New York Times – Room for Debate: Did Colorado Go Too Far with Pot?
Opinions from: Ernest Drucker, A. Eden Evans, Deborah Peterson, Kevin A. Sabet, Steve Fox, Joe Hodas.
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Legalization does NOT equal a frenzied free-for-all where “Big-Marijuana” is forcibly squirting psychoactive breast milk into every prohibitionist-teetotaler baby’s foaming mouths.
Legalization STOPS the currently existing free-for-all where the only people who control the price, quality and availability are by definition, criminals. I don’t want, and nor should I need to buy a demonstrably safer than water product from a “friend”. I want to grow it in my back yard, and share it with all my neighbors if they want. Or run down to the store to try someone else’s flavored lettuce.
Man, first I find Nora Volkow in my newspaper this morning, and now I see this NYT piece. It’s so frustrating seeing more money being spent on giving a megaphone (again) to smartish sounding people with flawed assumptions. If only I had 75 billion to do some of what needs to be done.
Every single fear and scary premonition that they have can be severely mitigated with simple, smart and well thought-out regulations. [sarcasm]It’s not as though books haven’t been written on the subject.[/sarcasm] Dammit, not the way I want to start a friday. The biggest problem in this world/society is the power of money. Money has no morals.
The more desperate the prohibs get, the more they’ll trot out the ‘Crazy Uncles’ they’ve hidden in the attic for fear the public might have heard them earlier on, and realized what loons comprise the Prohib General Staff. Denizens of the prohib’s version of Cloud-Cuckooland like Volkow. No LD-50? No ‘danger’ (except to DrugWarrior budgets, of course). That simple.
I am reminded of a conversation Sukhoi and I had last decade concerning a news report he had seen in which a prohib cop was put on the spot and asked by the reporter why legalization shouldn’t happen. The cop was so unable to logically explain his opposition that he was reduced to saying “We can’t! We just can’t!”
Their entire position distilled down to a rhetorical sub-atomic level…and like the real thing, there’s nothing there but empty space.
The day approaches when the prohibs will be reduced to wide-eyed, foaming glossolalia. A wordless, gut-level, raw-throat scream of hate and denial. It’s all they’ll have left.
I would love to see that interview. Is there a link for a YouTube video?
Unfortunately, I don’t have a link. But ‘the Internet is forever’, so I am sure it exists. I’ll have to do some searching.
But in the meantime, I just went back to Kevvie’s page in the article, and, as usual, he’s taking a trip to the woodpile.
Sometimes I feel guilty; answering prohib blather anymore makes me feel like I am beating up on a man confined to a wheelchair. They’re hopelessly out-classed.
But then I recall what he and his ilk have done to me and my fellow cannabists, ruining (and taking!) lives so offhandedly. Giving them a public rhetorical horse-whipping is a love tap to what they really deserve.
We didn’t do jack to them, they were the ones who declared war on us…and then stated there would be ‘no quarter’. Very well, then; as our victory approaches, none for them, either.
Damn, you’ve got a good memory Kapt; as you’ve always had! As I recall, I had a debate about it in a local forum with a local LEO who was of the same mind; a Sabet or Kerlikowski state of mind is what I’ll call it… And you’re right, it’s just moronic circular logic: it’s illegal because it’s bad / it’s bad because it’s illegal…
I still fight the good fight locally, but I do plan on getting back on the band wagon with you guys – you guys are friggin AWESOME!!! And I can’t stress that enough!!! Those of you who know me know that this does indeed come from the heart, and if there is anything that I can do to help you guys, please don’t hesitate to ask – EVER…
Not as good as I thought, old friend. I believed that it had been a TV news segment. But no matter. The gist of the (pathetic) argument against re-legalization is the boiled-down essence of their ‘rationale’. Namely, they don’t really have one.
It also demonstrates something else, and it is being brought into national attention via the dust-up with this Wasserman-Schultz debacle: those arguments haven’t changed in 20 years.
She, like most DrugWar-supporting pols, is totally reliant upon the ONDCP/DEA ‘playbook’, which contains all the phrases they’ve used ad nauseum for literally 2 decades. It’s all through her (pathetically weak) ‘riposte’.
Every trite phrase, every canned response, every intelligence-insulting declaration…was minted as far back as 1994. Really.
They’re running on mental fumes, and even those fumes are low-grade. But then, what else can be expected from prohibs?
Kevvie seems unusually brief in his offering. Maybe he’s hoping by scaling back the BS, he won’t take such huge, multiple, fact-laden punches in the gut in a Comments section like he normally does when he spews?
Since all the lies have already been told decades ago, all that’s left for the prohibs is to dress them in new clothes, spray them with cologne and hope nobody notices their subterfuge. And in this day and age, with light-speed fact-checking available courtesy of the Internet, that’s pure desperation.
One more thing, and I kick myself mentally for not noticing it earlier when I kept seeing the comments refer to him as “Mister Sabet.”
Kevvie forgot to tack on his ‘doctorate’, this time.
Or, did he?
I guess being reminded in public fora that it isn’t in anything medical, while fronting for the ‘treatment’ industry, got to be a little too embarrassing.
But he did remember to tout himself as a ‘senior drug policy adviser’…in exactly the same vein that a garbageman is a ‘sanitation engineer’.
He was and remains nothing more than a speechwriter, an inveterate BSer. The NYT should be ashamed of itself for giving this fraud of a professional mouthpiece any face time at all.
Kevin Sabet is so fixated on marijuana prohibition he neglects to note that chocolate candies filled with a liqueur are being sold in innocent-looking candy stores. Rumors persist that the alcoholic candies are produced by Big Chocolate, and in countries such as Belgium, a bastion of libertinism if there ever was one.
Given that Kevin’s Baha’i religion forbids its members under pain of excommunication from going near alcohol, why is he not providing manipulated statistics showing thousands of addicted toddlers bombed on bonbons, and with lowered IQs? What about increases in crime outside Belgian chocolate shops? Does Kevin Sabet fear Big Chocolate?
As much as I hate to admit it, unfortunately there is one big reason why I won’t use this line of reasoning. An educated moralizer will come back with: “Getting a buzz off of alcoholic candies is difficult, but not at all difficult with cannabis candies.” And since they automatically equate buzz=bad, you have made the difficult task of showing this person the light of a drug-war free world even more difficult.
I believe this comparison would only work on someone with a greater than average open mind. And this type of person is probably already convinced that the drug war needs to end…
At one time I feared Big Vanilla.
One afternoon, when I was about 3 years old, my mother was baking a cake (or something). There was this great aroma coming from a small dark bottle on the counter. While my mother’s back was turned I took a healthy swig of McCormick’s Pure Vanilla Extract. Let it be known that there was a pretty good punch of alcohol in that extract. It burned like hell all the way down. I wailed like the toddler I was. My alarmed mother called my doctor and asked if I needed to be taken to the emergency room (back in the day you could actually talk to a doctor on the phone pretty easily). My doctor chuckled and told my mother to get me to drink plenty of water and that I would be fine, maybe just a little woozy. He was right.
My mother did not form Mad Mothers of Vanilla Drinking Children. She did not call for a vanilla ban. One time not long after my initial vanilla swig my mother jokingly pulled the vanilla bottle from the cabinet and asked me if I wanted to try a little more. I ran from the room. CPS did not visit. My brief vanilla addiction came to a screeching halt all by itself. No intervention or mandatory rehab was necessary.
Big Vanilla, you thought you had me with your fancy dark bottle packaging and your intentional come hither child attracting aroma. But I wiggled free of your chains, thanks in large part to my throat becoming a tunnel of fire scorching hell. Although it’s been many years now, I take each day of not drinking vanilla one day at a time.
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I won’t be visiting the NY Times comments columns any more. I’ve had too many posts rejected by their idiot censors which were straight up, on topic and informational. It appears that their censors think that medical maggots are fictional rather than a medical device approved by the FDA a decade ago. I wouldn’t mind if the posts censored were of my borderline insults, but those they print.
Websites that have censors examine every post before publishing which also feature a “report inappropriate content” snitch button drive me nuts.
You just have to get in quick submitting comments over there.
I’ve never had any comments censored, but I did have one unpublished as I submitted it many hours after the original article was posted online.
OT:Colorado’s poster boy for ‘stoned driving’ was drunk off his gourd
“Wait, Kilbey was drunk? Neither drunk nor alcohol appeared in any of those previous stories.
In fact, Kilbey had a blood-alcohol concentration of .268, more than three times the legal limit.”
http://tinyurl.com/ofq3464
That’s a Radley Balko piece at the WaPo. Amazing bullshit he calls them out on. 0.268 BAC, the dude would not only be staggering, he’d absolutely reek of alcohol. And yet only MJ was mentioned in the media coverage at the time.
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I really, really want to see the actual toxicology reports on the guy that shot his wife. Without a substantial BAC or another drug like meth or PCP in his system the event just isn’t right. Opioids/opiates just don’t fill that role IMO. We know for a fact that the press and public safety in Denver are perfectly willing to “frame” cannabis at least as far as leaving out pesky information about a BAC which would leave most people unable to even crawl in a straight line much less stand upright.
