cannabisnews.com: Smoke and Smearers 





Smoke and Smearers 
Posted by FoM on February 15, 2001 at 22:29:52 PT
By Matt Smith 
Source: SF Weekly
Before the Medical Marijuana Initiative, aka Proposition 215, passed in 1996, it was possible to note a person curled into a paranoid, catatonic ball, to turn to one's companion, and to say, "Look at the pothead; now there's a lame-o for you," and go on about one's business. Now, though, when one sees a teenager staring endlessly at a light bulb, it's necessary to say, "Look at the poor, dear, nauseated, hangnail sufferer. Thankfully, there are drug pushers to ease his pain." 
The underlying lie here -- that the medical marijuana "movement" is anything more than a bale of hokum meant to give drug profiteers broader reign -- may seem like a harmless one. But facile, harmless-seeming lies, when elevated into the realm of policy debate, beget more lies, which beget impunity, which begets corruption. These facts came swirling through my brain like acrid smoke last week as I sat in a Marin hotel conference room witnessing District Attorney Paula Kamena take the ridiculous, degrading, yet sadly necessary step of campaigning against a recall initiative. Her offense: bringing a single "medical" marijuana case to trial out of the 73 such arrests by Marin law enforcement officers during the past two years. Following the passage of Prop. 215, Kamena had sought to find middle ground between voters' wish to allow legitimate patients to use marijuana as a medicine, and her oath as district attorney to uphold the law that makes marijuana possession a crime. For this she became the first of six district attorneys now targeted, statewide, for removal in recall petition drives sponsored by pot activists who hope to install officials committed to allowing residents to cultivate and smoke marijuana unfettered. One needn't be as prejudiced against the doobied classes as I am to consider this anti-DA pogrom a threat to justice everywhere, and a menace to the fundaments of egalitarianism and democracy. It's possible to hold the personal belief that marijuana should be legalized, yet still be scared walleyed at the idea that well-financed groups might politically extort law enforcement officials into refusing to enforce controversial laws. America's been down that unseemly road before, with shameful results. Federal troops had to be sent to Arkansas to enforce school desegregation, because local officials wouldn't. Southern Californians launched recall drives against judges who upheld the busing of students as a way of desegregating schools, even though the law of the land allowed busing as a remedy to entrenched discrimination. We live in a democracy with state and federal legislatures constituted expressly to allow citizens to choose which laws society will live by. We have criminal justice systems whose purpose, ideally, is to ensure those laws are implemented evenly and fairly. Most Californians -- or, at least, most Californians who smoke high-grade reefer in their Marin County homes -- rarely have to consider the broader ramifications of law enforcement that sways to the winds of politics. Sadly, people on much of the rest of the planet do; political classes the world over enjoy such luxuries as smuggling, larceny, and the killing of political enemies with impunity. America's not a corrupt dictatorship yet. But if localized political pressure can be used to nullify drug laws here, it can certainly nullify laws designed to protect ethnic minorities, or endangered species, or public lands. Behind the effort to recall Paula Kamena is the vague and misleading language of Prop. 215, which puts law enforcement in a devilish quandary. The proposition grants patient status to sufferers of "any illness for which marijuana provides relief," a list potentially including boredom and fear of facing one's personal problems/addictive tendencies, along with such medically recognized uses as relief from glaucoma and AIDS-related wasting syndrome. Federal law, meanwhile, still considers all marijuana, medical or no, to be contraband and subject to seizure. State law likewise prohibits marijuana possession; Proposition 215 merely allows users the "medicinal use" defense at trial. Given the ambiguities of the law on marijuana, enforcement philosophy has varied widely from county to California county, with some jurisdictions giving growers and dealers a free pass, and others making marijuana arrests, and then letting the medical-vs.-nonmedical issue sort itself out at trial. The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to help untangle this mess when it hears legal challenges to the proposition later this year. Kamena, as it happens, has been one of California's most reasonable officials in seeking to strike a fair approach to Prop. 215's contradictions. She established specific guidelines for prosecuting marijuana cases, including a county certification process permitting legitimate patients to cultivate and possess medical marijuana. But the medical marijuana folk, who, as far as I can tell, are largely indistinguishable from ordinary marijuana folk, want more than that. Like other practitioners of the Politics of Base Urges -- gun nuts, death penalty advocates, etc. -- the dope activists have used lies and political extortion to further their goals. A year ago, Kamena became the target of a group of family law litigants who had mounted a failed drive to recall three judges for allegedly overstepping their authority. Carol Mardeusz, who had been convicted by a jury of falsifying records in an effort to steal custody of her child, included Kamena as a late-hour addition to the recall list, apparently because Kamena's office was responsible for prosecuting her. The petition drives against the judges fizzled, but the anti-Kamena campaign took off when reefer advocates adopted it as a possible way to push Marin County to stop enforcing marijuana laws. The medical marijuana proponents gathered $15,000 in secret donations, hired signature gatherers, and launched a publicity campaign that characterized Kamena as an opponent of medical marijuana, a charge Kamena denies. The petition itself -- still a relic of Mardeusz's all but forgotten family-court gripes -- made no mention of marijuana. I've always wondered how promoting illegal drug use had managed to place itself toward the heights of the progressive pantheon, a position ordinarily reserved for vanquishing injustice, comforting the unfortunate, and toppling the mighty and cruel. I thought perchance a call to Lynette Shaw, founding director of the Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana and leader of the recall campaign, might shed some light. Shaw rejects the idea that Kamena has sought to tread a reasonable path through the vagaries of California narcotics law. Rather, she sees Kamena as leader of a veritable police state, with shock troops routinely brutalizing citizens whose only crime is seeking medical attention for painful disease. Shaw says she is acting as a consultant to parallel DA-recall efforts in Placer, El Dorado, Shasta, Butte, and Sonoma counties. By drafting guidelines that acknowledge that state and federal law still consider marijuana possession to be illegal, Kamena is encouraging Marin law enforcement officers to terrorize residents, Shaw says. "She's violating the state Constitution; I think it's Section 2, Chapter 2 ... um, I'm going to get a copy of the state Constitution here on file pretty soon," says Shaw, before returning to more familiar ground. "She's violating Prop. 215, which says patients should be allowed to have their cannabis." Shaw says she began the alliance after finding solace in marijuana for a laundry list of medical conditions. A long laundry list. "I have chemical injury illness. I grew up in Antioch, California, where they manufactured DDT, fiberglass, and other chemically based products," Shaw explains. "I was formerly a battered woman; I was almost strangled to death. I have a shoulder injury that's a source of constant chronic pain. I had to go through abused women's services here. I got a lot of support. I will never be the same and will always hurt every day of my life. I can't take common medicines they prescribe for this. I have to live in Marin County, a pollution-free area. I'm always having allergic reactions. The use of cannabis really helps to strengthen me. I think it balances me out, or strengthens my immune system -- actually I have a hyper immune system. I used to have anorexia. It seems to reduce the symptoms of having a hyper immune system. If someone sprays pesticide, I have an allergic attack. I'm shaking. I'm ready to throw up. My boyfriend will run and get me a joint. I'll take one hit -- it's a bronchial dilator -- and I can relax, I can breathe, the swelling reduces. One hit will reduce a lot of these symptoms, and it reduces the panic. It treats the panic and anxiety along with the physical symptoms. Also, eating the brownies with marijuana was also good for me. It balances out my system. Now I can even go to L.A. with all that smog. I can be less of a woman in a bubble, and if a car drives by, I don't faint. I really just want to be a normal person. I tried everything -- everything. I was on disability, I was on welfare. It was very frightening, and the doctors couldn't figure out what was going on. Finally I found a doctor who believed me. He started me on macrobiotic brown rice, then we started on cannabis, and that stopped it." Oh. If Shaw and her Marin pothead allies succeed in toppling district attorneys from here to Oregon, they would, quite simply, degrade law enforcement. Marin Sheriff Robert T. Doyle, for one, told me that he would turn to the state Attorney General's Office if marijuana users manage to install a district attorney who refuses to enforce the law. There's an attractive prospect -- state shock troops enforcing laws, because local jurisdictions refuse to do their duty. The alternative, a Humboldtization of California where local officials corrode into lawless lackeys of armed-and-dangerous marijuana entrepreneurs, seems equally unsavory to me. With Kamena and other rural district attorneys as a precedent, the recall mechanism might cease to be a mere method for removing public officials who fail to uphold their oaths of office. "This kind of thing, if it snowballs, will become a threat to district attorneys around the state," said retired Marin Superior Court Judge William Stephens when I spoke with him last week. Then there's the simple danger of allowing stoners to dictate how California is run. Fairfax, a town some residents fancy as a monument to counterculture, provides ample warning that this would be an awful fate. "There's leftover burnouts who pretend they're the heart and soul of the town. They're working hard to climb down the social ladder by being too lazy to succeed at anything and trying to make some kind of religious experience out of it," notes Peter Ethridge, who lives not far from Shaw's office in Fairfax. "I'm 50-plus years old. I experimented with every drug under the sun as a kid. The one thing I know is, you have to keep chemicals out of the hands of children. It wrecks their lives before they even live them. In a family town such as Fairfax, I'm amazed that people haven't run them out of town. I'm surprised what that little activist has been able to do." If Shaw succeeds in expanding her two-tokes-over-the-line universe beyond Fairfax, she would do much more than just make it easier for Marin County residents to get stoned. She would put California's justice system on notice that it enforces locally unpopular laws at its own peril. She would institute, as a matter of law, reefer madness. (1) A theoretical wireless data network run by and for lower primates. (2) Allegedly unused BART tubes connect Vallejo, San Mateo, Sausalito, Stockton. (3) Core #34-PXJ5 is vulnerable to hackers. (4) The aforementioned "unreported stories" were invented to trap potheads into a "Duuuuuuuuuuuude" holding pattern. Our valued non-pot-smoking readers are urged to disregard and read on. Note: Potheads distort the record -- and endanger the justice system -- as they try to recall the Marin DA. Of all of the underreported stories of 2001 -- the simian Evernet (1), secret BART tunnels (2), Hetch Hetchy reactor problems (3) -- the most egregious by far is the fact that marijuana smokers are lame losers. (4) Matt Smith: E-Mail: Matthew.Smith sfweekly.com Source: SF Weekly (CA) Author: Matt Smith Published: February 14, 2001Address: 185 Berry, Lobby 4, Suite 3800, San Francisco, CA 94107 Copyright: 2001 New Times Inc Contact:  feedback sfweekly.com Website: http://www.sfweekly.com/ Feedback: http://www.sfweekly.com/feedback/ Related Articles:Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana http://www.cbcmarin.com/Unfair Recall in Marinhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread8642.shtmlMedical Marijuana Backers Target D.A.'s With Recall http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread8638.shtmlMarin D.A. Calls Foes Thuggishhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread8603.shtml
Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help




