Hard to think about the year being over soon, but we are starting to see year-in-review pieces.
Phillip Smith has one at Alternet: The People Are Rising Up Against the Destructive Drug War: 8 Key Developments
The items he notes are:
1. The sky hasn’t fallen on legal marijuana states.
2. The marijuana majority solidifies.
3. Monopoly marijuana is rejected in the Heartland.
4. Black Lives Matter’s policing critique implicates the drug war.
5. Overdoses kill tens of thousands, harm reduction responses emerge.
6. Asset forfeiture reform picks up steam.
7. Six thousand federal drug war prisoners come home.
8. Canada elects a marijuana-legalizing prime minister.
I would add that the forces of prohibition are still active and still powerful – note the imposition of “prohibition lite” in Washington State – ending patients rights to grow enough medicine for themselves (four plants is an insult!); forcing them to buy medicine in the Stalinist supply-managed system and pay 37% tax on their medicine at prohibition prices (the only medicine taxed in the State); Implementing a centralized patient database ONLY for MMJ patients – the only drug so treated.
The powers that be in Washington are making policy based on prohibitionist ignorance and greed and total disrespect for patients – they think MMJ is a fraud and all patients are fraudsters – this is what Washington State Democrats apparently stand for. Well, fuck them and fuck their dirty deals with the forces of prohibition and fuck their disrespect for us. They will surely pay for this in 2016 – they are counting on us voting for them as the lesser of evils – well the lesser evil is still evil and I am one MMJ patient that will never vote again for a WA Democrat.
These scum are negating a MMJ law mandated by a Citizens’ initiative – while standing by and allowing COstco to abuse they initiative process and privatize liquor sales for their own profit. Shameful……
Agree, I am just re-reading Hari’s Chasing the Scream…. the drug war is still grinding up individuals and stripping them of their rights as human beings…..cracks are appearing in the structure of prohibition but the British media, for instance, is only considering Hillary as a counterweight to Trump. If there is to be any progress at all in dismantling Anslinger’s zombie state the only hope in 2016 is Bernie Sanders….though even he will probably let us down in the end…… Hillary doing that is a certainty.
Cannabis regulation is now the majority view in the US, but the public generally has no conception of just how corrupt and corrupting the drug war has been over the last 70-80 years.
I do not think Bernie will let us down,,he will do what Obama should have done and may do yet,,he will EO cannabis out of Schedule 1 and force the drug war machine to provide the science to prove cannabis is a dangerous drug,,which has never been done in nearly 8 decades.
An EO doesn’t bypass Congress but Congress must override the EO with proof of any claims they make justifying an override vote.
That will bypass the Judicial Committee,,because it has nothing to do with whether marijuana is legalized or even decriminalized,,only removes the DEA control of the research and the Judicial Committee won’t have a hearing on it for Grassley too ignore.
Obama is still clearly “evolving” on that one, but I live in hope. It took Joe Biden to tip him over the edge on his gay marriage evolution, but I can’t see that happening with cannabis re-scheduling.
clay, you do not understand EOs, EOs do NOT make law for ANYONE, they make rules ONLY for those who work in the executive branch. They do NOT affect congress and congress has no say over them, pro or con. They do NOT affect the populace or the judiciary, and they cannot be used to police the people. Obama is delusional (besides being a pretender to the office) if he thinks he can make law with EOs and so is Bernie or anyone else who thinks this a legitimate way to alter how things are done in America.
I’ve put a link in another comment, please couchmates, take advantage of it so at least you will not be making erroneous decisions in the upcoming elections.
As for me, I vote.
However, my State allows write-ins, so on candidates’ races I write in “NOTA” unless there are libertarian candidates on my ballot. I will vote for libertarians because I want to send the message that I want government OUT of my life. I also vote on the issues, I vote no on any issue that limits my freedom or raises my taxes, I vote yes on any issue that would increase my freedom or lowers/repeals my taxes. I urge others to do the same thing. Imagine an election where no candidate receives a vote but every ballot is voted and every issue is voted in a manner that increases freedom and lowers and repeals taxes.
I also vote in the MOST important election, that being for my County Sheriff (the ONLY Constitutional form of police, and the ONLY police force we need; municipal and State cops are an unnecessary additional expense to the taxpayers, and federal cops are totally illegal since the Constitution explicitly forbade the fed gov from having ANY police powers at all). The Sheriff’s duty is to enforce the Constitution within his/her county and to protect the residents of his/her county from any and ALL unconstitutional statutes and regulations regardless which level of government they originate; and by virtue of being an elected position the Sheriff is accountable to the voters within his/her county, unlike all other police.
I believe that Libertarians are genuinely sincere about keeping the government out of our private lives, but they have absolutely zero interest in keeping powerful players in the private sector out of them.
There’s no question that the illegality of drugs has resulted in tons of evil from the government, but anyone here knows full well how much additional evil comes from the non-government profiteers. Libertarians may well give us freedom from marijuana laws but they won’t do a damned thing to stop the crap coming from employers. Anyone who thinks the employers are forced by the government to interfere in private lives to the extent they do is ignorant of the law. They do it because they enjoy it and because the “free market” has inundated them with salespeople convincing them it’s necessary. Nothing short of explicit bans on that interference (which we will NEVER get from Libertarians) is likely to make them stop.
There’s very close to nothing in the real world today preventing “market forces” from making pee-sniffing nothing but a distant memory, but in fact it’s “market forces” that have crammed it down our throats.
However much I truly wish otherwise, pure Libertarianism would make today’s shitty workplaces seem like a beautiful dream from the good old days.
Wendy,,you understand that removing cannabis from Schedule 1 is not a law.
The entire CSA was enacted starting with an Executive Order.
“the drug war is still grinding up individuals and stripping them of their rights as human beings”
I can tell you one story I am personally aware of that is appalling to me.
A disabled friend who had a recent house fire (from a lightening strike) was recently put on probation BEFORE he was arraigned or officially charged with a crime. The police apologized and suggested he turn himself in (four and a half months later). He was verbally told his charge by public safety and he was presented no paperwork.
He had too many plants according to the prosecutor – which were counted by police during the fire. Of course cuttings, dead plants, and possible empty pots were all counted as “plants”.
Without having been convicted of anything or having the opportunity to defend, he was barred from using his legal medicine. He is battling cancer. The $200 a month supervision and urine testing fees made it impossible to retain paid legal counsel for representation, necessitating a court appointed attorney – to which he does not yet have access to.
He is currently awaiting arraignment. There was nothing at all in writing until he bonded, and that paperwork came from the bonding agency. He was not informed of any rights except for the price of his bond.
Under the current state of affairs his “rights” are whatever the court decides, based solely on official whim and opinion of criminality.
Our nation of laws has been replaced. Guilty until proven innocent is the new order of the day.
Jack booted thugs behind desks using mere criminal accusation have become standard operational procedure replacing the concept of “innocent until proven guilty”.
Society has been saved from a dangerous criminal whose only crime is trying to stay healthy enough to survive.
Drug war logic is the new world order. The Bill of Rights? Well, our drug war makes exceptions.
Protecting the public has become a joke.
My friend comitted a victimless “crime” with an uncaring death sentence attached. He was Thinking Clearly until the fire.
Now he just watches the tumors grow bigger while he waits to seen the judge for the very first time.
I think that’s called “bail” rather than probation. Back when I was a wee lad bail was just a garuntee of appearance in court. Now they’ve effectively turned bail into probation before trial by adding such things as drug testing to bail conditions.
Unfortunately, Bernie’s version of economically illiterate socialism will have as seriously harmful results as the drug war has had. No Bernie, he is just as evil as Trump, they just appeal to two different groups of people.
BTW, you ARE aware that Bernie holds dual citizenship, right? Dual citizenship is something the Founders said made a person suspect, having allegiance to a nation other than America. It SHOULD make him ineligible for the presidency, but apparently nothing makes a person ineligible any longer, not even not being a citizen of these united States of America, let alone the original definition of eligibility: being a “natural born citizen” — to be one, one’s father had to have been an American citizen when one was born, period (one’s mother’s citizenship status did not matter). It is truly scary to me how little most people know about the Constitution (the rules for the federal government) and how little power those elected to the fed gov are actually supposed to have, and what kind of people they are supposed to be (or NOT be). Ignorant people cause problems, please educate yourself, arm yourself with knowledge, it’s free and only takes 7 hours of your time for the body of the Constitution, follow up with the lesson on the Bill of Rights:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wp-48d_jSb4
To remove cannabis from the CSA doesn’t require an EO. Just an order. The AG can do the same for any substance as written into the Controlled Substance Act. They have already lowered marinol to a schedule#3. To disolve the CSA might take Congress since they enacted it. An EO could block any enforcement, as the memo has tried to do with some success.
Cannabis could be rescheduled either legislatively, through Congress, or through the executive branch. The Controlled Substances Act also provides for a rulemaking process by which the United States Attorney General can reschedule cannabis administratively.
The backstory behind Diane Rehm’s question
to Bernie Sanders on dual Israeli citizenship
Rehm: “Senator, you have dual citizenship with Israel.”
Sanders: “No, I do not have dual citizenship with Israel, I’m an American. Don’t know where that question came from. I’m an American citizen. I have visited Israel on a couple of occasions. No, I’m an American citizen, period.”
Rehm: “I understand from a list we have gotten that you were on that list. Forgive me if that …”
Sanders: “No, that’s some of the nonsense that goes on in the Internet. But that is absolutely not true.”
Rehm: “Interesting. Are there members of Congress who do have dual citizenship or is that part of the fable?”
Sanders: “I honestly don’t know. But I have read that on the Internet. You know, my dad came to this country from Poland at the age of 17 without a nickel in his pocket. He loved this country. I am, you know, I got offended a little bit by that comment, and I know it’s been on the Internet. I am, obviously, an American citizen and I do not have any dual citizenship.”
“No source is given,” Sichel wrote, “because the list is a total fabrication, not to mention created by an anti-Semite and anti-Zionist, which is given away by the fact that it says ‘Jewish Lobby,’ ‘#israelwarcrime,’ ‘AIPAC: Buying Congress one seat at a time,’ ‘Rothschild,’ and features an American flag with a Star of David replacing the 50 stars.”
The Anti-Defamation League, which combats anti-Semitism, issued a statement calling the episode “deeply troubling” and saying that the source material played into “classic anti-Semitic charges of dual loyalty.”
I want to apologize as well to all our listeners for having made an erroneous statement. I am sorry for the mistake. However, I am glad to play a role in putting this rumor to rest.”
This isn’t just a steaming pile of fucking bullshit, it’s a steaming pile of fucking bullshit that was disproven long ago. You’re repeating it here either because you’re deliberately spreading a lie or you’re repeating it because it would fit your agenda so you’ve never bothered to look into it.
Yes. Having non-white skin, too. They’re definitely the first bunch I’d consult in such matters.
Ah, a birther. Guess I should have seen that coming.
No, Canada:
Sen. Ted Cruz has formally shed his dual citizenship
Alberta-born Sen. Ted Cruz has given up his Canadian dual citizenship. The renunciation became official on May 14, roughly 9 months after he learned he wasn’t only an American.
Armed ‘Three Percenters’ Movement
Now Confronting Muslim Americans
Saudi women vote for the first time, testing boundaries
US FELONY DISENFRANCHISEMENT
5.85 million Americans denied the right to vote.
Bernie Sanders Will Become President,
Despite Rigged Debate Schedules,
Skewed Polls, and Clinton’s ‘Inevitability’
Wendy,,you have had entirely too much too think.