I’ve got my fingers crossed that the toxicology report for the Thamba kid who fell from the balcony comes back tarnished but that one I can see happening because of the combination of immaturity and inexperience. Of course in my version his friends aren’t just stunned onlookers as portrayed in their own self serving witness statements. Not criminally responsible, perhaps not even morally responsible but a lot more involved in the dynamics of the event than they’ve admitted. Of course since it was a suicide we may never hear the details unless someone decides to go dig them up.
here’s something from last month:https://news.vice.com/article/legal-pot-in-the-us-is-crippling-mexican-cartels. lots of fun in the comments
Time to heap abuse on the MSM. If they had the least skepticism about what the cops tell them, they wouldn’t be duped again and again. Bad journalist. Stupid journalist. Incompetent journalist. Perhaps in the future they will be less likely to swallow the cops’ lies hook, line and sinker as they do now. As it is, by believing the cops, the MSM lose cred as well. People will be saying, “Of course the cops lied, I understand why. What I can’t accept is ANYONE believing ANYTHING the cops say. I can’t trust the paper/radio/tv to tell me the truth because they are gullible and stupid.”
Yes, and it’s not just the cops. Honestly, when has our government told us the truth about anything in recent (and not so recent) memory? The wars, the trade deals, foreign relations, prisoner swaps. The truth exists, but can’t be revealed because then those that benefit would be exposed to scrutiny, and we can’t have that!
We are barraged by untruth everywhere. Sure the reporters should know better, but then again they need to have something to write about, and if all the sources lie, can we reasonably expect them to go out of business until the truth is found?
It’s like the old story about the movie business, where we all wonder how that (awful) picture could have been made: the studios sift through hundreds and hundreds of scripts every year, and make the least bad ones, because they are in the business of making movies, and if they don’t make something, arguably they’re no longer in business.
Ah, truth, ever elusive, even hidden, yet extant. How did ‘everyone’ get so afraid of the truth? I guess it’s slowly changing, but v e r y slowly.
Time to heap abuse on the MSM
aye, you got that right. That link from gonzo above has several offending media outlets included that ran the LEO lies. I will be contacting each one separately and axing them some pertinent questions. One likely question will be to ask if they hire their “journalists” from the plethora of dissatisfied fast food workers available or do they require an AA in liberal arts.
Sabet is losing touch with reality… his focus on advertising regulations, as though that were the reason he remains on the wrong side of history, is pitiful.
OT
As long as Leonhart remains at the DEA expect to see more harassment of professions which must hold federal certification. She seems to have set up an alternative power-base to the administration through the use of creative bureaucracy.
“Doctors Say DEA Blackmailed Them Over Medical Marijuana Ties”
“Romano said the DEA’s actions certainly seemed to violate the spirit of Deputy Attorney General James Cole’s August 2013 memo on the federal government’s approach to state marijuana regulations….
“This is another way they can go after the dispensaries without actually violating the letter and what they’ve been instructed.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/06/dea-doctors-medical-marijuana-_n_5460077.html
If this doesn’t make it abundantly clear how much a rogue agency DEA has become, and how important it is to immediately dismiss Leonhart, nothing can or will.
This is a direct challenge to both State Rights and democracy, itself, and if the Mass State and Congressional Representatives and Senators, especially the Democratic Party ones, don’t raise their voices and call for Obama to quit pussyfooting and put this mad dog down – after its chief has spit in his face repeatedly with her public pronouncements in opposition to Administration statements – then the Dems can kiss the 35 and under voters goodbye forever.
These idiots don’t realize just what is at stake. This goes waaay beyond the issue of prohibition, and strikes at the very heart of the democratic process, itself.
Cannabis re-legalization of any stripe is a litmus test by a generation that has had its future stolen and views almost all pols, as well as the system, itself, as being corrupt. If something that is that important to them as this is gets run over roughshod, then that’s the last straw, and there’s no point in playing the game, anymore. Nullify democracy by bureaucratic fiat, and Chaos and Hell await.
The prohibs are so blindly arrogant that they refuse to read the writing on the wall that’s in big, block fluorescent neon red letters 10 stories tall: YOU (the prohibs) FAILED.
The prohib’s DARE program FAILED to bamboozle the Millennials into remaining the marks in the multi-generational con-game called prohibition.
They rejected the prohib’s damnable ‘war’ fought ‘for’ (actually, on) them when they expressed their political will at the voting booth. And it is they, not gullible, benighted, prejudiced Seniors, who pay the taxes, now.
Clearly, the mad dog is completely off the chain. How much rope will Obama give Leonhart to hang herself with? Congress needs to feel the heat ASAP and start demanding an answer to that very question.
It looks more like O’Bama is on our side after all. By letting this rabid dog bark, he ensures others will hear her. When Botticelli spoke, he showed that it is not just gender related. BHO is allowing the argument to reach fever pitch. When it becomes obvious, then he can change things. Until then he can’t. At least not without enduring massive criticism. When the noise calling for action equals or exceeds the noise calling for inaction, he will be able to move. Let her bark. It does us good.
Wow Kapt, well spaketh!!
“I have nothing further to add, your Honor, let the Defense rest”.
