OT: Everybody Must (not) Get Stoned

I hate to hear that about your back Yvsa. Nothing can get me down like back pain, and nothing can totally put me out of comission like super bad back pain.
 
if the press runs "Terminal cancer patient imprisoned for possession of marijuana" and runs a picture of a little ol' Grandma? Can you imagine the public outcry? I'm starting to think our elected leaders are smoking their fair share.

Frank
 
Well, Fox, that's just it. It was similar outrages- little black ladies being jailed for not giving up seats to large, healthy white men, for instance- that helped change some of the great injustices of our recent past.

Byron's father suffered from neurofibromatosis (hope I'm spelling that right), a disease where his body grew tumors that sometimes impacted his spine or other nerves. His body tolerance to pain medication grew, until he was taking an enormous amount of pain medication, just to function. Well, he was contacted by some police agency- don't remember whether local or state- and told he was going to be forced to testify against his doctor for prescribing unneeded drugs. He refused. He was told he would be prosecuted for his multiple prescriptions if he did not.

At that point, he pulled his shirt from off his 160-lb, 6 ft+ frame, leaned out of his wheelchair, and turning his back, filled with scar tracks, said, "If you think you can find a jury in Georgia that'll convict me, you go right ahead."

He never heard anything else about it.

Each "war" is just another excuse to take more of our freedoms. Hell, even if all drugs were legalized, it would NOT be legal to have them within reach of your children, to drive while using them, or to indulge in heavy drugs while taking care of kids. Down with "victimless crime" laws; up with personal responsibility.

Down with the nanny state.

John
 
Svashtar said:
..... The trampling of individual rights, the unconscionable criminalization and banning of a lousy weed, and the number of people in jail for possessing a certain plant is criminal in and of itself. The people of several states have spoken and said that they at least want medical marijuana to be legalized. Instead of listening to the will of these tens of millions of citizens, our Federal Master's have decreed that this will not be allowed. In true Joe Friday Dragnet fashion they maintain the incredible fiction that pot is more dangerous than alcohol.

After all, huge bureaucracies depend on the asset forfeiture revenue from "enforcing" this war on some drugs. When people dying of cancer in terrible pain defy these tyrants, they are thrown in jail without their medicine to die an even more horrible pain-filled death. OR the bastards running these programs provide their own low-THC ditchweed pot that is useless, and then point to this as definitive proof that pot doesn't work.

I'm not talking about crank or coke or heroin, even though those are arguably drugs that people should be able to use in the privacy of their own homes, as long as they don't hop in the car and go for a drive. I'm talking about a natural herbal medicine that can help sick people, and these power mad sunsabiyches in the DEA insisting they can't have it!
I believe I'm the "power mad son of a bitch" you're looking for. Just for the record, the reason I kicked @$$ and took names for nearly thirty years, was guys like you who told my high school students that drugs were 'cool' and O.K. to take. After two of 'my' kids overdosed in my classroom (two separate incidents about three weeks apart), I began to make inquiries which resulted in my identifying three dealers operating around our mining town in northern West Virginia. My principal told me "You're not a cop. Your job is to keep school" (an old fashioned expression meaning keep a lid on the class, and don't bother yourself with what happens after hours). When one of those young men died trying to withdraw from barbiturates, for me, that was the last straw. I quit a perfectly good teaching job, and set out, not to change the world, but what was immediately in front of me. When, after a year, I finally got in to the Federal Bureau of Narcotics ( DEA's ancestor) my managers found an agent with a background in science (read Chem and Bio) who was not afraid to eat fumes to go after a lab. In the middle 60's, domestic drug labs were just getting common, and old FBN had only found four.

Drugs are not considered 'bad' because congress made them illegal; rather, they were brought under control because of a political groundswell beginning just before 1900, and led by the American Medical Assn., whose members had to treat drug abusers. Congress dithered around for over ten years, while several international conventions calling for drug control...Shanghai, the Hague, and I forget the third. Anyway, Congress, at the urging of constituents, enacted the Harrison Narcotic Act of 1914, followed by the Marijuana Act of 1937. Keep in mind, FBN didn't exist back then, and the IRS placed the Harrison Narcotic Act behind the Butter Tax act as a priority. During Prohibition, more special agents died serving drug warrants than the more publicized raids on Capone and company.

The Single Convention of 1961 was the drug treaty "to end all further debate" and was signed by the United States and 42 (?) foreign countries. Toward the end of that decade, The Controlled Substances Act placed various drugs in five 'Schedules' with Sched I being those with high addiction potential and No Accepted Medical Use. Guess what, the U.S. and 42 other countries put marihuana in that catagory along with heroin. Since the United States is not in the habit of unilaterally violating a fully ratified international treaty, I believe, Shavistar, your whining is to no avail, as evidenced by the recent (like yesterday) Supreme Court decision denying medical necessity for marijuana use.

Also for the record, my last marijuana case was 120,000 pounds (that's right, 60 tons) and the guy and 30 members of his organization pled guilty. My last cocaine lab in Colombia ( case agent Mel S.) was 28,000 lbs of cocaine and about the same amount of coca paste waiting to be converted to HCl. Mel got the attorney general's award for that one ...and I had Mel in class.

I'm proud of my 27+ years with DEA, and now that I'm retired, I went back to college, got recertified, and now teach molecular biology and botany. Don't worry about DEA tracking you down...they probably won't waste the time :D
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As expected you set up a perfect straw man and knock him down. The thrust of my post was clearly about legalizing the use of marijuana, specifically for medical use.

Your war on drugs is not that, but a "war on SOME drugs." If it were a true war on drugs then alcohol would be banned. The "war" is a miserable failure. Even important conservative scholars have concluded that to be the case. If your mind was even in the least bit open on the subject, you would read the book I referenced, whose author was a judge who for years sentenced people to jail for years because of mindless mandatory sentencing laws. But you never will I'm sure; you might learn something that would shake your built in biases.

Your devotion to your job and the important work you did in stopping meth labs and the trafficking in heroin has blinded you to the enormous constitutional infringements that have resulted. The asset forfeiture laws themselves are horrendously unconstitutional, but in true-trooper-for-the- state fashion you excuse it as necessary.

My son is a police officer now, having just graduated from the police academy. He will enforce the law, but I cannot see him persecuting someone sick for the possession of a weed.

If your assinine unworkable drug laws were not in place, then a million pounds of pot could not be stockpiled or sold or fetch a huge price that would in turn lead to crime as gangs jockeyed to control it. Like the Bureau of Alterations, Tales and Fabrications, the DEA deludes itself that prohibition can work. Does the freakin' Volstead act ring a bell? You can't keep drugs out of prison, how could you keep it out of a free society? Your brilliant novel solution: make it less free! There are TWO MILLION people incarcerated in this country, a huge majority there from mandatory sentencing laws. What is your solution? Increase the war? Add MORE laws?

I obey the law, but I don't give a s*&t about jack-booted asset theiving facists no matter what their stripe. I am 49 and haven't smoked pot for over 30 years, but I would be the first to give it to a sick man. That you justify this outrageous and unenforceable SC ruling just goes to show how out of touch our Government and it's minions are with the people. But the SC is always right; after all, they once ruled that a black man was worth 3/5's of a white man, so they have their heads screwed on straight after all.

I believe I'm the "power mad son of a bitch" you're looking for. Just for the record, the reason I kicked @$$ and took names for nearly thirty years, was guys like you who told my high school students that drugs were 'cool' and O.K. to take.
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I might as well be speaking Klingon for all your understanding of what I said. Believe me, I'm not looking for you or anyone like you. You kicked ass and took names because that what you were paid to do, and undoubtedly enjoyed doing. I never said drugs were 'cool'. You read that into what I said. I never said "drugs" were OK to take. You read that into what I said. After 30 years of propaganda you are incapable of thinking independently or outside of the box about the subject. You are like the fanatic religious figure who interprets every comment as an attack upon his faith, and of course all infidels must be attacked in turn and eliminated!

Go ahead and delude yourself that you made a difference with regards to Marijuana. A lot of us know differently, and the future will ride with us. But, at least you got a pension out of it I guess. I would rather shovel s&^t for .50 cents an hour for a quarter century than say I ever worked for the DEA.

By the way, I don't need to be "tracked down", as I'm not breaking any laws. But if your buddies do decide to execute a no-knock kick-in-the-door warrant (puzzling; the only kind that ever seems to get served!?), based on nothing more than my public advocacy for medical marijuana, you had better come prepared. (No jeans and beards and dirty sweatshirts and not identifying yourself as you burst in and murder me and my family. Were you part of the crowd that murdered Mr. Scott down in Socal for his house and three million dollar property, because your goons said they "saw" pot from the air? After blowing his head off, it was "Oops! Sorry! No pot after all!" Tweedledum and Tweedledee.)

Oh yeah, before I forget, {"forceful" comment deleted}

Sincerely,

"Svashtar"
 
Jurrasicnarc;
You have every reason to be proud of 27+ years with the DEA. I'm proud of it. You've just had your say in strong terms. Let this be the high water mark, and lets not personalize it past this, OK?

I lived through what you are fighting against. I don't like philosophical or sugar coated interpretations of drug and alcohol use. In the real world lives and a lot of 'could have been's die. That's the way it is. But if you went into an AA meeting and said,"Hey, I got a great idea, let's make booze illegal so no one will ever drink again." You'd be laughed out of the room.

There is middle ground here. I believe society can and should offer rewards greater than those of addiction. And hey- one can find them. Reality is we are going to lose a lot of our sons and daughter to this scourge. I won't cheer it on and rationalize it, but I won't contribute to organized crime and an impossible war on illegal drugs either, and that's what the current status quo supports.

I don't think you're a power mad sob, jurrasicnarc. I think you're a man of honor and integrity who was probably offered opportunities to lose both many times.

And I don't think Norm's a 'whiner', whatever the hell that's about. Let's not go down. Let's keep this one headed in the right direction, OK?


munk
 
OK, I see Norm just had his own say in the strongest possible terms while I was writing my post.


Same line right now though- you've both let off steam and ripped some out. Fine.
Don't let this thread crash. Take a breath. Norm? Enough.
If you two are going to personalize it then step back or withdraw.


munk
 
munk said:
OK, I see Norm just had his own say in the strongest possible terms while I was writing my post.


Same line right now though- you've both let off steam and ripped some out. Fine.
Don't let this thread crash. Take a breath. Norm? Enough.
If you two are going to personalize it then step back or withdraw.


munk
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Will do, thanks Munk. But I disagree that my terms were the "strongest possible!" That was about a 6 on a scale of 10. I'll reserve what I really think on the subject... (-:

Probably the whole post was a waste of time, unfortunately.

I did edit the last anger driven shot though. Sorry I let it get out of hand, but if you have seen some of the suffering I have personally witnessed because of medical restrictions, well, it just makes me nuts.

Thanks for being a great Moderator Munk, and sorry you had to step in.

Regards,

Norm
 
Thank you, Norm, and thank you for the edit, I think you did that without reading my posts.

I don't know for sure but it looks like the two of you pigeon-holed the other into postions impossible to budge from.

That's what my old man was telling me; it aint the goverment, it isn't the DEA, it isn't the intellectual elite, or some group of incalculable power ala New World Order Conspiracy; it's just us, people.

munk
 
jurassicnarc44 said:
Toward the end of that decade, The Controlled Substances Act placed various drugs in five 'Schedules' with Sched I being those with high addiction potential and No Accepted Medical Use. Guess what, the U.S. and 42 other countries put marihuana in that catagory along with heroin.
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I just wanted to clarify this point. So, since the CSA identified pot as having no medical use AND being "highly addictive" 4 decades ago, we're gonna stick with that viewpoint now, despite the enormous evidence to the contrary? You know it is not "highly addictive", so why do you say so? Every text I have read for the past 30 years says that it is at worst only psychologically addictive, and enormously less so than nicotine.

I sincerely pray Sir that you never become terminally ill with cancer and require Marijuana to help you keep your food down because chemo has made you so ill you throw up every 20 minutes all day.

But, after all, you won't ever need it; the Government said so, 40 years ago!
 
Categories and the law will not matter eventually. Slavery was once legal. Jim Crow laws were once legal. For that matter, prohibition was once the law of the land.

As an observer of societies and modern civilization, I think it is inevitable Pot will be legalized some day. All lumping it in with the opiates did was to stuff the discussion for 40 years.

We will always have a drug problem and drug questions.
\

munk
 
I think all drugs should be decriminalized.

That has absolutely nothing to do with desiring consumption of said drugs. I have no desire or intention of ever consuming cocain, heroine, or meth, to name a quick 3. (It is wrong, unfair, elitist and arrogant- but I'm being redundant- to somehow assume that someone whose position is "leave other folks what ain't hurt you alone" MUST be some crackhead.) That does not mean I believe they "should"- or that anyone has the right to- criminalize them. It is foolish and counterproductive to only try to push my viewpoint, ideals, and actions on others, so I hold as a basic standard, this:

whatever consenting adults want to do with themselves, hurting no others, have on. As long as consenting adults are involved, great. I don't care, and what's more I find it morally repugnant to have the audacity to claim to know what's best for anyone else.

Remember, folks- debate thoughts. Knock down ideas, not people.

But if you knock down doors without reason, expect some unpleasantness. It is my duty to resist aggression, and we must all do our duty as we see it.

John the well-armed
 
Watch out John! The DEA will "track you down" for having an opinion that disagrees with the Government! No evidence at all of any illegal drug use, but that hardly matters. Mere details.

"It is not enough that you obey Big Brother; you must learn to love him as well."

Orwell was so right...
 
Shucks. I reckon they won't have to track hard, since I get a check every month. :p
 
OK, here's my $.02 (and its worth about half that)

I have seen, first hand, personality changes in heavy marijuana users. I've seen "tweakers" who did not know what planet they were on. Teeth falling out of their head, looking 25 years older than they were. I've seen families destroyed. Children scarred for life.

No one will ever convince me street drugs should be legal. Our society can not afford it financially. But most of all, the destruction of human lives would be more than our conscience could bear.

Semp
 
Like I said before. Besides crystal meth, the most abused drugs here and the ones that cause the most trouble are prescription ones. I look at medical records all day and I can tell you that xanax, oxycontin, coke, heroin, and meth are the most damaging.

As far as the weed, in the 70's there was Mexican. $20 an ounce. Then the gov't did the paraquat thing. Suddenly the more powerful Columbian became available. $40 an ounce. Reagan blockaded Columbia and the CIA got involved in Central America. The price went up to $60 an ounce, then $100 and then the supply almost totally dried up and cocaine, which was easier to smuggle came in. Then we had the coke and crack epidemic of the 80's. Gradually the domestic weed took over but it was still expensive. Then infra red and other technologies made this harder to do. I'm not sure what it goes for anymore but I have heard people quote 400 an ounce! So now instead of growing it people make meth, and sell their prescriptions.

What I am getting at here is that it seems like with every sucess in curbing the relatively non toxic pot, we have seen an increase in more dangerous drugs that are easier to make or conceal.

I am really glad there are guys out there like Jurassic who have struggled against the violent international criminals who move large quantities of drugs.

However with the pot I think that due to it being illegal it allows people buying it to be exposed to other drugs and by our efforts to eradicate it we have inadvertently promoted more dangerous and addictive substances.
 
Not generally a fan of utilitarian arguements, but Hollow, while you're right that there's a toll taken by addiction, that toll is far outstriped by the toll taken by the criminalization of drugs and the prohibition economy that stems from it. Personal or family tragedy expands exponentially when inflated prices and profits lead to a junky mugging someone for his next armful, and the organized violence on the part of those who are willing to fight to be the ones selling it to him. That's the tip of the iceberg, the costs keep rolling up, and include intangible costs like the errosion of due process and other fundemental civil rights.

Again, we should be dealing with this as a public health issue, not as a war waged on our own population.
 
Just a quick note before diving out the door to drive to W.Va., the answer is simple for those of you who want to change the law. Congressmen and Senators want to be re-elected. When they are convinced that those who want legalization are the majority, change will occur.

Listen closely to this one: DEA is funded solely through appropriations; NOT ONE PENNY comes from asset forfeiture. After a judge has ruled that seized assets indeed represent proceeds from drug transactions, some portion of that may be returned to local or state agencies who spent resources (man-hours, travel, buy money) to assist in the case. The larger portion goes into the General Fund of the U.S., to be used for education, roads, etc., not narcotic enforcement, but to assist in reducing taxes. As a supervisor in the DEA, I was the deciding official (earlier in Detroit, later in Indiana) on what was to be seized...could we reasonably establish that the asset represented drug proceeds. I also decided what portion went to which local agency. This was just a small portion of my job, but I took it ( the job, not the money) very seriously...... As friend Munk, suggests, I will withdraw with no animosity. As Munk said.....we're just people
 
I'm a little confused by something. OK, pot for medicinal use is illegal. However, there is a drug called Marinol that is THC (synthetic) in a pill form. Perfectly legal with prescription. I'd expect that it'd have most if not all of the effects of mary jane, except that you don't have to fool with album covers and such.

Why is medicinal ganja needed with Marinol available? Is the slower absorbtion rate vs. smoking a problem? Do prescriptions get lots of attention and suspicion of the physician, etc? Is it just ungodly expensive?
 
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