A Special Message From the AMGA, Dedicated to Keep Pot Illegal & Profits High!

“We all know that a lot of people are harmed by prohibition, but who benefits? Strangely enough, some of the biggest beneficiaries are the bootleggers. Sure, they take a big risk, but black marketeers don’t have to pay taxes, they’re protected from foreign competition, and they benefit from artificially inflated prices. Talk about protectionism.”

Share on Facebook

Marijuana and Halloween just seem to mix. Not like St. Patrick’s Day and alcohol, but you get my drift. Here’s a collection of marijuana themed pics that just happen to coincide with one our favorite holidays. Happy Halloweed everyone!

(source)

(source)

(source)

(source)

(source)

(source)

(source)

(source)

(source)

(source)

(source)

(source)

(source)

Share on Facebook

Legalize Marijuana and Watch the Prison Industry Crumble

I was sitting at my morning post in the kitchen, trying to decide which country to flee to should health care reform not pass. Canada was winning by a long shot when something from the television caught my attention.

The always sensible dope-heads in California are pushing hard for marijuana legalization. Expect to see up to three different measures on the 2010 ballot. Even the most conservative plan sounds like a clear winner, a ray of sunshine to a whole generation of rain.

It would allow any person over the age of 21 to posses up to an ounce on their person, which is more than enough for most occasions. It would also permit citizens to grow their own plants in an area up to 5 ft by 5 ft. Now that doesn’t sound like a very big space, but the fact that it’s legal makes all the difference in the world. Any half-wit with access to the internet could educate themselves enough to implement a rotating cannabis crop with good yields all year round.

California is always at the head of the pack when it comes to these progressive issues, or at least it seems that way to an outsider. Their emissions standards and plans for environmental focus are being adopted by the federal government, and with any luck the reformation of marijuana laws in California will have the same effect.

The obvious problem lies in the downfall of the prison industry, which has been propped up by non-violent drug offences and petty possession charges. If pot is legalized across the US, there is a strong possibility that many prisons will be forced to close their giant gates and tear down their razor wire fences. Of course, this wouldn’t be a problem at all if the prison industry wasn’t such a fantastic money maker. For almost a decade, financial experts have told us that private prisons are the best investment anyone with that kind of capital could possible make. And the people listened. We now hold the title of the country with the highest percentage of jailed citizens.

I say fuck the prison industry, they’ve never done anything for me. When I was very young, my dad was locked away for growing pot. My air-headed mother insisted several times that we go visit him, and as scared as I was, I followed her. I’ll tell you like I told her, that’s the last time I’ll ever set foot in that place.

We entered the sterile building, which immediately reminded me of the hospital–where I had just undergone the most horrifying experience of my young life–and I tailed my mom to a bizarre looking phone booth facing a thick wall of glass. I sat next to her with none of the usual childhood innocence, mine was taken away at a young age. I watched my father, humiliated and emotionally broken, shuffle his way over to the phone in front of us.

The conversation that followed between my parents had overtones of panic and dismay, though I can’t remember exactly what they said. I was too busy thinking “happy thought” about the tire swing in our yard or my new cat named Big Bob–who was freakishly huge for a cat, and had a bobbed tail. I couldn’t even look at my dad, and obviously he was embarrassed because he barely acknowledged my presence.

That strange half hour of my childhood stands out more clearly than any other memory I’ve managed to hold on to. My father is the guy who struck fear into the hearts of anyone who threatened his family. He was a big dude, and tough as nails. He had tattoos mocking the devil, and encouraging violence. On that day, he was defeated. The warrior sat in a chair, separated from his family by a clear border, hung his head, and slowly closed his eyes. I didn’t want to see it, but I recognized that look. It meant that this was a challenge he knew he couldn’t win.

Many children in our great nation of distorted family values are forced to endure the same memories, which sets them up for a lifetime of distrust and living “outside the law.” There’s nothing worse in this entire world than a child who’s lost all hope.

So fuck the prisons, legalize marijuana and watch them crumble. It’s inhumane to lock someone away for a plant, and extremely weak of our lame-ass government to fear a weed.

