Thursday, March 15, 2007

The worst scum on the earth I'm sorry, I probably shouldn't let my feelings get away like that. And I should have been smart enough to not listen to this radio program featuring ONDCP's "Dr." David Murray and gambler/sado-moralist/former drug czar William Bennett. So Bill Bennett asks about medical marijuana, and this is what David Murray, a federal employee paid by my tax dollars, has to say: This is really hurting us, and it's hurting the people because it's a fraud. There is no medical value to smoked, raw, weed marijuana -- the Food and Drug Administration, scientific bodies have weighed in on this. This is not an open, or a contested issue -- it's clear. It is risky. It is dangerous to the people who use it, and it is not therapeutically valuable. It's not a medicine, so the fraud is to keep offering it as a medicine. And in state initiatives supported by very powerful legalization lobbies with millions of dollars behind it, they've sometimes pulled the wool over voters in state initiatives in places like California, and now even New Mexico. This isn't worth debunking. This is a guy throwing handfuls of his own feces around the room. When that happens, there's no point sticking around. You just hope that an attendant will be around soon to put him back in his cell. So I turned it off. If any of the rest of you want to listen to the rest and see what the callers had to say, let me know what happened. I've got some other thoughts going through my head right now... Link Raich, 41, began sobbing when she was told of the decision and said she would continue using the drug. "I'm sure not going to let them kill me," she said. "Oh my God." Link On June 14, Natalie Fisher went to Peter McWilliams' home, where she worked as housekeeper to the wheelchair-bound victim of AIDS and cancer. In the bathroom on the second floor, she found his life-less body. He had choked to death on his own vomit. ... I thought about the judge who had denied him his day in court and had ordered him to forgo the medication that kept him alive. I suppose he's happy, I said to myself, now that he's murdered Peter. I'm one of those libertarians who generally tries to look at government policies more as folly than as evil. But sometimes, the evil that government does transcends simple folly. Sometimes I have to be reminded that there is a real human cost of government. There is a real cost to what the David Murrays of this world do to our country, our citizens, our soul. 11:38:22 PM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []

Flex Your Rights Take the quiz. It's a tricky one. 7:54:09 PM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []

What's next? Tables are turned. Two years ago I reported about a particularly heinous police action in Flint, Michigan. Innocent partygoers at Club What's Next were strip searched and arrested for "frequenting a drug establishment" simply because someone else at the club possessed illegal drugs. Fortunately, on October 13, a judge threw out the cases. And now today... Detroit -- The American Civil Liberties of Michigan filed a class action lawsuit in Federal District Court today against the City of Flint, the Flint Police Department and Genesee County Sheriff Department on behalf of 40 innocent young men and women who were strip and/or cavity searched and wrongfully arrested during a 2005 raid of a licensed Flint nightclub. "These young people simply did what thousands like them do all over the country [^] they went to a licensed and legal club to listen to music, dance and socialize," said Kary Moss, Executive Director of the ACLU of Michigan. "A judge has already agreed with us that the arrests were unlawful and we now seek to hold Flint and Genesee County accountable for their reckless disregard for the patrons' rights and to ensure that these practices are abolished." Communities have to be made to pay. If that's the only way to stop the un-American, un-Constitutional, and unacceptable abuses of drug war power, then so be it. Let every community that turns its police force over to an oversight-free multi-jurisdictional task force pay. Every community that turns a blind eye to abuse because they've been told it's "for the children" -- let them pay. And to Corey and all the others who have endured both the indignity of the event and the two years that followed, thanks for being willing to stand up for the rights of all of us. 7:37:53 PM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []

Billy Bob Thornton joins Halle Berry in Tulia project Link The film's visibility just raised a couple more notches. Think he'll play Coleman? 7:08:49 PM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []