DdC

It was a foregone conclusion that Americans United for Separation of Church and State would concoct a reason to object to the White House's latest faith-based drug-prevention project.

As part of a modest and commonsensical approach to fighting abuse, the White House is providing religious organizations with pamphlets, guidebooks and Web sites that provide guidance on addressing drug-related issues.

But Americans United Executive Director Barry Lynn said the endeavor "raises serious constitutional problems." He also said, "The Bush administration seems to think there's a 'faith-based' solution to every social and medical problem in America." We believe faith is a key.

In his zeal to deride the administration's program, Mr. Lynn conveniently forgot that, according to recent studies, young Americans also seek faith-based solutions to problems such as drug abuse.

In March, the American Psychological Association found that adolescents who consider religion important in their lives were half as likely to use drugs such as marijuana than those who don't. And a study by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse concluded that teen-agers who don't view faith as important are up to four times as likely to smoke marijuana.

Mr. Lynn's contention that distributing anti-drug guidance to a wide range of religious organizations somehow merges church and state is bewildering. He never quite explains how this alleged merger occurs.

What remains clear, though, is that countering drug use among teen-agers is a priority for most Americans. Distributing information to spiritual leaders on how to guide youth toward a drug-free life is a small but important step toward that goal.

John Walters, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, was flanked by Christian, Jewish and Islamic community leaders as he announced the program on Thursday. Said Sayyid Syeed, secretary-general of the Islamic Society of North America, "we're proud to be part of this jihad on drugs and alcohol in America."

President Bush has long recognized that faith and charity are sibling sentiments. Giving religious organizations an opportunity to address some of this country's most glaring social ills comes nowhere near establishing a state-sanctioned religion.

Americans in need of help — due to drug abuse, poverty, mental anguish or physical abuse, especially young people — need more than economic aid and physical comforting. Many simply can't even find a way out of addiction and those other problems without spiritual guidance and sustenance.

The White House's latest approach to countering drug abuse is well-conceived. Although we advocate a more voucherized approach, the central tenet of the White House program is valid: faith-based choice.

<a href="http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread16844.shtml" target="_blank">Fait h is a Key</a>
Source: Washington Times (DC)
Published: July 13, 2003

And I will raise up for them a plant of renown, and they shall be no more consumed with hunger in the land, neither bear the shame of the heathen any more. (Ezekiel 34:29)
<a href="http://www.jackherer.com" target="_blank">http ://www.jackherer.com</a>

<a href="http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread16820.shtml" target="_blank">U.S. Asks Church Groups' Help Vs. Drugs</a>
<a href="http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread15974.shtml" target="_blank">Nati on's Drug Czar Touts Faith-Based Programs</a>
<a href="http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread15537.shtml" target="_blank">Bush 's Focus on Antidrug Ministry Irks Some</a>



In the later times, some shall speak lies in hypocrisy commanding to abstain from meats which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth. Every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused if it be received with thanksgiving. For it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer. If thou put the brethren in remembrance of these things, thou shalt be a good minister of Jesus Christ, nourished up in the words of faith and of good doctrine. (Paul: 1 Timothy 4:1-6)

<a href="http://pub3.ezboard.com/fendingcannabisprohi bitionstuff.showMess age?topicID=83.topic " target="_blank">Amer ica was NOT founded on Christianity!</a>
<a href="http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0601-05.htm" target="_blank">Bush , Cheney Have Millions in Assets</a>
<a href="http://www.baltech.org/lederman/bush-farben-1-5-01.html" target="_blank">GW Bush Gang: IG Farben 2001</a>
<a href="http://www.freedomforum.org/templates/document.asp?documen tID=17507" target="_blank">Chur ch-state foes decry Bush plan to fund faith-based drug treatmen</a> t
<a href="http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n602/a01.html" target="_blank">US TX: George W Bush: The Record In Texas</a>
Religious drug treatment in Texas
<a href="http://www.nctimes.net/news/2002/20020608/55035.html" target="_blank">Feds wage war on cancer patients</a>
Dr. Andrew Weil Commentary

