Category Archives: Cannabis news

Big Buddha trade mark ‘The Buddha’

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Buddhists in Tibet and throughout the world have been told they may no longer call themselves Buddhists following a cease and desists letter sent from Big Buddha Seeds.

The UK based cannabis seed-bank, Big Buddha Seeds, had previously caused outrage in the stoner community by trademarking the names of cannabis seed strains they had copied, such as Cheese, despite the fact their seeds are a poor imitation of a strain that was originally developed by the Exodus crew in Luton, England, many years ago.

Numerous seed-banks received threatening letters telling them Big Buddha had trademarked “Cheese” along with other well-known strains and informed them legal action would be taken if they continued to use the name “Cheese”.

However, they have now gone one step further and announced they have trademarked “The Buddha” and informed monasteries and buddhist retreats throughout the world they face legal action if they continue to refer to themselves as buddhists.

Milo Yung

Milo Yung, proprietor of Big Buddha Seeds.

Milo Yung, proprietor of Big Big Buddha seeds informed Weedman420 he has also trademarked “Big Phat Cunt” and “Smelly Knob Cheese”.

“I’m the biggest fat cunt and smelly knob cheese in the cannabis industry, therefore I have a duty and obligation to protect my intellectual property.

“Eric Pickles will face the full force of the law should he continue to promote himself as the biggest fat cunt in Britain. That is my title,” said Mr Yung.

Some legal trade mark experts have said Mr Yung may have difficulty enforcing his trade marks, because if an organisation can prove prior usage then a trade mark can be challenged and since Gautama Buddha on whose teachings Buddhism was founded is believed to have lived around 1,500 years ago, it is uncertain whether BBSCO’s trade marks have any validity.

Despite that, some monasteries and new agers have bowed down to Mr Yung’s threats and have already changed their names. The Sharpham Buddhist Centre, just outside the Devon town of Totnes, has said it will be now be known as the Sharpham Barn Bugger Meditation Centre.

The Dalai Lama was unavailable for comment.

Big Buddha, Dalai Lama, trade mark.

Letter sent from Big Buddha Seeds to his Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama.

McDonald’s to open weed friendly smoking areas?

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A cannabis story doing the rounds on social media claims that supergiant fast food restaurant chain McDonald’s is to open marijuana friendly restaurants with special smoking pods, so consumers can enjoy their junk food with their healthy herb.

The story claimed two restaurants in Denver Colorado had already converted the children’s play areas into special smoking areas, complete with ventilation so the smell did not annoy other customers, with another 13 restaurants to follow suit by the end of 2015.

To those of you who thought the story might be too good to be true were indeed correct, it appeared on well known news hoax site Now8News.  Despite the fact the story was an obvious hoax that didn’t stop it getting shared over 50,000 times on Facebook.

The article stated “each facility will consist of fifteen smoking pods in which customers can smoke a joint, bong, or pipe without being harassed or bothered by people who are offended by it.” and that “ McDonald’s will not be getting into the sale of marijuana or marijuana edibles. However, they do welcome their patrons to have a smoke before ordering.”

Marijuana in McDonalds hoax

Photoshopped image of capsules for smoking pot in hoax McDonald’s cannabis article.

The article came complete with a badly photoshopped image of a restaurant, which clearly was not a McDonald’s, with ridiculous looking hangers from the ceiling that were obviously fake.

This site is one of many satirical websites, in this case one that does not post a disclaimer identifying it as such. With no disclaimer, gullible folks will always believe this type of content to be true, no matter how outrageous the story. Chris Bovey, owner of cannabis seed retailer Pot Seeds last year proved how easy it was to hoax people with a short video clip of a plane dumping fuel and a short caption “I filmed this on a plane, what the fuck are they spraying from the airplane wing?”.

Chris knew full well what the video clip was, since he was on the plane travelling from Buenos Aires to London, which had to make an emergency landing in São Paulo, Brazil, shortly after takeoff, due to an unidentified burning smell in the cabin; so the plane had to jetison the fuel to lighten the landing weight. However, although he did it to prank a few friends, the video clip soon went viral, with now over 1,750,000 views and nearly 30,000 shares on Facebook, cited as evidence of chemtrails.

When Chris returned to the UK he added further fuel to the fire by falsely claiming on Facebook that he had been detained by military police at Heathrow airport and had his iPhone confiscated. A number of conspiracy theory websites picked up on the story without checking the facts and he was later invited to tell his story live on the Richie Allen Show on the David Icke radio network, where he came clean and admitted it was a hoax. The story later gained international coverage in Vice who covered the chemtrail hoax. Despite the fact the Chris Bovey admitted it was all a hoax, one year later the story is still being shared on Facebook as evidence of chemtrails.

