Here's why in #BIG2014 the true losers of the war on pot are exposed like ants under a microscope.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta's breaking CNN documentary #Weed clearly shows scientific support thorough-out (including medical) that exists in the scientific community.
Indisputable evidence shows medical merit for #marijuana and therefore henceforth consequently negates the findings of the Nixon admin who decreed weed was as dangerous as drugs such as heroin and LSD deeming it a schedule one drug with no medical value.
The claims by the Nixon admin are now just that = claims = for its evidence against marihuana & its medical merits now serves as "inconsequential evidence."
However if you get your rocks off violating sets of civil liberties & human rights including individual & minority rights, then go ahead with your paltry war on weed.
Is this really a place for low level non violent "offenders".. Maybe, just maybe instead of flushing hard earned tax payor $ & stretched law enforcement resources we could try a "different approach" instead of violating individual & minority rights + civil & human rights of non violent #potheads
@RepCohen: ICYMI Watch my interview w/ @Lawrence on @msnbc's @TheLastWord abt failed #WarOnDrugs&misplaced #marijuana priorities http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWX6Bt1AJjI
Steve Cohen (@RepCohen) favorited one of your Tweets!
@NewEdayMedia: @RepCohen @Lawrence @msnbc @TheLastWord congratulations#RepCohen = A+ for not only getting it but being eloquently outraged #protect#serve
"If someone cannot simply agree that marijuana is less harmful than drugs like heroin and methamphetamine, they are not fit to be overseeing our nation's drug policy." --- Congressman Steve Cohen #Boom #ThisArticleRocks = thank God some of our elected officials are trying to change things for the better
Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) tore into deputy drug czar
Michael Botticelli on Tuesday, highlighting federal drug policy's failure to address the substances "ravaging our country" while still considering marijuana to be as dangerous as heroin.
Speaking during a hearing of the
House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform focused on the Obama administration's marijuana policy, Cohen urged drug policy officials to rethink marijuana's classification as a Schedule 1 substance, which the
Drug Enforcement Administration considers "the most dangerous class of drugs." Other Schedule 1 substances include heroin, LSD and ecstasy, while methamphetamine and cocaine fall under the Schedule II definition.
"It is ludicrous, absurd, crazy to have marijuana in the same level as heroin," Cohen said. "Ask the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, if you could. Nobody dies from marijuana. People die from heroin."
Hoffman, the Academy Award-winning actor,
died Sunday after an apparent heroin overdose. Police officials said he was found with a syringe still in his arm.
"Every second that we spend in this country trying to enforce marijuana laws is a second that we're not enforcing heroin laws. And heroin and meth are the two drugs that are ravaging our country," Cohen continued. "And every death, including Mr. Hoffman's, is partly the responsibility of the federal government's drug priorities for not putting total emphasis on the drugs that kill, that cause people to be addicted and have to steal to support their habit."
Cohen warned that by not acknowledging that marijuana is less dangerous than heroin and other substances, as DEA Chief Michele Leonhart has
refused to do, the administration is undermining its own efforts to prevent drug abuse.
"Heroin is getting into the arms of young people," Cohen said. "When we put marijuana on the same level as heroin and crack and LSD and meth and crack and cocaine, we are telling young people not to listen to adults about the ravages and problems, and they don't listen because they know you're wrong."
watch and read here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/04/steve-cohen-marijuana-heroin_n_4726794.html
Later in the hearing, Cohen grilled Botticelli over the dangers of heroin use versus that of smoking pot.
"You can't name one person who's died from a overdose of marijuana can you?"
"Not to my knowledge," Botticelli replied.
"Do you know people, possibly, heard of people who smoke marijuana, who are corporate giants? Who run banks? Run major corporations?" Cohen asked.
"Yes sir, but I also know.. a substantial number of people who also have gone one to develop significant disorders who have smoked marijuana. Again 1 in 9 people who try marijuana develop a dependency and we know that particularly those kids who use it early.."
"Kids shouldn't use it," Cohen said, cutting off Botticelli. "Kids shouldn't use it ever. And at age 18 people shouldn't be arrested for it. Maybe it should be 21.. but the fact is, we need to put our priorities toward heroin and meth."
Hoffman's death has put the spotlight back on heroin use, an epidemic that's been overlooked in recent years. As AFP reported Monday,
overdose deaths rose 45 percentfrom 2006 to 2010. Meanwhile, an often lethal combination of
heroin and Fentanylhas made its way through the mid-Atlantic, leaving a string of overdose deaths in its wake.
When asked by Cohen how much of the Office of National Drug Control Policy's budget goes toward treating heroin addiction, Botticelli said the administration doesn't divide the budget based on specific drugs, but focuses on preventing overall drug use.
