Major Study Shows Legal Weed REVERSED a Decade of Rising Opioid Deaths in Colorado

A new study reveals that opioid-related deaths in Colorado decreased by nearly 7 percent in the two years after the state legalized cannabis.

Police Chief Stops Arresting Opioid Addicts, Offers Help Instead – Crime & Addiction PLUMMET

Image Credit: CNN

Nashville, NC – A police chief in a small eastern North Carolina town, Chief Thomas Bashore, in collaboration with town manager Hank Raper, began a program — using compassion instead of violence — known as the HOPE initiative that is both saving lives and lowering crime.

Nashville, North Carolina, a town of 5,400 offers a unique program to help addicts recover, rather than continue the cycle of crime and addiction, by allowing addicts to turn themselves into police with their drugs and paraphernalia, without being thrown in a cage.

Instead of them facing arrest, they get help getting into a program to fight addiction.

Thomas Spikes, 24, has battled addiction since before he was a teenager, and credits Bashore with saving his life by putting him on a path to recovery from the deadly scourge of opioid addiction.

“He saved my life for sure,” he said. “I owe a lot to him and the program.”

As opioid deaths continue to rise dramatically across the United States, replacing car accidents as the number one cause of unintentional deaths, the state of North Carolina has seen a more than 340 percent increase in opioid deaths from 2010 to 2016.

“There’s no clear characteristic of what a heroin or opioid addiction looks like,” Raper told CNN. “It’s not a white problem, it’s not a black problem, it’s not a Hispanic problem, middle class, working class, upper class. It affects all peoples of all walks of life.” 

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The HOPE initiative was modeled on the “Angel” program in Gloucester, Massachusetts, which allows addicts to safely get medical help and police assistance—without fear of being arrested. These innovative programs are creating a new paradigm that reconfigures the manner in which law enforcement responds to addiction.

“They walk into the front door, if they have drugs or paraphernalia on them at any time, they can turn it in to us at that time, and have no charges filed. And we facilitate them into recovery,” Bashore said.

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“We have actually had individuals who have brought in heroin bags and turned that over because they knew that they were going to get into recovery and they didn’t want that around when they got out,” Bashore said.

To ensure that there would be no impediments to the HOPE program, Chief Bashore and Raper recruited the county district attorney, who was on board with the initiative, ensuring that addicts seeking help would not be charged. With the support of the county attorney, the HOPE program began on Feb. 9, 2016—with the first addict coming into the police station seeking help only eight days later.

“It was eye-opening,” recalled Bashore. “That individual came in and we spent the better part of 7 and a half hours getting him processed. Only then did I leave the hospital and come back to the police department to start calling facilities to start having him placed, after he left detox. You can spend hours on the phone, calling facilities, saying, ‘Do you have a bed?"”

Bashore has been intimately involved in the program, driving many of the 172 men and women that have been helped by the HOPE initiative. Revealing the changing nature of law enforcement’s fight against drug addition—and a clear movement from a punitive “War on Drugs” mentality, to a recovery-based model—Bashore has worked to build personal relationships with numerous rehabilitation facilities across North Carolina.

The business cards he passes out even have his personal cellphone number so that rehab facilities across the state can personally alert him when a space opens up for an addict.

“My cellphone, it rings all the time,” Bashore said. “Each participant who comes through the program and all their family members have it. So, when they need something, they reach out.”

In addition to helping numerous addicts get clean, the HOPE initiative has substantially changed the dynamics between the police and the community. Bashore said he is working to help people understand that substance abuse is a disease and that his department’s goal is to “supportive not only for their benefit, but for the community benefit.”

Revealing exactly how this new approach by law enforcement, to drugs and addiction, can drastically alter crime rates, Bashore said that crime is down 40 percent since the program’s inception.

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“We’ve had a pretty significant drop in our crimes that are associated with substance-abuse disorder,” Bashore said. “Things like shoplifting and larcenies and breaking into cars.”

The beautiful thing is that HOPE does not limit its services to residents of Nashville, as people from across the state have taken advantage of the program—as well as people from as far away as California and Pennsylvania.

The initiative has no cost to participants in the program, and is funded through small grants, fundraisers, and donations.

“The chief paid for the first two months that I was there and the rehab I was at,” recalled Spikes. After spending over half his life in the grip of addiction, Spikes has now been clean for four months after leaving the rehabilitation facility.

In an interview with CNN, Spikes said that he first used drugs when he was 12 years old. “It started off with just smoking weed,” he said, “then occasional pills, and it progressed through the years.” Eventually, his addiction became a $200 to $300 a day habit at its worst.

After being caught with heroin and sent to jail in October 2016, he had his first encounter with Chief Bashore. Initially, Spikes was skeptical of any help police offered, and expressed a commonly held belief: “You don’t talk to cops, you don’t associate with them, they’re not your friends.”

Spikes’ perceptions quickly began to evolve when he recognized that Bashore was solely there to help him, no questions asked.

The chief “never tried to pry into anything in my life in that era,” Spikes said. “[He doesn’t] care who you hang out with, what kind of drugs you do.”

After having gone through countless rehab facilities in the past, Spikes said his life has changed because of Chief Bashore and the HOPE initiative.

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“He saved my life for sure because if it wasn’t for the HOPE Initiative, I wouldn’t have gotten help,” Spikes said. “My life has done a 180. I’m working, I have a vehicle, a house, I have a beautiful girlfriend with a baby on the way.”

This inspirational police chief decided that criminalizing addiction is a clear recipe for failure, and increased crime and death in his community—and made a decision to do something about it. By not comporting with the “get tough on crime” mentality that is often prevalent in law enforcement, Bashore is actually making a difference in people’s lives. He is also saving taxpayers money as the cost of rehabilitation is far less than prison, and it is being independently funded.

“Of those 172 people that have come through the program, I’ve actually been to two funerals. Knowing what the alternative could have been for Thomas … (who) just recently disclosed to me that his girlfriend’s pregnant, he’s going to be a father,” he said. “So, that’s an amazing thing. That touches me deeply.”

Mainstream Media Now Advocating ‘All Citizens’ Spend Time in Prison as ‘Service’ to Country

Corporate media achieved a new level of absurdity last week, when Jesse Ball, writing for the Los Angeles Times, suggested every American be required to spend a stint behind bars every ten years as a veritable guarantee to improve conditions of incarceration in the United States.

In the piece titled, “Everyone should go to jail, say, once every ten years,” Ball writes,

“A notable demand that is made upon the citizens of the United States of America is that of jury duty. Although many despise, hate and avoid it, there is a general sense that the task is necessary. We believe a society is only just if everyone shares in the apportionment of guilt.

“To this demand of jury duty, I would like to add another, and in the same spirit. I propose that all citizens of the United States of America should serve a brief sentence of incarceration in our maximum-security penitentiaries. This service, which would occur for each person once in a decade, would help ensure that the quality of life within our prisons is sufficient for the keeping of human beings.”

