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...their knee at the same time, do you think it might catapult them all off to Poland or similar where they'd no doubt find their authoritarian meddling in other peoples' lives more acceptable and satisfying?

Haroon Siddique and Matthew Tempest
Wednesday July 18, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

Gordon Brown today announced the second review in two years into whether cannabis should be reclassified, in response to concerns that its current status does not reflect the drug's dangers.

Mr Brown announced the review, which will look at whether cannabis should be reclassified as class B again - rather than its present class C - at prime minister's questions.

Of course a "review" is also an opportunity to persuade of the opposite case, though anyone who received the government's reply to a pro-legalization petition the other day will know just how prejudiced they are heading into this latest review.

In 2005, 10,000 11- to 17-year-olds were treated for cannabis use - 10 times the number a decade ago.

Yeah - you know what - reclassifying will not make any difference in a black market where pushers don't really care about the age of their customers. Decriminalizing and penalizing people extremely harshly who sell to minors would.

But I'd love to know where this 10,000 figure comes from - before it becomes a matter of popular "fact" created by a political spin doctor. Officially there were just 946 mental health admissions related to cannabis in total in the UK in all age groups in 2005-6. So it seems extraordinary that, given the most common juxtaposition is between mental health and cannabis, that ten times the total number of mental health admissions can be attributed to youngsters suffering other problems as a result of the drug. By contrast, there were 5700+ hospital admissions of under 16 year olds due to alcohol abuse in the same year.

Plants are increasingly cultivated to include high levels of the active ingredient of cannabis, THC, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, which encourages addiction and can cause a range of symptoms, from short-term memory loss, anxiety and panic attacks to triggering schizophrenia.

They are so cultivated because of the illegal market in which they operate. Where pushers and growers want to get the maximum value they can out of as little as possible to minimize their chances of being caught. It's not that difficult to measure the THC in any one strain or plant. So decriminalizing and forcing people to sell only with a statement of how strong it was would solve that one too. You don't expect people to be drinking pints of full strength Whisky when they go out for small beer do you? That's what the criminal nature of the market is forcing on cannabis consumers.

Prohibition has not worked and never will work. However unlikely, every review of the situation is an opportunity to persuade of the better course. Jacqui - read this first. On the other hand, given that most of us are criminals anyway, maybe if you stick to the paper clips and I'll stick to unwinding after work with a joint we'll all get along fine.

Technorati Tags: drugs laws, gordon brown, liberty, prohibition

...a society made up almost entirely of mendacious megalomaniacal psychopaths, do declare that the causes of the current economic crisis are basically nothing to do with us:

3. During a period of strong global growth, growing capital flows, and prolonged stability earlier this decade, market participants sought higher yields without an adequate appreciation of the risks and failed to exercise proper due diligence. At the same time, weak underwriting standards, unsound risk management practices, increasingly complex and opaque financial products, and consequent excessive leverage combined to create vulnerabilities in the system. Policy-makers, regulators and supervisors, in some advanced countries, did not adequately appreciate and address the risks building up in financial markets, keep pace with financial innovation, or take into account the systemic ramifications of domestic regulatory actions.

4. Major underlying factors to the current situation were, among others, inconsistent and insufficiently coordinated macroeconomic policies, inadequate structural reforms, which led to unsustainable global macroeconomic outcomes. These developments, together, contributed to excesses and ultimately resulted in severe market disruption.

God it makes me sick. Lying miserable tossers. Understand this well. Maintaining low interest rates, in order to get more people borrowing more to put into a land price bubble which would enable others to borrow to spend our way out of a mini-recession at the beginning of the century was DELIBERATE PUBLIC POLICY. Deliberate public policy the effects of which were to make the poorest and weakest in society attempt to take on unacceptable levels of debt and risk just to prevent themselves from being ripped off even more in the future.

Not only that, but they knew at the time it would lead to problems later (Eddie George said: "My legacy to the MPC, if you like, has been 'sort that out',"). They simply hoped their successors could get us out of those problems. I think we should take their prescriptions for recovery with all the salt in the world's oceans.

The Guardian on Thursday presages a Downing Street Press-fest at which Tony Blair will apparently claim that we've all "misunderstood me over the Middle East".

Apparently...he will "face down his critics today over his controversial handling of the Middle East crisis by insisting that he has been working throughout for a ceasefire in Lebanon and that his position has been misunderstood. He will argue at a Downing Street press conference that he wanted a ceasefire, but only if it was coupled with a clear understanding that the Hizbullah militia would be disarmed."

So that'll be a "no" then Tony, we've understood you perfectly well. You don't actually give a stuff about the real people whose lives have been cut short and homes and livelihoods torn apart by what's been happening (actually on both sides but since Israel has all the responsibilities and moral capacity of a democratic nation state they bear most of the blame).

You're happiest with your seven good buddies tucked up in some posh hotel like prep schoolers playing that great game of Diplomacy or like the crowned heads posturing in the pier ballroom on "Oh what a lovely war!". You want a ceasefire but only once 20% of a country has been displaced or left utterly destitute. Can you imagine not wanting a ceasefire until after London and the South East region had been evacuated, bulldozed and occupied? No.

The "rules of war" and human rights were established to prevent a recurrence of razing villages, treating civilian areas as battle grounds to target your artillery at. I actually have more respect for what Israel are now doing - starting on the eyeball to eyeball anti-guerilla fighting on the ground - than the softening up and remote control village clearances by artillery and bombing (now acknowledged by Israel to have been completely intentional all along as some of us predicted).

You'd rather condone human rights abuses and war crimes when they're being carried out by the lot on "our side" (apparently) than stick up for what is right - the defense of the innocents (also on both sides). Presumably your party is worried that they'll never be allowed into International Labour Organization meetings ever again having surrendered any claim to being the champions of ordinary people.

I don't believe anyone can really talk properly about what happens in the future until the guns have fallen silent. The difference between that happening two weeks ago and next week will only have been that "our ally" achieved most of its illegal and immoral military aims before you made them stop with hundreds dead and hundreds of thousands displaced. And I have no doubt Hezbullah is now stronger by a few village butchers, bankers and undertakers because nobody else was going to help them fight for their homes, lands and livelihoods.

While governments are pushing options round tables thousands of miles away, hundreds of thousands of lives are being uprooted and devastated. The poor and excluded are always the victims of war.