I'd like to clear something up about Cannabis, pot, weed, ganja, or whatever you like to call it.
I may come across as a die hard activist about it, but actually I don't think anyone should do drugs if they can avoid them. Meds, obviously are another issue. The concept of using medical pot for recreation has always been a bastardization of it, something our government should hang their heads in shame over the need for that to have come about. That has nothing to do with the actual need for medical pot. I'm talking only recreational use.
I just don't think people should be abused as we have, through prohibition (and alcohol in my view is as bad as cocaine and just or nearly, as dangerous). Unlike most of those against all this, I learned to have my opinion through research and experience, not just having a jaded opinion as many who are against it.
There has also been more interest by the public in drugs after our government has lied to use for so many decades about them. There are now doctors, scientists and journalists talking about drugs and the real information about them. Therefore there is also more interest in hallucinogens.
People like Michael Pollan with his book, How to Change your Mind - What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence,.discusses this. At the writing of this here, I'm still waiting for the audiobook to hit retail.
I go in depth about this myself in my latest audiobook, On Psychology. It should be available any day now on Amazon, iTunes and Audible.com. See the addendum at the end of that article about the history and systems of psychology and study of synesthesia and schizophrenia. It's a fascinating article. Even if I do say so myself. And I explain in it what that is so and how I know that to be true.
I don't say this in my psychology article but I'll mention it here. I do mention drugs like LSD in the article and audiobook, however. Years ago I was in a job I couldn't quit, couldn't get away from and had it for several years. It was stressful and difficult to go back day after day until finally I had ran out my condition of employment. It allowed me to get my degree eventually in psychology from a university, so in the end, that was good. But it was a stressful few years.
I would use LSD over a weekend sometimes when I really needed to escape but couldn't. So that come that next Monday, I felt refreshed and recharged, like I had been on vacation for an entire week. I would also use it at times to kill off a bad habit, or one I wanted to change but kept failing to. I was drop (take) the acid (LSD) alone, concentrate on what I wanted through the experience and find that afterword, There is talk nowadays about microdosing LSD. Taking low doses on a daily basis. The word is out on that for now but they are beginning to research it.
And I Found that I had indeed changed that habit after a single acid trip. Now I'm not advocating this method for people, just saying that it worked for me. And I admit, I was unusual in my understanding of drugs and psychology, even before I got a degree in it. Yet, I didn't go crazy, didn't lose my job, didn't need medical attention, didn't harm anyone, not even myself, and it seemed to me to only be a benefit to me. And to be sure, in the 1950s it was actually used in therapeutic ways. But our government, out of fear and ignorance, as usual, had made it illegal because of the 1960s counterculture.
Weed in comparison to those other drugs is pretty harmless, in that it doesn't kill like the other drugs can that it's been inappropriately grouped with. Grouping pot with heroin and meth, is ridiculous and always has been. Cocaine and cannabis are not physically addictive. The issue there comes not in physical but emotional. They are not the same thing. But cocaine is vastly more dangerous that cannabis.
Yet there are dangers related to legalizing cannabis, now. And oddly enough, they have little to do with the substance itself.
The dangers come not in the substance but in big money as usual and through corporate mismanagement (also as usual), in trying to push a product on us more than is good for us. They will seek to sell us pot soda pop, pot everything, now. Anyway they can make a buck and addict us just as in tobacco.
Except, as stated above, weed isn't addictive in the same sense as heroin or alcohol.
But does that mean it should be illegal? No. We will go through a honeymoon period for a while and then slack off some as it becomes culturally normal and we acclimate to how to use and not abuse it. As we mature into it's national use as we did alcohol after prohibition, or as a human maturing into adulthood and make decisions of use or abuse.
Also, in over enhancing the weed itself to powerful medical levels, something that came from the underhanded way that decriminalizing it had to go, we have it more and more in a far more powerful than necessary form.
All because our government lied to us ever since the Nixon commission said it was safe and he as president ignored that because of his own personal bias. Just as we're seeing now with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whom even the man who appointed him as said, was a bad idea. This had led since Nixon to a war on (citizens, not) drugs (as it failed in waring on drugs), where we found ourselves eventually with a very powerful form of pot that never appeared in nature.
I would suggest to anyone wanting to use pot, to seek the weaker forms, to learn they don't need to consume as much now a days to get reasonably high, to imbibe with reason as you would (or should) alcohol.
The less often you use it, the less it can become normalized in your system. Use at little as possible to enhance life, to "take the edge off" and not make it a life in and of itself. In that form, it can be very useful as an adjunct to life and not an end all, be all. Rather than use it and do nothing, use it and do something, safely, and legally.
We simply need to act like responsible adults. The ability now to eat THC (or CBD) is healthier than smoking it. Using a bong or water pipe (even better as it doesn't burn the substance just as a vape does not), is healthier. Vaping the oil or other such substance is better too than smoking it due to the heated smoke, the particulates hitting the lung's alveoli.
Let's face it, drugs aren't for kids. But if my own pre adult kids (or as adults) were to use a drug, I'd far more prefer it be cannabis, than literally any of our other of the scarier prospects out there, including alcohol. Deaths to cannabis are nearly if not completely non existent. Death due to alcohol, domestic violence, drunk driving, weapons charges on booze, etc., are astounding. The more we can get people to replace alcohol use with cannabis, the better we'll all be.
And then, there is the tax situation. Robbing drug cartels of their mainstay, removing crime from cannabis use. This isn't rocket science and states with legal cannabis are proving this to extraordinary degree. Including my own state of Washington. Where we are also leading the way on serious drugs like heroin use in needle exchanges and safe injection and use locations.
This is America and I've always been stunned at how our government continues to try to make decisions for us, that we should be making ourselves...if America is such a great and free nation.
Let us see it. Let us decide. And stop abusing us for mere political gain.
Showing posts with label Pot. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pot. Show all posts
Monday, June 4, 2018
Monday, January 30, 2017
Cannabis - Up Side, Down Side
It's good to face reality whatever that may be. Good OR bad (as Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has recently pointed out). But this is an article that can be perceived only as bad, bad for the masses, as well as disingenuously good for anti-cannabis groups. What we need is more research, more information. Legalization, not continued abuse. Healthcare, not prison.
This is a time and a climate where we need things like cannabis. Not just for medical issues but also for recreational ones. It is far more gentle on one's system than alcohol, recreational drugs like cocaine, heroin and so on. As for people calling it a schedule one drug, or a gateway to harder drugs, that is pure ignorance and goes against what science shows and we are seeing. They are looking at personality issues there with people, not the actual cannabis itself.
We have a new president now in Pres. Trump. A capitalist and a businessman who has left a lot of damage in his wake in making more and more money. However if he truly is a capitalist and a businessman then cannabis should be legalized by the end of the year, nationally.
Certainly before he leaves office. Which as things are going from his actions, could be any day now. If he is who he says he is in being a capitalist and having such a great mind, nobody has one better, he claims. Then surely he can do anything. Even this.
I'd expect to see by the beginning of 2018, a new and thriving capitalism based, not criminal based, health based not judicially based industry. But we won't. That however is an argument for another time.
There is a new article is talking about people who over indulge on a daily basis, that is to say, actually abuse it, and does not refer to normal or even regular use of cannabis.
Conservative and anti Cannabis types are already gloaming onto this report in droves. It is their Godsend in the realm of anti Cannabis diatribe and potential legislation. They will take this out of context and use it inappropriately as always. Seeing the world as they do in black and white and not the measured grey that it is and how honest people, how adults would normally use information.
It's odd however that this result would be found as cannabis, unlike tobacco, is a vasodialator. Tobacco actually is a vasoconstrictant. Ever know someone who right after sex has to light up a cigarette? HAS to?. It's because in part sex releases chemicals to relax, but they are addicted to nicotine. So while they like the good feeling from the release in the culmination of sex, they crave that tension, that vasoconstrictive effect that nicotine induces. It also explains those anxious people who need to smoke cigarettes. They crave the familiar when really they need soemthing else. But that's the confusion of addiction.
Meaning overall anyway I suppose, that under this study tobacco would be potentially leading to Alzheimer's even more so, yet we haven't heard about that. But apparently not so. Well, kind of. Nicotine has some nasty side effects, and some good ones. However once the body breaks it down into cotinine ....
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-201899/Tobacco-cure-Alzheimers.html
"In the case of Alzheimer's, cotinine may share nicotine's ability to improve attention and memory and at the same time reduce or halt disease progression. "One advantage of cotinine is that it could be used long-term with little concern about serious side effects and substance abuse."
Who knew?
"Addiction" is a medical term indicating a physical addition. Cannabis is not physically addictive but can be psychologically addictive. That however is a mental and not physiological defect.
About that..."Marijuana use disorder is a new term introduced by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) used by psychiatrists and mental health professionals for diagnostic criteria."
http://hightimes.com/medicinal/science/pot-matters-marijuana-use-disorder/
The High Times article has a list of eleven elements for the criteria of diagnosing substance use disorders.
Again, the article states (and I'm not disputing this, but it's odd) that:
"Those diagnosed with cannabis use disorder showed a significant reduction in brain blood flow in almost every region."
I think that requires more investigation because of the way Cannabis works on the brain. It doesn't make sense. If this was a conservative anti cannabis article I would call bull on this. As the article itself indicates, this is odd indeed:
"More research will have to be conducted to corroborate this claim. But it’s reasonable that someone who only lights up occasionally won’t have such an issue. This study conflicts with a 2014 preclinical trial, also published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease. There, tiny doses of marijuana’s active ingredient, delta 9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) had neuroprotective qualities. It helped ward off Alzheimer’s by destroying beta amyloid proteins which are what cause the disease. So in the end, it may be an issue of dosage. A little is okay, but too much is damaging. But only more studies can tell us for sure."
There does seem to be some support for this report's contentions:
http://www.idmu.co.uk/canncardio.htm
Which says:
"Summary - Cardiovascular effects of Cannabis:
"Cannabis increases heart rate in na•ve users although tolerance develops to this effect.
"Cannabinoids can also reduce blood pressure via arteriollar dilatation in a variety of tissues, although the effect on blood flow varies at a local level, with some organs or brain regions experiencing vasoconstriction, others vasodilation.
"In the withdrawal phase following cessation of chronic use, cerebral blood flow may be significantly reduced.
"Cannabis use has been implicated as a causative factor in a small number of patients suffering strokes or transient ischaemic attacks, and may represent a risk factor to susceptible individuals.
"However cannabinoids, in particular CB1-receptor agonists, have been shown to protect against nerve cell death following stroke, and dexanabinol at an advanced stage of the licensing process as a drug to be administered to victims of stroke or closed-head injuries to minimise the long-term brain damage caused by such events, and to improve survival and recovery prospects."
Conservatives and anti Cannabis types are gloaming onto this report in droves. It is their Godsend in the realm of anti Cannabis legislation. They will take this out of context and use it inappropriately. Seeing the world as they do in black and white and not the measured grey it is.
More to come, I'm sure.
