Download Link: Secret Stash - Register to access

Download audio file (NORML_Daily_AudioStash_2009-08-04.mp3)

Hemp Headlines

1. CBS News: Does the pot pill work?
2. How the “War on Drugs” became the “War on Marijuana” in the 1990s
3. Reefer Madness – John English III: Fast and Furious

California Marijuana Report with Eric Brenner

• San Francisco Libertarian activist Starchild facing felony marijuana charges in South Dakota.
• Bob Weir and Kingfish–rare track.

Daily Toker Tunes by Marijuana Music Awards . com

• Variety Tuesday – ‘Public Service Announcement’ by Anders Manga

Government at Work

• Replay of 3/23 interview with PA Rep. Cohen on introduction of first Pennsylvania medical marijuana bill.

My favorite Local Portland Lock-Picking Logic-Impaired Prohibitionist is at it again.  This time, the peril of stoned drivers!  John’s in full-blown reefer madness mode from the opening graf:

Ask yourself, do marijuana users, who can be found in the wee hours of the morning, staring at the “white noise” of a blank TV screen – off the air for hours, be competent drivers? Every druggie has laughed about having found themselves in that position.

What is this television channel in the 21st century that goes “off the air”?  John, it’s called the digital transition – your old Magnavox console with the built in 8-track and turntable won’t pick up our fancy-schmancy hi-def 24-hour digital channels, dagnabbit!

John provides a cut-n-paste of a study that says pot smokers are 3 to 7 times more likely to cause an accident.  He’s kind enough to provide footnotes to these esteemed scientist’s work.  But John’s been hammered in his comments section, by me and quite a few well-educated people, pointing out every flaw in his argument and every deficit in his scientific claims.  There is a simple explanation: John’s scientists are pure as the driven snow and our scientists are “druggies” with a self-serving agenda bankrolled by evil world dominating billionaires.

[I]n fact, those who leave comments, claim it’s just the opposite.Of course they’re users, trying to tell you that they’re fine to drive, … and they’ll refer to “studies”, proving just the opposite of what is only common sense, that using marijuana doesn’t impair drivers … so where’s the truth?  [T]here are seemingly competent scientists who are also users, and will evidently produce ‘studies’ to further their agendas, and/or those who pay them, and don’t forget; behind the scenes, there are also wealthy men and organizations willing to bankroll anything to further their goal of legalization.

And the next claim will make Dr. Earleywine and every other scientist who’s ever tried to get a grant to study the medicinal properties of cannabis fall out of their chair:

These scientists, … they’re also a concern, for those attempting to find the truth. Truth is, they’re under pressure: 1) if academics - they need to be a published author, (being published in the scientific and research field means more respect and impacts tenure issues) … 2) how better to get more grant money than to produce something controversial?

Oh, yeah, the money is just flowing for controversial marijuana studies.  Can’t you just stick to the standard reefer madness lines like “This ain’t your father’s Woodstock Weed”?

Understand also that the marijuana of this generation is not the same as their parents smoked!

Pot then, had a THC content of 1 – 3%. Now, the THC content is surging up to 25%. (That too will be covered in future articles.) One can expect an increase of physiological and psychological problems  with higher dosages.

Sure, the flower children were all smoking barely-above industrial hemp ditchweed.  That explains Laugh In, “be-ins”, massive afros, bellbottoms, and the Grateful Dead. all that lousy weak pot our parents were smoking.

I could cite the studies that show heavily-stoned drivers drive no worse than a .05 BAC driver, or that we tend to drive slower and leave more room, but also tend to wander a bit in the lane.  John would just say those are druggie scientists.  It doesn’t matter because nobody’s advocating for people to be allowed to drive stoned.  Making marijuana legal is not going to increase any smoking and driving, because the idiots who would do that are doing that now.  When marijuana is legal, police will still be able to bust drivers who demonstate impairment or poor driving.

So many of these prohibitionist fears are based on the notion that making marijuana legal will mean suddenly people will start smoking it. Out of nowhere we’ll have increased healthcare costs, lost productivity, impaired drivers, psychotic teenagers, and rampant crime.  You can only buy into that if you don’t know that 22 million people are smoking pot this year, 14 million monthly, 3 million weekly.  If the projected harms of legalized marijuana exist, we would have seen them by now because so many people have been smoking marijuana for so long!

