According to the news release, "When their food is moved, birds without benefit of cannabinoids have trouble imagining where else the food might be." Why would they want to suppress their imaginations except to eliminate their free will?
The study, paid for with your tax dollars, was conducted for the National Institutes of Health. Think about that for a minute. To borrow a phrase from Abnu - This can't be a good thing.
I reaped many unexpected rewards from hosting the Carnival and finding Rogue Pundit is certainly one of them. We're not quite eye to eye on politics but we're closer than most and his posts on drug issues are always really interesting. For those of my readers who skipped through the carnival post (and I know you did), I'm going to repost the link to this story on opium poppies that don't produce morphine. They do produce other compounds however that form the basis of the drugs thebaine and oripavine which are apparently non-addictive.
What this means in practical terms is that the pharma companies can extract these drugs without going through the extra step of processing the morphine first. Don't hold your breath waiting for Eli Lily to pass those savings to the consumer though.
The plants, that bleed red instead of white, naturally mutated at the legal farms in Tazmania and are now being cultivated for the potential creation of non-addictive pain killers. For the technical details on this and an excellent explanation on medical potential of the drugs for pain relief and addiction treatments, read Rogue Pundit's excellent post on the subject.
Prohibition unjustly claimed the life of Jonathan Magbie this week. The story has already been well covered by DrugWarRant and D'Alliance so I'll sum it up only briefly. Jonathan, a 27-year-old quadriplegic who had been unable to breathe on his own since he was 4, needed 24 hour care to stay alive. He was caught with about joint's worth of marijuana, a small amount of cocaine no doubt for personal use and being in proximity to a loaded gun in a car that he was riding in. (Keep in mind he lives in DC. It's a very dangerous city outside of the beltway.) It's not like he was physically able to go out and mug people with it.
The judge threw out the plea bargain and decided to issue the guy a death sentence. He sent him to jail for ten days. Four days later Jonathan Magbie was dead from inadequate care. The WaPo has an excellent editorial on the subject today but leaves us with the same questions.
But did Mr. Magbie deserve jail? Why was he sent to the hospital? Why did the hospital discharge him and refuse to take him back? Why did two days elapse before he could get his ventilator? Why is his case closed?
The first question is key. Did you feel any safer knowing he was off the street? Do you think spending the tax revenue to put and keep this man in jail in the first place was worth it? And should the penalty for personal consumption of a plant or even a drug be such an obviously predictable cruel and unusual death?
It would be a shame to lose this organization, particularly at a time when they're gaining so much ground on legislation at the state level. You can help and get a spiffy new tshirt in the process. For a suggested donation of only $12 you can get a tshirt from the event that was washed out. These are bound to become collector's items and so far only 18 people have responded to this plea for help. This is an embarassing response, so don't wait. Help them out today. Details are available here.
For even greater bargains, check out their clearance sale while you're at the site. You can get tshirts and books at incredibly low prices. Don't just sit there - please buy something.
Steve is hoping the blog will be a temporary project and may take it down if the decrim proposal in Chicago is a success so don't delay your visit to this exciting addition to the voice of drug policy reform. Click on over and check it out. We're going to put it on our daily read list here.
Legal Intoxication Specials Available for Use and Abuse
Come celebrate this literary landmark with the editor and contributors
In Manhattan's Lower East Side
@ Uncle Ming's
225 Avenue B Second Floor
(between 13th and 14th Sts.)
212-979-8506
Whatever good may be done by reduction in consumption is being completely overpowered by the restrictions on freedoms and outright thuggery of those prosecuting the war.
Read the whole post for his excellent argument on the folly of forfeiture. I love his idea to make the point. You can still buy the seeds to grow these poppies in any grocery store during sowing season. He recommends you buy some but don't plant them in your own yard. The DEA could take your house. He thinks you should share instead.
Yes, you've got it. Find out who your local police chief is. Who's the head of the local D.A.R.E unit? Perhaps the local DA is being a little extreme in his prosecution of drugs cases? What about that judge who gave a life sentence to the guy with ten joints on his third strike?
