Antinomian

Debaters debate the two wars as if the civil War on Drugs against Woodstock Nation did not yet run amok. A failed program that costs multi-billion dollars - without accountability, oversight, milestones, or exit plan - surely deserves debate. Continuing the vendetta against all present at the peaceful public assembly of Woodstock Nation in August 1969, and their legions, cannot be good for America. Foreign enemies are at the gate, and they have a cash cow that should be ours, a resilient market for psychoactive substances. The USA incarcerates a higher percent of its people than any other country on the face of the earth. If we are all about spreading liberty abroad, then why mix the message at home?

The negative numbers that will have to be used to bottom-line our legacy to the next generation can be less ginormous. The witch-hunt doctor’s Rx is for every bust to numerate a bigger tax-load over a smaller denominator of payers. Spend more on prisons than on schools. My second witch’s opinion is herbal remedy. More consumer discretionary funds will flow to the rest of the economy when they are no longer depleted by a seller’s market in weed.

A clause about interstate commerce provides the required pretext of constitutionality. Any excuse is better than none. So, how is that interstate commerce going, which allegedly requires the Controlled Substances Act? The CSA mantra is eradicate, do not tax, the country’s number-one cash crop. When supply is dry, robust demand bids prices up. Gifted with margin to frustrate interdiction, peddlers’ bags do not carry coals to Newcastle. The founders’ purpose to authorize federal meddling in interstate commerce was not to funnel potential tax revenue to outlaws. Justice Thomas’s dissent in Gonzalez v. Raich is well-taken.

In 1933, America decided against substance prohibition in the case of the substance alcohol. Drug prohibitionists knew better than to attempt an amendment sanctioning drug prohibition. They simply declared that they don’t need any stinking amendment. This bluff has not been called for 38 years, enforced by tyranny against the powerless Woodstock Nation.

Old England coerced conformity on the puritan nonconformists, so they came to New England, rather than submit. Then the puritans coerced Quakers by whippings, cutting off of ears, hangings, and land forfeiture for absence at church, but they did not submit. The Toleration Act of 1689 granted freedom of worship to Quaker nonconformists. Now the War on Drugs coerces conformity on a double-digit-demographic of substance nonconformists.

The 1641 Massachusetts Liberties [item 94.2] echoes the Mosaic Law that witches having or consulting a familiar spirit shall be put to death. In 1692, teenage girls, claiming to channel invisible spirits and devils, sent 19 people, who their parents disliked, to the gallows for witchcraft. In 1693, the court stopped accepting spectral evidence. Gaols emptied. Fourteen years later, the leader of the accusers confided, “It was a great delusion of Satan that deceived me in that sad time, where I justly fear I may have brought upon myself and this land the guilt of innocent blood.”

The scheduled substances have never had their day in court. Nixon promised to supply supporting evidence later. Later, the Commission evidence wasn’t supporting. No matter, civil war against Woodstock Nation had its charter. No amendments can assure due-process under an arbitrary law that never had any due-process itself. Marijuana has no medical use, period. Open and shut cases clog the kangaroo courts. Peers are excluded from juries. Lives are flushed down expensive tubes.

The CSA is anti-science. Redundantly, there is no accepted use, nor will there ever be, when all use is not accepted. Research by Myron Stolaroff, Alexander Shulgin PhD, and Rick Doblin PhD is shut down. LSD was hailed as a breakthrough drug until the CSA halted research. America’s drug policy should seek light from, not ignore, experts who are familiar with the scheduled substances at first-hand. How many politicians have studied the book, LSD, My Problem Child, by the Nobel Prize Committee member Albert Hofmann (1906-2008)? Google reveals the full text.

The Religious Freedom Restoration Act restores choice of sacrament for the Native American Church to eat peyote. All Americans, without distinction of church, should be extended the same freedom, to select scheduled sacraments to mediate communion in the rituals even of single-member sects.

