Absurd ideas from the White House

The ACLU weighs in:

The White House announced a new proposal today for policies that respond to the opioid addiction crisis, including possibly imposing the death penalty for those charged with dealing drugs.

Jesselyn McCurdy, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union Washington Legislative Office, had the following reaction:

“The opioid crisis is a serious problem that requires a serious solution. But the draconian law enforcement provisions included in this proposal are unconstitutional and absurd. […]

“The administration has, once again, put out a potentially disastrous and ill-thought-out policy proposal into our national discussion. The idea of executing people who sell drugs is ineffective, and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle understand that.”

This was a completely moronic idea 20 years ago. Now it’s moronic and tone-deaf.

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163 Responses to Absurd ideas from the White House

  1. Freeman says:

    So, for example, executives (kingpins) of the pharmaceutical manufacturers and distributors that shipped 21 million opioid doses to a West Virginia town of 2900 population, feeding an epidemic that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, would surely be subject to the death penalty provision, right?

    Yeah, that’s what I thought.

    • Will says:

      .
      .
      You mean the drug dealers pharmaceutical companies who also happen to be major campaign contributors? Yes, they receive a special bribery waiver.

    • Jon says:

      You’d think people here would understand things a bit better. I guess. It’s even on Vox; did the idea it’s hysterical propaganda not even cross your mind?
      You, and the article, are trying to make the implication that those 21 million doses were exclusively for patients within that town, when that’s simply not the case. First of all, there’s a major regional medical complex there that draws in people from all over.
      And the second more important point, as opioid hysteria rages on, it’s getting harder and harder for people to find a pain doctor that will actually help them. Even at the height of pill mills, outside of a couple states it was still tough. People have to drive hundreds of miles, sometimes to an entire different state, to find doctors to help them. Most fill their prescription by their doctor, since pharmacies that stock enough opiates to handle a pain practice are also rare.
      Since that’s standard, there’s no reason to assume there aren’t such doctors in that town.
      You’re also missing the point that the large marjority of ODs come from kicking people out of the medical system, where they’re either in severe pain, or an abuser that will just choose another drug, and OD on fentanyl analogs.
      Shame on you for promoting drug war propaganda here.

      • DdC says:

        Jon the difference between propaganda and profits killing people is that Ganja doesn’t kill and hysterical profiteers or dumbed down citizens follow and spread the gossip. While the Big Pharma makes $300 billion on cancer drugs and billions on pain medications and a real life death rate in the hundreds of thousands. Your simple quip leaves out that tiny point.

        You then try to guild out an argument and hide behind victims of drug worrier supply side demand reduction. That indeed does leave those needing pain meds to suffer or have hardships obtaining the drug. But it doesn’t deny the fact Big Pharma shipped millions of pills to towns in the Appalachia’s that for generations carried a tin of morphine with them in case of emergency. Or that Ganja can replace the amount used and be an alternative to the highly problematic opioids. Can’t be both ways dude.

        Either Big Pharma is making a killing killing people or people are left without pain meds because doctors are afraid to prescribe them. The DEA controls that, not reporting facts of greed. The NIDA propagandists and DEA Shuckers and Jivers steer the policies toward Big Pharma profits and de-regulations and fast tracks and arbitrary and capricious sabotaging and stifling Cannabis testing and research. The revolving door between Big Pharma and the FDA and HHS, IOM and USDA is in constant motion revolving out cures and preventive measures. Profits are in treatment of symptoms.

        Add Big Ag poisons to the un-propagandized and reported death and abortion rates soaring. Poisons spread on cotton crops while organic Hemp is lumped in as a Schedule#1 substance. Leaving American Family Farmers without a cash crop and committing suicides at twice the rate of Veterans. Who serve their country and then are caged for dealing with PTSD on their own.

        Deregulating the EPA and Clean Air and Water protections from greed and no tax paid department is spreading rumors about it at every turn, yet. Maybe the GizMO cops will emerge. So it continues and if someone speaks out they might as well be a kid shooting victim at an NRA meeting chastised for truth. Would you protect INSY’s golden boy’s right to gouge drug prices or use substandard materials in a Trump construction project because you can’t stand regalashuns? Like the first few of 27 words in the 2nd. A well regulated militia.

        Big Pharma and the NRA make as much profit with War as the steel mills and munitions makers. La Pierre lobbied against medicinal Ganja and against the 2nd Amendment rights of Ganjaâ„ž patients. Listen to Sue Sisley M.D. describe the ridiculous irrational procedures to do Cannabis research. Then after decades of preliminary hurdles they end up with a small assortment of strains and potencies from ElSohly’s Mississippi Schwag Farm to test with. University studies finding results by using private samples from State dispensaries that are not legal under Federal Scam Laws. It’s so obvious, its invisible.

        People also travel hundreds of miles when FRCn Fortune 700 Club Alt Christians hypocritical hysteria closes clinics serving medicare patients. SO dude, stop foaming at the mouth over whistle blowers outing them and start calling them out for the harm they are doing. The DEA limits medications to the elderly and injured as it is. They are the bad guys causing torment and suffering. They have no medical degree to determine doctors methods or dosages, but they do just the same. No doctors have a Medical School that teaches the ECS. So common sense is twice removed.

        It’s a new weird odor dude and profits are the Prophets and Necessity a deterrent to speaking out if you’re a paycheck away from the same predicament. Inventions and Natures creations that prevent and cure are shelved. While pills with side effects are promoted, bringing more profits treating misery they create. Like racism demonized people for cheaper labor, prohibitionism demonizes for profits in private prisons and rehabilitation asylums. Stigmatized into urine tested unemployment and again, cheaper labor. With the monopolies of Big Pharma to supply the “treatment”. As ludicrous as blaming hippies for prohibition caused tragedies or slowing regulation when it was they who kept it from extinction from DEA genetic fungus and ditchweed roundups.

        White Powders do kill when abused and when prohibition causes a junkie to be equal to a pharmacologist, only mixing up inconsistent batches with adulterated ingredients. Then they blame Ganja while the same guilty Prohibitionists and Pharma Drama Queens escape scrutiny as the Anslinger fear mongering. Physicians keep records of patients usage and logically there is no reason too OD. But thousands do, due to adulterations and human error measuring dosages or abusing amounts. Ganja can’t kill by overdose so even if the ECS is saturated and the residual high is off the charts you will still awaken and not just die a victim of Fentanyl profits.

        But now here’s a word, an explosion is heard;
        The miners are trapped far below;
        If any survive down there alive,
        I’m certain we never will know;
        Although our families have vainly appealed,
        No rescue attempt can be seen;
        Our hope for loved ones in the dark earth sealed,
        Now lies in a tin of morphine.
        ~ Ignorant Jeff
        Miner’s Lullaby Drug Overdoses & Ganjaâ„ž

        You can be convicted of welfare fraud or murder, but you can continue to receive welfare. If you are busted for Ganja you can lose benefits for life. Plus Pell Grants and Tuition assistance. Evictions and loss of jobs. Loss of driving privileges and you can be removed from VA programs. You can be kicked out of Organ Transplant lists and get sentenced with NRA bought mandatory minimum’s and 3 strikes with ALEC lobbied MaxCap contract private profit prisons. For using a safer alternative to Big Pharma. Prohibition permits draconian treatment preventing patients pain needs. Not speaking out against murderous profiteers.

        • Jon says:

          Oh yay more misinformation and propaganda.

          You’re grossly misrepresenting the death rate among chronic pain patients. Overdose on people taking a prescribed dose, as directed, are exceptionally rare. The proximate factor responsible for the spike in ODs is twofold, the rise of fentanyl analogs, but predominantly discharging and non-consensual dose reduction among users (and yes, abusers) forcing them to either go without or use the black market. How realistic is go without? Not very.
          Yes, opiates are indeed dangerous, that’s why it’s even more critical to legalize and regulate. I’ve seen you posting here for years, how do you not understand that prohibition is a harm maximization policy, not a harm reduction policy?
          You’ve provided no evidence to dispute the factors I cited that cast sharp doubt on the whole ‘million pills for tiny town’ BS.

          Now, further back, you’re repeating propaganda regarding the nature of the initial increase in opiate prescriptions. This was the result of relaxing of the pro-torture policies you apparently support (implication that small tin of morphine was in any way adequate): previously, non-cancer and non-hospice patients were denied adequate pain relief as a matter of course. This is what changed. You’re sadly uninformed if you thought anyone who can pass the USMLE would lack understanding that oxycodone, as a full agonist opioid, was not equivalent in addictive potential to morphine, or that the crushability of OxyContin was not common knowledge within a week of release. Usage for non-cancer chronic pain was the change. It’s extraordinarily disingenuous to paint manufacturers as profiting by killing people in this regard, considering the lifetime mortality of an opiate addiction is less than that of tobacco. Expanding the use of a product to more people that need it is not profiteering off death when the predominant usage is legitimate medical issues. Maybe you’re intellectually consistent and recognize your theory applies 1000x more to legal recreational substances manufacturers whose products are not predominately medical. I doubt it.
          I’m not sure what the rest of your post is about; I never suggested I was in any way in favor of any restrictions on pot whatsoever.

        • DdC says:

          Jon

          Oh yay more misinformation and propaganda.

          you seem well adapt at bringing it.

          You’re grossly misrepresenting the death rate among chronic pain patients.

          No Jon, you’re in denial. The number of deaths are either true or the press inflated them. 100,000 dead are still dead in spite of your blame game. I said the od’s were from over prescribing and obviously not following directions. Human error and fentanyl is more potent so the dosage would be lower. Keep it the same and you die. Again junkie pharmacologists caused by DEA supply side reductions forcing people into the streets to relieve pain. What’s so hard to understand? Coming out of the over supplied small towns where much of it ended up on the streets from quick cash deals. Towns with people accustomed to morphine from generations of carrying it for disasters. Perhaps a tolerance over the years raised the dosage, and then fentanyl od’d them. Just a point, getting all huffy about your theory being right or even different. Doesn’t impress me or anyone I’d imagine. Again, Ganja is my choice and od’s are impossible since its nonlethal.

          The proximate factor responsible for the spike in ODs is twofold

          Both stated by me that you seem to be disturbed by. White Powders do kill when abused and when prohibition causes a junkie to be equal to a pharmacologist, only mixing up inconsistent batches with adulterated ingredients. Logically there is no reason too OD. But thousands do, due to adulterations and human error measuring dosages or abusing amounts.

          Yes, opiates are indeed dangerous, that’s why it’s even more critical to legalize and regulate.

          I have no problem with that, as I stated. DEA supply side reductions is part of prohibition and the streets cause the deaths. Your hysteria is misplaced or your comprehension is lax. But oh Jon, opiates are legal and regulated as it is. So your point is off kilter a bit. The od’s are real BUT keeping opiates from patients is wrong, period, for whatever nonsense reasons. The DEA are not doctors and should have no say in it. As stated hundreds of times, its prohibition stupid. To try to reverse that is clear you may have seen peoples posts for years, now try reading them. I am against prohibition and the DEA even existing. Giving them power to prescribe is ludicrous. So you’re preaching gibberish or just throwing stones randomly. Or are deathly afraid of facing your shoulder monkey.

          I tried heroin and loved it so much I never tried it again. That was 1971 and I’ve never regretted it. If it were readily available maybe I’d have tried again. It would have been my problem and I wouldn’t blame the laws or advocate prohibition since I believe heroin is better than morphine for pain. But as a teenage kid with only the streets supervising dosage and ingredients, I would have probably been in more danger. Legitimizing it also could cause patients to be lulled into believing since it is legal, it is harmless. Or taking more when you’re high or using in different places or different potency. Many reasons people can od.

          You’ve provided no evidence to dispute the factors I cited that cast sharp doubt on the whole ‘million pills for tiny town’ BS.

          Just the news reports dude. If you think your denial of the numbers the often propagandized press posted, is proof the numbers are false, it isn’t either. 100,000 deaths may also be false but its what we have to go on without counting bodies. Again denying it without proof is no better. Big Pharma sales records can end the dispute more than your “beliefs”. Also, again what is not arguable is big pharma profits were made.

          Now, further back, you’re repeating propaganda regarding the nature of the initial increase in opiate prescriptions. This was the result of relaxing of the pro-torture policies you apparently support

          Insults and gibberish don’t make your point any more than raising your voice at the bar you sound like you’re in. What pro torture policies and fuck you saying anyone supports anything prohibition brings. You again rely on ignorance to make false claims. The tins of morphine were used for suicides over slow agonizing death from a cave in or injury. For generations.

          previously, non-cancer and non-hospice patients were denied adequate pain relief as a matter of course.

          Say you. I work hospice cases and rox cocktails are pushed when CBD does well with comforting patients, lowering seizure rates and is nonlethal… and not prescribed by AMA doctors. As for non cancer or non hospice dying patients having no access. Your word for it. I haven’t been hurt many times requiring pain meds but I had no problem getting them from doctors when I did need them. Never finished a script but they were available.

          Again the DEA limits it and causes the hardships to patients. Why hollar at people here because you can’t find anyone to get you pain pills? Maybe you should medicate before going off on these rants of rage and hate, eh? Hey, ask Rush where he scores.

          It’s extraordinarily disingenuous to paint manufacturers as profiting by killing people in this regard, considering the lifetime mortality of an opiate addiction is less than that of tobacco.

          Rush Limbaugh sure seemed addicted when he doctor shopped. Big Pharma “sold” the oxy and fentanyl. When, as you state, they released it to non cancer patients, they sold it. They made profits on it. No one said they held patients down and shot them up with it. Your propaganda over tobacco is misguided and flat out false. Chemicals added to tobacco do the harm. Not the nicotine naturally occurring. People die from big pharma, period. No one is advocating people be cut off because others are dying. Except the DEA who are also denying Ganja that doesn’t kill. It seems you are afraid big pharma will cut you off because you don’t have cancer or are a hospice patient, and again that is the DEA and most here that you are attacking are opposed to the DEA existence or ability to make policy. Who ya gonna call Jon?

          Expanding the use of a product to more people that need it is not profiteering off death when the predominant usage is legitimate medical issues.

          Again comprehension Jon. Your crooked finger pointing is boring. “legitimate” Jon? You just screeched out about how we are torturing patients with propaganda over big pharma profits not being motives, or price gouging I suppose. That their benevolence helping people like you is reward in itself. Such righteous people.

          Maybe you’re intellectually consistent and recognize your theory applies 1000x more to legal recreational substances manufacturers whose products are not predominately medical.

          I checked the box all of the above. Doctors prescribe and big pharma fills it. Blame whomever you want. I don’t do pharmaceuticals, booze, GMOs or chemical cigarettes. Yet my Ganja is classified the same as heroin, that also doesn’t kill by itself and yet is banned for patients by the CSA.

          I’m not sure what the rest of your post is about; I never suggested I was in any way in favor of any restrictions on pot whatsoever.

          That is more than I understand from your anger and blame. I seriously doubt if you “understand” any posts. No one suggested you favor anything, only stating Ganja doesn’t kill like for profit white powders. I’m as natural as I can be while living in America. What I eat and wear and how I live avoiding human adulterants in clothing, food and on rare occasions, medicine. I prefer preventing illness with Ganja saturating my ECS over for profit treatments by big fat pharma. To each their own. But in your naivety you say one thing and then advocate the opposite.

          Big Pharma is a major factor in why Ganja is prohibited. So by promoting them you do promote prohibition of natural substances outlawed by money interest over safety. People are dying from od’s Jon. That doesn’t equate to your false accusations that anyone here wants you to suffer. Or that passing info on millions of pills sent to a small town is false. Or that it didn’t contributed to deaths. Thousands do die from these opiods and the DEA and Sessions blame Ganja and Legalizing. But in spite of your hysteria, big pharma did “sell” them. They did profit and thousands have died who may have found pain relief or less pain with Ganja. Just the fact’s ma’am.

          So lets recap. DEA bad. Big Pharma sucks but since most have no alternative they are what we have to deal with. At least where Ganja is not readily available. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. You can spew some more rage against the stupid people dying and giving the precious big pharma profiteers bad press all you want. Ganja reduces opiods and other prescriptions and big pharma lobbies for prohibition or for a monopoly keeping it as a schedule#1 or #2 substance. Not the type I’d side with, but you have rights damn it and I’ll fight for you to protect them.

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtz8qZz6s8s

        • darkcycle says:

          DdC, I hate to say it, but Jon is right here. A thousand word filibuster is not needed, but I suspect you’ll fire one my way, anyhow. That’s okay. Doctors and pharmaceutical companies are (mostly) blameless. This is a crisis of trauma and despair, and the addition of a deadly cutting agent (fentanyl) to the Nation’s drug supply. The rates of addiction among pain patients remains the same as it has always been.
          Prescription rates for opioids have been dropping for ten years. https://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/opioids/index.html Yet here we are, with people dropping like flies. Now overlay a map of drug overdose rates with a map of where Fentanyl as been found in the heroin supply. Bingo. We need to legalize ALL drugs.

