Every April 20, marijuana smokers around the country light up for an unofficial holiday celebrating pot that stems from the smoker slang “420.” This year, as the drug war rages in Mexico, the festivities fall against an increasingly violent backdrop.
Some antidrug advocates are using the occasion to jump-start a movement against marijuana not just for health and legal reasons, but on moral grounds. American pot smokers, they say, are unwittingly supporting drug cartels in Mexico.
Aaron Byzak, president of the North Coastal Prevention Coalition, an antidrug group in north San Diego County, says he’ll focus on the Mexican drug war when he addresses 1,000 seventh- to 10th-graders at the group’s annual antidrug festival, also held on April 20, at an amusement park in Vista, Calif. Mr. Byzak will urge the kids to think of Mexico’s drug lords if they’re offered a puff.
“This is a prime opportunity for us to educate them about how every bit of marijuana someone smokes here is giving more power and more money to the drug cartels in Mexico,” he says.
In February 2005, Westat, a research company hired by NIDA and funded by The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, reported on its five-year study of the government ad campaigns aimed at dissuading teens from using marijuana, campaigns that cost more than $1 billion between 1998 and 2004. The study found that the ads did not work: “greater exposure to the campaign was associated with weaker anti-drug norms and increases in the perceptions that others use marijuana.” NIDA leaders and the White House drug office did not release the Westat report for a year and a half. NIDA dated Westat’s report as “delivered” in June 2006. In fact, it was delivered in February 2005, according to the Government Accountability Office, the federal watchdog agency charged with reviewing the study.
Let’s repeat that for clarity: not only were the results proven ineffective but were so distressing to the ONDCP and NIDA that they delayed releasing the report for a year and a half. And you’re trying to push this on kids again? How stupid do you think they are?
[If there's any message to be taken from the "pot funds Mexican drug gangs" and the "pot funds 9/11 terrorists" propaganda, it's "Buy American!" Or maybe, "Friends don't let friends smoke Mexican schwag." -- "R"R]
(1.) endorses the medicinal use of marijuana for compassionate use including non-terminal but chronic illnesses such as multiple sclerosis, fibromyalgia, and other conditions involving neuropathic pain unresponsiveness to conventional medications,
(2.) firmly disagrees with the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and other government agencies that purport marijuana to be a highly addictive substance similar to cocaine and heroin (in fact, we consider this assertion to be particularly irresponsible and call upon these government agencies to soften their rhetoric regarding marijuana and to recognize its actual status as a ‘soft drug’),
(3.) supports the decriminalization of marijuana and applauds progressive state legislative bodies such as that seen in our home state of New York who have already de facto decriminalized marijuana, and
(4.) while not advocating the recreational use of marijuana presently withholds opinion on this popular activity.
Or let me put it this way – as a twelve year old, I watched my dad kick alcohol and speed cold turkey, sweating and puking and twitching and hallucinating in a single wide trailer over the span of three horrendous weeks… I’ve smoked a lot of pot in my life, but lack of bud never put me through anything remotely close to that.
Monday, February 9th, 2009 at 4:15 pm | By: Radical Russ
Go ahead and surf over to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s report, “Weak link found between smoking pot, testicular cancer“. It’s a lot of rehashing of the pot nut cancer story blazing through the mainstream media today. I’m just reposting the parts that show what a reasonably balanced report report on a preliminary press release on an unseen marijuana health study looks like. (All emphasis mine.)
[Lede:] Teenagers who smoke pot regularly may slightly increase their risk of developing the most aggressive type of testicular cancer compared with nonsmokers, according to a new study.
The study does not prove that smoking marijuana causes cancer, and relied on self-reports of marijuana use.
Even if further research also points to an association, the risk would be small, said Dr. David Bell, a urologist with Capital Health in Halifax.
“This is a very rare malignancy, seen in about one per 100,000 men per year,” said Bell. “One has to really question the significance of this.”
The researchers did not find a link between marijuana and the more common form of testicular cancer.
The research was funded by the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the Hutchinson Center.
What, NIDA funded a study to find out something bad about pot? Where’s Paul’s number, he’s never gonna believe this!…
Monday, January 12th, 2009 at 12:11 pm | By: Radical Russ
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Bush administration struck a parting shot to legitimate science today as the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) refused to end the unique government monopoly over the supply of marijuana available for Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved research. DEA’s final ruling rejected the formal recommendation of DEA Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) Mary Ellen Bittner, issued nearly two years ago following extensive legal hearings.
