DdC

This data from a recent CNN poll.

Asking for more of what ails you by Pete Guither

• ..............White......Non-White
• Favor.........43%... .......36%
• Oppose......54%..... .....62%

Incredible? Perhaps.

And yet, not really.

For us, it’s hard to imagine that minorities would support the drug war. After all, we know that it’s the single most racist public policy since slavery. We’ve seen the figures of use versus arrest versus incarceration. We seen the numbers that South Africa under Apartheid incarcerated 851 black males per 100,000 population while we incarcerate 4,919 black males per 100,000 population.

We’ve seen how Hispanics are targeted by law enforcement in the drug war, including the incredible statistic in the Chicago area that 73% of Hispanics whose cars were searched because a dog sniff “detected” drugs actually had no drugs (the result of the dog’s handler believing they had to be there).

With all of this, there can be a natural tendency for people in drug policy reform to throw up their hands in exasperation at the lack of interest in drug policy reform in many minority communities.

However, we know these things because we study them. The average person does not (at least not until we do a better job of telling them). The average person knows what the government has told them, or what their church has told them, or what has been passed down as “common knowledge.”

One of the few “successes” (and I’m speaking ironically here) of the drug war has been to convince people that the negative effects of prohibition are actually the negative effects of drugs.

People see violence on the street and say “that’s because of drugs” when, in fact, it’s because of the drug war. And so they call for more enforcement even though (as we know) that won’t help the problem but rather make it worse.

And, quite frankly, this issue is much more visible out on the streets in poor/minority neighborhoods than in affluent neighborhoods where the drug trafficking takes place discretely in the country club locker room.

I know. I live in one of those poor/minority neighborhoods. I talked to a neighbor once who told me “I think the next door neighbors are selling pot. I hope the police come and bust them and take away their kids.” I was flabbergasted. But she saw the problem in the community as drugs, rather than as the by-product of the drug war.

This, in my mind, is what drives the fact that minorities lag behind in understanding the need for drug policy reform.

The fact is that we still have not done a good enough job of educating the public regarding the damage done by the drug war. Because of that, we often end up with the strangely incongruous image of a mostly white population of drug policy reformers carrying the banner for ending the most racist policy since slavery.

Thank you Miss Rosa
* The Racist Ganjawar
* Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and MMJ Prohibition

PREJUDICE: MARIJUANA AND THE JIM CROW LAWS
The Emperor Wears No Cloths by Jack Herer
* Vicious Insolence: Between 1884 and 1900, 3,500 documented deaths of black Americans were caused by lynchings; between 1900 and 1917, more than 1,100 were recorded. The real figures were undoubtedly higher. It is estimated that one-third of these lynchings were for insolence, which might be anything from looking (or being accused of looking)at a white woman twice, to stepping on a white man's shadow, even to looking a white man directly in the eye for more than three seconds, not going directly to the back of the trolley, etc.

It was obvious to whites, marijuana caused Negro and Mexican viciousness or they wouldn't dare be insolent; etc

Hundreds of thousands of Negroes and Chicanos were sentenced from 10 days to 10 years mostly on local and state chain gangs for such silly crimes as we have just listed.

SLAVERY IN THE HEMP INDUSTRY James F. Hopkins
Without hemp, slavery might not have flourished in Kentucky, since other agricultural products of the state were not conducive to the extensive use of bondsmen. On the hemp farm and in the hemp factories the need for laborers was filled to a large extent by the use of Negro slaves, and it is a significant fact that the heaviest concentration of slavery was in the hemp producing area.

Xil

i guess i always assumed favor for legalization was higher in minority communities.

thanks for the well thought out explanation, i think you may be right.

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DdC

That was Pete's thoughts ...
I''m just passin it on.

I see it more like...
Reforming bogus laws is like voting lesser evils.
You still end up with bogus laws and evil.

