Legalization // Current TV

Obama: End Drugwar; Surrender to Reality - Its Failed and Ron Paul is right

Barack Obama on the failure of the war on drugs. A discussion with NYT Charles M Blow... more

Radical_Centrist
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1 month ago
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115 comments

Penn Jillette's Obama Rant about President Barack Obama's appearance on Jimmy Fallon and his previous drug use.

Penn Jillette and Michael Goudeau talk about President Barack Obama's appearance... more

Radical_Centrist
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7 days ago
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1 comment

Irish politician claims legalisation of cannabis can aid recovery from economic collapse

Ming Flanagan predicts $600 million revenue stream if government goes to pot A... more

Vierotchka
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24 days ago
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5 comments

Stinky fish helps limit potfest at Colo university

BOULDER, Colo. (AP) — Stinky fish fertilizer and two dozen law-enforcement... more

cabinettags
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1 month ago
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27 comments

Do you know the Truth about Cannabis Prohibition? is 420..Time for a little history lesson!!!

The actual story behind the legislature passed against marijuana is quite surprising. According to Jack Herer, author of The Emperor Wears No Clothes and an expert on the "hemp conspiracy," the acts bringing about the demise of hemp were part of a large conspiracy involving DuPont, Harry J. Anslinger, commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, and many other influential industrial leaders such as William Randolph Hearst and Andrew Mellon. Herer notes that the Marijuana Tax Act, which passed in 1937, coincidentally occurred just as the decoricator machine was invented.

With this invention, hemp would have been able to take over competing industries almost instantaneously. According to Popular Mechanics, "10,000 acres devoted to hemp will produce as much paper as 40,000 acres of average [forest] pulp land." William Hearst owned enormous timber acreage, land best suited for conventional pulp, so his interest in preventing the growth of hemp can be easily explained. Competition from hemp would have easily driven the Hearst paper-manufacturing company out of business and significantly lowered the value of his land.

Herer even suggests popularizing the term "marijuana" was a strategy Hearst used in order to create fear in the American public. "The first step in creating hysteria was to introduce the element of fear of the unknown by using a word that no one had ever heard of before... 'marijuana'" (ibid).

DuPont's involvment in the anti-hemp campaign can also be explained with great ease. At this time, DuPont was patenting a new sulfuric acid process for producing wood-pulp paper. "According to the company's own records, wood-pulp products ultimately accounted for more than 80% of all DuPont's railroad car loadings for the next 50 years" (ibid). Indeed it should be noted that "two years before the prohibitive hemp tax in 1937, DuPont developed a new synthetic fiber, nylon, which was an ideal substitute for hemp rope" (Hartsell). The year after the tax was passed DuPont came out with rayon, which would have been unable to compete with the strength of hemp fiber or its economical process of manufacturing.

"DuPont's point man was none other than Harry Anslinger...who was appointed to the FBN by Treasury Secretary Andrew MEllon, who was also chairman of the Mellon Bank, DuPont's chief financial backer. Anslinger's relationship to Mellon wasn't just political, he was also married to Mellon's niece" (Hartsell). It doesn't take much to draw a connection between DuPont, Anslinger, and Mellon, and it's obvious that all of these groups, including Hearst, had strong motivation to prevent the growth of the hemp industry.

The reasoning behind DuPont, Anslinger, and Hearst was not for any moral or health related issues. They fought to prevent the growth of this new industry so they wouldn't go bankrupt. In fact, the American Medical Association tried to argue for the medical benefits of hemp. Marijuana is actually less dangerous than alcohol, cigarettes, and even most over-the-counter medicines or prescriptions. According to Francis J. Young, the DEA's administrative judge, "nearly all medicines have toxicm, potentially letal affects, but marijuana is not such a substance..

.Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man. By any measure of rational analysis marijuana can be safely used within a supervised routine of medical care" (DEA Docket No. 86-22, 57). It is illogical then, for marijuana to be illegal in the United States when "alcohol poisoning is a significant cause of death in this country" and "approximately 400,000 premature deaths are attributed to cigarettes annually."

Dr. Roger Pertwee, SEcretary of the International Cannabis Research Society states that as a recreational drug, "Marijuana compares favourably to nicotine, alcohol, and even caffeine." Under extreme amounts of alcohol a person will experience an "inability to stand or walk without help, stupor and near unconsciousness, lack of comprehension of what is seen or heard, shock, and breathing and heartbeat may stop." Even though these effects occur only under insane amounts of alcohol consumption, (.2-.5 BAL) the fact is smoking extreme amounts of marijuana will do nothing more than put you to sleep, whereas drinking excessive amounts of alcohol will kill you.

