The northlondonhippy

Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category

The Econ­o­mist, a rather con­ser­v­a­tive pub­li­ca­tion, has come out strongly in favour of the legal­i­sa­tion, tax­a­tion and gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tion of drugs.

All drugs.

The arti­cle I am refer­ring to is RIGHT HERE and is well worth a few min­utes of your valu­able surf­ing time because it lays out a very ratio­nal, sen­si­ble and per­sua­sive argu­ment for this rad­i­cal suggestion.

As the UN meets in Vienna to decide the next decade’s drug pol­icy, why won’t they lis­ten to the experts?

There are so many intel­li­gent, edu­cated, thought­ful mem­bers of respectable soci­ety who believe legal­i­sa­tion is the only solu­tion. There are loads of senior police­men who believe this, many civil ser­vants and politi­cians do too, but they are too afraid to speak up because of the false hys­te­ria sur­round­ing the issue.

David Cameron, most likely the next Prime Min­is­ter of this coun­try is sym­pa­thetic to the idea of rad­i­cally chang­ing our approach on the sub­ject as men­tioned in this, another well writ­ten and thought­ful piece on the sub­ject from politics.co.uk

I’ve always thought we’ve had more of a chance of chang­ing the laws under a con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment, because it takes a strong party to take deci­sive action.

If David Cameron would take one key step in that direc­tion, he could have my support.

Mr. Cameron, I implore you to shift your pub­lic posi­tion based on facts and sci­ence. Please con­sider decrim­i­nal­is­ing or legal­is­ing cannabis as soon as you are in power.

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

Promises, promises. Politi­cians make them all the time when they are cam­paign­ing, only to con­ve­niently for­get about them once in office, but not Pres­i­dent Sav­iour Obama.

This week, US Attor­ney Gen­eral, Eric Holder con­firmed that fed­eral raids on Med­ical Mar­i­juana facil­i­ties would end and indi­vid­ual states could deter­mine their own poli­cies regard­ing my favourite plant. He said this is “now Amer­i­can policy”.

How cool is that?

This is a huge shift in the way the law deals with weed in Amer­ica. I wish the UK could be equally enlight­ened, but the gov­ern­ment here works very hard to be as un-Obama-like as possible.

And they don’t want to stop there either. Leg­is­la­tors in Cal­i­for­nia are now con­sid­er­ing tak­ing it one step fur­ther, with a pos­si­ble plan to fully legalise and tax cannabis to help bale out the finan­cially des­ti­tute state. They say it could bring in $1.3 bil­lion (with a B) in tax rev­enue to the state annually.

That’s a lot of green­backs for a lot of green­ery! Its com­mon fuck­ing sense! Pro­hi­bi­tion doesn’t work, never has, never will. If you can’t beat ‘em, tax ‘em.

Obama’s motto through­out his cam­paign was “Yes, we can.” Now that he’s in office, the new motto is: “Yes, we cannabis!”

Roseanne Barr, domes­tic god­dess, come­dian and now radio talk­show host is sell­ing some very cool tee-shirts in Amer­ica with that very slo­gan on them, Yes, we CANnabis.

We should all order our­selves one to show our sup­port for this long over­due change in pol­icy. Let’s hope that it spreads out from Amer­ica to the rest of the world.

Hello. Wel­come back. Did ya miss me?

Its ram­ble time. Woke up too early fol­low­ing too lit­tle sleep. Must focus.

On what?

Its a pleas­ant, relax­ing day off, or rather it should be, but I’ve got heaps to do ‘round the house and I might even wan­der up to my local high street.

Do they call it a “high street” because you have to get high before you go there? No? Well, tough, because I will be high when I go.

It should be a rule that you have to be high before allowed onto your local high street. It would make the entire shop­ping expe­ri­ence more pleas­ant for every­one involved. The shop assis­tants would think all the cus­tomers were mel­low and pleas­ant, the shop assis­tants would be help­ful with­out being over­bear­ing and I wouldn’t nearly get into fist fights with all the rude, surly peo­ple knock­ing into me and block­ing my way.

Oh wouldn’t it be grand?

As soon as they start open­ing cannabis cafes around the coun­try, this is the sort of relaxed Utopia we can expect. Until then it will con­tinue to be no fun.

Did you see a group of for­mer pres­i­dents from Latin Amer­ica are urg­ing the world to adopt a con­trolled and reg­u­lated cannabis mar­ket? Did you look here?

Even the UN is work­ing towards this fairly obvi­ous and sen­si­ble con­clu­sion. In the good ol’ US of A, they are mov­ing in this direc­tion. Pres­i­dent Sav­iour Obama has even said that fed­eral raids against med­ical mar­i­juana estab­lish­ments must end and the fed­eral gov­ern­ment needs to start respect­ing laws passed by indi­vid­ual states.

