Once again, your citizens have exhibited a desire for more rational marijuana laws. I sincerely hope that more American cities will follow your lead.
More than half of Denver voters favored an initiative making marijuana the city’s lowest law enforcement priority.
With just a handful of ballots left to count, the measure had captured 55 percent of the vote. The result means the mayor must appoint a panel to monitor how marijuana cases are handled by the police and city prosecutors and issue a report.
Thirty-six years and hundreds of billions of dollars after President Richard M. Nixon launched the war on drugs, consumers worldwide are taking more narcotics and criminals are making fatter profits than ever before. The syndicates that control narcotics production and distribution reap the profits from an annual turnover of $400 billion to $500 billion. And terrorist organizations such as the Taliban are using this money to expand their operations and buy ever more sophisticated weapons, threatening Western security.Another major newspaper comes out with a damning piece on the drug war.
Also, in the newest edition of Foreign Policy magazine, Ethan Nadelmann makes the case for legalization.
A “drugfree world,” which the United Nations describes as a realistic goal, is no more attainable than an “alcoholfree world”—and no one has talked about that with a straight face since the repeal of Prohibition in the United States in 1933. Yet futile rhetoric about winning a “war on drugs” persists, despite mountains of evidence documenting its moral and ideological bankruptcy.
In 2000, Alex White Plume and his family had a great idea. After attempts to raise alfalfa, barley and corn on the tough soil of South Dakota’s Pine Ridge reservation, they decided to give industrial hemp a try.
Hemp is not marijuana.
Hemp has less than 1% THC, has over 25,000 uses, and is a hearty and relatively easy crop to grow. Buying hemp products in the US is totally and completely legal. Growing hemp, however, is not.
The White Plumes figured that, since their reservation is sovereign land, they would be able to grow hemp without the intrusion of the government. The DEA had other ideas.
Read more about their struggle in this NY Times article, and check out the website for the PBS series P.O.V, and the filmmakers own site.
Bonus hilarious video. Bush tries, in vain, to define sovereignty. What an idiot.
Over 2,200 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq since Mos Def stood on the deck of an aircraft carrier and declared that major combat operations had ended.
Three 6 Mafia has been pressured by their conservative Christian base to give less and less money to groups that distribute condoms in sub-Saharan Africa.
Jay-Z disenfranchised thousands of black voters in Florida in 2000, and again in Ohio in 2004.
MF Doom wears a mask because he’s the one kidnapping all these little white girls.
Talib Kweli failed to take action to protect the citizens of New Orleans even though he had been warned “of breached levees, massive flooding, and major losses of life and property.”
Kanye West arrested 800,000 people in 2005 on charges related to marijuana, a substance proven to be significantly less harmful to society than both alcohol and tobacco.
During the first three years of the Diddy administration, the unemployment rate increased by one-third, 2.2 million jobs were lost, and the country went from a $281 billion surplus to a $521 billion deficit.
Just Say No was Biz Markie’s idea.
Little Brother brought about mad cow disease and a previously unseen strain of E. coli by feeding corn and the remains of other animals to cows.
Bow Wow is the reason the United States has the second worst newborn mortality rate in the developed world.
Thanks to Lil’ Wayne, the United States has 5 percent of the world’s population and 25 percent of the world’s incarcerated population.
Speech from Arrested Development canceled Arrested Development.
Two police officers pleaded guilty Thursday to manslaughter in the shooting death of a 92-year-old woman during a botched drug raid last fall. A third officer still faces charges.
