Free Advice and Opinions

It is acknowledged by “religious conservatives” that God is the Creator, the Author of All Things, seen and unseen… including marijuana and all other psychoactive substances, prohibited and unprohibited.
To prohibit any of those substances is to assert that God simply must have made a “Mistake” in putting them here, that we the “Unwashed” are incapable of using them responsibly for recreational or any other purposes. Of course the “”Anointed Conservatives”, who cannot deny that this is their assertion, are the same ones who nver tire of vacuously mouthing the phrase “personal responsibility”.

Did God in fact make a “Mistake” in Creating marijuana?

Prohibitionists will hasten to say, with no supporting evidence by the way, that marijuana is sooo much stronger today than it was in the past. No only cannot their assertion be proven, but it only tap-dances around the question: God is Omniscient, so He must have Known that humans would attempt to improve it; whether we have succeeded is a question that could only be addressed by going back in time to retrieve, or at least to test, marijuana from years gone by. Even with modern technology, it is impossible perfectly to prevent degradation of potency, so when they rummage through their “evidence rooms” to find some pot from, say, the 1960’s, what they find and test today is not what was smoked or eaten then. But even granting the tenuous thesis that today’s pot is stronger, the questions remain: Didn’t God Know we’d make it stronger if we were able? Does its putative greater potency constitute any excuse to abridge our liberty?

——
A famous talk-show host, I won’t dignify him by telling his name, asserted that “Marijuana induces violent criminal activity”. That’s a direct quote. He didn’t even use the usual “may, might, could possibly”, or any other equivocation. I haven’t looked at the latest DEA lie about how many Americans use marijuana, I’m sure they have “updated” from the lowball figure I saw on their weBSite, that 12 million Americans use pot, but let’s just generously grant that number for the sake of argument. Why, Mr. Big Talk-Show Host, are there not 12 million violent criminals running around knocking over 7-11’s, mugging little old ladies, corrupting the minds of “the children”, and generally creating mayhem?

——
Another talk-show host, a lesser light than the one cited above, once said of me, “He’s just a druggie and all he wants is to get stoned”. Again, that’s a direct quote. He said it long after I was no longer able to defend myself, because I had asked him a question he couldn’t answer so he “won” the argument with his trusty dump-button, but the amazing thing to note here is that that simpleton didn’t ask himself this question: If “to get stoned” were in fact all I wanted, why on Earth would I call a talk-radio station, to which it’s common knowledge that literally thousands of law-enforcement officers regularly listen? If it were true that “all I want is to get stoned”, I’d shut up just as all the cowardly, sneaky pot-smokers do, and skulk over to Grundy County to buy some pot.
I don’t skulk.

“The Emperor Wears No Clothes”.
God didn’t put me here to be popular or to be obsequious. Popularity is just fine, but it should be nobody’s sine qua non, and it is certainly not mine.
Why, you may ask, do I have a link to my political/ religious blog on my JRPottery webpage?
I do that as a matter of courtesy, thing one: those of you who believe I am “Unpatriotic”, or that I’m a “sinner” because I smoke pot from time to time, and I refuse to pretend to be ashamed that I “inhaled”, are free to find other artists who are more submissive.
Much more than courtesy to confused Prohibitionists motivates me though: Unscrupulous people purvey drugs because it’s easy to make a fortune doing so. In the absence of prohibition laws, commodities such as marijuana would command no greater prices than un-prohibited drugs such as tobacco or tea. Please note, the finest teas do command fairly high prices, some sell for tens of dollars per ounce. Loony terrorists don’t try to sell expensive tea on the Black Market though, because NOBODY WOULD BUY. Reputable people who don’t want to terrorize anybody already sell the best tea, just as the Coca-Cola Company used, until 1905, to sell a coca-based product at a reasonable price in this country. Very few people became “Coke-heads”, and there were ZERO drive-by shootings, turf-wars, or other money-motivated instances of violence associated with cocaine. In addition, there was no expense of incarceration. There was no expense of investigation or enforcement.
The most important reason for my public honesty about the folly and immorality of Prohibition was stated best by Patrick Henry:
Give me LIBERTY or give me death.
Don’t tell me this is the Land of the Free, when Black Helicopters fly over MY land to inspect it for marijuana, when satellites look for infrared signatures that might indicate indoor marijuana cultivation, when DEA thugs snoop around in anybody’s bank records looking for “suspicious activity”. Again, for the denser readers, large sums of money would not change hands in the first place if we were at LIBERTY to cultivate marijuana, or anything else God put here, for ourselves.
If what I write makes you uncomfortable, boycott my pottery. Better yet, sprout a pair and tell me what is wrong with Personal Responsibility and concomitant Personal Liberty.
——-
March 28
At times in this space my language has been, and will likely continue to be, inflammatory where it could be mild and conciliatory. I explain: Everyone has heard the old bromide that “you attract more flies with honey than with vinegar”. Well, honey, honey ain’t the only thing flies are known for eating, so I’m not at all interested in attracting them, numerous though they are.

