U.S. Agrees To Drug Legalization Talks

This week Vice President Joe Biden heads south of the border to meet with Mexican President Felipe Calderon and a number of presidents from Central American countries including Costa Rica and Guatemala who "have said in recent weeks they'd like to open up the discussion of legalizing drugs" as reported by Martha Mendoza for The Associated Press.

Last week at a conference on transnational crime a security official for the Organization of American States warned that the drug cartels "are posing a growing threat to democracy in Latin America" as reported by BBC News: "cartels are influencing elections by threatening politicians and even running their own candidates, OAS Secretary for Multidimensional Security Adam Blackwell said."

Allegations of ties between Mexican politicians and narco traffickers have become routine, and U.S. officials say "that even the most dedicated public servants can't avoid the taint of drug cartels in some areas of the country where mobsters are the de facto overlords" as reported by Tim Johnson for McClatchy Newspapers.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton finally is recognizing "intelligence reports that Latin American drug cartels are closely linked with Hezbollah and Iran" as reported by Jim Kouri for The Examiner.

Maybe the U.S. has to prepare for losing the drug wars in order to save democracy.

What utter nonsense. 10th Amendment says it falls to the states and I am all for that. I will gladly smile as law enforcement puts the like of you behind bars and forgets you exist.

As for your nonsense about medical marijuana:

http://www.policemag.com/Blog/Gangs/Story/2011/10/California-s-Biggest-Losers.aspx

Winnie was an exceptional expert in his field. He grew up in California’s Central Valley, which was once known as “America’s Bread Basket.” As the son of two 1960s hippies, the marijuana plant was always significant in his life. His parents had run a small marijuana farm for as long as he could remember.

His father was the bread winner who profited mostly from his skill in growing clandestine marijuana crops.

These people were real flower children, and it’s difficult to think of them as threatening or dangerous. Winnie grew in stature and knowledge to follow in the path of his parents. As a young man, Winnie played soccer with the Latino farm workers including a boy from Nayarit, Mexico called “El Toro” (The Bull). As the friends grew up both boys became involved in the marijuana farming business, starting first in small grows and graduating to larger, and larger farms.

Winnie would study magazines such as “Head” and “High Times” to learn the best plants to cultivate. Sending for good Afghan seeds from Holland, he would start the plants indoors in 2-½-gallon plastic pots. He was a natural nurturer providing the perfect amount of sun, water, and other nutrients. His green thumb and knowledge of the marijuana plants produced increasily potent plants that exceeded each prior year’s THC content. Sometimes El Toro or other Mexican friends worked with him.

After seven to nine weeks, the pot plants were ready to be transferred outdoors to 250-gallon sack pots. They eventually built industrial-sized grows yielding tons of marijuana product more potent than anything his parents had ever seen. One of his famous hybrid plants topped 40 percent THC content.

As marijuana became more accepted by the California public, his work was perceived as nearly legal. Winnie knew many local prominent citizens and even police officers who used his product. Even those who didn’t use pot themselves looked at the private use of marijuana as unimportant. It was the hard drugs and pushers they despised.

The influence of the pot industry was powerful and reached all the way to Sacramento. When California passed its medical marijuana law, Winnie found a market he could really excel in. He truly believed in the healing properties of his product and distained alcoholics and hard drug abusers.

One day, his old friend Toro approached him about making some real money. Toro suggested that Winnie work for Toro’s old friend from Nayarit known as “El Gallo” (The Rooster). Gallo promised a larger percentage of the profits of the hybrid marijuana harvest to Winnie and offered to cover start-up costs. His pal Toro would also be on the payroll.

Winnie was persuaded, and he talked a farmer friend in Sonoma County into renting his farm to Gallo. Many immigrant farm workers were also hired with promises of fair treatment and higher wages. Most of them were here illegally and in the past were often cheated out of their pay by “legitimate” farming corporations. So the huge marijuana farm operation was started in the rich fields of Sonoma County.

Winnie soon found that everyone feared the Bantam Rooster, Gallo, even Winnie’s old friend Toro. Gallo was the farm’s overseer for a powerful Mexican cartel. The group got its start smuggling marijuana into the U.S. in the drug haze days of the ‘60s and ‘70s. In Mexico, they were currently involved in a violent and bloody war with rival cartels over the control of the smuggling routes into the United States. By establishing their industrial size farms here, they avoided the border drug wars and any Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) interference.

Gallo’s ruthlessness first became apparent when the farmer Winnie had recruited told him he had not been paid any of the promised rent for several months. Gallo knew the farmer had little legal recourse. What could he do, call the police?

He also noticed that the farm laborers were even more unfairly treated by their Mexican overseers than their former white ones. They were more like slaves than employees. Winnie himself had not been paid in almost two years. Gallo would dole out only a few dollars every so often, just to keep the workers from starving. He held them there with the promise to pay them when the crop sold and with threats of violence to anyone perceived to be disloyal.