This is a time and a climate where we need things like cannabis. Not just for medical issues but also for recreational ones. It is far more gentle on one's system than alcohol, recreational drugs like cocaine, heroin and so on. As for people calling it a schedule one drug, or a gateway to harder drugs, that is pure ignorance and goes against what science shows and we are seeing. They are looking at personality issues there with people, not the actual cannabis itself.
We have a new president now in Pres. Trump. A capitalist and a businessman who has left a lot of damage in his wake in making more and more money. However if he truly is a capitalist and a businessman then cannabis should be legalized by the end of the year, nationally.
Certainly before he leaves office. Which as things are going from his actions, could be any day now. If he is who he says he is in being a capitalist and having such a great mind, nobody has one better, he claims. Then surely he can do anything. Even this.
I'd expect to see by the beginning of 2018, a new and thriving capitalism based, not criminal based, health based not judicially based industry. But we won't. That however is an argument for another time.
There is a new article is talking about people who over indulge on a daily basis, that is to say, actually abuse it, and does not refer to normal or even regular use of cannabis.
Conservative and anti Cannabis types are already gloaming onto this report in droves. It is their Godsend in the realm of anti Cannabis diatribe and potential legislation. They will take this out of context and use it inappropriately as always. Seeing the world as they do in black and white and not the measured grey that it is and how honest people, how adults would normally use information.
It's odd however that this result would be found as cannabis, unlike tobacco, is a vasodialator. Tobacco actually is a vasoconstrictant. Ever know someone who right after sex has to light up a cigarette? HAS to?. It's because in part sex releases chemicals to relax, but they are addicted to nicotine. So while they like the good feeling from the release in the culmination of sex, they crave that tension, that vasoconstrictive effect that nicotine induces. It also explains those anxious people who need to smoke cigarettes. They crave the familiar when really they need soemthing else. But that's the confusion of addiction.
Meaning overall anyway I suppose, that under this study tobacco would be potentially leading to Alzheimer's even more so, yet we haven't heard about that. But apparently not so. Well, kind of. Nicotine has some nasty side effects, and some good ones. However once the body breaks it down into cotinine ....
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-201899/Tobacco-cure-Alzheimers.html
"In the case of Alzheimer's, cotinine may share nicotine's ability to improve attention and memory and at the same time reduce or halt disease progression. "One advantage of cotinine is that it could be used long-term with little concern about serious side effects and substance abuse."
Who knew?
"Addiction" is a medical term indicating a physical addition. Cannabis is not physically addictive but can be psychologically addictive. That however is a mental and not physiological defect.
About that..."Marijuana use disorder is a new term introduced by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) used by psychiatrists and mental health professionals for diagnostic criteria."
http://hightimes.com/medicinal/science/pot-matters-marijuana-use-disorder/
The High Times article has a list of eleven elements for the criteria of diagnosing substance use disorders.
Again, the article states (and I'm not disputing this, but it's odd) that:
"Those diagnosed with cannabis use disorder showed a significant reduction in brain blood flow in almost every region."
I think that requires more investigation because of the way Cannabis works on the brain. It doesn't make sense. If this was a conservative anti cannabis article I would call bull on this. As the article itself indicates, this is odd indeed:
"More research will have to be conducted to corroborate this claim. But it’s reasonable that someone who only lights up occasionally won’t have such an issue. This study conflicts with a 2014 preclinical trial, also published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease. There, tiny doses of marijuana’s active ingredient, delta 9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) had neuroprotective qualities. It helped ward off Alzheimer’s by destroying beta amyloid proteins which are what cause the disease. So in the end, it may be an issue of dosage. A little is okay, but too much is damaging. But only more studies can tell us for sure."
There does seem to be some support for this report's contentions:
http://www.idmu.co.uk/canncardio.htm
Which says:
"Summary - Cardiovascular effects of Cannabis:
"Cannabis increases heart rate in na•ve users although tolerance develops to this effect.
"Cannabinoids can also reduce blood pressure via arteriollar dilatation in a variety of tissues, although the effect on blood flow varies at a local level, with some organs or brain regions experiencing vasoconstriction, others vasodilation.
"In the withdrawal phase following cessation of chronic use, cerebral blood flow may be significantly reduced.
"Cannabis use has been implicated as a causative factor in a small number of patients suffering strokes or transient ischaemic attacks, and may represent a risk factor to susceptible individuals.
"However cannabinoids, in particular CB1-receptor agonists, have been shown to protect against nerve cell death following stroke, and dexanabinol at an advanced stage of the licensing process as a drug to be administered to victims of stroke or closed-head injuries to minimise the long-term brain damage caused by such events, and to improve survival and recovery prospects."
Conservatives and anti Cannabis types are gloaming onto this report in droves. It is their Godsend in the realm of anti Cannabis legislation. They will take this out of context and use it inappropriately. Seeing the world as they do in black and white and not the measured grey it is.
More to come, I'm sure.
Monday, December 5, 2016
We need to Legalize Cannabis NOW!
I'm so sick of hearing about Trump lately. Yes, he's a carbuncle on the American political system, as are the misguided misinformed beliefs of those who put him in office. Not to mention the efforts of another country (Russia) to see him in office as well as any one apparently who voted for him, not seeming to care about any of that that at all. But let's put that aside for the moment for something else immediate and ignored.
Now for something truly relevant that extends into so much of our culture and economy. We waste far too much time, energy, resources, and money in literally ruining people's lives and that of their extended family and our culture. We waste police resources, jail space and clogged the judicial system for no apparent reason and for issues that are proven to be better treated through healthcare resources.
We are shooting ourselves in the foot over and over because of our stubborn refusal to update our outdated beliefs and ideals, which I might add, were wrong to begin with. Not to mention, were originally based in racism as well as a carryover from alcohol prohibition..
For those who are anti weed, anti Cannabis, pot, grass, the racist term Marijuana, or whatever you wish to call it...really people, just stop talking.
Just, stop. Don't talk. Learn.
You are welcome to talk once again after you either watch BookTVs episode on C-SPAN2 with the author, journalist Joe Dolce, former Editor-in-chief of Details magazine as he talks about the current situation. Or you buy and read the book, Brave New Weed Adventures into the Uncharted World of Cannabis.
We need Cannabis immediately removed from the abusive Schedule 1 status. Abuse to pot, abusive to Americans, and worst of all, worst to those who need it medically and otherwise.
As Dolce points out, because it's a Schedule 1 drug only the NSA can easily research it and their agenda is to find what is bad about it. Israel for decades has been doing the leading positive research on it. And as one caretaker at one assisted living home in Israel put it, before weed started being used to enhance the quality of the lives of those living there, she was on the way out the door because no other drugs do as good a job.
But in America, weed is evil and demonized. Makes you wonder, how stupid are people? Because if they aren't stupid, how do you explain this almost religious negativity against it?
The Wall Street Journal recently blushed an article about the downside of legalization which to be honest, didn't make a hell of a lot of sense. Other than as click bate, which is starting to seem like that is what most of journalism is anymore.
Truth be damned, get us clicks at all costs!
This article is little more than disingenuous fear mongering. I don't doubt that the facts stated are real. But if you suddenly legalized (again?) alcohol, the stats would be far, FAR worse I'm sure.
As for the shaving off IQ points off teens who smoke weed as mentioned in the article, the alternative were it alcohol would be to shave off lives at those rates. I agree teens shouldn't smoke pot, not till they are 25 is my understanding, but good luck with that, as well has limiting them on alcohol. Anyway, it's false equivalency.
Which makes me wonder, was the so called journalist Allysia Finley who wrote this piece a conservative (she is after all a Fox News contributor)? Or is she just stupid? Or did her editor talk her into writing it?
We need to stop closing our eyes and labeling the demon cannabis and as evil and start labeling those who are against legalizing it as the ones who are actually, evil.
Now for something truly relevant that extends into so much of our culture and economy. We waste far too much time, energy, resources, and money in literally ruining people's lives and that of their extended family and our culture. We waste police resources, jail space and clogged the judicial system for no apparent reason and for issues that are proven to be better treated through healthcare resources.
We are shooting ourselves in the foot over and over because of our stubborn refusal to update our outdated beliefs and ideals, which I might add, were wrong to begin with. Not to mention, were originally based in racism as well as a carryover from alcohol prohibition..
For those who are anti weed, anti Cannabis, pot, grass, the racist term Marijuana, or whatever you wish to call it...really people, just stop talking.
Just, stop. Don't talk. Learn.
You are welcome to talk once again after you either watch BookTVs episode on C-SPAN2 with the author, journalist Joe Dolce, former Editor-in-chief of Details magazine as he talks about the current situation. Or you buy and read the book, Brave New Weed Adventures into the Uncharted World of Cannabis.
We need Cannabis immediately removed from the abusive Schedule 1 status. Abuse to pot, abusive to Americans, and worst of all, worst to those who need it medically and otherwise.
As Dolce points out, because it's a Schedule 1 drug only the NSA can easily research it and their agenda is to find what is bad about it. Israel for decades has been doing the leading positive research on it. And as one caretaker at one assisted living home in Israel put it, before weed started being used to enhance the quality of the lives of those living there, she was on the way out the door because no other drugs do as good a job.
But in America, weed is evil and demonized. Makes you wonder, how stupid are people? Because if they aren't stupid, how do you explain this almost religious negativity against it?
The Wall Street Journal recently blushed an article about the downside of legalization which to be honest, didn't make a hell of a lot of sense. Other than as click bate, which is starting to seem like that is what most of journalism is anymore.
Truth be damned, get us clicks at all costs!
This article is little more than disingenuous fear mongering. I don't doubt that the facts stated are real. But if you suddenly legalized (again?) alcohol, the stats would be far, FAR worse I'm sure.
As for the shaving off IQ points off teens who smoke weed as mentioned in the article, the alternative were it alcohol would be to shave off lives at those rates. I agree teens shouldn't smoke pot, not till they are 25 is my understanding, but good luck with that, as well has limiting them on alcohol. Anyway, it's false equivalency.
Which makes me wonder, was the so called journalist Allysia Finley who wrote this piece a conservative (she is after all a Fox News contributor)? Or is she just stupid? Or did her editor talk her into writing it?
We need to stop closing our eyes and labeling the demon cannabis and as evil and start labeling those who are against legalizing it as the ones who are actually, evil.
Monday, March 7, 2016
Cannabis as American as Apple Pie
This is a rerun of a very popular blog I wrote back in July 2, 2012. It has gotten so many hits that I thought I might run it again for those who are new to my blogs to have a chance to see it. Have fun!
I found a video on The Power of Raw Cannabis that I found very interesting. It talks about using Cannabis as raw food, as a vegetable with medical qualities far exceeding almost anything we have seen to date. They say that once you burn it, you get a different quality out of Cannabis, which should make those phobic about it feel all warm and fuzzy. But they are taking a different tact in their research by juicing Cannabis and using it as an actual natural remedy for disease.
Now watch this video, especially if you are fully anti Cannabis. This is not hype, it's very reasonable in what it has to say and it has a very good point. If Cannabis had never been heard of and was today discovered in the Amazon river basin, it would be called out as a miracle medicine and hailed around the world.
