“Mothers throughout history have come forward for the sake of their children. We’re coming forth saying that the drug war has been more damaging to our families than the drugs themselves.” – Gretchen Burns Bergman, executive director of PATH
Moms United is a growing movement to stop the violence, mass incarceration and overdose deaths that are the result of deeply flawed, punitive and discriminatory drug policies. (more…)
Alternet writers put up a concise piece highlighting 5 Special Interest Groups That Help Keep Marijuana Illegal, something worth knowing if you didn’t already.
The 5 groups listed are:
Seeing how it’s the time of year when billows of pungent smoke pour out across the world (Happy 4/20 everyone!), let us take a few moments to reflect upon the insanity that is drug prohibition.
Suppose every myth you’ve been led to believe about drugs is true, and that they are really an evil scourge on society; destroying families, fueling crime, and turning our young people into mindless addicts. Even if all that were factually accurate (which it isn’t), there is still something far more destructive to our world than drugs themselves. And that something is drug prohibition. (more…)
Oh glorious days! The war against the war on weed is advancing across many fronts. As long as this keeps up, the Western world might actually climb out of the dark ages and finally purge the plague of drug prohibition.
Up in the Great White North, the Liberal party added legalization of marijuana to their platform. Not less enforcement. Not decriminalization. Actual full fledged regulation that allows the unfettered distribution and taxation of legal weed. Take that, Harper!
Spurred forward by the frigid temperatures, Michiganders just kicked of a campaign to amend state law and legalize marijuana for use with adults over the age of 21. Go Wolverines! Or should I say Weedverines? No… Wolverines is just fine.
Members of the Centennial State – Colorado – will soon get a chance, come November, to decide whether or not they’d like to legalize possession of small amounts of the sticky icky. Finally, a law-abiding rocky mountain high!
And last but not least, prepare your bullshit protection for when the US government will be forced to justify the Schedule I status of Marijuana in court. Watch as the contortionists from the pro-prohibition side attempt to show how one of the safest and most beneficial plants on earth is actually just as bad as black tar heroin.
Opposition to drug prohibition has never been stronger than it is right now. The end is in sight. Within a few years, if all goes smoothly, we’ll be able to look back on ourselves today with the same disdain with which we view the quaint alcohol prohibitionists from last century.
Glorious days, indeed!
Out of nowhere, the Liberal party has jumped back into the running with the Canadian public, just by adding one simple policy to their platform: legalize marijuana.
Party members announced that “a new Liberal government will legalize marijuana and ensure the regulation and taxation of its production, distribution, and use, while enacting strict penalties for illegal trafficking, illegal importation and exportation, and impaired driving.”
Yes!!! Canada’s pro-cannabis movement just gained new levels of traction. Even though it is being pushed by the Liberals – 3rd prize in Canadian politics – this is still a huge milestone.
As other parties see just how much the issue of legal weed resonates with the Canadian people, they too will be tempted to hop on the ‘Oh Cannabis’ bandwagon.
While Harper and his conservatives cram more crime bills down our throats, it is great to see that not all politicians have abandoned reasonable policies.
You may have noticed a rash of posts lately calling for the end of the global war on drugs. Well, they say write what you know, so here’s one more reason why we should end drug prohibition – because it sends mixed messages to our young people.
Consider the following:
Cannabis is an incredible medicine that helps patients physically, mentally and spiritually. Cannabis makes for an excellent recreational drug and is proven safer than alcohol or tobacco. Cannabis seeds make a super-nutritional food, and the stalk of the plant itself is one of the most versatile building blocks on earth, able to create all kinds of useful goods.
Yet this incredible plant, this godsend which could be a tremendous boon to human civilization, is vehemently persecuted and vilified worldwide thanks to laws that are entrenched all the way up to the United Nations.
So just what are educated young people supposed to think when they discover both of the above truths, which they inevitably will. Probably something like “If the grown-ups are hell-bent on sticking to something that is so obviously misguided, what else have they been getting wrong?”
If the goal is to protect children, why not start by making it so the system they grow up in isn’t overrun with draconian drug prohibition laws. Laws which have never – even after many decades and hundreds of billions of dollars invested – offered any shred of evidence that they are making the world a better place.
(Oh, Cannabis!)
An Ontario Superior Court judge ruled Monday that Canada’s medical marijuana program is unconstitutional, essentially quashing laws against possessing and producing cannabis.
The judge has given the government three months to appeal, and if the ruling isn’t challenged, owning or growing pot will become legal across Canada.
Oh man, how glorious this would be! We can finally stop policing and prohibiting one of the world’s most productive plants.
As you’ve heard by now, Proposition 19’s bid to legalized small amounts of Cannabis has failed.
But it was close to passing. Really close. Just under half. So if more pro-pot people had just gotten off their asses to vote, marijuana would now be somewhat legal in California.
And this would have been huge! For an influential state in America – one of the world’s most prohibitionist countries – to legalize the bud may have been considered a pivotal blow in the movement to end drug prohibition. In the very least, it would have would have served as a case and point example of how ending prohibition results in a resounding success, like it did in Portugal when they legalized all drugs.
I know what you’re thinking, if “ifs” and “buts” were segway’s then we’d all have fat bottoms. But don’t give up! Drug prohibition is such a flawed, draconian policy and a blight to our species that it is integral that we end it ASAP.
And don’t forget, Prop 19 stands as an awesome step forward. For one, many more people were exposed to new ideas about the war on drugs. As well, these efforts lead the way for other states (and provinces) to follow suit.
Heck, we should try something like that up here in Canada, seeing as we’re home to the most dope smokers (per capita) in the industrialized world.
This Saturday, May 1 2010, will be the Global Marijuana March, held in every major city around the world.
We march to protest the prohibition of Marijuana. On Saturday, we will speak out to free the weed. This blight on humankind – drug prohibition – has got to stop.
Even if you don’t smoke pot, you can still come out and let your voice be heard. These marches are often a big party and lots of fun so come out and support the wondrous plant known as Marijuana.
Here’s a clip from Vancouver 2008 pot rally:
