Legalize marijuana? Allow everyone to smoke the toke? Pot lovers unite? There’s a big convo about weed these days and I wanted to make sure the people were heard! Like, is alcohol more dangerous than pot? And who’s smoking up out there? Looks like old people don’t get it and young people, man, they just want to have fun.
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Banks Warned They Risk Prosecution If They Follow Obama Admin Guidance on Marijuana
http://static.infowars.com/bindnfocom/2014/02/021514obamasigning.jpg
Valerie Richardson
The Washington Times
February 15, 2014
Obama’s “guidance” for banks to follow will only ensure their prosecution by the DOJ and the Treasury Dept.
Bankers should beware of the Obama administration’s newly issued green light for banks doing business with the legal marijuana industry, according to the head of the Colorado Bankers Association.
Memos released Friday by the Justice Department and Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network were intended to give banks leeway to open accounts for marijuana businesses in states like Colorado and Washington that have legalized retail pot. Instead, the guidance “only reinforces and reiterates that banks can be prosecuted for providing accounts to marijuana related businesses,” said the CBA in a Friday statement.
“In fact, it is even stronger than original guidance issued by the Department of Justice and the Treasury,” said CBA president and CEO Don Childears. “After a series of red lights, we expected this guidance to be a yellow one. This isn’t close to that. At best, this amounts to ‘serve these customers at your own risk’ and it emphasizes all of the risks. This light is red.”
This article was posted: Saturday, February 15, 2014 at 11:27 am
Twenty states and the District of Columbia have legalized medical marijuana, and this year powerful GOP lawmakers in Georgia and Alabama are putting their weight behind bills that would allow for the limited use of cannabis oil by those with specific medical conditions. Other Southern states are also weighing the issue with varying levels of support.
The key to swaying the hearts of conservative lawmakers has been the stories of children suffering up to 100 seizures a day whose parents say they could benefit from access to cannabidiol, which would be administered orally in a liquid form. And proponents argue the cannabis oil is low in tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the psychoactive compound in marijuana that makes users feel high.
“I’m an unlikely champion for this cause,” said Georgia Rep. Allen Peake, a businessman from Macon who attended the evangelical Dallas Theological Seminary. “Once people realize it’s not a 6-year-old smoking a joint, most folks realize this is the compassionate thing to do.”
Peake’s bill has already earned the backing of more than 80 state lawmakers, including several members of the House Republican leadership, who signed on as co-sponsors and the state’s largest professional association of doctors. The bill would revive a long-dormant research program allowing academic institutions to distribute the medical cannabis and would be “limited in scope, tightly restricted, well regulated and managed by doctors,” Peake said.
Alabama Rep. Mike Ball, a retired hostage negotiator for the State Patrol, is behind a bill that would allow people to possess the cannabis oil if they have certain medical conditions. It passed a key committee vote on Wednesday.
“The public is starting to understand what this is,” said Ball, who chairs a powerful House committee and is a prominent voice on law enforcement issues. “The political fear is shifting from what will happen if we pass it, to might what happen if we don’t,” Ball said.
The bills in Georgia and Alabama still have more vetting, and their ultimate prospects are not certain. But what is happening offers a strong signal of what’s to come in other states.
In Louisiana, although a bill has yet to be introduced, a recent committee hearing at the Capitol on legalizing medical marijuana drew a standing-room-only crowd, and Gov. Bobby Jindal made comments last month indicating he was willing to consider it.
“When it comes to medical marijuana … if there is a legitimate medical need, I’d certainly be open to making it available under very strict supervision for patients that would benefit from that,” Jindal said, according to a report in The Advocate.
Technically, both Georgia and Louisiana have laws on the books from the 1980s and 1990s that allow for the use of medical marijuana, but those programs essentially ended before they could start. Georgia’s law established the academic research program for those diagnosed with glaucoma and cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy and radiation, but the program stalled when the federal government stopped delivery of legal cannabis.
Louisiana’s law allowed for glaucoma and cancer patients and those suffering from spastic quadriplegia to receive marijuana for therapeutic use but regulations to govern the program were never developed.
In Mississippi, Republican state Sen. Josh Harkins of Brandon is sponsoring a cannabis oil bill similar to the ones in Alabama and Georgia. Harkins said one of his constituents has a 20-month-old daughter with Dravet syndrome, a form of pediatric epilepsy, and the oil can help reduce the number of seizures.
Elsewhere, both Kentucky and Tennessee have medical marijuana bills under consideration although they have yet to gain traction. Kentucky Senate President Rover Stivers, R-Manchester, has said he’s not convinced marijuana has legitimate medical purposes and called it an area ripe for abuse.
In Florida, it’s likely to become a campaign issue in the fall given that Gov. Rick Scott is up for re-election and a proposed constitutional amendment will be on the ballot that would allow for the medical use of marijuana as determined by a licensed physician. Former Republican Gov. Charlie Christ, now a Democrat seeking to challenge Scott, has called it “an issue of compassion, trusting doctors and trusting the people of Florida.”
Meanwhile, Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley has signaled a willingness to discuss medicine that might be derived from marijuana with appropriate federal regulation.
“If someone wants to use the medicine that is in marijuana, go through the same testing that you have to go through when you do that through the (U.S. Food and Drug Administration), you go through all of that, do the testing, the drug testing, that’s fine,” Bentley said last month. “I have no problem with that. I am not just for prescribing marijuana.”
Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal has declined to take a position, but noted the “strong case being presented by some of the families with very serious situations involving their children.”
Dustin Chandler, a police officer in Pelham, Ala., has been a major part of the effort there. His daughter, 2-year-old Carly, has three to five seizures each day from a severe neurological condition she has had since infancy. Chandler believes cannabidiol could help control his daughter’s seizures and improve her cognitive functioning based on anecdotal evidence seen elsewhere.
“We’ve been battling the stigma from the m-word,” Chandler said. “I’d love to hear my daughter talk. I’d love to hear her say one word. You know that is something most parents take for granted.”
Overall, public opinion in support of legalization has shifted in less than a decade, according to William Galston and E.J. Dionne, who co-wrote a paper last year on the topic for The Brookings Institution. The authors noted proponents were shrewd in focusing the earliest campaigns on efforts to allow the use of marijuana for medical purposes, citing a 2013 Pew Research Center survey that three-quarters of Americans, including 72 percent of Republicans, believe marijuana has legitimate medical uses.
Among critics’ biggest concerns is that allowing medical marijuana even under a narrow list of circumstance would eventually open the door to widespread use. Peake, the Georgia lawmaker, has been adamant that will not be the case.
“I am concerned as anyone that we would get to a slippery slope of a broader scope of marijuana use in the state,” Peake said. “I promise you I will fight that with every bit of energy in me.”
Georgia Rep. Terry England, chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee and a deacon at his Baptist church in Auburn, is a prime example of a state lawmaker who never thought of legalizing medical marijuana but is now open to it, even signing on as a co-sponsor to Peake’s bill.
“I’ve not made a complete 180-degree turn, but I’m probably at 178 degrees,” England said.
© Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Opponents of legalizing cannabis for medicinal purposes are fond of arguing that the plant must be subjected to the same standards of clinical study and FDA review as conventional medicines. What they fail to mention is that cannabis and its active components have already been subjected to a greater degree of scientific scrutiny than many FDA-approved pharmaceuticals.
According to a just-published analysis of some 200 newly FDA-approved medications, few conventional drugs are tested in multiple, large-scale clinical assessing safety and efficacy trials prior to market approval. “[A]bout a third won approval on the basis of a single clinical trial, and many other trials involved small groups of patients and shorter durations,” reports the Washington Post in its summary of the study, which appears in the January edition of The Journal of the American Medical Association. “Only about 40 percent of approvals included trials in which the new drug was compared with existing drugs on the market.”
By comparison, there exists over 20,000 published studies or reviews in the scientific literature referencing the cannabis plant and its cannabinoids, nearly half of which were published within the last five years, according to a keyword search on PubMed Central, the government repository for peer-reviewed scientific research. Of these, more than 100 are controlled clinical trials assessing the therapeutic efficacy of cannabinoids for a variety of indications.
A 2006 review of 72 of these trials, conducted between the years 1975 and 2004, identifies ten distinct pathologies for which controlled studies on cannabinoids have been published. The review concludes that these trial data “affirm that cannabinoids exhibit an interesting therapeutic potential as antiemetics, appetite stimulants in debilitating diseases (cancer and AIDS), analgesics, as well as in the treatment of multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injuries, Tourette syndrome, epilepsy and glaucoma.”
A 2010 review of 37 additional controlled trials, conducted between the years 2005 and 2009, similarly acknowledges the plant’s efficacy, finding, “Based on the clinical results, cannabinoids present an interesting therapeutic potential mainly as analgesics in chronic neuropathic pain, appetite stimulants in debilitating diseases (cancer and AIDS), as well as in the treatment of multiple sclerosis.” The review estimates that some 6,100 patients suffering from a wide range of ailments have taken part in clinical cannabis trials over the past decades – a far greater cohort of subjects than would typically participate in clinical trials for more conventional therapeutics.
Most recently, a 2012 review of more recent clinical trials conducted by the California Center for Medicinal Research, involving several hundred patients, concluded emphatically: “Recent clinical trials with smoked and vaporized marijuana, as well as other botanical extracts, indicate the likelihood that the cannabinoids can be useful in the management of neuropathic pain, spasticity due to multiple sclerosis, and possibly other indications…Based on evidence currently available the Schedule I classification is not tenable; it is not accurate that cannabis has no medical value, or that information on safety is lacking.”
The bottom line: Scientists now know more about cannabis as a medicine than regulators know about many of the FDA-approved pharmaceuticals that the plant could replace.
Catherine Thompson
talkingpointsmemo.com
January 23, 2014
Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) said Thursday that he’s open to marijuana decriminalization in the Lone Star state.
“As governor, I have begun to implement policies that start us toward a decriminalization,” Perry said at a World Economic Forum panel on drug legalization in Davos, Switzerland, according to the San Antonio Express-News. He was referring to “drug courts” in the state that provide treatment and softer penalties for minor offenses.
A Perry spokeswoman confirmed to the Express-News that while Perry is opposed to legalization of the drug because of medical issues, the governor supports policies that lower punishments for marijuana use in order to keep smokers out of jail.
This article was posted: Thursday, January 23, 2014 at 1:57 pm
The New Yorker has just dropped an extensive profile of President Obama by David Remnick, who wrote a major book on the president published in 2011.
It’s nuanced and touches on issues like gay marriage and Israel and Palestine. But Obama also drops this bombshell about marijuana: “I don’t think it is more dangerous than alcohol.”
Obama goes on to add more nuance to the statement. Here’s the context for the statement:
“When I asked Obama about another area of shifting public opinion—the legalization of marijuana—he seemed even less eager to evolve with any dispatch and get in front of the issue. ‘As has been well documented, I smoked pot as a kid, and I view it as a bad habit and a vice, not very different from the cigarettes that I smoked as a young person up through a big chunk of my adult life. I don’t think it is more dangerous than alcohol.’
“Is it less dangerous? I asked.
“Obama leaned back and let a moment go by. That’s one of his moves. When he is interviewed, particularly for print, he has the habit of slowing himself down, and the result is a spool of cautious lucidity. He speaks in paragraphs and with moments of revision. Sometimes he will stop in the middle of a sentence and say, ‘Scratch that,’ or, ‘I think the grammar was all screwed up in that sentence, so let me start again.’
