Monday, May 21, 2012

The Prohibition Follies

I'm inspired today by a story I read on a local television stations web site. The headlines intrigued me;

"POLICE: Louisville man tells cops his pot plants were burglarized"

You have to know that for a legalization advocate these things drive me up a wall. I don't think anyone could read those headlines without the words "how stupid" creeping into their mind. But after reading the complete story my head started to hurt when I thought about how really stupid this was all around.




LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Police say they responded to a scene early Friday morning where a Louisville man claimed his marijuana was being burglarized.

According to an arrest report, 911 dispatchers received a phone call asking police to come to an address on St. Joseph Avenue, near the intersection of the Watterson Expressway and Dixie Hwy., but the call was disconnected.

When officers arrived on the scene, they say they found 51-year-old Stephen Byerly. Police say Byerly told them he found two individuals in his home, "who then burglarized his marijuana plants." 



You can see what happened by those first three paragraphs. This guy discovers two people in his basement messing with his grow. Now he doesn't think about his plants when he calls the police, he just knows he's got two strangers in his home. He then realizes where they are and decides to take care of things on his own. Unfortunately for him the police knew where he had called from and followed it up.


When Byerly gave police permission to search his home, officers allegedly found 10 marijuana plants growing in the basement. They also found a "sophisticated irrigation, lighting and ventilation system."
Police say Byerly told them he was forced to grow marijuana so he could raise money after being laid off from his job

I want to warn anyone when faced with this situation. The police do not have the right to enter your premises with out a search warrant and you do not have to answer anything without an attorney present. No exceptions!




Here is a must see video:










So now what do we have? Has justice been served? An average citizen is now in trouble for growing ten plants, which would only be enough to keep and average smoker supplied for their personal use. If he grew enough to sell for a profit it would have no effect on the supply of cannabis on the market and you have two punks who wanted to take advantage of this guy still on the streets while this guy is in jail. What a comedy of errors.




This war on cannabis is wrong, so wrong. It's gotten so absurd you can't even count the ways anymore...




Educate, Legislate, Regulate...




ref link: http://www.wdrb.com/story/18554668/police-louisville-man-tells-cops-his-pot-plants-were-burglarized




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Saturday, May 5, 2012

Stoned Driving

The newest fear mongering tactic. Think of all the stoned drivers that will be on the roads if we make this illegal. I am always amazed at how people are so gullible of course it was gullible people who let Cannabis become illegal. Had they stood up and demanded proof we may not be discussing this right now.

First off let me assure you, I doubt there will be any more stoned drivers out there after we make this plant legal, than there are now. People are driving while smoking Cannabis now. Nothing makes a trip more enjoyable than to smoke a pipe bowl full on the way. It's no different that the pills you take to make you feel the same way and if your smoking Cannabis you're not going to smoke more than you can handle.

Don't get me wrong. Smoking Cannabis should be done responsibly and everyone should know there own limits but no one I know ever smokes Cannabis to the point that they cannot drive responsibly. Mix it with something like alcohol now that's another story but Marijuana by itself is not as debilitating as they would have you believe.

You don't have to take my word for it here are a couple articles on the subject:

Comparing traffic deaths over time in states with and without medical marijuana law changes, the researchers found that fatal car wrecks dropped by 9% in states that legalized medical use — which was largely attributable to a decline in drunk driving. The researchers controlled for other factors like changes in driving laws and the number of miles driven that could affect the results.
Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2011/12/02/why-medical-marijuana-laws-reduce-traffic-deaths/#ixzz1u0OOsQVS

You read things like this...




“We were astounded by how little is known about the effects of legalizing medical marijuana,” lead author Daniel Rees, professor of economics at the University of Colorado-Denver, said in a statement. ”We looked into traffic fatalities because there is good data, and the data allow us to test whether alcohol was a factor. … Traffic fatalities are an important outcome from a policy perspective because they represent the leading cause of death among Americans ages 5 to 34.”
Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2011/12/02/why-medical-marijuana-laws-reduce-traffic-deaths/#ixzz1u0OempbI
And it doesn't make sense. None of it does. They don't even try to refute what we have found they just go back to their tried and true misinformation. No Cannabis is not a Gateway drug no more than sugar is.

Then you have this...




If passed, drivers under the influence of marijuana would be considered impaired and unfit to be driving if their blood contains 5 nanograms or more of THC per millimeter of whole blood.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/02/driving-while-stoned-mari_n_1470641.html

A blood test to find if you're driving stoned. The one flaw in the plan...