But Cannabis is as American as apple pie. Albeit a rather abused American, on multiple levels and for multiple reasons.
All this made me look for some interesting and famous quotes and images on hemp and cannabis and this is what I found. I broke out some photos for you that I will comment on, and at the bottom is a link to the actual video which includes fifty and some comments at the end of it. Here are some of my favorites, for various reasons. I've done my best to vet them at least to some degree. Let's start at the beginning.
It's well known that Washington was a hemp farmer and it was actually illegal not to grow hemp if you had a farm. However it was mostly for it's other qualities such as rope, clothes, paper, etc. Still, it's hard to believe there would be an active hemp market and no one knew about smoking it. Have you ever, as a kid, "smoked" on a piece of tall grass?
Typically you didn't inhale as it was harsh, but it's reasonable that someone figured it out back in the slaves days as slaves were made to work closely with hemp. Still, did any of the founding fathers smoke pot? Probably not though it would make a great case for modern pro Cannabis individuals. Napoleon brought hashish to France when his army returned from the Egyptian campaign (1798-1801). America had emmisaries in France over the years, so it's possible some of them tried hash. Hash comes from Cannabis, which was all over the United States. These were smart guys, so it's possible they put two and two together.
This would be great except that Lincoln wasn't known to be a smoker, although I know many people who smoke cannabis but wouldn't touch a ciggarette or pipe, otherwise. It is however plausible that Lincoln had a harmonica.
I would say it's reasonable Lincoln said that one. Abraham Lincoln (1809-65), U.S. President.
Speech, 18 Dec. 1840, to Illinois House of Representatives.
"In the mid-19th century, French writers including Baudelaire and Dumas met regularly to use cannabis. In this extract from his new book, Jonathon Green describes the Club des Hachichins." From an article in the Guardian UK.
I can find nothing to back this up, and he doesn't actually mention "hemp", other than a reference around the internet of a "Dr. Burke" with the "American Historical Reference Society" who doesn't seem to have a presence on the internet.
So you have to be careful about some of these kinds of quotes and references. Since they Founding Father's either left no record of smoking hemp or hash that I can find, it still has very good qualities for production and use in so many other areas. Lately we have been discovering that officially, that being by scientists and medical researchers not under the thumb of government relgulations or the American judicial systems, so that is mostly outside America but also inside prestigeous American institutions, there are incredible uses for Cannabis as you could see in the video above.
So we need to look at other things. Just like with a black hole out in space, if you can't see it, you can tell it exists by circumstantial evidence. In this case, it would be in the areas of prohibition and the "War on Drugs" (and U.S. citizens).
Leave it to a rational and logical thinker (so not a politician or law enforcer), to think, uh, rationally and logically.
So prohitition seems like not a smart thing? I wonder if the Alcohol Prohibition years support that claim at all?
Well, that pretty much jumps right to the point of things. Did Carl say this? Well, he has spoken out about it and there is video to prove it where he asks, "Is it rational, to [keep dying patients in discomfort, from it]."
"Village Voice jazz critic and Crosby biographer Gary Giddins says that Louis Armstrong's influence on Crosby "extended to his love of marijuana." Crosby smoked it during his early career when it was still legal, and "surprised interviewers" in the 1960s and 1970s by advocating its decriminalization." - Wikipedia
I think that pretty much speaks for itself. Now from a couple of politicians.
"Nuff' said" there.
This may hurt the President in some ways, but what would you pay for an honest politician? Well, it would seem we got one, at least to some point.
It's been alleged that British commissioner in India, Mr. J.M. Campell in "Note on the Religion of Hemp, British Indian Hemp Drugs Commission Report 1839-1894" was the one to actually say this. Considering the format of the words, I would say this would sound more like Campell than Carter.
What he HAS said was this:
Kind of shoots downn that highly addictive thing, don't you think?
This from a woman who is pretty productive in her life and doesn't seem to be drawing attention to herself because she's out of control or a drug addict.
Nice to hear someone just spit it out how he reallys sees it.
That my friends, is a very viable point. It's the type of comment I have heard from many people over the years. They didn't like the harsh drugs their doctor gave them, with the side effects, when they could just use cannabis as it was lighter on their systems, cheaper, and seemed to do a far better job in many cases without the side effects which in some cases, are actually, death.
Obviously we had a couple of indivduals who simply had to be mentioned here. Willie, of course, but also....
I've been saying for years that I cannot understand how Cannabis can be illegal for an entertainment drug when you have things out there that are legal like Lord King, Alcohol. Makes you wonder doesn't it (it should). When you consider the size and money involved in the alcohol industry and they size of their lobby, how is it cannabis is still illegal? Alcohol is very similar in affect to cocaine, it numbs you out, you can easily overdose on it, it leaves you feeling like crap after using it and especially over using it, it can put people into a rage where they hurt or kill people, you can't drive very well on it and it can kill you simply by using it.
Let's jus point out that the Declaration of Indepence is written on parchment which is treated animal skin. However, the drafts I believe were very likely written on hemp paper.
Hmmm... is there an echo in here?
The "War on Drugs" is an embarrassment and should be wiped off the face of the judicial branch. Even if you consider it now dead, which many don't, it is still being enforced under the Obama Administration and has been a shameful effort perpetrated on the American people by the judicial branch for decades now and have caused many indivduals and their families great pain and suffering.
And finally....
We should be listening to the man holding the highest office in the United States when even he thinks this. See the full quote at Reuters April 2012.
There is no doubt that we need to rethink and reinstitue our laws on Cannabis. No matter how you view the subject, if you are pro, question if you should be such an advocate; if you are against cannabis, question if you should be so against it. Ask yourself why you feel how you do and if you know everything to be as sure of yourself as you are. No one knows everything. America has made legislative mistakes before. What makes America great is when we see our mistakes, and do some thing to change them. To make our country greater, to make our citizens not just happier, but better off. Sometimes what makes our life better, makes us unhapy, until we see just how wrong we had been.
Have an open mind. Educate yourself. Then, make an informed decision and share it with those who used to look at things how you used to. Don't let America be ignorant, but more so, seek out that ignorance and help remove it.
Video with full run of photos and audio.
To finish up, here is another video of a very good argument for legalizing Cannabis, given by a Judge! If you are anti Cannabis, at least listen to this Judge making his plea to help the citizens of his state.
We can make things better, one step, one state at a time. But it all starts with removing the ignorance that is running rampant around our country, by making ourselves more informed and seeking out changing our opinions when necessary. Especially if your feel adamant that you are right about something, really vet it, check it out. Things change. Maybe you were right once. But new information is in. People are different today than in, say the 1960s. Don't listen only to people who agree with you.
America is a great country, but not as great as we once thought we were. We can again be that Greatest nation in the world. But we need more education, understanding, compassion and action.
Let me leave you with this last, scary quote and think about this for a moment. This man, in charge of police, is talking not just about people who use drugs, but American citizens. That seems to be something we forget in these talks about who is right or wrong. The subjects of these things are people. Consider too by the definition used for cannabis usage, having a drink after work is also a casual drug use, having a cigarette is a casul drug use, and even some would argue coffee or tea as caffeine could be therefore considered a drug. How would you like those people in charge of who should be charged with casual drug us, or as Daryl says:
Finally, if you really found that too depressing, watch a nice little history of "Marijuana".
I found a video on The Power of Raw Cannabis that I found very interesting. It talks about using Cannabis as raw food, as a vegetable with medical qualities far exceeding almost anything we have seen to date. They say that once you burn it, you get a different quality out of Cannabis, which should make those phobic about it feel all warm and fuzzy. But they are taking a different tact in their research by juicing Cannabis and using it as an actual natural remedy for disease.
 |
| From The Power Of Raw Cannabis |
But Cannabis is as American as apple pie. Albeit a rather abused American, on multiple levels and for multiple reasons.
All this made me look for some interesting and famous quotes and images on hemp and cannabis and this is what I found. I broke out some photos for you that I will comment on, and at the bottom is a link to the actual video which includes fifty and some comments at the end of it. Here are some of my favorites, for various reasons. I've done my best to vet them at least to some degree. Let's start at the beginning.
It's well known that Washington was a hemp farmer and it was actually illegal not to grow hemp if you had a farm. However it was mostly for it's other qualities such as rope, clothes, paper, etc. Still, it's hard to believe there would be an active hemp market and no one knew about smoking it. Have you ever, as a kid, "smoked" on a piece of tall grass?
Typically you didn't inhale as it was harsh, but it's reasonable that someone figured it out back in the slaves days as slaves were made to work closely with hemp. Still, did any of the founding fathers smoke pot? Probably not though it would make a great case for modern pro Cannabis individuals. Napoleon brought hashish to France when his army returned from the Egyptian campaign (1798-1801). America had emmisaries in France over the years, so it's possible some of them tried hash. Hash comes from Cannabis, which was all over the United States. These were smart guys, so it's possible they put two and two together.
This would be great except that Lincoln wasn't known to be a smoker, although I know many people who smoke cannabis but wouldn't touch a ciggarette or pipe, otherwise. It is however plausible that Lincoln had a harmonica.
I would say it's reasonable Lincoln said that one. Abraham Lincoln (1809-65), U.S. President.
Speech, 18 Dec. 1840, to Illinois House of Representatives.
"In the mid-19th century, French writers including Baudelaire and Dumas met regularly to use cannabis. In this extract from his new book, Jonathon Green describes the Club des Hachichins." From an article in the Guardian UK.
I can find nothing to back this up, and he doesn't actually mention "hemp", other than a reference around the internet of a "Dr. Burke" with the "American Historical Reference Society" who doesn't seem to have a presence on the internet.
So you have to be careful about some of these kinds of quotes and references. Since they Founding Father's either left no record of smoking hemp or hash that I can find, it still has very good qualities for production and use in so many other areas. Lately we have been discovering that officially, that being by scientists and medical researchers not under the thumb of government relgulations or the American judicial systems, so that is mostly outside America but also inside prestigeous American institutions, there are incredible uses for Cannabis as you could see in the video above.
So we need to look at other things. Just like with a black hole out in space, if you can't see it, you can tell it exists by circumstantial evidence. In this case, it would be in the areas of prohibition and the "War on Drugs" (and U.S. citizens).
Leave it to a rational and logical thinker (so not a politician or law enforcer), to think, uh, rationally and logically.
So prohitition seems like not a smart thing? I wonder if the Alcohol Prohibition years support that claim at all?
Well, that pretty much jumps right to the point of things. Did Carl say this? Well, he has spoken out about it and there is video to prove it where he asks, "Is it rational, to [keep dying patients in discomfort, from it]."
"Village Voice jazz critic and Crosby biographer Gary Giddins says that Louis Armstrong's influence on Crosby "extended to his love of marijuana." Crosby smoked it during his early career when it was still legal, and "surprised interviewers" in the 1960s and 1970s by advocating its decriminalization." - Wikipedia
I think that pretty much speaks for itself. Now from a couple of politicians.
"Nuff' said" there.
This may hurt the President in some ways, but what would you pay for an honest politician? Well, it would seem we got one, at least to some point.
