'Among the four main drug types – ATS, cannabis, cocaine and opioids –
for which data were reported, cannabis accounted for more than half of
those brought into contact with the criminal justice system over the
five-year period (reflecting the large global market for the drug),
followed by ATS (19 per cent), cocaine (11 per cent) and opioids (7 per
cent).'
- United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020
- United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020
'The enactment of state-level, adult-use marijuana legalization laws is
not associated with increases in either drug treatment admissions,
violent crime, or overdose deaths, according to a comprehensive analysis
published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.'
- NORML
- United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020
'Agnew was the Joey Buttafuoco of the Nixon administration, and Hoover
was its Caligula. They were brutal, brain-damaged degenerates worse than
any hit man out of The Godfather, yet they were the men Nixon trusted
most. Together they defined his presidency.
It would be easy to forget and forgive Henry Kissinger of his crimes, just as he forgave Nixon. Yes, we could do that - but it would be wrong. Kissinger is a slippery little devil, a world-class hustler with a thick German accent and a very keen eye for weak spots at the top of the power structure. Nixon was one of these, and Super K exploited him mercilessly, all the way to the end.
Kissinger made the Gang of Four complete: Agnew, Hoover, Kissinger, and Nixon. A group photo of these perverts would say all we need to know about the Age of Nixon.'
- He Was a Crook, June 16, 1994, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
It would be easy to forget and forgive Henry Kissinger of his crimes, just as he forgave Nixon. Yes, we could do that - but it would be wrong. Kissinger is a slippery little devil, a world-class hustler with a thick German accent and a very keen eye for weak spots at the top of the power structure. Nixon was one of these, and Super K exploited him mercilessly, all the way to the end.
Kissinger made the Gang of Four complete: Agnew, Hoover, Kissinger, and Nixon. A group photo of these perverts would say all we need to know about the Age of Nixon.'
- He Was a Crook, June 16, 1994, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
One of the biggest myths perpetrated worldwide is that cannabis and crime go hand in hand, that the cannabis user is a criminal and any person who uses cannabis is capable of the worst, most despicable crimes. Very often, a person becomes a key suspect for a crime simply because he or she is found in possession of a small amount of cannabis, mostly for personal medical or recreational use. Law enforcement, the media and cannabis opposition work over time to keep this myth alive.
The fact that cannabis legalization does not increase crime has been repeatedly proven through studies from places where cannabis has been legalized for recreational use. In fact, many of these places have seen a drop in crime rates. Cross border smuggling of cannabis and associated crimes has come down hugely, especially at the US Mexico border, since the legalization wave started in the US. The US DEA reports that there was an 80% drop in cannabis seizures in 2020 at the US southern borders. As far back as the 19th century, when the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission of 1894 studied the connection between cannabis and crime in Indian society, the evidence was overwhelming that there was no direct causal link between cannabis and crime. In summarizing its view, on the subject of cannabis and its relationship with crime, the Commission wrote - 552 Summary of conclusions regarding effects. In regard to the moral effects of the drugs, the Commission are of opinion that their moderate use produces no moral injury whatever. There is no adequate ground for believing that it injuriously affects the character of the consumer. Excessive consumption, on the other hand, both indicates and intensifies moral weakness or depravity. Manifest excess leads directly to loss of selfrespect, and thus to moral degradation. In respect to his relations with society, however, even the excessive consumer of hemp drugs is ordinarily inoffensive. His excesses may indeed bring him to degraded poverty which may lead him to dishonest practices; and occasionally, but apparently very rarely indeed, excessive indulgence in hemp drugs may lead to violent crime. But for all practical purposes it may be laid down that there is little or no connection between the use of hemp drugs and crime.
The fact that cannabis legalization does not increase crime has been repeatedly proven through studies from places where cannabis has been legalized for recreational use. In fact, many of these places have seen a drop in crime rates. Cross border smuggling of cannabis and associated crimes has come down hugely, especially at the US Mexico border, since the legalization wave started in the US. The US DEA reports that there was an 80% drop in cannabis seizures in 2020 at the US southern borders. As far back as the 19th century, when the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission of 1894 studied the connection between cannabis and crime in Indian society, the evidence was overwhelming that there was no direct causal link between cannabis and crime. In summarizing its view, on the subject of cannabis and its relationship with crime, the Commission wrote - 552 Summary of conclusions regarding effects. In regard to the moral effects of the drugs, the Commission are of opinion that their moderate use produces no moral injury whatever. There is no adequate ground for believing that it injuriously affects the character of the consumer. Excessive consumption, on the other hand, both indicates and intensifies moral weakness or depravity. Manifest excess leads directly to loss of selfrespect, and thus to moral degradation. In respect to his relations with society, however, even the excessive consumer of hemp drugs is ordinarily inoffensive. His excesses may indeed bring him to degraded poverty which may lead him to dishonest practices; and occasionally, but apparently very rarely indeed, excessive indulgence in hemp drugs may lead to violent crime. But for all practical purposes it may be laid down that there is little or no connection between the use of hemp drugs and crime.
A common perception one is likely to come across is that a cannabis user is a 'bad character'. In examining the proportion of cannabis users among so-called 'bad characters' to cannabis users among the general population, it appears that the proportion is higher among 'bad characters' leading some to the conclusion that there is a link between the two. However when one considers that the proportion of cannabis users is higher among the poorer sections of society, and that the label 'bad character' is most likely to be given to a person from the poorer sections of society, then one can see how this myth has come about. When the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission of 1894 examined the question 'Are ganja users offensive to their neighbors?' , the results were an overwhelming 'No'. It appears that the most offensive thing about a ganja smoker to his neighbor was the smell of ganja smoke, which I would perceive as prejudice and intolerance on the part of the neighbor , rather than an offense by the ganja smoker. This is the same prejudice that makes an individual dislike the smell of meat or fish cooking, especially when the person taking offense considers these habits to be alien to his own culture or traditions.
Another allegation is that criminals fortify themselves with cannabis before a premeditated crime. Cannabis is known to reduce fatigue and calm the nerves. A criminal may use alcohol, if that is the drug he is habituated to. Others may drink a cup of tea or coffee or smoke a cigarette. So a criminal may use whatever drug he is habituated to in order to calm his nerves before a crime and to prepare himself for the exertion ahead. Associating only cannabis with a criminal would be inaccurate.
Some people say that consuming cannabis makes a person want to commit a crime, especially one of a financial or sexual nature. If one were to look at the facts more closely, one would see that the main trigger for a person committing crimes of a financial nature is the inability of the person to live within his or her means, and a desire for the possessions that can be procured with the fruits of crime. Similarly, regarding crimes of a sexual nature, it is the underlying traits of the person and his or her attitude and relationship with the victim that drive the crime and not cannabis. The use of cannabis, even over a long period of time, will not turn a person, living within his or her means or in control of sexual desires, into suddenly a criminal. In fact, the use of cannabis is said to help control these very desires which is why it is the most popular drug pursued for spiritual purposes the world over.
Some people suggest that cannabis is used to stupefy the victim before a crime is committed. This myth is also perpetuated by those who have limited awareness of cannabis. If cannabis is mixed with tobacco and given to the victim, the pungent smell and taste of cannabis is most obvious to any person who has smoked either tobacco or cannabis before. Only in the rarest of cases will a first time user of cannabis reach a state of stupefaction required to commit a crime. If the objective is to stun the victim, there are many more potent, natural and synthetic, compounds that can serve the purpose besides cannabis. This myth, regarding the use of cannabis to stupefy a victim, is also one of the underlying fears created by parents in their children against cannabis users. This, coupled with the myth that cannabis users are bad characters, are ways in which parents try to keep their children away from it.
Another commonly perpetrated myth is that cannabis is a key element of unpremeditated crimes of a violent or homicidal nature. Almost every person who has used cannabis will tell you that it helps you calm down, de-stress and relax. It relieves pain and depression.
It is probably the best medicine against crime and criminal behavior.
It is one of the best ways to reach a meditative state of mind, and is
still widely used for meditation in many parts of the world, by persons
who pursue spirituality. It is used by many to stave off hunger, and the
pain of physical and mental hardships, and to strengthen their resolve to
minimize the pursuit of material wealth. On the other hand, alcohol, methamphetamine, synthetic cannabinoids and prescription medication have been directly implicated in crimes and violence across numerous studies. In this regard, the drug that is the undisputed cause of violent crime of an unpremeditated nature is alcohol. According to the UNODC World Drug Report 2020, alcohol was associated with 90% of homicide under the influence of any sort of drugs. The report states that 'On the basis of data from 17 countries, it is estimated that 37 per
cent of homicide perpetrators were under the influence of a psychoactive
substance when committing the homicide, and the vast majority tended to
be under the influence of alcohol. This finding coincides with a
meta-analysis of 23 independent studies, which found that on average 37
per cent of homicide offenders were under the influence of alcohol when
they committed the offence. In the psychopharmacological model, the
finding that the role of alcohol in homicide is more important than that
of drugs is mostly attributed to the more widespread use of alcohol,
which can also occur in concomitance with the use of drugs. The existing
body of research points to a positive but not necessarily causal
relationship between alcohol use and violence. Some studies analysing
drug consumption among inmates found that violent offenders were more
likely than non-violent offenders to have consumed alcohol at the time
of the offence'
Why is it then that cannabis has this negative image, and prisons worldwide have a significant number of cannabis users? The truth probably has something to do with the way legal systems, comprising of law enforcement, the judicial system and prison system works. Worldwide, drug and law enforcement bodies - like the DEA, police departments and narcotics control bureaus - receive annual budget allocations based on work done and performance parameters. To ensure that a substantial budget is allocated, these institutions need to show results. The easiest way to show results is to round up cannabis users, growers and sellers. Cannabis is one of the easiest things to detect since it is a plant with strong smelling flowers. It is the most widely used (now illicit) recreational drug, used for thousands of years by man. It is bulky and difficult to conceal. In spite of the judiciary bursting at its seams in terms of caseload, the judicial system comprising of lawyers, judges and administrative staff, are quite content to maintain the current status quo, and cannabis users make a significant number of judicial cases in every part of the world. Prisons too need to show capacity for allocation of funds, and to maintain their workforce.
The cannabis community is the most peaceful community, and most arrests target the poorer sections, minorities, or youth, who are the least likely or able to fight back, thus contributing to the numbers that make up performance parameters. Even during the early days of framing anti-cannabis laws, it was made abundantly clear by the persons exploring cannabis prohibition, that there was no need to fear any political or social backlash, if cannabis was prohibited. Yes, there would be widespread discontent, but no political backlash, since governments ruled by force, and the cannabis communities consisted of the poorest people, the working classes and the religious mendicants. None of these were capable of any serious political threat to the ruling classes. The ruling classes were anyway more fond of opium, alcohol and tobacco, and they could always procure their cannabis through the illicit market, paying huge sums of money, so there was nothing to fear from them.
There is no doubt that law enforcement and the lawmakers receive incentives from lobbies that see cannabis as a threat, such as alcohol, tobacco, petrochemical, arms trade, mining, pharmaceutical, heroin, and other powerful drug networks or their representatives in government, in order to turn a blind eye to violent crime, financial crime, human trafficking, environmental crime, etc., which are the real crimes in society. The foremost aim of the legal system does not appear to be one where human society exists devoid of crime, but rather its aim appears to be that of protecting the ruling classes that it perceives as its masters, that of ensuring its own existence, and that of justifying its existence through performance numbers for which cannabis and the cannabis user are the easiest targets.
The irony of the whole situation is that the truth is the exact opposite of what is portrayed. Cannabis does not contribute to crime, but it is the keeping of cannabis illegal that can be clearly associated with increase in crime. For one thing, interacting with the black market to procure cannabis heightens the chances of one becoming a victim of crime. Criminals build and strengthen their networks through unaccounted cash, received through cannabis sales in the black market. This fuels activities like heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine trade, extortion, arms trade, money laundering, illegal mining, etc. Youth, who reach out to the black market for cannabis, are likely to get drafted into criminal gangs to repay debts or earn extra money. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020 states that 'Drug use is associated to a degree with homicidal violence, but at a much lower rate than alcohol use. However, there is also evidence of synergistic effects of alcohol used in combination with drugs, cocaine in particular as it can potentiate violent thoughts and threats. In addition, it has been shown, for example, that during the “crack” cocaine epidemic which started in the United States in 1984, the sharp increase in the number of homicides in many cities could be attributed to the use of “crack” cocaine, but also, and to a much greater degree, to systemic violence, mostly resulting from territorial disputes. However, some have argued that the greatest effect of drug use on violence may be indirect, by creating a demand for the illicit production and distribution of drugs. In addition, for a variety of reasons, illegal markets can sometimes and in some places generate enormous violence.'
Million of ordinary law abiding peaceful people, arrested for cannabis use and labelled as criminals, end up in prison, where they get exposed to hardened criminals who train them and induct them into their gangs to execute violent crime and theft subsequently. Keeping cannabis illegal forces many people to procure, consume and, possibly, even eventually start manufacturing and selling dangerous drugs like synthetic cannabinoids, methamphetamine, novel psychotropic substances, etc., due to the non-availability of a safe drug like cannabis. The illegality of cannabis forces cannabis businesses to deal in cash and run the risk of being robbed due to the non-availability of banking services. These are just some of the ways in which keeping cannabis illegal actually causes significant increase in crime world wide. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020 states that - 'Among the four main drug types – ATS, cannabis, cocaine and opioids – for which data were reported, cannabis accounted for more than half of those brought into contact with the criminal justice system over the five-year period (reflecting the large global market for the drug), followed by ATS (19 per cent), cocaine (11 per cent) and opioids (7 per cent).'
Global legalization of cannabis for recreational use is an essential, urgent, legal and human rights reform that all must bring about, starting with the UN , the heads of state of every single nation, and the law enforcement arms of every nation - such as drug enforcement agencies, narcotics control bureaus, police forces, judiciaries and prison systems. The myth that cannabis usage and legalization increase crime rates needs to be dispelled immediately, and corrective action must be taken, since it is keeping the plant illegal that is, in truth, contributing significantly to world wide crime, and oppression of vast sections of society, especially the poor, the working classes, the minorities, the indigenous people. The oppression pushes society to crimes of passion. But even these crimes of passion pale in comparison to the scale of crimes of violence, financial crimes and environmental crimes that are perpetrated in an organized manner, by the governments and industries that thrive in the absence of cannabis, for whom law enforcement, world wide, continues to be the main accomplice. Targeting cannabis and its users as a workaround to the real fight against crime may eventually backfire, with society arriving at the conclusion that law enforcement is not really that effective, and so, not that necessary after all, especially at the scale at, and in the areas in which, it currently operates.
The cannabis community is the most peaceful community, and most arrests target the poorer sections, minorities, or youth, who are the least likely or able to fight back, thus contributing to the numbers that make up performance parameters. Even during the early days of framing anti-cannabis laws, it was made abundantly clear by the persons exploring cannabis prohibition, that there was no need to fear any political or social backlash, if cannabis was prohibited. Yes, there would be widespread discontent, but no political backlash, since governments ruled by force, and the cannabis communities consisted of the poorest people, the working classes and the religious mendicants. None of these were capable of any serious political threat to the ruling classes. The ruling classes were anyway more fond of opium, alcohol and tobacco, and they could always procure their cannabis through the illicit market, paying huge sums of money, so there was nothing to fear from them.
There is no doubt that law enforcement and the lawmakers receive incentives from lobbies that see cannabis as a threat, such as alcohol, tobacco, petrochemical, arms trade, mining, pharmaceutical, heroin, and other powerful drug networks or their representatives in government, in order to turn a blind eye to violent crime, financial crime, human trafficking, environmental crime, etc., which are the real crimes in society. The foremost aim of the legal system does not appear to be one where human society exists devoid of crime, but rather its aim appears to be that of protecting the ruling classes that it perceives as its masters, that of ensuring its own existence, and that of justifying its existence through performance numbers for which cannabis and the cannabis user are the easiest targets.
The irony of the whole situation is that the truth is the exact opposite of what is portrayed. Cannabis does not contribute to crime, but it is the keeping of cannabis illegal that can be clearly associated with increase in crime. For one thing, interacting with the black market to procure cannabis heightens the chances of one becoming a victim of crime. Criminals build and strengthen their networks through unaccounted cash, received through cannabis sales in the black market. This fuels activities like heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine trade, extortion, arms trade, money laundering, illegal mining, etc. Youth, who reach out to the black market for cannabis, are likely to get drafted into criminal gangs to repay debts or earn extra money. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020 states that 'Drug use is associated to a degree with homicidal violence, but at a much lower rate than alcohol use. However, there is also evidence of synergistic effects of alcohol used in combination with drugs, cocaine in particular as it can potentiate violent thoughts and threats. In addition, it has been shown, for example, that during the “crack” cocaine epidemic which started in the United States in 1984, the sharp increase in the number of homicides in many cities could be attributed to the use of “crack” cocaine, but also, and to a much greater degree, to systemic violence, mostly resulting from territorial disputes. However, some have argued that the greatest effect of drug use on violence may be indirect, by creating a demand for the illicit production and distribution of drugs. In addition, for a variety of reasons, illegal markets can sometimes and in some places generate enormous violence.'
Million of ordinary law abiding peaceful people, arrested for cannabis use and labelled as criminals, end up in prison, where they get exposed to hardened criminals who train them and induct them into their gangs to execute violent crime and theft subsequently. Keeping cannabis illegal forces many people to procure, consume and, possibly, even eventually start manufacturing and selling dangerous drugs like synthetic cannabinoids, methamphetamine, novel psychotropic substances, etc., due to the non-availability of a safe drug like cannabis. The illegality of cannabis forces cannabis businesses to deal in cash and run the risk of being robbed due to the non-availability of banking services. These are just some of the ways in which keeping cannabis illegal actually causes significant increase in crime world wide. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020 states that - 'Among the four main drug types – ATS, cannabis, cocaine and opioids – for which data were reported, cannabis accounted for more than half of those brought into contact with the criminal justice system over the five-year period (reflecting the large global market for the drug), followed by ATS (19 per cent), cocaine (11 per cent) and opioids (7 per cent).'
