Prohibition Is Not Over

"Prohibition" on PBS - TV schedule

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Guns And Drugs Don't Mix

Guns and drugs don't mix according to the ATF. If you live in a state where medical marijuana is legal you can go to prison for up to two years if you use medical marijuana and own a firearm. A gun rights group and a medical marijuana group are getting together to oppose this measure.

Gary Marbut, president of the Montana Shooting Sports Association, and Kate Cholewa and Chris Lindsey, board members of Montana Cannabis Industry Association, separately blasted the Sept. 21 letter sent by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives of the U.S. Justice Department to federally licensed firearms dealers.

“It is egregious that people may be sentenced to years in a federal prison only because they possessed a firearm while using a state-approved medicine,” Marbut said in a statement from the association.

Cholewa said: “In fact, the policy goes so far as to say even being in possession of a medical cannabis card forfeits a citizen’s Second Amendment rights whether or not that person ever followed through and used cannabis for their condition.”

Chris Lindsey, a lawyer specializing in medical marijuana cases, wrote: “With a stroke of a pen, the Department of Justice has suspended the Second Amendment for those who use medical cannabis.”

Rep. Diane Sands, D-Missoula, who headed an interim legislative panel that studied the issue last year, called the letter “further evidence that federal marijuana law trumps any Montana legislation, initiative or court action attempting to create protected medical use for marijuana.”

“The only viable action open to Montana and other states is to change the federal law,” Sands said.

I have been trying for years to get gun groups to recognize the threats to their rights that the Drug War has created by posting things like Guns And Weed - The Road To Freedom, to no avail. The only gun group to get it was Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership. Evidently the ATF is bound and determined to help me get my message across by direct action. Thanks ATF!

H/T Drug Policy Forum of Texas

Guns And Weed - The Road To Freedom

From the above trailer: "I was an undercover narcotics officer [secret police - Ed.], the Drug War is nothing but a farce."



Suggested by a post at Libertarian Punk. Commenter Bob Mulroy recommended the site in the comments at Guns And Drugs.

Update: You can watch the whole movie here. Just click on the Play All button at the top and the whole movie will automatically play in segments. The www site for the movie is here.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Liberty

Now there is a novel concept. Practically unknown in America these days. The subject came up because of a comment TMI made to Eric's post the feather yankee doodle stuck in his cap is now a federal felony!. Let me quote the bit by TMI that is pertinent:

Gary Becker’s seminal work in crime and punishment are tested, nearly every day, by Simon. What are the things that make behaviours shift? What are the things that make behaviours exceed the range of normal law enforcement? And, have we adopted ranges of “normal” law enforcement and subsequent punishments in line with the policies we have legislated?

Imagine, if simple possession of marijuana was a death offense, and the likelihood of experiencing the death penalty within 120 days of the discovery of the offense was assured. At or near one-hundred percent. How many of us would be willing to purchase or hold marijuana?

My reply went something like this:

TMI,

Thank you.

These days I'm more interested in the moral dimension. I have good evidence that the idea of "addiction" is an incorrect concept. Drugs do not make people "addicts". Pain makes people addicts.

To wit:

People in chronic pain chronically take pain relievers.

The question for me then is: is it moral to punish people in pain for relieving their pain with drugs?

The problem is that most people of my generation +/- don't consider PTSD "real" pain. i.e. "emotional" pain is not real. "Real" pain only comes from visible wounds.

If you look at the whole Drug War through the lens of pain what "addicts" do makes a lot of sense. No other concept explains why the laws don't work.

As to sure punishment. It won't work either. Pain is a very powerful motivating force.

====

So let me ask you: is it the right thing to do to put to death women who relieve the pain of childhood sexual abuse with drugs?

You can't just work in the economic dimension. That is a sterile approach.

====

Bottom line is: if you formulate the problem incorrectly the solution will not work.

The proper question is: what should be done with people in pain? How much pain for how long?

Morphine for a stubbed toe is obviously not a very good idea.

=====

The best idea I can come up with is that each adult has to decide for himself what the best course of action is in his own case. Liberty.