It's been alleged that British commissioner in India, Mr. J.M. Campell in "Note on the Religion of Hemp, British Indian Hemp Drugs Commission Report 1839-1894" was the one to actually say this. Considering the format of the words, I would say this would sound more like Campell than Carter.
What he HAS said was this:
"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," Carter wrote. "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.' "
"Those ideas were widely accepted at the time," Carter wrote. "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."
"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," Carter wrote.
"Maybe the increased tax burden on wealthy citizens necessary to pay for the war on drugs will help bring about a reform of America's drug policies," Carter wrote. "At least the recommendations of the Global Commission will give some cover to political leaders who wish to do what is right."
Okay, enough already. Let's hear what some other entertainers have to say. Right?
Okay, did Arnold really say that? It would seem so: Mail Online UK October 2007.
This from a woman who is pretty productive in her life and doesn't seem to be drawing attention to herself because she's out of control or a drug addict.
Nice to hear someone just spit it out how he reallys sees it.
That my friends, is a very viable point. It's the type of comment I have heard from many people over the years. They didn't like the harsh drugs their doctor gave them, with the side effects, when they could just use cannabis as it was lighter on their systems, cheaper, and seemed to do a far better job in many cases without the side effects which in some cases, are actually, death.
Obviously we had a couple of indivduals who simply had to be mentioned here. Willie, of course, but also....
I've been saying for years that I cannot understand how Cannabis can be illegal for an entertainment drug when you have things out there that are legal like Lord King, Alcohol. Makes you wonder doesn't it (it should). When you consider the size and money involved in the alcohol industry and they size of their lobby, how is it cannabis is still illegal? Alcohol is very similar in affect to cocaine, it numbs you out, you can easily overdose on it, it leaves you feeling like crap after using it and especially over using it, it can put people into a rage where they hurt or kill people, you can't drive very well on it and it can kill you simply by using it.
Let's jus point out that the Declaration of Indepence is written on parchment which is treated animal skin. However, the drafts I believe were very likely written on hemp paper.
Hmmm... is there an echo in here?
The "War on Drugs" is an embarrassment and should be wiped off the face of the judicial branch. Even if you consider it now dead, which many don't, it is still being enforced under the Obama Administration and has been a shameful effort perpetrated on the American people by the judicial branch for decades now and have caused many indivduals and their families great pain and suffering.
And finally....
We should be listening to the man holding the highest office in the United States when even he thinks this. See the full quote at Reuters April 2012.
There is no doubt that we need to rethink and reinstitue our laws on Cannabis. No matter how you view the subject, if you are pro, question if you should be such an advocate; if you are against cannabis, question if you should be so against it. Ask yourself why you feel how you do and if you know everything to be as sure of yourself as you are. No one knows everything. America has made legislative mistakes before. What makes America great is when we see our mistakes, and do some thing to change them. To make our country greater, to make our citizens not just happier, but better off. Sometimes what makes our life better, makes us unhapy, until we see just how wrong we had been.
Have an open mind. Educate yourself. Then, make an informed decision and share it with those who used to look at things how you used to. Don't let America be ignorant, but more so, seek out that ignorance and help remove it.
Video with full run of photos and audio.
To finish up, here is another video of a very good argument for legalizing Cannabis, given by a Judge! If you are anti Cannabis, at least listen to this Judge making his plea to help the citizens of his state.
We can make things better, one step, one state at a time. But it all starts with removing the ignorance that is running rampant around our country, by making ourselves more informed and seeking out changing our opinions when necessary. Especially if your feel adamant that you are right about something, really vet it, check it out. Things change. Maybe you were right once. But new information is in. People are different today than in, say the 1960s. Don't listen only to people who agree with you.
America is a great country, but not as great as we once thought we were. We can again be that Greatest nation in the world. But we need more education, understanding, compassion and action.
Let me leave you with this last, scary quote and think about this for a moment. This man, in charge of police, is talking not just about people who use drugs, but American citizens. That seems to be something we forget in these talks about who is right or wrong. The subjects of these things are people. Consider too by the definition used for cannabis usage, having a drink after work is also a casual drug use, having a cigarette is a casul drug use, and even some would argue coffee or tea as caffeine could be therefore considered a drug. How would you like those people in charge of who should be charged with casual drug us, or as Daryl says:
Finally, if you really found that too depressing, watch a nice little history of "Marijuana".
Monday, December 7, 2015
A joint by any other name is still a joint - Cannabis History
Grass. Weed. Pot. Cannabis. Marijuana....
These are some of the terms I've heard since high school going back for me to 1970, related to the weed superb.
Life lately and so in my blogs of late I've been kind of heavy. Considering it's also the holiday season, I thought it was high time to lighten things up a bit.
Last week I gave a little history of myself, leaving out some obvious (and not obvious and therefore probably the more interesting) parts of it. Much of it really but then how much CAN one put in a blog of one's history. The purpose of that was to let you know a little about who I was\am and why I am how I am.
Mostly in that blog regarding speaking out against injustices (and stupidity which appears to be rampant lately, both of which there is so much of today. Which I find surprising because I'd always suspected by this time in our nation's history we'd be a country of University graduates.
Yet no. Instead it's almost as if we have chosen entirely, another path.
There are a lot of important things we need to deal with in the world but we also need to realize that the quality of our life is just as important as the seriousness of it. I could just as easily have talked about alcohol. My first year at Western Washington University, my main professor in the psych department, my adviser actually, asked us in class for a topic and he would use it to teach us how to think. We all offered suggestions but he picked mine. Beer. But that, for another time.
Anyway, have some fun once in a while. Right? So I chose something that is still forbidden to most of us in most of our states in this country. Cannabis. And yes, this is being posted by someone living in Washington state where pot is now legal.
However pot has been available in Washington as long as I've known about it and much longer. Over the years people have had to hide it and it developed a culture around it that involved a lexicon to hide what was being talked about from "normals" (non pot smokers).
These are some of the terms I've heard since high school going back for me to 1970, related to the weed superb.
Life lately and so in my blogs of late I've been kind of heavy. Considering it's also the holiday season, I thought it was high time to lighten things up a bit.
Last week I gave a little history of myself, leaving out some obvious (and not obvious and therefore probably the more interesting) parts of it. Much of it really but then how much CAN one put in a blog of one's history. The purpose of that was to let you know a little about who I was\am and why I am how I am.
Mostly in that blog regarding speaking out against injustices (and stupidity which appears to be rampant lately, both of which there is so much of today. Which I find surprising because I'd always suspected by this time in our nation's history we'd be a country of University graduates.
Yet no. Instead it's almost as if we have chosen entirely, another path.
There are a lot of important things we need to deal with in the world but we also need to realize that the quality of our life is just as important as the seriousness of it. I could just as easily have talked about alcohol. My first year at Western Washington University, my main professor in the psych department, my adviser actually, asked us in class for a topic and he would use it to teach us how to think. We all offered suggestions but he picked mine. Beer. But that, for another time.
Anyway, have some fun once in a while. Right? So I chose something that is still forbidden to most of us in most of our states in this country. Cannabis. And yes, this is being posted by someone living in Washington state where pot is now legal.
However pot has been available in Washington as long as I've known about it and much longer. Over the years people have had to hide it and it developed a culture around it that involved a lexicon to hide what was being talked about from "normals" (non pot smokers).
Posting this in no way promotes the use or sale of illicit substances (and again, ain't illicit here no more).
It does however question why this is still illegal anywhere else....
It does however question why this is still illegal anywhere else....
There are many more but where I grew up in Tacoma, Washington and the places I traveled and lived through my life including military service in the last half of the 1970s, these were the terms I heard related to Cannabis. I try no longer to use the more prejudicial term, Marijuana, that has been abused by our government to oppressed minorities and has been used for political purposes since the 1930s.
These are offered alphabetically but otherwise in no specific order with some interesting, fun or educational links supplied.
Terms came and went as I grew up through time, moved about the country and saw different trends and products come and go. These terms also found a place in popular social circles, media and entertainment (Re: comedians like Cheech and Chong, or musicians, famously such as Bob Marley or more recently Snoop Dog and others).
These are offered alphabetically but otherwise in no specific order with some interesting, fun or educational links supplied.
Terms came and went as I grew up through time, moved about the country and saw different trends and products come and go. These terms also found a place in popular social circles, media and entertainment (Re: comedians like Cheech and Chong, or musicians, famously such as Bob Marley or more recently Snoop Dog and others).
Acapulco Gold
bag (or baggie, as in sandwich bag)
Blaze
Bud
cannabis
Cambodian
Colombian
crazy weed
Dime bag ($10 1 oz sandwich bag)
Dirt weed (weak or bad Mexican weed of a dingy brown color).
Domestic
Doobie
Dope
Flower tops (or tops)
Ganja (ganj, or the ganj)
Ghana
Giggle weed
Grass
Green
bag (or baggie, as in sandwich bag)
Blaze
Bud
cannabis
Cambodian
Colombian
crazy weed
Dime bag ($10 1 oz sandwich bag)
Dirt weed (weak or bad Mexican weed of a dingy brown color).
Domestic
Doobie
Dope
Flower tops (or tops)
Ganja (ganj, or the ganj)
Ghana
Giggle weed
Grass
Green
Hash (properly, Hashhish) - Also hash oil, but this is another related topic really but is a concentrated form of pot. Now a days may be referred to as "wax" depending on how it was processed. Wikipedia --"Hashhishan evolved into the word assassin from a group who would eat and kill for pay. The word assassin has its root from the Arabic word Hashshashin ( حشّاشين, ħashshāshīyīn, also Hashishin, Hashashiyyin),[8] and shares its etymological roots with the Arabic term ḥashīsh."
Hawaiian
Heady weed (for more of mental not body stone or high, also see, head for smoker).
Home grown
Kate Bush (after the famed singer)
Keif
KGB (Killer Green Bud, also a joking homage to the Soviet secret espionage agency)
Kona Gold
Kush
Jamaican Gold (or Jamaican)
joint
Joy Stick
Leaf
lid (from removing seeds in a shoe box lid? There was a time when you could go to just about anyone's house you knew and find a shoe box lid under the living room couch with their stash in it and many seeds off to one corner or side, using a driver's license or credit card to separate them while holding the lid at an angle. Proliferation of sinsemilla ended that practice)
Marijuana (or MaryJuwana or Marijuania)
MaryJane (or MJ)
Maui-wowie
Oaxacan (imported pot from the that Mexican district)
O.Z. (o-zee or ounce)
Panama Red
Parsley
pocololo
Pot (or, potables)
Primo
Purple haze (also and previously used for LSD)
Rag weed (or rag)
Red bud
reefer (or reef, see also the 1936 anti Marijuana propaganda film, Reefer Madness)
shake (powder in the bottom of a baggy)
Sinse (sinsemilla or sen, no seeds which was thought to be a good ting until one day someone tried to grow their own and started to wonder, is this a conspiracy?).
Skunk weed (or stink weed)
super grass
Smoke
stoney weed (big body high as opposed to more mental high, see also stoned, stoner)
Tea
Thai
Thai stick (pot wrapped to bamboo stick and dipped in opium oil)
stems and seeds (the part of pot you don't want to smoke or bad bag of weed. Once this hit the states it was quickly replaced with cheap, fake versions but sold as the same, some which were dipped in unsafe alternatives, most which weren't even dipped in anything until no one would buy them anymore)
Toke
wacky tobacky
yerba
Yesca
Weed
Hawaiian
Heady weed (for more of mental not body stone or high, also see, head for smoker).
Home grown
Kate Bush (after the famed singer)
Keif
KGB (Killer Green Bud, also a joking homage to the Soviet secret espionage agency)
Kona Gold
Kush
Jamaican Gold (or Jamaican)
joint
Joy Stick
Leaf
lid (from removing seeds in a shoe box lid? There was a time when you could go to just about anyone's house you knew and find a shoe box lid under the living room couch with their stash in it and many seeds off to one corner or side, using a driver's license or credit card to separate them while holding the lid at an angle. Proliferation of sinsemilla ended that practice)
Marijuana (or MaryJuwana or Marijuania)
MaryJane (or MJ)
Maui-wowie
Oaxacan (imported pot from the that Mexican district)
O.Z. (o-zee or ounce)
Panama Red
Parsley
pocololo
Pot (or, potables)
Primo
Purple haze (also and previously used for LSD)
Rag weed (or rag)
Red bud
reefer (or reef, see also the 1936 anti Marijuana propaganda film, Reefer Madness)
shake (powder in the bottom of a baggy)
Sinse (sinsemilla or sen, no seeds which was thought to be a good ting until one day someone tried to grow their own and started to wonder, is this a conspiracy?).
Skunk weed (or stink weed)
super grass
Smoke
stoney weed (big body high as opposed to more mental high, see also stoned, stoner)
Tea
Thai
Thai stick (pot wrapped to bamboo stick and dipped in opium oil)
stems and seeds (the part of pot you don't want to smoke or bad bag of weed. Once this hit the states it was quickly replaced with cheap, fake versions but sold as the same, some which were dipped in unsafe alternatives, most which weren't even dipped in anything until no one would buy them anymore)
Toke
wacky tobacky
yerba
Yesca
Weed
Also...
roach (smoked joint)
blunt (type of joint)
spliff (type of joint also containing tobacco)
bomb (or bomber, type of joint, see fatty below)
Fatty (type of joint)
Jamaican style (or other named country style, various types of joint, see below)
 |
| Cone style, from Grass City |
Jamaican cone - I've heard others call it by different country's names but back in the 70s it's what I knew it as, but it was a cone with a bigger end folded in and over sealing it and the other smaller toking end could have a rolled up piece of matchbook cover or something used as a filter)
bong (kind of water pipe.
calumet (aeration pipe)
water pipe (traditional water pipe)
One hitter (holds one hit \ inhale)
roach clip (or clip, for holding joints and from which an entire industry was built from)
shotgun (to shotgun, from Vietnam soldiers using shotgun to aerate the smoke blown from one person to another)
 |
| Vape |
 |
| Travel Bong (1980s) |
Ozium
Zig-Zag (or zigs, rolling papers or simply papers from which an entire industry was built upon)
User Titles - Then there were the names for those who would partake of the holy weed. I haven't thought about this in years as it's not a thing anymore especially now that it's legal here.
Druggies
Heads (from Pot Heads)
Freaks
Hippies (way over-generalized use of a term that was incorrectly applied to far too many people for far too many decades)
Space cadets (or spacers)
Stoners
Tokers
There are many more things I could mention but I have a life and these were the ones that I was able to remember fairly easily.
Remember. Life is here to enjoy, not simply to suffer through. Have fun.
Cheers!
Monday, July 6, 2015
Finally, the War on the War on Drugs is Here
We are beginning to see the war on the War on Drugs.
That is to say, a war against the war on American citizens which has been going on even decades before the so called "War on Drugs" was officially begun in 1971, but goes back to an effort from as far back as 1914. Our more modern war on drugs is based in some very old and unfounded scientifically, beliefs.
Before I get into this, how does what I'm going to say benefit you, what does it do for you?
Here's the thing, no matter where you are living, you have to see what is best for yourself, your country and the world. Conservatives seem to see what is best for them, then justify what is best for everyone else through that filter. But what is best for all is best for the one because the one, needs to live in that world of the all. Kind of counter-intuitive (not really) which is why many conservatives have issue with it.
We need to push for what is best and not just what our governments and people have been misled toward believing is best for them, when in reality it is best for a few and a few who control things, who have power, money and influence. The masses however are the people, not the few people. It's not just quantity over quality but it's quality overall of the quantity.
So don't let people put you down, speak out, say what needs to be said. Vote accordingly and think forward. Be proactive when possible or at least, reasonable. Progressiveness should be about progressing and we have as a world been regressing now for far too long. Look at all the wondrous things going on around us, breakthroughs in science and in advances in society.
Legalizing cannabis (pot), legalizing gay marriage, cracking down on money in elections, squarely facing the responsibility humans have for advancing climate change, on and on down the line. People are starting to wake up and realize they are suffering only to prop up corporations and government, rather than government and corporations propping up human beings.
But for now I'm only focusing on the end of the nightmare that has been, the war on drugs.
I won't go into a history lesson on this, but when Nixon called for a commission on drugs and they returned to him a recommendation that we legalize them, he lost control, ignored the recommendation and took his current paranoia at the time which we all know about now, which eventually led to "Watergate" and the bled over and into the eventual and official War on Drugs.
Whenever a government starts to see its own citizens as the enemy, it has to be seen that something has gone very wrong right from right and at the top as well in this case, deep in the past.
I've been pushing for the legalization of pot for decades. Literally since I was a kid, since I was in my mid teens, anyway. We've spent over a trillion dollars on the war on drugs in this country, something that should never have been instituted. But okay, it was.
What have we learned? We have incarcerated over 37 million people and it's not yet gotten a handle on the issue while in other countries, they have. They have in ways we would never before have considered, considering.
"We've been walking into the future, backwards for too long." Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom said on Real Time With Bill Maher..
If we have a troubled child and punish them but they don't get it together, they don't figure things out through their being mistreated, then what do we usually do? We punish harder. Where does that stop, though? When do WE wake up and realize that what we are doing is only adding to the problem? We are then at some point making things worse.
We do become the bad guy at some point.
We have to wake up to see if maybe our charge, our child, needs something we aren't offering them. Maybe it is our lifestyle that is abusing that child. Maybe it is us who needs to change.
On a side note, this is especially true of ADD and ADHD kids who go through hell because their school and family wants them to adhere to what is considered normal.
Offering borders on behavior is good, but punishment at an early stage tends to be counter-productive because it is a counter-intuitive situation. Much like our war on drugs which requires those in charge to have intelligence, to observe and update their own behaviors. Not to keep saying we have to hit them harder. Because as some point, they have become the abusers. They, have become the addicts. Social addicts, addicted to a social behavior that is failing.
Regarding the arguments about children and pot, that really isn't the argument, so stop diluting the topic.
Adults are who we are talking about using pot.
As for kids they can get it now with no legal issues stopping them, as they are going to underground dealers. If we take the market from them, well? Just as today, where it's illegal for children to buy alcohol, they will still be able to get pot, just as they can now get alcohol. But we require alcohol to be regulated and it is legal. Why would we treat pot any different? Especially when it is an entirely different animal that is far less harmful that alcohol and actually has some benefits.
To alcohol if nothing else and there isn't nothing else. It is being shown time and again that there are benefits to pot. That being said, no, of course children shouldn't be using pot and it would be best as I've read, not to use it until around twenty-five years of age. Same as with alcohol. But that's just not going to happen. So let's make the best of the situation and consider the whole and not just the most delicate of our species.
But that has absolutely nothing to do with legalizing it for adults state by state as is not happening now, or nationwide as is surely soon to come once we hit that tipping point. Hopefully our leaders and legislators won't sadly wait till all states have legalized it before they pass national legalization.
With all the new forms of pot available we need to hold adults who have it legally, to be held legally responsible for it's access, in the case of children accessing it. If you have a lollipop pot confection, you have to know to lock it up.
Only an idiot leaves it around for a kid to use it. People need to be educated. Just as if alcohol were dropped into a society when they were ignorant of it before. As humanity has done to isolated communities all through history in missionaries and sailors having discovered island societies and suddenly brought them up to the world's most modern times and technologies.
If the recriminations are made well known for children accidentally taking pot, it will get around and it will settle down. How many people do you know now who don't lock up their alcohol? Except they don't leave around a mixed sweet drink that would entice a child. It's an educational situation and we will work it out. It takes being proactive, something Americans as a nation seem to be allergic to.
That doesn't mean we should continue a war on American citizens.
It means, we need to grow up and wake up and move forward into the future. Because as we're seeing in so many other things, as in the middle east, oil and gas drilling and fraking, climate change and so on, the future is rapidly passing us by.
We can either get on the train and deal with the ride, or stand before the train and be run over.
Choose your path. Choose it now, before it's too late. Because the rest of us, are going to move on without you, if you don't.
That is to say, a war against the war on American citizens which has been going on even decades before the so called "War on Drugs" was officially begun in 1971, but goes back to an effort from as far back as 1914. Our more modern war on drugs is based in some very old and unfounded scientifically, beliefs.
Before I get into this, how does what I'm going to say benefit you, what does it do for you?
Here's the thing, no matter where you are living, you have to see what is best for yourself, your country and the world. Conservatives seem to see what is best for them, then justify what is best for everyone else through that filter. But what is best for all is best for the one because the one, needs to live in that world of the all. Kind of counter-intuitive (not really) which is why many conservatives have issue with it.
We need to push for what is best and not just what our governments and people have been misled toward believing is best for them, when in reality it is best for a few and a few who control things, who have power, money and influence. The masses however are the people, not the few people. It's not just quantity over quality but it's quality overall of the quantity.
So don't let people put you down, speak out, say what needs to be said. Vote accordingly and think forward. Be proactive when possible or at least, reasonable. Progressiveness should be about progressing and we have as a world been regressing now for far too long. Look at all the wondrous things going on around us, breakthroughs in science and in advances in society.
Legalizing cannabis (pot), legalizing gay marriage, cracking down on money in elections, squarely facing the responsibility humans have for advancing climate change, on and on down the line. People are starting to wake up and realize they are suffering only to prop up corporations and government, rather than government and corporations propping up human beings.
But for now I'm only focusing on the end of the nightmare that has been, the war on drugs.
I won't go into a history lesson on this, but when Nixon called for a commission on drugs and they returned to him a recommendation that we legalize them, he lost control, ignored the recommendation and took his current paranoia at the time which we all know about now, which eventually led to "Watergate" and the bled over and into the eventual and official War on Drugs.
Whenever a government starts to see its own citizens as the enemy, it has to be seen that something has gone very wrong right from right and at the top as well in this case, deep in the past.
I've been pushing for the legalization of pot for decades. Literally since I was a kid, since I was in my mid teens, anyway. We've spent over a trillion dollars on the war on drugs in this country, something that should never have been instituted. But okay, it was.
