Item 1: Los Angeles Times publishes an excellent editorial: The DEA’s marijuana mistake
But guess who bears responsibility for this level of ignorance? The DEA itself, which through its ultra-tight restrictions on marijuana has made it nearly impossible for researchers to obtain the drug for study, and the National Institute for Drug Abuse, which controls the availability of the tiny quantity of research-grade marijuana that is federally approved for production.
Item 2: The DEA responds: The DEA’s pot defense [Blowback] by Robert Bonner – full of deceptions and misdirections.
And yet the editorial is based on the myth that the DEA has made it “nearly impossible” for researchers to obtain marijuana for such scientific studies. To the contrary, not a single scientifically valid study by a qualified researcher has ever been denied by the DEA or, for that matter, by the National Institute of Drug Abuse. And there is ample government-grown marijuana, specifically for research, available at the marijuana farm run by the University of Mississippi. More surprising, as your editorial points out, is that there is still no scientifically valid study that proves that marijuana is effective, much less safe, as a medicine. […]
Essentially, I invited those who advocate marijuana use as a medicine to conduct research and then present it to the DEA. I laid out a road map for what they needed to do. If scientifically valid studies demonstrated that marijuana was “effective†and “safe,†as the FDA defines those terms, the agency would reclassify marijuana into one of the other schedules. It is amazing that 20 years later there is still no such scientific study establishing that marijuana is effective as a medicine. And yet in the interim, the well-funded marijuana lobby, including the National Assn. for the Reform of Marijuana Laws and others, have spent tens of millions of dollars on convincing voters to pass medical marijuana initiatives based on anecdotes but not science. […]
One can only conclude the marijuana proponents did not go this route because doing so would have shown that cannabis is not an effective and safe medicine. Alternatively, we are left to conclude that their agenda was not about marijuana to help sick people, but rather was getting voters to pass medical marijuana initiatives as a wedge to legalize the drug for “recreational” use.
Item 3: Noted scientist Rick Doblin (of Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS)) responds.
I have put my full energies for the last 20+ years into trying to conduct FDA-approved medical marijuana drug development research. Unfortunately, my experience, to which I hope you will give some credence, is exactly opposite of the open door to research that you claim exists. MAPS has obtained FDA and IRB approval for three different protocols to which NIDA refused to sell any marijuana, preventing the studies from taking place. In addition, NIDA refused for 7 years to sell MAPS 10 grams (!!) of marijuana for laboratory research investigating the vapors that come out of the Volcano vaporizer, compared to smoke from combusted marijuana.
Furthermore, MAPS has been involved for the last decade in litigation against DEA for refusing to license Prof. Craker, UMass Amherst, to grow marijuana exclusively for use in federally regulated research. In 2007, DEA Administrative Law Judge Bittner recommended, after extensive hearings with witness testimony, that it would be in the public interest for DEA to license Prof. Craker to grow marijuana under contract to MAPS, ending the NIDA monopoly on the supply of marijuana legal for use in FDA-regulated studies. DEA waited for almost two years and then rejected the ALJ recommendation just six days before the inauguration of Pres. Obama. On May 11, 2012, oral arguments took place before the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in a lawsuit by Prof. Craker challenging DEA’s rationale for rejecting the DEA ALJ recommendation. A ruling is currently pending from the 1st Circuit. From my perspective, DEA’s rationale for rejecting the DEA ALJ recommendation is arbitrary and capricious, but of course what matters is what the 1st Circuit will eventually decide. […]
My conclusion is opposite of yours, when you said, “One can only conclude the marijuana proponents did not go this route because doing so would have shown that cannabis is not an effective and safe medicine.”
Rather, one can only conclude that privately-funded medical marijuana drug development research is being aggressively and actively obstructed by DEA/NIDA/PHS because they know it can be scientifically proven that marijuana, smoked or vaporized, is both safe and effective.
Bonner and every admin of the DEA are intelligent enough to conclude from the lies and propaganda they had to buy science for that the prohibition of marijuana was for political and economical reasons and had nothing to do with possible harms from marijuana.
They cooperated in continuing “Reefer Madness” and the incarceration and destruction of millions of young peoples lives and continue doing so now.
They are all war criminals and are guilty of crimes against humanity.
Cannabis is a threat to capitalism, AND Empire.
End of story.
You’ve got to be kidding, tripping, or both simultaneously.
