BC Bud Goes Global

I watched a BBC TV report on this subject today which was quite entertaining. Especially humorous was the lovely anchor trying to look serious and purposeful while introducing the clip! Unfortunately, the link was unavailable, but here is part of the story:
Canada's spreading cannabis crop
Page last updated at 12:02 GMT, Tuesday, 22 July 2008 13:02 UKAs we walk into John's basement, the smell is so overwhelming it almost knocks me off my feet.
In front of me stand 120 marijuana plants whose thick bushy leaves cover the strong stems.
John explains quite nonchalantly that this is just a small growing operation, or grow-ops as they are known throughout Canada.
[...] Inspector Brian Cantera of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in Vancouver believes that John's small grow-op is one of 20,000 to be found in residential houses around the province.
That figure excludes the larger grow-ops in industrial locations, not to mention the huge dope farms that are scattered around British Columbia's vast interior.
If Inspector Cantera's estimates are accurate, then British Columbia is probably home to the largest concentration of organised criminal syndicates in the world.
The striking aspect of BC's marijuana trade is that it has gone beyond the boundaries of traditional organised crime groups (although some are still heavily involved) and entered into the middle classes [astonishing! you can’t possibly mean it!].
Much of the revenue derived from BC Bud, as the cannabis crop is known, goes on paying college fees, perhaps buying a second car or making that holiday to the Caribbean just a little bit more affordable.
The trade is so large that the police in BC are faced with an impossible task.
[...] Billy Weselowski and his wife Kim have devoted themselves to helping vulnerable women caught up in drug and alcohol addiction to restart their lives.
Billy rails against those Canadians who are demanding the legalisation of marijuana.
"I've dealt with at least 20,000 addicts, and easily 10,000 will tell you they've relapsed on marijuana¿That's the underbelly of what marijuana (is) about - what it's doing to people. And it's like alcohol - it runs an industry."
But the marijuana growers have equally passionate supporters like Michelle Rainey who has the legal right to cultivate a limited amount of marijuana for medicinal purposes.
She says it is the only thing that helps relieve the pain inflicted by the debilitating Crohn's disease from which she suffers.
But she is sought by the US to face charges of conspiracy and money-laundering because of a legal Vancouver-based marijuana seed business with which she was previously involved.
Over the past decade, Canada has been moving slowly towards a more benign regime of toleration towards marijuana (although the current minority federal government of Stephen Harper vehemently opposes this development).
This has placed the trade in the middle of some intense arguments between Canada (and BC in particular) on the one hand and the US and its guardian on drugs orthodoxy, the Office of National Drug Control Policy, on the other.
If BC's marijuana trade ever did force through a change in the legal status of the drug in Canada, the implications for Canadian-US relations would be profound. This will be a crime story well worth watching.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7519178.stm

Waiting to Inhale is highly recommended to further your understanding of the seriousness of medical marijuana. It is available from Ironweed.org. Ironweed's monthly dvd selectioni usualy has more than one film on the same topic, and included on this DVD are two other films on the medical [dis]establishment, Health, Money and Fear and Collateral Damage: Bad Medicine in Tennessee: http://www.ironweedfilms.com/

