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With the recreational use of marijuana about to be legal in two states, Colorado and Washington, we thought now would be an important time to refresh ourselves about the effects that the drug has on our bodies and minds.
What Marijuana Does To Your Body And Mind, 11/11/12
Here's some good news in the election results: Voters in Washington and Colorado have decriminalized small quantities of marijuana for recreational use. This is an attempt to end the insane waste of law enforcement resources on small-time pot users who pose no threat to society.
Marijuana decriminalized in Washington and Colorado as voters reject police state 'War on Drugs', 11/7/12
MOUNT HOLLY — Ed “NJWeedman” Forchion hopes the not-guilty verdict a Burlington County jury rendered in his pot distribution trial plants a seed for other medical marijuana patients and sparks a change in the law.
NJWeedman found not guilty in pot distribution case, 10/19/12
This is not a book about the benefits of drugs; this is a book about the benefits of freedom. I neither use illegal drugs nor recommend their use to anyone else. I am even skeptical about the health benefits of most legal drugs.
War on Drugs Is a War on Freedom, 10/5/12
The drug war is one of the most misunderstood subjects in the mainstream political dialogue, even among people who are sympathetic to the plight of responsible drug users. It is rare for someone to come out and say that all drugs should be legal, but in all honesty this is the only logically consistent stance on the issue. To say that some drugs should be legal while others should not is still giving credence to the punishment paradigm and overlooking the external consequences of drug prohibition, or prohibition of any object for that matter.
8 Reasons To End Prohibition of All Drugs Immediately, 9/26/12
Infographic
Failed War on Drugs: An Infographic, 9/21/12
Long famous for "coffee shops" where joints and cappuchinos share the menu, the Netherlands' famed tolerance for drugs could be going up in smoke.
A judge on Friday upheld a government plan to ban non-Dutch residents from buying marijuana by introducing a "weed pass" available only to residents.
Dutch judge upholds ban on shops selling pot to tourists, 4/27/12
Marijuana prohibition currently costs taxpayers billions of dollars a year to enforce, and it accomplishes little or nothing beneficial in terms of economic benefits. On the contrary, legalizing marijuana would not only save taxpayers billions of dollars a year in unnecessary costs, but it would also jumpstart the economy to the tune of $100 billion a year or more, say some economists.
Hundreds of economists agree marijuana legalization could save US taxpayers $13.7 billion per year, 4/23/12
The University of Colorado will be on lockdown this Friday, complete with campus police conducting checkpoints and demanding proper ID from everyone in sight. The reason? Authorities want to finally end the school’s annual pro-pot rally.
UC Boulder loses some buds: School to shut down over pro-pot rally, 4/17/12
If you happen to need even more evidence that President Obama has gutted his campaign promises and betrayed not only the left but also African Americans who enthusiastically supported his election, he has just gone public with his support for the continued war on drugs. Keeping marijuana criminalized, it seems -- and keeping more African Americans in prison -- is a top priority for the Obama administration.
Obama cheers continued expansion of drug war, criminalization of plant-based medicine, 4/16/12
Police officers in New York are “manufacturing” criminal offenses by forcing people with small amounts of marijuana to reveal their drugs, according to a survey by public defenders.
New York police officers defy order to cut marijuana arrests, 3/30/12
U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano defended Washington’s failed war on drugs and vowed to continue to support brutal Latin American governments claiming to combat the producers and traffickers of narcotics.
Janet Napolitano Insists Drug War Not a Failure, 2/28/12
Well, there’s a lot of money in the drug trade…and not just for the people who traffic in drugs. The drug dealers make money. The drug fighters make money too. In short, the illegal drug industry has been zombified.
The dealers make money because the drug fighters restrict supply, keeping prices, and profit margins, high. The drug fighters make money because they are on the front lines in the war against drugs! They put on uniforms and pretend to be combating serious crime. They get jobs, helicopters, cars, guns, sophisticated machinery…and much more.
And then, when they actually catch someone with drugs, the lawyers come into the picture…and the prosecutors…and the prisons. Guess what is said to be the most powerful single lobbying organization in the state of California? Prison guards! The whole thing is immensely profitable. Everyone wants a piece of it.
The war on drugs may be a colossal waste of money and a stain on America’s escutcheon, with millions of dollars wasted and thousands of people sent to prison for no good reason. But neither the drug dealers nor the drug fighters want to see it come to an end.
Zombiefied Drug Trade, 2/2/12
Today, he’s acquired a unique extra-curricular activity: an anonymous blog served up by LEAP, examining the innards of the drug war from a perspective rarely put on public display. If his superiors knew, he explained, “I would probably be terminated.”
And, he claims, it’s not just him that’s come to some stark, personal conclusions on the drug war: fellow officers are coming around as well — especially those who’ve been doing it for a while.
Active duty cop: 'The war on drugs is a war on people', 1/27/12
Patricia Spottedcrow has served one year of her prison sentence. Listen to Spottedcrow talk about her life, while her family talks about life without her.
Mother with no prior offenses sentenced to TWELVE YEARS in prison for $31 marijuana offense, 12/28/11
Rather than curb their prolific use and propagation around the world, the global "war on drugs" has actually made the drug problem worse. According to the latest statistics, drug use around the world is on the rise in almost every category, despite the numerous anti-drug policies in place to supposedly curb their use. Heightened government crackdowns on drug trafficking in many countries have actually led to more, not less, drug-related gang violence.
Want to end Mexican drug gang violence? Legalize drugs and the cartels will collapse, 12/14/11
Great story in the New York Times about LEAP, and the risk active-duty law enforcement officers take if they express support for the organization.
We Have Lost Faith in This Officer To Enforce Our Failed Policy, 12/3/11
Afghanistan is, by far, the largest grower and exporter of opium in the world today, cultivating a 92 percent market share of the global opium trade. But what may shock many is the fact that the US military has been specifically tasked with guarding Afghan poppy fields, from which opium is derived, in order to protect this multibillion dollar industry that enriches Wall Street, the CIA, MI6, and various other groups that profit big time from this illicit drug trade scheme.
War on drugs revealed as total hoax – US military admits to guarding, assisting lucrative opium trade in Afghanistan, 12/1/11
An intensifying federal crackdown on growers and sellers of state-authorized medical marijuana has badly shaken the billion-dollar industry, which has sprung up in California since voters approved medical use of the drug in 1996, and has highlighted the stark contradiction between federal and state policies.
Medical Marijuana Industry Is Unnerved by U.S. Crackdown, 11/23/11
More generally, Obama has repeatedly expressed the view that many people in federal prisons are serving unconscionably long sentences. Yet he has not used his unilateral, absolute, and constitutionally unambiguous clemency power to shorten a single sentence, even though he has not otherwise been reticent about pushing his executive authority to the limit (and beyond).
Barack Obama turns out to be just another drug warrior, 11/21/11
In the forty years since Richard Nixon declared a “War on Drugs,” Americans’ perceptions of that war are finally beginning to shift.
Receding support for Prohibition is happening in large part because of virally circulated news accounts and videos of law enforcement’s disturbingly harsh tactics in the drug war. My former colleagues are making clear that besides causing thousands of deaths worldwide and costing billions of taxpayer dollars, the drug war’s most serious collateral damage has been to undermine the role of civilian law enforcement in our free society.
Losing Hearts and Minds in the Drug War, 11/9/11
The Obama administration is heading towards an ugly confrontation with California's medical marijuana dispensaries after the federal government ordered dozens of outlets to close by Saturday or face an immediate crackdown.
Growers and sellers of marijuana for medicinal use say the threats amount to a betrayal of campaign promises made by Obama in 2008, and that they fear a nationwide attempt to destroy the burgeoning industry. Partly encouraged by Obama's campaign messages that he would not use federal force against practitioners complying with state laws, dispensaries have spread over the past two years across 16 states, including Arizona, New Jersey, Delaware and Maine as well as Washington DC, with a combined annual turnover of up to $100bn.
California's medical marijuana outlets threatened in government crackdown, 11/8/11
The Seattle Police Department and the mayor's office have repeatedly insisted that marijuana possession, per city law, is the lowest law enforcement priority. They also adhere, they say, to a state law that makes it legal for authorized patients to use and grow marijuana.
But last night provided evidence that Seattle police are willing to invest tremendous resources in the smallest of pot cases—even cases where the pot is legal—and the mayor’s office will remain silent.
Submachine Guns Drawn, Seattle Police Break Down Door of Medical Marijuana Patient, Push Him to the Floor, and Raid His Home - for Two Tiny Pot Plants, 10/27/11
As always, the special interests have a lot to say in these matters, and it's particularly telling that those lobbying hard to keep the prohibition on marijuana include law enforcement officials and alcoholic beverage producers. However, when the war on drugs – a.k.a. the war on the American people – becomes little more than a thinly veiled attempt to keep SWAT teams employed and special interests appeased, it's time to revisit our drug policies and laws. As Professors Eric Blumenson and Eva Nilson recognize:
During the 25 years of its existence, the "War on Drugs" has transformed the criminal justice system, to the point where the imperatives of drug law enforcement now drive many of the broader legislative, law enforcement, and corrections policies in counterproductive ways. One significant impetus for this transformation has been the enactment of forfeiture laws which allow law enforcement agencies to keep the lion's share of the drug-related assets they seize. Another has been the federal law enforcement aid program, revised a decade ago to focus on assisting state anti-drug efforts. Collectively these financial incentives have left many law enforcement agencies dependent on drug law enforcement to meet their budgetary requirements, at the expense of alternative goals such as the investigation and prosecution of non-drug crimes, crime prevention strategies, and drug education and treatment.
War on Drugs Has Become the War on the American People, 10/21/11
If an American talks about using marijuana or other drugs in countries where such activity is perfectly legal, or even just discusses the hypothetical idea of such an activity with a friend or family member, he or she will be committing a felony crime under a heinous new bill recently passed by the US House Judiciary Committee.
House Committee passes bill that criminalizes free speech, applies US 'drug war' policies across entire world, 10/21/11
The California Medical Association, the state’s largest doctor group, on Friday adopted a resolution to support the legalization of marijuana for medical uses, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The group’s support of medical marijuana comes after U.S. prosecutors in California threatened to seize the properties of licensed California marijuana dispensaries if they don’t close up shop within 45 days. U.S. attorneys in California have also threatened to target newspapers, radio stations and other media outlets that advertise for dispensaries.
The California Medical Association said the discrepancy between state and federal law created an untenable situation for physicians. The use of marijuana for medical purposes is legal under California law, but the drug is still classified as a Schedule I substance under federal law, a classification reserved for dangerous drugs with no real medicinal value.
California’s largest doctor group calls for marijuana legalization, 10/16/11
California legalized medical marijuana for seriously ill patients in 1996 and it is now legal in 16 states and DC. However, the Obama Administration wants to shut down pot dispensaries in California.
Obama Starts a Civil War On Drugs, 10/13/11
Three years on, not a single Wall Street banker has been prosecuted after a financial crisis rooted in rampant fraud brought the global economy to its knees. President Obama's Department of Justice has more dangerous miscreants to worry about: medical marijuana shop owners.
The DoJ has launched an assault on medical pot dispensaries, vowing to shut down establishments licensed and regulated by state and local governments, in a reversal of an earlier policy, based on an Obama campaign promise to leave the shops alone as long as they followed state law.
Obama's War On Weed: White House Launches Crackdown On Medical Marijuana, 10/11/11
The Netherlands is embarking on a crusade against its multi-billion-euro marijuana industry, with significant implications both for its economy and its famously liberal approach to life.
Along with tighter control of legalized prostitution and a swing to the right in attitudes toward immigration and Islam in recent years, the clampdown is seen as further evidence of an erosion of tolerance in a country known for its liberal social policies.
Dutch fear threat to liberalism in "soft drugs" curbs, 10/10/11
This is what happens when you ban heroin: A state that can stamp out one person’s liberty, however peripheral he and his activities may seem to mainstream society, can and will continue to trample on all of us until all our freedom is a mangled corpse, a translucent shadow of what it once was. You want to restore civil society? Call for the legalization of all drugs. Only a society that does not seek something as irredeemably stupid and wicked as a drug war has any hope for liberty. Only those who are willing to defend the liberty of the junkie fully deserve to see their own liberty restored.
This Is What Happens When You Ban Heroin, 8/11/11
The prohibition of marijuana in the US has led to an "underground" cannabis industry in Mexico run primarily by violent gangster cartels like the ones wreaking havoc at the southern borders of Texas, Arizona, and California.
These cartels reap anywhere from $1 to $20 billion a year illegally selling marijuana to Americans, but advocates of reform and legalization say the crime and terror associated with the illicit drug trade would largely end if marijuana was simply decriminalized.
Legalizing marijuana would hinder the multi-billion dollar empire of Mexican drug cartels, 8/1/11
The US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) has finally acknowledged a nine-year-old petition filed by The Coalition for Rescheduling Cannabis to reclassify marijuana as a schedule III, IV, or V drug, rather than its current, and more-serious, schedule I classification.
The acknowledgment, however, was an official denial of the petition based on claims that there are no studies to prove the medicinal value of marijuana, and that the plant is basically as unsafe as heroin.
Denied: DEA refuses to reclassify marijuana, claims it's as dangerous as heroin, 7/25/11
One more time, it's much ado about nothing...Except government posturing and intrusion into the lives of supposedly free people, so someone somewhere will think (dare we imagine "believe", that Big Mother is looking out for us because, God knows, we can't live our own lives) that we are being spared the ravages of some demon herb. Aside from the social parasites in Washington, who'd miss if they threw themselves on the ground, few astute individuals of any persuasion care for longer than a blink of an eye what people do with their PERSONAL BODIES. What we are witnessing is a rather large group of pretentious, social-engineering dullards doing whatever they can to maintain a pretext of functionality and viability in their ludicrous and pathetic existences. (They and their "forefathers" created the drug problem and now must do whatever they can to protect their spurious, chickens--- theories and practices. Imagine how many people could be educated and fed on the billions of dollars that are wasted on a non-issue of a non-war on drugs. How many sacrificed agents, cops, and citizens would still be alive? Did someone say, "Enemies within"?)
Our entire culture can use a break on this one!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
WAR on Drugs is OVER!, 7/21/11
Legalizing marijuana in the USA projects a bigger picture than easing the drug war tyranny on harmless pot smokers. What is overlooked is the medicinal value that marijuana offers, which threatens Big Pharma. If the THC compounds in marijuana that cure as well as get you high are removed, then why isn't industrial hemp legalized in the USA? Decriminalizing marijuana could be the gateway for restoring sanity to agriculture and sustainable industry by allowing hemp to be grown for its many viable applications once again.
Why legalizing marijuana would be a very good thing, 7/6/11
Drug warriors often contend that drug use would skyrocket if we were to legalize or decriminalize drugs in the United States. Fortunately, we have a real-world example of the actual effects of ending the violent, expensive War on Drugs and replacing it with a system of treatment for problem users and addicts.
Ten years ago, Portugal decriminalized all drugs. One decade after this unprecedented experiment, drug abuse is down by half.
Ten Years After Decriminalization, Drug Abuse Down by Half in Portugal, 7/5/11
The US economy is rapidly unraveling, vital services are being cut, and millions of Americans are losing their jobs and struggling just to survive. Meanwhile, the federal government continues to spend billions of taxpayer dollars every year to fight its endless "War on Drugs," which includes spending about $7.7 billion a year just on enforcing marijuana laws, and preventing sick and injured patients from accessing this natural, side effect-free treatment for their ailments.
US spends billions every year prosecuting marijuana violations while economy tanks, 7/5/11
The federal war on drugs is coming under attack from multiple angles, most recently with the introduction of a bill in Congress by conservative Rep. Ron Paul and liberal Rep. Barney Frank that would end the national prohibition on marijuana and allow states to set their own policies.
The “Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2011,” or HR 2306, would not “legalize” marijuana. If passed, the legislation would simply remove the plant from the federal list of “controlled substances.” States would then be free to regulate, tax, or prohibit it without U.S. government interference.
Ron Paul Bill Attacks Federal Marijuana War, 6/24/11
The "War on Drugs" is a failure, with devastating consequences around the world, and it is time to decriminalize drugs and start treating drug problems as health issues, said a group of prominent former world leaders in a new report released June 1.
"Fifty years after the initiation of the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, and 40 years after President (Richard) Nixon launched the US government's war on drugs, fundamental reforms in national and global drug control policies are urgently needed," said the report.
The Global Commission on Drug Policy responsible for the report includes: former Brazilian president Fernando Cardoso; former Colombian president Cesar Gaviria; Mexico's former president Ernesto Zedillo; ex-UN chief Kofi Annan; former Chairman of the US Federal Reserve and of the Economic Recovery Board Paul Volcker; former U.S. Secretary of State George Schultz; Mario Vargas Llosa; Carlos Fuentes; and Richard Branson.
World leaders denounce failed war on drugs; call for global decriminalization, 6/16/11
Dame Judi Dench, Sir Richard Branson, and Sting have joined an ex-drugs minister and three former chief constables in calling for the decriminalisation of the possession of all drugs.
The high-profile celebrities together with leading lawyers, academics, artists and politicians have signed an open letter to David Cameron to mark this week's 40th anniversary of the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act. The letter, published in a full-page advertisement in Thursday's Guardian, calls for a "swift and transparent" review of the effectiveness of current drugs policies.
Decriminalise possession of drugs, celebrities urge government, 6/2/11
The pro-legalization group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition fretted that President Barack Obama and Mexican President Felipe Calderon were embarking on a counterproductive mission after the two pledged "renewed cooperation" on the drug war Thursday.
"Legalization is the only way to end the cartel violence, just like ending alcohol prohibition was the only way to make gangsters stop shooting each other over beer and liquor distribution," Tom Angell, a spokesman for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, told Raw Story in an e-mail. "How many more police officers and innocent civilians will these leaders allow to die before they finally tackle the one true solution to this violence?"
Legalization activists slam Obama’s renewed commitment to drug war, 3/4/11
Have no illusions about the true nature of the so-called "War on Drugs" and the actions of the DEA. The War on Drugs has always been about protecting the profits of the drug companies which have a long and well-documented history of copying street drugs, repackaging them as "medications" and selling them to children as FDA-approved drugs
DEA to legalize marijuana chemical for Big Pharma but keep it a crime for everyone else, 2/24/11
Fact is, we are a nation of drug addicts. We drug ourselves, our elderly and our children on a daily basis. We do it with prescription medications, over-the-counter pills, alcohol, caffeine, nicotine... and we say it's all fine because those drugs are legal.
But wait a minute, you say. Those legal drugs are different from marijuana. They're FDA-approved drugs, prescribed by a doctor. They have a medical purpose.
Oh really? Ritalin has a medical purpose? What medical symptoms does Ritalin treat, then? What measurable physiological state is addressed with Ritalin? There are none, of course. Ritalin is an authority drug. It keeps children in line. It makes teachers feel less stress and parents feel less guilt. Ritalin is a mind-altering narcotic, and yet millions of children are on it today. Its purpose is not to help children, but to make life more convenient for those who manage children.
Raw (and ugly) truth about the war on drugs, 8/15/5
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