Friday, November 20th, 2009 at 3:56 pm | By: Amanda
Thank you for contacting me about the Act to Remove Federal Penalties for the Personal Use of Marijuana by Responsible Adults. As you know, this bill would prohibit any imposition of penalties for the possession of marijuana for personal use or for the not-for-profit transfer between adults of marijuana for personal use and deems personal possession as 100 grams or less of the substance.
This bill would effectively legalize marijuana at the federal level. We all know the painful consequences of drug abuse on our society. For that reason alone I will not support such a measure and I will vote against it should it reach the House floor.
I do take your views into consideration as I decide how to vote in the House. Please feel free to express those views; even if we may occasionally disagree, it is important to me to know your thoughts. Do be aware that because of mail security measures for Congress, your letters can be delayed for up to two weeks. If you wish to offer an immediate comment or suggestion, you can e-mail my office at by going directly to my website at www.fallin.house.gov. While you are there, feel free to sign up for my regular e-newsletter.
Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 at 10:23 am | By: Radical Russ
Make it more potent for the taste of it! Yeah, that's it!
When it comes to the popular recreational relaxant that is non-toxic and cannot kill you, its increasing potency is a cause for alarm:
(TIME Magazine) 25% of BC Bud is made of the psychoactive drug tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). In contrast, the pot that the hippie generation smoked in the 1970s had only 2% THC content, and most pot consumed in the U.S. today averages about 7% THC.
(Chicago Tribune) One thing has changed: Pot packs a bigger wallop now than it did in the ’70s. Today’s leaves are up to five times as potent. So, says Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, still-developing brains, which are “more plastic, more sensitive to being modified,” are exposed to higher doses of THC, the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis.
(ABC News) With stronger pot, emergency rooms have reported more associated accidents. Just this week, seven people were killed when the driver — drove the wrong way on a New York highway and collided head on with a pickup truck. Although the drivers family has disputed the results, toxicology tests showed high levels of alcohol and marijuana.
(New York Times) “It’s like drinking beer versus drinking whiskey,” said Dr. Nora D. Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a government agency and a strong opponent of legalizing marijuana. “If you only have access to whiskey, your risk is going to be higher for addiction. Now that people have access to very high potency marijuana, the game is different.”
(Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics) The new marijuana in the market place is not the 1 percent to 2 percent THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), which is the psychoactive ingredient that produces the “high”. Today’s new cultivation methods are producing a drug with up to 30 percent THC, or 3,000 percent higher than the old 1960’s-1980’s available marijuana.
But if it is a popular recreational intoxicant that is toxic and can kill you, it’s increasing potency is a victory for connoisseurs and retailers:
(USA Today) A growing number of states are moving to allow higher alcohol content in beer, despite concerns from some substance-abuse experts.
Alabama and West Virginia have passed laws increasing the legal alcohol-by-volume cap for beer from 6% to as high as 13.9% this year. Similar efforts are underway in Iowa and Mississippi, two states with very restrictive limits on the sale of high-alcohol beer, said Sean Wilson, former president of Pop the Cap, North Carolina’s successful grass-roots effort that raised the state’s limit in 2005.
Vermont raised the cap to 16% and Montana to 14% last year.
The average alcohol content in beer is 4.65%, and in wine 11.45%, according to a 2002 study by the Alcohol Research Group in Emeryville, Calif.
Twenty states still place some kind of limit on the amount of alcohol in beer, Wilson said.
Paul Gatza, director of the national Brewers Association based in Boulder, Colo., said limiting alcohol content restricts flavors and styles because “you can’t put as much malt or other sugars in your beer as you may want to.”
Gatza said consumers of specialty or microbrewed beers, also known as craft beers, “don’t drink to get drunk. They drink to appreciate the flavors.”
Right… and I smoke pot because I appreciate the scents. This is a theme that goes back to the days of Nixon: the idea that people don’t drink to get drunk, they do it to socialize, but pot smokers are only smoking weed to get high. Tell you what, next time there’s a cocktail party, swap out all the beer for O’Doul’s, all the wine with grape juice, and all the cocktails with soft drinks, and let’s see how much the alcohol drinkers can socialize without getting a buzz on.
The reason alcohol drinkers can make this absurd statement is because they differentiate between the “socializing” (getting a buzz on) and the “getting drunk” (alcohol poisoning). They don’t conceive of a similar state for marijuana consumption. In their mind there’s “not smoking pot” and there’s “stoned out of your mind”, with no intermediate step. This is often because marijuana is illegal, so people who may have experimented a time or two did so under conditions that required smoking it all and smoking it quickly. They’ve never experienced an Amsterdam-like nice mellow joint followed by a productive day. So an increase in cannabis potency, to them, means the pot that used to get them “stoned out of your mind” will now get their kids “way stoned out of your mind”.
Meanwhile, having worked for fifteen years in bars every weekend, bars with parking lots full of cars that I can guarantee weren’t all driven by designated drivers, I can tell you that consumers of microbrews are doing it to get drunk. The guy who was pounding 4% beers at $2 a glass will be more than happy to pound 16% beers at $5 a glass, knowing that his $20 in beer money may only get him four microbrews compared to ten tap beers, but he can get drunker quicker and take fewer pee breaks for the effort, and the beer tastes better.
Isn’t it amazing? Here we have a drug we know kills 35,000 people a year directly from ingestion and another 40,000 due to its effects, a drug that is proven to cause serious harm to every organ in the body, a drug at the heart of a vast majority of domestic abuse cases, crimes, and assaults, and not only are states deciding to allow it to be up to four times more potent, but the marketers of the drug are boasting that it also tastes better and the increased potency doesn’t matter. But marijuana that kills no one, is non-toxic to cells and organs, and brings people together in peace and communion, when that becomes up to four times more potent it is serious cause for alarm.
I guess we better not tell them that the marijuana tastes better these days.
Thursday, October 29th, 2009 at 2:06 pm | By: Radical Russ
(San Jose Mercury News) OKLAHOMA CITY—In a case highlighted by advocates seeking to reform Oklahoma’s drug laws, the state on Wednesday sought to revoke the parole of a man sentenced to decades in prison for growing marijuana that he says was used to treat his arthritis pain.
William Joseph Foster, 51, initially was sentenced in Tulsa County to 93 years in prison after authorities uncovered a pot growing operation in the basement of his Tulsa home in 1995. A state appeals court later reduced that term to 20 years in prison, and he was released on parole in 2001.
During Wednesday’s parole revocation hearing, the Department of Corrections argued before an administrative law judge that Foster violated the terms of his parole while living in California by using and growing marijuana in that state and failing to follow his parole officer’s directions.
Foster maintains he was released from supervision by a parole officer in California overseeing his case, and he claims he refused to sign the paperwork on the advice of an attorney because it would have extended his parole by four years.
“We’re spending all this time, effort and money on one man when our prisons are already full,” said Norma Sapp, director of the Oklahoma chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. “I bet we could send six kids to college on what we’ve spent to keep Will in prison.”
Let’s see if I can follow the logic here:
Oklahoma catches Will Foster growing medical marijuana for his arthritis and sentences him to 93 years, so they can keep fellow Oklahomans safe from, uh, er, a guy smoking a joint to ease his pain.
Oklahoma paroles the guy and allows him to leave the state and serve his parole in California, where he can legally smoke a joint to ease his pain.
California looks at the guy and says, “This is no criminal,” and ends his parole, allowing the guy to live his life and legally smoke a joint to ease his pain.
Oklahoma gets very upset at California, because if he’d stayed in Oklahoma, he’d still be on parole and be unable to smoke a joint to ease his pain.
Oklahoma fights to extradite him, put him in a cell, and are now working to revoke his parole so he can serve the rest of his 20-year-sentence, so they can protect Oklahomans from a guy smoking a joint to ease his pain 1,500 miles away in a place where medical marijuana is legal.
Marijuana: the drug so deadly powerful that its private legal medical use can endanger people from two time zones away.
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Tuesday, August 25th, 2009 at 2:40 pm | By: Radical Russ
(Drug War Chronicle) Medical marijuana patient Will Foster is en route to prison in Oklahoma after being picked up Friday by Oklahoma law enforcement officials. He had been held at the Sonoma County Jail in Santa Rosa, California, for the past 15 months as he fought bogus marijuana cultivation charges there–he was a registered patient with a legal grow–and, after the California charges were dropped, on a parole violation warrant from the Sooner State.
