Although I am in favor of legalization, I do not think that welfare recipients should be afforded drug use.

While I agree that the above story is terrible, I do favor restricting the luxuries of people that I am supporting - in this case through my taxes.

Perhaps drug use does slow some people down - perhaps it makes others unable to work efficiently? Maybe, just maybe there could be some bad side effects of drug use?

Perhaps they can buy it themselves when they have a job making their own money? That seems only fair - you stay sober while I am supporting you and I promise to leave you alone about it when you are gainfully employed.

And! I promise to oppose drug testing in the workplace because that is also a tragedy.

Surely there must be a way to regulate drug use among the welfared without having tragedies like this occur?

(Once again the above story is terrible. Please don't mistake my remarks as being about the people above. My remarks are motivated by the question of "Where'd you get the money for drugs? Gifts happen, but not too often.)

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... and let the voters decide!

Politicians wont move on this issue as to much money is involved in keeping it illegal, both on and off the books!

laws need to be changed and if the politicals wont even hold a comprehensive discussion on harm reduction strategies then maybe we need to take the debate directly to the people to decide... that being... on the ballet!

is it to late to organize putting the war on drugs campaign on the ballet?

time to end prohibition...
end the black market funding of organized crime and terrorism...
end the overcrowding and waste of taxpayers money in incarceration and in the prison industrial complex
defund governmental black ops

the list is long but people know what i'm talking about...
and recognize the importance that this prohibition means to nefarious organizations worldwide!

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During Jeb Bush's tenure as Florida's governor, his daughter Noelle was arrested for prescription forgery. Contrary to Jeb's "tough on drugs" policies for everybody else, she was not charged and entered rehab, where she proceeded to supply illegal drugs to her fellow patients. Democrats called for the Bushes to quit the Governor's Mansion, on the grounds that it was public housing. As you can imagine, they stayed on.

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Until we make our govt. realize that addiction is a disease and you can not lock up a disease and take that money and put it into treatment nothing will change. Prison is our #1 business in our country and we have to keep it going with new inmates as everyday there are some that are released. As for this women we have come to the point in our society were no one gives a damn about anyone. We have to stand up together for a change or one day it will be us for something that someone did not something that we did. Just look at how we locked up people because we didn't like their last name and kept them imprisoned for years with no charges. What has this country become it is not the America I knew that had a heart.

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Two can play that game. Zero tolerance of drug use on the part of the government implies that government is superior to "We, the People". I, for one, don't accept that. No one, whether in government subsidized housing or in a gated affluent community, should lose their home over a little marihuana or any other "illegal" drug. We do not have a war on drugs in this nation but a war on liberty, and the sooner we understand this the better. While the pharmaceutical companies shamelessly push their drugs in TV commercials and dump their drug residues into our water Americans are made homeless, persecuted and imprisoned for no crime but choosing to use a plant that grows wild everywhere in the world. We, as a once and future free people, need to have zero tolerance for a government so obtuse and wicked as to presume to have zero tolerance for our freedom of choice. Anyone for a Boston tea party?

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in some countries in Europe marihuana is sold by licensed shops with restriction towards minors and hard drugs (including alcohol)

Strange enough the use of drugs didnt rise.
i.e we are allowed to grow for own use 5 plants.

Shopowners do not accept drugsdealers jeopardizing their turnovers and profits, so they cooperate with the police.

Marihuana is a drug, cocaine is a drug, alcohol is a drug
hey are not healthy, some comments in Alternet are childish ,claiming weed is innoncent.
Smoke Northern light and you cannot drive a car.
Drink a bottle of whisky and you cannot drive a car either.
A war NEVER solves a problem.But the problem in the USA is that as soon as marihuana is legalised big corporations will start advertising, promotion for profits. (See history of Tobacco and the situation on Peak Oil.) Then the prize will raise.
I am an advocate of NOT legalising marihuana.
only selling marihuana through a drugstore for semimedical purposes.
and cultivating for own use.

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O my god Whats Next?
Maybe these drug addicted people will see right through this system.
Doesnt it make teens crazy & suicidal
Next thing you know theyll be turning to hard drugs like ACID.
Watch Out

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This government only uses the illegality of soft drugs as just another method of control. Someone making too much noise? Have him arrested, chances are he's got some pot on him.

Someone suggested you can't do your job high on pot. Whether or not this is true, it is highly naive. My theory is this: I've worked construction in several states, and it seems to me that marijuana is what KEEPS people coming back to do the mind-numbing, back-breaking labor. It is EVERYWHERE. Which leads me to suspect that the powers that be are fully aware of the SOMA-like properties pot has that keep people working by making dull jobs a little more interesting.
Without pot, a lot of bright young people would be confronted with the fact that banging nails everyday for some rich dude really does just suck.

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What does our $40 billion-a-year drug war get us?
Legitimate welfare jobs.

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Just another cog in the genocide machine.

Destroy the machine, not the smokers of the weed and their kin.

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The great marjiuna lie makes it difficult, perhaps impossible, to teach kids about the drugs that can cause them real harm. Legalize it and tax it! Use the funds to treat those who cannot quit the truly addictive drugs.

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Honestly, think real hard or just drive down to "the ghetto" to your nearest "project" (yes there will be no starbucks however you can get a ice cold 40 ounce. Last I recall, this is Federal Housing and even my landlord has a "drug policy" and I know your landlord possibly has one too.
Wait I know damm well most of you kids only see "the Ghetto" when you are on the Freeway or the Subway going back to the burbs or never have to go to "that side of town" from you trendy enclave now you armchair urban Sociologists have just more blame on blame on things that is irrelevant.
Some things are not "fair" however life is not fair. That kid who got there grandmother evicted will have to learn the hard way, if there is a policy, you might wanna follow to it. I know most of you would be in a world of poo if you got evicted from your loft for violation of your landlords policy.
At the end, most of you would miss the boat on the fact this is Washington DC, this is the District Policy written by the local officials on the local level. So much for the War on Drugs.
Please move to "tha hood" and you will see why we have drug laws. Plus this is not like the 1990's when America's Ghettos was like scenes from Western Movies. Now its OK to go back to your Brookline, MA enclave (or anywhere ells like it in America)

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To me, the continued illegal status of pot is barbaric.

It's one of the most helpful drugs on the planet! For lots of ailments!

(Although it would be a MUCH better drug if it were distilled in a lab so you could get the active ingredients without smoking. I believe such a drug was approved in Canada for multiple sclerosis. Not 100% sure.)

To kick folks out of their house for pot when the pharmaceutical companies are raking in millions is ludicrous in the extreme. How many of the drugs pushed by big pharma have harmful side effects? To one degree or another...all of them do.

When I was a kid, I was the most hyperactive, loud mouthed little brat you'd ever want to meet. I began smoking pot in the 10th grade. I was then able to sit quietly, focus and keep my mouth shut. My teachers were thrilled and told me how much I had "matured." Ritalin just makes me nauseated. Pot CURED me baby!

Perhaps some day, if the human race survives, they will look back on the prohibition of pot and rank it up there with witch burning as a hysterical and ignorant overreaction.

VideoProductionTips = Learn Internet Video

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I lived in a very nice gated community with my teenage son who was going through the terrible teens (we won't even get into what *else* I went through with him; he's a model citizen, now). I got served an eviction notice and the server automatically assumed I was getting the boot because I hadn't paid my rent (color of my skin, yanno) but when he actually read it he said it was due to drug policy violation. Turns out my son had been spied smoking a joint in front of my door. I called the office but they were adamant. I had to leave, despite the fact that I paid my rent on time, had JUST paid my rent, and don't do drugs. All that for a damn JOINT! And *I* didn't even get high!

Ah, well, I survived it although I'm sure a lot of people here will say it's my own fault because I didn't raise my child right (said child actually told me the same thing). I had three, one of them is now a college graduate and has never been in trouble with the law. I raised the other two no differently than I raised that one. Kids are people, just like everyone else.

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I do agree that folks on public assistance should be held accountable for illegal activities, particularly those involving violent crime.

Which leads to the real flaw in this absurd illogic - if drugs, especially marijuana was not "illegal" to begin with, much of the violent crime that we see today would not exist in the first place.

For anyone who has trouble understanding the obvious, please review the history of alcohol prohibition, and why it was eventually repealed.

Somewhere in the future, one can only hope, just perhaps, common sense will prevail, and this entire so-called war on drugs, which is really a welfare program for international organized crime cartels, might finally get updated and revised to something much more logical . .

Oh, but silly me - I know, expecting logic and reason out of our current political system is a situational oxymoron.

Please forgive me - what was I thinking?

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did Alternet just want a tear jerker to get one's dander up? It is tragic that grandmother could lose her home if grandson gets caught with weed off the premises. But it only shows that some jerkwad in Public Housing management has his head up his butt.

The rule that axed grandmother was promulgated to deal with out of control public housing. It is frightening to live next door (either in the same building or an adjacent building) to somone who is dealing. Walls are thin and bullets go right through them.

I have lived in the projects and still live in the 'hood and it is not fun picking bullets out of the garage, the house, the tree. It is not fun to hear that some punk missed his target and killed the kid down the block while she was sitting in the family dining room doing her homework. It is not fun to stand on the sidewalk while a drive by shooter murders a kid in the gangs when you know him and his family. It is not fun to watch the fire department pull up and hose down the street, washing a kid's brains, spattered all over the ground and a fence, down the sewer. It is not fun to see a 16-year old (who can be one great kid) get 39 years in prison for being stupid and lethal. The waste of human potential that drugs and drug gangs embody is the crime behind the crimes.

Alternet presented a sure tear jerker situation and highlighted it, but missed the real tragedy of the stupid drug wars entirely.

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This war on drugs (war on personal freedom) is never going away... it supports waaay to many jobs, from the jail gaurds to the medical and social workers. I'm totally against people who are too lazy to get off their ass and go find some shit-hole job and rather stay at home and smoke bud. I say drug tests for everyone who applys for welfare and the ones who live with them. And please, don't shove the yuppy shit in my face... I started out at 7.50 and hour and over the course of 5 years am at 11.50... nothing to gloat about, but I manage with a car payment and rent amongst other stuff. I know the up and ends of living in poverty, self-discipline and budgeting are the only ways out. Decadence is what it is. Poor people gotta realize they are poor, and do something about it... and if you can't, well then survival of the fittest. Overpopulization is gonna drag us all down whether we like it or not.

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Several posts miss the point of this story. Heck, the "journalist" misses the point too. The grandma was not kicked out because of the drugs. She is being evicted because someone in the housing authority (HA) isn't using common sense. If the kid was not on the housing authority property, the HA should not have authority, and his actions should not have any affect on his Grandmother. If the HA does want to control his actions even when off of their property, they should ban him from the property and leave that woman alone.

What many do not realize is the environment many elderly and kids have to live in because of drugs in HA neighborhoods. For many, they are rampant and the crime that follows makes those neighborhoods worse than some in Iraq. The HA has to have rules on drugs on HA property and has to enforce them.

I think we all agree that this occassion is one where they need to pull their head out of their... , but to use this as a means to say that people should be able to do drugs anywhere they want is preposterous. There are those of us who would like to live in a drug free place and try to make life bearable for our children.

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Has anyone familiarized themselves with Peter McWilliams work entitled, Ain't Nobody's Business if You Do? The "War on Drugs" is a War on Individuals making Informed, Consensual Personal Decisions".

"If it harms none, do as thy will".

1789

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Find something which will make you feel good and our governments will either tax it or make it illegal.
I am surprized they have not figured out a way to tax sex in our bedrooms.

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So barbaric! Pot should have been legalized a hundred years ago. When are we all going to grow up?

JJ
Online Privacy when it Counts

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Though they contain no racist language, the application of the government's zero-tolerance prohibition policies are overtly racist, classist, ineffective and inhumane

Classist, ineffective and inhumane? Yes. Racist? No.

When a law applies to everyone equally regardless of race, it is not racist.

What IS racist, is to suggesting that the law is racist. When you say the law against marijuana use is racist, you are implying that blacks are all a bunch of pot addicts.

That kind of racial stereotyping is racist and unacceptable.

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I tried many times to get a response via email and regular mail from the Drug Policy Alliance about putting me in contact with an organized group here in the Twin Cities, MN that is dealing with federal drug policy. But apparently they have a policy of not responding to individual inquiries.

It's truly depressing that Rep. Keith Ellison is too afraid to speak out against the great harm done by federal drug policy. On his website he has this: "Ellison co-sponsored allowing rehabilitated drug convicts get student loans. This bill amends the Higher Education Act of 1965 to repeal the provisions prohibiting persons convicted of drug offenses from receiving student financial assistance."

Well, that's nice, but it's dealing with a symptom of the drug war. What about the drug war?

One thing I can say about Keith Ellison is that he's no Paul Wellstone--who was unafraid to be outspoken on behalf of the poor and oppressed. But even Wellstone was afraid to touch the drug war. This is insane.

Gov. Jesse Ventura said: "I hold drug possession and drug dealing as two totally different concepts. The drug dealers who resort to deadly street violence should be dealt with severely as the criminals they are."
Again, this is dumb. Legalize street drugs, then you won't have drug dealers resorting to deadly street violence. No one is killing anyone over the sale of alcohol or cigarettes.

What is needed is a human rights group in all cities in this country to pressure their representatives to end the drug war--to legalize drugs so that they can be sold in commercial establishments and taxed. This will end the robberies and killings of drug dealers on the streets, and the killings from turf wars, and the severe punishment as described in this article.

The Green Party here in the Twin Cities agrees that the drug war should be ended, but they tell me that that's only one of many concerns they have--and the drug war ends up toward the bottom of their concerns! Most Green Party members are middle-class white people who live away from predominantly black sections of Minneapolis--like where I live.

And it's amazing that black churches won't touch this issue with a ten-foot pole. Instead, they'll push "drug rehabilitation" programs. "Get high on Jesus, not drugs!" Again treating symptoms, without getting to the root cause: the federal laws themselves.

So can anyone inform me about a civil/human rights group here in the Twin Cities that is working to even organize public debates on this issue? That would be the best first step.

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The media really is blacking out these new house bills to legalize hemp once and for all. Look them up for yourself in the Jefferson Collection of the Library of Congress. These will end the ignorance and persecution that has divided our country and turned our own medical system against us. Smoke less and enjoy it more while turning this country back into a rain forest of our own. Hempseed oil sure makes great jet fuel.

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Mr. Obama ( or Ms. Clinton ) will not save your sorry asses.

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growing up and travelling around the U.S., i can tell you that the first and biggest sign i ever saw in a small town was DRUG STORE. think about it. puritan bullshit. let it all be legal and the overdoses will weed out the weak and stupid. you can now go back to your regular programming.

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