Tossing a few legally procured seeds over a fence is probably not even a crime yet. He goes on to take a more serious look at the use of this opioid in a subsequent post and his further ruminations on the subject are most illuminating. He remarks that a derivative was commonly available within the last century and society thrived.
I would note that the average dosage of narcotics in mid 19 th century Britain was 127 doses per head per year. That's man, woman and child. One can have all sorts of arguments about the Victorians and colonialism but it is worth noting that the basis for modern society, the huge explosion of wealth of the industrial revolution and the Empire were all built by those who we would today consider hopeless drug addicts.
I just kept on speaking. Loud and clear were my words of freedom, justice and equality. They rang off the surrounding buildings and echoed through downtown Montgomery. People in buildings and homes, people driving down the street and those shopping nearby heard what I had to say.
It's generally believed Loretta's speech was the reason the police shut them down. As one of the other attendees said “That white girl done pissed the cops off!”
The video report is now up at PotTv and more photos are available here. Check it out.
The tourists were injured by the tear gas the police used, not by the non-violent protest that was staged to get the government's attention. I would bet cash money that any one of those 19 tourists that really wanted to leave, would have been allowed to do so by the unarmed protesters.
The Peruvian government denies it has failed to honour its annual promise to purchase a quota of the coca crop for legitimate use that is held to be a vital part of indigenous Andean culture. The cocaleros have a message in response that the government does not want to be heard, so it used excessive force to disperse those who would listen. Your US tax dollars are being used to fund this culture war under the umbrella of the war on some drugs.
The coca plant is not a drug until it's processed into cocaine. Don't you think our government should find better ways to spend our money?
That started from this tropic port,
Aboard this tiny Ship.
Pieter at PeakTalk is mediating the dialogue with a post examining the man behind the mangled media preformance and tells us that Bush has a job to do.
Aunty Goob at Goobage (statisticulating with the best, fact-checking the rest), has an illuminating post on Infinite Sales Taxes. I'm not much for number crunching but it made sense to me.
The mate was a mighty sailin' man,
The Skipper brave and sure,
The weather started getting rough,
The tiny ship was tossed.
Annie at AmbivaBlog has a theory about "Why we love hurricanes". I think she's right. "Like a destructive toddler secretly relieved to be stopped by a godlike parent, we're appalled by our own power and grateful to have it dwarfed."
Joe Gandelman at the Moderate Voice wants to know why Reuters is in such a snit over the meaning of words. Joe also speaks on Russia's President Vladmir Putin who says he's cracking down on terrorism -- but others believe he's short-circuiting Russia's young democracy. They complain of a laundry list of measures to curtail freedoms proudly held up years ago as an examples of Russia's seemingly-miraculous conversion to democracy. Hmmm sounds somewhat familiar.
QandO Blog said they sent a post on Neolibertarianism and Foreign Policy but as I always say, the universe gives you what you need and the link turned up a list of Things You’d Love to Say at Work, but Can’t which really does work better with the theme.
Message in a bottle: I heard from QandO this morning and they really want you to know about this so here's the link to Neolibertarianism and Foreign Policy. Jon Henke tells us he makes a case for a bit more Hobbesian libertarianism in foreign policy because rigidly ideological Libertarian foreign policy principles are lovely.....less so, if you’re dead.
So this is the tale of our castways,
They're here for a long, long time
The first mate and the Skipper too,
Will do their very best,
John Beck at Incite keeps hearing the word, "Disingenuous," used to describe John Kerry & his campaign. He thinks they couldn't have picked a better word but he offers up a lot of synomyms just in case you have a favorite. I'm marking him down as an undecided for Bob.
So join us here each week my friends,
You're sure to get a smile,
I'm a pushover for naturalists, so I love Rogue Pundit, who has discovered Morphine-less Opium Poppies and Pain Relief. Australian farmers call the mutant poppy "Norman" (for no morphine) and it bleeds pink instead of white. This could mean a breakthrough for non-addictive pain relief.
So what do think folks? I admit handpicking the first five entries but after that I let them fall at random. I thought it answered the question and I'll be staying right here to ponder the meaning of all this but for those of you who want to make a run for the rescue ship, the carnival will be moving on to:
"It's a great legal victory," said John W. Roulac, chief executive of Nutiva, a Sebastopol, Calif., producer of hemp protein powder and nutrition bars.
Indeed it is. Nice to have some good news for a change.
The trip home was rather uneventful. I did however meet a young marine at the airport who had just returned from Afghanistan. We talked for a long time and he had photos with him. I don't know quite what to make of the encounter.
Some of the photos were of the trip over on the boat. The sea behind him looked very blue, as was the sky. He and his fellow Marines, barely in their 20s, looked so young and enthusiastic - laughing and horsing around for the camera. The next series were from the ground in Afghanistan. They were stark and harsh as the blazing sun. He was there for 74 days.
They told his unit that they would be doing 5 day operations, returning to a base camp at intervals. Instead it turned into a 74 day mission. They didn't get a shower the whole time. They had no changes of clothes. He had brought five pairs of socks and told of how he would use one of his 12 allotted bottles of water to try to wash them in a MRE bag. He told of men removing the skin off their feet when they took their boots off. Men wringing blood out of their socks from foot diseases and men being taken off the field by helicopter when taken ill with intestinal maladies from the lack of hygiene. Quite a few left that way.
He saw and confiscated a small but significant amount of processed drugs. They would turn the drugs in to higher ups who sent them on to some undefined central clearinghouse. He wasn't sure where that was or what was done with them. I didn't mention my theory on it. They did nothing about eradicating plants. He spent several days doing reconnaissance from the middle of a huge poppy field however. He thought it was amusing. He was surprised when I asked if he found it to be visually beautiful, as if it hadn't occurred to him to even think about it in that way. He reflected for a moment and said yeah, actually it was, as if he had just realized it.
He said there was only one road in the whole country and that was in bad shape from the bombings. His unit was in the center of the country and spent their tour hiking on goat trails and open land. Sometimes the "insurgents" would surrender when they saw them coming and were glad to see the unit arrive. The Aghanis apparently like the MREs better than the soldiers do. Other times they had to broadcast insults in Arabic to flush "them" out. He never spoke of the Afghanis by name and couldn't define who the "enemy" was. They had a list of high profile targets and didn't find a one of them. He was pretty sure that we would never find bin Laden if he was hiding out in that area. "There's a million hiding places," he said.
He was proud of his mission. He found some small caches (he called them cachets) of guns. He didn't have to kill anybody. The biggest threat they faced in the end was boredom. There was nothing to do, sitting in the blazing sun in full uniform, they would shoot at stray goats and donkeys and any wildlife that happened to come within range. This bothered me. I asked him (hopefully) if they at least ate the animals to relieve the boredom of the MRES but they didn't. "Don't you think the locals might depend on those animals for milk and food?" I asked. He replied, "Yeah, maybe, but sitting day after day, just waiting like that, you go a little stir crazy. You gotta do something."
I wanted to ask a lot more questions but my plane was boarding. In the end, even though I think his orders and what we are doing there is dangerous and destructive; I told him it was bad to kill the villagers' livestock but I thanked him for going there and going through all that to keep our country safe. He was visibly startled. He clearly expected a obvious liberal to say something - well - hateful. I did it because even if I don't think it helped, I know he believed it did and was doing the best he could for this country while risking his life for misguided leaders in the process.
In the last group of photos, he and his buddies were in Croatia. These pix featured girls and tables filled with copious amounts of beer. They were smiling in these photos too but this time they looked a whole lot older.
Bird brain logic?
More Poppies
Wrongful death in the war on some drugs
Save Money and MASS-CANN
Book Release Party
Poppies
Freedom March shut down in Alabama
The ship's aground on the shore of this
the Skipper too,
The Millionaire and his wife,
A movie star,
the Professor
and Mary Ann,
Hemp Food industry wins big
Fortune of a soldier
Homeward Bound
