The Pot-Pushing "Terrorists" Under Your Bed
Faced with mounting public criticism over the Justice Department's decision to shutter several locally authorized California medical marijuana dispensaries, Drug Czar John Walters recently traveled to Northern California to oversee police efforts to eradicate clandestine marijuana crops growing on public lands, and to label California's pot farmers as "terrorists."
According to a published report, writes Paul Armentano, the Czar proclaimed, "[T]he people who plant and tend [these marijuana] gardens are terrorists who wouldn't hesitate to help other terrorists get into the country with the aim of causing mass casualties."
While Walters's hyperbolic statement was no doubt meant to piggyback on recent terrorism fears fueled by US Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff, the allegation nonetheless reeks of desperation and dishonesty. FULL ARTICLE
Comments (10)
eric lansing
we're all (scratch out Keynesians) terrorists now.
Published: August 27, 2007 11:18 AM
Jeff
This sounds to weird/scary to be true. Personnally I see it as the federal government trying to bring back and strengthen the lies put out by "Reefer Madness" and Harry Anslinger the first head of the DEA. They must be determined to end the dispensaries by "Whatever It Takes" type of attitude. After all smoking marijuana will cause white woman who smoke it to seek out and engage black men in sexual affairs. Now the male of the species will have an irresistable urge to kill his parents and he will eventualle go totally criminally insane. All this from smoking marijuana. That's what was told the USA public back in 1936 on by our federal government. Now, today, with all the proof of the theraputic effects of marijuana our federal government has been caught in perpetrating bold face lies about the effects of smoking marijuana for 70 years. This must be so embarrassing to them that they feel they must do whatever it takes to not let medical marijuana become a reality and that they must continue in pushing lies on the people about marijuana and denieing the positive proof from the science and medical fields on the positive aspects of smoking or ingesting marijuana. For me it controls a 24/7 state of nausea, and does so much more for so many people with the widest safety margin of any drug, including over the counter. You can die from an overdose of aspirin but not cannabis. It has been proven in over 6000 years of undocumented use from 6000 B.C. to 0A.D. then documented proof from 1 A.D. to 1940 or there abouts when the feds stopped all use of cannabis and hemp and made them illegal to the most recent studies when we were allowed to study the theraputic effects of marijuana. So that's 2000 years of documented use of the positive effects of cannabis with a very wide safety margin. What is wrong with these people? Peace...
Published: August 27, 2007 2:58 PM
bwp
"Francis L. Young, Administrative Law Judge for the DEA on September 6th 1988 found that marijuana was probably the worlds safest medicine. The courts final conclusion reads; "The evidence in this record clearly shows that marijuana has been accepted as capable of relieving the distress of great numbers of very ill people, and doing so with safety under medical supervision. It would be unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious for DEA to continue to stand between those sufferers and the benefits of this substance in light of the evidence in this record." But they did. Probably if they didn't half of them would be out of a well paid job."
Published: August 27, 2007 5:44 PM
sean
you need to understand, that for the goverment to hold together with its peopl'e support, it needs a common enemy, and even if they have to make one up, they will get their enemy, whether it is certain middle eastern countries, or Cuba, or even a therepuetic, medically safe herb. Just like the church needs the icon of Satan to keep its subjects united and in line, the goverment needs its enemies. what they dont realize(or maybe they do and just dont care) is that the marijuana issue is tearing people apart who feel strongly on either side of the issue.
Published: August 28, 2007 2:05 PM
Vanmind
Praise j*h and pass the spliff.
Published: August 29, 2007 3:06 AM
mulp
sean wrote "you need to understand, that for the goverment to hold together with its peopl'e support, it needs a common enemy, and even if they have to make one up, they will get their enemy,..."
Nixon found the Drug War to be a convenient tool to fight the liberals, as have many since. One might wonder if the passion of subsequence Republican Drug War promoters weren't interested in profiting from the profit created by the government supported drug cartels. And the drug cartels have proved a useful way to fund and justify foreign interventions in many nations.
But I guess people like Nixon and Reagan who used the drug war to advance political ends domestically and internatioally are ok because they aren't liberals...?
Published: August 31, 2007 3:29 AM
Anthony
"But I guess people like Nixon and Reagan who used the drug war to advance political ends domestically and internatioally are ok because they aren't liberals...?"
I doubt you'd fine anyone here willing to answer that in the affirmative.
Published: August 31, 2007 7:19 AM
tokerdesigner
1.
1. Kathy Kelly noted that there are over 5 million Americans who aren't allowed to vote because they have been convicted of a felony.
A disproportionate number of these are African-Americans, and presumably a disproportionate number of them would be Democratic voters if they could vote. (Also true of those arrested for cannabis.) Look at the size of the Republican majority in the 2004 Presidential election to see what a difference this can make.
Therefore one possible reason for 800,000 cannabis arrests yearly is that each one of those arrests is a chance to examine, search, interrogate an individual and his/her associates in a fishing expedition to find grounds to prosecute and get felony convictions, knocking out more voters of a particular political direction, maybe those referred to by previous writers as "liberals"...
2. Has anyone noticed: (a) An R.J.Reynolds website "complains" (brags?) that cigaret smokers are paying over $30 bil. a year in taxes, settlements, etc.; meanwhile that matches neatly with "Drug War" expenditures by the government which received that money, mostly for cannabis arrests etc. Think a moment why tobacco companies would want to hire the government to suppress cannabis. (a) It's another herb slave addicts could turn to in their effort to kick the tobacco habit. (b) Even worse-- cannabis users, or many of them, learn to use moderate-sized, truly CONSERVATIVE (narrow diameter) smoking utensils-- if this practice spilled over into the tobacco addict population, the hot-burning-overdose-based tobacco profit margin is shot to hell. (c) As one friend said, refusing a toker, "If the cops found that in my car, they'd confiscate the car." The present legal terror and fear of arrest is probably the main reason so many cannabis users stick with "joints", "blunts" and other overdose smoking procedures which are easy to hide or dispose of, instead of turning to the one-hitter or mini-toke utensil which, once standardized for all smokers worldwide, would end the tobacco empire (and the 5 million deaths a year) forever. So much for politics: follow the money.
Published: September 27, 2007 7:28 PM
Ministry of Cannabis
Greetings by Ministry of Cannabis, a marijuana seeds bank, based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Published: December 11, 2007 10:00 AM
billwald
Confiscating property from drug raids has replaced speed traps for generating funds in local police depatments.
Published: December 11, 2007 10:31 AM