I wish people would wake up to the world around them. People look at me and think I am just for legalization because i’m a pothead. But it’s not about that. It’s about human rights. All the conspiracy theories 20 years ago are starting to happen, and people are blind as fuck to it. You make marijuana illegal through fear, you pass NDAA through fear. Well damn it i’m not afraid. I don’t want my rights taken from me anymore. Everyone needs to wake up, today, not tomorrow, not 6 years from now. But today. Our founding fathers warned us this would happen. We’re all going into slavery. This may sound like a nut job post, but why do you think FEMA camps exist? Why do you think NDAA was passed? It gives them bastards the right to lock us all up, without charge or trial indefinitely. Well you know what, I never agreed to this. None of us did. By our own constitution that makes it illegal yes?
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Ranting Mostly
I like letting the jack asses know what they are doing is wrong. Im surprised my rep hasnt had me up for stalking by now. I have an automatic email sent to him every 3 days and usually drop at least one letter in the mail a week.
People often wonder why the gay community is making such strides in their cause, its because they dont hide who they are and what they want. They protest, lobby and never give up in their beliefs and what makes them happy. They stick together like most races dont even do anymore.
From my time on forums I can say this with fact, most stoners talk shit, back and forth. Always starting drama when there is no cause or need for it. Instead of fighting amongst ourselves we need to come together to finally get this crap resolved. Anyone who says one voice doesnt make a difference has never tried.
I refuse to let anyone tell me what i can and cant put into my own body. I own my body, I do not pay taxes on my body and I will sure as hell not let them tell me what to do with it anymore.
Marijuana being illegal comes from 3 reasons. Initially, racism, corporate greed and public fear. Now its corporate greed, government greed and peoples inability to realize their voice matters. As I said in my petition, marijuana’s popularity has exceeded that of Barrack Obama. It’s a fact. We just have a little more pushing to do. Too bad he doesn’t understand legalizing weed right now makes him a shoe in for re election. Because as it stands he doesn’t have a snow balls chance in hell
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Pot laws should be eased
One day this summer, I had two experiences that made me grasp how fast attitudes toward marijuana are changing.
I pulled into the parking lot of a small shopping strip in the heart of Eugene, Ore., and noticed a cute storefront with a green awning and freshly painted salmon-colored walls. Clothing boutique? Massage spa? Juice bar? I walked up to the gleaming display windows. It was a brand new medical marijuana dispensary.
Later that day, a report came on the radio about an amazing occurrence in Denver. In the Mile High City, medical marijuana dispensaries now outnumber Starbucks, such a profusion that a local alternative weekly employs a pot critic to review them.
It’s not just in California anymore, Toto.
Here in Illinois, marijuana still comes with a strong whiff of the illicit.
Plenty of people smoke it — in living rooms, on decks, in parks, behind bars — but it remains against the law, despite the fact that, according to a recent Gallup poll, a record-breaking half of Americans think it should be legal. In May, the Illinois Legislature voted down a bill to authorize it for medical purposes, although two-thirds of Americans think that use should be allowed.
But attitudes are shifting even on our cautious Midwestern shores.
Not long ago, Toni Preckwinkle, the new president of the Cook County Board, had the guts to state the obvious: The war on drugs has failed. Substance abuse should be treated as a public health problem, not a crime.
She went a bold step further: Let’s stop arresting and incarcerating people for possessing small amounts of weed.
Preckwinkle points out that even if the charges are eventually dropped, as they usually are in Chicago, people who can’t make bail get stuck in jail, at a cost of $143 per day. That’s our tax money. Why not fine offenders instead?
Such an approach frees up jail space, frees officers to stay on patrol instead of processing paperwork, and raises money.
Now some Chicago politicians are following Preckwinkle’s lead. Next week, Ald. Daniel Solis, backed by several other aldermen, will introduce a proposal to change how people caught with 10 grams or less of marijuana are treated. Instead of being arrested, they’d get a $200 ticket and have to perform up to 10 hours of community service.
The idea is overdue.
