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Liverpool Indymedia

Weed contamination

Stoned and Concerned from Liverpool | 14.02.2007 13:53 | Health | Liverpool

Weed problems continue - Check your skunk for dodgy ingredients!

The nationwide weed famine is apparently over, but there's a new problem. Type 'weed contamination' in a search engine and you'll find details of a new, evil scam. Small glass / silica beads are being added to buds increase weight and give the impression of THC crystals. Some say they are too big to travel to the lungs but they could still be a cancer threat. Smokers have reported bleeding from the mouth and nose after smoking this. Put weed in your mouth and check for unsual grittiness, name and shame the dealers who are putting this out. The contamination is happening in the early stages of the distribution as it's been found around the country. I;ve Not seen any in Liverpool yet, but please inform Indymedia if you find some.

It may be that gangsters are trying to recuperate some of the money lost during the hot weather and police clampdown of 2006. During that time there was a movement of people away from pot towards hard stuff, particularly heroin. This might continue unless drug laws change or more people grow thier own.

Stoned and Concerned from Liverpool

Comments

Hide the following 13 comments

Grass them up

14.02.2007 15:12

as well

Greenfinger


This seems to be a nationwide problem, with one obvious solution ....

14.02.2007 15:19


I have heard of this happening in the South West as well, and is very worrying. Trying to aviod all dealers is the best solution to this problem, and growing your own is easy enough.
I don't smoke anymore, but I used to grow plenty of my own stuff to a high standard. I eventually got busted, but let off with a caution, a small price to pay for ounces and ounces of nearly free high quality weed.
Towards the end, I was luck enough to procure some second hand hydro equiptment, which is the best in terms of yeild and quality, but heres how you can grow o.k weed cheaply and easliy.

* Get some seeds, put them on a plate inbetween some damp tissue paper with a bowl on top. Change the paper a couple of times daily, and within a week, a small sprout should appear from the seed.

*Plant the seed(s) about 1cm down in good quality compost the pop in a cuboard/wardrobe coated with silver foil.

* Put in a bright lamp with 'sun bulb' and a timer attachment (both cheap and easy to find in DIY stores)

*For the first few weeks, keep the lamp on for 24 hours a day, then, when the plant is looking strong, change the light to 12 hours on, 12 hours off for 2 months.

*After 2 months, the plant should be budding heavily. Remove the bud and leave to dry for a week or so (or pop on a radiator if you cant wait that long!), then enjoy!

Have Fun!

p.s Obviously I do not endorse the growing or smoking of cannabis ... honest officer!

Concerned, South West


attack to the cyprus indymedia

14.02.2007 15:25

attack to the cyprus indymedia

liberality


Paranoid?

14.02.2007 15:50

As you say,you`ve not noticed this yourself. Maybe it`s just cannabis induced paranoid psychosis??!!

nobody


Paranoid?

14.02.2007 15:51

As you say,you`ve not noticed this yourself. Maybe it`s just cannabis induced paranoid psychosis??!!

nobody


nobody this is a big issue

14.02.2007 16:42

Actually i've noticed, first hand, quite a bit of this so called grit weed; particularly in Bradford and Manchester. Straight after the busts last year this stuff started appearing straight away. A national health warning has been issued regarding this, but the government is dragging it's heels over promoting such a warning, as the police action last year is being viewed (quite rightly imo) as a part driver for the current state of affairs...

The real danger is from developing silicosis which is, like asbestosis, terminal and many of the young people out there are very ignorant regarding grit weed and continue to smoke. Needless to say I have a doctors appointment on friday to talk about getting a chest x-ray. Although some doctors say the particles are too big, i've seen some of the microscope images with particles small enough to do the damage, and which were present in weed in a number of cities.

The guardian ran a story on this on the 12th of jan and local media, such as in plymouth have run some very good pieces too--Here the brainchild behind the LCA movement gives an interview and quite rightly comments that we will not know of the health outcome for a while, though here fears it will be huge as grit weed is awash over the country (and also the netherlands and germany but not to the same extent as the uk)

bigissue


we got it too

14.02.2007 16:54

yea we noticed this a few month back , there was loadsa this crystal looking stuff ,on the buds, it didnt disolve and was gritty , we thought it had summit to do with fertilizer .. how did you find out it is sillica/glass beads?

shugmcc


unfortunatly seen it about

14.02.2007 17:43

yeah this stuff's been knocking around nottingham as well. havent seen it in a while though.

