VLVL news: marijuana & Reagan & The Netherlands

[Mark Wright AIA]

Howdy
This fellow supports a "laboratory style greenhouse", production
records and database maintenance, a *moat*, 39 (he couldn't go for 40
just to keep his numbers round?) surveillance cameras and a security
staff on *ten* whole kilo's a month?? And he doesn't even have to
package it for distribution! At least we can be sure he isn't in it for
large money.... He must figure it's a growth industry (ha ha)

Mark


--- pynchonoid <pynchonoid at yahoo.com> wrote:
> <http://www.rnw.nl/hotspots/html/can030901.html>
> 
> [...] The Dutch government has started distributing
> cannabis as a prescription painkiller to pharmacies to
> treat chronically ill patients. The Hague had already
> been turning a blind eye to medicinal cannabis use,
> but now it's become the world's first government to
> supply the drug itself, in accordance with United
> Nations rules on narcotics.
> 
> [...] Production is left to two official suppliers,
> who grow their cannabis not for coffee shops but
> exclusively for the government. One of the licences
> went to James Burton, an American expatriate, who
> grows his plants in laboratory-style conditions in his
> well-guarded greenhouse, surrounded by water and
> guarded by 39 cameras and security staff.
> 
> Every month, Mr Burton will sell approximately 10
> kilos of medical cannabis to the Health Ministry,
> which in turn packages and labels the drug in small
> tubs to supply to pharmacies.
> 
> "Each plant is individually numbered," he says, "it
> has a starting date, an identification number and a
> pharmacy crop number, so that all the cannabis is
> recallable and traceable." 
> 
> Mr Burton hails the plant's medical benefits, calling
> it "a miracle drug, because it works for many, many
> diseases." He has a special passion for the plant
> because it saved his eyesight. "All my family members
> have glaucoma on the male side, caused by a genetic
> defect, and they're either blind or legally blind. Had
> I not smoked cannabis at an early age in the military
> service, I also would have been blind." 
> 
> As cannabis proved to work where conventional therapy
> had failed, Mr Burton became a research subject in
> America, where academic centres and hospitals studied
> the effects of government-provided cannabis on his
> eyes. 
> 
> But the tide turned in the early eighties when Ronald
> Reagan came in as US president on his
> "just-say-no-to-drugs" policy. All research into
> medical cannabis was stopped, and James Burton
> resorted to growing cannabis for his own use. After he
> was arrested and his house and car impounded, he moved
> to the Netherlands -  "the only place in the world at
> the time, where you could grow cannabis, and with one
> of the best eye-hospitals in the world located in
> Rotterdam."
> 
> Now after 20 years, Mr Burton has become an official
> cannabis supplier to the Dutch government. He finds it
> ironic that in this capacity he'll soon be exporting
> marijuana into the US for new research purposes.[...] 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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