(“Seeds of Terror” by Gretchen Peters) The Taliban dropped a bruised, shivering wretch at our feet, his legs in shackles. “This is what we do to addicts”, declared Abdul Rashed, head of their anti-drug force in Kandahar. It was Spring of 1997, I had traveled to the southern Afghan city, then the Taliban’s de facto capital, with the Pakistani journalist, Ahmed Rashed. I was writing a story about the opium trade for the AP, Ahmed was researching his book “The Taliban” which would become an overnight best-seller after the 9/11 attacks. We met the counter-narcotics chief in his shoebox sized office. I made a joke about how the 2 men might be related since they shared the same last name, neither man found it funny. Ahmed was meticulously turned out in an Italian sports coat, his namesake picked bits of food from his greasy beard while he explained the Taliban’s unique approach to curing drug addiction.
First he said addicts got beaten until they confess the name of their supplier, after that they were thrown in jail. “Then we dunk them in ice cold water for 2 or 3 hours a day”, Rashed explained. Adding brightly, “it’s a very good cure”, to prove his point he ordered his minions to drag out Bak Mohammad, a local shopkeeper recently caught smoking a joint. “When they put me in that cold water I forgot all about hashish” said Mohammad, slumped on the floor before us.
The irony here, of course, is that the Taliban is almost completely funded by the cultivation of opium and trafficking in heroin worldwide. Afghans don’t really use heroin, so the religious fanatics of the Taliban don’t seem to mind growing it to poison the infidel. But Afghans love their cannabis and hash, so the Taliban plays DEA whenever marijuana is involved.
Monday, July 6th, 2009 at 3:20 pm | By: Radical Russ
(RedOrbit) Injections of THC, the active principle of cannabis, eliminate dependence on opiates (morphine, heroin) in rats deprived of their mothers at birth. This has been shown by a study carried out by Valérie Daugé and her team at the Laboratory for Physiopathology of Diseases of the Central Nervous System (UPMC / CNRS / INSERM) in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology. The findings could lead to therapeutic alternatives to existing substitution treatments.
Previously, Daugé and her colleagues had shown that rats deprived of their mothers at birth become hypersensitive to the rewarding effect of morphine and heroin (substances belonging to the opiate family), and rapidly become dependent. In addition, there is a correlation between such behavioral disturbances linked to dependence, and hypoactivity of the enkephalinergic system, the endogenous opioid system.
To these rats, placed under stress from birth, the researchers intermittently administered increasingly high doses of THC (5 or 10 mg/kg) during the period corresponding to their adolescence (between 35 and 48 days after birth). By measuring their consumption of morphine in adulthood, they observed that, unlike results previously obtained, the rats no longer developed typical morphine-dependent behavior. Moreover, biochemical and molecular biological data corroborate these findings. In the striatum, a region of the brain involved in drug dependence, the production of endogenous enkephalins was restored under THC, whereas it diminished in rats stressed from birth which had not received THC.
Ah, the possibility that marijuana doesn’t lead to heroin, it may lead away from heroin! Put this in the Hall of Fame with Michael Phelps killing the amotivational slacker myth, Barack Obama slaying the admitted marijuana users can’t get elected rule, and Dr. Tashkin searching for a link to marijuana and lung cancer and instead finding anti-tumoral properties.
The evil thing is to think of how much our government already suspects many of these medical marijuana miracles (they knew about the anti-tumoral properties of THC since the 1970s) and has actively been suppressing all attempts to research the good marijuana can do (plenty of money for “demon weed” research, however.)
Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 at 10:20 am | By: Radical Russ
(WOAI.com) SAN ANTONIO — Controversy is brewing over a patch used for pain relief. At least two people in San Antonio have died after using the Fentanyl patch, and their families are blaming what they say is a defect.
Like most medicinal patches, Fentanyl is used by peeling off a sticky side and placing it against the skin of a patient. The patch is left on the skin for up to 72 hours and is supposed to provide the exact amount of medication needed.
However, the families of two San Antonio women who died say the patch they were prescribed to relieve their pain ended up killing them.
