Hi! My name is Kristian and im a Norwegian pot-smoker. For 2 years I were unemployed and in this time I used pretty much every day researching Cannabis politics, history, culture and science (the damage it does to your body). So I have read a insane amount about "the war on drugs", and how drug policies have been executed in the US, and now a year later i still read up almost as much as before. Not to point fingers, but what I have seen from American activists is that there is always a lot of talk about how much prohobition damages the American society, not to much internationally. I am mentioning this because (in principle) America started the prohobition and the war on drugs and took it internationally, so the US is sort of responsible for the world wide prohobition. But as said earlier, not to point fingers. Prop 19. in California was a glimse of hope, not just for California, not just for America, but for the whole world. The Scandinavian countries (Northern-Europe) pretty much just copy what America does, IF prop 19. had passed this could have saved us many years on waiting on legalization (we all know its a question of when and not if), if anything big like that happends in the US norwegian media sucks it up and write insane amounts about it. And this counts for a lot of the world, they are just waiting for the US to get something done. If there is ever going to be a change it looks like its gonna be the US who has to stand in the frontlines. Sure there is a couple of countries that have somewhat liberal laws like Portugal, Germany (some cities), Holland and Denmark (Copenhagen), but there is not a official legalization of cannabis anywhere. Just wanted all of you to know that we are all counting on you guys and these past years a lot has been done. Stoners all over the world are depending on you Americans, you guys are the front lines against the war on drugs! And to finish off I just want to say thanks a lot for all of you that have been fighting these past years, even in Norway there are hints of a debate. PS: Sorry if its a little badly written and misspelled words, english is my second language. And now off to have a spliff of terrible norwegian hash!
i wholeheartedly agree. America started this prohibition nonsense, and is still its strongest advocate (at least in the western world). Whilst some countries, especially in europe, have begun to liberalize their drug laws it is too politically difficult to move all the way to legalization. This is not not least because there are international treaties such as the Single Convention On Narcotic drugs (1961) which prohibit countries from legalizing drugs,notice even in portugal and holland drugs are technically still prohibited. Countries going against this would be seen as rogue nations to some extent. For these reasons i think it would be enormously beneficial and preferable if the US was to lead the way on drug legalization. If regulated legalization can be proven to work in california and/or other US states its impact would be huge. Not only would be an example to the rest of the world, but it would rob the US government of its authority when arguing for tough prohibitionist policies, and it could potentially create a snowball effect of reform of cannibas prohibition laws. BTW. there is no way that we would have gotten 46% support for legalization if that vote was taken in australia. My guess would be under 30%
It sucks to live in a country that seems to have so much influence and power on the world but their own citizens seem to have no power to influence their own elected officials..
I agree with you completely. You wrote what I was planning on writing after joining the forum. I myself am from Finland, and I'm not sure Californians truly appreciated their power when they voted on proposition 19. The thing is, the prohibition isn't as major an issue here as it is in the US. You can tell that because the use of cannabis was criminalized following a coin toss in parliament. The media never mentioned proposition 19, until George Soros donated his $1 million and even that was just "filler news." A lot of people still think that cannabis is comparable with heroin, because it's called a "huume" (~"drug") in Finnish, which unlike the English word "drug", exclusively refers to the illegal type of drugs. I still remember how much they outright lied to us in elementary school. For example, "there is no such thing as a mild drug, they are all very dangerous", equating weed with meth. Most of my generation views cannabis fairly reasonably. But some still believe in the over-the-top Reefer Madness talk. If proposition 19 had passed, it would've been (hopefully) all over the news, and become a wake up call to everybody here.
Same situation here, November 1. i checked google for prop 19 related articles in Norway and found no more than 17. And some of those articles were only a few sentences -.- It's not easy getting people informed when the media is working against you -.-
It's not easy to get any lobbying or campaigns done either when Finland's "Cannabis Society" (SKY - Suomen Kannabisyhdistys) does nothing at all. And their leaders are literally hippies from the 60s. Just look at NORML or the MPP, they have young guys in suits. But one other thing that really amazed me about the Proposition 19 campaign is that the official No on Prop 19 group barely talked anything about marijuana "destroying your brains and making you commit suicide" like the representative of an anti-drugs organization did here in a TV debate a month ago, but instead focused mostly on nitpicking proposition 19 not changing the current laws on being high on the job or driving high. Which simply means that far too many Californians are pro-legalization to believe any of the reefer madness B.S., but impressionable enough to get some of them to vote No because of a minor flaw in prop 19. Still, this would never be the case in Finland. You get labeled a drug user the minute you question the "zero tolerance" policies here.
Yeah it's really hard getting out there to people when they are just being ignorant of all the facts they thrown in the face. In a discussion the other guy said "I have heard all of these arguments before", and does that make them bad? He apperantly thought so -.- Right now in Norway (and maybe for a lot more of the world, i don't know) there is no research on the hash being sold on the black market and we have no idea what were actually putting in to out bodys. The only commitment the Norwegian goverment have put in to the "cannabis-problem" is raiding and going to high schools with dogs. I read somewhere that the price of cannabis would drop from 300 $ for 1 ounce to 30, in Norway you pay double (600$) for hash that looks and tastes more like asfalt than hash. Just wan't to let you lucky bastards in California, some of you dont know how good you have it PS: Love Finlands chocolate, TUPLA
This can only work if states individually vote for a legalization, a federal legalization will never happen in the US, waaay to many people up in high places getting rich because of the prohobition. but as you said, we can only hope for a snowball effect. That does mean that every stoner/pot smoker/pro cannabis supporter CAN do something locally, here it's a little harder. A guy that lives 10 minutes from me started a official Cannabis political party to get some media attention and inform people, and they pulled a Mark Emery on him. Not as serious as the Emery case offcourse, but this is how it works, speak up and they'll shut you right up! America have a actual debate on this and with a lot of media on their side! Your fight locally could potentially help houndreds of thousands of people around the world, reflect on that the next time you hit that bong. As i said in my first post, whatever America does Scandinavia supports or at least considers. And offcourse many other countries in the world will be affected if this would happend, but i don't know enough on more countries policies on this matter to actually say anything i know for sure.