Just for fun, we’ll throw in a little video of Halle Berry bugging Jay Leno about smoking pot.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ScKWTssKZY&sns=em
And for election geeks out there, this is a fascinating interactive chart showing the various paths to electoral victory for Obama and Romney.
(There’s a perverse part of me that would be intrigued by seeing an electoral tie caused by Gary Johnson.)
Let’s hope Americans make the right choice tomorrow – by legalizing cannabis in the Catholic Herald(!)
on John Walters and William Barr linked to Nazis: “More that might be useful, Mount Sinai researchers have identified a brain pathway that is affected by addictive drugs: 18-APR-2024–…researchers,…” Apr 18, 23:11
on John Walters and William Barr linked to Nazis: “More on opiate receptors. I had a physician who recommended Salvia Divinorum. He later asked me to keep his recommendation…” Apr 17, 11:40 on John Walters and William Barr linked to Nazis: “I’ve applied what little mental skills I have to the study of cannabinoid G-coupled protein receptors like CB1 and CB2…” Apr 16, 16:35 on John Walters and William Barr linked to Nazis: “University of Leipzig researchers examine the molecular mechanisms of the opioid receptors and their different functions: 12-APR-2024 — Drugs that…” Apr 14, 17:36 on John Walters and William Barr linked to Nazis: “Researchers at Dartmouth College reveal Cannabis receptors are among receptors implicated in the way the brain regulates emotions: 3-APR-2024 …”Our…” Apr 6, 09:59 on John Walters and William Barr linked to Nazis: “Corrected links: University of Basel: Liberalization of medical marijuana and mental health in the USA Health Economics Policy and Law:…” Apr 4, 19:24 on John Walters and William Barr linked to Nazis: “Swiss researchers investigated what effects if any medicinal marijuana had on mental health in the United States. Their results show…” Apr 4, 19:21 on John Walters and William Barr linked to Nazis: “Interesting question. All of it played a role. I think religious differences and conflict are the main motivators behind drug…” Mar 31, 23:17
Since I mailed in my ballot as soon as I had it and finished marking it, there’s nothing to do but wait and watch the coverage.
This is a hoot, I must say. I can only imagine the other side. For us, if we lose, it’s business as usual. We go on and get ready for the next battle.
They’ve never lost before. More than that. For us a loss isn’t really even a loss, we can go again. They can’t. For them a loss is the beginning of the end.
“Ask not for whom the Bell tolls,…it tolls for Kevie.”
I’m so thankful for getting to vote for Gary Johnson for President and Jim Gray for Vice President.
Back when Johnson was Governor of New Mexico, I wished for the opportunity to vote for him as President and I’ve always had the greatest respect for Judge Gray and am very pleased to have voted for him to be Vice President. I have a very nice, signed letter from Gov. Johnson when he was Governor and I had email with Judge Gray eons ago on a crashed computer somewhere. I also have an autographed copy of Judge Gray’s book that I won as activist of the month … or something… at DrugSense.
Whoo hoo! Let freedom ring!
Just returned from voting for Johnson. Felt good. Here is to hoping WA,CO, and OR do the right thing.
Whoops! No. I was wrong… my correspondence many years ago and autographed book was with Mike Gray. Not Jim Gray. Sorry, Mike!
But my letter from the Governor was from Gary Johnson.
I am surprised there are no calls for the priest to be burned at the stake for heresy in the Catholic Herald article comments…
DARE curriculum drops pot
http://www.kndo.com/story/20006739/d
“”KENNEWICK, Wash. -The students who graduated Monday from Kennewick’s DARE program will be the last to be taught the potential dangers of marijuana.
Nearly 100 fifth graders at Sunset View Elementary accepted their diplomas after the ten week course, which discourages kids from tobacco, alcohol, and drugs. But DARE officer Mike Meyer says the national dare organization has removed the discussion of marijuana from the curriculum.””
Can we have a THUD?
THUD!!