I say this even though I don’t enjoy marijuana. I hated it when I tried it in college. I hated it when I used it a couple times afterward. It made my brain feel like a giant mothball. It made conversation stupid. Inhaling wasn’t worth the work.
But it’s time to put marijuana into perspective. Decades of prohibition haven’t reduced its use. More people than ever smoke it, some for pure pleasure, some as a cure for pain.
For some, it turns into addiction. But those who grow addicted — like people addicted to cigarettes, Percocet or pinot gris — have a health problem. Treating them as criminals doesn’t solve their problem or society’s.
Of course, many people who smoke dope already do it with impunity. Lollapalooza, anyone?
In Chicago, punishment falls with appalling disproportion on black men. For a thorough analysis of that disturbing truth, read the excellent July piece by Mick Dumke and Ben Joravsky in the Chicago Reader: http://tinyurl.com/the-grass-gap
We’ve demonized marijuana for so long that it’s hard to shift attitudes and laws. But they’re shifting anyway.
Chicago may not need as many marijuana shops as Starbucks, but it does need laws that deal more squarely with reality.
Source: Chicago Tribune (IL)
Author: Mary Schmich
Published: October 28, 2011
Copyright: 2011 Chicago Tribune Company
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HARPER GETS TOUGHER ON POT GROWERS THAN CHILD RAPISTS
Prime Minister Stephen Harper is getting tougher on pot growers than he is on rapists of children. Under the Tories’ omnibus crime legislation tabled Tuesday, a person growing 201 pot plants in a rental unit would receive a longer mandatory sentence than someone who rapes a toddler or forces a five-year-old to have sex with an animal.
Producing six to 200 pot plants nets an automatic six-month sentence, with an extra three months if it’s done in a rental or is deemed a public-safety hazard. Growing 201 to 500 plants brings a one-year sentence, or 11/2 years if it’s in a rental or poses a safety risk.
The omnibus legislation imposes one-year mandatory minimums for sexually assaulting a child, luring a child via the Internet or involving a child in bestiality.
All three of these offences carry lighter automatic sentences than those for people running medium-sized grow-ops in rental property or on someone else’s land.
A pedophile who gets a child to watch pornography with him, or a pervert exposing himself to kids at a playground, would receive a minimum 90-day sentence, half the term of a man convicted of growing six pot plants in his own home.
The maximum sentence for growing marijuana would double from seven to 14 years, the same maximum applied to someone using a weapon during a child rape, and four years more than for someone sexually assaulting a kid without using a weapon.
Here in B.C., if police and prosecutors don’t rebel against the new laws, we’re going to be hit with massive jail costs, says Simon Fraser University criminologist Neil Boyd.
The new marijuana legislation will increase the proportion of pot criminals in B.C. jails from less than five per cent to around 30 per cent, at a cost of about $65,000 per inmate annually, Boyd says.
“Why put people who are not violent in jail?” Boyd asks. “People who commit serious violent crime are already dealt with pretty harshly, and crime rates are down, not up.”
Harper’s U.S.-style war on drugs ignores our southern neighbour’s expensive failed effort.
“Eight states — including New York, where laws were the most punitive in the nation — have repealed most of these mandatory-minimum sentences, and dozens of other jurisdictions are considering repeal or reform,” a February report from Human Rights Watch says.
Even the government’s own Justice Department questions the use of mandatory minimums.
“There is some indication that minimum sentences are not an effective sentencing tool,” reads a 2010 report from the department. “They constrain judicial discretion without offering any increased crime-prevention benefits.”
Provincial jails — where most people convicted under the new laws will end up — provide far fewer rehabilitation programs than federal prisons, leading to higher rates of reoffending, says Stacey Hannem, chairman of the policy review committee at the Canadian Criminal Justice Association.
“There’s a real revolving-door problem in our provincial institutions,” Hannem says. “If you’re going to throw even more people in there, you can bet that the recidivism rate in the provincial system is likely to go up.
“If you want to get tough on crime, that’s fine. But don’t sell it as increasing public safety. That’s just not true.”
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Legalizing Marijuana may be for the Best
I don’t use cannabis. I did during college, but it has been over 20 years since my last toke and I have no plans to return. I have familial and contractual obligations that make breaking the law with cannabis out of the question for me.
