Rest In Peace, Prince

Speculation at this point is that Prince died from an overdose of Percoset which is a combination of acetaminophen and oxycodone. Oxycodone is an addictive opioid pain medication and Prince had been taking it because he had been suffering from chronic pain for quite a while. 

Had Prince been able to use marijuana for his pain, he might still be alive today.  Marijuana is non addictive, has no side effects (other than the munchies), does not cause death and has been proven to be an effective pain relieving herb.  However, the government has deemed the herb marijuana to be a drug and Prince lived a clean life and would not do drugs.  They can kill you or get you arrested.

What other artists have died from pharmaceutical prescription drug overdoses?  Elvis, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Heath Ledger, Anna Nicole Smith, Chris Farley, Kurt Cobain, Margeaux Hemingway, Freddie Prinze, Bruce Lee, Keith Moon, Jimi Hendrix, Judy Garland, Brian Epstein, Marilyn Monroe, Tommy Dorsey and Sigmund Freud. 

Back in the 1930's, marijuana was a successful treatment for drug and alcohol addiction.  Today, you can spend thousands at a rehab center.

Drugs

We've been lied to and refuse to hear the truth.

I met a middle aged woman who is wracked with pain due to fibromyalgia, back injuries and arthritis.  She takes seven medications for her ailments and for the ancillary side effects they each cause.  In other words, she takes drugs for the drugs she takes.  She takes one which keeps her awake and another to help her sleep.  It is pharmaceutical chaos in her blood stream.  I told her how a friend of mine has a back injury which rendered him disabled at the age of 43 and the only drug he can take for the pain is morphine but that knocks him out and makes him sick. He has since discovered marijuana as a control for his pain, sleeping and even staying awake.  When I recommended to this woman that marijuana might offer her relief from both the pain and the prescriptions' side effects, she replied, "I don't do drugs." 

HA!

This country has a weird and unhealthy fetish with what we define as drugs.  Although marijuana is legal in several states, even the monstrosity called FACEBOOK takes it upon itself to police the internet and take down legal pages about marijuana even in the states where the herb is legal.  Not only are they taking down legal pages but harming tax paying businesses and the states at the same time. 

In 2013, 47,055 people died from prescription drugs.  How many died from marijuana use?  Zero.  C'mon Facebook, get with the times and start increasing the quality of life for people suffering from addiction, pain, mental health illness and debilitating diseases rather than denying them a chance to live pain-free and otherwise productive lives. 

What is the difference between Oxycontin and Marijuana?  One is addictive and can cause chills, confusion, difficulty breathing, dizziness, fever, tightness in the chest, abdominal pain, blood in the urine, convulsions, increase in heart rate, muscle pain, rapid weight gain, severe constipation, blurred vision and death.  The other one causes the munchies.

Which would you choose to put into your body? 

"Healing" with Marijuana

A friend of mine is suffering from cancer and, the treatment thereof.  She is in great pain and the medications she is taking are accompanied by debilitating side effects.  Surgery is out of the question because her platelets are low from the cancer and she has to watch her sodium intake.  She continues receiving chemo treatments but then immediately she gets a skin infection (cellulitis). Then her doctor gives her antibiotics which work against the chemo. Everything is working against each other.  Now she can't walk and she's gotten even weaker from lying in bed.  Since she is taking so many different drugs, they cancel out the good effects of each other and she can't eat.  It is too bad she won't consider cannabis (pot or marijuana) as a treatment but she has been brainwashed into thinking that marijuana is a "drug" and that the pills she is popping are treatments.  If only she would consider pot as a treatment she could not only re-gain her appetite which would be beneficial to her health and well being but she would also be relatively pain free and conscious.  The drugs she takes now renders her into a zombie estate and do not give her the benefit of sleep.  One of her drugs inhibits getting a good night's sleep which she desperately needs and marijuana could provide that.  But, she is a good girl and doesn't do drugs. 

NY recently passed medical marijuana laws and our next door neighbor, Massachusetts, is looking into legalizing it across the board which will of course destroy NY's medical marijuana industry and, bwahahahaha . . . all the wasted time and tax payer dollars that went into the planning for the medical marijuana industry.  Hah! 

Not only can marijuana be used for physical, mental, and emotional well being, it can be used for "healing."  First, consider the meaning of the word "healing."  There is a difference between healing and curing.  To cure means to make the disease go away.  Healing has to do with an expression of greater wholeness and acceptance rather than curing.  Healing is about discovering what is hurting us in the first place and helping us to come to terms with it. 

A long time ago a friend was dying of cancer.  She sought every treatment and nostrum available, draining her bank account and only getting physically and emotionally worse at the same time.  She was in denial.  I don't know what precipitated her change in attitude but when she accepted the fact that she was going to die, she "healed."  She was able to talk about it, make amends with friends and family whom she transgressed in the past.  She was able to live life a little more fully and finally be happy.  I beleive it was the edible pot that she illegally obtained from her son who traveled to Colorado and risked arrest and decades in prison for its procurement, but gave his mom a new outlook on life and death.  Healing is about discovering what is holding us back in the first place.  Pot helped my friend look at life differently and die with dignity and comfort rather than denial, failure and shame - and she had a healthy appetite, too. 

Diabetes, obesity, autism, anxiety, cancer, autoimmune conditions, thoughts of suicide and other expressions of imbalance are increasing in society as are prescription drug treatments for all of those ailments and the downward spiral which comes with them and their treatments.  A pharmacist friend told me that she believes all the cholesterol medication people take causes diabetes and the medication for diabetes causes weight gain and kidney complications leading to heart issues. 

Cannabis could play a much larger role in most people's lives by helping them maintain a balanced, healthy outlook and diet.  Dying with dignity, comfort and acceptance should be the primary focus of "healing."  It is time for doctors to incorporate medicinal marijuana into their regular treatment practices in addition to traditional medical treatment in order to spare people the harsh side effects of pharmaceutical drugs. 

I recently watched the History Channel's movie "Marijuana Revolution" and I discovered that cultivators of this plant are able create strains to achieve goals and outcomes far more advanced than the dangerous prescription drugs mired with side effects that profit hungry pharmaceuticals are creating and pushing onto doctors to prescribe.  I have no doubt that in the future, cannabis combined with other treatments will actually lead to a cure for many maladies which afflict us.  It is definitely a cure for alcohol and drug addiction because pot itself is not addictive but is an alternative to those other addictions.  Working on the suicide hot-line I had many callers who were in mental and physical pain because of their addiction to pain killers.  I'm sure pot would ameliorate their conditions on the first day of use.

Thank you to states like Colorado and Washington who of course are making billions in tax revenue each year but, are also providing people with the option to heal, even to their death.  It is very exciting that marijuana cultivators are exploring uses of various strains in an effort to find cures and treatments and these people are not even medical practitioners.  They are simply lovers of the plant.  Too bad medical science and pharmaceutical companies are overlooking what has been in front of us for centuries.  Ultimately, there is no profit in curing cancer and other diseases, there is profit however in treating  symptoms.  

If you are on the fence about this natural God given herb, watch the History channel's movie "Marijuana Revolution."  If you can't watch it on the history channel (http://www.history.com/shows/the-marijuana-revolution/about) or find it in the tv guides, you can probably find it on the torrent sites.  Write to your law makers and ask them to re-legalize this herbal drug and support the hundreds of companies already cultivating, infusing, testing, marketing and selling cannabis-related products.

Lies, Taxation and Pot, Oh My

A friend of mine suffers from nerve pain and has great difficulty sleeping.  When she sits in a chair, she hangs her head down, folds her arms in her lap and sits slumped over with her legs together as if trying to get in a fetal position.  The only time she can sleep is when she takes prescription muscle relaxants but they give her a hang over the next day.  The pain medication doesn't really work and presents some undesirable side effects on her.

She was complaining to me that she wished there was a natural, homeopathic or herbal medicine which would help her with her nerve pain and not have any side effects.  I immediately suggested marijuana.  Despite actually being a natural, homeopathic and herbal medicine, her voice rose with indignation saying that pot was an addictive drug with dangerous side effects.  It ills brain cells and she would never take that.  I told her that Steve Jobs was a pot smoker.  Look what it did to his brain.

It is amazing how Harry Anslinger's lies about this natural, homeopathic and herbal plant have endured over the decades despite medical research and thousands of my and your neighbors and friends "testing" it on a daily basis.  They themselves, in secret, have been proving the lies to be wrong.  It is easy to beleive a lie when so many people say it is so.

I looked up my friend's nerve pain medication and here are the possible side effects:
difficult or labored breathing, shortness of breath, tightness in the chest, , chills, cough, diarrhea, difficulty with swallowing, dizziness, fast heartbeat, hives, itching, joint or muscle pain, puffiness or swelling of the eyelids or around the eyes, skin lesions often with a purple center, skin rash, sore throat, unusual tiredness or weakness, accidental injury, bloating or swelling of the face, blurred vision, numbness or pain in the hands, change in walking and balance, clumsiness, confusion, delusions, dementia, difficulty having a bowel movement, difficulty with speaking, double vision, dry mouth, fever, headache, hoarseness, lack of coordination, loss of memory, lower back or side pain, painful or difficult urination, weight gain, seeing double, sensation of pins and needles, shakiness and unsteady walk, problems with muscle control or coordination, unusual weight gain, anxiety, bloated or full feeling, chest pain, cold sweats, coma, feeling of discomfort or illness, loss of appetite, loss of bladder control, loss of strength or energy, muscle aches and pains, muscle twitching or jerking, muscle weakness, nausea, nervousness, nightmares, noisy breathing, pain passing gas, rhythmic movement of the muscles, runny nose, seizures, shivering, slurred speech, sweating, trouble sleeping, twitching, uncontrolled eye movements, vomiting, thoughts of suicide, suicide.

Here are the side effects for marijuana:
munchies, mellow, sound sleep.

I shared with her my two experiences with marijuana.  Personally I would never smoke it.  I wouldn't do that to my lungs and beside that, I can't stand the smell of smoke and hate to be around people who do smoke.  So my first experience with marijuana was when I was in Washington State.  I went camping up to a glacier and since marijuana is legal in WA, at the suggestion of a friend, I purchased a few doses in pill form and took one before I went to sleep on the glacier.  I slept the whole night through while my hiking mates suffered the whole night freezing in the 20 degree temperature.  I took one final pill on my return flight back to NY.  As my plane took off I put my head down.  Six hours later I awoke to the sound of the pilot saying "We are making our final decent to Albany . . . "  This stuff is amazing.

It is too bad when my mother was suffering from nerve pain, her options were a concoction of three pain medications and one antidepressant or, as an alternative: morphine.  All that suffering she endured and at the expense to the insurance company could have been avoided if marijuana were legal.  You can bet that if she were alive today and still in that amount of pain, I would personally risk arrest and prison to find her relief from all the pain and suffering she endured in her final years.

For those who beleive in the fairy tales passed down by word of mouth, I am sorry you have been lied to and you beleive those lies; survival of the fittest.  Go ahead and take those lab created pills with all those aforementioned side effects.  For those of you wondering why marijuana was given a bad rap in the first place, our first drug czar, Harry Anslinger, who was in the pockets of the pharmaceutical companies, alcohol and tobacco distributors, and the lumber and print media industries, he made up stories about it.  Coming out of the prohibition, marijuana couldn't be taxed and was cutting into alcohol and tobacco sales.  Both the government and above mentioned industries were losing money.  His facts changed regularly and despite the scientific findings in LaGuardia report, issued the following quotes:

...the primary reason to outlaw marijuana is its effect on the degenerate races.​

Marihuana leads to pacifism and communist brainwashing.​

There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana usage. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others.​

Reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men.​

Marijuana is an addictive drug which produces in its users insanity, criminality, and death.​

You smoke a joint and you're likely to kill your brother.​

Marijuana is the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind.​

Marihuana influences Negroes to look at white people in the eye, step on white men’s shadows and look at a white woman twice.

Colored students at the Univ. of Minn. partying with white female students smoking marijuana and getting their sympathy with stories of racial persecution. Result pregnancy.

Two Negroes took a girl fourteen years old and kept her for two days in a hut under the influence of marihuana. Upon recovery she was found to be suffering from syphilis.

-----
Yup, your call.  Hopefully it will be to your elected representative demanding that marijuana be made legal AND, everyone languishing in our prisons today for past pot possession will be released and their records sealed or expunged. Hey, it is your tax dollars keeping them there at $30,000 per person per year.  It all started with Harry Anslinger.  Who will it end with?

Washington State

I recently took a trip out to Washington state, here is my overall review of the northwest corner of the US.

The landscape, mountains, rivers, streams, parks and forests are amazing.  If you are a hiker, there are many options for you to keep busy up there.  The people don't seem to be as rabid about hiking as there are in the Adirondack region of upstate New York but, there is enough of a variety of terrain to satisfy most hikers for a short period of time.

The food is good in all the restaurants of this state.  I routinely availed myself to several bowls of clam chowder and eggs Benedict at each place I ate.  Every diner failed on the eggs Benedict.  So far, the best place I've encountered to get that dish has been the Downtown Diner in Lake Placid.  The Fisherman's Restaurant in Seattle has the absolute best clam chowder I've ever had.   You can either get it in a bread bowl or a regular bowl.  You get bread with it anyway and the bread is from the hollowed out bowls of other soup orders so it is less expensive to get it in a regular bowl.   If you love to shop, plan on spending a day at the Pike Market.  It is a wonderful place and has everything.

The price for food is high in this state but you will generally get a higher quality and freshness than you would find anywhere else.  We went to a very fancy restaurant near a sailing club and pier one evening where everything about the restaurant was excellent except - most of the food came out of individually wrapped plastic bags as if they came from a food warehouse.  The salad was definitely pre-mixed from bags, the burgers had wax paper between each patty, the fish was from individually vacuum sealed pouches.  The cooking area is actually open and part of the dining area so you can watch the staff prepare all the food.  I wasn't impressed watching one of the chefs handle raw meat then reach over to a spice bowl and use the same unwashed hand to sprinkle spices on a cooked dish.  All this in an establishment with minimum $30 entrees.

While visiting the Olympic Peninsula, we turned on the news one morning and the first five minutes were devoted to a story about a tree falling down.  They even interviewed people who lived nearby and asked if anyone witnessed it or how the news of its fall will attract or impact rubberneckers driving by.   It was funny.

Driving on the roads of Washington is different from driving New York roads.  First, all NY roads have route markers every tenth of a mile and those would have been convenient in Washington State since I didn't always know where I was.  Many of the Washington streets have both route number names and formal names, sometimes a third name.  Often my GPS couldn't locate any of them.

I found the people of Washington to be often belligerent.  I went inside a Native American gift shop and the Anglo woman from Ohio who ran it evaded most of my questions about the indigenous people.  Each answer was accusatory and insinuated that I was somehow prejudice.  I knew this woman wasn't worth talking to further when she said that Columbus landed on Plymouth Rock.  You can't trust the information from a person who has that degree of ignorance.

I was walking along a river front park when two dogs came out of the woods and started to follow me.  They zigzagged in front of me for about two miles.  Each time I came upon another person, that person yelled at me for not having my dogs on a leash.  One woman asked me if I was carrying any poop bags for my dogs.  I told her they were not my dogs.  She asked again, "But are you cleaning up after them?"  I said, "They are not my dogs."  She then said "I am going to report you to the park ranger."

One place where you do find wonderful people are in the pot shops.  Yes, marijuana is legal in this state.  I don't smoke (both parents died from lung disorders) but my travel companions did, so, we stopped in several of these stores during the course of our travels.  You immediately feel "at home" once you walk in.  Everyone is cheerful, friendly and courteous.  While standing in line you can get directions, restaurant tips, hiking information and advice on what to buy in that shop.  The customers ranged in ages between about 30 to 70.  There were nice grandmotherly people in the shops, too.  Legalized marijuana and these shops are a very good thing for elderly people who have chronic pain and disease for they can benefit greatly from the pain relieving effects of marijuana.  For those who can't afford prescription drugs or can't tolerate the side effects of pharmaceuticals, marijuana is a Godsend.

Now, I know, according to Harry Anslinger, marijuana is a devil drug which causes white girls to have sexual relations with black men (Harry used a different word) where pregnancy and syphilis will ensue after sex with black men, and it will also cause young men to go on murderous rampages, go mad and lead to other drug uses.  I'm sure if Anslinger was correct, the news that day wouldn't have led off with a tree falling since the marijuana shops were packed.  I also noted that all the medical marijuana shops were out of business.  Too bad NY is spending a fortune on that industry eventually to bite the dust.

The facts are, everything we think we know about cannabis is false, exaggerated, cherry picked or made up.   The government made up lies and exaggerated truths about it back in the thirties simply because they didn't know how to tax it and it was cutting into the sale of alcohol and tobacco.  People without knowledge of the facts and statistics perpetuate the myth out of baseless fear and ignorance.

