UK drug adviser fired after marijuana comments

<p>LONDON - Britain's top drug adviser was fired Friday after saying that marijuana, Ecstasy and LSD were less dangerous than alcohol.</p><p>David Nutt's comments have embarrassed the British government, which toughened the penalties for possessing marijuana earlier this year over the protests of many prominent British scientists.</p><p>Nutt said he was disappointed by his sacking, telling Sky News television that it might have something to do with the upcoming general election, which must be called by the middle of next year.</p><p>"Politics is politics and science is science, and there's a bit of a tension between them sometime," he told the broadcaster by telephone.</p><p>In later comments to BBC radio's "PM" program, Nutt accused British Prime Minister Gordon Brown of making "completely irrational statements" about the dangerousness of marijuana.</p><p>"I'm not prepared to mislead the public about the harmfulness of drugs like cannabis and Ecstasy," he said.</p><p>A call and an e-mail by The Associated Press seeking comment from the scientist were not immediately returned.</p><p>Britain's Home Office confirmed that Nutt, a professor of neuropsychopharmacology, had been removed from his position and said it would be seeking a replacement shortly.</p><p>In Britain, drugs are classified in three different categories, with Class A the most dangerous one. Marijuana was recently upgraded to Class B from Class C, joining amphetamines, Ritalin and pholcodine as drugs whose unlawful possession could result in up to five years in prison.</p><p>But the move ran counter to recommendations made by Nutt, who has long argued that marijuana is far less dangerous than legal drugs such as alcohol, which is responsible for nearly 9,000 deaths a year in the U.K., according to recent government statistics.</p><p>Nutt argues that while all drugs are dangerous, the restrictions placed on them should be proportional to their potential harm. Britain's Home Office has rejected his advice, saying the scientific evidence is uncertain and that a message needs to be sent to marijuana users that possessing the drug is a serious crime.</p><p>The move prompted a flurry of protest from scientists - among them two former chief scientific advisers to the government. They and others wrote an open letter to the government warning that reclassifying marijuana would send confusing messages about how dangerous it and other drugs really were.</p><p>Although Nutt's views have long been public knowledge, the government seems to have been angered by a recent lecture for the Center for Crime and Justice Studies at King's College in London during which Nutt accused former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith of "distorting and devaluing" researchers' work.</p><p>In the lecture, Nutt said Smith's decision to tighten restrictions on marijuana had undermined public faith in government science.</p><p>"I think we have to accept young people like to experiment - with drugs and other potentially harmful activities - and what we should be doing in all of this is to protect them from harm at this stage of their lives," he said.</p><p>"If you think that scaring kids will stop them using, you are probably wrong."</p>

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g11SRHRYdrp_hpd_a-b0QlBqZmpgD9BLJECO0

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Sacked drugs adviser accuses Gordon Brown of meddling in cannabis decision

<p>The government's former chief drug adviser today accused the prime minister, Gordon Brown, of tightening the law on cannabis for political reasons.</p><p>Professor David Nutt warned that other experts on the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) could resign in protest at his sacking by the home secretary, Alan Johnson, yesterday.</p><p>Nutt was forced to quit after he accused ministers of "devaluing and distorting" the scientific evidence over illicit drugs when they decided last year to reclassify cannabis from class C to class B against the advice of the ACMD.</p><p>Nutt told the BBC today that Brown had "made up his mind" to reclassify cannabis despite evidence to the contrary.</p><p>"Gordon Brown comes into office and, soon after that, he starts saying absurd things like cannabis is lethal... it has to be a class B drug. He has made his mind up.</p><p>"We went back, we looked at the evidence, we said, 'No, no, there is no extra evidence of harm, it's still a class C drug.' He said, 'Tough, it's going to be class B'."</p><p>Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Nutt said: "He is the first prime minister, this is the first government, that has ever in the history of the Misuse of Drugs Act gone against the advice of its scientific panel.</p><p>"And then it did it again with ecstasy and I have to say it's not about [me] overstepping the line, it's about the government overstepping the line. They are making scientific decisions before they've even consulted with their experts.</p><p>"I know that my committee was very, very upset by the attitude the prime minister took over cannabis. We actually formally wrote to him to complain about it," he said. "I wouldn't be surprised if some of them stepped down. Maybe all of them will."</p><p>Nutt's sacking is likely to raise concerns among scientists over the independence of advice to the government and may trigger further resignations. The Home Office describes the ACMD as an independent expert body that advises on drug-related issues, including recommendations on classification under the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act.</p><p>It is not thought that the home secretary spoke directly to Nutt before requesting his resignation in writing.</p><p>Johnson accused the professor of going beyond his remit as an evidence-based scientist and accused him of "lobbying for a change in government policy" rather than giving impartial advice.</p><p>"It is important that the government's messages on drugs are clear and as an adviser you do nothing to undermine the public understanding of them," Johnson wrote to Nutt.</p><p>"As my lead adviser on drugs harms I am afraid the manner in which you have acted runs contrary to your responsibilities.</p><p>"I cannot have public confusion between scientific advice and policy and have therefore lost confidence in your ability to advise me as chair of the ACMD."</p><p>The decision followed the publication of a paper by the Centre for Crime and Justice at King's College London, based on a lecture Nutt delivered in July. He repeated his familiar view that illicit drugs should be classified according to the actual evidence of the harm they cause and pointed out that alcohol and tobacco caused more harm than LSD, ecstasy and cannabis.</p><p>He accused the former home secretary, Jacqui Smith, of distorting and devaluing scientific research when she reclassified cannabis, and repeated his claim that the risks of taking ecstasy were no worse than riding a horse.</p><p>The charity DrugScope's director of communications, Harry Shapiro, said: "The home secretary's decision to force the resignation of the chair of an independent advisory body is an extremely serious and concerning development and raises serious questions about the means by which drug policy is informed and kept under review."</p><p>Richard Garside, the director of the Centre for Crime and Justice at King's College London, accused Johnson of undermining scientific research.</p><p>He said: "I'm shocked and dismayed that the home secretary appears to believe that political calculation trumps honest and informed scientific opinion."</p>

