The
story which dominated the end of 2006 and the first few weeks
of 2007 was the issue of contamination of herbal cannabis
with microscopic glass beads.
We
first began hearing of this back in late summer 2006. Following
"Operation Keymer" - a series of high profile raids
against cannabis grow-ops - there was a widespread shortage
of cannabis all over the country for the first time in a good
few years.
No
doubt this was the simplistic aim of the police raids and
to that extent they were very successful. However, within
a couple of weeks of the raids, we began hearing of herbal
cannabis which seemed to contain "sand" or "grit",
it became known as "Grit weed".
At
first we thought this was fairly benign, the sand was being
added to increase the weigh, making the cannabis more expensive
but otherwise it wasn't thought to be a serious problem. We
don't think that anymore.
Posts
to our forum identified this "grit" as being small
pieces of glass. We then began getting photographs of this
"grit", which was very good at reflecting light
and so showed up well in flash photos (first
images November 2006).
On
Christmas day we received the first solid evidence of what
this contamination was (see
26th December update). It was shown to be small glass
beads used for sandblasting and reflective road marking paint
which had been sprayed onto the bud, penetrating deep into
it
ITV
Wales - Wales this Week - report January 2007
Part
1
Part
2
A
press release was issued by UKCIA's sister campaign site "cannaprag"
on 1st January, which resulted in an article in the Eastern
Daily Press paper.
On
January 5th we received another analysis - this time using
a scanning electron microscope. This revealed some of the
particles were 10 micron or less. This is very bad news, these
particles are small enough to penetrate deep into the lungs
where they could cause enormous damage.
Electron
microscope image of the glass beads sprayed into the
cananbis bud
A
further press release from Cannaprag on 7th January
resulted in an item in the Guardian and on 10th January
by research from France confirming the contamination
- and the fact that the French government were at
least monitoring the situation if nothnig else since
at least September last year. These analysis results
confirm the research posted here. It also indicates
other forms of contamination involving sand and "glass
wool"
An
alert was finally issued by the British dept of health
on 16th January
