“Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one.”
Thomas Paine
Marijuana and heroin are exactly the same. It’s true. According to the laws of the United States of America, marijuana and heroin possess sufficient commonalities to be rated as Schedule 1 Drugs. Schedule 1 Drugs (by governmental definition) have a high potential for abuse, possess a lack of accepted safety for use and have no practical medical application. Citizens can be locked in federal prison for the enjoyment of any of them.
Around 1987 (according to Russ Kick’s informative 100 Things You’re Not Supposed To Know), the DEA held hearings at the behest of several citizens and NORML (the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) to change cannabis from a Schedule 1 to a Schedule 2 drug, presided over by one of their own administrative judges, Francis L. Young. This rescheduling would not have decriminalized cannabis, merely made it more available for scientific testing and potential medical applications.
After considering the abundant evidence that cannabis (what marijuana was called before its prohibition in 1937, and during the 19th century when it was the second most widely prescribed drug in the USA) has no quantifiable body count and has in fact been used as medicine worldwide for thousands of years, Judge Young ruled that marijuana should be removed from its current status and reconsidered in light of the evidence.
“Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man. By any measure of rational analysis marijuana can be safely used within a supervised routine of medical care…” Francis L. Young
Judge Young ruled that it would be “…unreasoning, arbitrary and capricious” for the DEA to maintain the status of its prohibition in light of the evidence presented to him. John Lawn, appointed head of the DEA by Ronald Reagan, overruled him. An appointed official overruled the decision of a judge, who is usually elected if I’m not mistaken. In this instance Lawn represented the state’s predetermined position whereas Judge Young represented justice.
The state trumps justice.
The Controlled Substances Act of 1970 effectively set the standard for what was to become the government’s declared war upon its citizens, Richard Nixon’s War on Drugs. Because, even though the declared enemy is drugs, it is humans that are fined, incarcerated and killed.
The CSA combined extant federal statutes under a single blanket authority and vastly expanded federal police powers to deal with the drug problem. What was the drug problem? People were getting high, having too much fun and flouting authority on drugs, many of which were released by the government to the public as part of a failed mind control program, MK-ULTRA.
While challenging to conventional thinking, the sudden and ‘inexplicable’ appearance of all manner of euphoriant, hallucinogen and narcotic in the public sector during the exact period the government was running drug tests on unwitting subjects in the military, and, well, where ever defies rational coincidence. We got high because elements in the government wanted us to.
Then they came after us with guns.
Of course some will claim the drug problem is found in the horrible scourge of addiction. But the Supreme Court has ruled that addiction is not a crime and that doctors can provide addicts with drugs to alleviate the pangs of their addiction (Linder v. The United States; Robinson v. California). In fact, they ruled that punishing an addict for being an addict constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.
In commenting on Robinson in a later ruling, Justice White stated:
“If it cannot be a crime to have an irresistible compulsion to use narcotics,…I do not see how it can Constitutionally be a crime to yield to such a compulsion.”
The CSA effectively negated the Supreme Court rulings. Just as the Volstead Act created organized crime and the numerous federal, state and local authorities to fight it, the CSA established the mechanism of our current and expanding police state to fight the crimes they invented. In order to usher in a new set of unconstitutional laws and greatly reduce the rights and freedoms of the citizens, the system needed the citizens to misbehave. So it simultaneously introduced all kinds of unexplored chemical compounds into the public consciousness (promoted by dupes in the scientific community with inducements from celebrity icons), and indeed started a war that many of that same public would have to get mangled in.
It stirred them up nicely. And established the new in-country enemies on ground zero: hippies, yippies, Black Panthers, black anything, radicals and anti-American losers. With the media happy to point out any excess by the antidisestablishmentarianistas to the point of inventing them, and the authorities describing them with the contempt usually reserved for commies, drugs became the underlying cause of the preponderance of our social ills. And thus we could go to war on them, right here at home. USA! USA!
Don’t believe the government would conduct tests on unwitting subjects? Citizens?
Of course, to engage in such clearly unconstitutional behavior, especially in a legal framework, they had to form some committees and commissions to confirm what they had already decided: drugs were a clear and present danger to the well-being of our nation. One such group was called the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse and was headed by Nixon appointee Raymond P. Shafer who concluded:
“[T]he criminal law is too harsh a tool to apply to personal possession even in the effort to discourage use. It implies an overwhelming indictment of the behavior which we believe is not appropriate. The actual and potential harm of use of the drug is not great enough to justify intrusion by the criminal law into private behavior, a step which our society takes only with the greatest reluctance.”
This didn’t sit well with Richard Nixon who had an unusual burst of uncharacteristic honesty in his repudiation of the NCMDA conclusions when he stated to Commission head Shafer,"You're enough of a pro to know that for you to come out with something that would run counter to what the Congress feels and what the country feels, and what we're planning to do, would make your commission just look bad as hell."
“…what we’re planning to do…" Very ominous words from a man who was driven from the presidency owing to criminal corruption, violation of US law and violation of international law as well. Governmental commissions, judges, Supreme Court Justices, upon consideration of cannabis in light of prohibition, rule that it should not be criminalized as it is, for such criminalization is a violation of constitutional protections. The predisposed reject their findings.
Clearly the agenda was in place: the USA through the Controlled Substances Act became the vanguard for the prohibition which would sweep the planet under the direct order of the UN through the International Narcotics Control Board. They set the standards and those who didn’t play by the rules faced sanction.
The International Narcotics Control Board acts as a quasi-judicial body that among other things, establishes the quantity of drugs each country is allowed to produce, import or export, for medical or scientific purposes. They have given themselves the power (through quasi-authority) to determine how much production and transportation of illegal drugs nations (not even signatory to their mandates) can engage in. Should they produce too much or not enough, they can have economic sanctions imposed upon them by the INCB.
This seems worthy of consideration. The INCB exists to regulate the production and distribution of illicit drugs as the enforcement arm of the UN. The Single Convention on Narcotics, the international precursor to the CSA in Article 9 defines their agenda:
Limit the cultivation, production, manufacture and use of drugs to an adequate amount required for medical and scientific purposes;
Ensure their availability for such purposes; and
Prevent illicit cultivation, production and manufacture of, and illicit trafficking in and use of, drugs.
Through the INCB the UN seeks to restrict the use of illicit drugs to their assignees. The Single Convention on Narcotics is the UN’s codified intent to attain a monopoly on global drug production. Illicit drugs are illicit for everyone but the UN and those it designates. And those countries which don’t produce enough illicit drugs to meet the requirements of the INCB find themselves penalized for their shortages. Kinda like the mob.
Along with setting global drug import/export standards the INCB is an outspoken opponent of drug legalization. Its 2002 report rejects a common argument for drug reform, stating,
"Persons in favour of legalizing illicit drug use argue that drug abusers should not have their basic rights violated; however, it does not seem to have occurred to those persons that drug abusers themselves violate the basic rights of their own family members and society."
They can justify denying us our fundamental human rights because by taking certain drugs, we violate the rights of others. If we can do it to others, they can do it us – a very even, mature approach from a collective telling the world how best to behave. They don’t explain how a person using medical cannabis is abusing the rights of his or her family or the society around them: the fact of the proclamation is sufficient to keep us in line.
What then is the actual danger of cannabis, warranting its inclusion among the most reviled substances created by man? The Department of Justice argument against rescheduling cannabis goes like this:
The actual use and frequency of use of a substance, especially when that use may result in harmful consequences such as failure to fulfill major obligations at work or school, physical risk-taking, or even substance-related legal problems, are indicative of a substance's abuse potential. The same and much worse can also be said about the clear abuse of alcohol by many Americans.
As these appointed tyrants decide unilaterally to reject the medical evidence, legal decisions and Supreme Court determination, it behooves us to consider their perspective.
The through line is, “The actual use and frequency of use of a substance… are indicative of a substance's abuse potential.” Fascinating. What does that mean? By watching how much someone uses something one can determine how everyone will respond to it? That is utter nonsense. Everyone responds to different substances differently. Not everyone who drinks is an alcoholic. Not every alcoholic drinks. The same goes for any substance. While some substances are more addictive than others, and more prone to abuse (tobacco and pharmaceuticals atop the list), each person owns their body and thus should be allowed to determine its contents regardless what Nanny Bloomberg and his ilk think.
What are the horrible effects that cannabis cause? Not finishing our homework, or turning in our presentation late, doing something (for only in sequestered stasis is there a lack of physical risk), or getting caught. This is why hundreds of thousands of citizens of the USA are arrested every year, imprisoned, beaten, raped, murdered – because they might get stoned and turn in their homework late? Miss the big meeting? Fall down, go boom? These laws and conventions exist ostensibly to protect us from ourselves – an enforcement impossibility – but really provide for a simpler and more basic need: keeping them employed.
Because that’s what this brutally violent and unconstitutional prohibition exists for – keeping its various functionaries employed. The drug war, the war against citizens of the USA who use socially unsanctioned drugs, costs over 100 billion dollars a year. That money doesn’t make drugs disappear; magically or even in the real world. That money pays peoples’ salaries. Lots of them. Perhaps millions of them.
Consider: Presently, there are billions of people engaged in the activities of doctrinal religion. The Church, in its multifarious incarnations, exists owing to the many billions of tax free dollars that people contribute to it. It can only continue to exist based upon its credibility in the eyes of its worshippers. Loss of credibility equates to loss of followers equates to loss of operating capital. Loss of power.
Yet science and verifiable history (along with simple reason) make it abundantly obvious to those in the upper echelons of religious organizations that what they promote is impossible: a God angered by the slightest infraction of very specific protocols which are left to the individual to interpret; contradictory rules excluding certain groups to the point of committing genocide against them while inviting all to join and contribute to the majesty of the Church; the howling hypocrisy of promoting the love of an indigent carpenter and his message of peace and inclusion through extreme brutality, isolation and rapine carnage by some of the richest organizations in the world.
What would happen if they owned the lie they promoted, if they admitted what is obvious to any and all who look: that religion is naught more than human controlling human in the name of one god or another? The institution would fail. We would be free of religion, at least as far as the Church and its doctrine.
They would be unemployed.
To maintain status as a Schedule 1 Drug, cannabis has to have no practical medical application. Odd isn’t it that in 2003 the US government applied for a patent on the primary active ingredient in cannabis: cannabinoids.
Cannabinoids have been found to have antioxidant properties, unrelated to NMDA receptor antagonism. This new found property makes cannabinoids useful in the treatment and prophylaxis of wide variety of oxidation associated diseases, such as ischemic, age-related, inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. The cannabinoids are found to have particular application as neuroprotectants, for example in limiting neurological damage following ischemic insults, such as stroke and trauma, or in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and HIV dementia…
So, while overturning legal decisions, Supreme Court rulings and the recommendations of the very people tasked to determine a ‘supposedly’ rational legal status, the government of the USA patents the active ingredient of the demonized weed. Why? For a variety of medical treatments: Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, stroke, trauma. Yet cannabis remains a Schedule 1 Drug because it has no appreciable medical application, according to the USA.
The USA, through the UN and control arms like the INCB, knows full well what would happen to their happy little drug cartel if they admitted that not only are the drug laws unconstitutional, but that they are based on lies and deception with the objective of entrenching power through human controls. The admission that cannabis is not a dangerous toxic substance but in fact is a useful, therapeutic, naturally occurring organism would render the entire structure built to combat it – military, bureaucratic and legal – criminal.
The massive fraudulent collectives who have been leaching billions of dollars off the people of the world for all these decades under the mantel of law enforcers would be revealed as the charlatans and thugs that they are and always have been. Their structures would crumble.
They would be unemployed.
They should be unemployed, but for in prison workshops. But reality, so disdained by such mindsets, dictates that to solve the problem of drug prohibition is not to cast even more of us onto the streets looking for ever diminishing jobs. Wisdom would demand that we employ the harmful in the remediation of the harm they have caused, like having taggers clean up their own and other taggers’ messes. To begin, they could help kill the prison/industrial complex by reintegrating people wrongfully incarcerated owing to their criminal policies back into society. They could staff substance abuse recovery centers. They could go into communities not with guns but with jobs and potential, offering hope not despair.
Our national infrastructure is in shambles. We bomb other nations’ infrastructures. We need to stop destroying for a while and rebuild. Then, in a couple of decades, when we’ve really got a start on a clean, safer, less draconian world, the militant assholes will have something really nice to blow to shit.
"Looking only at the effects on the individual, there, is little proven danger of physical or psychological harm from the experimental or intermittent use of the natural preparations of cannabis." Raymond Shafer
5/8/2013
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