        • DdC says:

          darkcycle
          April 11, 2018 at 12:52 pm

          DdC, I hate to say it, but Jon is right here.

          That would be a change on your part dc, you always like to oppose my views. I wouldn’t have it any other way. As for Jon, I think you misinterpret what was said the same as him.

          A thousand word filibuster is not needed, but I suspect you’ll fire one my way, anyhow.

          That depends on how ornery you are. Small posts should suffice and do in most cases. Naturally there are execptions and you seem to continue reading them. What’s a guy to think?

          That’s okay. Doctors and pharmaceutical companies are (mostly) blameless.

          So I call BS. Not that I don’t put full blame on the DEA but big pharma does profit and advertise and over supplying a town leads to drugs on the street. So I’m in agreement that prohibition is the cause of harm and that no one should be denied access just because thousands are ODing. So what are you arguing about? Like Jon running off sentences protecting big pharma with nonsense that they are a charity and not a for profit corporation that has big weight maintaining prohibition? Generalities about others being wrong requires simple statements dc. Not just accusations. Explain.

          This is a crisis of trauma and despair, and the addition of a deadly cutting agent (fentanyl) to the Nation’s drug supply.

          That whom may I ask sell it or approved it? Fentanyl was legal. Big Pharma sold it to those in traumatic conditions. They did over supply towns and again got paid. Big Pharma is a major player in perpetuating prohibition so what exactly are you defending?

          The rates of addiction among pain patients remains the same as it has always been. Prescription rates for opioids have been dropping for ten years.

          If Prescription rates are the same and ODs are up then people are going to the streets. There is no argument that Big Pharma and FDA approved fentanyl is a major factor and that prohibition is keeping the safer Ganja out of the loop. So I don’t understand where the disagreement is or how you can let big pharma and prohibition off the hook and blame desperate patients in pain for being too stupid. It sounds like it to me. Doctors were prescribing fentanyl and are under obligation to explain to patients the risk and dosages. Big Pharma and FDA are a revolving door as far as policy.

          So again big pharma sold them and if people are abusing that then the doctor is responsible. Not for discontinuing the supply. For proper instructions to the patient. Saying patients will go to the streets if doctors cut them off is probably true. But the doctors worry more about losing their license than reality. That’s when the DEA doesn’t cut them off. So I agree that prohibition is the cause of OD with bogus products containing fentanyl but also that the AMA, FDA and DEA are also culprits.

          Yet here we are, with people dropping like flies.

          From for profit pharmaceuticals, not Ganja that they pay to keep prohibited.

          Now overlay a map of drug overdose rates with a map of where Fentanyl as been found in the heroin supply. Bingo.

          Trump voters

          We need to legalize ALL drugs.

          They are legal dude. We need safer alternatives like Ganja legalized. We need to keep the DEA out of medicine and cutting off people who are in pain and as I have said many times. Pain will always over rule policy. So me thinks thou dost protest too much. I know how you like to jab me on occasion and like I said, it keeps me honest. Not that I’ll be quick to change my opinions. Or that I really understand where we are at odds here. Prohibition sucks, big pharma sells and the DEA is worthless. I stand by that.

          As for hicks ODing, I am not surprised since most Hippy haters and bigots have no clue about drugs. I saw it in FL with rednecks and speed doing field work. Raising their heart rates with physical labor while raising it even more with the crank. Appalachian miners did carry morphine and were over prescribed pills that ended up in dead people. But whatever you want to believe, go for it. It’s not that I think I’m always right, I thought I was wrong once, but I made a mistake. Is that 1000 words? I’m too lazy to count them.

        • darkcycle says:

          No, we’re on the same page mostly. I just don’t agree with blaming pharmaceutical companies and doctors. While not entirely blameless, they aren’t doing anything now that they weren’t doing thirty years ago. I’m skeptical that there is an “opioid crisis” at all, I suppose. What we really have is a crisis of overdoses, primarily driven by the appearance of poisonous cutting agents… fentanyl and it’s analogs. And while legal for prescription, it’s mostly used as a knockout drug for post surgical patients. Meaning very few people were prescribed fentanyl for pain and it’s fentanyl that’s killing people. Plus fentanyl is unfortunately easy to make from readily available precursors, so the sources for the street drugs are illicit labs, not big pharma.
          We’re cool, just be careful not to attack the wrong people. The companies and doctors are a convenient place to lay the blame, but I’ve a strong impression that they’re just the scapegoat of the hour. This is yet another manufactured crisis just like crack, meth, krokodil and all the others…..and by my proibition clock, right on time. They need an influx of money and public panic every few years to keep this racket going.

        • DdC says:

          darkcycle
          April 11, 2018 at 5:59 pm

          No, we’re on the same page mostly. I just don’t agree with blaming pharmaceutical companies and doctors. While not entirely blameless, they aren’t doing anything now that they weren’t doing thirty years ago.

          I gave em hell then too. Not a personal vendetta but I tell them to their faces about doing the bidding for big pharma over patients. Its tricky since I know the expense of a medical education and equipment and AMA insurance for malpractice due to litigating patients more than fault. But their ignorance on Ganja although lessoning, still exists. I have a decade of Urologist records on Hemp oil and less antibiotics and CBD for inflammation but its still like pulling teeth to get them on board without prompting. The big pharma have never admitted to Ganja as medicinal. Profits are necessary, but legal drugs costs us more than most other countries.

          I’m skeptical that there is an “opioid crisis” at all, I suppose. What we really have is a crisis of overdoses, primarily driven by the appearance of poisonous cutting agents… fentanyl and it’s analogs.

          I agree, but I also believe the patient was somewhat responsible. I am also skeptical if this isn’t just a wag the dog false flag op to prop up the drug war and that means the Ganjawar as Sessions is aiming to do. Regardless, I don’t think DCing meds is the appropriate response, especially when its DEA. I’ve seen the same areas abuse alcohol for ever and have a lack of knowledge about any drugs, especially Ganja. Add fentanyl to the mix and it’s not hard to see how they are dying. I remember something about the fentanyl CEO getting dragged over the coals about something, raising prices or something. Then we had the RAVE drugs (GHB?) that were supposedly killing kids and giving credence to Joe Biden to BS about MDMA and hatch the RAVE Ax banning test kits.

          But then as I said with $300 billion a year in cancer treatment I see no one curing it anytime soon. Most of the propaganda groups are funded by Ganja competition companies like big pharma, big oil, big ag and booze. Most of the draconian laws are in fossil fool states. But I think you hit on it, that all the deaths are hyped for a reason and the logic would be to escalate the drug war.

          And while legal for prescription, it’s mostly used as a knockout drug for post surgical patients. Meaning very few people were prescribed fentanyl for pain and it’s fentanyl that’s killing people.

          I don’t know the details but that sounds logical. But if it’s not prescribed then they are getting it on the streets and to me it would be safer prescribed. Mixing up the medicine down in the basement was never an adequate way to treat anything. Is that what all Jons huffing and puffing was about? Keeping fentanyl legal? Last I heard it was.

          Fentanyl patches are on the World Health Organization’s List of Essential Medicines, the most effective and safe medicines needed in a health system.

          Fentanyl is also made illegally and used as a recreational drug often mixed with heroin or cocaine. In 2016 more than 20,000 deaths occurred in the United States due to overdoses of fentanyl and its analogues.

          Plus fentanyl is unfortunately easy to make from readily available precursors, so the sources for the street drugs are illicit labs, not big pharma.

          My only reason for posting any of it is to show that Ganja doesn’t kill and can replace opiods and other prescription drugs made by big pharma. It was never to aid idiots in preventing pain meds from getting to patients.

          We’re cool, just be careful not to attack the wrong people.

          I was attacked after coming to the aid a coucher being attacked, and I always try to minimize collateral damage if at all possible. I don’t like the military terms though. I prefer getting everything on the table and sorting it out to reach the truth. Being called names isn’t the way and as when I started. When I first came online I made it a point not to fire upon an attacker until at least 3 bombs were lobbed at me. Now they say I’m getting old and cranky so I don’t give them as many chances.

          The companies and doctors are a convenient place to lay the blame, but I’ve a strong impression that they’re just the scapegoat of the hour.

          They are to blame, but it’s not their fault society makes such things normal or SOP. I get on nurses and doctors all the time about protocols over riding patient care and they are embarrassed about it but have mortgages and expenses like the rest of us. They’ve invested years into studying white powders and symptom treatment and I get it that they are perturbed by a caregiver seemingly disrespecting them. But that’s reality. Ganja is a better medicine most times and for almost 3 decades they’ve heard my side of it and usually give me leeway. I don’t envy them a bit and it has to be hard to watch a patient fade away without a solution and then some old hairy dude starts telling them about a plant they never studied. I get it, but it doesn’t change my opinions of their professions. Not them personally, but most take it that way. I am a patient advocate before any ego soothing of medicinal practitioners. I also have a problem respecting titles. I speak to and treat doctors the same as garbage collectors, cops or homeless people. All the same. They believe their titles means something but respect is earned over time, not with initials before or after your name.

          This is yet another manufactured crisis just like crack, meth, krokodil and all the others…..and by my proibition clock, right on time.

          Again I can agree, and again the only reason I entered the conversation was to promote Ganja as an alternative. I’m not sure if it is all hype, since it isn’t recreational use but pain and not RAVE’s or Hippy’s but Blue Collar. I agree many deaths are from bootleg supplies, but I’ve also seen stats where many or most are dying overall from legal substances. Even OTCs like aspirin kill a few thousand. This thread on preferred methods also shows nasty side effects not with Ganja. So they get no pass from me and I still don’t take any, other than maybe a few Tylenol a year. Nothing prescribed, except Ganja and Hemp seed prescribed by me.

          They need an influx of money and public panic every few years to keep this racket going.

          That’s for sure. I’m still going to post Ganja as an alternative. Good jawing with ya DC, hope you’re doing well.

      • Will says:

        .
        .
        “You, and the article, are trying to make the implication that those 21 million doses were exclusively for patients within that town, when that’s simply not the case. First of all, there’s a major regional medical complex there that draws in people from all over.”

        You appear to be making allegations when you seemingly don’t understand the issue yourself. Did you even read the linked article in Vox by Eric Eyre of the Charleston Gazette-Mail? Nowhere in the article was the excuse used that the town of Williamson — or Mingo County — was a needed central distribution point for “people from all over”. It should be noted that Mingo County has a population of 25,000 people. Even if you add that number to counties adjacent to Mingo (including a few from Virginia and Kentucky) the population rises to only approximately 270,000 for all eight counties combined. Miami-Luken and H.D. Smith (the opioid distributers in question) could have used your suggestion as an excuse for pill dumping in sparsely populated Mingo County, but they were obviously smart enough to know that that ludicrous excuse wouldn’t fly. Here’s the droll answer H.D. Smith provided regarding their distribution strategy;

        “H.D. Smith works with its upstream manufacturing and downstream pharmacy partners to guard the integrity of the supply chain, and to improve patient outcomes,” the company said.

        Well, that really clears things up (SMFH).

        Another article from a few years ago delves into a wide range of topics (some possibly dubious) related to the opioid issue in West Virginia;

        How did WV come to lead the nation in overdoses?

        https://tinyurl.com/y76bgopu

  2. There is no way that the government can be trusted not to enter neighborhoods – trying to execute the guy down the street for selling some drugs to support his habit. Seriously harmful tactics being proposed here by a man who thinks and acts like a thug.

    People dying of heroin is a symptom of the disease of prohibition.

    If you don’t embrace harm reduction you are part of the problem. This decision makes Trump part of the problem, not part of anything resembling a solution.

  3. DdC says:

    ☛ Federal policies stalled
    with key committee split on workplace marijuana testing

    https://t.co/4WKl5gBczS

    ☛ Pennsylvania regulators published temporary rules
    for medical cannabis research.

    https://t.co/SB8VOI65Tt

    ☛ Here ya go….. The Rules
    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DYqsz2KVoAI4Kwa.jpg

    So my CSA schedule#1 hemp blue jeans
    are as potent as CSA schedule#1 heroin?

    ☛ Get more Pennsylvania doctors certified
    to prescribe medical marijuana

    https://t.co/f07VNpidYG

    ☛ A Survey of American Medical School’s
    Acceptance of the Science of the ECS

    (Endocannabinoid System)
    https://t.co/RwPFtmEQtD

    ☛ No medical schools have a department of endocannabinoid science or an ECS director. None of them taught the endocannabinoid science as an organized course. Only 13% of the medical schools surveyed mention the endocannabinoid science to our future doctors
    https://t.co/DGhqsa4fjG

    “I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.”
    ~ Tolstoy

    Since 1-1-18 CA dispensaries sell to anyone “of age” regardless of “condition” Those with medical cards get it for less taxes. Some dispensaries pay the tax so the difference is cost. Before P-64 a medical card was required, but even the 1996 P-215 had NO specific “condition” to be eligible. Anyone for ANY reason. One of those crazy lefty dawgone thoughts that people shouldn’t be sent to cages or have homes forfeitured for treating their stress without a drug store or doctor. They all must be stoned.

    The CSA Controlled Substance Act is a fraud, based on politics not Science. Banning research is surely a red flag. Nixon lumping medicinal and hemp including them as a schedule#1, with no medicinal value, highly addictive and a menace to society has been the foundation of his Drug War and over a trillion dollars spent perpetuating it. Grow Up!

    “You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities,” Ehrlichman said. “We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

    Ehrlichman’s comment is the first time the war on drugs has been plainly characterized as a political assault designed to help Nixon win, and keep, the White House.
    Report: Aide says Nixon’s war on drugs targeted blacks, hippies
    March 24, 2016 CVV Politics

    Its all just a ball of confusion.
    … and not by accident.
    https://youtu.be/QmRsWdK0PRI

    Have visited many treatment facilities. Every single treatment professional – EVERY SINGLE ONE- has told me “Marijuana is a gateway drug.” My office is preparing to enforce laws against marijuana aggressively – AGGRESSIVELY.
    ~ US Attorney Mike Stuart

    Cannabis has been used for thousands of years.

    Heroin/Diamorphine was first synthesized in 1874
    by C. R. Alder Wright,

    Tell us how Cannabis was a Gateway to what hadn’t been invented?
    Your Reefer Mad Prohibition is the Gateway.

    Why persecute Veterans?

    Ganja 4 PTSD & Depression

    5000 suicides in the United States alone
    occurred as a result of combat-based PTSD
    ~ The Veterans Cannabis Project

    Why do you persecute American Farmers?

    Farmer Grown Hemplastic or Fossil Fools Crud

    Why are America’s farmers
    killing themselves in record numbers?

    The suicide rate for farmers
    is more than double that of veterans.

    Why persecute the Children?

    Well, I am here to apologize.

    I apologize because I didn’t look hard enough, until now. I didn’t look far enough. I didn’t review papers from smaller labs in other countries doing some remarkable research, and I was too dismissive of the loud chorus of legitimate patients whose symptoms improved on cannabis.

    They didn’t have the science to support that claim, and I now know that when it comes to marijuana neither of those things are true. It doesn’t have a high potential for abuse, and there are very legitimate medical applications. In fact, sometimes marijuana is the only thing that works.

    Take the case of Charlotte Figi, who I met in Colorado. She started having seizures soon after birth. By age 3, she was having 300 a week, despite being on seven different medications. Medical marijuana has calmed her brain, limiting her seizures to 2 or 3 per month.
    ~Dr. Sanjay Gupta is a neurosurgeon
    and CNN’s chief medical correspondent.

    • DdC says:

      What Medical Conditions
      Benefit from Medical Marijuana?

      An Information Session with Dr. Sue Sisley,
      Nationally Recognized Expert,
      recorded at MOILIILI COMMUNITY CENTER
      in Honolulu, Hawaii
      on SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2016.

      Dr. Sisley, internal medicine/psychiatrist, is president of Scottsdale Research Institute and medical director, Manoa Botanicals. She has the only FDA approved study on the use of cannabis for combat veterans with treatment resistant Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). She has spoken to audiences worldwide and featured in numerous media outlets including CNN, Newsweek, New York Times, Military Times and Washington Post. For more information go to: facebook.com/manoabotanicals Recorded and Edited for broadcast by David “Kawika Luv” Jones. Music by Sweet Wave Audio, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lKCQTUcIXM

      Sue Sisley M.D.

