Mild Greens solve Twin Towers Puzzle....Opium Glut from Taleban - time to Regulate

The Mild Greens say the War on Drugs fails all ethical and quality standards, is a gross abuse of international Health Policy, and is well past its used-by date.

International Health Ministers are Meeting in Christchurch, New Zealand to attempt to work out what is wrong with the international health system. The 13CHMM Conference has particular concern about smoking related uptake and health costs - and tobacco control, but also the major issue of AIDS related transmission and treatment is high on the agenda.

Meanwhile, drug enforcement industry leaders are concerned their funding might have to be increased to deal with increased output of opium. It is understood that the Taleban regulated Opium trading on the back of beleaguered Afghans having few other ways of surviving.

Aids is a problem frequently associated with opiate use and other desperate activity occurring beyond the reach of health services and education.

If the world economy was not so grossly distorted by the prohibition, and population groups not so afflicted by systemic inequity and injustice, then the twin towers of global finance may not have been such an attractive target, say the Mild Greens.

"There is an identifiable problem with effective health promotion as it relates to apparently 'inequitable' drug use, unprincipled policy and issues such as cultural and economic peer pressure to break the rules"

"Join the Dots" say the Mild Greens.

Coincidentally the Health Select Committee is holding an inquiry into the exact same thing (Cannabis related Health Strategies and Health Promotion) - and the Smoke Free environments act is due for imminent modification including "herbal smoking products" by January 1 2002.

Meanwhile nurses employed by the Canterbury District Health Board are protesting outside the Christchurch convention center where Health Ministers of the World are gathered. While the nurses are protesting for equitable pay, the actual problem is undervaluing of best practice to alleviate suffering and expenditure - The Global health burden.

The Problem is the international health and law and order systems are in an "unhealthy relationship", say the Mild Greens.

"It's prohibition, You Ning Nongs", said Blair Anderson and Kevin O'Connell. "Fix the weakest link between blatant and insidious health inequity, misappropriation of public funds, and systemic failure."

The UN Millennium Declaration to “open, equitable, rule-based, predictable and non-discriminatory multilateral trading and financial systems” is in disrepute. PROHIBITION IS POLICY FRAUD and the WAR ON DRUGS IS A WAR ON US!

When governments set their health priorities it should be Hospitals not Prisons, say the Mild Greens - and biofuel not fossil fuel, and hempfields not landfills.

Instead, Billions of dollars is being sapped off and laundered in the Policing of corrupt international drug prohibition, the big brother of the so called War on Terror.

World Health Organisation figures in 1996 estimated the Global Illicit Drug Trade at US$400 billion/pa.

"Now drug enforcers, who are also coincidentally "terror enforcers", are warning people of an opium glut - as if they didn't know prohibition is the benefactor of organised crime and terrorist networks"

"Prohibition is a repressive control". Say the Mild Greens, "the perfect mechanism to promote crime, conflict, alienation, fanaticism and dissent and mask it every which way."

The wrong people are being given powers to which they are not entitled, to drop bombs disguised as food parcels, allow a few more million innocent people die, to inappropriately demonise plants and snoop universally stealing the freedom of otherwise law abiding citizens (lest they might not agree with cognitive liberty, mass destruction, bigoted policy or warmongering).

By extrapolating New Zealand cannabis use figures (52% of surveyed New Zealanders), it estimated that approximately 3.2 billion world citizens are complicit in drug related crime - "technically we can largely all be considered War Criminals" said O'Connell and Anderson.

"Time to set the prisoners free..." - say the Mild Greens.

Controlled availability - for example by prescription - is an entirely rational way to deal with certain currently "criminalised" drugs.

"Legalise - de-regulate and control cannabis under minimum provisions of the smokefree Environment's Enhanced Protection". That's the first and foremost ingredient in the recipe for success and harmony, say the Mild Greens. "Here's the Peace Dividend of September 11th - are the Health Ministers of the world wise enough to pick it up???"

There needs to be a new Single Convention: "End the WAR, END GLOBAL CRIMINALISATION POLICY", say the Mild Greens.

cc: Hon. Annette King, Minister of Health. cc: Canturbury District Health Board.

sig. Blair Anderson mailto:blair@technologist.com

Mild Green Media Centre phone ++64 3 389-4065 Web site http://pages.quicksilver.net.nz/blair News forum news://www.reddfish.co.nz/alcp "Blair's Brain on Cannabis" PlainsFM 96.9 every Wed 10:00pm

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Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>