cannabisnews.com: Buzz Kill





Buzz Kill
Posted by FoM on July 26, 2000 at 20:40:56 PT
Club-Drug Publishers Could Face Prison Terms
Source: Village Voice
When Congress tries to burn the Bill of Rights, its motto is "If at first you don't succeed, strike another match." With the Methamphetamine Anti-Proliferation Act of 1999 bogged down in the House Judiciary Committee, lawmakers have introduced a similar new bill in both houses. The Ecstasy Anti-Proliferation Act takes aim at other drugs but keeps its predecessor's free-speech-destroying measures. Several senators from each party, led by Democrat Bob Graham of Florida, apparently had their aides do a find-and-replace on the Meth Act, changing each occurrence of methamphetamine to Ecstasy or GHB. 
In addition to providing another $5 million for the War on Drugs and calling for stiffer penalties for anyone who makes or sells the substances in question, the resulting bill would outlaw the distribution of a wide range of drug info. "If citizens didn't already distrust the government's statements concerning certain drugs, it should now become crystal-clear that the government is engaged in a true wartime propaganda campaign," says Richard Glen Boire, the attorney who recently prepared a legislative analysis of the bill for the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics. "Along with the other civil liberties that have been blown to bits in the war, we can now add the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech." Boire and others are upset mainly over the section of the bill that makes it a felony to "distribute by any means information pertaining to, in whole or in part, the manufacture, acquisition, or use of a controlled substance"—if the distributor should have known someone would use the information to commit a crime. Each offense could net a huge fine and 10 years in the slammer. So what counts as an offense? With such a broad, vague law, that's anyone's guess, but it surely won't be safe to put up a Web site telling how to use pot for medicinal purposes. Posting safety guidelines for people who plan to drop Ecstasy could land you behind bars. And publishing books about how to make speed or grow magic mushrooms? Not advisable. Michael Hoy, whose company, Loompanics, publishes such material, says the law would prompt him to pull his drug books off the market. "This is insane," he says. "You can't solve problems by throwing people in prison for talking." Too bad nobody told that to the United Nations. The Ecstasy Act is the logical outgrowth of a call-to-censorship issued by the UN. In alittle-noticed 1997 report, the UN's International Narcotics Control Board urged member nations to criminalize speech that doesn't toe the antidrug line. The report urges countries to punish citizens who use "any type of media"—including the Net and books—to challenge drug laws or to incite people to use illicit drugs. Despite the UN's reputation for Milquetoast efforts, the Narcotics Control Board shows signs of gearing up to take action. At a New York press conference in June, the board's head, Pino Arlacchi, announced that the group was trying to establish "universal jurisdiction" in order to bust not just the global drug trade but also people who use the Internet to "disseminate information about drugs." The UN's top narc explained, "These views are spreading, and we are now thinking about some instrument to at least stop the expansion of this flow of information." If those in power have their way, publishing information about drugs will be a felony, and running a Web site calling for drug legalization will be a violation of international law, alongside genocide and other war atrocities. "This is precisely what one would expect from a policy that prides itself on zero tolerance and employs metaphors of war," Boire says. "Rather than intolerance and war, it's time to try a drug policy of respect and true education. Until we rethink our policy toward drugs, we will see only mounting casualties of human freedom, civil rights, and the environment." Somebody arrest that man! By Russ KickTell us what you think. Contact: editor villagevoice.com Contact Information:http://www.villagevoice.com/aboutus/contact.shtmlDirect Link To Above Article:http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0030/kick.shtmlPublished July 26 - August 1, 2000Copyright © 2000 Village Voice Media, Inc.Centers For Cognitive Libertyhttp://www.cognitiveliberty.org/Online Free Speech On the Line http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread6274.shtmlDenied Ecstasy http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread6107.shtmlFederal Anti-Ecstasy Bill Extends Zero-Tolerancehttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread5971.shtml
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Comment #3 posted by kaptinemo on July 27, 2000 at 05:01:18 PT:
Freedom and Slavery are neck-and-neck
If you stop and think about it, there's *always* been a race going on between those two forces, and the WoSD is a perfect example. The problem has always been one of the 'bad guys' always get taken for the 'good guys', because the bad guys are wearing the white hats, running around and screeching about law and freedom and whatnot...as they are robbing you of yours at gunpoint. All for your own good, of course.The antis paint themselves as the Righteous, who are alone amongst God's people as the only ones holding the bulwark against Satan's legions - composed of people like us, of course. Because we seek to use those freedoms supposedly granted us by both law and the blood of those who died trying to preserve them. But in the warped way the antis see the world, the world itself is actually Satan's dominion; Satan is using our Constitutionally guaranteed freedoms to inject Satanic influences (i.e. like reading whatever you