Global legalization of cannabis for recreational use is an essential, urgent, legal and human rights reform that all must bring about, starting with the UN , the heads of state of every single nation, and the law enforcement arms of every nation - such as drug enforcement agencies, narcotics control bureaus, police forces, judiciaries and prison systems. The myth that cannabis usage and legalization increase crime rates needs to be dispelled immediately, and corrective action must be taken, since it is keeping the plant illegal that is, in truth, contributing significantly to world wide crime, and oppression of vast sections of society, especially the poor, the working classes, the minorities, the indigenous people. The oppression pushes society to crimes of passion. But even these crimes of passion pale in comparison to the scale of crimes of violence, financial crimes and environmental crimes that are perpetrated in an organized manner, by the governments and industries that thrive in the absence of cannabis, for whom law enforcement, world wide, continues to be the main accomplice. Targeting cannabis and its users as a workaround to the real fight against crime may eventually backfire, with society arriving at the conclusion that law enforcement is not really that effective, and so, not that necessary after all, especially at the scale at, and in the areas in which, it currently operates.
Related articles
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.'The opening of state-licensed marijuana retailers does not negatively impact local crime rates, according to data published in the journal Annals of Regional Science.
Researchers with John Hopkins University and the University of Hawaii assessed the relationship between dispensary openings and neighborhood crime rates in Washington state’s three largest cities. Investigators reported that marijuana retailers “have a null effect on average local crime.”
They concluded: “Many North American jurisdictions have legalized the operation of recreational marijuana dispensaries. A common concern is that dispensaries may contribute to local crime. … The random assignment of recreational marijuana retail licenses in Washington State provides a unique opportunity to identify the causal effect of dispensary openings on local crime. … Combining lottery data with detailed geocoded crime data, we estimate that the presence of a dispensary has no significant impact on local crime in the average neighborhood.'
https://norml.org/news/2023/10/12/analysis-marijuana-retailers-not-linked-to-spikes-in-crime/
Researchers with John Hopkins University and the University of Hawaii assessed the relationship between dispensary openings and neighborhood crime rates in Washington state’s three largest cities. Investigators reported that marijuana retailers “have a null effect on average local crime.”
They concluded: “Many North American jurisdictions have legalized the operation of recreational marijuana dispensaries. A common concern is that dispensaries may contribute to local crime. … The random assignment of recreational marijuana retail licenses in Washington State provides a unique opportunity to identify the causal effect of dispensary openings on local crime. … Combining lottery data with detailed geocoded crime data, we estimate that the presence of a dispensary has no significant impact on local crime in the average neighborhood.'
https://norml.org/news/2023/10/12/analysis-marijuana-retailers-not-linked-to-spikes-in-crime/
'Results
Two per cent had been charged for drug-related offences, and 37% reported drug offending. Use of cannabis was the primary infraction statistically related to a criminal charge. Having parents with 4+ years university education (14% of the sample) was associated with lower risk for being charged than having parents with no higher education (OR 4.87; 95% CI: 1.16–20.52) or with a short university education (OR 4.76; 1.05–21.48). The association between parental education and drug charges remained stable when controlling for self-reported drug law infractions and other potential covariates.
Conclusion
In Norway, adolescents who have parents with higher university education, may be protected from getting a drug charge, even though they report similar levels of drug law infractions as other adolescents.'
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0955395921004047?via%3Dihub
Two per cent had been charged for drug-related offences, and 37% reported drug offending. Use of cannabis was the primary infraction statistically related to a criminal charge. Having parents with 4+ years university education (14% of the sample) was associated with lower risk for being charged than having parents with no higher education (OR 4.87; 95% CI: 1.16–20.52) or with a short university education (OR 4.76; 1.05–21.48). The association between parental education and drug charges remained stable when controlling for self-reported drug law infractions and other potential covariates.
Conclusion
In Norway, adolescents who have parents with higher university education, may be protected from getting a drug charge, even though they report similar levels of drug law infractions as other adolescents.'
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0955395921004047?via%3Dihub
'Why should marijuana result in violence, when many states and cities have legalized or decriminalized it? Several reasons:
- First, even in places where you can buy marijuana legally, it’s often much cheaper to buy it illegally. So the illegal markets are thriving.
- Second, states regulate how potent legal marijuana can be, and many people buy it illegally because they want a stronger product.
- Third, illegal marijuana sales are often arranged online, rather than by organized criminal gangs, so it’s harder for police to investigate marijuana dealers.
“When we get to the scenes of these shootouts, there’s guns and bodies everywhere, and what we find scattered on the ground is marijuana,” said Assistant Chief Crowe of Memphis. “Just this past week, we had a shootout, and there were 20 pounds of marijuana. The marijuana is what spikes our violent crime.”'
https://www.policeforum.org/trending23oct21
- First, even in places where you can buy marijuana legally, it’s often much cheaper to buy it illegally. So the illegal markets are thriving.
- Second, states regulate how potent legal marijuana can be, and many people buy it illegally because they want a stronger product.
- Third, illegal marijuana sales are often arranged online, rather than by organized criminal gangs, so it’s harder for police to investigate marijuana dealers.
“When we get to the scenes of these shootouts, there’s guns and bodies everywhere, and what we find scattered on the ground is marijuana,” said Assistant Chief Crowe of Memphis. “Just this past week, we had a shootout, and there were 20 pounds of marijuana. The marijuana is what spikes our violent crime.”'
https://www.policeforum.org/trending23oct21
'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
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
'A proposal to decriminalise various amounts of drugs including cocaine, heroin, acid and MDMA would mean police are “busier” and could see the ACT become a target for organised crime, a parliamentary committee has been told this week.
Speaking at a Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs committee earlier this week, Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw said the experience of overseas jurisdictions had shown there were many consequences to the decriminalisation of the drugs, including ‘narco-tourism’.'
https://the-riotact.com/drug-decriminalisation-could-make-the-act-a-target-for-organised-crime-afp-commissioner-says/506336
Speaking at a Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs committee earlier this week, Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw said the experience of overseas jurisdictions had shown there were many consequences to the decriminalisation of the drugs, including ‘narco-tourism’.'
https://the-riotact.com/drug-decriminalisation-could-make-the-act-a-target-for-organised-crime-afp-commissioner-says/506336
'To improve upon existing research, the study authors said they used a “multiple imputation procedure for agency-level crime data to fill in the gaps in the [Uniform Crime Reporting] data that accounts for the inherent uncertainty in these imputed values in the subsequent statistical analysis.”
“Our results indicate that [medical marijuana laws] result in significant reductions in both violent and property crime rates, with larger effects in Mexican border states,” they wrote.
“While these results for violent crime rates are consistent with previously reported evidence, we are the first paper to report such an effect on property crime as well. Moreover, the estimated effects of MMLs on property crime rates are substantially larger, which is not surprising given property crimes are more prevalent.”'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/impact-of-marijuana-legalization-on-crime-reduction-is-being-underestimated-new-study-finds/
“Our results indicate that [medical marijuana laws] result in significant reductions in both violent and property crime rates, with larger effects in Mexican border states,” they wrote.
“While these results for violent crime rates are consistent with previously reported evidence, we are the first paper to report such an effect on property crime as well. Moreover, the estimated effects of MMLs on property crime rates are substantially larger, which is not surprising given property crimes are more prevalent.”'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/impact-of-marijuana-legalization-on-crime-reduction-is-being-underestimated-new-study-finds/
'Question Is the legalization of recreational cannabis in the US associated with changes in cannabis use outcomes and cannabis use disorder across racial and ethnic groups?
Findings In this cross-sectional study analyzing repeated yearly surveys of US adults conducted from 2008 to 2017, living in a state after enactment of recreational cannabis laws was associated with increases in the odds of cannabis use within the past year and past month among Hispanic and non-Hispanic White individuals (as well as individuals identifying as Native American, Pacific Islander, Asian, or more than 1 race) compared with the period before the passage of recreational use laws; there were no increases among non-Hispanic Black individuals.
Meaning Cannabis legalization is generally associated with increased use of cannabis and not associated with frequent use or use disorder among cannabis users, including among members of demographic subgroups most affected by criminalization.'
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2784528
Findings In this cross-sectional study analyzing repeated yearly surveys of US adults conducted from 2008 to 2017, living in a state after enactment of recreational cannabis laws was associated with increases in the odds of cannabis use within the past year and past month among Hispanic and non-Hispanic White individuals (as well as individuals identifying as Native American, Pacific Islander, Asian, or more than 1 race) compared with the period before the passage of recreational use laws; there were no increases among non-Hispanic Black individuals.
Meaning Cannabis legalization is generally associated with increased use of cannabis and not associated with frequent use or use disorder among cannabis users, including among members of demographic subgroups most affected by criminalization.'
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2784528
'Bill Clinton has been worried about the nature of his Legacy in History, but he should worry no longer. He can shuck off his list of previous accomplishments: ending Welfare as we know it, presiding over the greatest peacetime prosperity since Octavian, paying off the Federal deficit, opening up the entire hemisphere to free trade, and engineering Wall-Street's great six-year Bull Run.
Most historians now agree that Clinton's lasting image will be as the president who Legalized Sodomy and set millions of Americans free from the chains of prudery and hopeless Ignorance.
Abe Lincoln freed the Slaves, Thomas Jefferson bought half of America for seventeen cents an acre, and Bill Clinton legitimized oral sex on the job. The real victim of this mess will be the vice president. It is no small thing for a sitting two-term president to leave his successor with near-record approval ratings. This means that the people are happy with the way things are and will expect more of the same. Al Gore will come under terrible pressure to maintain Clinton's standard of lewdness. Yes, we are in the midst of a revolution. Should the vice president have any questions, he would do himself a favor to look up the definition of "lewd' in the Random House dictionary.
lewd (lood) adj. -er, -est. 1 inclined to, characterized by, or inciting lust or lechery; lascivious 2 obscene or indecent, as language or songs; salacious 3 [Obs.] a) low, ignorant, or vulgar b) base, vile, or wicked, esp. of a person c) bad, worthless, or poor, esp. of a thing.
Sounds bad, eh? Well, get ready to know it up close pretty soon, Bubba. The electorate have spoken, and it will speak again in the year 2000.'
- Memo from the National Affairs Desk: More Trouble in Mr. Bill's Neighborhood, March 19, 1998, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
Most historians now agree that Clinton's lasting image will be as the president who Legalized Sodomy and set millions of Americans free from the chains of prudery and hopeless Ignorance.
Abe Lincoln freed the Slaves, Thomas Jefferson bought half of America for seventeen cents an acre, and Bill Clinton legitimized oral sex on the job. The real victim of this mess will be the vice president. It is no small thing for a sitting two-term president to leave his successor with near-record approval ratings. This means that the people are happy with the way things are and will expect more of the same. Al Gore will come under terrible pressure to maintain Clinton's standard of lewdness. Yes, we are in the midst of a revolution. Should the vice president have any questions, he would do himself a favor to look up the definition of "lewd' in the Random House dictionary.
lewd (lood) adj. -er, -est. 1 inclined to, characterized by, or inciting lust or lechery; lascivious 2 obscene or indecent, as language or songs; salacious 3 [Obs.] a) low, ignorant, or vulgar b) base, vile, or wicked, esp. of a person c) bad, worthless, or poor, esp. of a thing.
Sounds bad, eh? Well, get ready to know it up close pretty soon, Bubba. The electorate have spoken, and it will speak again in the year 2000.'
- Memo from the National Affairs Desk: More Trouble in Mr. Bill's Neighborhood, March 19, 1998, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
'“As more states move toward the sensible policy of legalizing and regulating cannabis, we are seeing a decline in the arrest of non-violent marijuana consumers nationwide,” NORML Executive Director Erik Altieri told Marijuana Moment. “The fight for legalization is a fight for justice. While these numbers represent a historic decline in arrests, even one person being put into handcuffs for the simple possession of marijuana is too many.”
Despite the decline in cannabis busts, the new data shows that American law enforcement still carried out more arrests for marijuana alone last year than for murder, rape, robbery, burglary, fraud and embezzlement combined.' - Marijuana Moment
Despite the decline in cannabis busts, the new data shows that American law enforcement still carried out more arrests for marijuana alone last year than for murder, rape, robbery, burglary, fraud and embezzlement combined.' - Marijuana Moment
'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/
https://norml.org/blog/2021/08/17/analysis-marijuana-legalization-opponents-fears-have-not-come-to-fruition-in-canada/
'Even as people buy weed from legal retailers across the country, police arrest people for marijuana possession in larger numbers than they do those charged with a violent crime.
Numbers from the FBI Uniform Crime Report show that in 2019, the latest year available, police across the country made 545,602 arrests for marijuana-related offenses. Of those, 92 percent - or 500,395 arrests - were for possession offenses only.
In contrast, a total of 495,871 were arrested for violent crimes. In a news release about the FBI data, NORML Executive Director Erik Altieri noted that a marijuana possession arrest is made every 58 seconds in the U.S.'
https://www.greenentrepreneur.com/article/380322
Numbers from the FBI Uniform Crime Report show that in 2019, the latest year available, police across the country made 545,602 arrests for marijuana-related offenses. Of those, 92 percent - or 500,395 arrests - were for possession offenses only.
In contrast, a total of 495,871 were arrested for violent crimes. In a news release about the FBI data, NORML Executive Director Erik Altieri noted that a marijuana possession arrest is made every 58 seconds in the U.S.'
https://www.greenentrepreneur.com/article/380322
'Shit. Not even Spiro Agnew was that dumb. He was a flat-out, knee-crawling thug with the morals of a weasel on speed. But he was Nixon's vice president for five years, and he only resigned when he was caught red-handed taking cash bribes across his desk in the White House.
Unlike Nixon, Agnew didn't argue. He quit his job and fled in the night to Baltimore, where he appeared the next morning in the U.S. District Court, which allowed him to stay out of prison for bribery and extortion in exchange for a guilty (no contest) plea on income-tax evasion. After that he became a major celebrity and played golf and tried to get a Coors distributorship. He never spoke to Nixon again and was an unwelcome guest at the funeral. They called him Rude, but he went anyway. It was one of those Biological Imperatives, like salmon swimming up waterfalls to spawn before they die. He knew he was scum, but it didn't bother him.
Agnew was the Joey Buttafuoco of the Nixon administration, and Hoover was its Caligula. They were brutal, brain-damaged degenerates worse than any hit man out of The Godfather, yet they were the men Nixon trusted most. Together they defined his presidency.
It would be easy to forget and forgive Henry Kissinger of his crimes, just as he forgave Nixon. Yes, we could do that - but it would be wrong. Kissinger is a slippery little devil, a world-class hustler with a thick German accent and a very keen eye for weak spots at the top of the power structure. Nixon was one of these, and Super K exploited him mercilessly, all the way to the end.
Kissinger made the Gang of Four complete: Agnew, Hoover, Kissinger, and Nixon. A group photo of these perverts would say all we need to know about the Age of Nixon.'
- He Was a Crook, June 16, 1994, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
Unlike Nixon, Agnew didn't argue. He quit his job and fled in the night to Baltimore, where he appeared the next morning in the U.S. District Court, which allowed him to stay out of prison for bribery and extortion in exchange for a guilty (no contest) plea on income-tax evasion. After that he became a major celebrity and played golf and tried to get a Coors distributorship. He never spoke to Nixon again and was an unwelcome guest at the funeral. They called him Rude, but he went anyway. It was one of those Biological Imperatives, like salmon swimming up waterfalls to spawn before they die. He knew he was scum, but it didn't bother him.
Agnew was the Joey Buttafuoco of the Nixon administration, and Hoover was its Caligula. They were brutal, brain-damaged degenerates worse than any hit man out of The Godfather, yet they were the men Nixon trusted most. Together they defined his presidency.
It would be easy to forget and forgive Henry Kissinger of his crimes, just as he forgave Nixon. Yes, we could do that - but it would be wrong. Kissinger is a slippery little devil, a world-class hustler with a thick German accent and a very keen eye for weak spots at the top of the power structure. Nixon was one of these, and Super K exploited him mercilessly, all the way to the end.
Kissinger made the Gang of Four complete: Agnew, Hoover, Kissinger, and Nixon. A group photo of these perverts would say all we need to know about the Age of Nixon.'
- He Was a Crook, June 16, 1994, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
'The enactment of state-level, adult-use marijuana legalization laws is not associated with increases in either drug treatment admissions, violent crime, or overdose deaths, according to a comprehensive analysis published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
A team of economists reviewed nationally representative data across all 50 states and the District of Columbia to “comprehensively explore the broader impacts of RMLs [recreational marijuana laws], providing some of the first evidence on how marijuana legalization is affecting illicit drug use, heavy alcohol use, arrests for drug and non-drug offenses, and objectively-measured adverse drug-related events including drug-related overdose deaths and admissions into substance abuse treatment services.”'
https://norml.org/news/2021/07/22/analysis-adult-use-legalization-laws-not-linked-to-increases-in-violent-crime-problematic-substance-abuse
A team of economists reviewed nationally representative data across all 50 states and the District of Columbia to “comprehensively explore the broader impacts of RMLs [recreational marijuana laws], providing some of the first evidence on how marijuana legalization is affecting illicit drug use, heavy alcohol use, arrests for drug and non-drug offenses, and objectively-measured adverse drug-related events including drug-related overdose deaths and admissions into substance abuse treatment services.”'
https://norml.org/news/2021/07/22/analysis-adult-use-legalization-laws-not-linked-to-increases-in-violent-crime-problematic-substance-abuse
'Recreational marijuana laws (RMLs), which legalize the possession of small quantities of marijuana for recreational use, have been adopted by 18 states and the District of Columbia. Opponents argue that RML-induced increases in marijuana consumption will serve as a “gateway” to harder drug use and crime. Using data covering the period 2000-2019 from a variety of national sources (the National Survey of Drug Use and Health, the Uniform Crime Reports, the National Vital Statistics System, and the Treatment Episode Data Set) this study is the first to comprehensively examine the effects of legalizing recreational marijuana on hard drug use, arrests, drug overdose deaths, suicides, and treatment admissions. Our analyses show that RMLs increase adult marijuana use and reduce drug-related arrests over an average post-legalization window of three to four years. There is little evidence to suggest that RML-induced increases in marijuana consumption encourage the use of harder substances or violent criminal activity. '
https://www.nber.org/papers/w29038
https://www.nber.org/papers/w29038
'Federal marijuana trafficking cases continued to decline in 2020 as more states have moved to legalize, a new analysis from the U.S. Sentencing Commission (USSC) shows.
In an updated fact sheet, USSC—which is an independent agency in the judicial branch of the federal government—analyzed the number of drug trafficking convictions and found that there were 1,118 cannabis cases in fiscal year 2020. That’s down 67 percent since 2016—shortly after the first recreational marijuana markets started to mature.
Advocates argue that the year-over-year decline corresponds with the growing number of states that have implemented legalization, and it also reflects a federal deprioritization of pursuing cannabis cases despite ongoing prohibition as the war on marijuana continues to lose voter support.'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/federal-marijuana-trafficking-cases-drop-again-in-2020-as-more-states-legalize/
In an updated fact sheet, USSC—which is an independent agency in the judicial branch of the federal government—analyzed the number of drug trafficking convictions and found that there were 1,118 cannabis cases in fiscal year 2020. That’s down 67 percent since 2016—shortly after the first recreational marijuana markets started to mature.