A Gringo In Mexico Gives Advice

Fred On Everything (FOE) has a most amusing post up and you should read the whole thing. The post is about the drug WAR generally and how to win it. He has lots of suggestions. I liked this one particularly. First the set up:

I see that I may have to take over drug policy for the United States. Maybe not, though. I’ll hold off if I get a call from Michelle Leonhart, who runs the Drug Enforcement Administration, asking me how she ought to do her job, and what she ought to think about Mexico, and what is wrong with Washington’s whole approach to mind candy. (I’m expecting her call any day now.) I will answer as follows:

Now, look here, milady. You need to re-think this drug thing. It’s not going well. It isn’t going to go well. The Bare Skirmish on Drugs (BSkOD) may have seemed a good idea when Reefer Madness came out, or even in the Sixties a half century ago. Now, no. Everyone with the brains of a microwave oven knows that DEA serves only to keep prices up so that the narcos in Mexico can afford classy military weaponry and gorgeous mansions.

Well he goes on a ways in the same vein and then he comes to what I think is his most brilliant suggestion.

So you see, Michelle, the DEA is like a man sitting on a raft in mid-Pacific, trying to outlaw water.

Now we come, tangentially anyway, to Mexico. It is being torn apart, toward God knows what future, because it lives next to the world’s most gluttonous market for drugs. It seems to Mexicans that Washington is forcing them to die for a BSkoD that Washington won’t fight on its own soil.

Is this unreasonable, lady? A couple of things you might do to persuade Mexico that you really want to do your part.

First, why don’t you put a youngish DEA guy, or gal, in each of about ten universities chosen at random: say, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Harvard Medical, Julliard, Haverford, Berkeley, UCLA, and Dartmouth. (I say they’re random). See, young agents could rig their apartments for sound and video. In six months you could arrest hundreds of children of senators, Fortune Five Hundred CEOs, and people high in the Executive branch. You could give them the same sentences that slum blacks get. Think of the headlines: “Senator’s Kid Gets Five Years in the General Population in Leavenworth.” Is that a concept or what?

Yes Fred. It is a concept. I like it. Why do Black kids get herded into prisons for 5 to 20 and the Upper Crust (is there something wrong with their plastic teeth?) get slaps on the wrist or a month or two in a plush private rehab? I guess it is a WHIP type concept. We cycle the poor into jail and the rich stoners can become President. All to better to beat the poor into submission. And WHIP? It is a very old story. Wealth Has Its Privileges. The best money can buy.

Another thing you could do to demonstrate your good faith: You could ask Congress to legislate that people selling drugs to children in high school be tried as adults. Since most of these dealers are themselves in high school, you could put the daughters of lawyers in women’s slam in places like the Cook County Jail. Think how many interesting things they could learn about compulsory lesbian sex.

I mean, you are sincere about wanting to punish dealers, aren’t you?

I'll bet the jailers could make a fortune selling the videos.

And here we come to the crux of the matter. A war with Mexico.

OK. More and more I see suggestions that the US send troops to Mexico to Right Wrongs and make Mexico into Iowa. The Pentagon is sneaking psychopaths of the CIA and “retired” military men into the country, apparently wanting to showcase its systemic incapacity to win any war against anybody at all. Here is a chance for you to do something useful. DEA agents are not idiots, but colonels are.

You might try to drill into the Pentagonal mind—I would suggest a cold chisel and a sledge hammer—that Mexico differs in a fundamental way from the military’s other comic efforts at martial enterprise: The narcos have a million gringo hostages. Or maybe five hundred thousand. Nobody is sure exactly how many Americans live in Mexico. They—we—are very soft targets. We live in a sort of sprawl across Mexico, concentrated in places well known, grouping in known bars, unarmed and utterly defenseless.

A minor contact I have with the bad guys says that, now, attacking Americans carries a death sentence from people who would carry it out with a blow torch over a period of days. “Oh no. Don’t fuck with the gringos,” says this guy. Like most Mexicans, the narcos figure the US is looking for a pretext to invade. They are happy with the current semi-partnership with Washington and don’t want interference.

I'm not going to tell you how it ends. You are going to have to click the link and find out for yourself.

H/T Classical Values commenter Frank via e-mail

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Regulatory Capture

This is a story of street level crime by officers of various government anti-drug organizations in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

After evidence of the officers’ misconduct came to light, federal agent Brandon McFadden pled guilty to drug conspiracy and testified against other TPD officers. An excerpt from former Agent McFadden’s guilty plea reveals his involvement in the scandal:

From January 7th of — to May of 2008, I conspired with others, including Tulsa police officer, Jeff Henderson, to distribute methamphetamine in the Northern District of Oklahoma. During the time period . . . I used the position as a special agent with ATF to further the drug conspiracy and abused my position as a special agent. During this time, myself and Henderson seized drugs and money which were kept for our own personal benefit, falsified investigative reports, and failed to document events, and obstruct justice through falsely [sic] testimony under oath and persuading other individuals to do the same.