According to lawsuits filed by family members, both women suffered chronic pain. So, their doctors suggested Fentanyl patches.
Fentanyl is stronger than morphine. When it is applied to the skin, it then delivers a certain amount of Fentanyl into the patient.
While wearing the patches, Donna Singleton and Ellen Burks died. Their families say both suffered an overdose of Fentanyl because the patches were defective.
Similar patches have been recalled before because a cut along the side of the patch allowed too much Fentanyl to leak and cause a possible overdose.
Wait a minute, didn’t the Food & Drug Administration approve the use of these Fentanyl patches? Why, doesn’t that mean it’s safe? We know for sure that the FDA wouldn’t let people stick a patch on their body loaded with a Schedule II drug if it weren’t safe, even if this Fentanyl is just one isomer short of being Schedule I “China White” heroin.
We know this because they protect us from that evil Schedule I medical marijuana that never killed anybody in 5,000 years.
Monday, May 11th, 2009 at 8:20 am | By: Dudemaster
Fifteen years ago, I was standing in a valley of several square miles which was completely saturated with marijuana. Later that same day, I was in another field several hundred miles away, but this one was filled with poppies. What was I doing? I was in Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Belize, Panama, Costa Rica, Bolivia, Brazil, and other Central and South American countries, involved with helping the local communities rid their area of drug producers.
When I worked for our government in support of these efforts in the early 1990’s, drug producers would go into a village, often after executing someone as an example, and conscript the village residents into manufacturing marijuana, cocaine, or opiates. Today, they are still hard at work conscripting residents and forcing them to manufacture their illegal drugs.
Don’t misunderstand me, I’m a strong proponent for legal marijuana, but I’m adamantly against the purchase or distribution of “cartel schwag” because there are innocents who die at the hands of the cartels. I would rather ‘never smoke pot again’ than line the pockets of cartels with my money. I’m hoping that someday, it will all be domestic.
I left government service a little more than a year ago, after serving more than 20 years wearing a uniform. In my senior military days, I dealt with policy and strategy, creating different solutions for different issues. Today I spend my time working policy and strategy for a University while working to influence legalization policies through letter writing and blogging.
During my research I came across a paper written by Ross Raffin which describes, in his opinion, how the current legalization movement is being done in a Federal way. He articulates quite accurately what the Obama administration is doing for the legalization movement.
Many advocates of legalizing or decriminalizing marijuana feel Obama has abandoned them. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is a consistent warrior against decriminalization. Attorney General Eric Holder has a history of opposing drug policy reforms and considers the adult use of marijuana equivalent to public nuisance. Even Joe Biden, when asked about pain management and medical cannabis, responded that “there’s got to be a better answer than marijuana.” But the reality is that the Obama administration has turned the tides in favor of legalization and decriminalization in a much stronger and subtler way than open rhetorical endorsements.
Optimism for drug reform began when Obama ended federal raids on cannabis dispensaries in states which allow medical marijuana. What marijuana advocates fail to realize is that with this the Obama administration initiated a small but extremely important step towards legalization. More importantly, it has done so in a way to insulate itself from Republican attacks and attempts to distract the public.
If Obama were to walk up to a microphone today and announce that he is going to submit legislation to congress to tax, regulate, and legalize marijuana, we might have a Congress ready to impeach, or at the very least, we’d have a Congress who wouldn’t take him seriously any longer.
The Obama administration’s public hesitation towards marijuana legalization is not only understandable but, considering the impact of the current economic legislation and programs the administration is endorsing, the most pragmatic and efficient route for the moment. Legalization and decriminalization advocates should focus efforts on state-wide legalization, not nation-wide. If states are challenged in lawsuits, than the Supreme Court will be forced to rule on whether legislation criminalizing marijuana should be struck down. This is preferable to the executive putting forward a proposal to legalize marijuana from the top down. When Obama tells the country that marijuana legalization is not the path he chooses for America, he means to say that the path must first be drawn by us.
What we need to do, as a point of policy and strategy, is continue what we are doing right now. At the grass roots level, we need to be even more active in our local NORML chapters, and try as hard as we can by rallying as much support as possible to support any and all decriminalization bills or propositions in our communities and states as we can.
Our president is allowing democracy to decide the fate of marijuana, so let’s use democracy to end the prohibition and re-legalize marijuana. Start a NORML chapter, or attend a meeting and get active! It’s a chance for you to serve your country.
Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 at 10:20 am | By: Radical Russ
96% of BEST drug seizures at the Mexican border are marijuana
(Counterpunch.org) DHS says the new initiative will be based on a “risk-based decision-making process.” All the various DHS initiatives that are part of its SBI umbrella program contend that they are “risk-based.” DHS contends it is protecting the homeland against “dangerous goods and people.”
In practice, however, its array of border control and immigration enforcement programs casts a wide net—with most of the arrests being immigration violators and drug law offenders rather than dangerous criminals. Marijuana leads, by far, the list of illegal drugs seized, even though there is widening consensus, even in the criminal justice community, that marijuana is not a “dangerous good,” especially when compared with cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamines.
The achievements of the existing [Border Enforcement Security Taskforce] BEST teams don’t support ICE declarations that their investigation and prosecutions are “risk-based.” The existing 95 members of BEST teams in the Southwest were responsible for 1,000 criminal arrests in 2008, but most of its arrests—1,256—were for administrative violations, presumably transgressions of immigration law. Marijuana seizures topped the list of drugs confiscated. BEST seized 42,400 lbs. of marijuana, 1,803 lbs. of cocaine, and 66 lbs. of heroin.
Do you feel safer now? When President Nixon declared the war on drugs, one of the first programs on the Mexican border was “Operation Intercept“. Then, too, the idea was that we’d stop those Mexicans from supplying weed to our youth. The massive crackdown was called off after Mexican officials complained about how badly this backed up legitimate business traffic at the border.
In this case, it’s not just business traffic inconveniences to worry about, it’s potential terrorists and explosive or radioactive materials we’re worried about. Every time border cops have to spend time busting truckloads of pot is an opportunity for a terrorist to go unnoticed.
Friday, March 6th, 2009 at 12:05 pm | By: Radical Russ
Next week ministers from around the world gather in Vienna to set international drug policy for the next decade. Like first-world-war generals, many will claim that all that is needed is more of the same. In fact the war on drugs has been a disaster, creating failed states in the developing world even as addiction has flourished in the rich world. By any sensible measure, this 100-year struggle has been illiberal, murderous and pointless. That is why The Economist continues to believe that the least bad policy is to legalise drugs.
“Least bad” does not mean good. Legalisation, though clearly better for producer countries, would bring (different) risks to consumer countries. As we outline below, many vulnerable drug-takers would suffer. But in our view, more would gain.
After pointing out the evidence of the Drug War’s failure to achieve “A drug free world by 2008″ as the UN’s general assembly crowed in 1998, The Economist points out:
This is not for want of effort. The United States alone spends some $40 billion each year on trying to eliminate the supply of drugs. It arrests 1.5m of its citizens each year for drug offences, locking up half a million of them; tougher drug laws are the main reason why one in five black American men spend some time behind bars. In the developing world blood is being shed at an astonishing rate. In Mexico more than 800 policemen and soldiers have been killed since December 2006 (and the annual overall death toll is running at over 6,000). This week yet another leader of a troubled drug-ridden country—Guinea Bissau—was assassinated.
The Economist then explains how legalization won’t be a tough sell at all in the producer countries, but it is faced with major political hurdles in the consumer countries:
That fear is based in large part on the presumption that more people would take drugs under a legal regime. That presumption may be wrong. There is no correlation between the harshness of drug laws and the incidence of drug-taking: citizens living under tough regimes (notably America but also Britain) take more drugs, not fewer. Embarrassed drug warriors blame this on alleged cultural differences, but even in fairly similar countries tough rules make little difference to the number of addicts: harsh Sweden and more liberal Norway have precisely the same addiction rates. Legalisation might reduce both supply (pushers by definition push) and demand (part of that dangerous thrill would go). Nobody knows for certain. But it is hard to argue that sales of any product that is made cheaper, safer and more widely available would fall. Any honest proponent of legalisation would be wise to assume that drug-taking as a whole would rise.
