“I want there to be a thousand Kevins,†he exclaims. “There can’t be just one Kevin. Kevin is not going to be able to do this alone. Kevin can’t just do this year after year, he is going to have a heart attack.â€
Sure, I understand the argument for just not talking about him, but this article has so much worth discussing…
Kevin Sabet Is The Marijuana Movement’s Biggest Threat, But Can He Really Stop ‘Big Pot’? by Joel Warner
Here’s the most damning bit of the entire article:
It’s why Project SAM opposes any form of legalization. But then what does the organization want in its place? Sabet has repeatedly promised to develop model laws, but so far, policy proposals encapsulating Project SAM’s preferred legal reforms, such as reduced marijuana arrests and increased public health campaigns and treatment options, haven’t materialized.
“What do they want as a policy?†says Tom Angell, chairman of the pro-legalization group Marijuana Majority. “They make these assertions, how it’s something in the middle, but it’s very vague.â€
Sabet says his organization has been working with drug-law experts and political consultants on the matter, and Project SAM-backed policy initiatives are coming soon. “We have to go on the offense,†he says. “I am sick of saying, ‘Vote no, vote no.’ We want to be ‘yes.’â€
Coming soon… yes, we’ve heard that for quite a while, now.
Here’s another interesting bit in the article:
The sky hasn’t fallen in Colorado or Washington State since marijuana became legal, concludes Jonathan Caulkins, a Carnegie Mellon University professor who studies marijuana policy. But that’s because, he says, it’s too soon to determine the social impacts of the policy change. He thinks that anyone who tries to spin the short-term data to either promote or condemn legalization is missing the bigger question: What happens years from now to the first generation to grow up not just with legalized but potentially mass-marketed cannabis?
“Only an idiot would predict that the problems would come in two years,†says Caulkins. “I think we are going to legalize this nationally, we are going to let Big Tobacco play, and 25 years from now we will say, ‘What were we thinking?’â€
Um… I think the real ‘What were we thinking?’ moment has already come, and is was a reaction to criminalization, not legalization. This is where the public policy folks completely fucked up. If they wanted to make a difference in how marijuana was legalized, then they needed to get involved in suggesting strategies, not just acting as naysayers.
ONDCP under Kevin’s watch, and also without him, have been recalcitrant at best on public policy surrounding recreational and medical marijuana. DEA has been worse, much worse. DoJ has tried where that can to make sense of things, but there are too many USAs who do what they want, regardless of the reality around them. They can say that the law prevented them from making good public policy, when in reality they did what was in their own best interests as well as that on their agencies.
“Sabet says his organization has been working with drug-law experts and political consultants on the matter, and Project SAM-backed policy initiatives are coming soon.”
When your entire premise of a prohibition alternative rests on a ‘third way’ — and you still cannot define what that ‘third way’ is — you don’t have any alternative to prohibition as usual. There is no core to your argument. No amount of consultations are going to provide you with a word salad of bureaucratic nonsense that will make people think it’s raining when you’re really pissing on them. Blabbering on about Big Marijuana and gummy bears are side issues. The ‘third way’ folder is still empty and gathering dust. The basic idea of this ‘third way’ should be able to be expressed in no more than three sentences. If you cannot string three coherent sentences together summarizing what your core mission is about, forget it. Especially if legalization of cannabis in Colorado and Washington — which happened over three years ago — was your watershed moment to begin to derail the “300 mph locomotive of legalization” and you still cannot articulate this mythical ‘third way’. FORGET IT.
Oh, but you’ll still try. But please do hurry up a little, we’re all getting older by the day.
Sabet knows what his third way is, I suspect, given his ties to Mel Sembler. Probably some sort of forced Straight, Inc. style “treatment”. He just knows not to say so.
Sabet lied about his time and position when he was working at the Drug Free America Foundation, Maia Szalavitz who was part of Subtance.com article We need to talk about Kevin Sabet caught Sabet blatantly lying about his working relationship with Betty and Melvin Sembler, also Sabet is being told what to say by the Semblers and his position at the University of Florida is now suspect as well, did Melvin Sembler buy Kevin Sabet’s position at the University of Florida?
I must have hit a nerve with the Anti Cannabis groups like Project SAM and etc, their third way which is bringing back horrors that happened at Straight Inc does not bode well aka forced Rehab, first they deny and in the end these Prohibs admit they don’t see anything Straight Inc has done any wrong when confronted with the question if the Prohibs support child abuse or even the perpetrators like Melvin Sembler being given ambassadorship along with Joseph Zappala who were involved with Straight Inc and when asked if Melvin Sembler and Betty Sembler should be in jail, the prohibs are enraged. With Kevin Sabet being a shill or frontmen for Betty and Melvin Sembler, it will be only time before it is all exposed or revealed and that will come wrecked reputations, Kevin Sabet your ties with Betty and Melvin Sembler which were exposed by Maia Szalavitz clearly shows you lied and if evidence is found that Melvin Sembler brought your position at the University of Florida, it is not only a shame but a insult to the Straight Inc survivors
Bingo… Their “Third Way” is a re-branding of jail.
The problem for the prohibitionists is to conceal their all important arrest-prison pipeline. This is a problem for them, as their arrest/prison police-state policy is the whole point of prohibition.
So prohibitionists – like Kevin – are absolutely hell-bent on keeping the arrests and prison for pot, and that is Job Numero Uno.
But since people are catching on to that (that is, the prohibitionists’ irrational and evil desire to arrest and incarcerate people for pot “crimes”), prohibitionists are forced again to lie, to conceal their true goal of gaol for ganga.
My guess is that the jailers/prohibitionists will continue to dissemble about their plans for police and prison for pot.
Kevin’s New Third Way, will of course be prison for pot, forced-treatment, jury-less drug “courts”, but re-branded as rainbows, ponies, and love.
Just as we’ve seen before, I predict more window-dressing and soft-selling of that government gun held to your head in the name of “marijuana” and “children”.
Shysters like David Frum will continue to click-test, and probe voters around the eternal question, ‘What reasons would you accept to arrest and jail people for pot?’
Another thing I suspect Sabet and his allies in the “treatment” industry want is to put people on probation for a very long time to keep their claws in. Call them the Party of Purpetual Probation.
good to see you here Obs!
The “third way” is even more evil than the now way..they want taxpayers to foot the bill for addiction counseling for the poor the prisons do not have room for,,they will use forced rehab as a “pop off” valve for the prison populations.
If you have a court appointed attorney and no beds are available in the prisons you will be sent through rehab on the taxpayers cuff,,,even more expensive than prison in the long run,,saving tax payers zilch and making the rehab centers owners rich.
If you have a paid attorney and can pay court costs and rehab fees you will get rehab automatically.
More money talks and shit walks justice.
What is ibtimes and why are.they giving KevKev so much deference? The whole”Big Pot” meme is just an hallucination dreamed up to justify his continuing opposition to what is essentially an issue of freedom and human rights. The “My family was persecuted in Iran” line inferring that he somehow has a hold on the moral high ground is illogical. It looks more like “i want to get back at my persecutors by supporting the persecution of others by whatever means possible.” As to his prediction of a heart attack in his future, one can hope he is prescient.
Besides from funding, Kevin Sabet took it very personally when I distributed Wes Fager’s article from thestraights.net called Study of the involvement of the Drug Free America Foundation (formerly Straight Incoporated Foundation) in American and International Drug Policy:
http://thestraights.net/reports/dfaf-and-drug-policy.htm
These Prohibs know it very well that Betty and Melvin Sembler writes their policies, it goes for the likes of CADCA, Project SAM, Parents Opposed to Pot, Stop Pot 2016 and etc and when that article goes on their Facebook and Twitter a instant block happens. another two articles by Wes Fager that they found so sensitive that they resort to blocking:
http://thestraights.net/articles/op-par-and-dfaf.htm
http://thestraights.net/articles/operationpar.htm
http://www.thestraights.net/financial/st-fdn-piercing-veil.htm
What a Circus…
Couldn’t find Kevie’s name and a couple are missing summaries.
As of November 23, 2015, these measures have been approved for circulation.
Craft Cannabis Initiative
Heather Burke and Omar Figueroa
Medical Marijuana Access Initiative
Jeffrey Bryne, Lanette Davies, list of names
Marijuana Control, Legalization and Revenue Initiative
John Lee, list of names
“Responsible Use Act” Initiative
Chad Hanes and Marinda Hanes
Cannabis Legalization Initiative
Jason Collinsworth and Lara Collinsworth
Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Initiative
Louis J. Marinelli submitted a letter requesting a title and summary
Marijuana Control, Legalization and Revenue Initiative
John Lee and list of names
Right to Medical Marijuana Initiative
Clarence Phillip Snider awaits a ballot title and a ballot summary
Compassionate and Sensible Access Act Initiative
list of names
Recreational and Medical Marijuana Legalization Initiative
Alice A. Huffman
Marijuana and Hemp Legalization Initiative
Berton Duzy and Michael Jolson
Marijuana Legalization Commission Initiative
Chad Hanes and Marinda Hanes
2 Marijuana Legalization with Local Regulation Initiative
Sam H. Clauder II #15-0058 & #15-0060
OpenSecrets.org Search: marijuana
Legalize Marijuana Super PAC.org 2016
Marijuana Economic Reform & Commercialization Init 2016
Marijuana Is Medicine 2016
Marijuana Policy Project 2016
National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws 2016
“Intolerant Jackass” Initiative
The initiative was proposed in response to the California “Sodomite Suppression†Initiative.
[Edited by moderator]
did you really just say that? what a …..
[Edited by Moderator]
Actually, I’ll miss the little shit when it happens. Sabet is one of those rare, aberrant life forms whose study turns out many new Ph.Ds, and greatly enhances our understanding of the human species. Such an understanding is not necessarily good news, but it’s useful.
Miss him? Yeah, I’ll miss him about as much as I’ll miss government when the human race actually, FINALLY, grows up and starts living their own lives and staying the HELL out of the lives of others.
Forgive me, I’ve been sick for two weeks with pneumonia, my temper is short and my emotions raw, I should not have put that into words.
Kevin Sabet and Jonathan Caulkins do not offer anything beyond prohibition because they are incapable of doing so. As categorical thinkers, neither Sabet nor Caulkins have imaginations. What makes it obvious is that Kevin can’t come up with anything more clever than ‘Big Marijuana’, which isn’t imaginative or clever at all. It’s not even correct as an economic model.
Categorical thinking is the description of a mental process or mechanism resulting in bigotry or racial essentialism, the same stuff that Donald Trump spews in his campaign speeches. Research at Tel Aviv University, in 2013, demonstrated that categorical thinkers do not have imaginations. In psych tests, essentialist mindsets are easily shown to correlate with reduced offerings of alternatives and new perspectives.
In Kevin’s case, his essentialist perspective focuses on the drug consumer, who is evil and must somehow be eliminated from decent society using jails or drug treatment programs. Based on the article, the reason appears to be because Sabet claims marijuana, or a marijuana consumer, is responsible for the death of a high school friend in a car accident. Had his friend died riding a motorbike, with no drugs involved, the situation might have been different. Motorcycles have less stigma attached to them, but are still more dangerous than marijuana, a plant that has killed no one.
Placing marijuana in the same category with tobacco and alcohol is a major categorical error for Caulkins and Sabet. If anything were wrong with consuming marijuana, our ancestors would have discovered something 8,000+ years ago when it was first used. Instead, all we find in the ancient medical texts of great men such as Galen is praise for the herb and its remarkable medicinal properties.
Ironically, people who say marijuana enhances their imagination and creativity have research to back up their self-observations. MRI studies indicate creativity occurs in a small region in the hippocampus, a part of the brain also known to be influenced by cannabinoids in various ways, such as in reducing memory impairment.
A personal note: my really cool cousin Tommie was killed by a drunk driver. But he didn’t die right away from having his legs amputated above the knees. He lingered on for 2 years afterward, with increasingly worsening medical problems from the initial injury, and eventually lost his mind before he died.
To my mind, drunk driving should be punished the way Heinlein suggested in his “Starship Troopers”, with ‘fifty lashes in the public square’.
But I would never condone any kind of substance prohibition, no matter what my personal beliefs about the substance or its consumers might be. ‘The Road To Hell’…and all that. The same road we’ve been walking for so long, that few are alive who can recall when we had even a modicum of freedom in this country. The same road Sabet and his ilk would love to force us to walk in bright, pastel-colored chains, stamped with the word ‘Treatment’.
Kevvie must never have read CS Lewis:
““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. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.†(Emphasis mine – k.)
That’s Kevvie and his gang for you. Eying you as if you were an animal in need of a collar, a ring in the nose, blinkers on your head, and in his hand is a gelding knife aimed at your freedoms.
