Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

Medical Cannabis Campaign

Freeborn | 08.12.2006 21:01 | Education | Health | Social Struggles | World

Medical Cannabis Campaign, street reaction. Positives and negatives.



Part Two of Medical Cannabis Campaign - Coffs Harbour.

On this day, we also put out a list, on the street, of the correlated factual ailments, proven to be helped by the Cannabis race. We also released the information on how Cannabis has been proven to stop strokes, to retard tumours, and…….how they are now using Cannabidiol (CBD) to negate ethanol-induced neuro toxicity, a worldwide highly destructive side effect/consequence of ethanol/ethyl alcohol/ethane hydroxide Class A drug abuse. (See Dr. Aidan Hampson’s study on a separate posting).

On the whole, people had positive reactions, and we only had two really negative bits of feedback. One from someone who didn’t have a clue what drugs actually could do and vehemently thought we were doing the wrong thing, but said she didn‘t have time to talk to us (just enough time to stop and discriminate), the other (an ex drug abuser, turned ‘preacher’) tried to excuse his own drug abuse, and the abuse of his friends, by saying that Cannabis is ‘an evil plant’ and it destroyed his life’. He went on to state that he and his mates got into it constantly and excessively every day of the week for three years, and that they (after 2 years) became addicts and that Cannabis was the problem. Hmmmm!

I turned around to him and stated, “So… what - you chose to abuse! What you’re telling me is that you didn’t show any respect for your drug of choice, didn’t bother getting any information or education about it. By the sound of things, you and your mates decided to abuse a drug, abuse each other, abuse your own bodies and abuse others around you, and then to try to unjustly excuse your abuse, you blame the race cannabis? This rhetoric is the same B.S. that they wielded in the 1900’s in their prohibition against the drug ethanol. Does that make the drug ethanol evil as well”. He said, ‘yes’, and he had given that up as well. Then he proudly confessed that he was a caffeine addict, and I simply told him, “Addiction itself isn’t a bad thing, it’s abuse of addictions that is the problem. If you wake up in the morning, mate, and you have to have a cup of coffee and every morning you have to have that same cup of coffee, then you are an addict. However, if you don’t stop with that one (or even two or three), and instead consume caffeine in so-called excess (abuse), then you allow yourself to become your drug’s bitch. When you are no longer in control of your drug, because you have let the abuse of your drug control you, then it is a problem, and not until. Buzzwords have nothing to do with abuse, they just make it easier to excuse”.

He didn’t like what I had to say, so he went off in a huff. I had explained to him at the beginning that this was a MEDICAL cannabis Campaign, but no matter what, you will always find some abuser trying to excuse their abuse by persecuting others for use and choice. Welcome to apartheid discrimination (social segregation of collective and individual coverings defined by differential and/or preferential treatment).

Now, it’s time (to coin Willie Nelson) to ‘accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative“. (The positive is: beneficial application and/or action = USE. The Negative is: perverted/destructive application and/or action = ABUSE).

We were there for two and half hours and, although quite a few people stopped to read the boards on their way past, or glanced at them as they passed by, only about 15 people actually stopped to talk. The funny thing was, a good ten of them, were older people suffering from different ailments, which included a bloke on a motorised ‘scooter’ for disabled people who was close to 80 years old. He had a neuro disorder and was trembling and had trouble with his speech pattern. He said that at the moment he was being prescribed Morphine and said it was ‘nasty stuff‘, and he wished that he could get some medical cannabis instead. In fact, he (and others) wanted to know if there was a place where they could get the Medical Cannabis? They were quite disappointed and annoyed with our Government when we told them that, thanks to drug apartheid policy, it’s basically, “Bad luck, mate. Try something else”.

The ‘Others’ included people with seizure disorders, people with arthritis, people with chronic back pain and a woman whose son had been in hospital with a brain tumour and who had to be on constant morphine for quite a while. He hated the stuff, (made him into a ’zombie’ with other nasty side effects because of the amount he had to take to give him relief), his mother AND doctor hated the stuff, and the Doctor said to the mother that he wished it was allowed for Cannabis to be used instead. Funny, isn’t it? This same problem showed up in the American Civil War and again, in Vietnam when the doctors (thanks to the Narcotics Act) switched from Cannabis analgesia to morphine analgesia, creating what we now know as….Soldier’s Disease, or abuse of morphine addiction.

Morphine’s toxicity death ratio is 1:40 whereas Cannabis’s toxicity death ratio is 1:40,000. And if people don’t agree with giving a 1:40,000 toxicity ratio drug to someone, Australia’s so-called ‘all good’ drug’s toxicity ratio is from 1:4 to 1:20 depending on body mass and metabolic rate.
(Ratio is from single drug dose to death dose).


Other people smiled as they walked past, some looked shocked and bemused, many said, “About time” and many gave the thumbs up sign. There were even people in cars passing along the street with people yelling out the windows in support. Two police cars passed by….no response - including not even bothering to come and ask what we were doing, even though the police looked our way and must have known we were campaigning for the Cannabis Race. They could see the pictures, just like everyone else. We chose the two opposites in the Cannabis race to demonstrate. One was Hawaiian Sativa and the other was Shiva Skunk (Indica/Kush). Both have distinctly different medical functions, which is why education and information is so important when using Cannabis for medicinal purposes.

i.e. See Old rats are no Dopes” vs NIMH study on separate posting.

In a country that goes through crisis after crisis, thanks to abuse, you would have thought by now that our Government would start targeting ABUSE alone, instead of just declaring No Tolerance on use, choice, belief and freedoms.

Examples of No Tolerance: “Kids alive, do the 5”. - Thanks, Laurie, but no thanks. No Tolerance Policy dictates ‘don’t teach kids respect for the water, just ban them from ever going in it ‘in case’ they drown’. ……. “Abuse of sun is causing skin cancer - Who cares about ‘slip, slop, slap’. No Tolerance dictates, “Your face/skin will never again see the sun, ‘just in case’ you get skin cancer”.

No matter what apartheid discrimination policies are unleashed against the human race, we (as the human race) still only have one mandate…to respect what we use and choose not to abuse. Use is our right, abuse is not.


POEM: “We’re Winning The War On Drugs” - D.Nentwig COPYRIGHT Dec.2006

We’re winning the war on drugs, while abuse is becoming worse and worse.
We’re winning the war on drugs, while society’s becoming more adverse.
We’re winning the war on drugs, but yet suffering’s become a national pastime.
We’re winning the war on drugs, whilst committing all sorts of heinous crimes.
We’re winning the war on drugs, while the words ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’ are made into buzzwords.
We’re winning the war on drugs, while people’s cries are seldom hears.
We’re winning the war on drugs, with tactics of Shock and Awe, Terror and fear.
We’re winning the war on drugs, through draconian policies unleashed year after year.
We’re winning the war on drugs, but does the end truly justify the means?
We’re winning the war on drugs, even though the innocent get swept away as it cleans.
We’re winning the war on drugs, but is the cover charge too high?
For we may be waging war on drugs of choice, but it’s abuses fault that people suffer and die.

Freeborn
- e-mail: respect_what_you_use@yahoo.com.au

Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech