Medical marijuana is 100 percent completely legal - however, only in a synthetic form of which there are many versions. Look at the Controlled Substance Act. How insane it is that our government imprisons, takes away parents from their children, and destroys the lives of hard-working every-day Americans by the hundreds of thousands every year because they utilize organic marijuana instead of that prescribed by physicians. According to Barry McCaffrey, the former federal drug czar, organic marijuana is much healthier for you because of its many natural beneficial compounds that can help people - especially suffering from muscular-selector type ailments and arthritic problems. [continues 143 words]
Gen. Barry McCaffrey offers an excellent primer on Colombia's recent economic and political reforms and why the United States must pass the U.S.-Colombia free-trade agreement stalled in Washington (Congress should OK trade deal, Issues & Ideas, Nov. 25). By promptly passing the trade agreement, Congress will help cement these reforms and send the unmistakable signal to other Latin American nations that Washington takes seriously economic and democratic liberalization. The economic reasons for passage are as compelling as the national-security arguments that McCaffrey outlined. Colombia is developing into a regional economic power, and it is the second-largest Latin American market for U.S. agriculture exports. [continues 160 words]
After Thirty-Five Years and $500 Billion, Drugs Are as Cheap and Plentiful as Ever: An Anatomy of a Failure. 1. After Pablo On the day of his death, December 2nd, 1993, the Colombian billionaire drug kingpin Pablo Escobar was on the run and living in a small, tiled-roof house in a middle-class neighborhood of Medellin, close to the soccer stadium. He died, theatrically, -ridiculously, gunned down by a Colombian police manhunt squad while he tried to flee across the barrio's rooftops, a fat, bearded man who had kicked off his flip-flops to try to outrun the bullets. The first thing the American drug agents who arrived on the scene wanted to do was to make sure that the corpse was actually Escobar's. The second thing was to check his house. [continues 15494 words]
Rolling Stone on the War on Drugs. If I were maximum dictator, I would force every newspaper editor, every magazine editor, and every television producer in the land to read Ben Wallace-Wells' 15,000-word article in the new (Dec. 13) issue of Rolling Stone, titled "How America Lost the War on Drugs." Wallace-Wells captures the complete costs of the drug war better than any journalist I've read in a long time. He documents how the federal government has dropped about $500 billion combating illicit drugs over the past 35 years. Nearly 500,000 people sit in jail or prison for drug crimes, "a twelvefold increase since 1980," Wallace-Wells writes. For all the money the government has spent and all the people it's jailed, it's still failed to make a long-term impact on the availability of drugs. The militarized drug-control techniques favored by the Bush administration, he reports, have increased violence and political corruption abroad, violated human rights, and destabilized several Latin American nations. [continues 1013 words]
The proposed free-trade agreement with Colombia has stalled in Congress. The success and stability of Colombia and the Pan-American region depend on our ability to recognize the importance of this agreement to the United States, to Colombia's economy, to human rights progress and to enhanced U.S. national security. This fall I spent several days in Colombia, meeting with President Alvaro Uribe and other high-ranking officials in the government and military. I visited refugee camps, economic development zones and counter-drug operations. The Colombia I recently visited is drastically different from the place I visited seven years ago when I served as the U.S. national drug czar. [continues 676 words]
Dear Editor, Many thanks to The New Paltz Oracle for the two editorials, "Should Students with Drug Convictions Get Financial Aid?" (Thur, Nov. 1). While the nuances of this specific aspect of drug policy are often times subtle, there are also aspects that are blunt and obnoxious. Such is the question of financial aid for those with a drug conviction. The first thought that comes to my mind is this is a form of double jeopardy wherein a student with a conviction for a drug offense is being punished a second time. The second thought is why are there no such penalties for convictions of other crimes? [continues 216 words]
(1) VETS MAKE UP QUARTER OF NATION'S HOMELESS Pubdate: Thu, 8 Nov 2007 Source: Los Angeles Times (CA) Copyright: 2007 Los Angeles Times Author: Associated Press Lonnie Bowen Jr. was once a social worker, but for 17 years the Vietnam war veteran has slept on the streets off and on as he's battled substance abuse and mental health problems. "It's been a hard struggle," said Bowen, 62, as he rolled a cigarette outside a homeless processing center in downtown Philadelphia, where he planned to seek help for his drug and alcohol problem, as he has before. [continues 6565 words]
McCaffrey Speaks At SIUE's Arts & Issues Series Drugs are funding the war in the Middle East, four-star Gen. Barry McCaffrey, U.S. Army (Ret.), told the crowd gathered to hear his discussion about the war on terror at an SIUE Arts & Issues presentation Saturday night. "(Our government) has been willfully in denial of that reality." He said the majority of the 44 recognized terrorist organizations are not funded by any communist state, but rather by the international crime of drug smuggling. [continues 1002 words]
To the Editor: The Union Democrat's editors have written an editorial so bad, "Pot farms thrive despite best CAMP efforts" (Aug 15), that it must be rebutted. You make sense when you say (addressing large illegal cannabis farms) "we don't need them..." Indeed, we don't. Those jobs and the profits from such massive commercial gardening need to go to workers and employers in the U.S., not foreign criminal syndicates. Your editorial says you "commend Campaign Against Marijuana Planting for doing an exemplary job of ridding both public and private lands of the plantations." It then goes on to say "the seizures have hardly put a stop to illegal growing." If CAMP were doing an exemplary job would record amounts of illegal cannabis be growing in our national parks and national forests? [continues 137 words]
County supervisors should approve ID cards for medical marijuana patients. The county Board of Supervisors is scheduled to consider the charged issue of having the Orange County Health Care Agency issue voluntary identification cards to medicinal users of marijuana, in compliance with state law. The supervisors should approve the program for several reasons. The first, of course, is that they are required by state law to do so. One might have argued that things should have been set up differently, with effective power lodged at the most-local level and flowing upward toward the state government. However, under California law counties are legally subdivisions of the state and are legally obliged to follow mandates of the state government. [continues 451 words]
More Than Ten Years After California's Compassionate Use Act Was Passed by Voters, State and Local Officials Are Still Collaborating With Federal Law Enforcement to Undermine It. On the morning of January 13, 2004, Tehama County prosecutor Lynn Strom unexpectedly announced that the state of California was dropping charges against Cynthia Blake and David Davidson for possessing and growing cannabis with the intent to distribute. While the two medical marijuana patients waited in the courtroom, Strom and the defense attorneys disappeared inside the judge's chambers to discuss the motion to dismiss. Moments later, more than a dozen sheriff's deputies pounced on the hapless couple, handcuffed them, and shoved them into an unmarked police car waiting outside the courthouse in the Sacramento Valley town of Corning. They were already en route to jail in Sacramento when Strom informed their lawyers that the state was bowing out because the Feds were taking over the case. [continues 707 words]
Ignorance Marches On Of all the men in the world, the one who happens to be best suited to our daughter lives in Bristol, England. This afternoon we were in the nearby town of Wells, drinking Guiness at a pub in front of which the Quaker leader William Penn used to address thousands of people and was once arrested for doing so. "Must remember to tell Tod about that," I thought (Tod Mikuriya, MD, being a Quaker from Pennsylvania who ran afoul of law enforcement himself). But of course Tod won't be there to tell about Penn when we get back. [continues 2359 words]
Like a lot of people who support marijuana use, psychiatrist Tod Mikuriya had detractors. (His work was called "the Cheech and Chong show" by Bill Clinton's drug czar, General Barry McCaffrey.) The longtime Republican believed in the therapeutic effects of the drug on more than 200 ailments and in 1996 saw a bill he crafted, Proposition 215, pass in California, legalizing the use of pot for the seriously ill. The "grandfather" of the medicinal-marijuana movement said his fight to "restore cannabis" stemmed from a backlash against its medical use following the late-'30s film Reefer Madness. He was 73 and had cancer. [end]
Dr. Tod Mikuriya, a California psychiatrist who was widely regarded as the grandfather of the medical marijuana movement in the United States, died May 20 at his home in Berkeley. He was 73. The cause was complications of cancer, his family told California news organizations. Mikuriya, who helped make the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes legal in California, spent the last four decades publicly advocating its use, researching its effects and publishing articles on the subject. He was an architect of Proposition 215, the state ballot measure that in 1996 made it legal for California doctors to recommend marijuana for seriously ill patients. He was also a founder of the California Cannabis Research Medical Group and its offshoot, the Society of Cannabis Clinicians. Sometimes Mikuriya's work found little favor. In 1996, General Barry McCaffrey, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy derided the doctor's medical philosophy as "the Cheech and Chong show," referring to two Hollywood movie characters known for their marijuana-themed humor. [end]
DR. TOD MIKURIYA: 1933 - 2007 Advocate for Use of Medical Marijuana California Psychiatrist Helped Create State Ballot Measure That Legalized Cannabis Use for Seriously Ill Patients NEW YORK -- Dr. Tod Mikuriya, a California psychiatrist widely regarded as the grandfather of the medical marijuana movement in the United States, died May 20 at his home in Berkeley. He was 73. The cause was cancer complications, his family told California news organizations. Dr. Mikuriya, who helped make the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes legal in California, spent the last four decades advocating its use, researching its effects and publishing articles on the subject. [continues 357 words]
Dr. Tod H. Mikuriya, a California psychiatrist who was widely regarded as the grandfather of the medicinal marijuana movement in the United States, died May 20 at home in Berkeley. He was 73. The cause was complications of cancer, his family told California news organizations. Dr. Mikuriya, who helped make the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes legal in California, spent the past four decades publicly advocating its use, researching its effects and publishing articles on the subject. He was an architect of Proposition 215, the state ballot measure that in 1996 made it legal for California doctors to recommend marijuana for seriously ill patients. He was also a founder of the California Cannabis Research Medical Group and its offshoot, the Society of Cannabis Clinicians. [continues 429 words]
Tod Mikuriya, M.D., died Sunday at his home in the Berkeley Hills. He was 73. The cause was complications of cancer. In the final days he'd been in the care of his sisters, Beverly, an M.D. from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and Mary Jane of San Francisco, and his longtime assistant, John Trapp. Cancer had been diagnosed originally in his lungs, and as of last March it had been detected in his liver, too. Dennis Peron and Dale Gieringer threw farewell parties for him. He canceled a trip to Hungary where he was to present a paper at the International Cannabinoid Research Society meeting. His office began steering patients to other doctors. [continues 1391 words]
Dr. Tod H. Mikuriya, a psychiatrist who was a leading figure in California's medical marijuana movement, died from complications of cancer Sunday at his Berkeley home, his family said. He was 73. He helped draft Proposition 215, a state ballot measure that legalized marijuana for the seriously ill who have a doctor's recommendation. Since its passage in 1996, Mikuriya had written approvals for almost 9,000 patients, said his friend Fred Gardner. Mikuriya had studied the drug's therapeutic potential since the 1960s and briefly directed marijuana research at the National Institute of Mental Health. He left when he realized the government only "wanted bad things found out about marijuana," he told the online newsmagazine AlterNet in 2004. [continues 587 words]
When the Medical Marijuana Patients Union held a symposium in Fort Bragg in August, 2004, Sheriff Tony Craver asked an organizer to please introduce him to Dr. Tod Mikuriya. It turned out that Mikuriya had left after participating in a morning panel. "That's one man I've always wanted to meet," said Craver, looking down in disappointment. The sheriff knew there was something unique about Mikuriya, and so did half the cops and prosecutors in California, who, unlike Tony Craver, fiercely resented him for legitimizing people previously considered criminals. [continues 1503 words]
On March 20, student free speech joined the panoply of endangered fundamental rights ready to be stripped away from us due to the tragedy of the drug war. Kenneth Starr, former solicitor general, who reached broad fame by highlighting a presidential sex scandal in the Clinton years, stood before the land's highest court to argue the "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" case. It all started innocently enough when 18-year-old Joe Frederick sought his "15 minutes of fame" by pulling a harmless prank. In 2002, in front of his high school, during a procession of the Olympic torch relay brigade, Joe unrolled a 14-foot banner bearing the words "Bong Hits 4 Jesus." Soon after the cameras caught the act, his high school principal suspended him for ten days for displaying the banner, in apparent violation of school policy limiting speech that promotes illegal drug use. Frederick soon brought a lawsuit against his school principal in which the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in his favor, finding that the principal had violated Frederick's First Amendment rights. [continues 299 words]
