I think it’s pretty exciting that we’re witnessing a renaissance of female heroes. Why are the police attacking them?
Law Enforcement Prepares to Fight Heroine Resurgence
To Channel 5’s headline writer: Spell-check doesn’t know the difference between a legendary female character and a drug made from poppies. That means you need to.
US-Trained Assassin Teams Now Deployed in Drug War
Now that’s something that you won’t hear either of our countries’ governments talking about publicly.
Michigan medical marijuana sellers close up shop after ruling
Thursday was a bad day to be among Michigan’s nearly 100,000 medical marijuana patients and down to a last joint.
Many marijuana dispensaries closed their shops to pot sales, on lawyers’ advice, following a court of appeals ruling.
“It would be dangerous to operate with the specter of a criminal case hanging over our head,” said John Lewis, lawyer for Compassionate Apothecary in Mt. Pleasant, the center of the marijuana maelstrom.
On Tuesday, a unanimous panel of the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled that the dispensary’s business model of charging clients a fee to store marijuana that could be sold to any registered patient was illegal. The ruling was a blow to the burgeoning medical marijuana business and its patients.
We’ve really got to make this plant legal. Period.
The Black market in Montana just let out a huge sigh of relief.
The tragedy for drug producing countries, and Latin American countries in particular, is that Prohibition has made the illicit drug market an extremely successful business, too profitable for its own good. At US$320,000 millions per year, this market ranks third amongst the more lucrative business in the world, and its revenue is higher than the GDP of 84% of the countries in the world. More significant, perhaps, is the fact that only a tiny fraction (some estimates talk of as little as 5%) of the revenues generated by the illegal drug market worldwide manages to make its way back into the economies of drug producing countries. So, it should not come as a surprise to find that a large number of interested parties, not just the US military establishment and the scavengers that feed on it and are fed by it, are willing to fight to death, literally and metaphorically, anyone trying to kill the proverbial goose that lays the golden egg.
To add insult to injury, the policy of the US, by far the largest consumer in the world and the most belligerent drug warrior, has always been to force others to deal with the mess they have created in the first place. Forty years ago a callous, cynical Dick, Richard Nixon that is, declared that the US was at war … at war with drugs. As history keeps reminding us, in order to stop US citizens challenging its internal institutions and saving it from showing its undemocratic colours (think Anti Vietnam Protests, the Civil Rights Movement, Anti Globalisation Demonstrations, etc., etc.) the US “exports†its internal conflicts and demands other countries to fight its fights. Instead of putting its own house in order and face the consequences for doing so, the US puts the onus on others and expects them to pay the lion’s share of the political and social costs of its policies.
The so-called War on Drugs is no exception. It is a clear example of the way in which the US has turned its internal affairs into an external war; a war where drug producing countries are doing the fighting, and in the process, paying the highest price imaginable: thousand and thousand of killings, death sentences for drug offences, corruption, destruction of civil society, undermining of democratic institutions, intimidation and execution of journalists, judges, politicians and anybody brave enough to question the corrupting and murderous practices of the drug trafficking gangs that control the illicit drugs market.
As Gary Becker, the 1992 Nobel Prize laureate in economics, puts it in “The American War on Drugs is Not Only an American Disasterâ€:
«No one has estimated the social cost of American drug policy on Mexico, Colombia, and other countries, but it has to be immense. PERHAPS THESE COUNTRIES SHOULD JUST ALLOW DRUGS TO BE SHIPPED TO THE US, AND PUT THE FULL BURDEN OF STOPPING THESE SHIPMENTS ON AMERICAN ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES. The American government would protest, but such a result would provide a clearer picture to the American people of the full cost of current policy, including the major costs imposed on other countries. One can hope that then we will get a serious rethinking of the American war on drugs, and some real political movement toward decriminalization and legalization of various drugs.» (my emphasis)
Gart Valenc
http://www.stopthewarondrugs.org
Spent some quality time with my buddies Lou and Pete up on the mountainside a while back. The deep-think on the economy is very, very gloomy, the current mess is about as intractable as it gets. Their take on the legalization push is basicaly this: under ordinary circumstances, the current drive could and probably would produce a regulation/ legalization scheme. Since the black market is currently the only truly functioning sector of the world economy, they think the current moves to roll back MMJ and ramp up the Mexican Drug War are just protecting this. I fear they may be right (and I can tell you Hillary’s words were ringing in my ears..too much money in it to legalize), but I’m not willing to be that cynical ..yet.
….on second thought, yeah. I am willing.
In regards to the first story linked, they are saying that it’s necessary to fight a NEW drug war becuase…
…they just discovered how easily people COULD get a hold of heroin?
Really? They have nothing better to do, so they have to manufacture crime? Start a new war to arrest people who MIGHT commit a real crime if they happened to decide to use heroin.
Wow. I feel a lot safer. Law enforcement and criminal justice in general are necessary evils. The thought that police and lawmakers would try to manufacture additional reasons to deprive my people of life and liberty truly sickens me.
.
.
Milligram per milligram heroin is cheaper than oxycodone at the going black market price. Even degenerate addicts are willing to pay a premium to know what they’re buying.
What is this nonsense I’ve stumbled across lately that has people saying that Perdue Pharma has made it so you can’t get high on oxycodone? Give me a bottle of oxycodone pills and I’ll betcha even I could figure out how to defeat whatever method they claim could do that. Let’s not forget that we’re talking about the company which was convicted of a felony and fined $634 million for promoting the recreational use of Oxycontin®.
http://www.hcpro.com/LFS-74458-356/Purdue-Pharma-to-pay-634M-charged-with-felony-over-OxyContin.html
Don’t be confused, Oxycontin® is a registered trademark, the generic name for the drug is oxycodone. You can only buy Oxycontin® brand oxycodone from Perdue Pharmaceuticals.
.
.
Well this is really bad news, on the front page, no search needed to find it. Yeah, we all know it’s another item that means re-legalization makes sense but some how I doubt that the Know Nothings will agree. BTW just to make it interesting it was poppies, not cannabis. This is the first domestic poppy grow that I recall being reported in the press. It seems like it was just yesterday I was wondering why we’d never heard of domestic poppy cultivation. Oh wait, that was just yesterday. A SWAT team in the woods? WTF?
.
.
PS The Associated Press is actually reporting that it was a cannabis grow.
I’ll be outside banging my head against the brick wall if anyone needs me.
Of course they are. Nothing like letting a little oopsie through, so you can print the correction that no one will see later.
Move over, Duncan.
.
.
Don’t you worry your pretty little head DC, there’s plenty of brick walls for anyone who needs one. I do suppose there could be a remote chance of blood to blood transfer so remember to bring a spray bottle of bleach to kill all the HIVs and the alphabetic hepatitis germs.
The University of Phoenix, of all things, has a poorly written piece titled “The Link Between Marijuana and Schizophrenia†on their social-sciences section website. The article revisits the alleged links to pot smoking and makes it appear as if there is a cause-and-effect relationship, starting with the drug itself.
No discussion of any early onset symptoms of schiz in childhood, nor the likelihood of a self-medication motive for ingestion: see for instance http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2000-06/IoP-2tdb-1306100.php .
The article uses a very broad definition of psychosis to widen its psychological net: “The THC part of marijuana causes hallucinations, paranoia and psychotic episodes. Yet a secondary ingredient, CBD or cannabidiol, works to reduce psychosis.â€
Full article at: http://www.phoenix.edu/colleges_divisions/social-sciences/articles/2011/04/the-link-between-marijuana-and-schizophrenia.html