George Soros’ quiet overhaul of the U.S. justice system
While America’s political kingmakers inject their millions into high-profile presidential and congressional contests, Democratic mega-donor George Soros has directed his wealth into an under-the-radar 2016 campaign to advance one of the progressive movement’s core goals — reshaping the American justice system.
The billionaire financier has channeled more than $3 million into seven local district-attorney campaigns in six states over the past year — a sum that exceeds the total spent on the 2016 presidential campaign by all but a handful of rival super-donors.
His money has supported African-American and Hispanic candidates for these powerful local roles, all of whom ran on platforms sharing major goals of Soros’, like reducing racial disparities in sentencing and directing some drug offenders to diversion programs instead of to trial. It is by far the most tangible action in a progressive push to find, prepare and finance criminal justice reform-oriented candidates for jobs that have been held by longtime incumbents and serve as pipelines to the federal courts — and it has inspired fury among opponents angry about the outside influence in local elections.
500 legal experts launch bid to reform drug policies
Demanding wholesale reform of Argentine narcotics legislation yesterday, over 500 respected legal voices commemorated the 30th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark “Bazterrica†ruling and called for an end to the so-called “War on Drugs.â€
The experts, who spoke in a room at the National Congress, said the landmark ruling by the land’s top court — which in 1986 declared the unconstitutionality of prosecuting individuals for possessing narcotics intended for personal consumption — had paved the way for change.“The current law prosecutes the most vulnerable sectors of our society. There must be a sincere answer from the Argentine system, so as to judge what needs to be judged and to give users the healthcare and assistance they need,†said Judge Ãngela Ledesma.
Introducing a declaration endorsed by 250 magistrates and 300 other signatories at the National Congress’ Blue Room, the Association of Penal Thinking (APP) — an NGO dealing with criminal law — filed a petition asking for a modification to National Drugs Law 23,737, which criminalizes the possession of narcotics for personal consumption.Ledesma argued that the “War on Drugs†was failing and said that decriminalization is the only way forward.
The war on drugs failed. What now?
A Christian publication takes a hard look at the need for a new view on dealing with drug problems.
Americans have a long history of viewing drug use as a moral weakness and drug users as criminals who need to be punished. But the failure of the war on drugs, and the evident success of other approaches, is changing minds. A fundamental shift in policy is under way—a shift toward a more humane and hopeful policy. For millions of drug users and their families, it can’t happen soon enough.
Note: I’m still on my extended road trip vacation. Started in Wisconsin, and headed to Ontario, Niagara Falls, the Hudson River, Manhattan, the Connecticut coast, Rhode Island harbors, Martha’s Vineyard, Cape Cod National Seashore, the scenic roads of Vermont’s Green Mountain Forest, Stowe, New Hampshire’s White Mountain National Forest and the top of Mount Washington, the Lakes and Mountains region of Maine, Ogunquit, Vinalhaven Island, and tomorrow head for Acadia National Park. Will soon be heading into easter Canada.
dang Pete, that itinerary tells me you have a lot of energy. are you putting any miles in on a bicycle? here’s an article from Steph Sherer about the recent dea decision http://tinyurl.com/hllrrga
From the Sherer article:
“And if Donald Trump wins in November, there is a strong chance that a medical cannabis opponent like Chris Christie or Rudy Giuliani will be our next U.S. Attorney General. Think about that for a moment.”
Got me wondering who Hillary might pick. Wasserface? Biden?
little more than two months ’til it’s time to vote, what then? maybe this: http://tinyurl.com/h8v2tyj
Pete: when you get back to Chicago, have a glass of Chinga Tu Pelo on me.
http://boingboing.net/2015/07/02/chicago-brewery-renames-their.html
Environmental scare story:
Usual bollocks. Californians use vastly more water growing grass on their lawns than they ever could growing the other sort for human consumption. Also, a fully legal and regulated market would ensure farmland was used to raise this crop, not redwood forest. As always, it is prohibition that really causes the damage.
http://www.alternet.org/environment/marijuana-growing-and-environment
And THERE’S the lede, bobbin’ around like a cork: “Timber companies, too, have done their share of damage, stripping slide-prone land of stabilizing vegetation and causing sediment to clog the river’s already diminished flows.”
Give writer credit for establish Yahoo clickbait ambience:
“In his sunny office on the edge of town in Arcata, California, Scott Greacen pulls up a slideshow on his large high-resolution monitor. As wildflowers sway in…”
In some parts of the drought-stricken California Sierras there are streams that flow only at night because the trees take up all available spare water during their daylight photosynthesis. Any further water depletion from climate change means the trees start dying. Such places cannot sustain grow operations, nor minimal human habitation, for much longer. Mother Nature will have the final say, and she can be a bitch.
An environmental cost with regard to watering lawns and landscapes that often doesn’t get mentioned is the electricity that’s used in pumping water from its source to its destination. In urban areas, landscaping is a big electrical energy consumer, but in many cases it’s worth it in order to help keep urban dwellers sane with some nice scenery.
