Price of snow removal breaks state's budget - Ganja Prohibition breaks my heart

I have a pretty good idea where the state can come up with about $10.5 million. That’s a conservative estimate of how much Delaware throws away persecuting ganja consumers every year.
Am I the only one puzzled by the state breaking the bank over a simple snow removal project, while at the same time the state is tossing human dignity, respect for the law, and tens of millions of dollars away on arresting a tiny fraction of Delaware’s ganja consumers?

Imagine, for a second, applying the rationale of ganja prohibition mentality to the snow removal budget. Let’s have the state clean up only one hundredth of one percent of the snow, while spending over $10 million. The difference is that ganja consumers are persecuted for making a personal choice that affects no one but themselves, while this last snowfall brought a huge chunk of the East Coast to a slushy halt, affecting businesses, schools, and the government itself. The difference is, the snow is dangerous, while ganja consumers are not.  Another difference is that another huge wave of ganja consumers will be here again next week, next month, next year.

The reality is that while the state can effectively provide snow removal service, there will never be enough money in the budget to arrest enough ganja consumers for the laws to be meaningful, let alone effective. The prohibitionist war on ganja consumers is already lost. All they’ve become at this point is an albatross hanging from society’s neck, destroying more lives that it purports to save while creating irrational costs to society and the individuals caught up in the abattoir of the so-called justice system.

The state has $3.2 million in its snow removal account. But it costs between $3.5 million and $4 million for every 8 inches of snow that falls, Delaware Department of Transportation Secretary Carolann Wicks said.

"So if we go over, we have to find the money and do less of something else," Wicks said.

Price of snow removal breaks state's budget | delawareonline.com | The News Journal

Could Delaware's Prison Overcrowding Problems Be Solved By Decriminalizing Ganja?

The Open Secret is that most of the people in Delaware's prisons are there not for committing a major, dangerous crime, but for pissing the wrong color. According to the study, Delaware Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Project 2003 to 2006 Evaluation with Recidivism Results, other state incarceration reports, and rough correlations made between the figures for Work Release, and the inmates who are there for violation of probation (most of which are for ganja related "dirty" urine tests), about 35% of Delaware's prison population is in the system for ganja related violation of probation or enhanced anti-ganja sentencing.

 

Don't get me wrong. If one has committed a serious, violent crime, there is no excuse for that. But when about 35% of the prison population consists of merely having having smoked some ganja the time to analyze the rationale behind that treatment has come.

 

Given the relative safety of ganja consumption, it makes about as much sense as the re-incarceration of people because they took a couple of over the counter pain relievers, since it is provable that taking counter pain relievers is more dangerous than consuming some ganja.  It makes as much sense to re-arrest people for drinking milk. If about a third of prisoners have consumed ganja, you can rest assured that almost all of them have drunken milk.

 

 

 

http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20091120/NEWS02/911200354

Largest study ever shows NO CAUSAL LINK between ganja use and Cancer and may PREVENT CANCER AND COPD!

A chief researcher for the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) has proven with a grant from NIDA that not only is there no link between ganja use and cancer, but that ganja use may actually prevent cancer and COPD!

The doctor, Donald Tashkin, who the prohibitionists have relied on exclusively for their claims that ganja use causes lung damage and even cancer has done a complete about face. In the largest study ever, of more than 2,200 people, has proven that there is no link between ganja use and cancer. This study is so frightening to the prohibitionist mentality that the NIDA has refused to publish the findings.

Tashkin reported them at the 2005 meeting of the International Cannabinoid Research Society and they were published in the October 2006 issue of Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention. The results are in "Marijuana Use and the Risk of Lung and Upper Aerodigestive Tract Cancers: Results of a Population-Based Case-Control Study" by Mia Hashibe1, Hal Morgenstern, Yan Cui, Donald P. Tashkin, Zuo-Feng Zhang, Wendy Cozen, Thomas M. Mack and Sander Greenland was a blockbuster story.

Tashkin reviewed his findings April 4 this year at a conference organized by "Patients Out of Time," a reform group devoted to educating doctors and the public ( as opposed to lobbying politicians ). Some 30 MDs and nurses got continuing medical education credits for attending.