“Less dangerous, he said, ‘in terms of its impact on the individual consumer. It’s not something I encourage, and I’ve told my daughters I think it’s a bad idea, a waste of time, not very healthy.’ What clearly does trouble him is the radically disproportionate arrests and incarcerations for marijuana among minorities. ‘Middle-class kids don’t get locked up for smoking pot, and poor kids do,’ he said. ‘And African-American kids and Latino kids are more likely to be poor and less likely to have the resources and the support to avoid unduly harsh penalties.’ But, he said, ‘we should not be locking up kids or individual users for long stretches of jail time when some of the folks who are writing those laws have probably done the same thing.’ Accordingly, he said of the legalization of marijuana in Colorado and Washington that ‘it’s important for it to go forward because it’s important for society not to have a situation in which a large portion of people have at one time or another broken the law and only a select few get punished.’”
We’ll let you click over to read the whole piece. We’ll also note that Obama’s statement about how pot use is policed differently depending on class and race, is in line with his policy.
It was Obama, remember, who signed into the law the Fair Sentencing Act, which dealt with the disparity with which the justice system dealt with powder cocaine and crack cocaine. Obama also issued commutations to eight people who were convicted of drug crimes, saying their terms were unusually harsh in the pre-Fair Sentencing Act days.
This article first appeared at The Fix, with coverage on addiction and recovery, straight up.
Everyone thinks they know something about drugs—whether from personal experience or from 8th grade prevention classes or simply because the media presents so many stories about them. Unfortunately, most of what people think they know is inaccurate, and comes from years of government war-on-drugs propaganda, with little understanding of itsmedical and historical context.
Take some of the recent absurd anti-marijuana columns and tweets from some of the backbones of the media establishment: the New York Times’ David Brooks, Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post and Tina Brown, former New Yorker editor and founder of the Daily Beast.
Both Brooks and Marcus told stories of their own youthful pot smoking—neither of which seems to have led to any lasting negative consequences as is the case for the overwhelming majority of marijuana users. Yet both claimed—without apparently understanding that relying on a single study that has been questioned in a follow up by the same journal is not accurately reporting “fact”—that marijuana definitively lowers IQ.
And neither mentioned the elephant in the room: the fact that marijuana laws are mainly enforced against black people and that arresting millions and saddling them with criminal records hasn’t prevented around half of the adult population (white and black) from trying weed. It has, however, meant that black people have reduced opportunities to get jobs with organizations like the Times or the Post while Brooks and Marcus never faced arrest.
Conveniently, the columnists also left out the fact that countries like Portugal that have decriminalized marijuana (or countries like Holland that tolerate some commercial sales of marijuana) actually havelower rates of youth drug use than we do.
Meanwhile, Tina Brown also tweeted that marijuana makes people stupid and legalization will reduce our ability to compete with China. Suffice it to say that she has little evidence for such a claim—one might argue based on equally flimsy data that it enhances creativity and popular culture, which is one of our true strengths—but that wouldn’t sound appropriately “serious.”
And right there is the problem: columnists and journalists who write about drugs rarely question conventional wisdom or go beyond cherry-picking of data to support what they already “know.”
But why are we so gullible in this area, when reporters are supposed to be skeptical? One reason has got to be the fact that over the last 40 years, the government has spent billions of dollars on advertising and even planted media articles and messages in TV shows aiming to get us all to “just say no.” While these campaigns are often ineffective at preventing use, they do seem to work at clouding perception.
And the truth is seen as immaterial in the drug war. Written into the job description of the “drug czar” by Congress is that whoever heads the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) must “take such actions as necessary to oppose any attempt to legalize the use of a substance (in any form)” that is currently illegal, regardless of the facts. When asked about its distribution of “misleading information”—by a Congressman, in fact—ONDCP cited this provision to justify doing so, saying that this is “within the statutory role assigned to ONDCP.” In other words, they have to lie.
