Cannabis.





I think a lot of the things being said now stem from the plain fact that the Government at present have abjectly given in to something endemic they feel that they can not fight. So they seek to liberalize and soften the impact, to talk down the effects, and to move the goalposts as they do with anything that is a little too difficult altogether to deal with in a proper manner. Sweep it under the carpet and relabel it as something else.

I speak from having taken cannabis in the seventies, hippy era of peace not war, love to all men, much of whose language and terms are now coming back into trendy and cool use. But there are fundamental differences between then and now, which young people should be made aware of.

Then cannabis was in the form of a leaf, this naturally occurring plant. Now it is synthetic, as in most of the other areas of life where the natural has given way to the unnatural, to our eternal detriment. Coincidentally enough, it is now around forty times stronger, in addition to being chemical based.

The Governing people who seek to legalise and feel the danger is slight, are by and large ex users of a much lesser potency of a naturally occurring plant. They feel scant danger in occasional recreational use of a drug they feel did little to harm their own long term prospects. Or their obvious sanity.

That is based on the false assumption that people tend to start smoking it around university stage and peter out of its use in a few years, with no addictive element. Also that they tend, like we did, to only use it occasionally at times when we needed to calm down after some tough project, or relax at concert, again remembering that product then was one fortieth as potent and much more mellow than it is today.

That is being charitable and assuming they are not fully informed of the dangers. This also begs the question, if not then why not, and if so why run and hide.

This creates at least two anomalies. One is that our young people can point the finger at our generation and say, you are being hypocritical, when you took it yourselves. Secondly, we did not start at twelve to thirteen, and use it every day at forty times the strength. That weight of evidence about severe psychiatric damage is too heavily weighted to discount any more, plus although in itself said to be non addictive, the culture that has sprung up around it tends to keep people in a circle of self same users, and massively significant portion of our youth are taking it. So there is a great peer pressure to take something which the Government at present sends out signals saying, that it is not too bad using it, just keep it relatively discreet and we will leave you alone.

I fear that is storing up a time bomb of serious psychological problems, and perhaps the strengths and constitution of the substance should be taken into account more. Politicians surely hear the word cannabis and relate to their own youth, where if they did not take it they knew people who did and who, by and large, are still relatively sane. That is not consistent with what is in circulation today, nor indicative of the higher daily use of a drug that formerly was taken recreationally every week or month, every concert or so.

It also gives the police an almost impossible job, as there are no guidelines to follow, and also drug pushers can admit to cannabis but be carrying other more harmful drugs as well, with impunity. Surely if you are carrying more on you than enough for your personal use for at the most a weekend say, then you are per se dealer. Just set a level that is a definite level and above it is illegal. The experiment in the London boroughs has been truly and demonstrably disastrous, yet it is being cloned to the rest of Britain as if harmless to everyone like sweets.

Addendum December 2005, now allowing large amounts to be carried with impuity.


Perhaps if we actually addressed our inner cities and used the money earmarked for them, yet held back, some of our most deprived kids could go to places where they could enjoy themselves, perhaps with an emphasis on sport and exercise to help combat obesity, where it is easy to blame junk food and convenient to forget lack of basic exercise and plain lazy and slothful habits. But where in all conscience have kids got to go, when even relatively well off kids to what we used to be are reduced to straggling on street corners like beggars or tramps and invariably annoying and alienating passers by, creating a severe division and schism in society between the young and old much more substantive and divisive than the natural contempt of the vigour of youth for oldies like us. It is easy to criticise this behavior, and easy to sympathise with victims of it, but what are we doing to provide an alternative to this kind of behavior, a place to meet, go and learn, have fun, and compete against each other at sporting not warring level. I had little to my name as kid, I worked the markets and two paper rounds and anything I could think up to make a few bob, and we all played cricket or football till dark in the street, everybody, loads of us. Being not fat or a real nuisance, but we did not have the pernicious power of television advertising and brainwashing telling us what to do, or parents determined not to be as strict on them as how theirs were and creating this soft youth who are spoilt rotten where we had nowt. Somewhere in the middle is right, but it does not help the kids now cope with an ever more sophisticated world wide machinery of selling and media manipulation around them.

Money should be released to inner cities to build centres for youth to go, and proper well equipped centres run by local hard men, or respected local figures, even hardened criminals who at least see their future is in their kids getting out of the gutter and into the real world on their own two feet, who will ensure zero destruction levels of what is provided. Where their day is gone their local kids day is not, yet.
This should be expanded to rural areas and gradual education in exercise and diet should be introduced.

At present anything that is too difficult for this government becomes relabeled and ignored, what that is doing long term to our youth god alone knows.

To reiterate, cannabis is forty times stronger than it was and synthetic. It is abused from age twelve daily through to way past twenty. I would not take this if given it free, nor would any of my old friends and associates I canvassed on this subject. Also I might add, I ended up with my smoking addiction it took twenty four years to quit, and most kids smoke it here, so there again we have a vicious circle of addiction which surely does kill you, even if the current cannabis does not send you mad, or kill your will to work completely. It is an exponentially growing apathy drug in high strength with, for very many, serious psychological side effects, and for the government to pretty well give up on it is yet another abject failure in their long litany of failing the British public at large. One could understand this if their minds had been destroyed by this drug in its present form, but what they used, if they did, was a pale imitation of todays fare. Each to their own, but I would not take the present stuff, and we are forcing more and ever more to go through what passes for Universities, at the end of which not only do they have huge debts but a smoking, drinking and cannabis habit which needs money to feed it just when a lot of them are unable to find work. Is it any wonder there is so much theft. If we channeled the money we have to spend on clearing up the mess which is our society at present into free University education, which surely is the right of anyone, plus educational programmes backed up by free coach travel to all schools, ensuring safety and massively cutting congestion at the same time, then maybe we would not have these problems to deal with in the first place.

The Government has abdicated responsibility for what it should do for the country, it should reassess the obligation it has to every British citizen no matter what colour or creed, age or infirmity, and do what is right for all of us, instead of creating divisions of poor and rich, educated and non educated, treated and sick, fined in cars rather than protected in their own homes.

It should first and foremost completely streamline the rail and power infrastructure and get free school buses for all in place. We would not need to spend millions on roads, see them cracking up under the strain and wait hours in queues, and be uncompetitive abroad if we had a bloody train system that worked properly, and Government not in striking unions pockets. Then we could address our inner cities, schools, hospitals and roads with renewed vigour and the optimism that the money is actually there and not being flagrantly thrown down a black hole of red tape and incompetence.

Can you imagine what the Army would do with any one of these problems, on a professional basis. So if that is the case, why cant we manage to do the same in civil life, if not for apathy, greed, self important bureaucrats, and idiotic causes sponsored solely for their vote. This country needs a loyal government and Royal family with the country at heart, with a firm professional agenda on crucial issues and the strength to implement them now. We also need them to take our youth in hand and educate them away from the seditious claws of a greedy marketplace brainwashing them via television programming, that normal life is a series of arguments and divorces, that soap operas are true reflections of real life though they have to be super agitated every second for thirty minutes, and sensationalised beyond belief. We older people were not weaned on television from the cradle, most of our under twenty fives have been, and have been exposed to this trash for all of their life and given substandard education to counteract it, little wonder they are mostly all led by the nose.

Is virtually legalising cannabis in its present toxic chemical form going to help them think clearly and objectively, are they likely to go on to put right what is wrong in Britain later in their lives when getting out of bed each morning is achieved about one pm in a blurred confusion, and their brain is steadily being eaten away. We are failing our own youth by letting them just have their own way, and not standing up for what is right. Just because we had a harsh youth does not mean being soft helps anyone, life IS hard, and ignoring failings early on just stores up problems of a greater nature in the future.
If we do not deal with drugs and the failure to fund our inner cities and give people proper amenities and proper counseling then we are doomed to failure and violent backlashes,
virtually legalising by the back door one of the most unpredictable drugs affecting the brain is worrying to say the least, and not actually telling kids that the stuff is forty times stronger and chemical or pure dosage is remiss at least and criminal at worst.

They use some language we used, and chill out and are cool, even mobile phone adverts harp on the drug culture language to sell, a cool phone. What no one is telling them all is that we would not take once what they take every waking day, and I debate whether twelve or thirteen year olds are sufficiently aware to be allowed to partake of what can be deadly. You cant prescribe some brain altering drugs under eighteen years of age, that affect serotonin levels to induce anti depressant effects, yet you can stand by and watch kids of twelve smoke cannabis.

At the very least I have tried to tell this like I see all of it on these pages and in the thoughts column, as I feel that I am somewhat divorced from media control, and watch little of what passes for entertainment on our not dumbed down but crude and clumsy television fare, what could be the greatest educator in the world is used for distinctly dubious and subversive ends, to sell, and to brainwash where possible in the process. Cannabis use is not the most potent form of awareness therapy when faced with the television threat, and one wonders whether the present Government actually likes this state of affairs as it too governs via the media directly to the public thanks to the liar Blair, when not kow towing and fawning to Bush, and killing our troops in the process in someone elses war.

I rest my case, if you want to kill your own minds after all this information from a disinterested source who profits nothing in the telling and may even suffer abuse because of it, then now it is your
mind that you are destroying, and your life that you are shortening. Ive been an alcoholic, chain smoker and addicted to bloody painkillers. I have dealt with all three, kicking cannabis should be not quite as bad like any one of these, believe me, and you definitely do not want to go where I have been, ever. Instead of the group and gang culture, you have to realise that in the end it comes down to YOU. We are all totally alone, when all is said and done, stand up or fall on our own actions, and if you make three or four very close friends in life thats about it. So really it pays to think for yourself, and the earlier you start the better, its too easy now to get dragged into things you would not normally do when in a crowd, better by far to be an individual, preferably with a clear mind.

When stating this admit I was well educated by the state at seriously old Grammar school, and television was a tad less sophisticated to say the least, after all you do not spend one hundred thousand pounds odd on a twenty second advert that will NOT subvert peoples minds, do you. I can merely warn, and point out the pitfalls, it is up to you all to be strong, for all our futures.


Malcolm Pugh November 2003.


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