I long ago got used to how young the police have become. To me, archbishops of Canterbury, High Court judges and Cabinet ministers look young too. It is an old joke, and a good one. As we grow older, we think the problem is not with us but with other people.

But in the case of QCs, I think, my recent discovery of their rather dismal quality is an objective fact, not a subjective consequence of my advancing age.

Please listen to this Spectator podcast in which I attempt to contest the views of a QC who believes in drug decriminalisation, while also claiming that we currently have “prohibition”.

The segment starts almost 12 minutes into the clip:

https://audioboom.com/posts/7249932-the-spectator-podcast-rise-of-the-brexit-party

Once upon a time, a Queen’s Counsel was something to be, and to hear and to see. They were hired, in their silk gowns and well-aged horsehair wigs, to give a Rolls-Royce smoothness to any prosecution or defence. They were witty. They were profoundly experienced. They knew their law or had the sense to look it up when they didn”t. They were dangerous in cross-examination.

But a few weeks ago I was publicly (and quite without personal provocation) attacked by a QC [Jessica Simor] who used the crudest abuse against me, suggesting that my opinions on the Jo Cox murder case betokened some sort of sympathy or excuse-making for the Nazi leadership. When I challenged her, she made no elegant defence, but swiftly hid behind the claim that I was in some way harassing her, as if a QC was in verbal danger from a mere columnist. This obviously was not a worthy opponent, so I let the matter be.

Then, this week, I was invited, by the Spectator magazine, to discuss drug legalization with another QC [Chris Daw], for a podcast. I accepted immediately. I am, I must admit, a little jaded by having had so many such discussions. My opponents, with very rare exceptions, are clueless regurgitators of propaganda talking points, who have not troubled to study my position and are astonished to find that a contrary view even exists, whereas I am wearily familiar with everything they say.

Foolishly, I thought when a QC was mentioned, that I would be encountering someone of sharp wit and carefully-assembled arguments. In the event, it was like an argument with a wiseacre in the pub. All it lacked was him jabbing his forefinger into my chest and saying at frequent intervals that “it stands to reason”.

He produced so many straw men (absurd caricatures of my position which enabled him to avoid addressing what I actually say) that the Spectator later had to hire peasants with pitchforks to remove all the resulting straw form the editor’s office. He changed the subject whenever he was in trouble, which was a lot, a particularly tedious style of debate. And while I may have been guilty of interrupting him a few times, I did give him a clear run for his opening statement (which he did not give to me) and he was virtually incapable of allowing me to finish a sentence.

By the way, in a brief preliminary skirmish on Twitter, several hours before our encounter, I had taken the trouble to send him links to my most concise statement of my position and also (since he had raised it) the details of my argument about the supposed condition of “addiction”. I, by contrast, had not had any advance sight of his Spectator article urging decriminalisation of drugs.

My opponent asked for figures which I did not have on the smuggling of tobacco and the illicit alcohol problem into this country, which he dismissed as minor. I had no figures because I have never before known anyone challenge the extent of this undoubted problem. Here is evidence recently submitted to the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-committees/home-affairs/Tobacco-written-evidence.pdf

The alert reader will notice that it says: “In 2010/11 650 million cigarettes were seized at the border.”

This seems to me to be a substantial quantity.

This HMRC document https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/510235/HMRC_Alcohol_Strategy.pdf likewise notes that: “the illicit alcohol market still costs the taxpayer approximately £1.2 billion a year. The criminality involved, including the use of the proceeds to fund other crimes, has a devastating effect on people and businesses across the UK”

It notes that 50 million litres of untaxed alcohol have been seized since 2010. Again, this hardly suggests that the matter is trivial.

In Colorado, where marijuana is legal, strengths of THC are not restricted. Here a CNBC report from March 2015 https://www.cnbc.com/2015/03/23/colorado-marijuana-study-finds-legal-weed-contains-potent-thc-levels.html states that “Colorado marijuana is nearly twice as potent as illegal pot of past decades, and some modern cannabis packs triple the punch of vintage ganja, lab tests reveal for the first time.

“In old-school dope, levels of THC – the psychoactive chemical that makes people high – were typically well below 10 percent. But in Colorado’s legal bud, the average THC level is 18.7 percent, and some retail pot contains 30 percent THC or more, according to research released Monday.”

There is a simple reason why. Any such restriction would simply lead to more business for the continuing illegal, untaxed market. See this CBC report https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/colorado-marijuana-black-market-1.4647198 which states that black market production of marijuana has boomed in Colorado since legalisation.

My opponent (at about 28 minutes into the discussion) also appears to think that either that the illegality of drugs began in 1971 with the Misuse of Drugs Act, or alternatively that the Victorian era ended in 1971. This did come close to reducing me to silence, but not the silence of admiration. Shall I say only that neither of these beliefs is correct?

This Wikipedia entry provides a reasonably accurate history of UK legislation concerning drugs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_the_United_Kingdom

It is genuinely astonishing to find such ignorance at such a level in the professions.

For complete article The Mail on Sunday (UK) blog, May 3, 2019.
URL: https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2019/05/-a-debate-with-a-qc-about-drug-legalisation-turns-out-to-be-more-like-an-argument-with-a-wiseacre-in.html

Cannabis factories open doors in villages as China looks to cash in on drug demand

Steven Lee Myers May 5, 2019

China has made your iPhone, your Nike shoes and, chances are, the lights on your Christmas tree. Now, it wants to grow your cannabis.

Two of China’s 34 regions are quietly leading a boom in cultivating cannabis to produce cannabidiol, or CBD, the non-intoxicating compound that has become a consumer health and beauty craze in the United States and beyond.

They are doing so even though cannabidiol has not been authorised for consumption in China, a country with some of the strictest drug-enforcement policies in the world.

“It has huge potential,” said Tan Xin, the chairman of Hanma Investment Group, which in 2017 became the first company to receive permission to extract cannabidiol in southern China. The chemical is marketed abroad — in oils, sprays and balms as treatment for insomnia, acne and even diseases like diabetes and multiple sclerosis. (The science, so far, is not conclusive.)

The movement to legalise the mind-altering kind of cannabis has virtually no chance of emerging in China. But the easing of the plant’s stigma in North America has generated global demand for medicinal products — especially for cannabidiol — that companies in China are rushing to fill.

Tian Wei, the director of Hempsoul, a factory at Shanchong, in the Yunnan Province of China. Photo: The New York Times

Hanma’s subsidiary at Shanchong, a village in a remote valley west of Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province, cultivates more than 1600 acres of hemp, the variety of cannabis that is also used in rope, paper and fabrics. From the crop, it extracts cannabidiol in oil and crystal form at a gleaming factory it opened two years ago, in a restricted zone next to a weapons manufacturer.

“It is very good for people’s health,” said Tian Wei, general manager of the subsidiary, Hempsoul, during an interview at the factory, which was punctuated by test gunfire from the manufacturer next door.

“China may have become aware of this aspect a little bit late, but there will definitely be opportunities in the future,” Tian said.

China has, in fact, cultivated cannabis for thousands of years — for textiles, for hemp seeds and oil and even, according to some, for traditional medicine.

The Divine Farmer’s Classic of Materia Medica, a text from the first or second century, attributed curative powers to cannabis, its seeds and its leaves for a variety of ailments.

“Prolonged consumption frees the spirit light and lightens the body,” it said, according to a translation cited in an article in the journal Frontiers in Pharmacology.

The People’s Republic of China, after its founding in 1949, took a hard line on illegal drugs, and cultivating and using marijuana are strictly forbidden to this day, with traffickers facing the death penalty in extreme cases.

After signing the United Nations Convention on Psychotropic Substances in 1985, China went even further. It banned all cultivation of hemp — which had long been grown in Yunnan, a mountainous province that borders Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam and is among China’s poorest.

Farmers produced hemp to make rope and textiles and China had banned it even though it has only trace amounts of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the mind-altering compound found in marijuana.

At a news conference in Beijing last month, Liu Yuejin, deputy director of the National Narcotics Control Commission, said the momentum toward legalisation in other countries meant Chinese authorities would “more strictly strengthen the supervision of industrial cannabis”.