Source: The Sleepy Eagle Free Press
Copyright: 2009 The Sleepy Eagle Free Press
Contact: sleepyeagle707@gmail.com
Website: http://www.sleepyeagle.wordpress.com/
Author: John Lindley

Share on Facebook

Marijuana vs Alcohol – Do the Math on the Dangers

May we please discuss marijuana, medical or otherwise, and alcohol in the same sentence? If I were to try to poison myself to death by consuming alcohol, I could easily do so. That was proved in our community last year. Were alcohol illegal and marijuana legal, perhaps we wouldn’t have lost a minor to alcohol poisoning last year. No regular user has ever “poisoned” themselves with marijuana and no one has ever died as a direct result of having smoked it.

Alcohol is one of the leading causes of vehicular death. As marijuana becomes legal, there will doubtless be more incidents of “buzzed driving.” While I cannot defend this practice any more than driving drunk, the mechanics are different regarding attention spans, reaction times, and cognitive association with one’s environment. Check the police reports, if you wish, but I don’t ever recall an article in the Record Searchlight regarding an accident vehicle reeking of marijuana. Could it be that marijuana-impaired drivers are safer than drunks?

Domestic violence is fueled by the consumption of alcohol. Someone who just got high is inhabiting an entirely different mental construct than one who just drank. I have never met a violent “stoner,” although I have met more than my fair share of obnoxious, violent drunks. Logic dictates that any drinker who is against legalizing marijuana is a world-class hypocrite.

There are, conservatively, 7,500 people in Shasta County who have medical marijuana prescriptions. Knock the dispensaries, if you wish, but they will succeed or fail based upon services provided in the market. Any dispensary that creates a bad name for itself will be out of business in very little time, without need for police tactics. I am sure that the people who smoke outside of dispensaries are the same people who drink in the liquor store parking lot. The ignorant will always be with us – drunk, stoned or dead-cold sober!

The problem boils down to an implicit threat of enforcing federal law over state law. This is patently ridiculous, as our president and drug czar have both said they will not prosecute. I would have rather our police chief had sent out a letter to all dispensaries reminding them of their responsibility, as businesses, to our community to regulate their clients’ on-site behavior, rather than to have “blown smoke” at them.

The bottom line is that, like it or not, this is the end of an era. Marijuana will soon be legal in the state of California as we, the people, will vote for legality in 2010. Any deaths associated with marijuana have been from the criminal element. Legalization will remove that incentive, once and for all. We Americans are already bankrupting the Mexican cartels – not through prohibition, but through de-criminalization! We are watching very bad law under deconstruction. Those who would vie for control of anyone’s mind through manipulation of law, regardless of the purity of their motives, really need to create a new paradigm.

Source: Record Searchlight (Redding, CA)
Copyright: 2009 Record Searchlight
Contact: letters@redding.com
Website: http://www.redding.com/
Author: Baran Galocy

Share on Facebook

We all know the bum rap recreational drugs have received in the United States and other countries. However, many governments are finally making the shift towards more progressive drug policies, treating use as a health matter rather than a criminal matter. There’s good reason for this. Take a short glance into some of the cases we’ve gathered here and you’ll understand why a shift has to be made. Too many families and lives have been torn by mandatory minimums and botched SWAT raids.

Not Such a Super Bowl

Lawrence Tynes is a Super Bowl winning kicker, hoisting the trophy with the NY Giants in their upset victory over the New England Patriots 3 seasons ago. What you don’t know about Lawrence is that his brother is currently serving a 27 year sentence in a federal penitentiary for selling pot.  From the kicker’s own mouth:

“I’m not embarrassed about it. Everyone has skeletons in the closet or whatever. You could go in that locker room and find 50 other stories probably similar to mine. He’s my brother. I love him. He made some bad choices. Rightfully so, he should be punished. But the extent of the punishment, to me, is ridiculous.”

Though Mark Tynes allegedly moved nearly two tons of cannabis between Texas and Florida over the course of several years, his severe sentence came as a result of him refusing to be an informant — a choice made by many defendants in drug cases.

But Mark Tynes had a record, including felony convictions for possession. And he “paid a heavy penalty for refusing to cooperate,” a managing assistant United States attorney told The Pensacola (Fla.) News Journal after sentencing. The others cooperated fully. They became government witnesses. Lawrence Tynes watched as each testified against his brother.  — New York Times

Sadly, the other four defendants in the case were all released before 2007, leaving their boyhood friend to rot until 2026.