Shortly after President Barack Obama’s comments that pot is no more dangerous than alcohol, his deputy drug czar, Michael Botticelli, reluctantly agreed.  Botticelli’s office considers marijuana dangerous and harmful but Rep. Gerry Connolly of VA challenged the ignorant Botticelli.  “How many people die from marijuana overdoses every year?” Connolly asked Botticelli.  “I don’t know that I know,” Botticelli replied. “It is very rare.”  “Very rare. Now just contrast that with prescription drugs, unintentional deaths from prescription drugs; one American dies every 19 minutes,” Connolly said. “Nothing comparable to marijuana. Is that correct?”  Botticelli agreed.  “Hundreds of thousands of people die every year from alcohol related deaths. Automobile, liver disease, esophageal cancer, blood poisoning,” Connolly continued. “Is it not a scientific fact that there is nothing comparable with marijuana? I’m not saying it is good or bad, but when we look at deaths and illnesses, alcohol, other hard drugs are certainly — even prescription drugs — are a threat to public health in a way that just isolated marijuana is not. Isn’t that a scientific fact? Or do you dispute that fact?”  “I don’t dispute that fact,” Botticelli said.  In an interview with the New Yorker magazine published last month, President Obama said that he views pot as a “bad habit” and “a vice” but no more dangerous than alcohol.

So, why then is it illegal?  Why are people arrested and sent to prison for pot use or possession?  Yes, $$$, for it will kill the medical marijuana industry, it will gouge the profits from alcohol, tobacco and PRESCRIPTION MEDICINE sales.  Back in the twenties, marijuana was an effective cure and treatment for many mental health disorders and addictions, such as alcoholism.  Why is this country so blind to truths and still believes in antiquated lies?  Is it simply because our parents told us it was bad because they were told it was bad by profiteers who told us it was bad?

Washington State is doing a couple of things right.  First, the state has pulled in over $70,000,000 in tax revenue from the sale of marijuana since the first of the year.  That is about ten million per month.  The chicken little people are panicking about drugged driving but if you look at the statistics, fatal accidents caused by DWI accidents are down significantly.  For instance, in 2002 there were 450 fatalities in the first seven months of the year.  This year there were under 200.  People are drinking alcohol less.  Sure, the chicken little people will say that there has been and increase in the number of drivers testing positive for THC who have also had accidents but that does not mean they were high when they had their accident, only that there was THC in their system.  The drug supposedly stays in the system for about 30 days from use.  If I have a glass of wine, then get in an accident a week later, you cannot blame the wine.

The down side of legalized pot is that cigarette and alcohol sales are down but, that is good.  And that is another thing about this state, alcohol can be purchased in grocery stores and places such as Walmart and drug stores.  In my state, illegal activities are rampant from liquor stores.  One of their favorite scams is to keep your receipt and cash in manufacturer rebates that the buyer may not be aware of.  That doesn't appear to be happening when the merchandise is sold from the supermarkets.  NY has some growing up to do.

There are no amusement parks in Washington.  Apparently the weather is not conducive to such investments.  That is too bad.  A major amusement park would attract people from all over the state, at least on sunny days.  Everyone I spoke to was disappointed that their state didn't have one and said they would support it if they did.

Black berry bushes are everywhere in this state.  You can't drive down any road without seeing copious amounts of berries growing wild on the side of the road.  They must be very plentiful because I never once saw anyone picking or eating them.  I stopped to pick and eat some and could tell that nobody had picked any of the berries prior to me.  Strange.  People must take them for granted since they are so plentiful.

Washington is a gorgeous state with much to offer.  If you visit, definitely check out Pikes Market and plan to spend a day if you enjoy shopping.  There are minor tours, cruises and other benign activities to partake in also.  For instance, you may wish to take the Underground Seattle tour for the stories but otherwise, it is just a walk through various basements.  I'd certainly visit again.

How Dangerous is Marijuana?

Here is a compilation of annual causes of death according to the CDC:
Homicides: 16,121 (11,208 involved firearms (many were domestic abuse))
Alcohol-impaired driving crashes: 10,322 (1,168 were children 0-14 years old)
Heart disease: 611,105
Cancer: 584,881
Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 149,205
Accidents (unintentional injuries): 130,557
Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 128,978
Alzheimer's disease: 84,767
Diabetes: 75,578
Influenza and Pneumonia: 56,979
Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 47,112
Intentional self-harm (suicide): 41,149
Marijuana: 0, no recorded cases of overdose deaths from cannabis have been found

Why is it illegal?  It can't be taxed other than by collecting money from arrests, tickets, court fees, fines and incarceration.  It is in the interest of the pharmaceutical industry, tobacco and alcohol industry, lumber industry and prison industry to keep it illegal.

For further reading, take a look at the LaGuardia Report on Marijuana:
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/library/studies/lag/lagmenu.htm

Marijuana; Pros and Cons

Wow, a step in the right direction.  Voters in Oregon, Alaska and Washington, D.C. approved marijuana legalization.  Let's see where it goes from there.

First of all, all our laws against the smoking of pot are a waste of taxpayer resources because the law focuses on a drug that, at worst, only hurts its user.  It is a waste of resources to take people with this one habit, remove them from support systems, their family, and the possibility of rehab, and send them to jail or prison (aka, criminal conditioning and crime school).  By making this drug illegal makes society less safe as it drives the inevitable market underground outside of regulation where dealing it becomes dangerous and promotes criminal enterprises such as gangs, terrorism and people who will stop at nothing to protect their crop.

I support the legalization of marijuana because I know several responsible professionals who secretly smoke recreationally just fine. There are countless professionals and politicians who use it but stay in the closet due to the irrational stigma, and thus the stigma persists as it is associated only with criminals and people with severe and debilitating addiction issues not at all related to marijuana. 

Marijuana should absolutely be made available to people with medical conditions.  I know someone who is severely disabled with a back injury and all his doctor can do is prescribe copious amounts of addictive pain killers with horrible side effects for him.  Many, such as morphine, make him ill and knock him out for hours.  Marijuana, however, allows him to get up, walk around while functioning almost pain free for a couple of hours at a time.  Should he be arrested?

My sister, who died of brain cancer, she refused morphine during her final few months and instead opted for the illegal and criminal use of marijuana for both pain management and to facilitate healthy eating.  Although she never partook in drugs ever before in her life prior to developing cancer, she said "So what if I become addicted to it.  So what if it will give me cancer.  So what if it kills my brain cells.  So what if it decreases my sex drive.  So what if it makes me a sex offender.  At least I can fully and actively spend my last few months on this earth with my family and not vegetated in a morphine induced coma."

Marijuana was first made illegal in the thirties when a man named Harry Anslinger was put in charge of alcohol prohibition.  When the government realized that they were loosing millions in tax revenue and prohibition only created crime (like the marijuana laws do today), they repealed the prohibition.  What they didn't realize is that poor people who couldn't afford the illegal alcohol turned to marijuana as a substitute and discovered that not only was it inexpensive and they could grow their own, but it promoted appetite for the sick, worked much better than prescription drugs for pain relief, and it was a cure for addiction to prescription drugs and was a cure for alcohol addiction.  Not only that but when a person with alcoholism tendencies came home and partook in smoking weed instead of the bottle, he didn't beat his wife and kids, he didn't blow his paycheck, he didn't crash his car, he didn't throw up all over the place, and he didn't get a hang over the next day.  Marijuana was a God-send to those suffering from alcoholism. 

Anslinger teamed up with the generou$ Hearst Corporation, who owned hundreds of newspapers, which were printed on paper made from trees, whose pulp  suppliers were farming marijuana instead of lumber; and he teamed up with the pharmaceutical companies who were seeing a decrease in prescription sales, and the breweries who were seeing a decrease in alcohol sales.  Something had to be done.  So they made marijuana illegal.

Harry Anslinger made up so many lies and exaggerated so many stories about the herb that every time he retold his stories, they became more phantasmagorical.  Anywhere he could connect marijuana to a crime, he would cherry pick the data with rabid and foaming at the mouth discourse and exaggeration.

Since racism was rampant and acceptable back then, he would often use race as a scare tactic.  Harry once wrote:  "Most marijuana smokers are Negroes, Hispanics, jazz musicians, and entertainers. Their satanic music is driven by marijuana, and marijuana smoking by white women makes them want to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and others. It is a drug that causes insanity, criminality, and death — the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind."  "Marijuana and sex, result: Syphilis and pregnancy."

If there was a crime and the smoking of marijuana could somehow be connected to that person in any capacity, he would blame the crime on the marijuana.  Even though music greats such as Billie Holiday and Charlie Parker both died after years of heroin and alcohol abuse, Anslinger blamed their deaths on marijuana.

This mentality still exists today.  In 1986 Reagan Drug Czar Carlton Turner ridiculously claimed that Marijuana leads to homosexuality and ultimately to AIDS.  Given his logic then, so does alcohol.  Why isn't that illegal?  Answer:  $$$$$$ on both fronts.