The heaviest marijuana smokers had lighted up more than 22,000 times, while moderately heavy usage was defined as smoking 11,000 to 22,000 marijuana cigarettes. Tashkin found that even the very heavy marijuana smokers showed no increased incidence of cancer.

As to the highly promising implication of his own study -that something in marijuana stops damaged cells from becoming malignant- Tashkin noted that an anti-proliferative effect of THC has been observed in cell-culture systems and animal models of brain, breast, prostate, and lung cancer. THC has been shown to promote known apoptosis ( damaged cells die instead of reproducing ) and to counter angiogenesis ( the process by which blood vessels are formed -a requirement of tumor growth ). Other antioxidants in cannabis may also be involved in countering malignancy, said Tashkin.

Much of Tashkin's talk was devoted to Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, another condition prevalent among tobacco smokers. Chronic bronchitis and emphysema are two forms of COPD, which is the fourth leading cause of death in the United States. Air pollution and tobacco smoke are known culprits. Inhaled pathogens cause an inflammatory response, resulting in diminished lung function. COPD patients have increasing difficulty clearing the airways as they get older.

Tashkin and colleagues at UCLA conducted a major study in which they measured lung function of various cohorts over eight years and found that tobacco-only smokers had an accelerated rate of decline, but marijuana smokers -even if they smoked tobacco as well-experienced the same rate of decline as non-smokers. "The more tobacco smoked, the greater the rate of decline," said Tashkin. "In contrast, no matter how much marijuana was smoked, the rate of decline was similar to normal." Tashkin concluded that his and other studies "do not support the concept that regular smoking of marijuana leads to COPD."

The new findings "were against our expectations," said Donald Tashkin of the University of California at Los Angeles, a pulmonologist who has studied marijuana for 30 years.

"We hypothesized that there would be a positive association between marijuana use and lung cancer, and that the association would be more positive with heavier use," he said. "What we found instead was no association at all, and even a suggestion of some protective effect."

One in three Americans will be afflicted with cancer, we are told by the government ( as if it's our immutable fate and somehow acceptable ). Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the U.S. and lung cancer the leading killer among cancers. UCLA medical school professor Donald Tashkin, doing research under an NIDA grant, revealed that components of marijuana smoke somehow prevent cells from becoming malignant. In other words, something in marijuana exerts an anti-cancer effect.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse supported Tashkin's marijuana-related research over the decades and readily gave him a grant to conduct a large, population-based, case-controlled study that would prove definitively that heavy, long-term marijuana use increases the risk of lung and upper-airways cancers. What Tashkin and his colleagues found, however, disproved their hypothesis. ( Tashkin is to marijuana as a cause of lung cancer what Hans Blick is to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction -an honest investigator who set out to find something, concluded that it wasn't there, and reported his results. )

I have to point out that this is (in the research world) a fresh study. Prohibitionists are quick to use antique studies, such as one commenter has posted in responding to this blog piece, that are literally decades older than this study BY THE VERY SAME DOCTOR!!

As all of the justifications used to promote prohibition and destroy peoples' lives over their consumption of ganja continue to be shown to be overblown myth or unfounded lies, we have to ask just what excuse does the government have to justify persecuting ganja consumers? I guess they are left with persecuting people for doing something that feels good.

The time has come to put an end to the perverts of prohibition peeping into our bedroom windows and arresting people jst for doing something that feels goods.

(some excerpts from report by Fred Gardner, (Source:CounterPunch))

International Terrorism funded by PROHIBITION

I did not write this amazing bit of journalism. Nonetheless, it illustrates how corruption and international terrorism lives in the heart of prohibition. There are millions of dollars in money laundering, and amazingly guilty poiticians, bankers and business being given a free ride courtesy of the CIA, DEA and FBI. Even Homeland Security is involved in this true tale of prohibition corruption.

These are the vested interests who do NOT want to see prohibition ended. These are the REAL criminals who reap unbelievable untaxed profits FROM PROHIBITION.



http://www.madcowprod.com/04242008.html


Reporter threatened with being "cluster-sued!"

Documents Sealed in '100 Drug plane' Court Case
Reporter threatened with being "cluster-sued!"

