witchwindy

witchwindy 9 months ago

electropig is right.

“I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”
–James Madison

We have been losing freedoms for a very long time. Since 1913, in fact. For a perfect example of how it happens go here:
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/media/rlmiller.htm
Recognize what i being done to us and fight it, or go down the same road as pre WWII Germany and end up less than slaves to the state.

witchwindy 9 months ago

Actually, they need to count the votes for all the drug war issue ideas posted and add them up to get close to the real nuimber of supporters. Yes, I know some of us have voted on each of those issues, but that merely makes up for those who never have come to this site but who do support reform of the drug laws.

If one has a basic knowledge of the Constitution, one knows the government has no legitimate Constitutional authority to tell the people they may not ingest this substance or that one

witchwindy 9 months ago

It's the indoctrination they receive in school, and the propaganda from the media 24/7. Too much statism and collectivism is promoted and not near enough individualism and libertarianism. That 12-16 years of indoctrination, along with the propaganda and lack of balance between philosophies leads to people not understanding true freedom. They are totally reliant on the state for their opinions, and also (all too often) for their incomes, and safety --which the state cannot really provide except in defense of our borders from attacks and invasions by other nations (tho, for the past 3 decades or so, they've been so focused on going after those who possess and smoke a little pot, and making war on other nations, to do that border protection job properly). We need as many libertarian voices in the media as we have liberals and conservatives, so that people can really hear ALL sides and make an educated choice. I really think the trend right now is toward regaining our freedoms, but there are still so many who really prefer to be dictated to.

witchwindy 9 months ago

There are so many laws on the books at each level of government it would be impossible for any one person to know all of them. Hell, it would be impossible for any one person to know even one tenth of them!

It is long past time to stop making new laws, at every level of government, and begin to eliminate unnecessary laws (marriage licenses, etc.), stupid laws (no horses in cars, etc.), laws that cause more harm than they prevent (drug banning laws, etc.), etc., at every level of government.

witchwindy 9 months ago

Absolutely test them for alcohol, after all it IS a drug, and a far more destructive drug than all the illicit ones put together.

witchwindy 9 months ago

How about all three?

witchwindy 9 months ago

Well stated matt, kudos!

witchwindy 9 months ago

jwelborn is right, these are posted as satire. What is truly worrisome are the votes FOR these proposals by ricardomigrant.

witchwindy 9 months ago

sobi is right, the government had no Constitutional authority to criminalize the use of any substance, and we should NOT have to beg the government to give us back our Rights which it had no legitimate authority to remove in the first place.

witchwindy 9 months ago

Common sense. Unfortunately, our elected members of government have nothing that even approaches common sense.

witchwindy 9 months ago

Currently, counting the numbers for all the topics related to ending prohibition, there are 2259 votes for ending the war on drugs. This idea thread o that topic is the one with the greatest number of up votes, if all were combined under this one it might outnumber all other topics in terms of support.

witchwindy 9 months ago

I got this in today's email:
Believe it or not

You might want to tell your doctor if you've been starting each morning with a bowl of Cheerios. Wouldn't want to invite any nasty interactions with any other drugs you're on.

Wait...what? Any OTHER drugs?

That's right—according to our old friends the FDA, the marketing speech (specifically their claim that Cheerios are "clinically proven to lower cholesterol") used by General Mills classifies Cheerios as a drug.

So General Mills is in "serious violation" of federal rules, and they have to stop using this marketing language unless they can get a new drug application approved.

You know, I criticize the FDA for allowing Big Pharma to put dangerous, life-threatening drugs on the market. But this really puts things in perspective. After all, how could they possibly focus their attention on all of that when they've got a "serious violation" like this to take care of?

Yours in good health,

Christine O'Brien

The above is just one more of the ridiculous actions the FDA has taken over recent years. There are far more dangerous actions it has taken, to wit, approved drugs that later have to be removed from the market due to deadly effects, cozying up to Big Pharma, trying to discourage and even ban the use of supplements and herbals, etc.. It is time to disband the FDA (among other unconstitutional, ineffective, or corrupt agencies -- almost all "alphabet agencies"). Let the private sector take over. We need more private agencies to take over for government agencies which are not doing their job, doing their job poorly, or are just plain unnecessary and wasteful.

Alternatively we could break the FDA up into two divisions, one to deal with food, the other to deal with pharmaceutical drugs, and then divide it further -- into 50 agencies for each of those two divisions, one of each in each state, with it requiring unanimous agreement from all 50 of the drug division before a drug is approved for market.

The food division should be merely a food safety watchdog agency and have all foods including meats and fish under their purview, with power only to inspect foods and warn about possible contamination, not to ban or promote. That way the USDA could better do their job of overseeing the cleanliness of slaughterhouses, feedlots, etc..

witchwindy 9 months ago

a.klassycat, that is why manufactured drugs should be regulated either via the alcohol model or th prescription model. When "speed" was available which was pharmacy made there were no meth labs. Restricting the prescribing of drugs like biphetamine 20s (known back then as "black beauties") is what led to the meth labs. People were determined to get that speed high and so they began manufacturing their own (like bathtub gin and moonshine during prohibition 1.0 and the meth they create is frequently as dangerous and deadly as those two forms of alcohol were during prohibition -- you've heard the tales of blindness and deaths from imbibing those homemade forms of alcohol) But the pharmaceutical versions, because they were free of impurities and dosage controlled, didn't cause any problems to the casual user. Regulation and commercial production is the only answer for those kinds of drugs.

witchwindy 9 months ago

Congress "weighs" nothing! They don't write the bills themselves, they don't read the bills themselves, they add "amendments" to the bill that none of the other members of congress bothers to read, and most often those "amendments" do not amend the bill because the amendments are things which are totally unrelated to the bill. When they "debate" the bill they don't come close to really debating it, nor are they concerned about unintended consequences or if it is even Constitutional. They vote on every bill depending on which Big interest gave them the most money and they vote in the way that interest wants them to vote, they don't give a damn about how their constituents feel about it. Witness the bailouts under both Bush and O, their calls and emails from constituents (according to my so-called "representative" in the House) were 50% "NO!" and 50% "HELL NO!", but he (and almost all the rest) voted yes, anyway.

Passing the three bills put up by DownsizeDC, and one introduced by Ron Paul, would help, immensely, those bills are:
The Write the Bills Act, which would allow only members of Congress to write a bill.
The One Subject at a Time Act, which addresses the issue we are discussing.
The Read the Bills Act, which would force EVERY member of Congress to have read the bill before voting on it.
Rep. Paul's bill would require that every piece of legislation introduced to Congress have the exact portion of the Constitution which authorizes the central government to do what the bill covers cited in the bill. It of course is intended to prevent future un-Constitutional laws from being passed. No one has yet introduced a bill to wipe all previous un-Constitutional legislation from the books, but someone surely should!

witchwindy 9 months ago

This wonderful comment came from StoptheDrugWar.org:
Zogby says we Already Have a Majority -- So lets end it now!
Comment posted by NoireeAxors NoireeAxors on Fri, 05/29/2009 - 12:06pm
There is no need to wait any longer. Call you representatives today and simply say: "either legalize under the MERP Model or loose you job in 2010. We are not kidding about this any longer"

The only model that will wipe out the Drug Cartels is one where individuals can grow their own: No Taxes, No Regulations, No More Drug Cartels.

The MERP Model is the answer and neither Dave Borden, nor anyone else in the "moneyed movement" will allow a discussion about their "tax and regulate" model Vs the real solution: No Taxes, No Regulations! for Personal Cultivation.