Do not use Marijuana as a way to attack capitalism. In fact, the legalization of cannabis fits most effectively under a free market and technically capitalism is associated with small government. Furthermore, I’m assuming that you are unaware of what political opinions our current President holds. Obama, a socialist, has enforced marijuana prohibition harder than his predescesor, Bush, who is a capitalist. If you would like to debate about Capitalism and Socialism, challenge accepted, but let us take the discussion elsewhere as I do not want to divert others from the real discussion, the ending of prohibition. I’m a capitalist, and I am very, very, very much pro-legalization.
if obama’s a socialist, I’m a banana. moderate to centrist republican more like.
Corporate fascist.
My Uncle overdosed on one whole marijuana. He injected too much into his bloodstream. RIP MARTY. o0
Are are either an 8 year old child or an adult with an agenda to spread misinformation. Also the All caps part and the googly eyes make it convincing that your are stupid. Good job that you can shove plant into your blood.
Slow down there hoss. I think you need to chill out and go smoke a joint or two. That guy was obviously being sarcastic.
Never let the facts…well you know how that one goes.
My mind is made up; quit trying to confuse me with those pesky facts.
Rick Doblin’s response was brilliant! From his concluding paragraphs:
To summarize, you have been an inspiration to me and have motivated me to devote several decades of my life to seek approval for medical marijuana drug development research.
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I urge you to reread your 1992 statement and join MAPS in asking for the end of the PHS protocol review process and for a new policy in which all FDA/IRB/DEA approved protocols automatically obtain approval to purchase NIDA marijuana. In addition, I sincerely hope you will also support DEA licensing of Prof. Craker. It’s time to “serve society better by promoting or sponsoring more legitimate scientific research.” (Bonner’s own words from his 1992 statement)
I loved that he agreed with the propagandist just enough to seriously challenge him to eat his own dog food! If Bonner is so confident in his conclusion, he should be eager to meet the challenge, which would presumably prove his case. I eagerly look forward to Bonner’s response, but I’m not holding my breath. (OK — I’m holding my hit right now, but that doesn’t count!)
It is time to legalize the plant. Whereas recent controversy seems to be based on lack of prevailing evidence of “Safe” and “Effective” as a “Medicine”, I contend that there is more than enough evidence to demonstrate that prohibition has been neither “Safe” nor “effective” in any way.
In fact, when we remove the two primary contentions to legalizing marijuana as a medicine, being efficacy and labeling a raw plant as a medicine, all science shows that it marijuana use is at least non-lethal, and likely non-toxic completely.
Legalization does not hinge on efficacy as a medicine, does allow for such advanced study, and allows for a safer recreational choice by citizens.
It has come to the point that the arguments against Medical Marijuana are equally applicable to justification for legalization. Take “Medical Efficacy” out of all of the mentioned articles, and we have sound reason to legalize and little reason to prohibit access to anyone for any reason at all.
All legalization hinges on is safety rather than efficacy for, or as, anything. Science and anecdotes all provide evidence of that much.
Thank you Robert Bonner. I say Hear Hear! Stick your foot in your mouth some more. Rick Doblin just kicked your ass. Want some more?
More Bonner:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPALNqimEvM
It’s funny isn’t it? That such crap can flow from an adult mouth… and of course anytime I hear “DEA” I think judge Young. Surely within the entrails of that bilious agency there are others like judge Young that are interested in the truth more than in their jobs.
I watched The Most Dangerous Man in America the other night on PBS. About Daniel Ellsberg. Mighty fine stuff, well done and a great look back. But the whole time watching it I kept saying (to myself)(and the dogs, when they’d listen) “the drug war needs a Daniel Ellsberg.”
As egregious as all (and I do mean all) the atrocities committed under the WO(s)D banner are, surely within all those gummint cubicles there sits a person or two disgusted up to the their eyeballs with the shit and has enough inside info to blow the whole shebang (also the name of a teen dance show in the ’60s) to smithereens.
So where’s our drug war whistle blower/s?
O/T, again. Allen, just flipped to February in my Garden Calender. Ahhh, that’s the hoop house in my dream garden(the big plants will finish outside, of course! 😉 ). Lovely work. Very nice.
save that calendar, those pictures will be worth cents on the dollar when I’m dead and gone and still not a famous photographer.