Without foreknowledge on length of stay and other details, citizens would languish behind the same bars as convicted criminals under Ball’s proposal — albeit in a section separated from offenders, assumedly not to confuse jailers and inmates, or endanger anyone serving ‘incarceration duty.’

But Ball misses the point — feeding the elephant in the room of overcriminalization of daily life, excessive laws, and, worst by far of all, the normalization of incarceration as conditional to the American way of life — lecturing all of us to walk a mile in the shoes of the convicted rather than declaring the brazen failures of the Injustice System evidence enough, itself, for dismantling the whole dysfunctional mess.

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After all, according to the Prison Policy Institute, the United States now cages some 2.3 million of its roughly 326.5 million total people — the largest per capita incarcerated persons of any nation on the entire planet.

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An interplanetary traveler would logically conclude it a prison nation — or, at least, one astonishingly rife with thugs, murderers, thieves, and worse.

Even the more law-and-order, authoritarian among us could see the flaws evident in a system claiming freedom, while locking away proportionally more than even the dictatorial fascist regimes our troops putatively combat.

While undoubtedly posited from a place of compassion as a plea for ethics in imprisonment, Ball’s somewhat tongue-in-cheek proposal unfortunately evinces the frequency with which Band-aids are applied as a fix for gaping structural flaws which should otherwise condemn the system to demolishment.

But, worst of all, this proposition capriciously normalizes the American Incarceration State.

Consider how those 2.3 million souls wound up stuffed into the cramped confines of the nation’s myriad federal, state, and local facilities; or, worse — judging by a voluminous body of anecdotal accounts — one of the altogether notorious prisons-for-profit, managed by private corporations intent only on thrift in housing its human commodities to save the State some pennies.

Most of the convicted behind bars have committed nonviolent crime — but moralizing on personal vice and legislation enacted sanctimoniously against substances have exploded the nation’s prison population to alarming proportions.

A court or jury decision of guilt in no way can be characterized on par with ‘laws’ governing ethics and human rights — for, if a candid observation of inmate records were ventured, a sweeping sum could be said to have landed in prison by violating the State’s prohibition on the cannabis plant.

And not violently so.

Forgetting for a moment ‘the law is the law,’ to describe a society as just, which chooses to not only cement unjust ideas into law, but imprison violators of aberrant legislation — particularly in cases of medicinal use — must be the pinnacle of hypocritical pomposity, if not the telltale heart of a dying empire.

Sure, forcing (on penalty of prison?!) yet more behind bars to prove how base the conditions behind bars might actually assist the vocal calling to improve conditions behind bars, but if so many have been locked there for reasons only justifiable for the violation interned in the print of legal tomes, the plan is an exercise in pure futility.

Unless it simply normalizes prison life as a veritable inevitability — might as well prepare for the eventuality some offensive chunk of life will be wasted rotting between the torrid walls of a prison cell.

The irony, palpable.

No, we do not need to send the relatively innocent to prison to endure torturously foul food and varying degrees of inhospitability to prove locking people in cages does nothing to curb crime — indeed, the opposite is arguably true.

It’s the system, broken — not people’s compassion.

Juries convict based on flawed evidence, evidence omitted by technicality, and an embarrassing list of other inexcusable conditions accumulated on the books over centuries — and more laws and regulations find their way to the ledger every day.

They’re creating additional ways to make you a criminal — so, in that sense, Ball might be onto something.

‘Get ready for prison, dear young people, by the time you’re an adult, there won’t be a thing you can do without somehow breaking the law,’ the writer unintentionally asserts between the lines.

“I wonder,” Ball continues, “once all you citizens of the United States are passing in and out of prison on a regular basis, will the conditions there not seem singularly urgent? Just picture congressmen, priests, stock traders, truck drivers, people of every faith, color, description, all for once sharing in something.”

Sharing in the memory of peering out from inside prison walls isn’t conducive to solving the issue of mass incarceration.

Scrapping unjust, unethical, amoral, and otherwise ludicrous laws governing every conceivable aspect of daily life, however, is.

Cannabis Kills: Cops Execute No Knock Raid, Murder Man Over Non-Existent Plant

St. Louis, MO — On Wednesday, St. Louis Police Swat team members executed what appeared to be a no-knock raid on a home, killing 21-year-old Isaiah Hammett. According to the Riverfront Times, Hammett was suspected of dealing in drugs and weapons, but his family is telling a very different version of events from what the St. Louis Police Department is sharing.

“A bunch of shots was going on. My grandson was trying to protect me, threw me on the floor,” his grandfather told reporters. “Then I hear screaming. He went in the dining room. I see my grandson laying dead on the dining room floor. And police SWAT team out front told me to come out. I come out. I didn’t know what was going on,” he said still in an apparent state of shock and disbelief.

Police say they had a search warrant to enter the home, but the grandfather made no mention of seeing a warrant or hearing police announce their presence. Nonetheless, the SWAT team penetrated the home. They’re now saying Hammett opened fire on them, according to Lt. Colonel Lawrence O’Toole, acting St. Louis Police Chief.

O’Toole told reporters, “I can describe it only as being a firefight that was inside the residence…Numerous rounds were fired.”

Hammett’s family disputes those claims.

Gina Torres, Hammett’s mother said the young man and his grandfather believed someone was breaking into the home, and tried to hide. “The cops came in and they killed my son,” Torres said matter of factly.

“I needed my son and I feel like dying right now,” she cried in the street as she conveyed her heartache. “For no reason. They shot my son to death,” Torres said, tears streaming down her face.

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O’Toole said his SWAT officers did a “Fantastic” job executing the search warrant and that Hammett shot at them first with an AK-47 they recovered at the scene. The semi-automatic rifle is sold in gun stores throughout the U.S. and is not illegal to possess by most citizens. O’Toole proudly displayed the rifle, which is commonly used for self-protection against such home invasions.

Noticeably absent from O’Toole’s press conference was any mention of drugs being found at the home. Also not mentioned was any discussion about other weapons found on the premises. Conventionally left out of the press conference was any reference to body cameras being worn by officers, the footage of which rarely lies. In other words, all the police found at the home was one solitary rifle, a weapon which cost one young man his life.

The family, convinced largely by the testimony of Hammett’s grandfather who was with his grandson at the time of his killing, believes the police are lying. Hammett’s grandfather reiterated to reporters his eyewitness testimony of the events which took place Wednesday.

“I just heard a bunch of gunshots, my grandson coming in. He took me out of the bed, put me on the floor, more shots was being involved. The next thing I know, he’s laying on the ground dead,” his 71-year-old grandpa said. The family admits to there being more guns in the home but insist their son did not fire first.

As TFTP has documented on numerous occasions, citizens are often surprised when SWAT teams execute search warrants, some even conducted without firstly knocking and identifying themselves as officers. The “no-knock” search warrant is especially dangerous as many citizens do not know it’s police who are knocking down their doors attempting to make entry.

