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anjeleyes77proud pagan's blog: "Mostly MJ legalization related"

created on 11/30/2006  |  http://fubar.com/mostly-mj-legalization-related/b29755
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posted on 12/07/2006&nbs-08:00;@&nbs-08:00;11:12&nbs-08:00;am

Cannabis and Lupus: A patient's story

Systemic Lupus Erythematosus
by Lisa Swiderski


I can remember being admitted to a hospital in New Jersey at the age of 3. My symptoms were baffling to all the doctors who had treated me as a child. I was first given a diagnosis of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. I had a butterfly rash on my face, fatigue, continuous low-grade fevers, redness behind my knees, and excruciating joint pain and swelling that would leave me unable to walk. Just try for a moment to feel the feeling of being jabbed with an ice pick being driven way deep inside of the bone, or a feeling that someone has just put you on a meat hook, hanging by the bone.

My left eye would raise up to the upper left corner. I experienced double vision, and my eye would tear for no reason at all. I experienced continuous pressure and was also very light sensitive. In my left eye I could only distinguish the difference between light and dark. There were times when it felt as though my eyeball was going to blow right out of its socket.

Finally I was diagnosed with systemic lupus erythematosus. I was also found to have a cataract on my left eye, scar tissue on the left cornea, and glaucoma. My eye doctor told my mom that surgery probably wouldn’t give me back any sight and that my eyeball could shrink to the size of a pit and fall out, and then I’d have to have a glass eye put in. So my mom and I chose not to do the surgery. The doctors told my mom that I wouldn’t live past puberty.

I can remember the times my mom and grandma would just try to open my left eye to get the drops in, years and years of eye drops to control the glaucoma. They burned worse than a deep open wound being filled with alcohol. As I became older, I couldn’t’ stand the pain any longer! I stopped using the eyedrops. Now what? In 1989/1990, I was 22-23 years of age. I had lost all the vision in my left eye. The total darkness scared the hell out of me. I could close my right eye, open my left eye, look up into the direct sun, and not see any light at all.

After fighting like hell for two years I was declared legally handicapped and approved for SSI disability.

I am now 31 years old. I often feel as though I have the aching body of a 90-year-old woman. At times I cannot get out of bed because every bone, muscle, and joint hurts as if a truck had hit me, gone into reverse, and backed up over me. My knees swell to the size of grapefruit and baby cantaloupes, and then I’m bedridden for days. High doses of aspirin help, but I can no longer take aspirin because it makes me start hemorrhaging. Doctors have wanted to put me on steroid medication, but I felt I was too young for that. Isn’t my system screwed up enough? I don’t even like the word "steroids."

Every morning it takes me several hours to get motivated because I am so stiff. My fingers are so tight and swollen that I couldn’t even pick up a pen. I have suffered from depression and use Prozac, which I believe is a mood elevator. I have also had severe stomach problems that would sometimes make me unable to eat. When I knew that I was hungry and wanted to eat, my stomach would get so sick inside that I would feel like throwing up. Sometimes I was unable to eat for a week or two, only able to push fluids into my body. I’d have episodes of diarrhea that would sometimes last up to 18 months. I’ve lost 20 to 35 pounds in a month or two.

I’d also have severe panic attacks. I’d be driving down a major highway where all of a sudden I couldn’t breathe. Then I would have serious chest pains and I’d pull onto the side of the road, scared to death, not know if I was having a heart attack or something. The pain would be so bad that I couldn’t even cry if I wanted to!

After hearing about marijuana for all those years, three or four years ago I decided to try it for myself, in the privacy of my own home, keeping it a secret from my children, ages 13, 10½, 8, and 5. I don’t travel with it, I don’t drive while using it, I don’t use it in public, nor do I talk about it with anyone except my family and my doctors.

When I smoke a marijuana cigarette the pain disappears. There is no more pressure in my left eye. The feelings of my eyeball blowing out of the socket disappear. The pain in my joints, muscles, and bones is still there but bearable. I have the energy and motivation to get housework done on a regular basis, which is even harder with four children to take care of. Depression is just another word in the dictionary that I know nothing of.