Nope. I’m gonna save it ’cause I like the pretty pictures. Jan. is coming off, and getting placed on permanent display (stapled to my garage wall in an honored spot. Right next to the line drawing of a 1938 Matchless G90)
I just visited Doblin’s MAPS website. This is from a timeline of their efforts to perform this study:
Placebo-Controlled, Triple-Blind, Randomized Crossover Pilot Study of the Safety and Efficacy of Five Different Potencies of Smoked or Vaporized Marijuana in 50 Veterans with Chronic, Treatment-Resistant Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
On February 9, 2011, the FDA and MAPS held a teleconference during which MAPS successfully addressed the FDA’s concerns, including the potential for diversion of marijuana used in the study
Sheesh! With illicit marijuana readily available to every high school kid in the country for the last forty years, they’re worried about “the potential for diversion” of a limited and tightly-controlled quantity of the very special government-sanctioned impossible-to-get “research-grade” marijuana required by the FDA, without which the research would be useless for it’s intended purpose??? Who really thinks it would be feasible that a research lab would leak something that important to their own research in order to serve an already well-served market? And Doblin describes the FDA as the “heros in all of this” — compared to the other federal agencies involved, they’re the reasonable one!
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I recently noticed that the FDA has a sign at their front gate that says, “Welcome to the tobacco free FDA.” I experienced some cognitive dissonance because only recently did the Feds give the FDA authority over smoking tobacco. Shouldn’t they be neutral or at least maintain at least a patina of being unbiased?
A new poll by Reason finds 72% support for not arresting marijuana users, 68% to not arrest growers, and 64% support for not arresting sellers, in legal states. As we remember, in December, Gallup found 64% of Americans don’t think the feds “should take to enforce federal anti-marijuana laws in those states.†There’s either a difference in language or there’s an 8 point bump since in the election. Notably, 64% is the lowest number—support found by Gallup for not enforcing anti-marijuana laws in general is equal to support found by Reason for sellers, which is notably less support than for personal possession.
These polls have to be a factor in the fed’s calculations in their non-responsive deliberations of silence. If the polls were around 50% or below then the feds would have room to swiftly knock us down like Arizona immigration, but 72% should be enough to give anyone a long pause. I know the feds won’t turn around like a motorcycle, more like a space shuttle mover, but I’ve been growing more confident the feds will ultimately allow commercial regulation to happen. Even if, even though, Mitch McConnell is full of himself and only playing politics, we are now a dominant issue in the game.
And I say they are steering the legalization issue into the ditch by trying to keep the propaganda going enough to force all production indoors which keeps production costs at a level to insure a continued black market,especially with all the “security” measures growers.distributors and retailers will be forced to provide,plus “sin taxes” from legislators during a time when every state is needing revenue driving the consumer price above the present street price.
By doing this they will be able to keep hemp prohibited,the issue that started this whole mess is still that big a political issue for our control freak government.
in our OR discussions I’ve made it clear that I’ll fight against any legalization (initiative or legislative) not including home cultivation, including outdoor.
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You’ve got significant factual basis because of A-64 and I-502. One had cultivation, one didn’t, both measures won by the same percentage on the same Election Day. Then toss the fact that Colorado is more conservative than Washington into the mix. Before Election Day 2012 there were good arguments for including the per se limit and not allowing personal cultivation. Both arguments have been blown out of the water because of those 2 initiatives.
Deep Dish, the Feds don’t have the power to get those 2 laws struck down. For crying out loud the California Medical Marijuana Program Act celebrates 10 years as a law this year. If they could, they would have done so a long, long time age. Just FYI immigration is an enumerated power in the U.S. Constitution.
From my perspective, I’ve always thought marijuana is what started the whole mess, and hemp got swept up in the hysteria for the reason both plants are cannabis sativa. Thus, in the interest of eradicating cannabis sativa, hemp was viewed down upon.
But I could be wrong.
How would the oil companies control prices if any country that could cultivate hemp made enough bio-diesel to fuel their transportation systems,enough food to feed their people,textiles,medicine and euphoria from one plant?
Deep,,read Jack Herer’s book:
http://www.jackherer.com/thebook/
It is a must read for understanding that marijuana was used as a wagon to pull hemp off the market.
