In Arkansas, organizations set up to assist business people and farmers in navigating and succeeding in the market place have joined forces to hobble small businesses and farmers by choosing to erect barriers to the marketplace.
Arkansans will be able to vote on two initiatives regarding medical cannabis on this year’s ballot in Arkansas.
Strange as it may seem, and contradicting the stated mission of these private membership organizations, the Arkansas Farm Bureau and the Arkansas Chamber of Commerce have joined forces to block our nation’s most lucrative cash crop, cannabis, from entering the marketplace in that state.
Ostensibly, these two organizations, which have previously been faithful advocates for farmers and small businessmen, would be expected to encourage and lionize the entry of cannabis as a legal product into the Arkansas commerce marketplace, given these groups’ historical support of the manufacturers and sellers all products, irrespective of how dangerous they may be, including the dangerous and addictive products sold by the tobacco and liquor industries.
In the case of the product cannabis, these organizations would be expected to be on the forefront of lobbying for legal cannabis in Arkansas because of the remarkable success for businessmen, farmers and taxing authorities that legal cannabis has been in the states where it is legal, Oregon, Colorado and Washington.
In OR, the state received $14.9 million in tax benefits from the sale of $60 million worth of legal cannabis in it’s first year of sales. And in CO, legal cannabis sales have brought in over $1 billion in sales since 2014 providing tax revenues of $135 million to the cash strapped state in 2015 alone, $35 million of which is targeted by law to fund Colorado’s schools.
The Arkansas Farm Bureau Federation’s Stanley Hill, vice president of public affairs and government relations, said the potential recognition of the medical benefits of cannabis could “be detrimental to the entire economy of the state in our opinion.”
Rather than supporting the creation of a multi-million dollar market place for legal medical cannabis in Arkansas, the Chamber and Farm Bureau have called for simply ignoring the lucrative successes in CO, OR and WA and slamming the door shut for Arkansan businesses and farmers.
The Drug Enforcement Administration has determined again that cannabis has “no currently accepted medical use and (has) a high potential for abuse.”
The federal agency that is under the direction of the office of the president has determined that cannabis is among the “most dangerous drugs” and threatens users with “potentially severe psychological or physical dependence.”
The DEA confirmed their belief that cannabis is as great a danger to the public as heroin,
lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (ecstasy), methaqualone, and peyote.
The DEA said in a letter that their decision was “based on whether marijuana, as determined by the FDA, is a safe and effective medicine,” he said, “and it’s not.” The letter went on to say that it “would be a wonderful and welcome development” if it could be scientifically proven that cannabis is an effective medicine, “but we insist that CBD research, or any research, be sound, scientific, and rigorous before a product can be authorized for medical use.”
President Obama has stated that he wants the decision to re-schedule cannabis to be driven by science rather than ideology, but critics point to the fact that the DEA’s own aggressive scheduling of cannabis itself stifles research into the medically important substance.
The regulatory dilemma that exists; where cannabis is deemed too dangerous to research by regulators and deemed not scientifically studied enough to be medicine by law enforcers, has led to a stalemate that has thwarted the advancement of science to the peril and ill health of sick patients.
Forty-two states have passed laws allowing their citizens to use medical cannabis.
Scientists in New Zealand were amazed to find out that the common sense real-life truism that is shared by millions of human beings, that drunk humans are irrationally combative and respond to situations by lashing out with unconsidered aggressive actions, is more than simple experiential conjecture and is in fact scientifically demonstrable.
Study subjects who were plied with liquor were given a battery of tests to determine their level of aggressiveness. The scientists discovered the drunk participants’ actions were characterized by observable ill-considered and uncontrolled aggressive asshole-ness.
Additionally, and importantly, the doctors found that when these same study participants were given the same battery of tests when they were not pie-eyed, the subjects refrained from aggressive attacking and became more cooperative and welcoming, more thoughtful and pleasant.
A control group of participants who did not use alcohol did not exhibit the unreasoned attacking aggressive attitudes that the booze-infused participants displayed, suggesting that it was the alcohol consumption itself that caused the unhelpful and disturbing aggressive behaviors.