You can hear the interview with Chris Bovey and Richie Allen here on Soundcloud:

So alas, McDonald’s will not be introducing weed smoking pods, which would actually not be legal in Colorado anyway, since although the recreational sale of cannabis has been legalised in the US state of Colorado, it is still not legal to smoke marijuana in public places and that includes McDonald’s.

Marijuana I'm lovin' it

McDonald’s Cannabis

This is not the first cannabis hoax article to go viral, a few years ago, a hoax story claiming Monsanto were to produce genetically modified cannabis was widely circulated on the internet.

I started a Government petition to ban alcohol

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Why I Started a Government Petition to Ban Alcohol (and then had a beer to celebrate it going live)

By Chris Shaw

August the 26th and I awaken to find an e-mail sitting in my inbox from the Government. At first I was a little worried. I try and stay out of the Government’s way as much as possible, but I read on and realised they finally responded to the “Make the production, sale and use of cannabis legal” petition that I signed weeks ago and, to be honest, I was very, very annoyed.

Downing Street response to cannabis petition.

Official Government response to over 200,000 UK residents calling for cannabis to be legalised.

I understand the Government’s response. Getting drug policy right in this country won’t get you votes from middle England, where the Tories and Labour have been fighting it out since the 90’s. If anything the Government’s response will help them with that base. Even though a 2013 Ipsos MORI poll suggests that 53% of the UK population support either legalisation or decriminalization of cannabis, we still have a lot of anti-cannabis hysteria in 21st century Britain, mainly thanks to right-wing news organizations and a lack of public figures that call for more liberal laws on drugs.

Another reason is because of big money interests. Do you think big pharmaceutical companies would be happy with a freely available medicine for many ailments to become free to use for anyone? And big booze companies that own the intoxicant market? No they would be livid. It’s not like politicians don’t know what the right thing to do when it comes to drugs laws. David Cameron, as a member of the home affairs select committee on drug misuse, said back in 2002 ‘I ask the Labour Government not to return to retribution and war on drugs, that has been tried and we all know that it does not work.’

Another reason why I understood the response (and let’s keep it real here guys) is that cannabis is a mind altering intoxicate, which can cause adverse effects and health issues in some people. Every substance has different effects on different people, but that’s all a reason for legalization; and none of the health or social issues associated with cannabis are as bad than the ones associated with alcohol.

So when I read the response to the cannabis petition I had a little think … all of their talking points where the same ones they used in America in the 1920’s to push through probation of alcohol. So what if you were replace the word cannabis and swapped it with alcohol? Would it still make sense? I did it and, guess what, it made perfect sense! So I then decided that I would take this straight to the Government in form of a petition to ban alcohol and make it a Class A drug

Highlighting Government hypocrisy over cannabis and alcohol.

Please sign and see what the Government has to say – https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/106811

Now hardly anybody reading this is likely to believe banning alcohol would be a good idea, most of all me. It would bring violence and organised crime to our streets. People would flaunt the laws and start making dodgy batches of booze in their baths with anti-freeze and other such dangerous additives, which people would happily put up with just to get their fix and children will be freely available to start buying alcohol due to fact that no one will care about an ID. Do any of these talking points seem familiar to you?

The point of this petition is not to get alcohol banned for the same reasons we say cannabis shouldn’t be banned. It’s to point out government hypocrisy. The same hypocrisy we’ve been putting up with for years. If the government is happy to say drink responsibly, then why can’t we smoke responsibly?

So please sign my petition. We only need 10,000 signatures to get a response from the Government and that’s all we need to show people they do not really care about our health, but rather their interests and with this petition we can point this out to the wider public and help our cause.

In case you missed it, you can sign online here – https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/106811… remember this is about highlighting Government hypocrisy over cannabis laws, not seriously proposing the introduction of alcohol prohibition in the UK and to see what they say in view of their response to the cannabis petition.

Police crack down on bong vendors

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West Yorkshire police to crack down on cola bottle bongsWest Yorkshire Police have called for vendors selling plastic bottles of soft drinks, Bic biros, copper tubes, sellotape and rubber bungs to be prosecuted if they knowingly sell them for the purposes of making improvised smoking paraphernalia to administer or prepare controlled drugs.

The announcement came after a West Yorkshire Police crackdown on so-called ‘legal highs’ following the successful prosecution in a Magistrate’s Court of a shop owner for supplying articles used to administer or prepare controlled drugs.

According to the Yorkshire Post, the court heard goods including bongs, plastic bags and grinders – all decorated with cannabis leaf motifs – were sold from the store.

