Glenn Beck and Faux News: FAIL!
This has been on my mind for awhile now to blog about (since Michael Phelps was vilified), and after watching this, I really feel like the word needs to be spread. I'm a history buff, especially when it comes to history that directly affects me. I am a pot-smoker, and I hate a lot of the propaganda that's out there about marijuana. I especially hate the retarded ads that they run and call an “Anti-Drug Campaign.” Seriously, folks, give me a fucking break.
Okay, I hate Faux News and everything they represent. They are biased, snarky, condescending, patronizing, and sometimes just flat out stupid. They brought Rob Kampia on to try to embarrass him, and they very obviously did NOT have their facts together, as does most opponents of Marijuana Law Reform. It KILLS me how people have no clue about why hemp is illegal. They really don't.
First, marijuana is not illegal because it's “harmful”. If that were an accepted argument, then cigarettes and alcohol would be illegal. That would never happen because the Tobacco Lobbyists are WAY too powerful making a product that we know will kill you. Yes, this is scientifically proven. And it's not the tobacco that kills you, it's everything they add to it that kills you. Alcohol was illegal for awhile (Prohibition) when the government was trying to legislate morality, and that mistake cost them in literal blood and gave rise to organized crime. They finally had to back up off that one. But hemp had a whole different set of problems.
The reason that marijuana is illegal is because a lot of very rich timber barons who had acres and acres of trees did not want the competition that hemp could have brought them. There are probably close to a hundred different products that can be made from hemp, but they had a problem with the fact that the same amount of paper produced with an acre of trees can be produced with 1/6th of an acre of hemp, and it grows back six times faster. A guy with an acre of hemp would be able to produce over 200 times what they could produce in the same amount of time from an acre of trees. This was something they simply could not let happen back in the day, so they paid lots of money to lobby Congress and produce propaganda films depicting people high on weed committing atrocious crimes, and for the first time in history a plant, something that grows wild if left alone, was labeled illegal. So this has been going now for more than 70 years, and there is not one single shred of evidence to support many of the ridiculous claims they make against hemp.
Hemp has been smoked in China for over 10,000 years. Hemp does not cause cancer. If you are smoking it in a blunt (not a natural leaf), then it's the carcinogens in the paper that are killing you, not the weed. Marijuana is not a 'gateway' drug. That is absolutely ridiculous. Anyone who smokes will tell you, if you smoke enough THC, you won't get as high, right? (Change up your green often to prevent this... invest in some 'dro, you cheap bastards) So is it the weed's fault that it can no longer medicate you against whatever it is you're trying to escape? If you never smoked weed and simply started drinking, you would need a 'gate' to anything else, you'd just be an alcoholic. People take drugs for different reasons, and blaming the weed for not “working” is just asinine. It's just another sound-bite that sounds good when you repeat it.
There are tremendous amounts of money right now being wasted on prosecuting marijuana cases, and some are just downright heinous. Will Foster, a rheumatoid arthritis sufferer and father of two, was sentenced to 93 years in prison for charges relating to the 25-plant medical marijuana garden he grew in a locked room in his basement. Suzanne Pfeil is a paraplegic who suffers from severe pain and muscle spasms linked to post-polio syndrome. On September 5, 2002, more than 20 armed federal agents raided her medical marijuana hospice, holding assault rifles to the heads of patients and their caregivers. When Pfeil was unable to stand, the agents handcuffed her behind her back and left her on the bed for several hours. These are cases of people who have an absolute NEED for marijuana, and we simply don't give enough of a fuck to look at this and say “This is what you call a 'War On Drugs'?”
Florida right now is facing a $200 million dollar shortfall in it's budget. California is even worse. If we could legalize marijuana, tax and regulate it, turn law enforcement on drugs that really are harmful, this whole idea of a financial crisis would have a real chance of turning around a lot quicker. Instead, a Conservative Propaganda Tool like Faux News and a complete nimrod like Glenn Beck would rather be glib about it and turn it into a joke. If we really are serious about making a difference, we need to look at the ways in which we have been doing things and make some adult decisions. I'm sick of the Right constantly standing on the sideline providing nothing in the way of serious discussion and consideration.
The time has come for us to stop talking about what we can do and actually do something. Donations in any amount need to be made to organizations like the Marijuana Policy Project who are working to make reform a reality. At the very least we need to make sure people like Will Foster and Suzanne Pfeil are not treated like criminals and can get access to marijuana to make their lives better. Go to http://www.mpp.org and donate $5, $2, whatever you can afford. Simply put, we need to get our heads out of our asses and make changes. Stop swallowing the bullshit we've been fed for so many years...
-ere'bodee's favorite mega, blogninja
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