It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
The Union: The Business Behind Getting High
page: 17
share:
This is something I have been working on for quite some time. This is a transcription of the documentary in the title. This is not for advocating use.
I would urge moderators to remove posts and ban individual offenders, and not lock or remove the entire thread. The easiest way an opponent of this
information can get this thread shut down is to break the rules, I've seen it happen in the past.
Here is the video:
And now some stuff transcribed from the video:
Marijuana History 101
*The first thing that strikes one as odd when looking at the history of marijuana, also known as cannabis, is how very much legal it once was. It wasn't only legal; it was one of the largest agricultural crops in the world, including the united states. You see cannabis, can also be hemp. Hemp is by and large the most robust, durable, natural soft fiber on the face of this planet.
*Up until 1883, and for thousands of years before, cannabis hemp was the largest agricultural crop in the world. Hemp had thousands of uses and products. The majority of fabric, lighting oil, medicines, paper, and fiber came from hemp.
*The first marijuana law to exist in the United States was a law ordering farmers to grow hemp.
*Benjamin Franklin used it to start one of America’s first paper mills.
*The first two copies of the Declaration of Independence were written on cannabis hemp paper. Up until the 1800's, most of the textiles in the United States were made with hemp. Fifty percent of medicine marketed in the last half of the 19th century was made from cannabis. Even Queen Victoria used the resin extracts from cannabis to alleviate her menstrual cramps.
*The funny thing about industrial hemp was you couldn’t get high from it. Yet it was lumped in with the following: Refer Madness
*This ended up leading to a law in the form of a tax stamp, a tax stamp that would not only include marijuana, but also hemp and cannabis medicines.
*It’s speculated that hemps potential for an abundance of new products was going to be in direct competition with other sources, and this added to the refer madness led to the eventual downfall of all forms of cannabis.Popular Mechanics magazine had prepared an article entitled, “New Billion Dollar Crop.” Hemp was touted as being able to produce more than 5,000 textile products from its thread like fiber, and more than 25,000 products from its cellulose, ranging from dynamite to cellophane. It’s superiority as a source for paper was also becoming known, especially with the development of hemp processing equipment.
*The new marijuana tax act was all fine and dandy except for one thing, if you wanted to grow hemp you needed to buy a stamp, but they weren’t giving any out, to anybody. So in effect all forms of cannabis became illegal. Things pretty much stayed this way until WWII when the government once again decided that hemp was a good thing and produced a video, “Hemp for Victory.”However by the time the war was over hemp again became bad and in 1948 when the marijuana law once again came into question congress recognized marijuana was made illegal for the wrong reason. It didn’t make people violent at all, it made them pacifists. The communists would use it to weaken America’s will to fight. Congress now voted to keep marijuana illegal for the exact opposite reason they had outlawed it in the first place.
*All through the years, report after report, commissioned by everybody, from the mayor of New York, to the President of the United States has come back with the view that marijuana should have no criminal penalty attached to it, yet marijuana remains as illegal today as it did nearly 70 years ago.
*In British Columbia alone it is speculated that the illegal marijuana trade brings in upwards of 7 billion dollars annually. Up to 85% of that product heads south to the United States.
*Having become an international issue, when do the lines blur? How does a massive underground market like this survive while remaining illegal? Why is marijuana illegal in the first place? If prohibition is meant to protect us, the most obvious question is: does the prohibition work?
[Senator Larry Campbell | Mayor of Vancouver, 2002-2005 | Former Member of RCMP Drug Squad]:
”If prohibition worked, if you could just wave a magic wand and say this is gone away, I’d be all over it, but the fact of the matter is that prohibition has NEVER worked.”
[Jack A. Cole | Director of L.E.A.P. | Former Undercover Narcotics Agent – 14 years]:
Jack: “Ya know we’ve been here before, you remember the first prohibition right? Which was?”
Interviewer: “The prohibition of alcohol.”
Jack: “No no, I am talking about the first prohibition, thou shall not partake of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and who was the big cop? [smiling – points upwards towards the sky], and how many people did he have to watch? Two.”
*Has the cannabis prohibition stopped people from using marijuana?
[Jeffrey Miron | Visiting Professor of Economics | Harvard University]:
“You get a phone call, it says I’m from the federal government and I want to know whether you’ve been using coc aine or marijuana recently presumably you might be getting a little bit of an underestimate.”
[Ed Rosenthal | Grow Expert | Faced 100 yrs in prison]:
“In 1937 there were estimated to be 55,000 marijuana users, and now there are estimated to be more than 50 million of them, that’s a hundred-thousand percent increase.”
*What are the negative effects of marijuana use:
Common response: “It’s been scientifically proven marijuana kills your brain cells.”
[Joe Rogan | Comedian | Fear Factor & UFC Host]:
“I thought the same thing, ya know I didn’t start smoking pot until about 5 years ago, I thought pot made you stupid. I bought into just as much as anybody did. I realized when I was like 30 years old that I was tricked. I was like you gotta be #ing kidding me."
[edit on 27-6-2010 by djzombie]
Here is the video:
Google Video Link |
And now some stuff transcribed from the video:
Marijuana History 101
*The first thing that strikes one as odd when looking at the history of marijuana, also known as cannabis, is how very much legal it once was. It wasn't only legal; it was one of the largest agricultural crops in the world, including the united states. You see cannabis, can also be hemp. Hemp is by and large the most robust, durable, natural soft fiber on the face of this planet.
*Up until 1883, and for thousands of years before, cannabis hemp was the largest agricultural crop in the world. Hemp had thousands of uses and products. The majority of fabric, lighting oil, medicines, paper, and fiber came from hemp.
*The first marijuana law to exist in the United States was a law ordering farmers to grow hemp.
*Benjamin Franklin used it to start one of America’s first paper mills.
*The first two copies of the Declaration of Independence were written on cannabis hemp paper. Up until the 1800's, most of the textiles in the United States were made with hemp. Fifty percent of medicine marketed in the last half of the 19th century was made from cannabis. Even Queen Victoria used the resin extracts from cannabis to alleviate her menstrual cramps.
*The funny thing about industrial hemp was you couldn’t get high from it. Yet it was lumped in with the following: Refer Madness
*This ended up leading to a law in the form of a tax stamp, a tax stamp that would not only include marijuana, but also hemp and cannabis medicines.
*It’s speculated that hemps potential for an abundance of new products was going to be in direct competition with other sources, and this added to the refer madness led to the eventual downfall of all forms of cannabis.Popular Mechanics magazine had prepared an article entitled, “New Billion Dollar Crop.” Hemp was touted as being able to produce more than 5,000 textile products from its thread like fiber, and more than 25,000 products from its cellulose, ranging from dynamite to cellophane. It’s superiority as a source for paper was also becoming known, especially with the development of hemp processing equipment.
*The new marijuana tax act was all fine and dandy except for one thing, if you wanted to grow hemp you needed to buy a stamp, but they weren’t giving any out, to anybody. So in effect all forms of cannabis became illegal. Things pretty much stayed this way until WWII when the government once again decided that hemp was a good thing and produced a video, “Hemp for Victory.”However by the time the war was over hemp again became bad and in 1948 when the marijuana law once again came into question congress recognized marijuana was made illegal for the wrong reason. It didn’t make people violent at all, it made them pacifists. The communists would use it to weaken America’s will to fight. Congress now voted to keep marijuana illegal for the exact opposite reason they had outlawed it in the first place.
*All through the years, report after report, commissioned by everybody, from the mayor of New York, to the President of the United States has come back with the view that marijuana should have no criminal penalty attached to it, yet marijuana remains as illegal today as it did nearly 70 years ago.
- *[1944 | New York | The LeGuardia Committee Report]
*[1968 | England | The Wooton Report]
*[1970 | Canada | The Le Dain Report]
*[1972 | United States | The Consumers Union Report on Licit and Illicit Drugs]
*[1972 | United States | The Shafer Report]
*[1975 | Ganja in Jamaica: A Medical Anthropological Study of Chronic Marijuana Use]
*[1980 | Cannabis in Costa Rica: A Study in Chronic Marijuana Use]
*[2002 | Canadian Senate | Cannabis: Our Position for a Canadian Public Policy]
*In British Columbia alone it is speculated that the illegal marijuana trade brings in upwards of 7 billion dollars annually. Up to 85% of that product heads south to the United States.
*Having become an international issue, when do the lines blur? How does a massive underground market like this survive while remaining illegal? Why is marijuana illegal in the first place? If prohibition is meant to protect us, the most obvious question is: does the prohibition work?
[Senator Larry Campbell | Mayor of Vancouver, 2002-2005 | Former Member of RCMP Drug Squad]:
”If prohibition worked, if you could just wave a magic wand and say this is gone away, I’d be all over it, but the fact of the matter is that prohibition has NEVER worked.”
[Jack A. Cole | Director of L.E.A.P. | Former Undercover Narcotics Agent – 14 years]:
Jack: “Ya know we’ve been here before, you remember the first prohibition right? Which was?”
Interviewer: “The prohibition of alcohol.”
Jack: “No no, I am talking about the first prohibition, thou shall not partake of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and who was the big cop? [smiling – points upwards towards the sky], and how many people did he have to watch? Two.”
*Has the cannabis prohibition stopped people from using marijuana?
[Jeffrey Miron | Visiting Professor of Economics | Harvard University]:
“You get a phone call, it says I’m from the federal government and I want to know whether you’ve been using coc aine or marijuana recently presumably you might be getting a little bit of an underestimate.”
[Ed Rosenthal | Grow Expert | Faced 100 yrs in prison]:
“In 1937 there were estimated to be 55,000 marijuana users, and now there are estimated to be more than 50 million of them, that’s a hundred-thousand percent increase.”
*What are the negative effects of marijuana use:
Common response: “It’s been scientifically proven marijuana kills your brain cells.”
[Joe Rogan | Comedian | Fear Factor & UFC Host]:
“I thought the same thing, ya know I didn’t start smoking pot until about 5 years ago, I thought pot made you stupid. I bought into just as much as anybody did. I realized when I was like 30 years old that I was tricked. I was like you gotta be #ing kidding me."
[edit on 27-6-2010 by djzombie]
[1974 | Dr. Heath/Tulane Study]:
*Ronald Reagan announces the most reliable scientific sources say permanent brain damage is one of the inevitable results of the use of marijuana.
*Monkeys pumped full of marijuana, apparently 30 joints a day, had begun to atrophy and die after 90 days. Brain damage was determined after counting the dead brain cells of both monkeys who had been subjected to the marijuana and ones who had not.
*This study became the foundation of the government and other special interest groups claim that marijuana kills brain cells. Here is what they didn’t tell you:
*After six years of requests on how the study was conducted, it was finally revealed: instead of administering 30 joints a day for one year, Dr. Heath used a method of pumping 63 Columbian strength joints through a gas mask within five minutes over three months.
[Todd McCormick | Author: How to Grow Medicinal Marijuana]:
“They suffocated the monkeys, what they did is they put these gas masks basically on their face and they pumped pot into it, but without additional oxygen, so after x amount of time the brain shut down. Well if you suffocate the first thing that’s gonna happen is your brain cells are going to die from lack of oxygen. So what they did is they suffocated the monkey, showed all these dead brain cells, and then went on to associate it saying cannabis use causes your brain cells to die. How many people not knowing the origin of the study have gone on to quote it, and re-quote it? And now people believe it.”
[St. John Ambulance – First Aid Guide]:
“Four minutes without oxygen, brain damage may result.”
*Studies since have shown no signs of brain cell damage.
*In 2005 new research suggested that marijuana could possible stimulate brain cell growth. That study hasn’t received the same attention.
*Another common belief: marijuana causes lung cancer.
[Todd McCormick | Author: How to Grow Medicinal Marijuana]:
“In the 1999 study by the Institute of Medicine that was paid for by the United States government, they had to use words like ‘may’ and ‘should’ cause cancer.”
[Rielle Capler | Policy Analyst | BC Compassion Club Society]:
“We’ve been hearing for years, them trying to say that it causes lung cancer, and we say really that’s interesting because you can’t even show us one case of cancer being caused by cannabis use alone.”
[David Malmo-Levine | Vancouver Drug War History School]:
“You definitely have to do it moderately because it does paralyze the cilia, but if it’s not radioactive you’re probably not going to get cancer from it.”
[Dr. Lester Grinspoon | MD | Professor Emeritus | Harvard Medical School]:
“People said well you don’t know, we haven’t been smoking it long enough, look what happened with cigarettes. We’ve had about four decades, more than four decades of experience; if this was gonna show up it should’ve shown up by now.”
[Rielle Capler | Policy Analyst | BC Compassion Club Society]:
“Finally a study came out, just in the last month, verifying that cannabis smoke does not cause cancer. It’s different than nicotine and the elements in the tobacco smoke do cause cancer. And elements in the marijuana don’t.”
[David Malmo-Levine | Vancouver Drug War History School]:
“There’s no cases of marijuana only smokers getting brown lung syndrome. There’s no cases of marijuana only smokers getting emphysema. Strange for a plant that is so dangerous, how come none of that?”
[Stephen Bloom | Former ‘High Times’ Editor]:
“Marijuana is as bad for you or worse than tobacco? Impossible. If they had they evidence they’d be putting emaciated bodies or emphysema, lung cancer, black lungs, they would be parading them throughout the media. They don’t have one. Yet people somehow think that it might cause the same thing.”
*In fact if you look at the straight deaths from substances a different type of picture starts to appear. The number one killer in the country, it beat out AIDS, heroin, crack, coc aine, alcohol, car accidents, fire, and murder combined: tobacco.
*With an average of 430,000 deaths per year, considering it’s the number one killer, it’s interesting to know that tobacco receives government subsidies and is grown with radioactive fertilizer.
*Number two on the list, if we don’t include poor diet and physical inactivity, with well over 85,000 deaths a year: alcohol.
*As we look much further down the list there are others that may surprise you, caffeine comes in with 1-10000 deaths per year. Some of our most popular pain relievers, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as aspirin: still make an appearance with over 7,000 deaths annually.
*Where does marijuana lie in this? What kind of staggering number do we find?
[Dr. Lester Grinspoon | MD | Professor Emeritus | Harvard Medical School]:
“There are no deaths from cannabis use, anywhere. You can’t find one.”
[Joe Rogan | Comedian | Fear Factor & UFC Host]:
“In 10,000 years of known use of marijuana there’s never been a single death attributed to marijuana. There’s 400,000 deaths in America alone every year that are directly attributed to tobacco.”
[Dr. Paul Hornby | PhD | Biochemist & Human Pathologist]:
“I’ve heard that you have to smoke something like 15,000 joints in 20 minutes to get a toxic amount of delta 9 tetrahydrocannabinol. I challenge anybody to do that.”
*Not one university or medical facility has ever recorded a single death directly attributed to marijuana, but never mind that there is other problems, other reasons to fear it.
*Take addiction for example. There are more kids in addiction clinics for marijuana than any other substance. This must mean that marijuana is the most addictive substance today.
[Kirk Tousaw | Lawyer & BC Marijuana Party Manager]:
“It’s undoubtedly true that there are more teenagers and kids in treatment for marijuana than all the other drugs combined. What the DEA never tells you is why that’s true.”
[edit on 27-6-2010 by djzombie]
*Ronald Reagan announces the most reliable scientific sources say permanent brain damage is one of the inevitable results of the use of marijuana.
*Monkeys pumped full of marijuana, apparently 30 joints a day, had begun to atrophy and die after 90 days. Brain damage was determined after counting the dead brain cells of both monkeys who had been subjected to the marijuana and ones who had not.
*This study became the foundation of the government and other special interest groups claim that marijuana kills brain cells. Here is what they didn’t tell you:
*After six years of requests on how the study was conducted, it was finally revealed: instead of administering 30 joints a day for one year, Dr. Heath used a method of pumping 63 Columbian strength joints through a gas mask within five minutes over three months.
[Todd McCormick | Author: How to Grow Medicinal Marijuana]:
“They suffocated the monkeys, what they did is they put these gas masks basically on their face and they pumped pot into it, but without additional oxygen, so after x amount of time the brain shut down. Well if you suffocate the first thing that’s gonna happen is your brain cells are going to die from lack of oxygen. So what they did is they suffocated the monkey, showed all these dead brain cells, and then went on to associate it saying cannabis use causes your brain cells to die. How many people not knowing the origin of the study have gone on to quote it, and re-quote it? And now people believe it.”
[St. John Ambulance – First Aid Guide]:
“Four minutes without oxygen, brain damage may result.”
*Studies since have shown no signs of brain cell damage.
*In 2005 new research suggested that marijuana could possible stimulate brain cell growth. That study hasn’t received the same attention.
- [2005 | Xia Zhang, University of Saskatchewan | Reported in the ‘Journal of Clinical Investigation’]
*Another common belief: marijuana causes lung cancer.
[Todd McCormick | Author: How to Grow Medicinal Marijuana]:
“In the 1999 study by the Institute of Medicine that was paid for by the United States government, they had to use words like ‘may’ and ‘should’ cause cancer.”
[Rielle Capler | Policy Analyst | BC Compassion Club Society]:
“We’ve been hearing for years, them trying to say that it causes lung cancer, and we say really that’s interesting because you can’t even show us one case of cancer being caused by cannabis use alone.”
[David Malmo-Levine | Vancouver Drug War History School]:
“You definitely have to do it moderately because it does paralyze the cilia, but if it’s not radioactive you’re probably not going to get cancer from it.”
[Dr. Lester Grinspoon | MD | Professor Emeritus | Harvard Medical School]:
“People said well you don’t know, we haven’t been smoking it long enough, look what happened with cigarettes. We’ve had about four decades, more than four decades of experience; if this was gonna show up it should’ve shown up by now.”
[Rielle Capler | Policy Analyst | BC Compassion Club Society]:
“Finally a study came out, just in the last month, verifying that cannabis smoke does not cause cancer. It’s different than nicotine and the elements in the tobacco smoke do cause cancer. And elements in the marijuana don’t.”
- [Dr. Donald Tashkin | UCLA | Marijuana Use and Lung Cancer: Results of a Case-Control Study]:
“We did not observer a positive association of MJ use, even heavy long-term use, with lung cancer.”
“Marijuana use does not cause or potentiate emphysema in any way.”
[David Malmo-Levine | Vancouver Drug War History School]:
“There’s no cases of marijuana only smokers getting brown lung syndrome. There’s no cases of marijuana only smokers getting emphysema. Strange for a plant that is so dangerous, how come none of that?”
[Stephen Bloom | Former ‘High Times’ Editor]:
“Marijuana is as bad for you or worse than tobacco? Impossible. If they had they evidence they’d be putting emaciated bodies or emphysema, lung cancer, black lungs, they would be parading them throughout the media. They don’t have one. Yet people somehow think that it might cause the same thing.”
*In fact if you look at the straight deaths from substances a different type of picture starts to appear. The number one killer in the country, it beat out AIDS, heroin, crack, coc aine, alcohol, car accidents, fire, and murder combined: tobacco.
*With an average of 430,000 deaths per year, considering it’s the number one killer, it’s interesting to know that tobacco receives government subsidies and is grown with radioactive fertilizer.
*Number two on the list, if we don’t include poor diet and physical inactivity, with well over 85,000 deaths a year: alcohol.
*As we look much further down the list there are others that may surprise you, caffeine comes in with 1-10000 deaths per year. Some of our most popular pain relievers, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as aspirin: still make an appearance with over 7,000 deaths annually.
*Where does marijuana lie in this? What kind of staggering number do we find?
[Dr. Lester Grinspoon | MD | Professor Emeritus | Harvard Medical School]:
“There are no deaths from cannabis use, anywhere. You can’t find one.”
[Joe Rogan | Comedian | Fear Factor & UFC Host]:
“In 10,000 years of known use of marijuana there’s never been a single death attributed to marijuana. There’s 400,000 deaths in America alone every year that are directly attributed to tobacco.”
[Dr. Paul Hornby | PhD | Biochemist & Human Pathologist]:
“I’ve heard that you have to smoke something like 15,000 joints in 20 minutes to get a toxic amount of delta 9 tetrahydrocannabinol. I challenge anybody to do that.”
*Not one university or medical facility has ever recorded a single death directly attributed to marijuana, but never mind that there is other problems, other reasons to fear it.
*Take addiction for example. There are more kids in addiction clinics for marijuana than any other substance. This must mean that marijuana is the most addictive substance today.
[Kirk Tousaw | Lawyer & BC Marijuana Party Manager]:
“It’s undoubtedly true that there are more teenagers and kids in treatment for marijuana than all the other drugs combined. What the DEA never tells you is why that’s true.”
[edit on 27-6-2010 by djzombie]
[Dr. Lester Grinspoon | MD | Professor Emeritus | Harvard Medical School]:
“A kid is caught possessing a smoke of marijuana, he’s taken to court. He’s given a choice: either some horrible penalty or you go to a treatment center. Obviously he chooses to go to treatment, and goes to treatment there he’s considered an addict.”
[Kirk Tousaw | Lawyer & BC Marijuana Party Manager]:
“But then the DEA gets to point at that stat and say look at all these kids in treatment for marijuana. God it must be because today’s marijuana is not the marijuana that your parents were smoking.”
[David Malmo-Levine | Vancouver Drug War History School]:
“As far as I understand only 3% of the people in treatment for marijuana are there voluntarily. The other 97% were told to by their guardian or told by a judge, ‘you can choose between jail or treatment’ a lot of people choose treatment. ”
[Dr. Lester Grinspoon | MD | Professor Emeritus | Harvard Medical School]:
“It provides no basis for speaking about addiction. Anybody who is at all sophisticated about marijuana would rate them the way two researchers were asked to rate drugs in order of addiction. Nicotine was one, alcohol was two, and then heroin, and coc aine, and coffee, and then marijuana. There may have been a couple of other drugs but marijuana was at the very bottom, below coffee.”
The Gateway Theory
*Is marijuana a gateway drug?
[Dr. Lester Grinspoon | MD | Professor Emeritus | Harvard Medical School]:
“Ya know in the days of Harry Anslinger, it was called the stepping stone hypothesis. If you stepped on this stone: marijuana, you are bound and determined to go onto to the next stone, which would be one of the so called hard drugs.”
[John Conroy | QC | Criminal Defense Lawyer]:
“Every time it’s been studied and looked at and so on they have never ever found that. There’s certainly nothing in marijuana that makes you want to go to anything else.”
[Dr. Lester Grinspoon | MD | Professor Emeritus | Harvard Medical School]:
“There is no inherent psychopharmacological property of the drug which pushes one toward another drug.
[Norm Stamper | PhD | Seattle Chief of Police 1994-2000]:
“I drink alcohol, that’s my drug of choice. It could be said ‘I started on milk.’ I mean this is crazy. If I use marijuana why does that automatically make me a candidate to black tar heroin? It’s a nonsensical argument.”
*In fact only 1 out of every 104 marijuana users ever use coc aine, and less than 1 use heroin.
[David Malmo-Levine | Vancouver Drug War History School]:
“The black market throws the dealers of soft drugs together with the dealer of hard drugs.”
[John Conroy | QC | Criminal Defense Lawyer]:
“So if you have a black market, and you have a dealer that’s dealing in marijuana and '___' and everything else, then the dealer might say to you ‘hey you wanna try something stronger?’ well in that sense because of the black market, because of prohibition people may be more susceptible to seeing these other drugs and being willing to try these other drugs.”
[Kirk Tousaw | Lawyer & BC Marijuana Party Manager]:
“And so what you see is that there is a gateway effect , but it’s a gateway effect caused by prohibition and the blending of the hard and soft drug markets.”
*Where does this leave us? Oh wait, what about laziness. You will be useless to society if you use marijuana. But if that’s true there are about 50 million people who smoke marijuana in America and over half of the Canadian population have tried it, and yet both societies seem to flourish. And just look who some of these people are.
[Marc Emery | Seed Retailer/Activist]:
“Steve Jobs developed apple computers smoking pot. Ted Turner developed CNN news smoking pot, still smokes a joint every day. You go through every musician you like from the rolling stones to the beatles to led zeppelin, they all smoked pot. Snoop dog, Willie Nelson, Bill Clinton.”
[Norm Stamper | PhD | Seattle Chief of Police 1994-2000]:
“Virtually every presidential candidate has now copped to using marijuana, at some time in his or her life.”
[Todd McCormick | Author: How to Grow Medicinal Marijuana]:
“I love Tommy Chong, I think a lot of the cheech and chong episodes that people believe not knowing that Tommy wrote and directed the movies thinking that ya know, that’s what a stupid stoner looks like. No actually that’s what a really brilliant creative genius looks like acting like somebody you thinks a stoner.”
[Ian Mulgrew | Vancouver Sun Columnist | Author: “Bud Inc.”]:
“And none of this is born out of the research or when you look at people who are long-term users and their happen to be lawyers, judges, doctors, and writers."
*But what about the potency of the drug?
[Ian Mulgrew | Vancouver Sun Columnist | Author: “Bud Inc.”]:
“Anytime you got a bag of Columbian dope 20 years ago it was way better than the Mexican schwag that you normally got, so there has always been a range of THC in plants and the fact that we can now grow stuff that’s now equivalent to what Columbian was 20 years ago doesn’t mean that we’re boosting THC to unheard of levels, it just means that there are some nuances in this discussion that people should be aware of.”
[Todd McCormick | Author: How to Grow Medicinal Marijuana]:
“I actually think it’s a real stroke of our own ego to think that for the 50 or so years of prohibition that we’ve improved upon varieties that have been cultivated for drug use in places like india and such for thousands of years.”
[Joe Rogan | Comedian | Fear Factor & UFC Host]:
“People say well you can abuse marijuana. Well # you can abuse cheese burgers too. You don’t go around closing burger king, because you can abuse something. I can take a #ing fork and jam it in my eyeball does that mean forks should be illegal? I could jump off a bridge, should we outlaw bridges? Let’s nerf the world."
[edit on 27-6-2010 by djzombie]
“A kid is caught possessing a smoke of marijuana, he’s taken to court. He’s given a choice: either some horrible penalty or you go to a treatment center. Obviously he chooses to go to treatment, and goes to treatment there he’s considered an addict.”
[Kirk Tousaw | Lawyer & BC Marijuana Party Manager]:
“But then the DEA gets to point at that stat and say look at all these kids in treatment for marijuana. God it must be because today’s marijuana is not the marijuana that your parents were smoking.”
[David Malmo-Levine | Vancouver Drug War History School]:
“As far as I understand only 3% of the people in treatment for marijuana are there voluntarily. The other 97% were told to by their guardian or told by a judge, ‘you can choose between jail or treatment’ a lot of people choose treatment. ”
[Dr. Lester Grinspoon | MD | Professor Emeritus | Harvard Medical School]:
“It provides no basis for speaking about addiction. Anybody who is at all sophisticated about marijuana would rate them the way two researchers were asked to rate drugs in order of addiction. Nicotine was one, alcohol was two, and then heroin, and coc aine, and coffee, and then marijuana. There may have been a couple of other drugs but marijuana was at the very bottom, below coffee.”
[1951 | Subject Narcotic | The Narcotic Education Foundation of America]:
“This narcotic unlike the opiates, the synthetics, and coc aine is non-addictive.” [referring to marijuana]
“What do you mean by non-addictive?”
“By non-addictive it is meant that the user of marijuana when deprived of the drug will not experience the agonies of withdrawal. It is habitual, but its use can be discontinued.”
“Then what is its danger?”
The Gateway Theory
*Is marijuana a gateway drug?
[Dr. Lester Grinspoon | MD | Professor Emeritus | Harvard Medical School]:
“Ya know in the days of Harry Anslinger, it was called the stepping stone hypothesis. If you stepped on this stone: marijuana, you are bound and determined to go onto to the next stone, which would be one of the so called hard drugs.”
[John Conroy | QC | Criminal Defense Lawyer]:
“Every time it’s been studied and looked at and so on they have never ever found that. There’s certainly nothing in marijuana that makes you want to go to anything else.”
[Dr. Lester Grinspoon | MD | Professor Emeritus | Harvard Medical School]:
“There is no inherent psychopharmacological property of the drug which pushes one toward another drug.
[Norm Stamper | PhD | Seattle Chief of Police 1994-2000]:
“I drink alcohol, that’s my drug of choice. It could be said ‘I started on milk.’ I mean this is crazy. If I use marijuana why does that automatically make me a candidate to black tar heroin? It’s a nonsensical argument.”
*In fact only 1 out of every 104 marijuana users ever use coc aine, and less than 1 use heroin.
[David Malmo-Levine | Vancouver Drug War History School]:
“The black market throws the dealers of soft drugs together with the dealer of hard drugs.”
[John Conroy | QC | Criminal Defense Lawyer]:
“So if you have a black market, and you have a dealer that’s dealing in marijuana and '___' and everything else, then the dealer might say to you ‘hey you wanna try something stronger?’ well in that sense because of the black market, because of prohibition people may be more susceptible to seeing these other drugs and being willing to try these other drugs.”
[Kirk Tousaw | Lawyer & BC Marijuana Party Manager]:
“And so what you see is that there is a gateway effect , but it’s a gateway effect caused by prohibition and the blending of the hard and soft drug markets.”
*Where does this leave us? Oh wait, what about laziness. You will be useless to society if you use marijuana. But if that’s true there are about 50 million people who smoke marijuana in America and over half of the Canadian population have tried it, and yet both societies seem to flourish. And just look who some of these people are.
[Marc Emery | Seed Retailer/Activist]:
“Steve Jobs developed apple computers smoking pot. Ted Turner developed CNN news smoking pot, still smokes a joint every day. You go through every musician you like from the rolling stones to the beatles to led zeppelin, they all smoked pot. Snoop dog, Willie Nelson, Bill Clinton.”
[Norm Stamper | PhD | Seattle Chief of Police 1994-2000]:
“Virtually every presidential candidate has now copped to using marijuana, at some time in his or her life.”
[Todd McCormick | Author: How to Grow Medicinal Marijuana]:
“I love Tommy Chong, I think a lot of the cheech and chong episodes that people believe not knowing that Tommy wrote and directed the movies thinking that ya know, that’s what a stupid stoner looks like. No actually that’s what a really brilliant creative genius looks like acting like somebody you thinks a stoner.”
[Ian Mulgrew | Vancouver Sun Columnist | Author: “Bud Inc.”]:
“And none of this is born out of the research or when you look at people who are long-term users and their happen to be lawyers, judges, doctors, and writers."
*But what about the potency of the drug?
[Ian Mulgrew | Vancouver Sun Columnist | Author: “Bud Inc.”]:
“Anytime you got a bag of Columbian dope 20 years ago it was way better than the Mexican schwag that you normally got, so there has always been a range of THC in plants and the fact that we can now grow stuff that’s now equivalent to what Columbian was 20 years ago doesn’t mean that we’re boosting THC to unheard of levels, it just means that there are some nuances in this discussion that people should be aware of.”
[Todd McCormick | Author: How to Grow Medicinal Marijuana]:
“I actually think it’s a real stroke of our own ego to think that for the 50 or so years of prohibition that we’ve improved upon varieties that have been cultivated for drug use in places like india and such for thousands of years.”
[Joe Rogan | Comedian | Fear Factor & UFC Host]:
“People say well you can abuse marijuana. Well # you can abuse cheese burgers too. You don’t go around closing burger king, because you can abuse something. I can take a #ing fork and jam it in my eyeball does that mean forks should be illegal? I could jump off a bridge, should we outlaw bridges? Let’s nerf the world."
[edit on 27-6-2010 by djzombie]
OP, there is a category, not US Political Madness, I think it's called "Alternative Substances" where you can discuss these things that isn't
indexed by Google and doesn't show Adsense ads so it doesn't, god forbid, detract from the sites earnings.
I hope a mod will move it there, instead of delete the thread, if they do, post it again there!
[edit on 27/6/10 by AmericanHero]
I hope a mod will move it there, instead of delete the thread, if they do, post it again there!
[edit on 27/6/10 by AmericanHero]
Response to above: sorry I thought that forum had been deleted, on my screen it is just an icon - no title. At any rate, a mod has already moved it
there. Thank you mystery mod. And now, on with the show.
[Norm Stamper | PhD | Seattle Chief of Police 1994-2000]:
“From beat cop to police chief, I saw ample evidence of the harm caused by alcohol, and the absence of evidence of the harm caused by marijuana use. And I mean the complete absence. I cannot recall a single case in which marijuana contributed to domestic violence, crimes of theft, and the like. There are far more crimes committed under the influence of, unadulterated if you will, emotions; anger, rage, jealousy.”
[Dr. Tim Stockwell | PhD | Professor of Psychology | University of Victoria]:
“A lot of our understanding is driven by what’s in the paper and on the television and the radio these days. We get extremes and the black and white thinking is reinforced I feel.”
*If only there was something to compare it to, something that was prohibited at one time but is now regulated, so we could see what the difference might be. Hmm… what could that be?
[Kirk Tousaw | Lawyer & BC Marijuana Party Manager]:
“Alcohol prohibition really gave birth to and raised massive organized criminal groups within the United States. It led to a general disregard for the law, and a general disregard for police activity, because it was a law that most people didn’t obey.”
[Jack A. Cole | Director of L.E.A.P. | Former Undercover Narcotics Agent – 14 years]:
“Alcohol poisoning went up by 600% during prohibition. There were more speakeasies in large cities like New York City under prohibition than there are taverns and liquor stores today.”
[John Conroy | QC | Criminal Defense Lawyer]:
“Sure one can point to alcohol to being a continuing social problem but we don’t have people shooting each other over alcohol.”
[Greg Williams | Activist | Facing US Extradition]:
“When alcohol was prohibited people lived at that time to know the difference between prohibition and non prohibition. They could see that the prohibition of alcohol caused the emergence of gangsters and the underworld that took control of these substances. Alcohol then was no longer in their control.”
*Could this be the same for marijuana?
[Joe Rogan | Comedian | Fear Factor & UFC Host]:
“It strengthens organized crime, without a doubt, because you have to be a criminal to sell it. It’s that simple.”
[Senator Larry Campbell | Mayor of Vancouver 2002-2005 | Former Member of RCMP Drug Squad]:
“This brings crime into it, that’s why the benefits and the ability to make money is so huge in it.”
[Jack A. Cole | Director of L.E.A.P. | Former Undercover Narcotics Agent – 14 years]:
“Marijuana is just a weed. Marijuana is worth more ounce for ounce than gold.”
[Marc Emery | Seed Retailer/Activist]:
“You don’t find legal commodities at two hundred dollars an ounce. You don’t even find them at two hundred dollars a pound. Heck most things are two hundred dollars a ton for corn and grain and barley.”
[Neil Boyd | Professor of Criminology, Simon Fraser University | Author: “High Society”]:
“That’s why when you walk ten pounds of marijuana across the border into the united states it becomes worth twenty pounds.”
[Jack A. Cole | Director of L.E.A.P. | Former Undercover Narcotics Agent – 14 years]:
“You create an artificially inflated value for that drug that is so huge that people decide it’s worth murdering people in order to control this market.”
[Neil Boyd | Professor of Criminology, Simon Fraser University | Author: “High Society”]:
“I think the Fraser Institute called cannabis prohibition a gift of revenue to organized crime.”
*But what do growers and dealers think of this?
Interviewer: “Would you like to see the government here legalize marijuana in BC?”
Grower1: “Stealing money from us?”
Grower2: “How can you compete with factories, perfectly rolled up doobies, they’d perfect it and we’d all be out of money.”
Grower2: “Make the penalties stiffer? Good, the price goes up for those people who aren’t getting caught.”
[Former Grower | Masked to Protect Identity]:
“I know I wouldn’t like to see it legalized. The government would control and regulate the product and that could potentially hurt a lot of people in the industry.”
[Kirk Tousaw | Lawyer & BC Marijuana Party Manager]:
“It makes for strange bedfellows. You’ve got the police and the high level drug dealers both agreeing that we should maintain this prohibition. When you got high level drug dealers saying prohibition is good, you might want to scratch your head a little and think, ‘well shoot why would they want to continue prohibition?’”
[Neil Boyd | Professor of Criminology, Simon Fraser University | Author: “High Society”]:
“I can’t imagine why a grower who is making $150,000 or $300,000 a year would ever want to see marijuana legalized. The last thing a grower wants is sensible policy. The madness continues and they continue to get rich.”
[Jack A. Cole | Director of L.E.A.P. | Former Undercover Narcotics Agent – 14 years]:
“So not only do we allow them to tell us how much drugs are going to supplied, or the potency of those drugs, who they’re going to sell to, where they’re going to sell them, just to make sure they get it all right we let them keep all the profits.”
[John Conroy | QC | Criminal Defense Lawyer]:
“So you’ve got essentially a wild west, you’ve got an unregulated market in which anything can happen. It certainly may work for things that people generally accept but if you try to prohibit something that’s in demand, that the people want, then its pure folly.”
*And without control it’s hard to regulate areas of concern, like keeping it out of the hands of our children. There have been some studies that suggest heavy sustained long-term use from adolescence to adulthood has the potential to exasperate tendencies of those with a genetic predisposition for schizophrenia. And although there is strong evidence that refutes this, it does lead one to question: could there be a better way to deter our children from using, rather than letting dealers decide what age is appropriate?
[Norm Stamper | PhD | Seattle Chief of Police 1994-2000]:
“From beat cop to police chief, I saw ample evidence of the harm caused by alcohol, and the absence of evidence of the harm caused by marijuana use. And I mean the complete absence. I cannot recall a single case in which marijuana contributed to domestic violence, crimes of theft, and the like. There are far more crimes committed under the influence of, unadulterated if you will, emotions; anger, rage, jealousy.”
[Dr. Tim Stockwell | PhD | Professor of Psychology | University of Victoria]:
“A lot of our understanding is driven by what’s in the paper and on the television and the radio these days. We get extremes and the black and white thinking is reinforced I feel.”
*If only there was something to compare it to, something that was prohibited at one time but is now regulated, so we could see what the difference might be. Hmm… what could that be?
[Kirk Tousaw | Lawyer & BC Marijuana Party Manager]:
“Alcohol prohibition really gave birth to and raised massive organized criminal groups within the United States. It led to a general disregard for the law, and a general disregard for police activity, because it was a law that most people didn’t obey.”
[Jack A. Cole | Director of L.E.A.P. | Former Undercover Narcotics Agent – 14 years]:
“Alcohol poisoning went up by 600% during prohibition. There were more speakeasies in large cities like New York City under prohibition than there are taverns and liquor stores today.”
[John Conroy | QC | Criminal Defense Lawyer]:
“Sure one can point to alcohol to being a continuing social problem but we don’t have people shooting each other over alcohol.”
[Greg Williams | Activist | Facing US Extradition]:
“When alcohol was prohibited people lived at that time to know the difference between prohibition and non prohibition. They could see that the prohibition of alcohol caused the emergence of gangsters and the underworld that took control of these substances. Alcohol then was no longer in their control.”
