Thoughts from the void: Cannabis Advocacy

'The obedient well-behaved citizen who does his duty is not a 'hero'. Only an individual who has fashioned his 'self-will', his noble, natural inner law, into his destiny can be a hero. 'Destiny and cast of mind are words for the same thing,' said Novalis, one of the profoundest and least-known German thinkers. But only a hero finds the courage to fulfil his destiny.

- Self-will, 1919, If The War Goes On, Herman Hesse

'McGOVERN AND FRIEND

"Sen. George McGovern (D-SD), shown here campaigning in Nebraska where he has spent 23 hours a day for the past six days denying charges by local Humphrey operatives that he favors the legalization of Marijuana, pauses between denials to shake hands for photographers with his "old friend" Hunter S. Thompson, the notorious National Correspondent for Rolling Stone who was recently identified by Newsweek magazine as a vicious drunkard and known abuser of hard drugs."

A thing like that would have finished him here in Nebraska. No more of that "Hi, sheriff" bullshit; I am now the resident puff adder...and the problem is very real. In Ohio, which McGovern eventually lost by a slim nineteen-thousand-vote margin, his handlers figure perhaps ten thousand of those were directly attributable to his public association with Warren Beatty, who once told a reporter somewhere that he favored legalizing grass. This was picked up by the worthless asshole Sen. Henry Jackson (D.Wash.) and turned into a major issue.

So it fairly boggles the mind to think what Humphrey's people might do with a photo of McGovern shaking hands with a person who once ran for Sheriff of Aspen on the Freak Power ticket, with a platform embracing the use and frequent enjoyment of Mescaline by the sheriff and all his deputies at any hour of the day or night that seemed Right.'

- The Campaign Trail: Crank-Time on the Low Road, June 8, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

'I do not hesitate to say that those who call themselves abolitionists should at once effectually withdraw their support, both in person and property, from the government of Massachusetts and not wait till they have a majority of one before they suffer the right to prevail through them. I think that it is enough if they have God on their side, without waiting for that other one. Moreover, any man more right than his neighbours constitutes a majority of one already'- Civil Disobedience, Henry D Thoreau, Selected Writings on Nature and Liberty.

Cannabis advocates, as opposed to cannabis opponents, are strikingly, individuals in most cases. They may eventually inspire organizations but these can, in no way be compared to the size, reach and economic clout of the cannabis opponents who are primarily the big businesses without a face. So cannabis advocates versus cannabis opponents is a classic case of David versus Goliath, or the individual versus the big business. Most leading cannabis advocates, as individuals, have stood their ground for what they believe is their fundamental human right, and have not been afraid to speak out fearlessly in favor of the plant, while others have chosen to remain silent or gone about their cannabis usage discreetly for fear of law enforcement action or social stigmatization. The essence of cannabis advocacy has been well and truly a grassroots level movement of individuals seeking to right the wrongs of the past and free a plant and its people.

Some of the leading names that are stellar advocates of cannabis are musicians, poets, scientists, writers, physicians, sports persons, politicians, film actors, and other brilliant individuals who have mastered their respective fields. Names that come to mind immediately are Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, Neil Young, Carl Sagan, Lester Grinspoon, Snoop Dogg, William S Burroughs, Alan Ginsberg, Hunter Thompson, Bernie Sanders, Willie Nelson, Jack Kerouac, JJ Cale, John Sinclair, Naseeruddin Shah, Morgan Freeman, Justin Tradeau, Louis Armstrong, Keith Stroup, Melissa Etheridge, Whoopie Golberg, Halle Berry, Elizabeth Warren, to name a few. A number of journalists, functioning more in their individual capacities, rather than as voices of their organization, have also been key to swaying public opinion in favor of cannabis through fearless journalism, covering the injustices, presenting the latest scientific information, focusing on the grassroots level movement and the political progress in the area of cannabis legalization in different parts of the world.

Most of these individuals, through the course of their work, have tried to dispel the cloud of misinformation and reefer madness that has been the result of a relentless attack by big businesses, politicians, law enforcement, medical and religious bodies on cannabis world wide.

Sustained action by cannabis advocates has spawned organizations that have been wholeheartedly devoted to cannabis advocacy. Some of the leading cannabis advocacy groups that come to mind are National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), Drug Policy Alliance (DPA), Students for Safe Drug Policy (SSDP), International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC), Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), etc. Most are US based but have, over the years, started becoming international organizations.

The focus of cannabis advocacy groups is on running cannabis awareness campaigns, lobbying with governments and policy makers, speaking to the public about the benefits of cannabis legalization, the responsible use of cannabis and the harms of cannabis prohibition. Many of these groups focus on the areas that need immediate attention, such as human rights, disproportionate law enforcement action on minority groups, cannabis education, supporting minority and economically challenged individuals in setting up cannabis businesses, helping individuals with cannabis convictions to get their criminal records expunged, helping secure jobs for people who have suffered because of cannabis prohibition, helping draft legal recreational cannabis and medical cannabis laws in states where cannabis legalization is being pursued by lawmakers, pushing for reclassification and removal of cannabis from the US and UN Scheduled list of banned substances, highlighting the vast damage caused by the war on cannabis as well as the huge benefits of legalization.

Some advocates are essentially caregivers who have been quietly treating persons with terminal and debilitating illnesses through illegally procured cannabis that has helped improve the quality of life of these patients. Increasingly, physicians who are seeing the medical benefits of cannabis on their patients are becoming advocates and prescribing cannabis.

It is heartening to see that cannabis advocacy is being recognized as an important full time industry role and career option in the United States. Some bright youngsters, just out of college, are starting to pursue this as a full time occupation. With increased funding flowing in, cannabis advocacy is growing into serious business, and that can only mean big trouble for cannabis opponents as well as an increasingly brighter future for cannabis legalization world wide.

What has currently grown from a seed to a sapling to a small garden of advocacy needs to become a forest of public action against the prohibition of cannabis, and the forces that are trying to keep this in place. The changes have started, the result is inevitable, it is only a matter of time before the truth of the cannabis plant is evident to all. In the meantime, the harder the battle, the sweeter the victory for the cannabis advocate...

Listed below are articles taken from various media related to the above subject. Words in italics are the thoughts of your truly at the time of reading the article

https://norml.org/blog/2024/07/01/interning-with-norml-a-door-to-a-lifetime-of-advocacy/

https://norml.org/blog/2024/04/18/norml-op-ed-state-level-marijuana-legalization-has-been-a-stunning-success/

https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/opinion-is-cannabis-legalization-worth-it-absolutely

Sinclair was a lifelong poet, musician, and marijuana law reform advocate. In 1969, he received a ten-year prison sentence in the state of Michigan for providing two cannabis cigarettes to undercover law enforcement. His severe sentence led to one of the first ever national protests against marijuana prohibition: the “Free John Sinclair“ rally (featuring John Lennon, Stevie Wonder, Bob Seger, and others) held on December 10, 1971 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Shortly following the event, the Michigan Supreme Court ordered Sinclair’s release on bond, which had been previously denied by the lower courts; and on March 9, 1972 the court overturned his conviction.

Appropriately, John Sinclair was the first person to purchase recreational marijuana when it became legal in Michigan on December 1, 2019. “To me, this is all for other people,” Sinclair told reporters at the time. “I’ve been able to get weed every day since 1962. But I’m glad for the average person, that they don’t have to worry about it anymore.”

https://norml.org/blog/2024/04/03/norml-remembers-john-sinclair/

#1: More States Enact Adult-Use Marijuana Legalization Laws
#2: HHS Recommends DEA Reclassify Cannabis as a Schedule III Substance
#3: More Americans Than Ever Say Cannabis Should Be Legal for Adults
#4 More States Enact Workplace Protections for Cannabis Consumers
#5: Federal Courts Reject Second Amendment Ban for Marijuana Consumers
#6: Marijuana Arrests Fall to 30-Year Low
#7: POTUS Issues Pardon Proclamation for Those with Marijuana-Related Convictions
#8 Teen Marijuana Use Remains Below Pre-Pandemic Levels
#9: FDA Fails To Establish Rules for Hemp-Derived Cannabis Products
#10: Kentucky Becomes 38th State To Legalize Medical Cannabis Access

https://norml.org/news/2023/12/28/2023-year-in-review-normls-top-ten-events-in-marijuana-policy/

This scenario is hardly without precedent. Following the federal government’s repeal of alcohol prohibition, state and local governments moved in to enact their own laws regulating the production and sale of booze. Many remain in effect today. This is why beer laws in California are very different from the rules in Pennsylvania.

Of course, elements of the alcoholic beverage market — such as regulations on advertising, marketing and labeling — are overseen by federal agencies. Such limited federal oversight and standardization would similarly be welcome in the cannabis space, particularly manufacturing practices and product contaminant testing. However, no such oversight is possible as long as the federal government clings to the outdated notion that marijuana belongs in the same category as heroin.

When nearly half the states have moved away from this absurd notion — and when nearly 70 percent of Americans reject it — a change in federal policy is necessary and long overdue

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/08/25/light-fire-federal-marijuana-reform/

NORML declared in an email that "rescheduling is not enough," and in response to the letter, deputy director Paul Armentano said that "it will be very interesting to see how DEA responds to this recommendation, given the agency's historic opposition to any potential change in cannabis' categorization under federal law. Further, for decades, the agency has utilized its own five-factor criteria for assessing cannabis' placement in the CSA—criteria that as recently as 2016, the agency claimed that cannabis failed to meet. Since the agency has final say over any rescheduling decision, it is safe to say that this process still remains far from over."

Armentano argued that "the goal of any federal cannabis policy reform ought to be to address the existing, untenable chasm between federal marijuana policy and the cannabis laws of the majority of U.S. states," and rescheduling "fails to adequately address this conflict."

https://www.commondreams.org/news/biden-marijuana-rescheduling

NORML is saddened to report on the passing of Dr. Raphael Mechoulam, the “Father of Cannabis Research.” He was 92 years old.

Dr. Mechoulam began conducting pioneering scientific experiments with cannabis in the 1960s. His research team was the first to isolate THC, among other cannabinoids. In later years, his research played a key role in the discovery of the endogenous cannabinoids and their receptors.

For nearly five decades, Dr. Mechoulam served on the faculty of Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In the 1990s, he was among the founding members of the International Cannabinoid Research Society and the International Association for Cannabinoid Medicines.

https://norml.org/blog/2023/03/10/norml-remembers-dr-raphael-mechoulam/

'Bill Piper had worked at Drug Policy Alliance for two decades in the role of Senior Director of National Affairs. While with DPA he was responsible for developing and implementing strategies for ending the federal war on drugs, lobbying Congress in support of cutting drug war waste, fighting to protect state marijuana laws from federal interference, reforming draconian sentencing laws, re-structuring federal law enforcement agencies, and preventing drug overdoses and the spread of HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C.

Bill was a prevalent spokesperson in the media, having appeared on outlets such as Fox News, Al Jazeera, BBC News, Voice of America, and NPR’s Marketplace. He was quoted in a wide range of regional and national newspapers, including the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, Roll Call, Politico, San Francisco Chronicle, USA Today, and Washington Post. '

https://norml.org/blog/2021/10/28/norml-honors-bill-piper/

We know the part played by Leo Tolstoy in the early development of Romain Rolland. The boy's letter to the old man was taken seriously and answered; the famous man replied earnestly and lovingly to the schoolboy's questions, he responded like a father and a brother to the troubled child's impetuous outpourings. In doing so, the venerable sage performed a sacred and magical act, the act of transmitting a calling. And in the course of his rich and fruitful life, Rolland was to perform this same act a number of times. As an older man who had found his way, he encouraged younger men who were searching and, once he was convinced of their good will, transmitted the call to them. As an awakener, an adviser, a comrade in the struggle, he was helpful to the earnest seekers of his own generation and the two succeeding generations. He guarded a flame that is not yet extinguished, not even in Germany, where during the days of terror his forbidden books sharpened the eyesight and conscience, and sustained the hearts, of a faithful few. I still receive reminders of Rolland from Germany. I am questioned about my personal memories of him and asked for his books.

Dispersed throughout the world, there are many pious believers outside the churches and denominations, men of good will who are gravely alarmed at the decline of the human spirit, at the wasting away of peace and confidence in the world. These men have no priests, no ecclesiastical consolations, but they too have their voices crying out in the wilderness, their saints and martyrs. Among these were Romain Rolland; Leo Tolstoy, his awakener; and Mahatma Gandhi, his comrade and friend. Those three great consolers are dead but they live on in thousands of hearts; they help thousands to keep faith and to hold up their light to the sluggish unreasoning world.

- On Romain Rolland, 1948, If The War Goes On, Herman Hesse

'The activists are effectively telling DEA to evolve on various criminal justice reform issues—and they did so by placing a 2,001-pound block in front of the agency’s main building in Arlington, Virginia and drawing a scene as they mimicked apes.

“The Drug Enforcement Administration of the Department of Justice has failed the American people for too long,” Anonymous Apes said in a statement that was promoted by the advocacy group DC Marijuana Justice (DCMJ). “This monolith of government oppression has imprisoned 10’s of millions of American citizens for seeking healing relief with natural substances.”

“The DEA, much like a floppy disc or VHS tape, must innovate to represent current science around plant medicines and end its lopsided enforcement practices which disproportionately affect people of color,” Anonymous Apes said. “We believe this monolith has arrived to guide us to a better future, and joins with us to demand that the DEA be brought to justice.”'

https://www.marijuanamoment.net/activist-apes-erect-2001-pound-monolith-in-front-of-dea-headquarters-demanding-feds-evolve-on-drug-policy/

'But to find the science that ultimately convinced him of the therapeutic potential of cannabis, he had to look internationally, because there seemed to be a “very biased set of data” in the U.S. that focused almost exclusively on the potential harms rather than benefits.

“If you’re just looking at papers—well, this one [says there’s] potential long harm, this one possible addiction, this one gateway—you know, you’re seeing all those individual studies, but at a broader level, one step upstream, you realize that most of the studies that are getting funded are designed to look for harm,” Gupta said.

“When I saw that, that was the first time I thought, ‘well, why are the studies that are getting out there, why are they all designed to look for harm?” he said. “Then I started looking at other countries, and some really good research out of places like Israel in particular.”'

https://www.marijuanamoment.net/sanjay-gupta-explains-his-marijuana-reversal-and-discusses-very-biased-u-s-research-with-joe-rogan/

'Back in June, when John Kerry was beginning to feel like a winner, I had a quick little rendezvous with him on a rain-soaked runway in Aspen, Colorado, where he was scheduled to meet with a harem of wealthy campaign contributors. As we rode to the event, I told him that Bush's vicious goons in the White House are perfectly capable of assassinating Nader and blaming it on him. His staff laughed, but the Secret Service men didn't. Kerry quickly suggested that I might make a good running mate, and we reminisced about trying to end the Vietnam War in 1972.

That was the year I first met him. at a riot on that elegant little street in front of the White House. He was yelling into a bullhorn, and I was trying to throw a dead, bleeding rat over a black-spike fence and onto the president's lawn.

We were angry and righteous in those days, and there were millions of us. We kicked two chief executives out of the White House because they were stupid warmongers. We conquered Lyndon Johnson and we stomped on Richard Nixon - which wise people said was impossible, but so what? It was fun. We were warriors then, and our tribe was strong like a river.

That river is still running. All we have to do is get out and vote, which is still legal, and we will wash those crooked warmongers out of the White House.'

- The Fun-Hogs in the Passing Lane, November 11, 2004, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

'At its core, Stone Age uses cannabis as a vehicle to explore larger issues. “Those are very much conversations that make a lot of people uncomfortable,” says Perelman. “We want to create a space where, in a fun, entertaining, and thought-provoking way, we can elicit those types of dialogues, and start to create a new narrative and create more progress.”'

https://www.fastcompany.com/90683865/inside-new-york-citys-9000-square-foot-exhibit-about-weed

'Due to Students for Sensible Drug Policy reach across the U.S. and our chapter structure, SSDP is uniquely situated to make local policy change in multiple states and begin to directly end the War on Drugs by directing pressure at their town and county governments. The Resolution to Advance Sensible Drug Policy is an effort to equip all SSDP members with clear policy grounded in science, reason and compassion. This resolution empowers all SSDP members and their allies to further the movement to end the war on drugs in their local context, with support from an international movement. Leveraging the expertise of young people worldwide toward local policy change is where the SSDP network can be most effective.'

https://ssdp.org/blog/public-announcement-of-the-resolution-to-advance-sensible-drug-policy/

'Results
The most robust predictors of support for the CLCB were use of and policy support for medicinal cannabis use, voting for a left-wing political party, having a positive moral view of cannabis use, living in a small town and having read the CLCB. Predictors of opposing the CLCB were voting for right-wing parties, considering “frequent” cannabis use to be a high health risk, and lifetime use of other drugs. Age, ethnicity, education, employment status, religiosity and lifetime cannabis use were not significant predictors after controlling for other variables.'

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0955395921003479

So we contaminate our environment, food and water with dangerous man-made chemicals in the pursuit of quick money. These chemicals cause cancers in our bodies. To treat these cancers we make dangerous synthetic drugs, in the pursuit of quick money, that not only fail to treat the cancers, but also result in a collapse of most other body systems. This leads to a weakening and collapse of humans on increasingly larger scales as time goes by. But we do nothing to stop the contamination and weakening of our bodies that evolved over hundreds of millions of years and the contamination of our environment, food and water. Instead we continue searching for more powerful man made chemicals, to make more money faster, in the name of medicine for our environment, bodies and minds believing that we are masters of nature or, if not that, smarter than nature, whom we can fool like our gullible fellow men...but nature is not looking to make more money faster..she only deals in life and death...

"Society is an illusion to the young citizen. It lies before him in rigid repose, with certain names, men and institutions rooted like oak-trees to the centre, round which all arrange themselves the best they can. But the old statesman knows that society is fluid; there are no such roots and centres, but any particle may suddenly become the centre of the movement and compel the system to gyrate round it; as every man of strong will, like Pisistratus or Cromwell, does for a time, and every man of truth, like Plato or Paul, does forever.' - Politics, Emerson The Basic Writings of America's Sage

'After we eat, Thoman sets down a metal tube used to tighten nuts and bolts. In the small opening at the top are hefty buds of weed grown on his property. “An after-meal digestive?” he offers.

