National Walking Day 26th of September, lets walk 2000 km together for #BringAliciaHome & #CannabisReformIreland
Poster with QR code for this Sunday’s 2000km walk for #BringAliciaHome & #CannabisReformIreland (Credit for poster goes to “Irish Hemp Harvest” https://irishharvest.ie/ )
In a recent twitter post by “Get Ireland Walking” Frank Feighan (Minister with responsibility for the national drug strategy) was chosen as an ambassador for the day for his abilities to walk away from his duties. Frank Feighan has shown an exceptional ability to walk away and ignore the many people who reach out to him regularly to help them with problems caused by our current national drugs strategy.
Frank Feighan (Minister with responsibility for the national drug strategy) was chosen as an ambassador for the day for his abilities to walk away from his duties
Youth Workers Against Prohibition which is a group of independent, experienced youth workers have raised their concerns about the policy of drug prohibition in Ireland. At present youth workers are supporting over 380,000 young people in communities across the country. They see first-hand, on a daily basis, the untold damage that criminalising young people has on their life opportunities in Ireland. They see the devastation that unregulated drugs are inflicting on communities as young people have no idea of the content, purity or consequences of what they are taking .They say “Prohibition drives our young people who use drugs underground, it isolates them and places them in danger. We believe that the policy of prohibition/criminalisation has failed and is not the way forward.” (Visit https://www.ywapireland.com/ to learn more)
Frank Feighan did not respond to the concerns of this group as he continues to walk away from and ignore any problems being caused by our current national drugs strategy. Frank believes the healthy thing to do is to leave the drugs in the hands of criminals and have gardai target young and vulnerable kids from disadvantaged areas.
Another person who has been ignored is Alicia Maher, a director of the group, Patients For Safe Access( https://www.patientsforsafeaccess.com/ ), who are dedicated to ensuring safe and legal access to cannabis for therapeutic use and research, protecting the rights of medical cannabis patients, and to promote scientifically valid information about cannabis use have been ignored by Frank and his buddy Stephen Donnelly (Minister for health).
Alicia is currently stuck in Alicante, Spain because of Ireland’s prohibition of Cannabis which would label Alicia a criminal for her use of the plant to treat her chronic pain. If we were to walk from Cork to Alicante it would take 2055km and require a ferry trip too. That would take almost 2 weeks of non stop travel according to google maps.
Google maps image showing the journey needed to travel from Cork to Alicante by foot
Vera Twomey who walked from Cork to Dublin over the lack of access to cannabis for her daugter Ava was also ignored by Frank and Stephen. For many years Vera campaigned to get her daughter the medicine she needed. Thankfully she has it now but Vera continues to help campaign for the many other patients who are without. ( https://www.thejournal.ie/vera-twomey-walk-to-dublin-2-3273370-Mar2017/ )
As Frank & Steve have been so keen to ignore the need to change our laws around Cannabis in Ireland, I propose this Sunday 26th of September for National Walking day we get 1000 people to commit to walking 2km for Alicia Maher and all the other patients affected by the current prohibition of Cannabis.
To sign up for "Walking 2000km for Alicia Maher #BringAliciaHome #CannabisReformIreland" the click on the following web link (or copy it into your web browser if clicking doesn't work) to go to the signup sheet:
To sign up, just follow the instructions on the page. It only takes a few seconds to do.
Even if you cant sign up the most important part of this campaign will be to make sure on the day to get a post up on your social media and include the #BringAliciaHome and #CannabisReformIreland and a little bit about why you are supporting this campaign.
Thank you for volunteering and helping raise awareness for our campaign!