That is because George Soros is pulling the strings so he can profit from a highly regulated, government controlled model of legalization that WILL NOT destroy the Cartels. Read all about it right here:

How the Marijuana Re-Legalization Movement Has Been Betrayed by Soros, Nadleman (DPA) and Kampia (MPP)
http://www.newagecitizen.com/MERP/RelegalizeNowObama08.htm

For numerous essays and videos on MERP:

MERP Headquarters
The Marijuana Re-Legalization Policy Project (MRPP)
http://www.newagecitizen.com/MERP.htm

It continues to mystify me why the TAX and REGULATE model is the apparently preferred model for so many reformers.

We didn't have a tax and regulate model before 1913... why can't we go back to that.

witchwindy 9 months ago

Come on people let's just relegalize it, for EVERY use, not just medical, thereby removing it from the controlled substances schedule completely.

witchwindy 9 months ago

If you support this idea, then go to this site and send your thoughts to your congressional delegation on the subject, ask them to sponsor this bill (One Subject at a Time Act) so that it gets to the floor for a vote:
http://www.downsizedc.org/etp/campaigns/83

witchwindy 9 months ago

mrmikemiller, and whomever first posted that thought about MJ being "no more harmful than alcohol or tobacco", I really need to point out here that MJ is NOT at all harmful, that aspirin/ibuprofin/acetaminophen you take for a headache is more harmful than cannabis/pot/weed/MJ/marijuana, look it up -- how many people die from a standard dosage of each of those substances each year -- it will floor you, no one has EVER died from a standard dosage of pot.

witchwindy 9 months ago

rsgallaher, you are right about the leeches feeding off the "war on drugs" teat. Those who are already part of the government (DEA, ONDCP and other drug warrior agencies must be disbanded, first) could be transferred to the Border Patrol to catch the terrorists before they get in, or join the Coast Guard or the National Guard in a state where they prefer to live ready to help out for disaster relief or fight wildfires. A beefed up Border Patrol would also be there on the borders to turn back those trying to illegally immigrate to our country, they could pass out the paperwork to achieve legal immigration, and even help those potential immigrants fill it out. Those jobs would be far more useful to, and a lot more popular with, the citizenry than the jobs they are doing now.

The judges, lawyers and prison guards will still have jobs, prisons are not going away anytime soon, we still have murderers, rapists, arsonists and wife/child beaters in our populace. I think non-violent offenders should NOT go to prison, prison is a school for violent criminals in how to do their nasty work easier, faster, and without getting caught the next time -- we don't want non-violent offenders (thieves, vandals, etc.) learning any of that. So, we need to provide a different answer for non-violent offenders, such as community service and/or home incarceration, along with mandatory restitution to the victim (rather than a fine to the state -- which doesn't make the victim whole again).

Those who are participants in the black market (drug dealers) will have to turn to the legal market to earn their living, won't they? And that would be a good thing for our economy -- new, legal, business startups are always a welcome thing. The gangs and cartels, which are the source of most of the prohibition related violence -- law enforcement is the source of the rest, usually during "dynamic entries" (which are stupid way of enforcing prohibition just begging for gunfights and ending all too often with death, of the possibly guilty, or the probably innocent, or even one or more of the cops themselves), would no longer have the power or the money to continue their mayhem.

Relegalization of all drugs would, in the end, have way more benefits to our society than costs.

witchwindy 9 months ago

You are incorrect, bellevuedan. Bipolar disorder is genetic, pot has nothing to do with it, tho some who have the disorder use pot to mellow the manic phase rather than rely on prescription meds which make them feel disassociated. Pot does absolutely NO damage to the brain or any other part of the body, our brains have receptor sites for cannabinoids, there is a reson for that. It has been shown to cure cancer:
http://www.phoenixtearsmovie.com/
also, do a search on "Run from the Cure the Rick Simpson story".

