More from Reuters:  “Brown said he was particularly worried about the growing use of skunk cannabis, which he described as "more lethal".

It would be fascinating to know how PM Gordon Brown acquires his ideas about marijuana.  How does someone remain that insulated from reality?  It can’t be from smoking anything—which would no doubt improve his reality radar.

Searching the web about the PM reveals that Mr. Brown, a minister’s son (Church of Scotland), was kicked in the head in a school rugby match with a force that resulted in detached retinas, later corrected in one eye by surgery.  Child abuse and brain damage may explain Mr. Brown’s later misgivings about marijuana.

Brown, a Scotsman, obtained a PhD in History (not chemistry nor biology nor neurology) from the University of Edinburgh.  His thesis subject was The Labour Party and Political Change in Scotland, 1918-1929.

Scotland…and Edinburgh no less.  Think Train Spotting and Acid House and ponder why the Roman Emperor Hadrian built his wall….

With no other apparent job experience, Brown went directly from his alma mater into the British Labour Party, where he became the number-two-guy behind Britain’s former PM, Tony Blair.  Mr. Blair, as you’ll recall, was popular when he brown-nosed for Bill Clinton, and unpopular when he brown-nosed for George W. Bush.  Strange how situations change.  Stranger still that Brown didn’t notice any change in American politics in the last few years.  Again, an indication of brain damage.

Brown’s brown-nosing for the Neocon ONDCP/DEA agenda has potential consequences in 2009 when, if things go well, subpoenas, indictments and warrants rain from the sky onto Bush and his co-conspirators.  Gordon Brown will end his career as a political fart.

Giordano

"This, my friends, is precisely how bad public policy gets made."

And a very strong public reaction against that policy is how bad policy gets removed.

Are there not very wealthy people supporting the legalization movement?

If there are, I don't know where their millions of dollars supporting the legalization movement is being allocated, but based on the results, it's not into a professional public relations campaign to allow the movement to immediately debunk the Prime Minister's statement via the mainstream media.

A high-quality public relations firm has established regular connections to the mainstream media, allowing us to promptly, properly, concisely, and very publicly tear into the lies.

It's funny that you reference the latin root of a word in an argument completely derived of logos. That means logic, by the way. While I agree that pot should be legal and, even better, decriminalized, you're grasping at straws, dude. Even here in America, I know what the fuck he's talking about. In one example, an entire population of campus smokers were sold pot with tiny glass balls in it, invisible to the naked eye, just to bulk it up. Dozens of people were either hospitalized, or coughed up blood for days.
In another example, pot was and IS being sold dusted with clear silicone to achieve the same result as above, a bulkier product of which you can sell less and make more. There have been, to date, 7 deaths related to that particular brilliant scam.
What I suggest you do, instead of poke around his words with your electronic dictionary grasping for an argument like you were flailing to grab soap dropped in the bathtub, is help him recognize that pot, like alcohol, when sold, taxed and regulated, is no more a gateway drug than it's legal partner in DUI crime. And it certainly would diminish the need to chemically fucking analyze you're everyday ditchwitch before you know it's safe to smoke it. Argue, but argue smartly. Why disagree with him that unregulated pot is forced to be sold from the hands of the same heartless dickholes that push coke, meth, crack, and all the other favorites, and if they will lace meth to stretch it like crack, they do the same with their pot.
Now, take a moment to apply your chosen point of argument, the word LETHAL, to the context in which he is actually speaking. Pot sold by heartless fucks who have chosen to bulk it up with deadly(and/or lethal, buddy) substances, is killing people. And those are not "non-living" things.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s Conservative Labour Party has been seriously hammered in Friday’s, May 2, 2008, elections.

BBC is reporting that the Conservative Labour Party will win 24% of the votes cast in England and Wales, falling behind the Tories who are expected to get 44%, and the Liberal Dems who it is expected will increase their share of the council seats from 13% to 25%.  For Labour, it’s their worst defeat in 40-years.

The General Secretary of the party has announced his resignation, saying that Labour had lost touch with ordinary people and that Mr. Brown had lost his ability to lead.

If Brown expected his BS about killer skunk marijuana to help his party’s election results, he has seriously miscalculated.  Good job, Brownie.

Giordano

Mr. Brown’s statements are political pandering to his base of support among conservative voters.

Many conservatives are shocked by cultural changes that threaten their view of their country. Instead of tolerance for individual freedom, conservatives rally to someone that might treat their concerns as a crisis to which the state must respond. Conservatives are willing to use the coercive forces of the government to push their moral agenda on the general population.

Hopefully, the defeat in the elections will signal an acceptance of greater personal freedoms to the citizens of the UK. We in the USA should be so lucky.