When the people of Colorado voted to legalize recreational marijuana on Election Day, there was immediate speculation as to how the federal government would deal with how it conflicted with federal laws. So far there has not been an official response from the White House or the Department of Justice, and the waters remain as murky as prosecution of medical marijuana has been.
In an attempt to preempt any violation of states’ rights by the feds, a group of Colorado Congressmen formally introduced the Respect States’ and Citizens’ Rights Actthis past Friday. The bill would amend the Controlled Substances Act to exempt states where lawmakers or voters have legalized marijuana.
The bill, which was authored by Democrat Congresswoman, Diana DeGette, has bipartisan support.
In a press release Rep. DeGette said “In Colorado we’ve witnessed the aggressive policies of the federal government in their treatment of legal medicinal marijuana providers. My constituents have spoken and I don’t want the federal government denying money to Colorado or taking other punitive steps that would undermine the will of our citizens.”
The bill is also supported by Mike Coffman and other Republicans, even though some of them were opposed to marijuana legalization.
“I voted against Amendment 64 and I strongly oppose the legalization of marijuana, but I also have an obligation to respect the will of the voters given the passage of this initiative, and so I feel obligated to support this legislation,” Coffman said in the statement.
This legislation is just part of the chorus of letters to Obama’s justice department demanding that the feds leave the states alone when it comes to marijuana laws.
Reps Barney Frank and Ron Paul sent a letter to Obama encouraging him to respect state laws and to not use federal resources to prosecute pot smokers.
“Respect for the principles of democracy; respect for the states to make decisions on matters that primarily affect the residents of those states; the chance to conserve scarce federal financial resources — these we believe are many strong reasons for you to defer to the state decisions,” Paul and Frank wrote.
Another bipartisan Congressional group wrote a similar letter to Eric Holder at the Department of Justice stating,
The voters of these states chose, by a substantial margin, to forge a new and effective policy with respect to marijuana. The tide of public opinion is changing both at the ballot box and in state legislatures across the country. We believe that the collective judgment of voters and state lawmakers must be respected.
California Governor Jerry Brown, who opposes marijuana legalization, also said the federal government should respect states’ rights to decide how to regulate marijuana use on CNN’s State of the Union shortly after the election.
“It’s time for the Justice Department to recognize the sovereignty of the states. We are capable of self-government,” he said. “We don’t need some federal gendarme to come and tell us what to do. I believe in comity toward the states, that’s a decent respect”
Although this bill specifically refers to state exemptions where marijuana is concerned, it comes at a time when more states and citizens are attempting to flex their muscles against federal dictates.With White House petitions for secession of all 50 states gaining steam, a clear message is being sent for the feds to back off.
In the next few months cannabis legalization measures will be going into effect in Washington state and Colorado, and already prosecutors all over both states are dropping charges against cannabis users.
Now, just weeks after those measures were voted on out west, there are a few states on the east coast that are now following suit and making moves to get the beneficial plant legalized in their area.
“State legislators in Rhode Island and Maine will announce bills tomorrow to legalize recreational marijuana, a spokesperson for the Marijuana Policy Project announced today.
Rhode Island Rep. Edith Ajello and Maine Rep. Diane Russell will hold a conference call tomorrow with the Marijuana Policy Project to announce the legislation.
MPP says that “similar proposals will be submitted in at least two other states — Vermont and Massachusetts.” A ballot iniative legalizing medical marijuana passed in Massachusetts last week with more than 60 percent of the vote.
Maine voters voted to expand the state’s 1999 medical marijuana law in 2009 to include dispensaries. The Rhode Island legislature decriminalized marijuana earlier this year, and has had medical marijuana since 2006″
The east coast has been far behind in efforts to legalize cannabis, in comparison to the west where many states have had medical programs for some time.
If these measures are taken seriously in these areas and do well, the effects will undoubtedly spread farther down the east coast, towards areas closer to DC and farther down south where cannabis users face some of the worst persecution.
Areas of New England have a much more laid back approach to cannabis, as we see with the announcement of these new bills.
As of right now New Hampshire is the only state in the New England area that has yet to pass any measures to legalize the drug, even for medicinal purposes.
However, I have a feeling that at this very moment a group of people from the Free State Project are hard at work to see that legalization efforts are made in New Hampshire as well.
