DEA Is Licensing Pot Farms....

[Hardrock69]

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/meet-your-new-pot-dealer-big-pharma/Content?oid=2665515


DEA licensing marijuana farms
May 29, 2011

Meet Your New Pot Dealer: Big Pharma
Generic cannabis pills planned for wide use.
By David Downs


Despite the US government's staunch opposition to medical cannabis farms in Oakland and elsewhere, the feds have begun licensing a whole lot of large legal pot grows throughout the country. But this weed is not for cannabis dispensaries and their patients; it's for Big Pharma.

The Drug Enforcement Administration told Legalization Nation in an e-mail last week that 55 unnamed companies now hold licenses to grow cannabis in the United States, a fact that contradicts the widespread belief that there is only one legal pot farm in America, operated under the DEA for research purposes. It appears as if the upswing in federally approved pot farming is about feeding the need of pharmaceutical companies who want to produce a generic version of THC pill Marinol and at least one other cannabis-based pill for a wide variety of new uses.

In other words, if big corporations grow dope with the government and put it in a pill, it's medicine. But if you grow it at home or at a city-permitted pot farm and then put it in a vaporizer, it's a felony.

"They've got to realize, as a political issue, this is going to raise a red flag," said Kris Hermes, spokesperson for medical marijuana lobby Americans for Safe Access. "Here we have companies cultivating marijuana on a mass scale to produce generic Marinol. It's going to force the government to answer more questions than it wants to."

It's a weird piece of news that comes at a strange and contradictory time for the drug war. As US attorneys send threatening letters to states and cities, including Oakland, warning them against "commercial cultivation" of marijuana, the DEA is quietly handing out licenses for commercial cultivation.

The schism has its roots in the Seventies and the drug war under Richard Nixon. Nixon ignored his staff's recommendations and named weed the most dangerous drug in America under the Controlled Substances Act. Cannabis has remained a so-called "Schedule 1" controlled substance alongside heroin and roofies (GHB) because it has allegedly no medical use and high potential for abuse.

But the only people who still believe that are old church ladies. Hermes said in an interview that decades of scientific studies and FDA approvals have proved the drug's 3,000-year-old medical efficacy and safety. Today, sixteen states defy the Controlled Substances Act and allow qualified patients to access the drug.

While federal legalization efforts have repeatedly failed, drug law reformers have also targeted the scheduling of cannabis. Filed in 1972, the first rescheduling petition was denied by the DEA 22 years later, over the objections of their own administrative law judge Francis Young, who said in court records: "Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man."

In 2002, activists again tried to reschedule the cannabis plant. Today, they still await word on their petition, which is why they filed a writ of mandamus Monday in a Washington, DC circuit court that would order the DEA to rule on the matter. "The federal government's strategy has been delay, delay, delay," said Joe Elford, chief counsel for Americans for Safe Access in an e-mailed statement Monday. "The Obama administration's refusal to act on this petition is an irresponsible stalling tactic," added Steph Sherer, executive director of the organization, in the statement.

But while the government has stalled on rescheduling a cheap, patent-less pain remedy with fewer toxic side effects than Advil or Tylenol, regulators are proving to be more than happy to accommodate Big Pharma's efforts to muscle in on pot.

Cannabis' main psychoactive ingredient, THC, was isolated in the Seventies, and copied in a lab to produce the prescription synthetic Marinol. In 1999, the DEA then downgraded Marinol to a Schedule III drug like codeine, while the plant itself stayed a Schedule I.

However, Marinol never did that well with cancer patients, doctors say. Effects vary widely. With at least 66 different canabinoids in smoked pot, patients report THC-only Marinol doesn't provide the same relief.

But Marinol is about to get a big boost. Its patent has recently expired, and a review of clinical human trials show sixteen studies under way that, if successful, would broaden generic Marinol's uses considerably beyond treating nausea in cancer patients.

In addition, researchers are using THC, as well as the number-two cannabinoid, CBD, in studies to treat obsessive compulsive disorder, schizophrenia, fibromyalgia, PTSD, and even irritable bowel syndrome. That's because pot modulates a newly discovered yet primal-cell signaling pathway called "the endocannabinoid system," with special effects in the brain and the gut.

Drug companies want to bring generic THC and CBD to new markets, and have requested that the DEA allow them to grow pot and put organic THC and CBD in pills, according to DEA records posted online last fall. But that requires the DEA to move organic THC down from Schedule I, where it is now, to Schedule III, where synthetic THC Marinol currently is.

According to DEA records, drug companies have requested just such a rescheduling. It appears as if they're likely to get it at any time, green-lighting a new generation of prescription pot pill farms.

The federal government has already boosted its marijuana production capability by 900 percent to 4.5 million grams, according documents obtained by Americans for Safe Access. The most famous federally approved pot grower, Dr. Mahmoud El Sohly, has also testified he has begun legally selling THC extracted from his Mississippi pot farm to the drug company Mallinckrodt.

Big Pharma's move on the pot industry isn't some forty-year-old hippie conspiracy theory, said Paul Armentano, spokesman for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. It's here.

[ThrillsNSpills]

Nixon ignored his staff's recommendations and named weed the most dangerous drug in America under the Controlled Substances Act. Cannabis has remained a so-called "Schedule 1" controlled substance alongside heroin and roofies (GHB) because it has allegedly no medical use and high potential for abuse.


Well, his word's good enough for me sonny.

[standin]

Until it is moved to food grade "phar-ing" is the best option. :)

[ThrillsNSpills]

under the "I made it up so it's the truth now" act.



Well it would certainly explain why pot was lumped in with the rest when you consider its inclusion in the scare films they pelted us with in 8th grade.

[Hardrock69]

I remember seeing one, where some guy is on 'drugs' and he is looking at himself in the mirror and he turns into a werewolf, lol.
That was in 1970.

