Radley Balko has a fun piece in the Huffington Post: Great Moments in Drug War Propaganda
There are a lot of classics, here, that brought back some memories.
What are your favorites?
- DrugWarRant.com, the longest running single-issue blog devoted to drug policy
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Watching all those anti-drug commercials has made me reconsider my position on drug legalisation.
Maybe the prohibitionists aren’t wrong.
Maybe they’re batshit crazy.
“Drug free America” and the rest of the these tax-funded lies follows in a long tradition of scapegoating propaganda. Here are some earlier examples of scapegoating from Der Sturmer:
http://tinyurl.com/mxd7k46
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I don’t believe it possible for even the most brain dead prohibitionist to ever top the fiction of pot causing man teats.
New petition at We The People: Appoint Dr. Sanjay Gupta to be the Director of National Drug Control Policy (Also known as the Drug Czar).
I think he would not accept since he is obviously opposed to lying to America about drugs.
Holder pressed on U.S. drug agency use of hidden data evidence
“These allegations raise serious concerns that gaps in the policy and law are allowing overreach by the federal government’s intelligence gathering apparatus,” wrote the senators – Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, Ron Wyden of Oregon, Tom Udall of New Mexico, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Sherrod Brown of Ohio.”
http://tinyurl.com/kfdbacn
OT, but have you seen this?
Senate Judiciary Holding Marijuana Hearing Next Month
I see that Holder has been invited to testify at the hearing. I wonder what he’ll say when asked about the Administration’s and DOJ’s position on CO and WA. Do you think he’ll tell them, “I would say, and I mean this, that you’ll hear soon”?
That’s what he said when asked back in February.
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It would make the Feds look weak if Mr. Holder were to publicly admit that they can’t do squat about the new laws in Colorado and Washington. Also, he knows that less than 3 seconds after saying that they were going to use Federal powers to abrogate those laws that we would expose him as the bald faced liar that he is.
Mr. Holder is in a classic situation of Catch-22 and hoping that everyone just forgets about this particular controversy. I’d probably feel sorry for him if he wasn’t such a total dipshit. But in this case it couldn’t be happening to anyone more worthy of ridicule and disgust. Well, at the Federal level anyway.
The Obama Administration has committed itself to deceit and lies when it come to prohibition. What more can we expect except more of the same? Lies beget more lies. I don’t expect any apologies from the Administration like from Sanjay Gupta. Just more roof hits and interceptions. I expect Holders interview to be one big parallel construction to the Committee.
Here is an article from Mike Riggs that shines a light:
snip/
Dan Riffle, legislative director of the Marijuana Policy Project, believes the senator from Vermont will ask the right questions. “Leahy has said he recognizes the will of the people and their right to make this decision and he wants those states to be able to fully and effectively implement their laws,” Riffle told me in an email. “Based on the conversations I’ve had, the focus will be on hurdles to effective implementation like access to banking.”
/snip
http://tinyurl.com/qhkyzrr
I’d like him to ask how preventing armored cars from carrying dispensary money will improve the public safety. Same for banks and credit card companies. I want to hear the logic behind how these policies are making us more safe.
OT: In California, an atheist refused to participate in a drug treatment program because no secular programs were available, only religious and 12-step nonsense; so he was sent to jail for 100 days.
Barry A. Hazle sued and won in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Unfortunately, because he was an atheist, the jury didn’t award him any damages. So a new jury was ordered convened, and a monetary damage assessment has been mandated by the court.
http://tinyurl.com/kakn4p2
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It’s been upheld in several Circuits previously dating back to the late 1990s. I’m aware of it because I couldn’t get the ACLU to even talk about defending my 1st Amendment right to be free of religionism in the early 1990s. While we only have so much time and limited resources which require us to pick our battles I genuinely regret choosing to not pursue that one. It’s just another item on my list which tells me if I have the choice between believing the assertions of someone else or my own two eyes that I should always pick my eyes. The discovery of the endo-cannabinoid system circa 1992 is another biggie on that list.
From time to time I’ve entertained the notion that the enemies of essential liberty have chosen to not pursue the issue to the SCOTUS because they knew they would lose and it would be binding everywhere in the US instead of in just
onetwothreefour Federal Circuits. I think 4 is now the correct number..
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Well let’s see, there’s:
Kerr v. Ferry, 95 F.3d 472 (7th Cir. 1996)
Warner v. Orange County Department of Probation, 115 F.3d 1068 (2d Cir. 1997)
Inouye v. Kemna, 504 F.3d 705 (9th Cir. 2007) oops, that looks like the 9th just reiterated.
But not only have at least 3 Federal Circuits upheld the interpretation, but
Haven’t seen an Ali G clip in quite some time. That’s my pick, funny stuff.
It makes me sick,,I remember them all,,I remember turning off my TV for weeks because with so few channels we couldn’t avoid watching them before cable came on to the scene and rescued us from watching ABC,CBS,NBC and PBS that were filing the airwaves with them,,I have often wondered how much the choice of more channels diluted the government propaganda because people were not penned down to the channels they were using to spread them.
From the era of the psycho-monkey:
“I got some grass and nobody’s home!!! Wanna come over and smooooke??”
Looks like the NIDA is hoping to add to more great moments to the drug war propaganda machine;
“The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) is granting the University of Buffalo $1.86 million to conduct 4 years of research; the study will be titled Proximal Effects of Marijuana in Understanding Intimate Partner Violence.”
“According to a university press release; “[Maria Testa, Ph.D, lead researcher for the study] says that despite the commonly held belief that marijuana suppresses aggression, many studies have found a positive association between marijuana use and intimate-partner violence.â€
So if the lead researcher says many studies (conveniently none are listed) already link marijuana and incidents of domestic violence, why are tax dollars being spent on this study?
And why doesn’t this Ph.D know that when you start out searching for a negative result, you are not committed to objective discovery. Why do I have to even ask this?
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“Never let the facts get in the way of disseminating an effective piece of hysterical rhetoricâ€
~~The motto of the Know Nothing prohibitionist
Maria Testa’s primary research areas?
Sexual assault; partner violence; women’s sexual behavior; college drinking.
I’m sure she was hand-picked by Nora Volkow for this important propaganda project. And no doubt Maria sees the bright lights ahead and a way out of Buffalo U.
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What about the guy that drinks 30 gallons of cheap vodka a month along with a joint or two in that same entire month? Wanna bet the research won’t say that his existence proves that smoking pot makes people violent?
I’ve got to say I think that people go too far when they claim that people who choose to enjoy cannabis all swear off violence totally. Helps reduce aggression? Sure, so the guy who in the absence of cannabis would have beaten his wife to death just fractures her skull and breaks her arm. That’s still consistent with that assertion.
I tell this to the prohibitionists all the time: There are at least 20 million Americans who choose to enjoy cannabis. In any cohort of people that size you’re going to find examples of every kind of human being that you can possibly imagine. About the only character trait that I would assert that is shared by every cannabinoidian is our strong sense of individuality. If you want to hear people squabble endlessly put 100 of us in a room and pick a subject at random. You’re just not likely to find us speaking with one voice or walking in lockstep. Now if we expand the horizon to the entire planet there are at least 200 million people in the cohort.
How many people reading this remember that the word “assassin” started out as “hashshashin”?
Assuming she’s an honest researcher, her results will refute the “many studies have found a positive association between marijuana use and intimate-partner violence.†It will be yet one more marijuana study the NIDA wishes it didn’t fund. And one they won’t ever talk about.
Either that, or there will be some correlation that gets interpreted as a causal relationship.
If they throw one twinkie into a roomful of half starved stoners we could have a problem,,,Houston,,,,,
I’ll have some of what Sonny is having…
Wish me luck, guys. Tomorrow’s a big day. No details will be advanced. 😉
… have a good un… I be sittin’ here watching the PBS March on Washington
It’s always good to fill in details and I’ve had a cuppla surprises. Charlton Heston was one of the celebrity spokespeople for the march.
I can’t help but think that for there not to be a march on WDC next year would be a grave mistake on we, the people’s part.
51 years is long enough. Lynchings of black folk from trees by the KKK has been replaced by the lynchings of blacks in the justice system. Such infringements upon our freedoms must be a line never broken… it might give upon pressure from those not friends of freedom but liberty is essential and this line will stand.
No one here would argue that we are not in deep doo-doo as a nation and a world. There are multiple issues reaching critical mass simultaneously and like the pressure grows on slipping fault lines.
50 years ago MLK scared the shit out of the white establishment. J Edgar called King ‘the most dangerous negro in the country’… and today MLK is a political saint.
A line from JFK caught my ear… ‘what I’m supposed to tell them, freedom for everyone but the negroes?’
And today, while we don’t have Bull Connor and his thugs, dogs and firehoses we do have laws that are as unjust, cruel and capricious as any Jim Crow policies have ever been.
Black America is still in crisis. 51 years is long enough. I say that if the freedom train needs an engine we have one going 300 mph and would gladly lend our reefer stained hands.
As many have and often do point out, pot smokers cross all demographics. Nearly 3/4 of a million arrests every year for pot is a cultural pogrom. One based on pure caca de vaca…
We need our tails in a knot… we need sharpened points on our pitchforks and fresh pitch on the torches.
If King was the ‘most dangerous negro in America’ then cannabis must be the most dangerous plant in the galaxy…
Wait, that egg commercial was anti-drug? I always interpreted it as a simple yet eloquent tribute to the benefits of consciousness-expanding substances. The raw egg is bland, static, and unappetizing as it slowly rots within the lonely claustrophobic darkness of its own egoic (“egg-oic”?) shell, a shell that is at once both a formidable prison, and a fragile illusion. The frying egg, on the other hand, is a dynamic, colorful, and joyful sensory delight of sights, sounds, smells, and tastes that literally sizzles with transformative energy.
Was that not the intended takeaway? Either way, I think I’m gonna go fry an egg now.
dont you just love the tough no nonsense actor who frys the egg? nothing hippy-dippy
about him
Yes he was the best one …so sincere about saving the chil’n.
I’m switching over to deviled eggs now.
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Oh c’mon Francis, that PSA was obviously product placement by Denny’s. Gee whiz, how many times was I sitting on my couch in Mom’s basement, stoned to the bejeezus, watching re-runs of Hawaii Five-0 and the next thing I knew that fried egg PSA would come on, and all of a sudden I was at Denny’s scarfing down a Grand Slam breakfast or three? Who the heck would argue that wasn’t it a promotion by big breakfast designed to get people hooked on fried eggs? I still haven’t been able to get my eggs addiction under control.
just one point id raise with balkos piece. the drug war has imprisoned MILLIONS of non violent drug consumers not tens of thousands
Here is a story Jean that links in with your comment. ww.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/27/california-prison-expansion_n_3825796.html
Speaking of ‘comment’, read the comments at the end of the story, nobody, I mean nobody is liking this idea…..go figure!
Doesn’t it just beggar belief that with America’s position as the world’s biggest jailer, this dipshit is seriously proposing a massive prison increase… how much money has he been paid by the private prison industry to spout such nonsense? What a dinosaur.
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If California doubled the number of prison beds they’d still be over capacity without convicting a single person of an as yet to be committed offense.
It’s not surprising that California has the largest prison system of any State. California also makes the largest State contribution to GDP, and both for the very same reason. Over 38 million, or 12% of America’s population calls California home.
When you look at per capita contribution to GDP California falls to #12, or #11 if you throw out the bogus DC number. The only reason DC has such a large per capita GDP is because most of the city’s work force live in neighboring States.
The point I’m trying to make is that I suspect that if the size of the California penile system were expressed in prison beds per capita the State wouldn’t even be in the top ten. I wouldn’t be shocked if the State isn’t even in the top half.
Activists urge Gov. Jerry Brown to release prisoners
http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/sreply/675
Jerry Brown, Jerry Brown. He’s a clown, that Jerry Brown. He’s gonna get caught. Just you wait and see. (Why’s everybody always pickin’ on me). That’s him on his knees. I know that’s him. Yeah, from 7 to 11. Down in the prisons. Who walks in the cell, cool and slow. Who calls the Koch Brothers Daddy-O. Jerry Brown, Jerry Brown. He’s a clown, that Jerry Brown. He’s gonna get caught. Just you wait and see. (Why’s everybody always pickin’ on me).
☛’Sesame Street’ now has a show for kids with parents in prison
☛ NRA Military & Prison Industrial Complex’, Are the Police State
☛ U.S. prison population largest in world
☛ Women in Prison
☛ THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR PRISONERS by Kay ‘Grandma’ Lee
☛ ‘Relax Your Muscles as Much as Possible’
What’s life like in our prisons for those marijuana convicts? Let’s steel our nerves and go visit the Web site http://www.spr.org, where the Los Angeles outfit “Stop Prisoner Rape” has posted the little plain-talking handbill it has prepared for young men entering our prison system, titled “For Prisoners: Advice on Avoiding HIV/AIDS.”
The group’s handout — targeted primarily at heterosexual men who have no desire to ever be involved in homosexual activity — advises:
“HIV/AIDS transmission during a sexual assault is a serious concern. The following are practical tips for reducing your risk. …
“If you have a choice, try to avoid men who used needles for drugs in the past or are still doing so. … The more often you are raped, the more exposed you will be, so especially try to avoid anal gang-bangs. The most dangerous situation of all is if your anus is bleeding, for that allows easy entry of the virus into your bloodstream. So try to use a lubricant or grease or cream if you can to minimize injury to your delicate internal body parts, avoid anal gang-bangs, and if you must endure forced anal penetration, try to relax your muscles as much as possible. These tactics are not ‘cooperating’ or consenting, they are just common-sense measures to try to save your life.
“In many situations you are better off agreeing to do something (masturbating, oral sex, sex with a condom) rather than just resisting until you are overwhelmed and forced to deal with unprotected anal sex from one or many guys. You may feel you should resist to the end, but that would put your life in danger. There is no shame in doing what you have to do to survive; nothing changes the fact that rape is involved and you are not morally or legally responsible for it; these compromises are just pathways to your survival. It may even be to your advantage to develop skills in oral sex so that guys you have to deal with will be satisfied with that alone. Don’t feel guilty about it; you’re just trying to save your life….”
Cheap Labor = Profits.
More income tax back caging a stoner,
than working minimum wage.
Treatment = profit,
while cures and prevention take profit away.
Eliminating competition = profit
Undercutting prices with outsourced sweatshops,
Or Koch private prison, man min, max cap contracts.
More prison slave labor = profit.
Larger pools of unemployed,
joining the scab labor, with or without papers,
to undercut more wages.
More desperate to vote on right to work for less.
Necessity is no longer the Mother of Invention,
it has become a deterrent to whistle blowing.
The new Mother is Profits.
The vast majority of prohibitionists
still profit on the drug war,…
… and that is still their only motive.
Shame on the Drug Worrier Profiteers
* Nonsensical Harbingers of Idiocracy
* Misinformation S.A.M.
* If the Roots are Poison, So be the Fruit.
For over a decade media cop shows utilize the threat of prison rape as a means to extract a confession from a suspect. Now, people that have no idea what they are saying have come to joke about “being the property of Bubba.†It’s a sad world when government incarceration can take away your most basic human dignity. That spr.org exists in the land of the free…to save your life…is abhorrent.
That is the way to band-aid the problem of imprisoning too many people for non violent crimes for too long. Beyond reason. Now we can get the fast food industry of prison incarceration to do the same for less so nothing substantive can really be accomplished. Except to lock in place another corporate parasite into the operation of Big Brother.
Cory Booker calls for prison reform, decriminalizing marijuana on anniversary of March on Washington
http://tinyurl.com/ol44wf4
We need people in Washington like this in all 50 States.
My only reservation to Mayor Booker is he not another lost well-meaning politician. Washington has a way of doing that. Sound familiar? I do hope Mr. Booker makes a difference. Messrs. Pallone and Holt are in Congress and proven more interested in the status quo than the issues important to this couch. Ms. Oliver (NJ Assembly Speaker) almost got my vote because of her feisty debates on NJ television. Booker is in the catbird seat. The GOP surely has their mud slingers ready for October.
HARRY ANSLINGER’S GORE FILE reefermadnessmuseum
☛”… the primary reason to outlaw marijuana is its effect on the degenerate races.”
☛”Marihuana is an addictive drug which produces in its users insanity, criminality, and death.”
☛”You smoke a joint and you’re likely to kill your brother.”
☛”marijuana is the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind.”
Calvina Fay Prohibition Inc. ecp
☛I wish I could show you what a small marihuana cigaret can do to one of our degenerate Spanish-speaking residents. That’s why our problem is so great; the greatest percentage of our population is composed of Spanish-speaking persons, most of who are low mentally, because of social and racial conditions.
THE DEMONIZATION OF MARIHUANA iahushua
☛”You know, it’s a funny thing, every one of the bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana is Jewish. What the Christ is the matter with the Jews, Bob? What is the matter with them? I suppose it is because most of them are psychiatrists.”