Three of my cousins were killed by drunken drivers. One involved a hit and run of a young boy, and two others were the consequence of multiple problems. Poorly marked high speed roads, bad weather, lack of quick access to a medical facilities, lack of public transportation for the inebriated, etc., in addition to the drunken driver. One idiot had so many prior DUIs they sent him to jail for seven years and set a legal precedent for the state. Probability kicks in with each new situation to create the perfect storm.
The good news is that emerging computer technology on autos and highways will eliminate the driver’s influence in accidents. Already, collision avoidance tech on a car can qualify a person for cheaper car insurance. The use of drugs or alcohol as the exclusive scapegoat in traffic fatalities is about to disappear. Freeway sensor maintenance will create many new jobs.
Kevvie’s been peddling his Third Way BS for 9 years now. And still no details. Yes, he said we’d see the details…back in 2006. He seems to have forgotten his promise. Which shows that the only ones suffering from any memory loss is Kevvie, not the cannabists he wishes to continue tormenting.
In reading the article, you realize something: Kevvie might not change strategy, but will modify tactics. He’s still a government-trained BSer:
“We cannot be Reefer Madness 2.0,†he tells his audience. “We went overboard.†Sabet doesn’t suggest marijuana is a gateway drug, doesn’t resort to scare tactics like the “This Is Your Brain on Drugs” public service announcement from the 1980s. In fact, Sabet agrees with his pro-marijuana opponents on many matters. He’s opposed to harsh drug laws that have long criminalized people – mostly minorities – for smoking or possessing small amounts of marijuana. He concedes that components of marijuana might hold medical promise and wants the federal government to make it easier to study the plant. And, most strikingly, he concedes the war on drugs was a failure.
But he continues his anti-cannabis jihad, because:
“In my mind, legalization equals commercialization,†says Sabet, explaining that legal cannabis will lead to the rise of corporations whose bottom lines will be tied to promoting the use of an inebriating and habit-forming substance. Like the alcohol industry, these marijuana businesses will target excessive users. “This is the addiction business,†he says. “The industry has an incentive to encourage heavy use.†And like the tobacco industry, marijuana businesses will try to hook potential customers when they’re young – hence the growing ubiquity of marijuana-infused gummy bears and other candies.
Translation: Strategy of prohibition remains intact, but since the intended targets of propaganda, the ‘kids’ (which somehow magically includes superannuated adults) have gotten wise to us, we have to switch tactics and try this route. It is exactly the way a certain Tommy LaNier pitched his bilge to environmental groups:
“According to Humboldt State University sociologist Josh Meisel, when he met with Tommy LaNier, head of the White House’s National Marijuana Initiative, in 2011, Meisel learned that federal authorities recognized that “public opinion has shifted, and they can’t wage this battle on the historic platform of it being an issue of morality.
“The public doesn’t buy that anymore,†LaNier reportedly said. “We’re (sic) aren’t going to win this as a battle of morality. We have to wage it in terms of the environmental destruction.
“We need to bring in … the Sierra Club, environmental individuals; we need to bring in as many people, to get them on our side to go to Congress and say, ‘Hey, this is enough. Those are pristine lands that were set aside for the use of the public, not for the production of marijuana.’†(Emphasis mine – k.)
If one mask hiding prohib lies and self-serving agenda doesn’t work, they’ll make another one and try wearing that. Anything to keep suckering the public. Kevvie learned from the masters.
And one more thing. Since when does being a speechwriter, a mouthpiece, equal ‘senior policy advisor’? More proof of Richard Cowan’s observation that ‘bad journalism’ contributes to continued prohibition.
Lots of really great analysis and comments today. What I’m not seeing is the backlash against Big Weed.
I’m totally with Sabet on that part of his attack. I want the small growers who got us here and have been there for us historically to get the first crack.
I want the Mom-and-Pop weed, not corporate cannabis.
If there’s a shortage, then legislate “community gardens.” I don’t want or need Big Pot.
Big Weed/ Big Pot, whatever. It’s coming and should be welcomed. Mom-and-Pop weed will be just fine. A little paranoia is a good thing; too much isn’t. A good example would be siding with Sabet.
Fart in somebody else’s direction. I’ll call somebody an ass, but diagnosing psychopathology over the internet? For fools and bored rich guys?
Fool? Maybe. Bored? Never. Rich? OK, you got me there… But you’re still paranoid.
Daniel, you use the word paranoid here frequently. Too frequently for it to have any meaning.
You may not be bored, but you’re certainly boring.
I’ve been here for years. And I doubt I’ve used the word more than a handful of times. Of course if you can prove otherwise, please do. If not, find another straw man for your paranoia.
Daniel, I’m reminded of what a very well-respected member of the couch told me years ago. Try to keep it positive.
If it’s proof you’re looking for, lets discuss terms. You started by calling me paranoid. If you’re not lying about being a rich guy, which I’m doubtful about BTW, then here’s my e-mail (j.d.civ@hotmail) set me up with a local (Santa Rosa)physician.
If the doc says I’m paranoid I’ll do your internet homework for you.
Hope you’ll take me up on my offer or you’re just a blowhard trying to intimidate and bully somebody.
Oh yeah don’t play the “you pay for it,” game, my monthly income probably wouldn’t pay for your lunch and if that’s you’re fallback that equals blowhard.
So rich boy, pay-up or shut-up. Prove I’m paranoid and that you’re not boring. Please, I promise to release the medical records for the couch.
But really danny, why don’t we just quit this nonsense. It’s Christmas time and people don’t need to be reading the petty bullshit between us.
I’m busy next week with medical school exams, but after that I’m free. Have your people get in touch and we’ll do this.
I could use that straw though for my domestic deer that hang out in my yard. Take care Daniel, hope to hear from you soon.
I come here to learn stuff and I’m not going anywhere. If you plan on sticking around, maybe just as a point-of-pride you’ll accept my offer. I don’t have much respect for you Daniel, prove me wrong, show me your word means something.
Or are you just a bully because this “dirty hippie” didn’t and won’t genuflect to Capitalism?
In Sabet’s bait and switch Cigarettes for Tobacco, NCN is right. If they (by Sabet example) adulterate it or maintain a monopoly. Segregation and continued punishment. By Daniel using the Sabet definition and not caring or worse, promoting, it is Daniel who is actually siding with Sabet. In reality cigarettes are not the same as unadulterated tobacco. Ganja should remain without added chemicals. So in reality, Big Tobacco doesn’t exist. Big Cigs harms are creating the latest prohibition, without mention of the 599. Sabet, as always, is trying to demonize Ganja. In truth many or most are against artificial additions or leaving those keeping it from extinction behind.
There is NO comparison of Ganja to Cigarettes. Big Cig is more realistic than scapegoating another plant that hasn’t harmed anyone in thousands of years. Same as Ganja. If you added the 599 chemicals to Ganja or Bananas, they would be harmful. Not the Ganja or Banana. Or Tobacco. If carbon monoxide is the point then you will get more driving to the market than from the cigarettes. Or working around factories that spew it in bulk.
So Sabeturd is a liar, again. By omission or commission. He is trying to spread fear of commercialization by falsely using a bait and switch. As the Butt Prohibbies leaving out the actual harmful chemicals. So Big Cig can’t happen to Ganja if it’s organic and dispensaries sample it. Let it Be. Free weed for anyone who can’t afford it. Quality brings competition and lower prices than those without scruples. Anyone harming people with schwag are breaking laws on the books about harming people. mho victims should be restituted fully for any crime before prisons profit.
Stop Incrementalism that btw means Cannabis. It’s silly to include human invention drugs that have no state laws to increment. Cannabis is not a drug. Get over it. Federal Cannabis Law is wrong, if the roots are poison, so be the fruit. There are obvious Constitutional and Human Rights abuses and just as obvious neglect in dealing with it. If the people know this and continue to appease and compromise dysfunction for personal gain. Fuckem. I don’t support wingnuts in business or running for office. Never a vote, a purchase or respect is given.
Laws of Botany are not debatable anymore than any physical law. Gravity is measured and Ganja is measured. Strains matched to symptoms by the people and true experts growing for decades. The AMA has no School for the ECS and yet the media rent doctors telling stories as evidence, or book promos.
The people growing will maintain quality, as they are doing in civilized areas of CA. While cops and cop suckers providing the only obstacles to dying patients and anyone for any reason using. That is not how the Chamber of Commerce usually assist small business. Or so called Christians following so called Jesus.
