Skunk.co.uk has just added some new skunk seed strains to its catalogue at www.skunk.co.uk. These are Afropips seeds and the World of Seeds feminized range.

Afropips contains some very interesting strains such as the Malawi Mini strain. The shorter statured compact version of the first grade Malawi Gold that has been developed for height restricted indoor cultivation. It will also perform well outdoors in the Southern Hemisphere.

Afropips is a superior collection of genetics for the cannabis connoisseur. Their excellent range consists of African heritage landrace cannabis strains from legendary growing regions & top growers. It includes intriguing new f1 cultivars created by combining the finest African sativas with international fast flowering favorites & Cannabis Cup Winners. These strains show superb hybrid vigour, as one would expect from their high quality parentage. Afropips was started in the year 2000 to satisfy the palette & medical requirements of the Afroman, their breeder. All seeds are professionally selected; pressure tested, packaged and sealed. Each crush proof pack contains 10 seeds. Afropips seeds are produced entirely organically and only the plumpest & ripest seeds from the most recent harvests are used.

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This news was actually released in late 2006 early 2007 and it just goes to demonstrate what a total cock-up the current US Administration has made of eradicating Cannabis.

In Rob Kampia’s words - executive director of Washington’s Marijuana Policy Project - “The fact that marijuana is America’s number-one cash crop after more than three decades of governmental eradication efforts is the clearest illustration that our present marijuana laws are a complete failure,”

Marijuana is the most valuable cash crop in the United States, worth more to its growers than corn and wheat combined, according to a new report by a leading American drug reform lobbyist that cites the US government’s own figures.

Decades of government efforts to crack down on both the cultivation and consumption of pot have had a counter-productive effect, since even the most conservative government estimates suggest domestic marijuana production has increased tenfold in the past 25 years. It is the leading cash crop in 12 states, and one of the top five crops in 39 states.

The report’s author, Jon Gettman, says it is “larger than cotton in Alabama, larger than grapes, vegetables and hay in California, larger than peanuts in Georgia, and larger than tobacco in South and North Carolina”.

California accounts for almost a third of all US production. It is a major economic force in the state, especially in the redwood forests in the north, where the smell of weed wafts unmistakably down the streets of several towns.

Marijuana remains popular with the baby boomer generation, which first experimented with it in the 1950s and 1960s. And its use is booming among teenagers and young adults, especially as alcohol cannot be sold to under 21s. US Marijuana cultivation is worth more than $35bn (£18bn) per year. And that is a conservative estimate, based on government price surveys, Mr Gettman says. Corn, the largest legitimate crop, is worth just over $23bn and soybeans around $17bn. “Despite years of effort by law enforcement, they’re not getting rid of it,” Mr Gettman told the Los Angeles Times ahead of his report’s publication yesterday in The Bulletin of Cannabis Reform. “Not only is the problem worse in terms of magnitude of cultivation, but production has spread all around the country. To say the genie is out of the bottle is a profound understatement.”

Figures issued by the State Department and other government agencies show marijuana production increased from an estimated 2.2 million pounds in 1981 to at least 22 million pounds. Some estimates put the current crop as high as 50 million pounds.

Since the presidency of George Bush Snr in the late 1980s, official policy has been one of zero tolerance of all illegal narcotics. Recently, the federal government has been unforgiving of the medical marijuana movement, and federal agents have raided numerous marijuana farms that were fully licensed under state law.

It has not cut down use of the drug. Mr Gettman and other activists argue that it might be time to legalise the entire industry and subject it to proper regulatory control and taxation.

Thanks to the Independent for this story.

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The most expensive place in the world to get stoned is Japan, according to the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime’s annual World Drug Report. The street price of a gram of cannabis weed was $58.30 in 2005, over twice as much as in the next most expensive nation, Australia. Americans pay nearly twice as much as Canadians. Similar disparities occur in Europe. Although the Netherlands is the only Western country where cannabis can be bought legally, punters pay more there than in Germany or France. Happily for us, prices are cheapest in the UK, South Africa and in developing countries, where enforcement is less strict.