The book is on my list of books to fully read, although I’m a little cautious on its reliability in a few respects. You know much more about hemp than I do, so let me you ask you this:
http://hemphoax.org/hemp-as-a-biofuel/
Here is a page which critiques the scientific plausibility of claims by hemp literature. The page is antagonistic in tone but seems well-researched and argued. Is it a reasonable critique? I should note, too, the pages are open to comments and the author has been responsive.
http://tinyurl.com/bbr5tk4
The above link is to a list Granny Storm Crow posted about hemp biofuel practicality,I have not read them and they may be some of the studies mentioned in your link.
It is possible that hemp supporters have exaggerated the efficiency the crop can produce fuel and even food but the fact remains that paper and textiles can be produced from hemp without the toxic chemicals required to produce paper from pulpwood and textiles from cotton.
Most marijuana advocates have realized that we must be truthful in our claims so we don’t come out looking like our government’s drug war propaganda producers but I have little experience with hemp advocates,mostly because the hemp advocates have traditionally distanced themselves from marijuana advocates.
Yep Clay and look who Anslinger married into -the Melons. They say Anslinger’s first anti-dope experience was as a kid when he heard the moans of an opiate addict . . . how do we not know it was some good ol’ fashioned American kinky-sex he didn’t hear. I know a man who forces his women to dress as a deer and make deer noises while he’s laying into her . . . what if Anslinger heard something like that. We’ll never know.
Jack’s book is accurate, he spent his entire adult life compiling and researching that book. And once it was written, he never stopped the editing process, going through eleven editions. The book it self makes a tall promise: $50,000 cash to anyone who can disprove a single claim made within. No one has so far collected.
Deep, that book isn’t just worth it, it’s a must-have for any DLR advocate.
DeepDish:
I had a look at the HempHoax website you linked to. I’m no biofuel expert, and I offer nothing to dispute the claims made there, but I did notice a few things that don’t seem right to me:
The first was the author’s heavy reliance on ridicule: the hemp activists he critiques aren’t merely wrong, “their arguments are advanced with almost superhuman incompetence”. You’d think the hempsters were claiming to have been turned into a bat or something….
But what struck me most was his conspicuously careful avoidance of referring to corn as a biofuel source, as if he wanted to avoid the reality of current production of corn ethanol and it’s comparison to hemp’s potential as an alternative to that.
He presents a table of relative biomass production yields that does not list corn, which he justifies with the introductory sentence “If you read the literature on dedicated biomass crops (as opposed to crops such as corn and wheat that may produce biomass as a byproduct rather than a primary product)”…
It is my understanding that corn biofuel production uses the corn kernels that would otherwise be the “primary product” and otherwise sold as food, so I think referring to corn biomass as a “byproduct” is highly misleading in this context. It looks like a subtle and intentional attempt to deceive.
He concludes with “If other biomass crops that are far more efficient and practical than hemp are legal already, then why aren’t these biofuels already replacing petroleum in America? If the U.S. is the only country in the world in which industrial hemp is not legal to grow, then why are liquid biofuels not being made from hemp in any of the other countries where the crop is legal—especially considering that many of them have far higher fuel prices than ours?”
These are good questions, except that if we accept their legitimacy they only beg the questions: Aren’t we “already replacing petroleum in America” to the extent we supplement the fuel supply with corn ethanol? Isn’t corn ethanol the primary biofuel gasoline replacement currently in regular production? Why didn’t the author compare hemp’s relative benefits as an alternative biofuel to the most common source in current use in an article that purports to dispel the myths of hemp as an efficient biofuel source?
Not once did he refer to corn as a biofuel source (aside from the dismissive and misleading mention as a “byproduct”). Not once did he attempt to refute the claim that hemp is 8 to 10 times more efficient than corn in the production of ethanol. That’s a glaring oversight that the author might have referred to as “superhuman incompetence” had he been critiquing the article rather than authoring it.
You’re right Freeman, the Corn used for Ethanol IS kernel, they do not use cellulose (as they should) to make Methanol, they use the Kernel to make Ethanol. Furthermore, as I understand it, the corn grown for Ethanol is bred for the purpose (Genetically Engineered?) and is inedible, and cannot be used for animal feed.
Thayer wasn’t merely avoiding the comparison of hemp to corn for biofuel by simple omission or by mistake, he was explicit about it — I somehow missed this in my first pass:
However, for biofuel we are not comparing hemp to corn or soybeans…
Since Corn is the main feedstock used for producing ethanol fuel in the United States, I wonder why not? It just doesn’t make any sense to me to avoid that comparison and focus exclusively on comparison to other potential sources if one is undertaking an honest critique of claims to hemp’s biofuel potential.
