This should be fun…

Via press release…

(San Jose, CA) — A coalition of campus organizations at San Jose State University are hosting a public debate tonight on Proposition 19 – the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010 – between former San Jose police chief Joseph McNamara and Ron Allen of the International Faith Based Coalition.

WHO: Joseph McNamara, former San Jose police chief & fellow at the Hoover Institute vs. Ron Allen of the International Faith Based Coalition

WHAT: Public debate on Proposition 19

WHERE: San Jose State University, Uhmunum Room of the Student Union

WHEN: Tonight, Tuesday, October 26, 6:00 pm PDT

“I’ve worked in law enforcement for 35 years, including 15 years as the police chief in San Jose. Over my career, I have seen firsthand how misguided our marijuana policies are for our state and our country,” says former San Jose police chief Joe McNamara. “California cannot afford to continue the same failed policies of the past. We need to pass Proposition 19 to tax and control marijuana like we do alcohol. Controlling and taxing marijuana will generate over a billion dollars in new revenue every year, in contrast to the current $14 billion criminally-controlled market for marijuana, the largest cash crop in California. This money will go to local communities, allow police to focus on violent crimes, and put drug cartels out of business.”

Proposition 19 has the support of law enforcement officials, judges, law professors, doctors, mothers, economists, politicians, the SIEU and other major labor groups, the California NAACP, and the California Council of Churches.

Tonight’s event will be hosted by Students for Sensible Drug Policy, and co-sponsored by a broad coalition of organizations, including the Silicon Valley chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, the SJSU College Republicans, SJSU Democratic Caucus, The Economics Club, The Sociology Club, Pi Sigma Alpha Political Science Honors Society, and Students for Quality Education.

The event is open to the general public. Admission is free and refreshments will be provided.

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39 Responses to This should be fun…

  1. Ben Mann says:

    I only wish it were being televised live on all 4 networks.

  2. If I had a rocket launcher says:

    Well they don’t give very much notice, Now do they? If I’d have known a week ago I would have started prepping the eggs and tomatoes to give them the response they deserve. I can’t get tomatoes and eggs to go rotten in just a few hours. Oh wait, that may be why only short notice was provided.

    Wow, the Soros donation brought out a whole bunch of know nothings in other forums. They have the poor little truth on the ropes and are beating him without mercy.

  3. Pete says:

    I bet Soros waited until the last minute to try to limit the amount that this would be all about him.

  4. Jared says:

    I would honestly pay to see this debate, even to go as far as pay-per-view. Ron Allen has lasted this long, feeding on religious fervor and subsidized opinion, but not for long. Considering he’s only been relevant for the time preceding the Proposition 19 vote, he will not be so after.

  5. Cannabis says:

    Yes, I agree Pete. We’ve debated the issues surrounding Prop 19 for the past few months rather than enduring a George Soros bash fest. He had a piece in the WSJ today: Why I Support Legal Marijuana

  6. claygooding says:

    Agreed Pete,by staying off the radar he saved the rants and raves about him being the devil with money.
    It will be limited to a one week barrage of prohib articles claiming everything from birth defects to tsunamis being his fault.

  7. claygooding says:

    It is time to end reefer madness and restore pot sanity.

    Join NORML and other drug policy reform groups at Jon Stewart’s Rally To Restore Sanity.

    http://blog.norml.org/2010/10/26/join-norml-at-the-rally-to-restore-pot-sanity/

    Now this is one I would like to go to,but just not enough cash for that flight,even if I hitchhiked home.

  8. Just me. says:

    Soros’ money spends too, even if our former drug czars offered money, That would be find, as long as it ends this insanity.

  9. permanentilt says:

    Oh wow there BETTER be video of this! I love watching Ron Allen, he is HILARIOUS!

    I just read most of the comments on the WSJ Soros article and was pleasantly surprised that it was at least 50-50 in support of what he said, maybe a few more supporters than detractors. Most of the comments started with something like, “Hell must be freezing over, I actually agree with George Soros!”. Overall I was happy with the comments I read. People were making all the right arguments and a few people seemed to be slowly but genuinely comming around to accepting this as a conservative issue. The anti-Soros posts mainly focused on him as a person, and the percieved “evil” he has wrought to earn his billions, they didn’t focus on marijuana as much. That said there was also a lot of “If Soros is for it I’m against it,” “What about the CHILDREN?” and “We are a nation of laws, if you smoke pot you are a criminal, period!” Honestly I probably saw more pro legalization posts than I usually do in WSJ legalization pieces.

  10. Jon Doe says:

    I still don’t get the hatred of Soros so prevalent in conservative circles. Even after reading the “George Soros conspiracy theories” page on Wikipedia all I can gather is that he’s a liberal/progressive guy with a lot of money who uses that money to back causes he believes in. Apparently that makes him the devil according to wackos like Glenn Beck.

  11. Maria says:

    Interesting. I hope someone films this and gets it up on the net. Should be interesting.

    What I get of Soros is that he’s at that rare point where a person gets ‘beyond money’. One of the few people like that on the planet, like Gates, who also uses his vast resources to fund/support/push causes he believes in. Or like Schmidt. Who is my favorite pick when getting all conspiracy theoryish during a smoke break.

  12. ezrydn says:

    If you’re going to the Stewart Rally, look for some tall, lanky Cowboy in a White Hat. He told me he’d be there.

    Another reason Soros may have waited was to figure out if the opposition had a Daddy Warbucks in position. Evidently not. If they say “He’s buying the election,” that’s fine because he’s buying it for me and all of us.

    Thanks again, George. I still say he’d look good in a Cavalry Stetson. Just need hat size and where to send it.

  13. Negation says:

    I hope SSDP records this and posts it on their website. I’d love to smoke a bowl and giggle uncontrollably (I mean stab everyone to death and steal your kid’s milk money, /sarcasm) at Ron Allen flying off the handle over everything and nothing.

  14. permanentilt says:

    Bishop Allen keeps coming back to “No one is arrested for marijuana, it is an infraction under the new law that the Gov signed. It is like a traffic ticket” to which my rebuttal is always, then why is it even illegal? If it is so awesome that we are not putting people in jail for it then why have laws against it? No criminal drug enterprises get rich when I speed, why do we hand them even more money when there is no threat of jail time for the user??? If it isn’t worth putting people in jail over, it isn’t worth creating a blackmarket over.

    No one ever rebuts with that tho 🙁

  15. Chris says:

    Good debate, watched all of it. I basically agreed with everything Joe said, it’s like all of the best arguments got concatenated into one speech with no wasted time belaboring any points, knowing that his audience already knew the explanation. Allen did waste some time repeating his points, which led to Joe looking at his hands like a bored kid.

  16. Chris says:

    permanentilt: Joe did mention that the decrim does not affect the supply and that creating legal market will end the violence associated with the trade.

  17. Windy says:

    I always have to laugh at the righties who rail about Soros’ money influencing an election or a policy, because they have their own Koch brothers doing the same thing.

    I always have to laugh at the lefties who rail about the Koch brothers’ money influencing an election or a policy, because they have their own Soros doing the same thing.

    Six of one, half dozen of the other.

  18. Alexander says:

    The Debate is available online @ http://ustre.am/oFFI

  19. Servetus says:

    George Soros is the single largest donor to the Democratic Party. He’s also a liberal who bases his political philosophy on Karl Popper’s book The Open Society and its Enemies (1945). Popper’s work is very much pro-democracy and anti-totalitarian, and in it Popper gores some of the conservatives’ favorite gurus, like Plato and Hegel.

  20. malcolmkyle says:

    I’ll sing no more now till I get a drink!

    I’ve just finished watching the 5th episode of Boardwalk Empire. In my humble opinion, the first 4 were OK but this one was pure genius!

  21. If I had a rocket launcher says:

    permanentilt
    October 26, 2010 at 7:08 pm

    Oh wow there BETTER be video of this! I love watching Ron Allen, he is HILARIOUS!<<<—
    —————————–
    You know I think we could make substantial progress in getting rid of crack addiction just by making some PSA's demonstrating what it did to poor Bishop Allen. Just follow him around and make video's of his normal, hour to hour business. We should be able to scare 98% of the potential crack users straight.

    The man really puzzles me. I've never once wished the authorities would come and arrest me. Crack really fucked up my life and it's easy to see this in hindsight. Now you need to remember my that my crack days started before the death of Len Bias. Get some issues of 'High Times' from the early 1980s and you'll see they promoted sniffing cocaine as a fun, wholesome, and practically as safe as cannabis. Hmm, maybe I'm remembering that wrong. When was it that Richard Pryor set himself on fire? Boy did the know nothings like pounding that as a risk of smoking cocaine as if flammable liquids were req

    Directly after Len Bias died and specifically because of it is the last time I can recall a disruption in the retail supply chain of black market MADs. The goal of those prosecuting the war on (some) drugs is to make sure that everyone can get cheaper, more potent and addictive drugs available on demand for all citizens of the US no matter where they live, right? Well, mission accomplished. It's good to see the government finally get something to work.

  22. malcolmkyle says:

    Thanks most kindly for that link Alexander

  23. Maria says:

    @Alexander. Thanks for the link. The vid itself is available in the video archive… Religious personal anecdotes and rantings, versus calm rational experience and facts. I know where I’ll land, every time. Allen is frankly brain hurtingly painful to listen to.

    As to Soros, oh the Pandoras box out there. Lots of interesting stuff about connections with Monsanto/Big Oil/Hemp/cartels/big pharma/trade organizations/corps/genetic patents etc. And the thing is, there’s definitely bad stuff going on there. There really is, but not because Cannabis is somehow intrinsically different but because there always is.

    Cannabis was, is and will be no different than any other resource in that sense. I’m not sure how anyone can think that voting no on Prop 19 will solve or win all of the the very real current and looming fights. And if some power players are salivating at the idea of Prop 19 then so be it, the same tool can be used by both an attacker and a defender. Prop 19 is a tool.

    So for me, the existence of these power plays and future fights is not an argument against Prop 19 itself. It’s at most an argument that Prop 19 is not even close to being the end of the wider struggle of individuals against tyranny and no honest proponent says it is. It’s only the ‘No’ guys who seem to think it should somehow be such a holy grail and if it’s not then it must suck and be voted down.

  24. ezrydn says:

    Bishop Allen kept throwing up Arnold’s little edict about possession being an infraction, like it’s been that way forever, not just a week or two. He doesn’t seem to understand that the incoming Governor can overturn that, also, with the flick of a pen.

    Whereas, Prop 19, when passed, would be untouchable by any governor.

    And let’s look at “gateway.” If I go into a store to get beer, there’s hard liquor offered. If I go in for coffee, there’s cigaretts being offered. Ever wonder what they call a coke a “soft drink?” If there’s a “soft drink,” there is also a “hard drink.” Gateway? Yeah, let’s talk “gateways.”

    If Cannabis is sold in liquor stores, there is no “gateway” to move onto. The other “dasterdly 6” would probably end up in true pharmacies, via Rx. And please remember, Cocaine is SCHEDULE 2, not 1!! I always remind people of that when THEY bring it up.

  25. Just me. says:

    OH 6 more days !! The suspence is agonizing !!

  26. claygooding says:

    Over one million foreclosures across our nation will put many people on the streets next month. Congress has already signaled that they will not extend unemployment benefits.
    We are nearly at the point where the government is going to have to cut programs just so they can get their yearly raise.
    The AG is going to have to borrow money from somewhere if
    he wants to start arresting CA marijuana criminals.
    And if the foreclosures and lack of UB starts moving even more people into the streets in the middle of the winter,the growth industry up in Pete’s neck of the woods will be mortuary worker.
    This is going to be a real interesting winter.

  27. darkcycle says:

    Damn, missed the debate. When I have time I’ll try to find a copy.
    Yeah, George Soros stayed away to avoid being the center of this debate.And Yeah, the Right has the Koch brothers, it also has the Star-Chamber of commerce, The API, Rupert Murdoch, Dick Armey, Turd-Blossom, etc, etc…
    The reason they are upset with Soros isn’t because he has money and uses it for influence, that’s the American Way. They are upset because no LEFTY is ever supposed to get that rich and powerful. They can’t stand that someone who doesn’t share their phiolsophy made it into their ranks.

  28. If I had a rocket launcher says:

    (doggone software posted my note above before it was ready. The last part of the second paragraph should read):

    When was it that Richard Pryor set himself on fire? Boy did the know nothings like pounding that as a risk of smoking cocaine as if flammable liquids were required to freebase cocaine. A mildly interesting point is we were freebasing back then, it didn’t start getting called crack until the later 1980s, at least in the lily white side of town.
    —————————————————————————————————————–

    Just FYI if you didn’t know already Mr. Pryor purposefully doused himself with rum and lit himself on fire in a suicide attempt. My source for that claim is hearing the words come out of his mouth. He admitted to lying about it because he was so ashamed of himself. One really can argue that his immolation was a direct result of freebasing because after a few years of heavy cocaine use the brain quits producing endogenous dopamine and this results in a black hole of despair. But that doesn’t happen to people who haven’t significantly abused cocaine but the know nothings were presenting it as a standard risk of ever using cocaine. It takes a consuming a couple of kilos in a relatively short period of time before that’s even a consideration. I still recall right after I quit thinking how sad it was that I would never laugh again. I think of that mental black hole every time I hear Soundgarden’s “Fell on Black Days” Fortunately I was wrong about that.

    Sharing that much of my life experience with Bishop Allen just leaves me puzzled that he would blame the consequences of cocaine use on cannabis. I never once wished the police would come and arrest me. My life was fucked, and getting arrested would have just meant it was more fucked.I doubt I would have been able to quit cocaine without it. Please kids, remember to have a parent or responsible adult present if you ever decide to try cocaine. Those would be the people that are going to explain that the gov’t isn’t lying about cocaine just because they’re lying about cannabis.

    Yes, there are a lot of people who think cannabis is excellent medicine for people in withdrawal from the hard drugs (that includes drinking alcohol!) Shortly before his death Dr. Tod Mikuriya was involved in an ongoing study of degenerate addicts using cannabis to help get through the pain of withdrawal. He was particularly focused on addicts that preferred drinking alcohol, but cannabis certainly helps anyone with the problem regardless of which MAD is the degenerate addict’s drug of choice. All 4 significantly addictive drugs have the dopamine stripping result in common. For a more in depth examination of Dr. Tod’s work with alcoholics: http://hamsnetwork.org/mm/
    http://www.mikuriya.com/cw_alcsub.pdf
    Also of note is the Harborside Dispensary in Oakland sponsors a 12 step program that accepts that cannabis consumption is irrationally and incorrectly in the same class as heroin, cocaine, alcohol, and methamphetamine.
    Interesting, if I knew it before I had totally forgotten but Dr. M was working on cannabis for PTSD. I think it must have slipped my mind because I was a big fan of Dr. M’s work for a couple of years before he bought the farm and highly doubt that I wouldn’t have missed anything that he published. Well I guess I have to stop posting claims that the Israelis were responsible for that. Nuts. It was one of the more impressive push backs to mention when the know nothings claim that medical cannabis is a ‘scam’. I guess it is still fairly impressive that the Israelis have done extensive research and have endorsed cannabis as medicine for PTSD. It’s also notable that Israel is the only place in the world when cannabis is used as a medicine when those patients end up in the hospital. Has the US Government even managed to bring themselves to identify PTSD as a specific medical condition? It would mean the US would have to pay out disability to a significant number of soldiers who suffer it. Oh well, we don’t get to write our own set of facts like the know nothings can.

  29. darkcycle says:

    Luckily for me, I was too broke throughout the cocaine fad to afford to do any thing but watch. I was in college and grad school in the eighties..For my late night study binges I would pop an anti-histamine and drink a coke. In those days I had a swing shift job at and oil refinery, doing a VERY dangerous job, and I think it was mostly adrenalin that kept me awake at work, because my schedual included about four hours for stuff like sleep, food and showers. Even the minimal impact of having a drink after work would screw me up for days. Pot, I could smoke pot all day, every day and it wouldn’t have that effect. So
    I did.

  30. If I had a rocket launcher says:

    I actually specifically recall how my decision to give the coke a try was because the ‘drugs are bad mmm-kay’ people had lied to me about cannabis and acid. Yes, the acid also got the nod because of the gov’t lies about cannabis.

  31. darkcycle says:

    I’ve done more acid than Timothy Leary. Summers? Following the Dead!!

  32. permanentilt says:

    Chris: I meant specifically the “if its a good thing people aren’t going to jail then why is it illegal??” Not as much the getting rid of the blackmarket which Joe did cover extensively.
    Rocket launcher: I can attest to marijuana curing alcoholism. I was pretty bad off as an alcoholic, some real bad stuff ended up happening, multiple arrests, multiple hospitalizations, lost friends, quit all my more productive hobbies. Every day I would think I wanted to quit, or at least cut down, and nearly every day I’d pass out drunk to fall asleep. One day, after getting 8 stitches in my hand, I had enough and decided to focus on weed (I was a big smoker in high school and college but focused more on alcohol after). At first I had to smoke 1.5 oz of schwagg a week (couldn’t afford the amount of good I had to smoke) gradually that fell to about .5 oz a week and then I went back to the goods, still don’t smoke schwagg due to the fact that I can’t stomach supporting the war in Mexico. Nowadays I can drink or not drink, smoke or not smoke (not smoking now because of job 🙁 ) and it’s all good. Thank God I had a schwagg connection and understood the healing power of herb or I’d be dead or in jail.

    As for crack, I smoked it 1 time and when I came down realized it was something I never wanted to touch again. So much for the “one hit and you’re an addict” nonsense.

  33. B-roll says:

    Meanwhile, in mexico…

  34. Maria says:

    @darkcycle
    The link Alexander posted is the link to the live feed (which is not active right now), scroll down a bit and the archived video is under it dated the 26th. I seriously had to skip through Allens ramblings at one point.

  35. Cliff says:

    “Bishop Allen keeps coming back to “No one is arrested for marijuana, it is an infraction under the new law that the Gov signed. It is like a traffic ticket””

    ..but you still will have to pee for your paycheck like a trained seal.

  36. malcolmkyle says:

    I actually forced myself to listen to Allen’s ranting as I was curious to know what it must feel like to be him. It appears he’s unable to put a bandage on the real problem. Could it be, that, in his case at least, years of heavy crack smoking has taken it’s toll concerning endorphin production. — He feels like shit so he sounds like shit!

    Joe! At your age and fine eminence, you did well to more than just survive this horrific and painful ordeal of having to listen to endless, deluded guff from the mouth of this poisonous, phony pastor.

    Thank you sir!

  37. Alexander says:

    Here is the more accurate URL of the recorded debate: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/10444148

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