April 24 2008
by Daniel Hopsicker







The biggest fish busted so far in the laundered-drug-money-for-American-planes scheme used by Mexico’s powerful Sinaloa cartel to purchase 100 airplanes in the U.S. has cut a secret deal with federal prosecutors in Miami, and agreed to testify against others involved, the MadCowMorningNews has learned.

The news is one of a series of recent developments in the scandal, which erupted in the wake of the massive drug hauls seized on two drug planes busted in Mexico’s Yucatan just eighteen months apart carrying, between them, more than ten tons of cocaine.

Also last week, a federal judge in Mexico City ordered the extradition to the U.S. of Pedro Alatorre Damy, identified by the DEA and the Attorney General of Mexico as the main money launderer for Joaquin Guzman, “El Chapo,” leader of the Sinaloa cartel.

And in another development which hits close to home (at least for this reporter) the MadCowMorningNews has been contacted by attorneys for two figures in the case, both threatening lawsuits.


Chickens make way home to roost

The first offer to sue came in a letter from a San Antonio attorney on behalf of Dennis Nixon, Chairman of Texas bank International Bancshares of San Antonio (IBC).

Based on the border with Mexico in Laredo Texas, IBC Bank was used in the money-laundering scheme, according to an FBI affidavit filed in the case.

We knew little else about the bank, however, until we received the letter threatening a lawsuit, and we certainly had no idea at the time that the bank’s co-founder, top investor and principal owner, Tony Sanchez, had once the target of accusations that millions of dollars of drug money had been knowingly laundered through his Texas thrift, called Tesoro Savings & Loan.

Before failing in 1988, at a cost to American taxpayers of $161 million, the thrift was accused of laundering $25 million in Mexican drug money, not exactly the ideal credential for a bank founder and owner.

But, we soon discovered, it gets worse…

The drug money Sanchez’s S& L was accused of raking in allegedly belonged to the very same drug traffickers who had recently witnessed, directed, recorded and participated in the infamous torture-murder in Mexico of American DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena.


Gaping jaws, violated rectums, buried alive
Camarena's disappearance while on assignment in Mexico in 1985 had briefly strained relations between the U.S. and Mexico, especially after the agent’s body was found in a shallow grave, along with that of a long-time fellow agent and pilot.

Cadaver No. 1, as Red Cross doctors on the scene labeled it, had been that of a muscular Hispanic male in his thirties. The left side of the skull was caved in, three ribs were broken, as well as the right arm. The body also showed numerous lesions; a foreign object, possibly a stick, had been forced into the rectum.

The rectum of Cadaver No. 2, a heavyset adult male in his forties, had also been violated, the doctors said. The jaw was gaping, and the hands had broken free of their bonds, and doctors were of the opinion that the man had been buried alive.

Texas justice aside, we have decided that this is one lawsuit we will happily defend.


Guyanese pilot with U.S. all-access "hall pass"
At almost the same time as this news, we received a second letter threatening to file suit. The letter was from a Fort Lauderdale lawyer on behalf of Guyanese pilot Michael Francis Brassington, who we have reported to be linked to the massive corruption scandal roiling U.S. Customs in South Florida.

What lies at the heart of the 100 plane scandal, according to a high-ranking DEA official we spoke to in Miami, is a corrupt U.S. Customs operation run out of Florida.

Although DEA affidavits in the case suspiciously neglected to mention his name, Brassington had been the co-pilot on the Learjet belonging to terror flight school owner Wallace J. Hilliard busted on a runway at Orlando Executive Airport during July of 2000, the same month Mohamed Atta began flying lessons at Hilliard’s flight school.

According to the Orlando Sentinel, it was the biggest heroin bust in Central Florida history. The Lear was found to be carrying 43 pound of heroin, an amount which is known in the drug trade as “heavy weight,” as in "He's moving heavy weight every week.'

In innumerable television interviews with Rudi Dekkers, Hilliard's flight school front man, in the days and weeks after the 9/11 attack, Dekkers said Mohamed Atta told him that he was from Afghanistan, a country at that time dominated by the Taliban and Osama bin Laden producing well over half (it produces a much higher percentage currently) of the world’s heroin, and was


"Gang-sued' is new legal term

It goes without saying (or should) that the link between Mohamed Atta’s presence at Hilliard’s flight school simultaneous with the massive heroin seizure aboard Wally Hilliard’s Learjet has never been explained.