      ✦ Treating PTSD with Cannabis? Dr. Sue Sisley Tells Us How
      ✦ Sue Sisley M.D.- Official Site
      ✦ NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt covers MAPS’
      ✦ Investigator Sue Sisley, M.D., of (MAPS)
      ✦ Military #veterans with #PTSD
      ✦ What Medical Conditions Benefit from Medical Marijuana?
      ✦ Sue Sisley M.D.twitter

      ☛ Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS)
      http://www.maps.org/

      ✦ Medical Marijuana
      MAPS has received regulatory approval to conduct a study of smoked marijuana for symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in veterans of war.

      ✦ LSD-Assisted Psychotherapy
      MAPS has completed the first double-blind, placebo-controlled study of the therapeutic use of LSD in human beings since the early 1970s.

      ✦ Ibogaine Therapy
      MAPS has completed two observational studies of the long-term effects of ibogaine treatment on patients undergoing therapy at independent ibogaine treatment centers in Mexico and New Zealand.

      ✦ Ayahuasca Research
      MAPS supports research into the safety and effectiveness of ayahuasca-assisted treatment for drug addiction and PTSD.

      ✦ Phase 3 Trials: FDA Grants Breakthrough Therapy Designation for MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy for PTSD, Agrees on Special Protocol Assessment
      Our highest priority project is funding clinical trials of 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) as a tool to assist psychotherapy for the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Preliminary studies have shown that MDMA in conjunction with psychotherapy can help people overcome PTSD, and possibly other disorders as well. MDMA is known for increasing feelings of trust and compassion towards others, which could make an ideal adjunct to psychotherapy for PTSD.

      ☛ Treating PTSD with MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy

      ☛ Your brain on PTSD: The Impact of Cannabis

  4. Bruce says:

    It is Patentably obvious that the World watches with incredulity the abject Evil entrenched in Deep State High Places. The Horn Honkers and Pot Bangers for a darker Tyranny risk a Tsunami of Resistance on this open Call-To- Murder development. Best get securing that Mega-Million rounds of Ammo and Lord knows what Military Hardware they have procured.

  5. darkcycle says:

    Troubling. Three steps backwards rather than the accepted two.
    Despite the fact it will never fly in the courts or congress, it bodes ill for any sort of sensible approach. Instead, millions more for voo-doo twelve stepper “rehabs” and nothing at all that effectively addresses the overdose crisis.
    Harm reduction is not even on the table, yet the communities affected NEED drug testing and safe injection sites. There will be no solution to this, only ineffective and damaging measures anchored in drug war dogma.
    Sessions must be pleased.

  6. DdC says:

    Death penalty for drug traffickers part of Trump opioid plan
    https://apnews.com/659d41f8a3bf4b6dbc8d5cdba33e7ab1

    Drug companies shipped nearly 21 million opioid painkillers to a town with 2,900 people
    https://t.co/KuBQCrZ3YG

    The New York Times looks at potential conflicts of interest within anti-addiction groups that take money from the pharmaceutical industry.
    https://t.co/XfW1pxZYvo

    Allowing Access To Marijuana May Help States Fix Their Opioid Problem
    https://t.co/I61YYaIpNE

    Sessions Says Marijuana Fuels the Opioid Epidemic
    http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread29242.shtml

    They live in the Airplane Movie and the prohibitionists are DEAthly afraid Ganja is what we have said it is. A prevention and/or cure that would take profits from the “treatment” trolls. Leninist FRCn alt Christians giving mulligans to the Con Don. Drain the swamp of Authoritarian Neocons and fill it with crooks. Damned if we do and damned if we don’t.

  7. Servetus says:

    Tsar Trump wants to eliminate people rather than eliminate problems. Intelligence and money are needed to solve problems, while praising wars and executions requires not thinking at all. Josef Stalin’s solution was always ‘no man, no problem’. Despotic methods such as these are called eliminationism. As the final solution of tyrants, eliminationism is directed at political opponents and marginalized groups. Some key characteristics include:

    Transformation is the destruction of a group’s essential and defining political, social, or cultural identities, in order to neuter its members’ alleged noxious qualities. (Eliminationist transformation—which is often accompanied by violence or its threat—differs from the ordinary processes of education or acculturation because it is directed at suppressing others rather than giving them new skills or expanding their possibilities.) Groups’ real or alleged features or practices—religious, ethnic, or cultural, among others—that putatively set them off from the dominant culture or group have been transformative projects’ main target. Historically, conquerors and empires have commonly sought to assimilate conquered peoples and areas by destroying their distinctive identities and loyalties.

    Repression entails keeping the hated, deprecated, or feared people within territorial reach and reducing, with violent domination, their ability to inflict real or imagined harm upon others. Such repression has been a regular feature of human societies. Its most extreme form is enslavement, which does have sources besides the desire to reduce a threat. Though few do today, most human societies have had slavery. Other violent forms are at least as common. Apartheid—a legal system of domination, political disenfranchisement, economic exploitation, and physical separation of a subordinate group—existed until recently in South Africa and, under the name of segregation, not so much longer ago in the American South. Political and legal segregation and ghettoization are by definition forms of eliminationist repression. Repression, including the ongoing threat of violence and its occasional or frequent use, exists against many groups—peasants, workers, ethnic groups, religious groups, political groups, and more—in many countries today.

    http://www.pbs.org/wnet/worse-than-war/featured/understanding-genocide-eliminationism/26/

    Soft targets such as drug offenders rendered powerless by the stigma of felony convictions, job losses, and loss of voting rights, are likely to be scapegoated before being eliminated in order to pave the way for the eradication and/or repression of the middle class — one of the main goals of fascism.

    Drug offenders are portrayed as a reason for increases in middle class impoverishment, a situation often deliberately wrought by the fascists themselves. Offenders get blamed for sapping public resources and taxpayer money in a manner similar to the ‘welfare queen’ meme paraded by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. The result is illicit drug consumers are deemed unworthy of receiving public assistance. The ultimate aim, however, is to provide excuses for totalitarians to eliminate the middle class’s social safety net. Until Trump and Sessions entered the scene, such prohibitionist tactics were being recognized as socially harmful and were being withdrawn:

    MAR 16, 2018 — Indiana is set to allow formerly incarcerated drug offenders to access food stamps starting next year, after lawmakers sent Gov. Eric Holcomb a bill ending the state’s longstanding restrictions on food aid to people who have already served their time. […]

    A fiscal note on an earlier version of the idea reported that administrators had denied 6,613 applications for food stamps due to a felony drug conviction over a recent 12-month period.

    Such bans are now widely understood to be self-defeating, as depriving someone of basic food assistance as they run through the various headwinds of re-entry into society after prison only increases the chances they’ll return to criminal activity in order to survive. The lifetime prohibition from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is encouraged under federal law. […]

    …hard-hearted, soft-brained policy … was actually approved in the 1990s by President Bill Clinton (D) as part of his disastrous overhaul of safety net programs. […]

    The Clinton reforms allowed states to effectively veto the bans. More than half of the states opted out immediately, and many others followed in short order. But as of 2014, drug offenders still had no hope of accessing SNAP in nine different states. Missouri ended its ban that year. Others canceled or cut wide exceptions into their own bans in the following years. If Holcomb signs the Indiana bill, only three states will maintain absolute prohibitions for life. […]

    https://thinkprogress.org/indiana-drugs-food-stamps-616fbd90a123/

    Ridding the welfare system of drug offenders explains the lurking presence of former Nixon drug czar and later drug-test tycoon Robert J. DuPont.

    For several years DuPont has been the major promoter pushing states to test welfare recipients for drugs. He’s also earned the disdain of the medical profession for pushing PHP, (Physicians Health Program), a drug and alcohol testing policy for testing doctors. In January, 2018, DuPont said that doctors should be forced to drug test all their patients.

    Trump’s execution decree, like his Southern border wall, is a distraction designed to deflect blame from Big Pharma and its fascist assault on the middle class, an assault that simultaneously denies the poor universal public health care, expensive medications and procedures, and alternatives to opiates such as cannabinoids.

    Fortunately, it’s far too late for Donald Trump’s trumpery. Too many citizens see drug enforcement and the drug war for what it is — a racket.

  8. DdC says:

    In the Morenos Mountains campesinos are planting their fields
    While the ghost of Zapata rides a horse that can still outrun the wheel
    There, free in the sky high above, nearly clear out of sight
    It’s the Free Mexican Air Force flyin’ tonight

    In the City of Angels, a cowboy is cooling his heels
    Remembering that God gave us herbs and the fruits of the fields
    But a criminal law that makes outlaws of those seeking light
    Made the Free Mexican Air Force — Mescalito riding his white horse —
    Yeah, the Free Mexican Air Force is flyin’ tonight!
    Flying so high – yi – hiyeeeee! …

    How strange that an innocent herb causes money to burn
    They’ll jail you or kill you for making those rich fat cats squirm
    They’re the fools who make rules with no difference between wrong or right
    That’s why the Free Mexican Air Force is flyin’ tonight

    Uncle Sam in his misery put a nix on the fields of Guerrero
    Sayin’, “Shoot down all gringos and wetbacks who dare wear sombreros!”
    Either run for your life, surrender, or stand up and fight —
    Or join the Free Mexican Air Force — Mescalito riding his white horse —
    Yeah, the Free Mexican Air Force is flying tonight!
    Flying so high – yi – hiyeeeee! …

    It is not marijuana destroying the minds of the young
    But confusion continued for power and greed in all forms
    Well, the borders of evil will fall to the smugglers of light!
    We’re the Free Mexican Air Force and we’re flyin’ tonight!

    In San Antonio, they tell me that power and money are one
    They can buy us or sell you to keep you afraid, on the run
    But no one can stop us! My vision is clearly in sight!
    And the Free Mexican Air Force — Mescalito riding his white horse —
    Yeah, the Free Mexican Air Force is flyin’ tonight!
    Flying so high – yi – hiyeeeee! …

    Some were smoking colitas while other were loading their guns
    Blowing smoke from their six-shooters, spinning their barrels for fun
    Contrabandistas, banditos alike —
    We’re the Free Mexican Air Force and we’re flyin’ tonight!

    High in the hills we are harvesting sweet sensimillia
    Yeah, the law wants it all ’cause they know that the wild weed can free ya
    And freedom for us is a prison for the rulers of might!
    That’s why the Free Mexican Air Force — Mescalito riding his white horse —
    Yeah, the Free Texican Air Force is flyin’ tonight!
    Flyin’ so high- yi- yee…
    Flyin’ tonight!

    Free Mexican Air-Force by Peter Rowan (w/ Flaco Jiminez)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dlFMKmE7pg

    I smuggled some smokes
    And folks from Mexico
    Baked by the sun
    Every time I go to Mexico
    And I’m still… Willin’

    And if you give me weed, whites, and wine
    And you show me a sign
    I’ll be willin’… to be movin’
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fTPQ0fVeN8

    • CrazyDays says:

      Nice choice!

      Those crazy days are now successfully behind us, but here’s what my wife and I would slide into our van’s cassette player, each and every time after crossing the border:

      Tweeter and the Monkey Man were hard up for cash,
      They stayed up all night selling cocaine and hash,
      To an undercover cop who had a sister named Jan.
      For reasons unexplained she loved the Monkey Man.

      Tweeter was a boy scout course he went to Vietnam,
      And found out the hard way, nobody gives a damn.
      They knew that they found freedom just across the Jersey line,
      So they hopped into a stolen car, took Highway 99.

      And the walls came down,
      All the way to hell.
      Never saw them when they’re standing.
      Never saw them when they fell.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmAYziKt2pU

  9. Will says:

    To really hit the point home, I hope Trump instructs Kellyanne Conway to reissue these gems;

    http://www.museumofdrugs.com/sensationalistno.html

    Who can resist;

    ‘Teen-Age Dope Slaves’
    ‘LSD Lusters’
    ‘Narco Nympho’
    ‘It Ain’t Hay’
    ‘We Are The People Our Parents Warned Us Against’ (one of my personal faves)
    …among many other classics.

  10. WalStMonky says:

    .
    .

    I wonder, Does anyone else think that the sycophants of prohibition have realized that they’re being marginalized to irrelevance yet? Let’s put this one in the “kicking ass and taking names” category:

    /snip/
    Shall the state of Illinois legalize the cultivation, manufacture, distribution, testing, and sale of marijuana and marijuana products for recreational use by adults 21 and older subject to state regulation, taxation and local ordinance?” on both Democratic and Republican ballots, the results of the vote will only advise lawmakers on whether or not to move in a direction to legalize. Votes in favor of marijuana today will not results in an impending legalization.
    SUBURBAN COOK COUNTY:
    (489 of 1,599 precincts reporting)

    Yes: 62.34%
    No: 37.66%

    CITY OF CHICAGO:
    (1,076 of 2,069 precincts reporting)

    Yes: 72.31%
    No: 27.69%

  11. Servetus says:

    “If we don’t get tough on the drug dealers,” said Trump, “we’re wasting our time. That toughness includes the death penalty.” Thomas L. Knapp warns Trump to beware of what he wishes for:

    March 21, 2018–…An odd take, considering that one of Trump’s few worthwhile campaign promises was to leave the legal status of marijuana up to the states. That promise should have been kept, and extended to other drugs as well. Instead, he turned Jeff “good people don’t smoke marijuana” Sessions loose as Attorney General, to the country’s injury.

    Even more odd, coming as it does from a high-level drug dealer like Donald Trump.

    You know, the owner of Trump Winery. And, as of his 2016 campaign financial disclosures, a shareholder in multiple conspiracies to manufacture and traffic in drugs (including opiates) — to wit, Pfizer, Merck, Celgene, and GlaxoSmithKline.

    Then again, maybe it’s not so odd. As a major league drug dealer, perhaps Trump is taking his cue from the murderous cartels of Colombia and Mexico. Now that he has the entirety of federal law enforcement and the US armed forces at his beck and call, why not just kill his competitors? Pablo Trumpobar, anyone? El Trumpo?

    Or perhaps the sentiment is genuine and he intends, as soon as he gets enabling legislation for the scheme, to turn himself in, plead guilty, don coveralls matching his complexion, and put in one of those legendary McDonald’s orders for his last meal. […]

    https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/03/21/death-penalty-for-drug-dealers-be-careful-what-you-wish-for-president-trump/

  12. Servetus says:

    Fingerprints have become more incriminating than ever. Chemical analysis of fingerprints by British researchers raises new concerns about personal privacy versus the Trump regime:

    Scientists have found that drugs are now so prevalent that 13 per cent of those taking part in a test were found to have traces of class A drugs on their fingerprints – despite never using them.

    But there is no easy escape for users as researchers from the University of Surrey, who have previously developed a quick fingerprint test to identify users, have created a definitive way to prove the difference between those using cocaine and heroin, and those exposed to the drugs due to environmental factors.

    In a study published by Clinical Chemistry, researchers from the University tested the fingerprints of 50 drug free volunteers and 15 drug users who testified to taking either cocaine or heroin in the previous 24 hours.

    Researchers tested fingerprints from the unwashed hands of the drug-free volunteers and, despite having no history of drug use, still found traces of class A drugs. Around 13 per cent of fingerprints were found to contain cocaine and one per cent contained a metabolite of heroin. By setting a “cut-off” level, researchers were able to distinguish between fingerprints that had environmental contaminants from those produced after genuine drug use – even after people washed their hands. […]

    AAAS Public Release: One in 10 people have traces of cocaine or heroin on their fingerprints

  13. “New Sessions memo pushes death penalty for big drug dealers. That could include legal marijuana business owners” https://tinyurl.com/y8x6au8p

    “This week, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions sent a memo to the nation’s federal prosecutors urging them to seek the death penalty in cases involving large-scale drug traffickers. The memo points to an existing but little-known federal law that already allows for such a punishment.”

    “Sessions’ memo talks largely about opioids, but federal law contains no such drug-specific limitation on prosecutors’ power. Trace the law’s meandering route through federal statutes and you’ll come to this conclusion: Anyone convicted of cultivating more than 60,000 marijuana plants or possessing more than 60,000 kilograms of a substance that contains marijuana could face death as a punishment.”

    “So, did Sessions just greenlight using the death penalty against the nation’s largest marijuana business owners?”

    Reading this makes me take a deep breath and a long pause. This is much more than the absurd.

    It’s the unthinkable.

    • Servetus says:

      Under a theocracy, Grand Inquisitor Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III not only believes marijuana consumers are bad people, he believes they’re witches. Following in the steps of countless other theocrats — and Donald Trump — we can expect Jeff to follow his execution plans for drug dealers with new policies that add inquisitorial torture to prosecuting drug suspects:

      Witchcraft medicine is wild medicine. It is uncontrollable, it surpasses the ruling order, it is anarchy. It belongs to the wilderness. It scares people. It is one thing above all: heathen. Witchcraft medicine stems from shamanism and has its roots in Paleolithic times. Witchcraft medicine is mythological, ritualistic, and strongly feminine. Witchcraft medicine is religion—a shamanic healing religion revolving around sacred, in other words, effective, plants. Cults, in which the medicinally effective plants and sacred beverages play a role, have always been viewed suspiciously, at first by representatives of the Christian faith, later also by Western medicine. The witches, the last wise women of European culture, fell victim to the Inquisition. In Siberia in the 1930s and 1940s shamans were prosecuted as counterrevolutionaries. Today shamans are also denigrated and ridiculed. So it was in the year 1990 that the Protestant church of the Indonesian island Siberut, which lies east of Sumatra, released a decree forbidding the activities of the medicine men as heathen and blasphemous (Plotkin, 1994: 187).

      “The first Christians slandered nature as a whole and in detail, in the past and in the future. They cursed nature in and of itself. They damned it so completely, that even in a flower they only saw evil incarnate—a demon embodied. … Not only were we [the humans] demonized—for goodness’ sake—but all of nature was demonized. If the devil is already found in a flower, then he must really be present in the dark forest.” —Jules Michelet , La Sorciére [The Sorcerer], 1952. […]

      “The Greek word wotani stood for the meadow herb, grass. This is where the modern scientific plant science, botany, gets its name. Homer’s botany was restricted to the groves sacred to his gods, the wondrous herbs of his mythological figures, or to the allegorical plants he was drawn to.” —Hellmut B Aumann , Die Griechische Pfanzenwelt [The Greek World of Plants], 1982 […]

      How to obtain magical powers: On the eve of the Adelbert festival (June 1) kill a snake, cut its head off, place therein three kernels of hemp [Cannabis sativa L.] and bury the whole thing in the ground: When the hemp has grown, twist a rope out of it. If you wrap this around your body, then even the strongest force will be withstood (Bauer, 1984: 151). The most famous Thessalian witches were called veneficus Thessalus . Magic, poison mixing, shamanic practices of the Goetians, and goetia (techniques for ecstatic rituals and divination) were classified together as pharmakon (Graf, 1996: 45). In other words, magic was originally applied pharmacology.

      Witchcraft Medicine, Healing Arts, Shamanic Practices, and Forbidden Plants – Claudia Müller-Ebeling, Christian Rätsch, Wolf-Dieter Storl. (1998), pp. 208-9-11-12, 362-3, 395.

  14. Servetus says:

    The “Drug” Business “We exist in a world where the fear of illusion is real.” — Jeff Martin and the Tea Party, “Temptation” (On Transmission, EMI Records, 1997)

    Driven by restrained desire
    I want what I need
    Shaking as her sex takes hold
    I’ve lost all control
    Temptation
    Temptation
    Drowning in a sea of rage
    I taste the embrace
    Helpless as it steals my soul
    I’ve lost all control
    Temptation
    It never lets you down
    Temptation
    One foot in the ground
    We exist in a world
    Where the fear of illusion is real
    And we cling to the past
    To deny and confuse the ideal
    Once inside we conceive and
    Believe in a God we can’t feel
    Destined by a fate so cruel
    And drugged to delight
    Laughing as these lies unfold
    I’ve lost all control
    Temptation
    It never lets me down
    Temptation
    One foot in the ground
    Temptation
    You satisfy my soul
    Temptation
    I’ve lost all control
    ***
    Songwriters: Jeffrey Scott Martin / Stuart Chatwood / Jeffrey John Burrows

    Temptation lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc

  15. Servetus says:

    Friedbert Weiss, leader of an investigative team at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, in Neuropsychopharmacology published by Springer Nature, has announced CBD studies that indicate the compound may help alleviate relapse among those addicted to cocaine, heroin or alcohol:

    23-MAR-2018–…The researchers applied a gel containing CBD once per day for a week to the skin of the rats in the current study. These animals had a history of voluntary daily alcohol or cocaine self-administration, leading to addiction-like behaviour. Various tests were performed to see how they reacted to stressful and anxiety-provoking situations and behavior in tests of impulsivity, a psychological trait associated with drug addiction. The researchers reported that CBD effectively reduced relapse provoked by stress and drug cues; CBD also reduced anxiety and impulsivity in the drug-experienced rats.

    Further studies showed that CBD was completely cleared from the brain and plasma of the rats three days after the therapy was completed. Quite unexpectedly though, five months later, experimental animals that had been treated with CBD still showed a reduced relapse induced by stress or drug cues. The authors of the study believe that insight into the mechanisms by which CBD exerts these effects in future research may open new vistas for the pharmacotherapeutic prevention of relapse to drug use.

    “The efficacy of the cannabinoid [CBD] to reduce reinstatement in rats with both alcohol and cocaine – and, as previously reported, heroin – histories predicts therapeutic potential for addiction treatment across several classes of abused drugs,” says Weiss. “The results provide proof of principle supporting the potential of CBD in relapse prevention along two dimensions: beneficial actions across several vulnerability states, and long-lasting effects with only brief treatment.” He goes on to say that “Drug addicts enter relapse vulnerability states for multiple reasons. Therefore, effects such as these observed with CBD that concurrently ameliorate several of these are likely to be more effective in preventing relapse than treatments targeting only a single state.”

    AAAS Public Release: Non-psychoactive cannabis ingredient could help addicts stay clean: Preclinical study using rats shows that Cannabidiol can reduce the risk of relapse

  16. TakeHimDown says:

    Wallace Godwin, the guy who tried to sue the government for $500 million for not enforcing the federal marijuana laws, is in deep shit for threatening to murder a congressman.

    “There should never be violence. There should never be threats of violence to elected officials or their staff. It is just unacceptable, especially my staff – they’re in there to help people. They’re in there to help people navigate the federal government,” said Taylor. “Violence is always serious. You should always take it serious.”

    Taylor addressed the media Friday afternoon. He said Godwin has been rude to his staff before and has even showed up at his home in the past.

    Godwin is outspoken about his anti-marijuana stance on social media, and last year court records indicate he even tried to sue the government for $500 million for not enforcing the federal marijuana laws. The case got dismissed.

    Taylor has worked to decriminalize marijuana on a federal level, and he said that’s angered Godwin.

    https://tinyurl.com/ProhibitionistThreatensMurder

    • kaptinemo says:

      The closer we are to victory, the crazier the prohibs will get. This is just one more ‘crazy uncle’ who’s fallen down the stairs and rolled out the front door, winding up in the street, displaying his mania; wait long enough, and he’ll have company.

      Of course, as has been said here, many times before, Mr. Godwin has outwardly exhibited the very real murderous desire common to many prohibs to deal summarily with those they don’t like. What he wanted to do, people like Trump would like to do and people like Shinawatra of Thailand and Duterte of the Philippines have done. It is safe to say that such inherent malevolence and bloodlust is common to the breed, regardless of nationality.

      Nevertheless, Godwin has not done his cause any favors by his actions; his actions should motivate the prohibs to either denounce him for his threat of violence in the service of their cause – a violence that they covertly wish to perpetrate, themselves – or publicly laud him, confirming their own extremism. Either way, they’re running out of corners to paint themselves into.

  17. DdC says:

    As I suspected long ago. (Too lazy to look for the post.) When the DEA bust’ a field of Ganja they are busting people for a non psychoactive substance. “Including raw cannabis soup dc”

    Can You Get High From Eating Raw Weed?
    https://hightimes.com/edibles/get-high-eating-raw-weed/
    If you were hoping to get high after eating some raw flower, you’re in for a disappointment. Raw weed will not get you high. To understand why, you have to be familiar with a little bit of cannabis chemistry.

    The sensation of being high is one of these effects. But you’ll only feel that way if your body gets active THC, and as it turns out, raw cannabis doesn’t actually have THC readily available.

    Instead, raw cannabis contains the non-psychoactive cannabinoid THCA. Interestingly, when cannabis is exposed to heat, the THCA is converted into “active” THC, which then makes you feel high.

    This process is called “decarboxylation.” This is exactly what happens when you ignite bud, or when you heat it to the point of vaporizing. It’s also why before an edible can get you high, the weed must at some point be decarboxylated.

    But when you eat raw weed, this crucial step is missing. As a result, all you’re getting is THCA, not THC, which means you won’t get high.

  18. PurpleMaine says:

    In a refreshing display of “if it’s legal, it’s legal,” the Maine Department of Labor has removed cannabis from the list of substances for which employers may test.

    While other states have legalized recreational cannabis use, until now, none of them prevented employers from enacting anti-marijuana policies or refusing to hire candidates who test positive for weed. HR managers at affected employers in Maine are updating their handbooks and drug policies to reflect the changes.

    https://tinyurl.com/PurpleMaine

  19. Servetus says:

    There may be a method to the madness of Trump and Sessions in scapegoating drug dealers for US opioid problems beyond that of distracting the public from Big Pharma’s role in an epidemic of ODs.

    Shannon M. Monnat, PhD, Associate Professor of Sociology and Lerner Chair for Public Health Promotion, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University, has surveyed the opioid OD mortality rates and determined the drug-related mortality is neither randomly nor evenly spread across the United States:

    26-MAR-2018 — …Evidence from the first national study of county-level differences suggests that addressing economic and social conditions will be key to reversing the rising tide of drug deaths, reports the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.… There was significant spatial variation in rates:

    ●High mortality rate clusters in Appalachia, Oklahoma, parts of the Southwest, and northern California

    ●Low mortality rate clusters in parts of the Northeast, the Black Belt, Texas, and the Great Plains

    ●Substantial within-state variation with West Virginia having the largest disparity between the highest and lowest rate counties

    Average mortality rates were significantly higher in counties with greater economic and family distress and in counties economically dependent on mining. Counties at the highest level of family distress (divorce/separation and single parent families) had an average of more than eight more drug-related deaths per 100,000 population than counties at the lowest level. […]

    “We need to get real with ourselves about the US drug problem,” explained Dr Monnat. “We are not going to Narcan our way out of this. Opioids are a symptom of much larger social and economic problems. Just as other chronic diseases have underlying social determinants, addiction is also a social disease. ‘Addiction does not discriminate’ is a soundbite that ignores the reality that overdose rates are highest in economically distressed communities, particularly places that have experienced declines in job opportunities for people without a college degree. Addressing economic and social conditions will be key to reversing the rising tide of drug deaths.”

    AAAS Public Release: Drug-related mortality rates are not randomly distributed across the US: Economic and social conditions underlie geographic disparities in overdose rates and addressing them will be key to reversing the rising tide of drug deaths

    Deaths of Despair and Support for Trump in the 2016 Presidential Election (pdf) – Monnat (12-04-2016)

    Trump will not improve economic and social conditions for people living in geopolitical areas afflicted with opioid dependencies, not even for those who voted for him. That’s not how fascists and Republicans operate. Organized misery and repression is their game. A social and economic improvement solution is far too difficult and expensive, and it’s a welfare-state approach fascists dread.

    Rather, scapegoats will be selected and eliminated—illicit, non-Pharma merchandizers of drugs in this case—who will be expected to shoulder all the blame and burden for America’s opiate problems. Once an amplified drug war that includes executions and mandatory minimums is operational, Trump and Sessions will claim victory over opioid disorders is at hand, when in fact nothing useful or positive will be achieved as primary causes will not be addressed.

  20. Will says:

    .
    .
    Interesting article on the breakdown of illicit substances amounts a person would have to be in possession of to trigger the death penalty. I don’t know what’s more insane, the amount of LSD it would take or the amount of cannabis it would take. Craziness no matter how you look at it;

    Here’s how much marijuana you’d need to be eligible for the death penalty under federal law

    http://www.goo.gl/hreMDM (tinyurl wasn’t working so I used Google shortener0

    • “Why, then, would the attorney general specifically highlight that provision in his memo?”

      – Todd thinks the memo is more about messaging than anything else. “To me it’s the message of ‘we’re going to be tough, and we don’t view these people as fully human and deserving of life,’ ” Todd said. “It’s an opportunity to look really tough by dehumanizing people.”

      Yes. Dehumanizing is an integral part of the drug war. Pretty much diametrically opposed to the idea of actually helping or the idea of harm reduction.

      The war on drugs harms people, its no accident.

    • The drug war is a philosophy of hate.

      • DdC says:

        Making America Hate Again!

        Profits are the Prophets and new Mother of Invention without Zappa. Profits on Misery they create. USA! Qaeda

        Unique treatment potential of cannabidiol for the prevention of relapse to drug use: preclinical proof of principle
        https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-018-0050-8

      • Servetus says:

        Jeff Sessions’ and Donald Trump’s bloodlust toward merchandizers of illicit drugs benefits from a flaw found in the criminalization of methamphetamine:

        March 23, 2018 –… if you sell enough dope, you are subject to execution. Normally, only ultra-kingpins could possibly sell enough dope to be eligible for execution under § 3591(b)(1). This is where things get dark for low to mid-level methamphetamine dealers.

        As exhaustively detailed by Federal District Court Judge Mark W. Bennet of the Northern District of Iowa, the criminalization of methamphetamine was originally based on purity. United States v. Hayes, 948 F.Supp.2d 1009 (N.D. Iowa 2013). Five grams of pure meth was punished as severely as 50 grams of a substance containing a detectable amount of meth. The rationale was that five grams of pure meth equaled ten times the weight on the street because the pure meth was being sold from kingpins to mid to low-level dealers, who then cut the pure meth before selling it. Essentially, Congress equated purity with drug dealer hierarchy. […]

        Today, all methamphetamine sold on the street is pure. […]

        Despite judges and various other persons noting this flaw in the criminalization of methamphetamine, nothing has been done. See Hayes, 948 F.Supp.2d at 1015; United States v. Goodman, 556 F.Supp.2d 1002, 1016 (D. Neb. 2008). Low to mid-level dealers face penalties that were intended for kingpins. We’re talking five to ten year mandatory minimums for emaciated addicts, 23-year-olds, and the homeless. Low to mid-level dealers are, and always have been, addicts. They sell meth to get high; none of them profit. Most are broke. The only thing new is that the meth they sell now is pure. […]

        Sessions exploits this uncorrected flaw. Under the law, 6.6 pounds of pure methamphetamine makes you eligible for the death penalty. See 18 U.S.C. 3591(b)(1). This does not mean a one-time deal of 6.6 pounds. It means over the course of time a person deals 6.6 pounds. Decades ago, 6.6 pounds of pure meth made you a kingpin. Today, 6.6 pounds of pure meth makes you a low to mid-level dealer. Sessions exploited a flaw to leverage the death penalty against low to mid-level dealers. The result will be either execution, or, more likely, a significant amount of persons pleading guilty to the mandatory minimum of ten years in exchange for their life. […]

        https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/03/23/sessions-exploits-a-flaw-to-pursue-execution-of-meth-addicts/

  21. MaryMicmak says:

    Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told hemp advocates in his home state of Kentucky that he will introduce legislation to legalize the crop as an agricultural commodity. The versatile crop has been grown on an experimental basis in a number of states in recent years.

    “It’s now time to take the final step and make this a legal crop,” McConnell said.

    Kentucky has been at the forefront of hemp’s comeback. Kentucky agriculture officials recently approved more than 12,000 acres to be grown in the state this year, and 57 Kentucky processors are helping turn the raw product into a multitude of products.

    The promised move was applauded by hemp supporters in Pennsylvania.

    “If this is true, this is the greatest moment in recent hemp history,” said attorney Andrew Sacks, the co-chair of the Pennsylvania Bar Association’s Medical Marijuana and Hemp Law Committee. “This will create millions of new jobs and bring hemp CBDs to the masses. Soon you will able to buy hemp CBDs at CVS pharmacies instead of opioids.”

    CBDs, or cannabidiols, are molecular compounds in hemp products that are believed to have pain-relieving effects.

    https://tinyurl.com/MaryMicmak

  22. The idea to use the justice department to stop drugs and drug abuse is born out of hatred.

    Arresting people for drugs will never make the problem go away. It makes drug problems increase.

    Finding and curing a person of a drug problem using the justice system is an injustice in and of itself.

    When an individual is sick he seeks out and needs a doctor for help, not a judge.

    War kills. Drug War is an abomination. It benefits only the war profiteers, the politicians, and the morticians.

    Selling drugs to Americans is big business.

