DEA Will Act on Marijuana Rescheduling Before Obama Leaves Office — What Could It Mean? by Tom Angell
Obviously I would prefer that marijuana was removed from the schedules entirely (just like alcohol and tobacco), but accept that there are positive values that can come from any change in the scheduling. Tom does a good job of laying out some of the benefits.
Senators held a hearing to remind you that ‘good people don’t smoke marijuana’ (yes, really) by Chris Ingraham
Caucus member Jeff Sessions (R.-Al.) spoke of the need to foster “knowledge that this drug is dangerous, you cannot play with it, it is not funny, it’s not something to laugh about… and to send that message with clarity that good people don’t smoke marijuana.”
This Norwegian Man’s UN Speech About People Who Use Drugs Is Extraordinary
My name is Sturla and I’m a drug addict. Because I am an addict, I do not represent most people who use drugs. The vast majority of people who use drugs don’t know what the inside of a rehabilitation center looks like: Most people who use drugs choose to enjoy mind-Âaltering substances besides alcohol without ever needing treatment. They’re doctors, lawyers, politicians, dentists and truck drivers. Far from everyone who uses drugs does so in a compulsory manner, just as far from everyone who enjoys alcohol are alcoholics. I, on the other hand, am seen by some as a sick person because I use drugs more regularly and suffer bigger consequences than most people as a result of my use. By others I am seen as a criminal.[…]
We need to stop demanding that people are drug Âfree before being admitted into society as fully worthy members, and accept that some will always feel the urge to alter their consciousness with substances.
Why Are Heroin, Cocaine and Other Drugs Really Illegal? We Must Never Forget the Answers
As the world grapples with the fallout from the War on Drugs—and heads towards UNGASS 2016, a possible opportunity to put things right—it’s important to know the history of these drugs and their journey from medicine to menace. We didn’t suddenly discover that they were far more addictive or dangerous than other medicines. In fact, the reasons that drugs like heroin, cocaine, marijuana and others are illegal today have far more to do with economics and cultural prejudice than with addiction.
Drug policy reform hits a Russian roadblock at the UN
Russia’s commitment to a hardline approach at home, and its influence as a global superpower, meant it shouldn’t have been too much of a surprise to see the Russian delegation flying the flag for the war on drugs at the UN’s annual drug policy jamboree, the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND), which took place a couple of weeks ago. But what was surprising was the lengths they were willing to go to to stymie any attempt, however incremental, to reorient the debate toward anything that could be considered even vaguely progressive.
One has to wonder if the DEA/ONDCP are playing politics with the DNC,,are they being sneaky trying to draw cannabis reform supporters away from the only candidate that will actually threaten the continued control of cannabis research by the DEA???
And I look for them to make a new CSA classification just for cannabis and some other psychoactive plants now in Schedule 1 to Schedule 1A,,,subject to high abuse with “some” medical efficacy,, research still controlled by the DEA to keep anyone but the pharmaceutical industry doing any research.
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The announcement that re-scheduling is actually on the table for consideration is so far out of character for the jack booted thugs that it’s perfectly reasonable to wonder what kind of mischief they’re up to. Well, out of character unless they’re trying to monkey wrench the juggernaut.
Keep in mind that no matter their game the DEA does not have the luxury of control of cannabis research anymore. Perhaps they can in the United States but the problem is the dozen or so foreign countries which have acknowledged the medicinal utility of cannabis. The Israelis just aren’t going to ask the DEA for permission to do their research.
I can’t imagine that Senate fossils Jeff Sessions (R-AL), and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) really concern themselves with the health of regular American citizens, given that the two Republican senators opposed Obama’s health care initiative. Such politicians typically concern themselves only with protecting the government and the financial elite who control it. Protecting the public is always a lesser priority.
