In a profile published online over the weekend in New Yorker magazine, President Barack Obama continued his softening towards marijuana legalization. In the interview, the president alluded to his own youthful marijuana consumption and clarified that, while he doesn’t believe it to be a healthy pastime and has discouraged his daughters from its use, it is a less dangerous substance than alcohol. President Obama also stated that current moves towards legalization are important experiments that can help end discriminatory arrest practices.
“As has been well documented, I smoked pot as a kid, and I view it as a bad habit and a vice, not very different from the cigarettes that I smoked as a young person up through a big chunk of my adult life. I don’t think it is more dangerous than alcohol.” President Obama stated when asked about the growing public support for ending marijuana prohibition.
When asked to clarify if he thought it was “less dangerous,” Obama replied that he thought it was less dangerous “in terms of its impact on the individual consumer.” He continued that “it’s not something I encourage, and I’ve told my daughters I think it’s a bad idea, a waste of time, not very healthy.”
“Middle-class kids don’t get locked up for smoking pot, and poor kids do and African-American kids and Latino kids are more likely to be poor and less likely to have the resources and the support to avoid unduly harsh penalties.” he stated, “we should not be locking up kids or individual users for long stretches of jail time when some of the folks who are writing those laws have probably done the same thing.”
“It’s important for it [marijuana legalization in Colorado and Washington] to go forward because it’s important for society not to have a situation in which a large portion of people have at one time or another broken the law and only a select few get punished.”
You can read the full article on the New Yorker’s website here.
Perhaps President Obama will continue to evolve and find himself on the right side of history when it comes to marijuana legalization. It would take just one simple Executive Order to deschedule marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act and help institute some real lasting change in our nation’s failed war on cannabis. At a minimum, these statements show just how far we have come from the “Just Say No” era of American politics.
This is a major improvement in the torturous relationship between reality and Washington DC.
Mr. President … Please look into your hear and ask yourself, how can this plant change the lives of Americans and what will be the impact to our economy.
Also, it gives a very loud message to the world that we are a Progressive Nation of diverse peoples that are always taking the leading position when it comes to History Changing Events. Let the legalization of cannabis be your legacy.
Please sign;The Executive Order to decriminalize marijuana from the Controlled Substance Act …..
Get rid of the thugs, and put the distribution in the hands of knowledgeable people,. and save money for the government…
are they finally in touch with reality, wow…
Does OBAMA want to have it both ways? Todays politician wants to sit on the fence. Make little hints to both sides of an issue but do nothing concrete. If Mr. OBAMA got caught and arrested for smoking pot while in college he may not be president today. The fact that he can protect minorities and others from arrest or ruin by correcting the dishonest “class one substance” label that allows prosecutors use to get long sentences against users. He wants to protect his daughters by leaving a scary label on pot and do do this while others will go to jail. IF YOU REALY WANT TO FIX THIS WRONG DO SOMETHING OTHER THAN HINTS! RECLASSIFY POT! NOT BECAUSE OF PUBLIC OPINION BUT BECAUSE OF SCIENCE. WHY SHOULD PEOPLE BE GOING TO JAIL OVER JUNK SCIENCE,FEAR AND LIES. HOME OF THE FREE OR HOME OF THE STUPID. 70 YEARS AND WE STILL DO NOT HAVE IT RIGHT!
I am pretty upset that the Pres. thinks any jail time is appropriate. I am sure he knows the real history of our laws. His statements are not what I would like to hear from someone with his life experiences. Now if he were proposing big cuts to the DEA…then that is something else.
“As has been well documented, I smoked pot as a kid, and I view it as a bad habit and a ***VICE***”
AT LAST! 🙂
http://www.lysanderspooner.org/VicesAreNotCrimes.htm
“Vices are those acts by which a man harms himself or his property.
Crimes are those acts by which one man harms the person or property of another.
Vices are simply the errors which a man makes in his search after his own happiness. Unlike crimes, they imply no malice toward others, and no interference with their persons or property.
In vices, the very essence of crime — that is, the design to injure the person or property of another — is wanting.
It is a maxim of the law that there can be no crime without a criminal intent; that is, without the intent to invade the person or property of another. But no one ever practises a vice with any such criminal intent. He practises his vice for his own happiness solely, and not from any malice toward others.
Unless this clear distinction between vices and crimes be made and recognized by the laws, there can be on earth no such thing as individual right, liberty, or property; no such things as the right of one man to the control of his own person and property, and the corresponding and coequal rights of another man to the control of his own person and property.
For a government to declare a vice to be a crime, and to punish it as such, is an attempt to falsify the very nature of things. It is as absurd as it would be to declare truth to be falsehood, or falsehood truth.”
unlawful unjust warrant served against my house because I smoke marijuana. I’ve worked for 27 years bought my house with a loan I pay my taxes and because marijuana is illegal they can bust down my door and demolish all my possessions to arrest me for a scant amount of marijuana. I went to jail. been smoking marijuana for 30 plus years. Legalize it and keep tax payers out of jail.
I don’t expect Obama to stick his neck out that far by signing an executive order, but I do expect him to instruct his minions to respond to the letter sent by Jared Polis and other politicians to allow cannabis banking.
I mean, what the hell are they waiting for? They knew this was coming. The Republicans are playing their role by not wanting to extend unemployment benefits and not getting any jobs bill through. Obama is for tried and proven job-making. Well, cannabis sector jobs are instant jobs, tried and true, and the prohibitionists don’t have anything better or they’d be implementing it.
What’s it going to take for the feds to allow cannabis banking? A cannabis banking permit? How the hell much will that cost? What kind of paperwork and hassle goes along with it?
Now, you have people in decision-making positions here in the administration, Obama’s minions, career bureaucrats and technocrats, and they’ve got a chance to right a system that allows so many wrongs to be done against otherwise law-abiding citizens, disproportionately stigmatizing poor people, a class weapon, holding some people back. Get rid of the assholes in the decision-making process or convert them. Look, as someone who has been battling cancer, I want all areas researched for cures, so these people currently in decision-making positions have to clear the obstacles put in the way of cannabis research. They need to let the banking go forward and call off the federal dawgz. They need to tell the UN to change its prohibitionist treaties regarding cannabis. The UN is pretty much a paper tiger, send you a bitch letter on official stationery, unless the US or other country on the security council puts its money and weapons where its mouth is.
Get Academi (formerly Black Water) type trained services to provide 360 degree security for cannabis community banks or credit associations. Armed to the teeth to protect against hits by the cartels on their legal competition. Feds shouldn’t do anything that might make the security personnel think they are from a cartel. Banks launder a bunch drug money for the CIA, their so-called assets, Mexican governors along the border states and other Mexican officials have said the CIA is working with cartels on numerous occasions.
Barry, just get the UN to change its language to allow countries to decide if they want to legalize or maintain prohibition of cannabis, and have your underlings come up with some kind of noninterference policy for legal cannabis banking and call off the dawgz. My warmest regards to your wife for her birthday.
Obviously, he knows that Pot has won. Now he’s just going along with it.
I just wish that politicians would stand by their beliefs, not whatever will give them a higher approval rating. The fact alone that he flip-flops on nearly all of his political views depending on the popularity of that issue makes me not trust him. Hell…just over a year ago he flat out ignored pro-legalization, deleted questions about pot legalization, and flat out laughed at the prospect of legalizing pot. He’ll agree with whatever the majority agrees with. But his actions always speak louder than his word.
He is turning as fast as he can. I think Obama would be happy to preside over legalisation as his presidential legacy. He was a stoner after all – he just had to keep it very, very quiet to get to the White House. There is a big fat Maui Wowi joint waiting for him in retirement 😎
Looks like the movement is still gathering pace.
This is a perfect example of how a
democracy should work.
as the people’s attitudes change so
should the politicians in like.
Although I’m kinda suspicious of the
FDA approval of sativex that’s coming to smooth
the way for pharmaceutical industry.
Just a quick one – Now that President Obama thinks alcohol is more dangerous than cannabis will he be serving Bhang at White house Dinners rather than wine ? 😎
So everyone should flood the White house with requests to end schedule one. End schedule one now!
Unfortunately actions speak louder than words. So where does this leave the issue Mr. Obama? If you know it’s more harmful than alcohol, you know it’s decimated the poor populations, and you know it locking people up for this destroys lives, what are you going to do about it?
** CORRECTION **
If you you know it’s NO MORE harmful than alcohol…
So far, the Pres. hasn’t mentioned vaporizers or the fact that there is a way to VAPE with a one-hitter. He admits he “smoked pot” (and there’s a famous picture of him hitting a short hot joint) but not that there are ways to use cannabis that are DIFFERENT from $igarette $moking. He admits cannabis is not more dangerous than alcohol.
Surgeon General to the rescue? Upped the estimated cost to US economy of $igarette smoking from $193-billion/year to over $280-bil! (Yes Virginia there IS something more dangerous than alcohol.) But nowhere in the index of the 978-age Report could “cannabis” or “marijuana” be found. No acknowledgement yet of the SUBSTITUTION OPTIONS:
1. Substitute cannabis for addictive tobacco;
2. Substitute a Vaporizer or 25-mg-per-serving Long-Drawtube-One-Hitter for 500-mg H-ot B-urning O-verdose M-onoxide “joint”, gateway drugdose to hard drug 700-mg nicotine $igarettes.
He did NOT say it was less dangerous, he said “I don’t think it is more dangerous than alcohol,”. He equated them in severity, which is bullcrap.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/19/obama-marijuana-alcohol_n_4627740.html
He did clarify:
Is it less dangerous? I asked.
Obama leaned back and let a moment go by. That’s one of his moves. When he is interviewed, particularly for print, he has the habit of slowing himself down, and the result is a spool of cautious lucidity. He speaks in paragraphs and with moments of revision. Sometimes he will stop in the middle of a sentence and say, “Scratch that,” or, “I think the grammar was all screwed up in that sentence, so let me start again.”
Less dangerous, he said, “in terms of its impact on the individual consumer. It’s not something I encourage, and I’ve told my daughters I think it’s a bad idea, a waste of time, not very healthy.”
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/01/27/140127fa_fact_remnick?currentPage=all
Not a ringing endorsement by any stretch, but a big departure from how our presidents have historically discussed marijuana in public.
The President never said that marijuana was less dangerous than alcohol as you state in your post,what he said was “it’s not more dangerous than alcohol”. While I find it obvious that marijuana is not nearly as dangerous as alcohol, you deliberately misrepresented what the President said, he basically implied that marijuana is as dangerous as alcohol just ” not more dangerous” which is political speak for I’m still not ready to say weed is perfectly safe.
President Obama’s words can be easily dissected and be turned against himself. Literally every issue he brought up involving cannabis can be solved if we simply legalized and regulated cannabis. We’re going that route in politics and social progress, he might as well side with us now if he wants to see a brighter future for his kids and their (possible) kids in the future.
@tiax that is exactly what a politician is supposed to do. as much as I dislike Obama, I have to wonder what exactly you think our elected officials are supposed to do.
they work for us or at least that is the way it is supposed to work. 8f their personal views dont align with their constituants they are supposed to put their personal views aside and put into works what the people want.
unfortunately he only does this on certain topics. the majority of the US is against gun control yet he is still trying to push it.
I think it is a good start but we are the UNITED …states of America so I hope the states stop dragging their feet and push legalization on all states or none it still looks like its a worse thing to use marijuana than alcohol I stopped drinking by smoking I haven’t had to drink in years and it taught me self control I went from 13 yrs of everyday drinking and other heavier drugs now i just like marijuana nothing else no AA no denial just self worth and happiness and legal or not it will not change a thing for most people in America.
It’s cool to see you guys express yourselves here… but do you make the phone calls expressing your opinions to our politicians? I know I do.
Law enforcement used to bust people for alcohol possession. Now, they too consume alcohol. I long for the day when law enforcement openly consume marijuana.They could all stand to mellow out.
Pardon Timothy Tyler…not crackheads…
Mr. President,
I share your concerns regarding recreational use of marijuana. But I beg you to consider working toward having medical cannabis removed from the same scheduling as heroin. My beautiful granddaughter, Piper Koozer, started having seizures at 3 mos. They increased to over 200 violent seizures a day. At 2 yrs old she was developmentally less than 6 mos. Her mom & dad left everything behind in Tennessee and moved to Colorado so that she could be treated with a mmj plant low in THC and high in CBD. With 4 mos of treatment , she is learning to sit alone, using her hands to reach for toys and playing them, sleeping thru the night for the first time in her 2 1/2 yrs. and she is trying to talk, learned the most wonderful word any mother can hear “mama”.
I urge you to ask the Axlerod’s what this kind of treatment could have meant to their daughter!!!
Well it’s about time Obama. I mean Mr. President…Sir. And Thank You!!!!
If the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals could move fast enough and hand down the decision declaring that Americans have a Fundamental Right under the US Constitution to use cannabis for medical purposes, it would give him the legal and political protection to sign an executive order to reschedule cannabis. While his popularity has suffered recently I still think that he wants to reschedule cannabis. I’m an optimist. A character flaw that I guard with my life. We all could use some good news and relax a little.
Hi, many good omens in the air! We may not get a super bowl commercial, but we have Colorado and Washington state in the big game! Free the people now! Smoke the Cannabis bowl….pot luck for the supper bowl party…Thanks NORML, you Rock! Perhaps president Obama will keep the good times Rolling and de-schedule Marijuana at last!
The Republicans are going to have a field day with this.
Thanks to President Obama for his guidance in having the Justice Dept. leave Colorado and Washington alone on their approval of marijuana use. Because of this, our grandaughter, Piper can take CBD oil here in Denver legally. A little girls life has been made so much easier. Our prayers are that other government leaders will share Mr Obama’ s open opinion so many other patients can have lives improved by the use of MMJ.
Many of you are fooling yourselves believing Obama said anything of value in the article. He is on the wrong side of the fence and ignoring everyone on our side. He favors tyranny, don’t believe the hype.
[Editor’s note: Tyranny? Hype? Dude, CO has taken in over $10 million in cannabis-related taxes because Obama did NOT act like a tyrant and is deferring to states’ rights. Don’t let your bias against Obama blind you from the fact that he allowing cannabis prohibition to wither on the vine.
What if the country had a President Romney or McCain? Do you think they would allow legal cannabis sales and taxation?]
I decree and declare Cannabis, aka. Marijuana be rescheduled as class 3 in 2014,
We need to see this happening Now! I pray this takes soon, real soon.
We have a governor in NH ready to Veto out Legalization bill. Since the President’s announcement and other postings. She has a closed mind it appears. Your help with facts and replies from many patrons could help lead us forward. Regards Here is her Link contact blog. https://www.facebook.com/GovernorHassan?fref=ts
Thank you in advance for adding your voices, names, likes, pressure. What ever it works to flip this veto. The 2nd vote is in 3 days I believe. This is where she says she will veto no matter what.
What…no giggles this time? That alone is a major step forward.
@Tiax – If President Obama is changing his views based on what the American people have made clear what they want then I salute him!
Do you think a politician should stick to their guns no matter what the people want?
