How come the United Kingdom government is prepared to blindly follow the United States into Iraq and Afghanistan, yet so far as how they deal with cannabis they could be from entirely different planets.
Democrat President Obama's arrival in the White House has been followed by a raft of what some are calling quite radical changes in direction from what George W Bush and his Republicans were seemingly trying to achieve.
On the one hand we have the good people of Portland Oregon in the US, who are celebrating the opening of their first legal cannabis cafe.
In the UK however, he reclassification of cannabis means people suffering with medical conditions which in Oregon would result in a doctors recommendation, are not allowed to consider cannabis as a possible treatment route.
For instance, Republican presidential candidate and ex-mayor of New York Rudi Giuliani was quite forceful whilst talking at a New Hampshire town hall meeting in the run up to the election which brought Obama to power.
Indeed the article we published here on CannaZine (read it here on High Times.Com ) went on to illustrate how the US Republicans, in much the same vein as the UK's own government in waiting the conservative party, were absolutely dead set in refusing to even acknowledge any of the benefits users can reap from using cannabis in the treatment of a medical condition.
So far as Republicans are concerned there are no benefits. Its as simple as that.
Indeed Giuliani went one further when he said "marijuana has no additive medical benefit of any kind". He also said "legalizing medical marijuana is just a pre-cursor to the outright legalization of cannabis, and nothing more."
When you stack that up against what some of the worlds largest medical organisations are saying (we think back to what the American Medical Association and the American College of Physicians have said recently) isn't it time we started to question the motivations of the Conservatives on both sides of the atlantic?
America had a close call and if their Republican party had a stronger pairing than McCain and Palin, chances are the cannabis cafe in Oregon would not have opened.
In the UK however we still have a general election on the horizon, and any thoughts of voting for a conservative government is a vote for the hardcore enforcement of cannabis policing for AT LEAST the next decade.
Green/Eco/Environment 
