It’s a tactic that the federal government has regularly used against us. Wear them out. Allow for a system of re-scheduling marijuana, but let it take 20 years to go through the process of appeals and denials and maybe we’ll just get tired of trying.
It’s been an effective tactic in stalling progress, but it can’t ultimately succeed, because we also use that tactic in a positive way.
Medical Marijuana Making Progress in Illinois Again
It’s been made very clear that every defeat of medical marijuana in Illinois will now mean another bill the next year. And it will get harder and harder for the opposition to mount a serious challenge to it, particularly as more of the public gets educated.
There is a strong and dedicated group of medical marijuana advocates in Illinois who will not give up.
The same is true of groups in various other states pushing for legalization of recreational or medical marijuana. As we’ve seen, success may be delayed, but with persistence and patience, we persevere.
It’s frustrating, but it won’t always move this slowly. Critical mass will see to that.
we don’t have the resources to win the “one step forward three steps” backward approach. at least, not before all of us currently participating are long dead.
for every one law we pass, the opposition passes four or five new ones. that isn’t really going to get us to the promised land. and given that there is already medical morphine, medical amphetamines and medical cocaine i honestly can’t see why so many people still think that the medical pot path is going to get us anywhere.
LEAP has the best idea — and the longer the rest of us pursue the one small step at a time approach, the longer the carnage will continue unabated.
even now via-a-vis the repeated meme of mexican drug violence, we can see the lunacy of “legalizing marijuana to allow the use of those resources for fighting hard drugs.”
alcohol was the litmus test: we already know what will happen when we re-legalize drugs.
I think the idea of medical marijuana is to allow SICK people to be able to use it, dw.
The folks with MS and Cancer and ALS and all the other stuff that cannabis helps with just want to medicate without going to jail. Medicalizing it is mercy for those folks, and the very least we can do.
Just because you can’t see beyond MMJ’s utilty for legalization, (like all the prohibitionists, I might add) does not mean that it isn’t medicine.
And since you have a better way of doing this, what’s stopping you?
i happen to be working my ass off darkcycle. that is a rather well known fact.
personally I’ll use the time I was actually a certified hard rock miner as my metaphor… When you want to remove some rock you drill a buncha holes for the dynamite, and you manhandle a big ass rock drill. It’s a lot of work getting those first hles done (thats us). Then the guys that do the BOOM! stuff come in and set the dynamite, wire it up, pack the holes… (that’s the LEAPsters…) and clear the area.
So utterly corrupt and expensive is the whole drug war/Prohibition fiasco that is nearly impossible to see what is going on, even to a casual observer. Why is that? Because we’ve been throwing it in their faces day after day, year after year… it’s starting to stick.
Now consider the brouhaha they raised about that agent shot in Mexico. Politicians ready to send troops into Mexico by God…
… but now… turns out THEY sent the gun that killed the agent. Prohibition killed that man, he was a victim of his employer’s gross negligence. In fact, it should be pretty easy to dovetail Jaime Zapata’s death with those of US Army pilot Captain Jennifer Odom and her crew.
Now IS the time to push, to drill a few more holes, set some charges and let ‘er rip. Really…
For instance… why is no hue and cry from the cancer research orgs? Why aren’t groups like the Susan G Kommen (sp?) (Race for the Cure) folks up in arms about the government’s burial of a positive cancer treatment?
I swear… we have the big stick.
And personally… their greatest shame will come from the hiding of studies like that Virginia cancer study and the blocking of domestic research. Patients united could become as effective a force as LEAP. One of my problems with mmj is that the bureaucracies grow larger – on both sides. It’s all so much easier than that.
And as far as a visible presence…? Come on. If John Stewart or Steven Colbert are gonna have a major dpr type, make it Howard and not Ethan. Ethan is eloquent, smart as hell but Howard is a figure to be reckoned with. One thing about charm is that it disarms. I was in sales for years and when you make a connection, if you have a good product, you have the sale.
Here in Oregon there has to be close to a dozen different bills coming up in the legislature trying to amend the OMMA, virtually all in a not kinder and gentler way.
As much as folks are on the streets in Wisconsin in mid-winter we need to make a presence with some noise. Without it? Another decade of different day, same bullshit…
In fact, seems the year before Ethan even brought up civil disobedience. To that (as one who got to see Terminal Island Federal from the inside…) I say absolutely. People should be pissed and indignant.
and that’s our job… stir the pot, feed the fire…
To quote Chief Dan George (from The Outlaw Josie Wales) we must “endeavor to persevere.”
There is not a Prohibitionist argument we can’t beat. That’s our job too. It’s never been the chiefs, it’s always been the indians that get shit done.
Euthanise the print media.
Persuading the older repubs etc. to participate in sidebar information (article web links) is the express gateway to accessible knowledge that will speed up reader consciousness to higher truths.
Bureaucracies are like any livng thing. Cut off their oxygen, and they asphyxiate.
It’s obvious what the ‘oxygen’ here is, and that’s money. How is it that in a time of almost universal fiscal suffering, with foreclosures still on the rise, unemployment still on the rise, with all the social unrest said unemployment is causing beginning to reach the level that many in this country are starting to take the term ‘class warfare’ quite literally, the DrugWar bureaucracies are still allowed to waste the taxpayer’s money when it’s so desperately needed for other domestic purposes?
This has to be an incessant 24/7 drumbeat, hour after hour, day after day: “DrugWar = government waste” “DrugWar = no money for unemployment” “DrugWar = no money for food stamps” “DrugWar = no money for homeless shelters” “DrugWar = no money for school lunches for needy kids” “DrugWar = NO MONEY FOR WHAT’S NEEDED RIGHT FRAKKIN’ NOW!”
General Patton, when he took over the demoralized II Corps after the disastrous battle at Kasserine Pass, needed to get his troops shaped up fast, and is attributed with a unique method: he fined his troops for every single instance of slovenliness or poor performance. As he put it, by ‘hitting them in the wallet’, they sat up and took notice real quick.
Making it plain to the American people what the costs of maintaining the DrugWar during a de facto economic DEPRESSION means for their wallets, when so many are desperately scratching to get by, will have the desired impact. In America, ‘Ohh, thus be it ever’ that money always trumps ideology (or expensive false ‘principles’ like those behind prohibition) every time.
This is what our reform ‘leadership’ has only just now seemed to realize, after over a decade of the obvious hanging like a neon-lit road sign in front of their faces. The pols are finally in cost-cutting mood, and we’ve got quite a list for the butcher…
allan420 wrote:
“why is there no hue and cry from the cancer research orgs? Why aren’t groups like the Susan G Kommen (sp?) (Race for the Cure) folks up in arms about the government’s burial of a positive cancer treatment?”
Perhaps the answer is because if the cure for cancer were to be widely known to be so easily available as cannabis is, there would be no more use for these organizations?
That is also the most logical reason for the government to allow the pharma cos to make meds from synthetic THC and extracts from the cannabis plant while keeping personal use and personal cultivation illegal.