for the legalization of the “demon weed”
For those who don’t think this is serious, or that some of us would just like to have a legal joint now and again… you are half wrong. Prison, the attendant ruination of lives, and billions of dollars spent harrassing harmless pot smokers is very serious. And it would be nice to have a few joints now and again that didn’t cost a paycheck. I won’t even mention cannibus is a seriously useful medicinal herb.
The linked commentary says pretty much all of it… except how we can unite more people to strike down this cruel and idiotic prohibition.
Marijuana occupies a bizarrely paradoxical place in American culture. Its use is widespread, commonplace among the young and ubiquitous in popular culture. Yet it remains highly illegal, and talk of legalization is usually deemed political suicide.
Here are five signs that pot should be legal soon — and five reasons why it probably won’t.
Da' Buffalo Amongst Wolves:
I dunno… The effects are pretty, umn… hmmm… severe.
Nevertheless (giggle), this post linked here with further linkage to another reason why the herb is not liable to be legalized anytime soon… The US government’s best friends, the military-industrial complex: Police States For PotHeads: U.S. to dispatch drones to hunt pot over California
5 May 2008, 1:25 pmStan:
Good link
5 May 2008, 1:50 pmxenia:
Let’s get this straight:
If you admit to even one smoke at an inopportune moment, it will render you permanently ineligible for federal financial aid (it’s a pittance but it can mean the difference between life and death). One mainstream take on it:
http://media.www.cardinalpointsonline.com/media/storage/paper1064/news/2007/11/30/News/Marijuana.Drug.Charge.May.Limit.Financial.Aid-3123846-page2.shtml
As one of my students correctly informed me: unlike marijuana smoking, homicide does not explicitly exclude you from getting financial aid.
Don’t like it personally (am mostly addicted to my crazy mind processes as they already are), but I know people who would be in severe physical pain without it. Besides, it seems a lot nicer than the chemical garbage which most white Americans need to get up in the morning, go through their day and fall asleep.
It’s not a question of pleasure or “choice”. It’s a matter of social justice. We know who will still get an abortion at a luxury clinic and high quality weed even if it’s illegal. We also know who will resort to using hangers and sniff glue instead.
As it is, smoking weed without legal consequences is for the rich only.
5 May 2008, 2:08 pmDa' Buffalo Amongst Wolves:
In California, from 1997 to 2004 it also affected the ability of anyone in the household to receive cash aid or food stamps. That right, if you roomed with someone who had a drug-related conviction, despite the fact that you did not, you are were STILL ineligible.
“In 1996, the federal government banned welfare and food stamp benefits for ex-drug offenders for life — making drug offenses the only crime that can cost Americans public assistance. But this denial of a second chance is becoming less and less common. In lifting its ban effective January 1, California joins 31 other states that have done so.”
Be it duly noted that these states have reneged in defiance of federal law.
A note about Medical Marijuana in California, Proposition 215.
Recently, I read a report of a local indoor growing operation busted in spite of the fact that the local police agencies knew the operation was in support of a local medical marijuana dispensary.
Apparently what is happening is the agencies are presented with a choice of enforcing a federal law that “just says no” and California’s proposition 215, a well-written but ‘barren of details piece of legislation’ (such as “can money be exchanged?” or “If the person in need is too ill, who or what may qualify as the beneficiary’s ‘agent’ to grow for, or distribute to them?”)
It appears the local police, in the case of large growing operations, are going with the simplified standard of federal law.
…and we still have a “long row to hoe”.
5 May 2008, 4:18 pmpeggy:
Well, here is my pet conspiracy theory: Marijuana is not legalized, because if it were, anybody could grow it in their back yards for free and smoke it. And since marijuana has valuable medical uses (e.g. dissolves certain kinds of very severe pain, as I myself can attest), big pharm, that thrives on expensive drugs, would lose out.
5 May 2008, 6:56 pmPlenty of people still grow marijuana and smoke it, despite the legal prohibitions.
My recommendation is for everybody who wishes to, to continue to grow it and smoke it and share it with their trusted friends. Right now, marijuana smokers and growers, in some areas anyway, constitute a community of trust, and that in itself is a rather nice thing.
peggy:
More medical research on values of marijuana:
http://www.norml.org.nz/article641.html
5 May 2008, 7:13 pmStan:
Good point, Peggy. I know a lot of people who have successfully self-medicated with marijuana… including yours truly for a couple of things that doctors never made any sense of.
