Dear Editor, An anonymous letter writer, in this paper, the Cook Islands News, made statements about myself and medicinal cannabis that are false.

Anonymous writer said, “we voted yes to medicinal cannabis, that’s the same as New Zealand’s definition of liquids high in CBD and no THC”.

That is a falsehood because according to the New Zealand Official Information Act, data obtained by the NZ Ministry of Health on 17 June 2022, before the Cook Islands medicinal cannabis referendum was held on 1 August 2022, statistics showed that 55 per cent of legal patients were treated with CBD and 45 per cent with THC products. Also when you couple this with a MOH survey reported on by Stuff NZ, 250,000 people who source medicinal cannabis on the black market use dry herb cannabis, high in THC content along with THC oils and CBD for medicinal purposes.

So don't be fooled by the fake news that anonymous writer is spewing in trying to obscure and confuse people about the facts. It's all incomprehensible language, nothing more than gibberish in a failed vain attempt to ignorantly stigmatise THC products as dangerous or drug use.

As far back as 2019, researchers at the University of New Mexico in the US solved a major gap in scientific literature by using mobile software technology to measure the real time effects of actual cannabis products used by millions of people everyday and found that contrary to popular media-reports and scientific dogma, the psychoactive chemical, THC showed the strongest correlation with therapeutic relief and far less evidence for the benefits of relying on CBD.

This evidence totally contradicts anonymous writer that “THC has almost no medical value”.

We can only hope that Anonymous is not a flunky who works for one of the Ministries or is a planted stooge acting as a forerunner for the Government to only bring in CBD products and no THC products. I wouldn't be surprised these people are control freaks who only want to shove their agenda down our throats.

I agree with Tingika Elikana, the chairman of the Cannabis Referendum Committee who said, “the Cook Islands may allow people to grow a certain amount for personal use”. and not the Secretary of Health who said, “ultimately the main issue is to avoid people cultivating their own cannabis”.

Lastly, the British Institute of Graphologist says the majority of anonymous letter writers are mild or pronounced paranoiacs, suffering from a condition that is not easy to detect.

It is a state of mind that has a distorted concept of reality.

From the Institute's own observations, these writers are sick individuals and this behaviour indicates inner feelings of personal inadequacies, and these disturbed individuals suffer from many more frustrations.

Sincerely,

Steve Boggs