Johann Hari, author of the outstanding “Chasing the Scream,” which you absolutely should read, continues to get the word out about the failures of our drug war through a large number of interviews and articles.
Of course, most of our national discussion on addiction has been hijacked by Nora Volkow and NIDA, whose agenda boils down to “drugs are bad.” They promote the brain disease model of addiction which is essentially presented by them in the following manner:
- Drugs cause brain disease
- Anyone who uses drugs will probably get this disease
- Nobody should use drugs
And this supposedly justifies prohibition.
Of course, even if the NIDA model were true, it wouldn’t justify the sledge hammer approach of prohibition, which doesn’t actually address the problems of addiction but causes all sorts of other problems.
And the brain-disease-directly-caused-by-drugs model is also braid dead, since the large majority of drug users never become addicted.
But, of course, the science already exists to explain the majority of addiction. The problem is that the answers don’t support prohibition and are thus unpopular with agencies like NIDA who exist to serve prohibition.
We know the major reason why addiction is transmitted through families – and it is not what most of us think. There is a genetic factor; but there is another explanation that is even more significant – and that we can do something about. A major study by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the healthcare provider Kaiser Permanente (4) of 17,000 people has unlocked this – and its results have subsequently been replicated by over 20 studies funded by individual US states.(5) […]
“A person who experienced any six or more of the categories†of childhood trauma, Dr Felitti tells me, “was 4600 percent more likely to become an IV [injecting] drug user later in life than a person who experienced none of them.†(6) He adds: “I remember the epidemologists at the CDC told me those were numbers a magnitude of which they see once in a career. You read the latest cancer scare of the week in the newspaper and something causes an increase of 30 percent in breast or prostate cancer and everybody goes nuts – and here, we’re talking 4600 percent.â€
The published research showed that for every category of trauma that happens to a child, they are two to four times more like to grow up to be an addict – and multiple traumas produced a massive risk.
In these instances, drugs are more a symptom than a cause of addiction, and to attempt to “treat” drug addiction by merely attempting to eliminate drugs, doesn’t address the problem.
Today, we have a criminal justice system that takes people who are addicted because they endured trauma, and we traumatize them more. […] Dr Gabor Mate, one of the leading experts on this question, told me: “If I had to design a system that was intended to keep people addicted, I’d design exactly the system that we have right now.â€
Dr Mate – after years of treating patients who became addicts after hellish abuse – has outlined an alternative. Imagine if we had taken the $1 trillion that has been spent so far on the failed drug war (11), and had spent it on the collapsing services designed to protect abused children instead. Every year there are 686,000 kids who have been identified as abused or neglected in the US – and the services for them are appalling. (12) We are setting up a generation of new addicts – and then we will squander more money punishing them. If we spent the drug war money on turning this around, there would, this evidence suggests, be a genuine and substantial fall in addiction.
The more we study, and the more we learn, the more we understand just how warped and counterproductive our drug policies have been.
Read the book twice already, and it has a prominant place on my bookshelf, right next to Mate’s book, “In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts”.
darkcycle, I’m glad I’m not the only one with a copy of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts around here.
I was worried it was considered somewhat obscure.
Adverse childhood experiences leading to drug addiction are abbreviated ‘ACEs’.
The studies forgot to mention one important ACE: the adverse childhood trauma of being arrested for drugs and tossed into a jail cell.
Living in poverty has a large impact on drug use,,,who doesn’t want an escape when you are up too your ass in alligators?
Or the childhood trauma of having a parent (or two) arrested for drugs and tossed into a jail cell.
BAM:
“The more we study, and the more we learn, the more we understand just how warped and counterproductive our drug policies have been.”
I feel the need for a correction here.
It should be, “The more they study, the more they understand just how warped and counterproductive their drug policies have been.”
Because we knew it all along…and told them, repeatedly, for decades. And they are only just now getting it?
When I come here, I sometimes I feel like a visiting time traveler, returning to a future where sanity reigns regarding drug policy. Because here, there is rationality.