Internationally, "the war on drugs" provides a cover for intervention. Domestically, it has little to do with drugs but a lot to do with distracting the population, increasing repression in the inner cities, and building support for the attack on civil liberties.
—Noam Chomsky, "The war on (certain) drugs" is What Uncle Sam Really Wants
<a href="http://deoxy.org/usdrugs.htm" target="_blank">http ://deoxy.org/usdrugs.htm</A>

<a href="http://www.hereinstead.com/sys-tmpl/resources" target="_blank">Mari juana Myths, Marijuana Facts</a>
<a href="http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread14054.shtml" target="_blank">Mari juana Drug Czar Distorts Report</a>
<a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2004/pma/dea.pdf" target="_blank">Whit e House Budget Office Flunks the DEA</a>
<a href="http://www.jackherer.com/book/ch15.html" target="_blank">Dr. Heath/Tulane Study, 1974</a>
The Hype: Brain Damage and Dead Monkeys
<a href="http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v01/n572/a11.html?1979" target="_blank">Cann abis Shrinks Tumors: Government Knew in 74</a>
<a href="http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread11031.shtml" target="_blank">Mari juana Could Help Cocaine Addicts Kick Habit</a>
<a href="http://rainbowallianceopenf aith.homestead.com/ReligiousHate.html" target="_blank">reli gious based hate groups</a>



"They say you can't legislate morality. Well, you certainly can."
John Ashcroft Chicago Tribune May 25, 1998

<a href="http://www.drcnet.org/wol/295.shtml#conantappe al" target="_blank">Ashc roft Seeks Supreme Court Permission to Overturn Free Speech Ruling</a>
on Physician-Patient Discussion of Medical Marijuana

On Monday, July 7, the Solicitor General of the United States filed papers in the US Supreme Court requesting that the Court overturn the 9th Circuit's unanimous decision in Conant v. Walters, which supports a doctor's right to openly recommend or approve marijuana as treatment for their patients. By taking this action, the Solicitor General seeks to allow the federal government to investigate any physician who mentions the word "marijuana" to patients and to sanction those who approve it for patient use.

"The 9th Circuit's opinion debunks the Justice Department's claims that marijuana has no medical usefulness -- citing a large body of medical research to the contrary," said Daniel N. Abrahamson, Director of Legal Affairs at the Drug Policy Alliance.

<a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/foodfuelfiberfarmace uticals/message/245" target="_blank">It's those Jewish Bastards Out for Legalizing!</a>
Richard M. Nixon



<a href="http://www.dimensional.com/~randl/mccart.htm" target="_blank">Witc h Hunts, Pledges, and Blacklists</a>

The war on drugs has always served a political agenda. During the Red Scare in the early 1950s, Sen. Joseph McCarthy blamed Red China for peddling heroin to weaken the moral fiber of the United States and the Free World.

Ironically, it appears that McCarthy himself developed a nasty little addiction to morphine while leading the anticommunist crusade. But his dope wasn't coming from Maoist China. According to Ladies Home Journal, that bastion of left-wing political correctness, McCarthy was getting his daily morphine script from Harry Anslinger, longtime head of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Narcotics.

<a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/foodfuelfiberfarmace uticals/message/251" target="_blank">Ansl inger & Walters: Fiction to Legislation</a>
<a href="http://www.yahooka.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=g et_topic&f=10&t=0032 65" target="_blank">Bush it Rumcheney Cocktail:Fascist Nationalism and MKULTRA</a>
<a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/foodfuelfiberfarmace uticals/message/248" target="_blank">Bush Escalates Ganjawar on Doctors</a>
<a href="http://www.nationalreview.c om/buckley/buckley061003.asp" target="_blank">Reef er Madness: Our Current Prohibition by William F. Buckley Jr.</a>

Waldo Narkczar


"Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger."
Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, Nazi Air Force (Luftwaffe) commander, the Nuremberg Trials

<a href="http://www.nasen.org/sandiego/aidswar5.htm" target="_blank">In Harm's Way</a>
--Lisa Moore analyzes harm reduction and the War on Drugs in communities of color

<a href="http://www.i-sig.com/~rkba/drugkids.htm" target="_blank">Kids , Drugs, Guns and Psychopolitics</a>
Dr. Julian Whitaker, on possible connection between Prozac and violence.

"Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith . . . we need believing people."
Adolf Hitler, April 26, 1933, from a speech made during negotiations leading to the Nazi Vatican Concordant of 1933

<a href="http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/history/murd3.htm" target="_blank">Hemp Around Their Necks From The Murderers</a>
THE STORY OF THE NARCOTIC GANGS
By HARRY J. ANSLINGER



<a href="http://forums.lacba.org/lalawyer/review.cfm?ID=59" target="_blank">Will iam J. Bennett, John J. DiIulio, Jr., and John P. Walters</a>
The book <a href="http://www.ncpa.org/hotlines/juvcrm/jj4new/g1.html" target="_blank">Body Count</a>: Moral Poverty Kids Who Kill . . . and How to Win America's War Against Crime and Drugs



<a href="http://loper.org/~george/archives/2001/Feb/76.html" target="_blank">Arch ives - John J. DiIulio, Jr. and His Change of Heart</a>
From his perch as the director of the new White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, which he believes will help uplift many needy people but particularly the most troubled teenagers, John J. Dilulio Jr. conceded today that he wished he had never become the 1990's intellectual pillar for putting violent juveniles in prison and condemning them as 'superpredators.'

Conditions of Confinement
Human Rights Watch has documented abominable conditions for children in detention in countries around the world. In the United States (Colorado, Georgia, Louisiana, and Maryland), Pakistan, Jamaica, among other countries, children are subjected to excessive force, inadequate medical and mental health care, and are provided with little or no education. Often, these children are placed in the facilities along side adults, exposing them to physical and sexual abuse.

<a href="http://www.hrw.org" target="_blank">Huma n Rights Watch</a>
<a href="http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/prison" target="_blank">Male Rape in US Prisons</a>
<a href="http://www.hrw.org/children" target="_blank">Chil drens rights</a>
<a href="http://www.hrw.org/children/us.htm" target="_blank">Chil dren in the US</a>
<a href="http://www.hrw.org/children/street.htm" target="_blank">Stre et Children</a>
<a href="http://www.hrw.org/children/justice.htm" target="_blank">Juve nile Justice</a>
<a href="http://www.hrw.org/children/labor.htm" target="_blank">Chil d Labor</a>



<a href="http://www.hrw.org/editorials/1999/crd-1199-wp.htm" target="_blank">Clos e to Home: Juveniles in Adult Jails</a> Op-Ed by Michael Bochenek The Washington Post

<a href="http://www.crxs.com" target="_blank">Corr ectional Systems, Inc. (CSI)</a> is a publicly-traded corporation that contracts with governmental agencies to operate correctional projects.

<a href="http://www.dfwinfo.com/hs/juvdetention/index.html" target="_blank">Juve nile Detention Study</a>
<a href="http://www.juvenilenet.org" target="_blank">Juve nile Info Network</a>
<a href="http://www.juvenilenet.org/jjtap/mentalhealth/view.html" target="_blank">Ment al Health Issues and Juvenile Justice</a>
<a href="http://theboojum.com/childrens_rights" target="_blank">The Benefits of Treating Kids Like People</a>
<a href="http://www.cs.utk.edu/~bartley/saInfoPage.html" target="_blank">Sexu al Assault Information Page</a>  
<a href="http://www.motherjones.com/prisons" target="_blank">The Real Price of Prisons</a>
<a href="http://www.motherjones.com/magazine/MJ01/dubya.html" target="_blank">Duby a and Me: We've Got No Idea</a>

<a href="http://cannabisnews.com/news/list/drug_testing.shtml" target="_blank">Piss tasters</a>
<a href="http://boards.marihemp.com/boards/culture/media/4/4356.gif" target="_blank">http ://boards.marihemp.com/boards/culture/media/4/4356.gif</A>

<a href="http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/7027/patrobertson.html" target="_blank">The Anti-Pat Robertson/Christian Coalition Site</a>

