Archives for posts with tag: Cannabis
“When I was under the influence of Cannabis, I began to question my government. I questioned its legitimacy, its authority, and its control over our daily lives. I then knew why Cannabis is illegal. It wakes people up.” – Author Unknown
“Cannabis is not a drug. Entheogens (mushrooms, salvia, etc.) are not drugs. Drugs are creations of Man. Anything that grows naturally is not a creation of Man; it is a creation of whatever Higher Power(s) is/are out there. Anything that is naturally on this Earth is here for a reason.”
-Author Unknown
The following is a video that was sent to us by a member of Anonymous. We sincerely hope that you take the time to view it…
The following article is taken from the New York Newsday. We claim no ownership over this article; it is being posted purely for educational purposes. The legalization measures that passed are unprecedented…We’re hoping that this plays out well, because these legalizations have the power to change the world…
Washington and Colorado voters legalized recreational use of marijuana, making them the first U.S. states to decriminalize the practice.
Washington will allow those at least 21 years old to buy as much as one ounce (28 grams) of marijuana from a licensed retailer. Colorado’s measure allows possession of an ounce, and permits growing as many as six plants in private, secure areas.
Oregon voters rejected a similar measure.
“The voters have spoken and we have to respect their will,” Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper said in a statement. “This will be a complicated process, but we intend to follow through. That said, federal law still says marijuana is an illegal drug so don’t break out the Cheetos or Goldfish too quickly.” Support for marijuana’s recreational use built on measures that allow it for medical purposes in one-third of U.S. states. Previous attempts to legalize pot through ballot measures failed in California, Alaska, Oregon, Colorado and Nevada since 1972, according to the Denver-based National Conference of State Legislatures.
A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Colorado said federal law was not affected by the vote.
“The Department of Justice’s enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act remains unchanged,” said Jeff Dorschner in a statement. “We are reviewing the ballot initiative and have no additional comment at this time.”
NEW LEAF
Washington, Colorado and Oregon were among six states with marijuana on their ballots. In Massachusetts, residents approved a measure to allow medical use, while Arkansas voters rejected such a proposal. Medical-marijuana use is already permitted in 17 states and the District of Columbia. In Montana, a proposal to restrict the use of medical marijuana was leading, 57 percent to 43 percent, with 65 percent of ballots counted, the Associated Press said.
“It’s very monumental,” said Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, a Washington-based group that advocates legalization. “No state has ever done this. Technically, marijuana isn’t even legal in Amsterdam.” The approval of recreational pot goes a step beyond its acceptance in medical use. California was the first state to permit medical-marijuana when voters approved it in 1996. Federal prosecutors cracked down on the medical-marijuana industry in California last year, threatening landlords with jail if they didn’t evict the shops.
LOOKING ASKANCE
“Regardless of state laws to the contrary, there is no such thing as ‘medical’ marijuana under federal law,” according to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder released a letter a month before California voters considered a ballot measure to legalize recreational use of marijuana in 2010, saying the Justice Department would “vigorously” enforce federal law. The initiative failed.
A Justice Department spokesman, Dean Boyd, declined to comment Wednesday when reached by telephone.
In Washington state, decriminalization and new rules on driving under the influence take effect Dec. 6. The state liquor control board must adopt rules by Dec.
1, 2013 for licensing producers, processors and retailers.
The Washington measure may generate as much as $1.9 billion in revenue over five fiscal years, according to the state’s Office of Financial Management.
“Life lived in the absence of the psychedelic experience that primordial shamanism is based on is life trivialized, life denied, life enslaved to the ego.” – Terence McKenna
The following is an article from The Daily Caller, by Paul Armentano, the Deputy Director of NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws). We believe it greatly sums up why Cannabis should be legalized, and we hope you agree. No ownership is claimed over any of this material; it is being posted purely for educational purposes.
The views on marijuana legalization expressed in The Daily Caller last week by The Heritage Foundation’s Charles Stimson (“Why we shouldn’t legalize marijuana,” July 19, 2012) are woefully out of step with contemporary science and public opinion.