Federally removed from the CSA. Without controlled substance status or restrictions for citizens on their own property. Without detrimental effects to the environment. To grow Ganja or Hemp. Then sold to the infrastructure, that is working fine in spite of government harassment. Then expand to a central place in towns to recycle hemp stalks. More jobs for those persecuted out of the workforce for stupid piss. Community gardens work well for veggies and would for hemp or homeless gardens of Ganja giving a hand not just a hand out. Factories to process material. Same as soybeans or flax. In all 51 states and a dozen or so territories.
As for growing in user ship, comes bigger places to provide for their needs. IF it is ever dealt with in a realistic manner. Anyone should be able to set up a family business or Cannabis Malls from Hemp to Dabs. Don’t tell anyone, but Ganja has been legal for me since 1969. My mind can’t process fiction when it causes real damage. I’ve never accepted Cannabis prohibition or the laws designed for some citizens to obtain certain substances. The law has to be applied equally and enforced by a neutral party. In Prohibition nothing could be further from the truth.
I remember a theater in SF during the summer of 71. They let everyone in at the midnight show, for a nickel. As soon as the lights went out the joints were fired up. Corny old movies and big phatties. I have seen civilization and will not return to the police intimidation willingly, without protest. Nor will millions who have experienced it, or the billions wanting too.
The American thing would be for Prohibitionists to Unconditionally Surrender. Those who were only supporters should be marched through the back streets and experience their drug war first hand. Those who continue to instigate hate and terror on citizens should be removed from society. Gitmo sounds good to me mon. Every group should be cut off of government grants, All donations should be immediately diverted to drug war victims. Those who administrated rehabilitation asylums of the state or religionists. Should be in prison and their assets diverted to victims of their immoral crusade.
As long as it is kept organic I’m not against people getting wealthy. If they depend on their wealth for happiness, then they will never be enriched. Except on the internet. It’s the DEA who equates value with dollar signs. No medicinal value growing it free. There can be room for everyone as long as conglomerates hired monkey’s don’t legislatively tweak it towards a monopoly. With segregation and punishment.
There are laws for abusing someone. It doesn’t matter if you are physically assaulted with a rock or bad dope. Those harms deserve restitution for the victim. Separate of the instrument used. The NRAs very bad heavily lobbied idea of mandatory minimum sentences sounded good to politikans for thwarting guns in robberies. When they added drugs and especially Cannabis. It created a job market trafficking humans into cages. To feed, shelter and give health care at tax payers expense, for a no victim crime. A crime so terrible the cops can’t tell you who the perpetrator is so they arrest the victim too. Wouldn’t know it was happening without a snitch. Most likely part of the plea bargain. Or pre-plea bargain. Can’t tell if someone is impaired unless they taste their piss.
Ends justifying means jobs with the end being profits. So NCN there are some in this world that have no concept of life outside of what they can avoid with money. Life experiences teach, while avoiding them hiding behind a wall of wealth is taught as easy or superior ways. To try to give them what they cannot understand is a waste of time. Sabet is an authoritarian neoconjob and will say anything to continue the prohibition. That is their only goal. It’s not cannabis, it’s the drug worrier vultures who circle wounded and sick men, women and childs. Then try to pick their bones clean before they die. Spilling the gravy boat. Plastic people live a life of day to day routines.
Big Cig & ‘Buck’ Duke
You have to look at the big picture,,,when fields of everything from Afghan too Northern Lights are so big it takes D-8 dozers to work them the only green market will be exceptional growers and they will have a dedicated customer base and selling their labor for less than it is going for now.
The brick weed is getting cleaner and cleaner as the Mexican growers are learning to pull the males,,and all those green houses reported in Mexico two years ago are not growing MMJ but seeds and clones of top shelf cannabis for when an international market becomes established,,,Mexico will be a player.
Big marijuana has always been in the game.
It wears a sombrero and already has banking available.
Rick Steves: Grow Your Own Pot to Keep ‘Big Marijuana’ Out
Speaking of the couch, seems it doesn’t much like your little hissy fit tossed my way. And try finding someone here that sides with Sabet – on anything.
Your ‘pay-up rich boy’ or ‘shut-up’ rant seems to negate the need to hire a shrink to determine your mental state. And I certainly won’t lose any sleep knowing you don’t respect me – and it may even make me sleep more soundly.
