Friday, January 31, 2023

National Drug Reform Meetup Day
what
Meetup with other local activists to
discuss Drug Reform issues.

who
Drug Reform Activists worldwide are invited.

when
Tuesday, Feb 25 @ 8:00PM
(4th Tuesday of every month.)

where
A location near you.

more information can be found at @ Drug Reform Meetup
posted @ 12:00 AM CST [link]

Thursday, January 30, 2023

Dad of 4, 1,249 other drug prisoners see freedom
Besides release of first-time offenders, repeal of sentencing law will save Michigan $41M.
By Norman Sinclair / The Detroit News

LANSING -- For more than a decade, James DiVietri, his four sons and the rest
of his large, close-knit family could only dream about a date like March 1.

DiVietri, 53, locked away for 11 years, was resigned to serving nearly 10 more
years behind bars for drug possession -- until last month's repeal of Michigan's
tough drug-sentencing law that forced judges to impose long, mandatory
sentences.

On March 1, DiVietri and other first-time, nonviolent drug offenders sentenced
under that law will be freed.

"The first two years, I thought somehow this was not real and I would somehow
get out," DiVietri said. "The last nine years, I couldn't allow myself to think
about freedom. Now for the first time, I can actually let go."

While the impact on offenders and their families is huge, implications for Michigan's
criminal justice system also are enormous. Long-term prison beds will be vacated
at a time when the state's prisons are near capacity. Overworked probation
officers will get relief, and the state will save millions of dollars.

continued @ The Detroit News
posted @ 11:48 PM CST [link]

Notable Quotes
Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1894:
"The commission has come to the conclusion that the moderate use of hemp drugs is practically attended by no evil results at all. ... ...moderate use of hemp... appears to cause no appreciable physical injury of any kind,... no injurious effects on the mind... [and] no moral injury whatever."


LaGuardia Commission Report, 1944
"Cannabis smoking does not lead directly to mental or physical deterioration... Those who have consumed marijuana for a period of years showed no mental or physical deterioration which may be attributed to the drug."


1968 UK ROYAL COMMISSION, THE WOOTTON REPORT:
"Having reviewed all the material available to us we find ourselves in agreement with the conclusion reached by the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission appointed by the Government of India (1893-94) and the New York Mayor's Committee (1944 - LaGuardia)that the long-term consumption of cannabis in moderate doses has no harmful effects"..."the long-asserted dangers of cannabis are exaggerated and that the related law is socially damaging, if not unworkable"


Peter Bourne, President Carter's Drug Czar
''We did not view marijuana as a significant health problem--as it was not....Nobody dies from marijuana. Marijuana smoking, in fact, if one wants to be honest, is a source of pleasure and amusement to countless millions of people in America, and it continues to be that way.''
Source: PBS's Frontline: ''Drug Wars,'' October 2000


JON OWEN JONES, MP, July 2023
"Cannabis is a far less harmful drug than almost all the other drugs that you are likely to mention."
Source: BBC News (UK Web), July 17, 2023

Related links:
Major Studies of Drugs and Drug Policy

posted @ 11:26 PM CST [link]

"The Case for Cheryl Miller: Medical Marijuana Necessity"

posted @ 08:00 AM CST [link]

Tuesday, January 28, 2023

NORML: Marijuana 'Truth' From A Super Bowl Champion

posted @ 10:43 AM CST [link]

Friday, January 24, 2023

The Media Awareness Project Focus Alert - Speak Out for Ed Rosenthal

posted @ 08:07 PM CST [link]

Canada: Study says war on drugs is futile

posted @ 08:00 PM CST [link]

Tuesday, January 21, 2023

Drug Policy Alliance ACTION ALERT: Demand Treatment Not Incarceration!

posted @ 02:41 PM CST [link]

Monday, January 20, 2023

January 28th - National Drug Reform Meetup Day

Information can be found @ Drug Reform Meetup

posted @ 02:42 AM CST [link]

Friday, January 17, 2023

"Your Government Is Lying To You (Again) About Marijuana!" NORML Charges In New Report Rebutting Drug Czar

posted @ 01:03 AM CST [link]

Thursday, January 16, 2023

Win at all Costs, Government Misconduct in the Name of Expedient Justice

posted @ 11:50 PM CST [link]

Wednesday, January 15, 2023

Resource in Focus - HempCar TransAmerica
With all the talk about this nation's dependency on foreign oil funding Middle East terrorists, perhaps a closer look at other fuel options should be seriously considered, or more appropriately stated, reconsidered. A good place to start is HempCar TransAmerica, http://www.hempcar.org

What is the HempCar? Below is an excerpt from the HempCar manifesto.