Thanks to Freeman… I went and read the HempHoaxster and my assumptions lined up w/ Free’s. I even went to the Canuckistan gummint for info on hemp production. The hoaxster played w/ numbers a bit. Hemp produces stalk, leaf and seed. When combined weights of all parts the hempsters aren’t as far off as hoaxster claims. The seed was several hundred to 1,000 lbs+ /acre. The stalk comprised the bulk of weight, up to several thousand pounds per acre. And the stalk itself has two components the fiber and the hurd. The hurd is used as insulation, bedding…
I was writing a long response last night, had it hyperlinked and everything! and hit the wrong key… I backed up but ’twas gone. He’s too long-winded, too heavy on the snark and (as Freeman points out) was… selective.
I worked for one the US’ most industrially active hempsters in the mid to late ’90s. I know the hemp schpiel pretty well.
Hoaxster ignored the industrial robustness of the hemp fiber, long and strong as shit. Conde and Seber produced MDF boards at the Washington State University wood products lab. Across the board (sorry, lumber pun) hemp MDF tested 2 to 3 times stronger in almost all categories (stress, modulus of rupture, elasticity) than MDF made from douglas fir fibers (the longest of which is 3/4″ while hemp fiber is loooong, so long it had to be chopped or else it bound up the production machinery). Hemp production is 4 times greater per acre than forest products (sorry Ents, I know you’re not “products”).
And… besides, if every claim made by the hoaxster is correct there is still no reason for hemp being illegal. We should let the market figger out it’s worth or worthlessness. Hoaxster didn’t address the nutritional component of hemp seed either. And he acts the ass.
US ND: Some Farmers Lobby For Legal Hemp (1999)
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99/n373/a06.html?1252
I don’t believe that it is possible to get all the outdoor growers back inside again.
Google Earth shows me literally dozens and dozens of grows throughout my county–there must be hundreds.
And we’ve got nothing on Southern Humboldt: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMpu0kbsV7w
That’s a lot of cats to herd back in the bag.
If hemp proliferates, outdoor growers just might be forced to grow indoors to protect the plants from turning into hemp . . . imagine your best Bubba Kush or Blue Dream turning into something worth $11 a pound because you grew it outdoors with hemp a mile or so away?
The feds will only get to keep the grows indoors by prosecuting outdoor grows as long as marijuana remains schedule 1,after that it will be up to each states policy makers such as the LCB in WA and the task force in CO.
War Vet,,if your Kush has been impregnated by a low thc strain it will not ruin your crop. According to research in the 80’s the production of seeds by any strain reduces thc content by .2>.4%,,such a low amount that it requires testing to tell the difference,,and a few seeds and not fully seeded reduces it even less. Seed production for your strains will have to be done indoors though to keep them pure.
If you have some seeds show up in your crop,,call me and I will haul that worthless stuff off for you.
W.V. Your blue dream will still be blue dream, albeit with seeds. That first generation of seeds will be okay too, it’s when you re-plant with that seed over successive generations that you will see it revert to hemp.
Mainly, nobody wants seeds in their buds. Unless you are a breeder or replant with seed from the contaminated plants, that’s the main consideration. Still, nobody will pay top dollar for seedy pot.
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I’m sure we’ve all heard Mr. Mackey say “drugs are bad, mmm-kay?” Of course the creators of South Park were making fun of the Feds using product placement in TV and movies to denigrate substances on their naughty lists.. They have stopped doing that. I was still shocked when the most recent episode of CSI (season 13 episode 12 “Double Fault”) mentioned the use of LSD as a therapeutic agent and most certainly not in a bad light.
I wonder if the South Park guys ever tried to get the Feds to pay them for making Mr. Mackey say that.
I hear LSD research is slowly coming back in vogue. Maybe I am just imagining things though.
I hope this Dr. Doblin is asked to testify when this case goes to trial again for the next round.
I’m referring to the petition to reschedule case that was recently decided in favor of the DEA’s decision.
it’s rare to see Doblin stepping out like this. He’s been pretty low profile in public. His (MAPS’) work is outstanding.