Never in modern history has there existed greater public support for ending the nation’s nearly century-long experiment with marijuana prohibition and replacing it with a system of legalization and regulation. A nationwide poll by Rasmussen Reports in May reported that 56 percent of Americans support “legalizing marijuana and regulating it like alcohol or cigarettes” versus only 34 percent who oppose the idea. Every age group polled, including those age 65 and older, favored the plant’s legalization over its continued criminalization. Separate nationwide polls by Gallup and Angus Reid report similar voter sentiment.
Americans have grown weary of the federal government’s war on cannabis. Their exasperation is justified. Since 1970, over 21 million U.S. citizens have been cited or arrested for violating marijuana laws. Yet despite this vigorous and fiscally taxing criminal enforcement, over 100 million Americans, including the president, acknowledge having consumed cannabis. One in ten admit that they use it regularly. Marijuana prohibition hasn’t dissuaded the general public from consuming cannabis or reduced its availability, especially among young people. But it has damaged the lives and careers of millions of people who were arrested and sanctioned for choosing to ingest a substance that is safer than alcohol or tobacco.
How much safer? A 2009 review published in the British Columbia Mental Health and Addictions Journal estimated that health-related costs per user are eight times higher for drinkers of alcoholic beverages than they are for those who use cannabis. For users of tobacco products, these costs are more than 40 times higher. Concluded the review, “In terms of [health-related] costs per user: tobacco-related health costs are over $800 per user, alcohol-related health costs are much lower at $165 per user and cannabis-related health costs are the lowest at $20 per user.” More recently, a February 2011 World Health Organization report concluded that alcohol consumption is responsible for a staggering four percent of all deaths worldwide, more than AIDS, tuberculosis or violence. No comparable statistics exist for cannabis, whose active compounds are relatively nontoxic to healthy cells and organs and are incapable of causing death by overdose.
This is not to say that marijuana is innocuous or without risk. It isn’t. But such concerns are hardly an argument in favor of the plant’s continued illegality. After all, there are numerous adverse health consequences associated with alcohol, tobacco and prescription pharmaceuticals — all of which are far more dangerous and costlier to society than cannabis — and it’s precisely because of these consequences that these products are legally regulated and their use is restricted to particular consumers and specific settings. A pragmatic regulatory framework that allows for the limited legal use of marijuana by adults would best reduce any risks associated with its use or abuse.
Likewise, regulation would positively address those risk factors largely associated with the substance’s criminal prohibition. For example, the marijuana sold on the street today is often of unknown purity and quality. Further, the product’s marketers are typically criminal entrepreneurs who may also introduce consumers to other, more potent illicit substances. Finally, the black market-inflated price of cannabis exposes its producers and consumers to potential crime and theft from other criminal entities looking to exploit the drug’s prohibition-inflated economic value. Each of these potential risks would be mitigated, if not eliminated, under a system of legalization and regulation.
Finally, a regulated system of cannabis legalization, complete with rules regarding who can legally provide and consume marijuana and at what age these activities are allowed, will make it easier, not harder, for parents, educators and members of the law enforcement community to rationally and persuasively discuss this subject with young people. Parents who may have tried cannabis during their youth (or who continue to use it occasionally) will no longer perceive societal pressures to lie to their children about their own behaviors. Rather, just as many parents and educators presently speak to young people objectively about the use of alcohol — instructing them that booze may be appropriate for adults in moderation, but that it remains inappropriate for young people — legalization will unburden adults and allow them to similarly speak rationally to adolescents about cannabis.
Need further proof that regulation works? Just look at our contemporary experience with tobacco — a legally marketed but deadly recreational drug. Teen use of cigarettes has recently fallen to its lowest levels in decades. Conversely, young people’s self-reported use of cannabis is rising and has now surpassed the number of teens consuming tobacco. Why the disparate trends? Simple. In short, it’s legalization, regulation and public education — coupled with the enforcement of age restrictions — that most effectively keeps mind-altering substances out of the hands of children.
Despite more than 70 years of federal prohibition and regardless of the fear-mongering of pundits like Charles Stimson, marijuana is here to stay. Let’s acknowledge this reality, cease ceding control of the marijuana market to untaxed criminal enterprises and put forward common-sense regulations governing cannabis’ use and production.
Paul Armentano is the deputy director for NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, and is the co-author of the book, “Marijuana Is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink?” (Chelsea Green, 2009)
The following article is from the Huffington Post; no ownership is claimed over any of this material, it is being posted purely for educational purposes.
