Thoughts From Within - Woody Harrelson

aggresive atheism

prohibition documentary

face of evil

plan for afghanistan

worst turkey ever

going rouge

nixon returns

in exile

Okay, so check this out. I've started a new social group called "in exile." It's intended as a gathering place for musicians, bands, poets & writers, djs, podcasters, and all of the fans that they generate.

You can join for free, and get your own homepage, blog, and upload and share music, videos, images, and just about anything. Handy. Make friends and contacts, promote your art, sell stuff, post events and just have a good time.
Well worth taking a look and seeing if you're interested. Did I mention it's free? Yep, and so are you.

So, check it out:
in exile - something for your head

The Madness Returns

By Robert Parry

The hoopla over former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s memoir is the latest sign that the madness, which has dominated American political life for most of the last three decades, has returned – and may be on its way to a political restoration in 2010 and beyond.

The outbreak of Palin-mania follows the right-wing enthusiasm over the accusations about President Barack Obama’s being born in Kenya, the phenomenon around Fox News personality Glenn Beck, the Tea Party rallies, and last summer’s town hall disruptions over health-care reform.

This excitement has given hope to national Republicans who believe they’re headed toward a return to power sooner rather than later. They have even succeeded in shifting the blame for the massive federal debt and the bank bailouts onto Obama and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, when those two mostly handled the messy triage after George W. Bush left behind a multi-car crash with bodies scattered all around.

The Republicans also are gaining traction with the old nostrum that got the United States into the current calamity, a reprise of Ronald Reagan’s mantra of tax cuts for the rich, a smaller social safety net, corporate deregulation, and a tough-talking foreign policy.

Their “free market” message is wrapped around clever talking points that appeal to many Americans conditioned for decades to despise “lib-rhuls.” Yet, some GOP arguments are head-snapping, such as the Republican anti-health-reform claim that the party's goal is to protect Medicare.

While the Republicans and the Right are having fun returning to this politically promising world of make-believe, Obama and the Democrats are plodding forward with all the joy of bedraggled war refugees dragging their life’s belongings behind them in an oxcart.

The struggle for health-care reform has turned into a long, excruciating march with many of the most worthwhile features – like a true cost-saving system, either a single-payer approach or a robust public option – cast away like family valuables left on the roadside to lighten the painful load.

In the 10 months since Obama was inaugurated on that bitterly cold day in January, he has been transformed from a beacon of hope and change into a cautionary tale, a symbol of what happens to a thoughtful man who is overly accommodating to both rivals and erstwhile allies.

By letting health-reform deadlines slip – and especially allowing Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus to dilly-dally by negotiating with Republicans who simply wanted to string out the process – Obama managed to look weak and indecisive, rather than bipartisan and conciliatory.

And the times when his administration has acted forthrightly, such as when it released evidence of George W. Bush’s torture policies and announced trials in New York federal court for five 9/11 defendants, the right-wing and mainstream news media have portrayed those reasonable decisions as controversial, if not unpatriotic and un-American.

Meanwhile, the American Left has reverted to its role as sideline critic, giving Obama almost no credit for his brave acts and lots of blame for his compromises. Progressives also have done little to build an infrastructure of media, think tanks and other institutions that can challenge today’s right-wing dominance in what the Right likes to call the “war of ideas.”

The Reagan Revolution

All these tendencies can be traced back three decades to the post-Vietnam War days when the Left largely dismantled its media outlets and think tanks, especially in the news center of Washington. Leading progressives mostly retreated to distant liberal strongholds such as San Francisco.

Simultaneously, the Right began pouring hundreds of millions – even billions – of dollars into building its own Establishment centered in Washington. Besides its own media outlets and think tanks, the Right spent large sums of money in creating anti-journalism attack groups to go after mainstream reporters who dug up information that undermined right-wing positions.

Into that shifting situation of the late-1970s stepped Ronald Reagan, a charming grade-B movie actor, corporate pitchman and former California governor. Unlike the responsible but dreary President Jimmy Carter, who talked about the need to conserve energy and rein in wasteful materialism, Reagan made everything seem simple and fun.

Though dubbed The Great Communicator, Reagan really wasn’t that great an orator. His secret was that – as an actor and adman – he understood that Americans wanted the world presented in easy blacks and whites, while enjoying flattering tales about their own innate goodness.

So, Reagan engaged in systematic exaggerations – about the black-hat evils of government, big unions, environmentalists, “welfare queens” and the Evil (Soviet) Empire and about the white-hat goodness of American Way consumerism, unrestrained capitalism, a beefed-up U.S. military and “freedom-fighters” from Nicaragua to Angola to Afghanistan.

To present such a black-and-white world required control of information, so Reagan’s Washington foot soldiers, especially a bright young cadre known as neoconservatives, sought control of key information sources. As the shock troops for what’s called “information warfare,” the neocons targeted independent-minded Washington journalists and the CIA’s analytical division.

The neocons’ behind-the-scenes victories over those two groups – made easier by the American Left’s abandonment of the information battlefield – proved decisive in setting the nation’s political course for three decades. The United States veered off into Reagan’s world of fear and fantasy.

The Interludes

Even during brief respites of relative sanity, such as when some of Reagan’s dirty secrets spilled out in the Iran-Contra Affair or when Bill Clinton finally ended the 12-year Reagan-Bush-I reign, the trend away from rationality never was seriously addressed. Rather, the Democrats looked to finesse the falsehoods and avoid ugly conflicts.

Because of that, the madness could quickly resume. For instance, during the first year of Clinton’s presidency, the potent right-wing media invented or exaggerated a host of “scandals,” such as Clinton’s Whitewater real estate deal, the Travel-gate firing of some holdover White House staff, and the “murder” of White House deputy counsel Vincent Foster, who actually had committed suicide.

In February 1994, when I attended the Conservative Political Action Conference, what I saw was a glimpse of the future. Right-wingers were hawking frat-boy-style magazines showing Hillary Clinton semi-nude and videos recounting Bill Clinton’s supposed “murders” and other crimes.

There was a locker-room-style madness to the scene, much like the blustery irreverence on the talk radio shows of Rush Limbaugh, G. Gordon Liddy and other Clinton-haters.

At the time, Democrats tended to dismiss the significance of this right-wing media assault. Instead, they sought bipartisanship and focused on legislative achievements, such as passing a deficit-reduction bill and pressing for reform of the health-care system. But congressional Republicans responded by doing whatever they could to delay and sabotage Clinton’s key initiatives.

Backed by a populist upsurge, which found its voice in the Clinton-hating media, the Republicans mounted a powerful comeback. Both the House and Senate fell under GOP control in 1994, shocking Democrats who had assumed that such a turnover was impossible. The next six years were marked mostly by President Clinton clinging to the White House while under relentless attack.

During Campaign 2000, the Right’s mean-spirited humor – which by then pervaded the mainstream news media, too – made fun of the all-too-serious Al Gore. Meanwhile, the over-aged-frat-boy George W. Bush was mostly fawned over as a fresh face with a down-home style.

Then, during the disputed election, when Bush’s team was busy blocking a Florida recount, which – if done fairly – would have put Gore in the White House, the Right rose up in rebellion against such a prospect (most famously with the Brooks Brothers riot to stop the Miami-Dade recount).

On the other side, Gore and the Democrats pursued a vote recount through the courts. And much of the activist Left insisted that the outcome didn’t much matter because Green Party candidate Ralph Nader had declared that there wasn’t “a dime’s worth of difference” between Gore and Bush anyway.

After Bush snaked away with the presidency, he made it clear that he didn’t give a hoot about bipartisan moderation. With the federal budget surprisingly in balance, Bush pressed for Reagan-style tax cuts tilted toward the rich. Soon, the federal government was sliding back into an ocean of red ink.

After the 9/11 attacks, the American people also wanted simplistic moral judgments. So Bush told them that the problem wasn’t that al-Qaeda reflected an extreme form of Islamic anger over Western intervention in the Middle East and especially the long-term Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. No, according to Bush, it was that they “hate our freedoms.”

Bush soon extended the black-white dichotomy to the “axis of evil,” three countries with almost nothing in common: Iraq, Iran and North Korea. With the neocons again pulling the strings -- at the CIA’s analytical division and with the Washington press corps -- the American people were guided to the conclusion that the neocons wanted, an invasion of Iraq.

Reason Rebounds

Only gradually – especially after the Iraq War turned into a figurative quagmire and New Orleans into a real-life one when Hurricane Katrina hit – did independent-minded Americans and the Left fully wake up to the danger of tolerating Bush's fantasy world. They began to aggressively challenge the lies.

This resurgence of rationality proved powerful in Election 2006, when the Democrats regained control of the Congress. Then, in Election 2008, Obama presented himself as not only a brilliant orator but as a rational human being who respected empirical evidence. Beyond an expression of hope, his victory was a recognition by the American people that reality mattered.

But Obama was also faced with the wreckage that Bush had left behind, including a cratered economy, a staggering federal debt, two wars, and tattered international relations with both allies and adversaries. Obama had to sort out what his priorities were, what needed emergency bandaging and what could wait.

Like Clinton before him, Obama also chose to turn his back on demands that the prior Republican administration be held accountable for its crimes. By looking “forward, not backward” in the name of bipartisanship, Obama presumably thought the Republicans might reciprocate, but – as with Clinton – that wasn’t going to happen.

As Obama stumbled, Reagan-style irrationality began to take hold again. After all, it’s not much fun to act responsibly and deal with hard problems.

Soon, millions of Americans were counting themselves as followers of Glenn Beck, the clownishly divorced-from-reality host of a popular Fox program. Other Americans tied teabags to their hats and marched on Washington to defend Reagan’s chief legacy, hatred of government.

Republican lawmakers trotted out their old cure-all for the economy, more tax cuts. And the neocons were back, questioning Obama’s toughness and egging him on to give his militarist commanders in Afghanistan all the fresh troops they want.

Next came Sarah Palin’s bus tour on behalf of her memoir, Going Rogue, with crowds lining up by the thousands to buy the book and get a glimpse of their heroine. For two days, cable news shows, including MSNBC, anchored programs from malls where Palin was appearing.

As soon as the mainstream news correspondents sensed that the tide was turning again, they smoothly readjusted to the resurgence of know-nothing-ism. Palin’s recitation of right-wing talking points was treated with deference and respect, except by the likes of Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Central’s “Daily Show.”

On his Nov. 18 program, Stewart showed a clip of Palin responding to a question about what she’d do about unemployment if she were President.

“I’d start cutting taxes and allowing our small businesses to keep more of what they’re earning,” Palin responded. “Not punishing them by forcing health care ‘reform’ down their throats, by forcing an energy policy down their throats that ultimately will tax them more and cost them more to stay in business.”

“That’s what I don’t like about her right there – it’s the nothing,” Stewart said. “If you peel back the pretty, shooty layers of the Palin onion, there’s no onion. It’s just a conservative boiler-plate mad-lib, ‘freedom is good and taxes are – ooh, I need an adjective – how ‘bout, I don’t know, silly.’

“And the worst part is that it is a mad-lib delivered as though it were the hard-earned wisdom of a life well lived. … The glee, boasting about you’re straight-shootin’ when you’re not straight-shootin’. You’re just a talking-point machine.” [For part of Stewart’s show, see below.]

Palin – like Reagan – has come to embody a willful, almost joyous contempt for reason and facts, a kind of juvenile rebellion against those boring folks who try to figure out reality and act responsibly.

And the Right may be onto something: it’s so much more fun and a lot easier politically to let the crazy times roll.

going rogue

Support for legalizing marijuana grows rapidly around U.S.

Approval for medical use expands alongside criticism of prohibition

By Karl Vick

Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 23, 2009

The same day they rejected a gay marriage ballot measure, residents of Maine voted overwhelmingly to allow the sale of medical marijuana over the counter at state-licensed dispensaries.

Later in the month, the American Medical Association reversed a longtime position and urged the federal government to remove marijuana from Schedule One of the Controlled Substances Act, which equates it with heroin.

A few days later, advocates for easing marijuana laws left their biannual strategy conference with plans to press ahead on all fronts -- state law, ballot measures, and court -- in a movement that for the first time in decades appeared to be gaining ground.

"This issue is breaking out in a remarkably rapid way now," said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance. "Public opinion is changing very, very rapidly."

The shift is widely described as generational. A Gallup poll in October found 44 percent of Americans favor full legalization of marijuana -- a rise of 13 points since 2000. Gallup said that if public support continues growing at a rate of 1 to 2 percent per year, "the majority of Americans could favor legalization of the drug in as little as four years."

A 53 percent majority already does so in the West, according to the survey. The finding heartens advocates collecting signatures to put the question of legalization before California voters in a 2010 initiative.

At last week's International Drug Reform Conference, activists gamed specific proposals for taxing and regulating pot along the lines of cigarettes and alcohol, as a bill pending in the California Legislature would do. The measure is not expected to pass, but in urging its serious debate, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) gave credence to a potential revenue source that the state's tax chief said could raise $1.3 billion in the recession, which advocates describe as a boon.

There were also tips on lobbying state legislatures, where measures decriminalizing possession of small amounts have passed in 14 states. Activists predict half of states will have laws allowing possession for medical purposes in the near future.

Interest in medical marijuana and easing other marijuana laws picked up markedly about 18 months ago, but advocates say the biggest surge came with the election of Barack Obama, the third straight president to acknowledge having smoked marijuana, and the first to regard it with anything like nonchalance.

"As a kid, I inhaled," Barack Obama famously said on the campaign. "That was the whole point."

In office, Obama made good on a promise to halt federal prosecutions of medical marijuana use where permitted by state law. That has recalibrated the federal attitude, which had been consistently hostile to marijuana since the early 1970s, when President Richard Nixon cast aside the recommendations of a presidential commission arguing against lumping pot with hard drugs.

Allen St. Pierre, the executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said he was astonished recently to be invited to contribute thoughts to the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Obama's drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, was police chief in Seattle, where voters officially made enforcement of marijuana laws the lowest priority.

"I've been thrown out of the ONDCP many times," St. Pierre said. "Never invited to actually participate."

Anti-drug advocates counter with surveys showing high school students nationwide already are more likely to smoke marijuana than tobacco -- and that the five states with the highest rate of adolescent pot use permit medical marijuana.

"We are in the prevention business," said Arthur Dean, chairman of the Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America. "Kids are getting the message tobacco's harmful, and they're not getting the message marijuana is."

In Los Angeles, city officials are dealing with elements of public backlash after more than 1,000 medical marijuana dispensaries opened, some employing in-house physicians to dispense legal permission to virtually all comers. The boom town atmosphere brought complaints from some neighbors, but little of the crime associated with underground drug-dealing.

Advocates cite the latter as evidence that, as with alcohol, violence associated with the marijuana trade flows from its prohibition.

"Seriously," said Bruce Merkin, communications director for the Marijuana Policy Project, an advocacy group based in the District, "there is a reason you don't have Mexican beer cartels planting fields of hops in the California forests."

But the controversy over the dispensaries also has put pressure on advocates who specifically champion access for ailing patients, not just those who champion easing marijuana laws.

"I don't want to say we keep arm's length from the other groups. You end up with all of us in the same room," said Joe Elford, counsel for Americans for Safe Access, which has led the court battle for medical marijuana and is squaring off with the Los Angeles City Council. "It's a very broad-based movement."

eight years later...

something in your face

something for your head

the love weed

Marijuana Will Be Legal Soon!

Can writers get a contact high from a news report? It seems possible given the giddy reactions of bloggers and activists to any whiff of positive marijuana-related coverage in the press. The Atlantic Wire previously covered some of the enthusiasm about laxer marijuana restrictions and increased cultural acceptance here and here. Now the Washington Post is bringing the drug back into headlines, with a Monday article positing a 'generational shift' in attitudes toward the drug, with more people favoring marijuana legalization today than a decade ago.



Whether marijuana legalization is in the near-term offing remains to be seen, but the media is happy to continue reporting the trend. Here's a sampling of the march-toward-marijuana-legalization motif over the last year:



* Andrew Cohen, CBS News: "It's not my place to advocate anything - so please don't write and accuse me of being Cheech or Chong. All I am saying is that the economic case for legalizing marijuana, and for lower the drinking rate, is as compelling as it has ever been and that, in a time of great changes in the interaction between government and the governed, it would not be the worst thing in the world to have a serious national debate on the topic."



* Alison Stateman, Time: "If passed, the Marijuana Control, Regulation and Education Act (AB 390) would give California control of pot in a manner similar to that of alcohol while prohibiting its purchase by citizens under age 21. (The bill has been referred to the California state assembly's public-safety and health committees; Ammiano says it could take up to a year before it comes to a vote for passage.) State revenues would be derived from a $50-per-oz. levy on retail sales of marijuana and sales taxes. By adopting the law, California could become a model for other states."



* Joe Klein, Time: "Obviously, marijuana can be abused. But the costs of criminalization have proved to be enormous, perhaps unsustainable. Would legalization be any worse? In any case, the drug-reform discussion comes just at the right moment. We boomers are getting older every day. You're not going to want us on the highways. Make us your best offer."



* Justin Scheck and Stu Woo, The Wall Street Journal: "After years in the shadows, medical marijuana in California is aspiring to crack the commercial mainstream...In February, the Justice Department said it would adhere to President Barack Obama's campaign statement that federal agents no longer would target med-pot dealers who comply with state law. Since then, vendors who had kept a low profile have begun to expand, and entrepreneurs who had avoided cannabis have begun to invest."



* Lisa Ling, National Geographic Explorer: "I really think that its time that our lawmakers and drug enforcement officials, perhaps scientists and intellectuals actually sit down and scrutinize this issue and figure out a way to possibly better regulate it, possibly decriminalize it. And there is a way, I think, because relative to methamphetamines and cocaine, its not as extreme a drug. And maybe there's a way to liken it to our laws vis-à-vis alcohol...I do know that the arguments for legalization are very strong."



* Roger Parloff, Fortune: "The acceptance of medical marijuana has implications that extend far beyond helping those suffering from life-threatening diseases. It is one of several factors -- including demographic changes, the financial crisis, and the widely perceived failure of the war on drugs -- reopening the country's 40-year-old on-again, off-again shouting match over whether marijuana should be legalized. This article is not another polemic about why it should or shouldn't be. Today, in any case, the pertinent question is whether it already has been -- at least on a local-option basis."



* Mark Jacobson, New York Magazine: "Could it be that, at long last, the Great Pot Moment is upon us? The planets are aligning. First and foremost is the recession; there's nothing like a little cash-flow problem to make societies reconsider supposed core values. The balance sheet couldn't be clearer. We have the so-called War on Drugs, the yawning money pit that used to send its mirror-shade warriors to far-flung corners of the globe, like the Golden Triangle of Burma and the Colombian Amazon, where they'd confront evil kingpins. Now, after 40 years, the front lines have moved to the streets of Juárez, where stray bullets can easily pick off old ladies in the Wal-Mart parking in El Paso, Texas, even as Mexico itself has decriminalized pot possession as well as a devil's medicine cabinet of other drugs. At the current $40 billion per annum, even General Westmoreland would have trouble calling this progress."



* Gideon Lewis-Kraus, Harper's: "A great many people who might in another era have cared about illegal foreign wars or grave threats to civil liberties had been outraged into apathy by the unrelenting malevolent ineptitude of their government and had again become preoccupied with their live-work loft spaces and the vesting schedules of options and how best to 'monetize eyeballs.' And whereas their forebears, in a bygone time, might have been found in Golden Gate Park scoring grass from which seeds and twigs had to be charily picked, our contemporaries were pleased to take the state of California up on its gracious proposition of Compassionate Use and relieve their chronic white-collar neck pain with top-shelf industrial-grade medical marijuana, purchased semi-legally and with post office-like convenience in the shabby boutiques increasingly blacking out shop windows all over town."