[Hardrock69]

Son of a bitch....The Netherlands is going to make it illegal for foreigners to buy cannabis. Goddammit! :mad:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110527/wl_nm/us_dutch_cannabis%3B_ylt%3DArG0eLAXAgHro9Gh6UANSOe s0NUE%3B_ylu%3DX3oDMTFpb21tYTRkBHBvcwMzNgRzZWMDYWN jb3JkaW9uX21vc3RfcG9wdWxhcgRzbGsDZHV0Y2hnb3Zlcm5t


Dutch government to ban tourists from cannabis shops


AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – The Dutch government on Friday said it would start banning tourists from buying cannabis from "coffee shops" and impose restrictions on Dutch customers by the end of the year.

The Netherlands is well known for having one of Europe's most liberal soft drug policies that has made its cannabis shops a popular tourist attraction, particularly in Amsterdam.

Backed by the far-right party of anti-immigrant politician Geert Wilders, the coalition government that came into power last year announced plans to curb drug tourism as part of a nationwide program to promote health and fight crime.

"In order to tackle the nuisance and criminality associated with coffee shops and drug trafficking, the open-door policy of coffee shops will end," the Dutch health and justice ministers wrote in a letter to the country's parliament on Friday.

Under the new rules, only Dutch residents will be able to sign up as members of cannabis shops.

Dutch customers will have to sign up for at least a year's membership and each shop would be expected to have only up to 1,500 members, a justice ministry spokesman said.

The policy will roll out in the southern provinces of Limburg, Noord Brabant and Zeeland by the end of the year and the rest of the country next year, the spokesman said.

Amsterdam, home to about 220 coffee shops, is already in the process of closing some in its red light district. Some officials have resisted the measures, saying they will push the soft drug trade underground.

Some Dutch border towns including Maastricht and Terneuzen have already restricted the sale of marijuana to foreigners.

[ThrillsNSpills]

There was one where there was a drag racer who was wrestling with pot addiction. Turns out at the end of the movie he couldn't control it and the last scene was his car starting up, going down the track, and bursting into flames( real quick scene that ended with a still frame mid-crash. (Feels like I grew up in the 50's looking back) One of my friends remembered another one with Sonny Bono.

So , Marinol isn't doing well, . so it's getting a boost?
Seems pill form has higher potential for abuse.

[Hardrock69]

The DEA is being so hypocritical it is pathetic.

[Nitro Express]

More Americans die from prescription drugs than any other kind. The drug companies make them. They send their kiss ass reps out to butter up the doctors. They flood Washington DC with lobbyists to buy off the law makers. Oh, and remember Iran Contra and Air America? Our government runs and sells drugs.

So tell me who the biggest pusher in the game is. It's not the guy growing some plants in the middle of his uncle's corn field.

[Nitro Express]

We better send out Clint so he can blow away those crooked drug company executives and their pet weevil politicians. "So you want to sell opiates do you punk?"

[FORD]

Worst part about this is that Marinol is mostly useless......

http://marijuana-as-medicine.org/Overview%20-%20Part%20IV.htm

[Nitro Express]

Worst part about this is that Marinol is mostly useless......

http://marijuana-as-medicine.org/Overview%20-%20Part%20IV.htm

The truth of the matter is the drug industry can make pills way cheaper than they can grow plants. It's pennies to make most drugs. They always like to tell us they have to cover their R&D. Give me a fucking break, the electronics industry has higher R&D costs, higher production costs, but manages to give us more for less year after year. The drug industry wants false scarcity to drive the prices up.

[Nitro Express]

:biggrin:



Don't take drugs. Really? Are you serious Paul?

[ODShowtime]

Son of a bitch....The Netherlands is going to make it illegal for foreigners to buy cannabis. Goddammit! :mad:


That is absolutely terrible news. My trip to the 'Dam was one of the best things to ever happen and I didn't even visit any ladies. What a waste of a wonderland that is. Fuck you Geert. Die and Rot in Hell.

[Seshmeister]

Reminds me of this where a show here made up a drug and got celebs to make comments against it... :)

http://youtu.be/Xbq3kc29Tmg

Hilarious what you can get celebs to say without thinking.

[Hardrock69]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110602/ap_on_re_us/us_drug_war_report



Major panel: Drug war failed; legalize marijuana

By JONATHAN M. KATZ, Associated Press Jonathan M. Katz, Associated Press – 1 hr 42 mins ago

NEW YORK – The global war on drugs has failed with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world, argues a new report to be released Thursday.

Compiled by the Global Commission on Drug Policy, which includes former heads of state, a former U.N. secretary-general and a business mogul, the report calls on governments to end the criminalization of marijuana and other controlled substances.

"Political leaders and public figures should have the courage to articulate publicly what many of them acknowledge privately: that the evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that repressive strategies will not solve the drug problem, and that the war on drugs has not, and cannot, be won," the report said.

The 19-member commission includes former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and former U.S. official George P. Schultz, who held cabinet posts under U.S. Presidents Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon. Others include former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, former presidents of Mexico, Brazil and Colombia, writers Carlos Fuentes and Mario Vargas Llosa, U.K. business mogul Richard Branson and the current prime minister of Greece.

Instead of punishing users who the report says "do no harm to others," the commission argues that governments should end criminalization of drug use, experiment with legal models that would undermine organized crime syndicates and offer health and treatment services for drug-users in need.

The commission called for drug policies based on methods empirically proven to reduce crime, lead to better health and promote economic and social development.

The commission is especially critical of the United States, which its members say must lead changing its anti-drug policies from being guided by anti-crime approaches to ones rooted in health care and human rights.

"We hope this country (the U.S.) at least starts to think there are alternatives," former Colombian president Cesar Gaviria told The Associated Press by phone. "We don't see the U.S. evolving in a way that is compatible with our (countries') long-term interests."

The office of White House drug czar Gil Kerlikowske said the report was misguided.

"Drug addiction is a disease that can be successfully prevented and treated. Making drugs more available — as this report suggests — will make it harder to keep our communities healthy and safe," Office of National Drug Control Policy spokesman Rafael Lemaitre said.

That office cites statistics showing declines in U.S. drug use compared to 30 years ago, along with a more recent 46 percent drop in current cocaine use among young adults over the last five years.

The report cited U.N. estimates that opiate use increased 34.5 percent worldwide and cocaine 27 percent from 1998 to 2008, while the use of cannabis, or marijuana, was up 8.5 percent.