The most profound activist for marijuana's use as a medicine is Dr. Lester Grinspoon, author of Marihuana: The Forbidden Medicine. According to Grinspoon, "The only well-confirmed negative effect of marijuana is caused by the smoke, which contains three times more tars and five times more carbon monoxide than tobacco. But even the heaviest marijuana smokers rarely use as much as an average tobacco smoker.

And, of course, many prefer to eat it." His book includes personal accounts of how prescribed marijuana alleviated epilepsy, weight loss of aids, nausea of chemotherapy, menstrual pains, and the severe effects of multiple sclerosis. The illness with the most documentation and harmony among doctors which marijuana has successfully treated is MS. Grinspoon believes for MS sufferers, "Cannabis is the drug of necessity." One patient of his, 51 year old Elizabeth MacRory, says "It has completely changed my life...It has helped with muscle spasms, allowed me to sleep properly, and helped control my bladder." Marijuana also proved to be effective in the treatment of glaucoma because its use lwoers pressure on the eye.

Continue reading at blog and Happy 420!!!The actual story behind the legislature passed against marijuana is quite surprising.... more

BRAVATRAVELS
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1 month ago
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36 comments

Obama’s New Drug Control Report Calls for More Workplace Drug Testing, Nationwide Zero Tolerance Laws

The first thing you should know about President Barack Obama’s 2012 Drug Control... more

JRBarilla
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1 month ago
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0 comments

Obama: Legalizing drugs not the answer to trafficking in illegal narcotics in the Americas

CARTAGENA, Colombia — President Barack Obama says legalizing drug use is not the... more

Radical_Centrist
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1 month ago
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2 comments

Mitch McConnell: Smoking Pot Leads to Death

But once Mitch's fat-cat friends in the tobacco industry learn how to profit from... more

StewSteve
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3 months ago
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0 comments

War on drugs is a joke, Central American countries tired of it and moving towards legalization

As Vice President Joe Biden wraps up a trip to Central America insisting the drug war... more

mrpuma2u
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3 months ago
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1 comment

Spanish town of Rasquera leases land for marijuana plantation

Town's mayor says scheme, which is legal, is chance to bring in money and create... more

Vierotchka
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3 months ago
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22 comments

LAPD deputy chief wins Ask Obama contest with pro-drug-legalization question

Tomangell sez, "A question advocating marijuana legalization from a retired LAPD... more

pjacobs51
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4 months ago
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54 comments

Virginia Is For Potheads?

When this country got torpedoed by the Great Recession of 2007, we experienced the largest collapse in state revenues on record. Now, nearly two years after the bottom fell out of the economy, all but four states have been forced to cut services for residents. More than 30 states have raised taxes and 29 still face budget shortfalls.

Among the states struggling to dig itself out of the financial abyss is Virginia, whose budget deficit reached $2 billion in 2012. Even at 8.3% growth in 2011, Virginia won’t fully restore its losses from the recession until 2019.

But David Englin, a Democratic delegate from Arlington, is unwilling to wait seven more years for a recovery and has a creative proposal to give Virginia’s economy an instant shot of adrenaline. It’s House Joint Resolution 140 and it’s raising eyebrows among some of his fellow lawmakers and constituents.

Englin wants Virginia's state-owned liquor outlets, called ABC stores, to start selling marijuana.

At least, for now, he wants the General Assembly to allow for a study on the economic impact of the sale and taxing of pot in Virginia as well as the feasibility and practicality of legalization.

“Right now, people are smoking marijuana, Englin told his local CBS affiliate. “Respectable members of society are out there secretly purchasing and smoking marijuana and the money they spend on that is going into the hands of criminals. So this legislation just seeks to find out how much money we could potentially be raising to fund core services of the Commonwealth.”

“What’s next? Selling it at Walmart (WMT)?” countered Wayne Frith of Substance Abuse Free Environment (SAFE) who believes marijuana’s health and safety implications are far too serious to allow this measure to pass.

Northern Virginia resident Bernard Hill thinks the proposal is “crazy” and opposes his tax dollars being spent to explore it. All told, the study, taken on by a joint subcommittee, would set the state back a little more than $15,000.