The ONDCP is building a case for their new authority to make athletes pee in a cup. But oh, no, don’t you worry, the next demand suuuuurely won’t be for authority to make “normal” citizens do likewise.
You prohibitionists are pawning your liberty, about which I could not care less and which you don’t deserve anyway, but you cowards are also pawning mine.
Have a nice “Brave New World”.

I refer to “boomerang kids” of any age, as well as to young people who have not yet left their parents’ home, in this rant.
Hey Kids! You might read what I’ve written about abolition of prohibition of various means of recreation, and you might be moved to say, “Yeah, dude, right on”, and on, but please realize that so long as you live in your PARENTS’ house, you must do as they say. You are obligated to tell them where you’ve been, what you’ve done and with whom. You are not free to smoke a joint with your friends if your parents say no. If you don’t like that, or if you’re “man enough to handle it and what your folks don’t know won’t hurt ‘em”, then, my MAN, you’re MAN enough to get a job, rent an apartment, pay your taxes, FLY and BE FREE! Then you get to decide what you do, until then you must do as you’re told. If you’re not yet “of age”, you can take proof of your employment and domicile and payment of taxes, and perhaps a letter of commendation from your parents, and petition a court for Emancipation. When you can buy your own clothes, pay your own insurance, tuition, medical expenses, transportation, food, all of it, then you’re man enough or woman enough to decide what’s good for you.

This also applies to students in schools that require their students to read and abide by Student Handbooks. Just about all of them prohibit use of various drugs, and with good reason because of their legal liability, but, young folks, here’s the important thing: When you apply to the school, you SIGN a Contract. The moment you do that, you give your WORD of HONOR. Don’t break your word, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Don’t let past transgressions get you down, but really if you’re a kid at your parents’ house or at school, do as you’re told even when it chafes, and let the chafing motivate you to Fly and Be Free that much sooner.

Here’s a link

…to the document in which the ONDCP promises it will only cost a few billion over the next few years. Please take especial note of their $2+ Billion “estimated” expenditure toward “educating the children”…

…which led me to ask myself what we’re getting for our money.

Watch the “Anti-Drug” ads on your Idiot Boxes, folks, listen to them on your radios. Media outlets claim to run these ads as “PSA’s”, “Public Service Announcements”, but they do certainly receive compensation, perhaps not in specie but certainly of value, at least as a negotiating point to be used when they prostrate themselves before the (majestic clarion call, toot-toot, toot-toot) FCC to supplicate docilely for renewal of their franchises to broadcast. So the on-air time is free to the ONDCP, and the entire $2+ Billion can be used producing ads telling us all what a wonderful job they’re doing protecting us from ourselves.

But I was wondering, just what value do these PSA’s have? I don’t have an Idiot Box so I have no idea how much “Market Penetration” the ONDCP has there, but I have noted recently the increasing number of ONDCP Propaganda Service Announcements on the radio. They are especially numerous on weekends, probably because the radio stations can’t sell “Private-Sector” ads then for as much as on weekdays. What a deal for the ONDCP, and how submissive, complicit are the radio stations in this abuse, every day of the week, of the political power of mass communication.

I wonder if the radio and television stations would condescend to give similar free ads to, for instance, NORML. No, I don’t wonder, neither do you, Prohibitionists. The radio and television stations don’t wonder either, they dare not allow anything to be said that might cause their audiences to feel uncomfortable, plus there is that matter of their Masters, the (majestic clarion call, toot-toot, toot-toot) FCC.

Oh by the way, for those of you who didn’t bother to look at the first link I provided above, the new revision of the ONDCP Law empowers them to make athletes pee in a cup whenever they’re told to do so.

If you Prohibitionists can now say the ONDCP, or the FCC, is Constitutional, I want you to do something: go to a mirror, look in it, and shout LIAR

Last time I caused “Harm to Society” by smoking a joint, did your goiter act up? Did the stock market go down? I didn’t drive, of course, so I didn’t cause an automobile accident. Maybe the “Harm to Society” was that American Athletes only won a few gold medals in the Olymipcs… but wait, those kids pee in a cup every morning and it’d be an international incident worthy of UN Special Hearings if one of them “peed hot” (tested positive for pot), so we know their puerility was not caused by the eeevil gateway drug. What “Harm to Society”, then, did I cause, last time I lit a fat one? To ask the question is to answer it. I cause you NO HARM; if I have caused you harm, sue me! We live in the Land of Litigation, sue me! I’ll be glad to acquit myself before a jury of my peers, and I’ll counter-sue you for abuse of process.
Or you could always just falsely accuse me of possessing or purveying drugs, thus obtain an illegal search warrant, and plant some “evidence” in my house when you search it. Then you could throw me in the Darkest Dungeon in the Land of the Free. Think of all the “Harm to Society” you’d prevent!
If you’re “shocked, shocked” by what you’ve now read, you’d better pour yourself a stiff drink of Hypocrisy-on-the-rocks before you read what else I’ve published at www.thinkyouverymuch

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/424/wsj.shtml

When will Prohibitionists come to their senses? Well, yet another former one seems to have realized that the “Waaaar On Druuuuugs” is not the solution, and is itself a root cause of social malaise.