Don’t smoke and drive, don’t drive impaired.  It’s all we ask of beer drinkers and they are far more dangerous drivers.

Download Link: Secret Stash - Register to access

Download audio file (NORML_Daily_AudioStash_2009-07-16.mp3)

Hemp Headlines

1. California Board of Equalization report: legalized marijuana would reap $1.38 billion
2. Hawai’i Legislature overrides Governor’s veto of medical marijuana study
3. Locking people in cages – good old fashioned American entrepreneurship
4. John English II: Reefer Madness Boogaloo

Southern California Scene with Tere Joyce

• A visit with Kent Kelley, activist working at LA’s largest dispensary, The Farmacy

Daily Toker Tunes by Marijuana Music Awards . com

• Rockin Thursday! – ‘New York Nickel Bag’ by Kevin Hinninger

Cannabis Conversations

• Brian K. Phillips, a caregiver facing charges in LA County. http://prop215injustice.blogspot.com/

My favorite locksmith-turned-prohibitionist, Portland’s own John English, has penned four more anti-pot screeds in the online Examiner.  Some people cringe when they read tripe like John’s, but I jump for joy.  Not only does John provide irreplaceable blog fodder, but the idiocy of his writing and fallacy of his reasoning illustrate how desperate prohibitionists are becoming.  Anyone who tortures logic and the English language as John does should be brought up on war crimes charges (or at least given a job app for the CIA).

In “Medical marijuana and the rule of law“, John delivers the tired “snake oil salesmen” argument that medical marijuana is akin to the bottles of “cocaine toothdrops” from 1885 and Bayer Co. heroin bottles from the same era.  Yes, John, cocaine, opium derivatives, and even cannabis were sold for medicinal purposes around the turn of the 20th century… just as they are now.  Cocaine is a Schedule II drug; doctors in any state can prescribe it.  Morphine, oxycodone, and other opioids (admittedly, not heroin) are also Schedule II and Schedule III, prescribable by physicians.  These drugs have safety ratios between 1:6 and 1:20, meaning they’re therapeutic (medicinal) if you take dosage level “1″, but if you take six-to-twenty times that dose, you’ll likely die.

Only cannabis, marooned in Schedule I (but not its synthetic 10x more potent cousin, Marinol, which is in Schedule III) is not prescribable by doctors in any state (not even medical marijuana states; it is only “recommended”) and its safety ratio is 1:1000.

But that’s not the shocking stuff…

The rule of law is intrinsic to the survival of the society in which people function.

Hedonists, pursuing their lusts, often step over the lines … not only of propriety, but of legality as well, becoming criminals.

Pedophilia, as well as drug use are examples of this. Society has determined that these practices are so destructive that they must remain illegal, yet there are groups that disagree; both groups have organized and also attempted to change the laws by hiring lobbyists in D.C.

One issue, obviously more repugnant, yet in ways, pedophilia and the pro-legalization movement are not so different. Both harm the innocent and those unable to foresee the ramifications of their actions.

Yes, NORML and NAMBLA*, ideological equals in John English’s mind.  NORML wants to smoke joints, NAMBLA wants to fuck boys.  Could it be any more obvious?

I can’t even wrap my mind around rebutting that.

In “Marijuana smoking: pulmonary and respiratory complications“, John does a lengthy cut-and-paste of the study “Effects of Marijuana Smoking on Pulmonary Function and Respiratory Complications” in order to explain to us why society needs to lock people up to protect them from a cough.  He begins by noting:

Although I understand that druggie websites have tons of bogus studies for you to refer to, and that they seem to contradict the legitimate science, but these doctors, Ph.D.’s, and Research Scientists are not like some of the “doctors and research scientists” who were and currently are drug users themselves, and – therefore have an axe to grind.

Unlike, say the doctors, Ph.D.’s, and research scientists working for or funded by the National Institutes on Drug Abuse, who can only get research funding for their marijuana studies if they present a grant request explaining how they plan to prove the dangers of marijuana, and get turned down if they ask for money to prove cannabis’ medical efficacy. No axe there.  (I guess now I have to refer to my Cannabis Science guest as “Dr.” Mitch Earleywine now.)