The political potential of this issue is huge, including the alliances that could be built on it. But people look at it like it’s a silly stoner issue. It’s not worthy of serious activists blah blah blah.
But in some of the same ways as food, it has a lot of aspects and dimensions… and it is well worth a hard political fight. Because winning that fight will leave the people stronger and smarter and the Powers more in check. And the first victories, as California has shown (with a few setbacks), are local, pitting local popular authority against disembedded federal authority. This can be a Good Thing.
5 May 2008, 8:16 pmpeggy:
So, with the laws cited above, the “offenders” are required forever to live outside the law or not live.
5 May 2008, 11:53 pmMike:
As a sided note to this discussion, it looks like salvia divinorum is on its way towards being scheduled. Sad to say.
6 May 2008, 12:51 pmI have personally self-medicated with SD to relieve grief and depression (I choose not to use pot because of the high price and because I am just plain scared of going to jail). Anyway, SD works, it has medicinal value, and should be allowed to work for anybody who chooses to use it. It is worth fighting for to keep legal.
eoinmonkey:
The status quo can use something to their own advantage (ie drug laws) without it being a conspiracy. I think the main reason drug laws remain on the books, despite being such total bullshit, is what historians call “lock-in”- the near impossibility of changing something that is already so entrenched as to be considered ‘normal’. It certainly makes no sense to have something like weed illegal when alcohol is. The sad thing is, most of the western world would have legalised or decriminalised weed ages ago if the US wasnt so uptight about it. Britain is possibly the least liberal country in europe as far as drug laws go, and that is almost certainly our slavish devotion to the American way of doing things, as espoused by our ludicrous tabloid press. Canada would certainly have legalised weed by now if they werent so afraid of the US slapping a load of trade sanctions on them.
6 May 2008, 2:51 pmDa' Buffalo Amongst Wolves:
One of the reasons that I intrinsically DO NOT support the legalization of marijuana is I believe they HAVE NO RIGHT to legislate on it in the first place, and allowing them to do so, even to legalize it, adds veracity to their claim that they have that right.
In reality, I wouldn’t do anything to obstruct it’s legalization, but I think medical marijuana legislation is a divide and conquer tactic, and when everyone’s back is turned, or there’s respite in the legal battles, they’ll just turn it around.
I can imagine, after the national legalization of recreational weed, the first time some yahoos smoke themselves into nirvana and drive their car into a tree, the media and legislators will be all over it and the legal sh*t-hammer will just drop again.
From today’s hometown news:
6,000 seedlings found at clandestine pot garden in Big Basin (State Park)
By JENNIFER SQUIRES – Sentinel Staff Writer
Article Launched: 05/05/2008 04:27:00 PM PDT
BIG BASIN – Sheriff’s deputies and State Parks rangers on Monday removed more than 6,000 young marijuana plants from two clandestine pot gardens planted in the same location in Big Basin State Park as a large grow law enforcement officers uprooted three years ago.
The sheriff’s narcotics enforcement team was tipped off to the replanted garden by a volunteer who helped clean up the forest after the marijuana grows were eradicated in 2005.
No arrests were made, but deputies suspect at least one grower raced into the wilderness as officers approached the makeshift camp around 9 a.m….
In Full, Santa Cruz Sentinel (The Senile)
OTOH, medicinal use of Marijuana might have prevented this tragedy:
Mother accused of throwing son off balcony dies in jail
By Jennifer Squires – Sentinel staff writer
Article Launched: 05/06/2008 12:46:47 PM PDT
SANTA CRUZ – A mother accused of throwing her young son off a balcony last fall died in County Jail early today, jail officials reported.
Rita Sativa Kraft, 22, of Lompico, was found unresponsive in her cell at 3:20 a.m. and was pronounced dead at 3:55 a.m., according to Lt. Craig Wilson, who oversees the jail.
Wilson said there was no sign of trauma and foul play is not suspected. The cause of death is under investigation and an autopsy will be performed this week, Wilson said.
Kraft had no history of self-harm since she was jailed in October, according to jail staff. She had pleaded innocent to charges of attempted murder and causing great bodily injury to a child younger than 5, and was due back in court May 20th to set a trial date.
.
.
.
Kraft has been jailed since October, after she allegedly confessed to a counselor that she had purposely thrown her son off a 21-foot balcony in early September. The boy, who was 18 months old at the time, suffered a serious head injury and had to be resuscitated, but survived.
