A federal appeals court ruled against the thousands of people who have experienced the life-saving effects of CBD oil by upholding the decision that the substance is a Schedule 1 drug.
The post Federal Court Proves Gov’t Loyalty to Big Pharma, Rules CBD Has No Medical Value appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
(INTELLIHUB) — After medical marijuana was approved in the state of Arkansas in early-2017 a judge struck down the idea of letting the businesses sell the plant which grows in the ground naturally.
Marijuana Business Daily reports:
Pulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen last month ruled that the state’s licensing process for the cultivation facilities violated a 2016 voter-approved constitutional amendment legalizing marijuana for patients with certain medical conditions.
“We are under an injunction that voids the method of cultivation scoring. Therefore, dispensary application review is on hold as we review the situation,” DFA spokesman Scott Hardin said in a statement.
To boot, the state made it a stiffer penalty for those who get caught with the plant who do not have a license for medical, making the entire process a sham to enslave and further criminalize.
The post Arkansas judge blocks medical marijuana dispensaries in the state appeared first on Intellihub.
Cannabis oil is gathering an unstoppable momentum as a world class healer, and there is little or nothing Western Governments are going to be able to do stop it. Cases are popping up all over the world showing that cannabis oil has healed some very serious diseases, including anxiety disorders, epilepsy, MS (Multiple Sclerosis), cerebral palsy and cancer. This young man healed his stage IV throat, stomach and pancreatic cancer with cannabis oil. This Australian women healed her terminal stage IV lung cancer with it. Wallace Rose in the video clip above explains how cannabis oil cured his stage IV pancreatic cancer. It is a fundamental human right, no matter where you live on the planet, to be able to access and use whatever medicine you want to heal yourself. And, thankfully, we are beginning to see that Governments worldwide will not have the power to stand in the way of this natural right any longer.
First of all, let’s clear up some definitions. Cannabis sativa is the plant and species; hemp and marijuana are both varieties or subspecies of it. Marijuana is actually a Spanish slang term meaning “Mary-Jane”. Marijuana is simply considered to have a higher THC content than hemp. THC (Tetrahydrocannabinol) is one of the unique phytonutrients or plant chemicals of cannabis. However, both hemp and marijuana contain various cannabinoids, a class of chemicals that activate cell membrane receptors.
To those unfamiliar with the beginning of the United States, it may come as a shock to learn that hemp was a big part of the inception. Not only was hemp (in all of its forms) completely legal, but also it was actually required to be planted by the early colonists! The Founding Fathers made references to it in their writings and grew it themselves. It was widely know that hemp was an incredible plant with a wide variety of uses: textiles, rope, clothing, paper, fuel, nutrition, medicine and recreation. So how did hemp fall from such exalted status to become an illegal “controlled substance”, for which you could be imprisoned due to mere possession of it?
The answer, as with many of aspects of the global conspiracy, comes back to the mega rich and powerful ruling elite families, in this case the Rockefellers. I have written other articles exposing how the Rockefellers invented modern (Western) medicine and created the Big Pharma cartel as a way to sell their petroleum-based drugs. John D. Rockefeller had the reputation as a ruthless businessman who once said, “Competition is sin.” The prohibition movement of the 1920s to ban alcohol was not really about making America more pure or morally upright. It was about the bottom line; Rockefeller wanted to eliminate competition to oil for fuel for motor-based vehicles. Similarly, the movement to ban hemp was also an attempt to destroy competition to oil-based products. Hemp is a powerful competitor to crude oil in many ways. Thus, the propaganda campaign was launched to demonized hemp and marijuana by inventing the fake phenomenon of “reefer madness”. The brainwashing worked and Congress outlawed the plant in various stages, eventually declaring it a controlled substance in 1970.
Cannabis oil is not to be confused with hempseed oil, which is the nutritional oil made from pressing hemp seeds, and is used as a food not a medicine. Medicinal cannabis oil is made by gathering large quantities of cannabis leaves from female plants, using a solvent to strip off some or all of the THC, and boiling off the excess water to produce a rich, gold or brown-colored concentrate. Depending on who is making it, the final product may have little or no THC, the chemical responsible for getting people “high”. For more information on one way to prepare cannabis oil, see Rick Simpson’s Run From The Cure.
Science has not yet discovered all of the hundreds or thousands of cannabis phytonutrients which are responsible for the healing effects of cannabis oil, but one of the main ones is CBD (Cannabidiol). Excitingly, CBD is being studied all over the world as people are beginning to realize its phenomenal healing benefits. Many clinical studies have shown that CBD is a very effective painkiller – especially for peripheral neuropathy associated with diabetes, arthritis, MS, cancer and other neurodegenerative conditions. CBD is especially brilliant because it prevents and suppresses inflammation. This means it is both a preventative and curative natural medicine. Chronic low level inflammation, as you may know, is the hidden cause of much pain and many diseases, so the potential for cannabis oil to help a lot of people is huge.
All of the cells in our body have cannabinoid receptor sites, including cells which have gone rogue and become cancerous. The brilliant thing about cannabis oil is that its THC and CBD connect to these cannabinoid receptor sites, causing the cell to increase ceramide, which then causes apoptosis or cell death. However, normal cells are unaffected by this, so cannabis oil is a targeted killer of cancer cells, leaving healthy cells intact. It reminds my very much of laetrile (or amygdalin or Vitamin B17) which functions in exactly the same way with cyanide as a targeted killer of cancer. As Dennis Hill writes, “Nature has designed the perfect medicine that fits exactly with our own immune system of receptors and signaling metabolites to provide rapid and complete immune response for systemic integrity and metabolic homeostasis.”
Due to recent changes in State legislation in 2014, marijuana is now legal in 20 of the 50 states in the USA. In 2 of these states (Colorado and Washington), it is fully legalized for recreational use, with Oregon and Alaska to come, while the other states or territories require a medical marijuana license (you can see the state-by-state details here). So it has already come a long way, and will continue to go much further. I predict at one point it will be legal in all 50 states in the US, and eventually throughout the world. There is already legislation pending in other American states, and the US Federal Government just decided in its 2015 spending measure that it would no longer allocate funds to the DOJ (Department of Justice) to enforce marijuana laws. That’s the beginning of the end of Federal cannabis prohibition!
Many countries around the world are leaning towards legalization, including the Czech Republic, Ecuador, Jamaica, Mexico, Canada, Spain, Argentina and India, according to this article. Uruguay became the first country in 2013 to fully legalize cannabis. It is also legal in North Korea, believe it or not!
Cannabis can have healing effects not just as cannabis oil; check out this video showing the power of raw cannabis leaves too. Truth be told, the healing power of cannabis has just barely been tapped. And, for those who don’t need to use cannabis medicinally, why not add it to your diet? The nutritional profile of hemp is unparalleled. Its protein profile is similar to that of human blood. It contains all 8 essential amino acids, as well as 2 key globulins, albumin and edestin (the latter of which is found only in hemp seeds). Edestin is so similar to protein found in the human body that it can actually repair your DNA! Additionally, hemp seeds contain the essential fatty acids linoleic acid (omega-6) and alpha-linoleic acid (omega-3) – in the ideal ratio for optimal health (3:1). These healthy fats reduce inflammation, boost the immune system and are responsible for strong and shiny skin, hair and nails. Hemp seeds have high quantities of iron, magnesium and zinc, and so combat many ailments resulting from a deficiency in these minerals. Other benefits of hemp seeds include reducing craving for junk foods and boosting memory.
The case of cannabis is a further positive indication to me that the NWO elite, the global conspirators, are not as powerful as they would like to think. We the people ultimately have the power, and the truth will ultimately triumph over lies, just as the powerful medicinal value of cannabis has outrun and outstripped the propaganda of “reefer madness”. Sometimes, though, it does take a long time for truth to prevail …
The post Governments Can’t Stop The Use Of This Cancer Cure … (VIDEO) appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.
Tallahassee Police Department raided Deondre Francois" apartment, starting QB for FSU, all to bust him with a tiny bit of weed.
The post Police Go Undercover for Months, Spend Thousands to Bust FSU Quarterback with Tiny Bit of Weed appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
The U.S. Health Secretary has left little hope that the federal government will reclassify cannabis and acknowledge its medicinal value anytime soon.
The post Health Secretary Who Gave Cialis to Children Says There Is ‘No Such Thing As Medical Marijuana’ appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
An Army veteran has been forced to become a criminal to save her life with the power of cannabis and as this video shows, it was worth it.
The post WATCH: Combat Vet Becomes Outlaw to Save Her Life With Cannabis—It WORKED appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
The Trump Administration is now making it easier for veterans to access the same drugs that are already increasing suicide rates.
The state of Pennsylvania has just found themselves a loophole they are going to use to take guns from law-abiding citizens.
Mike Tyson looks to revolutionize the marijuana industry as he breaks ground on a mega-resort for cannabis in Southern California.
(ANTIMEDIA Op-ed) — The National Rifle Association (NRA), which fancies itself a champion of the Second Amendment and gun rights, is nowhere to be found as state governments are moving to confiscate firearms from medical marijuana patients.
Police in Honolulu, Hawaii, recently sent out a letter to 30 medical cannabis patients warning them they had 30 days to hand over their guns. When medical cannabis becomes legal in Ohio in 2018, patients will not be permitted to own or possess firearms. Similar restrictions have been imposed in California and Oregon despite state policy, and they are not new.
In 2011, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosive issued a warning that because cannabis is illegal at the federal level, patients cannot possess guns. “There are no exceptions in federal law for marijuana purportedly used for medicinal purposes, even if such use is sanctioned by state law,” the ATF said in 2011.
Despite the NRA’s vehemently opinionated stances on many issues, including whether or not suspected terrorists should have access to guns, the lobbying group had little to say at the time about the federal government’s infringements on cannabis patients’ gun rights, merely ‘reporting’ that “If a person admits marijuana use to a licensed firearm dealer, the dealer is prohibited from transferring a firearm to that person because the dealer will have a ‘reasonable cause to believe’ that the person is an unlawful user.”
The NRA has not responded to Anti-Media’s request for comment on the Honolulu police order for cannabis patients to turn in their guns (considering the organization’s proud support for law enforcement, this is unsurprising). In fact, the order came and went after public outcry condemned the gun grab. Honolulu police have since backtracked, saying they will not be confiscating guns but will be enforcing their policy against future cannabis users who would like to purchase a firearm.
Still, the country’s foremost representative of gun rights has had no comment.
