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I recommend that you read Ain't Nobody's Business if you do by Peter McWilliams.

I bought the hardback book when it came out and I had not even heard of it. It is that cool.

The next cool thing is...it is online and free! Here's a link:
http://www.mcwilliams.com/books/aint/toc.htm

And here's a link to the prostitution chapter:
http://www.mcwilliams.com/books/aint/306.htm

What the government did to the author was really pretty horrible. Here's a commentary about his death:

THE MURDER OF PETER MCWILLIAMS

An Indictment, Not an Obituary

Peter McWiliams, 50, best selling author, poet, photographer, publisher, libertarian crusader, medical marijuana activist, AIDS patient and cancer survivor, was found dead on the floor of his bathroom, apparently having choked to death after vomiting, for want of medical marijuana.

There will be an autopsy, but whatever the immediate cause of death may have been, he was murdered by the United States Government as surely as if they shot him. Indeed, it would have been much more humane if they had just put a bullet in his head. No one should have to go through what he suffered at the hands of his country.

When I learned of his death yesterday, I was too angry to write about it. Even now, this is being written more in anger than in sorrow. Peter is where they can't hurt him anymore, but his murderers are still at large, and if there is anything that Peter would want, it would be for us to continue to speak the truth to power, to tyranny.

Of course, if Peter did choke after vomiting it would be directly the result of his having been denied the right to use medical marijuana. Peter was a part of the roughly 40% of those patients for whom the anti-viral drugs being used to treat AIDS can cause violent nausea. The government knew this from direct observation. During at least one court appearance he vomited into a wastebasket during the hearing.

See: How the Government Helps Medical Marijuana Patients: "McWilliams vomited repeatedly in court Friday, prompting guards to keep a trash can nearby." http://marijuananews.com/how_the_government_helps_medical.htm

Dealing with this nausea is one of the best documented uses of medical marijuana, and he had also used it during cancer chemotherapy, when he actually gained weight.

None of that mattered to the judge. None of that mattered to the prosecutor. After all, these are the same people who had held him in federal detention for months on a $250,000 bail, even though he posed no flight risk, the only justification for such a high bail.

See: Peter McWilliams Still Held on $250,000 Bond; Denied AIDS Medication For Four Days!!! Two Stories http://marijuananews.com/peter_mcwilliams_still_held_on_.htm

Had he wanted to flee, he had plenty of time to do so before he was charged, but he is a world famous writer, so he could not hide. His publishing company was there in Los Angeles, and he was taking expensive anti-virals for AIDS. He really could not flee, but that did not prevent the government from violating his Constitutional rights.

Consider the lengths to which they went to keep him from raising the bail.

When his elderly mother pledged her house as security for the bail, they threatened that the government would seize her house if her son simply failed a drug test, not just if he were to flee. She would not be intimidated, but now her son is dead as the result of the conditions of the bail. These are the "family values" of America's war on the sick and dying.

See: "The federal prosecutor personally called my mother to tell her that if I was found with even a trace of medical marijuana, her house would be taken away." -- Peter McWilliams

I recommend that you read Ain't Nobody's Business if you do by Peter McWilliams.

I bought the hardback book when it came out and I had not even heard of it. It is that cool.

The next cool thing is...it is online and free! Here's a link:
http://www.mcwilliams.com/books/aint/toc.htm

And here's a link to the prostitution chapter:
http://www.mcwilliams.com/books/aint/306.htm

What the government did to the author was really pretty horrible. Here's a commentary about his death:

THE MURDER OF PETER MCWILLIAMS

An Indictment, Not an Obituary

Peter McWiliams, 50, best selling author, poet, photographer, publisher, libertarian crusader, medical marijuana activist, AIDS patient and cancer survivor, was found dead on the floor of his bathroom, apparently having choked to death after vomiting, for want of medical marijuana.

There will be an autopsy, but whatever the immediate cause of death may have been, he was murdered by the United States Government as surely as if they shot him. Indeed, it would have been much more humane if they had just put a bullet in his head. No one should have to go through what he suffered at the hands of his country.

When I learned of his death yesterday, I was too angry to write about it. Even now, this is being written more in anger than in sorrow. Peter is where they can't hurt him anymore, but his murderers are still at large, and if there is anything that Peter would want, it would be for us to continue to speak the truth to power, to tyranny.