Just What Was He Smoking?
Richard Nixon missing tapes
The Assassins of Youth: DARE †FRCn PDFA! ecp
☛On Oct. 2, 1937, in the somewhat shady Lexington Apartments at 1200 California St. in Denver, Samuel R. Caldwell became the first person in the United States to be arrested on a marijuana charge. Caldwell, a 58-year-old unemployed laborer moonlighting as a dealer, was nailed by the FBI and Denver police for peddling two marijuana cigarettes to one Moses Baca, 26. If you’re wondering why it took the U.S. government so long to bust a pot dealer, it’s because until the Marijuana Stamp Act was passed – on you guessed it, Oct. 2, 1937 – cannabis wasn’t illegal.
Pot Considered ‘Murder Weed’ in 1937
By James B. Meadow Rocky Mountain News* 11, 05, 2005
NIDA’s Nutty Nora’s Tax Paid Gossip ecp
☛If the hideous monster Frankenstein came face to face with the monster marihuana he would drop dead of fright. This is not an overstatement. Users of the marihuana weed are committing a large percentage of the atrocious crimes blotting the daily picture of American life.It is reducing thousands of boys to CRIMINAL INSANITY. And ONLY TWO STATES have effective laws to protect their people against it. The marihuana weed, according to Mr. Anslinger, is grown, sold and USED in every State in the Union. He charges, and rightly, that this is not a responsibility of one State, but OF ALL and of the Federal Government. American women, aroused to this DANGER, will GET ACTION. (Aah-mmmmm?)
OT but important to ending the drug war:
I was hoping to add dots on the map for all the places hosting Jury Rights Day events, but it seems to only want to let me add one location. Nonetheless, we have begun listing Jury Rights Day events on FIJA’s website at the link below. So far we have Michigan, Washington, and Nevada represented. There are possible events in the planning stages Hawaii, California, D.C., Pennsylvania/New Jersey, and elsewhere. Details will be posted when plans firm up. Please let us know if you have an event to be added! If you would like to host an event but aren’t sure how to get started, let us know and we’ll be happy to help you.
http://fija.org/jury-rights-day/jury-rights-day-2013-events/
i just saw Snake the other day – he told me it’s heavily edited, they took out atleast 20 minutes of a passionate plea for common sense.
by the way, i want actors and actresses to take responsibility. your desire for fame, fortune and most of all love and attention makes you get involved, shamelessly in such a despicable enterprise. Totally unacceptable.
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So this is what achieving critical mass feels like. These news items are threatening to start coming so fast that I actually can see a time coming very soon when there will be too many for me to read them all. So far the only time that’s happened since I’ve been following this subject was the first week of November 2012 and obviously it was because Election Day was imminent. An Election Day with 3 re-legalization ballot initiatives front and center.
Toronto mayor says he has smoked ‘a lot of’ marijuana
But he didn’t say that he hasn’t smoked any since being sworn in as Mayor. Is it reasonable to presume that is a good indication that he’s an active fan of cannabis? I’ve never before seen a politician who made similar statements not deny use while in office except the few who have gotten caught red handed. This dating back to at least 1992 when Bill Clinton played the public for fools by noting that he “didn’t inhale” but forgetting to not that eating ABT brownies doesn’t require that.
All the promises are lies: http://www.ocweekly.com/2013-08-29/news/obama-medical-marijuana/
BREAKING: Eric Holder Announces Department of Justice to Allow Marijuana Legalization to Go Into Effect – See more at: http://blog.norml.org/2013/08/29/breaking-eric-holder-announces-department-of-justice-to-allow-marijuana-legalization-to-go-into-effect/#sthash.Jyjy24Lf.dpuf
Something in that article just squashes whatever excitement I could get out of it. Maybe the fact that it is just another memo or maybe that it leaves the feds with authority that in my opinion should be with the state. Drugged driving, cultivation, sales to minors etc. should really be left to the states to deal with. I truly hope that this opens the door for more states to tax and regulate.
Did somebody leave out a couple of paragraphs?
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Well, why waste words? The Feds really did say that they’re not going to file a meritless lawsuit in a lame attempt to strike down A-64 and I-502.
Marijuana: Obama administration will not sue to stop Amendment 64