[Hardrock69]

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-how-can-americas-war-on-drugs-succeed-if-their-prohibition-laws-failed-1997227.html


Johann Hari: How can America's 'War on Drugs' succeed if their Prohibition laws failed?

America's Prohibition laws were meant to cut crime and boost morality – they failed on both fronts. So how can the 'War on Drugs' ever succeed? It can't.

Friday, 11 June 2010



Since we first prowled the savannahs of Africa, human beings have displayed a few overpowering and ineradicable impulses—for food, for sex, and for drugs. Every human society has hunted for its short cuts to an altered state: The hunger for a chemical high, low, or pleasingly new shuffle sideways is universal. Peer back through history, and it's everywhere. Ovid said drug-induced ecstasy was a divine gift. The Chinese were brewing alcohol in prehistory and cultivating opium by 700 A.D. Cocaine was found in clay-pipe fragments from William Shakespeare's house. George Washington insisted American soldiers be given whiskey every day as part of their rations. Human history is filled with chemicals, come-downs, and hangovers.

Yet in every generation, there are moralists why try to douse this natural impulse in moral condemnation and burn it away. They believe that humans, stripped of their intoxicants, will become more rational or ethical or good. They point to the addicts and the overdoses and believe they reveal the true face - and the logical endpoint - of your order at the bar or your roll-up. And they believe it can be ended, if only we choose to do it. Their vision holds an intoxicating promise of its own.

Their most famous achievement - the criminalisation of alcohol in the United States between 1921 and 1933 - is one of the great parables of modern history. Daniel Okrent's superb new history, 'Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition', shows how a coalition of mostly well-meaning, big-hearted people came together and changed the Constitution to ban booze. On the day it began, one of the movement's leaders, the former baseball hero turned evangelical preacher Billy Sunday, told his ecstatic congregation what the Dry New World would look like: "The reign of tears is over. The slums will soon be only a memory. We will turn our prisons into factories and our jails into storehouses. Men will walk upright now, women will smile, and the children will laugh. Hell will be forever rent."

The story of the War on Alcohol has never needed to be told more urgently - because its grandchild, the War on Drugs, shares the same DNA. Okrent only alludes to the parallel briefly, on his final page, but it hangs over the book like old booze-fumes - and proves yet again Mark Twain's dictum: "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme."

There was never an America without chemical highs. The Native Americans used hallucinogens, and the ship that brought John Winthrop and the first Puritans to the continent carried three times more beer than water, along with ten thousand gallons of wine. It was immediately a society so soaked in alcohol that it makes your liver ache to read the raw statistics: by 1830, the average citizen drank seven gallons of pure alcohol a year. In 1839, an English traveller called Frederick Marryat wrote: "I am sure that Americans can fix nothing without a drink. If you meet, you drink; if you make acquaintance, you drink; they quarrel in their drink, and they make up with a drink. They drink because it is hot; they drink because it is cold... They commence it early in life, and the continue it until they soon drop into the grave."

America was so hungry for highs that when there was a backlash against all this boozing, the temperance movement's initial proposal was that people should water down their alcohol with opium.

It's not hard to see how this fug of liquor caused problems, as well as pleasure - and the backlash was launched by a furious housewife with eight children from a small town in Cincinnati. One Sunday in 1874, Eliza Thompson - a woman who had never spoken out on any public issue before - stood before the crowds at her church and announced that America would never be free or godly until the last whisky bottle was emptied onto the dry earth. A huge crowd of women cheered: they believed their husbands were squandering their wages at the saloon.

They marched as one to the nearest bar, where they all sank to their knees and prayed for the soul of its owner. They refused to leave until he repented. They worked in six hour prayer shifts on the streets, until the saloonkeeper finally appeared, head bowed, and agreed to shut it down. This prayerathon then moved around every alcohol-seller in the town. Within ten days, only four of the original thirteen remained, and the rebellion was spreading across the country.

It was women who led the first cry for Temperance, and it was women who made Prohibition happen. A woman called Carry Nation became a symbol of the movement when she travelled from bar to bar with an oversized hatchet and smashed them to pieces. Indeed, Prohibition was one of the first and most direct effects of expanding the vote. This is one of the first strange flecks of gray in this story: the proponents of prohibition were primarily progressives - and some of the most admirable people in American history. The pioneering suffragist Susan B Anthony gave her first public speech demanding a booze ban. The ex-slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglas said: "If we could make the world sober, we would have no slavery." America's greatest Socialist, Eugene V. Debs, said liquor was a capitalist tool to render the workers supine.

The pioneers of American feminism believed alcohol was at the root of men's brutality towards women. The anti-slavery movement saw alcohol addiction as a new form of slavery, replacing leg irons with whisky bottles. You can see the same left-wing prohibitionism today, when people like Al Sharpton says drugs must be criminalized because addiction does real harm in ghettoes.

Of course, there were more obviously sinister proponents of Prohibition too, pressing progressives into weird alliances. The Ku Klux Klan said that "****** gin" was the main reason why oppressed black people were prone to rebellion, and if you banned alcohol, they would become quiescent. The dry newspaper the Nashville Tenessean wrote: "The Negro, fairly docile and industrious, becomes, when filled with liquor, turbulent and dangerous and a menace to life, proporty, and the repose of the community." And of course there were hints that white women were in greater danger: one Congressman said alcohol "increases the menace of the black man's presence."

This, too, is still there in America's current strain of prohibition. Powder cocaine and crack cocaine are equally harmful, but crack - which is disproportionately used by black people - carries much heavier jail sentences than powder cocaine, which is disproportionately used by white people.

It was in this context that the Anti-Saloon League rose to become the most powerful pressure group in American history, and the only one to ever change the constitution through peaceful political campaigning. They announced their movement "was begun by Almighty God." In fact, it was begun by a little man called Wayne Wheeler, who was as dry as the Sahara and twice as overheated. One of Wheeler's friends said of him: "Like most humourless men, he had to make life into a crusade to make sense of it." Okrent compares him to Ned Flanders, but he was a political genius, maneuvering politicians of all parties into backing a ban. He made them change the school curriculum so children were taught that "the majority of beer drinkers die of dropsy" because it is "a narcotic poison [that will] deaden or paralyze the brain."

