A Born Confucianist

Welcome Spuds! Back to HBO

Dad always said “a good name is better to be chosen than great riches,” quoting Proverbs, and he stressed that the way to be good was to be honest. His name is Frank, and he will tell you if your tie doesn’t match or your plan stinks if you happen to ask, or if sorting such things out happens to be his job.

I brought this ethic into my work as a journalist and a writer – how could I not? I didn’t mind telling uncomfortable stories, if that happened to be my job. I tried to tell the truth, and duck the tomatoes.

Years later, post-journalism, I began to study China and was struck by the theories of Confucious, the great Chinese philosopher who stressed honesty over flattery. I ran across a great thumbnail sketch of Confucianism as applied by advisers to the emperor back-in-the-day, in The Fall of Imperial China by Frederic Wakeman, Jr.

Since heaven evaluated a monarch’s reign in terms of his subjects’ welfare, an emperor had to know when his policies failed. Slavish courtiers might sooth his vanity, but he needed ministers bold enough to advise him when he had erred. To Confucianists, who highly valued an honest ruler-minister relationship, the truest sign of loyalty was frankness, even if it meant lese majeste and the loss of one’s head.

Being Dad’s son pretty much assured I’d be a Confucianist. Whether I will do great good in the world or lose my head, I suppose is yet to be determined.##

Hank III and Happy Tales: Hardcore Good

This blogger is a fan, besides longtime friend, of Hank III – aka Shelton Hank Williams III. Nashville’s favorite Hellbilly turns music categorization on its ear in his live shows playing country for an hour or several, and then the hardest hardcore you’ve ever heard for an hour or several more. Williams’ voice and Nashville-style guitar fingering demonstrate the finesse and encyclopedic note-by-note knowledge of the favorites you’d expect from a country legend; and then he and Assjack bathe the crowd in an ear-splitting hardcore barrage that would do CBGB’s proud any night of the week. I have had the opportunity to see Hank III and Assjack several times but one of the best times was the show at The Factory of Franklin to benefit Happy Tales Humane, a local no-kill shelter that is very close to my heart. III continues his partnership with Happy Tales in a public service announcement for the organization on his Website. He introduces us to Trooper, his “number one black-and-tan dog,” and Mama, an “East Nashville special,” both rescue animals.

“I’ve always been an animal lover,” he says in the ad. “They’ve been some of the best family I’ve ever had.”

He will rescue an animal on the side of the road if he can do it without scaring the animal into traffic. “I’m always pulling over and trying to help ‘em out.”

The Happy Tales ad takes us from the show at The Factory to what might be III’s back yard or a nearby park where he is seen walking casually with his dogs. One, Trooper, looks like a Rottweiler from a distance. The other, Mama, has the face of a German shepherd and a fat, hotdog-like body. Dressed in black, with a Copenhagen cap, a chain dog collar, and Vans, III  takes a jab at “puppy mills and overbreeding.”

“I’ve never agreed with it … People just trying to capitalize on having 500 dogs locked up in a pen just is not a realistic situation.”

“My dogs have all been saved. Trooper was saved out of Mississippi … he’s helped me through a lot of hard times and I’m definitely going to be hurtin’ when he’s gone.”

“Mama is an East Nashville special, an east-side special. I don’t know what kind of dog she is. She’s got five or 10 kinds of mix in her. She’d been hit by a car and had of litter of puppies in her … She’s been a super dog. I’ve always been so dedicated to them because they’re so dedicated to me.”

He addresses the mortality of dogs, and inevitable sadness when they die. But “sometimes they can give you up to 12 – 17 years,” he points out.

“If you’re looking to adopt, for a new family friend, go to all your animal humane shelters,” III advises.

“You can save a life. And most of those animals know that you’ve saved their life, and they’re twice as loyal.”

I couldn’t agree more. Our dear old Basset hound Molly, who died last year at 13, gave us all of her love for 12-and-a-half years. She was a Happy Tales rescue with an amazing nose, who taught our other Basset, a $150, mentally unstable but perfectly formed pure-breed, how to hunt. Molly took off, barking, on an Idaho trail one afternoon and Ottis followed. They went on to chase bears and moose together, and both made it back home to Tennessee for several more pretty good rabbit chases before they died. Lucky, our rescue dog from the Kootenai County Humane Society Shelter in Idaho, survives them.

So, let me add my voice to Hank III’s. Saving these loyal creatures is a cause worth our time, money and microphones. Check out his video, and join us.#

Belville: Idaho Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act ‘Just the Beginning of Justice’

Read Idaho House Bill 19 – (tabled in 2011 – PDF file)

Perhaps the most high-profile Idaho native working to change marijuana laws reacted publicly this week to the reintroduced Idaho Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act which would legalize pot for sick residents but would not allow them to grow it at home.

[Related Spokesman.com story: Most Idahoans Back Medical Marijuana]

“”There’s something very telling in Tom Trail, Rep. Trail’s statement where he said it’s ‘preferable’ to have tightly controlled legislation, than a voter initiative. The reason why is when voter initiatives get passed they tend to be better as far as medical marijuana patients are concerned,” said Idaho native Russ Belville on his Jan. 17 radio program.

“Here we’ve got them talking about making Idaho another one of – yet another! – ‘no home grow’ state for medical cannabis. I think we’ve got four now, that would make them the fifth. Extreme limits on how much is able to be possessed, tight restrictions on what sort of conditions a person must have, and of course, you can’t look at a person suffering from cancer in Twin Falls, or suffering from HIV-AIDS in Coeur d’Alene, or suffering from chronic pain in Boise – and say ‘sorry, we’re not going to pass this because it doesn’t go far enough.’ And that’s kind of the bind we’re put in as proponents of legalization.”

Idaho House Bill 370 mirrors House Bill 19 of 2011 and would allow patients to possess up to two ounces of marijuana per month to be purchased from state approved dispensaries. Among the bill’s findings are that medical science has proven marijuana’s benefit to victims of chronic diseases, and that Idaho has no responsibility to arrest violators of federal law. [See sidebar.] Marijuana use of any kind is still prohibited under federal law.

But Belville, of Portland, Ore., radio host and outreach coordinator for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, believes Idaho voters can get more through their own initiative, which is also in the works as proponents with Compassionate Idaho seek to gather 47,500 signatures to gain access to the November ballot.

Said Belville: “This ‘tranquilizing drug of gradualism,’ as Dr. King called it, this gradual need to take these baby steps because we’re afraid that the public’s not going to vote for the full legalization that we want, I say that it’s time at least in the initiative states that we push initiatives to get what we really want out of these laws, out of these medical marijuana or full legalization laws, and let that be the leverage against the legislature to make them finally go and do something. But don’t rest on your laurels. Remember that just because you get a medical marijuana law passed, that’s just the beginning of justice, there still remains plenty of work to be done so that all users of cannabis are free from arrest in this country.”

The comments were made on NORML Show Live No. 838, taped Tuesday, Jan. 17 in Portland.##

-Thomas Brent Andrews

The Pot Plan Comes To Life

This feels like my moment. It’s what I have been waiting for since I found the pot plan and got sober in 2000. Academia is recognizing that when people substitute marijuana for alcohol, society benefits.

Honey called it “your pot plan,” as in, “You’re a lot nicer person when you’re working your pot plan.” We didn’t know what to call it and that label fit.

Through years of alcoholic behavior I found that after drinking a few beers, if I then smoked marijuana the party was over.

The combination left me out of balance, rolled my stomach, and put me to bed every time. I loved to drink. In rehab, when we were picking drugs of choice, I picked alcohol. It was my gateway drug, and the one I preferred. In college I fled stolid Middle Tennessee dozens of times for weekends in New Orleans, where alcoholic drinking approaches the level of religion, with idols, potions, and shrines.

But I kept getting arrested or beaten up, and waking up with painful disappointment. I  kept disappointing my wife and myself, and though I hated and feared driving drunk, good binges still found me behind the wheel. I moved from Tennessee to Idaho, and my drinking habit followed. Now, alone out West, Honey needed me more than ever.

After a terrible night in the Idaho wilderness, that had started out as such a good time, Honey and I had a long silent couple of hours to think on the way home. I thought: You know, when I smoke pot, I can’t drink. I don’t have mornings like this. Honey said I had to change, that this was the last time. I remembered this scene in my book, and don’t want to remember it different, now. But she said I had to change. I said I would change. She said, How? How could it be any different, this time? Why believe any more promises, from me? What could I possibly do to change?

“I’m just going to smoke pot,” I said, and it was done. Honey was neither smoker, nor toker, nor “midnight joker,” but she loved me – of all people. She was willing to at least wait and see, one more time, as I tried my pot plan.

It worked. Not perfectly, but it worked. I was astonished; this changed my life. After a year sober, it was easy. This was Idaho. We had excellent proximity to British Columbia; and don’t we all get high with a little help from our friends? I was willing to stay high, if that’s what it took. But all I really had to do was smoke marijuana when I felt like drinking. I felt like drinking a lot. Instead, I smoked pot. It might have saved my life. It might have saved someone else’s life.

The pot plan was so real and important to me, I wrote a book about it, thus marrying myself to the cause. I’ve been abused over it. Certain police don’t seem to like me anymore. But I have shared my story with alcoholics, which is essential to recovery.

The Pot Plan / Click to buy it

The pot plan isn’t perfect – I can’t say I haven’t relapsed; but relapse is part of recovery too, as much as abstinence and sharing your story. There have been times when I needed a reminder that I was an alcoholic. They came, but gently thank God. There have been times when I felt like giving up the fight – just drinking again, and heck with ‘em. If society cannot understand that safe access to marijuana saves lives, let’s just roll the dice and see what happens.

But not today. I am reading this study, ‘Medical Marijuana Laws, Traffic Fatalities, and Alcohol Consumption’. Released in draft in November and still being updated, it’s by economists Daniel I. Rees of the University of Colorado-Denver; D. Mark Anderson of Montana State University; and Benjamin Hansen of the University of Oregon. Finally, the posse is here. To quote the abstract (emphasis supplied):

To date, 16 states have passed medical marijuana laws, yet very little is known about their effects. Using state-level data, we examine the relationship between medical marijuana laws and a variety of outcomes. Legalization of medical marijuana is associated with increased use of marijuana among adults, but not among minors. In addition, legalization is associated with a nearly 9 percent decrease in traffic fatalities, most likely to due to its impact on alcohol consumption. Our estimates provide strong evidence that marijuana and alcohol are substitutes.

Substitutes. As in my experience, the drugs are not cohorts; it’s one or the other. When I read about this study in The Hartford Courant my jaw dropped. We as a society have been trying to stop drunk driving for as long as I’ve been alive. We’ve dedicated armies of police to it, allowed ourselves to be stopped and questioned at highway checkpoints over it, and made some advances but it remains a monster ending lives and putting alcoholics in prison.

“In the United States, traffic fatalities are the leading cause of death among Americans ages 5 through 34,” according to the study, which cites 2010 statistics from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Now marijuana has unexpectedly put a huge dent in the scourge’s armor, hitting it hard right when it’s most powerful: Friday and Saturday nights, according to the study’s findings. Here’s our chance! Let’s put our resources into getting marijuana into the hands of alcholics, and hurt the monster even worse!

My sweet cousins lost their father to a DUI driver in the early 1980s; as a child I hated drunk drivers as the worst kind of scum. And then I became one. Nobody chooses to become an alcoholic. And in fact, even people who are not alcoholics find themselves drinking and driving. But in my case the situation was exacerbated by alcholism – I drove drunk a lot.

Not anymore. Without making any promises or indiscreet admissions, I can say with perfect honesty that I’m better, now. I’m much less dangerous. I’m much less of a menace to myself, and others. It is in my best interest to just keep working the pot plan, and it’s in society’s best interest that I keep working the pot plan. Usually when someone finds the pot plan, he goes into hiding, in a way. It’s hard to put concrete numbers on how many people have done what I did, switch, but I have shaken a lot of their hands. Like the Lunatic Fringe, I know they’re out there. Here is a public safety benefit from their change.

Tennessee’s proposed Safe Access To Medical Cannabis Act does nothing for me, although I have fought hard for it. I know it will help many very sick people with the 13 conditions called for under the act. In those areas, as bill author Bernie Ellis has told me, the science is hard, irrefutable: AIDS, cancer, the most terrible cases.

The science of marijuana substitution for alcoholics is just getting serious, with this paper. Specifically, the authors targeted the relationship – if any – between medical marijuana laws in the 16 states that have passed them, and traffic fatalities. Is what Harry Anslinger warned of, “slaughter on the highways,” coming true in the age of legal marijuana, or not? Now we have an opportunity to find out and these three professors took it on.

“To our knowledge, there has been no previous examination of this relationship,” the economists state.

But I was a guinea pig. I lived it. Some of my friends lived it. Maybe we were pioneers. Maybe instead of being scorned and locked up, we’ll be heroes in a new enlightened age.

