Hard News: UMR: Medpot and the public
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What a realistic policy needs to do is remove the criminal element from the equation. This is why the Netherlands’ policy on soft drugs has stumbled – Amsterdam’s coffee shops may be able to sell up to 5 grams of cannabis per person per day but it remains illegal to produce, possess, sell, import and export drugs.
In Colorado, where regulated growers supply cannabis, anecdotal evidence suggests the new approach is working well. The legalisation was touted as saving taxpayers as much as US$10 billion a year in law enforcement.
Developing a new, balanced, comprehensive drug policy will be a complex undertaking. We should not rush to make changes but instead take the time to ensure we get it right.
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The Herald's lead story today:
Pike River widow Anna Osborne is set to self-medicate with medicinal marijuana - even if the move turns her into a criminal.
Mrs Osborne, 50, lost her husband, Milton - the father of their two children - in the 2010 mining tragedy on the West Coast.
The explosion " which killed 29 miners and contractors " happened just a month after doctors told Mrs Osborne she was again battling Hodgkin's lymphoma. She had been first diagnosed with the blood cancer eight years earlier but overcame it with radiation therapy.
Now, more than 5 years after the tragedy that left her a widow, Mrs Osborne has revealed she has been fighting cancer the whole time since.
In an exclusive interview with the Weekend Herald, Mrs Osborne said she wanted an alternative to conventional painkillers that mask the side effects of her treatment.
She is set to self-medicate with cannabis oil and is prepared to be sent to jail for doing so.
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Phillips Matthews in Stuff on Peter Dunne as the quiet drug reform visionary.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Phillips Matthews in Stuff on Peter Dunne as the quiet drug reform visionary.
Interesting interview. Dunne does tend to avoid addressing his prohibitionist days, but there's no doubting his views have evolved considerably.
And, unlike nearly all other current MPs, he's prepared to talk about reform. The clowns who routinely abuse him on Twitter don't seem to get that.
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Pot is a herb. Like wine and cooking the base plant and then the processing needs to be studied in order to optimise a production of a variety of reliefs. It needs to be qualified by dose and frequency, it's arguable in its infancy as a human pain relief. Doses and plant, will keep Unis busy for decades very soon. A willy wonka study of dope. ..and the hemp side looks attractive from a commercial point of view too.
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BenWilson, in reply to
Since 58% of Wellingtonians support legal weed, can't we have it just for us, with some sort of pass system to stop people from other areas coming to buy it?
I'd go for that, even though it's unfair. Obviously, it would work like a trial.
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The high level of support amongst Labour and Green voters does rather suggest that it could be a sound thing to suggest as Labour policy. OK, they might not get the swing voter that's bitter on pot. But they might pick up the swing voter that likes it. Seriously, when 80% of your support wants something, what's the damned hold-up?
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Tom Johnson, in reply to
Of course it will eat into some else’s profits, so expect extreme lobbying. It needs to be sold on its medical benefits, social users , just another breed.
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BenWilson, in reply to
Well I'm willing to say that at the barest minimum it should be sold on its medical benefits. Believing in that people shouldn't be suffering excruciating pain in the presence of an extremely simple and cost effective pain relief method, doesn't require anywhere near so many leaps as believing in blanket legalization. Obviously I believe in blanket legalization, but I don't think pain relief should be piggy backed onto that debate, which has gone on an on and is just reaching opinion equity now.
I'd say the same goes to a lesser degree for remedies to the cold and flu, which have been adversely affected by the war on P, a war that is clearly being lost anyway. Why practically the entire population is denied an effective remedy just so that the remedy can't be used as a base ingredient for an illegal drug that has clearly not been slowed by this ban, is beyond me.
But medical pot doesn't need to piggy back onto that either. I think that one at least has the slight silver lining that the dumbarses that prohibit pseudoephedrine based cold medication have to suck on miserable colds themselves on a yearly basis. Maybe that will, in the long run, end that particular madness.
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Tom Johnson, in reply to
It’s a carbon thing, we are particularly good at studying this stuff. Hypothetically imagine taking a low dosage of a variant of a mild type from extensive crossbreeds of a plant to placate a moody irrational feeling. ,a headache or a cold that has decimated your pain barrier for civil intercourse
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Doses and plant, will keep Unis busy for decades very soon.
Hell yes. The two studies on 50-50 THC/CBD in treatment of glioma (a fast-growing, very hard to treat brain tumour) are just the tip.
Then there are the other cannabinols. And then the terpenes. It's a hell of a plant, it turns out.
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Sacha, in reply to
it's arguable in its infancy as a human pain relief.
not in other cultures - millenia of practice-based evidence.
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Tom Johnson, in reply to
It’s a medicine unstudied , blackmarket Pot is not easy for some. Of course alcohol is an upper drug with sometimes violent depressive comedowns. Drugs are primarily medicinal. something to get through the day. Coffee is cool. for some.
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