Did you know that the first federal law that had anything to do with marijuana was the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act, HR 6385? That’s right, it was proposed as a $100/ounce transfer tax, cast in the same mold as the 1934 Federal Firearms Act, which was deemed by the Supremes not to violate the Second Amendment because the $200 tax levied on various firearms was justified as a revenue measure. Referring to the Marijuana Tax Act, Clinton Hester, Treasury Dept. Assistant General Goon and first-ever Drug-Czar, said the following in testimony before the United States Congress: “Although the $100 Transfer Tax in this bill is intended to be prohibitive, as is the $200 Transfer Tax in the National Firearms Act, it is submitted that it is Constitutional as a revenue measure”.
Congress
was not immediately convinced by Herr Hester’s testimony. I neglected to record in my notes the name of the “Member” who queried Hester further, I can only assure you that the question was twenty minutes in the asking, but Hester assured Congressman Fatbottom that “… the rule is if on the face of the bill it appears to be a revenue bill, the Courts will not inquire into any other motives that the Congress may have had in enacting this legislation.” (Hester used awkward sentence construction throughout his testimony).

Hello, is this thing on?? Historical perspective: Alcohol Prohibition was ruled Unconstitutional by the Supremes a few years before. The Prohibitionists predicted rampant alcoholism and moral decay. Next decade, America went on to win World War II. Today’s most risible “Druuuug Warriorrr” Prohibitionists might claim that our victory was made possible in part because of the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act’s salutory effect on society, if they were aware that that law existed in the first place, but history obviously isn’t their strong suit. For giggles, though, let’s consider that position just long enough to dismiss it: In testimony before Congress regarding the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act, Harry Anslinger, Commissioner of the Bureau of Narcotics, declared that “Last year [1936] there were some 338 seizures of marijuana in some 38 states”. There you go, Druuuug Warriors, you’re “winning the War on Drugs”. There were that many arrests in Nashville last month, I’m sure! According to the DEA’s website 1211 metric tons of marijuana were seized in 2001. Too bad you didn’t listen to Dr. William C. Woodward, Legislative Counsel to the AMA. He told Congress that the Marijuana Tax Act was “utterly unsusceptible of execution”. He was correct then, but today’s technology lets Big Brother look straight up your tailpipe at will. Yes, yours too, then you can tell me how it’s for your own good, or to forestall some gaseous “Harm to Society”. Which will it be, freedom and responsibility or Big Brother?

The only way to win the “Waaaar on Druuugs” is to empower the DEA to fully “Enforce” the law- that means they’ll search your body cavities too, O Druuuug Warriors, your sock drawers, basements, attics, trunks and wheel wells; you too will have to Submit* to periodic blood and urine tests, and if you resist you will be called Unpatriotic, as I am by some fools today. Don’t think for a second that there will be one word of apology from the Druuug Warriors when History repeats itself, prohibition laws are repealed, and the world doesn’t come to a Fiery End of Divine Retribution for our having shamelessly engaged in… responsible… Recreation**.

Again I invite Prohibitionists to consider that God may have had more in mind than giving Prohibitionists something else to tell the rest of us not to do, when He Created Marijuana, and Coca, and Poppies, and all the other psychoactive things He Created… or do you Druuuug Warriors entertain the notion that the Gateway Drug was Created by the Soviets? Maybe Tim Leary and Alan Ginzburg concocted it in an Upstate New York basement in the late ’50’s?? No?? God Created these things?? Then who the Fuck*** are you Druuuug Warriors to tell anyone what to do?