***


n/e before xmas was ere

14.02.2007 23:07

.....

Jack


the criminals you finance are a fucking cancer on society

15.02.2007 01:08

So I couldn't give 2 fucks what they put in your precious dope. Carcinogens? Great, let the crims pour them in. It'll improve the gene pool. I've seen too many minds and lives wrecked by drugs and I'm fed up to the back teeth listening to brain damaged wankers like you defending dope and the violent crime it supports.

syd barret


paranoia redux

15.02.2007 16:05

1. previous poster a reactionary twat ... i 2 have seen many of my generation ruined as a result of the drugs trade ... they have succumbed to terminal bore disease and reactionaryitis through a complete lack of indulgence

2. the seemingly endless ingenuity of humans to engineer situations to enhance their wealth at the expense of others health is not confined either to the drug market (i would like to know where and upon which days this occurs by the way) nor to the wider criminal endeavours ... i believe that to fuck over the other is the very basis upon which our society has been built

3. would not indulge to much speculation or paranoia over a few isolated incidents ... the vast majority of weedalholics are chuffing along nicely, unseen unheard and only imperceptably moving ...

4. if and when identified, dealers in such tainted loves should be dealt a taste of their own medicine ... either in a literal sensi or through dint of high speed solid footwear ... or squeal on their connections upon whom such action is identified as being reasonable

i'm soooo high now i am fallin off my keyboard

keep it lucid jack

jack h


But is this true?

17.02.2007 09:51

Is there anything other than anecdotal evidence for this? Where would dealers actually get these alleged silica beads? They don't sell them in the High Street!

Surely, if you wanted to rip smokers off, you'd just sell short weight or mix something like dried herds in with the grass? Or sand or sugar, if you want it to look crystalline. Why go to the trouble of obtaining some obscure silica beads?

Is this perhaps a new FOAF ("Friend of a Friend") myth, maybe deliberately spread to discredit blackmarket weed?

But I agree fully with the earlier poster - GROW YOUR OWN! Don't buy dodgy weed off dodgy dealers!

You can buy a brand new hydroponic growkit (lamp, tank, nutrients, the lot!) for about £150 - 200 from most hydroponic shops, eg Growwell Hydroponics, that will produce all the ganja you could ever want for a fraction of the blackmarket price %-)'

Mr P. Head-Pyxie


Same Problem in Peterborough

14.06.2007 17:36

Here's an article I wrote a while back, just thought I'd add it here...


WEED SITUATION



The UK is suffering the worst weed draught in recorded history. Diesel has seen extra attention of late and things around here can get pretty dire for scoring, but there is an up side to it if we use our heads.

It is not about writing pointless letters to MPs and setting up shit websites full of the same tired arguments for legalisation owned by people called AK47. We need to start again with a nice, clean page and a fresh approach. People are always chatting shit, whinging about how the police are clamping down on weed when they should be catching smack dealers...blah, blah, blah...You're wrong.
The police aren't lifting a finger to stop weed except where idiots are handing themselves over on a plate and even then, they don't actually do anything. They don't even take it off you anymore unless you give it the mouth, but who gives the mouth when you can just play dog, keep your weed and go? The reason that the police were raiding "a door a day" was nothing to do with people smoking spliffs, it was part of a crack down on a nationwide network of dirty, Chinese, people smuggling pirates. Some dead bodies start turning up and a few shifty fuckers start making a not so quiet couple of million from large scale weed farming and people smuggling and then some uniform bobby trips over a corpse, from there a bit of police attention is inevitable really.

It's not potheads that the police are after and it's not people with a couple of plants, it is, lets be honest, a bunch of scumbags. The normal cops that bother you in the street aren't bothering potheads any more than usual. There's no increase in stop and searches and they don't give a shit about possession anyway, no 'dealers' are getting busted and Grow Systems is open and selling seeds without any problems. It's not how people make it out.
The police busted all these houses and are dead chuffed with themselves, but this wasn't the result of any brilliance of detective work, it was the result of utter stupidity on the part of the criminals. Every night you can lay in bed and hear the flashy new police chopper booming across the sky, council tax pouring from it's exhaust. Everyone's seen the thermal imaging thingy on Police, Camera, Action...put two and two together...it’s not difficult for the police to identify houses that are about a thousand degrees centigrade.