I think many cannot wrap their heads around a drug that is both recreational and has medicinal benefits. And at the same time is super-safe for either use. After all, a drug that has medicinal applications can’t also be fun to use when/if you’re not sick. I think accepting this fact is one of the hardest things for the prohibitionist to do.
Epic rant, diva, may I copy/paste that into an email to our erstwhile legislators? And may I suggest you tone it down, ever so slightly (for public consumption, just remove or replace the blue language) and send it as a letter to the editor of our local paper and maybe a couple of Seattle rags, too?
Oh, you’re angry with me because politics, so instead of agreeing that suggesting that diva’s rant (which got 10 thumbs up) is excellent and should have wider distribution you choose to downvote my comment? Shows your real attitude; obviously, correcting problems with “legalization” is far less important to you than showing your disagreement with someone else’s political stance. Fuck you very much!
BTW, I am STILL sick, and my temper is even shorter thanks to being sick for so damn long, and my tact filter is nearly non-existent right now, so you wanna pick a fight? Bring it ON!
Windy, Try 2 tbs of hemp oil if you have a slight fever from your illness. It will also get nutrition to the gut quicker for the immune sys. to fight off any infection. Plus it is a noninflammatory to reduce some of the pressure, stress and anger caused by them. It’s totally legal. I’ve been keeping patients with bladder catheters from antibiotics for over 10 years. Also for skin rash, sometimes as a poultice sprinkled with Ganja dust. It’s online, even Amazon or Nutiva Organic Hemp Oil, 24-Ounce Bottle ☺
As far as the temper, I see it as a safety release valve on a boiler. If words can’t solve it, it’s better to get pissed off than feel like you’re getting pissed on, that makes it build up even more. I’ve discovered that preventing stress is cheaper than treating it. Sometimes you just got to get it off your chest. As for the thumbs, like polls, not really accurate but point towards general feelings. Not nesessarily right or wrong. They’re a drag when people have opinions and won’t post them.
Well I totally disagree with you on Bernie, but I hope you’re felling better soon. I always recomend reading Breakfast of Champians by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. for anyone under the weather…
DdC, my fever broke a couple nights ago, I awoke about 4 am, totally soaked from head to toe. I feel pretty well, but I’m still winded from very minor exertion and still coughing up ugly, thick, green phlegm, so I am staying away from other people until that stops, figure that is an indication that I am still contagious and I would not wish this illness on my worst enemy, not even Kevin Sabet. I use hemp oil for a LOT of things (skin, cooking some things) but I could never swallow just two drops, let alone 2 Tbs. coconut oil, maybe, but NOT hemp oil. Haven’t been able to smoke a bong load since I got sick, but I AM doing full extract every night before bed for the last 3 nights. CAn’t even take more than two drags off a cig without coughing a lung out, still smoking the same pack of smokes I bought just before Thanksgiving, I’ll be needing a new pack in a couple days, though.
I mix it into smoothies. I have taken a shot for any reflux. I keep it in the freezer and it doesn’t freeze. Fresh, not bad, nutty taste, aquired taste straight up. Salad dressing. It’s the EFA’s
Weed Massage, Anyone?
The legalization of weed in several states has spawned countless ganja ventures, and the benefits of topical cannabis have been touted for years.
Working on it, Windy! Nice to have a venue where you can let it all hang out and cuss where necessary…but I agree to convince some people you need to lay off the cussing as it just turns them off.
That is so true and I hate it soooo much. Unfortunate. It reminds me of sending a note to someone that the dam is breaking and the valley will be flooded. But the note had a misspelled word so they decided to disregard it and drown. I wasn’t offended by the word used, some might be. So maybe in the final draft you may want to change the last sentence “abuse they initiative” to abuse the initiative. ☺ Incrementalism sucks. Obama can solve the problem without Klieman sabetage.
John Novak wrote:
The republicans were just as guilty. In fact, the main sponsor of the bill that did all this is a republican, Sen. Ann Rivers.
Role call from the Senate:
Voting Yea: Senator Angel, Bailey, Baumgartner, Becker, Billig, Braun, Brown, Cleveland, Conway, Dammeier, Darneille, Fain, Frockt, Habib, Hargrove, Hatfield, Hewitt, Hill, Hobbs, Honeyford, Jayapal, Keiser, King, Liias, Litzow, McAuliffe, McCoy, Miloscia, Mullet, Nelson, O’Ban, Padden, Parlette, Pearson, Pedersen, Ranker, Rivers, Roach, Rolfes, Schoesler, Sheldon
Voting Nay: Senator Benton, Chase, Dansel, Ericksen, Fraser, Hasegawa, Kohl-Welles, Warnick
In the House:
Voting Yea: Representative Bergquist, Carlyle, Clibborn, Cody, Dunshee, Fagan, Farrell, Fey, Fitzgibbon, Gregerson, Gregory, Haler, Hansen, Hayes, Hudgins, S. Hunt, Hunter, Hurst, Jinkins, Johnson, Kagi, Kilduff, Kirby, Kochmar, Kristiansen, Lytton, Magendanz, McBride, Moeller, Morris, Nealey, Ormsby, Ortiz-Self, Orwall, Peterson, Pettigrew, Pollet, Riccelli, Robinson, Rodne, Ryu, Sawyer, Schmick, Sells, Senn, Springer, Stambaugh, Stanford, Stokesbary, Sullivan, Takko, Tarleton, Tharinger, Van De Wege, Van Werven, Vick, Walkinshaw, Wylie, Zeiger, Mr. Speaker
Voting Nay: Representative Appleton, Blake, Buys, Caldier, Chandler, Condotta, Dent, Goodman, Griffey, Hargrove, Harmsworth, Harris, Hawkins, Holy, G. Hunt, Klippert, Kretz, MacEwen, Manweller, McCabe, McCaslin, Moscoso, Muri, Orcutt, Parker, Pike, Reykdal, Santos, Scott, Shea, Short, Taylor, Walsh, Wilcox, Wilson, Young
Absent:
Excused: Representative DeBolt, Smith
In my opinion, this article is a pro-cannabis commentary on “legalisation†which contains the standard propaganda lie of fatal opioid “overdoseâ€. There cannot be a greater indictment on human nature in my view regarding “drug legalisation†as one group of oppressed people (cannabis users) using a lie to make their cause appear more valid than the cause of another group of oppressed people (opiate users). It is rife on the pages of this site along with the accompanying tribalism, aggression and denial. The author is so blatant as to use government propaganda as references for his article whilst proclaiming that he belongs to some mythical group of genuine (all drug) reformers: “we’re laying the groundworkâ€. Well if “…laying the groundwork†involves perpetuating the lie of fatal opioid “overdoseâ€, then the groundwork could be interpreted as the “legalisation†of cannabis with the users of other drugs such as opioids etc left in the mire of oppression. There have been comments made on this site about “incrementalismâ€. I believe it is much more sinister than this. Many Cannabis users and organisations will go to any lengths including lying about the hazards of other drugs to advance their own cause. So in other words employing the very same tactics against other oppressed people that the state has used for so long against them. The self-interested hypocrisy couldn’t really get any more cutting than this.
Do you actually believe the war on some drugs will continue when we take marijuana away from the drug war machine?
The entire drug war was used to cover up how safe cannabis really was and over 1/2 of the ONDCP budget is used fighting marijuana reform.
Buying support for continued prohibition of cannabis by other countries has seen more checks flown out of DC and delivered to countries talking reform in the last 6 years than has ever been recorded,,I have lost track trying to count them.
Claygooding, it already is continuing and of course it will continue. There is so much money in it. This is my point. The opioid overdose thing is a lie. They have gone harder on this since cannabis law liberalisation is progressing. The only reason cannabis law liberalisation is having success is the number of users. Nothing else. Cannabis users are good at organising and lobbying. Opiate users are not. Cannabis carries the same harm in general terms as tobacco when smoked. Cannabis is not safer or more dangerous than any other drug in general terms. Anyway, the danger of any particular drug is not the point. If the war on drugs was a genuine strategy and was based on harm, alcohol and tobacco would be shedule 1 drugs. So this continuous narrative by drug law liberalisation organisations that it (war on drugs) is about harm is, apart from being complete rubbish, completely counterproductive to their success in terms of drugs other than cannabis. But again, that is my point. Most of the organisations are really only interested in cannabis. If they were interested in other drugs and their users, they would tell the truth about things such as “heroin overdose”. But they won’t. It is in their interests to perpetuate the lie.
Of course it is a lie,,but marijuana arrests qualify LE agencies for those grants and nifty military surplus,,DO you think LE will continue chasing drugs they cannot bust as easily as marijuana since all they have to do is smell marijuana on you and the frisk is on,,busting most other drugs is not that easily done,,it would take more detective work and investigating for sure,,,plus they will never bust enough other drugs to qualify for the grants,,and without our government buying support for the drug war the cops will move to other crimes,,crimes they have ignored chasing puffs of smoke.
The fact that marijuana has never been linked directly with death even when taken with other drugs such as alcohol is vastly more important in this battle than is the ability of cannabis users to organize. Once cannabis is legal and the sky does not fall the public will be much more open to your legitimate arguments.
Matt, opioid overdoses are discussed all the time in the scientific literature. The problem may lie in your definition of overdose, whatever that is. Technical terms need to be precise and agreed upon by all. If people aren’t ODing on opiates, what are they dying from?
You might want to determine if there’s a conflict by viewing recent research:
http://search.eurekalert.org/e3/query.html?col=ev3new&col=ev3oneyr&col=ev3rel&qt=opioid+overdose&charset=iso-8859-1&pw=100.101%25
“Cannabis carries the same harm in general terms as tobacco when smoked.”
Wrong. It does you no good to complain about the perceived lies regarding heroin/opioids and then utter misconceptions of your own.
“Cannabis is not safer or more dangerous than any other drug in general terms.”
What is this “in general terms” bullshit? Would it be safe to say that the drug caffeine “not safer or more dangerous than any other drug in general terms.”? What is this nonsense? I have been in a car driven by someone who drank a little too much coffee and someone driving who has taken a little too much PCP. I can assure you –“in general terms”– I’d rather ride with the coffee head any day of the week.
Matt, does it really need to be explained to you again why cannabis takes up the lion’s share of the discourse regarding the war on drugs? You actually provide the obvious answer in your complaint about it: The sheer numbers of users. Which translates to;
— More people are arrested for cannabis than any other illicit substance.
— More people lose personal property through civil asset forfeiture because of cannabis than any other illicit substance
— More parents have their children removed from their custody because of cannabis than any other illicit substance.
— More people are denied employment or lose their jobs when a drug test comes back positive for cannabis than any other illicit substance.
And on and on. Why is this so hard for you to grasp? Some folks erroneously claim that the war on drugs “begins and ends with marijuana”. I don’t agree with that but it’s fairly easy to understand the sentiment. Again, the sheer NUMBERS of people impacted by possessing/using/selling cannabis.
I’m certainly with you regarding the lies about heroin/opioids. But you are not helping your cause by being blind to the substance that overwhelmingly drives the war on drugs. Seriously, stop being so damn think in the head about it.
That should read “*thick* in the head”. I’ve had a little too much coffee this morning. Maybe if I’d had a little too much PCP I’d of gotten it right.
I almost stopped breathing on prescription opiates long ago. I have a hard time entertaining your no overdose concept.
my eyes must be going bad, because they don’t see the word “opioid’ in the post. just overdose. are you tring to say there is no such thing as an overdose?
