Open Thread

I’m taking a group of 18 college students to New York tomorrow for a week of theatre and walking tours over Spring Break. We’ll be seeing Diary of a Madman with Geoffrey Rush, How to Succeed in Business with Daniel Radcliffe and John Laroquette, the much-talked-about Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark, Good People with Frances McDormand, and probably The Book of Mormon. I’ll be taking them on walking tours of Coney Island/Brighton Beach, Lower Manhattan/Chinatown/Little Italy, Chelsea/Meatpacking District/Village, East Village, Midtown, Central Park, Brooklyn Bridge, Roosevelt Island. I’m also really looking forward to eating at a lot of my favorite places.

I plan to continue posting while I’m gone as I can, but may not have much time.


bullet image UMass professor drops bid to grow medical pot (see update)

Sad. It’s what they do. They tie you up in processes and legal steps and hope that you just die or get tired before you get satisfaction.

A University of Massachusetts-Amherst professor says he’s dropping his nearly decade-long fight to persuade the government to let him grow marijuana in bulk for medical research.

Horticulturist Lyle Craker wanted to cultivate marijuana to boost research into the plant’s potential medicinal benefits. But he’s been rebuffed — even as more than a dozen states have legalized medical marijuana.

Craker, 70, said he saw no end in sight to the legal wrangling, given the likelihood of an appeals process that could run several years, or even decades. He was frustrated, too, that he never got a hoped-for boost from the Obama administration.

“I’m disappointed in our system,” he said. “But I’m not disappointed at what we did. I think our efforts have brought the problem to the public eye more. … This is just the first battle in a war.”

[Thanks, Tom]

Update: Thanks to Rick in comments, it appears that this report is premature. Go ahead and read the comment. They’re not giving up yet.


bullet image Obama, Calderon Pledge Cooperation On Drug Wars

Yawn.

Seeking to repair damaged relations, President Barack Obama and Mexican President Felipe Calderon agreed Thursday to deepen their cooperation in combating drug violence […]

During a joint news conference at the White House, Obama praised Calderon for his “extraordinary courage” in fighting the violent drug cartels that have been responsible for deaths on both sides of the border. Obama pledged to speed up U.S. aid to train and equip Mexican forces to help in those efforts, but he also acknowledged that the U.S. must stem the flow of cash and guns to Mexico that have aided the cartels.


bullet image Sócrates Rizzo: PRI Presidents oversaw drug trafficking

During an interview session the former PRI Governor admitted that previous PRI presidents held strong control over drug trafficking routes that prevented the attacks on civilians and the violence that Mexico is undergoing today.

Although an open secret in Mexican society and a charge occasionally leveled publicly by the country’s two other major political parties, the National Action Party (PAN) and the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD), this is the first time in recent history that a former or current PRI politician has admitted publicly that this arrangement existed.

“Somehow the problems with drug trafficking were avoided, there was a strong State control and a strong President and a strong Attorney General and a tight control of the Army.”

“Somehow they (drug traffickers) were told: ‘You go through here, you here, you there’, but do not touch these other places,” he said in his speech.

The former Governor added that this strategy allowed the State to ensure the social peace that has been lost in the war on drugs launched by the PAN administration of Felipe Calderon.

Unless we’re willing to either legalize and take the profit out of trafficking (or wave a magic wand and make demand go away), the Mexican government really only has two choices:

  1. Wink and let the traffickers get rich without interference
  2. Take them on head-on with force… and the traffickers still get rich, except now lots of people are dead and the country destabilizes.

Once we legalize, then you can crush the cartels successfully.


bullet image Extra drug tests added to try to stop medical marijuana patient from winning the race. Iditarod Expands Drug Testing After Last Year’s Pothead Victory

The top finishers all tested clean, according to Iditarod officials, including champion Lance Mackey, who believed jealous competitors called for the drug tests in hopes the throat-cancer survivor and well-known medicinal cannabis smoker would test positive.


bullet image Reyes Family: “Militarization of Drug War in Mexico to Blame for Extortions, Kidnappings and Murders”

The recent kidnapping and murder of three family members related to a slain human rights defender in the state of Chihuahua has drawn more scrutiny to the Mexican military’s role in policing and fighting the drug war. Lost in the national and international media’s reporting of the story are claims that soldiers on the ground in and around Ciudad Juarez are involved with committing assassinations and kidnappings to silence those who accuse them of corruption.

Members of the Reyes Salazar family have criticized the military for a number of illegal acts, including extortion, harassment, and murder. In the last three years, six family members have been killed. All of the incidents involve suspicious circumstances that happened after the family began denouncing the Army for human rights abuses.


bullet image You’re not paranoid. They really are out to get you.

In This Week’s Corrupt Cops Stories, there’s an extraordinary (I hope) case where police, prosectors, and judge all conspired to allow perjured testimony to be used.


bullet image Harper’s Faith-Based Drug War by Neil Boyd

The Harper Conservatives are under fire for their extraordinarily expensive legislative initiative, Bill S-10. Among other things, the bill seeks to spend at least hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on prison building, in order to impose a mandatory minimum term of six months in jail for anyone who grows more than six marijuana plants. […]

The mistake we make is to believe that the Harper Conservative agenda is based on fact, data relevant to public health, or the best available empirical evidence. That’s not what they care about. Stephen Harper is an ideologue, publicly committed to increasing imprisonment for a greater range of criminal offences and personally in favour of the death penalty. […]

Bill S-10 is about a belief in a particular world view – one that is hostile and emotionally driven in its intent, having more in common with George Bush’s Texas than our longstanding Canadian values of tolerance and compassion. We should not pretend that this legislation has anything to do with evidence – or with making our country a safer place in which to live.


bullet image Bolivian President Evo Morales snubs US drugs agents – Bolivian President Evo Morales has refused to invite US anti-narcotics agents back into the country.

Since the arrest last week of Gen Sanabria by DEA agents in Panama, some opposition politicians have been calling for the return to Bolivia of the American agents to help the Andean country in its fight against drug trafficking.

But President Morales said the DEA was “an instrument the US uses to blackmail those countries who don’t comply with imperialism and capitalism”.

He said that even though Bolivia was only a small country, its government, armed forces and police would not bow to the DEA.

“The fight against drugs is driven by geopolitical interests,” he said.

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40 Responses to Open Thread

  1. darkcycle says:

    Sounds like fun, Pete. Enjoy yourselves and stay out of trouble.

  2. Jake says:

    “deepen cooperation” – Empty words

    “extraordinary courage” – I would love to know how any part of Calderon’s war involves courage on his part. He sits in his marble mansion whilst regular people do the dying at the stroke of his pen. Real courage from a politician is to challenge the status quo!

  3. divadab says:

    Boy it would sure be nice to get the DEA out of our country, also.

  4. This is not my America says:

    Obama pledged to speed up U.S. aid to train and equip Mexican forces to help in those efforts, but he also acknowledged that the U.S. must stem the flow of cash and guns to Mexico that have aided the cartels.

    ——————————————————————————–
    Mexican forces that will end up as enforcers for the cartel at some point? AH good going you boobs.

    Train and equip? Train to become better killers for their future jobs at the office of cartels and drug smuggling(OCDS) using equipment(guns?) provided by the US government? I though we were going to stop the flow of guns…oh there I go thinking again.

  5. Duncan20903 says:

    So did you know that Mr. Mackey got a Marinol script and was using that during last years race although he said he wouldn’t use it during the race?

    Regardless, I think they should test the dogs too. 🙂

  6. allan420 says:

    Have fun Pete, altho’ I realize the hard work involved in corrupting… rrr uh… educating young minds… I still appreciate some of my college profs to this day, almost 35 years later up on down the road.

  7. Duncan20903 says:

    I think I’m getting a man crush on Dr. Phil Leveque.
    .

    “Medical Marijuana, Marinol and Ignorant Marijuanaphobes in the Legislatures”

    http://www.salem-news.com/articles/march042011/marijuana-medicine-pl.php

  8. Duncan20903 says:

    .
    .
    Wow, half a million people showed up to an event in Nepal to watch people smoking cannabis. Evidently this is an annual event, but is noted in the mews this year because the Nepalese authorities forbade the audience from enjoying cannabis. The performers were not bothered for their consumption.
    http://www.sify.com/news/nepal-bans-sale-of-marijuana-at-hindu-festival-news-international-ldepuffcdhc.html

    Nepal has reportedly banned the sale of marijuana during a popular Hindu festival wherein the male devotees traditionally smoke the drug and share it with young men and women.

    About 500,000 devotees had attended the festival on Wednesday at Kathmandu’s Pashupati temple, which is considered the most revered Hindu shrine in Nepal, according to the Daily Telegraph.

    Thousands of Indian devotees throng Nepal annually for the festival to mark the end of winter. The highlight is a bonfire at night at which devotees smoke marijuana.

    The paper quoted Police Chief Santosh Singh Rathore as saying that his department had patrolled the area and stopped marijuana dealings, but did not prevent the holy men from using the drug.

    Wow, something like that would likely give Skip Miller and Calvina Fay an apoplexy. Shall we chip in for tickets to send them over there next year?

  9. darkcycle says:

    Pashupati was like the Nepalese Hempfest. Hippies from all over the globe and the only original Temple Balls.

  10. Servetus says:

    One can only imagine the frustration Horticulturist Lyle Craker must feel regarding his futile efforts to get permission to do his medical research on cannabis. The potential benefits of Dr. Craker’s capable research abilities, and those of others, lost due to the cult-like and systematic attack on science by the DEA, paints prohibition once again as a tyrant and oppressor of the people.

    The same type of drama played out when professors at various universities in Europe introduced the Cartesian system to their colleagues and students. Not until the beginning of the 18th century did academia prevail over theology on the topic of geocentrism. Today, 311 years later, nearly four-out-of-five Americans believe that the earth orbits the sun—that’s progress, American-style.

    Even though totalitarians like to harness the power of science, mostly for killing people, they are loathe to give science a free reign when it might contradict their political dogma. Most know the famous example of Stalin and Lysenkoism, but Hitler was another anti-science charlatan. He believed a school’s priorities should focus on teaching will-power, and he considered science instruction to be “last in importance.” (cf: Timothy Ferris, The Science of Liberty: Democracy, Reason and the Laws of Nature (2010), pp. 194-5).

    Hitler was basically a pseudoscience freak. To help his digestion, he drank a toxic gun-cleaning fluid. His physician, Gustav Freiherr von Pohl, mapped out harmful “earth-rays” for him using a dowsing rod. Hitler believed the stars were big balls of ice; that the earth was hollow. He discounted the military potential of jets and rockets. He thought the atomic bomb was a fantasy promoted by “Jewish physics.” Hitler’s racial buzzword “Aryan” is a Sanskrit term that merely refers to Persian nobility, not a race. His ideas of racial purity were completely anti-scientific—a species derives its strength from its genetic diversity, not its singleness or “purity.”

    Someday, when the DEA lies cold and dead on its morgue slab, investigators will autopsy the corpse to reveal the geocentrists and assorted anti-intellectuals that went into making the DEA the tyrannical monster it is. Until then, we can only guess how bad it must be.

    • strayan says:

      “I know perfectly well, just as well as all those tremendously clever intellectuals, that in the scientific sense there is no such thing as race… With the conception of race, National Socialism will carry its revolution abroad and recast the world.” — Adolph Hitler

      http://books.google.com.au/books?id=INmP6-mdEccC&lpg=PP1&dq=racialization&pg=PA30#v=onepage&q&f=false

      Hitler knew that race was a bullshit concept but could see the immense political value in it.

      By the way Servetus, if Aryan is not a race, what is? Perhaps you could list the different races for me.

      • darkcycle says:

        Allow me: One. The human race. Any other conception is divisive dogma. Just so’s we’re clear.

      • Duncan20903 says:

        Have you ever been with a beancounter who wanted you to fill out a form, one of the questions being your race? Try putting in human next time, the reactions really are precious.

      • Servetus says:

        Darkcycle is right. The determination of race is still too difficult to determine genetically, assuming it can be determined using some yet-to-be determined definition.

        Also, people from places like India, Sri Lanka, Sicily and Polynesia can have a skin color as dark as any African, yet people from those regions are considered to be Caucasians.

        No definition of race exists that makes sense when juxtaposed with modern, scientific terminology.

      • This is not my America says:

        I like to put Daytona 500 for that question. 😉

  11. Rick Steeb says:

    THIS JUST IN [Re Lyle Craker]

    To: Dale Gieringer
    Subject: Re: Fwd: ARO: AP- UMass professor drops bid to grow medical pot
    From: Rick Doblin

    This is an incorrect report. ACLU and MAPS are
    working on our final brief which is due to DEA
    on Monday. It’s a strong, persuasive document,
    that will be rejected by DEA at some indefinite
    point in the future, maybe soon or maybe in as
    long as two years or more.

    What’s going on here is that ACLU has told Lyle
    they almost certainly don’t want to take the
    case to the Court of Appeals, after DEA issues
    its final order rejecting the ALJ
    recommendation. Lyle got confused. ACLU is
    still representing him, and I may be able to
    find funding for the appeals court case to be
    argued by Jenner & Block in DC.

    So, ACLU is still on the case and I’m not giving
    up even if they bail after the DEA rejects our
    final motion due on Monday.

    • DdC says:

      Can’t stand his old man
      and I have no respect for lushes.
      Ask Dunkem…

      If it’s one of his pooparazzi interviews I’ll pass.
      Though he has the right to be a lush and the media circus around him is by far in worse shape and make less sense.
      He delved into 911 I saw on a Community TV video.
      But like the Ganjawar. It takes more than knowledge and truth. If its something different let me know and I’ll watch it. This puter’s on dial up and U2b can be a drag.
      I don’t remember referencing him, why me?

      • strayan says:

        ‘Cause I know how much Dunkem (and his crack pipe) gives you the irrits.

        It is something different (and just for laughs)

        😛

  12. darkcycle says:

    That was Charlie Sheen’s “Mel Gibson Moment”. I understand the drive to watch these “self-immolations”, after all, it’s dramatic watching someone come apart…
    As far as I know, nobody here has imploded…well not completely and irretrievably…
    And I think there’s a special place for Charlie Sheen (right alongside Pee-Wee Herman and Billy Carter, in the freak show in the side tent)…
    It’s one thing to climb into the toilet, quite another to reach up and flush, with your own hand.
    I do fail to see any relevance to Duncan though. Was he the Blond doing the interview?

  13. darkcycle says:

    I thought Duncan was the gentleman with the sign in his post of 3/5/11 at 8:12….

    • DdC says:

      Except he said Judge not, that ye be not judged… close for Dunk. btw I got around to watching Humboldt County. Pretty good. Pretty real. Plot was weird and do all Ganja flicks have to end tragically? I know plenty of happy endings. Or happily ongoing. What happened to the chick? So now this med student is going to grow pot? Bogdanovich is such a stoner, seeing him pass the joint by was probably the most unbelievable part. I’d rate it similar to Homegrown or the Craig Ferguson flick Saving Grace. They’re all sort of in league with the Billy Jack flicks. Hero of the downtrodden, or good bad guys fighting the status quo good old boys or DEA good old boys and goils. Only instead of a commune, its growers. Still better than the stoner flicks.

      Every year we fight the Fed grants for CAMP funding DEAth circles. If we don’t, the county just accepts it. Laying off workers, slashing budgets for roads, teachers and even the developementally handicapped, but then they have eonugh to give $265,000.oo for each of the 50 CA counties to eradicate pot plants. They also get bargains on SWAT tanks. As long as the money isn’t used for real shit. Pitifools! What’s the scoop on “Rolling Kansas”?

      Good Movies about Weed

      movies linked with ‘marijuana’

      • darkcycle says:

        Rolling Kansas, basically another stoner on the road looking for the holy grail score movie. Take Cheech and Chong out of the Canna-Van and make them college students in Kansas. It’s not bad, or as bad as it might be. Will require plenty of weed and maybe a magazine to distract you to sit through.
        I wound up “collecting” stoner movies on DVD about ten years ago when I started using medical Cannabis for my chronic wasting (result of a chemical exposure from a job I worked when in school, long story.). As a joke my wife and friends began buying them for me. Then as a perverse return joke, I began WATCHING them. Most are drek. Some have genuinely funny moments, but get used to stereotyping. Humbolt County is the only one so far that seems to have moved partially beyond the stereotypes (well the worst of them, anyway). I’m waiting for the first really good pot movie. Someone should make a dramatization of Denis Perone’s struggle in California, or Brownie Mary’s work with AIDS patients. One problem is: in Hollywood, it can’t be done. Would have to be an independent filmmaker, or it would have to be somebody like Spielberg or Lucas, who could make it, promote it and release it without worrying about costs. Mainstream Hollywood, as f**ked up as Charlie Sheen and his ilk are on drugs, would never go there. Maybe even not after full legalization. Sorry to say.

  14. darkcycle says:

    Ya know, regarding the arguement that DEA agents would not be able to tell the difference between a field of industrial hemp and a field of marijuana: It seems obvious to me. One has tall skinny twenty foot plants and a hard bitten farmer, the other has short four foot bushes and a hippy drum circle. Now what’s so hard about that?

    • allan420 says:

      you mean somebody actually used the hiding-the-ganj-in-the-hemp scenario? How stupid can stupid get?

      Wait, never mind… I’ve seen…

    • Duncan20903 says:

      I don’t know, when the argument is based on the lack of native intelligence of the average drug enforcement agent I have a pretty hard time taking the other side. How the heck am I supposed to argue that drug agents are have the native intelligence required for tying shoelaces much less for telling the difference between one plant and the next? Do you know these idiots have mistaken horse mint for cannabis?
      http://www.drugwarrant.com/2010/05/yes-they-call-it-weed-but/

      They try the same argument with the ‘we don’t have a pot breathalyzer’ straw man. You know the first time I heard that one was in 1990? Two decades later the argument still gets traction. So is a test for present intoxication beyond the ken of mortal men, or is it just too darn convenient an argument? has anyone ever explained why the Aussies think they have such a test?

  15. DdC says:

    Such a scam. It’s totally different in size of the plant and gardening techniques. Spacing. You take time to remove male plants to avoid pollinating, to increase potency. Now the DEA bullshit says they would use hemp as camouflage? To pollinate $400/oz kyndbud into burlap? Crazytalk. The reason Hemp is outlawed is corporate competition to fossil fools. But since Klintoon it’s been a numbers booster in Ganja eradications. Similar scam to lower Ganja extractions for sublingual sprays while leaving Ganja and Hemp flowertops illegal to smoke. Same bogus comparison to “cigarettes” smoke when Ganja hasn’t the chemical adulterants. Same as why Tommy Chong got 9 months for blown glass artwork and Oxyrush got nothing for doctor shopping hillbilly heroin. I keep waiting for the people to understand the big polkadot elephant in the room really doesn’t belong there. Its not a weird coffee table or water fountain. Its a fricking polka dot elephant damnit!

    98 Percent Of All Domestically Eradicated Marijuana Is “Ditchweed,” DEA Admits

    Al Capone and Watergate were red herrings to divert the countries attention from the Fascist acts of eliminating competition. Booze/Ethanol or Ganja//Hemp.

  16. DdC says:

    Dumbed downed masses rely on certain words to sooth the manufactured confusion. In spite of their lying eyes, they continue to seek shelter in herds. Fed and Led by vested ignorance. Perpetuate! Profit on Prophets selling Chevy’s at the Levy. To the po folks who can’t afford the gas. Plan “B” in case of home forfeiture. Outsourced unemployed, towns dry, cars packed but now there’s no road. The New Weird Odor is Neither. Tain’t new, tain’t even weird. Plain as dirt right in front of our lying eyes. Fascism.

    The US business interest in farm and drug chemicals, tree lumber/paper, aluminum and sheet metal. Meat, Dairy and Fish. Booze and Crude oil synthetics. Nix the MonSatan Dow poisons. Especially with a near monopoly by outlawing Hemp and Ganja. More than just coincidence. Buzzwords divert and lies prevail without question. A direct logical link to who, what, when, where, and why the Ganjawar exists. Available to all who aren’t enthusiastic Denialists. Unlike the ONDCP/PFDA gossip choir’s crystal ball, soothsaying some in the future aborition. To provide money and cheap labor… for the prison industrial complex.

    Tricky Dick and Bevilacqua rushed passing the CSA. Like the same Neocon Fascism did in the Iraq “emergency” or Wall St bailout “emergency” or new and improved Ganjawar “emergency”. Homeyland Insurance Patriot Ax, Higher Education Ax, RAVE Ax. Same as the “Marihuana Tax Ax of 1937. When will the liars spending taxes, to implement policy derived from their lies. Pay their debt to society? When we answer that and round up the varmints, then we will celebrate with puff’s of smoke, merriment and much joy. Or 4:20pmpst, whatever comes first.

    “The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed, for the vast masses of the nation are in the depths of their hearts more easily deceived than they are consciously and intentionally bad. The primitive simplicity of their minds renders them a more easy prey to a big lie than a small one, for they themselves often tell little lies but would be ashamed to tell a big one.”
    From Benito Mussolini,
    contributing to the “London Sunday Express,” December 8, 1935

    Prohibitionist WoD Junkies

    1936: DuPont obtains a patent license to manufacture synthetic “plastic fibers” from German industrial giant I.G. Farben Corporation. The patent license is obtained as part Germany’s reparation payments to the United States after World War I. A few years later, I.G. Farben manufactures deadly Zyklon-B gas, used in Nazi death camps to murder millions of Jews (along with many homosexuals and drug users). DuPont owned and financed approximately 30% of Hitler’s I.G. Corps, the military-industrial backbone of the fascist Third Reich.

    Marijuana Tax Act, signed Aug. 2, 1937; effective Oct. 1, 1937.

    Corporate Predators…

    Be on gaurd against science without humanity, Politics without principle, Knowledge without character, Wealth without work, Commerce without morality, Pleasure without conscience, And worship without sacrifice.
    ~ Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

    STATE OF THE UNION: CORRUPT

    Italian fascism and German Nazism had their admirers within the U.S. business community and the corporate owned press. Bankers, publishers, and industrialists, including the likes of Henry Ford, traveled to Rome and Berlin to pay homage, receive medals, and strike profitable deals. Many did their utmost to advance the Nazi war effort, sharing military industrial secrets and engaging in secret transactions with the Nazi government, even after the United States entered the war. During the 1920s and early 1930s, major publications like Fortune, the Wall Street Journal, Saturday Evening Post, New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and Christian Science Monitor hailed Mussolini as the man who rescued Italy from anarchy and radicalism.

    Latest Hypocritical GOPerversion, another Prohibition!

    If Ganja was as bad as fewer and fewer keep saying. Would they really need… SCAPEGOATING – Blaming social problems on a cultural, racial, or behaviorial group. PREJUDICE – Selling the public on the idea that all members of the targeted group are ‘bad’ people. LIES -‘Facts’, which cannot be verified, and pseudo scientific studies are used as propaganda against the targeted group. History is rewritten. NO PUBLIC DEBATE – “These people have no right to have their viewpoiunt aired.” and ” Anyone who disagrees or questions us must be one of them!” DEHUMANIZATION – Characterizing all members of a targeted group as subhuman and typically capable of monstrous deeds and/or crimes. PROTECT OUR CHILDREN -“They corrupt, seduce and or destroy our children.” CIVIL LIBERTIES SACRIFICED -“We must give up some of our freedoms, liberties, and rights in order to combat this menace to society.” LEGAL DESCRIMINATION – Laws criminalize members of targeted group and they may be denied jobs, the right to own property and/or be restricted as to where they may live or go. INFORMERS – Citizens are urged to ‘turn in’ friends, neighbors, co-workers and family members. SECRET POLICE – Non-uniformed police squads set up to wage war on targeted groups utilizing deception, infiltration, espionage and entrapment. CONFISCATION OF PROPERTY – Property and assets are seized from people who are members of targeted group. Property may be divided between the informer and the state. REMOVAL FROM SOCIETY – Prisons, rehabilitation camps, ‘hospitals’, executions and genocide…
    (“Kill them All” “Zero Tolerance”)

    “There is a point at which the law becomes immoral and unethical. That point is reached when it becomes a cloak for the cowardice that dares not stand up against blatant violations of justice. A state that supresses all freedom of speech, and which by imposing the most terrible punishments, treats each and every attempt at criticism, however morally justified, and every suggestion for improvement as plotting to high treason, is a state that breaks an unwritten law.”
    – Kurt Huber,
    The head of “White Rose”,
    killed by the Nazis in 1943.

  17. DdC says:

    Fear-mongering newspaper headlines can harm children, says psychologist
    Newspaper frontpages with scary headlines may harm children as well as break the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, said Prof Magne Raundalen, a leading Norwegian child psychologist.

    “Marihuana makes fiends of boys in thirty days —
    Hashish goads users to bloodlust.”

    Reefer Madness Newspaper Headlines

    “Narcotics police are an enormous, corrupt international bureaucracy … and now fund a coterie of researchers who provide them with ‘scientific support’ … fanatics who distort the legitimate research of others. … The anti-marijuana campaign is a cancerous tissue of lies, undermining law enforcement, aggravating the drug problem, depriving the sick of needed help, and suckering well-intentioned conservatives and countless frightened parents.”
    — William F. Buckley,
    Commentary in The National Review, April 29, 1983, p. 495

    NORML’s Reefer Madness Du Jour: Bad Journalism 101

    “I now have absolute proof
    that smoking even one marijuana cigarette
    is equal in brain damage
    to being on Bikini Island during an H-bomb blast.”

    — Ronald Reagan – Former “B” Actor

    Prohibit Elected Lobbyists and Yellow Journalism

    “The very word ‘secrecy’ is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers, which are cited to justify it.”
    ~ President John F. Kennedy,
    Address to newspaper publishers April 27, 1961

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