Humankind cannot afford a 21 st century drug policy as ineffective and counter-productive as the last century’s. A new global response to drugs is needed, grounded in science, compassion, health and human rights.
That’s from this new letter: Over 1,000 Leaders Worldwide Call for End to “Disastrous” Drug War, Ahead of UN Special Session
The list of signatories is significant — of course including a lot of former world leaders, but also current leaders (and a couple of Presidential candidates). Apparently the list also was gathered in a very short time. Impressive.
There will be a pop-up museum in New York for 3 days: Museum of Drug Policy at UNGASS (245 Park Avenue (corner of Park & E 47th St., April 19-21, 2016; open 10:00 AM to 10:00 PM), which will include work by young artists about the drug war – This Is How Young Artists See the War on Drugs: The Winners of Our Poster Contest
There will also be a UNGASS Youth Demonstration conducted by Students for Sensible Drug Policy from 3:30 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. on those three days in the Dag Hammarskjold Plaza.
The activists will stage performance art pieces, including slam poetry readings. Visual art depicting the harms of drug prohibition, from as far away as Afghanistan and Eastern Europe, will be displayed, and students will give short soapbox speeches to make their voices heard.
“Breaking Down the Double Standards: Aren’t We All Drug Users After All?”, by Nuno Pinto, Anca Dima and Clara Abdullah, Portugal
I see Bernie there on the list…..no sign of Hillary though…. I suppose her employers on Wall St. would have had an issue with it
You won’t see this get mentioned a ton in the headlines, but I think it’s a big change.
So of course Clinton is against it — or, as she would say, “I would need to read more on this issue.” She doesn’t really do anything but incrementalism.
Nice! The pop-up museum and youth demonstrations will serve as a much-needed rebuttal to the much-hyped propaganda summit immediately preceding it in the area.
I couldn’t help but notice that while Harrumphreys pays lip-service to giving voice to the views of those who “have an experiential understanding of how heavy marijuana use, as well as policies that attempt to curb heavy marijuana use, affect individuals, families and neighborhoods” because “A major challenge therefore for the legitimacy of marijuana policy is to ensure that people outside the college educated bubble gain more voice in the ongoing political debate”, “Dr.” (k)Lieman assures us that that merely means “very heavy use (daily or near-daily, sometimes for years on end) of cannabis has about the same demographic profile as tobacco smoking: it skews downscale. And that leads well-educated people to underestimate the risks that cannabis use poses to people less privileged than they are.” (No mention of how that might also lead “well-educated” people to underestimate the harms that prohibition poses to “people less privileged than they are”, of course).
So, no voice for the “under-educated” riff-raff at his conference — that would only confuse all those big thinkers busily trying to over-estimate the risks in order to compensate for their natural ignorance of the issue they’re claiming expertise in.
Yippeee-ti-yi MFLR,,let this bitch buck,,only about 4 decades late.
A friend pointed me towards this agenda of the UNODC for UNGASS. It shows the adoption of the final document having been placed on the second day of four, before much discussion has taken place at all. What a way to ensure that the “wide-ranging and open debate that considers all options.” (quote Ban Ki-Moon) will have no practical impact. Is this for real, or are we missing something?
Yahoo news indicates seizures in Colorado today Friday!
http://www.lawyerherald.com/articles/42625/20160415/dozens-arrested-colorado-marijuana-raids-targeting-exporters-illegal-distributors.htm
Ryan Grim article. Everything that’s wrong with the drug war, policing for profit and privatized prisons in a nutshell:
“Mississippi Jails Are Losing Inmates, And Local Officials Are ‘Devastated’ By The Loss Of Revenue….
‘“If they do not send us our inmates back, we can’t make it,†said one county supervisor.’
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mississippi-jails-revenue_us_57100da1e4b06f35cb6f14e8
Wow. Another example of how easily otherwise good people are corrupted…
Governor Charlie Baker, Mayor Martin J. Walsh of Boston, and House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo are set to announce Thursday that they are launching an anti-legalization campaign that also includes a coalition of doctors, law enforcement officials, and addiction specialists. The push will warn that approving the measure would increase marijuana use among youths.
Baker, Walsh team up against legalizing marijuana
California: Legislation
To Impose Cultivation Tax On Medical Marijuana Pending
Whoopi Goldberg: Government needs to give up on gateway drug ‘lie’
Gov Baker has had a lucrative, revolving-door career in government and health care. He also claims to be a “fiscal conservative and a social liberal.” I guess the fiscal won out in that particular battle for his conscience.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Baker
My thoughts are that Gerbals are as paranoid of pot smoke as they are of cigarettes and republicans. The best they can muster is to lower it so fat pharma and rehabs get paid.
Democrats spare changing me can hold their breath.
http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/sreply/1077
oBama wants to keep it in the family.
Obama’s New Appointee To Head The FDA Is A Big Pharma Mega-Lobbyist
Government Spent $18 Million Destroying Marijuana
$4.42, up slightly from a cost of $4.20 per plant in 2014 (yes, really).
Huge drug raid found so much weed that the National Guard was called in
Mounting International Resistance to U.S. Drug War Strategy
Obama just gave cops the OK to simply take your stuff
Feds’ Pill Crackdown Drives Pain Patients to Heroin
“War on drugs: UN challenged by Colombian president”
‘His first point turns current thinking entirely on its head: he calls for leaders “to frame policy on drugs with a context of human rights, which stops victimising the victims of drug abuse.
‘“Under this principle,†he says, “we expect to progress in preventing stigmatisation against drug users, abolishing death penalty for drug related offences and obligatory treatments for drug abusers, among other measures.‒
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/16/war-drugs-un-colombian-president-farc
Recently went to Colorado to spend hundreds on legal cannabis. Found some new places, tried some new strains.
Sadly the dollar doobie days deals are done at dispensaries in Denver.
If you are lucky enough to know a native have them go in or you will overpay. Colorado Springs has no recreational cannabis but a small town right next to Co Springs at the base of Pike’s Peak called Manitou Springs is all recreational with some realistic prices. We found the bud and breakfast in Manitou and it is geared for cancer patients with buds delivered at breakfast for $140 a night.
The standout strains on this trip were Gorilla Glue, Chunky Diesel, Girl Scout Cookies, Purple Bush, Headband Kush, Banana Kush and the CO only strain Dairy Queen!
Now trust your big pharma mechanic and take this pill…no thanks.
What’s for dinner on the Central Coast Grand Pa?
Well we got some Big Sur Holy Bud for grace. Fat pb thc smores, warning not to be a Dowd. Bites, pause a while. Adjust. Atomic Northern Lights and Gorilla Glue#4 with Critical Hog Hash and for desert some 65% thc Chronic Sativa Oil over Green Crack Crumble and 76% thc cherry soda shatter. Ya-uum! Buy it at the Dispensary or have it delivered and paid by CC. Re-Creational.
Jolly, thanks for the report on your road trip. Sounds like great fun. Someone was pulling your leg on the Dairy Queen, Colorado exclusivity.
It’s a TGA Subcool Seeds variety that’s been in California for years. Very popular stuff in S.F. Bay Area dispensaries. I’m a fan of Cheese, and the D.Q. is Exodus Cheese, Romulan, and Cindy 99. Subcool says it can hit 26% THC, which is top-shelf potency.
Glad you made it home safe.
Exodus cheese….sounds like a road trip in Wisconsin…
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Pennsylvania’s Governor has signed that State’s (sort of) comprehensive medicinal cannabis patient protection law and the media is labeling Pennsylvania the 24th State with a comprehensive medicinal cannabis patient protection law. In this context the word comprehensive means that more than trace amounts of ∆-9 THC are allowed in medicinal cannabis preparations. The CBD only States do not offer “comprehensive” medicinal cannabis patient protection.
For the life of me I can’t figure out why Florida isn’t being labeled #24. Not very many days ago Governor Scott signed the expansion of that State’s CBD only law to include medicines containing THC. About the only difference between the new laws in Pennsylvania and Florida is that only the terminally ill with less than a year to live qualify for medicinal ∆-9 THC. I can certainly understand why Florida doesn’t qualify in the “CBD” only category. But refusing to include the State as a comprehensive medicinal cannabis State can only be done by creating a 3rd category. It’s very annoying. Hopefully the Florida voters will fix this on Election Day. With the broad brush of available medicinal utility we could soon have 54 categories of medicinal cannabis patient protection and that’s just plain ludicrous.
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Meanwhile back in la la land the NO States are back. Evidently the Attorneys General of Nebraska and Oklahoma really enjoyed the public humiliation of being kicked to the curb by the SCOTUS. It also appears that they may also just not like starting a court action where everyone else starts them. Their latest move is to petition the 10th Circuit to allow them to join the appeal of a case already laughed out of Courthouse by the Federal District Judge in Denver, and the appeal seeks to overturn the lower-court decision which concluded that pot opponents had no right to sue on their claim that federal law preempts Colorado’s legalization.
Marijuana Legalization In Colorado Under Threat Again From Anti-Weed Oklahoma And Nebraska Attorney Generals
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Oh, speaking of CBD only States Oklahoma is one of them. Even more amusing is that they codified their CBD only law while the were waiting for the SCOTUS ruling I guess Federal law is only important when they think that it is.
Now these people aren’t all bad. Courts in general and Federal Appeals Courts are very dull, somber and depressing places as a general rule of thumb. The people who are volunteering to be laughed out of the Courthouse are providing an invaluable service to our system of justice.
that event from the 19th on at 47th street. Ill try to be there, if anybody from the site is gonna go… it would be hard to miss me if youre there. say hello.
Plotinus, (c. 204/5 – 270 C.E.), a bigtime Greek philosopher, and a pagan, is an example of how something of little apparent use in its time can create something monstrous in the course of later history, with results such as the drug war, and now, this week, attempts at damage control at UNGASS:
Neoplatonism outdid the Puritans when it came to Puritanizing. It’s the Neoplatonists’ little ditty that by now, more than 17-centuries later, forces nations to come together at the U.N., in April of 2016, to reverse course on the Grecian anti-pleasure principle.
All the misery and sadomoralistic persecution happening over the sex, drugs, & rock-n-roll meme, is due to some crusty, grumpy old guys in third-century Greece.
As if that weren’t bad enough, Neoplatonist philosophy actually advocates people adopt a symptom of major depression. In studies of depression, for those who can’t experience pleasure, the technical term is ‘anhedonia’. Regardless of the claims made by Plotinus, don’t go there. Anhedonia sucks.
Watch Prohibition Sink In Real Time In Eerie Animated Recreation
http://preview.tinyurl.com/downdowngone
U.S. police recruitment is suffering in economically-challenged states that retain tough marijuana laws.
People pursuing careers in law enforcement are forced to confront the possibility they will be expected to arrest friends or relatives who smoke marijuana. Thus in prohibition states, it’s necessary to weed out police candidates who disagree with the drug laws, while it remains difficult enough to find enough young careerists who don’t dislike cops, as well as the profession itself, due to drug enforcement. Medicinal users of cannabis products are also discriminated against in the police hiring process:
It’s the same effect with other judicial professions. Drug laws taint the character of the judiciary such that largely “clean livingâ€, right-wing ideologues choose careers as judges or prosecutors. In Idaho, this kind of police recruitment results in drug discrimination favoring the hiring of religious fundamentalists, including white evangelicals or sect members who enforce their own peculiar health codes–groups such as Mormons or Scientologists. White supremacists probably get through the recruitment process with few problems. The police personnel situation is severe enough to call for a worldwide travelers’ alert that recognizes the situation in certain geopolitical areas.
Source: “Anti-police Sentiment, Legalized Pot Contribute to Idaho’s Law Enforcement Student Decline†http://magicvalley.com/news/local/mini-cassia/anti-police-sentiment-legalized-pot-contribute-to-idaho-s-law/article_700bd471-5593-53c8-a561-e14d788feb90.html
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Bothered by insomnia? The State of Colorado cares, and has issued a 147 page report which should take care of that annoying problem for at least the next several months.
Marijuana Legalization in Colorado: Early Findings
Please use this report as a sleep aid responsibly. It should not be perused while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment.
Yahoo will comb that CO report for Killer Weed clickbait stories. That’s how a pot news item gets reported on network news as a “some say” story.
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…and people like me are combing it so that we’re ready to discredit the prohibitionist morons when they do that. Like the poet said, they’ve got the guns, but we’ve got the numbers. But even more important we’ve got the truth on our side. It is why we’re winning.
Mounting International Resistance to U.S. Drug War Strategy
The topic of schizophrenics and excessive tobacco smoking has been noted in previous postings by darkcycle when discussing alleged marijuana links to mental illness. Research in Quebec has kindly provided us with a biological explanation for darkcycle’s observations:
In the mindless realm of the prohibitionist, excessive tobacco use by schizophrenics would be interpreted as a “link†and used to claim that tobacco causes schizophrenia. The same technique involving marijuana and schizophrenia disguises the idea that cannabis use is likely an act of self-medication.