Funny thing, though, the study John pastes into his article (is it really your article when 90% of it is a paste job?) has this citation:

Some of the known tobacco smoking–related adverse effects include cough, chronic bronchitis, impairment of gas exchange, and airway obstruction that leads to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.³

³ Tashkin DP. Smoked marijuana as a cause of lung injury. Monaldi Arch Chest Dis. 2005;63:93-100.

Funny, because that’s the same Dr. (or is it “Dr.”?) Donald P. Tashkin of the UCLA Medical Center, who has been engaged in thirty years of research using the largest case control study of marijuana smokers in history.  He was originally attempting to document his hypothesis that marijuana smoking leads to lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).  Not only did he find no association between even heavy, chronic marijuana smoking and lung cancer and COPD, but he stated just this year:

“Early on, when our research appeared as if there would be a negative impact on lung health, I was opposed to legalization because I thought it would lead to increased use and that would lead to increased health effects,” Tashkin says. “But at this point, I’d be in favor of legalization. I wouldn’t encourage anybody to smoke any substances. But I don’t think it should be stigmatized as an illegal substance. Tobacco smoking causes far more harm. And in terms of an intoxicant, alcohol causes far more harm.”

In “The medical marijuana scam“, John opens with the picture of the ten-stage “Faces of Meth” deterioration of a young meth addict’s series of mug shots (point taken, John: don’t do meth!) and an incorrect explanation that THC is a Schedule I substance to “debunk” one of his commenter’s correct assertions about Schedule III Marinol.

But the gist of this article is a return to the mid-90′s footage of former NORML Director Richard Cowan explaining how acceptance of medical marijuana will lead to eventual legalization of recreational marijuana, which, of course, will turn us into a nation of heroin addicts.  I agree with Cowan – once people find they’ve been lied to about cannabis’ medical uses, they’ll question other prohibitionist lies, which will lead to overturning prohibition – but even if I didn’t, how does we “legalizers” support of medical marijuana make the relief a chemo patient feels after smoking a joint any less real?

In reading now nine of John’s articles, I’ve found an interesting dichotomy he creates.  On the one hand…

Like most users, he cannot see what it’s doing to himself and his loved ones; that’s part of the pernicious aspect of using marijuana. … the hedonistic, immature and irresponsible seeker of highs, cannot see the subtle steps into drug use and that users sometimes grow up and somehow quit, normally they grow old and damage their mental acuity, or push the envelope and die prematurely. … Users make bad decision. Because of the bad decisions, users violate the laws and contribute to every social ill of the land. Users put others at risk. Users try to get others to be like them, sucking them into the lost world of criminality, life without hope, disability and prison. They believe all this justifies what they do. It doesn’t! The lengths to which they’ll go, the lies they’ll tell to get their own way, is pathetic! The society they’re attacking is ours; and they want our children, to be like them! Don’t forget that! Protect your children at all costs! Like it or not, just like the narco-terrorists they purchase their drugs from, they are at war with us . . . . and kids push the envelope; it’s part of growing up and breaking away!

But on the other hand…

The American public has been scammed, … intentionally!  … The legalizers made their presentations, (feigning desperate need) and demanded to be able to smoke their “medicine.” As the public heard the pleas, from so many, seeming to suffer pathetically, … from all sorts of maladies, and that their “condition” would be helped by smoking marijuana, (as anticipated) the public began to have compassion agreeing, ‘why shouldn’t people be able to use a substance if they were dying anyway?’ … The people bought it and therefore, we were all scammed and California’s proposition 215 was the outcome, which has taken us deeper into this whole mess.

So, then, marijuana users are the scourge of society seeking to lead your children into an abyss of despair, and yet these same people were able to fool 70% of the American public, a majority of voters in nine states (83 out of 83 counties in Michigan on our last go at it), and the legislatures of four states (six if you count MN and NH this year, stymied by veto) into believing marijuana’s medical efficacy and supporting legalization for medical use.  It’s like Bill Hicks once said, “George Bush says ‘we are losing the war on drugs’. Well you know what that implies? There’s a war going on, and people on drugs are winning it! Well what does that tell you about drugs? Some smart, creative motherfuckers on that side.”