Current drug laws parallel the earliest history of drug enforcement, which lends itself to institutionalized persecution and subjugation of certain types or classes of people. As part of a common pattern, William Edward Hartpole Lecky noted, “… a strictly moral and logical inference is drawn from a very immoral proposition which is accepted as part of a dogmatic theology.â€*
Lecky’s history offers relevant examples showing modern drug enforcement policies or traditions as motivated by a desire to subjugate and/or persecute weak, curious, or rebellious individuals. The usual targets include women and the poor. The ancient Roman prohibition against women drinking alcohol makes the point:
It took 1920s alcohol Prohibition to challenge the meme claiming it was unladylike to drink. Alcohol was a forbidden fruit. Then women discovered the newly invented mixed drink, flavored to take the bite out of the bootleg grain alcohol. Drinking in speakeasies also afforded women the opportunity of breaking a decidedly stupid law in an exciting and glamourous setting. Alcohol’s popularity among women was thereafter assured. Grassley, Sessions, and Feinstein, take the same path with marijuana prohibition. They make cannabis ever more popular when they seek to disguise archaic and hypocritical moral sentiments as a health issue.
*Lecky, p. 98.
The DEA will NEVER reschedule cannabis. EVER.
Hope has multiple leaflets

That endear to the soul

waning as excogitated runes
Then disappearing down a hole

It needs to be schedule 3 or higher. Schedule 2 gives DEA the green light to apply whatever strictures it feels like. It could end State medical marijuana programs as we know them, and put the drug even more firmly under their control than it is now. Not to mention that shedule two drugs are fully illegal to possess without a current doctor’s prescription, and there is still the fact that under that classification, marijuana will remain fully illegal on the federal level, meaning it will still have a schedule issue that would have to be addressed for the feds to recognize the status of States that have legalized. If it is rescheduled to two we’ll be sorry.
The DEA should not be the one making this decision. They are the ones keeping the drug war going, not ending it.
Apparently drug gangs will simply diversify if drugs are legal: http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-04-04/when-drugs-are-legal-gangs-will-diversify
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I’m glad someone came to his senses! How the heck can people not understand that criminalized cannabis keeps the members of organized criminal syndicates from getting into REAL mischief?
The difference is that violent crimes leave witnesses and evidence to arrest and convict suspects,,drug crimes seldom leave either.
When street gangs diversify into violent crimes and crimes with victims it will result in more real criminals being arrested instead of people with a joint.
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Rats, vexed by Poe’s law again.
Gangs may diversify, but the playing field for crime is being reduced. Far more important is the need to stop government repression, because it affects everyone. Drugs, by contrast, primarily affect their consumers, sometimes those within their immediate comfort zone. The chance of someone’s drugs affecting others can be reduced by legalization.
Diversity, BTW, is the natural order of all things; second law of thermodynamics, entropy and all that, does not predict a static condition for materials, or people.
The true face of the Prohibs exposed:
http://wwaspdiaries.com/2012/01/22/the-politics-of-the-troubled-teen-industry/
http://www.cannabisculture.com/content/2001/11/12/2072
http://www.fourwinds10.net/siterun_data/health/abuse/news.php?q=1201474274
“Read Joe Biden’s Powerful Speech About Combating Violence Against Women,” on International Human Rights Day.
Unless of course the women in question (and men too) happen to be caught consuming the wrong drugs. Under those circumstances Joe’s all in favor of lots of violence like arrest, cuffing and holding hostage. No impassioned human rights pleas from Joe for drug consumers. The man should be a laughing stock every time he opens his trap. Oh, and did I forget to mention the violence against the children of those arrested under Biden’s drug laws…..
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/12/bidens-speech-on-combatting-domestic-violence.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/joe-biden-drug-policy_us_55e6ef7ee4b0aec9f3552420
i would like to point out an interesting study that flies in the teeth of the ‘marijuana and heart attack’ chicken little prohibs:
“Marijuana Use Before Acute Myocardial Infarction May Give Survival Edge in Hospital”
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/861528
“… Lead author, medical student Cecelia P Johnson-Sasso (University of Colorado, Denver), noted that the data aren’t saying that marijuana is causing events, and they don’t yet know the mechanism behind “what appears to be prevention from death ….”
Nude sunbathers, beware. FBI spies in the skies are the new reality, thanks to the drug war:
SWAT teams could be a thing of the past if the American police state arms the surveillance aircraft with air-to-ground missiles. The good news (or is it disinformation propaganda?) says the aircraft aren’t flown much on weekends.
Smile, You’re on Candid Camera
I read a blurb of an article a while back that said the local cops aren’t that good at spotting smugglers. They get tips from the DEA and then just pull them over. The Drug War is just another key to open the doors of Fascism. Just another stigma to side step the Constitution. Another citizen with a little less liberty and station in life than the obedient god fearing citizens.
So those who do not fear their god must be punished. Those who don’t follow without question must be segregated. That is the way it is and Jesus his self proclaimed the DEA masters of the human body and nothing shall pass through the mouth, or any other orifice, skin or go into the veins without their permission. The Druggist’s will be saveded from their afflictions by the prison industrial complex. With mandatory maximum profits on mandatory minimum sentencing. Be raped and pillaged for their own good. For the message to the kids that the monopoly on drugs by Fat Pharma is important for the profits it brings. Cannabis can be grown in dirt, with free water and sunshine. Heathens. Must be stopped before the kids get the real message that it’s all bullshit.
I ask some school mates I knew at classmates.com how long they thought surveillance cameras would have lasted in our school. (They want you to join but you can access some of the features without paying like I do. Get emails of people or send messages through the site.) The consensus was they would probably be broken or gone before the maintenance person installing them, put their tools away. What’s the matter with kids today?
Slowly and consistently eroding the privacy, replacing it with fear. Mostly generated by those bartering away Liberty for future Safety that always gets more money for politicians and drug war paraphernalia groups. Always something so bad they can’t deal with it as humans. They must become sneaky weasels and lie cheat and steal or take any other means to the end of perpetuating their paychecks and bloating their budgets. The Untied State of Anemica.
Millions of cars tracked across US in ‘massive’ real-time DEA spy program
American Civil Liberties Union warns scanning of license plates by Drug Enforcement Agency is building a repository of all drivers’ movements
The DEA database has the potential to track every driver’s movements, the American Civil Liberties Union has warned.
The Drug Enforcement Administration was monitoring license plates on a “massive†scale, giving rise to “major civil liberties concernsâ€, the American Civil Liberties Union said on Monday night, citing DEA documents obtained under freedom of information.
If license plate readers continued to proliferate without restriction and the DEA held license plate reader data for extended periods the agency would soon possess a detailed and invasive depiction of people’s lives, the ACLU said, especially if combined with other surveillance data such as bulk phone records or information gleaned by the US Marshals Service using aircraft that mimic cellphone towers.
“Data-mining the information, an unproven law enforcement technique that the DEA has begun to use here, only exacerbates these concerns, potentially tagging people as criminals without due process,â€
The Wall Street Journal, citing official documents and anonymous officials, reported that the programme built a national database to track vehicles in real time and stored hundreds of millions of records about motorists.
U.S. Spies on Millions of Drivers (spare change wall)
DEA Uses License-Plate Readers to Build Database for Federal, Local Authorities Patrick Leahy, shown in December, says the government’s use of … The DEA program collects data about vehicle movements, including … repossess vehicles, and by local police departments to solve crimes. … and other illicit contraband moving along the southwest border and throughout the United States.
Why Do Democrats Defend Nixon’s Drug War?
The DEA has been spying on millions of US drivers for years
DEA documents obtained by the ACLU under the Freedom of Information Act show the license plate-reader program dating back to 2008.
Never Get Busted.com
Barry Cooper was once considered one of America’s top drug agents who worked joint operations with the ATF, DEA, FBI, U.S. Military and Border Patrol but has since switched sides and has dedicated his life to easing the suffering caused by the War on Drugs.
The Canadian Medical Cannabis Industry Association (CMCIA) responded today to a call by the Canadian Pharmacists Association (CPhA) for pharmacy to play a role in the management and distribution of medical cannabis.
“We welcome opening discussions with the pharmacy profession and industry on how additional distribution channels may be able to help patients with different needs,” said Colette Rivet, Executive Director of CMCIA. “We are pleased pharmacy is now recognizing the valuable role medical cannabis plays in helping patients deal with chronic conditions, particularly since they chose not to participate in the medical cannabis system when the MMPR was introduced in 2013.”
http://tinyurl.com/elkmcdufferty
Please keep in mind that drinking alcohol prohibition didn’t start in 1918 with the ratification of the 18th Amendment, or adoption of the National Prohibition Act of 1919 or in 1920 with the enactment of that Federal law.
hey guys this is a very serious article from the NY Times. A personal one. I saw it, reported over at the StopTheDrugWar network. I wrote a response on that site that Ill post here under the link.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/05/nyregion/undercover-officers-ask-addicts-to-buy-drugs-snaring-them-but-not-dealers.html?_r=0
NYPD Undercover busts
by Remmy “CJ” Skye (not verified), April 08, 2016, 06:45am
you guys have no idea. its a really big thing but this is once again one of those side effects of the drug situation where the NY Times is a bit late to the dance but I am both greatful and upset about this article and Ill explain.
