Bong Hits 4 Jesus -- A Guide to the Supreme Court student speech case.
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With all the problems we're having in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East, and with our soldiers' lives at risk, it's disheartening to see such a complete lack of command competence.
US troops and Iraqi police seized and destroyed a bumper crop of marijuana plants last week, according to a report in Stars & Stripes. Based on a military press release, the report said soldiers from the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, which has responsibility for most of northern Iraq, discovered the field in an unnamed location.
According to the military press release, the field contained "juvenile marijuana plants grown in a series of furrows. The owner claimed he was growing sesame." Police put the value of the field at $2 million. The crop was cut down and destroyed, and the man arrested.
First, we're spending hundreds of billions of dollars (or is it in the trillions yet) on Iraq, and we're trying to get them back on their feet, including developing their own internal commerce. Well, if the estimates are correct, we just destroyed $2 million of potential commerce.
Second, things are a little too tense over there. It's hard to think of a better tension reducer than a little cannabis. In fact, we should take all the marijuana that's seized here and help the war effort by giving it to the citizens of Iraq. Imagine the Sunnis and Shiites sitting there passing around the water pipe, and hearing one say "Wow! When you put it like that, what you say really makes sense. I never thought of it that way before." and the response: "Yeah, you too! ... Uh, what was I saying? ... Hey, look at the camel spider!"
I say it's time to replace Donald Rumsfeld with Tommy Chong (Hey, he couldn't do any worse!)
The Drug Czar's blog and mine are, like, so similar!
Check out the end of this post of mine from yesterday, and compare it to this post from the Drug Czar today.
Same exact quoted material.
The difference? The readers of my blog can get a chuckle out of the story, because they are smart enough to realize that the police and reporters in it are brazenly dishonest nitwits. On the other hand, the Drug Czar thinks by posting it that he can make readers think that marijuana causes murderous psychosis. This, of course, makes the Drug Czar a brazenly dishonest nitwit. But I repeat myself.
Racist Drug Raids: The "War on Drugs" costs taxpayers more than 50 billion dollars annually, but it costs those disproportionately targeted by the government -- youth, communities of color and the sick and dying -- so much more. In the "Drug Wars" episode, we'll take you to Hearne, Texas, where nearly 15% of the town's young African American men were incarcerated on drug charges based on the false accusations of a mentally ill police informant.
The Drug War Goes to School: And you'll meet the students at Stratford High School in Goose Creek, South Carolina, who were held at gunpoint, forced by school officials and a police SWAT team into lockdown -- all because of suspicion that a student "might" be in possession of a marijuana joint.
Excessive Prison Sentencing: We look at the family impact of cruel and excessive prison sentences for drug offenses through the eyes of three sisters from Oregon. Their mother, Hamedah Hasan, was sentenced to 27 years in prison because of her involvement with a man who was dealing drugs, though she never sold or used drugs herself.
Medical Marijuana: Valerie Corral suffered from constant, debilitating seizures until she discovered that marijuana relieved her symptoms. She helped author the country's first statewide law allowing the use of medical marijuana and started a hospice to help people with terminal illnesses cope with pain. Nevertheless, federal agents stormed her California home and arrested her and her husband. She talks about her fight to help seriously ill people live with dignity.
The ACLU web page for the program has some good resources (the pdf viewing guide looks pretty cool). They also have a web page for people to tell their own stories.
Nice. Just wish the program was on network TV in prime time instead of Court TV at noon, but still, it looks like they've done a good job with it.
If you don't have Court TV, you may not be out of luck. The ACLU has plans to stream the video on their site next week.
Every now and then, one of these quacks surfaces -- usually in England, for some reason -- at an inquest.
You see, 23-year-old Paul Dumville, after suffering from severe headaches for over a month, collapsed and died.
Well, the mallard utterance in question, Dr. Colin Hunter-Craig, has it all figured out, and explained it to Paul's father and girlfriend:
"He was a fit and healthy 23-year-old with no hardening of the arteries of the brain.
"In the back of the brain he had a haemorrhage which caused swelling of the brain, but there was no sign of any defects there.
"The cause of death was a haemorrhage due to cannabis abuse.
"We don't understand why it causes this, it just does. It takes about a month for THC (the psychoactive ingredient of cannabis) to build up in that part of the body.
"This is incredibly rare in young people, but in old people we would recognise this as a stroke.
"The fact that people say they only take cannabis every so often does not mean it should be recommended."
West Sussex coroner Dr David Skipp asked Dr Hunter-Craig to explain why the build up would effect Mr Dumville but not other users.
"There is a lot we don't know about this," he said.
"It is rather like running across a deserted country road with your eyes shut. Most of the time you get away with it but I still wouldn't recommend it."
The coroner said: "This may not have been a natural cause but I'm not prepared to say that it was definitely due to cannabis.
"I'm going to record a narrative verdict, and the fact is that Paul Dumville died of a cerebral haemorrhage augmented by the use of cannabis."
Dr. Hunter-Craig then returned to his practice of applying leeches to remove the demons that cause lung cancer.
If you've got a blog you'd like me to visit, feel free to drop me a line.
There's a war going on. It destroys lives and families, spawns violence, suspends civil liberties, tramples on the infirm, locks up millions of peaceful citizens, costs billions, and subjugates reason with fear. This blog looks at the front lines of the drug war, with news, analysis, and the occasional rant.
