Eamon Ryan and Cannabis
national |
politics / elections |
other press 
Thursday September 16, 2004 15:32
by Michael Hennigan - Finfacts.com
With just one minute to go on Mairin Finucane's RTE Radio 1 programme this morning, prospective Green Party presidential candidate was asked if he had used cannabis. He was honest and said yes.
The issue of the positive or negative benefits aside, one of the biggest fears of parents of teenage children who smoke dope is that they will graduate to another level.
I wonder if Eamon's honesty will give Pat Rabbitte a way out to give Labour sponsorship of the nomination a pass?
Comments (5 of 5)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5of TDs in the dail have smoked hash or grass.
Hash is a much safer drug than alcohol.
...that 75% of TDs and Ministers themselves have puffed the magic dragon....
...perhaps Mr. Ryan should take a chapter out of Slick Willie's book and suggest that he didn't inhale...it was good enough for the president of the US.
By the way, has anyone heard how the push for marijuana legalisation in Alaska is proceding?
Court Chooses Privacy Over Pot
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner; September 14, 2004
by Beth Ipsen, Staff Writer
The Alaska Supreme Court denied on Thursday a petition by the state attorney general's office seeking reconsideration of a decision allowing personal marijuana in the home.
The Supreme Court upheld last year's Court of Appeal unanimous ruling in Noy v. State of Alaska that solidified the argument a person's constitutional right to privacy is greater than a voter initiative making marijuana illegal.
The Court of Appeals decision was based largely upon a controversial 1975 Alaska Supreme Court opinion handed down in Ravin v. State allowing adults to possess marijuana for personal use in their home.
In 1990, voters passed an initiative on a 55 to 44 percent tally making it illegal to possess any amount of marijuana, but last year the appeals court not only ruled voters didn't have the authority to change the state constitution, but defined 4 ounces or less of marijuana as permissible for personal use at home.
see: http://www.mpp.org/states/site/quicknews.cgi?key=8178
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are you referring to the same "puff the magic dragon" who lived by the sea in a smal cave and ended up a lynching victim of the grown-up townsfolk in a sort of nursery rhyme precursor of the award winning multi-billion grossing animated Shrek movie series?
or was that contemporary Irish "drug code"?
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The idea of youngsters progressing from canabis to other drugs is an old one, but mostly based in ignorance. It is almost 99.99% true that all problem hard drug users (cocaine particularly crack and heroin) have experience of smoking hash or marijuana, but it is striking that almost none of such drug users still wish to use canabis.
Also many problem drug users have come from backgrounds of substance abuse which are pharmaceutical or industrial (mummy's valium/prozac daddy's solvents and whisky)
Our society though perpetuates many of these ideas to the clear detriment of wider health care.
The emergence of psychoactive substances in the last decade saw a completely new area of drug use and abuse, that of designer drugs and pills and raves. If there is a "psychological door" through which today's youngsters may go to further harmful drug use, it's there.
Other myths connected to Canabis-
It's more carcinogenic than Cigs.
(no more than untreated tobacco- though it is worth remembering that most people particularly in Ireland smoke hashish which has been processed at point of origin with unknown caking agents and then mix it with
refined (cigarette) tobacco.
Often more carcinogenics are ingested by a cardboard filter heating up and releasing industrial dyes into the mouth, that are found in the substance being smoked.
("the roche is important")
Canabis more than any other substance has been subject to decades _but not yet a century_ of prohibition and propaganda (both for and against). But what ever the truths or lies of smoking hashish/marijuana one thing is certain- If you want to find puff the magic dragon, you're going to have drop a few mushrooms or a tab of acid at least.
Emperor Haile Salessi of Ethiopia - the Lion of judah.
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