This was a bit of a nothing article: Legalization of Marijuana: Pros and Cons – the usual stuff, attempting to create “balanced” arguments on both sides whether they were valid or not.
This was the part that got me.
The Jury’s Still Out
The legalization of marijuana will likely go down as one of the largest social experiments of the 21st century, and that’s just it – it’s an experiment.
As commenters there have already noted, legalization is not the experiment. Marijuana has been legal for most of human history. It’s prohibition that was the experiment and it failed miserably.
We’re not legalizing drugs, so much as repealing prohibition.
In a sane world, that would be the dialog, and it would be up to those who wish to continue prohibition to justify it, and prove its value.
But criminalization has been the status quo for so long, that the national discussion has failed to remember that prohibition is the social experiment — a radical, dangerous, destructive, and temporary one.
I sometimes play a game with those who’ve (blindly, unthinkingly) regurgitated DrugWarrior talking points. To date, none of them have ever been able to provide the correct answer.
Under which President was the Federal War on (Some) Drugs begun?
Was it:
Ronald Reagan?
Richard Nixon?
FDR?
Woodrow Wilson?
Ulyses S. Grant?
The answer? Woodrow Wilson in 1914 signed the Harrison Narcotics Act, the first Federal anti-recerational drug prohibition law.
19-effin’-14. A century ago. We are no closer to achieving their ‘drug-free Utopia now than were then. Yet the DrugwWarriors are continually demanding more time and more money?
No civilian con man ever had it so good as any DrugWarrior does, as far as ‘job and finacial security’ goes. But it’s still a con, in the end.
Hasn’t an unknown number of pointlessly lost lives, a TRILLION dollars and a CENTURY of time been enough to prove them wrong? How much more blood, treasure and time are we willing to waste on this atrocity? How many more lives, rights and liberties must be sacrificed on the altar of their false, murderous god before we as a people say “Enough!”?
This is not the first time this question has been asked…and for the same horrible reasons. Click on any of those editorial cartoons and you’ll see exactly the same sentiments expressed then as we do today; History does repeat itself.
Back then our ancestors realized we as a nation couldn’t afford the madness…and we are no less intelligent than they. It’s long past time to repeat their example.
.
.
I’m not sure I wouldn’t go with 1906, Teddy Roosevelt and the creation of the FDA with the Federal Food and Drugs Act of 1906. Mr. Roosevelt was also the founder of the Progressive Party which invented the modern version of prohibition.
The Pure Food and Drug Act required truthful labeling, hardly the start of the drug war.
.
.
That’s a gross oversimplification Matthew. I’d think that the regulars here would know that the devil’s in the details and know that the political soundbites are often, if not always inaccurate. The 1906 law was when the shift from State to Federal control occurred. The law also specifically labeled cannabis as a “dangerous” “drug” and resulted in criminalization of non-medical use in the District of Columbia, the first such law in the US.
When President Wilson signed the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914 cocaine was criminalized in 46 of 48 States and heroin was criminalized in 29. It’s as accurate to call the Harrison Narcotics Act the “start” of drugs prohibition as it is to say the ratification of the 18th Amendment was the start of drinking alcohol prohibition. By the time that the National Prohibition Act of 1919 was signed into law 31 of 48 States had already criminalized drinking alcohol. The first of those 31 States was Kansas in 1881.
Gosh, wouldn’t be great if the laws actually matched the politicians sales pitch? You might want to read a bit more about the details of that law because it laid the foundation and the framework for the entire mess. It most certainly was not limited to “truth in labeling.”
Nice points, Duncan.
Yes, even the Harrison Act was supposed just to monitor dispensing of certain drugs, but court rulings in the teens made it clear that law enforcement would get to decide what was a legitimate prescription and what was illegal addiction maintenance.
Most histories I’ve read paint the 1906 law as a good one, if only they’d stopped there. But a quick look at it shows me you’re right, there’s more to learn about it.
Every single alphabet agency is unconstitutional. The job of making certain labeling was truthful and the drugs safe to use could have been done even better by a private organization similar to Consumer Reports, the Underwriters Laboratories, Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, etc.; especially since those private orgs rely on their integrity and unbiased relationship with the companies that provide the products and services they review, instead of government power, to get the job done. Government power attracts the usual lack of integrity and the “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” relationship that occurs between government agencies’ employees and the industries they regulate.
