tagged w/ Prohibition Is Stupid
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(Reuters) - Delaware became the 16th state on Friday to legalize marijuana for medical use after the governor signed the bill into law.
The law allows patients who certify they have a serious medical condition such as cancer to possess up to six ounces, or 170 grams, of marijuana.
State-licensed centers will be allowed to grow the marijuana and dispense it to patients 18 and older.
Democratic Governor Jack Markell signed the bill in private without a ceremony, according to his office.
The state Senate passed the measure on Wednesday by a 17-4 vote.
California was the first state to allow marijuana for medical use in 1996.
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Many more states are expected to follow suit. How many states need to do this before cannabis/THC is finally rescheduled? In reality, it should have only taken 1 state... We now have a full THIRD of US states with medicinal cannabis laws even though the government has refused to acknowledge it's medicinal value, let alone the fact that it is a completely safe and non-toxic recreational substance that could offer a valuable alternative to alcohol which is one of this nation's leading substances attributing to the death of thousands of people every year.
http://budbeauties.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/san-diego-medical-marijuana.jpg
PS - If you're wondering why I called it "Cannabis" that's because I refuse to call it "marijuana". Marijuana is a dirty racist term founded in the roots of the propaganda campaign that led to one of the biggest travesties in history...
Legalize, regulate and educate!! Cannabis should be free for adults to use as they wish, whether it be medicinal, spiritual, inspirational, or just simply recreational use. If we can drink ourselves to death with an accepted toxin with no medicinal value, why can't we choose to use a non-toxic herb for whatever we want???(Reuters) - Delaware became the 16th state on Friday to legalize marijuana for medical... more
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LEAP is made up of current and former members of the law enforcement and criminal justice communities who are speaking out about the failures of our existing drug policies.
These "Keepers of the Peace and Law and Order" really know what they are talking about and have actual hands-on experience with the results of the “war on drugs”.LEAP is made up of current and former members of the law enforcement and criminal... more
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Bringing Back the Biker Speed-
Old school meth: Mexican cartels go back to basics -By DAVID W. KOOP, Associated Press Writer
MEXICO CITY – Mexican cartels are increasingly going "old school" to keep supplying America with methamphetamine despite an ingredient squeeze.
Some gangs have responded to a Mexican crackdown on their meth chemical of choice — pseudoephedrine — by reviving a production method so old, it was used by U.S. motorcycle gangs and bathtub chemists in the 1970s and '80s, recent seizures show.
The re-emergence of the "P2P method" demonstrates how frustrating it is to crack down on a synthetic drug that — unlike cocaine, heroin and marijuana — comes from recipes of chemical ingredients, known as "precursors," instead of a plant.
When police succeed in cutting off the supply of one precursor, traffickers move on to or make another.
"Chemical restrictions are like squeezing mud, the stuff just comes out between your fingers," said Steve Preisler, who wrote the "Secrets of Methamphetamine Manufacture" under the nom de plume Uncle Fester and is considered the father of modern meth-making. "They make life difficult for the smurfers (home producers) but for people with connections, well, they find it to be no problem at all."
Still, authorities contend going after precursors has produced results. The crackdown contributed to a sharp decrease in meth production in Mexico and a drop in availability on U.S. streets in 2007 and in the first half of 2008, according to the U.S. National Drug Intelligence Center's 2009 methamphetamine report.
And authorities say the P2P method is less desirable for the gangs because it reputedly produces a less-potent drug.
But using easy-to-get phenylacetic acid, as well as new sources of contraband pseudoephedrine, Mexico's meth gangs regrouped, and their output was stabilizing or increasing by late 2008, the drug center's assessment said.
The latest turn in the meth fight began in 2005, when Mexican officials started imposing progressively tighter restrictions on imports of the ephedrine and pseudoephedrine used in cartels' meth labs. A near-total ban on medicines containing pseudoephedrine went into effect last year.
Traffickers found ways to smuggle the banned chemical into Mexico, and they moved some manufacturing abroad. They also started looking into new ingredients.
They came across phenyl-2-propanone, or P2P. While P2P itself is highly restricted and closely monitored by authorities, there are many ways to make it. Gangs found they could get their hands on phenylacetic acid, which can be made into P2P, which in turn can be made into meth. They began acquiring phenylacetic acid and its derivatives in huge quantities.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091214/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_drug_war_mexico_retro_meth
http://static.blogo.it/twowheelsblog/sexy-bikers-gooichi-749-01/big_sexy_bikers_gooichi749_2009_02.jpgBringing Back the Biker Speed-
Old school meth: Mexican cartels go back to basics... more
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The End of Prohibition
"I think this would be a good time for a beer," Franklin D. Roosevelt said upon signing a bill that made 3.2-percent lager legal again, some months ahead of the full repeal of Prohibition. I hope Barack Obama will come up with some comparably witty remarks as he presides over the dismantling of our contemporary forms of prohibition—laws that prevent gay marriage, restrict cannabis as a Schedule I Controlled Substance, and ban travel to Cuba. "You may now kiss the groom," perhaps, or—a version of the comment he once made about smoking pot—"I inhaled—that was the point."
Prohibition now is different from Prohibition then. When the 18th Amendment went into effect in 1920, it was a radical social experiment challenging a custom as old as civilization. Its predictable failure—the gross insult to individual rights, the impossibility of enforcement, the spawning of organized crime—came to an end when Utah, of all places, became the 36th state to ratify the 21st Amendment in 1933. Today prohibition is a byword for futile attempts to legislate morality and remake human nature.
Our forms of prohibition are more sins of omission than commission. Rather than trying to take away longstanding rights, they're instances of conservative laws failing to keep pace with a liberalizing society. But like Prohibition in the '20s, these restrictions have become indefensible as well as impractical, and as a result are fading fast. Within 10 years, it seems a reasonable guess that Americans will travel freely to Cuba, that all states will recognize gay unions, and that few will retain criminal penalties for marijuana use by individuals. Whether or not Democrats retain control of Congress, whether or not Obama is re-elected, and whether they happen sooner or later than expected, these reforms are inevitable—not because politics has changed but because society has.
Source: http://www.slate.com/id/2234017/The End of Prohibition
"I think this would be a good time for a beer,"... more
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We the people particularly resent the way the media treat the issue as a joke, in which almost any headline has to include a bad pun on "doobie," "high" or "mellow."
It's deadly serious when more than 800,000 people a year are arrested for it. Obama's "chuckle," he says, was emblematic. When legalizing marijuana was the top issue cited by visitors to Obama's transition Web site, the president dismissed it with a joke implying that there must be a lot of stoned people on the Internet.
"It's still an issue people are giggling about, not taking seriously," says Noelle Davis, former head of Texans for Medical Marijuana.
State legislators who have sponsored marijuana-related bills say that the two biggest obstacles are fear and cultural stereotypes.
"Elected officials are largely very concerned about being labeled 'soft on drugs,'" says New York State Assemblyman Richard Gottfried. Gottfried, a Manhattan Democrat who sponsored the state's 1977 decriminalization law, has introduced several bills to legalize medical marijuana.
Polls have shown medical marijuana to have the support of 70 to 80 percent of New Yorkers, he says, but "many legislators are afraid to touch it."
(Oh and thank you Current for no longer allowing people to attach photos of their choice to submitted stories, yeah that's great.)We the people particularly resent the way the media treat the issue as a joke, in... more
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