Neurotics build castles in the sky, psychotics live in them; the concept of a "Drug-Free Society" is a neurotic fantasy, and Prohibition's ills are a product of this psychotic delusion.

In a dangerous and futile attempt to stamp out alcohol, tobacco, heroin, marijuana, pornography, prostitution, marital infidelity, and even masturbation, this former land of the prosperous and free has been shamelessly pillaged by groups such as the Women’s Christian Temperance Society, The Anti-Saloon League, The Anti-Cigarette Movement, The Social Purity Movement, The Social Hygiene Movement, and now our latter day Drug Warriors.

Prohibition was flawlessly designed to increase drug use, atomize society, impoverish citizens, spread illness, increase unemployment, destroy lives, imprison productive people, subvert democracy, shred the Constitution, empower the ignorant & brutal, facilitate mass surveillance, destroy the educational system, hold people in ignorance, manipulate and censor the media, and enrich a tiny puritanical minority of mega-millionaires and corporate bosses. Sadly, it has succeeded in all these objectives.

Legalizing and regulating all drugs will not increase consumption—everything is already available right now. Drugs of all varieties are cheap and plentiful, and the basic economics of drug dealing remain: Take one dealer off the street, and another takes his place. Something that simply doesn't happen for real crimes like murder, embezzlement, assault or burglary.

The Founding Fathers were not social conservatives who believed that citizens should be subordinate to any particular narrow religious moral order—this is what the whole concept of unalienable individual rights means. And sumptuary laws, especially in the form of prohibition, were something they continually warned about.

Is marijuana more dangerous than an ever shrinking minority of parasitic, prohibitionist freeloaders who are guilty of turning federal, state, and local government into a gargantuan organized crime syndicate, interested only in protecting its own corrupt interests?

An ever-growing body of scientific research clearly demonstrates that Marijuana is less addictive than a cup of tea.
http://druglibrary.org/schaffer/library/basicfax5...

Dr. Jack E. Henningfield of the National Institute on Drug Abuse and Dr. Neal L. Benowitz of the University of California at San Francisco ranked six psychoactive substances on five criteria.

Withdrawal -- The severity of withdrawal symptoms produced by stopping the use of the drug.

Reinforcement -- The drug's tendency to induce users to take it again and again.

Tolerance -- The user's need to have ever-increasing doses to get the same effect.

Dependence -- The difficulty in quitting, or staying off the drug, the number of users who eventually become dependent

Intoxication -- The degree of intoxication produced by the drug in typical use.

The tables listed below show the rankings given for each of the drugs. Overall, their evaluations for the drugs are very consistent. It is notable that marijuana ranks below caffeine in most addictive criteria, while alcohol and tobacco are near the top of the scale in many areas.

The rating scale is from 1 to 6 --- 1 denotes the drug with the strongest addictive tendencies, while 6 denotes the drug with the least addictive tendencies.

HENNINGFIELD RATINGS

Withdrawal Reinforcement Tolerance Dependence Intoxication

Nicotine 3 4 2 1 5

Heroin 2 2 1 2 2

Cocaine 4 1 4 3 3

Alcohol 1 3 3 4 1

Caffeine 5 6 5 5 6

Marijuana 6 5 6 6 4

BENOWITZ RATINGS

Withdrawal Reinforcement Tolerance Dependence Intoxication

Nicotine 3 4 4 1 6

Heroin 2 2 2 2 2

Cocaine 3 1 1 3 3

Alcohol 1 3 4 4 1

Caffeine 4 5 3 5 5

Marijuana 5 6 5 6 4

1) Tobacco is cancer causing largely because it delivers specific carcinogens such as NNK and NNAL that are not present in cannabis. Not all "tar" is created equal, and tobacco has some of the most carcinogenic types of tar known to science, whereas cannabis does not.

2) Cannabis (marijuana) use is associated with a DECREASE in several types of cancer... potentially even providing a protective effect against tobacco and alcohol related cancer development.