"Isn't that a mistake when people die form heroin in great numbers, that the Vermont governor spends his entire
State of the State on heroin use? And we don't distinguish and try to save people's lives?" Cohen said. "That's when you knock people over at the corner store. It's not to get money to buy a donut 'cause you're high, it's to buy heroin because you're hooked."
Dan Riffle, the Marijuana Policy Project's director of federal policies, criticized Botticelli's responses to Cohen's questioning.
"It was made abundantly clear that the drug czar's office either does not have its facts straight on marijuana or is unwilling to acknowledge them," Riffle said in a statement. "If someone cannot simply agree that marijuana is less harmful than drugs like heroin and methamphetamine, they are not fit to be overseeing our nation's drug policy."
This Is Why So Many Reasonable People Think Anti-Marijuana Crusaders Look Ridiculous
Earlier this week, the official Twitter account of the Drug Free America Foundation posed this question: "What happens if marijuana is legalized?"
A perfectly reasonable question to ask. But the graphic that accompanied the question was far less so. For starters, it included zombies:
Without citing any studies or data, DFAF's graphic claimed that marijuana legalization would not only lead to an increase the number of teenage and adult users of cannabis -- doubling or tripling the total number of users -- but perhaps trigger one of the Internet's favorite fantasies:
the zombie apocalypse.
When pressed by Angell and The New York Times' Jack Healy for citations that could support the graphic's claims, DFAF first responded with a link to a website with questionable marijuana data, called
UnmaskingMarijuana.org.
Of course, marijuana legalization advocates and drug policy reformers had strong reactions to that tweet, too.
"When it comes to marijuana, the only ones stumbling around, grumbling incoherently, and slowly dying off are those fighting to keep it illegal," said Mason Tvert, communications director for the Marijuana Policy Project, in a statement to HuffPost. "Using marijuana does not make you lazy, but making wild claims without even attempting to back them up does. If they truly believe in what they are saying about marijuana, it wouldn't surprise me if they also truly believe in real zombies."
Representatives for DFAF did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this article.
The organization's figures on the current number of Americans who claim to use marijuana also appear to be incorrect, and in fact too low. According to
severalstudies on marijuana use in the U.S., there are anywhere between 19 and 25 million Americans who claim to smoke marijuana at least once per year.
"It's sad but not at all out of character for the Drug Free America Foundation to resort to scare tactics in light of the fact that they're so clearly losing the public debate about marijuana legalization," Angell told HuffPost about the tweet. "Thankfully, polls show that the majority of the American people agrees with us."
A recent Gallup poll found that for the first time in U.S. history, more than half of Americans --
58 percent -- think that marijuana use should be made legal.
"Most of the country is committed to ending marijuana prohibition and developing more effective ways to control it," Stephen Gutwillig, deputy executive director of drug-policy reform group Drug Policy Alliance, told HuffPost. "This well-meaning but misguided group is only demonstrating its irrelevance in the face of real progress to reform our long-outdated marijuana policies."
DFAF's tweet and others like it from anti-marijuana groups highlight a point that Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) made earlier this week
during a House Oversight Committee hearing about the federal government's inconsistent marijuana policy. Although 20 states in the U.S. have legalized marijuana in some form, be it medical or recreational, the federal government continues to ban the plant.
Blumenauer asked Michael Botticelli, deputy director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, if marijuana was more dangerous than cocaine or methamphetamines.
Botticelli reluctantly admitted that marijuana was less dangerous than alcohol, but wouldn't give a clear answer on its danger compared to harder drugs.
"Being unable to answer something clearly and definitively when there is unquestioned evidence to the contrary is why young people don't believe the propaganda, why they think it's benign," Blumenauer said. "If a professional like you can't answer clearly that meth is more dangerous than marijuana -- which every kid on the street knows, which every parent knows -- if you can't answer that, maybe that's why we're failing to educate people about the dangers. If the deputy director of the office of drug policy can't answer that question, how do you expect high school kids to take you seriously?"
@WTAE: Do you think #marijuana should be legal? Voice your opinion on today’s ABC Health chat at 1PM, ET. Use #abcDRBchat for tweets, photos.
Busting people for pot and incarcerating them is a big Gov $ money maker = quotas = $ + it looks like a good morality thing "busting pot smokers" .. They must think these pot smoking lives are wasted & ruined anyway & jail is the best solution!
Michael Baker ... are you still taking ideas for #AmericaDeclassified ... Here's a real life mystery = 22 deaths in Pittsburgh over a few days because of this stamped-bag-of-heroin on the streets. In Denver & Seattle where marijuana (reefer, weed, pot) is legal to buy & smoke have there been any reported marijuana deaths? Why is weed a Schedule 1 drug?
NewEdayMedia:
@foxandfriends @reason 22 Pittsburgh stampedheroinbag deaths @WTAE reported! Reported#Denver stampedbags of #marijuana deaths? @msnbc @GMA
www.theagitator.com/2008/11/.../successful-pot-smokers-lets-make-a-list...