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I wonder if the DEA jack boots have forgotten the ruling in Conant et al v Walters, (9th Cir 2002) 309 F.3d 629 (cert denied Oct. 14, 2003)? That would be the ruling that says that doctors don’t give up their right to free speech just because the DEA issues them a license. Perhaps they just hope that Massachusetts doctors are unaware that they’re protected from these actions? Maybe they hope to get a contrary ruling in the 1st District forcing the SCOTUS to decide the controversy once and for all? I wonder if they realize just how much weight the Justices of one Federal District give to the ruling of a different Federal District particularly when the SCOTUS had no interest in hearing the prohibitionists’ appeal of that ruling. It’s not like the prohibitionists aren’t going to be enjoined from trying to enforce this illegal action of the DEA while they work their way up to the SCOTUS.
Unbe-fekkin-lievable!
While I don’t agree with what the DEA are doing, I think it’s different than that case you cite. They’re not targeting doctors for recommending mmj this time, they’re targeting them for owning or being affiliated with a dispensary or mmj business. Apparently there’s a conflict of interest if doctors both write prescriptions (in this case recommendations) and also have an interest (finical or otherwise) in the drug they’re prescribing. I don’t think that really applies in this case, but I believe that’s the DEA’s justification.
Michelle likes to split hairs when she does her dirty work in her anti-administration fashion. I don’t think a recommendation qualifies as a prescription therefore not a conflict. Its simply a recommendation, not a prescription. TV commercials for pharmaceutical drugs haven’t been ruled as a conflict of interest. Doctor recommendation isn’t much different and does not have the same legal authority as a prescription.
Are handing out office samples a conflict? (I think it is btw)
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No, Tony’s right. I jumped to a conclusion and completely missed the boat. At least as far as the Conant decision, it specifically only protects doctors for expressing an opinion and says they can’t be involved in procurement.
I’m going to be stepping back because the assholes have my nerves too frayed. My brain needs a break from the constant insanity of the prohibitionist idiocy.
But the VA medical marijuana law means no doctor in America is legally able to talk about medical marijuana since the VA is the same thing as private heath care and private doctors due to how one earns the VA and thus choses the VA. The VA law is a slippery slope in controlling all doctors rights to disperse information.
Her methods have become “unsound…”
Marlow’s preparing to go upriver…
Let me guess, Mrs. Leonhart became an agent as a way of earning the kind of money and status to marry her sweetheart, her cousin. That’s not old tusks buried and crushing the competitor’s market–that’s dope she’s been hoarding and selling. Well, the boat is fixed after years of the company sending us worthless items unrelated to the boiler problems, time to head upriver and get her. We’ll make her not whisper it, but scream out ‘The horror’ in every language known to man.
correct. she is the heart of darkness and she s spent a lifetime hunting heads. then she sticks them on a pole and brags about it. she owes her position at dea to her use of false witness andrew chambers to gather scalps.
Even if everything kev-kev and fellow prohibitches had told us were true it still doesn’t justify incarceration or even ticketing,,zero deaths trumps even aspirin and anyone any age can buy aspirin at any corner store.
market economics can sometimes force outcomes that your government doesn’t like. OT story about evil genius george soros: http://tinyurl.com/mwdv4cg
That word ‘evil’ is very harsh and judgemental. The stupid British people chose the stupid ass politicians who set up the situation which the much smarter Soros capitalised on. The stupid British people paid the price of having made that choice. Smarter Soros became fabulously wealthy for exploiting the stupidity of an entire country. Think about that relative to our own choices for leaders. When we choose idiots that squander our resources on ill-advised exploits which expose us to vast dangers, is it not karma that we receive the consequences of said choices? 9/11 anyone?
i was trying to be humorous, but not hard enough, i guess. mr. soros can be as rich as he wants, i have no problem with for profit business. i don’t think you can blame the “stupid people” when the common man has little say in the running of either country. you are right that failure to remove the incompetant and corrupt administrations of recent times will lead to kharma sooner or later. that’s when you want to be able to grow your own food and medicine.
The ‘common man’ has little to say in the running of any representative democracy because he has abandoned his role in it. The common man pays little attention to what is actually going on, he believes the tripe handed out by the PTB instead of digging for the truth. He is at a distinct disadvantage in that the truth is buried deeply and camouflaged well, and he has little time in his busy life to pay attention. The PTB count on this. By hiding and camouflaging truth they ensure that their activities will be carried out far from prying eyes. The PTB follow the old Roman plan of “Bread and Circuses” to ensure there are many time wasters and amusements available, so the common man spends all his spare time on TV, hobbies etc. rather than paying attention, and that he is reasonably well fed to keep him from getting testy. TCM allows himself to be lulled into a false sense of security where he is ignorant of the perils he faces and therefore feels safe. That is why 9/11 caught so many people by surprise. Long ago, people gathered in coffee houses to discuss the events and politics of the day. It was in that environment that revolution was planned. The PTB did everything they could to undermine this process, even prohibiting coffee in some places. They feared that the common man would become educated about politics and interfere, causing the PTB great troubles. How is that any different from what they are trying to do to the ‘net? They fear that we will become knowledgeable, organised and therefore powerful. We are definitely causing them all sorts of trouble, forcing them to ‘splain themselves in ways they never had to when their lap dogs in the MSM did their bidding and kept the common man ignorant, and face consequences they would rather not. Now, they wish to rein in the power of the ‘net so they will regain control of information and keep us ignorant. This must not happen or we are doomed. If they get their way there will be no effective way to disseminate the truth and we will be back to the 1950’s where everyone thought that Leave It To Beaver and Father Knows Best reflected reality.
