(I want to give props to www.drcnet.org, which keeps improving as time goes on)
It was only a matter of time before the volume on the lies got turned up, and it's disappointing to see the LA Times doing its part to encourage the nonsense. [yes, yes... I know Sam Zell ran the paper into the ground, but still.]
This articlereally embodies much of what is wrong with some of the debates I see everywhere, even here. It's the fallacy of taking a SINGLE anecdotal case of a marijuana user, and trumpeting its relevance above that of scientific studies and stats. The hilarious aspect is that the person used to 'tarnish' cannabis in the article admits that re-legalization is needed.
Also, a certain RAND think-tank in Santa Monica got all of its buckets together to carry water for the No on 19 crowd, which the LA Times has been dutifully publishing today. This, of course, would have nothing to do with the LA Times editorial board's position taken against Prop 19....of course not....
(flip)
From the first article:
As California considers legalizing pot, there has been little discussion about the potential fallout on people's health. But it can be addictive, attested by one woman's $5,000-a-year habit.
Wow. You found one person addicted to pot? Good for you, LA Times!!! So...does this mean we're taking a trip down to Skid Row or LA County Jail to interview all the alcoholics who lost everything, caught felonies for domestic violence, and committed manslaughter in their vehicles under influence of booze? Wait, we're not? Oh, darn. And I was SO excited to get all fair-and-balance-ey.
Even after what she went through, McDonald said she would like to see marijuana legalized so that people who have problems with the drug will be steered into treatment.
To those who want marijuana to stay illegal because of health concerns, where were you when universities asked Bush's DEA and Obama's DEA to stop their thuggish attempts to suppress research? My guess: you weren't doing interviews with LA Times.
UC Studies Show Marijuana Has Therapeutic Value, Reports to Legislature
First results in United States in 20 years from clinical trials of smoked cannabis
Researchers from the University of California’s Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research (CMCR) have found "reasonable evidence that cannabis is a promising treatment" for some specific, pain-related medical conditions. Their findings, presented today to the California legislature and public, are included in a report available on the CMCR web site at
http://www.cmcr.ucsd.edu.
This is easily the biggest research on cannabis done in a very long time. But it's too, you know, science-y for some folks. Oh well.
Moving on-
RAND assures us that we are all idiots for thinking that taking away revenue from Mexican cartels will reduce drug violence. I mean, how stupid can the Yes on 19 crowd be? We aren't NEARLY as smart as those folks at RAND. Not even close. Look at these gems they drop on us:
...the proposal on the state's November ballot to legalize marijuana also will do little to quell the drug gangs' violent and sophisticated organizations that generate billions of dollars a year, according to the study by the nonpartisan RAND Drug Policy Research Center.
The report, released Tuesday by the Rand Corp., the non-partisan research institute in Santa Monica, estimates legalized marijuana could displace Mexican marijuana sold in California, but says that accounts for just 2% to 4% of the revenues gangs get from drug exports.
As to US Federal statistics showing about 60% of cartel revenues come from sales of cannabis, which is by far the #1 consumed 'drug' on Planet Earth, the RAND folks had this to say:
"This 60% figure is a truly mythical number, one that appeared out of nowhere and that has acquired great authority," they wrote. "This figure should not be taken seriously."
Ok, sure! It's so much easier to dismiss what you don't like, screw it. And that way you can be a self-proclaimed expert that much easier.
This is an interesting phenomenon, where we are starting to see this push by the prohibitionist crowd to claim that California is a lost cause for reducing cartel violence, we grow our own pot already, and that the only market displacement will occur outside of CA by mail-order pot dealing to the rest of USA. [For record: anyone with a box and a stamp and a food vacuum-sealer has all they need to be a mail-order pot dealer. It's quite common, and a method I used quite frequently for ordering my favorite California strains. As Mitch Hedburg said, "The mailman is my favorite dealer...and he doesn't even know it...]
So, to sum up: when law enforcement 'seizes' marijuana buds or plants, it's worth exorbitant sums of money. But when those who oppose Prop 19 crunch the numbers, they decide that Mexican cartel sales of the #1-consumed drug in America is irrelevant. Kind of funny how that works.
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Here is an interesting viewpoint on Prop 19 from North of the border: http://www.thestar.com/...
On the Yes side you’ll find everyone from doctors to lawyers to Facebook founders to the state’s largest public service union. And plenty of retired drug warriors, who no longer see weed as a demon worthy of the fight. Even some Tea Partiers bidding to end prohibition in the spirit of government-shrinking libertarianism. For many, the argument that ‘if you can’t beat it, tax it’ is the glue that binds in a time of extreme budget crisis.
The Nos, meanwhile, are lined up in a mismatch worthy of Monty Python. Here you will find old-school Reefer Madness rejectionists shoulder to shoulder with ethically challenged pot farmers and the cops who would jail them — all agitating for the status quo of more war, albeit for starkly different reasons. Soccer moms, polls show, worry the ballot initiative known as Proposition 19 will bring proliferation. Beer breweries worry about market share. Small-time growers and cartels alike worry about the taxman.
Many opponents, including the editorial pages of every major California newspaper, take the position of right-idea, wrong-law, arguing that allowing local governments to decide will create regulatory chaos, resulting in a crazy-quilt of different marijuana regimes throughout the state.
But the official sponsors of Prop 19 argue the four-page initiative was drafted carefully and deliberately to mirror the end of alcohol prohibition in the 20th century, which gave rise to a patchwork of wet and dry counties that endures to this day. They are particularly heartened that their campaign momentum coincides with the success of HBO’s new Boardwalk Empire as a timely reminder of how the ban on booze spawned Al Capone and organized crime.
"When prohibition ended, you didn’t see Budweiser and Anheuser-Busch pulling out guns on the street corner. They pulled out advertising. And there are no illegal grape-growing cartels producing wine in our national forests," Dale Sky Jones, chief spokeswoman for the Yes to 19 campaign, told the Star in an interview at Oakland’s battle-leading Oaksterdam University.
"That’s why it feels like there is a sea-change in attitudes now. Not only do the vast majority of polls show Californians in favour, but when you break down the numbers to those who have actually read the initiative, we’re at about 70 per cent support."
BUT WAIT!! THE FEDS WILL NULLIFY PROP 19!! OH NOES!!! JUST LIKE THEY DID WITH PROP215...(wait..California has medical marijuana dispensaries all over the state? Why, that wasn't in MY copy of Reefer Madness Weekly!!!)
What this guys says---->
"I don’t see the feds coming in with guns blazing. Even under George W. Bush there was only one single tokenistic raid in Humboldt County," said Hoover, the Arcata publisher.
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There's one more thing I'll say, on a more personal level. I'm used to cynicism and hatred; after all, I spent 9 months in lockup battling LA County Sheriff's department (a synonym for corrupt), judges, DA's, one inept Public Defender, the skinheads that prison guards segregate the rest of us white guys with, etc etc. All over a plant named cannabis sativa.
Prop 19 has shown some people with real compassion. The owner of Adam and Eve, a sex-toy retailer, gave $100k to Prop 19 way before it became fashionable for Facebook co-founders to donate. And I don't have a link, but it struck me to read what Phil Harvey said about Prop 19, and how we "lock up otherwise peaceful people" for no reason at all. None whatsoever. The article I link to describes him as such:
Harvey, so far the only listed donor to the committee, is also a philanthropist involved in family planning and HIV/AIDS prevention.
He is president of DKT International, which distributes condoms and contraceptives to poor countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Harvey is also the author of a 2001 book, The Government vs Erotica: The Siege of Adam & Eve which details the various prosecutions, beginning in 1986, of his company by the federal government for "violating community standards." (Harvey ultimately prevailed, though at great financial cost.)
Harvey's personal website features a 2004 profile by The Economist magazine which describes him as a "famously libertarian" man who looks "more like an academic than a sex magnate."
The article says Harvey has "broadened his fight for free speech and individual choice" to "America's war on drugs."
And who here shops at Trader Joe's? Remember Dr Bonner Soaps?
http://stopthedrugwar.org/...
If the pro-Prop 19 forces don't have the money for a TV ad campaign, they can take some solace in knowing that the opposition doesn't, either -- at least not yet. The main opposition group, Public Safety First, reported only $54,000 in the bank as of September 30. But the Prop 19 forces are waiting for -- not hoping for -- the other shoe to drop. A late, well-funded negative ad campaign in 2008 helped to defeat a sentencing reform initiative that had been leading in the polls up to that point.
"I'm calling up businesses like ours that I know are socially and environmentally conscious with a simple message, 'Just Say Now;' now is the time to step up support," said Bronner. "Prop 19 will free up police for fighting real crimes and stop renegade cannabis cultivation by gangs that are destroying our national parks. Cannabis prohibition, not the herb itself, has been ruining productive and upstanding citizens' lives with courts and jails for decades," he said.
"I was hoping to trigger more giving with our donation, and the Facebook guys helped, too," said Bronner. "This is just such an important moment; there is so much at stake. It's about being able to promote and get our message across. It's about cannabis, but it's also about freedom," he said.
"This has been pretty under-funded," said Bronner. "Richard Lee put in enough money to get on the ballot, and now it comes to getting out the youth vote. SSDP is well-positioned to drive that and already had a game plan. We're just powering that up," he said.
Late last week, Bronner and SSDP announced the "Sound the Alarm to Vote Yes on Prop 19" tour of California college campuses, complete with Dr. Bronner's promotional fire truck, now known as the "Yes We Cannabis Fire Truck." The tour kicked off in San Diego last weekend, and will crisscross the state in the three weeks until election day -- this weekend it will be in the Bay Area for SSDP's regional conference in San Francisco.
Bonner typically supports the hemp industry's attempts to reform our misguided hemp laws (which treat hemp like marijuana). On that note, we continue to see promise in industrial hemp:
http://www.physorg.com/...
Of all the various uses for Cannabis plants, add another, "green" one to the mix.
Researchers at UConn have found that the fiber crop Cannabis sativa, known as industrial hemp, has properties that make it viable and even attractive as a raw material, or feedstock, for producing biodiesel – sustainable diesel fuel made from renewable plant sources.
The plant’s ability to grow in infertile soils also reduces the need to grow it on primary croplands, which can then be reserved for growing food, says Richard Parnas, a professor of chemical, materials, and biomolecular engineering who led the study.
"For sustainable fuels, often it comes down to a question of food versus fuel," says Parnas, noting that major current biodiesel plants include food crops such as soybeans, olives, peanuts, and rapeseed. "It’s equally important to make fuel from plants that are not food, but also won’t need the high-quality land."