| Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ |
By Ron Marczyk, RN
“It is clear that we’re in the midst of a serious national conversation about marijuana.” ~ Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske
Let’s start that serious national conversation about marijuana! Seventy-five years late is better than never. Why now? Because marijuana legalization support is growing and is more popular by several points then any politician in the country!
This new marijuana majority has the momentum, the votes and the moral high ground; if you support prohibition you are showing your age and your lack of medical science knowledge and you shouldn’t be in office making decisions that affect young people 18-34 who are the new face of America.
This new marijuana spring just gave birth to legalization.
| The Kids Window |
| Do you feel it…? The Berlin Wall of marijuana prohibition is crumbling before our eyes |
There ain’t no stopping this good thing. Those running for any public office in the future would be wise to join the winning side and come in for the big win with us.
Cannabis will be completely legal in the US by 2020, two presidential cycles from now. The writing is on the wall, and the simple age demographics of the U.S. assure it.
Our first serious national topic of conversation: Stop this War on Marijuana
Marijuana prohibition has wounded our nation, and we need to stop this bleeding.
| Photobucket |
For no cost, our nation could be healed with the stroke of a pen overnight!
A compassionate example would be:
• An executive order of nationwide amnesty for any nonviolent person in prison or awaiting trail for marijuana possession and/or growing;
• A retroactive, blanket pardon of any nonviolent person convicted of marijuana possession who is still alive;
• Lifting all restrictions on medical researchers’ access to independently supplied cannabis for medical study purposes.
| Eliza Wiley/Helena Independent Record [Williams]; Cannabis Culture [Sandusky] |
| Chris Williams, left, accepted a plea deal and faces from five years in federal prison. He will be sentenced next month. Aaron Sandusky, right, got 10 years in federal prison — and a condescending lecture from the judge |
These brave men are not criminals. Hey Mr. President, I have an idea: why not pardon these men and invite them to an unplugged beer summit at the White House as payback for all the votes we gave you in good faith? I still believe in your good will.
| Marijuana Policy Project |
Our country is ending our second overseas war–why not make it three? End this war here at home. We are very good at protecting everybody else in the world–when are we going to protect and care for our own? We are not the enemy.
This serious conversation may lead to some uncomfortable truths about our nation, but ultimately it needs to end with a nationwide marijuana reconciliation which starts with amnesty for all, traditional when a war ends.
Surely simple marijuana possession and growing is no worse than crashing the nation’s banking system for trillions of dollars with nobody going to jail. See what we mean?
| ACLU |
| Our planet, our plant, our right… we will be free. |
| hamstar |
“I guess it makes a difference when marijuana legalization gets more votes than your boss does in an important swing state, as happened in Colorado this last election” ~ Tom Angell, Marijuana Majority
Our second serious national topic of c
onversation: Cannabis is the safest plant-based medicine on Earth!
onversation: Cannabis is the safest plant-based medicine on Earth!
Please explain why marijuana is considered dangerous when 1,993 legal deaths take place every day from four government regulated items vs. zero marijuana deaths ever.
Let me explain…
| SodaHead |
| What’s missing? The “Lives Saved By Marijuana” version of this chart! |
Today in the U.S., one can purchase all matter of items that can and do kill.
Need evidence? Let’s see…
A semi automatic assault rifle — Status: Legal
Causes: 87 gun deaths and 183 injuries per day in the US! Annual cost: 100 billion dollars per year.
Marijuana saves lives by reducing suicide. Including those in law enforcement.
A bottle of alcohol — Status: Legal
Number of alcoholic liver disease deaths: 15,183
Number of alcohol-induced deaths, excluding accidents and homicides: 24,518
Alcohol killed 39,701 Americans in 2009: 109 people killed per day!
The LD 50 for alcohol: What is the lethal dose?
“To place this in perspective, a 100-pound woman or man who consumed 9-10 standard drinks, respectively, in less than an hour, would be in the LD 50 range. A 200-pound man would have to consume about 5-6 drinks per hour for 4 hours to reach the LD 50. Although such high rates of consumption are atypical of most situations, participating in drinking games or club initiations often involves highly unregulated alcohol consumption. Impaired judgment from intoxication, coupled with large amounts of alcohol, is a potentially fatal combination.”
