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Welcome to the Donkey Show.

This is a Win for the People of America and States Rights. For too long our Elected Officials have been trampling on our rights and it is time for someone to stand up and say enough.

Judge says Feds violated 10th Amendment by subverting state marijuana laws

As It Stands by Dave Stancliff/For the Times-Standard
Article Launched: 09/14/2008 01:32:06 AM PDT

A landmark decision for all Californian’s quietly made history on August 20th in a Santa Cruz courtroom.

For the first time since 1996, when the Compassionate Use Act was passed, the federal authorities have been charged with violating the 10th Amendment for harassing medical marijuana patients and state authorities.

The case of Santa Cruz vs. Mukasey, was heard by U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel, who said the Bush Administration’s request to dismiss a lawsuit by Santa Cruz city and county officials, and the Wo/Men’s Alliance for Medical Marijuana (WAMM), wasn’t going to happen.

In a recent telephone interview with Alan Hopper, an ACLU counsel familiar with the case, I asked him what came next?

”The plaintiff will get a get a court-ordered discovery document that will allow them to get documents, and even depositions, from the federal authorities to support their claims,” he explained.

So now it’s the city, county, and WAMM’s turn to prove their case against the federal government. The court has recognized a concerted effort by the federal government to sabotage state medical marijuana laws, which violates the U.S. Constitution. The significance of this ruling, the first of its kind, cannot be overstated.

California voters may finally get what they asked for a dozen years ago. When the court said that the federal government had gone out of its way to arrest and prosecute some of the most legitimate doctors, patients,

caregivers, and dispensary owners that had been working with state and local officials, it finally drew a line-in-the sand.

An example of the federal authorities violations was their pursuit of WAMM. This non-profit group has been around for many years, and has been fully supported by the city and county of Santa Cruz. They have been referred to, by officials, as the model medical marijuana patient’s collective.

The group was functioning so smoothly that the city even allowed them to hold regular meetings to distribute marijuana to its patients on the steps of city hall! The federal agents still went after them, which brought about this court decision.

When the ACLU filed this lawsuit to stop them from targeting medical marijuana providers and patients, they opened a door that may finally lead to no federal interference in California’s medical marijuana law.

We must not forget that medical marijuana brings in about $100 million each year in tax revenue. Conferring total legitimacy to the law will allow this cash flow to continue, and hopefully, increase over time.

When the judge ruled the feds were threatening physicians who recommended marijuana, he set the stage for regaining patient’s rights. The ruling clearly pointed out that the feds were also threatening government officials who issue medical marijuana cards, and interfered with municipal zoning plans.

In the summation, the court found that, “There was a calculated pattern of selective arrests and prosecutions by the federal government with the intent to render California’s medical marijuana laws impossible to implement and therefore forced Californian’s and their political subdivisions to re-criminalize medical marijuana.”

In a recent column, I mentioned California’s Attorney General Jerry Brown had passed out an 11-page directive that all law agencies were to go by. I expressed concern that the federal authorities would ignore those guidelines, but upon finding out about this recent ruling I now have some cause for hope.

It sure sounded like Hopper was looking forward to the next phase, and he seemed confident that positive change lay ahead. Asked which presidential candidate would be more amenable to upholding medical marijuana laws, he cleverly replied that he thought they both would be willing to work for change. He could be right too. This is a year of change.

This on-going battle with the federal authorities ignoring California’s laws has been well-documented in the past. Why hasn’t there been more coverage for such an epic ruling? Its potential as breakthrough legislation is something all Californian’s should know about in my opinion.

The war against medical marijuana hasn’t been won yet, but this could be the breakthrough everybody’s waited for. At the core of the war waged by the federal government against the voter’s will, is the failed War on Drugs by the Bush Administration. It’s about time someone told them to back off.

As It Stands, we can score this as a successful round for state’s rights.

Check out NORML’s Website to make sure you know your Rights.

Tags: 10th amendment, DRUG LAWS, Feds, marijuana, NORML, pot, state law, subversion, violated

The Tribune-Democrat

IRWIN — A North Huntingdon man was charged by Greensburg state police with possession of marijuana after Dairy Queen employees found the substance in his returned take-out bag.

Calvin Masten, 18, ordered several hamburgers through the Dairy Queen drive-through in Irwin Borough, Westmoreland County, on June 23. After receiving the burgers, he allegedly placed a baggie of marijuana inside the take-out bag.

Police said Masten eventually realized his order was not correct, and, forgetting that he placed the marijuana in the bag, went inside the restaurant and returned his order to get the correctly prepared hamburgers.

When counter personnel saw the bag of marijuana, they contacted police.

