The Lie of Cannabis Prohibition
I ran across a web site claiming that some states have laws forbidding web page hyperlinks without permission. This seems absurd to me, even though I remember some deep-linking lawsuits a while back. Sure enough, there's a fair amount of stuff out there on this, from lawyers and others. A Google search for permission +to link gets lots and lots of hits. Below are some that I particularly liked.
Tim Berners-Lee - Links and Law: Myths:
Users and information providers and lawyers have to share this convention. If they do not, people will be frightened to make links for fear of legal implications. I received a mail message asking for "permission" to link to our site. I refused as I insisted that permission was not needed.
There is no reason to have to ask before making a link to another site But by the same token,
You are responsible for what you say about other people, and their sites, etc., on the web as anywhere
zug.com, John Hargrave's Comedy Home - Link to ZUG!:
Many people actually ask for permission to link to my site. What they don't understand is that I am a media whore who would sell crack to children if it meant more traffic for my site.
Melissa Thibault at the Learn North Carolina Beacon - Just Link It?
As a general rule, the Web follows a doctrine of implied public access. Benedict O'Mahoney, a lawyer and the author of The Copyright Website, writes that "The Web was created on the basis of being able to attach hypertext links to any other location on the Web. Consequently, by putting yourself on the Web, you have given implied permission to others to link to your Web page, and everyone else on the Web is deemed to have given you implied permission to link to their Web pages." You can request that someone remove a link to your material, but this is a matter of "netiquette," not the law. "Netiquette dictates that: Links to other Websites be removed if the linkee objects."
In case you haven't figured it out by now, I encourage links to End the War on Freedom and billstclair.com, deep or otherwise. I also generally allow use of my photographs as long as you give me credit and do not crop or alter them in any way other than resizing. I like to know if you link to or use my stuff, but that's just curiosity on my part, not a request.
Elizabeth Benjamin at the Albany (NY) Times-Union - Pataki offers drug reform: in the guise of relaxing New York's Rockefeller drug laws, Governor Pataki proposes to radically increase the penalties for selling cannabis. Heil Georgie! I wrote this letter to the editor:
Pataki offers drug reform. Not!What a crock! Pataki pretends to relax the draconian laws against possession of non-state-approved vegetables when in reality he is making the penalties harsher for the supply side of the black market exchange. Better to eliminate the black market entirely by legalizing cannabis hemp (aka marijuana). By this I don't mean that it should be available by prescription, though it IS good medicine, but that it should be available in the bulk herbs section of the local health food store for a few bucks an ounce. Cannabis is, after all, much safer and more useful than aspirin. The Times-Union would also do well, environmentally and economically, to switch from dead trees to dead weeds for their newsprint, once the repeal of these bogus laws makes the growing of industrial hemp again possible in America.
Cannabis prohibition is a lie. An evil, criminal lie. It suppresses the most useful plant on the planet. Lie promoting legislators and lie enforcement officers are the real criminals here, responsible for the assault and kidnapping of hundreds of thousands of peaceful Americans. Isn't kidnapping a capital offense?
The war on some drugs has nothing to do with drugs. It is a war on freedom. A war on the Bill of Rights. A war on the soul of America. End it.
The Militia Watchdog has an incredible links page containing hundreds of links to freedom-oriented web sites. Sometimes your enemies are your friends. They also have an image gallery, including this image of (hehe):
God grant me the
serenity to accept
the things I cannot
change, the courage
to change the
things I can, and
THE WEAPONRY
to make the
difference!
Never Surrender Your Firearms!
Keep and Bear Arms - Oaths Taken Before Taking Office or Position: KABA has been collecting for a while various oaths of office. They now have all fifty states. [kaba]
Amy Standen at Salon - Ready for some lockjaw? because of government price controls, making it nearly impossible to make any money, one of the two main sources of the tetanus vaccine has stopped production. brianf calls this a failure of the free market. As with Kalifornia's electricity crisis, the problem here is government interference with the market. Get the government completely out of the medicine business and things will work much better. BTW, the articles I've read about vaccines single out tetanus toxoid as one of a very few "vaccine"s that isn't more harmful than the disease (to healthy first-world folks, the trade-offs are different in the third world). I don't know if they'd include smallpox in this group, but smallpox is supposedly dead. [brianf]
The problem is that the vaccine business offers very low profit margins -- in large part because of well-meaning but hopelessly outdated price controls -- and if private manufacturers decide they're not making enough money and decide to get out, there's nothing to stop them....