witchwindy 9 months ago

I support the FULL RELEGALIZATION of ALL drugs, but not the taxation or strict regulation of cannabis under the alcohol model. I prefer the MERP model for all natural drugs (cannabis, mushrooms, salvia, etc.), the alcohol model for manufactured hallucinogens (LSD, MDMA, etc.) and the prescription model for processed drugs (cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines). If you look at the actual effects of each of the mind altering drugs, individually, you should be able to understand why this is the common sense way relegalization should be handled. Unfortunately, there has not been much in the way of common sense in government, and our laws, for a very, very long time -- almost since about the third or fouth presidential administration. Don't you think it is time bring common sense back into the equation?

witchwindy 9 months ago

DownsizeDC had this idea long ago, join them and you can help bring this change about. ere is a protion of their latest email to members:
Quote of the Day: "Students of American history will recall that the important place where work gets done in the legislative body, almost without exception, is in the committees, more so than on the floor although sometimes more attention is paid to the floor." - Paul Sarbanes

Subject: Common sense

Each year the Iraq-Afghanistan spending bill comes loaded with extras that remind us how much we need the One Subject At A Time Act.

Because few in Congress will vote against a bill that "supports the troops," this bill provides an opportunity for legislative abuse . . .

Four years ago, the otherwise unpopular Real ID Act was attached to the Iraq bill and became law
Last year, $95 billion in domestic spending was added to the Iraq bill in exchange for Democratic support for the warrantless spying and telecom immunity bill.
The House and Senate conference committee will soon meet to work out differences in this year's bill. It is unknown what tricks they'll have up their sleeve, but the bill, H.R. 2346, is already bad enough. In addition to funding the wars, there is money for the BATFE, federal prisons, foreign aid, the War on Drugs, forest fire management, and other programs. The total price tag is over $900 per family.

Downsize DC's proposed One Subject At A Time Act (OSTA) would prevent the bundling of these different topics into one bill. Instead, each subject would be voted on as a separate bill. Necessary bills will still pass, but unpopular measures won't. The country would be spared the cost of programs most members of Congress didn't want in the first place.

If members of Congress had common sense, they would actually want to live under OSTA's constraints. Then they could vote for a reasonable and necessary bill without being forced to accept unnecessary, unrelated provisions. Whether the U.S. should fight these wars, and whether the federal government should provide more money for wildland fire management, are two completely unrelated questions. Members of Congress who support one but oppose the other shouldn't be forced to either accept both or reject both.

witchwindy 9 months ago

One more thing, we should NEVER incarcerate non-violent offenders in the same prisons as violent criminals, which is why I suggested home incarceration and halfway houses for non-violent crimes.

witchwindy 9 months ago

jwelborn3434, have you ever seen the inside of jail or prison? Most of them are filthy holes, the guards are often sadistic, the food more garbage than healthful.

If we want those who are jailed/imprisoned to come out of incarceration with a healthy attitude, "rehabilitated", ready to be law abiding, productive citizens (for the first time or again), then we are certainly NOT going to achieve that goal the way we are currently doing things. Our governments and our society are far too focused on punishment (and cruel punishment, at that) and not enough on rehabilitation and/or restitution (restitution -- making the victim whole again). Therefore, I have some common sense suggestions as to how to change that.

Inmates should be well fed with a nutritionally sound diet and allowed the occasional non-nutritional treat, they should be allowed adequate time in the sunlight to build Vitamin D (if sunlight is lacking, their diets should be supplemented with Vitamin D-3), and they should be allowed sufficient exercise, we need to keep them completely healthy, anything less is inhumane. We prosecute an animal owner for not providing at least that much for their animal(s), so why should jails and prisons be allowed to deprive inmates of their full health with impunity?.

Inmates should also be protected from the violence of other inmates, and sadistic guards, particularly those inmates who are incarcerated pre-trial (where and when the hell did the idea of "presumed innocence" disappear?) and especially those who have been convicted of non-violent and/or victimless "crimes". Again we would do whatever we could to protect an abused animal, why do we allow PEOPLE to be mistreated this way? That Sheriff in AZ, Arpaio?, is an excellent example of what NOT to do, he should be incarcerated himself, one week, under his own rules, for treating those inmates the way he does, perhaps he'd come out the other side with a bit more compassion.

You should recall that many of those incarcerated are innocent of the charges against them (just look at the recent cases where DNA has shown quite a few people who were convicted to be innocent; and also there has been a lot of coverage lately of cases where poor, or even criminal, forensic practices and/or police tactics convicted innocent people of crimes) sometimes those innocents spend decades in prison before their innocence comes to light. How do you think those innocents feel once they are free? Angry? Resentful? How should they feel?

If every innocent person who was convicted under any questionable circumstances were to sue the prosecutors in their cases, I'm certain that we'd soon see a lot more careful attention to making certain ALL the evidence clearly shows the suspect as the ONLY possible perpetrator of the crime before taking the case to trial. Unfortunately, most of those freed innocents just want to move on, live their lives, and forget all about those months or years in prison; so the abuses continue.

Every court system (municipal, district, superior and federal) in the nation should have a division of advocates for the families of the defendants to help them navigate the labyrinth of the "justice" system (at least until the unjust system is actually made just again). This could be an agency made up of volunteers or paid employees or any combination of those, but they should be all about helping the families understand what is happening, where to go for hearings and court dates, a list of Attorneys and a notation which ones are willing to take on pro bono cases, what the rules are (re: the defendant, the court, the jail, the bail, etc.), what they can do to help the defendant, the defense, and each other, etc.. The voters in the locality of each court's venue should have the choice which system would be put in place -- volunteerism, taxpayer provided, or a mix -- if taxpayers are to provide the funding for the service. Alternatively, it could be funded by donations.

To expand on the pro bono thought, attorneys should be encouraged to take at least one case a month pro bono. the public defender system is too overloaded and therefore is to focused on plea bargaining. Plea bargaining is not a bargain, for either the victim or the defendant. If the defendant is innocent of any wrongdoing he is encouraged, often coerced, into taking a plea bargain just to get out of jail, now, or the prospect of getting out sooner. If the defendant is guilty, s/he is getting away with being convicted on a lesser crime, probably getting lighter sentence, and therefore the victim loses out on real justice in the long run.

Of course, a good percentage of the reason why the courts, public defenders offices and jails/prisons are so overwhelmed and overcrowded is due to the so called "war on drugs". End that and a whole lot of these problems go away by themselves. The police would have more time and resources to devote to doing a thorough investigation. The courts would have fewer cases on the dockets and would no longer need to encourage plea bargains or to push cases through too quickly for a truly fair trial. The prisons would have room for the truly violent and dangerous among us who truly need to be kept apart from society. Halfway houses, and leg bracelet/home incarceration could take care of those who are guilty of lesser crimes, and jails could then be left for only the pretrial flight risks and the overnight stays of the drunk, the disorderly, the DUIs, etc..

So having the incarcerated work at a job that teaches them a marketable skill would help them transition from prison to freedom, not to mention keep them occupied while incarcerated, so they have less time to learn better methods of committing crimes from fellow inmates.

witchwindy 9 months ago

From DownsizeDC:
Our goal is to constantly grow larger and stronger in order to...

* Exert relentless, overwhelming, resistance numbing pressure on Congress
* Make our ideas heard by everyone, everywhere, every day
* Attract opportunistic politicians who will want to march in front of our Big Parade

Achieving these goals will Downsize DC. We know of no other way to do the job...

* You can't win a political contest if you're outnumbered
* You can't win an argument if your voice isn't heard

So we keep pushing on these essential things in our relentless way. The result in May was more progress...

* We bombarded Congress with 36,512 messages, exceeding what we did in April by 4,782
* 610 new people registered to use our Educate the Powerful System (this one is down from 710 last month)
* We recruited 424 net new members, as opposed to 302 net new members in April
* Net growth for the year now stands at 1,079
* The Downsize DC Army now stands at 25,428
* It took us 176 days to grow from 24,000 to 25,000, but now we've grown nearly 43% of the way from 25k to 26k in just 31 days.

The more who join and use the system to contact Congress the stronger will be our voice to make Congress behave Constitutionally, if every one who believes government has gotten far too big, too intrusive and far too controlling would join DownsizeDC we'd win against the Big Government proponents. There really are more of us, but too few of us actually try to do anything about stopping the growth and unbearable nosiness of government, but Downsize DC makes it so easy to do something. It takes less than 2 minutes to send a message to Congress once you are signed up. So please sign up.

witchwindy 9 months ago

The FDA must be disbanded entirely and replaced by private agencies like the Underwriters Laboratories, and Good Housekeeping's Seal of Approval, I trust both those agencies, I would never buy an electrical item that didn't have the UL label. Would you? But I do NOT trust the FDA, they are far too close to Big Pharma and have allowed far too many deadly drugs on the market that later have to be recalled, and dragged their feet on others cacusing many to die waiting for a drug's approval. I would defund and disband the DEA and many other agencies as well, most of which have far outlived their usefulness and become tyrannous.

witchwindy 9 months ago

It all comes down to self ownership, our bodies are our property, our bodies (and our income) are NOT owned by government, as our property we have the full Constitutional Right to ingest whatever we please, and to decorate or treat or use our own bodies however we please, as long as what we do does NOT interfere with the rights of others to do what they want with their bodies.

witchwindy 9 months ago

I like hamptonrachel20025's idea, federal minimum wage paid for inmates in the federal system who work, and each state should enact similar using teir minimum wage). The jobs should be jobs that benefit society, like the training of help dogs (guide dogs, etc.) that is done in the women's prison in WA state. Better they get training in a job skill they can use once they are freed than that they just get an education how to better commit crimes.

witchwindy 9 months ago

Full agreement with bre2002, extend it to all illicit drug users.

witchwindy 9 months ago

I prefer the "MERP" model for re-legalization of cannabis, but I do prefer the "legalize, tax and regulate similar to alcohol" model for other currently illicit drugs. I would also like to point out that mostof what is called "drug related crime" is actually "prohibition related crime", get rid of prohibition 2.0 and get rid of all that crime, it also would end the power of the cartels and gangs -- no black market, no money for cartels and gangs and we all know that if there is no money, there is also no power. Additionally, there is all the money that would be saved in the areas of law enforcement, and courts, and prisons -- 800,000 people investigated, arrested, tried and imprisoned for drug "crimes" adds up to a huge cost to the taxpayers every year, not to mention the ongoing costs of keeping a prison population of over two million. Plus how many of you have been pretty much brushed off by the cops when reporting a burglary or other theft type crime? Legalizing all drugs under the two models I listed above would free up the time and respources for the police to investigate all property crimes (including the minor ones they now brush off) in addition to the violent ones (murder, assault, etc.), making a much safer life for every American and all tourists/visitors.

witchwindy 9 months ago

I encourage everyone who supports this idea, join DownsizeDC, they have the One Subject at a Time Act already written and just need people to pressure their congress members to sponsor it, so it gets to the floor for a vote. They also have the REad the Bills Act and the Write the Bills Act, where only members of congress would be allowed to write legislation, no more lobbying orgs or businesses or NGOs writing legislation which congress then votes on without reading.

witchwindy 9 months ago

Please join DownsizeDC to push this idea forward faster, they've been pushing the Read the Bills Act for a few years now, and the more people who use their system of contacting congress, the more likely this bill will pass. While there, read about the Write the Bills Act and the One Subject at a Time Act, too.

witchwindy 9 months ago

Actually it would help, there are a maximum number of 31 days in a month, so at the very most it owuld only be stretching one's budget by one day rather than the sometimes 6 days that happens, now. And this does affect me almost every month, too. It makes my checking account go into the red when it stretches from 4 weeks to almost 5, costing me overdraft fees I cannot afford on my limited income.

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