The Hempsoul factory has dozens of closed-circuit cameras that stream videos directly to the provincial public security bureau.

China relented on industrial hemp only in 2010, allowing Yunnan to resume production. Hemp then was used principally for textiles, including the uniforms of the People’s Liberation Army, but soon the products expanded.

The growing industry has brought much-needed investment to Yunnan. The mild, spring-like climate is exemplary for growing cannabis, and a farmer can earn the equivalent of $300 an acre for it, more than for flax or rapeseed, Tian of Hempsoul said.

Cbd-dominant cannabis is is manufactured into oils and sprays, and is legal as a health product in some countries. Photo: AAP

Hempsoul is one of four companies in Yunnan that have received licences to process hemp for cannabidiol, putting more than 36,000 acres under cultivation. Now others are joining the rush.

In February, the province granted a licence to three subsidiaries of Conba Group, a pharmaceutical company based in Zhejiang province. A company based in the city of Qingdao, Huaren Pharmaceutical, said recently it was applying for permission to grow hemp in greenhouses, which already line the landscape around Kunming.

Other regions have taken notice, too. In 2017, Heilongjiang, a province along China’s northeastern border with Russia, joined Yunnan in allowing cannabis cultivation. Jilin, the province next door, said this year that it would also move to do so. The flurry of announcements sent the companies’ stocks soaring on Chinese exchanges, prompting regulators to step in to restrict trading.

While the health benefits of cannabidiol remain uncertain, the US Food and Drug Administration last year approved the first use of it as a drug to treat two rare and severe forms of epilepsy. Other potential uses are being studied.

China permits the sale of hemp seeds and hemp oil and the use of CBD in cosmetics, but it has not yet approved cannabidiol for use in food and medicines. So, for now, the bulk of Hempsoul’s product — roughly two tons a year — is bound for markets overseas. Tian said he believed it was only a matter of time before China approved the compound for ingestion.

For complete story https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/world/2019/05/05/cannabis-marijuana-china/?utm_source=Adestra&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Morning%20News%20-%2020190506

Rep. Marty Moylan, NAACP and Smart Approaches to Marijuana-Illinois Share Opposition to New Marijuana Bill

(Chicago, IL) – With under a month left to go in the 2019 legislative session, Governor J.B. Pritzker and lawmakers have released a more than 500-page bill that would commercialize and legalize marijuana in Illinois. Rep. Marty Moylan, D-Des Plaines, and key members of the Smart Approaches to Marijuana-Illinois (SAM-IL) coalition including the NAACP and health care professionals gathered in Chicago today to share their serious concerns and opposition to this bill.

\”With just weeks left in the session, we are now seeing a massive bill that will have far-reaching and devastating consequences for our citizens, our communities and our state,\” said Rep. Moylan. \”From increased drugged driving to impacts on our youth, marijuana has brought numerous, negative consequences to other states, and we don\’t want that in Illinois too. Lawmakers should take a step back and look at the real impact this legislation will have on our state, and oppose this bill.\”

Rep. Moylan is also the sponsor of a bipartisan House Resolution urging lawmakers to slow down on their push for legal marijuana. It has 60 co-sponsors.

\”Community leaders, health care professionals, law enforcement, legislators, faith leaders and concerned citizens are all coming together and opposing marijuana legalization,\” said Omari Prince, State Director of SAM-IL. \”This is not a done deal, and we will continue to work tirelessly to oppose this bill because once we say \’yes\’ to welcoming Big Marijuana into our state, it will be incredibly hard to go back and undo the damage.\”

\”The legalization of marijuana does not impact the African-American community in a positive way,\” said Abu Edwards, Director of State Affairs for SAM Action. \”This is not the hope that we want for our communities. Legalization of marijuana sends one message and one message only to our kids: that it is okay for them to use drugs.\”

To view the press conference, please click here.

