I was struck by this headline: Report: Shooter drug-free during Sikh temple killing
MILWAUKEE — A white supremacist with a history of alcohol problems was drug-free when he walked into a Sikh temple in the U.S. this summer and fatally shot six people before killing himself, according to a toxicology report released Wednesday.
There’s almost a sense of… bafflement in the article. If it wasn’t drugs that caused a man to fatally shoot six people and then himself, what could it possibly have been?
Remember the Zombie who had eaten part of a man’s face? The assumption was that he was high on “bath salts” – an assumption that was repeated without evidence over and over, even leading to new laws against bath salts… despite the fact that the autopsy found no such drug (not even the autopsy stopped supposed news outlets from continuing to repeat the false story).
And of course, whenever there is some heinous crime and drugs are discovered, it’s a pretty sure bet that they will be blamed, regardless of any evidence as to their causing the behavior, as opposed to blaming the individual.
Recently, the ONDCP’s communications director Rafael Lemaitre tweeted:
Tragic story. http://t.co/it9Hx5ZU Help raise awareness. Learn more on what the research shows re: drugged driving http://t.co/HmXIzcfX
The tragic drugged driving story was about four young people who were killed in a car accident, and the driver tested positive for marijuana. The inference, of course, was that the drug caused their deaths. But the story is actually about a 17-year-old without a driver’s license who was driving 110 miles per hour at 3:35 am. Whether or not he was stoned, it certainly wasn’t marijuana that caused that accident.
As uncomfortable as it is to consider, sometimes there are people who are just plain fucking nuts. You can’t “explain” them by blaming some drug they took. They just are.
And all you can do is hope that when they do melt down they’ll become Darwin Award recipients instead of taking out their friends or some innocent Sikhs.
Blaming drugs won’t help.
Drugs don’t make anybody do anything. Personal responsibility for ones actions don’t end when a person has a drug in them. To blame a drug for ANYTHING has been the reason that the issue of personal responsibility became instead a drug war. Alcohol as a national drug passtime has given the Government the excuse it needs to help us all to think incoherently.
Blaming a substance for irresponsible behavior is like excusing a politician for not following through with his campaign promises because he is now in Washington and somehow that changes things.
Blaming some one’s actions on the drugs he took supports the Governments drain on the public coffers to fight the drug war.
Isn’t it about time the press woke up to the excellent job the Government has done in manipulating the true story into a brainless answer for everything?
Frank Zappa:
“Ingesting a substance does not magically bestow upon you the right to act like an asshole.”
My friends have a rule, and it’s a good one:
“Handle your shit.”
If you can’t handle it, don’t do it. If you find yourself doing extra stupid things under the influence, you’re not following the rule.
Grampa Semu used to say, anything is alright, if you can handle it.
Drugs are safe to blame. To acknowledge that someone can simply “crack” (they never crack, they simmer below a boil sometimes for decades before they finally boil over) and commit a crime is to acknowledge it could potentially happen to you, or your weird Uncle Steve. Nobody wants to believe Uncle Steve is REALLY going to go into a Disney film with an automatic rifle and a five gallon can of gas. He just talks about it alot. Like, constantly.
Unfortunately, there is no shortage of “Uncle Steves”. This is a martial culture. We are taught violence here before we can walk or talk (via images on the parental TV screen). We give false expectations of justice in an unjust world, and then when we show false justice administered by a caped superhero who uses righteous violence to correct that said injustice. We present black and white depictions of right and wrong in a grey shaded world, and then tell the public constantly through words and images that violence is the tool to make things right. Trauma is the result, and trauma is the key to this behavior. It is the experience of violent trauma that sets these people apart from the ordinary person (see the work of Lonnie Athens, Georgetown University and Seton Hall). We create these people, more and more of them every day, because this sort of thing is a vicious circle. Violence begets violence. It is certainly easier to blame drugs than to look at ourselves.
Now if you don’t mind, I have to go see about my Uncle Steve.
Compare to how this example of alcohol related stupidity was reported: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2140897/Ian-Smith-College-student-leaps-roof-lands-concrete-Colorado-party.html
Now imagine if he had taken LSD or cannabis and jumped (not that they ever would).
Only thing I have seen that blaming drugs helps is…
helps increase the amount of money law enforcement gets.
Helps government remove our rights.
Helps remove personal resposibility and increase the ignorance that propaganda spreads.
….those are three off the top of my head, anyone got anything to add?
Civil War?
Fucking nuts??…..Congress….Fucking nuts??…Government…..HHhhmmmmmmmmmmmmm
She spent four hours smoking “super-strength skunk cannabis,†which caused her to hallucinate and climb the high-voltage pole, thinking it was a bridge that crossed the Morova River which runs through Central Europe.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/06/25/czech-girl-gets-high-climbs-high-voltage-power-lines/#ixzz2DKRMMTeE
Still at it, Kev?
DID you hear about the Czech woman who, having smoked cannabis, mistook an electricity pylon for a bridge? She climbed it. The Daily Mail says the woman spent “four hours smoking super-strength ‘skunk’ cannabis“. She was “hallucinating“.
The Sun agrees, stating that the woman from Zlin, Czech Republic smoked skunk and mistook a pylon for a bridge. The Sun gets identifies her as a “21-year-old girlâ€.
The Mirror notes that the “girl†was wearing a “tiny pair of denim hotpants and a t-shirt.â€
All papers quote “police spokesman Jan Macalikovaâ€, who says:
“It was a nightmare because she was very much under the influence of drugs and wasn’t making much sense….She received treatment at hospital for her drugs consumption but was otherwise unhurt. She’s lucky she didn’t get a new high – high voltage.â€
Only, the site of the Czech police force says the woman climbed the pylon “apparently because of unrequited love“.
The police say she thought she was climbing the ropes to a cable car that crosses the River Morava.
No mention of cannabis. None at all…
-what-really-happened.html/
I would say that does a very good job of validating Pete’s observations.
Thanx Kev
I think Bongola was only trying to bring this to our attention.
Indeed 🙂
What was that old saying?
““A lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on.â€
Fortunately, the Internet has given us electric roller-blades to catch up with the lie and overtake it. Which causes Kev and his ilk no end of vexation…
Yeah, these electric rollerblades are NEATO!
*swwoooooosssshhhh*
I would wager that Kev and Kerli curse the internet daily,,maybe even hourly. I am waiting for Kerli to urge congress to censor the internet and you can bet what sites would be closed down first.
Yup. Last time I did that we stopped playing poker and watched a movie instead. First commercial I folded.
We all smoke weed so we will become as lazy as Michael Phelps,as stupid as Carl Sagan and unproductive as Steve Jobs.
Now it’s Kev’s turn,,name one successful person in the 21st century that has never done any drugs.
I wonder what will take the blame when pot is legal?
Can’t be messing with tax revenues, you know.
Canadian law experts call for a “crackdown on drugged driving” (MedicalXpress):
Another propaganda piece with comments disabled.
I so wanted to put my 5mph comment in there.
Will Pot Be the Next Obama Stimulus Plan?
http://tinyurl.com/bprcmee
President Obama has said he’s open to new ideas during his second term. Here’s one that at least two states are pushing: legalizing marijuana to help ease government finances.
On Election Day, voters in Colorado and Washington approved measures that would make it legal for citizens to buy pot and smoke it recreationally. Among other things, legalizing pot would help each state raise some desperately needed revenue. But whether pot becomes commonly available, and taxed just like alcohol, depends on whether the federal government tacitly goes along with the new measures or cracks down on them, which it has the authority to do.
The federal government regards marijuana as a Schedule 1 controlled substance, in the same class with powerful narcotics such as heroin and LSD. Pro-pot groups have been pushing the feds for years to reclassify marijuana and adopt a more permissive stance, especially since some doctors believe the leafy drug has important medicinal properties. Washington has tolerated the legalization of medical marijuana, but it hasn’t budged on recreational use, and last year the Obama administration reaffirmed its opposition to any changes in the status of marijuana.
The question now is whether the two statewide measures, along with others that might follow, might persuade a second Obama administration to mellow out and reconsider its tough stance against pot. The economic arguments in favor of legalizing pot are no hallucination.