The DEA ruling constitutes a formal rejection of University of Massachusetts at Amherst Professor Lyle Craker’s petition, filed initially June 24, 2001, to cultivate research-grade marijuana for use by scientists in FDA-approved studies aimed at developing the drug as a legal, prescription medication.
Professor Craker’s petition was rejected despite the opinion of DEA ALJ Bittner that granting Craker a license to grow marijuana “would be in the public interest.” Judge Bittner issued a comprehensive, 88-page nonbinding recommendation to DEA Deputy Administrator Michele Leonhartt on February 12, 2007, following nine days of hearings, testimony and evidence presented by the ACLU and others on both sides of the issue.
DEA failed to take action on Judge Bittner’s recommendation until now, continuing the strategy of delay and pattern of unresponsiveness that has characterized the process since Professor Craker first filed his initial petition seven-and-a-half years ago.
Judge Bittner’s recommendation was based largely on the fact that marijuana is the only Schedule I drug that the DEA prohibits from being produced by private laboratories for scientific research, which has resulted in a unique government monopoly that fundamentally obstructs appropriate research and regulatory channels. Other controlled substances, including LSD, MDMA, heroin and cocaine, are available to researchers from DEA-licensed private laboratories.
In contrast, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) remains scientists’ sole source of marijuana, despite the agency’s repeated refusal to make marijuana available for privately-funded, FDA-approved studies that seek to develop smoked or vaporized marijuana into a legal, prescription medicine.
Forty-five members of the U.S. House of Representatives, Massachusetts Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Edward Kennedy (D-MA), and a broad range of scientific, medical and public health organizations have written in support of Professor Craker, including the Lymphoma Foundation of America, the National Association for Public Health Policy, the Multiple Sclerosis Foundation, as well as several state medical and nurses’ associations.
Despite contradictory federal policy, 13 states have enacted legislation protecting patients who use medical marijuana with a physician’s recommendation from prosecution under state law, and national polls consistently find that roughly 75 percent of Americans support the use of medical marijuana.
Shorter:
US: We’d like to use marijuana as a medicine.
THEM: Marijuana is a dangerous drug. You cannot use it.
US: But our experiences show it is a medicine!
THEM: For something to be a “medicine”, it has to be scientifically studied and proven.
US: OK, then we’d like to scientifically study marijuana.
A. Though cannabis had been used by man for thousands of years, it wasn’t until 1964 that the actual chemical structure of the active ingredient, tetrahydrocannabinol — THC — was determined. That stimulated new research on the plant.
At this laboratory, which began in 1968, we often investigate marijuana’s chemistry. We also have a farm where we grow cannabis for federally approved researchers. Our material is employed in clinical studies around the country, to see if the active ingredient in this plant is useful for pain, nausea, glaucoma, for AIDS patients and so on. For these tests, researchers need standardized material for cigarettes or THC pills. We grow the cannabis as contractors for the National Institute on Drug Abuse — NIDA. And the only researchers who can get our material are those with special permits. We have visitors at the building now and then who ask, “Oh, do you give samples?” We say, “No!”
…Interestingly, [research] led us to see that there was only one species of cannabis. It had always been thought that there were many. But you could see that the chemistry of this plant is the same qualitatively no matter where it comes from. What makes each different is the relative proportion of the different chemicals in there, which doesn’t make a different species. It’s really the same species, but different varieties of it. The different types of varieties hybridize very easily.
Q. DO YOUR NEIGHBORS EVER KID YOU ABOUT YOUR JOB?
A. My daughters, when they were in grade school, the teachers would ask them, “What does your father do?” And they’d say, “He grows marijuana.” And the teachers’ eyes would grow wide. After a while, my daughters said: “He works at the University of Mississippi. He’s a professor.”
One troubling part of this interview is when Dr. Elsohly discusses the ability to genetically modify cannabis, and how black market growers have been doing this for years to increase potency. And yet, when I speak with Elvy Musikka or Irv Rosenfeld, two of the federal patients who get their medicine from Dr. Elsohly’s farm, they tell me is is very low quality cannabis. Why aren’t these patients getting the benefit of all this federal money and research? A cynic might think you want to give federal patients bad pot, lest the public learn how much good quality cannabis can help these people!
I’m also intrigued that cannabis is cannabis, that these different strains are just different ratios of cannabinoids in the same species of plant. We always get teased by the general public about the names of strains – that because they’re called “Medicine Woman”, “AK-47″, or “Alaskan Thunderfuck”, they can’t really be medicine.
If I may butcher Shakespeare, a bud by any other name will still smoke as sweet. What’s in a name? Have you caught some of these pharmaceutical names lately? Celebrex, what exactly are we celebrating with Celebrex? Or is it made from celery? Rozerem? Does that some from roses or does it make your skin rosy? Lunesta? Is that a Mexican nap taken at midnight (actually, yes, it is, sorta). Are the names of cannabis medicines not valid because they’re not Madison Avenue-approved pseudo-scientific brand names with a Latin prefix or an “x” or a “z” in them? Did you know that the generic name for the boner pill Cialis is “tadalafil”? Ta-da! It’s filled!
We’d love for cannabis varieties to have some sort of scientific-sounding ad-friendly name. But you won’t let us grow it or sell it or test it legally. So dedicated outlaw growers played backwoods Gregor Mendels and came up with brand names that would do well on the black market. When you don’t have the benefit of multimedia branding campaigns and must rely only on word of mouth, and when the prohibited market demands high-potency product, “Alaskan Thunderfuck” sells more baggies than “Cannabizex”.
If cannabis were legal, I think it would still have brand names like “Afghani”, “Jack Herer”, and “Bubblegum”, but I think like fertilizer, it would also have a standardized ratio of THC/CBD/CBN/CBL printed on every bag.
A new intervention enhances prospects for substance abusers whose mental illness complicates the path to recovery. In a recent clinical trial, a 6-month course of Behavioral Treatment for Substance Abuse in Severe and Persistent Mental Illness (BTSAS) reduced drug abuse, boosted treatment-session attendance, and improved the quality of life of outpatients with a wide spectrum of mental disorders.
Dr. Alan S. Bellack and colleagues at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore designed BTSAS to counter the factors that make recovery from addiction especially difficult for people who have co-occurring severe and persistent mental illness. These factors include frequent failure to meet their own and others’ expectations, inconsistent motivation, and social and personal pressure to appear normal.
Twice-weekly sessions begin with urine tests. Patients who have provided drug-free urine samples are praised by the therapists and group members. They also receive financial incentives that start at $1.50 for the first drug-free sample and increase in $0.50 increments for every consecutive one thereafter, up to $3.50. The amount is set back to $1.50 after a drug-positive sample or an absence.
The researchers reported that the extra costs of running the BTSAS program were modest. For the 6-month trial, monetary rewards averaged roughly $60 per patient; total per-patient cost, including therapist time, was $372.
“Let’s see, I need to pass a pee test twice a week so I can make sixty bucks. Now that marijuana is relatively expensive, and if I use it then I could test positive for two to four weeks. But the crack and the meth, those are real cheap, and if I use some of those after my Thursday test, I’m pretty sure I can clean up in time for my Monday test, since those drugs flush out in just a couple of days. I suppose I could just get drunk as well, that’ll clean out pretty quick and it’s legal….”
I am completely in favor of more drug rehabilitation and treatment for addiction and for the mentally ill. A drug treatment center saved my dad’s life.
But any time you bring urine testing into the equation, you create an artificial incentive to stop the safest drug, marijuana, in favor of the harder, less detectable drugs. Also, an addict’s recovery needs to be something that is built from within, not incentivized with petty bribery.
Tuesday, July 1st, 2008 at 8:02 am | By: Radical Russ
Bloomberg.com: U.S.
Cocaine and marijuana have been tried by more Americans than residents of 16 other countries surveyed, researchers said, even though tough U.S. laws seek to discourage the use of the drugs.
In the U.S., 42 percent said they had used marijuana and 16 percent had tried cocaine, according to the study published in the journal of the Public Library of Science. In the Netherlands, where people can go to cafes to smoke marijuana, 20 percent have tried that drug and 1.9 percent sampled cocaine.
The higher incidence of drug use in the U.S. may be linked to the nation’s relative affluence, not its anti-drug laws, said James Anthony, chairman of the epidemiology department at Michigan State University’s medical school in East Lansing, Michigan, and an author of the study.
“Drug use is related to income, but does not appear to be simply related to drug policy, since countries with more stringent policies toward illegal drug use did not have lower levels of such drug use than countries with more liberal policies,” the study’s authors wrote.
“In the Netherlands, despite a less restrictive approach, the population hasn’t taken up cannabis smoking to the extent that’s true in U.S., or New Zealand,” Anthony said.
Trying to find a link between drug use and drug enforcement doesn’t make sense, said Tom Riley, spokesman for the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy in Washington.
“The U.S. has high crime rates but we spend a lot on law enforcement and prison,” Riley said yesterday in a telephone interview. “Should we spend less? We’re just a different kind of country. We have higher drug use rates, a higher crime rate, many things that go with a highly free and mobile society.”
Yes, Mr. Riley, we should spend less. Or, more accurately, we should spend a lot of that prison and drug war money for funding education and drug treatment.
I’m confused by the idea that we have higher crime and drug use rates because we are a “highly free and mobile society”. I’ve never been outside the United States (a sin I will repent for someday), but aren’t Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Israel, Japan, and New Zealand “highly free and mobile societies”? (You also have the irony of a spokesman who represents an agency sworn to lock you up if you smoke cannabis saying we are “highly free”.)
And if you do a little more digging, you’ll find that the racist underpinnings of the drug war are really what they are referring to by a “highly free and mobile society”. I’ve read this line from the Drug Czar before, when confronted with the metrics of their own failures in reducing drug problems in the US: you can’t compare the US and Europe (the Netherlands) because we have different cultures.
“In addition to the factors measured in this study, the role of culture, drug availability and knowledge about drug use are likely to be important in the types and patterns of drug use throughout the world,” said Dr. Nora D. Volkow, NIDA director. “Even within the United States, rates and patterns of substance use differ based on geographical location and ethnicity, among other factors.”
According to your own NIDA report on Drug Use Among Racial / Ethnic Minorities (pg 51), use of marijuana among whites is more prevalent than Hispanic use, but less prevalent than black use. However, all drug use, legal and illegal, was far less prevalent among Asians/Pacific Islanders. So, couldn’t you say that the ethnic problem in America regarding drugs includes the white Americans, too? The white folks in the Netherlands aren’t using as much drugs as the white folks in America.
Tuesday, March 25th, 2008 at 6:38 pm | By: Radical Russ
I’m reminded of Bob Saget’s cameo in the movie Half Baked. The recent litany of “marijuana addiction” stories always offend me as a person who has struggled with real addictions to speed and alcohol, whose father was damn near killed by addictions to speed, alcohol, and nicotine, whose grandfather was killed by addiction to alcohol, whose grandmother was killed by addictions to pharmaceuticals. To paraphrase the late Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, “Mary Jane, I suffered with addiction: I knew addiction; addiction was a friend of mine. Mary Jane, you’re no addiction.”
I’m told that there are some people who do have serious dependency issues with marijuana. But that is nowhere near the physical and psychological hell suffered by a heroin addict, alcoholic, or cigarette smoker trying to quit. This press to label “marijuana addicts” is just the latest reefer madness salvo to keep funding the perpetual drug war prison/rehab industrial complex. Paul Armentano, our Deputy Director, picks up on this theme as he notes that a full one-third of these “marijuana addicts” haven’t even used marijuana for over a month! If you can find any treatment facility for alcohol, heroin, cocaine, meth, or nicotine addicts that contains even one addict who hasn’t used in a month, I’ll be amazed…
According to the latest statistics from the US Department of Health and Human Services, a startling high number of US government-defined marijuana ‘addicts’ don’t even smoke pot! That’s right, according to a recent DHS report, more than one-third of Americans entered into drug treatment with a primary diagnosis of marijuana ‘dependency’ haven’t used pot in the month prior to their admission.
Nevertheless, the White House touts this phony ‘data’ as evidence that marijuana is allegedly more dangerous than cocaine or heroin, and NIDA touts these numbers as evidence to support multi-million dollar ‘Cannabis Addiction Centers.’
Looking for the truth about marijuana use and dependency? Look no further than my recent Alternet.org essay on the subject here, or you can ‘digg’ it here.
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 Antidrug Campaign Tries a New Message
sounds like time for some 
mountain time wake n bake 
don't forget to watch CCS live on u-stream 8 pm west 
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