BREAKING: First Release of Data from Canadian Legalization Shows Significant Increase in Youth and Overall Use

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – May 3, 2019

Also finds concerning trends in marijuana-impaired driving and workplace use

(Alexandria, VA) – A new Canadian federal study released yesterday found a 27% increase in marijuana use among people aged 15 to 24 over the last year. Additionally, approximately 646,000 Canadians have reported trying marijuana for the first time in the last three months, an amount almost double the 327,000 that admitted to trying the drug for the same time period last year.

\”Last year, Canada flouted international treaties and allowed a predatory, addiction-for-profit industry to entrench itself nationwide – and now we are beginning to see the results,\” said Dr. Kevin Sabet, founder and president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana and a former senior drug policy advisor to President Obama. \”It is stunning what has happened in such a short period of time: A doubling of first-time use of today\’s highly potent and addictive marijuana and a rise in use among young people. This is incredibly concerning for the implications it has on mental health.\”

The data, drawn from the newly released National Cannabis Survey, highlighted other concerning takeaways relating to marijuana use and driving:

• 15% of marijuana users got behind the wheel of a car within two hours of using the drug.
• Daily users were more than twice as likely to believe that it was safe for them to operate a vehicle within three hours of ingesting the drug.
• 20% of Canadians who reported driving under the influence of marijuana admitted to also consuming alcohol at the same time.
• About 13%, or half a million, Canadian workers who are active marijuana users admitted to using the drug either prior to or during work.

\”The initial results are in for Canada and what we see is increased use, more dangerous roads, and more unsafe workplaces,\” continued Dr. Sabet. \”This report comes on the heels of another study finding that the black market in Canada is absolutely thriving, with over 79% of marijuana sales in the last quarter of 2018 occurring outside the legal market. Lawmakers in the United States should take a close look at this data – which mirrors data in \”legal\” states – and ask if they want to see similar results for our country.\”

IMMEDIATE RELEASE May 4, 2019

CONTACT: Luke Niforatos [email protected]303-335-7584

Colorado Legislature Passes Bill Exempting Pot Industry from Clean Indoor Air Act

Bill would allow marijuana smoking in hotels a

nd restaurants

(Denver, CO) – Yesterday, the Colorado legislature sent a bill to Governor Jared Polis\’ desk that would allow the pot industry to set up social consumption sites in hotels, restaurants and other indoor areas. These sites would be exempt from the Clean Indoor Air Act. Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM) Senior Policy Advisor and Marijuana Accountability Coalition (MAC) spokesperson Luke Niforatos released the following statement:

\”Exempting the pot industry and smoking marijuana from the Clean Indoor Air Act would effectively take the state of Colorado back to the early 1900s. Didn\’t we all learn how bad it was to have smoking in airplanes, restaurants, and buses? Governor Jared Polis should consider the terrible lessons we learned from Big Tobacco and its widespread public health carnage and veto this unconscionable bill. Second hand marijuana smoke and second hand tobacco smoke both bring similar health harms, as the American Lung Association tells us.\”

About MAC: The Marijuana Accountability Coalition (MAC) is a coalition made up of individuals and organizations united for one common purpose: to fearlessly investigate, expose, challenge, and hold the marijuana industry accountable. If you care about the future of Colorado and holding Big Tobacco 2.0 (The Marijuana Industry) accountable, please join us.

About SAM: Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM) is a nonpartisan, non-profit alliance of physicians, policy makers, prevention workers, treatment and recovery professionals, scientists, and other concerned citizens opposed to marijuana legalization who want health and scientific evidence to guide marijuana policies. SAM has affiliates in more than 30 states.

www.MarijuanaAccountability.co

www.learnaboutsam.org

There\’s nothing funny about today\’s highly potent marijuana. It killed my son.

Sally Schindel, Opinion contributor  April 28, 2019

Modern medical marijuana is much more potent than your father\’s pot brownies of the 1970s, and that potency is taking a toll on mental health.

As attorneys argued over a section of an Arizona law that differentiates between marijuana and cannabis, the state’s Supreme Court justices joked about baking pot brownies in their kitchens.

They clearly do not understand how the marijuana industry has irresponsibly manipulated pot into dangerously high levels of potency.

My son could explain it to them. Or he could if he were still with us.

“I want to die,” he wrote before hanging himself at the age of 31. “My soul is already dead. Marijuana killed my soul + ruined my brain.”

Andy wanted to quit. He couldn\’t

Andy had been the class clown. He made parties come alive. He helped friends through tough times and served with the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division in Iraq.

Then he became addicted to pot, using a medical marijuana card that enabled him to buy enough pot for up to 10 joints a day. That would keep anyone baked all day. He was hospitalized in five mental health hospitals and did two stints of court-ordered mental health treatment.

He told me that to live, he needed to quit marijuana. He just couldn’t do it.

The marijuana industry doesn’t like to acknowledge people like my son, dismissing his case as an aberration. But he is not alone, and new research shows the toll marijuana takes.

A new study shows he\’s not alone

The peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet last month published a major study that found people who use high-potency marijuana daily are five times more likely to develop psychosis than those who never partake. The researchers compared data for more than 2,100 people in multiple countries.

Read more commentary:

Marijuana needs warning labels like tobacco for associated mental, physical health risks

Mental illness in the family raises marijuana risks. Parents, please talk to your teens.

Cannabis industry shouldn\’t expand until we fix marijuana\’s racial inequities, injustices

Today’s marijuana has as much similarity to the pot brownies of the 1970s as a smartphone does to a Texas Instruments calculator. Today’s marijuana is incredibly potent, powerful enough to destroy lives.

….It’s not something to laugh about.

Sally Schindel lives in Prescott. She is co-founder of MomsStrong.org and a member of the Marijuana Victims Alliance. This column originally appeared in The Arizona Republic.

For complete story go to https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/04/28/medical-marijuana-arizona-supreme-court-thc-potency-column/3587406002/

Cannabis health warning messages

Canadian Government 2019

REFLECTIONS ON LOSING MY BROTHER TO MARIJUANA SUICIDE

May 2019

By BC, University of Texas If you told me five years ago that my brother would end his life in such a degrading state following marijuana-induced psychosis, I would have called you crazy. Unfortunately, I have lived with this reality every day for the past 5 months.

I am a business and pre-medical student at The University of Texas in Austin.  David was my little brother, my confidant, and my workout partner. I always thought David would become an architect; he was exceptionally gifted at math and art. His life spiraled down a dark path when he started smoking weed and, on December 5^th, 2018, at the age of nineteen, he became the first member of my immediate family to die. He shot himself in the head while in the restroom; he did not leave a note or give any warning.  It happened four days after he left the hospital and started smoking weed, again.

Last summer, I studied for my medical school admissions exam and took a psychology class. Consequently, I learned a great deal about neurotransmitters and how they are modulated by drugs, which David and I discussed frequently. He told me that he wanted to find happiness outside of drugs, but could not imagine how. He told me that he felt incapable of giving up the high. He told me that the relapse was too hard. He told me his brain was different— since using drugs, he felt utterly low and despondent when he was sober. Ultimately, this helplessness prompted him to end his life altogether.

A whole family suffers, too

Weed not only ruined David’s life; my entire family is suffering. I cannot convey how difficult it is to see my parents’ sleep-deprived faces and increasingly frail frames. I cannot express how heartbroken I feel for my two 17-year-old brothers, who whole-heartedly looked up to their older brother. My 23-year-old sister struggles financially as she has taken off work for depression-related fatigue. Each member of my family is experiencing trauma similar to my own.

Now, when I sit in class, I constantly fight images of David’s brain exploding. I dread falling asleep each and every night because of the graphic, horrifying nightmares. It has been almost five months since David died, but the visions continue to haunt me. I wish I could say that my experience is unique; I wish I could say thousands of others have not experienced similar trauma. Unfortunately, marijuana-related suicides are on the rise.

I spent my spring break in California, where marijuana is already legal. I saw and smelled it everywhere. My friend took me to a Sacramento Kings game, and the entire row sitting behind us looked stoned and reeked of weed while a six- or seven-year old boy sat in front of us. Throughout the entire game, I could not stop thinking about what open marijuana consumption might do to the child and all of the children placed in harm’s way.

For complete story, go  This IS Reefer Madness!