Since I started smoking marijuana, I have no more diarrhea. I’ve been able to eat two to three meals per day without getting stomach upset. I haven’t had very many anxiety attacks, and I’m once again motivated to get out of bed. I feel as though I’m able to enjoy my life again with my children. I can relax and even concentrate better. Also marijuana gives me an immediate response. I don’t have to wait for it to take effect, as with conventional medications.

Marijuana is 100% naturally grown. I’m afraid of prescription mediations because of seeing my aunt become addicted to prescription painkillers. She almost died, and now it’s like she’s fried in the brain because of them.

Marijuana has helped me, and I will keep on using it for pain reduction whether it is legalized or not.
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posted on 12/07/2006&nbs-08:00;@&nbs-08:00;11:12&nbs-08:00;am

New Report- Impact of Current Laws on Teen Marijuana Use

As the federal government prepares to release its annual "Monitoring the Future" survey of teenage drug use, the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) in Washington, D.C., will release a report examining a hotly debated question: Do our marijuana laws deter teen use of marijuana?

When reformers propose regulating marijuana for adults in a manner similar to alcohol or tobacco, government officials often object that such a policy would encourage use by children. Because such assertions are widely accepted by the press and the public and underlie so much U.S. public policy, MPP undertook a thorough examination of data that can shed light on the impact of marijuana laws on rates of marijuana use by young people, including:

**U.S. government data on rates of marijuana use by youth and adults before and after the advent of national marijuana prohibition in 1937.

**Independent studies by impartial research organizations such as RAND Corp. and the National Research Council.

**Comparisons of youth marijuana use rates in the U.S. with rates in nations that have differing marijuana policies, such as the Netherlands, and state-to-state comparisons in the U.S. and Australia, where states or territories have differing laws.

**The impact on teen marijuana use of Britain's decision to end most marijuana possession arrests in January 2004.

**Studies suggesting a possible "boomerang" effect of marijuana prohibition, including the impact of the unregulated illicit drug market on both marijuana use and progression to hard drugs (the "gateway effect").

MPP's report will be released to the public Dec. 11.
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posted on 12/07/2006&nbs-08:00;@&nbs-08:00;11:12&nbs-08:00;am

from and by Christopher Largen

While Child Predators Walk, Marijuana Consumers Nailed

DENTON — For those of you who retain faith in our justice system, it may shock you to learn that my hometown of Denton, Texas is home to dozens of predators convicted of sex crimes against children 13 and younger, all the way down to age four, who never served a single day in jail. Some of these rapists have been convicted of multiple offenses against multiple children. This same dynamic is occurring across our nation.

Sit with that a moment. The system that sentences prostitutes, vandalists, and marijuana consumers to jail might release a convicted child rapist right back into your neighborhood — as if personal property and morality were more important than public safety, and pilferers and potheads were more threatening than perverted predators.

This disparity is not for lack of resources. The United States leads the world in incarceration rates. Thanks to Draconian penalties for consensual crimes (implemented in the name of "protecting the children"), we lock up more of our population than Iraq, China, Iran, and North Korea. Yet many of our judges go easy on child rapists.

Complacency in the face of evil is inexcusable. Children are being abducted, raped, videotaped for the perverse pleasure of predators, tortured, and murdered. Last year in Florida, a beautiful little girl named Jessica Lunsford was attacked by a previously convicted molester who was set free by the courts to enter her bedroom, abduct her, sexually assault her repeatedly, and bury her alive in her neighbor’s yard.

While Florida law enforcement officials failed to properly monitor and control the convicted predators in their communities, they had plenty of resources to set up reverse marijuana stings, dispatching officers to try and sell small bags of the outlawed herb to strangers on the street. It appears that inciting petty misdemeanors takes priority over preventing violent felonies. Jessica’s father Mark Lunsford, who has spent the past year traveling the country, tirelessly fighting for changes in the law, asked, "Where are our priorities as a nation? Where are our values? Sometimes it seems like we don’t value anything, least of all the children."