The DEA has still promised to enforce the federal laws, but if this catches on like it’s looking to do, than it is going to get to the point where they cant enforce it, and then its all over for prohibition, or atleast prohibition of cannabis.
What the drug war actually accomplishes is the establishment of black markets and gangs, the erosion of personal liberties, the expansion of the prison system and prison population as well as a constant excuse for frivolous government spending.
This hypothesis has been tested time and time again, anytime throughout history where a ruling power has prohibited the consumption or possession of any item whatsoever.
This process was made quite clear during the alcohol prohibition of the 1920s and 1930s.
As we saw with alcohol prohibition, making a substance illegal does nothing to stifle its use, but simply creates outlaws out of nonviolent people and foments a culture of violence that the rest of society is forced to deal with, even if they have no interest at all in the banned substance.
However, Cannabis is of a specific immediate importance though, because of its ability to heal sick people and create more environmentally friendly industrial products.
It is also one of the safest drugs known to our species.
Note: Our friends at Truth Exposed Radio just conducted an outstanding interview with Rick Simpson that once again reminds us how powerful this plant actually is.
From Video Description:
Truth Exposed Radio’s Robert Blount interviews Rick Simpson about the power of pure hemp extract vs. Cancer and other diseases. – http://truthexposedradio.com/
J.G. Vibes is the author of an 87 chapter counter culture textbook called Alchemy of the Modern Renaissance, a staff writer and reporter for The Intel Hub and host of a show called Voluntary Hippie Radio.
You can keep up with his work, which includes free podcasts, free e-books & free audiobooks at his website www.aotmr.com
Support for marijuana legalization in British Columbia has reached a whopping 75%, according to a new Angus Reid poll commissioned by Stop the Violence BC, a coalition of law enforcement officials, legal experts, medical and public health officials and academic experts concerned about the links between cannabis prohibition in British Columbia and the growth of organized crime and related violence in the province.
The poll surveyed 799 respondents in British Columbia. The results have a margin of error of +/- 3.5%.
The number supporting legalization is up six points over last year’s Angus Reid poll, where 69% supported it. Meanwhile, opposition to legalization has declined from 24% last year to 21% this year.
The new poll also suggested a broad social acceptance of marijuana in Canada’s westernmost province, which has been a hotbed of marijuana cultivation and culture for several decades now. Only 14% of those polled believe possession of a joint should lead to a criminal record, down six points from last year, and 74% would be comfortable living in a society where adult cannabis consumption was taxed and legally regulated under a public health framework, an increase of four percentage points from last year.
Strikingly, support for full legalization was higher than support for the half-measure of decriminalization. While 75% supported legalization, only 62% wanted decriminalization.
“From a scientific and public safety, making cannabis illegal has clearly been an expensive and harmful failure,” said Dr. Evan Wood, founder of Stop the Violence BC and Canada Research Chair in Inner City Medicine at the University of British Columbia. “With 75% of British Columbians supporting change, and the status quo contributing to increasing harms in BC communities, it is absolutely time for politicians to catch up with the public.”
Stop the Violence BC has been pushing for the legalization and regulation of marijuana. Its members include four former BC attorneys general, four former Vancouver mayors, including Larry Campbell, and former West Vancouver police chief and Liberal member of the provincial legislature Kash Heed.
The campaign is picking up steam. In September, the Union of BC Municipalities passed a resolution called for marijuana regulation, and last month, the Public Health Association of BC (PHABC) endorsed regulation.
“From a public health perspective, we urgently need to research alternatives to our current approach to cannabis which has clearly failed to protect public health and has actually resulted in substantial individual and community harms,” PHABC president Dr. Marjorie MacDonald said in a statement.
The following article is taken from the New York Newsday. We claim no ownership is claimed over this article; it is being posted purely for educational purposes. The legalization measures that passed are unprecedented…We’re hoping that this plays out well, because these legalizations have the power to change the world…
Washington and Colorado voters legalized recreational use of marijuana, making them the first U.S. states to decriminalize the practice.
Washington will allow those at least 21 years old to buy as much as one ounce (28 grams) of marijuana from a licensed retailer. Colorado’s measure allows possession of an ounce, and permits growing as many as six plants in private, secure areas.