Dying for a Joint

Doesn't it seem a little weird that Drs. Reyes and Sade (!!!) are concerned organ transplant recipients might become "addicted" to marijuana? These are borderline DEAD people and he's concerned they might want to smoke pot every day? Get your priorities straight, doctors!
Medical marijuana patients denied a spot on transplant list
By Gene Johnson, AP
SEATTLE — Timothy Garon's face and arms are hauntingly skeletal, but the fluid building up in his abdomen makes the 56-year-old musician look eight months pregnant.
His liver, ravaged by hepatitis C, is failing. Without a new one, his doctors tell him, he will be dead in days.
But Garon isn't getting a new liver. He's been refused a spot on the transplant list, largely because he has used marijuana, even though it was legally approved for medical reasons.
[...] "Most transplant centers struggle with issues of how to deal with people who are known to use marijuana, whether or not it's with a doctor's prescription," said Dr. Robert Sade, director of the Institute of Human Values in Health Care at the Medical University of South Carolina. "Marijuana, unlike alcohol, has no direct effect on the liver. It is however a concern ... in that it's a potential indicator of an addictive personality." [my bold]
The Virginia-based United Network for Organ Sharing, which oversees the nation's transplant system, leaves it to individual hospitals to develop criteria for transplant candidates. At some, people who use "illicit substances" — including medical marijuana, even in states that allow it — are automatically rejected. At others, such as the UCLA Medical Center, patients are given a chance to reapply if they stay clean for six months. Marijuana is illegal under federal law.
[...] "There needs to be some kind of national eligibility criteria so that everyone will know what the rules are," [Peggy] Stewart [a clinical social worker on the liver transplant team at UCLA] said. The patients "are trusting their physician to do the right thing. The physician prescribes marijuana, they take the marijuana, and they are shocked that this is now the end result."
No one tracks how many patients are denied transplants over medical marijuana use. Pro-marijuana groups have cited a handful of cases, including at least two patient deaths, in Oregon and California, since the mid-to-late 1990s, when states began adopting medical marijuana laws.
[...] Many doctors agree that using marijuana — smoking it, especially — is out of the question post-transplant. The drugs patients take to help their bodies accept a new organ increase the risk of aspergillosis, a frequently fatal infection caused by a common mold found in marijuana and tobacco. [my bold]
But there's little information on whether using marijuana is a problem before the transplant, said Dr. Emily Blumberg, an infectious disease specialist who works with transplant patients at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital.
Further complicating matters, Blumberg said, is that some insurers require proof of abstinence, such as drug tests, before they'll agree to pay for transplants.
[...] Dr. Jorge Reyes, a liver transplant surgeon at the UW Medical Center, said that while medical marijuana use isn't in itself a sign of substance abuse, it must be evaluated in the context of each patient.
"The concern is that patients who have been using it will not be able to stop," Reyes said.
Dale Gieringer, state coordinator for the California chapter of NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, scoffed at that notion.
"Everyone agrees that marijuana is the least habit-forming of all the recreational drugs, including alcohol," Gieringer said. "And unlike a lot of prescription medications, it's nontoxic to the liver." [...]
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2004375764_webtrnsplant26.html

Justice for Non-Violent "Drug" Offenders

Do you need me to point out that our airwaves are full of "legal" drugs which provide very little real help except to make money for Big Pharma? Of course not! You also know that if you have money, or are white and "upwardly mobile," (the delusion that the rich will pee money on you) you probably will get off with a tiny slap on the wrist. And the lesson is?

24 Hour Push: Email the Governor!

Dear Friend of Drop the Rock,
Tomorrow, at 1:00 PM, Governor Spitzer will deliver his State of the State address. The Drop the Rock Coalition aims to send as many emails as possible to the Governor in the next 24 hours to press him to call for Rockefeller repeal during his speech.
To Email the Governor, Click here:
http://www.droptherock.org/actionalert.htm
Enacted in 1973, when Nelson Rockefeller was governor, the Rockefeller Drug Laws require harsh prison terms for the possession or sale of relatively small amounts of drugs.
There are now almost 15,500 drug offenders in NY's prisons; most of them minor offenders with no history of violent behavior.
It costs NY nearly $500 million a year to imprison drug offenders.
Over 92% of the people locked up in NY for drug offenses are African American or Latino, despite research showing that the majority of people who use and sell drugs are white.
Research shows that drug treatment is cheaper than imprisonment and more successful in reducing drug related crime.
Moreover, repealing the Drug Laws would save the fiscally strapped state up to $200 million per year.
After over 32 years, it is long past time to remove the stain of these wasteful, unjust, ineffective & racist laws from NY’s penal code.
http://www.droptherock.org/

Please also review my post from December 20, 2007, Prove it or Shut Up! discussing the wasted money for the “War on Drugs” as well as a hilarious challenge of $10,000 to either Giuliani, Romney, McCain to prove their statements on medical marijuana.

http://www.mpp.org/

Prove it or Shut Up!