*Could this be the same for marijuana?
[Joe Rogan | Comedian | Fear Factor & UFC Host]:
“It strengthens organized crime, without a doubt, because you have to be a criminal to sell it. It’s that simple.”
[Senator Larry Campbell | Mayor of Vancouver 2002-2005 | Former Member of RCMP Drug Squad]:
“This brings crime into it, that’s why the benefits and the ability to make money is so huge in it.”
[Jack A. Cole | Director of L.E.A.P. | Former Undercover Narcotics Agent – 14 years]:
“Marijuana is just a weed. Marijuana is worth more ounce for ounce than gold.”
[Marc Emery | Seed Retailer/Activist]:
“You don’t find legal commodities at two hundred dollars an ounce. You don’t even find them at two hundred dollars a pound. Heck most things are two hundred dollars a ton for corn and grain and barley.”
[Neil Boyd | Professor of Criminology, Simon Fraser University | Author: “High Society”]:
“That’s why when you walk ten pounds of marijuana across the border into the united states it becomes worth twenty pounds.”
[Jack A. Cole | Director of L.E.A.P. | Former Undercover Narcotics Agent – 14 years]:
“You create an artificially inflated value for that drug that is so huge that people decide it’s worth murdering people in order to control this market.”
[Neil Boyd | Professor of Criminology, Simon Fraser University | Author: “High Society”]:
“I think the Fraser Institute called cannabis prohibition a gift of revenue to organized crime.”
*But what do growers and dealers think of this?
Interviewer: “Would you like to see the government here legalize marijuana in BC?”
Grower1: “Stealing money from us?”
Grower2: “How can you compete with factories, perfectly rolled up doobies, they’d perfect it and we’d all be out of money.”
Grower2: “Make the penalties stiffer? Good, the price goes up for those people who aren’t getting caught.”
[Former Grower | Masked to Protect Identity]:
“I know I wouldn’t like to see it legalized. The government would control and regulate the product and that could potentially hurt a lot of people in the industry.”
[Kirk Tousaw | Lawyer & BC Marijuana Party Manager]:
“It makes for strange bedfellows. You’ve got the police and the high level drug dealers both agreeing that we should maintain this prohibition. When you got high level drug dealers saying prohibition is good, you might want to scratch your head a little and think, ‘well shoot why would they want to continue prohibition?’”
[Neil Boyd | Professor of Criminology, Simon Fraser University | Author: “High Society”]:
“I can’t imagine why a grower who is making $150,000 or $300,000 a year would ever want to see marijuana legalized. The last thing a grower wants is sensible policy. The madness continues and they continue to get rich.”
[Jack A. Cole | Director of L.E.A.P. | Former Undercover Narcotics Agent – 14 years]:
“So not only do we allow them to tell us how much drugs are going to supplied, or the potency of those drugs, who they’re going to sell to, where they’re going to sell them, just to make sure they get it all right we let them keep all the profits.”
[John Conroy | QC | Criminal Defense Lawyer]:
“So you’ve got essentially a wild west, you’ve got an unregulated market in which anything can happen. It certainly may work for things that people generally accept but if you try to prohibit something that’s in demand, that the people want, then its pure folly.”
*And without control it’s hard to regulate areas of concern, like keeping it out of the hands of our children. There have been some studies that suggest heavy sustained long-term use from adolescence to adulthood has the potential to exasperate tendencies of those with a genetic predisposition for schizophrenia. And although there is strong evidence that refutes this, it does lead one to question: could there be a better way to deter our children from using, rather than letting dealers decide what age is appropriate?
[Jack A. Cole | Director of L.E.A.P. | Former Undercover Narcotics Agent – 14 years]:
“For the last ten years our children across the United States have said that it’s easier buy illegal drugs than it is to buy beer and cigarettes.”
[Kirk Tousaw | Lawyer & BC Marijuana Party Manager]:
“It’s harder to get beer cause you have to go through a regulated establishment that’s going to check ID, that’s going to have those safeguards in place and isn’t just going to sell it to you because got forty bucks in your pocket.”
[Jack A. Cole | Director of L.E.A.P. | Former Undercover Narcotics Agent – 14 years]:
“Guy down on the street corner, he doesn’t wanna know how old they are, he doesn’t want to see an ID, he says ‘show me the money’ and if they get the money it doesn’t matter if that child is four years old they’re gonna get the dope.”
[Kirk Tousaw | Lawyer & BC Marijuana Party Manager]:
“If you can’t control the sale of the product how on earth are you going to keep it out of the hands of kids?”
*Could we be the creators of what we now see as some of our biggest problems? Have our solutions been prelude to our worst fears?
[Neil Boyd | Professor of Criminology, Simon Fraser University | Author: “High Society”]:
“The use of the criminal law for the basis of public health is a wholly bad idea, no matter how you cut it.”
[Todd McCormick | Author: How to Grow Medicinal Marijuana]:
“It doesn’t work, you cannot legislate morality.”
[Jeffrey Miron | Visiting Professor of Economics | Harvard University]:
“One person can say it’s immoral to legalize it just as much as someone can say it’s immoral not to legalize it. It doesn’t get you anywhere, you have to have a rational policy debate by talking about the consequences.”
[Neil Boyd | Professor of Criminology, Simon Fraser University | Author: “High Society”]:
“It’s a lot easier argument if you just say ‘oh its immoral’ then you don’t have to debate why it is that alcohol kills so many more people than marijuana or why it is that tobacco takes seven years off your life and we can’t establish that marijuana does anything particularly.”
[Joe Rogan | Comedian | Fear Factor & UFC Host]:
“If people do, do drugs, and they commit crimes while on those drugs then they should in fact be punished, but you can’t punish someone for something that hurts no one.”
[Kirk Tousaw | Lawyer & BC Marijuana Party Manager]:
“We should legalize marijuana, tax the hell out of it and put every dime back into the healthcare system.”
*Taxation and legalization? Doesn’t that seem a little extreme? Wouldn’t it be better to just decriminalize?
[Norm Stamper | PhD | Seattle Chief of Police 1994-2000]:
“The distinction is simple. Legalization of marijuana makes it a product that is legally available to adults. The decriminalization of marijuana still makes it an offense. You’re not going to go to jail for it under a decriminalized model, but society is still saying no no no.”
[Dr. Tim Stockwell | PhD | Professor of Psychology | University of Victoria]:
“That doesn’t mean that there is unregulated distribution, unregulated sale, and unregulated use. Decriminalization doesn’t address the problems of organized crime and it doesn’t create a situation where you have retail sales.”
[Jeffrey Miron | Visiting Professor of Economics | Harvard University]:
“Decriminalization is just kind of a goofy concept to say that it’s legal to own something, to use it, to possess it, but not to produce it or sell it, just seems like this illogical position because where did this stuff come from?”
[Senator Larry Campbell | Mayor of Vancouver, 2002-2005 | Former Member of RCMP Drug Squad]:
“Decriminalization is the worst of both worlds and sends out an incredibly bad message. It should be controlled like alcohol, like tobacco.”
[Jeffrey Miron | Visiting Professor of Economics | Harvard University]:
“The total impact for the U.S. budget for legalizing marijuana and taxing it with rates like alcohol and tobacco is somewhere in the 10 to 14 billion dollar range. It can be used to pay for health care costs, it can be used to lower taxes, it can be used for highways and hospitals, for national defense, it’s 14 billion dollars and can be used for whatever it’s best use is.”
*What have we learned so far? Well one the prohibition hasn’t reduced the demand and it certainly hasn’t reduced the supply. Two, it’s a steady source of revenue for organized crime, which in turn attracts young people because the money is so easy. Three, being an underground market actually creates crime and violence and yet the only one paying the cost for all this are the taxpayers. People like you and me. Even further, this whole deal is over a drug that seems to pose no more of a threat than the substances we already regulate. At the very least, why isn’t this up for debate?
[Craig X. Rubin | Actor: Weeds]:
“The real war on marijuana didn’t start until 1972. President Nixon said oh it’s all the jews smoking pot. He really said that.”
[Jack A. Cole | Director of L.E.A.P. | Former Undercover Narcotics Agent – 14 years]:
“When Nixon got into this with his war on drugs he had things that he wanted to do, he had an agenda."
[Todd McCormick | Author: How to Grow Medicinal Marijuana]:
“A lot of the information that was kept in warehoused in the library of congress and also at major universities was actually recalled and destroyed. The Nixon report that came out through his administration was called ‘The Shafer Report.’ It was by a republican governor. When he studied and gave it out, you could pick this report up, open any page of it and if you actually have experience with cannabis you’ll realize they’re telling the truth. ”
[Kirk Tousaw | Lawyer & BC Marijuana Party Manager]:
“And then when it came out and said that marijuana was essentially harmless he totally ignored it and said we’re going to launch the war on drugs anyways.”
“For the last ten years our children across the United States have said that it’s easier buy illegal drugs than it is to buy beer and cigarettes.”
[Kirk Tousaw | Lawyer & BC Marijuana Party Manager]:
“It’s harder to get beer cause you have to go through a regulated establishment that’s going to check ID, that’s going to have those safeguards in place and isn’t just going to sell it to you because got forty bucks in your pocket.”
[Jack A. Cole | Director of L.E.A.P. | Former Undercover Narcotics Agent – 14 years]:
“Guy down on the street corner, he doesn’t wanna know how old they are, he doesn’t want to see an ID, he says ‘show me the money’ and if they get the money it doesn’t matter if that child is four years old they’re gonna get the dope.”
[Kirk Tousaw | Lawyer & BC Marijuana Party Manager]:
“If you can’t control the sale of the product how on earth are you going to keep it out of the hands of kids?”
*Could we be the creators of what we now see as some of our biggest problems? Have our solutions been prelude to our worst fears?
[Neil Boyd | Professor of Criminology, Simon Fraser University | Author: “High Society”]:
“The use of the criminal law for the basis of public health is a wholly bad idea, no matter how you cut it.”
[Todd McCormick | Author: How to Grow Medicinal Marijuana]:
“It doesn’t work, you cannot legislate morality.”
[Jeffrey Miron | Visiting Professor of Economics | Harvard University]:
“One person can say it’s immoral to legalize it just as much as someone can say it’s immoral not to legalize it. It doesn’t get you anywhere, you have to have a rational policy debate by talking about the consequences.”
[Neil Boyd | Professor of Criminology, Simon Fraser University | Author: “High Society”]:
“It’s a lot easier argument if you just say ‘oh its immoral’ then you don’t have to debate why it is that alcohol kills so many more people than marijuana or why it is that tobacco takes seven years off your life and we can’t establish that marijuana does anything particularly.”
[Joe Rogan | Comedian | Fear Factor & UFC Host]:
“If people do, do drugs, and they commit crimes while on those drugs then they should in fact be punished, but you can’t punish someone for something that hurts no one.”
[Kirk Tousaw | Lawyer & BC Marijuana Party Manager]:
“We should legalize marijuana, tax the hell out of it and put every dime back into the healthcare system.”
*Taxation and legalization? Doesn’t that seem a little extreme? Wouldn’t it be better to just decriminalize?
[Norm Stamper | PhD | Seattle Chief of Police 1994-2000]:
“The distinction is simple. Legalization of marijuana makes it a product that is legally available to adults. The decriminalization of marijuana still makes it an offense. You’re not going to go to jail for it under a decriminalized model, but society is still saying no no no.”
[Dr. Tim Stockwell | PhD | Professor of Psychology | University of Victoria]:
“That doesn’t mean that there is unregulated distribution, unregulated sale, and unregulated use. Decriminalization doesn’t address the problems of organized crime and it doesn’t create a situation where you have retail sales.”
[Jeffrey Miron | Visiting Professor of Economics | Harvard University]:
“Decriminalization is just kind of a goofy concept to say that it’s legal to own something, to use it, to possess it, but not to produce it or sell it, just seems like this illogical position because where did this stuff come from?”
[Senator Larry Campbell | Mayor of Vancouver, 2002-2005 | Former Member of RCMP Drug Squad]:
“Decriminalization is the worst of both worlds and sends out an incredibly bad message. It should be controlled like alcohol, like tobacco.”
[Jeffrey Miron | Visiting Professor of Economics | Harvard University]:
“The total impact for the U.S. budget for legalizing marijuana and taxing it with rates like alcohol and tobacco is somewhere in the 10 to 14 billion dollar range. It can be used to pay for health care costs, it can be used to lower taxes, it can be used for highways and hospitals, for national defense, it’s 14 billion dollars and can be used for whatever it’s best use is.”
*What have we learned so far? Well one the prohibition hasn’t reduced the demand and it certainly hasn’t reduced the supply. Two, it’s a steady source of revenue for organized crime, which in turn attracts young people because the money is so easy. Three, being an underground market actually creates crime and violence and yet the only one paying the cost for all this are the taxpayers. People like you and me. Even further, this whole deal is over a drug that seems to pose no more of a threat than the substances we already regulate. At the very least, why isn’t this up for debate?
[Craig X. Rubin | Actor: Weeds]:
“The real war on marijuana didn’t start until 1972. President Nixon said oh it’s all the jews smoking pot. He really said that.”
- [1971 | Richard Nixon]: “Every one of the bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana is jewish.”
[Jack A. Cole | Director of L.E.A.P. | Former Undercover Narcotics Agent – 14 years]:
“When Nixon got into this with his war on drugs he had things that he wanted to do, he had an agenda."
[Todd McCormick | Author: How to Grow Medicinal Marijuana]:
“A lot of the information that was kept in warehoused in the library of congress and also at major universities was actually recalled and destroyed. The Nixon report that came out through his administration was called ‘The Shafer Report.’ It was by a republican governor. When he studied and gave it out, you could pick this report up, open any page of it and if you actually have experience with cannabis you’ll realize they’re telling the truth. ”
[Kirk Tousaw | Lawyer & BC Marijuana Party Manager]:
“And then when it came out and said that marijuana was essentially harmless he totally ignored it and said we’re going to launch the war on drugs anyways.”
[Jack A. Cole | Director of L.E.A.P. | Former Undercover Narcotics Agent – 14 years]:
“1970, the beginning of the war on drugs, 76 New Jersey troopers became detectives, I was one of them. They designated one third of us undercover, I happened to fall in that one third, that’s where I spent the next 14 years of my life. What we were targeted on was the pot smokers. There was a very good reason we were targeting on the pot smokers, most of them were protesting against the Vietnam war. Now if you could arrest that whole group of people because they were smoking pot you didn’t have to have a Vietnam war protest. Which Mr. Nixon thought was a pretty good idea.”
[Craig X. Rubin | Actor: Weeds]:
“So when President Nixon declared the civil war that we’re living in right now, the drug war, in 1972, it was really a war on marijuana.”
[Chris Bennett | Author/Former ‘Pot TV’ Manager]:
“Ronald Reagan he said, ‘these young people, they get together, they read books, they smoke marijuana, and they talk.’ Like these three elements were a recipe for disaster.
[Kirk Tousaw | Lawyer & BC Marijuana Party Manager]:
“Make no mistake, the US government; the focus of their war on drugs was cannabis, the focus of their rhetoric was cannabis.”
[Greg Williams | Activist | Facing US Extradition]:
“It’s certainly used as a poster child for all drugs, when you see an ad for drugs its always the marijuana leaf that goes up.”
[Dr. Tod Mikuriya | MD | Former national administrator of the U.S. Government’s marijuana research programs]:
“It’s almost like a religious jihad.”
[Chris Bennett | Author/Former ‘Pot TV’ Manager]:
“It causes people to think, when people think, people question. They question things like say the war in Vietnam, or race separation of blacks and whites like they did in the 30’s in the jazz clubs, or women’s rights, or the gulf war, oil wars.”
[Joe Rogan | Comedian | Fear Factor & UFC Host]:
“It’s real simple, you put your loafers on, you put your black socks on, you get in your car, you have your briefcase, you say hi to your neighbors, he mows his lawn just like you do, and things keep moving along in the same direction they always have been. That’s why marijuana laws exist.”
[Norm Stamper | PhD | Seattle Chief of Police 1994-2000]:
“There are in my opinion people in government, at all levels of government who know that it’s not a winnable war yet they continue to pursue it.”
[Dana Larsen | Founding Editor of Cannabis Culture Magazine]:
“Often you go to debates and it’s the police officers debating us, these guys are supposed to enforce the laws, they should not be arguing for or against law, that’s not their job.”
[Greg Williams | Activist | Facing US Extradition]:
“Well what is their job? Is it to enforce laws that exist on the books or to determine the policy of the laws that are made?”
[Kirk Tousaw | Lawyer & BC Marijuana Party Manager]:
“The way to justify the policy is to create a lot of fear, and then spend a lot of money combating it. Quite frankly if you took the using population of all the other illegal drugs combined and you eliminated cannabis from that equation there wouldn’t be a big enough drug problem in either this country or the United States to justify the massive expenditures that go towards fighting the war.”
*An estimated $7.7 billion is spent annually by the US government to enforce marijuana prohibition.
*$400 million dollars is spent annually in Canada arresting and prosecuting marijuana crimes, the total budget in Canada for all drugs is $500 million dollars. That means 4/5ths of the drug budget goes towards arresting and prosecuting marijuana users, leaving 1/5th for crack, heroin, coke, crystal meth.
[Norm Stamper | PhD | Seattle Chief of Police 1994-2000]:
“The drug enforcement industry is big business, it’s self perpetuating, it relies on taxpayer dollars.”
[Tommy Chong | Comedian: Cheech & Chong, That 70’s Show]:
“It’s like doing a big budget movie, you get 30 million dollars to do a movie and then the movie comes out and it doesn’t make any money, but someone made 30 million dollars. Every once in a while they’ll show a guy posing beside a big bunch of marijuana plants, ‘this is the DEA money at work.’”
[Chris Bennett | Author/Former ‘Pot TV’ Manager]:
“It would be like asking loggers about saving trees, this is where the mainstay of their cash flow comes from.”
[Norm Stamper | PhD | Seattle Chief of Police 1994-2000]:
“There are many, many police officers however, that believe that it ought to be legalized, regulated, and controlled. They see the hypocrisy between our existing laws relating to alcohol and marijuana in their day to day life, shift after shift, and they get it, but they don’t want to lose their jobs. They don’t want to lose that promotion to sergeant or the assignment to detectives, they want to be a chief someday and they don’t want to piss of the people in power.”
[John Conroy | QC | Criminal Defense Lawyer]:
“Judges, lawyers, prosecutors, defense lawyers, prison guards, there’s all of those people in the criminal justice industry, are their interests being protected? In a sense yes they are. Defense bar similarly, the more things they prohibit, the more money we make. You still have large numbers of people being busted for simple possession. If you look at the statistics, in terms of drug offenses, the largest group is still simple possession of marijuana.”
[FBI – Uniform Crime Report]: 786,546 marijuana arrests in 2005. 88% of marijuana arrests are for simple possession.
*The number of arrests annually for marijuana now rivals the number for murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault; combined.
*But the marijuana laws protect us, they make our lives safer, they send us the correct moral message.
[Jack A. Cole | Director of L.E.A.P. | Former Undercover Narcotics Agent – 14 years]:
“If you’ve been caught in the US with so much as one marijuana cigarette, you can’t get a loan or grant from the government to go to college. If you’ve been convicted of murdering someone, or raping someone, no problem, go right down they’ll give you the loan. I guess the message is it’s ok to rape and murder and pillage, just don’t smoke a joint afterwards.”
