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UN "cannabis as harmful as cocaine and heroin"
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
New strains of highly potent cannabis are as dangerous as heroin and cocaine and the drug can no longer be dismissed as "soft and relatively harmless", the United Nations said yesterday.
In an implied criticism of Britain's decision to downgrade cannabis, Antonio Maria Costa, the head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said that countries got the "drug problem they deserved" if they maintained inadequate policies.
His comments indicated deep unhappiness with the Government's decision to reclassify cannabis from a Class B drug to Class C. Heroin and cocaine are Class A substances, attracting the toughest penalties for possession and trafficking.
Executive director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Antonio Maria Costa, said countries got the "drug problem they deserved" if they maintained inadequate policies.
How is it we allow the UN to dictate drug policy to the rest of the world especially when they come out with comments like this?
:chin:Mr Costa said: "After so many years of drug control experience, we now know that a coherent, long-term strategy can reduce drug supply, demand and trafficking.
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Comments
http://www.unodc.org/unodc/press_release_2006_06_26_1.html
ihaven't read the link but ...if he is saying what is posted in this thread then it flies in the face of every scientific study ever done on cannabis.
BUT - its totally stupid to suggest that cannabis is as dangerous as heroin or cocaine.
For a start his sweeping statements about the dangers of weed are very wrong. It is more a case of he probably read a report of a strain of weed that is highly potent and used it as basis for all Cannabis decisions.
Second, the whole beginning seems to be one big "pat yourself on the back" speach to the UN about how they stabalised drug production, got Loas to stop production almost entirely and saw demand for drugs fall, though blaming any encouragement on drugs on nations governments like the UK for changing drug policies and downgrading drugs, and blaming celebrities for encouraging young, impressionable children to take up the use of narcotics.
Frankly, it just doesnt tally with anything else i have read on drugs.
Though, i do concede the point that several studies...but i hasten to add, not all studies, have shown some links between cannabis use and mental illness.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/06/27/ndrug27.xml
There are several reasons for a drop in the production of heroin in the Far East, first of all there have been incentives to the governments, secondly Burma has moved from opium to methamphetamine, and thirdly and most importantly the heroin market in the US (where most Far East heroin goes) has been largely taken over by prescribed opiates.