http://tinyurl.com/lcjuvq7
Mark Klieman is still trying to act as if medical marijuana is a lie and marijuana will never be legalized without lies,,it sounds like more reverse role playing,,marijuana prohibition would never have existed without lies and Kman is just reversing the truth so it sounds like marijuana safety and efficacy are lies..
The way the US govt has patents on cannabinoids as neuroprotectant and buys science claiming marijuana causes brain damage.
The Professor has a very strange definition of the word “reality”.
He’s not a professor since academic law requires him to change his mind once data proves the old mindset is faulty. Part of growing up is one’s willingness to change their mind . . . to admit being wrong and to change course for academic coherency/structure. I printed off a Harvard Doctorate degree for my dog, does that make my pooch a college professor? Before I found out about a few websites that calculated the total sum of the black market (like the U.N.’s), I calculated $400 odd Billion a year based on the data I had and first hand experience. Could Mark have done that from his position? A real professor will not fight the data. I’ve decided he is no longer a professor because he’s stubborn and because Mark forced me to fight for his ideology and thus I’ve decide I had the power to throw away his doctorate since he at one time had the power to kill my friends and put my life in danger over his ideology (the War on Drugs in Iraq). If he can attempt to kill me via the cause and effect of his precious drug war, then I can attempt to negate his degree and thus made it so (via using a little Hegel, Nietzsche, Descartes and a tiny bit of Wittgenstein logic). One must earn a degree and truth is progressive and he is hiding from the truth, attempting to destroy the truth, thus he no longer has the right to keep his degree. I will not call him a professor for the same reason I won’t call the rap group ICP professors. Pete is a professor based on his work in the fields of truth. Mark is a fraud and we cannot prove he has a doctorate.
I dig your logic, however fact is, he IS a professor because a school says he is. Has nothing to do with qualifications, credibility or ability. He is, however a tremendous narcissist, he likes having himself quoted and interviewed. It makes him feel important. He wants prohibition to continue because then the MSM will pay attention to him, which he wants. When prohibition ends the need for him, Kev-Kev, Calvina etc. will dwindle and stop. They will become footnotes to history, relegated to the ‘sad, really, such brilliant minds, so misguided. Tsk. Tsk. Tsk.’ column. That is what they dread, that is what motivates them.
Sadly you are right Primus. Mark could be forever kept in the pages of history if he decided to use his brain and toss the emperor down into the depths of the Death Star and join us. He’s doing a good job at making sure he’ll be forgotten with no proof of ever existing in a hundred or more years down the road.
Here is how the perception of “too far with pot” is created by a gullible press and a media that is all too ready to boost its reader statistics and hit counters by playing to the controversy whether real or imagined.
http://tinyurl.com/ofq3464
“Colorado’s poster boy for ‘stoned driving’ was drunk off his gourd” -at the Wapo by Radley Balko
Out of the DEAvils Garden…
Your music collection is probably illegal in Malaysia via @tokeofthetown
Arizona agents give chase to drug smugglers pretending to be feds ktar.com
http://shar.es/PpLaB via @KTAR923
SAM DEAgo clings to the stinking sinking ship of fools.
San Diego moving backwards on medical marijuana
via @tokeofthetown
The Tricky Case of Drugged (Cannabis) Driving
Canna Law Blog –
Legalizing marijuana: Police officers speak out via @policeone
UK study: MJ & messed-up sperm
Canadian study shows marijuana doesn’t make you crazy, booze does
Oregon high schooler banned from graduation for not smoking marijuana
South Salem High School in Oregon recently forced one of its seniors to admit to being under the influence of marijuana, but even though he was not, and has since provided school officials with a negative drug test to prove it, the school still refuses to grant him permission to participate in the graduation ceremony.
Colorado Attorney General: Medical marijuana use is not a right
Florida medical marijuana backers refute claims from prohibitionists
More on Maureen Dowd’s Colorado edibles experience. She’s looking dumber by the minute;
Maureen Dowd Was Warned About Edibles but Still Acted Like an Idiot
http://tinyurl.com/p28jekq
My favorite part;
“What is needed to stop people from accidentally over-consuming and causing a possible political backlash is to make the packaging of marijuana edibles truly idiot-proof [or Dowd-proof].”