As for the Humboldt brand, the stunning flora and fauna of the Emerald Triangle will get first priority. Whether the brand and the land industry surrounding it can survive the fact that marijuana is a weed capable of growing in asphalt is another thing entirely.
Dairy cattle and beef using water for the grain or grass they eat and what they drink. Hemp milk doesn’t need or does the protein in hemp seed. Almonds take 25 gallons of water for each nut while Greek yogurt takes 90 gallons per container. Maybe pass the Starbucks 50 gallons of water for each Latte. Nestles 800M gallons a year sold during a drought. Exporting veggies for the nation, using most of the water so a few corporations profit. So lame to let brain crippled prohibition delusionists sit in on policy discussions.
I want to vote for a legalization petition, but probably won’t get the chance to do so this year. I just finished reading this fully:
http://media.mlive.com/news_impact/other/MSC%20document.pdf
Basically, Michigan citizens have always had 4 years to gather signatures for petitions, but a 1986 ruling added a vague and as-of-yet undefined “stale and void” restriction limiting assumed-valid signatures to a 180 window of the filing date (oh yeah, knowingly signing a petition twice is a misdemeanor). They still have 4 years, but anything outside the last 180 days must be verified to ensure those signers are still active voters as of the date the petition is filed. This restriction has never before been enforced.
The process was defined as requiring county/town clerks to verify voters were still active, but because these clerks can refuse to comply with the checks, and an electronic database being created, this avenue makes no sense and is impossible to comply with. The petitioners submitted over 100,000 more than the required signatures and an electronic file with all of the older-than-180-day signatures checked against this voter registration database, but they’re getting treated like the impossible system of having clerks verify the signatures is the only way to have these validated.
What they want is to have their validity check done the same way the state does it to verify the in-180-day signatures: a random sampling validated against the electronic database. The problem is that the ballot format and language is supposed to be finalized by September 9th, so any further inaction or delay will make this unlikely to appear on a ballot until 2017 or 2018.
Further, the 180-day window has been signed into law by the governor so that any petitions with signatures outside the window not being counted-period. This creates a situation where only paid campaigners can get enough signatures and totally prevents any grass-roots organizations from getting on the ballot. Given the rarity of petitions making it to the ballot and the protections against these restrictions in the state constitution, this shouldn’t have became a law. But it did: two days after the MCC filed their petition (and not sooner, because the senate voted against it). It’s immediately active, and no other petitions were even close to having sufficient signatures, so it’s very clear that it was designed to prevent at least this petition. I want to vote on this, and I don’t want to wait!
http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2016/09/07/marijuana-legalization-michigan-supreme-court-ballots/89973862/
No justice from the Michigan Supreme Court.
If Comey wants to have an “adult conversation,” we should maybe set encryption aside for now and talk about the absurdity of our government-sponsored drug war that will never, ever succeed any more than any other prohibition has ever succeeded and why the government still clings to the illogical, absurd (and childish) fantasy that illegal drug use can somehow be halted. Maybe if we had that “adult conversation” and brought it to its logical conclusion (ending this foolish war), we could actually then go back and determine how important it actually is for the FBI to be able to defeat encryption. Evidence shows the relentless drive to perpetuate this drug war is playing a major role in this encryption fight, not terrorism, as the feds would have us believe.
http://reason.com/blog/2016/08/30/fbis-comey-proposes-an-adult-conversatio
Reshaping the American Justice System
Cardiff University released research findings on a cocaine addiction treatment that eliminates memories of craving:
Medicinal cannabis to be legalised in Australia from November
The final decision was published on Wednesday, paving the way for the drug to be legalised for medicinal use, as the federal government works towards creating a national regulator.
http://tinyurl.com/AusiesGotTheirsFirst
Now all they need is an “expert” like Lieman to set up the restrictions and legal catch 22s necessary to ensure Aussies are not getting high.
If you’re going to kill people with your car when drunk, make sure you’re rich:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/05/kayla-mendoza-2-drunk-2-care_n_7212462.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ethan-couch-seeks-release_us_57c818fde4b078581f1128f5?section=&
Jacob weighs in on the idiotic Kratom ban:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobsullum/2016/09/01/the-deas-crazy-kratom-ban-dresses-pharmacological-phobias-in-scientific-garb/#469761a4f867
HEY!!!! MY THINGIE IS ALL WRONG!! For nearly a decade, I have looked the same here on the couch….
HOW COME YOU GUYS DIDN’T TELL ME I LOOKED FUNNY?
Could a certain fellow couchmate have possibly learned how to manipulate that ÇÉ”Éds & Çɯıʇ thingy?
That lacks a cohesive structure; you know nothing of my work!
Problem is, I resembled my old thingie….it was a very good likeness. The new one, not so much.
I want my old thingie back.
You’re a breath away from getting sued by Chuck Berry.
