I’ve made a slight advertising change on the site. I was really unhappy with Google ads since the move to the new URL. It seemed that they were feeding the site almost nothing but drug rehab ads, which aren’t of much interest to public policy activists, and the ad revenue dropped by over 60%.
I’ve started working with AdBrite, which will hopefully deliver some more interesting ads. Additionally, if AdBrite doesn’t have any ads for me, it’ll go ahead and let the Google ads run, which is useful.
It’s now possible to purchase ads specifically for this site, and reach a politically active, motivated group of readers.
…
By the way, thanks for all the well-wishes. I’m making progress on the cold and have the weekend to keep making chicken soup (I make an outstanding homemade chicken soup), drink liquids and rest.
Some excellent detailed features on President Obama’s decision to keep Michele Leonhart on officially as Director of the DEA over at Drug War Chronicle and Sterling on Justice and Drugs. It’s nice to see some of the things I reported about her past back in 2003 surfacing again.
There’s no way I can see that this nomination will be derailed. It will go through without much of a hitch. But, if we’re thinking that it’s at least an opportunity to air a few things in a Judiciary Committee hearing, then it seems to me that Senator Durbin is the one to reach.
Durbin is, after all, the only one to take on Karen Tandy during her confirmation hearing. Check out his questioning of her here. It was one of our better days (of course, she still was confirmed unanimously).
The Intl. Assn. of Exhibitions and Events has adopted a policy aimed at achieving drug-free workplaces in the exhibitions and events industry. Its first step: random drug testing for all IAEE employees.
Really? Exhibition and events employees? Cause like, there’s so much satisfaction in such a job that you shouldn’t care that they’re invading your privacy and punishing you for what you do on the weekend?
In A New Jim Crow? in Newsweek, Ellis Cose says that Obama should tackle the jails.
Given that, now (as midterm panic has broken out in Democratic quarters in the wake of the Massachusetts Senate defeat) may not be the best moment for Obama to tackle the matter head-on. But at some point any president aiming for greatness must grapple with a set of policies that have forced us to build prisons instead of schools. And ultimately even the most hardheaded critics must concede that rethinking a failed policy is not weakness but the only wise way to proceed.
DrugSense Weekly – a weekly review of the most interesting or relevant articles in the press and on the web related to drug policy reform.
Drug War Chronicle – weekly update of drug war news and analysis from Stop the Drug War.org.
The woman definitely is bad news. When she believes a witness that perjures his testimony is a good thing,don’t look for to much happening on her watch that has anything to do with science or common sense.
I just wish she would be the last administrator of the DEA.
Rats, I was just about ready to sign up for drug rehab through this site’s link. Oh well, I guess that commission goes to Linda Taylor now.
Gee , you would thnk the google ads were a good thing. Help all us outta our mind addicts make a choice, no alliance to government proaganda there huh?
realistically, drug rehab ads and prescription pill ads are the only type of “drug-related” advertising anyone should expect to see on a “drug-related” site.
seriously, what are the alternatives? fake buds?
Well, I’ll admit that there may not be enough business out there for me to be getting ads for drug policy books, conferences, etc., I think the point is that I should be getting ads for something other than “drug-related.” The people who come here buy products and services and are interested in a whole variety of things. My ad revenue was best when I got ads for electronics and department stores and television shows and stuff.
And no, please no fake bud ads.
Many cannabis aficionados I know are outdoor types who like backpacking and skiing. Breckinridge Ski Resort would be a good ad, since they recently voted to eliminate marijuana penalties for personal use. Movie ads are another venue. Travel ads would work. People who like foreign travel often use chemicals to travel in their minds without physically moving as far. Music ads, of course. I think most ad categories appearing in Rolling Stone would work here.
actually, the kinds of ads we see here may be a barometer of whether or not we are succeeding at becoming “mainstream.” while those of us who do this work certainly realize that we are successful, educated and otherwise “normal” citizens (and consumers), we are at the moment still largely thought of as fringe elements of society.
as we and our messages gain acceptance among the public at large, pete’s site will probably get a wider variety of ads. at the moment i guess advertisers don’t think there is much money to be gotten from a bunch of anonymous “drug legalizers” — silly bastards.
I think the problem with the Google ads has more to do with Google than with the advertisers. When we had a salon.com address we got diverse ads (sure, we still got the rehab ones, but mixed in with others). When we moved to drugwarrant.com, the diversity pretty much stopped.
Google doesn’t have a way for me to indicate what the nature of the site is, so they use their own algorithms to determine where ads are placed. AdBrite, on the other hand, had me go through a detailed set of keywords, and categories. Ads from their advertisers are then placed based on that (although advertisers can, of course, individually decide they don’t want it placed on my site).
D.A.R.E. Alert!
The following is an excerpt from a oped in the LA Times;
“According to Dr. Sheila Kar, clinical chief of cardiology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center ( and a member of the D.A.R.E America board of directors ) marijuana has serious short- and long-term health consequences. It has been shown to cause an immediate rise in the heartbeat by 20 to 30 beats per minute along with an increase in blood pressure, thus increasing the workload of the heart. Marijuana is an irritant to the lungs and contains proportionally more carcinogens than tobacco smoke. It is associated with increased incidence of cancer of the head and neck area and lungs. It works on the brain, causing short- and long-term memory loss and impairing judgment, and it affects the sensations of taste and smell. One of its more pernicious effects is that it reduces inhibitions and can lead a person under its influence to try even more harmful substances.”
1.Your heartbeat and blood pressure both rise when you take a brisk walk or perform any kind of exercise.
2.Dr Taskins lung function study,the longest and most thorough study of its kind,reported that marijuana does not cause any lung function decrease but instead that it actually increased lung function.
http://www.marijuana.com/videos/1149…-function.html
3.She has reversed the study in Spain results completely,They reported that marijuana smokers are 60% less likely to have the cancers of the skin,head and neck. They didn’t know how,but it appeared that marijuana blocks cancer,not causes it.
A population-based case-control study of marijuana… [Cancer Prev Res (Phila Pa). 2009] – PubMed result
4.I have smoked 42 years and my memory is fine,and my judgment
of this lady is right on,she is a liar.
5.Marijuana enhances the senses,not damages them.
6.The gateway theory has been debunked and I can’t believe she even dug this old line of bullshit out of her box full of debunked lies and dusted it off.
I just chose the above paragraph because it shows just how little the prohibitionists have to fight with. They have to lie in order to come up with anything that even sounds a little dangerous or scary.
America does not have a marijuana problem,we can find marijuana in any town in America.
Ads. It’s probably just a machine, a computer program, a robot, or something, that reads a site and chooses ads because of the word connections it makes, and it probably has a huge number of “rehabs” and “treatment center” ads to choose from. Maybe.
We know even our own computers are targets for certain sorts of ads… and if you’re like me and been keeping up with the War on Drugs…and all it entails… you’ve been targeted with treatment and rehab ads for ages because of the sites you’ve visited and searches you’ve likely done.
I think I have. I noticed it quite some time ago.
That’s where super targeted ads fail.
If I spend several days searching for shoes online. I’ll see lots of ads for shoes for awhile.
Willie Nelson’s Tour Bus Cited For Moonshine, Marijuana
Pot Haze Invites Raid on Nelson Bus
Sacred Brews, Secret Muse
If you haven’t seen Avatar yet
After seeing the film twice, I believe Mr. Cameron may have had help with his vision of life in another dimension, where the blue-skinned Na’vi maintain a direct communication with all biological life through a visceral connection with the tree deity Eywa. My suspicion is that he has heard about the use of ayahuasca among indigenous people in the Amazon, our closest relative to the luxuriant, bioluminescent jungle of Pandora.
Ayahuasca Tourism in South America 10/20/00
Film the Cops, Go to Jail
Marijuana Legalization Tops List of YouTube Questions for Obama
Another online survey by the Obama administration ends with marijuana legalization the #1 issue.
iGrow: Walmart of Weed Opens in Oakland
A giant, 15,000-square-foot grow store called iGrow has opened in Oakland, California.
“First they ignore you,
then they ridicule you,
then they fight you,
then you win.”
— Mahatma Gandhi
Religious Views Growing Around Marijuana
Faithful smokers say cannabis has been used in religions since before written history.
Catholic Charities to Give Syringes to Drug Users
After 20 years of alleviating suffering for people touched by AIDS, Catholic Charities will take one of its boldest steps yet on Monday: passing out free syringes to IV drug users in two urban neighborhoods to prevent the spread of the disease.
iGrow: Walmart of Weed Opens in Oakland
A giant, 15,000-square-foot grow store called iGrow has opened in Oakland, California.
The Harvard Psychedelic Club by Don Lattin U2b
The Harvard Psychedelic Club
Tuesday, January 26, 2010 [5 articles]
There was apparently a time at Harvard when it was perfectly hunky-dory for professors to give LSD to their students for purely scientific purposes, of course.
“In 1960, Timothy Leary set up an infamous institute at Harvard to experiment with psychedelic drugs. An exclusive excerpt from Don Lattin’s new book on how lifestyle guru Andrew Weil and other freshmen started tripping.”
– The Daily Beast
Hummmm, Oprah’s buddy Andy Weil friend of Hempseed but not a word mentioned, Guru of Holistic Meds writing about Ganja, but not a mention on TV… spied for the Havard admin and in a game of acedemic competition had Leary and Ram Dass tossed, ooops sorry he says… Also noted on community TV where I saw Lattin speak, that most of the “studies” were with Psilocybin shrooms, not LSD.
“In the Realm of Hungry Ghostsâ€: Dr. Gabor Maté, Physician at Vancouver Safe-Injection Site, on the Biological and Socio-Economic Roots of Addiction and ADD
Dr. Gabor Maté is the staff physician at the Portland Hotel Society, which runs a residence/harm reduction facility and North America’s only supervised safe-injection site in Vancouver, Canada, home to one of the world’s densest areas of drug users. The bestselling author of four books, we speak to Dr. Maté about his latest, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction, which proposes new approaches to treating addiction through an understanding of its biological and socio-economic roots. Maté also discusses his work on attention deficit disorder and the mind-body connection. [includes rush transcript]
STEALING AMERICA Vote by Vote
STEALING AMERICA: Vote by Vote brings together behind-the-scenes perspectives from the U.S. presidential election of 2004 – plus startling stories from key races in 1996, 2000, 2002 and 2006. Unbiased and nonpartisan, the film sheds light on a decade of vote counts that don’t match votes cast – uncounted ballots, vote switching, under-votes and many other examples of election totals that warrant serious investigation.
Stealing America: Vote By Vote Part 1 of 10 U2b
Howard Zinn, 1922-2010
legendary historian, author and activist, died last week at the age of 87. His most famous book is “A People’s History of the United States.â€
Howard Zinn page
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