This has not been confirmed, but I cannot imagine it is true. Dare is a wasteful, idiotic program but they talk about legal and illegal drugs. This just doesn’t make sense.
http://reason.com/blog/2012/11/06/is-dare-really-dropping-marijuana-from-i
thunk?
In the article the decision was made at the National level,,we need a wiki-leak of the policy change,,if /DARE is dropping marijuana from it’s program it means funding for marijuana propaganda has been cut,,and that is the thud I was speaking of.
I would think it great if true, just have my doubts.
All I can find is that one article, quoting one DARE cop. Still seems to good to be true.
Hmmmmm….doesn’t seem even remotely right to me…
Good piece by Russ B. debunking 502 opponents claims:
http://www.alternet.org/top-5-bad-excuses-voting-against-pot-legalization?page=0%2C0
C’mon, Darkcycle, I-502 is a stinker. I held my nose and voted for it because I just couldn’t stand to see it lose like 19 in CA.
Two specific items make it a stinker, IMHO:
1) no provision for personal grows; and
2) a presumptive dui which is ignorant and unscientific.
Generally, I-502 panders to ignorance, its tax provisions guarantee the black market will continue, and its regulations will attract federal preemption.
What we will be left with is decrim of less than an ounce. Retail possession will no longer be a crime. That, and the symbolism, was enough to make me vote yes. But let’s not forget that it is at best fair to poor. And a very small step in the right direction.
We disagree on that. There are fine point that I have reservations about. It was the right mix…it made it. It could have been better, but for the life of me I cannot remember the last piece of legislation that had no points that I found distasteful. Laws and sausages, Diva. Laws and sausages.
Besides. One month from now (knock on wood), you and I will be able to walk around with a ounce of weed poking out of our pockets, and nobody can say squat. I’ve been dreaming of that since 1974.
.
.
The FBI has released 2011 arrest statistics. Marijuana arrests happen every 42 seconds, analysis of FBI data shows
As I predicted some months ago California deciding to decrim on 1/1/2011 caused cannabis arrests to fall off of a cliff to 660,000. But that can’t be the only catalyst here as California had around 80,000 arrests annually for petty possession prior to decrim which would have left the total arrests in the high 700,000s if everything else was equal.
Quick synopsis:
1) A total 12,408,899 people were arrested last year
2)The No. 1 arrest charge in the U.S. was drug abuse violations. More than 81 percent of the 1,531,251 arrests stemmed from possession, while the remainder were for sales and manufacturing.
3) 43.3 percent of all arrests under the drug abuse violations category were for possession of cannabis.
California’s overall crime rate fell another 6.483% in 2011. It’s now down 42.429% since 1996.
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/cacrime.htm
In the same time period the US crime rate fell 35.234%. Don’t forget that the crime rate is expressed per capita. Since California has a hair better than 12% of the US population that California’s crime rate reduction had a significant effect on the nationwide numbers.
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm
Colorado may just squeek by: http://tinyurl.com/aumau7x
In response to Clay, I think maybe not a “thud” but a Baptist choir of “Amen, amen, aaaamen, amen, amen”!
I voted for Gary Johnson – I don’t think I’ve ever voted for the winning candidate though I will say I feel better about Johnson then I have in a long time about a candidate. I am hoping he gets 5% and the LP is recognized as a minor party.
Voted for Johnson, but am actually more interested in the marijuana legalization issue more so then the presidential election. I wish I lived in one of the three states so that I could vote on it. I think I will be crushed if it doesn’t pass in at least one of the states. Very nervous.
It is difficult for me to understand the thuds and the thunks above, and why it is wasteful and idiotic to teach youngsters about drugs and potential hazards of using them. I am not a prohibitionist, but I care very much that my grandchildren learn about and hopefully are dissuaded from taking up drugs including marijuana before adulthood – preferably about age 26. Maybe one of you sophisticates can enlighten me.
Maybe, just maybe, that should be done by you and their parents. DARE is an ineffectual organization that wastes millions of our tax dollars.
