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.

Letter to Amnesty International

Medcanaware | 26.05.2008 07:45 | Analysis | Health | Social Struggles | World

Dear Amnesty International,

Thankyou in advance for taking the time to read this letter. It is an important subject to hundreds of thousands in Australia and millions around the world.

We, Medical Cannabis Awareness, believe wholeheartedly in the right to choose the correct medicine that benefit’s the sufferer, and not just the Drug cartel and the Government that wants to push, advocate, manufacture and deal drugs as medicine.

We believe that Alchemists and their Government backers do not have the right to violate and persecute herbalists as heretics, just because ‘they’ believe in Alchemic drug supremacy. No matter the side effects (both acute and chronic), as well as the amount of deaths from Alchemic drugs, our Government and our Media constantly tout that “No matter the side effects, don’t stop taking our drugs”. Meanwhile, they eradicate and brand as heretics (just like herbalists have been throughout history) any choice, including choices that are far less toxic than the drug choices that they want us to take.

Selective Prohibition on drugs of choice that they don’t agree with, (while they force the supremacy of the drugs they do agree with), is an act of social segregation and an act of slavery - for, when one steals your right of choice, your right of decision making, and forces you to kow-tow to them and theirs, they make you their slave. This criminal act must not be allowed to continue.

Even on the recreational psychoactive drug front, Governments and their drug lords plaster their drugs and their drug culture across our Country through every medium imaginable, targeting all ages equally through advocation and advertising - while at the same time they eradicate other’s choices of medicinal or recreational drugs and their cultures. There is a definition for this, it’s called Cultural Genocide. This crime cannot be allowed to continue.

The reason medicinal choice is a human right is that no matter where you come from, or what you believe in, or what group you belong to, everyone believes that they have the right to choose the medicine or recreation or culture that best suits them, the individual. All individuals on the earth believe this, even though some individuals believe that they have the right to suppress and eradicate another’s choice in favour of the supremacy of their own.

Even our Health Ministers believe that if you want a particular medicine that benefits you, even if it grows naturally and you don’t have to get it from a drug lord, then - and we quote - “It has to be approved as a therapeutic drug, it has to be made into a Pharmaceutical form, and an application must be made to the TGA to assess its quality, safety and efficacy”, but this must be done by an Alchemic drug cartel (albeit legal) after they have mutilated, manipulated, tampered with and extracted only the active ingredients out of it, slapped it into a pill, patch or potion, slapped a patent on it so that only Pharmaceutical drug cartels can deal it, then they deal it back to us for a price.

Let us look at these Criteria, simply……….
Safety: 40,000:1 toxicity death ratio.
Quality: You cannot improve on Nature and if you grow your own, you know exactly the quality of the herb you grow, exactly what went into it, exactly what was sprayed on it, and if you respect it, that it is 100% organic. This is the mandate of all true herbalists. Efficacy: It may not be efficient for drug cartels, but it’s certainly efficient for the sufferer who chooses it and knows that it benefits and works for them on a regular basis.

A medical cannabis user is already suffering from an illness/disease/disorder. He/she is not going to choose something that causes more misery, more suffering and more ill effects than what they already suffer with - which is why the greatest percentage of them reject, wholeheartedly, the Pharmaceutical/Alchemic drug flood now pushed on us by Governments, Drug Lords and other vested interests.

The Health Dept. stated in their letter to us, “that Cannabis is an illegal drug”. This sickening buzzword is the only excuse they have for denying this medicine, and the buzzword ‘legal’ is the only excuse that they have for tobacco and ethanol causing 4.0% and 4.1% of the Global Disease Burden….but that’s okay - it’s Legal! People forget though that the kilt, the tomato, books, music, and many other things we enjoy and accept today, (including homosexuality) were classed as illegal, while slavery was (and still is) legal.

The difference between ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’ drugs is exactly that - Just those two buzzwords, which have no influence on the International Criteria of Harm involved - mortality, morbidity, toxicity, addictiveness and relationship with crime. Just in case anyone hasn’t realized it by now, the words ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’, when applied to subject matter, are not reasons, they are prejudices.

This is a blatant violation of human rights and the rights of people who choose natural, untampered with, unviolated herbal medicine.

People who benefit from medical cannabis (and there are millions Worldwide) are treated as criminals, hunted down in their own homes, persecuted by Governments and Police, Media etc. who cannot admit to themselves that they also take psychoactive drugs of choice, they are dragged into courts, fined, condemned, discriminated against, ostracised and socially segregated from their own society, from their own people. This again is a criminal act and a violation of human rights.

The phobias that were stated by our Health Department are these:
1) “If cannabis was allowed for medicinal purposes, it could be diverted to non-medicinal purposes, which poses a significant risk to the community”.

Again, this shows the bias of our drug supremacy Government, as medicinal cannabis users have to go out and score (off illicit drug dealers) their vital medication, while Governments, (including the present one, and the Wealth/Health Department) have allowed ethanol drug abuse in this country to pose more than a significant risk of $4.5 BILLION…no, sorry, $7.6 BILLION….no, sorry, the latest ethanol drug social cost statistic is $15.6 BILLION. The scary thing about this Government Department is, as long as you kow-tow to them and their drug lords, they are “the Dept. of Health and Ageing“. However, no matter your age, if you choose the competition/ the ‘heretic’s choice’ it becomes the Dept. of Wealth and Waging War, and you are their target….’for your own good, of course’.

Then, on top of the social monetary cost, you have 6,000 dead in one year from a psychoactive, recreational drug (ethanol) that is our Politician’s official drug of choice,
and as we all know, recreational cannabis is the main direct competition for their personal recreational, psychoactive drug. Their real fear about cannabis, on both medicinal and recreational drug fronts, is that people will stop buying/scoring their drugs and choose a safer option (under the Criteria of Harm not revenue)

They then stated…….
2) “It contravenes the United Nations Conventions, to which Australia is a signatory”. But, if our Governments really cared about United Nations Conventions, one would like to know why we went to War in direct violation of the United Nations. It seems our Governments can break United Nations Conventions when it suits them, but when it comes to a Fair Go for all, we are forced to kow-tow to a fossilised Policy that was set up solely for drug cartel supremacy. Ethanol drug prohibition was a good symbol of this. Ethanol was an illicit recreational drug at the time of Prohibition (1920’s) and it put this psychoactive drug in the hands of people like Horace Alderman and Al Capone.

Once they realized Prohibition wasn’t working, (and they also realized that they loved
their drug and its revenue too much to ban it), they re-instated it and it became the forced official recreational, psychoactive drug of the World, while they wrote laws to wipe out its competition.

Prohibition on selective use and choice is a world war being waged to this very day on people who are doing nothing more than the war wagers are doing, and that is consuming a psychoactive, medicinal or recreational drug of choice and believing in its culture. This, again, is nothing but apartheid discrimination (a social segregation policy defined by differential and/or preferential treatments…..or to put it simply, “Our drugs all good, your drugs all bad”. “Our drug culture must be glorified”, while “Your drug culture must be crucified”).

Like yourselves, we believe wholeheartedly in defending and standing up for inalienable human rights, beliefs, freedoms and culture, the things that make us human.

Medical sufferers don’t live in test tubes, petri dishes and Pharmaceutical drug labs, neither do their illnesses and diseases. The sufferers live in the real world and their illnesses, diseases and disorders exist in them. Yet, they do not get consulted or even asked for an opinion. Instead, the consultation goes directly to the drug cartels and drug lords (ie Medicines Australia) to ask what particular drug they would like to patent and deal to the medical sufferer, whether the sufferer wants their forced choice of drug or not.

It’s time that our Governments and our Medical Bodies started to put the sufferer first, and started to place need before greed, health before wealth, suffering before supremacy, compassion before Corporate control, respect before revenue, patients before Politics, medicine before Media, benefit before brutality, acceptance before apartheid (policies of social segregation), deliverance before discrimination and a Fair Go before (to quote the game Monopoly), ‘Do not get a Fair Go, go directly to court, pick up a fine on the way, and (in some countries) go directly to jail‘.

When it comes to Alchemic drug supremacy over Herbalism, the author of the book “World of Herbs” - Lesley Bremness states, “It is not merely the monopoly of drug companies that causes concern. Many people are worried about the dangers of isolating so-called ‘active ingredients’, one danger is that the modifying agents are left out. Modifying agents are part of the make-up of some herbs, which render the whole herb safe. These may not appear active in isolated tests (remember, we don’t live in test tubes in drug labs), but they offset the side effects of the active constituents.

(Medcanaware - ie drug lords are now taking the active ingredient out of the Cannabis herb/genus -THC- and sticking it into a pill and trying to deal it to people who already benefit from the natural cannabis herb/genus. But, they seem to forget that while THC is a psychoactive drug….. just like their favourite recreational drug of choice ethanol…. the CBD and other non-psychoactive ingredients actually negate the excess psychoactivity that manifests in dysphoric psychosis-like symptoms when taken in excess. THC reacts in the CB receptors in the brain, but CBD and the rest of the constituents in the Cannabis genus negate and regulate the “side effects” of pure THC bombardment….. but try telling that to the Government. They have their minds made up and don’t want to be confused with the facts).

Dr. Guy from the U.K. stated, “Cannabis has the startlingly unusual property of being incredibly safe. The difference between a therapeutic dose and a deadly one is 40,000:1. By comparison, the figure for aspirin is 25 while morphine is 50”. Note: The official recreational drug of Australia, ethanol, has an LD50 toxicity death ratio of 4:1 -
20:1 depending on size, body mass and fitness.

Dr. Kerryn Phelps, former President of the A.M.A., stated: “Cannabis was sometimes the only thing that helped people deal with the pain and intractable nausea of diseases such as leukaemia, lymphoma, and certain AIDS related conditions and the treatment”.

(Medcanaware: Note: This is only the bare minimum of diseases and disorders Cannabis works for that sufferers have discovered for themselves, - Seizure disorders are a major part of medical cannabis application Worldwide, yet we are forced to take seizure medications that can kill and cause side effects…..get this… including seizures!)

Dr. Phelps continued, “Yet such people face arrest and prosecution for using an illegal drug. The bottom line is, we are talking about people who on compassionate grounds need a medical treatment. I would challenge any Politician to look any person in the eye, who has intolerable symptoms…..and say ‘We know there is something that might work for you, but we are not going to make it legal”.

To back this up, we would like to quote a statement written from the Dept. of Health and Ageing to us, “As you are aware, there has been discussion in the research literature about the use of Cannabis as a possible treatment option for a range of medical conditions. While some people report that it appears to relieve the symptoms of certain medical problems, Cannabis has not been approved as a therapeutic drug in Australia”.

This letter was written on behalf of Nicola Roxon, Health Minister, by Virginia Hart, Asst Sec. for the Drug Strategy Branch. Their strategy has always been very clear, “If we can’t patent it and deal it and get revenue from it, then we don’t care how much you can benefit from it. We will not tolerate it and we will not tolerate you choosing it as your individual choice”.

We have compiled a collective article on what Prohibition truly is and how many abusive words truly define it. We believe that you will understand this article, as remove the word ‘drug’ and replace it with any other subject matter, and the principles, the actions, the applications and the outcome of selective Prohibition are the same. (You can find this on www.freewebs.com/medcanaware)

Thankyou for taking the time to read this. We greatly appreciate it.

Yours with respect,


Medcanaware
- e-mail: coffsmedcan@yahoo.com
- Homepage: http://www.freewebs.com/medcanaware

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