And it is demonstrated with ever increasing frequency just how rational and logical reformers have been from the get-go; just about everything we have been saying for the past 20 years is only just now entering into the L/MSM. And that article is a perfect example of that lag.
Reformers have ‘been there and done that’ long before anybody else knew there was a necessity to go and do in drug law reform. Now we have all these Johnny-Come-Lately’s pointing at the entrances of the trails we blazed, and claiming they discovered them. Like Nutty Nora and the goofs at SAM making noises about the need for research into medicinal aspects of cannabis…after working strenuously for years to accomplish the exact opposite. As if nobody would call them out for it.
Like I said, the future is here, if only figuratively. The electoral, literal reality is closing rapidly from behind.
Not a damn BOX in sight.
Twenty Cannazillion thumbs UP to Pete and the people who comment here. As a group you stimulate and energize me.
The writing skills and BEAUTIFUL logic are inspiring. You GUYS and our special ladies ROCK!
If I’m going to stray back on TOPIC it would be to put some numbers out there.
Plan #1. TWO DOLLARS PER DAY.
Plan #2. THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS PER DAY.
Okay you cute little out-of-the-boxers which plan do you choose. And oh yeah, option #1 is safer and does the better job, and option #2 is radioactive.
Still confused and need a little more info?
Plan #1 is a nasty plant sometimes referred to as an “herb.” It’s made into a liquid spray or greasy substance by a tribe called “dirty hippies.”
Plan #2 is drenched in “GOOD SCIENCE” and we know this because hot young babes in white lab coats have told us so repeatedly with songs stolen from something called “old rock stars.”
Plan #2 also includes the Seizure package with associated muscle pain and dizziness. But don’t worry you won’t be so dizzy you won’t make it to the toilet in time.
It’s FDA approved, and you’re just gonna love it.
Plan #1 is using full extract cannabis oil and Plan #2 is using the above mentioned (Kaiser Permanente)-pushed pill called Xtandi for advanced prostate cancer.
What does $2 per day get you? It varies by ratio, but in my dad’s case using a 4:1 CBD-to-THC sublingual full extract cannabis oil he was getting 5.2 mg CBD and 1.2 mg of THC, TOTAL per day.
I smell a REVOLUTION.
Forgot to mention that FDA approval for Xtandi was based on no other substance being available (hint cannabis oil, hint cannabis oil) to reduce PSA scores in advanced prostate cancer.
This old-school guy named Aristotle had this little three-point thingy he liked to put out there.
1. What is it?
2. What is it good for?
3. How do we know?
I think he was on to something.
OT… (blame it on Kap, he mentioned them):
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37 States with some form of medicinal cannabis patient protection law as of this moment, and Kev-Kev and Stupidpatrick think that their nonsense has a prayer of happening?
When exactly was it that the American citizenry forgot that the Federal government is not a stand alone entity, but is the sum of its parts? On a couple of rare occasions I’ve actually read people asking the question, what happens if all 50 States decide to “ignore” Federal law? The answer is easy. It’s just plain impossible for that to occur.
Yes, I’m including the CBD only States. You either do know, or at least you should know that I understand that there’s no rational medical or scientific reason to exclude THC from the pharmacopoeia. But this isn’t about medicine, it’s about politics. Two years ago today there was no reason for US Senators and Representatives from Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Utah, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, Louisiana, Virginia, Texas, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina or Tennessee to believe that Federal policy vis a vis medicinal cannabis affected their constituents. One year ago today there were enough of those names on the list to have a super majority of States to have some “skin in the game.” We might not see those States as providing true medicinal cannabis patient protection from arrest but our point of view is irrelevant. It turns out that CBD only does qualify those States as being States that offer that protection from arrest for their Members of Congress.
If Ren & Stimpy really think they’re going to talk those States’ Members of Congress into voting against the interests of their constituents they are truly brain dead idiots. You know, 38 is the magic number needed to amend the US Constitution.
They really show their ignorance and lack of intelligence when they allow such errors in their alerts as “which told prohibited”. It makes one wonder if they are actually living beings.
As long as we’re off topic, The “Dread Pirate Roberts” just got sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/mikehayes/silk-road-ross-ulbricht-dread-pirate-roberts-sentencing#.uuyaZKmr4
And here’s something completely unexpected:
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/05/29/fewer-pot-packages-found-in-mail-as-legalization-takes-hold
Silk Road Mastermind Sentenced To Life In Prison
Ross Ulbricht, 31, was convicted of running the “darknet†drug bazaar before it was seized by the federal government. Despite pleas for leniency, Ulbricht will also not be eligible for parole.
3 Ways the Dark Web Makes Drugs Safer
This week, a federal judge will sentence Ross Ulbricht, founder and operator of the Silk Road, to at least 30 years in prison after he was convicted earlier this year of a handful of federal felonies for running the dark web drug sales website.
Silk Road helped reduce risks users faced trying to buy narcotics
Silk Road and Ross Ulbricht served the public
That is precisely the point. It’s a business or a product sold, not a failure to those selling it. Until we stop this automatic trust of authority or even professionals taught under the censored system, it will continue. Excusing these pods of humanity over and over. More research needed or worse, the general feeling of Congress crap. Letting Sabet torture kids with seizures and it doesn’t seem to have an effect on anyones conscious writing policy. Its all for the greater good crap. Meaning knowingly doing harm or blind ignorance following what you’re told.
A very lucrative hoax…
A $Trillion spent on the Ganjawar
is a $Trillion in the Pockets of Prohibitionists.
That is the plan, not the terrible waste of young lives that it really boils down too almost exclusively caused by prohibition. As I’ve said. In todays fascism you will generate more profit and tax sitting in a private tax paid Koch cage than flipping burgers. So if you are of color or an instigator of peculiar ideas. You are a liability to the status weird and profit is the new mother of invention. The tragedy is when intelligent educated people just go along with the agenda. Now that stories are seen on youtube and especially hemp products are sold on the internet. One would think they have no ammo left to fight. But they still control, program and manipulate data with the propaganda media. They still buy political ticks to legislate profits and they still dumb down citizens with crazy-ass religious beliefs. Until we as a country get sane, how will we fight insanity?
In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts – 02/03/10
Dr. Gabor Maté
That pretty much sums it up. So lets stop giving them the benefit of doubt. They do not care about anything except perpetuating their mythological base for existence and of coarse the profits that follow.
Volkow’s Vengeance on Americans, Trotsky Fanaticism
Inhumanly ruthless in her dealings with non-prohibitionists and at the same time thoroughly inept in her relations with Science…. In the end it is impossible to see her as anything other than an absurd figure, a fantasist seeking to found a paradise who helped build a hell on earth. To her American admirers, Volkow appears as a kind of Soviet Garibaldi, fighting for freedom against an evil pot empire. The problem is that Volkow is one of those chiefly responsible for that evil.
I have not looked at the drug war clock recently but it was nearly $6 trillion a few months ago,,what would be telling is figuring out how much of that was spent on marijuana related expenditures.
Federal———-$6.25 trillion
States———–$10.7 trillion
Total drug war costs—-$17 trillion
Nora Volkow’s politics would predictably favor capitalism given the fate of her family under the Bolsheviks. That would make her like Ayn Rand, whose father’s chemical company was seized by the Communists, transforming Ayn Rand’s bourgeois status to strictly proletarian, and prompting her to be upset enough about it to mythologize capitalism in her books.
In the case of Dr. Nora Volkow, M.D., whose surname was spelled ‘Volkov’ in Mexico, her grandfather disappeared into a Russian prison never to be seen or heard of again. Her grandmother, Leon Trotsky’s daughter, committed suicide in Germany. All were targeted by Stalin because they were Leon Trotsky’s family. Nora was born in 1956 in Mexico City, and never knew her grandparents.
Extreme western capitalist conservatism is typical of immigrant families to the US from Soviet-period Eastern Bloc countries. The old timers nearly always vote Republican. If Nora follows the same pattern, then it’s expected her politics would support an absolutist capital supremacy of the pharmaceutical companies over that of American citizens, something we observe in her public policy preferences.
