Still keeping extremely busy in New York, trying to keep up with 16 college students, but having a good time. So far, we’ve seen “All the Way,” “Pippin,” “Sleep No More,” “Gentlemen’s Guide to Love and Murder,” and I’ve given walking tours of Midtown, Wall Street/World Trade/Battery Park, Chinatown, Little Italy, Central Park, High Line, Meatpacking District, Village, East Village, Soho, Chelsea, Roosevelt Island.
Check the previous thread for good discussions about Dr. Gupta’s new special that aired last night, as well as action to take regarding medical marijuana in Washington.
Random Drug Testing for All? The Chilling Proposal That Could Eradicate Your Privacy by Paul Armentano.
The practice of random drug testing has become popularized in both the workplace and in public schools. But according to a recently released paper by the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM), the controversial practice is, at present, “underutilized†and ought to be expanded to include people of all ages in virtually all aspects of daily life.
The white paper, authored by former United States National Institute on Drug Abuse Director (and present-day drug testing consultant and profiteer) Robert Dupont (along with input from staffers at various drug testing labs and corporations) argues: “The major need today is the wider and smarter use of the currently available drug testing technologies and practices. … This White Paper encourages wider and ‘smarter’ use of drug testing within the practice of medicine and, beyond that, broadly within American society. Smarter drug testing means increased use of random testing rather than the more common scheduled testing, and it means testing not only urine but also other matrices such as blood, oral fluid (saliva), hair, nails, sweat and breath.â€
Somebody apparently let Robert DuPont write something. Oh, and Andrea Barthwell helped.
Not getting the message… Governor LePage wants to ramp up the war on drugs
WSJ Poll: Sugar is more harmful than Cannabis.
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2014/03/12/wsj-poll-candy-is-dandy-but-pot-is-less-harmful/?mod=WSJBlog
Where did they find these informed people?
As per status quo,,when your income is threatened try to expand to absorb any losses,,if they lose marijuana then finding other drug will become a must for the pee collectors,,which takes more than an occasional job drug screen.
I would expect for Dupont and other savvy drug screeners to be heavily vested in the more technological methods of testing for drug use,,such as the hair burn test that you can’t clean up for,,much more costly but more reliable.
.
About 50 years ago I had a shop teacher tell me several things I’ve never forgotten (he was quite an inspiring philosopher and teacher actually). He said that people are like bedsprings: the harder you push them, the harder they push back. I’ve never found that to be untrue.
More testing? These guys really need a reality check.
The problem is that they work with the LE folks who have the guns, and think that might makes right, and makes for a workable situation. How deluded.
It’s the same old fight for freedom taken to ever more arenas, and depriving people of freedom simply does not solve problems: never has, never will. It’s mind boggling to me that some who claim they want to lead policy (meaning Dupont) haven’t yet figured that out.
Or maybe they know that perfectly well, but only care about the bottom line they’ve contrived.
Gee, let’s get money out of politics, and politics out of profit. (Ugh, if only it were possible here.)
How about we just get rid of government? Government is the problem, without it these asshats would have no ability to threaten our freedoms.
Sometimes keeping it both simple and crude is the best response.
Dupont and American Empire Suck.
I was urine tested when I went to my Doctor and my meds were
cancelled.
Dupont = fascist fuck. Fuck him and his fucking anti-Constitutional ideas; fuck his police state friends; fuck his self-serving advocacy for destroying personal freedoms.
Why does this fuck hate America so much? Because he’s a fucking tory who would have supported George III in suppressing the revolution. What scum!
don’t hold back divi… tell us how you really feel 🙂
Great rant, divadab.
I am using your comment to call attention to this for other Whatcom County readers of this blog and its comments. There is a meetup on Friday 3/14 from 5-8PM at Billy McHale’s with the two libertarian challengers wanting to replace our State reps in the legislature. I urge you to go (I already know I am going to vote for them if they make it to the ballot):
http://sweeneypolitics.com/2014/03/09/buys-and-overstreet-draw-potential-libertarian-challengers/
Full disclosure: Overstreet voted against the egregious medical marijuana bill they are attempting to pass, Buys voted for it.
It’s Time to End All Drug Testing
Submitted by Thom Hartmann on 12. March 2014
As the reality of legalized marijuana inches closer and closer every day, more and more Americans are rethinking our society’s attitude towards drugs. But not the American Society of Addiction Medicine. In a recent white paper, the organization argued that we should start expanding drug testing at schools and in the workplace.
As that paper’s author put it, “The major need today is the wider and smarter use of the currently available drug testing technologies and practices.… Smarter drug testing means increased use of random testing rather than the more common scheduled testing, and it means testing not only urine but also other matrices such as blood, oral fluid (saliva), hair, nails, sweat and breath.â€
I couldn’t disagree more. Drug testing is counterproductive, degrading, and invasive, and it’s we put an end to it once and for all. Although humans have used narcotics and intoxicants since the dawn of time, drug testing as know it is a relatively new phenomenon, and really took off with Nixon’s War on Drugs.
I had a friend back in the early 1970s – let’s call him Stanley – who sold drug purity testing kits out of the back of High Times magazine. It was a good business because it cost about ten cents for the drug-testing chemicals and he sold the testing kit for ten bucks plus shipping. By the 1980s, though, once the drug testing hysteria took off, he got really rich by selling his little drug-testing company for several million dollars.