Here at NORML we promote the legalization of cannabis. Other drugs should require other measures that take into account the addictiveness and socially destructive capabilities of those drugs. I personally don’t believe those measures should include locking up addicts — prison is a lousy rehab — but I also don’t think a regulatory scheme that treats marijuana similar to alcohol would be appropriate for, say, cocaine, meth, or heroin.
But when you say the word “Legalization”, immediately people conjure visions of “Maui Wowie”, “Colombia Flake”, “Crystal Energy”, and “Super Smack” sold on convenience store shelves next to the 24-oz beers and junk food snack cakes. “Legalization”, though, can mean marijuana in adults-only stores with IDs checked for age 21 and limits placed on amount purchased while it can also mean much more stringent restrictions on other drugs like prescriptions and pharmacies and tight controls.
Wednesday, January 14th, 2009 at 10:24 am | By: Radical Russ
A new study looks at the increased arrest of marijuana smokers in New York City and the increase in marijuana smokers seeking treatment, and comes to a conclusion only a hardened drug warrior like Dr. Kevin Sabet could make:
In the mid-late 1990s Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Police Chief William Bratton focused on arresting and detaining people for crimes that contributed to a lower “quality-of-life” in New York City. This aggressive arrest policy (AAP) resulted in a record growth in marijuana arrests. In 1992, the number of marijuana arrests was around 5,000. By 2000, the arrest rate hit an all-time high of about 60,000 (the large majority of which were for misdemeanor arrests in both years). Through a triangulation of data sources, including the Uniform Crime Reports and the Treatment Episode Data Set from 1992 to 2003, and other published accounts, this paper shows that entries into treatment for marijuana dramatically increased in New York City at the same time as misdemeanor and felony arrests for marijuana also rose.
Good so far, right? Matches up nicely with that graph there showing that 1992-2000, marijuana arrests increased 1000% and so did court referrals for marijuana “treatment”. After 9/11 as arrests declined, referrals began to decline. Shows what we’ve been saying for a while now, that few people actually seek professional drug rehab for marijuana alone; most are forced into it after being arrested for marijuana possession.
Well, not to Dr. Kevin Sabet:
While it is unclear if these arrests caused the treatment increase (vis-à-vis criminal justice referral programs), the presence of these two phenomena show that policy regimes of increased treatment and increased law enforcement actions can co-exist. The oft-heard phrase “treatment versus law enforcement” may represent a false dichotomy in drug policy analysis.
Unclear?!? You think 1000% more pot smokers just up and decided they were marijuana “addicts” and voluntarily sought treatment? Could this paper get any sillier? (Yes. Yes it can.)
Thursday, January 8th, 2009 at 7:08 pm | By: Radical Russ
So I’m reading the Washington DC newspaper when I find this article on Afghanistan and the Taliban. It goes into detail about how the Taliban is funding its activities against our troops through trafficking in opium, which is a wonderful poppy that gives us helpful medicines like morphine, but mostly becomes very profitable heroin. ”In 2007, Afghanistan was the world’s largest opium supplier (accounting for 93 percent of the world’s opium, according to UN estimates),” says the Drug Czar.
Imagine my surprise when I discover that it is an opinion piece and the author is calling for the US to spend 1/100th of the cost of the Afghanistan War and just buy up all the opium! Imagine my increased surprise when I find the newspaper isn’t the accusedly-liberal Washington Post, but the definitely-conservative Moonie-owned Washington Times!
Washington Times – NATHAN: Ending the Taliban’s money stream
Placed beside the $200 billion Afghanistan has already exacted from American taxpayers, the cost of purchasing all Afghanistan opium hardly seems outsized. Currently, opium gum fetches about $50 a pound. The largest crop in Afghanistan’s history was 8,200 tons, in 2007. A year’s worth of Afghan crop at twice the going rate would go for $2 billion to $2.5 billion. But even if the cost were $5 billion, the price would not seem untoward, especially given the paucity of alternative; and given the fact that opium, corruption, and the rise of the Taliban are single pieces of the same sorry cloth.
