Over the past four years, Mexicans have been locked up and deported in record numbers, while young black men and Negro veterans have been imprisoned and/or killed for doing exactly what the black man currently in the Oval Office laughed about having done as a youth, while cancer, PTSD, and MS patients and seniors have been forced back into the black market, had their homes raided and their children held at gunpoint while their pets were killed, despite that black man in the Oval Office's implied promise, during his last campaign, NOT to target medical cannabis users and suppliers.
Nonetheless, in the wake of a huge Latino turnout in November and the tragedy at Sandy Hook, gun control and immigration reform have become the primary focus of the second term, despite the fact that the Oval Office itself lost guns that later killed Federal agents, that dozens of Sandy Hooks have happened all over this country in the last decade without a meaningful peep from the press or the Prez, and despite the fact that immigration, legal and otherwise, is at 10% of the levels we had in 2000.
Ignore the fact that armed thugs in body armor are smashing in front doors and holding children of the exact same ages at gunpoint, so long as THOSE criminals have a badge.
Pay no mind to the fact that a far higher percentage of people than EVER voted for Obama think that cannabis and its cousin hemp should be taken off of the Federal Drug Schedule and regulated like alcohol and tobacco, a truly bipartisan moment that every facet of the press on the left and right is doing its very best to ignore;
How do you talk meaningfully about "growing the economy" when, due to your actions and those of your Attorney General, the once prosperous city of "Oaksterdam" and the state of California have both lost millions in tax revenues due to Federal disruption of state-certified businesses and trade, while other states with cannabis legislation waste months in which they could be generating tax revenue, jobs, and new businesses, awaiting a Federal interpretation of intent regarding respect of their laws?
How do you justify Federal silence and inaction when almost half the states in the Union currently allow medical use of cannabis or have decriminalized personal possession?
How can you talk about immigration reform and border violence and still not act to reduce the profitability of cannabis smuggling for the cartels, thus reducing their ability to buy guns, bribe politicians and cops or maintain a strong enough presence to dominate a region?
Latinos are voting in record numbers BECAUSE THEY ARE BEING DEPORTED and the crime cartels are losing all their money laundering and courier connections, all their operation fronts. Want to reform immigration? The Federal Investigation into Joe Arpaio's criminal activities might have been a good start, followed by Eric Holder's indictment and Barack Obama's impeachment for the Fast and Furious debacle.
Isn't it great that the Progressive Obama Government decided that, while promising our veterans jobs on their return and spending trillions to restart our economy, playing games with the fiscal cliff and the budget crisis, there were 50,000 children of illegal immigrants (you know, criminals?) could have jobs and/or get a college education? I can't tell you how glad I am that a college education and a decent job aren't burdens I'll have to shoulder in the near future.
Illegal immigration is fixing itself... Latinos are going south in record numbers, here in the southwest. This is a smoke-and-mirrors issue.... Ignore the absence of the little brown man behind the curtain, we are Oz, the Great and Terrible...
Why are we fighting to free the Middle East, when the nations south of the Rio Grande are controlled by one of the largest criminal organizations in history? How can we claim to combat terrorism and border violence and the growth of the cartels when MS13 has a cell in every city in America, while they make billions on the illegal import of low-grade cannabis?
See the bigger picture... look for the connections.
Gun Control, the other topic sure to unite America, means hitting your target as many times as you pull the trigger. Guns made our nation free, guns, not talk, stopped global tyranny, and the responsible use and ownership of guns will keep our nation and our world free, from outside influences as well as the forces, corporate, private, conservative and liberal, attempting to subvert our government from the inside. Retention of background check data in a LEO eyes-only database, with required state and federal input of felony and mental data to the NICS, and uniform enforcement of the current laws, with no loopholes, no special cases, and no privileged class would remove the need for any new legislation regarding guns.
No gun has ever simply pointed itself at someone and killed them.
And NO ONE, EVER, IN ALL OF RECORDED HUMAN HISTORY, DIED FROM THE USE OF CANNABIS.
We have enough laws about humans and guns... we need clarity and reason, we need enforcement, and we need consistency between our scientific knowledge, our laws, and our actions. Cognitive independence is a term that is getting thrown around a lot. In an age of increasing government invasion, shrinking freedoms, genetic research and scientific advances in artificial intelligence, it may be long past time to start considering jujst where a competent, thinking individual draws the line between external and internal authority and autonomy.