This puts the NRA in a contradictory position. The organization has made it clear it believes the 2nd Amendment is intended to fight tyranny, an obvious reference to the American Revolution.
As Wayne LaPierre, the NRA’s executive vice president, said in 2013:
“I think without any doubt, if you look at why our Founding Fathers put it there, they had lived under the tyranny of King George and they wanted to make sure that these free people in this new country would never be subjugated again and have to live under tyranny.”
But during the revolution, the American rebels were largely spurred to action because of their opposition unjust laws.
In 2017, a vast majority of Americans oppose the war on cannabis, especially with respect to medicinal uses. Even Republicans now favor legalization. Yet the NRA is nowhere to be found to speak on behalf of the people and the gun owners they claim to protect while an over-bloated federal government violates the constitution to punish people for non-violently possessing a plant.
Rather, the NRA prefers to express its eternal support for law enforcement — the enforcers of unjust laws — and seems content to ignore the federal government’s violations of marijuana users’ rights simply because the federal government asserts — through unjust and outdated laws — that the plant is illegal.
But assuming laws are akin to wisdom and morality is a dangerous practice, as demonstrated by a 2016 ruling from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that reaffirmed cannabis use and possession is grounds for infringing on the 2nd Amendment.
The court case itself was rooted in legality. A gun shop owner refused to issue a gun to a medical marijuana patient in Nevada precisely because the plant remains illegal at the federal level. In the 9th Circuit Court panel’s opinion, they cited federal law, writing:
“Turning to federal firearms provisions, under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3) no person ‘who is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance’ may ‘possess . . . or . . . receive any firearm or ammunition.’ In addition, it is unlawful for ‘any person to sell or otherwise dispose of any firearm or ammunition to any person knowing or having reasonable cause to believe that such person . . . is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance.’”
In addition to citing legality, the panel claimed cannabis use “raises the risk of irrational or unpredictable behavior with which gun use should not be associated.”
In reality, research suggests violence and crime actually decrease in states that (illegally, according to the federal government) allow access to cannabis. In contrast, alcohol, a legal drug (according to the federal government), has well-documented, strong links to aggression, violence, and ‘irrational or unpredictable behavior.’ Because it is legal, however, gun access is not restricted to people who use the government-approved drug.
Though alcohol is far more dangerous than cannabis, alcohol gets a free pass because the federal government, which the NRA purports to mistrust, does not violently punish people for using it. The NRA remains silent when that same federal government, which, again, it believes its constituents might need to overthrow at some point, violates the 2nd Amendment. Rather than questioning laws as the glorified 18th-century American rebels did, the NRA prefers the government they mistrust simply enforce existing gun laws, like denying cannabis users their rights.
Apparently, the organization only believes in the notion of “shall not be infringed” if gun owners align with their own right-wing establishment views and law-and-order agenda, which often command submission to the very government they fantasize about overthrowing.
Op-ed / Creative Commons / Anti-Media / Report a typo
With the FDA recently authorizing the world"s first "smart pill", many ethical questions are being raised by medical doctors. Forced medication by the state seems imminent.
The Honolulu Police Department has sent a series of letters to local medical marijuana patients that directly orders them to surrender their firearms or, presumably, face state sanctioned violence to remove them.
Signed by Honolulu Police Chief Susan Ballard, the letters “inform” patients that upon receipt of the confiscation order, a citizen has 30 days to turn over their guns to the police. This stunning move amounts to direct gun confiscation for people who have no history of violent crimes.
As Leafly noted, “The existence of the notices, first reported early today by Russ Belville at The Marijuana Agenda podcast, was confirmed to Leafly News this afternoon by the Honolulu Police Department.
“The startling order comes just three months after the state’s first medical marijuana dispensary opened in Hawaii’s capital city.”
Courtesy of Russ Belville, The Marijuana Agenda
Although federal law prohibits all cannabis consumers from purchasing firearms, this is the first time that a local law enforcement agency has “proactively” sought to confiscate weapons from state-registered medical marijuana patients.
Despite the law being confirmed in multiple federal courts, any rational human being knows that this is nothing short of tyrannical overreach by an overzealous police chief who most likely is against private gun ownership in the first place.
Literally no one in the history of marijuana smoking as specifically killed someone because they have smoked a joint yet people like Police Chief Susan Ballard are apparently so caught up in their own power trip that they are willing to use violent force to strip the legitimate Second Amendment rights of citizens who legally use marijuana for a variety of aliments.
Make no mistake, if a local resident in Hawaii refuses this order, you can almost guarantee that the next step is forced gun confiscation at the barrel of a gun.
Police appear to have used the fact that a woman was leaving the parking lot of a cannabis dispensary as probable cause to immediately arrest her for DUI.
The state demanded this little girl be administered a harmful pharma drug, even though her seizures were virtually cured using a legal CBD prescription.
The future of medicine rests on the fundamental right we all have to use things that spring from the Earth naturally as healing agents. Why should cannabis, used for at least 10000 years by humankind to alleviate suffering, be excluded from this inexorable mandate?
The politics of cannabis are exceedingly complex, and yet the truth is simple: this freely growing plant heals the human body – not to mention provides food, fuel, clothing and shelter, if only we will let it perform its birthright. In a previous article, we investigated the strange fact that the human body is in many ways pre-designed, or as it were, pre-loaded with a receptiveness to cannabis’ active compounds — cannabinoids — thanks to its well documented endocannabinoid system.
But the medical-industrial complex in the U.S. does not want you to use these freely growing compounds. They threaten its very business model and existence. Which is why it synergizes so naturally with the burgeoning privatized prison sector, which now has the dubious title of having the highest incarceration rate in the world. The statistics don’t lie:
“far surpassing any other nation. For every 100,000 Americans, 743 citizens sit behind bars. Presently, the prison population in America consists of more than six million people, a number exceeding the amount of prisoners held in the gulags of the former Soviet Union at any point in its history.”
According to a recent Al-Jeezera editorial, “One explanation for the boom in the prison population is the mandatory sentencing imposed for drug offences and the “tough on crime” attitude that has prevailed since the 1980s.”
Cannabis/marijuana is presently on the DEA’s Schedule 1 list. Since 1972, cannabis has been listed on the Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, the most tightly restricted category reserved for drugs which have “no currently accepted medical use”. Opioids, stimulants, psychedelics and a few antidepressants now populate this list of substances that can put you in jail for possessing without a prescription.
The notion that marijuana has no ‘medicinal benefits’ is preposterous, actually. Since time immemorial it has been used as a panacea (‘cure-all’). In fact, as far back as 2727 B.C., cannabis was recorded in the Chinese pharmacopoeia as an effective medicine, and evidence for its use as a food, textile and presumably as a healing agent stretch back even further, to 12 BC.[1]
When it comes to cannabis’ medical applications, cannabis’ ‘healing properties’ is a loaded term. In fact, it is extremely dangerous, as far as the medical industrial complex goes, who has the FDA/FTC to enforce it’s mandate: anything that prevents, diagnoses, treats or cures a disease must be an FDA approved drug by law, i.e. pharmaceutical agents which often have 75 or more adverse effects for each marketed and approved “therapeutic” effect.
Indeed, the dominant, drug-based medical system does not even acknowledge the body’s healing abilities, opting for a view that looks at most bodily suffering as fatalistic, primarily genetically based, and resulting from dysfunction in the mechanical design of a highly entropic ‘bag of enzymes and proteins’ destined to suffer along the trajectory of time.
And so, an at least two trillion dollar a year industry stands between you and access to the disease alleviating properties of this humble plant.
As Emerson said, “a weed is an herb whose virtues have yet to be discovered,” and yet, by this definition, cannabis is not a weed, but given that is has been extensively researched and used for thousands of years for a wide range of health conditions, it should be considered and respected as a medicinal herb and food. Sadly, the fact that the whole herb is non-patentable is the main reason why it is still struggling to gain approval from the powers that be.
Let’s look at the actual, vetted, published and peer-reviewed research – bullet proof, if we are to subscribe to the ‘evidence-based’ model of medicine – which includes over 100 proven therapeutic actions of this amazing plant, featuring the following:
Moreover, this plant’s therapeutic properties have been subdivided into the following 40+ pharmacological actions:
Thanks to modern scientific investigation, it is no longer considered strictly ‘theoretical’ that cannabis has a role to play in medicine. There is a growing movement to wrench back control from the powers that be, whose primary objectives appear to be the subjection of the human body in order to control the population (political motives) — what 20th century French philosopher Michel Foucault termed biopower, and not to awaken true healing powers intrinsic within the body of all self-possessed members of society. Even the instinct towards recreational use – think of the etymology: to re-create – should be allowed, as long as those who choose to use cannabis instead of tobacco and alcohol (and prescription drugs) do not cause harm to themselves or others. How many deaths are attributed to cannnabis each year versus these other societally approved recreational agents, not to mention prescription drugs, which are the 3rd leading cause of death in the developed world?
Ultimately, the politics surrounding cannabis access and the truth about its medicinal properties are so heavily a politicized issue that it is doubtful the science itself will prevail against the distorted lens of media characterizations of it as a ‘dangerous drug,’ and certainly not the iron-clad impasse represented by federal laws against its possession and use. All we can do is to advocate for the fundamental rights we all possess as free men and women, and our inborn right towards self-possession, i.e as long as what we do does not interfere with the choices and rights of others, we should be free to use an herb/food/textile that sprouts freely and grows freely from this earth, as God/Nature as freely made available.
I think people need to be educated to the fact that marijuana is not a drug. Marijuana is an herb and a flower. God put it here. If He put it here and He wants it to grow, what gives the government the right to say that God is wrong?
~ Willie Nelson
“Why is marijuana against the law? It grows naturally upon our planet. Doesn’t the idea of making nature against the law seem to you a bit . . . unnatural?” – Bill Hicks
[1] Marijuana – The First Twelve Thousand Years
© October 27, 2017 GreenMedInfo LLC. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of GreenMedInfo LLC. Want to learn more from GreenMedInfo? Sign up for the newsletter here http://www.greenmedinfo.com/greenmed/newsletter.
The post Why Cannabis Is The Future Of Medicine appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.
As the era of “alternative facts” takes hold across the political spectrum and federal government buries its head in ignorance, lawmakers are increasingly challenging facets of the insanity. Medical cannabis is receiving particular attention, with supporters becoming even more passionate after the appointment of drug warrior Jeff Sessions to Attorney General.
According to Marijuana Moment, Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-FL) testified in a House Judiciary Committee that medical cannabis has great potential to treat mental health issues and should be made available to everyone – including cops. Many lawmakers are trying to change VA policies to allow medical cannabis for veterans with PTSD, but Gaetz is taking this logic a step further with law enforcement.
The legislation being considered, titled “Law Enforcement Mental Health and Wellness Act of 2017,” would delve into the mental health practices and services of LEO agencies across the country, and direct the attorney general to consult with the DoD and VA on how they treat soldiers.
Advertisment
Gaetz proposed an amendment which would have required agencies to examine, “Department of Defense and Department of Veterans Affairs mental health practices and services, including medical cannabis treatment on mental health, that could be adopted by Federal, State, local, or tribal law enforcement agencies.“
As we know, drugs such as SSRIs–with harmful effects on health and public safety–are the method of choice for treating military veterans who suffer trauma after fighting in America’s wars of aggression. If patients can use a plant and its extracts for healing, which can’t be patented, this is a serious threat to the profits of Big Pharma.
READ MORE: "How was your water? Was it clean?" Gov Snyder Chased Out Of Restaurant By Angry Residents
After blowback from several lawmakers who felt law enforcement wasn’t the place to pursue cannabis reform, Gaetz withdrew his amendment. But the point was made – there is mounting resistance to the inhumane, logically bankrupt War on Drugs.
“The federal government has lied to the American people for a generation about cannabis,” said Gaetz as his amendment was discussed for about 30 minutes. “There is substantial evidence that indicates that there is a case to be made for the medical efficacy of cannabis in the treatment of mental health and particularly PTSD.”
The Florida Congressman noted for the record, the “idiotic, indefensible policy in this country where we list cannabis as a Schedule I drug.”
The thought of cops using medical cannabis is interesting, considering the violent U.S. police state and its assault on the populace through the war on drugs. Perhaps those cops who actually believe a person should be arrested for a plant would have second thoughts if they actually experienced the benefits of said plant. More importantly, could the extraordinary rate of police-initiated violence go down if cops could toke up after work?
Even though fellow lawmakers assured Gaetz they supported his efforts at cannabis reform, they must have been shocked by the truth bombs he dropped during the hearing. There is no contesting the statements Gaetz made about the lies and the disregard of scientific fact that dominate U.S. drug policy.
These moments of clarity in Congress are refreshing indeed. A day before Gaetz made his statements, Rep. Earl Blumenauer testified before a House Subcommittee on Health that medical cannabis can solve the opioid crisis. He provided strong scientific evidence to make his point and lambasted the “stranglehold” federal government has on cannabis research.
READ MORE: Police State Activism Knows No Age Limit, 16-Year-Old Boy Working to Force Govt Accountability
The Ashley Borough Police Department received a call for help in finding a missing child. But instead of locating the missing child, when they smelled marijuana at a nearby residence, they abandoned their search and confiscated a cannabis user’s bongs and smoking devices. That was their first mistake, according to some. Their second mistake, arguably, was bragging about their bust on Facebook
Here’s the photo they posted on their Facebook page and the accompanying caption.
The stash was undeniably a prized possession to someone who unwittingly had drawn the attention of Ashley Borough police. Now it’s in the hands of law enforcement. But if the department was looking to be praised by the local community, they were sadly mistaken. Instead of lauding the accomplishments of the boys in blue, the public ripped them a new one.
Spencer Holt was seemingly perplexed when he wrote, “You must be so proud of yourselves. How about the kid? A lost child is a time-sensitive issue, how did that situation develop while you were rounding up the giggle weed?” Holt’s sentiments echoed the overall feelings of the public who viewed abandoning the search for a missing child to committing a cardinal sin.
Chad Mummert blasted the department as well. He wrote, “This basically states that you’ve abandoned a lost child investigation…let’s repeat that…a lost child investigation because you smelled marijuana and went for some low hanging fruit to eventually exploit on social media. You deserve every bit of the roast (pun intended) that you are getting with this foolish post.
Approaching with a more lighthearted statement Connor Cormier asked police if he could buy the bong. He said he’d pay, “$45 for the Zong,” and promised to, “meet you wherever is most convenient.”
The cynicism was not lost in the seriousness of what police had admitted to doing. They openly confessed to devoting at least a portion of their department to potentially charging an individual for treating his/her ailments with cannabis.
As TFTP has reported, cannabis has been decriminalized and made available as medical marijuana in at least 29 states with eight states allowing for recreational use. The states of Alaska, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington now allow for full recreational use of cannabis.
Some of the Ashley Borough Police Department’s critics understand there are many sick people who use cannabis to deal with their illnesses and are not afraid of committing a misdemeanor crime to do so. Alex Hardy didn’t hold anything back when he criticized the department’s seizure. Hardy asked, “Lemme get this straight. You dickless little shits get sidetracked from looking for a missing child to hassle someone for their pot gear. And then you actually brag about it on fb?”
Dallas Shaefer attempted to shame the PD into repentance. “You should be ashamed of yourselves. This is a waste of public resources and damaging to the record of someone who was likely hurting no one,” he wrote.
Whatever their motivations, the Ashley Borough Police Department understandably opened up the proverbial can of worms with their post. The ongoing criticism serves to illustrate how attitudes toward cannabis are changing at the what seems to be the speed of light. People are waking up to the fact that pharmaceutical companies have used their lobbying power for years to convince the federal government, the FDA, and the DEA to keep cannabis categorized as a Schedule I narcotic.
All the while they’ve quietly been addicting millions of Americans to their synthetic opiates which killed more Americans in 2016 than in the entire Vietnam War. Maybe what Ashley Borough Police should do is begin to arrest pharmacists for dispensing addicting and life-ending opiates. Only then can they rightfully claim they’re protecting the public.
This week, rap superstar and Pittsburgh native Wiz Khalifa caused an uproar as he threw out the first pitch at the Pirates’ final home game of the season. Taking the pitcher’s mound, while sporting a “Legalize It” t-shirt, Khalifa pretended to toke a joint prior to throwing out the ceremonial first pitch.
While NFL players are causing a public debate by taking a knee during the national anthem, in a purported stand against police brutality and racism, the sentiment expressed by Khalifa – that cannabis should be legalized – would almost certainly be a more effective prescription to combat racist policing and brutality.
Well, according to the Drug Policy Alliance:
The drug war has produced profoundly unequal outcomes across racial groups, manifested through racial discrimination by law enforcement and disproportionate drug war misery suffered by communities of color.
Although rates of drug use and selling are comparable across racial lines, people of color are far more likely to be stopped, searched, arrested, prosecuted, convicted and incarcerated for drug law violations than are whites.
Higher arrest and incarceration rates for African Americans and Latinos are not reflective of increased prevalence of drug use or sales in these communities, but rather of a law enforcement focus on urban areas, on lower-income communities and on communities of color as well as inequitable treatment by the criminal justice system. We believe that the mass criminalization of people of color, particularly young African American men, is as profound a system of racial control as the Jim Crow laws were in this country until the mid-1960s.
The life-long penalties and exclusions that follow a drug conviction have created a permanent second-class status for millions of Americans, who may be prohibited from voting, being licensed, accessing public assistance and any number of other activities and opportunities. The drug war’s racist enforcement means that all of these exclusions fall more heavily on people and communities of color.
Of course, in typical fashion, Major League Baseball (MLB) issued a statement rebuking Khalifa’s pro-marijuana stance, noting: “Marijuana is a (prohibited) substance in all of our drug programs and it is unfortunate this situation occurred.”
READ MORE: “Good People Don’t Smoke Marijuana” -- Clueless Senator Just Vilified 50% of All Americans
Historically, the prohibition of cannabis began as a racist endeavor meant to control Mexican immigration into the United States and to help boost the profits of large pharmaceutical companies.
Advertisment
According to a report by the Foundation for Economic Education:
Around 1910, the Mexican Revolution was starting to boil over, and many Mexicans immigrated to the U.S. to escape the conflict. This Mexican population had its own uses for cannabis, and they referred to it as “marihuana.” Not only did they use it for medicinal purposes, but they smoked it recreationally – a new concept for white Americans. U.S. politicians quickly jumped on the opportunity to label cannabis “marihuana” in order to give it a bad rep by making it sound more authentically Mexican at a time of extreme prejudice.
It worked. Southern states became worried about the dangers this drug would bring, and newspapers began calling Mexican cannabis use a “marijuana menace.”
During the 1920s, many anti-marijuana campaigns were conducted to raise awareness about the many harmful effects the drug caused. These campaigns included radical claims stating that marijuana turned users into killers and drug addicts.
The “war against marijuana” arguably began in 1930, where a new division in the Treasury Department was established — the Federal Bureau of Narcotics — and Harry J. Anslinger was named director. This, if anything, marked the beginning of the all-out war against marijuana.
Anslinger realized that opiates and cocaine would not be enough to build his new agency, so he turned towards marijuana and worked relentlessly to make it illegal on a federal level. Some anti-marijuana quotes from Anslinger’s agency read:
“There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos, and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz, and swing, result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and any others.”
“…the primary reason to outlaw marijuana is its effect on the degenerate races.”
While on the surface, an MLB game seems like a somewhat odd venue to promote cannabis legalization, what better stage to use as a platform than that of a publicly televised event that reaches a wide segment of the population.
READ MORE: US Government Admits Marijuana Kills Cancer Cells, But they Still Kidnap, Cage, and Kill You For It
Currently, recreational cannabis is not legal in Pennsylvania, but medical marijuana is.
The night after Khalifa’s MLB cannabis “protest,” the rap mega-star appeared at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Music Hall of Oakland as a speaker at Thrival Innovation’s marquee event — a discussion about the intersection of cannabis, medical marijuana, and technology.
“If you think it’s a bad thing, you’re just going to think it’s bad,” he told the crowd on Thursday evening. “Until you fully experience it, or someone around you benefits off of it … I feel like for the people who are open to it, when they do they change their mind, it’s always significant.”
Khalifa appeared on stage during a public chat with cannabis investor Marc Ruxin and John Battelle, founding editor of Wired magazine, at the opening of the two-day Thrival music festival at Carrie Furnace.
“I see it being like alcohol or something that’s more acceptable and accessible for the people,” he said of marijuana. “There’s edibles, there’s oils, there’s vapes and all of that different stuff.”