    • Yeah But says:

      The drug war inevitably increases violence. In order to become a successful “kingpin” the dealer must prevent his customers from giving information about him to law enforcement, and the best way to do this is to establish a reputation for violence and create a climate of fear. Those dealers who can do this best will rise to the top and eliminate rivals. This is being played out daily in Mexico where drug criminals have created a theater of violence, trying to outdo each other with beheadings etc. This is what you get when you hand over control of a multi-billion dollar industry to criminals. Of course none of these costs ever appear as a debit for prohibition, instead the violence is blamed on the effects of the drugs themselves, and used to justify continuing prohibition.

      • DdC says:

        The “criminals” respond to Military force with the same defensive energy as they receive. When Cartels ran pot there was little violence. White Powders and US dictated Military escalation and the Cartels responded with violence. To match the weaponry of the Military cartel’s increased the gore factor. Letting peasants grow hemp and Cartels Ganja might reduce the white powder trade and violence. Since the DEA is totally responsible. It probably won’t be too soon.

  23. Servetus says:

    John Knefel at Truthout implies Trump’s desire to execute drug merchants is a byproduct of Trump’s adherence to eugenics, the US derived pseudoscience that helped launch the Holocaust:

    March 27, 2018 — President Donald Trump has…gone from praising a dictator for killing drug dealers and users, to pushing to bring at least part of that practice to the United States…when paired with Trump’s knee-jerk racism and his previous comments about his own genetic superiority, his proposal takes on a deeper and even more repugnant significance. […]

    Many observers have noted the cruelty and dictatorial nature of Trump’s proposal. Less recognized, though, is the way in which it fits as a predictable outgrowth of two positions he holds close: anti-Black racism, and the belief in his own genetic superiority. […]

    How then, does Trump see himself and his family? As beneficiaries of good genetic breeding, in the most literal of terms. Going back decades, he has praised his own genetic make-up in language reminiscent of eugenics. He has credited his health and financial success to his genes, and has referred to himself at one point as a “gene believer.” […]

    He has also praised the “good genes” of his granddaughter Arabella, crediting heredity with the young girl’s aptitude for learning Mandarin, rather than recognizing the work of her Chinese nanny. […]

    It is against these backdrops, then — Trump’s dismissal of the worth of Black lives and his belief in his genetic superiority — that we must understand his desire to expand capital punishment to drug dealers.

    When Maine Gov. Paul LePage infamously said that drug dealers named “G-Money, Smoothie, Shifty” came to his state to sell drugs and impregnate white women, there can be little doubt that he was expressing a framework shared by Trump. […]

    When Trump says he wants to kill “drug dealers,” it’s clear he’s invoking stereotypes about immigrants and Black gang members. To him, victims are white, and perpetrators of violence are not. We should understand his drug policy as another of his racist dog whistles — and one of the most alarming ones to date.

    http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/43976-trump-s-comments-about-his-good-genes-make-his-death-penalty-for-drug-dealers-proposal-even-more-horrifying

    If Donald Trump were as genetically superior as he claims, he would have better hair.

  24. Harvard University Finds Cannabis Cuts Tumor Growth in Half in Three Weeks
    https://tinyurl.com/y8dto9me

    The active ingredient in marijuana cuts tumor growth in common lung cancer in half and significantly reduces the ability of the cancer to spread, say researchers at Harvard University who tested the chemical in both lab and mouse studies.

    They say this is the first set of experiments to show that the compound, Delta-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), inhibits EGF-induced growth and migration in epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) expressing non-small cell lung cancer cell lines. Lung cancers that over-express EGFR are usually highly aggressive and resistant to chemotherapy.

    THC that targets cannabinoid receptors CB1 and CB2 is similar in function to endocannabinoids, which are cannabinoids that are naturally produced in the body and activate these receptors. The researchers suggest that THC or other designer agents that activate these receptors might be used in a targeted fashion to treat lung cancer.

    “The beauty of this study is that we are showing that a substance of abuse, if used prudently, may offer a new road to therapy against lung cancer,” said Anju Preet, Ph.D., a researcher in the Division of Experimental Medicine.

  25. The IRS Has Blocked Cannabis Advocacy Groups From Non-Profit Status https://tinyurl.com/y8w3y6bq

    “While the report’s language doesn’t explicitly cite cannabis advocates like NORML as its target, it’s not hard to read between the lines.”

    Government fighting against popular public opinion is truly telling. Who do they represent? Certainly its not the American public.

    Good luck to “America’s Most Trusted Horseman”
    https://tinyurl.com/yavfutdn

    • Yeah But says:

      There may be a problem with your link to the IRS story. I get “page not found.”

      • Was a story on “Civilized”. It appears to have been taken down. Here is one from Leafly: https://t.co/BhAg5EYgTH

        I suspect the answer as to why the Civilized article was taken down might be in here:

        “The new rule is not expected to have an immediate impact on cannabis-related nonprofit groups, but is likely to hamper the establishment of nonprofit industry groups in emerging legal adult-use markets like Massachusetts, and medical markets like Pennsylvania and Ohio.”

        “The current administration continues to act in direct contradiction to what the majority of Americans want,” said Krista Whitley, CEO of Nevada-based Altitude Products. “Blocking nonprofit cannabis industry associations who are working to advocate for responsible consumption of this powerful plant medicine makes absolutely no sense.”

    • WalStMonky says:

      .
      .

      The first question that comes to my mind is “doesn’t this eviscerate the “big merrywanna” boogeyman that is so pervasive among the sycophants of prohibition, SAM in particular?

      After the IRS gets spanked then reversed by the Federal Courts of appeals perhaps some folks will take some time to reflect on their animosity towards the ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310 (2010)

      No, I don’t have a problem with going both ways. The sycophants of prohibition don’t have any use for fact based logic and aren’t swayed by reason. Heck, “big merrywanna” is total fiction which only exists in the pristine wilderness of their brains.

  26. Mouthy says:

    Will Scott Pruitt get ousted? He supposedly rented or bought a home belonging to an energy company?

    • Mouthy says:

      He is the reason why Medical didn’t pass in Oklahoma a few years back, delaying it again so state lawmakers can create limiting bills on a law that hasn’t even come to the polls yet.

    • Servetus says:

      Here’s more on Pruitt the Polluter:

      March 30, 2018…”This deal stinks like the swamp Scott Pruitt is mired in. Pruitt’s wanton corruption doesn’t just ignore the rule of law and clear ethical boundaries, it threatens the health of our families,” said Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune. “He must be fired immediately.”

      “Pruitt the Polluter”—who earned his nickname by attempting to roll back numerous anti-pollution regulations—paid a nightly rental fee of $50 for a bedroom in a condo co-owned by healthcare lobbyist Vicki Hart, the wife of energy lobbyist Steven Hart, whose firm reported a $16 million federal lobbying income last year and who worked temporarily on the Trump transition team.[…]

      https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/03/30/calls-pruitt-resign-after-reports-sweetheart-rental-energy-lobbyists-wife

      Here is Pruitt the Polluter acting as EPA chief:

      March 30, 2018 — After more than a year of aggressively lobbying the Trump administration to gut Obama-era fuel efficiency standards aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, automakers are poised to finally have their wish granted on Sunday, when EPA chief Scott Pruitt is scheduled to officially declare the rules “not appropriate.”

      “The current iteration of fuel standards are based on sound science, which the EPA should be using to make its decision—not pressure from the auto industry.”

      —Natalie Nava, Greenpeace USAs Reuters reports, Pruitt is then planning to deliver a speech on Tuesday celebrating the regulatory rollback from a Chevrolet dealership in Virginia—a fitting location, given that representatives of Chevrolet’s parent company General Motors met with Pruitt frequently last year to demand less stringent fuel standards. […]

      https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/03/30/among-stupidest-policies-yet-proposed-trump-epa-lower-car-emissions-standards

      Pruitt’s corporate welfare deal could be used to spark boycotts of General Motors non-electric vehicles; enough to retaliate against Pruitt the Polluting Prohib.

  27. Servetus says:

    Erstwhile reefer madness maven and inquisitor general wannabe Jeff Sessions may fail to realize his dream of spearheading the persecution of cannabis consumers due to an unfortunate flaw in Jeff’s character — he’s a traitor:

    April 2, 2018…In his confirmation hearing in January 2017, Sessions claimed that he knew of no one on the campaign, including himself, who had contact with Russian officials. Sessions later acknowledged that he had personally met with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak at least three times, but claimed the meetings were in his capacity as a U.S. senator.

    In November 2017, Sessions acknowledged he attended a campaign meeting where George Papadopoulos said he had connections to Russian officials and offered to set up a meeting between Trump and Putin. Sessions said he did not mention that meeting earlier because he forgot about it. He emphasized that he still had “no clear recollection” of the meeting.

    After his memory was “refreshed,” however, Sessions did recall communicating with Papadopoulos. “[T]o the best of my recollection, I believe that I wanted to make clear to him that he was not authorized to represent the campaign with the Russian government, or any other foreign government, for that matter,” Sessions said.

    Reuters reported last month that three people who spoke to Robert Mueller had contradicted Sessions’ testimony about the meeting with Papadopoulos, including Sessions’ claim that “he opposed a proposal for Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign team to meet with Russians.” […]

    https://thinkprogress.org/george-papadopoulos-new-claim-jeff-sessions-chicago-nightclub-da653988529c/

    Just in case things don’t turn out well for him in the near future, AG Sessions has been “on board” with Jared Kushner regarding federal prison reforms:

    https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/27/politics/koch-criminal-justice-reform-sessions/index.html

  28. DdC says:

    How many times must a man look up
    Before he can see the sky?
    How many ears must one man have
    Before he can hear people cry?
    How many deaths will it take ’til he knows
    That too many people have died?
    The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
    The answer is blowin’ in the wind
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QcBD1TtOUc

    Ro Khanna @RoKhanna
    Working to create tech & manufacturing jobs locally & across America. Refuse all PAC & lobbyist contributions. Obama alum. Represent SV in Congress.

    When we talk about building affordable housing in California, we mean housing that’s truly affordable for teachers, nurses, and service workers, not just the tech developers and engineers who work in Silicon Valley.

    ☛ Cannabis Construction: Entrepreneurs Using Hemp for Home-Building

    ☛ Hempcrete? Green building with cannabis bricks

    ☛ The (Not So) New Role of Cannabis in Construction

    Ro Khanna @RoKhanna
    Oklahoma students deserve better than shredded, outdated textbooks. I stand with the tens of thousands of teachers who are walking out to demand higher wages and more funding for their schools. #OklahomaTeacherWalkout

    ☛ Marijuana sales creating new revenue for schools, children’s programs

    ☛ Outdated, sagging Colorado schools
    get $300 million boost from pot sales, other taxes

    ☛ 5 things to know about marijuana money and schools

    Since 2015, Colorado Department of Education received $140.5 million through marijuana revenue — $86.3 million in 2015-16 and $54.2 million in 2016-17. That’s compared to total state education funding of $5.3 billion in 2015-16 and $5.4 billion in 2016-17.

  29. Will says:

    .
    .
    “Recreational use is definitely a gateway drug for heroin”.

    You simply can not get through to some people;

    http://video.foxnews.com/v/5763679871001/?#sp=show-clips

    • DdC says:

      Marc Siegel Quack quack quack… Disgusting.
      https://twitter.com/DendeCannabist/status/981770045159129093

      “From time to time,
      I say that the suppression of medical marijuana is murder. This is not quite correct. It is actually mass murder.
      It has caused the deaths
      of countless thousands of people.”
      ~ the Financial Times Limited, 1998
      (Ed. note: The FT is the London equivalent of the Wall Street Journal. This drug could be patented, so it is of interest to the financial community.)

      The Cannabis Solution http://theexitdrug.com
      The Exit Drug documentary, created by Weedmaps, investigates how cannabis could play a major role in ending the opioid crisis, a public health emergency that kills an average of 115 U.S. citizens a day.

  30. WalStMonky says:

    .
    .

    You simply can not break Francis’ Law. Not only that but it’s self enforcing! The sycophants of prohibition can only get theirs’ to work a teeny tiny fraction of the time and seemingly only at random.

    Two new studies show how marijuana can help fight the opioid epidemic
    4/2/2018

    /snip/
    In the second study, Ashley C. Bradford, W. David Bradford and Amanda Abraham of the University of Georgia found that at the state level, medical marijuana laws were associated with an 8.5 percent reduction in the number of daily opioid doses filled under Medicare Part D, relative to states without medical marijuana laws. Reductions were even higher (amounting to 14.4 percent) for states that allowed medical marijuana dispensaries. States that allowed home marijuana cultivation had 6.9 percent reductions in opiate prescriptions.

  31. Servetus says:

    Jeff Sessions’ federal crackdown on marijuana grows has resulted in a bounty of seized properties now owned by the government, placing feds in the lucrative California real estate business:

    APRIL 4, 2018 — U.S. law enforcement agencies seized over 100 homes in the Sacramento, California-area this week […]

    …The operation announced on Wednesday…relates to underground illegal marijuana-growing operations, and not those following California’s stringent regulatory and licensing regime.

    Federal law enforcement officials said in a statement that the criminal organization targeted through the home seizures used foreign funds to purchase the homes in order to use them for growing marijuana.

    Down payments on the properties were financed by wire transfers from the province of Fujian, China, and the pot that was grown in the homes was later distributed outside California to other parts of the United States, the statement said.

    The Justice Department said the operation represented one of the largest-ever residential forfeiture efforts in U.S. criminal history.

    In addition to seizing the homes, the government also seized 61,050 marijuana plants, more than 440 pounds (200 kg) of processed marijuana and 15 firearms.
    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-justice-marijuana/justice-department-seizes-over-100-homes-in-crackdown-on-marijuana-operation-idUSKCN1HB36M

    Too bad the seized marijuana will be destroyed. Incinerated cannabis benefits no one. Confiscation or forfeiture of homes was also employed by the various inquisitions and by the British colonialists prior to the American Revolution. The houses of alleged offenders were burned down (razed) until some smart inquisitor or British Royal official realized the properties could be sold for a profit instead. Perhaps one day the US government will learn from the Red Coats and the Spanish Inquisition and will act to change its marijuana looting policies.

    • DdC says:

      Seems like another personal burst of rage tantrum. Trump’s trade war with China escalated and so he sic’d his loyal obedient lapdog Beauregard on em. Since it all falls back on Anslinger and Nixon lies as the foundation of Prohibition. It’s a non crime. It’s not Science its Politics. The Incremental Illness is making Billions. Freeing the weed is not prudent. Not following rules in CA or even more regulated states. Only applies to Dispensaries. Not Landlords. Many places banning it on vice or health reasons and again its more Politics than Science. Just as true none the less. Many are still Prohibited because of their living conditions. No one bans Oxy or Amphetamines or booze from homes. Or their sales close to schools or their ability to deposit their earnings in a bank. No tax exemptions and tossed off of an Organ Transplant list. I guess we Mongo’s are Only Pawns in Game of Life.

      Politics by Frank Zappa
      https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DaD9iHsVAAAzuYM.jpg

      Drawing Down: How To Roll Back Police Militarization In America
      https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/15/how-to-roll-back-police-militarization_n_3749272.html?ncid=engmodushpmg00000004 via @HuffPostPol

  32. DdC says:

    During his presidency, Clinton’s drug control strategy focused on prevention, drug treatment and enforcement.

    ☛ Bill Clinton on the opioid crisis: ‘Nobody gets out of this for free’

    According to Clinton White House archives, he elevated the “drug czar” to a cabinet-level post, expanded drug courts and stepped up drug-related enforcement efforts. Meanwhile, overall funding for anti-drug efforts rose from $12.2 billion in 1993 to $18.5 billion in 2000.

    Not a word about…

    ☛ Marijuana could reduce drug and alcohol relapses for addicts
    ☛ Two New Studies Find Cannabis Reduces Opioid Prescriptions

    In 1994, the conservative Heritage Foundation issued a report titled, “How the Clinton Administration is Abandoning the War Against Drugs,” which said Clinton’s “new direction will allow more cocaine, heroin and marijuana to reach American streets, and it will cut federal enforcement personnel.” The group also said one of the first announced goals of then-Attorney General Janet Reno was to reduce mandatory minimum sentences for drug trafficking and other related crimes, sentences the group argued “put teeth in drug enforcement.”

    ☛ McCaffrey’s Brain On Drugs
    A Vivisection Of Clinton’s Drug Warrior In Chief

    With regard to the position taken by Mr. Barry R. McCaffrey opposing the legalization of drugs, there are a few concepts that need clarifying. What Mr. Barry R. McCaffrey means when he says “drugs” are psychotropic substances such as marijuana and cocaine.

    ☛ Clinton Asks Supreme Court To Overturn MMJ Ruling

    “We can’t be so fixated
    on our desire to preserve the rights
    of ordinary Americans.” – Bill Clinton

    ☛ Thalidomide v Cannabis
    ~ THE THALIDOMIDE TRAGEDY
    Thalidomide studied as weight therapy

    Notice they can rebirth Thalidomide in month’s. Now it is found that second generation babies born with flippers from Granma’s given thalidomide…Cancer treatment? Anorexia in teenage girls? AIDs wasting anything but cannabis taking away their profits…

    ☛ State resolution urges feds to focus on opioids, not cannabis

    If the personal freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution inhibit the government’s ability to govern the people, we should look to limit those guarantees. ~ President Bill Clinton, August 12, 1993

  33. Servetus says:

    Mushrooms once again come to the rescue of the human species—and in this case all other species.

    After being used to grow mushrooms, compost comprising straw and sawdust evolved a new bacterium. Engineers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) report that “Thermoanaerobacterium thermosaccharolyticum TG57…is capable of directly converting cellulose, a plant-based material, to biobutanol….”:

    5-APR-2018 …Traditional biofuels are produced from food crops. This approach is highly costly and competes with food production in the use of land, water, energy and other environmental resources.

    Biofuels produced from unprocessed cellulosic materials such as plant biomass, as well as agriculture, horticultural and organic waste, are expected to meet growing energy demands without increasing greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the burning of fossil fuels. These cellulosic materials are in great abundance, environmentally friendly, and economically sustainable.

    Among various types of biofuels, biobutanol offers a great promise as petrol substitute because of its high energy density and superior properties. It can directly replace gasoline in car engines without any modification. However, commercial production of biobutanol has been hampered by the lack of potent microbes capable of converting cellulosic biomass [such as hemp, for example] into biofuels. The current technique is costly and also requires complicated chemical pre-treatment.

    Moving forward, the research team will continue to optimise the performance of the TG57 strain, and further engineer it to enhance biobutanol ratio and yield using molecular genetic tools.

    AAAS Public Release: NUS engineers pioneer greener and cheaper technique for biofuel production: Natural bacterium isolated from mushroom crop residue converts plant-based material to butanol directly

    Published in Science Advances on 23 March 2018

    THC molecules in marijuana threaten to wipe out an entire opioid pain industry and its ill effects, as well as threatening politicians who prohibit cannabis. Hemp and a bacterium found in mushroom compost threatens to undermine the fossil fuel industry and put the climate-denying Koch brothers and their Canadian oil pipeline out of business, while simultaneously ridding the US of its dependency on North African and foreign oil production.

    I love the smell of science in the morning—smells like victory.

  34. Speaking of victory:

    “Feds Want Input On Marijuana Reclassification”
    https://t.co/gB3KYbqpXg

    “The Trump administration is asking Americans for input on whether marijuana should be reclassified under international drug control treaties to which the U.S. is a party.”

    Yes. To about the same classification level as water.

    • Will says:

      Strange that the method to submit comments is not mentioned in the articles I’ve seen. But I found this on the FDA site;

      Electronic Submissions
      Submit electronic comments in the following way:
      ï‚· Federal eRulemaking Portal: https://www.regulations.gov. Follow the instructions
      for submitting comments. Comments submitted electronically, including
      attachments, to https://www.regulations.gov will be posted to the docket unchanged.
      Because your comment will be made public, you are solely responsible for ensuring
      that your comment does not include any confidential information that you or a third
      party may not wish to be posted, such as medical information, your or anyone else’s
      Social Security number, or confidential business information, such as a
      manufacturing process. Please note that if you include your name, contact
      information, or other information that identifies you in the body of your comments,
      that information will be posted on https://www.regulations.gov.
      ï‚· If you want to submit a comment with confidential information that you do not wish
      to be made available to the public, submit the comment as a written/paper submission
      and in the manner detailed (see “Written/Paper Submissions” and “Instructions”).
      Written/Paper Submissions
      Submit written/paper submissions as follows:
      ï‚· Mail/Hand delivery/Courier (for written/paper submissions): Dockets Management
      Staff (HFA-305), Food and Drug Administration, 5630 Fishers Lane, Rm. 1061,
      Rockville, MD 20852.

      • NorCalNative says:

        Will, muchas gracias for el linky.

        I’ve tried a half-dozen different searches without success.

        Typing the exact wording from Tom’s link, i.e. “International Drug Scheduling; Convention on Psychotropic Substances; Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs; Cannabis Plant and Resin; Extracts and Tinctures of Cannabis; …” Gets nothing.

        Variations using key words gets nothing.

        I’d really like to enter my comment at this site and would love it if someone smarter than me can figure out how to comment. Can you help a hippie out?

      • Tony Aroma says:

        The link is near the end of the article in the original post:

        FDA notes in the new Federal Register notice.

        It does look like this is something the federal government wants to keep quiet.

      • DdC says:

        Here we go again…

        Marijuana Legalization Question Again Tops Obama Twitter Townhall
        http://blog.norml.org/2011/07/07/marijuana-legalization-question-again-tops-obama-twitter-townhall/
        For the third consecutive time in his presidency, the number one topic of concern for the public: ending Cannabis Prohibition and finally re-legalizing the herb!Obama Seeks Comments on Proposed Changes to Summary of Benefits and Coverage
        Wednesday, January 28, 2015
        https://www.natlawreview.com/article/obama-seeks-comments-proposed-changes-to-summary-benefits-and-coverage

        Obama Insults Online Community for Supporting Marijuana Legalization
        https://stopthedrugwar.org/speakeasy/2009/mar/26/obama_insults_online_community_s

        Make your voice heard!
        https://stopthedrugwar.org/speakeasy/2009/mar/26/obama_insults_online_community_s#comment-29689

        Point of View
        Open Government
        Assessing the Obama Administration’s Efforts
        To Make Government Transparency a Reality
        https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en_us/about/ac79/docs/pov/Open_and_Transparent_Government_Formatted_120209FINAL.pdf

      • Hope says:

        I’ve got the comment section of the Federal Register on this request. I was hoping for some advice from you guys about what we should do about this. I see DdC is not impressed. Do you think it’s a ruse or something to possibly use to incriminate people? Or just a waste of time like the Town Hall crap was? Are you guys going to put in a word or are you going to refrain? Why or why not. This is very odd, it seems. Since when did the FDA or WHO or any of them ever care about the public’s opinion?

        • NorCalNative says:

          Hope, here’s what Tom Angell said to someone worried this was a Trump trap or waste of time.

          “If, you’re so paranoid that you’re not even willing to do the simplest thing to help change marijuana laws so people like you aren’ sent to jail for doing what you do, just GTFO off my timeline and get out of the way.”

          I’m commenting to stand up for weed, hope you join me.

        • Hope says:

          Thank you, NorCalNative. I agree with Mr. Angell’s perception. It’s hard not to be a bit paranoid when it comes to all this. But for all of us here on the couch and on FoM’s couch or the NORML couch… when it comes to government lists, we all should realize by now that we’re all on every list they have, I’m sure. I’ve been hanging around over there looking at it as closely as I can and taking information back to C-News about what I see there. My main problem at the moment is what to say. Dang. I’ve had something to say about this very often for most of my life. Now I’m pretty much speechless. I don’t know what to say.

        • Hope says:

          I’d like to take Mr. Angell’s quote back to C-News for reference. Can I take it from here or is there an original source I can copy it from. Some people are more afraid than Mr. Angell though. He’s stood in the line of fire many years now. He is fearless. If he weren’t we wouldn’t have heard him so loudly and clearly all these years. I love him. He’s a good leader. I think he’s right.

        • DdC says:

          It’s a great exercise in futility Hope. Other than what we do every day spreading info. The same exercise with Obama asking for input and then disregarding or avoiding it, as I posted. Reality Tom Angell avoids in some naive attempt to chastise those who have been informing people a lot longer than his few years. Seeing in real time, the results maintaining the status quo at the end of the day. Obama could have removed cannabis as a controlled substance and made a choice to band aid it with the Cole memo. Obama stated he wanted transparency and Science backing while Sessions is Excluding the National Commission on Forensic Science.

          Tom hasn’t gotten the word that the “M” word is derogatory and stigmatizing as the “N” word. Yet pretends that in some far distant galaxy there will arise a democracy that over rules the patent fascism of the Ganjawar. Nixon lied and rejected his own republican commission to include Ganja as a schedule#1 substance. For political reasons, that it was a common denominator of three groups on his enemies list. Blacks, Radicals and Hippy’s. So for 47 years and since the FIA release of the Nixon Tapes and the obvious values of Cannabis that would exclude it in the CSA. He still thinks our comments will reach Trump and even more far out. That he will do something about it. Other than the plan to profit on prisons filled with growers who are killing opiod users somehow in his mushbrain.

          Quotes, what else can be said that hasn’t been said?

          The IOM report in 1999 has never reached the FDA because the HHS is still sitting on it. So I’ll post a comment to let off some steam and to bring info to those reading it. But I have no confidence it will be anymore than what is already posted on twitter, facebook, here or you tube. For decades we hoped for a way around the censorship of TV, Radio and the Press. Surely when the people get the truth it will be over. High Times and some others gave us info that was not seen by the majority. We thought for sure the internet would prove we were right and an end could be envisioned. But it seems it was never about informing people or Congress. Who btw had more info than we ever had access too. Its willful ignorance and all the information and comments will never stop those choosing not to read it. For vested ignorance in eliminating fossil fools competition and prohibition that brings Billions of dollars. I get Tom’s news delivered and pass it on. Even though MM reminds me of the Civil Rights movement, only with protesters carrying signs to Free the N******!

          Maybe when the Earth’s north and south poles flip the Neurotransmitters will reverse fascist greed into common sense. Trying to be optimistic. As I told a democrat politician.

          Ro Khanna @RoKhanna
          It’s telling that the same Republicans who had no problem adding $1.5 trillion to the deficit to help corporations and investors, now want a “balanced budget amendment” to force cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. As the Parkland kids would say: “We call B.S.”

          They are Neocons dude. Keep playing patty cake while they continue kicking your ass in slimy ways of ends justifying means. Sanctioned by the FRCn Fortune 700 Club lobbying Geeazus for Mulligans. Winners and Whiners. They thrive on chaos and fear and all your tears are joy to their ears.

          Southern Strategy Line From Nixon – Trump
          Assassination Of MLK Parts 1 – 5
          https://t.co/pJiXkoWUmO

          Nixon’s Treason
          https://t.co/wIUlEZvYNN
          Nixon Threads
          https://t.co/owMS8Riq1e
          Nixon lied to schedule Ganja #1
          https://t.co/D7AQouzh6D

        • Hope says:

          I’d like very much to hear Kaptinemo’s take on this National Register business. I’m not sure I’ve ever even heard of the National Register before or what it is. It sort of seems familiar for some of the farm-related documents, but I’m not sure.

        • DdC says:

          First Draft My “comment”

          Dear Dark Desperate WoD Junkie Overlords of Misery,

          We know now, and yet you continue to act as if it were a secret. We see how it stops seizures and stimulates appetites while it curtails obesity. Reduces stress without the inebriation of booze or drugs.

          We hear the cries of 40 million Americans arrested. With life time banishment of services, housing, jobs and medicinal care. Including organ transplants, Veterans and suffering Children.

          We feel the pulse of the Nation quickening for simple common sense that my Hemp blue jeans are not worthy of a schedule#1 narcotic classification. Comfortable enough to be addictive, maybe? When farmers, needing a cash crop, have doubled the Veterans suicide rates.

          $300 billion in profits “treating” cancer with Pharma drugs, while the 1999 IOM report has never reached the FDA for testing. With the decades of Media silence and allegiance to the Corporate Prohibition. Just knowing is not enough. It will take Science and Guts to stand up to the Profiteers. Even more to bring back ethics and integrity to Federal Departments designed to Lie and Stifle or Kill legislation. Headed by a Tzar.

          Ganja is or it ain’t schmucks. Science has overwhelmingly contended it is. Do you want our “Opinions” on Gravity or the boiling point of water? Maybe the Denialist’ want to debate it. I want my America back. Remove Cannabis from the CSA and teach Doctors about the ECS, not one Medical School has a Department of Endocannabinoid Science. Ain’t that a shame?

        • Will says:

          .
          .
          DdC wrote;

          “It’s a great exercise in futility Hope.”

          DdC, I’m in general agreement that the FDA’s request for comments is futile. I’m not sure why these requests for comments regarding ANY regulations changes even exists. I’m curious, because I don’t know, has there ever been an instance where public comments have been documented as having been instrumental in swaying proposed regulation changes about anything? I could be wrong, but my guess to that question is a big, fat “no”. Nada. Except, possibly, if comments generally aligned with whatever status quo an agency wished to maintain.

          That said, I wasted a full 3 minutes entering a brief, succinct comment on the reclassification of cannabis. I’m sure my contribution has already been filed in the black hole of “We don’t give a shit what you think”. That’s 3 minutes I’ll never get back. I’m just going to have to get over it ;).

        • DdC says:

          Reply Will April 11, 2018 at 11:48 am

          I think we’re probably skeptical with good reason Will. I’m not saying no one should pour their hearts out with anecdotal info they won’t accept. Just that Science is not based on opinion. Even if I believe it is what it is, the FDA won’t accept anything outside of their own testing. Including when Obama had his cyber town halls. This is to gather opinions for the UN Convention that was totally initiated by Anslinger as a departing gift after Kennedy canned his ass. The world is changing attitudes and maybe this will drive Science to take a more active roll.

          But I still think profits will over rule common sense as it has since Nixon fast tracked the CSA while everyone watched the tail wag the dog on Watergate. Now its Trump-gate daily and not one TV station is disclosing anything much about Ganja. The opiodiats assigned to solving the od problem are clueless. Many are grasping at straws and many believe the system would not lie, when many others here and about, have seen the results of their acts and know damn well prohibition exists from ulterior motives than our safety and lies are a staple.

          Maybe they aren’t as dependent on US funding as in the past, but the UN seems more than willing to side with the US on most issues, especially prohibition. Then on the third hand, as I said, what is there to say that hasn’t been said? What can be said that they don’t already know about or could access if they wanted too? Thousands of years of documentation and 20,000 US research reports are not read as it is. So our opinions seem rather moot. When all they have to offer is crumbs, those starving might see it as a meal. I think profits are the wall that protects prohibitionists and our well being is the farthest thing from reality. The system stinks and the smell won’t be removed by unread truths or even heartfelt stories and tragedies of prohibition. Or it hasn’t as of yet. If we don’t hold them accountable then we will continue the status quo. IF holding them accountable cost us something, most won’t get off the couch to answer a phone let alone risk their jobs. Can’t really blame them for not being martyrs. Past martyrs are still dead and nothing much has changed.

          Until the Feds remove Ganja from the CSA and Science dictates why it is removed. Hobgoblins will remain employed. Talk is over as far as I’m concerned. Education is still required for many and I’m going to continue passing info and giving my two cents. But the longer I do this the more skepticism rears its head. As always I’m hoping for some sense in the proverbial “leaders”. Just not banking on it.

  35. Yeah But says:

    Drunk guy at the end of the bar in Queens?

    ygUDuh

    ydoan
    yunnuhstan

    ydoan o
    yunnuhstand dem
    yguduh ged

    yunnuhstan dem doidee
    yguduh ged riduh
    ydoan o nudn

    LISN bud LISN

    dem
    gud
    am

    lidl yelluh bas
    tuds weer goin

    duhSIVILEYEzum

    (e.e.cummings)

  36. DdC says:

    Oh cause she said it, now its okay to use the “F” word.

    Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright warns of the growing risk of worldwide fascism emboldened by Donald Trump’s “scorn” for democracy in a scathing New York Times op-ed.

    Trump’s “scorn for democracy’s building blocks
    has strengthened the hands of dictators.”

    “Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.”
    ~ Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering,
    Nazi Air Force (Luftwaffe) commander,
    the Nuremberg Trials

  37. DdC says:

    What the 4 Medications Donald Trump Takes Every Day
    Reveal About His Health vs Ganja/Hemp
    https://twitter.com/DendeCannabist/status/982703510562136069

    The Southern Strategy:
    The Line From Nixon to Donald Trump:
    & the Assassination Of MLK Parts 1 – 5
    https://twitter.com/DendeCannabist/status/982052684235620353

    Now its the Federal Government that “suggests”
    marijuana-laced fentanyl is a concern
    https://twitter.com/DendeCannabist/status/982693594925383680

    Medical Marijuana Industry
    https://twitter.com/DendeCannabist/status/981314201762197504

    • primus says:

      Third point; S/B fentanyl laced marijuana, or more clearly; marijuana adulterated with fentanyl.

      • DdC says:

        Marijuana-laced fentanyl or fentanyl laced marijuana was hatched by an Ohio Fire Dept. Spread by a reefer mad politician and now lands with Goofy, Dumbo and Donald. Point being, its all B.S. They should be arrested for endangering the public the same as yelling theater in a crowded fire.

        ☛ Don’t Believe the Hype:
        Fentanyl-Laced Marijuana Is a Dangerous Myth

        ☛ At numerous times in 2017, local news stories reporting overdose incidents from “fentanyl-laced” marijuana have gone viral. Ohio’s Painesville Township Fire Department posted a (hyped) warning. snopes.com

        ☛ U.S. Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) claimed on the Senate floor that drug dealers are lacing marijuana with fentanyl.

        ☛ “These are very sophisticated operators, and they are lacing other illegal drugs with fentanyl to get you hooked on opioids and bring you into their system,”
        ~ Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar

        Well Alex Azar, not when its legal they don’t. Dispensaries are fentanyl free and only Prohibition and the bogus CSA scheduling by the Feds creates a scenario where very sophisticated operators get you hooked.

        • DdC says:

          Six Examples of Fake News About Marijuana
          https://t.co/qjMZnAoyTp

          NEW CANNABIS OPPOSITION GROUP TARGETS KIDS WITH #FAKENEWS

          “Back in November, right around the five-year anniversary of marijuana legalization, a new group called the Marijuana Accountability Coalition announced they were setting up,” Marcus notes. “They just put out the usual talking points about how marijuana is devastating kids with the same baseless, misleading statistics that have now been debunked. They like to use stats that have no correlation to marijuana legalization, using years that aren’t really relevant.

          RHETORIC FROM MARIJUANA OPPONENTS COULD FUEL OPIOID EPIDEMIC

          “Earlier this year, SAM and MAC released a five-page report that relied on outdated data — data that has mostly proved to be misleading. This is nothing new from our opponents. We’ve seen this kind of ‘reefer madness’ for a long time. But highlighting opioids in the report isn’t reefer madness.

          “The opioid epidemic is taking tens of thousands of lives, and studies like a recent one out of Minnesota show that in legal marijuana states, prescription drug abuse is down. And in Minnesota, it was down by an astonishing number — nearly 63 percent said they were either using fewer opioids or had stopped using them altogether after they started using medical marijuana for pain.

          “So when our opponents say marijuana legalization has led to a spike in the opioid epidemic, that’s the worst kind of fake news — because it’s a dangerous statement to be making.

  38. IrelandGoesGreen says:

    The HSE (Health Service of Ireland) will reimburse the cost of medicinal cannabis sourced in the Netherlands by a Cork mother for the treatment of her eight-year-old daughter’s Dravet’s Syndrome.

    A spokesperson for Health Minister Simon Harris said the HSE contacted Vera Twomey yesterday to confirm arrangements to cover the cost and that the Minister contacted her ‘to express his hope that this good news would be of assistance’.

    On Thursday, the mother of four appealed to the Health Minister to cover the cost of the medication under the Long Term Illness Scheme saying the family couldn’t continue to pay up to €5,000 every three months for the medicinal cannabis.

    After a long campaign, Ms Twomey was granted a license last December to import the medications CBD & THC from the Netherlands to treat her daughter Ava for the severe form of epilepsy.

    https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2018/0407/952848-cannabis/

    • Tony Aroma says:

      Why is getting medicine to a little girl such an amazing accomplishment? Is it just me, or is it totally insane that is took years and the support of thousands of people just to get this girl some medicine? Why is something like that SO difficult?

      • DdC says:

        Tony Aroma April 10, 2018 Reply

        Is it just me, or is it totally insane that is took years and the support of thousands of people just to get this girl some medicine?

        Yes it is insane, and that is why it took years and the support of thousands of people.

        Why is something like that SO difficult?

        Insanity ain’t easy.

        Why is getting medicine to a little girl such an amazing accomplishment?

        Profits are the Prophets.

        ☛ Drug Worriers preferred methods of treatment…

        Because the FDA, is a subsidiary of Fat Pharma.

        ☛ Collaterally Damaged Kids
        New York Nine Year Old Girl With Dravet Syndrome
        Dies Without Medical Marijuana

        They have taken kids from parents relieving their symptoms with Ganja. Killed a few when they resisted. $300 billion a year made on Cancer treatment, that trumps emotions and mercy. Why would they outlaw cures? Curing Polio cost the leg brace manufacturers too much profits. They won’t make that mistake again.

        ☛ Marijuana Users Needing Organ Transplant Suffer & Die Because of Discrimination from Doctors & Hospitals

        Even the tax money and stimulating economies get a back burner when the industries in competition loose profits over it. We the People?

        ☛ $1.2 million in marijuana tax money to help repave Denver streets

        The Ganjawar is a microcosm of what can they get away with. How far can they push the envelope in persecuting Americans, with a Bill of Rights, if the Hobgoblin is scary enough. They succeeded with mandatory minimums, maxcap contracts, lopsided sentencing, banishment from programs designed to assist Americans. Piss testing profits and unemployment. Banned from organ transplants and even banning their supposed 2nd Amendment rights, and the NRA approves.

        ☛ Trump launches a new drug war, targeting the opioid crisis
        Why medical marijuana may be the answer
        to the opioids epidemic

        Why not a word about it during the “opiod summit”? One might think with all the hoopla over tanks driving down PA Ave and jerking off flags that Veterans would seem to be an issue worth fighting over. I guess that’s only soldiers shipping out, not returning with battle scars Ganja relieves.

        ☛ Treating PTSD with Cannabis? Dr. Sue Sisley Tells Us How

        Or even the Profits they worship are too much of a threat to the status weird fossil fools and fat pharma. No other business has the obstacles placed in their way as the Ganja Industry. Just waiting for the day when Yellow Stars of David are placed on “users” sleeves and a Big Red Letter branded in their foreheads to stigmatize all manner of Stoners out of Mainstream society. All TV channels of cable news avoids Ganja and Hemp with tit for tat diversions about Trump and his bad manners. Open, blatant Fascism and Demonizing Citizens and both sides hide under their tables.

        ☛ Main bank for Illinois’ medical marijuana industry is pulling out, leaving some operators to deal

        Trump starts a trade war and democrats whine about prices and both sides hide from non-psychoactive schedule#1 Hemp that could reduce the amount of steel imported. It’s insane and it’s administrated that way.

        ☛ Hemp for Victory

  39. Servetus says:

    Want to light up your weed? Here’s a tip from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. What began as a bioluminescent desk lamp powered by a plant’s metabolism can be applied to cannabis, giving marijuana its own source of light for photosynthesis:

    https://www.curbed.com/2017/12/15/16780094/glowing-plant-lamp-bioluminescence-mit

    Potential MIT cannabis innovations don’t stop with self-luminating plants:

    CAMBRIDGE, Mass, –22-MAR-2018 — It seems like getting something for nothing, but you really can get drinkable water right out of the driest of desert air.

    Even in the most arid places on Earth, there is some moisture in the air, and a practical way to extract that moisture could be a key to survival in such bone-dry locations. Now, researchers at MIT have proved that such an extraction system can work.

    The new device, based on a concept the team first proposed last year, has now been field-tested in the very dry air of Tempe, Arizona, confirming the potential of the new method, though much work remains to scale up the process, the researchers say.

    The new work is reported today in the journal Nature Communications and includes some significant improvements over the initial concept that was described last year in a paper in Science, says Evelyn Wang, the Gail E. Kendall Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, who was the senior author of both papers. MIT postdoc Sameer Rao and former graduate student Hyunho Kim SM ’14, PhD ’18 were the lead authors of the latest paper, along with four others at MIT and the University of California at Berkeley.

    Last year’s paper drew a great deal of attention, Wang says. “It got a lot of hype, and some criticism,” she says. Now, “all of the questions that were raised from last time were explicitly demonstrated in this paper. We’ve validated those points.” […]

    AAAS Public Release: In field tests, device harvests water from desert air: MIT-developed system could provide drinking water even in extremely arid locations

    As prohibs will likely complain about the amounts of water used for cannabis production, while completely ignoring the water wasted on Trump’s golf courses, MOF provides a tech solution. Combining MOFs with the latest solar cell technology for offline grow sites creates a useful combination of technologies for growing marijuana in the High Sierras or the Mohave Desert, if not on Mars. Speaking of which, it would be great if the first two plants to make it to the Red Planet were potatoes and cannabis.

    • DdC says:

      In field tests, device harvests water from desert air
      https://twitter.com/DendeCannabist/status/983198109965545472
      ~ MIT-developed system could provide drinking water
      even in extremely arid locations
      ~ A Bamboo Tower That Produces Water From Air
      ~ This Dew-Harvesting Greenhouse Waters Itself–
      And Then Makes Clean Drinking Water
      ~ Grow Trees Without Watering
      ~ Benefits of Trees
      ~ Hemp to Save the Forests

  40. Servetus says:

    Mushrooms are in the medical science news again. This time Amanita phalloides’ deadly toxin is being used to cure pancreatic cancer in mice:

    11-APR-2018 — The death-cap mushroom has a long history as a tool of murder and suicide, going back to ancient Roman times. The fungus, Amanita phalloides, produces one of the world’s deadliest toxins: α-amanitin. While it may seem ill-advised, researchers are eager to synthesize the toxin because studies have shown that it could help fight cancer. Scientists now report in the Journal of the American Chemical Society how they overcame obstacles to synthesize the death-cap killer compound. […]

    Using α-amanitin bound to antibodies against tumor molecules, cancer researchers have reportedly cured mice of pancreatic cancer. These conjugates are currently in human trials; however, the only way to obtain α-amanitin so far has been to harvest mushrooms, which is time-consuming and results in relatively small amounts of the compound. Synthetic production approaches have been hampered by α-amanitin’s unusual bicyclic structure, among other tricky features. […]

    Due to its toxic nature, the researchers limited production to less than a milligram, but … they are confident that good yields are can be readily obtained by scaling up the process. The researchers also say that the development of this synthetic route will enable chemists to attenuate the toxicity and potentially improve α-amanitin’s activity against cancer, something that is only made possible by the use of synthetic derivatives. […]

    AAAS Public Release: Synthesizing a deadly mushroom toxin

    Fortunately, Amanita phalloids kills people instead of providing them with a mind-healing psychotropic effect as psilocybin mushrooms do. Researchers are thus free to investigate killer mushroom compounds minus any government restrictions or red tape imposed upon scientists who want to research illegal mushrooms. In this case, research was funded by the Canadian government, so it will be Canadian pharmaceutical businesses that profit from new chemical analogs of α-amanitin.

  41. Will says:

    .
    .
    Pigs are flying;

    John Boehner was a longtime opponent of marijuana reform. Here’s what changed his mind.

    https://tinyurl.com/y9muvvhn

    Spokesman David Schnittger said Boehner’s evolving position has been the result of close study after leaving office. [emphasis added]

    Yeah, always after someone leaves office. I’d say that’s a tacit admission that politicians are cravenly stupid while still in office. As if we didn’t know that already.

    • darkcycle says:

      …and surprise, surprise….he’ll be profiting from legalization. Sadly predicted here so many years ago.

      • WalStMonky says:

        .
        .

        Mr. Boehner was born in 1949. A few months back Gallup published the results of its annual survey of the level of support for regulated re-legalization among the citizenry which was 64% in favor. They’ve done the survey every year since 1969. Wow, that’s almost a half century! In 1969 Gallup reported that the citizenry support was a meager 12%. Mr. Boehner had his 20th birthday in 1969. So what’s my point? We would never have come this far without the defection of prohibitionists. I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. I hope he makes a shit ton of money and tells his cronies how much fun he has doing so. If you don’t understand why you can go ask Upton Sinclair.

        • Deep Dish says:

          Yeah, I’m excited to see this opportunism, because it suggests we’re at the point in the game where there’s now more money in legalization than prohibition.

          To quote the book The 48 Laws of Power:

          Law 13: When Asking for Help Appeal to People’s Self-Interest, Never To Their Mercy or Gratitude

          “If you need to turn to an ally for help, do not bother to re­mind him of your past assistance and good deeds. He will find a way to ignore you. Instead, uncover some­thing in your request, or in your alliance with him, that will benefit him, and emphasize it out of all proportion. He will respond enthusiastically when he sees something to be gained for himself.”

    • DdC says:

      John Boehner Joins Cannabis Board to Reschedule Marijuana –
      https://t.co/FjVKTApAm3
      @RepRubenGallego says it’s nice that John Boehner and other former members of Congress are having a change of heart on legal marijuana and want to make some money, but it’s too bad they didn’t think this way when they were in power and pushed for harsher drug laws.

      420,000 people were arrested for selling marijuana while John Boehner ran Congress
      https://t.co/flpyfzASub

      John A. Boehner, has been appointed to the board of advisers of Acreage Holdings,
      https://www.acreageholdings.com/

      “DEA Success Update:
      Let’s see. After 20 years of relentless federal Drug War activity, while the price of world-class marijuana has gone from $60 an ounce to $450, the price of quality cocaine has plummeted from $125 a gram to $30, and 30%-pure heroin has dropped from $700 a gram to about $100. Way to go, boys! “
      – High Times, April 1995

      Scientologists Hate Weed, and They Want Everybody to Hate It Too
      https://merryjane.com/culture/scientologists-hate-weed-and-they-want-everybody-to-hate-it-too

      Former Mexican President Fox calls for opium poppy legalization
      https://t.co/evoAJckSgG

    • DdC says:

      John Boehner: Here’s What Changed His Mind
      http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread29268.shtml
      John A. Boehner, the former Republican speaker of the House who once said he was “unalterably opposed”

      John Boehner has budding interest in marijuana legalization
      https://t.co/CyW7JNxvFS
      “My thinking on cannabis has evolved,” Boehner said in a tweet Wednesday, adding that marijuana should be decriminalized at the federal level “so we can do research, help our veterans, and reverse the opioid epidemic ravaging our communities.”

      Boehner’s Daughter Marries Rasta May 14, 2013
      Steve Bloom https://t.co/N3rcaZpNcF

      Speaker of the House John Boehner’s oldest daughter Lindsay married Jamaican-born Rasta, Dominic Lakhan, on May 10, 2013. The couple took their vows in Delray Beach, FL.

      Lakhan was arrested for marijuana possession in 2006 in Pembroke Pines, FL during a traffic stop. Police found two grams of weed in his car.

      Lakhan, who sports long dreads, is a construction worker. At 38, he’s three years older than Lindsay. Her father, a conservative Republican from Ohio, opposes marijuana legalization in any form.

      Acreage Holdings
      https://t.co/wWB0VGA4oz

      Marijuana Stocks Spike After Ex-House Speaker
      John Boehner Joins Cannabis Company Board

      http://fortune.com/2018/04/11/john-boehner-acreage-holdings-marijuana-stocks/
      Shares of the still-fledgling cannabis industry mainstays like Canada’s Aphria, Aurora, and others rose anywhere from 1% to more than 4% after Boehner’s surprise announcement, outpacing broader markets.

      GW Pharmaceuticals PLC- ADR
      122.51 USD Price increase 4.00 (3.38%)

      • Will says:

        .
        .
        There’s something else that helped ‘change his mind’. And we’ve heard this narrow-minded bullshit before (https://tinyurl.com/ybyaszr4);

        Former Speaker John Boehner’s perspective on the matter changed over time as he watched how medical marijuana eased a close friend’s debilitating back pain.

        This type of conversion, “I was against it until it helped a family member or friend, now I’m all for it”, has been described in a wide array of circumstances. Including Nancy Reagan becoming an advocate for stem cell research — even though the party she belonged to was staunchly opposed — after she learned that that research might lead to therapy that could help Ronald’s problems with Alzheimer’s.

        It’s like me learning that my next door neighbor needs dialysis due to kidney disease, then wondering aloud, “Why would you need that? None of my family or friends do, so you don’t either”.

        • DdC says:

          Stem Cells maybe…
          Gotten from the beheaded pot dealers no doubt.
          Nanny No No deprived Rayguns of Ganja for ALZ.
          Jon Boner is as Orange as Trump.
          I’ve never trusted orange or blue people.

          “All propaganda must be so popular and on such an intellectual level, that even the most stupid of those towards whom it is directed will understand it. Therefore, the intellectual level of the propaganda must be lower the larger the number of people who are to be influenced by it.” Just say D’oh!

          Alzheimer: Resveratrol v Cannabis
          http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/sreply/1115

          Using Pot To Save Brains!

