The northlondonhippy

Archive for the ‘drugs’ Category

I realised this morn­ing, I have a real prob­lem with drugs…

No, not that kind of prob­lem, you won’t see me going into rehab, no, no, no!

My prob­lem with drugs is this: my drug of choice, weed, is not legal and I’m unduly made a crim­i­nal as a result. That’s a big problem.

Its silly, its unfair, and its unjus­ti­fied. It’s also the law.

Laws can be changed and when a law is unjust, it should be changed. Crim­i­nal­is­ing peo­ple because they want to indulge in the con­sump­tion of a plant is stu­pid, no mat­ter how you look at it.

Cannabis is com­par­a­tively safe, if you’re com­par­ing it to the two legally obtain­able drugs, tobacco and alco­hol. You can’t over­dose on weed and accord­ing to the post just below this one, there are only 2 recorded deaths attrib­uted to cannabis in the his­tory of recording!

How is soci­ety served by crim­i­nal­is­ing me? I am a respectable, oth­er­wise law-abiding, tax pay­ing cit­i­zen of this fine planet. Send me to prison for a few years and not only do you lose my pos­i­tive con­tri­bu­tions to soci­ety and the queen’s purse, but I end up cost­ing you money! You think those orange boiler suits and mys­tery meat sur­prise for lunch every day is free? You pay for it! Isn’t it bet­ter that I stay on the out­side and con­tinue to pur­chase my own meals and clothing?

The truth is, the like­li­hood of me ever serv­ing time for sim­ple pos­ses­sion is min­i­mal. I’m care­ful, I don’t take risks and I pretty much only ever smoke in the pri­vacy and secu­rity of my own home. The only place I flaunt my cannabis use is here on the inter­net, but I do that for a rea­son. My agenda.…

My agenda here has always been sim­ple and hope­fully obvi­ous; I wish to remove any remain­ing stigma attached to smok­ing cannabis. I am a pro­fes­sional, I work full time (and then some), I take care of myself and the peo­ple I love, I’m kind to strangers and ani­mals. Espe­cially animals.

I’ve per­son­ally known loads of peo­ple who smoke dope, from the casual “I’ll have a cou­ple of puffs on that spliff” types, to peo­ple “who can smoke me under the table”, I’ve smoked with them all. I’ve prob­a­bly directly encoun­tered over one-thousand peo­ple in the last nearly three decades of my daily dope smok­ing who have all enjoyed a bit of weed. None of them were home­less, clin­i­cally insane or went on to harder drugs. If any­thing, most of them mel­lowed as they got older, which is not some­thing I can say for myself. Ninety-nine per­cent of them were gain­fully employed and if I am hon­est worked in my pro­fes­sion. The media is full of hyp­ocrites and the same peo­ple putting out anti-drug pro­pa­ganda bull­shit in the news­pa­pers, enjoy a toot or a pill or a puff at the weekend.

When­ever I’ve had to deal with drug issues pro­fes­sion­ally, I’ve tried to be bal­anced and I’ve aimed to find voices on my side of the argu­ment. Trust me, its more than most would do, for to be seen as sym­pa­thetic to drug use could land you in hot water. I’ve never kept my drug use a secret and if asked point blank by a boss, I wouldn’t deny where my inter­ests lie. As I’ve aged, I’ve become more vocal in mak­ing sure the pro­pa­ganda is not unchal­lenged. It’s about all I can do and I know its not much.

I want to do more.

I want us all to do more.

For the drug laws to change, every sin­gle one of us who smokes weed has to come out of the green closet and declare with pride our love of weed. If I do it on my own, if I out­ted myself here and now, there’s a very good chance I would lose my job or worse.

Atti­tudes are chang­ing, more so than one might think. Espe­cially if one is in the cur­rent, out of step with the elec­torate, gov­ern­ment of this coun­try. Remem­ber, our Prime Min­is­ter, old what­shis­face, the really unpop­u­lar one that EVERYONE hates, said that cannabis is lethal. What fuck­ing planet is he from and can we send him back, please?

Check out this sur­vey which was pub­lished today. Really, click here and read it, it won’t take you long.

Did you read it? Don’t lie, this hippy sees all. A bit like Santa Claus, or god, only I’m not fictional.

The “rave gen­er­a­tion” has begat another gen­er­a­tion of “junior ravers” and both gen­er­a­tions think the other gen­er­a­tion is on drugs. Cool.

The times, they are a’changin’ and our politi­cians have to wake up to this, espe­cially on my pet sub­ject. Cli­mate change, finan­cial melt­down, pos­si­ble flu pan­demics, a McCain pres­i­dency, the future is look­ing decid­edly bleak. The least those idiots in power could do is let us all soften the blow with a lit­tle sweet smoke!

I really need help with my drug prob­lem. I’m will­ing to help myself, if you’ll help me too, but its a big ask…

I want you all to con­sider out­ting your­selves along side me as a life long dope smoker. More than con­sider, I want you to make a pledge to do it and I want you to email it to me. If I get, oh I don’t know, a mil­lion emailed pledges, I will reveal myself to the world.

Ok, a mil­lion is prob­a­bly push­ing it.

