THE Home Secretary Jack Straw is refusing to allow doctors to prescribe

THE Home Secretary, Jack Straw, is refusing to allow doctors to prescribe cannabis to their patients because he fears that it could be as dangerous as Thalidomide, writes Graham Ball. Thalidomide was a medicinal drug given to pregnant women in the 1960s as a remedy for morning sickness and nausea but was later found to be the agent responsible for widespread defects and abnormalities in babies. Mr Straw made this remarkable comparison in a televised confrontation with the satirist, Mark Thomas, which was broadcast on Channel 4 last Wednesday.
The Home Secretary said: “It does not follow that because there are no deaths from a drug, it is therefore not harmful. I was not very impressed.”Jack Straw was absurd when he compared cannabis to Thalidomide. People have been using cannabis all over the world for thousands of years without serious side-effects.”Geoff Atkinson, the producer of The Mark Thomas Comedy Product, asked Channel 4 to extend the programme to include more of the interview with the Home Secretary.”We had no intention of getting involved with the police but I believe that if people had been able to see more of the scenes where police made a crippled man get on to his feet so they could search him it would have made a very telling point about how absurd our current laws are.

The Home Secretary had mistaken the hand- rolled cigarette for a cannabis joint. Afterwards a defiant Mr Crisp, who uses crutches to walk, said: “I did it deliberately to see how he reacted under pressure. “Unfortunately cannabis is illegal and we must obey the letter of the law,”.Mr Crisp was then searched butcannabis was not found on him. “I have been led to believe that cannabis has been smoked,” said the officer somewhat apologetically.

I thought this was to be a serious discussion not some sort of stunt.”A few seconds later a uniformed police officer entered the room and officially cautioned 43-year-old Mr Crisp. Are you happy with that?” he said.At this point Hamish Crisp, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, produced a hand-rolled cigarette and lit it within a few feet of the Home Secretary.Mr Straw became agitated and stood up to indicate that the interview was over.”It is not a question of happiness, it is whether or not we should obey the law, which we all should. “If any of these men were now to produce cannabis in this office they would be arrested. Extracting the corpse or the strangler must be done with care; roots mingle quickly beneath the surface and a yank too far can haul out the whole display in one go. Electricians used to tangles of wire or knitters used to tangles of wool have less problems than most at separating rival root balls.One alternative option is going into complete denial: rather than admitting that any nearby plants could possibly be in pots that are constrictingly (and perhaps, who knows, agonisingly) too small, keep ruthlessly chopping their top shoots off.

Either one specimen will promptly wither and die, leaving an ugly gap, or, crazed by the freedom of its new container, a small, well-behaved plant will start behaving like a triffid and over-run its neighbours. Dealing with anything approaching the size of a bush requires either a crane or half-a-dozen husky helpers.Multiple potting, where a variety of plants are crammed in together to create those neat displays beloved of garden centres with tall plants at the back of the pot, medium ones in the middle and teeny cute ones at the front, is fraught with peril. Either way, some vital shoot is more than likely to get snapped off during the process, and either the old or the new pot is likely to disintegrate into terracotta shards at some point. Attempting to extract a pot-bound plant can actually prove fatal if in the attempt to tease it out half its roots are severed and left behind. Equally possibly, the plant is less pot-bound than it was pretending to be, and shoots out in an explosion of loose compost.