Selling drugs is the best job in the Ghetto by DdC

Xil

ah gotcha. with all the links you post to his website i actually thought you were pete guither

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DdC

We definitely need more "professors" writing outside of the think tank box of hypotheticalists. Seems like a nice guy taking it serious. Usually has good info and comments. I gahter he believes in reform and going through the system. I gave up on that in 1972, and see clearly its all about the money stupids. Incrementally Con Promising with state by state, inch by inch. Temporary and arbitrarily enforced oasis' by initiatives is shelter in a storm. There is no fault in surviving. Or setting goals in Libertarian and Green Utopia's. But until the mad slashers stop cutting the people. The band aids are the most economically and humane ways of dealing with it. That's from old geezers living History books. It's also clear that they who divert and deny without substantiation are probably making money on it, and us not knowing things.

Those who can't accept the fact that the government is controlled by the lobbyist' that have a revolving door between the Courts, Congress and Corporations will spin their wheels another hundred years. On purpose in many cases. Just blaming the government is like scapegoating tobacco. It leaves the corporate criminals and deadly "cigarette" chemical substances out of the picture. Then compare it to Ganja without chemical adulterations. False science, like religion mythology making laws for real people. Ludicrous. To continue stealing from the workers and bankrupting the country to sell "treatments". No cures or prevention. Treating police actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, Colombia and the Ganjawar. Perpetuating is profit. Peace is for hippies. No money selling war utensils without wars. Most of the History in school books reads like pamphlets for the tourists. It's not History. On purpose.

* The 'Virtues' of Ganja
* The Politics of Pot

Racism is a tool that is learned and therefore taught. Most out of blind ignorance. Those behind the ignorance making profits used it to segregate a portion of the population, the same as they use the machines who replaced them. Lincoln only had powers during war and Congress did what Congress still does, nothing much. Power hungry egomaniacs and the only reason for a President was to balance their powers somewhat. Requiring a super majority to over ride a veto. The Industrial revolution made it cheaper than accommodating the basics for slaves. Its always about cheap labor and resources. All this think tank projection is basically no more than Miss Cleo Psychics. As sir Hilary says, there's just too much money in it to legalize. Dysfunction Junction. It's not the bells and whistles doing it, it's the man behind the curtain...



I also don't buy the people just don't know crap. They know and they choose to turn a blind eye for various reasons, predominately money. How many church ladies would go against their peers just for reality? Or political preachers or the DA's Gone Wild special rules for the Ganjawar. Just in case there is a chance you may be found innocent. Better to cop a please and pay the for profit and faith based rehabs to emancipate you in the name of Jesus and sobriety... and weekly random pisstastes. Ankle bracelets, Probation fees, lawyers pleading you guilty and many times the private prison conglomerate. Like a shopping mall for cheap labor to selling cheap crap from foreign NAFTA/GATT outsourcing.

* The Counterculture Colonel
* Bud Beats Mérdnol for Pain

Construction building cages since no schools are being built. Guards and Cop-shops. Transportation from mini-tanks to trucks and vans and buses. All stuck in traffic giving more profits to Exxon and Chevron. Its the money and compromising with the laws of physics is insanity. In the case of cannabis its pseudo-reality like living in the bible literally. Ganja is or it is not. It has physical properties that do certain things the same as any other plant. This is probably the most studied plant of all time and there is no idiot that couldn't figure it out. Since I doubt if there are that many idiots I must take an educated guess that people know and are protecting their own investments and families income.



Blacks were given incentives to leave the south by the thousands to build the Golden Gate and Levies and Skyscrapers. Thousands were rounded up for chain gangs the same as prison industries telemarketing with cons today. Then after construction came the projects and welfare. A band aid less expensive to tax payers than being homeless and stealing ending up in $35k/yr prison cells. Minimum wages pay less tax than someone sitting in prison earns. Incentives to fill the cages. Now we cage 2.2 million and we import.

Slavery was cheap labor, the Ganjawar is a product. I buy fair trade that should cost less. Giving tax breaks to do more humane practices is what my America is about. Not giving tax breaks to multi-national corporations with no allegiance and vast control over Constitutional enforcement. All the money you make will never buy back your soul or country.

Al Capone and Watergate were red herrings to divert the countries attention from the Fascist acts of eliminating competition. Booze/Ethanol or Ganja//Hemp.