While the threat of being “gang-sued” from multiple directions at once is a daunting prospect for our ability to continue reporting the story, it also seems to be a sure sign of deepening scandal.

The first new development took place in a Federal court in Miami last week, where Pedro Benavides-Natera, allegedly one of the key figures in the money-laundering scheme which Mexico’s powerful Sinaloa Cartel used to finance the U.S. plane-buying spree, was about to go on trial on multiple felony money laundering charges.

Instead, he cut a deal, and will now presumably be testifying against others in the scheme, in which the ultimate target may be America’s current bete noire, Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez.

As a result of Benavides’ plea deal, key documents to be used in his trial have now been sealed. As well, the multiple felony charges against Benavides, a Miami resident with dual Venezuelan-American citizenship, have been dropped to a single felony count, and he will learn his fate when his case is disposed sometime in the future.


Washing Medellin money in 1998
One of the people Benavides will presumably be testifying against is Pedro Alatorre Damy, owner of currency exchanges in Mexico used in the scheme, and identified as the head financier for the huge Sinaloa drug cartel.

Drug profits were allegedly funneled from Mexican and Colombian drug traffickers from Alatorre’s Mexican money exchanges to a Miami bank, then used to buy airplanes intended to ferry more cocaine shipments around the world.

Just as the first two American planes used in the scheme were discovered to have ties to the CIA, the Dept. of Homeland Security, and top Republican financiers, the Mexicans already charged in the case have ties to top officials in Mexico.

The family which controls the Casa de Cambio Puebla currency exchanges run by Pedro Alatorre has strong links to Mexico’s ruling PAN party, as well as to Vicente Fox, who was still Mexico’s President when the planes were caught.

In fact, the Mexico City newspaper Reforma recently reported that Pedro Alatorre Damy was already well-known to Mexican authorities during the 1990’s, and had been investigated and jailed, after the DEA and Mexico’s Federal Police found that he had been washing Medellin Cartel money through another now-defunct Mexican currency exchange, in August of 1998.


Must have asked for the 'good prisoner' discount
Alatorre, after spending five months in jail, was released.

Another person who Benavides may be called to testify against is Carlos Ayala Lara, who FBI affidavits filed in the case state is a top Venezuelan drug kingpin as well as Benavides’ former boss.

The FBI affidavit states that Benavides, arrested last October, had almost immediately confessed to FBI agents that his boss Carlos Ayala Lara used Alatorre’s Mexican currency exchanges to wire million to the United States, including several million dollars traced to the purchase of American aircraft.

Carlos Ayala Lara can apparently afford some pretty good legal eagles in Miami. In a prior brush with American law enforcement, he was allowed to keep half of the drug money which authorities confiscated from him.

There is some speculation Ayala may ultimately be linked to Hugo Chavez.


More 'bad apples' and 'rogue operations.'
Two years ago this month, an American DC9 left St Petersburg, FL and flew to Venezuela which belonged, or appeared to belong, to the Dept. of Homeland Security. Several days later, at an airport in Mexico’s Yucatan, this plane was busted carrying 5.5 tons of cocaine.

Then last September, a Gulfstream business jet took off St Petersburg, FL. and flew to Medellin, Colombia, where it presumably loaded its cargo before being forced down in the Yucatan carrying more than 4 tons of cocaine, as well as a large amount of heroin, which, except for news reports in Por Esto, a Mexican tabloid, has gone unmentioned.

The likely reason is simple: the heroin never made it into the evidence locker.

The Gulfstream had been previously used to fly extraordinary rendition, as well as a host of other tasks, for the CIA.

And the DC9 was painted to appear to be an official aircraft from the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security, without a word of protest from a major U.S. Coast Guard facility located less than 100 yards from where it was parked.

In an early Bush Administration reshuffling, both the Coast Guard as well as U.S. Customs had been placed under the Dept. of Homeland Security.


Maybe because they had pictures of him in a dress?

The resulting investigation led to the discovery of a scheme in which drug profits were allegedly funneled from South American traffickers through Mexican money exchanges to a Miami bank, then used to buy airplanes intended to ferry more cocaine shipments around the world.

