"I've Got Drugs" - by the Frogs

man, I gotta get some Frogs back into my rotation. perhaps the funniest band ever.

CA split evenly on Prop 19: the full legalization of marijuana

"..oh the times, they are-a changin'.." Bob Dylan said it best. Medicinal marijuana? Science has spoken; old news now. So here's where we are now with legalizing recreational use of weed, the same we all recreationally use coffee, beer, rum, whiskey, wine, cigarettes, prescription meds, and everything else (except, without all the the side effects and people dying). Once a state or two makes this law, the rest will surely follow. There just isn't a reason not to: it's safe, the legalization, taxation and distribution of it will save oceans-full of money on fighting the crime now surrounding it, and of course, most importantly, governments (local, state, federal, if it wants to) will make lots of money. Oh yeah, and the people like it (and the people are the government, right?). Here's an update from Firedoglake on CA's upcoming referendum to fully legalize marijuana (clik on title of this post for original piece).-sj


By: Jon Walker
June 30th, 2010
California Split Almost Evenly on Prop 19; Few Left Undecided about Marijuana Legalization

Proposition 19, the newly numbered California initiative to legalize, tax and regulate cannabis, would lose by a very close margin if the election was held today, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll:

"The poll, which has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points, also found that 48 percent of voters would support legalizing marijuana, compared to 50 percent opposed."

While voters who oppose Prop 19 slightly outnumber those who support it , the two-point difference is well within the poll’s margin of error, so the state is effectively evenly split on the issue. The numbers mirror the findings of a poll from the Public Policy Institute of California (PDF) taken back in May. It gave the pro-marijuana legalization side a slight edge, 49-48, also within the poll’s margin of error.

An interesting thing to note in both of these polls is how incredibly few undecideds there are. It seems almost all Californians have already taken at least a tentative initial position on the issue. Previous experience will tell you that persuading people to change their minds one way or the other is often a fairly difficult endeavor.

Prop 19 supporters’ best hope might be to find a way to increase turnout among young people (under-25 voters overwhelmingly favor legalizing marijuana, but tend to vote in very low numbers in midterm elections). If the issue remains this closely divided all the way through to November, Prop 19’s fate could easily rest on whether or not the issue gets young voters politically engaged in higher-than-usual numbers.

Smoke This Recession

Mark Morford's one of the best current event/news/political/social writers and commentators in America now. He has been for years. He's witty, simple, serious and fun. If there is another person out there who I agree with more on a myriad of topics, issues and concerns, I don't know who he or she is. You can read his weekly posts and a long list of archives by clicking on his link/page on the left sidebar. sj

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, February 20, 2009

It's simple: First we tax the booze. Then we legalize the pot. Done.

It is a time of strange bedfellows and bizarre contortions and extraordinary responses to extreme situations, all overslathered with gobs of panic and dread and oh my God, I might have to sell the Range Rover.

In other words, it is a time -- like you don't already know -- of plentiful alarmist rhetoric, resulting in weird outbursts of ingenuity and wanton ethics-loosening, all in a desperate effort to suck up some much-needed cash.

Translation: Money's tight, baby. City's in trouble. State's deep in the hole. Nation's broke.

Solution? Upend the system. Think differently. Get creative. Demolish Ye Olde Ways. And maybe get a really nice buzz on while you're at it.

Where to begin? How can the city/state refill their empty coffers and further gouge the populace to make ends meet? Increased bridge tolls? A new per-mile driving tax? Heavier parking fines? State parks abandoned and left to seed? Child's play, darling.

You want to raise funds in an instant? You want a sure-fire, double-barreled source of nearly limitless funds from a wary, burned-out citizenry? That's easy. Go after its biggest vices, its most beloved balms.

Up first: booze. Already local governments are quietly proposing jacking up the alcohol tax and loosening sales restrictions because, well, why the hell not? Aren't you, right this very moment, as you prepare your taxes and weep over your gutted portfolio and stare down one very bleak 2009, more in need of a drink or three than at any time in recent history except for the entirety of the last eight miserable, Bush-stabbed years? Well, there you go. Tax increases on cocktails, here they come.