Nora Volkow Update:
For those wanting to hear all the dope about dope from a dope, Ms. Dopamine is speaking at the California Academy of Sciences on June 30, 2015. The topic is “Drugs, Dopamine, And Lessons From The Brainâ€: Nora D. Volkow In Conversation with Michael Krasny from KQED Radio.
Tickets and information here. For all you picketers out there, the event takes place starting at 7:30 PM at the Nourse Theatre located at 275 Hayes Street in San Francisco.
Is it possible to reach Michael Krasny and prime him with some pointed questions which would make la Volkow squirm?
Maybe. I can forward Krasny info on the latest research involving tobacco addiction, and the epigenetics of cocaine withdrawal, to see if Nora is keeping up with the latest scientific evidence contradicting her dopamine studies.
Why We Need to Stop Nora Volkow
From Taking Over the World 1.17.15
The head of the National Institute on Drug Abuse uses brain scans to propagate the disease model of addiction. I say she’s wrong—and the dominance of her theory causes great harm.
“Groundbreaking discoveries about the brain have revolutionized our understanding of drug addiction, enabling us to respond effectively to the problem,†trumpets the White House website, beneath a video of Volkow proselytizing her theory.
Yet there are no diagnoses or treatments based on neuroscientific research pegged to the brain scans so avidly pursued and enthusiastically presented by Volkow and her school. We are told to be patient because the new scientific paradigm must mature before it produces real-life applications. Until then, we have a glut of super-high-tech pictures of the living brain to distract us. They distract us above all from the major truth revealed by addiction epidemiology: Most people overcome alcoholism and drug addiction on their own. Finally, belief in the disease theory—to the extent that it persuades you of your powerlessness to control your substance use—has been shown to increase relapse and diminish the prospects for recovery.
Volkow and the Dalai Lama
♟ In the Buddhist Tara Tantra Cannabis is used as a rasayana, meaning an elixir of vitality. In the Tibetan Taratantra, Cannabis is “essential to ecstasyâ€. Rev Christie
☀ Nora Volkow is the first person from the NIH to visit His Holiness the Dalai Lama at his residence in Dharamsala, HP, India. During this 2013 visit, Dr. Volkow took part in a dialogue with His Holiness the Dalai Lama about addiction science, as part of a five-day conference sponsored by the Mind and Life Institute. wiki
☛ Have you ever smoked pot?
The Dalai Lama blows-it … AGAIN. :-O
Author: Rev. Roger Christie Mar 3rd, 2014
♟ No. Never. These kinds of substances are generally considered poison, very bad. But for particular illnesses, this is sometimes deliberately used. So that’s up to the doctor, or up to scientists. The ability to judge reality is something very unique.
☛ Based on this ignorant answer of his own ancient culture and of modern science I question the ability of the Dalai Lama to ‘judge reality’. He has – once again – proven to be an agent of ignorance and misinformation about Cannabis hemp, and of his very own culture.
☀ Volkow, shown with her three sisters—Veronica, a writer, Patricia, a medical doctor, and Natalia, a government statistician.
Note that Ayn Rand’s father was a pharmacist, not the owner of a ‘chemical company.’
OT
The Queen on psychoactive drugs (spoof video):
Now that the Daily Mail and their co-pilot the Conservative Party have taken full control in Britain they have launched an idiotic bill to ban “psychoactive drugs,” (legal highs). The media have jumped on the sensationalist band wagon with horror stories about legal highs with virtually no challenge at all. One rare exception was provided by the doc from the TV show Embarrassing Bodies who told a government minister that they could end the dangers of legal highs by simply legalizing the two most copied drugs, cannabis and ecstasy, both of which have a great safety record compared to their synthetic copies (not to mention the two exceptions in the bill, alcohol and tobacco). Unfortunately his was a very rare voice in British media where hypocrisy rules.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5DXqA7mGN8
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Mick Palmer is a former Federal Police and Northern Territory Police commissioner and barrister.
“My view has changed dramatically over the years. But my current stance on illicit drugs was forged by a 33-year policing career, including seven years as the Federal Police commissioner, and my experience at the coalface of the nation’s drug problem.
Essentially, our prohibitionist approach is totally broken. It is ineffective and probably always has been. Despite our best endeavours over many years, drugs are as available now as they’ve ever been, experimentation is rife with an ever-widening array of drugs, the market is totally unregulated and controlled by organised crime and drug traffickers who make huge profits, pay no tax and follow no rules but their own.
Law-enforcement strategies are unavoidably discriminatory in that only a small percentage of total users fall foul of the legal system, while the damage caused to their careers can be substantial. As a consequence, much law-enforcement activity is demonstrably counterproductive and often increases harm rather than reduces it.
>>
I am convinced that our approach is compounding rather than helping the problem and that the publicity surrounding ice is an illustration of this failure. As Ken Lay, the head of the Prime Minister’s Ice Task force said, “We can’t police our way out of this problem.†He is absolutely right.
Take the United States. Despite massive investment in drug law enforcement, around $3 trillion according to some sources, a richly resourced and empowered Drug Enforcement Administration agency and the death penalty in many states, the US has a huge drug-related incarceration rate, but a seemingly undiminished supply chain nationwide.
Northern Mexico has degenerated into a virtual drug cartel stronghold with an estimated 64,000 homicides between 2006-2012. It features horrific violence and indiscriminate killings, not only between gangs, but of innocent people. And most, if not all of it, is supplying the US marketplace.
In Australia in 2011, 86 per cent of users said that obtaining heroin was easy or very easy while 93 per cent reported hydroponic cannabis was easy or very easy to get.
In the US and Europe the price of heroin and cocaine is reported to have decreased by more than 80 per cent in the 20 years to 2012.
If this is success I would hate to see failure.
So what sensibly can be done about it?
A genuine, honest debate and assessment would be an excellent start. One which removes the fear and looks dispassionately and objectively at the facts and the options including identifying illicit drug use as a social and health issue not a criminal issue.
>>
We should consider decriminalisation first of cannabis and, if successful, other drugs.
We should consider the options and means of regulation of supply to ensure quality and purity, control the outlets and sale price and tax the profits.
>>
The fact remains, though, young people will experiment, and forbidden fruit will always be attractive to them. Therefore, we cannot hope to nanny ourselves out of risk – rather, we must be courageous enough to consider a new and different approach.”
http://tinyurl.com/ntvgz9w
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Drug Educators Told To Stop Preaching
Instead of warning about the harms and peer pressure of drugs, addictions researcher Dan Reist wants teachers to focus on the historical, social and cultural aspects of psychoactive substances – so kids can make their own choices.
South Africa: ‘It Is Absurd That Dagga Is Still Illegal in SA’
ME Pot DUID Bill Dies
The Patriot Act May Be Dead Forever
Citizens in Action
Medical Marijuana Update
On Tuesday, a successful Santa Cruz County referendum blocked a supervisors’ ban on commercial medical marijuana grows. The supes had voted last month to enact the ban, but opponents managed to gather enough signatures in just three weeks to qualify an initiative for the ballot, thus putting the ban on hold until the vote.
Drug Lab Misconduct Leads to New Trials for Thousands
Underground Cannabis Bunker with Battery-Powered Lift Uncovered in Adelaide Drug Raids
Jury Acquits Medical Marijuana Patient of Felony Charges
Pot Activist Wants to Help Heroin Epidemic… With an African Plant and the Kardashians
Study: New Cannabinoids Discovered
A huge policing and prosecution scandal is emerging from behind the Orange Curtain in Anaheim, Orange County, California:
Judge disqualifies all 250 prosecutors in Orange County, CA because of widespread corruption.
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Should Marijuana Be Legal Just Because it is Safe?
http://tinyurl.com/on5fatk
The mechanisms of prohibition must all be brought into the public light of day with truth, just as pointing out (as Pete just did) that “The problem is that the answers don’t support prohibition and are thus unpopular with agencies like NIDA who exist to serve prohibition.”