Here's news from a different front, the medical marijuana debate. Thanks to the Marijuana Policy Project for letting us know of yet another scandal in the White House: use of public funds for political purposes. Below is a synopsis of how they are nailing the Repug contenders on their continual use of lies to promote themselves (and line their pockets via big Pharma). As always, I've highlighted in bold text that should make you scream! Enjoy!

On Monday, Congress passed an omnibus spending bill that funds the White House drug czar’s ad campaign at only $60 million for 2008. This figure is down from $99 million for 2007 ... and is considerably less than President Bush’s request of $130 million for 2008. In fact, since 2002, the lobbying efforts of MPP and a host of other organizations have helped to achieve a 66% reduction in funding for the White House’s ad campaign.
[…] The bill also admonishes the drug czar — and his Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) — for travel for political purposes on the taxpayers’ dime. In the months before the November 2006 elections, the drug czar and his deputies traveled to 20 events to help vulnerable Republican members of Congress get re-elected — illegally spending taxpayer money to do so — including two trips to Nevada to oppose our ballot initiative to end marijuana prohibition entirely.
The bill chastens, “The Committees are aware of instigations of travel by ONDCP officials that may have occurred for political purposes and caution the Director and other high-ranking officials that travel should occur for official business reasons only, not for political gain ...”
Giuliani, Romney, McCain Offered $10,000 to Prove Their Statements on Medical Marijuana — December 6, 2007
MANCHESTER, NH -- At a press conference in front of Rudy Giuliani's Manchester headquarters this morning with a massive mobile truck billboard in tow, a representative of the Marijuana Policy Project joined two New Hampshire patients to challenge presidential candidates Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and Mitt Romney to back up their statements regarding medical marijuana with scientific evidence, offering the legal maximum $10,000 campaign contribution to any of the three who can prove that their statements are true.

[…] Since appeals to science, compassion and common sense haven't worked, we're talking to them in a language we know they understand -- campaign contributions. If Giuliani, Romney or McCain can back up their claims that medical marijuana isn't needed or is too dangerous, we'll give their campaign $10,000, but if they can't, they need to stop lying."
Any responses from the campaigns will be evaluated by an independent panel of medical experts. An image of the billboard along with full details of the challenge and relevant scientific data are posted at http://www.medicalmarijuanaworks.org/.
In responses to questions posed by New Hampshire voters at campaign events, all three leading Republicans have claimed that marijuana is either too dangerous for medical use or not needed because adequate substitutes exist -- claims that are contradicted by published scientific data. In letters being delivered today to each of the three candidates, Kampia cited their specific statements and challenged them to supply proof. In his letter to Giuliani, Kampia wrote:
"We find it notable that you dismiss marijuana as too dangerous for medical use, while your law firm represented Purdue Pharma -- the makers of the highly addictive and toxic opioid OxyContin -- given that the company paid $634.5 million in fines and penalties for misleading doctors and patients about the drug's abuse potential, and given that a growing body of evidence suggests that medical marijuana can reduce the use of such highly addictive opioid painkillers."
Complete copies of all three letters and a photo of the mobile billboard are available from MPP director of communications Bruce Mirken, at 202-215-4205.
http://www.mpp.org/
Go to the MPP site for ways to get involved. Here’s one way to help the cause and also purchase last minute presents:
When you shop at major online retailers, such as Amazon.com, Gap.com, and many others, you can have a portion of the cost of your purchase automatically donated to MPP — without adding to the cost of your purchase. To get started, simply register with http://www.igive.com/, and then enter MPP as your cause (cause ID = 2564). Then, shop with any of the hundreds of participating merchants and a portion of the purchase price will be sent to MPP. This won't increase the cost of your purchases by even one cent.