I do wish he’d do a lot more for this effort. For starters he has the power to remove cannabis from schedule 1 of the controlled subtances list. He could also pardon people who have had their lives ruined by prohibition and are now spending their days in prison alongside real criminals.
Still, I’m very glad he got re-elected for another term! Just imagine what Mitt Romney would be doing; e.g. beefing up the DEA and putting even more good Americans behind bars. He is the kind of person who would do things his way in spite of what the people want or need.
I don’t believe that any president wants to be remembered for legalizing marijuana. So how about being remembered for this:
1. The largest job creation through building schools, teachers, and education from tax revenue from marijuana tax.
2. Reduction of violent crime since law enforcement can now focus on violent crime.
3. Prosecution of illegal marijuana sales through our federal tax system.
4. Reducing the over crowding of our prison systems.
5. Stoping the pointless arrest of our nation’s poorest citizens.
6. Allowing farmers new crops to grow.
7. Providing a real healthy medicine to so many people with so many medical issues.
And so many more.
Before Cancer took over my body I really wouldn’t have cared about marijuana, it was not my drug. But now with so many contraindications to my meds alcohol is not a choice. Every day hurts, why can’t I laugh and be pain free for a little while each day, and not feel like a criminal?
In the story he (Obama) stated it was a bad idea and a vice, using cannabis. Correct me if I am wrong, but doesn’t the word vice elude to continued use? I would guess it would also mean that he intends to use after leaving the White House. Can’t a vice be an addiction? He never said he stopped!
I say we coin a new catch phrase, Yo, you got any vice Kush?”
america “land of the free” ??? lets legalize marijuana which harms no one but those unfortunate to be caught with it!! Marijuana is not a narcotic it is a great anti-depressent and a natural herb. come on President Obama Legalize this plant and let that contribute to your Great Legacy.
You are correct if you assume that the President’s support is about his legacy over African American incarceration, but it’s also of course about upcoming elections. Mandela refused to see Obama for our current drug policy that disproportionately incarcerates more African Americans although they use the same marijuana as “white” people do (ACLU). The president’s daughters face discrimination. The Zimmerman verdict is what broke the marijuana genie bottle: How could a black president allow more black people to be incarcerated under his tenure than any other president in history while Zimmerman gets away with murdering a black adolescent male?
The funding of the Stand Your Ground laws by the Tea-party extreme right wing State Policy Network was uncovered. Amazon, Wal-Mart and McDonald’s had to protect their African-American consumer base image, and pulled funding on the SPN, which also supports no income tax for corporations, big Farm insurance, privatizing public education, eliminating medicare and medicaid, and supporting petroleum based ethanol subsidies in the Farm Bill. Corporations like the big farm monster corporation Monsantos give kickbacks to Congressman for voting for protections against genetic labeling, terminator seeds that can’t reproduce fertile food and are terrified of the pending hemp research amendment. (Hemp is high in omega fatty acids and increases nutritional absorbtion in the intestines. Hemp also requires no pesticides, little fertilizer, uses less water than corn, and contains more cellulose).
Big pharmaceutical companies are also behind the State Policy Network like GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer who failed at patenting marinol, since marijuana is easier to grow and the U.S. government owns the patent on cannabinoids– (Cannabinoids are also naturally produced in the pituitary gland that regulate the human body in what is called the endocannabinoid system). The idea is to let corporations hide behind “research think tanks” that oppose marijuana while donating chump change at pro marijuana groups and publishing freely. No one is better than that than the Koch brothers.
Koch Industries is a major backer of the SPN, which defies a legal marijuana industry. Meanwhile the conservative “think tank” the Cato Institute throws a little money at summer internships at the Drug Policy Alliance to purchase a marijuana friendly image. David Koch purchased the fiber and timber patents from DuPont in 2006, the same DuPont that outlawed a domestic hemp industry in 1937 with the Marijuana Stamp Act. Synthetic patents for nylon and petroleum products like stainmaster carpets (owned by Koch Industries) aren’t cost effective with renewable cheap hemp products on the market. That is why marijuana has been illegal all these years. The prison profit, the families separated, the decades of discrimination and unjust prosecution without due process? That’s all just a corrupt satellite industry of prohibition.
But marijuana investment firms are taking over the constipated marijuana banking regulation. There’s simply too much profit in a legally regulated cannabis industry. And Americans are voting it in, thanks to grass-roots non-for-profit organizations like NORML, the Drug Policy Alliance, Votehemp, the Marijuana Policy Project and Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.
Get ready for the Green Age: An agrarian revolution of sustainable, cheap, clean, homegrown medicine, food, innovative carbon-trapping building materials, transportation as well as celulosic fuel and energy.
Perhaps the best benefit of legal herb of all is the inspiration to grow our own gardens. Forgetting how to grow our own gardens is at the heart of the corporate agricultural mono-culture that is tearing at the very fabric of human coexistence with our environment. Marijuana can change that. Welcome to the Green Age.
How can cannabis contribute to the medical sector and what will be the impact to our economy? Cannabinoid receptors are involved in a vast array of functions in our bodies, including helping to control brain and nerve activity (including memory and pain), energy metabolism, heart function, the immune system and even reproduction. Because of this molecular multitasking, they’re implicated in a huge range of illnesses, from cancer to neurodegenerative diseases. Taken from – http://www.kaliberry.com/tested-cannabis/
I think he will legalize just before the next election to give the left a little better chance of winning. If he doesn’t legalize then the right will most likely win. We are tired of being lied to just for our vote.
WANT MY VOTE, MAKE THE CHANGE!!!! Make the change before the election.
@TheOracle
I don’t know why Colorado Cannabis stores couldn’t use a bitcoin or litecoin type currency to trade. I know they are fiat currencies but they are starting to gain popularity. If they (bitcoin) would tie their worth to Colorado Cannabis pounds they would stabilize the bitcoin market as well as give the Cannabis industry a way to trade that does not include banks…. Thoughts??
LESS harmful in that unlike alcohol, there is an Anti-inflammatory response, no motor/spatial impairment, minimal-no behavioral impairment, no withdrawal effects, NO lethal dosage.
Been smoking weed 40 years now and physically 20-30 yrs. YOUNGER than my chronological age!
Obama had courage at least. He needs to use his power to end the federal restrictions on marijuana so states, banks and consumers can move forward freely as our founding fathers intended.
Ahh yes… Washington and colorado….. Seahawks and broncos…. Superbowl…. I am seeing a new pattern here… Come on wisconsin!!!!!! Lol
@ Miles, yes Mitt Romney is a narcissist. He will gladly attack people doing nothing wrong. It helps keep people’s attention from his failures and misdeeds.
People fighting deadly diseases who find marijuana extremely useful? Thrown under the bus in Mitt’s World. Why? Because they aren’t HIM. HE is going get the Economy Going, not ten’s of thousands of the people growing marijuana, nah, that will not do anything for the economy in Mitt’s World.
Meanwhile, the rest of us live in the real world and are sick of paying our taxes to support “Mitt/Nixon’s Narcissist World”. We want an economy that works for everyone, not just a couple locos that think they are better than everyone else.
until his justice dept quits raiding dispenseries, it is just talk. look at the facts. just a bid to get us to vote yes on approval ratings. put money where mouth is and sign a presidential order
[Editor’s note: Maybe some of the dispensaries were operating in clear violation of the law? What are the cops supposed to do, look the other way and play judge and jury too? The facts are there and there are some ‘bad apples’ selling medical cannabis. As if Obama and Company have not done enough already by 1) allowing states to sell and tax medical cannabis, 2) allowing states to sell and tax cannabis to all adults, 3) reforming mandatory minimum sentencing practices, and 4) issuing an Executive Order telling agencies not to have federal laws preempt state laws where ever possible. That was done in the first five years.
