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Contamination - Grit weed and more

UKCIA has been warning about contaminated cannabis for over a year now. Back in December 2006 we were a alerted to the “Grit weed” problem - herbal cannabis containing microscopic glass beads. Things, it seems, have just taken a turn for the worse - much worse. The New England Journal of Medicine has reported that herbal cannabis in Europe has been found to be contaminated with lead shot which has produced casualties. Read more here

Government

UK drugs law descends even further into farce
with the government's rejection of the Ecstasy review. What future for the Misuse of Drugs Act. Do we even care?

The Government on drugs: alcohol Vs cannabis yet again. Draft Guidance on the Consumption of Alcohol by Children and Young People - if it's good advice for alcohol, why not for cannabis?

Cannabis reclassification - impact assessment.
The government has produced what must be the worst impact assessment ever produced in order to try to justify the move back to B. Even given the gloss, they accept it will harm race relations and divert funding from serious drug work, cost £50Million and much more.

Cannabis classification, a pointless issue that just isn’t going to go away. - Proffesor Nutt of the ACMD has never forgiven Gordon Brown for ignoring his advice to keep cannabis as a class C drug and he's been all over thenews today

The ACMD Cannabis Potency Study
Based on bad data this is a flawed study, but it's about the best we can expect under prohibition.

The UK Drug Policy Commission report “Tackling Drug Markets and Distribution Networks in the UK”
The latest official report into the total failure of prohibition, this one makes depressing reading for anyone who still thinks there is a future for the war on drugs

UKDPC report online here - PDF document

The case of Professor Nutt and the need for political lies - To paraphrase Douglas Adams of “The hitch hikers guide to the galaxy” fame: The skills needed to get elected mean that anyone who has the ability to do so is precisely the sort of person who should never be allowed to. That would seem to describe politicians only too well as recent events have demonstrated.

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The Home Secretary Alan Johnson sacked the head of the ACMD, the committee which advises the government on drug policy, Prof. David Nutt towards the end of 2009. Nothing like this has ever happened before and is likely to have serious implications for the development of UK drugs policy.

Newsblog comment on Prof Nutts sacking (Sunday November 1st)

An Audience with David Nutt - recording of the recent meeting at King College London - UKCIA mediasite

Evan Harris MP blog - critique of why the Home Secretary was wrong, it's devastating stuff.

The politics of arrogance, faith and denial. Did Home Secretary Alan Johnson realise the can of worms he was opening when he sacked Professor Nutt?

The interesting case of Professor Nutt - Famously sacked by an ex-postman for taking an evidence based approach to drugs and telling people about it, his family slandered by the Sun and who's developing a new wonder drug for people to have fun with.

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Prohibition - the When in a hole dig faster school of problem solving. How the prohibition of cannabis has changed over the years

The new Talking About Cannabis "Cannabis Helpline". Talking About Cannabis is a well known prohibition supporting site which is now about to open a "24/7 helpline"

Libdem MP Tom Brake The stated policy of the Libdems is to stop the prosecution of cannabis growers and ultimatly to leglaise cannabis. Strange then that Libbdem MP Tom Brake - MP for Carshalton in Surrey - tried to outlaw seeds with a 10 minute rule bill in Parliament. If you were thniknig of supporting the Libdems because of their drugs policy (which is by far the most intellegent of the main parties), maybe you need to think again - and tell them

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Early law reform arguments
Arguments for law reform from the late 1990's - the more things change, the more they remain the same

Past events: What you did
Smokey Bears picnics, Cannabis Carnivals

Coffee Shops
Well, it was a good try - The story of the British Coffeeshop campaign. This section has been moved from Activism.

A female flower showing crystals of THC on the leaves

Smoking? Back in 2002 the British Lung foundation (BLF) published a report called "A smoking gun" which made serious claims about the health risks of smoking cannabis. You can read our critique of that report here, as well as the original report. Later research has failed to support many of the more extreme claims made by the BLF, but unlike the enthusiasm shown for reporting the "Smoking Gun's" claims, the later research was all but ignored in the British media. However, UKCIA would welcome a factual information campaign about the possible dangers of using cannabis and we highlight some of the points made in the report in our "How to smoke cannabis" and "Risks" sections, especially the added risk posed by the use of tobacco. UKCIA doesn't claim that cannabis is harmless, but because of prohibition scare after scare claiming serious dangers have been made, most if not all of which have been shown to be false. It's been like shouting "wolf", many people simply don't believe government warnings anymore. Also because of prohibition safer ways of smoking, such as pipes or vapes are themselves dangerous things to have because of the risk of arrest. Their use is hardly encouraged in government "educational" material such as Talk to Frank.. UKCIA is running a campaign called Toke pure to encourage safer ways to use cannabis. Not only that but we point out that smoking isn't the only way to use cannabis - see our section "How to eat cannabis" - but again, prohibition makes this less appealing because of uncertain strengths and contaminated supplies.