By the way, John, I’m still waiting for that class action lawsuit from medical marijuana patients against NORML for defrauding them into thinking the pot they are smoking is somehow helping them.

Finally, in “To marijuana users“, John explains how his experience as a locksmith led him to seeing the horrors of drug use – the beaten wife whose locks he has changed, the parents locking their teenager out of the home for smoking pot, etc.  But the real cause of his reefer madness, as John finally writes something with some honesty:

I can recount for you my own history, and how my beloved children followed my example into drugs, when, my only drug use at that time was marijuana. My using had come because of a great loss – divorce; I’d lost the only thing of import to me – my family.

I can also tell you that not only do children follow in their parents and older siblings’ footsteps, … as mine and their mom’s did. Our role modeling, as parents, sometimes inadvertently, guides when we’re not aware of it. But also, almost invariably all children which begin with pot, also “push the envelope” and proceed into other and harder drugs.

I can tell you of the heartbreak when I realized how I had laid the groundwork for my children’s grief. My son, whom I love(d) with all my heart, made subsequent bad choices … ended up not only in jail, but in prison, … in what, I found out later, are called the ‘gladiator academies’ of the prison system.

I sincerely am sorry for the terrible turns your life took, John, following your use of marijuana.  My father was an alcoholic.  Up until age 12, my life was severely impacted by his drug abuse.  He, like you, had a moment of clarity and realized his life had become unmanageable and that he needed to stop his use of that deadly drug.  He’s been clean and sober now for 29 years – longer than he had been a drunk (25 years).

However, you don’t see me advocating for a repeal of the 21st Amendment and locking up beer drinkers for the sake of the children.  Not “invariably” do children who smoke pot use harder drugs, in fact, by the government’s own statistics, there are 100 million people 12 and older who have tried marijuana, but only 2 million current regular (monthly) cocaine users and 135,000 current heroin users.  By far, most people who use marijuana don’t go on to use other drugs; for every 104 people who have tried marijuana, there is only 1 person you could classify as a cocaine “addict”.

It sound like you and your children made some bad decisions.  But take that finger you’re pointing at marijuana and try pointing it in the mirror.

Download Link: Secret Stash - Register to access

Download audio file (NORML_Daily_AudioStash_2009-07-08.mp3)

Hemp Headlines

1. South Dakota NORML’s Bob Newland sentenced to shut up about ending marijuana prohibition
2. Bill Maher is “disillusioned” with NORML
3. Hawaii Gov. Lingle (R) vetoes medical marijuana study bill
4. John English: Reefer Madman

NORML Newsmakers

• Casper Leitch from Time4Hemp.com on his history of podcasting to the cannabis community.

Daily Toker Tunes by Marijuana Music Awards . com

• 2009 AMMA Best Spiritual Song – ‘Peaceful Village’ by Seefari

California Marijuana Report with Eric Brenner

• Interview with Dennis Peron, the “father of Prop 215″

In “Marijuana Crosses the Placenta“, John tortures the language he’s named after with fine writing like this:

Effects on the fetus, though scientifically difficult to evaluate, for a variety of reasons, the detection of metabolites in meconium establishes fetal drug exposure. The effects on the babies after birth is obvious.

Judging from his various cut’n'pastes from scientific articles I doubt he understands, I think his argument is that women who smoke a lot of pot while pregnant risk harming their babies, so we should lock them up.  Wait’ll he sees the statistics on fetal alcohol syndrome!

In “Who Populates the Prison System“, John claims to debunk the idea pushed by “pro-drug advocates and their financial backers (Soros, Sperling, et al.)” that the prisons are filled with non-violent marijuana possessors:

# The massive numbers of people in prison for marijuana, are / were smugglers and distributors.

# These skewed facts ignore that when a person actually is incarcerated for simple possession, invariably it’s because they’ve cooperated and been allowed to plead to a lesser charge!