Should he support current Congressional bills that are currently pending to reform law? Should he issue Executive Orders that at minimum reschedule cannabis from I to a lower schedule if not legalize cannabis outright? Should he seek to commute the sentences of federal prisoners incarcerated for cannabis-only related offenses? Should he seek to defund the federal government’s incentivizing state/local government’s making over 700,000 cannabis-related arrests annually?
Yes!!
Three years left in his term…]
@fireweed there is a lethal dose but the amount is more than 30 people combined could do in a day if they all smoked non stop
I hope this is the turning point. I’m tired of living in 1984.
does anyone have a e-mail for the white house? so we can flood them with our views about this subject. politicians arent coming around to our way of thinking, they are just running out of revinue. either way win for us
Thank you all for the positive comments.
Having just returned from Denver I see the end of this – but with some sadness, because it has been a good fight for a just cause and I have made many close friends based at first on our shared liking of this remarkable green, leafy plant material commonly referred to as marijuana, and our shared burden of being considered enemies of society.
Right now, I could probably sit down with any of these commenters and become friends over a bowl. We share this fight. What will we do for friends, and camaraderie, when it’s all over?
Maybe when it’s legalized the fight will be to free the drug war prisoners. I don’t know.
As a Tennessean I am a long way from living free … or maybe not. The ACLU changed everything. African Americans are coming over to our side, and that’s the game changer we’ve been waiting for. The black vote has proven critical in California – when we lost – and more recently in D.C. where it looks like we won. NORML has trumpeted the racial disparity for years. This is not new to friends of NORML but it is more or less new to the majority of folks. It may tip the scales in California and here in Tennessee, where we arrested 3.8 blacks for every white in the marijuana war – where the black population is declining, and no wonder! The rankest Klansman could not contrive a more efficient, bloodless way to rid the countryside of his targets!
We fight for justice at every turn, friends, and it will be a good day, but I know there may come a time when I miss pot prohibition and the relationships we built railing against it.
@Stanleyj
My thoughts on Bitcoins is that the federal government does not back them with deposit insurance. Shops can accept payment in Bitcoins, but that leaves a trail. Cash transactions, however, are anonymous, so unless the prohibitionist employer is there in Colorado to observe the employee or has private detectives there on the look out spying the person from, let’s say Alabama, won’t get fired. How much information can employers force out of their employees? They’ve been known to ask for Facebook and Twitter logins and passwords and shit. The feds just simply need to get the fuck out of the way. Banks are huge ass corporations with lobbyists who will be a huge pain in the ass and prevent cannabis banking with Bitcoins if they can’t have the lion’s share of the cash and credit card transactions. Banks will put the kibosh on electronic banking if they can’t. My gut feeling.
You have to reschedule it sir. It will never be done by petitioning the DEA it will have ot be done by Executive Order and should be done immediately. Immediately. It is Un-American to say that and then still allow people in this country to be arrested when you have the ability to stop it. Its Un-American…
The needs of the many out weigh the needs of the few! i’ve read all of the replies and it awalys amazes me as to the real effort and intelligence that comes to this forum. i have backed off writting for awhile as i was getting too radicle. why this is a no brainer for so many, why is it so hard to get the change to happen? lets have yearly votes. make them more accountable. our country is ours, they work for us. there is more of us than them. does this have to go all the way to say a major move like a total shutdown of the country. if all the pot users went on strike just to make a statement i believe everyone would be shocked! that is if everyone could be honest about it! just to openly say i believe in legaligation
Wow! This is HUGE!!
Most of the opposition to legalizing marijuana, in CO and WA, was from people who said the legalization proposals did not go far enough.
Reschedule marijuana NOW! People are STILL going to jail for this harmless plant!
PLEASE Reschedule Cannabis!
This is the smartest thing that has crossed this man’s mind! I hate him a little bit less. Just legalize and get the hell out!
Here is a link to the white house petition!
http://wh.gov/l9wFn
He could end it all with the stroke of a pen by ordering cannabis be removed from the drug schedule, something Gary Johnson would have done in his first week.
@ JC,
I was just telling my wife that yesterday–that the Super Bowl will be represented by the two states that legalized pot last year. The true Bud Bowl, lol. Let’s see how many sportswriters note that.
Thank you mr president for acknowledging the real fact. It’s time for the people educate them self about the real benefit of marijuana. Safer than any pain killer and alcohol.
We have come so far on this issue, I’m willing to risk my career for the opportunity to have marijuana in my life and to get rid of alcohol and tobacco. I’m going to get a medical marijuana card this week. And enjoy my life never to look back on this bs policy.
All I want to know is who’s coming with me man! Who’s coming with me?
President Obama: “I don’t think it is more dangerous than alcohol.”
Everybody knows that, but did you know that if a stoner
falls in the woods, he still makes a happy sound?
“Oh, I’m falling. Ahhhhhhh, oof.
Dude, that was so cool!”
Stop the forfeitures! Stop taking people’s property! It has become like organized crime for law enforcement. They roll up to bust someone, while their buddies are staged around the corner with flatbed trailers and moving trucks, ready to loot the place. I don’t care if they sanctioned the practice by making it a law or not, there’s nothing noble about stealing.No wonder people don’t respect the police any more. The cops demand that they be respected at the end of a gun barrel, when it is actually fear of being killed that is the result. Stop acting like thugs and bullies and act like professional peace keepers and the respect will follow.Legalize weed and see how much easier life is for both sides.Nobody deserves to die or have everything they’ve ever worked for stolen from them over weed.Those laws were intended for major drug dealers and police have expanded the law to include anyone who has anything of value.
Once upon a time along time ago I knew this guy. I saw him everyday. He was afraid of nothing. Ten feet tall and bulletproof he seemed. He would jump blind into the unknown. The pain from the close calls only drove him harder. He always claimed he was different, but never said how or why. In a panic one day I watched him save a life and it left him speechless for a long time. The best drug on earth he said, was adrenaline. But that was a long time ago and I don’t see him much any more. Too many close calls won him wisdom. Too much adrenaline made him age fast. Peace fills the cup these days for him. Telling people in a whisper,”The truth of the world will make you live forever, pass it on”, always made him smile
Truth is the only tolerated revenge a man can pursue.
I think that we’re getting closer and closer to total legalization. Think about it; on this day last year would you expect citizens of Colorado and Washington to be lining up to legally buy cannabis? There’s been a significant shift in the number of people who support legalization in the last 3 years. A majority of Americans now favor legalization. So although Obama still refuses to discuss federal rescheduling, we musnt lose hope. As Bob Dylan once said, “the battle outside raging will soon shake your windows and rattle your walls, for the times, they are a-changin’.”
On the white house’s website, it says
“Confusing messages being presented by popular culture, media, proponents of “medical” marijuana, and political campaigns to legalize all marijuana use perpetuate the false notion that marijuana is harmless. This significantly diminishes efforts tkeep our young people drug free and hampers the struggle of those recovering from addiction.”
The confusing messages are being presented by the government, too.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/ondcp/ondcp-fact-sheets/marijuana-legalization
First time Obama has made sense in years….weird.
I’m still waiting for legal cannabis banking. Why am I still waiting? Why are we all still waiting?
I certainly hope that your remarks (about cannabis not being more harmful than alcohol) in The New Yorker, Barry, were not stalling or a diversion. If it’s stalling while your underlings put something down on paper to allow legal cannabis banking then that nudges things along a notch toward the legalization end of the cannabis continuum, one end being medical, industrial and recreational legalization and the other end being death penalty cannabis prohibition. If these remarks were a substitution for allowing legal cannabis banking and something comes out on paper either re-confirming prohibition on cannabis banking or it is left in limbo I’m gonna be pissed. If it turns out to be a diversion while the dawgz are set on the cannabis community I’ll be even more pissed.
The transactions are still going to take place. The community wants legal cannabis banking, and since the banks have been laundering drug money–they would say unwittingly and not admit liability–for decades for CIA assets and crime organizations alike–don’t believe that shit for a minute, someone knew–they want their fingers in the cannabis pie. Yum, yum!
Banks are worried about their image. Make the ratings on banks’ images improve. Hey, why don’t you improve your profits by doing business with the cannabis community. In the age of stockholder capitalism the 1% should love it. Use some of the money from your profits to make good some of the damage caused by the financial meltdown.
Reminds me of an old prisoner of war chant from when the chow was late sung as: Why are we waiting?
You know, lots of things associated with cannabis are felonies, and we’ve had how many presidents, vice presidents and politicians who have at least tried marijuana, and somewhere there amongst them that they’re not willing to admit to some of the must have committed some kind of cannabis felonies (quantity, sales) or consorted with known felons solely because of cannabis prohibition which means something so absurd that non-crimes are still crimes. Just because they weren’t caught they could get to where they are but does that really change anything about them? The fact that they didn’t get caught shows that marijuana is so ubiquitous that it simply without further debate ought to be legal.
I’ll stop ranting about legal cannabis banking as soon as you greenlight it, Mr. President.
Dear Mr. President,
Have you forgotten, We the people elected you President, based on, your smoking Cannabis or was this a false flag also?
Do the Right Thing and Legalize it!
You also had a peek into you future to see yourself become the 44th President, why stop now knowing your your intuition was enhanced by the use of Cannabis to see beyond what’s norml?
Do you really want to continue to lie to the public? Or take it on the chin; Repent and come clean. We can Respect you more as a Leader and a man among many, that wishes even evil to be the best way ( out of chaos comes change) only that what you can’t create is what you Fear! That’s what created All of us together, One Humanity of Love, Love has always conquered HATE in any shape and or form.
We want this old system to crash, we also know the Kingdom that will rule lovers us..and you r’s can’t handle it. Neither can we, and we accept this Matthew 6: 33.
Dear Mr. President,
Have you forgotten, We the people elected you President, based on, your smoking Cannabis or was this a false flag also?
I
Do the Right Thing and Legalize it!
You also had a peek into you future to see yourself become the 44th President, why stop now knowing your your intuition was enhanced by the use of Cannabis to see beyond what’s norml?
Do you really want to continue to lie to the public? Or take it on the chin; Repent and come clean. We can Respect you more as a Leader and a man among many, that wishes even evil to be the best way ( out of chaos comes change) only that what you can’t create is what you Fear! That’s what created All of us together, One Humanity of Love, Love has always conquered HATE in any shape and or form.
We want this old system to crash, we also know the Kingdom that will rule overs us..and you r’s can’t handle it. Neither can we, and most of accept this Matthew 6: 33. We die Daily! YahoShua Ben YahuWeH!
We need to sacrifice some Cannabis to our planet for, what she has given us: a Universal Mass Healing ! Let us give back to Mother Earth for what she has given us…She need healing to!
LOVE, PEACE, AND LIGHT
i know, let normal use their site to collect signatures for a petition to the whitehouse! i’ve seen other sites and we need to get a common place and this may work!
@ Vickia52,
I laughed when you said you stopped posting because you thought you sounded too “radical.” I know my post here went all over the place and made me sound like a hemp nut, but considering what we activists are and have been up against, we must fear the violence of silence, not how we look when were shouting at our president to deschedule cannabis. (hey, I would say we cannabis consumers look relatively healthy… But we wont go into drug comparisons…)
You mentioned the shutdown. I suppose you may know by now that “they” responsible for that costly blemish to American credit was once again: DING! …the Koch brothers, who funded the State Policy Network who funds the Tea Party. The shutdown happened the same day the Farm Bill expired… You know, the still pending Farm Bill with the hemp research amendment.
Please dont think I repeat this information because of partisan politics. In order to restrain extremism or sounding like a “radical” it is vital that we all as activists and bloggers refrain from using the word “them,” when refering to the Feds, our opponents, or in any debate. In a green information age we all must search for the answers to “them” or there is no “us.” without names, like the real people who own corporations or the real people who work for the government, we are leaving open targets for our prohibitionists to play a shell game with “think tanks” and fruitless donation facades in order to further conceal their true intentions. We must not accept the purchase of our freedom. We have come too far and lost too much to hand our enemies the camoflauge of think tanks or the unconstitutional authority of the DOJ to write the laws of “government drug research,” allowed by the use of words like “them.”
It still fascinates me that our government has been in the dirty business of prohibition so long, authorities have to turn to non for profits like Norml to write our legal marijuana policies. Times are changing fast. We have top DEA agents defecting to start Marijuana Investment Firms. How radical is that?
Ending prohibition is the greatest civil rights issue of our time. It is of no mire coincidence the President’s open and positive dialogue about Marijuana happened the day before Martin Luther King Day, then the Koch brothers stalling the hemp amendment by shutting the Farm Bill down the same day the old bill expired. While Koch industries gets fat off of oil and farm subsidies sunce the shutdown they have already managed to turn the EPA policy of increasing corn ethanol (that would cut into their petroleum based profits) into getting tge EPA to say no increase above %10 of ANY celulosic product is allowed.
That means once hemp finally is descheduled we have another uphill battle to use it as fuel.
@Erik Altieri,
Good analysis and conclusion. The President could crush both CO/WA and medical cannabis laws if he wanted too. He wants to end “discriminatory arrest practices” and views cannabis as no more dangerous than alcohol and even less dangerous “in terms of its impact on individual consumers.”
This may indicate that he is close to DE scheduling cannabis and this is what we need most right now.
Mr. President,…Sir
The possible scenarios of all the tomorrows that lay upon your desk must include an outcome with cannabis being moved from its current schedule 1 classification. Let me give you something to help you find peace. Of my 56 years of living the privilege of being an American, my family has for most of it watched me withdraw from society and become disappointed in my country. From the death of Kennedy to the birth of Big Brother. It has changed not just me but the whole country. This drug war has destroyed freedom, removed liberty, and is clawing away at the vary foundation this democracy was built on. Just as the Civil Rights Movement rattled this country deep in its core, so will the legalization of cannabis. Free people can survive anything. Don’t miss your moment in history. Standing up right now will be that moment, and it will rattle this country like never before, but it will survive and be better because of it. I know it will work. You just step up and jump, we’ll all catch you, I promise. All of our children’s children will speak in great regard of us all. Because it will give back what so many powerful and ignorant people have take from us. Have faith in the American People, …..I do!
And as this sacred time of year comes upon us again…Super Bowl season, let us not fail to recognize these two wonderful states…Washington and Colorado, or better yet Seattle and Denver who have reached the peak in their profession of football. You ask me the verdict is in….Cannabis does a body good!
@chollie…that is some funny shit. wishin I could feel that again.i miss the spirit of cannabis.
I am a firm believer that, it is not only the president who runs this country.you cannot tell me that their are not a ‘group’of suggestive,corporate based individuals who are also helping things along…in their favor of course.obama was able to ‘toss’ it out for us to grab on to but the puppetmasters are helping themselves to the strings.it is money, power and greed that keeps us from the gates of freedom. obama knows the truth!government testing was concluded many years ago…
I’m pretty sure the President alone cannot reschedule drugs. It takes either an act of Congress or a motion by whoever heads the ONDCP.
In the immediate future, with the House under Republican control and the Senate potentially being about to fall under Republican control, it’s pretty impossible that it will be rescheduled. If the Democrats get a majority again in the House and Senate (plus the obvious presidency that they’re almost assuredly going to win) in 2016, there should be a few more medical marijuana states and a number of actually legal states. Basically 2016 to 2018 is one window for Congress to reschedule and a more likely one is 2020 to 2022.
Democrats, unlike Republicans, will come around sooner or later. But even when they do, Republicans are going to be resisting like mad.
As for the ONDCP, well, that almost goes without saying. Isn’t Gil prohibited by the terms of office from advocating any positive change in drug law? So that’s pretty hopeless.
The best we can do is just push for more medical and legal states between now and 2016 or between now and 2020.
live in mi. got card in 09 been smoking on daily ever day my son said the other day that im more healty today than 10 years ago I’m 60 had a stroke years ago
The President finally started talking.
Looks like they’re coming to the conclusion that there might really be an elephant in the room.
Thanks
NORML
Ah ha. The Them have been counted. 85 people hold half the worlds wealth. Heard on the news.
With all the suspicion surrounding the behavior and choices of elected officials, especially motivation toward self-enrichment and further empowerment, it’s no wonder there is such distrust of government.
Only now does Obama mention cannabis prohibition, yet he has not gotten as far as many proponents of legalization, the understanding that cannabis prohibition is the direct *cause* of many social ills and economic absurdities.
DEA Administrative Law judge Francis Young wrote that cannabis is unlike any other drug, as the term is used. Cannabis is safer than alcohol, certain public officials are now admitting. Why stop there?
Cannabis is statistically safer than aspirin, caffeine, nicotine, legal drugs alcohol and chemically enriched tobacco. Tylenol kills accidentally thousands of times a year.
Cannabis is not like any of those substances. In 1988 he made a plea to remove cannabis from schedule I based on the scheduling system’s rules. Claiming cannabis has no accepted medical benefit and has a high potential for abuse is tantamount to telling deliberate lies.
In 1988 Francis Young, DEA Administrative Law Judge, made a plea to remove cannabis from schedule 1 based on the obvious misclassification.
http://www.ccguide.org/young88.php
Francis Young’s findings (note the final statement):
“Findings of Fact:
Point 3. The most obvious concern when dealing with drug safety is the possibility of lethal effects. Can the drug cause death?
4. Nearly all medicines have toxic, potentially lethal effects. But marijuana is not such a substance. There is no record in the extensive medical literature describing a proven, documented cannabis-induced fatality.
5. This is a remarkable statement. First, the record on marijuana encompasses 5,000 years of human experience. Second, marijuana is now used daily by enormous numbers of people throughout the world. Estimates suggest that from twenty million to fifty million Americans routinely, albeit illegally, smoke marijuana without the benefit of direct medical supervision. Yet, despite this long history of use and the extraordinarily high numbers of social smokers, there are simply no credible medical reports to suggest that consuming marijuana has caused a single death.
6. By contrast aspirin, a commonly used, over-the-counter medicine, causes hundreds of deaths each year.
7. Drugs used in medicine are routinely given what is called an LD-50. The LD-50 rating indicates at what dosage fifty percent of test animals receiving a drug will die as a result of drug induced toxicity. A number of researchers have attempted to determine marijuana’s LD-50 rating in test animals, without success. Simply stated, researchers have been unable to give animals enough marijuana to induce death.
8. At present it is estimated that marijuana’s LD-50 is around
1:20,000 or 1:40,000. In layman terms this means that in order to induce death a marijuana smoker would have to consume 20,000 to 40,000 times as much marijuana as is contained in onemarijuana cigarette. NIDA-supplied marijuana cigarettes weigh approximately .9 grams. A smoker would theoretically have to consume nearly 1,500 pounds of marijuana within about fifteen minutes to induce a lethal response.
9. In practical terms, marijuana cannot induce a lethal response as a result of drug-related toxicity.
10. Another common medical way to determine drug safety is called the therapeutic ratio. This ratio defines the difference between a therapeutically effective dose and a dose which is capable of inducing adverse effects.
11. A commonly used over-the-counter product like aspirin has a therapeutic ratio of around 1:20. Two aspirins are the recommended dose for adult patients. Twenty times this dose, forty aspirins, may cause a lethal reaction in some patients, and will almost certainly cause gross injury to the digestive system, including extensive internal bleeding.
12. The therapeutic ratio for prescribed drugs is commonly around 1:10 or lower. Valium, a commonly used prescriptive drug, may cause very serious biological damage if patients use ten times the recommended (therapeutic) dose.
13. There are, of course, prescriptive drugs which have much lower therapeutic ratios. Many of the drugs used to treat patients with cancer, glaucoma and multiple sclerosis are highly toxic. The therapeutic ratio of some of the drugs used in antineoplastic therapies, for example, are regarded as extremely toxic poisons with therapeutic ratios that may fall below 1:1.5. These drugs also have very low LD-50 ratios and can result in toxic, even lethal reactions, while being properly employed.
14. By contrast, marijuana’s therapeutic ratio, like its LD-50, is impossible to quantify because it is so high.
15. In strict medical terms marijuana is far safer than many foods we commonly consume. For example, eating ten raw potatoes can result in a toxic response. By comparison, it is physically impossible to eat enough marijuana to induce death.
16. 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.”
—
Notice the phrase “therapeutically active substance.” Is that not synonymous with “medicine?” I believe it is.
As acting oversight of the DEA, he did not say it’s medicine outright but that is essentially that. Not only is it medicine, it’s the safest one known.
One thing Judge Young also did not do, however, he did not question *the validity of the scheduling system* in the first place, but challenges the definitions used in scheduling in relation to cannabis.
Cannabis was made illegal (the second time) by R Nixon and AG John Mitchell by starting the CSA drug war, after the Supreme Court deemed the Marihuana Tax Stamp Act unconstitutional and unenforceable.
Timothy Leary, Harvard professor, had argued that getting a stamp required self-incrimination. Telling them you possessed it, and how much was required to get a “stamp.” If they even followed through with the scam to process the application and then provide a stamp to the applicant, they could just arrest the applicant immediately. They did not intend to give out stamps and it’s no wonder that there is no remarkable record of anyone attaining a stamp, at least without arrest. The SCOTUS decision in favor of Dr. Leary made cannabis legal for a very brief period.
Just Nixon/Mitchell, one a crook and the other a lawyer, made up the federal rules of pharmacology and the scheduling system, as unscientific and arbitrary as it is, at best it is government paternalism, *to protect you from you, for your own good.*
The scheduling system itself is an arbitrary, non-scientific sham created by Nixon and AG J.Mitchell. Notice that alcohol and tobacco are not scheduled.
Come to think of it, tobacco cigarettes have ** no accepted medical use and have a high potential for abuse.** Tobacco cigarettes belong in schedule 1 if they are to be consistent. It is remarked that cigarettes are 9-11 times more addictive than heroin. Alcohol would probably be included in schedule III or IV, with other depressants or tranquilizers. Alcohol has a Therapeutic Ratio of roughly 1:10 to 1:4, based on dosage. The LD-50 and TR for cannabis are incalculably large, which says a great deal, considering how far mathematics has come.
Yet cannabis, which as Judge Young describes it, is unique, in a class of its own, and should not be in schedule 1. He could have gone further and stated that the scheduling system itself is questionable, if not institutionalized injustice, created by two guys, yet affects everyone. The misclassification is inherently and pervasively problematic–it allows for such absurdities as “paper from trees” (previously unheard of) and clothes from flimsy second-rate fibers like seed-laden cotton.