I hope “Dowd-proof” enters the lexicon and comes to be known as “beyond idiot proof”. Hilarious.
‘Dowd-proof’. Yep, I like it. It expands the description of stupidity available in the English language to new ranges.
I can just see the new labels: A line drawing of a face that vaguely resembles her own, with sleepy/stupid eyes and tongue hanging out, with the letters
D-Pruf (Misspelling is intentional for you English majors gnashing your teeth)
or maybe
Dowdalized
or some such.
You really have to wonder if la Dowd and her dead-tree media pals at NYT fully understand what alienating an entire generation who get their information from the Web means.
They still don’t understand that their relevance is nearly zero to such people…and angering them is not a brilliant idea if you hope to become relevant to them in the future. Insulting their intelligence is not a smart move. Not smart, at all.
OT, but still important.
Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-Big Pharma) voted against the Farr-Rohrabacher Amendment to defund DEA raids on MMJ dispensaries.
She is evidently feeling the heat, because of this and has issued a joke of a non-explanation, using all the usual DEA-playbook verbiage.
Non-apology un-accepted, and I hope to see her defeated in the next elections. With ‘friends’ like that, we need full-plate body armor to deflect the knives they aim for our backs.
Debbie still doesn’t get it — at all. The last sentence from her non-explanation;
“My view is that approval of the use of marijuana as a medical treatment should be handled responsibly and in a regulated manner that ensures its approval does not do more harm than good.â€
——————–
What she continues to misunderstand is that her personal view is relevant only to her. Her constituents (her bosses if you will) are telling her that their collective view — 88% of Floridians approve of medical cannabis — is what she is to be concerned with. Interesting that her statement conveniently leaves that out. If she doesn’t get in line with the people she represents, she will be cast aside.
Which is why I contend that it will take only 2 election cycles for the lesson to sink into the pols’ thick skulls that they ought to check the political version of the Weather Channel, as the wind has, indeed, changed direction…and urinating into it is never smart. And with so many supporting MMJ in Florida, that’s just what she did.
A few ‘examples’ like her political career getting shot down in flames will get the message across that it’s not a good idea to piss off your paymasters.
Oh, and guess what? A Big Pharma mouthpiece posted an article on Raw Story defending Wasserman-Schultz It’s being slaughtered in the Comments section.
But when you go to the originating Website, you find a different header. As if we couldn’t tell the difference.
They really do have a low opinion of reformer’s intelligence quotients. Perhaps we should return the favor…
Maybe this is why Debbie issued the statement on her site;
ASA to Air TV Ads Calling Out Congressional Opponents of Medical Marijuana
Debbie is prominently featured;
http://tinyurl.com/m9sbt3c
Note that the pictures used on the ad were very unflattering. I guess she is not a pretty girl, but they make her look quite foolish as well.
And more about Debbie. She really stepped in it;
From John Morgan;
“Why she’s trying to undermine this amendment I don’t know,†he said. “But I’ll tell you I will never give a penny or raise a penny for the national party while she’s in leadership. And I have given and helped raise millions.â€
Full article;
Major Democratic donor bashes DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz
http://tinyurl.com/kx7tvm5
————————–
Mess with the money flow from major donors? Oh Debbie, what do you do now…?
I’ve been waiting for this for some time, and here it is. It began with the defeat of Dwight Holton. Now, the steamroller is accelerating.
And the idiot pols who think they can keep on giving the same old stupid answers to increasingly sharp criticism of their stances in the DrugWar are beginning to realize the same old DrugWar incantations, shibboleths and fetishes don’t work anymore.
They refuse to admit the steamroller is heading their way, despite it being a few yards in front of them. They still think their DrugWarrior supplied ju-ju will save them from it.
I can pity someone that Nature cheated out of a full six-pack in the mental department; such were short-changed through no fault of their own.
But there is no excuse for such intentional, deliberately obtuse behavior on the part of a supposedly intelligent, educated person. Certainly not one in a position of power. Consequently, by denying mercy to others in the form of MMJ, they deserve NONE.
John Morgan speaks for the Big Money Boyz. He sees the writing on the wall very clearly. He knows what ‘demographic shift’ means for his Party.
Wasserman-Schultz is a supplicant, a beggar, hat-in-hand. Either she immediately begins singing “mea culpa, mea culpa” like Dr. Gupta did, or she’s political toast. Charred so carbon-black, you’d swear you see diamonds.
I hope she remains clueless, I really do. Because that’s how I like my toast…with a little cannabudder on it.
So she approves of mmj in her state, but also wants the DEA to come in and and arrest the people in her state that use mmj. My guess is she doesn’t approve, and wants the DEA to show her constituents the error of their ways.
I believe that with a major Democratic Party donor VERY publicly calling her ‘irrelevant’ and ‘despised’, and castigating her for her stance in the face of overwhelming support for MMJ by Florida’s electorate, and stating he will not help raise another several millions for Dem coffers while she’s running the DNC, la Wasserman-Schultz’s political days may be drawing to a close.
Congress is not Great Britain’s Parliament, where MP’s are sent there to exercise their best judgement (or prejudices) on behalf of the people. She’s supposed to take her lead from the people.
Autocratically voting against the will of the people (as delineated by an 88% approval for MMJ in recent polling) in this democracy is a sure sign she needs to go, soonest. And having ticked off a major donor, who is almost certainly going to be joined by others for their own reasons, that may just happen.
In ancient Rome, conspirators against Caesar who failed were often offered ‘the dagger’ to honorably commit suicide…or risk having the public shame of beheading also cause their families to lose their estates.
Looks like Debbie’s going to be offered the political version of ‘the dagger’, very soon:
State Democratic leader breaks with Wasserman Schultz over marijuana
Read her detractor’s statement; looks like any Couchmate could have penned it.
(Putting on Charlton-Heston-as-Moses get-up, arranging phony beard) Yea, verily, after 40 frakkin’ hard, mean years in the g-d-mn desert, the Promised Land is in sight. Tarry not, rest not, but in steeled determination, drive on, brothers and sisters, drive on!
It’s getting worse for her:On Medical Marijuana, Debbie Wasserman Schultz Sounds Like a Republican
and:
Debbie Wasserman Schultz feels heat for vote on medical marijuana issue
from the article:
“Soon, United for Care, a group supporting the initiative, issued a statement blasting Wasserman Schultz’s positions as “puzzling, unfortunate and wrong.”
“It got worse.”
“The DNC issued a statement saying Wasserman Schultz’s comment was her own and that the committee did not have a position on the pot ballot measure.” (Emphasis mine – k.)
She’s being set up for a fall. The Dems are in damage control mode. That ‘dagger’ I mentioned is being honed razor-sharp, right now, and she has only a few days to decide, or the decision will be made for her, courtesy of that Democratic National Committee Praetorian sword also being sharpened for her neck.
If a political Party could have a bladder, this one just peed itself. They’re scared, people. Keep up the pressure, don’t let up in the Comments sections, for, you can bet your arse without risking it that they’re being read by the right people.
And now the ‘progressive’ blogs are taking aim: Why Would Congresswoman Wasserman Schultz Vote To Send Patients Like This To Prison?
The accompanying Photoshopped pic is especially apt.
Yes, this a clear sign of the abject loss they are suffering. She’s committing death by electorate, political Hari-Kari.
Make me a proud Couch monkey, it does. Heh. This has been growing at a rate that is just staggering me. One, loud chorus is rising, and the word “ENOUGH!” is being carried to all. Bye-bye, Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
Her explanation brings to mind a picture of cockroaches running for (DEA) cracks to hide in.
More like vampires feverishly looking for empty coffins as dawn approaches and they realized they forgot the time change on the weekend…
“Vhut was dat, hagain? Zpring fovart and Vall beck?” as they begin to sizzle. As they used to say, back in the day, “Burn, baby, burn!”
OT, a little news from Texas. This weekend the DFW Norml regional conference is taking place in Fort Worth. I listened to an interview with Shaun McAlister of DFW Norml explain the situation in Texas. Two things stood out: 1). He mentioned the Texas Republican Party has recently added to their platform a provision allowing for doctors to prescribe medical cannabis where appropriate (I’m paraphrasing). And 2). He described, a bit vaguely, that certain Dallas entrepreneurs with deep pockets are laying the foundation for the inevitability of legal cannabis in Texas. They are buying land and procuring resources to enter into the legal market when the laws change (those are two big Texas thuds right there).
And this goes to what people like Kevin Sabet just don’t understand. When Kevin warns of Big Marijuana in the hopes of scaring people, he doesn’t realize that Big Money folks are enthusiastically shaking their heads, “Yes, lets get on with it”.
That and the bit about several of the “Gas Pipe” (aka smoke-shop/novelties/etc.) stores that have been around for a LONG time…
Yeah, the owner (and/or operator?) of one of them just recently got busted selling “Spice” = they’re taking out the “fake weed” & head shops that have “allegedly” made a killing off it for a number of recent years.
Now, I wonder why they might go & do that?? Other than to say they “got the main producer/distributors for the product in North Texas…”
One of the stores was – according to the local news – just recently = being remodeled to produce the “stuff” apparently? They don’t really have to fact-check that too much, they can say whatever and correct themselves later after they get those “right now” evening news ratings.
There was a least one of the stores that was spared at the time when I first saw it, I can’t recall what night that was – *google* – Okay, it was Thursday the 5th or Friday the 6th…
DEA Targets Head Shop For Manufacturing Synthetic Drugs
Damn, Just ahead of the NORML conference, I wonder how less subtle could they be?
Though that does, fit the political rumblings you heard talk of – pretty darn well! Gotta move to ‘clear the field’ a bit, and putting the Synthetic Marijuana = that like a month ago maybe less sent a BUNCH several dozen – (maybe a hundred or so = IIRC? People to local Hospitals.
They have to demonize that and then proposition a trade-off for “legal medical marijuana” (primarily for the ‘well-to-do’ knowing how things go or “work” in some parts DFW.
Anybody see “The Purge” on cable this week/weekend? Its kinda related, Don’t wanna spoil it…
But, at the end in the close captioned radio snippets about the aftermath the next morning/day (that I would’ve totally missed without the closed captions) they talked about – the most activity being in Dallas!
Here’s the quotes – from the Radio (or TV audio) = people talking while the credits roll
Very, VERY – plausible IMHO, of course. The film is set in the not-so-distant future, and it’s almost frighteningly plausible.
http://tinyurl.com/lmq3p6r
Anyone need some good pics of the trichomes on your buds?
How To Build A Smartphone Microscope Stand for $10
get nice pics to display with your bud at your next competition,,,
So, it’s time to start voting for congress and every Republican in my state has voted no on allowing the VA to discus medical marijuana and they voted no on not funding the DOJ to go after medical marijuana and hemp. My independent candidate was not allowed to speak at a pivotal debate since debates are only allowed for Dems and GOP candidates. The Dem choice last time was a former Drug Warrior District Attorney and the GOP (who won) was a very young business man and against legalization.
Now it looks like my independent candidate won’t be running again because the last time he ran, it was just a joke and waste of his time and money due to the very low coverage he had, the biasness of a county seat’s newspaper and the biasness of a very progressive university’s unwillingness to allow him to debate at my former college. The university that enabled me to graduate with a bunch of short fiction stories against the war on drugs and a large essay proving my fiction stories had always hovered in the ether of the real world and not just simply coming out of my ass. This is very confusing for me since my Liberal Arts professors defended my right to glorify violence against police officers, jailors, judges, DEA, DAs, politicians and wealthy businessmen who were gung-ho Drug Warriors (how can you not be violent after coming home from the War on Drugs in Iraq and seeing and hearing things most anti-drug war civilians wouldn’t ever believe about the war on drugs in Iraq, let alone the drug warriors as well), but they didn’t defend the 3rd party guy, even after I wrote to them about the problem and hypocrisy.
I have no one to vote for and I guess I won’t be voting.
Vote independent. That will piss ’em off WAY more than NOT VOTING. They count on people like you not voting.
I’m a registered independent without a candidate. It’s like getting dressed for a Ball, just to find out its only a NASCAR race. Should I vote for a drug warrior Dem or an Anti-Legalization and anti-hemp GOP? I will not vote since there is no lesser of the two evils running. If by chance an independent does run, I will vote for them if they are anti-drug war but it doesn’t look like any independent will run. In my state, we are not legally allowed to vote for a candidate not belonging to our party until the final election date, where we are then legally allowed to vote for anyone of any party left standing. How does one vote independent with only a GOP and a Dem choice? The only candidate who is anti-drug war in my state is a Dem and she is running for U.S. Senator and her stance on being pro-choice is why she will lose. I will vote for her though I’m anti-abortion because my ideology tells me the War on Drugs is far more wicked than abortion and that the WOD makes abortion and unwanted pregnancies more probable. If she was a white man or a white woman, she might have a better chance. I can only hope I’m wrong about her odds, but I know my district and their voters.
DC–what do you mean by going ahead and vote? I don’t understand. Are you telling me I should go to the poll and sign my name and then cast my ballot in the machine without a single oval filled for a candidate? If I don’t fill out any oval for a candidate, is it the same as voting? I understand going out and filling the oval over issues on state questions and county taxes etc, but not for a candidate. Of course I’m the kind of guy who would go to the poll, sign my name and not fill out a single oval for a candidate and then slip the paper in the counting machine. Does my vote count if I don’t pick a candidate because they are pro-drug war? Though I appreciate your ideology DC, it just doesn’t fit for my area if no independent runs. Voting for someone you will not vote for is a negation and that’s my dilemma if my independent Candidate decides not to run and I wouldn’t blame him.
In cases like this I will always vote for the ever-present standby write-in candidate: “Someone Else Esq. The Third”
Besides, that’s not the only thing usually on the ballot to vote for… For instance the coming landslide vote on MMJ in Florida…
I write-in “NOTA” (none of the above) when there is no acceptable (to me) candidate on the ballot in a race. If you vote on the issues and do not vote on the candidates, your ballot IS counted and your vote on the issue(s) is(are) counted, so that decreases the percentage of the votes for each candidate for whom you refused to cast a vote.