Despite evidence to the contrary, American law enforcement has glibly pronounced innocent all of the Americans who sold planes to the Mexican cartel. They were victims of circumstance, and of the evil cunning of devious foreign drug lords.

The DEA’s assertion that there are no American drug lords is as unbelievable as the FBI’s J Edgar Hoover’s longtime insistence that there were no Mafia dons, and no organized crime in America.

Still, we wondered: Were any of the Americans who sold planes to the cartel also in business with them? Did any of the American planes’ owners have connections with the Mob? With the CIA? Or with major Republican Party financiers?

The answer to all three questions is “Yes.”


World class organized crime
The American ownership of the planes cannot withstand close scrutiny. Evidence was overwhelming that, despite some sham fast shuffling of registrations, both planes had been American-registered and controlled when they were busted, and that the names to whom the planes have recently been registered were known to have fronted in the past for a much larger enterprise, the CIA.

Collectively, the two planes from St. Petersburg carried more than ten tons of cocaine that—had they not been intercepted—would have made somebody richer than they already were by almost a half billion dollars.

This is world class crime. And no Americans are likely to be punished for it.

But observers can’t help but notice that the individuals and companies who owned the planes bought by the Sinaloa Cartel are inter-linked, and have ties to each other.

Americans who sold planes to the Sinaloa Cartel are even openly in business together, and Directors of each other’s companies.


"Scene-ster" and felon Adnan Khashoggi

Recent owners of the St Petersburg FL-based DC9, for example, have interlocking partnerships with recent owners of the St Petersburg FL-based Gulfstream II business jet.

Though only six of the planes sold to the cartel have been identified so far, they’re connected six ways from Tuesday. And their numbers include a bus-load of the usual suspects: Ramy El-Batrawi, a henchman for CIA fixer and Saudi arms merchant Adnan Khashoggi.

El-Batrawi had owned the airliners which Oliver North used to send TOW missiles to Iran, the beginning of the Iran Contra Scandal. His company, Jetborne, owned by Khashoggi, was called a CIA proprietary in the Iran Contra hearings.

However, none of the American sellers of the airplanes appear to be under investigation by any law enforcement entity in the entire united states.

Were the Americans who sold a fleet of drug planes to Mexico’s most powerful cartel just innocent aviation enthusiasts? Or do they, instead, offer the best glimpse anyone's likely to get of the world of the highly-elusive American Drug Lords?

NOTE: Recently we incorrectly reported that money was wired from Mexico to an account at Commerce Bank in Miami, whose Chairman, we incorrectly reported, was Dennis Nixon, also the South Texas Co-chair of John McCain’s campaign.

Dennis Nixon's International Bancshares of San Antonio has no connection to Commerce Bank in Miami. We regret the error.

We have since learned that court documents show that Carlos Ayala Lara, the target of the current FBI investigation, also laundered money through the Texas bank.

Is the War being waged on Americans effective for controlling drugs?

The short history of prohibition laws is that America has had some sort of prohibition law since the "noble experiment" of alcohol prohibition (1920 - 1933). Prior to that, three states had alcohol laws in 1906 and over the next ten years twenty more states passed some sort of alcohol prohibition law. There were no ganja laws until the passage of the Marihuana Tax Act. There is an excellent historical discussion of the progression of prohibition laws previously published in the Virginia Law Review now available at THE FORBIDDEN FRUIT AND THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE: AN INQUIRY INTO THE LEGAL HISTORY OF AMERICAN MARIJUANA PROHIBITION

There are studies that examine the parallels and divergences between alcohol temperance and ganja suppression. For our discussion, we are only interested in one major difference: there was significant, open public debate about temperance. Ganja prohibition was slipped in with no public debate. In fact, the day the first ganja law was introduced, congressional records show that no one knew what it was about and it passed with no discussion; all of the scientific and medical communities that opposed ganja control laws were simply ignored.

Today, ganja prohibition exists with no permitted public discussion. Yellow journalists are forced by manipulation by the law enforcement community to suppress the truth that ganja decriminalization is supported by every major medical and psychiatric organization but one, which group has not presented any opinion about decriminalizing ganja. In fact, most people oppose the present prohibition scheme that treats all users as dysfunctional. The prohibitionists get quite rabid in attempting to dominate every conversation about law reform with their lies and misdirections.

