Hemp BC
Many years ago, I sampled an electronic copy of Jack Herer's The Emperor Wears No Clothes, electricemperor.com. My mirror is at billstclair.com/ElectricEmperor. Jack died in 2010, but somebody is keeping the site alive, and has added more information since I pulled my mirror.
I got an email from Alan Wood, the proprietor of weekendgardener.net, notifying me about a broken link to hempbc.com. I don't fix broken links in archived web sites, but I will link to his account of What Happened to Hemp BC? The Hemp BC Story.
The Seeds Depot
The Seeds Depot is an incredible resource for hundreds of varieties of cannabis seed. It appears to primarily be a marketing wrapper around Amsterdam Marijuana Seeds. Seed prices vary from $3 to $17 per seed, sold in packages of 10. Thank you prohibition (not!) for making seeds that should cost a few pennies cost many dollars.
Like the old Emery Seeds, on steroids.
Tylenol and the War on Drugs
Kurt Harris at Psychology Today - thanks to the war on some drugs, many medications that would otherwise be "prone to abuse" are deadly poisons if taken to excess. Hydrocordone is an opiod analgesic, but it's sold as Vicodin, mixed with Tylenol, an overdose of which kills you by destroying you liver. They do the same with denatured alcohol. Grain alcohol, which makes you drunk if abused, is mixed with methanol or acetone, so that it will kill you if you drink it. By so-doing, the manufacturer avoids the taxation and licensing required for selling alcoholic beverages.
The manufacturer goes to extra effort and expense to add poison for the sole purpose of escaping burdensome government regulation and taxation. And the government dissuades you from getting high with a legal drug by threatening you with death.
...
Note: I advise requesting good old morphine when in the hospital, which is cheap, safe and effective, and requesting pure oxycodone or maybe percodan if you really need it after discharge.
I don't advise taking any drugs for recreation.
The Folly of Locking Up Non-Violent Offenders
Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars - commentary on Missouri Chief Justice William Ray Price, Jr.'s annual State of the Judiciary address.
I commented:
As I've been harping for 10 years now, drug criminalization and regulation is a crime. People have the absolute right to ingest anything they want. Nobody has the authority to say anything whatsoever about it. Nor to tax it. No matter how many people are convinced to vote for regulation. If modifying your consciousness with chemicals causes you to commit an actual crime, harming another person or their property, you are responsible, but as long as you don't, it ain't nobody's business how high you choose to get, or how.
As Vin Suprynowicz so aptly put it, "This does not mean that 'Marijuana should be available by prescription.' It means that morphine sulfate should be available in five pound bags at the supermarket for a couple of bucks, like sugar... but probably in a different aisle, to avoid confusion."
And cannabis should be available in bulk at the health food store, again for a couple of bucks an ounce, or less. And my 13-year-old daughter should be able to buy as much of it as she wants.
Drug Czar of My Dreams
Mattew Elrod has created a web site promoting Dr. Ethan A. Nadelmann for Obama's drug czar. He invites you to sign a petition. I did. From the About Dr. Nadelmann page:
In 1994, Nadelmann founded the Lindesmith Center, a drug policy institute created with the philanthropic support of George Soros. In 2000, the growing Center merged with another organization to form the Drug Policy Alliance and Drug Policy Alliance Network, which advocate for drug policies grounded in science, compassion, health and human rights. Described by Rolling Stone as "the point man" for drug policy reform efforts, Ethan Nadelmann is widely regarded as the most prominent proponent of drug policy reform.
This Is Your Country, Fighting the War on Drugs
I thought up an addition to the Partnership for a Drug-Free America's This is Your Brain on Drugs commercial.
Holding up an egg: "This is your brain."
Pointing at a frying pan: "This is drugs."
Frying the egg in the frying pan: "This is your brain on drugs."
With the narrator from above looking out the door of a house: "This is your country."
Viewing an attack helicopter: "This is the war on drugs."
Showing a missile fired from the attack helicopter into the house, and the house exploding in flames: "This is your country, fighting the war on drugs."
"Any questions?"