Up a ladder is a 12-windowed attic loft, once the bedroom for two kids and now webbed with wire for drying weed. Back-to-the-landers started cultivating marijuana for their own consumption in the mid '70s, and in the ensuing decades, their isolation, dedication to the crop, and general disregard for the law would turn Humboldt County into one of the epicenters of America's illegal cannabis industry. By the 1980s, former hippies who had once disavowed materialism were turning hefty profits; some built private “pot palaces” and became disconnected from the communes that first brought them into the countryside. Not Ted Thoman, though. He grows for himself and his friends. When we leave, he hands me a full baggie for later.'

https://www.gq.com/story/californias-vanishing-hippie-utopias

'Under a government which imprisons any unjustly the true place for a just man is also a prison. The proper place today, the only place which Massachusetts has provided for her freer and less desponding spirits, is in her prisons, to be put out and locked out of the State by her own act, as they have already put themselves out by their principles. It is there that the fugitive slave and the Mexican prisoner on parole and the Indian come to plead the wrongs of his race should find them, on that separate, but more free and honorable ground, where the State places those who are not with her, but against her - the only house in a slave state in which a free man can abide with honor. If any think that their influence would be lost there and their voices no longer afflict the ear of the State, that they would not be as an enemy within its walls, they do not know by how much truth is stronger than error, nor how much more eloquently and effectively he can combat injustice who has experienced a little in his own person. Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight. If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison or to give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose. If a thousand men were to not pay their tax bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peacable revolution, if any such is possible. If the taxgatherer or any other public officer asks me, as one has done, "But what shall I do?" my answer is, "If your really wish to do anything, resign your office." When the subject has refused allegiance and the officer has resigned his office, then the revolution is accomplished. But even suppose blood should flow. Is there not a sort of bloodshed when the conscience is wounded? Through this wound a man's real manhood and immortality flows out, and he bleeds to an everlasting death. I see this blood flowing now.'- Civil Disobedience, Henry D Thoreau, Selected Writings on Nature and Liberty.

'This was the first of three arrests for Rathbun, who continued defying the law by baking thousands of buttery cannabis brownies until just before she died on April 10, 1999. While headlines at the time painted “Brownie Mary” as a sweet and sassy grandma giving away pot-infused confections to the sick and dying, the real Rathbun was so much more.'

https://www.leafly.com/news/lifestyle/mary-rathbun-pot-brownie

'They conclude: “In the lead up to legalization, professional associations … suggested that legalization posed a threat to public health, advocated for the legal age for cannabis use to be set at a minimum age of 21 or 25, or that Canada should not legalize at all because it would place youth at greater risk of harm. With such categorical fears now shown to be largely unfounded, this should provide the basis to move forward on more nuanced grounds. … [O]n the balance, cannabis legalization – especially when considering the severe adverse social impacts of criminalization, and especially for youth – continues to offer the potential to better protect and achieve consequential net benefits to public health and welfare of cannabis users and society at large.”'

https://norml.org/blog/2021/08/17/analysis-marijuana-legalization-opponents-fears-have-not-come-to-fruition-in-canada/

'The current vogue for poisons has failed utterly to take into account these most fundamental considerations. As crude a weapon as the cave man's club, the chemical barrage has been hurled against the fabric of life - a fabric on the one hand delicate and destructible, on the other miraculously tough and resilient, and capable of striking back in unexpected ways. These extraordinary capacities have been ignored by the practitioners of chemical control who have brought to their task no 'high-minded orientation', no humility before the vast forces with which they tamper.' - Silent Spring, Rachel Carson, 1962

'If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go; perchance it will wear smooth - certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counterfriction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.'- Civil Disobedience, Henry D Thoreau, Selected Writings on Nature and Liberty.

'Marijuana reform activists in several states around the country are already working to qualify various statewide reform measures for the 2022 ballot. Here’s a breakdown of current statewide, citizen-initiated efforts so far:'

https://norml.org/blog/2021/08/03/2022-marijuana-reform-ballot-initiative-efforts-underway-nationwide/

'“Is it how I would have written it? No. Do I have concerns about potential overreach by the FDA? Yes. But I think largely this is going in the right direction,” Strekal said.

Despite the potential of decriminalization changing numerous lives for the better, some of the people that have watched the hiccups of state reforms over again and over again fear similar results at the federal level. This could permanently put the cannabis industry on a poor footing. Regardless of the little we know about what things will look like so far besides taxes, some are suggesting that any kind of federal move would collapse the industry. Strekal believes part of the problem is the defensive posture cannabis reforms had to take in the early going in order to be more palatable for lawmakers and voters.'

https://www.laweekly.com/cages-and-capitalism-norml-push-legalization-their-way/

So governments, the pharmaceutical industry and the medical industry cut off the supply of natural intoxicants like cannabis, opium, coca and palm toddy. They create refined and much more potent extracts from these natural materials. They control the supply and stock of these chemical drugs. They use the doctor-pharmacist route to administer these drugs to the public legally and the peddler-narcotics agent-rehabilitation center route to administer these drugs illegally. The individual is not allowed to grow or procure these intoxicants from nature. He must rely on the system to get his intoxicant and pay the maximum price for it. To realize more and more profits the system creates more and more potent chemical intoxicants moving further and further away from natural territory into synthetic chemically constructed territory. As the toxicity and addictive power of these drugs increase, the public gets addicted to an even greater extent and pays even more for any available intoxicant. Profits rise and fuel the growth of the system tremendously. The individual pays for the system, pays for the synthetic drug, pays for the treatment which is further synthetic drugs and eventually pays with his life for the synthetic intoxicant. Legalize all natural drugs - opium, coca, cannabis and toddy to name a few. Most importantly, legalize cannabis, the universal drug of the world...

'Amazon’s endorsement of the MORE Act didn’t draw big headlines, but it made an impact among those pushing to reform the country’s cannabis laws.

“It’s a big deal for such a large employer, and an employer and a company that nearly every American household interacts with in some way,” to endorse the MORE Act, said Chelsea Parsons, the Center for American Progress’ acting vice president for criminal justice reform. “It helps shift the culture around this issue.”'

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/20/amazon-legal-weed-500263

'How can a man be satisfied to entertain an opinion merely, and enjoy it? Is there any enjoyment in it if his opinion is that he is aggrieved? If you are cheated out of a single dollar by your neighbour, you do not rest satisfied with knowing that you are cheated, or with saying that you are cheated, or even with petitioning him to pay you your due, but that you take effectual steps at once to obtain the full amount and see that you are never cheated again. Action from principle, the perception and the performance of the right, changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with anything which was. It not only divides states and churches, it divides families; aye, it divides the individual, separating the diabolical in him from the divine.'- Civil Disobedience, Henry D Thoreau, Selected Writings on Nature and Liberty.

'In a first for the company, e-commerce behemoth Amazon lobbied the U.S. government on cannabis policy during the second quarter of this year, Business Insider reported.

The report did not detail exactly which aspects of cannabis policy were the focus of Amazon’s recent lobbying activity.

However, Seattle-headquartered Amazon announced in June that it would actively support the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act of 2021 (MORE Act).

At the same time, Amazon announced it would stop screening employees in many positions for cannabis usage.'

https://mjbizdaily.com/amazon-lobbies-government-on-cannabis-policy/

'If only the hearts of individual men would not be troubled by the temptations which assail them every hour, and would not be frightened by the imaginary terrors that alarm them; if only men recognized in what their mighty and all conquering power lies, that peace which they have always desired - not the peace obtained by diplomatic negotiations, by visits of emperors and kings from one town to another, by banquets, speeches, fortresses, artillery, dynamite and melinite, by exhausting the people by taxation or tearing the flower of the nation from toil and corrupting it, but the peace which is secured by the free advocacy of the truth by each individual man - would long since have been established among us.' -Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

'Although the current White House is not focused on cannabis and sees it as more of a peripheral issue, nothing could be further from the truth. Cannabis enforcement and its decades of effects have significantly contributed to the issues we now face around race relations, mass incarceration, policing policy, and economic opportunity. A president who is serious about each of those issues must also be serious about cannabis.'

https://www.brookings.edu/research/reversing-the-war-on-drugs-a-five-point-plan/

'But to speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no-government men, I ask for not at once no government, but at once a better government. Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step towards obtaining it.' - Civil Disobedience, Henry D Thoreau, Selected Writings on Nature and Liberty

'With millions of black ex-felons unable to vote because of their marijuana possession convictions, the status quo is rightly called "the New Jim Crow."

Thankfully, in the last few years states are recognizing the built-in racism in this prohibition. They are working to ensure that communities of color, having paid the dearest price for our war on marijuana, are the first to see the benefits of the newly legalized market, and that portions of the tax revenue raised from new cannabis sales are reinvested in the communities most ravaged by our War on Drugs. We also need to clear the records of people with marijuana convictions, something the governors of Illinois and Washington have made a priority. '

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/06/30/opinions/its-time-to-legalize-marijuana-rick-steves/index.html

'“I don’t smoke any weed, and that’s not a judgement,” O’Brien said. “It’s not that I have any problem with people smoking pot—I think it actually seems to be a fine herb. But the couple of times I’ve tried it, nothing really happened… But I know that you own a weed company so you might be able to tell me, maybe I was smoking the wrong stuff,” he said. “I don’t know. What would you want me smoking?”

On cue, Rogen pulled a joint from his shirt pocket. He told the host that if he smoked it, it “will be a great, weird show.”

“Are you, as a as a professor of weed, telling me that this is the kind you think I should use?” O’Brien asked.

“I think you should take one hit of that weed, and I think you’ll have a really good time.”

Then, in a moment of late-night TV history, a joint was lit, puffed and passed on the TBS program.'

https://www.marijuanamoment.net/conan-obrien-celebrates-retirement-by-smoking-marijuana-with-seth-rogen-on-tv/

'I do not wish to quarrel with any man or nation. I do not wish to split hairs, to make fine distinctions, or set myself up as better than my neighbors. I seek rather, I may say, even an excuse for conforming to the laws of the land. I am but too ready to conform to them. Indeed, I have reason to suspect myself on this head; and each year, as the taxgatherers come round, I find myself disposed to review the acts and position of the general and state governments and the spirit of the people to discover a pretext for conformity.

We must affect our country as our parents,
And if at any time we alienate
Our love or industry from doing it honor,
We must respect effects and teach the soul
Matter of conscience and religion,
And not desire of rule or benefit.'

- Civil Disobedience, Henry D Thoreau, Selected Writings on Nature and Liberty.

' “Along with music, herb was such an important part of my father’s life. He was always a strong advocate for marijuana and all of its healing qualities. We are thrilled to honor him and his contribution to the world of music and now cannabis at the Bob Marley Museum,” said Stephen Marley.

“We are thrilled to work with the Marley family to bring the Marley Natural portfolio to Jamaica through this flagship retail location. This unique cannabis experience will bring to life the ethos of Bob Marley,” said Damian Marano, CEO, Docklight Brands. “It is incredibly meaningful to have the first Marley Natural dispensary in the world at the Bob Marley Museum in Kingston, Jamaica.” '

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210607005453/en/Marley-Natural®-Flagship-Cannabis-Retail-Store-to-Open-at-the-Bob-Marley-Museum-in-Jamaica/

'Grant all this, as we must, yet I suppose none of my auditors will deny that we ought to seek to establish ourselves in such disciplines and courses as will deserve that guidance and clearer communication with the spiritual nature. And further, I will not dissemble my hope that each person whom I address has felt his own call to cast aside all evil customs, timidities, and limitations, and to be in his place a free and helpful man, a reformer, a benefactor, not content to slip along through the world like a footman or spy, escaping by his nimbleness and apologies as many knocks as he can but a brave and upright man, who must find or cut a straight road for everything excellent in the earth, and not only go honorably himself, but make it easier for all who follow him to go in honor and with benefit.' - Man the Reformer, Emerson, The Basic Writings of America's Sage

'Sometimes, Rick Steves wants to smoke a joint. And why not? The popular travel personality tells Eugene Weekly, it’s his right to do so, as it should be for everyone.

“If I want to hang out at home, smoke a joint and listen to my favorite music, that’s my civil liberty,” he says.

Steves, a TV and radio host and a best-selling European guidebook writer, has advocated for the legalization of marijuana for more than 15 years, volunteering his time on the board of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). He says illegal marijuana is racist, wrong and counterproductive. Steves was appointed as the NORML board chair in February, and is optimistic that this could be the year the federal government legalizes marijuana.'

https://www.eugeneweekly.com/2021/04/15/rick-steves-and-weed/

'The industry’s increasing legitimacy at the state level has attracted a diverse set of corporate players, union advocates, personal-use supporters and social-justice activists, reflecting the industry’s widening base even if its participants are sometimes at odds with each other.'

https://www.wsj.com/articles/cannabis-goes-corporate-lobbyists-unions-seek-to-shape-marijuana-industry-11620466202

'Besides running a business, navigating her kindergartener’s virtual learning assignments, and potty training a toddler, Anthony moderates a judgment-free refuge for her 23k Instagram followers who agree with her mantra: Moms who smoke weed are not bad moms.

What started in 2017 as a casual Instagram account where Anthony openly embraced motherhood and cannabis has now blossomed into a safe haven for like-minded moms.

The goal behind Blunt Blowin’ Mama is to normalize weed while letting other cannabis-consuming moms know they’re not alone. Anthony does this by tapping into her journalism and social media skills to amplify stories and experiences from parents who consume cannabis and experts who discuss the plant and debunk misconceptions. Central to the discussion is the importance of embracing diversity within the cannabis community.'

https://www.leafly.com/learn/social-justice/lumen/shonitria-anthony

'In any other industry, the harm of a product like this would be limited to an offense against good taste. But cannabis isn’t any other industry. The harm here goes far deeper. Tens of millions of Americans have had their freedom revoked and their lives ruined by nonsense criminalization and the War on Drugs. Those harms are reinforced by the stigma surrounding cannabis, and the stereotypes that still cling to healthy, happy, everyday consumers.

Canna Bumps isn’t just a marketing pitch gone awry. It’s actively facilitating the risk and harm that millions of Americans face every day.

So way to go, THC Living. Neat idea. Clever. Very not fucking funny.'

https://www.leafly.com/news/industry/neat-idea-canna-bumps-thanks-for-keeping-marijuana-illegal

'Steves said his devotion to the legalization cause was largely inspired by his travels abroad, and by witnessing the safe and compassionate approach that many European nations have taken to marijuana.

“In Europe, they’re not into legislating morality and incarceration, they’re into something called pragmatic harm reduction,” he said. “And in this country right now, it’s [confronting] a law based on lies, started by President Nixon in 1971 when he was mad at the hippies.” '

https://www.wgbh.org/news/national-news/2021/04/20/step-aside-bellingham-hippies-rick-steves-has-a-marijuana-message-for-the-squares

'When New Mexico became the 18th state to legalize marijuana, Paul Armentano had to smile.

“The dominoes are falling,” says Armentano, the deputy director of NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws), author of several pro-marijuana books, consultant on marijuana policy reforms, and a 13-year Vallejo resident.

“It took a quarter of a century to go from 0 to where we are now and less than a decade to go from 0 states regulating the adult use of marijuana to having 43 percent of people living in jurisdictions where it’s legalized,” Armentano said, believing the trend continues.'

https://www.timesheraldonline.com/2021/04/19/vallejos-paul-armentano-the-dominoes-are-falling/

'Yes, of course, reasoned arguments and statistical data have their place in fomenting political change, and we never could have gotten this far in the legalization movement without them. But all the same salient facts existed back in 1971, when a Harvard Medical School professor named Dr. Lester Grinspoon published his seminal book, Marihuana Reconsidered.

Grinspoon originally set out to research the subject in an effort to convince his best friend, famed astronomer Carl Sagan, to stop smoking so much weed. Instead, the good doctor came away convinced that the government’s case against cannabis was based on lies and propaganda. Assuming that an impeccably sourced scholarly work exposing this terrible injustice would lead to rapid societal change, he first gave a private mea culpa to his best bud, then set out to share his findings with the world.'

https://www.leafly.com/news/politics/chronic-chronology-great-moments-in-4-20-history

Just as the presence of a tiger is an indicator of a healthy, vibrant forest, the presence of legal recreational ganja is an indicator of a healthy, vibrant society.
Legalize it...

'Legalization Nation is a comic strip aiming to educate the population about what exactly is happening right under their noses. It covers legalization from a ground level perspective, not shying away from black market discussion, patients' rights, corporate advantage and more. People want to legalize weed very much, but don't quite understand what this looks like in practice because it's happening so lightning fast.

Brian "Box" Brown, is a cartoonist, New York Times Best Seller, Eisner Winner and Pennsylvania Medical Cannabis Patient. My non-fiction graphic novel Cannabis: The Illegalization of Weed in America, studies why cannabis became illegal. I stopped short of covering the legalization process because it's too fast moving and complex. By the time a book about legalization was released it would be horribly outdated.'

https://www.patreon.com/LegalizationNation

'“Today, the long-term harm of cannabis prohibition in communities of color throughout the country is profound,” the document continues. “As we look to solutions to provide healing, the dangerous policing tactics that were developed to execute the war on marijuana, including no-knock warrants and other aggressive tactics, shock the nation and have led us to historic levels of mistrust. When a large majority of Americans no longer believe cannabis should be illegal, aggressive enforcement tactics quickly lose support. A general pardon of all former and current federal non-violent cannabis offenders would be the kind of grand, ambitious, and impactful action that would effectively signal to marginalized communities that their suffering is seen and that the government seeks to remedy their harms.”'

https://lawandcrime.com/drug-policy/marijuana-and-racial-justice-advocates-call-on-biden-to-issue-categorical-pardon-grants-to-non-violent-cannabis-offenders/

'There are people who want to make money off of marijuana, and there are people who want to defend the civil liberty to smoke marijuana. And at NORML, we are not in the business of making money on NORML, and we're not a lobby organization for or against the marijuana business. We have been working very hard for 30 or 40 years simply to take the crime out of the equation and recognize the civil liberty for adults to smoke marijuana responsibly in their home. And that's what we do.'

https://finance.yahoo.com/video/not-pro-marijuana-pro-civil-182528267.html

https://www.dcfpi.org/all/first-in-line/

https://uprootingthedrugwar.org/

'For the first time, IDPC's new Strategic plan also defines five 'priority areas' for 2021-2023, following consultations and discussions with the IDPC membership and partners:

- Decriminalisation and criminal justice reforms.
- Drug policy impacts on women.
- The global Support. Don't Punish campaign.
- Cross-UN involvement and the Common Position.
- Protecting civil society space and building alliances.'

https://idpc.net/about/idpc-s-strategic-plan-2021-2023

The Allahabad High Court quashed a FIR against an inter-faith couple, saying that the right to live with an individual of one's choice is intrinsic to the right to life and personal liberty under Article 21 of the constitution. This right to live with a consenting adult individual of one's choice is also, besides inter-faith couples, applicable to couples of the same-sex as well. Extending it further, it also applies to consensual human-animal relationships and human-plant relationships. Mind you, right to live is not right to sex, unless both individuals consent to it. This right to life and personal liberty, therefore, applies to a human's relationship with the cannabis plant. If I plant some cannabis seeds and the plant decides to sprout and grow with me, then it has chosen its right to life and personal freedom. Any law stating that it is illegal to grow a cannabis plant at home for personal reasons is a law against the right to life and personal liberty of the person growing the cannabis plant and, equally importantly, to the right to life and personal liberty of the cannabis plant itself.