MAGAZINE, NEWSPAPER ADVERTISEMENTS FOR MEDICAL CANNABIS
antiquecannabisbook
During the First World War (for numerous reasons) Americans’ easy access to imported botanical raw medicines was abruptly cut off. With its ability to import Cannabis Indica (Cannabis from Hindu-stan) abruptly curtailed, America was forced to turn to its domestically grown Cannabis Americana for its medical needs.
CANNABIS ITS LAST LEGAL DAYS
REEFER MADNESS, BEFORE THE HYSTERIA CAMPAIGN
For the sake of brevity, let’s move ahead in time some six-thousand years, to the early 1880’s. To a time just before the Federal Government’s orchestrated hysteria campaign will remove / prevent those voices of logic and reason from being heard.
Another factor that simply can’t be overlooked was our country’s state of race relations at the time. Along with alcohol prohibition, the 1920’s also saw a great resurgence or rise in the membership and shear power of groups like the Ku-Klux-Kan. And while normally these groups wouldn’t take much interest in medicines. Due to the Mexican connection, and the perception that the use of this strange Mexican Weed” made those people think that they were as good as white people, quickly brought it to their attention.
That and one other reason that is just as important but usually overlooked by most historians. While these racially charged groups, like the KKK, were nationwide in scope, most of their members were essentially concentrated in the “Land of Cotton” and in the 1920’s, Industrial Hemp[5] was feared to be making a comeback. And obviously, if there was one thing that cotton farmers now [during the depression] didn’t need or want was a natural and much cheaper competitor.
The Grand, Racist, Hundred-Year History of Pot Prohibition in California
Pot was banned by bureaucrats in California in 1913 without any public debate. Even though weed was largely unknown to Californians in 1913, prohibition was seen as a preemptive, “progressive†idea.
The Popes hate dope
While millions of Catholic faithful around the world mourn the passing of Pope John Paul II, pot people would do well to remember that the Catholic Church has long been a leader in the global effort to exterminate marijuana and the cannabis culture.
Some of these traditions of using psychoactive plants as sacraments survived for many centuries before finally being violently extinguished. For example, the magic mushroom eating Manicheans survived until the 12th century before finally being slaughtered by Catholic armies.
Okay, whoever made the thumb’s-down, if you haven’t figured it out by now, unlike our opposition, we, here, welcome debate. Please state your case.
cat’s got their qwerty…
I was just thinkin’ Kap, back when all those late afternoon/early eve Sunday MAPchats (the pre-millenium, pre-DWR couch) were going on were lonely days. Nowadays we’re all the rage don’tcha know – and we turned the NYT. Anslinger and McCarthy are flippin’ their wigs in their personal hells. Calvina is picking up the pieces after her head exploded (like a hollow eggshell). Kev-kev is consulting whatever book the B’hai read…
Aaah, the sweet fruit of summer. Can’t wait ’til Nov. I’m itching to throw around the tax projections for legal herb in OR… $35 mil the first year.
How much of this kind of upside-the-head slapping can the Prohibs take? They started off w/ a handicap, now they’re looking like dead weight, albatross-around-the-neck inconsequentials. L
Allan, the way I see it, what we’ve experienced in just the past 5 years has a biological analog: turgor. The force that enables a blade of grass to buckle a sidewalk.
We’ve had built-up pressure from being held back by a number of factors for decades. That pressure is suddenly being released now in part due to the passing of drug prohibition’s greatest supporters/suckers into physical infirmity and political impotence.
The rise of the Internet was another major factor; the traditional ‘information gate keepers’, like the NYT, which the prohibs invested so much in to do their propaganda dirty work, can easily be circumvented with a few keystrokes and click of a mouse. “Ain’t technology wonderful?”
All of these factors, all these different ‘roads’, small as many have been, are arriving from different directions, but all are now coming together to form a superhighway…with a corresponding higher speed to match.
And now it’s the prohib’s turn to find out what it means to be political and social roadkill…while their former victims, seeing what’s in front of them, are not slowing down or swerving in evasive action.
