cannabisnews.com: Take Marijuana Out of Drug War
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Take Marijuana Out of Drug War
Posted by CN Staff on July 22, 2013 at 06:09:01 PT
By John Havelock
Source: Anchorage Daily News
USA -- Americans like wars: the war on poverty -- we lost that one when a bigger war came along. In 1971, while losing the war in Vietnam, President Nixon declared a war on drugs. The two wars got mixed together in some unpleasant ways. American soldiers began using drugs in Vietnam as a way of deadening the fear and loathing in fighting a war where civilians were indistinguishable from enemy soldiers. Back home, a youthful revolution developed: a rejection not just of the war and the draft that was taking so many young men to death or injury but of the humbug that had preceded it. The revolution rejected apple pie, stars-and-stripes morality with its undertones of bigotry and overtones of hypocrisy and embraced the emerging marijuana plant as a principal source of recreational pleasure.
The increased solidarity among young blacks and whites, many of whom had been part of the racial rebelliousness that brought about the civil rights acts of the sixties did not sit comfortably with the older ruling class still, particularly in the South, resisting the civil rights movement.Exaggerated proclamations regarding the dangers of drugs, marijuana in particular, which did not match youthful experience, opened the generational split further. Birth control pills, newly invented and now widely distributed brought a new sense of sexual freedom to American youth leaving parents aghast. The new youth expressed itself through radically new musical preferences, incomprehensible or appalling to their parents. All this was accompanied by the expansion of marijuana use. The new wave of young men wearing long hair as a signal of alienation from the expectations of the adult world was the last straw. The Establishment struck back, a counterrevolution against uppity youth, spotting marijuana use as a point of special vulnerability. They had a point. Marijuana is not good for you. Yes, cigarettes are much more likely to kill you. Alcohol is far worse. It can get you in all kinds of trouble as well as shortening your life. Alcohol and cigarettes are both more addictive but if you have been around, you know someone who has spent too much time in a marijuana haze. That cigarettes and alcohol, which are distributed with minor controls, are much worse does not make marijuana healthy.SnippedComplete Article: http://drugsense.org/url/W6XRvxSZSource: Anchorage Daily News (AK)Author: John HavelockPublished: July 21, 2013Copyright: 2013 The Anchorage Daily News Contact: letters adn.com Website: http://www.adn.com/ CannabisNews -- Cannabis Archiveshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/list/cannabis.shtml 
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Comment #5 posted by museman on July 22, 2013 at 10:34:14 PT
this is why
I never became a journalist. I could not stiffen up my writing to conform to a dry standard of 'just the facts maam.' Facts are great, and I appreciate it when they are delivered without slants and opinions, but as a writer I just could not fit between those lines. So I never claim to be a journalist. Doesn't mean I don't know what that is. When it comes to the WOD and cannabis all journalism instantly becomes editorializing, because the actual, hands on, experiential facts all support the 'anecdotal evidence' of the benevolence of cannabis instead of the harm theory that has a list of contrived 'statistical support' and pure hype made up by paid lackies of the system.I read this article and until I got to the point that was sloppily 'hidden' in this quote; "They had a point. Marijuana is not good for you." -and the whole dipsy thing tumbles out like a bag of dirty laundry torn open by a bunch of puppies.But as Sam points out, the entire system is so corrupt, the media so controlled by corporate interest and influence, that it is no wonder there are so many compliant small-minded consumers consistently upholding the corruption for whatever their own daily fix is; Materialism Addictions. Entertainment addictions. Power addictions. GMO addictions. etc.Americans are in for some rude awakenings real soon. Too bad the comsumer/sheeple can't read past the digital texting abbreviations and see the writing on the wall. Too bad they have all been trained to let their 'betters' do the thinking for them.Good thing some of us are prepared (and not by stockpiling anything except knowledge) or when the day comes that the wave of revolution and change circling the planet actually touches our chores with earnest, the number of dead bodies in the streets could be astronomical. Because americans cannot unite behind anything except their right to buy!I have been living in the woods for over 40 years preparing myself, my friends, and my family for the inevitability that now sits on the threshold of our reality like a gargoyle beginning to come to life. The facts are in. The denial is rampant. But denial never did anything for anyone, it ain't gonna do it now.LEGALIZE FREEDOM
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Comment #4 posted by mexweed on July 22, 2013 at 10:24:00 PT:
Have a heart, Havelock
Where does this writer get off saying, "Marijuana is not good for you" and "If you have been around you know someone who has spent too much time in a marijuana haze"?Maybe he thinks "marijuana" means smoked cannabis-- and true, heat shock, carbon monoxide and 4221 combustion toxins are not good for you. He does not seem to know of the existence of vaporizers and of the easily learned technique for vaporizing with a one-hitter (hold the light low, suck slow, don't glow till after 19 seconds or so).
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Comment #3 posted by Sam Adams on July 22, 2013 at 09:04:56 PT
old time religion
reading this stuff makes me yearn for the pre-1920 days, when government was incredibly small and people made their own choices about how to live - typically by choosing a church and political party that reflected their views.It used to be that meddlers and do-gooders had no audience with the government - they could only harass people within their own church and value system.Now, in the days of Big Government, there's only one Church, one set of Rules, and all the meddling sociopaths have been elevated to positions of incredible power. For example you must turn your children over to them to be raised and indoctrinated by state bureaucrats. EVERYBODY's got a complaint or issue with their neighbors, and the government is SO eager to accommodate the whiners' every whim.All churches have been de-powered and de-funded, the various political parties destroyed by the Republicrat system. The wide variety of small, independent schools available to parents are gone, replaced by huge prison-like, concrete-block structuresAnd we wonder why we're in an epidemic of mental illness
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Comment #2 posted by runruff on July 22, 2013 at 08:15:10 PT
What is more dangerous than the worst drug?
An idiot with a forum, that's what!
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Comment #1 posted by HempWorld on July 22, 2013 at 07:48:16 PT
John Havelock
How on earth can you write so much non-sense and get it published in a newspaper?How about doing some research?
Legalize It!
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