Hooked: Illegal drugs and how they got that way

[SCREAM]

By the way, lets get something settled once and for all. Marijuana is not a gateway drug. Alcohol, including beer, is the gateway drug.


HOOKED: ILLEGAL DRUGS AND HOW THEY GOT THAT WAY

I was up late watching the History Channel and this show came on... Very VERY interesting...



Marijuana; Part 1 of 5

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Yqyx...eature=related

Marijuana; Part 2 of 5
You're going to laugh at the lies they tell starting at 1:50

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx50l...eature=related

Marijuana; Part 3 of 5

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oloob...eature=related

[ninjalooter1701]

Have you seen the "I helped" video?

[toolman846]

You mean the one about "It's Shake 'N Bake, and Ah helped"?

Or was that just shake?

[SCREAM]

Driven by the Drug War, the U.S. prison population is six to ten times as high as most Western European nations. The United States is a close second only to Russia in its rate of incarceration per 100,000 people. In 2000, more than 734,000 people were arrested in this country for marijuana-related offenses alone.

The US war on drugs places great emphasis on arresting people for smoking marijuana. Since 1990, nearly 5.9 million Americans have been arrested on marijuana charges, a greater number than the entire populations of Alaska, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming combined. In 2000, state and local law enforcement arrested 734,498 people for marijuana violations. This is an increase of 800 percent since 1980, and is the highest ever recorded by the FBI.

As has been the case throughout the 1990s, the overwhelming majority of those charged with marijuana violations in 2000-- 646,042 Americans (88 %) -- were for simple possession. The remaining 12% (88,456 Americans) were for "sale/manufacture", an FBI category which includes marijuana grown for personal use or purely medical purposes. These new FBI statistics indicate that one marijuana smoker is arrested every 45 seconds in America. Taken together, the total number of marijuana arrests for 2000 far exceeded the combined number of arrests for violent crimes, including murder, manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault.


http://www.legalizationofmarijuana.com/




In 1937, when marijuana was outlawed against the American Medical Association’s recommendation, cannabis was a component of at least 28 patent medicines made by many pharmaceutical companies still in business today. This national prohibition not only removed cannabis from use as a medicine, but has also produced the social wreckage of 20 million arrests (with an additional 2,200 arrests daily) and today’s pot prohibition bill to taxpayers approaching $25 billion annually.

With the ever-growing national realization that cannabis is one of “the safest therapeutically active substances known to man…”, the American people are taking back their rights to cannabis as medicine, one state at a time. Starting in California in 1996, thirteen states (eight states via voter initiative – five via state legislation) have now taken back their rights to marijuana as a medicine. After this week’s massive victory in Michigan, it is a clear sign that this culture war over medical marijuana is finally over, and the American people (and science) have won—the citizenry refuse to be denied the use of pot in their medicines chest any longer.

President-elect Obama immediately upon taking office should seat a national commission to update the Shafer Commission and bring forward national legislation to address this vital health care and social issue


http://norml.org/

[Gilles de Rais]

All these people were arrested for using marijuana medically? Please!

I am for the decriminalisation of soft drugs. But let's use proper arguments. The present classification was done on whims and as reaction to fantasies.

We now have a far clearer idea of what's dangerous and what's not so dangerous. Let's use that as our principle for what recreational drugs we want legalised. And let's stop saying it's all to help those poor cancer sufferers...

[contracycle]

The "war on drugs" is particularly ironic in a state that previously recognised that the prohibition of alcohol was a failure, empowered organised crime, and undermined popular identification with the state by criminilisaing whole swathes of the population. It should, and I ex[pect will, be seen as the precursor to and model for the "war on terror", a similar effort to use war-time rhetoric to justify actions and suppress dissent in a situation that is not a real war. In both cases they serve as pretexts for the extension of American military interventionism that is domestically acceptable,