Some Dubai Cases

If you are traveling anywhere overseas, just make sure your plane doesn’t make a stop in Dubai. If you’re planning a vacation there, stop! The minimum sentence for possession is 4 years in prison and there are even cases of travelers being sent to prison for failing to claim cough medicine and having leftover poppy seeds from breakfast. How does Dubai expect to be the tourist hot-spot of the world if they are arresting people and incarcearting them for years at a time for such trivial amounts of banned substances?

“A Briton, traveling through Dubai on his way to England, was arrested and sentenced to 4 years in jail, for having a microscopic piece of cannabis stuck to the bottom of one of his shoes. Keith Brown by name, this guy was stopped while he was walking through the Dubai airport and searched with high tech equipment.

The search revealed a piece of cannabis on the bottom of one of his shoes, too small to be seen with the naked eye, weighing only 0.003 grams. — AbsoluteRandom.com

(source)

This next example leaves a traveler spending four years in prison for unknowingly possessing two cannabis seeds. He managed to take a video of the holding cell at the airport prior to having his life forever changed.

I lost my house, car, job and my sense of humor for 0.04 grams of vegetation. I understand zero tolerance, but the sentence was a bit harsh. The side effects of are tragic. Families break up, children suffer tremendous stress, and many lives are ruined through bankruptcy because the breadwinner is locked up.

I did not intentionally smuggle two seeds into Dubai. I had been given a hard kick in the nuts for being ignorant.

You can’t turn on the TV or open a magazine without seeing how grand Dubai is, but the reality is a laughing tourist needs to be careful not to kiss in public, take flu medicine or a sneaky joint on the beach. Unfortunately, starry-eyed individuals are flocking there and being locked up because they had porn on their laptop. Not so starry-eyed any more. Kiss mine Dubai. — Cannabis Culture Magazine

Here’s the video: Orato.com

Oops! Wrong House! Here’s Your Life Sentence.

The next case involves a largely publicized drug war atrocity that can be attributed to a SWAT raid gone wrong and shoddy investigative work.

A young man by the name of Corey Maye, while relaxing in a recliner after putting his 18th-month-old daughter down to sleep, is awakened by men pounding at his door and trying to gain entrance.

Corey made the mistake of retrieving his gun and firing at the unidentified intruders. Turns out the intruders were at the wrong address and the man Corey had shot was the police chief’s son. Corey was sentenced to life in prison despite the officers’ obvious missteps.

Here are some other examples similar to Corey’s. Luckily, for these two, death came swift;  unlike Corey, who may spend the rest of his life in prison for protecting his drug-free home.

You are 57 years old, getting ready for work in mid-May 2003. It’s shortly after six in the morning. A battering ram breaks down your door, and in gets tossed a flash grenade. You can’t breathe, you’re coughing, and the police don’t believe you – they’re looking for a stash of drugs and guns they’ll never find. Taking no notice of your worsening condition, they handcuff you, and in little more than an hour, though you’re finally on the way to the hospital, the heart attack caused by this traumatic violation takes your life. This was Alberta Spruill, a church volunteer and city worker in Harlem.

It gets worse:

It’s November 2006. You’re a fierce 92-year-old woman, frightened by the sounds of someone prying off the burglar bars that cover your front door, but determined to protect your home: when your door is broken down you fire one shot at the intruders, before being shot 39 times, handcuffed and left to die while the police (who are the intruders, and as it turns out, have broken down the wrong door) realize their mistake and plant drugs in your basement. This was Kathryn Johnston of northwest Atlanta; two of the cops responsible for her death pled guilty to manslaughter last year, and a third was recently convicted of lying in the cover-up. — DrugPolicy.org

Citizen’s Arrest!

These next two stories are just as tragic. They cover two elderly men whose only intent was to protect their decaying neighborhoods. However, the thugs they chose to confront, turned out to be undercover police officers. In one case they were posing as drug dealers (it’s easier to pick off low-level offenders — users — and simply force them to snitch through threat of  considerable incarceration time) and in another as a simple drug abuser. The two undercover efforts turned out to be fatal to the two innocent grandfathers.