We’ve tried things your way, Drug Warriors, with disastrous Alcohol Prohibition and with naturally unsuccessful, deleterious prohibitions of other drugs throughout the Twentieth Century. It is now “High” time to give substance and meaning to the often-mouthed, seldom-meant phrase, “Personal Responsibility”. That does not mean “responsibility to do as we are told”, O Drug Warriors, it means the following: I say I would cause NO “Harm to Society” by cultivating a couple of marijuana plants in my back yard. I have no opportunity to prove it because you Prohibitionists would love nothing better than to seize my property and throw me and all dissenters in prison for life. If you succeed, have a nice life in your Free-From-Harm Society. When you Drug Warriors fail, and Americans prove ourselves to be Personally Responsible despite the direst predictions of all ONDCP Sycophants, I wonder how many “Pundits” will publicly acknowledge their mistake and the Harm it has caused to Society. Blow-Reilly? Oh’ Really! He said, “Drug use induces violence”. Direct quote. Lie. Liddiot? He still excuses his own subversion of the 1972 Presidential Election. He bragged on national radio about spawning a bastard child, called it “little tyke”. Michael Sewage? The Brown-Diaper Brownshirt would drown himself in vodka before he’d ever admit he was wrong. Same’s true of just about all the other hypocrite prohibitionist blowhards on the air today, as well as all the Bobblehead Babblehead Bubblehead Bibleheads who always agree with their Patron Prohibitionists, “110%, in every way, shape, form, and fashion”.

Hey Drug Warriors:
God’s the reason drugs are here in the first place.
Hey Drug Warriors:
To “recreate” is not necessarily to “sin”, and millions demonstrate regularly the ability to recreate responsibly; if you choose not to participate, fine, have a nice life and Hereafter too.
Hey Drug Warriors:
Your Prohibition Laws are the reason there is a “Black Market”. People intentionally carry large sums of cash to places where they hope the police are not.
Hey Drug Warriors:
Your puerile, manipulative laws, and your bovine docility posing as patriotism, are much of what’s wrong with society today.

* Interesting word for that in Arabic: ISLAM
** “Pursuit of Happiness”
*** The F-bomb is pretty much ‘thermonuclear’ coming from me, as people who know me know I seldom use such language. Conciliatory language is not working.

Ron,
In your 8:30 news, you reported about a fool who claimed ownership of some marijuana that the police had; I’m sure you recall asking why we think they call it “dope”.

Implied is that all who smoke pot will certainly do such stupid things.

Your position argues from the specific to the general, thus is untenable.

Prove it? I will, at your leisure. Go to nikkei.co.jp, and see what I read every morning. Is that why they call it “dope”?

They call it “dope” in order to imply exactly what you’ve obviously been “Duped” into believing, to wit that all who use drugs (other than those drugs deemed acceptable by the government, of course) will be stupid.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t give a hoot whether you think I’m smart or stupid, I only sacrificed modesty at the altar of honesty in order to prove my point.

It is no more logical to say that all who smoke pot will stupidly incriminate themselves, than it is to say that all who smoke pot can read Japanese.

You report such instances as the self-incriminating pot-smoker, the PCP-LSD-who-knows-what-else junked up kid who foolishly got himself “tazed” to death, and innumerable other similar stories, as though they painted the whole picture. The “Statistics” bolster your prohibitionist position too, and you never pause to consider that the “Scientists” who generate those statistics are hired to do just that, yet you believe them as the “Environmentalists” believe their own “Scientists”.

The real crimes are motivated by Black Market lucre, the Black Market exists for the single purpose of subverting Prohibition Laws, therefore Prohibition Laws are the root of the problem.

John Ray

Steve responded again:

John - When you are totally innacurate in the first paragraph, I see
no reason to read further since the credibility of whatever you would
have to say is totally shot.

You have listened to the show enough to know that when the music
starts playing we have a hard break and have to go to commercials. You
can try to create a mountain out of a molehill, but it had nothing to
do with “avoiding” any questions. You know that, so your post is
additionally deceptive on that point.

Steve Gill
WWTN

Had I been totally inaccurate as Steve claims, ignoring what I said would perhaps have been warranted. I said that Steve did not address the question of how properly to levy the Unauthorized Substance Tax. He did not. He refuses to address the other issues I raised by protesting that I said something inaccurate when I did not. I asked the question because the remainder of my thesis follows logically. The Muslim “Infidel Tax” is levied on people for not doing as they’re told, the “Unauthorized Substance Tax” is levied on people who do what they’re told not to do. “Not a dime’s worth of difference”, as they say.

I know about radio commercials, as well as I know about staying on hold for an hour and a half, to be cut off right in the middle of the word “Prohibition”. If I was in fact deceptive, why do the questions remain unanswered? Steve views the Black Market and Public Corruption as “molehills”, or so he claims. I believe he’s stuck his fingers in his ears and is saying nothing more meaningful than ,”LALALALA I can’t hear what you’re saying!”

I’m still waiting for Steve or anyone else to address any of the issues I raised. They may be Molehills, but they’ll do until some Mountains come along.

Actually, I said I don’t know, but I suppose they base it on
the “retail” or street value of the drugs. Just because you don’t like
an answer doesn’t mean the question was avoided.

Steve Gill
WWTN

The question, avoided again, was how the “retail” or street value of the drugs was determined. My essay further invited attentive readers to consider any moral questions attending the issue, but Steve avoided that altogether as you can see.