Advocates argue that the year-over-year decline corresponds with the growing number of states that have implemented legalization, and it also reflects a federal deprioritization of pursuing cannabis cases despite ongoing prohibition as the war on marijuana continues to lose voter support.'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/federal-marijuana-trafficking-cases-drop-again-in-2020-as-more-states-legalize/
'Nixon had no friends except George Will and J. Edgar Hoover (and they both deserted him). It was Hoover's shameless death in 1972 that led directly to Nixon's downfall. He felt helpless and alone with Hoover gone. He no longer had access to either the Director or the Director's ghastly bank of Personal Files on almost everybody in Washington.
Hoover was Nixon's right flank, and when he croaked, Nixon knew how Lee felt when Stonewall Jackson got killed at Chancellorsville. It permanently exposed Lee's flank and led to the disaster at Gettysburg.
For Nixon, the loss of Hoover led inevitably to the disaster of Watergate. It meant hiring a New Director - who turned out to be an unfortunate toady named L. Patrick Gray, who squealed like a pig in hot oil the first time Nixon leaned on him. Gray panicked and fingered White House Counsel John Dean, who refused to take the rap and rolled over, instead, on Nixon, who was trapped like a rat by Dean's relentless, vengeful testimony and went all to pieces right in front of our eyes on TV.
That is Watergate, in a nut, for people with seriously diminished attention spans. The real story is a lot longer and reads like a textbook on human treachery. They were all scum, but only Nixon walked free and lived to clear his name. Or at least that's what Bill Clinton says - and he is, after all, the president of the United States.
Nixon liked to remind people of that. He believed it, and that was why he went down. He was not only a crook but a fool. Two years after he quit, he told a TV journalist that "if the president does it, it can't be illegal."'
- He Was a Crook, June 16, 1994, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
Hoover was Nixon's right flank, and when he croaked, Nixon knew how Lee felt when Stonewall Jackson got killed at Chancellorsville. It permanently exposed Lee's flank and led to the disaster at Gettysburg.
For Nixon, the loss of Hoover led inevitably to the disaster of Watergate. It meant hiring a New Director - who turned out to be an unfortunate toady named L. Patrick Gray, who squealed like a pig in hot oil the first time Nixon leaned on him. Gray panicked and fingered White House Counsel John Dean, who refused to take the rap and rolled over, instead, on Nixon, who was trapped like a rat by Dean's relentless, vengeful testimony and went all to pieces right in front of our eyes on TV.
That is Watergate, in a nut, for people with seriously diminished attention spans. The real story is a lot longer and reads like a textbook on human treachery. They were all scum, but only Nixon walked free and lived to clear his name. Or at least that's what Bill Clinton says - and he is, after all, the president of the United States.
Nixon liked to remind people of that. He believed it, and that was why he went down. He was not only a crook but a fool. Two years after he quit, he told a TV journalist that "if the president does it, it can't be illegal."'
- He Was a Crook, June 16, 1994, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
'Findings
For females, legalization was associated with a step-effect decrease of 4.56 (95% confidence interval [CI] = 3.32, 5.81; P < 0.001) police-reported cannabis-related criminal offences per day, an effect equivalent to a 64.6% (standard error [SE] = 33.5%) reduction. For males, legalization was associated with a drop of 12.73 (95% CI = 8.82, 16.64; P < 0.001) cannabis-related offences per day, equaling a decrease of 57.7% (SE = 22.6%). Results were inconclusive as to whether there were associations between cannabis legalization and patterns of property crimes or violent crimes.
Conclusions
Implementation of the Cannabis Act in Canada in 2018 appears to have been associated with decreases of 55%–65% in cannabis-related crimes among male and female youth.'
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/add.15535
For females, legalization was associated with a step-effect decrease of 4.56 (95% confidence interval [CI] = 3.32, 5.81; P < 0.001) police-reported cannabis-related criminal offences per day, an effect equivalent to a 64.6% (standard error [SE] = 33.5%) reduction. For males, legalization was associated with a drop of 12.73 (95% CI = 8.82, 16.64; P < 0.001) cannabis-related offences per day, equaling a decrease of 57.7% (SE = 22.6%). Results were inconclusive as to whether there were associations between cannabis legalization and patterns of property crimes or violent crimes.
Conclusions
Implementation of the Cannabis Act in Canada in 2018 appears to have been associated with decreases of 55%–65% in cannabis-related crimes among male and female youth.'
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/add.15535
In today's DH report, the Supreme Court says that drug dealers are worse than those accused of murder. People accused of murder only kill one or two persons while drug dealers kill many persons. I totally agree. Pharma companies and their dealers including physicians, chemical pesticide and fertilizer manufacturers and their dealers, petrochemical based non-biodegradable polymer manufacturers and their dealers, are all drug dealers at the apex of the pyramid. They kill hundreds of millions of people every year, along with numerous other life forms and destroy the planet. They, and the governments that support and promote them, must be punished with the utmost severity rather than targeting the inconsequential individuals at the bottom of the pyramid for selling a few grams of heroin or cocaine. What is the Supreme Court doing to address and mitigate this? Can it punish the powerful criminals at the apex for their monumental crimes? Why is cannabis still banned when it provides a safe, sustainable and healthy alternative to synthetic drugs, chemical fertilizer and pesticide based agriculture, petrochemical based products and industries? Can we start with the complete legalization of the plant, a fundamental right to life, instead of meaningless actions that fail to address the root causes of the problems afflicting society? Remove all references to cannabis in any form from the NDPS for starters...
Apr 07, 2021 4:57:17pm
Apr 07, 2021 4:57:17pm
'The report notes that since FY 2015, the number of fentanyl offenders reported to the Commission more than doubled each fiscal year, resulting in a 3,592 percent increase, from 24 to 886 offenders. Additionally, since FY 2016, the number of fentanyl analogue offenders increased 5,725 percent, from four to 233 offenders. The report also discusses the harms associated with fentanyl and fentanyl analogues, which account for over three-quarters of all drug trafficking offenders sentenced where the offense of conviction established that death or serious bodily injury resulted from the substance’s use.
Among drug cases, offenses involving methamphetamine were most common, accounting for 45.7 percent of all drug cases.
The average length of imprisonment in methamphetamine cases was unchanged from fiscal year 2019 at 95 months. However, the average sentence imposed decreased across the other major drug types: in crack cocaine cases (from 78 to 74 months), powder cocaine cases (from 70 to 66 months), heroin cases (from 70 to 66 months), and marijuana cases (from 31 to 29 months).'
https://www.ussc.gov/about/annual-report-2020
Among drug cases, offenses involving methamphetamine were most common, accounting for 45.7 percent of all drug cases.
The average length of imprisonment in methamphetamine cases was unchanged from fiscal year 2019 at 95 months. However, the average sentence imposed decreased across the other major drug types: in crack cocaine cases (from 78 to 74 months), powder cocaine cases (from 70 to 66 months), heroin cases (from 70 to 66 months), and marijuana cases (from 31 to 29 months).'
https://www.ussc.gov/about/annual-report-2020
I estimate the total global deaths in 2020 to be somewhere in the range of 60-70 million people from all causes of death such as non-communicable diseases, communicable diseases and injuries. Covid with approx. 2 million deaths in 2020 would account for something like 3-4% of all deaths. Compare that with the top cause of death in 2019, ischaemic heart disease, that I estimate accounts for around 9-10 million deaths or 15-16% of deaths in 2020. So the world has stopped addressing causes of death that are responsible for 96-97% of deaths and focused completely on an alleged disease that accounts for 3-4% of deaths. To top it all, I firmly believe that many of the persons who have died in 2020 from other causes of death have been given the Covid tag as cause of death to boost the numbers and thus support the global havoc that governments, health officials, the medical industry, pharma industry and petrochemical industry have wrecked. Even if this is not the case, Covid only accounts for under 5% of all causes of death, totally not acceptable or justifiable for the oppression that has happened in the past year of the world's people and still continues today...What a terrible global crime by these charlatans...the second worst in human history in terms of global impact after prohibition of cannabis. Cannabis would have not only mitigated such global crimes by clipping the wings of these charlatans but even addressed most, it not all, leading causes of global deaths...
Mar 31, 2021 4:45:52pm
Mar 31, 2021 4:45:52pm
'"Good work, Judge,' I said. "They'll never catch us now." He smiled and drank deeply from our Whiskey jug, which he had somehow picked up as we fled...Then he passed it over to me, and I too drank deeply as I whipped the big V-8 into passing gear and we went from forty-five to ninety in four seconds and left the ugliness far behind us in the rain.
I glanced over at the Judge as he loaded five huge bullets into the Magnum. He was very calm and focused, showing no signs of the drug coma that had crippled him just moments before...I was impressed. The man was clearly a Warrior. I slapped him on the back and grinned. "Calm down, Judge," I said. "We're almost home."
I knew better, of course. I was one thousand miles from home, and we were almost certainly doomed. There was no hope of escaping the dragnet that would be put out for us, once those poor fools discovered Leach in a pool of burning blood with the top of his head blown off. The squad car was destroyed - thanks to the shrew instincts of the Judge - but I knew it would not take them long to send out an all-points alarm. Soon there would be angry police roadblocks at every exit between Reno and Salt Lake City...
So what? I thought. There were many side roads, and we had a very fast car. All I had to do was to get the Judge out of his killing frenzy and find a truck stop where I could buy a few cans of Flat Black spray paint. Then we could slither out of the state by dawn and find a place to hide.
But it would not be an easy run. In the quick space of four hours we had destroyed two automobiles and somehow participated in at least one killing - in addition to all the other random, standard-brand crimes like speeding and arson and attempted murder of State Police officers while fleeing the scene of a homicide...'
- Fear and Loathing in Elko, January 23, 1992, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
I glanced over at the Judge as he loaded five huge bullets into the Magnum. He was very calm and focused, showing no signs of the drug coma that had crippled him just moments before...I was impressed. The man was clearly a Warrior. I slapped him on the back and grinned. "Calm down, Judge," I said. "We're almost home."
I knew better, of course. I was one thousand miles from home, and we were almost certainly doomed. There was no hope of escaping the dragnet that would be put out for us, once those poor fools discovered Leach in a pool of burning blood with the top of his head blown off. The squad car was destroyed - thanks to the shrew instincts of the Judge - but I knew it would not take them long to send out an all-points alarm. Soon there would be angry police roadblocks at every exit between Reno and Salt Lake City...
So what? I thought. There were many side roads, and we had a very fast car. All I had to do was to get the Judge out of his killing frenzy and find a truck stop where I could buy a few cans of Flat Black spray paint. Then we could slither out of the state by dawn and find a place to hide.
But it would not be an easy run. In the quick space of four hours we had destroyed two automobiles and somehow participated in at least one killing - in addition to all the other random, standard-brand crimes like speeding and arson and attempted murder of State Police officers while fleeing the scene of a homicide...'
- Fear and Loathing in Elko, January 23, 1992, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
'The US sourced 92 percent of its heroin from Mexico in 2019, according to product analyzed by a DEA tracing program. The Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation Cartels continue to be identified as Mexico’s biggest drug trafficking organizations.
But, in terms of cannabis, the report says that Mexican weed in the States has “largely been supplanted by domestic-produced marijuana.”
As proof, the DEA explains that agency-driven marijuana seizures along the US-Mexican border have decreased by over 80 percent since 2013. 2009 was the high water mark for seizures along the Southwest Border. The agency nabbed close to 1.3 million kilograms that year.'
https://merryjane.com/news/new-dea-report-says-border-seizures-of-mexican-weed-have-fallen-by-80-percent
But, in terms of cannabis, the report says that Mexican weed in the States has “largely been supplanted by domestic-produced marijuana.”
As proof, the DEA explains that agency-driven marijuana seizures along the US-Mexican border have decreased by over 80 percent since 2013. 2009 was the high water mark for seizures along the Southwest Border. The agency nabbed close to 1.3 million kilograms that year.'
https://merryjane.com/news/new-dea-report-says-border-seizures-of-mexican-weed-have-fallen-by-80-percent
'“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/
https://lawandcrime.com/drug-policy/marijuana-and-racial-justice-advocates-call-on-biden-to-issue-categorical-pardon-grants-to-non-violent-cannabis-offenders/
'Investigators reported that legalization has not demonstrably impacted young people’s use of cannabis or other substances, nor has it significantly influenced overall trends in traffic safety, violent crime, or suicide rates.
“Our data showed that state-?level legalization of marijuana had generally minor effects,” authors concluded. “One notable exception was the increase in state tax revenue from legalized marijuana sales, … which has exceeded some expectations.”'
https://norml.org/news/2021/02/11/report-adult-use-legalization-laws-not-associated-with-adverse-impacts-on-public-health
'"Where's your wife?" I asked. "Is she still here?"
"Oh, yes," he said quickly. "She just went out for some cigarettes. She'll be back any minute." He nodded eagerly. "Oh, yes, she's very proud of me. We're almost reconciled. She really loves these dolls."
I smiled, but something about his story made me nervous. "How many do you have?" I asked him.
"Don't worry," he said. "I have all I need." He reached into a nearby broom closet and pulled out another one - a half-inflated Chinese-looking woman with rings in her nipples and two electric cords attached to her head. "This is Ling-Ling," he said. "She screams when I hit her." He whacked the doll's head and it squawked stupidly.
Just then I heard car doors slamming outside the trailer, then loud knocking on the front door and a gruff voice shouting, "Open up! Police!"
Leach grabbed a .44 Magnum out of a shoulder holster inside the bathrobe and fired two shots through the front door. "You bitch!" he screamed. "I should have killed you a long time ago."
He fired two more shots, laughing calmly. Then he turned to face me and out the barrel of his gun in his mouth. He hesitated for a moment, staring directly into my eyes. Then he pulled the trigger and blew off the back of his head.'
- Fear and Loathing in Elko, January 23, 1992, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
"Oh, yes," he said quickly. "She just went out for some cigarettes. She'll be back any minute." He nodded eagerly. "Oh, yes, she's very proud of me. We're almost reconciled. She really loves these dolls."
I smiled, but something about his story made me nervous. "How many do you have?" I asked him.
"Don't worry," he said. "I have all I need." He reached into a nearby broom closet and pulled out another one - a half-inflated Chinese-looking woman with rings in her nipples and two electric cords attached to her head. "This is Ling-Ling," he said. "She screams when I hit her." He whacked the doll's head and it squawked stupidly.
Just then I heard car doors slamming outside the trailer, then loud knocking on the front door and a gruff voice shouting, "Open up! Police!"
Leach grabbed a .44 Magnum out of a shoulder holster inside the bathrobe and fired two shots through the front door. "You bitch!" he screamed. "I should have killed you a long time ago."
He fired two more shots, laughing calmly. Then he turned to face me and out the barrel of his gun in his mouth. He hesitated for a moment, staring directly into my eyes. Then he pulled the trigger and blew off the back of his head.'
- Fear and Loathing in Elko, January 23, 1992, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
'Studies on the effect of marijuana on domestic violence often suffer from endogeneity issues. To examine the effect of marijuana decriminalization and medical marijuana legalization on serious domestic assaults, we conducted a difference-in-differences analysis on a panel dataset on NIBRS-reported assaults in 24 states over the 12 years between 2005 and 2016. Assaults disaggregated according to situation and extent of injury were employed as dependent variables. We found that while the total number of assaults did not change, decriminalization reduced domestic assaults involving serious injuries by 18%. From a harm reduction perspective, these results suggest that while the extensive margin of violence did not change, the intensive margin measured by the seriousness of assaults were substantially affected by decriminalization. This result may be partially explained by reductions in offender alcohol intoxication and weapon-involved assault.'
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0886260520961876
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0886260520961876
'Among the four main drug types – ATS, cannabis, cocaine and opioids – for which data were reported, cannabis accounted for more than half of those brought into contact with the criminal justice system over the five-year period (reflecting the large global market for the drug), followed by ATS (19 per cent), cocaine (11 per cent) and opioids (7 per cent).'
- United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_6.pdf
- United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_6.pdf
'Leach appeared in the doorway holding the naked lady by the neck and hurled her across the room at me...
Time stood still for an instant. The woman seemed to hover in the air, coming at me in the darkness like a body in slow motion. I went into a stance with the bread knife and braced for a fight to the death.
Then the thing hit me and bounced softly down to the floor. It was a rubber blow-up doll: one of those things with five orifices that young stockbrokers by in adult bookstores after the singles bars close.
"Meet Jennifer," he said. "She's my punching bag." He picked it up by the hair and slammed it across the room.
"Ho, ho," he chuckled, " no more wife beating. I'm cured, thanks to Jennifer." He smiled sheepishly. "It's almost like a miracle. These dolls saved my marriage. They're a lot smarter than you think." He nodded gravely. "Sometimes I have to beat two at once. But it always calms me down, you know what I mean?"
Whoops, I thought. Welcome to the night train. "Oh, hell yes," I said quickly. "How do the neighbors handle it?"
"No problem," he said. "They love me."
Sure, I thought. I tried to imagine the horror of living in a muddy industrial slum full of tin-walled trailers and trying to protect your family against brain damage from knowing that every night when you look out your kitchen window there will be a man in a leather bathrobe flogging two naked women around the room with a quart bottle of Wild Turkey. Sometimes for two or three hours...It was horrible.'
- Fear and Loathing in Elko, January 23, 1992, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
Time stood still for an instant. The woman seemed to hover in the air, coming at me in the darkness like a body in slow motion. I went into a stance with the bread knife and braced for a fight to the death.
Then the thing hit me and bounced softly down to the floor. It was a rubber blow-up doll: one of those things with five orifices that young stockbrokers by in adult bookstores after the singles bars close.
"Meet Jennifer," he said. "She's my punching bag." He picked it up by the hair and slammed it across the room.
"Ho, ho," he chuckled, " no more wife beating. I'm cured, thanks to Jennifer." He smiled sheepishly. "It's almost like a miracle. These dolls saved my marriage. They're a lot smarter than you think." He nodded gravely. "Sometimes I have to beat two at once. But it always calms me down, you know what I mean?"
Whoops, I thought. Welcome to the night train. "Oh, hell yes," I said quickly. "How do the neighbors handle it?"
"No problem," he said. "They love me."
Sure, I thought. I tried to imagine the horror of living in a muddy industrial slum full of tin-walled trailers and trying to protect your family against brain damage from knowing that every night when you look out your kitchen window there will be a man in a leather bathrobe flogging two naked women around the room with a quart bottle of Wild Turkey. Sometimes for two or three hours...It was horrible.'