The Dale Gribble in me says he knows the aliens are running Prohibition, along the lines of the Body Snatchers.
Aliens with pockets full of cash to buy stupidity by the bushel.
OT eh…
War on drugs draws Canadian military focus in Central America
idjits
Ya I saw that yesterday. What a joke. Our soldiers farting around in central America, basically accomplishing nothing while our taxes are going up in order to fight the deficit which is huge although nothing compared to the US deficit.
If Harper isn’t gone in the next election we are in serious trouble.
Screw “arbitrary and capricious ” — it’s politically motivated and designed to undermine actual science and medicine.
I suppose that isn’t legal speak though.
I was trying to recall any historic period when a specific government has been so dismissive of science, and the only example I think of is Nazi Germany. Relativity was wrong because it was ‘Jewish physics’. Magnus Hirschfeld’s studies on sexuality were suppressed, and the valuable research documentation burned, because it was about sex, and so forth. In this case, it appears the marijuana research is ‘missing’ because it’s ‘liberal science’, a science category which currently includes evolution, stem cell research, and climate studies.
That leaves individual, liberal-minded states and foreign governments to do cannabis research, which they are doing.
University research in Israel is reliable. Much of it exonerates marijuana and hash of being demon-infested substances. If a court is wondering where to find good research on marijuana, FDA studies are probably not the place to look for it. The DEA and FDA are captured government agencies. Big Pharma owns them both.
I dunno, sometimes I see little dibbles in dry sift at 60x.
Did Israel officially say that medical pot had medical benefits? Does the Israeli state officially recognize it? I know it’s prescribed to their soldiers. So, if Israel did in fact OK pot to have medical use and if Israel is our American ally and the DEA refutes Israeli scientists, could we not say that the DEA are Anti-Semitic since they don’t respect Jewish doctors or scientists because they are in Israel?
Anti-Semitism is more complicated than that. It began as we know it in the 11th century, when because of restricted work laws Jews worked for monarchs as tax collectors and tax farmers (i.e., seeking out new things to tax). Because Jews were so closely affiliated with some medieval governments and their economies, and because they did the government’s dirty work along with its books, anytime a corrupt and incompetent monarch screwed up, the Jews were seen as part of the problem (an object lesson for those who don’t believe in separating church and state).
My observations of the DEA indicate they do indeed form their own centrist culture, one that is more religious in terms of behavior and belief systems than empirical, which makes the job attractive to members of the extreme religious right. Current evangelicals support Israel, right or wrong, because they think it will play a role in the apocalypse. But that doesn’t mean they recognize Israeli science, or anyone else’s science. The DEA is anti-science, and anti-intellectual.
I use the title as an attack against our enemy, the DEA, the way they used propaganda against us. I really don’t believe the DEA wear Swastikas . . . but they are not human and must be attacked with whatever words we can find and we must use historical examples to at least give a body validity to it . . . just cannot call the DEA a bunch of no good wine bottles . . . that makes no sense . . . but because they refute the Jewish State’s science and their view of Israel giving their troops medical pot for PTSD (which is humane), I call them Anti-Semites because they hate Jewish soldiers using pot . . . they ridicule the Jewish State and the DEA enforce drug prohibitions, which funds terrorism which funds most of the attacks Israel has, thus making a more valid point in calling the DEA Anti-Semites . . . they would let Israel be destroyed over drug prohibition, just like Hitler would if that was his tactic.
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Well one true irony is that this stone cold atheist finds that the only religion that is even remotely tolerable is Judaism.
But point in fact the Nazis killed a whole lot of people who weren’t Jewish, something like 4 million non Jews were killed. Catholics, gay, drunks, drug addicts etc but it’s the Jews that get all the press. Mr. Hitler really was an equal opportunity hater.
Servetus, Didn’t some government in the guise of established religion execute some poor research scientist because he was able to prove that the Earth revolved around the sun, not vice versa? I’ve got the dead guy’s name on the tip of my tongue and just can’t pull it out of my brain.
It was Galileo and the Church of Rome forced him to recant his belief, or be tortured and killed as a heretic.
The Church recently apologized for its error, if I’m not mistaken.
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Oh for crying out loud. Galileo is one of my Facebook friends. Sheesh! It’s a darn good thing that Freddy Mercury isn’t alive to see this.
