When Kevin Sabet tweeted a virtual thumbs up to an article, I thought I should go check it out: Not so fast! A case against legalizing marijuana by Daniel K. Duncan, director of community services for the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse–St. Louis Area.
Daniel endorses the S.A.M. position while demonstrating how absurd it is.
The National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse-St. Louis Area does not endorse legalization. However we see the benefits in an intelligent decriminalization of using small quantities of the drug. […]
Marijuana may be less harmful than other drugs, but it is far from harmless.
The research clearly indicates that marijuana is not only addictive (approximately 1 out of 6 youths who smoke marijuana will develop a dependence) but that the dangers of marijuana are, in fact, far more pronounced in young people than in adults. Marijuana is unquestionably a gateway to other, more dangerous drug use and, unsurprisingly, recent studies show regular users of marijuana may suffer a significant and permanent drop in IQ. The other health risks attached to smoked marijuana (e.g. stroke, cancer, psychosis) are suggested by early research but still unknown. […]
While it may make sense to intelligently decriminalize the use of marijuana, a legitimate case for full legalization has yet to be made. Introducing another likely “legal†threat to public health — especially the health of our youth — is misguided, premature and ill-advised.
So, to recap, because marijuana has potential risks (that we’ve been unable to clearly demonstrate after decades of study), we should institute a policy where we don’t punish people for using it, but we are careful to leave the distribution of it in the hands of criminal networks with no regulatory oversight.
These ridiculous arguments always seem to come from “treatment experts.” How can you make the argument against regulation if your concern is for the well-being of your charges? How can we not believe that you’re in it to protect profits? Now Sabet claims that it’s not about profit – that treatment folks would make more money from cannabis being legal. That’s nonsense, but let’s assume they believe it. What does that make them then? Just stupid?
Or is it something about being around people all the time who can’t control their drug use? I remember growing up that my Dad (a minister) had almost no contact with anyone who drank alcohol, except when they came to him for counseling becuase they had lost their job, beaten their wife… His view was that all alcohol use must be pretty horrible, because that was all he saw. And he came close to, but avoided, the trap of feeling morally superior to them.
Do these treatment experts suffer from a sense of moral superiority? (Many of them are recovered addicts themselves, and you probably know reformed cigarette smokers, for example, that can be pretty judgemental about current smokers.) Maybe this is a case of knowing prison won’t do any good for their charges, but just not being able to stand the notion of anybody being able to enjoy the drug without some kind of potential justice hanging over their head.
I don’t know.
Maybe it is just profits.
More and more of these 2 or three man anti pot orgs are showing up and nearly every one is chaired by a person in a drug war spin off industry,,I have not checked the above one yet but I will lay odds the writer is either a rehab doctor or drug screening advisor,,these people feel us breathing down their necks.
TREATMENT RECOVERY SERVICES MANUAL – NCADA-St. Louis – “The …
Adobe PDF
Daniel K. Duncan Director of Community Services … ST. LOUIS, MO 63115 636-757-2300, EXT. 110 OR 866-758-1152 314-367-8989 C-STAR 8675 OLIVE BLVD., UNIVERSITY CITY …
any questions?
“Tobacco is dangerous and should be affixed with health warnings. Illicit drugs are dangerous and should not be affixed with health warnings”
– Every Prohibitionist Ever
The prohibs know that putting warning labels on cigarettes that say “this will kill you” sends the message that the government approves of cigarette smoking.
Man, I can’t even ironize this stuff, it’s so twisted!
Whatever it is, some people think that because they have found an idea that works for them, they feel they have the right, no the duty, to attempt from their place of ‘enlightenment’ on the subject, to attempt to impose their ‘improved’ idea on everyone. And of course, if they profit from it, all the better.
The fallacy of a one size fits all lifestyle . . . well what can I say? There is no one size fits all lifestyle, and it really is about time for such control freaks to get over themselves and let people be who they are and want to be, without maintaining and mounting new campaigns to keep attempting to force others into ‘their’ box. (Like jail, for example.) Live and let live… Do unto others…
We all know the point here, we’re the adults.
We should all be at the Drug & Alcohol Testing Industry Association (DATIA) annual conference, which is being held this week. I’d bet that their sponsors are providing a top shelf hosted bar.
Referencing your link to their sponsors, surely the “Your Treasure Chest For Learning” theme alludes to the financial potential they’re expecting.
How could they be in this for the money??? (sarcastic font)
what a great idea, an organisation devoted to testing drugs. i love testing drugs. not alcohol, but i like to make sure my marijuana is up to snuff every day. these guys must be wealthy: going to the lowes royal pacific hotel to test alcohol and drugs has got to be pricey. i’d join, but i refuse to associate with rich folks. or rich f#(ks.
Can I sue this asshole? Time to watch out for the Dough boys Mr. Duncan. You think those rolling pins don’t hurt?
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When I was gathering signatures for I-1086 (Washington State legalization initiative) in 2010, I engaged the most aggressive of the few people who gave me static. SHe practically shouted that “Pot ruined her teenage years, she was a marijuana addict until treatment helped her get off it, that dangerous drugs like pot should be illegal, think of the children, etc.”. I asked her what she did for a living – she replied “I’m a drug treatment counselor”. Oh, I replied, so you make your money from prohibition – I guess you lose your meal ticket if it’s legalized. She shut up and went away.
These people are self-serving parasites. Corrupt fruit of a corrupt law.
Mother’s milk is the ultimate gateway drug. Every single hard drug user started on either breast milk or formula. Both of these addictive substances must be banned immediately. Think of the children!
Of course we’re back to cannabinoids as the “gateway” in that case. Ben, you did know that Mom’s milk is just teeming with endo-cannabinoids the first few days after birth, right?
Degenerate mothers getting their babies stoned! We must stop this madness! This calls for a scare piece. Someone, get me the New York Times!
I’m 66 and Cannabiniods still make me want to devour nipples.
at 61, I’m glad to hear that I have at least a few more years of nipple testing.
Mother’s milk also contains traces of morphine. Morphine gets concentrated in milk because morphine originates in trace amounts in consumed leafy food substances like lettuce and cow fodder.
That means any high from mother’s milk is going to be more like opiated hashish.
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Wow, all of these decades I’ve thought that breasts were merely ornamental. But apparently all roads lead to Rome. Well unless you’re already in Rome, then they lead to everywhere else. Now let’s get the SWAT team down to the maternity ward, we’ve got to protect the children!
IIRC mother’s milk is also loaded with beta-endorphin and oxytocin.
Our drugs laws are written such that the packaging and adulterants is included in the weight of the drug. Thus a 30% mix of heroin and adulterants is treated like a gram of pure heroin. 100 micrograms of LSD on a sugar cube could be charged as tens of thousands of doses. A dairy farmer transporting a tanker of milk with “tons” (traces) of morphine could go down as one of the all time biggest narcotraffickers.
Clearly lactating women are guilty of possessing narcotics, and worse if breastfeeding they’re distributing narcotics to children! Actually since morphine is made by the human brain, we’re all guity of possession.
Life as we know it cannot exist without chemicals. Endogenous opioids, cannabinoids and neurotransmitters like GHB etc are essential to our very survival.
There is no such thing as ‘drug free’.
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There was a time in my life when I was infatuated with fish emulsion as a fertilizer. By happenstance I was also still dirt poor so I would go down the Goose Creek and catch sunfish to convert. One day I did that, catching several dozen bluegill. Since I was processing them I just tossed them into a garbage bag. When I got home that particular day I pulled the bag from my car’s trunk and quite remarkably one was still alive despite having been out of the water an absolute minimum of 45 minutes but probably much longer. Amused, I threw him into a bucket of tap water. He must have been one of those jesus fish because he revived. I decided that since he hadn’t died that I’d keep him, feed him until plump enough and take him down to the game station and win the prize for catching the State record bluefish. Hey, I read the rules closely and nothing said anything about the weigh in having to take place within a limited time after catching it. There was no prohibition from feeding the fish subsequent to capture, etc. I named him Fillet o’Fish, and eventually he grew large enough that I bought a 55 gallon fish house. Poor Fillet died from too much cocaine and never did break that State record. Not from his own use of course but mine. Too much cocaine makes a person very sensitive to sound so his air filter had to be turned off. After exhausting all of the oxygen in his tank he jumped out, landing on the floor and eventually suffocating. Apparently that was his destiny all along. The epitaph on his tombstone was “Life is a biochemical state” because that was his lifelong motto.
BTW it was remarkable how terrified the poor goldfish that I fed him would be when they first noticed his presence after being dropped into his tank. Sure, he was going to eat them but how the heck could they know that? These were farm raised goldfish which had never in their lives ever seen any other species of fish, predator or not. It did make me wonder if animals in mortal fear for their lives shit themselves as a favor to the predator. Now go figure that one out.
When yer a fish, it’s a matter of scale. If you fall into it’s prey range, (as a matter of your relative size), you run (swim) from it. Not really a perception of fear so much as a universal response to anything big enough to possibly eat them. Their tiny fishy brains don’t allow for much more. Filet ‘o fish, god rest his soul, would have the same response to anything larger than him.
Lie: “Marijuana may be less harmful than other drugs, but it is far from harmless.”
Truth: The fact is no experimental science exists proving any harm in moderate cannabis use.
Statements like the one you quote invoke scientific and medical authority in the attempt, apparently, to sway public opinion.
What’s funny is that the moral authority of this language has shrunk so much. Sure, in certain contexts it still has the power to make people think twice.
But it’s talk that grows increasingly shrill and unbelievable, with more and more folks realizing it’s the old “man behind the curtain” and not the Voice of Impersonal Science that condemns cannabis in 2013.
The government has stretched definitions so bad Webster had to leave legalization out of they’re dictionary and bought so much targeted science it is becoming harmful to quote science,,the prohibs just claim your science is bought science like theirs is and for some reason it makes us out as the liars and their lies ar OK,,,because they are saving the children.
“One in six” …those are ALCOHOL statistics. IIRC marijuana is more like 1 in 14. And it depends upon how you define “addiction”. Ah, well, he has an investment to protect. With fewer and fewer employers testing (no “demonstrable return on investment, you see) and marijuana legalization looming large, he’s gotta be worried for his meal ticket.
Going to be in and out (mostly out) for a week or so. When I get back I’ll have some really good news (I hope!). Carry on.
I could be wrong but I believe it’s a puritan notion that doing drugs should be harmful. Drinking alcohol and smoking tobacco can kill you so it fits with the puritan notion that sinners should be punished for their sins. This does not occur with cannabis thus they have to create negative consequences to satisfy their belief system. I could be wrong, they could just want to protect the status quo because of profits but I wonder sometimes what motivates the drug war inquisitors. It surely isn’t compassion.
The couch potato has always been a favorite prohibitionist stereotype for targeting marijuana consumers. Now the stereotype is being challenged at the University of Missouri by researchers Frank Booth and Michael Roberts.
Booth and Roberts selectively bred two groups of rats that exhibit either extreme activity or extreme laziness. The results indicate that laziness is most likely genetic, like schizophrenia, and not the result of marijuana consumption, as so many prohibitionists fervently hoped it would be.
Do these treatment experts suffer from a sense of moral superiority?
I think you’re right About that Pete. Many of these “experts” (of which a goodly number are former-addicts with little to no formal education) think that abstinence is equivalent to a state of grace. This is why they use the words “clean” and “dirty” to describe the presence of drug metabolites in the body. I bathe regularly, (brush my teeth, take care of my hygiene, ect), using drugs does not make me “dirty.”
I once had a counselor tell me she wanted to get high everyday of her life…I was like fine if you want to live your life in a state of chronic deprivation that’s your perogative, but don’t enforce your beliefs on me. The thought that someone, somewhere, can get high without any negative consequences bothers them. Anything that reduces the negative consequences, especially if they are legal in nature, is opposed. How else are we to make the drug users hit “bottom”?
the definition of sn expert does fit these individuals,,,ex is a has been and spurt is drip under pressure.
“The thought that someone, somewhere, can get high without any negative consequences bothers them.”
Some here will recall that the movie “It’s Complicated” was rated R largely because it depicts Meryl Streep’s and Steve Martin’s characters smoking pot, driving, and *not having any problems*.
Definite MPAA no-no:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/25/business/media/25ratings.html?_r=0
I have a good bit of experience being around folks like the ones we are all talking about here, and I truly believe that the vast majority of the are simply blinded by their own experience. And the phrase “if you can’t help a fellow addict, don’t harm a fellow addict” I think gets interpreted in such a way that it seems ( and really, is) “safer” to preach total abstinence from all drugs. There are people just drawing a paycheck to be sure, but addiction counseling isn’t really something people go into because they think they are going to get rich. It is mostly recovering addicts who truly want to help others with the same message that helped them, which is usually total abstinence from everything. I don’t agree with their point of view but I do think it usually comes from a place of wanting to help others in the best way they know how.
The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.
-Albert Camus
I’m taking aim at counselors who specialize in Court-ordered “marijuana addiction treatment” (in lieue of going to jail). Total BS. I don;t agree that these are benevolent people – they are milking the system based on a lie.
Any mental health professional who relies on coercion treads a very fine line, ethically, IMO. The fact that these people profit off their “clients” is completely unethical. Combined with the fact that most people caught with possession are not “problem users” (addicts) and you have a system where people without problems are coerced into a treatment program they don’t need…seems pretty unethical to me. At least when you are claiming to cure people who were never sick your success rates are (artificially) high.
Any drug-court style treatment is inappropriate, regardless of the substance in question (though I concede marijuana “addiction” is the most egregious use of drug courts). Drug court participants essentially waive all their rights. The judge essentially assumes control over every aspect of their lives. This is subject to all sorts of abuse. If you “relapse” the sentence may start over and you may find yourself in years of drug court purgatory. Sometimes people are in “treatment” longer than they would have been incarcerated had they not taken the drug court option.
What the hell do judges and prosecutors know about treatment for a medical problem? Did they go to law or medical school? For what other disease do we put treatment failures in jail for? For all the talk of the “disease of addiction” the focus on punishment demonstrates that drug courts adhere to the moral model of addiction, they merely pay lip service to a disease model by adapting the jargon of the treatment industry.
Drug courts scare the hell out of me, all the more so since many liberals view them as being more humane (at least for those that buy into the slogan treatment not jail) and conservatives see them as cost savings measures (maybe true when compared to the spectacularly costly and ineffective incarceration, much costlier than legalization/decrim). Some think drug courts are the “answer” to the WoD. It can be a real hard choice to decide to take the drug court option vs plea bargain (since almost nobody makes it all the way to a trial).
I think we can safely draw a line between well intentioned counselors, and treatment center profiteers. The folks “on the line” are genuinely trying to do some good (that doesn’t stop some of them from becoming moralizing assholes, they just didn’t start out that way).
Good point.
A good acid test to distinguish the well-intentioned from the profiteers is on the issue of harm reduction.
Example:
“Dr.” Drew: Opposes methadone, quack and professional drug war profiteer.
Dr. Gabor Mate: Supports methadone and heroin maintenance, well intentioned and respected authority on addiction.
OT:Still Waiting for Obama’s Marijuana Policy
I know this is not new to anyone on the couch, but the frustration in the article is right on.
“Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder continue to fight the War On Weed as if Nancy Reagan were in charge. Or Harry Anslinger, for that matter. This fight has been very quiet, for the most part — Obama has given no major speeches touting his crackdown on marijuana — but it has been a fierce one nonetheless. When Obama was first elected president, he promised his administration would set “science-based” policies and allow states with medical marijuana laws to experiment without federal interference. He has broken both those promises, to be blunt (no pun intended). The Department of Justice has taken a very hard line indeed, even in states with legalized medical marijuana.”
http://tinyurl.com/buyvtop
To go along with this:
I have seen all of the 2nd amendment folks all up in arms about this, but I think it could be used against local law enforcement and refuse to go after cannabis suppliers in Colorado as well.