Hill may not be familiar with the old business adage “You have to spend money to make money” because if he was, he may be more comfortable knowing what kind of a return he’d be guaranteed on his investment. In 2011 alone, states like Colorado and California -- where medical marijuana is legal -- reaped $1.7 billion in sales.

To put this figure into perspective, consider that Pfizer (PFE) made $1.9 billion off Viagra -- which is legal everywhere.When this country got torpedoed by the Great Recession of 2007, we experienced the... more

Vierotchka
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4 months ago
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0 comments

Snoop Dogg to W.H.: Legalize pot

Lots of celebrities want to meet the president and they often come with their own pet... more

Anonmaly
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5 months ago
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1 comment

The real reason why the media establishment attacks Ron Paul over 'racism'

It's fascinating to watch the long knives coming out for Texas Republican Rep.... more

maasanova
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5 months ago
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0 comments

Super Frat: Newt World Order

Mistah Sh*t watches one of the GOP candidates talk about weed.

TonyDiGerolamo
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6 months ago
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0 comments

Traffic Accidents Decline in States that Legalize Medical Marijuana

Any attempt to segue into this post with a clever lead is likely to fall flat, so in the interest of skipping the cliches: a new study out of University of Colorado Denver and Montana State University shows that legalizing medical marijuana sales in various states over the past two decades has led to a nearly 10 percent drop in traffic fatalities. What the study really shows--by way of causal chain--is a five percent drop in beer sales, and that has in turn led to fewer fatalities on the road. Put that in your pipe and smoke it (couldn’t resist just one).

This is the kind of study that’s going to be attacked from all sides, by those with agendas and those who will simply point out that establishing that causal link between legalized pot and the decrease in alcohol sales (and in turn the reduced traffic deaths) is difficult with all the variables out there. But it is an interesting study for no other reason than it actually attempts to measure the effects of legalizing pot by linking it to some kind of hard data rather than some hard-to-quantify metric.That, of course, is traffic data, of which we have plenty. Traffic data is bountiful and generally pretty good because incidents on the road--particularly those that involve injury or fatality--very rarely go unnoticed by authorities, who are required to dutifully record them in the public record. So Daniel Rees of UC Denver and D. Mark Anderson of MSU started looking at the traffic data both nationwide and more particularly in the 13 states that legalized marijuana for medical use between 1990 and 2009.

They found several connections and trends that seemingly stem from the legalization laws, but most notably they found evidence that alcohol consumption by 20- to 29-year-olds decreased, and that translated into fewer deaths on the road. Previous simulator studies have shown that drinkers tend to drive more aggressively and take more risks, while marijuana users tilt toward risk-averse behaviors. Notably, they also found that in the states that legalized marijuana there was no evidence of an uptick in use among minors, which is a major concern for the medical marijuana opposition.

To be fair, establishing these kinds of links is still difficult as variable abound and the data is sometimes difficult to trust. Common sense (experience?) tells us that kids smoking pot generally don’t go around telling adults about it, including those conducting academic research. So establishing whether or not more or fewer kids are getting high is more or less an exercise in guesswork. And Rees and Anderson point out that while alcohol is often consumed in public places marijuana is consumed privately, often in the home. So making marijuana use a publicly acceptable activity for all people--not just those with a medical necessity--might diminish the reduction in traffic fatalities as more stoney drivers get behind the wheel.

But things being what they are, medical marijuana laws appear to be trending toward safer roadways, and that’s all this study purports to demonstrate. Place whatever value on that you will. PopSci would like to point out that this post does not constitute an opinion either for or against the legalization of medical marijuana, and Rees’s and Anderson’s findings are just, like, their opinions, man.

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-11/todays-study-debate-medical-marijuana-laws-reduce-traffic-fatalitiesAny attempt to segue into this post with a clever lead is likely to fall flat, so in... more

EmperorThan
added this
6 months ago
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1 comment

Chicago Councilmen set to Decriminalize Possession of Marijuana

Chicago pot smokers may soon be able to light up without fear of jail time. Several... more

jeffissleeping
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7 months ago
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13 comments

Colombia's President: Marijuana Should Be Legalized Globally

Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos said this week that legalization of... more

Anonmaly
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7 months ago
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2 comments

White House Petition Website: Legalize Marijuana Petition

https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/legalize-and-regulate-marijuana-manner... more

Avior
added this
8 months ago
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28 comments

Debate: Legalize marijuana? And a look at demand side policies in the U.S. war on drugs

http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/09/07/debate-legalize-marijuana-and-a-look... more

Avior
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9 months ago
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3 comments

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