A Greek Orthodox nunnery was turned into a marijuana garden by 2 men that are currently hunted by the Greek police. The muns told the a few months ago 2 men introduces themselves into the nunnery, offering to the nuns to take care of their plants and flowers. But instead of curing their garden, the 2 men fulfill it with marijuana plants. “The nuns did not know what they were and assumed they were large decorative plants,” said the chief of the Greek police while his men are completing the cleaning of the garden. Of course none of the nuns has been arrested and the police has launched a hunt to catch the men.

Three cannabis-flavoured drinks have been removed from sale after a serie of complaints. These 3 drinks, produced by Beveland SA products are the Perigan’s Cannabis-Flavoured Gin, Iganoff Cannabis-Flavoured Vodka and Rodnik’s Cannabis-Flavoured Absinthe. All of them shows a cannabis leaf on the label. The Portman Group, the watchdog of the alcohol industry, has ruled that the drinks breach one of its codes of practice: “Too many young adults these days regard alcohol and illicit drugs as interchangeable, the industry must not contribute to this attitude, but instead distance itself totally from illegal drugs”, says David Poley, chief executive of the Portman Group.

Right, let’s go on with this ridiculous farce, cannabis is so banned that a leaf cannot even be shown on a label. The alcohol, the substance that has killed more than evey other substance in history, is perfectly legal.

Now is given to the alcohol industry even the power to draw the moral for everybody, and decide wheter or not a cannabis leaf can or cannot be shown. Nice world, our world.

French government have decided to study the cannabis “problem” better, and to start in the good way they have decided to do a little calculation about the profit that a cannabis smuggler/seller can make in one year. “Although the average street dealer hardly makes the minimum wage out of selling cannabis, the middlemen get away with an average of 550,000 euros. That’s an annual income similar to that of a managing director in a company of 2,000 workers”.  Then they have analysed the market in its complexity: “One in ten boys and one in sixteen girls aged 17 year consider themselves regular smokers. Over half a million French smoke cannabis every day. The total market consists of 1.2 million users, who consume 208 tonnes of cannabis, and spend 832 million euros on it”.

Everybody can understand how this number are little compared to the reality. French people are believed the heavier cannabis user in Europe with a population of smokers/users of about 10 million people. However it is even forbidden to speak  about cannabis (unless you speak bad about it) and this prohibition is ennforced by the criminal laws. It seems difficult to start a debate about cannabis under such a law. Sad time for a nation that gave us in the past l’Etat de Droit, l’Illuminisme and many other contributes to the European Civilisation.

Albanian police has arrested one person and seized 2040 kg of marijuana. The weed was hidden in a truck that has been stopped while it was trying to enter in Greece crossing the Kakavie border. Post communist Albania is often used as transit point for drugs and weapons. Criminals target Albania because of its lax border controls, a weak judiciary and corrupt police force. But now the Albanian government is trying to joint the NATO and the EU: lower the corruption and stop illicit trafficsis the first condition requested by EU and NATO to go on with the negotiation: a big problem for the Albanian government.

According to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) that has just released its annual report, the young Czechs under 24 remain the harder users of cannabis (marijuana and hashish) in Europe. 28% of them have admitted that thaty have smoked marijuana in 2006. The use oh hard drugs is also really high, double than average in the case of ecstasy (12% of users) and methamphetamine (30.000 people).

One of the chief of the scottish police, has recently declared that “Organised criminals have turned Scotland into a cannabis greenhouse”.  According to his information, criminal organizations from the far east run a net of greenhouses in the whole country. These grenhouses produces marijuana for the value of 1 billion euro per year. The greenhouses are manned by illegal immigrants, that work there 24 hours a day. Many of them are farmers imported with violence from Vietnam. In the past year, more than 30.000 plants worth 40 million euro have been seized, but that’s just the top of the iceberg. The quality of the weed is extremely high, however you can’t  find this weed in Scotland. Almost everything is made to be exported in UK or in Europe.

EU commission expressed concern about an Ice Tea that is producted and legally sold in EU, the C-Ice Swiss Cannabis Ice Tea. That tea is advertised by pointing that it contains 5% cannabis extract and 0.0015% THC - the psychoactive substance of the cannabis. The commission accuses the producer to violate a European Directive 2000/13/EC that forbids  giving misleading information about a product. More in general, the Commission is afraid that such a product could trigger positive attitudes toward cannabis use among young people. Bulgaria, Romania, Germany, Spain, Portugal and the UK are some of the countries that legally and freely sell the Ice Tea. Many other country have forbidden the sale of the beverage, and they have based their decision on article 30 of the EC Agreement, which approves prohibition of products over moral and social health concerns. What a polemic for just a few drops of (inoffensive) tea!

A few days ago, the Dutch government has announced its decision to extend the cannabis’s availability in pharmacies by five years, so more scientific research will be possible. The sale of cannabis specifically as medicine is legal and managed by the governmet since 2003. The Ministry of Health control the production and the quality through a specifically created agency. Sources inside the ministry say that a Dutch company started working on developing a cannabis-based drug last year. Cannabis has at least 5000 years of use as medicine; it was used in China as herbal medicine. More recently, british queen Victoria used cannabis tincture for menstrual pains. Even the international treaties (Single Convention on Narcotics, New York, 1961 and its modifications) expressly authorize and promote the use of cannabis as medicine (and according to the treaties, this is the only use allowed).

A recently published Swiss study is making a lot of noise for its content, that sounds revolutionnary: “Teens that use cannabis may function better than teen tobacco-users, and appear to be more socially driven and have fewer psychosocial problems than those who do not use either substance”. This statement is contained in the final report of this study that has involved 5.263 students, a  very large sample. 3105 of them didn’t use any drug, 455 of them smoke marijuana only and 1703 smoke marijuana mixed with tobacco. The report also says “…even though they are more likely to skip class, they have the same level of good grades; and although they have a worse relationship with their parents, they are not more likely to be depressed”.

Once again, a study shows evidence that marijuana is not a monster. The fact that american scientists have immediately started to scream while reading these results is pretty obvious. How can they justify 80 years of miserable failures in their stupid “war on drugs”?

The Court of Cassazione (Italian Supreme Court) has rejected every charge for a 57 years old man, accused of growing cannabis in his home. The decision of the Supreme Court is in accord with the two decisions of the lower tribunals, that have always recognized the man as not guilty. The man was catched growing a few cannabis plant in his bath tube. When the plants were big enough, the man sold them in a pot with even a little light attached. According to the accuse, every formof cannabis growing should be allowed. According to the judges instead, such little growing operations are legal, if the number of plant is little and if the purpose it’s not growing themto get marijuana.