing out, read­ing my shit. I men­tion your rag too much for you not too. I don’t mind if you sniff around my nether regions a bit. I kinda like it, actu­ally, but usu­ally I expect a bit of din­ner or a drink before I let some­one do that sort of thing to me.

Don’t worry, I still dig your Monday-Saturday edi­tions, but you really need to sort those dorks at the IoS out. Their lies, exag­ger­a­tions and mixed mes­sages on cannabis are ludi­crous, hurt­ful and unhelp­ful and they should cease imme­di­ately. You know it makes sense!

Yep, me again. And no, it’s not the threat­ened review of my brand new, shiny, lick­able and super­fast iMac. It’s com­ing. So is xmas. Xmas will not come first, because as we all know, com­ing first is rude.

As I was thread­ing my way through the rush hour traf­fic this morn­ing, strug­gling to get myself home, I started think­ing how much I could really do with get seri­ously out of my skull.

What I mean is, I could really do with a psy­che­delic trip that got me totally off my face. I need to see some pretty colours!

I’ve done acid a hand­ful of times, the last time around 10 years ago. I also used to enjoy magic mush­rooms, around every week or so. I’ve lost count of the num­ber of shroom trips I’ve had.

Magic mush­rooms grow wild all over the UK and a friend of mine would take an annual pil­grim­age to the West Coun­try every autumn to col­lect them. He was always very gen­er­ous with them and I ended up with a few trips yearly.

Then, in 2003 I dis­cov­ered that fresh magic mush­rooms were avail­able, legally to pur­chase and con­sume. I didn’t believe it at first, that you could really buy them that eas­ily. At first, I thought it was some sort of a scam. How wrong I was!

I first ordered them from EDIT my friends who are now the exclu­sive dis­trib­u­tors of my NLH deluxe bong. They arrived the fol­low­ing day and were exactly as described. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

I started research­ing shrooms, learn­ing about dif­fer­ent strains, poten­cies and dosages. With my friend’s West Coun­try shrooms, I never mea­sured them; they were dried and rel­a­tively easy to con­sume, if not totally disgusting.

Fresh shrooms are even nas­tier, slimy and cold, with the flavour of what I expect the insides of a rot­ting corpse might taste like. Gross!

I started out on 30 grams of Mex­i­can p-cubes, which is a rea­son­able, but not overly strong dose — for me any­way. Over the few years I did them reg­u­larly, I worked my way up to higher doses, peak­ing around 55 grams or so.

The trips were amaz­ing, I got to hang out with the mush­room god. Search for him on my site, if you want to know more. Basi­cally, if you eat enough shrooms, the mush­room god vis­its you and shows you the pretty colours!

Shrooms take a while to hit you. On an empty stom­ach, it would take 60–90 min­utes before feel­ing the first effects, with a peak reached any­where from 2–4 hours and last­ing for 4–6 hours. It pretty much wasted a whole day, but what way to waste it!

Psy­che­delic drugs enhance your per­cep­tion; the sim­ple way to under­stand it is they make the synap­tic nerves in your brain fire faster, giv­ing you more sen­sory input. Your vision sharp­ens, as does your hear­ing which makes music sound amaz­ing. As you get fur­ther into your trip, pat­terns in things swish and swirl, wood grain flows like a river.

On one par­tic­u­larly pleas­ant trip, on some Colom­bian p-cubes, right at the point where I peaked, I saw a burst of rain­bow colours in the air, in a sun-filled room. It was astound­ingly beau­ti­ful and com­pletely unex­pected. Colom­bians are appar­ently known for the colours they pro­duce, but try as I did, I was unable to repeat the experience.

No two trips are exactly alike, which is why I had no chance of repeat­ing my explo­sion of colour by pre­med­i­tat­ing it. Shrooms take you on the jour­ney, though I can’t say I really lost any con­trol. Except once…

For my birth­day a few years back, I had some Hawai­ian shrooms, which are very well known for their ultra-high potency. I had tried them before, elect­ing to exper­i­ment with the rec­om­mended starter dose of 10 grams. They didn’t do that much for me. Then, I did some­thing stu­pid, I dou­bled the dose.

Bad move! I had a seri­ously strong trip which ended with me hid­ing under my duvet with my eyes closed for sev­eral hours, still see­ing a multi-coloured geo­met­ric pat­tern stretched from right in front of me, all the way to infin­ity. I couldn’t see what my eyes were see­ing, I could only “see” what my brain was gen­er­at­ing. Kids, I seri­ously rec­om­mend you do NOT try this at home!

