American Legion Magazine Letter to the Editor

The most recent issue of American Legion Magazine had several letters to the editor regarding medical marijuana, the health benefits, whether it should be decriminalized, etc.  (Yes I'm a member, having been in the Navy from 1969 to 1973).  Some of the letters were surprisingly open-minded and libertarian/live-and-let-live.

And then there was the following bilge-fest, which I shall proceed to rant about here:

“If the plant had great value, why haven't the medical profession and drug companies taken from it what works and produced a pill obtainable only by prescription?  All who sell, use or grow the stuff (except as noted above) should be most severely punished.  Its apparently widespread use is purely to render the nation a bunch of stupid, worthless druggies some nation will find easy to defeat.”

James G. Hudkins, Cuyahoga Falls, OH

W? T? F???

Where to begin...

Is this guy just dumber than a bag of hammers?  A paid shill for the pharmaceutical industry and/or the drug-testing industry and/or the Prison Industrial Complex?  Or maybe his letter was tongue-in-cheek; and he was just doing a hilarious imitation of a mean-and-stupid power-crazed lifer (which the Navy was heavily infested/infected with in the early '70s).

Another Reason for Legal Medical Marijuana

Strangely enough, it's also one of the main reasons the Powers That Be are desperately fighting to keep medical marijuana illegal.

Patients who use marijuana for medicinal purposes are less likely to become addicted to pharmaceutical painkillers.  Talk about a win win.  Isn't this great?  Who could possibly be against it?

In 2010, the states where medical marijuana was legal had about 1,700 fewer deaths from painkiller overdoses than they would have had if medical pot was still illegal.  According to the study led by Dr. Marcus Bachhuber:

“We found there was about a 25% lower rate of prescription painkiller overdose deaths on average after implementation of a medical marijuana law.”

Stepping Up the War on Drugs — Again

The Worst President Ever has now combined the War on Drugs with the firing of those eight federal prosecutors.

Kevin Ryan was U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California until he was purged in December 2006. Bush’s replacement is Joseph Russoniello, who's been one of the most gung ho drug warriors since the early 1980s.

According to this article, the Senate hasn’t yet voted on Russoniello’s confirmation. But according to this story, Russoniello WAS confirmed by the Senate in mid-December. Left hand meet the right hand…

Russoniello was a cofounder of California’s infamous CAMP (Campaign Against Marijuana Planting) program: Every harvest season, government helicopters come swooping in on California’s pot farmers (and anyone else who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time). Where are all those anti-tax “taxpayers’ rights” groups when shit like this happens? The same people who go ballistic over libraries and every other “waste of tax dollars” suddenly develop mass laryngitis when it comes to Iraqmire and the War on Drugs.

Russoniello has been one of the ringleaders of the Republican approach to crime for the past 25 years: Let’s quit dithering over white collar crime and start going after those small-time drug users instead.

In 1994 he told an interviewer that marijuana growers in California were “like an open wound on our prayer hand.” Oooookay.

With the medical marijuana issue heating up in California — most Californians are in favor of it; Dumbya and his puppetmasters are against it — you can guess what this douchebag’s top priority will be. Let’s crack down on these whiny cancer patients; enough of this “waaaaaaahhh!!! I’m nauseous from chemotherapy.” Stand up and take it like a man!

Russoniello is a perfect example of our government's schizophrenic approach to drugs. He goes for the jugular when it comes to pot growers and small-time drug users, but he's been surprisingly lenient with major cocaine dealers. In the 1980s he was “investigating” the connection between cocaine and Ronald Reagan’s rightwing terrorists (the “Contras”) in Nicaragua. Several Contra-affiliated dealers were arrested with huge amounts of cocaine. Russoniello “declined” to investigate any further; he insisted these dealers couldn’t possibly have any connection with the Contras.

Check out some of the links here on the Nicaraguan Contras/cocaine connection. It's a dark chapter in America's history; one of many.

And so another shitstain joins the Bush Administration; another grain of sand on Jones Beach.

cross-posted at Bring It On!

DEA: A New Low

You may already think the DEA is a gang of sleazy shitbags who couldn’t possibly sink any lower. Unfortunately, they just did.

The DEA has come up with a new tactic in their neverending war on those dangerous cancer patients who smoke marijuana to reduce the nausea from chemotherapy. They're targeting the landlords who own the properties where medical marijuana is dispensed.

A guilty landlord could have his/her property seized and/or face up to twenty years in prison. WTF??? Whatever happened to those “Property Rights” that conservatives are always blubbering about? For that matter, “States’ Rights” is another popular rightwing slogan. Here we have the federal government marching in and steamrolling over the states whose citizens have voted in favor of medical marijuana. And all we hear from the Far Right is thundering silence.

What do these DEA thugs see when they look in the mirror? And what do they tell their kids? “Daddy is a sadistic douchebag who persecutes sick people for a living. Aren't you proud, son? Maybe you can be just like me when you grow up.”

I’m guessing that most people, whatever their religious views, believe in some sort of Karma — “you reap what you sow,” “what goes around comes around,” whatever you want to call it.

Perhaps the legislators, prosecutors and DEA agents who keep persecuting medical marijuana patients are secretly scared shitless of reaping what they’ve sown. I know I would be.

It’s gotta be somewhere in the back of their minds when they go in for their medical checkups. Maybe they're shitting themselves with the crippling fear that the doctor will say “there's a spot on this X-ray. We’ll need to run some more tests.”

After all, what goes around comes around.