Why do people love excellence? Because excellence shows us what is possible. After someone broke the 5-minute mile, many others followed. After Frank Bannister broke the 4-minute mile, others followed.
Legalization in Colorado and Washington have shown what is possible, and the other states will follow, which is already evident.
Why did race have to come into this?? Really!!
This is the response i received from my state senator in Indiana to my support of bill 314…….January 23, 2014
Dear Mr. Bland,
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on Senate Bill 314.
I am still open to the conversation, and have been so for a few years. The issue appears to be a tug of war between personal liberty and personal responsibility. We do have legal drugs (alcohol, pain killers, etc.), whether under doctor oversight or not, that do impair judgment. We also can enhance criminal penalties for a variety of offenses where mental impairment is a contributing factor.
I continue to be concerned when I see evidence that marijuana is still a gateway drug. Can we yet discern whether this is true because of its nature, or is it because of the illegality of consumption and the contacts created sourcing an illegal product?
If you have relevant information that tries to address this question, I would be pleased to see it. I am still undecided regarding research identifying any long term cumulative negative effects of usage.
Respectfully,
Greg Walker I sure wish that someone could send them all the research on this gateway drug train of thought. I guess it at least nice that hes open to talk about the matter.
[Paul Armentano responds: For most people, marijuana is a terminus — not a gateway. Statistically, most people who try marijuana do not go on to use any other illicit substance and by age 30 they also cease consuming marijuana.
Cannabis as an exit drug:
http://blog.norml.org/2010/04/23/closing-the-gateway-to-drug-abuse-with-cannabis/
Gateway theory dismissed:
http://norml.org/news/2006/12/07/marijuana-use-per-se-not-a-gateway-to-illicit-drug-use-study-says%5D
Well I think they should legalize marijuana in Tx because ppl say it makes them focus more everyone gets along doing it if they leave it unlegalized they will keep seeing ppl getting locked up ppl dying over that stuff so if they really want to stop all that killing robbing they’ll legalize marijuana and pluse they’ll make it easyer for cop less chases,shooting, and Etc so think about it
pres. obama legilize, all the people (more than 52%), could move to where it’s legal thanks jullian for you’re reply.i’m so inspired by what i’ve read! thanks for f. young! the more that i learn it makes me realize that it’s stupid to keep it illegal. but then the only reason for this, $, and were does it lead? as it is said follow the $
Legalize the shit mr president and let peoe feel the way they wanna feel u did u smoked when u wanted so let us alone andlet us smoke some pot and enjoy are lives here on earth Iiinstead of hidi g something we love legalize it please
Republicans better take their head out of the sands of cannabis ignorance if they want to get into office or remain in their comfortable civil service position. The public is not going to leave healthcare in the hands of law enforcement regardless of its fiscal duress. We are not comfortable killing the non-productive yet. Just relagating their needs to the periphery helps to silence their demands.
Bottom line for me is that I do not need.nor do I want anyone other than myself deciding what I consume with my body and what I choose not to consume.Meaning “my government” is welcome to inform me of potential hazards associated with the consumption of “whatever”,but in the end I decide whether to consume it or not. My consumption is not criminal and as long as does not affect anyone other than myself,then it is nobody’s business but mine.If you want to grow it, sell it,run a store or farm then you are subject to guidelines and regulations of COMMERCE as you are selling to the public,just like a vineyard. If we require the President to decriminalize it ,then so be it, but it seems ridiculous he will in essence be returning our right to choose to use, when he, nor the government ever had the right to assume power over our right of choice.
No criminal law should be associated with the consumption of pot. Those involved in commerce will be subject to the same laws as similar business’s ,vineyard/pot farm, pot shop/liquor store…etc.
There are many great arguments for legalization,medicinal reasons, tax revenue,but it still boils down to an individuals choice. I choose whats right for me,not anyone else,you choose what right for you,its that simple
As happy as I am to hear him say this. It is a completely different thing to actually get cannabis off the DEA schedule. Which is what should of been done years ago. Even according to one of their own DEA judges. On the other hand, Let’s be honest. What would the DEA do if it wasn’t for cannabis. We are still just barbarians. We just have electricity and internet now.
Reading through these comments, I have come across people’s concerns that the president truly cannot do this by executive order.. i assure you that he can! Furthermore, HE doesn’t actually have to be the one to officially do it… the Attorney General of the United States has the power to it on his own. Holder will do as his president wishes, so I firmly believe that an executive order is coming in the near future. The AG has stated that he’s concerned with the lack of banking options in CO and WA and promises help in that area. Then the president of the American Banking Assoc. comes out and says that regardless of any federal guidlines submitted, American banks will turn down marijuana business as long as it’s illegal federally. The next and only logical step is to executively order it’s reclassification federally to fix the problems with all of this. Just wait, it’s coming soon. Obama’s PR people will use it to spin him as the hero of the overwhelming majority who wish it legalized. Fine by me… although I’m not overly-fond of Obama, the ends justify the means.
“The President is wise and thoughtful in what he says and not biased on the subject of legalization of medical marijuana. And since he has already made it clear that he doesn’t encourage marijuana consumption and keeps discouraging his daughters from using it, the decision of legalization of medical marijuana is clearly a statutory matter and can’t be linked to his personal life or propagandized as his personal opinion.
The decision will help overcome the situation of people breaking the law for marijuana, mainly because only a few of those who break the law get punished at present!
“
What can the president do? Hmm, well if he wants to be a pussy and not issue executive orders ending stealing by police/DEA, then he could very well sue his own DEA for lying under oath. He could at least order them to stop fucking lying about marijuana all the time? What that is too much??? I’m pretty sure lying while being law enforcement isn’t legal in court rooms nation wide, lying by police is only allowed just while you are performing an active investigation.
Just led prohibition end. People want to grow their own, the only reason we buy bud from Mexico is because they are selling it the USA has evil laws that force you onto the black market instead of heading to the farmers market. End the Evil bullshit. What is there to “think about”???
The president is not wise or thoughtful on marijuana. He is showing clear bias against marijuana will at the same time brewing beer in the whitehouse. That’s just silly, not wise. He said, “I don’t think marijuana any worse than VODKA”. Really??? Cause that is funny as VODKA does kill people thanks to it chemistry which unlike strong marijuana is extremely toxic! Several joints cannot intoxicate a person while several beers or shots will. You might feel odd, but your nerves and you nervous system is still in working order. Unwise comparisons filled with huge amounts of bias. ‘I tell my daughters pot is a waste of time’ suggesting marijuana is for losers. Yeah, no bias there!
If he signed an Executive Order, he would be trying to take down an out-of-control monster, he’ll end up a sitting duck for the rest of his term.
Legalization has to happen state by state. No one person is going to martyr themselves. I would say his latest comments and the clearance for cannabis banking by order of the DOJ, were milestones for any president.
Compared to Reagan, who said that “marihuana” is probably the most dangerous drug on earth and also kills brain cells, Obama’s was a bold statement, forward-looking in regards to the states deciding for themselves eventually, trumping federal law (that is hypocritical, problematic, and unjust).
In reality, cannabis is a neuroprotective which can help protect the brain after stroke, aneurysm, seizure, over-drinking alcohol drugs, and can help prevent Alzheimers and can be taken as a palliative neuroprotective.* Cannabis has been shown to promote neurogenesis, or the growth of new brain cells, thought impossible only 15 years ago. Dr. Melamede at the University of Colorado, CO Springs, found that regular smokers of cannabis have lower rates of lung cancer, and cancers in general, than people who smoke nothing at all.*
The President could however, commission a group to study cannabis before signing the order, for the sake of procedure.
