cannabisnews.com: Exhale, Stage Left 










  Exhale, Stage Left 

Posted by CN Staff on January 03, 2005 at 21:03:27 PT
By Peter Carlson, Washington Post Staff Writer 
Source: Washington Post 

Keith Stroup's mouth is dry. His brain is foggy. America's most famous marijuana lobbyist admits that a powerful drug has messed up his mind. The drug isn't marijuana, although he smokes that nearly every night. It's Tylenol cold medicine. He took some this morning, he says, and it made him feel goofy, spacey, stoned. "I hate taking it," he says. "But my nose was running and I kept sneezing and I thought, 'I gotta take something.' "
Wearing a bright white shirt and dark blue suit, Stroup is sitting at his impeccably neat desk in the tidy K Street offices of NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. He founded NORML back in 1970 and now, 34 years later, he's retiring at 61 as the pot lobby's executive director. "When I turned 60, I looked in the mirror and I saw this gray-haired old man and I said, 'I think we need younger leadership,' " he explains. "It has to do with more energy, fresh perspectives, new ideas. It's not like I'm ready for the old folks' home. I just think we need somebody younger running the organization." That somebody is Allen St. Pierre, 39, who has served as NORML's second-in-command for the past decade. St. Pierre took over yesterday, while Stroup, who recently got married for the third time, headed off to his Falls Church home to become a consultant and lecturer.But now, Stroup, stoned on cold medicine and nostalgia, starts showing off the strange souvenirs of his strange lobbying career.He pulls a black-and-white photo off the wall. It shows him in jeans and a jacket addressing a crowd of hippies in front of the White House in the '70s. "We used to have a July 4 smoke-in every year in Lafayette Park," he says. "I like this just as a period piece. Look at those ragtag folks! Look at the guys without their shirts on!"He points to a poster on the wall and reads its message aloud: "It's only a weed that turns to a flower in your mind." He laughs. "That's a period piece, too."Decorating his filing cabinet are stickers -- "Just Say Yes to Legalization" -- and a backstage pass from a Willie Nelson concert. Nelson, famously fond of the weed, is a longtime NORML supporter."Over the years, we've built up a nice friendship," Stroup says. "He's going to sponsor a celebrity NORML golf tournament in 2005."Stoned golf? Stroup laughs. "It's a lot less competitive," he says. He picks up a picture frame that contains a typed letter. It's the note that accompanied $10,000 in cash left on the doorstep of NORML's office in the summer of 1976. "Officially, it was an anonymous gift," Stroup says, smiling mischievously, "but I knew who it was."The money came from Tom Forcade, the legendary pot smuggler who founded High Times, the marijuana magazine, in 1974 and helped bankroll NORML before he committed suicide in 1978. Forcade's letter claimed the $10,000 was a donation from "The Confederation," a fictitious group of dope growers and smugglers. It concluded: "Karma prevails. Venceremos." Stroup turned that gift into a media event, calling a news conference and spreading the well-worn $10 and $20 bills across a table for photographers. Today Stroup is a bit embarrassed by that publicity stunt. "It was a little close to the line," he says. "I was nervous about the whole thing going down, but I played along with it. If I did that today, the FBI and the DEA would have me before a grand jury in no time."Back in the '70s, though, it seemed perfectly normal for NORML to call a dope smuggler when it ran short of cash. One day, Stroup recalls, he called Forcade for a donation and the smuggler told him to come to an address on New York's Lower East Side. "I got up there and it's an apartment with no electricity," he says, "and I walk in the door and the whole room is filled with bales of marijuana! It was a stash house! And I'm saying, 'Forcade, what are you doing? I don't know if I'm being followed.' But we needed the money and I took the money." On a RollThere was a time, back in the '70s, when Keith Stroup was about as close to a rock star as Washington lobbyists ever get. He hung out with the Allman Brothers and Jimmy Buffett. He partied with Willie Nelson and presidential son Chip Carter. He had sex in the fabled grotto at the Playboy mansion, where Hugh Hefner hosted a NORML fundraiser. The man they called "Mr. Marijuana" grew up on a farm in southern Illinois. His mother was a devout Baptist. His father was a building contractor and Republican Party activist who stashed a bottle of whiskey under the front seat of his Lincoln Continental so he could take a snort when his wife wasn't looking. Stroup graduated from the University of Illinois in 1965 -- after a one-year expulsion for drunken frat boy high jinks -- and headed for Washington. He enrolled in Georgetown Law School and, using his dad's GOP connections, landed a $50-a-week job in the office of Sen. Everett Dirksen of Illinois. The work was dull, but it gave Stroup a taste for Capitol Hill wheeling and dealing. Meanwhile he'd begun smoking pot and marching in antiwar demonstrations, sometimes simultaneously.He finished law school in 1968, got