Ah. But it gets better (or worse - depending)

Larry Barnes and his daughter, Larita, have been deeply affected by the Tulsa scandal. Larry and Larita were imprisoned because several TPD officers fabricated a drug buy and coached an informant to lie about the buy. The informant later recanted his testimony and admitted that TPD officers told him to lie. As a result, Larry and Larita Barnes have been released from prison.

However, Larry and Larita were not the only individuals affected by police corruption in Tulsa. Many more were wrongfully convicted based on the lies and false testimony of TPD officers. In fact, since 2009, almost 40 people have been released from prison or had their cases dismissed.

I'm sure this was just an isolated incident. After all, America has the most moral people and the most moral police in the world. Especially in Oklahoma. The Buckle of the Bible Belt. Just a few bad apples. Besides it is probably worse elsewhere in the country. Uh. Oh.

The Real Purpose

Patriot Action Network is going on about the Government plan (implemented) to deliver guns to the Mexican Drug Cartels.

One commenter said:

The real purpose of "Fast and furious" program was to shut down the Texas gun shops.

To which I responded.

The real purpose of the Drug War is to attack the 2nd Amendment.

Had enough yet?

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Houston, We Have A Problem

It looks like some police in Houston love pot as much as the people they arrest for it.

Police say Hill told them he was a weed dealer and that he'd just taken delivery of his supply earlier that day.

Three other people in the apartment were allegedly holding drugs, and a thorough search of the apartment turned up a couple of shotguns, an unknown quantity of 'shrooms, around $940 cash, a little more weed, and an assortment of bongs and pipes.

What this official report does not mention specifically is the tray of pot brownies Hill says the cops seized and ate right in front of him and his fellow suspects.

All of this would emerge in Hill's conversations with his lawyers Daniel Cahill and J. Julio Vela. Cahill was disbelieving at first -- although only 19, Hill has a little bit of a precocious record in drug arrests -- but investigated his client's claims nevertheless. And now he says he has what might be a smoking gun.

Hill told Cahill that after eating the brownies and arresting him and two of his buddies, the cops got on their in-car computers and started squawking about how stoned they were.

KTRK's Ted Oberg got a hold of the transcripts:

"So HIGH...Good munchies," typed one at 2:44 a.m.

And why shouldn't they get baked on pot brownies? After all the supply is free to police. As long as they are willing to steal. If they had avoided arresting the kid for dealing pot they could have gotten away with it. Just a cost of doing business. In fact the police could probably have arranged for a regular supply free of charge had they thought the whole deal through.

A Local Comes Out Against Marijuana Prohibition

As you may or may not know Black support for the pResident is falling off a cliff. If the Head Man doesn't do something about it soon he is a goner in 2012. So imagine my surprise when a local Black who writes an editorial column for the Rockford Register Star, Ed Wells, has come out against Marijuana Prohibition. You can find details at the link.

What other Blacks are against Drug Prohibition to varying degrees?

The NAACP

Blacks in Government

Charles Blow at the New York Times

Wilton D. Alston at Lew Rockwell

It looks to me like the Black community is begging the President to change his tune on Drug Prohibition. It will shore up his waning support among Democrats and if the discussions around here are any indication it will split the Republicans. The Republicans who stick with Prohibition will be branded racists. That should motivate college kids who are itching to recreate the anti-racism of the 60s. Not to mention that enforcement is targeted at their age group.

The President will have a perfect opportunity to change his tune following the showing of the Ken Burns movie “Prohibition” about Alcohol Prohibition airing on PBS starting on this Sunday 2 Oct. Check your local listings. And follow the news on it (I probably will be posting copiously on it - sorry about that).

It should be a very exciting election season.

H/T a friend.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Don't She Look Good In Leather

A History Of Weed

One interesting stat from the video: THC concentration in average pot in the 1960s was about 1%. In 2008 it was 9.6%. Does that mean people are 10X more stoned these days? Nope. They use roughly 1/10th as much weed by weight. Where an ounce might have sufficed in the 60s currently 1/8th of an ounce will do. Adjusted for inflation and THC content the price of weed has hardly changed at all in 40+ years.

Veterans Need Our Help

First a little background on the source, Stars and Stripes newspaper.