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War Vet, Israel’s definition of medicinal cannabis is the closest to treating it like any other medicine but still comes up a few yards short of the goal line. They’ll accommodate cannabis patients in the hospital but they still keep it separate, supplied by a single dispensary and the cost isn’t covered by their single payer health care system. IIRC the dispensary operator can’t get paid for their efforts. They’re the ones that got a lot of press for developing a high CBD almost THC free strain of medicinal cannabis. Isn’t it just precious how many people think that medicinal cannabis should be free of charge?
It’s actually a major reason for why I think Judaism is the most tolerable religion. Israel is a friggin’ theocracy but you can actually get their government to change their position using facts and logic, at least to a certain point.
The Israeli police act just like our stupid police do on this particular issue. But unlike the US the police opinion is just a voice in the wilderness.
Unless there’s a compelling case for antisemitism on the part of the drug warriors I think playing the Godwin card is a horrid idea. I doubt that our drug warriors would even get as far as identifying their religion before they judge. Also as I stated above their police use the same “logic” as U.S. police (ex LEAP). That would make the antisemitism thing a lost cause all by itself.
Me too. Gallie is a good fellow. How can he be dead? He’s on Facebook.
Hitler executed about 6 million Jews, 5 million Gypsies, various numbers of gays, Jehovah’s Witnesses, drug addicts, pamphleteers, and people who named their dogs Adolf.
We don’t hear much about how the Gypsies fared, because their culture never had a literary tradition like the Jews. It was said the Nazis much preferred executing Jews because they would go quietly and solemnly to their deaths. By contrast, Nazis hated having to kill the Gypsies because the Gypsies always made a big fuss about it. Perhaps the moral of the story is never go quietly.
At the cusp of an impending Hemp renaissance, the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 effectively made the cultivation of hemp illegal. This was due largely to the efforts of the following businessmen/entities:
Andrew Mellon – As chairman of the Mellon Bank he was Dupont’s primary investor and treasurer (1921-1932). He was also responsible for the appointment, in 1930, of his future nephew-in-law, Harry J. Anslinger, as head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN).
William Randolph Hearst – Competition from hemp was a threat to Hearst’s paper-manufacturing company, and he believed that hemp’s renaissance would also significantly lower the value of his land (enormous timber acreage in both California and Mexico, and best suited for conventional pulp). He used his publishing empire (28 newspapers in 18 key American cities with an estimated 20 million readers) to run stories claiming that marijuana was responsible for everything from murder to loose morality.
The DuPont family – In 1935, two years before the prohibitive hemp tax act, DuPont developed a new synthetic fiber, nylon, a direct competitor to hemp in the textile and cordage industries. DuPont was also in the process of patenting a new sulfuric acid process for producing wood-pulp paper. According to the company’s own records, wood-pulp products accounted for more than 80% of all DuPont’s railroad car loadings for the next 50 years.
For their billion dollar dynasties to remain intact, these unconscionable tycoons decided that hemp had to go. Taking an obscure Mexican slang word, “marihuana,†they vehemently tarnished the good image and phenomenal history of one of God’s most loving gifts to humanity. Undoubtably, one of their most effective tools was the use of Goebel-esque cinematography – Films like ‘Marihuana: Assassin of Youth’ (1935) ‘Marihuana: The Devil’s Weed’ (1936) and ‘Reefer Madness’ (1936). Using such underhanded tactics, these industrialists were able to swoon an unsuspecting American public into helping them completely kill off the competition.
“Marihuana makes fiends of boys in thirty days : Hashish goads users to bloodlust.”
— Hearst newspapers, nationwide, circa 1936.
Hearst’s company slogan, BTW, was: Truth, Justice, and Public Service!
What do you expect from an agency who advertises that paper, socks, shoes, carpets, paint, plastics, concrete and gasoline have no medicinal value as well? I feel sorry for the DEA agent who was forced to rub a hemp concrete block against his junk just to prove to Michele Leonheart that hemp has no medical values for relieving crabs that the agent received while in South America . . . or that poor DEA agent who had to drink hemp based paints just to prove it didn’t cure his tobacco cough. They say hemp can create 50,000 different products, what if each product only required 100 workers per?
Just to respond to Item 3 above — research into vaporizers can be done with all sorts of herbs, like those used for aromatherapy (lavender, chamomile, etc.). This kind of research can make the public aware of lots of benefits of using vapes.