I spent the weekend up in a National Forest in North Carolina this past weekend. How glorious it was to be totally immersed in Nature, enjoying the camaraderies of friends. We ate well, my buddies all drank a LOT of beer, and we smoked a lot of weed. It was like Freedom.
I arrived back with all my fingers and toes, unburnt, scathed only due to the trail-building we did. I like cannabis because it doesn't interfere with my motor skills or my judgment. My beer-soaked buddies developed progressively more difficulties with basic tasks as the cans piled up.
I returned to find a couple interestingly titled diaries:
The gun diary was the original and the router diary a spin-off follow-up of a sort I have seen done here a few times, even with one of my own diaries.
Of course, something else Kossacks are demonstrably ignorant informationally-underfunded about popped into my mind - make the jump.
I have been writing diaries and articles about cannabis relegalization at Kos for about 4 years. I have worked on this issue hard since about 2000. I pretty much have the facts straight but one amazing thing about cannabis reform is that facts basically mean nothing in this "debate". Nothing at all.
All Americans have grown up bathed in anti-cannabis propaganda. My parents grew up during the time the propaganda was invented, researched and refined. By the time I was 10 or 12 years old Nixon had become president and had declared war on the pot plant. And the GOP took reefer madness and made it part of their total political "philosophy".
Since the 1970's the mainstream media has been the delivery system for all the highly emotionalized propaganda that passes for most people's "knowledge" of cannabis. It's been a torrent of lies, deceit, ill-will, and intentional psychological manipulation.
And it's worked great: Americans can't discuss cannabis facts for more than 4 minutes without belching out programmed responses: either the shrill histrionics of "what about the children?" (the idea that any effort to relegalize cannabis is a ploy to get kindergarten-aged children to shoot up on heroin) or the "pot shot": some half-funny "witticism" that people - particularly news reporters and broadcasters - think they HAVE to make every time this subject appears.
Noneltheless, the Debate about Reform has to move forward and Democrats will be the ones to accomplish this (whether they like it or not.) following are a few loosely interrelated issues. I say "loosely" because cannabis prohibition is so huge, it's hard to grasp everything it influences, impacts, and skews.
Racism
First of all - most people don't even know that "cannabis" is the actual "proper" term for "marijuana". They just don't. They don't know that marijuana is actually a racist term meant to denigrate the plant and the people who touch it. They don't really know anything about the ungodly racism that is a large part of the foundation on which cannabis prohibition is set. I am uncertain if it is entirely essential that people know the technical history of all this. There's a lot of distraction from the current manifestation which is far worse than the antecedents.
Possession means "touching"
Secondly, cannabis, specifically, is illegal to touch. The laws are not about "smoking" or "being high" or "getting stoned". The law is quite specifically about touching. This is what "possession" means: it means touching. This is a major clue as to the intention of the law.
Skewed Law Enforcement Priorities
The main intention of cannabis prohibition, despite everything you have ever been told (but never once researched on your own) is to prevent cannabis-based agriculture and, in turn, industrial applications of cannabis in America. In this light, cannabis prohibition is a stunning success. There are NO non-drug uses of this plant in America. I just bought a new shirt: 55% hemp, 45% organic cotton. The hemp is imported because it cannot be grown in America. This has absolutely nothing with getting high or smoking pot but it is prevented from occuring.
And I have heard rumors here and there that we are actually in a "War on Terror" and that we are subject to "terrorist attacks". I am unsure of the veracity of this assertion, as it is mostly made by Team Bush and the GOP and a few old school Democratic candidates, because half of all American law enforcement is dedicated to chasing, harassing, ruining, and killing pot smokers.
Black Market Dynamics
As I said at the beginning, I smoked pot all weekend. Cannabis prohibition FAILS to halt pot smoking and makes the value of weed similar to that of Gold.
Authors report that the average price for pot fell in the 1990s, but began rising once again after 2000.
"This recent price increase leaves current marijuana prices near their 20-year averages," the study concludes. "Marijuana is quite literally worth its weight in gold."