As if public safety weren’t enough reason to prioritize violent crimes against children, there is also the question of justice. Our judicial system is partially based on a precept that punishment should fit the crime, so the victim’s perspective must be taken into account. Many sexual abuse survivors will contend with depression, anxiety, nightmares, insomnia, identity confusion, substance abuse, social and sexual alienation, self-mutilation, and suicidal tendencies. Child abuse is a crime against humanity, and it deserves more than a slap on the wrist.

Predators are like domestic terrorists in our own backyards, targeting the most vulnerable members of our society. The fact that our system is failing to protect children should make us sick at heart, angry in spirit, and most importantly, active. A national judicial scandal of this magnitude should cause massive political reverberations as people elect to replace the legislators, district attorneys and judges who lack the insight or the concern to prioritize public safety.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for the national media to cover this issue. Pundits repeatedly reported that a Vermont judge sentenced an admitted child rapist (his victim was six years old, with assaults occurring over a four-year period) to a pathetic 60 days in jail. However, these reporters spun the story as an isolated incident involving a single renegade official who needed to be removed, and they failed to cover the broader issue.

None dare call it corruption, but information regarding probated sentences for child rapists is easily accessible online at sex offender registries. So at the very least, media moguls were negligent. But did they hope people would simply raise a highly-publicized outcry against one judge, engage in primal scream therapy, and then move on to the next flavor of the month, without confronting the system itself?

I was determined to find out, so I contacted representatives at CNN, FOX, and MSNBC. They didn’t even want to talk about it, and neglected to return my calls or my emails. I contacted the Denton Record-Chronicle, to no avail. Finally, while waiting for police to arrive at my home so I could report a toy bullet suspiciously left in the back of my car on Martin Luther King Day, I phoned our local child advocacy center about the possibility of joining forces. I was told they couldn’t get involved in political issues that might upset the system of cooperation between law enforcement officials, district attorneys, and therapists. The one group that remained unmentioned was the children themselves.

The truth is painful, but we have to face the fact that our society is failing our kids. From the time they are babes, we teach them to obey adults, to respect their elders, to stay quiet, to not resist, to acquiesce. Many of our school districts are less secure than our shopping malls, lacking sufficient resources to prevent students from being harmed by predators, terrorists, mentally unstable students, or even teachers who rape children (a common theme in the press these days).

Yet those same districts will often expend resources to teach our kids (many of whom have already been sexually abused) the ultimate lesson in submission and acquiescence, forcing them to drop their pants and urinate on command, sometimes in front of adult strangers who may or may not be pedophiles themselves (this is what happens when being "drug-free" takes precedence over freedom from violence). Additionally, our children are forced to grow up in a sexually schizophrenic society, where media reduces the human body to a hyper-sexual crass commodity, and religious institutions reinforce repressive Puritanism. We fail to provide them with accurate information about their bodies and their rights.

Having rendered children psychologically helpless to defend themselves, we release convicted child predators into their neighborhoods. Predators live within drug-free school zones across our nation, unmolested by police. When our kids get raped and grow up to develop drug dependencies (as many do, trying to self-medicate psychological and psychiatric symptoms) or become prostitutes (again, trying to self-medicate), we’ll throw those crime victims in jail for their involvement with drugs and prostitution, while child rapists walk the street to create more victims (and therefore more consensual crimes, like drug abuse and prostitution).

Adding insult to injury, the United States Government denies drug-using rape victims financial aid for college (thanks to an anti-drug clause contained in the Higher Education Act of 1998), while convicted rapists continue to attend universities on the backs of their rape victims. Our federal legislators don’t want tax dollars purchasing illegal drugs, but they evidently have no problem with buying the knives, duct tape, pharmaceutical drugs, and video cameras that child predators will use on their next victims.

As a survivor of sexual abuse and child pornography who offered testimony to a Texas committee hearing on child advocacy, my blood is boiling. As the father of two beautiful children I delivered with my own trembling hands, I am afraid for them. Most importantly, I’m determined to do anything in my legal power to change this.

