“There will be in the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them but will rather enjoy it … brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods.”
Aldous Huxley, California Medical School, 1961.
The legal drugs industries vast profits have long been dependent upon their billion dollar pay offs to the state, for the right to sell some of the most lethal and highly addictive of all drugs used by Mankind. The blatant hypocrisy of current international drugs laws allows the pharmaceutical, tobacco and alcohol industries to flourish, while generations of innocent people are criminalised by statutes that are both futile, unjust and hypocritical.
To paraphrase the immortal words of Oxford University’s most celebrated dope smuggler, Howard Marks, it’s high time the situation was rectified. If Ron Paul is ever elected to the White House, he has promised to pardon all federal prisoners convicted of non-violent drugs-related offences. This would cut the massive U.S. prison population in half, along with the profits of the ever-expanding Prison-Industrial Complex. The chances of Dr Paul moving into the White House are about as likely as Tony Blair admitting that he is a War Criminal.
Thousands of legal proceedings all over the world have resulted in damages being awarded to people who have been harmed by the products of the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries, all of which had government clearance for consumption by the public. Nevertheless, to restrict the right to smoke cigarettes in western society, while the tobacco industry continues to make billions from the unregulated exploitation of the Developing World and the legislating governments reap vast profits from the taxes imposed from the supposed moral high-ground, is an obvious example of the lethal hypocrisy of the corporatist state.
The early 20th century prohibition of alcohol in the U.S., Russia and parts of Europe proved that such a policy actually creates a larger, more lucrative market for a forbidden substance. American speakeasys have been immortalised by 1930’s film noirs and Marks Brothers comedies, but the laws were only repealed when the governments of those nations realised that that they had handed millions in tax-free profits to mobsters such as Al Capone, who then expanded their business interests into the newly-formed illegal drugs trade, following the ratification of the Geneva International Opium Convention, 1925, which was organised by the League of Nations to compel each of its signatories to create domestic laws to criminalise the production and use of opium, heroin, morphine, coca, cocaine and Indian hemp.
Rather conveniently for DuPont and Rockefeller interests, the mass production of hemp, from which it is possible to manufacture all manner and description of organic plastics, paper, fuel, medicine, food and clothing, became illegal right across the planet, despite six thousand years of tradition, a myriad of beneficial uses for the incredibly versatile plant and the 1893 finding of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission that “the moderate use of hemp drugs is practically attended by no evil results at all.” The prohibition of the popular weed had much more to with replacing hemp-based products with the oil and chemical-based pollutants produced by Robber Barons, than simply preventing people from getting stoned by ingesting its flowers or resin.
Everybody has the inalienable right to choose the way they spend their own time, as we hurtle through the universe on this amazing planet, provided our choices do not infringe any other’s rights to do the same. Wherever we may roam, no individual, organisation or government has the right to dictate how we behave, if nobody is adversely affected by our choices.
All laws prohibiting the production, possession, use and trade of all substances which will grow naturally upon the Earth must be abolished, whilst serious consideration needs to be given to whether the legal drugs industries are knowingly manufacturing substances which exacerbate, prolong and even cause illnesses, rather than producing proven natural remedies which are widely known to cure all manner and description of ailments, from the common cold to cancer. Moreover, the governments who have licensed and taxed the pharmaceutical industries must be held accountable for any and all damage, injury, harm and loss caused by the products that were approved for public consumption by the state.
The U.K. government’s continued crusade against various flora and fungi that have been found growing on these shores since the dawn of time is completely ludicrous. That Magic Mushrooms and Philosophers Stones are currently considered Class A drugs is simply absurd, when there is no existing research that proves that they are harmful to our health.
Addictive drugs such as heroin, cocaine and amphetamines can easily, cleanly and cheaply be supplied in ever-decreasing amounts by not-for-profit dispensaries to registered addicts, free of charge, until such time that they have kicked their habits. Even if some fail to overcome their chemical dependencies, it would no longer be an ultimate necessity for addicts to thieve from others to feed the habits that currently line the pockets of some of the most dangerous criminals the world has ever seen.
