Wednesday, June 10th, 2009 at 3:20 pm | By: Radical Russ
Until marijuana is decriminalized, production of the drug will continue to be a serious problem in this province, says a criminology professor at St. Thomas University.
“The war on drugs is over a century old now and we still haven’t won it despite all of the arrests that have been made over the years, the large seizures,” Michael Boudreau said. “As long as we outlaw marijuana, it is going to keep the costs high and the demand high.”
Boudreau’s comments follow news that the RCMP recently removed close to one million marijuana cigarettes from the illegal drug market in New Brunswick.
Ooh, what a scary and meaningless number! A million joints! Of course, they didn’t actually seize a million rolled joints from some dealer. This report was about seizing 2,000 marijuana plants, which, in their estimate, equals 1,000,000 joints. That’s 500 joints per plant! Now if a joint is 0.4 grams that’s 200 grams or over 7 ounces per plant; if you roll ‘em fat like me at 0.75 grams, that’s 350 grams or over 13 ounces per plant. You Canadians grow some pretty nice plants, eh?
But a “million joints”, that’s a good scare figure. 2,000 plants means nothing to the average Canadian. It sounds like a garden and offers no comparison of harm – a plant, does that get one kid high? two? twenty? But 1,000,000 marijuana cigarettes instantly means 1,000,000 drug doses and 1,000,000 kids in most people’s minds.
It’s meaningless, of course, just as a pizza sliced twelve times isn’t any more pizza than if it’s sliced eight times. If an indoor plant averages a 4-6oz harvest (horticulture expert Chris Conrad, CA Superior Court testimony), then 2,000 plants equals 500-750lbs. of marijuana. So if I roll 0.4-0.75 gram joints, that’s 566,990-302,395 joints, or if I roll Oregon NORML Qbit™ joints at 113 grams, that’s 2,007 joints.
[RCMP Staff Sgt. Gary] Hadley said RCMP have always considered marijuana to be a gateway to other drugs.
Hadley said his experience working with young and old people shows that marijuana leads to harder drugs.
“It seems that it always turns back to when you make that decision to take drugs. It always goes back, it seems, to marijuana as being the gateway drug to many (other) drugs.”
Indeed, almost everyone you can find with a severe cocaine, heroin, or meth addiction, if you ask, will tell you the first illegal drug they ever did was marijuana. In many people’s minds, smoking pot is crossing the Rubicon into “drug use”. Many people will tell you, “I don’t do drugs,” even as they sip a beer, smoke a cigarette, eat refined sugar, chug a Red Bull, pop an NSAID for a headache or a Viagra for some sex. In that frame, there are “good” drugs and “bad” drugs, and even if people will admit that marijuana is the least bad of the “bad” drugs and even better than some of the “good” drugs, marijuana’s still “bad”, mmmkay?
If you smoke pot, you “do drugs”. So if you “do drugs”, it’s not surprising – expected even – for you to do other drugs. That’s what drug users do. Maybe not all of them, maybe not yet, but they figure the progression from pot to coke to meth to heroin is as natural as the progression from Coors Light to Guiness Stout to mixed drinks to shots; everybody likes variety and the old stuff gets boring after a while.
The key to undoing the gateway theory lies in the part where Hadley said, “It seems that it always turns back to when you make that decision to take drugs.” It lies in erasing the distinction between “good” and “bad” and emphasizing that alcohol is a drug. It lies in changing “take drugs” to “alter consciousness” or “alter the mind”. Once we shift away from the substance (drugs) and to the effect (mind-altering), it becomes obvious that the first decision most people make is whether or not to alter their mind, and the first substance they use to achieve that effect is usually alcohol. We can then use every gateway theory talking point they have against them in a farcical conversation about banning alcohol again.
Thursday, May 21st, 2009 at 11:20 am | By: Radical Russ
Did I just hear a United States representative say, “They probably started off with milk and then went to beer, and then they went to bourbon, and then they might have gone to marijuana. The gateway theory doesn’t work. It’s a reality.”?
Holy crap, there is hope for reason in this debate!
Thursday, May 21st, 2009 at 9:20 am | By: Radical Russ
Forty-one percent (41%) of likely U.S. voters think the United States should legalize and tax marijuana to help solve the nation’s fiscal problems.
However, nearly half (49%) oppose this idea, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.
