Prohibitionists who continue to place roadblocks to cannabis legalization are now committing immoral and illegal acts that threaten the public safety.
Elected officials who do not demand and work to establish laws legalizing cannabis are violation their oaths of office, are guilty of misappropriating tax payer monies and are enabling criminal enterprises.
Our political leaders, who do not immediately call for the legalization of cannabis are committing violations of public safety and enabling acts of discrimination.
“Laboratory and animal studies show that cannabinoids may be able to kill cancer cells while protecting normal cells” – National Cancer Institute
“law enforcement agencies made 574,641 arrests last year for small quantities of (cannabis) intended for personal use, according to the report, which was released Wednesday by the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch. The marijuana arrests were about 13.6 percent more than the 505,681 arrests made for all violent crimes, including murder, rape and serious assaults.” – New York Times
As compassionate and patriotic Americans, mLaw asks you Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, President Obama and members of congress, Nora Volkow and Kevin Sabet, why do you allow the death, agony, inequality and racism to continue. What purposes are served, other than narissicistic, selfish and immoral personal aggrandizement and perceived political gain, by your calculated and inhumane inaction?
Hillary, Donald, Barack, Nora and Kevin, America implores you to act out of compassion and for the sake of justice. And we ask, “Why do you hate sick children and young minorities?
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.
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.
The federal government’s cannabis warriors are given millions of dollars every year to search for and uproot clandestine cannabis grows on federal lands across the US. In 2014, the DEA received $18 million tax payer dollars to uproot cannabis and seize the assets of cannabis criminals (the Asset Forfeiture Fund for the Domestic Cannabis Suppression/Eradication Program).
Federal drug warriors who receive the yearly cash infusions have been able to justify receiving the monies by suggesting that clandestine cannabis farms in the US have links to and ultimately support ‘narco terrorists’ in Mexico and (gasp) worldwide, routinely characterizing cannabis grows on federal lands as “cartel grows.”
Although recent analysis of such links to international terror organizations suggests that these connections exist only in the propaganda addled brains of our fearless anti-drug soldiers, the cannabis eradicating warriors’ need for funding is real, and so the pot-pulling raids continue and continue to rack up costs, even as the citizens of the US, the folks who hire these cannabis-stopper-coppers, have decided that the war on cannabis is (at best) misguided and (more likely) immoral and wasteful.
Last year’s stunning example of this self-justifying, fake-assed anti-terror, overzealous drug war boondoggling pot plant pulling stupidity came from the great state of Oregon, where cannabis is legal for recreational consumption by adults, and where our nation’s DEA spent $960,000 to destroy just over 16,000 “illegal” pot plants.
The simple math shows that taxpayers ponied up 60 dollars per destroyed pot plant in a state where cannabis is legal to purchase by adults and where cannabis sales tax revenue is supporting education and health care.
As all in the law enforcement game will advise, “freedom ain’t free” and we need to pay real dollars for real programs to “keep our kids safe”, and with that in mind, lets run the numbers on this described as important program in our country’s war on cannabis:
The feds spent $960,000 to uproot 16,000 cannabis plants in Oregon in 2014.
The DEA reports that the total value of the assets seized by the DEA under the program (including cannabis plants and property, such as weapons) in 2014 in Oregon was $259,484.
So…the self-justifying fully funded anti-cannabis crusaders in the legal cannabis state of Oregon spent 369.965% more than the value of the assets that they destroyed in the effort to eradicate illegal cannabis in a state where cannabis is legal.
And, if the utterly transparent make-work boondoggle (exposed proudly in a self-congratulatory DEA press release, no less) of 2014 did not bilk tax payers boldly enough, our always vigilant cannabis warring federal authorities have earmarked $760,000 dollars for cannabis eradication in Oregon for 2015!
Thankfully, some law makers agree that uprooting cannabis plants in legal cannabis Oregon is a wasteful folly and have taken steps to end the make work boondoggle. In the mean time we suggest the following course of action;
As an alternative to spending $760,000 to eradicate Oregonian cannabis plants this year, why not use the federal funds to purchase legal cannabis in Oregon that could be distributed cost free to federal tax payers in Oregon who use cannabis?
In the states where cannabis is legal for recreational consumption by adults, the substance sells for about $20 per gram. So, again, let’s run the numbers:
$760,000 / $20 = 38,000 grams of legal commercially sold cannabis.
The federal dollars will go to newly established legal businesses in Oregon, and the state will reap tax benefits from these sales that will support the health care and education of Oregonians, creating a brand new federal DEA drug war program to support communities in Oregon; which could be called: “the Anti-Cannabis Warrior Eradication Program.”
You know, this suggested use of our federal tax dollars by the DEA could be the only victory that our disastrous and immoral drug war has acheived in 45 years of warring.
If you ask an attorney if torture is OK, if broad based warrantless wiretapping is allowed, if wealthy private corporations can be absolved of felonies just because they are wealthy corporations, if American citizens can be executed with a no charges leveled against them or trial – it really doesn’t matter what political party they are affiliated with – a member of the bar will generally agree that none of the above statements make sense, and in fact, these statements actually contravene our laws, our treaties and our constitution.
But, if you are asking these questions of a member of the personal staff of the President of the United States, who happens to be an attorney, you can expect to get answers that turn your concepts of fair treatment under the law, constitutional guarantees and international law into shredded and masticated gloppy pulp.
Over the past decades the nation’s top attorneys, using the magic and misleading mumblings and deliberately deceptive diatribes of their clients, presidents of our United States, our Attorneys General have navigated into new territory as they justify clearly unlawful actions for their clients and set precedents, which have gone unchallenged by our elected officials, that will serve to deform the legal landscape in America for decades, generations.
As in:
“The Constitution doesn’t say every individual in the United States or every citizen is hereby granted or assured the right of habeas.”
– Alberto Gonzales, US Attorney General, Congressional hearing, 01.17.2007
“Due process and judicial process are not one in the same.”
– Eric Holder, US Attorney General, Northwestern University Law School, 03.06.2012
The retiring US Attorney General, Eric Holder, has recently claimed, after six years, that he believes that cannabis should be considered for rescheduling, removing the substance from the Department of Justice’s list of most dangerous drugs. No useful purpose, susceptible to being abused, a designation that (oddly) also applies to the drug LSD but (oddly) not to the drugs heroin, meth and cocaine.
As is obvious to any sentient being – torture is always wrong and always at the apogee of immoral human behavior, recording and storing forever the private conversations of our citizens with no judicial order violates the Constitution, killing our citizens with no trial, no judge, no jury, no charges, no right to even articulate a defense makes a mockery of the basic principles that are woven into American law as it grew out of fundamental rights recognized by humans since before our country was founded, and cannabis is essentially benign and medically important, the prohibition of which has resulted in life changing arrests for over 600,000 Americans every year that Holder has held his appointed position as US Attorney General – that’s over 3 million Americans since Barack Obama became president, 3 million Americans who are overwhelmingly African Americans and Latino Americans.
I wonder, now that he soon will be no longer ‘retained’ by his former client, if Holder will eventually confide to Katie Couric that, he really, really believes, like all moral humans, that torture is wrong, warrantless surveillance violates our rights, corporations can be charged with crimes and every person deserves a fair trial before being executed.
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