Interestingly, and providing a measure of hope for our alcohol addled society, another group of participants were given cannabis before they were tested and the researchers reported that cannabis users responded in a more cooperative and peaceable way. Further, the scientists discovered that when the cannabis using group performed the battery of tests while they were not high, they responded less cooperatively and were less accommodating, suggesting that using cannabis makes one more non-aggressive, amiable and nonbelligerent.
The scientists who conducted the study reported their findings succinctly:
“It is concluded that alcohol facilitates feelings of aggression whereas cannabis diminished aggressive feelings.”
The study’s findings could mark a watershed moment in America, a country that spends billions every year encouraging, glorifying, and mythologizing both alcohol use and uncontrolled aggression, by pointing to a pathway through which citizens can move beyond booze fueled violence – the pathway, cannabis use.
“Herb is the healing of a nation, alcohol is the destruction.”
Bob Marley
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In a medical study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) researchers reported finding troubling evidence that money permanently alters money-users’ brains causing cash addicts to value money over most if not all things.
The study found that when researchers brought up the idea of getting more money to cash addicts, their brains responded by producing the natural stimulant dopamine.
The study found that the earlier one is indoctrinated into the world where cash is valued over all else; more than knowledge, personal safety, health and family, cash addicts come to believe that money is the single most important motivational factor, severing these poor souls from their concerns for our human brethren and even their concerns about the planet that we all inhabit.
Luckily, the doctors who performed the study found that participants in the study who use cannabis were able to control their blind subservience to dollars and displayed less of an all consuming drive for wealth. In fact, researchers found that the longer participants in the study have used cannabis, the less likely their thoughts and actions will be dominated by the motivation to acquire more and more money at the sacrifice of every other human desire.
One of the research associates who helped author the study, #MaryHeitzeg, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan, told the popular journal Live Science, that the cash addled brains of money addicts lose the capacity of finding pleasure and delight in life’s simple and often free pursuits, such as watching a sunset, sitting quietly with a loved one or playing with puppies, unless there is some cost or price related to the activity. Heitzeg advised the magazine that, to cannabis users, “there is not as much pleasure” evident when they are asked to cravenly consider enriching themselves over all other pursuits.
Heitzeg, herself an apparent cash addict, seemed to not be able to understand how or why cannabis users can find pleasure in thoughts and actions that do not revolve around acquiring more money. In her interview Heitzeg revealed to Live Science, that, in her cash-addicted way of thinking, getting more cash is “something that would naturally give somebody pleasure.”
The report comes on the heels of several recent studies that found more and more amazing medical qualities inherent in cannabis; that the substance dissolves plaque on Alzheimers patients’ brains, that the substance quiets seizures in young children with epilepsy and that Medicare drug costs are lower in states that have legalized the substance for use by adults, leaving many to consider that, although blindly demonized by health professionals for eight decades, cannabis may in fact be a true panacea, unlike any substance that is currently pushed by profit seeking pharmaceutical corporations – and surely more beneficial to humankind than money.
The chief of police in Bennington Vermont, Paul Doucette, is doing anti-cannabis prohibitionists a disservice after returning from a cannabis fact finding mission in the tolerant and compassionate state of Colorado.
Doucette’s recent anti-cannabis pronouncements are so off-base he threatens the prohibitionist talking-points playbook by relating nonsense regarding legalized cannabis that is so false that it inhabits a bizzaro world that is unmoored from extant reality – not to suggest that anti-cannabis warriors have ever really cared about extant reality.
paul doucette, propagandist
As legislators begin discussion of several bills before the statehouse in Vermont regarding cannabis legalization, Doucette, speaking to TV News WRGB Albany, New York, advised that he counsels against cannabis legalization because;
“To now legalize another mind altering substance, and task us with monitoring that, monitoring the sales, the cultivation and all the things that go along with it, you’re really tasking the police department in Bennington that’s already overburdened with issues we’re seeing.”
We can take from the statement that while the chief may be a good soldier in the nation’s war on cannabis, he falls short when it comes to finding facts.
In Colorado, as in Washington, Alaska and Oregon, states where adults are allowed to consume cannabis legally for recreational purposes, no local police department is “tasked” with overseeing cannabis cultivation, cannabis safety monitoring, cannabis sales or cannabis taxation.
While we are certain that Chief Doucette is really good at spreading propaganda, we are equally certain he knows very well that – across America – no local police department is required by state or federal law to be “tasked” with any government obligation to monitor, regulate or oversee in any way whatsoever either the sale of tobacco or alcohol, and for Doucette to pretend to the TV reporters that legalizing cannabis for recreational purposes in Vermont will require any additional efforts from local police departments that will dangerously “over burden” their resources is a bold faced misrepresentation that is unmoored from the truth; i.e. a lie.
Doucette may, as is the case with many anti-cannabis drug warriors, be of the belief that citizens of Vermont who desire to end cannabis prohibition in the state are befuddled and dimwitted stoners who will simply accept more lying by law enforcement officials, just like during the bad old days of the 80 year war on cannabis in America. But, speaking disinformation instead of telling the truth is not in the job description of police chiefs and actually countervails concern for the public’s safety.
Doucette, it seems, keeps gum-flapping, spreading known falsehoods to media outlets while the citizens of Bennington and Vermont plead for politicians and law enforcement officials to end the wasteful and destructive war on cannabis.
We urge Chief Doucette to stop quaffing the truth altering anti-cannabis propaganda, go back to school in Colorado and this time learn something about legal cannabis and public safety, before the citizens of Bennington Vermont learn that their police chief is a left-over drug war zealot who needs to be replaced.
For years now, and important years they have been for the cause of freeing cannabis from the grip of propagandists and prohibitionist, Dr. Nora Volkow, the head of our government’s National Institute on Drug Addiction has been spending a whole lot of her time and energies demonizing the substance cannabis.
Strange, her compulsion to do this as we as a nation must console the families of sick and dying addicts every year who fall ill using our favorite addictive substances, the legal life killers tobacco and alcohol. Especially strange as Nora knows full well that cannabis is known by honest scientists to be as addictive as caffeine and acetaminophen (you know, Coke and Tylenol). And even stranger when America’s head of addiction research knows that there is absolutely no dispute that tobacco and alcohol are both extremely addictive and extremely deadly.
quack quacking
Even though it is true that many American citizens are now becoming aware that they have been lied to by our leaders about cannabis – both politicians as well as federally employed research scientists – as cannabis legalization is normalized across the US, Volkow has determined that there is value in continuing to misreport, propagandize, demonize and misrepresent what we know and what we are discovering about cannabis now that 80 years of the prohibition of the medical study of the substance has finally and thankfully come to an end.
We likely cannot expect biased and drug war bred politicos to be honest about cannabis, but doctors? Doctors with degrees and all that schooling, knowing that their statements matter to the citizens that they serve, doctors? One would hope that, having participated in selling a lie for over half a century, a doctor like Volkow would at least (for the sake of truth and the health of our citizens) be shamed into reporting facts as facts and make a personal vow to be objective, to consciously avoid being biased and deceptive.
Maybe a vow like this;
I swear by Apollo the physician, and Aesculapius the surgeon, likewise Hygeia and Panacea, and call all the gods and goddesses to witness, that I will observe and keep this underwritten oath, to the utmost of my power and judgment.
I will reverence my master who taught me the art. Equally with my parents, will I allow him things necessary for his support, and will consider his sons as brothers. I will teach them my art without reward or agreement; and I will impart all my acquirement, instructions, and whatever I know, to my master’s children, as to my own; and likewise to all my pupils, who shall bind and tie themselves by a professional oath, but to none else.
With regard to healing the sick, I will devise and order for them the best diet, according to my judgment and means; and I will take care that they suffer no hurt or damage.
Nor shall any man’s entreaty prevail upon me to administer poison to anyone; neither will I counsel any man to do so. Moreover, I will give no sort of medicine to any pregnant woman, with a view to destroy the child.
Further, I will comport myself and use my knowledge in a godly manner.
I will not cut for the stone, but will commit that affair entirely to the surgeons.
Whatsoever house I may enter, my visit shall be for the convenience and advantage of the patient; and I will willingly refrain from doing any injury or wrong from falsehood, and (in an especial manner) from acts of an amorous nature, whatever may be the rank of those who it may be my duty to cure, whether mistress or servant, bond or free.