Forecasting firm IHS Global Insight reports that Washington state could pull down nearly $2 billion in additional revenue over five years, through fees on licenses granted to pot providers. Colorado, which would manage pot sales differently, could earn about $342 million from excise taxes over five year. In a tough economy, with voters staunchly opposed to most new taxes, that’s a meaningful amount of revenue. ‘snip’
Greed of the few created marijuana prohibition and greed of the many will end it.
“Powerful narcotics like LSD”??? Where the hell do these reporters learn their trade, Lies, Inc.?
And WA State really doesn’t need any more revenue, what it needs is to rid itself of public employee unions, the excessive upper and middle management positions, and dozens of unnecessary and duplicate programs.
I think the emphasis on “drug-caused” behavior is symptomatic of a darker social ill – the desire of authoritarians to see people as passive and weak and subject to outside forces rather than strong, active and personally responsible for their behavior.
Just look at their emphasis on rote learning, their inability to handle situations without detailed rules, and their reactionary clinging to old ways and rejection of new ideas.
Prohibition is a reactionary authoritarian policy. Enforced by reactionary authoritarians. They are not able to process the idea that it’s wrong because they are living in the past and enslaved to its authority. And they want us to be enslaved to their authoritarian reality because they want to crush what they don’t understand.
This is what you get when you cede authority to reactionary authoritarians.
diva, please post this comment on FB so I can share it.
done!
The BBC has a good article about the history and economics of hemp that questions the legal status of hemp production in the U.S., given the recent legalization of marijuana in two states. A DEA spokes-idiot explains the federal position on hemp production:
So much for the scientific approach to government regulations. Federal drug law defines the official perception of reality, rather than allowing the species, chemical-makeup, or genome of a plant to define and determine national and international economic policies regarding its use and marketing. The motives for prohibition are emotional, rather than rational or scientific. Canada and China grow hemp despite marijuana being illegal in each of those countries, but the United States just isn’t up to the task (according to the DEA).
Meanwhile, marijuana itself continues to be scapegoated like some purported witch during the Middle Ages who gets prosecuted by the superstitious peasants for all the rotten luck occurring in their crummy, disease-infested little village. Not only are U.S. federal marijuana policies psychotic and primitive, but it’s become a national disgrace and embarrassment that Americans exist who still think and act like witch hunters.
Hmmm, I wonder if you’ve heard the part where the Catholic Church got its hard on for the so called witches during the black plague because because the Church couldn’t do a damned thing for the people suffering. Making the politically powerful look weak is a good way to get on their bad side. But it turns out that the “witches” were able to help the sick suffer less with a particular medicinal herb with which we’re all familiar. Then there was also a medicinal herb which is unfamiliar to us but was used to cause a miscarriage, the elective abortion of that time. It may be the substance that doctors were swearing to never use in the 1st version of the Hippocratic Oath.
That sounds about right. Plagues and disease were believed to be punishment for sins, so if you were sick, you deserved it, and all the Church would do is pray for forgiveness and console the dying. Medications were the work of the devil.
The witch was believed to be a physical instrument of the devil, in that the devil was powerless without the mediation of the witch who actually brought about the physical harm, such as livestock deaths, crop failures, male impotence, and so forth. The belief persisted despite the fact that nothing in the Bible describes such a creature. That meant that a witch could be judged according to anything that was convenient. For example, since there was no divorce, a man could use the convenient vagueness of a witch accusation to get rid of his wife.
The abortificant you’re talking about could’ve been ergot, a precursor to LSD, which is used today to medically induce labor for birthing. Another natural abortificant in common use in the Caribbean and North Africa is found in the root of the flower known as the Bird of Paradise (Strelitzia reginae).
The most popular stories of witches and drugs involves the use of concoctions prepared from the psychoactive datura plant. A woman would allegedly dip the end of a broomstick into a brew she created from datura and then masturbate with the broomstick to get high. A man might come home to find his wife claiming she’d just had sex with the devil, and that the devil was a fuck of a lot better lay than he was. Such confrontations were likely to give rise to family disputes.
.
This week, farmers, scientists, health food experts, retailers and fashion designers are meeting in Edmonton to celebrate hemp and discuss how to help products derived from the plant to blossom on world markets.