Many states in Amer­ica have already decrim­i­nalised weed. That means it is con­sid­ered the low­est pos­si­ble polic­ing pri­or­ity, with penal­ties for pos­ses­sion being the equiv­a­lent of a minor traf­fic or park­ing offence.

Why can’t we do that here?

We could and we were going to until Gor­don Brown and Jacqui Smith started muck­ing around with things. These two nin­com­poops believe laws should be used to “send a mes­sage” to peo­ple, rather than reflect the sci­en­tific evi­dence or the truth.

This week the Advi­sory Coun­cil for the Mis­use of Drugs (ACMD). the body that advises the gov­ern­ment on drug pol­icy stated that ecstasy (E, pills, MDMA), be re-classified from its cur­rent A grade, back into Class B, to reflect its rel­a­tive harm to the user. Sounds sen­si­ble enough as E is not in the same league as coke and smack.

The head of the ACMD, Pro­fes­sor. David Nutt went on to say that tak­ing ecstasy is no worse than horse­back rid­ing and an equiv­a­lent num­ber of peo­ple die from both activ­i­ties annu­ally. You would have thought that he said Jesus was secretly Satan for the drub­bing he took over the com­ments. He was even forced to apol­o­gise and his future on the ACMD has been questioned.

Just for telling the truth!

In Amer­ica, MDMA has been used by men­tal health pro­fes­sion­als to assist in the ther­apy process. Would med­ical doc­tors pre­scribe some­thing poten­tially lethal when their first rule is to “do no harm”? What do they know that we don’t know.

Noth­ing! The dif­fer­ence is our gov­ern­ment uses leg­is­la­tion to “send a mes­sage” rather than to treat peo­ple with respect. Leg­is­lat­ing moral­ity never works, because peo­ple have their own moral com­passes and that counts for something.

The sim­ple fact is that any­one who’s ever smoked a joint or necked an E knows that what the gov­ern­ment is say­ing is bull­shit. What do you reckon that does to the government’s credibility?

It knocks it into the toi­let. When a gov­ern­ment lies about any­thing, we all suffer.

Drug tak­ing is a health issue, not a moral or legal issue and try­ing to force it only does a dis­ser­vice to every­one. If I choose to ingest MDMA, or cannabis or choco­late or even bro­ken glass, its my body and my choice.

Crim­i­nal­is­ing mil­lions of peo­ple serves no one. If you’re hav­ing trou­ble with drugs, you should be able to seek help with­out wor­ry­ing about end­ing up with a crim­i­nal record. And if you are enjoy­ing them respon­si­bly, it should be nobody’s busi­ness but your own.

Com­mon sense and com­pas­sion will even­tu­ally rule the day, but for now we’ll have to just keep watch­ing our lead­ers screw things up more and more. Its frus­trat­ing, annoy­ing and unavoid­able, for as long as politi­cians can use the debate over drugs to score points with Mid­dle Eng­land, the sense­less per­se­cu­tion of peo­ple who enjoy some­thing other than booze will continue.

Gee, that wasn’t as nearly as ram­bling as I expected it to be. Lucky you, or maybe even lucky me.

Our stu­pid gov­ern­ment went ahead and reclas­si­fied weed today, against the advice of the sci­en­tists, med­ical experts and drug advi­sors. Cannabis has been returned to Class B, which means penal­ties for sim­ple pos­ses­sion have increased, but penal­ties for deal­ing and pro­duc­tion remain the same, sort of…

While not in place yet, a 3-strike sys­tem is to be imple­mented later in the week. On your first offence, you will be given a warn­ing, on your sec­ond, you will be fined 80 quid and on your third, you will be charged. Nat­u­rally, this new penalty sys­tem is not in place today and won’t be until at least mid­week. The gov­ern­ment couldn’t even co-ordinate the change in clas­si­fi­ca­tion and the new penal­ties so they started on the same day and they’ve had over a year to plan it. Losers!

So why did they change the classification?

I don’t know, there isn’t a sin­gle good rea­son for the change. Laws regard­ing cannabis are even more mud­dled and con­fus­ing now than they ever were!

The advice from the var­i­ous gov­ern­ment advi­sory boards was to leave it in Class C, but if they did that, they couldn’t score any polit­i­cal points with our poorly informed electorate.

Check out this BBC report for more details.

No one in the UK gov­ern­ment is inter­ested in the truth, or doing the right thing where cannabis is con­cerned. I am so dis­ap­pointed and depressed by this stu­pid out­come, words can­not begin to express my distress.

I found this list of Cannabis Myths from a drug organ­i­sa­tion in the US state of Indi­ana. Even they know more about weed than Gor­don Brown and his idi­otic cab­i­net. Please read it so you can be armed with the truth being denied us by the media and the gov­ern­ment here.

Gor­don Brown may still not be long for pol­i­tics as the cur­rent eco­nomic depres­sion (some­one has to say it) may sink his career yet. If it does, it will be the one good thing to come from an oth­er­wise bleak finan­cial out­look. Here’s hoping!

President-elect Obama just fin­ished speak­ing. It was pow­er­ful and mov­ing, he’s quite an orator.

His mes­sage was one of hope, for the future of Amer­ica and the world. He even addressed the rest of us, not in Amer­ica. That’s unprece­dented. The cur­rent occu­pant of the White House only made threats to the rest of the world.

I felt a bit sorry for John McCain when I watched his speech. I don’t think he is a bad man, I just think his poli­cies were bad. Peo­ple clearly wanted change and that wasn’t on offer from the Sen­a­tor from Arizona.

I hate to piss all over the party, but the feel­ing I have right now reminds me of the day after Tony Blair was elected the first time, back in 1997. Strangers smiled at each other in the streets, peo­ple seemed so happy by the prospect of change. It was really amazing.

And we know how all that turned out. Not well.

I think it will be dif­fer­ent with Obama. I hope so, anyway.

Obama has a lot to live up to. Many peo­ple will be dis­ap­pointed with him when he doesn’t turn all the water into wine.

The changes Obama has promised won’t hap­pen overnight, but they will hap­pen. We need to be patient and let him do what he can. Don’t be dis­cour­aged if the happy feel­ing you have today wears off.

Trust me, it will wear off. It always does.

But for today, just enjoy it. Bask in it. Revel in it.

For today, for the first time in the bet­ter part of a decade, things have never looked brighter.

That’s it for me, tonight. I hope you’ve enjoyed my sur­pris­ingly pro­lific live-blogging this evening. I’ve enjoyed being able to com­ment on actual his­tory as it unfolds.

the northlon­don­hippy
0535gmt — 5th Novem­ber 2008

They may have been an hour behind me, but the Amer­i­can net­works have now called the elec­tion in favour of Barack Obama.

That’s right, I beat every­one else.

This is a his­toric moment. I never thought in my life time I would ever see a black man elected pres­i­dent of the United States.

It’s an amaz­ing achieve­ment for Mr. Obama, and an amaz­ing achieve­ment for the Amer­i­can people.

No mat­ter who you are, or where you are in the world, you can’t deny the sig­nif­i­cance of this moment in time.

Or as Bob Dylan said a long time ago, “The times they are a changing”.

the northlon­don­hippy
0410gmt — 5th Novem­ber 2008

I can’t wait for the net­works to call the win­ner of this elec­tion, so I am doing it myself.

It’s 10pm east­ern time, 0300gmt here in north Lon­don and I hearby declare Barack Hus­sein Obama the win­ner of the 2008 pres­i­den­tial election.

Based on every­thing I’ve absorbed in the last half hour, there’s no way McCain could reach the magic 270 elec­toral votes.

Remem­ber, you read it here first, fuckers!

the northlon­don­hippy
0301gmt — 5th Novem­ber 2008

Some­thing I noticed today, there were no pic­tures of Bush or Cheney voting.

Usu­ally, the incum­bent is seen cast­ing his bal­lot. Usu­ally, the incum­bent also speaks after vot­ing, offer­ing a strong endorse­ment of his party’s candidate.

This year is not usual in this regard as the incum­bent is so wildly unpopular.

It’s no won­der we haven’t seen much of him recently, and though he may not be cur­rently in anyone’s field of vision, he’s cer­tainly on their minds.

If any­one is respon­si­ble for the abysmal per­for­mance of the Repub­li­can party this year, its George W. (for What were they think­ing when they elected him twice?) Bush.

When peo­ple look back at the his­toric elec­tion of 2008, Bush will take a large slice of the blame. And that brain­less bimbo, Sarah Palin, who kept the inde­pen­dent vot­ers away from the Repub­li­cans in droves, will also shoul­der a healthy por­tion of blame.

the northlon­don­hippy
02:28gmt — 5th Novem­ber 2008

Penn­syl­va­nia has gone to Obama.

Appar­ently that’s a good indi­ca­tion of where the race is going.

Also, it is look­ing good in Florida, which as you may recall has been a prob­lem­atic state for the Democ­rats in pre­vi­ous elections…especially 2000 for poor ol’ Al Gore.

Even this close to a result, I am still ner­vous and unsure.

I’m still alter­nat­ing between CNN and FoxNews, though I def­i­nitely pre­fer CNN. CNN has been high­light­ing viewer reports of var­i­ous vot­ing irreg­u­lar­i­ties across Amer­ica, with a really cool graphic map. The more orange an area is, the more they are screw­ing with people’s right to a free and fair vote.

And don’t for­get the holograms!

It’s just gone 9pm on the east coast of Amer­ica (0200gmt here in north Lon­don) and accord­ing to CNN, Obama is now lead­ing lead­ing McCain with about 3 elec­toral votes to one. That’s a pretty good mar­gin, let’s hope it holds!

the northlon­don­hippy
02:02gmt — 5th Novem­ber 2008