No, this isn’t about recent legislation in New York.
It’s about Barney Frank and Ron Paul, and Willie Nelson and The National Review.
Those of us following drug policy regularly know that sanity in drug policy is not necessarily a liberal or conservative thing — in fact, for the most part, both liberal and conservative politicians have shown no sanity at all. Sanity in drug policy is simply about sanity, not about party or political leaning.
National Review and Willie Nelson Unite for Pot Legalization at the Atlantic Wire
The characteristically liberal National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Legalization (NORML) and incredibly conservative National Review seem like strange bedfellows, but they’re not. On Monday, NORML posted a link to a National Review editorial that attracted hundreds of likes and dozens of comments. “You know it’s a strange day when the National Review calls Lamar Smith out for his mistakes,” writes one commenter of the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee who has vowed to block Barney Frank and Ron Paul’s bill to end federal prohibition pot.
Right on Marijuana at the National Review
The War on Drugs, which is celebrating its 40th year, has been a colossal failure. It has curtailed personal freedom, created a violent black market, and filled our prisons. It has also trampled on states’ rights: Sixteen states have legalized “medical marijuana†— which is, admittedly, often code for legalizing pot in general — only to clash with federal laws that ban weed throughout the land.
That last sin is not the War on Drugs’ greatest, but it is not insignificant, either. A bill introduced by Reps. Barney Frank (D., Mass.) and Ron Paul (R., Texas) would remove the federal roadblock to state marijuana reform, and though the Republican House seems almost certain to reject it, the proposal deserves support from across the political spectrum.
Willie Nelson:
This bill puts the issue of marijuana in the hands of the states; isn’t that what every damn Republican claims to stand for…States Rights? Let the hypocrisy begin.
Yes,Ken your so right Republicans claim to stand for states rights only when its about,Right to Life Issues,Gun Rights, and some of them are for Tobacco Rights, Property Rights Etc.
When it concerns Cannabis,they go extreme psycho,and totally deny the folks any states rights.
Just take for example over at MAPS current articles concerning Marijuana Lawsuit to stop that very restrictive law that becomes effective on July,in Montana you would think Harold Camping’s end of world scenario did sincerely come true and was happening in Montana if most of Senate Bill 423 is temporarly halted, you think that according Prohibs there that total chaos and unfettered Bacchanalia will ensue. I think they really think Pot will turn their population into The Walking Dead Show, Yeah the Pot Zombies will get you.HA HA.
.
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I’m kind of looking forward to seeing the Montana Clowns have their asses handed to them over SB 423. It really shouldn’t be hard to get the law suspended and put back on the 2012 ballot. The number of signatures needed for that is less than the total number of registered patients and caregivers. With support for medicinal cannabis in Montana still pushing 70% it makes me wonder what the morons who pushed this nonsense through were thinking.
In 1997 Oregon’s legislature re-criminalized cannabis. In 1998 Oregon’s voters told the legislature to get bent by a margin better than 2-1.
From your lips (fingertips?) to god’s ears…
It is a mystery as to why a substance that can eliminate deforrestation, eliminate the need for foreign oil as well as create over than 5,000 textile products and the fiber in the plant contains more than seventy-seven per cent cellulose, and can be used to produce more than 25,000 products, ranging from dynamite to Cellophane to fuel. Not to mention the ability to kill cancer cells while not harming healthy cells as well as nearly 2500 other medicinal uses (this is a miniscule list of the uses that the plant God provided for us). Why is this banned in the US and in many nations across the globe? This plant can save us! Wake up everyone!
Since Rep. Smith won’t take email comments from any American citizens, except his constituents (as is true of most members of the House) I am writing him a snail mail letter taking him to task for being so uninformed and hidebound on this issue. I am also going to seek out the largest newspaper in his district to write a letter to the editor and inform his constituents what a truly cruel man he is to block this bill from going forward. I hope most of the rest of you will do the same, the more letters the better the chance we can force him to let the bill go to the floor of the House for a vote.
There is no respect for a bad law or those waging a civil war to maintain it. I’ve never met a stoner who forced anyone to smoke a joint. Its all about choices. Doesn’t matter if you don’t like my choices. The repulsive, disgusting idea of winning a war against your own people, which is diametrically opposed to the Neocon profit perpetuating it. But the very idea that a drug worrier thinks torturing Americans and their families is somehow winning.
Wall St is the reason for Nixon to disregard republican Governor Shafer’s Commission report. So the CSA is 100% political, not science. It sucessfully removed Hemp and Medicinal cannabis, that was never outlawed by the 1937 Tax Act. So by lumping it together as a schedule#1 narcotic it has removed the $200 million in Hemp product sales last year. A cash crop and alternative to the pollutants and non renewable resources and the foreign police actions protecting them.
The message the ONDCP, and its subsidiary groups boringly spew is crystal clear. Don’t mess with Wall St. and the War Machine. The 20 million Americans Tzar’s have tortured with arrest and inprisonment deserve justice if not vengeance. Most cops wanting to serve the community aren’t the problem. Only those with political or commercial aspirations. Another coincidence they can hide from or reap for themselves. A lot of terrorizing responsible citizens going on, especially sick ones for the beneifit of lazy and/or greedy cops. Come Together…
“No class or group or party in Germany could escape its share of responsibility for the abandonment of the democratic Republic and the advent of Adolf Hitler. The cardinal error of the Germans who opposed Nazism was their failure to unite against it. ….the 63% of the German people who expressed their opposition to Hitler were much too divided and shortsighted to combine against a common danger which they must have known would overwhelm them unless they united, HOWEVER TEMPORARY, to stamp it out.”
– William L. Shirer, author;
“The rise and fall of the Third Reich” **p.259**
The Conservative Argument for Legalization
I am against Prohibition because it has set the cause of temperence back twenty years; because it has substituted an ineffective campaign of force for an effective campaign of education; because it has replaced comparatively uninjurious light wines and beers with the worst kind of hard liquor and bad liquor; because it has increased drinking not only among men but has extended drinking to women and even children.
— William Randolph Hearst, initially a supporter of Prohibition,
explaining his change of mind in 1929.
From “Drink: A Social History of America” by Andrew Barr (1999), p. 239
Ending Cannabis Prohibition
* Willie Nelson: Leave The Man Alone
* Bio-Willie
* Willie4Kucinich4President
* Voices National W.F. Buckley Archives/Forum
* Lost political causes By William Buckley
* William F. Buckley Requiescat In Pace
* The Conservative Argument for Legalization
* Reps. Frank, Paul Want To End Federal Ban on Pot
* New Bill Would End Federal Marijuana Prohibition
* Frank & Paul Introduce Bill To End MJ Prohibition
* ‘Dramatic Change’ To Marijuana Laws?
* US: Barney Frank And Ron Paul Team Up To Legalize Marijuana
* Cover-Ups, Prevarications, Subversions & Sabotage
* Fellow NeoCons: Our Position Is Hypocritical
* NeoCons Addiction Good, Liberal Addiction Bad!
* the Drug Czar is Required by Law to Lie
* Isn’t talking about drugs and drug laws illegal?
The Joseph McNamara Collection
If the roots of the law are poison, so be the fruit.
Enforcing laws that create victims is treason. Your choice.
Nixon lied to schedule Ganja #1
Nixon Commission Report
1972 US Marihuana: A Signal of Misunderstanding
US National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse
Gov. Raymond Shafer of Pennsylvania) 1972 report, entitled “Marihuana: A Signal of Misunderstanding,” boldly proclaimed that “neither the marihuana user nor the drug itself can be said to constitute a danger to public safety” and recommended Congress and state legislatures decriminalize the use and casual distribution of marijuana for personal use.
“You’re enough of a pro, to know that for you to come out with something that would run counter to what the Congress feels and what the country feels, and what we’re planning to do, would make your commission just look bad as hell.”
– Richard Milhouse Nixon to Raymond P. Shafer”
Let’s go back to a conservative version of the Constitution, where the Federal (national) government could only legislate about interstate commerce and not every “crime” was a “federal case.” Why should California and Utah have the same pot laws? Neither will get the perfect fit.
Let’s go back to the old definition of “liberal:” someone who believes in freedom. If you don’t believe in the freedom of an adult to grow, harvest, and consume a plant on his/her own property, what kind of believer in freedom (liberal?) are you?