Comment #22 posted by mr. skullhead on February 17, 2001 at 07:40:36 PT:
Matt Smith; typical pro-establishment sell out
Let's not forget that this is the same guy that endorced violence against Green Party supporters. See link below. As for e-mailing this creep, why bother? Send your e-mail to feedback sfweekly.com I'm going to tell them I won't read their publication because of this moron. 
Nader voters should be slapped around a bit
[ Post Comment ]


Comment #21 posted by dddd on February 16, 2001 at 19:12:17 PT
superb
Patriot.My compliments on your outstanding and elloqunt response to Mr Smith...Excellent!dddd
[ Post Comment ]


Comment #20 posted by The Patriot on February 16, 2001 at 18:54:27 PT
Bolshevism in action; Stalin would be proud!!
This guy is unbelievable. Simply unbelievable. "fucking idiot" hardly covers it. I send the following message to the guy:Mr. Smith: Did you actually write the column entitled "Smokers and Smearers"? I found it at the following URL http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread8681.shtml#19 . IF you wrote what is posted there, this is for you: I have to say that this is the most tendentious pile of badly executed, ill-begotten sophistic flotsam I have read in a long, long, long time (excepting of course, the editorial page of the NYTimes). Do they actually pay for you such coprographia? Unbelievable. Since you write for a commie-rage, I have a feeling that you are one of this puerile phonies who label themselves "progressive." But that is a pool of effluvia I will wade into at another time.  It's funny that you support people who refuse to uphold the law (i.e. the People's Commissar of Justice for the Placer County Oblast of the People's Republic of California) whilst excoriating (I realize that the word is too big for you; look it up; in the thick book; the one that says "Dictionary") people who are actually working legally to accomplish their goals. Lenin and Stalin would be proud of you. The simple fact is that the war on drugs is destroying liberty at home and entire nations abroad. Our police have become militarized, arrogant and completely out of control. They despoil citizens of their property without trial! Our freedom is evaporating all around us. Whatever happened to REAL liberals? You rabidly lick your chops over the thought of pot-smokers in prison. It won't stop there. When they come for you I hope you will remember the words of the late Martin Niemoeller: "When they came for me there was nobody left to speak up for me." So, while you wallow in the hate-filled, mean-spirited muck that is your soul, I'm gonna light up a fattie of exotic, imported smoking material and enjoy myself... The Patriot.
[ Post Comment ]


Comment #19 posted by miguel on February 16, 2001 at 17:17:22 PT
dumbass
what a fucking idiot. You are absolutely right . No sense in responding to this guy with serious feedback
[ Post Comment ]


Comment #18 posted by Dan Hillman on February 16, 2001 at 13:51:41 PT
SF Weekly called for prohibition of N20...
...aka nitrous oxide. They made this plea several years ago. Calling nitrous "hippie crack" they editorialized in support for criminalization of this component of the earth's atmosphere. (Nitrous oxide is a few percent of every breath you take.) Of course, I wrote the SF Weekly at the time, pointing out how ridiculous their prohibitionist stance was. No further articles demonizing N20 were printed in the SF Weekly. 
[ Post Comment ]


Comment #17 posted by drifter on February 16, 2001 at 13:08:47 PT
safe
 Matthew Smith is lucky he lives in S.F. , where it is safe! In South America , do you know what they do with reporters that write crap like this ? Wait I have an idea , Lets send little Matthew on a field trip to Bogota That might teach young Matthew a lesson.
[ Post Comment ]


Comment #16 posted by again on February 16, 2001 at 11:31:59 PT
mad?
--We have criminal justice systems whose purpose, ideally, is to ensure those laws are implemented evenly and fairly. >>OK, when is that ideal standard going to be the way of the world? I submit that it will happen when politicians are cognizant of their collective responsibility to implement laws evenly and fairly. The recall effort suggests that Ms. Kamena is not, and this should be a reminder.--It's possible to hold the personal belief that marijuana should be legalized, yet still be scared walleyed at the idea that well-financed groups might politically extort law enforcement officials into refusing to enforce controversial laws.>>What well-funded groups might THAT be?  Remember that the locals are doing the work. Thank providence for the money. --But if localized political pressure can be used to nullify drug laws here, it can certainly nullify laws designed to protect ethnic minorities, or endangered species, or public lands.>>No comparison here ... the only common thread is this issue is about people and their right to be unmolested in their private non-violent behavior.--Like other practitioners of the Politics of Base Urges -- gun nuts, death penalty advocates, etc. -- the dope activists have used lies and political extortion to further their goals. >>Nice group we've joined in his mind. Activists who are not satisfied by half measures. Could be in a worse place ...--I've always wondered how promoting illegal drug use had managed to place itself toward the heights of the progressive pantheon, a position ordinarily reserved for vanquishing injustice, comforting the unfortunate, and toppling the mighty and cruel. >>Hey, stupid, the drugs are illegal because small-minded men and women lied and pushed a prohibition to end all prohibitions. What part of your comment does not apply to the recall effort?Will we not be vanquishing injustice, comforting the unfortunate and toppling the FIRST of the might and cruel??--Rather, she sees Kamena as leader of a veritable police state, with shock troops routinely brutalizing citizens whose only crime is seeking medical attention for painful disease. >>Peter McWilliams ... Todd McCormick ... Steve and Michelle Kubby .... the long list of all who were brutalized by 3AM no-knock SWAT raids .. Abner Luema,  others have longer lists ...>>--If Shaw and her Marin pothead allies succeed in toppling district attorneys from here to Oregon, they would, quite simply, degrade law enforcement. >>Law Enforcement would be better served by Kamena's removal. Hope we can get a good person to replace her ...-- There's an attractive prospect -- state shock troops enforcing laws, because local jurisdictions refuse to do their duty. >>Attractive to whom? I understand that you MAY be ironic here, but NO Guarantees!! Many would be attracted to that situation. Scary, huh??--With Kamena and other rural district attorneys as a precedent, the recall mechanism might cease to be a mere method for removing public officials who fail to uphold their oaths of office. "This kind of thing, if it snowballs, will become a threat to district attorneys around the state," said retired Marin Superior Court Judge William Stephens when I spoke with him last week. >>Now you said that anti-busing folks did this, too. So where is this PRECEDENT you speak of. It would seem that ordinary citizens are merely petitioning for a redress of injuries. Aren't we allowed to do this in america? Or did the prohibitionists add THIS right to the long list of abrogated 4th Amendment rights we have seen in this drug war?--She would put California's justice system on notice that it enforces locally unpopular laws at its own peril. She would institute, as a matter of law, reefer madness. >>Reefer madness here dictates that no one should be arrested for using marijuana medically. What sort of madness IS this in your tiny little sweat-stained, alcohol-atrophied, super bowl-numbed, network tv-entertained excuse for grey matter?--Of all of the underreported stories of 2001 -- the simian Evernet (1), secret BART tunnels (2), Hetch Hetchy reactor problems (3) -- the most egregious by far is the fact that marijuana smokers are lame losers. (4) >>When you are unable to mount a credible defence to an undefensible position you devolve to attacking your enemy. And believe it, you ARE the enemy. Thank You for raising your head into the target zone.See how it works???
[ Post Comment ]


Comment #15 posted by dankhank on February 16, 2001 at 11:29:32 PT:
Who's REALLY mad here???
>OK, when is that ideal standard going to be the way of the world? I submit that it will happen when politicians are cognizant of their collective responsibility to implement laws evenly and fairly. The recall effort suggests that Ms. Kamena is not, and this should be a reminder.>What well-funded groups might THAT be?  Remember that the locals are doing the work. Thank providence for the money. >No comparison here ... the only common thread is this issue is about people and their right to be unmolested in their private non-violent behavior.>Nice group we've joined in his mind. Activists who are not satisfied by half measures. Could be in a worse place ...>Hey, stupid, the drugs are illegal because small-minded men and women lied and pushed a prohibition to end all prohibitions. What part of your comment does not apply to the recall effort?Will we not be vanquishing injustice, comforting the unfortunate and toppling the FIRST of the might and cruel??>Peter McWilliams ... Todd McCormick ... Steve and Michelle Kubby .... the long list of all who were brutalized by 3AM no-knock SWAT raids .. Abner Luema,  others have longer lists ...>>>Law Enforcement would be better served by Kamena's removal. Hope we can get a good person to replace her ...>Attractive to whom? I understand that you MAY be ironic here, but NO Guarantees!! Many would be attracted to that situation. Scary, huh??>Now you said that anti-busing folks did this, too. So where is this PRECEDENT you speak of. It would seem that ordinary citizens are merely petitioning for a redress of injuries. Aren't we allowed to do this in america? Or did the prohibitionists add THIS right to the long list of abrogated 4th Amendment rights we have seen in this drug war?>Reefer madness here dictates that no one should be arrested for using marijuana medically. What sort of madness IS this in your tiny little sweat-stained, alcohol-atrophied, super bowl-numbed, network tv-entertained excuse for grey matter?>When you are unable to mount a credible defence to an undefensible position you devolve to attacking your enemy. And believe it, you ARE the enemy. Thank You for raising your head into the target zone.See how it works???
hemp n stuff
[ Post Comment ]


Comment #14 posted by Stripey on February 16, 2001 at 10:35:17 PT
Something just occured to me. . .
You know, perhaps Dubya is looking to appoint a reformer to drug czar. If not a complete reformer, maybe someone a bit more liberal. Maybe that's why he's appointed such a conservative AG, he's trying to give his party what they want in the high offices to excuse the appointment of a liberal czar. Maybe it's just politicos being so, but perhaps bushy is trying to reform around the GoP's ears.
[ Post Comment ]


Comment #13 posted by Lehder on February 16, 2001 at 09:47:31 PT
the flaw in my argument
[ you pulled out quite a list this time, observer! this author is a real resource!]All the progress, slow progress, is being made from the bottom up, as in recalls. I tried to end the war with a roundhouse from the top - it ain't likely gonna happen, but that does not mean grass-roots mvements will also fail. We'll win eventually, but how much longer?I'm gonna give Bush another chance, despite the Ashcroft appointment, and wait and see what, if anything, he has to say about drugs on his Mexico trip, and what, especially, he does with the "drug czar" appointment. The government in this country has no business in the first place initiating internal wars or empowering czars. ANY appointment will anger me. If he appoints, by some miracle, a reformer, then rename the office.
[ Post Comment ]


Comment #12 posted by observer on February 16, 2001 at 09:35:53 PT
some content analysis
The following list of common prohibition propaganda themes is taken from this familiar (to Cannabisnews readers) 1979 NIDA report. http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/History/ticp.html Quickly running down the list, here are some of the classic prohibitionist propaganda themes seen.The drug is associated with a hated subgroup of the society or a foreign enemy. a person curled into a paranoid, catatonic ball"Look at the pothead; now there's a lame-o for you,"medical marijuana "movement" drug profiteerspot activists the doobied classeswell-financed groups...segregation[ists] [i.e. racists/bigots]Californians who smoke high-grade reefer in their Marin County homespolitical classes [who] enjoy such luxuries as smuggling, larceny, and the killing of political enemies with impunitygrowers and dealersthe medical marijuana folk, who, as far as I can tell, are largely indistinguishable from ordinary marijuana folkpractitioners of the Politics of Base Urgesgun nutsdeath penalty advocatesthe dope activists reefer advocates medical marijuana proponents her Marin pothead allies lawless lackeys of armed-and-dangerous marijuana entrepreneursa monument to counterculture leftover burnouts who pretend that little activist her two-tokes-over-the-line universeMarin County residents ... stonedpotheads ... a "Duuuuuuuuuuuude" holding patternPotheads ... endanger the justice systemmarijuana smokers are lame losers The drug is identified as solely responsible for many problems in the culture, i.e., crime, violence, and insanity. impunity, which begets corruption"medical" marijuana case to trial cultivate and smoke marijuana unfetteredextort law enforcement officialsgiving growers and dealers a free passextortiontoo lazy to succeed at anythingwould institute, as a matter of law, reefer madness The survival of the culture is pictured as being dependent on the prohibition of the drug. this anti-DA pogrom a threat to justice everywherea menace to the fundaments of egalitarianism and democracythey would, quite simply, degrade law enforcementa threat to district attorneys around the stateample warning that this would be an awful fatewould put California's justice system on notice ... perilendanger the justice system The concept of "controlled" usage is destroyed and replaced by a "domino [gateway] theory" of chemical progression. [this theme not seen] The drug is associated with the corruption of young children, particularly their sexual corruption. a teenager staring endlessly at a light bulbyou have to keep chemicals out of the hands of children. It wrecks their lives before they even live them Both the user and supplier of the drug are defined as fiends, always in search of new victims; usage of the drug is considered "contagious." . . . Efforts to reduce drug usage are referred to as the "war" on or "battle" against drug abuse. promoting illegal drug use Policy options are presented as total prohibition or total access. [theme not present, arguably] Anyone questioning any of the above assumptions is bitterly attacked and characterized as part of the problem that needs to be eliminated. [Needless to say, this whole "Smoke and Smearers" article is an attack on adults who use cannabis, especialy those in the "movement" the "activists" who do indeed question the laws and authorities that jail cannabis users.]The theme that we see most attempted in this article is the prohibitionist propaganda theme #1, "the drug is associated with a hated subgroup of the society". One favorite propaganda technique used, the "Name Calling" ( http://carmen.artsci.washington.edu/Propaganda/name.htm etc. Name calling is closely related to the logical fallacy called the "ad hominem" fallacy http://www.lincoln.ac.nz/emd/subjects/phil102/fallacy/hominem.htm ) Hope this helps a little for the letters to the editor there.
[ Post Comment ]