If possession of all drugs were decriminalised and pardons were granted to all those previously convicted of non-violent drugs-related offences, the prisons would empty overnight, since the majority of petty crimes against property are motivated by illegal drugs habits, whilst 16% of the male and 40% of the female prison population in the United Kingdom in 2006 were serving sentences for possession, production, smuggling and/or distribution of controlled substances.
“The cancer cell killing and pain relieving properties of cannabinoids are less well known to the general public. Cannabinoids may prove to be useful chemotherapeutic agents. Numerous cancer types are killed in cell cultures and in animals by cannabinoids. For example, cannabinoids kill the cancer cells of various lymphoblastic malignancies such as leukemia, lymphoma, skin cancer, glioma, breast and prostate cancer, pheochromocytoma, thyroid cancer, and colorectal cancer.”
Dr Robert Melamede, Harm Reduction Journal, September 2005.
Given this scandalous era of blatant media manipulation and corporate corruption on an inter-governmental scale, it is hardly surprising that the discovery by scientists at the University of Colorado, that cannabis may actually help prevent the development of cancerous tumours, has been all but completely blackballed in the mainstream media.
As published on the widely respected Drugscope website in October 2005, the Colorado scientists have discovered that cannabis smoke is not only much less harmful than cigarette smoke, the unfairly criminalised weed actually destroys cancerous cells in the lungs of animals.
Dope less likely to cause cancer than tobacco
Chemically-treated tobacco is arguably the least effective, most addictive and systematically fatal of all recreational drugs. Mixing it with dope also helps maintain the common perception that smoking joints can be fiercely addictive and horrendous for the lungs. This is absolutely true of course, but only when the microtoxic chemicals used during non-oragnic growing processes are present in the tobacco being added to the weed or resin.
Consuming homegrown organic or microtoxin-free tobacco cannot therefore be dismissed as a catastrophic health risk, by simply citing the same evidence as can easily be found to support the argument that smoking chemically-treated cigarettes poses such a risk. However, what has become abundently clear from the verifiable testimony of former victims of every form of cancer known to Man, is that THC-rich Cannabis Indica or Sativa oil destroys all types of malignant tumours when taken in sufficient doses.
Furthermore, in the light of the University of Colorado’s discoveries, the implications are that consuming cannabis may even reduce your chances of contracting cancer, as well as killing any existing malignant cells. In two reports published in the Harm Reduction Journal in September and November 2005 respectively, Dr. Robert Melamede wrote that certain ingredients found within the plant help regulate the immune system, relieve pain and prevent disease.
Dr Melamede’s Conclusions Part One
Dr Melamede’s Conclusions Part Two
Dr. Melamede also suggested that while cannabis has been known to exacerbate the symptoms of schizophrenia in some patients, it conversely helps alleviate symptoms in others, but there is no evidence to suggest that there is any causal link. Nevertheless, what becomes blindingly obvious to all diligent researchers of this subject is that the compelling work of Dr Melamede and many others in his field have been completetly ignored by the corporatised mainstream media, for one very obvious reason: pretending to cure cancer by killing people with chemotherapy is big business.
The current international drugs laws are perfectly designed to serve the needs of the legalised drugs industries, rather than the people, who continue to pay with their lives for their lethal, government-approved addictions. It’s not illegal drugs that don’t work, it’s the laws that stigmatise one fifth of the population of Britain for victimless crimes.
If cannabis and its myriad of uses were decriminalised, ALL oil-based products could be replaced with biodegradable hemp-based solutions, in which case the use of ALL chemicals that have destabilised our physical and environmental health would naturally become obsolete, along with the vast profits of the cancer industry.
A plant that can grow almost anywhere on this Earth, in almost any conditions, has been provided to us for good reasons. Instead of displacing food crops for the disastrous bio-fuel industry, farmers could be growing fields of fruits, vegetables and pastures, bordered by the most unique and versatile plant ever utilised by Man, thereby eradicating the need to use of any chemical fertilisers, additives and pesticides, which poison the Earth as well as the food that grows upon it.
With the help of wonderful, courageous people like Rick Simpson, we might also rid the planet of the pain and suffering that is the life-blood of the Cancer-Industrial Complex, with the widespread distribution of the miraculous medicine which has been so systematically criminalised to the detriment of Mankind. Long may the healing continue.
“One minute I’m waiting for Kate to arrive to join me in the Jacuzzi for a romantic evening. The next thing I can remember is doing cold turkey in a vomit-filled cell.”
Babyshambles’ hell-raising singer-songwriter, Pete Doherty, as quoted in the Daily Mail in 2005, following one of his many drug-fueled arrests while dating supermodel, Kate Moss.
Anthropological evidence compellingly suggests that Mankind has always exercised a healthy proclivity to experiment with body and mind altering substances, and the laws prohibiting our freedom to choose to do so are definitively disingenuous and systematically perpetuate social problems. However, it must be acknowledged that ex-Libertines front man, Pete Doherty, incurred the self-righteous righteous wrath of the British tabloids by nothing more than his literary idols, the Romantic Poets, became infamous for – hedonistic excess in the search for creative inspiration.
Doherty, at least theoretically, may have survived the copious amounts of heroin and crack cocaine he has ingested by maintaining the purity and controlling the strength of his supply, as did writer William Burroughs during his heroin habit of more than fifty years, as well as the novelist, Will Self, who was allegedly caught by a fellow journalist injecting in a cabin toilet on former Prime Minister, John Major’s jet during an election campaign.
However, addicts without the financial means to support their addiction are usually forced into crime by their inability to handle withdrawal and cold turkey. Doherty was convicted of burgling his Carl Barat’s flat to pay for more drugs, but it’s difficult not to feel that his motivation was attention-seeking, rather than borne out of sheer desperation for his next fix. A plea for help from Doherty’s mother resulted in a quasi intervention by Kirsty Walk during an interview on BBC’s Newsnight programme. It is difficult to imagine this happening to a homeless heroin addict from Edinburgh.
Needless to say, Doherty’s drug-taking has continued despite his character assassination by the tabloid press, as did his romantic relationship with the world’s most fashionable model, Kate Moss, whose career prospered greatly after her own cocaine confessions were plastered all over the mainstream media. The fact that while they were together Doherty and Moss were widely considered to be the coolest Brit-couple of their generation, significantly reinforced the mystique of the illegal drugs culture. One must ask who benefits from such a set of circumstances and the answer is certainly not the public.
The drugs laws clearly don’t work, otherwise it would be considered uncool to take them and the careers of famous users would go into free-fall upon public disclosure of a drug habit. Alleged drug problems and a husband in prison certainly didn’t harm the sales of Amy Winehouse’s award-winning album, REHAB, nor the love she inspired in millions of people who never even knew her, before and since her sad and untimely death. This is undoubtedly a reflection of the public’s acceptance of drug-taking in the lives of their cultural icons, which has inevitably resulted in a dramatic increase in the consumption of illicit substances across the general population.
According to the 2006 British Crime Survey, the number of people who admitted consuming cannabis in the UK was almost twelve million, despite government propaganda about the unsustainable causal link between dope smoking and psychosis.
It was estimated during the previous year by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction that there were more than sixty million cannabis smokers living in the European Union.
According to statistics originally published by Transform Drugs Policy, there were around 1,500 illegal drug-related deaths in the UK in 2005, the vast majority of which were caused by legal substances mixed with low-grade heroin, morphine or methadone, while 1,300 people died in 2005 from overdoses of legal anti-depressants, benzodiazepines, zopiclone, barbiturates, aspirin and codeine.
During the same year there were more than 6,000 alcohol-related and 86,000 tobacco-related deaths. Of the estimated 13 million tobacco smokers in Britain, at least 5 million will suffer from life-threatening cancerous growths that would probably not have occurred were it not for cigarette smoking. Millions of those people will eventually die as a direct result of their recreational habit. The lethal hypocrisy is once again criminally self-evident.
In Holland, all recreational drugs, including the highly addictive ones, have been completely demystified by a government policy that reflects the public’s largely tolerant attitude towards them. This policy has been tested in Spain, Switzerland, Belgium, Portugal, South and Central America, where crime has often been significantly reduced in places that were once considered no go areas by the police.
You can still get mugged or ripped-off by a crack-head in the Red Light District of Amsterdam after dark, as you inevitably can in London, but we are yet to hear about gangs of stoned psychopaths marauding round the canals of Amsterdam, the way gangs of drunks punch, puke and piss their way through British cities every Friday and Saturday night.
