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veggie
Registered: 07/25/04
Posts: 17,504
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Obama's Marijuana Prohibition Acid Test 2
#9604586 - 01/13/09 10:23 PM (15 years, 2 months ago) |
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Obama's Marijuana Prohibition Acid Test January 13, 2009 - The Free Press by By Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
The parallels between the 1933 coming of Franklin Roosevelt and the upcoming inauguration of Barack Obama must include the issue of Prohibition: alcohol in 1933, and marijuana today. As FDR did back then, Obama must now help end an utterly failed, socially destructive, reactionary crusade.
Marijuana prohibition is a core cause of the nation's economic problems. It now costs the U.S. more than tens of billions per year to track, arrest, try, defend and imprison marijuana consumers who pose little harm to society. The social toll soars even higher when we account for social violence, lost work, ruined careers and damaged families. In 2007, 775,137 people were arrested in the U.S. for mere possession of this ancient crop, according to the FBI’s uniform crime report.
Like the Prohibition on alcohol that plagued the nation from 1919 to 1933, marijuana prohibition (which essentially began in 1937) feeds organized crime and a socially useless prison-industrial complex that includes judges, lawyers, police, prison guards, prison contractors, and more.
A dozen states have now passed public referenda confirming medical uses for marijuana based on voluminous research dating back 5,000 years. Confirmed medicinal uses for marijuana include treatment for glaucoma, hypertension, arthritis, pain relief, nausea relief, reducing muscle spasticity from spinal cord injuries and multiple sclerosis, and diminishing tremors in multiple sclerosis patients. Medical reports also prove smoked marijuana provides relief from migraine headaches, depression, seizures, and insomnia, according to NORML. In recent years its use has become critical to thousands of cancer and AIDS sufferers who need to it to maintain their appetite while undergoing chemotherapy.
The ban on marijuana has been extended in the U.S. to include hemp, one of the most widely used agricultural products in human history. Unlike many other industrial crops, hemp is extremely prolific in a natural state, requiring no pesticides, herbicides, extraordinary fertilizing or inappropriate irrigation. Its core uses include paper, cloth, sails, rope, cosmetics, fuel, supplements and food. Its seeds are a potentially huge source of bio-diesel fuel, and its leaves and stems an obvious choice for cellulosic ethanol, both critically important for a conversion to a Solartopian renewable energy supply.
Hemp was grown in large quantities by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and many more of the nation's founders, most of whom would likely be dumbfounded to hear it is illegal in the United States (based on entries in Washington's agricultural diaries, referring to the separation of male and female plants, it's likely he and his cohorts raised an earlier form of "medicinal" marijuana as well).
The growing of hemp was mandatory in some circumstances in early America, and again during World War II, when virtually the entire state of Kansas was planted in it. The current ban on industrial hemp costs the U.S. billiions of dollars in lost production and revenue from a plant that can produce superior paper, clothing, fuel and other critical materials at a fraction of the financial cost and environmental damage imposed by less worthy sources.
In 1919, fundamentalist crusaders help pass the 19th Amendment, making the sale of alcohol illegal. The ensuing 14-year Prohibition was by all accounts a ludicrous failure epitomized by gang violence and lethal "amateur" product that added to the death toll. Its only real winner was organized crime.
FDR's support was critical to passing the 22d Amendment repealing Prohibition. It ended a period of gratuitous social repression and gave the American economy a substantial boost.
Marijuana prohibition has escalated substantially since Richard Nixon's 1970 declaration of the War on Drugs. There was a brief reprieve when Steve Ford, the son of President Gerald Ford appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone barefoot and claiming that the best place to smoke pot was in the White House. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter’s last year in office, only 338,664 were arrested for marijuana possession. Following Reagan, President George Herbert Walker Bush recorded a low of 260,390 marijuana possession arrests.
Ronald Reagan renewed the War on Drugs and declared his “Zero Tolerance” policy, despite his daughter Patti Davis’ claim the Gipper smoked weed with a major donor. This utterly failed reactionary crusade has resulted in millions of incarcerations costing billions of dollars with, again, whose only real beneficiaries have been organized crime and the prison-industrial complex that is its twin.
On a percentage basis, more American high school students (who report virtually unlimited access to marijuana and a wide range of other drugs) smoke more pot than students in Holland, where it is legal. Because so many Americans use it, and it is so readily available, marijuana prohibition can only be seen as a virtually universal assault on the basic liberties of our citizenry.
In a 2005 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services survey, more than 97 million Americans admitted to having tried pot, like Barack.
Barack Obama has made it clear in his book Dreams From My Father, he has smoked---and inhaled---marijuana (he is also apparently addicted to a far more dangerous drug, tobacco). In the long run, marijuana should be taxed. Like alcohol and tobacco, a minimum age for legal access should be set at 21.
The War on Drugs as a whole has been a catastrophic failure. The violence and repression it continues to impose on the American public need to be ended.
No part of that war is more destructive or less defensible than the marijuana laws. Like FDR, Obama needs to demonstrate the courage and good sense to end this insane, absurd legal disaster. Along with ending the war in Iraq, there are few single steps Obama could take toward restoring prosperity and sanity to American society than ending the war on this age-old medicinal herb.
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Newfound_wonder
Social Outcast
Registered: 03/14/08
Posts: 447
Last seen: 12 years, 23 days
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Re: Obama's Marijuana Prohibition Acid Test [Re: veggie]
#9605004 - 01/13/09 11:29 PM (15 years, 2 months ago) |
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Go to http://citizensbriefingbook.change.gov/ to vote on issues about marijuana prohibition and the war on drugs. Your support is needed.