Comment #11 posted by Robbie on February 16, 2001 at 09:02:01 PT
The politics of it all
I appreciate the sentiments of the posters here, but this man's acid-tongued barbs are a little (if not a lot) hollow. Whatever this man believes, he is, either, a personal friend of Paula Kamena, or, a political friend of the Marin DA. If the "Make-A-Wish" foundation attacked her, he'd probably be just as voracious in his hate-speak.Of course, being that our side is so unpopular on the whole (unfortunately, still) this man can get away with attacking people who smoke, whether medicinally or recreationally.I personally hope, however, that Steve Kubby or some other person suffering a terrible illness that is only alleviated by medi-pot, to sue this ashcroft for everything he's worth.
[ Post Comment ]


Comment #10 posted by Kevin Hebert on February 16, 2001 at 08:47:12 PT:
This sort of thing helps more than it hurts
Mr. Smith's extremism is so far-fetched that one wonders what could have possibly compelled him to write such an article.Nothing in this article does anything to justify putting people in prison for using cannabis. Nothing. It's more pathetic than anything else.
[ Post Comment ]


Comment #9 posted by dddd on February 16, 2001 at 07:48:50 PT
Thought experiment
"Ladies and gentlemen,,The prezident of the united states,,George W Bush".."My fellow Americans,,I come before you today to make a special announcement.I have decided it's time to end the war on drugs.It is the right thing to do.As of tomorrow,all non violent drug offenders will be released from custody.They will be issued a formal apology,and reimbursed for the time they have been unjustly incarcerated.This is part of my new plan to restore freedom and justice to the nation. I felt that this was an appropriate time to make this announcment in light of last weeks admission by John Ashcroft,of his ongoing homosexual relationship with Jerry Falwell. With the opening of the new Pat Robertson Federal abortion clinic this week,and the indictment of Barry McCaffrey for war crimes,,we hope to usher in a whole new era.".............................BAM!......BAM!...gunshots ring out from the grassy knoll,and the library,,,,,Dick Cheney is splattered with warm gray matter,,,,he turns white as a ghost and collapses while clutching his chest....
[ Post Comment ]


