This so called drug war is part of a bigger agenda a slower train to Auswitz it is a silent weapon mostly aimed at Africans in America. Along with the media and Racist/terrorist society we are being marginalized and disenfranchised .This drug war is about the police state.

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Article in FP, why the war on drugs can't be won...

Just Say No to Prohibition

Like most conservative-oriented policies, and the US is a far-right country among the developed countries, current anti-drug activities are counter-productive and increase the power of the authoritarian state. A short-list of harsh policies which failed:

- War on Terrorism
- Militarism
- Abstinence Education
- No Child Left Behind

Other faillures of conservatism aren't so obviously heavy-handed, but they fail just the same.

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The 25000 industrial uses of hemp is what Big Business feared 70 years ago. When FDR signed the bill to excessively tax marijuana, he pretty much caved in to Corporate America as did the "Democrats" who were handpicked by the vested business interests back then.

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How much is the total cost of the War On Some Drugs costing America? It is probably close to a trillion a year.
Drugs are freely available right now after all the effort wasted to stamp them out.
The repeal of drug prohibition in its entirety drugs would be freely available just as they are now but they would be cheap, pure and available in known quantities and we could have more effective strategies for helping the small minority of users who ask for help.
The violence ,corruption of police and politicians, money laundering , drug fueled prostitution, funding of bad people with drug money...it would all end.
Remember people...drug laws are a very new thing in general. The entire time humans have been on this planet have been free of drug laws and people used the drugs they wanted.
Also by dismantling the DEA who controls and approves all scientific research on controlled drugs new ways of treating addiction and new safe intoxicants could be developed.
The number of people who have problems with drugs will actually decrease and those who choose not to use intoxicants will not start using them and will not suffer the terrible effects of the WAR On SOME DRUGS. Police can focus on real crime, drug money violence and drug gangs will disappear and theft will drop as well.
It is a total positive gain for society as a whole.

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When I was a child back in the dark ages, prohibition was in effect and so was rampant bootlegging. My father, a Democrat and a teetotaller, was against prohibition because he said it made criminals of ordinary people. My mother, a good Republican moralist, felt drinking was an evil that prohibition could cure.

I never see it mentioned anywhere these days, but those who were pro prohibition in those days (largely Republicans), were labeled "dries," while those opposed to the government as keepers of the public morals, (largely Democrats) were called "wets" and the arguments between the two were hot and heavy. My parents were very political and even though I was a small child at the time, I had the advantage of hearing both sides to an important social and political issue. Eventually, of course, sanity ruled, the wets prevailed and prohibition was called a failure.

So now alcohol, a known killer, is sold legally, and Marijuana, with a record of having caused no deaths at all is illegal and anyone possessing a small amount is liable to imprisonment. Like my dad, I am a teetoteller also, but think prohibiting the use of Marijuana makes even less sense than prohibiting the use of alcohol. Marijuana is lumped in with the really dangerous drugs which makes no sense at all.

One day we may have our fill of the government treating its people like children and trying to save us from ourselves and insist enough is enough. We should have learned something from a failed prohibition policy years ago, but we seem to have a talent in this country for electing a lot of slow learners to positions of power. We haven't learned a thing.

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The cost is probably underestimated if it doesn't include things like crimes caused by robbers and violent criminals that could have been prevented if the cops weren't spending their time catching potheads. Also, crimes committed by other criminals that were released from prison early due to overcrowding caused of the incarceration of potheads.

Also, consider that it in many neighborhoods the cops are seen as the bad guys, and so people don't want to help in stopping criminal activity.

Don't forget the hemp business that could be providing everything from paper products without killing old growth forests to alternative fuels. Both hemp and majihuana production could also lower the need farm subsidies by giving farmers a new cash crop.

Consider too the benefits of regulating the strength of marijuana. Mnay of the present products are much too strong for casual use and render the uses too stoned to function. We don't have 100 proof beer for a reason, it's regulated.

Then there is the benefit of keping it out of the hands of children. It is often easier for children to get marijuana than it is to get beer. The beer retailer doesn't want to lose his license by selling to underage buyers. The marijuana dealer doesn't have to worry about that.

Finally, there is the issue of it being a "gateway drug". No, smoking marijuana doesn't automatically make people want to try harder drugs. Rather, since they have to go to a dealer of illegal drugs to buy it, it is quite likely that the dealer will also offer them other illegal drugs. You don't often go into a beer store, and have the clerk offer you cocaine or heroin.

Ok, that should be enough right there, except that our politicians are an extremely conservative bunch, so don't expect any changes. These ideas have been kicked around since the '70s, but instead of prgress, our laws have only gotton tougher. For some reason, we can't elect representatives who actually represent us.

It's a combination of conservatives showing up at the voting booth, while liberals don't. But it's not just laziness, most times liberals don't have anyone to vote for, except third parties, and the two major parties and media have everyone convinced that that would be "throwing away your vote".

What I call throwing away your vote is voting for someone who does not reflect your views, or not voting at all. That is throwing away your vote. Whether your candidate wins or not is not material to your selection of who to vote for. Even worse, when the media tells you who is expected to win, and you take that into account when you vote, then you have just been manipulated! You are now voting for the media's choice, not your own. And the media is owned by big business, so don't be surprised when you find that everything seems slanted towards the needs of big business, and not the needs of the prople.

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I keep reading these posts telling us to vote for progressive candidates. If only it was that easy. After the last two elections fraud has become the norm. Exit polls used to be so accurate that with only 2% or so of the votes in the winner could be calculated. Not so in the past two elections. The exit polls were entirely wrong. The first times in history. Our elections are rigged and with electronic voting machines they have gotten much easier to manipulate. I mean where the hell did John Kerry come from? I honestly believe that nobody should vote until a more secure system (paper ballots anyone?) is invented.

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The war on marijuana really IS a modern day Prohibition. In 1989-1990, I was a pothead. I've been drug, alcohol, and caffeine free for over 16 years now, but when I told my friend Dennis Archer (serving time for a marijuana bust) back in 1993 that I had lived unwillingly under electronic surveillance, his immediate response was: "Did the government have you under surveillance for using drugs?"

In his 1992 book, Visions of Liberty, former Executive Director of the ACLU, Ira Glasser writes:

"The use of wiretapping and electronic eavesdropping emerged during the Prohibition era. Roy Olmstead was a suspected bootlegger whom the government wished to search. It placed taps in the basement of his office building and on wires in the streets near his home. No physical entry into his office or home took place. Olmstead was convicted entirely on the basis of evidence from the wiretaps.

"In his appeal to the Supreme Court, Olmstead argued that the taps were a search conducted without a warrant and without probable cause, and that the evidence seized against him should have been excluded because it was illegally gathered. He also argued that his Fifth Amendment right not to be a witness against himself was violated.

"By a 5-4 vote, the Court rejected his arguments and upheld the government's power to wiretap without limit and without any Fourth Amendment restrictions, on the grounds that no actual physical intrusion had taken place.

"Olmstead's Fifth Amendment claim was also dismissed on the grounds that he had not been compelled to talk on the telephone, but had done so voluntarily. Thus the Court upheld the government's power to do by trickery and surreptitious means what it was not permitted to do honestly and openly. It wasn't until 1967, in a similar case involving gambling, that the Court overruled the Olmstead decision by an 8-1 margin and recognized that the Fourth Amendment applied to wiretapping and electronic surveillance.

"Interestingly, these cases arose in the context of crimes like bootlegging and gambling. During the past twenty years, the majority of wiretapping and electronic eavesdropping by both state and federal officials has been in cases involving drug dealing and gambling.

"Serious crimes of violence, such as homicide, assault, rape, robbery, and burglary, are rarely the target of electronic eavesdropping, which is not normally a useful tool in such cases.

"From the beginning, when wiretapping was virtually invented to enforce laws prohibiting the sale of alcohol, to the late 1960s, when gambling was a major target, to the present, when the use and sale of drugs other than alcohol are the main target, these intrusive devices have been used mostly to enforce laws aimed at punishing and proscribing personal conduct that society deems immoral.

"Because such conduct essentially involves private activities among consenting adults who are all likely to want to keep those activities secret, they are harder to investigate and prosecute than crimes like robbery or burglary, in which an unwilling victim will probably aid any investigation...the invasion of privacy inherent in wiretapping and electronic eavesdropping remains with us as part of the legacy of our attempts to criminalize personal conduct.

"The other major use of electronic eavesdropping has been to punish political dissent. For decades, former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover used wiretaps and other electronic devices to spy on political figures and citizens not yet suspected of having committed a crime. He built vast dossiers on their political activities and personal lives. Special units of local police called 'Red Squads' did the same."

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The United States is a nation of laws. Prohibition of marijuana is currently one of thos laws. If you don't agree with this law then do something. YES you can! The power in this country is with "We the People". WE elect or Representatives that pass or rescind these laws! When is the last time YOU sat down and wrote a letter to your Representatives? Do you know who your Representatives are?
Here is a small test in civics.
1. Do you know the names of your two Senators?
2. Did you know that each State only has two?
3. Do you know the names of your Representatives in the House of Representitives?
4 How many House members does your State have?
5 Do you know the names of your State Senators?
6. Do you know the difference between the Senators that work in your State Capitol and the ones that work in Washington D.C.?
7. When is the last time YOU wrote to any of the above mentioned people and expressed your feelings on the legalization of marijuana?

BONUS QUESTION: What is the difference between a Senator and a Congressman?

On average only about 50% of eligible Americans vote in a Presidential election. Yet many more than that complain about our Government. Get involved! Do something other than complaining! Write to your Representatives. VOTE!

Those that failed the above test need not bitch about Marijuana or any other thing that our Government does. After all how can you complain about it if you don't even know how our Government works? YOU, YES YOU have the power to change things but you can't do it if you don't know the process. The power in this country rests with WE THE PEOPLE! WE elect them so WE make the laws! If you don't vote then it's the same as letting go of the steering wheel and complaing that you car is careening out of control.

Uknown quote: "it is better that the Government fear the People than the People fear their Government"

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"...we've effectively cut legitimate businesspeople out of the market and handed a monopoly to CRIMINALS AND GANGS."

Who do you think would take over the production and distribution of cannabis if it were legalized? Corporations (criminals and gangs) that's who.

You don't think for a minute that the average small farmer or businessman would be allowed to flourish, do you? They would be crushed by the corporate/government greed machine. Look at whats happened to farmers and small businesses so far. Why do you think cannabis would be any different? At least small clandestine farmers can make a decent living from it the way it is now. Thanks to government "price controls" (aka the war on drugs.) If the average person could legally grow his own the bottom would drop out on the price and only huge quantity growers could make it profitable and small growers would be wiped out.

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The article said:

"Or use all $42 billion for a massive tax cut that would put an extra $140 in the pockets of every person in the country -- $560 for a family of four..."

Amen to that.

I am a staunch opponent of the insane war on drugs and believe it only benefits rich insiders.

It must end, mainly because of civil liberties violations, but also because of the waste of productivity.

And the savings must accrue to the *true owners* of that money: those from whom it was taken in the first place. Let them decide the best use for it.

See my blog at: http://www.alicelillieandher.blogspot.com

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I agree with all of these comments and wish to point out the biggest lobby for drug control are the police and other drug related law enforcement agencies. This is to maintain their jobs. I have been using pot for 40 years and at 85 only use it to maintain my sex life which without pot would have ended at least ten years ago. God bless God for small favors. As Hemp seems to be the best source of Biofuel it is a crime to suppres it.

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Cannibas Hemp,what marijuana's real name is, is one very
interesting plant. You can make bio-diesel,all clothing from work pants to wedding dresses,lubricating oils, #2 diesel fuel and a host of other products that would make the farm market price about $3500/ acre. That's just for the raw product,legal uses. Products that would be worth Hundreds of Billions of dollars in product sales. hemp would create hundreds of thousands of 'living wage' jobs,everything form dayworkers to scientists to engineers. Tradesmen would be employed to build the plants to process the raw fibers into clothing,fuel and foods.Family Farms could stay in business.
Soils can be revitalized because hemp field waste is a natural fertilizer. Without even considering the 'pot smoker' mind set,
the money that could be generated by legalizing hemp far out 'earns' the deficits we get from interdiction.
Allowing hemp medicines gives many people the right to buy from legal sources or grow their own. Allowing hemp to be available as alchohol would have a pacifying effect on the society as a whole. Domestic violence,the most common crime,would drop to nearly nothing.People would need less anti-depressants, mood elevators, and social anxiety drugs.
Between the legal uses and the medical uses,there's no real reason to keep hemp illegal,except for the vast amounts of money the government makes playing both ends against the middle. Hemp is a tool that's used to promote fear,at least as far as 'Uncle Screw You' is concerned. Funny thing though, The president's grand pappy wore baby clothes made from hemp. Used cold remedies made from hemp, lit lanterns that held hempoil. Worked the oilfields in pants made from hemp and buttoned a hemp shirt. Read books printed on hemp paper. Sat at the dinner table with a fine Irish hemp tablecloth
with hemp napkins. Too bad he clebrated his success with alchohol instead of joints. We might not have been 9/11'd. We may even had a more peaceful society that had more jobs,cleaner air and a stronger economy.
Jeffrey7

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The people elected how many new Democratic Members in 2006 to the House of Representatives??

It is my understanding that only TWO new Democratic House Members voted for the Hinchey-Rohrabacher Amendment in July. The Ammendment would have stopped the FEDS from arresting and prosecuting medical Cannabis patients in the States that have passed Medical MJ Laws.

Cannabis is not just a Liberal/Progressive issue. Get on a Drug Policy site like Rob Kampia's Marijuana Policy Project or others like Norml or DPA and they will contact you when it is time to email your Government Reps. It is so easy.

I don't know how I missed the weekly column in the New York Daily News by Dr David Moore and Bill Manville. "Do Pot Smokers Need Detox?" [Fri 10/05] A read that will raise the BP of some people. Easy to get it by going to the Map Drug News Index site.

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$42 billion dollars is far too high a price for this especially when you know the Pothead-in-Chief will skate regardless. Then again, compared to some of his more horendeous crimes, his use of pot is a very trivial matter, though if it would send him to prison, I'd be all for it.

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Don't forget how the "officials" (a joke in itself) charge those that get busted for every dime they can squeeze out ot them and then some. Breaking up families with their neolithic, ham handed bullshit "rules". I got a DUI once, (arrested out of my own house, because a dimwit at the video store "smelled beer". I was just over the limit)
There were perhaps a dozen different "fees", not including the BIG FINE, and the 5 years of having to pay risk insurance. I remember an "arrest fee", an "arrest filing fee", paying hotel prices for a few days locked up, restaurant fees for shit sandwiches, About $25 PER DAY, for the privelage of wearing the darling ankle bracelet they chose for me. I'm leaving out quite a few
IT'S A FRIGGIN INDUSTRY FOLKS!!! And if you can't pay, you get to stay in jail! And all it does, is make you HATE the police, the judges, the lawyers and the rest of the rip-off bastards involved in "The Industry".
I wish I had the money to buy a 98,000 acre ranch in paraguay like gorges George Bush has done. (check out the "Latina News Service" if you don't believe me.
I'm kind of glad I'm getting old, so I don't have to spend my money paying for George's War. Crooked bastards dictating what we do. May they go to hell where they belong.

Matt

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The exit polls in '04 were right early on election day. Kerry was winning, even with all the fraud and voter suppression techniques being used by the Bushies. Only when the fraudulent tactics kicked in late at night and the "results" no longer matched the exit polls, were the exit poll data "corrected" to match the "official results". Exit polls are used to verify elections in most countries in Europe, since they still use paper ballots and it takes a couple of days for the official results to come in. Exit polls are usually accurate to less than one percent, and were accurate in the U. S. before the Republicans started their massive campaigns of fraud and voter suppression. It's time to call these bastards on their undemocratic voter suppression tactics whenever and wherever we see talk of anything except the theft of democracy they engage in!

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1. The most people incarcerated in any country on planet Earth. With about 5% of the worlds population we have about 25% of the worlds prisoners. Western Europe with more population has less people locked away in cages for all crimes than the U.S. has locked up for drug crimes.

2. Erosion of our constitutional rights. Erosion so severe it emboldened one supreme court justice to coin the phrase "the drug exception" when writing about how drugs sway the opinions of our nations highest court.

3. It not only doesn't keep "the children" off drugs it guarantees that anyone with money can buy any drug they want regardles of age.

4. It guarantees that about 6% of the worlds economy (larger than the global automobile industry) is derived from prohibited drugs fueling quite a large black market industry.

5. It's turned our police forces into quasi pari-military swat teams for dawn no knock kick in your door raids which sometimes lead to innocent people being killed to "save the children".

Over 800,000 (you gotta be kidding) arrests for mostly possession of a substance that is much safer than booze. And please don't run that "oh it's 30 times as potent as your fathers pot" horsehockey by me. I've smoked pot for 40 years and the 5 most potent strains of pot I've smoked were all grown in the 70's (and that includes some very fine hydroponic strains in recent years) Besides the more potent the strain the less you have to smoke.

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Ron Paul 2008!!!

duh.

And yeah we're talkin way way wayyyyyy more than $42 billion here. I'm thinkin more like $500 billion altogether. The costs are hidden but certainly cannot be ignored. Just like how they say Iraq only costed a few hundred billion (lol, only). But then when you look at the war's effect on the price of oil and do a little math, it comes out to about $33 billion for every dollar increase in the price of a barrel of oil since 2003. This war on herb is extracting a similar hidden cost. We really need to declare war on something more logical. How about a war on crayola crayons? You know how many kids choke on those things?

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A 113 billion dollar illegal business wouldn't be worth half that much if it were legal, and the cost of regulation would probably offset much of the revenue if it were legalized. I agree with the premise of the article, but using obviously inflated figures detracts from it's credibility.

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Decriminalize ALL drugs. Get the money out and crime, violence and the "lure" of drugs will decrease. Put 1/10th of this money into rehab and help programs for addicts, jobs, etc. and get real. Drugs, as terrorism, can't succumb to "war". Root cause elimination is the only way.

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from ASA
Call on the Governor to Defend California's Medical Marijuana Laws!

Over the past several years, President Bush's Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has victimized patients and providers throughout California, undermining state law and stooping to new levels to shut down access for sick and dying patients in California. We must put an end to the attack on patients and providers!

Americans for Safe Access (ASA) has launched a pressure campaign, calling on Governor Schwarzenegger to "Stand Up for Patients' Rights: Defend California's Medical Marijuana Laws."

We are calling on Governor Schwarzenegger to defend the rights of medical cannabis patients and caregivers and the will of the voters in California by standing up to the Bush Administration. We are urging him to take a stand against federal medical cannabis enforcement and to support efforts to harmonize federal law with the compassionate laws of California and the eleven other states that allow medical cannabis use.

ASA's new campaign consists of statewide call in days, legislative visits from constituents and lobbyists, and sign-on letters from key public officials and organizations. This pressure will build up to a mass mobilization on Thursday, October 11th, to Governor Schwarzenegger's office in Los Angeles.

The only way this campaign will be successful is if people like you take action to protect California's patients, providers, and medical marijuana laws! Please read on for ways to get involved.

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I keep reading that the drug war should end. While I agree that the safe drugs like a little weed should be decriminalized I don't really believe that all drugs should be legal. Have you ever witnessed first hand what the effects of drugs like meth,coke,smack, and crack will do to people? I have and let me just say that it's not a pretty sight. Those drugs will turn you into someone who you never wanted to be, they will take you to the darkest places in your mind and not let you go back unless you quit. Can you imagine what this country would be like in twenty years if everyone would be allowed to run rampant on hard drugs? I don't even want to. What we need is to ask our leaders simply why Why is pot illegal, why are you allowing the hard drugs to be accesible, what I mean is, why are the ingredients to make those drugs, save for coke still in existence? we can survive without psuedoeffidrine, we can survive without anhydrous ammonia, just to name a few, we really need to think about this. But this is just my opinion.

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At some point we are just going to have to realize that this coming election may be the best format we will ever have for this discussion. We need to keep pinning down the candidates and educating them about what we think. We also need to face the real beliefs of people that have lived with the drug scene in America. Their views are important and valuable. I am talking about both the bad and the good. We need to see all sides and force ourselves to think about what this war on drugs does to our country. A start in making this change to a healthy view of drug use a reality would be a petition asking that a general amnesty be declared so as to get the people caught in this war out of our overcrowded prisons. Another step we could and should make is to show some respect for ourselves. Let's give ourselves a chance, and the people who have been affected an opportunity, to learn the difference between treating recreational drug use as an adult choice and treating it as a vile crime. Using a recreational drug is a choice that millions of people make every day. But in our world, we also choose to make fun of this choice in the most horrible of ways. We can stop doing that.

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why on earth you want make production and sale of DRUGS legal???
Forgotten all the harm done by the Cancercompanies with there lousy cigarrettes???

Why not be happy with the knowledge that smoking pot will not put you in jail.
And those minidealers find a regular job.
If haschies becomes legalized Prices go up .

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apologies for being slightly off topic, but this short clip is quite worth watching... compassionate conservatism at its best...

Mitt Romney on medical marijuana

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I agree with the article, and have only one thing to amend, towards the end:

Regulate marijuana, but don't regulate it just like alcohol, for as we have seen, and the paper makes clear use of that, alcohol causes great problems. Regulating marijuana in the same way as alcohol cuts no argument. You can't bring about the positive aspects of marijuana by using alcohol as the frame of reference for a legal "baddy," and then asking for marijuana to be regulated just like that very same baddy. This is one of the crucial flaws to this argumentation, and it seems to be detrimental to the whole cause of marijuana regulation, for it makes no sense to those who have issues about marijuana, to those with reservations about relaxing any such prohibitions, to the conservatives, and to any logical person that expects to hear arguments about marijuana's utility, and not self-serving arguments that use the legality of one substance just to push for another one. In their minds, this may be the prelude to the feared comeback of a late-60's mentality (or any kind of monster thereof, which they have been cultivating in their head) and the worst part of it is that they have a point!

Regulate marijuana just like marijuana should be regulated i.e. study its effects and its own nature, and devise proper regulatory legislation, which will not be perfect (and will probably have to be revised and adjusted over time), and we got ourselves an argument, and more importantly, a bigger audience.

Regulate marijuana just like we do alcohol, and not even I wanna hear the rest of it, for it's just a big joke. The problem, though, is that as time passes, the joke is on knowledge and on our capacity to enhance it. If those who shout so fervently about the legalisation/regulation etc of marijuana are serious about it, then they better get their arguments straight, for they are their own worst saboteurs, and believe me, after cruising around in that given underground for a while, even the intellectual part of it, where research meets academia meets politics and ecstasy and a solicitous attitude, I have realised that all some of these people really want is the right for everyone to get high without trouble... and that doesn't seem to be taking into consideration the throngs of people that will be smoking up without having the mental preparation, the cognitive skills, the general disposition, and the whole array of tools that are needed if one is to smoke responsibly and with a minimised risk of abuse; it's just not the kind of attitude that will win public opinion over, and this is why it hasn't made any headway so far, and it never will, not as long as it is carried out along these arguments. This is not about civil rights. It's about research, science, knowledge, evolution. The 60's have come and gone, and they failed monumentally in their grand goals (bless Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas for its masterful incision on that issue among others), so let them not be brought back as they were. Time for a new argument, one that speaks of responsible use within the confines and order of society, one of ecstasy and not anarchy, of growth and not malady, of adjustment and not maladaptation, of turning on, tuning in and going deeper rather than just dropping out... Time for exploration, not parties and chill-outs. If the mind is the final frontier, then it's time to deal with it seriously. Everyone is just waiting to hear the right argument before they can sanction a venture into it, and all we have to do is give it to them. The problem, though, is that before we do so, we must mean it ourselves, and I just don't think that we are ready to face the burdens and responsibilities inherent in that which we so fervently advocate, not yet anyway, otherwise we would have done it already.

Time to get serious then, isn't it? Time to grow up. Or are expanded minds the hardest to adjust of them all?

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The fact that drugs are illegal makes them expensive. The fact that they are expensive means that those who can manage to sell them despite the law will reap tremendous profit, completely off the books and tax free. This is the perfect arrangement for intelligence operations that are otherwise constrained in terms of funding and secrecy by Congress.

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http://www.genwi.com/play/2306218

I finally listened to the segment on pot last month.

My pot doc, Doctor Tom has a web blog and has been musing about politics. Perhaps you will find it interesting to read his perspective. He asked me what I had thought of the 60 minutes show so I will answer here.

The coverage wasn't too bad. I hope they do an investigative follow-up on the police record of misrepresenting the situation to community leaders for so long. This truth really makes me angry because Pot is an important medicine to REPLACE alcohol, a far more dangerous drug.

It is very useful for treating alcoholism. Think public health on a huge, HUGE scale. Alcohol misuse is the number one cause of child abuse. Child abuse is the number one cause of violent crime.

Why do police forces insist on taking this wrong and ignorant position? Why do they look at a healthy young man and assume he doesn't need help managing his anger? He should only be allowed to legally manage it with alcohol?

The police really do need to answer that question for us because everyone knows an angry drunk is a lot more likely to be violent then an angry pothead. Children really are better off if their parents are not violent.

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Listen to Bill, youtube 9/2/7, it is just over 4 minutes.

It'd be a lot more then 109 people, if they only used pot to treat alcoholism.

Anyway, I liked what I heard. Take a listen, "I am going to fight the Bush people." Wow, dude, I am impressed.

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linked text He wants someone to show him it really IS medicine. Yeah gads!

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He wants the FDA in charge of it. I don't think I like that, but I haven't thought it out. John, want to give us your reasoning?

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OK, the rest were interesting, this one is actually funny, "I'll be glad to sit down and talk to you about it." You have to laugh, because the only other option is crying.

Do you think he loses any sleep thinking about the hundreds of thousands of people rotting their lives away in stinking prisons over tokin a little weed? He either is a dufus or a heartless monster.

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Yes. Next question.

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Reasonable answer.

Nice, thank you.

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:-)

See the people? End of argument.

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A good bit of lawyer talk about medical marijuana, 10 min.

California law, "any illness for which marijuana provides relief." Thank god.

History lesson.

Gotta love it!

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Sick people with legitimate recommendations are being brutalized and victimized in California in a blatant attempt to get compassionate use laws repealed. Most local police consider the compassionate use law a joke and ignore attacks on patients, making no attempt to find the perpetrators. If patients defend themselves they are prosecuted, persecuted and punished to the harshest degree possible. There are plenty of medical patients walking around scarred and traumatized for life by gang style attacks and the police just tell them they deserve everything they get. The newest easy target for home invasion gang criminals: disabled medical marijuana patients.

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For another example of how the "war on Drugs" translates go to:geocities .com and search "chronicreform" all one word/small case.About how the authorities incarcerated a Blind VietNam veteran for posession of small qty. of marijuana. Jeeze...hope they'll treat the Iraq/Afghan Veterans a little bit better?

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Here is a direct quote from Sacramento CA police detectives: You people (compassionate use patients) are just drug addicts and there is no such thing as medical marijuana. You deserve everything you get, even if you are killed. It is your own fault for attracting attacks."

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The interdiction on growing hemp becomes totally ridiculous when you understand that the commercial hemp plant is Cannabis Ruderalis, a low THC cousin of Cannabis Sativa. (DEA take note...you can't get buzzed from commercial hemp, duh...) Canada makes big bucks from hemp, which is basically a dry-farmed weed, something that could spell salvation for farmers in the drought stricken areas of the Southwest. Wake up stupid politicians and policy makers. It is Sativa which is the medicinal plant.

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Let's not confuse marijuana with industrial hemp as our government leaders, aka giant corporations want us to do. The US, which has no hemp industry of its own, imports 60% of the world's hemp products. As for marijuana, its danger is to big pharma who don't want something that everyone can grow in his backyard to interfere with their business.

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They say ya fight fire w/ fire,how about we put together a lobby of our own and every pot smoker in the USA donates 5 bucks thats alot of money ,get lobbyist types,outgoing short hair real salesmen and beat the other lobbyists at their own game,go to ea.official and make an offer big offer! w/promise of more to come,just sign here!Hell most of them are crooked,have lots of money and want more right??? Is that a good idea or what?

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...I just think the war on drugs is just anothe way for the Republican Pary to transfer taxpayer dollars to it's own benefit and to the benefit of it's corporate friends.

Money, money, money...

Ronnie Raygun and Daddy Bush, both corporate whores and the introduction/ use of drugs into the greater LA area. Just imagine that.

And this is what right wingers and their relions(Catholic and evangelical fundies) call pro-life and family values.

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