You can join me and other survivors, parents, and advocacy groups, who are creating a new organization called Building BLOCK - Better Lives for Our Communities and Kids (www.Building-Block.org), which will expose the authorities who perpetuate the perpetration, offering an interactive U.S. map to provide county-specific case profiles of officials who refuse to prioritize public safety over private morality. Membership is completely free, and we need your help.

Incompetent and corrupt officials take note. The people have grown weary of the ineptitude and apathy that allow fundamental liberties to deteriorate while violence devastates our communities. If you do not prioritize public, we’ll ensure you are de-prioritized at the ballet box.

And to those public servants who fight hard to protect children and strengthen our communities, I want to personally offer my thanks, as you are truly unsung heroes.

If you have kids, hug them tight when you tuck them in tonight. They deserve your protection. And if you aren’t enraged yet, you must be dead or asleep. Here’s to waking up and breaking the silence.

Christopher Largen is the founder of Building BLOCK - Better Lives for Our Communities and Kids www.Building-Block.org, author of Junk (www.ENCPress.com) and Prescription Pot

www.PrescriptionPot.com

www.lonestaricon.com
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posted on 12/07/2006&nbs-08:00;@&nbs-08:00;11:12&nbs-08:00;am

Free ebook about our favorite subject - Hemp!

Download this ebook for free!

"The Reign of Law; a Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields" by James Lane Allen

This was a bestseller in 1900 and it's all about our favorite subject cannabis/hemp/marijuana!

Reign of Law - free ebook
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posted on 12/07/2006&nbs-08:00;@&nbs-08:00;11:12&nbs-08:00;am

WRITE/CALL YOUR CONGRESSMAN: PLANT-KILLER FUNGUS VOTE

I just got this in a message from cannabis culture magazine and thought I would share

The Office of the National Drug Control Policy budget bill is up for a vote. It includes provisions and money for the development of aerial sprays of herbicides to kill poppies, coca, cannabis.

Earlier this year, DRCNet reported on a push by the (ONDCP) drug czar John Walters and drug warriors in Congress to pass a reckless bill to research the use of mycoherbicides -- toxic, fungal plant killers -- as a means of attacking illicit drug crops. Even government agencies are unenthusiastic about this one -- our article cited the Florida Dept. of Environmental Protection, the Department of Agriculture, the State Department, the CIA and even the DEA as agencies that have rejected the idea as dangerous for health and the environment as well as likely to meet with resistant strains of poppy and coca against which it would be ineffective.

Unfortunately, some less prudent members of Congress -- Rep. Mark Souder (R-IN), Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) are attempting to pass the legislation by rushing it to the floors of the House of Representatives and the Senate as part of the Office of National Drug Control Policy reauthorization bill this week. Please call your US Representative and your two US Senators today to urge them to vote NO on this dangerous bill! You can reach them (or find out who they are) by calling the Congressional Switchboard at (202) 224-3121. You can also use the House and Senate web sites at www.house.gov and www.senate.gov to look them up. Also suggest that they vote NO on reauthorizing ONDCP itself -- a useless, agency whose functioning has been highly warped by its placing ideology over facts.

The ONDCP bill does not have a number yet. So, when you speak to the staffers in the offices of your Representative and your two Senators, you should ask them to oppose the ONDCP reauthorization bill, especially the mycoherbicide provision, which is part of section 1111.

Thank you for taking action. Please send us a note using our contact web form at STOPTHEDRUGWAR.org/contact to let us know that you've taken action and what you learned about how your Rep. and Senators might vote.

Visit the web address below to tell your friends about this.
Tell-a-friend!

Sign up for DRCNet.org bulletins at Stopthedrugwar.org
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posted on 12/01/2006&nbs-08:00;@&nbs-08:00;03:12&nbs-08:00;pm

war on sex offenders

This blog was originally posted by Our Missing Children

On June 17, 1971 President Nixon declared war on drugs. At a press conference Nixon names drug abuse as "public enemy number one in the United States."

On August 9, 1974, President Nixon resigns.

Since then the flow of drugs into our country has continued to increase. The sentences for drug offenders has also continued to increase.

Our prisons are filled to capacity with all level of drug offenders serving stiff mandatory sentences. Meanwhile predators flourish in every region of our nation, preying on our women and children. I do not buy the arguement that drug dealers prey on our children too. Our children have a choice when it comes to using and buying drugs. What it all comes down to is how well of a job of educating and parenting the parents did. Of course all the educating and good parenting is still not going to stop teenagers from experimenting, but we have to trust that the values we instill in them will help them make the right choices in the long run after experimenting.

Our children do not have a choice when it comes to being abducted, assaulted, raped and murdered.

The two drugs that kill more people than all other drugs put together are legal, alcohol and cigarettes...

The prohobition did not work...

The most addicting and expensive habit in America is not a drug at all and is legal in some form I believe in every state, Gambling...

What it all comes down to is if we required people to wear helmets while driving cars lives could be saved. If we outlawed snowmobiles, motorcycles, firearms, abortion, ice fishing, mountain climbing, and a million other things, lives could be saved. But that is highly unrealistic. This is Land of the Free, what happened to freedom of choice?

Last night I was browsing the Iowa Sex Offender Registry and was quite surprised at how many individuals on it had been convicted of a crime of sexual assault of a minor aged 0-13 years since 2000 and were not even in prison, some not even on supervised release. Yet in stark contrast I also read about a 72 year old man in Sioux City, Iowa who is a two time war vet, served in the Korean War and World War II. Never been in trouble in his life, yet now he faces a mandatory minimum sentence of ten years in prison because his son was involved in a drug ring and they linked him to it only because his son registered a motorcycle in his dad's name. What the hell is going on in this country? I am tired of sex offenders walking the streets, getting probation, and reoffending. I am tired of nothing getting done until a body turns up! I am tired of this senseless war on drugs. The power is in your hands as we the people put the czars of the drug war in office. Think about that next election time. Is legalization the answer? I don't know...

Anyways, to make a long story short, I found many in other states registries, who were in violation and wanted. One guy I found his myspace account which was logged into two days ago and I am currently in contact with authorities and hope to have this child molestor apprehended soon. I have a special account set up for just such a detail. I have put links to every states sex offender registry in this blog.

Please if you find wanted sex offenders on myspace do not tip them off. Instead play them and try to become their friend and get a address or phone number to give to authorities.

I am now doing what our nations leaders have failed to do:

I am declaring a war on sex offenders!!!

You are my soldiers in this war and things you can do to fight this great battle is help find these monstors and get phone numbers and addresses from them to give to the authorities so they may be put in jail where they belong. If you find a sex offender who is not wanted there is no sense in harrassing them. I know you like me are fed up with how they keep remaining free to hurt again and our own government has made it a crime to harrass them, think about that next time you vote. Instead maybe you could warn friends on their friendslist that they are a convicted sex offender. I don't think that would be considered harrassment. If you see minors on a convicted sex offenders friends report them to their probation officer if they are on probation.

We the people must make the people who run for office start debating these issues that really matter. Maybe legalization is not the answer, but something needs to be done. Most of the violence attributed to drugs is related to the key fact that they are illegal. Just like alcohol in the prohobition. It is either turf wars, informants being killed, agents being killed, or addicts who can't afford their drugs because of the high price due to them being illegal, causing most of the violence. What would happen if we legalized all drugs? How would criminal enterprises such as the Bloods, Crips, Hell's Angels, Mexican Mafia, etc. be able to finance themselves? They wouldn't. Our economy would improve as we would no longer have billions of American dollars leaving our country every year. We would have more than enough room in our prisons to start locking up the "real criminals." If they legalized all drugs I won't start using them. I have much better things to do, like raise my family, those are my values and I will instill them in my kids.

Here are the sex offender registry links for each state, click the links to search for sex offenders in your area:


Alabama
Alaska
Arizona
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
District of Columbia
Florida
Georgia
Hawaii
Idaho
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Mississippi
Missouri
Montana
Nebraska
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York
North Carolina
North Dakota
Ohio
Oklahoma
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Vermont
Virginia
Washington
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Wyoming
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