cannabisnews.com: British 'Zero Tolerance' Chief Swallows MMJ!





British 'Zero Tolerance' Chief Swallows MMJ!
Posted by FoM on June 16, 1999 at 07:05:00 PT
Source: High Times
"I support the use of cannabis on medical grounds," England's top government drug adviser Keith Hellawell reluctantly confessed last week, in a June 10 interview with BBC News.
Hellawell, the British equivalent of Clinton Drug Czar Gen. Barry McCaffrey in the USA, says now that he feels that cannabis can genuinely help some sick people, and that he has a lot of sympathy for those patients. But having said this aloud, he was sure to instantly turn around and demonstrate the lack of backbone that politicians symptomatically suffer when dealing with controversial subjects such as marijuana."There's a myth that if we legalize a substance, it would somehow take the illegality out of it," said Hellawell rather opaquely, but definitely grimly. Following this gem, he went on to allow to the BBC that it might not be a tragedy if one of his own grandchildren tried drugs, then quickly added that cannabis experimentation is nevertheless not a "normal part of growing up."Because the British government has solidly voted to expedite clinical trials for patients using cannabis, Hellawell has been politically obliged come out publicly in support of of the project, bragging suddenly that England is at the forefront of research into pot's therapeutic properties. This face-about from previous US-style ZeroTolerance dogmas out of the Drug Tsar (as it's spelled in the UK) was the result of sustained encouragement and pressure from Prime Minister Tony Blair and Home Secretary Jack Straw, who have other constituents to satisfy besides Barry McCaffrey's international drug-control political clique.Closing the GatewaySpeaking to the BBC last week, Hellawell specifically rejected the idea of pot having a "gateway" effect, leading to harder drugs--thus recognizing innumerable studies, such as the recent Institute of Medicine survey in the US, which have exposed the absurdity of this perennial reefer-madness shibboleth. Hellawell actually told the BBC that while he used to say that he never met a heroin addict who didn't start by smoking pot, now this isn't the case. (How many junkies he's suddenly met who haven't ever smoked pot is a matter of much mystified speculation now.)This support of pot from "on high" comes while the British government is finalizing plans to begin clinical trials on human beings in the near future. Dr. Geoffrey Guy, the chairman of GW Pharmaceuticals, Ltd, has already spent $16 million setting up projects to investigate the effects of cannabis extracts on multiple sclerosis and pain relief, under license from Straw's Home Office. Much of this has been invested in a HortaPharm, a Dutch horticulture company which has one of the largest "living libraries" of cannabis cultivars in the world. GW Pharmaceuticals is about to begin planting in a highly secret location, in a guarded greenhouse in the South of England somewhere. Dr. Guy has told the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology in London that he'll utilize primarily oral methods of administering the drug, saying that this method seems to bring the fastest relief of pain symptoms.When he was asked about possibly synthesizing THC or other active cannabinoids by a patentable process, Guy responded, "I don't see the value in taking apart something that seems at the moment to work."About two dozen subjects will begin the trials, mostly sufferers of MS, by inhaling small amounts of cannabis, either by smoking or by some nebulizer-type aerosol method. It is reported that the subjects will be "immune" from prosecution by the law, demonstrating one more amazing effect of a medicinal use of pot.
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