“Just with the way technology changes, peoples’ minds change on how we are actually using it. I think that’s really going to revolutionize it and make it stand out,” he continued.
Khalifa actually owns his own strain of cannabis, called “Khalifa Kush,” which is sold in three states that have legalized marijuana.
“Being that I smoke as much as I do or use as much cannabis as I do, I wanted people to have an experience that was like mine,” he said. “And I was really passionate about bringing a high-quality product that was accessible to everybody.”
The rap superstar also discussed the extreme medical benefits of medical marijuana, noting that his acting coach is using CBDs, or cannabidiol, to recover from injuries sustained during a car accident. CBD, which is derived from cannabis but is non-psychoactive, is used for various forms of pain relief in many states where medical cannabis is legal.
READ MORE: Thousands Arrested in Michigan for Pot While the Governor Remains Free for Poisoning Entire City
“She said she wouldn’t be able to make it through her days if it wasn’t for CBDs,” Khalifa said of his acting coach. “It helps a lot of with pain and people put it in creams so you’re not necessarily getting stoned off of it, but you’re still getting all of the benefits from it.”
“I’ve seen a lot of people who before might have been scared of it or might have run away from it. But now they are in situations when they are in need of it and it really helps them,” Khalifa said, in reference to the therapeutic use of cannabis for pain relief.
Although the federal government labels cannabis a Schedule I substances, denoting no known medical value, while a substance like cocaine is considered a Schedule II drug and alcohol is legal, it clearly remains the safest, and more importantly, the most medically useful of the three.
So, while NFL players take a knee in protest, what Wiz Khalifa is advocating is a viable solution to actually stemming racist policing and brutality. Ending the war on cannabis would have a drastic effect, and is a much more effective means than simply kneeling.
Please share this story to help others understand the extreme societal benefit of legalizing cannabis!
For years now, we at TFTP have been praising the benefits of cannabis and it’s ability to heal. We’ve even brought you stories of medical doctors using cannabis to help opiate addicts kick their addiction to powerful narcotics. But now, a world renowned doctor, “Doctor Oz” (Mehmet Oz) has joined us and has officially come out in favor of medical marijuana, debunking it as a “gateway drug” and claiming it may be the “exit drug” to help our nation’s addicted get off heroin and opiates.
Dr. Oz was a guest on Fox News’ Fox and Friends on Tuesday. As the segment with the physician and television host was coming to a close, Oz seized the opportunity to say a few things about medical marijuana. He said:
The real story is the hypocrisy around medical marijuana. People think it’s a gateway drug to narcotics. It may be the exit drug to get us out of the narcotic epidemic.
Oz criticized the government’s long-standing position on marijuana and said it should no longer be classified as a Schedule I narcotic, precisely the stance TFTP has taken for so many years. Oz stated:
Advertisment
We’re not allowed to study it because it’s a Schedule I drug, and I personally believe it could help.
Fox and Friends anchor Steve Doocy could only respond by saying, “Wow, I haven’t heard that one before” and cut to a commercial break. But the public announcement was quickly noticed by several media outlets who ran the story. Forbes was one such publication which ran a similar story to ours.
For many years, marijuana advocates have been stereotyped as hippies like Willie Nelson, dreadlock wearing rappers like Snoop Dog, and shamed athletes such as swimmer Michael Phelps. But now, one of the world’s most recognizable doctors has taken his stand with cannabis, and it’s no longer the fringe elements of society saying the same thing. It’s mainstream, it’s medical, it’s Dr. Oz.
READ MORE: Legal Weed is Killing Cartels and Corporate Media Is Trying to Say that"s a Bad Thing
However, Oz is not the first, to come out in support of not only cannabis research, declassification as a Schedule I narcotic by the DEA, and an herb to be used to help people overcome addiction.
In 2015, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy made an appearance on CBS News and was asked about his own personal feelings about medical marijuana. In the interview he declared marijuana “can be helpful.”
Also, in 2013, CNN’s Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta had to apologize to his viewers for critical comments he’d made about cannabis. In what appeared to be a very sincere apology, Gupta declared he was wrong about cannabis.
I apologize because I didn’t look hard enough, until now. I didn’t look far enough. I didn’t review papers from smaller labs in other countries doing some remarkable research, and I was too dismissive of the loud chorus of legitimate patients whose symptoms improved on cannabis.
Instead, I lumped them with the high-visibility malingerers, just looking to get high. I mistakenly believed the Drug Enforcement Agency listed marijuana as a schedule 1 substance because of sound scientific proof. Surely, they must have quality reasoning as to why marijuana is in the category of the most dangerous drugs that have ‘no accepted medicinal use and a high potential for abuse.’
Gupta declared that the U.S. government and other entities have been systematically lying to the American people about cannabis and as a result, the people, including himself at one time, had been duped.
What about you? Are you still holding on the the propaganda that weed is somehow bad for you as if your brain is frying like an egg? Please share your comments below. What does it mean for Dr. Oz to come out in favor of cannabis?
READ MORE: Canada"s Pot Legalization Comes With a Hefty Dose of Police State - 10 Years in Prison for Driving High
Pot smokers, environmentalists, and just plain humans: take notice.
A recent article in The Atlantic reveals highly toxic pesticides are being used on illegal pot farms in California, and the runoff is poisoning forests.
