Reclassification

Gordon Brown is a cock.

Back in the post-Blair, anyone’s-better-than-that-warmongering-asshole days of Brown’s ascension, I was prepared to give him a chance. He’s a fellow Scot after all; and he used to be Chancellor –a job that very few people are smart enough to perform well.

I figured This Brown Guy would be alright.

I figured wrong.

In case you’ve been out of the loop; Brown commissioned an independent advisory council (paid for by the UK taxpayer) to present a scientific analysis as to whether or not marijuana should be reclassified, from Class C to Class B.

The advisory panel said “no” and proceeded to give a list of reasons why the reclassification was not necessary. But Gordon didn’t listen; he’s going to go ahead and reclassify it anyway. So now, all the tens of thousands of marijuana users throughout the UK can be imprisoned for five years for possession of a small quantity of weed.

FUCK

THAT

SHIT

I have a problem with this decision on a number of levels:

1.) It’s not the Government’s right to tell the citizens of an allegedly free nation what they may, and may not, put into their own bodies.

2.) There are hundreds of thousands of deaths caused by alcohol and nicotine every year; but there has never been a recorded case of death by marijuana. It’s simply not toxic enough. “Based on extrapolations from animal studies, the ratio of marijuana’s lethal dose to its effective dose is something like 40,000 to 1 (compared to 20 to 1 for aspirin and between 4 and 10 to 1 for alcohol).” –Source

3.) The Government’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs agrees that some strains of cannabis are stronger than they were in the past, there have been no studies that demonstrate a causal “link” between cannabis use and mental illness.

4.) “When you look at the evidence, both internationally and here in the U.K., it is clear that the drug classification system is a very poor vehicle for delivering messages to young people,” said Ben Lynam, of Britain’s Drug Policy Commission.

5.) Brown’s dressing this up like a social issue. Like weed causes crime –well, if you make possession of marijuana a crime then of course it does. Furthermore, young people are far more likely to misbehave under the influence of alcohol, which is readily available. If he’s reclassifying marijuana then it’s nothing short of hypocrisy to fail to reclassify alcohol.

The people I know who smoke marijuana are; for the most part; normal, functional people. Fair enough, the people I know who use it too much are a little fucked-up, yes –but nowhere near as fucked up as the alcoholics I’ve known.

Maybe excessive use of cannabis does make you go crazy; but the important word here is excessive. Excess is never healthy, whether it’s drugs or porn or driving fast or eating, excess is something which is worth avoiding. But it’s not illegal to drink yourself stupid, is it? It’s not illegal to drink and drink and drink until you look, sound and smell like some of the ruined little men who prop up the bar in my local. They’re proper fucked up. Why not use that argument to make alcohol illegal? What is the difference between the two narcotics, really? Why can’t adults in the UK be trusted to make responsible decisions for themselves? Where is the merit in banging up smokers?

I wont give too much away here, wouldn’t want to find myself in the can; but there was a time, a long, long time ago when I once tried a tiny quantity of marijuana. I treated the drug with the same respect and caution as I still treat alcohol -I wouldn’t drive my car, for example, when I was high. I know people who do; I know people who drive very well when they’re high –and this is one of the important things about weed; the ways in which it affects people are so diverse that it’s impossible to determine what the substance actually does.

The right-wing, camel-fucking dickheads who’ve never had a joint before and spend their spare time looking down on other people for their life choices (whilst secretly they masturbate out of windows and eat their own shit) assume that it turns everyone into giggly, ravenous, violent, zombies with no coordination. This simply isn’t true –one joint might make you giggle, another might not. It’s dangerous stereotypes about the perceived effects of the narcotic which are giving the substance such a bad name; and whipping up the media shit-storm which is raining down on us right now.

It makes me incredibly angry that we live in a knee-jerk, kowtow-to-the-tabloids, ball-sucking society that bans things left, right and centre to drum up public support for a failing regime of lies and hypocrisy.

Wake up people; what the tabloids are telling you is untrue. Marijuana is not a threat to society; Gordon Brown is a threat to society.

By allowing him to make this kind of decision, flagrantly ignoring the scientific fact which has been presented to him, you are losing sight of the fact that we did not vote for this man, we loathed his predecessor and the country is hurtling at ultrasonic speeds into a gigantic bowl of human faeces.

We must not obey bad laws; that is our duty as citizens of this country.

If Brown thinks reclassifying Marijuana is going to revive the economy, the police force, the education system and the NHS then he’s an even bigger dickhead than Blair was.

And that’s saying something.