want, which may contradict their dogma and call it into question) into daily life and corrupt more of God's people and lead them astray. (I kid you not, friends; I've read extensively of a lot of the *really* Far Right tracts and observed some of the luminaries of that particular movement over the past 20 years, and they honestly believe this s***, they really do.)So, in order to fight Satan, they have to fight the means by which Satan can spread his message. Hence these insane bills attempting to throttle Free Speech. If it means incinerating the Bill of Rights to save souls, these clowns will do it.Whenever I read about some anti whining about George Soros's money being involved in MMJ referendums, I can't help but think of how much money the taxpayers have had wasted for them by Congress (200 Billion since 1980)in the DrugWar. And then I think of how much else was raised by PACs controlled by these nuts who seek to ram their religious ideas down throats of the rest of us by influencing legislators to draft this kind of nonsense. (That's exactly what it is, folks; the de facto - and sub rosa - attempt by the Far Right to subvert the First Amendment, particularly the part about 'Congress shall make no law respective of religion...' By adopting the legislation these PACs pressure for, Congress is allowing religious groups to have that 'respect' and thus it is established as a 'state religion'. A very dangerous move indeed.) Yep, you always have to take a second look at just who is really the 'good guy' - just because they wear a cleric's collar... a judge's robe... or a cop's badge... doesn't mean they are necessarily on the side of the angels. As Peter McWilliams's murder-by-judicial-decree so amply proves. 
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Comment #2 posted by Dan B on July 27, 2000 at 04:16:06 PT:
That Makes For A Lot Of Arrests
I guess they would have to start by arresting every government offical from the Netherlands, Portugal, most states in Australia, Switzerland, Spain, etc. Then there is California and the other states (and D.C.) that have legalized medical marijuana. In other words, any place where laws exist on the books, those laws are written down. The governments of these places should be held to the same standards as the rest of the people. After all, these places have written material condoning a relaxation of UN drug policy. Then, they would have to arrest the owners of virtually every search engine in the world, since they all provide links to anti-drug-war sites. They would have to start monitoring all message boards and chat rooms, and then they could really start putting people away. By the time they finished, the only people not in prison would be the government officials themselves. Oh, wait. No, many of them also would be incarcerated for dismissing the severity of their "youthful indiscretions." Incarcerated? Did I say that? In case you weren't aware, crimes against the UN are generally punishable by death.Scary, isn't it?
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Comment #1 posted by observer on July 26, 2000 at 22:57:59 PT
Political Prisoners
running a Web site calling for drug legalization will be a violation of international law, alongside genocide and other war atrocities.Catch that folks? These totalitarians are lusting for the power to try us (you and I) as international war criminals. Simply for questioning the laws (drug laws at first). Needless to say, this totally violates the first amendment of the Bill of Rights, probably the Magna Carta also, not to mention common law, common sense, etc. (not that prohibitionists care an iota about any of that). In addition to private boycott, government restrictions on free speech are growing. A classic subterfuge is to bring criminal charges against someone who speaks out against the drug war. As some of President Clinton's cabinet choices discovered, upstanding citizens can easily be in violation of some law. In 1993 the U.S. Attorney in St. Louis issued a press release about a guilty plea in a marijuana case. The amount of marijuana was so small that observers could scarcely believe the offense merited federal action, let alone a press release publicizing it. The press release incorrectly claimed the accused person was St. Louis coordinator for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML)6. Skeptics suggested that prosecution of the hapless defendant was intended to cripple NORML's St. Louis activity and damage NORML by implying that it is a criminal organization. A letter to the editor questioning antimarijuana laws irked an Idaho drug squad, which went to the letter writer's residence, searched the writer's trash, and arrested the writer when marijuana stems were found. A police spokesman explained that only a person who is a law violator would seek change in the law7 (an interesting attitude, considering that police and prosecutors continually seek changes in law). Although the official charge was marijuana possession, the Idaho writer was punished for his speech. Similar thinking was seen in 1935 when the SS journal Das Schwarze Korps and the Ministry of Justice journal Die Deutsche Justiz called for punishment of Jews who complained about a boycott action against Jewish businesses.8 Punishment not for thwarting the boycott, but just for complaining about it. Prosecution of an Aryan for a 10-pfennig purchase violating the boycott occurred in part because he questioned the policy of zero tolerance for commerce with Jews.9 When using criminal violations as a subterfuge to punish Americans for questioning the drug war, police follow a well-established model. (Richard L Miller, Drug Warriors and their Prey, 1996, pg.38) http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0275950425/Cannabisnews/ 
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