Is this what you’re referring too Frank?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaEC-lWSlmI
I don’t know why he made it, but when Chuck Berry came out with My Ding a ling. It became a favorite of older generations apparently not actually knowing of Chuck Berry. Just thought it was a cute beer drinking song. When Chuck came to town the place filled with stoners wanting to hear Chuck Berry. I remember feeling sorry for those old dudes totally lost in a sea of long hair and doobies flying. I don’t even think they knew he was black until he started playing. Good show. Don’t think it did much for the generation gap.
My thingy changed once before. I think it was because I used an alternate email address.
I could show you how to get your face in lights.
Obama grants more clemencies but many thousands remain incarcerated:
“I sometimes say I feel like the guy that’s rowing a lifeboat and you’re glad you have a few people in the boat, but you’re feeling this impending sense of panic about people in the water,” Osler told NPR in June. “It’s a scary thing and part of it is because they’ve been given hope. … Every time there’s an announcement of clemency and other people are receiving it, it’s heartbreaking for them, it’s heartbreaking for me.”
http://www.npr.org/2016/08/30/491964417/obama-grants-clemency-to-100-prisoners-doj-confident-it-will-clear-backlog
Researchers at the Institute of Transformative Bio-Molecules (ITBM), Nagoya, University, have explained why plants such as marijuana have “teethâ€, or serrations around the edge of the leaf:
Transformative molecules indeed. Want to disguise marijuana plants? What’s a marijuana leaf without its teeth, right? Today, with legalization looming on the horizon, the research becomes little more than a bit of interesting plant biochemistry.
If marijuana legalization is a “left-wing” cause, why is the most left-wing country in Europe, Sweden, the most anti marijuana?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ps3CRL-RPBw
Don’t dodge the question. Answer it!
No emotional “left-wing” arguments. I want facts.
It’s almost as if you lot don’t want it legal, but just pretend to want it legal to push more sinister nanny state agendas.
Also, fuck George Soros (a bit on topic, but who gives a shit).
I am also pro-Brexit.
Come at me leftards.
Given the video link you posted, you should have noted the commentator saying the “left party in Sweden is fed up with Sweden†about its drug and rape policies. The commentator also says “Sweden’s moral compass is fucked up†and that it is “conservative morality†that’s doing it. Sweden’s socialism (or leftist status) appears to play little part in its anti-drug hysteria, as the drug hysteria is based on Sweden’s frozen culture, not its economics.
In any event, I would not assign “leftist†to a conservative country that precludes mixing different kinds of meat into single servings. Any country that prohibits club sandwiches is not a free country, nor a leftist nation. It’s an authoritarian one.
Good luck on the Brexit thing; it’s not my problem.
Our pop up troll again folks. Obviously no Trump rally to go to tonight. Just have to stay at home and watch “Triumph of the Will.”
OK junior, keep up. It’s 2016. Sweden approved Sativex, which is more cannabis friendly than the US. Money runs the drug war, including Cannabis prohibition. It’s hard not to know that with all of the Siliconehead gadgets to find out. Almost have to hide from the information. Like prohibitionists hiding behind kids, using them as shields to protect their investment. It only seems republican because of proud obedience to authority. Taught that is how good people act. They don’t sass or question. They have faith and believe. Facts are a threat to denialists. Thousands of years of facts about Cannabis makes it pretty stupid to outlaw it. Yet they do. Mostly the poor, those of color or public figures pay the heavier price of prohibition. Now with MaxCap contracts for private profit cages. Politicians have an incentive to keep them full. All prisons are paid by taxes and a waste to everyone except those receiving the tax dollars.
Especially Hemp. Unless you are gullible enough to believe the drug worriers actually care about people using substances not approved by the DEA. A subsidiary of Wall St multinational corporations with no allegiance to Americans or their Constitution. Profits over people. Those reaping bennies from those corporations as well as the side effects of prohibition. The profits by the prison/rehab courts, cops and clergy. Made up as they go. Forfeitures, confiscations, gag rules, mandatory minimums, 3 strikes, arbitrary enforcement and capricious persecution of well over 30 million citizens last count.
Arrest records accounting for life time bans for Pell Grants or tuition assistance bastardizing the Higher Education Act from LBJ. Nixon restarted what Anslinger continued until Tim Leary had the Marihuana Tax Act over turned as UnConstitutional. The Controlled Substance Act created by Nixon to punish blacks and the counter culture using cannabis. A trillion tax dollars later, dollars going into prohibitionists pockets. Not a damn is given over parties. Neocon RNC prefer jails to lil Debbie Wasserface Asylums.
Portfolio’s have no emotions to care. DNC Blue Dawg Dems and GOPers profits kept Vietnam blazing. DNC tear gassed Chicago protesters. Klintoon and the Czarberry are not typical leftist worker concerned environmentalists. Trying to persuade the SCotUS decision, crossing boundaries between the branches. Nixon’s treason killed Americans. Yet Biden joined him fabricating the ONDCP with the DEA and NIDA fabricating facts to keep them in business. Ford banning medicinal research after discovering Ganja reduces the size of brain tumors. 45 years of this cold war on Americans by Militarized cops. So shoo fly don’t bother me with your lapdog obedience training. Yawn.
