UK REPORT CALLS FOR CANNABIS POSSESION TO BE LEGALISED.....let vip2 help make growing legal

[Kim]

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/394295/20121015/legalise-cannabis-possession-ukdpc-skunk.htm

HOPEFULLY GROWING CANNABIS WILL BE LEGALISED, A NEW REPORT IS SHOWN

[local]

That will f*ck up the prices

Leave it be

[Black.]

How

[local]

When u think about the amount of money they spend on small busts tho

[local]

How

Prices would drop, every1 with sense would start a grow

[Kim]

no the prices have gone up becuase they changed it to a class b drug

if its legal it WILL COST ME NEXT TO NOTHING.....

[local]

Actually f*ck it, jus been thinking bout this in the shower, this would be mad

You'd never have a drought again, it'd be like dam, imagine the saturation a few months after this came into effect

The old head pro farmers would he raging but fek it, rooms n cupboards would get rented all over the shop, bare profit to be made with half the risk

doubt ur gona see a big price/weight difference at consumer level, little shotters will jus make more on the 10s n 8s

Won't actually happen but still

[Kurtis]

f*ckin nittys

[MARVELL]

it can never be legalised. the end

[Kim]

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/38360dont u want to make a difference, its our responsibility to question the current law and to do something about it....

they way i see it is the reason for certain individuals to be against it is soley for the own person gain in the consumer market.....i-e alcohol

all we need to do, is make everybody aware that weed isnt harmfull, cocaine is less harmfull than horseriding, and horseriding is addictive.....

pass this on......we can start here at least

[Kim]

it can never be legalised. the end

why not?

[imhim]

f*ckin nittys

[imhim]

it can never be legalised. the end

[MARVELL]

it can never be legalised. the end

why not?

cos this is the UK

[Kim]

it can never be legalised. the end

why not?

and we cant be ignorant forever, this is wot im saying, ur attitude is the same as everyone elses.....see holland listened to their people because in the end they had to, and opened up a few coffee shops where they had licenses to grow and sell

why not in the uk??

cos this is the UK

[Skola]

The Governments drugs policies are not based on any scientific facts as we all know after what happened to David Knutt

More likely is that there is some unseen political propaganda behind the various decisions that they have made which are pretty much THE OPPOSITE of what the knowledgable experts advice them

[Guest M12]

f*ckin nittys

[Skola]

http://www.guardian....use-say-experts

partial quote:

A six-year study of Britain's drug laws by leading scientists, police officers, academics and experts has concluded it is time to introduce decriminalisation.

The report by the UK Drug Policy Commission (UKDPC), an independent advisory body, says possession of small amounts of controlled drugs should no longer be a criminal offence and concludes the move will not lead to a significant increase in use.

The experts say the criminal sanctions imposed on the 42,000 people sentenced each year for possession of all drugs – and the 160,000 given cannabis warnings – should be replaced with simple civil penalties such as a fine, attendance at a drug awareness session or a referral to a drug treatment programme.

They also say that imposing minimal or no sanctions on those growing cannabis for personal use could go some way to undermining the burgeoning illicit cannabis factories controlled by organised crime.

But their report rejects any more radical move to legalisation, saying that allowing the legal sale of drugs such as heroin or cocaine could cause more damage than the existing drugs trade.

The commission is chaired by Dame Ruth Runciman with a membership that includes the former head of the British Medical Research Council, Prof Colin Blakemore, and the former chief inspector of constabulary, David Blakey.

The report says their analysis of the evidence shows that existing drugs policies struggle to make an impact and, in some cases, may make the problem worse.

The work of the commission is the first major independent report on drugs policy since the influential Police Foundation report 12 years ago called for an end to the jailing of those possessing cannabis.

The UKDPC's membership also includes Prof John Strang, head of the National Addictions Centre, Prof Alan Maynard, a specialist in health economics, and Lady Ilora Finlay, a past president of the Royal Society of Medicine.

The report says that although levels of illicit drug use in Britain have declined in recent years, they are still much higher than in many other countries. The UK has 2,000 drug-related deaths each year and more than 380,000 problem drug users.

The 173-page report concludes: "Taking drugs does not always cause problems, but this is rarely acknowledged by policymakers. In fact most users do not experience significant problems, and there is some evidence that drug use can have benefits in some circumstances."

The commission's radical critique says the current UK approach is simplistic in seeing all drug use as problematic, fails to recognise that entrenched drug problems are linked to inequality and social exclusion, and that separating drugs from alcohol and tobacco use makes it more difficult to tackle the full range of an individual's substance use.

It says the £3bn a year spent tackling illegal drugs is not based on any evidence of what works, with much of the money wasted on policies that are not cost-effective.

http://www.guardian....-law?intcmp=239

partial quote:

The UK drug policy commission's case for decriminalisation rests on the evidence of the limited deterrent effect of Britain's 40-year-old drug law, with an estimated 3 million people having used an illicit drug in the past year.

Its report says that since 1971's Misuse of Drugs Act came in the nature of drug use in Britain has changed radically and the legislation was never designed to deal with such high levels of use nor the rapid development of new drugs.

Under this legislation more than 160,000 people a year are being given cannabis warnings and a further 42,000 in England and Wales sentenced for possessing drugs. Enforcement focuses particularly on the young and some ethnic groups in particular areas, with more than half of all police stop-and-search activity aimed at finding small amounts of drugs.

The scientists and drug experts say the risk of being caught possessing drugs is very low compared with the prevalence of drug use overall and the point has now been reached where the drug laws are largely seen as an irrelevance by those who break them.

"Opponents of depenalisation and decriminalisation raise concerns about the message that a change in the law would send the public, particularly young people. We recognise that the law expresses the sort of society we wish to live in. But the law relating to the possession of drugs has become discredited to such an extent that any usefulness in setting a moral position has in many situations become largely ineffectual," the report says.

It argues that the "roof has not fallen in" across parts of Australia, the US, Portugal, the Czech Republic and some South American countries which have gradually moved towards a more decriminalised approach to personal possession. "Prevalence and consumption have not increased in these countries to any significant extent. Some experts indeed argue that these reforms have led to decreasing problems."

The fresh approach advocated by the commission says the first step should be to scrap existing criminal sanctions for possession of small amounts of cannabis.

[Kim]

f*ckin nittys

why, because we want to make a difference///?

[Beavis]

Wouldn't really make much difference to me if it's legal or not. Got sick of signing them petition things ages ago, nothing will change, too much money involved in keeping it illegal.

[Benicio del Toney]

f*ckin nittys

why, because we want to make a difference///?

Did you sign the chemical castration petition for Paedos I put in the Jimmy Savile thread?

[Mr. Martinez]

This comment in the article Malika posted sums it up nicely..

The British government, David Cameron, Theresa May and the entire cabinet prefer to support gangsters and allow children unregulated access to cannabis.

Why?

Because their sponsors in the alcohol industry tell them to and they are scared stiff of the hysteria that would follow from the tabloid press, particularly the Daily Mail, were they to follow an evidence-based approach.

[dub]

Should be a medicinal drug at the least.

[Skola]

Should be a medicinal drug at the least.

this

so morally wrong to deny people a cheap and effective treatment

but so obvious why the status quo shall remain

[Agony]

Who Is Secretly Working to Keep Pot Illegal?

By Steven Kotler

Big Pharma and Government



The Pharmaceutical Industry

In 2009, the global pharmaceutical market was worth $837 billion—and it’s on track to top $1 trillion by 2014. This is a lot of money to spread around, so when it comes to lobbying efforts, very few have this group’s clout. Mostly, Big Pharma gets what Big Pharma wants. And one thing it wants is for marijuana to remain illegal.

It’s not hard to figure out why. You can’t patent a plant—and that’s a big problem for pharmaceutical companies when it comes to medical marijuana.

Why?

Imagine a wonder drug able to provide much-needed relief from dozens and dozens of conditions. Imagine it’s cheap, easy to grow, easy to dispense, easy to ingest and, over millennia of “product testing,” has produced no fatalities and few side effects—except for the fact that it “reportedly” makes you feel really, really good. That would be quite a drug. Knowing all this, it’s easy to see why the pharmaceutical industry worries about competition from marijuana.

And besides its palliative prowess, researchers consistently find that patients prefer smoking marijuana to taking prescription drugs. In another study run by Reiman, 66 percent of her patients used cannabis as a substitute for prescription drugs; 68 percent used it instead of prescription drugs to treat a chronic condition and 85 percent reported that cannabis had fewer side effects than other medicines.

Early on, the pharmaceutical industry fought back by spending money on anti-pot efforts, but the same NORML investigation that fingered the alcohol and tobacco industries as heavy backers of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America found that Big Pharma was doing so as well. “They were so embarrassed by that revelation” says MAPS founder Rick Doblin, “that they mostly stopped spending money on anti-marijuana lobbying efforts.”

Since then, the pharmaceutical industry has shifted its focus to developing alternatives to medical cannabis, often taking the traditional reductionist approach. Specifically, these days, if a pharmaceutical company wants to turn a plant into a medicine they isolate the most active ingredient and make what’s known as a “single-compound drug.” Morphine, for example, is really just the chemical core of the poppy plant. This too has been tried with marijuana. Out of the 400 chemicals in marijuana, 80 of them belong to a class called “cannabinoids.” Out of those 80 cannabinoids, a number of pharmaceutical companies have tried reducing marijuana to only one: THC. But the results have been unsatisfactory.

“There are certain cases,” says Doblin, “where the single-compound formula works wonders. But it’s just not true in every case. The pharmaceutical industry keeps claiming they’re not worried about medical marijuana because they make a better product, but when you reduce cannabis to just THC, you lose efficacy and gain side effects.”

Government Entities

The U.S. government pours $15 billion into the office of the Drug Czar each year. And this total doesn’t include a few obvious items like the cost of imprisoning drug offenders, nor does it cover state or local funds spin-off entities like D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education)—which has an annual billion-dollar operating budget—or the dozens of other government agencies currently getting additional monies thanks to anti-pot laws. The problem is that all that money translates into jobs—lots of jobs—and it’s in the vested interests of all these agencies to oppose marijuana legalization.

The smoking gun in this equation, at least according to some critics, is the U.S. government’s reliance on propaganda in their anti-marijuana campaign. For example, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) 2008 Marijuana Sourcebook states that recent research shows marijuana is a “gateway drug” (it leads people to use harder drugs), even though scientists studying the issue keep finding the opposite. In 2006, a study published in the American Journal of Public Health, for example, found no evidence that marijuana acts as a gateway drug. And a 2002 report by the RAND corporation, an independent research group with a historically conservative bent, examined the historical data from 1982-1994 and found the exact same thing.

Furthermore, Congress is a reactive body. “The number-one rule in Congress is ‘get re-elected,’” says NORML’s Paul Stroup. “Until we can demonstrate that pot wins votes, Congressmen are going to play it safe. But if something like Proposition 19 passes and polling shows that it increased voter turnout, this could become a key wedge issue for Democrats.”

US article but the reasons why it won't become legal are pretty much the same for over here