Since the opening of Coffeeshops (yes, that’s how it is spelt), they have always operated two systems. The so-called ‘front door’ which is legal and the so-called ‘back door’ which is illegal.
These two systems are totally separate and have nothing to do with each other. Let me explain...
Over the past week we have seen an incredible amount of positive press around medical cannabis in the UK.
From Billy Caldwell getting back his life-saving medicine and both him and Alfie Dingley being granted medical licenses to the new Home Secretary Sajid Javid issuing a statement talking about how they will adopt a new policy on cannabis as medicine.
Having been on the front line of a cancer battle for the past 2 and a half years, I have been on a constant quest to keep myself learning so that I can outsmart the disease that turned my life upside down at the end of 2015.
Outsmarting the disease has felt like being on the run from a psychopathic killer that will take a mile if you give it an inch. So far I have been very successful going into remission early and staying there for longer than my prognosis.
Unfortunately, luck played a big part too and I say unfortunately because as a humanist, it’s frustrating that I cannot replicate my luck in others in this regard. I was lucky in two major ways. The first was that my cancer happened to have the right mutations to over-express CB1 receptors making it highly responsive to the entourage effect of simply vaping “Cheese” in a herbal vaporizer every night, crucially while I was halfway through a course of brain radiotherapy.
The second was meeting a survivor who was further along than me who told me about the trial he was on to find how successful the ketogenic diet is against brain cancer. Not only did he give me some crucial lifesaving advice on starving cancer cells of the glucose it prefers to gain fuel on but he told me he started cannabis as soon as he was diagnosed. He happened to be a former police Sergeant so he stood as the first example to me of how indiscriminate serious chronic or “terminal” diseases can be.
This week on ISMOKE we will be finishing up our seven-part series exploring Europe's ever-changing attitudes towards cannabis and looking at how individual nations are preparing future policies for what will eventually and inevitably become a global post-prohibition paradigm.
In this final piece, we'll be looking at the remaining countries on the continent that we have yet to touch upon in the previous six articles – all of which you can read below.
This week in the penultimate article continuing on with our seven-part series exploring the ever-evolving European cannabis scene. In this piece, we’ll be focusing on the former Soviet Union block of Europe.
In this feature, we are discussing the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and its cannabis policies and history. We will then be taking a look at the individual nations created by the fall of the Soviet republic in 1991.
This is the fifth of our seven-part series looking at changing tides in the European cannabis scene.
This week we'll be looking at the Balkan states and countries of the former Yugoslavia.
Named for the Balkan mountain range that stretches from the Serbian/Bulgaria border to the black sea region, this includes. Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Albania, Romania, Serbia, Greece, and Slovenia. We’ll be looking in more depth at some states than others, focusing on Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania as individual countries and The former states of Yugoslavia (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo, Republic of Macedonia and Montenegro) as a collective. We have covered Greece already here in a previous article.
Earlier this week it was announced that the Government in Malta will recognize the efficacy of cannabis for a number of severe medical conditions, and will move towards a medical cannabis system in the country.
The amendments to Malta's Drug Dependence Act (Treatment not Imprisonment) were enacted on the 26 March by Maltese parliament after its…
This week we are continuing on with our multi-part series exploring the ever-changing face of cannabis policy on the European continent.