Prob­a­bly? I’ve got more chance of sprout­ing wings, spit­ting fire and renam­ing myself the northlondondragon.

What’s a real­is­tic num­ber? If I’m seri­ous about this, and dammit I am, then I need to come up with a num­ber that strikes a bal­ance between being attain­able and yet still giv­ing me the con­fi­dence of know­ing I’ll be backed up by my legions of hippyfans.

How many in a legion?

Accord­ing to Wikipedia, around 5,200. Of course, Wikipedia says Neil Arm­strong was the first man to eat cheese. At least it does now.

Five thou­sand ain’t nearly enough.

I’ve nar­rowed it down then, I need some­where between 5,000 and one-million emails from you guys before I’ll tell the world who I am.

Clearly this plan requires more thought.

It’s not easy hav­ing a drug prob­lem, espe­cially when the solu­tion seems so elu­sive, but with your help, maybe our col­lec­tive drug prob­lem can be cured.

(Keep read­ing, the next post is about weed too. I know, two in a row, go me!)

It’s about bloody time!

The Global Cannabis Com­mis­sion report is being pre­sented at the House of Lords today. It was under­taken by the Beck­ley foun­da­tion, a UN-accredited non-governmental organ­i­sa­tion in advance of the United Nations strate­gic drug pol­icy review expected next year.

The report makes a rather sur­pris­ing recommendation…surprising because it is so sen­si­ble! They sug­gest that a “reg­u­lated mar­ket” should replace the cur­rent (silly and unen­force­able) inter­na­tional pro­hi­bi­tion of my favourite plant. The report pro­poses that we con­sider replac­ing pro­hi­bi­tion with a sys­tem of labelling, tax­a­tion and min­i­mal age requirements.

This is a seis­mic shift in atti­tude for the United Nations, which as an organ­i­sa­tion, sits at the cen­tre of cannabis pro­hi­bi­tion, but I can’t say for cer­tain that they will take this advice on board. After all, sim­i­lar rec­om­men­da­tions have been made here in the UK and have been promptly ignored by our igno­rant politi­cians. Espe­cially that incom­pe­tent ues­less twit, Gor­don Brown. I really thought he would be gone by now, but the Labour Party is seri­ously lack­ing com­mon sense and balls and they pussed out at their party con­fer­ence. Wimps!

This report puts the issue in con­text, going on to say “…in terms of rel­a­tive harms it (cannabis) is con­sid­er­ably less harm­ful than alco­hol or tobacco. His­tor­i­cally, there have only been two deaths world­wide attrib­uted to cannabis, whereas alco­hol and tobacco together are respon­si­ble for an esti­mated 150,000 deaths per annum in the UK alone.”

I’d like to know how 2 peo­ple died from weed. Did they choke on on it? Oh and the word “his­tor­i­cally” in that con­text means since records began, which is a seri­ously long-old time!

Nat­u­rally this report is being warmly wel­comed by cannabis cam­paign­ers world-wide, myself included.

My dope smok­ing recently hasn’t been recre­ational, as much as it has been med­i­c­i­nal, thanks to my recent health prob­lems. Spliff helped when my back was seized up like a clenched fist and it con­tin­ues to calm the nau­sea I am feel­ing from my chronic thy­roidi­tis, which is another name for Hashimoto’s disease.

I don’t know what I would do with­out weed and I know that is the same for lit­er­ally mil­lions of peo­ple around the world, who are unnec­es­sar­ily crim­i­nalised for our love of dope. I am not a crim­i­nal and nei­ther are they! It’s about time the law caught up to this unde­ni­able truth.

If you would like to read the Guardian’s take on this new report, all you need to do is CLICK HERE.

And if you would like to find out more about weed, please fol­low this link to the hippy’s cannabis truth series.

This is turn­ing into the diary of the infirm.

Sorry, I know this used to be the cap­i­tal of online fun. Maybe I should bring back the vir­tual black­jack tables? At least the house would always win.

I’m still feel­ing crap. The med­ica­tion I’m tak­ing is pro­vid­ing me with a host of side effects, all of them seri­ously dull and no fun.

I saw my GP again last week, he changed the brand of the meds I’m tak­ing, which has sub­tracted a lot of the nau­sea, but not all of it and I still have the other side effects. Like breath­less­ness, heart pal­pi­ta­tions, dizzi­ness, headaches, tired­ness, con­fu­sion and forgetfulness…need I go on?

My GP ordered more tests, which he says is to rule out some other things, rather than con­firm any­thing he sus­pects. I think that’s sup­posed to be comforting.

My back seems to be hold­ing its own. I still have pain, but I can cope with it. I’m still see­ing the chi­ro­prac­tor, twice a week down from three vis­its and its always bet­ter after an adjust­ment. It tends to slide back a bit in between though, which I think is down to the fact that my thy­roid lev­els aren’t right yet. The inflam­ma­tion is being held at bay, but it’s not dis­ap­pear­ing com­pletely because what­ever orig­i­nally caused it, is still caus­ing it.

My thy­roid lev­els won’t be right for a while, as my GP says the dose I am on now, that is giv­ing me all these fun side effects, will most likely needed to be increased after my next blood test. Dou­bled, actu­ally. I can’t wait.

