How many of your African-American and Hispanic coworkers are angry about 'profiling'? I'd bet quite a few. Especially after they have been stopped lately.

But how many of them know why they were stopped? A seeming no-brainer...but why were they stopped because of their skin color? How many know< the drug laws are deliberately targeting them for harassment that is otherwise forbidden by the Constitution?

Harassment...because it is assumed on the part of law enforcement that minorities are - by statistics - more likely to engage in criminal activity. And what provides those statistics? Why, arrest records...which purport to accurately show crime statistics. But if a practice unfairly targets minorities for LEO scrutiny solely on the basis of a Jim Crow law stating that 'the degenerate races' are more likely to use illicit substances and thus justifying those measures? If arrests are geared to actually 'prove' Anslinger's sick rantings? And if this information concerning the very basis for prohibitionist drug law is dragged out, moldy and foul, in the light of day of a trial?

I contend that the first defense lawyer who is able to adequately include Anslinger's testimony, uncut and unabridged, into a defense motion will probably do more than acquit their minority member's charge; they will cause the kind of interest which has been long overdue for decades into the very basis of our drug laws...which have since the time of Anslinger operate upon a kind of inertia.

Because for all the attempts to make the branches of the tree appealing, and to perfume the pox-ridden fruit, the trunk is rotten and diseased to the core. By doing what The Observer has for so long, by pointing out the inevitable side effect of these anti-minority laws is JAIL! JAIL! JAIL! in concert with the idea that this is exactly what Anslinger and others had in mind for minorities, we make it abundantly clear in a way difficult to sidestep that this is the heart of prohibition. Punitive racism excused via Social Darwinism.

...the U.S.  Official Expert on marijuana from 1938 to 1962 testified in court, under oath, that marijuana could make your incisors grow six inches long and drip with blood and, when he tried it, it turned him into a bat.  ( Surely, everyone who has been to a good party has seen these awful effects.  )

It is occasionally said out here among us grassroots type folks out here that "Washington is out of touch." No where does that seem more true than among the anawim, the alcoholic, the addicted, the abusive families -- and we don't need geographical distance to be separate. For several years I lived in the same neighborhood as Bill Bennett, for example, and worked not far from Kurt Schmoke. Yet I lived, at the time, in an entirely different world -- and so did my children.

During some of that time, my children were living in an alcoholic and abusive home, and part of it they were in recovery with friends still living in alcoholic and abusive homes. These were wealthy homes filled with darkness, despair, disease, drug abuse and dysfunction. Many if not all were families with a long family history of addictions and compulsions for whom addictive thinking or codependent ideas had become entrenched as "family values." These were the kids who are most likely to use alcohol or other drugs improperly as adults --genetically, attitudinally, emotionally. Indeed, they were the(ir) kids who WERE using alcohol and other drugs improperly, already, by junior high, or earlier.

Is there anyone with common sense who believes that asking the parents of these kids to talk to them about drugs is a sane solution? Or thinks that kicking them out of school so they have no healthy options or role models is a promising harbinger for solving the problem in the 21st Century? Are there any intelligent adults who believe that it's adequate to tell these young people, who some experts say may comprise as much as 25% of our U.S. population, "just say no?" Or are these "solutions" simply preaching to the choir, to the children of good, conservative citizens with Bennettesque values?

I think it's worth noting that these approaches were crafted by politicians, not professionals. My old boss John Volpe chaired the President's Task Force on Drunk Driving in 1981-82, the incubator of public policy these past two decades. The career experts pushed for balance. It was mothers like angry Candi Lightner (MADD) and Joyce Nalepka, a conservative woman who felt her drug-using son had been victimized by dealers, who outshouted the call for balanced public policy and joined with the political conservatives to tip the scales to the right.

Drug Free Schools - 3

Maybe mothers like me, whose children have suffered public abuse under the conservative policies of the past two decades on top of the personal abuse of our afflictions, should now yell for liberalization and coddling in the next Administration. But it would be better to work together -- conservatives, liberals, Republicans, Democrats, healthy, afflicted, moral, addicted -- to find REAL solutions for ALL our children, and our children's children of tomorrow.

Robert Stutman, panelist,

A leading advocate for drug prevention and education, Robert Stutman spent twenty-five years as one of America's highest profile drug busters. As special agent in charge of the New York office of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Stutman launched more than 5,000 investigations, leading to more than 15,000 arrests with a conviction rate in federal and state courts exceeding ninety percent. During his tenure, the New York office was responsible for the seizure of more than twenty-five tons of cocaine, more than $400 million worth of drug traffickers' assets, and almost half the total amount of heroin seized in the U.S. during that time period. Stutman left the DEA in 1990 to found Employee Information Services, Inc., the national's largest management consulting firm specializing in the design and implementation of substance abuse prevention programs for all industries. A recipient of numerous awards from law enforcement agencies throughout the world, he was appointed by the U.S. Congress to a nine-member panel studying national drug policy.

. . . and I hope you continue to use that strategy when people do it--get up and leave, don't arrest them.

Look, the fact that "it's against the law" is not a "feeling" you have. It's a fact, plain and simple. Let me boil it down for those who can't read between your lines: your response means that as a future cop you will one day be arresting people for doing something that you admit is "not as bad as other drugs." In truth, your feeling is not that it is illegal; your feeling is one of support for its illegality, in spite of the fact that you know it is not dangerous like other drugs--and that is wrong. If you want us to believe otherwise, stop trying to placate your conscience with the law and start putting your effort into changing the law.

And if you're of a double-mind about it, you may want to reconsider your future as a cop in the United States.

Mr. Stutman makes an interesting point. I might not recommend that someone smoke a joint before calculus class, but I certainly would never presume to tell them they couldn't. I'm not sure what has come over the population of the "Land of the Free," when we feel the need to dictate the every move of our peers.

I, myself, have attended classes stoned, as well as on LSD, and I still managed to earn a college scholarship, graduate from a prestigious engineering school, and excel in my field as a software engineer. In fact, I currently earn more than three times what Mr. Stutman earned with the DEA, and that's only because the market is currently in a slump.

I have earned the tremendous respect of my peers, through my hard work and perseverance. This week, I worked over 70 hours, as I have practically every week since Christmas. Hardly the actions of a "lazy pot smoker," wouldn't you agree Mr. Stutman?

And yet, I continue to smoke cannabis to this day. In fact, I am high right now.

If it weren't for cannabis, I would never have survived the past three months. My green lady provides the stress relief I need after sitting in front of the computer for 12 hours straight. Without that release, I would be a slobbering mass of throbbing jelly right now, and not much use to my family or client. Just ask my them.

Of course, I limit my intake to weekends, usually only once or twice a week. Everything in moderation. I certainly don't go to work high, any more than I might go to work drunk. I don't even use caffeine at work. (Try that one on for size, Mr. Stutman.)

Am I an anomaly? I doubt it. Perhaps others like me are just keeping their heads in the sand - easy to understand, given the current political climate. We are taxpayers, and upstanding members of our communities. We are parents, children, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, and even grandparents. We are your relatives, whether or not you are in denial. We are the blood of this country. Keep cutting off the flow, and see how long it lasts.

Mr. Stutman, I honestly feel very sorry for you. I can't imagine how I would feel about myself if I spent my life arresting people for growing plants. What a shame, to look back on that in 30 years. Why not do something really helpful with the time you have left? Why not contribute to the solution, instead of the problem? What this country needs is for someone like you to stand up and say, "I believe in what this country stands for. I believe that our founding fathers were right, that all Americans are guaranteed the right to freedom and to the pursuit of happiness. I want to do what's right for my country, and if that means ending prohibition for the second time, then so be it."

I smoked a joint and volunteered ten years of my life to the Boy Scouts, six years as a Scoutmaster.

I smoked a joint and coached youth soccer teams for five years, including a United States Europe championship 10-12 year-old team in 1985.

I teach 4-12 year olds to use Computers ... and to think ... I sent the 5/6th graders to Easter Weekend thinking about computer chips in dogs, children ... and airport scanners that see through your clothes. The kids want to know the truth about everything, yet I will lose my position if I tell them about the lying Nixon and why we really have a drug war.

Ain't America Grand?

Well, here is what chemical engineer Adam Meadows has to say :

Marijuana became a weekend treat that made the toils of the school week tolerable. In fact, I credit marijuana with showing me the deep truth-beauty of what I was being taught. After learning about quantum mechanics during the week, a marijuana-aided reflection on the topic could be profoundly inspiring! So much so that it was during this transition period of my usage style that I decided I would get a PhD in chemical engineering.

http://www.marijuana-uses.com/examples/meadows.htm

My own experience is similar. I never went to class high, but later on I solved and published a few problems,some that had thwarted people with far bigger reputations and positions than mine. There's nothing I like better. I go into seclusion and basically think of nothing else, round and round in the same circles that others circuited before until I find a way out. I sit at the table and calculate until i see that my idea does not work and why it does not work. Then I lie down and close my eyes. I draw dozens of simple little pictures in my mind, and usually none of those work out either. Finally I find a picture that works. I go to the table and calculate until I see why that doesn't work. SOmetimes I have to eat, sometimes I get fidgety and have to go outside - that's when I like New Mexico. Then I come back in and it's back and forth between the table and the equations and the bed and the pictures. I love it.