Rare is the journalist who will admit to having fallen for this outright propaganda, which is why last year’s confession by CNN’s chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta that he was wrong about marijuana was so stunning.
On CNN’s website, he wrote:
I mistakenly believed the Drug Enforcement Agency listed marijuana as a schedule 1 substance because of sound scientific proof. Surely, they must have quality reasoning as to why marijuana is in the category of the most dangerous drugs that have “no accepted medicinal use and a high potential for abuse.”
They didn"t have the science to support that claim, and I now know that when it comes to marijuana neither of those things are true. It doesn"t have a high potential for abuse, and there are very legitimate medical applications.
The truth is that our perceptions of marijuana—and in fact all of our drug laws—are based on early 20th century racism and “science” circa the Jim Crow era. In the early decades of the 20th century, the drug was linked to Mexican immigrants and black jazzmen, who were seen as potentially dangerous.
Harry Anslinger, the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (an early predecessor of the DEA), was one of the driving forces behind pot prohibition. He pushed it for explicitly racist reasons, saying, “Reefer makes darkies think they"re as good as white men,” and:
“There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the U.S., and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others.”
The main reason to prohibit marijuana, he said was “its effect on the degenerate races.” (And god forbid women should sleep with entertainers!)
Although it sounds absurd now, it was this type of propaganda that caused the drug to be outlawed in 1937—along with support from the Hearst newspapers, which ran ads calling marijuana “the assassin of youth” and published stories about how it led to violence and insanity. Anslinger remained as head of federal narcotics efforts as late as 1962, whereafter he spread his poisonous message to the world as the American representative to the U.N. for drug policy for a further two years.
Before marijuana was made illegal, the American Medical Association’s opposition to prohibition was ignored, as was an earlier report on marijuana in India by the British government, which did not find marijuana to be particularly addictive or dangerous. That “Indian Hemp Drugs Committee” reporthad concluded way back in 1894 that, “The moderate use of hemp drugs is practically attended by no evil results at all.”
Pundits and columnists who make pronouncements about marijuana’s dangers seem willfully ignorant of this history, which is easy to check via any online search engine. Its seems unlikely that Brooks, Marcus and Brown would want their names associated with a law that is both explicitly racist in intent—and continuingly racist in outcome.
But until we treat drug issues as medical and scientific questions, we will be doomed to continue this bigoted legacy—and we will not be able to treat addiction as the health issue that it is.
So, just say know when it comes to drugs—and be sure what you know is based in science, not ancient biased nonsense. (Though, on second thought, Anslinger may have had a point about the inadvisability of sexual relations with entertainers, particularly musicians.)
For a weekly roundup of news and developments in the drug reform movement and the injustices stemming from prohibition, sign up to receive AlterNet"s Drugs Newsletter here. Make sure to scroll down to “Drugs” and subscribe. Also, please check out the new AlterNet Drugs page on Facebook. Thanks for reading!
Maia Szalavitz is a columnist at The Fix. She is also a health reporter at Time magazine online, and co-author, with Bruce Perry, of Born for Love: Why Empathy Is Essential—and Endangered (Morrow, 2010), and author of Help at Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids (Riverhead, 2006).
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The cause of death of a man who collapsed in a San Diego Border Patrol holding cell on Christmas Eve after he was taken into custody for allegedly carrying three pounds of marijuana, is being investigated by the County Medical Examiner’s office.
U.S. citizen Steven Keith, 58, was stopped at a checkpoint on Interstate 8, near the Mexican border.
He was arrested and taken to a holding cell at the Campo Border Patrol station after authorities said they found marijuana, drug paraphernalia and traces of methamphetamine in his car.
Several hours after sitting in a holding cell, officials said Keith became ‘incoherent and unresponsive.’