A few months after that, the gov­ern­ment put fresh magic mush­rooms into Class A, which is the same cat­e­gory as coke and smack.…the fuck­ers! In no way are shrooms any­where near as bad for you as heroin or crack. Used respon­si­bly, they are very safe, good fun!

Thanks to the actions of some stu­pid tourists, the Dutch have just banned shrooms as well. So much for tol­er­ant Hol­land! The tourists in ques­tion were all drink­ing as well, but booze had noth­ing to do with their unfor­tu­nate inci­dents. Sure thing! Booze never causes any­one any trou­ble, does it?

I think I read that shroom farm­ing is a 14 mil­lion pound a year busi­ness in Hol­land. That’s an awful lot of money to be just throw­ing away. And peo­ple will still want their shrooms, they will just have to go under­ground for them.

I haven’t had any shrooms since the gov­ern­ment out­lawed them. It’s not because I haven’t had the chance, one can still get them, if one knows where to look — like online! You can still get grow kits from Europe, if you really want some and they’re dead easy to grow. I haven’t had any shrooms because I don’t do Class A drugs and haven’t done since I gave up coke and E’s over 5 years ago.

I still love weed and con­tinue to sam­ple lots of dif­fer­ent legal highs, and as of today, I wouldn’t mind some­thing psy­che­delic. I don’t think I will actively seek any­thing elec­tric, but should I be offered some shrooms or even a blot­ter, I would be sorely tempted to accept the universe’s gen­eros­ity. I could really use a lit­tle break from real­ity right now, I think it would do my men­tal health a world of good.

It’s clear to any­one with an open mind and access to the facts that the pro­hi­bi­tion on drugs is not work­ing on any level. Sup­plies are at an all time high, potency is up while prices con­tinue to fall and pris­ons world­wide are filled with oth­er­wise law abid­ing folks who are no threat to soci­ety or other peo­ple. Yet, in the face of all that, our lead­ers con­tinue to cling to irra­tional poli­cies that only make the sit­u­a­tion worse.

I’ve been pro-legalisation for many, many years. I can see the seri­ous harm that cur­rent drug leg­is­la­tion causes to soci­eties around the world and that dam­age it does to indi­vid­u­als. As an oth­er­wise law abid­ing cit­i­zen myself, I find it absolutely abhor­rent that I am crim­i­nalised because I enjoy smok­ing cannabis in the pri­vacy of my own home.

There has been much made in the media recently over cannabis with many trumped up scare sto­ries based on weak sci­ence and a rep­e­ti­tion of non-facts to jus­tify a reclas­si­fi­ca­tion of weed back to Class B from its cur­rent sta­tus of Class C. Those of us who have taken the time to exam­ine the facts know that this is a polit­i­cally moti­vated move, meant to make our new lead­er­ship appear strong on the drug issue, with no regard for how it effects soci­ety. When it comes to drugs, most peo­ple in power refuse to be ratio­nal on the sub­ject, instead they prey on your emotions.

Cur­rent drug pol­icy is built on these twin themes, of attempt­ing to appear tougher than your oppo­si­tion and appeal­ing to people’s emo­tional and moral views. The pre­vail­ing cri­te­ria for deal­ing with this com­plex issue should not be based on any­thing other than, clear, ratio­nal, com­mon sense. Laws should pro­vide the most ben­e­fit to the most peo­ple. That’s com­mon sense. Cur­rent drug leg­is­la­tion ben­e­fits only one group of peo­ple, the black mar­ke­teers who insure their wares are read­ily avail­able to any­one who wants them at wildly inflated prices.

You don’t have to believe me, as there is a cover story in the most recent edi­tion of a pub­li­ca­tion called “For­eign Pol­icy” which has been mak­ing waves in polit­i­cal cir­cles around the world. This rather con­ser­v­a­tive, respected and high­brow mag­a­zine is call­ing for the com­plete legal­i­sa­tion of all drugs. It’s extremely well-presented, thought­fully con­sid­ered and thought pro­vok­ing and wor­thy of your valu­able surf­ing time. Please read it by CLICKING RIGHT HERE.

It’s not just crazy, pseudo-intellectual hip­pies based in north Lon­don who want to see drugs made legal. A top police offi­cer, a bit closer to home has come to the same con­clu­sion. Richard Brun­strom, the Chief Con­sta­ble of North Wales is prepar­ing to sub­mit just such a pro­posal to the Home Sec­re­tary, lay­ing out this very sen­si­ble solu­tion regard­ing ille­gal sub­stances. My friends at the Inde­pen­dent news­pa­per had THIS STORY on the front page of their news­pa­per on Monday.

When­ever I’ve per­son­ally spo­ken to law enforce­ment offi­cers or read about their views in the press, they always seem to sup­port decrim­i­nal­i­sa­tion or legal­i­sa­tion. These are the peo­ple on the front lines in the “war on drugs”, so their voices should carry a bit more weight and grav­i­tas than even our elected politi­cians, who remain blink­ered to reality.

Here’s another exam­ple of the view from some­one for­mally, very senior in law enforce­ment. Lord Rams­botham, who used to be the chief inspec­tor of pris­ons, has come out in full sup­port of Chief Con­sta­ble Brunstrom’s pro­pos­als. Again, my friends at the Inde­pen­dent pub­lished THIS REPORT today, which details Lord Ramsbotham’s comments.

As an aside, I’m still con­tin­u­ing to be amused by the giant schism between the Inde­pen­dent (the one pub­lished Mon-Sat) and the Inde­pen­dent on Sun­day regard­ing drugs. While the daily ver­sion of the Indy con­tin­ues to pro­vide fairly bal­anced and com­mend­able cov­er­age on cannabis, the IoS is fol­low­ing a pol­icy of mis­rep­re­sent­ing facts to jus­tify fic­ti­tious ban­ner head­lines nearly every Sunday.

I’m sure some­one at the Indy is track­ing back to my site and read­ing this. I’m also cer­tain I can’t be the only one amused by this silly sit­u­a­tion and I bet their own employ­ees are laugh­ing too!

The most recent exam­ple of this poor level of jour­nal­ism in the Inde­pen­dent on Sun­day, was a mis­quote from Mr. Nice, Howard Marks regard­ing an as-yet unproved link between cannabis use and psy­chosis. I won’t pro­vide a link, so as not to fur­ther embar­rass the IoS, but what Mr. Marks said is that the sit­u­a­tion is wor­thy of fur­ther study and the ques­tion was sim­i­lar to that old favourite, which came first, the chicken or the egg? Does cannabis cause psy­chosis or does hav­ing psy­chosis help steer peo­ple towards cannabis for relief? It should be stud­ied fur­ther, because the reports so far are extremely incon­clu­sive and like most things in this world, far more com­plex than a news­pa­per head­line can allow.

The gov­ern­ment has already said that a proper rethink on drugs pol­icy is out of the ques­tion, Their minds are closed to even pos­ing the ques­tion for debate. In a free and open soci­ety, how is that ben­e­fi­cial to anyone?

I don’t under­stand what the prob­lem is with ratio­nal thought, exam­in­ing the hard facts and reach­ing a sen­si­ble, common-sense con­clu­sion. I apply these sim­ple rules to absolutely every­thing in my life, both pro­fes­sion­ally and per­son­ally and these this approach has never, ever let me down.

Why can’t we present the facts prop­erly? Why do we have to be ruled by peo­ple who refuse to con­sider things unemo­tion­ally? Why can’t we just do what’s right and ratio­nal? Shouldn’t we all be doing our best to make the world a bet­ter place?

I just sited sev­eral exam­ples of intel­li­gent, ratio­nal peo­ple, with expe­ri­ence and knowl­edge on the sub­ject of drugs, offer­ing up alter­na­tive views on some­thing we all agree is a prob­lem that requires a solu­tion. Why won’t they lis­ten? Why do the pow­ers that be auto­mat­i­cally react as a reflex in attempt­ing to dis­credit both the mes­sage and the messenger?

Wouldn’t chang­ing our tack on drugs be pru­dent? Isn’t our new PM sup­posed to be a fan of pru­dence? Isn’t he in favour of a free mar­ket econ­omy? Doesn’t he claim to care about the future of Britain? Then why won’t he even enter­tain a full and frank dis­cus­sion of the issue? Is there a wider agenda which lurks beneath all of this?

I don’t have the answers, but I do have some more thoughts on the sub­ject, which many of you know is near and dear to this hippy’s heart. I’ll be return­ing to the sub­ject soon, with a glance in the direc­tion of the lat­est anti-drug phe­nom­e­non, the cannabis-hysteria mum as well as offer­ing a pos­si­ble expla­na­tion why cannabis is cur­rently under such a seri­ous assault from the estab­lish­ment. Bet you all just can’t wait!

(read the hippy’s cannabis truth series)

Get­ting to the truth about cannabis these days is not easy. The exag­ger­ated scare sto­ries con­tinue apace in most of the news­pa­pers. They are so chock full of fal­lac­ies and mis­in­for­ma­tion that I am not going to high­light them any more. Yes, Inde­pen­dent on Sun­day, I am look­ing right at you!

There is one news­pa­per that con­tin­ues to deliver the truth about cannabis, regard­less of how these truths fit into the main­stream media’s pre­med­i­tated pat­tern of lies and hys­te­ria in the lead-up to the government’s review of weed’s classification.

That news­pa­per is of course, The Guardian.

Last week, The Guardian pub­lished a story on a cou­ple of labs test­ing the potency of cannabis and guess what! It is nowhere near as strong as you are being lead to believe.

Here’s a link to the orig­i­nal arti­cle:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/drugs/Story/0„2170798,00.html

And here’s the arti­cle in full:

Skunk strength has dou­bled, stud­ies suggest

4% — Only 4% of skunk seized had THC of over 20%, one study showed

You see, the truth will always find a way! I just hope the peo­ple respon­si­ble for this point­less review into regrad­ing weed look at the gen­uine facts and not the ridicu­lous fab­ri­ca­tions of some news­pa­pers. Yes, I’m look­ing at you again, Inde­pen­dent on Sunday!

(read the hippy’s cannabis truth series!)

Hey ho hip­py­fans! Howsit hangin’?

I’m just mak­ing a quick fly­ing visit to men­tion a cou­ple of quick, web­site related bits of news.

Firstly, you may notice 2 new links on my page; one to my stated com­ment pol­icy and a 2nd one to the NLH deluxe page.

A some of you may know, I had to dis­able the com­ments facil­ity on my site a while back, because of the over­whelm­ing amount of spammed com­ments I was receiv­ing from porn, Via­gra and poker sites. I was receiv­ing around 1000 of the lit­tle fuck­ers each day. This hippy wasn’t down with that shit!

After review­ing the sit­u­a­tion for a num­ber of months, I have finally decided that the com­ment­ing facil­ity will have to remain shut-off per­ma­nently, as I’ve now stated in my newly pub­lished COMMENT POLICY.

I’m not happy about it, you’re not happy about it and I bet the spam­mers are even less happy! Tough shit on the spam­mers, but I would like to apol­o­gise to you, my dear read­ers. Never hes­i­tate to email me though, as I will always, ALWAYS reply!

Now, on to the good news! I received my very own “RooR Cus­tom 5.0 – northlon­don­hippy deluxe” bong a few days ago! It is a com­plete work of art and I love it already!

As you will see, I’ve added a link called “NLH Deluxe” to the main page and once my bong is for sale, you will see that page updated with every­thing you ever wanted to know about the best glass bong in the world! You will also see a ban­ner advert added to my front­page for the “NLH Deluxe” too.

There will be only one place for you to buy my bong and that’s from everyonedoesit.com or EDIT as they are known. They are the exclu­sive dis­trib­u­tors of the “NLH Deluxe” which means this is one bong you can’t buy any­where else!

Each one is made, by hand by one of the arti­sans at the RooR fac­tory in Ger­many, which means the stan­dard of con­struc­tion is amaz­ingly high! It looks great, smokes great and will become your favourite bong ever after just one sweet hit!

Keep watch­ing my page for the big announce­ment of when the bong goes on sale to the gen­eral pub­lic. No one gets a pre­view of what it looks like, until then!

Wait till you see how gor­geous it is! You are going to want one so bad that it hurts!

There’s some­thing lurk­ing in YOUR HOME that is a dan­ger to CHILDREN!

There is some­thing FREELY AVAILABLE in your work­place, every­day that could put YOUR CHILD in HOSPITAL!

Restau­rants, bars, cafes, all serve this evil brew and a CHILD YOU KNOW could SUFFER as a result.

Yes, my friends, I’m talk­ing about: COFFEE!

And NO CHILD is safe from this dev­il­ishly dan­ger­ous demon drink.

Don’t believe me? Check out this gen­uine arti­cle from a gen­uine news­pa­per: CLICK HERE, CLICK NOW!

I know some of you don’t click on my links, you lazy hippyfans…so for your ben­e­fit, I’ll sum­marise the story: A 17-year-old TEENAGER who works in her father’s café, drank 14 shots of espresso and ended up OVERDOSING ON CAFFEINE!

Here’s what YOUNG Jas­mine Willis had to say about this tragic inci­dent, in her own words, “My nerves were all over the place. I was cry­ing in front of the cus­tomers and had tears stream­ing down my face. I was drenched and burn­ing up and hyper­ven­ti­lat­ing. I was hav­ing pal­pi­ta­tions, my heart was beat­ing so fast and I think I was going into shock.”

Ms. Willis was so affected by this DANGEROUS DRUG that she had to seek hos­pi­tal treat­ment. She said the effects lin­gered for sev­eral days.

It sounds to me like a COFFEE TRIP can really MESS YOU UP.

KIDS, JUST SAY NO!

I should be hon­est and up front right now, as I always am, that I too have used this drug, though never to excess. I’ve only ever used it in moderation.

Sure, I’ve dab­bled in the DEVIL’S BREW, but today I limit myself to one cup of fil­ter cof­fee with break­fast and a cap­puc­cino if I’m work­ing, around 2 hours after I start. Any more than that, and I would not be able to sleep. I know my own caf­feine tolerance.

That’s the thing about me, I know my lim­its and I’m always care­ful not to overindulge, what­ever the sub­stance. And on those rare occa­sions when I have, I’ve made sure I’m in a safe, secure envi­ron­ment. Many peo­ple, ESPECIALLY CHILDREN, aren’t as respon­si­ble when it comes to coffee.

Cof­fee is grown in far away places, like Colom­bia and Ethiopia and our con­tin­ued depen­dence on it is keep­ing poor farm­ers alive. How dare we allow decent, hon­est peo­ple to get involved in this EVIL TRADE in cof­fee beans! Per­haps the DEA should start erad­i­cat­ing the cof­fee bean crops to spare OUR CHILDREN from this scourge.

I am not going to rest until ALL CHILDREN are free from the THREAT posed by COFFEE. I don’t see how any par­ent could allow the con­tin­ued con­sump­tion of this DEMON DRUG by any­one, even respon­si­ble, law-abiding cit­i­zens such as myself.

Think about how many crimes are com­mit­ted under the INFLUENCE of COFFEE. Like in the open­ing scene of the NEAR CRIME DOCUMENTARY, “Reser­voir Dogs”, where all those CRIMINALS are sit­ting in a diner, drink­ing COFFEE, to get hep­ped up to com­mit CRIME!

It’s the same in real life, too.

COFFEE IS THE ROOT OF ALL-EVIL!

Alright, enough of my satire, my social com­men­tary, my fuck­ing bull­shit. The fact is sim­ple: No one is going to con­sider ban­ning cof­fee because it is dan­ger­ous in large quantities.

Ask Tony Blair, the for­mer prime min­is­ter. Fol­low­ing his heart prob­lems, he had to cut down on his cof­fee intake. Don’t believe me? CLICK HERE.

From the fourth para­graph from the bot­tom: “Last year, when Tony Blair received treat­ment for his irreg­u­lar heart­beat and Bill Clin­ton blamed his friend’s hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion on ‘too lit­tle sleep and too much cof­fee’, Cherie Blair announced that she would try to reduce his caf­feine intake.”

Caf­feine is a strong stim­u­lant and is one of the most widely con­sumed drugs in the west­ern world. We’re all cool with that, even though it has risks.

I bet cannabis has less risk, yet it remains pro­hib­ited and on the verge of com­plete demon­i­sa­tion because of the cur­rent false media hysteria.

It’s not the first time this has hap­pened. Check out the film “Reefer Mad­ness”, if you haven’t seen it and make sure you are stoned when you do. What’s hap­pen­ing right now to weed, is exactly what they tried to do way back then.

Guess what! It didn’t work then and it’s not going to work now.

Why? Enough peo­ple have inhaled and enjoyed it by now to know the truth.

Cannabis is and will remain pop­u­lar because peo­ple have first hand expe­ri­ence of it. They won’t buy into the lies. It may get dri­ven a lit­tle fur­ther under­ground, but not that much and it will, of course, survive.

Weed is an accepted part of soci­ety and more so every­day, the next gen­er­a­tion is going to be even cooler about it and finally legalise it. I may not get to see that next gen­er­a­tion come of age to do the right thing, with you my friends, but I can assure you that day is coming.

For now, I’ve got to go meet my new bean dealer. I fig­ured it was bet­ter to have a ready sup­ply on the black mar­ket put in place, before they announce the ban on coffee…because YOUR CHILDREN COULD O.D. ON IT!!!!

(Click here to read the hippy’s “cannabis truth” series)

I feel like a proper foot solider in the bat­tle over cannabis. The government’s recent announce­ment that they would review its cur­rent sta­tus in the UK as a “Class C” drug is crazy. They say and I quote, that this review is “likely to result in reclas­si­fi­ca­tion back into “Class B””. That’s even madder!

I don’t feel I can let this hap­pen with­out at least putting up some sort of fight. Even though the media would like you to think oth­er­wise, there is actu­ally no gen­uine case to reclas­sify cannabis. In fact, if the argu­ment is pre­sented objec­tively, then the smart con­clu­sion to reach is that full legal­i­sa­tion is the cor­rect move.

I’m hardly the first per­son to call for cannabis to be legalised and I’m not likely to be the last. Many peo­ple feel the same, as wit­nessed in count­less opin­ion polls.

In response to the siege on cannabis, I’ve put together sev­eral entries which put forth a much more bal­anced view, based on gen­uine sci­ence and per­sonal expe­ri­ence, espe­cially, my own per­sonal expe­ri­ences with cannabis, which I will briefly share with you now.

I’ve been a daily cannabis smoker for over 26 years. For 25 years of that, I’ve been smok­ing mainly “skunk weed” as it has come to be known, so I have some degree of author­ity on the subject.

For the record, what is known as “skunk weed” is not new, but has been around and avail­able for decades. All it really is, are par­tic­u­lar strains of cannabis, that have been selec­tively grown and bred for their pos­i­tive qual­i­ties, be they taste, yield or potency. The tech­niques used are no dif­fer­ent from those used by farm­ers everywhere.

“Skunk weed” is not genet­i­cally mod­i­fied, as I have seen reported in the press, because that would be ridicu­lous. Can you imag­ine some white lab coat wear­ing sci­en­tist aban­don­ing his research into cur­ing can­cer, or AIDS in favour of genet­i­cally engi­neer­ing stronger weed? It’s just ludicrous!

These stronger strains of cannabis, are in real­ity 2 or 3 times stronger than weed grow­ing wild, and not 25–30 times stronger, as reported recently. Also, they have been com­mer­cially avail­able for a very long time, decades in fact. I first tried it in 1982, some 25 years ago.

Peo­ple who smoke cannabis should not be crim­i­nalised. It’s a plant, for fuck’s sake. For most users of cannabis, the high is pleas­ant, relax­ing and enjoy­able. If it doesn’t agree with you, then please, don’t smoke any more, but don’t try and pre­vent those of us who do enjoy it, from doing so!

Ask any police­man if they agree with the cur­rent cannabis leg­is­la­tion and most will tell you that “Class C” doesn’t go far enough and they would pre­fer to see it legalised fully. Then ask them if they would rather deal with some­one under the influ­ence of weed or alco­hol and once they stop laugh­ing, they will tell you that a drunk is always the most dangerous.

Alco­hol, is legal and freely avail­able, yet is a hor­ri­ble drug, with mis­er­able side effects and can be directly linked to many of soci­eties ills. From anti­so­cial and vio­lent behav­iour on the streets, to domes­tic vio­lence in the home, and the loss of pro­duc­tiv­ity in busi­ness and indus­try, alco­hol is at the root of all of this.

But is any­one call­ing for a ban on booze? Of course not! And besides, they tried that in Amer­ica in the early decades of the last cen­tury and do you know what it resulted in? Organ­ised crime and the mafia tak­ing hold all over the country.

Let’s get the crim­i­nals out of the cannabis sup­ply chain. Let’s turn it into the reg­u­lated, com­mer­cial indus­try it deserves to be!

I’ve posted a series of pieces today, which puts forth the pos­i­tive argu­ments for cannabis. I’ve also put out a pub­lic offer to be the pos­i­tive voice of cannabis smok­ers, to redress the bal­ance in the cov­er­age and com­ment on the sub­ject, which is tend­ing towards hys­te­ria, rather than truth.

Here is a list of handy links to today’s cannabis series, please expect more on the sub­ject to follow:

- The northlon­don­hippy offers to be the voice of rea­son, truth, san­ity and expe­ri­ence regard­ing cannabis (534)

- Don’t just take my word for it (535)

- That Lan­cent cannabis study, the Daily Mail and truth (536)

- It’s not as black and white as they want you to believe (538)

- Demand and sup­ply – another angle on the sta­tus of cannabis (539)

Please take the time to read all of it. You deserve to inform your­selves, so you can all bet­ter inform others.

If you smoke cannabis, or you’ve ever smoked it and you’ve enjoyed it, then your voice needs to be heard too!