Belville to Sabet to Chapman

Russ Belville: A Response to Kevin Sabet’s ‘A Response to Steven Chapman’s ‘The War on Pot: Not a Safe Bet”

An entertaining takedown by Russ Belville. He hits all the top Sabet talking points quite nicely.

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21 Responses to Belville to Sabet to Chapman

  1. Double Barrels!

    Kevin Sabet’s ‘Learn About SAM’ Would Force All Marijuana Users Into Rehab

    http://tinyurl.com/a99tqqu

    These guys are nothing but deceitful in the extreme. Opportunists of the worst kind.

  2. primus says:

    OK, so they call themselves ‘Smart Approaches to Marijuana’. For that to be true, the people behind this organization must perforce be ‘smart’. They were NOT SMART ENOUGH to arrange for the website etc, which allowed others to take those sites etc. over and expose the stupidity of SAM. They also used a name the acronym for which, ‘SAM’ can equally mean ‘Stupid Approaches to Marijuana’ which is what it will come to be called. They just keep aiming for their foot and hitting it. Forest’s mama said ‘Stupid is as stupid does.’ Don’t expect anything smarter from this crowd. Rebutting them should continue to be like shooting fish in a barrel.

    • Freeman says:

      True that. They went for the obscure “learnaboutsam.org” and left the more obvious “smartapproaches.com” available to Belville for his parody site (which is almost redundant — the SAM site itself is such a self-parody that new visitors to the parody site often mistake it for the real thing), and did the same thing with Facebook and Twitter. Real smart!

      Kevin Anslinger Seebat (suffers from James Munch syndrome), Ph.D (Phull Diaper) can’t even manage working links to his SAM website in his response to Steven Chapman. The post has been there for a week now, and still the last two links in the article, meant to link to his SAM website in a bit of self-promotion, instead link to HuffPo and produce a 404 error — and he still either hasn’t noticed or hasn’t been able to fix them. Epic fail!

      Russ Belville has the dual advantage of not only making reasoned, rational, intelligent arguments for the cause, but in being funny while doing it as well. I love his Zuess-style comic about SAM.

  3. claygooding says:

    Especially since Kevin’s PHD is in Treatment,,he is still trying to get rich people to fund the rehab centers necessary to change from imprisonment too rehab,,only the rich aren’t buying his spiel either,,,so imprisonment will continue and promise of change will continue,,somewhere over the rainbow.

    • Dante says:

      And….

      After a time, the “rehab centers” start to look exactly like state prisons. You know, drab cinderblock buildings with razor-wire fences all around.

      Now that I think of it, that’s what High Schools are starting to look like, too.

  4. Duncan20903 says:

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    So what makes me think that the probability of ending prohibition is real? I’ve been watching for 35 1/2 years and there’s no doubt in my mind that the mob’s shared insanity is imploding. There’s just so many things happening which are brand new, stuff we wouldn’t have even dared to hope for over those 3 1/2 decades. But it’s the sum of a not small number of significant events that has me convinced.

    Now if I were to make the case for this belief it would likely take a couple of hundred pages to explain. There are a rather large number of moving parts involved. But one rather significant example is when I do my search for current events in the field of cannabis law reform I’ll see a headline which in the past would indicate only a marginal possibility that the article was written by a friend of freedom. In the last several months that has ceased. I’m getting surprised by so many people who have somehow ended up on our side of the table without being noticed that I’m just going to have to abandon that tried and (formerly) true rule of thumb. Anyway, here’s a contemporaneous example:

    Dr. Peter Ferentzy:
    Author of Dealing with Addiction – Why The 20th Century Was Wrong
    ‘Marijuana Recovery’ – The Next Major Support Group for Recovering Alcoholics, Cocaine and Heroin Addicts?
    1/29/2013

    I have long been bothered by an inexcusable absence among the many recovery options available to people struggling with addictions: marijuana is not considered a viable substitute.

    Despite all the myopic tripe you often hear about how someone kicking a substance addiction must abstain from all psychoactive substances, some of the best recovery I’ve seen is among people who use marijuana as a substitute for their former drug of choice – be it alcohol, heroin, cocaine, or amphetamine.

    And, no, this isn’t a personal vendetta. I do not use weed that way, or any way. THC doesn’t suit me at all. But it works wonders for many.
    /snip/

    /snip/
    And if less than 5% who attempt abstinence are able to keep it up for two years without a horrible crash, the dominant mindset simply blames the overwhelming majority rather than targeting the obvious culprit: abstinence hailed as the only possible goal at the exclusion of every other option. There really is nothing wrong with abstinence per se. The trouble starts when it is hailed, uncompromisingly, as the only option.

    Throughout the 20th Century, many were deprived – without a single good reason – of approaching their recovery through what has been derided as ‘the marijuana maintenance plan.’