When the government holds medical patents on a plant that same government defines as a drug with no medicinal value, when the courts refuse to hear evidence to the contrary, the same old answers and issues will not continue to distract or dissuade a public too well informed and personally experienced to accept those tired clumsy shenanigans.
When SWAT and RUSH task forces are raiding family homes, killing pets, holding children and seniors at gunpoint, destroying any notion of freedom and justice, when entire cities are reduced to slums and empty storefronts by Federal contempt for states' and citizens' rights, how can we continue the meaningless charade of talking about high-capacity magazines or border fences as a solution or source of our problems?
Showing posts with label recovery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label recovery. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Friday, December 7, 2012
Don't Let Go, and You Won't Fall Off of The Fiscal Cliff, either.
Posting this again, because given Washington State and Colorado's recent VOTER initiatives to legalize cannabis and regulate it in the same fashion as alcohol and tobacco, I think it is a crime that NONE of the major news outlets on the right or left has shown much interest in a historical moment in American politics. Focusing on immigration due to Latino turnout? Millions of white, black, brow
n and red voters turned out , and in November, and a significant number of them spoke far more loudly to the issue of a trillion-dollar war on our own people than the rapidly-diminishing illegal immigrant problem, which is down to 10% of 2000 levels.
How about you focus on the issues, Congress and Mister Obama, and stop trying to win the next state elections before you deal with the current problems?
AVOID THE FISCAL CLIFF.
One simple step: Executive Order (like the one for Bin Ladin's execution) decriminalizing hemp and cannabis, releasing all non-violent offenders, dismissing all pending cases for simple possession with or without intent, legalizing personal production and growing co-ops.
Results: compassion and dignity for patients and caregivers, reduced stress for the same, lower Medicaid and Medicare doctor and prescription costs, lower infrastructure costs (hospitals and clinics), lower enforcement and incarceration budgets, no new prison costs, increased jobs and tax revenues across the country (Washington estimates 2 billion in the next 5 years just from new taxes, stores, patients, clinics, and dispensaries. I've estimated a savings of almost 2 million PER YEAR for Medicaid and Medicare; http://
Decriminalization also means exponential reduction of the profit margin of the cartels and black markets, reduction of inner city crime levels, revitalization of urban and farm communities, and an increasingly competitive America.
AVOID THE FISCAL CLIFF.
One simple step: Executive Order (like the one for Bin Ladin's execution) decriminalizing hemp and cannabis, releasing all non-violent offenders, dismissing all pending cases for simple possession with or without intent, legalizing personal production and growing co-ops.
Results: compassion and dignity for patients and caregivers, reduced stress for the same, lower Medicaid and Medicare doctor and prescription costs, lower infrastructure costs (hospitals and clinics), lower enforcement and incarceration budgets, no new prison costs, increased jobs and tax revenues across the country (Washington estimates 2 billion in the next 5 years just from new taxes, stores, patients, clinics, and dispensaries. I've estimated a savings of almost 2 million PER YEAR for Medicaid and Medicare; http://
Decriminalization also means exponential reduction of the profit margin of the cartels and black markets, reduction of inner city crime levels, revitalization of urban and farm communities, and an increasingly competitive America.
So how 'bout instead of partisan politics and special interest accomodation as usual, we all join in on a solution that offers immediate relief and forward momentum? Or is that too much to ask from a group of lifelong bureaucrats?
Saturday, June 2, 2012
No value
A recent Kentucky Drug Task Force raid netted 250 cannabis plants. High-potency marijuana, according to the Sheriff's Department. Estimate of value was 1.9 million dollars.
Almost 2 million dollars for 250 plants. Plants that will grow in the ditch, and do in more than a few places in America. Plants the Federal government has denied have any medicinal value or practical application. What makes this plant so valuable... so valuable that the government that has classified this herb as a dangerous drug and of no use to medical science, that same government holds patents on the medical applications of cannabis extracts.
What could make this plant so valuable?
Is it that addictive?
The government doesn't think so. Not one government study of the effects of cannabis has ever proven that it is addictive or has any negative long term health effects. The results that have been reported by the government were skewed to fit administration policy, every time.
So why this war on drugs? Let's go back to that raid, the one that seized 250 cannabis plants worth 1.9 million.