What have we learned? We have incarcerated over 37 million people and it's not yet gotten a handle on the issue while in other countries, they have. They have in ways we would never before have considered, considering.
"We've been walking into the future, backwards for too long." Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom said on Real Time With Bill Maher..
If we have a troubled child and punish them but they don't get it together, they don't figure things out through their being mistreated, then what do we usually do? We punish harder. Where does that stop, though? When do WE wake up and realize that what we are doing is only adding to the problem? We are then at some point making things worse.
We do become the bad guy at some point.
We have to wake up to see if maybe our charge, our child, needs something we aren't offering them. Maybe it is our lifestyle that is abusing that child. Maybe it is us who needs to change.
On a side note, this is especially true of ADD and ADHD kids who go through hell because their school and family wants them to adhere to what is considered normal.
Offering borders on behavior is good, but punishment at an early stage tends to be counter-productive because it is a counter-intuitive situation. Much like our war on drugs which requires those in charge to have intelligence, to observe and update their own behaviors. Not to keep saying we have to hit them harder. Because as some point, they have become the abusers. They, have become the addicts. Social addicts, addicted to a social behavior that is failing.
Regarding the arguments about children and pot, that really isn't the argument, so stop diluting the topic.
Adults are who we are talking about using pot.
As for kids they can get it now with no legal issues stopping them, as they are going to underground dealers. If we take the market from them, well? Just as today, where it's illegal for children to buy alcohol, they will still be able to get pot, just as they can now get alcohol. But we require alcohol to be regulated and it is legal. Why would we treat pot any different? Especially when it is an entirely different animal that is far less harmful that alcohol and actually has some benefits.
To alcohol if nothing else and there isn't nothing else. It is being shown time and again that there are benefits to pot. That being said, no, of course children shouldn't be using pot and it would be best as I've read, not to use it until around twenty-five years of age. Same as with alcohol. But that's just not going to happen. So let's make the best of the situation and consider the whole and not just the most delicate of our species.
But that has absolutely nothing to do with legalizing it for adults state by state as is not happening now, or nationwide as is surely soon to come once we hit that tipping point. Hopefully our leaders and legislators won't sadly wait till all states have legalized it before they pass national legalization.
With all the new forms of pot available we need to hold adults who have it legally, to be held legally responsible for it's access, in the case of children accessing it. If you have a lollipop pot confection, you have to know to lock it up.
Only an idiot leaves it around for a kid to use it. People need to be educated. Just as if alcohol were dropped into a society when they were ignorant of it before. As humanity has done to isolated communities all through history in missionaries and sailors having discovered island societies and suddenly brought them up to the world's most modern times and technologies.
If the recriminations are made well known for children accidentally taking pot, it will get around and it will settle down. How many people do you know now who don't lock up their alcohol? Except they don't leave around a mixed sweet drink that would entice a child. It's an educational situation and we will work it out. It takes being proactive, something Americans as a nation seem to be allergic to.
That doesn't mean we should continue a war on American citizens.
It means, we need to grow up and wake up and move forward into the future. Because as we're seeing in so many other things, as in the middle east, oil and gas drilling and fraking, climate change and so on, the future is rapidly passing us by.
We can either get on the train and deal with the ride, or stand before the train and be run over.
Choose your path. Choose it now, before it's too late. Because the rest of us, are going to move on without you, if you don't.
Monday, October 28, 2013
58% of Americans say legalize Pot. So what new Drug shall we attack?
So, 58% of Americans now think we should legalize Cannabis. So let's stop wasting time and energy and legalize Pot! On the federal level. Let's now put that money into something useful. The War on Drugs has failed. So now what?
Consider that with the end of Prohibition against alcohol, Harry Jacob Anslinger (who held office as the assistant prohibition commissioner in the Bureau of Prohibition, before being appointed as the first commissioner of the U.S. Treasury Department's Federal Bureau of Narcotics on August 12, 1930), replaced alcohol as the drug to war against, with pot. After all, he had to do something for those poor agents now pretty much out of work with families to support. Right?
So? Where does that leave us now? Don't we now have to replace warring on pot with something else? So what do you want to be the prime target now in our eternal war on whatever, I mean, drugs (and Americans) now?
Look, if you want to continue your wasteful "War on Drugs" then you've got to find a new drug to attack. A new group of people, new users, new addicts to attack, to ruin their lives like we have for so many pot smokers and their families (for no apparent reason or end purpose). And just what should be the new, nefarious, and most highly dangerous drug in History to attack and destroy? Well, I think I've got it. But it's not a drug, per se, though the symptoms are pretty much the same.
Extremism.
At least, extremism in ideological views. I'm all for extreme sports (within reason), as much as the next guy. Then again let's face it, extreme anything at some point, just becomes stupid. And we've seen a lot of that in recent times. The lesser of the evils, is still evil nonetheless in the form of trying to decide other's lifestyles, as in being antiGay, and needs in life, as in making abortion illegal and taking away women's rights, trying to force them into roles right out of the 1940s.
It would seem that conservatives in this country can't have a progressive thought without first leaning on their childhood fears of Hellfire and brimstone. But these are the least of our worries as there are far more ridiculous people out there. Not just people standing behind the counter-intuitive banners of ProLife, but those who out right murder people. Like abortion clinic Doctors. Or worse.
Yes, extremism has brought us suicide bombers, the destruction of the twin towers in NYC, mass murders, genocide, abuse, rape, child slavery, and on and on. It has recently even brought our government to a shut down (thanks GOP extremists), or to a slim down or whatever you want to call it. Whatever you label it, it was bad. Stupid, and bad.
Extremism is where you take something based in a truth, twist it with a half truth, then intelligently shove it down the throats of the less educated, the ignorant, the stupid, and those who are more rather than less, narcissistic. See you can't con an honest man. Conservatism and extremism, are like kissing cousins. As is Fundamentalism. It's all an attempt to decrease things to their simplest elements and let's face it, Life ain't simple. And whenever you try to make it so, people get lost in the shuffle. And a select minority find power.
Maajid Nawaz, is cofounder of the world's first counter extremism think tank, Quilliam, a campaign organization where they do "counter messaging", where they try to popularize counter narratives against extremism. They are looking for ways to "inoculate" extremists against extremist messages. Maajid was recently put on the Al Shabab hit list, so he must be doing something right. He is also author of the book, "Radical - My Journey out of Islamist Extremism", and he is one of those out there fighting the good fight, trying to squelch Islamic extremism.
Like the eleven year-old girl, Malala Yousafzai, who stood for education in her country against the Taliban, and who in 2009 was shot in the face by them for her efforts. She is now touring and continuing to speak out. Sam Harris called her, "The best thing to happen to Islam in 1,000 years."
One group engaged in this, in the arena of Women's Rights is AON. On this order of things, Valarie Plame (author of the new novel, "Blowback" and previously the non-fiction work, "Fair Game"), said recently that you can tell that "the trouble spots in the world, it is no coincidence, are places where women are treated as second class citizens."
Christopher Hitchens once said in a July 2011 Vanity Fair article, in speaking about Islam before the Talibanization of Afghanistan and Pakistan and on repression in the Islamic republic, "Let me try to summarize and update the situation like this: Here is a society where rape is not a crime. It is a punishment. Women can be sentenced to be raped, by tribal and religious kangaroo courts, if even a rumor of their immodesty brings shame on their menfolk. In such an obscenely distorted context, the counterpart term to shame—which is the noble word “honor”—becomes most commonly associated with the word “killing.” Moral courage consists of the willingness to butcher your own daughter."
Try to name some famous opposites of the Islamic extremist leaders who are on the other side of the table, as Democratic leaders in the Muslim world. Far harder to think of, isn't it? You remember Bin Laden, right? But who is his opposite number on the other side? Extremism is alive and well around the world, and here at home.
We can't keep trying to simply take out these extremists with raids and drone attacks and so on, as it works about as well as the drug war had. It's not stopping. We need to treat Islamic extremism like the ideological phenomenon that it is. As any extremism is. We can't simply remove the heads of these movements and organizations and expect them to simply go away. It just doesn't work.
They will just be replaced. Extremism needs to be nipped in the bud. It becomes as a drug to them, an addiction that they need to be extracted from, weaned off of. And because of it, they won't listen to reason. They are much like a drug addict of a real drug. Not pot for reason's sake, but we're talking your heroin or meth of the theistic type. The change needs to come in a fashion more insidious to them. They can't see it coming, because no matter how much sense the opposing argument can be, they will refuse to hear it. Spoken with an extreme American Conservative lately?
People are afraid of clarity in these things because it forces them to think, and have to avoid reason and they don't want that. They don't want it because it forces them to face that they aren't using reason, they are rationalizing what they want emotionally. And the world seems to be going that direction, more and more.
Whenever we are clear about a position, then people are forced to have to go up against it and either agree with it or more typically, disagree with it. But at that point they have to KNOW something. They have to know either that they don't know what they are talking about, or that they are avoiding dealing with it rationally. And that pisses people off. Not appropriately at themselves, but at others who are opposing them. No matter how correct those others are. Since mostly people don't know something, they then become fearful.
Richard Dawkins said that in the struggle of his Atheism against Theism, that this was exactly what he had come up against, time and time again. And it is very much how it is today in our own nation.
Since about 1980 Christians have taken over our national agendas. And that has got to stop. We need to have a secular government back to make secular decisions. Ones based in Humanity and not religious tomes. But we have been steeped in extremism ourselves in order to further these right wing religious agendas against secularism and sanity. We are in a death throw with theism around the world, and at home.
But at a more base point, it isn't just an issue with theism, Christianity, Islam, etc.
Again, it is the drug of Extremism.
Extremism, that easy drug to swallow, to become addicted to. It doesn't require much thought. But the thought it does require is easy and fun, emotionally satiating. Regardless who else out there gets hurt by it. Because it is a very narcissistic addition. It is for the "Me" generation. It is a kind of, "put your head down and ram it into the wall repeatedly" kind of thought format. It is both dangerous and holding the world back from advancing, from evolving. And it warps compassion for our race and justifies things, in the Islamic terror organization as example (and there are other religions doing this), such as killing of innocents and their own Islamic brothers and sisters.
Finally in Catholicism with Pope Francis, some sanity is coming into play. He is putting down all the avenues of extremism available to Catholics. Stop picking on Gays, stop being so focused on the concerns of birth control. Love one another, have compassion. Basically, he is turning the largest religion in the world, Buddhist, albeit with different rituals and texts. And, I am good with that.
So in the end we need a new drug. My vote as you have seen, is for a war on extremism. Or no war at all. Because the way we are really going to get a handle on things kinds of things, that keep popping up, is to treat all people of the world with compassion and not just corporate and national interests as primary concerns. But in the well being of all of Humanity, even those not of your country, or personal belief system.
Consider that with the end of Prohibition against alcohol, Harry Jacob Anslinger (who held office as the assistant prohibition commissioner in the Bureau of Prohibition, before being appointed as the first commissioner of the U.S. Treasury Department's Federal Bureau of Narcotics on August 12, 1930), replaced alcohol as the drug to war against, with pot. After all, he had to do something for those poor agents now pretty much out of work with families to support. Right?
So? Where does that leave us now? Don't we now have to replace warring on pot with something else? So what do you want to be the prime target now in our eternal war on whatever, I mean, drugs (and Americans) now?
Look, if you want to continue your wasteful "War on Drugs" then you've got to find a new drug to attack. A new group of people, new users, new addicts to attack, to ruin their lives like we have for so many pot smokers and their families (for no apparent reason or end purpose). And just what should be the new, nefarious, and most highly dangerous drug in History to attack and destroy? Well, I think I've got it. But it's not a drug, per se, though the symptoms are pretty much the same.
Extremism.
At least, extremism in ideological views. I'm all for extreme sports (within reason), as much as the next guy. Then again let's face it, extreme anything at some point, just becomes stupid. And we've seen a lot of that in recent times. The lesser of the evils, is still evil nonetheless in the form of trying to decide other's lifestyles, as in being antiGay, and needs in life, as in making abortion illegal and taking away women's rights, trying to force them into roles right out of the 1940s.
It would seem that conservatives in this country can't have a progressive thought without first leaning on their childhood fears of Hellfire and brimstone. But these are the least of our worries as there are far more ridiculous people out there. Not just people standing behind the counter-intuitive banners of ProLife, but those who out right murder people. Like abortion clinic Doctors. Or worse.
Yes, extremism has brought us suicide bombers, the destruction of the twin towers in NYC, mass murders, genocide, abuse, rape, child slavery, and on and on. It has recently even brought our government to a shut down (thanks GOP extremists), or to a slim down or whatever you want to call it. Whatever you label it, it was bad. Stupid, and bad.
Extremism is where you take something based in a truth, twist it with a half truth, then intelligently shove it down the throats of the less educated, the ignorant, the stupid, and those who are more rather than less, narcissistic. See you can't con an honest man. Conservatism and extremism, are like kissing cousins. As is Fundamentalism. It's all an attempt to decrease things to their simplest elements and let's face it, Life ain't simple. And whenever you try to make it so, people get lost in the shuffle. And a select minority find power.
Maajid Nawaz, is cofounder of the world's first counter extremism think tank, Quilliam, a campaign organization where they do "counter messaging", where they try to popularize counter narratives against extremism. They are looking for ways to "inoculate" extremists against extremist messages. Maajid was recently put on the Al Shabab hit list, so he must be doing something right. He is also author of the book, "Radical - My Journey out of Islamist Extremism", and he is one of those out there fighting the good fight, trying to squelch Islamic extremism.
Like the eleven year-old girl, Malala Yousafzai, who stood for education in her country against the Taliban, and who in 2009 was shot in the face by them for her efforts. She is now touring and continuing to speak out. Sam Harris called her, "The best thing to happen to Islam in 1,000 years."
One group engaged in this, in the arena of Women's Rights is AON. On this order of things, Valarie Plame (author of the new novel, "Blowback" and previously the non-fiction work, "Fair Game"), said recently that you can tell that "the trouble spots in the world, it is no coincidence, are places where women are treated as second class citizens."
Christopher Hitchens once said in a July 2011 Vanity Fair article, in speaking about Islam before the Talibanization of Afghanistan and Pakistan and on repression in the Islamic republic, "Let me try to summarize and update the situation like this: Here is a society where rape is not a crime. It is a punishment. Women can be sentenced to be raped, by tribal and religious kangaroo courts, if even a rumor of their immodesty brings shame on their menfolk. In such an obscenely distorted context, the counterpart term to shame—which is the noble word “honor”—becomes most commonly associated with the word “killing.” Moral courage consists of the willingness to butcher your own daughter."
Try to name some famous opposites of the Islamic extremist leaders who are on the other side of the table, as Democratic leaders in the Muslim world. Far harder to think of, isn't it? You remember Bin Laden, right? But who is his opposite number on the other side? Extremism is alive and well around the world, and here at home.
We can't keep trying to simply take out these extremists with raids and drone attacks and so on, as it works about as well as the drug war had. It's not stopping. We need to treat Islamic extremism like the ideological phenomenon that it is. As any extremism is. We can't simply remove the heads of these movements and organizations and expect them to simply go away. It just doesn't work.
They will just be replaced. Extremism needs to be nipped in the bud. It becomes as a drug to them, an addiction that they need to be extracted from, weaned off of. And because of it, they won't listen to reason. They are much like a drug addict of a real drug. Not pot for reason's sake, but we're talking your heroin or meth of the theistic type. The change needs to come in a fashion more insidious to them. They can't see it coming, because no matter how much sense the opposing argument can be, they will refuse to hear it. Spoken with an extreme American Conservative lately?
People are afraid of clarity in these things because it forces them to think, and have to avoid reason and they don't want that. They don't want it because it forces them to face that they aren't using reason, they are rationalizing what they want emotionally. And the world seems to be going that direction, more and more.
Whenever we are clear about a position, then people are forced to have to go up against it and either agree with it or more typically, disagree with it. But at that point they have to KNOW something. They have to know either that they don't know what they are talking about, or that they are avoiding dealing with it rationally. And that pisses people off. Not appropriately at themselves, but at others who are opposing them. No matter how correct those others are. Since mostly people don't know something, they then become fearful.
Richard Dawkins said that in the struggle of his Atheism against Theism, that this was exactly what he had come up against, time and time again. And it is very much how it is today in our own nation.
Since about 1980 Christians have taken over our national agendas. And that has got to stop. We need to have a secular government back to make secular decisions. Ones based in Humanity and not religious tomes. But we have been steeped in extremism ourselves in order to further these right wing religious agendas against secularism and sanity. We are in a death throw with theism around the world, and at home.
But at a more base point, it isn't just an issue with theism, Christianity, Islam, etc.
Again, it is the drug of Extremism.
Extremism, that easy drug to swallow, to become addicted to. It doesn't require much thought. But the thought it does require is easy and fun, emotionally satiating. Regardless who else out there gets hurt by it. Because it is a very narcissistic addition. It is for the "Me" generation. It is a kind of, "put your head down and ram it into the wall repeatedly" kind of thought format. It is both dangerous and holding the world back from advancing, from evolving. And it warps compassion for our race and justifies things, in the Islamic terror organization as example (and there are other religions doing this), such as killing of innocents and their own Islamic brothers and sisters.
Finally in Catholicism with Pope Francis, some sanity is coming into play. He is putting down all the avenues of extremism available to Catholics. Stop picking on Gays, stop being so focused on the concerns of birth control. Love one another, have compassion. Basically, he is turning the largest religion in the world, Buddhist, albeit with different rituals and texts. And, I am good with that.
So in the end we need a new drug. My vote as you have seen, is for a war on extremism. Or no war at all. Because the way we are really going to get a handle on things kinds of things, that keep popping up, is to treat all people of the world with compassion and not just corporate and national interests as primary concerns. But in the well being of all of Humanity, even those not of your country, or personal belief system.
Friday, August 9, 2013
Sanjay Gupta: ‘I Was Wrong On Pot, Sorry America’ Sunday Documentary on CNN
Finally. Some intelligent reporting on a controversial topic. Sunday night on CNN Dr. Sanjay Gupta's documentary "Weed: Dr. Sanjay Gupta Reports" will offer what Erin Burnett on her CNN show said is, "amazing". It airs at 5PM Pacific Time on CNN.
Dr. Gupta says we have been duped by the government (no surprise there to many of us). His words as Erin Burnett quoted him on her show today while he listened and smiled, were:
"I think the government is reprehensible for not allowing pot."
He also said he has apologized for his previous held belief that pot was bad and that it should not be a "Schedule One" illegal drug as it has truly stupidly been for decades, along with, Heroin? I still shake my head at that one. It just made no sense. That was in part the beginning of my realizing how out of touch with reality our government was, or could be. I was disillusioned. I was a lot younger back then. But I still believe it. Nice to have corroboration, though. Finally.
There are two things I'd like to mention right up front. I've been saying for many, many years that minors shouldn't smoke pot. It's been reported in the documentary that your brain is still growing until you are around twenty-four years old. I've been saying I would like to see kids not use pot until they were at least twenty-one to twenty-five, so I was right in the ball park. The other issue is strength of weed. In the 60s it was aournd 1%. Now it is typically around 13% and there have been recorded instances of it at as high as 39% which is around a dangerous level, certainly with someone unused to that level of THC. I have been concerned about these high levels for some years now. So it's necessary for people to have regulations so they know what levels they are getting.
THC and CBD are the two primary components of pot that are of importance. The THC gets you high. The CBD supplies the body stone effect that can be important for patients with various diseases. So they are now growing high CBD levels and low THC levels. And they are seeing very good effects from this. It's starting to look like you would want to have a balance of these two components depending on what effect you are looking for, and not just the THC.
"The Controlled Substances Act provides a process for rescheduling controlled substances by petitioning the Drug Enforcement Administration. The first petition under this process was filed in 1972 to allow cannabis to be legally prescribed by physicians. The petition was ultimately denied after 22 years of court challenges, although a pill form of cannabis' psychoactive ingredient, THC, was rescheduled in 1985 to allow prescription under schedule II. In 1999 it was again rescheduled to allow prescription under schedule III. A second petition, based on claims related to clinical studies, was denied in 2001. The most recent rescheduling petition was filed by medical cannabis advocates in 2002, but was denied by the DEA in July 2011. Subsequently, medical cannabis advocacy group Americans for Safe Access filed an appeal in January 2012 with the D.C. Circuit, which was heard on October 16, 2012. As of August 2013, 20 states and Washington D.C. have legalized the use of medical marijuana." - Wikipedia
The Doctor said that all these thousands of research reports you hear about that say how bad pot is, had studied how it is bad. I could probably come up with a pretty good report on how bad penicillin is, for that matter. But those reports did not look into just how much good it can do. He has also pointed out that the withdrawal from quitting long term excessive use of alcohol can and does kill people. Obviously, the same for Schedule One drugs like heroin.
But the worst you get off of quitting pot is maybe irritable for a few days at most. As for addictiveness, pot is as addictive as your personality will allow. It's "psychologically addictive", not "physically addictive" and anyone telling you otherwise is not only incorrectly informed (or a liar), they are fear-mongering. Psychologically addictive means that you have to believe you are addicted, but you are not "really" (physically, medically) addicted. Many heroin addicts would kill for that situation with their own addiction.
Regarding pot making people "stoners", a humorous euphemism for people who get high on pot, generally do nothing and are, according to popular films, complete idiots, albeit funny and endearing ones for the most part. That alone should also tell you something about pot. How are heroin, cocaine and alcohol addicts portrayed in popular media?
When I think of how things are going with pot now a days (finally) and how many have suffered beyond prison terms up to the ultimate sacrifice of being killed by police... for mere possession(!), I can only shake my head in dismay. I don't so much blame police who are just doing their jobs, though they could be intelligent and a little less aggressive sometimes, but I do blame the government and the medical arm of that government who should have stopped worrying about their jobs and performed their function and the truth sayers of the nation. When popular crap is the Zeitgeist we need someone (science? medicine?) to lead the way with fact and not politics and conjecture.