- Fear and Loathing in Elko, January 23, 1992, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
'The association between domestic violence, including male perpetrated intimate partner violence against women, and psychoactive substance use has been investigated extensively. While it is not possible to ascertain a causal relationship between these phenomena, evidence shows that women who were injured by a male intimate partner are two to three times more likely to abuse alcohol and to have used cocaine than those who were not injured'
- United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_6.pdf
- United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_6.pdf
'On the basis of data from 17 countries, it is estimated that 37 per cent of homicide perpetrators were under the influence of a psychoactive substance when committing the homicide, and the vast majority tended to be under the influence of alcohol. This finding coincides with a meta-analysis of 23 independent studies, which found that on average 37 per cent of homicide offenders were under the influence of alcohol when they committed the offence. In the psychopharmacological model, the finding that the role of alcohol in homicide is more important than that of drugs is mostly attributed to the more widespread use of alcohol, which can also occur in concomitance with the use of drugs. The existing body of research points to a positive but not necessarily causal relationship between alcohol use and violence. Some studies analysing drug consumption among inmates found that violent offenders were more likely than non-violent offenders to have consumed alcohol at the time of the offence'
- United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_6.pdf
- United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_6.pdf
'Drug use is associated to a degree with homicidal violence, but at a much lower rate than alcohol use. However, there is also evidence of synergistic effects of alcohol used in combination with drugs, cocaine in particular as it can potentiate violent thoughts and threats. In addition, it has been shown, for example, that during the “crack” cocaine epidemic which started in the United States in 1984, the sharp increase in the number of homicides in many cities could be attributed to the use of “crack” cocaine, but also, and to a much greater degree, to systemic violence, mostly resulting from territorial disputes. However, some have argued that the greatest effect of drug use on violence may be indirect, by creating a demand for the illicit production and distribution of drugs. In addition, for a variety of reasons, illegal markets can sometimes and in some places generate enormous violence.'
- United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_6.pdf
- United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_6.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
'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
'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 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/
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 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/
- 'Since 2011, interceptions of cannabis along U.S. borders have fallen 89%, reflecting the convergence of changing social, economic, and legal developments.
- The southern border continues to account for almost all the interceptions (99%), though it has also seen the steepest decline (90%) of them since 2011.
- The decrease in southern interceptions is likely attributable to a range of factors: falling demand for illicit cannabis in states with legal medical and adult use programs, less appeal for traditionally lower-quality cannabis from Mexico or other southern countries than for domestically cultivated products, and increased border enforcement efforts raising the risk of interdiction.
- Conversely, interceptions at the norther border increased 113% between 2018 and 2019, reflecting Canada’s nationwide adult-use legalization in 2018 and the appeal of its reputed high-quality cannabis.
- The data suggest that legalization is having a major disruptive effect on international cannabis smuggling operations aimed at the U.S., and underscores American consumer preference for regulated cannabis products where available and competitively priced'
'I had never been able to drink before when I was on the junk, or junk sick. But eating hop is different from shooting the white stuff. You can mix hop and lush.
At first I started drinking at five in the afternoon. After a week, I started drinking at eight in the morning, stayed drunk all day and all night, and woke up drunk the next morning.
Every morning when I woke up, I washed down benzedrine, sanicin, and a piece of hop with black coffee and a shot of tequila. Then I lay back and closed my eyes to piece together the night before and yesterday. Often, I drew a blank from noon on. You sometimes wake up from a dream and think, "Thank God, I didn't really do that!" Reconstructing a period of blackout you think, "My God, did I really do it?" The line between saying and thinking is blurred. Did you say it or just think it?' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
At first I started drinking at five in the afternoon. After a week, I started drinking at eight in the morning, stayed drunk all day and all night, and woke up drunk the next morning.
Every morning when I woke up, I washed down benzedrine, sanicin, and a piece of hop with black coffee and a shot of tequila. Then I lay back and closed my eyes to piece together the night before and yesterday. Often, I drew a blank from noon on. You sometimes wake up from a dream and think, "Thank God, I didn't really do that!" Reconstructing a period of blackout you think, "My God, did I really do it?" The line between saying and thinking is blurred. Did you say it or just think it?' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'After ten days of the cure I had deteriorated shockingly. My clothes were spotted and stiff from the drinks I had spilled all over myself. I never bathed. I had lost weight, my hands shook, I was always spilling things, knocking over chairs, and falling down. But I seemed to have unlimited energy and a capacity for liquor I never had before. My emotions spilled out everywhere. I was uncontrollably social and would talk to anybody I could pin down. I forced distastefully intimate confidences on perfect strangers. Several times I made the crudest sexual propositions to people who had given no hint of reciprocity.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'The sale of non-medical cannabis through legal sources represents only a
portion of the cannabis market, as it appears that a substantial
proportion of users still rely on illegal sources to obtain cannabis (42
per cent in 2019). Moreover, cannabis prices on the illegal market have
remained considerably lower (and have been declining) compared with the
prices on the legal market. In the second quarter of 2019, based on 236
submissions, the average price per gram of cannabis on the legal market
was Can$10.65, compared with Can$5.93 per gram on the illegal market.' -
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'Lyndon LaRouche was atomized and the Deviate Reverend Jim Bakker was sent to prison for forty-five years for just dabbling in the kind of brazen, low-rent crimes that were apparently taken for granted and pursued with relentless zeal - day and night, 366 days of the year, in full view of the servants and the Secret Service - by the folks who lived in the White House.
Just folks. No different from you or me or the Mitchell brothers. And they never claimed to be anything else, really. Just Good Ol' Dutch and What's Her Name, the maniac little sex doll who squawked openly (allegedly) with Frank Sinatra on dim-lit couches in TV studios, where she went constantly to tape public-service announcements about Just Say No.
It was a very wild act in a very fast lane, and I have to admire it for the Heaviness. It is no small thing in some circles to make headlines lewd and shocking enough to bump a new Kennedy/Palm Beach rape case off the front page of the tabloids...That is Strong...That is Charles Manson country.
Remember they laughed at Thomas Edison. And don't forget that Deep Throat was a box-office hit in the same years that Nancy spent grooming her mongrel stud for the Real Derby, the biggest race of them all...and They Won!!!Twice!!!'
- The Taming of the Shrew, May 30, 1991, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
'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
Just folks. No different from you or me or the Mitchell brothers. And they never claimed to be anything else, really. Just Good Ol' Dutch and What's Her Name, the maniac little sex doll who squawked openly (allegedly) with Frank Sinatra on dim-lit couches in TV studios, where she went constantly to tape public-service announcements about Just Say No.
It was a very wild act in a very fast lane, and I have to admire it for the Heaviness. It is no small thing in some circles to make headlines lewd and shocking enough to bump a new Kennedy/Palm Beach rape case off the front page of the tabloids...That is Strong...That is Charles Manson country.
Remember they laughed at Thomas Edison. And don't forget that Deep Throat was a box-office hit in the same years that Nancy spent grooming her mongrel stud for the Real Derby, the biggest race of them all...and They Won!!!Twice!!!'
- The Taming of the Shrew, May 30, 1991, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
'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
'Rollins listened to my account of the previous evening. "You're going to get your head blown off carrying that gun," he said. "What do you carry it for? You wouldn't know what you were shooting at. You bumped into trees twice there on Insurgentes. You walked right in front of a car. I pulled you back and you threatened me. I left you there to find your own way home, and I don't know how you ever made it. Everyone is fed up with the way you've been acting lately. If there's one thing I don't want to be around, and I think no one else particularly wants to be around, it's a drunk with a gun."' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
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
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
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
'The objectives of the current cannabis legislation in Canada are to
keep cannabis away from young people (under 18 years of age), to prevent
criminals from profiting from the distribution and sale of -cannabis
and to safeguard public health and safety by allowing adults (aged 18
and older) legal access to cannabis. Under the constitutional division
of powers in Canada, the federal Government and provincial governments
have different responsibilities. As the provinces historically developed
their own systems to regulate the sale of alcohol, a similar approach
has been applied to regulate the non-medical use of cannabis products.' -
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'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/
'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/
'Which brings us back to the story, for good or ill: not everybody who failed to understand the nature of the Social Contract has been terminally banished to the west coast. Some of them still live here - for now, at least - and every once in a while they cause problems that make headlines all over the world.
The strange and terrible case of young Roxanne Pulitzer is one of these, and that is the reason I came to Palm Beach, because I feel a bond with these people that runs deeper and stronger than mere money and orgies and drugs and witchcraft and lesbians and whiskey and red Chrysler convertibles.
Bestiality is the key to it, I think. I have always loved animals. They are different from us, and their brains are not complex, but their hearts are pure and there is usually no fat in their bodies and they will never call the police on you or take you in front of a judge or run off and hide with your money...
Animals don't hire lawyers...'
- A Dog Took My Place, July 21, 1983, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
The strange and terrible case of young Roxanne Pulitzer is one of these, and that is the reason I came to Palm Beach, because I feel a bond with these people that runs deeper and stronger than mere money and orgies and drugs and witchcraft and lesbians and whiskey and red Chrysler convertibles.
Bestiality is the key to it, I think. I have always loved animals. They are different from us, and their brains are not complex, but their hearts are pure and there is usually no fat in their bodies and they will never call the police on you or take you in front of a judge or run off and hide with your money...
Animals don't hire lawyers...'
- A Dog Took My Place, July 21, 1983, 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
'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
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
'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
- 'Since 2011, interceptions of cannabis along U.S. borders have fallen 89%, reflecting the convergence of changing social, economic, and legal developments.
- The southern border continues to account for almost all the interceptions (99%), though it has also seen the steepest decline (90%) of them since 2011.
- The decrease in southern interceptions is likely attributable to a range of factors: falling demand for illicit cannabis in states with legal medical and adult use programs, less appeal for traditionally lower-quality cannabis from Mexico or other southern countries than for domestically cultivated products, and increased border enforcement efforts raising the risk of interdiction.
- Conversely, interceptions at the norther border increased 113% between 2018 and 2019, reflecting Canada’s nationwide adult-use legalization in 2018 and the appeal of its reputed high-quality cannabis.
- The data suggest that legalization is having a major disruptive effect on international cannabis smuggling operations aimed at the U.S., and underscores American consumer preference for regulated cannabis products where available and competitively priced'
'Sales of guns and ammunition are soaring across the US as fears of possible social unrest amid the coronavirus crisis are prompting some Americans to turn to firearms as a form of self-protection.
On the west coast, long lines of customers were queueing up outside gun stores to stock up on deadly materials. At the Martin B Retting gun shop in Culver City, California, the queues stretched round the block throughout the weekend.'
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/16/us-sales-guns-ammunition-soar-amid-coronavirus-panic-buying
'In this first report of this decade, the Global Commission on Drug Policy outlines how the current international drug control regime works for the benefit of transnational organized crime. It highlights how years of repressive policies targeted at nonviolent drug offenders have resulted in mass incarceration and produced countless adverse impacts on public health, the rule of law, and social cohesion, whilst at the same time reinforcing criminal elites.
The report argues that the top layers of criminal organizations must be disempowered, through policy responses and political will. It provides implementable recommendations for the replacement of the current policy of targeting non-violent drug offenders and resorting to mass incarceration. Law enforcement must focus on the most dangerous and protected actors and primary drivers of the corruption, violence, and chaos around illegal drug markets'
https://www.globalcommissionondrugs.org/reports/enforcement-of-drug-laws
'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
'I shrugged and went back to fondling the goods on the shirt rack. The concept of victimless crime is well understood in Palm Beach, and the logic is hard to argue. No harm, no crime. If a pretty girl from Atlanta can sleep late in the morning, have lunch at the Everglades Club, and make $50,000 tax free a year fucking dogs in rich people's bedrooms on weekends, why should she fear the police? What is the difference between bestiality and common sodomy? Is it better to fuck swine at the Holiday Inn or donkeys in a penthouse on Tarpon Island? And what's wrong with incest, anyway? It takes two hundred years of careful inbreeding to produce a line of beautiful daughters, and only a madman would turn them out to strangers. Feed them cocaine and teach them to love their stepsisters - or even their fathers and brothers, if that's what it takes to keep ugliness out of the family.
Look at the servants. They have warts and fat ankles. Their children are too dumb to learn and too mean to live, and there is no sense of family continuity. There is a lot more to breeding than teaching children good table manners, and a lot more to being rich than just spending money on wearing alligator shirts. The real difference between the Rich and the Others is not just that "they have more money," as Hemingway noted, but that money is not a governing factor in their lives, as it is with people who work for a living. The truly rich are born free, like dolphins, they will never feel hungry, and their credit will never be questioned. Their daughters will be debutantes and their sons will go to prep schools, and if their cousins are junkies and lesbians, so what? The breeding of humans is still an imperfect art, even with all the advantages.
Where are the Aryan thoroughbreds that Hitler bred so carefully in the early days of the Third Reich? Where are the best and brightest children of Bel Air and Palm Beach?
These are awkward questions in some circles, and the answers can be disturbing. Why do the finest flowers of the American Dream so often turn up in asylums, divorce courts, and other grey hallways of the living doomed? What is it about being born free and rich beyond worry that makes people crazy?'
- A Dog Took My Place, July 21, 1983, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
Look at the servants. They have warts and fat ankles. Their children are too dumb to learn and too mean to live, and there is no sense of family continuity. There is a lot more to breeding than teaching children good table manners, and a lot more to being rich than just spending money on wearing alligator shirts. The real difference between the Rich and the Others is not just that "they have more money," as Hemingway noted, but that money is not a governing factor in their lives, as it is with people who work for a living. The truly rich are born free, like dolphins, they will never feel hungry, and their credit will never be questioned. Their daughters will be debutantes and their sons will go to prep schools, and if their cousins are junkies and lesbians, so what? The breeding of humans is still an imperfect art, even with all the advantages.
Where are the Aryan thoroughbreds that Hitler bred so carefully in the early days of the Third Reich? Where are the best and brightest children of Bel Air and Palm Beach?
These are awkward questions in some circles, and the answers can be disturbing. Why do the finest flowers of the American Dream so often turn up in asylums, divorce courts, and other grey hallways of the living doomed? What is it about being born free and rich beyond worry that makes people crazy?'
- A Dog Took My Place, July 21, 1983, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
'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
'The burden of drug policing is overwhelmingly borne by poor
communities, young people, and often disadvantaged social and ethnic
groups, whereas drug consumption by wealthier communities may evade
police attention. Criminal records for low-level, non-violent offenders –
often already stigmatized – further exclude them from society and the
legitimate economy, and makes it more difficult to access health
services. Burdening criminal justice systems with minor crimes such as
possession for personal use, especially of cannabis, drains resources
from more complex investigations into serious crime.'
https://www.globalcommissionondrugs.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/FINAL-EN_2020report_web.pdf
'Prison systems in Latin America and the Caribbean have been described as “near-perfect recruiting centers and incubators for crime,” as organized crime groups have come to control drugs economies within prisons and use the facilities as bases by which to control trafficking operations outside. In São Paulo, the prison system gave rise to Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC), the largest and best-organized criminal group in Brazil. Similarly, prison overcrowding in Indonesia linked to the country’s hardline drugs policy has led to inhumane conditions, a breakdown in prison governance, and the rise of prison-based drug trafficking organizations.'
https://www.globalcommissionondrugs.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/FINAL-EN_2020report_web.pdf
https://www.globalcommissionondrugs.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/FINAL-EN_2020report_web.pdf
'Prison systems in Latin America and the Caribbean have been described as “near-perfect recruiting centers and incubators for crime,” as organized crime groups have come to control drugs economies within prisons and use the facilities as bases by which to control trafficking operations outside. In São Paulo, the prison system gave rise to Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC), the largest and best-organized criminal group in Brazil. Similarly, prison overcrowding in Indonesia linked to the country’s hardline drugs policy has led to inhumane conditions, a breakdown in prison governance, and the rise of prison-based drug trafficking organizations.'
https://www.globalcommissionondrugs.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/FINAL-EN_2020report_web.pdf
'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
'In an era when the vice president of the United States held court in Washington to accept payoffs from his former vassals in the form of big wads of $100 bills - and when the president himself routinely held secretly tape-recorded meetings with his top aides in the Oval Office to plot illegal wiretaps, political burglaries, and other gross felonies in the name of a "silent majority," it was hard to feel anything more than a flush of high, nervous humor at the sight of some acid-bent lawyer setting fire to a judge's front yard at four o'clock in the morning.
I might even be tempted to justify a thing like that - but of course it would be wrong...And my attorney was Not a Crook, and, to the best of my knowledge, his mother was just as much a "saint" as Richard Nixon's.
Indeed. And now - as an almost perfect tribute to every icepick ever wielded in the name of Justice - I want to enter into the permanent record, at this point, as a strange but unchallenged fact that Oscar Z. Acosta was never disbarred from the practice of law in the state of California - and ex-president Richard Nixon was.
There are some things, apparently, that not even lawyers will tolerate, and in a naturally unjust world where the image of "Justice" is honored for being blind, even a blind pig will find an acorn once in a while.
Or maybe not - because Oscar was eventually hurt far worse by professional ostracism than Nixon was hurt by disbarment. The Great Banshee screamed for both of them at almost the same time - for entirely different reasons, but with ominously similar results.'
- 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 might even be tempted to justify a thing like that - but of course it would be wrong...And my attorney was Not a Crook, and, to the best of my knowledge, his mother was just as much a "saint" as Richard Nixon's.
Indeed. And now - as an almost perfect tribute to every icepick ever wielded in the name of Justice - I want to enter into the permanent record, at this point, as a strange but unchallenged fact that Oscar Z. Acosta was never disbarred from the practice of law in the state of California - and ex-president Richard Nixon was.
There are some things, apparently, that not even lawyers will tolerate, and in a naturally unjust world where the image of "Justice" is honored for being blind, even a blind pig will find an acorn once in a while.
Or maybe not - because Oscar was eventually hurt far worse by professional ostracism than Nixon was hurt by disbarment. The Great Banshee screamed for both of them at almost the same time - for entirely different reasons, but with ominously similar results.'