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Often times innocent people are killed in the process, and sometimes it’s the police officers who are killed. In Texas, where the “Castle” law is in effect, several officers have been killed executing such warrants, with at least one homeowner being exonerated for killing the intruders.

Oddly enough, Hammett may have had every right to fire on officers, especially if they did not announce their presence before throwing in the flash-bang grenade. The law states according to GunLaws101;

Missouri’s Castle Doctrine. The use of force to defend one’s self is justified when the person believes there is a certain risk of death, or great physical harm. This also applies when someone is trying to break into an occupied vehicle or home.

Unfortunately, Isaiah Hammett will not get a chance to prove his innocence in a court of law because police became his executioners, and we at TFTP do not think there is anything “fantastic” about that. Hammett’s only prior conviction was for possession of marijuana, a God-given plant, which is legal to use either recreationally or medicinally in 29 U.S. States. He now becomes one of the latest victims in the failed War on Drugs.

Mainstream Media Just Admitted Magic Mushrooms are Safest Recreational Drug

Obliterating the war on drugs in one decisively earth-shattering move, an unprecedented new survey cited by the corporate press found that — of all recreational drugs available — magic mushrooms can be considered safest.

Of an astonishing 120,000 participants from 50 nations, researchers for the Global Drug Survey found the percentage of those seeking emergency treatment for ingesting psilocybin-containing hallucinogenic mushrooms to comprise just 0.2 percent per 10,000 individuals.

Rates of hospitalization for MDMA, alcohol, LSD, and cocaine were an astounding five times higher.

“Magic mushrooms are one of the safest drugs in the world,” Global Drug Survey founder and consultant addiction psychiatrist, Adam Winstock, told the Guardian, noting the biggest risk users face is misidentification — ingesting the wrong mushroom — not from the psychedelic fungus, itself.

“Death from toxicity is almost unheard of with poisoning with more dangerous fungi being a much greater risk in terms of serious harms,” he asserted.

Annually, the Global Drug Survey queries the planet about its drug habits — covering type of substances used and in what quantity, patterns of drug use, and whether they experienced negative effects.

Reports the Guardian, “Overall, 28,000 people said they had taken magic mushrooms at some point in their lives, with 81.7% seeking a ‘moderate psychedelic experience’ and the ‘enhancement of environment and social interactions.’”

Winstock noted the greatest risk posed by magic mushrooms comes from combining psilocybin with other substances — or careless disregard for the drug as a powerful hallucinogen — as he explained,

“Combined use with alcohol and use within risky or unfamiliar settings increase the risks of harm most commonly accidental injury, panic and short lived confusion, disorientation and fears of losing one’s mind.”

Indeed, because ‘shrooms’ can induce flashbacks and panic attacks, Winstock advised those considering experimentation to plan “your trip carefully with trusted company in a safe place and always know what mushrooms you are using.”

Just because a trip devolves into a negative experience doesn’t guarantee the user will come away reeling with long-term psychological consequences, as Roland Griffiths and Robert Jesse of Johns Hopkins discovered in a 2016 survey of 2,000 people.

Quizzed about challenging or difficult magic mushroom experiences, just 2.7 percent of users reported having sought medical attention, while 7.6 percent were treated from enduring psychological symptoms — mere fractions of the 84 percent reporting beneficial effects from the psychedelic.

That finding concurs with two additional studies deeming magic mushrooms palliative for severe depression and anxiety.

Unintentionally lambasting the U.S. farcical war on drugs, Winstock pointed out that LSD — whose users, the 2017 GDS found, were hospitalized at a rate of 1 percent — came with problems due to variance in quality.

“LSD is such a potent drug,” he told the Guardian. “It’s so difficult to dose accurately when tabs you buy vary so widely. It’s easy to take too much and have an experience beyond the one you were expecting.”

When partakers practice moderation, ingesting small amounts until one becomes well-acquainted with their effects; procure shrooms only from a “reliable, trustworthy supply”; and taking only “a tiny dose to start,” the ingestion of mushrooms can be made exponentially safer.

Brad Burge, of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), pointed out the self-reporting by users upon which the Global Drug Survey relies should not be taken as documented medical data — particularly as users sometimes ingest multiple substances, thus making the determination of cause and effect murky, at best.

Additionally, what someone could cite as the need to seek emergency treatment vastly differs according to the substance, as Burge explained,

“With a drug such as heroin, a trip to the emergency room is a life-or-death situation requiring resuscitation and medication. With LSD or mushrooms, there is no toxicity and the effects wear after a few hours.”

However, he added, “There is no known lethal dose for LSD or pure psilocybin.”

“People don’t tend to abuse psychedelics,” Winstock asserted, “they don’t get dependent, they don’t rot every organ from head to toe, and many would cite their impact upon their life as profound and positive. But you need to know how to use them.”

“Drug laws,” he added, “need to balance the positives and problems they can create in society and well crafted laws should nudge people to find the right balance for themselves.”

WATCH: Dept Claims Cops ‘Did a Good Job’ Beating Father to a Pulp for Having Ecstasy

Englewood, IL — In the land of the free, if you are in possession of an arbitrary substance deemed illegal by the state, police will claim the legal authority to kidnap, cage, beat, and/or kill you. This scenario plays out like a broken record in towns across America, every minute of every day. Despite police force and violence proving to be an utter failure at preventing and deterring drug use, the state, like a deranged maniac, continues to wage this futile war on drugs.

A wise person once said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. If we are to hold this definition true, the state needs to see a doctor — and soon.

The most recent instance of this insanity comes from Englewood, Illinois in which police found a man with some pills people take that make them feel good, ecstasy. For being in possession of those pills, police claimed the legal right to assault and kidnap Mr. Jermain Milan. And, as the dramatic cell phone footage shows, assault and kidnap him they did.

Despite the state’s vicious war on drugs, over 17 million Americans have reported using ecstasy. Despite this massive number of users proving the ineffective nature of using police force to prevent drug use, police will still ruin your life over it. Sadly, that’s exactly what they did with Jermain Milan.

“[Jermaine] was minding his own business and they just came at him, you know?” Juwahn, Milan’s brother, told NBC Chicago.

According to NBC Chicago, family members shared the video, which they said was taken around 7:30 p.m. on Monday in the city’s West Englewood neighborhood. In the video, 34-year-old Jermaine Milan can be seen on the ground with a white plainclothes police officer straddling him. The officer repeatedly strikes Milan in the head while yelling, “Spit it out.” It is not quite clear what “it” is, according to the news station.

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During the video, you can hear an officer telling Milan, “I’ll kill you.” After this threat, the cop begins smashing the 34-year-old father of two’s face in for not complying with his kidnappers fast enough.

After the police department and the union became aware of the video, two statements were issued by the respective groups.

“We became aware of the video documenting plain clothes officers attempting to arrest a noncompliant offender after a suspected narcotics transaction last night,” the department said in a statement. “An investigation into the incident has been opened and the matter will be referred to the Independent Police Review Authority for a thorough review of the facts and circumstances of the incident.”