To speak freely, one must first think freely. To create, one must be in a receptive mood. How could a slacker such as I hope to achieve a great work such as ending the War on Drugs? What was I smoking? The Constitution, as amended, does not enumerate any power to impede outside-the-box thinking or arbitrate states of consciousness. How and when did government acquire this power? Politicians who would limit cognitive liberty lack jurisdiction. Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech, says the First Amendment. The CSA derails speech, such as these addled words of mine, onto mental roads not taken.

Common Law must hold that the people are the legal owners of their own bodies, to do with as they please, absent harm to others. That includes corporal components such as the various receptor sites. The people should have the same liberty to move about in their spiritual abodes as they have in their material apartments.

The people have a right to get drunk in their apartments, be it folly or otherwise. Some may self-medicate to comply with the dictum of Socrates to know thy self. Those who appreciate their own free choice of personal path in life should not deny the same to others. Live and let live. The Declaration of Independence gets right to the point. The pursuit of happiness is a self-evident, God-given, inalienable, right of man. The War on Drugs is a war on the pursuit of happiness.

The books have ample law on them, sans CSA. The usual caveats, against injury to others, or their estates, remain in effect. Employees can be fired for poor job performance. People should be held responsible for damage caused by their screw-ups. No harm, no foul; and no excuse, either.

The annual dollar cost of the War on Drugs at federal, state and local levels totals what, only 50 or 100B USD? If anybody is counting, please share. There is no lower-hanging, riper, or higher-yielding budgetary fruit than to kick the addiction to the third war, cold turkey. Repeal the Controlled Substances Act of 1970.

LowRider

so did you write this or is this copy and paste? good read either way

Antinomian

LowRider, thanks. I am the author. You can find it at OpEdNews. I continue work on it to reduce the number of words. I appreciate your appreciation.

Yana Usdi

That's really very good. Drug war is something I've been fighting for ages now, or had been. On a sanity break at the moment. If you've got any use for other articles on the subject I'd be glad to point you to some of what I've written, you're welcome to use or adapt it as you need. I tend more toward the historical and statistical rather than argumentative but they might compliment each other in the hands of a skilled author, or at least serve as a source of additional information.

__________________
"Give a man a fish, and he will eat for a day. Teach him to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day." -Dan Moon

Always be kind to animals, Morning, noon and night: For animals have feelings too, And furthermore, they bite. - John Gardner

Freedom_User

Tremendous read! Good job!

__________________
The feds continually use and twist this simple clause as an excuse to expand their own power - at the expense of our liberty.

"If you shot a ton of pot to the Sun, will it burn up and get everyone high?"

druiddreams

while your thread posts wonderful and valid points, i've learned some rather harsh realities regarding MJ legalization from the online/literary research i've done... not to be a total bummer to your great post


after all my reading, i've become convinced of one thing for sure, and suspect another (re: MJ)...

i suspect that it's villification has been systematically done (via "the war on drugs") to pave the way for acceptance of alchohol as being "ok when you're old enough". while i agree this is just a guess, i believe that MJ makes a useful scapegoat as a "root of society's ills". from all experiences with it compared to alchohol, you'll never convince me alchohol is somehow less damaging; i'd say moreso than MJ if anything...

but i am convinced that it's prohibition and inclusion in the "war on drugs" has less to do with science and public welfare and far more to do with $$.

it's competition for the various products it shares commonality with do not want a serious challange to the monopoly within their respective fields they hold. allow me to elaborate:

alchohol. for 95%+ of the population, if you want to get a buzz/high (LEGALLY) this is the only option. while one can certainly homebrew, such endevours create (in most cases) sub-standard results and are too much of a hassle for all but the staunchest of fans. in most cases, almost no one bothers with it. this leave the alchohol industry a market nearly entirely dependent upon them for supply. and as a result, these companies have gathered quite a bit of wealth (and therefore political clout) over the years.