Of course, if Peter did choke after vomiting it would be directly the result of his having been denied the right to use medical marijuana. Peter was a part of the roughly 40% of those patients for whom the anti-viral drugs being used to treat AIDS can cause violent nausea. The government knew this from direct observation. During at least one court appearance he vomited into a wastebasket during the hearing.

See: How the Government Helps Medical Marijuana Patients: "McWilliams vomited repeatedly in court Friday, prompting guards to keep a trash can nearby." http://marijuananews.com/how_the_government_helps_medical.htm

Dealing with this nausea is one of the best documented uses of medical marijuana, and he had also used it during cancer chemotherapy, when he actually gained weight.

None of that mattered to the judge. None of that mattered to the prosecutor. After all, these are the same people who had held him in federal detention for months on a $250,000 bail, even though he posed no flight risk, the only justification for such a high bail.

See: Peter McWilliams Still Held on $250,000 Bond; Denied AIDS Medication For Four Days!!! Two Stories http://marijuananews.com/peter_mcwilliams_still_held_on_.htm

Had he wanted to flee, he had plenty of time to do so before he was charged, but he is a world famous writer, so he could not hide. His publishing company was there in Los Angeles, and he was taking expensive anti-virals for AIDS. He really could not flee, but that did not prevent the government from violating his Constitutional rights.

Consider the lengths to which they went to keep him from raising the bail.

When his elderly mother pledged her house as security for the bail, they threatened that the government would seize her house if her son simply failed a drug test, not just if he were to flee. She would not be intimidated, but now her son is dead as the result of the conditions of the bail. These are the "family values" of America's war on the sick and dying.

See: "The federal prosecutor personally called my mother to tell her that if I was found with even a trace of medical marijuana, her house would be taken away." -- Peter McWilliams

Been done. Ever hear of the Doobie Toss(es) at hemp fests? Used to be one locally for years...

clicky - about half way down the page.

While I'll admit that the chart and graph on the page seem to support your claim, drugwarfacts.org doesn't offer any source for the data in the chart (and graph). Especially considering the title of the (nine year old) NYT article, I'll have to remain doubtful of your claim that tobacco is more addictive than heroin, but I would love to see the data from NIDA that backs up your claim.

A quick Google search reveals any number of links to the full-text of the article. Here's just one.

Heroin abuse is associated with serious health conditions, including fatal overdose, spontaneous abortion, collapsed veins, and infectious diseases, including HIV/AIDS and hepatitis.

As a previous poster has observed, prohibition contributes to--if not outright causes--each of these consequences.

I can't remember the last time I heard of anyone dying from a fatal overdose of nicotine--and I've known a number of chain-smokers.

What does it matter how the substance kills? That said, there is emerging evidence that exposure to tobacco smoke can induce cardiac arrest, simply by being exposed. In effect, the victims overdose. ...the health concerns NIDA is referring to here are for the heroin itself

This is not true.

However, the fact that the additives are dangerous does not change the fact that the heroin is dangerous, too.

The emerging consensus is that heroin causes no ongoing toxicity to the body, even through long-term use. Heroin may only be dangerous because we've worked so hard to make it that way.

I'm not against the legalization of some drugs which are currently illegal, but I am against distorting the truth.

As am I, which is why I take such great exception to your post.

MarijuanaNews
DRCNet
Smokedot

Now, please educate yourself, come back, and lets have a nice discussion.

Because the U.S. has been stuck in a low-grade civil war since the 1960s.

Although most of the currently illegal drugs were outlawed early in the century, drug politics didn't really take their current shape until Nixon seized upon a "war on drugs" as a convenient proxy war against young hippies and radicals. It wasn't politically possible to directly criminalize young people in general, so he did the next best thing -- pick what he perceived to be an attribute of his young political enemies -- recreational drug use -- and criminalize that.

Nixon came and went, and Carter toyed with the idea of stopping the drug war, but he didn't do it -- one of the major errors of his administration -- and by the time Reagan was elected, the drug war had already proved extraordinarily effective as a "law and order" issue -- in spite of the fact that drug prohibition causes much of the disorder and lawlessness that getting "tough on drugs" is supposed to correct.

Now, there is simply too much money in the drug war for it to be stopped from within the government. In California, for instance, the prison guards lobby is one of the strongest political entities in the state. Pharmaceutical companies are also in on the game -- with their billion dollar drug testing programs, and with the billions of dollars in patented drugs that do exactly the same thing as unpatentable illegal drugs (Marinol for instance.)

The media profits immensely from the drug war -- they receive millions of dollars in U.S. government anti-drug advertising, and also take money to insert government anti-drug messages in their programming. You can organize an anti-drug-war demonstration, and the only thing that you can be assured of is that it will either not be covered by the media, or mocked by the media. They know who is paying them. When the media are forced to cover anti-prohibition stories, they heavily slant them. Usually, the headline or the first sentence will have a cute little pun -- "Initiative goes to pot", that makes the article appear trivial and funny, and such articles tend to use derogatory terms such as "pothead", or invoke stereotypes -- "The police really suck," said a protester. "We just want to toke up the kind" in the same way that a newspaper of another generation might have used the word "nigger", or invoke negative stereotypes against blacks. Drug users are uniformly portrayed as ignorant, lazy, prone to crime, politically irrelevant, and in need of government suppression and control.

Quite simply, illegal drug users -- be they recreational or medicinal users -- have about as many civil rights in the United States as blacks had in the 1940s.

There appear to be two effective methods of counterattack against the drug war machine.

The first are voter initiatives, in the states that allow them. Right now, the only successful initiatives have been for decriminalizing medicinal marijuana, but initiatives for outright legalization have a surprisingly strong showing. Did you hear about the Alaska marijuana decriminalization initiative? Probably not. The results were hardly covered. 40% of the voting population voted not only to legalize marijuana for all adults, for all purposes, but also to issue pardons and reparations to drug-war prisoners. The organizers of the initiative will try again in two years, and I believe that they will win by the end of the decade.

The second effective resource against drug prohibition is the internet. If you read a newspaper, you'll be lucky to find a single article about the drug war that isn't pro-war, but there are some excellent web sites that are documenting the drug war.

mapinc is an archive of thousands of drug-war related stories gathered mostly from print publications. It's an excellent place to get a good "feel" of the pulse of the drug war. Click on the blue "50000+ Drug-Related News Clippings!" link for the meat of the site.

Richard Cowan's Marijuananews is another excellent resource. Cowan picks out articles, and provides biting analysis. It's one of my favorite sites on the net.

In a nutshell, the drug war continues unabated because it has become part of American life. So many people and entities -- the government, corporations, individuals -- directly profit from drug prohibition, that it has taken on a life of its own.

I believe that drug prohibition will only be destroyed at the polling place, because, in the end, the victims of drug prohibition are individuals, and not just individuals who use drugs. The model employee who has never missed a day in his life who is fired because he went to a concert, and inhaled enough second-hand marijuana smoke to show up on his surprise drug test the next day. The mother whose child was shot to death by the police in a botched police swat attack on the wrong house. The father who stands up against a school drug-testing program, and bears the wrath of his community. The person who sees their best friend -- who is fighting cancer -- arrested and imprisoned for using marijuana to control the symptoms of chemotherapy. The parent who thinks that DARE creates an unhealthy fascination with drugs. The parent whose child becomes addicted to heroin, because their DARE instructor said that heroin is just as bad as marijuana, and because the kid already knows that pot is not addictive, she decides that the officer is lying to her -- which he is -- and starts using an addictive drug. The kid who "just says no" to marijuana, then is hooked on a lifetime addiction to tobacco, while his pot-smoking friends stop using pot when they get tired of it.

Even if you don't use drugs, you should oppose drug prohibition, for the simple reason that you could find yourself, a friend of yours, or a member of your own family on that list tomorrow.

From the report you linked to: about effects of Cannabis: Psychomotor impairment. Synergism with alcohol and sedatives. Apathy and mental slowing, impaired memory and learning (brain damage?). Impaired immune response?

Only One report? I linked to four and gave a reference to a fifth. Brain damage in that report is listed as brain damage. Lets put this into perspective by listing the effects of alcohol from the same report:

Psychomotor impairment, impaired thinking and judgment, reckless or violent behavior. Lowering of body temperature, respiratory depression. Hypertension, stroke hepatitis, cirrhosis, gastritis, pancreatitis. Organic brain damage, cognitive deficits. Fetal alcohol syndrome. Withdrawal effects: shakes, seizures, delirium tremens.