While the department has to pay lip service to the community by claiming some type of investigation will take place, the FOP does not. And, their remarks paint a far clearer image of what the department thinks versus what they said.

“We believe the officers were clearly in compliance with general orders and the use of force policy… The officers did a good job,” said Kevin Graham, president of the FOP.

To summarize the ‘good job’ of these officers, let’s recap what happened from an entirely objective point of view — omitting the claim of morality by police to tell people what they can and can’t put in their own bodies.

Jermain Milan had a few pills of a substance people take to escape reality. These pills are not nearly as dangerous as completely legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco, yet police insist of locking people in cages for them.

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Milan was minding his own business, had not harmed anyone, and may have just been trying to raise a few dollars for his family, or, perhaps, he wanted to escape reality for a while. Either way, there was no victim — until police showed up — and created one.

When police arrived, they assaulted this father of two, who had harmed no one. Because this father did not want to be kidnapped, he didn’t immediately comply with his kidnappers, so, his kidnappers began beating him.

Because he did not comply, his kidnappers then charged him with obstruction of justice and aggravated assault — all stemming from being in possession of a controlled substance.

Milan is a father of two whose children will now grow up without a dad because police took him away and are holding him in a cage.

There is no moral ground for the war on drugs. Legality does not equal morality — and society is slowly but surely coming to this conclusion.

As for the police, they can end this right now by joining those officers who’ve already figured this out and refuse to enforce the drug war any longer. It is unnecessary, ineffective, barbarian, and it has failed — miserably. It is also responsible for so much of the divide between the police and the policed in America today.

Jermaine’s brother sums up this sentiment in the statement below.

“I don’t like the police no more—at all,” Juwahn said. “They’re wrong for that.”

NYPD Cops Brag About Tiny Pot Bust on Twitter — So the Internet Destroyed Them

With acute deterioration in public support and vociferous backlash against the State’s already-failed war on drugs, police departments nationwide should have grasped by now the perils of boasting about drug raids on social media — particularly when the booty consists solely of cannabis and cash.

Two NYPD cops from Queens, stern-faced before an insignificant seizure of weed in a post to Twitter, thus, are either obstinate braggarts, or hapless gluttons for punishment — and the Internet responded accordingly.

Officers Sardone and Winter of the 106th Precinct in Ozone Park stand in front of a table displaying a few dozen gram bags of pot, two machetes, and (perhaps as a cautionary tale) one can of Monster Energy drink, seem to appear concerned for the citizens they heroically rescued from, well, some weed dealer.

“One less marijuana dealer on our streets thanks to Officers Sardone and Winter,” reads the caption accompanying an equally clinical picture, posted from the official Twitter account of the New York Police Department’s 106th Precinct.

One less marijuana dealer on our streets thanks to Officers Sardone and Winter. pic.twitter.com/uY4ddzCbch

— NYPD 106th Precinct (@NYPD106Pct) April 22, 2017

Not interested in letting the iconic dimebag bust image sink to the Internet’s dusty corners, or perhaps in the interest of increasing traffic to the precinct’s site, the pair of hero cops proceeded to tweet new versions shortly after the original first appeared.

Although the posts indeed received a smattering of neutral support, Twitter otherwise annihilated the bust as one farcical example of many throughout the duration of the wholly illogical and anachronistic war on drugs.

@NYPD106Pct You guys just ended the drug war.

— SertOne:Father Yöd (@SertOne) April 24, 2017

Volumes of research and findings from myriad scientific studies tout the healing and curative properties of cannabis and its derivatives, like cannabidiol (CBD) oil — yet, the DEA and Federal Government have remained bullheaded, failing to reschedule cannabis from its classification as a dangerous substance devoid of any potential medical use.

But that cult of a fervent few dedicated to destroying weed’s well-established counterculture acceptability has been backfiring in the current context of reputable medical research and loosening of state marijuana laws.

Fully 88 percent of people in the U.S. agree medical cannabis use should be legal, while 61 percent say, when it comes to recreational use, ‘legalize’ — the highest percentage of legalization supporters ever recorded by CBS News for that poll.

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Almost needless to say, that the pair of chest-puffing NYPD cops stood victorious over a few dozen grams of pot, two knives, and an energy drink, became an instant Internet goldmine — the keenest of which noted the drug war’s astonishing hypocrisy, summarized in this highly-polished yet substantively flat reminder it’s altogether illogical to continue the war on drugs.

Following are just a few examples of many in which Twitter users deflated unnecessarily large egos, while educating law enforcement about the pitfalls of enforcing unjust laws.

@NYPD106Pct @DmDeShazo Looks like officer Sardone and Winter were upset when they found out weed wasn"t actually $20 a gram

— Cody (@Cprids) April 24, 2017

@Cprids @NYPD106Pct I don"t see the 106 stopping or helping its 2-6 sexual assaults daily in its district tho yikes

— Don Darko (@DmDeShazo) April 24, 2017

@DmDeShazo @NYPD106Pct Real crime stoppers.. taking these hardened criminals off the streets

— Cody (@Cprids) April 24, 2017

@NYPD106Pct The can of monster is a whole lot deadlier than the lettuce homie.

— The Cannacrat (@Trumpsterfuego) April 22, 2017

@NYPD106Pct You are not heroes, and the public is not on your side in busting marijuana sellers.

— Ibrahim Nur (@IbrahimNur10) April 23, 2017

@NYPD106Pct This who y"all caught? pic.twitter.com/tDH3wVcNf6

— Lil $ega (@lilDreamcast) April 24, 2017

@NYPD106Pct saving the world from absolutely nothing. good job tho

— sadist (@DEADASFRED) April 24, 2017

@NYPD106Pct pic.twitter.com/v4mFY3xlaS

— King Of Zamunda (@_kingdavid) April 24, 2017

@NYPD106Pct "let"s put those crocodile dundee knives we got on ebay by these dub sacks we got off that 21 year old kid"

— Bryan (@jaykubs) April 24, 2017

@NYPD106Pct lmao weed is still illegal over there?

— jumpman (@Fingasindabooty) April 24, 2017

@NYPD106Pct pic.twitter.com/Hffnkdpz0O

— A.P. (@inyour_sole) April 24, 2017

@NYPD106Pct send nudes

— ✗ (@bemykind) April 24, 2017

@NYPD106Pct "marijuana dealer" holds about the same weight as "cotton candy distributor" in this tweet for some reason

— silly bitch ◟̽◞̽ (@WARZONEZAIN) April 24, 2017

First of Its Kind Study Finds Cannabis May Be a “Miracle” Treatment for Autistic Kids

Autism could now be added to the lengthy and perpetually-expanding list of afflictions and symptoms treatable with the one product of nature shamefully prohibited by the federal government — the “miracle” palliative, cannabis.

One in every 68 children in the United States is now affected by autism, and the number of kids coping with the developmental disorder has been increasing at an explosive rate in recent years. With onset most common during infancy and early childhood, autism can impact social and communication skills and may cause repetitive or compulsive behaviors, among other manifestations.

Now, fresh evidence again frowns upon U.S. federal prohibition of cannabis — listed as a Schedule I dangerous substance of no potential medical use, alongside heroin — which could be depriving ailing children the chance for treatment, and hope for a better-adjusted future.

In contrast to its staunch U.S. ally, Israel has approached the cannabis plant as the medicinal healer it has more than proven to be — medical marijuana was first approved in Israel decades ago, in 1992, making it one of the first in the world to do so.

As USA Today notes, in a recent article titled, Marijuana may be a miracle treatment for children with autism, Israel and just two other countries — Canada and the Netherlands — have government-sponsored medical marijuana programs available to citizens.

As USA Today reports:

When Noa Shulman came home from school, her mother, Yael, sat her down to eat, then spoon-fed her mashed sweet potatoes — mixed with cannabis oil.

Noa, who has a severe form of autism, started to bite her own arm. “No sweetie,” Yael gently told her 17-year-old daughter. “Here, have another bite of this.”

Noa is part of the first clinical trial in the world to test the benefits of medicinal marijuana for young people with autism, a potential breakthrough that would offer relief for millions of afflicted children — and their anguished parents.

Because of the notorious, if not nefarious, American war on drugs irresponsibly focuses on the cannabis plant as a dangerous substance sans redeeming medical value, research here lags exponentially behind other nations — unnecessary red tape, regulations, laws, and restrictions make procuring clearance for scientific study a somewhat odious hurdle.

To wit, the Food and Drug Administration — which, incidentally, oversees the drug warriors of the DEA — has thus far only approved two antipsychotic pharmaceuticals for the treatment of symptoms of autism. Both of those come replete with a host of serious and untenable side effects — making the choice to treat a difficult one, at best.

Israeli researchers, unbound by the absurdities of the drug war, began a new study in January at the Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, comprised of 120 children ranging in age from five to 29 years, who have been diagnosed with mild to severe autism.

Study participants are given one of two cannabis oil treatments or a placebo, drops of which can be mixed into a meal — none contain high levels of THC, the ingredient which gives users a ‘high.’

“Adi Aran, the pediatric neurologist leading the study, said nearly all the participants previously took antipsychotics and nearly half responded negatively. Yael desperately pushed Aran and other doctors to prescribe cannabis oil after a news report aired about a mother who illegally obtained it for her autistic son and said it was the only thing that helped him,” USA Today reports.

Myriad scientific studies and innumerable anecdotal cases have proven cannabis to treat everything from PTSD to ADHD, various cancers to the painful pressure of glaucoma — but the plant’s miraculous quality has been most apparent in treating severe seizures of childhood epilepsy.

Now, it appears, cannabis — specifically, the non-psychoactive compound, cannabidiol or CBD — may offer improved quality of life for children with autism, and the families providing their care.

“Many parents were asking for cannabis for their kids,” Aran told USA Today. “First I said, ‘No, there’s no data to support cannabis for autism, so we can’t give it to you.’”

Doubt quickly lifted, however, after multiple studies championed cannabis in the treatment of childhood epilepsy and in reducing the severity of symptoms of autism. Aran points out 30 percent of children with autism are also afflicted with epilepsy.

In an observational study, the doctor found 70 patients with autism experienced positive results from cannabis — so the clinical trial was launched for in-depth study.

Where Israel provides hope for families of children with various ailments with government-sponsored cannabis care, parents in the United States are forced to grapple with a patchwork of laws and regulations. Packing up a house of belongings to flee draconian marijuana laws for life-saving cannabis treatment has become commonplace to the point such families are now deemed, in all seriousness, medical refugees.

As long as cannabis prohibition remains in effect — an overwhelming likelihood, given the profiteering possible at every level of the system, from police departments to courts to for-profit prisons, and so on — children and adults will needlessly suffer without the healing powers of a substance that couldn’t get anyone high.

One-hundred-ten clinical trials of cannabis are currently underway in Israel — and although there may be many in the U.S., research primarily focuses on the treatment of addiction and related issues.

Should cannabis, specifically, CBD oil, prove its mettle in treating the symptoms of autism in children, it would behoove U.S. bureaucrats and drug warriors to pay attention and save lives — rather than standing tough on an anachronistic and harmful national policy.

DEA Approves Synthetic Weed for Pharma Co. That Paid $500K to Keep REAL Pot Illegal

After it waged a veritable war against cannabis legalization in Arizona, coughing up half a million dollars for the campaign, Insys Therapeutics recently announced the ultimate victory has finally come to fruition: the DEA approved one of the company’s groundbreaking pharmaceuticals — synthetic marijuana — to be listed as a Schedule II substance.

“Insys gave $500,000 last summer to Arizonans for Responsible Drug Policy, the group opposing marijuana legalization in Arizona,” the Washington Post reported. “The donation amounted to roughly 10 percent of all money raised by the group in an ultimately successful campaign against legalization. Insys was the only pharmaceutical company known to be giving money to oppose legalization last year, according to a Washington Post analysis of campaign finance records.”

That flood of cash from the pharmaceutical company with a vested interest in killing legalization probably did just that.

Now, the equally profit-motivated government has bestowed on Insys Therapeutics what is tantamount to skirting federal cannabis prohibition — despite that synthetic Syndros contains the equivalent ingredient, THC, nature provided in the first place.

This coordinated effort between a profiteering, private entity and the U.S. government to not only crush, but scoff at personal liberties sounds a quiet but resounding alarm for America’s legal cannabis industry.

The fact the cannabis plant, itself still languishes as a supposedly dangerous Schedule I substance, while Big Pharma can profit from its imitation, did not occur by happenstance — in fact, Insys’ history should have flatly nullified this government-granted windfall.

Syndros garnered approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration last summer for the treatment of the nausea, vomiting, and weight loss suffered by AIDS and cancer patients.

Now, Insys has received the green light from the Drug Enforcement Agency, which categorized the synthetic substance and its generic formulations as Schedule II — a classification placing it alongside substances from cocaine and methamphetamines, to Adderall, OxyContin, and even methadone.

Cannabis remains on the DEA’s hitlist of Schedule I dangerous substances the State vilipends as devoid of redeeming medical value, on par with heroin, LSD, ecstasy, and peyote — largely due to pressure from, if not surreptitious coordination with, Big Pharma.

Insys’ stupefyingly brash endeavor to crush cannabis legalization while attempting approval of a fabricated concoction that mimics the vilified plant must be the most astonishingly pretentious example of callous corporate profiteering in years — indeed, this loathsome hypocrisy has not escaped the cannabis advocacy microscope.

“It appears they are trying to kill a non-pharmaceutical market for marijuana in order to line their own pockets,” J.P. Holyoak, chairman of the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol in Arizona, asserted last year.

Even a cursory examination of Insys Therapeutics’ anti-pot propaganda — imbued with all the patronizing semantics characteristic of an industry too experienced in cozying up to the U.S. government — belies the inanity in Big Pharma’s naked profiteering.

In short, it doesn’t matter to Insys and the federal government that scores of patients suffering a startlingly wide spectrum of ailments find relief from a plant, cannabis, in its natural state — together with loosening laws nationwide — cannot profit Insys.

But a fabricated version of the plant — and its oh-so-helpful categorization as less dangerous than what nature managed to produce — can.

During its shameless anti-pot campaign, Insys bloviated of legalization, “it fails to protect the safety of Arizona’s citizens, and particularly its children.”

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Perhaps targeting the heartstrings of family members whose loved ones use cannabis to treat childhood epilepsy and seizures, cancer, post-traumatic stress disorder, Crohn’s disease, addiction, depression, ADHD, or one of myriad other conditions, Insys deigned itself a shield between customers and the villain plant, adding it “firmly believes in the potential clinical benefits of cannabinoids,” and “we hope that patients will have the opportunity to benefit from these potential products once clinical trials demonstrate their safe and effective use.”

That socially-awkward attempt to seem compassionate fools no one — and hasn’t yet — considering Insys Therapeutics began seeking the boundless profits of synthesized cannabis more than a decade ago.

Insys predicted current staggering support for the medical and recreational use of cannabis years ago, as the company postured on the need to maintain the non-synthetic plant’s Schedule I status in a 2011 letter to the DEA, noting the “longstanding policy of the United States to disfavor domestic cultivation of narcotic raw materials because of concerns about the abuse potential from farming of this material.”

But evidence the pharmaceutical company’s hostility toward the cannabis plant pertained to profit deprived it, in actuality, came years earlier — Insys’ own words from nearly a decade ago substantiate fully the financial motivation.

As state-run RT pointed out, a disclosure filed by Insys on August 17, 2007, with the Securities and Exchange Commission proves beyond a doubt the profit-robbing factor would motivate killing legalization ten years later. Forgoing pretense, Insys asserted,

“If marijuana or non-synthetic cannabinoids were legalized in the United States, the market for dronabinol [Syndros] product sales would likely be significantly reduced and our ability to generate revenue and our business prospects would be materially adversely affected.”

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Of course, given Insys Therapeutics’ penchant for flying fast and loose with the law when profits are at stake aligns perfectly with the company’s insultingly-hypocritical, patently-fictitious moralizing on public health concerns.

Insys is now under investigation for off-brand marketing of fentanyl — an opioid painkiller 50 times stronger than Schedule I-listed heroin, and one of the most addictive substances available — a route pharmaceutical companies take when a drug is either found efficacious in treating an additional condition, or when sales for the approved purpose slump.

Worse, and lending further credence to the company’s profit-no-matter-the-cost modus operandi, several Insys executives were just arrested in December for conspiring to pay off healthcare workers to recklessly prescribe the medication — even when the dangerous opioid wasn’t needed.

“Several pharmaceutical executives and managers, formerly employed by Insys Therapeutics, Inc., were arrested today on charges that they led a nationwide conspiracy to bribe medical practitioners to unnecessarily prescribe a fentanyl-based pain medication and defraud healthcare insurers,” wrote the U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts in an announcement on December 8, 2016.

“As alleged, top executives of Insys Therapeutics, Inc. paid kickbacks and committed fraud to sell a highly potent and addictive opioid that can lead to abuse and life threatening respiratory depression,” stated Harold H. Shaw, Special Agent in Charge of the Boston Field Division of the FBI, after the arrests. “In doing so, they contributed to the growing opioid epidemic and placed profit before patient safety.  These indictments reflect the steadfast commitment of the FBI and our law enforcement partners to confront the opioid epidemic impacting our communities, while bringing to justice those who seek to profit from fraud or other criminal acts.”

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Yet, the duplicitous nature of the U.S. government’s prohibition on cannabis now has the DEA, putatively Drug Warrior Number One, transparently forking over legal protections for synthetic THC, allowing the company to profit handily, while the plant’s scheduling makes criminals out of patients legitimately using cannabis for medical reasons.

It is this skirting of legality, deceptive marketing, duplicitous propaganda, offensively direct assistance from the government, and flagrant criminality that make Insys Therapeutics the exact corporate thug paragon of a monied-interest, authoritarian Police State.

If you need a case to abolish the State, look no further than its dealings with the cannabis plant — whether or not you are a user, the miraculously beneficial weed has flourished for centuries unmolested by self-important empires, until fiat currency made it a threat to unscrupulous profiteers.

The State’s farcical war on cannabis has effectively ended for most Americans — and it’s well overdue the government catch up with the rest of us.

Analysis Shows Pot Will NOT Kill You, But Cops Arresting You For It Definitely Can

While an embarrassing number of Americans still swallow the drug war’s laughably fictitious marijuana prohibition propaganda, SWAT raids to confiscate the plant ludicrously deemed illegal by the State kill people at an exponentially higher rate than weed, itself.

Cannabis has never been the cause of a fatal overdose.

Data amassed by the New York Times “or the most part, governments at all levels have chosen not to quantify the toll by requiring reporting on SWAT operations. But The Times’s investigation, which relied on dozens of open-record requests and thousands of pages from police and court files, found that at least 81 civilians and 13 law enforcement officers died in such raids from 2010 through 2016. Scores of others were maimed or wounded.”

Euphemistically-termed “dynamic entry” raids allow militarily-clad police to smash through doors with assault weapons drawn, demand anyone present comply immediately, and, far too frequently, shoot first and claim imminent threat later.

Such reprehensible exertion of control through violent tactics seemingly lifted from gestapo manuals — particularly to enforce the much-maligned prohibition of cannabis — was never the intended use of police SWAT. As the Washington Post explains,

“The modern-day SWAT team originated in Los Angeles in the late 1960s as a way to deal with gunmen targeting police officers or civilians. But today SWAT teams are mostly used to handle routine warrant work, especially drug warrants. A 2014 ACLU study found that nearly 80 percent of SWAT deployments were to serve search warrants. Just 7 percent of SWAT deployments involved ‘hostage, barricade, or active shooter scenarios.’”

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A patchwork of state laws now govern the legality of the plant falsely classified as lacking any medical value, as a Schedule 1 substance, by the FDA and Drug Enforcement Agency — whose own website hypocritically also states, “No death from overdose of marijuana has been reported” — making it possible to buy weed in a store in one state, and die because of it just over state lines.

Yet cops still maintain blank slate to crash through doors, ransack homes, confiscate property and cash, and — inexcusably — shoot to kill, even though the government knows its own cannabis prohibition is a scam.

Although debate furiously ensues over whether suspect or cop is to blame when headlines detail the latest traffic stop turned fatal shooting by police, in door-smashing SWAT raids, police always act as the aggressor. With adrenaline heightening fear and sometimes clouding threat perception — and inexplicable administrative mistakes, such as incorrect address — uninvolved parties pay the price with disquieting regularity.