While it is not illegal to sell the items in themselves, prosecutor Robert Campbell argued that store owner Hassan Abbas and fellow defendant, shop assistant Owen Allerton, would have known that they would be used by cannabis smokers.

Mr Campbell successfully argued that paraphernalia should only be sold if the vendor is absolutely certain they are to be used with legal tobacco (that contains chemicals such as tar, arsenic, benzene, cadimium, formaldelhyde, polonium-210, chromium, 1,3-butadiene, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, nitrosamines, and acrolein).

Following the successful prosecution of a legal VAT registered business, a spokesman for West Yorkshire Police said they would like to expand the initiative.

“Rather than put too much police resources into trivial matters such as murder, rape, burglary and the trafficking of Vietnamese slave children, we intend to crack down further on the vendors of any items which can be easily made into a DIY bong.

“It’s come to our attention people have been using empty bottles of Sprite, plastic tubing from Bic biro pens or copper pipes, to make their own homemade bongs with which to smoke cannabis. We are working with the Home Office to come up with new and innovative ways to stop people from smoking cannabis. The message needs to be sent out that bongs and pipes are only meant for smoking deadly tobacco.”

Mr Matey

Could Mr Matey be used to smoke illegal contraband?A spokesman for the Home Office said they welcomed the initiative and were considering new legislation, but accepted it might prove rather difficult, conceding there were some people who bought Mr Matey bubble bath for legitimate reasons.

The Home Office spokesman said, “We applaud this initiative by West Yorkshire Police and the message needs to put across that if people wish to fill their lungs with an intoxicating substance, then it must only be smoke from a substance that is manufactured by big multinational corporations, sold by all major supermarkets and generates billions in taxation for the Government.

“We are working closely with drug charities, neighbourhood watch schemes, Police Commissioners and law enforcement agencies, to ensure smoking paraphernalia is only sold in the UK for the purposes of smoking tobacco. Vendors who knowingly sell biro pens, plastic bottles or even packets of Pringles that are used to make improvised bongs for smoking cannabis can expect to feel the full force of the law.”

Pringles cannabis bong

West Yorkshire Police warn shops selling Pringles they face prosecution if the empty box is used for smoking cannabis.

False media claims young mother dies of cannabis overdose

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Cannabis users throughout the UK and the world have been horrified at the sensationalist  claims in the UK media that the first death attributed to cannabis in the UK has been documented, with the tragic death of Gemma Moss, who died last year.

A pathologist, Dr Kudair Hussein, gave the verdict that cannabis was responsible for her death. The Daily Mail, the BBC, the Daily Telegraph, even the front page of the free London newspaper, The Metro, picked up this story in order to demonise weed.

The problems I have is this is a most unscientific verdict and irresponsible reporting by the British media. For starters it is impossible to die from a cannabis overdose, the science says cannabis cannot kill. The LD50 of THS is 1:20,000 –1:40,000, that means the lethal dose of THC is 20,000 to 40,000 the active dose. In other words you would have to smoke a shedload to overdose; this is simply impossible.

The tragic death of Gemma Moss is unscientifically blamed on cannabis toxicity by the mainstream media.

Justice for Gemma Moss

This didn’t stop the media publishing lies that Gemma Moss died from cannabis toxicity; even the pathologist in question did not actually say that, he said she had a heart attack triggered by cannabis because she had cannabis in her system and half a joint was by her bed. While this is not impossible to completely rule out, it is very unlikely that half a doobie would trigger a heart attack and to splatter Gemma Moss’ picture all over the media, claiming she died from a cannabis overdose (impossible) is both wrong and disrespectful to her memory and her friends and family.

As Prof David Nutt, chair of the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs has already pointed out in his blog about the death of Gemma Moss, it is quite plausible that the additional small stress caused by that cannabis joint triggered a one-in-a-million cardiac event, just as has been more frequently recorded from sport, sex, saunas and even straining on the toilet.

The truth is we simply do not know why Gemma Moss died and the chances that cannabis was the cause of death are extremely low indeed. You are more likely to have a cardiac arrest from a hot bath or drinking coffee. In fact, this would make it officially the safest recreational substance known to mankind, if the story were even true, but this didn’t stop the prohibitionists shamefully using it, with total disregard to the feelings of the family, to use it as prohibitionist propaganda.

It has been said Ms Moss suffered from depression, which Prof Nutt states increases the risk of a sudden cardiac arrest.

I’m pleased to see the NORML UK cannabis campaign take up this story and have called on people to write to the Poole Hospital NHS Foundation Trust to inform them the science says cannabis cannot kill and to ask for reinvestigation into the death of Gemma Moss. They explain you can write to the Ombudsman if you do not receive a satisfactory response, which is your right.