AAAS News Release: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-04/uom-sas041516.php
Pub. Med: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27005897
Despite all the new science, however, King’s College researchers in the UK want to give us the BS with no biological explanations as backup:
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/apr/15/cannabis-scientists-call-for-action-amid-mental-health-concerns
It is sensible to wait for absolute proof that cannabis is a causative factor in psychosis before persecuting people for it. Otherwise, as marijuana is likely to be shown as harmless, people will have been victimized by the drug laws for nothing. It is Sir Robin Murray who is not sensible.
I can count the schizophrenics I have worked with who didn’t smoke tobacco without running out of fingers. I can count the schizophrenics I have worked with who didn’t use caffeine on one hand with some fingers left over. It’s that ubiquitous.
Historical Trivia: Income tax? The wages of the sin tax:
I absolutely abhor suppression of free speech. Whether it comes from the left or the right (sadly,it’s always been mostly from the left).
Now… Here is a very good example of an attack on free speech: drugpolicy.org/news/2016/04/united-nations-orders-security-confiscate-copies-open-letter-ban-ki-moon-calling-end-gl
Now is the UN left ir right wing? Most of the critics of the UN seem to be on the right.
That means the UN is left-wing…
Right…?!
The drug cartels and other criminal scumbags are having a huge celebration party tonight: theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/19/un-summit-global-war-drugs-agreement-approved
But hey! Don’t worry! It is 4/20, dudde! Let’s congregate, blaze it and perpetuate the hippie stereotype. Because the hippie stereotype is exactly what the reform movement needs.
*kicks over chair*
The drug cartels and other criminal scumbags are having a huge celebration party tonight: theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/19/un-summit-global-war-drugs-agreement-approved
But hey! Don’t worry! It is 4/20, dudde! Let’s congregate, blaze it and perpetuate the hippie stereotype. Because the hippie stereotypeis exactly what the reform movement needs.
*kicks over chair*
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What happened to your support for free speech?
A “herd of house cats” is a very accurate metaphor for the fans of cannabis. We really don’t have a lot of character traits in common throughout our cohort. That’s why we sniggle and snipe each other, sometimes even to the detriment to the timeline of our goal of regulated re-legalization. Some people might think that if we walked in lockstep and speak with on voice that we’d have gotten it done decades ago. I say if that were true that our cohort wouldn’t even exist. We may be slow but we’re getting there.
There’s one very good reason why the absolute prohibition of cannabis is an epic failure of public policy. That reason is also one of the rare character traits which is arguably shared character by almost if not every single member of our the entire. We really, really, really suck at taking orders from civil authorities. Don’t you know that the government governs by consent of the governed? Well we’ve withdrawn our consent. I don’t believe that it’s a worthwhile goal to try to reign in the very character trait that makes the absolute prohibition of cannabis absolutely impossible to perpetuate.
The drug cartels and other criminal scumbags are having a huge celebration party tonight: theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/19/un-summit-global-war-drugs-agreement-approved
But hey! Don’t worry! It is 4/20, dudde! Let’s congregate, blaze it and perpetuate the hippie stereotype. Because the hippie stereotypeis exactly what the reform movement needs.
*kicks over chair*
Canadian journalist and author of Drug War Capitalism, Dawn Paley, speaks out about the drug war on the eve of UNGASS:
Sourced at teleSUR: http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/UNGASS-and-the-Violence-of-US-Drug-War-Policies-in-the-Americas-20160418-0026.html
I was all set to dress up in full hippie regalia in honor of today’s holiday.
But, I decided to go with the plain white T-shirt that says: I Smoke Pot and I Vote!
With this being election season, hopefully that might be the more frightening choice? Mothers hide your childrens.
SAM or BOTEC ought to hire the scary hippie tribe to parade around in public and scare the “square” investors of the new green rush. Might be useful in keeping the greedy bastards away from my favorite plant.
A hippie can dream.
Possibly the first time in 45 years? Pathetic
Marijuana Advocates Get Meeting With White House
A member of the Obama administration will meet with representatives of the marijuana advocacy community on Monday in what is being billed as a groundbreaking gathering.
DCMJ, an organization created in 2013 that has advocated for the legalization of marijuana in the District of Columbia, says it was extended a tete-a-tete with a representative of the Obama administration after having been rebuffed two times prior. The meeting, according to Adam Eidinger, co-founder of the group, will be the first time that they have sat down with a political aide — he declined to name the aide because of the sensitivity of the meeting — and possibly the first time a national reform group has had such an audience.
What Will Rescheduling Marijuana Mean for Industry
Is The DEA Legalizing THC? 03/02/11