Prohibition is still backed by Steel, Fossil Fools, Trees, Fat Pharma, Big Agh, Chemical cotton, crude oil plastic, Cattle, Dairy, Fish, Cliarence’s GMO’s and Fast fried frankenfud. All vested interests in prohibition keeping Ganja and Hemp off of the free trade market. With the subsidiary MSMedia keeping it fact free, divided and bias. The AMA continues to avoid adding it back to the pharmacopeia and of the 157 Medical Schools teaching our future doctors. None as in Zero, Ziltch Nada teach the The endocannabinoid system (ECS). So the “experts” fear mongering gossip are only “excerpts” repeating fear monger’s gossip.
We can import Hemp products but the banned farmers are going bankrupt to Monsanto. Mills shut down that could process Hemp blue jeans instead of Levi using cotton taking 90 million pounds of poison aborting bible belt pre-babies each year. Neocons dudley. Nothing to do with republicans and democrats or so called left and right. The country they seek to rule is Earth. Nixon’s war rehashed from FDR’s rehashed from Rockefellers 18th amendment. Or the Industrial Revolution making slavery obsolete, except on the tax dollar with prison slave labor continuing today. All you do is divert, clinging to your silly Fox or any Alphabet Channel dogma. Once again the flag jerkers value the symbols over the flesh and blood they spend protecting it.
Sweden has a long history of fascism (see relations with Nazi Germany) and is a slavish devotee of the American corporate world empire. Look how obligingly they have pursued Julian Assange on highly dubious rape charges in order to secure his deportation to face American “justice” for blowing the whistle on corruption in Iraq and the rest of the Wikileaks exposures.
Yea, so does the US.
Why Do YOU Think They Call it DOPE?
http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/topic/1175
* Cannabis Hemp: The Invisible Prohibition Revealed
* The Elkhorn Manifesto
* Marijuana and Hemp: The Untold Story
From Whom Did the Fascists Get Support?
http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/topic/1625
Italian fascism and German Nazism had their admirers within the U.S. business community and the corporate owned press. Bankers, publishers, and industrialists, including the likes of Henry Ford, traveled to Rome and Berlin to pay homage, receive medals, and strike profitable deals. Many did their utmost to advance the Nazi war effort, sharing military industrial secrets and engaging in secret transactions with the Nazi government, even after the United States entered the war. During the 1920s and early 1930s, major publications like Fortune, the Wall Street Journal, Saturday Evening Post, New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and Christian Science Monitor hailed Mussolini as the man who rescued Italy from anarchy and radicalism.
Bush Family History with Nazism
http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/topic/526
Slavery: Another Fine Product Still Made in the USA!
http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/topic/446/
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The devil you say! Are you trying to tell me that Franklin Roosevelt and the 74th US Congress weren’t conservatives in the extreme? Wow, next thing you’ll try to tell me Woodrow Wilson didn’t have a lawn jockey on the White House lawn when he signed for the 18th Amendment…sheesh!
VoteVets.org
Sign the card: Support Colin Kaepernick’s right to protest
http://action.votevets.org/page/s/kaepernick
☛ Head of police organization: Colin Kaepernick’s socks ‘disrespectful’ and NFL at fault
The executive director of one of the largest police organizations in the country blasted Colin Kaepernick and the NFL on Thursday after learning that during training camp practices in August, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback wore socks that bear the image of cartoon pigs wearing police hats.
They may have a point.
Cops are more like the Animal Farm attack dogs, not pigs.
☛ Napoleon – The pig who emerges as the leader of Animal Farm after the Rebellion. Based on Joseph Stalin, Napoleon uses military force (his nine loyal attack dogs) to intimidate the other animals and consolidate his power.
☛ Political Commentary: Fuck the Pigs!
☛ Court OKs Barring High IQs for Cops
A man whose bid to become a police officer was rejected after he scored too high on an intelligence test has lost an appeal in his federal lawsuit against the city.
This might be a good idea for Cop Boot Camp…
☛ An aspiring police officer who went undercover in a jail for 2 months describes why ‘violence is almost necessary’ behind bars
The Missing Verse of the Star Spangled Banner
That May Change Your View of Our Anthem
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017398845
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEl9gUOgvZQ
The Star-Spangled Banner’ and Slavery‘snopes.com
Like so many of his compatriots, Francis Scott Key, the wealthy American lawyer who wrote “The Star Spangled Banner” in the wake of the Battle of Fort McHenry on 14 September 1814, was a slaveholder who believed blacks to be “a distinct and inferior race of people, which all experience proves to be the greatest evil that afflicts a community.” It goes without saying that Key did not have the enslaved black population of America in mind when he penned the words “land of the free.” It would be logical to assume, as well, that he might have harbored a special resentment toward African Americans who fought against the United States on behalf of the King.
