Yes Imagine!

The goals are the same: a public meeting place for those who celebrate cannabis and its medical social and spiritual values, public acceptance of cannabis culture, a viable business, outreach to medical patients and to the community at-large, and a focal point for continued personal and social growth and activism.

ekim, that's great news. We are seeing the beginning of the oh-so-necessary human interest stories that put a human face on our issue. We need the visual and aural touch to contact the heart of America, to share our concerns.

We are the robins of spring, the canaries in a coal mine, the harbingers, forerunners, scouts, guides, and prophets, but we need to reach John and Jane Q. Public in order to achieve critical mass and change these heartless laws.

SAFER utilizes the comparison to alcohol to great advantage.

http://www.saferchoice.org/

Will it add to the carnival atmosphere at Fisherman's Wharf?

Hardly, says Green Cross owner Kevin Reed. ``There are 30 different bars and different restaurants within two blocks of here,'' he said.

He pointed out that he must comply with dozens of regulations, including hiring security guards and controlling odor emissions, before he can open on Leavenworth Street just down the block from the Cannery, a century-old building with stores, restaurants and bars.

``We are playing by the rules,'' said Reed, 32, whose earlier marijuana dispensary on the edge of Noe Valley was closed in a compromise with city officials after San Francisco clamped down on pot clubs.

Wharf battles are not new. In-N-Out Burger ticked off the fishmongers at its opening. The addition of a Hooters restaurant was a frontal assault to traditionalists.

Now, the dispensary debate comes as local crab and salmon fishermen are under siege and cannot afford to berth their picturesque floating crafts. The city is threatening to tear down a century-old pier. And tourism, while rebounding, has not reached pre-Sept. 11 levels, dispensary opponents say.

One merchant complained that bringing a pot club to the neighborhood is akin to the headaches of ``a big-box retailer or fast-food drive-in.'

' Supporters of the Green Cross laugh. ``It's metro-chic,'' said Kathleen Prevost, a medicinal marijuana user who dropped by Wednesday to check out the proposed new digs. ``It's in Amsterdam, in Paris.''

Reed said he is not targeting tourists. In fact, the only customers who will be allowed through the fortified front door must carry state or city-issued medicinal marijuana cards, which require a doctor's written permission. There will be a one-ounce per customer limit.

And no marijuana smoking will be allowed on or near the premises.

But perhaps the biggest only-in-San Francisco irony is that the Cannery, the pot club's biggest opponent, has served as the temporary home to a museum that celebrates one of San Francisco's original joint-toting countercultures -- the Beat Generation.

I don't say this to flame you Hope, it's just something about how I feel and what I want to say about what we believe. I don't want to conceal who we are or what we are about. I don't want to pretend to be something other than I am. I'm frankly tired of having to do that. I know we are still in too much danger to be completely open, even here in the liberal San Francisco Bay Area. But the goal should be for us to come out of our closet, as the gays have come out of theirs.

Does this seem immature or too careless? Why should a picture of Bob Marley be incriminating? He was a great and good man, and a fine musician, we should be proud of his legacy. He did nothing shameful in his life that we should conceal, least of all by using cannabis.

Why should people have to be helped in sterile, hospital-like environments, tended by humorless nurses in strict uniforms who poke and prod and make people as uncomfortable as possible? Why should we not take joy in helping one another and being helped and in having the experience of perceiving and understanding our common humanity and divinity?

FoM, I just heard a story on my local news that said a study showed people who lived alone and lacked an active social life had a much higher risk of disease and dying as those who lived with a partner.

How many sick people live by themselves and need someplace to go to socialize?

What a coincidence in time this was when I had just posted my previous post.

They tried prescription cannabis in the Netherlands, but the patients almost unanimously like purchasing at the coffeeshops better. There's more of a selection (just like the 55 varieties that were to be offered at the Fisherman's Wharf club,) some coffeeshops offered medical cannabis at half the cost as the general public pays, but the main reason is the patients LIKE the laid-back atmosphere of the coffeeshops. That's who we are and we shouldn't be ashamed of it.

People like socializing, and I can see how that would be therapeutic to the sick.

They hate the cannabis plant and it's partakers, so it doesn't really matter how you dress it up to them.

If they don't care about the suffering of the sick, why do we think they care about aesthetics?

San Francisco is a short ride from me now, and I'm going to want to help in ways that are constructive and non-confrontational. Back east, there wasn't much I could do or say publicly because the culture was not ready to accept us and there was no support system for me to do anything. Here, I think it is otherwise.

I hope to find out how to be effective, consistent with the approach of helping and educating without conflict or provocation.

Do you think our people are ready to have the religious case for Cannabis in public? Or will MMJ activists find this a hindrance to their efforts? I'd like to find out, and at the very least, make this case privately to everyone we can in our own community.

US troops and Iraqi police seized and destroyed a bumper crop of marijuana plants last week, according to a report in Stars & Stripes. Based on a military press release, the report said soldiers from the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, which has responsibility for most of northern Iraq, discovered the field in an unnamed location. According to the military press release, the field contained "juvenile marijuana plants grown in a series of furrows. The owner claimed he was growing sesame." Police put the value of the field at $2 million. The crop was cut down and destroyed, and the man arrested.

ACLU-TV Drug Wars

The ACLU Freedom Files: Drug Wars will air tomorrow (Saturday, July 15) at noon (Eastern and Pacific) on Court TV. Here's the line-up for the program:

Racist Drug Raids: The "War on Drugs" costs taxpayers more than 50 billion dollars annually, but it costs those disproportionately targeted by the government -- youth, communities of color and the sick and dying -- so much more. In the "Drug Wars" episode, we'll take you to Hearne, Texas, where nearly 15% of the town's young African American men were incarcerated on drug charges based on the false accusations of a mentally ill police informant. The Drug War Goes to School: And you'll meet the students at Stratford High School in Goose Creek, South Carolina, who were held at gunpoint, forced by school officials and a police SWAT team into lockdown -- all because of suspicion that a student "might" be in possession of a marijuana joint.

Excessive Prison Sentencing: We look at the family impact of cruel and excessive prison sentences for drug offenses through the eyes of three sisters from Oregon. Their mother, Hamedah Hasan, was sentenced to 27 years in prison because of her involvement with a man who was dealing drugs, though she never sold or used drugs herself.

Medical Marijuana: Valerie Corral suffered from constant, debilitating seizures until she discovered that marijuana relieved her symptoms. She helped author the country[base ']s first statewide law allowing the use of medical marijuana and started a hospice to help people with terminal illnesses cope with pain. Nevertheless, federal agents stormed her California home and arrested her and her husband. She talks about her fight to help seriously ill people live with dignity.

The ACLU web page for the program has some good resources (the pdf viewing guide looks pretty cool). They also have a web page for people to tell their own stories.

Nice. Just wish the program was on network TV in prime time instead of Court TV at noon, but still, it looks like they've done a good job with it.

If you don't have Court TV, you may not be out of luck. The ACLU has plans to stream the video on their site next week.

The movement west was partially fuelled by the wicked witch trials of the nor east, the apathy towards human slavery, and the beginnings of the industrial revolution.

It took a lot of courage and determination to venture out to a land that had no laws, medicine or civilization.

To answer your question, there is no place on this planet you can have freedom, so it is best to start seriously thinking about colonizing the other planets, the other star systems, that God in Infinite Mercy has provided.

In the past I have seen pictures of clubs that were decorated like crash pads.

I really think they should. It's an effort that could prove very valuable with our acceptance.

We don't need a picture of Jimi Hendrix or Jerry Garcia (much as I love them) or Shiva to provide medicine.

Decorate the den or your bedroom that way...but I think it's a bad idea for a medical business. It's fine for head shops or novelty stores.

Business is business...and medical business is even more serious. We should be professionals and look like it when we are working.

(Cowering with my arms over my head waiting for the backlash.)

It's a serious endeavor...let's lose the freak flags if it means we can do a better job of helping the needy and running a respectable business.

It is respect that we want. Isn't it?

We can get that respect by being strictly business when we are operating a serious business ....and we can still be ourselves. It's kind of like showing a lot of cleavage. It's fine in the appropriate situation but having it out there all the time for every stranger that comes along cheapens the situation.

Just my humble opinion.

Maybe, though, if we keep it up, someone like that, will, whatever reason they come here, might have some light dawn in their thinking.

The deal was to find the first death. She was to watch for a cannabis death, anywhere in the world, any kind of cannabis.

On my side, I would limit myself. I wouldn't go after any kind of alcoholic drink, I would limit it to beer, not only to beer, but to one brand, Coors. I would also limit myself to not the whole world, not even to our country, but I would limit myself to Colorado. I bet her I could find a death from coors in Colorado before she could find a death from cannabis worldwide.

Years back, when they were naming Denver's new baseball stadium after a drug dealer, I held a protest in downtown Denver where we brought up the notion that it would glamourize a dangerous drug by naming a sports shrine after a dealer of that drug. I publicy call Coors a drug dealer in newspapers and on radio stations and he couldn't do dodo about it because I spoke the TRUTH.

I don't know if this is a direct quote or bad journalism butthe quotes at the end are certainly non-sensical.

What the heck are quality-of-life crimes?

then,.....is he saying cannabis clubs are not right for such an adult oriented and, to a great degree, counter culture environment of the Wharf?

Marijuana tied to precancerous lung changes: http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=31&art_id=qw115285338696B243

But the article states...

"We must conclude that no convincing evidence exists for an association between marijuana smoking and lung cancer based on existing data," Mehra and her team write.

What a joke.

Meanwhile, in Ohio...

Justices set limits on police searches in traffic stops: http://www.vindy.com/content/local_regional/321776575893223.php

And here's a very good LTE...

How sickening...

Medical journal reveals that 70 percent of drug decision-making panel members have financial ties to industry: http://www.newstarget.com/019608.html

Oh, no! Not the evil counter-culture!

Actually, this has nothing to do with the counter-culture as people from all walks of life use medical cannabis these days! And look what America's "status quo culture" is doing to this world. The counter-culture isn't yet the dominant culture but if it was I guarantee we wouldn't be on the brink of WWIII!!!

THE WAY OUT IS THE WAY IN...

Nass still seeking Barrett's removal: http://www.madison.com/wsj/home/local/index.php?ntid=90930&ntpid=1

9/11 Truth Video on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sb7kZBEHL8&search=twin%20towers%20story

Ground Zero - 9/11/06: http://www.truthmove.org/groundzero.html

Interview with April Gallop: http://georgewashington.blogspot.com/2006/07/interview-with-april-gallop.html

Preview of Upcoming Book That Roasts Rudy Giuliani -- Over 9/11: http://editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002838833&imw=Y

Comfortably Numb (Gilmour, Waters)

Hello?

Is there anybody in there?

Just nod if you can hear me.

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