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Barney Frank Files Bill To Decriminalize Pot

Started by FOTD, June 23, 2009, 08:47:09 AM

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FOTD


Double A

(Long Island, N.Y.) A Texas patient who uses medical marijuana to treat the symptoms of HIV won acquittal on marijuana possession charges March 25 based on a "necessity defense." Though such a defense - which requires the defendant to establish that an otherwise illegal act was necessary to avoid imminent harm more serious than the harm prevented by the law he or she broke - has rarely been successful in Texas, the jury took just 11 minutes to acquit Tim Stevens, 53. The trial was hotly contested. Stevens had never been in trouble until Amarillo police arrested him for possessing less than 4 grams of marijuana. As a result of his HIV infection, Stevens suffers from nausea and cyclical vomiting syndrome, a condition so severe that he has required hospitalization and blood transfusions in the past.

Extensive research has established medical marijuana as an effective treatment for nausea and vomiting associated with HIV/AIDS and cancer chemotherapy, uses recently acknowledged by the prestigious American College of Physicians. Key in establishing Stevens' medical necessity was the testimony of Dr. Steve Jenison, medical director of the Infectious Diseases Bureau for the state of New Mexico's Department of Health.

"This case proved to be a testing ground for public attitudes toward medical marijuana," said attorney Jeff Blackburn, who represented Stevens. "Even in a very conservative part of a very conservative state, jurors were willing to listen to the facts about medical marijuana and give Tim a break, and I hope this case will help to create a trend in Texas."

"The common sense and decency exhibited by this Amarillo jury is typical of what we see from voters around the country," said Ray Warren, director of state policies for the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, D.C., and a former North Carolina Superior Court judge. "The American public doesn't want to see seriously ill patients arrested and jailed for simply trying to stay alive with the help of medical marijuana. It's time for legislators in Texas and around the country to follow the public's lead and take action to protect patients, so that no one battling a life-threatening illness has to live in fear of arrest."

www.juryimmunity.org
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The clash of ideas is the sound of freedom. Ars Longa, Vita Brevis!

Michael71

Quote from: Conan71 on June 24, 2009, 01:34:02 PM
'Scuse me, I just spit vodka all over my computer screen.  I suppose it isn't in the hands of people who have balance in their life but try and pass that line of BS off on someone who has struggled with substance abuse and addiction, you won't get very far.


NSFW--VOLUME ONLY!!!
NSFW--VOLUME ONLY!!!
NSFW--VOLUME ONLY!!!



NSFW--VOLUME ONLY!!!
NSFW--VOLUME ONLY!!!
NSFW--VOLUME ONLY!!!
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"Why be part of the 'brain drain' that gets sucked out of Tulsa...The opportunity IS there, you just gotta make it!!"--Eric Marshall

FOTD

#63

Active Ingredient In Cannabis Eliminates Morphine Dependence In Rats

ScienceDaily (July 15, 2009) — Injections of THC, the active principle of cannabis, eliminate dependence on opiates (morphine, heroin) in rats deprived of their mothers at birth.  The findings could lead to therapeutic alternatives to existing substitution treatments.


http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090706090440.htm






Once we stop making marijuana the bogeyman of drugs we will probably find that there are many medical uses for it.

cannon_fodder

Those stupid stoners said that legalizing pot would raise $1billion in revenue for the State of California and save the state hundreds of millions on incarceration.  A new study by the State's revenue department concluded they were wrong.  It would raise $1.4 Billion in revenue.    ;D

http://cbs13.com/local/california.marijuana.tax.2.1087391.html
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I crush grooves.

FOTD

THC initiates brain cancer cells to destroy themselves

Posted in Longevity and Age Management, Cancer, Medical Marijuana on Wed May 20, 2009
THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, causes brain cancer cells to undergo a process called autophagy in which cells feed upon themselves, according to a study conducted by Guillermo Velasco and colleagues at Complutense University in Spain. Using mice designed to carry human brain cancer tumors, the researchers found that the growth of the tumors shrank when the animals received THC. The study also involved two patients with glioblastoma multiforme, a highly aggressive form of brain cancer. Both patients had been enrolled in a clinical trial designed to test THC's potential as a cancer therapy. The researchers used electron microscopes to analyze brain tissue taken before and after a 26- to 30-day THC treatment regimen. They found that THC eliminated the cancer cells while leaving healthy cells intact. In addition, in what they described as a "novel discovery," the specific signalling route by which the autophagy process unfolds was isolated.

"These results may help to design new cancer therapies based on the use of medicines containing the active principle of marijuana and/or in the activation of autophagy," says Velasco. The findings were published in the April 2009 issue of The Journal of Clinical Investigation.

According to Dr. John S. Yu, co-director of the Comprehensive Brain Tumor Program in the Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, "The findings were not surprising. There have been previous reports to this effect as well. So this is yet another indication that THC has an anti-cancer effect, which means it's certainly worth further study."