Painkillers, heroin drive increase in US overdose deaths
Matt….I have refrained from giving you a thumbs down on principle, but I have to say you come across as someone with a bee in his bonnet on the subject of opiate overdoses. I suspect that some of the problem is your previously admitted lack of personal experience with illegal drugs, including opiates. You are looking at the issue from a top-down viewpoint, much as Kevin Sabet does, and both of you are completely wrong in your assumptions about street addiction. People die all the time from drug war induced adulterated heroin who would not die in a hospital setting like the one you presumably work in.
I don’t believe there are any couch regulars who are calling for cannabis to be re-legalized while heroin users continue to be the victims of state-sponsored violence.
If you want a crash course on the approach many of us here are taking on ending prohibition, may I recommend Johann Hari’s superb take down of America’s insane drug policy, “Chasing the Scream”.
I’m sorry to have to tell you that your lobbying over “heroin overdoses” is just a red herring on the course of drug reform.
That said, I won’t trouble you again.
I thought we just did this a few PetePosts back?
Yes, and I expect it will recur in the near future. Matt isn’t receptive to the idea that we are drug LAW reformers, not “Cannabis law reformers”. He thinks that because we spend a large percentage of our time talking about cannabis laws (because,as he noted, that is where the numbers lie, and where the current push is proving successful), that we look unfavorably on the reform of prohibition laws in general. He also thinks that somehow, this couch full of drug literature scholars has somehow missed the work of Stanton Peele and others who have written about combination overdoses and injection reaction induced sudden death. Obviously, this is not the case. He’s wrong. But he’s passionate, and doesn’t seem stupid…he’s just a little slow on the old uptake and he’s got a really big axe to grind. Even CJ couldn’t ‘splain it to him. Cut Matt some slack. He’ll either come around, or leave.
don’t look now…
Jean valjean, you say “People die all the time from drug war induced adulterated heroin…”. Two things. First you need to provide evidence. When you have the credible evidence, let me know and I will give my email address so that you may forward it on to me. Secondly, I always wonder about the motives of people who say things about heroin/opiates etc similar to what you have said. From experience I know they are almost never honest and willing to divulge their true motives and also that they can never provide evidence to back up their claims. And incidently, the biggest lie in drug user oppression history cannot be seriously described as a red-herring. It appears however to be a red herring to the cause of cannabis law reform that uses opiate users as cannon fodder.
👎
Seven more factors affecting drug legalization for 2015:
“4. Black Lives Matter’s policing critique implicates the drug war.”
I watch the local and national/global mainstream news (ABC), and during that too-often torturous experience to tune in with mainstream media reporting (so I can write about it online usually to help combat their obscenely nationally destructive bias), I can say that all reports involving the Black Lives Matters protest never (or at least never prominently enough) mention the war on some drugs.
The mainstream media still essentially exercises extreme bias in supporting Certain Drug Prohibition, because they have an obvious (albeit journalistically unethically undisclosed) conflict of interest with our government (especially law enforcement).
That conflict arises from the refusal by the mainstream media to decouple tragic reporting from the people’s right to know.
That right isn’t always ‘dessert’ news (as always presented against the critical need for ‘vegetable’ news), but mainstream news outlets always go for way too much ‘sugar’, ‘salt’, and ‘fat’ to compete for advertising revenue (public safety be way too often damned).
Information about the tragedies consuming the overwhelming majority of news reporting don’t just fall off of trees and land in the newsroom.
Journalists need access (industry term) to the freshest information sources involving tragic events, and those sources are usually logically our government (the “greater” the tragedy, the higher up the government hierarchy a journalist must climb to secure that access).
We clearly have effectively state-run media in the land of the free press — all with minimal challenge against the mass devastatingly serious corruption favored by our governing oligarchy (obviously spanning the public and private sectors) and the manipulated masses (manipulated usually by the mainstream media).
The movement to end Certain Drug Prohibition strengthened, because the Internet allows us to powerfully communicate online to undermine that hideously corrupt system selfishly upholding the blatantly rogue oligarchy against public safety and constitutional wisdom.
Preventing the abuse of law itself was the entire point of our nation, but that point was instantly submerged by pre-American conservatism across the political spectrum to reject unalienable rights and constitutional limits of government power (to prevent law abuse) to instead allow the sadly traditional idea that allowing our oligarchy to judicially define risk (and therefore liberty, so inevitably infringing upon that key right) is somehow less risky (despite ample amounts of history and current events clearly demonstrating the contrary — e.g. police corruption).
That risk (i.e. blatantly illegal liberty) definition grows unabated, and the result (among many thousands of highly questionable regulations in terms of net-resulting tragedy, including unintended consequences) is mass rights infringement literally corroding our national integrity as national infighting complexly agitates in the sick competition to (perhaps selfishly) legally define risk.
Critically note that most obscene national tragedy never makes the mainstream news.
Factually speaking, regulation is a euphemism for prohibition. Each regulation includes a ban, and those bans fail for the same reason the prohibition mindset always ultimately fails — it’s outright abusive thuggery (too often reinforced by reason abuse) that costs way too much to implement and can never be guaranteed to significantly limit abuse (murderers still murder, regulators are too often bribed or incompetent, regulations are watered-down to pointlessness by the corrupt, regulations place crushing burdens on legit small businesses and innocent people, etc.)
Scientific constitutionalism to end wildly subjectively defined law (partially by eliminating vague judicial constructs — e.g. the Commerce Clause — the true judicial source of the evil that is Certain Drug Prohibition) is logically the only answer.
A scientific constitutionalist is one strictly applying the scientific method to form more precise and concise language constructs (increasing the number of — and leveraging the power of — certainties), so intrinsically improving education, law, and ultimately health with a fairness (so justice) that can only come from conclusive objectivity (not elitism).
.
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Wow, all that hot air and no balloon!
Said the hypocrite?
.
.
Oh my, I am so wounded.
Toodles!
I would give that comment a thousand thumbs ups if I could. Well done!
Those down votes are from people who could not give a shit about the rule of Law or the Constitution, sorry to see so many of them on the couch, I really thought better of my couchmates than that. I’m really disappointed in those 6, whomever they are, because people with that attitude are the major reason our government has successfully strayed so far from its Constitutionally imposed limits.
Thank you, Windy. You nailed it.
👍
“Scientific constitutionalism to end wildly subjectively defined law (partially by eliminating vague judicial constructs — e.g. the Commerce Clause — the true judicial source of the evil that is Certain Drug Prohibition) is logically the only answer.”
Even ‘google’ refused to translate it.
Because I started it. https://spiritwave.wordpress.com/2015/12/13/court-addicts/
Despite what seems an unpopular idea, I must speak to prevent what I believe to be a great misunderstanding. Flame me all you want, Couchmates, but I’ve got 20 pairs of Nomex undies and a Kevlar-coated heart. Fire away if you feel the need.
If understand properly, what SpiritWind is asking for is nothing less than what Jefferson wanted.
Although he was speaking about religion (from a Deist viewpoint), he also alluded to the use of science to determine policy; from Query XVII:
“ Reason and free enquiry are the only effectual agents against error. Give a loose to them, they will support the true religion, by bringing every false one to their tribunal, to the test of their investigation. They are the natural enemies of error, and of error only. Had not the Roman government permitted free enquiry, Christianity could never have been introduced. Had not free enquiry been indulged, at the aera of the reformation, the corruptions of Christianity could not have been purged away. If it be restrained now, the present corruptions will be protected, and new ones encouraged. Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now. Thus in France the emetic was once forbidden as a medicine, and the potatoe as an article of food. Government is just as infallible too when it fixes systems in physics. Galileo was sent to the inquisition for affirming that the earth was a sphere: the government had declared it to be as flat as a trencher, and Galileo was obliged to abjure his error. This error however at length prevailed, the earth became a globe, and Descartes declared it was whirled round its axis by a vortex. The government in which he lived was wise enough to see that this was no question of civil jurisdiction, or we should all have been involved by authority in vortices. In fact, the vortices have been exploded, and the Newtonian principle of gravitation is now more firmly established, on the basis of reason, than it would be were the government to step in, and to make it an article of necessary faith. Reason and experiment have been indulged, and error has fled before them. It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.” (Emphasis mine – k.)
Apologies to all for the long block quote without breaking it up, but I cut-and-pasted from the only available source I had, simply because I don’t want to be accused of taking things out of context. I don’t know if ol Tom indented it any.
But our drug polices were based on no small degree of religious bigotry and intolerance, the same kind as Jefferson decried in Query 17, with the results he also castigated. Science played little or no part in the formulation of our drug laws, save in being Lysenkoized (aka bastardized) and made to ‘justify’ the racially bigoted politics of the day.
In the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, Jefferson (and Madison) spoke of the dangers of allowing sentiment to rule over law…which is what happened with the drug laws trampling Constitutional rights. Jefferson spoke of not having confidence in any person’s ability to resist the corrosive influence of power: “In questions of powers, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.”
With the drug laws, the chains were lifted, and we can see what ‘mischief’ has arisen. Had our laws been based on science, rather than on cultural bigotries, you have to wonder how many less headstones would be in our cemeteries. Thus speaks an old retired engineer who has felt the teeth and claws of the Beast those chains were unbound, and felt its ‘mischief’ in a very personal way.
Sorry I got your name wrong, but when the Muse is screaming in my ear, I have to get it on line before it slips away. I’ve lost too much in the past that I thought needs saying, and I definitely believe this does.
We are all suffering from a surfeit of science in the policy diet, and as a nation we’re the equivalent of being junk-food junkies starving on empty platitudes and poisoned by bigoted lies about drugs.
I can only reply to myself, kaptinemo, but this is directed in response to your comments.
No need to apologize. I thought you were just conveniently forming an amalgam of Spirit Wave and Windy.
Just as certain drug users are demonized, so too unfairly are our Founding Fathers. Every generation has pros and cons, and in recognition of that fact, our Founding Fathers formed a seriously challenging (but possible) constitutional amendment process.
Previous generations abused that process to introduce Alcohol Prohibition, but managed to reverse that error by the same means.
Application of the scientific method to expand the power of reasoning for the fairness definitively part of justice is obviously critical.
These days, that method is apparently all about math, but certainty in verbal language indeed exists and its power has yet to be tapped to follow through on the progressive aspect of our nation (liberty not defined by elitists through public manipulation).
Logically speaking, either liberty is unalienable or not. Any exception (even to protect the children) begins the slippery slope of exceptions. By uncorrupted law, liberty is indeed unalienable. By current “law”, liberty is overridden by judicially based risk management (demonstrably seriously and ironically risky throughout history). I maintain that sound (full and grounded) reasoning dictates that risk management must be moved solely to strengthening education, and law remains solely applied against anyone actually guilty of rights infringement.
I’m not deterred or surprised by the baseless negative reaction in this thread, because I leveraged pure reason to out the error you echoed from history (an error sadly too common in my home state with cringeworthy consequences and apparently growing unabated).
I’m simply testing scientific constitutionalism to see how resilient it truly is. If it’s as resilient as the scientific method it’s purely based upon, then logically speaking, it’s the only way to end the leveraging of abusive reasoning and thuggery across the political spectrum that pretends to reduce net-resulting tragedy (instead of just ‘spinning the judicial wheel of victims’ from various political and/or financial pressures).
Thank you for introducing me to that historical statement. You also nailed it.
As someone with a lifelong interest in linguistics, I learned long ago the problems of conveying information in such a way as to prevent misunderstandings. In fact, that is what ‘information theory’ is all about, especially when you take it out of the academic sphere and use it every day.