If anyone needed proof that Trump was an idiot, this statement should do it:
“We’re going to stop all drug trafficking. It’s not going to happen anymore. We’re going to stop it…..”
http://www.alternet.org/drugs/trump-flails-immigration-demagogues-drugs
Trump should use the promise I heard on a “fan recording” of an Elvis concert when the Loaded One snarled (about dopers) “I’ll rip their goddam throats out!”
Should Missouri legalize recreational marijuana?
http://tinyurl.com/pleasePleaseVote
The result today is that 15% of children in the US have been diagnosed with ADHD, while in some southern school districts the rate for boys is as high as 30%. And this for a condition that scientific studies suggest affects no more than 5% of children.
In ADHD Nation, the New York Times journalist Alan Schwarz aims to make sense of this disturbing medical and cultural phenomenon by speaking to the psychiatrists who pushed the diagnosis of ADHD, and the parents and children who bought into it – oblivious to the fact that Ritalin and copycat medications such as Adderall were addictive and could trigger dangerous side-effects, including hallucinations and psychosis.
http://tinyurl.com/kidsondrugskids
“In the United States right now there are three million children receiving stimulant drugs for ADHD.” (Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder)
~ Dr. Gabor Maté
Cannabis treatment of ADHD
~ Cannabis as a medical treatment for attention deficit disorder
~ Marijuana and ADD
~ Cannabinoids effective in animal model of hyperactivity disorder
~ Addiction, Attention Deficit Disorder
~ Case Study: Inhaled Cannabis Improves Symptoms Of ADHD
~ Cannabis ‘Scrips to Calm Kids? foxnews
As a California pediatrician and 49-year-old mother of two teenage daughters, Claudia Jensen says pot might prove to be the preferred medical treatment for attention deficit disorder (search) — even in adolescents.
RIP Richard Neville, who had an disproportionate influence on this particular couchnik.
I was struck by one paragraph from the obituary and realized I knew nothing about this aspect of his research, so I don’t know how accurate this is:
“Neville was no street revolutionary. Violence shocked and actually frightened him. The revolution he sought was in the mind and he was always willing to change his, if the evidence demanded. (He discarded his youthful belief that soft drugs were conducive to peace when he researched the killings of Vietnamese civilians by GIs high on cannabis.)”
If he really did form that conclusion I would have to say that many Vietnamese civilians were killed by GIs who were in every conceivable state of consciousness, so why the focus on just one intoxicant?
Like many who were teenagers in the sixties, for me Neville was a sort of maitre d of the counter-culture, holding out the promise of transgression and the forbidden. In the early seventies, during the OZ trials, he showed up the hypocrisy and ridiculousness of the British establishment and for that he will be missed by many.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/sep/04/richard-neville-obituary
Return to Oz: the most controversial magazine of the 60s goes online
Everything the establishment hated most was in Oz, the enfant terrible of the underground press. Now, 45 years after its famous obscenity trial, the entire archive has been published on the web
OZ links – London OZ Magazine (1967-1973)
As Organ puts it: “Oz is a record of the cultural revolution. Many of the issues it raised, such as the environment, sexuality and drug use, are no longer contentious. In fact, they have now become mainstream.â€
The Berkeley Barb
Launched by Max Scherr on August 13, 1965, and was one of the earliest underground newspapers to serve the civil rights, anti-war, and countercultural movements in the Sixties.
List of underground newspapers
Launched during the Sixties era of the hippie/psychedelic/youth/counterculture/New Left/antiwar movements, approximately 1965-1972, in the US and abroad.
Four-year-old Althea Fhem Barbon is the second child to be murdered in Duterte’s drug-war, just a few days after the death of five-year-old Danica Mae Garcia.
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/812797/another-child-dies-in-war-on-drugs
Duterte tells Obama not to question him about killings
https://www.yahoo.com/news/duterte-tells-obama-not-him-killings-101149877.html
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Are big Texas cities going easier on pot?
http://tinyurl.com/h6yk8j4
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In one of the books I read on the history of alcohol prohibition in the US (can’t remember which one), there was mention that in the latter days of the “noble experiment”, prosecution zeal targeting alcohol manufacture/distribution/consumption began to wane. Among other factors, this was largely due to the ever increasing unpopularity of prohibition within the general public.
While a similar weariness appears to be occurring in Texas with respect to cannabis prohibition, the above article does accurately caution not to think of reduced urgency to prosecute “minor” cannabis possession cases as “de facto legalization”. Even as the percentage of Texans who view cannabis laws as needing to change steadily inches upward, the vast majority of state legislators feel the laws should remain exactly as they are (some, no doubt, would like to make them tougher). Governor Greg Abbott has emphatically stated that he does not believe cannabis should be made legal in Texas (the very limited CDB only bill that he signed notwithstanding). And Lt. Governor Dan Patrick is even more hard line, at one point stating that any talk of relaxing cannabis laws is a “non starter” as far as he’s concerned.