It’s been awhile but allow me to just remind some people that I am the guy who is an often homeless heroin lover in the LES, I have been involved in online drug reform communities now since about 2011 I’d say which is to say when I was last dealing with a serious arrest. It was at that time that I was lucky enough to realize all those ridiculous guilt questions us users tell ourselves “this is the last time” when it really isnt, “i dont want to do this anymore” when I really do, etc, when those burdens were taken away from me and I realized I love shooting dope, I dont ever want to stop, and the fact that I dont think that there’s absolutely anything wrong with that. I wanted, at the time, to find out as much as I could about the drug itself and the prohibition of it, the history, the chemistry, everything. And I’ve met lots of great people, friends really, through this world online.
But in my real life, things have been hectic, as you can imagine, trying to procure lots of money everyday its a very difficult thing to do, and as you may know from experience, there really is no days off with this, lol.
So being homeless and when I say that, I mean, yes, homeless, meaning when you find out the real definition of starving, like when you actually have physical pain from lack of food and water, but at the same time, if you should ever pay for any food or water you will hate yourself because that dollar couldve been used for what you really want. And yes, at night, before bed, scrounging the streets in the LES for cardboard to sleep on, I know some people have said to me, “whats up with the cardboard, why always cardboard” and I guess if you dont think about it, or whatever, it seems strange but its because the concrete is painful to sleep on the cardboard is a buffer and it makes an insane difference when you sleep on the ground. Panhandling without a dog or girl to make you any decent money, its the life man.
So this NY Post story. Its a shame but its so true. And it is actually one of the main main things I and so many of my friends would be worried about out there.
You see, and especially in the summer, what these undercovers are doing, its not at all uncommon. The area is known for its homeless drug users. And while you sitting infront of McDonalds or Two Bro’s pizza or wherever you are, spanging that money, you will be approached, for me there was a period where it was happening everyday and you have to understand what it means.
Because for me, not having had a dog, being good looking, not having a girl to spange with or for me, it would take an average of 4 hours to make 10 dollars and if youre sick because A. you didnt do anything in awhile or B. the stuff was just awful and had no legs or whatever, that is a brutal 4 hours and its depressing as hell. Some homeless people have been out there for years and its so degrading a feeling and just miserable that they still wont spange/panhandle. But you dont necessarily have to be spanging or panhandling for this to happen as the article says. They will come up to you. That cop IS A LIAR to say that she “randomly” approached a “random table” in that McDonalds. I am telling you, you piece of garbage woman, and believe me, I think I know who you are too, atleast what you look like, you kinda chubby blond piece of garbage.
Its such a relief when someone approaches you saying they need something and can you help them. Because, unlike the NY Times article, the rule is you will get a bag for doing it. Look, theres ABSOLUTELY NO WAY anybody is doing it for less than a bag, and to be honest its actually still 50/50 because depending on your mood or how bad things have been you may just totally beat the person and take all their money and run. I can say Ive only ever done that once when the guy refused to even give me 5 bucks for what i was doing. But anyway, yeah so it happens alot but yes, there are cops coming up to you and the NYPD has been doing this for YEARS.
I will never forget the summer of 2013. It was a very busy year in NYC homeless druggie world. The past few summers not many people have shown up, not as many as used to anyway, some have died, some have changed their lives, whatever but that year was crazy because so many people came in and some got out of jail and some were new etc. That was the summer we had to deal with the Big Lebowski, as we called him. You still hear once and awhile that he comes around but lets give the devil his due this guy got so many people it was insane and let me tell you something NOT ONE OF THE PEOPLE THAT HE GOT WAS A SERIOUS DRUG DEALER. NOT ONE. HE DID NOTHING BUT BUST HARDCORE USERS, *USERS* and the NYPD glorified in this and what they were doing. Locking up NON VIOLENT, low level users already in the depths of depravity and pain and hell and just destroying life after life.