The reason Stanley was able to sell his testing kits for such a big markup, of course, was that they’re hugely profitable. Today, ten cents worth of chemicals are sold for $30 to as much as $100. Drug testing is a multi-billion-dollar-a-year industry. And it’s only gotten bigger. According some estimates, approximately 84 percent of all American employers require pre-employment drug tests.
This is absolute insanity. There is little proof that drug tests do anything other than make testing companies rich. That’s because as the ACLU has concluded, “…drug tests do not measure impairment. Rather than looking for drugs, drug tests look for drug metabolites…As a result, drug tests mainly identify drug users who may have used a drug on the weekend, as they might use alcohol, and who are not under the influence of a drug while at work or when tested.â€
That’s the biggest problem with drug testing. If an employee’s drug use actually affects their job performance, then their employer can and should have a discussion with them about it – and if they’re seriously impaired, get them into therapy or out of the job. Any other probing into an employee’s out of work behavior is just a violation of their basic right to privacy.
Think of it this way: there are a whole bunch of things that can affect someone’s job performance. Health issues, financial issues, spousal issues, quality of sleep, you name it. And if any one of those things becomes a problem, then an employer should work it out with his or her employee. But if we took the principle behind drug testing to its logical conclusion, then we’d let employers install cameras in their workers’ houses to see if they getting a full night’s sleep. After all, poor sleep can impair many people worse than moderate drug use.
Of course, people would say that monitoring employees’ sleep is an insane idea. But it’s just as insane as making people pee into a cup to work at a factory. There is maybe a case to be made that some jobs, like being a commercial airline pilot, are so dangerous that we should require drug testing for them. But I know from years of experience as a pilot and passenger that the people who work in the airline industry are so concerned about their safety, as well as the safety of their passengers, that they will self-regulate even without the threat of getting fired after a failed drug test.
And what’s more, the work and pay schedules of some airlines – particularly the commuters, who pay their workers less than Burger King managers and have them work grinding hours – have been demonstrated to be a serious safety problem, one that’s arguably worse than any problem casual drug use could cause.
Ultimately, drug-testing gives people a false sense of security. And false positives regularly cost people time, money, and sometimes even their careers. Most importantly, though, drug testing cuts at the core of our right to privacy. It gets usused to regularly having our privacy – including the privacy of our own bodies – invaded.
It promulgates the false meme that the Fourth Amendment is porous, when in fact it’s very clear in saying that our government has no right to mandate the inspection of your person or papers without getting a warrant first. It also promotes the worst ideas about what it means to be both a drug user and a worker in America.
It promulgates the false meme that drug abuse should be a criminal matter, when in fact it’s a medical matter. And it promulgates the false meme that employers are kings who can do whatever they want to their employees, when in fact employers should be treating their employees with respect.
What you do on the weekends and in the privacy of your own home is your business and your business alone, and no one should be allowed to punish you for it. We need to end all drug testing beyond what is totally voluntary. Let’s make America once again the “Land of the Free.â€
Drug mishandling may have tainted 40,000 cases
More than Sixty Years of Suppression
The Official Story: Debunking “Gutter Scienceâ€
Urine Testing Company
After his resignation, Turner joined with Robert DuPont and former head of NIDA, Peter Bensinger, to corner the market on urine testing. They contracted as advisors to 250 of the largest corporations to develop drug diversion, detection, and urine testing programs.
After his resignation, Turner joined with Robert L. DuPont and former head of NIDA, Peter Bensinger to corner the market on urine testing.
Soon after Turner left office, Nancy Reagan recommended that no corporation be permitted to do business with the Federal government without having a urine purity policy in place to show their loyalty.
Just as G. Gordon Liddy went into high-tech corporate security after his disgrace, Carlton Turner became a rich man in what has now become a huge growth industry: urine-testing.
Robert DuPont must be feeling an economic pinch if he’s advocating for universal drug testing this late in the drug war. Perhaps sales of drug test kits and services are bottoming out in Colorado.
As a drug test pusher, DuPont probably knows the survival of his drug testing empire depends on the federal and state governments violating citizens’ Fourth Amendment rights. By promoting the drug war, DuPont made himself the enemy of the free and open society; a tool of proto-fascists. He is without remorse for all the lives he’s ruined, and he’s oblivious to the national harm he’s caused by being a shallow-minded ideologue. To top it off, addiction rates are as prevalent today as when he first intervened in the private lives of others without their consent. Robert DuPont’s destiny is to be remembered as a total failure and a war criminal.
My good buddy Brian Bennett – and semi-frequent commenter here at Pete’s – has warned about this for years. I love the guy but less when he’s right (at least about this kinda shit).
Back in my corporate days, I successfully lobbied our funding partners (over $250M before we turned a dime in profit) to not drug test our little group of misfit stoners. And we made them nearly a billion-dollar return…
Shorter DuPont:
(As anti-drug money trough is slowly being shut off) Gruntgruntgrunt! OINK! Snort! Skuh-wee! skuh-wee! SKUH-WEEEEEEEE!
They still don’t get it. It’s all over but for the shouting. Standing against (at least) half the American people automatically dooms their cause. The younger folks were not duped as intended.
The ‘kids’ – who’ve now grown to adulthood – found out that, just as so many had already suspected, they were deliberately lied to. And now they can vote. They don’t like drug testing, and companies will be hard pressed to find those amongst that generation with both the desired skill sets and ‘chemical virginity’. Aint-gonna-happen.
A truly fundamental shift is underway in American society, as those holding almost completely different views from the previous generation will now be in the driver’s seat.