Cover-Ups, Prevarications, Subversions & Sabotage
``These documents show the lengths to which the government was trying to cover up the truth,'' said the scientist's son, Eric Olson, who gave them to the Mercury News. ``For 22 years there was a coverup. And then, under the guise of revealing everything, there was a new coverup.'' Who covered up? Rumsfeld and Cheney. MKULTRA.

Corporations That Own Our Media
In the process, the usual democratic expectation for the media -- diversity of ownership and ideas -- has disappeared as the goal of official policy and, worse, as a daily experience of a generation of American readers and viewers.

* The Corporate Muzzle
* Trolls of Fascism

Bad dog

you guys are missing the point. there are a hundred good reasons for drugs to be illegal.
driving without a seat belt is illegal. not stopping at a stop sign is illegal.

the question here is only about decriminilization.

i don't care if it's illegal, I just don't think that locking people up for using drugs is reasonable. not just mj but all drugs.

no one has the right to tell an adult what he can and cannot do with his own body.

I wouldn't like to see drugs legal. it would encourage all sorts of idiots to use them that have no place using them.

drugs should simply become medicines that the doctor can prescribe freely like anti biotics.

recreational use can be handled in special entertainment areas allowed to sell drugs.

even in holland the use and possession of cannabis is illegal. the courts simply refuse to punish anyone for personal use. therefor the police don't bother arresting anyone for it either. but the law is there and cannabis is illegal. society will only legalise it when it legalises prostitution, gambling and suicide.

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this is where i live

farmergiles

This does leave unresolved issues. The coffee shops are decriminalised but they have no legal source of weed so must buy it from criminals.
If it was legalised this would not be the case.

I think their are clauses in the rules for membership of the UN which mean Holland cannot just legalise though?

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Cultivate a stoic calmness

Bad dog

I am sure you agree that it must be restricted at least to the extent of alcohol.
I wouldn't want to see high school kids toking in the playground in lunchbreak.
They should at least wait until they finish school.

Legalization would also mean taxation and restriction. I guess.

What we really need to fight against is the criminalization of it. Doesn't need to be legal, just needs to be a misdemeanor.

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this is where i live

stoneric

Decriminalization only solves half the problem. The source doesn't change.

Xil

weed is the only thing that came me from blowing a fucking gasket in high school, so i'd be a hypocrite if i said they shouldnt smoke it

and wtf ind of high school has a playground?


legalize the herb, sell it to anyone whose 18, and let them give it to the younger people (like we do with alcohol and cigarettes...but fuck cigarettes)

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SmokeaJoint

... is this really real?

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AMERICA: LAND OF THE FREE!
Some restrictions may apply. Void where prohibited

~1~

Wait, what?

I live right next to Santa Fe Springs, probably the highest concentration of dispensaries in the state and it has done something pretty interesting here.

You can't find Mexican brick to save your life here, shit weed trucked up on the backs of mojados is a thing of the past in SoCal for the most part. Local growers supply local dispensaries who sell to local patients, keeping the money in the community. Dirt weed goes to other states where the illicit drug trade flourishes because there is a market, given the chance to go above board and become legitimate, the need to buy inferior product would vanish and then you get what we have here, local growers supplying local dispensaries for local patients thus keeping the money in the community.

There hasn't been an increase in crime, there hasn't been an influx of harder drugs, there aren't gang wars in the street over turf to sell dope on.

There has been an increase in business among our restaurant trade, there have been vacancies filled in the industrial areas which has lured other non-related business back into the neighborhood (face it, no one wants to be the only one on the block) and it has also resulted in things like street and city improvements because they are a business and do pay taxes to the city, which in turn employs folks to clean shit up.

Fuckin' amazing how it works out so well, although I'm sure most of you have never even heard of Santa Fe Springs.

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stoneric

And I don't live right next to Santa Fe Springs. Pot is still the backbone of the illicit drug trade.

SmokeaJoint

Only because Prohibition made it that way.

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AMERICA: LAND OF THE FREE!
Some restrictions may apply. Void where prohibited

~1~

Prohibition is the back bone of the illicit drug trade.


Fighting the never ending drug war for profit is the skull.