Donald Tashkin, a UCLA researcher whose work is funded by NIDA, did a case-control study comparing 1,200 patients with lung, head and neck cancers to a matched group with no cancer. Even the heaviest marijuana smokers had no increased risk of cancer, and had somewhat lower cancer risk than non-smokers (tobacco smokers had a 20-fold increased lung cancer risk). Tashkin D. Marijuana Use and Lung Cancer: Results of a Case-Control Study. American Thoracic Society International Conference. May 23, 2006.

Researchers at the Kaiser-Permanente HMO, funded by NIDA, followed 65,000 patients for nearly a decade, comparing cancer rates among non-smokers, tobacco smokers, and marijuana smokers. Tobacco smokers had massively higher rates of lung cancer and other cancers. Marijuana smokers who didn't also use tobacco had no increase in risk of tobacco-related cancers or of cancer risk overall. In fact their rates of lung and most other cancers were slightly lower than non-smokers. Sidney, S. et al. Marijuana Use and Cancer Incidence (California, United States). Cancer Causes and Control. Vol. 8. Sept. 1997, p. 722-728.

"Components of cannabis smoke minimize some carcinogenic pathways whereas tobacco smoke enhances some. Both types of smoke contain carcinogens and particulate matter that promotes inflammatory immune responses that may enhance the carcinogenic effects of the smoke. However, cannabis typically down-regulates immunologically-generated free radical production by promoting a Th2 immune cytokine profile. Furthermore, THC inhibits the enzyme necessary to activate some of the carcinogens found in smoke. In contrast, tobacco smoke increases the likelihood of carcinogenesis by overcoming normal cellular checkpoint protective mechanisms through the activity of respiratory epithelial cell nicotine receptors. Cannabinoids receptors have not been reported in respiratory epithelial cells (in skin they prevent cancer), and hence the DNA damage checkpoint mechanism should remain intact after prolonged cannabis exposure. Furthermore, nicotine promotes tumor angiogenesis whereas cannabis inhibits it."

See :http://www.harmreductionjournal.com/content/2/1/21

So there we have it: Tobacco Causes Cancer and Cannabis Prevents Cancer - even when smoked!

When governments prohibit drugs they effectively and knowingly hand a monopoly on their sale to dangerous criminals and terrorists. Without a legal framework in which to operate, these black-market entities can always be expected to settle their disputes violently while terrorizing many peaceful and innocent citizens in the process. Were the users of alcohol to blame for the St Valentines massacre in 1929? Of course not! It is just as naive to assume that one can compel all the users of marijuana, heroin or cocaine to simply quit as it is to assume that all the users of Alcohol should have stopped drinking after the introduction of alcohol prohibition in 1919.

If you support prohibition, then you are guilty of demagoguery, sadomoralism, greed, deception, self-deception, despotism, racism, willful ignorance, fraud, murder, oppression, torture, espionage, corruption, theft, money laundering, illegal arms transfers, militarizing domestic police forces, political intrigue, bigotry, class warfare, hate crimes, human rights crimes, erosion of constitutional rights, invasion of privacy, extortion, environmental pollution, obstruction of justice, corruption of the scientific method, infanticide, genocide, trespassing, bribery, illegal restraint of trade, illegal surveillance, religious intolerance, thuggery…this list may actually be endless.

Everything we have been told by the government about drugs is a lie; the two most dangerous and addictive, gateway drugs are already legal: alcohol and nicotine.

The only thing that has proven to reduce use and demand is legalized regulation combined with treatment and education.

Prohibition is not simply just a 'War on Reason' it is a dire threat to the very fabric of our nation, a slow but relentless degradation (death by a zillion cuts) of all our cherished national institutions, inclusive the nightmare of new and far more deadlier substitute-concoctions (bathtub-meth, crack-cocaine, crocodile-heroin-ersatz, and synthetic marijuana) that will leave us crippled for numerous generations.

Prohibitionists like Nancy Grace are not only infantile, their insatiable need to inflict suffering on the rest of us and their greed for both money and power is a threat to every single civic institution of our "once proud and free" nation. Their final objective, a drug-free society, toward which all their deceit is directed, is not even obtainable in a single maximum security prison anywhere on this planet.