'The legalization of marijuana still has its battles. The negative stigma associated with its use can be traced back as far as the 1930s. Fortunately, the fight is being won one state at a time.'

https://www.benzinga.com/markets/cannabis/20/09/17538552/the-history-of-cannabis-legislation-and-an-homage-to-its-pioneers

'NIHC says it plans to focus its advocacy on China and Europe as “top priority markets,” aiming to develop relationships and trade policies that will promote the sale of hemp products that are manufactured domestically.

The federal government has also recognized the market potential of China for the crop, which historically has been a main source of hemp imports. A trade deal announced at the beginning of the year requires the country to import hemp from the U.S. on a larger scale over the next two years.'

https://www.marijuanamoment.net/usda-awards-hemp-advocacy-group-200000-to-support-international-trade/

'They wanted to know how the marijuana would make them feel and we told them it would make them feel good. I still hadn't learned how to roll a joint in those days, so when the Beatles agreed to try some, I asked Dylan to roll the first joint. Bob wasn't much of a roller either, and a lot of the grass fell into the big bowl of fruit on the room service table. Bob hovered unsteadily over the bowl as he stood at the table while he tried to lift the grass from the baggie with the fingertips of one hand so he could crush it into the leaf of rolling paper which he held in his other hand. In addition to the fact that Bob was a sloppy roller to begin with, what Bob had started drinking had already gotten to him.'

https://www.celebstoner.com/blogs/steve-bloom/2014/08/29/lets-ave-a-larf-the-beatles,-bob-dylan-and-marijuana/

'At 79, the Croz concluded: “We’ve been watching the effects of smoking marijuana on me for almost 60 years now. So far it hasn’t done anything we can tell. My memory has never been really great, and when I’m really stoned I have trouble remembering your name, but it hasn’t had any physical harm as far as we can tell.”'

https://www.celebstoner.com/news/celebstoner-news/2020/11/12/david-crosby-smoked-out-the-beatles/

'Over my 5 years of active cannabis advocacy, I’ve embraced all 5 of these steps — but I also recognize that my ability to do so is due in part to the level of privilege I hold.

While past cannabis policies have been detrimental to everyone, they have been uniquely destructive within historically marginalized communities.

As the current cannabis reform movement intersects with 2020s renewed focus on civil and human rights, it’s time for the cannabis advocates who are experiencing the most freedom to ensure lasting change for all.'

https://www.healthline.com/health/becoming-a-conscious-cannabis-advocate

'Proponents of state ballot measures have outraised opponents this election season by almost 36-to-1, a massive increase from four years ago when advocates outstripped the opposition by only 4-to-1.

Supporters of the legalization measures in Arizona, Mississippi, Montana, New Jersey and South Dakota have brought in roughly $19.6 million so far, compared with only $546,000 raised by opponents, according to a Marijuana Business Daily analysis using data from Ballotpedia and campaign-finance disclosures.

But that is a far cry from the $83.5 million supporters raised for the eight measures on the 2016 ballot, when California and Maine each raised record sums.'

https://mjbizdaily.com/marijuana-legalization-proponents-outraising-opponents-36-to-1-in-2020/

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/marijuana-legalization-advocates-fighting-end-war-cannabis-210407817.html

'“If the Democrats do a clean sweep, then descheduling with interstate trade is definitely within the realm of possibility,” said Randal Meyer, the executive director of the Global Alliance for Cannabis Commerce (GACC).

Descheduling is akin to the cannabis holy grail.

It would simultaneously:

- Legalize marijuana federally.
- End the 280E tax restrictions.
- Open banking access.
- Allow for interstate and international cannabis trade.

“Descheduling unlocks everything else, including banking, relief on 280E, everything,” said Steven Hawkins, the executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project. “It’s a rock that kills three birds.”'

https://mjbizdaily.com/marijuana-advocates-eye-federal-legalization-after-2020-election/

'This long slow trudge to overcome the misinformation and exaggerated fears about marijuana smoking, and to convert citizens from prohibitionists to legalizers, did not happen on its own.

It was the result of the effective public advocacy and lobbying efforts of hundreds of dedicated individuals who made this issue a priority in their lives and refused to accept the status quo, even in a difficult political environment.

This week I want to focus some attention on a few of the NORML activists who have, for decades, demonstrated the courage and commitment required to effectively challenge marijuana prohibition, and who have made it possible for us to experience the success we currently enjoy.'

https://norml.org/blog/2020/10/02/a-founder-looks-at-50-spotlighting-some-of-the-norml-freedom-fighters-who-have-challenged-prohibition-for-decades/

'As states across the country decriminalize and legalize the use of cannabis, the rapid growth of the cannabis industry is largely enjoyed solely by white Americans. Though cannabis use is similar across race, Black Americans are 3.7 times more likely than white people to be arrested for possession. It is crucial that people who have previously been convicted of a cannabis-related offense also enjoy the benefits afforded by decriminalization.

This toolkit provides three plausible legal routes — expungement, sealing, and vacating — one can take to begin repairing the consequences of marijuana-related records on vulnerable communities.

Varying state laws, immigration consequences, and the expense of record expungement are all things that must be considered when determining the best strategy for either expunging, sealing, or vacating records.

Over the past few years, significant progress has been made to address the expungement of certain cannabis-related convictions. States like Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, and Washington, among others, have voted to authorize record relief for cannabis offenses. New Jersey, Illinois, and New York have authorized automatic processes. We encourage everyone to explore creative options within your own jurisdictions. We also encourage advocates to help uplift the importance of automatic expungement within states. The Expungement Now: A Post-Conviction Toolkit for Attorneys and Advocates, provides messaging tools, facts, sample tweets, and tips for writing and placing an op-ed in a local newspaper to assist local advocates who seek reform.'

https://lawyerscommittee.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Expungement-Now-Toolkit-FINAL.pdf

10 actually...

1. Because cannabis is a medicine
2. We should stop wasting scarce resources
3. We should preserve freedom and increase justice
4. Prohibition has become a pretext for arresting decent, law-abiding people
5. Legalization creates jobs and raises tax revenue
6. Legalization increases product safety
7. Marijuana is less harmful than alcohol
8. Legalization has not led to increased road deaths
9. The gateway theory has been debunked. So has ‘amotivational syndrome’
10. Legalization has not increased teen use

https://www.leafly.com/news/politics/9-marijuana-legalization-arguments

'Playboy has long advocated for cannabis law reform and pushed the conversation forward. Fifty years ago this year, in 1970, Playboy became the proud founding donor of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). Notably, in 1969, Playboy published a professional assessment entitled "Pot: A Rational Approach," and consistently, the pages of Playboy have declared boldly that the "war on drugs" and similar actions have created systemic inequality including in our criminal justice system.'

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/playboy-launches-cannabis-law-reform-and-advocacy-campaign-301137841.html

'And so Hunter Thompson lost the Battle of Aspen. But Freak Power would win the war.

In the next election, the entire Aspen City Council was voted out and replaced by Joe Edwards and other counterculture types. Then in 1976 Sheriff Whitmire was removed from his post amid accusations of misappropriating funds from the jail, and an ally of Hunter Thompson took over and enacted many of the Freak Power movement’s proposed reforms.

Aspen (alas, not “Fat City”), a town of just over 7,000 residents, now has seven cannabis dispensaries in its downtown core alone, and last year became the first city in history to have more cannabis sales than alcohol sales in a single year.'

https://www.leafly.com/news/lifestyle/hunter-s-thompson-sheriff-campaign

'As I look back on those early days, I think the credibility and likability of these two senior citizens provided great political cover for a proposal that was seen at the time as primarily of interest to young Americans, and that most older Americans continued to consider a somewhat radical proposal. We had other witnesses, including some of the senior staff from the Marijuana Commission, who could provide more specific data to elected officials, but none who had a more positive impact on their attitudes about marijuana. These two senior citizens who thought it made sense to stop arresting marijuana smokers were hard to ignore.'

https://norml.org/blog/2020/09/10/a-founder-looks-at-50-some-early-unexpected-supporters-of-marijuana-decriminalization/

'Holland said: “The Brief exposes a fundamental paradox – if cannabis is federally illegal for all purposes, and the three coordinate branches of federal government have acted to allow for cannabis businesses, then the federal government is nullifying its own law. Simply put, under the Constitution, something cannot be illegal and legal at the same time especially when it comes to state laws that conflict with federal laws. The only resolution to this constitutional conflict is for the Supreme Court to invoke the doctrine of estoppel to prevent the federal government from reversing course and retroactively penalizing that which it has protected in fostering state cannabis programs and effectively legalizing it.”'

https://norml.org/news/2020/09/17/norml-files-amicus-brief-to-the-supreme-court-challenging-cannabis-schedule-i-prohibited-status

'Hair follicle testing is well established to possesses limited probative value, which is why it has never gained a particularly strong foothold in the general workplace. Federal authorities have also rejected the inclusion of hair follicle testing in the federal workplace drug testing guidelines on multiple occasions dating back decades. The newly proposed rules explicitly recognize the technology’s many limitations, acknowledging that “a positive hair test alone, without corroborating evidence, may be vulnerable to legal challenge.”

If the plan is adopted, HHS estimates that hair follicle testing will be some eight-times more expensive than traditional urinalysis, and that it will likely only be utilized in “approximately one percent of the 275,000 specimens tested per year.”'

https://norml.org/news/2020/09/17/norml-slams-proposed-changes-to-federal-drug-testing-rules-to-permit-hair-follicle-analysis

'First, the House’s pending floor vote is historic. It will be the first time since the passage of the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 that a Congressional chamber has ever voted on legislation to remove marijuana from its prohibitive classification under federal law.'

https://norml.org/blog/2020/09/10/four-reasons-why-the-more-act-vote-is-a-really-big-deal/

'“It united stoners all around the world,” actor Tommy Chong has said. “We always knew that there were other stoners out there, but until High Times magazine came along, no publication had devoted everything to the weed.”

It was an instant hit, and its circulation quickly climbed into the hundreds of thousands. “High Times was a rocket. It was the Playboy of pot. It was the Playboy of drugs,” gushed Steve Bloom, who joined the magazine in the ’80s and rose to be its top editor.

At its outset, the magazine was something of a smuggler’s bible, full of tips and tricks for profitably moving the plant across borders. The weed coverage mingled with general interest reportage from around the world. Early issues included Bob Marley’s first-ever magazine cover, an interview with the Dalai Lama in India, and a conversation between Truman Capote and Andy Warhol.'

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/09/04/high-times-hard-times-404419

'From Locke’s perspective, an individual has the right to their own body and what they put into their body. When this something comes from the earth itself, your right to that liberty is even more well-established. Notice Locke does not say “The earth, and all that is therein besides plants with psychoactive properties, is given to men for the support and comfort of their being.”'

https://norml.org/blog/2020/09/01/opinion-21st-century-john-locke-would-fight-for-marijuana-legalization/

'The introduction of the concept of “responsible” marijuana use was also an important strategic pivot that helped convince many Americans who may have no personal interest in smoking that one can smoke marijuana responsibly and not cause any problems. But we knew it would be important to define more clearly what we meant by “responsible use,” or our opponents would define it in a manner that was unnecessarily narrow and limiting for consumers.'

https://norml.org/blog/2020/08/20/a-founder-looks-at-50-the-concept-of-responsible-marijuana-use/

'Former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark has been appointed the chair of the 26-member Global Commission on Drug Policy.

Clark succeeds the former President of the Swiss Confederation, Ruth Dreifuss, who has served as chair since 2016.

Since its establishment in 2011, the Global Commission has advocated for evidence-informed drug policy. and challenged a prohibitionist approach to drugs.'

https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/300092341/helen-clark-appointed-chair-of-the-global-commission-on-drug-policy

'Our societies cannot afford a straitjacket criminal justice system where repression is the prime way to enforce laws, including those which are unfair, unjust,and disproportionate. We need societies which are flexible, adaptable and humane, and in which people are not intimidated and tortured. Reforming drug policies,opening debates on drug control and on empowering citizens for informed decisions,and considering how to end these degrading and cruel punishments is more timely now than ever. '

https://www.globalcommissionondrugs.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/media-release-GCDP-corporal-punishment_En.pdf

'Another interesting Playboy ad featured a caricature of Queen Victoria sitting on a throne, smoking a joint, with the headline “Last year 300,000 Americans were arrested for smoking an herb that Queen Victoria used regularly for menstrual cramps”, an obscure fact that is well documented.'

https://norml.org/blog/2020/08/13/a-founder-looks-at-50-you-bet-i-did-and-i-enjoyed-it/

'In a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), more than 120 groups—including the American Civil Liberties Union, NAACP, Human Rights Watch, Drug Policy Alliance and Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights—said it’s imperative to hold the vote on the Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act.

They said leadership should “swiftly advance this comprehensive marijuana justice policy that addresses criminal justice reform, racial justice, and equity” and noted that the Judiciary Committee approved the legislation last year. The bill currently has 83 cosponsors, including two who signed on this week.'

https://www.marijuanamoment.net/aclu-naacp-and-other-groups-push-congress-to-pass-marijuana-legalization-bill-by-next-month/

'Criminal penalties for simple possession would be removed on the federal level. While Congress can’t change state laws under which a majority of people punished for drug offenses are prosecuted, the proposal states that federal dollars would no longer go to states for drug enforcement purposes. Also, military equipment would not be allowed to be transferred to local or state law enforcement departments for drug enforcement, no-knock warrants and surveillance technologies for drug offenses would be prohibited and employment discrimination based on criminal conviction disclosures would also be banned.

Under the proposed legislation, drug scheduling classification responsibilities would be shifted from DEA to the National Institutes of Health (NIH).'

https://www.marijuanamoment.net/federal-drug-decriminalization-model-unveiled-by-top-reform-group/

'John Sinclair is a poet and radical political activist from Detroit who had helped found the White Panther Party, a militantly anti-racist countercultural group of socialists seeking to assist the Black Panthers during the civil rights movement. Following a couple of convictions for the possession of marijuana, Sinclair had been sentenced to 10 years in state prison in 1969 for giving two joints to an undercover narcotics agent.

His extraordinary sentence had caught the attention of other radical political activists, including Abbie Hoffman and fellow poet Allen Ginsberg, and most importantly John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who scheduled a “Free John Sinclair” concert and rally at the Crisler Arena in Ann Arbor, to draw attention to Sinclair’s plight. '

https://norml.org/blog/2020/07/24/a-founder-looks-at-50-the-free-john-sinclair-rally-public-protests-sometimes-matter/

'The data tracks arrests, not individuals, so there’s no mechanism for winnowing out repeat offenders. Nor does it include arrests for the sale or production of marijuana. But the numbers still illustrate how marijuana enforcement continues to make up a big part of many police agencies’ caseloads.

The findings reflect, in part, a few simple realities: The federal government incentivizes aggressive drug enforcement via funding for drug task forces and generous forfeiture rules that allow agencies to keep cash and other valuables they find in the course of a drug bust. And because marijuana is bulky and pungent relative to other drugs, it’s often easy for police to root out.'
https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2019/04/15/where-war-weed-still-rages/

Happy Ganja Day to the lovers, friends and supporters of the divine herb. As we celebrate this day, let us not forget the millions who are imprisoned or face criminal action because of their association with the herb and its current worldwide illegal status. Let us not forget the millions who continue to suffer from physical and mental conditions and their lack of access to the medicinal properties of the plant. Let us not forget the millions who are addicted to heroin, methamphetamine, prescription drugs, alcohol, tobacco, novel psychoactive substances, synthetic cannabinoids and other dangerous substances without access to the natural, recreational herb. Let us hope that the opponents of the herb find reason and understanding in the coming days. Let us also look forward to the fast approaching inevitable day when the herb is finally free once again and available to every living being worldwide as it was always meant to be.

'Overall, this study finds that the adoption and diffusion of [Medical Marijuana Laws]MMLs is mainly determined by the opinions of citizens rather than the political ideology of elected officials or the government’s fiscal health conditions.'
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01442872.2019.1656805

' Bulletin

KERRY WINS GONZO ENDORSEMENT: DR. THOMPSON JOINS DEMOCRAT IN CALLING BUSH "THE SYPHILIS PRESIDENT"
""Four more years of George Bush will be like four more years of syphilis," the famed author said yesterday at a hastily called press conference near his home in Woody Creek, Colorado. "Only a fool or a sucker would vote for a dangerous loser like Bush," Dr. Thompson warned. "He hates everything we stand for, and he knows we will vote against him in November."

"I endorsed John Kerry a long time ago," he said, "and I will do everything in my power, short of roaming the streets with a meat hammer, to help him be the next president of the United States.""

Which is true; I said all those things, and I will say them again. Of course I will vote for John Kerry. I have known him for thirty years as a good man with a brave heart - which is more than even the president's friends will tell you about George W. Bush, who is also an old acquaintance from the white-knuckle days of yesteryear. He is hated all over the world, including large parts of Texas, and he is taking us all down with him.

Bush is a natural born loser with a filthy rich daddy who pimped his son out to rich oilmongers. He hates music, football, and sex, in no particular order, and he is no fun at all.'

- The Fun-Hogs in the Passing Lane, November 11, 2004, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

'Fifty years ago, cannabis was known as the drug most emblematic of counterculture. Today, many people promote it as a fount of treatments for almost any ailment imaginable. This immense about-turn is reflected in changes in legal regimes: medicinal use of cannabis is now permitted in many countries, and some also allow the drug to be used recreationally. The times, they have a-changed.'
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02523-6

'The question is frequently asked: Why does a man become a drug addict?

The answer is that he usually does not intend to become an addict. You don't wake up one morning and decide to become a drug addict. It takes at least three months' shooting twice a day to get any habit at all. And you don't really know wht junk sickness is until you have had several habits. It took me almost six months to get my first habit, and then the withdrawal symptoms were mild. I think it is no exaggeration to say it takes about a year and several hundred injections to make an addict' - Prologue, Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953

'Sisley, the petitioner in the DEA lawsuit, says she’s staying realistic for now. She says she recently received word from a former DEA official in Arizona on the matter, who claimed that it’s very likely the case that the DEA’s recent announcement is the agency’s latest in a series of stall tactics. “Rule-making process is code word for delay,” Sisley continues. “[The DEA] could slow play us for years. So I’m not celebrating yet.”'
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/pot-research-university-mississippi-cannabis-license-dea-886606/

'A Christian is independent of human authority because he only acknowledges the authority of God, whose law revealed by Christ he recognizes in himself and voluntarily obeys.