First, that's a ridiculous sum, pricing each plant at almost $8,000 dollars. Cannabis, on the black market, sells for $400-560 per ounce. Pounds generally go for $2,400-3200, so the estimate was based on the premium ounce price and the expectation that each plant would produce about 2.5 pounds.
Most plants produce between one and three pounds, usually closer to one.
Black market cannabis may have been soaked in perfumes to hide the scent, shipped cross-country inside spare tires, dusted with powdered rubber and industrial solvents and lubricants, or recovered from a law-enforcement burn, rinsed but still laced with kerosene and petrochemicals. On the black market, inferior cannabis can be treated with the same substances that make "spice" so potent and potentially dangerous.
Under Prohibition, there is no competition. Under Prohibition, there is no incentive to produce a superior product, just one that will get you more stoned.
Under Prohibition, sick people and people in pain must risk their lives in order to use the best quality of herb they can find, depending on their location. Often, many of the medicinal properties of the cannabis have so degraded from heat, oxygen and sunlight that it is worth next to nothing for actual medical use.
Prohibition has failed for the last 40 years. Its only claim for success is to have made otherwise law-abiding citizens into felons for a victimless crime, and to have put billins of dollars into the pockets of private prison contractors, police unions, rehabilitation programs, and an army of DEA agents, INS agents, as well as providing meaninless high-profile headlines for state, county and local law enforcement. Yet murder, rape, theft, child pornography, narcotics, and a host of new "designer drugs" are still sweeping the nation.
But I digress...
One thousand pounds at $3,200/lb is $3,200,000 on the black market. Because of prohibition, that money creates zero taxes, no by-products, zero economic growth. Because of Prohibition, that money can go toward buying guns to funnel into South America to the cartels, and leads to turf wars between rival dealers, rarely upstanding pillars of the community, who sell cocaine, crack, oxycodone, ecstacy, weapons and prostitutes to "round out" their portfolio, so to speak. Because of Prohibition, bud from the west coast makes it to Florida where it is often traded for cocaine that then spreads out across America.
Now, let's look at the medical marijuana market.
Here, an ounce of carefully trimmed and scientifically-bred cannabis costs $280-480. Very high quality, no fertilizers, clearly labelled for specific complaints like stress, pain, nerve spasm, etc.
Dispensaries are legitimate businesses, licensed by the state and subject to a number of conditions. Dispensary owners pay business taxes, and if they own the building, property taxes. The owners make every effort to operate within the law, and do not dispense any other substance than cannabis.
Dispensaries create jobs for growers, trimmers, counterpeople, clothing, poster and paraphenalia manufacturers, delivery drivers, glass blowers, and cooks to bake the brownies and make the butter. Each one of those jobs creates tax revenue. Dispensaries charge taxes on clothing, paraphenalia, posters, edibles, and premium bud cannabis.
So in a legalized market, 1,000 pounds of cannabis is worth an average of $3,200,000 if sold in ounces. That is another difference in markets. on the black market, you can buy as much cannabis as you can afford, setting the stage for distribution. In a regulated system, patients can only possess 2 ounces of cannabis at any time. So that's 8,000 patients who could have benefitted from that amount of cannabis, which was instead destroyed.
In a regulated system, that 1,000 pounds will generate $4800 or more, just in sales taxes.
It will generate zero in law enforcement costs.
It can provide employment and supplemental income for seniors, veterans and the disabled; growing, trimming, rolling into cigarettes.
It can be woven into cloth much more durable than cotton.
It can be mixed into concrete as as a superstrong fibrous mesh, and used in the place of old-growth forests that take a hundred years or more to mature (as opposed to 9 MONTHS for hemp) to make the finest paper.
It can be used to make fuel for America and the world's growing energy needs, without the hazard of poisoning the entire Gulf of Mexico or turning Japan into a radioactive wasteland.
It absorbs greenhouse gases and gives off oxygen.
More importantly, and much more relevant to this inquiry, 1,000 pounds of cannabis can replace $36,000 worth of prescription meds each year for each one of 1,000 patients with chronic pain or diseases like MS and cancer.
$36,000 x 1000 = $36,000,000 in potential reduced costs for every thousand people on Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security Disability. There are over 61,000 people living on a fixed income from Social Security Disability Insurance, most of them also on Medicaid and Medicare.
$36,000,000 x 61 = $2,196,000,000 in savings for the American taxpayer and the Federal Government.
In the current economy, why wouldn't the Federal Government want to save almost 2.2 trillion dollars annually? The current Drug Enforcement Agency budget is $2,130,100 which is spent on 8,399 positions; 4,146 of which are actually agents.
Approximately 75-80% of that budget is for the interdiction of cannabis. That's over $1,600,000,000 spent on destroying a harmless herb with numerous medical applications proven in peer-reviewed studies around the globe and not a single fatality from use in the recorded history of mankind.
Why wouldn't our government want almost $3,600,000,000 in additional budget revenues every year?
Perhaps the answer is one of perspective, and a focus on profits, rather than the good of all mankind.
Because viewed another way, that 1,000 pounds of cannabis represents a potential $2 Million loss for the pharmaceutical companies, every year.
Pharmaceutical companies that routinely churn out drugs with side effects such as addiction, psychosis, hallucinations, thoughts of murder or suicide, blisters on your eyeballs, mouth, tongue, or throat, red or peeling skin, deadly viral infections, arrhythmic heartbeat, unstoppable bleeding, tumors, stomach cancer, and the list goes on and on.
And yet these substances are considered to be medicines and are accepted as such by a public that will flock to accept all those side effects even while decrying the "gateway drug", cannabis. How have these poisons become medicine while cannabis is classified as a drug?
Because companies like Pfizer and Lilly-Squibb pour millions of dollars into sustaining the War on Cannabis, all while selling their panaceas with images of bright, happy families, running playful dogs and hard-working Americans who NEED these blessed powders and potions to truly enjoy the American Dream. Cannabis is demonized, as it ever has been, as the province of seedy characters and loose women in smoky dives and crack houses. It is portrayed as the domain of criminals and societal failures, a gateway drug with no redeeming medical applications, no value.
Pharmaceutical companies pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions. For which, they get a return of hundreds of thousands of dollars on each and every dollar of those contributions by keeping cannabis illegal and forcing seniors, soldiers, and sick people to continue consuming narcotics that destroy their organs, drain their happiness, and fail to address the underlying causes of the symptoms they are made to treat.
Isn't it odd, then, that those same companies that deny the rest of the world the free, regulated use of cannabis have a medicine derived from cannabis? Odder yet, the DEA website acts as a salesite to pitch the product. Below is a quote from the DEA website concerning Marinol, the "synthetic" THC derivative.
"A pharmaceutical product, Marinol, is widely available through prescription. It comes in the form of a pill and is also being studied by researchers for suitability via other delivery methods, such as an inhaler or patch. The active ingredient of Marinol is synthetic THC, which has been found to relieve the nausea and vomiting associated with chemotherapy for cancer patients and to assist with loss of appetite with AIDS patients."
So THC has been found to help with nausea and vomiting and loss of appetite? But, only if it has been packaged and processed by a giant corporation. Forget about that THC you could grow in your closet for a few dollars a month, that stuff is bad for you, the report goes on to explain;
"Unlike smoked marijuana--which contains more than 400 different chemicals, including most of the hazardous chemicals found in tobacco smoke-Marinol has been studied and approved by the medical community and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the nation's watchdog over unsafe and harmful food and drug products. Since the passage of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act, any drug that is marketed in the United States must undergo rigorous scientific testing. The approval process mandated by this act ensures that claims of safety and therapeutic value are supported by clinical evidence and keeps unsafe, ineffective and dangerous drugs off the market."
Now, let's back up to the beginning of that quote. One, Marinol is unlike smoked cannabis in that it does not deliver 400 different chemicals to users.
Of course not. Most of those chemicals are also potential medicines for development. Why would they let you have them all at once, in the same way Nature did? Nature doesn't have a bottom line to consider. It's not about a cure... it's about developing a market and keeping a share.
Next the DEA rather breathlessly contends that cannabis, when smoked, is ALMOST as dangerous as tobacco.
No government finding has ever said so. No independent study has ever supported that claim. And every single study has shown nicotine to be the most powerful, addictive central nervous stimulant on the planet.
So why is it that you can buy this incredibly destructive drug at any convenience store, but possessing cannabis will get you 15 years in prison in some states... predominantly those in which tobacco is a major cash crop.