I haven’t felt like post­ing much lately, which is annoy­ing because there’s loads I’d like to write about, I just don’t have the atten­tion span to focus very long.

For all the jokes and ref­er­ences I’ve made about being mid­dle aged, I’ve never really felt it in my bones. These days, not only do I feel it, I think I look the part too. It’s all dread­fully tedious and I’m bored of it all already.

I liked it bet­ter when I thought I was healthy. Clearly, I wasn’t really healthy, but I thought I was and isn’t that what really matter?

My doc­tor says that once my med­ica­tion is sorted out, I’ll feel bet­ter than ever. Right now, I find that really hard to believe. When you feel shitty every day, its hard to be even a lit­tle bit pos­i­tive about anything.

There’s a brand new Bush­mas­ter bub­bler sit­ting here, with your name on it. Well, maybe…but you won’t have a chance if you don’t enter my contest!

I’ve been dig­ging the Canna Zine for a while now and I thought its about time I gave it some proper attention.

Canna Zine is “the only Pro-Reform (of cannabis laws) news agency in Europe” and an excel­lent resource for infor­ma­tion on my beloved weed. They stay up to date with the lat­est news on weed, plus they give a lot of time and atten­tion to other pro-reform groups.

I should men­tion that I am now listed as a cannabis resource in the UK in the Canna Zine direc­tory, but that is more a state­ment of sup­port from me to them, than any sort of endorse­ment of what­ever it is I do here. I’m pleased they accepted my sub­mis­sion and I’m proud to be asso­ci­ated with a web­site that is striv­ing to fur­ther a sen­si­ble, sci­ence and fact-based approach to cannabis.

This is espe­cially impor­tant now as it looks very likely that Gor­don (GGG!) Brown and his merry band of glee-thieves will be reclas­si­fy­ing weed early next year. I say “likely” because the move has yet to be rub­ber stamped by par­lia­ment. Yes, I know its a for­mal­ity, but I still hold a small glim­mer of hope that com­mon sense, logic and decency will pre­vail and my beloved weed will remain in Class C…until it is first decrim­i­nalised, then full legalised, reg­u­lated, and taxed.

A hippy can dream. And I do. Still way too much.

(Did you want a bub­bler? Funny, because I’m giv­ing one away, along with a shit­load of other prizes. Go on, click this link to find out more)

I’m start­ing a new cam­paign today and I’m going to need help from all of you. It is my desire to see Gor­don Brown removed from Num­ber 10. Brown’s been Prime Min­is­ter long enough. Too long!

Gordon’s gotta go!

GGG!

Gordon’s
Gotta
Go!

Gor­don Brown is by far the worst Prime Min­is­ter the United King­dom has ever had, bar none. Even war-monger Blair had a bit of charm and charisma; Brown is a charisma-free zone.

I could actu­ally cope with Gor­don Brown’s stiff and unpleas­ant demeanour, if it weren’t for his total lack of vision and point­less poli­cies and you know where this is going…

Reclas­si­fi­ca­tion…

Yep, I’m a one-issue kinda guy.

The Advi­sory Coun­cil on the Mis­use of Drugs (ACMD) is the inde­pen­dent body which advises the gov­ern­ment on drugs pol­icy. No gov­ern­ment has ever ignored their rec­om­men­da­tions since the board was formed. Ol’ Gordo is prepar­ing to ignore their advice and reclas­sify cannabis to Class B from its cur­rent sta­tus of Class C.

The ACMD have reviewed cannabis pol­icy three times in the last sev­eral years; the first time Tony Blair and David Blun­kett fol­lowed their advice and put weed into Class C. See, Blair wasn’t all bad. There was this and North­ern Ire­land, the rest, well that was all pretty bad.

The sec­ond time the ACMD recently reviewed cannabis, they again reached the same con­clu­sion. This was done in the heat of the polit­i­cal firestorm that fol­lowed the orig­i­nal declas­si­fi­ca­tion deci­sion and it only reaf­firmed the move and the gov­ern­ment left it alone.

The third review of cannabis was requested by Brown, in light of the “new evi­dence” of the dan­gers of cannabis.

The truth is, there is no new evi­dence, there are just con­flict­ing stud­ies which don’t come to any real con­clu­sions regard­ing links between men­tal health prob­lems and cannabis use. That hasn’t stopped the media from try­ing to whip up a Down­ing Street inspired shit storm of hys­ter­i­cal spin, paint­ing cannabis as the devil’s weed. It was reefer mad­ness mark II, only these days, most of us know much better.

The ACMD reached the same con­clu­sion on their third review, that cannabis should remain in Class C — the report was deliv­ered to Gor­don this week. The con­tents of the report were leaked to the press sev­eral weeks ago though they have yet to be made offi­cially pub­lic. Their deci­sion, along with Gordon’s over­rul­ing of it is expected to come some­time after yesterday’s local elections.

Now, here’s the cool bit. If Gor­don Brown ignores the advice of the ACMD, the mem­bers of the ACMD are pre­pared to pub­licly resign in dis­gust. That’s how seri­ous this is.