"Hemp car is an alternative-fuel project car that utilizes hemp biodiesel for fuel. Industrial hemp would be an economical fuel if hemp were legal to cultivate in the United States. Industrial hemp has no psychoactive properties and is not a drug. Hemp Car demonstrates the concept of hemp fuels on a national level and promotes the reformation of current law. "

At the site you can biofuel facts and resources as well as items of interest in reference to:

? Mercedes Benz
? Rudolf Diesel
? Henry Ford
? George Washington
? Thomas Jefferson

Further information found at hempcar.org on the benefits of hemp for fuel, food, fiber, medicine, and industry

Fuel::

Farming 6% of the continental U.S. acreage with biomass crops would provide all of America's energy needs.

Hemp is Earth's number-one biomass resource; it is capable of producing 10 tons per acre in four months.

Biomass can be converted to methane, methanol, or gasoline at a cost comparable to petroleum, and hemp is much better for the environment. Pyrolysis (charcoalizing), or biochemical composting are two methods of turning hemp into fuel.

Hemp can produce 10 times more methanol than corn.

Hemp fuel burns clean. Petroleum causes acid rain due to sulfur pollution.

The use of hemp fuel does not contribute to global warming.


Food::

Hemp seed can be pressed into a nutritious oil, which contains the highest amount of fatty acids in the plant kingdom. Essential oils are responsible for our immune system responses, and clear the arteries of cholesterol and plaque.

The byproduct of pressing the oil from hemp seed is high quality protein seed cake. It can be sprouted (malted) or ground and baked into cakes, breads, and casseroles. Hemp seed protein is one of mankind's finest, most complete and available-to-the-body vegetable proteins.

Hemp seed was the world's number one wild and domestic bird seed until the 1937 Marijuana prohibition law. Four million pounds of hemp seed for songbirds were sold at retail in the U.S. in 1937. Birds will pick hemp seeds out and eat them first from a pile of mixed seed. Birds in the wild live longer and breed more with hemp seed in their diet, using the oil for the feathers and their overall health.


Fiber::

Hemp is the oldest cultivated fiber plant in the world.

Low-THC fiber hemp varieties developed by the French and others have been available for over 20 years. It is impossible to get high from fiber hemp. Over 600,000 acres of hemp is grown worldwide with no drug misuse problem.

One acre of hemp can produce as much usable fiber as 4 acres of trees or two acres of cotton.
Trees cut down to make paper take 50 to 500 years to grow, while hemp can be cultivated in as little as 100 days and can yield 4 times more paper over a 20 year period.

Until 1883, from 75-90% of all paper in the world was made with cannabis hemp fiber including that for books, Bibles, maps, paper money, stocks and bonds, newspapers, etc.

Hemp paper is longer lasting than wood pulp, stronger, acid-free, and chlorine free. (Chlorine is estimated to cause up to 10% of all Cancers.)

Hemp paper can be recycled 7 times, wood pulp 4 times.

If the hemp pulp paper process reported by the USDA in 1916, were legal today it would soon replace 70% of all wood paper products.

Rag paper containing hemp fiber is the highest quality and longest lasting paper ever made. It can be torn when wet, but returns to its full strength when dry. Barring extreme conditions, rag paper remains stable for centuries.

Hemp particle board may be up to 2 times stronger than wood particleboard and holds nails better.

Hemp is softer, warmer, more water absorbent, has three times the tensile strength, and is many times more durable than cotton. Hemp production uses less chemicals than cotton.

From 70-90% of all rope, twine, and cordage was made from hemp until 1937.

A strong lustrous fiber; hemp withstands heat, mildew, insects, and is not damaged by light. Oil paintings on hemp and/or flax canvas have stayed in fine condition for centuries.


Medicine::

Deaths from marijuana use: 0

From 1842 through the 1880s, extremely strong marijuana (then known as cannabis extractums), hashish extracts, tinctures, and elixirs were routinely the second and third most-used medicines in America for humans (from birth through old age). These extracts were also used in veterinary medicine until the 1920s and longer.

For at least 3,000 years prior to 1842 widely varying marijuana extracts (bud, leaves, roots, etc.) were the most commonly used real medicines in the world for the majority of mankind's illnesses. 2
The U.S. Pharmacopoeia indicated cannabis should be used for treating such ailments as fatigue, fits of coughing, rheumatism, asthma, delirium tremens, migraine headaches, and the cramps and depressions associated with menstruation.

In this century, cannabis research has demonstrated therapeutic value and complete safety in the treatment of many health problems including asthma, glaucoma, nausea, tumors, epilepsy, infection, stress, migraines, anorexia, depression, rheumatism, arthritis, and possibly herpes.

Deaths from aspirin (U.S. per year): 180 - 1,000 +

Deaths from legal drugs (U.S. per year) at doses used for prevention, diagnosis, or therapy: 106,000


Industry::

Almost any product that can be made from wood, cotton, or petroleum (including plastics) can be made from hemp. There are more than 25,000 known uses for hemp.

For thousands of years virtually all good paints and varnishes were made with hemp seed oil and/or linseed oil.

Hemp stems are 80% hurds (pulp by-product after the hemp fiber is removed from the plant). Hemp hurds are 77% cellulose - a primary chemical feed stock (industrial raw material) used in the production of chemicals, plastics, and fibers. Depending on which U.S. agricultural report is correct, an acre of full grown hemp plants can sustainably provide from four to 50 or even 100 times the cellulose found in cornstalks, kenaf, or sugar cane (the planet's next highest annual cellulose plants).

One acre of hemp produces as much cellulose fiber pulp as 4.1 acres of trees, making hemp a perfect material to replace trees for pressed board, particle board, and concrete construction molds.

Heating and compressing plant fibers can create practical, inexpensive, fire-resistant construction materials with excellent thermal and sound-insulating qualities. These strong plant fiber construction materials could replace dry wall and wood paneling. William B. Conde of Conde's Redwood Lumber, Inc. near Eugene, Oregon, in conjunction with Washington State University (1991-1993), has demonstrated the superior strength, flexibility, and economy of hemp composite building materials compared to wood fiber, even as beams.

Isochanvre, a rediscovered French building material made from hemp hurds mixed with lime petrifies into a mineral state and lasts for many centuries. Archeologists have found a bridge in the south of France from the Merovingian period (500-751 A.D.), built with this process.

Hemp has been used throughout history for carpet backing. Hemp fiber has potential in the manufacture of strong, rot resistant carpeting - eliminating the poisonous fumes of burning synthetic materials in a house or commercial fire, along with allergic reactions associated with new synthetic carpeting.

Plastic plumbing pipe (PVC pipes) can be manufactured using renewable hemp cellulose as the chemical feed stocks, replacing non-renewable coal or petroleum based chemical feed stocks.

In 1941 Henry Ford built a plastic car made of fiber from hemp and wheat straw. Hemp plastic is biodegradable, synthetic plastic is not.

For further information please visit HempCar.Org
posted @ 10:01 AM CST [link]

Tuesday, January 14, 2023

Did Jesus Use Cannabis?
Ever since Chris Bennett's article ran in High Times and was quoted in the Guardian, many CforC visitors have come here to find the answer. While the answer may not be the one sought, it should bring comfort none the less.

While I applaud Mr. Bennett's untiring research efforts, I have been part of the conservative Christian community long enough to know that unless Jesus comes down from Heaven and tells them himself, no amount of evidence will sway them to believe it.

Bill and Annabelle Gillum, a lovely and very wise couple that I used to listen to on the local Christian radio station gave this advice, "Only act on what you know to be true". What do we know to be true about Jesus?

When questioned by The teachers of the law and the Pharisees in reference to the woman who had been caught in the act of adultery, a crime carrying a sentence of death by stoning, to those that brought the accusation against the woman and brought the woman to Jesus, he wisely said to them, "He who hath no sin, cast the first stone." They left with nothing to say. He then asked the woman where her accusers were and if anyone had condemned her. She said no to which he replied, "Then neither do I condemn you. Go and leave your life of sin." -John 8:1-11

Based on his response to a person that had broke a God given law, would his response to someone accused of breaking a man-made rule, that did not violate God's law, be anything less?

While the question of Jesus using cannabis may remain unanswered, he would never support the war on drugs. This we know to be true and and this we should act on.
posted @ 02:50 AM CST [link]

Monday, January 13, 2023

Getting Off Drugs: The Legalization Option by Walter Wink
Friends Journal February 1996

The Quaker commitment to non-violence has direct implications for the United
States' failed drug war. It is a spiritual law that we become what we hate.
Jesus articulated this law in the Sermon on the Mount when he admonished,
"Do not react violently to the one who is evil" (Scholars' Version). The
sense is clear: do not resist evil by violent means; do not let evil set the
terms of your response. Applied to the drug issue, this means "Do not resist
drugs by violent methods."

When we oppose evil with the same weapons that evil employs, we commit the
same atrocities, violate the same civil liberties, and break the same laws
as those whom we oppose. We become what we hate. Evil makes us over into its
double. If one side prevails, the evil continues by virtue of having been
established through the means used. This principle of mimetic opposition is
abundantly illustrated in the case of the disastrous U.S. drug war.

The drug war is over, and we lost. We merely repeated the mistake of
Prohibition. The harder we tried to stamp out this evil, the more lucrative
we made it, and the more it spread. Our forcible resistance to evil simply
augments it. An evil cannot be eradicated by making it more profitable.

We lost that war on all three fronts: destroying the drug sources,
intercepting drugs at our borders, and arresting drug dealers and users.

In the first place, we have failed to cut off drug sources. When we paid
Turkey to stop the growth of opium, production merely shifted to Southeast
Asia and Afghanistan. Crop substitution programs in Peru led to increased
planting of coca, as farmers simply planted a small parcel of land with one
of the accepted substitute crops and used the bulk of the funds to plant
more coca. Cocaine cultivation uses only 700 of the 2.5 million square miles
suitable for its growth in South America.

There is simply no way the United States can police so vast an area.

Second, the drug war has failed to stop illicit drugs at our borders.
According to a Government Accounting Office study, the air force spent $3.3
million on drug interdiction, using sophisticated AWACS surveillance planes,
over a 15-month period ending in 1987. The grand total of drug seizures from
that effort was eight. During the same period, the combined efforts of the
coast guard and navy, sailing for 2,512 ship days at a cost of $40 million,
resulted in the seizure of a mere 20 drug-carrying vessels. Hard drugs are
so easy to smuggle because they are so concentrated. Our entire country's
annual import of cocaine would fit into a single C-5A cargo plane.

As if the flood of imported drugs were not enough, domestic production of
marijuana continues to increase. It is the largest cash crop in ten states,
and the second largest cash crop in the nation, next only to corn.
Methamphetamine, at two to three times the cost of crack, sustains a high
for 24 hours as opposed to crack's 20 minutes. It can be manufactured in
clandestine laboratories anywhere for an initial cost of only $2,000. Even
if we sealed our borders we could not stop the making of new drugs.

Third, the drug war calls for arresting drug dealers and users in the United
States. There are already 750,000 drug arrests per year, and the current
prison population has far outstripped existing facilities. Drug offenders
account for more than 60 percent of the prison population; to make room for
them, far more dangerous criminals are being returned to the streets. It is
not drugs but the drug laws themselves that have created this monster. The
unimaginable wealth involved leads to the corruption of police, judges, and
elected officials. A huge bureaucracy has grown dependent on the drug war
for employment. Even the financial community is compromised, since the only
thing preventing default by some of the heavily indebted Latin American
nations or major money-laundering banks is the drug trade. Cocaine brings
Bolivia's economy about $600 million per year, a figure equal to the
country's legal export income. Revenues from drug trafficking in Miami,
Fla., are greater than those from tourism, exports, health care, and all
other legitimate businesses combined.

Some people argue that legalization represents a daring and risky experiment,
but it is prohibition that is the daring and risky experiment.

Drug laws have also fostered drug-related murders and an estimated 40
percent of all property crime in the United States. The greatest
beneficiaries of the drug laws are the drug traffickers, who benefit from
the inflated prices that the drug war creates. Rather than collecting taxes
off the sale of drugs, governments at all levels expend billions in what
amounts to a subsidy of organized criminals. Such are the ironies of violent
resistance to evil.

The war on drugs creates other casualties beyond those arrested. There are
the ones killed in fights over turf; innocents caught in crossfire; citizens
terrified of city streets; escalating robberies; children given free crack
to get them addicted and then enlisted as runners and dealers; mothers so
crazed for a fix that they abandon their babies, prostitute themselves and
their daughters, and addict their unborn. Much of that, too, is the result
of the drug laws. Dealing is so lucrative only because it is illegal.

The media usually portray cocaine and crack use as a black ghetto
phenomenon. This is a racist caricature. There are more drug addicts among
middle- and upper-class whites than any other segment of the population, and
far more such occasional drug users. The typical customer is a single, white
male 20-40 years old. Only 13 percent of those using illegal drugs are
African American, but they constitute 35 percent of those arrested for
simple possession and a staggering 74 percent of those sentenced for drug
possession. It is the demand by white users that makes drugs flow. Americans
consume 60 percent of the world's illegal drugs. That is simply too
profitable a market to refuse.

Increasing the budget for fighting drugs is scarcely the answer. As Francis
Hall, former head of the New York City Police Department's narcotics
division, put it, "it's like Westmorland asking "Washington for two more
divisions. We lost the Vietnam War with a half million men. We're doing the
same thing with drugs." The drug war is the United States' longest war, our
domestic Vietnam.

We are the addicts

This nation is addicted to the use of force, and its armed resistance to the
drug trade is doomed to fail precisely because the drug trade perfectly
mirrors our own values. We condemn drug traffickers for sacrificing their
children, their integrity, and their human dignity just to make money or
experience pleasure -- without recognizing that these are the values
espoused by the society at large. In the drug war, we are scapegoating
addicts and blacks for what we have become as a nation. Drugs are the
ultimate consumer product for people who want to feel good now without
benefit of hard work, social interaction, or making a productive
contribution to society. Drug dealers are living out the rags-to-riches
American dream as private entrepreneurs desperately trying to become
upwardly mobile. That is why we could not win the war on drugs. We are the
enemy, and we cannot face that fact. So we launched a half-hearted,
half-baked war against a menace that only mirrors ourselves.

The uproar about drugs is itself odd. Illicit drugs are, on the whole, far
less dangerous than the legal drugs that many more people consume.

Alcohol is associated with 40 percent of all suicide attempts, 40 percent of
all traffic deaths, 54 percent of all violent crimes, and 10 percent of all
work-related injuries. Nicotine, the most addictive drug of all, has
transformed lung cancer from a medical curiosity to a common disease that
now accounts for 3 million deaths a year worldwide, 60 million since the
l950s. Smoking will kill one in three smokers eventually.

None of the illegal drugs is as lethal as tobacco or alcohol. If anyone has
ever died as a direct result of marijuana, no one seems to be able to
document it. Most deaths from hard drugs are the result of adulteration or
unregulated concentrations. Many people can be addicted to heroin for most
of their lives without serious health consequences. It has no known side
effects other than constipation. Cocaine in powder form is not as addictive
as nicotine; only 3 percent of those who try it become addicted. Most
cocaine user do not become dependent, and most who do eventually free
themselves. Crack is terribly addictive, but its use is a direct consequence
of the expense of powdered cocaine, and its spread is in part a function of
its lower price.

We must be honest about these facts, because much of the hysteria about
illegal drugs has been based on misinformation. All addiction is a serious
matter, and Quakers are right to be most concerned about the human costs.
But many of these costs are a consequence of a wrong-headed approach to
eradication. Our tolerance of the real killer-drugs (nicotine and alcohol)
and our abhorrence of the drugs that are far less lethal is hypocritical, or
at best a selective moralism reflecting passing fashions of indignation.

Drug addiction is singled out as evil, yet ours is a society of addicts. We
project on the black drug subculture all our profound anxieties about our
own addictions (to wealth, power, sex, food, work, religion, alcohol,
caffeine, and tobacco) and attack addiction in others without having to gain
insight about ourselves. New York City councilman Wendell Foster illustrated
this scapegoating attitude when he suggested chaining addicts to trees so
people could spit on them. Instead of nurturing compassion in order to help
addicts, our society targets them as pariahs and dumps on them our own
shadow side.

Legalization: not capitulation but a better strategy.
posted by @ 01:04 AM CST [more..]

Friday, January 10, 2023

US MS: OPED: How Many (Ex-)Prisoners Is A Recession Worth?

posted @ 07:01 AM CST [link]