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More Dumberer Than Potheads

TUESDAY MARCH 25 2008 6:00 AM

Submitted by FearTheReaper. Edited By FearTheReaper.

TAGS: Medical marijuana, Barney Frank

Our pot laws in the US are so backwards and idiotic, it is astounding. It is unbelievable that arrests for marijuana violations are actually going up. But it seems everywhere you look, the US has its priorities completely backwards. We are some seriously stupid motherfuckers. But that all may change because of a fat, gay guy from Massachusetts named Barney Frank.

I’m for the legalization of all drugs. People are going to get them anyway, so there is no point in keeping them illegal. When I was growing up, I had no problem getting my hands on pot, magic mushrooms, LSD, cocaine, speed, or anything else I wanted. It is my understanding that heroin and meth have now been added to the list of easy access drugs. For me they were all one phone call away, or they would come to me at a party, or football game – hell, one time I got my drugs in a high school Spanish class. Muy bueno! The point is, if you want drugs, you can get drugs - especially pot.

Pot is the least dangerous drug out there, but the government keeps cracking down.


Police arrested a record 829,625 persons for marijuana violations in 2006, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's annual Uniform Crime Report, released today. This is the largest total number of annual arrests for pot ever recorded by the FBI. Marijuana arrests now comprise nearly 44 percent of all drug arrests in the United States.


The government is seriously stupider than stoners. In the past 15 years, pot arrests have gone up 188%. You’d think the government would have something better to do, like sit around and diddle their balls. Or maybe they could punch themselves in the face. I would rather my tax dollars pay for that. The last thing I want happening is people, like Mary Ann from “Gilligan’s Island,” getting arrested.


Dawn Wells, who played Mary Ann on "Gilligan's Island," is serving six months' unsupervised probation after allegedly being caught with marijuana in her car.


WTF? That poor woman was stuck on an island with a bunch of retards for years. Dawn should always be high. She should wear a glass helmet with a tube attached that constantly feeds pot into her poor brain. By the way, awesome mug shot, burnout.

Six months probation doesn’t sound bad, but for many people it’s not just about the sentence. Their lives can be turned upside down.


Sanctions triggered by a marijuana conviction can include loss of access to food stamps, public housing, and student financial aid, as well as driver's license suspensions, loss of or ineligibility for professional licenses, other barriers to employment or promotion, and bars to adoption, voting, and jury service.


My wife is a therapist. If she smoked pot and was caught, she would lose her license to practice. The punishment for smoking a natural plant does not fit the crime – it more fits the crime of murder. If I were a student who lost his financial aide and was looking at a life working at Home Depot, I would go on a shooting spree. The California Supreme Court recently ruled that employees could be fired for smoking pot, even if it has nothing to do with the job.


The California Supreme Court weakened the effect of the state's beleaguered medical marijuana law, ruling Thursday that employers may fire workers for using physician-recommended marijuana while off duty, even if it did not hurt their job performance.


The pot laws vary from state to state. 12 states have passed medical marijuana laws. California passed a medical marijuana law in 1996. Now we have pot stores and even pot vending machines. But that does not stop the Federal Government from raiding our pot stores, because George Bush has a serious hard on for pot.


The gap between state and federal drug laws became apparent again Wednesday when federal agents raided 10 local medical marijuana facilities only minutes after the Los Angeles City Council placed a moratorium on new facilities so rules could be drafted to better regulate them.


And it doesn’t help that in 2005 the douchebags on the Supreme Court ruled that the Feds could overrule state pot laws.


The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled doctors can be blocked from prescribing marijuana for patients suffering from pain caused by cancer or other serious illnesses.

In a 6-3 vote, the justices ruled the Bush administration can block the backyard cultivation of pot for personal use, because such use has broader social and financial implications.


Sweet. I know one of the “broader implications” is that people will be more relaxed. And more video games will be played. And quite a few more lemons may be stared at for over 10 minutes. Oh, and shows like Two and A Half Men may actually be somewhat tolerable. Actually, strike that. The creators of Two and A Half Men should be murdered.

As far as the “financial implications,” as a country we spend $7.5 billion annually enforcing pot laws. And that doesn’t include taking care of the poor fuckers who are in jail. Maybe we should act like adults, legalize pot and rake in the taxes from all the herb that would be legally sold. Hell, we could probably fund universal health care with the tax profits.

Thankfully, Barney Frank is on the case.


Rep. Barney Frank said he plans to file a bill to legalize "small amounts" of marijuana.

Frank announced his plans late Friday on the HBO show "Real Time," hosted by Bill Maher.

"I'm going to file a bill as soon as we go back to remove all federal penalties for the possession or use of small amounts of marijuana," Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, told Maher.





That would be awesome. It will never happen, but it sounds awesome. For whatever reason, America likes to cater to the most retarded amongst us – which turns out to be most of us. Although, we have been moving slowly towards legalization over the years.

Of course, the vast majority of people arrested for smoking pot are minorities – even though the rates of marijuana use are the same for whites and people who are not whites. Plus, we do like to keep our black people in jail and pot makes that easy.


Since it started in 1970, American law enforcement has arrested 38 million people for nonviolent drug offenses, nearly 2 million last year alone. The number of people jailed for violent crimes has risen 300 percent, but the prison population of nonviolent drug offenders has soared 2,558 percent.


Thank God. All those people were getting high and not doing anything wrong. Motherfuckers. Nothing is more infuriating than a guy going to a park and getting high. You may as well shit on the baby Jesus. An influential physician group recently called for pot to be declassified as a “Schedule I” drug.


The American College of Physicians, the nation's largest organization of doctors of internal medicine, with 124,000 members, contends that the long and rancorous debate over marijuana legalization has obscured good science that has demonstrated the benefits and medicinal promise of cannabis.

The group calls on the government to drop marijuana from Schedule I, a classification it shares with illegal drugs such as heroin and LSD that are considered to have no medicinal value and a high likelihood of abuse.


Holy shit. Pot is classified the same as heroin? Why not classify murder the same as trespassing? How about classifying rape the same as jaywalking? The people who first made pot illegal should be beaten about the head with a large wooden object. If they are dead, they should be dug up and set on fire. But they won’t be, because they have made billions of dollars keeping pot illegal. Plus, it would be weird to dig up a body and set it on fire. And I doubt anyone would understand the political statement. By the way, “They” are people like Du Pont and Hearst.

Corporations like Du Pont and industrialists like William Randolph Hearst were concerned that hemp would cut into their pulpwood paper and synthetic products profits. So, they launched a campaign.

In the '30s, Du Pont had just patented a new process for making pulpwood paper and was working on something called “nylon.” Du Pont financial backer and US Secretary of Treasury Andrew Mellon made sure his nephew was in charge of the new Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. They combined with the Hearst newspaper business to create the new monster: Pot. Then came the "Marihuana Tax Act of 1937,” which was the end. Yay big business.

It’s amazing Barney Frank is actually going to introduce legislation to legalize small amounts of pot. It has no chance, especially in an election year, because the majority our politicians are spineless creatures, with no ability to take a strong stand. We are basically represented by sea cucumbers.

Even everyone’s great hope, Barack Obama, won’t come out for medical marijuana. He did a few months ago, but then recently backed off.


When a voter asked Obama if he was for the legalization of medical marijuana, Obama said that he wasn't in favor of legalization without scientific evidence and tight controls. Citing his mother who died from cancer young, Obama compared marijuana to morphine saying there was little difference between the two.


Really? Because I’ve experienced both and I’m going to go ahead and say there’s a huge fucking difference. Morphine is the great “pain go bye-bye.” Pot is, “hey, shit is weird.” And Obama’s statement that he can’t favor “legalization without scientific evidence” is pure bullshit. There is loads of scientific evidence that pot aids in the treatment of health ailments. And even if there wasn't, who gives a shit? Hemp and pot were a big part of the early days of America.

Both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson grew marijuana, and smoked it. Today, they’d be locked up in jail.


"If people let government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny." - Thomas Jefferson


Whatever, hippy.

Let’s hope Barney Frank gets somewhere with his legislation. But I seriously doubt anything is going to happen. Because we are morons.

 

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SockPuppet

SockPuppet

I'm lost
July 2006

MAR 26, 2008 05:40 PM

bald_eagle said:

BellyJack said:
Ruling marijuana a schedule I drug in 1970 didn't make a lot of sense then, and it still doesn't now.

In 2007 a study was done in The Lancet (the chart shown below came from a Wikipedia entry on marijuana citing the research) comparing twenty drugs in terms of their addiction potential, and bodily harm they can create.


If this research is valid then it is hard to make a case for legal tobacco and alcohol while throwing people in jail, and otherwise disrupting their lives if they choose to use substances "down, and to the left" from them.

...

You tell me.


Another way to look at the same principle is the number of overdose deaths. You see them from alcohol about once a year on college campuses. Barbs? Of course. You can kill yourself with too many aspirin, for that matter.

Deaths fro marijuana overdose = zero.



Indeed. Though I'm a bit surprised by that graph; it was perfectly possible to function as a heroin addict in the UK, before they made it illegal; and the group which tended to become addicts, above all others, was medical personnel, doctors and nurses. (Easy access, uncut, and the effects didn't preclude you being a functional human.)
Meanwhile, IIRC there are barbiturates which - once you're an addict - you must not quit cold; because quitting cold will kill you. That doesn't happen with heroin.

So I'm a bit surprised. Maybe the graph doesn't just look at the medical effects of the drugs; maybe it reflects their legality and the form they're taken in. I'd bet that a large part of the harm rating shown for heroin is that it's easily cut (being injectable/smokable, rather than in pill form), so the purity of what you're getting is very doubtful. (Which also increases the OD risk, of course.)

Coyotemike

Coyotemike

Kearney, NE
May 2006

MAR 26, 2008 06:27 PM

Wow. This thread has really made it easy to tell who is toking up just on occasion and who has made it part of their daily schedule. Amazing tongue

Varuka_Salt

Varuka_Salt

I'm lost
October 2006

MAR 26, 2008 06:46 PM

coyotemike said:
Wow. This thread has really made it easy to tell who is toking up just on occasion and who has made it part of their daily schedule. Amazing tongue



What are you trying to say??

What am I trying to say?

Who are you again?

Who am I again?

Wait, dude.....what?

Stiles

Stiles

New York, NY
November 2002

MAR 26, 2008 07:31 PM

TheRedBaron said:

What on earth would heroin and meth be prescribed for?



Methamphetamine was widely given to German tank and plane crews during WWII to increase alertness and stamina. Meth was also widely prescribed in America in the 1950s for narcolepsy, alcoholism, as an antidepressant and the most popular use, for weight control.

"Mother's little helper", anyone?

Meth is currently available for prescription in the US under the trade name Desoxyn, made by Ovation Pharma. Good luck getting a doctor to prescribe it...

Heroin was first commercially synthesized by Bayer (yes, that Bayer) and sold in the US from 1898 to 1924, the date the US banned it.

Shalome

Shalome

MODERATOR

Los Angeles, CA

MAR 26, 2008 08:29 PM

Stiles said:

TheRedBaron said:

What on earth would heroin and meth be prescribed for?



Methamphetamine was widely given to German tank and plane crews during WWII to increase alertness and stamina. Meth was also widely prescribed in America in the 1950s for narcolepsy, alcoholism, as an antidepressant and the most popular use, for weight control.

"Mother's little helper", anyone?

Meth is currently available for prescription in the US under the trade name Desoxyn, made by Ovation Pharma. Good luck getting a doctor to prescribe it...

Heroin was first commercially synthesized by Bayer (yes, that Bayer) and sold in the US from 1898 to 1924, the date the US banned it.



"Mother's little helper" was Diazepam (Valium). wink Unless you're talking about Dexamyl, which was dextroamphetamine and amylbarbitone, which was "mother's little helper" in a completely different way.

And long before Valium, it was "Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup" which was liquid opiate -- good for fussy children and frazzled mothers alike!

BellyJack

BellyJack

I'm lost
May 2005

MAR 26, 2008 08:29 PM

SockPuppet wondered,

Indeed. Though I'm a bit surprised by that graph; it was perfectly possible to function as a heroin addict in the UK, before they made it illegal; and the group which tended to become addicts, above all others, was medical personnel, doctors and nurses.



I don't know for certain, and don't have the time now to do the requisite study so as not to stuff my entire foot into my mouth. That said, I did track down several lay articles, and (for those interested in trading hard coinage for an ethereal PDF file) a copy of the original study.

SPOILERS! (Click to view)

Nutt D, King LA, Saulsbury W, Blakemore C (2007). "Development of a rational scale to assess the harm of drugs of potential misuse". Lancet 369 (9566): 1047-53. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(07)60464-4. PMID 17382831.



Learned that all of The Lancet articles are available online, but aren't free. One can download directly from there, but registration is required even to see the pricing so I didn't bother.

It is $31.50 per download from ScienceDirect so is about equivalent to buying a case of top notch beer.

Maybe one of these day my curiosity will be sufficiently piqued, but not right now.

SPOILERS! (Click to view)
It infuriates me to no end that access to research papers costs so damn much using online distribution. I haven't done an interlibrary loan in years, and maybe things have changed, but (so long as you didn't go nuts, and attempt to suck down the entire Library of Congress) an interlibrary loan was free.

There is nothing like reading an original research paper, especially when the subject is fraught with several levels of nuance, rather than relying solely on wire service and news outlet reportage.


BBC Today
MSNBC
USA Today

Not all the news is good - in the same year The Lancet published "Cannabis use and risk of psychotic or affective mental health outcomes: a systematic review"

SPOILERS! (Click to view)

Cannabis use and risk of psychotic or affective mental health outcomes: a systematic review
The Lancet, Volume 370, Issue 9584, 28 July 2007-3 August 2007, Pages 319-328
Theresa HM Moore, Stanley Zammit, Anne Lingford-Hughes, Thomas RE Barnes, Peter B Jones, Margaret Burke and Glyn Lewis.

ScienceDirect Download


In a nutshell, there appears to be correlation, but not necessarily causation, between marijuana use and development of psychosis later in life.
Storied Conduct has a pretty good synopsis, and CNN has a more semantically weighted version written for a non-technical audience.

There are many aspects to these issues, and the pros/cons are difficult to balance, but Mythos370560 has expressed many of my own thoughts on a reasonable way to proceed.

Stiles

Stiles

New York, NY
November 2002

MAR 26, 2008 08:35 PM

Shalome said:

Stiles said:

SPOILERS! (Click to view)

TheRedBaron said:

What on earth would heroin and meth be prescribed for?



Methamphetamine was widely given to German tank and plane crews during WWII to increase alertness and stamina. Meth was also widely prescribed in America in the 1950s for narcolepsy, alcoholism, as an antidepressant and the most popular use, for weight control.

"Mother's little helper", anyone?

Meth is currently available for prescription in the US under the trade name Desoxyn, made by Ovation Pharma. Good luck getting a doctor to prescribe it...

Heroin was first commercially synthesized by Bayer (yes, that Bayer) and sold in the US from 1898 to 1924, the date the US banned it.





"Mother's little helper" was Diazepam (Valium). wink Unless you're talking about Dexamyl, which was dextroamphetamine and amylbarbitone, which was "mother's little helper" in a completely different way.

And long before Valium, it was "Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup" which was liquid opiate -- good for fussy children and frazzled mothers alike!



Yep, you get the drift.

smile

TheRedBaron

TheRedBaron

Cambridge, MA
November 2003

MAR 26, 2008 09:16 PM

Stiles said:

TheRedBaron said:

What on earth would heroin and meth be prescribed for?



Methamphetamine was widely given to German tank and plane crews during WWII to increase alertness and stamina. Meth was also widely prescribed in America in the 1950s for narcolepsy, alcoholism, as an antidepressant and the most popular use, for weight control.



Wow. Fair enough. I DID NOT know that about meth. Thanks.


TheRedBaron

TheRedBaron

Cambridge, MA
November 2003

MAR 26, 2008 09:18 PM

SockPuppet said:

TheRedBaron said:

SockPuppet said:
Also, which new fast-acting painkillers are you thinking of?



Can't actually remember the name. They hit me with it when I got shot a while back. I told them there was opiate dependence in my family and that I'd rather not take any risks; they told me what they were giving me was mild but fast-acting and never caused dependence. It worked pretty well.



Ah. I'm not surprised you can't remember what it was... that's pretty drastic.



Really? Considering I had a bullet hole in me and an IV full of drugs, I'm not too shocked. tongue

Tritone

Tritone

Saint Paul, MN
May 2004

MAR 26, 2008 10:42 PM

TheRedBaron said:

Stiles said:

TheRedBaron said:

What on earth would heroin and meth be prescribed for?



Methamphetamine was widely given to German tank and plane crews during WWII to increase alertness and stamina. Meth was also widely prescribed in America in the 1950s for narcolepsy, alcoholism, as an antidepressant and the most popular use, for weight control.



Wow. Fair enough. I DID NOT know that about meth. Thanks.




I saw this on History or Discovery Channel, something like that, and they introduced it more as drugging the German army just so they could keep up with a forced march that wouldn't be described as healthy. But yeah, stimulants for energy and to push the limits of human endurance, who knew?

BellyJack

BellyJack

I'm lost
May 2005

MAR 26, 2008 11:27 PM

Don't know about meth, but the US military still supplies Dexedrine to Air Force personnel during long duration flights, and made this and other stimulants available to our troops since at least WWII for just about the same reasons as the Germans.

Defense Tech has an interesting article on BZ (aka "Buzz", aka 3-Quinuclidinyl Benzilate), which is an extremely powerful incapacitating agent with a whole range of activity including severe hallucinations, dry mouth, flushing, and increased heart rate typical of anticholinergics (think - Jimson weed on steroids) except it has a relatively low toxicity, can be delivered in aerosol form, and is virtually undetectable.

This is some bad-ass stuff, especially since there is evidence those affected by it can share the same illusions.

TheRedBaron

TheRedBaron

Cambridge, MA
November 2003

MAR 27, 2008 12:09 AM

Tritone said:

TheRedBaron said:

Stiles said:

TheRedBaron said:

What on earth would heroin and meth be prescribed for?



Methamphetamine was widely given to German tank and plane crews during WWII to increase alertness and stamina. Meth was also widely prescribed in America in the 1950s for narcolepsy, alcoholism, as an antidepressant and the most popular use, for weight control.



Wow. Fair enough. I DID NOT know that about meth. Thanks.




I saw this on History or Discovery Channel, something like that, and they introduced it more as drugging the German army just so they could keep up with a forced march that wouldn't be described as healthy. But yeah, stimulants for energy and to push the limits of human endurance, who knew?



Nono, i knew that. About the Germans (and I think, the Japaneses para-troopers, too). I didn't know it had modern medicinal use.

edith

edith

France
April 2006

MAR 27, 2008 01:56 AM

i guess you never had ADD.

SockPuppet

SockPuppet

I'm lost
July 2006

MAR 27, 2008 02:38 AM

Stiles said:

TheRedBaron said:

What on earth would heroin and meth be prescribed for?



Methamphetamine was widely given to German tank and plane crews during WWII to increase alertness and stamina. Meth was also widely prescribed in America in the 1950s for narcolepsy, alcoholism, as an antidepressant and the most popular use, for weight control.

"Mother's little helper", anyone?

Meth is currently available for prescription in the US under the trade name Desoxyn, made by Ovation Pharma. Good luck getting a doctor to prescribe it...

Heroin was first commercially synthesized by Bayer (yes, that Bayer) and sold in the US from 1898 to 1924, the date the US banned it.



Amphetamines also to RAF pilots, certainly during 1944-5.

fountainofdreams

fountainofdreams

Mokena, IL
January 2005

MAR 27, 2008 05:21 AM

BellyJack said:
Don't know about meth, but the US military still supplies Dexedrine to Air Force personnel during long duration flights, and made this and other stimulants available to our troops since at least WWII for just about the same reasons as the Germans.

Defense Tech has an interesting article on BZ (aka "Buzz", aka 3-Quinuclidinyl Benzilate), which is an extremely powerful incapacitating agent with a whole range of activity including severe hallucinations, dry mouth, flushing, and increased heart rate typical of anticholinergics (think - Jimson weed on steroids) except it has a relatively low toxicity, can be delivered in aerosol form, and is virtually undetectable.

This is some bad-ass stuff, especially since there is evidence those affected by it can share the same illusions.



I could swear I remember reading an article about the US government testing out giving soldiers MDMA. I can't remember the validity or context of the article though.

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