Wheeler and the Prohibitionists had a structural advantage over his enemies. As the writer George Ade pointed out: "The Non-Drinkers were organising for fifty years but the Drinkers had no organization whatsoever. They had been too busy drinking." The League succeeded in 1921, when the Eighteenth Amendment came into effect, and it became a crime to drink alcohol anywhere in the United States. They celebrated the arrival of Utopia - and the inevitable dysfunctions of prohibition began.

When you ban a popular drug that millions of people want, it doesn't disappear. Instead, it is transferred from the legal economy into the hand of armed criminal gangs. Across America, gangsters rejoiced that they had just been handed one of the biggest markets in the country, and unleashed an Armada of freighters, steamers, and even submarines to bring booze back. Nobody who wanted a drink went without. As the journalist Malcolm Bingay wrote: "It was absolutely impossible to get a drink, unless you walked at least ten feet and told the busy bartender in a voice loud enough for him to hear you above the uproar."

So if it didn't stop alcoholism, what did it achieve? The same as prohibition does today - a massive unleashing of criminality and violence. Before prohibition, the saloon-keepers could defend their property and their markets by going to the police if they were threatened. After prohibition, the bootleggers could only defend theirs with guns - and they did. As the legendary lawyer Clarence Darrow explained: "The business pays very well, but it is outside the law and they can't go to court, like shoe dealers or real estate men or grocers when they think an injustice has been done them, or unfair competition has arisen in their territory. So, they naturally shoot." Massive gang wars broke out, with the members torturing and murdering each other first to gain control of and then to retain their patches. Thousands of ordinary citizens were caught in the crossfire.

The icon of the new criminal class was Al Capone, a figure so fixed in our minds as the scar-faced King of Charismatic Crime, pursued by the rugged federal agent Eliot Ness, that Okrent's biographical details seem oddly puncturing. Capone was only 25 when he tortured his way to running Chicago's underworld. He was gone from the city by the age of 30, and a syphillitic corpse by 40. But he was an eloquent exponent of his own case, saying simply: "I give to the public what the public wants. I never had to send out high pressure salesmen. Why, I could never meet the demand."

By 1926, he and his fellow gangsters were making $3.6bn (in 1926 money!). To give some perspective, that was more than the entire expenditure of the US government. The criminals could outbid and outgun the state. So they crippled the institutions of a democratic state and ruled, just as drug gangs do today in Mexico, Afghanistan, and ghettoes from South Central Los Angeles to the banlieues of Paris. They have been handed a market so massive that they can tool up to intimidate everyone in their area, bribe many police and judges into submission, and achieve such a vast size the honest police couldn't even begin to get them all. The late Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman said: "Al Capone epitomizes our earlier attempts at Prohibition; the Crips and Bloods epitomize this one."

Occasionally, the alcohol gangs would have "Peace Conferences" in Atlantic City where they would divide up the country, fix prices, and agree to stay out of the other's territory - and violence would go down. But then the police would try to take out one of the many gangs, and war would break out again to seize control of the newly-available territory. This dynamic explains something that might appear, at first, to be a paradox: the more the police try to enforce prohibition, the worse the drug violence becomes. Since Mexican President Felipe Calderon tried to knock out the heads of the drug gangs, 40,000 people have been killed. Each killing triggers a new war for the dead dealer's patch.

Of course excessive alcohol and drug use can cause terrible harm: I have friends whose lives have been ruined by it. But the harm caused by prohibition soon outweighs the harm caused by the drug itself - whether it's alcohol or cannabis or cocaine. An appalled President Hoover soon said in private that prohibition had caused "a complete breakdown in Government" in Detroit with "indiscrimiate shooting on the river." Sound familiar?

One insight, more than any other, ripples down from Okrent's history to our own bout of prohibition. Armed criminal gangs don't fear prohibition: they love it. He has uncovered fascinating evidence that the criminal gangs sometimes financially supported dry politicians, precisely to keep it in place. They knew if it ended, most of organised crime in America would be bankrupted. When Michael Levine, one of America's top narcotics agents, went undercover in the 1980s and 1990s with la Mafia Cruenza, the Bolivian cocaine cartel, he discovered that, as he puts it, "not only did they not fear our war on drugs, they actually counted on it." The cartel's boss, Jorge Roman, told him the drug war was "a sham on the American tax payer" and bragged it was "actually good for business." When Levine told his boss, the officer in charge of the US drug war in South America, about this, he replied: "Yeah, we know it doesn't work, but we sold [the War on Drugs] up and down the Potomac."

So it's a nasty irony that Prohibitionists try to present legalizers - then, and now - as "the bootlegger's friend" or "the drug-dealer's ally." Precisely the opposite is the truth. Legalizers are the only people who can bankrupt and destroy the drug-gangs, just as they destroyed Capone. Only the prohibitionists can keep them alive.

Once a product is controlled only by criminals, all safety controls vanish - and the drug becomes far more deadly. After 1921, it became common to dilute and relabel poisonous industrial alcohol, which could still legally be bought, and sell it by the pint-glass. This "rotgut" caused epidemics of paralysis and poisoning. For example, one single batch of bad booze permenantly crippled 500 people in Wichita in early 1927 - a usual event. That year, 760 people were poisoned to death by bad booze in New York City alone. So many people became partially paralysed by an industrial alcohol known as 'Jake' that a shuffling, stumbling inability to walk was known 'Jake leg.' Wayne Wheeler persuaded the government not to remove fatal toxins from industrial alcohol, saying it was good to keep this 'disincentive' in place.

Prohibition's flaws were so obvious that the politicians in charge privately admitted the law was self-defeating. Warren Harding brought $1800 of booze with him to the White House, while Andrew Mellon - in charge of enforcing the law - called it "unworkable." Similarly, the last three Presidents of the US have been recreational drug users in their youth. If the law was enforced in full, they would all have been ineligible to vote, never mind enter the Oval Office. Once he ceased to be President, Bill Clinton called for the decriminalisation of cannabis, and Obama probably will too. Yet in office, they continue to mouth prohibitionist platitudes about "eradicating drugs", and insist the rest of the world's leaders resist the calls for greater liberalisation from their populations and instead "crack down" on the drug gangs - no matter how much violence it unleashes.