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This is an article taken from the Guardian.co.uk website.

Cannabis users are smoking more of the stronger stuff as skunk marijuana pushes traditional pot to the sidelines of the British drugs market, a government advisory panel heard today.

The highly potent sinsemilla, or “skunk” as it’s known on the street, is now used by up to 70% of cannabis users, jumping from just 15% six years ago.

The evidence marked the beginning of a two-day fact-finding mission by the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD). The information presented will form the basis of the council’s recommendations to the government about whether or not cannabis should be reclassified as a class B drug, after being bumped down to class C four years ago.

Marjorie Wallace, the chief executive of the mental health charity Sane, said she believed cannabis should be returned to class B to combat what she said were mixed messages on its harmfulness.

Rawlins asked: “Are you really wanting people to go to prison for five years for possession? Bear in mind that 3.5 million took cannabis last year - there aren’t enough prison spaces to deal with them all.”

The national director for mental health at the Department of Health, Louis Appleby, told the committee that attitudes towards cannabis had become complacent.

He said health professionals had been “guilty of complacency” on the issue.

Pointing to evidence that implicates marijuana use in the development of severe mental illness, Appleby called cannabis a “harmful drug” that contributed to a cycle of relapse and risk in mentally disordered patients.

Cindy Barnett of the Magistrates Association told the hearing that downgrading “sent out the wrong message”.

“An awful lot of people think cannabis is now legal,” she said. “We feel very strongly it is a question of mixed messages, confusion and increasing harm that is being caused by reclassification to class C and we feel very strongly it should go back to class B.”

Dr Les King, an adviser to the Home Office scientific development branch, told the ACMD several hundred samples seized by police on the streets in just the last weeks showed levels of skunk had rocketed, while cannabis resin, or hash, had slumped to being used by 20% of smokers, compared to over 60% previously.

Traditional herbal cannabis now accounts for just 5% of seizures, compared with 15% six years ago, he added.

“The large increase in the market share of sinsemilla appears to have come about in the last few years,” said King. “It is now clearly the dominant product. It coincides with the rise of these large organised criminal concerns run by the Vietnamese. Traditional herbal cannabis has almost been squeezed out of the market.”

The Vietnamese “concerns” King refers to is the sharp escalation of pot farms over the past couple of years. In the two years up to March 2007, police had raided 1,500 cannabis factories in London alone - triple the amount from the two years previous to that period, according to earlier figures from the drugs charity DrugScope.

David Potter, of GW Pharmaceuticals, who has conducted a separate survey of samples from a number of police forces, told the ACMD he had found a similar swing towards stronger cannabis.

“It’s like a wave moving towards the more potent end,” he said. “People are moving towards sinsemilla, which is a much, much more potent product. This has the potential to change the cannabis scene quite a lot.”

The ACMD heard that skunk contains higher levels of the active ingredient in cannabis, known as THC. But it also contains much lower levels of another ingredient, cannabidiol or CBD, an anti-psychotic substance which may moderate effects of THC on the mental health of users.

The home secretary, Jacqui Smith, has said she would keep an open mind on the issue of reclassification in the face of calls for tougher penalties for possession from the police and the opposition.

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The Transform Drug Policy Foundation is a charitable think tank that seeks to draw public attention to the fact that drug prohibition itself is the major cause of drug-related harm to individuals, communities and nations, and should be replaced by effective, just and humane government control and regulation.

Transform has emerged in response to the increasingly apparent failings of current UK and international drug policy. As illegal drug use and the problems associated with illegal drug markets have continued to grow, Transform is providing new thinking on alternatives to the current enforcement-oriented regime of prohibition.

In short, Transform is seeking to reform policies that have attempted to control drug use through criminal justice enforcement, a failed approach that has been enormously destructive.

For a concise introduction to what motivates the Transform Drug Policy Foundation to do their work, please download their publicity leaflet “Illegal Drugs: The Problem is Prohibition; The Solution is Control and Regulation“.

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Skunk.co.uk is urgently looking for people to help write Press Releases and maybe news-related Blog Posts for this blog.