As little as 9-10 ounces of alcohol can kill you — About 1/3 of a bottle of a legal GOVERNMENT controlled product.
The LD 50 marijuana: What is the lethal dose?
When THC is tested for its LD 50 in rats, researchers have a problem: They can’t seem to kill the rats with THC, no matter how hard they try! THC is just too damn safe.
A pack of cigarettes — Status: legal
443,000 deaths annually (including deaths from secondhand smoke).
| Wealth to Health |
Causes: 1,213 direct cancer deaths per day from smoking cigarettes in the US. That’s equal to four fully loaded jumbo jets crashing and burning and not one single person walking away every day in the U.S.!
Cigarette smoking costs more than $193 billion per year (i.e., $97 billion in lost productivity plus $96 billion in health care expenditures).
Prescription Drug Overdoses: A U.S. Epidemic — Status: Legal
Causes 74 deaths per day in U.S.
So, let’s see: that’s 1,993 deaths per day from four legal products that you can buy all in the same day, and probably in one giant superstore!
1993 legal deaths per day vs. zero marijuana deaths, ever.
Cannabis is the safest plant-based medicine on the earth!
And prohibitionists have the nerve to say marijuana is dangerous?
Their hidden agenda is they see marijuana prohibition as a a growth industry where corporate profits can be made by locking up young adults and offering drug treatment. They make money by destroying other people’s lives.
And where are all the death certificates that list marijuana as the direct cause of death?
[Insert sound of crickets here]
Cannabis: it’s not for everybody, but at least it will not kill you, no matter how much you consume.
FACT: zero deaths, ever!
Marijuana saves lives by reducing anger, aggressiveness, anxiety and depression.
Future topics for any prohibitionist who would like to enter our serious national conversation about marijuana. Answers requested please.
| The Blaze |
| Future President Barack Obama with the Choom Gang, a marijuana-smoking club at his high school in Hawaii |
• If you believe marijuana damages young brains and destroys motivation, how did the President, who was a serious marijuana smoker in his youth, rise to the highest office in the land for two terms?
• Please give the nation a short history lesson -explain to the nation how marijuana became illegal in 1937 and why?
| Cannabis in falling pianos is also a hazard. |
• Please explain to Hispanic and African Americans how mari
juana was used to discriminate against their great-grandparents.
juana was used to discriminate against their great-grandparents.
• Please explain why the US government knew in 1973 that cannabinoids from marijuana treated and appeared to cure cancer, but shut down the government-funded study?
• Please explain to the nation why the U.S. government holds a patent on medical cannabinoids?
• Please explain the catch-22 of not going after medical marijuana patients, but raiding the clinics where these patients get their medicine and jailing the providers, forcing the patients into the black market.
Outlawing marijuana because of outdated fears of addiction and teen use is just a smokescreen; the reason goes deeper than that. Cannabis as a therapeutic agent can eliminate the need for alcohol, nicotine and many prescription drugs, and makes you so calm you probably wouldn’t want to shoot things, either.
| TopNug |
Peanuts alone kill 100 people a year in the US. Imagine that! “Marijuana safer then peanuts!”
Did you know that if you go to a an E.R. for any reason and if, when your history is being taken, you admit to smoking marijuana, your E.R. visit is now coded in billing as a “an emergency room marijuana-related visit”?
That is how they generate their false anti-marijuana “data.”
Here’s what they’re not telling you:
Marijuana saves lives by reducing anger, aggressiveness, anxiety and depression.
Marijuana saves lives by increasing, joy, compassion, insight and treatment of illness and disease.
Cannabis is so nontoxic it does not even move the needle on this chart of nontoxic – poison scale below. Please find alcohol, tobacco and caffeine for yourself.
imgur.com
Editor’s note: Ron Marczyk is a retired high school health education teacher who taught Wellness and Disease Prevention, Drug and Sex Ed, and AIDS education to tee
ns aged 13-17. He also taught a high school International Baccalaureate psychology course. He taught in a New York City public school as a Drug Prevention Specialist. He is a Registered Nurse with six years of ER/Critical Care experience in NYC hospitals, earned an M.S. in cardiac rehabilitation and exercise physiology, and worked as a New York City police officer for two years. Currently he is focused on how evolutionary psychology explains human behavior. |