I’m going to do this, not only because the truth should be told, but we owe it to the memory of Gemma Moss who has had her memory slurred by the gutter press and media. May she rest in peace.

The levers of democracy – cannabis activism in the UK

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th (1)Since the Legalise Cannabis Alliance (LCA) sat down with the Home Secretary to have cannabis downgraded to a Class C drug in 2004, the movement has struggled with what to do in making a change. There has been factionalism and no clear leadership (no matter what certain groups believe). Those who choose the liberal, non egocentric approach are working on a variety of different fronts to achieve the same aim – liberalisation of cannabis laws. Over this blog we will examine the various ways of harnessing what some term “democracy” in Britain.

Politicians in the UK are supposed to lead but they in fact follow. Most of them, even in the cannabis movement, are empty husks with no firm idea of what they want except to be on TV or radio where possible. Those in the major parties take their ideas from the newspapers – their leaders augment that with opinion polls which is an expensive way of asking “what do people think after reading the newspaper?” 

Sativa cannabis

The fact is there is so much bias the citizens of the UK are deluded rather than informed. Politicians talk so much rubbish and are frequently so incoherent you wonder what was actually in their teacakes when they sat down to elevenses in the Commons café…

Being confused and morally empty, they are vulnerable too – as any nutcase is on a psychiatric ward. Since they are vulnerable, this leaves them open to influence. One wonders who Theresa May hangs out with when she blatantly banned the legal sale of Qat and handed its supply to drug dealers?

Where one cannot be certain that May spends her summer holidays in a Colombian mansion, if she did this would show how lobbying and activism can work. If we look at something that has certainly happened – the government going soft on alcohol policy. The science is clear that price is linked to alcohol abuse. The NHS could save £1billion a year by pricing people vulnerable to alcoholism off the cheap booze. However, booze suppliers would lose several £ billions in income from fewer people becoming alcoholics.  They lobbied the government with lots of free booze and false science to show that being pissed eases plebs’ lives when their benefits are cut. The government backed away from minimum pricing.

You’re reading this, asking how in hell you would get half the Cabinet stoned on teacakes and to convince them plebs can feel better when stoned about their benefits being cut by Atos? The cannabis movement has to start at the grassroots. On the 20th July UK Uncut have turned a number of HSBC bank branches into food banks. Groups of them went into the branches and offered customers interest free cat food and baked beans to highlight the tax practices of the bank in question.

UK Uncut have seized the global political agenda by doing something similar. In 2010 they went into over 50 Vodafone shops and prevented them from trading. Until that day tax avoidance was a nonentity on the UK news agenda. Since then the G20 has announced a system to shut tax loopholes and one day, may succeed in making major multinationals pay what they owe in host countries. Not bad for a bunch of smelly students sitting in a mobile phone shop!

Stunts in short, work. I argued above that most government policy comes from politicians reading newspapers. If you give newspapers something to write about? Politicians read about you. There are a number of events that have happened – 10 000 cannabis activists in Hyde Park earlier this year, and an upcoming cannabis picnic in Reading. Even the Daily Mail wrote about the Hyde Park event.

Lobbying doesn’t have to be civil disobedience or protest. Some of the most exciting legal changes are coming in law courts. The Courts have almost the same amount of power as Parliament. The Cannabis campaign NORML wrote about Michelle X who hopes the Courts will give her an unconditional discharge for her medical cannabis use. If they do? There will be a de facto medical cannabis law in the UK. As is, she told me that the police didn’t want to raid her home and only did when some lowlife made allegations that kids were in her home and she was dealing.

The police don’t want to bust stoners as it is a waste of time and resources. Tom Lloyd, speaking to the NORML AGM, referred to his former colleagues thinking of cannabis busts as “cleaning sewers” – no matter what you do, more sewage will come through. This opens the door to direct lobbying at a low level. NORML wrote to most of the police commissioner candidates in the UK to get their opinions on cannabis use. Their survey gave an idea of who thought it a low priority and who was a Daily Heil reading monster. The next phase should have been for local NORML volunteers to sit with those identified as waiverers – people who might be bent toward a soft touch on cannabis – and those who are already taking the view that cannabis is a low priority.

In sitting with them and forming a relationship, so you have started low level lobbying. Police Commissioners are all politicians. To be a politician? You have to be an empty husk who likes to be on TV. Making a popular decision will get TV time!

Low level, regional work may well be the way forward. The US has a lot more democracy than we do and at a local level have won many a battle. We all know about the warfare between the Feds and states in the US don’t we? Why not use the local levers of power in the UK?