Border Patrol emergency medical technicians performed CPR on Keith while waiting on paramedics to arrive. Paramedics took over life-saving efforts but were unable to revive Keith, officials said.
Keith’s sister Janet, who lives in Texas, said Steven had moved to Thailand years ago but was visiting family in San Diego for the holidays.
Janet said the medical examiner told her an autopsy was done, but they couldn’t release the cause of death for 90 days while toxicology tests are being completed, reports ABC10.
Janet, a former police officer, said her brother was in good health. He had no partner or children.
‘I am a former police officer myself and I definitely want some answers and I’m going to get them,’ she told UT San Diego.
‘Customs and Border Protection’s San Diego Sector Border Patrol is cooperating fully with these investigators to ensure a neutral third party reviews all evidence and information surrounding this unfortunate death,’ said a statement released by the Border Patrol.
The Department of Homeland Security Office of Investigator General is also investigating the incident.
Alliance San Diego, a human rights organization, is monitoring the incident as well.
‘Border Patrol is under a whole lot of pressure to make sure their agents are properly trained and to make sure when cases like this happen information is properly given to the family,’ said Christian Ramirez with Alliance San Diego.
Video: Family wants answers after man dies in Border Patrol custody
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2530720/Man-mysteriously-dead-U-S-border-control-cell-arrested-marijuana-possession.html#ixzz2ovBosLN9
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The UK police has shut down a large, well-equipped cannabis factory worth over $ 1 million, hidden underground in the historic Drakelow Tunnels, which was used as a shelter for local government back in the 1950s in case of nuclear attack.
The police had to descend deep underground to close down the secret facility, hidden in the tunnels north of the English town of Kidderminster.
A total of 400 cannabis plants, worth around £650,000 (just over $ 1 million) according to preliminary estimates, were seized during the raid, the police said.
The operation, which took place Wednesday morning, involved 30 police officers and staff, including dog handlers.
“While executing the warrant at Drakelow Tunnels, we discovered a large and sophisticated cannabis growing operation,” said Kevin Purcell, North Worcestershire Superintendent, local paper The Shuttle reported. “Although the plants will need to be tested, it would appear that this seizure has prevented a large quantity of illegal drugs ending up on the streets.”
The factory was well equipped, as it had plenty of hydroponic hardware, including heating, lighting and ventilation fans.
Prior to the raid, a 45-year-old man was arrested in Kidderminster on suspicion of money laundering and being involved in the production and supply of illegal drugs.
The operation was part of a new three-year anti-drug strategy, which the local police began implementing in September, seeking the “reduction of supply and demand achieved through the identification and dismantling of trafficking and dealer networks, and the closure of drug factories or farms.”
The Drakelow Tunnels, dug in the early 1940s, are considered a monument to the UK’s military history.
The underground facility, with a floor space of 23,000 square meters amid tunnels stretching 6 kilometers, was used to produce machine parts during World War II.
In the late 1950s, the UK Home Office turned the tunnels into emergency government offices in case of a nuclear attack.
The current owner of Drakelow Tunnels has recently announced plans to turn the site into a museum.
Police officers were briefed in advance on the historic nature of the venue and the operation was carried out in a way to cause as little disturbance as possible within the complex, Purcell said.
Cannabis remains the most seized illegal drug in England. According to Home Office statistics, 12,267 kilograms of marijuana and 507,401 cannabis plants were confiscated by the police and border service last year.
UK police bust $1 mn marijuana factory in historic underground nuclear bunker
http://isbigbrotherwatchingyou.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/443aa__cannabis.si.jpg
The UK police has shut down a large, well-equipped cannabis factory worth over $ 1 million, hidden underground in the historic Drakelow Tunnels, which was used as a shelter for local government back in the 1950s in case of nuclear attack.
The police had to descend deep underground to close down the secret facility, hidden in the tunnels north of the English town of Kidderminster.
A total of 400 cannabis plants, worth around £650,000 (just over $ 1 million) according to preliminary estimates, were seized during the raid, the police said.