Foster had been arrested and convicted of growing marijuana in Oklahoma and sentenced to 93 years in prison in the 1990s. After that draconian sentence focused national attention on his case, he was eventually resentenced to 20 years in prison. He later won parole and moved to California, where he served three years on parole and was discharged from parole by California authorities.
That wasn’t good enough for vindictive Oklahoma authorities, who wanted to squeeze more years out of Foster. He refused to sign Oklahoma paperwork requiring him to return there to serve out the remainder of his sentence. He also refused to sign paperback that extended his original service. Oklahoma authorities issued a parole violation warrant, and the governors of both states signed it.
Foster had sought to block extradition by filing a writ of habeas corpus–he had won a similar writ against Oklahoma earlier–but that effort failed on Friday, and Oklahoma authorities were there to whisk him away. Foster is scheduled to be held at the Tulsa County Jail before being assigned to a prison in the Oklahoma gulag.
Drug War Chronicle has an excellent recap of the Foster case if you’re interested. This basically comes down to Oklahoma pursuing Foster out of spite. Foster beat Oklahoma on the original 93 year prison sentence, then beat them when the Oklahoma Supreme Court reduced the sentence to twenty years. He beat Oklahoma when his twenty years were converted to probation and he beat them when he was able to be paroled in California. He beat them once again when California wouldn’t hold him on parole for longer than three years and again as he filed a writ of habeas corpus to beat back extradition to Oklahoma the first time.
Oklahoma is upset that at every turn, they have been unable to punish Will Foster to the extent they find just but everyone else finds cruel and unusual. Will Foster will now be returned to Oklahoma to spend years in a prison, all for the “crime” of growing a 5′x5′ tract of marijuana to use medicinally to treat his degenerative arthritis. Rather than live peacefully with his new family using marijuana to safely treat his ailment under California’s Prop 215, Will Foster gets to live in a cage suffering from his ailment and from the harsh side effects of the legal pharmaceuticals they will give him instead.
This is why I wake up every day dedicated to end adult marijuana prohibition. This barbarism and cruelty must stop!
Friday, July 10th, 2009 at 5:20 pm | By: Dudemaster
You can’t escape the headlines; recently a cornucopia of athletes have been in the headlines relating to Marijuana. Some in possession, others test positive in urine tests, and others are photographed with a bong like Olympic swimming champion Michael Phelps.
In this particular article, two Oklahoma State football players were arrested for Marijuana possession. As you read this article and my opinion, try and put yourself or one of your children in the place of one of these young men.
Stillwater Newspress - Two Oklahoma State football players — sophomore Jamal Mosley and freshman Dexter Pratt — have been charged with one count each of misdemeanor possession of marijuana in court documents filed on Wednesday.
Both players were charged on June 17 and arraignment for both is scheduled for July 29.
OSU media relations said Thursday that OSU head coach Mike Gundy is out of town and would have no immediate comment on the situation and that information on the situation would likely come within the next few days.
Mosely, a tight end, is expected to battle for the starting spot while Pratt was one of the top incoming recruits for the Cowboys at running back. There has been talk of Pratt redshirting with Kendall Hunter and Keith Toston expected to see much of the playing time.
Police records said that both players possessed and controlled within a residence a small plastic bag containing what appeared to be, and subsequently field tested positive as a small amount of marijuana.
Most people will probably snicker after reading this and move onto more important things in their lives. But, for these athletes, their dilemma has just got started.
Because they are college students, they will probably lose their college loan, and also any scholarship they may have earned. You see, these athletes signed a contract with their university which allows them to compete in athletics. The contract specifies each athlete will support NCAA rules and regulations.
Let’s see what the NCAA requires when one fails a drug test:
NCAA Positive Test Result
If the NCAA tests you for the banned drugs listed in Bylaw 31.2.3.1 and you test positive, you will lose a season of competition in all sports if the season of competition has not yet begun for you. If the season of competition has begun, you will lose one full season of competition in all sports – i.e. remaining contests in the current season and contests in the following season up to the time that you were declared ineligible in the previous year.
Now let’s not forget these guys live in a state with extremely draconian Marijuana laws. The article didn’t mention the quantity the athletes were charged with, but assuming it was a smaller amount, the laws leave a great deal of discretion to the judge. They could receive any amount in fines and up to 1 year in prison for simply choosing a safer alternative. Is this the message we want to send our children as they approach college?
There is a really good chance that one or both of them will have to leave his college dreams behind and go to work. Since they have a drug conviction, the only jobs they can find are the kind of jobs that you and I don’t want to do. Over time they see their friends succeed financially, and it’s only logical to conclude that some people in their position have turned to selling drugs. Why not? The rationalization is that society has already made them outcasts and the only way to make an appropriate income means selling contraband or committing crimes.
In comparison, college binge drinking is a worse offense, although tolerated by universities a great deal more than Marijuana use.
According to Mothers Against Drunk Drivers
* 54 percent of binge drinking college students black out and forget what they did or where they were at some point in the year. For students who don’t binge drink, the number was 25 percent.
* 48 percent of the alcohol consumed at a 4 year college is consumed by an underage student.
* 44 percent of students report symptoms of alcohol abuse and dependency
* 25 percent of students say they have faced academic consequences (missing class, getting a bad grade, etc.) as a result of drinking.
* On average, students who have more than 5 drinks per occasion have a GPA that is half a grade lower than the GPA for other students.
A little non-toxic Marijuana isn’t going to hurt you, but alcohol may kill you and you might just take a few people with you when you slam your car head-on into someone else.
Think for just a moment; our standing President admitted he had used Marijuana earlier in his life. The only difference between these young men and our current standing president is they got caught, he didn’t. Does that sound fair to you?
Mr. President, can you take just a moment of your time to address the growing number of Americans who are clamoring to get your support for Marijuana legalization? I know you think it’s really funny, but people are going to prison and lives are being ruined every day because you can’t stop laughing long enough to be a real president. Step up, your constituents are demanding it.
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Norma Sapp from Oklahoma NORML on the case of Will Foster, originally sentenced to 93 years in Oklahoma, paroled to California, now awaiting Schwarzenegger decision on Oklahoma extradition request.
Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 at 8:20 am | By: Radical Russ
(John Stossel’s Take) Back in 1998, for a 20/20 special titled “Sex, Drugs and Consenting Adults,” I interviewed Will Foster, who had been sentenced to 93 years in jail for growing marijuana to treat his arthritis.
After his case got attention, Foster’s sentence was reduced to 20 years, and after several years in prison he was given parole. But now he’s being hounded again, the Drug War Chronicles reports:
Although Foster settled into a law-abiding life in Northern California, picking up a new family along the way, and successfully completed what the state of California considered an adequate parole period, that wasn’t good enough for the state of Oklahoma. Upset that California officials hadn’t kept him on parole as long as they would have, Oklahoma parole officials demanded that he return to that benighted state to finish his parole. And when he, perhaps understandably, declined, [Oklahoma] issued a warrant for his arrest.
Foster has been sitting in a California prison for the last 16 months – apparently at a cost of $100,000 to taxpayers – while governor Schwarzenegger decides whether to extradite him to Oklahoma.
Why do we persecute people for a victimless crime?
Because prison guard unions lobby like hell. Â Because well-meaning parents think pot will hook their kids on heroin. Â Because moralists think they have the right to tell people how to live their lives. Â Because Democrats wanted to look “tough on crime” in the 1980s. Â Because Republicans don’t like hippies. Â Because America has a nasty streak of racism and classism.
Oh, I’m sorry, that was a rhetorical question, wasn’t it?
I’ll be interviewing Oklahoma NORML’s Norma Sapp tonight regarding the Will Foster case.
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Wednesday, June 24th, 2009 at 8:20 am | By: Radical Russ
Police say some of the dumbest things about marijuana, but this official “Fact Sheet” on cannabis from the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics & Dangerous Drugs Control (the dreaded OBNDDC – could you have a clumsier name?) wins the award for Exceptional Lies, Ignorance, and Propaganda in Service of Prohibition (”Exceptional LIP Service” – see, cool acronyms are easy!):
Cannabis Sativa L. is a species of tall annual woody shrub with male or female flowers borne on separate plants. [Good so far...]Cannabis grows wild in most of the temperate and tropic regions of the world. [Still OK...]Hemp, as marijuana was earlier known, was grown in the News England colonies and used in making cloth and cordage. [Hear that, my News England friends?]
The cannabis sativa plant material, marijuana, has been used as a drug for centuries. [Uh, if the plant material is the drug "marijuana", what is all that hemp, an animal or a mineral?]It originally was used for the treatment of various mental and physical ailments. But after close examination, the Food and Drug Administration in 1937 declared it to be without medical utility and removed it from the market place. [Not even close; Congress prohibited marijuana in 1937 with the Marihuana Tax Act, over the objections of the AMA, who knew its medical utility. Â The FDA had never regulated cannabis and had nothing to do with its prohibition.]
The new marijuana in the market place is not the 1 percent to 2 percent THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), which is the psychoactive ingredient that produces the “high”. [Right, because 1%-2% THC marijuana is called "hemp" and smoking it will only give you a headache.] Today’s new cultivation methods are producing a drug with up to 30 percent THC, or 3,000 percent higher than the old 1960’s-1980’s available marijuana. [Wow. That's my first "Super Pot is 3000x stronger than Woodstock Weed" reference. Â My previous best was 400x. Â But at least the math is correct: if you compare 1% industrial hemp that nobody smoked in the 1960s to the 30% THC hash oil that makes up a tiny sub-percentage of the cannabis seized, then 3000% is correct. Â It's also as meaningful as noting that Pabst Blue Ribbon beer is 3000% more potent than O'Doul's "near-beer".]
Some people argue marijuana should be legalized for both medical and recreational use. But medical studies show how dangerous this idea would be. New data has shown that marijuana smoke has a higher concentration of carcinogenic substances than tobacco smoke. [This is somehwat true, but ignores that THC mitigates these carcinogens with an anti-tumoral effect.]It is linked as a cause of lung problems such as bronchitis [Yes, but not if you vaporize it]and emphysema [no, not true], and studies confirm damage to brain cells [not true, and may actually protect alcoholic's brains and may be a treatment for brain cancer], nerve cells [no, and may actually stimulate nerve cell growth in the brain] and reproductive organs which have lead to still births and birth defects[not at all true, and don't you think we'd see more hippie kids with birth defects if it were true?]. In addition, acute memory loss [no long term memory problems and only short term memory problems while high]and lowered immune systems [right, that's why doctors give medical marijuana to HIV/AIDS patients]also have been traced to marijuana smoking.
Plus, surveys indicate that about 33 percent of all patients in emergency rooms test positive for either alcohol or marijuana in their systems. [Which just means the ones who tested for marijuana had used some in the past few days, and not that marijuana caused the visit.]
RevRayGreen: I'll post a pic of me and my son....gimme a minute
Missippi Hippy: Guess what... I'm gonna be a new... ummmmm well, my pet piggie Ganja is in labor and they ain't mine in the same sense. See what your wife [...]
RevRayGreen: days they didn't talk back..or act disrespectful..
RevRayGreen: feel so lucky my son is 18 going 19 and my daughter 16 going on 17..relish the days that can't talk back
Urb Age: Congrats Spof thats awesome. My little Clara is about to hit 20 months. Im not the activist I used to be, but its made me a better man.
Urb Age: Heck I was gonna go up there, but just not feeling well this weekend..Dang it, I hate it when that happens..
RevRayGreen: wishing I was hanging at NORML cafe...
JohnH: Just a quick comment about tokin' and sperm motility....been tokin since age 14 and have 8 kids ranging in age from 30 to 9...(what can I say, I found 2 [...]
slash5city: really ..oprah 35 yr or more in the closet toker ...outed ....o my god !!
SneakerPimp: that would be huge news just imagen the headline
RevRayGreen: maybe Oprah smokes and keeps it on the DL...
SneakerPimp: and good afternoon
mr reuben: I could do without seeing Rob K. on tv. But Bruce and Eithan get a big thumbs up from me.
SneakerPimp: waitn for NSL and congrast for spofett.
mr reuben: I don't respect her opinion bluzguy.
Missippi Hippy: Something about the last year in a contract... folks become more ballsey... and Oprah has big ones.
Adam: Oprah won't actually go off air for over a year, 2011 sometime. Maybe with here leaving the network soon, she'll be more likely to speak out about MMJ.
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. […]
Rep. Mary Fallin (R-OK) on Marijuana Decriminalization
waitn for NSL and congrast for spofett.
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