Use Of Cannabis Now Legal

When George Papandreou spoke about "green development" most of us here in Greece actually thought he meant eco-friendly products and services, but we never thought that he actually meant "smoke weed,,, it does the body good." The BIG news this week is that the use of drugs (and possible cultivation of cannabis for personal use) is now LEGAL! The new bill which was quietly voted on by the majority of the PASOK party late last week involves the de-criminalisation of use of drugs but strict penalties will still apply for traffickers. According to the new bill the use of narcotics will be punished as a petty offence, rather than as a misdemeanour (indictable) as is currently the case.

Traffickers and dealers will be separated into three categories. The first category concerns traffickers, which will entail a life sentence, without mitigating circumstances. A second category will entail 5-20 years imprisonment. The third category that of a simple misdemeanour will entail a prison term of up to five years.

This is a controversial issue since on the one hand some 350 drug-related deaths documented annually, while 5,000 inmates in the country's prison system have been incarcerated on drug charges. On the other though, we can just picture farmers in Zoniana on the island of Crete, or happy "organic farmers" in the southern part of Kalamata and/or the area of Agrinio contemplating if they should plant cotton, tomatoes, herbs or some cannabis and bank in on the opportunity... If caught they can always claim that it’s for their own personal use now. And this makes us wonder... a chain smoker for instance can say that he needs ten acres of cannabis a year and someone who smokes less than a pack a day can claim that he is cultivating five acres a year for his personal use. In this economic strangling environment expect to hear the wildest stories from hereafter.

(Oh brother)

In such a framework, we decided to dedicate the following video to our pot-loving former premier, now we understand.... me toses mamakies pou exei pei... to paidi pinei mbafous kai pezi pro.