The problem is always that KISS (“Keep It Short and Simple” from my old CAP Commo and Army Signal Corps days) can’t work when the concepts you are trying to get across cannot be distilled down into, say, BASIC English. As The Bard said, “Aye, there’s the rub.”
The complexity of the concepts involved in rapidly expanding spheres of Human knowledge are going to require a revamping of language itself, and whether ‘meatspace’ can actually handle that without cybernetic augmentation ( a la Kurzweil) is something I seriously doubt.
I just don’t want to wind up like these guys in the process.
2 concepts:
#1 government has the authority to do only what is explicitly spelled out in our constitution
#2 government is allowed to do whatever it wants except for what it is explicitly banned from doing in the constitution
Teddy Roosevelt took door number 2 thinking he could put a lid on the likes of the JP Morgans of the world.
Now we have a monstrously sized government who claims all the authority. Corporations rule the government. It thinks “the people” only have the rights that it (government) allows the people to have.
Somehow the horse is now riding us instead of “we the people” riding the horse.
I can’t help but feel that somewhere this USA has been tipped upside down.
TC, arguably that happened as far back as the (not-so-)Civil War.
Lincoln, in order to save the country from being balkanized from outside influences (the British Empire at the time was very keen on that) made the Devil’s bargain and broke the essential covenant of the States being separate, sovereign political entities vis-a-vis the Federal government and began the process of reducing them to postal codes in a de facto continental empire. This is what the great historian Shelby Foote meant when he said that the Civil War caused us to go from ‘the United States are‘ to ‘the United States is‘.
One need only note the demotion from looking at the way the word ‘state’ is applied when referring to a State or States, namely, in lower case.
This is why I use the traditional capitalization of the word when referring to them, to remind us of where the Federal behemoth went seriously wrong.
In doing so, we went from a nation that asked (with the threat of force to protect rights not far behind it) “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” (“Who shall police the police?”) to “Silent leges enim inter arma!” (“Law stands mute under force of arms!”) and have suffered ever-increasing encroachments upon what were once thought to be unalienable and sacrosanct rights ever since. Once the precedent was set, Juggernaut was unleashed, crushing those rights in the name of a supposed ‘common good’ which daily proves it is anything but.
It is from this force majuere mindset that we have drug prohibition affecting the entire nation, instead of it having been tried – and trashed – as a social experiment in few States, sparing the rest from the damage it invariably causes. And why there is such a resurgence in interest in the Tenth Amendment.
Anyone who’s paid any attention to how I write, would have noticed I still capitalize “State” when referring to one of the 50 and do not when referring to the “state” (government), and would also have noticed I STILL use “these united States of America” or these “uSofA”, when referring to the country. It is because I do NOT (and never will) accept the legitimacy of the fed gov going outside the bounds of the Constitution to rule over the entire 50 States, when it is supposed to be the States that rule over the fed gov.
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Here’s something that I didn’t foresee happening…the four Mexicans who won the right to cultivate and consume cannabis from the Mexican Supreme Court have no intention of doing so:
Mexico issues first permit to grow and use marijuana
So will someone please explain why I find this so damn annoying? I suppose it’s that common theme among the sycophants of prohibition which seeks to discount our efforts to re-legalize as only coming from outsiders who want to make money selling cannabis, e.g. George Soros. Well I won’t be trying to get those Mexicans to give their permits back but it sure does spoil the fun.
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Botticelli will be on “60 Minutes” tomorrow. Corporations helping corporations!
Saw it, what a fucking tool he is, just like every other “reformed addict”: “I had to go through this, I was an addict and if you do any drug (no matter how infrequently) you are an addict and must be saved from yourself in this way, and ONLY this way.” Fuck him right in the ear!
Whatever. Americuh will legalize dope while the rest of the world still suffers under prohibition. Who gives a shit if some rich kid white hipster American douchebag can legally purchase his favourite recreational kush from some douchebag hippie store while some poor sod from Africa painfully dying from aids or cancer gets thrown in a gulag for the same stuff. It’s all about Americuh and the rights of hipster scum to get high. Just needed to get that off my chest. Fuck off.
Doom..did you miss a few discussions since 1961 about the US buying,sanctioning and bullying the Single Convention Treaty into existence and the part where America spends $4o billion a year through the ONDCP funding other country’s war on drugs?
Ending the WOD in Amerikuh will end it worldwide.
Doom, it’s been said here many times that the Beast of prohibition was sired here, and to save the rest of the planet it has to be killed here, by the nation that first gave birth to it. That’s what we are accomplishing.
And yes, we are accomplishing that, despite enormous advantages enjoyed by our opposition (like using our taxpayer dollars in propagandizing the public in their favor) because other nations didn’t dare speak up until after the 2012 victories in WA and CO.
Now they have become emboldened to talk back to Uncle Sam, and rightfully base their objections to his insane drug policies on the obvious hypocrisy that those victories illustrated.
Kill prohibition in America, and it will die swiftly elsewhere in the world. We’re in the trenches, fighting every day to make that happen. Care to lend a hand? Because, otherwise, your posting is the equivalent of standing on the outside and peeing on those in those trenches.
We don’t need any urine added to the (in some cases, our own very real) blood making up the mud in those trenches we have to fight through. We have enough to deal with, already.
‘Think of the children’. That’s the prohibitionists’ motto. Some researchers were thinking of the children when they ran a study and discovered that drug violence in Mexico is hard on children’s mental health:
The next time a prohibitionist says they’re only thinking about the children, ask them which children.
AAAS Press Release: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-12/ttuh-vim121115.php
IMNSHO, there has always been a eugenics aspect to the DrugWar, beginning even before the Harrison Narcotics Act. The complaints of the Black communities regarding that have always been derided in the LameStream Media, but the historical evidence is quite clear.
NEGRO COCAINE “FIENDS” NEW SOUTHERN MENACE; Murder and Insanity Increasing Among Lower Class Because They Have Taken to “Sniffing” Since Being Deprived of Whiskey by Prohibition. – New York Times, Sunday February 8, 1914
From Dan Russel’s excellent critique “Stategic Suicide: The Birth of the Modern American Drug War” in the chapter entitled “Black Fiends”:
“Rep. Hobson of Alabama was the Anti-Saloon League’s most popular and highest paid speaker. The assumptions of his astounding arguments are all written into today’s drug law. Here are some excerpts from his speech introducing what became the Eighteenth Amendment, Prohibition, on Feb.2, 1911:
“If a peaceable red man is subjected to the regular use of alcoholic beverage, he will speedily be put back to the plane of the savage. The Government long since recognized this and absolutely prohibits the introduction of alcoholic beverage into an Indian reservation. If a negro takes up a regular use of alcoholic beverage, in a short time he will degenerate to the level of the cannibal. No matter how high the stage of evolution, the result is the same.”
“In our great cities like New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia the ravages upon the average character have been so great, so many degenerates have already been produced, that the degenerate and corruptible vote not only holds the balance of power between the two great political parties and can dictate to both, but actually holds a majority of the votes, so that honest and efficient self-government as a permanent condition is now impossible. Immigrants coming in vast numbers from abroad remained chiefly in the cities. As young as our Nation is, the deadly work of alcohol has already blighted liberty in our greatest cities.”
“If America degenerates the yellow man will be on hand. Some may make light of the yellow man; so did Romans make light of the ‘Barbarians.’ The yellow man is not degenerating. He can shoot as straight as a white man now, and undegenerated he can live on one-tenth of what is necessary for the white men while they are in the field doing the shooting. A race of degenerates cannot occupy the American continent.”
“In America we are making the last stand of the great white race, and substantially of the human race. If this destroyer cannot be conquered in young America, it cannot in any of the old and more degenerate nations. If America fails, the world will be undone and the human race will be doomed to go down from degeneracy into degeneracy till the Almighty in wrath wipes the accursed thing out!”
‘Degeneracy’ and ‘miscegenation’ were the bugaboos of eugenicists. The addition of race to eugenics sealed the unholy marriage. The racist origins of the DrugWar have been conveniently forgotten by those who promote drug prohibition, but a dead skunk stinks just as bad as a live one. The ‘dead skunk’ of prohibition’s racist, eugenic origin is still stinking up its modern implementation.
In short, you’re right; it comes down to whose children are the prohibs most ‘concerned’ about. It is no accident that the population cohort who most supported drug prohibition last century were also supporters of racial segregation in their younger days.
That cohort has almost died out, leaving drug prohibition to run loose like a Doomsday Machine without a pilot; a good description of our situation, today. Those who set it in motion are almost all gone now, and those of the present generation that support it are almost entirely outvoted by those who don’t.
Those who support prohibition today do so largely for mercenary reasons, with a few privately doing so for the same reasons their forebears did: racism, with Fergusons and Baltimores as a result.
Kap, thanks for having the balls to stick up for unpopular comments.
I’ll take facts over internet popularity any day.
I really admire and respect the quality of your interests and information. Huge fan. Thank you for being so persistent with your efforts.
NorCal, to my mind, it’s not having ‘balls’; it’s our willingness to speak out at all is what differentiates us from the prohibs.
We can and do hold debates amongst ourselves, often vociferous, heated ones, but we do (and dare) debate. Cookie-cutter uniformity of thought is the prohib’s bailiwick…as is their inability to countenance the idea that they might be wrong. A luxury none on our side can afford.
And with support for our position rising in the electorate, it is a luxury the prohibs can no longer afford.
Sure, things get heated amongst ourselves, but think of it as the friction caused by the sharpening of a rhetorical blade…lots and lots of them. Hundreds of millions of them.
The prohib’s rhetorical blades are dull, and they’re down to one knife, and as Robert DuPont (rather morosely) said, it is Kevin Sabet.
So…the way I figure, we can and must be willing to argue in favor of our beliefs, and that is bound to cause conflict amongst ourselves. But the flexibility that that represents is one of our greatest strengths. A flexibility the mentally musclebound prohibs lost long ago…and it’s largely why they’re losing.
NCN… Kap is a special creature. Always glad he was on OUR side. One of the joys I’ve eeked out of fighting the WO(s)D comes in the form of the people I’ve walked with on this rocky path. After the Kerry election (Pete’s blog came on-line during that election cycle I do believe) this band of ne’er-do-wells were a force to be reckoned with. The numbers were far smaller then but the principles of engagement kept us in fair winds.
Back then Pete even put up a BulletinBoard for our use, including a private group where we could share our top level dopershitsecrets. Or just point out new targets for one another…
Primarily thru Pete, Kap and Malcolm, I learned the value of civility as a tool in online debate, rather than acting a fool in debate. We have quite the assemblage sharing Pete’s couch…
Please, guys, you’re making me blush, here.
As Newton said, if I see so far, it’s only because I have stood on the shoulders of giants. Mindful of that, I always try to scrape my shoes.
Stanton Peele, Arnold Trebach, Richard Cowan, Dr. Woodward, Rufus King, so many (unfortunately, too many) to count. Names known only to us, but names we should respect. I am only an inheritor of a (great) legacy of reform, not its progenitor. I am the one who is constantly learning from all the ‘cooks’ who bring their informational ‘wares’ to the table, and it is Pete who provides the table. Many thanks, Pete!
indeed Kap, there are many names on that list.