“The voters have spoken and we have to respect their will,” Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper said in a statement. “This will be a complicated process, but we intend to follow through. That said, federal law still says marijuana is an illegal drug so don’t break out the Cheetos or Goldfish too quickly.” Support for marijuana’s recreational use built on measures that allow it for medical purposes in one-third of U.S. states. Previous attempts to legalize pot through ballot measures failed in California, Alaska, Oregon, Colorado and Nevada since 1972, according to the Denver-based National Conference of State Legislatures.
A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Colorado said federal law was not affected by the vote.
“The Department of Justice’s enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act remains unchanged,” said Jeff Dorschner in a statement. “We are reviewing the ballot initiative and have no additional comment at this time.”
NEW LEAF
Washington, Colorado and Oregon were among six states with marijuana on their ballots. In Massachusetts, residents approved a measure to allow medical use, while Arkansas voters rejected such a proposal. Medical-marijuana use is already permitted in 17 states and the District of Columbia. In Montana, a proposal to restrict the use of medical marijuana was leading, 57 percent to 43 percent, with 65 percent of ballots counted, the Associated Press said.
“It’s very monumental,” said Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, a Washington-based group that advocates legalization. “No state has ever done this. Technically, marijuana isn’t even legal in Amsterdam.” The approval of recreational pot goes a step beyond its acceptance in medical use. California was the first state to permit medical-marijuana when voters approved it in 1996. Federal prosecutors cracked down on the medical-marijuana industry in California last year, threatening landlords with jail if they didn’t evict the shops.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder released a letter a month before California voters considered a ballot measure to legalize recreational use of marijuana in 2010, saying the Justice Department would “vigorously” enforce federal law. The initiative failed.
A Justice Department spokesman, Dean Boyd, declined to comment Wednesday when reached by telephone.
In Washington state, decriminalization and new rules on driving under the influence take effect Dec. 6. The state liquor control board must adopt rules by Dec.
1, 2013 for licensing producers, processors and retailers.
The Washington measure may generate as much as $1.9 billion in revenue over five fiscal years, according to the state’s Office of Financial Management.
The drug war is one of the most misunderstood subjects in the mainstream political dialogue, even among people who are sympathetic to the plight of responsible drug users. It is rare for someone to come out and say that all drugs should be legal, but in all honesty this is the only logically consistent stance on the issue. To say that some drugs should be legal while others should not is still giving credence to the punishment paradigm and overlooking the external consequences of drug prohibition, or prohibition of any object for that matter.
There is no doubt that drug abuse is a serious issue in our culture, primarily because people are so depressed and beaten down that they self medicate just to be able to tolerate the average day. However, a prohibition policy is a policy of violence, because if you happen to be caught with any of these banned items you will be forcefully taken against your will and put in a cage, and if you dare to prevent this kidnap from taking place you will inevitably be killed. This is the fundamental issue surrounding the drug war that we need to be focused on. Instead of bickering over how to slightly reform drug policy, or arguing about which drug is more harmful than the other, we need to be pointing out that prohibition itself is an inherently violent policy that rests upon the stone age concept of punishment.
As I alluded to earlier, there are many external factors that are effected by the drug war that many people don’t take into account. That is because when you carry out acts of violence, even in the form of punishment, you then create a ripple effect which extends far beyond the bounds of the original circumstance to effect many innocent people down the line. The following list delves into those external factors to illustrate how drug users and non users alike, would be a lot better off if prohibition ended immediately.
(1) – Reduce Violent Crime – The steady increase in violent crime over the past few decades is directly correlated with the escalation of the drug war. As we saw during the times of alcohol prohibition, when you ban any inanimate object, you create an incentive for people to get involved in the black market distribution of that object. Since there is no accountability, or means of peaceful dispute resolution within the black market, buyers and sellers are forced to resort to violence as their sole means of handling disagreements.
Eventually, this violence spills over into the everyday world and effects everyone’s lives. No one could imagine Budweiser and Miller Lite in a back alley gunfight, but less than a century ago during alcohol prohibition, distributors of the drug were involved in shootouts on a regular basis, just as drug gangs are today. Of course, all of this violence came to an immediate end when alcohol was legalized, however, it was not long before the establishment found a new crusade in the drug war, which allowed them to continue the same policy just with different substances.
(2) Improve Seller Accountability and Drug Safety – In the black market one of the major drawbacks is that there is no accountability among the people selling the drug. Since anyone can get kidnapped and thrown in a cage for even dealing with the stuff, it really doesn’t make sense for people to be plastering their names and logos all over the drugs. In this age of corporate mercantilism logos and branding may seem like a really tacky idea, but when looking at the black market we can see the value in such things. Someone who is selling a product with their name on it, is going to go through far greater lengths to ensure the quality of their product, as opposed to someone who would remain anonymous.
This anonymity creates an incentive for people to be dishonest with what they sell. This could lead to rip offs, or downright contamination of the drug with unwanted harmful substances. This is why there was bathtub gin that would make you go blind if your drank it during alcohol prohibition. This is also the reason why some of the harder street drugs today are cut with toxic chemicals that increase the chance of overdose ten fold. The fact that the drugs need to be smuggled also creates the incentive to make drugs more potent, and thus in some circumstances more dangerous. The increased potency and decreased availability inevitably leads to a massive increase in cost. The increased cost is a whole other issue with its own unique side effects in regaurds to drug safety. When the price of the real drugs go up, people just start huffing paint thinner, smoking bath salts and cooking up crystal meth in their basements, which is then even many times more dangerous than the unbranded drugs on the black market.
(3) – Reduce Drug Availability to Children – Many children have houses that are filled with alcohol, yet most of them find it way easier to get drugs than to get alcohol even though alcohol is legal. Even if there were no legal age restrictions on alcohol, the societal and family norms would be just as effective at deterring children from then a formal prohibition policy. If we look overseas at countries that don’t have age restrictions on alcohol, younger people are oftentimes much more mature and informed about its effects than children in the west, and are more likely to make responsible decisions about mind altering substances. In Portugal where drugs have been decriminalized for some time now there has actually been a double digit drop in drug use by school age children.
(4) – Reduce Nonviolent Prisoner Population – A vast majority of the prisoners in the united states are there for nonviolent non crimes, many of which stem from the drug war. Currently, there are more people in US prisons than were in the gulags of Soviet Russia at its worst. Putting nonviolent people in cages, bringing violence against nonviolent people is a horrible violation of natural law. However, if you have no sympathy or compassion for the casualties in this drug war, I would point again to the external consequences which effect even the most vocal prohibitionist. According to the most cited Judge in the United States, Richard A. Posner, the government spends $41.3 billion per year of your tax money on law enforcement measures against mostly small time drug users.
(5) – Real Crime Can be Dealt With – Even in areas with a declining homicide rate, the murder cases that are going unsolved are continuing to climb. Police departments and buerocrats have a million excuses, but the drug war is one of the primary reasons for this occurrence. On one hand indiscriminate killings become more common than crimes of passion that are easy to figure out, but there is a much more sinister aspect of this as well. If you look at the rate of incarcerations for drug offenses, and how incredibly often drug cases are “solved” and found in favor of the state, it becomes obvious that the police have more of an incentive in their day to day activities to hunt down drug users than murderers. These people aren’t selfless public servants as the propaganda on primetime television would lead you to believe, they are average people just like you and me. They will even tell ya “im just doin my job”, so like most of us, when they are on the job they try to get the most amount of money for the least amount of work, and murder cases are really tough work.
A cop could even miss his quota by taking the time and effort to hunt down a murderer, instead of grabbing a kid with a bag of pot, which is a lot easier to find and a lot easier to catch. Quotas are another thing that many police departments deny, but time and time again evidence surfaces that proves otherwise, recently a former NYPD officer has come forward saying that he used to ticket dead people just to meet his quota. This is not to say that all cops are nasty people, but the way that their jobs are monopolized by the state and focused on the drug war corrupts their position and forces them to hurt innocent people and violate people’s rights even if they have the best of intentions.
(6) – Encourage Genuine Treatment for Addicts – As a result of international drug treaties most of the world has remained trapped in a punishment mindset when it comes to dealing with the social problem of drug addiction. While an addiction may be problematic for the person involved and everyone that they come in contact with, they are not a criminal until they actually hurt someone or damage their property, and even then they are a criminal because of their aforementioned transgression not because of their drug addiction. Even the treatment that we see today is not genuine because it is forced on people and doesent address the reasons why they are doing drugs in the first place. In other words, today’s treatment programs just try to bash the idea that “drugs are bad” into peoples heads, instead of really communicating with these them, treating them like human beings and overcoming the underlying issues in their lives that are pushing them towards lives of drug addiction.
(7) – Prevent Drug Overdoses – As I mentioned earlier most drug overdoses that happen today wouldn’t occur if it wasn’t for the artificially high potency of drugs that we see today. However, what is even more sad is that of those overdoses that do happen, many more of them could have been prevented but were not because witnesses were too afraid of the police getting involved to call for help. 9 states out of 50 in the US currently have good Samaritan laws to give legal amnesty to anyone who brings an overdosing person to the hospital, but that measure wouldn’t even be necessary if prohibition wasn’t a factor in the first place. The fact that people are actually afraid to call an ambulance in this country should really tell you something about the level that the police state has risen to.
(8) – Protect Individual Rights – Thanks to the drug war, merely on the whim of saying that they smell something cops are now able to enter homes, search cars and totally violate the rights of nonviolent people. The drug war and terrorism are the two biggest excuses used to violate peoples rights, yet according to the national safety council you are 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than a terrorist. The very existence of the drug war to begin with, or a prohibition on any object is a fundamental violation of natural rights that should not exist in any civilized society.
If you have any questions or disagreements feel free to email me at jgvibes@aotmr.com
What if everything you were ever told and believed about a subject wasn’t true? What if the well-meaning, trusted and respected people who told you those lies were just parroting the propaganda that they heard?
That’s the exact dilemma I found myself in about three years ago. For most of my life, I bought into the grim and terrifying stories I heard about — dare I say it? — marijuana.
Whether they called it doobie, reefer, pot, Mary Jane or plain ol’ weed, I believed all those ominous voices when they warned me that marijuana could cause everything from brain damage to a craving for stronger drugs (i.e., the “gateway” theory.) And so as I got older, I just kept repeating the same marijuana mantras to others, convinced that I was right. “Marijuana is dangerous,” I told others. “Only brain dead stoners use it.”
Someone once said to me, “the further you get away from the facts, the easier they can turn into a myth.” Boy, is that the truth. It all started three years ago when I decided to finally research marijuana. If anything, I was determined to prove to myself and others that my concerns were valid. Living in Colorado where medical marijuana was legal to possess and grow once you qualified for a “red card”, I was surrounded by “pot shops.” Thanks to Amendment 20 in our State Constitution, these dispensaries grew and flourished faster than it takes a medical marijuana bud to mature. In Denver County alone, there are around 400 medical marijuana dispensaries, outnumbering the 375 Starbucks statewide. I freely admit that I mocked these businesses and rolled my eyes at the people who frequented them. So, on that summer day nearly three years ago, I decided to dig into this controversial plant and arm myself with even more information that would support my anti-marijuana stance.
But a strange thing kept happening. The more I dug into what some opponents refer to as “the green menace,” the more I continued to find research studies I wasn’t aware existed. Some of these studies had been buried — perhaps purposely — and made scientific claims about Cannabis Indica and Cannabis Sativa that I found almost too good to be true. For example, I read a 1974 study (published in 1975) that was conducted at Virginia Commonwealth University that proved that the cannabinoids in the cannabis plant shrunk cancerous tumors and killed cancer cells, leaving healthy cells alone. Even though it was there in black and white, I still didn’t buy it. So I kept investigating. I found that when I used the Internet search terms “cannabis+indica+healing+benefits,” I got a whooping 220,000 websites. When I added the word “medical” to that group of words, the field increased to 452,000.
For the next six months, I spent every spare moment researching “the Devil Weed.” Putting it bluntly, I was shocked. There was absolutely nothing “devilish” about it. All this remarkable information had been out there, waiting to be discovered and all I had to do was agree to view it with an open mind. I learned that Cannabis Indica had been compounded into liquid extracts in the late 1800’s and up until the early 1900’s. These extracts were recommended by medical doctors to alleviate everything from teething pain in infants to reducing the pain of arthritis and menstrual cramps.
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