Both Republicans and Democrats tried to stand up against the bill, but to no avail. Sen. Pat Steadman (D-Denver) spoke out about the issues that make marijuana blood limits problematic like the fact that THC is fat-soluable, so blood limits could remain above the 5 nanogram limit for days after the user last legally smoked pot, CBS4 reports. The user would not appear stoned, but legally they could still be considered impaired. With this thinking in mind, Steadman tried and failed to exempt medical marijuana patients in the bill.
This fact of THC's different effect on the body than alcohol's was stunningly shown last year by Westword pot reporter William Breathes. After a night of sleep and not smoking pot for 15 hours, a sober Breathes still tested nearly three times higher than the proposed legal limit.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/02/driving-while-stoned-mari_n_1470641.html

You and I, hell the whole world knows this is crap. But we sit back and , "oh it doesn't effect me so I'll let it slide". I tell you what if you let it slide because it doesn't affect you then you deserve to have every one of your rights stripped away. If you can't stand up for the rights of others when it's this obvious something is wrong here then you don't deserve rights yourself!

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

May Day

Spring is moving into summer and the ground is breaking with new sprouts from seeds planted earlier in the season. Now is the time for renewal, the earth is coming to life again and it's time for us to plan for the harvest. Unfortunately we can't because the one crop that we'd plant is illegal. Yes illegal.

You'd think that for something to be illegal, not just restricted or regulated but illegal, it would be the most dangerous thing you could have. If it's illegal then it has to be so harmful that any contact with it would be fatal. Cocaine has a better rating on the DEA's schedule of narcotics than cannabis THC. This must be the worst thing in the world.

Imagine my surprise to find that what they were saying was just so much bullshit. I was 19 when I found out. Now I'm not going to lie and say the first couple of times weren't very intense for me, they were but I learned how to enjoy myself and it was fine. It wasn't like liquor. With liquor you lose everything you just become stupid. You can't control yourself on liquor. Hangovers, splitting headaches, finding out the ass you made of yourself the night before. You have to make liquor out of grains and herbs that ferment. Whiskey is set up four years before it's consumed all these processes are manufacturing. What you have with Cannabis is nature.

I didn't start smoking cannabis on a regular basis until after my divorce. My friends all smoked and we just ran in a crowd. I didn't try anything else until we moved away from all my friends. Moving to a bigger city I was around a different sort of people. Along with cannabis, I could get other things and remembering the lie I was told about cannabis I tried them. I was lucky, some of the people I knew didn't make it.

It wasn't until I met Gatewood Galbraith that I knew the whole truth about the war on cannabis. The worst scam that's ever been pulled on the American people. I hate to think what they could have done in 1936 if they'd had the internet and not just a west coast newspaper. People were gullible back then and believed most of what the media shoved at them. Movies like "Reefer Madness" and all the fear propaganda that ended us up with the marijuana tax act.

I met a man named Jack Herer in 1989, during Gatewoods campaign and I bought his book. I couldn't put it down. "The Emperor Wears No Cloths" was truly the bible for the legalization movement. I couldn't believe what he was writing about because at that time we didn't talk openly about cannabis. It was all there and verifiable. You know you find something out and it just burns in you and the more it burns the more you see lies and you finally just wan to scream. That is what inspired me, I couldn't stand back any longer

Gatewood and Jack are gone. They were good friends and died within a short time of each other. I couldn't help feeling responsible to carry on what they had started. I sat with Jack back in 1990 in front of the Federal building and talked with him for hours. He autographed my book and in a long rambling thought, as Jack was want to do, he named me his surrogate to Kentucky and made me responsible for educating as many people as I can. In Jacks words " No one can beat a fact".

Since Jack first published his book a lot more facts have come out. Many more facts about how the government ignored reports that suggested they should legalize cannabis and continued with their war. How cannabis is medicine even though it remains a schedule1 narcotic that it's alleged to have no medicinal value. This plant can help shrink breast tumors, skin cancers, lower blood pressure along with the other things people already know it does. Why is this still illegal.

It's mind boggling when you think about this whole thing and you realize it has been a lie and that millions of lives have been ruined or lost because of this lie. If you can't get excited. If you can't get angry. If you can't demand a change then something is very wrong with this country and it's citizens.

Cannabis helped thousands of veterans with PTSD. Support the troops  Legalize it, Regulate it and educate the people with the truth. Let us be the judge of what we put in our bodies.