Because Tobacco also pours millions into the campaign coffers and Drug War rallies of those who stand to profit from the continued use of cotton, trees, petroleum, and pharmaceuticals.
But surely good Christians could not believe that the Almightly, in His Wisdom, made a mistake? Sadly pastors and preachers and politico-religious tyrants still blast this herb from the pulpit, weaned on 75 years of lies and terrified of the closeness to the spiritual that so many attain with a single puff, after years of searching in vain through the churches and synagogues for that link to the Eternal.
We have lost the will to Question Authority, to think critically about the information we are offered, to act on our convictions, to stand for what is Right even if it means inconvenience, loss of standing in the community or even jail.
We are a nation of people who want change... as long as someone else makes it happen, preferably before the next reality TV show comes on and we are forced to miss an episode of The Biggest Loser.
We cannot see that, in today's corporate government machine, it is We, the People, who are The Biggest Losers of all.
That is why cannabis is still illegal.
.
Almost 2 million dollars for 250 plants. Plants that will grow in the ditch, and do in more than a few places in America. Plants the Federal government has denied have any medicinal value or practical application. What makes this plant so valuable... so valuable that the government that has classified this herb as a dangerous drug and of no use to medical science, that same government holds patents on the medical applications of cannabis extracts.
What could make this plant so valuable?
Is it that addictive?
The government doesn't think so. Not one government study of the effects of cannabis has ever proven that it is addictive or has any negative long term health effects. The results that have been reported by the government were skewed to fit administration policy, every time.
So why this war on drugs? Let's go back to that raid, the one that seized 250 cannabis plants worth 1.9 million.
First, that's a ridiculous sum, pricing each plant at almost $8,000 dollars. Cannabis, on the black market, sells for $400-560 per ounce. Pounds generally go for $2,400-3200, so the estimate was based on the premium ounce price and the expectation that each plant would produce about 2.5 pounds.
Most plants produce between one and three pounds, usually closer to one.
Black market cannabis may have been soaked in perfumes to hide the scent, shipped cross-country inside spare tires, dusted with powdered rubber and industrial solvents and lubricants, or recovered from a law-enforcement burn, rinsed but still laced with kerosene and petrochemicals. On the black market, inferior cannabis can be treated with the same substances that make "spice" so potent and potentially dangerous.
Under Prohibition, there is no competition. Under Prohibition, there is no incentive to produce a superior product, just one that will get you more stoned.
Under Prohibition, sick people and people in pain must risk their lives in order to use the best quality of herb they can find, depending on their location. Often, many of the medicinal properties of the cannabis have so degraded from heat, oxygen and sunlight that it is worth next to nothing for actual medical use.
Prohibition has failed for the last 40 years. Its only claim for success is to have made otherwise law-abiding citizens into felons for a victimless crime, and to have put billins of dollars into the pockets of private prison contractors, police unions, rehabilitation programs, and an army of DEA agents, INS agents, as well as providing meaninless high-profile headlines for state, county and local law enforcement. Yet murder, rape, theft, child pornography, narcotics, and a host of new "designer drugs" are still sweeping the nation.
But I digress...
One thousand pounds at $3,200/lb is $3,200,000 on the black market. Because of prohibition, that money creates zero taxes, no by-products, zero economic growth. Because of Prohibition, that money can go toward buying guns to funnel into South America to the cartels, and leads to turf wars between rival dealers, rarely upstanding pillars of the community, who sell cocaine, crack, oxycodone, ecstacy, weapons and prostitutes to "round out" their portfolio, so to speak. Because of Prohibition, bud from the west coast makes it to Florida where it is often traded for cocaine that then spreads out across America.
Now, let's look at the medical marijuana market.
Here, an ounce of carefully trimmed and scientifically-bred cannabis costs $280-480. Very high quality, no fertilizers, clearly labelled for specific complaints like stress, pain, nerve spasm, etc.
Dispensaries are legitimate businesses, licensed by the state and subject to a number of conditions. Dispensary owners pay business taxes, and if they own the building, property taxes. The owners make every effort to operate within the law, and do not dispense any other substance than cannabis.
Dispensaries create jobs for growers, trimmers, counterpeople, clothing, poster and paraphenalia manufacturers, delivery drivers, glass blowers, and cooks to bake the brownies and make the butter. Each one of those jobs creates tax revenue. Dispensaries charge taxes on clothing, paraphenalia, posters, edibles, and premium bud cannabis.
So in a legalized market, 1,000 pounds of cannabis is worth an average of $3,200,000 if sold in ounces. That is another difference in markets. on the black market, you can buy as much cannabis as you can afford, setting the stage for distribution. In a regulated system, patients can only possess 2 ounces of cannabis at any time. So that's 8,000 patients who could have benefitted from that amount of cannabis, which was instead destroyed.
In a regulated system, that 1,000 pounds will generate $4800 or more, just in sales taxes.
It will generate zero in law enforcement costs.
It can provide employment and supplemental income for seniors, veterans and the disabled; growing, trimming, rolling into cigarettes.
It can be woven into cloth much more durable than cotton.
It can be mixed into concrete as as a superstrong fibrous mesh, and used in the place of old-growth forests that take a hundred years or more to mature (as opposed to 9 MONTHS for hemp) to make the finest paper.
It can be used to make fuel for America and the world's growing energy needs, without the hazard of poisoning the entire Gulf of Mexico or turning Japan into a radioactive wasteland.
It absorbs greenhouse gases and gives off oxygen.
More importantly, and much more relevant to this inquiry, 1,000 pounds of cannabis can replace $36,000 worth of prescription meds each year for each one of 1,000 patients with chronic pain or diseases like MS and cancer.
$36,000 x 1000 = $36,000,000 in potential reduced costs for every thousand people on Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security Disability. There are over 61,000 people living on a fixed income from Social Security Disability Insurance, most of them also on Medicaid and Medicare.
$36,000,000 x 61 = $2,196,000,000 in savings for the American taxpayer and the Federal Government.
In the current economy, why wouldn't the Federal Government want to save almost 2.2 trillion dollars annually? The current Drug Enforcement Agency budget is $2,130,100 which is spent on 8,399 positions; 4,146 of which are actually agents.
Approximately 75-80% of that budget is for the interdiction of cannabis. That's over $1,600,000,000 spent on destroying a harmless herb with numerous medical applications proven in peer-reviewed studies around the globe and not a single fatality from use in the recorded history of mankind.
Why wouldn't our government want almost $3,600,000,000 in additional budget revenues every year?
Perhaps the answer is one of perspective, and a focus on profits, rather than the good of all mankind.
Because viewed another way, that 1,000 pounds of cannabis represents a potential $2 Million loss for the pharmaceutical companies, every year.
Pharmaceutical companies that routinely churn out drugs with side effects such as addiction, psychosis, hallucinations, thoughts of murder or suicide, blisters on your eyeballs, mouth, tongue, or throat, red or peeling skin, deadly viral infections, arrhythmic heartbeat, unstoppable bleeding, tumors, stomach cancer, and the list goes on and on.
And yet these substances are considered to be medicines and are accepted as such by a public that will flock to accept all those side effects even while decrying the "gateway drug", cannabis. How have these poisons become medicine while cannabis is classified as a drug?
Because companies like Pfizer and Lilly-Squibb pour millions of dollars into sustaining the War on Cannabis, all while selling their panaceas with images of bright, happy families, running playful dogs and hard-working Americans who NEED these blessed powders and potions to truly enjoy the American Dream. Cannabis is demonized, as it ever has been, as the province of seedy characters and loose women in smoky dives and crack houses. It is portrayed as the domain of criminals and societal failures, a gateway drug with no redeeming medical applications, no value.
Pharmaceutical companies pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions. For which, they get a return of hundreds of thousands of dollars on each and every dollar of those contributions by keeping cannabis illegal and forcing seniors, soldiers, and sick people to continue consuming narcotics that destroy their organs, drain their happiness, and fail to address the underlying causes of the symptoms they are made to treat.
Isn't it odd, then, that those same companies that deny the rest of the world the free, regulated use of cannabis have a medicine derived from cannabis? Odder yet, the DEA website acts as a salesite to pitch the product. Below is a quote from the DEA website concerning Marinol, the "synthetic" THC derivative.
"A pharmaceutical product, Marinol, is widely available through prescription. It comes in the form of a pill and is also being studied by researchers for suitability via other delivery methods, such as an inhaler or patch. The active ingredient of Marinol is synthetic THC, which has been found to relieve the nausea and vomiting associated with chemotherapy for cancer patients and to assist with loss of appetite with AIDS patients."
