The Justice Department's decision to order the pamphlets destroyed drew criticism from Patrice McDermott, deputy director of governmental affairs for the American Library Association, and Bernard A. Margolis, president of the Boston Public Library, one of the libraries ordered to destroy the pamphlets.
"I'm thrilled," he said. "I think our concerns have been heard that when material is placed in the depository system for access by citizens that it should stay there."
And so it should. This is the power of the internet. I first saw this story rumbling through the discussion lists but by the next morning, the mainstream media had picked it up and put this directive under the spotlight. It couldn't survive the heat of public scrutiny and the order is now rescinded.
Here's one more of these ridiculous busts. A bigger one at one hundred plants, but again busted by expensive helicopter flyovers and look at them. The photo is of the actual plants. They are claiming there's a potential for one pound per plant but those are barely beginning to flower and they look like they haven't even been sexed out yet. The male plants are useless and it takes until they get about that big to figure out which ones are males. Usually that's about half the plants. Those would all be culled in the first place and those skinny female plants are not going to yield a pound of buds each. That is the best you can hope to get under optimal conditions. It just doesn't happen most of the time. No way that field is worth $200,000 but again I wouldn't be surprised if the cost of the law enforcement side of this bust doesn't approach at least half of that.
And don't get me started on DNA testing the cannabis to hold in a bank for some future "conspiracy to spread cannabis around the world" charge. It takes weeks and months for the courts to get DNA results on humans in murder cases and they want to tie up the labs with this penny-ante stuff? It's time for our government to get their priorities straight and going around tearing up beneficial flora should not even be on the list.
We're posting about this little bust because it's close to home and it illustrates once again how law enforcement overstates the value of the plants. The 26 plants found in Agawam are not going to be worth $50,000 even if they had all been mature. My guess is since they were so tall they're a Hawaiian sativa strain which is unlikely to even flower properly in the cold summer we had here but even supposing they did bloom, you still don't get that much useable or I should say saleable cannabis from a plant. You can only sell the flower tops. They would be lucky to get a couple of ounces out of that patch. Furthermore, chances are they were just growing it for their own consumption. That small a plot would not be worth the effort nor the risk to an actual dealer.
Let me say this again, the cost of the helicopters, the police hours and the future court appearances will run over $50,000 or more of your tax dollars, all to bust what in practical terms would probably be worth, at the very most, if all the plants had matured, about $2,000.00. More likely it was worth about 600 bucks. Not to mention that two otherwise law-abiding people will not be contributing to the municipal tax base because they will either lose their jobs or at least have to take a lot of time off to defend against this penny-ante bust.
The only criminal here is the criminal waste of your tax dollars spent waging war against a plant.
The Taliban had cracked down on poppy growers, but the regime's fall led to an increase in production and this year's harvest will be the largest since the October 2001 invasion.
The evidence mounts that large areas of Afghanistan returned to the control of warlords, who command militias of up to 10,000 men, which are paid for by the profits of the illegal heroin trade. The pundits predict this will bode ill for Tony Blair, "as he cited the supply of heroin as one of the justifications for the invasion, in addition to removing the Taliban regime and rooting out al-Qaida training camps run by Osama bin Laden."
Here in the US, Bush and his minions continue to insist in the face of these facts to the contrary that life is better for the Afghanis since we "liberated" them. One wonders if the indigenous residents of the country think they are better off with their entire infrastructure blasted to smithereens by a liberating force that immediately left them virtually alone to deal with the rampant violence of warlords fighting for territory.
Officials from the international aid group said the decision is a response to the killing in June of five staff members, the danger of further attacks, and its frustration with both the U.S.-led coalition and the Afghan government.
The impoverished natives unfortunately don't have that option and must continue to live under these abysmal conditions. Is it any wonder they protect the al-Qaida rather than throw their lot in with the few remaining US forces?
Cannabis is not a chemical performance enhancing drug, it's a plant used in an unadulterated form as a relaxant and a pain reliever. Williams is said to have used the herb to help overcome his anxiety disorder because the pharmaceutical drug he was prescribed did not agree with him. As someone who used this plant to overcome the same malady, I can attest to its effectiveness. I was a painfully shy child and twenty five years ago, marijuana helped me overcome that disorder.
I see these headlines from sports writers calling him selfish and saying he has a "pot problem". I'm not often moved to this kind of language, but to that I say, screw you. Ricky has no obligation to surrender his personal sovereignty to give you guys something to talk about and what makes his pot use such a problem? That he was too good a player?
[He] led the NFL in 2002 with 1,853 yards rushing and broke nine team records. Last season he ran for 1,372 yards despite little offensive support.
Williams only problem with cannabis use that I can see is that our government would like to put him in prison for it and the NFL would continue to penalize him for using a natural medicine instead of a chemical like Paxil, for which he was a former spokesman.
It took Blair a while to figure out that they were there because of the potted star hibiscus in his front yard, that he grows for his business. It took the Task Force over an hour to admit they had made a dumb mistake. In the interim they scoured Davis' home, questioned him about the bamboo growing in his window and demanded to know what he intended to do with the watermelons and cantaloupes growing in his back yard. What did they think he was going to do with them? Put them up for adoption? The police finally gave up and left, leaving Davis only a "citizen's information card" with "closed-report" written on it. You think they could have at least apologized for their ridiculous mistake.
It's this kind of incompetency that underscores the need to disband these Task Forces. From the corruption at Tulia to the idiocy in this raid, it's clear that these people number one, do not have enough to do and number two, are wasting our tax dollars while having no effect on the black market for drugs.
Furthermore, it endangers the public safety. This is how innocent people get killed in the war on some drugs and consumers. A person who is not involved in drugs would either be inclined to protect themselves from a group of armed thugs invading their homes or in the case of the elderly victims of these botched raids, have heart attacks from the terror of having strangers with guns ordering them on the floor.
The store is apparently still open but is struggling and could use public support to stay open and continue serving its needy patients. Please send them a donation, or even an encouraging email. Contact Hemp NB: tel 506-652-4367; email hempnb@hotmail.com
Jeff Doolittle hosts this week's Carnival of the Vanities #97 using a fun timeline theme where everybody got to pick their own categories. All the events listed had occurred on July 28th in different years. Since I was submitting a post about a football player, I was tempted to go for the Crusades but I thought the connection would be too esoteric so I went with the Star Spangled banner instead. They still sing that before all sports events don't they?
As always there's something for everyone in the posts. And Doolittle's blog is a good read in and of itself, even though he's so technosmart that he'll make you feel a little dumb if you're technodope like me.
Meanwhile, our favorite political candidate in the US, Ed "NJ Weedman" Forchion has completed a series of campaign commercials relative to his candidacy for Congressman. Ed's spent five months in jail in his attempt to get these ads aired on Comcast. The least you can do is check them out and if you live in his district, get to the polls on election day and vote for the NJWeedman.com.
It's all so ridiculous. Think about it. If they invented a test that no one could beat and 75% of the players tested positive for marijuana, would you stop watching the sport? Would you think less of them. They would be the same people you admired the day before you found out what they did to relax in the privacy of their own homes.
The sports world appears to be reeling but Ricky Williams is said to be at peace with his decision. One can't help but think that knowing he won't have to pee in a cup contributes greatly to his serenity.
This is a travesty. Although we realize Conroy suffered some repercussions for this illegal and unethical act by having to leave his employment, it's still a miscarriage of justice. Certainly, the young student whose life Conroy was attempting to ruin will get the message that you can get away with breaking the law if you're a white man in an administrative position of power. I doubt if he will end up with any respect for either authority or the law.
Happy birthday to Drug War Rant. Pete has a nice post up to celebrate the Rant's first year of existence and we're sending our best wishes from Last One Speaks.
We feel lucky to have stumbled onto his blog just about at the beginning of the Rant and grateful to have been the beneficiary of his insight and his kindness in sharing his readers over the last year.
This is frightening. A vaccination to block the receptors that allow someone to experience pleasure from drugs? Who's to say it won't also block pleasure from everything else in life? Or have some other effect on a growing child's metabolism that would cause more harm than the potential use of the drug at some undetermined time in the future might cause? I can see it as a benefit for an adult who is out of control with addiction to white powder drugs but to inoculate children who might be at risk to become addicted when they grow up, crosses the line of acceptability.
For one thing by what criteria would the children be judged as risks? Genetics? Environment? Economic standing? And who would be the judges? No -- enforcing government policy and mandating future behavior with neuropharmaceuticals goes much too far.
Young people sometimes use drugs to fill the void left by absent parents, however, drugs can not be a substitute for parents who are present in their children's lives. If our parenting skills have diminished to the point where we have so little time to give our offspring that we must use drugs to ensure they don't want to use drugs, then we should just stop having children.
Jeralyn at Talk Left is blogging at the DNC this week but she's still the first to point us to this story on prison population growth in the US. The Department of Justice has released a new report and it confirms that 6.9 million Americans, (that's 3.2% of our entire population) are either incarcerated or under the control of the prison system via probation and parole.
The numbers keep growing but the crime has not proportionally increased which leads to the conclusion that this is a residual effect of the war on some drugs. All those non-violent substance consumers sentenced to irrationally long confinements during the "tough on crime" 90s have filled the industrial prison system to bursting and are unable to be released under mandatory sentencing. Meanwhile violent criminals, who were are not subject to these same restrictions are being released early because the states simply cannot afford to keep them in jail.
This is no way to run a penal system and certainly does not contribute to the public safety. Prisons and sentencing laws are an issue ripe for reform and one that could generate some badly enthusiam for the Democratic ticket should they choose to address it. However, Jeralyn reports that she has scruntinized the copy of the Democratic Platform she was given yesterday and what does it say about these policies that is bankrupting the states and shredding the fabric of society. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
It's time for the Dems to wake up and smell the iron bars. With due respect to the victims of 9/11, it's time to pay some attention to the millions of victims who are suffering right now under our own government's ill-advised policies.
Bush and his thugs at ONDCP want you to believe that marijuana is the new scourge of today's youth. They say this is not your grandmother's pot and it's so much more potent and more dangerous... Pure hogwash. I am the grandmother who smoked that pot and I'm telling you it's no better now than it was in 1960. There has always been really good pot that no one but politician's kids could afford and then there's the commercial grade Mexican that everyone else smoked. And when you did get high grade herb, you smoked a lot less of it. The dose is controllable.
In terms of the health, safety and social impact, marijuana still is and always has been the least destructive drug available to society. Alcohol, tobacco, meth and heroin are all much more dangerous and exact a far greater toll from our youth.
Also keep in mind, NIDA, the same agency that is telling you pot is more dangerous and is causing more medical and rehab interventions, is also saying the ONDCP cut the use of marijuana by 11% through use of their ineffective anti-drug programs. Both cannot be true about the same demographic group and these deceitful statistics and irrational policies are actually putting our youth more at risk, not less.
And what's up with the government-funded Mississippi growing facility we've been talking about naming it's anti-legalization program the Marijuana Potency Project -- a direct play on words on the privately run pro-legalization organization, Marijuana Policy Project. It's practically a copyright violation and clearly designed to confuse a young person looking for real information instead of NIDA propaganda.
Make no mistake about it. This new focus has nothing to do with public safety. The Bush administration feels sufficiently challenged by our numbers and effectiveness at organizing, that they are targeting our issue with a proposal that is sheer folly. Kerry would do well to acknowledge the abject failure of these policies and start courting our ranks by coming out of the convention with a plank on drug policy reform.
That might be the value of the haul if the couple caught with it were to sell it by the gram in the local park but it's more likely they would have made no more than a few hundred dollars on the transaction at best. The authorities inflate the figures to make it sound like an important bust. These two are certainly not kingpin dealers.
Meanwhile if you're young and able to get to Toronto by Friday night, shake out the sequins, put on your dancing shoes and get yourself to Yonge St. for Caribana Friday. It looks like it will be quite a party.
This is what Democracy looks like
More dumb pot busts
How does your garden grow
Afghanistan opium production continues to grow
Ricky Williams comes out for pot
More stupid Task Force tricks
Can't keep a good store down
Follow the time line
By the numbers
Ricky Williams "free at last"
No punishment for the crime
...Go out and have a good time
A shot in the arm
Bush Targets Cannabis Consumers
Small miracles and other stuff