On a day when Winnie had to leave the farm for a few fours, someone stole 20 large marijuana plants. He discovered the loss when he returned. He knew only his own workers could have done this. He strongly suspected his old friend Toro who was also at the end of his rope and desperate for cash.

When Gallo returned, his old friend Toro told Gallo that Winnie “the white boy” had taken the 20 plants. Gallo threatened to kill Winnie, as well as his mother and father, if the plants were not returned. These were not the type of people Winnie was used to dealing with. He had heard about the violence common to Mexican cartels, as well as the violence perpetrated on anyone who stole from them.

That night, fearing for his own life and the lives of his family, and angry about not being paid and his ultimate betrayal by Toro, he ran. He left, but not empty handed. He took what he felt he was owed and what he was accused of stealing, he took 20 plants.

He had relatives living in the Northwest, so he made the run for the border in a large motor home. However Winnie’s luck had run out, just before he crossed the Northern California line he was stopped by the police.

The 20 plants weighed in at over 100 pounds of unprocessed marijuana. Winnie was through. He was a dead man now, in or out of jail. He knew the Mexican cartel would find him and blame him for the loss of all 40 plants. And what about his family? He tried to talk to the local cops but they seemed content with their 100-pound seizure.

Back in the 1920s during prohibition, I’m sure that some well-meaning scientists and doctors advocated for and suggested medicinal uses for alcohol. I’m sure some prescriptions for beer and wine were written. Another argument for the end of prohibition was that it would stop gang violence in the national war to control the illegal sale of booze. But the end of prohibition did not end alcohol abuse and addiction, or end organized crime gangs and their violence. Legalizing pot will do no better.

Please check out the California Narcotics Officers Association (CNOA) papers on medical marijuana and the legalization of marijuana. There’s no benefit found in smoking marijuana that can’t be more safely achieved with other prescription medications. How can we teach our children that smoking tobacco is bad for everyone, but smoking marijuana is good?

Wake up California; you’ve been sold a lie. This lie has allowed the Mexican (and other) cartels and gangs to produce huge crops of unregulated marijuana here in our state. These fields produce hybrid dope high in THC content and high in illicit profit. For this, some men are willing to kill.

The huge profits corrupt the souls of men in high places and produce the best government that money can buy. Today, the number one industry in California is illegal drugs and number two is the natural consequence of the first—the prison system.

The Mexican cartels grow rich; the politicians grow fat; and American criminal gangs profit. The old hippie growers are losing out to the industrial cartel farms, but the biggest losers are the honest California citizens.

Back in the 1920s during prohibition, I’m sure that some well-meaning scientists and doctors advocated for and suggested medicinal uses for alcohol.

Research shows health benefits for moderate consumption of alcohol.

I’m sure some prescriptions for beer and wine were written.

Suppose they were - was that wrong?

Was Prohibition a good policy? Should we bring it back?

Another argument for the end of prohibition was that it would stop gang violence in the national war to control the illegal sale of booze. But the end of prohibition did not end alcohol abuse and addiction, or end organized crime gangs and their violence.

It got them out of the alcohol trade, as the Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce reported.

Legalizing pot will do no better.

Here's what real medical professionals say:

"there is no clear alternative for people suffering from chronic conditions that might be relieved by smoking marijuana, such as pain or AIDS wasting."
- "Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base", Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences

How can we teach our children that smoking tobacco is bad for everyone, but smoking marijuana is good?

Stupid straw man - by allowing Vicodin to be prescribed, are we teaching our children that "taking Vicodin is good"?

Here is what I am against:

I am against the continuing erosion of my right to be secure in my property, person, and effects which has come about as a result of the "War on Drugs", especially the presumptive siezure of property or assets without warrant or probable cause as the result of 'random' searches.

I am against the apparent corruption of the selfsame Law Enforcement Agencies which are there to secure our rights, prompted by profit motive from siezure of assets, or the corruption of those who are supposed to secure our borders (or those in their chain of command) by outside influences.

I am against the continued militarization of civillian police forces in the US.

To deny the profit inherent in selling something illegal, or the enhancement of those profits due to the clandestine nature of the activity involved is ridiculous.

To strip the activity of its profitability, remove the clandestine aspect.

I'll be the first to say that that alone won't clean up the mess--far from it, in fact things will look worse once the cover is stripped from the festering rot beneath.

There will still be 'turf wars'. There will still be the ugliness of addiction, the social problems, and crime, but the money involved will be smaller (and with smaller profit comes smaller incentive), and the real reasons for failing to secure the southern border for over 50 years (not 'cheap farm labor') will lose their overwhelming profitability and luster for those making the decisions to continue the Kabuke they claim is 'security'.

Nuts and bolts:

Drug users, to be legal, must be 18 years of age, a high school graduate or equivalent, and must legally commit to not ever holding jobs which would place them in a position to wreck the train, crash the lane, cause a pileup on the interstate, botch an operation, etc. They must understand they are permanantly signing away their rights to ever being a doctor, being elected to public office, being able to vote, or legally owning a firearm.

In short, sign away most of their options of their future to become a registered drug user, with the full knowledge they are abdicating the rights and responsibility of an adult in our society as well as the benefits which go with it.

Unregistered users would face penalties far worse than current laws as a deterrent to registered use, and if using while performing one of the jobs proscribed for users, would be stripped of all their assets as well.

Commission of crimes of violence and property crimes (theft) under the influence or by a registered user would be dealt with very harshly, as would all violations as a deterrent to breaking those laws.

All of this would be to emphasize the gravity of the choice to use or not use drugs, and the need for good conduct under their influence.

Licensed dealers, distributors, and suppliers would be required to pay taxes, the drugs could be sampled for tests of purity, for contaminants or adulterants.

The bottom line is that currently the use of these substances is underground. The extent is only estimated, those who hold critical jobs not subject to drug testing may use whatever substances they choose (Congress? The Executive Branch?) with relative impunity and no one is the wiser.

Until we restore the widespread cultural contempt for addiction which was present in the America of my youth (the corruption of which occurred mainly in the 60's and '70s and still persists today in pop culture and in media), we won't make any progress.

The war on drugs has been fought in the wrong place. Until we reinstill the widespread desire for excellence in our youth, the motivation to succeed (largely squelched by overbearing regulation in other areas of day-to-day life), the desire to create and build will be overwhelmed by the desire to "Turn on, tune in, and drop out" out of sheer frustration, aided and abetted by the Marxists' rhetoric of class and race 'warfare'.

The fundamental difference between the message of the Liberals and Marxists ("you're nothing, you can't succeed without us") has to be replaced by the concept that America has been built by people who had a dream and pursued it, a desire to be the best and reap the rewards which go with that.

the psychological effects of synthetic intravenous THC in healthy subjects.

Nobody uses THC intravenously.

Unless they’re being administered controlled amounts in a manner that reduces variability of absorption in a research environment.

They reduced variability at the expense of real-life applicability of their results - they're like the guy who lost his wallet on Second Street but is looking for it on Third Street because the light is better there.

Over 2 experimental sessions, participants (N=22) were administered 2.5mg IV THC

Even aside from the unrealistic route of administration, how does this dose compares to the amount a recreational user of strong weed would get? Rats get cancer from artificial sweetener when fed the equivalent of a million cans of diet soda - should we worry?

No response to this point?

Following THC, there was a significant increase in self-rated and observer-rated positive psychotic symptoms which were highly correlated (r=0.62, p=0.001).

In research terminology, "significant" means only statistically distinguishable from no effect - it says nothing about the magnitude of the effect.

No response to this point?

Phenomena centered on de-synchronisation of self-agency (ipseity disturbance) and hypersalience/paranoia.

While these may technically fall under the general heading of "psychotic," a smoker hiding under the bed or examining his fingers in wonder ("ipseity disturbance") is nothing you or I need to fear.

Uhuh. That’s what the hippytards were telling my dazed and confuzed friends back in the 70’s too.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Having observed the wreckage of the lives of those who believed that bullshyte and proceeded to self-medicate themselves into oblivion -— NO SALE.

Did they self-medicate themselves into a fear-worthy sort of psychosis? If not, your observations have no bearing on the research you cited.

Look again Supergenius:

S26-03 The phenomenology of acute THC-psychosis
European Psychiatry, Volume 24, Issue null, Page S146
P. Morrison, S. Kapur, R. Murray
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/2853929/posts?page=71#71

Where's DeSouza? Not there. Completely different research group.

After you're done "analyzing" that crow Wiley, tell the audience how the drug culture of the 1960's had "nothing" to do with this:

Don't need no Weatherman to see which way the wind blws.

"Behind the Violence, Says Jane Alpert, Was Sex"

--November 09, 1981--
"The leaders of the Weather Underground, she believes, followed a similar pattern of constantly shifting sexual alliances..."
http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20080637,00.html
"He [Bill Ayers] also writes about the Weathermen's sexual experimentation as they tried to 'smash monogamy.' The Weathermen were 'an army of lovers,' he says, and describes having had different sexual partners, including his best male friend."
Source: New York Times, September 11, 2001: "No Regrets for a Love Of Explosives; In a Memoir of Sorts, a War Protester Talks of Life With the Weathermen"
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F02E1DE1438F932A2575AC0A9679C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1
"...the Weathermen, when not engaged in group sex, committed such revolutionary acts as parading with a Viet Cong flag through a local park on Independence Day and spray-painting the walls of a high school with the slogans, "Off the Pigs," "Viet Cong Will Win," and "F#$k U.S. Imperialism."..."
Campus Wars: The Peace Movement At American State Universities in the Vietnam Era

"What happens next bears watching closely, as does the response of the president, ex-Speaker Pelosi, and others on the left. Encouraged by leftists in the Democratic Party and funded by left-leaning nonprofit organizations and celebrity contributors, Occupy Wall Street may in time morph into something resembling the radical factions of the late 1960s and 1970s."
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/10/predicting_the_weatherman.html

The Osawatomie Coincidence
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2818309/posts

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