MJ on the other hand (while you can push bud-growing to intense, costly heights) in general is WAY easier for your average joe to do, and achieve alright results with just a little studying. and since plants are more or less a renewable resource, they can be perpetuated quite a bit easier.

back to the $$ point: my belief is that keeping MJ illegal not only makes business sense for the alchohol industry, but for the gov't too. you are causing most people to spend money to achieve their desired "mental playtime" so to speak. MJ is FAR less dependent upon outside resources. and spending means taxes.

plus, alchohol might have one of those "this here town ain't a-big enough for the both of us" complexes ^_^

Yana Usdi

I do NOT want to go into detail on this since it gets into an off topic area, but from personal experience you're mistaken on the home brew angle. Great results or substandard results depends entirely on if they believe in science or not. In other words what they can't see CAN hurt the results, you can't let wild yeast or bacteria get into it. As long as you follow advice about cleanliness it's really very easy and the results are as high in quality as anything you can buy. I did it myself for a while back in the 80s and started with the most basic of kits, it's not hard.

Take a shortcut on cleanliness and yeah, you'll get some pretty funky results though I never did. That's not a problem with the process, but with their understanding of the way things actually work. I'd see the complexity of growing your own and brewing your own to be roughly equivalent, at least with hydro since you've got similar problems with infections and contamination there. Soil is probably a bit easier.

The420NightHawk

2 Thumbs Up; unfortunately since making Marijuana legal isn't in their perceivable best interests it will never happen as long as their in control. America has been in a shit hole ever since they illegally created the federal reserve. There is so much that they don't want us to know, which is directly connected with our very spiritual evolution. The same people are responsible for the importation of pure heroin and cocaine; the fake war on drugs to lock people up in fucking cages, and so many other horrific acts upon another human being and animal. Our grocery store shelves are full of cloned Beef, chicken and dairy products, and they can bug your cellular devices whether they are on or not and listen and track you via G PS, so to believe that we are free is one of the most naive personal statements of my time. It all goes back to materialism and the founding and heavy research into psychology to figure out exactly how to human mind operates and perceives the world as we think it to be. Psychologists are materialists, they don't believe in souls, there for morals and values - Meh - Who is to say what I can and can't stick in your ass? And that's basically it... So if we want to live in a World where we are Free of Head Games, Hatred and all of these other disgusting awful oppressive things, we must get people "wake up" and quit living in a dream world...The real world is the one we want - Where there is an ample supply of Marijuana for everybody.

druiddreams

I'm willing to bet $10 you've watched Zeitgeist ^_^ pretty cool video, fyi if you haven't watched it. poses some thought-provoking questions.

The war on drugs is pretty much a gag from what I can tell. Alchohol has a huge stranglehold on the recreational drug market and has BIGTIME money and power through gov't and business. I could be wrong, but barring a massive cultural and social revolution, I don't see MJ getting legalized if for no other reason that just that alchohol would lose TONS of $$. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of funding for the "war on drugs" (i.e. anything other than alchohol and tobacco) comes directly from the alchohol industry. I know a few people *cough cough* who would be spending money on some sweet smoke instead of booze

The other reason I don't see MJ getting legalized is the amount of hell the legal system would be exposed to in appeals from current inmates. I would guess there'd have to be hundreds of thousands of appeals on MJ fines/jail time that would choke the sh1t out of the court system.

Anybody else have any opinions on this??

<3 dd

Yana Usdi

If you want a serious discussion about the history and causes of prohibition, I could do that. We'll get to what keeps it going today after we see how we got here in the first place.

DPFT History of Prohibition

That's a brief, sort of, history of how we got from pre-prohibition to here. It's a decent read and covers more than most but not in as much detail as the next one.

History of the Non-Medical Use of Drugs in the United States

That's a longer, more authoritative, and comprehensive look at how we got from there to here. The author is Charles Whitebread, Professor of Law, USC Law School, and this was the text of a speech he delivered to the California Judges Association 1995 annual conference. It reads a bit odd at times since it was meant to be spoken instead of read but it's as good a look at the history as I'm aware of online. He had done some research into the history of marijuana prohibition which impressed the government enough that he was invited to be part of the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse. That allowed access to the archives of the old Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, what had historically been called the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and what today is called the Drug Enforcement Agency. The info is first hand knowledge and from our own records.

What keeps us here today is a much longer and more complex issue, if anyone actually reads the links I already posted and is interested I'd be glad to go into that a bit. It's not worth writing a book nobody wants to read though