Phil Stovell wrote:
On Thu, 08 Mar 2007 11:41:50 +0000, hugh_j wrote:

As things stand it is a criminal offence to plant a cannabis seed in your
garden. This situation has arisen as a result of long-term lobbying by the
drug companies.

Rubbish. They've done no such thing.

Opinion noted. It doesn't happen in the media. I would also add in the
brewers and the distillers to that statement. You know it makes sense.

They now aim to channel the medicinal cannabis market
towards the commercial product Sativex, and to make a handsome profit from
it.

If this venture succeeds, it will only be a matter of time before the
pharmaceutical industry uses it's lobby to seek to prohibit the growing of
other medicinal herbs, and, if they can, the sale of seed.

I can buy opium poppy seeds in my local supermarket, so that's rubbish as
well.
Ephedra distachya, catha edulis, both in line for the chop. The recent
targeting of health food additives and Chinese medicine shops The poppy
seed question is an interesting anomoly. I refer you he
http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/ncnu02/v5-284.html
specifically the lines:

Hemp has at times in the past been grown simply for its ornamental
value. The short, strongly-branched cultivar ‘Panorama’ (Fig. 43) bred
by Iván Bósca, the dean of the world’s living hemp breeders, was
commercialized in Hungary in the 1980s, and has been said to be the only
ornamental hemp cultivar available. It has had limited success, of
course, because there are very few circumstances that permit private
gardeners can grow Cannabis as an ornamental today. By contrast,
beautiful ornamental cultivars of opium poppy are widely cultivated in
home gardens across North America, despite their absolute illegality and
the potentially draconian penalties that could be imposed. Doubtless in
the unlikely event that it became possible, many would grow hemp as an
ornamental.

I can see them making the sale of cannabis seeds illegal. It would mean a
change in the law as the seeds contain no cannabinoids at all.

It might be a good idea to lay some in now.