Aus - Critics slam police cannabis claims

[poledriver]

Critics slam police cannabis claims

Police have been accused of inflating the value of cannabis plants seized during annual helicopter raids, and of taking ‘medicine’ away from sick people.

NSW Police issued a media release this week saying that $20 million worth of cannabis plants had been seized during the 2015/16 ‘Cannabis Eradication Program’.

Police seized plants in the Richmond, Mid North Coast, Manning Great Lakes, Tweed/Byron and Coffs/Clarence local area commands.

Police said the total number of cannabis plants seized during program this year was 10,705, with an estimated potential street value of $21.4 million.

Nimbin Hemp Embassy president Michael Balderstone said the figures were unrealistic.

‘The police trot out the same old very tired lines that surely need a rewrite,’ he said.

‘Like, “that’s $20 million dollars that won’t be boosting the profits of drug dealers and thousands of cannabis plants that won’t be sold in the community”.

‘For a start every seedling is valued at $2,000 and as we know the male plants are worthless, kangaroos eat some, the wet may rot half of the rest, or its eaten by grubs or two legged pests steal it, and so on.

‘These police are clearly not gardeners and these twisted statistics are only to justify their funding for next season’s raids I suspect.

‘Time to review this waste of money Mr Premier.’

Commander of the Drug Squad, detective superintendent Tony Cooke, said the cannabis eradication program was ‘a key component of the NSW Police Force’s efforts to remove illicit drugs from the community and target criminals who profit from peddling those drugs.’

‘The cultivation of cannabis is a crime and we make no apologies for targeting an illicit drug and those who knowingly break the law by growing or supplying it,’ det supt Cooke said.

‘All illicit drugs cause immeasurable harm in our community and we will continue to use this program and a suite of other strategies to target drug supply.’

But Mr Balderstone said the police were creating problems for people using cannabis as medicine.

‘Those people will be spending their cash for the next year on buying their medicine of choice and actually boosting the profits of drug dealers who must love the annual raids which ensure their indoor chemically enhanced hydroponic pot keeps dominating the market place.

‘Do the police realise taking peoples’ medicine puts a huge hole in one’s weekly income? ‘Often it’s the kids who miss out when a family’s weed is taken.

‘Why do they think so many pot smokers are poor? If you can’t grow your own it’s a very expensive medicine, considering we could all grow our own in the backyard if only we were allowed.’

Mr Balderstone said on one hand the government was keen to investigate medical cannabis, while on the other it was fighting the people already supplying it.

‘If only the new respect for cannabis’s medical properties stretched a bit to include the actual users of the medicine we might start getting somewhere but the police banter is all the same tired old press releases word for word … the same for years it seems.

‘Like, “all illicit drugs cause immeasurable harm in our community”. Yeah right, tell that to those thousands of epileptics now seizure free.’

http://www.echo.net.au/2016/03/critics-slam-police-cannabis-claims/

 

[ro4eva]

‘The cultivation of cannabis is a crime and we make no apologies for targeting an illicit drug and those who knowingly break the law by growing or supplying it,’ det supt Cooke said.

‘All illicit drugs cause immeasurable harm in our community and we will continue to use this program and a suite of other strategies to target drug supply.’

Officer Cooke sounds like a talking textbook published in the mid 80s.

It's likely that he has never consumed a 'street drug' before in his life, yet truly believes that he is an expert on the topic. God forbid that tries to fly a jumbo jet, because clearly he's more than ready after reading a few Wikipedia articles and absorbing a weekend marathon of the Discovery Channel documentary 'Mayday.'

The sheer ignorance and arrogance that these "experts" have publicly demonstrated - while slapping countless non-violent, otherwise law-abiding citizens with criminal records - for the past ~45 years has consistently yielded the following progressive crowning achievement: Nothing!

Oh, right: Congrats!

 

[poledriver]

It gets more and more annoying the more we hear and know.

I heard one head cop on TV telling everyone on the prime time news that cannabis is a scourge on our communities and that it leads people to use ice which in turn leads them into a life of crime.

They keep pushing out all this bullshit to keep the people who are easily led to believe that the government and police are doing the right thing in spending so much money to target plants (that people actually wont to use and arent hurting anyone) and other drugs.

We are in a strange position in Australia right now. On one side we just passed laws allowing the growing of cannabis for medicinal purposes but afaik no one is as yet has been granted a license to grow it. And all the very sick and dying people are still not allowed to consume cannabis at all afaik either. Many people are getting very fed up with it all.

It’s all talk and no action on medicinal cannabis

The Government’s embracing of cannabis as the great green hope for our farmers is a classic case of framing themselves as helping make something evil turn into good.

As always, all is not as it seems.

So far, it means nothing for most and only offers a thread of hope for a chosen few.

These steps are more like marching on the spot than moving forward. At a distance, it looks effective, but in reality it is all just for show.