And this liberation is gained not by means of struggle, not by the destruction of existing forms, but only by a change in the understanding of life. A Christian recognizes the law of love revealed to him by his teacher, as perfectly sufficient for all human relations, and therefore regards all use of violence as unnecessary and wrong. He also, with his different conception of life, regards those deprivations, sufferings, or threats of deprivation and suffering, by which a man with the social conception of life is reduced to the necessity of obedience, merely as inevitable conditions of existence (like sickness, hunger, and all sorts of calamities), which he patiently endures without forcible resistance, but not as anything that can serve as a guide to his actions. The only guide for a Christian's actions is to be found in the divine principle that dwells within him, which cannot be checked or governed by anything else.' - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

'The stereotypical image of a cannabis smoker is someone who sprawls on the sofa for hours surrounded by a haze of smoke and half-eaten snacks. The scene is played up for laughs in films, but social psychologist Angela Bryan thought it could be cause for concern. After all, cannabis is known to increase appetite and aid relaxation, which might put people at risk of health conditions such as obesity, says Bryan, who is at the University of Colorado Boulder.

But digging into health trends revealed the opposite. Nationwide US studies report that, compared to non-users, cannabis users actually have a lower prevalence of obesity.'
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02529-0

Our kingdom, my dear Max Brod, is simply 'not of this world'. Our business is not to preach or to command or to plead but to stand fast amid hells and devils. We cannot expect to exert the least influence through our fame or through the concerted action of the greatest possible number of our fellows. In the long view, to be sure, we shall always be the winners, something of us will remain when all the ministers and generals of today have been forgotten. But in the short view, in the here and now, we are poor devils, and the world wouldn't dream of letting us join in its game. If we poets and thinkers are of any importance, it is solely because we are human beings, because for all our failings we have hearts and minds and a brotherly understanding of everything that is natural and organic. The power of the ministers and other policy-makers is not based on the heart or mind but on the masses whose 'representatives' they are. They operate with something that we neither can nor should operate with., with number, with quantity, and that is a field we must leave to them. They too have no easy time of it, we must not forget that, actually they are worse off than we are, because they have not an intelligence, a rest and unrest, an equilibrium of their own, but are carried along, buffeted, and in the end wiped away by the millions of their electorate. Nor are they unmoved by the hideous things that go on under their eyes and partly as a result of their mistakes; they are very much bewildered. They have their house rules that cover them and perhaps make their responsibility more bearable. We guardians of the spiritual substance, we servants of the word and of truth, watch them with as much pity as horror. But our house rules, we believe, are more than house rules, they are true commandments, eternal and divine laws. Our mission is to safeguard them, and we endanger it every time we agree, even with the noblest intentions, to play by their 'rules'.

- An Attempt at Justification, May 1948, If The War Goes On, Herman Hesse

'After discussing the data limitations of the study, the authors concluded that “it indeed seems to be the case that legalizing the recreational use of marijuana results in fewer marijuana related arrests and court cases” and that while law enforcement sources voiced various concerns, several “indicated that methamphetamine and heroin were much larger problems for their agencies than was marijuana.”

The team “saw no evidence that marijuana legalization had an impact on indicators in border states,” adding that they “found no indications of increases in arrests related to transportation/trafficking offenses.”'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/study-funded-by-feds-debunks-myths-about-marijuana-legalizations-alleged-harms/

'The socialists, communists, and anarchists, with their bombs, riots, and revolutions, are not nearly so much dreaded by governments as the scattered individuals in various countries all justifying their refusals on the ground of one and the same familiar doctrine. Every government knows how and with what to defend itself against revolutionaries, and has the means of doing so, and therefore does not dread these external foes. But what are governments to do against these people who show the uselessness, superfluity, and harmfulness of all governments, and instead of contending with them merely show that they do not need them, that they can get along without them and are therefore unwilling to take part in them?' - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

'Safety First: Real Drug Education for Teens is the nation’s first harm reduction-based drug education curriculum for high school teachers. The free curriculum consists of 15 lessons that can be completed in a 45- to 50-minute class period.

Each lesson is designed to engage students through interactive activities such as discussions and role-playing. The curriculum is aligned with National Health Education Standards as well as Common Core State Standards so it can be easily integrated into Health classes. '
http://www.drugpolicy.org/resource/safety-first-real-drug-education-teens

'The question, of course, could be asked: Why did you ever try narcotics? Why did you continue using it long enough to become an addict? You become a narcotics addict because you do not have strong motivations in any other direction. Junk wins by default. I tried it as a matter of curiosity. I drifted along taking shots when I could score. I ended up hooked. Most addicts I have talked to report a similar experience. They did not start using drugs for any reason they can remember. They just drifted along until they got hooked. If you have never been addicted, you can have no clear idea what it means to need junk with the addict's special need. You don't decide to be an addict. One morning you wake up sick and you're an addict.' - Prologue, Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953

'The study, published in the journal Justice Quarterly and funded by the federal National Institute of Justice, found that violent and property crimes rates were not affected in a statistically significant way in the years after Colorado and Washington State became the first in the nation to legalize marijuana for adult use.

“Our results suggest that marijuana legalization and sales have had minimal to no effect on major crimes in Colorado or Washington,” the paper concluded. “We observed no statistically significant long-term effects of recreational cannabis laws or the initiation of retail sales on violent or property crime rates in these states.”'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/marijuana-legalization-doesnt-cause-increased-crime-federally-funded-study-finds/

'I was having my own troubles with police in those years. In the fifth grade I was officially apprehended by the FBI for turning over a U.S. mailbox in front of a bus. Soon after that, I became a frequent detainee in various jails around the South on booze, theft, and violence charges. People called me a criminal, and about half the time they were right. I was a full-bore Juvenile Delinquent, and I had a lot of friends.

We stole cars and drank gin and did a lot of fast driving at night in places like Nashville and Atlanta and Chicago. We needed music on those nights, and it usually came on the radio - on the fifty-thousand-watt clear-channel stations like WWL in New Orleans and WLAC in Nashville.

That is where I went wrong, I guess - listening to WLAC and driving all night across Tennessee in a stolen car that wouldn't be reported for three days. That is how I got introduced to the Howlin' Wolf. We didn't know him, but we liked him and we knew what he was talking about. "I Smell a Rat: is a pure rock & roll monument to the axiom that says, "There is no such thing as paranoia." The Wolf would kick out the jams, but he had a melancholy side to him. He could tear your heart out like the worst kind of honky-tonk. If history judges a man by his heroes, like they say, then let the record show that Howlin' Wolf was one of mine. He was a monster.'

- Hey Rube! I Love You: Eerie Reflections on Fuel, Madness & Music, May 13, 1999, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

'An event to honor Lester Grinspoon (June 24, 1928 - June 25, 2020)

This online conversation will focus on the life, activism, and work of Dr. Lester Grinspoon, particularly on his groundbreaking research on cannabis use, psychedelics, and other drugs, in the 50th-anniversary year of his book Marihuana Reconsidered. This virtual event, on what would have been Dr. Grinspoon’s 93rd birthday, will formally kick off a campaign to raise funds to process and digitize his papers, one of the major collections related to drug policy and social change held in Special Collections and University Archives, UMass Amherst Libraries, and is a prelude to a larger event scheduled for June 24, 2022. '

https://umass-amherst.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Lozo2XFlS5qGnLSG21KkXw

'The Misuse of Drugs Act (1971) is not fit for purpose. For 50 years, it has failed to reduce drug consumption. Instead it has increased harm, damaged public health and exacerbated social inequalities.

Change cannot be delayed any longer. We need reform and new legislation to ensure that future drug policy protects human rights, promotes public health and ensures social justice.'

https://transformdrugs.org/mda-at-50/parliamentary-support

'Quite independently of any man's opinion as to whether chicks are mature enough for him to drive the mother-hen away from the nest and let them come out of their shells, the question will be indisputably settled by the birds themselves when, unable any longer to find room enough in the shells, they begin to peck with their beaks and come out of their own accord.

It is the same in regard to whether the time has or has not come to do away with governmental authority and substitute a new type of society. If, through the growth of a higher consciousness, men no longer comply with the demands of the State, if they no longer find sufficient room in it and at the same time no longer need its protection, then the question whether they have matured sufficiently to discard the State form of life is decided from quite a different side - just as in the case of chicks that break out of their shells into which no power on earth can make them return - by the men themselves who have outgrown the State and whom no power on earth can replace in it.' - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

Then Zarathustra smiled and said: 'Well then, my dear friends, speak with Zarathustra, hear Zarathustra. The man who stands before you is not a demagogue, or a soldier, or a king, or a general; he is Zarathustra, the old hermit and joker, inventor of the last laugh, and of so many other sad last things. From me, my friends, you cannot learn how to govern nations and repair defeats. I cannot teach you to drive herds or appease the hungry. Those are not Zarathustra's arts. Those are not Zarathustra's concerns.

- Zarathustra's Return, A Word to German Youth, 1919, If The War Goes On, Herman Hesse

'Marijuana activist and poet John Sinclair, although older now at 78, is no less the rebel he was in 1969.

“I knew they were going to be after me, but you can’t let them determine your life,” he said of his 1971 release from prison for possession of two joints.

About 9:49 a.m. Sunday, Dec. 1, at Arbors Wellness in Ann Arbor with a happy line of hundreds wrapped around the block, Sinclair made what was likely the first-ever licensed recreational retail marijuana sale in Michigan.'

https://www.mlive.com/public-interest/2019/12/activist-and-poet-john-sinclair-among-first-to-purchase-legal-recreational-marijuana-in-michigan-50-years-after-his-historic-arrest.html

'Researchers interested in the history of marijuana and medicine will appreciate learning about the Tod Mikuriya Papers (1933–2015), a newly-available archival collection here at the National Library of Medicine (NLM). Tod Mikuriya (1933–2007) was a psychiatrist and medical marijuana activist. In addition to his work in addiction medicine and biofeedback, he is well-known for compiling Marijuana: Medical Papers, 1839–1972, a master bibliography of historical resources on marijuana, and for campaigning for California Proposition 215 (Prop 215) which legalized medical marijuana in the state in 1996. Dr. Mikuriya conducted research on marijuana use and founded the California Cannabis Research Medical Group, a non-profit educational organization.'
https://circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov/2020/02/25/tod-mikuriya-papers-now-available-for-research/

'And therefore the transformation of human life (through which those in power will renounce power and there will be none anxious to seize it) will not come about solely by all men consciously and separately assimilating a Christian conception of life, but will come when a Christian public opinion so definite and comprehensive as to reach everybody has arisen and subdued the whole inert mass which is not able to attain the truth by its own intuition and is therefore always swayed by public opinion.

Such public opinion does not need hundreds and thousands of years for its formation and growth, for it possesses an infectious quality of acting on people and attracting collective masses with great rapidity.' - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

'A majority of Americans say that adult-use marijuana legalization has been a success in those states that have implemented it, according to nationwide polling compiled by YouGov.com.

Fifty-five percent of respondents said that statewide laws allowing recreational marijuana use have been either fully or mostly successful. Nineteen percent of respondents said that the laws have been largely unsuccessful. Twenty-six percent voiced no opinion. '
https://norml.org/news/2020/04/23/poll-majority-of-americans-say-adult-use-legalization-policies-have-been-a-success

'But he [William Burroughs] was not the first white man to be busted for weed in my time. No. That was Robert Mitchum, the actor, who was arrested three months earlier in Malibu at the front door of a hideaway beach house for possession of marijuana and suspicion of molesting a teenage girl on August 31, 1948. I remember the photos: Mitchum wearing an undershirt and snarling at the cops with the sea rolling up and the palm trees blowing.

Yessir, that was my boy. Between Mitchum and Burroughs and James Dean and Jack Kerouac, I got myself a serious running start before I was twenty years old, and there was no turning back. Buy the ticket, take the ride.

So welcome to Thunder Road, bubba. It was one of those movies that got a grip on me when I was too young to resist. It convinced me that the only way to drive was at top speed with a car full of whiskey, and I have been driving that way ever since, for good or ill.'

- Hey Rube! I Love You: Eerie Reflections on Fuel, Madness & Music, May 13, 1999, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

'When it comes to withdrawal, Armentano said research has found symptoms to be mild and short-lived.

“Like with most matters specific to cannabis,” he said, the new findings “need to be placed in appropriate context.”

He compared cannabis withdrawal to withdrawal symptoms when someone stops using tobacco or alcohol.

“The profound physical withdrawal effects associated with tobacco are so severe that many subjects who strongly desire to quit end up reinitiating their use. In the case of alcohol, the abrupt ceasing of use in heavy users can be so severe that it can lead to death,” Armentano said.

“Simply withdrawing from caffeine can lead to a number of adverse side effects, like rebound headaches,” he added. “But we do not arrest 600,000 Americans annually for their use of caffeine.”'
https://www.healthline.com/health-news/marijuana-withdrawal-symptoms-are-real-for-regular-users

'I have never regretted my experience with drugs. I think I am at better health now as a result of using junk at intervals than I would be if I had never been an addict. When you stop growing you start dying. An addict never stops growing. Most users periodically kick the habit, which involves shrinking of the organism and replacement of the junk-dependent cells. A user is in continual state of shrinking and growing in his daily cycle of shot-need for shot completed.' - Prologue, Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953

'When all this becomes quite evident to everybody it will be natural for men to ask themselves: "Why should we feed and maintain all these kings, emperors, presidents, and members of various chambers and ministries, since nothing comes of their meetings and talks? Would it not be better, as some humorist has said, to make an India-rubber queen?

And what do we want armies for with their general, and their bands, and cavalry, and drums? What are they wanted for when there is no war and no one wants to conquer anybody? And even if there were a war, other nations would not let us profit by it, and the army will not fire on its own people.

And what are the judges and lawyers for, who in civil cases decide nothing according to justice, and in criminal affairs themselves recognize the uselessness of punishments?

And what are the tax-gatherers for, who exact taxes reluctantly while what is really needed is easily collected without them?

And what is the use of the clergy, who have long since ceased to believe in what they have to preach?

And what use is capital in private hands, if it can be useful only after becoming public property?"

And once they ask themselves these questions, men cannot fail to conclude that they ought not to support all these institutions which have become useless.' - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

'“We’re pleased the legislature made the right choice to reject a proposed delay in the legalization workgroup’s final report,” Jenn Michelle Pedini, NORML’s development director who also serves as executive director of Virginia NORML, told Marijuana Moment. “Decriminalization is a victory worth celebrating, but as we have said repeatedly, it is not a public policy solution for marijuana prohibition.”

“While decriminalization will reduce arrests by about half, it will not address the racially disparate enforcement of marijuana laws,” they said. “It is imperative the Commonwealth work swiftly to legalize and regulate the responsible adult-use of cannabis and begin undoing the damages done by prohibition.'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/virginia-lawmakers-reject-governors-delay-of-marijuana-legalization-study/

'I used to respect William Burroughs because he was the first white man to be busted for marijuana in my time. William was the Man. He was the victim of an illegal police raid at his home at 500 Wagner Street in Old Algiers, a low-rent suburb across the river from New Orleans, where he was settling in for a while to do some shooting and smoke marijuana.

William didn't fuck around. He was serious about everything. When the Deal went down William was There, with a gun. Whacko! Boom! Stand back, I am the Law. He was my hero a long time before I ever heard of him.'

- Hey Rube! I Love You: Eerie Reflections on Fuel, Madness & Music, May 13, 1999, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

The urban legend of 420..
https://thedcapage.blog/2020/04/21/california-dreamin-or-the-tale-of-420/

'The hemp industry scored a victory on Tuesday after the Senate passed a coronavirus relief bill that, for the first time, will allow farmers to access a certain federal loan program amid the pandemic.

Farmers have historically been left out of disaster relief legislation through the federal Small Business Administration (SBA) because they’re eligible for separate programs under the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). But those programs are designated for natural disasters, and so industry advocates have been pushing Congress to allow farmers to be eligible for SBA’s Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program.'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/hemp-industry-secures-federal-coronavirus-relief-for-farmers-in-senate-passed-bill/

'This is what ought to happen wherever violence is used. The officer feels dull. He has nothing to do. He has been put, poor fellow, in a position in which he has to give orders. He is shut off from all rational human existence. He can only look on and give orders, give orders and look on, though nobody needs either his orders or his attention. All our unfortunate rulers, ministers, members of parliament, governors, generals, officers, archbishops, bishops, priests, and even rich men, already find themselves partly, and soon will find themselves completely, in that position. They can do nothing but give orders, and so they make a fuss and send their subordinates about, as that officer sent the gendarme, to interfere with people. And as the people they interfere with ask them not to interfere, they imagine themselves to be quite indispensable men.

But a time is approaching and draws near when it will become perfectly evident to everyone that these people are of no use at all but are merely a hindrance, and those whom they interfere with will say amiably and quietly, like the man in the peasant's coat: "Don't interfere with us, please!" And then all these emissaries, and those who send them, will have to follow the good advice, that is, cease to ride about with an arm akimbo hindering people, and get off their horses, doff their uniforms, listen to what is being said, and join with others in real human work.' - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

'Junk is a cellular equation that teaches the user facts of general validity. I have learned a great deal from using junk: I have seen life measured out in eyedroppers of morphine solution. I experienced the agonizing deprivation of junk sickness, and the pleasure of relief when junk-thirsty cells drank from the needle. Perhaps all pleasure is relief. I have learned the cellular stoicism that junk teaches the user. I have seen a cell full of sick junkies silent and immobile in separate misery. They knew the pointlessness of complaining or moving. They knew that basically no one can help anyone else. There is no key, no secret someone else has that he can give you.' - Prologue, Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953

Hey junkie, this dope is not against you. Of course he believes that his dope is a much better intoxicant, more versatile medicine and more useful to the planet than your junk but that doesn't mean he intends to ban your junk in retribution for you helping to get his dope banned. What he does want, however, is that you start growing your own plant at home like him. In this way, you source your junk directly from the plant instead of putting money in the pockets of chemists who increasingly make more and more toxic stuff that destroy you, me and the planet. Your money is making the chemist pay the government to arm itself and protect him while pushing you and me closer to death. Growing your own plant will give you organic healthy junk in the best possible way, directly from the plant, like how it used to be for thousands of years, making you sustainable and the planet sustainable..yes, you can go green too..don't remain snowblind..we need your eyes too, to steer the planet away from man-made chemical disaster...

'More than half of the studies, however, have shown that cannabis and alcohol are substitutes, meaning that the increased use of one substance reduces the use of the other. Other researchers have also suggested that cannabis, especially cannabis for medical use, may serve as a substitute for alcohol, tobacco and other drugs, including prescription drugs.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf

'I will miss Tim Leary - not for his wisdom or his beauty or his warped lust for combat or because of his wealth or his power or his drugs, but mainly because I won't hear his laughing voice on my midnight telephone anymore. Tim usually called around 2. It was his habit - one of many that we shared, and he knew that I would be awake.

