The New York Times, the historically credible newspaper that sold its soul to Team Bush fascism and helped lie and cheerlead this nation into an illegal occupation of a non-threatening country, has apparently noticed that America's laws about the cannabis plant (known to most ignorant people as "marijuana", a racist term tagged to the plant back in the early days of reefer madness and an age-old example of using brown-skinned people to cause dumb informationally-challenged Americans to fear, has now called for the elimination of a law that bars petty drug possession offenses from college aid. I guess once in awhile the NYT has an editor whose face isn't buried up Team Bush's dirty ass.

Anything that keeps ex-offenders from attending college makes it more likely that they will be caught in the revolving door that leads to prison. Tens of thousands of people have been pushed in that direction since the 1990s when Congress passed a law that barred even minor drug offenders from receiving federal education aid. The law applies even to offenses so minor that they are normally punished by probation, a small fine or community service.

Typical of drug war propaganda, the word "drugs" is used as much as possible so that the specific drugs are not part of the discussion. The word is intended to mean "bad things" and is specifically overused to cover up the fact that 90% of all "anti-drug" efforts in the country are focused on cannabis, the plant many folks want relegalized.

People have been working hard for relegalization in this country and the overview of that history tells a story we know all-too-well today: the GOP does what it wants and the Democratic party plays right along, fabulously unconcerned about you or me.

There have been Dems who try to fix this issue, Barny Frank and Dennis Kucinish among them, but they wield little power and too many Dems are still stuck in the Nixon-era propaganda talking points about this useful plant.

So people have worked hard to get issues on ballots and usually when the issue gets on the ballot, it passes. Not always, but it's got a better batting average than Barry Bonds and has achieved it solely by following the rules of this country.

Just recently, people in Denver Colorado sent the message to the city: Denver Voters Again Tell Police To Back Off On Pot. This recent vote is the second time they have sent this message to city leaders, who are invariably reefer-mad adherents to this arcane law.

The vote was the third marijuana initiative sponsored by Safer Alternative for Enjoyable Recreation and its outspoken leader, Mason Tvert. He noted the initiative passed despite opposition from editorials in The Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News as well as from city officials. "Everyone said vote 'no' and the people of this city still voted 'yes,"' Tvert said. "I think that sends a clear message that people want change."

More from The Denver Post

More than half of Denver voters appeared to favor an initiative making marijuana the city's lowest law enforcement priority, according to early ballot returns. If the result holds, the mayor must now appoint a panel to monitor how marijuana cases are handled by the police and city prosecutors and issue a report. **** Tvert says the measure was motivated by what he says are overzealous police who continue to cite adults for possessing under an ounce of marijuana despite a law that allows simple pot possession in Denver. Denver police and prosecutors say possessing marijuana still violates state and federal law.

Police, Prosecutors and Republicans are the super-powerful minority that still cling desperately to the old reefer madness fictions, partly because some of them really are dumber than a bag of hammers and they actually believe all the propaganda. It's a shame, too. Many of the people in this sad demographic are wealthy, well-educated and politically powerful, but where reality-based knowledge about the cannabis should be there's nothing but ignorance, bullshit, and superstitious thinking. And that's a giant part of why cannabis is still illegal in this country.

Other countries have a better relationship with reality

Elsewhere in the world, the Netherlands is extending their medical marijuana program another 5 years:

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands: The Dutch Health Ministry announced plans Wednesday to extend its experimental medical marijuana program for five years, despite setbacks. Under the program, launched in 2003, standardized marijuana is grown by government-licensed growers under controlled conditions and sold by prescription in pharmacies. ut few patients, even armed with a doctor's prescription, bought the regulated weed since they could buy it at a third of the price in "coffee shops," where it remains illegal but tolerated if sold in small amounts. The medical marijuana plan was meant to allow the growers licensed by the ministry's Bureau for Medical Cannabis to build a customer base and eventually take over production from illegal growers. It also would give companies a chance to develop and register cannabis-based prescription drugs.

My....how advanced.