-------------------- If it's good for fungus, it's good for us...
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TreeMoss
I live in a Fox Hole
Registered: 12/05/08
Posts: 1,615
Last seen: 15 years, 2 months
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Re: Obama's Marijuana Prohibition Acid Test [Re: Newfound_wonder]
#9605094 - 01/13/09 11:44 PM (15 years, 2 months ago) |
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Yep, ancient crop......it would be no big thing legal, look down on users if you want to....they will just puff and pass.
-------------------- Drug chemicals are going to be more abundant and survive longer than any anti-drug agendas. Some of us are just ahead of the game, we already know what the future will understand. Drugs weren't bad but how some people used them were and some people just were bad because they had to be.
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tempingasashaman
\\\\\\\\////////\\\\\\\\
Registered: 11/17/08
Posts: 1,374
Loc: under the rainbow
Last seen: 14 years, 2 months
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Re: Obama's Marijuana Prohibition Acid Test [Re: TreeMoss]
#9605613 - 01/14/09 01:33 AM (15 years, 2 months ago) |
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The drug usage he's told everyone about lets you know he's done a few more drugs than he's reported. I'm sure he has experimented, but he smells the bullshit. Hopefully Obama does what we need him to before he's out...
We'll let the Mexican-American border killings get a little worse and it will happen.
-------------------- the greatest use of life is to spend it on something that will outlast it
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shroomgatherer
Connoisseur of the finer things
Registered: 11/08/07
Posts: 1,731
Loc: Florida
Last seen: 4 months, 7 days
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Re: Obama's Marijuana Prohibition Acid Test [Re: veggie]
#9607084 - 01/14/09 10:17 AM (15 years, 2 months ago) |
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Quote:
The War on Drugs as a whole has been a catastrophic failure. The violence and repression it continues to impose on the American public need to be ended.
No part of that war is more destructive or less defensible than the marijuana laws. Like FDR, Obama needs to demonstrate the courage and good sense to end this insane, absurd legal disaster. Along with ending the war in Iraq, there are few single steps Obama could take toward restoring prosperity and sanity to American society than ending the war on this age-old medicinal herb.
Yes, agreed!
~
-------------------- "Let us declare nature to be legitimate. All plants should be declared legal, and all animals for that matter. The notion of illegal plants and animals is obnoxious and ridiculous."
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Stonewall
Mad Scientist
Registered: 08/31/08
Posts: 165
Loc: MI, USA
Last seen: 8 months, 29 days
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Re: Obama's Marijuana Prohibition Acid Test [Re: veggie]
#9607147 - 01/14/09 10:34 AM (15 years, 2 months ago) |
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As a hemophiliac, who uses marijuana solely for medicinal purposes (but admittedly enjoys being high), I can say with experience that the prohibition on marijuana - medicinally especially, but not specifically - is ludicrous and harmful to the nation. I have tried other drugs - including, but not limited to, codiene (in the form of tylenol fours), Vicoden, and even Morphine, but nothing has proved more effective to me, with less harmful side effects.
Of course, I'm only saying things you already know. What I'd like to know is how America can overlook our right to our own bodies. We have the right to decide wht we put into our bodies, and in the case of pot, the pursuit of happiness finds itself called into question as well.
-------------------- The ultimate good is like water. It nourishes all things without trying to, content with the lowly places people disdain.
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IdeLOLogies
Strange
Registered: 03/26/08
Posts: 461
Last seen: 10 years, 7 months
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Re: Obama's Marijuana Prohibition Acid Test [Re: shroomgatherer]
#9607239 - 01/14/09 10:54 AM (15 years, 2 months ago) |
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I keep seeing more and more articles like this. Maybe there may actually be some of this change Obama was battering on about so much during the election.
If he does make a stand it will certainly be one for the history books.
-------------------- God takes those closest to us, because it makes him feel better about himself. He is a very vengeful God. He's all pissed off about something we did thousands of years ago. He just can't get over it, so he doesn't care who he takes. Children, puppies, it don't matter to him, so long as it makes us sad. Why does God give us anything? Look at it this way: if you want to make a baby cry, first you give it a lollipop. Then you take it away. If you never give it a lollipop to begin with, it would have nothin' to cry about. That's like God, who gives us life and love and help just so that he can tear it all away and make us cry, so he can drink the sweet milk of our tears. You see, it's our tears, Stan, that give God his great power.
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billclinton
Creedence in my word
Registered: 08/23/08
Posts: 347
Loc: usa
Last seen: 10 years, 7 months
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Re: Obama's Marijuana Prohibition Acid Test [Re: IdeLOLogies]
#9607630 - 01/14/09 12:13 PM (15 years, 2 months ago) |
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It may never be legal (i hope it will though) because all the government cares about is money; and when you go and buy an eighth where does your money go? to a drug dealer and partly to the government as well hence why its is only a "misdeameanor"; it really is an endless cycle of the seed of all evil, greed. They only may be beginning to realize that this divine plant is worth a lot of money and could really help boost our economy, but if we owe so much money everywhere what makes us think the government wont just say fuck it its illegal forever?
-------------------- Love is all, Love is you
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BrainChemistry
Captain Obvious
Registered: 06/19/07
Posts: 3,657
Loc: Mountains of N. America
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Re: Obama's Marijuana Prohibition Acid Test [Re: billclinton]
#9607666 - 01/14/09 12:22 PM (15 years, 2 months ago) |
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Very well written article. When you look at what repealing prohibition did in the 1930s, I don't see how anyone could say doing the same thing wouldn't be a great benefit to America.
We'll have to wait and see what our pal Obama does with his new found "powers".
-------------------- Word to your mom.
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