- 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
'Men of our time, availing themselves of the order of things maintained by violence, and at the same time protesting that they love their neighbours 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
'The siloed and uncoordinated responses currently provided only add to
the existing challenges. There is no justification in addressing drugs
at the CND from a pre-dominant perspective of crime. Only a
comprehensive approach to drugs such as that recommended by the “UN
System common position on drug-related matters” can address organized
crime without further increasing harms. UN member states must consider
merging the 1961 and 1971 Conventions complemented by precursor control,
and terminating the 1988 “UN Convention against Illicit Traffic in
Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances”. This would broaden the
mandate of the CCPCJ as the functional commission on crime and provide
coherence to the fight against organized crime.'
https://www.globalcommissionondrugs.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/FINAL-EN_2020report_web.pdf
'Results
Compared to Dauphin, the mean arrest rate for all marijuana-related crimes in Philadelphia declined by 19.9 per 100,000 residents (34.9% reduction), 17.1 per 100,000 residents (43.1% reduction) for possession, and 2.8 per 100,000 resident (15.9% reduction) for sales/manufacturing. Arrest rates also differed by demographic characteristics post-decriminalization. Notably, African Americans had a greater absolute/relative reduction in possession-based arrests than Whites. However, relative reductions for sales/manufacturing-based arrests was nearly 3 times lower for African Americans. Males had greater absolute/relative reduction for possession-based arrests, but lower relative reduction for sales/manufacturing-based arrests compared to females. There were no substantial absolute differences by age; however, youths (vs. adults) experienced higher relative reduction in arrest rates.'
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0376871620302234
https://www.globalcommissionondrugs.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/FINAL-EN_2020report_web.pdf
'Results
Compared to Dauphin, the mean arrest rate for all marijuana-related crimes in Philadelphia declined by 19.9 per 100,000 residents (34.9% reduction), 17.1 per 100,000 residents (43.1% reduction) for possession, and 2.8 per 100,000 resident (15.9% reduction) for sales/manufacturing. Arrest rates also differed by demographic characteristics post-decriminalization. Notably, African Americans had a greater absolute/relative reduction in possession-based arrests than Whites. However, relative reductions for sales/manufacturing-based arrests was nearly 3 times lower for African Americans. Males had greater absolute/relative reduction for possession-based arrests, but lower relative reduction for sales/manufacturing-based arrests compared to females. There were no substantial absolute differences by age; however, youths (vs. adults) experienced higher relative reduction in arrest rates.'
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0376871620302234
'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
'According to the FBI's Uniform Crime Report, police made 663,367
arrests for marijuana-related violations in 2018. That is more than 21
percent higher than the total number of persons arrested for the
commission of violent crimes (521,103). Of those arrested for
cannabis-related activities, some 90 percent (608,776) were arrested for
marijuana possession offenses only.
"Police across America make a marijuana-related arrest every 48 seconds," NORML Executive Director Erik Altieri said. "At a time when the overwhelming majority of Americans want cannabis to be legal and regulated, it is an outrage that many police departments across the country continue to waste tax dollars and limited law enforcement resources on arresting otherwise law-abiding citizens for simple marijuana possession."'
https://norml.org/news/2019/10/03/fbi-marijuana-arrests-rise-for-third-year-in-a-row-outpace-arrests-for-all-violent-crimes
"Police across America make a marijuana-related arrest every 48 seconds," NORML Executive Director Erik Altieri said. "At a time when the overwhelming majority of Americans want cannabis to be legal and regulated, it is an outrage that many police departments across the country continue to waste tax dollars and limited law enforcement resources on arresting otherwise law-abiding citizens for simple marijuana possession."'
https://norml.org/news/2019/10/03/fbi-marijuana-arrests-rise-for-third-year-in-a-row-outpace-arrests-for-all-violent-crimes
'No other president in American history has been driven out of the White House in a cloud of disgrace. No other president has been forced to preside over the degrading collapse of his own administration or been forced to stand aside and watch helplessly - and also guiltily - while some of his close friends and ranking assistants are led off to jail. And finally, no president of the United States has ever been so vulnerable to criminal prosecution, so menaced by the threat of indictment and trial, crouched in the dock of a federal courtroom and so obviously headed for prison that only the sudden grant of presidential pardon from the man he appointed to succeed him could prevent his final humiliation.
These are the stinking realities that will determine Richard Nixon's place in American history...And in this ugly context, the argument that "Richard Nixon has been punished enough" takes on a different meaning. He will spend many nights out there in his study in San Clemente, listening over and over to those tapes he made for the ages and half remembering the feel of thick grass on the Rose Garden lawn adding a strange new spring to his walk, even making him talk a bit louder as he makes his own knotty, plastic kind of love to his sweet little Japanese bride, telling it over and over again that he really is The President, The Most Powerful Man in the World - and goddamn it, you better never forget that!'
- 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
These are the stinking realities that will determine Richard Nixon's place in American history...And in this ugly context, the argument that "Richard Nixon has been punished enough" takes on a different meaning. He will spend many nights out there in his study in San Clemente, listening over and over to those tapes he made for the ages and half remembering the feel of thick grass on the Rose Garden lawn adding a strange new spring to his walk, even making him talk a bit louder as he makes his own knotty, plastic kind of love to his sweet little Japanese bride, telling it over and over again that he really is The President, The Most Powerful Man in the World - and goddamn it, you better never forget that!'
- 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
The story is the same globally..minorities, indigenous people, tribals and the poor are the primary targets of marijuana policing...
'Authors wrote, "In every single state, Black people were more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession, and in some states, Black people were up to six, eight, or almost ten times more likely to be arrested. In 31 states, racial disparities were actually larger in 2018 than they were in 2010."
In two states, Montana and Kentucky, African Americans were arrested for marijuana possession violations at more than nine times the rate of Caucasians – the highest disparity in the country. Colorado and Alaska, which legalized adult-use marijuana sales in 2012 and 2014 respectively, possessed the lowest disparity in marijuana possession arrest rates'
https://norml.org/news/2020/04/23/aclu-report-racial-disparities-persist-in-marijuana-possession-arrests
'In general, hypocrisy having entered into the flesh and blood of all classes in our time has reached such proportions that nothing of that kind any longer arouses indignation. Not for nothing was "hypocrisy" derived from "acting". And anyone can act, that is, play a part. Such facts as that the representatives of Christ, at divine service, bless ranks of murderers holding loaded rifles in readiness to shoot their fellow men, that ministers of all the Christian sects take part in executions as inevitably as the executioners, by their presence acknowledging murder to be compatible with Christianity (a clergyman officiated in America at the first experiment of murder by electricity), no longer occasion surprise to anyone.' - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'All the injustice and cruelties customary in present-day life have become habitual only because there are men always ready to carry out these injustices and cruelties. If it were not for them there would not only be no one to wreak violence on those immense masses of oppressed people, but those who issued the orders would never venture to do so, and would not even dare to dream of the sentences they now confidently pass.
Were it not for these men ready to torture or kill anyone they are commanded to, no one would dare to claim what is confidently claimed by all the non-working landowners, namely that land surrounded by men who are suffering for lack of land, is the property of a man who does not work on it, or that stores of grain collected by trickery ought to be preserved untouched in the midst of a population dying of hunger, because the merchant wants to make a profit. But for the existence of these people, ready at the will of the authorities to torture and kill anyone they are told to, it could never enter the head of a landowner to deprive the peasants of a wood they had grown, or of the officials to consider it proper to receive salaries taken from the famishing people for oppressing them, not to mention executing, imprisoning, or evicting people for exposing falsehood and preaching the truth. In fact all this is demanded and done only because the authorities are all fully convinced that they have always at hand servile people ready to carry out all their demands by means of tortures and killings.' - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/videos/city/hyderabad/200-kg-cannabis-seized-in-aps-krishna-district-2-arrested/videoshow/71562085.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/indore/directorate-of-revenue-intelligence-nabs-seven-with-ganja-worth-of-rs-1-26-crore-in-madhya-pradesh/articleshow/71476255.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/indore/directorate-of-revenue-intelligence-nabs-seven-with-ganja-worth-of-rs-1-26-crore-in-madhya-pradesh/articleshow/71476255.cms
'Neither John Ehrlichman nor Charles Colson, for instance, were "officially" aware of the stunningly sophisticated network of hidden bugs that the Technical Security Division of the Secret Service had constructed for President Nixon. According to Alex Butterfield's testimony in closed hearings before the House Judiciary Committee, Nixon told chief SS agent Wong to have his electronics experts wire every room, desk, lamp, phone, and mantelpiece inside the White House grounds where the president was likely ever to utter a word of more than one syllable on any subject.
I've been using tape recorders in all kinds of journalistic situations for almost ten years, all kinds of equipment, ranging from ten-inch studio reels to raisin-sized minibugs - but I have never seen anything like the system the Secret Service experts rigged up for Nixon in the White House. In addition to dozens of wireless, voice-activated mikes about the size of a pencil eraser that he had built into the woodwork, there were also custom-built sensors, delay mechanisms, and "standby" switches wired into telephones that either Bull or Butterfield could activate.
In the Cabinet Room, for instance, Nixon had microphones built into the bases of the wall lamps that he could turn on or off with harmless-looking buzzers labeled "Haldeman" and "Butterfield" on the rug underneath the cabinet table in front of his chair. The tapes and recording equipment were installed in a locked closet in the basement of the West Wing, but Nixon could start the reels rolling by simply pressing on the floor buzzer marked "Butterfield" with the toe of his shoe - and to stop the reels, putting the machinery back on standby, he could step on the "Haldeman" button...'
- 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
I've been using tape recorders in all kinds of journalistic situations for almost ten years, all kinds of equipment, ranging from ten-inch studio reels to raisin-sized minibugs - but I have never seen anything like the system the Secret Service experts rigged up for Nixon in the White House. In addition to dozens of wireless, voice-activated mikes about the size of a pencil eraser that he had built into the woodwork, there were also custom-built sensors, delay mechanisms, and "standby" switches wired into telephones that either Bull or Butterfield could activate.
In the Cabinet Room, for instance, Nixon had microphones built into the bases of the wall lamps that he could turn on or off with harmless-looking buzzers labeled "Haldeman" and "Butterfield" on the rug underneath the cabinet table in front of his chair. The tapes and recording equipment were installed in a locked closet in the basement of the West Wing, but Nixon could start the reels rolling by simply pressing on the floor buzzer marked "Butterfield" with the toe of his shoe - and to stop the reels, putting the machinery back on standby, he could step on the "Haldeman" button...'
- 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
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/videos/city/hyderabad/visakhapatnam-40-kg-cannabis-seized-by-police-4-arrested/videoshow/71603314.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/shimla/himachal-pradesh-cops-trek-six-hours-to-raid-charas-makers-31-held/articleshow/71887429.cms
'When whole nations have sometimes submitted to a new religious creed, and become Christians or Mohammedans, these conversions have been accomplished not because men wielding power rendered them compulsory by violence (on the contrary, violence has more often acted in the contrary direction) but because public opinion made such a change inevitable. Nations forced by violence to accept the faith of their conquerors have always remained antagonistic to it.
And it is the same with savage elements existing in our society. Neither the increase or decrease of the severity of the punishments, nor modifications of the prison system, nor increase of the police, either diminish or increase the quantity of crime. Changes occur only in consequence of changes in the moral standard of society. No severities have eradicated duelling and blood-fueds in certain countries. No matter how many Circassians were executed for robbery, they continued to rob out of bravado because no maiden would marry a young man who had not shown his daring by stealing a horse or at least a sheep. If men cease to fight duels and the Circassians cease to rob, it is not from fear of punishment (indeed that makes the bravado more attractive), but through a change in public opinion. And it is the same with all other crimes. Violence can never destroy what is sanctioned by public opinion. On the contrary, public opinion need only be directly opposed to violence to neutralize its whole effect, as has been shown by all martyrdoms both past and present.' - Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'Still the numbers are undeniable when it comes to the racially
disproportionate arrests.Of those approximate 11,700 arrested for a
cannabis charge of some kind, around 10,500 were black. Of those 11,700
arrestees, 709 were white. Of those arrests, 5,987 were for cannabis
possession or public consumption arrests were black while 451 were
white.
The release of this data is useful for partially understanding where the district falls when it comes to cannabis arrests nationwide. On April 20 of this year, The American Civil Liberties Union released a massive report on racial disparities when it comes to who is arrested for cannabis possession. The report, “A Tale of Two Countries: Racially Targeted Arrests in the Era of Marijuana Reform,” looked at all 50 states’ cannabis possession arrests between 2010-2018 and revealed a national average in which a black person was 3.6 times more likely to be arrested for cannabis than a white person.'
https://www.outlawreport.com/blog/washington-dc-cannabis-arrests-race
The release of this data is useful for partially understanding where the district falls when it comes to cannabis arrests nationwide. On April 20 of this year, The American Civil Liberties Union released a massive report on racial disparities when it comes to who is arrested for cannabis possession. The report, “A Tale of Two Countries: Racially Targeted Arrests in the Era of Marijuana Reform,” looked at all 50 states’ cannabis possession arrests between 2010-2018 and revealed a national average in which a black person was 3.6 times more likely to be arrested for cannabis than a white person.'
https://www.outlawreport.com/blog/washington-dc-cannabis-arrests-race
'Meanwhile with either Price or Buchanan or both standing ready to write his memoirs for him, Nixon was pondering an offer from Reader's Digest to sign as a "consulting editor" at a salary of $100,000 a year...And Thursday of that week, President Ford made headlines urging the Congress to appropriate $850,000 to cover Nixon's pension, living expenses, and other costs of the painful transition from the White House to San Clemente. When the $850,000 runs out, he will have to scrimp until July 1 of next year, when he will have to pick up another $400,000 that will have to last him until July 1, 1976. For as long as he lives, Richard Nixon will be on the federal dole for $400,000 a year -$60,000 pension, $96,000 to cover personal staff salaries, $40,000 for travel, $21,000 to cover his telephone bills, and $100,000 for "miscellaneous."
On top of his $300,000 annual expense account, Nixon's twenty-four-hour-a-day Secret Service protection will cost the taxpayers between $500 and $1000 a day for as long as he lives - a conservative figure, considering the daily cost of things like helicopters, patrol boats, walkie-talkies, and car telephones, along with salaries and living expenses for ten or twelve full-time agents. There is also the $40,000 a year Ron Ziegler still commands as a ranking public servant. Add another $30,000 to $50,000 each for personal aides like Stephen Bull and Rose Mary Woods, plus all their living and travel expenses - and the cost of maintaining Richard Nixon in exile adds up to something like $750,000 a year...and these are merely the expenses. His personal income will derive from things like the $2 million advance on his memoirs, his $100,000-a-year stipend from Reader's Digest, and the $5,000 a crack he can average, with no effort at all, on the year-round lecture circuit.
So...what we are looking at here is a millionaire ex-president and admitted felon: a congenital thief and pathological liar who spent twenty-eight years on the public sugar tit and then quit just in time to avoid the axe. If he had fought to the bitter end, as he'd promised Julie he would "as long as even one senator believes in me," he risked losing about 95 percent of the $400,000 annual allowance he became qualified for under the "Former Presidents Act" by resigning...But a president who gets impeached, convicted, and dragged out of the White House by U.S. marshals is not covered by any Former Presidents Act. If Nixon had fought to the end and lost - which had become absolutely inevitable by the time he resigned - he would have forfeited all but about $15,000 a year from the federal dole...So, in retrospect, the reason he quit is as easy to see as the numbers on his personal balance sheet. The difference between resignation and being kicked out of office was about $385,000 a year for the rest of his life.
Most of this annual largesse will come, one way or another, out of the pockets of the taxpayers. All of the taxpayers. Even George and Eleanor McGovern will contribute a slice of their income to Richard Nixon's retirement fund...And so will I, unless Jaworski can nail the bastard on enough felony counts to strip him not only of his right to vote, like Agnew, but also his key to the back door of the Federal Treasury - which is not very likely now that Ford has done everything but announce the date for when he will grant the pardon.'
- 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
'The cops who fatally shot Breonna Taylor, the black EMT who was killed in a no-knock raid in her home in Louisville, Ky., were looking for drugs. The NYPD accused Eric Garner, a black man strangled to death by a policeman in 2014, of having marijuana to justify the extrajudicial killing. After the killing of Sylville Smith by the Milwaukee Police Department, which sparked the 2016 Sherman Park riots, the Department of Justice made a point of mentioning that drugs, including “suspected marijuana,” were found in his car.'
https://shepherdexpress.com/hemp/cannabis/the-war-on-drugs-is-a-war-on-black-americans/
On top of his $300,000 annual expense account, Nixon's twenty-four-hour-a-day Secret Service protection will cost the taxpayers between $500 and $1000 a day for as long as he lives - a conservative figure, considering the daily cost of things like helicopters, patrol boats, walkie-talkies, and car telephones, along with salaries and living expenses for ten or twelve full-time agents. There is also the $40,000 a year Ron Ziegler still commands as a ranking public servant. Add another $30,000 to $50,000 each for personal aides like Stephen Bull and Rose Mary Woods, plus all their living and travel expenses - and the cost of maintaining Richard Nixon in exile adds up to something like $750,000 a year...and these are merely the expenses. His personal income will derive from things like the $2 million advance on his memoirs, his $100,000-a-year stipend from Reader's Digest, and the $5,000 a crack he can average, with no effort at all, on the year-round lecture circuit.
So...what we are looking at here is a millionaire ex-president and admitted felon: a congenital thief and pathological liar who spent twenty-eight years on the public sugar tit and then quit just in time to avoid the axe. If he had fought to the bitter end, as he'd promised Julie he would "as long as even one senator believes in me," he risked losing about 95 percent of the $400,000 annual allowance he became qualified for under the "Former Presidents Act" by resigning...But a president who gets impeached, convicted, and dragged out of the White House by U.S. marshals is not covered by any Former Presidents Act. If Nixon had fought to the end and lost - which had become absolutely inevitable by the time he resigned - he would have forfeited all but about $15,000 a year from the federal dole...So, in retrospect, the reason he quit is as easy to see as the numbers on his personal balance sheet. The difference between resignation and being kicked out of office was about $385,000 a year for the rest of his life.
Most of this annual largesse will come, one way or another, out of the pockets of the taxpayers. All of the taxpayers. Even George and Eleanor McGovern will contribute a slice of their income to Richard Nixon's retirement fund...And so will I, unless Jaworski can nail the bastard on enough felony counts to strip him not only of his right to vote, like Agnew, but also his key to the back door of the Federal Treasury - which is not very likely now that Ford has done everything but announce the date for when he will grant the pardon.'
- 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
'The cops who fatally shot Breonna Taylor, the black EMT who was killed in a no-knock raid in her home in Louisville, Ky., were looking for drugs. The NYPD accused Eric Garner, a black man strangled to death by a policeman in 2014, of having marijuana to justify the extrajudicial killing. After the killing of Sylville Smith by the Milwaukee Police Department, which sparked the 2016 Sherman Park riots, the Department of Justice made a point of mentioning that drugs, including “suspected marijuana,” were found in his car.'
https://shepherdexpress.com/hemp/cannabis/the-war-on-drugs-is-a-war-on-black-americans/
'Contemplatives are not likely to become gamblers, or procurers, or drunkards; they do not as a rule preach intolerance, or make war; do not find it necessary to rob, swindle or grind the faces of the poor. And to these enormous negative virtues we may add another which, though hard to define, is both positive and important. The arhat and the quietist may not practice contemplation in its fullness; but if they practise it at all, they may bring back enlightening reports of another, a transcendent country of the mind; and if they practise it in the height, they will become conduits through which some beneficient influence can flow out of that other country into a world of darkened selves, chronically dying from lack of it.' - The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954.
It is the same with cannabis...
'To most people, mescalin is almost completely innocuous. Unlike alcohol, it does not drive the taker into the kind of uninhibited action which results in brawls. crimes of violence and traffic accidents. A man under the influence of mescalin quietly minds his own business. Moreover, the business he minds is an experience of the most enlightening kind, which does not have to be paid for (and this is surely important) by a compensatory hangover. Of the long-range consequences of regular mescalin taking we know very little. The Indians that consume peyote buttons do not seem to be physically or morally degraded by the habit. However the available evidence is still scarce or sketchy.' - The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954.
'And, it’s only fair according to DeAngelo. “The cannabis industry currently pays the federal government over $5 billion in taxes each year,” he said, “and it deserves to get the benefits all other business have access to, namely safe banking.”'
https://www.forbes.com/sites/julieweed/2019/09/27/cannabis-executives-cheer-congress-approval-of-pot-business-banking/
'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
'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
'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 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
'Ah...mother of jabbering god, how the hell did I get off on that tangent about teenage street crime? This is supposed to be a deep and political essay about Richard Nixon...
Although maybe that wasn't such a tangent after all. The original point, I think, had to do with the street-punk mentality that caused Nixon to push his luck so far that it was finally almost impossible not to get himself busted. For a while, he had the luck and arrogance of a half-smart amateur. From their base in the White House, Nixon and the L.A. account execs he brought with him treated the old-line Washington power structure with the same kind of contempt that the young burglars casing Georgetown seem to have for the forts of the rich and powerful - or that I had for the poor bastard who owned the gas station in Lexington.
This is a very hard thing for professional cops, journalists, or investigators to cope with. Like doctors and lawyers, most of the best minds in police work have been trained since puberty to think in terms of patterns and precedents; anything original tends to have the same kind of effect on their investigative machinery as a casually mutilated punch card fed into a computer. The immediate result is chaos and false conclusions...But both cops and computers are programmed to know when they've been jammed by a wild card or a joker, and in both cases there are usually enough competent technicians standing by to locate the problems and get the machinery working again pretty quickly.'
- 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
'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
'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
'Italian mafia groups such as the ‘Ndrangheta maintain a dominant position within European drug markets, and a diverse criminal portfolio involving corrupt control over legitimate industries.'
https://www.globalcommissionondrugs.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/FINAL-EN_2020report_web.pdf
'According to a recap of the case’s closing arguments in the Pioneer Press, “Had it not been for Castile’s decision to ‘get stoned’ on marijuana before operating a vehicle while armed with a gun, and further his decision to ‘ignore’ Yanez’s commands not to reach for his firearm, ‘none of this would have happened, [defense attorney Earl] Gray told jurors.”
Yanez was ultimately acquitted.'
https://www.twincities.com/2017/06/21/philando-castile-yanez-smell-of-marijuana-made-him-fear-for-his-life-jeronimo/
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/surat/ganja-worth-rs-1-crore-seized-from-kamrej/articleshow/71962005.cms
Although maybe that wasn't such a tangent after all. The original point, I think, had to do with the street-punk mentality that caused Nixon to push his luck so far that it was finally almost impossible not to get himself busted. For a while, he had the luck and arrogance of a half-smart amateur. From their base in the White House, Nixon and the L.A. account execs he brought with him treated the old-line Washington power structure with the same kind of contempt that the young burglars casing Georgetown seem to have for the forts of the rich and powerful - or that I had for the poor bastard who owned the gas station in Lexington.
This is a very hard thing for professional cops, journalists, or investigators to cope with. Like doctors and lawyers, most of the best minds in police work have been trained since puberty to think in terms of patterns and precedents; anything original tends to have the same kind of effect on their investigative machinery as a casually mutilated punch card fed into a computer. The immediate result is chaos and false conclusions...But both cops and computers are programmed to know when they've been jammed by a wild card or a joker, and in both cases there are usually enough competent technicians standing by to locate the problems and get the machinery working again pretty quickly.'
- 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
'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
'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
'Italian mafia groups such as the ‘Ndrangheta maintain a dominant position within European drug markets, and a diverse criminal portfolio involving corrupt control over legitimate industries.'
https://www.globalcommissionondrugs.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/FINAL-EN_2020report_web.pdf
'According to a recap of the case’s closing arguments in the Pioneer Press, “Had it not been for Castile’s decision to ‘get stoned’ on marijuana before operating a vehicle while armed with a gun, and further his decision to ‘ignore’ Yanez’s commands not to reach for his firearm, ‘none of this would have happened, [defense attorney Earl] Gray told jurors.”
Yanez was ultimately acquitted.'
https://www.twincities.com/2017/06/21/philando-castile-yanez-smell-of-marijuana-made-him-fear-for-his-life-jeronimo/
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/surat/ganja-worth-rs-1-crore-seized-from-kamrej/articleshow/71962005.cms
'Within hours after Jaworski and Nixon's "Watergate lawyer" James St. Clair had argued the case in a special session of the court, I talked to Pat Buchanan and was surprised to hear that Nixon and his wizards in the White House were confident that the verdict would be five to three in their favor. Even Buchanan, who thinks rationally about 79 percent of the time, apparently believed - less than two weeks before the court ruled unanimously against Nixon - that five of the judges who would have ruled on that question would see no legal objection to ratifying Nixon's demented idea that anything discussed in the president's official office - even a patently criminal conspiracy - was the president's personal property, if he chose to record it on his personal tape-recording machinery.
The possibility that even some of the justices The Boss himself had appointed to the court might not cheerfully endorse a concept of presidential immunity that mocked both the U.S. Constitution and the Magna Carta had apparently been considered for a moment and then written off as too farfetched and crazy even to worry about by all of Nixon's personal strategists.
It is still a little difficult to believe, in fact, that some of the closest advisers to the president of a constitutional democracy in the year nineteen-hundred and seventy-four might actually expect the highest court in any constitutional democracy to crank up what is possibly the most discredited precedent in the history of Anglo-American jurisprudence - the "divine right of kings" - in order to legalize the notion that a president of the United States or any other would-be democracy is above and beyond "the law."
That Nixon and his personal gestapo actually believed this could happen is a measure of the insanity quotient of the people Nixon took down in the bunker with him when he knew the time had come to get serious.'
- 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
The possibility that even some of the justices The Boss himself had appointed to the court might not cheerfully endorse a concept of presidential immunity that mocked both the U.S. Constitution and the Magna Carta had apparently been considered for a moment and then written off as too farfetched and crazy even to worry about by all of Nixon's personal strategists.
It is still a little difficult to believe, in fact, that some of the closest advisers to the president of a constitutional democracy in the year nineteen-hundred and seventy-four might actually expect the highest court in any constitutional democracy to crank up what is possibly the most discredited precedent in the history of Anglo-American jurisprudence - the "divine right of kings" - in order to legalize the notion that a president of the United States or any other would-be democracy is above and beyond "the law."
That Nixon and his personal gestapo actually believed this could happen is a measure of the insanity quotient of the people Nixon took down in the bunker with him when he knew the time had come to get serious.'
- 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
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/goa/cops-arrested-5-persons-a-week-for-drugs-this-yr/articleshow/71999120.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/goa/up-man-nigerian-held-for-possessing-drugs-worth-rs-3l/articleshow/72030061.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/goa/up-man-nigerian-held-for-possessing-drugs-worth-rs-3l/articleshow/72030061.cms
'there is a weird, unsettled, painfully incomplete quality about the whole thing. All over Washington tonight is the stench of a massive psychic battle that nobody really won. Richard Nixon has been broken, whipped, and castrated all at once, but even for me there is no real crank or elation in having been a front-row spectator at the final scenes, the Deathwatch, the first time in American history that a president has been chased out of the White House and cast down in the ditch with all the other geeks and common criminals...
Looking back on the final few months of his presidency, it is easy to see that Nixon was doomed all along - or at least from that moment when Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox first decided to force a showdown on the "executive privilege" question by sending a U.S. marshal over to the White House with a subpoena for some of the Oval Office tapes.
Nixon naturally defied the subpoena, but not even the crazed firing of Cox, [Elliot] Richardson, and [William] Ruckleshaus could make it go away. And when Jaworski challenged Nixon's right to defy the subpoena in the U.S. Supreme Court, the wheels of doom began rolling. And from that point on, it was clear to all the principals except Nixon himself that the Unthinkable was suddenly inevitable; it was only a matter of time...And it was just about then that Richard Nixon began losing his grip on reality.'
- 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
Looking back on the final few months of his presidency, it is easy to see that Nixon was doomed all along - or at least from that moment when Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox first decided to force a showdown on the "executive privilege" question by sending a U.S. marshal over to the White House with a subpoena for some of the Oval Office tapes.
Nixon naturally defied the subpoena, but not even the crazed firing of Cox, [Elliot] Richardson, and [William] Ruckleshaus could make it go away. And when Jaworski challenged Nixon's right to defy the subpoena in the U.S. Supreme Court, the wheels of doom began rolling. And from that point on, it was clear to all the principals except Nixon himself that the Unthinkable was suddenly inevitable; it was only a matter of time...And it was just about then that Richard Nixon began losing his grip on reality.'
- 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
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/vadodara/56-youngsters-detained-in-dcb-raids-on-drug-pockets/articleshow/72191619.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/videos/news/88-packets-of-cannabis-worth-over-rs-70-lakh-seized-in-tripura-1-held/videoshow/72223469.cms
'I recalled these things Ford had said, but I was not sure I'd heard Dick Tuck correctly - or if I'd really heard him at all. I held my right hand in front of my eyes, trying to remember if I'd eaten anything the night before to cause hallucinations. If so, my hand would appear to be transparent, and I would be able to see all the bones and blood vessels very clearly.
But my hand was not transparent. I moaned again, bringing Sandy in from the kitchen to find out what was wrong. "Did Tuck just call?" I asked.
She nodded: "He was almost hysterical. Ford just gave Nixon a full pardon."
I sat up quickly, groping around the bed for something to smash. "No!" I shouted. "That's impossible!"
She shook her head. "I heard it on the radio, too."
I stared at my hands again, feeling anger behind my eyes and noise coming up in my throat: "That stupid, lying bastard! Jesus! Who votes for these treacherous scumbags! You can't even trust the dumb ones! Look at Ford! He's too goddamn stupid to arrange a deal like that! Hell, he's almost too stupid to lie."
Sandy shrugged. "He gave Nixon all the tapes, too."'
- 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
But my hand was not transparent. I moaned again, bringing Sandy in from the kitchen to find out what was wrong. "Did Tuck just call?" I asked.
She nodded: "He was almost hysterical. Ford just gave Nixon a full pardon."
I sat up quickly, groping around the bed for something to smash. "No!" I shouted. "That's impossible!"
She shook her head. "I heard it on the radio, too."
I stared at my hands again, feeling anger behind my eyes and noise coming up in my throat: "That stupid, lying bastard! Jesus! Who votes for these treacherous scumbags! You can't even trust the dumb ones! Look at Ford! He's too goddamn stupid to arrange a deal like that! Hell, he's almost too stupid to lie."
Sandy shrugged. "He gave Nixon all the tapes, too."'
- 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
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/patna/700kg-ganja-seized-near-muzaffarpur/articleshow/72265292.cms
This article says that according to the NDPS Act, the leaves and seeds of the cannabis plant are legal, the flowers and nectar/resin is illegal. How absurd is that? One analogy that comes to mind is that a woman as a child is legal, but she becomes illegal once she reaches puberty. Her eggs which she produces once she reaches puberty however are legal while she is not legal anymore...??
'It’s only on January 31 that India’s first medical cannabis clinic opened in Bengaluru. Launched by a Bhubaneswar-based startup, Hempcann Solutions, the clinic has the license to prescribe CBD and THC medication by an ayurvedic doctor. “Patients can then order these medicines online from our website. We are not stocking them in the clinic as of now,” a spokesperson of the company said.'
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/why-this-patient-has-pot-in-his-pav-bhaji/articleshow/74240739.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/rajkot/two-held-for-growing-cannabis/articleshow/72961201.cms
'This is not the first time that Richard Nixon has been caught. After his failed campaign for the governorship of California in 1962 he was formally convicted - along with H. R. Haldeman, Maurice Stans, Murray Chotiner, Herb Klein, and Herb Kalmbach for exactly the same kind of crudely illegal campaign tactics that he stands accused of today.
But this time, in the language of the sergeants who keep military traditions alive, "he got caught every which way"...and "his ass went into the blades."
Not many people have written in the English language better than a Polack with a twisted sense of humor who called himself Joseph Conrad. And if he were with us today, I think he'd be getting a fine boot out of this Watergate story. Mr. Kurtz, in Conrad's Heart of Darkness, did his thing.
Mr. Nixon also did his thing.
And now, just as surely as Kurtz, "Mistah Nixon, he dead."
- Fear and Loathing at the Watergate: Mr. Nixon Has Cashed His Check, September 27, 1973, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
But this time, in the language of the sergeants who keep military traditions alive, "he got caught every which way"...and "his ass went into the blades."
Not many people have written in the English language better than a Polack with a twisted sense of humor who called himself Joseph Conrad. And if he were with us today, I think he'd be getting a fine boot out of this Watergate story. Mr. Kurtz, in Conrad's Heart of Darkness, did his thing.
Mr. Nixon also did his thing.
And now, just as surely as Kurtz, "Mistah Nixon, he dead."
- Fear and Loathing at the Watergate: Mr. Nixon Has Cashed His Check, September 27, 1973, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/goa/russian-held-for-growing-cannabis-in-goa/articleshow/74427647.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/lucknow/drug-ring-busted-in-faizabad-cantonment-soldiers-buying-cannabis-under-lens/articleshow/73003241.cms
Organized thuggery and targeting by vested interests using the smoke screen of public disturbance..now haven't we seen this before?
https://thcnet.com/news/several-us-cannabis-companies-targeted-during-nationwide-protests-as-business-owners-lose-millions-to-looters
'Data collected by Kraska shows that municipal police and sheriffs’ departments used no-knock or quick-knock warrants about 1,500 times in the early 1980s, but that number rose to about 40,000 times per year by 2000, he said. In 2010, Kraska estimated 60,000-70,000 no-knock or quick-knock raids were conducted by local police annually. The majority of those raids were looking for marijuana, he added.
Currently, Florida and Oregon ban no-knock warrants. Thirteen states have laws explicitly permitting no-knock warrants, and the remaining states issue them based on a judge’s discretion. '
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/the-war-on-drugs-gave-rise-to-no-knock-warrants-breonna-taylors-death-could-end-them
https://edition.cnn.com/videos/tv/2020/06/15/amanpour-david-simon-police-reform.cnn
'The axis of Nixon's new and perhaps final strategy began to surface with the first mention of "the tapes," and it has developed with the inevitability of either desperation or inspired strategy ever since. The key question is whether the "constitutional crisis" Nixon seems determined to bring down on himself by forcing the Tape Issue all the way to the Supreme Court is a crisis that was genuinely forced on him by accident - or whether it is a masterpiece of legal cynicism that bubbled up at some midnight hour many weeks ago from the depths of attorney John Wilson's legendary legal mind.
The conventional press wisdom - backed by what would normally be considered "good evidence," or at least reliable leaks from the Ervin committee - holds that the existence of the presidential tapes & the fact that Nixon has been systematically bugging every conversation he has had with anybody, in any of his offices, ever since he got elected, was a secret that was only unearthed by luck, shrewdness, and high-powered sleuth-work. According to unofficial but consistently reliable sources, Alex Butterfield - current head of the Federal Aviation Administration and former "chief for internal security" at the White House - was privately interviewed "more or less on a hunch" by Ervin committee investigators, and during the course of this interview talked himself into such an untenable position while trying to explain the verbatim-accuracy of some Oval Office logs that he finally caved in and spilled the whole story about Nixon's taping apparatus.
According to one of the investigators who conducted the private interview - in the ground-floor bowels of the Ervin committee's "boiler room" in the Old Senate Office Building - Butterfield couldn't explain why the logs of Nixon's conversations in his own office were so precise that they included pauses, digressions, half sentences, and even personal speech patterns.
"When I finally asked him if maybe these logs had been transcribed from tapes," said the investigator, "he sort of slumped back in his chair and said, 'I wish you hadn't asked me that.' And then he told us the whole thing."'
- Fear and Loathing at the Watergate: Mr. Nixon Has Cashed His Check, September 27, 1973, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
The conventional press wisdom - backed by what would normally be considered "good evidence," or at least reliable leaks from the Ervin committee - holds that the existence of the presidential tapes & the fact that Nixon has been systematically bugging every conversation he has had with anybody, in any of his offices, ever since he got elected, was a secret that was only unearthed by luck, shrewdness, and high-powered sleuth-work. According to unofficial but consistently reliable sources, Alex Butterfield - current head of the Federal Aviation Administration and former "chief for internal security" at the White House - was privately interviewed "more or less on a hunch" by Ervin committee investigators, and during the course of this interview talked himself into such an untenable position while trying to explain the verbatim-accuracy of some Oval Office logs that he finally caved in and spilled the whole story about Nixon's taping apparatus.
According to one of the investigators who conducted the private interview - in the ground-floor bowels of the Ervin committee's "boiler room" in the Old Senate Office Building - Butterfield couldn't explain why the logs of Nixon's conversations in his own office were so precise that they included pauses, digressions, half sentences, and even personal speech patterns.
"When I finally asked him if maybe these logs had been transcribed from tapes," said the investigator, "he sort of slumped back in his chair and said, 'I wish you hadn't asked me that.' And then he told us the whole thing."'
- Fear and Loathing at the Watergate: Mr. Nixon Has Cashed His Check, September 27, 1973, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
'The limited data at the global level show that intoxication may be a significant factor in homicide. However, alcohol seems to play a larger role in violence than do drugs' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf
'Cannabis is the drug that most brings people into contact with the criminal justice system, accounting for more than half of all drug law offences cases, based on reports from a total of 69 countries over 2014–2018 The predominance of cannabis-related cases in the statistics reflects the drug's large global market. ATS were the next biggest drug category (responsible for 19 per cent of cases), followed by cocaine (11 per cent) and opioids (7 per cent). Almost 90 per cent of suspects were men.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf
'In countries with limited law enforcement capacity, enforcing measures to counter the spread of COVID-19 may divert resources away from counter-narcotics efforts, making drug trafficking and production less risky for organized criminal groups and providing a conducive environment for illicit activities. Moreover, there are indications that drug trafficking groups are adapting their strategies in order to continue their operations and that some have started to exploit the situation so as to enhance their image among the population by providing services, in particular to the vulnerable.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf
'The decline in the domestic supply of methamphetamine, indicated by the falling number of manufacturing facilities dismantled in the United States, going hand in hand with increasing use and an overall increase in the supply of the drug, can be explained by the increasing importance of rapidly growing illegal methamphetamine imports from clandestine manufacture sites in neighbouring Mexico. According to the United States authorities, the latter phenomenon appears to have resulted from attempts by Mexican organized crime groups to diversify their drug portfolio as they attempted to reduce their dependence on cocaine produced in countries in South America, preferring instead to source the required chemicals from China and produce methamphetamine themselves. Methamphetamine shipments intercepted along the south-western border of the United States increased almost fourfold between 2013 and 2018.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'Practically all the major transnational criminal organizations in Mexico seem to be involved in the smuggling of methamphetamine to the United States. They include the Sinaloa Cartel, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, the Juárez Cartel, the Gulf Cartel, the Los Zetas Cartel and the Beltrán-Leyva Organization. In parallel, outlaw motorcycle gangs continue to be involved in the distribution of methamphetamine within the United States. The increased involvement of Mexican organized crime groups in the trafficking of drugs other than cocaine has contributed to the spread of methamphetamine trafficking from the western United States to the whole country over the past decade, including states in the eastern part of the country that had previously been spared from the large-scale harmful use of methamphetamine.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'There was not a hell of a lot of room for a gonzo journalist to operate in that high-tuned atmosphere. For the first time in memory, the Washington press corps was working close to the peak of its awesome but normally dormant potential. The Washington Post has a half dozen of the best reporters in America working every tangent of the Watergate story like wild-eyed junkies set adrift, with no warning, to find their next connection. The New York Times, badly blitzed on the story at first, called in hot rods from its bureau all over the country to overcome the Post's early lead. Both Time's and Newsweek's Washington bureaus began scrambling feverishly to find new angles, new connections, new leaks, and leads in this story that was unravelling so fast that nobody could stay on top of it...And especially not the three (or four) TV networks, whose whole machinery was geared up to visual/action stories rather than skillfully planted tips from faceless lawyers who called on private phones and then refused to say anything at all in front of the cameras.
The only standard-brand visual "action' in the Watergate story happened at the very beginning - when the burglars were caught in the act by a squad of plain-clothes policemen with drawn guns - and that happened so fast that there was not even a still photographer on hand, much less a TV camera.
The network news moguls are not hungry for stories involving weeks of dreary investigation and minimum camera possibilities - particularly at a time when every ranking TV correspondent in the country was assigned to one aspect or another of a presidential campaign that was still boiling feverishly when the Watergate break-in occurred on June 17. The Miami conventions and the Eagleton fiasco kept the Watergate story backstage all that summer. Both the networks and the press had their "first teams" out on the campaign trail until long after the initial indictments - Liddy, Hunt, McCord, et a. - on September 15. And by Election Day in November, the Watergate story seemed like old news.'
- Fear and Loathing at the Watergate: Mr. Nixon Has Cashed His Check, September 27, 1973, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
The only standard-brand visual "action' in the Watergate story happened at the very beginning - when the burglars were caught in the act by a squad of plain-clothes policemen with drawn guns - and that happened so fast that there was not even a still photographer on hand, much less a TV camera.
The network news moguls are not hungry for stories involving weeks of dreary investigation and minimum camera possibilities - particularly at a time when every ranking TV correspondent in the country was assigned to one aspect or another of a presidential campaign that was still boiling feverishly when the Watergate break-in occurred on June 17. The Miami conventions and the Eagleton fiasco kept the Watergate story backstage all that summer. Both the networks and the press had their "first teams" out on the campaign trail until long after the initial indictments - Liddy, Hunt, McCord, et a. - on September 15. And by Election Day in November, the Watergate story seemed like old news.'
- Fear and Loathing at the Watergate: Mr. Nixon Has Cashed His Check, September 27, 1973, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
'"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/
'Harm Reduction International monitored prison decongestion measures adopted around the world between March and June 2020 in response to COVID-19, and found evidence of such schemes in 109 countries. We tracked criteria for eligibility and implementation of the measures. Noting that UN experts recommended countries release "those charged for minor and non-violent drug and other offences" in the context of COVID-19, we further focused on how these measures impact on people in prison for drug offences.
Despite a scarcity of official information, we found that around a fourth of countries implementing decongestion schemes explicitly excluded people incarcerated for drug offences; effectively prioritising punitive approaches to drug control over the health of the prison population and the individual'
https://www.hri.global/covid-19-prison-diversion-measures
“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/
'Harm Reduction International monitored prison decongestion measures adopted around the world between March and June 2020 in response to COVID-19, and found evidence of such schemes in 109 countries. We tracked criteria for eligibility and implementation of the measures. Noting that UN experts recommended countries release "those charged for minor and non-violent drug and other offences" in the context of COVID-19, we further focused on how these measures impact on people in prison for drug offences.
Despite a scarcity of official information, we found that around a fourth of countries implementing decongestion schemes explicitly excluded people incarcerated for drug offences; effectively prioritising punitive approaches to drug control over the health of the prison population and the individual'
https://www.hri.global/covid-19-prison-diversion-measures
'Ours is the age, among other things, of the automobile and of rocketing
population. Alcohol is incompatible with safety on the roads, and its
production, like that of tobacco, condemns to virtual sterility many
millions of acres of the most fertile soil. The problems raised by
alcohol and tobacco cannot, it goes without saying, be solved by
prohibition. The universal and ever-present urge to self-transcendence
is not to be abolished by slamming the currenty popular Doors in the
Wall. The only reasonable policy is to open other, better doors in the
hope of inducing men and women to exchange their old bad habits for new
and less harmful ones. Some of these other, better doors will be social
and technological in nature, others religious or psychological, others
dietetic, educational, athletic. But the need for frequent chemical
vacations from intolerable selfhood and repulsive surroundings will
undoubtedly remain.' - The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954.
'“In the six states surrounding Colorado—Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah, and Wyoming—following Colorado’s legalization, the border counties experienced, on average, a decrease of 393.1 cases of property crime and 277.3 cases of larceny per 100,000 population relative to the nonborder counties.”
“Specifically, we observed that the property crime rate and larceny rate experienced substantial decreases in the border counties in neighboring states relative to nonborder counties following the legalization in Colorado,” the study says. “This is also true for the rate of simple assault…if Utah is not considered (only considering Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Wyoming as neighboring states of Colorado).”
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/colorados-marijuana-legalization-law-decreases-crime-in-neighboring-states-study-finds/
'The slow-rising central horror of "Watergate" is not that it might grind down to the reluctant impeachment of a vengeful thug of a president whose entire political career has been a monument to the same kind of cheap shots and treachery he finally got nailed for, but that we might somehow fail to learn something from it.
Already - with the worst news yet to come - there is an ominous tide of public opinion that says whatever Nixon and his small gang of henchmen and hired gunsels might have done, it was probably no worse than what other politicians have been doing all along, and still are.
Anybody who believes this is a fool - but a lot of people seem to, and that evidence is hard to ignore. What almost happened here - and what was only avoided because the men who made Nixon president and who were running the country in his name knew in their hearts that they were all mean, hollow little bastards who couldn't dare turn their backs on each other - was a takeover and total perversion of the American political process by a gang of cold-blooded fixers so incompetent that they couldn't even pull off a simple burglary...which tends to explain, among other things, why twenty-five thousand young Americans died for no reason in Vietnam while Nixon and his brain trust were trying to figure out how to admit the whole thing was a mistake from the start.'
- 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
Already - with the worst news yet to come - there is an ominous tide of public opinion that says whatever Nixon and his small gang of henchmen and hired gunsels might have done, it was probably no worse than what other politicians have been doing all along, and still are.
Anybody who believes this is a fool - but a lot of people seem to, and that evidence is hard to ignore. What almost happened here - and what was only avoided because the men who made Nixon president and who were running the country in his name knew in their hearts that they were all mean, hollow little bastards who couldn't dare turn their backs on each other - was a takeover and total perversion of the American political process by a gang of cold-blooded fixers so incompetent that they couldn't even pull off a simple burglary...which tends to explain, among other things, why twenty-five thousand young Americans died for no reason in Vietnam while Nixon and his brain trust were trying to figure out how to admit the whole thing was a mistake from the start.'
- 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
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/drugs-worth-rs-1081-crore-seized-in-the-last-19-months-rti/articleshow/72075414.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/goa/peddlers-mostly-target-tourists-sp/articleshow/72079064.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/goa/peddlers-mostly-target-tourists-sp/articleshow/72079064.cms
'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
"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
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/rajkot/ganja-worth-rs-89l-seized-4-held/articleshow/72090316.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/mp-govt-plans-to-promote-hemp-cultivation-bjp-opposes-move/articleshow/72182339.cms
'We also summarise the evidence relating to our current cannabis laws, to show what the impacts of maintaining the status quo might be. For example, the life-long collateral consequences of a drug conviction have detrimental social outcomes on individuals, whanau, and communities. Maori are disproportionately impacted by cannabis-related arrests and convictions and – despite recent changes to the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975 that affirm police discretion to take a health-oriented approach – this is unlikely to change while cannabis remains illegal.
The impacts of legalising cannabis are wide-ranging, including changes to social outcomes, public health outcomes and criminal justice. There may be some outcomes people haven’t yet considered, and we hope that having accessible information from trusted sources helps New Zealanders in their decision-making process.'
https://twitter.com/ChiefSciAdvisor/status/1280276739839496192
'Over the past two decades, drug markets have become increasingly complex in terms of variety and combinations of substances used and trafficked, manufacturing processes and the organizational structure of drug trafficking organizations. There has been a rapid emergence of new substances, as well as new mixes of controlled and non-controlled substances, with an increasing misuse of pharmaceuticals, which poses new challenges for both drug demand and supply control efforts at the national, regional and global levels.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'I watched the whole thing myself, but not without problems. It reminded me of Last Exit to Brooklyn - the rape of a bent whore - but I also knew Dr. Thompson was watching the show in Miami, and that it would fill him with venom and craziness. Whatever small hope we might have had of keeping him away from Washington during this crisis was burned to a cinder by the Wallace-Ehrlichman show. It had the effect of reinforcing Thompson's conviction that Nixon had cashed his cheque - and that possibility alone is enough to lure him to Washington for the death-watch.
My own prognosis is less drastic, at this point in time [sic], but it's also a fact that I've never been able to share The Doktor's obsessive political visions - for good or ill. My job has to do with nuts & bolts, not terminal vengeance. And it also occurs to me that there is nothing in the Watergate revelations, thus far, to convince anyone but a stone partisan fanatic that we will all be better off when it's finished. As I see it, we have already reaped the real benefits of this spectacle - the almost accidental castration of dehumanized power-mongers like Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Tom Charles Huston, that vicious young jackal of a lawyer from Indianapolis that Nixon put in charge of the Special Domestic Intelligence operation.
Dumping thugs like these out of power for the next three years gives us all new room to breathe, for a while - which is just about all we can hope for, given the nature of the entrenched (Democratic) opposition. Nixon himself is no problem, now that all his ranking thugs have been neutralized. Just imagine what those bastards might have done, given three more years on their own terms.'
- 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
My own prognosis is less drastic, at this point in time [sic], but it's also a fact that I've never been able to share The Doktor's obsessive political visions - for good or ill. My job has to do with nuts & bolts, not terminal vengeance. And it also occurs to me that there is nothing in the Watergate revelations, thus far, to convince anyone but a stone partisan fanatic that we will all be better off when it's finished. As I see it, we have already reaped the real benefits of this spectacle - the almost accidental castration of dehumanized power-mongers like Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Tom Charles Huston, that vicious young jackal of a lawyer from Indianapolis that Nixon put in charge of the Special Domestic Intelligence operation.
Dumping thugs like these out of power for the next three years gives us all new room to breathe, for a while - which is just about all we can hope for, given the nature of the entrenched (Democratic) opposition. Nixon himself is no problem, now that all his ranking thugs have been neutralized. Just imagine what those bastards might have done, given three more years on their own terms.'
- 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
'In the late 1990s, some 230 psychoactive substances were under international control, of which a handful dominated the global drug markets, most notably cannabis, cocaine, opium, heroin, amphetamines and “ecstasy”. Two decades later, the situation has changed, as there are now far more substances on the market. A number of synthetic NPS (i.e. psychoactive substances that mimic the properties of substances already under international control) emerged on the drug markets in the past decade, including synthetic cannabinoids, cathinones, phenethylamines, piperazines and various fentanyl analogues, resulting in a new wave of scheduling of such substances at the international level, with the total number of substances under international control rising from 234 in 2014 to 282 in 2018. At the same time, the number of NPS rose from 166 substances over the period 2005–2009 to 950 substances by the end of 2019. Worldwide, in recent years authorities have identified more than three times as many NPS as there are psychoactive substances under international control' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'Beyond internationally controlled substances, the legal status of many substances in the market differ from country to country, and sometimes within countries. This creates quite complex production and trafficking patterns in which some substances are under national control in some countries but not in others, leaving ample opportunities for producers and traffickers of the substances to select countries depending on the legal status of those substances in the respective jurisdictions, while also quickly adjusting to new controls wherever and whenever they may occur. The multiplicity of substances currently in the market challenges the effectiveness of national and international interventions because the elimination of one substance from the market easily leads to replacement by another.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The growing complexity of drug markets can be also observed in the organizational structure of the actors involved. There has been a general trend over the past two decades towards an increasing fragmentation of the serious and organized crime landscape and the emergence of more groups and looser networks. Organizations based on loose cooperation across criminal networks have proved more resilient to law enforcement interventions than other types, as a network that gets dismantled can, in general, be easily replaced by another. The landscape of the global illicit drug trade has thus become more complex, is rapidly evolving and is facilitated by new technology such as encrypted communications software and the darknet.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The shift away from purely hierarchically organized crime groups, characterized by an extensive division of labour within such organizations, also entails the emergence of new groups engaged in specific activities, covering only limited aspects of drug manufacture and logistics or specific areas such as money-laundering and the investment of drug proceeds. Moreover, a number of new groups have emerged in recent years, bypassing many of the traditional actors, purchasing and selling drugs online through the darknet to end users. They make use of private or public postal services to transport drugs to anonymous post office boxes from which they are collected by the end users. The payment is made in parallel by means of cryptocurrency transactions on the darknet' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
Please note the picture of pharmaceutical synthetic drugs while what is being destroyed is a natural medicinal plant...
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/meerut/three-men-caught-with-7kg-drugs-in-anti-drug-drive-that-began-on-nov-1/articleshow/72266374.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/videos/news/police-seize-10kg-cannabis-in-chhattisgarhs-kondagaon/videoshow/72367737.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolhapur/break-the-ganja-nexus-sp-instructs-officials/articleshow/72374351.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/dehradun/2-nepalese-women-held-with-4-kg-cannabis/articleshow/74124471.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/agra/agra-woman-in-rajdhani-held-for-smuggling-20-kg-of-cannabis/articleshow/74328809.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/meerut/three-men-caught-with-7kg-drugs-in-anti-drug-drive-that-began-on-nov-1/articleshow/72266374.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/videos/news/police-seize-10kg-cannabis-in-chhattisgarhs-kondagaon/videoshow/72367737.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolhapur/break-the-ganja-nexus-sp-instructs-officials/articleshow/72374351.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/dehradun/2-nepalese-women-held-with-4-kg-cannabis/articleshow/74124471.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/agra/agra-woman-in-rajdhani-held-for-smuggling-20-kg-of-cannabis/articleshow/74328809.cms
'The way drug trafficking organizations operate has been influenced by the growth of licit international trade and by the emergence of new ways of transporting goods. Notably, the use of containers has increased, and GPS devices have helped to retrieve the drug cargo within the multitude of containers. In a few cases, organized crime groups have even succeeded in hacking the computers of shipping companies to have containers redirected to locations where the drugs could be more easily removed from the container. In parallel, technological innovation has also enabled drug trafficking groups to acquire semi-submersibles to transport drugs, such as cocaine, from South America to Central and North America and, more recently, even to Europe, without being easily detectable. Moreover, drones are being used by drug trafficking groups to assist them in the shipment of drugs across borders. Another technological advance that has facilitated the connection of criminal groups is the emergence of encrypted messaging applications for mobile telephones, which have helped drug dealers to stay connected while maintaining a high degree of anonymity' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'However, polydrug trafficking is not limited to Europe and can also be found in other regions and subregions, including North America, South America, Asia, Oceania and Africa. For a number of years, for example, polydrug trafficking organizations have been dismantled in the United States. A recent example was the dismantlement in July 2019 of an organization involving more than 50 people selling counterfeit oxycodone pills (containing fentanyl), methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin and benzodiazepine pills, as well as various types of weapons.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'According to FBI crime data, in 2017, there were 659,000 marijuana arrests in the U.S. There were also 1.2 million violent crimes with victims, but only 518,617 arrests for these same violent crimes. This means that there are more than 700,000 victims who have suffered without justice.
In states with legalized recreational marijuana, police now no longer spend time on marijuana arrests and can spend more time on solving these types of crime. FBI data from Colorado and Washington show that crime clearance rates – the number of times that the police solved a crime – increased for both violent and property crimes after legalization.'
https://www.penncapital-star.com/commentary/does-legalizing-marijuana-help-or-harm-americans-weighing-the-statistical-evidence-opinion/
'“This is exactly the kind of data collection we need to inform our regulatory and law enforcement framework,” said Governor John Hickenlooper. “We now have that ever-critical baseline from which we can spot trends so Colorado’s leaders understand where our efforts are succeeding and identify areas where we need to focus additional research, resources or even new policy.”'
https://www.colorado.gov/pacific/publicsafety/news/colorado-division-criminal-justice-publishes-report-impacts-marijuana-legalization-colorado
https://norml.org/marijuana/fact-sheets/item/marijuana-regulation-and-crime-rates
'Andaman and Nicobar administration has ordered an inquiry into reports, which alleged that the Jarawa tribe women were being sexually exploited by poachers for alcohol and marijuana.'
https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/governor-orders-inquiry-into-exploitation-of-jarawa-women/article5676922.ece
'"You've got to ask what are they doing this for, is it reprisal for not paying your drugs bill?" he asked of the cause of the multiple stabbings.
But when Piers pointed out that research shows a glut of cocaine in London appears to be fuelling the murder rate, Lord Sugar doubled down.
"You're right, my opinion has changed since I've been listening to the commentary on this. My idea would be, one element of it, if it [marijuana] was legalised it would do away with a lot of gang culture, very similar to Prohibition in America in the 1930s, when alcohol was legalised again it just wiped out the crime and corruption," he argued.'
https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/lord-sugar-calls-drugs-legalised-13576818
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bhopal/bhopal-minor-made-drug-addict-and-raped/articleshow/73075813.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/vijayawada/enforcement-wing-keen-on-rooting-out-cannabis-trade-engg-students-addicted/articleshow/74601270.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/rajkot/cannabis-cultivation-busted-in-botad-farm-owner-arrested/articleshow/72986675.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/sports/football/indian-super-league/top-stories/chennaiyin-fc-official-held-for-carrying-cannabis-at-isl-match/articleshow/74654700.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/jaipur/mandrax-cannabis-cocktail-worries-cops/articleshow/71768388.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/delhi-crime-branch-arrests-notorious-drug-dealer-karan-khanna/articleshow/70244892.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/vijayawada/enforcement-wing-keen-on-rooting-out-cannabis-trade-engg-students-addicted/articleshow/74601270.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/rajkot/cannabis-cultivation-busted-in-botad-farm-owner-arrested/articleshow/72986675.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/sports/football/indian-super-league/top-stories/chennaiyin-fc-official-held-for-carrying-cannabis-at-isl-match/articleshow/74654700.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/jaipur/mandrax-cannabis-cocktail-worries-cops/articleshow/71768388.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/delhi-crime-branch-arrests-notorious-drug-dealer-karan-khanna/articleshow/70244892.cms
Legalize marijuana so that people can grow their own plants and do not need to resort to desperate measures such as robbery, violence, hard drug and alcohol addiction. Many of these persons can become members of the legalized marijuana industry as growers and retailers, get their lives back and contribute to a healthy society..
'Analysing the pattern and the cause of robberies after questioning habitual offenders has revealed that over 90 per cent of the muggers operating in the city are drug addicts and commit the offence to make quick money to buy drugs.
A gang of chain-snatchers, who were nabbed recently by the southeast division police, revealed that they are chronic alcoholics and drug addicts. They commit crime on a regular basis to get their daily dose of drugs.'
https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/hitech-way-to-stop-robberies/article7589154.ece
'Citing an inspector general’s report from earlier this year, the congressman explained how Customs and Border Protection seizures of illicit cannabis along the southern border decreased by more than 330,000 pounds from 2005 to 2017. That trend “correlates to the decrease in demand since the legalization of marijuana in states” in the country, the report found.'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/homeland-security-chiefs-job-would-be-easier-with-legal-marijuana-gop-congressman-says/
'"State-level marijuana legalization has significantly undercut marijuana smuggling," David Bier, an immigration policy analyst at Cato, wrote in the paper, published last week. "Based on Border Patrol seizures, smuggling has fallen 78 percent over just a five-year period. Because marijuana was the primary drug smuggled between ports of entry, where Border Patrol surveils, the value of the agency’s seizures overall — on a per-agent basis — has declined 70 percent."'
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomangell/2018/12/24/marijuana-legalization-means-safer-borders-and-less-smuggling-study-shows/#71ed5456d764
'“Today in Texas, consumers easily find a wider variety of cannabis products than a few years ago coming from all over the place,” said Dean Becker, a Baker Institute contributing expert in drug policy.
Becker explained that states like Colorado, California and Oregon are growing more than their markets can absorb, and smugglers are flourishing moving the merchandise to other marketplaces. Mexico, he said, isn’t the main Texas supplier anymore as their producers are struggling to compete with the higher quality of U.S. grown products.'
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Changing-marijuana-laws-in-Canada-and-Mexico-13496512.php
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/hc-junks-plea-to-legalise-cannabis/articleshow/70402875.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chandigarh/nihangs-cut-off-hand-of-policeman-after-scuffle-in-vegetable-market/articleshow/75104243.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/jaipur/five-held-with-narcotics-in-separate-raids/articleshow/74165677.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/nashik/man-in-possession-of-cannabis-worth-8l-held/articleshow/73815916.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/indore/mp-dri-seizes-cannabis-worth-rs-3-1-cr-in-chhattisgarh/articleshow/74212523.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/report-flags-pot-cultivation-its-impact-on-kids/articleshow/74358523.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/ncb-arrests-six-with-over-380kg-ganja-in-delhi/articleshow/74426471.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/in-a-1st-government-oks-cannabis-research-in-up-uttarakhand/articleshow/71040612.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chandigarh/nihangs-cut-off-hand-of-policeman-after-scuffle-in-vegetable-market/articleshow/75104243.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/jaipur/five-held-with-narcotics-in-separate-raids/articleshow/74165677.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/nashik/man-in-possession-of-cannabis-worth-8l-held/articleshow/73815916.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/indore/mp-dri-seizes-cannabis-worth-rs-3-1-cr-in-chhattisgarh/articleshow/74212523.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/report-flags-pot-cultivation-its-impact-on-kids/articleshow/74358523.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/ncb-arrests-six-with-over-380kg-ganja-in-delhi/articleshow/74426471.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/in-a-1st-government-oks-cannabis-research-in-up-uttarakhand/articleshow/71040612.cms
'“Drug crime defendants, who accounted for 28 percent of total filings, grew two percent, although defendants accused of crimes associated with marijuana decreased 19 percent,” Roberts wrote.'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/federal-marijuana-prosecutions-are-dropping-in-era-of-legalization-chief-justice-reports/
'KERLIKOWSKE: I don't mention a wall. The marijuana comes between the ports of entry, but marijuana seizures have been down for many years - probably eight or nine years. You know, we have 10 states that made a decision to legalize marijuana. We have a lot of marijuana that's grown in the United States. So the marijuana issues, which I saw the president standing in front of bales of marijuana, those aren't the things - you know, that isn't killing people in this country.'
https://www.npr.org/2019/02/16/695420181/former-cbp-commissioner-gil-kerlikowske-on-trumps-border-declaration
Legalize ganja so that people can grow their own plants and not have to resort to expensive drugs like alcohol and tobacco as well as dangerous crimes like chain snatching, cattle and automobile thefts.
'Police said that the foursome are friends and are addicted to marijuana, cigarettes and alcohol. They allegedly took to chain-snatching to pay for their addictions.'
https://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-telangana/four-arrested-for-chain-snatching/article26040959.ece
Would these situations arise if marijuana was legalized like alcohol and tobacco? Would anyone today think of planting tobacco or alcohol to frame a person and extort money? The students are just a reflection of what is surely happening at various levels and in multiple instances in Indian society where marijuana because of its illegal status is being used to harass and harm many people to comply with the demands of criminals..
'The victim, Vyshak, lodged a complaint with the police on Saturday. He said that the students barged into his apartment, accused him of peddling drugs, and looked up in his room. They then allegedly planted a packet of marijuana, confronted him and beat him up until he confessed that the drugs were his. They recorded the confession and left with his wallet, mobile phone, bag and motorcycle. They threatened to show the video recording to the police if he didn’t give them more money'
https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/bangalore/seven-booked-for-blackmailing-student/article25759267.ece
Legalize ganja and include it in the Ayurvedic tourism package to promote safe and healthy tourism in India. Legalize ganja to protect local and international tourists from dangerous criminals who use ganja to lure their victims. Legalize ganja so that revenue from its sale goes into improving tourism industry and not into funding criminals.
'The European woman had been in the capital for Ayurveda treatment. She had a history of clinical depression. Early on March 14, she arrived at Grove Beach in Kovalam and aimlessly wandered off to the wooded estuary area frequented by the accused.
The accused plied her with marijuana at the remote locality before they raped and strangulated her to death. Then they strung her up with a creeper’s vine to masquerade the murder as a suicide.'
https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Thiruvananthapuram/latvians-murder-twoyouths-chargesheeted/article24813973.ece
Gunja not guns..
“You have people that are advancing up in age that need medical marijuana and might have, say, 50 firearms and just realized they sacrificed all of those,” Stolfer said. “Where are they going to turn them in and how are they going to get rid of them?”
Legalization appears to have brought down international trafficking of cannabis into the US by nearly half since 2009..smuggling out of the US appears to be increasingly attractive because of the better quality and strains now available in the US post legalization..another reason to legalize worldwide...
'Such a dramatic drop in cannabis smuggling activity is likely due to a nationwide shift in demand from typically lower-quality Mexican cannabis to higher-quality American-grown cannabis, a shift that has taken place in part as a result of state-by-state legalization, making cannabis more readily available to consumers. In fact, the dynamic has shifted to such an extent that trafficking-related violent crime is down in US states bordering Mexico. Federal drug enforcement agents have even been seizing speciality-strain American cannabis destined for Mexican consumers.'
https://cannabiswire.com/2018/10/08/who-gets-busted-at-the-border-for-cannabis-frequently-us-citizens-with-small-stashes/
'Luke Graham, the Scottish Conservative, highlighted the boost to tax revenues and falling violent crime in American states where cannabis has been legalised, as he suggested a fresh look at the classification of recreational substances'
https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/news/politics/scottish-politics/737058/tory-mp-calls-on-uk-ministers-to-review-the-law-amid-war-on-drugs-failings/
'Lord Falconer argued that recent disclosures concerning the way in which thousands of children were being exploited to deal drugs by so-called county-lines gangs – urban dealers who swamp rural communities with drugs – was further evidence that the current laws were not working.'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6199639/Former-Labour-Justice-Secretary-calls-UK-legalise-drugs-including-cocaine-heroin.html
'The “criminal” stereotype from the negative societal perception about users as criminals which often resulted in stigma and lost opportunities paradoxically appeared to reinforce cannabis use among male users.'
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14659891.2018.1510052
'Those findings should reassure not just San Diegans who might live near or patronize a dispensary, but also officials across the county who’ve expressed concern that legal marijuana storefronts will attract crime'
https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/public-safety/few-crimes-linked-to-legal-pot-dispensaries-in-first-half-of-2018/
'Bivariate, multivariate, and PSM analyses all indicate a strong relationship between being arrested and engaging in synthetic psychoactive drug use. This finding has important implications for drug policy and criminal justice practices. Some have argued that current drug prohibitions and the ubiquitous nature of drug testing is a driving factor in the increased prevalence of novel drug use. To an extent, our data support this claim in that those who have been in contact with the criminal justice system (arrested) have a much higher likelihood of using NPDs when controlling and matching for other factors.'
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0022042616678611
'More than half of individuals with prescription opioid use disorder or heroin use reported a history of involvement in the criminal justice system, and any level of opioid use was independently associated with involvement in the criminal justice system in the past year. Given the complex health and criminal justice profiles of individuals who use opioids, policy makers should carefully consider how changes to public health insurance programs and sentencing guidelines may aid or hinder a public health approach to the opioid epidemic. '
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2687053
'In the present study, the most malicious forms of interpersonal violence – physical or sexual assault – were not only associated with opioid medication but also to various degrees with all outcomes of NMUPD (non-medical use of prescription drugs). However, more significant associations were found with assaults by strangers. Against our hypothesis, there was only one significant relationship for assaults within the family, which was associated with NMU of sleeping pills. Given that many occurrences of sexual abuse by a family member occur at night or in bed, it is possible that this type of drug is more likely to be used by men who have experienced this sort of trauma, perhaps as a form of self-medicating to induce sleep or to avoid the emotions associated with bedtime traumatic reminders. Further research would be useful to further clarify this association.'
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5944370/
In sum, these findings run counter to arguments suggesting the legalization of marijuana for medical purposes poses a danger to public health in terms of exposure to violent crime and property crimes. To be sure, medical marijuana laws were not found to have a crime exacerbating effect on any of the seven crime types. On the contrary, our findings indicated that MML precedes a reduction in homicide and assault.
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0092816
The researchers then looked at crime rate data for robberies, assaults, and murder. When the research team looked at specific crimes, like murder, there was a huge drop in the rate of drug-related homicides after legalization—a drop of over 40 percent in the Mexican border states.
https://www.leafly.com/news/politics/study-legalization-reduces-crime-in-border-towns
At a time of increased focus on enhancing border security, especially at the southern U.S. border, legal cannabis appears to be successfully eroding demand for non-domestically produced cannabis
https://newfrontierdata.com/marijuana-insights/something-to-declare-legalized-cannabis-leads-to-fewer-border-interceptions/
'Sam Znaimer is a Vancouver, Canada-based venture capitalist who has been investing in everything from tech to telecommunications for more than 30 years. Recently, he put more than $100,000 into legal American cannabis companies. In May, when he attempted to drive across the border, he was flagged for a secondary inspection and questioned for four hours.'
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/canadian-pot-investors-are-being-banned-from-entering-us/
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/food-news/delhi-mumbai-among-worlds-biggest-consumers-of-weed-study/photostory/71148455.cms
Please note the picture of a pharmaceutical synthetic drug while what is being destroyed is a natural medicinal plant...
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/nashik/1-held-with-cannabis-worth-rs6-10-lakh/articleshow/74583687.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/shimla/cannabis-crop-destroyed-on-6175-bighas-in-kullu/articleshow/71250688.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mysuru/farmer-growing-cannabis-in-krs-backwaters-held/articleshow/74601643.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/food-news/studies-on-cannabis-being-healthy-may-be-more-of-social-media-propaganda/photostory/72936156.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/hc-relief-to-law-student-in-cannabis-on-campus-case/articleshow/75071763.cms
Please note the picture of a pharmaceutical synthetic drug while what is being destroyed is a natural medicinal plant...
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/nashik/1-held-with-cannabis-worth-rs6-10-lakh/articleshow/74583687.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/shimla/cannabis-crop-destroyed-on-6175-bighas-in-kullu/articleshow/71250688.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mysuru/farmer-growing-cannabis-in-krs-backwaters-held/articleshow/74601643.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/food-news/studies-on-cannabis-being-healthy-may-be-more-of-social-media-propaganda/photostory/72936156.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/hc-relief-to-law-student-in-cannabis-on-campus-case/articleshow/75071763.cms
'And in spite of the evidence linking cigarettes with lung cancer,
practically everybody regards tobacco smoking as being hardly less
normal and natural than eating. From the point of view of the
rationalist utilitarian this may seem odd. For the historian, it is
exactly what you would expect. A firm conviction of the material reality
of Hell never prevented mediaeval Christians from doing what their
ambition, lust or covetousness suggested. Lung cancer, traffic accidents
and the millions of miserable and misery-creating alcoholics are facts
even more certain than was, in Dante's day, the fact of the Inferno. But
all such facts are remote and unsubstantial compared with the near,
felt fact of a craving, here and now, for release or sedation, for a
drink or a smoke.' - The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/chennai-customs-officials-seize-1-7kg-of-cannabis-sent-from-us/articleshow/75377661.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/videos/city/chennai/cannabis-worth-rs-9-lakh-seized-from-sleeping-bags-in-chennai/videoshow/75382831.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/madurai/woman-arrested-for-possession-of-arrack-cannabis-gets-bail/articleshow/75334994.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/21kg-of-cannabis-rs-20-lakh-in-cash-seized-from-vaniyambadi-house/articleshow/75832354.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/noida/up-3-held-in-noida-with-105-kg-cannabis-sourced-from-odisha/articleshow/73089542.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/man-held-at-new-delhi-railway-station-with-over-90-kg-cannabis/articleshow/73215604.cms
'MOMS sees it differently. The organization, which advocates and provides services for victimized families “to move toward healing,” is frustrated over low police clearance rates for homicide and feels that prosecuting people for non-violent marijuana offenses is a waste of law enforcement resources.
And that frustration escalated after Interim Baltimore Police Commissioner Gary Tuggle dismissed the city attorney’s policy change and said his officers would continue to arrest people for cannabis possession.
To bring attention to the issue, MOMS will be driving a truck around City Hall and police headquarters with a billboard featuring the mayor and their message.'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/mothers-demand-baltimore-police-end-marijuana-arrests-and-instead-focus-on-murders/
Legalize marijuana at the federal level in the US to eliminate arrests for marijuana possession on the US-Canada border...
'Fines for marijuana possession are a minimum of $500 and can go a lot higher depending on the quantity and whether someone has a record. Customs officials tell 2 On Your Side that there has been confusion at the border about whether medical marijuana can be brought over, although it's legal in New York state, it is not legal at the border, which operates under federal law, so medical marijuana cannot be brought over the border.'
https://www.wgrz.com/article/news/local/marijuana-seizures-up-140-percent-at-the-border/71-612788435
'The 2019 Global Drug Survey also asks a number of questions about sexual assault and drug use. Winstock said it was a natural topic to explore amid the Me Too movement, which has led to numerous claims against men who have allegedly sexually mistreated women. Through the survey, Winstock said he hopes to get a clearer idea of the role drugs and alcohol play in these sorts of incidents, as well as how they affect a victim’s response to them.'
https://www.huffingtonpost.in/entry/global-drug-survey-2019_us_5bef18a2e4b07573881e7b5e
'A range of drugs, particularly cocaine and amphetamines (including methamphetamine) are associated with increased aggressive and violent behaviour. Users of cocaine and/or heroin may be at greater risk of observing, perpetrating and being a victim of violence than users of cannabis. Individuals under the influence of benzodiazepines have been found to be more likely to act aggressively than non-intoxicated individuals. However, such findings may be due to high levels of pre-existing hostility and aggressive dispositions. The non-prescribed use of anabolic androgenic steroids (AASs) is also associated with a number of psychiatric and behavioural changes including aggression, which in some cases may lead to violence. As with other drugs, whether such effects are caused by AAS use, or whether users are predisposed to such effects, remains unclear.'
http://www.who.int/violenceprevention/interpersonal_violence_and_illicit_drug_use.pdf
'Some physicians are traveling up and down the state, showing up at makeshift clinics that open suddenly and close unexpectedly, said Pat Deluca, a medical marijuana advocate who is executive director of Compassionate Cannabis Clinic in Venice. He says these traveling doctors often disappear after collecting the cash, and can’t be reached for weeks.'
http://www.tampabay.com/investigations/2018/05/04/floridas-medical-marijuana-program-is-attracting-troubled-doctors-its-like-the-wild-wild-west/
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