Tim and I kept the same hours. He believed, as I do, that "after midnight, all things are possible."

Just last week he called me on the phone at two-thirty in the morning and said he was moving to a ranch in Nicaragua in a few days and would fax me the telephone number. Which he did. And I think he also faxed it to Dr. Kasey.

Indeed. There are many rooms in the mansion. And Tim was familiar with most of them. We will never know the range of his fiendish vision, or the many lives he was sucked into by his savage and unnatural passions.

We sometimes disagreed, but in the end we made our peace. Tim was a Chieftain. He Stomped on the Terra, and he left his elegant hoof prints on all our lives.

He is forgotten now but not gone. We will see him soon enough. Our tribe is now smaller by one. Our circle is one link shorter. And there is one more name in the honor list of pure warriors who saw the great light and leapt for it.'

- Memo from the National Affairs Desk. To: Jann S. Wenner, August 8, 1996, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

'In Washington, driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol is considered the number one contributing factor in fatal crashes and is involved in nearly half of all traffic fatalities. However, in that state, reporting on such cases does not differentiate between cannabis and other drugs. The number of reported cases of driving under the influence of drugs has increased by more than 60 per cent in Washington since 2014. Although not so recent, data on drivers involved in fatal crashes who tested positive for alcohol or drugs in Washington during the period 2008–2016 show that 44 per cent tested positive for two or more substances. Of those substances, the most common one was alcohol, followed by THC, while alcohol and THC formed the most common polydrug combination involved in fatal crashes during that period.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf

'I have learned the junk equation. Junk is not, like alcohol or weed, a means to increased enjoyment of life. Junk is not a kick. It is a way of life.' - Prologue, Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953

'Starting in 2014, data on traffic fatalities in Colorado showed a marked increase in the number of traffic deaths in which the driver tested positive for cannabis use. Over the period 2009–2013, there were 53 traffic deaths on average per year in which the driver tested positive for cannabis, a figure that increased to an average of 110 such deaths in the period 2014–2018, and the proportion of fatalities with drivers testing positive for cannabis doubled over the period 2009–2018. However, toxicology analysis has shown that car crashes in which the driver was found to be under the influence of cannabis frequently involved other drugs, in particular alcohol' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf

'The condition of Christian humanity, with its fortresses, cannon, dynamite, rifles, torpedoes, prisons, gallows, churches, factories, custom-house and palaces, is really terrible. But neither the fortresses nor the cannon nor the rifles will attack anyone of themselves, the prisons will not of themselves lock anyone up, the gallows will not of themselves hang anyone, nor will the churches delude anyone or the custom-houses hold anyone back, and the palaces and factories do not build themselves or maintain themselves. All this is done by people. And if they once understand that there is no necessity for all these things, these things will disappear.

And men already begin to understand. If they do not all understand, the leaders among them do - those whom the rest will follow. And what the leaders have once understood they cannot possibly cease to understand. And what the leaders have understood the rest of mankind not only can, but inevitably must, understand too.

So that the prediction that a time will come when men will be taught of God, will cease to learn war any more, and will beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning-hooks (which translated into our own tongue means that all the prisons, fortresses, barracks, palaces, and churches, will remain empty, and that all the gallows, guns and cannon will remain unused), is no longer a dream but a definite new form of life, to which humanity is approaching with ever-increasing rapidity.' - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

'A contentious issue between people who are for and against the legalization of cannabis remains whether it has had an impact on driving under the influence of cannabis and caused fatal car crashes. The evidence remains inconclusive, as within the United States there have been no differences in cannabis- or alcohol-related traffic fatalities between states that have and have not legalized the non-medical use of cannabis. As different research contributions have also shown, it is difficult to quantify the effects of cannabis on road accidents, as cannabis is often used in combination with alcohol, which increases the challenge of determining the influence of cannabis itself on road traffic accidents. Moreover, studies on THC levels and degrees of impairment have found that the level of THC in the blood and the degree of impairment do not appear to be closely related; peak impairment does not occur when THC concentration in the blood is at or near peak levels.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf

'In 1937, weed was placed under the Harrison Narcotics Act. Narcotics authorities claim it is a habit-forming drug, that its use is injurious to mind and body, and that it causes the people who use it to commit crimes. Here are the facts: Weed is positively not habit forming. You can smoke weed for years and you will experience no discomfort if your supply is cut off. I have seen tea heads in jail and none of them showed withdrawal symptoms. I have smoked weed myself off and on for fifteen years, and never missed it when I ran out. There is less habit to weed than there is to tobacco. Weed does not harm the general health. In fact. most users claim it gives you an appetite and acts as a tonic to the system. I do not know of any other agent that gives as definite a boot to the appetite. I can smoke a stick of tea and enjoy a glass of California sherry and a hash house meal.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953

'The 'control of nature' is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man. The concepts and practices of applied entomology for the most part date from that Stone Age of science. It is our alarming misfortune that so primitive a science has armed itself with the most modern and terrible weapons, and that in turning them against the insects it has also turned them against the earth.' - Silent Spring, Rachel Carson, 1962

'In Washington state, the past-month use of cannabis among high-school students of different grades has generally remained stable, although it increases by grade, with the highest past-month prevalence found among twelfth grade students, as in Colorado. The perception of risk relating to cannabis use among high-school students has also declined since the nonmedical use of cannabis was legalized, with nearly three quarters of twelfth grade students seeing no or low risk in trying cannabis a few times and less than half perceiving no or low risk in the regular use of cannabis in 2018. Similarly, some 38 per cent of twelfth grade students considered that it was fairly easy to get cannabis.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf

'While the daily or near-daily use of cannabis among high-school students in Colorado has declined, the prevalence of occasional users, that is, those who report having used cannabis one or two times in the past month, has increased since legalization. Nevertheless, 4.7 per cent of high-school students reported using cannabis daily or nearly daily (20 or more times in the past 30 days) in 2017. Moreover, although the share of high-school students smoking cannabis declined from 92 per cent in 2015 to 84 per cent in 2017, there was an increase in the share of those who reported using edibles with high THC content (from 28 per cent in 2015 to 36 per cent in 2017) or “dabbing” cannabis extracts and concentrates (from 28 per cent in 2015 to 34 per cent in 2017) in the past month.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf

'For a very long time past the power of the governments over the peoples has not rested on force, as it did in the days when one people conquered another and held it in subjection by force of arms, or when the rulers had legions of janissaries, oprichniki, and armed guards amid an unarmed people. For a long time past the power of the government rested on what is called public opinion.

There is a public opinion that patriotism is a great moral sentiment, and that people should consider their own nation and State as the best in the world; and this results in a public opinion that it is right and proper to acknowledge the authority of the government and to submit to it, that it is right and proper to serve in the army and submit to its discipline, that it is right and proper to give one's earnings to the government in the form of taxes, that it is right and proper to accept the decisions of the courts, and that it is right and proper to accept as divine truth whatever the emissaries of the government deliver to us.

And once such a public opinion exists, a mighty power is established, controlling in our days milliards of money, an organized mechanism of administration, the postal service, telegraphy, telephones, disciplined armies, the law courts, the police, a submissive clergy, schools, and even newspapers; and this power maintains among the people the public opinion needed for its own maintenance.' - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

'What began as a quick and stylish epitaph for my allegedly erstwhile three-hundred-pound Samoan attorney has long since gone out of control. Not even Oscar would have wanted an obituary with no end, at least not until he was legally dead, and that will take four more years.

Until then - and probably for many years afterward - the Weird Grapevine will not wither for lack of bulletins, warnings, and other twisted rumors of the latest Brown Buffalo sightings. He will be seen at least once in Calcutta, buying nine-year-old girls out of cages in the White Slave Market...and also in Houston, tending bar at a roadhouse on South Main that was once the Blue Fox...or perhaps once again on the midnight run to Bimini; standing tall on his own hind legs in the cockpit of a fifty-foot cigarette boat with a silver Uzi in one hand and a magnum of smack in the other, always running ninety miles an hour with no lights and howling Old Testament gibberish at the top of his bleeding lungs...

It might even come to pass that he will suddenly appear on my porch in Woody Creek on some moonless night when the peacocks are screeching with lust...Maybe so, and that is one ghost who will always be welcome in this house, even with a head full of acid and a chain of bull-maggots around his neck.

Oscar was one of God's own prototypes - a high-powered mutant of some kind who was never even considered for mass production. He was too weird to live and too rare to die - and as far as I'm concerned, that's just about all that needs to be said about him right now. Nobody really needed Oscar Zeta Acosta. Or Rolling Stone. Or Jimmy Carter or the Hindenburg...or even the Sloat diamond.'

- Fear & Loathing in the Graveyard of the Weird: The Banshee Screams for Buffalo Meat, December 15, 1977, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

'One concern about legalizing the non-medical use of cannabis for adults (21 years and older) is that its use could also increase access to cannabis and its use among adolescents. Based on national data, cannabis use among high-school students remained stable overall, whereas the risk perception of the occasional use of cannabis declined in the United States over the period 2012–2018. In Colorado, although there has been a decline in daily or near-daily use of cannabis among high-school students, they are now consuming and exposed to cannabis products with far higher THC content than was available or used earlier. In 2017, about 20 per cent of high-school students in Colorado reported non-medical use of cannabis in the past month; that rate is comparable to the national average among high-school students.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf

'When I converse with the freest of my neighbours, I perceive that, whatever they may say about the magnitude and seriousness of the question and their regard for the public tranquility, the long and the short of the matter is that they cannot spare the protection of the existing government, and they dread the consequences to their property and families of disobedience to it. For my own part, I should not like to think that I ever rely on the protection of the State. But, if I deny the authority of the State when it presents its tax bill, it will soon take and waste all my property, and so harass me and my children without end. This is hard. This makes it impossible for a man to live honestly, and at the same time comfortably, in outward respects. It will not be worth the while to accumulate property; that would be sure to go again. You must hire or squat somewhere, and raise but a small crop, and eat that soon. You must live within yourself, and depend upon yourself always tucked up and ready for a start, and not have many affairs. A man may grow rich in Turkey even, if he will be in all respects a good subject of the Turkish government. Confucius said: "If a state is governed by the principles of reason, poverty and misery are subjects of shame; if a state is not governed by the principles of reason, riches and honors are the subjects of shame." No: until I want the protection of Massachusetts to be extended to me in some distant southern port where my liberty is endangered, or until I am bent solely on building up an estate at home by peaceful enterprise, I can refuse allegiance to Massachusetts and her right to my property and life. It costs me less in every sense to incur the penalty of disobedience to the State than it would to obey. I should feel as if I were worth less in that case.' - Civil Disobedience, Henry D Thoreau, Selected Writings on Nature and Liberty.

'Colorado and Washington were the first two states in the United States to legalize the production of cannabis for non-medical use, in 2012. However, prior to legalization, those states and others, such as California, had various regimes in place that permitted or tolerated the production and sale of cannabis for medical use, which allowed people with a range of conditions that were not well-defined to gain access to cannabis. The states of Colorado and Washington, for which more long-term trend data are available, are interesting case studies for examining the public health and public safety outcomes that have emerged in the years since the production of cannabis for non-medical use was legalized.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf

'I once kicked a junk habit with weed. The second day off junk I sat down and ate a full meal. Ordinarily, I can't eat for eight days after kicking a habit.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953

'In 2019, young people aged 15–24 were more likely than those in older age groups to obtain cannabis from illegal sources, whereas a larger share of older cannabis users relied solely on legal sources; 41 per cent of cannabis users aged 65 or older reported using only legal sources to obtain cannabis, compared with roughly one quarter of the other age groups.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf

'A terrible weight of evil hangs over the people of the world and presses them down. And men standing beneath that weight, and more and more oppressed by it, seek means of release. They know that by their collective strength they could lift that weight and throw it off, but they cannot agree to do so, and each of them bends lower and lower, letting it lie on other shoulders. And the weight presses on people more and more and would long ago have crushed them had there not been some men among them who were guided in their actions not by the consideration of external consequences but by a desire to make them agree with the voice of conscience. There have been and are such people - Christians, for the essence of Christianity lies in substituting an inward aim (to attain which no one else's consent is necessary) in place of external aims (to attain which everyone's agreement is necessary). And therefore salvation from the slavery men are enduring - impossible for men of the social life-perception - has been and is achieved by Christianity - simply by substituting the Christian in place of the social conception of life.

The aim of universal life cannot be fully known to you, says the Christian teaching to each man, and presents itself to you only as a nearer and nearer approach to the infinite welfare of the world - to the establishment of the Kingdom of God. But the aim of the personal life is certainly known to you, and consists in realizing in yourself the infinite perfecting of love, essential for the realization of the Kingdom of God. And that aim is always known to you and always attainable.' - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

'The transition from the illegal market to legal sources of cannabis has been a gradual one. The proportion of cannabis users sourcing their products from the legal market increased from around 25 per cent in the second and third quarters of 2018 to about 50 per cent one year later, and in 2019 nearly 30 per cent relied solely on the legal market for their cannabis (compared with 10 per cent in 2018). Many users relied on multiple sources to obtain their cannabis, with about 40 per cent of cannabis users still getting their product from illegal sources.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf

Fundamental to programming is the avoidance of hard coding values that are likely to change, that need translation and that need to be used in different functions based on varying conditions. This is to avoid duplication, ambiguity and re-programming. These values are kept in configuration files that are accessed and amended as needed. This is even more true for medicines that need to be controlled based on nature of harm and use. The idea of globally agreed lists of medicines with harmful substances requiring tight control is good provided laws regarding these are universal, fair and consistent at regional, country or state levels. A key operational issue is that even these global lists are not updated fast enough considering the latest scientific knowledge and that new harmful synthetic substances are rapidly churned out of pharmacy labs. Worse, natural cannabis, peyote, psilcybin, etc. proven over thousands of years to be much more safer in their natural form than the recently created synthetic drugs, continue to remain in these global lists, significantly hampering their objective and efficiency, diverting precious resources and greatly damaging global public health. The Indian NDPS Act is like one of the worst examples of programming with a list of substances hard coded into it and a bunch of rules copy pasted around it, existing over and above the IPC. 20kgs of hashish or 500g of THC will get you the death sentence. Fentanyls, the leading cause of global drug overdose deaths, synthetic cannabinoids and synthetic cathinones, etc. are not even on the list...
Jul 21, 2020, 4:09 PM

'Special Guests David Clarenbach, Benjamin Tyler, Mitch Young and Paul Armentano.

Lots of perspectives on Cannabis and Opioid Addiction.'
https://talk927fm.com/podcast/7-8-20-wiscannabis-radio/

'Weed does not inspire anyone to commit crimes. I have never seen anyone get nasty under the influence of weed. Tea heads are a sociable lot. Too sociable for my liking. I cannot understand why the people who claim weed causes crime do not follow through and demand the outlawing of alcohol. Every day, crimes are committed by drunks who would not have committed the crime sober.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953

'Indeed. And they were at least half right - which is not a bad average for lawyers - because Oscar Z. Acosta, Chicano lawyer, very definitely could not afford the shitrain of suicidal publicity that he was doing everything possible to bring down on himself. There are a lot of nice ways to behave like a criminal - but hiring a camera to have yourself photographed doing it on the road is not one of them. It would have taken a reputation as formidable as Melvin Belli's to survive the kind of grossly illegal behavior that Oscar was effectively admitting by signing that libel release. He might as well have burned his lawyer's license on the steps of the Superior Court building in downtown L.A.

This was what the Ivy League libel lawyers in New York could not accept. They knew what that license was worth - at least to them, it averaged out to about $150 an hour - even for a borderline psychotic, as long as he had the credentials.

And Oscar had them - not because his father and grandfather had gone to Yale or Harvard Law; he'd paid his dues at night school, the only Chicano in his class, and his record in the courtroom was better than that of most of the colleagues who called him a disgrace to their venal profession.

Which may have been true, for whatever it's worth...but what none of us knew at the time of the Great Madness that came so close to making Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas incurably unfit for publication was that we were no longer dealing with O. Z. Acosta, attorney-at-law - but with Zeta, the King of Brown Buffaloes.'

- Fear & Loathing in the Graveyard of the Weird: The Banshee Screams for Buffalo Meat, December 15, 1977, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

'Let all the external improvements that religious and scientific people dream of be accomplished; let all men accept Christianity and all the improvements the Bellamys and Richets desire be accomplished with all possible additions and corrections, but if at the same time the hypocrisy remains that now exists, if people do not profess the truth they know but continue to feign belief in what they do not themselves believe and veneration for what they do not respect, the condition of people will not only merely remain what it is but will become worse and worse. The better men are materially provided for, the more telegraphs, telephones, books, papers and periodicals they have the more means there will be of spreading contradictory lies and hypocrisies, and the more disunited and consequently unhappy will men become, as indeed occurs now.

Let all those external alterations be realized and the position of humanity will not be bettered. But let each man according to the strength that is in him profess the truth he knows and practises in his own life - or at least cease to excuse the falsehood he supports by representing it as truth - and at once, in this very year 1893, such changes would be accomplished towards man's liberation and the establishment of truth on earth, as we dare not hope for in hundreds of years.' - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

'“Politicians are always lagging behind public opinion. They always wait for a parade and then run to get in front of it,” Erik Altieri said.

Altieri said to obtain federal legalization a true, multi-racial, class, and generation coalition is needed. NORML has built strong alliances with the ACLU and NAACP, among others. They also have some unexpected allies like AARP, which advocates for seniors since clinical cannabis benefits them greatly.

“We have the American people at our back, and we’ll finally see prohibition crumble and be a relic of history,” Erik Altieri predicted.'
https://headynj.com/erik-altieri-leading-norml-to-cannabis-legalization-victories/

'“Not only do we know that ending marijuana prohibition is good policy, it is also good politics with majorities of all political persuasions supporting this change,” NORML’s Altieri told Marijuana Moment. “It amounts to almost political malpractice to continue to oppose these broadly popular reforms in the year 2020.”

“Biden and Trump have an opportunity to show some real leadership by taking ownership of this issue,” he said. “If they opt not to lead, we will continue to push for Congress to initiate these overdue policies and the two major party candidates can go down as firmly residing on the wrong side of history.”'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/biden-and-trump-must-back-marijuana-legalization-before-election-norml-petition-demands/

'The power of the governments rests on public opinion and possessing power they can always support the sort of public opinion they require by their whole organization, officials, law courts, schools, the Church, and even the Press. Public opinion produces power , power produces public opinion; and it seems as if there were no escape from this position.

And that would really be the case if public opinion were something fixed and unchanging and if governments could always produce the public opinion they desired.