Stars and Stripes is a news source that operates from inside the United States Department of Defense but is editorially separate from it. The First Amendment protection which Stars and Stripes enjoys is safeguarded by Congress to whom an independent ombudsman, who serves the readers' interests, regularly reports.

So what you are about to read comes from a semi-official source.

Former platoon sergeant says marijuana was 'the only thing' that controlled his PTSD

Jamey Raines tried marijuana once or twice in high school, but he said he had no interest in it after he joined the Army in 2000. He served in heavy combat in Iraq from 2003 to 2004 and rose through the ranks from private to platoon sergeant. Along the way he drank and smoked cigarettes like many infantrymen do, but he said he was “100 percent against” using any drug in any form.

Five years out of the military as of next month, however, Raines has changed his mind.

Using marijuana, he said, was the only way he could control his intense anger and anxiety as a result of post-traumatic stress disorder. The drug was a crutch, but a necessary one, he said, and it enabled him to go to college, earn his degree and land a decent job.

It succeeded, he said, where the fistfuls of prescription medications that Army doctors doled out failed him.

“The only way that I got through all that was that I smoked pot every day,” said Raines, 29, now living in Ohio. He thought of it as “the lesser of two evils [that] made it easier to go out in public, to talk to people, and easier to let things go when people say stupid [stuff].”

I assume the the brackets "[]" are to make the paper family friendly. So fill in the blanks.

This is not the first time military people have come out in favor of keeping pot legal. I'm not talking about individuals. I'm talking about an official US Military Commission. The following is taken from: The Military Surgeon Volume 73 - July-December 1933. The commission studied pot smoking by US Military personnel in the Panama Canal Zone.

B. Common effects of mariajuana described by users:

1. Mild intoxication. (Smokers use different terms to describe their sensations, the most common being "brushed up," "high," "happy," "peppy," "rosy," "dopy," "satisfied.")

2. Increased appetite.

3. Induction of sleep an hour or two after smoking.

4. Only five, or 15 per cent, stated they missed mariajuana when deprived of it.

5. Twenty-four, or 71 per cent, stated they preferred tobacco to mariajuana.

6. These soldiers stated that mariajuana was cheap and easy to procure in Panama and that they used it for "a pleasant pastime," usually during hours off duty when they had nothing else to do to amuse themselves. They stated that practically all recruits tried mariajuana and those who like it usually continued its use. Their average estimate of the number of habitual mariajuana smokers in their respective organizations was approximately 10 per cent.

We now know that the incidence of PTSD in the general population is about 10%. It can go as high as 20% to 25% among combat veterans. So the habitual use or "missing it" numbers fits well with what we know today.

So what was the final conclusion of the report?

RECOMMENDATIONS

1.The present military regulations prohibiting the introduction, sale, possession, or use of mariajuana on military reservations should continue in force, as they are believed to restrict the use of mariajuana among soldiers.

2. With the evidence obtained and considered by the committee no recommendations for further legislative action to prevent the sale or use of mariajuana in the Canal Zone, Panama, are deemed advisable under existing conditions.

Of course at the time the report was written marijuana was legal for any desired use in the US. It wasn't outlawed until 1937.

Our veterans need our help and yet so many of my "I'm on your side" friends say "not now" it might ruin our election chances. What about the chances of those suffering veterans my friends? What about them?

If you are into petitioning the White House here is the place to go: Allow United States Disabled Military Veterans access to medical marijuana to treat their PTSD

A little Panama music for the enjoyment of fans.



Cross Posted at Power and Control

Hemp Oil Cures Cancer

But according to our Congress marijuana has NO valid medical uses. We do have the smartest Congress money can buy.

kurogroves.com

Run From The Cure - video. For those of you with a heart condition look about 5 minutes into the video.

Also see my post The War On Cancer Patients.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Cannabis For Life Extension

I knew the narrator Peter Coyote back in the day.

Patients Out Of Time - medicalcannabis.com

Patients Out of Time is pleased to be a contributer to Len Richmond's important new film, "What If Cannabis Cured Cancer", which features video of Raphael Mechoulam, PhD and Robert Melamede, PhD from our 2004 National Clinical Conference on Cannabis Therapeutics. Patients Out Of Time - cancer

Here are some text resources:

NIH - Cannabinoids and Cancer

NIH - Cannabinoids and Heart Disease

Also see Marijuana IS Medicine for more links.

That should give you some resources for further research.

Cross Posted at Power and Control