LaGuardia commissioned a report, called "The LaGuardia Report" which debunked most of the myths about marijuana but the government refused and still refuses to listen to facts.  Alcohol kills tens of thousands every year in car accidents and hundreds of thousands more due to other health complications related to alcoholism.  The Center for Disease Control doesn't even have a category for marijuana because, well, no one ever died from it. 

So, my predominate disgruntlement about this herb being illegal is because we were sold a bill of lies and deceit by the government which in turn destroyed hundreds of thousands of lives, many more collateral lives and cost us billions.  If alcohol was illegal and marijuana was legal, this country would be in a much better estate.

Now, for my cons.  I am a church organist and I know a lot of people who recreationally smoke pot, and that includes a smattering of Roman Catholic priests.  People who smoke pot are quick to say that it augments  and amplifies an experience.  I'm not a smoker so I can't confirm this.  However, I can talk about my experience with other smokers.

I once went on a hike with a few people who took a few hits while out on the trail.  As we walked down a path, one of them commented on the beautiful and glistening foliage on the trees.  It was winter and I told them that there were no leaves on the trees.  She said that the way the sunlight was glistening on the branches, it was as if there were leaves on the trees. 

Further down the trail we walked past a lake and I noticed my companions were "focused" on the trail straight ahead.  When I pointed out the lake to their left, they were amazed that it was there and commented how gorgeous it was and waxed exuberantly about the way the sun glistened off the water and how gorgeous it was.   On our return trip, I told them that we were going to pass by the beach on the lake and one of them asked "What beach?"  It was the one we walked across to get to the trail.  Somehow, their senses were so augmented and amplified, they missed was was in front of them.

My point is, maybe marijuana does augment and amplify the experience but, only in the users' head.  Not in reality.  Likewise, food apparently tastes better while high.  In reality, the flavor of the food doesn't change, only the the smoker's perception of it.  Are the senses heightened?  I don't know.

Here is a link to a Family Guy Episode from season four called "Deep Throats."  In this episode, Lois and Peter resurrect their hippie days as folk singers and they enter a talent contest because, well, they are really good.  Watch the end to see how good they really are. 

The Choices of Brittany

I was so happy to read that Brittany Maynard has chosen to live a little longer.  Brittany has terminal brain cancer and decided to engage in either physician assisted suicide or some other right to die method of her choosing.  She has recently chosen to put off her scheduled departure. 

She is an inspiration to both those who wish to have the right to die on their own terms and also to those such as my mother and sister who fought against death to the very last breath.

My mother fought a very long battle with COPD and was not afraid to die.  At the very end, she fought very hard to stay alive.  Her last three weeks of life were spent in a morphine induced coma and I slept on the floor beside her bed every night and taking care of her every day.  As painful as the whole experience was, I would do it all over again.  The whole experience was a blessing that only those of us who have given our lives to a loved one could understand.

My sister died from brain cancer which had originally metastasized from breast cancer.  She too wasn't afraid of death but fought to the very end to live.  She decided not to take morphine for her pain management and opted for other herbal methods (we need to vote in politicians who understand this).  Despite being bed ridden, my sister insisted upon going on a camping trip and the family carried her and her bed out to a campsite near a lake and a few days later, that is where she died, peacefully watching a sunrise. 

Both experiences have taught me two lessons which can be summed up in these two quotes by Henri Nouwen:

“The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing... not healing, not curing... that is a friend who cares.”

"Blessed are those who suffer.  Not because suffering is good but, because they shall be comforted."

Regardless of the path Brittany chooses, she is an inspiration for both those who wish to have the right to leave this world on their own terms and for those who fight to stay as long as possible. 

If Brittany decides to fight the battle to the bitter end, she won't be a burden to anyone, but a blessing and they wouldn't have it any other way. 

Explanation of the Terrorism Video

Americans think that terrorism started in this country on September 11th, it didn't.  It has existed for certain classes and groups of people since we first came to this hemisphere.

The first act of terrorism began with Christopher Columbus who sought to find a faster route from Spain to China.  Instead he landed on the shore of Hispaniola.  Today we call that island the Dominican Republic and Haiti.  Do they still teach in school that he landed on Plymouth Rock?  Your tax dollars at work.

The indigenous people of Hispaniola were the Arawaks whom Columbus and his men raped, murdered and took as slaves.  In his ship's log he thanked and praised God for the gift of human chattel.  He filled his ship's hulls with several hundred Arawak men and took them back to Spain as slaves.  Most did not survive.  Who knew you had to feed them?  He then lied to the Queen, telling her that there was so much gold there (there was none) that he needed dozens more ships. 

When he returned, the Arawaks poisoned their children and committed mass suicide so as not to be raped, murdered and taken as slaves by Columbus and his Christian men.  Hundreds of thousands of native Arawaks died at the hands of Christopher.  Happy Columbus Day.

When more Europeans began to colonize the entire east coast of the country, they encountered other Native American Nations such as the Iroquois, Mohawk, Algonquin, Seneca and many more.  After the white man launched political campaigns to take Native American land, displace the natives and murder them (because they fought back), we pushed westward because it was our God ordained destiny.  Today, the remnants of those aborigine nations live on reservations and we're trying to take those lands, too.  We are starting by creating insidious laws which they must abide by.

When the Puritans came to North America to escape religious persecution, what did they do?  They persecuted other people because of their religion.  They also created witch hunts.  These were successful campaigns because the general population was told that witches abducted, raped, murdered and ate small children.  This was the same tactic Adolph Hitler used to turn his followers against the Jews.  Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf, "The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation."   Most of our fairy tales and nursery rhymes were created around the myth of children being abducted such as Little Red Riding-hood, Hansel and Gretel, the Pied Piper, Snow White, etcetera.

Then there was the enslavement of the Africans.  After their emancipation, Lincoln's second phase was to repatriate all the blacks back to Africa or to off shore islands.  He first needed to set them free because he couldn't repatriate them if they were property.  He freed them but before he could sign the repatriation act to remove the newly freed from the country, he was assasinated and the African-Americans stayed.  African-Americans should celebrate Lincoln not because he set them free, but that he was assasinated before he could eradicate them.  If outright hate and prejudice wasn't bad enough, our entertainment, music and movie industry further perpetuated stereotypes and inequality.

After prohibition failed, many poor people turned to marijuana since they couldn't afford the illegal hooch.  Marijuana was found to be an excellent source of pain relief and even a cure for alcoholism.  Harry Anslinger made it his mission to eradicate marijuana by spreading lies about its efficacy.  Although the lies were disproved by the La Guardia Report, Anslinger used racism to convince society that marijuana was the devil's drug.  He said that when white girls smoke muggles, it results in them seeking sexual relations with black men and the result would be pregnancy and syphilis.  Marijuana causes sane people to go mad and commit murder.  All the lies must be true because Anslinger had the financial support of pharmaceutical companies, the lumber and paper industry, the tobacco industry, the brewery's and the Hearst empire which published Anslingers tales of rabid, foaming at the mouth hysteria in all their papers. 

Despite none of the lies about this miracle herb being true, the fear and confusion about it continues to exist today.  Many prescription drugs come with horrible side effects including difficulty breathing, heart problems, lung problems, liver problems, blood disorders, thoughts of suicide and even death.  Many prescription drugs are also addictive and it is easy to overdose on them.  In case you overdose on Tylenol, Advil, Sudafed, Motrin, Codein or Aspirin, contact Poison Control immediately.  In case you overdose on marijuana, contact Domino's Pizza.  Unlike alcoholics, I've never seen a person who was high on marijuana beat his wife and children.  The only benefit from the marijuana scare Anslinger created is that it filled our jails and prisons which also employ hundreds of thousands of people in every state.

The hatred for homosexuality fueled by religion has been devastating to our country.  Homosexuality and masturbation were considered sinful because those acts did not produce offspring at a time when the Christian population needed to outnumber the Muslim population (Crusades).  Also, people died in their forties so it was imperative that we marry off our 13 year old children as soon as they hit puberty so they could pump out as many children as possible.  Population is no longer an issue so these "sins" are no longer threats to society, but we forgot why we made them sins.   We are still in conflict today  with the Muslim religion though.  Thanks Pope Urban II and the Holy Roman Catholic Church.  You made genocide holy and gave us wars to last for centuries.

I used to volunteer answering both a suicide hotline and the 211 line.  Far too many gay teenagers would call the suicide hotline not because of their sexuality but because of society's response to them.  I mean, even God hates them.   Now when our new Pope tried to get the message out that even homosexuals are welcome in the church, the Synod said no, they are not welcome.  How ironic, the Catholic church is a magnet to gay artists, musicians, sculptors, writers and clergy.  I guess the Vatican should purge its churches and museums of the works of Da Vinci and Michelangelo because they were gay. 

While answering the 211 line, I would get calls from women and kids who were being physically abused, homeless people without a place to go, hungry families without enough food, people without insurance and who couldn't afford medical care, people with insurance but were now addicted to prescription drugs and they often feel that suicide is their only escape.

I then went on to volunteer at a homeless shelter where I discovered that many of the men there have arrest records.  The reason they can't get jobs is that little box ubiquitous to all applications.  Once they check yes on that box, HR disqualifies them as a candidate.  Now, that is illegal in this country and if you were to ask an HR person if they acted out of prejudice  they would say - prove it.  Many will go so far as to drag an undesirable candidate through the process just to give the outward appearance that they don't discriminate.  Ultimately, that applicant won't be qualified or may fail the Meyers-Briggs test or some such excuse.

Now, I love the church but, before you go to church on Sunday, consider the words of St. Vincent de Paul.  He wrote: "If a needy person requires medicine or other help during your prayer time, do whatever has to be done with peace of mind. Offer that deed to God as your prayer. Do not become upset or feel guilty because you use your prayer time to serve the poor. God is not neglected if you leave him for real service. You should prefer the service of the poor to making your prayer. For, it is not enough to love God, if, your neighbor does not also love God."

Fold your hands in a praying position. These are the hands you use to touch the ones you love, hold the things you treasure, perform the constant countless motions of your living. For now, these hands do nothing, they are not useful held this way, kept by each other from all movement of living and serving. Pressed to each other, there is no space for holding anything or anyone. For the moment these hands are empty and still.  Jon Stewart once said, "Prayer is the least thing you can do for someone while still getting to grandstand like you are actually doing something."

So, vote this November.  Not to vote is to vote.  Then call the politicians and tell them why you did or did not vote for them.  GET OFF YOUR BUTT AND DO IT.  Then get out into your community and help people.  After you do that, go to church and pray over it.  If your social convictions don't align with your church institution's teachings or acts of terrorism, find another church and let them know why you are leaving.  Not to act is to act.  Keep in mind, no agnostic ever burned anyone at the stake or tortured a pagan, a heretic, or an unbeliever.   Has your church?  Government?  Have they made amends? 

Marijuana: The Devil Drug

David Juaire and his wife Christina Stewart were recently charged with criminal possession of marijuana in the third degree.  They were growing it in their basement.  Have you ever wondered why this sort of thing happens?  Here is a quote:

"Most marijuana smokers are Negroes, Hispanics, jazz musicians, and entertainers. Their satanic music is driven by marijuana, and marijuana smoking by white women makes them want to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and others. It is a drug that causes insanity, criminality, and death — the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind."
-Harry Anslinger.

That quote must be true because a politician said it and laws were created because of what he said.  There is a saying, "If you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail."   Good old Harry served on the Bureau of Prohibition.  Since Prohibition caused more crime than it deterred and the government lost a lot of money in tax revenue,  prohibition was lifted.   Anslinger was appointed as the first commissioner of the U.S. Treasury Department's Federal Bureau of Narcotics.  What the Treasury Department has to do with drugs, I don't . . . oh, alcohol and tobacco are big business and therefore taxable.  Marijuana can be home grown and thus, is not taxable. 

The war on drugs began when Anslinger wanted to make a name for himself and like many politicians,  he made up "facts" about marijuana which were later debunked in the La Guardia Report.  During the Prohibition, poor people who couldn't buy what Capone and other mobsters were selling, turned to marijuana.  They could easily grow it themselves.  After the Prohibition was lifted, marijuana smokers continued to use it because it was cheap, non addictive and didn't cause hangovers or intoxication.  Since marijuana use was cutting into alcohol and tobacco profits, Congress made it illegal.  Anslinger simply made up lies about marijuana to get congress and the sheep of society to follow along with his plan.  Many of those lies and false beliefs exist today.

Now that Colorado has legalized marijuana, have their death rates from automobile accidents  climbed? And crime, rape, murder and burglary, have those skyrocketed as Anslinger would have predicted? 

According to the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration Statistics the alcohol-related deaths in the US in  2007 were 15,387.  Here are the Annual Causes of Death in the United States in the year 2010:
Tobacco : 435,000
Alcohol : 85,000
Prescription Drugs : 32,000
Suicide: 30,622
Sexual Fetishes : 20,000
All illegal drug use (excluding marijuana) : 17,000
Aspirin : 7,600
Lack of Health Insurance 44,789
Poisoning 41,592
Firearm Injuries 31,347
Homicide 16,799
Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) 9,406
Viral hepatitis 7,694
Marijuana : 0
http://drugwarfacts.org/cms/?q=node/30

As I look over that list, I can't help but wonder how many of those deaths could have been prevented had the victim been able to use marijuana for the treatment of whatever was ailing them.  While answering a suicide hotline, many of my callers are suffering from prescription drug addictions and the withdrawal is unbearable to them.

Facts:
Over 31% of the US population aged 12 and older are estimated to have used marijuana.

Many people die from alcohol use. Nobody dies from marijuana use. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) does not even have a category for deaths caused by the use of marijuana since it is so insignificant.

People die from alcohol and drug overdoses. There has never been a fatal marijuana overdose.

The health-related costs associated with alcohol use far exceed those for marijuana use.

Alcohol use damages the brain. Marijuana use does not. Despite the myths we've heard throughout our lives about marijuana killing brain cells, it turns out that a growing number of studies seem to indicate that marijuana actually has neuroprotective properties. This means that it works to protect brain cells from harm - after around the age of 21, after the brain has fully formed.

According to the La Guardia Report which was commissioned to answer the claims of Anslinger:
Alcohol use is linked to cancer. Marijuana use is not.
Alcohol is addictive.  Marijuana is not.
Alcohol use increases the risk of injury to the consumer. Marijuana use does not.
Alcohol use contributes to aggressive and violent behavior. Marijuana use does not.
Alcohol use is a major factor in violent crimes. Marijuana use is not.
Alcohol use contributes to the likelihood of domestic abuse and sexual assault. Marijuana use does not.
   
It is a shame that the Draconian Congressional laws behind this benign drug have put so many people in prison and jail.  Marijuana arrests have rendered  people unemployable because of their "criminal" records.  It has sentenced so many children of these convicted "criminals" as collateral damage and has sucked dry our social services programs because these "criminals" can't sustain themselves nor their families.  Incarceration of these non-violent offenders costs the tax payers about $30,000 per year per offender.

Congress, in one fell swoop, can legalize marijuana across the country, release all the non-violent pot smoking offenders from prisons and jails, expunge their records and allow people to use medical marijuana for addictions, mental health issues and pain relief.

Sure, this will cut into the tax revenue yielding from alcohol, tobacco and prescription drugs, but not that much.  The users of those products are addicted and will always be around to squander their pay checks in service to their addictions.  The one thing that can save them from their addictions is, well, marijuana.

As people use tobacco less, consume less alcohol and the misuse of prescription drugs diminishes, the less fatalities we will have.  Less people will be going to hospitals and draining our healthcare programs, less people will be suffering from the side effects of prescription pain medication, less people will be in prison.  In essence, there will be a lot less people in the position of being a burden to society.

The solution is so simple and staring us right in the face.  Congress needs only to listen to facts and statistics, not the lobbyists  and their cherry pickers.  Every day I read in the paper that someone is getting arrested for possession.  Why are they being arrested?  Because it is against the law?  Why is it illegal in the first place?   Oh, because of Harry:

"How many murders, suicides, robberies, criminal assaults, holdups, burglaries and deeds of maniacal insanity it causes each year, especially among the young, can only be conjectured...No one knows, when he places a marijuana cigarette to his lips, whether he will become a joyous reveller in a musical heaven, a mad insensate, a calm philosopher, or a murderer... "
-Harry Anslinger.

Marijuana; And How Politicians Hurt Society

Throughout history, politicians, together with big business and lobby's have been steering the country in calumnious directions in an effort to make money, control people, decimate competition and win elections. 

Consider the Puritan Witch Hunts.  We didn't hunt witches, run them out of town and burn them at the stake because they were actually turning people into frogs and conjuring demons.  Some of them were actually political troublemakers, they may have owned land that someone else wanted or someone just didn't like them.  Many of them were falsely accused because their accusers were tortured into giving names.

So how do you get people rallied into an irrational blood thirsty mob willing to take up pitchforks and torches?   You use children.  Everyone knows that witches eat children and lock them up in dungeons and towers.  That is where we get stories such as "Hansel and Gretel" and "Little Red Riding hood."  Think of the children. 

Our current boondoggle sex offender registry is no different.  You need only take a few high profile crimes, scare the public into thinking that this could happen in their back yard, you publish a hundred million dollar photo album online with no delineating information about the case, the remorse, acceptance of responsibility or rehabilitation, and then you disenfranchise an entire class of citizen - to protect the children.   An 18 year old HS senior who has sex with his 15 year old HS sweetheart is not so much a child rapist (although by law he is) than a teen with raging hormones and quite possibly, they are two kids in love. 