Comment #8 posted by Lehder on February 16, 2001 at 07:13:10 PT
Intolerance
I sure hope kaptinemo is right, and his eloquent optimism cheers me when little else for our cause does.The recalls are the best news we've seen in the drug wars in a long time. We're taking aggressive action instead of just trying to 'educate' bigots who are truly beyond hope or redemption - it is impossible to reason with them:I am to consider this anti-DA pogrom a threat to justice everywhere, and a menace to the fundaments of egalitarianism and democracy. Well, the district attorney is not fundamental to democracy, and I can think of nothing more egalitarian and democratic than her recall by the People. You can't reason with this kind, the kind who are in charge and wield the official power. Words lose their meanings in an anti's mouth. Still, some minds are being changed by the Internet. But these are, I suspect, the parents whose kids are in prison, expelled for possession of aspirin etc. But their numbers remain too few.Yes, the struggle is heating up some, and we are not so impotent as we were even two years ago. But I am not so sure we're winning yet. I do have faith in our ultimate victory, but how long will it take and how much more violence to our cities and destruction of lives will it still take? Think of the Democratic National Convention of 1968: a full scale police riot, "The Whole World is Watching". Yet the whole world had to continue watching through six more years of the bitterest acrimony and tens of thousands more dead soldiers before the war was stopped. Americans seem unimpressed by the abstractions conveyed in words, they need pictures and blood and must see the forces of bigotry played out before their eyes and not on paper or the lessons of history. And they have to see this over and over and over for years.As a 'thought experiment' to understand how difficult it is going to be for us to win, I sometimes ask myself what would happen if high places in government decided that the war was self-destructive and foolish and proceeded to end it? Can you imagine how George Bush would be received if he were to make an 'end of the war' announcement on TV? All the economic powers that drive this war would have to be unraveled. The people who hold the economic power would loudly condemn him, caalling for impeachment. They would claim that an alcoholic and coke freak had infiltrated the White House, bent on destroying America and handing it overto dopers and Colombians. It might be possible for an enlightened government ( which is nowhere in sight ) to stop the war, but it wouldtake extraordinary leadership skills, and Isure don't see these anywhere in sight either.No, it's the seldom-reported voice of a divided, quarrelling people against an economic powerhouse, and I can see only more violence and destruction before thewar abates.We are victims of our own intolerance. And it's compounded bythe government's pleasure in setting religious-like beliefs against reason. Our government knows only polls and propaganda and force and cannot provide any kind of leadership. The Europeans are way ahead of us in this war because they learned Tolerance from Auschwitz. What will it take for Americans to learn?
[ Post Comment ]


Comment #7 posted by ripper on February 16, 2001 at 05:50:30 PT
Yikes....A democracy?
"We live in a democracy with state and federal legislatures constituted expressly to allow citizens to choose which   laws society will live by."What??? I thought we lived in a Democratic Republic? If the citizens choose which laws society will live by, and the elected stiffs won't uphold the law, then the people have to take that stiff out of office. Its their duty. Thank god for the recall. Just more un-caring (I do it for the children)drug warrior tripe. They don't care about the children, only the money and power. This type of crap only appeals to thoughs making money off the drug war. If they really cared about the children they would quit jailing them and taking away their education loans. If we believe this guy, we are all doomed if pot is leagalized. The sky will start falling, the earth will shake and all kinds of mass pig outs will occur. The USA will be turned into a hellish third world country within 6 months. All the streets will be lined with stoned people laying all over the place. Crazy drug dealers will be chasing our kids in school yards with bags of pot. Stoned polititions will be giving freedom back to the people. Oh the horror... Well, I think I'll sink a few and go watch a light bulb while I wait for the sky to start falling.  
[ Post Comment ]


Comment #6 posted by kaptinemo on February 16, 2001 at 05:26:16 PT:
More proof we're winning.
Antis have worked extremely hard for decades to wrap themselves in the trappings of legitimacy. They feel that by doing so, it becomes simply ridiculous to challenge their orthodoxy. Like priests in fancy robes, they expect to awe the hoi polloi into silence with thier uagust presence and scowling demeanor, without ever having to explain why they are entitled to wearing such raiments.For decades, they have repeatedly shunned ever having to debate us, because to do so is to acknowledge that there is a legitimate reason to. To acknowlewdge that there exists such a reason calls into question their very claims of moral leadership.Something they dare not allow.So, when something like the DA recall comes up, what do they do?They imperiously cast aspersions upon those plebians who dare hold them...accountable to their own laws. Or hold them morally culpable when they persist in ignoring those laws in favor of those which support their positions.'One needn't be as prejudiced against the doobied classes as I am to consider this anti-DA pogrom a threat to justice everywhere, and a menace to the fundaments of egalitarianism and democracy. It's possible to hold the personal belief that marijuana should be legalized, yet still be scared walleyed at the idea that well-financed groups might politically extort law enforcement officials into refusing to enforce controversial laws. America's been down that unseemly road before, with shameful results.'Yes, we have. It took a Civil War which killed tens of thousands and maimed scores of thousands more...to get rid of a law that - to the everlasting shame of freedom loving people everywhere - had actually been written into our great Constitution.I refer to slavery, friends. The very Law of the Land was poisoned by that, and decent people tried to get this morally repugnant law peacefully expunged. And we all know what happened when that failed.Some laws on their face are simply rotten. The anti-drugs laws are defended by antis with all the fervor that slaveowners once defended the practice of slavery - and with as much certainty in their moral rectitude in doing so. Mr. Smith displays the same kind of sneering certainty of his righteousness that many slaveowners did in doubting the basic humanity of their 'property'. And uses the law as his foundation for doing so.But like many antis, he forgets some basic elements of government. Those recall statutes appear on the books for a reason; just because the machinery to use them is rusty from neglect does not mean that it may not be used at all. It is only because of custom that they have not been used. But such safety valves against oppression are now about to be exercised. And the antis can hear the machinery groaning into operation again after long silence. Machinery that they know once activated, can grind their DrugWar into a pulp. Hence Mr. Smith's shrill denunciations.They wouldn't make these noises if they weren't worried. It's time to turn up the heat.
[ Post Comment ]


