Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Legalization of Cannabis Story on 'JustPaste.It' Proved to be a Hoax for Invalid Sources

The news of legalization of cannabis and regulation of its marketing in Sweden makes quick inroads into different social networks. The news spread like a jungle fire around the globe through internet and generates mixed kind of reaction.

Hoax Story of Legalization of Cannabis in Sweden
It has been reported on Monday (Dec. 19) that the Swedish Parliament has just approved new legislation which will legalize and regulate the country’s thriving cannabis trade.

The story-cum-news appeared on an Italian website ‘justpaste.it’ indicating that Sweden had bravely forged ahead of its Scandinavian neighbors and legalized cannabis – a source plant of psychoactive chemicals like hashish and hash oil. The news report, referring to Jonas Grönhög on behalf of Health and Social Services of Sweden, said:

We don't want to make the same mistakes which the USA has done, we do not want to be prohibitionists because the war on drugs has been lost long ago. It is better to prevent marginalization of young people than jail them for soft drugs usage which are comparatively harmless. If we allow the sale of alcohol, there is no reason to ban the soft drugs no longer.

Cannabis products are going to be available in the pharmacies in Sweden as non-prescription medicine since April 20 in 2012 and customers more than 18-year-old can buy 10 grams at once, the report mentioned further.

However, the story, mentioned its source “420 Dagbladet, Stockholm, December 19, 2011,” can’t not be confirmed anywhere else and apparently have no reality.

Users in the “Sensationalist Headlines” section on the forums of the site FacePunch weren’t fooled for long, and the member who posted the item appeared to have been banned from the site as a result.

The story rapidly buzzed on the cannabis oriented “Trees” section of social media news sharing site Reddit, but as its vagueness and lack of sources to verify it became evident, users voted the story down in almost equal numbers to the up votes.

According to latest numbers at the time of writing these lines; there are 1498 up votes in comparison of 1373 down votes.

And most importantly the comment from a user on Reddit can be served as valid reason to tag this story as HOAX. The user, whatever_idc, writes there:

“I am sorry but what the fuck? I live in central Stockholm and I haven’t heard shit about this?” commented one Reddit user. “I haven’t even heard if there’s a discussion about legalizing it. Looking at the top 5 Swedish newspaper’s websites I see nothing but Saab and Kim Jong-Il.

I’d be happy if someone proved me wrong but there’s no doubt in my mind that these facts are wrong.”






SOURCES: 


JustPaste.It


Reddit



Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...