The report did not analyze long-term trends in marijuana’s potency because STRIDE fails to document the drug’s purity. However, a 2006 report by the US National Drug Intelligence Center states that "most of the marijuana available in the domestic drug markets is lower potency commercial-grade marijuana."
Not that the unknowing want to read new facts, but all prohibition REALLY accomplishes in supporting evermore dangerous criminal organizations. Enforcement determines the risk in trafficking - this is why cannabis values skyrocketed when Team Bush slimed their way into office. This is why three-quarters of a million Americans are arrested and harassed each year. The more enforcement is effective (arrest numbers being the only measure of enforcement) the more people will pay for weed because those who can deliver it are doing it for profit. The late-stages of this can be seen currently in Mexico with all the drug-trafficking related violence there. Legalize the weed and few people will make any money off it at all and people should - likely - stop being killed over it, particularly by the police.
It's primarily about oil profits
While you are worried about the evil weed kidnapping your child and forcing him or her into a life of herion-stained nightmres, the reall reason for all this bullshit is oil profits. You have been lied to so much you cannot believe any of the facts.
As cannabis can make most anything that petroleum can it has been made illegal so that it will not provide competition to petroleum profiteering. It's more or less the same as Microsoft being able to control enough of the government to make Apple Computers illegal. No fundamental difference.
And, of course, there goes all those bullshit arguments about the sanctity of the "Free Market". As long as natural competition is repressed by the government, there AIN'T NO FREE MARKET. Blow that talk out your ass.
Media Complicity
Cannabis prohibition has been largely accomplished through propaganda: use of the media in all its forms to spread false information and to black-out accurate/reality-based scientific discourse about the plant. The Feds have been sued for lying constantly about medical marijuana...because they do. With your tax money.
The truth is that cannabis prohibition is a HUGE issue with more than 90% of the information for discussion totally blacked out of the MSM. As a progressive or liberal Democrat, you actually support this??
Assault on the Constitution
Cannabis prohibition has been one of the most major assaults on the Constitution. Basically, law enforcement has pleaded for and won an endless series of demands for powers that slip around the intent of the Constitution.
Let me restate that for clarity: Reefer madness has been the major assault on the Constitution and the bill of rights since at least the day Nixon declared the need for the DEA: The Drug Enforcement Agency essentially came into being as a creation of Nixon and his intention that cannabis would never be relegalized because he thought that was "letting the hippies win".
The PATRIOT Act owes at least half of its success to the 30+ years of siege that reefer madness has laid upon America.
Don't like all that illegal wiretapping? Think it's a violation of your 4th Amendment rights? It IS...but hey, you don't blink an eye when you are required to PEE FOR A JOB?
Wise up.
Cannabis prohibition is the reason that the GOP was successful in getting 80% of America's decent employers (and most of the shitty ones as well) to test you urine BEFORE you can get a job.
Make a note: it is a basic violation of your human rights and your personhood to be forced to pee when somebody else demands it. Dogs have to pee to show submissiveness to the Alpha. Pee-testing is nothing short of pure fascism - and some Kossacks actually support this! Ghastly!
It is wrong that they can use this technology to see if you have smoke pot in the last month. By the way, the #1 use for drug testing is to keep marijuana smokers from having good jobs and seeming successful. It's part of the unbelievably huge Government and GOP_related corporate agenda to punish people who have the audacity to see through reefer madness propaganda.
Cannabis Prohibition Kills People
With the dubiousness of smoking ANYTHING aside, the only real dangers of cannabis are 100% artificially made by men - arrest, financial ruination, imprisonment and de facto execution by reefer mad cops and DEA agents.
See, lots of Americans have been shot to death for touching marijuana and by and large nothing really happens to the cops. A few cops recently gunned down an old black woman in her house after getting a false warrant based on lies from a known drug user (a real drug user, not some pothead). They smashed into her house, shot her to death, shot themselves 3 times, blamed that on her and deposited marijuana at the scene as if that would "justify" their killing of the old woman. These guys, thank God, are going to jail where they belong.
Other false beliefs
I can just imagine some Kossacks thinking this is actually a good idea because they have grown up on reefer madness kool-aid and think it's A-OK
Which is why I wrote this. I have generally noted that a lot of Kossacks DO INDEED support reform and DO have solid knowledge of the issue.