Whatever, in the course of my practice, I may see or hear (even when not invited), whatever I may happen to obtain knowledge of, if it be not proper to repeat it, I will keep sacred and secret within my own breast.
If I faithfully observe this oath, may I thrive and prosper in my fortune and profession, and live in the estimation of posterity; or on breach thereof, may the reverse be my fate! – the Hippocratic Oath, sworn to by all who become degreed physicians
“I will willingly refrain from doing any injury or wrong from falsehood…”, one would hope.
Now, it’s s not because this high flying government research scientist is stupid that she clings to false framing and misrepresentation about cannabis while knowingly shilling for whatever interest she is shilling for, be it the pharmaceutical industry, the private prison industry, the booze industry or the tobacco industry – all leeches feeding off of our society. Volkow is always sleezilly speedy in her invocation of the “true dangers” of cannabis as she has reported in her own research work that suggests a connection between anxiety and depression in cannabis users. Volkow is sure to relate in the interviews she gives as head of a government health agency that she is so very concerned about cannabis users anxiety and depression.
Well, Volkow, having vowed to “impart all my acquirement, instructions, and whatever I know” in the service of advancing the health of the nation, must be damn happy that a new medical study has found that “cannabis use (is) not associated with increased risk for developing mood or anxiety disorders,” or any other mental illnesses. This is in a scientific study that took care to control for a multiplicity of factors, including socio-demographic characteristics, family history, environment and past and present psychiatric disorders. Volkow can now, charged as she is by her vow, to spread honest medical truth, stifle and desist with the fear mongering and advise the nation that her warnings about cannabis causing anxiety and depression were wrong and people should no longer fear that cannabis is an evil anxiety and depression causing weed.
But wait, as the nation’s news fakers report the story, there is scant mention of the years of inaccurate and wrong fear mongering, little reference to the study’s debunking of the prohibitionist anxiety and depression meme from the press and no mention whatsoever from the mouth of our nation’s top addiction doctor.
What the prohibitionist media and Volkow focused on instead was another of the study’s findings, that cannabis users may in the future abuse other drugs that are more dangerous than cannabis, such as alcohol. The study’s authors found that cannabis users were three timers more likely to abuse alcohol three years after the study’s initial research.
Importantly, the researchers pointed out that this association does not prove cannabis use causes other substance abuse problems, but they speculated that similarities between marijuana and other substances “may contribute to the association of cannabis use with (substance use disorders) but not with most other disorders examined.” The researchers posited that, “use of cannabis can also lead to behavioral disinhibition, which increases the likelihood of use of other substances and the risk of abuse or dependence on those substances.”
To be clear, the study found a correlation, not proven causation, between cannabis use (an extremely mildly addictive substance, despite it’s illegality) and later abuse of alcohol (a demonstrably addictive and deadly substance, in spite of it’s legality). More importantly, the study debunked the often repeated scare tactic of prohibitionists regarding cannabis use causing anxiety and depression.
What was it that the good-oath-taking-government-paid-doctor told the press when asked about the study? Volkow told FOXNews;
“These results delineate more clearly the outlines of the possible adverse psychiatric outcomes associated with cannabis use. Patients, doctors, advocates, and policymakers should understand that cannabis use, even for medicinal purposes, is associated with a clear risk of developing cannabis and/or other substance use disorders. This knowledge should be incorporated into clinical care and policy planning.”
So, we should be worried that cannabis users may become abusive drinkers who may become enmeshed in the horrors of alcohol addiction, and this 2 steps from reality consciousness should inform our policy making? Huh?
Maybe the doctor should have advised that drinking alcohol is dangerous, potentially addictive and is the third leading preventable cause of death in the United States causing 88,000 deaths each year, and cannabis is mildly addictive and has never caused a death in human history.
Volkow is in a position of power to lobby for the re-classification of cannabis from being considered to be highly addictive and of no medical value. Volkow knows that the classification of cannabis is a destructive and harm causing lie. Volkow keeps quacking and America keeps treating cannabis like heroin. Volkow does nothing. Volkow has broken her vow.
Dr. Nora Volkow, we beg of you, please try to do no more harm.
Many compassionate Americans now know of the struggle of Linda Horan, a victim of cancer who passed from this earth on February 2 who was a resident of the state of New Hampshire.