Fear and propaganda are the heart...


This is a free market economy supposedly, as long as you are supporting the military industrial complex or the prison industrial complex or the medical industrial complex, buck that system though and there will be fuck to pay.


Support your pro-medijuana candidates and vote out ignorance. The shit can work out fine with no drama if you let it. We grow, we evolve and eventually we move past the ignorance but only because some of us were just too damned stubborn to not find out the truth.

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stoneric

You're preaching to the choir.

My original point was decriminalization doesn't change the fact that the source remains illegal. I'm arguing against decriminalization being better than legalization. I KNOW prohibition is the root of the problem.

DdC

Prohibition enables it to happen. If prohibition ever stopped anything people wanted its news to me. Maybe short term despots deterrents were so drastic. Not much sicker than caging sick people for relieving what ails them. Or things most realize are not worthy of doing in which case what's the point of the law except to profit. The only reason for the Ganjawar is profit maintaining it and profit keeping safer cleaner alternatives out of the free trade market as a schedule#1 narcotic... burlap. Gets you high when you wear it. Shssssh, the cops don';t know about it yet. Only kidding.

The illicit drug trade sells to people who want to buy it. The Growers and Delivery system are Public Servants who are welcomed by the customers. Without Madison Ave. advertising, flip charts, demographics, visual aids, white boards or even a store. When "A" demonizes "B" and "B" is serving the same needs as "A". Then its a sure bet "A" may be exaggerating at best. In the Ganjawar its flat out legal lies.

Seems that would be the part for assholes.

Man, they have no hearts.

Supposedly for everyday staples, more or less. There is so much adulteration and bastardization and every science department is headed and controlled by a political appointee. So Rumsfeld can fast track aspartame or marinol. While the oldest medicine hasn't been tested by the FDA because it hasn't been through the HHS obstacle coarse, since 1999. All after Nixon arbitrarily disregarded his own Commission and because he didn't like Jewish Psychiatrists and needed a way to control the "negroes". He just lumped RxGanja and Hemp into the mix after the Marihuana Tax Act was over turned in 1969 by Timothy Leary. So between 69 and 72 fast tracked closed door CSA was hatched and signed. Not much in the news except non stop headlines of the Watergate Hotel's 2 bit break in. Maybe the reason I wasn't ever arrested, 4 different times for various amounts, including a pound in 71 and 72.

So thousands of years of physical history including the medicinal use deemed irrelevant over the drunken whim lies of a wing nut grudge holding hippie hating GOPervert. You can't compromise on reality and expect anything but insanity. We can pretend but reforming prohibition is like voting the lesser evil. It's a war and no one can fault anyone for taking cover behind state initiatives, We've been doing it since 1993 and then in 96 with prop 215. The Compassionate use act, NOT the mmj act. For any reason with or without a card. As a hospice home health aid for 20 years in Santa Cruz. I've never had a problem cops, even before the initiatives. Most horrendous headlines come to political advocates or dealers from a house. At least in my case the cops and corner and paramedics have all been cooperative and non threatening. I've been ask for remaining narcotics in some cases, but not the pot. Especially if a doctor and the families were involved. That may not be the case for everyone or everyplace.

This is capitalism and it works fine as long as everybody pays their fair share. When the top 2% don't pay and earn as much as the bottom 40%, while tearing up the infrastructure and sending the jobs to India and Thailand. Its not. When corporate heads can successfully demonize booze, the end result after repeal was farmers could no longer distill their own ethanol. Had nothing to do with drinking. The Temperance League didn't seek prohibition. Lincoln either. They sought Temperance. Rockefeller and Hearst propaganda kept the people focused on Al Capone while diesel and gasoline replaced homegrown "fill er up with ethyl". Since it worked so well they used it to deter Hemp and RX Ganja and Prohibit Pot until the 69 Supreme Court said it was against Leary's 5th amendment rights.