What concerns me is that most likely half of Kossacks DO NOT UNDERSTAND this and I can see it in the commentaries I get.
There are a lot of odd and blatantly stupid beliefs on the part of otherwise educated and intelligent Kossacks.
One ignorant tidbit I like, that seems to have been buried is that all pot diaries are written in between bowls of Cheerios and episodes of Spongebob. That's ignorant. Stupid. Information-free. As an American you have the right to believe it. But you are wrong to do so.
Another one is that somehow I am a teenager and I need to grow up. This touches on one of the more bizarre reefer madness beliefs: it's extremely screwed-up but apparently while we don't want teenagers smoking pot, it can only be interesting to the kids. Or only kids smoke pot. It's quite upside down but a surprising number of folks here believe this like it is somehow correct. It' ain't and you look really dumb when you assert this crap.
Another good one is that relegalizers are selfish, one-issue voters who are only interested in smoking pot and not getting arrested. That one always makes me giggle - of course we don't want to get arrested: do YOU want to get arrested for nothing? I assume you don't.
Cannabis prohibition is the vast bulk of the so-called War on Drugs which currently wastes at least $20 billion each year and results in the arrests of no fewer than three-quarters of a million Americans each year. More police resources are blown on chasing and arresting marijuana touchers than is expended on all violent ad other "real crimes" put together.
And Yes, that is very much true and based on their own numbers. When cannabis is no longer a "crime" in America half the police won't have anything to do. Maybe this could aid in sorting out all the bad apples and making sure only good and decent people become cops. (Currently I think the case can be made they hire just about anybody, as long as they aren't terribly well educated and don't ask lots of pertinent questions.)
Certainly relegalized cannabis spells the end of the "war on drugs" as it has been known.
Cannabis reform is a Democratic Value and Issue
As we now need to construct a New Social Democratic Party renovating the current problematic party, cannabis reform issues should be in the forefront of things to accomplish.
Cannabis prohibition has the potential to be an issue that can be addressed rather decisively. It never should have been made illegal to begin with: there's little value, I think, in excavating all the tiny reasons which started the issue.
The important thing is to see how it wastes money, has trampled the Constitution, how it has caused the government to lie endlessly to the People about the plant and how the perpetuation of this travesty is partly due to the vast amount of money it makes for the police, the power it gives the GOP, and the vast waste of time it truly is. Oh... and the thousands and thousands of Americans languishing needlessly in jail for touching weed.
This is now especially egregious since Scooter Libby outed a CIA agent, got 30 months for obstruction of justice but the Pres commuted the jail time. This says that marijuana touching is worse than obstruction of justice and treason. That ain't right and you know it.
I know some of the currently unknowing Kossacks will resent the tone of this diary and will make the specific complaint that I am saying I am right and you are wrong. That would be the correct assessment.
The information is out there, it is easy to get, it is voluminous.
However, outside the activist community and those who already know, the prohibition of cannabis is an EMOTIONAL debate, not a fact-based rational issue. Once can quickly discern who knows something about the issue from those who are doing a perfect job of regurgitating reefer mad propaganda like a good citizen should. If facts actually mattered, this would not be an issue currently.
Cannabis should be legal
This means just like tobacco and alcohol and gasoline (look on the pump sometime and notice nobody under 16 or 18 should be pumping gas - that's the law.).
Cops should not be kicking down doors to arrest people for it. They should not be shooting people to death for it and Progressive/Liberal activists should NOT BE REGURGITATION reefer mad bullshit.
People should not have to lose their jobs because they smoked some pot last weekend - or last month while on vacation is some country where it's legal. This is wrong and you know it. How can you be a "liberal" and support such Stalinist shit?
Whether you agree with pot smoking or not, you, as a progressive or liberal, need to get your noggin around the need to relegalize cannabis. You have to know it's NOT about getting high so it should make it easier on you to support it - like you should.
It's about protecting the Constitution, re-focusing law enforcement priorities, and helping Americans. It's about waking up and correcting an egregious social malady and moving on to more important things.
Support Relegalization or champion a false cause built on lies.
You are free to choose.