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Increasing opium production in Afghanistan
(China View, October 28, 2004)
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said Thursday that opium production in Afghanistan was currently increasing as reconstruction continues in the country. . . . "I expect the figures for this year to show a large increase in the area under cultivation, and a significant increase in opium production," Straw said in a speech on the challenges ahead for Afghanistan after its presidential elections. . . . "So for all these reasons, the impact of drugs on the UK, the region and most of all on the Afghan people themselves, we must reduce opium cultivation. The UK, our international partners and the Afghan government are determined to do so," Straw said at the London-based think tank, the International Institute for Strategic Studies. . . . Claiming that Britain, together with the Afghan government and its international partners, would implement a strong and comprehensive strategy which tackles every aspect of the drug problem, Straw said work aimed at reducing drug production should combine eradication, alternative livelihoods, law enforcement, criminal justice, as well as information and treatment campaigns to raise awareness and tackle addiction in Afghanistan itself. . . . According to Straw, 95 percent of the heroin on Britain's streets originates in Afghanistan's poppy fields. . . . Afghanistan's opium output was about 3,600 tons in 2003.

. . . Read more!


posted by LoZo 2:39 PM

 

Drug Trade Booms in Afghanistan
"Drug enforcement officials say Afghanistan is now supplying 86 percent of the world's heroin products. Much of the economic growth in the country is being fueled by money from Afghan traffickers and producers, who are earning an estimated $2.8 billion this year."

[To listen to this full NPR report, click on the above link.]

. . . Read more!


posted by LoZo 2:35 PM

 

The Cancer-Healing Properties of Cannabis
(Paul Armentano, NowToronto.com)
CANCER KILLER

U.S. War on Drugs Stalling Mind-Blowing Research into Pot's Cancer-Healing Properties . . . Clinical research published in a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research showing that marijuana's components can inhibit the growth of cancerous brain tumours is the latest in a long line of studies demonstrating the drug's potential as an anti-cancer agent.

This latest study, performed by researchers at Madrid's Complutense University, found that cannabis restricts the blood supply to glioblastoma multiforme tumours, an aggressive brain tumour that kills some 7,000 people in the United States every year. But despite the value of such findings both in terms of the treatment of life-threatening illnesses and as news, U.S. media coverage has been almost non-existent. . . . Why the blackout? Not one such study has been acknowledged by the U.S. government. . . . This wasn't always the case. In fact, the first experiment documenting pot's anti-tumour effects took place in 1974 at the Medical College of Virginia at the behest of the U.S. government. . . . It showed that marijuana's psychoactive component, THC, "slowed the growth of lung cancers, breast cancers and a virus-induced leukemia in laboratory mice and prolonged their lives by as much as 36 per cent." . . . Despite these favourable preliminary findings, U.S. government officials refused to fund any follow-up research for two decades, until it conducted a similar - though secret - clinical trial in the mid-1990s. . . . That study, carried out by the U.S. National Toxicology Program, concluded that mice and rats administered high doses of THC over long periods had greater protection against malignant tumours than untreated controls. . . . Rather than publicize these findings, government researchers shelved the results, which only became public after a draft copy of the findings were leaked in 1997 to a medical journal that in turn forwarded the story to the national media. . . . However, in the eight years since then, the U.S. government has yet to fund a single additional study examining the drug's potential anti-cancer properties. Is this a case of federal bureaucrats valuing politics more than the health and safety of patients? You be the judge. . . . Fortunately, scientists overseas have generously picked up where U.S. researchers so abruptly left off. . . . This month, researchers at the University of Milan in Italy, reported that marijuana's constituents inhibit the spread of brain cancer in human tumour biopsies from patients failed by standard cancer therapies. . . . Last year, the same researchers reported in the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics that non-psychoactive compounds in marijuana inhibited the growth of glioma cells in a dose-dependent manner and selectively targeted and killed malignant cells, stimulating them to "commit suicide" in a natural process called apoptosis. . . . In 2000, a research team at Complutense's department of biochemistry and molecular biology reported in the journal Nature Medicine that injections of synthetic THC eradicated malignant gliomas (brain tumours) in one-third of treated rats. The study was undertaken after the discovery in 1998 that THC can selectively induce apoptosis in brain tumour cells without negatively affecting the surrounding healthy cells. . . . Nevertheless, federal officials in the U.S. continue to refuse to express any interest in funding - or even acknowledging - this clinical research.

. . . Read more!


posted by LoZo 12:51 PM

 

Book by Joel Miller: Bad Trip: How the War Against Drugs is Destroying America

The U.S. government is addicted to the drug war, and the power and pelf it reaps from it. But anyone who cares about freedom and justice can only be horrified. Thank goodness for Joel Miller and this important book. As he shows, we have to send the feds to rehab.

A tough, uncompromising look at how America's controversial war on drugs is punishing the innocent and rewarding the guilty, and what citizens can do to stop our country's drug war abuse.

In a related story...How the futile war on drugs and the futile war on guns are both related and both responsible for violent crime. It comes down to a simple reality: As long as the drug trade is illegal, prohibition will foster and exacerbate crime and violence. And as long as it does that, gun-control fanatics and vote-hungry politicians will be able to leverage the situation to undermine our right to keep and bear arms.

. . . Read more!


posted by Hal 8:17 PM

 

Something to think about
A pipe of kif before breakfast gives a man the strength of a hundred camels in the courtyard.
-- Moroccan proverb

. . . Read more!


posted by LoZo 2:50 PM