On top of that, the Asso­ci­a­tion of Chief Police Offi­cers (ACPO) are report­edly pre­pared to reassert the cur­rent guid­ance on cannabis pos­ses­sion, if Gor­don does reclas­sify to Class B. In other words, they will con­tinue to oper­ate as if it was Class C.

Just a quick expla­na­tion on the dif­fer­ences between the Class B and Class C — the penal­ties are exactly the same for pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion under both. The end user ends up worse off under B.

Where they dif­fer is when it comes to per­sonal pos­ses­sion — under Class C, you should be cau­tioned and have the weed con­fis­cated. Under Class C, you can still do time, up to 2 years in prison. Under Class B, there is tech­ni­cally no con­fis­cate and cau­tion option, the penalty for pos­ses­sion is 5 years in the big house.

Any­one with a brain knows that the clas­si­fi­ca­tion of a drug has lit­tle to do with how peo­ple view it. Cocaine is Class A, car­ry­ing the stiffest penal­ties for pos­ses­sion, but peo­ple still take it. A lot of peo­ple, actually.

Since cannabis was declas­si­fied, usage has gone down. Since cannabis was declas­si­fied, far fewer peo­ple are unnec­es­sar­ily impris­oned for a vic­tim­less crime. Since cannabis was declas­si­fied, we’ve had a drug pol­icy in this coun­try that was on the verge of sen­si­ble (with sen­si­ble being com­pletely decrim­i­nalised or even bet­ter legalised, taxed and sold like liquor).

Gordon’s rea­son for all of this is the same rea­son he uses for every­thing he does. Gor­don knows best.

Like fuck he does!

To say that Gordon’s drug pol­icy is cre­at­ing a com­plete mud­dle would be an under­state­ment, like say­ing an ocean is slightly damp. It’s becom­ing an unmit­i­gated dis­as­ter full of lies, hys­te­ria, mis­steps, mis­in­for­ma­tion and decided lack of con­sis­tency or honesty.

In other words, for fuck’s sake, what a twat!

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a politi­cian so out of step with his coun­try. He hasn’t a clue what gen­uine peo­ple are like. He can’t relate to any of us, because he is a com­plete social outsider.

Imag­ine, if you can, meet­ing Gor­don in your local for a drink. He’d order a pint of what­ever you’re hav­ing, but then hardly touch it. He’d try to talk to you about fis­cal respon­si­bil­ity and moral author­ity, when you would rather talk about the foot­ball or how cool that new Iron Man movie looks. He would stand uncom­fort­ably in the crowd, mak­ings oth­ers feel uneasy, yet you would def­i­nitely get the sense he thought he was bet­ter than you, though you wouldn’t in a month of Sun­days ever guess how he jus­ti­fies it in his head.

Yes, Gor­don, you are socially awk­ward and that was fine when you were the Chan­cel­lor and every­one thought you were doing a good job. No one thinks that now! The econ­omy is up the spout, it’s screwed, its fucked and Gor­don is to blame.

I’m pay­ing £1.10 a litre for petrol. That’s really bad! (And for my Amer­i­can read­ers, I reckon that’s about 8 bucks a gal­lon and you didn’t read that wrong!)

The cost of food is sky­rock­et­ing too. But that’s not what is upset­ting peo­ple at the moment, its the decline in house prices.

The econ­omy here in Blighty has been falsely inflated due to the hous­ing mar­ket. House prices were mak­ing wild gains, but that’s stopped now. Peo­ple can’t trade up every year or two because their homes aren’t increas­ing any more. In some cases, they are decreas­ing and a term from a long time ago is creep­ing back:

Neg­a­tive equity.

That’s a fancy pants way of say­ing your home is worth less than the amount you owe on your mort­gage. It’s wank speak, really and it only mat­ters if you are sell­ing your house. If your house is not on the mar­ket, then it doesn’t really mat­ter, but it might be the rea­son you can’t put your house for sale.

What would you do if you had a 100K loan and your house was only worth 75K. Where would you come up with that extra 25K to pay off the bank, plus inter­est? You wouldn’t, you’d just keep pay­ing your mort­gage and thank­ing god you have a roof over your head.

No one I know is get­ting rich or even get­ting ahead just by work­ing. The peo­ple I know who have seri­ous money in the bank, or have leap-frogged the rest of us on the prop­erty lad­der have done so by mak­ing vastly inflated prof­its on prop­erty trad­ing. That’s what has really been dri­ving the economy.

Guess what? The econ­omy is run­ning out of steam and is grind­ing to a halt, thanks in a large part to the cur­rent hous­ing mar­ket crash (or should I say crunch so I don’t panic anyone?).

And Gor­don is to blame!

As I write this, the local elec­tion results are drib­bling slowly out of my tele­vi­sion. The topline is a sim­ple one, it’s the Labour party’s worst show­ing in 40 years. They’ve come in third, after the Tories and the Lib Dems.

And Gor­don is to blame.

Brown is a polit­i­cal liability.

Oh who am I kid­ding, he is a lia­bil­ity in every con­ceiv­able way.

I don’t think I’ve ever dis­liked a politi­cian as much as I dis­like Gor­don Brown.