He started off with Mark and Mary. Everybody loves Mark, hes a loveable guy hes a funny dude too but hell do anything and so he didnt really ask alot of questions. He got them then he got Charlie Brown and someone Im not gonna name. The next one was gonna be me, he used this persons name, he used all those names matter of fact, and usually when people do that, you think, oh so they know so and so who I saw a few days ago and they hooked this person up so theyre ok. He used their names and I thought he was cool. The beautiful thing for me though was, though I was living in the LES, at the time I was copping in BK. He told me he’d done a painting job and had 100 bucks, hed hook me up, he was about to be sick (like the girl in the article) and that his main guy,(the friend i wouldnt name) he couldnt find him. I told him so and so had just got locked up (not knowing he had been the guy to lock up said friend) and he acted. he made this big to do “OH NO! REALLY? SO AND SO GOT BUSTED? NO!!” like wow man you slimy son of a gun. So I said I’d help him but that wed have to go to BK and his whole demeanor changed. he wanted nothing to do with me then. He couldnt go to BK. Nope. A guy about to be sick, has no other means to get anything, Im willing but we gotta take a subway ride (a simple thing in NYC) I immediately knew something was up. I left him. The funny thing is a little while later that same day I saw him walking with a well known junkie somewhere and he waved at me… maybe thinking hed get me eventually. F that. But that summer he nailed everybody. At least 20 people probably way more.
It’s disgusting to use the power of the NYPD to do this. That jurist who wrote that letter to that DA i am SO PROUD of that man. Because this is a war crime, what theyre doing to us.
hey i didnt write this part over at the other site but I am going to write it here because this is a more personal place where I know the faces and I wouldnt be comfortable writing it over at that other site.
So the reason why this article has also been upsetting is because on March 29th, this year, not long before this article was published, this very thing happened and set off a chain of events that got my roommate arrested.
I’ve been inside now for over a year and half, 2 years and this past 6-8 months I’ve had a roommate who slowly became one of my best friends and someone I totally trusted.
Now this roommate was a salesmen if you will. He would give me three things of cat food every night for my cat for staying over, but if he didnt, he’d been previously sleeping on the sidewalk or in shady shady illegal flophouses throughout the city. Not places you want to be when you are responsible for about 150 to 180 units of cat food everyday. Look, thats not a LOT of cat food, and I hope you guys know what I’m realling saying, in the grand scheme of things. The guy barely made enough money to pay me and there were many days where I’d let him stay for less or nothing. But I also made sure the guy ate, I mean, I had a situation where I could get us food everyday so I was techinically also paying for his food in a sense, I mean, the guy wouldnt have had enough money to eat, he was making 1-2 dollars profit on those cat foods he was selling.
So theres a friend of all of ours, someone I thought was a very good old time friend and I wont name names. But he has been around 20 years and he too saw my roommate many many many times and theyd hung out many times as friends as well.
So my roommate got busted on the 29th. Seeing as my health had become accostomed to being dependent on him, like, when Id get the text at anywhere between 6:30-9:30 PM and sometimes even very late, saying “im on the train coming home” you had no idea the relief I felt. Many days when I had no money at all and no way to get any, I was 100% depending on the roommate. So on the 39th at 5PM I just assumed my roommate was working, I had just got home from doing my own work and when i saw the phone ring and it was his boss my heart lept into my throat. I knew something was wrong immediately. Answering that call I knew what I was going to be told and I so didnt want to hear it. The boss is also a friend and potentially couldve had something else to tell me about but no, he told me and my heart broke and immediately I knew I had to get myself together and get the hell downtown or Id be sick that night.
At that point though we didnt know anything. All we knew was that the guys phone was off and had been off for 45 minutes and nobody knew why or understood anything. At that point, there was some concern he was even dead.
Well he did get word out eventually that he was in jail.
The pieces came together. The long time friend whose been around 20 years was approached by a girl who needed “help” getting something. Now both of them are in jail. The buyer and the seller.
I was hoping that he’d make bail, he’d come back, you have to understand, I am not the kind of guy who makes close friends easily after the life I’ve lived and everything I’ve been through. Those few friends who’re close I treasure and I dont expect to make any new close friends in my life. So it was double painful for me that this happened. I will even man up to say that I wept for my friend, knowing he was in jail, in an unwinnable situation, dope sick beyond belief surely and that there was NOTHING I could do about it. I wept. I have tears in my eyes and a burning in my nose right now typing this.
so in the days that have followed I checked for him in the public database, he didnt show up for a few days but he did eventually. Class B felony possession charge, maybe sales charge but the real killer. we all thouhgt maybe his bail would be 1k, 1,500 maybe and that maybe somehow we could put that together but we were totally SHOCKED to see it was 15,000$! yea 15,000$ bail or 25,000$ bond. Nothing we could do.
The horrible ordeal has continued because yesterday just on a whim I looked him up again and where his bail had been said to be 15,000$ the website had changed and instead of 15,000$ it says “remanded” so his day is done and he is totally screwed.
This is the war on drugs and to use the power of the NYPD like this is DISGUSTING and to have personally been involved in this and to have seen the HORRIBLE SATISFACTION all those officers get everytime they arrest one of use nobodies it is F’N REVOLTING it is DISGUSTING.
Thanks, CJ!
Hang tough, CJ. I hope your friend makes it through alright. You’re absolutley right….what purpose could that possibly serve?
“This is the war on drugs and to use the power of the NYPD like this is DISGUSTING and to have personally been involved in this and to have seen the HORRIBLE SATISFACTION all those officers get everytime they arrest one of use nobodies it is F’N REVOLTING it is DISGUSTING.”
This is how many Germans felt about Jews during the Nazi era…. society endorsed and reinforced their prejudices and gave them a self-righteous glow.
Well, who’d a thunk it?
‘”It was an invitation from the Vatican,†Sanders replied. “I was very moved by the invitation. I am a big, big fan of the Pope. Obviously there are areas that we disagree on—women’s rights, gay rights—but he has played an unbelievable role of injecting a moral consequence into the economy.”‘
And one more specific area of difference I can think of….. but I do agree about Frankie’s introduction of a (shock horror) economic consequence for most of what passes as morality in the age of Wall Street materialism.
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/media-baffled-bernies-vatican-invite-and-its-hilarious
http://tinyurl.com/WhenPoloniusDies
Professor Barnes, who has a long standing interest in the management of spasticity – a condition in which the muscles become stiff, causing pain or interfering with movement and speech –
1952 Webster’s Dictionary
Bhang: An Indian variety of the common hemp… employed in medicine, for its anodyne,hyponotic, and anti-spasmodic qualities; also spelled bang, beng.
Marijuana Stops Child’s Severe Seizures
“AUGUSTA, Maine — A Superior Court judge has overturned Secretary of State Matt Dunlap’s ruling that a citizen petition for a referendum to legalize recreational marijuana in Maine was invalid.
Superior Court Justice Michaela Murphy made the decision in a 26-page ruling issued Friday. She ruled that Dunlap “committed an error of law by applying a vague, subjective and/or unduly burdensome interpretation†of the law.
She wrote that variations in signatures are understandable, given how citizen petitions are conducted.
Murphy’s decision puts the question back on track to appear on the November state ballot. Dunlap now will have time to take a fresh look at the signatures to determine whether petitioners submitted enough valid ones to qualify for ballot placement.”
http://tinyurl.com/SleddedEruptions
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So what does this mean for the demand by SAM Gagnon that the cannabis law reform advocates be investigated for election fraud? Normally I’d expect something like that would be dropped but SAM hasn’t ever needed a valid reason to denigrate people who choose to enjoy cannabis or have a medicinal need.
Marijuana foes call for investigation of failed petition drive
/snip/
“As new reporting comes out on why almost half of the collected signatures were deemed to be invalid, SAM Maine believes the Office of the Attorney General should launch an immediate and thorough investigation of the signature gathering operation of the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol,†said SAM director Scott Gagnon in a written statement. “SAM Maine strongly supports Maine’s citizen’s referendum process, however, we also strongly believe that the integrity of the process must be protected.â€
/snip/
Scott Gagnon is a total fucking asshole, and as dishonest a person as a person can be. Keep up the good work Scotty, it’s much easier to discredit a total fucking asshole with his own words. It won’t be long before everyone knows that being a lying jackass is a prerequisite for working for SAM.
