INCB Calls for More of the Same on Global Drug Policy -- Critics Call for No More INC

Edit: And, yes, seriously--who the fuck goes to the emergency room as a result of weed? The only reason I could ever see needing to go to the ER for a weed related issue would be if I got hit in the head by a cannabis plant someone dropped out of a plane.
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hahaha so true
 
Riemann Zeta said:
And, yes, seriously--who the fuck goes to the emergency room as a result of weed? The only reason I could ever see needing to go to the ER for a weed related issue would be if I got hit in the head by a cannabis plant someone dropped out of a plane.
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highschool pussies that dont know jack about the idea of 'dosage'. ie, baking brownies.
 
I can't fucking stand reading shit like this. 'Marijuana potency has increased over the years.' Has its use gone down? Will it ever go down, or be wiped from our society? No.

If even stricter laws are enforced, then logically even MORE potent weed will be on the streets which is WORSE for you. :\
 
infectedmushroom said:
If even stricter laws are enforced, then logically even MORE potent weed will be on the streets which is WORSE for you. :\
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I disagree,

MORE potent weed IS better for you.

Cannabinoids have been linked to shrinking tumors for over 30 years.

http://www.mapinc.org/newscc/v01/n572/a11.html

US: Pot Shrinks Tumors; Government Knew In '74
by Raymond Cushing, (29 Mar 2001)

San Antonio Current United States
( Wednesday, March 28, The United States Supreme Court rules on whether marijuana use for medicinal purposes can be a valid defense on charges of marijuana possession. The following article was listed as one of the top 25 censored stories of the year 2000. We reprint it here and pose the question, why would the government want to keep us from knowing this? )

The term medical marijuana took on dramatic new meaning in February 2000, when researchers in Madrid announced they had destroyed incurable brain tumors in rats by injecting them with THC, the active ingredient in cannabis.

The Madrid study marks only the second time that THC has been administered to tumor-bearing animals. In 1974, researchers at the Medical College of Virginia, who had been funded by the National Institutes of Health to find evidence that marijuana damages the immune system, found instead that THC slowed the growth of three kinds of cancer in mice -- lung and breast cancer, and a virus-induced leukemia.

The DEA quickly shut down the Virginia study and all further cannabis/tumor research, according to Jack Herer, who reports on the events in his book, The Emperor Wears No Clothes. In 1976, President Gerald Ford put an end to all public cannabis research and granted exclusive research rights to major pharmaceutical companies, who set out -- unsuccessfully -- to develop synthetic forms of THC that would deliver all the medical benefits without the "high."

The Madrid researchers reported in the March issue of Nature Medicine that they injected the brains of 45 rats with cancer cells, producing tumors whose presence they confirmed through magnetic resonance imaging ( MRI ). On the 12th day they injected 15 of the rats with THC and 15 with Win-55,212-2, a synthetic compound similar to THC. "All the rats left untreated uniformly died 12-18 days after glioma ( brain cancer ) cell inoculation ... Cannabinoid ( THC )-treated rats survived significantly longer than control rats. THC administration was ineffective in three rats, which died by days 16-18. Nine of the THC-treated rats surpassed the time of death of untreated rats, and survived up to 19-35 days. Moreover, the tumor was completely eradicated in three of the treated rats." The rats treated with Win-55,212-2 showed similar results.

The Spanish researchers, led by Dr. Manuel Guzman of Complutense University, also irrigated healthy rats' brains with large doses of THC for seven days, to test for harmful biochemical or neurological effects. They found none.

"Careful MRI analysis of all those tumor-free rats showed no sign of damage related to necrosis, edema, infection or trauma ... We also examined other potential side effects of cannabinoid administration. In both tumor-free and tumor-bearing rats, cannabinoid administration induced no substantial change in behavioral parameters such as motor coordination or physical activity. Food and water intake, as well as body weight gain, were unaffected during and after cannabinoid delivery. Likewise, the general hematological profiles of cannabinoid-treated rats were normal. Thus, neither biochemical parameters nor markers of tissue damage changed substantially during the seven-day delivery period or for at least two months after cannabinoid treatment ended."

