Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank introduced a bill today that would allow possession of up to 100 grams of marijuana. He obviously met with some opposition, mostly from Republicans and the DEA (who would lose a big part of their job). This is a step in the right direction. Many more people are arrested for marijuana possession than are for violent crimes. The taxpayers have spent too much money fighting a losing battle in this war on drugs, especially when it comes to marijuana. The laws against marijuana are some of the most destructive laws on the books today. If someone is arrested for simple possession, even if he serves no jail time, he can lose his job, his affordable housing, his welfare benefits, or financial aid for college. The Republicans, who fight for smaller government, want more government oversight on this. How ironic. They choose their stances only when it suits them.
Anyway, the time is now. This is an important bill. Call, write, contact your representatives in the House and urge them to support HR 5843.
I saw this linked in a couple places now. The site is Dipdive.com. I have no idea where it came from or who made it, but it’s pretty amazing. Now that Dennis Kucinich has dropped out of the race for president, I have been supporting Barack Obama for president. He brings something new to the table that I have yet to see any other candidate bring. It’s a young freshness that Hillary Clinton just doesn’t offer. We don’t need another legacy president. We need someone new, something different. Hillary is very polarizing. Obama is a uniter and a true leader. We need Barack Obama as the next president of the United States.
Every now and then Rolling Stone publishes an awesome article. The latest issue (Dec. 13) had an article titled “How America Lost the War on Drugs“, written by Ben Wallace-Wells. The article goes into great detail on how the so-called War on Drugs began and how it evolved to what it has become today. If you have any interest in politics and the economy of our country, this article is a must read. The War on Drugs has cost the country $500 billion and that is increasing at a rate of $50 billion a year. It puts non-violent criminals in overcrowded prisons and is racially biased in that it puts on average more African-Americans in prison than whites, yet there is no evidence that African-Americans use more.
The article goes on to show that the whole notion of marijuana as a “gateway” drug is completely false and anyone that tells you otherwise is lying. It explains how the War on Drugs has gone from attacking drugs at the source in Colombia to attacking medical marijuana users (key quote about just how ridiculous things have gotten follows):
In one particularly ludicrous incident, a forty-four-year-old post-polio sufferer named Suzanne Pfeil, who smoked prescription marijuana to relieve her pain, was hauled off to jail by DEA agents who pointed automatic rifles at her head and handcuffed her to her wheelchair. The rhetoric reached the level of crusade: Walters called citizens who plant and tend marijuana gardens “terrorists who wouldn’t hesitate to help other terrorists get into the country with the aim of causing mass casualties.”
People who use drugs are not terrorists. People who grow marijuana are not supporting terrorists. That notion shows just how out of touch with reality our current government truly is and what lengths they will go to and what scare tactics they will use to continue this War on Drugs that will never end and will never be won.
This War on Drugs needs to end. Support organizations like NORML. Contact your representatives and senators in Congress. This is your money being thrown out the window. Half a trillion dollars ($500,000,000,000 so you can see how big it is written out) could go a long way towards other things, like improving our education system, research into alternative fuels for automobiles, supporting public transportation system. Spending it on a losing battle is just wasting it.
I found it on Boing Boing. Slate has a great article on it as well.
As someone who works in higher education IT, I can safely say that this bill would be extremely detrimental to all American colleges and universities. It would prove to be the most harmful to under-privileged students who depend upon that financial aid money and student loans in order to attend college. While colleges should take certain measures to help combat copyright infringement, it is not their job to be the copyright police, nor should it be. That is exactly what this bill would do. Most college IT departments are under heavy financial stress and cannot meet the needs of the students, the faculty, the staff, and in many cases, the research staff as well. This bill would cause unnecessary financial burden on the colleges and universities who are already suffering budgetary issues. The only responsibility colleges and universities have in regards to copyright infringement is education. They should be educating students on the issues surrounding file sharing and peer-to-peer. They should not be spending time actually fighting the copyright infringement. Most colleges already use technology to throttle traffic that goes towards P2P networks (though I do have my own issues with that as well, as I believe all traffic should get the same priority). The only business in which colleges should be is education. Educate the students on what copyright infringement entails. Educate them on the law and the consequences. In the end, however, it is the students’ responsibility to be sure they are not breaking the laws. The colleges should not be punished for something their students are doing. Colleges are not allowing the behavior any more than commercial ISP’s allow it. Colleges simply make for an easy target and that’s all this bill is doing, making a target out of colleges and enabling the MPAA and RIAA. It is their job to protect their copyrights, not the job of colleges or of Congress.
I urge you to contact your representatives and senators in Congress and urge them to fight this bill or at least remove this particular segment of the bill.
Update: According to Boing Boing, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is also behind this. You can also contact Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi at www.speaker.gov if you do not live in her district.
Saw this posted to UrbanPlanet today. Unfortunately, to get in on the discussion there, you need at least 100 posts to the forums before you have access to the Coffee House there. You can still watch the video (it’s YouTube). Basically, it says that the mainstream candidates for president, from both parties, are no different than each other. If you want real change, there are only 2 candidates, Dennis Kucinich (who currently has my support) and Ron Paul (who I would not be opposed to seeing in the white house). The others are basically in favor of keeping the status quo with very minor changes. Watch the video, it’s enlightening.
So I wanted a good one for my 100th post (which this is). I couldn’t figure out what to write about until I came across a nice article about California’s Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger (via Okfuture.net, via Boing Boing). When asked about his obvious use of marijuana in the documentary “Pumping Iron”, he replied saying that marijuana is not a drug, but rather a leaf. Now say what you will about Arnold, but I have to agree with him on this one. Anyone who knows me knows that I am very much in favor of 100% legalization of marijuana. Many scientific studies have shown that marijuana is less harmful than alcohol and tobacco (which, by Arnold’s reasoning is also “just a leaf”). Marijuana does not cause a chemical dependency like alcohol and nicotine, found in tobacco products. It has been proven to have many medical benefits, the reason why medical marijuana is legal in several states (including, thanks to our General Assembly that had to override out governor’s veto, my home of Rhode Island).
I might be shooting myself in the foot for admitting to this on a public blog, but I truly believe in personal privacy rights. The propaganda that the anti-drug people give is nonsense. I have heard of several reasons for the prohibition of marijuana, among them that William Randolph Hearst was going to lose money because hemp is stronger and easier to grow than cotton to be used in paper or that it was racially motivated in a bigoted move against Mexican migrant workers. Whatever the reason truly was, it has no basis on scientific fact. The reason cigarettes are still legal, while doing more bodily harm, is because of the big money the tobacco companies give to political campaigns and the strong lobbyists they have in Washington. I ultimately support the legalization of marijuana because, for the same reason that alcohol is regulated and taxed by the government, it, too, can be regulated and taxed. I don’t see anything different about someone smoking pot as opposed to getting drunk. It’s all about personal responsibility. If you are high, you don’t get behind the wheel, same thing as if you were drinking (of course, I also don’t agree with the use of BAC as a determination factor to your driving ability, as devices exist that can test your fine motor skills related to driving rather than infringing on your privacy).
Perhaps this will be a step in the right direction. I don’t see marijuana being legalized outright in this country right away, but the more states that decriminalize possession for personal use, the more likely we are to move in the right direction. Marijuana alone has never killed anyone. You cannot overdose on pot like you can on legal prescription and over-the-counter drugs. Contact your senators and representatives in congress. Support NORML. End the stupid criminalization of people who are not harming anyone else. Prohibition didn’t work with alcohol and it’s not working with pot. The so-called “war on drugs” started by Nancy Reagan is a losing battle.
I’m not normally a political person. Because of that, you’ll very rarely see political statements here. However, the United States government is having some issues. While anyone but Bush would be great right now, especially if it were a democrat, I’ve got some very mixed feelings about the current democratic front-runners, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. They both make me feel that there won’t be a whole lot of change, regardless of the rhetoric they’re feeding us. Because of that, I am supporting, as the title of this post states, Dennis Kuchich in 2008. He’s the only one running for president who voted against the war in Iraq and against the constant funding of the war. He’s also the only one who supports full marriage rights for gays and lesbians. The others have tip toed around that subject saying that they support civil unions, but not marriage.
So, I urge anyone who cares about your future and the future of this country to vote for Dennis Kucinich in the primaries and for president. Vote for change, vote for peace, vote for sustainability. Even if you disagree with me that he’s the right person for the job, at least vote.
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