OAKLAND — Locally-owned businesses along Oakland’s Telegraph Avenue flew green flags outside their storefronts Monday afternoon in solidarity with several hundred protesters outside nearby City Hall speaking out against President Barack Obama’s recent crackdown on medical marijuana.
“We are here today to send a message so loud that not even the president will be able to ignore it,” Steve D’Angelo, director of Oakland’s Harborside Health Care, which calls itself the “nation’s largest dispensary,” told the crowd as it erupted into cheers.
(SCROLL DOWN FOR PHOTOS)
Obama will swoop through the Bay Area for three fundraisers Monday evening, including a reception at Oakland’s Fox Theatre. And the local cannabis community is determined to make its presence known.
Since the Department of Justice began targeting medical marijuana businesses last fall, the East Bay city has been one of the hardest hit. In April, federal agents raided the iconic Oaksterdam University, forcing its owner, Richard Lee, to separate himself from the company he founded.
This month, U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag, the face of the Bay Area’s anti-marijuana movement, threatened to seize Harborside and its sister dispensary in San Jose.
“You can close down Oaksterdam, you can close down Harborside, and lots of things will happen,” said retired Orange County Superior Court Judge James P. Gray at the rally. “None of them will be good. People will still be getting marijuana, but it will be in illegal manners.
“Harborside has met the regulations,” Gray, the Libertarian Party candidate for vice president, continued. “They are law-abiding people.”
California became the first state to legalize marijuana for medicinal purposes when voters passed Proposition 215 in 1996. The industry has since flourished into a major moneymaker for the state, generating more than $100 million in tax revenue each year.
That began to change in October, after federal authorities announced they would target medical marijuana operations throughout California, claiming the businesses have ballooned into “numerous drug trafficking enterprises” and citing their proximity to parks and schools. In the past 10 months, hundreds of dispensaries have been forced to close, and thousands of jobs have been lost.
The Obama administration’s actions contradict the president’s messages on the campaign trail, where he assured voters he would not use federal resources to go after medical marijuana in states that had legalized it.
Parents at Monday’s demonstration said that they weren’t concerned with dispensaries’ locations near parks and schools, and that they wished federal officials would focus their attention elsewhere.
“As a mother, I demand our Justice Department focus on child predators, gun violence, and human traffickers,” Dale Sky Jones, executive chancellor of Oaksterdam University, said in a statement. “The action by the U.S. attorneys is tragic for the victims and families of violent crime that do not have the full attention of law enforcement; tragic for schools and emergency services that depend on millions in tax dollars from medical cannabis.”
Oakland has been plagued by unprecedented gun violence in recent weeks.
Other protesters were quick to point to the medical benefits of cannabis.
Evelyn Hoch has been caring for her best friend, a victim of stomach cancer, for 23 years. For two decades, her pain medication “turned her into a zombie,” Hoch explained. Then she tried medical marijuana, and was able to cut down on other narcotics by 50 percent.
“She’s not a well person,” Hoch said. “But she’s so much better. She has a little bit of a life again.”
Hoch’s friend isn’t alone — Monday’s demonstration was joined by many activists suffering from terminal illnesses who claim medical marijuana is their best antidote.
“Don’t take away our medicine,” Oakland resident Randy Von Gogh, whose girlfriend uses cannabis to alleviate pain from a paralysis that left her wheelchair-bound, said. “Obama’s gotta go back to what he’s said before. This is all just politics.”
To see more images from the protest, follow the link at the top of the page to go to the Huffington Post article.
Stand together in spirit with Oakland!
“If the words “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” don’t include the right to experiment with your own consciousness, then the Declaration of Independence isn’t worth the hemp it was written on.”
Terence McKenna is a great inspiration to the author of this blog; if you’d like to learn more about his ideas, please check out this book!
“Marijuana! Heavens, oh yeah. It’s just the stupidest law possible, given history. You don’t stop people from doing what they want to do, so forget about making it unlawful. You’re just making criminals out of people who aren’t engaged in criminal activity. And we’re spending zillions of dollars trying to fight a war we can’t win! We could make zillions, just legalize it and tax it like we do liquor. It’s stupid.”
-Morgan Freeman, on the criminalization of Cannabis
When God tells you that Cannabis prohibition is stupid, what does that really tell you?
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