So THC has been found to help with nausea and vomiting and loss of appetite? But, only if it has been packaged and processed by a giant corporation. Forget about that THC you could grow in your closet for a few dollars a month, that stuff is bad for you, the report goes on to explain;
"Unlike smoked marijuana--which contains more than 400 different chemicals, including most of the hazardous chemicals found in tobacco smoke-Marinol has been studied and approved by the medical community and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the nation's watchdog over unsafe and harmful food and drug products. Since the passage of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act, any drug that is marketed in the United States must undergo rigorous scientific testing. The approval process mandated by this act ensures that claims of safety and therapeutic value are supported by clinical evidence and keeps unsafe, ineffective and dangerous drugs off the market."
Now, let's back up to the beginning of that quote. One, Marinol is unlike smoked cannabis in that it does not deliver 400 different chemicals to users.
Of course not. Most of those chemicals are also potential medicines for development. Why would they let you have them all at once, in the same way Nature did? Nature doesn't have a bottom line to consider. It's not about a cure... it's about developing a market and keeping a share.
Next the DEA rather breathlessly contends that cannabis, when smoked, is ALMOST as dangerous as tobacco.
No government finding has ever said so. No independent study has ever supported that claim. And every single study has shown nicotine to be the most powerful, addictive central nervous stimulant on the planet.
So why is it that you can buy this incredibly destructive drug at any convenience store, but possessing cannabis will get you 15 years in prison in some states... predominantly those in which tobacco is a major cash crop.
Because Tobacco also pours millions into the campaign coffers and Drug War rallies of those who stand to profit from the continued use of cotton, trees, petroleum, and pharmaceuticals.
But surely good Christians could not believe that the Almightly, in His Wisdom, made a mistake? Sadly pastors and preachers and politico-religious tyrants still blast this herb from the pulpit, weaned on 75 years of lies and terrified of the closeness to the spiritual that so many attain with a single puff, after years of searching in vain through the churches and synagogues for that link to the Eternal.
We have lost the will to Question Authority, to think critically about the information we are offered, to act on our convictions, to stand for what is Right even if it means inconvenience, loss of standing in the community or even jail.
We are a nation of people who want change... as long as someone else makes it happen, preferably before the next reality TV show comes on and we are forced to miss an episode of The Biggest Loser.
We cannot see that, in today's corporate government machine, it is We, the People, who are The Biggest Losers of all.
That is why cannabis is still illegal.
.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Back in the Hole.
The Power Couple spent yesterday hiking and snapping pics of assorted crags before snatching out packs and heading up Reed's Creek to enjoy some stretches and pulls on a sweet new line, Mike Stewart and Company's "Rain", a new 5.9 at the right end of The Reach.
Relaxed later with our buddy Mike D, enjoyed some fine music we'd carried away from our visit to the Purple Fiddle in Davis, WV on our first night back in town.
Up and out early this morning to count bolts and snap more pics, with the river high and the air much cooler than Thursday's mid-80s. Amazing flood debris piled high among the boulders and buds pushing from the tip of every branch. Cindy and I dodge drops as we eyeball lines and try to spot bolts amid poison ivy and tree branches.
Back at the Casa D now with my lovely wife cleaning and sorting gear and a couple of plates of leftover megaburritos from Hellbender Burritos.
Inbound LSC students and good weather for the weekend... life looks good.
Relaxed later with our buddy Mike D, enjoyed some fine music we'd carried away from our visit to the Purple Fiddle in Davis, WV on our first night back in town.
Up and out early this morning to count bolts and snap more pics, with the river high and the air much cooler than Thursday's mid-80s. Amazing flood debris piled high among the boulders and buds pushing from the tip of every branch. Cindy and I dodge drops as we eyeball lines and try to spot bolts amid poison ivy and tree branches.
Back at the Casa D now with my lovely wife cleaning and sorting gear and a couple of plates of leftover megaburritos from Hellbender Burritos.
Inbound LSC students and good weather for the weekend... life looks good.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
A new website for natural stone and handcrafted jewelry lovers-
Check out Owl Feather Productions' new Facebook page, and look for the blogspot coming soon!
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