Before Kraft spoke with her counselor, authorities had ruled the incident a freak accident.
Kraft’s attorney said last fall that the young mother suffered from post-partum depression, and also said several members of her family suffer from depression, two aunts have committed suicide and an uncle has threatened suicide.
In Full
Depression control is one of the better known uses of marijuana, and in California or many other states, a parent is punished severely for consuming it near their child, Child Endangerment etc, ESPECIALLY if the parent is on AFDC and other government programs, even if everything in the household is otherwise in ‘perfect order’.
But they’ll do nothing to you for filling an unventilated room with you and your child full of cigarette smoke.
Profound hypocrisy.
6 May 2008, 4:58 pmG.:
Has anyone seen this before?
http://www.a1b2c3.com/drugs/mj004.htm
Can anyone comment on its validity?
6 May 2008, 10:21 pmpeggy:
G. We could look this up, but I think the claims are probably true, because marijuana is a common weed, probably on all the big continents, and because evidence suggests that human beings were into trying out all the plants and all their uses from the time they (the human beings) could think.
7 May 2008, 5:45 pmpeggy:
Okay, here’s something:
98. Marijuana in Sumerian?
> I have heard instances of cavemen using cannabis sativa for religious purposes. Did the Sumerians use cannabis (I don’t see why they would as prepackaged food was unavailable to them)?
u2 a-zal-la2 : a medicinal plant, probably distilled into a narcotic (described as “a plant for forgetting worries”); cannabis sativa, hashish (?) (‘liquid’ + ‘to have time elapse’ + nominative).
From a period 2000 years later, we know the Akkadian word shim qunnabu. There are many references in Google to qunnabu.
The best reference in Google for a-zal-la is at:
http://www.ukcia.org/research/abel/1ref.htm
http://www.sumerian.org/sumerfaq.htm
7 May 2008, 7:03 pmeoinmonkey:
Tabloid politics in the UK:
“The government’s own scientific advisers last night warned the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, that her decision to upgrade the legal status of cannabis would not work in curbing its widespread abuse.
Professor Sir Michael Rawlins, chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), said moving cannabis from class C to class B “is neither warranted, nor will it achieve its desired effect”.
Smith told the House of Commons yesterday that she had to take into consideration public perceptions and the pressures on policing as well as the advice of the advisory council.
“There is a compelling case to act now rather than risk the future health of young people,” she said. “Where there is a clear and serious problem, but doubt about the harm that will be caused, we must err on the side of caution and protect the public. I make no apology for that I am not prepared to ‘wait and see’.”
The ACMD, the government’s own expert body on drugs, decided by 20 votes to three to recommend that cannabis remain a class C drug. Its nine-month review concluded that while more potent, homegrown strains of herbal cannabis, such as skunk, now dominate the British market, the evidence of a substantial link with mental illness remains weak.”
8 May 2008, 4:22 amFlorifulgurator:
Wasn’t George Washington a marichuana farmer?
Not far from where I’m typing this, the world´s oldest pot smoking pipe was discovered (1500 BC). But then those barbarian Bavarians invented beer…
The oldest hempseeds discovered in ancient Germany pottery dates 5.500 B.C
http://www.hempage.com/cms/cms_e.php?id=1&content_id=46
8 May 2008, 11:43 amDa' Buffalo Amongst Wolves:
Eoimonkey: “…the evidence of a substantial link with mental illness remains weak.””
The study last year which touted and shouted that Marijuana caused Schizophrenia actually stated that Marijuana HELPED many Schizophrenics, except the one it didn’t, who got slightly worse.
Note to oneself – “Ignore sensationalist headlines and media analysis of synopses of studies done on pot”
8 May 2008, 4:05 pmCasey:
I think it really has to do with the PTB just not wanting the masses doing anything that might provide a different perspective about what is really going on in the good ol’ United States Corporation of Amerika.
8 May 2008, 4:53 pmDa' Buffalo Amongst Wolves:
A little more on the topic of ‘studies:
[July 27 2007] Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: Reefer Madness Redux – The Medical Journal Lancet Study On Marijuana Psychosis Leaves Out Some Critical Information Which Should Make One Skeptical
http://www.archive.org/details/tth_070727
(With a little John Hartford following the commentary)
…and:
You have requested access to the following article:
Cannabis use prior to first onset psychosis predicts spared neurocognition at 10-year follow-up .