I believe the issue folks have with DARE is that it has become a podium for fear mongering and propaganda. I would go as far as to imply that it is a tool of indoctrination and brainwashing for the prohibitionist cause. I have talked to my children after days that I see the DARE squad car at their school. My personal problem is that they manipulate children by terrifying them, and usually with old myths. Myths that I would put on par with a teacher telling my son he will go blind from masturbating. It is also repugnant that law enforcement has bastardized it into a “fishing” program for children to innocently indict their parents.
Well said, I would only add that DARE type programs contribute to the stigmatization and discrimination against people who use drugs. This is especially true for us “hard” drug users. If we can find time and money for BS drug “education”(indoctrination?) programs we could certainly teach children real information. For example every student could get a basic education into pharmacology so at least they wouldn’t buy into the ridiculous, laughable notion that all illegal drugs are the same (cost the same, have the same effects, ect). Maybe a meaningful look at the positive uses of drugs as well as an anthropological view of various cultural uses of drugs, especially traditional use of opium, coca and the entheogenic plants/fungi.
According to the Australian National Drug Research Institute (2003): “Tobacco, alcohol and illicit drugs are prematurely killing around seven million people worldwide each year, and robbing tens of millions more of a healthy life. The research into the global burden of disease attributable to alcohol, tobacco and illicit drugs found, that in 2000, tobacco use was responsible for 4.9 million deaths worldwide, equating to 71 percent of all drug-related deaths. Around 1.8 million deaths were attributable to the use of alcohol (26 percent of all drug-related deaths), and illicit drugs (heroin, cocaine and amphetamines) caused approximately 223,000 deaths (3 percent of all drug-related deaths).” Marijuana doesn’t get a mention.
I don’t think any of us have a problem with evidence-based realistic drug education aimed at harm reduction. But the history of D.A.R.E. has been counter-productive, actually increasing drug harm for those who go through the “training.”
And there is also the question of what kinds of training are appropriate for school vs. home, or by health professionals vs. law enforcement professionals.
Any lessening of the scope of D.A.R.E. in our eyes is an improvement.
I am a child of the 80’s, therefore at an impressionable age when DARE started. I will be honest, the information they passed out scared the bejezzus outta me. Then when I first tried pot (damned peer-pressure)I came to realize everything they had told me was on out-and-out lie.
In high-school the only ones sporting DARE stickers on their cars were pot smokers who wanted the cops think they supported DARE when they got pulled over.
@Dave Finch
simple… the thuds are bricks falling out of the WO(s)Dwall, the thunk was a questioning of the thud (waiting for verification). And the point of not liking DARE is – as indigenous folks have been telling others for a few centuries now, “white man speak with forked tongue.” Damn near anything about drugs coming out of Wash DC is lies and manure. (at best)
I am sooo thankful my kids didn’t have a DARE program in their schools, ever. They either wouldn’t have gone or had dad there with ’em. DARE smells like a prohibitionist agenda, looks like a prohibitionist agenda… omg!… it is a prohibitionist agenda! For too many years it operated carte blanche, supported and celebrated and all along just so wrong.
Because my kids are now young adults I can say that I obviously taught them about drugs right (their dumbass drug using schoolmates providing visual aids) because they both are moderate to conservative in what and how much they consume. And they both voted for Measure 80.
David,,first you have to research the roots of marijuana prohibition to understand the self feeding cancer it has become,,it is consuming the host.
If you search the congressional record you can find the big lie to congress that got marijuana prohibited(taxed to death)and further research will reveal that the government has continued the lie,,,the entire program at DARE was lies and skewed statistics,,,when children leave a DARE class thinking marijuana is the devils weed that DARE and our government has sworn it was,,they learn different and they then doubt that warnings about other drugs and substances may be just more propaganda,,,only it isn’t.
By removing marijuana from their program and telling the truth,,DARE and other organizations like them will have a lot more success at keeping kids off drugs than by using lies to scare them away from them.