And ditto on the props to Mr. Guither. Pete, for whatever reason, provided a sanctuary of sanity from those forays down the WOD wabbit hole. Pretty much his only rule here is -and has been – civility. We can speak our minds or pee our pants, it’s all good. No membership dues. Cold pizza and beer in the fridge. Plenty of good herb… stale Doritos…
Kap, I quote you (on other fora) most often and when I do, I usually also say something about how often you hit the nail right on its tiny little head! I thank you so much for your wisdom and your patience for I have little of both, but enough to recognize it in others. I have little patience these days because I am 71 years old and I have been fighting the leviathan and its propaganda and police state since long before I ever got a computer (which I got in the late 80s). I started writing LTEs and essays on these subjects, back in ’71, on a manual typewriter that had belonged to my grandmother, tossing reams of the written word when I spotted an error (no going back and correcting a word or punctuation on that kind of typewriter unless one had quarts of whiteout, which made for a messy final appearance, and often having to retype the entire thing as some alterations changed the number of pages). Somewhere (probably no longer readable as they are likely all mouldy by now, being in the unheated, uninsulated drafty, leaky, use to be a horse barn and now is hubby’s “shop” and MC and lawnmower garage) I kept copies of all those letters and essays, I had the intent of someday putting them in book form. Anyway, i am getting more and more impatient as I grow older, as I REALLY want to see the country back on the RIGHT road before I change dimensions (something I hope to NOT do for at least another 30 years, I promised my furbabies I would NEVER abandon them and I fully intend to keep that promise, but they still have a good 18-20 years if I take good care of them, and I will definitely need to outlive my hubby, he can’t remember what kind of sandwich spread he uses, doesn’t know how to “hunt sammiches cuz he doesn’t know where they live” and he has not a clue how to pay the bills, since I’ve been taking care of them for the past 53 yars).
Yes, 2015 has seen key developments. But some people just can’t seem to leave the ’50’s or the ’30’s or some other undefined time warp behind. Consider one John Ellis “Jeb” Bush;
Jeb Bush Supports Decriminalization But Calls Marijuana a ‘Gateway Drug’
http://tinyurl.com/ngvljbc
Notables from Jeb;
“Marijuana is a gateway drug just as opiates are a gateway drug. Of course it is, every study shows that.â€
“The new heroin and the new marijuana are highly, highly toxic,†he said.
Good Lord, Jeb. You’re supposed to be the ‘smart’ Bush. I guess we can put to rest the notion that anybody in your clan has two brain cells to rub together.
amazing isn’t it?
Recall that Kevvie admitted colluding with both Jeb Bush and the Semblers:
““You know something,†Maia told me, “I’ve always wanted to ask Kevin about when he worked for them…â€
So I asked him, and once again got a flat denial.
“I never worked for them,†he said. “I am against the use of any of those techniques for treatment or anything else. DFAF [Drug Free America Foundation, the Semblers’ new project] has nothing to do with SAM—it has zero involvement. No money. No influence. Nada. We agree on some issues, yes, but I think you’ll find we are different organizations with different approaches. And I only became aware of any allegations after a few articles on the subject some years ago.â€
Which seemed definitive enough. But then Maia sent me something very interesting: the 2007 DFAF Annual Report, which listed a certain Kevin Sabet as a member of their advisory board in the role of “drug prevention expert.†Sabet was also listed as a member of the editorial board for the journal of the Institute of Global Drug Policy, a division of DFAF.
I reached back out to Kevin to ask, “What gives?â€
This time, his answer was rather different.
“Tony, I was on the advisory board along with Jeb Bush, Bob DuPont and others for a few years—that’s all unpaid.†(Emphasis mine – k.)
All pro bono? Out of pure, shining altruism? When it is screamingly obvious that all his compatriots have a very large financial stake in maintaining prohibition? Pardon my folded arms and the incredulous look on my face.
The Bush Clan have been up to their fair follicles in dirty dealings (like bankrolling the Nazis), being prime handmaidens for the de facto Elite for over a century. An Elite whose bankster origins include acting as bankers for the opium trade in the 19th century.
Oh, yes, you are known by the company you keep. Kevvie’s hobnobbing with families that bankroll mass murderers (see World War 2 and Prescott Bush’s role in fomenting that conflict) and who sanction child torture. And he wants to think he’s the knight in shining anti-drug armor. Yeah, sure, riiiiiight.
Kevin Sabet also knows Father Cassian Newton who ran KIDS or Bergen County, i have heard from other people that Father Cassian Newton did also mentor Kevin Sabet
The more I learn about such, the more I am convinced that prohibs have either read the works of NeoConservative godfather Leo Strauss, or are simply Straussians by nature.
Strauss had no problems at all with cynical, amoral manipulations of the masses, most notably with the use of Plato’s so-called ‘Noble Lie’.
US foreign policy has been run by Straussian acolytes. Why should we think it different when it comes to both international and domestic polices such as drug prohibition?
Prohibition itself was based on ‘noble lies’ used to dissuade drug consumption, particularly cannabis prohibition (see ‘Reefer Madness’). But such lies could only work in the face of mass ignorance and trust in government officials. Since Watergate, both have waned. Particularly in the past 15 years. Hence the increasing calls for retiring prohibition.
Add to that the unsavory associations that most prohibs have, as Kevvie has with the (historically proven Nazi-supporting) Bush Clan and the (profiting from child torture) Semblers, and one has every right to question both their motivations and their modus operandae.
Virgil Miller Newton, AKA Father Cassian (Newton), is on the hot contenders’ list for drug war criminals. From Wiki:
Isolation ward. Not punishment. Yeah, right….
Mr. Alex, Miller Newton was a big wheel at Straight, Inc. before he went to NJ and founded Kids. Kids was a near exact copy of Straight without what little restraint that Straight exerted over Newton. He was finally sued by an inmate who didn’t use drugs (she was judged an “addict” over her fashion choices) but was nonetheless locked up at Kids for 13 YEARS. Maia Szalavitz devotes two chapters to that case (Corter vs. Kids) in her book “Help at Any Cost”.
Most of the Prohibs not only hate me but I no longer use the scientific questions on them, when I ask them why are they silent on what Father Cassian Newton did at KIDS of Bergen County or even Melvin Sembler and Betty Sembler who ran straight inc, groups like Stop Pot 2016, Parents Opposed to Pot, Project SAM, Kevin Sabet, David Frum, Julie Ann Schauer, Bridget Klotz and whole host of prohibs hate being asked if they condone rehab abuse which usually results in a instant block, at least one Prohib is trying to write a book on the revisionism genre on Straight Inc that what they did was not against the Geneva convention or against human rights, these prohibs make me sick
OK Jeb, roll out your daughter’s using history again so the voters can see what a sensitive, “opened up” pol you are on this subject
Meet the new heroin
Same as the old heroin
Conservative Addiction Good, Liberal Addiction Bad!
Fair Deal for Noelle Bush
Chicago Sun-Times October 22, 2002
Noelle Bush, the daughter of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, is in trouble. Last week, she was sentenced to 10 days in jail for violating a drug rehabilitation program. Workers at the treatment center allegedly found crack cocaine in the heel of her shoe.
JEB BUSH CAUGHT IN ILLEGAL DRUG COVER-UP SCANDAL
nationalenquirer February 7, 2002
A week before Noelle’s recent arrest for prescription fraud, she tried to illegally acquire prescription medications THREE more times at THREE different pharmacies. But pharmacists were told to keep the police out of it.
Noelle Bush Needs Help, As All Addicts Do
Orlando Sentinel January 31, 2002
I knew Noelle Bush had a drug problem before she was arrested. The state editor told me. He knew because most of the reporters in Tallahassee who cover the governor knew about it.
Jeb Bush Urged To Reconsider Drug Law View
Washington Post January 31, 2002
Advocates of reforming Florida’s drug laws say it is understandable that Gov. Jeb Bush (R) is asking for compassion and privacy for his daughter, arrested this week on prescription fraud charges. But they also think he should reconsider his tough “drug warrior” approach to the state’s other nonviolent drug offenders.
Aqualungs
http://oi39.tinypic.com/2vukpaf.jpg
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Length Speed & Duration, that’s my motto.
I can recall only once instance of opiates being called a “gateway” drug. That was by Sgt Joe Friday on Dragnet who insisted that heroin is a gateway to LSD. He was arguing with a very poorly disguised Timothy Leary and man he was pixxed off in that episode.
Couldn’t some clever fellow put that on a t-shirt? Perhaps a greeting card? Make it the new secret password to access the Loyal Order of Water Buffalo meeting place?
And as I can attest, in moderation, LSD is, indeed (using the modern parlance) ‘the bomb’. I’ve only used it a few times, but in every instance it enabled me to crack through a tech problem that had been bedeviling me.
And then afterward I kicked myself mentally for not seeing the simple solution that was (palming forehead repeatedly) right there in front of me, all along, but took chemical augmentation to ‘cleanse the doorways of perception’ so I could see what I was practically tripping over.
It was the ‘Joe Fridays’ and the ‘Archie Bunkers’ of the previous generation that ramped up the DrugWar to match their ignorance and their seething hatred of those nonconformists who refused to bow to their false conventionalities and buy into a lie. As Nixon’s henchman Erlichman attested, such hatred was largely the reason for why the DrugWar became the favorite means of attacking those who questioned the falseness of their beliefs. No amount of ‘acid’ would have helped them see what was right in front of them as to what was wrong in doing so.
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Did you know that the guy who invented Alcoholics Anonymous in the late 1930’s was dropping acid with Aldous Huxley in the 1950s?
Hubby and I, along with our friends, were doing acid nearly every weekend in the mid 70s. We had a LOT of fun, including doing a LOT of group coloring of posters. Sometimes we were camping, watching stars (and the campfire) at night, floating the river during the day; sometimes we were partying at home by the fireplace, but we always had a GREAT time, never saw a single instance of a bad trip over all those years. I still like doing it occasionally, but it’s not as easy to get nowadays.
thanks for the segue Kap…
Pete Christ shared this on FB and I was looking for the right spot to slip it into
your drinksthe comments:LEAP and Joe Friday, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDQUxVdCx5k
Outstanding video. Thanks, Allan.
New anti cannabis campaign from the Australian government: http://stonersloth.com.au/
ONDCP Director Botticelli botched it tonight in his CBS 60-Minutes interview, wherein he concluded with a typical prohibitionist anti-marijuana stance, citing all the false propaganda, including that of Sabet’s Big Marijuana.
Botticelli appears to know nothing of marijuana, and he’s a former alky, which does nothing for his cred, nor does it indicate he understands illicit drugs. Little mention was made of the recent advances made in understanding addiction.
Sure, Botticelli is promoting a kinder, gentler, drug inquisition, but it’s an old ploy, a form of apologetics abandoned both by human rights activists and the framers of the Constitution two-hundred years ago.
Botticelli and Rosenberg are two sides of the same coin. They wouldn’t have their jobs had they any inkling of how evil prohibition actually is. True believers, in a society constructed of lies.
Mic left on after interview. Botticelli breaks down and admits
his true job description.
They have wasted Millions of lives and Trillions of dollars trying to put non violent drug and pot users in prison. The new and improved war on drugs is right? They can waste Millions of lives and Trillions of dollars trying to put non violent drug and pot users into forced rehabilitation. oy vey
Botticelli provides no new surprises. Perfectly predictable, in fact.
Having been a civil servant some 20 years ago, and having come into contact with quite a few career ones, I can speak from experience that if kumquats were illegal, the enforcers of kumquat prohibition would be just as ruthless towards kumquat consumers as they are towards cannabists.