At the same time when the decoracator was improved to mass produce the hemp harvest without the intense labor and expense. Most have heard of the Pop Mech ad about the New Billion Dollar Crop. That is Fascism, this is still Fascism and until that is dealt with we will be side stepped, red herringed, bogeymanned and hobgoblined down the dead end street. Turn around and get directions to sit and wait and then forgetaboutit. Try again, get put on hold while stupid voices try to sell you something while you wait. Shuck and jive and catch 22's aren't a free trade market. 32 countries growing hemp including the drug worrier pope. Not US farmers. Meat, Dairy and Poultry fear the omega 3,6 and 9 efa's and 26% protein and more cellulose than trees and no poisons like the 90 million pounds used on cotton. Running off aborting op rescue bible belt babies. Butting into other women's right to choose. Like they do our right to choose Ganja.

We have no choice or much say against these systems except through our reps in Congress. So thats moot. I have one of the most rational Congress persons with Sam Farr, and he can't stop the wars or machines. We have the power of consumption. We can control the local city councils to keep polluters and wallmart sweatshops out of our towns. We can refuse to buy their products. Especially Non Fair Trade crap. Or chinese plastic from opecer crude oil crap. We can gather and show our solidarity and solicit other like minded and oppressed. Oppression is oppression. The details don't actually matter or shouldn't. The racism and classism stigmatizing Ganja users should not be accepted as appropriate behavior. Oh its just a doper is anti American crap. The money interest is like any product or celebrity. Michael Phelps got booted from Klogogg and the publicity temporarily lowered their sales 11 points. We have to get aggressive every chance we get. Ballgames expose tee shirts with messages. One on ones have changed a lot in the past 40 years. But we have to keep it real.

Politics will not work with 'special" rules pertaining only to the Ganjawar. 404 gag rules preventing a medical defense, mandatory minimum sentencing deterring jury trials, meaning 95% take plea bargains. That means expensive rehabs where Califono's can get rich. With that comes piss taste where drug czars Turner and Dupont got lots of coinage. Still do and the wing nuts are trying to mandate in some backwards states. So no its not the government because we have no government. We have a board of directors that take two trillion in bail outs and protest medicare. They create fictional scenarios and take another two trillion dollars for Iraq and Afghan and then protest planned parenthood as the culprits running up the debts. Spent 1 trillion dollars on the Ganjawar and still funding it in the multi tens of billions each year. 98% of the "marihuana" eradications are wild unkept non-psychoactive ditchweed pheasant habitat burlap. Keeping the kidlets saved from narcotic canvas.

Good start would be to stop dragging 72 pounds of racist baggage using the "M" word. It has no reason for use. The latin for Rx is cannabis. Sativa or Indica or Hemp. Slang is slang from pot to muggles and that is culture and no problem. But the "M" word is a buzzword for manipulation the same as lies means to an end. Its not just slang. It's baggage is filled with thoughts of lilly white daughters in the SW smoking the heathen devil weed and becoming the Hearst fictional character "Mary Jane". With a similar background of a Tijuana donkey girl. Servicing poncho and his men. All because they couldn't resist and their inhibitions required prohibitions. So its a tool of the Fascists the same as Black balling Liberals in the Opium junkie Joe McCarthy Ron Rayguns witch hunts against the "Red Menace". Same fascism different methods and time. That is why we have prohibition, and how we rid ourselves of the Ganjawar. We have to recognize the fascism behind it. Not just the noise but the silence too.

Lipstick on a Pig...

Pancho Villa's Love Life and Offspring

After just a brief courtship, Pancho Villa married Maria Luz Corral. He convinced the priest that neither one would really have the time for his confession before the marriage. This relationship ended in 1921.

Juana Torres was also married to Pancho at some point. Juana's love faded when Pancho Villa put Juana's mother and sister in prison for stealing his money.

Ganja: A term of Sanskrit origin for cannabis.

A Few Buzzwords

The Obama Admin's Anti-Marijuana Manifesto
* Multiple DEA Raids Target Marijuana in Hawaii
* Obama: Drug Legalization is "An Entirely Legitimate Topic for Debate"
* Hil and Gil on the Drug War

Al Capone and Watergate were red herrings to divert the countries attention from the Fascist acts of eliminating competition. Booze/Ethanol or Ganja//Hemp.