As the press releases will essentially be released through a partner website to the Google News network, we will be looking for the following:

• A very good command of the English Language and strong writing skills
• A strong interest in Cannabis news
• Some knowledge or preferably some experience of how to put together concise, interesting press releases

After an initial trial period, this will potentially become a paid position for the right person.

If you are interested, or want to find out more, please contact us via our main contact form at http://www.skunk.co.uk/contact_us.php and put as the subject “Writing”.

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Last Autumn, during a nationally televised presidential debate, Barack Obama hesitantly raised his hand and joined with most of his Democratic rivals to declare that he opposed decriminalising cannabis.

But as a candidate for the U.S. Senate four years ago, Mr. Obama told Illinois college students that he supported eliminating criminal penalties for cannabis use or possession, according to a videotape of a debate that was obtained by The Washington Times.

“I think we need to rethink and decriminalize our marijuana laws,” Mr. Obama told an audience during a debate at Northwestern University in 2004. “But I’m not somebody who believes in legalization of marijuana.”

Asked about the two different answers, Mr. Obama’s presidential campaign said he in fact has “always” supported decriminalising cannabis as he answered in 2004, meaning the candidate mistakenly raised his hand during the presidential debate last fall.

That position leaves Mr. Obama as the lone presidential candidate among the four leading challengers in either party who supports eliminating criminal penalties for cannabis. Mr. Obama’s chief rival for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton, opposes decriminalisation.

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This is a map showing all the Cannabis laws throughout the world - please click on it for a full-size version. The map shows the following Cannabis law ‘levels’: Legal/Essentially Legal, decriminalized, illegal but often unenforced, confirmed illegal, probably illegal, varies by region, no information.

.

Thanks to Wikipedia.

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The BBC website published a story yesterday, following on from two studies recently published in Respirology and the European Respiratory Journal suggesting that heavy cannabis users may be at a significantly greater risk of chronic lung disease - including cancer - compared to tobacco smokers.

One of the studies took a sample group of 79 patients in New Zealand and claimed that the risk of lung cancer rose 8% for each year of smoking one joint a day, and 7% for each year of smoking an entire packet of cigarettes a day. The speculated reason for this was “…the heightened risk may be connected to the fact that the cannabis smoker inhales more deeply and for longer, increasing the amount of carbon monoxide.”

A second, smaller study was conducted amongst 10 smokers - yes ten - who were treated for chronic respiratory problems at the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne. All of them admitted intense cannabis use for at least a year and had developed bullous lung disease, a condition where air becomes trapped in the lungs, at an average age of 41, compared to 65 for tobacco smoking patients.

Thankfully, the campaign group Transform Drug Policy Foundation added a bit of perspective to this, suggesting that it is very difficult to separate cannabis from tobacco use as the two were so often smoked together. They continued to point out that inhaling smoke from any burning object was intrinsically harmful, and that policy should focus more on educating people about the risks of taking the drug - which can be taken using other methods.

The UK Government may decide later this year whether it will reclassify cannabis as a class B drug, having downgraded it to a class C substance in 2004. There is some evidence to suggest that usage has actually fallen since reclassification occurred.

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Proposals to return marijuana to a Class B drug in England have caused a clash between the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs and the British government.

Council member Les Iversen, a pharmacologist at Oxford University, said he was unhappy with “what appears to be a deliberate leak about the government’s alleged intention to reclassify” marijuana, or cannabis, regardless of the panel’s advice.

Iversen said if the change is made without the council’s recommendation it would be unprecedented “and it would call into question the whole function and future of this group.”

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Home Secretary Jacqui Smith reportedly were determined to upgrade the drug from Class C to Class B, a status it held prior to 2004, The Independent reported Sunday.

“There is no significantly new evidence to suggest that cannabis is any more harmful than in the last review we did 18 months ago,” said the Rev. Martin Blakeborough, who runs Kaleidoscope, a drug abuse charity.

“The only reason that the ACMD is being forced to discuss this matter is because every new home secretary seems to want to show how tough they are.”

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