I can’t wait to read the rest of the paper. I called Professor Rees to see how I could get a copy. Besides telling me a little about the process – the study is still being updated; and has been submitted but not yet accepted to the professional journals – he gave me a URL where I can read the early version. What I’ve seen so far leaves me happy. It’s enough to turn a cold day beautiful. You can read it too, here.##

More  The Pot Plan Saves Lives As Alcohol Related Fatalities Decrease In Medical Marijuana States * Study: Medical Marijuana Laws, Traffic Fatalities, and Alcohol Consumption * National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws Founder Keith Stroup Reacts To the Study 

Blackout

We can’t afford to turn away readers for the sake of a political stunt. That is what Grandma called getting too big for your breeches. You think you can turn away readers. Wikipedia is doing it tonight and turning me away. It looks like a political stunt. It’s not even Wikipedia’s country! But tonight the site went black and if I want to read Keith Stroup’s excellent biographical entry again, I will have to wait until tomorrow. Or whenever. The problem with free things is you can’t trust them to be reliable. Can you imagine The Times (any of them; pick one) printing all black one day; or blacking out its Website? This blackout stunt is getting in the way of my information flow and I won’t participate. In fact, it might make me mad enough to get involved on the other side. Wikipedia, get out of my politics. And turn the lights back on, why not? You seek to free knowledge – yet tonight you hold it hostage. My old World Books were cumbersome, yes, somewhat dated even fresh from the box, perhaps; but they never went black at a critical moment. Tonight, reliable would be even more welcome than free.##

Stroup: Watch for National Movement Toward Harm Reduction as Public Sees Marijuana’s Benefits

Related  The Pot Plan Saves Lives As Alcohol Related Fatalities Decrease In Medical Marijuana States / Chronic Discontent

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National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws founder Keith Stroup reacted Tuesday to news that medical marijuana might be making U.S. highways safer.

“I’m not shocked by the results,” he said of a new study showing a 9 percent reduction in traffic fatalities in states which have legalized medical marijuana, detailed in Monday’s online edition of The Hartford (Conn.) Courant.

“It will be a while before that will be something we can use with any leverage with elected officials because it is just one analysis,” said Stroup, 68, in a telephone interview with Chronic Discontent from his offices on K Street in Washington, D.C. “More studies need to be done. But if you’re going to be in the car with someone who is impaired, I would a whole … lot rather be in the car with the marijuana smoker than the alcohol drinker.”

The Hartford Courant cited a report by economists Daniel I. Rees of the University of Colorado-Denver; D. Mark Anderson of Montana State University and Benjamin Hansen of the University of Oregon following traffic deaths between 1990 and 2009 including in 16 states where medical marijuana is legal. [Read the study, 'Medical Marijuana Laws, Traffic Fatalities, and Alcohol Consumption'.] Colorado, Montana, and Oregon all have medical marijuana on the books.

“Legalization is associated with nearly a 9 percent decrease in traffic fatalities, most likely as a result of its impact on alcohol consumption by young adults,” the Courant reported, citing the study.

The researchers noted a 5 percent drop in beer sales after medical marijuana bills passed, while no change was noted in wine or liquor sales. Said study co-author Rees in the Courant story: “And beer, of course, is the most popular drink among young adults. So, it sort of fits in with this whole substitution story among young adults.”

The Courant story said it is unclear whether those who might have driven drunk drove high on marijuana instead, or did not drive at all.

Speaking from his NORML offices a block and a half from the White House, Stroup sees evidence in this study of something he has talked about for a long time – the notion of harm reduction. Some drugs, it turns out, are safer than others. By moving from a more dangerous drug to a safer one, users reduce harm to their bodies and society in general.

Stroup notes that 30,000 people die every year from alcohol overdose – not including traffic deaths. A former off-again, on-again cigarette smoker, he noted over 430,000 people die every year in the U.S. from complications related to smoking tobacco. No one, he maintains, has ever died from an overdose of marijuana.

Still, Stroup makes no argument that anyone should drive while high.

“You shouldn’t drive when you’re impaired by any drug and you shouldn’t go to work when you’re impaired by any drug,” he said.

He points to NORML’s Principles of Responsible Marijuana Use which include “no driving” while using.

“The mistakes one makes when you’re smoking marijuana and driving have primarily to do with short-term memory loss,” explained Stroup, adding users tend to be very aware of the effect the drug has had on their body.

“They recognize some impairment and they slow down. So they do make mistakes but the mistakes they make generally are not deadly, whereas with alcohol the driver almost never recognizes that he is impaired and in fact he drives faster and is more deadly in conduct,” he said.