Ms. Horan’s story is a happy/sad tale that is really indicative of the America that we live in today- where selfish politicians from both parties are happy to turn a callously blind and narcissistic eye when confronted with a sick American who needs medicine, and yet proceed to call themselves public servants, moral humans and Christians.
Linda Horan, medical cannabis hero
In New Hampshire, it should be noted, the legislature has passed a law that allows sick citizens to buy cannabis medicine – but only after dispensaries have been established. The estimated opening date of New Hampshire dispensaries is April 2016. Unfortunately given Horan’s disease, doctors said waiting until April would surely be too long for the dying woman.
Ms. Horan sought the protection of the courts against the inhumane and self-serving political caculus that led to her being denied medicine to help her deal with her disease. Her simple request of New Hampshire courts was to be allowed to buy cannabis medicine in Maine, a progressive and compassionate state that allows its sick citizens to purchase cannabis medicine.
Yes, it’s true, Horan asked the courts of equity in New Hampshire to allow her to break both the state’s and the nation’s scientifically backward and destructive cannabis prohibitions.
Attorney General #JohnFosterAsshole, allegedly in service of protecting the citizens of New Hampshire, made the gruesome and discompassionate argument to the court that if the dying cancer patient got scientifically proven cannabis medicine to ease her pain, the citizens of New Hampshire would be harmed and placed in danger.
A human, Judge Richard McNamara, doing what judges do, i.e. making a decision based up the facts of the situation, ruled that the dying person in modern America should have the right to medicine. That is the happy part of the story – an American with the power to do something helped a woman who was suffering from a “painful, terminal disease” (as the good Judge McNamara wrote in his order).
#JohnFosterAsshole and loser, lost his argument, but, as with other self-promoting drug warriors, he did not lose his assholeness. #JohnFosterAsshole, proving he is an amoral asshole, appealed Judge McNamara’s ruling, seeking to make damn sure that a sick and dying woman would not get her medicine.
At that point, with Horan’s disease spreading and death drawing near, Ms. Horan’s attorney Paul Twomey chose not to reveal to his client that the government’s provision of cannabis compassion had been challenged by #JohnFosterAsshole.
“I didn’t want her to be worried having it in the press and by that time she was in hospice care,” Twomey told reporters recently.
The sad part of this real-life modern American tale? #JohnFosterAsshole has determined, even with the death of the plaintiff, even with the opening of legal medical cannabis dispensaries in the state within the next 60 days, the loser attorney general is going to continue with his appeal of Judge McNamara’s compassionate ruling…did I mention that the loser is an asshole?
#FrankFredericksAssistantAsshole a subordinate of #JohnFosterAsshole recently gave reporters his transparently specious reasoning for continuing the expensive time wasting appeal that will serve no citizen of the state’s interest: “We want clarification on the important points of law where New Hampshire residents can obtain cannabis,” Fredericks said.
Horan’s attorney pointed out the obvious, “This is absurd,” Twomey said. “There is no one to have a case with” with the death of Horan.
The decidedly duplicitous #FrankFredericksAssistantAsshole maintained that the state has an interest to discover whether New Hampshire’s medical cannabis law “authorizes a New Hampshire patient to obtain or possess cannabis from a source other than the alternative treatment center the patient designated when applying for a registry identification card with DHHS.”
Twomey (a good attorney who knows how the courts work – as opposed to a fake public servant who is trying to burnish his anti-cannabis credentials in hopes of running for congress, i.e. #JohnFosterAsshole) countered that the court ruled on only one issue – whether or not Horan should be issued a state cannabis medicine card, and the matter that #JohnFosterAsshole wants an answer to was not even at issue in the lawsuit.
Twomey further noted that the New Hampshire Attorney General can in fact request an opinion on the matter from the state legislature – the people who wrote the actual law. But, to do so would not give #JohnFosterAsshole the opportunity to grandstand, self-promote and basically be a craven and narcissistic political animal, as opposed to being an attorney for the people and human being.
Going a step further, Twomey reminded that the New Hampshire state Supreme Court cannot rule on whether New Hampshire citizens can obtain legal medical #cannabis in Maine, telling reporters, “This court doesn’t have any jurisdiction over Maine. It’s none of their business what Maine does.” #JohnFosterAsshole knows this too, he’s just an asshole.