We are actually experiencing a de facto civl war between the majority (those who embrace reason and function in the real world of cause and effect) and the prohibitionists, who, numbed by their isolation and despair, are seeking meaning in a mythical world that can never, ever, be reality-based. A world of deceit and lies, of blood and corpses—a world of complete social and economic collapse.

Prohibitionists are not only infantile, their insatiable need to inflict suffering on the rest of us and their greed for both money and power is a threat to every single civic institution of our "once proud and free" nation. Their final objective, a drug-free society, toward which all their deceit is directed, is not even obtainable in a single maximum security prison anywhere on this planet.

Prohibitionists claim to be protecting society, but they would gladly destroy every single liberty guaranteed by the Constitution, or even commit murder rather than admit defeat:

"Frustrated that people continued to consume so much alcohol even after it was banned, federal officials had decided to try a different kind of enforcement. They ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols manufactured in the United States, products regularly stolen by bootleggers and resold as drinkable spirits. The idea was to scare people into giving up illicit drinking. Instead, by the time Prohibition ended in 1933, the federal poisoning program, by some estimates, had killed at least 10,000 people."
—an extract from: The little-told story of how the U.S. government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition with deadly consequences.

“Together, they would watch everything that was so carefully planned collapse, and they would smile at the beauty of destruction.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

We are actually experiencing a de facto civl war between the majority (those who embrace reason and function in the real world of cause and effect) and the prohibitionists, who, numbed by their isolation and despair, are seeking meaning in a mythical world that can never, ever, be reality-based. A world of deceit and lies, of blood and corpses—a world of complete social and economic collapse.

Prohibitionists are not only infantile, their insatiable need to inflict suffering on the rest of us and their greed for both money and power is a threat to every single civic institution of our "once proud and free" nation. Their final objective, a drug-free society, toward which all their deceit is directed, is not even obtainable in a single maximum security prison anywhere on this planet.

Prohibitionists claim to be protecting society, but they would gladly destroy every single liberty guaranteed by the Constitution.

If you support prohibition then prepare yourself for even more death, corruption, sickness, imprisonment, unemployment, and the complete loss of the rule of law.

Neurotics build castles in the sky, psychotics live in them; the concept of a "Drug-Free Society" is a neurotic fantasy and Prohibition's ills are a product of this psychotic delusion.

Prohibition has (again) evolved local gangs into transnational enterprises with intricate power structures that reach into every corner of society, helping them control vast swaths of territory while gifting them with significant social and military resources. Former and present Prohibitionists must not be allowed to remain untainted or untouched by the unconscionable acts that they have viciously committed on their fellow human beings. They have provided us with neither safe communities nor safe streets. We will provide them with neither a safe haven to enjoy their ill-gotten gains nor the liberty to repeat such a similar atrocity.

Those responsible for this shameful policy—parasitic prohibitionists like the INCB—should not go unpunished!

My post said nothing about smoking so kindly sell your red herrings someplace else!

The main advocate of the idea that kaneh bosm was cannabis was Sula Benet in 1936 in a paper in Warsaw, and again in her Early Diffusion and Folk Uses of Hemp (1967) Benet identifies it as the hemp plant, or cannabis. Both in the original Hebrew text of the Old Testament and in the Aramaic translation, the word 'kaneh' or ' keneh' is used either alone or linked to the adjective bosm in Hebrew and busma in Aramaic, meaning aromatic. It is 'cana' in Sanskrit, 'qunnabu' in Assyrian, 'kenab' in Persian, 'kannab' in Arabic and 'kanbun' in Chaldean. In Exodus 30: 23, God directed Moses to make a holy oil composed of "myrrh, sweet cinnamon, kaneh bosm and kassia." In many ancient languages, including Hebrew, the root 'kan' has a double meaning --- both hemp and reed. In many translations of the Bible's original Hebrew, we find 'kaneh bosm' variously and erroneously translated as "calamus" and "aromatic reed," a vague term. Calamus, (Calamus aromaticus) is a fragrant marsh plant. The error occurred in the oldest Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, Septuagint, in the third century B.C., where the terms 'kaneh, kaneh bosm' were incorrectly translated as "calamus."