    It is, in fact, a good plan for a lot of people. And with the current trend in favour of the legitimation of marijuana use, it should not be long before support groups start popping up centered on marijuana use to help people kick harder drugs. There might already be a few such groups out there as I write these words.

    About f’n time!

    • claygooding says:

      Think of “road rage” control,,20 minutes before driving and no road rage,,,however,,eating and driving is dangerous also.

      • Duncan20903 says:

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        I recall one very long night which I spent trapped in a Walmart parking lot because those damn edibles kicked in sooner and stronger than I expected. Believe you me the Walmart parking lot is no place to be stuck when you’re that stoned. It took me almost 7 hours to find the damn car keys so I could leave.

  5. Nunavut Tripper says:

    A great little cartoon over on weedblog

    http://www.theweedblog.com/the-haag-by-dr-geuss/

  6. n.t. greene says:

    I am hoping that by the time my infant child is an adult, we as a culture can finally be mature enough to have a totally honest and open approach to drugs and drug policy. Just as sexual abstinence adverts are ineffective in promoting safe habits and educating, the insistence on a ‘drug free society’ essentially prevents proper education in a high risk area. We should be teaching kids what really happens and addressing the real problems of abuse all the while being honest about the fact that use and abuse are very different animals.

  7. War Vet says:

    I’d love to see Project SAM go to source countries and urge the locals to not grow . . . but then again the next video of Sabet we’d ever see would be him getting his head cut off, while the loud wailing ‘Call to Prayer’ speakers of Kabul would be on. He and Beltran Leyva would make a good team –traveling the country and sharing their ideas as to why it should never be legal.

  8. n.t. greene says:

    I’m now thinking of SAM as the prohibitionist “dream team”… the only problem is that under a sensible regime all of their players would never have been drafted at all.

    Our team, however, consists of Nobel laureates, current and former world leaders, academics, economists, scientists…

    • darkcycle says:

      And the folks on Pete’s couch. Here we have the brains AND the web based rapid response force of the movement. In the future, prohibition free world, I expect a park will be named for us with a large bronze couch upon a granite monument at it’s center, at the very least.(This should be located on a lawn suitable for frisbee…)

      • allan says:

        this past election was the couch’s 3rd Presidential. We whet our appetites on John Kerry (he didn’t give us any love either). I’m not sure what Pete’s official birthdate is but if memory serves (heh… so far so good) that’s when I drifted in and planted my butt down. In fact it mighta been at kerry’s website (yes, we dominated) that Hope and Kap and others pointed me this way. Gads – I’ve been drug policy reforming with them (online only) for 15 years. It really is time to kill this f’ing wod thing…

      • Duncan20903 says:

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        darkcycle it sounds like you are describing the White House lawn. The only problem I see is that the proposed monument should be easily accessed by the public, and that’s not going to happen at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW. The only way I’ll ever get on the grounds of the White House is if the POTUS insists and even then I’m not sure that the Secret Service would allow it to happen. That would apply to a not insignificant number of my fellow potheads as well.

        OK, OK I’m being silly. I know good and well that no one on this side of the table is going to get any official credit. It’s more likely that we’ll see a mini Mt. Rushmore with the likenesses of Kevin Sabet, Mark Kleiman, David Frum and Paul Chabot as the public heroes who brought about the end of Prohibition II. But believe it or not I’m OK with that, especially if they use the likeness those men’s asses instead of their faces. Sometimes I keep eggs for too long and they go bad. It would be nice to have a use for them. [splatt!]

  9. claygooding says:

    Hawaii
    Maine
    New Hampshire
    Pennsylvania
    Rhode Island
    Vermont

    Six states now have legalization bills in they’re legislatures,,all introduced by politicians and not by ballot initiatives,,the sharks are circling and politicians want to be sure they are making the rules and not waiting and allowing the citizens to do it.
    That is one month into 2013,,can we hit an even dozen by July?

    • allan says:

      one of our current debates/discussions here in OR is whether to go for ’14 or the ’16 Prez election (assuming the legislature doesn’t beat us to the punch). While tomorrow isn’t soon enough for legalization for me, a big part of me says we can have a virtual legalization armada ready in ’15 to allow for successive and unrelenting broadsides upon the feds.

      And it may be that this revolution won’t have to ask the French for help… it also could be that once enough states join the clamor the feds will buckle (I’m not holding my breath).

      Oh… and Gil needs to face the press and the public!! Damitol® we pay his salary, he can answer some real questions for a change. C’mon you national media folks, start a fire under Droopy’s feet. Or is real journalism in the US press dead?

      • Duncan20903 says:

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        None of that matters if the State Legislature re-legalizes in 2013. if that does happen then I would feel compelled to support having no more cannabis law referendums for Oregon ever again.

    • N.T. Greene says:

      Maybe Massachusetts will drag it’s bill out of study. Hell, we may even see some Barney Frank action on the Congressional level if things sort out in that way.

  10. darkcycle says:

    A few more dribblets from Washington: http://tinyurl.com/a9vxebx

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