Working WITH Big Pharma to HELP it develop MEDICINES from cannabis, versus the mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging abject stupidity of our "system" where the cops and DEA act as profit enforcers for Big Pharma, a gigantic contributor to the GOP. They fight medical marijuana laws tooth and nail. The DEA routinely draws weapons on sick people who are struggling to adhere to medical marijuana aws that already exist in this country.

The GOP holds reefer madness dearly close to its heart. The Democrats job is to make sure the GOP gets what it wants and they have performed beautifully. They have turned into to stellar supporters for the GOP's anti-America agenda. (Some of our Democratic leaders are so supportive of the GOP I await THEIR homosexual bathroom scandals.)

Won't legalizing marijuana cause an explosion of crime?

Some informationally-challenged Americans ask this question: "What happens when marijuana is legal? Will their be an explosion of crime?"

No, folks, there won't be "an explosion of crime".

Not that I expect the informationally-challenged to grasp this, but quite the opposite will occur. But here goes, anyway.....

Marijuana prohibition CAUSES and CREATES the crime that the propagandists report as caused by the plant itself. Why? It's simple. Making pot illegal makes it worth a LOT of money. The harsher the enforcement of the laws, the more money there is to be made in trafficking. The higher the profits the worse the character of those who want to make them.

Like this school bus driver who appears to have been dealing weed from her friggin' bus!

A school-bus driver who was hailed as a hero six years ago when she saved the lives of 22 children after a traffic accident was arrested Tuesday afternoon after authorities said they found marijuana and a loaded handgun on her bus. Cheryl Mooring, 52, of Spanaway, was arrested just before picking up children at the end of the school day, said Pierce County sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer. He said her blood-alcohol content was above the state's legal limit of .08 percent. **** Deputies found a loaded .40-caliber handgun underneath Mooring's seat and several packaged baggies of marijuana stashed in the bus first-aid kit, Troyer said.

The arrest came from an "anonymous tip". If cannabis was legal and regulated - as the far more dangerous and addictive tobacco and alcohol are - then this lady would not likely be exposing herself to such stiff penaties.

The profit from selling marijuana and other illegal drugs is the attraction to this activity. The harsher the enforcement the riskier the trafficking and the higher the profits. And it encourages real criminals to get involved when there is serious money to be made.

I will be interested to learn the outcome of this investigation, to see what was the motivation for her to carry weed and a huge handgun on a bus filled with children.

Tobacco far worse for teens than cannabis smoking

Where is the outrage about teen tobacco use? Why aren't people turning 20 shades of purple about teen-aged tobacco smoking?

Because they have not been trained to. There is no similar effort to dissuade teens from somking tobacco. There's some, but it is in no way comparable to reefer madness.

The informationally-challenged have been trained via years of reefer mad propaganda (which they accept without question, thus my pejorative term "informationally-challenged) raise the whine "What about the Childrennnnnnnnn?". It's such a shrill whine, but let's play along.

Not that science matters in America anymore, but, according to a recent study, Cigarettes are More of a Drag on Teens than Marijuana. This is reported in the Scientific American, for what that's worth:

Reefer madness? Apparently not, according to a new Swiss survey of students that concludes teenagers who smoke pot function better than those who also use tobacco. In addition, researchers at the University of Lausanne report in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, teens who only use marijuana are apparently more socially driven and have no more psychosocial problems than those who neither smoke nor toke.

Oh.. that stupid "Gateway Theory" championed by many, many informationally-challenged people as well as those with a vested interest in maintaining the propaganda meme, gets smashed again, not that it matters:

"The gateway theory hypothesizes that the use of legal drugs (tobacco and alcohol) is the previous step to cannabis consumption," the authors wrote. "However, recent research also indicates that cannabis use may precede or be simultaneous to tobacco use and that, in fact, its use may reinforce cigarette smoking or lead to nicotine addiction independently of smoking status."

Again we see tobacco as far more of a concern than cannabis, which is Reality.

There's no "cause and effect" to suggest that pot smoking leads to dying in an alley with a dirty needle in one's arm, the hallmark of the Gateway Theory proponents. But it does appear that cannabis smoking can be precipitated by and further encourage tobacco smoking.