Yes, some day cannabis will be legal in Texas. But I don’t think that will happen until the majority of other states have long abandoned prohibition.
The 18th Amendment had nothing much to do with drinking booze. Other than the same fear mongering used on drugs. No one was ever arrested for consumption. Only manufacturing and distribution. As soon as Rockefeller had his gasoline stations running. Hearst had a change of heart and the end came soon after. For a while until Hemp became a threat to Carnegie steel and the fossil fools used to melt it. Dupont also had stake in cannabis prohibition and again Rockefellers crude oil was used for Dupont fibers. Wall St owns the drug war and the politicians waging it. Texas was one of the most draconian states for using pot. I’ve heard tales of the 60’s when it was a death sentence for having over a pound. Most states outlaw pot for the same profit reasons. Cotton, Fat Pharma and Crude Oil all have a stake in keeping out competition.
Al Capone and Watergate
6 States That May Never Legalize Marijuana
No Texas, maybe they are easing up a bit…
Georgia
Nebraska
Oklahoma
Idaho
Arkansas
Tennessee
While the 18th Amendment was specifically about the manufacture and distribution of alcohol, local policing of prohibition laws often suffered from “mission creep” that violated the strict letter of the law (just as we see with prohibition of certain substances today). Police raiding speakeasies often did not just bust up liquor bottles and haul off the proprietors but also arrested patrons as well. And in many cases those patrons were held overnight in jail on vague charges of “public drunkenness” (to “dry them out”) even though they were sitting inside a speakeasy — out of public view — prior to being loaded into a paddy wagon. Many women had the added insult of being accused of being prostitutes even though they were drinking with their husbands at the time of a raid(!)(to be clear though, prostitution and gambling were rife in many speakeasies). I read a funny account years ago of a Chicago policeman describing his frustration with enforcing prohibition. He made mention of busting up the place and arresting the owners. But when it came to folks sitting at the bar, he said, “…what were we supposed to do, ask them to turn off the lights on their way out?” Some of my favorite photographs taken during that time were of bar patrons stumbling out of paddy wagons, smiling and laughing, knowing full well that they would be released that night or the next day. Still, they should have never been arrested in the first place. While the letter of the law was clear, it certainly was not always properly applied by law enforcement.
When it comes to the last states predicted to legalize cannabis, I’m surprised Texas isn’t on it. However, I am guilty — the same way many citizens are in backward states — of being overly cynical about changes coming to the state I live in. That said, for many reasons unrelated to current Texas laws, I might be moving elsewhere sooner rather than later.
The federal courts truly need relief from the wrongful scheduling of cannabis. The drug despotism surrounding marijuana will take your guns away. The NRA should get involved in this:
Next up, hemp guns. Will the U.S. Congress “reasonably conclude†hemp composite guns are too dangerous because they might contain minor traces of THC? If hemp guns are banned, will only marijuana consumers have guns? What about the smoking gun? Will “getting smoked†take on a whole new meaning?
I’ll never be able to hear “smoking gun” again without a chuckle.
9th U.S. Circuit Cart of Apples
☛ Want to reduce gun violence? Halt the war on drugs
Medical cards can also ban organ transplants. Corporate housing already bans guns and growing pot or vape/smoking it. HUD’s pushing for a ban. NRA lobbied heavy for Mandatory Minimums and 3 strikes. Seems unlikely they are going to intervene. They haven’t so far. Poor people don’t buy new guns. Gag rules banning a medicinal defense and various driving bans with impossible limits to avoid arrest.
I have had a card since 98 for patients that Prop 215 permits. Seems that should be exempt. If using it is an assumption, that makes an ass out of you and me. Their agenda for the American people all along.
I thought the 9th were gerbals? Gun phobic maybe, tobacco for sure. Pot? Neocons. If memory serves Breyer was on the 9th and he gave Ed Rosenthal a one day sentence after the jury said they would have nullified if they knew the details. The brother of the SCotUS dude.
This can lead down a path of segregation and more persecution based on conjecture by court jesters who have no business deciding on cannabis any more than untaught doctors writing policy with the even stranger perversions of letting the cops in on the conversation.
What else will they deem worthy or banishment for the same groups Nixon targeted? The bias siding with Fat Pharma is inexcusable. Blatant bias without a word about pharmaceutical drugs and real impairment.
Or how many hunters are getting blitzed on booze the night before hunting season starts? Or cops after work. More blatant bullshit.