At around 6pm on January 27 of last year, 80-year-old Isaac Singletary spotted a couple of drug dealers attempting to do business on his front lawn. It wasn’t the first time. Singletary, described by relatives as territorial and a bit crotchety, did what he’d done in the past. He grabbed his gun, and walked out on to his lawn to scare them off. Problem is, this time the men weren’t drug dealers. They were undercover Jacksonville, Florida police posing as drug dealers. They had come on to Singletary’s property to bait possible drug offenders. When he brandished his gun, the police shot Singletary four times, once in the back. He died a short time later. A subsequent investigation by Florida’s attorney general cleared the officers who shot Singletary of any wrongdoing. — Reason.com

Patrick Dorismond was a security guard who wanted to become a policeman. He was off-duty and unarmed when he went out with friends. Standing on the street looking for a taxi, he was approached by undercover police who asked to buy some marijuana from him. Patrick was offended by the request (he didn’t use drugs), and a scuffle ensued. Dorismond was then shot to death by the police. — DrugWarRant.com

Drop the Joint or We’ll Shoot!

The next story is of Grand Valley State University student Derek Copp who was shot during a drug raid. The victim describes himself on Facebook as: “a left-wing hippie peace-keeping liberal.”

– Chyco.com

Spousal Abuse

Family members aren’t just indirectly affected by the drug war. Here’s a case where someone’s wife was sentenced to 25 years in prison for little more than being an accountant to her marijuana distributing husband. Her moral beliefs kept her from leaving him and she paid the price.

Shirley Womble is 58 years old serving her 15th year of a 25-year sentence for “Conspiracy to Distribute Marijuana.” Shirley’s husband, Willard, engaged in the sell of marijuana. Several arguments occurred due to his decision to engage in illegal behavior because they made decent money with their legitimate business, Womble Auto Sales, and Shirley did not want their well being jeopardized. The extent of Shirley’s involvement consisted of counting some of the money that Willard earned from marijuana, and she was present on a few occasions when Willard met with certain co-conspirators. Because Shirley was the bookkeeper for Womble Auto Sales, the government alleged that Shirley handled the bookkeeping for the marijuana business as well, although there was never any tangible evidence to support this allegation. Before this, Shirley had never even received a speeding ticket.

Shirley did not believe in divorce, and because they had two children she wanted to hold the marriage together, but their relationship had deteriorated to such extent they were sleeping in separate bedrooms when they were indicted.

The examples we featured are just a few of thousands, if not tens of thousands. They covered a pretty wide spectrum of circumstances in which the drug war ensnares unintentional victims; collateral damage at its worst. We leave you with a few more examples, courtesy of  The Drug War Rant by Paul Guither.

Share on Facebook

Macro marijuana photography, when shot with a decent camera and heady nugs, is some intriguing shit. It’s almost like stepping into an alien world besieged by the writhing and oozing tendrils of… God? Okay, maybe I’ve been smoking on the job, but the images below are indeed of another world. Who, but a stoner like myself and those of you reading this, imagined cannabis to be so intricate and at the same time beautiful? Grab yourself a cool glass of water before scrolling down… I’m getting cotton-mouth just thinking about some of these buds.

(source)

(source)

(source)

(source)

(source)

(source)

(source)

(source)

(source)

(source)

(source)

(source)

(source)

(source)

(source)

(source)

(source)

(source)

(source)

(source)

(source)

(source)

(source)

(source)

(source)

Share on Facebook

Wouldn’t you love to have a few of these delicious Blueberry Bonsai-like Marijuana plants decorating your gardens? I don’t think they’d remain “decorative” for very long if we were the ones responsible for nurturing them.

Image: Courtesy of The Art of Bonsai.

(source)

Share on Facebook

If there has ever been a sign pointing to the progress cannabis has made as a medicine in the eyes of the world, it can be found in Singapore. Singapore is one of the strictest countries in the world in terms of drug possession and trafficking sentencing. Defendants are imprisoned for excessive periods of time for what many countries consider minor possession offenses, often caned in addition to this, and, in the case of “traffickers,” put to death. However, as described in the article below, a recent offender was spared a trafficking conviction based on his lawyer being able to prove the man’s medical need for the drug.