Alas, Nixon’s Shafer Commission, where eight of the fifteen members were selected by him, reported that cannabis shouldn’t be illegal, shouldn’t carry criminal penalties, and had shown anti-tumor properties with only the scant few studies that were not fudged by the NIDA’s intellectual dishonesty. Yet Nixon went ahead with the CSA drug war and put cannabis in the worst category. The CSA’s drug-related agencies (over 20 of them), created by Nixon’s Drug War, universally accepted as a failure and at best an ineffective and harmful policy that looted the coffers in order to eliminate competition for special interests and control people.
The scheduling system is a sham. It’s not about scientific data that has thorougly demonstrated all potential harms or lethality of drugs or medicines, while considering the possible benefit(s) to the willing patient, in spite the risk. Nor is the scheduling scheme concerned with the overall welfare of people, considering all the drugs that are legal at present yet are highly toxic and kill people in droves every year, like prescription drugs that are taken according to the doctor’s orders, but end up fatal. (Sanjay Gupta, almost the Surgeon General, wrote:
“I even wrote about this in a TIME magazine article, back in 2009, titled “Why I would Vote No on Pot.”
Well, I am here to apologize.
I apologize because I didn’t look hard enough, until now. I didn’t look far enough. I didn’t review papers from smaller labs in other countries doing some remarkable research, and I was too dismissive of the loud chorus of legitimate patients whose symptoms improved on cannabis.
on cannabis.
Instead, I lumped them with the high-visibility malingerers, just looking to get high. I mistakenly believed the Drug Enforcement Agency listed marijuana as a schedule 1 substance because of sound scientific proof. Surely, they must have quality reasoning as to why marijuana is in the category of the most dangerous drugs that have “no accepted medicinal use and a high potential for abuse.”
They didn’t have the science to support that claim, and I now know that when it comes to marijuana neither of those things are true. It doesn’t have a high potential for abuse, and there are very legitimate medical applications. In fact, sometimes marijuana is the only thing that works. Take the case of Charlotte Figi, who I met in Colorado…
…We have been terribly and systematically misled for nearly 70 years in the United States, and I apologize for my own role in that.
I hope this article and upcoming documentary will help set the record straight.
On August 14, 1970, the Assistant Secretary of Health, Dr. Roger O. Egeberg wrote a letter recommending the plant, marijuana, be classified as a schedule 1 substance, and it has remained that way for nearly 45 years. My research started with a careful reading of that decades old letter. What I found was unsettling. Egeberg had carefully chosen his words:
“Since there is still a considerable void in our knowledge of the plant and effects of the active drug contained in it, our recommendation is that marijuana be retained within schedule 1 at least until the completion of certain studies now underway to resolve the issue.
…
Not because of sound science, but because of its absence, marijuana was classified as a schedule 1 substance.
…
Most frightening to me is that someone dies in the United States every 19 minutes from a prescription drug overdose, mostly accidental. Every 19 minutes. It is a horrifying statistic. As much as I searched, I could not find a documented case of death from marijuana overdose.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/08/health/gupta-changed-mind-marijuana/
“that marijuana be retained within schedule 1 at least until the completion of certain studies now underway to resolve the issue.”
Forty five years of lies.
The scheduling system is not a guide to good health.
It is a ranking order of how severe the punishments are.
It means that even though the drug war is unjust and undermines Constitutional and Human rights, schedule I related crimes means you’ll be stripped of your civil and human rights, and treated like violent person or police-chase driver.
The ideals of personal property, privacy, and freedom from arbitrary persectution, just disappear. Schedule I means no holds barred.
Then after the actual punishment, they stigmatize people, denying them financial aid or scholarships when convicted sex offenders have no such limitations at University, resulting from past misdeeds. Worst, cannabis use is not a crime at all. What is that common definition of insanity again? Deemed ineffective, and often a failure, some people are gluttons because 45 years is a long time to be insane.
Using cannabis isn’t “a crime,” it is defying a wholly unjust and arbitrary federal law. Non-violent protest during the civil rights movement meant not fighting back against attackers while simply participating in activities afforded to other citizens, what was called “breaking the law.”
“An unjust law is no law at all,” was a quote by Martin Luther, in Letters from a Birmingham Jail, by MLK.
“only a few of those who break the law get punished at present!”
Roughly one-third, or 33% of all arrests are for cannabis related charges, and of those, certain racial groups predominate. Think of all the different crimes out there, including violent crime, theft, sexual assault, fractional reserve banking, and so on. One-third for cannabis use? That is hugely significant in a country that imprisons more per capita than any other. That’s a broken system.
So the prisons are filled with murderers, armed robbers, and flower gardeners and medical patients (?). Cannabis was likely the first plant ever cultivated by humans, the male and female (dioecious) forms of the plant, their sexual reproductive process, leading to seeds (abundant in omega fatty acids, hemp oil) that become full grown plants. The agrarian revolution didn’t start with corn, wheat, rice, potatoes, but cannabis hemp, which co-evolved with humans. Exocannabinoids in the cannabis plant resemble and mimic the function of endogenous, or endocannabinoids made in the body, like anandamide. The body’s immunity doesn’t see cannabis as a threat, it is so non-toxic, there’s no rush to excrete it.
In contrast, the other drugs tested for during employment-related, govt. coerced pee tests, are so toxic the body excretes them ASAP as with alcohol-drug, so coke, crack, meth, heroin users can pass the coerced employment screening in a day or two. Cannabis which looks just like certain endocannabinoids, non-threatening, and at home, but which can lead to a postive test result even after two weeks of non-use.
Forced drug testing is only a test for cannabis, since job applicants who take the hard drugs only appear drug-free because they planned it that way. A farce.
The gateway “theory” or propaganda, that cannabis will lead to heroin use, was thought up by none other than Harry Anslinger and amazingly is still parrotted by people who don’t realize that cigarettes and alcohol are the gateway drugs, like legal rites of passage, but are “legal” yet deadly, and unscheduled.
Cannabis is a gateway.
It’s a gateway to health.
*Marijuana Gateway to Health: How Cannabis Protects Us from Cancer and Alzheimer’s Disease by Clint Werner
http://www.amazon.com/Marijuana-Gateway-Health-Cannabis-Alzheimers/dp/098342618X/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_y
However, if he did bear the burden of an Executive Order (which could mean worse than low ratings considering the Dark Ages mentality of the drug war), he earn that Peace Prize, a few times further, by ending drug cartels, black markets, turf/territorial killings, unregulated drugs sold on the street, easier for kids to obtain than regulated beer. The end of paper (toilet paper!) from trees? Clothes of high durability and quality from Made in the USA manufacturers? Plastics that don’t require petroleum as a starting material? “Canvas” used to be made of hemp till inferior substitutes like cotton and linen became common. What if master painters had used cotton or linen instead of hemp canvas? If drafts of the Declaration of Independece are still intact for our posterity, it’s only because they were printed on hemp paper, not tree paper.
I agree the President needs to step up and Sign the Order to Reschdule Marijuana to harmless, this way state governors can be free to let the people vote on legalization.
Our Next Target should be president obama, have him get this schedule changed so we can move forward at a quicker pace. Its obvious change is Inevitable, but in the meantime, people are still without medical pot, and people are still being arrested for its use and carriage.
The president needs to act NOW, not a month from now! WAKE UP OBAMA< Sign the Paper, let us get to work!
Johnny V.
http://www.JohnnysOnlineReviews.com
eCannabis.nl
R I think we have failed ourselves as a country when i can drive 20 minutes and and score primo herion but as a 44 yr old responsbl. i cant get a bag of pot…well i can…and i m facing a dui for a minor car accident for ganja in my system..i
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