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/oct/31/david-nutt-drugs-adviser-sacked

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The cannabis conundrum

As the headlines this week alone demonstrate, the whole process of determining drug classification has become quite complex and highly politicised. I focus on cannabis partly because it is the only drug that has been downgraded in the whole history of the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act, which established the present system of drug classification, but also because the issues relating to cannabis pose a challenge to whether the act is working as it was originally intended.

The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) was requested by the home secretary in 2007 to review the status of cannabis because: "Though statistics show that cannabis use has fallen significantly, there is real public concern about the potential mental health effects of cannabis use, in particular the use of stronger forms of the drug, commonly known as skunk."

So, there was a skunk scare. Cannabis had gone from class B to C, but, supposedly, skunk use had been increasing and it was getting stronger, so we were asked to review whether the decision to go from B to C was still appropriate. In what was the ACMD's third cannabis report (Rawlins et al, 2008), we came to several conclusions:

<blockquote>&#9679; Cannabis is a harmful drug and there are concerns about the widespread use of cannabis among young people.<br />&#9679; A concerted public health response is required to drastically reduce its use.<br />&#9679; Current evidence suggests a probable, but weak, causal link between psychotic illness and cannabis use.<br />&#9679; The harms caused by cannabis are not considered to be as serious as drugs in class B and therefore it should remain a class C drug.</blockquote>

On that final point, there has been a lot of commentary and some research as to whether cannabis is associated with schizophrenia, and the results are really quite difficult to interpret.

What we can say is that cannabis use is associated with an increased experience of psychotic disorders. That is quite a complicated thing to disentangle because, of course, the reason people take cannabis is that it produces a change in their mental state. These changes are a bit akin to being psychotic � they include distortions of perception, especially in visual and auditory perception, as well as in the way one thinks. So it can be quite hard to know whether, when you analyse the incidence of psychotic disorders with cannabis, you are simply looking at the acute effects of cannabis, as opposed to some consequence of cannabis use.

If we look on the generous side, there is a likelihood that taking cannabis, particularly if you use a lot of it, will make you more prone to having psychotic experiences. That includes schizophrenia. But schizophrenia is a relatively rare condition, so it's very hard to be sure about its causation. The analysis we came up with was that smokers of cannabis are about 2.6 times more likely to have a psychotic-like experience than non-smokers. To put that figure in proportion, you are 20 times more likely to get lung cancer if you smoke tobacco than if you don't.

The other paradox is that schizophrenia seems to be disappearing (from the general population), even though cannabis use has increased markedly in the last 30 years. So, even though skunk has been around now for 10 years, there has been no upswing in schizophrenia. In fact, where people have looked, they haven't found any evidence linking cannabis use in a population and schizophrenia.

Nevertheless, one of the key arguments in moving cannabis from class C to B was the concern that skunk would cause more psychosis. What is very regularly invoked in this debate is the precautionary principle, which is that, if you're not sure about a drug harm, rank it high, make all drugs class A and get rid of the problem.

In her statement to the Commons, after receiving the ACMD's report but rejecting its recommendation to keep cannabis as a class C drug, Jacqui Smith, the former home secretary, said: "We must err on the side of caution and protect the public." As this is protection from the known unknowns, at first sight it might seem the obvious decision � why wouldn't you take the precautionary principle?

But the precautionary principle is also an act of faith in deterrence, and this is one of the key issues for lawyers. Does deterrence impact on drug use? We don't know. In fact, the outcome may be the opposite of that predicted. It may be that if you move a drug up a class, it has a greater cachet.

I think we have to accept young people like to experiment, and what we should be doing is to protect them from harm at this stage of their lives. We therefore have to provide more accurate and credible information. We have to tell them the truth, so that they use us as their preferred source of information. If you think that scaring kids will stop them using, you're probably wrong.

<em>This article is based on a </em>longer version published by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies<em> at Kings College, London, which itself was based on a </em>lecture delivered by Professor Nutt<em> earlier in the year.</em>

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/29/cannabis-david-nutt-drug-classification

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Purple Wreck Seeds now available in feminised

The extremely popular Purple Wreck from Reserva Privada is now available in feminised seeds.

<i>Urkel is one of California’s most sought after strain. It demands the highest price in any circle. It was crossed with the Train Wreck (T4) male. This improved the vigor of the Urkel, a notorious slow grower. The Purple Wreck has large Train Wreck buds with purple hues. The sweet fruity aroma of the Urkel dominates the cross. The Purple Wreck is short, early flowering and produces dense nugs.</i>

They're sure to sell out quickly, so don't miss out!

Details and buy: Purple Wreck Seeds

http://www.pickandmixseeds.co.uk/products/reserva-privada-purple-wreck

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Cannabis use was to 'assist with pain relief'

A FORMER glazier tried to grow cannabis in his Wincham back garden to help with the pain of an old injury, a court heard.

Police found two plants in the garden, a small amount of cannabis bush in the lounge and a stun gun when they raided James Wilkinson’s house in Chapel Street on July 21.

The 35-year-old was sentenced at Vale Royal Magistrates’ Court.

Rob Youds, prosecuting, said: “He stated he was a cannabis user and the bush from the tub in the lounge was for personal use.

“The two plants he was growing from seed for his own personal use.

“The stun gun, which had a CS gas attachment, he said he found when he was a doorman and decided to keep it � he knew being in possession of it was illegal.”

Vanessa Shaw, defending, said Wilkinson tore cartilage in his knee in an accident a few years ago when he worked as a glazier.

“As a result of this injury he was taking strong painkillers and anti-inflammatories but they were affecting him,” she said.

“So he cut back on the tablets and found himself using cannabis as medicinal, to assist with the pain.

“He decided, rather foolishly, he would grow a small amount for his own personal use.”

She added: “There was no sophistication in the operation and it is quite clear he was unsure what he was doing.”

Ms Shaw said he found the stun gun on a night out in Manchester when he saw a group of men arguing with some bouncers.

She said: “Later the men approached him in the street with a view to attacking him.

“He dropped his mobile phone and one of the persons involved also dropped an item.

“He recovered this, took it home and discovered it was a stun gun.”

She claimed the first time he found out it had a CS gas attachment was when it was examined at the police station.

He admitted charges of cultivation and possession of cannabis and possession of an offensive weapon on Thursday.

Magistrates gave him a 12-month sentence, which they suspended for a year.

http://www.northwichguardian.co.uk/news/4694629.Cannabis_use_was_to__assist_with_pain_relief_/

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Smuggled cannabis sausage rolls uncovered in chill box

A student bit off more than he could chew when he tried to smuggle some cannabis over a European border stashed in a sausage roll.

Luis Fellini, 22, hid the drugs by cutting out a hole and then replacing the crust before wrapping the snack in cling film.

But he was stopped by police sniffer dogs in Brogeda, in Italy as he tried to cross the border from Switzerland on a coach.

He had hidden the sausage roll in a chill box along with other foods to try and disguise the smell of the cannabis.

One officer said: "He had put it next to some very ripe cheese and salami to confuse the scent.

"He went to a lot of trouble but either our dog was hungry and went straight to the food, or he didn't hide the smell fo the cannabis as well as he thought he had."

http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/article.html?Smuggled_cannabis_sausage_rolls_uncovered_in_chill_box&in_article_id=757764&in_page_id=2

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Minimal Relationship Between Cannabis And Schizophrenia Or Psychosis, Suggested By New Study

Last year the UK government reclassified cannabis from a class C to a class B drug, partly out of concerns that cannabis, especially the more potent varieties, may increase the risk of schizophrenia in young people. But the evidence for the relationship between cannabis and schizophrenia or psychosis remains controversial. A new study has determined that it may be necessary to stop thousands of cannabis users in order to prevent a single case of schizophrenia.

Scientists from Bristol, Cambridge and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine took the latest information on numbers of cannabis users, the risk of developing schizophrenia, and the risk that cannabis use causes schizophrenia to estimate how many cannabis users may need to be stopped to prevent one case of schizophrenia. The study found it would be necessary to stop 2800 heavy cannabis users in young men and over 5000 heavy cannabis users in young women to prevent a single case of schizophrenia. Among light cannabis users, those numbers rise to over 10,000 young men and nearly 30,000 young women to prevent one case of schizophrenia.

That's just part of the story. Interventions to prevent cannabis use typically do not succeed for every person who is treated. Depending on how effective an intervention is at preventing cannabis use, it would be necessary to treat even higher numbers of users to achieve the thousands of successful results necessary to prevent a very few cases of schizophrenia.

Matt Hickman, one of the authors of the report recently published in the journal Addiction, said that "preventing cannabis use is important for many reasons -- including reducing tobacco and drug dependence and improving school performance. But our evidence suggests that focusing on schizophrenia may have been misguided. Our research cannot resolve the question whether cannabis causes schizophrenia, but does show that many people need to give up cannabis in order to have an impact on the number of people with schizophrenia. The likely impact of re-classifying cannabis in the UK on schizophrenia or psychosis incidence is very uncertain."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091022101538.htm

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Colorado newspaper searches for cannabis critic

It might be the best job in journalism but deadlines could prove a problem.

An alternative Denver newspaper, Westword, is advertising for a reviewer to survey Colorado's marijuana dispensaries and their products amid a boom in the sale of dope as a medical treatment.

The writer of the Mile Highs and Lows column will offer insights not only into the best decor - do you want the hippy experience or the clinical? - but will also offer an opinion on more than a dozen kinds of marijuana, from White Widow to Afghan Gold Seal, that come at up to $130 (£78) an ounce.

The reviewer's post was proposed by a Westword journalist, Joel Warner, who has written about Colorado's medical marijuana industry for several years. He noticed a disparity in the places selling pot.

"Some really looked like your college drug dealer's dorm room. You know, Bob Marley posters on the wall and big marijuana leaf posters," Warner said. "But then some were so fancy, like dentist's offices. They had bubbling aquariums in the lobby and were so clean. I thought, somebody needs to review these. Somebody needs to tell people what these places are like."

Westword has received applications from more than 120 prospective reviewers, some of whom have offered to work for free - presumably with expenses paid. "Marijuana isn't just important to me, it is my life," wrote one enthusiastic applicant.

But there is a catch. Whoever gets the job has to be able to buy marijuana legally for medical reasons.

Marijuana is illegal under US federal law but has been unbanned in some states for medical use as a prescription drug. Amid growing acceptance of dope smoking as a pain reliever, the Obama administration this week instructed the Drug Enforcement Administration and other federal agencies not to raid marijuana dispensaries that are legal under state law or arrest their customers.

That is an important shift. Until now, while local and state police ignored the dispensaries, the DEA could swoop at any time and often did.

California was the first state to approve medical marijuana dispensaries in 1996 but there has been a real boom in recent years. The number in Los Angeles alone has gone from four in 2005 to about 800 today. Colorado has more than 100.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/21/marijuana-cannabis-newspaper-westword-colorado

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Sign of the high times

<p>Ships of state tend to change course slowly. Policies set in place over decades, and implemented by large, self-perpetuating bureaucracies and enforcement systems are pretty hard to dismantle. Fundamental change rarely happens overnight.</p><p>Much of the criticism that has been levelled at the Obama administration in recent months by progressives forgets this basic truth of politics. It's one thing to bang the "change drum" in an election campaign. It's another thing to use the levers of power wisely, in a way that makes that change durable.</p><p>When Barack Obama came into power, drug policy reformers were hopeful that, finally, the ill-conceived war on drugs � a war that has cost hundreds of billions of dollars, incarcerated millions of Americans, created narco-states throughout much of Latin America and failed to reduce the availability or use of illegal substances � would be ended.</p><p>After all, Obama himself had frankly admitted to his youthful experiments with an array of drugs. The new drug tsar, Gil Kerlikowske, favoured a "harm reduction" strategy that viewed drugs more as a medical than a criminal justice problem. And senior administration officials were committed to ending the sentencing disparities between crack and powder cocaine offences.</p><p>Well, not surprisingly, big-picture changes didn't occur instantaneously. And, if you follow the chatter on drug policy reform sites, much of the initial optimism faded. On Monday, it came roaring back.</p><p>Eric Holder, the US attorney general, announced that the feds would no longer launch raids against, and prosecute, legitimate medical marijuana dispensers and users in the 14 states around the country that have passed legislation (or citizen initiatives) allowing for the use of medical marijuana. </p><p>In and of itself, this is a relatively minor event, a common-sense corrective to another rigid and bullying Bush-era policy. And, in and of itself, there's not much political capital at stake here for Obama. After all, you've got to be a pretty zealous drug-warrior to get truly morally outraged by cancer patients taking a few hits of weed to ease their nausea. With all the other troubles facing America, most Americans probably aren't too happy with scarce resources being spent on prosecuting doper-grannies and their prescription pot suppliers.</p><p>But, there's a bigger story here. And it's that story of the ship of state.</p><p>If you exercise too sharp a turn, you risk capsizing. If you go into the turn gradually, giving yourself plenty of room to manoeuvre, you've got a much better chance of getting where you want to ultimately go.</p><p>There's popular support for leaving medical marijuana dispensaries and users alone. Nationally, support for marijuana legalisation is at its highest point in decades, and in some states, including California, there's now majority popular support for a broad legalisation of the drug. Last year Arnold Schwarzenegger himself broached the notion that it might be time to have a debate on this. After years in the policy wilderness, reform groups such as the Drug Policy Alliance and the National Organisation for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (Norml) are attracting high-profile followers to their causes.</p><p>Like the medical marijuana laws, the legalisation of pot would place individual states in legal conflict with the federal government. Under previous administrations, the knee-jerk war on drugs response would have been to launch prosecutions, to prove to the states that the feds had the muscle and the willpower to nip legalisation in the bud (as it were).</p><p>With the current policy shift on medical marijuana, and the implicit understanding that Washington is now ready to leave enforcement of such laws up to the states, there's room for the feds to step back if and when the next wave of marijuana laws comes to pass at the state level.</p><p>And, if the sky doesn't fall as a result of this new federal stance (or non-stance), over time the American public � conditioned since Richard Nixon launched the war on drugs in the early 1970s to regard drugs first and foremost as a criminal justice issue � will likely become more tolerant of this new, gentler, approach. And, once opinion poll numbers start moving away from more general support for the war on drugs, an increasing number of politicians will feel they have cover to do what they already know needs to be done: wind down a war that has long been unwinnable and which is now, in an era of straitened public finances, increasingly unaffordable.</p><p>If you analyse politics simply via the 24-hour-news-cycle, then Obama's achievements in reforming drug policy have been modest. But, if you think long term � and in writing my book Inside Obama's Brain I came to understand that Obama thinks long-term in a way that few recent presidents have done � then I would venture to bet that Monday's shift on medical marijuana presages some fundamental changes in how America approaches its many drug problems in the years to come.</p>

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/oct/21/obama-medical-marijuana-drug-war

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Is there a medical marijuana defence?

<p>Discogsfred asks:</p><p><blockquote>Would a person charged with cultivating cannabis for personal consumption have any grounds for a defence on medical grounds. Does this factor in such prosecutions? And does the wide and legal availability of both cultivation equipment and seed stock, from tax paying UK businesses, effect the legitimacy of the prosecution?</blockquote></p><p></p><p>The court of appeal considered whether someone charged with cannabis offences could rely on medical reasons as a defence in the 2005 case of R v Quayle and others.</p><p></p><p>The police discovered that Barry Quayle was cultivating cannabis plants in his loft. A bi-lateral amputee, he claimed that he used the cannabis to deal with chronic pain and that he preferred using it to the prescription drugs that he was given because these "knocked him out". At his trial for cultivating cannabis he tried to run the defence of necessity. The judge refused to put the defence to the jury and Quayle pleaded guilty. He was given a four-month prison sentence suspended for six months. He appealed the judge's decision not to allow the jury to consider a necessity defence.</p><p></p><p>Quayle's appeal was heard with five others. Of the other appellants two were in a similar situation to Quayle in that they grew and used cannabis in order to alleviate their own chronic pain. Two of the others were convicted of importing organically-grown cannabis for distribution though a holistic clinic to people with HIV/AIDS and multiple sclerosis. In the final case the attorney general appealed against a judge allowing the jury to consider the defence of necessity put forward by a defendant who distributed cannabis free to those with various medical conditions. The jury acquitted the defendant in that case but the attorney general made use of a mechanism that allowed him to get a ruling from the court of appeal on the correctness of the judge's ruling.</p><p></p><p>The question for the court of appeal was whether the defence of "necessity" could apply in these types of circumstances. Necessity is a common law defence that has been developed by judges over the years and is not defined in any statute. Its parameters are � as a result � rather vague and the court spent a lot of its judgment reviewing the relevant case law. It is closely related to the defence of duress, a defence that applies to all offences except murder and attempted murder, where a defendant claims to have been forced to commit an offence by the threat of death or serious physical injury but in the defence of necessity it is circumstances that force the person to break the law.</p><p></p><p>The court of appeal held that the defence of necessity was not available in these cases (or should not have been in the last one) for two reasons:</p><p>First, because parliament had set in place a legislative scheme for the supply of drugs. This provided for controlled drugs to be prescribed only by doctors but also for certain drugs to be designated whose use would never be legal. Cannabis fell into the latter category, although a limited exception permitted it to be used for medical research. In the court's view the "necessitous medical use on an individual basis � is in conflict with the purpose and effect of the legislative scheme." Allowing unqualified people to prescribe it to themselves or others "would involve obvious risks for the integrity and the prospects of any coherent enforcement of the legislative scheme." It would also necessitate a parallel but unregulated market in drugs. Put simply, allowing the appeals would run a coach and horses through attempts to regulate cannabis use.</p><p></p><p>Second, having distilled from case law the elements of the defence of necessity, the court held that those requirements were not met: the circumstance to which Quayle and the other self-medicators were responding, their pain, was not extraneous to them and so was not open to objective assessment by the courts; the court doubted whether chronic pain could equate to the risk of serious injury that the case law required; and the requirement that the risk be "imminent and immediate" was not met in the case of those who had supplied the drug and did not sit well with the self-medicators' deliberate and continuous flouting of the law.</p><p></p><p>A human rights argument � relying on article 8, the right to respect for private life � was raised. The court commented that if it was to be persuaded that the law was incompatible with the convention it would need a lot more medical and scientific evidence than was before it.</p><p></p><p>The court of appeal was faced with a further human rights argument in R v Altham. Lee Altham suffered from chronic pain as a result of a road traffic accident. Like Quayle he considered that cannabis was a more effective and less unpleasant way of dealing with his pain than prescription painkillers. In response to a charge of possession of cannabis he raised the defence of necessity. Again the judge refused to put the defence to the jury, so Altham appealed arguing that the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 had to be read subject to a defence of medical necessity in order to avoid the law being incompatible with article 3. Article 3 prohibits in absolute terms subjecting anyone to inhuman or degrading treatment (it also prohibits torture but there was no suggestion that that came into play here.) Altham argued that the pain from which he suffered was sufficiently grave to engage article 3 and that the state, by criminalising the only means he had of dealing with it, was in effect subjecting him to that pain.</p><p></p><p>The court rejected his argument: it was not "treatment" by the state that had resulted in the pain he experienced but rather his road accident, the state could not be considered responsible for the harm done to him. Moreover, as in Quayle's case, the defence of necessity for which Altham was arguing ran contrary to the legislative scheme.</p><p></p><p>So as the law currently stands there is no defence on medical grounds available to someone charged with cultivating cannabis. That is not to say that there may not be scope for a further human rights challenge to the law relying on the sort of extensive medical and scientific evidence that the court of appeal said it did not have before it in the Quayle case. But anyone contemplating such a challenge will need to bear in mind that this is the type of policy area where the courts will be extremely reluctant to interfere with decisions made by parliament, as the cases of Quayle and Altham themselves indicate.</p><p></p><p>As for Discogsfred's second question, I can't see any way that the wide availability of paraphernalia which could be used for cultivating cannabis would have an impact on the law prohibiting the cultivation of cannabis. I can't see that this could give rise to any defence in law.</p>

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/oct/21/medical-marijuana-defence

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Two Jack Strains Back: Black Jack, Herijuana Jack 33

We've just got in a couple more strains that have been out for a while. Both of them are Jack Herer-style strains:

<strong>Black Jack from Sweet Seeds</strong>
This one is a cross between a Black Domina and Jack Herer. This breed-crossing provides the plant a sweet aroma of Black Domina that softens the deep characteristic aroma of the Jack Herer.

<strong>Herijuana Jack 33 from CH9 Seeds</strong>
CH9 have produced a cross between Motarebel Herijuana and their Jack 33. It is a proven medical strain with three phenotypes, all of slightly varying characteristics.

Product Links:
Black Jack Seeds
Herijuana Jack 33 Seeds

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US medical cannabis policy eased

Federal prosecutors in the US have been ordered to stop cannabis-related prosecutions in the 13 states where medical use of the drug is legal.

Attorney General Eric Holder said it was wrong for federal resources to be spent on prosecuting people who were in compliance with existing state laws.

But he warned that the authorities would continue to go after traffickers hiding behind medical marijuana laws.

The policy is considered a sharp shift from that of the Bush administration.

California became the first state to permit medical use of cannabis in 1996. It allows special facilities to sell the drug and even to advertise.

In 2005, the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government could continue to enforce US law barring the cultivation, possession and use of cannabis for any purpose, even when states had legalised it.
'Step forward'

But in a policy memo issued by the Department of Justice on Monday, prosecutors were told they "should not focus federal resources in your states on individuals whose actions are in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws providing for the medical use of marijuana".

However, they will be required to go after people who distribute more than is permitted under state law or use it as a cover for weapons offences, money laundering and other crimes.

"We will not tolerate drug traffickers who hide behind claims of compliance with state law to mask activities that are clearly illegal," Mr Holder said in a statement.

According to the government, 14 states allow some use of cannabis for medical purposes - Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.

However, Maryland only allows for reduced penalties for those found to have used cannabis solely for medical reasons.

Advocates of the medical use of cannabis argue that it is effective in treating chronic pain and nausea, among other ailments.

"This is a major step forward," Bruce Mirken of the Marijuana Policy Project told the Associated Press news agency.

"This change in policy moves the federal government dramatically toward respecting scientific and practical reality."

But critics said it signalled a retreat in the fight against Mexican drug cartels, whose largest source of revenue in the US is cannabis.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8315603.stm

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Green House Seeds Cheese returns!

We now have fresh stock of Green House Seeds Cheese cannabis seeds.

This hugely popular strain is sure to start flying out again, so grab it while you can!

Here's some details about the strain:

Cheese was a first prize Indica Cup winner at the High Times Cannabis Cup 2006. It is a skunk-kush cross with an intense musky earth flavour.

Click for more: Green House Seeds

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Cannabis May Fight Auto-Immune Diseases

In the 13 years since California passed a law allowing for the medical use of marijuana, a dozen more states, including Washington, have followed suit. Today, all the Pacific states allow people to grow or possess marijuana with a doctor’s recommendation, as do several states in the Mountain West, a few in New England and some along the Eastern Seaboard � despite the continued insistence by the federal Food and Drug Administration that the herb is a dangerous drug with no valid medical benefits.

Medical Marijuana By far, the most widespread support for the move to allow marijuana smoking for medicinal purposes has been on behalf of people with AIDS Wasting Syndrome or on cancer chemotherapy. The chief benefit noted for these patients has had to do with a reduction in nausea and the stimulation of appetite, something anyone who has experienced the “blind raving munchies” can attest to.

Proponents of medical marijuana have not stopped there, however. Advocates cite reports that marijuana can be beneficial in treating a range of illnesses, even though the FDA and the Drug Enforcement Administration provide few, if any, opportunities for researchers to investigate these claims.

One of the least publicized of these claims is that cannabis can be a help for people with Multiple Sclerosis. MS affects the ability of nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord to communicate with each other due to damage of the myelin sheath, an insulating coat around nerve cells that allow them to pass electrical signals. While theories abound for ultimate causes of MS, from genetics to environmental exposure to toxins, it is well understood to be an autoimmune disease. That is, the body’s natural defense systems attack the myelin layers in the brain. In that sense, it is like other chronic conditions, including Rheumatoid Arthritis and Lupus.

Recently, indirect evidence has surfaced which could go a long way in explaining the potential for marijuana to improve the outlook for MS patients. Scientists generally believe that marijuana’s high is a result of cannabinols, the active ingredients in the smoke, binding to a receptor on brain cells called CB1 receptors.

In June, Temple University physiologist Ron Tuma and his team released a report on work they have done studying a related receptor known as CB2. The Microvascular Research report reveals that selectively targeting CB2 receptors reduces injury and tissue death after a certain kind of stroke. Additionally, a New Zealand pharmacologist at the University of Auckland, Michelle Glass, recently noted that activating the CB2 receptors can shield neurons from damage, possibly by stopping immune cells in the brain, known as microglia, from triggering an inflammatory response.

Some drug researchers find this particularly exciting because binding proteins to the CB2 receptors does not result in people getting high. How much attention this gets from pharmaceutical companies may depend on how widespread the CB2 receptors are in the body, a matter of some scientific controversy. In the meantime, patients with MS will just have to put up with getting stoned.

http://colorsnw.com/colors/2009/10/14/art-of-healing-cannabis-may-fight-auto-immune-diseases/

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Marijuana Activist Jack Herer Showing Signs Of Improvement After Heart Attack

Jack Herer, a leader in the modern marijuana legalization movement, has been discharged from a Portland hospital nearly a month after a Sept. 12 heart attack, and his family has moved him to a Eugene nursing facility.

Herer, 70, of Lower Lake, Calif., had just delivered what for him was a typical barn-burner of a speech promoting hemp at Portland's Hempstalk festival when he collapsed. He was airlifted to Legacy Emanuel Medical Center and was in critical but stable condition for more than three weeks.

Herer had improved enough to be released from Emanuel and moved, said Paul Stanford, a longtime friend who is executive director of The Hemp and Cannabis Foundation in Portland.

"He is waking up and gazing appropriately when someone's talking," Stanford said Monday, "but he's not really communicating in any way."

The heavy-set Herer suffered a stroke in 2000, and for several years after, he struggled to regain his speech and locomotion. Stanford said that before Herer addressed the Sept. 12 festival at Portland's Kelley Point Park, "Jack was telling everyone that he never felt better."

Herer wrote the 1985 book "The Emperor Wears No Clothes," a history of hemp that he self-published and distributed underground on his constant speaking trips across the United States, mainly to college campuses. The book is in its 11th printing and is considered the founding document of the legalization movement in the Just Say No era.

Herer wrote much of "Emperor" while living in Portland campaigning for legalization and later was instrumental in two West Coast voter initiatives to allow patients to use marijuana as medicine -- California in 1996 and Oregon in 1998.

A cantankerous, boisterous, zealous promoter of hemp and marijuana, Herer was the subject of a 1999 documentary "The Emperor of Hemp" financed by Anita Roderick, founder of The Body Shop.

"He is a true American original," said Rick Cusick, associate publisher of High Times magazine. "He's lovable to a ridiculous degree even as he's annoying to a ridiculous degree, and I say that with deep, deep love."

"He wins over everybody he's ever met," Cusick said. "The reason he wins them over is that in a world filled with phonies, he is absolutely sincere."

http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2009/10/marijuana_activist_showing_sig.html

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Stephen Gately consumed cannabis on the day he died, claim reports

Stephen Gately consumed cannabis the day he died, it was reported yesterday.

Majorca daily newspaper Ultima Hora said: “An analysis of the singer’s urine indicates he had consumed cannabis the night he died.” It made no mention of other drugs.

Studies have indicated that cannabis smoke can injure the lungs and regular smoking has been associated with chronic respiratory symptoms.

A spokesman for the Majorca court probing Stephen’s death has insisted drink or drugs were not factors in his death.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/celebs/news/2009/10/15/stephen-gately-consumed-cannabis-on-the-day-he-died-claim-reports-115875-21747707/

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Australia: Legalising cannabis 'could stop recession'

In July, Oakland City Council voted overwhelmingly to tax the city's medical marijuana dispensaries to increase its profits.

At the time of the vote the city faced an $US83 million budget shortfall, and expected the marijuana tax to raise $315,000, according to the report.

The city auditor projected the tax would ring up to $17.5 million in sales.

Richard Lee, Head of Oaksterdam University, the US's first cannabis college, told Sky News the rest of California could follow suit.

He estimates the Californian cannabis industry is worth around "$15 billion, so just the 10-percent sales tax alone would be one and a half billion dollars."

However Special Agent Bob Cook from the Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement doubts the tax collected would offset the damage he thinks may be caused from the use of the drug.

He points to people who are now ill from smoking tobacco, now in hospital.

"We're not making enough money now to care for all these people who are in hospitals who have developed emphysema, lung disease, throat cancer, circulation issues..who's going to pay for all of that?" Cook told Sky News.

Advocates of marijuana in the state of California have started their push to get a marijuana legalisation measure on California's 2010 ballot.

Supporters of the Tax Cannabis 2010 campaign need nearly 434,000 signatures to make the November 2010 ballot.

Under the proposal, adults 21 and older could legally possess up to an ounce of pot.

Homeowners could grow limited amounts, and local governments would decide whether to allow pot sales.

Supporters argue taxes levied on marijuana sales could help strapped cities weather revenue shortfalls caused by the recession and California's budget crisis.

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1109281/Legalising-cannabis-could-stop-recession

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Smurfberry from Sagarmatha returns!

The HUGELY popular Smurfberry from Sagarmatha is now back in stock.

After a short absence whilst stocks were out, it's back and flying out as fast as ever. Get your hands on it before it goes again!

Here's the full product details:

<blockquote>Named after her Blueberry influence, Smurfberry has risen to the top of the Blueberry type autoflowering plants. All the blueberry traits familiar with that notorious strain have been preserved with this hybrid. Flavor, smell and color take you on a trip inside your mind to a Smurfy place where all is blue and sweet. High density growing is a must as with most autoflower breeds and she is no exception. When people want to have all the best then Smurfberry should be in your nest. Satisfying and sensual she evokes alpha waves that flow you right into the sweet spot.

life cycle 8 weeks
height .5-.7m
yield 300g/m2</blockquote>

Smurfberry Seeds

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Bubba Kush from Green House Seeds now in stock

Green House Seeds have released one of their brand new strains that everyone has been eagerly awaiting!

Green House Seeds Bubba Kush

It is a cross between Bubble Gum and Kush with relaxing, narcotic and long lasting effects.

It was a first prize winner in the High Times Cannabis Cup (HTCC) 1996.

Full details can be found on the website:
Bubba Kush Seeds

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Improbable research: how to check the marijuana in your muffins

If a friend or, alternatively, a police undercover agent, gives you a tempting marijuana muffin, how can you know whether it's made with real marijuana?

A report called Identification of Cannabinoids in Baked Goods by UHPLC/MS tells how to do it easily and directly � or as the professionals say, with "minimal sample preparation, and no chemical derivatisation".

The two professionals who say this, Guifeng Jiang and Jason R Stenzel, cooked up the report for Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc, of San Jose, California. Jiang works for the company. Stenzel is part of Washington State Patrol's Crime Laboratory Division in the remote town of Cheney.

By "minimal sample preparation", Jiang and Stenzel mean minimal compared to the traditional method for testing the genuineness of leaf marijuana, hashish, hash oil, and what they lovingly call "residue collected from smoking paraphernalia".

Their traditional method may not be your traditional method. Their traditional method, they explain, is gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, the professional forensic lab technician's favourite way to identify the presence or absence of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), cannabinol and cannabidiol, the most famous ingredients of marijuana or hashish.

By "no chemical derivatisation", Jiang and Stenzel mean without the rigamarole of doing chemical reactions that produce related substances which are easier to identify than the originals (the originals in this case being the aforementioned THC, cannabinol and cannabidiol).

Out with the old glitzy method, in with the new. Jiang and Stenzel prefer using ultra high-performance liquid chromatography with mass spectrometry (UHPLC/MS). As it happens, Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc manufactures UHPLC/MS equipment, one variety of which, the Accela UHPLC system, proved handy when Jiang and Stenzel decided to test their baked goods.

They are slightly coy when describing where they got the goods. "Brownie and cookie samples were obtained from evidence archived after adjudication" is all they say about it, other than vaguely muttering that it "was known to contain" THC, and that "after 10 years in the forensic laboratory's training vault, cannabinoids in the cookie sample had degraded significantly".

Jiang and Stetzel had some fun with those brownies and cookies. They crumbled them, added some methanol, vortexed the gooey mixture, allowed it to settle for two minutes, filtered it through a cotton-plugged Pasteur pipette, centrifuged it at 12,000 revolutions per minute for 90 seconds, then centrifuged it again.

Following this minimal sample preparation, they ran it through the ol' Accela UHPLC system, and then through an MSQ Plus single quadrupole LC/MS detector that uses Thermo Fisher's Xcalibur 2.05 software.

That's pretty much the story of what they did � and what you can do, too, if you have this equipment on hand the next time someone gives you purportedly marijuana-containing cakes, breads, buns, doughnuts, tarts or pies.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/oct/06/improbable-research-marijuana-muffins

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New Evidence That Marijuana is Safe, Effective

The International Association for Cannabis as Medicine just concluded its 5th Conference on Cannabinoids in Medicine in Cologne, Germany. The conference included significant new evidence that marijuana is a safe, effective medicine for certain conditions, some of which can be found in the conference abstracts, now available online.

Canadian researcher Mark Ware presented results of a yearlong safety study known as the COMPASS study, which compared 215 patients who used marijuana to manage chronic pain with comparable control patients who did not use marijuana. Ware and colleagues report “no difference in serious adverse events” between the two groups, concluding, “Cannabis use for chronic pain over one year is not associated with major changes in lung, endocrine, cognitive function or serious adverse events.”

A much-awaited study came from the University of California, San Francisco, where Donald Abrams and colleagues tested the effects of adding marijuana to the therapeutic regimen of chronic pain patients on long-term morphine or oxycodone therapy. Unfortunately, because the researchers were crunching numbers right up until the conference, the abstract doesn’t include a lot of details. But the study shows that marijuana did indeed add significant pain relief on top of that already provided by the narcotic painkillers. The scientists conclude, “Cannabinoids may augment the analgesic effects of opioids, allowing longer treatment at lower doses with fewer side effects.”

Meanwhile, British researchers added to the body of evidence indicating that marijuana can aid the treatment of multiple sclerosis. Two-hundred and seventy-nine patients received either a standardized cannabis extract, given orally, or a placebo. Patients receiving the extract were twice as likely to experience relief of muscle stiffness, and also reported relief of body pain, spasms, and sleep problems.

http://www.enewspf.com/index.php?option=com_content&amp;view=article&amp;id=10629:new-evidence-that-marijuana-is-safe-effective&amp;catid=88888904&amp;Itemid=88890249

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