Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Monday, November 16th, 2009 at 2:20 pm | By: Radical Russ
(Washington Post) A federal survey of Americans’ drug use shows that [Joe Lee, a 62-year-old, and his friends] are not the only baby boomers approaching the age of retirement much as they departed the Age of Aquarius — with an occasional case of the munchies. The government’s most recent survey showed that the share of marijuana users ages 50 to 59 increased from 5.1 percent in 2002 to almost 10 percent in 2007.
Some of those users are empty-nesters, returning to the drug decades after their pot habits gave way to raising children and building careers. Others, like Lee, have kept using pot all along, researchers said.
[O]lder marijuana users say they are living evidence that smoking pot does not preclude a normal life, and more older smokers seem more comfortable than at any point since their teen years with going public — a tribute, they say, to a big boost in public tolerance of marijuana use.
“I don’t think more people in their 50s are smoking marijuana. I think we are just more comfortable talking about it,” said Rick Steves, who writes travel guidebooks and hosts a public TV series on travel. At 54, the clean-cut guru of mass-market European tourism has begun to present himself as the hard-working, successful face of the longtime smoker.
“Even my pastor knows I smoke pot,” said Steves, who was recently named Lutheran activist of the year for his work on international poverty relief.
One older smoker who doesn’t mind outing herself is Florence Siegel, an 88-year-old artist from New York who has been smoking regularly since her early 50s. That’s when the family’s pediatrician suggested they try marijuana together to see “what the kids were so excited about.” The pediatrician didn’t feel a thing. Siegel said she never stopped.
Now her routine is to sit in her favorite chair each evening, listen to Bach and take a few hits from one of her many pipes. Marijuana boosts her creativity and helps with joint pain that has come with aging, she said.
Siegel smokes occasionally with her daughter Loren Siegel, 64, a recently retired lawyer. But does her 93-year-old husband ever join her?
“Oh, no,” she said. “Well, only very rarely.”
I know some sixty-, seventy- and eighty-year-olds who occasionally use cannabis, and some who still drink coffee, and a few who even still use alcohol and tobacco. I can’t say that I’ve met one yet who was an active cocaine, heroin, or methamphetamine user.
There is a joke in medical marijuana circles that “after forty, all use is medical.” There is a certain grain of truth to that, though. Even as I approach age 42, I can feel pain in my knees and back that never used to bother me before. When you think of the things marijuana can be used to treat – arthritis, chronic pain, Alzheimer’s, cancer, and so on – it seems to be a natural fit for many seniors who’d prefer an herbal remedy over a handful of increasingly expensive pills.
The debate over whether Americans ought to have the right to be stupid — or to make other people seem more interesting — continues apace after 40 years of the (failed) “war on drugs.”
… But the shift toward a more-sensible national policy is no longer confined to the left. Nor is the long-haired stoner the face of the pro-pot lobby. Today’s activist, more likely, doesn’t have facial hair, but she does have kids.
Lately to the smallish conservative crowd, notably once led by anti-prohibitionist William F. Buckley, is Jessica Corry of Colorado, a married, pro-life Republican mom, soon to be “freedom fighter of the month” in High Times magazine.
Corry’s arguments focus not only on the inhumanity of further punishing sick people who seek relief through pot, but also on protecting her own children should they decide to try marijuana someday. There’s nothing like imagining one’s own children as “criminals” to put irrational laws in perspective.
Corry is hardly alone and, in fact, may be part of a “toking point.” (Is there a drug yet for “Tipping Point Fatigue”?) In its October issue, Marie Claire magazine featured “Stiletto Stoners” about accomplished career women who prefer to relax with pot. A September Fortune cover story, “Is Pot Already Legal?” examined the issue. In April, a former (2006) Miss New Jersey, Georgine DiMaria, outed herself as a stealth marijuana user to treat her asthma.
In a column for the Colorado Daily, Corry argued that conservative principles of smaller government are in direct conflict with laws that try to control what we put into our bodies. Alcohol and cigarettes — not to mention 700-calorie cheeseburgers — are inarguably more harmful than a little reefer, she wrote.
Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 at 6:41 pm | By: Radical Russ
(Washington Post) The Justice Department says it’s backing off the prosecution of people who smoke pot or sell it in compliance with state laws that permit “medical marijuana.” Attorney General Eric Holder says “it will not be a priority to use federal resources to prosecute patients with serious illnesses or their caregivers.” Party hardy! I mean — let the healing begin!
I don’t think the federal government should be spending a whole lot of time on small-time druggies, and I’m undecided about legalizing pot, which enjoys 44 percent support among the general public, according to a recent poll. Recreational use is not the wisest thing — and if my 12-year-old son is reading this, that means you! — but it’s no more harmful than other drugs (e.g., alcohol) and impossible to eradicate. On the other hand, I worry it’s a gateway to harder stuff. So I think we probably should have an open debate about decriminalization.
The Institute of Medicine in 1999 and everypeer-reviewedstudysince has concluded that there is no such thing as a “gateway effect” from marijuana to “harder stuff”. What this writer, Charles Lane, wants is the government acting as parent to keep his 12-year-old off of pot by saying “don’t do it, it’s illegal”. Which, by the way, has been a colossal failure; almost forty years into the War on (Certain American Citizens Using Non-Pharmaceutical, Non-Alcoholic, Tobacco-Free) Drugs™ and kids still say it is much easier to acquire weed than whiskey and blunts than beer.
But it should be a real debate, about real decriminalization, and not clouded — pardon the expression — by hokum about “medical marijuana.” … I do not deny that for some people, including some terminal cancer patients and pain-wracked AIDS sufferers, marijuana is a blessed relief. Let ‘em smoke, I say, just as the Justice Department has usually ignored such cases since long before Holder spoke up. But if you believe there is any scientific evidence that smoked marijuana has the multiplicity of therapeutic uses that advocates claim — well, I’ve got a bag of oregano I’d like to sell you.
Wednesday, August 12th, 2009 at 1:06 pm | By: Radical Russ
(MSNBC / Washington Post) WASHINGTON – Andre Hayes’s phone rang one October afternoon, and a mysterious woman was on the line. She had called the wrong number, she told him. But she didn’t hang up. They bantered a bit. They flirted. She said he sounded nice.
Over the next week, they spoke or texted by cellphone more than 100 times. As he drove to meet her on Halloween night, they chatted for 29 straight minutes. And then, as he awaited their rendezvous in a dark suburban driveway, Hayes was shot dead.
Hayes, a slick dresser with a sharp wit, was described as a fun-loving guy who doted on his relatives and three daughters. But close friends said he also had a weakness: women.
Hayes, who lived in Clinton, sold drugs and held odd jobs. During the past 15 years, he had been arrested a few times on charges ranging from assault to drug possession. In January 2007, he was arrested on federal cocaine distribution charges in Virginia.
Soon, he was working out a deal with the Drug Enforcement Administration: He would help them arrest other dealers if they would recommend a lighter sentence for him. By September, he was telling DEA Agent Kendrah Johnson that he knew a guy named “Weldon” who sold marijuana, crack and heroin, according to notes taken by the agent and filed in court.
During the next 11 months, Hayes bought more than 150 grams of crack from “Weldon,” later identified as Weldon Gordon, in three deals — one in Maryland and two in the District, according to court papers filed by the DEA and federal prosecutors.
The woman, Tiffany Reaves, 30, of Upper Marlboro, has been indicted on a federal charge of conspiring to obstruct justice by killing a witness. The charge carries a potential sentence of death. Reaves’s boyfriend, Weldon Gordon, 31, has been indicted on federal drug charges tied to undercover purchases made by Hayes on behalf of federal investigators.
In other news, millions of Americans today will buy and sell alcohol, from 3.2% to 75.5% potency. Nobody will be arrested for these transactions. Nobody will be making deals with prosecutors to help arrest others for these transactions. Nobody will compel their girlfriend to seduce those who help prosecutors. And nobody will be murdered over these transactions or for helping prosecutors.
Wednesday, July 29th, 2009 at 12:20 pm | By: Radical Russ
(Washington Post) MEXICO CITY — President Felipe Calderón is under growing pressure to overhaul a U.S.-backed anti-narcotics strategy that many political leaders and analysts said is failing amid spectacular drug cartel assaults against the government.
There are now sustained calls in Mexico for a change in tactics, even from allies within Calderón’s political party, who say the deployment of 45,000 soldiers to fight the cartels is a flawed plan that relies too heavily on the blunt force of the military to stem soaring violence and lawlessness.
U.S. and Mexican government officials say the military strategy, while difficult, is working. Since Calderón took office in December 2006, authorities have arrested 76,765 suspected drug traffickers at all levels and have extradited 187 cartel members to the United States. Calderón’s security advisers said they have few options besides the army — as they just begin to vet and retrain the police forces they say will ultimately take over the fight.
Drug-related deaths during the 2 1/2 years of Calderon’s administration passed 12,000 this month. Rather than shrinking or growing weaker, the Mexican cartels are using their wealth and increasing power to expand into Central America, cocaine-producing regions of the Andes and maritime trafficking routes in the eastern Pacific, according to law enforcement authorities.
Think about that. In thirty months there are almosttriple the number of civilian deaths in Mexico compared to US military deaths in Iraq in 77 months.
This is a fascinating piece that you should click over and read. It also takes a look at how the cartels have won the hearts and minds of the people by playing “Robin Hood” and taking care of their increasingly impoverished neighborhoods.
Mr. Calderón, Mr. Obama, the war against supply and demand is one you cannot win.
Wednesday, June 24th, 2009 at 5:20 pm | By: Radical Russ
(Washington Post) NOGALES, Ariz. — They call themselves the Tunnel Rats. Trained in close-quarter combat, psychologically certified to work in confined spaces and armed to the teeth, these four-member teams of Border Patrol agents monitor an elaborate underground warren of dark and dangerous storm drains that crisscross these twin downtowns along the border.
In the past nine months, they have discovered 16 new tunnels dug by smugglers in Nogales to move drugs, migrants, cash and weapons between Mexico and the United States. The number of tunnels sets a new record. A Border Patrol official calls the burst of subterranean activity “startling.”
“It’s Swiss cheese under there,” said Brooke Howells, a supervisory Border Patrol agent and a tunnel teams leader. “They’re constantly burrowing. If you are a smuggler, a working tunnel can be a very lucrative enterprise.”
The digging has become so extensive beneath Nogales that the southbound traffic lane through the international port of entry collapsed.
“Before that, the parking lot at the customs office caved in,” Howells said. “They collapse all the time.”
The tunnelers pop up all over town. Border Patrol agents report that it is not uncommon to see a manhole cover suddenly lift during rush hour and men run out of the hole.
"License to kill gophers by the government of the United Nations. Man, free to kill gophers at will. To kill, you must know your enemy, and in this case my enemy is a varmint. And a varmint will never quit - ever. They're like the Viet Cong - Varmint Cong. So you have to fall back on superior firepower and superior intelligence. And that's all she wrote."
Why do I have the image of Bill Murray’s “Carl Spackler” character from Caddyshack running through my mind?
Look, this is going to happen even if marijuana were legalized here, because there will still be migrants, cash, guns, and hard drugs to smuggle. But I have to think that digging tunnels isn’t just a dude with a shovel; it’s got to take some money to make a significant tunnel. Legalize marijuana and you remove 60% of the profits from the cartels and maybe they have to cut back on their tunneling budget.
Then we here in America can grow our own and buy our own domestic marijuana and not contribute one cent (or centavo) to Mexican smuggler’s tunneling budget. We might even develop some more interesting hybrids…
“This is a hybrid. This is a cross, ah, Bluegrass, Kentucky Bluegrass, Featherbed Bent, and Northern California Sensemilia. The amazing stuff about this is, that you can play 36 holes on it in the afternoon, take it home and just get stoned to the bejeezus-belt that night on this stuff.” – Carl Spackler
On an entirely different issue, 46 percent of Americans now favor legalizing small amounts of marijuana for personal use, the most in data back to the mid-1980s and more than double its level 12 years ago. While 52 percent remain opposed, that’s down from 75 percent in the late 1990s and 78 percent in 1986.
The biggest changes in the past two decades are 29- and 27-point advances in support for legalization among Democrats and independents, to 49 and 53 percent, respectively. The slightest: a 10-point gain among Republicans, to just 28 percent support.
Also, tune in tonight to The Colbert Report on Comedy Central as Ethan Nadelmann from Drug Policy Alliance will be his guest.
OpEd writer Kathleen Parker, regularly featured on The Washington Post, pens an opinion piece for The Daily Beast that wonders why such a flippant response to the marijuana question was given by President Obama duing his online town hall meeting.
How hard would it have been to say something like: “Cool idea, brah, but…” OK, maybe not. But why not something reasonable and presidential, such as:
“Look, I’m not ready to legalize marijuana tomorrow, but I do think it’s time to take a fresh look at the effectiveness of some of our criminal justice policies. And I support Sen. James Webb’s current efforts to do just that.
“I also don’t mean to make light of this issue because I know that a lot of kids wind up in jail who shouldn’t. And I know from personal experience that smoking marijuana is not a career-ender. But I do want to study this issue carefully before I suggest any broad changes in policy. Thank you for your question.”
Everyone would have gone home reasonably satisfied, if not quite ready to celebrate. Instead, Obama enjoyed a brief flashback and insulted his merrier minions.
As pot smokers blanket the White House with letters of protest, Obama may want to rethink his position. He not only has ticked off a portion of his grass-roots, so to speak, but, when the Chinese come to collect interest on those trillions, he may find it preferable that more, rather than fewer, Americans be mellow.
Our long-running “war on drugs,” focusing on the supply side of the equation, has been an utter disaster. Domestically, we’ve locked up hundreds of thousands of street-level dealers, some of whom genuinely deserve to be in prison and some of whom don’t. It made no difference. According to a 2007 University of Michigan study, 84 percent of high school seniors nationwide said they could obtain marijuana “fairly easily” or “very easily.” The figure for amphetamines was 50 percent; for cocaine, 47 percent; for heroin, 30 percent.
At the same time, we’ve persisted in a Sisyphean attempt to cut off the drug supply at or near the source. When I was The Washington Post’s correspondent in South America, I once took a nerve-racking helicopter ride to visit a U.S.-funded military base in the Upper Huallaga Valley of Peru. It was the place where most of the country’s coca — the plant from which cocaine is processed — was being grown, and the valley was crawling with Maoist guerrillas who funded their insurgency with money they extorted from the coca growers and traffickers. Eventually, the coca business was eliminated in the Upper Huallaga. But now it’s flourishing in other parts of Peru, and last year authorities there seized a record 30 tons of cocaine — meaning, by rule of thumb, that at least 10 times that much was probably produced and shipped.
[Nobody is immune from the laws of supply and demand. If we demand it, they will supply it. You can target "them" and a new "them" will just spring up in their place. You can target supply and all you'll accomplish is moving the supply to a new location and enriching "them" with the unnatural price supports of prohibition. Your only realistic choices are to reduce demand or legalize supply, and even our own Secretary of State just said our demand for drugs is "insatiable". -- "R"R]
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.
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. […]
Stash for Mon, Nov 16, 2009
waitn for NSL and congrast for spofett.
Fresh Stash V RSS Feed
Loading ...
; is she incognito like me 
, or can...