That being said, I understand that cannabis is a permanent part of our society. I have also come to believe that our current cannabis laws and policies do not achieve reasonable public health goals, are cost inefficient, are corrosive to the Constitution, and have contributed to the destabilization of governments around the world and communities throughout the United States.
In making such assertions, I am far from alone. Fully 75% of the American people consider the Drug War failed, according to a 2008 Zogby poll. Over 500 world economists from the best universities and agencies, including three who are Nobel Laureates, have endorsed the work of Harvard economist Jeffrey A. Miron. Miron has shown, among other things, that prohibition increases the price of cannabis and other drugs and actually spurs increased production and sales.
The Global Commission on Drug Policy, touting such luminaries as Kofi Annan, Reagan administration officials like George Schulz and Paul Volcker, and leaders from business, the arts, and the law, recently published its review of the Drug War. Like many before them, they concluded that prohibition policies principally championed by the United States are failing and are exacerbating the international drug problem.
In 2009, a combined panel of Latin American presidents and politicians, including Fernando Ernando Henrique Cardoso (former President of Brazil), Cesar Gaviria (former President of Colombia) and Ernesto Zedillo (former President of Mexico) requested the US to review and revise its Drug War policies. None of these observers are wild people or counter-cultural agitators. They represent the highest levels of leadership and achievement across many countries.
And they all say the same thing: the Drug War does not work.
Looking at the costs at home, we see that not only has the United States invested billions of dollars in this failed effort, it has also embraced legal and social practices that threaten our basic civil liberties. Currently, the United States imprisons the most people in the world. With about 5% of the world population, our nation maintains about 25% of the world prison population. We imprison more people per 100,000 of the general population than Russia and China combined.
American police officers and federal agents conduct thousands of home invasions every year, too often with tragic unintended consequences. Investigations, arrests, and sentencing are demonstrably unequal among our different racial groups. For example, while adult African Americans account for about 9% of the population and about 13% of cannabis users, they account for nearly 25% of all cannabis/marijuana arrests. Such heavy handed imprisonment policies and unequal enforcement breed hostility and contempt for the law.
Moreover, US policies are the most aggressive in the industrialized world for ensuring drug offenders do not successfully reform. American rates for funding treatment and rehab are among the lowest.
American laws dictate that drug offenders lose access to educational funding. The 1998 Drug Free Student Loans act withholds student loans (not grants, just loans) from convicted drug offenders, even though research shows education is a major tool in rehabilitation of offenders.
I do not support drug abuse. In reforming drug laws including the legalization of marijuana, I believe we can achieve better public health and public security results than we do now. My goals are the same as most people: reduction in health hazards associated with drug use including marijuana; special focus on keeping young people and children from beginning drug habits; reduction in drug related crimes; stabilization of neighbors like Mexico by reducing and eventually eliminating the power of organized crime.
I also wish to strengthen our Constitutional liberties and work for a more efficient government here at home. These goals can be better achieved not with heavy handed prohibitionist policies, but with a blended mix of law enforcement, public education, treatment and rehabilitation of drug addicts, and in some instances like marijuana legalization.
Several countries now have regimes of legal decriminalization of cannabis possession. Places like the Netherlands have practiced legal toleration of marijuana use for many years. Portugal, having created a comprehensive drug policy reform, has enjoyed tremendous success in reducing drug related pathologies since 2001. However, all countries decriminalizing marijuana still wrestle with problems related to production and supply. Legalization will close that loop in the particular case of marijuana.
No country has developed a magic formula and even the most successful, like Portugal, are works in progress. I do not propose any utopian scheme. Reform and repair of Drug War damage will take time, wisdom, and skill. However, the necessary components to begin are nowhere more abundant than the United States. Our country still boasts the best medical science, the best universities, the highest number of top level trained professionals and trained jurists in the world. We have social services professionals, health policy analysts, and an excellent media and information infrastructure.
There is no reason other than fear and political obstruction that we could not begin the process of transforming our drug law regime, taking the best elements of what has worked so far and developing continuing strategies to go farther. Ultimately, we would have to review some of our international treaty obligations, particularly the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotics.
The task is indeed complicated, but our resources are arguably the best available in the world. Based on models like that of Portugal, we could achieve real reform in a decade or less and become once again the land of the free.
That is why I support cannabis legalization.
http://www.cannabisnews.org/united-states-cannabis-news/legalizing-marijuana-may-be-for-the-best/
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Florida Pays To Bury Teen After Marijuana Arrest
8/1/2011 -State authorities in Florida caused a stir last week when they stopped a check to pay for the funeral services of a teenager who died after jail staff refused him medical attention. The West Palm Beach Post reported that a $5,000 check issued at the request of the Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) was destroyed last week by the state’s Chief Financial Officer. Today the same newspaper is reporting that state CFO JeffAtwater re-issued the check.On the night of July 9th Eric Perez as just another young resident in Florida with a small amount of marijuana. He turned 18 just a few weeks earlier. But the next morning Perez was dead. What happened in the time between is the subject of an intense and ongoing investigation. Some disturbing details have already emerged.For the seven hours that Perez was in custody he was having severe headaches and was continuously vomiting. He pleaded for help. Guards have come forward to say they were directed by supervisors not to call 911 that night. (Those guards were then fired for following those orders.) Towards the end, Perez was moved to a bare “medical”(More)
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We Have Games!
I’m pleased to announce we finally have games! If you are into playing online flash games, for endless hours of entertain check out our games section here
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NO CAUSE FOR MARIJUANA CASE, BUT ENOUGH FOR CHILD
New York
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The police found about 10 grams of marijuana, or about a third of an ounce, when they searched Penelope Harris’s apartment in the Bronx last year. The amount was below the legal threshold for even a misdemeanor, and prosecutors declined to charge her. But Ms. Harris, a mother whose son and niece were home when she was briefly in custody, could hardly rest easy.The police had reported her arrest to the state’s child welfare hot line, and city caseworkers quickly arrived and took the children away.
Her son, then 10, spent more than a week in foster care. Her niece, who was 8 and living with her as a foster child, was placed in another home and not returned by the foster care agency for more than a year. Ms. Harris, 31, had to weather a lengthy child neglect inquiry, though she had no criminal record and had never before been investigated by the child welfare authorities, Ms. Harris and her lawyer said.
“I felt like less of a parent, like I had failed my children,” Ms. Harris said. “It tore me up.” (More)
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INNOCENT GRANDMOTHER’S 12 DAYS IN WINNIPEG JAIL
Minnesota grandmother Janet Goodin crossed the border to play bingo and ended up in a Winnipeg jail for 12 days, after a forgotten jar of motor oil in her van mistakenly tested positive for heroin. The 66-year-old widow and retired Girl Scout administrator from Warroad, Minn., was questioned, strip-searched and jailed until officials discovered the error and released her. “This was so out of context and so preposterous that it’s just literally turned my life upside down,” she told the Post’s Sarah Boesveld by phone from her quiet trailer home about six kilometres from the border. “It was so surreal.” The Canada Border Services Agency said Tuesday officials at the Sprague border followed protocol, but Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said he has requested a ”full report” on Ms. Goodin’s detention from the agency’s president. While sitting in the Winnipeg Remand Centre, Ms. Gooding began chronicling her ordeal in what would become a nearly 4,000-word journal entry, which she shared with the Winnipeg Free Press. Here is the entry, edited for length and clarity by the Post:
SUNDAY, MAY 1, 2011
I woke up again this morning aware of a constant gnawing anxiety – my constant accompaniment all day, every day. I open my eyes. I am in jail. IN JAIL!
My nightmare began about 10 days ago, April 20, on a pleasant Wednesday evening. About 5 p.m. I got a text message from my daughter, who lives just across the border in Canada. She was asking if I wanted to go with her and her sisters to play bingo in Sprague, MB, 7 p.m. I had to decide quickly; I hadn’t had dinner yet, and was hungry, but then I thought there would probably be snacks available at Bingo, so I texted her that I would leave right away.
When I arrived there, I presented my…..(More)
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