Open Thread

I guess you need one, since the last post had about 1 in 30 comments actually on topic. 🙂 (I hope some people actually watched the Frontline piece.)


bullet image Amazing new bridge in Mexico built by the government makes it easier to supply drugs to the U.S.


bullet image 200 million people use illegal drugs; what is the toll on health? The L.A. Times tries to make something out of ho-hum statistics on drug use and just ends up with a meaningless article.


bullet image Sacramento County DA receives funds to fight drug-impaired driving

The Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office has received grants totaling $1.37 million to fight drug-impaired driving.

Appears to be mostly a back-door effort to criminalize internal possession of marijuana.


bullet image Tasmania’s Michelle O’Byrne MP appears to mean well in her support for Industrial Hemp, but this statement seemed… odd.

“The poppy industry, where licensing arrangements are also required under the Poisons Act, has developed into a major source of the world’s licit opioid alkaloids with an annual farm gate value of about $100 million.

“There is no reason why the hemp industry would be any different.”

Well, yes, in fact. It’s a different plant. It has different usable substances and those are produced, marketed and distributed in far different ways.

It’s like saying that chickens produce a farm value of “x” so there’s no reason why raising grapes would be any different.


bullet image Groups Call For Change In Civil Forfeiture Laws

More and more, it seems that people are waking up on this issue and realizing just how wrong it is. Agencies have gotten so greedy for forfeiture money that the public is becoming aware. And aroused.


bullet image Pa. judge dismisses 2,000 juvenile cases in ‘kids for cash’ scandal

As a result of Grim’s efforts, records have been expunged for more than 2,000 juveniles sentenced by Ciavarella.

Ciavarella and another ex-judge are serving federal prison sentences for sending juveniles to for-profit youth detention centers in return for money.

Grim called the handling of juvenile cases in Luzerne County a judicial process “run amok,” and he gave recommendations to prevent such renegade justice again.


bullet image War on the war on drugs — LEAP on the political front lines.

SSDP has been doing a great job in New Hampshire as well, questioning candidates about drug policy, with sometimes hilarious results.

[A big thanks to Tom]
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42 Responses to Open Thread

  1. AndreLaffargue says:

    Please help watch my back in case any angry Stoßtruppen turn up.

    • Duncan20903 says:

      /snip/
      DEA Special Agent in Charge Frank Smith has been involved in the war on drugs all over the globe. He is quick to dismiss any arguments about legalizing drugs like marijuana, especially after fellow officers were shot and killed, presumably trying to take down a so-called indoor marijuana grow operation.

      “It’s not a legalization issue, it’s not an immigration issue, it’s a public safety issue. If someone is willing to shoot it out with police, who is self-medicating on marijuana, what’s to say he’s not willing to walk out his house and start shooting his neighbors?” Smith says.
      /snip/
      …and you were skeptical about there being a maximum IQ to get hired as a LEO…Hah!

      I’ve got to admit, sometimes Francis gets to looking real scary. I don’t think he’d shoot anyone but would it shock anyone here if out of the blue he went around the bend and creamed a prohibitionist in the face with a lemon meringue pie? Is it really OK to condone assault with a yummy weapon?

  2. Francis says:

    “I guess you need one, since the last post had about 1 in 30 comments actually on topic.”

    Yeah, but if we preface our off-topic comments with “OT” that gives us immunity. It’s kind of like how you can say absolutely anything, but if it’s immediately followed or preceded by “no offense,” then the other person can’t be offended. 😉

  3. Duncan20903 says:

    .
    .
    Another edition of “There’s so many different ways to write a headline for the same story”…

    Marijuana Use Most Rampant in Australia, Study Finds
    ‎~~ New York Times

    Study says Australians consume more marijuana than anyone else in …‎
    ~~ The Boston Globe

    Flying kangaroos! Aussies and Kiwis are top pot users
    ‎~~ Los Angeles Times

    Worldwide illegal drug use estimated at 200 million people a year‎
    ~~ CBS News

    Australiani primi consumatori mondiali marijuana
    ‎~~Blitz quotidiano

    New Study: Marijuana Most Popular Drug on Earth‎
    ~~ HIGH TIMES

  4. ezrydn says:

    Yes, Pete, I watched it. It’s really sad that the US is responsible for those lost and abducted children. Next time someone asks “What about the children,” they should be sat down and forced to watch it. Thanks for posting it.

  5. ezrydn says:

    BTW, FYI, as of this posting, we have 299 days, 21 hrs til the first US polls open.

  6. claygooding says:

    The mmj crowd is shredding St Pierre at ToT for his article in CelebStoner:

    http://www.celebstoner.com/201201059479/blogs/misc/allen-st-pierre-on-medical-marijuana.html

    “”Prescriptive alcohol was a sham then, and the “medical” cannabis industry (not medical cannabis itself) is largely a sham now. Is this news? NORML, and lawyers like Bill Panzer, have been warning ganjapreneurs and their legal counsel at our seminars and conferences about this political and legal box canyon since at least 2002.””

    The mmj patients see this as an attack on mmj and want him out of NORML,,at least the ones speaking up are. I see it as an attack on dispensaries and growers that fight legalization to keep their profits secure.

    • Duncan20903 says:

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      Oh my word. Allan St. Pierre actually taking a position that’s controversial? Are there still people saying that the world isn’t going to end on 12/21??

      I agree with you clay, that the medical side has been taken over by moneyed special interests more concerned with protecting their profits than anything else. Why else would they be promoting the faux concern about patients getting arrested in Washington because of the 5 ng/ml limit? Will there be a few that get arrested and convicted? Maybe, but I haven’t heard any potheads complaining in more than theoretical terms about the so called “zero tolerance” States. I also wonder just how many of the very few medicinal cannabis patients who will be arrested and convicted under the proposed per se law would actually mount a defense, and how many of those would be able to convince a jury that 6, 7, 8 ng/ml or more doesn’t necessarily indicate impairment with the foaming at the mouth prosecutor regurgitating hysterical rhetoric and a prohibitionist police oaficer swearing that the driver was impaired? Now, how many thousands of people in Washington go to jail every year for possession? Remember, Washington State does have a mandatory minimum jail term for petty possession. Yeah, it’s only one day. Nothing to worry about? Let’s have volunteers to go do a jail term of a single day. C’mon, let’s see a show of hands of people willing to prove that a day in jail is irrelevant. [crickets]

      I’m really tired of people saying that pot needs to be kept illegal to keep impaired drivers off of the road. Not only have I never met a pothead that has been convicted for cannabis addled driving, I’ve never met one that got pulled over for suspicion of impaired driving. Let the Know Nothings have their precious “limit”. It’s just not that hard to avoid getting tested.

      If Valerie and Mike Corral speak up on the other side of the issue I’d most certainly reconsider. Steve Sarich can blow me.

      • Windy says:

        Well, the feds, and the gov’s wussiness in backing up our voter created MMJ law against the feds, have managed to scare my WA town into shutting down 2 of the 3 dispensaries we had, all three of which were operating according to the state law as it stands — not allowing anyone in who can’t present their MMJ license.

        Apparently the city went into each of them and removed the city’s business license from the premises of all 3. The one that is still operating, is doing so in defiance of that removal of their license to operate their business and is just waiting for the law to come in and forcefully evict them. Also, apparently, one of them has gone to delivery service, according to their facebook page.

    • Matthew Meyer says:

      Looks like that wasn’t an “article” per se, but an internal NORML email celebstoner dredged up and published as though it were.

      I don’t think St. Pierre was consulted.

      I felt duped when I found this out, totally changes the flippant tone when you know it’s an internal memo to the NORML legal team.

      My impression is that celebstoner posted this because they knew it would be inflammatory.

  7. darkcycle says:

    Open threads are nice, Pete, but we’re okay w/o one!
    I suppose you could be frustrated with the off topic posts, OR, you could feel good about the fact the children will entertain themselves, even if they are not completely “on task” all the time.
    Just think how boring it would be around here if we were all good little blogophiles. This way, you can treat every visit like a mystery gift…you never quite know what you will find we’ve done in your absence.
    In any case, you’ve gotta admit, even though the threads may take off under their own power, there’s is ALWAYS good stuff. And we mostly retain the hazy idea we’re all fighting prohibition out here….

    • Pete says:

      Actually, I don’t mind off-topic posts. It was just that the last one was so thorough that I though maybe people saw “Opium Brides” and read “Open Thread”

      • darkcycle says:

        Nope. We’re just off topic. I had a class once where the pre-class chatter took over. It was an adult education class, and all of the students knew each other (some even lived together in an “artist’s loft” not far from campus). I don’t know how, but every one of those students did very well on the written work and the two exams. But I could NOT control that classroom chatter! I often wondered if I was even needed there….

  8. Duncan20903 says:

    .
    .
    Well Pete’s exaggerating about the off topic ratio in the last thread. It was 1:26 not 1:30! Sheesh. Then again it may have actually been 1:~ since the only post even remotely on topic was me “correcting Pete’s spelling.”

    I watched about 2 minutes of the video but started retching in disgust when that woman said they borrowed $20,000. Do you know how flippin’ far $20k will go in Afghanistan? These “poor farmers” not only could have planted an entire valley for that, they could have bought the valley too. Oh, another thing are we really supposed to believe that the Afghan government eradimacation program is carried out with machetes? Sorry Pete, I have a strict limit of the amount of total bullshit I can tolerate in less than two minutes and had to go get some Tums.

    Afghan per capita income in 2010 was $330 (best guess). The United States PCI was $47,140. We’re being asked to believe that these farmers borrowed 60.6 years worth of the average income. 60.6 * 47,140 = $2,856,684. I call shenanigans.

    • allan says:

      hey… I was on topic… I even watched the program on the tube before Pete posted it here… sheesh. In a world with relatively little going for it, let the old guy have a biscuit will ya. Even a r-r-r-r-ubbbbbber biscuit! Whaddaya want for nothin’…?

      If you google the film maker’s name – Najibullah Quraishi – there is contact/facebook info to be found… seems to have a pretty strong resume. Even if you deduct a zero, $2000 would prolly be impossible to repay if the gummint cuts down your crop.

  9. ezrydn says:

    Found and watched this this morning. It’s about the Morocco Hash Industry. Not as heart-wrenching as “Opium Brides” but a good look-see.

    http://tubeplus.me/player/1970144/Drugs%2C_Inc./season_2/episode_2/Hash/

    It’s evidently from some TV series you guys have up there.

    • claygooding says:

      yup..NatGeo I think,and they have episodes covering nearly all drugs,,new one will be on Sun nite.

      NatGeo,Discovery and the History channels all cover the drug scene and they only use a little propaganda in them,some are no propaganda at all.

  10. AndreLaffargue says:

    OK, which one of you degenerates is Flutie Flambert?

    All great posts BTW.

  11. Peter says:

    duncan my bs detector went off there too. while im sure some in afghanistan are awash with prohibition money i cant see them lending 20k to farmers with a couple of acres to buy seed. somethings not right with this story

    • claygooding says:

      I quit listening to the news about AFG the first year our troops took over Happy Valley and allowed the local farmers to sell their opium to the traffickers. They claimed it was to keep from alienating the farmers but those farmers would have sold their crops to the DEA,,money is money,and then they could have napalmed it and destroyed 80% of the worlds illicit opium market.

      Instead they let it hit the streets. It told the world that stopping drugs is not what the war on drugs is about.

      • allan says:

        I’ll repeat what I said in the Opium Brides post… paraphrasing George MGovern from his interview with Charlie Rose… over the centuries many powers have tackled Afghanistan – they all lost.

        I think it’s more about their mountainous vault of precious metals, but that’s just me.

        • claygooding says:

          It is all of it,how do you like the way China slipped in there and bought the mining rights,,we spend billions fighting for those people(sic)and they go and sell all those rare metals to China,I laughed till my sides hurt.

          As foreign troops withdraw, will foreign miners move in? They’ve known of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth for a century but it hasn’t been safe or easy enough to extract it. Now Western companies, including Australian miners, are behind the geopolitical eight-ball as China and India lock up mining rights. Reporter, Stan Correy

          http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/backgroundbriefing/background-briefing-template/3728332

        • allan says:

          great link, thanks clay. I like the part where it says the Pentagon only figured out the geologic wealth of Afghanistan less than two years ago. While a tad incredulous I am not shocked. I looked at that when we went in there. It makes sense… big, ancient mountains means lots of rocks… lots of rocks means lots of minerals… some of which were bound to be precious.

          And yeah, the US is gonna take a back seat on the mining rush after pissing off the locals. Oops…

          It’s funny too, because Ron Paul is accused of being an isolationist yet what my ears hear from him is that he wants to return to being a good neighbor – you know, helping others instead of bombing them, deposing elected leaders…

  12. AndreLaffargue says:

    .

    After the grisly discovery, Wright heard stories from locals about the beach being used as a drop off point for drugs and a dumping ground for bodies of those killed by drug gangs.

    He suspects the couple might have been cornered on the beach and robbed either for their car or money.

    “Over the course of three days, I found three bodies over six hours of looking. That tells me there’s a lot more bodies,” said Wright.

    He said he believes authorities had been keeping the existence of the apparent dumping ground quiet in order to protect the tourist industry.

  13. darkcycle says:

    Okay! I’m back! Had a visit yesterday from an artist friend of mine, back from Brasil (No, not Bassie, he’s still there), who I have not seen for over a decade. Picked him up at the airport at 10:45 AM and dropped him right back there to fly away at 9:20 PM. He left on the “Red Eye” (but not because it was a late flight!). Heh-heh.

  14. darkcycle says:

    OH MAN…this has been a coupla weeks of real winners. All interested parties, please take note: Another prohibitionist relying on straw men and stereotypes to bash legalization (at another podunk, backwater blog)
    This is a doozey that could use some attention. I’m gettin’ to it:
    http://subversify.com/2012/01/06/the-culture-of-legalizing-stupidity-and-weakness/

    • darkcycle says:

      Oh fer crap’s sake, get a load of this:
      “I know its fashionable to forgive the addiction these days and show compassion. But I’m sorry, I hate potheads! They are deceitful, disgusting and weak! They put their drug needs in front of the needs of others.to simply exist in third world countries. How can I respect people like that?”
      This one is a real winner, I tell you.

      • Duncan20903 says:

        .
        .
        It’s shameful that we think about ourselves. What about her needs? Doesn’t anyone care about Ms. Zepeda’s needs?

        How in the world did she get Mr. Spicoli to pose for her blog?

  15. darkcycle says:

    Well. My “comment is awaiting moderation”. Having read that diatribe end to end, I couldn’t imagine what they consider “moderate”.

  16. Windy says:

    https://www.facebook.com/pages/Stop-I-502/228018333933115

    This shows what I-502 has done to the cannabis community, and public support for legalization. The poll taken this summer, after Sensible Washington ran a repeal initiative vs. this recent poll taken during NAW’s reign of terror, shows how differently people feel about ending prohibition vs. creating new ways to criminalize cannabis users.

    http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2012/01/04/poll-suggests-declining-support-for-pot-legalization

    http://www.northernstar.com.au/story/2012/01/09/memory-loss-fears-over-cannabis-use-up-in-smoke/

    • darkcycle says:

      Isn’t giving birth usually painful?

    • Duncan20903 says:

      .
      .
      The Elway Poll queried 411 Washingtonians to get that result. With 39 Counties, that’s about 10.5 per County.

      The Elway Poll from July had 408 respondents.

      One thing I’ll say for the enemies of freedom potheads in opposition to I-502 is that they certainly seem to enjoy trying to make mountains out of mole hills.

      Hey, both polls had a 5% margin of error. Doesn’t that mean that statistically these polls were just about a dead heat?

  17. darkcycle says:

    Great one in the Tacoma News Tribune, all except he missed a key point in his exposition…I can’t seem to log in (again), but I’m kind of curious if anyone will point out that if pot is legalized, it’s street value will decrease to the point where home invasion robberies for pot will no longer be worth it. I certainly look forward to that eventuality. Also, if you vigorously defend your home in the dead of night from unknown intruders, you stand the chance of killing some donut eaters by mistake and earning yourself a trip to the electric chair. Otherwise, it’s a pretty good take…
    http://blog.thenewstribune.com/bluebyline/2012/01/08/current-marijuana-statute-lacks-clarity-adds-danger/

  18. darkcycle says:

    …Actually, it’s not all bad, at least in Washington you can have the choice of lethal injection or HANGING. And it is a well known principal of jurisprudence that if a person survives, they cannot be hung twice for the same crime. So if you manage to survive, you walk (well, you might not actually be ABLE to walk, but you know what I mean). And people regularly survived.

    • Duncan20903 says:

      .
      .
      Maryland has the death penalty and juries that absolutely never condemn a person to death. In such close proximity to Virginia too.

      We’ll soon see if a jury can condemn a prisoner for killing a correctional officer.

  19. Duncan20903 says:

    Well they’ve come up with a cure for marijuana addiction!

    Professor Jan Copeland, says it is a pharmaceutical extract of botanical cannabis which smooths the peaks of withdrawal.

    You just can’t make up shit like this. Δ9-THC is the cure! Christ on a crutch, this came out of Australia no less. Will they say schizophrenia is a possible side effect in the TV commercials? Stay tuned.

  20. Duncan20903 says:

    .
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    It seems that they’ve proven that exposure to prohibitionists promotes puking periodically in some people, mostly males. It also appears from the study that women are able to better tolerate prohibitionists at least judging from their paltry production of puke.
    http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-01-marijuana-cyclic-vomiting-syndrome-young.html

    Here’s today’s math lesson:

    82 * 0.37 = 30.34

    82 * 0.13 = 10.66

    62 * 0.11 = 6.82

    30.34 + 10.66 + 6.82 = a grand total of 47.82 cannabis users who participated in the study. No mention was made of how much, how often, or whether cannabis use began previous or subsequent to the onset of the conditions described. The participation of partial people was not explained.

    No mention was made of how a doctor differentiates diagnoses of CVS or FV, why there are two medical conditions with such similar symptoms, or why in the world they decided to blame cannabis. Of course I’m being disingenuous with the latter. Everyone knows that cannabis is the cause of anything and everything negative that ever has or ever will happen, and that the government pays well for proof of that.

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