And what a show governments have put on: there was a sparkly announcement last year that the Queensland Government would be involved in a single trial of testing the efficacy of medicinal cannabis on children with severe epilepsy. Then the Federal Government said it would take steps to decriminalise the growing of the wonder plant for medical purposes.

Now the state says our laws, if and when they are eventually drafted, debated, voted on and enacted, will be the most progressive in the country and will open new industries and help the sick and dying.

But so far — nothing.

It smacks of 2003, when then NSW premier Bob Carr and then PM John Howard announced four years of medicinal cannabis clinical trials. They never happened.

Importantly, nothing has changed for the many already using medicinal cannabis oil and spray. No lifeline has been extended, no amnesty offered to create secure and legal lines of supply during the many years it will take for the tiniest changes to be made.

Pertinently, the talk around medicinal cannabis has all been around working with pharmaceutical companies.

This is a product that already has experts making it. It is already helping those willing to step outside the law.

And it is most effective when as close to its natural state as possible — no pill press, boxing conveyor belt or assembly line required.

All the Government needs to do is to legitimise and embrace the covert industry and its knowledge, not focus solely on legislation and economy ahead of health.

Last month, in response to a parliamentary e-petition to change the law to free up access to medicinal cannabis for those who need it now, Health Minister Cameron Dick reiterated that cannabis in all forms is illegal.

The Government is therefore being churlish and misleading in saying that they want to make medicinal cannabis available to more sick people. They could do that now, but they haven’t.

And they are wrong in indicating that the move on Tuesday will legally put medicinal cannabis under the tongues of Queenslanders who are sick or dying: the only thing it changes is that it lays out a possible legal route in which the state’s chief medical officer can give permission to individuals to be part of specific clinical trials.

That will not change the status quo — and too bad for the dying, who do not have time to wait for the world to change.

Dick said individuals who wanted to access medicinal cannabis now could apply to the Federal Government’s Therapeutic Goods Administration under its Special Access Scheme.

Just how many people have done that and how many were approved is unknown, but I would wager the answer is none.

The healing properties within the cannabis plant have been embraced for thousands of years. It has forever been food, clothing and medicine. The Declaration of Independence was drafted on hemp paper and early American flags were made from hemp cloth.

Its status was changed by magicians who turned the life-giving wonder plant into a demonic danger right before the public’s eyes 100 years ago.

We were all robbed of nature’s nutritious, healing gift, in all its forms.

I bought some hulled hemp seed at a natural food store the other day. Hemp seed is a complete vegetable protein, perfect for an active person like me.

Stuck on the front of the packaging is a warning that hemp seed has not been approved for human consumption in Australia and New Zealand.

We are islands in this — the rest of the world uses it as a key food for exercisers.

More action and less talk is required. We must shift out thinking, offer an amnesty to those already making medicinal cannabis and those who will use it before any legislative wheels might start turning. Medicinal cannabis can do no harm.

And we must have legal steps that make medicinal cannabis available to more than just a handful on a specific clinical trial.

Otherwise, the Government must stop hinting that medicinal cannabis will be Queensland farmers’ saving grace and broad hope for the sick and dying and, instead, be honest about it being pharmaceutical companies’ future new cash cow.

http://www.couriermail.com.au/rende...s/news-story/eb5ceb5136f17ecfc4ee580c71655c5d

 

[poledriver]

^ Some good comments after the link too. So many people are fed up here. We've been getting these lies for so long.

We are allowed to consume toxic alcohol and tobacco and GP's can prescribe really strong benzos, opiates anti psych meds, anti anxiety meds, strong sleeping meds and we can buy codeine products over the counter but we can't use cannabis at all even though it's probably the safest out of all those substances? What the actual fuck.

It'd be so easy to fix too. Just allow the growing of a few plants on your own property, allow the use of cannabis and allow us to travel with up to an ounce in public.

But they wont do that because they wont to make tax out of it and have big pharma involved. They still dont wont the relatively average healthy person to be allowed to use cannabis though, for what reasons I cannot understand.

 

[manboychef]

You are so right. Big pharma, big tobacco, and big alcohol have giant lobbying branches that have put this product down. The fact it is legal in some states, but still is a problem federally is so asinine. We also have lots of regressive aka red states that look at it from the 1930s demonized status.

 

[ro4eva]

You are so right. Big pharma, big tobacco, and big alcohol have giant lobbying branches that have put this product down. The fact it is legal in some states, but still is a problem federally is so asinine. We also have lots of regressive aka red states that look at it from the 1930s demonized status.

With Oklahoma AFAIK being (among other things) the worst state to be busted in with 'Possession of Marijuana.'

 

[manboychef]

In Central florida they are slowly but surely making it a citable offense instead of a felony to possess under 20 grams of cannabis. This is an extremely small step in the right direction. There should be no fine associated considering we are 48th of 50 in wages which means most citizens cannot even take the 150 dollar or so hit that getting caught with a joint would cause.

We are also running into the problem of local governments wanting to let a small group of wealthy companies control the production and distribution. Why let this small group get wealthier at the expense of the people that actually need it?