Comment #5 posted by Frank on February 16, 2001 at 04:27:28 PT
Kick Sheriff Robert T. Doyle Out of Office Also
"Marin Sheriff Robert T. Doyle, for one, told me that he would turn to the state Attorney General's Office if marijuana users manage to install a district attorney who refuses to enforce the law."Kick Sheriff Robert T. Doyle out of office along with District Attorney Paula Kamena. "These two people who refuses to enforce the law" --- The State Attorney General should go after Doyle and Kamena for the witch hunt against medical marijuana users. Prop 215 is the Law! However, these two people do not want to honor it. Recall them.
[ Post Comment ]


Comment #4 posted by dddd on February 16, 2001 at 01:01:33 PT
Raw Crap!
Hope Barry left someone in the officeto cut this jerk a check.For some reason,I am always suprized eachtime I read such blatant rubbish.It's hard tobelieve that anyone could be so logicallychallenged,and misinformed.I always think that these type writers arejust messin' around,,and the whole idea ofwriting such an article,is to poke fun at theabsurd crusade of the priggish and insipidantis.....It's really scary to think that this person actually believes all this.........I think it's more likely thatthe boss told this guy to come up with this article,sothe paper would be eligible for a beefy check fromthe ondcp...As soon as Mr Smith got home from work,he had several robust bong hits,,and sat there inbewildered amusement about the article................................................................................................................................................dddd
[ Post Comment ]


Comment #3 posted by Dan B on February 15, 2001 at 23:57:02 PT:
Just to let everyone know . . .
I do understand that a question should end with a question mark. Oops!And the tone of what I have written below can best be described as "ironic." Just in case anyone thought I was seriously siding with the bad guys.Dan B
[ Post Comment ]


Comment #2 posted by Dan B on February 15, 2001 at 23:48:59 PT:
Can You Feel the Love?
I'm so glad this person finally wrote the definitive marijuana prohibitionist manifesto. This loving soul should be proud of this testimony to his allegiance to the police state. I cannot think of a better way to beat the prohibitionists than to get them so riled up that they spew forth the bile of their compassion in this fashion.How kind of him to argue on our behalf that facile, harmless-seeming lies, when elevated into the realm of policy debate, beget more lies, which beget impunity, which begets corruption. What a brilliant description of the effects of prohibitionist propaganda. I couldn't have said it better myself!Or how about this luscious tidbit: One needn't be as prejudiced against the doobied classes as I am to consider this anti-DA pogrom a threat to justice everywhere, and a menace to the fundaments of egalitarianism and democracy.  Indeed! What a caring, egalitarian person! What a charming fount of democracy! I can think of no better way to treat people equally than to round up those that people in positions of power don't like and force them either into prison or into treatment programs. Yes! That's what the founding fathers had in mind! They wanted America to be free for those who abstain from using non-government sanctioned chemicals, and to hell with the rest! That's it!Want another morsel of good ol' prohibitionist fun? How about Before the Medical Marijuana Initiative, aka Proposition 215, passed in 1996, it was possible to note a person curled into a paranoid, catatonic ball, to turn to one's companion, and to say, "Look at the pothead; now there's a lame-o for you," and go on about one's business. What an accurate depiction of marijuana's effects. I'm sure that California's fourth graders will have no problem accepting that statement as fact. I'm sure they will consider the name-calling ("pothead," "lame-o") as mature, adult argumentation. And I might give birth to a kangaroo.Frankly, I don't think anyone really needs to say anything against this drivel. The author makes a blatantly biased (he goes so far as to call himself "prejudiced"), poorly organized, often incoherent argument with absolutely no supporting facts. Why waste our time writing serious responses to it. It's much more enjoyable to simply make fun of this kind of childish idiocy and let it pass like the flatulence it is.Dan B
[ Post Comment ]


Comment #1 posted by NiftySplifty on February 15, 2001 at 23:26:01 PT
Prediction? Pain.
I predict (and anxiously await) observer to tear poor Matt Smith a new A-hole. If you would be so kind as to send it to Mr. Smith at his e-mail address above, and post a copy for us to enjoy, I'd be much obliged.Nifty...
[ Post Comment ]


Post Comment


Name: Optional Password: 
E-Mail: 
Subject: 
Comment: [Please refrain from using profanity in your message]
Link URL: 
Link Title: