If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
This is just yet another way marijuana smokers are second-class citizens in America. You can drink all the beer you like and we'd have to prove your bad parenting before taking your kids, but smoke any pot at all and you are a bad parent by definition.
People often wonder why someone in my position would advocate for diversified legal intoxication. After all, I'm an advocate for total sobriety]. My reasons are many, but the most notable is what the alcohol monopoly is doing to our communities and our families.
Washington, D.C. may no longer be the "murder capital," but new data released by the D.C. police department conļ¬rms we're still #1 in something: marijuana arrests.
Barack Obama and Eric Holder continue to fight the War On Weed as if Nancy Reagan were in charge. Or Harry Anslinger, for that matter. This fight has been very quiet, for the most part -- Obama has given no major speeches touting his crackdown on marijuana -- but it has been a fierce one nonetheless.
Why does Mark, like many of today's American black market cannabis farmers, dread the above-ground acceptance of his industry?
I'm not naive. I know what bureaucratic thrust drives the war on drugs and what an obstacle this represents. Yet still, everywhere I look, I also see the writing on the wall. Everyday, a growing number of states moves closer to legalizing marijuana as Colorado and Washington did on Election Day.
Conservatives demand mandatory drug testing of applicants for unemployment insurance and welfare benefits. Shouldn't senior executives of banks that receive federal aid also have to "pee in the cup"?
We've got a lot to cover this week, so we're going to try to get through everything in a rather foreshortened format. At least, that's the goal.
Law-abiding patients possessing well below the state-approved amount of medical marijuana are forced to defend themselves in court for following the law. The Linden arrest policy is seemingly bent on circumventing Michigan's medical marijuana law.
Imagine how many more customers companies like Wal-Mart, McDonalds, General Motors, Amazon.com, Ford, Foot Locker, H & M, or Ben & Jerry's might have if the tens of millions of people with convictions could get jobs and not have to live on food stamps!
Given all of these benefits, why have Obama and the political establishment chosen to remain silent? The explanation has to do with retrograde and backward beliefs which have been hindering environmental progress for a generation.
If you have a justification for violence, destruction, murder, like a political statement, like war, does that make it right? Or does thinking it's right make you crazy?
Today is a very special day for the memory of my friendly acquaintance and sometimes political rival, Gatewood Galbraith.
"My 15-year old son just told me that he tried marijuana a few weeks ago with his buddies. I don't know if I should punish him or if doing so will only make him become dishonest. He said he didn't like it, but I'm not sure I believe him."
No matter what happens, Senator Paul represents a redefining of America's conservative party, and regardless of how electable he is now, his posturing should send a clear message to Democrats.
Given forty years of escalation of the war on drugs in the U.S. and around the world, the global consensus that the policy is a deadly and costly failure, and that policies that hurt our fragile economies must be fixed, we need a new Shafer Commission to develop and recommend a drug policy that saves lives.
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