Kim Shukla, executive director of the Canadian Hemp Trading Alliance, says production in this country is forecast to almost double by 2015.
“That will translate to about $100 million to the Canadian economy,” she said from her farm near Steinbach, Man. “Saskatchewan is by far the leading province, followed by Manitoba and Alberta.”
The hemp business is downright respectable in Canada.
Alberta’s agriculture minister is to open the convention and trade show today and the federal government plans to make a funding announcement in support of Canada’s growers.
Canadian+hemp+growing+like+weed
I’ve been saying it for years, but the savvy politician who legalizes pot can turn around in a few months and point to dropping crime rates. Not just pot arrests, dropping rates for all prohibition associated crimes (crimes of aquisition, assaults, etc.).
Here is is in black and white, and the proper perspective:
http://www.alternet.org/marijuana-decriminalization-drops-youth-crime-rates-stunning-20-one-year
I didn’t get the edit function to work, so here’s a little teaser from the above linked piece:
“[In California following marijuana decriminalization which covers ALL age brackets, not just adults] Drug-related juvenile arrests overall fell by 47 percent between 2010 and 2011. Violent crime arrests fell by 16 percent; homicide arrests by 26 percent; rape arrests by 10 percent; and property-crime arrests by 16 percent. Nationwide, according to the FBI Uniform Crime Reports, arrests of juveniles for all offenses decreased 11.1 percent in 2011 when compared with the 2010 number; arrests of adults declined 3.6 percent.”
It is becoming my opinion that the problem isn’t too many people smoking pot, it is that there aren’t enough.
looking forward to the day when every person must smoke a joint 30 minutes before leaving work for home by automobile,,,road rage and idiot drivers will be the rarity instead of the norm.
Why is this story not on the front page of every news source in the country. These falls in crime-rates are Kevin Sabet’s nightmare. I’m eagerly awaiting the results we’ll see from CO and WA in 18 months time.
Instead we get bollocks like this:
http://tinyurl.com/c4oucrg
This is getting to be a really old story. No solid evidence at all.
They are taking a page out of the Salem Witch Craft Trials.
Dude, check out these electric rollerblades! This stuff works!
(In other words, don’t expect them to pick this piece of information up and run with it. That’s our job. And it turns out we’re damn good at it.I put this here because this is like modern communication: Telephone, Telegraph, Tell the Couch.)
*whizzing round and round the couch laughing maniacally*
why don’t you take your skates over to the Independent article by Henry Cockburn (cited above) regarding the “link” between schizophrenia and cannabis consumption. The comments page badly needs to hear from the couch….
I’m in, but there are already 900+ comments. My usual rule is if I can’t get in there before the first sixty or so, I don’t bother. I don’t expect the uncommitted on the subject to get through the first coupla dozen comments. For couch brethren, I sometimes make exceptions.
Don’t have too much fun with those things or they’ll get put on a naughty list and made illegal.
RAPE GHOST NIGGER LOVER’S DROP SOME COCAINE IN YOUR EYEBALL FAGGOT MAN. I DONT MAKE FUCKING SENSE! BECAUSE I’M THE COCKMONSTER. I BUTTFUCK LITTLE DOGS AND CATS FOR FUN WHILE SMOKING CRACK COCAINE WITH KIDS, YUMMY YUMMY COCAINE IN MY TUMMY,I SAY LEGALIZE CRACK SO WE CAN LEGALIZE PEDOPHILIA,THATS OUR MAIN GOAL ISN’T IT. TO LEGALIZE HAVING SEX WITH CHILDREN AGAIN? PRAISE ALLAH
Wow now that is come creative trollitry there. The end goal of ending the prohibition of drugs is to make pedophilia legal. We’ve all been outed you guys, guess it’s time to give up the ship.
Go back upstairs, Wiggles.
please turn off cap locks
narks are realizing that their rice bowls are fragile, hence the shrill screaming.
Kevin Sabet is facing some new competition from the halls of academia. Humboldt State University in Arcata, California, an apex of California’s Green Triangle, is introducing a marijuana studies project.
.