The need to mouth this script can lead even the sharpest brains into unwitting absurdities. Obama recently praised Calderon for his "crackdown" on drugs by - with no apparent irony - calling him "Mexico's Eliot Ness." Yes: he praised an enforcer of drug prohibition by comparing him to an enforcer of alcohol prohibition. Obama should know that Ness came to regard his War on Alcohol as a disastrous failure, and he died a drunk himself - but drug prohibition addles politicians' brains just as drugs addle a chronic addict's.

By 1928, the failure of alcohol prohibition was plain - yet its opponents were demoralised and despairing. It looked like a fixed and immovable part of the American political landscape, since it would require big majorities in every state to amend the Constitution again. Clarence Darrow wrote that "thirteen dry states with a population of less than New York State alone can prevent repeal until Haley's Comet returns," so "one might as well talk about taking a summer vacation of Mars."

Yet it happened. It happened suddenly and completely. Why? The prohibitionists made a serious miscalculations: they reacted to their failure by demanding the laws be tightened even more. Misdemeanours were turned into felonies - and it threw up a series of judgements shocked America. For example, one 48 year old mother called Etta Mae Miller with ten children was given a life sentence - for selling two pints of liquor to an undercover cop.

But the biggest answer is found in your wallet, with the hard cash. After the Great Crash, the government's revenues from income taxes collapsed by 60 percent in just three years, while the need for spending to stimulate the economy was sky-rocketing. The US government needed a new source of income, fast. The giant untaxed, unchecked alcohol industry suddenly looked like a giant pot of cash at the end of the prohibitionist rainbow. They needed it. Could the same thing happen today, after our own Great Crash? The bankrupt state of California is about to hold a referendum to legalize and tax cannabis, and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has pointed out that it could raise massive sums. Yes, history does rhyme.

Many people understandably worry that legalization would cause a huge rise in drug use - but the facts suggest this isn't the case. Portugal decriminalized the personal possession of all drugs in 2001, and - as a study by Glenn Greenwald for the American Enterprise Institute found - it had almost no effect at all. Indeed, drug use fell a little among the young. Similarly, Okrent says the end of alcohol prohibition "made it harder, not easier, to get a drink... Now there were closing hours and age limits and Sunday blue laws, as well as a collection of geographic prosecriptions that kept bars or package stories distant from schools, churches and hospitals." People didn't drink much more. The only change was that they didn't have to turn to armed criminal gangs for it, and they didn't end up swigging poison.

Who now defends alcohol prohibition? Is there a single person left? This echoing silence is suggestive. Ending drug prohibition seems like a huge heave, just as ending alcohol prohibition did. But when it is gone, when the drug gangs are a bankrupted memory, when drug addicts are treated not as immoral criminals but as ill people needing healthcare, who will grieve? American history is pocked by utopian movements that prefer glib wish-thinking over a hard scrutiny of reality, but they always crest and crash in the end.

There will always be millions of people who want to get drunk or stoned or high. The only question is whether their needs are met to by mafias and militias, or by legal and regulated businesses. Okrent's dazzling history leaves us with one whisky-sharp insight above all others. The War on Alcohol and the War on Drugs failed because they were, beneath all the blather, a war on human nature.

[Seshmeister]

Johann Hari is my favorite journalist at the moment and he's spot on again there.

We need a war on wars.

[Hardrock69]

True!

[Hardrock69]

Wow. A former US President calls for an end to the War On Drugs!

This from the NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/17/opinion/17carter.html?_r=3






Op-Ed Contributor
Call Off the Global Drug War
By JIMMY CARTER
Published: June 16, 2011

Atlanta

IN an extraordinary new initiative announced earlier this month, the Global Commission on Drug Policy has made some courageous and profoundly important recommendations in a report on how to bring more effective control over the illicit drug trade. The commission includes the former presidents or prime ministers of five countries, a former secretary general of the United Nations, human rights leaders, and business and government leaders, including Richard Branson, George P. Shultz and Paul A. Volcker.

The report describes the total failure of the present global antidrug effort, and in particular America’s “war on drugs,” which was declared 40 years ago today. It notes that the global consumption of opiates has increased 34.5 percent, cocaine 27 percent and cannabis 8.5 percent from 1998 to 2008. Its primary recommendations are to substitute treatment for imprisonment for people who use drugs but do no harm to others, and to concentrate more coordinated international effort on combating violent criminal organizations rather than nonviolent, low-level offenders.

These recommendations are compatible with United States drug policy from three decades ago. In a message to Congress in 1977, I said the country should decriminalize the possession of less than an ounce of marijuana, with a full program of treatment for addicts. I also cautioned against filling our prisons with young people who were no threat to society, and summarized by saying: “Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself.”

These ideas were widely accepted at the time. But in the 1980s President Ronald Reagan and Congress began to shift from balanced drug policies, including the treatment and rehabilitation of addicts, toward futile efforts to control drug imports from foreign countries.

This approach entailed an enormous expenditure of resources and the dependence on police and military forces to reduce the foreign cultivation of marijuana, coca and opium poppy and the production of cocaine and heroin. One result has been a terrible escalation in drug-related violence, corruption and gross violations of human rights in a growing number of Latin American countries.

The commission’s facts and arguments are persuasive. It recommends that governments be encouraged to experiment “with models of legal regulation of drugs ... that are designed to undermine the power of organized crime and safeguard the health and security of their citizens.” For effective examples, they can look to policies that have shown promising results in Europe, Australia and other places.

But they probably won’t turn to the United States for advice. Drug policies here are more punitive and counterproductive than in other democracies, and have brought about an explosion in prison populations. At the end of 1980, just before I left office, 500,000 people were incarcerated in America; at the end of 2009 the number was nearly 2.3 million. There are 743 people in prison for every 100,000 Americans, a higher portion than in any other country and seven times as great as in Europe. Some 7.2 million people are either in prison or on probation or parole — more than 3 percent of all American adults!