Then there is the numbers of deaths due to drug cartel actions, which are nearly uncountable. The south of the border drug cartels now, as it has been reported, are very unhappy about pot getting legalized in the US. Another nail in the coffin of not legalizing pot.
And consider the cost. Check this out:
This is How Much Marijuana Prohibition Costs You, the Taxpayer
Even if you don't know much about pot, you should know it is just not in the same category as heroin.
Do I think heroin should be legalized? Well, I know it's dangerous, but I just don't know. Maybe. But it worries me. It worries me because, if you overdose "reasonably" on heroin, you die. It's that simple. If you overdose "reasonably" on pot, you don't even get close to dying (we're talking adults, of course all drugs should be kept from children). So what's reasonable? An amount the size of which is easy to accidentally take with the ability to stop in order to back off to achieve a safer level, before dying. Cocaine is like that too, dangerous. But nothing like heroin and pot is nothing like cocaine. Alcohol is.
So why is pot illegal and alcohol isn't? Because alcohol has a much bigger group of fans and it can literally be made almost anywhere from a large variety of things. With pot, you need at very least a seed from which to grow it from. And then there is that proven issue of Prohibition and how that went south so quickly. Consider that sixty-seven percent of U.S. adults drink alcohol according to Gallup. But in 2011, there were 18.1 million current (past-month) users—about 7.0 percent of people aged 12 or older according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) as conducted by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
Consider too that the so called and poorly named,"War on Drugs" or simply "The Drug War" was started by one of, if not the most corrupt President in the history of the United States: Richard Nixon. He set up a commission to study the drug issue coming out of the 1960s free love and drug culture. But when he was told they had decided it wasn't as bad as thought, and actually suggested solutions diametrically opposed to what Nixon wanted with his anti-crime platform, he went against his own commission's conclusions and began to wage a war on the America people. He had already broken many laws to maintain his regime. This was merely a natural and understandable extension of that. His paranoia had finally turned itself from only being against his political enemies to the entire American public in general.
It was later supported and reinforced in the 1980s by Ronald Reagan at a time when "crack" cocaine was first coming onto the scene. A drug that had been used in that way for some time by the rich and famous, once crack was put into the hands of people as a cheap and easily attained street drug by those of lower income, it started scaring people. Crack was an addictive and crime associated street drug and rightly should be targeted. But not as a war because a war quickly turns into actions against citizens rather than actions against dangerous drugs. It became a rallying point; not crack, but the "War on Drugs". As a more widely used illegal drug pot then became, as it had been for years, the rallying point in the "War on Drugs". It was just easier to go after, more available, not to mention pot users are less dangerous than crack users. It was a soft target.
Over the years, pot has gained a status in governments like religion. Hands off. Don't think. Just keep it at a distance and do nothing other than victimize its users. Why? Because it's the kind of drug when taken that let's you sit back, relax, but actually see your life, your world, if not as it is, then in a way different than what the current regime is pushing on its citizens. Sound funny? Not really. There have been many countries who feared it in large part for that reason alone. They don't want their people thinking too much. Alcohol also helps you relax, is legal and easily available. But it numbs you out and makes you stupid and at times, aggressive. Pot simply doesn't in its normal dosage levels for entertainment purposes. Instead it leads one to thinking outside the box. And that is anathema especially to dictatorial leaders, fascist regimes and right wing ruled governments and administrations.
Yes there are many other issues involved here and I could certainly give you a long list of the politics and history of pot, but really here I only wanted to let you know about the documentary on Sunday (8/11/2013).
Check it out. It sounds like it just might be worth watching. Perhaps finally we are getting the right information to the right people. Everyone.
Dr. Gupta says we have been duped by the government (no surprise there to many of us). His words as Erin Burnett quoted him on her show today while he listened and smiled, were:
"I think the government is reprehensible for not allowing pot."
He also said he has apologized for his previous held belief that pot was bad and that it should not be a "Schedule One" illegal drug as it has truly stupidly been for decades, along with, Heroin? I still shake my head at that one. It just made no sense. That was in part the beginning of my realizing how out of touch with reality our government was, or could be. I was disillusioned. I was a lot younger back then. But I still believe it. Nice to have corroboration, though. Finally.
There are two things I'd like to mention right up front. I've been saying for many, many years that minors shouldn't smoke pot. It's been reported in the documentary that your brain is still growing until you are around twenty-four years old. I've been saying I would like to see kids not use pot until they were at least twenty-one to twenty-five, so I was right in the ball park. The other issue is strength of weed. In the 60s it was aournd 1%. Now it is typically around 13% and there have been recorded instances of it at as high as 39% which is around a dangerous level, certainly with someone unused to that level of THC. I have been concerned about these high levels for some years now. So it's necessary for people to have regulations so they know what levels they are getting.
THC and CBD are the two primary components of pot that are of importance. The THC gets you high. The CBD supplies the body stone effect that can be important for patients with various diseases. So they are now growing high CBD levels and low THC levels. And they are seeing very good effects from this. It's starting to look like you would want to have a balance of these two components depending on what effect you are looking for, and not just the THC.
"The Controlled Substances Act provides a process for rescheduling controlled substances by petitioning the Drug Enforcement Administration. The first petition under this process was filed in 1972 to allow cannabis to be legally prescribed by physicians. The petition was ultimately denied after 22 years of court challenges, although a pill form of cannabis' psychoactive ingredient, THC, was rescheduled in 1985 to allow prescription under schedule II. In 1999 it was again rescheduled to allow prescription under schedule III. A second petition, based on claims related to clinical studies, was denied in 2001. The most recent rescheduling petition was filed by medical cannabis advocates in 2002, but was denied by the DEA in July 2011. Subsequently, medical cannabis advocacy group Americans for Safe Access filed an appeal in January 2012 with the D.C. Circuit, which was heard on October 16, 2012. As of August 2013, 20 states and Washington D.C. have legalized the use of medical marijuana." - Wikipedia
The Doctor said that all these thousands of research reports you hear about that say how bad pot is, had studied how it is bad. I could probably come up with a pretty good report on how bad penicillin is, for that matter. But those reports did not look into just how much good it can do. He has also pointed out that the withdrawal from quitting long term excessive use of alcohol can and does kill people. Obviously, the same for Schedule One drugs like heroin.
But the worst you get off of quitting pot is maybe irritable for a few days at most. As for addictiveness, pot is as addictive as your personality will allow. It's "psychologically addictive", not "physically addictive" and anyone telling you otherwise is not only incorrectly informed (or a liar), they are fear-mongering. Psychologically addictive means that you have to believe you are addicted, but you are not "really" (physically, medically) addicted. Many heroin addicts would kill for that situation with their own addiction.
Regarding pot making people "stoners", a humorous euphemism for people who get high on pot, generally do nothing and are, according to popular films, complete idiots, albeit funny and endearing ones for the most part. That alone should also tell you something about pot. How are heroin, cocaine and alcohol addicts portrayed in popular media?
When I think of how things are going with pot now a days (finally) and how many have suffered beyond prison terms up to the ultimate sacrifice of being killed by police... for mere possession(!), I can only shake my head in dismay. I don't so much blame police who are just doing their jobs, though they could be intelligent and a little less aggressive sometimes, but I do blame the government and the medical arm of that government who should have stopped worrying about their jobs and performed their function and the truth sayers of the nation. When popular crap is the Zeitgeist we need someone (science? medicine?) to lead the way with fact and not politics and conjecture.
Then there is the numbers of deaths due to drug cartel actions, which are nearly uncountable. The south of the border drug cartels now, as it has been reported, are very unhappy about pot getting legalized in the US. Another nail in the coffin of not legalizing pot.
And consider the cost. Check this out:
This is How Much Marijuana Prohibition Costs You, the Taxpayer
Even if you don't know much about pot, you should know it is just not in the same category as heroin.
Do I think heroin should be legalized? Well, I know it's dangerous, but I just don't know. Maybe. But it worries me. It worries me because, if you overdose "reasonably" on heroin, you die. It's that simple. If you overdose "reasonably" on pot, you don't even get close to dying (we're talking adults, of course all drugs should be kept from children). So what's reasonable? An amount the size of which is easy to accidentally take with the ability to stop in order to back off to achieve a safer level, before dying. Cocaine is like that too, dangerous. But nothing like heroin and pot is nothing like cocaine. Alcohol is.
So why is pot illegal and alcohol isn't? Because alcohol has a much bigger group of fans and it can literally be made almost anywhere from a large variety of things. With pot, you need at very least a seed from which to grow it from. And then there is that proven issue of Prohibition and how that went south so quickly. Consider that sixty-seven percent of U.S. adults drink alcohol according to Gallup. But in 2011, there were 18.1 million current (past-month) users—about 7.0 percent of people aged 12 or older according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) as conducted by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
Consider too that the so called and poorly named,"War on Drugs" or simply "The Drug War" was started by one of, if not the most corrupt President in the history of the United States: Richard Nixon. He set up a commission to study the drug issue coming out of the 1960s free love and drug culture. But when he was told they had decided it wasn't as bad as thought, and actually suggested solutions diametrically opposed to what Nixon wanted with his anti-crime platform, he went against his own commission's conclusions and began to wage a war on the America people. He had already broken many laws to maintain his regime. This was merely a natural and understandable extension of that. His paranoia had finally turned itself from only being against his political enemies to the entire American public in general.
It was later supported and reinforced in the 1980s by Ronald Reagan at a time when "crack" cocaine was first coming onto the scene. A drug that had been used in that way for some time by the rich and famous, once crack was put into the hands of people as a cheap and easily attained street drug by those of lower income, it started scaring people. Crack was an addictive and crime associated street drug and rightly should be targeted. But not as a war because a war quickly turns into actions against citizens rather than actions against dangerous drugs. It became a rallying point; not crack, but the "War on Drugs". As a more widely used illegal drug pot then became, as it had been for years, the rallying point in the "War on Drugs". It was just easier to go after, more available, not to mention pot users are less dangerous than crack users. It was a soft target.
Over the years, pot has gained a status in governments like religion. Hands off. Don't think. Just keep it at a distance and do nothing other than victimize its users. Why? Because it's the kind of drug when taken that let's you sit back, relax, but actually see your life, your world, if not as it is, then in a way different than what the current regime is pushing on its citizens. Sound funny? Not really. There have been many countries who feared it in large part for that reason alone. They don't want their people thinking too much. Alcohol also helps you relax, is legal and easily available. But it numbs you out and makes you stupid and at times, aggressive. Pot simply doesn't in its normal dosage levels for entertainment purposes. Instead it leads one to thinking outside the box. And that is anathema especially to dictatorial leaders, fascist regimes and right wing ruled governments and administrations.
Yes there are many other issues involved here and I could certainly give you a long list of the politics and history of pot, but really here I only wanted to let you know about the documentary on Sunday (8/11/2013).
Check it out. It sounds like it just might be worth watching. Perhaps finally we are getting the right information to the right people. Everyone.
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