As you may have noted, we here at mLaw are making an effort to promote and immortalize the self-serving drug war loser gambit of the Attorney General of the State of New Hampshire #JohnFosterAsshole by starting the internet meme #JohnFosterAsshole, and, as with all good memes, they have to be repeated to catch on.
So, we are seeking your help, dear reader, to take the time and tweet anything that comes to your mind after reading the happy/sad tale of Linda Horan and scuzzy attack on her well being that was initiated by #JohnFosterAsshole. Anything will qualify, for example, “Attorney General John Foster is a self-serving, war against cannabis losing, fake public servant who does not care about sick women, #JohnFosterAsshole”, or “Why does #JohnFosterAsshole want to withhold medicine from the sick?”, or “Do the people of New Hampshire want to be represented by #JohnFosterAsshole who is happy to let sick patients die without their medicine?”, or ” #JohnFosterAsshole is an immoral douchebag”‘ really anything that comes to your great mind will suffice.
Thanks for helping us do the people of the state of New Hampshire a favor, and remember #JohnFosterAsshole is an asshole.
I was standing next to our local police chief when we saw a crime being committed.
I looked at him – expecting a police response…nothing. I said, gently prodding, “Sir, don’t you see what is happening?”
He looked at me coolly saying nothing.
“There is a crime being committed”, I blurted.
“Well, call the police,” I was commanded.
“Aren’t you the police?, I asked credulously.
“If you call the police and they think a crime is happening then they will do something,” the chief copper said.
“But,” I stammered, you are here right now – you see what is happening right in front of your eyes…do something!”, I ordered the public servant, putting my hand on his forearm to emphasize my exasperation as we witnessed the crime taking place in front of our eyes.
“I can’t say that a crime is happening over there, but if you don’t remove your hand you will be arrested for assault right now,” the chief law enforcement official hissed.
>>
Yesterday, chief Obama was asked again by an American (a congressman) if he would do anything at all within the tremendous authority that he has vested upon him as president to end the criminal and harmful war on cannabis, and he retorted that his intention is to take no personal action whatsoever to help our sick veterans and children, to end the racially motivated arrests of our young people, to spur economic growth in New-Depression America. Barack Obama intends to take no action to legalize cannabis for medical or recreational use in the United States.
What are the consequences of this action Obama intends to take, his action to callously continue the war on cannabis? It will ensure the arrest of hundreds of thousands of Americans in the next year alone (2016- Obama’s last year as president). It will ensure that thousands of sick Americans, including suffering babies, will have to live with relievable pain every day. It will ensure that the nascent marketplace of cannabis commerce will still be encumbered by being unable to use the federal banking system, purchase business insurance or be treated fairly under America’s tax code.
Why would this human who can help choose to do nothing and watch while his inaction results in all of these easily avoidable consequences?
The answer to that question is simple and selfish and appalling and putrid – because Obama does not care about the sick children, Obama does not care about the hundreds of thousands of people of color who will be arrested and Obama does not care that a substantial majority of Americans think that he is wrong. Obama cares only about his sorry neo-conservative finance, military and pharma-industry captive narcissistic ass – he is simply burnishing his personal “legacy” as a political leader for the history books…sick and dying children be damned.
When Obama was first elected, around the same time that he orchestrated a 16 trillion tax dollar give-away to private and failed finance gamblers (banks, Insurance companies, finance companies, etc), he said with a straight face that the freakily-felonious banker bullies “broke no laws.”
When he was busted for maintaining and expanding George W. Bush’s illegal spy-on-everybody pogrom he blithely suggested, flouting the constitution, that his illegal scheming stole “valuable intelligence” from unsuspecting Americans.
When it became clear that he and his predecessors participate in the medieval and illegal act of torture, he admitted unapologetically, “We tortured some folks.”
>>
When you hear some self-interersted dumbassed democratic party operative tell you that you have to vote for the “lesser of two evils”, again, to save our precious American oligarchy of law breaking militarists who think it serves their legacy to give tax dollar hand-outs to rich asshats and arrest the parents of sick children and arrest young minorities, remember that you can do something to help people that you will never meet:
– simply end your support of our criminal class of bought and paid for politicians.