Tags: baggie, burgers, dairy queen, hamburgers, june 23, marijuana, north huntingdon, possession of marijuana, pot, Reefer, state police, tribune democrat, westmoreland county

US ID: Column: Those Old Problem Children
by Dick Dorworth, (25 Jun 2008) Idaho Mountain Express Idaho

When Albert Hofmann died in April at the age of 102 at his home in Switzerland, he would have been unknown outside the scientific community had it not been for what he affectionately called his “problem child,” LSD–lysergic acid diethylamide-25, which he discovered/invented/synthesized in 1938 in the process of looking for medicinal uses of a fungus found on rye, wheat and other grains. He was a Swiss scientist in the traditional mold searching for ways to improve human life and he succeeded beyond his wildest expectations in unexpected ways. LSD deeply altered the lives of millions of people and, thereby, the course of human events.

LSD has been profoundly misunderstood and demonized by non-cognoscenti, seriously abused by some who could be called cognoscenti and banned for many years in much of the world. Hofmann’s problem child strikes terror into the quaking hearts and fearful souls of those authorities who mistake control for order and who quiver with rage or uncertainty at questions ( or chemicals ) that challenge their certainty about what is what.

Psychedelics were well known by the time Hofmann discovered LSD, but LSD was some 10,000 times more powerful than mescaline. Through the 1940s and 1950s, LSD created a revolution in psychiatry. It was used successfully in the treatment of neurosis, psychosis and depression. Some 40,000 people underwent psychedelic therapy, perhaps most notably the actor Cary Grant, who received some 60 LSD psychotherapy sessions and said of them, “I have been born again.” Aldous Huxley requested an injection of LSD on his deathbed. And many psychotherapists took the drug along with their patients, a fact not noted nearly enough.

Even though it was a problem child, Hofmann, who took LSD hundreds of times, never gave up his belief in its goodness and usefulness as a “medicine for the soul.” He never believed in it as a pleasure drug for the masses. He said, “As long as people fail to truly understand psychedelics and continue to use them as pleasure drugs, and fail to appreciate the very deep psychic experience they may induce, then their medical use will be held back.”

Like many others–perhaps including some reading these words–at a certain point he realized he no longer had a use for LSD. He turned to and recommended to others older methods of attaining “extraordinary states of consciousness”–breathing techniques, yoga, fasting, dance, art, meditation. He said, “LSD brings about a reduction of intellectual powers in favor of an emotional experience of the world. It can help to refill our consciousness with this feeling of wholeness and being one with nature.” Which would seem to indicate a key element of any “extraordinary state of consciousness” is nothing more complicated than connecting the heart to the brain.

LSD was made illegal in the U.S. in 1967 and despite its successful use in psychotherapy for the previous more than 20 years the DEA holds that it has no medical benefits. Its potential for abuse as what Hofmann termed one of the “pleasure drugs” is well established, as, contrary to the rationale for its legal standing, is its beneficial medical use.

Another problem child in the pharmacopoeia of medicine is Cannabis sativa, more commonly known as marijuana. It has been used for thousands of years for a variety of purposes, including medicinal and spiritual. As hemp it has been used in the making of fiber goods including rope, many different sturdy woven products, oil, paper, textiles and fuel. Hemp is grown, harvested and used well in virtually every country in the world except the United States. The illegal marijuana has certainly been ( and is as you read these words ) used and abused as a pleasure drug, but its use, abuse, destructiveness and danger to the social order pales in comparison to that of the legal drug alcohol and, for that matter, several others.

The marijuana laws of America, unlike marijuana itself, have damaged and destroyed the lives of hundreds of thousands of otherwise innocent people, flooded the jails with people who could not be termed criminal in a rational social order, created a huge illegal industry of enormous profits to a criminal hierarchy far more dangerous to society than the most pleasure seeking of their customers, including those seeking relief from the symptoms of AIDS, cancer, glaucoma and the incessant pain of many ailments.

The thing is, those old problem children are not going to go away. Though this newspaper and many of its readers do not support the legalization and control of marijuana and/or LSD the way alcohol and nicotine are controlled, this writer and, as the city of Hailey recently evinced ( twice ), many other readers do. Part of the rationale behind such thinking is perhaps best illustrated by a Florida report published this month that analyzed 168,900 deaths statewide in 2007. Cocaine, heroin and all methamphatemines caused 989 deaths, it found, while legal opioids–strong painkillers in brand-name drugs like Vicodin and OxyContin–caused 2,328. Drugs with benzodiazepine, mainly depressants like Valium and Xanax, led to 743 deaths. Alcohol was the most commonly occurring drug, appearing in the bodies of 4,179 of the dead and judged the cause of death of 466–fewer than cocaine ( 843 ) but more than methamphetamine ( 25 ) and marijuana ( 0 ).

Res ipsa loquitur.

Tags: 1940s, 1950s, 420, aldous huxley, cary grant, cognoscenti, deathbed, dick dorworth, fungus, goodness, grains, lsd, lsd psychotherapy, marijuana, mescaline, mountain express, neurosis psychosis, pot, problem child, psychiatry, psychotherapists, psychotherapy sessions, Reefer, swiss scientist, traditional mold