Some of this increase has been caused by mandatory minimum sentencing and “three strikes you’re out” laws. But about three-quarters of new admissions to state prisons are for nonviolent crimes. And the single greatest cause of prison population growth has been the war on drugs, with the number of people incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses increasing more than twelvefold since 1980.

Not only has this excessive punishment destroyed the lives of millions of young people and their families (disproportionately minorities), but it is wreaking havoc on state and local budgets. Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger pointed out that, in 1980, 10 percent of his state’s budget went to higher education and 3 percent to prisons; in 2010, almost 11 percent went to prisons and only 7.5 percent to higher education.

Maybe the increased tax burden on wealthy citizens necessary to pay for the war on drugs will help to bring about a reform of America’s drug policies. At least the recommendations of the Global Commission will give some cover to political leaders who wish to do what is right.

A few years ago I worked side by side for four months with a group of prison inmates, who were learning the building trade, to renovate some public buildings in my hometown of Plains, Ga. They were intelligent and dedicated young men, each preparing for a productive life after the completion of his sentence. More than half of them were in prison for drug-related crimes, and would have been better off in college or trade school.

To help such men remain valuable members of society, and to make drug policies more humane and more effective, the American government should support and enact the reforms laid out by the Global Commission on Drug Policy.

Jimmy Carter, the 39th president, is the founder of the Carter Center and the winner of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize.

[Hardrock69]

And now, on a related note, prestiguous institution Johns Hopkins University is doing a study on Magic Mushrooms...

http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/577702



Released: 6/13/2011 1:50 PM EDT
Embargo expired: 6/15/2011 12:05 AM EDT
Source: Council on Spiritual Practices

* Scientists seek dosage “sweet spot,” find positive effects lasting over a year

* Former U.S. “Drug Czar” raises policy question

* Clinical trials now underway

Newswise — BALTIMORE, June 15 -- Scientists at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have zeroed in on the dose levels of the “sacred mushroom” chemical capable of yielding positive, life-changing experiences, while minimizing the chance of transient negative reactions in screened volunteers under supportive, carefully monitored conditions.

The findings, published online this week in the journal Psychopharmacology, come from the latest in a series of rigorous experiments done at Johns Hopkins designed to shed scientific light on psilocybin, a substance found in certain psychoactive mushrooms and used for centuries in various cultures for divinatory, healing, and religious purposes.

Looking back over a year later, most of the experiment’s 18 volunteers (94 percent) rated a psilocybin session as among the top five most or as the topmost spiritually significant experience of his or her life. Under higher doses, up to a third experienced great fear or anxiety or had delusions, yet those reactions, the researchers report, were managed with gentle reassurance from the study monitors and did not outlast the session or harm the volunteers.

Most volunteers (89 percent) also reported positive changes in their behaviors, and those reports were corroborated by family members or others, the researchers say. The behavior changes most frequently cited were improved relationships with family and others, increased physical and psychological self-care, and increased devotion to spiritual practice.

In the experiment, volunteers were given preparatory guidance and five sessions each a month apart, four with different doses of psilocybin and one with placebo (no dose). While the positive effects of psilocybin increased with increasing doses, the likelihood of fear or delusions increased sharply at the highest doses. At the second-highest dose given, two-thirds of the volunteers rated the experience as among the five most spiritually significant of their lifetime, and just 5.6 percent reported intervals of "extreme" fear or anxiety during the session. With the highest dose, the percentage of participants having a top-five experience rose modestly, from 67 percent to 78 percent, but the percentage of those having psychological struggle rose sixfold, to 33 percent.

The researchers also found that participants who received lower psilocybin doses before the higher doses were more likely to have long-lasting positive changes in attitudes, behavior, and remembered mystical-type experiences than those who received the highest dose first.

The study’s lead scientist, Roland Griffiths, Ph.D., a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, explained that “in cultures before ours, the spiritual guide or healer had to discern how much of what type of mushroom to use for what purposes, because the strength of psychoactive mushrooms varies from species to species and even from specimen to specimen. In our laboratory, we’re working with the pure chemical psilocybin, which we can measure out precisely. We wanted to take a methodical look at how its effects change with dosage. We seem to have found levels of the substance and particular conditions for its use that give a high probability of a profound and beneficial experience, a low enough probability of psychological struggle, and very little risk of any actual harm.”

Two Practical Questions

Commenting on the findings, Jerome Jaffe, M.D., of the University of Maryland School of Medicine, who served as the first White House “Drug Czar” and has also been a consultant to the World Health Organization on drug issues, remarked, “The Hopkins psilocybin studies clearly demonstrate that this route to the mystical is not to be walked alone. But they have also demonstrated significant and lasting benefits. That raises two questions: Could psilocybin-occasioned experiences prove therapeutically useful, for example in dealing with the psychological distress experienced by some terminal patients? And should properly-informed citizens, not in distress, be allowed to receive psilocybin for its possible spiritual benefits, as we now allow them to pursue other possibly risky activities such as cosmetic surgery and mountain-climbing?”

Research Underway

The dose-effect findings published this week help pave the way for research into possible therapeutic uses of psilocybin. One ongoing study at Hopkins is exploring whether psilocybin-induced peak experiences can help alleviate anxiety and fear of death in cancer patients. Another study is testing whether psilocybin can help smokers quit cigarettes.

A third psilocybin experiment underway at Hopkins is working with healthy volunteers engaged in spiritual exploration. The research examines the outcomes of psilocybin sessions in combination with various spiritual practices such as meditation, awareness training, and dialogue with other study participants.

In its completed and current studies combined, the Hopkins research team has given more than 210 psilocybin sessions to more than 100 volunteers. Nearly all volunteers have reported that their psilocybin sessions have lead to significant and lasting increases in well-being.

The report published online in Psychopharmacology, “Psilocybin occasioned mystical-type experiences: immediate and persisting dose-related effects,” was authored by Roland R. Griffiths, Matthew W. Johnson, Una McCann, William A. Richards, Brian D. Richards, and Robert Jesse. The research was supported by grants from the Council on Spiritual Practices, the Heffter Research Institute, the Betsy Gordon Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health.

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

Study Design

The latest study was conducted with 18 volunteers, ages 29 to 62, screened to include only psychologically and physically healthy individuals. Each volunteer received five carefully monitored, eight-hour sessions a month apart, four with varying amounts of psilocybin and a fifth session with placebo. As in earlier Hopkins psilocybin studies, the sessions took place in an aesthetic, living-room-like setting, and the volunteers were encouraged to recline on a couch, put on eye shades and headphones, and to turn their attention inward as a program of music played. The program, used for all sessions, consisted of classical and world music chosen to complement the arc of the psilocybin action, from onset, through the peak of the effects, and subsiding back to baseline.

The study was “blind,” meaning neither the volunteers, the monitors, nor the scientists knew how much psilocybin had been given during any session. Most of the research team was also blind to another aspect of the study, namely, that the five sessions would be conducted with either ascending or descending psilocybin amounts administered across consecutive sessions.

Study Findings

The new study showed an orderly relationship between the dose of psilocybin and both its transient and persisting effects. Even the lowest dose produced measurable changes during the hours of drug action. However, the effects most likely to be beneficial and long-lived occurred at the higher doses. Notably, between the second-highest and the highest doses given, the likelihood of a “complete” mystical-type experience, resembling those reported by religious mystics from diverse traditions, increased from 44 percent to 56 percent, and the likelihood of a volunteer having what he or she a month later would call “the single most spiritually significant experience of his/her life” increased from 28 percent to 44 percent.

While the second-highest dose administered was moderately less likely than the highest dose to produce a potentially life-changing experience, it was much less likely to produce fear, anxiety, or delusions during the session. At the second-highest dose, one of the 18 volunteers (5.6 percent) reported “extreme” fear or anxiety during some interval of the session. At the highest dose, that proportion increased to six out of 18 (33 percent). In all instances, the fear or anxiety was managed with gentle reassurance from the monitors and the passage of time, and did not lead to any reported or observed negative consequences after the session.

One month after sessions, a majority of the volunteers (61 percent) considered their psilocybin experience during either or both of the two highest-dose sessions to have been the single most spiritually significant of their lives, and most (83 percent) rated it as among their top five. When asked at 14-month follow-up, that proportion increased from 83 percent to 94 percent. Additionally, 83 percent said it increased their well-being or life satisfaction moderately or very much, and 89 percent said it lead to moderate, strong, or extreme improvements in their behaviors. Of the 90 total sessions conducted during the study, none were rated as having decreased well-being or life satisfaction.

Although the ascending or descending order did not alter the transient effects of a single dose, the ascending sequence overall was found to be somewhat more likely to yield long-lasting positive changes in attitudes, behavior, and remembered mystical-type experiences.

These findings reinforce previous Hopkins research showing that psilocybin, given under well-designed conditions, has a high probability of leading to mystical or spiritual experiences descriptively identical to spontaneous ones mystics have reported across cultures and throughout the ages, while not leading to drug abuse or organ toxicity. Furthermore, the research has shown that the mystical-type experience is often followed by positive changes in attitudes, mood, life satisfaction, and behavior, including altruistic behavior, that persist for more than a year, as described by the subjects and also by observers close to them.

The results do not necessarily generalize to other populations, such as people less carefully screened or those without a spiritual orientation, nor do they generalize to conditions of use other than the carefully monitored study environment.

From Insights to Improvements

The behavior changes most frequently cited were improved relationships with family and others, increased physical and psychological self-care, and increased devotion to spiritual practice. Mary Cosimano, M.S.W., a lead monitor for the study in the Johns Hopkins Behavioral Pharmacology Research Unit, noted, “It’s an incredible privilege to be able to witness and support our participants before, during, and after their psilocybin sessions. In a single day, deep emotions and insights often arise, and sometimes profound peace, clarity, and compassion. More than a few of our participants were able to turn such an experience into real improvements in their ongoing lives.”

Risk Management

Matthew Johnson, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins and lead author of an earlier Hopkins paper on hallucinogen safety, explained that “safety with psilocybin encompasses more than its direct pharmacological effects. We know that psilocybin is remarkably non-toxic to the body’s organ systems. But there are indirect risks: if someone experiences high anxiety, fear, or paranoia during a psilocybin session, it’s not hard to imagine them behaving in ways harmful to themselves or others. We can also imagine the possibility that strong, transient negative emotions could leave someone thrown off course, not knowing what to make of the experience.” Johnson, also an author of the new study, continued, “Both of these risks appear to be minimized when volunteers develop a trusting relationship with a skilled monitor, who remains present with them for the duration of the substance’s primary effects, and who is available afterwards for consultation.”

Also, the scientists excluded from the study volunteers with certain types of personal or family psychiatric histories or other signs of vulnerabilities that might make psilocybin inadvisable, at least until more is known.

Previous Johns Hopkins Psilocybin Research

See www.csp.org/psilocybin

Volunteer Comments

Responding to a questionnaire given at the 14-month follow-up, volunteers in the dose-effect study provided written comments about the nature of any behavior changes they attributed to either or both of the two highest dose psilocybin sessions. Here are excerpts:

• “I have an increased commitment to spiritual practices; I think my heart is more open to all interactions with other people....”

• “I have a stronger desire for devotion, have increased yoga practice and prayer.... I need less food to make me full. My alcohol use has diminished dramatically.”

• “I feel that I relate better in my marriage. There is more empathy – a greater understanding of people and understanding their difficulties and less judgment.”

• “Increased time for meditation. I think I’m even warmer towards people and more accepting. I now believe I have something important to tell people about how the universe works.”

• “Less concerned with the appearance of ‘spirituality’, while realizing more that everything is sacred. I feel more accommodating and forgiving towards both friends and strangers, and less anxious to label them or convert them to my viewpoint.”

[FORD]

I can only imagine what the big pharma version of 'shrooms will be....