Bionically, Mary was thirteen and Joseph was in his forties when they got married.  That was a different culture and a different time, though.  In those days  life expectancy was about forty so girls had to start pumping out babies ASAP in an effort to propagate the population. 

Today, the registry is a giant blind net ranging from violent murderers to people who urinate in public.  This registry program wins elections, sells papers, supports our struggling prison system and creates businesses designed to protect you from the monster next door. 

There was another man who used children for job security, to become famous, to triple his budget, to hobnob with the rich and powerful, to spread mis-truth and to win favor and support from big business.  His name was Harry Jacob Anslinger.

The war on drugs is a billion dollar boondoggle.  Much like Prohibition in the ‘20s which made tons of money for suppliers and made gangsters very wealthy. 

Politicians love to cherry pick data and skewed statistics in an effort to get what they want, to win elections, to scare people into seeing things their way, to obtain and distribute grant money and to bribe or win supporters.  It is easy for them to make something up, spin, fold, mutilate the facts and statistics or rely on unconfirmed data and hearsay.  Politicians are adroit at not dealing in realty but in the false narrative.  That's the nature of the politician.  They often seek out and only listen to the "expert" who shares their same opinion.  Show me an expert witness with one opinion and I'll show you another with an equal and opposite one. 

We know that alcohol is the root cause of many car accidents and deaths.  Alcohol also amplifies bad behavior in people and some of these people may beat their wives and kids, drink their paychecks and many drunks die in alcohol fueled car accidents.  People die every day from liver and heart damage caused by alcohol and millions of people suffer from addiction and other medical maladies caused by alcohol. 

In 1951, the United Nations reported that an estimated 200 million people used marijuana.  It has been used for over 5,000 years and the earliest reference was from China where it was used to relieve pain during surgery.  For decades it was pedaled by vendors as a nostrum for swelled breasts, sore nipples, shingles, piles, bronchitis, eczema, migraine, menstrual discomfort, sore throat, colic, arthritis, rheumatism, depression, epileptic fits, gout, it was sold as an aphrodisiac, and ironically, it was used successfully as a treatment for alcoholism. 

Marijuana was a source of rope and cloth fibers, birdseed, essential oils and many medicinal products.  It has long been a cash crop for many farmers including President George Washington.  Unlike Bill Clinton and certainly like Barack Obama, George probably inhaled.  So how did this weed become illegal?

During prohibition, many of the poor and minorities were unable to acquire illegal alcohol from gangsters so they turned to the cheaper and less harmful medicinal herb, marijuana.  They found it stimulating, relaxing, non toxic and non addictive.

In the 1930s the Treasury Department began their warfare on marijuana.  Prohibition was repealed and liquor began to flow freely but the people who took to smoking pot when liquor was scarce, illegal and expensive, continued smoking it because it was still cheaper, easier to get, faster acting, didn't render the user to an intoxicated and vomiting stupor, you could grow your own, it wasn't addictive and it didn't give you a hangover like alcohol did.

The Federal Bureau of Narcotics, like the Bureau of Prohibition, was under the auspices of the U.S. Treasury Department. At that time, the sale of marijuana was considered a loss of revenue because it could not be taxed and people could grow it themselves. There was no way to control it and it was dipping into alcohol and tobacco sales.

The Newly created Federal Bureau of Narcotics then began a 7 year campaign to fight marijuana and labeled it a killer drug.  Harry Jacob Anslinger led this new office and his scare campaign was in all the papers and on all radio stations.  It became a political campaign tool and parents were frightened into thinking that marijuana was everywhere and it would kill their children or destroy their lives - think of the children.    

Harry Anslinger claimed that he had witnessed a scene that affected his life. When he was 12, he heard the screams of a morphine addict.  I'm not sure what this has to do with marijuana but it became his political football and excuse for his rabid and foaming at the mouth lust to criminalize pot, and it was job security.  It was easy for him to get political support because he had budgets, business backers, the media and he could make up facts.

Thousands of people were surgically arrested for the possession of pot.  They were mostly black and poor.  Marijuana was a great tool to ethnically cleanse certain neighborhoods and was an easy means to get people you didn't like off the street, especially if you couldn't get them on some other charge.   I once knew a cop who admitted to me that they had no evidence on an arsonist so they planted pot on him just to get him in the system.  The same thing happened to Freeway Rick Ross.  He rarely carried drugs of any kind.  He did however walk around with about $80,000 in his pocket which every day, he freely gave it all out to the people in his community who needed it for food, rent, medicine or school.  The police finally got him off the street but he also had evidence against the cops so they brokered a deal.

New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia was not convinced of Anslinger's arguments and requested the first in depth study into the effects of smoking marijuana.  He remembered a report he read by the Army Board of Inquiry that the drug was used by many soldiers and was deemed harmless to them.  La Guardia requested that the New York Academy of Medicine to do a thorough study of the herb. 

This report systematically contradicted claims made by Anslinger and the U.S. Treasury Department that smoking marijuana results in insanity, deteriorates physical health, assists in criminal behavior and juvenile delinquency, is physically addictive, is a gateway drug to more dangerous drugs and the report determined that the practice of smoking marijuana did not lead to addiction in the medical sense of the word.  Ultimately, the worse effect smoking pot will have on someone is 2 - 40 years in prison, a criminal record and no hope of getting a job when they got out. 

Released in 1944, the La Guardia report  (http://medicalmarijuana.procon.org/sourcefiles/laguardia.pdf) infuriated Harry Anslinger who was campaigning against marijuana and he condemned it as unscientific.  Anslinger then went on an offensive against what he saw as a "degenerate Hollywood" that was promoting marijuana use. After high profile arrests of actors like Robert Mitchum, Anslinger gained full control over future scripts.   Cotton farmers and farming lobbies who didn't want hemp competing with their crop stood behind and supported Anslinger, in many way$.

Much like the way Congress works today, the early laws against marijuana were often passed with little public attention. Many people allege that Anslinger and the campaign against marijuana had a hidden agenda.  DuPont petrochemical interests and William Randolph Hearst together created the highly sensational anti-marijuana campaign to eliminate hemp as an industrial competitor.  Hemp took less time and was significantly less expensive to harvest an acre of than it did for cotton.  Today, the lies and half truths Anslinger bandied about still exist simply because of ignorance and indoctrinated lies.  

Anslinger's primary focus was to alarm the public of the threat in their community. He used the mass media as his forum to start this national movement to scare people about a problem that didn't exist.  This required a larger staff and bigger budgets.  He used isolated and even unrelated stories to get his point across.  Here are a few of his press releases:

"An entire family was murdered by a youthful addict in Florida. When officers arrived at the home, they found the youth staggering about in a human slaughterhouse. With an axe he had killed his father, mother, two brothers, and a sister. He seemed to be in a daze… He had no recollection of having committed the multiple crime. The officers knew him ordinarily as a sane, rather quiet young man; now he was pitifully crazed. They sought the reason. The boy said that he had been in the habit of smoking something which youthful friends called “muggles,” a childish name for marijuana."

“By the tons it is coming into this country — the deadly, dreadful poison that racks and tears not only the body, but the very heart and soul of every human being who once becomes a slave to it in any of its cruel and devastating forms…. Marihuana is a short cut to the insane asylum. Smoke marihuana cigarettes for a month and what was once your brain will be nothing but a storehouse of horrid specters. Hasheesh makes a murderer who kills for the love of killing out of the mildest mannered man who ever laughed at the idea that any habit could ever get him….”

People still beleive these lies today.  Anslinger was not afraid to use race to scare people, either:

"Colored students at the Univ. of Minn. partying with (white) female students, smoking [marijuana] and getting their sympathy with stories of racial persecution. Result: pregnancy."

"Two Negros took a girl fourteen years old and kept her for two days under the influence of hemp. Upon recovery she was found to be suffering from syphilis."

Anslinger also noted that Billie Holiday and Charlie Parker both died after years of heroin and alcohol abuse so he orchestrated a nationwide dragnet of jazz musicians and kept a file called "Marijuana and Musicians."  Keep in mind that Billie and Charlie died of heroin and alcohol abuse, not marijuana.

It's time we stopped wasting our tax dollars enforcing outdated laws based upon lies and incarcerating non-violent "offenders" for possession of an herb. Recreational drugs are not anything I am interested in but who am I to tell someone what they can or cannot put in their bodies when the stuff really doesn't harm anyone? I've yet to meet a mean, nasty stoner, but I've dealt with more than my fair share of mean, nasty drunks and mean nasty "good" people who go to church on Sunday yet harbor hate and prejudice and are eager to run people out of town whom they don't like.  (Hands in the air) Praise Jesus.

We can use our tax dollars to address much bigger problems such as education, crime and rebuilding our failing roads and bridges.  Legalizing marijuana will take the cash flow away from major crime gangs and we can then cut our police and prison budgets.  When the prohibition on alcohol was lifted, the next day, Al Capone was out of a job. 

Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King who is pushing his new law The KIDS Act, said that Mexicans are crossing the border and desert each carrying 75 pounds of marijuana.  Uhm, like, you know, do you know how big a 75 pound bag of pot would be?  More false narrative.  Steve King, you're funny.  Who voted for you?

Not only should pot be legal, maybe it should be part of the daily regimen of our New York politicians. It already is for some of them (Steve Katz).  Greed and job security is to blame for their stupidity, corruption and many of their asinine decisions. They push lies in order to pass their own bills which are usually laden with hidden pork.  Maybe if our politicians were stoned, they'd make less destructive legislation and focus on what is good and needed rather than how they can justify a pay raise and pretend to look busy. 

When my sister was dying from brain cancer which metastasized from breast cancer, a morphine induced coma was unacceptable and not how she wanted to live out her final days.  Marijuana made it so that she could consciously enjoy her family for a few more precious weeks with minimal pain.  So many people are suffering today from medicine and their side effects.  It's time to recognize that marijuana has a place in the treatment of certain diseases and treatment side effects.

And Congress, quit passing stupid laws in an effort to make it look like your are doing something.  Fix the laws already broken.  Astrologically we are leaving the Piscean age and entering into Aquarius, the age of enlightenment.   Let's facilitate that.

For more reading:

More and more police officers are realizing the War on Drugs is a mistake
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/five-reasons-cops-want-to-legalize-marijuana-20130627

Marijuana Legalization Gains Support, Confounding Policymakers
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/29/marijuana-legalization_n_3521547.html

Monsters Under the Bed

I haven't blogged in a while because I've been busy but, recently an event that happened which perturbed me enough to pick up my sententious and pugilistic pen.  The 20 year old son of a friend was recently arrested with drugs.  Drugs are scary.  Just as a drunk driver can hurt or kill themselves or others, drugs can hurt and kill.  Well, most drug users use them in the privacy of their own home and are less likely to harm others but, they do run the risk of damaging their own bodies and creating issues in their normal day to day living.  If someone has a drug problem, arresting them does nothing to assuage their addiction.  It will be far from mollifying but intensifying any problem they may have.  Punishment takes away his life.  Only treatment and support from family, friends and the community will help unencumber him from the appetite of chemical dependency.  People with support, mercy, compassion and purpose are more amenable to discipline and healing. 

Take the scary and often moniker-ed "gateway drug" marijuana.  Most everyone I know uses it or has used it and I bet that most everyone you know falls into the same category - or they're lying.  So why isn't most of our population drug addicts?  Because they don't have that addiction gene?  I have alcohol in my house and I rarely consume it.  I do drink but I don't have to.  I have no need or strong desire to imbibe in it.  I'm not a drinker but I enjoy the product on occasion with friends.

I have several fiends who admit to doing cocaine, heroin or ecstasy in their pasts (I work in the church.  I run across these people a lot.  What is the church for if not for sinners?).  Once they got the fad of drug experimentation out of their systems, they went on to lead productive and professional lives, raising families and leaving drugs behind them.  Would they like to indulge again once in a while?  I'm sure but, they "grew up" and recognized that it affects their productivity and living a real life. 

Many of our politicians and technological geniuses have indulged in temporary drug use: Clinton, Bush, Obama, Steve Jobs.  If any of those men were ever caught and thrown into prison, none of them would be the men they are today for they would be convicted felons and not eligible to work in the professions they have chosen.  Can you imagine what our world would be like if Steve Jobs was given a forty year prison sentence instead of freely practicing his craft in pursuit of genius and perfection? 

Assemblyman Steve Katz (R) who is an outspoken state assemblyman who serves on the chamber's Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Committee — and had the effrontery to vote against medical marijuana — was recently busted for possessing pot.  He was pulled over on the state Thruway for going 80 miles an hour  in a 65 mph zone when a trooper detected a palpable odor redolent of pot wafting from his car.  Katz was on his way to Albany to vote on legislation while under the influence, BTW.  All charges were dropped against him.  Hmmph.  Membership has its privileges. 

Even our best athletes in the world have smoked weed.  "Disgraced U.S. Olympian Nick Delpopolo " is what the headlines read last summer after he failed a drug test. Why is he disgraced when so many other people use the drug with impunity? The Bureau of Statistics doesn't even research marijuana deaths each year because the number is so insignificant. Our government has lied and frightened the public for decades about this safe, natural medicine. Nobody beats their wife or kids, loses their job, gets in accidents, rapes or murders, or blows their paycheck on pot.  Alcohol?  That's a different story.  Nick's life, career and dream of greatness in service to our country through sports is now ruined by societal prejudice due to the unjust prohibition laws of cannabis.

Here are just a few of the many highly motivated athletes who have used drugs:
* Usain Bolt, the 2008 World Record holder of the 100 and 200 meter sprint.
* Michael Phelps, the most decorated swimmer ever with 14 Olympic gold medals.
* Tim Lincecum, the National League baseball’s Cy Young Award winner for 2009.
* Santonio Holmes, the Super Bowl XLII’s MVP.
* Mark Stepnoski, two-time Super Bowl champion. "I'd rather smoke than take painkillers."
* Randy Moss, NFL single season touchdown reception record (23, set in 2007), and the NFL  single-season touchdown reception record for a rookie (17, in 1998). Moss has founded, and  financed many charitable endeavors including the the Links for Learning foundation, formed in  2008.
* Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the NBA's all-time leader in points scored (38,387), games played,  minutes played, field goals made, field goal attempts, blocked shots and defensive rebounds.  During his career with the NBA's Milwaukee Bucks and Los Angeles Lakers from 1969 to  1989, Abdul-Jabbar won six NBA championships and a record six regular season MVP  Awards. He has a prescription to smoke marijuana in California, which he says he uses to  control nausea and migraine headaches. He has been arrested twice for marijuana possession.
* "Most of the players in the league use marijuana and I have and do  partake in smoking weed in the off season" - Josh Howard, forward for the Dallas Mavericks.  Howard admitted to smoking marijuana on Michel Irvin's ESPN show.
* "You got guys out there playing high every night. You got 60% of your league on marijuana.  What can you do?" - Charles Oakley (Chicago Bulls, New York Knicks, Toronto Raptors,  Washington Wizards and Houston Rockets)
* "I personally know boxers, body builders, cyclists, runners and athletes from all walks of life  that train and compete with the assistance of marijuana," —WWE wrestler Rob Van Dam
* Some of the best cricket players of all time, like Phil Tufnell and Sir Ian Botham, have  admitted to regularly using marijuana to deal with stress and muscle aches. In 2001, half of  South Africa's cricket team was caught smoking marijuana with the team physiotherapist. They were celebrating a championship victory in the Caribbean.

Where would any of those un-convicted criminals be today had they been caught and arrested before they achieved greatness?  Yes, drugs are bad and I would not encourage anyone to take or abuse them.  However, are they as bad as we have been led to beleive or are we just not able to make money off of them as well as say, alcohol which kills tens of thousands of people each year?  Are those deaths acceptable to our predominately Christic society? 

My biggest complaint here is not drugs.  It is the arrest of this twenty year old.   Millions of people before him, right now and in the future will do drugs and not get caught.  They will then go on to lead normal and productive lives without incident.  They either lead a life so boring that they are easily enchanted or they lead a life so full of stimulus that are are easily bored so, drugs were a temporary experiment.  This twenty year old will most likely become a convicted felon, do prison time, have the stigma of a conviction on his record, have difficulty procuring housing because of background checks and drug registries, endure numerous desultory attempts at finding a job, he'll have zero credit and he will most likely live off the largess of the social services and the taxpayer's dime.  He will be judged differently from normal, phantasmagorical good people with a prepossessing Christian artifice.  He will be labeled with the delineating modifier of "criminal" and his productivity to society will be a patent waste.  His life will be larded with more problems than an algebra textbook.  Most likely he is no different than anyone else.  He just got caught.

Nobody is the worse thing that they've ever done.  A conviction and doing prison time will not help this kid if he has a problem.  It will certainly not help him when he gets out and tries to put his life back in order.  If he has a drug problem, then he should be treated for it, not punished.  Our entire justice system is designed for punishment and profit.  Prisons should be for people who are a threat to others and not a warehouse for politicians, judges, DA's and law enforcement people to win elections and win grant money.

A story I often like to tell is about a friend who as a teen would ensconce himself on a bridge and throw pumpkins onto a highway below.  Fortunately he never hit a car and he was never caught.  Had he been caught or had he hurt anyone, he would have done many years in prison.  He wasn't caught, he went on to college, got married, became very active in his church, had kids and now works for corporate America as a manager of a nationally recognized chain.  Should he have been punished?  I don't know.  Had he been caught, his life would be drastically different today.  With a felony conviction on his record, he wouldn't have gone to college, probably not be married and his kids wouldn't exist.  He does more good for society today than society would have gotten out of him by punishing him. 

Winston Churchill once said that “One of the most unfailing tests of a civilization is how a country treats its criminals.”  Most criminals return to the streets in a worse state than when they were arrested.  Prison turns good people bad and bad people worse.  A better solution for crime would be a restorative justice approach. 

In The Art of Forgiveness, Lovingkindness, and Peace, Jack Kornfield describes an African forgiveness ritual: "In the Babemba tribe of South Africa, when a person acts irresponsibly or unjustly, he is placed in the center of the village, alone and unfettered. All work ceases, and every man, woman, and child in the village gathers in a large circle around the accused individual. Then each person in the tribe speaks to the accused, one at a time, each recalling the good things the person in the center of the circle has done in his lifetime. Every incident, every experience that can be recalled with any detail and accuracy, is recounted. All his positive attributes, good deeds, strengths, and kindnesses are recited carefully and at length. This tribal ceremony often lasts for several days. At the end, the tribal circle is broken, a joyous celebration takes place, and the person is symbolically and literally welcomed back into the tribe."

Too bad for those of us who profess to be Christians, that Jesus didn't show us another way.  Maybe those of us with eyes to see and ears to hear, know that way.  But, not to act is to act. 

-Malcolm Kogut.

Legalization of Marijuana

Do you know anyone who uses pot?  Has been arrested for pot?  Tried it once?  Do you know anyone who suffers from depression, addiction, chronic pain, cancer or fibromyalgia?  Well, it looks like NY is going to join the pantheon of states to legalize medical marijuana.  Many of our politicians freely admit to once using the herb such as Obama and Clinton.   Recently Republican Assemblyman Steve Katz was arrested and charged with possession as he was commuting to Albany to vote on legislation.  It is not clear if he has ever been high while on the floor passing laws but it seems now that these laws are affecting our lawmakers and they're going to do something about it.

I know what you're thinking.  Marijuana is a drug.  It slows motor skills.  It causes cancer in the long term.  It kills brain cells.  Well, again, the operative word here is "medical" marijuana.

If you could improve the quality of life for someone who is either elderly or suffering from debilitating injuries or disease, would you or, would you rather they suffer?  We know the side effects of marijuana so let's look at a few of the side effects from many common doctor prescribed medications:

Diarrhea, vomiting, suicide, death, nausea, amnesia, heart failure, stroke, water weight gain, muscle pain, blood clots, rash, dizziness, thinning bones, weakness, internal bleeding, dehydration, headaches, blurred vision, grogginess, difficulty breathing, no appetite, loss of balance, weight loss, weight gain, ringing in ears. 

Marijuana doesn't do any of those.  If your 80 year old grandmother suffered from painful  and debilitating arthritis, would you rather she suffer any of those aforementioned medicated side effects and sleep away her day or sit around watching TV, being snack obsessed and laughing at the paint on the wall?  Would you be concerned about her pot habit becoming a gateway drug?

What are some of the conditions medical marijuana is known for amelioration?  Alzheimer's, arthritis, glaucoma, ALS, MS, fibromyalgia, migraines, pain relief, cancer, HIV/AIDS, breast and brain cancer, addiction, opioid addiction, depression, chronic pain, nausea, no appetite, suicide.

When I was answering the suicide hotline, I had a caller who once had breast cancer a few years prior and she became addicted to pain killers.  She was taking eight pills a day despite being prescribed only four per day.  They have no effect on her anymore and the pain is unbearable to the point that she is suicidal. She admitted that she had smoked pot with her daughter and that pot was the only thing that took away the pain.  She was afraid of being arrested or getting her daughter arrested who was only trying to help her long suffering mother.  If this was your mother, which treatment would you prefer she imbibe in?  Endless and pointless suffering or giddy induced four hour lunches?

I have a friend in his forties who was a construction worker.  He fell from a roof and is now permanently disabled.  When he wakes up in the morning he is in excruciating pain.  He takes medication which then knocks him out for four more hours.  When he wakes in the afternoon, he forces himself to get up and take more medication which makes him nauseous, unable to eat and it still it doesn't take away his pain.  He has absolutely no life with his current medical treatment.  Enter marijuana.  When he smokes pot, he is able to eat and function for the whole day and it helps him to sleep at night.  Last year we went to the state fair and he was able to walk the entire park with no complaint.  So he had two fried doughs, a turkey leg, a cotton candy, two Slurpees, a beer and then we went to lunch.  He was able to function and have a quality day.  Please note that I did not share in his treatment and waited outside his car while he took his morning dosage.

I'm not talking about making pot legal like alcohol is - which unlike pot, kills over 5,000 children each year in DWI accidents.  Make pot available to people who can't find relief from modern medicine - or who do not wish to suffer the side effects of modern medicine - or who do not have insurance and can't afford the cost of modern medicine - or who sacrifice their quality of life because of the side effects of modern medicine. 

We would like for our elderly (old tokes) and disabled loved ones to have a certain quality of life.  If youth is through, do you think they are worried about long term damage from consuming or smoking an herb?  Not if it allows them to enjoy the few years they have left. 

A relative of mine was dying from cancer and she was prescribed morphine.  She refused to take it because she wanted to be awake for every precious moment she had left in this world.  Marijuana gave her a few pain free final weeks with her children which she would not have had otherwise. 

A funny aside, I recently had lunch with one of my former youth choir members who is now in his twenties.  He told me that when he was eight, his neighbor friend found his mother's stash of pot and they both snuck down into his basement to smoke it.  He said that it didn't have any effect on them and they really didn't remember much.  His friend emerged from the basement with shaved eyebrows and they plugged the toilet with something causing it to overflow and flood the basement. 

It seems when a senator's son comes out of the closet, they change their view on gay rights and attendant laws.  When a senator gets arrested for possession, we change our marijuana laws.   Once we do change the law, what are we going to do about the thousands of people in jail or prison who were arrested for possession and are serving lengthy sentences?  What about the people with prior felony convictions who are unemployable?  Congress, please fix the problems you created.

We need to arrest more senators.

-Malcolm Kogut.

The Arrest of Shelly

Back in the late seventies my friend Shelly was a third year college student. While celebrating with some of her friends after some school event, all the kids went to a local tavern where somebody gave my friend Shelly a rolled joint. A few minutes later a man approached her and asked if he could buy it from her but Shelly didn't want it to begin with so she gave it to him. The man offered her $5.00 but she refused it. He insisted that she take the five bucks and he placed it in her hand. Later as she left the tavern, two men approached her and arrested for for dealing drugs.

$30,000 in lawyer fees later, she was sentenced to 10 years probation which was better than the 25 years the state was looking to send her to prison for. At the time of her arrest, she had a bright future as a
teacher. Over the next 30 years she struggled to find employment. The only jobs that she could get were under the table jobs as a waitress and offering tutoring sessions. Over time she has made many contacts, proved herself to several high end restaurants and built a comfortable private tutoring business.  Those efforts combined with social services and living off the largess of the taxpayer Shelly was able to survive, meagerly. She also had an unerring eye for free food!

Due to the recent proliferation of sex offender laws and other forms of mass hysteria perpetuated by ratings hungry media and voter hungry politicians, more and more businesses are doing background checks.  After 30 years Shelly's name is beginning to resurface as a convicted drug dealer and now her private business and good name which she had struggled so long and so hard to rebuild are suffering. There are more and more private websites now adding to the mix of outing people with records. It used to be only the government who had or posted this information on the internet but more sites and background check companies are beginning to share and propagate this information.  A multitude of data harvesters are playing this profitable game with this old information as well. Even restaurants who used to hire anyone, even under the table, are now weeding out people with long past felony convictions. Even if it were sealed or expunged, they are still finding records from various sources. 

A friend who worked for ten years at a dead end call center at minimum wage recently lost his job because the company was forced to institute a background check policy to protect society.  I would think that the last thing we would want are unemployed former criminals with no money, nowhere to turn and no support, struggling and desperate to survive and provide for a family. 

We give our dogs bones so they won't chew on the furniture and keep them out of mischief.  We need to keep desperate people employed so they don't do anything desperate.

This country is inching closer to the legalization of marijuana.  What will happen to people like Shelly who have old records for possession and innocuous sales?

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-december-5-2012/old-tokes-home