The attitudes they hold in various social fields (such as scrapping the War on Drugs) will eventually be reflected in such areas as governance…and economics. Which will hit the prohibs amidships, as, in their case, a right-wing ‘coup’ in this country starting around 1980 ushured in the ever increasingly odious laws that in turn created the industry that bloodsuckers like DuPont need to survive.
A swing of the social pendulum back to some semblance of sanity would in turn show up as reduced tolerance for violations of civil rights (such as, perforce, the DrugWar represents) and even less tolerance for governmental entities engaging in such violations. Such may lead to budget-cutting in the future if today’s chief obstructionists, dependent upon a gub’ment slop trough for survival, pisses off those with their hands on the future tax revenue spigot.
“A single glass of wine will impair your driving more than smoking a joint. And under certain test conditions, the complex way alcohol and cannabis combine to affect driving behaviour suggests that someone who has taken both may drive less recklessly than a person who is simply drunk”.
~ New Scientist March 2002
✘ Cannabis and Driving
THC’s effects after doses up to 300 g/kg never exceeded alcohol’s at BACs of 0.08 g% and were in no way unusual compared to many medicinal drugs (Robbe 1994). Yet THC’s effects differ qualitatively from many other drugs, especially alcohol. Evidence from the present and previous studies strongly suggests that alcohol encourages risky driving WHEREAS THC encourage greater caution, at least in experiments. Another way THC seems to differ qualitatively from many other drugs is that the former’s users seem better able to compensate for its adverse effects while driving under the influence.
~ Hindrik W.J. Robbe
Institute for Human Psychopharmacology,
University of Limburg,
P.O. Box 616, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands
✘ Field Impairment Testing (FIT)
FIT 2000 Series
Fitness-for-Duty
Impairment Screeners
30-second test. PMI has developed a unique technology to measure human impairment. It’s proprietary technology can assess whether a person is significantly impaired by fatigue, legal medications, illegal drugs, alcohol, sleep deprivation; alone or in combination.
PMI has developed a mobile and fixed location device that permits an individual to self-administer a quick, non-invasive assessment test. The technology measures a person’s involuntary eye-reflex reactions to light, and compares key eye measurements to the person’s own baseline. These measurements can be used to track changes in the person’s alertness levels and levels of impairment.
✘ Critics Sound Alarm Over Secret Drug Tests of Injured Drivers
The B.C. Civil Liberties Association has raised serious concerns on behalf of 3,000 injured B.C. drivers whose blood will be tested for marijuana without their knowledge for a $1-million study on drugs and driving. full story
✘ 12 Days in Jail Over a Faulty Drug Test
Warroad woman was held in Canada after a motor oil bottle tested positive for heroin. full story
✘ Systematic Discrimination Boycott List
✘ ‘White Men Getting Rich From Legal Weed Won’t Help Those Harmed Most By Drug War’
@stopthedrugwar @WeedFeed
✘ Parents 4 Pot â€@parents4pot
Have you told your kids the truth about pot?
✘ The US Government Now Supplies Cannabis Extracts to Epileptic Kids
✘ WSJ Poll: Candy Is Dandy But Pot Is Less Harmful
✘ 7 Reasons to Hire a Stoner
shared comment from another board…
dtlewis
I am blood relative (immediate family) to the owner of a prominent drug testing lab here in the US. If it weren’t enough that this person rakes in millions annually on state, federal and private contracts in corrections, transportation and private industry through testing of individuals for commonly abused drugs (among other things,) the business is organized such that the operating company which does the testing holds no assets and therefore cannot suffer any significant damages for botched tests which harm innocents.
A separate holding company owns all the assets other than a pay period’s worth of cash so the cash reserves and physical assets are beyond the reach of most courts. And if that weren’t sufficiently insulting, this person once intimated that being in such a position, virtually any manner of compound is readily accessible to him in its pure form for the taking whenever the urge to partake should arise, no prescription required and, apparently, with little if any regulatory oversight.
This is the same person whom, when we were considerably younger, was found to be in possession of syringes, needles and illicitly produced or obtained illegal drugs. Right up there with the likes of Darrell Issa i.e an unrepentent sociopath gleefully exhibiting the rigidly authoritarian corporate personna of so many of our “pillars” of industry and society. Pompous, arrogant, self-righteous and condescending pretty much sum up my impression.
Not to rain on anyone’s parade, but SAM is always warning about “big marijuana” and making a profit from addiction. If SAM had an actual interest in preventing business from profiting from addiction here would be the perfect example. Where is SAM in rallying against DuPont? Where is there diatribe about the drug testing industry and how they profit from the addiction industry and government attempts to use it as a control mechanism? There will be nothing from SAM about it because they are part of that same effort. The raping of America and Americans while pretending to help. Their motto: – “May the government spigot of drug war subsidy never perish from the face of the earth”.
pretty close to my thoughts TC when reading earlier.
Dupont is a pimp w/o shame. He’s a war profiteer. Let me put that in quotes for search engine ease, “Dupont war profiteer”…
Hopefully the word warriors will not let Dupont’s war profiteering rest.
I think I can help war profiteer Dupont w/ sloganeering, anybody else wanna help, have at it:
Your Pee, My Profit
Drugs, Bad For You, Good Business For Me
this one has a nice ring to it (but it’s for us, not douchebag war profiteer Dupont):
Pee Free Or Die
tc, sabet and dupont are so far up each other there is no chance that sam is going to extend their narrow definition of who is profiting “from addiction. ” they turn a blind eye to the giant trough of prohibition and the multitude of pigs feeding at it. heaven forbid they should look in the mirror and see thselves profiting from addiction.
Speaking of SAM. What an idiotic group. Really grasping for straws. I find this really funny.
Anti-Pot Group Complains That Coloradans Are Not Buying Enough Pot
http://tinyurl.com/o9o6ly7
Which is why he grates so hard on the sensibilities of those whom he hopes to savage.
Like I say sometimes, the prohibs are ‘stuck in the ’80’s’. The ‘kids’ they keep referring to were the first ones exposed to their mania, from the moment most of them walked into a classroom.
Said ‘kids’ have grown up, have kids of their own, know the truth about cannabis, know who told the lies about it, and they’re voting to end the prohibition…and the lies.
DuPont and his cronies think the status quo can be maintained from corporate pressure on the economy. I guess he figures if the big-shot banksters caught red-handed money laundering won’t go to jail, the corp-rat sphere has overwhelming power to maintain drug testing in the face of re-legalization.
Pardon the pun, but he’s engaging in a pipe dream. The sheer reverse economic pressure of consumerism will be the determining factor in continuing drug testing. Firms that try to continue to use this as a cudgel over worker’s heads will see their staff roles depleted due to the employees taking their skills to a company with more enlightened policies. The former firm will wither; the latter will experience an increase in growth and profitability.
Chase out the ‘cultural creatives’, the ones who dream up new technologies, and you risk stagnation or worse. (Hitler found that out the hard way, and the Bomb the mainly Jewish scientists he chased out were working on was meant for Adolf and his bully-boys as payback.)
Which is why drug testing in Silicon Valley is almost unheard of. (And you have to wonder what other economic losses due to lost opportunities for creativity we’ve had as a country because of drug testing.)
DuPont and all his kind still refuse to look down and see how far their dinosaur backsides have sunk into History’s tarpit. While we ‘mammals’ are standing on the edge, wishing they’d sink a whole lot faster…
My drug test at my ‘interview’ consisted of going out onto the street in San Francisco and smoking a joint with the team, then going inside to write a computer program. That said, I’m at a different job where testing doesn’t happen, except for the rare case where clients have requirements to access their systems, so I’ve got a test Monday. Unfortunate, but I just had a long chat with the guy I sit next to at the office last night – very nice guy.
So in the previous open thread discussion someone mentioned that one mmj bill was pulled or something, this just came through my fb feed:
http://hemp.org/news/content/new-york-first-time-ever-assembly-includes-medical-marijuana-one-house-budget-bill
As Pot Laws Change, Workplaces Must Cope
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v14/n239/a01.html?102
how do welfare drug testers propose to deal with applicants in mmj states who have a valid doctors recommendation to use cannabis? surely this will set one part of state gov against another.
Gubner LePage is a clueless putz. There is a poll at the LePage article:
Do you think the war on drugs needs to be
expanded?
No 63.22% (361 votes)
Yes 36.78% (210 votes)
here is an interesting idea: http://tinyurl.com/mqcqaws. a little more diligence on the part of the police may have prevented the boston marathon bombing. maybe murder should have a higher priority than drug logistics.
Looks like Colorado might be walking back some Cannabis convictions.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/13/colorado-marijuana-convictions_n_4957887.html
I just love the fact that pretty much EVERY article I read regarding Cannabis including some conservative sites (with the exception of Police one)over 95% of the comments are against the WOD.
Basically if you’re smart enough to know how to use a computer online, can read, and know how to leave comments, you are on OUR side!
This is very good news….up to a point. It seems to apply only to those appealing their convictions right now. What is needed is an amnesty for any and all convictions for possession (or even sale) of cannabis no matter how long ago. If the people have decided in Colorado that possession of an ounce or two is legal now, why should someone else still be stigmatized for an earlier conviction for this non-crime?
“One in five older Americans take medications that work against each other…â€
The problem is significant with regard to medical marijuana. I can’t think of any drug that’s contraindicated with regard to the cannabinoids. Marijuana by itself can treat depression, hypertension and type II diabetes. Perhaps these are added reasons for Big Pharma to fear and loathe cannabis so much.
University of Colorado President has decided that it should be really hard to do research on cannabis: https://www.cusys.edu/universityrelations/email/ootp/20140311_Univ-Colo_Marijuana-Research.pdf
and an article on the CU’s stand:
http://www.leafscience.com/2014/03/12/marijuana-still-limits-researchers-colorado/
The one thing that the federales are smart about is knowing that money talks. The irony is, that all things considered, it’s our most significant stupidity.
VICE â€@VICE
We’re giving away dick insurance! It’s like regular insurance—but for dicks! http://bit.ly/1iihgdb
it’s official: wall street bankers don’t need as much law enforcement as your average hemp fiend. it’s ’cause the bankers would never hurt the moral fabric of our free country. http://tinyurl.com/q9go4wd
Why am I totally unsurprised that Issa’s name is attached to that.
The Drug War animal is fatally wounded and cornered. One would be wise to let it die in peace.
The Marijuana Industry Pleads With Congress
To boot, cannabis dealers are not allowed to deduct their business expenses because of IRS regulations aimed at drug dealers. With an effective tax rate that can run as high as 85 percent, the cannabis industry has won the support of Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, which has joined in the fight to repeal the regulation. Any number of other laws are keeping cannabis dealers in the doghouse even as voters have made their voices clear across the country.
i’m not worried duncan. i have 12 plants in the back yard to keep me calm. ready to harvest on the equinox. legal as can be.
damn those bodily functions. My first trouble in elementary school came when I got caught in a pissing contest in the restroom. True story. I swear we are at about 8′ from the urinals. But that was 4th grade…
.