married and took a job on the newly formed federal Commission on Product Safety. That job put Stroup in contact with Ralph Nader, then a hot young consumer advocate. Inspired by Nader's work, Stroup got an idea: He'd create a consumer group for pot smokers, an organization to lobby for legalization. It was the kind of pipe dream that floated through the heads of countless pot smokers during long nights of deep inhaling, but Stroup actually did it -- hustling $5,000 in seed money from the Playboy Foundation and opening an office in his basement near Dupont Circle."Keith was a rebel, and he resented the idea that his government treated him as a criminal because of a drug that he and millions of other people used," says Patrick Anderson, author of "High in America," a 1981 book on Stroup and NORML. Stroup didn't dress like a rebel, though. He wore a suit and tie, like every other Washington lawyer-lobbyist. "He was consciously trying to be an alternative to the freak approach, which he knew wasn't going to work," Anderson says.Courting respectability, Stroup assembled a board of directors that included Harvard professors, former attorney general Ramsey Clark and, later, Sens. Phil Hart and Jacob Javits. Pumped with zeal, Stroup went anywhere to make his pitch, appearing on TV, lecturing at colleges, testifying before Congress and state legislatures.In 1972, Stroup got unexpected help from an unlikely source: The National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse, appointed by President Nixon, issued its final report, concluding that marijuana is relatively harmless and that possession of less than an ounce should be legal. Nixon rejected the report, but Stroup used it as a lobbying tool in his increasingly successful campaign to reduce penalties for pot. In 1975, five states -- Alaska, California, Colorado, Maine and Ohio -- removed criminal penalties for possession of small amounts of the weed. In 1976, Jimmy Carter, who during his campaign had advocated decriminalizing pot, was elected president. In 1977, Stroup visited the White House to meet with Carter's drug policy adviser, Peter Bourne. Soon NORML would be playing the White House in softball. It seemed like high times for NORML. Publicly, Stroup predicted that pot would be legal in a couple of years. Privately, he and his NORML pals joked about forming an advocacy group for another drug they'd begun to enjoy -- cocaine. Then Stroup hit a couple of snags. In October 1977, Canadian customs agents found a joint in Stroup's pocket and busted him. That wasn't too bad: Canada had liberal pot laws and when Stroup returned for trial in 1978, the judge let him off with a $100 fine. But at the airport on his way home, Canadian customs agents searched his bags and found a joint and a vial containing traces of cocaine. Busted again, he spent the night in jail, was fined $300 and got kicked out of Canada. The whole absurd episode was like a bad joke: How can you tell if you might be a little too stoned? You get busted going through customs with dope after your trial for going though customs with dope. That was a dumb blunder. But Stroup was about to make a blunder that was infinitely dumber. Back in Washington, he was lobbying for a bill to ban federal funding of a controversial program that sprayed Mexican marijuana fields with the herbicide paraquat, shown to cause lung damage in people who smoked the tainted weed. Stroup asked Bourne, Carter's drug adviser, to support the bill. Bourne refused. Stroup was outraged. To him, it was a moral issue: The feds were deliberately poisoning pot smokers! Seeking revenge, Stroup leaked a secret to newspaper columnist Jack Anderson in July 1978: Bourne had snorted cocaine at NORML's 1977 Christmas party. And Stroup revealed the names of a couple of witnesses.When Anderson broke the story, Bourne told reporters he'd only handled cocaine at the NORML party, he hadn't actually snorted any. It didn't matter. Bourne lost his job. A few months later, so did Stroup. The folks at NORML didn't like snitches and eased him out the door. "When I look back on it," Stroup says now, "it was probably the stupidest thing I ever did." Nobody "in their rational mind," he adds, would jeopardize a relationship with a high White House official over a minor policy dispute.Is it possible that he wasn't in his "rational mind" because he was too stoned too often? "Yes," he says. "I think it is possible that my own personal use of cocaine played into that."In those days he, like many people, thought coke was harmless. Now he knows better. "Cocaine is deadly," he says. "There are probably people who can use cocaine moderately. But I gotta tell you: Based on me and my friends, I didn't see very many of them." The Dude No More After leaving NORML in 1979, Stroup spent four years as a defense attorney. "Every client I had was a drug offender," he says. "The only people who'd heard of me had been arrested on drug charges." Unfortunately they weren't the kind of drug offenders he liked -- folks who'd been caught with a little weed. They were mostly cocaine smugglers and, he soon realized, a lot of them were thugs. "So I stepped aside," he says, "and went back into public-interest work." Stroup, who had divorced in the early '70s, married a television