Article From: Today in Singapore

In a new legal precedent, a student of Hotel Institute Montreaux in Switzerland was let off jail, spared a fine, escaped the gallows, and allowed to smoke cannabis for his headache. According to usual sentencing practices for Singaporeans nabbed, first time drug offenders are swiftly jailed for 6 to 18 months.

Although he was caught while cruising along expatriate heaven Holland Road in his parent’s luxury Lexus with 65 grams of cannabis stashed in the glove compartment (weed on wheels), Paresh Ramanlal was charged by the arresting police officers only for possession and consumption, and waived the more deadly drug trafficking offence. The Singapore Misuse of Drugs Act’s penal provisions are considered draconian by most nations’ standards, as the law creates a presumption of trafficking for certain threshold amounts, e.g. 30 grams of cannabis, which attracts the death-by-hanging sentence. Ramanlal’s veteran lawyer Subhas Anandan submitted a medical report in which consultant neurosurgeon Prem Pillay indicated that student’s long term prognosis was unknown, but his brain tumor could recur and could cause blindness, paralysis, coma and even death. We assume Dr Pillay did not prescribe the medical dosage of cannabis, which Ramanlal used to relieve his headaches, since there are a lot of commercial pain killers available in Singapore’s well stocked pharmacies. A letter from a Dr Alex Fok, Ramanlal’s hormone specialist, stated that it was unlikely that adequate treatment was available in prison, Panadol excepted. Makes sense, since drug peddlars in Changi are normally sent straight to the gallows before they can stay alive long enough to make a sale. Judge Ng Peng Hong granted the defence lawyer’s request for compassion and understanding.

The same Community Court judge Ng Peng Hong recently sentenced Azmi Osman,a diagnosed schizophrenia patient of the Institute of Mental Health (IMH), to 3 years’ jail and 12 strokes of the cane for punching an Ang Moh. We are not told if Respiradol for treating schizophrenia will be made available to Azmi while in prison. Apparently Singapore has one constitution but two justice systems.

Singapore’s drug laws are widely unaccepted by the rest of the world. Some of the terms of the Misuse of Drugs Act include guilt by association (if your roommate or another occupant of the dwelling is found to be in possession of drugs, it’s assumed everyone else present knew about it and were using them as well), police being able to demand urinary analysis from any suspects and the ability for law enforcement to search a a dwelling and its occupants without any form of warrant. Given the allowances afforded these police officers in arresting and investigating suspected drug users and the severe penalties handed down for conviction of possession or trafficking threshold amounts of illegal substances, the above case is truly groundbreaking for the small country. Maybe their northern neighbor Thailand is next and we’ll be needing a sequel to Brokedown Palace.

Sources: Today in Singapore & Wikipedia

Share on Facebook

We’ve met up for #WeedChat on Fridays the first three weeks since its inception. However, due to a lack of consistent participation, we’ve decided to switch to Wednesdays. With impending weekends, the start of football season and most smokers seemingly doing things other than conversing on Twitter as a Friday afternoon activity, we believe Wednesdays to be a better choice. Please drop us a line and let us know what you think. #WeedChat Wednesdays has a certain ring to it, eh? If you haven’t joined the Twub yet, here’s the link: #WeedChat

Share on Facebook

Q: How long have you been smoking weed?

A: Since the very beginning of high school.

Q: Why did you start?

A: I started smoking weed because the coolest kid in school offered me some when we were hanging out one Friday. You could say it was peer pressure, but I was eager to try out getting high for the first time.

Q: What did you smoke for the first time?

A: A fat ass blunt.

Q: What other things have you used to smoke weed?

A: Joints, spliffs, bongs, chillums, roars, steam rollers, pipes, one-hitters, vaporizers, gravity bongs, soda cans, home made bongs, etc.

Q: You seem to have covered a lot there! Do you feel like you have posed any health risks due to smoking weed?

A: I have asthma and have had it since I was a little kid, and weed has done nothing noticeable to my lungs or brain. The only thing weed does for me is assist in stimulating my creativity and my metabolism.

Q: So would you say you have ever had a ‘bad’ trip smoking weed?

A: I can’t think of anything too drastic off the top of my head, but a friend of mine had mistakenly smoked weed laced with heroin, and he was freaking out for the rest of the day. You can definitely call that some evil weed.

Share on Facebook