Those in government who serve the ideal’s of prohibition should not be allowed to hide from truth’s searching beam.
There is no such thing as the science of prohibition.
There is such a thing as a collusion to prohibit truth, masquerading as science. NIDA’s forte.
Lets not ever forget that getting marijuana out of Federal prohib clutches isn’t the end of the trail. Prohibition of all drugs kills.
Sorry, just read what I wrote and I don’t want to sound like I am preaching to the choir. Not really thinking clearly tonight. My dog, my best friend over the last 13 years just passed away a short time ago. Feel like I lost a kid.
I’m happy that your dog died. Hope it was shot because of your reckless drug abuse
The misfortune of others is they only way you people get your kicks:
“The more obvious the failure becomes, the more shamelessly they [the prohibitionists] exhibit their genuine motives. In plain words, what moves them is the psychological aberration called sadism. They lust to inflict inconvenience, discomfort, and, whenever possible, disgrace upon the persons they hate — which is to say, upon everyone who is free from their barbarous theological superstitions, and is having a better time in the world than they are.”
“They cannot stop the use of alcohol, nor even appreciably diminish it, but they can badger and annoy everyone who seeks to use it decently, and they can fill the jails with men taken for purely artificial offences, and they can get satisfaction thereby for the Puritan yearning to browbeat and injure, to torture and terrorize, to punish and humiliate all who show any sign of being happy. And all this they can do with a safe line of policemen and judges in front of them; always they can do it without personal risk.”
—an extract from “Notes on Democracy” by Henry Louis Mencken, written in 1926, during alcohol prohibition, 1919-1933
i’m happy that i can consume cannabis constantly with out any adverse consequenses. the knowledge that it causes the likes of pete bulkner fear and loathing is just gravy.
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I’m pleased that our Pete doesn’t censor utter stupidity in posts by morons. Most website moderators would remove PB’s post for being “offensive” which means that casual readers will never get to see the utter stupidity of the prohibitionist in action.
I think covering up stupidity is much more offensive. I also appreciate PB providing a working example of the prohibitionist “mind” or whatever it is that occupies the space in his skull where most people keep their brain.
Put your pants on Pete, no one wants to see that. And you reek like a distillary.
Go home and yell at the TV.
Oh Holy Sabet,
I, Pee Bulkner have seen my wicked religionist ways, and I am counting the days when we will bed down again. Until then, Mama Calvina is farting fiercely, each time her thighs slap. I was finding it pleasant. Until the Sheriff, Busted us for eating dog crap. Mostly road kill and strays, maggot gravy. Washed down with distilled Holy Water.
We named our son nephew, seemed appropriate. Has green teeth like his aunt mommy. Shits his pants more than Ted Nugent, dodging the draft. Ya hear Oral Hatch is gettting busted, stealing taxes selling steroids and speed. Like Mitchell Macadoodle’s inlaws are outlaws smuggling cocaine. That’s the GOP. One of the prophets of profits. To be hung on the †. With his girlfriend Nora, the commie.
Koch choked, sold his teabag stocks. Po rural white folk in poverty mo than the cities. Larger fear centers from endocannabinoid deficiency. But we Bulkner’s are proud of ire long line of igornance. Since great granpappy Bulk Peter the puppy killer. Worked carnival side shows as the man with his brain in his penis. He taught cousingranpa white trash. Never trust a word with two or more syllabols. Foster care pays double, puttin the kids to work. Don’t trust the government unless its China bringing them low low MalWart prices.
Shooting kids ain’t no problem wearing a special costume, why would anyone think us Bulkner’s wouldn’t shoot dogs. So keep them prohibitches snitchin, more profits in corporate prisons. The profits and taxes for them yankee bluedawg liberals, are just as good with po white redneck beer guzzling folks. GOPerverted Neocons lap us Bulkners up like a mongrel dog to a bitch in heat.