But it's not just governments. Check out the happily shameless TV networks who, for the first time in a whocares number of years, are allowing ads for alcohol and K-Y lube during prime-time programming. Oh the outrage! Oh the debauchery! Who, pray who, will protect the children? Oh wait, the children are out buying daddy some more beer and applying for a job at Starbucks to help pay rent. Never mind.

New taxes on the other Great American vices: porn, gambling, prescription meds, pro sports, obesity, Miley Cyrus? Watch for it.

Now, let's get serious. Because there are, of course, bigger fish to fry in the sea of potentially lucrative, all-American inebriates. There is a far more potent, obvious solution to the state's budget woes, a huge, untapped revenue source, and now might be the perfect time to, you know, light it up.

Really now, could there be a better time to decriminalize/fully legalize pot? Or, more fully, to decriminalize pot, and then spread respectable pot shops and vending machines and dispensaries far and wide, instill quality control and decent oversight and then tax the living hell out of the glorious, stress-reducing goodness, as we stop wasting billions fighting its grand ubiquity and instead sink into profitable pools of warm, hazy progress? Don't you already know the answer?


It's difficult to imagine that some intrepid legislator hasn't already walked into Arnie "Pot is not a drug" Schwarzenegger's office and said, "Governator, now is the time. Light it up. Inhale the new reality. Pot is, by a huge margin, the single largest cash crop in the state unless you count porn stars and celebrity rehab. It rakes in upwards of $14 billion a year -- maybe a lot more than that -- and that's just from five clever hippies and a couple intrepid grandmas in Ukiah. Imagine what we could do if we went all-in."

Are the discussions ongoing? Are they passing the bong of possibility around the state Senate chambers? You're damn right they are. What's holding them back? Probably the usual: the negative PR, looking "soft" on crime, encouraging permissiveness, pressure from prison lobbies, and so on. Don't worry, Sacramento. Everyone's already plenty drunk/high on prescription meds trying to alleviate fears of losing their job to care about that nonsense right now. Get to it.

There won't be much pushback from D.C. President Obama's already stated that his upcoming appointee to head the DEA is going to knock it the hell off with the insidious raids of harmless medical pot shops in California, and wants to quit using federal resources to bash hippies and circumvent state laws.

Look. Is there really anyone left who doesn't already know the "War on Drugs" is a pathetic joke, an abject failure and a taxpayer nightmare, and the only reason it survives at all is to fund the CIA and fellate the prison guard unions and support a shameful prison system, and to let politicians say they're "tough on crime" so they can to deflect all those uninformed parents who relentlessly whine about pot in public schools just before dashing off a wine-tasting party to snort a nice line of Bolivian coke?

Anyone left, furthermore, who doesn't know that pot is far safer than booze, less addictive, nonviolent, more transportable, easier to light, and generally won't interfere with your ability to crawl across the carpet and lick cookie crumbs from your lover's thighs? And sure, while heavy, daily usage can make you slow and stupid and rather useless to the world, well, so can a six-pack of Diet Dr. Pepper and six hours of TV every day. Gateway drug? That's on Channel 2, right after "Oprah."

And another thing. Maybe it wouldn't be merely tax 'n' puff. Maybe California, already the pot-growing capital of the nation, could become something more. A hub. A world-class research center. Pot education, study, medicine, import/export, the works. We could ship our crop to various nations in desperate need of chilling the hell out, like Israel. Palestine. Pakistan. Russia. The N-Judah on a Friday afternoon. We could become the largest research and manufacturing center in the world. How proud we would be. You know, sort of.


Let's phrase this grand scenario in another way: Why the hell not try it? What have we got to lose? What, we could go more broke? We could get more desperate and anxious? Fact is, economic nightmares need not breed only miserable stories of lost homes and lost jobs and shuttered businesses. They can also spawn creative solutions, innovative thinking, widespread munchies. Now is the time.

Let's not get carried away. Pot's only one little inebriate, one mild and -- let's just admit it -- relatively boring feel-good plant. California is $40 billion in debt and we're running low on water and we can't give away those hideous tract developments out in Stockton. Milking the pot cow for all she's worth might net us, at best, a few billion a year. To get out of this massive hole, we'd have to legalize Ecstasy too. (Someday, honey, someday).

But it's something. It's radical new thinking that's not the slightest bit radical, or new, and in fact the notion is now even more obvious than it's been for the past 30 years. What are we waiting for? A match?

another take on the Michael Phelps event...

So Radley Balko from reason-online wrote this piece. I put two snippets below from his article. Click on the title of this post to go to the original article and read the entire post; it's funny, and he makes some excellent points. Radley himself, is an interesting character; you can click on his name in the article and read about his many accomplishments and career, including his time as a policy analyst for the Cato Institute specializing in civil liberties issues. sj

What Michael Phelps Should Have Said

Smoking pot shouldn't be a crime. Or the public's business.
Radley Balko | February 2, 2009

Dear America,
I take it back. I don’t apologize.

Because you know what? It’s none of your goddamned business. I work my ass off 10 months a year. It’s that hard work that gave you all those gooey feelings of patriotism last summer. If during my brief window of down time I want to relax, enjoy myself, and partake of a substance that’s a hell of a lot less bad for me than alcohol, tobacco, or, frankly, most of the prescription drugs most of you are taking, well, you can spare me the lecture.

...and then this, at the end of the piece:

Go ahead and tear me down if you like. But let’s see you rationalize in your next lame ONDCP commercial how the greatest motherfucking swimmer the world has ever seen...is also a proud pot smoker.

Yours,
Michael Phelps

click on the title of this post to go to the original article

Phelps has 14 olympic medals. And he smokes weed. Problem?

okay, so apparently this is a big story today. why? can't one of the greatest athletes of all time relax every once and a while? Not only is he not harming anyone, his occasional relaxing with beer and marijuana over the years (as has been reported before, by the way), most surely hasn't effected his utter domination of every and all swimming opponents or his obliterating of the record books in all swimming strokes and different competitive formats. Now, if smoking green is in violation of the OIC rules and/or other governing bodies, and rules him out for future events, next olympics, etc, then so be it. Rules are rules. And surely he's aware of those rules when he made/makes his choices. But enough with the uninformed, misguided and ignorant stigma and critiques that are too often associated with marijuana, and the people from all walks of life who chill out socially with it; almost everyone I know, chills out or partakes once in a while with beer, wine, liquor, cigarettes, soda, coffee, cigars and/or more; most of which - if not all - are more harmful to people than marijuana is. Perhaps amongst the "aww, I really liked him," and "I am shocked - he seemed like such a good kid!," and all the other similar reactions we'll hear endlessly on this event, there will be a few reactions along these lines: "wow. he smokes marijuana and he's still far and away the greatest swimmer in the history of the world. how bad can it be?!"


Michael Phelps in Shocking Drug Scandal After Being Pictured Taking Hit from a Bong

Normally when you talk about Olympic athletes using drugs it is steroids or some type of supplement that can increase their performance in their sport. Michael Phelps, who dazzles the sports world last year, isn't exactly Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens when it comes to his drug of choice. The record breaking gold medalist, instead, has been snapped on camera taken a hit of a marijuana bong that was obtained by UK scandal sheet News of the World [1].

The picture was taken at a University of South Carolina party and, if it is proven that there that was in fact cannabis in the bong, Phelps would likely get sanctioned from the Olympic committee.

In the past few months, Phelps has been partying hard and having some insiders in the sport wondering if he can regain his world class athletic mantle with his lifestyle. In the the News of the World Report, they wrote:

One party-goer who witnessed the star’s behaviour told the News of the World: “He was out of control from the moment he got there.

“If he continues to party like that I’d be amazed if he ever won any more medals again.”

In 2004 after his Olympic glory in Greece, Phelps was popped for a DUI and sentenced to 18 months probation. After dominating this Olympic games, that scandal blew over and the swimming star was able to earn a number of endorsements. With this new allegation, the only thing that Phelps may now be able to advertise is an upcoming c film.

This isn't the first time that Phelps has made headlines for the wrong reasons.