Wyeth-Ayerst won't explain why the company halted tetanus production, except to note, again, the process of portfolio review. But it's easy to come to at least one conclusion: Wyeth-Ayerst dropped out of the tetanus business, leaving a shortage, because making tetanus was bad business for it. The FDA demanded changes, and levied a fine, and presumably, that didn't bode well for Wyeth-Ayerst's profit margin. As a public company, it answered to the only people to whom it is obligated: stockholders.
DRCNet - Interview with Steve Kubby: Mr. Kubby has been vindicated, as I reported a while back, but he had to work hard to make that happen. Most people don't have the will. They plead guilty. If every drug arrest went to trial, the war on some freedom, er, some drugs, would die more quickly, IMNSHO.
At that point, we realized we would not only have to defend Prop. 215, but also the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. For two years, we weaved our way through the court system battling for three things: First, the right to counsel of our choice -- they didn't want to allow Tony Serra to represent me, and we had to go through a bunch of judges who considered us guilty until proved innocent before we could prevail on that fundamental issue. Second, the right to the defense of our choice -- the right to use the Compassionate Use Act as a defense. The prosecution took the position we were commercial growers hiding behind the law. The Prop. 215 defense would "confuse the jurors," said the prosecution. And third, the right to the witnesses of our choice. The prosecution would require us to suddenly produce witnesses without warning; they would hold hearings to disqualify our witnesses any way they could.Tony Serra has gone through over 600 jury trials, and he told me that never in his career has he seen such slimy tactics or prosecutorial misconduct as in our case. But we beat 'em. Their narcs lied, their witnesses lied, and we caught them in lies. We had to fight on their own turf, by their own rules, and we still beat them.
David Borden at DRCNet - Thinking About Drug Policy: Mr. Borden reminds us that we need to continually fight drug lie enforcement with reasoned truth.
This week, I had one of those special experiences that sharpened my focus and resolve as a drug reformer, though not so emotionally riveting as those other examples. What happened was that I participated, as one of five panelists, in a debate on drug legalization, courtesy of the Wake Forest University Law School, baptist country, North Carolina. The debate reconnected me with the purpose of drug reform, by reminding me of just how misinformed our opponents are and how simplistic their thinking is on this issue.
Russell Madden at Laissez Faire City Times - The Body Snatchers: Texas has passed a law that allows the state to harvest the organs of any dead person who does not explicitly make it known that (s)he does not wish this to be done. Mr. Madden compares this with the body snatchers of yore who did medical research on corpses stolen from the cemetery.
One can only marvel at the amazing progress the centuries have bestowed upon us. Modern day body snatchers need no longer scurry about in the dark of night nor fear a ready noose for their temerity. No, nowadays the grave robbing is to be sanctioned by the power and glory of the State. Imagine if those skulking figures of old had stood boldly and offered in their defense that, well, no one said we couldn't dig up the corpse and slice it open....
On second thought, maybe this principle of "presumed consent" is not so novel in the annals of the State, after all. Currently when you die, if you were too frugal, too successful, too prudent in your life, and you amassed too much money, the State has no compunction stepping in and seizing over half the wealth you accumulated. Who cares that such property represents years of your life and the creative energy of your mind? You lived in this society and therefore you gave "presumed consent" to whatever laws the majority deemed proper.
More from The Emperor Wears No Clothes:
Concerning the lies told by the Partnership for a Drug Free America (PDFA):
In addition to releasing such meaningless drivel as an ad which shows a skillet ("This is drugs.") on which an egg is frying ("This is your brain on drugs. Any questions?"), PDFA is not above lying outright in their ads....
Perhaps a more valid ad for the PDFA to produce and the networks to run would show a skillet ("This is the PDFA.") and an egg frying ("These are the facts.").
In the chapter "LaRouche Against Rock", after giving a couple examples of censoring of TV shows that mentioned cannabis use as beneficial:
In 1997, in an episode of the TV series "Murphy Brown", starring Candice Bergen, Murphy undergoes cancer treatment from which she is vomitting constantly and has lost her appetite. Finally she is told by her doctor to illegally use marijuana for nausea and appetite stimulation. Murphy smokes pot and she is saved by doing so.The Partnership For a Drug Free America and DARE tried unsuccessfully to stop this episode from airing as it "...sent the wrong message to our children..." What wrong message!?...That marijuana is the best anti-nausea and the best appetite-stimulant on our planet and can save millions of lives?
Paul McCartney on his song "Band on the Run":
"And our argument was that we didn't want to be outlaws. We just wanted to be part of the regular scene, you know, and make our music and live in peace. We didn't see why we should be treated like criminals when all we wanted to do was smoke pot instead of hitting the booze."And that's what the song was about; it was my reaction to that whole scene..."
Debunking 'gutter Science' (man, if I keep reading this book, I'm likely to take up smoking weed again... only kidding):
After 15 days of taking testimony and more than a year's legal deliberation, DEA Administrative Law Judge Francis L. Young formally urged the DEA to allow doctors to prescribe marijuana. In a September 1988 judgement, he ruled: "The evidence in this record clearly shows that marijuana has been accepted as capable of relieving the distress of great numbers of very ill people, and doing so with safety under medical supervision... It would be unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious for the DEA to continue to stand between those sufferers and the benefits of this substance in light of the evidence in this record. In strict medical terms, marijuana is far safer than many foods we commonly consume...marijuana in its natural form is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man."
Lingering THC Metabolites:
The government also claimed that since "THC metabolites" stay in the body's fatty cells for up to 30 days after ingestion, just one joint was very dangerous; inferring that the long range view of what these THC metabolites eventually could do to the human race could not even be guessed and other pseudo-scientific double-talk (e.g., phrases like: "might be," "could mean," "possibly," "perhaps," etc.)** "May, might, could, and possibly are not scientific conclusions." Dr. Fred Oerther, M.D., September 1986.
The Coptic Study (1981):
Most studies (matched populations, past and present) indicate that--everything else being equal--an average American pot smoker will live longer than his counterpart who does no drugs at all; with fewer wrinkles, and generally less stress--thereby having fewer illnesses to upset the immune system, and being a more peaceful neighbor.(Costa Rican and Jamaican Studies)
Comparison to Alcohol:
The mortality figure for alcohol use are 100,000 annually, compared with zero marijuana deaths in 10,000 years of consumption.
Conclusion:
On the basis of the information provided in this book, we demand an end to the enforcement of these prohibition laws. All laws regarding the cultivation of the plant must be stricken from the books, including the UN's Single Convention Treaty of 1961, at which Anslinger represented the United States. Although he was forced to retire by an angry President Kennedy for, among other things, his antics at the Convention, Anslinger's legacy of lies and deceit lives on in 1999.Our government owes an apology to all persons who spent jail or prison time for cannabis (14 million years in aggregate so far), had to go through the courts, had their education, families, and professions torn apart, and their lives, wealth, and health often destroyed.
We also owe an apology to honest-but-ignorant teachers, police, and judges for our lack of courage to speak up and educate them. But there is no apologizing for the profit-minded corporate and government leaders who have acted illegally to censor and refute the undeniable truth of hemp.
What You Can Do:
At the risk of repetition, let us once more state in the strongest possible terms, that cannabis hemp--indeed the plant we denigrate with the slang name marijuana--will become known to future generations, as it was known to past generations for millenia, as the number-one annually renewable, fully sustainable, non pesticide-requiring, and most abundant source of paper/fiber/fuel on the face of the earth; with more overall uses than any other known plant.In other words, cannabis hemp is the greatest plant on earth!