The operation, which took place Wednesday morning, involved 30 police officers and staff, including dog handlers.
“While executing the warrant at Drakelow Tunnels, we discovered a large and sophisticated cannabis growing operation,” said Kevin Purcell, North Worcestershire Superintendent, local paper The Shuttle reported. “Although the plants will need to be tested, it would appear that this seizure has prevented a large quantity of illegal drugs ending up on the streets.”
The factory was well equipped, as it had plenty of hydroponic hardware, including heating, lighting and ventilation fans.
Prior to the raid, a 45-year-old man was arrested in Kidderminster on suspicion of money laundering and being involved in the production and supply of illegal drugs.
The operation was part of a new three-year anti-drug strategy, which the local police began implementing in September, seeking the “reduction of supply and demand achieved through the identification and dismantling of trafficking and dealer networks, and the closure of drug factories or farms.”
The Drakelow Tunnels, dug in the early 1940s, are considered a monument to the UK’s military history.
The underground facility, with a floor space of 23,000 square meters amid tunnels stretching 6 kilometers, was used to produce machine parts during World War II.
In the late 1950s, the UK Home Office turned the tunnels into emergency government offices in case of a nuclear attack.
The current owner of Drakelow Tunnels has recently announced plans to turn the site into a museum.
Police officers were briefed in advance on the historic nature of the venue and the operation was carried out in a way to cause as little disturbance as possible within the complex, Purcell said.
Cannabis remains the most seized illegal drug in England. According to Home Office statistics, 12,267 kilograms of marijuana and 507,401 cannabis plants were confiscated by the police and border service last year.
Image Credit: Flickr / Carlos Gracia
By: Elizabeth Renter,
State by state, the marijuana laws in this country are changing, but this isn’t the only place reconsidering pot prohibition. Marijuana legalization support is growing around the world. Recently, Uruguay became the latest to “edge toward” a government owned and regulated marijuana industry. Medical marijuana in Canada is similarly making significant strides towards making this healing herb a legal choice for millions. A recent debate at the Economist suggested legalization should be a global endeavor, with thousands weighing in.
Economist debates put two high profile experts against each other, arguing different sides of an issue. Readers are invited to weigh in and vote for the arguments that are most convincing.
On the side of global legalization was Ethan Nadelmann, founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance. On the other side, founding director of the Centre for Drug Misuse Research Neil McKeganey was against marijuana legalization. With marijuana being a hot button issue no matter how you look at it, both had to bring some convincing arguments to the table.
McKeganey, as most opponents do, focused on the belief that marijuana legalization would increase marijuana usage, and with studies linking consumption to schizophrenia, he argued, this could create a sad state of affairs. For fear of minimizing the issue of adults being able to choose whether or not to consume a plant in their day-to-day life, McKeganey characterized legalization as a form of “extremism”.
With a long list of arguments for the elimination of pot prohibition, Nadelmann hit them all in his opening remarks—from the discriminatory foundations of prohibition (initially crafted to keep Mexican migrants and Black Americans “in their place”), to the fact that prohibition has made marijuana more popular than ever—Nadelmann set up numerous arguments for global marijuana legalization.
“Marijuana prohibition is unique among criminal laws. No other law is enforced so widely and harshly yet deemed unnecessary by such a substantial portion of the populace.”
Marijuana is a plant which can have psychoactive effects when consumed by certain methods, but it also has a laundry list of beneficial health effects—many of which have yet to be explored fully simply due to prohibition and a lack of funding. Even more than its health effects, however, marijuana legalization is an issue of liberty and freedom
As Nadelmann said in his opening remarks:
“But when all is said and done, the principal, and most principled, argument in favour of ending marijuana prohibition is this: whether or not I or anyone else consumes marijuana should be none of the government’s business—so long as I’m not behind the wheel of a car or otherwise putting others at risk. It’s time to get the government off my property and out of both my pockets and my body when it comes to marijuana. Enough is enough.”