Schizophrenia Research , Volume 75 , Issue 1 , Pages 135 – 137 J . Stirling , S . Lewis , R . Hopkins , C . White
“Abstract: A priori cannabis use was recorded at index admission for 112 participants in the Manchester first-episode psychosis cohort. 69 of the 100 surviving (mainly schizophrenia) patients were followed up 10–12 years later and assessed on a battery of clinical, behavioural and neurocognitive measures. Individuals who had not used cannabis before the first episode of illness were generally indistinguishable from cannabis users at follow-up, except that the latter group (for clarity: CANNABIS USERS BEFORE SCHIZOPHRENIC “ONSET”) evidenced a marked ‘sparing’ of neurocognitive functions. These findings are briefly discussed in relation to other casual factors in psychosis.”
http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0920996404003986 Abstract only without $$$ or institutional subscription
Gist… If you smoke marijuana before, and continuing into your ‘diagnosed life of Schizophrenia’, you fare better neurocognitive-ly.
8 May 2008, 7:32 pmStan:
Don’t know about all that; but if marijuana was going to make someone psychotic, I and about a jillion other people I’ve known, who at one time were almost daily users, would be mad as hatters. I know this isn’t a scientific study, but there comes a point when the accumulation of anectodal (even habitual) experience from almost everyone we know has to be taken into account.
If any drug induces serious contingent spychosis, with a signficantly elevated probability of violence or fatal accident, it’s ETOH… alcohol. As a veteran of a couple of embassies, I can say without fear of rebuttal that the fuel of the foreign service is scotch whiskey. I wonder how foreign policy would be run if diplomatic fetes served brownies.
9 May 2008, 6:09 ampeggy:
I think that the article Da’ Buffalo cited was saying that people who happened to use marijuana before they were diagnosed with schizophrenia were better off than people who did not happen to use marijuana before diagnosis. Or in other words, marijuana *ameliorates* schizophrenia (which is kind of catch-all diagnosis, anyway).
9 May 2008, 7:59 ameoinmonkey:
To clarify my own position:
9 May 2008, 10:39 amEven if marijuana use caused mental problems (which it might in some individuals) or lung cancer (which it almost certainly does, when its use involves inhaling smoke), this is completely irrelevant to the question of wether it should be legal (which it should). People have a perfectly reasonable right to fuck themselves up on whatever substance they choose to, and will continue to do so no matter what the state or other individuals may think about it- a sensible state will attempt to regulate and profit from this human desire, and mitigate some of its more unpleasant problems (like alcoholism, drink driving, meth addicts robbing you to fund their habit, etc etc). I know a lot of people on here dont agree with the idea of there being a state or their having control over such things, but at the moment thats how things are, and I think will probably continue to be, so i am sidestepping that one.
The issue of how old marijuana use is in human history is a similar red herring- as a historian I find it very interesting, but it is completely irrelevant to the question of legality. Even if pot had only been discovered yesterday, or synthesised in a lab last week, it still shouldnt be illegal. And George Washington grew hemp, not marijuana, for rope manufacture and paper production, as many people at the time did, because it was cheaper than importing sisal or jute from thousands of miles away. I would imagine his preferred mind altering substance was Brandy, Wine or Ale, as fits his social station and personal wealth at that time period.
I also dont want to sound like Im peeing on anyones chips, but the idea that widespread marijuana use would somehow serve the purpose of enlightening the population as a whole, and that this is a corresponding reason why the government keeps it illegal, is comewhat lacking in evidence. Plenty of pig ignorant wife-beating assholes, criminals who’d shoot you soon as look at you for the contents of your wallet, hardcore racists and conservatives smoke pot, and it doesnt seem to be shaking them out of any of their bullshit. This is also completely irrelevant to the discussion about its legality or illegality. The only thing that can enlighten the population of any country, or the world, is education, something America is sadly lacking and which certainly seems to have a better case for its lack being the result of a government/status quo “conspiracy”.
Stan:
Yah, education is the Answer…
Lighten up, eoinmonkey.
9 May 2008, 8:15 pmDeAnander:
I think eoinmonkey’s point’s well taken, i.e. that the mere physical fact of dope smoking (or tea-making or brownie-baking) isn’t going to bring about enlightened social change. but stan’s point, or at least how I read it, was similar to our notions about the Food Underground and peggy’s point about a community of trust: the experience of working together to subvert an unjust authoritarian structure is good all around. it builds community which confers heightened immunity to further future abuses of state power; and it offers the lived experience of challenging abusive power (and maybe succeeding).
sure, some people will not learn anything from it except “hey, I can smoke as much dope as I want to, yippee”. but then some people got nothing out of the lofty principle of Freedom of Speech other than “yippee, I can have all the gross misogynist porn I want” — and that doesn’t really negate the beneficial (imho) experience of lived resistance to state censorship, like the librarians’ revolt against the reporting requirements of one or more of the “PATRIOT” act provisions (reporting on library patrons’ reading habits, that is).
radicalised people resist more, but resistance is also radicalising… and like they’re always saying about hard drugs, a little resistance to petty oppressions can, in some people, lead to major, stubborn resistance to the big stuff.
10 May 2008, 12:19 amDa' Buffalo Amongst Wolves:
DeAnander:
“We are a people. We are a new nation,”… “We want everyone to control their own life and to care for one another. . . . We cannot tolerate attitudes, institutions, and machines whose purpose is the destruction of life, the accumulation of profit.”[4]
The goal was a decentralized, collective, anarchistic nation rooted in the borderless hippie counterculture and its communal ethos. Abbie Hoffman wrote: “We shall not defeat Amerika by organizing a poltical party. We shall do it by building a new nation — a nation as rugged as the marijuana leaf.”
Yup, Yup, YIP!
10 May 2008, 12:38 pmY.K.:
I was able to spend some time recently in northern and western Europe. I could drink alcohol openly on public transportation and in other public spaces and buy marijuana easily and legally, or at least without fear of arrest. Although I had access to both from adolescence, it was a big change to lack any anxiety about punishment, provided that I didn’t disturb public order (i.e. “indecent exposure”, fighting, etc.). Within a few months, I experienced a new freedom to enjoy or not enjoy these substances based on my personal desire at that moment, presupposing of course that I could afford it! Any anxious craving decreased dramatically while simple relaxation and enjoyment increased accordingly. A measure of externally enforced austerity fell away.
Legal marijuana certainly won’t bring an end to capitalism, I don’t think anyone is asserting that point … and there is no doubt that marijuana legalization activism can be *part of* organizing resistance to authoritarian structures. . There are lots of problems in western and northern Europe that shouldn’t be underestimated; I don’t hold up those countries as models in all ways and in any case I’m more of a “Third-Worldist” than most of that population. But it’s not so good for bosses if pleasures are unregimented.
The medical benefits are well-known and perhaps constitute the most important mainstream argument for legalization. The US should probably subsidize marijuana the same way that it does tobacco, alcohol, corn, etc., no doubt that there is a food angle to this issue, but I also want to suggest that a good glass of wine or a fat joint are ends in themselves, and not only a means to a more perfect (global) society.
Yet, I also believe quite strongly that there are limits to activism based solely on enjoyment. It is precisely the political economy of marijuana that concerns about pleasure are superseded by those of social justice, not even so much on the basis of medical availability, but rather on the US class and “race” structure that safely lets those get “high” who can afford it, while the rest of us fear punishment.
NYC Marijuana Possession Arrests Skyrocket, Illustrate NYPD Racial Bias:
10 May 2008, 3:45 pmhttp://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/nyclu290408.html
Charles:
I think Michigan is going to have
10 May 2008, 5:03 pmmedical m on the ballot in an upcoming election.
Stan:
http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/84515/
11 May 2008, 4:05 pmRastaCyborg:
Can I offer a suggestion? I don’t smoke pot and I don’t really know that much about it but one day I was watching a friend of mine separating the seeds from the smokable portion of his bag of weed and I asked him what he does with the seeds. He said, “Oh that’s just shake, I throw it out or smoke it if I get desperate”. Well, I thought, why don’t pot smokers take the seeds that they normally cast away and drop them in public places where they’ll take root and flourish? Or better yet, bring them over to that ultra conservative cousin’s house and non-chalantly spread them behind the house. Soon, marijuana would be growing everywhere and maybe some of the pricks who believe in the idiotic prohibition of marijuana would actually experience the anti-cannabis police state first hand.
11 May 2008, 10:50 pmRequired:
RastaCyborg’s idea had occurred to me in the past as well. Just keep planting seeds until the prohibition becomes unworkable.
12 May 2008, 10:26 amreggiemental:
There’s been a recent crackdown on pot smoking in Britain under the (entirely spurious) mental health pretext.
Pot has recently been reclassified from a class C to a class B ‘drug’ after being downgraded only a couple of years ago, despite the recommendation of a govt committee to keep the C classification.
The most comprehensive information I can find regarding pot use comes from the the Harvard Medical School psychiatrist Dr Lester Grinspoon which can be found here.
12 May 2008, 4:06 pmreggiemental:
Or here: http://www.marijuana-uses.com/index.html
12 May 2008, 4:08 pmJames M:
Alluding to Peggy’s earlier comments: My sister, PhD pharmacology, once asked why there was such a movement for medicinal pot in California given the existence of marijuana-derived pharmaceuticals like Marinol. The answer is, of course, because you can’t grow Marinol for free in your backyard.
I tend to think of this issue, rather than being one of bodily sovereignty (i.e. “I should be able to ingest whatever substance I choose,”) as being more about “plant sovereignty” or “vegetable rights” or something along those lines. Because I’m not so sure I agree that there should be an individual right to ingest crystal meth, crack, or heroin for example — drugs whose negative ripples outward to society are pretty obvious by now.
It’s interesting, though, that the plants from which even these harder substances are derived are generally more or less safe and beneficial in their natural states. I know of few psychoactive plants (correct me if I’m wrong,) other than things like belladonna (a.k.a. nightshade,) which are truly dangerous right out of the ground. It’s only this more-is-better, concentrated power, going-to-extremes mentality — the same one that promotes things like Hummers, cosmetic breast augmentation, and gonzo porn — that, applied to these plants, has made them dangerous.
Unrefined coca leaves are chewed habitually without noticeable harm by South Americans; opium poppies by themselves have only mild effects; even Salvia Divinorum, which was referenced by Mike earlier and which I used to think was only for the foolhardiest of psychedelic-enthusiasts (e.g., an acquaintance of mine once had to be restrained from ramming his head through a glass coffee table under its influence,) has been used by Mazatec Indians safely and with no reported ill effects for who knows how long. Their method involves a ritual setting where the plant is chewed, delivering a mild and quite agreeable experience. The method of choice for the “developed world,” however, is to buy concentrated extracts from companies whose websites promote “5x” and “10x” varieties, the numbers being the factors by which potency has been increased. The plant is then smoked and a complete dissociative stupor is achieved; videos of such effects posted on YouTube are what’s behind the latest push to criminalize it.
As for pot — good lord! Concentrate it all you want, and the worst effect will be a long nap. And people who perpetuate this stereotype about “idiotic stoners” make me wonder, have they never been in a room full of drunk idiots? Both alcohol and pot cause mental impairment, but one of them can tend to cause impairment plus increased aggression, while the other causes impairment plus increased passivity. Which would you rather be legal?
I’ve been more or less a straight-edger for the better part of a decade — as the cliche goes, regular meditation seems to produce enough of the happy head chemicals I require. But I’m very happy I live in a state where penalties are relaxed-to-nonexistent for pot use, because you never know when that versatile plant will come in handy for something. And I’m also very glad it’s an issue that’s being taken seriously here on FS, because plenty of people’s lives literally depend on it.
13 May 2008, 4:10 amDeAnander:
I think James’ note about concentration (industrial/chemical mindset, plus “efficiency” — a smaller dose gets you higher!) is important and I’ll be mulling it over for a while.
Concentration (distillation) in alcoholic beverages gets us from mildly intoxicating country wines and beers — eventually — to Everclear and neat vodka, of which it’s possible to drink enough to kill yourself pretty darned quick… again, “efficiency” — you get really drunk on a small amount of the stuff, “bigger bang for the buck.” Optimisation?
13 May 2008, 2:56 pmDa' Buffalo Amongst Wolves:
Required: “RastaCyborg’s idea had occurred to me in the past as well. Just keep planting seeds until the prohibition becomes unworkable.”
When I was a teenage hippie in New York circa 1968, the NYPD Central Park precinct house was always surrounded. ‘Johnny Pot-seeding’ is an ongoing project… NAY! Avocation, for lottsa potsters.
James M: “Alluding to Peggy’s earlier comments: My sister, PhD pharmacology, once asked why there was such a movement for medicinal pot in California given the existence of marijuana-derived pharmaceuticals like Marinol. The answer is, of course, because you can’t grow Marinol for free in your backyard.”
There are other reasons… The fellow I did live audio work with here in California was a participant in the Stanford ‘Pot Tests’. He said the pills they dispensed made him (a working electrical engineer) ‘sluggish and stupid’, and what little they smoked during the tests was ‘Standardized’ in the apothecary sense of the word. Sticks, stems, seeds, ‘vegetal matter’ all ground together. As was done for the 12 (count ‘em twelve) Glaucoma research participants whom the feds studied for a while.
For Glaucoma (site-specific blood pressure control… ‘vision viagra’), as an analgesic… for physical pain relief, the ‘breakdown products’ of the pot plant as it cures/ages, CBD, CBD… ‘cannabinoids’… are the desired product.
For instance, hashish has almost NO THC and is pretty much all cannabinoid from the ‘manufacturing process’.
Cannabinoids affect the body and make you ‘sluggish & stupid’, as my friend put it. I suspect that would be the full focus of any Federal attempt to study Marijuana. Blood pressure regulation, pain relief, and narcotic effects.
OTOH, what most of the people I know use Marijuana for, the therapeutic psychological effects, is in the THC, and I don’t think the US government and pharmacological-industrial complex are interested in that type of research.
Hence, I’m a California smoker who would not only NOT benefit from pharma-complex pills, but wouldn’t even benefit from their ‘vegetal matter’.
Besides, as James M implied at the top, growing pot is a GREAT stress-reduction tool… In and of itself benficial to the patient… When you don’t have to worry about getting busted.
For that to actualize, the elimination of fear-of-arrest, what with “Total Deployment” of all available National Guard resources used to persecute pot growers to the Middle East et al, legalization at state level is sufficient for anyone growing less than acres of it.
13 May 2008, 4:45 pmpeggy:
A friend of mine says that different strains of marijuana are being developed to emphasize different effects. Some strains are good at helping you sleep, some are good at painkilling, some strains soothe the stomach, some strains make you more energetic, some strains conduce to laughter, some strains just make you really high, and so forth. The specific effect of a particular strain is a consequence of the specific canniboid or set of cannibinoids most abundant in that strain. Don’t know if there is any independent evidence of this kind of research going on in a careful and precise way.
14 May 2008, 8:29 amDa' Buffalo Amongst Wolves:
“Curing” for a specific psycho-physiological effect is an empirical art, requiring continuous sampling of a specific type of plant under specific and controlled curing conditions over an extended period of time.
I volunteer! (giggle….)
14 May 2008, 2:10 pmLoyd:
I feel that this discussion might benefit from another perspective. The PBS program “Now” did a recent story titled “Prisons for Profit” – http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/419/index.html
16 May 2008, 10:11 amThe private prison industry is something like a 55 billion dollar a year industry. The largest corporate jailer, Corrections Corporation of America, is the fifth largest jailer in the U.S., with revenues of over 1.4 billion dollars last year. Human beings behind bars is money in the bank to these people. Can there be any doubt that this industry has deployed legions of lobbyists and front organizations to make sure that we continue to get tough on crime and round up and detain all those illegal aliens – although they swear up and down with tears in their eyes that they would never ever ever do anything so ethically dubious. So I think it is rather naive to expect marijuana to be legalized on whatever merits it may possess, until the private prison industry is abolished and the profits in incarcerating people is removed.
Stan:
Do you have information on their lobbyists? Any positions they have taken on marijuana?
Loyd, coming into this discussion and asserting the naivete of the participants (and by implication your superior wisdom and experience) is not going to get you a friendly or critical hearing.
16 May 2008, 5:53 pmMichael:
For the last couple of years I’ve had this fantasy of some country leagalizing it and taking the U.S. to the WTO over their (our) trade restraining drug laws.
Unfortunetly this has about as much chance of being realized as the rest of my fantasies but still it’s fun to dream.
16 May 2008, 11:50 pmDa' Buffalo Amongst Wolves:
Well, isn’t it *always* about the money… and the ‘stuff’?
17 May 2008, 5:59 pmRequired:
It seems highly unlikely that it would be less viable to dismantle one highly unpopular section of the prison industrial complex then it would to dismantle the whole thing, a move which would not have the fraction of the support of marijuana legalization. Those “legions of lobbyists and front organizations” aren’t going to be any more friendly when you’re dismantling their entire industry, as opposed to knocking down a section of it.
17 May 2008, 8:25 pm