          ~ High Times for Alzheimers
          ~ Pot Joins The Fight Against Alzheimer’s, Memory Loss
          ~ MARIJUANA SLOWS ALZHEIMER’S DECLINE
          ~ Marijuana may block Alzheimer’s
          ~ Alzheimer brain damage ‘reversed’

          Nancy Reagan’s Role in the Disastrous War on Drugs
          http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/sreply/1070

          Nancy was herself known to issue bombastic statements about drugs that discredited the credibility of her voice. She once for example characterized casual drug users as “accomplices to murder.” Feeding off this kind of rhetoric, others went so far as to call for the “beheading of drug dealers” (William Bennet, drug czar under George H.W. Bush) and “shooting of casual drug users” (LAPD chief, Daryl Gates). In 1986 and 1988, Congress passed billion dollar anti-drug bills mandating urine testing for all federal workers and establishing harsh mandatory minimum sentencing regulations, which resulted in the mass incarceration boom that is now widely condemned.

  42. LeStarryZoof says:

    Argentinian officers fired after claiming mice ate half a ton of missing marijuana

    Called before Judge Adrián González Charvay, Specia and three of his subordinates all offered the same explanation: the missing narcotics had had been “eaten by mice”, they said.

    https://tinyurl.com/LeZoofZoof

  43. SingingOurTune says:

    At the Chicago Tribune:

    The bigger toll from modern drug prohibition, however, comes among opioid users. By making criminals of many people who are dependent on prescription painkillers such as oxycodone and hydrocodone, the law exiles them to the black market. There, consumers may find legitimate FDA-approved medicines, but they may also buy counterfeit versions or heroin — which often carry far greater hazards.

    >>

    It would help to have facilities where opioid users could inject drugs under the supervision of medical professionals who could intervene to reverse overdoses — not to mention offer counseling and treatment referrals.

    In 2016 alone, more Americans died of overdoses than were killed in the Vietnam War. Drug prohibition is justified as a vital protection against the ravages of abuse and addiction. But our graveyards are filling up with people it was supposed to save.

    https://tinyurl.com/ProhibitionChicagolandia

  44. Servetus says:

    In its continuing effort to preserve artificial crimes, and to view certain inanimate things as demonic, the Mormon or LDS Church has come out against a Utah ballot initiative to legalize medical marijuana:

    April 11, 2018 — The LDS Church on Tuesday appeared to come out against a ballot initiative that would legalize medical marijuana in Utah, a move that followed opposition by Gov. Gary Herbert and the powerful Utah Medical Association in recent days.

    In a two-paragraph statement, the Salt Lake City-based faith commended the Utah Medical Association (UMA) for issuing its own recent statement opposing the initiative. But the church did not explicitly criticize any part of the legalization effort.

    “We respect the wise counsel of the medical doctors of Utah,” the statement on the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ website said, indicating that it agreed with the association’s general position that medical marijuana “would compromise the health and safety of Utah communities.”

    “The public interest is best served when all new drugs designed to relieve suffering and illness and the procedures by which they are made available to the public undergo the scrutiny of medical scientists and official approval bodies,” said the statement, which was issued by the church’s governing First Presidency. LDS Church President Russell M. Nelson, the leader of that group, is an internationally acclaimed heart surgeon. […]

    https://www.sltrib.com/news/health/2018/04/10/lds-church-issues-statement-opposing-medical-marijuana-ballot-initiative-which-a-majority-of-utah-voters-supports/

    Dr Nelson fails to note that Mormon physicians in Utah would be in trouble with their church if they used, prescribed, or promoted medical marijuana. For political reasons, Nelson wants to make it appear as if the LDS Church is being neutral on the subject of medical marijuana, and he’s stepped in it as a result.

    It likely didn’t occur to Dr Nelson that many Mormons in adjacent states such as Nevada have access to cannabis should they need it, and therefore such restrictions on Utah Mormons constitute a violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, providing that no state shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction “the equal protection of the laws”.

    It also didn’t occur to Dr/President Nelson that if Utah Mormons vote yes on the ballot anyway it will demonstrate that the LDS church has been severely weakened in its influence over its membership — all due to a weed.

    By voting no, and successfully rejecting the ballot, some Utah Mormons could die from Dravet syndrome, or some other affliction cannabis could have alleviated. Dr Russell will then have violated his Hippocratic oath by doing harm. It’s a no win situation in either case.

    In hindsight, Russell Marion Nelson Sr should have observed the wisdom of a much greater American than himself, or for that matter, con-man Joseph Smith:

    Churches are becoming political organizations… It probably will not be long until the churches will divide as sharply upon political, as upon theological questions; and when that day comes, if there are not liberals enough to hold the balance of power, this Government will be destroyed. The liberty of man is not safe in the hands of any church. Wherever the Bible and sword are in partnership, man is a slave. ~ Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-1899)

    • WalStMonky says:

      .
      .

      Wow, a perfect fit last name! What is a herbert? Let’s ask Mr. Spock!

    • Servetus says:

      The Temperance movement was in full operation in Robert Ingersoll’s lifetime. In an interview conducted by a Chicago reporter in 1883, Ingersoll gives his prescient opinion of prohibitions and prohibitionists in an excerpt titled “Religion, Prohibition, and General Grant”:

      Reporter: What do you think of prohibition, and what do you think of its success in this state?

      Ingersoll: Few people understand the restraining influence of liberty. Moderation walks hand in hand with freedom. I do not mean the freedom springing from the sudden rupture of restraint. That kind of freedom usually rushes to extremes.

      People must be educated to take care of themselves, and this education must commence in infancy. Self-restraint is the only kind that can always be depended upon. Of course intemperance is a great evil. It causes immense suffering — clothes wives and children in rags, and is accountable for many crimes, particularly those of violence. Laws to be of value must be honestly enforced. Laws that sleep had better be dead. Laws to be enforced must be honestly approved of and believed in by a large majority of the people. Unpopular laws make hypocrites, perjurers and official shirkers of duty. And if to the violation of such laws severe penalties attach, they are rarely enforced. Laws that create artificial crimes are the hardest to carry into effect. You can never convince a majority of people that it is as bad to import goods without paying the legal duty as to commit larceny. Neither can you convince a majority of people that it is a crime or a sin, or even a mistake to drink a glass of wine or beer. Thousands and thousands of people in this State honestly believe that prohibition is an interference with their natural rights, and they feel justified in resorting to almost any means to defeat the law.

      In this way the people become somewhat demoralized. It is unfortunate to pass laws that remain unenforced on account of their unpopularity. People who would on most subjects swear to the truth do not hesitate to testify falsely on a prohibition trial. In addition to this, every known device is resorted to, to sell in spite of the law, and when some want to sell and a great many want to buy, considerable business will be done, while there are fewer saloons and less liquor sold in them. The liquor is poorer and the price is higher. The consumer has to pay for the extra risk. More liquor finds its way to homes, more men buy by the bottle and gallon. In old times nearly everybody kept a little rum or whiskey on the sideboard. The great Washingtonian temperance movement drove liquor out of the home and increased the taverns and saloons. Now we are driving liquor back to the homes. In my opinion there is a vast difference between distilled spirits and the lighter drinks, such as wine and beer. Wine is a fireside and whiskey a conflagration. These lighter drinks are not unhealthful and do not, as I believe, create a craving for stronger beverages. You will, I think, find it almost impossible to enforce the present law against wine and beer. I was told yesterday that there are some sixty places in Cedar Rapids where whiskey is sold. It takes about as much ceremony to get a drink as it does to join the Masons, but they seem to like the ceremony. People seem to take delight in outwitting the State when it does not involve the commission of any natural offence, and when about to be caught, may not hesitate to swear falsely to the extent of “don’t remember,” or “can’t say positively,” or “can’t swear whether it was whiskey or not.” One great trouble in Iowa is that the politicians, or many of them who openly advocate prohibition, are really opposed to it. They want to keep the German vote, and they do not want to lose native Republicans. They feel a “divided duty” to ride both horses. This causes the contrast between their conversation and their speeches. A few years ago I took dinner with a gentleman who had been elected Governor of one of our States on the Prohibition ticket. We had four kinds of wine during the meal, and a pony of brandy at the end. Prohibition will never be a success until it prohibits the Prohibitionists. And yet I most sincerely hope and believe that the time will come when drunkenness shall have perished from the earth. Let us cultivate the love of home. Let husbands and wives and children be companions. Let them seek amusements together. If it is a good place for father to go, it is a good place for mother and the children. I believe that a home can be made more attractive than a saloon. Let the boys and girls amuse themselves at home — play games, study music, read interesting books, and let the parents be their playfellows.

      The best temperance lecture, in the fewest words, you will find in Victor Hugo’s great novel “Les Miserables.” The grave digger is asked to take a drink. He refuses and gives this reason: “The hunger of my family is the enemy of my thirst.” […] [emphasis added]

      Appeared in The Times, Chicago, Illinois, October 13, 1883.
      Source: “The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, Vol VIII, pp. 231-3.

      • DdC says:

        The Temperance Movement opposed prohibitions. For this reason I believe Lincoln’s quote was either from him, or at least from his views on the subject. They lost the vote for Prohibition with a difference of 1,128 votes.

        PROHIBITION will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason, in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation and in making crimes out of things that are not crimes.
        Lincoln and Prohibition,
        Blazes on a Zigzag Trail

        BY HARRY MILLER LYDENBERG

        The 20th Century. With Randolph Hearst “Yellow Journalism” in full swing and as we know of his later “Reefer Madness” campaign and rhetoric. With an “alleged” $5 million contribution to the Christian Women’s Temperance League expanding them from 3 chapters to all of the states. With his lobby pounding Congress. It was definitely doable to pass the 18th. Like Ganja and Hemp competing with Big Pharma and Big Oil, gave us the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act. SO the 18th ended legal booze, just not for the intended purposes of temperance.

        “I am against Prohibition because it has set the cause of temperance back twenty years; because it has substituted an ineffective campaign of force for an effective campaign of education; because it has replaced comparatively un-injurious light wines and beers with the worst kind of hard liquor and bad liquor; because it has increased drinking not only among men but has extended drinking to women and even children.”
        — William Randolph Hearst,
        initially a supporter of Prohibition,
        explaining his change of mind in 1929.
        From “Drink: A Social History of America”
        by Andrew Barr (1999), p.239.

        Also Robert Ingersoll, not John, was the better man.

        Give to every other human being every right you claim for yourself.
        — Robert Green Ingersoll

        Not only are we here to protect the public from vicious criminals in the street but also to protect the public from harmful ideas.
        — John E. Ingersoll,
        then Director of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs,
        in a column by Jack Anderson in the Washington Post, June 24, 1972, p.31
        (Ingersoll became the first director of the DEA in 1974)

        Which leads me to believe the 18th Amendment was about removing Rockefeller Oil and Carnegie Steel competition after Henry Ford’s “car built from the ground up” that ran on Ethanol and had a car body made of farmer grown soy and hemp fiber. Everyone has heard all about Al Capone and the violence and Repeal Movement. One might think it odd that there was not one person arrested for drinking during the entire Prohibition.

        Al Capone and Watergate

        Then when the AMA objected to Nixon classification of cannabis as a schedule#1. Nixon placed it “temporarily” according to Sanjay Gupta. Well known medicinal use was around at least since 1840s O’Shaughnessy’s book and thousands of years in China and India. With all the hoopla of Watergate, Nixon and Congress fast tracked the (CSA) Controlled Substance Act, including GanjaRx and Hemp as S#1. With daily Trump diversions and a corporate press repeating every word and accusation. There are no doubt, draconian legislation’s brewing behind the scenes today.

        • DdC says:

          Amendment

          Which leads me to believe the 18th Amendment was about removing Rockefeller Oil and Carnegie Steel competition. Henry Ford’s Model “T” ran on ethanol, crude oil and kerosine. Later in the 30s, his “car built from the ground up” ran on Ethanol and had a car body made of farmer grown soy and hemp fiber plastic. Everyone has heard all about Al Capone and the violence and Repeal Movement. One might think it odd that there was not one person arrested for drinking during the entire Prohibition. Or that it did wipe out Ford’s fleet of ethanol cars.

  45. Servetus says:

    A new technology originating in Finland is expected to remove pharmaceutical products from public wastewater.

    In particular, Prozac has proven to be a threat to Oregon shore crabs. The over-exuberant crabs develop risk-taking behavior that makes them vulnerable to being eaten. The technique can also oxidize illicit drug products:

    13-APR-2018 — A doctoral dissertation to undergo a public examination at Lappeenranta University of Technology (LUT) examines the removal of harmful organic substances, such as pharmaceutical residues, energy efficiently from wastewater using only electricity. According to practical tests, pulsed corona discharge (PCD) may significantly reduce the environmental burden of pharmaceutical residues.

    According to the pilot tests in the chemical technology dissertation by Petri Ajo, M.Sc. (Tech.) specialising in environmental technology, pharmaceutical residues, their variants and other similar compounds degrade easily from wastewater because the process is non-selective.

    PCD is based on the instantaneous contact produced by an electric discharge between a plasma zone and water. In this phenomenon, water molecules and oxygen in the atmosphere create strong oxidants which degrade organic compounds into water and carbon dioxide. The study examined the formation of oxidants on the plasma-liquid-gas interface and their behaviour in the process. […]

    AAAS Public Release: Pulsed corona discharge removes pharmaceutical residues from wastewater

  46. SingingOurTune says:

    Trump, Gardner strike deal on legalized marijuana, ending standoff over Justice nominees

    “Trump has assured me that he will support a federalism-based legislative solution to fix this states’ rights issue once and for all. Because of these commitments, I have informed the Administration that I will be lifting my remaining holds on Department of Justice nominees.”

    https://tinyurl.com/y9baj3fx

    • σφαῖραBlue says:

      Trump Backs State-Level Marijuana Regulation, Lifting Pot Stocks
      https://tinyurl.com/SambolllBB

      • Atrocity says:

        I hope he sticks to it, but at the moment this seems to be more about deliberately irritating Sessions than any thought-out long-term strategy. I’d love to have to admit I was wrong later, though.

        If he actually signs a bill, I’d even be in favor of giving him the occasional meal once he’s locked up.

        • Will says:

          .
          .
          “I hope he sticks to it, but at the moment this seems to be more about deliberately irritating Sessions than any thought-out long-term strategy.”

          We’ll have to see how this plays out. I can imagine Gardner explaining to Trump his frustration regarding Sessions suggesting he wasn’t going to crack down on states where cannabis has been legalized, only to see Sessions do a u-turn and espouse the opposite. That may have resonated with Trump’s own extreme distaste for Sessions’ perceived disloyalty when he recused himself from taking any part in the investigations with respect to Russia. I’m not even sure Gardner’s blocking of potential judicial nominees is the biggest factor, even though it’s likely some members of the administration have been bending Trump’s ear about the problems this blockade is causing. (Being a ‘stable genius’, Trump will probably say he realized the issues on his own.)

          As a caution to Gardner, Trump, on numerous occasions, has suggested action to be taken only to tweet later, “I never said…”. Time will tell if Gardner has overplayed his hand by ending his blockade before any solid, meaningful legislation has been written. It’s also very possible that certain legislators buck Trump’s possible move to loosen federal regulations, only to have Trump fire off tweets against yet another group of perceived disloyalists before pivoting toward other unknown shiny objects.

          “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro”. — HST

        • primus says:

          Will: HST?

        • DdC says:

          I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me.

          https://i.pinimg.com/564x/63/a0/06/63a00629b327e559ac953390d32faf45.jpg

        • Will says:

          .
          .
          “Will: HST?”;

          Hunter S. Thompson (the quote is from ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’, 1971)

    • DdC says:

      Look at the weasel Beauregard…
      https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DatKOMMVwAARoGC.jpg

      The Trump administration is abandoning a Justice Department threat to crack down on recreational marijuana in states where it is legal.
      https://twitter.com/DendeCannabist/status/984962805370679296

  47. WalStMonky says:

    .
    .

    Sure, I’ve no doubt that his “evolution” is the result of his love of money. But I think that he must think that that regulated re-legalization is within the realm of the possible.

    I can’t recall any occasion where I’ve heard a conservative utter the word deschedule. Heck, it’s a very rare word in any politician’s lobbyist’s vocabulary. He was on CNBC yesterday along with the CEO of Acreage Holdings. CNBC was pimping the interview for about 4 hours every time they went to a commercial. Do you have any idea how many commercials CNBC airs? Well neither do because I always lose count because there are so many but without doubt it’s a boatload.

    I do think it would be prudent to keep 2 of the Ferengi Rules of Acquisitions in mind:

    Rule of Acquisition #76: Every once in a while, declare peace. It confuses the hell out of your enemies.

    Rule of Acquisition #217: You can’t free a fish from water.

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