{"id":10023,"date":"2014-10-28T13:40:05","date_gmt":"2014-10-28T13:40:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/?p=10023"},"modified":"2016-09-20T17:53:54","modified_gmt":"2016-09-20T17:53:54","slug":"kathy-gyngell-even-us-liberals-are-doubting-the-wisdom-of-colorados-drugs-experiment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/2014\/10\/kathy-gyngell-even-us-liberals-are-doubting-the-wisdom-of-colorados-drugs-experiment\/","title":{"rendered":"Kathy Gyngell: Even US liberals are doubting the wisdom of Colorado\u2019s drugs experiment"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Washington Post \u202f<\/span>came out<\/a>\u00a0\u202fagainst the legalising of pot in the District of Columbia in an editorial last weekend.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Though a supporter of the decriminalisation of medical marijuana, when it was on the ballot a few years ago, the Post has drawn the line at outright legalisation (which is what\u2019s on the ballot this November in D.C.).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Post commented that \u201cthe rush to legalise marijuana gives us \u2013 and we hope voters \u2013 serious pause\u201d. It refused too to buy into that pot-pusher canard that pot is no different than alcohol, saying clearly that marijuana \u201cis not harmless.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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This is hardly rocket science so why I am I blogging about it? Does it matter? \u202fThe answer is\u00a0Yes. \u202fFor such an influential\u202f\u2018liberal’ organ to come out with this caution is significant.\u00a0Whether it marks a turning of the pro-pot and pro-legalisation tide remains to be seen.\u202fBut what it does prove is that hearts and minds \u2013 even those of liberal diehards – are there for the winning once the bald facts are in the public domain.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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That is where Kevin\u00a0Sabet, co-founder of the project\u202fSmart Approaches to Marijuana<\/a>\u202f (SAM)\u202fand author of\u202fReefer Sanity: Seven Great Myths\u00a0About\u00a0Marijuana<\/a>,\u202fhas been putting them.\u00a0It was his cataloguing of what\u2019s been going on in Colorado since legalisation that provoked the\u00a0Post\u2019s \u202fconcern\u00a0about bringing a Colorado-style experiment to its home turf.\u00a0\u00a0The editorial had also picked up on a\u202freport<\/a>\u202fthat found that teenagers who smoke marijuana daily are 60 per cent less likely to complete high school (one I wrote about\u00a0here<\/a>\u202flast week).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But it is not just in Colorado that the pot pusher\u2019s paradise is being seen through. In Uruguay too, their new marijuana law\u202fis under fire<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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All the money spent persuading members of Uruguayan parliament to vote\u00a0Yes\u00a0to legalisation has left the public cold. The majority are as against legalisation now as they were before; \u202fnone\u00a0believe that the real motive behind it was to improve health.\u00a0The argument that legalisation is necessary for health and human\u00a0rights is\u00a0of course a fallacious one.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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That hasn\u2019t stopped the Global Commission on Drugs Policy from using it. This is the body that Neil\u00a0Mckeganey\u00a0revealed\u202fhere<\/a>\u202fto be a front for drug\u202flegalisation. It is also on a mission to throw over the\u202finternational\u202fdrug conventions in 2016, at a special\u202fsession\u202fof the United Nations General Assembly on the world drug problem.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Though presented\u202fby some\u202fformer heads of state<\/a>, \u202fthe\u00a0Global Commission’s\u202fchallenge to the international drug control regime was drafted with the assistance of Steve\u00a0Rolles, Danny\u00a0Kushlick, Martin\u00a0Jelsma, Mike Trace, and Ethan\u00a0Nadelmann, all of whom are long term and passionate advocates and lobbyists for drugs legalisation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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And a\u00a0healthy dose of scepticism is advised before reading their thinly veiled propaganda. It is based on the straw man that current international policy is na\u00efve and offers false promises.\u00a0Far from it.\u00a0 No one who\u00a0actually \u202freads\u00a0the detailed publications of either the International Narcotics Board or \u202fthe United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime \u202for follows\u202ftheir\u202fpragmatic\u202fresponses to this complex problem could possibly accuse them of this.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It is the Global Commission that is naive \u2013 to think\u00a0that \u202fnormalising\u00a0\u202fdrug use and removing any constraints will improve health or protect human rights.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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There is already evidence that the opposite is the case\u202fnow that recreational use of cannabis is legal in Colorado and Washington State, and pot can be purchased for medicinal use in 23 other states and Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Today nearly 1 in 10 Americans show up to work high on marijuana, a\u202fnew report<\/a>\u202fhas revealed.\u202f And last week\u2019s publication of\u202fnational Drug Testing data<\/a>\u202frevealed that\u202fthe percentage of positive drug tests among American workers has increased for the first time in more than a decade, fuelled by a rise in marijuana and amphetamines use; and that marijuana positivity increased 6.2 per cent nationally in urine drug tests, and by double digits in Colorado and Washington<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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As more states fall into normalisation and legalisation of pot such stats will only get worse. Business however will be ever more eager to exploit the\u202fgrowing\u202f\u202fhabit.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Indeed it was with much fanfare, that, with the ex-president of Mexico, Vicente Fox, the passionate legalising advocate and member of the GCDP in tow, \u202fthe\u00a0former head of Microsoft corporate strategy, James\u00a0Shivley, announced earlier this year that he was creating \u201cthe Starbucks of marijuana.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Washington Post\u2019s next step will be, I hope, to editorialise on this. \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Kathy\u00a0Gyngell<\/p>\n

Source:\u00a0<\/span>www.conservativewoman.co.uk<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 20th\u00a0Sept.2014\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Washington Post \u202fcame out\u00a0\u202fagainst the legalising of pot in the District of Columbia in an editorial last weekend.\u00a0 Though a supporter of the decriminalisation of medical marijuana, when it was on the ballot a few years ago, the Post has drawn the line at outright legalisation (which is what\u2019s on the ballot this November […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,90],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-effects-of-drugs","category-global-drug-legalisation-efforts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10023\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}