America’s War on Drugs – a four-part documentary on the History Channel that began on Sunday evening.
I watched the first episode (“Acid Spies, and Secret Experiments”) – a fascinating look at the 1960s and 1970s, focusing on the CIA’s involvement in Cuba and how that shifted mafia drug trafficking to the US, the introduction of LSD into the US by the CIA (the MKULTRA program), and the CIA’s involvement in the secret war in Laos (the golden triangle) and their connection to trafficking heroin (with Air America), and the military’s experiments with drugging soldiers. Great story of how the CIA brought LSD into the country to attempt to control people’s minds, but it turned out that LSD actually did the opposite and ended up controlled by people who were against the kind of government that the CIA represented. Also in this episode, the impact of Ken Kesey, Timothy Leary, G. Gordon Liddy, Billy Hitchcock, Richard Nixon, John Mitchell, Elvis Presley, John Ehrlichman, Frank Serpico, and more. Also the interesting story of one of the largest thefts in history (the French Connection heroin seizure stolen from lockup) – and it was perpetrated by New York cops.
Very good historical information. Note: The History Channel is providing a number of re-broadcasts of the first episode on their channel (check listings) and may also be adding it online later.
Monday: the Contras.
As NBC describes it:
[Executive Producer Anthony] Lappé, alongside Julian P. Hobbs, Elli Hakami, spent a year conducting dozens and dozens of interviews with former CIA officers, Drug Enforcement Agency officers, historians and more. The crew takes viewers through an eight hour journey crisscrossing the world and deconstructing how the U.S. “war on drugs†truly began through interviews, old footage, and reenactments.
So far so good.
I agree Daniel. Looks to be a great source for information on the governments involvement not commonly known about. and this great policymaker handbook tells us how to end this madness.
Cato Handbook for Policymakers, 8th Edition (2017)
https://t.co/lsrnCFQ3Ri
War on Drugs
Congress should:
• repeal the Controlled Substances Act of 1970;
• direct the administration not to interfere with the implementation of state initiatives that allow for the recreational or medical use of marijuana;
• repeal the federal mandatory minimum sentences; and
• shut down the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Now, there is some real good advice for any policy maker to follow to reform this horrible mess we call a drug war.
To stop the errors of the past https://tinyurl.com/y7kycqtw
Jeff Sessions Misunderstands Drugs and Crime https://t.co/1qkFqGHs6r
I think Jeff Sessions understands drugs and crime very well, just as his approach to opiates explains why he scapegoats specific drugs for problems that are more closely associated with lax prescription practices currently being revised at a number of different health care levels. His conduct regarding marijuana fits with creating a cultural hegemony dominated by his own tribe of authoritarians and followers.
Sessions is reputed to have a very good memory. Perhaps his memory explains in part how he came to be governor of Alabama. His recent forgetfulness before Congress is therefore suspicious.
“‘Southern-fried snoozefest’: late-night hosts on Sessions testimonyâ€
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2017/jun/15/late-night-hosts-jeff-sessions-senate-testimony-kamala-harris
Regardless of whether Trump finishes his term as president or gets booted out, his appointments of federal judges will continue to do harm to the legal system and democracy for decades to come.
So far the federal judges being appointed by Trump appear to reside within the same proto-fascist comfort zones that prohibitionists such as Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump find so appealing. Two recent appointees illustrate the problem, John K. Bush and Damien Schiff:
Neither of the two appointees have enough grip on reality to recognize the harm being done by the drug war and to balance it against the need for reform. They are extremist ideologues who do not care about or even consider the consequences of their actions, even when such actions have the potential to kill innocent people. Someone such as Rodrigo Duterte would likely approve their nominations to the bench.
It seems if piss testers are found guilty of fraud or corruption with test results. All of the tests are deemed bogus and not used as evidence. Same with appointees by a corrupt politician. If the election was rigged as Trump claimed, then it would be logical to redo the entire election from Cities to PotUS. Oh I forgot, this is just a democracy in name only.
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Vermont asks AG Sessions, “how many fingers am I holding up?”
Isn’t it ironic that the first State Governor to sign a law re-legalizing limited amounts of cannabis will be a Republican? /knock wood/ But he’s not just signing the bill into law. He was an integral part of the process of rewriting the law which he vetoed not that long ago. Of course he could have just let the previous law be implemented but he could also have vetoed and left it there. The Legislature didn’t have the votes needed to override and the legislative session had expired.
Radio host Wayne Allyn Root accused Georgia special election Democrat candidate and documentary film maker Jon Ossof of being a filthy, pot-smoking Marxist:
I know Root. He’s an idiot.
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Long ago I came in contact with a group of isolated cannabis consumers who smoked pot all day with bare feet. After I showed them how much easier it was to smoke pot using their hands instead, they smiled and thanked me as I departed their remote enclave.
As glaringly stupid as Mr. Root’s description of “documentary filmmakers” comes across, the legions of ignorant Americans that will now adopt this definition is even stupider by several orders of magnitude. From Werner Herzog to Ken burns to all other documentary filmmakers in between, they all must be thinking, “If only Wayne Allyn Root would have told us that all this time we could have been shirtless, filthy, and smoking pot with bare feet while making our Marxist films, we would have had so much more fun”.
“documentary filmmakersâ€
Like Steve Bannon
Mercer’s earliest activist ventures was financing a slew of fringe documentary projects that’ve helped raise the profiles of people like Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann and most notably, the director of those films, Steve Bannon
The Mercer Family Foundation
.
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Steve Bannon is more of an agenda driven propagandist than a documentarian (oddly, he admires the methodology of Michael Moore who has been described similarly). Although surely he gets a pass from Mr. Root, he does at least deserve the ‘filthy’ tag. As someone once queried, “Why does Steve Bannon always look like he spent last night in a ditch?”. Indeed.
His work will never hold a candle to the likes of Herzog’s “Grizzly Man”, Errol Morris’ “The Thin Blue Line”, or a bit more recently, James Marsh’s “Man On Wire” (masterfully done, highly recommended) to name a paltry few from a very long list of well made documentaries.
I saw that David Attenborough in the street the other day wearing jeans with no shirt, barefoot and with a massive Camberwell Carrot hanging out of his mouth…..
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Another war on (some) drugs casualty:
The officer was ultimately acquitted.
Bullshit baffles brains.
Which is why the excited states is a fly-over country.
“Everything’s better after we shoot stuff”
— Cops
“after the rounds were off”
euphemism translation: after I killed her daddy…
Treating Rage With Cannabis
http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/topic/2086
Sessions understands why prohibition exists,
http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/sreply/1176
A new study out from Duke and Stanford reveals that “chatter in the deep brain spurs empathy in rats.†If the new information can help us understand rats, cannot it also help us understand prohibitionists?
Prohibitionists such as Bill O’Reilly are noted for their stated rejection of empathy. The new rat research points to a possible solution to all the Bill O’Reillys out there. Yes, it’s true, a cure may be available in the near future that allows anti-empathenogenic critters such as prohibitionists to rise to the level of emotionally well-adjusted rats.
The Canadian Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) has published guidelines for marijuana use in the American Journal of Public Health. The guideline publication was motivated by the fact that Canada is ranked as having the highest rates of marijuana consumption in the world: “[m]ore than 10 per cent of adults and 25 per cent of adolescents report cannabis use over the past year. â€
Some of the guidelines are basic. Others push the limits of caution toward prohibition by presuming cannabis is more harmful than it really is. Among the presumptions is that if one small demographic has problems with marijuana, then all people qualify for the same risk. That’s not how it works. Marijuana’s popularity hinges in part on the fact it has fewer undesirable side effects when compared to other substances. Death is an example. Marijuana won’t kill you, but it may make you think, and that’s going to upset a lot of authoritarians:
DEA is quietly changing the rules…
http://cannabisnews.com/news/29/thread29118.shtml#3
“Clarification of the New Drug Code (7350) for Marijuana Extractâ€
http://speciosa.org/dea-clarification-of-the-new-drug-code-7350-for-marijuana-extract/
March 15, 2017
DEAth.jpg
http://oi65.tinypic.com/2elfhb6.jpg
DEA is quietly changing the rules…
http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/topic/719
Lies, Manipulating Data, Denials, the Original Fake News
Last PGT show speaks to the cbd issue.
66 min into the show.
https://www.spreaker.com/user/planetgreentrees/pgt-354-some-things-you-cant-explain-awa
Meanwhile, in sunny Mexico, the US sanctioned and initiated drug war continues its feverish pitch, in what is suspected to be government sanctioned murders of Mexican citizens:
Mexico is still fatal for journalists who report on the drug war:
Weed Beat the Recession in Denver vs
60,000164,000 Dead Mexicanshttp://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/sreply/1178
New House Oversight chair Rep. Gowdy pledges not to meddle in District affairs
http://tinyurl.com/y787escj
Not willing to pay Wapo to read their corporate biases, but here’s a (free) reminder of the unlamented Jason Chaffetz:
https://www.thenation.com/article/republican-congressman-threatens-dc-mayor-arrest-over-marijuana-legalization/
@DdC
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/59480440e4b04d8767077a8e
Dr Bearman debunking the Dunedin study on Cannabis
Hurray for our side
Medicinal cannabis: Doctors, nurses and Nimbin ‘elders’ trade marijuana tips
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-23/medicinal-cannabis-drug-melbourne-course-caldicott/8643204
Government harm-increase:
“In 2013 a 15-year-old called Martha Fernback died within three hours of taking 500mg of MDMA. A standard dose for a medium to large adult male is 120mg, said Measham. She runs a drugs charity, The Loop, which has been running a campaign called Crush Dab Wait, which encourages users to crush the MDMA crystals into a powder, dab a little on their gums or tongue, and then wait for the effect before taking any more.”
Or better still, only buy correctly dosed MDMA from a government regulated supplier….oh, I forgot….. they won’t allow that.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jun/26/one-dead-and-four-critical-after-taking-potent-form-of-mdma
Pharmacy boss sorry for meningitis outbreak, gets 9 years
The co-owner of a pharmacy responsible for the deaths of 76 people was sentenced Monday to nine years in prison after he tearfully apologized to victims who described watching their loved ones die or enduring excruciating physical pain from a 2012 nationwide fungal meningitis outbreak caused by contaminated steroids.
☛ Cannabis convict Eddy Lepp free from prison Dec. 7, 2016
As a result of his conviction, Lepp lost his beloved Lake County home, farm and cars, which were seized and sold by federal drug agents. He also lost his marriage to divorce and missed nearly a decade of life with family and friends, some of whom died while he was behind bars.
Early one morning in February 2002, a team of 34 different law enforcement officials — among them, the local Lake County Sheriff’s Department, Mendocino Marijuana Eradication Program and DEA — raided the property, arresting Lepp and confiscating 24,784 plants, processed marijuana and equipment.
☛ The 10 Most Outrageous Marijuana Sentences
Serving life without parole…
John Knock, Paul Free, Leopoldo Hernandez-Miranda, Antonio Bascaro, Kenny Kubinski, Larry Duke, Billy Dekle, Craig Cesal, Jeff Mizanskey and Fred Cundiff.
☛ U.S. Veterans Affairs Sec. David Shulkin said that state legalization laws are leading to more research on marijuana’s possible benefits for military veterans, but that his department won’t participate in any studies unless federal law changes.
The four part History Channel documentary on the US led drug war is long overdue. Making and showing the series wouldn’t have been possible decades ago when even uttering the word ‘higher’ was prohibited on the Ed Sullivan Show. Censorship has long been a strategy of the government’s drug war, along with lies and misrepresenting or ignoring scientific information.
With the advent of Trump and Sessions, drug war tactics such as censorship and muddying the waters with useless trivia will likely be revived. Satire and comedy still reign as the best defense. A new report from Index on Censorship Magazine compares Leninist censorship in 1917 to Trump’s attacks on the press in 2017:
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I think I’ve heard the most ludicrous reason ever to keep cannabis illegal. In fact the only thing keeping me from declaring this the absolute outer limit of stupidity is because of how many times in the past that the sycophants of prohibition have scammed me into thinking that I had arrived at that location. But at least I got a good laugh at the thought that there’s a shortage of cannabis in Canada. I’m putting this one in the “baffled by bullshit” category:
Can marijuana shortage delay Canada’s pot legalization?
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Don’t be deceived by the headline, this one was actually quite a pleasant surprise:
Lots of other snippets in that article that gave me a warm fuzzy.
“Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts
when you have forgotten your aim.â€
– George Santayana,
“The Life of Reasonâ€
☛ High on Hemp
Hemplastic or Fossil Fools Crud
http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/topic/1659
☛ Legal Marijuana Industry Has Created 123,000 Full-Time Jobs
http://norml.org/news/2017/01/12/report-legal-marijuana-industry-has-created-12300-full-time-jobs
☛ Marijuana saves a California town
https://www.newsdeeply.com/water/articles/2017/04/03/california-desert-towns-become-haven-for-a-new-crop-marijuana
☛ 5 towns saved from ruin by the booming legal weed industry
https://www.yahoo.com/news/m/6cafd158-ea14-3d85-a5c3-b1716d5b5f10/ss_5-towns-saved-from-ruin-by.html
☛ California’s Pot Makes More Money Than the Next 5 Largest Crops Combined
http://hightimes.com/news/californias-pot-makes-more-money-than-the-next-5-largest-crops-combined/
☛ Make That $1.2 Billion and Rising:
http://hightimes.com/news/make-that-1-2-billion-and-rising-colorado-marijuana-sales-keep-climbing
United Nations’s World Health Organization Calls for Worldwide Decriminalization of Drug Use and Possession
https://t.co/aXjxFKOE5M
An Ohio city councilman, Dan Picard, has a solution for people suffering from opioid use disorder that speaks to his inner authoritarian:
Under Dan Picard’s three-strikes-and-you’re-dead proposal, Middletown won’t need to lay him off from his job. Part of the $1,104 for each paramedic response to an OD (598 runs in 2017 alone) can be spent instead on a big new sign welcoming tourists that reads: “Come to Middletown and Die.â€
J. D. Vance wrote of his experiences in Middletown in Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis (2016). And Bristol Palin won’t be doing any heroin in Middletown. Bristol trashes Middletown in her autobiography Not Afraid of Life: My Journey So Far. [sources Wiki]
It seems Cannabis is not a Medicinal Drug.
Its an Endocannabinoid System supplement.
http://tinyurl.com/OleFuckersOle
OT. Wales must be proud of their boy in the yellow jersey.
“Iz you Iz, or Iz you (Ger) Ain’t?
The doc loves cycling almost as much as weed.
Que?
Another clue please!
Malcolm, I thought you were from Wales, am I mistaken?
Geraint Thomas, procyclist for Team Sky in the Tour de France is from your tribe, no?
Ah! I had to google him/it. Thanks for the heads up!
@DdC
By any chance have you seen this?:
http://reason.com/archives/2006/12/28/the-trouble-with-troubled-teen/2
I’ll add it Mr_Alex.
She’s one of the good guys.
Maia Szalavitz
http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/topic/2087
@DdC
Also this appeared on the New Zealand Television yesterday and apparently Dr Quack was live:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGetNp_0LwU
@DdC
Wrong link, this one is the correct one
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/there-also-risks-specialist-says-medicinal-cannabis-not-wonder-drug
Dr. Quack indeed. He lost me right from the start when he said cannabis was useful for a “few” conditions.
One of the things that bothered me when I immersed myself in studying cannabis was that the studies for the most part ONLY used THC or stronger versions of THC (e.g. HU-210 from Hebrew University is hundreds time more potent).
For research purposes, the synthetic versions of cannabis that are more potent (i.e., receptor affinity,) are used because THC is considered a “weak, partial, agonist” at CB1 receptors.
So yeah, THC is problematic, but it’s made to look that way by biased research. The entourage or ensemble effect of cannabis is still not recognized scientifically because there have been no Randomized Clinical Trials.
Scientific American’s 420 issue of this year had a drug abuse researcher from Columbia University saying she believed that the terpene craze was all about the placebo effect.
The White Lab Coat crowd (the Prohibitionist Division) doesn’t want the public to ever know that real research using whole-plant cannabis is practically non-existent. Once the people know Hash Oil is a potential gateway to health, how ya gonna keep down on the farm?
THC as a solo act is problematic and that’s how you can get a catalogue of NIDA-crapola that’s says merrywanna is bad because they KNOW THC is problematic.
BTW, my idea of biased research is anything that isn’t whole-plant. Medical professionals like Dr. Quack are not only assholes, their a public danger.
How is this quack considered a specialist?
No medical schools have a department of endocannabinoid science or an ECS director.
http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/sreply/937
I think I’d rather take my chances with the first link on contrails.
@DdC
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/shows/q-and-a/clips/extras/associate-health-minister-peter-dunne-does-drug-testing-kit-win
Farewell Chaffetz…. so glad you found a replacement for the government teat, now that you’re going to be on Fox News… they’ve been running low on truly punchable faces lately, but you’ll fill the bill.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/jason-chaffetz-fox-news_us_59567a66e4b02734df31fb76?v1f&ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009
“‘Conduct that Shocks the Conscience’: South Dakota Forcibly Catheterizes a Toddler in the Name of the War on Drugs”
Is S.D. the only state with “internal possession” laws?
http://www.alternet.org/drugs/conduct-shocks-conscience-south-dakota-forcibly-catheterize-toddler-drugs
Craziest Marijuana Law in the USA:
‘Internal Possession’ Means You Can Be Busted
for Having Smoked Pot in Another State
http://www.alternet.org/drugs/craziest-marijuana-law-usa-internal-possession-means-you-can-be-busted-having-smoked-pot
The South Dakota Highway Schutzstaffel should have targeted DMT instead, a Schedule I substance and a chemical produced in the pineal gland of the human brain. Failure to allow a police officer to drill into one’s pineal gland searching for unholy molecules would result in the immediate revocation of that person’s motor vehicle license. Criminalizing anandamide could achieve a similar result.
Their proto-fascist neighbor to the north, North Dakota, has some strange driving regulations as well. It’s illegal in North Dakota to make a U-turn within city limits. If Dakotans’ driving habits are so incompetent they can’t negotiate U-turns, why should anyone expect these people to drive while sober—much less if they’re feeling the evil of blasphemous bliss molecules?
The Non-Ordinary Conhibition Rhetoric of Terence
http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/topic/1923
I should mention that DMT is an endogenous neurotransmitter. Yes, DMT, the most powerful of the hallucinogens occurs in the human brain as a normal part of metabolism. It also is a Schedule I drug, so you’re all holding and this might be the basis for some kind of case. To just show what absolute poppycock all this nonsense is: People Have Been Made Illegal!
~ Terence McKenna
Metaphorically, DMT is like an intellectual black hole in that once one knows about it, it is very hard for others to understand what one is talking about. One cannot be heard. The more one is able to articulate what it is, the less others are able to understand. This is why I think people who attain enlightenment, if we may for a moment comap these two, are silent. They are silent because we cannot understand them. Why the phenomenon of tryptamine ecstasy has not been looked at by scientists, thrill seekers, or anyone else, I am not sure, but I recommend it to your attention.
~ Terence McKenna,
The Archaic Revival: Speculations on Psychedelics, Mushrooms, the Amazon,
Virtual Reality, UFO’s, Evolution, Shamanism, the Rebirth of the Goddess, & the End of History. (1991).
Everything you need to know about DMT
(Terence Mckenna) [rapdancing into the 3rd millennium]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZAMKn2xr9E
We’re not just “holding,” we’re all “manufacturing.” It’s far worse… even Jeff Sessions is an illegal drug producer…. off to jail with him.
By the way, check out the drug laws in Dubai…. internal possession can result from eating a poppy seed bagel.
“The United Arab Emirates has emerged as the country with the longest list of banned substances, which include many commonly available drugs, such as codeine, and many well-known anti-depressants, which can lead to jail if unaccompanied by a doctor’s written prescription. Dubai airport has recently installed new drug-sensitive equipment which can detect a trace of a drug on a shoe. Earlier this year, Fair Trials International (FTI) published a list of the drugs that could lead to terms of imprisonment in Dubai. Travellers carrying jet-lag medicine have been held. Even poppy seeds can result in a charge. Fifty-nine Britons were arrested in Dubai last year on drug charges.”
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2008/jun/09/unitedarabemirates.travelnews
Hang in there,
Prohibitionists are on the Universe’s short list for extinction.
When the activity of the cannabinoid system declines,
we find rapid ageing in the brain.â€
No detectable limit to how long people can live
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-06-limit-people.html
Cannabis reverses aging processes in the brain
http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/sreply/1169
When the activity of the cannabinoid system declines,
we find rapid ageing in the brain.â€
Cannabis and Longevity
http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/sreply/241
The Tree of Life
http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/sreply/377