☛ Organ Transplant Denied
The Heartlessness of Dying for Prohibition
☛ Employers can still ‘just say no’
to recreational marijuana even where legalized under law
☛ HUD proposes ban on smoking in public housing
☛ Ass.Woman Torre’ Drudged Driving Bill
~ Cannabis Users Are Safer Drivers Than Non-Users ~ Zero-Tolerance DUI Would Ensnare ‘Sober’ Med Patients ~ California: Unscientific Per Se DUI Marijuana Measure to be Heard Tuesday ~ Are You Drunk Correa? CA SB 289 Clueless Legislation ~ The anti-marijuana campaign is a cancerous tissue of lies ~ A Tail and Three Assholes, Turner, DuPont, Bensinger ~ Stop California’s Unscientific and Unnecessary Drugged Driving Law ~ White Paper: Drug Testing Results Often Inaccurate, Unreliable ~ Businesses Mobilize Against Jobless Drug Testing Bill In Arizona ~ Policing for Profit ~ Who Profits From Drugs ~ Drug War a ‘War on Our Own People’ ~ Life in Jail for Ganja ~ The Drug War Industrial Complex
Caution: Smoking pot may make you feel good, even happy. Not really suitable demographics for buying new guns. Except to protect the crop. Well well. They also banned Armored Trucks, Security and Banks from doing business with Cannabiz companies. A plot admitted by D.E.A.th itself.
Drug Worriers preferred methods of treatment…
Partial list of Side Effects + Guns Okay.
Some of these “drugs” are recommended by NIDA to withdraw from Ganja. lol seriously. The Jesters give their blessing to the Fat Pharms. Assuming if they can afford white powders, they might buy a new gun.
Ambien delusions, dementia, lack of feeling or emotion, thoughts of killing oneself, confusion, shakiness…
Celexa, lack of emotion, loss of memory, Behavior change similar to drunkenness, convulsions, (seizures)…. *
Adderall, Blistering,peeling,loosening of the skin-difficulty breathing, speaking, swallowing-dizziness…. *
Xanax, changes in patterns and rhythms of speech,clumsiness or unsteadiness,difficulty with coordination, shakiness and unsteady walk, feeling sad or empty, trouble performing routine tasks, confusion about identity, place, and time
Prozac, inability to sit still,difficulty with concentration,drowsiness,mood or behavior changes,continuing vomiting *
Zoloft, very stiff (rigid) muscles, confusion, agitation, hallucinations, trouble concentrating, memory problems, fainting, seizure
Paxil, unusual bleeding (nose, mouth, vagina, or rectum), coughing up blood; agitation, hallucinations, loss of coordination, fainting; slurred speech,
3 million children taking stimulant drugs for ADHD
Still waiting for advice about how we can dismantle this agency, since the most “liberal” politicians that can be voted into office still obey the DEA.
We need to switch/trade Hilzy for Jill Stein.
Or make her drug czar…
Marijuana is dangerous because it’s illegal, not vice-versa
Q: Should marijuana and other drugs be legalized?
A: We wouldn’t remove all laws against all drug use. Marijuana is a drug that is dangerous because it’s illegal. It isn’t illegal because it’s dangerous. There are drugs in use that are far more harmful than marijuana–such as alcohol. Legalize marijuana and the dangers go away. Regulate it so that children can’t buy it on the street corner.
Bring marijuana sales under a legal regulatory framework
I also support legalization of marijuana, ending war, and other bread-and-butter concerns for young people. This is a constituency that is just itching for a platform of this sort.
Source: Interview with Steve Horn of Truthout.org , Jan 29, 2012
Federal War on Marijuana is Hurting Veterans
http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread28903.shtml
The American Legion, a group representing 2.4 million U.S. military veterans, has called on Congress to remove marijuana from Schedule 1 of the federal Controlled Substances Act and “reclassify it in a category that, at a minimum will recognize cannabis as a drug with potential medical value.”
Two life sentences for 61 ecstasy pills in Thailand. What is it with East Asian countries? It can’t all be religion as China’s just as bad. I put it down to social control, just like in the US, with holy books (or Little Red ones) used to justify it all.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/07/jake-mastroianni-lance-whitmore-jail-thai-court-appeal#img-1
Or financial control. Might be a few non-Asian players like the CIA or DEA horsing around the area. (see 19th Century Opium Wars) though I can’t imagine who profits off canings for littering. I do notice that Obama has been in the Phillipines, selling the TPP like Professor Harold Hill.
US PRAISES THAI DRUG WAR!
http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/topic/417
Drug War Creates Mass Death of the Akha
Some good news from Florida: Most reviled prosecutor and judicial child abuser Angela Corey loses office in primary.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/angela-corey-florida-election_us_57c63538e4b0e60d31dc1f6e?cps=gravity_2302_4838393417702122034
As marijuana legalization advances throughout the U.S., finding public figures to criticize for their stance on the plant’s properties becomes more and more difficult. So, lest she remain a forgotten cog in a corrupt political machine, I present Ms. Elisha Figueroa, administrator of the Idaho Governor’s Office of Drug Policy.
