Showing posts with label Pot. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pot. Show all posts
Monday, May 24, 2010
Action Alert: Federally Funded Drug Squad Seizes Petition For Pot Legalization In Washington State
I KNEW you could!
An Alert, from Firedoglake:
Sensible Washington is the group whose marijuana legalization petitions were seized by the federally funded agents. The group is well on its way to let Washington State residents vote on legalization on the November ballot, but this raid can put it in jeopardy.
The intended effect of this raid is to put a chill on other citizens from signing the petition, who will fear having their names and addresses exposed to a drug task force. It's intimidation, pure and simple. And your tax dollars are paying for it.
A federally funded drug task force seized as evidence up to 200 petition signatures for marijuana legalization in Washington State in a series of early-morning raids this week. Seizing the petition signatures is bad enough. What's worse is what the task force did on its raids of a legal marijuana dispensary and its owner's home.Drug agents handcuffed a 14-year-old boy and pointed a gun at his head. Then they took $80 from a 9-year-old girl's Minnie Mouse wallet that she earned for straight A's on her report card.
Now the drug agents - funded by the US Department of Justice - say they can only find two pages of the petition. But they had time to make photocopies of the petition, keeping the names and addresses of residents who signed.
We started our own petition demanding the release of the seized signatures that we'll deliver to the task force headquarters next week.
Ironically, it's this kind of reckless waste of time and money that makes marijuana legalization a safer, smarter alternative than the failed war on drugs.
Sensible Washington is the group whose marijuana legalization petitions were seized by the federally funded agents. The group is well on its way to let Washington State residents vote on legalization on the November ballot, but this raid can put it in jeopardy.
The intended effect of this raid is to put a chill on other citizens from signing the petition, who will fear having their names and addresses exposed to a drug task force. It's intimidation, pure and simple. And your tax dollars are paying for it.
That's why it's important we speak out about this gross violation of first amendment rights. We need to make sure that not only is every petition signature returned, but any other copies must be destroyed.
The only thing these petition signatures are evidence of is an exercise in democracy.
Sign the petition HERE
Thanks for standing with us,
Jane Hamsher
Firedoglake.com
Monday, May 5, 2008
Five signs that pot might become legal soon -- and five reasons why it probably won't. - Alternet
Disabled Homeless Vietnam Vet
Santa Cruz California
4/20/2008
H/T Stan @ Feral Scholar, who comments:
for the legalization of the “demon weed”
5th May 2008, 11:13 am by Stan
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.
Will Pot Ever Be Legal in This Schizoid Country?
By Steven Wishnia, AlterNet
Posted on May 1, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/84055/
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.
1. Pot is indelibly a part of the cultural mainstream. The stoner comedy Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay grossed $14.6 million in its first weekend, making it the second most popular movie in the country. Most pro basketball players blaze, according to sources as diverse as the ganjaphile Mavericks player Josh Howard and the anti-drug ex-Knick Charles Oakley. And on April 20, thousands of revelers turned out at the University of Colorado and the University of California at Santa Cruz to celebrate the 4/20 herb holiday.
As of 2002, notes Keith Stroup, legal counsel with the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, 47 percent of American adults had smoked marijuana at some time in their lives, according to a CNN/Time poll. By today, he adds, "it is likely there are more living Americans who have smoked marijuana than who have not. Approximately 26 million Americans smoked marijuana just in the last year. All of these people know it did not cause them any real harm and that it did not keep them from having a successful life and career."
2. Increased medical acceptance. In February, the American College of Physicians, the second-largest medical organization in the country, urged the federal government to move cannabis out of Schedule I, the category for drugs with no legal medical use, "given marijuana's proven efficacy at treating certain symptoms and its relatively low toxicity." The group also strongly urged legal protections for doctors who prescribe cannabis and patients who use it.
Last year, more than 3,000 articles on cannabinoids were published in scientific journals. These have explored their possible uses for a host of ailments, from easing the pain of arthritis to inhibiting the growth of brain tumors.
The development of vaporization technology -- pricey devices that heat cannabis to a point where the THC can be inhaled, but don't incinerate the plant matter -- has eliminated one of the main reasons for doctors to be uncomfortable about the medical use of cannabis: that smoke contains toxic compounds. "Vaporization of THC offers the rapid onset of symptom relief without the negative effects from smoking," the ACP noted.
3. A federal decriminalization bill was introduced last month. HR 5843, sponsored by Reps. Barney Frank, D-Mass., and Ron Paul, R-Tex., would eliminate federal penalties for possession of less than 100 grams or for the nonprofit transfer of less than one ounce between adults. The bill is the first decriminalization measure introduced in Congress since the early 1980s.
4. The state budget crunch. With the recession battering their treasuries, many states are taking a second look at the price of incarcerating thousands of drug prisoners. Legal cannabis would eliminate the costs of arresting, prosecuting and jailing cannabis users, growers and dealers, and could be a major new source of tax revenue -- especially in states like California, where it is estimated to be the most valuable cash crop. And cannabis farming could revive rural economies, whether by hemp production in the Great Plains or marijuana cultivation in Appalachia.
5. There are no rational arguments against legalizing cannabis under regulations similar to those for alcohol. I've been covering drug issues for almost 20 years (and smoking the green since? Well, I went to Woodstock when I was 14, you do the math), and I haven't heard any. The most common, the "gateway theory" and the idea that today's pot is so much stronger than Woodstock-era weed that it's essentially a different drug, are based on distortion and misinformation. They aren't even valid rebuttable presumptions like "abortion is murder," "the government should not interfere with the free market by regulating rents," or "the U.S. government had to depose Saddam Hussein by any means necessary." And the "send a message to the children" argument is akin to espousing the resurrection of Prohibition because legal alcohol encourages underage drinking.
****
On the other hand, I strongly doubt that cannabis will become legal in the near future, for the following reasons...
In Full @ AlternetAlso See: Introducing...... Police States For PotHeads: U.S. to dispatch drones to hunt pot over California - McClatchy
Tags:
420,
Barney Franks,
Dennis Kucinich,
Hemp,
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Prohibition,
Ron Paul
Friday, April 4, 2008
Introducing...... Police States For PotHeads: U.S. to dispatch drones to hunt pot over California - McClatchy
U.S. to dispatch drones to hunt pot over Calif. forestsA quote from a Northern California Hemp grower:
Now I can use that ManPad missile launcher I purchased from FARC last year without worrying about 'civilian' casualties
The federal government plans to escalate its eradication of marijuana plantations in the backwoods of national forests this year, beginning in California with the deployment of larger strike teams and the controversial launching of miniature, remote-controlled spy planes to outfox growers, a top Bush administration official said Thursday.
Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey said an increasing number of pot growers financed by Mexican drug cartels are taking cover in the forest, particularly in the southern Sierra Nevada.
According to Rey, the administration decided to disclose the planned surge in forest surveillance after news organizations persisted in questioning U.S. Forest Service officials about a $100,000 purchase of two battery-powered "unmanned aerial vehicles."
Source, Sacramento Bee/McClatchy
There Have Been
Thanks For Stopping By
Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey said an increasing number of pot growers financed by Mexican drug cartels are taking cover in the forest, particularly in the southern Sierra Nevada.
According to Rey, the administration decided to disclose the planned surge in forest surveillance after news organizations persisted in questioning U.S. Forest Service officials about a $100,000 purchase of two battery-powered "unmanned aerial vehicles."
Source, Sacramento Bee/McClatchy
Thanks For Stopping By
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