In a dramatic display of the dangers of drug war zealotry, anti-cannabis propagandist and Director of the Drug Enforcement Agency Chuck Rosenberg (recently appointed to take over for the previous anti-cannabis propagandist Michelle Leonhart, who headed the agency during the tenures of two of our former cannabis imbibing dry-doper presidents, Barack Obama and George W. Bush) advised the world-wide medical establishment that doctors’ concerns for their patients for whom they have prescribed cannabis medicine are not “intellectually honest” and that their belief in the science behind cannabis medicine is “a joke” because ingesting cannabis medicine by smoking the substance is “bad and dangerous.”
Chuck Rosenberg, Dimwit
As with many drug warriors, to the head of the DEA, Chuck Rosenberg, the facts don’t matter. The patients are lying because they are addicted drug fiends and the medical professionals who support cannabis medicine are dishonest charlatans who are engaged in dangerous quackery when they prescribe cannabis medicine to their sick patients.
As a human living in the 21st century who understands the benefits of modern science and such, I have to vociferously denounce Mr. Rosenberg’s ill informed, medieval and backward notions about medical progress and advise him of our social responsibility to embrace our sick brethren to help them be relieved from pain and suffering and be cured from their ailments if it is possible through modern science and medical technology. Simply put, Chuck Rosenberg, to do anything less is immoral and inhuman.
It is disturbing to me that the head of a governmental agency, laboring under an archaic and non-supportable anti-science belief system, can blithely dismiss learned professionals out of hand and support the dubious and immoral proposition that modern people can and should withhold known beneficial medicines from our sick fellow citizens. Chuck, cannabis, smoked or vaporized “whole plant” does provide blessed relief from real pain – relief that modern addiction prone opiate based pain killers cannot.
Mr. Rosenberg, if you share the medieval superstitions held by dangerous backward belief system supporting cults like Christian Scientists who believe they can simply “pray away” the sickness and the pain, you should stop spreading dangerous and harmful anti-science bullshit as a public safety official, put on a frock, get a 1-800 number and start bilking the stupid and credulous amongst us as a ding-bat preacher.
On the other hand, if you take your position as a public safety professional seriously, you should really cogitate for a moment on the harm done when public officials spread propagandic information that flies in the face of science engendering mistrust in the minds of the public about what our medical professionals tell us.
Right now, America is dealing with a public health crisis because wacky conspiritorialists have caused the public to fear immunization – the time honored and scientifically proven practice that has damn near ended horrible diseases like Polio.
Mr. Rosenberg, do you not see the harm that can be inflicted by you on trusting and curious citizens when you spout your ill informed and propagandistic personal opinions as the head of a government agency denouncing scientific fact? Have you no shame as your agency defends the indefensible failure that is the “war on drugs” by scaring citizens with your un-scientific pronouncements? Does it not embarrass you that your statements contradict the experiences of disabled veterans and parents of sick children as well as the studies of our very own government and the comments of our Surgeon General?
Chuck Rosenberg you today sound very much like the often righy lampooned Henry Anslinger, head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics in the 1930s, who succeeded in convincing the federal government to outlaw cannabis by describing how the substance “causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others.” We now see the ignorance and bigotry contained in this statement (a statement made under oath and before the US Congress).
Mr. Roseberg, it is in part through lies like the one you told today that we do not know more about the medical benefits of cannabis. Your agency has a large part of the blame for creating the current regulatory embargo, ‘Catch 22’, that has barred scientists from studying the medical benefits of cannbis for more than 80 years. You should be apologizing today rather than continuing with the propaganda and lies – you are harming sick Americans, Chuck Rosenberg.
When cannabis is legalized and can finally be fully studied by our medical professionals with vigor and without fear of arrest, Chuck, your comments will then also been seen as stupid, irresponsible, inciting, factually wrong, an act of duplicity and a danger to public safety.
Can we please stop using deceptive and discredited propaganda techniques to scare Americans?