Guzman's investigation is the only time since the 1974 Virginia study that THC has been administered to live, tumor-bearing animals. ( The Spanish researchers cite a 1998 study in which cannabinoids inhibited breast cancer cell proliferation, but that was a "petri dish" experiment that didn't involve live subjects. )

In an e-mail interview for this story, the Madrid researcher said he had heard of the Virginia study, but had never been able to locate literature on it. Hence, the Nature Medicine article characterizes the new study as the first on tumor-laden animals and doesn't cite the 1974 Virginia investigation.

"I am aware of the existence of that research. In fact I have attempted many times to obtain the journal article on the original investigation by these people, but it has proven impossible," Guzman said.

In 1983, the Reagan/Bush Administration tried to persuade American universities and researchers to destroy all 1966-76 cannabis research work, including compendiums in libraries, reports Jack Herer, who states, "We know that large amounts of information have since disappeared."

Guzman provided the title of the work -- "Antineoplastic activity of cannabinoids," an article in a 1975 Journal of the National Cancer Institute -- and this writer obtained a copy at the University of California medical school library in Davis and faxed it to Madrid.

The summary of the Virginia study begins, "Lewis lung adenocarcinoma growth was retarded by the oral administration of tetrahydrocannabinol ( THC ) and cannabinol ( CBN )" -- two types of cannabinoids, a family of active components in marijuana. "Mice treated for 20 consecutive days with THC and CBN had reduced primary tumor size."

The 1975 journal article doesn't mention breast cancer tumors, which are featured in the only newspaper story ever to appear about the 1974 study -- in the "Local" section of The Washington Post on Aug. 18, 1974. Under the headline, "Cancer Curb Is Studied," it read in part:

"The active chemical agent in marijuana curbs the growth of three kinds of cancer in mice and may also suppress the immunity reaction that causes rejection of organ transplants, a Medical College of Virginia team has discovered." The researchers "found that THC slowed the growth of lung cancers, breast cancers, and a virus-induced leukemia in laboratory mice, and prolonged their lives by as much as 36 percent."

Guzman, writing from Madrid, was eloquent in his response after this writer faxed him the clipping from The Washington Post of a quarter century ago. In translation, he wrote:

"It is extremely interesting to me, the hope that the project seemed to awaken at that moment, and the sad evolution of events during the years following the discovery, until now we once again draw back the veil, over the anti-tumoral power of THC, 25 years later. Unfortunately, the world bumps along between such moments of hope and long periods of intellectual castration."

News coverage of the Madrid discovery has been virtually nonexistent in this country. The news broke quietly on Feb. 29, 2000 with a story that ran once on the UPI wire about the Nature Medicine article. This writer stumbled on it through a link that appeared briefly on the Drudge Report Web page. The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times all ignored the story, even though its newsworthiness is indisputable: a benign substance occurring in nature destroys deadly brain tumors.
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This does reek of an outdated and conservative-based ideology. More and more, recently, I have begun to empathize with the aims or drug prohibition though. To be clear, I don't support it outright or think that its effective in any significant or beneficial way, but I don't think the intentions of drug prohibition, and the agencies that enforce the associated policies, are necessarily malicious. In spite of their intentions however, their actions are misguided and the consequences of the policies in place to day are nothing short of tragic.

As drug users, we are mostly biased when it comes to these issues. Naturally we are opposed to these policies. I don't believe that the demograhpic of drug users who're involved in internet forums anywhere near matches the demographic of the drug using population as a whole, and we may be prone to consider that most drug users or more or less like ourselves: well-informed about drugs, relatively responsible, etc. The fact is, there are a lot more irresponsible and uninformed drug users than there are people like us, and personally I don't think many of the people who do use drugs are either smart enough or responsible enough to do so. To that extent, I do support drug prohibition. The ideals behind personal freedom, and the right to use are bodies and property as we see fit without outside interference are great, if largely unpractical. Just as some people are unfit to fly commercial jets, some people are likewise unfit to use drugs. They cannot do so responsibly or in any sort of moderation. It is beyond doubt that some of these people resort to crime (beyond breaking drug laws) that is somehow associated with their own drug use. I think that drug prohibition by and large is targeted towards these people; the idiots who ruin it for the rest of us.
 
^they aren't idiots, they are victims of drug prohibition itself. that's one of the infinite reasons prohibition is so tragic

you don't have to be smart to use drugs without dying. most drugs are far less harmful, in nearly all respects, than alcohol, on any scale whether biological, psychological, sociological, economical, and to get more specific, academic, relationship, job performance, spread of disease. and nearly all of us have been exposed to alcohol. the rate of addiction for heroin: less than 10 percent; iirc, alcohol was between 30-50%
 
INCB Calls for More of the Same on Global Drug Policy
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Because it's been so successful in the past?


As for the 'gateway drug' theory, the gateway drug for others is generally seen to be a drug that sensitizes a user to dopamine, such that drug use results in a reward that re-enforces drug seeking behaviour. Now the best drug to do that with, that is widely used is nicotine, not cannabis, but that would mean giving tobacco growers and tobacco firms loads of shit so it's easier to blame cannabis for convenient political reasons (the fact that a lot of people smoke mixtures of tobacco & cannabis seems another important fact that has escaped them)

As someone has already pointed out though, cannabis A&E/ER admissions aren't just the ones with tortuous links; there are some admissions due to people experiencing panic attacks and thinking that they are going to die (very characteristic diagnostic symptom of a severe panic attack). This is usually because of ignorance about possible effects of the drug, but the fuckwits behind this report want to target harm reduction which intends to inform people about such things


It was also critical of opiate maintenance therapy and harm reduction programs. Heroin maintenance programs violate the UN conventions, while some harm reduction practices facilitate drug use, the INCB charges.
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And there we have the final conclusive evidence that these people have their heads so far up their arses that they're in danger of turning inside out. Only a total shit for brains would want opiate maintainance & harm reduction programs abolished. They're not a bit interested in improving the lives of citizens of member countries because as well as the disruption of the lives ofpeople with opiate dependancies who have managed to live a useful productive life through maintainance, the crime rate would go through the roof due to the increase of incidents like burglary as the people thrown off the courses have to find money for illicit heroin to fund their problem. Doing that to people with a medical problem (which it's generally agreed drug dependancy is) is the antithesis of what the UN is supposed to be there for.


Makes you wonder how such callous, stupid people ever manage to get into such influential positions...
 
Cambodia is my favourite nation for a variety of reasons, but most of all for its live and let live policy where cash is king and one can basically do anything for a fair price.

First Drug Tourism caused the UN (INCB) to lean on the country to take morphine out of OTC status, and they comlied of course ofr the funds.

Then in 1/2009 the UN leaned again and told them they want their entire OTC system revamped. This month they will try to pass the legislation and so another era ends of course. they have revamped sentencing as well, and are doing so again so that they now will give Life Without Parole for 80 grammes and up, whereas before it was a mere 12 years which for foreigners even without deep pockets meant 18 months more or less.

The UN is the Anti-Christ.
 
I have been out of the country for over 3 years now, but heard somewhere that in at least 4 other european countries that drugs had been dicriminalised. Such as in Spain and Portugal, weed is practically legal, but also class A hard drugs such as heroin and crack are not treated as arrestable offences, well , possession that is. More like if you are found using you are simply directed to the nearest drug clinic. Is this true? And to what other countries is it applicable? What exactly are the details or where can I find more information on this subject?
 
as the original poster I think implied, the real power of the UN lies in its image as a world government and its ability to determine global policy by this influence and the hugely unsubtle hint of money. it doesn't take a military to make war.

as for the prohibition argument, firstly I think its a matter of personal freedom. Secondly, I love drugs in general and I want options with good information.

Truthfully though, its all about social learning. The more open and accepted it is, the more we are able to effectively use (or eventually reduce use of some) drugs.
 
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