As studies like this one are released “we’re probably going to see marijuana discussed as a harm reduction step for many Americans,” Stroup said. “It’ll be a harm reduction step and harm reduction is a good thing. This idea that we have to be all-or-nothing, total drunks or total stoners or teetotalers, that’s not in fact how most people live their lives.”

A Midwestern Sensibility

Stroup was raised on a 160-acre farm in rural Dix, Ill., a town of some 120 people near Mt. Vernon. His family raised corn, soybeans and sheep. When Stroup’s father returned from military service he arranged for a neighbor to farm the Stroup land, and went into lumber and construction.

“I worked every summer from when I was in late grade-school up through high school loading trucks and hauling lumber for my father,” said Stroup.

After high school, wanting out of the small town, he went to college and law school, graduating with his J.D. in 1968.

In October, 1970, what would become the NORML board of directors began meeting, and the non-profit was formally organized in March, 1971.

NORML was the first organization to define medical use of marijuana, and in 1973 filed the first suit asking the U.S. government to reclassify it from Schedule I – the D.E.A.’s list of drugs with no medical benefit – to Schedule II, the list of drugs with potential for abuse and some medicinal value.

“But it has always been our purpose to legalize the responsible use of marijuana for all adults, regardless of why they smoke,” said Stroup, who defines his own use as recreational and does not want to lie and pretend it is something else “just to be left alone.”

“Probably 95 percent of the people that smoke marijuana in this country are not using it for medical reasons,” he said “… Marijuana smokers enjoy smoking a joint and relaxing.”

“Our culture has taken a position that we should take medical use and define it so broadly that everybody qualities,” he said.

“There are lots of people that find legitimate medical use of pot,” he said, but “I don’t think it’s smart for us to try to change the English language so that all use is medical use.”

Provided people apply NORML’s responsible use principles, Stroup sees numerous public health benefits from more accessible, and sometimes legal, marijuana.

“They don’t say you can’t use alcohol, they say don’t abuse it,” he said. “But with marijuana, even a single joint is abuse. Well that’s stupid. It’s not abuse. And the vast majority of smokers, they don’t abuse marijuana.”##

- Thomas Brent Andrews

Read More About the Study at CU Newsroom – University of Colorado – Denver

More Chronic Discontent Tennessee NORML Welcomes Keith Stroup In January 2012 at Sunset Grill * Keith Stroup: Rescheduling Cannabis Does Nothing for Recreational Marijuana Smokers * Feature Photo: Fun with Tennessee NORML

Breaking News: The Pot Plan Saves Lives As Alcohol Related Fatalities Decrease In Medical Marijuana States

- FATAL CRASHES DOWN 9%, BEER SALES DOWN 5% AS SOME CHOOSE MARIJUANA

- STUDY: YOUNG PEOPLE SEEKING ALTERNATIVE TO ALCOHOL FIND POT LEGALLY – OR NOT – AND FEWER ARE DYING ON NATION’S HIGHWAYS

The Hartford Courant reports today on a new study showing a dramatic decline in traffic fatalities in states that have passed medical marijuana laws.

Report: Medical Marijuana Laws Reduced Traffic Fatalities

By MATTHEW STURDEVANT, msturdevant@courant.com

The Hartford Courant 6:26 p.m. EST, January 16, 2012

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States that legalized the medical use of marijuana have had a drop in deadly automobile crashes, suggesting that some people who would otherwise drive drunk and kill someone are smoking weed instead, according to research by three economists.

It’s not clear if the would-be drunken drivers are high behind the wheel with less deadly results, or if they’re simply not driving.

The research by professors at the University of Colorado-Denver [Daniel I. Rees], Montana State University [D. Mark Anderson] and the University of Oregon [Benjamin Hansen] looked at traffic deaths from 1990 to 2009 in all 50 states, including the 16 that passed medical marijuana laws.

“Legalization is associated with nearly a 9 percent decrease in traffic fatalities, most likely as a result of its impact on alcohol consumption by young adults,” the researchers said in the report, published in November.

CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL STORY

In my 2005 book, The Pot Plan, I documented how I used marijuana to stop drinking and saved my life. I recalled episodes of drunken driving in my youth that threatened my life and the lives of my fellow citizens, besides landing me in jail. I wrote The Pot Plan to help save lives. I think alcoholics and drug addicts can benefit from smoking marijuana whenever they feel like using. I did, and I stopped drinking.

Who can say – but maybe I would have killed someone by now, if I hadn’t stopped drinking. And after many stops and starts, after trying everything, the pot plan made it easy. I never again wanted to drink, when I could get my hands on good marijuana. It changes my perspective entirely.

For me, a journalist, there was nothing but to tell the story, whatever the consequences. I wrote it out in 562 pages, and brought a whole bunch of my friends to help show and tell how I was then, and how I changed when I applied the simple marijuana-only program to my drinking problem.

Since then I have been demonized, threatened, black-listed and – worst of all – ignored. I have been turned away from public records, laughed at, labeled a ‘marijuana writer’ (rhymes with child molester), and slandered. I have held my head up through it all because I believe the applied marijuana program kept me out of prison, that God led me to find it for a reason, and telling the story would save addicts prison and the innocent, their lives. Along the way I have met many people who worked their way out of a drinking problem through the same plan.

The pot plan is spreading. People are finding it naturally. And the carnage on the highways is down. It wouldn’t surprise me if the medical marijuana states are also becoming less violent. It wouldn’t surprise me if the national downward trend in violence might somehow be tied to marijuana, as well. The Los Angeles Times reported recently that for the first time in years, one can walk down Main Street, in the central city, with a reasonable expectation of not falling victim to a crime. This is the first time L.A. could say this since Joe Friday left the beat. Los Angeles is awash in marijuana, and rather suddenly everyone’s a little more chilled out. It doesn’t surprise me at all. But will the politicians accept it?

It will take a lot more books like mine, and a lot more good stories like this one from The Hartford Courant, but I think one day they will. To quote just a bit more of the Courant’s story, which appears to be based on a Fox Connecticut television report (available at the same URL):

Traffic deaths are declining, on average, throughout the nation.

The drop in fatalities after a medical-marijuana law passed was greater than the drop in the other states.

“You get a much bigger effect on accidents involving alcohol, fatal accidents involving alcohol,” said Daniel I. Rees, a co-author and an economics professor at the University of Colorado-Denver.

The study asserts that states that have medical-marijuana laws are allowing some people to access marijuana for recreational purposes, either through the system as would-be patients or illegally because of a bolstered supply of marijuana in the state after the law passes.

Some of those recreational users are drinking less.

This is not a bad thing at all for America, I’d say.##

Keith Stroup: Recheduling Cannabis Does Nothing for Recreational Smokers

In anticipation of Keith Stroup’s visit to Middle Tennessee for Marijuana Education Day later this month we asked him to answer some questions via email and he responded right away. An excerpt follows.

Chronic Discontent: Have you ever been to Tennessee? Will you be able to do any ‘tourism’ while you are here?

Keith Stroup: I have been to Tennessee a few times, for short visits, usually on business trips, but I do not know the state well. I did grow up in southern Illinois, just across the river from Paducah, KY, so I feel like I have a general feel for the culture and politics of the region.

Unfortunately I am visiting only on business this time, and will not have any time to tour.

CD: Some Tennessee Legislators are shy about passing our Safe Access bill under the present federal prohibition policy. Rescheduling of cannabis by the D.E.A. which is being sought by four states (Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and Colorado) could smooth the way for Tennessee’s program and others. My two-part question to you is, What would you expect to happen in the states if the D.E.A. does reschedule marijuana? and, Does it seem to you that the D.E.A. has a special interest in maintaining prohibition? Can it be objective in making this decision?

KS: I am generally discouraged about getting the feds to reschedule marijuana, as NORML has been part of an effort to do that going all the way back to 1973, all to no avail. In addition, all that would do is help the patients by eliminating the conflict with some state and federal laws. It would do nothing for those of us who are recreational smokers, and not interested in acting as if I am ill in order to be left alone. And the vast majority of marijuana smokers are not patients.##

 

More Chronic Discontent In South, ‘Least Supportive’ of Medical Marijuana, Expect New Forays by NORML * Graphic: Safe Access In Tennessee * Tennessee NORML Welcomes Keith Stroup In January 2012 at Sunset Grill

Conversation Between Little Girls: Kindle Fire Vs. I-Pad 2

Conversation between Sunday Girl and Cousin Liz:

Liz [enters]: Did you get Kindle Fire for Christmas?

Sunday Girl [ holding Dad's I-Pad ]: No, it’s an I-Pad 2.

Liz: Oh.

Sunday Girl: Why; what’s wrong?

Liz: It’s just – the Kindle Fire does more.

Sunday Girl [ putting down the I-Pad]: Oh.

And I think: that is SO not true! The I-Pad 2 does everything! Yesterday mine went to the store for me! But congratulations to Amazon.com for winning the marketing battle, I guess.##

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