Posted on 09/15/2002 8:38:29 AM PDT by JediGirl
Early in the morning of Sept. 5, dozens of armed men stormed a respected medical facility where nearly 300 people desperately ill from cancer, AIDS and other illnesses got their medicine. Brandishing semiautomatic weapons in the faces of terrified patients, including a woman paralyzed from childhood polio, they destroyed all of the medicine and took prisoner the facility's operators.
The work of Osama bin Laden? Hamas? Some other international terrorists?
No. This particular terrorist raid was carried out by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
The facility they attacked was the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana ( WAMM ) in Santa Cruz, Calif. A co-op run entirely by and for seriously ill people - 80 percent of whom have terminal diagnoses - WAMM sold nothing. All of the medical marijuana grown was given to members without charge.
The facility was supported by the community and worked closely with local officials. According to County Supervisor Mardi Wormhoudt, WAMM operated in an "exemplary" fashion. After the raid - which had been planned and executed with no warning to the local government - Wormhoudt told reporters she was "appalled" by the DEA's action.
The patients WAMM served are desperately ill. For many with AIDS or cancer, marijuana is the only thing that allows them to tolerate the horrendous side effects of the harsh treatments that keep them alive. Others endure excruciating pain that conventional medicines have failed to relieve, but which marijuana helps.
Because of this raid, many of these people will die prematurely - agonizing, horrible deaths - because the only medicine that helped them has been taken away.
What could possibly motivate such cruelty?
Desperation.
All around the world, governments and scientific experts are coming to believe that marijuana shouldn't be illegal - that it is simply not dangerous enough to warrant arresting and jailing even social or recreational users, much less people using it to relieve symptoms of cancer or AIDS. The British government has already moved to make marijuana possession a nonarrestable offense.
On Sept. 4, Canada's Senate Special Committee on Illegal Drugs released the most exhaustive investigation of marijuana data and policy options ever conducted by any government. The 650-page report declared that criminalizing marijuana amounted to "throwing taxpayers' money down the drain in a crusade that is not warranted by the danger posed by the substance."
But marijuana - which accounts for the vast majority of illegal drug use and arrests - is the engine that drives the war on drugs and keeps massive drug-control budgets pumped up.
So even as DEA agents were shoving machine guns in the faces of sick people, White House drug czar John Walters and Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson stood in front of a Washington, D.C., press conference, spouting long-discredited myths as if they were proven facts.
Marijuana, said Thompson, is "a clear and present danger to the health and well-being of all its users" - a statement contradicted by reams of scientific research.
Indeed, in 1995, the prestigious medical journal The Lancet stated flatly, "The smoking of cannabis, even long term, is not harmful to health." This year, the British government's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs and the Canadian Senate committee came to similar conclusions after extensive study.
But our government's drug war ideologues don't care about science. And they don't care how many sick people they literally torture to death in their desperate effort to pump up a collapsing policy.
"Legalizing pot" and changing the drug war paradigm may seem like a waste to you, but it is the single biggest obstacle in getting the right to denounce and disavow the policies and doctrines of the New Deal. We cannot hope to stop the liberals abuse of the Constitution as long as we are complicit.
On The Smokey Backroom Sep 15 10:20 AM #130 of 386
Um. What the hell is your point? My journal doesn't have to be filled with profound observations about the state of the world. Sod off.
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Sod off.
Don't get it!
(from Cambridge International Dictionary of Idioms)
Sod's Law British, humorous
the way in which plans fail and bad things happen where there is any possibility of them doing so
It's Sod's Law that on the one occasion when the train arrives on time, I'm late!
Maybe I have one for you!
The following is the entire radio address from 1979. It can be found on pages 396-399 of Reagan In His Own Hand. This is from my own personal transcription.
Marijuana
August 1979
There is more evidence in on marijuana and it should ring an alarm bell particularly for parents.
I'll be right back.
From time to time I've used these commentaries to report an update on the continued research into marijuana. Medical Science has come a long way since the 1972 report by the Nat.Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse which gave the weed a relatively clean bill of health.
Everyone who had the urge to light up a joint somehow became aware of the report and could recite it as a litany ---exhaling smoke on every line. Strange to say however (or may be not so strange) the confident & happy pot smokers overlooked a follow up report by members of the same commission which in effect said "Oops we overlooked a few things in the 1st report".
Further research has continued to repudiate that first report, research by increasing numbers of scientists here and abroad. And yet none of these subsequent findings seem to have caught the attention of the estimated 16 mil. regular users in our land ---4 mil. of whom are between the ages of 12 and 17.
Those who have no axe to grind except to report the scientific facts they have uncovered say that marijuana has a far greater potential for harm then was previously believed.
The toxic ingredident which provides the effects pot smokers want has a jawbreaker name which I may not pronounce correctly --- Tetrahydrocannabinol which I will henceforth refer to as T.H.C. This THC lodges in the bodoes fatty tissues and that includes the brain & the reproductive organs. Now for those hard to sell souls who liken a joint to a martini the difference is our body eliminates the martini in 24 hours. THC satys in the body for amonth. A person who only lights up a couple of times a week is keeping his most essential bodily organs permanently soaked in this toxic drug.
Does this have an effect? You can bet on it. Science now knows that it reduces the ability of the brain to transfer information from short term to long term memory in adition to other adverse & irreversible effects on the mental processes.
It slows the bodys production of white blood cells which play a major role in fighting infection. And it lowers the male hormone & pserm count in men which if I may be blunt leads to sterility.
But there is another effect, which in this day & age of warnings on cigarette packages about the danger of cancer from smoking tobacco, should give any pot smoker pause to think. The smoke from burning marijuana contains many more cancer causing substances then tobacco. And if that isn't enough it leads to bronchitis & emphysema.
If adults want to take such chances that is their business. But surely the communications media and public figures whose words get some attention should let 4 mil.youngsters know what they are risking when they light up a "joint" and pass it around because they think its the in thing to do.
This is RR. Thanks for listening.
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Reagan's disdain for marijuana is clear and evident. But I agree with Reagan. If adults want to be stupid in public and break the law by using pot, that chance they take is their business. However, its still illegal.
Stoners always think that.
It is very questionable.
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