“Whose bread I eat, his song I sing” is the guiding principle of such people, who may, in the deepest, darkest hours of the night have the slightest, barest twinge of remorse…quickly misidentified as caused by something they ate, go back to sleep, and continue their predations in the morning. ‘Nuremberg’ doesn’t exist in their vocabulary.
The immorality of what they do never enters their minds; so long as a paycheck does enter their bank account, they are content. And it also gives them an opportunity to use the force of The State for personal reasons; corrupt, thieving (via forfeiture), sadistic drug cops have existed as long as there have been drug laws.
Such as they respect only one thing: power. But the source of their power comes from the law. Change the law, their power must also, perforce, be diminished. They know what cannabis re-legalization means, and it means precisely that same diminution of power.
And given all the sins committed while wielding that power, they also know what will eventually happen for abusing that power when the majority of the electorate that they’ve treated as ‘the enemy’ gain the upper hand. It will be back to a tight collar, a short leash and a kibble diet instead of the champagne-and-caviar budgets that they have gotten accustomed to.
No wonder they’re pulling stunts like the OK/NE lawsuits meant to undermine democratic principles: it illustrates perfectly their authoritarian attitudes.
But it also illustrates their fear of what will happen to them once they do lose that power; ‘Nuremberg’ may not be in their vocabularies, but it does exist in the vocabularies of those they’ve savaged.
The real villain here is CBS, whose fossilized reporters are the rotted skin-tags of television. How about “The Hippie Temptation” story from 1967?
“They offer the spurious attraction of the young, a corruption of the idea of innocence.” Don’t worry Dan, Nixon’s gonna clean up this town next year.
The real villain here is CBS, whose fossilized reporters are the rotted skin-tags of television. How about “The Hippie Temptation” story from 1967?
“They offer the spurious attraction of the young, a corruption of the idea of innocence.” Come and save us, Nixon.
Tried to reedit and failed. Sorry.
The forces of evil refuse to surrender. A ten-pictorial piece consisting of vague, unsupported health suppositions about marijuana, called “How Marijuana Affects Healthâ€, published by “Healthgradesâ€, and “Medically Reviewed By: Brian McDonough, MDâ€, is being linked to by CNN.com. Has CNN no shame?:
http://www.healthgrades.com/conditions/how-recreational-marijuana-use-affects-your-health?cid=t1_hpatf
In a long article entitled “The Narco-terror Trap†written by Pulitzer Prize winner Ginger Thompson, ProPublica (co-published with the New Yorker), December 7, 2015 – “The DEA warns that drugs are funding terror. An examination of cases raises questions about whether the agency is stopping threats or staging them.â€
The existence of extensive terrorist-based drug smuggling is being fabricated by the DEA. DEA agents pose as belonging to a terrorist group, Taliban, al Qaeda, and so forth, then they hand people big wads of cash to set up drug smuggling routes into Europe. Thus entrapped, the recruited drug dealers are labeled terrorists once they are arrested, even though they likely have no connections to terrorism whatsoever. The DEA then claims it’s fighting terrorism:
.
.
Wow! All of these people coming out of the proverbial cannabis closet lately begs the question, “How the heck did so many people fit in that darn closet in the first place?” Here’s another one from the “read ’em and weep Mr. Prohibitionist” category:
Wow, Mexico has their very own homegrown Granny Storm Crow. Who’da thunk that there was a very significant number of Mexicans who not only accept the medicinal value of cannabis they have used it medicinally? This one has me fish mouthing because I was double clueless that these people or their generational medicinal tincture even existed. I can already hear the prohibitionists attempting to marginalize this event. But they can’t marginalize a large cohort which grew up thinking that cannabis tincture is in fact a valid medicine. Even better, it was taught to them by their parents who learned it for their parents. There’s just very little chance that they might change their minds. When I grew up there was a local chain of drug store called Peoples. From at least the time I turned 2 1/2 our family used them for our drug store needs. CVS assimilated Peoples years and years later. To this very day I have to concentrate or I’ll refer to the local CVS stores as Peoples. Things imprinted on a growing brain at that age are all but impossible to dislodge.
Granny intent on smoking crawdads, gets busted:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFK9TO1v8H0
Chuck Grassley Is Basically Killing The CARERS Act With Inactivity – at TheWeedBlog
http://www.theweedblog.com/chuck-grassley-is-basically-killing-the-carers-act-with-inactivity/
Senator Chuck Grassley’s contact information:
Des Moines Office
721 Federal Building
210 Walnut Street
Des Moines, IA 50309
Phone: 515-288-1145
Fax: 515-288-5097
Washington D.C. Office
135 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
Phone: 202-224-3744
Fax: 202-224-6020
MiLegalize has extended the time for signing the petition to legalize marijuana in Michigan. If you live in Michigan here is the info you need:
http://www.milegalize.com/petition_locations
Greetings couchlings.
I’ve got a mild rant building up and so here goes.
“What do you know about the endocanabinoid system.”
Yep, those eight-words are huge. And, I’m not asking what the couch knows, I’m asking if the people who come here have had that conversation with their personal physicians, or any physician.
What are your doctors hearing from you?
Since the ECS is “the master control panel for almost every physiological process in the human body,” it’s kind of a big deal. Big enough that any doctor without this knowledge is “dated” and as Dr. Sue Sisley, Sunil Aggarwal, MD Phd, Gregory Carter, MD MS, have said there’s a “body count” which is a human rights issue. A huge human rights issue.
Why this is a rant is this. Do you come here to bitch and complain? Do you expect legal cannabis to be delivered to your door based on your internet clicks and anxiety, or do you take it into the community and try and push the ending of this disastrous human-destroying policy?
Now, be gentle with the down-thumbs because not all of us are capable of active or energetic protest. However, if you are capable. If you do have the knowledge base to confront the medical community about their lack of evidence-based practice I’m hoping maybe you’ll join the battle sooner-rather-than-later.
You can start by asking your doctor those “8-words.” It’s a perfectly acceptable question for any patient to ask. If you’re not comfortable with that for any reason you can examine your own medicine cabinet, both Rx and OTC, and see what you can replace with cannabis products.
For most of us, the risk/benefit decision making behind prescription meds is a skewed and a f’d-up big mess because doctors are “dated”.
Narcotic analgesics–can be replaced with cannabis. NSAIDS (ibuprofen, Celebrex, etc) can be replaced with cannabis. Anti-neuropathic drugs like gabapentin and amitryptaline an old-school tricylic anti-depressant can be replaced with cannabis. The newer anti-depressants the SSRI’s can be replaced with cannabis.
The list of Rx meds that can and should be replaced by cannabis based on the medical metric of benefit/risk ratios is significant.
Once you grasp the significance and evidence-based truth behind the idea doctors without knowledge are both “dated” and responsible for a growing “body count,” I wonder how anyone can sit on the sidelines on this human rights issue.
Last week I called my dad’s oncologist dated after asking him the “8-words.” When I got the 1,000-yard stare and crickets I called him “dated.” He replied “that’s offensive.” I didn’t disagree.
After I left his office I went to Kaiser member services and complained about Dr. Ye and every other physician in that hospital about their lack of evidence-based care.
I then went to the Hospital Chaplain and complained about the hospitals lack of evidence-based policy. I finished up with “chatting” with the Kaiser public service dept.
Then, I went home and spent a half-hour with my congressman’s staff telling them that our military veterans struggling with PTSD need whole-plant cannabis medication, Yesterday!
When I visit Kaiser helping my dad get his “dated” medical care for his cancer, I’m like a predator. Any opening I get I’m selling the ECS, whether it’s to patients or doctors.
I quit my last doctor because when I did the cannabis-for-Big Pharma trade-in program his response was “you’re giving all your money to the marijuana people and not the pharmacies.” Uh doc, could you have said anything possibly more stupid to me?
So, when I had an appointment with my new doc I had to tell him why I left the old one. I left the old one because I called him “dated” and I also told him I couldn’t tell the difference between Western (allopathic) medicine and war crimes.
My new doc humbled my ass immediately. The first thing he told me was a story about killing a patient by giving him an opiate prescription. When I told him the “dated” doc—war crime thing he didn’t bat an eye because he understood exactly what I was wound up about.
When I say I come here to learn stuff, what I mean is that I take the angst, the pain and suffering of drug war victims and I use it as “mental nutrition” to help me deal with “dick” doctors. I’m working my ass off for the cause every time I leave the house. I don’t just come here to whine and complain.
Do you?
We have a right to be the best we can be. For many of us that depends on having that conversation with your doc. Love to help anyone out if you’re considering it and maybe need an extra push. If agitating against Big Medicine isn’t your thing, find something if you’re able.
Peace.
Nor Cal, I can’t speak for everybody, but the last time I saw my physician (who also happens to be a personal friend), we went out for lunch and talked for over an hour. And when I left, he had my copy of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts in his hands. His interest in addiction medicine and my interest in legalization and background as a therapist makes for some very interesting conversations.
But not everybody’s Doctor is as enlightened. Broaching this topic with the wrong doctor can have you labeled as a problem patient or worse, a potential addict. It may even influence his diagnosis and or what prescriptions he will write. Many doctors have a very closed mind and knee jerk reaction to cannabis in particular. Many resent the times they have been “worked” by addicts and convinced to prescribe opiates to someone who turns out to have been faking. They will often take this out on anybody they even faintly suspect of being a drug user. I have seen it happen more than once in my practice. So, my advice is to be tactful and feel them out before you go there.
Couch, listen to darkcycle’s advice here. He knows what he’s talking about. If there’s possible danger don’t go there.
On the other hand, if you’re like me, someone who has a basic level of medical knowledge (it’s kind of the reason I’m taking CME units for docs) and you don’t have a job or reputation to worry about, what’s the harm in agitating?
I’m much less worried about upsetting a dated doc if it means I wake him/her up enough to maybe do the five minutes of easy internet research it takes to get started helping patients.
Heroes or Accountants? I think patients want heroes.
dc, thanks for adding your extensive knowledge-base to this discussion. I mean no disrespect to honest professionals who put patients first. Certainly you’re not suggesting I owe any respect to dated doctors who don’t care about patients. A degree is not a shield after all.
Peace Washington dude.
BTW, as a cannabis expert what’s the maximum number of plants a single grower can manage with complete-and-total professionalism?
I don’t advocate continuing to see a doc such as that, much less giving them your respect. There is a certain deference they get as a function of having achieved their station in life,but beyond that, they earn respect from me, it’s not a granted.
As to your closing question…really depends on what sort of growing methods and setup. I really haven’t a clue. My limitations were always prohibition dictated. Before Medical I always kept it under 99, and I went for long fallow periods. Now, my limits are dictated by how many letters I have… but the way I do it, It’s not practical to keep more than about 50. As a matter of fact, I’m in the process of a planned shutdown….I have 8 plants left to harvest, then I’ll be doing cleaning and maintenance for a week or so before starting all over from seed. Wish me luck.
doctors… the last doc I saw was a woman doc running Sandee Burbank’s clinics at MAMA, the one year I had a card. Before that… the closest would have been the nurse in the ER that cleaned up the index finger I fed to my table saw. She was a VN vet and we had such a great conversation. I don’t like doctors and I don’t like western/pharma medicine. OTH, nurses rock.
NorCal, while I’ve slowed my word production (LTEs and Opeds) I still step right up when the opportunity arises. I had to go to Portland last week to shoot Russ Belville for the cover of this week’s Oregon Cannabis Connection. Was raining cats and dogs all day. Went up on Amtrak. Heading back, the tracks had washed out south of Portland so they had to send a bus, but it got stuck in traffic.
