Orwellian Tendencies and Strange Factions
in the Marijuana Reform Movement
a Letter to the Editor of DrugWar.com
posted November 13, 2002
The editor of DrugWar.com posts this letter without
comment, prefering to allow the letter to stand on its own. Further
comments are welcome.
Hello,
RE: http://www.drugwar.com/dutch30years.shtm
I would like to appeal against the current
trend of Orwellian tendencies in the marijuana reform movement.
Let's try hard to not loose sight of well known historical facts
!
I would like to make a correction to the
assertion that Wernard Bruining was the first supplier of Medical
Marijuana in the Netherlands in 1996.
The first supplier of medical marijuana was
James Burton's Stichting
Institute of Medical Marijuana (SIMM) in October, 1993, a
full 3 years ahead of Wernard's
Medi-Wiet program.
As a matter of fact, when Todd
McCormick legally imported about one kilo of medical marijuana
through U.S. Customs in March 1995, the kilo of pot was supplied
by SIMM. See Peter
Gorman's High
Times article (mirror/archived
here by NORML Canada)
The SIMM actually became fully licensed and
legal in October 2001, and I don't mean licensed as a café
or art gallery. They received an "opium permit" to produce
and distribute marijuana, specifically.
For an accurate account of this ongoing error,
please see the following link here.
Linda Burton has repeatedly contacted Richard
Cowan about his ongoing error, to no avail. It doesn't look good
when marijuananews.com
spreads things which are simply not true. I know of no reason
to discredit James
and Linda Burton's historically significant success with the
SIMM.
(There are starting to be strange factions
forming in the marijuana reform movement, without any apparent
reason, or logical grouping.) I have had a fair amount of contact
with James and Linda Burton and find them to be "nice"
people, in general, with no hidden agenda. James is a glaucoma
patient whose medical marijuana usage was studied at the University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Why is the success and well known existence
of the Stichting Institute of Medical Marijuana virtually ignored
by the marijuana press ?
Thanks for your consideration of correcting
an obvious error which brings discredit on the marijuna legaliation/reform
movement.
Bill Carroll
NORML Canada web maintainer.
http://www.iowatelecom.net/~sharkhaus