Another set of facts about prohibition law that the cops hope that people never discuss is whether the law is having the effect it is purported to seek to address. Just as significant, are all of the goals rational and based in scientific fact? Integral to any discussion of law is how will enforcement be financed, and are the goals fiscally attainable? Let's examine some of the stated goals of prohibition and the costs in socioeconomic terms.

A significant fear that prohibitionists promote is that decriminalizing ganja will lead to wider use. In fact, in countries and states where ganja laws have been relaxed, the rates of use have actually gone down. (read the blog about Yellow Journalists which has a discussion of a Harvard website that provides statistics on this).

Not only is more widespread use an unfounded fear, but even the most draconian laws and enforcement have had not effect. The fact is, anyone who wants ganja can get it. According to DEA and FBI statistics, a little over half of adults have tried ganja at one time or another and between a quarter and a third of adults use ganja on a regular basis. In Delaware, that equates to some 250,000 regular ganja consumers. Prohibitionists hate these numbers. It comes from government statistics, so if they want to argue the point they will need to provide better stats to support their contentions.

A subset of this fear of spreading use is that decriminalizing ganja will lead to more youth getting involved with ganja. I refer again to the study on the Harvard website I mention in another blog, which provides government statistics that show that decriminalizing, removing the rebel status of ganja, results in declining use in youth. Because prohibition results in a profitable black market, which has none of the legal incentives to restrict sales to youth that legal businesses have, prohibition actually results in more exposure of youth to access to ganja.

The wrong message is continued government benign neglect that empowers a massive and corrupt black market leaving children to the amoral tender mercies of addict dealers, gangsters and other social predators who all thrive in the illegal economy. The right message is showing that we care with strong government institutions watching closely enough over well regulated merchants who 'just say no' when children come in to buy, whether it be tobacco, alcohol or ganja.

Another subset fear that prohibitionists promote is that decriminalization will result in more addicts. But, according to The National Institutes on Drug Abuse Genetics Working Group "drug abuse and dependence comprise a complex set of genetic disorders..." Addiction is a biological malady that impacts 25% or more of our population no matter how many police and prisons we have.

Under the current prohibition policies, if a goal is to keep children from becoming addicts the law has been dramatically ineffective. The real result has been that the black market gives those with the worst incentive, drug dealers and their addicted users. Illicit ganja sales amount to a highly inflated eighty billion dollar hit on the pockets of consumers every year, and even the limited enforcement of ganja laws costs another seventy billion dollars a year. A better way to address the harm of addiction would be to regulate, tax and license the criminal anarchy out of the distribution of drugs as completely and effectively as regulations today protect consumers from predatory practices in other commerce.

Most revealing about this claim about ganja is that the fear itself has no foundation in science and medicine. As former Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders points out, which I address in another blog, the American College of Physicians has provided scientific proof that ganja use is not a predictor of either addiction or trying other drugs. There are no facts to support that fear, they point out.

These aspects of increased use, addiction and stepping stone theories are only a part of the rationals on which prohibition is provably a complete failure in achieving its goals.

I just got the following message from a former police officer.

For Immediate Release April 22, 2008 Medford, MA- A burst of gang violence in Chicago between April 18 and April 21 left at least 37 people shot, 2 stabbed, and 9 dead. Thirteen of the victims have been identified as Chicago Public Schools students. The 36 separate incidents of violence included gang shootings, drive-by shootings, and shots fired at police with an AK-47. In response to the weekend’s surge of violence, Chicago police will disperse gun, tactical, and gang teams, as well as SWAT officers in battle gear. As summer approaches, police anticipate that gang activity will continue to increase. The gang violence of the 1920’s is the same 80 years later: it is driven by a prohibition that increases crime, violence, disease and death. The land of Al Capone should read the history books: just as alcohol prohibition in the 1920’s caused Chicago to erupt in gang violence in Capone’s era, drug prohibition is the root of gang warfare in Chicago in 2008. The black market drug trade fuels the violence, and as long as prohibition continues, the resulting violence will only increase. For More Information Contact: Mike Smithson LEAP Operations Director speakers@leap.cc