* Jessica Bennett, Newsweek: "The fact that we now are debating [marijuana decriminalization]--at least in some parts of the country--is the result of a number of forces that, as MacCoun puts it, have created the perfect pot storm: the failure of the War on Drugs, the growing death toll of murderous drug cartels, pop culture, the economy, and a generation of voters that have simply grown up around the stuff. Today there are pot television shows and frequent references to the drug in film, music, and books. And everyone from the president to the most successful athlete in modern history has talked about smoking it at one point or another."



* David Stout and Solomon Moore, The New York Times: "Polls have shown for years that there is widespread public support for making marijuana available to relieve the suffering of people who are very ill. But repeated efforts in Congress to block federal prosecution of medical marijuana have fallen short, and the new policy was a sharp departure from that of the Bush administration, in which the Drug Enforcement Administration raided medical marijuana distributors even if the distributors appeared to be complying with state laws. The new policy, which reflects positions that Mr. Obama took as a presidential candidate and that Mr. Holder laid out in March, came in a memo from David W. Ogden, the deputy attorney general, to the United States attorneys in the affected states, most notably California."

you betcha

Pot Prohibition Is 'Failed Public Health Policy'

State Medical Association Says Pot Prohibition Is 'Failed Public Health Policy' In a laudable nod to the obvious, members of the California Medical Association's (CMA) House of Delegates have endorsed a resolution stating that the criminal prohibition of marijuana is a "failed public health policy."

As enacted, Resolution 704a-09, the "Criminalization of Marijuana" states: "[The] CMA considers the criminalization of marijuana to be a failed public health policy, ... and encourage[s] ... debate and education regarding the health aspects of changing current policy regarding cannabis use." The CMA has more than 35,000 members statewide.

A report just published in the British Columbia Mental Health and Addictions Journal highlights another good reason to question marijuana prohibition: Health-related "social costs" per user are eight times higher for alcohol users than for those who use marijuana, and more than 40 times higher for tobacco smokers.

The report gauges related costs per user at more than $800 yearly for tobacco; $165 for alcohol; and only $20 for cannabis.

The newly adopted CMA resolution coincides with the scheduling of legislative hearings regarding Assembly Bill 390, the Marijuana Control, Regulation, and Education Act, which seeks to tax and regulate the commercial production and retail sale of cannabis to those age 21 or older. The California Assembly Committee on Public Safety is anticipated to vote on AB 390 by late January.

The CMA's resolution comes on the heels of last week's resolution from the American Medical Association (AMA) that "marijuana's status as a federal Schedule I controlled substance be reviewed with the goal of facilitating the conduct of clinical research and development of cannabinoid-based medicines."

This was a significant reversal, since the AMA had previously called for cannabis to be "retained in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act," a legal classification that defines the substance and its natural compounds as possessing "no currently accepted use in treatment in the United States."

afghanistan plan

Report on Weed Use Prompts Call for Legalization

A report released Thursday that shows the number of pot smokers in the world has grown to more than 160 million people has Canadian advocates renewing calls for legalization of the drug.

An Australian study, citing United Nations data from 2006 and published Thursday in the journal Lancet, found that about 166 million people aged 15-64 — or an estimated one in 25 in that age range — reported using cannabis. That's up from about 159 million people in 2005.

"It's not going away. So should one in 25 people be criminalized for smoking pot?" asked Eugene Oscapella, an Ottawa professor and spokesman for the Canadian Foundation For Drug Policy. "What this number says to me is the world is not drug free. Some people prefer alcohol over cannabis and some people prefer cannabis."

The foundation is urging the Canadian government to legalize and regulate marijuana, by allowing people to grow their own and taxing sales the way it regulates alcohol or tobacco.

While the Australian study found pot use was greatest in the U.S., Australia and New Zealand, followed by Europe, another report — from the United Nations — shows marijuana use in this country is actually the highest in the industrialized world.

That 2007 report, by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, found 16.8 per cent of Canadians aged 15 to 64 smoked marijuana or used other cannabis products in 2004. That's the most recent year for which statistics were cited.

"I'd say 70 or 80 per cent of my university students smoke pot and they are perfectly normal people," said Oscapella. "If you've ever tried it you know its no big deal. So why are we using criminal law to deal with this behaviour? That's the real issue."

Other figures — from Statistics Canada — show the number of Canadians using cannabis is on the rise, from 6.5 per cent of Canadians in 1989, to 7.4 per cent in 1994 and then to 12.2 per cent in 2002.

The largest concentration of marijuana use in Canada is in British Columbia, while residents of Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan had lower-than-average rates.

B.C. also leads the country in marijuana production with 40 per cent of Canadian cannabis produced there. That's followed by Ontario at 25 per cent and another 25 per cent in Quebec, the UN report said.

Unlike Canada, in Australia and New Zealand — where eight per cent of the population use cannabis — the numbers there are declining, the Australian study says. It says a similar trend is also happening in western Europe.

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going rogue

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Oh, Pretty Woman

RI considers legalizing marijuana

Special Senate Commission meets for the first time

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) - A special Senate Commission meets for the first time Wednesday, to discuss the possibility of legalizing marijuana in RI.

Lawmakers voted to create the 9 member panel back in July.

The group will study issues surrounding the state's position on marijuana, including the money it might make If it enacts a $35 sin tax for purchases of an ounce or more.

Radio Free Exile

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The Timeless Wisdom of George W. Bush

Its never too late to fuck with Dubya. In fact, it should be mandatory...

Boomers see views relaxing on marijuana

Health, law enforcement officials bemoan greater public tolerance of drug

By Steve Hendrix
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 16, 2009

Smoking pot isn't what it used to be for Joe Lee, a 62-year-old vintage-record dealer in Rockville.

Back in the late 1960s, as an art student in Baltimore, he kept his landlord in a constant state of suspicion, with clouds of marijuana smoke poorly masked by clouds of incense.

These days, after four decades of regular use, cannabis is a smaller deal. Lee takes a few hits every other day or so, when he wants to listen to music or laugh with a few friends on the porch. And he's happy to talk about it.

"There's gotten to be greater tolerance, that's for sure," said Lee, the son of one-time acting Maryland governor Blair Lee III. "I know literally hundreds of people my age who smoke. They are upright citizens, good parents who are holding down jobs. You take two or three puffs, and you're good to go. I'm not a Rastafarian; I don't treat this as some holy sacrament. But pot is fun."

A federal survey of Americans' drug use shows that Lee and his friends are not the only baby boomers approaching the age of retirement much as they departed the Age of Aquarius -- with an occasional case of the munchies. The government's most recent survey showed that the share of marijuana users ages 50 to 59 increased from 5.1 percent in 2002 to almost 10 percent in 2007.

Some of those users are empty-nesters, returning to the drug decades after their pot habits gave way to raising children and building careers. Others, like Lee, have kept using pot all along, researchers said.

"We're concerned by the public health impact of this," said Peter Delany, who heads the office in the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration that conducts the survey. Marijuana could present special problems for older users, he said, including unknown interactions with prescription drugs. "Doctors need to be more sensitive to it," he said. "They may ask older patients about alcohol now but not think to ask about illicit drug use."

But some older marijuana users say they are living evidence that smoking pot does not preclude a normal life, and more older smokers seem more comfortable than at any point since their teen years with going public -- a tribute, they say, to a big boost in public tolerance of marijuana use.
Mainstreaming marijuana

In parts of California, licensed medical marijuana dispensaries have become as common as In-N-Out Burger stands. At least 13 other states allow some form of pot use for medicinal purposes, and the Obama administration announced last month that federal prosecutors would no longer go after medical users in those states, a policy shift that activists hailed as a watershed.

Last week, in a reversal, the American Medical Association called for a review of marijuana's status as a Schedule 1 hard drug alongside LSD and PCP and for more study of its medicinal potential.

In May, California's Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, said it was "time for a debate" on the merits of legalizing and taxing the drug. Nationally, support for legalization has jumped to its highest level in 40 years, up in a Gallup poll from 31 percent in 2000 to 44 percent last month.

In much of American pop culture, the taboo against smoking pot lies largely in ashes -- in ubiquitous references in hip-hop music and in TV programs such as Showtime's "Weeds." Even iconic potheads Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong are in vogue again, back on the road with their 22-city "Light Up America" comedy tour.

All of which adds up to what some commentators see as marijuana's steady march into the mainstream. Conservative pundit George Will recently declared the drug "essentially legalized" in California and predicted that the rest of the nation would follow suit.

That shift in atmosphere has encouraged more older users to take their pot habits public.

"I don't think more people in their 50s are smoking marijuana. I think we are just more comfortable talking about it," said Rick Steves, who writes travel guidebooks and hosts a public TV series on travel. At 54, the clean-cut guru of mass-market European tourism has begun to present himself as the hard-working, successful face of the longtime smoker.

"Even my pastor knows I smoke pot," said Steves, who was recently named Lutheran activist of the year for his work on international poverty relief.

"It's just not that big a deal anymore. It's another recreational drug, like alcohol."

For Steves, the starkest sign of pot's growing acceptance is the annual Hempfest, which draws tens of thousands of marijuana enthusiasts each summer to a park in his home town of Seattle. But he said he has detected a change in more straitlaced cities, including the District, which he visited last week to see his daughter at Georgetown University.

"When I stepped out of my daughter's apartment, a couple of guys were passing a bong on the front stoop," Steves said. "They weren't self-conscious at all."

Although young users generally go to some lengths to keep their pot use under wraps, those of a certain age -- especially those not in danger of being kicked out of school or subjected to workplace drug tests -- seem more likely to talk about their usage.

"It seems the stereotype of the marijuana user as a goofy teenage boy has begun to change," said Shelby Sadler, 48, a freelance editor from Rockville. She described a wide circle of professional friends in the Washington area, many of them women, who use the drug socially. "They are less inclined to hide it now. The kids are gone, and they no longer have to worry about losing their jobs because they're the ones doing the hiring."

Sadler, who was journalist Hunter S. Thompson's longtime editor and works on books with historian Douglas Brinkley, said she smokes a few times a month, usually with friends. The only difference now, compared with when she started at Cornell University, is the clothing.

"Then, it was Crazy Horse crewneck sweaters and oxford shirts," said Sadler, who is editing a history of pot by Keith Stroup, founder of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. "Now I dress like Hillary Clinton."
Police, others disagree

Drug counselors bemoan the softening views on marijuana, saying that it complicates their efforts to steer addicts away from illicit substances.

"It's more of a struggle for us when the parents just see heroin or cocaine as the dangerous drugs and sort of turn their heads with marijuana," said Carol Porto, who runs an inpatient drug treatment center in Calvert County.

Most Washington area police departments enforce the laws that make marijuana illegal, officials said. A Montgomery County police spokesman would not comment other than to say that the department has seen no spike in marijuana use by older residents and is not targeting those users.

One older smoker who doesn't mind outing herself is Florence Siegel, an 88-year-old artist from New York who has been smoking regularly since her early 50s. That's when the family's pediatrician suggested they try marijuana together to see "what the kids were so excited about." The pediatrician didn't feel a thing. Siegel said she never stopped.

Now her routine is to sit in her favorite chair each evening, listen to Bach and take a few hits from one of her many pipes. Marijuana boosts her creativity and helps with joint pain that has come with aging, she said.

Siegel smokes occasionally with her daughter Loren Siegel, 64, a recently retired lawyer. But does her 93-year-old husband ever join her?

"Oh, no," she said. "Well, only very rarely."

Tea partiers punk’d

Tea partiers punk’d into supporting removal of white people from US

By Daniel Tencer

A speaker at an anti-immigration rally in St. Paul, Minnesota, this past weekend got the crowd to support more than just the deportation of all illegal immigrants -- he got them cheering for the eviction of all European-descended immigrants to America who "stole this land through genocide and ethnic cleansing."

A crowd of some 40 people showed up to the steps of the Minnesota State Capitol on Saturday to protest proposed reform of US immigration law. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Friday that the Obama administration was pushing for immigration reform that would create a pathway for the legalization of undocumented immigrants.

Napolitano said she would like to see a "tough, fair" plan that would allow illegal migrants to gain legal status if they pay a fine, pass a criminal background check, pay all back taxes and learn English.

That idea brought 40 anti-immigration protesters to Saturday's protest, as well as 30 pro-immigration reform counter-protesters, according to FightBackNews in Minneapolis.

One of those protesters, going by the alias "Robert Erickson," got a speaking spot at the rally and used it to argue for the eviction of all descendants of European immigrants -- in other words, that contingent of white Americans who these days see themselves as "real" Americans.

But some of the demonstrators didn't seem to notice that the angry speech was targeted at them.

"In Minneapolis where I'm from, we have a huge immigrant population that has been causing a number of problems," Erickson began. "With the economy in recession and so many people laid off and unable to find work, immigrants should not be competing for the few jobs that are open. It's just not fair to the folks who have a claim to this country and have a right to be here."

That was met with with applause, but soon it became clear that "Erickson" had a different notion from the Tea-partiers as to who actually has "a claim to this country."

"Let's send these European immigrants back where they came from," he said to wild cheers. "We need to send every one of them back home. ... They stole this land through genocide and ethnic cleansing."

Even after that comment, some of the anti-immigration protesters didn't seem to notice that "Erickson" was standing up for the right of Native Americans to reclaim their land from the Caucasian population -- even though, as FightBackNews noted, the pro-immigration reform crowd had joined in the cheering.

"Erickson" walked off the stage leading the crowd in a loud chant of "Columbus go home! Columbus go home!"

Political mockery has been gaining steam as a tactic of progressive activists. Last month, the Yes Men held a phony press conference pretending to be representatives of the US Chamber of Commerce, and tricked major media outlets into reporting that the group had relented and now supported climate change legislation.

In August, a farcical group calling itself Billionaires for WealthCare mocked opponents of health care reform with slogans such as "“If God loved the poor people, he wouldn’t let them get sick,” and “Healthcare rationing, that’s our job!”

The following video was filmed Saturday, November 14, 2009, and uploaded to YouTube by FightBackNews.

New Additions to Radio Free Exile Televised

Here's some of the newest additions to the Radio Free Exile Televised stream.


Bill Hicks - "Mandatory Marijuana"
Civilization! *some restrictions apply
Doctor Steel's Fibonacci Sequence
Bob Marley - "Redemption Song"
Paul Hipp - "Waterboard! Waterboard!"
Playing For Change - "One Love"
Arlo Guthrie - "City Of New Orleans"

Tune in to see what's playing now...

dick magazine

If Marijuana Production Were Legal:

Projected Tax Revenues, by State

Love it or hate it, people smoke marijuana - lots of it. In some states marijuana consumption and possession have been decriminalized, and even legalized for medicinal purposes. But, have you ever wondered how large the economics of Marijuana were? Us too. As a result ,have decided to put together this graphic, which illustrates the popularity of marijuana consumption, the federal tax dollars spent to keep marijuana illegal, and the possible tax revenues that could be generated if marijuana production were legalized and taxed like any other agricultural product. It is especially interesting, with regards to the Great Recession:

atheism

the red phone

First U.S. marijuana cafe opens in Portland

By Dan Cook

PORTLAND, Oregon (Reuters) - The United States' first marijuana cafe opened on Friday, posing an early test of the Obama administration's move to relax policing of medical use of the drug.

The Cannabis Cafe in Portland, Oregon, is the first to give certified medical marijuana users a place to get hold of the drug and smoke it -- as long as they are out of public view -- despite a federal ban.

"This club represents personal freedom, finally, for our members," said Madeline Martinez, Oregon's executive director of NORML, a group pushing for marijuana legalization.

"Our plans go beyond serving food and marijuana," said Martinez. "We hope to have classes, seminars, even a Cannabis Community College, based here to help people learn about growing and other uses for cannabis."

The cafe -- in a two-story building which formerly housed a speak-easy and adult erotic club Rumpspankers -- is technically a private club, but is open to any Oregon residents who are NORML members and hold an official medical marijuana card.

Members pay $25 per month to use the 100-person capacity cafe. They don't buy marijuana, but get it free over the counter from "budtenders". Open 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., it serves food but has no liquor license.

There are about 21,000 patients registered to use marijuana for medical purposes in Oregon. Doctors have prescribed marijuana for a host of illnesses, including Alzheimer's, diabetes, multiple sclerosis and Tourette's syndrome.

On opening day, reporters invited to the cafe could smell, but were not allowed to see, people smoking marijuana.

"I still run a coffee shop and events venue, just like I did before we converted it to the Cannabis Cafe, but now it will be cannabis-themed," said Eric Solomon, the owner of the cafe, who is looking forward to holding marijuana-themed weddings, film festivals and dances in the second-floor ballroom.

NO PROSECUTION

The creation of the cafe comes almost a month after the Obama administration told federal attorneys not to prosecute patients who use marijuana for medical reasons or dispensaries in states which have legalized them.

About a dozen states, including Oregon, followed California's 1996 move to adopt medical marijuana laws, allowing the drug to be cultivated and sold for medical use. A similar number have pending legislation or ballot measures planned.

Pot cafes, known as "coffee shops", are popular in the Dutch city of Amsterdam, where possession of small amounts of marijuana is legal. Portland's Cannabis Cafe is the first of its kind to open in the United States, according to NORML.

Growing, possessing, distributing and smoking marijuana are still illegal under U.S. federal law, which makes no distinction between medical and recreational use.

Federal and local law enforcement agencies did not return phone calls from Reuters on Friday seeking comment on the Portland cafe's operations.

"To have a place that is this open about its activities, where people can come together and smoke -- I say that's pretty amazing." said Tim Pate, a longtime NORML member, at the cafe.

Some locals are hoping it might even be good for business.

"I know some neighbors are pretty negative about this place opening up," said David Bell, who works at a boutique that shares space with the cafe. "But I'm withholding judgment. There's no precedent for it. We don't know what to expect. But it would great if it brought some customers into our store."

Paul Hipp - "Waterboard! Waterboard!"

The appeal that Obama refused

In the aftermath of the tragic shooting at Fort Hood, Barack Obama paid a visit to a barracks on the U.S. Army base outside Killeen, Texas.

Michael Kern, president of the Fort Hood chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), waited his turn to shake hands with the president like everyone else. When Obama approached him with his hand outstretched, Michael attempted to give the president a letter, saying, "Sir, IVAW has some concerns we'd like for you to address."

Obama dropped his hand and went on to speak to the next soldier, and the Secret Service took the letter. Here, we publish the statement from the IVAW that Obama wouldn't accept.

President Obama:

In your recent comments on the Fort Hood tragedy, you stated, "These are men and women who have made the selfless and courageous decision to risk and at times give their lives to protect the rest of us on a daily basis. It's difficult enough when we lose these brave Americans in battles overseas. It is horrifying that they should come under fire at an Army base on American soil." Sir, we have been losing these brave Americans on American soil for years, due to the mental health problems that come after deployment, which include post-traumatic stress disorder and, often, suicide.

You also said, "We will continue to support the community with the full resources of the federal government." Sir, we appreciate that--but what we need is not more FBI or Homeland Security personnel swarming Fort Hood. What we need is full mental health care for all soldiers serving in the Army. What happened at Fort Hood has made it abundantly clear that the military mental health system, and our soldiers, are broken.

You said, "We will make sure that we will get answers to every single question about this terrible incident." Sir, one of the answers is self-evident: that a strained military cannot continue without better mental health care for all soldiers.

You stated that "As Commander-in-Chief, there's no greater honor but also no greater responsibility for me than to make sure that the extraordinary men and women in uniform are properly cared for." Sir, we urge you to carry out your promise and ensure that our servicemembers indeed have access to quality mental health care.

The Army has only 408 psychiatrists--military, civilian and contractors--serving about 553,000 active-duty troops around the world. This is far too few, and the providers who exist are often not competent professionals, as this incident shows. Military wages cannot attract the quality psychiatrists we need to care for these returning soldiers.

We ask that:

1. Each soldier about to be deployed and returning from deployment be assigned a mental health provider who will reach out to them, rather than requiring them to initiate the search for help.

2. Ensure that the stigma of seeking care for mental health issues is removed for soldiers at all levels--from junior enlisted to senior enlisted and officers alike.

3. Ensure that if mental health care is not available from military facilities, soldiers can seek mental health care with civilian providers of their choice.

4. Ensure that soldiers are prevented from deploying with mental health problems and issues.

5. Stop multiple redeployments of the same troops.

6. Ensure full background checks for all mental health providers and periodic check-ups for them to decompress from the stresses they shoulder, from the soldiers they counsel to the workload they endure.

Sir, we hope that you will make the decision not to deploy one single Fort Hood troop without ensuring that all have had access to fair and impartial mental health screening and treatment.

You have stated on a number of occasions, starting during your campaign, how important our military and veterans are to this nation. The best way to safeguard the soldiers of this nation is to provide ALL soldiers with immediate, personal and professional mental health resources.

Iraq Veterans Against the War

how all revolutions end

stressed armed forces

Major Hasan and The Legacy of George W Bush

by Thom Hartmann

If Bill Clinton - or, presumably, Al Gore (or even Ralph Nader) - had been President in 2001, the Ft. Hood massacre almost certainly wouldn't have happened. Because George W. Bush was president, it did. Here's why it's Bush's fault:

One of the first lessons aspiring novelists and screenwriters learn is that the goodness of a hero is defined by a single quality - the evil of his opponent. From Superman's Lex Luthor to Batman's Joker to Indiana Jones' Nazis to Luke Skywalker's Darth Vader, for a hero to be perceived as larger than life, he must have a larger than life enemy.

If Frodo in "Lord of the Rings," for example, hadn't been forced to do battle with the supernatural powers of the Ring and its minions, his story would have merely been a boring travelogue. But with an army of supernaturally brilliant, evil, and powerful opponents, Frodo had the opportunity to display his extraordinary inner courage and resourcefulness, qualities he didn't even realize he had until they were called forth by the peril of an awesome evil.

This is a lesson that was not lost on Karl Rove and George W. Bush. If they could recast George as the opponent of a power as great as the Ring, then the rather ordinary Dubya could become the extraordinary SuperGeorge, rising from his facileness to prevail over supernatural powers of evil.

Bill Clinton had a similar chance, but passed on it for the good of America and the world.

When bin Laden attacked us in the 1990s - several times - in an attempt to raise his own stature in the Islamic world, Bill Clinton dealt with Osama like the criminal he was. He enlisted Interpol and the police and investigative agencies of various nations, brought in our best intelligence agents, and missed bin Laden in a missile-launched assassination attempt by a scant twenty minutes (bringing derisive howls from Republicans that he was trying to "wag the dog" and deflect attention from the Monica investigations).

As Clinton left office, he and the CIA were tightening the noose on bin Laden, and his National Security Advisor, Sandy Berger, told me that when he briefed his successor, Condoleezza Rice, he told her to put bin Laden and al-Qaeda at the top of her priority list and thus finish the job the Clinton administration had nearly completed.

As we know, when Rice, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush, et al finally came up with the priorities for their new administration in January of 2001, al-Qaeda had been replaced by tax cuts for Bush's rich donors on the "A" list, and didn't even appear on the "B" list.

Thus came 9/11, despite over fifty explicit warnings given to the President, including the infamous August 6, 2001 CIA briefing in Crawford, Texas that in the immediate future al-Qaeda intended to hijack commercial planes and use them to attack east coast targets. (Bush apparently took the warnings seriously - Ashcroft immediately stopped flying on commercial aircraft, and Bush moved to Texas for the longest vacation in the history of the American presidency...and even when that was over, he preferred Florida to target-listed Washington, D.C.)

In the days after the 9/11 attacks - much as in the days after Tim McVeigh blew up the Murrah Building - America had the sympathy of the world, and the police and intelligence agencies of even normally hostile nations offered to help us track down and bring to justice its perpetrators.

Muslims all over the world were horrified at the actions of one of their own, a fundamentalist turned criminal and murderer.

Mullah Omar of Afghanistan's Taliban first offered to arrest bin Laden and turn him over to us (Washington Post, Page 1, October 29, 2001, "Diplomats Met With Taliban On Bin Laden" by Ottaway and Stephens) and then made an explicit offer to arrest Bin Laden and try him for the crime of 9/11 (CNN, October 7, 2001, "US Rejects Taliban Offer To Try Bin Laden"; The Guardian, October 14, 2001, "Bush Rejects Taliban Offer To Hand Bin Laden Over").

It would have been so easy for Bush to accept Omar's offer, which had resulted, according to the Post, in over 20 diplomatic meetings and negotiations. The Justice Department could have arrested Bin Laden like they did McVeigh, helped the Taliban dismantle Bin Laden's training camps and track down their attendees and sponsors, and launch an international effort to disassemble and render impotent al-Qaeda.

It probably could have been done in a year or less, given the intensity of the worldwide empathy for citizens of America and the many other nations whose people died in the World Trade Center. Over 5000 American soldiers would still be alive, and tens of thousands would not have lost arms, legs, and eyes. Hundreds of thousands - possibly over a million - innocent Afghans and Iraqis would still be alive.

But Karl Rove knew that George W. Bush had a problem, and saw in bin Laden the solution. And didn't much give a damn what it would mean to American Muslims.

Bush had not defeated Al Gore fair and square, and was seen by most Americans as a spoiler, an illegitimate leader. As soon as the details of his proposed "supply side" voodoo economics hit the press in the first months of his presidency, the markets went into a nosedive.

And already there were stories circulating in the media of his cozy relationship with corrupt oil barons like Ken Lay and the secret energy meetings in the Spring of 2001 - before 9/11 - in which Cheney, Lay, and others in the oil industry were apparently carving up the oil fields of Iraq.

Bush, in short, was seen as a buffoonish pretender, an ineffectual manager, and a sellout to big oil and other scandal-ridden industries. He was the butt of late-night jokes, a former college cheerleader, a "dry drunk" (except when tempted by beer and pretzels), an inside trader, a small man on the national and international stage.

George W. desperately needed his own Lex Luthor if he was to reinvent himself as Superman.

Rove and Bush realized that if they simply branded Bin Laden as the criminal thug that he was - the leader of an obscure Islamic mafia with fewer than 20,000 serious members - they wouldn't have the super-villain they needed for George W. Bush to be seen as a super-hero. If Bush only authorized a police action, or cut a deal with Omar, he'd miss a golden opportunity to position himself as the Battle Commander of The War Against Evil Incarnate.

And so began the building of the mythos. Osama as evil genius. Osama as worldwide mastermind. Even Osama as the antichrist (as General Boykin reminded us so candidly).

If the remnants of al-Qaeda tried to pull our strings by increasing "chatter" about particular flights, for example, the Bush White House hyper-reacted with many press conferences and televised appearances by Tom Ridge. Every action was trumpeted. Bush put "Terror Alerts" on the screens of TVs nationwide as often as possible. The constant drumbeat was that George The Good was battling the One True Dragon. And that Dragon was Islamic.

For George to remain SuperGeorge, Bin Laden had to be as big as Hitler in the minds of Americans. Thus, Richard Perle wrote in his breathless and hyperbolic book An End To Evil: "There is no middle way for Americans: It is victory or holocaust."

But Afghanistan and Iraq weren't Germany, and Bin Laden wasn't even a pale imitation of Hitler. It wasn't a nation that attacked us - it was a tiny, local, but well-funded Islamic mafia. And that band of thugs run by Bin Laden no more represented the interests or opinions of the majority of the world's Muslims than Tim McVeigh represented the majority of America's Christians.

This archetypal transformation of George W. Bush from spoiled, rich-boy pretender-to-the-presidency into the caped (well, flight-suited) SuperGeorge, Defender Of All Things Good And Right had a powerful impact on the American people - and particularly on their perception of Muslims.

The shadow of the "good" SuperGeorge was, necessarily, the "evil" of Muslims. They were vilified - talk show hosts called for their outright murder ("Kill them all" said Michael Savage) - and a steady drumbeat of suspicion was cast toward American Muslims.

Fox News and right-wing talk jumped in with both feet, feeding anti-Muslim hysteria that continues to this day with teary-eyed TV shows, a "secret Muslim" president, and Nazi-image Tea Parties.

"Be afraid," they tell Americans every day. "Be very afraid."

In retrospect, it's surprising that Major Hasan was the first to snap in all these years.

Bill Clinton knew what to do with a terrorist, be he Bin Laden or Tim McVeigh: brand them as criminals.

The countries of Europe who endured years of terrorism - from the crimes of the IRA against the citizens of Britain, to the crimes of the November 17th terrorist group against Greece, to the crimes of the Red Brigades against Italy - they were fought by investigators, intelligence operatives, and the highly effective web of police agencies that stretch across the world. Although less filled with shock and awe, these able people could have brought Bin Laden and his associates to justice without turning him into a super-villain or demonizing Muslims.

But that would have deflated the heroic SuperGeorge action figure in the minds of average Americans, and possibly Cheny's company Halliburton - which was on shaky ground financially before 9/11 - would have even gone under because of Cheney's ill-thought-out purchase by that company of a bankrupt asbestos supplier. (On December 10, 2001, before the bombing of Afghanistan began, Halliburton stock lost 43% of its value in a single day because Cheney's business decision was pushing them toward bankruptcy.)

So George and Dick made out just fine. But Major Hasan went nuts. And probably never would have, had somebody other than Bush/Rove/Cheney been in the White House back in 2001.

Thom Hartmann (thom at thomhartmann.com) is a Project Censored Award-winning New York Times best-selling author, and host of a nationally syndicated daily progressive talk program The Thom Hartmann Show. www.thomhartmann.com

AMA Ends 72-Year Policy, Says Marijuana has Medical Benefits

HOUSTON --- The American Medical Association (AMA) voted today to reverse its long-held position that marijuana be retained as a Schedule I substance with no medical value. The AMA adopted a report drafted by the AMA Council on Science and Public Health (CSAPH) entitled, "Use of Cannabis for Medicinal Purposes," which affirmed the therapeutic benefits of marijuana and called for further research. The CSAPH report concluded that, "short term controlled trials indicate that smoked cannabis reduces neuropathic pain, improves appetite and caloric intake especially in patients with reduced muscle mass, and may relieve spasticity and pain in patients with multiple sclerosis." Furthermore, the report urges that "the Schedule I status of marijuana be reviewed with the goal of facilitating clinical research and development of cannabinoid-based medicines, and alternate delivery methods."

The change of position by the largest physician-based group in the country was precipitated in part by a resolution adopted in June of 2008 by the Medical Student Section (MSS) of the AMA in support of the reclassification of marijuana's status as a Schedule I substance. In the past year, the AMA has considered three resolutions dealing with medical marijuana, which also helped to influence the report and its recommendations. The AMA vote on the report took place in Houston, Texas during the organization's annual Interim Meeting of the House of Delegates. The last AMA position, adopted 8 years ago, called for maintaining marijuana as a Schedule I substance, with no medical value.

"It's been 72 years since the AMA has officially recognized that marijuana has both already-demonstrated and future-promising medical utility," said Sunil Aggarwal, Ph.D., the medical student who spearheaded both the passage of the June 2008 resolution by the MSS and one of the CSAPH report's designated expert reviewers. "The AMA has written an extensive, well-documented, evidence-based report that they are seeking to publish in a peer-reviewed journal that will help to educate the medical community about the scientific basis of botanical cannabis-based medicines." Aggarwal is also on the Medical & Scientific Advisory Board of Americans for Safe Access (ASA), the largest medical marijuana advocacy organization in the U.S.

The AMA's about face on medical marijuana follows an announcement by the Obama Administration in October discouraging U.S. Attorneys from taking enforcement actions in medical marijuana states. In February 2008, a resolution was adopted by the American College of Physicians (ACP), the country's second largest physician group and the largest organization of doctors of internal medicine. The ACP resolution called for an "evidence-based review of marijuana's status as a Schedule I controlled substance to determine whether it should be reclassified to a different schedule. "The two largest physician groups in the U.S. have established medical marijuana as a health care issue that must be addressed," said ASA Government Affairs Director Caren Woodson. "Both organizations have underscored the need for change by placing patients above politics."

Though the CSAPH report has not been officially released to the public, AMA documentation indicates that it:
"(1) provides a brief historical perspective on the use of cannabis as medicine;
(2) examines the current federal and state-based legal envelope relevant to the medical use of cannabis;
(3) provides a brief overview of our current understanding of the pharmacology and physiology of the endocannabinoid system;
(4) reviews clinical trials on the relative safety and efficacy of smoked cannabis and botanical-based products; and
(5) places this information in perspective with respect to the current drug regulatory framework."