But fortunately that is not so. In the first place, public opinion is not something constant, unchanging and stagnant, but on the contrary is something continually changing and moving with the movement of mankind. And secondly, public opinion not only cannot be produced at will by governments, but is what produces governments and gives or deprives them of power.' - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

'There has been a lot said about the aphrodisiac effect of weed. For some reason, scientists dislike to admit that there is such a thing as as aphrodisiac, so most pharmacologists say there is "no evidence to support the popular idea that weed possesses aphrodisiac properties." I can say definitely that weed is an aphrodisiac and that sex is more enjoyable under the influence of weed than without it. Anyone who has used good weed will verify this statement.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953

'Except that Richard Nixon got rich from his crimes, and Oscar Acosta got killed. The wheels of Justice grind small and queer in this life, and if they seem occasionally unbalanced or even stupid and capricious in their grinding, my own midnight guess is that they were probably fixed from the start. And any judge who can safely slide into full-pension retirement without having to look back on anything worse in the way of criminal vengeance than a few scorched lawns is a man who got off easy.

There is, after all, considerable work and risk - and even a certain art - to the torching of a half-acre lawn without also destroying the house or exploding every car in the driveway. It would be a lot easier to simply make a funeral pyre of the whole place and leave the lawn for dilettantes.

That's how Oscar viewed arson - anything worth doing is worth doing well - and I'd watched enough of his fiery work to know he was right. If he was a King-Hell Pyromaniac, he was also a gut politician and occasionally a very skilled artist in the style and tone of his teachings.'

- Fear & Loathing in the Graveyard of the Weird: The Banshee Screams for Buffalo Meat, December 15, 1977, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

Now that's lovely..sweet are the fruits of labor...

'You’re also a weed enthusiast. Has that been part of your quarantine lifestyle?

Not yet, but it's going to be. For the first time in my life, I actually bought marijuana. Because of my notoriety in helping legalize marijuana, I've never had to buy marijuana in my life. People just give me marijuana. Perfect strangers come up to me and they put a joint in my shirt pocket and they say, "Thank you."'
https://www.gq.com/story/rick-steves-travel-isolation-interview

No human, I repeat, NO HUMAN, has the authority to ban the cannabis plant created by the supreme power of the universe..

Happy 4/20 to the lovers, friends and enemies of the divine herb...
Apr 20, 2020, 9:03 PM

'People may not bethink themselves, might not confess their faith in the Gospel, till the delusion of violence had reached its utmost limits as it has done in our day, but such faith has now become inevitable. Men can no longer fail to bethink themselves and confess their belief in the Gospel, when each of them is called upon not to pour oblations to pagan gods, as was the case of old, but to take part in the most horrible and cruel homicides after a preliminary announcement of the possibility and necessity of patricide. General conscription is the last stone laid on a wall with a crooked base, and will cause the collapse of the whole edifice of social violence which rests on shaky foundations.

And that edifice is collapsing not because the economic weight laid upon it by armaments is too great to be borne; not because the expected wars are too awful; and not because the calamities chanted by Ravachol are so dreadful. It is collapsing because the demand presented to men as the crown of the social structure - military conscription - is so contrary to the Christian teaching which has entered into men's consciousness, that they cannot fail to understand from these demands the whole falsity of the social structure in which they have lived and the full truth of the teaching which for nineteen hundred years has been rejected.' - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

'It was the experience of working around Nader at the product safety commission that convinced me to consider using my legal training to work for the interests of American consumers. I had first started smoking marijuana when I was a first-year law student and by the time the commission came to an end, ending marijuana prohibition had become an important cause for me. I knew there was no justification for treating smokers as criminals and since I was then too old to be drafted, I decided to use my new freedom to found NORML as a consumer lobby to represent the interests of responsible marijuana smokers. I wanted to use the consumer advocate model Nader had used so successfully for product safety to challenge marijuana prohibition.

And, as the saying goes, “the rest is history.” Fifty years and counting as we continue to fight for a world in which marijuana smokers are treated fairly in all aspects of their lives.'
https://blog.norml.org/2020/05/01/a-founder-looks-at-50-keith-stroup-on-starting-norml/

'When you're sick, music is a great help. Once, in Texas, I kicked a habit on weed, a pint of paregoric and a few Louis Armstrong records.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953 - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953

We talk about ratifying the 1961 and 1970 conventions and the NDPS Act to legalize the cannabis plant. A most simple approach would be if each of us took care to collect the precious seeds of the plant when we have access to it instead of throwing it away. If even 2 per cent of the world's population decided to grow the cannabis plant at home, no force in this world could prevent it from happening...
May 15, 2020, 12:42 PM

'NORML's letter was written in response to a recent blog post authored by Director Volkow in which she recognizes, "Whites and Black/African Americans use drugs at similar rates, but it is overwhelmingly the latter group who are singled out for arrest and incarceration." The Director further acknowledges that the disproportionate enforcement of anti-drug laws has historically been utilized "as a lever to suppress people of a particular race," and that this abuse of law enforcement power "has had devastating effects on communities of color." She concludes, "I look forward to working with ... advocates, policymakers, and other stakeholders ... to eradicate discrimination and promote equality."

NORML responded: "America's decades-long prohibition of marijuana was founded upon racism and bigotry. ... Today, the modern era of marijuana prohibition continues to be disproportionately applied to people of color. ... That is why we are asking [you] to demand an end to marijuana prohibition."'
https://norml.org/news/2020/06/11/norml-demands-nida-acknowledge-marijuana-prohibition-s-burden-on-public-health

'A single execution carried out dispassionately by prosperous and educated men with the approval and participation of Christian minister and presented as something necessary and even just, perverts and brutalizes men more than thousands of murders committed by uneducated working people under the influence of passion. An execution such as Zukhovsky proposed to arrange, which was to arouse in men a sentiment of religious emotion, would have the most depraving influence imaginable.

Every war, even the briefest, with the expenditure usual to war, the destruction of crops, the plundering, the licensed debauchery and murders, the sophisticated excuses as to its necessity and justice, the exaltation and glorification of military exploits, patriotism and devotion to the flag, the feigned solicitude for the wounded, and so on, does more to deprave people in a single year than millions of robberies, arsons, and murders committed in hundreds of years by individual men under the influence of passion.' - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

When the rumour went around among the young people in the capital that Zarathustra had reappeared and had been seen here and there in the streets and squares, a few young men went out to look for him. These were young men who had returned home from the war and were seized with anguish amid the change and upheaval in their homeland, for they saw that great things were happening, but the meaning of these things was obscure and to many they were without rhyme or reason. In former years all these young men had looked upon Zarathustra as their prophet and guide; they had read what is written concerning him with the enthusiasm of youth; they had spoken and thought about him on their wanderings over heath and mountain, and at night in the lamplight of their rooms. And because the voice that first and most forcefully turns a man's thoughts to his own self and his own fate is held sacred, they had held Zarathustra sacred.

The young men found Zarathustra in a wide street filled with people. He was standing pressed against a wall, listening to a demagogue who was haranguing the crowd from the top of a vehicle. Zarathustra listened, smiled, and looked into the faces of the people. He looked into the faces as an aged hermit looks into the waves of the sea or the clouds in the morning. He saw the fear; he saw the impatience and the perplexed, plaintive child like anxiety; he saw the courage and thatred in the eyes of the resolute and despairing. And he did not weary of looking, while at the same time listening to the speaker. The young men recognized him by his smile. He was neither old nor young, he looked neither like a teacher nor like a soldier, he looked like a man - like man himself when he first rose out of the darkness of the beginning, the first of his kind.

And yet, after doubting for a time that it was he, they recognized him by his smile. His smile was bright but not kindly; it was guileless, but not good-natured. It was the smile of a warrior, but still more the smile of an old man who has seen much and has ceased to set store by tears.

- Zarathustra's Return, A Word to German Youth, 1919, If The War Goes On, Herman Hesse

'There is no doubt that our national discussion over matters of race and policing will continue long after these public protests have ceased. NORML believes that calls for cannabis legalization need to be an important part of this emerging discussion — but only a part. Black and brown lives matter and we owe it to our country and to ourselves to take tangible steps toward dismantling many of the power structures that perpetuate injustice. Marijuana prohibition is simply one of them.

We are at a crossroads in this country and it is time for all of us to march as allies in the fight for racial justice and equality. It is important during this process for those of us not from these marginalized communities to truly listen to those who are facing this oppression and support them in this struggle. Let us take this moment in time to pledge to put in the work necessary in order to make America the better and more just nation that we know it can be'
https://www.aspentimes.com/news/high-country-marijuana-legalization-and-the-fight-for-racial-justice/

'According to the Blue Grass Law of Kentucky, any "known user of narcotic drugs can be sentenced to the county jail for one year, with the alternative of taking the cure in Lexington."' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953

'I was with him one night in L.A. when he decided that the only way to meaningfully communicate with a judge who'd been leaning on him in the courtroom was to drive out to the man's home in Santa Monica and set his whole front lawn on fire after soaking it down with ten gallons of gasoline...and then, instead of fleeing into the night like some common lunatic vandal, Oscar stood in the street and howled through the flames at a face peering out from a shattered upstairs window, delivering one of his Billy Sunday-style sermons on morality and justice.

The nut of his flame-enraged text, as I recall, was this mind-bending chunk of eternal damnation from Luke 11:46 - a direct quote from Jesus Christ:

"And he said, Woe unto you also, ye lawyers, for ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers."

The Lawn of Fire was Oscar's answer to the Ku Klux Klan's burning cross, and he derived the same demonic satisfaction from doing it.

'Did you see his face?" he shouted as we screeched off at top speed toward Hollywood. "That corrupt old fool! I know he recognized me, but he'll never admit it! No officer of the court would set a judge's front yard on fire - the whole system would break down if lawyers would get away with crazy shit like this."

I agreed. It is not my wont to disagree with even a criminally insane attorney on questions of basic law. But in truth it never occurred to me that Oscar was either insane or a criminal, given the generally fascist, Nixonian context of those angry years.'

- Fear & Loathing in the Graveyard of the Weird: The Banshee Screams for Buffalo Meat, December 15, 1977, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

Now you're talking..united you stand, divided you fall...it's the clout of big pharma, petrochemicals, alcohol and tobacco that you're up against...

'Hemp entrepreneurs currently bound by state and national rules are setting their sights higher.

Europe’s dominant hemp industry association unveiled plans this week to form an international hemp association that could advocate for the industry before global authorities such as the World Health Organization and United Nations.'
https://hempindustrydaily.com/hemp-activists-set-sights-globally-in-new-push-for-collaboration/

'If only free men would not rely on what has no power and is never free, that is, external force, but would trust in what is always powerful and free, that is, the truth and its expression!

If only men would boldly and clearly express the truth already manifest to them (of the brotherhood of all nations and the crime of exclusive devotion to one's own) that defunct, false, public opinion on which rests the power of governments and all the evil they produce, would slough off by itself like a dead skin and reveal that new, living, public opinion which now only awaits the shedding of the old husk that has confined it, in order to announce its demands clearly and powerfully and establish new forms of existence in conformity with the conscience of mankind.' - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

'The time for studies and commissions on police reform has long passed: this moment requires action. We cannot continue to make the mistakes of the past and pass meaningless feel-good measures that do nothing but seek to minimize the outrage of the moment—while Black, Latinx and Native American communities continue to lose their lives and suffer through the trauma of living in a police state. We must dramatically rethink the way we view public safety and health, and that requires a sizable shift in how we invest our resources - away from police and back into communities. We call on Congress to turn their attention to improving the Justice in Policing Act.”'
https://www.drugpolicy.org/press-release/2020/06/drug-policy-alliance-statement-tim-scott-senate-police-bill

'About this time an anti-narcotics drive hit the town. The chief of police said, "This drive is going to continue as long as there is a single violator left in the city." The State legislators drew up a law making it a crime to be a drug addict. They did not specify where or when or what they meant by drug addict.
The cops began stopping addicts on the street and examining arms for needle marks. If they found marks, they pressured the addict to sign a statement admitting his condition so he could be charged under the "drug addicts law." The addicts were promised a suspended sentence if they would plead guilty and get the new law started. Addicts ransacked their persons looking for places to shoot in outside the arm area. If the law could find no marks on a man they usually let him go. If they found marks they would hold him for seventy-two hours and try to make him sign a statement.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953

If the majority of men possessed this courage and self-will, the earth would be a different place. No, say our paid teachers (the same who are so adept at praising the heroes and self-willed men of former times), everything would be topsy-turvy. But in reality life would be richer and better if each man independently followed his own law and will. In such a world, it is true, some of the insults and unreflecting blows that keep our venerable judges so busy today might go unpunished. Now and then a murderer might go free - but doesn't that happen now in spite of all our laws and punishments? On the other hand, many of the terrible, unspeakably sad, and insane things that we witness today in our so well-ordered world would be unknown and impossible. Such as wars between nations.

Now I hear the authorities saying: 'You preach revolution.'

Wrong again. Such a mistake is possible only among herd men. I preach self-will, not revolution. How could I want a revolution? Revolution is war; like all other war, it is a 'prolongation of politics by other means'. But a man who has once felt the courage to be himself, who has heard the voice of his own destiny, cares nothing for politics, whether it be monarchist or democratic, revolutionary or conservative! He is concerned with something else. His self-will, like the profound, magnificent God-given self-will that inhabits every blade of grass, has no other aim than his own growth. 'Egoism', if you will. But very different from the sordid egoism of those who lust for money and power!

- Self-will, 1919, If The War Goes On, Herman Hesse

'We believe that taking this public position would be consistent with NIDA’s mission to promote and enhance public health. NORML recognizes that, from a public health perspective, cannabis is not altogether harmless,” NORML Executive Director Erik Altieri and Deputy Director Paul Armentano wrote in a joint open letter. “It can be mood-altering; some consumers can become dependent upon it, and some can experience adverse effects.

“But we believe, and based upon your recent public statements we have faith that you do too, that marijuana’s potential public health risks to the individual adult consumer pale in comparison to the known public health burden imposed by its continued criminalization.”'
https://thefreshtoast.com/cannabis/advocacy-group-says-prohibition-more-damaging-than-marijuana/

'The advocates of peace by means of arbitration reason thus: two animals cannot divide their prey except by fighting: children act thus also, and so do barbarians and the barbarous nations, but rational men settle their disagreements by discussion, persuasion, and by referring the decision of the question to disinterested and reasonable people, and the nations of our day ought to act so. These arguments seem quite correct. The peoples of our time have reached a period of enlightenment and have no enmity towards one another and would settle their differences in a peaceful manner. But the argument is correct only in so far as it applies to the people alone, and only if the people are not under the sway of their governments. People in subjection to government is already an indication of the utmost irrationality. ' - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

'Lester Grinspoon, M.D., the longtime Harvard professor, psychiatrist, and author of twelve books — including Marihuana Reconsidered, the single most comprehensive and thoughtful and convincing explanation of the crucial need to end marijuana prohibition and establish a legal marijuana market — passed away early this morning. He was 92 years old.

For the last five decades, Dr. Grinspoon was the intellectual leader of the marijuana legalization movement. Like most of his generation, he began with an assumption that marijuana was a dangerous drug and should be prohibited. But those biases were initially challenged by Dr. Grinspoon’s close friend, (then) Harvard colleague astronomer Carl Sagan, who convinced him that his initial negative views about marijuana were likely mistaken, and that he might personally find the marijuana experience to be a positive one.'
https://norml.org/blog/2020/06/25/norml-remembers-dr-lester-grinspoon/

'What finally cracked the Brown Buffalo was the bridge he refused to build between the self-serving elegance of his instincts and the self-destructive carnival of his reality. He was a Baptist missionary at a leper colony in Panama before he was a lawyer in Oakland and East L.A., or a radical-chic author in San Francisco and Beverly Hills...But whenever things got tense or when he had to work close to the bone, he was always a missionary. And that was the governing instinct that ruined him for anything else. He was a preacher in the courtroom, a preacher at the typewriter, and a flat-out awesome preacher when he cranked his head full of acid.

That's LSD-25, folks - a certified "dangerous drug" that is no longer fashionable, due to reasons of extreme and unnatural heaviness. The CIA was right about acid: some of their best and brightest operatives went over the side in the name of Top Secret research on a drug that was finally abandoned as a far too dangerous and unimaginable thing to be used as a public weapon. Not even the sacred minnock of "national security" could justify the hazards of playing with a thing too small to be seen and too big to control. The professional spook mentality was more comfortable with things like nerve gas and neutron bombs.

But not the Brown Buffalo - he ate LSD-25 with a relish that bordered on worship. When his brain felt bogged down in the mundane nuts-and-bolts horrors of the Law or some dead-end manuscript, he would simply take off in his hot rod Mustang for a week on the road and a few days of what he called "walking with the King." Oscar used acid like other lawyers use Valium - a distinctly unprofessional and occasionally nasty habit that shocked even the most liberal of his colleagues and frequently panicked his clients.'

- Fear & Loathing in the Graveyard of the Weird: The Banshee Screams for Buffalo Meat, December 15, 1977, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

'“America’s most beloved marijuana smoker.” That’s what I tell Willie he is, but then I remind him that he is also America’s only beloved marijuana smoker, and we laugh and pass the joint. Willie is an icon who is loved by tens of millions of Americans for his country music and his charming country style, despite the fact that for more than 40 years, he has been open and honest about the enjoyment he derives from smoking marijuana. Willie is totally comfortable with himself, and that includes his marijuana smoking. He is a proud smoker and he seldom does an interview with anyone without making the point that he is a marijuana smoker and that smoking should be legalized for adults.'
https://norml.org/blog/2020/06/19/a-founder-looks-at-50-willie-nelson-americas-favorite-marijuana-smoker/

'By whatever names we dignify ourselves, in whatever apparel we attire ourselves, by whatever and before whatever priest we may be smeared with oil, however many millions we possess, however many special guards are stationed along our route, however many policemen guard our wealth, however many so-called miscreant-revolutionaries and anarchists we may execute, whatever exploits we may ourselves perform, whatever States we may found, whatever fortresses and towers we may erect - from the Tower of Babel to that of Eiffel - we are always all of us confronted by two inevitable conditions of life which destroy its whole meaning. There is first of all death, which may at any moment overtake any of us, and there is the transitoriness of all that we do and that is so quickly destroyed leaving no trace. Whatever we may do - found kingdoms, build palaces and monuments, compose poems and romances - everything is transitory, and soon passes leaving no trace. And therefore, however we may conceal it from ourselves, we cannot help seeing that the meaning of our life can be neither in our personal physical existence, subject to unavoidable sufferings and inevitable death, nor in any worldly institution or organization.

Whoever you may be who read these lines, consider your position and your duties - not the position of landowner, merchant, judge, emperor, president, minister, priest, or soldiers, temporarily attributed to you by men, nor those imaginary duties imposed on you by that position - but your real position in eternity as a creature who by Someone's will has been called out of unconsciousness after an eternity of nonexistence, to which by the same will you may at any moment be recalled. Think of your duties - not your imaginary duties as a landowner to your estate, as a merchant to your capital, as an emperor, minister, official to the State - but those real duties which follow from your real position as a being called to life and endowed with reason and love.' - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

'"I expect a record number of states to legalize marijuana in 2021, in part due to the financial pressures, along with the racial injustice imperative to reduce unnecessary police-civilian interactions," said Karen O'Keefe, director of state policies for the Marijuana Policy Project, the lobbying organization behind many state cannabis policies in place today.

In recent weeks, a spate of US states have sought to relax decades-old drug laws that criminalized cannabis use and possession and disproportionately jailed Black people for non-violent offenses. '
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/24/business/cannabis-legalize-2021-recession/index.html

'While Grinspoon’s accolades and leadership positions in medicine played a major role in how important his voice was to the cause, it was also the voice of a father who had deeply personal experiences with medical cannabis. As his son Danny battled terminal cancer, Grinspoon witnessed the benefits of medical cannabis to someone going through an aggressive chemotherapy regime.

Danny lost his life to leukemia, but the lessons his father learned in helping him live a better quality of life would go on to help millions. As cannabis rose to prominence in the last 20 years, it’s undeniable the tale of a Harvard Medical School professor and his son went a long way to calming nerves around what was still a very illicit substance in the eyes of so many.'
https://www.laweekly.com/the-cannabis-world-mourns-dr-lester-grinspoon/

Officially sponsored myth 1 -'"All drugs are more or less similar and all are habit forming." This myth lumps cocaine, marijuana and junk together. Marijuana is not at all habit forming and its action is almost the direct opposite from junk action. There is no habit to cocaine. You can develop a tremendous craving for cocaine, but you won't be sick if you can't get it. When you have a junk habit, on the other hand, you live in a state of chronic poisoning for which junk itself is the specific antidote. If you don't get the antidote at eight-hour intervals, and enough of it, you develop symptoms of allergic poisoning: yawning, sneezing, watering of the eyes and nose, cramps, vomiting and diarrhea, hot and cold flushes, loss of appetite, insomnia, restlessness and weakness, in some cases circulatory collapse and death from alergic shock....When I say "habit-forming drug" I mean a drug that alters the endocrinal balance of the body in such a way that the body requires that drug in order to function. So far as I know, junk is the only habit forming drug according to this definition.'

- Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953

'The Gallup poll, published Tuesday, asked 1,028 Americans in all 50 states and the nation’s capital whether they deemed 21 different behaviors or policies, from using birth control to the death penalty, moral or not. More respondents viewed marijuana use as acceptable than they did abortion, pornography, having children outside of marriage and wearing fur.'
https://www.nj.com/marijuana/2020/06/most-americans-see-smoking-weed-as-morally-acceptable-survey-finds.html

'Men of our time, availing themselves of the order of things maintained by violence, and at the same time protesting that they love their neigbours very much, and who do not notice that they are doing evil to their neighbours all the time, are like a man who, after a life of robbery, when at last caught with lifted knife in the act of striking a victim who is frantically crying for help, should declare that he did not know that what he was doing was unpleasant to the man he had robbed and was just about to kill. As that robber and murderer could not deny what was evident to everyone, so it would seem impossible for men of our time, living on the sufferings of the oppressed classes, to persuade themselves and others that they desire the welfare of those whom they unceasingly plunder, and that they do not know how the advantages they enjoy are obtained.

We cannot now assert that we do not know of those hundred thousand men in Russia alone who are always confined in prisons and convict settlements fr the security of our tranquility and property, and that we do not know of those trials in which we ourselves take part, and which at our instigation condemn men who have made attempts to our property or security prisons, exile, or convict settlements where men no worse than those who sentence them, perish pr become corrupt. Nor can we pretend that all that we have obtained and is maintained for us by murders and violence. We cannot pretend that we do not see the constable who with a loaded revolver walks in front of our windows defending us while we eat our appetizing dinner or see a new play at the theatre, or that we do not know of those soldiers who set off so promptly with rifles and live cartridges to where our property is in danger of being infringed.' - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

'But by that time his deal had already gone down. None of the respectable Chicano pols in East L.A. had ever liked him anyway, and that "high-speed drug bust" was all they needed to publicly denounce everything Left of huevos rancheros and start calling themselves Mexican-American again. The trial of the Biltmore Five was no longer a do-or-die cause for La Raza, but a shameful crime that a handful of radical dope fiends had brought down on the whole community. The mood on Whittier Boulevard turned sour overnight, and the sight of a Brown Beret was suddenly as rare as a cash client for Oscar Zeta Acosta - the ex-Chicano lawyer.

The entire ex-Chicano political community went as public as possible to make sure that the rest of the city understood that they had known all along that this dope-addict rata who had somehow been one of their most articulate and certainly their most radical, popular, and politically aggressive spokesmen for almost two years was really just a self-seeking publicity dope freak who couldn't even run a bar tab at the Silver Dollar Cafe, much less rally friends or a following. There was no mention in the Mexican-American press about Acosta's surprisingly popular campaign for sheriff of L.A. County a year earlier, which had made him a minor hero among politically hip Chicanos all over the city.

No more of that dilly-dong bullshit on Whittier Boulevard. Oscar's drug bust was still alive on the Evening News when he was evicted from his apartment on three days' notice and his car was either stolen or towed away from its customary parking place on the street in front of his driveway. His offer to defend his two friends on what he later assured me were absolutely valid charges of first degree murder were publicly rejected. Not even for free, they said. A dope-addled clown was worse than no lawyer at all.

It was dumb gunsel thinking, but Oscar was in no mood to offer his help more than once. So he beat a strategic retreat to Mazatlan, which he called his "other home," to lick his wounds and start writing the Great Chicano Novel. It was the end of an era! The fireball Chicano lawyer was on his way to becoming a half-successful writer, a cult figure of sorts - then a fugitive, a freak, and finally either a permanently missing person or an undiscovered corpse.'

- Fear & Loathing in the Graveyard of the Weird: The Banshee Screams for Buffalo Meat, December 15, 1977, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

'The upward trend in support caught the eye of rapper and actor Snoop Dogg, who threw his support behind the legalisation of cannabis in New Zealand.

Taking to Facebook, Snoop Dogg referenced Lord of the Rings character Gandalf in his pro-cannabis post.

"Gandalf smoking that good good," he wrote while linking to a Merry Jane article which discusses the growing support for cannabis in New Zealand.'
https://www.odt.co.nz/news/national/snoop-doggs-message-nz-over-cannabis-referendum

'Altieri, the pro-marijuana lobbyist, said coming up with a legalization policy wouldn’t take much work: Sanders had one, as did Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Andrew Yang. Or Biden could check in with Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, who wrote a legalization bill based on the argument that legalization is essential to the criminal-justice-reform conversation. Altieri is not impressed with how little Biden has moved so far. “Where he’s at now would have been maybe a bold stance in 1988. It’s not much of one in 2020,” he told me.'
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/07/biden-marijuana-pot-legalize/613777/

'However much the governments try to excite in people the old public opinion of the heroism of patriotism - now no longer natural to them - men of our time no longer believe in it, but believe more and more in the solidarity and brotherhood of all nations. Patriotism does not now offer men anything but a most terrible future; while the brotherhood of all the people is an ideal which becomes ever more and more intelligible and desirable to mankind. And so the transition from the old, outlived public opinion to the new one must inevitably be accomplished. That transition is as inevitable as the fall of the last dry leaves in spring and the opening out of the young ones from the swollen buds.

And the longer the transition is postponed the more insistent it becomes and the more obvious is its - inevitability.' - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

'Join NORML's Founder Keith Stroup, Executive Director Erik Altieri, and a number of special guests who knew and worked with Lester for a conversation honoring his life and contributions to the cannabis reform movement.

Lester Grinspoon, M.D., the longtime Harvard professor, psychiatrist, and author of twelve books — including Marihuana Reconsidered, the single most comprehensive and thoughtful and convincing explanation of the crucial need to end marijuana prohibition and establish a legal marijuana market — passed away on June 25th. He was 92 years old.

His extraordinary personal commitment to advancing both marijuana policy and the NORML organization demonstrated his deeply held belief that we all have an obligation to fight injustice whenever and wherever we find it.'
https://www.facebook.com/norml/videos/196873921743486/

Officially sponsored myth 2 - '"A drug habit is formed instantly, on first use, or at most, after three or four shots." From this notion derive the stories of people becoming addicts after using a few "headache pills" given them by the Sympathetic Stranger. Actually, a non-user would have to take a shot every day for at least a month to get any kind of habit. The Stranger would go broke handing out samples. But a cured addict, even if he has not used it for years, can get a new habit in a few days. He is allergic to junk.'

- Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953

'NORML urges candidate Biden to join with many of his Democratic colleagues and to throw his support behind The MORE Act, HR 3884 — which would remove marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act and once and for all allow individual states the flexibility and authority to regulate cannabis how best they see fit.

The MORE Act would also make several other important changes. For example, it permits physicians affiliated with the Veterans Administration to make medical marijuana recommendations to qualifying veterans who reside in legal states and it incentivizes states to move ahead with expungement policies that will end the stigma and lost opportunities suffered by those with past, low-level cannabis convictions. If approved, the MORE Act also allows the Small Business Administration to support entrepreneurs and businesses as they seek to gain a foothold in this emerging industry.

The MORE Act became the first bill in US history to end federal marijuana prohibition to be approved in the House Judiciary Committee on November, 20th, 2019 with a bipartisan vote of 24-10.'
https://norml.org/blog/2020/07/09/bidens-marijuana-plan-is-out-of-step-with-public-opinion-would-do-little-to-mitigate-the-failed-policy-of-federal-prohibition/

'Hypocrisy in our time is supported by two things - pseudo-religion and pseudo-science - and has reached such colossal dimensions that were we not living in the midst of it, it would be impossible to believe, that men could reach such a degree of self-deception. They have now reached such a strange condition and their hearts are so hardened that though they have eyes they see not, and having ears they hear not, neither do they understand.

Men have long been living in antagonism with their conscience. If it were not for hypocrisy they could not continue to do so. Their present arrangement of life in opposition to their conscience only exists because it is masked by hypocrisy.

And the more the divergence between reality and men's conscience increases, the more is that hypocrisy extended. But hypocrisy has its limits. And it seems that in our day those limits have been reached.' - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

'"Where does the change begin, what does the change look like?” asked DuBois.

“Well, the change has to be the voters start asking for the right things. They start demanding from their district attorneys and their state’s attorneys and their mayors and their county executives the arrest rates for real crime,” said Simon.'
https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2020/07/08/maurice-dubois-david-simon/

'Yeah, and so much for the "paranoid Sixties." It's time to end this bent seance - or almost closing time, anyway - but before we get back to raw facts and rude lawyer's humor, I want to make sure that at least one record will show that I tried and totally failed, for at least five years, to convince my allegedly erstwhile Samoan attorney, Oscar Zeta Acosta, that there was no such thing as paranoia: at least not in that cultural and political war zone called "East L.A." in the late 1960s and especially not for an aggressively radical "Chicano Lawyer" who thought he could stay up all night, every night, eating acid and throwing "Molotov cocktails" with the same people he was going to have to represent in a downtown courtroom the next morning.

There were times - all too often, I felt - when Oscar would show up in front of the courthouse at nine in the morning with a stench of fresh gasoline on his hands and a green crust of charred soap flakes on the toes of his $300 snakeskin cowboy boots. He would pause outside the courtroom just long enough to give the TV press five minutes of crazed rhetoric for the evening news, then he would shepherd his equally crazed "clients" into the courtroom for their daily war-circus with the judge. When you get into bear-baiting on that level, paranoia is just another word for ignorance...They really are out to get you.

The odds on his being dragged off to jail for "contempt" were about fifty-fifty on any given day - which meant that he was always in danger of being seized and booked with a pocket full of "bennies" or "black beauties" at the property desk. After several narrow escapes, he decided it was necessary to work in the courtroom as part of a three-man "defense team."'

- Fear & Loathing in the Graveyard of the Weird: The Banshee Screams for Buffalo Meat, December 15, 1977, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

Officially sponsored myth 3 - '"Once a habit is formed escape is almost impossible." Actually, a habit is easily cured. The usual cure takes from ten days to three weeks. You don't need any "will power." If the cure is done right there is very little discomfort.'

- Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953

'However, the conversation on police reform cannot simply start and end with these measures, and it must include a reexamination of our entire criminal justice system. We should be repealing mandatory sentencing and reducing over-policing (which includes finally legalizing adult-use marijuana)'
https://www.poconorecord.com/opinion/20200707/lt-gov-john-fetterman-discretion-and-de-escalation-are-police-officerrsquos-strongest-tools

'“It is hardly a surprise that those who elect to clandestinely cultivate cannabis on federal lands engage in practices that provide greater potential risks to both the environment and to the end product itself,” Paul Armentano, deputy director for the advocacy group NORML, told Marijuana Moment. “By contrast, a legal market provides regulatory oversight and demands that those engaged in these activities be licensed and utilize best practices.”

“While legalization itself will likely not entirely eliminate the illicit market, just as, for instance, broader alcohol legalization has not eliminated moonshining in its entirety,” Armentano added, “the reality is that it will continue to severely curtail these activities and the involvement of criminal entrepreneurs.”'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/feds-hire-hazmat-firm-for-marijuana-eradication-training/

'No feats of heroism are needed to bring about the greatest and most important changes in the life of humanity; neither the arming of millions of men, nor the construction of new railways and machines, nor the organization of exhibitions or trade unions, nor revolutions, nor barricades, nor dynamite outrages, nor the perfection of aerial navigation, and so forth. All that is necessary is a change of public opinion.

And for that change no effort of thought is demanded, no refutation of any existing thing, and no planning of anything new and extraordinary. All that is necessary is to cease acquiescing in the public opinion of the past, now false and already defunct and only artificially induced by governments. It is only necessary for each individual to say what he really thinks and feels or at least refrain from saying what he does not think.

If only men - even a few - would do that, the out-worn public opinion would at once and of itself fall away and a new, real, and vital opinion would manifest itself. And with this change of public opinion all that inner fabric of men's lives which oppresses and torments them would change of its own accord. One is ashamed to say how little is needed to deliver all men from the calamities which now oppress them. It is only necessary to give up lying! Only let men reject the lie which is imposed upon them; only let them stop saying what they neither think nor feel, and at once such a change of the whole structure of our life will be accomplished as the revolutionaries would not achieve in centuries even if all the power were in their hands.' - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

'"This report is another nail in the coffin for the war on drugs," said Ann Fordham, the Executive Director of IDPC, in a prepared statement.
"The fact that governments and the UN do not see fit to properly evaluate the disastrous impact of the last ten years of drug policy is depressingly unsurprising.'
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/10/21/health/drug-report-un-failure-intl/index.html

Officially sponsored myth 5 - '"Addicts never get enough. They have to keep raising the dosage. They need more and more. Finally, I quote from a recent movie called Johnny Stool Pigeon - They tear the clothes off their skinny bodies and die screaming - for more junk."
This is preposterous. Addicts get enough and they do not have to raise the dosage. I know addicts who have used the same dose for years. Of course, addicts do occasionally die if they are cut off the junk cold. They don't die because they need more and more. They die because they can't get any.'

- Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953

'"We're spending a lot of money right now on the black market and none of it is going back into the community," says Mary Kruger, president of Rochester NORML, a group that has been working to get recreational marijuana approved. "It's been behind a curtain or not really talked about for so long."

But now, recreational marijuana is front and center.'
https://www.whec.com/news/new-yorks-recreational-marijuana-plan-coming-together/5178780/

'If people tell you that all this is necessary for the maintenance of the existing order of life and that this social order, with its destitution, hunger, prisons, executions, armies and wars, is necessary for society, that still more miseries will ensue were that organization infringed; all that is said only by those who profit by such an organization. Those who suffer from it - and they are ten times as numerous - all think and say the contrary. And in the depth of your soul you yourself know it is untrue, you know that the existing organization of life has outlived its time and must inevitably be reconstructed on new principles, and that therefore there is no need to sacrifice all human feeling to maintain it.' - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

"I walk in the night rain until the dawn of the new day. I have devised the plan, straightened out the philosophy, and set up the organization. When I have the 1 million Brown Buffaloes on my side I will present the demands for a new nation to the U.S. Government and the United Nations...and then I'll split and write the book. I have no desire to be a politician. I don't want to lead anyone. I have no practical ego. I am not ambitious. I merely want to do what is right. Once in every century comes a man who is chosen to speak for his people. Moses, Mao, and Martin [Luther King Jr.] are examples. Who's to say that I am not such a man? In this day and age the man for all seasons needs many voices. Perhaps that is why the gods have sent me into Riverbank, Panama, San Francisco, Alpine, and Juarez. Perhaps that is why I have been taught so many trades. Who will deny that I am unique?" - Oscar Costa, The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo

Well...not me, old sport. Wherever you are and in whatever shape - dead or alive or even both, eh? That's one thing they can't take away from you...Which is lucky, I think, for the rest of us: because (and, yeah - let's face it, Oscar) you were not really light on your feet in this world, and you were too goddamn heavy for most of the boats you jumped into. One of my greatest regrets in life is that I was not able to introduce you to my old football buddy, Richard Nixon. The main thing he feared in his life - even worse than the Queers and Jews and Mutants - was people who might run amok; he called them "loose cannons on the deck," and he wanted them all put to sleep.

That's one graveyard we never even checked, Oscar, but why not? If your classic "doomed nigger" style of paranoia had any validity at all, you must understand that it was not just Richard Nixon who was out to get you - but all the people who thought like Nixon and all the judges and U.S. attorneys he appointed in those weird years. Were there any of Nixon's friends among all those superior court judges you subpoenaed and mocked and humiliated when you were trying to bust the grand jury selection system in L.A.? How many of those Brown Beret "bodyguards" [in the La Raza Movement] you called "brothers' were deep-cover cops or informants? I recall being seriously worried about that when we were working on that story about the killing of the Chicano journalist Ruben Salazar by an L.A. County sheriff's deputy. How many of those bomb-throwing, trigger-happy freaks who slept on mattresses in your apartment were talking to the sheriff on a chilli-hall pay phone every morning? Or maybe to the judges who kept jailing you for contempt of court, when they didn't have anything else?'

- Fear & Loathing in the Graveyard of the Weird: The Banshee Screams for Buffalo Meat, December 15, 1977, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

'“I learned in prison when I was up in their face with the radical stuff about ending their way of life and the war and female oppression. I concluded there’s nothing I can do about it. In the '70s, they said back off,” he said. “So I focused on the arts. The only issue I’ve really kept active on is marijuana because it’s so important. It’s been a continuous war for 80 years on people like you and me. They’ve got no business messing with us for getting high.”'
https://www.freep.com/story/news/marijuana/2018/12/31/pot-advocate-john-sinclair-cafe-detroit/2445319002/

'Men have only to understand that what is given out to them as public opinion and is maintained by such complicated, strenuous, and artificial means, is not public opinion but a dead relic of what was once public opinion; they have only, above all, to believe in themselves - in the fact that what they are conscious of in the depths of their souls and what craves expression in each of them and remains unexpressed only because it runs counter to existing social opinion, is that force which transforms that world and to express which is man's vocation - they have only to believe that the truth lies not in what is said by the people around them, but in what is said by their conscience, that is, by God, - and the false and artificially maintained public opinion will instantly vanish and a true public opinion establish itself.

If only people would say what they think and refrain from saying what they do not think, all the superstitions bred by patriotism would fall away at once with all the evil feelings and acts of violence that are based upon them. The hatred and enmity of one country for another that is fanned by the governments would cease, and so would the glorification of warlike exploits, that is, of murder; and above all there would be an end of respect and subservience towards those in power and of the surrender to them of men's labour - for these things have no foundation but patriotism.' -Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

It's true I cherry pick pro-ganja information. Why? Two things - where you stand with reference to ganja and where ganja stands currently.

Where you stand could be one of three positions - pro, anti or neutral. If you are pro-ganja then you share information showing the good side of ganja. If you are anti-ganja, then you share information showing ganja in a bad light. If you are ganja neutral then you probably share information showing both sides or none at all.

You also need to consider the current status of ganja when you make your stand. If ganja was legal, widely available, free to grow normally everywhere like all other plants and being excessively abused then being anti-ganja could [maybe] have been a positive thing. But when it is prohibited unlike all the numerous other more deadly and dangerous drugs which are freely available, then sharing negative information regarding ganja is like saying a tiger is a dangerous animal that needs to be shot even as it faces worldwide extinction.

Legalize ganja, let it's social usage become normalized for at least 10 years like all the other available drugs such as alcohol, tobacco, pharmaceutical drugs, etc and then start cherry picking and sharing anti-marijuana information. Me, am totally pro-ganja if you haven't guessed yet.

Officially sponsored myth 6 - '"Addicts want to get others on the stuff." This silly idea seems to be universal. Every time I take a fall the law says to my wife: "It's a wonder he didn't get you on the junk." Why in hell should I? I have enough trouble keeping up my own habit. Of course, a peddling addict wants to get other people on the stuff so he will have more customers.'

- Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953

This lobby needs to grow...

'Vireo spokesman Andrew Mangini said the company agreed with the state health department’s report on recreational pot. He didn’t answer questions about Vireo’s lobbying and business plans related to the issue. “Legalization will not only help reduce opioid deaths and discrimination against people of color, but also bring substantial tax revenue to the state,” he said. “It’s time to end the war on drugs and create an environment in which New York patients and adult consumers have safe and legal access to marijuana.”'
https://www.lohud.com/story/news/investigations/2018/10/09/new-york-marijuana-legalization/1535138002/

'Sandy likes Mo Uddal, and so do I, for that matter...I also like Jerry Jeff Walker, the Scofflaw King of New Orleans and a lot of other people I don't necessarily believe should be president of the United States. The immense concentration of power in that office is just too goddamn heavy for anybody with good sense to turn his back on. On her back. Or its back...At least not as long as whatever lives in the White House has the power to fill vacancies in the U.S. Supreme Court, because anybody with that kind of power can use it - like Nixon did - to pack-crown the Court of Final Appeal in this country with the same kind of lame, vindictive yo-yos who recently voted to sustain the commonwealth of Virginia's antisodomy statutes...And anybody who thinks that a 6-3 vote against "sodomy" is some kind of abstract legal gibberish that doesn't affect them had better hope they never get busted for anything the Bible or any local vice-squad cop calls an "unnatural sex act." Because "unnatural" is defined by the laws of almost every state in the Union as anything but a quick and dutiful hump in the classic missionary position, for purposes of procreation only. Anything else is a felony crime, and people who commit felony crimes go to prison.

Which won't make much difference to me. I took that fatal dive off the straight and narrow path so long ago that I can't remember when I first became a felon - but I have been one ever since, and it's way too late to change now. In the eyes of The Law, my whole life has been one long and sinful felony. I have sinned repeatedly, as often as possible, and just as soon as I can get away from this goddamn Calvinist typewriter I am going to get right after it again...God knows, I hate it, but I can't help myself after all these criminal years. Like Waylon Jennings says, "The devil made me do it the first time. The second time, I done it on my own."

Right. And the third time I did it because of brain damage...And after that: well, I figured that anybody who was already doomed to a life of crime and sin might as well learn to love it.'

- Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail '76: Third-Rate Romance, Low Rent Rendezvous, June 3, 1976, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

'Now the group is looking at ways to smooth the way out of prohibition, recommending countries start regulating lower-potency drugs as well as reforms to international treaties that require prohibition and punishment.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-drugs-presidents/regulate-ex-world-leaders-solution-to-failed-drug-war-idUSKCN1M40DC

'Divide up what you possess with others, do not gather riches, do not exalt yourself, do not steal, do not cause suffering, do not kill anyone, do not do to another what you would not have done to yourself, was said not only nineteen hundred years ago but five thousand years ago. And there can be no doubt of the truth of this law, and but for hypocrisy it would be impossible for men - even if they themselves did not conform to it - to fail to recognize at least its necessity, and that he who does not do these things is doing wrong.

But you say that there is a public welfare for the sake of which these rules may and should be infringed: for the public good it is permissible to kill, torture, and rob. You say, as Caiaphas did, that it is better for one man to perish than the whole nation, and you sign the death sentence of a first, a second, and a third man, load your rifles against this man who is to perish for the public welfare, put him in prison, and take his possessions. You say that you do these cruel things because as a member of society and of the State you feel that it is your duty to serve them: as a landowner, judge, emperor, or military man to conform to their laws. But besides belonging to a certain State and having duties arising from that position, you belong also to eternity and to God and have duties arising from that.' - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

'The recommendations by Obasanjo’s West Africa Commission on Drugs come as a number of countries look to decriminalize drug use, especially marijuana, after decades of enforcement appear to have done little to curb it.'
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-africa-drugs/former-nigerian-leader-obasanjo-urges-west-african-governments-to-decriminalize-drugs-idUSKCN1LR1O2

Officially sponsored myth 7 - '"There is a clear line between addict and peddler. The authorities pity the addict and are out only to get the peddler."
I have never seen an addict who did not sell, or a street peddler who did not use. There is no line at all. The authorities make no distinction, and the penalty for selling and possession are about the same.'

- Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953

'Medical marijuana advocates have unsuccessfully pushed for DEA reclassification for decades, including a series of petitions to the agency. It’s time for Congress to recognize that the people are ready for this step by forcing reclassification. The Schedule I classification reflects a dated attitude toward marijuana, which has been repudiated by voters around the nation, including voters in Oklahoma.'
https://www.tulsaworld.com/homepagelatest/tulsa-world-editorial-time-to-revise-the-federal-government-s/article_910bb408-0c61-515e-af0c-9af3ca0bfce9.html

'The broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue to sustain it. The slight reproach to which the virtue of patriotism is commonly liable the noble are most likely to incur. Those who, while they disapprove of the character and measures of a government, yield to it their allegiance and support are undoubtedly its most conscientious supporters, and so frequently the most serious obstacles to reform. Some are petitioning the State to dissolve the Union, to disregard the requisitions of the President. Why do they not dissolve it themselves - the union between themselves and the State - and refuse to pay their quota into the treasury? Do not they stand in the same relation to the State that the State does to the Union? And have not the same reasons prevented the State from resisting the Union which have prevented them from resisting the State?'- Civil Disobedience, Henry D Thoreau, Selected Writings on Nature and Liberty.

'Though New York proudly remains one of the most progressive states in the country, we cannot afford to rest on our laurels. If we truly want to be a leader on criminal justice reform, a leader in economic justice, a leader in ensuring a fair and equal state for all, and a leader combatting decades-old policies that continue to hold communities of color back, then it is long past time that we legalized marijuana.'
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tishjames/legalize-pot-today-correct-injustices-of-the-past

'The victim is always and ever the deceived, foolish, working folk - those who with blistered hands have built all those ships, fortresses, arsenals, barracks, cannon, harbours, steamers, and moles, and all these palaces, halls, platforms, and triumphal arches; who have set up and printed all these newspapers and pamphlets, and have procured and brought all these pheasants and ortolans, oysters, and wines that are consumed by the men who are fed, brought up, and kept by them, and who are deceiving them and preparing the most fearful calamities for them. It is always the same kindly, foolish folk, who stand open-mouthed like children, showing their healthy white teeth, naively delighted by dressed-up admirals and presidents with flags waving above them, and by fireworks and bands of music; and for whom, before they have time to look around, there will be neither admirals nor presidents nor flags nor bands, but only a desolate battlefield, cold, hunger, and anguish - before them murderous enemies and behind them relentless officers preventing their escape - blood, wounds, suffering, putrefying corpses, and a senseless unnecessary death.' - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

'After five and a half years of watching a gang of fascist thugs treating the White House and the whole machinery of the federal government like a conquered empire to be used like the spoils of war for any purpose that served either the needs or whims of the victors, the prospect of some harmless, half-bright jock like Ford running a cautious, caretaker-style government for two or even six years was almost a welcome relief.

Not even the ominous sight of Vice President Nelson Rockefeller hovering a heartbeat away from the presidency had much effect on my head.

After more than ten years of civil war with the White House and all the swine who either lived or worked there, I was ready to give the benefit of the doubt to almost any president who acted half human and had enough sense not to walk around in public wearing a swastika armband.'

- Fear and Loathing in Limbo: The Scum Also Rises, October 10, 1974, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

It is time to stop treating marijuana like a deadly drug, when science and public opinion agree that it is relatively safe for adult recreational use. The last thing we need is another expensive and ineffective war on a substance like cannabis—especially when there are far more serious drug problems to tackle.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/end-the-war-on-weed/

Officially sponsored myth 8 - '"Peddlers try to get high school children on junk, or marijuana. A recent magazine article depicts peddlers slipping laudanum into the Coca-Cola of teenagers."
This is utterly ridiculous. No peddler wants kids for customers. They never have enough money, they talk too much and they cannot stand up under police questioning. The best customers are the old-timers. They know all the angles and generally have some source of revenue.'

- Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953

'Jenn Michelle Pedini, executive director of Virginia NORML, said the commonwealth’s approach is among the strictest in the nation. But among the states operating under “hyper-restrictive models, Virginia is sort of the best of the worst,” Pedini said, noting that the state will allow the oils to contain up to 5 percent THC, compared with 0.5 percent in Texas.'https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/dozens-compete-for-a-piece-of-virginias-limited-medical-marijuana-market/2018/08/20/d8b62aac-a16d-11e8-93e3-24d1703d2a7a_story.html

'But yet in these apparently unimportant actions - in our indicating to the extent of our powers the unreasonableness of what we clearly see to be irrational and refraining from taking part in it - lies our great and irresistible power: the power which constitutes that unconquerable force which makes up real genuine public opinion - that opinion which with its own advance moves all humanity. Governments know this. They tremble before that force and strive in every possible way to counteract and overcome it.

They know that strength lies not in force but in the action of the mind and in the clear expression. And they fear that expression of independent thought more than an army. So they establish censorship, bribe newspapers, and seize control of the Churches and schools. But the spiritual force which moves the world eludes them. It is not in a book or a newspaper: it cannot be trapped but is always free, for it lies in the depth's of man's consciousness. This most powerful, elusive, and free force shows itself in a man's soul when he is alone and reflects on the phenomena of the world and then involuntarily expresses his thoughts to his wife, his brother, his friend, and to all whom he accounts it a sin to conceal what he considers to be the truth. No milliards of rubles, or millions of troops, or any institutions, or wars, or revolutions, can or will produce what a free man can produce by the simple expression of what he considers right, independently of what exists and what is impressed upon him.' - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays

'NCIA’s report titled “How the U.S. is Falling Behind in the Regulated Global Cannabis Market,” explains how a lack of federal regulation and the inability to expand beyond state borders means U.S. cannabis companies are constrained in their ability to grow and are at a competitive disadvantage to cannabis companies in other countries, with Canada and Israel being the most prominent examples.'
https://thecannabisindustry.org/press-releases/legal-marijuana-sales-begin-in-canada-u-s-industry-org-urges-congress-to-follow/

'From his time as the mayor of Burlington, Vermont, to his years in the U.S. Senate, Sanders has established himself as a champion of drug policy reform, particularly when it comes to marijuana. NORML gave the senator an “A+” grade based on his legislative track record.

And it didn’t take long for Sanders to incorporate drug reform into his latest presidential bid. In his announcement video, he reiterated that the government “needs to end the destructive war on drugs.”

Sanders has been behind some of the first and most wide-ranging legislative efforts to fundamentally change federal cannabis laws. He was the first major presidential candidate to endorse marijuana legalization during his last bid and, in 2015, filed the first-ever Senate bill to end federal cannabis prohibition.'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/where-presidential-candidate-bernie-sanders-stands-on-marijuana/

'Even a casual reading of White House memorandums in re: Domestic Subversives & Other White House Enemies (Bill Cosby, James Reston, Paul Newman, Joe Namath, et al.) is enough to queer the faith of any American less liberal than Mussolini. Here is a paragraph from one of his (September 21, 1970) memos to Harry "Bob" Haldeman:

"What we cannot do in a courtroom via criminal prosecutions to curtail the activities of some of these groups, IRS [the Internal Revenue Service] could do by administrative action. Moreover, valuable intelligence-type information could be turned up by IRS as a result of their field audits..."

Dr. Thompson - if he were with us & certifiably de-pressurized at this point in time - could offer some firsthand testimony about how the IRS and the Treasury Department were used, back in 1970, to work muscle on Ideological Enemies like himself...and if Thompson's account might be shrugged off as "biased," we can always compel the testimony of Aspen police chief Dick Richey, whose office safe still holds an illegal sawed-off shotgun belonging to a U.S. Treasury Department undercover agent from Denver who fucked up in his efforts to convince Dr. Thompson that he should find a quick reason for dropping out of electoral politics. The incident came up the other afternoon at the Jerome Bar in Aspen, when Steve Levine, a young reporter from Denver, observed that "Thompson was one of the original victims of the Watergate syndrome - but nobody recognized it then; they called it paranoia."

- Memo from the Sports Desk & Rude Notes from a Decompression Chamber in Miami, August 2, 1973, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

Officially sponsored myth 10 - '"There is a connection between addiction and crime. Marijuana, especially, is supposed to cause people to commit crimes."
There is no direct connection between crime and drug intoxication that I have ever seen or heard of. The people who talk about drugs causing crime never seem to follow through and take into account the vast number of crimes committed by drunks. Alcohol is a crime-producing drug that outclasses all others. Of course, a lot of junkies steal to keep up their habit. It isn't easy to get up $10-15 per day, which is what the addict has to pay out for a day's supply of junk in the US.'

- Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953

'As New York lawmakers continue to work on legislation to legalize marijuana for adult use in the state, advocates are ramping up efforts to ensure that social equity and restorative justice are key components of any legal cannabis system that eventually emerges. DPA teamed up with creative agency Virtue to make that point by creating the fake cannabis club.

Country Club Cannabis was supposed to represent the moneyed, exclusive marijuana market that develops when cannabis is legalized without a focus on social equity. Members could pay for special access to different services—spa access for basic membership and access to “legal counsel” for premium members, for example. And joining the club also meant adhering to a dress code that prohibits members from wearing sneakers or having visible tattoos.'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/legalization-advocates-create-hoax-elite-new-york-marijuana-club-in-push-for-social-equity/

'Doctors who were interviewed for the story, are reluctant to make any recommendations about the therapy. The one-sided conversation has resulted in a somewhat shady and dubious approach. The downside of the ban, at least for the medical use cottage industry, is the risk of getting inferior quality oil that is also highly over-priced. If only there were enough clinical trials, rues Sudeep. The strain of doing something “illegal” is telling on him. But for trials to happen, the ban must be lifted. “It (manufacturing cannabis oil) can be one of the biggest Make in India projects,” enthuses Vaurora. For now, it is just another ray of hope for patients of life-threatening diseases and their caregivers. '
https://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-sundaymagazine/Just-a-pipe-dream/article14467284.ece

Now that's lovely..sweet are the fruits of labor...

'You’re also a weed enthusiast. Has that been part of your quarantine lifestyle?

Not yet, but it's going to be. For the first time in my life, I actually bought marijuana. Because of my notoriety in helping legalize marijuana, I've never had to buy marijuana in my life. People just give me marijuana. Perfect strangers come up to me and they put a joint in my shirt pocket and they say, "Thank you."'
https://www.gq.com/story/rick-steves-travel-isolation-interview

'Any anti-narcotic legislation is considered a good thing by the public. For this reason the field of narcotic legislation has become a testing ground for a type of law new to this country but familiar in police states. In the states of Louisiana and Kentucky it is a crime punishable by imprisonment (La., two to five years; Ky., one year) to be an addict. This is police-state legislation penalizing a condition or state of being. In the Louisiana law, no time or place is specified, nor is the term "addict" defined.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953

'I was, after all, the only accredited journalist covering the 1972 presidential campaign to compare Nixon with Adolph Hitler...I was the only one to describe him as a congenital thug, a fixer with the personal principles of a used-car salesman. And when these distasteful excesses were privately censured by the docile White House press corps, I compounded my flirtation with Bad Taste by describing the White House correspondents as a gang of lame whores & sheep without the balls to even argue with Ron Zeigler - who kept them all dancing to Nixon's bogus tune until it became suddenly fashionable to see hi for the hired liar he was and has been all along.

The nut of my complaint here - in addition to being left off The List - is rooted in a powerful resentment at not being recognized (not even by Zeigler) for the insults I heaped on Nixon before he was laid low. This is a matter of journalistic ethics - or perhaps even "sportsmanship" - and I take a certain pride in knowing that I kicked Nixon before he went down. Not afterward - though I plan to do that, too, as soon as possible.

And I felt no more guilt about it than I would about setting a rat trap in my kitchen, if it ever seemed necessary - and certainly no more guilt than I know Nixon would feel about hiring some thug like Gordon Liddy to set me up for a felony charge, if my name turned up on his List.

When they update the bugger, I plan to be on it. My attorney is even now preparing my tax records, with an eye to confrontation. When the next list of "White House Enemies" comes out, I want to be on it. My son will never forgive me - ten years from now - if I fail to clear my name and get grouped, for the record, with those whom Richard Milhous Nixon considered dangerous.'

- Memo from the Sports Desk & Rude Notes from a Decompression Chamber in Miami, August 2, 1973, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

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