These results show little difference from a survey conducted in February that asked Americans about legalization only. At that time, 40% said marijuana should be legalized, but 46% disagreed.
Over half of Democrats (52%) support the idea of legalizing and taxing pot, but only 28% of Republicans agree. Most GOP voters (65%) are against the idea, as are 37% of Democrats. Unaffiliated voters are more evenly divided: 41% are in favor of the idea and 47% are opposed to it.
Adults between the ages of 18 and 40 are much more likely to support legalizing and taxing marijuana than those over 40.
The new survey also shows that nearly half of voters (46%) believe marijuana use leads to use of harder drugs. Thirty-seven percent (37%) do not see marijuana as a “gateway” drug.
That “gateway drug” argument sure is persistent, isn’t it? I guess I could give it a positive spin: at least if you’re relying on the “gateway drug” argument to show how awful marijuana is, you’re tacitly admitting that the marijuana itself isn’t so harmful.
The only three effective tools left in the prohibitionist’s rhetorical arsenal are:
Marijuana is a gateway drug that leads to use of harder drugs.
If we legalized marijuana, our streets would be filled with stoned drivers!
What about the children? For God’s Sake, won’t somebody think of the children?
So it is up to us to educate our friends and family and elected representatives. We need to have people who bring up “gateway drug” laughed out of the room like people who insist the moon landing was faked*.
We’ll deal with “stoned drivers” and “what about the children” another time. For your peers that shoot you the “gateway drug” argument, you could tell them that the Institute of Medicine debunked this theory in 1999 and every study subsequent to it has agreed. Or you could point out that the “gateway theory” is a logical fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning (that since this came before that, this caused that). But if your peers were swayed by logic and reason, we wouldn’t have 46% of them believing the “gateway theory”.
The theory survives because it fits a pattern familiar to most people. They understand that the falling-down drunk who’s loaded on scotch was once probably a guy who drank a beer or two. They understand that the chain smoker was once probably a guy who had a cigarette now and then. They understand that the right-wing talk radio host who was downing 30 illegal Oxycontin a day probably started on one or two a day. They also realize — accurately, I’ll admit — that the crack addict and heroin junkie probably smoked a joint or two before they moved on to the hard stuff.
So the way you attack this is to flip the perspective. They’re looking at all the hard drug addicts and noting that almost all of them used pot. You need to make them see all the marijuana users and show how few actually use hard drugs. Here are your three rhetorical attacks on the “gateway theory”:
Tuesday, March 24th, 2009 at 9:50 am | By: Radical Russ
Aw, you write that like it is a bad thing…
WASHINGTON (BP)–The decision by the Obama administration to surrender to bad state policies on so-called medicinal marijuana will have disastrous effects.
Medicinal marijuana is the Trojan horse of the marijuana decriminalization movement. The movement sees it as the means to appeal to people’s compassion in order to change public opinion about marijuana and ease the way toward decriminalization of marijuana. The Obama administration’s decision to cave on enforcement of federal drug laws against marijuana distribution represents the dropping of the first shoe on decriminalization of marijuana and signals the next one is coming.
I love the idea that we “legalizers” are meeting at Dr. Evil’s island lair to figure out how to pull a fast one over on the American people. Like we’re sitting there saying, “How are we ever going to convince the public that this dangerous killer plant is actually OK so we can get high legally?” We don’t have to appeal to anything to change public opinion that marijuana is medicine, we only have to show them the truth. Medical marijuana is not a “Trojan horse”, it is Galileo’s telescope proving the sun doesn’t revolve around the earth, not matter how much the religion of the day says it does.
With the federal government out of the way, we can expect to see a rapid rise in marijuana distributors and marijuana demand in states that have fallen victim to the medical marijuana scam. None of this escalation will prove especially helpful to the sick or to society. Those who use medicinal marijuana will pay the price first, and then everyone else will.
Yes, there will be more medical marijuana distributors, and as people realize they have a safe, legal, non-toxic alternative to the side-effect-laden killer pharmaceuticals shoved at them for pain and other conditions, there may be an increase in demand. But I’m still waiting for that medical marijuana patient to complain that we “legalizers” have taken advantage of them. I’m still waiting for those patients to protest the opening of another dispensary.
Friday, February 20th, 2009 at 11:37 am | By: Radical Russ
VIENNA (AFP) – A UN drugs agency warned Thursday against underestimating the dangers of cannabis.
“The international community may wish to review the issue of cannabis,” the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) wrote in its annual report.
“Over the years, cannabis has become more potent and is associated with an increasing number of emergency room admissions,” the report stated.
Ooh, a swing and a miss! Cannabis has become more potent, but increasing potency does not mean increase in danger, as marijuana smoking is a self-titrating action. If you have schwag, you smoke a lot and get high. If you have kind, you smoke a little and get high. As for emergency room admissions, this myth is taken from the DAWN statistics where they determine if someone has used cannabis prior to admittance, not whether cannabis caused the admittance. Since cannabis is the most popular illicit drug, it is naturally going to be mentioned more often in the ER.
Cannabis was often the first illicit drug taken by young people and was frequently called a “gateway drug,” in that it could lead to later use of hard drugs.
Indeed, many countries allowed the “recreational” use of cannabis, and public perceptions of the so-called “medical” uses of the drug and its recreational use “are overlapping and confusing,” it said.
It also urged governments to “stimulate” the controlled use of opiate-based painkillers to help “alleviate unnecessary suffering of millions of patients.”
“Although the access to controlled medicines, including morphine and codeine, is considered by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to be a human right, it is virtually non existent in over 150 countries,” the report said.
“The WHO estimates that at least 30 million patients and possibly as many as 86 million annually suffer from untreated moderate to severe pain.”
Yerrrr OUT! In fact, not only are you out, but your whole team is out, disqualified, and banished from the league! In the same set of recommendations where you demonize cannabis and its “so-called medical” uses you then remind us access to painkillers is a human right, millions are suffering with under-treated pain, and you recommend we “stimulate” more use of opiates? Who writes your recommendations, the Opium Poppy Growers Union?
Good job by Aaron Houston, pointing out the $14 billion in revenue, more 10th graders smoke pot than tobacco, and that DEA’s way hasn’t worked. I think it would be better if those points were shorter and tied together with something a talk radio pro taught me called the “Why do I give a shit?” angle. Simply put, to get your point across to the audience, you have to hook them with something that affects them personally.
Here’s how it might work:
“…Milton Friedman and 500 Harvard economists said that legal marijuana could bring in $14 billion. Mr. Hutchinson, that’s enough money to bail out Detroit and save some American jobs! That’s enough money to fix the levees in New Orleans or provide health care to every kid in America! Can we really afford to keep arresting people for smoking pot?”
“…more 10th graders smoke pot than tobacco, because we figured out that checking ID’s, curbing advertising, and educating kids with honest facts about cigarettes made them naturally want to quit. I don’t want teens using pot any more than you do, Mr. Hutchinson, so why don’t we take what worked with a really dangerous addictive drug like cigarettes and apply that to a weed that is as addictive as coffee?
“…Mr. Hutchinson, we’ve tried it your way and it hasn’t worked, but what it has done is locked up more people in the Land of the Free than any other nation, even Communist China and Putin’s Russia. A legal marijuana and hemp industry would not only create jobs other than prison guard, but save family farms, struggling timber towns, and bring in tax revenue to local communities. Mr. Hutchinson, if the government can regulate, control, and profit from cigarettes and 151-proof rum, why not marijuana?
Now for two low hanging softballs that must be crushed out of the park every time they are uttered. The only impediment to getting the average reasonable on-the-fence non-toking citizen to our side is the “What about the children?” angle. This is the corollary to the “Why do I give a shit?” angle, because the #1 thing people give a shit about is their kids. The primary fear to address is ”if I support the potheads, my kids will turn into potheads!”:
“Marijuana a stepping stone / gateway to other harder drugs.”
“Shame on you, Mr. Hutchinson, for trying to muddy this discussion of marijuana by scaring people about cocaine and heroin! The myth of the ‘gateway theory’ has been debunked by the government’s own Institute of Medicine in 1999. The only thing marijuana has in common with cocaine and heroin is that they are all illegal. You know why nobody calls alcohol a ‘gateway drug’? Because it’s not sold on a shelf next to cocaine and heroin.”
“When you legalize a substance, the use of that substance always goes up.”