I'm thinking no pretty colors and 10 times the liver damage. :(

Damn, it's been over 20 years, but I'd try them again under the right circumstances. But not a big pharma mutated GMO shroom!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JlnI1Xgn-o

[Hardrock69]

It's been about 15 years since I did shrooms. Funny, it was due to a girl I had met in a bar who wanted to fuck. Boy, was that a great night! :biggrin:

[Hardrock69]

Interesting article:

http://reason.com/blog/2011/06/22/if-the-laws-unfit-you-must-acq






If the Law's Unfit, You Must Acquit

Jacob Sullum | June 22, 2011


Ricardo Cortés, author of It's Just a Plant and illustrator of Go the Fuck to Sleep, has a new project: Jury Independence Illustrated. He says the free pamphlet, which he planned to distribute at a Brooklyn courthouse today, is meant to "inform potential jurors" about "a specific, largely unknown power they have—a transformative role that could radically shift the criminal justice system." As the pamphlet explains, a jury has the unreviewable power to declare a defendant not guilty "despite evidence establishing that the defendant is guilty as charged." It can thereby "nullify a law that it believes unjust or wrongly applied to a defendant." Echoing the creators of Eric Holder's favorite TV show, Cortés urges jurors to use this power in all cases involving nonviolent drug offenders.

The pamphlet includes a chart detailing New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's shameful crackdown on pot smokers, regarding which Cortés relates the following anecdote:

I confronted Bloomberg once at a Gracie Mansion BBQ, where I asked him to reconcile his administration of record marijuana arrests with his own admission of personal use and enjoyment. He hemmed and hawed. I asked why he wouldn't arrest himself for the past use, and he said "That's not how the law works." I said, "So, really you're just saying 'I got away with it.'" At that point he said, "You and I have nothing in common," and walked away from me.

[Hardrock69]

Here is the bill:

http://reason.com/assets/db/13088586922347.pdf

[Hardrock69]

California Legislation To Legalize Industrial Hemp

Now THIS is something AMERICA needs. The number of jobs that could be created could save the economy (unlike any plans by any of the idiots in Dee See).


http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/hemp-farming-in-california-even-closer-to-reality-as-sb-676-moves-through-california-legislature-125158784.html


ACRAMENTO, Calif., July 7, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Introduced by Senator Mark Leno earlier this year, SB 676, the Industrial Hemp Farming Act is moving quickly through the California Legislature. SB 676 would create an 8-year pilot program to allow industrial hemp farming in five California counties, Kern, Kings, Imperial, San Joaquin and Yolo. Passing through the Assembly Committee on Agriculture last week with a 6-0 vote, leading hemp advocacy organization, Vote Hemp, expects the bill to reach the Governor's desk this September.

The bill has the endorsement of the UFCW, the Imperial County Farm Bureau, California Certified Organic Growers and other leading farming organizations. Dan Rush, UFCW 5 Statewide Special Operations Director, stated, "UFCW enthusiastically supports SB 676 because we see it as a jobs and revenue generator at a time when they are sorely needed in California."...

"Support for hemp farming and manufacturing in California has been very strong. It is passing through committee after committee with a positive reception. We expect this bill to be on its way to the Governor's desk by early September. Governor Brown will then have 30 days to act on the bill," explains Patrick Goggin, California Legal Counsel for Vote Hemp.

The bill clarifies that industrial hemp is separate and distinct from forms of Cannabis used to produce marijuana and if passed will allow commercial farming of industrial hemp in five counties (Imperial, Kern, Kings, San Joaquin and Yolo) under an 8-year pilot program. Industrial hemp was grown in California up until shortly after World War II. Industrial hemp is the non-psychoactive, low-THC, oilseed and fiber varieties of the Cannabis sativa plant. Hemp has absolutely no value as a recreational drug....

A variety of products made from industrial hemp including healthy food and natural body care products as well as eco-friendly clothing are made in California. "There are over 50 member businesses of the Hemp Industries Association (HIA) that make or sell hemp products in the state of California alone that could benefit from an in-state source of hemp seed, fiber and oil," says Eric Steenstra, Executive Director of the HIA. "Because of outdated federal and state policies these businesses are forced to import millions of dollars of industrial hemp from Canada, China and Europe." Companies that manufacture or sell products made with hemp include Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps, a California company that manufactures the number-one-selling natural soap in the U.S. as well as best-selling hemp food manufacturers, such as French Meadow Bakery, Living Harvest, Manitoba Harvest, Nature's Path, Nutiva and Sequel Naturals who make their products from hemp grown in Canada. Major companies such as Ford Motors, Patagonia and The Body Shop also use sustainable hemp seed, fiber and oil.

"Dr. Bronner's currently purchases twenty tons of hemp oil each year from Canada. We look forward to the day that we can meet our supply needs from hemp produced right here in our home state," says David Bronner, President of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps of Escondido.

On May 11th, Rep. Ron Paul introduced The Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2011 (H.R. 1831) in Congress along with 22 co-sponsors including 6 Representatives from California (Farr, McClintock, Miller, Rohrabacher, Stark, Woolsey). If passed, H.R. 1831 will remove federal restrictions on the cultivation of industrial hemp.

To date, 17 states have passed pro-hemp laws or resolutions, including the California Assembly in 1999 when it passed a resolution declaring that "the Legislature should consider action to revise the legal status of industrial hemp to allow for its growth in California as an agricultural and industrial crop...

The Hemp Industries Association (HIA) represents the interests of the hemp industry and encourages the research and development of new hemp products. Vote Hemp is a national, single-issue, non-profit organization dedicated to the acceptance of and a free market for low-THC industrial hemp and to changes in current law to allow U.S. farmers to once again grow this agricultural crop. More information about hemp legislation and the crop's many uses may be found at www.VoteHemp.com and www.TheHIA.org.





One interesting thing they failed to mention. Remember back in the day when pundits claimed computers would help us to move to a 'paperless society'? The opposite has happened actually.

1 acre of hemp can create more paper than 10 acres of trees, and can be harvested twice yearly instead of once every 20-30 years. The paper is more durable and cheaper to make. If we ever needed a cheaper and more renewable source for paper, this is it.