“Innocents have died in attacks on wrong addresses, including a 7-year-old girl in Detroit, and collaterally as the police pursued other residents, among them a 68-year-old grandfather in Framingham, Mass.,” reports the Times. “Stray bullets have whizzed through neighboring homes, and in dozens of instances the victims of police gunfire have included the family dog […]

“In a country where four in 10 adults have guns in their homes, the raids incite predictable collisions between forces that hurtle toward each other like speeding cars in a passing lane — officers with a license to invade private homes and residents convinced of their right to self-defense.

“After being awakened by the shattering of doors and the detonation of stun grenades, bleary suspects reach for nearby weapons — at times realizing it is the police, at others mistaking them for intruders — and the shooting begins.”

Contrary to the Times’ intimation, officers regularly shoot first — first, that is, if the subjects of the raid even possess weapons, or, if they do, regardless of whether or not they take aim at officers.

Innumerable tales of SWAT raids gone horrifically awry detail State-sanctioned maimings, the utter annihilation of property, slaughter of family pets, stray bullets finding unfortunate targets, and other gruesome outcomes — all for nonviolent crimes involving ostensively illicit substances the State made verboten for Americans it must condescendingly view as incapable of self control.

But times — and the national attitude toward weed — are changing. Over half of the states in the nation have shirked federal law in favor of medical cannabis, and eight states and the District of Columbia allow recreational use. Americans who believe the ban should be lifted in some way increase in number each time a survey assesses the national attitude toward the beneficial plant.

The United States undeniably failed in its bellicose campaign to eradicate ‘evil’ marijuana, but — as ineffective yet profitable policies go — cannabis prohibition remains official federal law.

A prime example of the inanity of profit-seeking trumping the prudence of lifting the ban on cannabis comes from a 2013 SWAT raid recounted by the Post, in which an informant — considered almost wholly unreliable in multiple analyses — snitched on Henry Magee for allegedly possessing 12 cannabis plants.

“Groggy and disoriented by the commotion” of a pre-dawn, door-busting police raid, the Post reports, “Magee grabbed a semi-automatic rifle and began firing in the direction of the door that the officers had just battered down. His live-in girlfriend, four months pregnant at the time, thought they were being robbed.

“When Magee and his girlfriend heard the police announce themselves, they immediately surrendered. By then, police investigator Frederich Sowders lay dead on the floor. They later recovered 10 marijuana plants and 4 ounces of dried marijuana from his home.”

A grand jury acquitted Magee of capital murder.

“All of us felt that if I were in bed and heard anything that made me get up and get a gun, and all of a sudden my door explodes in, I’m shooting,” one juror told the Times, adding in disbelief, “Why in the world would you do a full-out assault on a guy growing pot?”

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Why, indeed.

Having Your Life Saved During an Overdose Now Punishable by 6 Months in Jail

Washington Court House, OH — As if struggling to beat opioid addiction weren’t challenging enough, being revived from an overdose in one Ohio town could now earn the victim criminal charges.

In February, Washington Court House Police Chief Brian Hottinger told NBC4, his department began citing anyone whom emergency services must revive using naloxone (name brand, Narcan) with inducing panic.

At least seven people have been charged with this first-degree misdemeanor since the change, and now must face a $1,000 fine and — alarmingly for those already battling addiction — up to six months in county jail.

Officials claim the switch occurred as the latest attempt to quash a widespread opioid epidemic gripping Ohio and the entire nation — but the situation has spiraled so far out of control, Washington Court House’s plan mostly seeks to track who has overdosed.

“It gives us the ability to keep an eye on them, to offer them assistance and to know who has overdosed,” City Attorney Mark Pitsick explained to ABC6. “Sometimes we can’t even track who has overdosed.”

Southwest Ohio and the surrounding region are experiencing, as other areas, the brunt of the heroin and opioid epidemic, leaving authorities scrambling to determine how to best help civilians and stem the supply.

“We are trying everything we can do. It’s an epidemic,” Pitsick asserted.

Hottinger and Pitsick insist charging overdose victims this way will allow officials to offer much-needed help to those whose habits have overtaken their lives — and stuffing people in cages isn’t the goal, but is one option of last resort.

Pitsick reiterated,

“Service. Follow up. Just them understanding that people do care. We are here to help. We are not here to put them in jail.

“They don’t have hope to begin with, but [by] helping them we hope we are giving them the ability to turn their lives around.”

Although the epidemic is far from unique to Washington Court House, the frustration expressed by overwhelmed officials isn’t; but the widespread, deadly issue has the simplest of solutions — if only beleaguered police departments and emergency medical providers would make their case to the federal government.

Several viable alternatives to jailing nonviolent drug offenders — particularly people addicted to opiates — have shown undeniable promise in curbing the epidemic.

Repealing cannabis prohibition — implemented and sustained for purely political reasons — could virtually solve America’s sordid obsession with heroin and painkillers. Weed not only fails to act as the ‘gateway’ drug U.S. government propaganda has warned us about for decades, but a recent study also found the extraordinary plant can reduce a user’s dependency on, among other things, opiates.

Indeed, decriminalization or legalization as has been attempted in a growing number of nations after Portugal experienced a decade of imperfect success in removing the criminality from all substances — including cannabis, cocaine, heroin, and any drug considered illicit.

Portugal’s prisons veritably emptied of nonviolent drug offenders, the overall violent crime rate slumped, adolescents no longer experiment with substances at the same rate as other Western nations, and — after a brief, expected spike in the revolutionary program’s nascence — the rate of drug use and dependence has lessened dramatically.

Were the U.S. to follow those cues, anyone dependent on opioids would be able to use psilocybin or LSD to break the drug’s chokehold — the government’s own data admits magic mushrooms and acid can reduce opioid dependence.

Of course, any of these options would steal profits from the pockets of pharmaceutical companies which wildly profit from legal drugs like Oxycontin, fentanyl, and more — in short, national decriminalization isn’t likely anytime soon, if ever.

One option working to fight the opioid epidemic that doesn’t require a seismic shift in federal drug policy originally hails from Gloucester, Massachusetts, where heartbroken, now-former Police Chief Leonard Campanello threw the ultimate Hail Mary in 2015.

Sick of the town’s string of deaths from heroin, the frustrated Campanello posted to social media that anyone suffering with drug addiction and dependence should come to the police station — with their remaining supply and needles — and rather than being charged or taken to jail, the department promised to help find an appropriate treatment facility.

To his delight, a number of people took the chief’s offer, even sending the desperate out of state when treatment better fit the individual elsewhere. The drastic switch in policy — and Campanello’s resultant Angel Program — were so efficacious in thwarting the epidemic, it has now been implemented by over 200 police departments around the United States.

Washington Court House officials closely echo Campanello’s helplessness in the face of the monster epidemic — but their plan to charge people as criminals after what must be the lowest point of dependence, overdose, misses the mark.

Our federal government has the power to stifle this problem and rein in opioid dependence — but its fealty to Big Pharma thus far has supplanted any semblance of reason, common sense, and, most of all, compassion.

Legal Weed is Doing What Trump’s Wall and a Trillion Dollar Drug War NEVER Will

Vowing to be “ruthless,” building a mammoth wall, and revisiting crackdowns on federal cannabis prohibition won’t stop barbarous drug cartels or the flow of substances the State deems illegal into the United States — reinvigorating the war on drugs will, in fact, have quite the opposite effect ostensively intended.

But if he sticks to his word (unlike with that dubious swamp promise) President Donald Trump will empower the exact criminals he eviscerates publicly by keeping illicit substances the prized goods of the black market.

Perhaps the president simply has not examined the overwhelming evidence across-the-board that decriminalization or legalization focuses funds on providing help to addicts, robs cartels of viability, lowers the rate of drug abuse, and empties prisons of otherwise nonviolent offenders.

Or perhaps he has.

Because the war on drugs wasn’t meant to be won — or, at least, not by anyone but the pharmaceutical industry, the military-industrial machine, the for-profit prison-industrial complex, politicians, and, perhaps incidentally, violent drug cartels.

“We’ve defended the borders of other nations, while leaving our own borders wide open, for anyone to cross — and for drugs to pour in at a now unprecedented rate,” Trump proclaimed in his first full speech to Congress, moments later adding that, with getting tough, “Our terrible drug epidemic will slow down and ultimately, stop.”

Abandoning logic for a fear-based appeal to the perpetually paranoid masses, Trump continues heralding the notorious border Mexico border wall as a feasible method to keep the bad guys and bad drugs out of the U.S. — presumably under the premise Americans will be safer. He continued,

“For that reason, we will soon begin the construction of a great wall along our southern border. It will be started ahead of schedule and, when finished, it will be a very effective weapon against drugs and crime.

“As we speak, we are removing gang members, drug dealers, and criminals that threaten our communities and prey on our citizens. Bad ones are going out as I speak tonight and as I have promised.”

Not many would argue the presence of violent gang members isn’t desirable — particularly if they involved in violent and destructive behavior — but expecting the deportation of criminals and cartel members to somehow stifle the drug pipeline or thwart criminal activity is ludicrously negligent.

Worse, reviving the dead horse that is the cannabis prohibition robs Americans of a vital medicine not only treating everything from cancer, Crohn’s disease, childhood epilepsy, PTSD, and countless other conditions, it prevents people addicted to tobacco and dangerous opioid painkillers from having access to a potential cure.

Claiming you have the country’s best interests at heart while ratcheting up the effort to prosecute those who use a plant, for any reason, belies Trump’s actual goals of placating the somnambulant masses while ensuring excessive laws generate income for prisons, police, and Big Pharma.

“But this president can’t, as he as forcefully remarked, expect much fairness from the national media, and if he keeps promising draconian reductions in crime and especially drug abuse, and doesn’t act accordingly, it will haunt him,” writes the National Review’s Conrad Black. “The War on Drugs has largely been a fraud and a complete failure. After the imprisonment of nearly 7 million people and the spending of at least $1.5 trillion, narcotics are as readily available — and as or more widely used — and absorb more of the GDP than ever. And the United States is not blameless in the inflammation of virtual civil wars in Mexico, Colombia and elsewhere, though there were many other contributing causes in those countries.”

If the new administration sought seriously for a major victory in the war on drugs, Trump and his cohorts would look to Portugal and other countries where — although kinks are still being worked out — decriminalization of all drugs has had impressive results in reducing crime, addiction, and imprisonment.

But broad decriminalization wouldn’t keep Americans addicted to prescription opioid pharmaceuticals — thus yanking the unspoken basis for U.S. troop presence out from under that operation. Broad decriminalization, by nature, means less people would wind up mired in the boggling complexity that is the court and prison system.

Something darker than pure profit motivates political drug warriors, however — this isn’t just about the money.

Cannabis prohibition and the classification of substances as arbitrarily harmful — despite voluminous evidence even so-called harder drugs like LSD, psilocybin, and cocaine have viable medicinal qualities — represent an insidious method of control. American society tends to conflate morality with legality, thus instilling a stigma around substances, against those who ingest, and particularly against anyone struggling with dependence.

Drugs and users have been horrendously stigmatized throughout the duration of this failed political battle, precisely as former President Richard Nixon desired when he ratcheted up the war on pot in the name of criminalizing the antiwar left and being black. The worse opinion the public maintains of drug culture, the simpler it will be for the State to hoodwink the ignorant into believing the easily-refuted — such as that cannabis holds no medical value and those who partake must be stoners and amoral lawbreakers.

This pits citizen against citizen and neighbor against neighbor, as the State encourages everyone to poke their noses in the affairs of everyone else, and dutifully report anything even minimally suspicious.

Militarized police investigating drug ‘crimes’ have permission to knock down doors, ransack residences, seize assets — houses, cars, cash, savings, and any valuables — in many cases, when the activity is only suspected of taking place.

As a bellicose nation with the most bloated military budget on the planet, our choice of belligerent language aptly describes the war on drugs and its consequences — masking the need to question its validity with the somber overtones of a military endeavor.

“Instead of conducting a serious war,” Black continues, “which would entail a massive sweep of campuses and a severe interdiction of delivery, as well as a tight control of border points and the air approaches to the country, it has been easier, these 40 years, just to troll through African-American and Latino areas, round up users, give first offenders a soft ride for denunciations of their suppliers, and send 7 million of such easily replaceable people to prison on absurdly extreme sentences, and masquerade as warriors against drugs. If the anti-drug war were conducted against white middle- and upper-income-area users, and the university students of America, with the same zeal it is waged against the non-white poor, the demand for and supply of drugs would decline sharply, the obscenely inflated number of incarcerated people would skyrocket, the ranks of students in institutions of higher learning would be thinned out sharply; and practically every elected official in the country would be impeached, recalled, or hammered at the polls.”

In telling ways, the United States has surreptitiously held loyal to its Puritanical roots, sanctimoniously denouncing illicit substances on the world stage while secretly taking a toke or snorting a line behind closed doors.

This — that Americans, like anyone else, wish to be left to live life without a nanny state dictating what should be verboten — is the elephant in the drug war room.

Trump doesn’t want to end the war on drugs anymore than any other president in a succession of administrations who see value in depriving the populace of liberties while profiting off the misery criminalization brings.

No matter how tall or impenetrable the president and his supporters build this wall — no matter how tough on crime and drugs, users and dealers U.S. police forces get — nothing will ever stop these substances from circulating.

Demand necessitates supply, but rather than legalization and resuscitating the economy through businesses centered on cannabis and hemp, the carbon-copy White House has chosen the predictable, stale, and forever-hollow call to arms against drugs.

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But in actuality Trump’s heightened war on drugs just another tired manifestation of the government’s war on you.