Heavy Metal Monkage

Has nothing to do with hemp, per se, but does further illustrate that age discrimination is bullshit and young people have no monopoly on feeling oppressed or desiring to break out of the societal cookie cutter mold. People should be allowed to do WHATEVER THEY WANT at ANY AGE.

California's Inalienable Rights Enforcement Initiative

Whatever happened to STATE'S RIGHTS? We're TAKING THEM BACK, that's what. Please do read the LAO analysis of The California Inalienable Rights Enforcement Initiative (A.G. File No. 08‑0009) in its entirety right now. It's short, but could be pivotal in the the century long history of our struggle.

Our regular readers know that I don't ever insist on reading right now unless it is vitally essential. Please, do read it right now. It's not that long and by writing to your congress person to support this key legislation and then VOTING to support this measure, we will strike a major blow against the Totalitarian Prohibition Regime. Excerpt:

March 24, 2008

Pursuant to Elections Code Section 9005, [the California Legislative Analyst's Office has] reviewed the proposed initiative cited as the “The Inalienable Rights Enforcement Initiative” (A.G. File No. 08‑0009). The initiative amends the State Constitution and adds Section 32 that allows, with certain restrictions, the legal cultivation, possession, transportation, sale, and use of marijuana.

Given that the federal government continues to enforce [utterly backward] federal marijuana laws after the passage of California's Proposition 215, which allowed marijuana use for medicinal purposes, it is likely that enforcement of federal marijuana laws would continue if this measure is enacted. As such, any revenues and expenditures generated by this measure would be subject to significant uncertainty. The measure would have the following major fiscal effects:

• Potential savings of up to several tens of millions of dollars annually to state and local governments, which would no longer incur the costs of incarcerating and supervising certain marijuana offenders.
• Potential costs of up to the tens of millions of dollars to state and local governments to fund the one-time start-up costs of the IREBs.
• A potentially significant increase in state and local spending on substance abuse treatment services that could possibly be partially or fully offset by revenues from this measure.
• Potential increased revenues in the tens of millions to low hundreds of millions of dollars annually from marijuana stamps and licenses to support specified programs and the IREBs.
• Unknown but potentially significant increase in state and local revenues from collection of SUT on the sale of Marijuana.
• Unknown but potentially significant decrease in state and local revenues from taxes on tobacco and alcohol due to a prohibition of advertising for these goods that would likely result in a decline in sales.

Vermont Hemp Farming Bill Becomes Law

Vote Hemp: News: Press Releases: 7-1-08

MONTPELIER, Vermont — Vote Hemp, a grassroots advocacy organization working to give farmers the right to grow non-drug industrial hemp, is extremely pleased that the Vermont Secretary of State's office accepted Formal Opinion #2008-1 from the Office of the Attorney General and gave H.267, the Hemp for Vermont bill, the designation of Act No. 212 last Friday. The new law sets up a state-regulated program for farmers to grow non-drug industrial hemp which is used in a wide variety of products, including nutritious foods, cosmetics, body care, clothing, tree-free paper, auto parts, building materials and much more. Learn more about industrial hemp at the Vote Hemp Web site.

Pilot Speed

Sometimes, it's just about the music. Especially when Sometimes is All The Time.

Watch the latest videos on YouTube.com

The Planet is Fine. Us? Not so much.

"The planet is FINE ... the PEOPLE are fucked!" -- George Carlin

Hemp for Victory

This film is authentic even though no less than the Library of Congress LIED ABOUT IT'S EXISTENCE until it could no longer be denied. The hypocrisy of marijuana prohibition is so far beyond absurd as to render any thinking American utterly mortified that We The People have tolerated the abuses of Government that would one day SUBSIDIZE our growing of hemp and the next IMPRISON OUR CHILDREN for it's possession or recreational use.

And this is a government to whom we are to feel proud to pledge allegiance? I think not. However, WE CAN BE THE CHANGE WE SEEK IN THE WORLD and can *change* these backward policies through education and solidarity in action.

Bush Impeachment in Progress

But have you heard a SINGLE word about it in the mainstream? Of course not. And as usual, guess who our humble, courageous, and persistent American hero is ... yet again ...

Metallica Has Smoked Themselves Retarded

So sad, but Mark is right:

I try not to throw this terminology around lightly, either, as I’ve witnessed [and partaken in] a fair amount of mental incapacity and inebriation in my life. This is the only explanation I can proffer that seems to make any sense, though.