''I don't like our kids to get in contact with drug dealers and I believe that, well . . . let them have an opportunity to raise two or three marijuana plants and smoke them. It's better than to try to buy it on the streets.''
<a href="http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v03/n1014/a02.html" target="_blank">Petr Mares, Deputy Prime Minister of the Czech Republic...</a>

PETER LEWIS - FORMER CEO OF PROGRESSIVE, AN INSURANCE COMPANY
[Time Magazine, Nov 4, 2002, in cover article: "The New Politics of Pot"]

"The absurdity of its illegality has been clear to me for some time. I learned about pot from my kids and realized it was a lot better than Scotch, and I loved the Scotch. Then I went to my doctor, and he said, 'I'm thrilled. You're drinking too much. You're much better off doing pot than drinking.'"

TOM HAYDEN - CALIFORNIA STATE SENATOR AND FATHER OF TWO CHILDREN
[Time Magazine, Dec 9, 1996, when asked "What do you tell children about smoking marijuana?"]

I didn't smoke much dope in the '60s. Pot sent me into giggling fits, and I feared the loss of control. My addiction was alcohol, which was approved by the same Establishment that was bent on criminalizing marijuana. My kids saw that, and they developed an acute sensitivity to hypocrisy. It took me many years to stop drinking and live without such addictions. When I did, that was a better lesson than any words I could have preached to them. But this experience hardly makes me a neo-Puritan supporter of the continuing war against marijuana users. It's despicable to criminalize and imprison thousands for marijuana possession, while the liquor and tobacco lobbies are destroying so many lives with advertising and campaign contributions. I told my kids that marijuana in moderation for medicinal, ceremonial and recreational use is defensible, especially in comparison with alcohol and tobacco. I also warned them that marijuana has never improved anyone's ability to do homework or hit a curve ball. It infuriates me that my kids, like millions of their generation, are defined as criminals by a President who smoked but did not inhale.

RICHARD EVANS - BOARD MEMBER OF NORML
[Time Magazine, Dec 9, 1996, when asked "What do you tell children about smoking marijuana?"]

My son Jonathan is a bright, sociable and curious 13-year-old.
Here's what I have told him about drugs:
1. Don't do drugs. Kids don't drive cars, they don't sign contracts, and they don't do drugs.
2. Now that that's clear, be aware that obeying Rule No. I is impossible because "drugs" are everywhere. Even chocolate and soft drinks contain caffeine.
3. You will someday be invited to smoke marijuana. I want you to decline. However, if you try it, I want you to remember that the harm of any drug is only partly due to the drug itself. More important are the physical, social and psychological circumstances.
4. In the case of marijuana, the greatest harm comes from being arrested.
5. Don't believe much of what they tell you in school about drugs. For example, don't buy into the notion that drug "abuse" is the same as drug "use." Remember, one means harm, and the other doesn't. Know also that a lot of people use drugs-both legal and illegal-without any apparent harm to themselves or anyone else.

STEPHEN GASKIN - CO-FOUNDER OF THE FARM
[Excerpted from Gaskin's book, Cannabis Spirituality, Nov 1996]

It is very important for children to achieve a work ethic before starting a relationship with grass. It seems to me that grass is a lovely icing on the cake of life but that it is not to be substituted for the cake... kids don't need any extraneous things standing between them and learning their life tools. It's such a heavy emotional time for them, with their hormones coming in. It's hard for them to be more amplified than they already are... However, there's a ceremonial place when they are old enough, when a teenager takes up as much space as a grownup, eats as much food as a grownup and works as much as a grownup.

JOHN WATERS - FILMMAKER

"Family" this and "family" that. If I had a family I'd be furious that moral busybodies are taking the perfectly good word family and using it as a code for censorship the same way "states' rights" was used to discuss racism in the mid-sixties.

"Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way around, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise."
From Benito Mussolini contributing to the "London Sunday Express," December 8, 1935

__________________

DdC

<a href="http://www.angelfire.com/co/JeffersonBible" target="_blank">The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth</a>
Extracted Textually from the Gospels
Compiled by Thomas Jefferson
Edited by Eyler Robert Coates, Sr.

. . . Thomas Jefferson believed that the ethical system of Jesus was the finest the world has ever seen. In compiling what has come to be called "The Jefferson Bible," he sought to separate those ethical teachings from the religious dogma and other supernatural elements that are intermixed in the account provided by the four Gospels. He presented these teachings, along with the essential events of the life of Jesus, in one continuous narrative.

"I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature."
-- Thomas Jefferson

<a href="http://pub3.ezboard.com/fendingcannabisprohi bitionstuff.showMess age?topicID=83.topic " target="_blank">Amer ica was NOT founded on Christianity!</a>

Of Jesus] Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the the most lovely benevolence, and others, again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being. I separate, therefore, the dross; restore to him the former and leave the latter to the stupidity of some, the roguery of others of his disciples. Of this band of dupes and imposters, Paul was the great Coryphaeus, and first corruptor of the doctrines of Jesus.
Jefferson Letter to W. Short, 1820.

But the greatest of all reformers of the depraved religion of his country was Jesus of Nazareth. Abstracting what is really his from the rubbish in which it is buried, easily distinguished by its lustre from the dross of his biographers, as is separable from that as diamonds from a dunghill, we have the outlines of a system of the most sublime morality of man ... The establishment of the innocent and genuine character of this benevolent morality, and the rescuing it from the imputation of imposture, which has resulted from artificial systems invented by ultra-Christian sects (*)... is most desirable.

(*) Jeffersons footnote: "The imaculate conception of Jesus, his deification, the creation of the world by him, his miraculous powers, his resurrection and visible ascension, his corporeal presence in the Eucharist, the Trinity, original sin, atonement, regeneration, election, orders of hierarchy, etc. -TJ"
Jefferson Letter to W. Short Oct 31, 1819

The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. Thomas Jefferson, 1823

The United States is in no way founded upon the Christian religion
-- George Washington & John Adams, in a diplomatic message to Malta.

This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.
-- John Adams, in a letter to Thomas Jefferson.

I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to Heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.
--Thomas Jefferson

In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own. -- Thomas Jefferson, 1814

The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.
-- Thomas Jefferson, 1823

I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature. -- Thomas Jefferson

Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.... Do not be frightened from this inquiry from any fear of its consequences. If it ends in the belief that there is no God, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise...
-- Thomas Jefferson, in a 1787 letter to his nephew

The Bible is not my book, and Christianity is not my religion. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma. -- Abraham Lincoln

Neither the trappings of robes, nor temples of stone, nor a fixed liturgy, nor an extensive literature or history is required to meet the test of beliefs cognizable under the Constitution as religious. So far as our law is concerned, one person's religious beliefs held for one day are presumptively entitled to the same protection as the beliefs of millions which have been shared for thousands of years.
-- Judge Jack Weinstein, New York State, 1977

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences.
-- C. S. Lewis

Morality is always the product of terror; its chains and strait-waistcoats are fashioned by those who dare not trust others, because they dare not trust themselves, to walk in liberty.
-- Aldous Huxley

He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression: for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach unto himself.
-- Thomas Paine

Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.
-- Daniel Webster

The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. -- John Stuart Mill, "On Liberty", 1859

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
-- H.L. Mencken

<a href="http://www.yahooka.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=g et_topic&f=10&t=0032 17" target="_blank">Temp le Incense was Hashish!</a>
Did Jesus Inhale?

__________________

patriot

I watch everyday as the churches continue to believe in the government more than they do in the Lord. They forget the fact that cannabis is a natural element and is mentioned on the very first page of the Bible as a seed bearing herb that shall be used for mest.

I responded to a post awhile back that I will try to find regarding church and state and how the prohibition keeps them from being seperate.

Remember, Hitler went to church every Sunday. The Bush family does also.

__________________
A true patriot is always ready to stand up against his own government.

We can't be using plants that come from the Lord for beneficial purposes. Now hurry up, or we'll be late for church.

The bigger the lie, the more people will believe it.-Adolf Hitler

Legalizing marijuana won't grow our economy-Barack Hussein Obama 2009

DdC

Amen to that...

In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty, He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.
Thomas Jefferson, 1814

__________________