Purchasing the whole opium crop of Afghanistan, at whatever price, would take the crop away from the traffickers without cutting more than half the economy out of Afghanistan. If opium crops were pre-emptively purchased, the traffickers and Afghanistan’s most corrosive corruption would be directly confronted. The huge supply could be purchased by Americans who are specially cleared, and be stored in the United States, perhaps by Security Council resolution assigned to the United Nations under American control for future medical emergencies.
Let Afghans produce the world’s opium supply, providing them an agricultural market to stabilize the economy, and take away the majority of the Taliban’s income, and provide for a secure stockpile of emergency medicines?
More and more, even (especially?) conservatives are realizing that prohibition is the most expensive way to deal with the natural appetite for mild-altering drugs. Imagine if they took this idea to the Mexican cannabis market – make it legal to buy and sell processed cannabis in America, but only legal to grow it commercially in Mexico. Turn the Mexican economy around by providing them a lucrative agricultural market, take away 70% of the Mexican Mafia’s income, and provide a secure stockpile of medicine for registered patients!
(I know, it should be legal to grow here. But in this hypothetical, at least 89% of the people arrested for cannabis would be free from harassment.)
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Welcome back, Stashers! Did you get enough turkey this weekend? Hey, hold on, I can just ask you with this handy dandy new Polls plug-in (some of you already noticed the polls over there on the right, right?)
Through the entire Thanksgiving Weekend, I had...
Enough turkey (59%, 22 Votes)
No turkey at all (24%, 9 Votes)
Too much turkey (17%, 6 Votes)
Total Voters: 37
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Oh, I’m going to have fun with this. Let’s get existential!
Will you answer this poll?
Yes. (68%, 23 Votes)
No. (21%, 7 Votes)
Maybe. (11%, 5 Votes)
Total Voters: 34
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Anyway, today’s Stash takes us all the way to Switzerland, home of alpenhorns, army knives, and government-prescribed heroin. PJ Wasserman joins us to discuss Swiss culture and how they can accept free heroin for addicts but reject cannabis decriminalization. Check out PJ’s music website at SchaltkreisWasserman.com.
Then Brendan Rivard from the University of Central Florida chapter of NORML comes on to talk about the cannabis-alcohol equalization initiative that will be voted on by the student assembly.
Sunday, November 30th, 2008 at 3:31 pm | By: Radical Russ
Heroin Legalization Program Approved By Swiss Voters
GENEVA — The world’s most comprehensive legalized heroin program became permanent Sunday with overwhelming approval from Swiss voters who simultaneously rejected the decriminalization of marijuana.
The nearly 1,300 selected addicts, who have been unhelped by other therapies, visit one of the centers twice a day to receive the carefully measured dose of heroin produced by a government-approved laboratory.
They keep their paraphernalia in cups labeled with their names and use the equipment and clean needles to inject themselves _ four at a time _ under the supervision of a nurse, and also receive counseling from psychiatrists and social workers.
Sixty-eight percent of the 2.26 million Swiss voters casting ballots approved making the heroin program permanent.
By contrast, around 63.2 percent of voters voted against the marijuana proposal, which was based on a separate citizens’ initiative to decriminalize the consumption of marijuana and growing the plant for personal use.
Jo Lang, a Green Party member of parliament from the central city of Zug, said he was disappointed in the failure of the marijuana measure because it means 600,000 people in Switzerland will be treated as criminals because they use cannabis.
“People have died from alcohol and heroin, but not from cannabis,” Lang said.
The government, which opposed the marijuana proposal, said it feared that liberalizing cannabis could cause problems with neighboring countries.
Talk about “sending a wrong message to the children”! Don’t use cannabis, or we’ll arrest you, but if you get into heroin, we’ll give you a nice place to shoot up some free smack. In a strange way, the Swiss voters just said that cannabis use isn’t addictive. They had to take action against heroin because those people got addicted and would shoot up in the city parks, but apparently cannabis isn’t enough of a problem for the Swiss people to think it needs a harm reduction solution.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for clean needle exchange programs and maintenance heroin programs and I really don’t even mind if the government pays for it. But to accept that treatment of heroin while maintaining a prohibition against cannabis seems insane to me. I’d bet if you legalized the cannabis, you’d end up with less heroin addicts over the long term, too.
RevRayGreen: MASS TWEET THIS -@ChuckGrassley Truth is Chuck you follow Nixon's CSA full of reefer sadness. btw Chuck, Marijuana is not a drug.
RevRayGreen: @ChuckGrassley http://bit.ly/55Ejsi Truth is Chuck you follow Nixon's CSA full of reefer madness. btw Chuck, Marijuana is not a drug.
SneakerPimp: one last thing Puff puff pass to any one who wants it
SneakerPimp: i wanna here about the imminent MiniSpof sounds like time for some
SneakerPimp: im estatic and excited for NSL today.
SneakerPimp: mountain time wake n bake
SneakerPimp: oh yea also wake n bake
SneakerPimp: its central im high as a kite everybody
SneakerPimp: ill grab that WUD
WakeUpDead: @Russ, I dont think that wireless is going to work out for the show, it was choppy and studdered just like last week. Hardline may be the only way. Puff [...]
WakeUpDead: A MINI Spof, Lock up your Weed, in 18 years that is. Really Man congrats! Greatest days of my life when my kids were born, hell yeh, great news [...]
BenJaMin: Late night Stash!!!
SneakerPimp: heres a bong rip for spof
RevRayGreen: errr test over....
RevRayGreen: on hold..
RevRayGreen: @RR I'll try and lob a call to you.....
SneakerPimp: where is the first field of cannabis gonna be?
SneakerPimp: !
Radical Russ: Breaking News: MrSpof's wife's water just broke! A MiniSpof is imminent!
SneakerPimp: oh russ its not my fault that i dont understand choppy word:stoned:
SneakerPimp: @Mrspof congratulations tell us all about it tommrow
Radical Russ: OK, test over. Sorry. Only needed a half hour. Be back tomorrow afternoon.
slash5city: don't forget to watch CCS live on u-stream 8 pm west
thaistik: Local Crime Stoppers notice.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Pot shop burglars sought
Crime Stoppers is looking for information on the suspects who police say burglarized a medical marijuana dispensary and stole cash, drugs [...]
Marijuana-Related Health Costs Minimal Compared To Those Of Alcohol, Tobacco; California Medical Association Says Pot Prohibition Is A "Failed Public Health Policy"; Oregon: State NORML Affiliate Opens First 'Cannabis Café'. […]
American Medical Association Calls For Scientific Review Of Marijuana's Prohibitive Status; Dutch Marijuana Use Lower Than European Average, Study Says […]
"Truth In Trials Act" Reintroduced In Congress; Maine: Voters Approve Medical Marijuana Dispensaries Measure; Colorado: Breckenridge Voters Overwhelmingly Decide To End Pot Penalties. […]
Some of the nation’s top athletes discuss why today's pros are turning to cannabis — and away from alcohol and painkillers — off the field, and question why pro sports leagues are continuing to sanction those who do. Moderator: Steve Bloom, Author, Pot Culture; editor, celebstoner.com * Toby Grear, MMA fighter * Sean Neumann, Documentary Filmm […]
Cannabis Law Reform's Missing Link: Law Enforcement Former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper; LEAP and NORML Advisory Board; Author of Breaking Rank Putting the Mexican Cartels Out of Business Mexican drug cartels now employ over 100,000 soldiers and are responsible for nearly ten thousand deaths per year. Their largest source of income is marijuana. […]
The Taliban’s cure for marijuana “addiction”
Somewhere in Georgia, Rep. Tommy “Caning for Potheads” Benton is calling the Taliban weak for their light treatment of marijuana users…
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sounds like time for some 
mountain time wake n bake 
don't forget to watch CCS live on u-stream 8 pm west 
Fresh Stash V RSS Feed
, or can...