I have this fan­tasy that this after­noon, after all the elec­tion results are tab­u­lated, cer­ti­fied and released and the true pic­ture of the Labour mas­sacre is con­firmed, that a small group of very senior Labour types swing by Num­ber 10 for a pri­vate chat with Brown.

In this chat, they ask him to resign asap, right then and there. When he refuses, they tell him if he doesn’t resign his posi­tion as Prime Min­is­ter, they will invoke a spe­cial extra­or­di­nary ses­sion of Par­lia­ment and call for a vote of no con­fi­dence in his leadership.

In other words, Gor­don can do this the easy way or he can do it the hard way and its his choice.

Gor­don is con­fronted with this dif­fi­cult deci­sion and he chooses to resign to make it seem like it was his idea. He returns to the back bench where we hardly ever hear from him again.

Or I’ve got another sce­nario, which I just thought of, just now. He could return to Num­ber 11 and be the Chan­cel­lor of the Exche­quer again, because of the dire eco­nomic out­look, the depart­ment needs his exper­tise again!

Basi­cally, any­thing that ends his pre­mier­ship before he can fuck up any­thing else is good with me.

I’ve even got a catch phrase for you. You can use it as a greet­ing, when you meet peo­ple. Bet­ter yet, you can use it to sign off let­ters and emails. Maybe I should get tee-shirts printed. How can we lose when we have my win­ning slo­gan? Go on, chant along with me!

GGG!

Gordon’s gotta go!

GGG!

GORDON’S GOTTA GO!

GGG!

GORDON’S
GOTTA
GO!

Three G’s means Gordon’s not for me!

GGG!

Gordon’s gotta go!

GGG!

Are you all with me?

(While we’re on the sub­ject of weed, check out the northlondonhippy’s cannabis truth series.)

I have to say, I was more than a bit miffed at being excluded from the Observer Newspaper’s top 50 list of most pow­er­ful blogs. I guess this is just another main­stream media plot to keep my mes­sage from reach­ing a wider audi­ence, but I will not be silenced!

And there’s always next year! Make sure you write your MP or con­gressper­son and point out this hor­ri­ble injustice.

Ah-hem.

The real rea­son I’m here is because the pope clearly must read my blog and he doesn’t like it and he doesn’t like me. Well, matey, the feel­ing is very mutual.

A while back, I con­firmed the exis­tence of my band, “the seven deadly sins” when I announced the upcom­ing release of my album. It seems the pope didn’t like this move and he’s try­ing to sti­fle my cre­ativ­ity by updat­ing the 7 deadly sins for our mod­ern age. I guess god has finally made an appear­ance in the 21st cen­tury and about time!

The new top seven sins accord­ing to the pope are as follows:

1) Envi­ron­men­tal pol­lu­tion
2) Genetic manip­u­la­tion
3) Accu­mu­lat­ing exces­sive wealth
4) Inflict­ing poverty
5) Drug traf­fick­ing and con­sump­tion
6) Morally debat­able exper­i­ments
7) Vio­la­tion of fun­da­men­tal rights of human nature

Ok, there’s one on that list that wouldn’t be there, if it weren’t for his hatred of me and that’s num­ber 5…drug con­sump­tion. The pope’s get­ting his revenge on me with that one, but it’s not the only one…

Genetic manip­u­la­tion! My pub­lished work in recom­bi­nant DNA research is well known and I only missed out on a Nobel sci­ence prize because of some ill con­ceived pub­lic com­ments I made while drunk on power, fame and 151 proof Bacardi!

And yes, I’ve vio­lated the rights of human nature, for accord­ing to the catholic church, that’s an easy one as its their def­i­n­i­tion of sodomy. Oh and before you think I am some sort of ass ban­dit, sodomy at its most basic def­i­n­i­tion includes oral-genital sex­ual con­tact. Guilty!

The pope is out to get me! He knows my lib­eral ideas and secular-humanist val­ues threaten his exis­tence as a silly old white man in a white dress!

But never mind him! What about my band?

The drum­mer, wrath, doesn’t want to change his stage name to “genetic manip­u­la­tion” and sloth, who never makes it to rehearsals, would have to start show­ing up…

I’m sure glad I’m an athe­ist and I don’t believe in any of this non­sense. I mean, come on, eter­nal damna­tion? Give me a fuck­ing break!

Sin is far too much fun, any­way. I don’t see any­one stop­ping, do you?

The United Nations wants to jail Amy Wine­house. Oh, and Kate Moss too. They want to see celebri­ties pun­ished more harshly for drug offences, to send a mes­sage to the rest of us.

What the fuck?

Don’t they have more impor­tant things to do at the United Nations? Like bring­ing about world peace, feed­ing the starv­ing, solv­ing cli­mate change? I’d cer­tainly put those three issues ahead of a few spoiled rich peo­ple enjoy­ing a toot or two.

Do peo­ple really think that any­one takes drugs because celebri­ties do? You know, that Pete Doherty smokes crack, maybe I should too? He looks so good on it!

I’m not mak­ing this up, it’s in all the news­pa­pers today and I’ve seen the story on TV too. What a waste of breath, print and air­time! My favourite ver­sion is in today’s SUN NEWSPAPER.

The UN is far too involved in global drug pol­icy and the UN is effec­tively a global spe­cial inter­est group directed by the world’s most pow­er­ful nations.

Peo­ple take drugs because they make them feel good, not because some celebrity enjoys them. No one should be pun­ished for drug use, unless that use causes other prob­lems. I’d have no issues with arrest­ing some­one on smack for run­ning some­one over with their car. If you’re high on H, you shouldn’t be dri­ving, but if you’re high on H at home, it’s nobody’s busi­ness but your own!

If any one organ­i­sa­tion should be advo­cat­ing the full inter­na­tional legal­i­sa­tion of drugs, its the United Nations. They have the sta­tis­tics, they know what a large part of the inter­na­tional econ­omy the drug trade is and they know how it could ben­e­fit from sen­si­ble inter­na­tional con­trols. But will they? Will they, fuck!

No, the UN will remain a largely irrel­e­vant body, unless you believe the con­spir­acy the­o­ries about black heli­copters and world dom­i­na­tion! Trust me, the United Nations could barely organ­ise lunch for 6 peo­ple, I don’t think we have to worry about them try­ing to take over the planet, though if they did, at least we wouldn’t have to worry about career crim­i­nals like Amy Wine­house and Kate Moss roam­ing free!

Peo­ple are always going on about the dan­gers of ille­gal drugs, but pre­cious lit­tle gets said about the abuse of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal med­ica­tions. Since the death of actor, Heath Ledger, that’s start­ing to change.

Check out THIS ARTICLE from today’s Observer news­pa­per, please.

The only quote I’m going to repro­duce, is a small bit from the tease at the top of the page:

“…mis­use of over-the-counter pills now kills more Amer­i­cans than ille­gal drugs.”

I have to put my hand in the air and admit I didn’t know that. Did you?

Of course I know pharms are dan­ger­ous, any drug can be dan­ger­ous if used irre­spon­si­bly or reck­lessly, but I didn’t realise that they were killing more Amer­i­cans than street drugs.

The only pre­scrip­tion drug I’ve really taken recre­ation­ally is Val­ium and that was usu­ally to make the come down from other drugs eas­ier. And that’s it. In other words, I don’t have much first hand expe­ri­ence of recre­ational pharm use.

I cer­tainly can see the temp­ta­tion though. Swal­low a pill, get high. Sim­ple, clean and effective.

I also know that pre­scrip­tion pills are fiercely addic­tive. And I know that tak­ing too many can lead to death.

Peo­ple turn to legal drugs, well, because they’re legal. They’re also cleaner and less likely to be cut with any old rub­bish. The dosages are con­sis­tent, the man­u­fac­ture con­trolled and reg­u­lated and the dis­tri­b­u­tion, if you have a pre­scrip­tion, is from a nice, well lit shop sell­ing them at rea­son­able prices, along with loads of other use­ful goods. Why not pick up a handy home First Aid kit, while you’re there?

Peo­ple also turn to pharms because what they might pre­fer, is ille­gal, pos­si­bly cut with any old rub­bish, with incon­sis­tent dosages, poor man­u­fac­tur­ing con­di­tions and sold by some creepy guy in the back of a pub or on a street cor­ner in the bad part of town, at night.

Do you see where I’m headed.

If proper recre­ational drugs, like my beloved weed were legal and a safe sup­ply was avail­able, then more peo­ple would smoke dope and less peo­ple would abuse pills, ergo: less peo­ple will die prematurely.

The ille­gal­ity of prefer­able sub­stances is the main thing dri­ving decent folks to abuse what’s in their med­i­cine cabinets.

If you piss-test pos­i­tive for cannabis in a work-drugs test, you’re fucked. If you come up pos­i­tive for opi­ates, you just say you have a “bad back” and no one blinks an eye.The fact that you go home and pain pills with a litre of Stoli is your lit­tle secret…until your body is dis­cov­ered lying in a pool of sick, in your bed and you’re not breathing!

Look, no drug is safe, but all drugs can be made safer if you have the right infor­ma­tion and don’t fear seek­ing it out. Cross­ing the street’s not safe, but we make it safer by learn­ing to look both ways. “Harm reduc­tion” is what its called and with drugs too, you can reduce the chances of prob­lems with a lit­tle bit of knowledge.

In light of this tragedy tak­ing place in Amer­ica, I am issu­ing an open call to all law­mak­ers there to set an exam­ple to the world and legalise all recre­ational sub­stances! Let’s reduce the num­ber of Amer­i­cans who are dying from the effects of pre­scrip­tion drug abuse and give them the choice of safely enjoy­ing the good­ies of their choosing!

Who am I kid­ding? Amer­ica will just declare war on chemists or doc­tors, or the pre­scrip­tion meds them­selves. That’s the more their style. There’s more of a chance of them doing that, than any­thing remotely sensible…

Richard Made­ley and Judy Finni­gan, or “Richard and Judy” as they are known to their legions of fans in the UK are very pop­u­lar and influ­en­tial celebri­ties in this coun­try. When they rec­om­mend a book or a wine, it becomes a big seller overnight. What they say to the nation, can change the course of the nation. They hold a lot of sway.

