More cannabis stuff from Gordon Brown on youtube last week. Gordon provides a question and answer service entitled “Ask the PM” – no doubt in a bid to counter his rival’s use of the new medium, to try to appear modern and to reach out to the young people out there.The question, which was really quite simple came from Bill Bennet
Hello, Bill Bennet from Taunton in Somerset here. I want to know why, if cannabis has been regraded from class C to Class B on account of it hurting people, why cigarettes and tobacco aren’t made an illegal drug because there’s lots of evidence and research that they have hurt harmed and killed people.
A fairly straight forward question about the legal status of tobacco you might think. Mr Brown replies
“Let me be clear that we are just classifying cannabis again to show very clearly, particularly to the young people who fall prey to people selling cannabis that is it an illegal and a harmful drug and it could lead to people taking more dangerous drugs as a result of taking cannabis. So we are absolutely determined to tell young people that cannabis is unacceptable, it is unlawful and it is harmful.”
We’ll come back to this later, but the question accepted cannabis was dangerous and asked as you’re doing this, why don’t you also prohibit tobacco?
Mr Brown goes on:
“We know that there are harmful effects of alcohol as well but the important thing here is we give people the best advice possible and that includes giving people advice on what its advisable to drink, giving people help if they get into difficulty, giving people support services for the family if there’s a difficulty that happens as a result of their – er alcohol being abused and I think you’ll find the services to help people who have fallen as a result of er of the impact of alcohol are getting better and that they’re able to give people better advice than ever before.”
So not only Mr Brown not answer a very simple question, he didn’t even get the right drug.
But ignoring the confusion over drugs, the difference in approach Brown supports between cannabis and alcohol is hard to understand, especially as alcohol is a very much more dangerous and destructive drug than cannabis in so many ways. That, incidentally before anyone complains, doesn’t imply cannabis is harmless. However, both are drugs and the approach to both couldn’t be more different.
Cannabis: Increasing the penalty against low level possession to make it clear cannabis is harmful. Also to protect young people from those who sell illegal drugs (how exactly isn’t explained) and because Mr Brown believes cannabis is a gateway drug which it isn’t. Oh and because it’s already illegal and “unacceptable” to Mr Brown, although clearly not everyone.
Alcohol: It’s important to give people advice on how to use it safely and to provide support services when people get into trouble through its use, including support for families torn apart by drinking.
It’s unlikely to happen but if UKCIA were to be asked for advice on PR by Mr Brown, it would be along the lines of do try to listen to and answer the question, learn the difference between booze and fags and try to develop policies which are consistent and logical. Until you can do these things, stay well away from youtube and – ideally – politics.
Gordon Brown manages to blink in excess of 60 times within the first 30 or so seconds of his video… isn’t that a sign of being nervous? I wonder what he could possibly have to feel nervous about.
Seriously though – who wrote his answer, and do the SERIOUSLY think it answers the question that was asked?
Lets hope there is a leadership challenge so we can get rid of him asap…
This is the right approach in my view; and we understand now that this “criminalisation v protection” of (at worst)equally harmful drugs approach ought fairly to be found to be a discrimination under the Human Rights Act and is representative of an abuse of power by the government and the advisory council given their duties as proscribed under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971.
After Bill Bennet’s question, ‘why cigarettes and tobacco aren’t made an illegal drug’, Mr. Brown repeated his determination to suppress cannabis and launched into a 75-word run-on sentence beginning ‘We know that there are harmful effects of alcohol as well but…’ mentioning “alcohol” three times but never once mentioning “cigarettes” or “tobacco”.
In making light of this (‘he didn’t even get the right drug’) UKCIA misses the point– ‘It’s the tobacco, stupid!’ or: the secret sacred cigarette. Mr. Brown has billions of reasons to avoid referring particularly to tobacco– the Poundage of cigarette tax revenues which the government are gratefully receiving courtesy of their sponsor Big Tobackgo. While the percentage may not be as huge as in Pakistan (10% of total govt. budget), you may consider H.M. government bought, and far more in the case of tobacco than in that of alcohol.
Tobacco industry hostility to cannabis rests on two main causes:
(b) Possibility that cannabis might replace tobacco among some smokers, and
(a) Far more important: that legalization of cannabis brings with it de facto legalization of vapourisers, e-cigarette with THC instead of nicotine in the cartridge, and the screened single-toke utensil with a 25-mg. serving-size replacing the profitable 700-mg. cigarette — with the fearsome result that tobacco smokers, imitating cannabis smokers, might switch from profitable hot-burning overdose to unprofitable safe rational equipment.
It is in order to keep this harm reduction equipment legally dangerous to possess and deny smokers the right to moderate instead of overdose smoking methods that Big Tobackgo’s political stooges, who just want the tax money with least possible trouble, persecute cannabis users.
(Big Pharma? It feeds off Big Tobackgo. Popularization of safer smoking methods would cause a sudden steep drop in cigarette-caused disease and a corresponding drop in profits from supplying drugs and medical services to treat such disease.)
it dosnt matter what the goverment changes the classification of cannabis to, the people know that they have the right to make up their own minds and wether it remains illeagle or not people who want to will carry on smoking it and nobody on earth can change that. GOD put all drugs on earth for a reason wether its for social or medical reasons or both its up to all human kind to decide for themselfs and not for others to decide for us. there are some things in life that cant be governed or policed
and it always should and will stay that way
THE PEOPLES WORD IS FINAL THANK GOD
PEACE TO ALL MAN/WOMANKIND