producer and moved to Boston, where he became a lobbyist for the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities. In 1986 he moved back to Washington to lobby for a family farm organization. In 1989 he became executive director of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. In 1994 he became a lobbyist for the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives, an Alexandria-based prison reform group. Then in 1995, NORML -- split by infighting -- asked Stroup to come back and run the place. He returned to find that everything had changed. The movement to legalize marijuana had run aground. In the 1970s, 11 states had decriminalized pot; in the '80s, none did. Nancy Reagan's "Just say no" crusade and the deadly spread of crack cocaine had led to a backlash against drugs. And NORML was nearly broke, politically impotent and beset by feuding factions. Stroup saved NORML from self-destruction, St. Pierre says, but he failed to bring back the glory days: "Keith could not replicate what he did in the '70s."Part of Stroup's problem was competition. In the '90s, two new groups arose to advocate drug-law reform, each bankrolled by an eccentric billionaire. The Drug Policy Alliance is funded by financier George Soros. The Marijuana Policy Project, founded by former NORML staffer Rob Kampia, is funded by insurance mogul Peter Lewis. Both groups have spent millions on state referendums to legalize medical marijuana -- many successful, some not. But Stroup has failed to find an eccentric billionaire sugar daddy for NORML. "I wish we had that kind of funding," he says. "If I had the kind of funding that Kampia has, I think I could have done a lot more with it than he has." Now NORML limps by on about $750,000 a year, most of it raised from dues paid by about 12,000 members. It's not enough money to do much politicking, so NORML is now largely a service organization for pot smokers, providing tips on beating drug tests and legal advice for arrested smokers.Over the past year money was so tight that Stroup laid off two staffers and stopped collecting his $75,000-a-year salary for two months. "I view NORML as a small and shrinking dinosaur," Kampia says. "NORML's time has come and gone."Tom Riley, official spokesman for federal drug czar John Walters, agrees. "Keith and people like that have banged their heads against the wall for years saying 'Legalize pot.' But they're farther behind now than they were 20 years ago."Riley says Stroup's career reminds him of a line from the movie "The Big Lebowski": "The '60s are over, Lebowski. The bums lost. My condolences." Keep on Tokin' "I have no doubt I'll be smoking marijuana the day I die," Stroup says.He loves the weed. He smokes it nearly every night. He comes home from work, pours a glass of chardonnay, lights up a joint and turns on the TV news. He does not smoke pot when he has to work or drive, he says, because, as the movies of stoner comedians Cheech and Chong prove, pot can make you stupid. "I learned a long time ago that some of those Cheech and Chong jokes are very real," he says. "If you're in a social setting and you're smoking marijuana, there are going to be a lot of those Cheech and Chong situations, where you feel real strongly about something and you start a conversation and about halfway through you forget what the point was." He laughs. "But that's only when you're stoned. Four hours later, you don't have that." His new wife doesn't share his passion for pot. Neither does his 35-year-old daughter, who recently had a baby boy, making Stroup a grandfather. He doesn't care that they don't smoke pot and he doesn't think anybody should care that he does smoke it. Forty years of serious inhaling, he claims, hasn't harmed his body or his mind. "There's absolutely nothing wrong with it," he says, "and it should be of no interest or concern to the government."Despite his candor on the topic, Stroup hasn't been busted since his Canadian misadventures. But he knows the government and its drug war are always out there, and that can make a guy paranoid. About a year ago, the feds nearly discovered Stroup's stash in a suitcase he'd checked on a plane. "I had a few joints in an airtight thing inside a sock so you couldn't see it," he says. "I got back home and opened it up and there was this slip saying, 'We opened your bag, blah, blah blah.' And my weed is a few inches away! I said, 'Man, that was too close!' So I no longer carry anything when I'm flying. If I'm going to be someplace for a few days, I ship myself a 'care package.' "The next day Stroup calls, leaves a message on the voice mail. "Man, I was totally goofy yesterday on that cold medicine," he says. "I hope I wasn't totally goofy in my responses. . . . I should have better sense than to do an interview when I'm stoned out of my mind on cold medicine." Note: At 61, Longtime Marijuana Lobby Leader Keith Stroup Is Finally Leaving the Joint Source: Washington Post (DC)Author:  Peter Carlson, Washington Post Staff Writer Published: Tuesday, January 4, 2005; Page C01 Copyright: 2005 Washington Post Contact: letterstoed washpost.comWebsite: http://www.washingtonpost.com/NORMLhttp://www.norml.org/ CannabisNews NORML Archiveshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/list/NORML.shtml

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Comment #26 posted by FoM on January 05, 2005 at 09:20:42 PT
ekim
You're welcome and I hope that is what you were looking for.Laduncon, Welcome to CNews and I think the world of Jack Herer. He's a hero to me. I don't call people heroes unless I mean it. I mean it. Bless his heart.
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Comment #25 posted by ekim on January 05, 2005 at 07:55:53 PT
just think of how much packaging comes from China
Thanks FoM for Woodys information.today on C-Span our old Govonor John Engler from MI was on -- he is now head of the National manufacturing of America www.nam.orghe was saying that we need to level the playing field around the world for our products.he was asked if he has sent a delegation to any of the 30 countries which grow and process Hemp products. Like Canada and China. The caller said that Canada is using Hemp in the big three car companies as panels, and in China for paper and clothing making. While our markets are being destroyed.And our Farmers are not allowed to grow and produce this product.Engler said that MAM does not do that sort of thing. That if some one wants to present a proposal he might help but that is not what his job is. But ------------he was licking his chops while saying that next week he will be working to ram thru a Asbestos settlement as soon as possible.
http://www.leap.cc/events
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Comment #24 posted by laduncon on January 04, 2005 at 21:56:48 PT:
Uses of Hemp
"The Emperor Wears No Clothes" by Jack Herer is a must-read for all who wish to know the truth about hemp and the motives/forces behind the evil propaganda effort aimed at its complete destruction.It is precisely because of hemp’s superiority (cheaper, less polluting, annually renewable, 77% pulp) to tree-paper, synthetic fibers, and emerging pharmaceutical medicines that it became the target of special interests. These special interests disguised their hatred of hemp as a moral crusade against marijuana, with tales of Reefer Madness to scare the public into outlawing a plant they had depended upon for centuries!
http://www.jackherer.com/chapter04.html
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Comment #23 posted by tokenitallup4162 on January 04, 2005 at 21:16:54 PT:
hemp,hemp,hurray
 EJ, I think I was reading your article right, you are asking about hemp. heres a site that might help you. www.oldgrowthfree.com/crops.html. heck, I knew I shoulda waited for my nightly meds before posting, lols. not smoke but painkillers. Being in jabez makes you quite stupid at times. (PAUSE), much better, the tightly rolled joint rolled to hit the point!!! anyway, I hope I read it right. as for mr. stroup, he may have done some crazy things in his past, now he can mend his future. He has done a heck of a job under the circumstances of our laws. I'm sure mr.st. pierre will do his best under the same circumstances stroup had. potpal, very good article, thanks, Toker.
http://www.oldgrowthfree.com/crops.html
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Comment #22 posted by FoM on January 04, 2005 at 20:14:17 PT
ekim
Is this what you want to know?http://www.livingtreepaper.com/about_whywoody.htmlPS: I remove a post of mine that's why there is one missing number for anyone that might wonder.
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Comment #21 posted by ekim on January 04, 2005 at 20:02:04 PT
in the year 8585 if man is still alive
FoM do you remember the name of the Canadian Paper mill that Woody bought into. If any one knows about news print Woody will and you know China does.E Johnson work to get a Movie of the fifth grade teacher made and the young will know that Hemp makes paper, in fact if the right fit can be made Hemp paper could seal the said paper as it could recycle the stock and reuse it over and over. A jury acquitted actor Woody Harrelson of misdemeanor marijuana possession charges Thursday, ending his four-year court battle http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread6818.shtml********************1984******************Red hemp used in paper making could prevent the felling of forests while clothing made from hemp is particularly comfortable to wear and poses no health hazard. Being one of the earliest fabrics used in China, hemp's heyday can date back 4,000 years when only nobles and royal families could afford to wear finely spun linen while coarse linen were favored by commoners. The production technology of linen has undergone constant improvement. In ***1984***, the country made a breakthrough in the degumming technology, bringing worldwide attention to linen products. 
http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread11260.shtmlComment #6 posted by i420 on November 13, 2001 at 04:40:01 PT 
pleaaaaaaaasse http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread11329.shtml
"On the face of it, it appears inappropriate for a fifth-grade class to have a celebrity speaker on a matter as complicated as legalizing industrial hemp," Siler wrote. complicated ??? algebra maybe hemp not this issue is a no brainer for fifth graders its those idiots higher up that don't get it.
The crop is illegal in Kentucky because it is the same plant as marijuana, although it lacks sufficient narcotic ingredients to have the same drug-related effect on people. IT IS NOT THE SAME PLANT IT IS A RELATED PLANT I can't wait to see this movie hope it gets out there soon. 
 ******************Woody********************                 ******************Movie*********************
******************Please*********************
However many millions of TV viewers enjoyed Harrelson in his role as Woody on Cheers, some residents of Shelby County did not enjoy his role as teacher for a day. Several parents and teachers wrote to complain about the visit, the fact that it occurred on the same day as the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program "graduation" and because Cockrel allowed hemp seeds -- illegal in Kentucky -- to be passed around the room during the presentation. On the recommendation of Cockrel's principal, Shelby County Schools Superintendent Leon Mooneyman fired Cockrel on July 15, 1997, citing "insubordination, conduct unbecoming a teacher, inefficiency, incompetency, and neglect of duty." On June 4, 1998, Cockrel sued, claiming that she was fired in violation of her First Amendment free speech right to discuss the potential environmental benefits of hemp. While not deciding Cockrel's state law breach-of-contract claim, the trial court granted the school board's motion for summary judgment on the First Amendment retaliation claim, holding that Cockrel's presentation was not protected speech. Specifically, the court held that Cockrel's speech was private speech by a teacher in her role as an employee, not as a citizen speaking on matters of public concern, and that she did not have a constitutional right to discuss industrial hemp in her classroom. But Cockrel may get her trial after all. On Nov. 9, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the Kentucky court and remanded the case for trial. The appellate court held that the issue was, in fact, one of public concern, citing the trial court's own opinion, where it said that "the issue of industrial hemp is politically charged and of great concern to certain citizens." The court acknowledged that Cockrel's speech had led to some problems, but it also observed that school officials told CNN that there was "educational value" in teaching about industrial hemp and that, more important, school officials had given prior approval for the visits. Cockrel v. Shelby County Sch. Bd., No 00-5259 (6th Cir. Nov. 9, 2001). Trial dates are pending. http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread11464.shtml
 Comment #2 posted by goneposthole on December 02, 2001 at 13:05:57 PT 
How can hemp help? 
The information at the link given will tell you how much hemp oil is yielded from test crops in Ontario.
A gallon of crude oil weighs 7.2 pounds by standard wieghts and measures.27% of the yield of hemp seed is hemp oil. The seed yield is about 1000 kg per hectare, or 2206 lbs. (long ton). 27% of 1000 kg is 270 kg of cold processed hemp oil per hectare. 2.2 lbs is what a kg weighs; 2.2 times 270 kg is 594 lbs. 594 lbs. of oil divided by 7.2 lbs per gallon is 82.5 gallons of hemp oil per hectare. That is close to 2 barrels of crude oil. 10,000,000 hectares would have a land area of 39,687.5 square miles. The oil yield would be 19,642,857 forty-two gallon barrels of hemp oil per growing season.It would help to have that much 'extra' oil for all kinds of uses. It is possible.http://www.gov.ca/OMAFRA/english/crops/hort/hemp/info-hempoileffect.htm ********************1984******************Red hemp used in paper making could prevent the felling of forests while clothing made from hemp is particularly comfortable to wear and poses no health hazard. Being one of the earliest fabrics used in China, hemp's heyday can date back 4,000 years when only nobles and royal families could afford to wear finely spun linen while coarse linen were favored by commoners. The production technology of linen has undergone constant improvement. In ***1984***, the country made a breakthrough in the degumming technology, bringing worldwide attention to linen products. 
http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread11260.shtml
http://www.leap.ccevents
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Comment #19 posted by FoM on January 04, 2005 at 11:21:18 PT

EJ I Checked
You're right it was Zoloft. What is Zoloft anyway? Is it a tranquilizer or an anti-depressant? Princess Diana's driver was drinking and taking Prozac. I got the two mixed up.
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Comment #18 posted by FoM on January 04, 2005 at 10:51:36 PT

EJ You Could Be Right
I thought it was Prozac but you could be right. She was a coke and alcohol addict for a long time but she had been recently before she killed him and then herself had been given one or the other drug. Did the pharmaceutical added to the coke and alcohol push her over the edge? I think so.
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Comment #17 posted by E_Johnson on January 04, 2005 at 10:47:20 PT

FoM do you mean Phil Hartman?
I read that his wife was a cocaine addict. He put her through rehab a couple of times but she fell off the wagon when he told her he was filing for divorce. She went out to meet her dealer and got really high on coke and then came home and killed him. Then she did some more coke and shot herself. In her blood they found cocaine, alcohol and Zoloft. Her blood alcohol was .12 at the time of death.His estate tried to sue the company that makes Zoloft and blame the whole thing on Zoloft, but with alcohol and cocaine present, nobody can prove what exactly made her behave that way, or if it was just herself making herself behave in the dysfunctional controlling bullying way she had behaved throughout their entire marriage.
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Comment #16 posted by FoM on January 04, 2005 at 10:41:39 PT

dongenero
I hope you are feeling better soon. I don't want anyone to think that I am anti-drug because I'm being a moralist or something because I'm not. I was dependent on drugs for years and they almost killed me. I feel life for me is a second chance and that is why I shun drugs.
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Comment #15 posted by E_Johnson on January 04, 2005 at 10:32:14 PT

The Hempington Post
What are the properties of hemp paper? Can you make newsprint from it?

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Comment #14 posted by dongenero on January 04, 2005 at 10:30:20 PT

Pharma side effects
That's interesting FoM. I started taking Allegra at my HMO's suggestion as they were raising copay on my usual allergy med.After 2 days I was very fatigued and had a strange backache, (both listed side effects).
I stopped taking the Allegra and 4 days later come down with a nasty headcold, (cold and flu are listed as most common side effects).How does this stuff give one a cold or flu??? I don't know but, I have it! I am a bit miserable and pretty pissed off.Ah, the wonders of medicine and the pharmaceutical industry!
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Comment #13 posted by FoM on January 04, 2005 at 09:58:42 PT

A Little Pretty Pill 
I feel very sorry for people who need to take many drugs. I don't take Tylenol because of it causing Liver damage. If I need to take something for pain I take what I always took and that's Bufferin. Prozac is a drug that I have been concerned about and I'm glad the truth is finally getting out. I can't remember the name of the SNL comedian that was shot and killed by his wife and then she killed herself. She had been taking Prozac. A warning on one pill they push is Tuberculosis.How can a pill give a person Tuberculosis?
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Comment #12 posted by Sam Adams on January 04, 2005 at 09:45:22 PT

potpal
Wow, thanks for posting the NSAID article. It seems that the lying doctors & others in the health care "industry" have been intent on poisioning chronic pain patients for decades.  Both natural opium & cannabis extracts are FAR safer than NSAIDS.Or, maybe it's just our Christian society that sees euphoria as a worse side effect than heart, liver, kidney, and GI damage. Really, death is preferable to a little unsolicited euphoria.
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Comment #11 posted by FoM on January 04, 2005 at 08:43:01 PT

Article About Nevada
Here's an article about Nevada. I just can't get interested in anything about Nevada after all the money spent in that particular state. I can only imagine how much this has cost.Going To Court: http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2005/Jan-04-Tue-2005/opinion/25593063.html
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Comment #10 posted by potpal on January 04, 2005 at 06:15:30 PT

I'll stick with herb...
fyi...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4144775.stm 
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Comment #9 posted by Sam Adams on January 04, 2005 at 04:53:15 PT

Kampia's comment
Shrinking dinosaur? I wonder what names the folks in Arkansas use for MPP? I love the comment from the ONDCP guy; how revealing. All the straight kids in the 60s with short hair & straight A's resented the hippies getting all the attention - wah! what about me? So they've spent the next 30 years arresting millions of new kids that use cannabis, none of whom knows anything about the 60's.  They're just a bunch of intellectually poor saps, brainwashed by the right-winger's corporate arm to buy whatever crap the hip-hop stars are selling, and of course that includes "the chronic". Of course, the government exploits this and many other cultural vendettas to extort more of our money & productivity. 
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Comment #8 posted by The GCW on January 04, 2005 at 04:49:26 PT

Being NORMAL is not about the high.
1:3:5 Not just high; enhanced. For those who believe and know the truth, cannabis does not give a “SPIRIT OF STUPOR” as written in Romans 11:8. God gives the “spirit of stupor” to undeserving ones. The opposite of spirit of stupor may be considered the “Spirit of holiness” –see Romans 1:4. Paul, was called as an apostle, -see Romans 1:1. Romans 1:5, uses the phrase, “obedience of faith.” 1:4:5 Note: Romans 1:13 indicates that Paul wants to go to Rome and while there “…obtain some fruit…” AND He wants to “…impart some spiritual gift…” in Romans 1:11. …" it seems that cannabis can be used as part of the subject of conversation in both of these and if it applies then it would help open up new realms of truth to all. When Paul and Romans with cannabis/ kaneh bosm join together it seems one thing obtained is the ability to “encourage together.” –see Romans 1:12. That combination of cannabis and the right people, “encourage(d) together” is what We have. Cannabis does so much that one of the things it does goes unnoticed, that is its ability to ENCOURAGE Us. If that is true, that cannabis encourages Us, then it stands to reason that the dark empire would want to separate Us from a God Awesome substance that helps give Us among other things, courage. That is one reason why it is important to realize that cannabis, while helpful, can be absent, but to retain the truth, that it is good, is at times all that is left connecting someone to the truth. I was pitiful, but I knew cannabis was good. It was the only link left in Me that could lead Me to the source of all truth; AND IT DID.NORML spread a lot of love.The Green Collar Worker
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Comment #7 posted by FoM on January 04, 2005 at 00:10:30 PT

Picture from The Above Article
http://www.freedomtoexhale.com/keith.jpg"I have no doubt I'll be smoking marijuana 
the day I die," says Stroup, in his K Street office. Behind him is a poster of 
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Photograph by: Lucian Perkins -- The Washington Post 

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Comment #6 posted by FoM on January 03, 2005 at 22:45:27 PT

I Want To Say Thank You
When we moved to Ohio in 1973 the laws were very bad. A 20 to 40 year jail sentence was what was on the books and we met a person who was serving a sentence like that for a very tiny amount. When the laws changed he was released after serving 2 years in a Federal Prison. We didn't have the Internet or news like we do today but I remember how happy everyone was when the laws changed in Ohio. It was like night and day and I want to thank Keith Stroup for helping change that terrible law.
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Comment #5 posted by E_Johnson on January 03, 2005 at 22:43:24 PT

That was harsh
Rob Kampia sounded mean. How does it profit the marijuana community to say something catty like that?NORML has a better website, and MPP doesn't bother to put out a weekly news report. There are probably third graders who can build a better website than the one MPP has.
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Comment #4 posted by Taylor121 on January 03, 2005 at 22:42:13 PT

A little rude but...
I find Kampia's comment a bit over the top but there is no doubt in my mind that NORML does lack the critical funding it needs. It has association with the counter-culture that is stuck in many older American's heads, and the movement may be better off with a new face.I am a 2 year NORML member but I also support the MPP. I favor the MPP more than I do NORML and I reject the claim that Stroup could do better. I know that is a topic for debate, but I think BOTH organizations should be supported.I do wish this man the best. He stood up when someone needed to, and he has paved a dirt road for the future of marijuana reform.
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Comment #3 posted by FoM on January 03, 2005 at 22:25:04 PT

medicinal toker
You said exactly what I was thinking. That was rude. Is that how we'll be remembered too someday?I wish Keith Stroup a happy and healthy future.
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Comment #2 posted by medicinal toker on January 03, 2005 at 22:20:44 PT

if you can't say anything nice...
"I view NORML as a small and shrinking dinosaur," Kampia says. "NORML's time has come and gone."[snip]
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Comment #1 posted by E_Johnson on January 03, 2005 at 21:35:19 PT

Memory is not intelligence 
Having a memory blip in the middle of a heated conversation does not make a person stupid. As the research with black capped chickadees shows, cannabinoid-induced forgetting is an important part of learning. Intelligence is not equivalent to memory. Memory can get in the way of intelligence. Perhaps one contribution of cannabinoid research will be to disabuse people of the widely held misconception that having a good memory is the same thing as being smart.It's awkward to forget what you were going to say in a conversation, but usually it happens because the other person said something interesting that made you think of something even more interesting than the thing you were focusing on previously.It's just like the chickadee experiment. You're finding food in a new hole.
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