Nope, now, as they used to say during the ‘trucker craze’ of the 1970’s, it’s time to “put the hammer down!”
Kap’t it sound good to me mon. As with the vast majority of your posts I’m in total agreement. I’m not usually shy when I don’t. I wouldn’t expect debate with resources so available to squash their gossip. I prefer views over thumbs and pay little mind to trolls. Maybe a snack now and again. Don’t let it get you down, it’s only their castles that are burning.
Allan mentioned Kerry’s forum the other day and I started recollectin’. First AlObama term had a similar website asking for suggestions in all matter. It was a stampede of stoners ranked #1 posts, even if the media neglected to report much. Drug worrier drugs, especially cannabis opposition never had a chance. They would hurl gossip gabbed or graphed. Within 10 minutes it was returned more truthfully.
http://i44.tinypic.com/35mno0w.jpg
The days when MAP and Cannabis.com/MerryHemp was active. Yahooka getting sued by Yahoo, Before “Guv” was murdered. Martha starting Cannabisnews. In the 90’s and early oughts stories were scarce and she gave us a nest to have a conversation and ammo. Calyx, Cliff Shaffer and Lyceum libraries yanked the probitches out of flat denial.
Fox had a rotating board and if it was slow the info stayed longer. When I’d post cannabis all of a sudden people got chatty. It was rather light hearted. Most conservatudes and gerbals were afraid and censored anything. Look at us now Oprah. Deepak had a site, Arianna had several before HuffPost. More Ganja sites on the net than Christians I do believe. But overall discussions were pretty lonely. NYTimes had a forum when the even fewer cops were speaking out, preLEAP, Joe McNamara would drop by. Gil Puder in Canada.
Gays were pretty serious and appeased the powers in exchange for anyone not dying. Out of desperation and exasperation I’m sure. Bartering with the devil in a red dress. It was stoners getting them pot. It was stoners getting Vets pot or Vets bringing stoners pot. If the seeds are poison, so be the fruit. Bartering over poison is like arguing over acceptable levels of arsenic. How bout none.
How bout fuck the laws created on lies and humanly impossible means to follow. Any use is abuse, is not the truth. It is the law. Incrementalism is Apartheid on most states, actually all states if the Fed has its say. Still criminalized for the suppliers. When the suppliers defend themselves, they are demonized by the press.
Now what has changed. Unimaginable Dispensaries and a local underground market keeping pace. Delivery services with websites bringing it to your door. As it has been if you were connected or grew your own stash. Advertising commercialism and Big Pharma totally not ready to unleash this whole plant to the public. Patents on Cannabinoids and Sativex Barthwell Bayer with the Mississippi Schwag Farm and Contracted Processor Corporation grinding it, rolling and packaging off to a Drug Store near you.
Prohibition intact no need for Dispensaries or Homegrown. Big Booze and the Cigarette Industry keeping out the riffraff. Monsanto and Soros frankenseeds shelving Hemp until they suck the last drop of oil, using biomass drills. Rehabilitation for the users, court ordered. Feds in bed with the white powder people killing little girls in their sleep.
Launder billions and pay a fine,,smoke a joint and get a flash bomb in your living room and your dog dead in front of your children.
Liberty and justice for all has died and now “if you got the money honey,,,you won’t get no time”.
Well said Pete! I don’t think I’ve seen that point made so perfectly by anyone else to date. It’s been said in many ways but you hit it dead on.
Kill the WODbeast!
OT, though you might appreciate what it means for us poor Oregon peasants:
http://www.blueoregon.com/2014/07/hedge-fund-run-robert-mercer-who-funded-anti-defazio-superpac-may-have-dodged-6-billion-taxes/
SOMEBODY was paying for those weatherbeaten Art Robinson signs in the Illinois Valley!