I’ll quote extensively from the article and then make comments:
“Secret growers are taking advantage of the state’s remote stretches of public land—and the environmental impact is severe.”
“…this past November, [California] residents voted ‘yes’ on Proposition 64, making California the fifth state to legalize recreational pot. Almost two-thirds of the country’s total legal harvest comes from the Golden State…” [poisoned pot shipped everywhere]
“The lethal poisons growers use to protect their crops and campsites from pests are annihilating wildlife, polluting pristine public lands, and maybe even turning up in your next bong hit.”
“…grow sites tested positive for carbofuran, a neurotoxic insecticide that is so nasty it has been banned in the U.S., Canada and the EU. Farmers in Kenya have used it to kill lions. Symptoms of exposure range from nausea and blurred vision to convulsions, spontaneous abortions, and death….”
“Some 50 different toxicants have turned up at grow sites… Growers use the poisons to keep rodents and other animals from eating the sugar-rich sprouting plants, from gnawing on irrigation tubing, and from invading their campsites in search of food. Acute rodenticides cause neurological damage and internal bleeding. Animals literally drown in their own blood or stumble around until they’re eaten themselves, passing the poison up the food chain to predators like owls and fishers.”
“’It’s a massive problem,’ says Craig Thompson, a wildlife ecologist with the U.S. Forest Service. ‘People don’t tend to grasp the industrial scale of what’s going on. There are thousands of these sites in places the public thinks are pristine, with obscene amounts of chemicals at each one. Each one is a little environmental disaster’.”
“Gabriel [biologist] and Thompson fear the poisons could spread far beyond each grow site and contaminate the water supply of towns and cities far downstream. The toxicants can leach into the soil and linger for years. Using water monitors, Gabriel has already found organophosphates—nerve agents used to make insecticides and certain types of chemical weapons—several hundred meters downhill from grow sites.”
“’These guys aren’t growing for the legal recreational market or medical dispensaries—they’re growing to exploit a black market somewhere,’ says Mark Higley, a wildlife biologist with the Hoopa Tribe in Humboldt County, whose reservation has seen an explosion in illegal grow sites. While there is no proof that illegal pot ends up in the burgeoning legal market, many familiar with the industry suspect it does.”
“Law enforcement officials think many trespass grows are set up [on government land] by Mexican drug cartels, which prefer to ship marijuana from state to state rather than smuggle it over the international border. Growers arrested during raids are often undocumented immigrants in their 20s from Michoacan, experienced in covert agriculture and hard living. They earn around $150 a day for two-to-four months, much more than they would at a farm or winery.”
“Captured growers sometimes claim their employers are holding their families hostage until the harvest is collected. Whether or not that’s true, they’re motivated to protect the crop. Hendrickson estimates between a quarter and half of raids turn up some kind of weapon, from crossbows to automatic rifles. He has found elevated sniper positions set up near grow sites.”
“Just walking through rows of plants coated with toxic chemicals can be enough to bring on symptoms like lethargy and headaches—let alone spending hours cutting them down in the hot sun under the wash of a helicopter. Gabriel [biologist] and his employees have started getting monthly blood tests to check for pesticide exposure.”
“Some chemical threats are more immediate. At one site Gabriel was inspecting an unfamiliar container full of aluminum phosphide, a poisonous powder used to kill rodents and insects. It had gasified and built up pressure in the heat of the sun. When he touched it, it exploded in his face. Luckily he was wearing a hazmat respirator.”
“’My biggest fear is that some kid will come across one of those bottles,” Thompson says. ‘Carbofuran is pink, it looks like Pepto, like candy. Can you imagine what a five-year-old would do with that?’”
—-end of Atlantic excerpt—
So the contamination and the poison are in the land, in the water, in animals, and in the marijuana people smoke.
This is not the first time, in recent years, that pot has been found to contain pesticides. A quick search will turn up a number of articles. However, the level of toxicity here in these California pot farms is extreme, to say the least.
Where are the growers buying their banned pesticides? Mexico? On the black market in the US?
How can pot smokers be sure they’re smoking clean product? For example, are legal dispensaries working with proper labs to test many, many samples? In these tests, how many pesticide compounds are covered? How many aren’t?
Over time, stories like the one in The Atlantic come and go, and people forget them. But that would be a mistake.
People who use marijuana often reply to stories like this with the claim they know that a great deal of pot is pure, and their suppliers are ethical. One hopes that’s true, but is it?
If some, most, or all of these highly contaminated pot farms in California are run by Mexican drug cartels, don’t expect state or federal law enforcement to solve the problem. It isn’t going to happen. The resources aren’t there, and neither is the determination.
The government of California considers the state to be a sanctuary for illegal immigrants. So how is the government going to stop some of these immigrants from becoming illegal pot growers who deploy highly dangerous chemicals on a daily basis?
As for the California forests and rivers, government agencies are far behind the curve. The illegal growers are, in effect, staging wide-ranging random attacks on the environment.
This has nothing to do with a “progressive attitude” toward pot.
It has everything to do with criminals seeding the land with poison.
And it is yet one more consequence of the unchecked and unprosecuted growth of the pesticide industry, in which, over many decades, corporations have been manufacturing and selling all sorts of heinous poisons—“better living through chemistry”—reversing centuries of agricultural practice that fed populations good clean food.
Jon Rappoport is the author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.
Create your own review