I start shooting the train depot in the rain and dark – lights, rails, reflections – and noticed a guy waiting for the “train” sitting in his car with the window down so I walked down and started talking. I mentioned why I was in Portland. Which lead to us talking about cannabis. So I told him about Charlotte Figi, Oregon’s Brave Mikayla (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRLnZgTGSN4) and we talked weed and Prohibition (he wasn’t a smot poker) for 1/2 an hour until the bus showed up. He left far better edjimicated.
I love your approach btw! Education is key to eliminating or reforming prejudice and ignorance.
allan, when I grow up I hope to be half the cannabis activist you are. Thanks for keeping me in a steady supply of eye-candy.
Since I have used cannabis for 46 years I have very little contact with doctors and even less patience.
My medicine bag consists of aspirin,blood pressure medicine and cholesterol medicine.
I have found that trying to educate a person that has had almost a decade of college is nearly impossible so instead I try to peek their interest enough for them to do the research themselves.
Dropping the NCI report on their desk usually does it.
Antitumor activity
Studies in mice and rats have shown that cannabinoids may inhibit tumor growth by causing cell death, blocking cell growth, and blocking the development of blood vessels needed by tumors to grow. Laboratory and animal studies have shown that cannabinoids may be able to kill cancer cells while protecting normal cells.
A study in mice showed that cannabinoids may protect against inflammation of the colon and may have potential in reducing the risk of colon cancer, and possibly in its treatment.
A laboratory study of delta-9-THC in hepatocellular carcinoma (liver cancer) cells showed that it damaged or killed the cancer cells. The same study of delta-9-THC in mouse models of liver cancer showed that it had antitumor effects. Delta-9-THC has been shown to cause these effects by acting on molecules that may also be found in non-small cell lung cancer cells and breast cancer cells.
A laboratory study of cannabidiol (CBD) in estrogen receptor positive and estrogen receptor negative breast cancer cells showed that it caused cancer cell death while having little effect on normal breast cells. Studies in mouse models of metastatic breast cancer showed that cannabinoids may lessen the growth, number, and spread of tumors.
A laboratory study of cannabidiol (CBD) in human glioma cells showed that when given along with chemotherapy, CBD may make chemotherapy more effective and increase cancer cell death without harming normal cells. Studies in mouse models of cancer showed that CBD together with delta-9-THC may make chemotherapy such as temozolomide more effective.
http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/treatment/cam/patient/cannabis-pdq/#link/_13
I do talk with my primary care physician about cannabis and the ECS, he’s known for years that I am a user and every time I see him (as infrequently as I can manage, though PeaceHealth INSISTS I visit him once a year or they will not authorize my bioidentical hormones) I take him some info I’ve printed out.
https://reason.com/blog/2015/12/14/drug-czar-wants-more-money-to-spend-on-t?utm_campaign=naytev&utm_content=566f5dc5e4b0087ca43e90bd
I was just stopping by to post on this very subject, Windy.
Sheesh! Organized theft sure is expensive.
Again, Botticelli, a career bureaucrat, provides no surprises. When policies fail, bureaucrats blame ‘insufficient funding’, not inherent flaws in that policy.
Bureaucracies are like those nasty-looking little microorganisms that you had to look at under microscopes in school. They almost mindlessly seek to expand and voraciously eat all resources – and organisms – around them to accomplish that.
That is, unless they are themselves eaten…or exterminated. The latter course of action is what should be applied to the ONDCP. It has never served any useful purpose other than providing employment for the otherwise unemployable or talentless, in short, a sinecure. (What other kind of job do you think somebody like Kevvie could have possibly held?)
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CWV9c3kVAAASDc3.jpg
And you call yourselves free?
I’m rarely free and will be raising my hourly rate next year!
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.
primus, don’t you know that it’s a free Country as long as you do as you’re told to do?
As a retired realtor I have said for many years it’s a free country until you want to live indoors
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahpIirW0svY
I like Janis’ version better.
Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) has responded to the petition to fire DEA Director Chuck Rosenberg which was signed by 142,125 irate medical marijuana supporters. No firings, but Blumenauer calls out Chuck Rosenberg for saying medical marijuana is a joke:
https://www.change.org/p/obama-fire-dea-head-for-calling-medical-marijuana-a-joke/responses/32150
This is interesting on multiple levels:
The DEA Allows Unlikely Candidate to Import Cannabis Internationally
Until now, the only way to legally obtain any cannabis in the US was from U Miss. The DEA wouldn’t even allow them produce cannabis at Harvard. Suddenly the DEA are allowing a SECOND source of cannabis.
It’s also been illegal to import cannabis. Even the legal hemp seeds bound for Kentucky were nabbed by the DEA and held hostage. Now importing actual marijuana is OK.
On top of that, many of these production and storage facilities are going to be in states where mj is completely illegal (like Kansas). I wonder if anyone in those states has anything to say about the devil’s weed coming to their state. The usual reason they give is that it’s illegal federally. I guess they’ll have to come up with a new reason to keep mj out of their state. I have a feeling though, representatives from those states were not consulted, and probably don’t even know about these plans.
Other than those firsts, I don’t see this company as a particularly “unlikely candidate,” as they’re working with GW Pharmaceuticals. Obviously, if the DEA are going to cave to anybody, it would be a pharmaceutical company.
because I love you all like family, may I share (and may the saints forgive me) a classic in drug war history? No?
… too bad! Put the children to bed before watching:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an7neQrpc94
Dammit, Allan, I’m outta meds, now I feel like I want to make my dinner an offering to the Porcelain God after seeing that. Give some warning next time. (Blurg…Glup…Blawwwwww!)
Who needs ipecac, just watch that creature and you’ll save some money.
Every time I post it I’ve forgotten how traumatizing the video really is. I suspect that’s my need to pass on these historic glimpses to the young’uns overriding my don’t-hit-that-button sense.
Unfortunately the Drug-Free Community grants are still operating and spreading funds into the anti-drugnut community. I’m sure there are some good community orgs out there receiving these funds. Somewhere…
I had never seen Linda Taylor in action before. Too bad for Linda. She’s a really sad example of prohibition derangement syndrome.
She’s funny… Few dabs of candy cookie and a few tokes of Game Changer. I bet she sweats a lot. Smells too. Where are the nose cops about that? I’d much rather smell buds than sweaty wingnuts. Definitely ECB Deficiency and from years of trying to stuff that 300 pound mass into a pair of high heels two sizes too small.
So she tells the 6 year old kids their seizures are gods way of punishing them for their parents trying the heathen devil weed. Just because the seizures almost stopped from 300 a week. It’s illegal, suffering is part of life.
Or those Veterans claiming PTSD just to smoke pot. We should honor them with mandatory minimum sentences and all kinds of fat pharma pills, with all kinds of side effects.
Seniors are supposed to suffer, its just not the christian way to “feel good”. You must repent. Mercy sake, to have dying people giggle at jokes. Or cancer without the agonizing pain, tain’t natural. God created Pharmacists for treating sickness, not weeds! The fact that they bring relief to millions of people is irrelevant. Crumps.
Perhaps the easy way to confirm medical cannabis is simply to block the endocannanbinoid CB1 receptor.
Rimonabant, a French-produced weight-loss pill that was taken off the market due to suicides “blocks” the CB1 receptor.
It was a disaster as a medicine, but is much more important as a research tool and substance for cannabis studies.
I suggest we start offering this “option” to the Sabet’s and Linda Taylor’s of the world. If they’re so sure about their positions surely they wouldn’t mind taking the “MMJ” test and block their ECS.
I’m not advocating “death-by-suicide.” I am advocating the selling of science to idiots. You want to bitch? Take the Rimonabant challenge. Get back to us in a couple of months and we’ll talk MMJ.
They’d still be bitching that smoke isn’t medicine, but after Rimonabant “therapy” I doubt they’d be holding firm on their previous prejudices based on ignorance. A hippie can dream.
Seems Randy Philbrick’s now butthurt from Russ Belville, by the way I got a email reply from SAM Oregon where they called me a troll but but it seems Randy started raging when i told him is Project SAM another front for Betty and Melvin Sembler and Virgil Miller Newton who ran KIDS of Bergen County which was sued for abuse, when i told Randy that Kevin Sabet admitted that he worked for the Drug Free America Foundation and Sabet was caught lying, Randy got even more mad
Drug-Dealing Pizza Hut Employee Busted for Selling Heroin at Work
I came to a conclusion long ago that the truth always hurts somebody…usually the one denying it. Prohibs in general are the best examples of that maxim’s validity to date.
They really hate it when the truth comes knocking on their doors…and won’t go away, just stands there, knocking continuously. They may live in a regular house, with windows and doors, but mentally, they reside in bunkers.
The truth is hurting Nora Volkow and Kevin Sabet in a Dec. 16 article in the U.S. News and World Report.
A new NIDA drug use study has produced results the prohibitionists can’t wrap their warped brainstems around: perception of risk of marijuana use is down among teenagers, but rates of use remain steady. According to the standard model of prohibition theory, rates of use should go up when perception of risk goes down.
Nora and Kevin came up with some bonkers bunkers’ excuses for the results. Nora thinks we can’t perceive any trend in teen marijuana use until forty years from now when all the results are in. Kevin thinks the researchers didn’t include school dropouts in their study, thereby skewing results. Denial equals job tenure for the dastardly duo.
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015-12-16/key-anti-pot-argument-torched-teen-use-flat-as-risk-perception-plunges?ref=yfp
Thus spake Kevvie: ““We know that a Big Marijuana industry pushes the gummy bear and pot ice cream for profit,†he says.”
(Facepalm) I’m close to blaspheming at the sheer monomania of the prohib’s assertions that there’s some shadowy cabal out there, in the back of a dark, (cannabis) smoke-filled room, furtively conspiring to ‘hook’ unsuspecting little children on THC-rich junk food.
As somebody told me long ago, “A thief will always suspect you of theft, and a liar will suspect you of lying.” I recall on more than one occasion the prohibs attempting to hide where their conferences were so they wouldn’t have to face demonstrations comprised of those savaged by their efforts to ‘save’ them from themselves.
They even screw over their own allies, as McCaffrey did to Abe Rosenthal of the NYT, by secretly recording their phone conversations. They don’t even trust each other.
Now, just who is prone to engaging in hidden, closed-door, conspiratorial dealings to hide their efforts? All too often, on the public’s dime and time? Ain’t you and me, friends, that’s for sure.
To break heroin addiction,
one neuroscientist suggests using drugs
neuroscience giveth and now neuroscience taketh away
Marc Lewis, a psychologist and former addict himself, also the author of a new book “The Biology of Desire: Why Addiction is Not a Disease.†Lewis’s argument is actually fairly simple: The disease theory, and the science sometimes used to support it, fail to take into account the plasticity of the human brain. Of course, “the brain changes with addiction,†he writes. “But the way it changes has to do with learning and development — not disease.†All significant and repeated experiences change the brain; adaptability and habit are the brain’s secret weapons. The changes wrought by addiction are not, however, permanent, and while they are dangerous, they’re not abnormal. Through a combination of a difficult emotional history, bad luck and the ordinary operations of the brain itself, an addict is someone whose brain has been transformed, but also someone who can be pushed further along the road toward healthy development. (Lewis doesn’t like the term “recovery†because it implies a return to the addict’s state before the addiction took hold.)
Why Did Anonymous
Declare War on Donald Trump?
☛ Anonymous reveals the next phase in its cyber war with ISIS
☛ A Letter From ISIS to Donald Trump
☛ When He Called for an End to the War on Drugs,
Trump Claims, He Meant It Should Be Waged More Aggressively
☛ Isis burn down marijuana farm in Syria – video
☛ Notorious Drug Kingpin El Chapo Declares War on ISIS
☛ El Chapo Bounty On Donald Trump?
$100M Reward Reportedly Offered By Mexican Fugitive For Candidate’s Head
There has been no Happy Smoke since the middle of August due to some red ass red state crackdown courtesy of some Tricky Dick Nixon wannabe governor.
A reliable source joined the dark side only to pee in a cup for a few shekels and feel free for 48 hours a week. Now anxiety pills help him cope. I’ll pass on synthetics when nature’s own healing herb is still out there.
Slowly saving for a rasta mecca hajj to Colorado but it takes a good sized bank roll to have a quality trip to Shangri-La.
It is the nearest cannabis friendly state at 1000 miles.
Hopefully the oppressive puritan gene will eventually be bred out in this country but there will always be mean bitter pinched face control freaks among us.
Sorry for venting and Merry Christmas, this concludes a dispatch from the glorious (for the profiteers) drug war.
“Mean bitter pinched face”. I have one of those sometimes from considering how long it takes to just stop something so wrong as the persecution of people under these prohibition laws.
Control freaks, I think, probably have a mean “I might hurt you” look on their face.
Merry Christmas to you, as well.
William S. Burrough’s Thanksgiving Prayer
Thanks for the wild turkey and
The passenger pigeons, destined
To be shat out through wholesome
American guts.
Thanks for a continent to despoil
And poison.
Thanks for Indians to provide a
Modicum of challenge and
Danger.
Thanks for vast herds of bison to
Kill and skin leaving the
Carcasses to rot.
Thanks for bounties on wolves
And coyotes.
Thanks for the American dream,
To vulgarize and to falsify until
The bare lies shine through.
Thanks for the KKK.
For nigger-killing lawmen,
Feeling their notches.
For decent church-going women,
With their mean, pinched, bitter,
Evil faces.
Thanks for “Kill a Queer for
Christ” stickers.
Thanks for laboratory AIDS.
Thanks for Prohibition and the
War against drugs.
Thanks for a country where
Nobody’s allowed to mind their
own business.
Thanks for a nation of finks.
Yes, thanks for all the
Memories– all right let’s see
Your arms!
You always were a headache and
You always were a bore.
Thanks for the last and greatest
Betrayal of the last and greatest
Of human dreams.
Aw, did I ruffle somebody’s widdle fevvers, hmmmmm?
GOOD!
If you have an argument with what he wrote, address it to Burrough’s long-gone spirit. But every time I see a prohib, I am reminded of his observation. For behind all the seeming words of sweet reason, I hear the tone of the authoritarian, just itching to get his/her hands around their neighbor’s throats and start strangling.
They remind me of what Nietzsche said:
“But thus I counsel you, my friends: Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful. They are people of a low sort and stock; the hangman and the bloodhound look out of their faces. Mistrust all who talk much of their justice! Verily, their souls lack more than honey. And when they call themselves the good and the just, do not forget that they would be pharisees, if only they had – power.” (Emphasis mine – k.)
Part II, Chapter 29, Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
The prohibs are always four-square for ‘justice’…so long as they are the ones dispensing it. And their ‘justice’ invariably leads to the shedding of innocent blood. An ‘inconvenient fact’ that they prefer to gloss over when they propose ever more destructive laws to punish those they don’t like.
And, as I have said it before, and bears repeating: Prohibs want people they don’t like to die. It really is that simple.
This is one way those opposing legalization have tried to keep the upper hand — by forbidding discussion of an alternative to the War on Drugs. Botticelli would be breaking the law if he supported legalization.
Still, by looking at Botticelli’s personal life, it appears he’s sold his principles for his job. Gay people spent the last few decades fighting persecution and the concept that they just need “treatment” to be cured of their desires, but Botticelli — a gay man who’s been married to another man since 2009 — claims support for similar oppression against cannabis users.
http://tinyurl.com/j98vrgn
And that’s not even getting into the possibility that cannabis directly combats HIV in some cases.
Could Cannabis Treat HIV?
Endocannabinoids
http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/topic/1683
Antibacterial, Analgesic and Antiinflammatory
Bees, Weed and HIV
http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/sreply/546
Making Sure Drugs Kill
http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/topic/1772
“You Can’t Stop AIDS Without Ending the Drug War”
http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/sreply/406
GanjaRx Reference List
https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=95659
Granny Storm Crow
Botticelli is another person who fits the description:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.†(Emphasis mine – k.)― C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology (Making of Modern Theology)
Such as Botticelli always seem to gravitate to positions like the one he holds now, always seeking to ‘fix’ that which doesn’t require it, failing to see the flaw in themselves that leads them to that behavior…and in the process make the lives of those who’ve done them no wrong living nightmares, thanks to their misnamed ‘compassion’.
For, as Mencken spelled it out so clearly nearly a century ago: “The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.”
It’s long past time to save ourselves from our would-be ‘saviors’.
Only a revolution will end the tyranny!
Revolution now!
robertsrevolution.net
http://www.theindychannel.com/news/local-news/anderson-police-officer-arrested-for-selling-drugs-on-duty
FTA:
According to a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office, Donald Jordan, 52, was arrested in Anderson Thursday at the Anderson Police Department around 3 p.m. for possession with intent to distribute hydrocodone and possession with intent to distribute Xanax.
Jordan was dealing drugs on duty, in uniform, and in a marked police car, according to the spokesman. The U.S. Attorney’s Office says Jordan bartered sex for drugs.
Jordan has been under investigation by the FBI for several months. The investigation started after a citizen called the Anderson Police Department in July 2014 to file a complaint against Jordan. The Anderson Police Department investigated and passed the information to the FBI.
Had Jordan been dealing drugs for the CIA, he wouldn’t be in this mess now.
That will be what he is sentenced to do.
2015 nearing the end
✽ Colorado Set To Collect $125 Million In Legal Marijuana Tax Revenues
By The End Of The Year- http://ow.ly/W5KTf
✽ The DEA Allows Unlikely Candidate to Import Cannabis Internationally
“The DEA has…determined that the registration of Catalent CTS, LLC to import the basic class of controlled substance is consistent with the public interest and with United States obligations under international treaties, conventions, or protocols in effect on May 1, 1971.â€
✽ Congress snuck a surveillance bill
into the federal budget last night
✽ California Farmers Consider Cashing In On A New Crop . . . Marijuana
✽ San Francisco Forms Legal Cannabis Task Force
My recent petition to POTUS at Change.org which cites your quotes from Harry Anslinger:
Drug prohibition is “mala prohibita,” and as such, is an illegitimate category of law. By enfocing “mala prohibita,” which has its roots in the theocratic “Divine Right of Kings,” the U.S. legal system has adopted an anti-American practice. “Mala prohibita,” unlike the common law designation “mala in se” lacks a valid, 2-part “corpus delicti” or “body of the crime.” In order for an action to be considered criminal under the common law (the law referred to by the Bill of Rights), two elements (“injury” and “intent to injure” a specific individual or set of individuals) must comprise a valid “body of the crime.” Without this valid “body of the crime,” being found by a jury, there is no criminal guilt, and a defendant has technically committed no punishable wrong.
The simple act of making something illegal is enough to create law in a theocracy, but not in a constitutional republic. Laws in a constitutional republic must not violate individual property rights, or they are considered illegitimate, because they lack a valid corpus. For example: Even if 51% of the electorate votes to outlaw the Jewish religion, and build concentration camps, the Bill of Rights doesn’t allow this law to come into existence. In “common law” societies, the legal legitimacy is derived from “natural law” which, as defined by Thomas Paine and John Locke, protects individual property rights from government over-reach. The alternative is totalitarianism, which believes that “those with power have no limit on that power” or “all power is legitimate” or “might makes right.” The form of totalitarianism that has historically prohibited drugs is known as theocracy, as the first drug prohibition laws argued that Christianity didn’t allow any other “sacraments,” and that the use of drugs other than wine was therefore sacrilegious. Morning glory seeds were outlawed in the American British colonies prior to the 1776 rebellion, for this reason.
Drugs were initially made illegal in the 1900s due to racist testimony of Harry Anslinger, this racist origin of the drug war is well-documented. It’s part of the congressional record. Here are some of his remarks, which resulted in the outlaw of marijuana:
“There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos, and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz, and swing, result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and any others.â€
“…the primary reason to outlaw marijuana is its effect on the degenerate races.â€
“Marijuana is an addictive drug which produces in its users insanity, criminality, and death.â€
“Reefer makes darkies think they’re as good as white men.â€
“Marihuana leads to pacifism and communist brainwashingâ€
“You smoke a joint and you’re likely to kill your brother.â€
“Marijuana is the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind.â€
The above comments indicate the unscientific, racist, socially intolerant, stupid nature of drug prohibition. Because “protecting the superior status of white men” is not a valid function of the law, simply calling attention to the origins of drug prohibition would likely be enough to end it, as well as rekindle the scientific debate over its merits. As a matter of historical record, a black president could not be faulted for rekindling this debate: Must the highest elected office-holder in the USA support arguments for his own racial inferiority? Even the DEA and ONDCP cannot demand that, nor would such demands, if attempted, be considered legitimate.
Because the reasons for outlawing drugs are all illegitimate, and the reasons for maintaining their outlaw are also illegitimate, unscientific, and opposed to the basic principles of western law, drug prohibition should be repealed. Because drug prohibition has become a self-defending cybernetic system, its full repeal may not be immediately possible (although it would be, if given sufficient effort from the President).
If full repeal is not possible, intermediary efforts should be undertaken to weaken drug prohibition. Simply telling the truth about the origins of drug prohibition will dramatically weaken it. Drug prohibition cannot withstand “sunlight” or “public scrutiny of its intrinsic nature and History.” Additionally, it cannot withstand the proper operation of the constitutional common law.
The more people are informed about the requirements of the common law for a valid “corpus delicti” (referred to in the 4th Amendment’s requirement of “habeas corpus”), the less tenable drug prohibition is.
A full and detailed examination of the ways in which drug prohibition is unlawful is beyond the size limitations of this venue. Suffice to say, drug prohibitions lack the basic requirements that could categorize them as “mala in se,” pushing them into the category of “mala prohibita.”
As a president, this subject requires your leadership more than any other subject.
You should not believe that the racist prison industrial complex will automatically prevail on this subject simply because it has in the past.
There is no productive future for humanity that includes drug prohibition.
Drug prohibition (along with other violations of individual property rights necessary for material prosperity) is illegitimate.
As if all of the prior were not reason enough to end drug prohibition, drug prohibition is a central part of Sharia law, the law of the worst enemies of the USA ever known, radical Islamic theocrats in ISIS and Iran. ISIS and Iran put people to death for drug use or dealing (after stealing their property), the USA puts people in prison for drug use or dealing (after stealing their property). We should not simply be a “less brutal” form of prohibitionist theocracy, we should be entirely different from, separate from, and in opposition to prohibitionist theocracy.
https://youtu.be/AUjHb4C7b94?t=17m54s
https://youtu.be/AUjHb4C7b94?t=26m7s – Drug users sentenced to death by ISIS
The very fact that the CIA has funded its operations with drug profits shows that either the goal of drug prohibition is not as serious as stated, or it is entirely a lie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UT5MY3C86bk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBfjB-jzvso
If you understand this, the onus on you is to expose it.