A marijuana break from time to time can give one a fresh outlook and a new perspective. It assists one in turning the object of study over and over and in viewing it in new ways. It freshens and rejuvenates the mind and never gives a hangover. It is by no means an escape from reality: marijuana is for those who enjoy the reality they have achieved. The ideas that one has while under the influence of marijuana remain valid when the effect has passed. What is the harm in this? There is none.

I think that Stutman would have had trouble with calculus under any circumstances. Either he lacks the interest, or he lacks the brains to ever develop an interest in the work of civilization and in the advancement of mankind and the appreciation of the culture men and women have created. That's why he's a cop and a dullard. That's why he should but out of the lives of people who have serious work to do. He's just another example of how this ugly drug war empowers the brutal and the ignorant at the expense of more capable and better motivated people.

Besides healing the body, marijuana can help people to think clearly. Our government does not want us to think.

I smoked a joint and went to calculus and got an A plus then I smoked another joint and went to advanced calculus and got an A plus and then I smoked another one and went to advanced engineering math and got an A plus and then I smoked another one and taught myself differential geometry in my spare time.

This ridiculous idea that people who smoke weed can't do math has to be annihilated.

What about watching TV and going to calculus class?

What about eating a big fat piece of dead dripping bloody cheese-encrusted cow and going to calculus class?

What about living in a depressing impoverished unsafe environment and going to calculus class?

All of those are legal but we haven't really tried to conclusively determine the role they may or may not play in learning calculus.

But we spend millions of taxpayers dollars trying to tease out to the last tiny eensie beensie microstatistic what marijuana may or may not have to do with calculus class, even when we can't find anything that is dramatically conclusive of anything worth worrying about.

Rucker took the third choice: She accepted responsibility for her family.  She signed the lease and tried to keep her household free of drugs.  That she failed in this regard is little different than the failure of Gov.  Jeb Bush of Florida and his wife to keep their daughter, Noelle, off drugs. 

What's different is that only Rucker, and impoverished parents like her, stand to lose their homes for their children's failings. 

Rehnquist thinks it's reasonable for Congress to permit zero-tolerance evictions in public housing because, he wrote, drugs lead to murders, muggings and other forms of violence against tenants. 

Wrong.  Drug prohibition leads to murders, muggings and other forms of violence. 

"...he emphasized medical journal articles that cite health risks such as lung disease, and a loss of depth perception and short-term memory."

The facts on loss of depth perception and short-term memory loss are sketchy. Once again we find an Anti looking at MJ in a vacuum. He should compare it to our legal drugs. We have scientific proof that tobacco damages the lungs, and we know alcohol damages the liver and the brain. By comparision to tobacco and booze MJ is benign.

"Those of you who are opposed, I challenge you to ask Steve Hager if he would recommend smoking a joint and then going to a calculus class."

Here's that vacuum again. Would Stutman advise going to calculus class after drinking a fifth of vodka? I went to Calculus classes when I was high . I got A's, and I still remember most of the Calculus that I learned nearly 20 years ago. I am certain that if I was drunk instead of high my grades would have been much worse. It is the old cognitive impairment argument. The fact the alcohol causes much more short term and long term cognitive impairment than MJ nullifies it.

"...legalization of marijuana would lead to more users"

I am not convinced. The per capita consumption of booze and cigarettes has decreased during the latter half of the 20th century. They are both legal. I don't believe their was a large spike in alcohol abuse after prohibition was repealed. Those who used continued using. Those who abstained continued abstaining.

"I believe the marijuana argument in the United States of America isn’t about medicine or spirituality; it’s about people wanting to get stoned and high whenever they want"

But Robert, people can get high when every they want. The problem is to get high legally they must opt for alcohol, a drug that has much more devasting effects than MJ.

http://www.mapinc.org/ccnews/v02/n593/a03.html

Basically, if you are poor, you can be evicted when your unstable daughter possesses crack off the property.

When your dad is governor of Florida, you can be guilty of prescription drug fraud, still live in the mansion, and not do time.

Just from my own experience, and from those who I have talked with, the truth about this is that if you have an interest in a subject, pot can be a benevolent help in focusing and expanding on the subject. If someone is into calculus, they probably will do quite well smoking a joint and going to class. If someone is not into calculus, smoking a joint and going to class would probably be a detriment to the learning process. I think the key words are 'inherent interest'.

Personally, mine is art...sculpture to be more precise. I have learned more, and expanded upon this subject, with outright glee, when high. And have done quite well financially to boot, thank you. Being able to do what you love, and making a living at it...isn't that the American Dream? The pursuit of happiness?

What are you going to be when you grow up?

Follow your bliss.

What's my bliss?