Under the Influence: The Chemical Muse

Public Radio International (PRI), National Public Radio (NPR), and Wisconsin Public Radio (WPR)'s To The Best of Our Knowledge (TTBOOK) present Under the Influence:

David Hillman almost lost his chance for a PhD when his doctoral committee questioned the part of his dissertation on recreational drug use in antiquity. He took it out, but revived it for his book "The Chemical Muse : Drug Use and the Roots of Western Civilization." He tells Jim Fleming that drug use was common in Greco-Roman times, and that the ancients thought it helped them get closer to the gods.

Program 08-05-18-B (click to listen now).

You can find additional Editorial Reviews at Barnes and Noble:

[EXCERPT from Publishers Weekly] -- Ancient Greeks and Romans used substances from plants and animals to heal the body, but also, Hillman says, to heal the mind and as a source of creative inspiration. Taking up an old thesis of such scholars as Morton Smith and John Allegro, Hillman contends that ancient poets and playwrights from Homer to Aristophanes, and philosophers from Pythagoras to Empedocles, featured the use of mind-altering drugs in their writings. Hillman ends with a peroration on the roots of the Western notion of freedom in ancient Greece and on the right to use recreational drugs as a core freedom.

Kirkus Reviews (Source) -- In ancient Greece and Rome the right to use recreational drugs was not just accepted, but an important aspect of personal freedom. Conservative academics don't want this to get around, claims debut author Hillman, asserting that he was told to delete material on recreational drug use from his dissertation for a doctorate in classics from the University of Wisconsin. That incident provided the incentive for this book, which argues that psychotropic drugs played a crucial role in the history of Western intellectual development. The earliest Greek philosophers, Hillman avers, "flourished in a society that embraced the intellectual, social, and political freedoms associated with recreational drug use." They understood the value of mind-altering substances in assisting creativity and advocated their use. In the ancient world, he continues, such botanical medicines as opium and belladonna were a comfort and a source of hope; they were often mixed with wine, or inhaled, or applied as suppositories to provide relief from pain and illness. Knowledge of their powerful effects-euphoria, sedation, states of altered perception, temporary psychosis-was widespread, and ancient myths are replete with instances of their power. The author combs the writings of Homer, Virgil and Ovid for references to narcotics and the effects of various stimulants, seeking to demonstrate their familiarity to those authors and their audiences. Among the personal freedoms valued highly by the founders of Western civilization, he contends, was the right of the individual to use drugs of any kind; Hillman views the loss of this right as deplorable. Apparently still stinging from his academic experience, he claims that classical scholars have a moral bent that has led them to ignore this subject, making "the Greco-Roman fascination with narcotics, stimulants, and depressants . . . the last unexplored frontier of ancient history."If the movement to legalize marijuana is looking for an irate classicist as spokesman, Hillman is it.

2008 Presidential Candidates Come Clean on Marijuana Use

FINALLY! Once we can at least get some truth tellers in the highest office of the land, it may not be long before we finally END THE MORONIC WAR ON MARIJUANA!

As it turns out, while Kerry and others also went on record professing the truth, it is the introspective Barack Obama, leading what we might call the New American Century for Sanity and Truth In Public Policy Movement.

Hemp for Eliot

It's a little off-topic, but the videos at this link are completely stereotypical of the hubris and hypocrisy that keeps STUPID laws on the books and stupid people defending them.

Jon Stewart’s Recipe for Spitzer Stew

Canadians are all potheads ... but they are still better than us

So posits prolific writer, ATP licensed pilot, photographer, and self-described recovering computer programmer-engineer Philip Greenspun in response to this gratuitously hyperbolic, fear-mongering Wall Street Journal article which absurdly attempts to imply that legalizing marijuana has somehow led directly and immediately to "the execution-style murders of six people" while dismissively glossing over the fact that the "greater Vancouver remains one of the safest metropolitan areas in North America" in the very same article.

Brilliant. I'm shocked that a publication as venerable as the WSJ would tolerate such irrational and irresponsible histrionics; not to mention the inexcusably sloppy lumping together of all illicit drug-related crime -- cocaine, crack, heroine -- as somehow typical of "those marijuana users." That's utterly absurd, Dougy, and you know better. Shame on you.

Just like at the end of alcohol prohibition, there are bound to be some pissed off thugs here and there when we take away their tax-free black market cash and put it to work in our American Economy, including a sizable boost to tax revenues. That is the best reason to LEGALIZE, rather than a reason to revoke Canada's progressive policy.

Gladwell on The (Entirely Arbitrary) War On Drugs

The story begins at gladwell.com: The War on Drugs, as follows:

From the January 14, 2008 Sports Illustrated:

Page 36: "Then, on a late touchdown run against Arkansas on Nov. 23 [LSU quarterback Matt Flynn] separated his throwing shoulder. Two painkilling injections allowed him to stay in the game."