The truth is we could all come out of this much better off. If everyone that smokes a fair bit got two or three plants going there'd be too much weed. The only reason we're still paying twenty quid for a few grams of random herbs is that we allowed our supply chain to be controlled by foreign pimps.

If every regular pothead got a couple of plants on the go, there'd be no draughts, no dodgy pimps, no police grief, no having to score, no having to pay and no organised crime element, it'd be sweet. The police couldn't do much even if they wanted to, which they don't. You would be able to buy what few bits you needed for a couple of plants, buy them legally and get a receipt. If we started to spend a few quid in the grow shops, more would spring up creating competition which means better deals for the rest of us. Grow shops, not coffee shops, are the key to quality weed in the UK.

Legalisation is a fantasy, no government is every going to legalise cannabis totally. There would always be laws to prevent sale to minors, taxes to pay, licences for coffee shops, export controls, health and safety regulations, relative driving laws, medical practice standards and the list goes on. Any sane person can see that the only future for actually legalising cannabis lays in government regulation. These regulations would need to span a vast spectrum of different, specialised areas which would require a very expensive process, drawn out over years, which would simply piss time and money up the wall.

There are a large number of people over 50 who are still strongly opposed to legalisation, even ignoring their right to oppose, do you really think they and other non-smokers should fund this colossal expenditure? The money involved could instead be spent on putting the NHS back on target or some other public service. People forget that the budget is finite, governments can't just print money, well, not indefinitely at least.

If we want to be free to smoke weed, we need to look at alternatives to a financially unworkable regulated legalisation as well as insane, unregulated legalisation, in short, alternatives to legalisation altogether. The word on everybody's lips is, of course, 'decriminalisation'; "Don't legalise it, just don't stop it either." This is again a fantasy.
Cannabis isn't decriminalised in Holland, decriminalisation is just an English word used to describe the Dutch legal situation. 'Decriminalise' doesn't have any actual real meaning that differs from 'legalise'. In Holland you can't just do as you please with weed, there are a number of flexible, but well enforced, boundaries.
The Dutch system is regulated even if it is done in a way more suitable to the Dutch way of life generally. We have less success in this country with schemes that rely upon those involved acting with social responsibility. Many systems that are a success in Holland depend upon social elements that are lacking in the UK. The reasons for this are not relevant here, but it is never the less the case. Decriminalisation in the UK would simply end up as legalisation without proper regulation. In short, there are no realistic options for the government to take, but to stick to their guns.

The fact is that we already have the UK's closest possible equivalent of the Dutch system. We have legal grow shops, we have a police force that turn a blind eye to possession by adults and focuses no resources on social suppliers and small scale growers. The only difference is that we don't have coffee shops. So fucking what? We've got living rooms and kettles.
Whilst it's true that the UK has a lot to learn from the Dutch attitude to social issues generally, it is also true that were enough potheads in the UK socially responsible enough to merit a Dutch style cannabis system we would already have one. There is no barrier, but social irresponsibility on our part.

In summary, I would go as far as to say that a UK 'cottage-shop' system is not only possible, but a virtual inevitability. A case of not 'if', but 'when'. A cottage-shop system takes away all major social problems caused by cannabis in the UK including organised crime as well as other crimes such as benefit fraud, tax evasion and smuggling. It also removes the cost of failing to police cannabis itself. The cost of both the set up and maintenance of national regulation as well as bringing this in line with EU commitments also disappears. It also means that where cannabis was causing a social problem, say you were smoking a joint next to a day nursery, the police would have perfectly unquestionable grounds for arrest still fully supported by the Misuse of Drugs Act.

I personally believe it likely that the police and government deliberately worked to change the laws such as to engineer a cottage-shop system. The only question being asked by them now is "When will these dumb fucks get the message and grow their own?"

C Smith


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