It is a multi-headed hydra and is also the reasons why we have so much non-biodegradable plastics. It is why housing cost the way it does in many nations because of an ever growing need to move away from a drug black market compromised ghetto and no cheaper homes because of no hemp replacing many of the home building materials (like pipes and walls). It was a part of many of the central beams and screws holding up the Arab Spring since the War on Drugs gave birth to the War on Narco-Terror after 9/11 and Iran-Contra had influenced the Middle East and current sects utilizing drug money to fight their government or other sects is a result of the Arab Spring itself. It has significantly aided in the movement of American job going overseas because of the destruction of competition via hemp prohibition. I wouldn’t be surprised if drug money was used/authorized by the CIA when playing their dirty games in Iran back in the 50’s and in Iraq during the 60’s when establishing the Bathist. The War on Drugs helped to force Russia to tear down the Berlin Wall because of the huge economic costs of fighting heroin laced guns/bombs in Afghanistan and the black market in mother Russia (unless the Berlin Wall fell before the war in Afghanistan)would have given the Soviets less strength to keep the wall standing. Its black market enables N. Korea to be a very real threat to Japan and S. Korea and our troops just from what drug money can buy in terms of weapons, technology and troops. The War on Drugs probably moved out at least 300,000 Detroit natives from the city, thus further making it a ghost town because of the creation of the drug black market compromising the safety and equality of many neighborhoods and furthering the plight of the ghetto and destroying competing jobs in regards to denied hemp. We could easily go on and on and on. The War on Drugs is why L.A. has a lot of haze and smog since I’m sure hemp fuels and hemp plastics could have reduced much of the pollution and emphasized in the saving of our trees and in saving money in not using local LE for dope patrol, which could have gone back to the city and used to combat pollution via various civic initiatives. I think we’ll find many of our problems connected to the War on Drugs and its affects on our taxes, consumer goods and the war on our TV screens in regards to Israel feeling the need to use Megadeath as a way to combat drug money financed PLO/Hamas fighters.
No, it’s not an experiment. It’s a revolution. The prohibs don’t understand the game plan. That’s why they lost the drug war.
All men within living memory have lived with the plague of prohibition. At 63, it’s all that I can remember. Why do we allow this degradation, the overpowering control and debasement to continue?
Its because mankind is “more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”
I think those words were meant for us. Our living generations have been fleeced like sheep, and the funding faucets are still running, pouring billions down the drain to con a new generation into believing their self generated lies that foment fear.
Letting future governments fund more drug war is money spent on our own prison cells and those meant for our children.
The failed experiment of prohibiting a non toxic plant needs to be remembered for the failure that it really is. It needs to be remembered who has those pockets full of dirty blood stained prohibition money. It needs to be stopped. The guys with the prohibition money in their pockets won’t be the ones to do it.
This, I fear, is perhaps one of the most significant barriers to repealing drug prohibition and why I often direct people to a quote from a former Australian Parliamentarian – The Hon. Richard Stanley Leigh Jones
Drug-War Nonsense from a U.S. Commander
http://tinyurl.com/ndpx2cv
“People have been taking drugs as long as drugs have been around. And they are going to continue to do so, no matter how harsh and severe the drug-war crackdowns become. And we’ve learned that just putting drug users away into jail for large portions of their lives doesn’t accomplish anything but more misery and ruination of lives. The same goes for every other harsh and severe measure U.S. officials have adopted for the past several decades as part of their drug-war campaign.”
“Thus, the only real choice is: Should the consumption, possession, sale, and distribution of drugs remain criminalized or should drug laws be repealed? If they remain criminalized, the drug-war violence will continue and U.S. military intervention will only makes it worse. If they are decriminalized, the drug gangs and drug cartels disappear and are replaced by reputable drug firms.”
“…The only way to do that is by ending the drug war, closing all U.S. military bases in Latin America, bringing all U.S. troops and CIA agents home and discharging them, and ending U.S. interventionism.”
I love your commentary on this article. So well said! Thank you for putting it perfectly.
I am always leery of ‘socal engineers’; they never ask permission of those they wish to experiment upon…for fear of a very valid rejection of their plans.
For History shows us that, all too often, they become, not engineers, but Dr. Frankenstein. And produce monsters that ravage the land until they are finally cornered and put down.
The 20th century is littered with examples. How many scores of millions died because social engineers with their various ‘-isms’ (Nazism, Communism, Socialism, imperialism, etc.), thought to ‘mold the masses’ (note the distance between those being molded and those doing the molding?), always, out of the best of intentions, create Hell on Earth.
Drug Prohibition was seen as an opportunity for the self-described American ‘Progressives’ of the first two decades of the last century to put what were essentially socialistic tendencies stained with racist bigotry into operation.
They wanted to use government as a counter to the (very real) power of the economic Elites of the day, which were engaging in the same kind of predations then as they are now. (Anti-trust laws are the best example of that.) Drug prohibition was actually a side-show at the time, but it served the engineers in their attempt to justify a governmental power grab, so it was folded in with the rest of the ‘plans’.
But, as usual, that Road to Hell was built without asking where the liquid to make the cement would come from. As History shows, that cement is mixed with Human blood. The blood of those who were supposed to be ‘saved’ by the engineers’ efforts.
Over and over, again and again, I am reminded of something a favorite SF writer of my youth said:
“Political tags–such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and. so forth–are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.” (Emphasis mine – k.)
We have suffered long enough from these damnable social engineers and their insane plans for ‘the masses’. Time to reclaim our freedoms stolen under false pretenses, and drug law reform has always been at the vanguard, the spearpoint, of that process.
The prohibition experiment has worked perfectly (for some at the expense of many).
Solving the minority-persecution problem (created by calling it a human-benefiting solution) is needed for better balance and consequently strength for our species imho.
Empowering a central authority to apply (sometimes reverse-discriminatory) law has been the dominant public call, but that has always benefited the aforementioned “some” by fueling their constant conflict for more power.
Experiments purely conforming to the scientific method are purely objective for obvious reasons. Subjectivity is never grounded in human agreement, and always favors the dominant (a.k.a. minority persecution).
Most people believe subjectivity is a civilized basis for law, based upon the overwhelming number of subjectively defined laws (and the pressing call for more).
However, the definition of justice includes fairness. Without objectivity, there is no fairness, so there is no justice.
What we need is a scientific experiment in law itself.
For objectivity, we must turn to absolutes. Examples include self-evident, naturally given, unalienable (i.e. cannot be taken away), and liberty (the condition of being free from restriction or control). Putting those absolutes together reveals an absolute social construct:
The only limit against your liberty is the right itself (no exceptions).
Had that social construct been applied, slavery (and racial discrimination beyond it) would have instantly ended, women would have been instantly treated equally, any sexual preference could never be effectively negated by law, Alcohol Prohibition would have violated amendment nine (which lawfully enforces that social construct) in our Constitution (the self-proclaimed “supreme law of the land” dominating federal, state, and local “experiments”), and so too would Certain Drug Prohibition.
For that social construct to work right, an objective definition of harm is needed. For prime example, murder is objectively harmful (as proven by each dead person), so the law against murder is just. Any damage objectively proven beyond healing capability apparently forms the scientific form of harm (and would logically righteously radically transform our judicial system into a major scientific push to better define harm for the sake of justice).
While people can “grab the bull by the crap” against other people (e.g. the Big Lie technique), reality is never fooled. According to purely experimental science, we are all seamlessly connected in the ocean of energy called reality. As 100% of all systems require balance for stability, it makes sense to conclude the ultimate system that is reality itself does too (every action truly is an opposite and equal reaction).
Therefore, logically speaking, dominance is always spent (and paid for by being dominated).
Those who persecute minorities cannot do so perpetually, and death (upon logical assessment too, which is beyond the scope of yet another lengthy comment by yours truly) is merely a delusion as an escape. Whether you turn to religion or science, we all experience positive and negative pressures of domination. I sculpted and continue to refine a scientific theory (called Reality Waveform Theory — https://spiritwave.wordpress.com/reality-waveform-theory) that hopefully negates any confusion from my brevity-calling need to trail off from this ‘you never get away with abusive behavior, according to well-established science’ point.
According to logic, the experiment that ignited our nation in a bloody revolution against law abuse — the worst form of abuse due to its mainly broad scope of destruction, and the reason the aforementioned social construct exists — has never even been tried (despite our national obligation in the form of supreme law to fundamentally embrace that construct).
Dominance Management by voluntary (i.e. liberty embracing) means is the ultimate human experience waiting for the generation uncorrupted enough to implement it by objective law. This experiment is critical when recognizing perception alteration (not just by drug use, but all technological and religious influences). Perception alteration is not always abusive, and that fact must be represented in justice-serving law, while actual harm caused by abuse finds similar representation.
As I’ve said time and time again, the experiment known as prohibition required American cops to go around the world and lock up foreigners for dope and dope dealing as long as American drug policy influences global drug policy. If no American cops are getting killed in Africa at least once a week with all this terrorism running around it (much funded by dope), then said American cops cannot prove they work for their paychecks. It is common sense to understand that it was the average American cop’s responsibility to undergo combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and not the U.S. Military, since L.A. cops are responsible for L.A. gangs and its urban warfare, just like L.A. cops are responsible for going after any of the dope money supercharged ISIS and Taliban fighters etc . . . since it is the L.A. drug war cop who is also responsible for the drug war in Mali or Kenya or Nigeria etc. The DEA’s globetrotting exploits proves this is not my opinion, but a requirement as stated in the job duties of all American law enforcement–simply because the DEA has precedents for LE to go around the world and play whack-a-mole. Too few cops die for their beliefs in keeping dope illegal, which is a tragedy in itself, since it means that said cowardly cops are letting innocent victims die. What good are American cops to us if they are not losing their lives in places like Mexico, Iraq, Somalia, Burma, Honduras etc?
When people talk about street drugs and junkies and kids getting high, buying from drug dealers, I don’t picture people using or buying drugs or feeling the effects of said illegal drug. All I see is bombs, AKs, sodomy, recession and can feel the Hot Iraqi heat on my back.
As long as dope is illegal, I do not see any problems with sending any and all of our American cops to every and any place in the world undergoing conflict in which drug money plays a role i.e. Africa’s conflicts with Radical Islam simply means radical Islam is attempting to get a stronghold the way the Taliban and ISIS are in their regions, which can further put the U.S. in harms way by having more regions controlled by terrorist who use drug money. Why hasn’t Obama sent in Metro-Dade PD from Miami to Baghdad to help the Iraqi Gov’t fight drug money and drug money funded fighters? Instead, Obama wants to send in our troops and not the main causes of said conflict’s funding: loyal cops doing their job. Don’t cops use their cars and guns to go after gangs in our American cities? Anslinger as well as the DEA have traveled around the world in order to spread and create the War on Drugs for every nation to engage in, surely our own police officers can flock to every nation having a drug black market problem and organized crime problem as a result of a global drug prohibition influenced by America and further entrenched by the American cop submitting to the War on Drugs and not boycotting it. If they don’t boycott the War on Drugs, then I say we need to ship most of our police officers out to the Middle East, Central America, Mexico, South America, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Haiti, Jamaica, India, Pakistan, Russia, Berlin and much of Africa. Give the dirty cop a taste of his own medicine–force them into Military style combat roles where they don’t get to see their family for a year or two and they will change their mind on the War on Drugs . . . especially if said cops are lucky enough to see their friends die from a bullet or bomb paid for by drug money. Legalization is not an experiment, but a natural phenomena found in nature.
.
.
Oh, poor Bob Beauprez, the Republican candidate for Governor of Colorado, smashed flat as a pancake…
Christie throws full weight behind Beauprez
Has anyone told Governor Christie that New Jersey is known as the “armpit of America”?
This one is from the “you just can’t break Francis’ Law” category:
“Before getting behind the NADS wheel, each volunteer was required to consume specific combinations of marijuana and alcohol, or a placebo.”
Why are they only testing cannabis in combination with alcohol? Is it that cannabis-only impaired driving is less likely to cause an accident?
Sounds like NIDA attempting to mickey finn cannabis reform.
Jean,,every study done by our federal agencies,including the most recent done by CMCR which is still being withheld by NIDA,has proven that marijuana use alone doen’t impair drivers,,there is a list of appx 15 studies done around the world,many by the drug war agencies,that have all reported that stoned drivers are not a threat on the highways.
Would love to see a list of those studies.
Marijuana and Driving: A Review of the Scientific Evidence
“Marijuana has a measurable yet relatively mild effect on psychomotor skills, yet it does not appear to play a significant role in vehicle crashes, particularly when compared to alcohol. Below is a summary of some of the existing data.â€
http://norml.org/library/item/marijuana-and-driving-a-review-of-the-scientific-evidence
The incidence and role of drugs in fatally injured drivers
“There was no indication that cannabis by itself was a cause of fatal crashes.â€
REFERENCE: Washington, DC: US Department of Transportation, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration,
Report No. DOT HS 808 065, K. Terhune. 1992.
http://ntl.bts.gov/lib/26000/26600/26685/DOT_HS_808_065.pdf
Marijuana and actual driving performance
“Drivers under the influence of marijuana retain insight in their performance and will compensate when they can, for example, by slowing down or increasing effort. As a consequence, THC’s adverse effects on driving performance appear relatively small.â€
REFERENCE: U.S. Department of Transportation study, 1993
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Misc/driving/s1p2.htm
Marijuana’s effects on actual driving performance
“Evidence from the present and previous studies strongly suggests that alcohol encourages risky driving whereas THC encourages greater cautionâ€
REFERENCE: University of Adelaide study, 1995
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Misc/driving/s1p2.htm
Role of cannabis in motor vehicle crashes
“There is no evidence that consumption of cannabis alone increases the risk of culpability for traffic crash fatalities or injuries for which hospitalization occurs, and may reduce those risks.. The more cautious behavior of subjects who have received marijuana decreases the impact of the drug on performance, whereas the opposite holds true for alcohol.â€
REFERENCE: Marijuana: On-Road and Driving-Simulator Studies; Epidemiologic Reviews 21: 222-232, A. Smiley. 1999.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10682259
“Both simulation and road trials generally find that driving behaviour shortly after consumption of larger doses of cannabis results in (i) a more cautious driving style; (ii) increased variability in lane position (and headway); and (iii) longer decision times. Whereas these results indicate a ‘change’ from normal conditions, they do not necessarily reflect ‘impairment’ in terms of performance effectiveness since few studies report increased accident risk.â€
REFERENCE: UK Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions (Road Safety Division). 2000.
http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/
/http:/www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/roadsafety/research/rsrr/theme3/cannabisanddrivingareviewoft4764?page=12
Cannabis And Cannabinoids – Pharmacology, Toxicology And Therapy
“At the present time, the evidence to suggest an involvement of cannabis in road crashes is scientifically unprovenâ€.
REFERENCE: G. Chesher and M. Longo. 2002.
https://www.dmt-nexus.me/Files/Books/General/Cannabis%20And%20Cannabinoids%20-%20Pharmacology,Toxicology%20And%20Therapy.pdf
Cannabis: Our position for a Canadian Public Policy
“Cannabis alone, particularly in low doses, has little effect on the skills involved in automobile driving. Cannabis leads to a more cautious style of driving. However it has a negative impact on decision time and trajectory. This in itself does not mean that drivers under the influence of cannabis represent a traffic safety riskâ€
http://tinyurl.com/llzlgy8
^ The CMCR study done with NIDA/DEA oversight,,waited two years now for results to be published,,if it showed impairment it would have been published by now
.
.
Because they were using GI bunkweed that has been in a UMiss freezer for 10 years or more?
I just had to tell – The NYT Editorial Board just came out in favor of repealing marijuana prohibition
Repeal Prohibition, Again
http://tinyurl.com/l7lfehb
THUD
was just coming by to post this… THUD indeed.
I’ll bet that was quite the editorial board meeting. And they aren’t saying anything that we haven’t been…
I say plagiarize away! I think their editorial could be a synopsis of our conversations on Pete’s articles. Thanks to Pete I think we have covered much sacred ground.
Getting almost common place for actual truthful discussions in the strangest of places. Three sports casters at Yahoo Sports Talk Live condemning a football players 2 game suspension for domestic violence compared with a year for cannabis. They said that pot never harmed anyone. They said it was good for pain and much safer than the pills given. Then they said how it should be legal and available and drop the suspensions. Times, are they a changin?
The NFL Thinks Smoking Weed Is Eight Times Worse Than Beating a Woman Unconscious
http://i.imgur.com/72D7V0E.png
NFL’s Buzzkill
The Hypocrisy of the NFL
I’ve become the self appointed Cannabist for the SF Giants.
Announcer Mike Krukow has inclusion-body myositis and first baseman Brandon Belt had back spasms. So I sent them some info. Haven’t heard back.
Cannabinoids treat Amyloidosis Symptoms
Buxbaum J. Treatment and prevention of the amyloidoses: can the lessons learned by applied to sporadic inclusion-body myositis? Neurology. 2006;66(2 Suppl 1):S110-3.
Marihuana as a therapeutic agent for muscle spasm or spasticity
Therapeutic Effects and Indications for Cannabis Use
New Mexico Medical Cannabis Program
Inclusion body myositis
http://tinyurl.com/p8fnqre
Some Background on Our ‘High Time’ Series
By ANDREW ROSENTHAL JULY 26, 2014 8:12 PM
(Sitting back with a sigh held in for damn near 20 YEARS) It’s almost over. The end truly IS in sight.
Reformers knew that the key to it all was to get the MSM to say the word ‘prohibition’. In every LTE, in every article, we hammered away, incessantly, “Pro-hi-bition!, Pro-hi-bition!, Pro-hi-bition!” to make the public realize the same old mistake had been repeated, again…and the public would recall what happened the last time this country tried that nonsense, and what to do to end it.
And now, finally realizing that what was rising up was, not a frost dimple, but a frakkin’ underground nuke of a groundswell, a former ‘information gate keeper’, in a bid to stay relevant, is finally treating this subject the way they should have all along. And, to paraphrase a saying often made about California, “As the NYT goes, so goes the MSM”.
But don’t make my generations’ mistake, my friends. Many of us thought we had it all sewn up by 1977, and we made the mistake of not killing The Beast when it would have been so easy. We were blindsided by the control-freak parent’s movement and their alliance with the bureaucrats (who eventually discarded their ‘useful idiots’ when their utility had ended). We all know what happened after that.
Truly, our time has come. Truly, as I said way back in 2009, OUR TIME IS NOW.
Now is the time to finish this monster once and for all. Don’t let up, don’t give it a break, but forward, with razor-sharp, fixed media bayonets. No mercy! No mercy!
Again, slightly off topic, but from the New York Times:
“Repeal Prohibition, Again
It took 13 years for the United States to come to its senses and end Prohibition, 13 years in which people kept drinking, otherwise law-abiding citizens became criminals and crime syndicates arose and flourished. It has been more than 40 years since Congress passed the current ban on marijuana, inflicting great harm on society just to prohibit a substance far less dangerous than alcohol.
The federal government should repeal the ban on marijuana.”
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/07/27/opinion/sunday/high-time-marijuana-legalization.html?_r=0
I love the fact that they are using the term “prohibition” – hmmmm, who is it that started that recent trend???
see TC’s post just above you. Yeah, we be lovin’ it.
maybe the NYT editorial board was channeling the couch? If so it might’ve been the contact high that did it. fffffffft… ffft
Remember the attempt at floating the Pentagon? I think this is better, Allan. Couch sessions.
Holy shit! The New York Times has come around at last:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/07/27/opinion/sunday/high-time-marijuana-legalization.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=c-column-top-span-region®ion=c-column-top-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-top-span-region
Bahahahahahaha, you can sort by reader response: ‘against legalisation’ and ‘for legalisation’.
59 pathetic arguments (that’s being generous) ‘against’.
OVER A THOUSAND RESPONSES ‘FOR’.
They also published my comment:
I’d been keen read the comments from my couch-mates but I can’t be bothered wading through so many!
I found this comment among the “against” comments:
So I did look it up (the bolded type, my emphasis), and apparently there have been 98 cases, worldwide! Wow, such a problem over which to be concerned, out of 7 billion people, perhaps a third of whom use cannabis, 98 cases prompts a fear, or even a concern? So a few people become allergic to pot, all they have to do to stop the problem is stop using pot, but that commenter (David K) thinks prohibition should continue because of it. What a prohibidiot!
There’s an old saying: “To get to the fruit of the tree, you must first go out on a limb.” This latest obscure, arcane BS proves prohibs are really streeeeetching as far as they can now.
But they’re already too far out on that limb, and it’s breaking beneath them even as we watch.
And we have lots of chainsaws, too.