Merry Christmas
The debates in which Sabet appears in are biased in his favor due to the fact that he mainly ends up arguing with public policy experts who are interested in marijuana legalization from a distant perspective. These fellows lean pro-legalization (like Jonathan Rauch of Brookings Institute) but don’t have that fire in their belly that Sabet does…I haven’t seen him ever debate someone who was ardently pro-legalization.
Additionally, there’s some money in traveling around the country and earning fees pandering to conservative groups who are against legalization.
In some ways I’m comforted by Sabet’s existence since he’s apparently all that the prohibitionist’s have.
What does the organization want in its place?
It’s always been Rehabilitation. Since Clinton with McCaffrey treating drug use like cancer. Kevies training years. The alternative to prison. Unless you flunk rehab. Still branded and you are still considered broken until you are fixed by Sabet. Fat Pharma and Shrinks if necessary. Warehousing seniors and citizens with disabilities from their homes is a biggie growth market too.
Neocon math. You are of more value being treated than being free, and unemployed, low wage or working under the table. The kids dying of seizures or the seniors living in pain are sacrificial lambs so Sabet’s god Prohibition can send profits treating Americans like POW’s. There is nothing original about Kevin Abraham Sabet-Sharghi.
Then CzarBarry Crunch adding some Military tweaks…
More Prohibition lite. Not criminals anymore, now just po pitiful junkies in need of fixin’
McCaffrey wanted to treat stoners like cancer.
Chemo? Or Rick Simpson’s Ganja Oil?
The only reason we have big tobacco is because at the turn of the twentieth century a man named ‘Buck’ Duke forced small tobacco manufactures into a consortium (the ‘Tobacco Trust’) through a series of aggressive acquisitions. The practices he used at the time would now be completely illegal (and were at the time as well). The Trust lasted for nearly 20 years and deliberately sought and secured a monopoly. By the time the Department of Justice undertook antitrust litigation the Tobacco Trust controlled 90% of the industry. The Trust was ordered dissolved in 1911 (into the American Tobacco Company, Liggett & Myers, R.J. Reynolds, and P. Lorillard). Given that dissolving the monopoly merely put an oligopoly in its place open market competition never returned to the tobacco trade.
Now obviously big players are going to emerge in the cannabis industry but anyone who suggests that this is ‘big tobacco’ all over again is either ignorant of history or has a massive agenda to push.
Show me the antitrust violations and then we’ll talk.
Big Pot will be.extremely hard to maintain. Too many varieties and variables. Think beer: large companies making mediocre but acceptable and safe low gage, craft growers producing more exotic.varieties and home growers with favourites for own consumption. Home growers will still buy some for variety’s sake and consumers of regular gage will sometimes buy craft gage too. So what if.there is a Budbudweiser there will be options enough for every taste.
seems the peace officers of pittsburg don’t want to part with their precious bodily fluids: http://tinyurl.com/o9oujha
Why would cops not want to be drug tested?
Juicers in Blue
http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/sreply/933
I hope they win, because it will set precedent for others to fight against urine screening for the same reasons.
As with any addiction, drug prohibition addicts are in serious denial.
They’re in denial about a blatantly unconstitutional prohibition grounded in a factually illegally redefined Commerce Clause from “regulate commerce” to ‘regulate any activity having a substantial effect on commerce’. Our Judicial Branch of government has no authority to redefine law.
Smoking gun evidence of that illegal redefining simply comes from the public record as repeatedly supplied by our Supreme Court (e.g. upholding the ban against merely holding a certain relevant plant in your American hand) combined with the English language.
That illegality is a serious national disgrace resulting in ample law abuse spanning several decades and strongly counting — the worst form of abuse due to its mainly broad scope of destruction, and the form that our Constitution and fundamental rights were supposed to protect “We the people” against.
They’re in denial about the ineffectiveness of prohibition. We don’t even have a drug-free prison system, nor one shred of concrete evidence proving we live in even a slightly more drug-free America.
They’re in denial about the destruction by prohibition. Basically millions (if not billions) of non-violent lives have been ruined to varying degrees worldwide.
They’re in denial about the scientific invalidation of prohibition — at least in the case of cannabis. The fact is there’s no conclusive science proving any harm from moderate cannabis use. Moderate means any use for which no objectively proven harm occurs.
According to statistics they cite, cannabis is consistently about 75% of “illicit” drug use, so forms the overwhelming majority of fueling their prohibition addiction.
