Odds and Ends

bullet image Should Marijuana Be Rescheduled? — Kevin Sabet, sounding really desparate to remain relevant given everything going on.

bullet image What does Holder’s speech really mean? Who knows? It certainly had some attractive rhetoric, but at that level, you can afford good speechwriters, so your rhetoric should seem like ambrosia. Actual action is yet to happen.

If I was to guess, I would say that Holder’s speech is the equivalent of throwing the door wide open, while his actions will be merely opening the door another crack. But that’s OK – we’re used to that and we’ll get another foot in that crack and keep that door open just a little more. We’ll never back down so there’s only one way for that door to go.

bullet image Why a Federal Judge Says the NYPD’s Stop-and-Frisk Program is Unconstitutional by Jacob Sullum.

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30 Responses to Odds and Ends

  1. jean valjean says:

    love that last sentence kev. effortlessly blends hypocrisy and irony.

  2. claygooding says:

    He just reversed his opinion and 10 years of shouting no medical uses and acted as if the former lies were justified because ,after all,,he is only protecting us from the unknown,,it takes a very confident person to stand up and say they will protect us from anything bad that “could” happen to us.
    How do we opt out of his protection?

  3. Nick says:

    Many of the posts critiquing Sabet were deleted after the fact. Screen capture is my friend.
    Much like Kevin, Huffingtonpost is a tool.

    • claygooding says:

      One of mine made it through the night,,I didn’t expect it too but it was the most popular so they couldn’t hardly delete it with all the replies too it hanging out there with no lead off.

  4. Francis says:

    “Thanks to legalization advocates, an issue mostly confined to scholarly and legal debates — that of the scheduling of drugs as laid out in the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) — has recently gained prominence.”
    .
    What a weird, douchey comment. Yes, how strange that the people whose lives are actually being affected by the mis-scheduling of cannabis — the patients being denied legal access to a safe and effective medicine, the millions of people who risk arrest simply for exercising one of their God-given rights, the hundreds of thousands who are arrested each year for marijuana-related offenses — how strange that those people would take an interest in what should really be a dry and dusty debate left to the “experts” and “academics” (you know, to people like Kev).

    • Citizen Teus says:

      Excellent points. Notice how Sabet name drops “Law Review” at the top of the piece? He is neither a medical doctor, nor a lawyer. His Doctorate is in “Social Policy”.

      According to the London School of Economics, “Social Policy is focused on those aspects of the economy, society and policy that are necessary to human existence and the means by which they can be provided.

      It is my opinion that Kevin Sabet, PhD is a failure at “Social Policy”.

  5. allan says:

    re Kev-kev… projectile vomiting is messy and no fun. Lord, what a nauseating bit of juggling that piece was. I need some illegal, schedule 1, whole-plant-isn’t-medicine medicine after that poorly-apologetic spew…

  6. Chris says:

    Judging by the lack of comments here, Holder did not do anything meaningful. I was not expecting anything, but damn. Not acknowledging that cannabis will be legalized is like not acknowledging that the sun will come up tomorrow. Why continue looking like an idiot?

  7. Citizen Teus says:

    From the NYPD ruling:

    Many police practices may be useful for fighting crime—preventive detention or coerced confessions, for example—but because they are unconstitutional they cannot be used, no matter how effective.

    Amen!

  8. strayan says:

    Plants can’t be medicine?

    BS

    Botanical products are finished, labeled products that contain vegetable matter as ingredients.3 A botanical product may be a food (including a dietary supplement), a drug (including a biological drug), a medical device (e.g., gutta-percha), or a cosmetic under the Act.

    http://www.fda.gov/downloads/Drugs/GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInformation/Guidances/ucm070491.pdf

    • Matthew Meyer says:

      Heck, not just plants, but leeches and maggots are legit: http://www.livescience.com/203-maggots-leeches-medicine.html

      • .
        .

        Oh my word, thanks for reminding me that necrotic flesh eating insect larvae and blood sucking worms are FDA approved medical devices since 2004. That used to quickly shut down the sycophants of prohibition when they regurgitated nonsense about there being no such thing as a “smoked” medicine. Mentioning mullein didn’t impress them at all. Their brains just shut off completely if you tell them that people smoke mullein to aid respiratory health, and is particularly effective for heavy and/or long term tobacco smokers. It’s hard enough trying to reason with a prohibitionists if his brain is turned on. Even then I find that have better luck reasoning with a bag of rocks.

        Do you realize that this means that there are FDA approved maggot and/or leech factories? Hmm, I wonder, are there free range maggots available? I don’t want to get on the wrong side of the A.S.P.C.M. or the Blood Suckers Anti-defamation League.

        Another myth that I’ve recently disproved is the horse puckey about no one chewing willow bark for a headache instead just taking aspirin. Not that it took more effort than remembering to do the search when I was actually on line.

        Search for willow bark vendors

        .
        .

        “What we have here…is failure to eradicate. Some prohibitionist parasites you just can’t reach. So you get what we had here for the last century, which is the way they want it. Well, they get it. I don’t like it any more than you people.”

        /snip/
        I don’t need your civil war
        It feeds the rich while it buries the poor
        Your power hungry sellin’ soldiers
        In a human grocery store
        Ain’t that fresh
        I don’t need your civil war

        Look at the shoes you’re filling
        Look at the blood we’re spilling
        Look at the world we’re killing
        The way we’ve always done before
        Look in the doubt we’ve wallowed
        Look at the leaders we’ve followed
        Look at the lies we’ve swallowed
        And I don’t want to hear no more

        My hands are tied
        For all I’ve seen has changed my mind
        But still the wars go on as the years go by
        With no love of God or human rights
        ‘Cause all these dreams are swept aside
        By bloody hands of the hypnotized
        Who carry the cross of homicide
        And history bears the scars of our civil wars
        /snip/

        ~~ From “Use Your Illusion II” by Guns N’ Roses – “Civil War”

      • strayan says:

        They use pharmaceutical grade honey in wound care too: http://www.revamil.nl/new/uk/about-us-products

        If honey can be approved, why can’t cannabis?

        • Windy says:

          Because cannabis can get you “high”, and puritans cannot stand the idea of someone actually enjoying life, having fun, getting “high”.

  9. Servetus says:

    Kevin Sabet assumes way too much about herbal marijuana. First he adopts the FDA mantra of one-chemical, one-symptom, that prevents research being done on multiple combinations of chemicals that together can provide a synergistic effect to relieve a symptom or stop a disease in its tracks. It’s not an unusual concept in pharmacy. Someone needed to invent the AIDS cocktail, a combination of AIDS drugs taken together, to finally make a major impact on the disease.

    The problem with doing research on combinations of chemicals to determine if a specific combination alleviates a specific illness is that each chemical becomes a variable within a larger set of variables. For three different chemicals, seven different tests are required to provide data on seven different combinations of the three chemicals. For four chemicals, it becomes 15. The number of tests increases exponentially with each added chemical, so that testing combinations of the 60 different cannabinoids found within marijuana would require, by my calculation, roughly 1.15-billion-billion tests. It’s easier just to sample a marijuana strain to determine if it works for an individual patient, than to do the complete research. Thus, for practical purposes, herbs are necessary.

    • darkcycle says:

      Excellent point. It becomes redundant to test all the potential combinations, you can just find the one(s) that work for you. That’s exactly how I went about collecting my medical strains. The ones that worked well for me were saved, the strains I found less desirable, I passed on or gave up.
      Interesting aside. It is four years ago this month that I stopped using bottled fertilizer. The fact is, not only is it not needed, it is a detriment to growing the best smoke possible. Organic amended soil. The only way to go. Period.

      • allan says:

        Love organic gardening?

        Hanging out with hippie farmers in the CA’s San Joaquin Valley really upped my respect for soil building.

        Just a couple of reading suggestions… at the top of my list of recommends, The One Straw Revolution, by Masanobu Fukuoka. Pretty much anything by Wendell Berry. Right behind Fukuoka’s book I’d put Gary Nabhan’s The Desert Smells Like Rain.

        And no chemicals in my garden either darkcycle, organic is the way to grow.

        • darkcycle says:

          Read ’em. Try: “Adding Biology For Soil and Hydroponic Systems” Ingham and Rollins, “Teaming With Microbes” Lownefels and Lewis, “The Soul of Soil” Gershuny and Smillie, as well as “Mycelium Running” By Paul Stamets.
          Oh. I almost forgot, “Permaculture” by Sepp Holtzer.
          That might keep you occupied…. (the volume of written material I consume is staggering. Problem is, My retention is behind my processing speed by a factor of five)

      • Plant Down Babylon says:

        Besides composting my own soil, I like to use Roots Organics from Eugene, OR. It’s one of my favorites. They give away free lighters, too!

        • darkcycle says:

          STAY AWAY FROM ANYTHING FROM ROOTS!!! PDB, That stuff is FILTHY. Those bastards gave me root aphids!
          Oh god, PDB, take my word, stay away!
          (that’s my thumbs down…Curtis Creek, find me on Facebook, get the whole sordid story.)

        • darkcycle says:

          …or you can go to the Skunk Magazine forums, I post as darkcycle there, too. Search “Root Aphids”. Look at the “Shop-vac” thread and get the story.

    • claygooding says:

      I hope science one day proves our bodies have developed all those receptors in our bodies that respond to the cannabis plant were developed through centuries of man’s use of cannabis as food and medicine.
      I believe our bodies adapted to the cannabis plant and our government has been starving our society,,it is why we have an epidemic of cancers killing the straights.

      • darkcycle says:

        Not the way it worked, Clay, those receptors are for our own, endogenous chemicals. The plant products are only similar enough to key the receptors. THC is only a partial fit to the CB1 receptor.

  10. Howard says:

    As odd as it may sound, Kevin Sabet is in retreat. Not that long ago he scoffed at cannabis as “medicine” (scare quotes!). Now he disingenuously concedes that certain cannabis compounds have medicinal properties. But only if isolated, not from the raw plant from which they’re derived. By his logic, I really should stop grinding coffee beans to make my morning coffee and just swallow white, bitter caffeine pills. I mean, the horror of pouring hot water over crude ground coffee! I’m a caveman! No more carrots, just take FDA and USDA approved vitamin A pills (and maybe an FDA and USDA approved fiber supplement). The tomato plants in my garden need to go. They are ‘raw’ after all, that can’t be good (unless the FDA and USDA deem them so).

    Kevin Sabet is all over the road now (wrong turns and u-turns galore). His already small world in getting much smaller. He must be feeling REALLY claustrophobic. He probably looks in the mirror and wonders, “Am I Calvina Fay in drag?” (answer: yes, in a weird way you are).

    And Kevin, you need to deal with this;

    http://www.alternet.org/drugs/5-biggest-lies-anti-pot-propagandist-kevin-sabet

    That is written by a real doctor, Kevin. He’s exposed you and he’s calling you out. You can’t retreat from this — unless you’re the coward we all think you are. Put on your Calvina Fay eye-liner and man up!

    • allan says:

      coffee is sooo last century. Pills are where the fair is at!

      Uncle Pharma Wants You!

    • primus says:

      Yeah, Kev, put on your big girl panties and refute the physician. If you dare.

    • darkcycle says:

      Priceless. What the heck is Kevvie gonna do? Poor, poor Kevvie. I guess he’ll just have to prowl the comments sections under his droppings and give a single, lonely “thumbs down” to anybody who defies him. Irrelevant, lost, and scrambling to salvage any scraps of his precious prohibition.

    • BudBarter says:

      Kevin respond? LOL

      As far as retreat I would love to agree, just can’t see it happening anytime soon. I don’t know if this is a personal crusade or just his meal ticket but folks like this keep on going way beyond what any rational person would allow or expect.

      It is not in the best interest of our society for prohibition to continue. This having been detailed by so many esteemed personages yet Dr. Sabet with all his learning can not seem to grasp these facts.

      My take on him? He is either insane or greedy. I do not say this to be hateful, I just can come to no other conclusion based on his own well documented positions that have no basis in fact.

      It isn’t like no one hasn’t tried to “reeducate” him. I do believe there are “brief” treatments for both conditions once he awakens.

      zeal·ot
      [zel-uht]
      noun
      1.
      a person who shows zeal.
      2.
      an excessively zealous person; fanatic.

      Synonyms
      extremist, crank, bigot. See fanatic.

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