Federal Framework Being Set Up To Arrest Sheriffs
http://tinyurl.com/cfkee48
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I think that one of the most absurd things I’ve ever seen in my entire life is my first sighting of one of the marked cars belonging to the “Secret” Service. For the love of various proverbial objects, the uniformed division of the “Secret” Service?? Well it’s not much of a flippin’ secret if you mark the cars and wear uniforms, now is it?
Just another typical example of life in your Nation’s Capital. We’ve got more police forces here than you can shake a stick at. Well, I think that’s true, everyone that’s tried was arrested before they were finished trying.
CS Lewis had the Treatment Nazis pegged perfectly:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
IMHO, if you scratch your typical ‘world saver’ you’ll usually find a proto-fascist gestating in a dark corner of their souls. One with a roaring (but usually quiet) case of hubris for thinking they’re any better than those they publicly or privately deprecate. Heinlein’s ‘Controllers’. Just have to make everyone conform to their ideals.
And a cudgel is hidden behind their backs for the day they get the power to make you. And they always do, for the lesson has to be learned every generation; such always gravitate to power, and there’s always Hell to pay when they acquire it.
In an example of the type of tyranny we’re speaking of, the stated purpose of the European inquisitions was to save people’s souls. Since the health of the soul was considered the basis for good physical health, and all physical illness was considered a punishment for sin, the inquisitions declared themselves protectors of the public health, as well as spiritual protectors of public morals. In that sense, the inquisitors were much like prohibitionists who claim a public health motive.
Beginning in 1346, priests and clerics traveling about and spreading the word to ward off disease also spread the bubonic plague, thereby becoming a primary vector in decimating one-third of the European continental population over the next four centuries.
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!
you know I had to say it…
The/End-Of> Prohibition
Marijuana Linked to Increased Stroke Risk By Maia Szalavitz
“Marijuana is unquestionably a gateway to other, more dangerous drug use”
“users of marijuana may suffer a significant and permanent drop in IQ”
Neither of these statements are true. Both statements are born out of correlation and extrapolated into causation. These falsehoods serve a purpose.
As with many of these claims, corrolation does not mean causation. Authority lends creedence to any opinion as if it were a fact.
Do we have a situation where even the users of these claims believe them? I think so.
That does not prove any of this. Authority and opinion seem to go together. There is no science there, even in some of the so called “science”.
If anyone is looking for coalition building…
President Obama halt the ‘war on drugs,’ and war on Blacks, says coalition
and heeeeeeeeere’s… Hollywood!
Celebrities ask Obama to end war on drugs
And here’s the letter, check out the signatures…
http://globalgrind.com/endthewarondrugs/
tha’s what I be talking about. Rock on Russell Simmons!
I could live my entire life without being on the same side of the table as Kim Kardashian.
O/T
Here’s an interesting article with Prof. Harry Levine. He notes that cops may try to make up the arrests in CO and WA by targeting teens, something I hadn’t thought much about before but is troubling. Also notes the dearth of financial support from people who donate to support gay marriage, but are still “in the closet” with cannabis.
National Disgrace: an interview with Harry Levine
The fascists already put a hundred thousand percent effort into “busting teens.” Saving the children is the mainmast mantra of prohibition, and always has been.
oh dude without a doubt they feel superior. without question. no question at all man. in fact its a major problem. its not just the head honchos, its the people who get a few days under them as well. i always knew the treatment business was gonna be a problem. the good news is their foundation, IN THIS COUNTRY, is weak as hell because their foundation is AA/NA/12-Step which we all know has only a 5% success rate (same % of people who get dry/kick without any outside influence/help. so maybe the real number is 0%.) The organization was founded by a thieving sexual deviant to boot. I feel, with insite vancouver t-shirt on and blood all over my arms from a poor shot last night, very morally superior at the moment to bill w. though my momentary moral superiority may in fact be slightly artificial, im the type of lad who figures there’s no afterlife, no offense and total respect to those who do, i believe we’ve got one shot at Earth and the goal is to rack up happy points. Meaning, the meaning of life is to be happy by any means necessary. The happier the life, the more you win when it’s over. Thus why the use of narcotics is absolutely important but in this “all natural” “health nut” country they have some issue with the artifical nature of the matter.