Pete Bulkner,
I curse you! Each and every single bad thing you have ever wished or will wish on anyone else happens to you; that your life becomes so unpleasant, so unrewarding, so without love, so miserable that you desire to die, but that you are prevented from dying for a good 50 years past your desire to die.
TC, I empathize with your loss, been there too many times. I was sick (something I seldom experience) the last two days and last night hubby was watching a show (Street Outlaws) where one of the show’s main characters lost his dog, what he said was so right on, I don’t recall his exact words but the gist was “Everyone talks about a dog being family, no, family leaves, your dog is your companion for its whole life.” It leaves such a huge hole in your life when your dog dies, most people are incapable of true unconditional love but unconditional love is all a dog knows how to give.
OT
Leading Mexican Journalist Explains Why Everything You’re Hearing About The Drug War Is Wrong:
“For me, one of the truly pressing questions is: What does the government of the United States want? What is really its objective? To end drug production in Mexico? To destroy the drug cartels? Or to control them and administer the business? I’ve found, for example, that in the case of the Sinaloa cartel, there have been agreements between the DEA [U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency] and the Sinaloa cartel where they gave the cartel immunity — You guys traffic what you want, and in exchange, give me the names of the leaders of your enemy cartels. And that was how the DEA and the Mexican government went about capturing many of Chapo Guzmán’s enemies during the Felipe Calderón administration.”
A year or two ago Michele was telling the world that the murders in Mexico were a sign of the success of the drug war. Now we know what she meant.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/30/mexico-drug-war_n_7476278.html
So much for the story that the financing for the Mexican traffickers comes from American drug consumers. http://tinyurl.com/lmsx2p
Meridia is alive. http://tinyurl.com/pxab2jr
“There’s no clarity about whether it actually happened that way. The people [the Mexican authorities] detained were small-time crooks from Iguala. They weren’t big-time criminals or major drug traffickers. They were some poor devils who were standing on the corner that the federal police or the military came around to arrest. They were tortured to confess a bunch of things that there’s no concrete proof they actually did.
But the story is indirectly related to the drug war in this way: The documentation, testimony and videos that we have show that the military, the federal police and the state police, and to a lesser extent the municipal police in Iguala, participated in the attack on the students. They were there. The federal police have been trained and armed by the government of the United States within the framework of the war on drugs. The U.S. government offered arms, money and training to these corrupt entities because of the drug war. And today, these corrupt entities use those arms and that training to attack Mexican citizens.”
Jury nullifies! Tells cops to go find real criminals…
“However, the jury was able to see past the attempt to demonize a man who had caused no harm to anyone. Not that having guns and large quantities of marijuana is immoral in any way, but the prosecution’s attempt to sway the jurors into believing Ficano was a criminal for having these things, failed miserably”
http://www.alternet.org/drugs/jury-sends-message-cops-go-find-real-criminals-acquits-man-felony-pot-charges
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Often prohibitionists will assert that “nobody goes to jail” just for possession of cannabis. Their argument can be more accurately summarized as “nobody goes to jail just for cannabis except the ones who do.” One example that they constantly discount is people convicted for illegal possession of a firearm which absent their possession of cannabis would have been legal. They don’t see anything wrong with stripping people of the ability to defend themselves after ceding the market to organized criminal syndicates.
Hey Mr. Ripper, please don’t use a gun when you rob me. Just ask politely because I’m not allowed to defend myself. Just come on in and help yourself to whatever you want.
Can I hire a security guard licensed to carry a gun to defend me? No? Can I at least use a replica to bluff that ripper? No? Can I throw rocks at the asshole? No? Can I at least fart in their general direction?
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Paul McCartney says he’s quit enjoying cannabis. Again. In other news it was verified that the sun rose in the east this morning and is on track to set in the west as most experts in the field of solar illumination predict.
Just how many times can a guy quit, announce that he’s done so, and get headlines? Mr. McCartney must have some Italian ancestors in his family tree. I’d have thought that his marriage to the amputee lady would have taught him a lesson.
http://ultimateclassicrock.com/paul-mccartney-marijuana/