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 say 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 Brtitain’s own GW Pharmaceuticals. It’s biggest shareholder is the $1.4 Tn Capital Group, and Philip May (husband to PM Theresa May) is a senior exec there. 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 that crop is ‘Skunk #1’, a legendary winner of many Cannabis Cups. You couldn’t make this stuff up.
It’s so wrong.
So who exactly does cannabis threaten? It’s doesn’t threaten people. Cultures across the globe have revered this strategic resource for millennia. It’s been the backbone of empires, like the British, Roman and Chinese, to name just three. Because it offers people food, health, shelter, pleasure and more. But it does threaten 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.
Would you believe it used to be a crime not to grow cannabis in both Great Britain and the USA? True fact. It’s the world’s most useful and valuable crop. It’s green gold, and it’s “safe even in immense doses” according to Pfizer subsidiary Parke-Davis.
Thank goodness the coalition’s referendum legislation looks good. Please make sure you and all whanau vote ‘Yes’ in 2020.
(Tadhg Stopford)