A US-sponsored anti-narcotics campaign in Colombia has been dealt a serious blow after a judge ruled to suspend the aerial spraying of drug crops because of health and environmental concerns. The crops are being sprayed with a glyphosate herbicide. However, Colombia's Judge Gilberto Reyes has ruled that until more safety data on the weed killer is produced all aerial spraying must stop. According to Greenpeace, there are three forms of glyphosate used as herbicides: glyphosate-isopropylammonium and glyphosate-sesquiodium, both patented by US agricultural products giant Monsanto, and glyphosate-trimesium, which is owned by Zeneca. [continues 146 words]
Sir: You report, The British Medical Association said it was disappointed that the Lords had not made the distinction between cannabinoids, the active ingredient in cannabis, and the crude form of the drug which contains a number of toxins. Your article is saturated with hidden convictions of questionable validity. And the BMA does no better! Calling high-grade, medically-effective cannabis "crude" may be the lingo of the pharmaceutical paradigm, but thankfully the drugs industry hasn't yet taken over the farms whereupon they will be informing us of the risks in eating "crude" wheat when perfectly safe synthesized nutrients are available which have been double-blinded on entire civilizations (only [pound sterling] 99.50 a bushel). [continues 154 words]
published in each issue; Peter's letter won the prize. RE: Lords Back Cannabis For Pain Relief, Mon, 7 Dec 1998 Sir: You report, The British Medical Association said it was disappointed that the Lords had not made the distinction between cannabinoids, the active ingredient in cannabis, and the crude form of the drug which contains a number of toxins. Your article is saturated with hidden convictions of questionable validity. And the BMA does no better! Calling high-grade, medically-effective cannabis "crude" may be the lingo of the pharmaceutical paradigm, but thankfully the drugs industry hasn't yet taken over the farms whereupon they will be informing us of the risks in eating "crude" wheat when perfectly safe synthesized nutrients are available which have been double-blinded on entire civilizations (only =A399.50 a bushel). [continues 153 words]
Medicinal use of cannabis has come a step closer in the UK. A report by the science and technology select committee of the House of Lords has called for doctors to be legally allowed to prescribe the drug for multiple sclerosis and chronic pain. Committee chairman Lord Perry of Walton said the Lords had made the decision 'primarily for compassionate reasons' despite accepting that there was a lack of rigorous scientific evidence that cannabis relieves pain. While hundreds of patients in the UK smoke cannabis illegally for its therapeutic benefits, clinical trials will not determine the efficacy of the drug for at least another five years, the 53-page report concluded. 'We consider it unjustifiable and inhumane to make them wait quite so long before they can get supplies legally,' said Perry, a former pharmacology professor. [continues 248 words]
One of the many badges popular in the late 1960s reproduced a well-known motto of E I DuPont: 'Better things for better living through chemistry'. Although the actual chemicals the hippies referred to were quite different from those intended by the old industrialist, their basic philosophy was the same. All human problems, whether material or internal, could be solved by the appliance of science. Mind-altering, or psychoactive, drugs are many and varied in both effect and social standing. But whether legal and freely available, legal but at least nominally controlled by prescription, or damned as having little or no medicinal use and subject to tight legal control, they are generally used for the same fundamental purpose - to provide a quick-fix solution to problems physical, spiritual or emotional. In a technological society, what is there to object to in that? [continues 891 words]
