It is a wacky world of late. Our priorities are senseless and most certainly out of whack! Good parenting, public policies including university policies need to be about safety first. Big government can regulate, make illegal, or ban anything. That's why sweet Liberty takes constant vigilance. Martin Luther King warned us to, "Never forget everything Hitler did in Germany was legal."
Servants of tyranny are good at ignoring history and science while catering to the needs of special interests but very bad at determining what is best or safer for the individual or society. They play on our fears to make us more accepting of their waste of our precious lives and resources. The tobacco, alcohol and prescription drug gangs cause more death annually than all illicit drugs.
Marijuana is a safer choice. It is definitely safer than alcohol and some perilous prescriptions. So why are we driving people to drink? Stop driving US to drink and use dangerous pharmaceuticals!
"TCU’s zero tolerance hurts students," says Joy Strickland, CEO of the local chapter of Mothers Against Teen Violence and New York Times columnist Frank Bruni says, "Let’s treat alcohol as the danger it is and make it pay its way with higher taxes," in response to a recent Dallas Morning News article about the drug trafficking investigation ending with 22 arrests at TCU.
"The crime is in the arrest. The crime is violating these young people and labeling them because of a ridiculous law that should have been changed decades ago," comments Cheryl Norman of Plano. "Seriously, your gleeful celebration of the arrests of TCU students for marijuana offenses was worthy of a major FBI roundup of Mafioso capos and professional assassins instead of an easy and risk-free bust of college students dealing in the “devil’s weed,” disparages Ronald Wade of Rockwall.
Real warriors get their adrenaline rush making us all safer, catching violent rapist and killers!
Why let murderers and other violent predators roam free, while we police nonviolent adult social, medicinal and religious drug use? Regulation, science based education and treating abuse as a medical problem is a better drug policy that increases public safety and harm reduction plus frees up billions in wasted funds to use catching and incarcerating the violent.
People who use the term doper for individuals who make a safer choice are showing their ignorance. We can educate them. These TCU students and Michael Phelps are Rebels with Just Cause and true American Patriots taking a stand for freedom against tyranny and injustice!
Save the children, just say NO to prohibition! Trigger less violence, racism, tyranny and ruined lives!
"An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law."- MLK. Marc Emery is our hero and wins one of the 2011 Rebel with Just Cause portraits for taking a stand for justice against a morally bankrupt, violence triggering, nightmare policy.
The other 2011 Rebel with Just Cause portrait will be shared by Bradley Manning and Julian Assange: for posting the Afghanistan war diaries on wikileaks. It is not a crime to expose war crimes.
Do we want to be known as a disgusting military super power, policing the world or as a humanitarian super power? "Strike the root!" Be brave, that's how we end terror. All we have to do is stop being afraid, and stop acting out of fear.
"People who are strong believers in issues and ideas and principals, they do lead the way," Ron Paul proclaims. They never forget this is the home of the free and the brave.
"If the words "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" don't include the right to experiment with your own consciousness, then the Declaration of Independence isn't worth the hemp it was written on." - Terence McKenna
Watch these videos SCIENCE VS. STIGMA and WITCHGRASS: a pipe dream by Dave Wilkinson showing once again that fact is stranger than fiction. "A compassionate doctor presents scientific evidence to support the stigmatized plant’s effectiveness in treating more than a dozen medical conditions." SCIENCE VS. STIGMA puts a human face on some of the collateral damage from the war on drugs.
All drug use is medical use. Social use to relax, to relieve stress is self- medication. "Policymakers weighing the pros and cons of legalization should consider... that (these) laws may lead to fewer suicides among young adult males"
Servants of tyranny want you to believe the evils of the drug war are unintended but felony convictions disenfranchise mostly poor and minority Americans. Harassing the sick and dying is an un-American activity. The people believe in self-government and self-medication.
Throughout history people have found ways to alter their consciousness. In primitive societies psychoactive plants were sacred and ingested with care, with supposed spiritual intent, but use was often limited to a corrupt powerful few who used fear and superstition to control the masses.
If some choose to carry on the ancient tradition of using drugs to enhance their spirituality it is cause for rejoicing not incarceration. Holy smokes, cannabis is often used as a sacrament just like wine.
"The illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world." - Carl Sagan
Today to celebrate, to relax, to just feel better, to live without pain, fear, uncertainty, depression and doubt we use our favorite legal or illegal drug. Nationally, globally, en masse, we are a High Society!
The responsibility is ours and so is the opportunity to right this situation! Save the American Dream of freedom from big government oppression and tyranny. Restore Justice, the guardian of liberty!
Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul warned the U.S. is "slipping into a fascist system" dominated by big government and big businesses at a recent fiery rally. "If we are allowed to deal with our eternity and all that we believe in spiritually, and if we're allowed to read any book that we want under freedom of speech, why is it we can't put into our body whatever we want?"
Noah Potter suggests (based on Buford Terrell's fascinating legal theory challenging DEA claims that Cannabis has No "currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States,") writing letters to demand that your Governor joins the governors of Rhode Island and Washington in their petition to the federal government. See ASA National Action Alert. "2 Governors Asking US to Ease Rules on Marijuana to Allow for Its Medical Use" might be a good article to ask if your Governor has read, in a letter encouraging him to sign this petition.
Disband the FDA and the DEA! They are profound regulatory failures! The DEA has harassed the sick and dying, shamed and destroyed families, locked up and killed many (including enforcement) over one of the safest therapeutically active plants known to man. While the FDA has allowed more pharmaceutical killers on the market, suppressed the truth about cannabis and failed to grant the terminally ill access to investigational drugs and treatments. Both agencies exacerbate problems instead of solving them. They should be disbanded.
Morally bankrupt financiers, industrialists, empire builders and leaders in their pockets make capitalism abhorrent with their predatory capitalism. Predatory capitalism, due to big government interference and protection, destroys people. Benign or ethical capitalism, America's founders' vision of the free market, creates a world of abundance for all.
Shame all these distasteful industries and big government for their booming economy based on the suffering of others!! Shame them in every letter and conversation that applies, please. Make predatory capitalism unfashionable.
That Obama gave us small change and worse backed out on his promises to drug law reformers is an Obamanation! Big government is an abomination of the American dream of self-government, free of tyranny and oppression.
Considering the oppression, the bloodshed and corruption triggered by the new prohibition; the worst public policy since slavery is a simmering scandal and a gory, violence triggering disgrace more explosive than sex in the oval office!
Drug laws and other types of crimes are enforced in a racist manner... or does it really have less to do with the color of your skin and more to do with just being poor? Is American justice is for sale?!
Being poor is the key factor to prison population. The poor, no matter what color, receive little legal council of any use. "In America you can have all the freedom and justice money can buy you." Says Rusty White, another recovering drug warrior from LEAP.
Our prisons are full of minorities and the poor. More members of minorities are needed in the reform movement. The drug laws replaced the segregation laws for those with racist inclinations in power, in some cases. Mostly it's less sinister but just as devastating.
Simply put, we are all products of our conditioning or experience. If asked, most of us agree all men are created equal. However, a fascinating tool called the Implicit Association Test, IAT shows more than 80% of all races who have ever taken it have pro-white associations.
We have to train our decision makers to overcome their conditioning. Most of us have pro-tall associations because in the past we wanted be able to see our leaders on the battlefield. We can overcome our conditioning.
Prisons propagate crime, violence and sexual deviance. Putting nonviolent offenders in this breeding ground is madness. Support for the federal war on drugs is inconsistent with support for individual freedom, constitutional government and the teachings of Jesus, the Prince of Peace. The Spirit of 1776 was the Holy Spirit and is our true North.
God made the cocoa, opium and cannabis plants. The UN's (150 nations) drug strategy is senselessly committed to eradicating these plants which are obvious evidence of the Creator's mercy and compassion from the planet.
"That wiser strategy understands how dramatic reductions in global poverty and effective responses to crises such as the HIV/AIDS pandemic are both morally required and critical to our security. And in those struggles, the worlds religious communities could provide the "tipping point" for change. In an era aflame with war, the gospel vocation of peacemaker has never been more important." - Jim Wallis author of "God's Politics." He says the religious right's Bible is full of holes! They have taken out all references to helping the poor and oppressed.
Churches are coming on board. Twenty-two for sentencing reform, fourteen for educational opportunities and the United Methodist Church, Progressive National Baptist Convention, United Church of Christ, Unitarian Universalist Association, Episcopal Church and the Union for Reform Judaism, all have supportive positions on medical use of marijuana.
"In 2000, after a decade of unparalleled prosperity, it was somehow not a campaign issue that 13.5 million children, one out of every five, were hungry; and that three out of four of the hungry children had parents who work. Nor was welfare of $125 billion a year to politically-wired corporations and industries. Nor was the massive transfer of cash, securities and other assets to foreign tax havens." Morton Mintz wants that to change, don't you?
The core problem is poverty. If we must wage war, let's defeat this age old enemy. As our founding fathers did, all libertarian thinkers believe in individual freedom and the free market. Less government is the best, only enough to protect us from violence and fraud, with no government poverty program or welfare redistribution of the wealth. Freed from our excessive tax burdens more of us could afford to donate to carefully chosen trustworthy charities. Philanthropists, churches and other humanitarian organizations would be able to win a war on global poverty, one life at a time.
"The Improving State of the World:: Why We're Living Longer, Healthier, More Comfortable Lives on a Cleaner Planet," is a guide to how human well-being has steadily improved with economic growth, technological change, and free trade combining to power a “cycle of progress” that has led to unprecedented improvements in human well-being.
Increases in the food supply have reduced chronic undernourishment in developing countries from 37% in 1970 to 17% in 2001, despite an overall 83% growth in their populations. The real global price of food commodities has declined 75% since 1950. Yet percentages here are deceiving because the actual number of starving people has increased.
Economic freedom has increased in 102 of the 113 countries for which data is available for both 1990 and 2000. Disability in the older population of such developed countries as the US, Canada, France, are in decline. Between 1970 and the early 2000s, the global illiteracy rated dropped from 46 to 18 percent.
Both as world citizens and as individuals we must learn to love ourselves and each other, in order to be happy and truly at peace. We can celebrate our similarities and be tolerant of our differences in matters of race, religion and life style.
Self-government, the bold vision of our founders is an idea whose time has come to stay for good in America and the world!
A UNITED NATIONS report concludes:"Overall there seems to be a high correlation between human development and human freedom. Freedom seems to have unleashed the creative energies of the people.... and leads to even higher levels of income and social progress."
Save lives instead of ruining them. Join LEAP! It is a LEAP year!! Join COP and DownSizeDC!
Get tough on violent crime! Restore Justice, the guardian of liberty!
Track your Senators' and Representative's votes by e-mail.
Changing who's in charge will not affect much. The real cause of this huge quagmire of failed policy is the beast, big government, that money hungry beast, Uncle Sam! Ma Freedom tells it like it is! The beauty of it is when we focus on down-sizing our government we regain our roots of self-government and secure the blessings of liberty for future generations and ourselves.
Compiled and written by Colleen McCool