So, who won the debate? While Economist debates are hardly scientific surveys or polls, Nadelmann won with 92% of readers supporting his arguments. Yes, most people support marijuana legalization. If this kind of debate can be recreated in a well-publicized forum, there’s no telling where it could go and the ultimate effect it could have.
Credits:
This article first appeared on Natural Society.
Picture: Hupu2 (CC)
Published a day prior to the legislative temper tantrum:
One of the first victims of a government shutdown may be a congressional hearing on marijuana laws.
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s Subcommittee on Government Operations is scheduled to hold a hearing Wednesday on the White House’s drug control policy “in the wake of the DOJ’s decision not to enforce federal marijuana laws in states that have legalized it,” the panel said in a statement. “This hearing will also explore the effects of legalization, including the social costs of increased marijuana use.”
But if there’s no agreement on a federal budget, the hearing will be postponed, the committee said.
Nutella released a new cookbook yesterday. Coincidence? We think not. Picture: Organicares/Instagram Source: Supplied
Nugtella is a hazelnut spread laced with hash oil. Just don’t eat too much! Picture: Organicares/Instagram Source: Supplied
STONERS will want to buy a ticket to California immediately.
A company in California has create a chocolatey spread similar to Nutella that is laced with medical marijuana, food blog Foodbeast reported.
The product, Nugtella, was the creation of Organicares, who specialise in “medical edibles”.
The magical spread is infused with 320mg of hash oil, giving a whole new meaning to a special treat.
Unfortunately it is only available to purchase from medical marijuana dispensaries so you’ll need to know a friend with a prescription.
The spread comes just a week after Nutella announced that it would be launching its official cookbook, which teaches people how to make all kinds of yummy desserts. News.com.au would never recommend substituting Nutella with Nugtella, but we suspect we won’t have to.
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Saundra Young
CNN
August 9, 2013
By most standards Matt and Paige Figi were living the American dream. They met at Colorado State University, where they shared a love of the outdoors. After getting married, the couple bought a house and planned to travel the world.
They did travel, but their plans changed when their first child was born in 2004.
Max was 2 when they decided to have another child. The couple got the surprise of their lives when an ultrasound revealed not one but two babies. Charlotte and Chase were born October 18, 2006.
This article was posted: Friday, August 9, 2013 at 5:27 pm
Tags: health, natural health
Kens 5 News
August 2, 2013
More than 1,300 pounds of marijuana was seized by the Del Rio Sector Border Patrol agents in a series of five incidents, an estimated $ 1.1 million worth, according to a press release.
From July 23 to July 31agents made immigration and linewatch stops at the Eagle Pass North Station. During these stops agents found hundreds of pounds of marijuana concealed in duffel bags, trash bags and underneath tarps, according to a press release.
A case on August 1in Carrizo Spring station also resulted in hundreds of pounds of marijuana turned over.
This article was posted: Friday, August 2, 2013 at 4:57 pm
Tags: business, government corruption
WBTV
June 19, 2013
Police in northeast Charlotte say they were forced to shoot a teenager in a gang-related undercover drug operation. The teen has since died.
[...] Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department Chief Rodney Monroe says the shooting involved a marijuana drug deal between an undercover officer, informant and two teenage suspects.
Jaquaz Walker, 17, shot the informant in the shoulder after he tried to rob him. That’s when police say the undercover officer shot Walker in the head. Walker died at Carolinas Medical Center Tuesday night. Police tell WBTV his family has been notified.
RELATED: Charlotte, N.C., Police Chaplains Told to Stop Praying in Jesus’ Name – http://www.prisonplanet.com/charlotte-n-c-police-chaplains-told-to-stop-praying-in-jesus%E2%80%99-name.html
This article was posted: Wednesday, June 19, 2013 at 12:44 pm
Tags: police state