Wrong, Servetus! It’s not coming from Kev-Kev’s side, it’s coming from ours! The institute seeks to study the impact of Cannabis on society and business, and they will embrace the “New Stoner” image. This is OUR academic Think-Tank! (I have the link somewhere, I’ll look for it)
That’s what I meant to say, that the Humboldt Institute is likely to be competitive for Sabet in an anti-Sabet sort of way. Sorry for the lack of clarity.
Misunderstood: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqEX3Zx-UyM
My theme song!
Will it be competition or rebuttal,,if the economics investigation reports that legalized marijuana would not reduce cartel cash flow then we check the funding for the study.
Here is the link, it was sent to me by Debby Goldsbury, a fellow advocate:
http://www.times-standard.com/rss/ci_22062798?source=rss
Two of the Largest American Newspapers Opine in Favor of Allowing States to Legalize Marijuana
by Erik Altieri, NORML Communications Director November 26, 2012
Check it out at the NORML blog:
NYT
“”For what stands between ending this absurd front in the dead-ender war on drugs and the status quo is the federal government. It could intervene, citing the supremacy of federal law that still classifies marijuana as a dangerous drug.
But it shouldn’t. Social revolutions in a democracy, especially ones that begin with voters, should not be lightly dismissed. Forget all the lame jokes about Cheetos and Cheech and Chong. In the two-and-a-half weeks since a pair of progressive Western states sent a message that arresting 853,000 people a year for marijuana offenses is an insult to a country built on individual freedom, a whiff of positive, even monumental change is in the air.
…there remains the big question of how President Obama will handle the cannabis spring. So far, he and Attorney General Eric Holder have been silent. I take that as a good sign, and certainly a departure from the hard-line position they took when California voters were considering legalization a few years ago. “”
The Washington Post by Washington Post Editorial Board:
Marijuana’s Foot in the Door
…Or the Justice Department could keep its hands off, perhaps continuing the approach the feds have largely taken for some time — focusing scarce resources on major violators, such as big growers that might serve multi-state markets, cultivators using public lands or dispensaries near schools. The last option is clearly best.
But it’s unrealistic and unwise to expect federal officials to pick up the slack left by state law- enforcement officers who used to enforce marijuana prohibitions against pot users and small-time growers. Unrealistic, because it would require lots more resources. Unwise, because filling prisons with users, each given a criminal stain on his or her record, has long been irrational. For the latter reason, we favor decriminalizing possession of small amounts of pot, assessing civil fines instead of locking people up.
Also, for that reason and others, the Justice Department should hold its fire on a lawsuit challenging Colorado and Washington’s decision to behave more leniently. And state officials involved in good-faith efforts to regulate marijuana production and distribution according to state laws should be explicitly excused from federal targeting.
just floating a balloon here… but let’s say the Fed does come down with a giant jackboot on CO and WA. Will that make 2013, The Year? The year that we finally do that march on DC with a massive million joint smoke-in?
I shudder to think just how many,,it gives me flashbacks of the anti-war protests that scared the shit out of Nixon and we are still fighting what that caused.
I dunno, Allan…the “war on drugs” is still largely a euphemism to most ordinary shills. That ends when Federal police start arresting their children and sending them to federal prison for simple possession….
They’d be shoving that jackboot right into a nasty bear trap.
as I said, just floatin’ a balloon. But more than actually doing a march… I like the sound of the threat of a march. I mean if we’re gonna push… why not get ’em worried early?
Breaking the Taboo, Trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2vqpNT1kV4&feature=youtu.be
Published on Nov 23, 2012
Narrated by Morgan Freeman, this groundbreaking new documentary uncovers the UN sanctioned war on drugs, charting its origins and its devastating impact on countries like the USA,
.
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I’m kind of surprised that we haven’t talked about Stephanie Bongiovi’s recent heroin overdose. Not that there’s anything remarkable about an OD but the fact that New York State law gave her immunity because an ambulance was called to take her for medical treatment. This is a significant victory for harm reduction. I wonder if daddy Jon Bon Jovi might cough up some of his money pile to help future potential victims? She’d be on her way to a criminal conviction or dead had she overdosed in his home State of New Jersey. Please remember that an OD does not necessarily cause death.
Jon Bon Jovi addresses daughter Stephanie Bongiovi’s heroin OD