For those of you not resid­ing here in Blighty, I should explain a bit. The cou­ple I’m talk­ing about have been fix­tures on our day­time TV screens for many, many years. They are mar­ried and after start­ing out in regional telly, moved on to host­ing a national day­time chat show in the morn­ings on ITV. After many years on ITV and in a well pub­li­cised and expen­sive net­work coup, made a high pro­file jump to Chan­nel 4. That’s where theyre­main, host­ing a pro­gramme that goes out week­days 5pm-6pm.

Nor­mally, I find their views on the con­ser­v­a­tive­side and in some instances extremely so, which meant I was quite sur­prised when some­one I know drew my atten­tion to a recent Richard Madeley’s col­umn in the Daily Express newspaper.

Yes, the Daily Express of all places!

Rather than tease you with this, I’ll just cut to the chase with the salient quotes:

“RICHARD: How awk­ward it is to have to begin the new year defend­ing the appar­ently inde­fen­si­ble… in the form of eccen­tric police chief Richard Brunstrom’s lat­est headline-grabbing “gaffe”. I refer, of course, to his call this week on Radio 4’s Today pro­gramme for the legal­is­ing of drugs.



Brun­strom reck­ons all cur­rently banned sub­stances – every­thing from Ecstasy to heroin – will have been decrim­i­nalised inside 10 years. He added that Ecstasy is “safer than aspirin”, for good measure.


“Idiotic”, “Mad”, and “Cap­tain Calamity” were just some descrip­tions of the head of the North Wales force the fol­low­ing morn­ing. Par­ents of young peo­ple who died after tak­ing Ecstasy queued up to cas­ti­gate him – quite under­stand­ably. If my child had per­ished because of drug abuse, I would be first in line call­ing for Brunstrom’s head.



Which doesn’t mean I would be right. It is point­less here to get into a sta­tis­ti­cal debate about the dan­gers of aspirin ver­sus Ecstasy.  Both prepa­ra­tions can kill: Ecstasy by fits fol­low­ing dehy­dra­tion and other fac­tors, aspirin usu­ally from inter­nal bleeding.



Ecstasy kills around 50 peo­ple every year – although many more have a close encounter with the Grim Reaper in their local inten­sive care unit.



But con­sid­er­ing the colos­sal num­ber of (mostly) young peo­ple who swal­low Ecstasy tablets in night­clubs up and down Britain every night of the year, the toll is com­par­a­tively small when set against those killed or maimed in drink-driving crashes.



Don’t get me wrong, I think tak­ing Ecstasy is stupid. 



Pro­longed use may well cause mem­ory loss. But being against the law hasn’t stopped it from becom­ing endemic – which means the crim­i­nal sup­ply of Ecstasy and other drugs is endemic too.

This is at the root of the gang cul­ture that grips vir­tu­ally every city in Britain and is largely respon­si­ble for the pro­lif­er­a­tion of guns on our streets. The anal­ogy with Thir­ties pro­hi­bi­tion era Chicago is inescapable.

Per­son­ally, I’d feel safer tak­ing a palm­ful of aspirin than even one Ecstasy. But as a social pol­icy, the crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of drugs must surely be recog­nised for what it is:  an abject fail­ure. Cocaine, heroin, speed and, yes, Ecstasy, have never been more widely avail­able or cheaper to buy. Their ille­gal sale on an indus­trial scale nour­ishes a huge, sprawl­ing and hydra-headed crim­i­nal underclass.

All Richard Brun­strom – with,  by the way, the broad sup­port of his police author­ity – is really ask­ing is for a sen­si­ble debate on how we move on from the failed drug poli­cies of the past.



He may be a ridicu­lous hon­orary druid with an irri­tat­ing pen­chant for speed cam­eras and absurdly sen­si­tive to weak jokes about the Welsh, but he’s doing some­thing rarely seen in our chief constables.

He is think­ing out of the box. That is brave and bold and deserves thought­ful con­sid­er­a­tion, not calumny.”

Please do click this link to the orig­i­nal arti­cle, it starts about 1/2 way down the page.

I was stunned.

I was flabbergasted!

I’m never flabbergasted.

I’m not cer­tain what flab­ber­gasted even means!

Some­times, com­mon sense comes from very unlikely sources and I must say there was no more unlikely source of these sagely words than Richard Madeley.

I’d like to applaud Mr. Madeley’s brav­ery and gen­uine courage for com­ing out in sup­port of Richard Brun­stom and the Police Author­ity in the pur­suit of truth and hon­esty about drugs.

The next time you’re dis­cussing legal­is­ing drugs with some­one, quote Richard. Seri­ously, even to your par­ents. Peo­ple really dig Richard and Judy, if you quote him, they will think twice about their beliefs and per­haps even start to ques­tion them. Try it and you’ll see what I mean, attach­ing his name to the cause will give it a new level of respect.

If Richard Made­ley sup­ports a com­plete re-think on drug pol­icy, per­haps there IS some­thing to it!

If more peo­ple were will­ing to stand up and speak out, per­haps things would be bet­ter for respon­si­ble adults like myself and those of you out there who choose to indulge in the use of unsanc­tioned sub­stances. There are so so SO many of us out there, who lead pro­duc­tive, nor­mal lives, yet enjoy things other than alco­hol and tobacco.