Dr. Yu warns cancer patients that they should not consider marijuana a potential cure for cancer and urges that people "not start smoking pot right away as a means of curing their own cancer." However, Dr. Paul Graham Fisher, the Beirne Family director of Neuro-Oncology at Stanford University, says that's precisely what many brain cancer patients are doing. "In fact, 40 percent of brain tumor patients in the U.S. are already using alternative treatments, ranging from herbals to vitamins to marijuana," says Dr. Fisher. "But that actually points out a cautionary tale here, which is that many brain cancer patients are already rolling a joint to treat themselves, but we're not really seeing brain tumors suddenly going away as a result, which we clearly would have noticed if it had that effect."

News Release: Marijuana chemical may fight brain cancer www.webmd.com

News Release: Active ingredient in marijuana kills brain cancer cells www.forbes.com

patric


What would happen if marijuana was legal — not just for medical uses, but for all uses?

Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, wants the state to tax and regulate all pot as it does alcohol. State Board of Equalization chairwoman Betty Yee, a supporter, projects the law would generate $990 million annually through a $50-per-ounce fee for retailers and $392 million in sales taxes. (The state now collects $18 million each year in taxes on medical marijuana.) The state would not start collecting taxes on marijuana under Ammiano's bill until the federal government lifts its restrictions on the drug.
http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=13&articleid=20090719_13_0_SANFRA706370

Drug enforcement agencies would be forced to switch their efforts to dangerous substances like Meth or Cocaine or risk loosing grant monies.
"Tulsa will lay off police and firemen before we will cut back on unnecessarily wasteful streetlights."  -- March 18, 2009 TulsaNow Forum

FOTD

WOW! TULSA UNIVERSITY HAS SOME BUMP!



The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure: From the Vietnam to the Afghan Quagmire


By Jeremy Kuzmarov

Jeremy Kuzmarov is Assistant Professor of History, Tulsa University.

In a recent interview, Richard Holbrooke, White House Special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan and a key architect of President Obama's "surge" strategy, declared the War on Drugs in Afghanistan to be a failure. After spending millions upon millions of taxpayer dollars, he said, aerial eradication campaigns have not cut supply rates and contributed to the displacement of farmers and loss of their livelihood, causing many to gravitate to the insurgent camp. He might have added that many of these farmers have been poisoned by chemical sprays resulting in the spread of diseases like cancer, and that the U.S. supports some of the major opium warlords in the Karzai government responsible for turning the country into what even Fox News has characterized as a "narco-state." Drug money has corrupted all facets of society, crippled the legal economy and made it nearly impossible to carry out the simplest development projects. Positions for police chief in many provinces are auctioned off to the highest bidder due to their enormous graft value. The cost for a job as chief of police anywhere on the border is rumored to be upwards of $150,000.

As Holbrooke is well aware, the failure of the war on drugs in Afghanistan fits a long historical precedent. Holbrooke started his career as an employee with USAID, which was involved in pioneering drug interdiction campaigns during another ill-fated occupation where they proved to be an important recruiting tool for the 'Vietcong.' American intervention in Vietnam was a watershed in the growth of the global war on drugs, stemming largely from the crisis of addiction in the American armed forces and revelations of CIA support for opium growing warlords in the Golden Triangle.

By the early 1970s, as I chronicle in my book, The Myth of the Addicted Army: Vietnam and the Modern War on Drugs, the media was filled with sensational depictions which grossly inflated the scope of drug abuse among American GI's and obscured the context in which they got stoned. The Nixon administration was placed on the defensive because of the corruption of U.S. governmental allies, who were supplying the troops with drugs, including heroin. In response, Nixon ordered the training of local South Vietnamese police units in counter-narcotics, threatened to cut off aid to South Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Van Thieu if he did not cut down on corruption, and initiated extensive aerial eradication and spraying programs across Southeast Asia. In Laos, the U.S. went so far as to order the bombing of heroin refineries once owned by a CIA asset in the Lao Air Force, Ouane Rattikone, and also initiated crop substitution programs which led to the uprooting of Hmong tribesmen whose principal cash crop was opium.

Nixon's War on Drugs in Southeast Asia proved to be a disaster on all fronts. Governmental corruption remained endemic across the region, owing largely to the social displacements bred by the war and influx of foreign capital on a hollow economic base. A June 1972 army criminal investigations division staff report concluded that the flow of drugs was "so abundant and the distribution through local nationals so pervasive, that efforts to cut off the supply, even within the military compounds, are like trying to imprison the morning mist." In South Vietnam, American narcotic agents continued to suspect that high-ranking military personnel and police were skimming the profits of all drug seizures, which one adviser evidently concluded "presents a major problem in narcotics investigations." Crop-substitution and destruction programs caused the displacement of farmers, many of whom resisted US policy by shooting at overhead planes. Some later testified about children dying from poisoned food crops.

