My friends in the Free State Project have stepped up the activism to include daily open cannabis celebrations in the Keene town square. After two marijuana possession arrests the police are standing down. The second arrestee was released after it was discovered that he was in possession of chocolate mint, an herb as harmless as cannabis itself but not currently prohibited by law. The activism has even spread to nearby Manchester where an activist openly sold cannabis in protest of an irrational and immoral law. The following video is from the Obscured Truth Network, Sam Dodson reporting.
Follow continuing coverage of the protests at FreeKeene.com.
It’s good to see someone in the senate will stand for human rights every once in a while:
The State Department intended to send the favorable report on Mexico’s human rights record to Congress in advance of President Obama’s visit to Guadalajara for a summit of North American leaders this weekend, U.S. officials familiar with the report said.
That plan was scrapped after aides to Sen. Patrick J. Leahy D-Vt., chairman of the Senate Appropriations foreign operations subcommittee, told State Department officials that the findings contradicted reports of human rights violations in Mexico, including torture and forced disappearances, in connection with the drug war.
The New Hampshire house has just passed a medical marijuana bill. Now it’s on to the Senate where passage looks promising. I’ve wanted to move to New Hampshire for a few years now, as part of the Free State Project. The passage of this bill could give me the push I needed to make the final decision. It will be hard for my wife and I to leave Memphis, but our prospects of raising a family in a voluntary society look a lot more promising in the Granite State.
CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE — The New Hampshire House passed a bill today, 234-138, that would allow seriously ill patients to use medical marijuana if their doctor recommends it – a first for either chamber of the state’s legislature.
I’ve been so busy with my work and personal life I just have not had time to do much blogging. I’m still very active on my Twitter account, but I can always find time to write a 140 character tweet. You can also view my news stream on twitter, just follow @ganjanews.
I’m currently working on a huge story, my first investigative piece. I’m so excited about it I just have to tease a little. It’s big, so stay tuned.
I hope your holiday season is filled with peace, cheer, and smoke. Celebrate with friends and family. Share your greenery and Christmas cheer. Remember that they can cage our bodies but they can never cage our minds. Peace.
A Colbert Christmas: Willie Nelson Sings
Willie Nelson tells the story of a plant that smokes more sweetly than either frankincense or myrrh
Sheriff Joe Arpaio can’t keep drugs out of his own jail. Arpaio is the self proclaimed “Toughest Sheriff in America.” He makes his inmates sleep in tents and wear pink underwear while letting his guards deal drugs to them.
The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office says a guard at the 4th Avenue Jail has been arrested for allegedly supplying cocaine to an inmate.
The guard is identified by the Sheriff’s Office as 27-year-old Ryan White, a detention officer with the Sheriff’s Office for four years.
White was arrested and booked on two felonies Monday afternoon. Charges include promoting jail contraband and assisting in a criminal syndicate.
So Joe, how’s your drug war working out for you when you can’t even keep the convicted and caged from getting drugs? How the hell are you going to keep drugs off the street if you can’t keep them out of your own damn jail?
The sheriff really thinks highly of himself. I think his fetish is homoerotic bondage. You can hear a full interview with him in the documentary, American Drug War: the Last White Hope (sound warning).
Two men will spend a combined 41 years in prison for providing medicine to the sick and dying. You would have to be a very disturbed individual to find this outcome “justice.” Two lives ruined and countless others are left without the legal medicine they need to survive.
… Luke Scarmazzo, 28, was sentenced to 262 months in prison — 21 years, 10 months — in U.S. District Court in Fresno. His co-defendant, Ricardo Ruiz Montes, 28, was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Both were convicted in May of manufacturing marijuana and distributing the drug, as well as operating a continuing criminal enterprise. The two men operated a medical marijuana dispensary known as the California Healthcare Collective that was raided by law enforcement officials in September 2006.
My questions to the government: Where is the victim? What harm was done? If there is no victim, there is no crime. The incarceration of these men is simply unjustified kidnapping. The drug warriors are using the violent aggression of force to enforce an arbitrary moral code. A moral code that believes violence is justified to prevent someone from slightly altering their consciousness and feeling mildly euphoric by using the medicine that naturally occurs in a plant. Some day we will look back on these crimes against humanity as another American holocaust. God help America.
My wife wanted to ad: Why doesn’t Arnold Schwarzenegger do something to stop the US Government from interfering with California law? The governor has a duty to uphold the rule of law in California and if that means throwing the DEA out, then that’s exactly what he should do.
Obama’s selection of Drug Warrior Joe Biden left me queasy about the future administration’s drug policy. Apparently I’m not the only one with concerns. Jacob Sullum writes:
The main danger with Obama is that his history of drug use, instead of making him more open to reform, will make him anxious to show he’s tough on drugs. Something like that seems to have happened with Bill Clinton, who bragged about ever-escalating drug war budgets and threatened doctors who recommended marijuana to their patients with jail, trampling the First Amendment in his rush to prove his anti-drug bona fides.
American’s have spoken and they don’t think humans should be caged for marijuana. In fact the victories that cannabis law reform saw had higher margins of victory than Barack Obama.
Fayetteville, AR, home to the University of Arkansas votes to make marijuana prohibition the lowest law enforcement priority 66% to 34%.
I want extend personal congratulations to the people at the Marijuana Policy Project. No one organization has done so much for cannabis law reform in such a short amount of time. Sensible Fayetteville deserve honors for their work in Fayetteville, Arkansas. If we reformers can score 2 to 1 margins in the deep south I see hope for ending marijuana prohibition completely. We’re winning!