When a guy puts on a white doctor’s jacket and, having wrapped himself in the patina of medical respectability, begins to breathlessly describe how advocating for regulated medical experimentation and equal justice in our country in the twenty first century will endanger the lives of our nation’s precious children, we are obliged to stand up and remind everyone that advancing straw dog arguments in the service of supporting a socially destructive and immoral edifice of laws and brakes on the advancement of science is a shameful act of deceit.
Sushrut Jagi, Propagandist
Dr. Sushrut Jangi has shown in his recent opinion piece (published in the Boston Globe on October 8, 2015) that, while he may be a fine doctor, he has chosen to be a propagandist by deceptively asserting that those Americans who support the recreational use of cannabis or the medical application of the substance to treat sick patients are blasé, neglectful, dismissive or do not care about “the children” as he deploys a self-created straw dog that he can gallantly slay in his self-appointed role as protector of the children from drug craving, child harming cannabis advocates.
Newsflash to the editors of the Boston Globe: No person who advocates for the reclassification of cannabis by the Justice Department, no person who supports legalizing cannabis for medical use or recreational consumption has ever advocated for allowing children to recreationally use cannabis – no one.
The sleazy Sushrut sets forth his thesis early on in the piece establishing quite clearly to an observant reader that he has no intention of speaking as a licensed and trained medical professional:
“(U)nderscoring the incredible momentum to legalize marijuana is the misconception that the drug can’t hurt anybody. It can, especially young people”,
and instead, intends only to obfuscate, misrepresent and terrify through an act of calculated and intentionally deceptive propaganda.
Dr. Jangi, can you please stop inferring the falsehood that the goal of cannabis activists is to in any way allow or make it easier for minors to use cannabis or to promote the use of cannabis by minors? The predicate of your propagandized rant is false. Your intentional fanning of the fear flames is deceptive, immoral and unethical.
I do not care how much you personally hate cannabis or how much of your professional existence is determined by our government’s funding the 45 year horror that has been the ‘war on cannabis’, your donning a doctor’s disguise while peddling faulty logic in the service of broadcasting political propaganda is disgusting, dangerous and deceitful. You may be a doctor, but as an essayist or opinion writer your premise is wholly concocted and your goal is not advancing knowledge but shutting down discussion by promoting bogus and chimerical fears.
It is really revealing when a person who is empowered by his education chooses to mis-use his status to promote patently false theories in support of a hidden agenda. I know that doctors are allegedly guided by the Hippocratic oath (to shorthand for the purpose of this discussion; ‘do no harm’). I ask, Sushrut, how can your misrepresentational assertion that cannabis advocates are not concerned for the health of our nation’s youth be considered as anything less than a lie and nothing more than an ethical failure. To assert that I do not care about “the children” is counter-factual, disparaging, deceitful, unethical and does great harm.
I would suggest, Doctor, if your desire is to engage in deceptive attacks in the world of public policy – take off the hospital scrubs disguise and seek employment at Fox News.
To be clear, this analysis has nothing to do with the so-called medical facts that Dr. Jangi uses to buttress his manufactured straw dog thesis and wehave refutedthe so-calledevidence that Jangi re-hashes in the Globe opinion piece onmanyoccasions. But rather it is with regard to Jangi’s choice to deceptively broadcast his medical credentials to give cover as he proffers a discredited and harmful load of propaganda.
If Jangi wants to be honest for a human second he will have to agree with mLaw that the concerns that he presents in his scare mongering piece will be settled quite easily – not by ending the normalization of legal cannabis in America, which is what he propagandizes in support of, but by re-scheduling cannabis so that we can finally do real scientific experimentation to understand the medical uses of cannabis, as we here at mLaw support.
As it stands, Jangi clearly throws his support behind the medieval and anti-science stance of continuing a knowing and immoral program of shutting down medical research for going on nearly 100 years that is concomitant with a knowing and immoral police policy in our land that has resulted in tens of millions of otherwise law abiding citizens being permanently saddled with an arrest record, if not a conviction record. It is difficult to gauge the cruelty and recklessness of such a stance.
I ask you doctor, have you no concern for the young Americans of color who have been imprisoned unequally and unfairly? Have you no concern for the children who are receiving blessed and unquestionable relief from medical cannabis today?
I ask you Sushrut, have you no human compassion for these, some of our “most vulnerable populations”?
I ask you Sushrut Jangi, have you no sense of decency at long last?
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