.
Well believe it or not not my last pissing contest was with my wife and came about after some some wise guy was making snide remarks to her about the concept of “potty parity”. I had to show her that it was just plain silly to think that sitting down made it take much longer to pee. Boom, in and out, it added like 3 seconds. For crying out loud, how long does it take to drop trou? The funny thing was that I thought it worked much better and quit standing up permanently. Well, not in public restrooms of course. But that’s only because of the idiots that pee on the seats, and I doubt that’s a problem in the ladies’ room. Heck, I don’t even sit down to poop in a public restroom. Just for a bonus, there’s no more arguments about why it’s silly to complain about having to check if the seat is up!
Speaking of the very different world in the ladies room believe it or not my wife had no clue about all the classic poetry left by unknown prophets on the walls of public bathroom stalls from here to Tim Bucktwo. Apparently women don’t do that if she can be believed. Can you imagine an entire cohort of culturally deprived people who have never contemplated the sex acts of that young man from Kent with the oddly shaped genitalia? I find it very hard to believe that no women have ever contemplated giving birth to a State Trooper. Heck, the only people that live in my house that get pulled over by the cops are women!
Heather R. Mizeur â€@heathermizeur
Photos from today’s rally in Annapolis for #marijuana reforms @MarijuanaPolicy @NORML #mdpolitics #MizMd pic.twitter.com/Gyr1QxpJId
HIGH TIMES â€@HIGH_TIMES_Mag
.@espn defends pot use in the @NBA! http://ht.420.com/1cqEAp2
ACLU National â€@ACLU
.@PublicHealth endorses decriminalizing drugs! http://www.apha.org/advocacy/policy/policysearch/default.htm?id=1456 … (Racially disparate enforcement upsets them too)
Trey Corleone â€@HTPEXCLUSIVE
@HIGH_TIMES_Mag have you guys tried the THC patches in Colorado or Washington? Pretty legit
chris roberts â€@cbloggy
California Cops Want to Ban Hash, Dabs, all Marijuana Concentrates http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2014/03/calif_cops_want_to_ban_hash_da.php … via @sfweekly
Marijuana News â€@WeedFeed
From @stonedsociety: Sanjay Gupta Honored With New Strain Of Medical Marijuana: Double Down Kush: Boulder, Col… http://bit.ly/1qBnvwB
Toke Signals â€@TokeSignals
A Mixed Bag: “Weed 2″ Documentary From Dr. Gupta http://bit.ly/1cWvHUI #marijuana #cannabis #mmot #mmj
RT:Colorado Court Rules Some Marijuana Convictions Can Be Overturned http://mjba.us/1nWZkXb #MJNews
Marijuana News â€@WeedFeed
FROM WEB: Four States on Verge of Passing CBD-Only Laws http://bit.ly/1cDMCed
OaksterdamUniversity â€@Oaksterdam
Federal prosecutor admits she cheated at the trial of #drugwar POW. If only all LEOs had so much courage. http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/03/when-prosecutors-admit-to-cheating/284180/
Okay, this link-to-article – has a good (IMO) review of “Weed 2”.
A Mixed Bag: “Weed 2″ Documentary From Dr. Gupta
He does a good job of addressing one of my main concerns about the program as well:
Thoughts on Gupta 2:
http://weedactivist.com/2014/03/13/weed-2-getting-somewhere-but-where/
My favorite excerpt from Weed 2: Getting Somewhere but Where? is, but it IS “the core message we are not getting enough”:
HIGH TIMES â€@HIGH_TIMES_Mag
Inside the story of @CheebaChew!—http://ht.420.com/1cT4fBO pic.twitter.com/YCsW3lWVdZ
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Biohh78CMAAmYpm.jpg
Tommy Chong â€@tommychong
Do you want to grow the best buds? Check out my new line of nutrients created by kylekushman420.… http://instagram.com/p/lf4oS3OPbB/
Marijuana Edibles â€@EdiblesList
Cannabis law overview in the world today. http://fb.me/3uQ7Zn5S6
Ethan Nadelmann â€@ethannadelmann
Check out PPI’s fine new graphic re incarceration in the US: jail vs fed/state prison & for what. http://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie.html … via @prisonpolicy
http://www.savemedicalcannabis.com/
It’s over. We won this round….both bills are dead for this session and won’t be coming back in their current forms. Thank all of you Washington Advocates and every body else, too. We did it.
I’m going to go celebrate with a nice little bong load, right now. Hooray! and well done!
The Washington state legislature is leaving medical marijuana alone… for now: http://ow.ly/uBxxX
FBI Balks At Background Checks For Washington State Retail Marijuana
http://mjba.us/1cI184U #MJNews via @MJHeadlineNews
Global Hemp â€@globalhemp
The uses for hemp in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) are diverse and eclectic and according to the literature. http://bit.ly/1lCiwbd
Marijuana News â€@WeedFeed
FROM WEB: Thank You for Smoking—Marijuana http://bit.ly/1fH6zAJ
Drug Policy Alliance â€@DrugPolicyNews
Nevada health dept. allows treating PTSD with marijuana http://bit.ly/NaxZmw #PTSD #mmj
That WSJ piece has a lot of prohibidiots and quite a few prohibitches in the comments. I almost registered to educate them but I’ve been online doing that almost all day and I’m tired of correcting the ignorance of others. There are too many others.
Job Seekers Swarm Marijuana Job Fair As Colorado’s Green Rush Continues
http://tinyurl.com/n5y5uee
If there was any doubt that the “green rush†is on in Colorado, the scene outside a marijuana industry career fair in Denver on Thursday looked like a throwback to the Great Recession.
Thousands of people waited for hours with resumes in hand in a line that stretched several blocks. The O.penVAPE Cannabis Job Fair featured 15 different businesses associated with recreational marijuana sales, and it had turn people away by the day’s end. “snip”
I am emailing the link to my legislators and asking them what their game plan is to create jobs or start a billion dollar industry that already exists.
Scott Burns on NPR is punishment pimping against sentencing reform… He now works for the DA association. SMH….
Here are some names to remember next time you are at a voting booth and you want to know who NOT to vote for:
“Legislation approved by House Republicans would seek to force President Barack Obama to crack down on marijuana in states that have made the drug legal for medical or recreational use.”
“The House passed the Enforce the Law Act by a vote of 233-181 on Wednesday. The bill was introduced by Reps. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Jim Gerlach (R-PA) to allow Congress to sue the president for failing to faithfully execute laws.” http://tinyurl.com/pjx5zoy
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I wonder if many people who would vote for those guys would actually visit this site on purpose? It appears that those guys are trying to win the support of the clueless since that nonsense has no chance of becoming law, darn it all.
I assume the esteemed representatives who introduced this bill had no qualms when certain characters in a certain industry (*cough* banking *cough*) broke numerous laws but were left unscathed. That was fine by them, no doubt.
And I’m totally shocked there isn’t at least one Texas representative on the list of who helped put this crap bill together. Shocked I tell you. Probably napping after too much brisket…
This was my comment on The Tea Party page article on that story (http://www.teaparty.org/rep-gowdy-going-senator-president-rewrite-constitution-36913/) don’t know how long it will remain, those social conservatives don’t like being reminded there are rights they do not support:
Hemp flour and green tea leaves answer the health food need for gluten-free crackers:
Hemp: feeding the world one hors d’oeuvre at a time.
My daughter and her son are both gluten intolerant, this is good news for them. Wonder how soon they will be available on the open market in America?
I’ve been keeping patients off of antibiotics going on 6 years with hemp seed and oil. Buying bulk online for 5. Every organic market sells it. Hemp seed oatmeal, cereal and protein powders. Shelled seeds and anything processed. Whole seeds still have to be sterilized. All imported driving up costs. They have never stopped selling them to pet shops for song birds. Also wild ditchweed is good habitat for game birds the DEA destroys collecting eradication numbers. Omega 3, 6 and 9 essential fatty acids vs factory fish and farming. Good for the skin, best soap on the market and softest, strongest blue jeans and organic cotton blend shirts. Car parts to potato chips and they classify it all as a schedule#1 narcotic since Nixon. Ain’t that America, in the eyes of a drug worrier?
google: hemp flour
Dash Hemp Clothing
Starving Babies and Illegal Food
Legalize It! Audubon Mag.
5 Generations. Over 150 Years of Soapmaking Excellence.
Industrial hemp is the non-psychoactive varieties of the Cannabis plant grown for fiber and seed. Hemp has a remarkable number of beneficial uses, and we support its application in agriculture, manufacturing and trade. Dr. Bronner’s uses hemp oil as a superfatting ingredient in all our soaps because of its unsurpassed essential fatty acid (EFA) content. Hemp oil makes our soap lather smoother and less drying, and it is an excellent moisturizer in our lotions and balms.
This is the Canadian Conservative Party idea of an attack ad:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id5GBBR6RLU
What part of “dealers dont’t ID” do they not understand?
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Today the Maryland Senate voted in favor of a pretty pathetic decrim bill making 10 grams or less a civil fine of $100 by a vote of 36-9. For the compulsive mathemaphiles that’s an 80% supermajority. That improves the 2013 margin of 30-16. It’s a valid inference that since they’re voting on the same proposal that it failed in the House in 2013. I’m not even seeing people speculating about how it might fare in the House.
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Strange, now the tally is showing at 36-8. I wonder if some Senator changed his mind? I suppose that I might have skipped a groove but I don’t think that I did.
or skip the wannabes gossip…
But Neill Franklin, a former Maryland State Police major who has turned against the war on drugs, said some law enforcement officials back the status quo because they are protecting their turf. “I get it — why police don’t want to lose marijuana as a pretext to search,” Franklin said. Enforcing marijuana laws, he said, “has become our identity. It’s what we do.”
Marijuana Hearings Reflect Public Opinion Shift
Maryland — An NAACP leader, a former Maryland State Police major, a candidate for governor and a mother seeking to help her son with epilepsy converged Thursday on Annapolis to support more liberal marijuana laws. A number of bills, backed by lawmakers from a range of philosophical backgrounds, are moving through the General Assembly this year as a broader swath of the electorate has embraced legalizing or decriminalizing the drug.
Group of Lawmakers Vows Workable Medical Marijuana
Baltimore Sun A bipartisan group of state lawmakers vowed Friday to pass legislation this year to create a workable medical marijuana program that would cover children with debilitating conditions as well as adults. Dels. Cheryl D. Glenn and Dan K. Morhaim, sponsors of two bills that would replace legislation passed last year that is widely regarded as a failure, said they would meld their two versions into a single measure. One change they expect to make in the original bills next week is to remove provisions restricting the therapeutic use of cannabis to adults.
Maryland
Maryland Shifts on Marijuana
Maryland Senate President Supports Legalization
Maryland Lawmakers Pass Medical Marijuana Bill
Maryland Marijuana Bill Would End Jail Time
MMJ Bills Introduced In Maryland House
On Medical Marijuana, Maryland Should Go Slow
Maryland’s Medical Marijuana Bill Suffers Setback
Maryland Students Vote To Ease Marijuana Penalties
Maryland at Forefront of Drug Policy Reforms
Canada, Maryland Going To Pot
Maryland’s Marijuana Bill
Maryland’s Marijuana Legalization Bid
Maryland Governor Gets Medical Marijuana Bill
Maryland Debates Medicinal-Marijuana
Maryland Sheriff’s Office Hid Seized Cash
Pro-MJ Group Looks to Reestablish at U. Maryland
Toke of the Town â€@TokeOfTheTown
Maryland’s legislature is considering several marijuana bills. Which do you support? http://ow.ly/uBx39
Maryland Senate Okays Marijuana Decriminalization
Bad news
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/03/13/house-gop-passes-bill-to-force-obama-to-crack-down-on-legal-weed-in-states-that-allow-it/#comment-1284086685
Although, it really doesn’t even have a snowball’s chance of hell in passing.
House Republicans Want To Sue The President For Not Arresting People For Marijuana
The Republican-controlled House passed legislation on Thursday to force President Barack Obama to crack down on states that have legalized marijuana in any form.
Introduced by Reps. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), Jim Gerlach (R-Pa.) and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), the ENFORCE the Law Act (H.R. 4138) would allow the House or the Senate to sue the president for “failure to faithfully execute federal laws,” including those related to immigration, health care and marijuana.
Marijuana News â€@WeedFeed
FROM WEB: It’s high time to remove federal marijuana laws in states where pot’s legal http://bit.ly/OdEAxI
Marijuana News â€@WeedFeed
FROM WEB: War on weed costly, unnecessary http://bit.ly/OdN0p1
Cannabis Science â€@CannabisScienc1
Cannabis Science (CBIS) Announces Plans for Observational Research Study in 2014 http://ow.ly/t1Maf
VICE â€@VICE
Colorado’s Governor Needs a Lesson in Cannabis Customer Service http://bit.ly/1d2XpcN
Hide summary
HIGH TIMES â€@HIGH_TIMES_Mag
What are you doing this weekend? Whatever it is, add #marijuana to make it great! 11 Chores To Do While Stoned http://ht.420.com/1coxb3c
UNODC Panel Says Criminalizing Drug Use “Not Beneficial”
Mar 13 2014
Yep, you read that right. The global anti-drug bureaucracy doesn’t think it’s a good idea to criminalize drug use.
Random Drug Testing for All? The Chilling Proposal That Could Eradicate Your Privacy
Former NIDA director suggests parents engage in the random drug testing of their children.
Oh WOW. That is a HUGE Deal. Effing Nora Volkow as part of recommendations to not criminalize drug use and possession?
Everyone get AWAY from the wall. It’s unstable and is falling over!
Good reason to show up this November and remember!
this is a shame because the puyallup valley has some of the best soil in the country.http://tinyurl.com/mj4km5x
Yeah, with Yakima and the Yakima tribe blocking it too, that lets out about 50% of the arable land in Washington State. It’s mostly still open up North were we live. Up here we have the Nooksac valley and the Raspberry farmers are getting some new neighbors
“It’s not your grandfather’s heroin,â€
more ships needed
jeez. is this guy for real. i thought i was reading the onion. he must have been at sea too long to be so clueless about whats happening at home.
Wow, they really like that meme. But my grand dad was a Pinkerton, and everyone knows the Pinkertons had the best dope.
pete how much longer are you in town for? i bet you didnt recognize the LES. Everything is gone or moved. You came just in time too for Greys Papaya also is going the way of the times, meaning gone forever 🙁 but I think they were best when the dogs were 50 cents a pop, it got up to ridiculous amounts in recent times. You could almost buy a McDonalds Value Meal for one greys papaya dog lol. well, if theres anyway my personal email is remmyskye at gmail.
Just got back, CJ — sorry I missed you — a very busy week for me. And yes, changes are always happening in New York. I did get to the sole remaining Gray’s Papaya on 72nd and Broadway for a Recession Special (I love the Papaya drink). I’ll be back in June – I’ll try to catch you then.
Radley Balko â€@radleybalko
“I’m federal Metamucil, and I’m here to unclog this fucking system.”
Cannabis Culture â€@CannabisCulture
Must read: Health Canada threatens police action against medical #marijuana patients who don’t destroy crops
FROM WEB: Norman Lambert: Drug laws hurt more than help http://bit.ly/1d56DFx
way to go Radley Balko.
hey i wanted to say something and I figured this was the place best to do that, I hope I’m not too ignorant to be able to realize when I’m wrong about something, in this case I can’t find my thoughts wrong but maybe, if I am, someone can point it out to me.
It’s this perverse idea that is especially popular in the drug treatment business. To be rather blunt about it there is always a good deal of support for reform under the pretense of “drug use that doesn’t harm anybody else but the user” essentially, if you’re not inflicting harm on anybody but yourself, well it’s your right to choose to do that since your body is your only true possession. And let me say that I subscribe to this theory myself.
One could write a piece as large as Great Bodhissavta Pass or all the volumes of the Romance of Three Kingdoms if one was so inclined to discuss all the different aspects of use, abuse, the politics and rules of. I don’t want to do that right now, I’d just like to make one side note at this point – not that I’m glorifying, there’s nothing glorious about begging for money, starving and sleeping on the street – but the bottom line is yes I have often been a homeless drug user, maintaining that these horrors I’ve seen would have never happened to me had it not been for prohibition. Many many years ago before my first night on the street, while I was using, maybe then there was hope that one day I’d decide to do things differently but I can tell you now, if I am completely honest, there is no way. It’s not impossible for someone to overcome this, it happens sure, but listen, the things you see….and some of the soul sacrificing things you do, in that position, I can tell you the levels of post traumatic stress I feel when sober, the things I’d thought were just for film, that I’ve done… there’s no way, it hurts way too much and there’s this overwhelming claustrophobia in my heart when sober, all those days and nights and all those things, they eat your sober soul alive, I’m sorry it’s true. The point in saying this is just to point this out – this situation of mine is almost totally irrelevant, I’m just one of so many, but the point is this is a profoundly intricate psychological issue. I’m not even remotely close to the worst case. And yet to deal with me and those like me the system manufactures these “social workers” whom spend 6 months in a side course to get certified and then they’re pretty much out in the field.
Someone can tell me, is it not so, to get a PHD isnt it a 10 year commitment of the highest responsibility?
So you’re telling me, oh great system, that the dude whose having some minor confidence issues in his normal life is the one entitled to the doctor with 10 years minimum in school, whereby the most damaged persons with the most intricate of issues are subject to this clueless army of “counselors” with 6 months of schooling?? LOL! No wonder things are so messed up.
I digress.
yes i dont think what I do TRULY hurts anybody but myself. In a nutshell though the response is “what about your friends and family” the “pain” they’ve felt being witness to my descent. No, I’m sorry, I’m too sorry to say that if we all lived our lives for others we’d be void of some very real and necessary pleasure. I do understand my fathers pain at my homelessness and drug use in that he who subscribes to a theory of success is demonstrated in the length of zeros at the end of ones bank account, my idea of success is how many bags you can get on a given day, so we are fundamentally at ideas in a very real and very ideological way.
This idea that we drug users hurt others with our choices is a little too convenient and is just another barrier we must destroy to get to the end of the proverbial rainbow. Am I wrong?
Hey Pete hope you’ve been having a good time in NYC! 🙂
CJ, unless what you are doing is assaulting, murdering, kidnapping others, or stealing from them or destroying their property, you are NOT causing harm to others, period and those are the only kinds of harm around which laws should be built. You might be making others unhappy or, in the case of family members heartsick, but you are NOT harming them! Tell that to those social workers.
“So you’re telling me, oh great system, that the dude whose having some minor confidence issues in his normal life is the one entitled to the doctor with 10 years minimum in school, whereby the most damaged persons with the most intricate of issues are subject to this clueless army of “counselors†with 6 months of schooling??”
Yes, C.J. you’ve nailed it. The person with the minor problems doesn’t get any more of their time, really. But it’s tied up in the way people do things in a hierarchy. For every one PhD, there have to be ten or fifteen social workers, because there aren’t enough PhD’s to do the work. Also because you can’t pay that many very highly qualified people to do the work. The same thing happens in hospitals, where the highly qualified Doctors direct the residents and nurses. It’s worse because they don’t want to PAY enough highly qualified PhD’s (they’re comparatively expensive) to adequately supervise and review these workers.
I wrote a grant and set up a model program that was designed in the opposite way. The paperwork, scheduling purchasing and other ordinarily managerial functions were rotated through the new staff (with weekly supervision sessions with me) and the experienced people were supposed to spend more of their time with direct patient contact. In many ordinary cases, a Shrink in my position would only spend about ten percent of his time in direct patient contact. In that model, I aimed to up that to forty percent or more in hopes of better patient outcomes. The supervisory staff did get more time on the floor. But the program management became a disaster in short order. Too bad. With tweaking it would have worked, but the Grant wasn’t renewed because the paperwork was a (predictable) disaster.
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Actually DC, it started more as noblesse oblige to Pete because he emailed me and asked me to play nice. This is his house. Despite the fact that I’ve taken a couple of mulligans I’ve actually got to say that I like it and think it’s worked out very well for me. Other than the instant gratification of snide questions like, “when do you think you’ll make your project to link to articles published before Mr. Gutenberg invented the printing press succeed?” there isn’t any real value in that. You might find it shocking if you knew how genuinely pleased I was when he returned, hell, it isn’t possible for you to be more shocked than I was about that. There are a lot of people who who don’t recognize that it’s the miracle of modern pharmacology that facilitated his release from the laughing academy. Without those drugs he’d still be in the straight jacket and making Nurse Ratched have kittens from the residual stress. I just don’t understand people’s cruelty, even though I’m sure it’s unintentional. All in all it’s worked out very well for everyone, and the experience has certainly made me a better person.
A note on refereeing. If you’ve ever watched football on TV, you’ve seen it. Someone shoves someone, and they shove back, and the second shove is the one seen by the refs and penalized. May not seem fair, but it’s the way it works.
1. Don’t shove back. 2. If you do, and get caught, take your penalty and get back in the game. 3. Taking that moment to get in the ref’s face and insult him is poor form and really stupid. All you’ll gain is more penalties or ejection from the game.