Now, I think that makes marijuana look like a walk in the park. Do you wish to go back to alcohol prohibition?

Nt only that, but the brain damage part was a guess on the part of the PSU student, who was expositorily gathering all suggested effects. If you had read the article concerning long term cognitive damage, you would see that those fears are largely laid to rest. Most of the speculation of cognitive damage comes from a report showing lowered scores in visual recognition, only 18 hours after taking the drug, which hardly qualifies as long term.

Furthermore, I wish you would try tearing apart my references, because they are funded by either respected universities or the government, there are very few pro-cannabis sig's and they don't have that kind of money. You should look at NIDA's own comparison of marijuana to other recreational drugs including alcohol, tobacco, and caffiene. I have a reprint from the new york times at this site which reprints news about marijuana issues. I will agree with you that the additional commentary is biased, but the text is from the NYTimes, and the figures directly from NIDA, who is most certainly biased towards your side of the issue.

I should point out that the extremely liberal laws regarding property seizures only apply in drug and child porn cases, so far as I know. Normally, property can only be seized and sold at auction by the gov't after it has been proven to have been a)used in the commission of a crime, or b)purchased with ill-gotten gains (eg stolen money). However, in drug-related cases and child porn cases (practically the same crime, right?), all the Feds need is "Suspicion" - no evidence needs to be submitted, they just have to have reason to suspect one of the two cases outlined above. The realy egregious cases occur when the Feds steal your property, sell it at auction, and then later decide the case against you isn't strong enough to prosecute. Sure, you're free, but you don't get the opportunity to prove your innocence if you never have a day in court. In those cases, the only way you even get a fraction of the money back is if you can prove (in civil litigation) that the cops were maliciously targeting you - in other words, hope for a miracle. Incidentally, this is how Jock Sturgis, the San francisco photographer, lost his mansion. Many other examples of forfeiture exceses can be found at marijuananews.

The law requires that trucking companies randomly drug test drivers on a draconian random basis. [...] The justification is to make the roads safer since such a large number of trucker are drug addicts. And it has made things safer, too.

is there some hard facts to support these? ie that truchers are drug addicts? or are the drugs being blamed? also who said this, do they profit for saying this?

Don't all of you remember the daily reports of drug crazed truck drivers [...] running church buses off the road killing all aboard? When is the last time you heard such a report?

last month, or was it last mothers day... was in new orleans, cops blamed his illigal drug use. but i think it was is just a heart attack, and his use of MJ was to easy the pain but that a diffrent story... (more info somewhere here i can't look, cause im at work...)

also most drug tests dont get the really deadly ones ( coke and speed ). werd hmmm?


nmarshall
#include "standard_disclaimer.h"
R.U. SIRIUS: THE ONLY POSSIBLE RESPONSE

...a pretty good prohibition argument could be made on the following premise: You can't really keep people from smoking pot. But because of pot's extreme illegality, people are less likely to do dumb things (which generally involves leaving the living room couch) like driving or operating heavy machinerey. They're fearful of the law, and are thus content to sequester themselves.

Man, I always thought /.'ers were an intelligent lot...

This is a ludicrous argument. Think about it: Marijuana generally makes people lethargic & hungry. So let's make it illegal so we can encourage people to drink instead, that way they will be rowdy & violent instead!

If you'd like to make a intelligent argument on the subject of Marijuana, you really should educate yourself on the subject. I highly recommend the book 'Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts' by Lynn Zimmer & John Morgan (ISBN 0-9641568-4-9). It looks at virtually all the SCIENTIFIC evidence for & against Marijuana. You'll be amazed at how little you know. I've been -very- pro-legalization for years (and, no, I don't smoke), but even I was amazed at some of the outright lies that the government has been telling us for decades.

And check out Marijuana News for a look at some of what's really going on in the so-called drug war. (Note: the Marijuana News site -is- biased. Occasionally, they get a bit caught up in their own rhetoric (and of course the site is ugly!). Nonetheless, the site contains vast amounts of information. Read it with an open mind, though, and you will begin to question your governments motives in all of this.)

NOTE: I'm not meaning to single out this particular poster in my criticism. This comment is directed at everyone who is spouting rhetoric without really having a clue on the subject.