So What If Pot Can Cure Cancer; That's No Reason For You To Use It
Paul Armentano at LewRockwell.com - Dr. Wai Man Liu has discovered that an ingredient of marijuana "slows tumour growth and prevents the reproduction of cancer cells", but he thinks that "smoking ganja" would cause "more harm than good." Bull. [lew]
Having recently lost friends and family members to cancer, including one to leukemia, I can inform Dr. Liu that such a diagnosis -- even when treated with standard radiation and chemotherapy -- is a death sentence. For Dr. Liu to advise, with a straight face no less, that these patients would do "more harm than good" by smoking cannabis is a disgrace. Not only can cannabis alleviate cancer patients' nausea and pain, elevate their mood, and increase their appetite, but also -- as Dr. Liu's own data demonstrates -- it may help to alleviate the very disease that's ravaging their bodies. Nevertheless, I suppose that Dr. Liu would rather have these patients shut up and die than expose the political hypocrisy surrounding criminalizing a plant.
Legalization in disguise
Margaret Wente at The Globe and Mail - fourth in a series of articles deriding harm reduction, and proposing treatment-or-jail programs for drug addicts. The four articles are:
- Sick of watching people die
- We still await the scientific proof of harm reduction's success
- Europe's approach to drugs is more enlightened ... it's tougher
- Sick of Watching People Die
I sent the following letter to the editor, and posted it as a comment to the final article: [drugsense]
Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2008 04:30:33 -0400
From: "Bill St. Clair" <billstclair@gmail.com>
To: letters@globeandmail.ca
Subject: Letter to the editorThe real question about drugs, weed or cocaine or heroin, is not how harmful they are, but who owns our bodies. If each one of us owns his or her own body, then if we choose to live in a drug-induced stupor, it ain't nobody's business. All drugs must be legalized. If the state owns us, well then, it can do what it will with its slaves, so there's nothing to discuss. The natural consequences of drug abuse are more harsh and more fair than anything any legislator can dream up. You can't help somebody who doesn't want to be helped. Give it up.
Bill St. Clair
Successful Medical Necessity Defense in Texas Marijuana Case
Jacob Sullum at Reason - a Texas jury recently acquitted Tim Stevens for possessing marijuana which he used to relieve the cyclical vomiting syndrome associated with HIV infection. His expert witness convinced the jury that enforcing the "law" was worse than allowing Mr. Stevens to have his medicine, so they nullified. Bravo! [tmm]
Stevens, whose vomiting has been so severe that he was hospitalized and received blood transfusions, was arrested last October after an anonymous tipster saw him sharing a joint on a friend's porch in Amarillo and called the police. He had about a twelfth of an ounce of marijuana, resulting in a Class B misdemeanor charge that carries a penalty of up to six months in jail and a $2,000 fine. He probably could have gotten off with a fine or a year's probation, Blackburn says, "but he didn't want to; he wanted to take a stand." The trial lasted about 10 hours on Tuesday, and the jury came back after 11 minutes with a "not guilty" verdict.
Blackburn says the expert testimony of Steve Jenison, medical director of the Infectious Diseases Bureau in New Mexico's Department of Health, helped establish that marijuana is demonstrably effective at treating nausea and superior in some ways to the legal alternatives. (For one thing, unlike the synthetic THC capsule Marinol, it does not have to be swallowed and kept down, a feat for someone suffering from severe nausea.) Blackburn, who was not at all confident about the prospects for Stevens' unusual defense in a "very, very conservative area," also credits "a streak of independence" and a "distaste for government" that he says is common in West Texas. "I think these jurors like the idea that they get to make a decision about what the law means, about when it applies," he says, "and I don't think they were shy at all about deciding how valuable the law proscribing marijuana use really is."
Civil injustice strikes Ohio
Bob Ewing at The Cleveland Plain Dealer - asset forfeiture isn't in the news much these days. But it's still big business for the crooks who run local, state, and federal government theft rings. They stole Meredith and Luther Ricks' life savings, $400,000, when they found the cannabis Mr. Ricks' used to ease his painful arthritis, hip replacement and shingles, while investigating his self-defense shooting of a home intruder. That ain't right. Every cop and prosecutor involved should go to prison for a long time, and never again be allowed to darken the doors of any public office. Asset forfeiture is theft, plain and simple. But then, so is taxation.
Shortly afterward, the FBI got involved - not to help the stricken family, but to claim the money for the federal government.
Such is the result of civil forfeiture laws, which represent one of the most profound assaults on our rights today.
Civil forfeiture can apply to virtually any property: cars, houses, boats and, as the Rickses' case demonstrates, even money. The property can be seized merely on suspicion that it was used in connection with a crime or resulted from criminal activity.
The police did not charge Luther for the shooting - he acted in self-defense - or for the small quantity of marijuana he used as medicine. Under civil forfeiture, the government can confiscate money or property without proving that a person is guilty of criminal misconduct.