“1970, the beginning of the war on drugs, 76 New Jersey troopers became detectives, I was one of them. They designated one third of us undercover, I happened to fall in that one third, that’s where I spent the next 14 years of my life. What we were targeted on was the pot smokers. There was a very good reason we were targeting on the pot smokers, most of them were protesting against the Vietnam war. Now if you could arrest that whole group of people because they were smoking pot you didn’t have to have a Vietnam war protest. Which Mr. Nixon thought was a pretty good idea.”
[Craig X. Rubin | Actor: Weeds]:
“So when President Nixon declared the civil war that we’re living in right now, the drug war, in 1972, it was really a war on marijuana.”
[Chris Bennett | Author/Former ‘Pot TV’ Manager]:
“Ronald Reagan he said, ‘these young people, they get together, they read books, they smoke marijuana, and they talk.’ Like these three elements were a recipe for disaster.
[Kirk Tousaw | Lawyer & BC Marijuana Party Manager]:
“Make no mistake, the US government; the focus of their war on drugs was cannabis, the focus of their rhetoric was cannabis.”
[Greg Williams | Activist | Facing US Extradition]:
“It’s certainly used as a poster child for all drugs, when you see an ad for drugs its always the marijuana leaf that goes up.”
[Dr. Tod Mikuriya | MD | Former national administrator of the U.S. Government’s marijuana research programs]:
“It’s almost like a religious jihad.”
[Chris Bennett | Author/Former ‘Pot TV’ Manager]:
“It causes people to think, when people think, people question. They question things like say the war in Vietnam, or race separation of blacks and whites like they did in the 30’s in the jazz clubs, or women’s rights, or the gulf war, oil wars.”
[Joe Rogan | Comedian | Fear Factor & UFC Host]:
“It’s real simple, you put your loafers on, you put your black socks on, you get in your car, you have your briefcase, you say hi to your neighbors, he mows his lawn just like you do, and things keep moving along in the same direction they always have been. That’s why marijuana laws exist.”
[Norm Stamper | PhD | Seattle Chief of Police 1994-2000]:
“There are in my opinion people in government, at all levels of government who know that it’s not a winnable war yet they continue to pursue it.”
[Dana Larsen | Founding Editor of Cannabis Culture Magazine]:
“Often you go to debates and it’s the police officers debating us, these guys are supposed to enforce the laws, they should not be arguing for or against law, that’s not their job.”
[Greg Williams | Activist | Facing US Extradition]:
“Well what is their job? Is it to enforce laws that exist on the books or to determine the policy of the laws that are made?”
[Kirk Tousaw | Lawyer & BC Marijuana Party Manager]:
“The way to justify the policy is to create a lot of fear, and then spend a lot of money combating it. Quite frankly if you took the using population of all the other illegal drugs combined and you eliminated cannabis from that equation there wouldn’t be a big enough drug problem in either this country or the United States to justify the massive expenditures that go towards fighting the war.”
*An estimated $7.7 billion is spent annually by the US government to enforce marijuana prohibition.
*$400 million dollars is spent annually in Canada arresting and prosecuting marijuana crimes, the total budget in Canada for all drugs is $500 million dollars. That means 4/5ths of the drug budget goes towards arresting and prosecuting marijuana users, leaving 1/5th for crack, heroin, coke, crystal meth.
[Norm Stamper | PhD | Seattle Chief of Police 1994-2000]:
“The drug enforcement industry is big business, it’s self perpetuating, it relies on taxpayer dollars.”
[Tommy Chong | Comedian: Cheech & Chong, That 70’s Show]:
“It’s like doing a big budget movie, you get 30 million dollars to do a movie and then the movie comes out and it doesn’t make any money, but someone made 30 million dollars. Every once in a while they’ll show a guy posing beside a big bunch of marijuana plants, ‘this is the DEA money at work.’”
[Chris Bennett | Author/Former ‘Pot TV’ Manager]:
“It would be like asking loggers about saving trees, this is where the mainstay of their cash flow comes from.”
[Norm Stamper | PhD | Seattle Chief of Police 1994-2000]:
“There are many, many police officers however, that believe that it ought to be legalized, regulated, and controlled. They see the hypocrisy between our existing laws relating to alcohol and marijuana in their day to day life, shift after shift, and they get it, but they don’t want to lose their jobs. They don’t want to lose that promotion to sergeant or the assignment to detectives, they want to be a chief someday and they don’t want to piss of the people in power.”
[John Conroy | QC | Criminal Defense Lawyer]:
“Judges, lawyers, prosecutors, defense lawyers, prison guards, there’s all of those people in the criminal justice industry, are their interests being protected? In a sense yes they are. Defense bar similarly, the more things they prohibit, the more money we make. You still have large numbers of people being busted for simple possession. If you look at the statistics, in terms of drug offenses, the largest group is still simple possession of marijuana.”
[FBI – Uniform Crime Report]: 786,546 marijuana arrests in 2005. 88% of marijuana arrests are for simple possession.
*The number of arrests annually for marijuana now rivals the number for murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault; combined.
*But the marijuana laws protect us, they make our lives safer, they send us the correct moral message.
[Jack A. Cole | Director of L.E.A.P. | Former Undercover Narcotics Agent – 14 years]:
“If you’ve been caught in the US with so much as one marijuana cigarette, you can’t get a loan or grant from the government to go to college. If you’ve been convicted of murdering someone, or raping someone, no problem, go right down they’ll give you the loan. I guess the message is it’s ok to rape and murder and pillage, just don’t smoke a joint afterwards.”
*And what else helps national security? Taking down top criminal targets. In 2003 the US government put aside money to do just that, 25 million for
the head of Osama bin laden, 15 million each for the whereabouts of Uday and Cusay Hussein, Sadam’s sons. And a 12 million dollar budget to go after
one of the most dangerous men of all, this man.[Tommy Chong]
Interviewer: “A man like yourself that is an established actor, a comedian, not a criminal, why do you think they targeted you?”
Tommy: “Well because our movies were #1 rentals in America. What our movies did was really show the hypocrisy of the pot laws. In fact when I went to jail they added in the transcript that our movies have influenced children for 30 years and will continue to do so forever. Therefore I should go to jail. You gotta remember, they were going into Iraq and they needed some diversion as far as headlines go and they equated the billion dollar paraphernalia business with aiding terrorists. This was a legitimate company, paying taxes, I was just the face on the bowl. They charged me. I had nothing to do with the company. I never shipped anything to anybody. But if I didn’t plead, they threatened my son and my wife.”
[Craig X. Rubin | Actor: Weeds]:
”It wasn’t even his company, he just loaned his name to it. 51 people were arrested under operation pipe dreams only one person, Tommy Chong, went to jail. Tommy stands up and volunteers to go to jail says ‘yeah, ok that’s my paraphernalia leave my wife and kid alone’ he’s protecting his family.”
Interviewer: “What kind of force was used on the day you were arrested?”
Tommy: “There was over 20 swat team people, visors, automatic weapons, helicopters overhead, they had news trucks, fox news trucks outside. They had the media on the ready, this was a photo op for everybody. They asked ‘do I have any drugs, and I said yeah I got pot, they wanted to know where it was so I told them. They said well its not really a drug bust, so I said well then what the &$#@ are you doing in my house? Then they said ‘it’s about bongs. We’re bringing down all the bong companies in America.”
*And with tommy safely behind bars for months, the united states drug wars reset its sites. This time across borders. Marc Emery and two of his employees are facing life in prison in the united states, for selling marijuana seeds over the internet.
[Marc Emery | Seed Retailer/Activist]:
“Well obviously I am the most dangerous man alive, no wonder I am facing life in prison without parole for something that no one has ever gone to jail for here in Canada. No one has ever gone to jail for seeds not even for a day.”
[Kirk Tousaw | Lawyer & BC Marijuana Party Manager]:
“The US sees Marc Emery as a major political threat to its anti cannabis agenda.”
[Norm Stamper | PhD | Seattle Chief of Police 1994-2000]:
“We have seen an explosion in prison construction that lags only slightly behind the explosion in incarceration.”
[Tommy Chong | Comedian: Cheech & Chong, That 70’s Show]:
“There are more people in jail in america now than ever before.”
[Kirk Tousaw | Lawyer & BC Marijuana Party Manager]:
“In the united states its one of the fastest growing industries.”
[Chris Bennett | Author/Former ‘Pot TV’ Manager]:
“Right now in the united states of America, the biggest growth industry is the privatized prison complex.”
[Jack A. Cole | Director of L.E.A.P. | Former Undercover Narcotics Agent – 14 years]:
“Japan for instance incarcerates 38 people per 100,000 population, the united states incarcerates at a rate of 726 people per 100,000 population. In a 20 year period the prison population in the United States quadrupled. “
[Norm Stamper | PhD | Seattle Chief of Police 1994-2000]:
“We have just shy of 5% of the world’s population and almost 25% of its prisoner’s.”
[Dana Larsen | Founding Editor of Cannabis Culture Magazine]:
“Even South Africa at its worst didn’t have as many prisoners per capita as America has now.”
[Jack A. Cole | Director of L.E.A.P. | Former Undercover Narcotics Agent – 14 years]:
“Texas just built 77 prisons in about the last 20 years.”
[Norm Stamper | PhD | Seattle Chief of Police 1994-2000]:
“We find state treasuries on the verge of bankruptcy as a result of prison construction.”
*Currently, there are nearly 45,000 prisoners in state and federal prisons for marijuana violations in the United States. This does not include the number of people in local and county jails for marijuana related offences. That data was not available.
*In the late 80’s, there were about five privately run prisons in the United States. By 2005, that number had reached over 260.
[David Malmo-Levine | Vancouver Drug War History School]:
“As soon as you’ve accumulated a certain amount of capital from building prisons you can start investing that in ensuring job security, ensuring there will always be more prisoners around to require more prisons.”
[Joe Rogan | Comedian | Fear Factor & UFC Host]:
“We have private prisons? What the # is that? How did that happen? How can you profit over people going to jail? That’s scary. That’s a bad bad sign. Our society is in deep trouble if nobody is looking into that.”