There are basically hundreds of cannabis strains with dramatically different psychological effects. Strain differential (and other intake factors) are scientifically critical, but have apparently yet to be properly factored into any research pertaining to negative health (especially psychological) impact. The “science” is purely junk science, based upon the whole truth (and nothing but). An unalienable right to liberty obviously deserves much better (to put it mildly).
They’re in denial about the many billions of dollars spent annually by taxpayers to fund their addiction.
They desperately need their prohibition fix, and they boldly lie and effectively steal to get it — the macrocosm of the stereotypical heroin addict.
Even the Controlled Substances Act differentiates between use and abuse by stating Schedule I drugs have a “high potential for abuse”. Yet, prohibition addicts disgustingly swap the words use and abuse purely to their convenience.
They’re among the worst hypocrites to walk upon the Earth, and too much of the public (including essentially the mainstream media) has been conned into enabling their horrendously severe addiction.
Instead, they seriously need a proper public intervention to get them the help they desperately immediately need, so our society can finally sanely rest upon the fact that…
Drug abuse (which demonstrably affects the overwhelming minority of people) is a health issue, so never a criminal issue by default.
I’m not sure why Sabet is stalling to describe his ‘third way’. On SAM’s website are enough clues as to what it likely is.
————————-
In the ‘Legal Reform’ section of their website there’s this which sounds ‘reformy’;
“Project SAM seeks to establish a rational policy for marijuana possession that is for personal use only. A rational policy no longer relies only on the criminal justice system to address people whose only crime is smoking or possessing a small amount of marijuana.”
————————-
But then, in the first bulleted point under ‘Marijuana use/possession’ the above is contradicted;
– That possession or use of a small amount of marijuana be a civil offense subject to a mandatory health screening and marijuana-education program as appropriate. Referrals to treatment and/or social-support services should be made if needed. The individual could even be monitored for 6-12 months in a probation program designed to prevent further drug use.
————————-
I suppose what Sabet is struggling with now is, “What words do we have to put together to make ‘mandatory health screenings’, ‘marijuana-education programs’, ‘referrals to treatment’, and ‘probation programs’ sound good”?
Heh, not a chance.
OT but relevant on Betty and Melvin Sembler, for those who do not know about DARE Australia, it was founded by Betty and Melvin Sembler and this is where it gets low, it encourages children to snitch and narc on their parents to the Australian Federal Police if they are using Cannabis
http://melvinsembler.blogspot.co.nz/2009/01/gov-jeb-bush-declares-betty-sembler-day.html
According to the blog link above Betty Sembler is also a member in the DARE Foundation
Holy crap! Betty Sembler Day?? Why doesn’t Jeb? just hang a big mural featuring Betty’s mugshot pasted onto a big swastika? Call it a Semblerstika.
Prohib can’t stand the facts so they have to thumb me down what a surprise
In research “supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and Fondation de Recherche du Quebec – Santéâ€,
With Dr. Conrad’s education methods , Kevin Sabet’s role and effectiveness as a savior of American youth diminishes or disappears. Prohibition is not a drug prevention method, as it likely plays a role in a forbidden fruit effect that makes drugs seem attractive to teens.
***
AAAS Press Release: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-12/acon-srs121015.php
Co-Venture Trial, “in which personality-targeted interventions are evaluated for their impact on 5-year addiction outcomes and cognitive functioningâ€: http://co-venture.ca/
Radical Rant: Kevin Sabet Doesn’t Have A ‘Calling,’ He Has A ‘Bigotry’
Illinois Collects $57K in Medical Marijuana Taxes During 1st Month of Sales
Best comment so far on the Radical Rant article:
Grace Clark wrote:
“Kevin Sabet probably doesn’t even care about cannabis, he’s a prohibitionist profiteer leaching off of police and rehab funding, which makes him worse than black market dealers. The sad part though is that for some people access to cannabis is a matter of life and death, and people like Kevin are actually helping to kill them with their greed and misinformation. I consider him to be a murderer posing as a Puritan.”
“Only an idiot would predict that the problems would start in two years”. Bullshit. The Prohibitionist mentality was never so nuanced as to say “it would take a while”. It was always “legalization would be crazy. The sky would fall.” They didn’t use those words, but that WAS what was supposed to happen. And not just legalization. They predicted the same about medical, about decrim, and any reduction of the drug war.