“That’s flat-out wrong. The Netherlands, with its tolerance of cannabis coffee shops, has not only half the rate of teen and adult use of cannabis compared to America, they also have lower rates of use and addiction to hard drugs. And here in America, thirteen states have legalized the medical use of marijuana and teen use of marijuana has declined in those states. It’s funny, Mr. Hutchinson, that you would claim the decrease in teen marijuana use this decade has something to do with arresting people, and not because since 1996 some states have legalized pot.”
Somewhere along the line I think I would’ve thrown in “Mr. Hutchinson, when marijuana is made legal, will you smoke it? If ”
Of course, it is easy for me to think of all of this and type it up while not in a suit and tie under the hot lights in front of a camera by myself listening to an earpiece monitor of four other people I can’t see while I’m live on national television debating a former executive branch media-savvy administrator. I mean only to be constructive and to practice these analyses for that future day when I’m a talking head in a box on a cable news show…
As revealed by NORML’s research, the group named on the billboard — Molalla Coalition Against Drug Crime — receives federal money from the Office of National Drug Control Policy.
Monday, December 1st, 2008 at 6:52 pm | By: Radical Russ
Just south of the Portland, Oregon, metro area is a town called Molalla. Like most rural areas in Oregon, it is politically much more intolerant of cannabis than the liberal confines of Multnomah County.
An Oregon NORML member snapped this pic while driving on US Hwy 99E. In case it’s unreadable (click pic for larger version) the message on this billboard from the Molalla Coalition Against Drug Crime says:
MARIJUANA- A Gateway Drug to METH
This message is accompanied by a picture of a man smoking a joint on the left, and the now infamous Oregonian picture of the pock-marked female meth addict. Then the message continues by asking people to call the county sheriff’s office anonymous tip line.
We’re not against community organizations who in good faith try to relieve their neighborhoods of crime. It’s just sad that they’re trying to reduce the harm from hard drugs by lying about cannabis. Marijuana is not a gateway to meth or any other drug, any moreso than coffee, nicotine, alcohol, sugar, or Flintstones Chewable Vitamins. The gateway theory has been debunked by many independent organizations and even by our own drug-hating government:
MrSpof: There was a LAG in my computer, a LAG in my computer :metal kicks out the amp Awesome
SneakerPimp: that was a lag in my comp
SneakerPimp: like the new pic slash5 and adam
SneakerPimp: like the new pic slash5
RevRayGreen: that blows B-dog.......
bullbog: Hawkeyes you had a good run...this toke is for you.
Track Snack: Mornin Stashers! Tokin on the Mean Green Martian for breakfast.
MrSpof: Maybe Dr Mitch could comment on the efficacy of reasonable amount of weed like that consumed (smoked) quickly mitigating migraine effects. I know the lowering of blood pressure would be [...]
MrSpof: Had the onset of a migraine yesterday. Immediately took 8 , moist cool washcloth on eyes, heating pad on neck and upper back, turned off lights. Migraine gone in [...]
MrSpof: As you personal non-accredited doctor, I advise the rest of you to smoke/vape/eat heavily
slash5city: frickazee'd.... Mr. Spof, thank you very much
MrSpof: Risen and roasted How the hell are you?
RevRayGreen: always Fidget......always.
Adam: Maybe in WA, judges are starting to think about the true cost of a Drug charge...
Adam: Tim Lincecum, pitcher for the San Francisco Giants will pea to a paraphernalia charge/ Possession charges DROPPED
Adam: Add some cottage cheese to your pancake batter, replace the maple with a fruit syrup! f-ing killer, YES I was stoned...
Fidget Truittelli: Good morning from beautiful Arizona! I hope you all have a happy, fun day. Remember to 'pay-it' forward. Do something nice for someone.
BenJaMin: Go NORML!!!
BenJaMin: Russ Is Tha BEst! :smokin:
SneakerPimp: oh there it is thanx russ
SneakerPimp: so whats up with today stash?
RevRayGreen: Barney Frank Present When Partner Arrested for pot-- http://bit.ly/1XpM2R
RevRayGreen: KMK 11/17/09 VAL AIR ballroom DSM
bullbog: that's crazy. I had a NORML black t-shirt on. It was hell of a show
RevRayGreen: dude I was probably 4-5 seats from you then
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Marijuana laws keep demand, price high, STU professor says
There was a LAG in my computer, a LAG in my computer :metal kicks out the amp 
Awesome 
and adam 
frickazee'd.... Mr. Spof, thank you very much
and roasted 
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