*Correctional guard unions have become powerful lobbying groups, pushing for longer sentences on less serious crimes. California’s has become one of the most powerful in that state. The California department of corrections budget rose from $923 million in 1985, to $5.7 billion in 2004. Between 1977 and 1999 overall local and state spending on corrections across the country grew 946%. Almost two and a half times the rate at which spending for education increased.
********
There is much more to the movie - but if you've read this far into it I would be surprised. I would encourage everyone to watch the documentary linked in my first post, the makers of this documentary gathered a wealth of information on the subject and now you can find it in one place.
[edit on 27-6-2010 by djzombie]
Interviewer: “A man like yourself that is an established actor, a comedian, not a criminal, why do you think they targeted you?”
Tommy: “Well because our movies were #1 rentals in America. What our movies did was really show the hypocrisy of the pot laws. In fact when I went to jail they added in the transcript that our movies have influenced children for 30 years and will continue to do so forever. Therefore I should go to jail. You gotta remember, they were going into Iraq and they needed some diversion as far as headlines go and they equated the billion dollar paraphernalia business with aiding terrorists. This was a legitimate company, paying taxes, I was just the face on the bowl. They charged me. I had nothing to do with the company. I never shipped anything to anybody. But if I didn’t plead, they threatened my son and my wife.”
[Craig X. Rubin | Actor: Weeds]:
”It wasn’t even his company, he just loaned his name to it. 51 people were arrested under operation pipe dreams only one person, Tommy Chong, went to jail. Tommy stands up and volunteers to go to jail says ‘yeah, ok that’s my paraphernalia leave my wife and kid alone’ he’s protecting his family.”
Interviewer: “What kind of force was used on the day you were arrested?”
Tommy: “There was over 20 swat team people, visors, automatic weapons, helicopters overhead, they had news trucks, fox news trucks outside. They had the media on the ready, this was a photo op for everybody. They asked ‘do I have any drugs, and I said yeah I got pot, they wanted to know where it was so I told them. They said well its not really a drug bust, so I said well then what the &$#@ are you doing in my house? Then they said ‘it’s about bongs. We’re bringing down all the bong companies in America.”
*And with tommy safely behind bars for months, the united states drug wars reset its sites. This time across borders. Marc Emery and two of his employees are facing life in prison in the united states, for selling marijuana seeds over the internet.
[Marc Emery | Seed Retailer/Activist]:
“Well obviously I am the most dangerous man alive, no wonder I am facing life in prison without parole for something that no one has ever gone to jail for here in Canada. No one has ever gone to jail for seeds not even for a day.”
[Kirk Tousaw | Lawyer & BC Marijuana Party Manager]:
“The US sees Marc Emery as a major political threat to its anti cannabis agenda.”
[Norm Stamper | PhD | Seattle Chief of Police 1994-2000]:
“We have seen an explosion in prison construction that lags only slightly behind the explosion in incarceration.”
[Tommy Chong | Comedian: Cheech & Chong, That 70’s Show]:
“There are more people in jail in america now than ever before.”
[Kirk Tousaw | Lawyer & BC Marijuana Party Manager]:
“In the united states its one of the fastest growing industries.”
[Chris Bennett | Author/Former ‘Pot TV’ Manager]:
“Right now in the united states of America, the biggest growth industry is the privatized prison complex.”
[Jack A. Cole | Director of L.E.A.P. | Former Undercover Narcotics Agent – 14 years]:
“Japan for instance incarcerates 38 people per 100,000 population, the united states incarcerates at a rate of 726 people per 100,000 population. In a 20 year period the prison population in the United States quadrupled. “
[Norm Stamper | PhD | Seattle Chief of Police 1994-2000]:
“We have just shy of 5% of the world’s population and almost 25% of its prisoner’s.”
[Dana Larsen | Founding Editor of Cannabis Culture Magazine]:
“Even South Africa at its worst didn’t have as many prisoners per capita as America has now.”
[Jack A. Cole | Director of L.E.A.P. | Former Undercover Narcotics Agent – 14 years]:
“Texas just built 77 prisons in about the last 20 years.”
[Norm Stamper | PhD | Seattle Chief of Police 1994-2000]:
“We find state treasuries on the verge of bankruptcy as a result of prison construction.”
*Currently, there are nearly 45,000 prisoners in state and federal prisons for marijuana violations in the United States. This does not include the number of people in local and county jails for marijuana related offences. That data was not available.
*In the late 80’s, there were about five privately run prisons in the United States. By 2005, that number had reached over 260.
[David Malmo-Levine | Vancouver Drug War History School]:
“As soon as you’ve accumulated a certain amount of capital from building prisons you can start investing that in ensuring job security, ensuring there will always be more prisoners around to require more prisons.”
[Joe Rogan | Comedian | Fear Factor & UFC Host]:
“We have private prisons? What the # is that? How did that happen? How can you profit over people going to jail? That’s scary. That’s a bad bad sign. Our society is in deep trouble if nobody is looking into that.”
*Correctional guard unions have become powerful lobbying groups, pushing for longer sentences on less serious crimes. California’s has become one of the most powerful in that state. The California department of corrections budget rose from $923 million in 1985, to $5.7 billion in 2004. Between 1977 and 1999 overall local and state spending on corrections across the country grew 946%. Almost two and a half times the rate at which spending for education increased.
********
There is much more to the movie - but if you've read this far into it I would be surprised. I would encourage everyone to watch the documentary linked in my first post, the makers of this documentary gathered a wealth of information on the subject and now you can find it in one place.
[edit on 27-6-2010 by djzombie]
Much respect to you DJ!! I would have just posted the link to the documentary and be done with it lol
Good on you for typing all that out. Some killer quotes in there from more than respectable people.
This documentary is super professional in its approach, you picked a good one. If there was a documentary out there that could convince a bible-beating conservative that the war on cannabis is the racket that it is, this is it.
s & f!!!!!
Good on you for typing all that out. Some killer quotes in there from more than respectable people.
This documentary is super professional in its approach, you picked a good one. If there was a documentary out there that could convince a bible-beating conservative that the war on cannabis is the racket that it is, this is it.
s & f!!!!!
Yeah this is a very good documentary!
Thanks for typing that up OP!
Also check out "Run from the cure" Rick Simpson..
Powerful stuff.
[edit on 28-6-2010 by Ahmose]
Thanks for typing that up OP!
Also check out "Run from the cure" Rick Simpson..
Powerful stuff.
[edit on 28-6-2010 by Ahmose]
One of the most poignant parts of the documentary I thought was the interview with greg cooper, the guy with MS.
wow is all i have to say poor guy.
and from personal experience it does increase your well being and forget about stress
and from personal experience it does increase your well being and forget about stress
new topics
-
The Great Mosaic of God Unfolding Before Our Eyes
Religion, Faith, And Theology: 27 minutes ago -
Silent Weapons
General Conspiracies: 3 hours ago -
New Whistleblower: "I worked on a team that dealt with with NHI technology and left in 2018."
Aliens and UFOs: 7 hours ago -
According to Wiki, HAMAS is the same as "Palestinians"
US Political Madness: 8 hours ago -
Two Guards Shot Dead And Gang Boss Nicknamed "The Fly" On The Run.
Mainstream News: 8 hours ago -
Long Range Drone - Test Flight
General Chit Chat: 8 hours ago -
Fake Aurora's produced by HAARP
Science & Technology: 9 hours ago -
15.6 Percent of US Population Now Foreign Born - 51.6 Million
Social Issues and Civil Unrest: 9 hours ago -
Deadbots - AI Deepfakes that Simulate Dead People Risks Haunting Relatives
Science & Technology: 9 hours ago
top topics
-
According to Wiki, HAMAS is the same as "Palestinians"
US Political Madness: 8 hours ago, 8 flags -
Two Guards Shot Dead And Gang Boss Nicknamed "The Fly" On The Run.
Mainstream News: 8 hours ago, 7 flags -
Long Range Drone - Test Flight
General Chit Chat: 8 hours ago, 6 flags -
New Whistleblower: "I worked on a team that dealt with with NHI technology and left in 2018."
Aliens and UFOs: 7 hours ago, 6 flags -
Silent Weapons
General Conspiracies: 3 hours ago, 5 flags -
15.6 Percent of US Population Now Foreign Born - 51.6 Million
Social Issues and Civil Unrest: 9 hours ago, 4 flags -
Fake Aurora's produced by HAARP
Science & Technology: 9 hours ago, 3 flags -
Deadbots - AI Deepfakes that Simulate Dead People Risks Haunting Relatives
Science & Technology: 9 hours ago, 2 flags -
The Great Mosaic of God Unfolding Before Our Eyes
Religion, Faith, And Theology: 27 minutes ago, 0 flags
active topics
-
Gaza Genocide Real or Propaganda
Middle East Issues • 327 • : YourFaceAgain -
Candidate TRUMP Now Has Crazy Judge JUAN MERCHAN After Him - The Stormy Daniels Hush-Money Case.
Political Conspiracies • 1681 • : CarlLaFong -
The Great Mosaic of God Unfolding Before Our Eyes
Religion, Faith, And Theology • 1 • : Disgusted123 -
Those Fake Death Numbers From Hamas Out Of Gaza
Middle East Issues • 145 • : FlyersFan -
The Politics Of Growing A Carrot In Britain
Survival • 14 • : angelchemuel -
Mood Music Part VI
Music • 3189 • : BrucellaOrchitis -
15.6 Percent of US Population Now Foreign Born - 51.6 Million
Social Issues and Civil Unrest • 40 • : SchrodingersRat -
Fake Aurora's produced by HAARP
Science & Technology • 72 • : Oldcarpy2 -
Eric Adams seems to have made the list
US Political Madness • 19 • : SchrodingersRat -
"I Want Mercy Not Sacrifice"
Conspiracies in Religions • 10 • : SchrodingersRat
7