Green Gold

What is wealth? I think that it is having food, health and shelter. When you have those sorted, you can spend time with your family and friends.

Kiwi-farmed hemp was re-legalised in 2006, but MoH and MPI have largely disabled the industry ever since; apart from the recent legalising of hemp seed in November 2018, (12 years later). Hemp’s like a dirty secret. It can’t be planted within 5km of a school, or anywhere it can be seen from the road. It can’t be fed to animals (a recent change under a National-appointed pharma veteran), or used for medicine despite being both safe, beneficial and having ‘no risk of abuse’ according to the World Health Organisation.

The traditional home of ‘drug hemp’ (or Cannabis Indica) is India, a proudly independent state since throwing off the tyrannical shackles of Empire. India’s ambassador reportedly refused to agree to the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotics, saying “600 million Indians will die laughing, if I agree that hemp is a dangerous drug.” Pakistan and Bangladesh also exempted themselves. Despite these (then) 1.5 billion people having legal access to cannabis since 1961, there has been no discernable social harm.

That figure is now closer to 2.5 billion people, with around 600 million eligible to be extorted by the ‘medicinal cannabis’ racket now fixing up world markets. This racket is of epic proportions, obscene ethics and gargantuan profits. It is an utter betrayal of the public trust by politicians and regulators for private profit. But we all know ‘that’s just politics’.

For example, Cannabis Sativa (industrial hemp) enjoyed 1000 years in Britain’s herbal Pharmacopoeia ‘as medicine’. Cannabis Indica was reported by Professor O’Shaughnessy in 1843 and, by the 1890s, Great Britain was importing 100 tons of Cannabis Indica resin a year ‘as medicine’. Cannabis was only removed from the pharmacopoeia in the 1970s.

Yet today Britain prohibits public access on the grounds that it has no therapeutic value and a high risk of abuse, despite being the world’s biggest exporter of cannabis medicine (at $1000 a bottle/$33,000 USD per year).

Interestingly, that medicine is made by GW Pharmaceuticals, and a senior employee of their biggest shareholder is Philip May, who is husband to British PM Theresa May. Co-incidentally, the husband (Paul Kenward) of UK Drugs Minister VIctoria Atkin, is the MD of British Sugar, and grows 23 football pitches of cannabis for Theresa’s husband’s company. Funnily enough, half of that is ‘Skunk #1’, a famous multiple Cannabis Cup-winning strain developed by Sensi Seeds of Spain. I couldn’t make this up. It’s all so wrong.

So who exactly does cannabis threaten?

It’s not people it threatens, multiple societies across the globe have revered this strategic resource for millenia. It’s been the backbone of empires, like Great Britain and Rome, to name just two. Hemp offers people food, health, shelter, pleasure and more. It threatens some major markets, and a few destructive monopolies like pharmaceuticals and petro-chemicals – the industries that are bleeding our wallets and taxes, while poisoning our health and environment.

It was a criminal offence if you did not grow cannabis in both Great Britain and the USA in more sensible days, because it’s the world’s most useful and valuable crop. Green gold.

Luckily the coalition governments referendum legislation is good, please make sure you and all whanau vote ‘Yes’ in 2020. (TADHG STOPFORD)

www.thehempfoundation.org.nz

#ponsonby #thehempfoundation #greylynn #greylynn #marijuana #hemp #medicinalmarijuana #greengold