John doesn’t understand, though, that a “smuggler/distributor” of marijuana can be a pot possessor who made the mistake of keeping his two separate strains in two separate baggies, or keeps Ziploc sandwich baggies in his home, or owns a postal scale, or grew more than one plant, or keeps a legal firearm.  He also doesn’t realize that folks on parole or probation who get busted for possession technically go back to prison for their original crime, not the pot possession, so they don’t show up in statistics as pot prisoners.  But it is refreshing to see him admit that there are “massive numbers of people in prison for marijuana” as he beats up his strawman.

In “Losing Our Youth to Depression“, John explains that marijuana doesn’t treat depression, it causes depression:

The marijuana user is in a constant state of depression interspersed with “short bursts of feeling almost normal again.” The user, when he’s reached out and achieved that “high,” he has a temporary reprieve from that constant, marijuana-induced state of depression, but it returns as the “high” fades.

That’s the cause, the scenario . . . ; users seek, the non-depressed state, they perceive as a “high”. They’re wrong; it’s the state they were in before – it’s the absence of depression. Over and over, they’re drawn into the ‘fog of marijuana addiction’ which has caused them to perceive it wrongly. The user has unknowingly, only taken a step down a rung, on the ladder of normalcy!

So I’ll bet when John learns that the suicidal/homicidal Columbine shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, and just about every high-profile school shooting you can name in the past twenty years involved depressed teens who were prescribed SSRI anti-depressants, he’ll be eager to pump out a few columns about how we should be locking up people in possession of Paxil, Effexor, Celexa, Prozac, Zoloft, Luvox, Anafranil, Lexapro, Wellbutrin, etc.

In “Addiction to cannabis and mental disorders“, John reveals the insidious evil of marijuana – the “potheads” are seducing our youth into their debauched lifestyle (I guess we’ve been borrowing strategy from the “gay agenda”):

The most convincing reason why potheads must remain criminals, why marijuana must remain illegal, is their targeting of children. That behavior in and of itself reveals that they suffer from a deep psychological insufficiency, a need to draw children into becoming like them – whether it’s a need to justify their own beliefs or some other motivation, it doesn’t matter! They’re damaging future generations and doing so intentionally.

You know who’s targeting children, John?  Pot dealers who aren’t required to check IDs, a million of whom are teenagers themselves.  You know who else targeted children?  Alcohol and tobacco companies with their “Budweiser Frogs” and “Joe Camel”, but since those drugs are legal, we were able to set strong advertising restrictions on those products, create effective anti-youth drinking and smoking educational campaigns, and reduced teen drinking and smoking to the lowest levels ever recorded.

In “What is wrong with smoking marijuana for medicinal purposes“, John cites a video of “Nathan Edelman” (he means Drug Policy Alliance’s Ethan Nadelmann), which is actually video of former NORML Director Richard Cowan taken way out of context to illustrate our alleged secret agenda of telling pot smokers to lie about how marijuana helps them medically so we can legalize all drugs (and, naturally, recruit the children into our debauched lifestyle).

When considering at this question, one must take into account two related issues: 1) that the whole plan to make marijuana legal was published in “High Times.” They issued a call, compelling users to come forward saying that pot helped their suffering.

And there’s another part: 2) that a survey showed that medical marijuana cardholders had been smoking pot for an average of 17 years! That in itself, brings the whole system under more suspicion – - – for what if, marijuana does cause one to think their “medicine” helps their condition when it is instead, actually causing or contributing to it?

Then, there’s two further question that needs to be asked:

1) What weed is smoked without the particulate matter, tars, and (over 400 chemical compounds in the smoke) not causing harm? The doctor’s oath is “First, do no harm.”

2) If people who were already breaking the law using an illicit drug for 17 years before the system allowed this pseudo-legal use, do they have the credibility to allow us to believe this actually helps?

If you were nauseous, in chronic pain, spastic, prone to seizures, or were losing your eyesight to glaucoma, and you smoked a joint 17 years ago and found it helped you medically, would you choose to live in misery for another 17 years until it became legal to use, just so you could have some credibility in John English’s view?

You can read more of my responses to John English in the comments sections of his articles in the hyperlinks above.  Feel free to leave some of your own comments, too.