Here's another report on the same study

The authors of the study are quick to point out that the study is not meant to trivialize the use of marijuana among teens. However, some of the stereotypical behaviors associated with marijuana use among teens could not be validated in this study.

"Stereotypical" has to men "those reported in the propaganda literature". They could not replicate any of the things all the scare-mongering asserts will happen.

Continuing:

Dr. J.C. Suris and colleagues at the University of Lausanne Switzerland analyzed Swiss students aged 16 to 20 years. A total of 5,263 students were included in the study, including 455 who smoked marijuana only, 1,703 who smoked both tobacco and marijuana and 3,105 who abstained from both substances. The study found that students who smoked marijuana only tended to be male, play sports, live with both parents and have good grades. They also were less likely to have been drunk in the past 30 days and most had not smoked marijuana more than once during the past 30 days. Teens who smoke both marijuana and tobacco were shown to be at higher risk for behavioral problems pointing to a strong need for prevention and intervention. Adolescents who smoked tobacco were more aggressive, more hyperactive, and tended to have more conduct problems upon entering the study than the adolescents who did not smoke.

Of course, this is Swiss society, not America. American values are a tad different than those of the Swiss.

I my work with adolescents, I have had the good fortune to interact with a couple non-American teens, including one from Denmark who lamented the "immaturity" of American teens and frequently asked me "what's wrong with them?".

The bottom line is that relegalization and regulation - making cannabis available just like tobacco and alcohol - is the only real choice in dealing with the cannabis plant. Arresting 800,000 Americans per year and clogging our courts and prisons with non-violent and otherwise law-abiding Americans is fit for ridicule, if it wasn't such a travesty of justice and such an affront to basic common sense.

Education is the key

From tobacco to heroin and unsafe sex, the answers to such issues lay in adequate and effective education.

To me there is no real excuse for people to start smoking something addictive like tobacco or using heroin. Both create disease for the body. Period. Not enough has been done to educate people about tobacco or heroin.

In both cases the US government has a vested interest in continuing to hook young people onto these substances.

Above-board, the US Federal Government has historically been deeply invested in tobacco profits. Under the radar the CIA is known to have trafficked heroin to create clandestine monies for God Only Knows What.

I am all for damaging all these business investments and increasing the overall health of the nation.

The new, emerging Democratic Party should be too.

Update [2007-11-8 15:55:19 by xxdr zombiexx]: This is big, too. Added on edit.

CBS: Critics say Drew Carey's career won't go up in smoke due to pot campaign

When Bob Barker was hosting the venerable television game show The Price is Right, he would end each program by encouraging viewers to make sure their pets were spayed or neutered. Now, CBS reports, the show's new host, comedian Drew Carey, has taken up a somewhat more controversial cause -- medical marijuana. "People that need it should be able to get it," Carey argues in a video produced by the libertarian Reason Foundation. In the video, Carey tours a California pharmacy that dispenses neatly packaged medical marijuana. "Ah. Smell that smell? It's the smell of freedom," says Carey as he enters the pharmacy. However, the marijuana is available by prescription only, and Carey himself does not actually smoke any in the video. Carey's efforts on behalf of medical marijuana are not expected to cause any problems for his relationship with The Price is Right. "Most of the audience sort of believes that most of the entertainers are a little bit out there and wacky anyway, the fact that he's advocating medical marijuana is actually a fairly reasonable stance that people in the medical community would be in favor of," said CBS entertainment contributor Jess Cagle.

"wacky" but reasonable. Only in America, eh?

The Smell of Freedom

Update [2007-11-9 7:51:12 by xxdr zombiexx]: I was surprised to see this still in the rec list today - the next day (11/9/07). It's very clear this is a vibrant issue that enjoys far more support than one would ever imagine. The naysayers and other unsupportive, negative perspectives are a small minority. This can be done. It can be done easily if they will just do it. I saw yesterday that the Congress "too busy to waste time on cannabis reform" had plenty of time to draft a resolution on a friggin' baseball game. They have time to do something more important.

More to come.

Peace out, my Friends!