Me thinks SAM doth protest too much. SAM deflects blame from itself so long as the petition problem really is someone else’s fault. But why should it be? How do we know SAM didn’t plant moles as signature gatherers who subsequently gummed up the works? SAM-Maine and Gagnon are suspects and must be investigated.
The venture capital funding branch of the CIA, known as In-Q-Tel, has financed the startup of a cosmetic skincare company, Kincential Sciences, to produce products that facilitate drug testing and genetics spying:
The CIA finally did it. They got under our skin. Drug enforcement will foist this latest privacy invasion onto an already browbeaten, unwary public. The technology can be used to identify hippies disguised as real people, or, as in the movie Gattaca, leave no place to hide.
“I want America to prosper and I want to do it in the cleanest way we can do it. That’s the reason my picture is on the cover — because I really am an American. Some people just claim to be American. I really am. I really l love this country.â€
— Merle Haggard
Spring 1997 issue of HEMP TIMES
A Merle Haggard Tribute: An American Hemp Patriot
Country Legend Merle Haggard Dies
We don’t smoke marijuana in Muskogee;
We don’t take no trips on LSD
We don’t burn no draft cards down on Main Street;
We like livin’ right, and bein’ free…
Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard – It’s All Going to Pot
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6c6eUeoa9Q
Unfortunately, the optimism surrounding this development may have been a bit premature.
Vermont: Legal Marijuana Could Be Doomed for 2016
It was reveled this week that the House decided that Vermont is not quite ready to embark on a journey into the realm of full-blown legalization. A key committee under the guidance of Representative Maxine Grad has ripped the Senate bill to shreds and started from scratch on a new proposal that replaces the concept of full legalization with more decriminalization.
Since 55 percent of Colorado voters legalized recreational marijuana in 2012, Colorado has experienced record economic growth, record tourism, and record job creation. In addition, Denver was recently named the best city to live in the United States by U.S. News and World Report based on factors such as quality of life, low crime rate, and job prospects.
Marijuana Weekly News Roundup
Should Colorado Limit Marijuana Potency? No
The doomsday predictions of the prohibitionists never came to pass. Colorado is experiencing near record low traffic fatalities, and teen marijuana usage has remained relatively stagnant.
In other words, Coloradans have enhanced their civil liberties and created a new, legal industry while maintaining public safety and boosting the economy.
Despite this good news, marijuana prohibitionists are trying to overturn the will of the voters. With some polls showing more than 60 percent of Coloradans now support legalization, prohibitionists know that an overt effort to make marijuana illegal again would likely fail. So their plan is to undermine the program and make it impossible for legal businesses to operate.
Whoopi Goldberg Could Be Cut from ‘The View’
Over Medical Marijuana Business, Insiders Say
Judge’s Ruling Might Keep Maine’s Legalization Initiative Alive
The old global consensus on the war on drugs is crumbling
Once a decade, the United Nations organizes a meeting where every country in the world comes together to figure out what to do about drugs — and up to now, they’ve always pledged to wage a relentless war, to fight until the planet is “drug-free.†They’ve consistently affirmed U.N. treaties written in the 1960s and 1970s, mainly by the United States, which require every country to arrest and imprison their way out of drug-related problems.
Chomsky on how financial backers corrupt politics using the advertising industry:
‘“Obama didn’t really promise anything. That’s mostly illusion,†confirmed Chomsky. “You go back to the campaign rhetoric and take a look at it. There’s very little discussion of policy issues and for very good reason. Because public opinion on policy is sharply disconnected, from what the two party leaders and their financial backers want. Policy more and more is focused on the private interest that fund the campaigns with the public being marginialized.‒
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/noam-chomsky-explains-why-campaign-financing-just-one-part-corruption-politics
If you think about it, and as a realist I must I must. Just about every dollar spent on campaigns. Ends up with advertisers and media, owned by multinational corporations. Billion this election goes to those businesses. Agencies owned by Industries who are prohibitionists. If simply for the numbers, selling more if competition is outlawed. So the money filtered through the candidates end up with the big buck donors. Like playing poker with the proverbial Mafia. Hand picking employees to serve as representatives in Congress. Buying their elections, then getting a refund from both parties constituents. Nice work if you’re a Neocon Fascist.
Say No to Socialism?