We have too much to lose. That’s the prob­lem, our nor­malcy and respon­si­ble lives don’t meet society’s stereo­types of what a drug user is. If we did step out of the closet and pro­claim proudly that we smoke weed, or snort a bit of char­lie, or neck a few pills every week­end and it wasn’t destroy­ing our lives, peo­ple who dis­ap­proved would find a way of destroy­ing our lives for us.

Next week is the pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on reclas­si­fy­ing weed. I’m sure peo­ple braver than me will attend and speak out elo­quently on the sub­ject, before they’re ignored com­pletely and the gov­ern­ment just reclas­si­fies it any­way. But that’s not why I’m not going.

I’m not going, because I have too much to lose. As open as I am about my drug use to friends, fam­ily, work col­leagues, strangers I sit next to on the bus, I don’t know how I’d feel about my name and address being on record with this gov­ern­ment in rela­tion to the sta­tus of weed and specif­i­cally my con­stant intake of it.

And with this gov­ern­ment, how long would it take them before they lost the list and it ended up in the hands of, oh I don’t know, the police maybe! Mak­ing cannabis class B means the penal­ties are worse for the end user; what if they decide to ‘round us all up? They’re build­ing an awful lot of new prisons!

Oh and by the way, the penal­ties for pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of cannabis, ie grow­ing and deal­ing, are exactly the same under class B as class C, so it’s really only those of us who might get caught with a small amount who are see­ing the penal­ties change. Thanks, Gor­don. Thanks, Jacqui.

What’s worse is that it will only drive those of us who wish to speak out, fur­ther under­ground, while allow­ing the crim­i­nal ele­ment to con­tinue rul­ing the trade, with no addi­tional risks. Who really ben­e­fits from this change in status?

That’s an easy ques­tion to answer. Who ben­e­fits from the reclas­si­fi­ca­tion of cannabis?

No one at all.

A few days ago, I learned of a pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion that’s to be held on the sub­ject of the “pos­si­ble” reclas­si­fi­ca­tion of cannabis. It takes place in Lon­don on the 5th of February.

This gov­ern­ment has appar­ently decided the out­come of this con­sul­ta­tion and Jacqui Smith has already leaked their deci­sion to put cannabis back into Class B from its cur­rent sta­tus of Class C.

It widely known that the gov­ern­ment has cho­sen this path for one sim­ple rea­son, to appear “tough on drugs.” They iden­ti­fied this issue as one which Tony Blair and David Blun­kett left them vul­ner­a­ble to crit­i­cism that could be eas­ily changed with­out much pub­lic outcry.

They’re cor­rect on that score. How many dope smok­ers do you know that would attend a government-held, pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on cannabis, and con­fess to reg­u­larly break­ing a law, which is about to become a lot harder on peo­ple who enjoy weed?

Let’s not bull­shit around this…a change in clas­si­fi­ca­tion from C to B means only one thing and that is to fur­ther crim­i­nalise peo­ple who smoke a bit of dope. The penal­ties for pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of cannabis are exactly the same under class B and C — exactly the same! The dif­fer­ence is on the oth­er­wise law abid­ing cit­i­zen, who par­takes of this plant — the penal­ties for sim­ple pos­ses­sion are sig­nif­i­cantly harsher.

Why would the gov­ern­ment wish to crim­i­nalise so many peo­ple? Could it have to do with build­ing new pris­ons and need­ing peo­ple to fill those places? Dope­heads aren’t dan­ger­ous or vio­lent, you would have a prison pop­u­la­tion that was cheap and easy to manage!

Think that’s a bit “con­spir­acy the­ory” even for me? Ok, have you got a bet­ter explanation?

Just about every think tank, pol­icy group and gen­uine expert feels it should be left class C, decrim­i­nalised or legalised com­pletely. Many cops believe this too, and so do a fair few MPs and min­is­ters, but many are afraid to voice their opin­ions for fear of the wrath of the Mail/Express/Telegraph set.

I con­sid­ered attend­ing that con­sul­ta­tion on the 5th of Feb. I thought long and hard about going, stat­ing my real name and read­ing a selec­tion of entries I’ve writ­ten on this sub­ject so near and dear to my heart. And then I pussied out.

Look, either we all go, or none of us go! That’s right, all 6 mil­lion (esti­mated) reg­u­lar cannabis smok­ers have to reg­is­ter to attend. Every last one of us. I’ll go, if you’ll all go. They can’t put us all in jail, can they? If they try, we can just seek asy­lum in the Netherlands!

Here are a few inter­est­ing and related links:

This is from the can­nazine and talks about the 5th Feb con­sul­ta­tion and how they are ignor­ing the experts in the deci­sion to regrade
Click Me.

This one is from the Inde­pen­dent, it’s the same story, only with some ques­tion­able men­tal health details thrown in to con­fuse the issue
Click Me.

This is from the Times and talks about how the gov­ern­ment should base its poli­cies on sci­ence, not emo­tion. It sites the cannabis “debate” as an exam­ple
Click Me.

And here again is my cannabis truth series, which is worth read­ing if you want to know the real story and not the twisted shit they want you to believe!
Click Me.