Anyone possessing a conscience might be expected to choose to ignore medieval ignorance and bureaucratic red tape in order to save the lives of epileptic children, but not Elisha. Elisha’s preference is that certain children die without access to CBD so Idaho cops can continue to arrest and harass black and brown people, and the occasional leftover hippie. Here is Elisha’s policy statement:
Elisha Figueroa goes on in the linked op-ed above to spread disinformation about marijuana and its legalization, stories filled with emotion and half-truths, if not outright lies.
Elisha’s boss, Governor Butch Otter, is governor of Idaho only because he married the boss’s daughter—the boss in this case was J. R. Simplot. He’s called “Butcher†Otter by some Idaho residents because he promotes the killing of wolves in wilderness areas. Butcher is also a climate denier who tossed $64 million in Idaho taxpayer money down a black hole over a contract screw-up he created involving a botched Internet broadband deal. Otter’s failed private prison program is used as a national example of what’s wrong with private prisons.
Idaho doesn’t get a lot of attention because its population is less than 1.7-million. Yet, its government is still capable of exerting a small but vile influence over U.S. health policy, so it plays a role despite its size and backwardness. Outside agitators are definitely needed there, and would probably be much appreciated by oppressed Idahoans. The Peace Corp might want to get involved.
“When our way of life….. is jeopardized…†that one phrase says it all. Elisha no doubt feels her human rights are being violated by the Other’s consumption of weed, not to mention her right to be a bigot. I’m sure she’s equally worried about what the Other gets up to in bed.
Elisha Figueroa’s matriarch and sadomoralistic inspiration just passed.
This is the biggest loss to the lost-cause of sanctimonious BS and conspiracy theories since Justice Scalia smothered himself to death with a pillow:
I see Elisha enjoys “watersports” ….. not quite sure what she means by this but clearly she enjoys pissing all over public opinion and the rights of Idahoans. Just one more career prohibitionist trying to hang on to the gravy train.
https://odp.idaho.gov/office/staff.html
Radical Russ had a run-in with Ms. Figueroa (or her Idaho mafia) according to this 1-26-2016 article.
http://marijuanapolitics.com/idaho-cops-try-to-bust-radical-russ-after-marijuana-town-hall/
Ms. Figueroa rejects “radical speaker[s] from out of state.†She sounds just like the KKK complaining about damn Yankees wanting to abolish the Jim Crow laws in the Deep South.
http://marijuanapolitics.com/idaho-state-police-drug-czar-afraid-debate-marijuana-reform/
Thanks for this!
Trump to speak at Shlafly’s funeral:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/report-trump-speak-schlafly-funeral
Wow, Canada has reversed it’s ban on prescription Heroin, allowing doctors to apply for access to prescribe Diacetlymorphine for severely addicted patients:
http://www.straight.com/news/777376/health-canada-reverses-conservative-regulations-and-allows-prescription-heroin-severe
Looking for confirmation from other sources, if anybody can verify this, it would be greatly appreciated.
NIDA funded research on college students citing percentages of marijuana use verses other types of drug consumption further contradicts the NIDA’s myth strewn and beleaguered gateway theory. A drug substitution theory would better explain what’s observed in this instance:
If parents want to keep their son or daughter off narcotic drugs, they might want to send them to college. Traditionally the proving ground for drug consumption, good colleges are more likely to offer objective, scientific, drug information free of the usual witch hysteria promoted by governments.
Thailand is moving closer to decriminalizing meth
Under the current prohibition model, Tanguay says, Thailand’s government “has essentially given carte blanche to organized crime. [Criminals] set prices and control quality.â€
But legalization, he says, would enable the government to oversee the manufacture of cleaner meth, cooked up in a regulated facility instead of a dirty jungle lab. The drug could be meted out to adult users in set amounts per week or month.
It could also be heavily taxed, of course, and ideally the proceeds would fund treatment centers — which users like Wut could visit if their habit spiraled out of control.
http://www.pri.org/stories/2016-09-07/thailand-moving-closer-decriminalizing-meth
Make meth available so the slaves work harder (see Thai fishing industry) ….get caught with ecstasy and you’re looking at a life sentence… Thai drug laws are even more insane than the DEA’s.
Your mention of Thailand reminds me of the DEA’s very recent rescheduling of kratom . Are we going to find a financial shit-trail leading to America, and will we know about it? I’ll be checking out “Democracy Now” for news.
PHOENIX — A Chandler firm that could lose business from legalized marijuana is now the largest contributor to a campaign to stop that from happening here.
Reports filed with the Secretary of State’s Office show Insys Therapeutics, whose sole product is an opiate spray to treat pain for cancer patients, gave $500,000 to Arizonans for Responsible Drug Policy. That is nearly four times more than the second largest donation of $110,000 from the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry to try to defeat Proposition 205.
http://tinyurl.com/quelleSurpriseJim
Cato weighs in on drug scheduling and Kratom. The short version? “It’s a scam, people!”:
http://www.cato.org/blog/incoherence-schedule-i-0
Cato doesn’t see a link between Indonesia and kratom rescheduling? Good enough for me and Mr Koch, then!