Eventually the military command sought to limit the scope of the drug war. In May 1971, Director of Pacification John Paul Vann sent a memo to senior advisers warning them not to spray marijuana growing fields in the Chau Doc, An Giang, and Se Dec provinces controlled by the Hoa-Hao sect. He feared alienating them and driving them into the hands of the National Liberation Front (the southern based resistance movement). Vann viewed the marijuana program as a bane to broader pacification efforts designed to win over the "hearts and minds" of the South Vietnamese people. The programs nevertheless continued, in part as a covert means of funneling weapons to state security forces bent on stamping out the political opposition. In this respect, the War on Drugs proved to be something of a success, especially as Congress began lobbying for cutting off aid to regimes implicated in systematic human rights violations.

In spite of the overriding failure to curb supply rates, Nixon's drug-control formula was adopted by successive administrations, which institutionalized the War on Drugs as a crucial dimension of American national security policy. The Reagan, Bush and Clinton administrations were fixated on international interdiction in Latin America, where chemical spraying campaigns directed against predominantly poor farmers and the use of private mercenary firms like Dyncorps bred a sustained political backlash, culminating in the election of Evo Morales to the presidency and expulsion of the Drug Enforcement Administration from Bolivia. Afghanistan became the focal point under Bush II, with similar deleterious effects. Most disturbingly, the U.S. funded Afghan police have been implicated in major human rights violations, including the brutalization and torture of prisoners and terrorization of whole communities suspected of supporting the Taliban. All the while, Hamid Karzai's own brother, Walid, is reputed to be the biggest heroin exporter in the country along with CIA backed warlords.

While acknowledging that there is no magic solution, Holbrooke has recently talked about switching to a strategy of alternative crop development. In the past, however, this approach has predominantly failed, largely because of an inability to create a viable livelihood for farmers and because the programs have often been implemented in an environmentally unsustainable and coercive way by USAID in collaboration with corrupt officials, resulting in displacement and the destruction of the rural social fabric. The U.S. should proceed with caution, and also think about finding a diplomatic settlement capable of bringing peace to a land ravaged by successive imperial interventions. This is the first and only precondition capable of curtailing the growth of the drug trade and fostering a climate in which genuine social and economic development can take root.




cannon_fodder

Quote from: FOTD on July 20, 2009, 04:48:15 PM
WOW! TULSA UNIVERSITY HAS SOME BUMP!

The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure: From the Vietnam to the Afghan Quagmire

By Jeremy Kuzmarov

Jeremy Kuzmarov is Assistant Professor of History, Tulsa University.

You need to at least cite to the publication when you cut and paste.  Even then it is probably outside the realm of "fair use."

The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure: From the Vietnam to the Afghan Quagmire, Jeremy Kuzmarov of The University of Tulsa, July 20th, 2009, History News Network published by George Mason University.  Available at http://www.hnn.us/articles/96313.html, last visited 07/21/2009.

*Not a technically correct citation, but all the info is jumbled in there.
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I crush grooves.

FOTD

Quote from: cannon_fodder on July 21, 2009, 09:26:20 AM
You need to at least cite to the publication when you cut and paste.  Even then it is probably outside the realm of "fair use."

The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure: From the Vietnam to the Afghan Quagmire, Jeremy Kuzmarov of The University of Tulsa, July 20th, 2009, History News Network published by George Mason University.  Available at http://www.hnn.us/articles/96313.html, last visited 07/21/2009.

*Not a technically correct citation, but all the info is jumbled in there.


FOTD misses putting the link in one time and gets jumped by Spartacuss....

Here.... http://hnn.us/articles/96313.html

cannon_fodder

Well, cut and paste is generally bad form anyway.  It is well beyond the scope of fair use when done occasionally and essentially an FOTD wire service around here the last couple months.  So when you cut and paste an entire article and don't even cite the source it's kind of a big deal.
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I crush grooves.

FOTD

Quote from: cannon_fodder on July 21, 2009, 03:13:53 PM
Well, cut and paste is generally bad form anyway.  It is well beyond the scope of fair use when done occasionally and essentially an FOTD wire service around here the last couple months.  So when you cut and paste an entire article and don't even cite the source it's kind of a big deal.

Agreed...except, Groove Crusher, it is not an FOTD wire service....it's the truth teller conveying news channeled by what's good and fair.

patric

This caught my eye on kotv's website:

"The Tulsa Fire Department cut a hole through the suspect's garage door at the home in the 4100 block of East 36th Street so undercover officers could haul out loads of marijuana"

Is it really ethical for the FIRE department to be breaking into homes to make pot busts?
"Tulsa will lay off police and firemen before we will cut back on unnecessarily wasteful streetlights."  -- March 18, 2009 TulsaNow Forum

FOTD

Quote from: patric on August 12, 2009, 09:47:38 PM
This caught my eye on kotv's website:

"The Tulsa Fire Department cut a hole through the suspect's garage door at the home in the 4100 block of East 36th Street so undercover officers could haul out loads of marijuana"

Is it really ethical for the FIRE department to be breaking into homes to make pot busts?

Jebus! This is going to be a cottage industry every where unemployment has grown.