I’ve been searching for some time for the transcripts from a critical Congressional hearing from way back, the late 1990’s, in which drug law reformers were compared to pedophiles and other scum.
I found it.
Medication alert: MUST indulge before reading, nausea guaranteed.
And you will see just how early on a certain propagandist mouthpiece touted today in all MSM outlets as a ‘drug policy expert’ was being groomed.
From having Congresscritters comparing us to pedophiles to being on the verge of winning. Lotta change in 13 years. And there will be even more in the next two.
Two years. This election and the next. That’s all it will take to force the realization that cannabis relegalization is here to stay. And standing in its’ way is a sure way to lose an election.
boy… thanks, I think, for that blast-from-the-past Kap. My how times change. And how Mark Souder doesn’t… there’s some election brouhaha that has me too distracted for such a long read tonite. But if one were to take these distinguished gentlemen at their words, we’re a real bad lot, sittin’ here on this couch. A real bad lot indeed.
Well said Jose, couldn’t have put it any better myself!
Watching the live election coverage of the various cannabis initiatives.
They just announced that MA’s medical marijuana initiative is looking like a lock. The results are early but right now they’re showing 64% in support.
Intrade is now predicting that Washington Initiative I-502 has a 97.5% chance of passing!
This could be a fun night! I’m not even paying attention to the Obama / Romney nonsense. Sure, you could let yourself be depressed by the fact that one of those two assclowns will be our next president. But why not be an optimist and look at it this way – one of those assclowns will also lose? Either way there’s a loss to savor.
and now a definitive win
Are we there yet?
BTW, does anyone else think Leno is full of it? He kept saying “I’m not a pot smoker.” Great — except that doesn’t answer the question you were asked, which was if you had ever smoked pot. He also seemed uncomfortable. And I just find it extremely hard to believe that a man with his career and lifestyle has NEVER tried pot — although I suppose it would help explain why he’s so painfully unfunny.
…. but does his admission to eating cup cakes suggest a different method of consumption?
Colorado is going to PASS!!!!!!!!! 52.5 to 47.5 21% reporting. I am so pumped. Can’t wait for Washington results.
I think Washington is a lock, but since they don’t start counting the ballots until 5:00 PM and it’s a mail in State, we won’t know the exact numbers for a day or so…
It is way too early to claim a win or loss anywhere,,,until the count is at 100%
Well, we’ll have most of King County done by the end of the night. As goes King County, so goes Washington. We’ll be pretty clear on that. Mass. passed MMJ.
Ladies and gentlemen, we’re cleaning their clocks. I like being on the winning end for a change.
Oregon, Measure 80 is leading in early counts! 2% counted!
Aw, this is looking like a route!! We’re absoluteley kicking their asses!!!
EDIT!! COLORADO PASSED!!! LEGAL!!!!!!!
Headline from The Onion:
COLORADO LEGALIZES! 64 PASSES! Would you believe this may be the biggest night of my life! Let the party begin!
Washington just called by the United Press I-502- PASS!!!!!
Now begins the dance,,do the feds wanna two-step or waltz with the devil?
Now our fight begins to get personal grows in every future legalization attempt.
*sigh* I just put up the ploom for CO, I guess I will have to load my WA bowl. Life is hard some times.
What can I say, but I’M WITH YOU DR. WOO!
Oregon doesn’t look good. Everywhere else, excepting Ark. everything else looks incredible…so far….
with no cable I watched the election coverage on NBC… it was sooo nice to hear a Dem pundit say that Gary Johnson actually had them very worried in CO. That’s an admission I’ll take! Also heard Tom Brokaw say (paraphrasing here) “I hope that in the next 4 years we do some serious work on a broken election system.” Amen to that!
so ok, election is done (not over but done). I guess it’s back to the trenches… but boy do we have some fine new ammo to use!
Allan, DON’T YOU SEE THAT GIANT HOLE IN THE WALL??? Back to the trenches?? BACK? I’m going through and see what’s over there!
is that where that giant ray of sunshine came from?