You know its such a sick, deeply entrenched scam. I can’t believe there’s not been a serious expose on the drug treatment business. The non using public just assume when they hear AA/12-Step its a good thing. heh.
The biggest crock of it all is the halfway house business. Listen I’ll tell you how it goes if you dont know. So you find yourself in coerced treatment or worse drug court and whatever you gotta do the standard edition 30 day rehab. About 10 days left they start piling on the pressure to go into a halfway house. Dude they all say they dont get kickbacks but give me a break you know it’s BS, why the hell else is it so prevalent and why else would they recommend it to people whose situations clearly dictate that no infact they must return to their family and job.
So you get to the halfway house and heres the bottom line: you get hit with this massive initial fee, let’s just call it 800 but it varies. After that you pay your first month. OK. The deal is however that the halfway houses can kick you out for ANY REASON. All too often halfway houses “clean house” they claim a atmosphere of use is in the air, maybe one person used something and got caught now they throw everybody out.
Im saying very seriously it can be any reason. Most halfway houses have this obligational community meeting once a week, right? sometimes the halfway house may take that serious, sometimes its as simple as gathering heads in the halfway house parking lot for a half hour. You show up a few minutes late? GOODBYE.
Your room is sparkling clean, they found dust somewhere, turns out, halfway house owner dude’s kids about to go to college so he needs all the help he can get, dust? PEACE
Listen I’ve got a personal one for you too. I went into a halfway house one time in Florida over in West Palm. It was called Freedom House. Unfortunately for the fellow residents I came in with the knowledge that I totally got one over on the rehab and was on a mission to set a local or global record for how fast i could cop in this foreign city the 1st day out of rehab. So i made it happen, parked my tooshy wooshy at the mcdonalds and after an hour or so a hot chick told me i looked famous, my reply was “listen i just got out of rehab and i really need some PKs or some smack sweetheart.” and that was all she wrote cuz this very chick was at the McDonalds pulling a lou reed and “waiting for the man” if you will (who ended up in that case being a WOman) now there was this one dude there though who i liked alot i actually considered him a friend and he was dead serious about being clean. I voluntarily said dude i will stay out of your life forever because i like you and thats what a true friend would do, objectively. He insisted I not. Despite the “drug culture” and “use” I eventually brought to the place for a temporary period, he never used and never judged or had a problem with anybody else who used. Indeed, that guy, that friend in my opinion is what the perfect sober person is. So needles to say (needless*) some kid who felt left out ratted us all out and we all were mass exodus in one felt swoop. You see that 800$ fee is HISTORY when you get kicked out. Ate up by the halfway house mgmt. you will not get it back. The general policy is, after a resident is kicked out they have 72 hrs they’re not allowed there but then they can reapply BUT YOU GOTTA PAY UP THAT 800 AGAIN! NO MATTER! YES SIR YES SIRE YES INDEED YOU DO! I mean, if I was some scumbag halfway house owner I would much rather have a revolving door of fat 800$ checks coming in and out versus a steady 150$ a week payment or whatever the hell.
so we all got kicked out and try as they did, the friend i mentioned was tested twice a day for awhile but he was clean. They just had such a hard on for him so get this man he had gotten intimate with one of the chicks who was kicked out but she lived local. She lent him her car. One day hes driving around doing his sober business (whatever THOSE people do, you know) and pulls up to a red light and low and behold right next to him in his own car going about his own sober business as well (i presume) is the halfway house owner. He immediately recognizes that the sober friend is driving the whip of a girl who was kicked out for using and that is it. KICKED OUT! FOR DRIVING SOMEONES CAR THAT ISNT EVEN IN THE PLACE ANYMORE!! CAN YOU BELIEVE IT! MINUS 800$ AGAIN.
What a scam. It’s gross. These people are especially devilish because they use the facade of “helping people.” May the lord burn them in hell like the heretics they are. amen.