The things that go through my head

Since this blog has been all pot all the time for the last little while, so reviving my Friday 4:20 series seems rather pointless but I’m doing it anyway.  All I have is this excellent article from cannabis crusader Marc Emery, imploring everybody to vote for the BC Greens in the upcoming provincial election.  He does a good job of explaining, once again, why prohibition kills and why we need a better drug policy and less drug enforcement.

I hope everybody has a great weekend.   As I write this post, it’s snowing outside.  Stupid snow! The kids and I have to trudge through the snow to deliver the flyers.

I may indulge in a barley sandwich.  Then again, maybe I won’t.

This week I bring you an appalling drug policy story that I saw while perusing the excellent Drugnews Digest at The Media Awareness Project. They are an excellent news site, compiling drug policy news stories from around the world. Check them out. Anyway, we North Americans live privileged pampered lives at the expense of people living on the other side of the world. No wonder shopping at Wal-Mart is a tool of the patriarchy, as all of their goods are cheap crap from China. But it isn’t just our rich white honky lifestyles that hurt people. Just consider the damage that international drug policy has had on disadvantaged groups from around the world.

In the name of eliminating drug crops, dangerous, poisonous pesticides rain down from the sky. This has been going on in Columbia for many years in an attempt to kill the drug crops. What has been the result of this policy? The governments spend billions of dollars on drug eradication and drugs are more widely available at cheaper prices every year. According to the US governments own statistics, drug production in Columbia is up by 36%! AY-YI-YI!!! This should be a good enough reason to lay off of the aerial drug eradication poison. But no! I bring you more bad news.

A group of 100 widows in Columbia that started a farm, after tragically losing their loved ones, recently lost their crops due to aerial eradication. Unfortunately, Teresa Ortega and her group are just one of 10 000 farmers that reported losing their crops in recent years.

What the hell are we thinking, to allow this to go on year after year?

Instead of coming to their senses and legalizing all drugs, likely some disconnected government agency will issue a report shaming the cocaine addicts in Hollywood for the fact that their habit probably came at the expense of someone’s hard-earned food crops. Stupid government. #%$@#$^#^%^%^#

Good news, all you pot-smokers and drug policy reform activists and members of the reality based community. Obama’s attorney general made a public statement vowing to knock off the federal medical marijuana raids.

“No,” he said. “What the president said during the campaign, you’ll be surprised to know, will be consistent with what we’ll be doing in law enforcement. He was my boss during the campaign. He is formally and technically and by law my boss now. What he said during the campaign is now American policy.”

I love that dig at the previous administration. Unlike Bush, the president will now keep his promises. ZING! Well, he better, or I will have to rename my phone and he can’t be having that.

Thanks to my friend Ken, I have even more links to check out in relation to this story. Cannabis culture covered this story as well as the San Francisco Gate.

Guess where I got this awesome picture of a cannabis plant?

I got it from a perfectly legal local medical marijuana grow. My friend the grower is allowed to grow twenty five plants by the government. He has a license over the door of his grow room. He has a drip irrigation hydroponic system with six pipes all fed by a twenty five gallon reservoir. He has to add lots of water to the reservoir every day and change the nutrient solution once a week. Pretty sweet deal, eh? It was the first time I had ever seen the inside of a real live grow room, legal or not. I am so jealous.

I now know three people with legal medical marijuana grows. I can remember when nobody could get permission to grow this beautiful plant. Things are looking up. Overgrow the government! There is a light at the end of the tunnel and it’s not an oncoming train. Hooray!

And now for something completely different. I was contemplating my weekly drug policy post and I came to the realization that I have never properly explained why I care so much about the legal status about my favorite plant, the much maligned and demonized cannabis. Cannabis AKA reefer, demon weed, marijuana, mary-jane, pot or grass, just to name a few of the commonly used euphemisms. You may think that there are more important causes in the world to get behind, such as ending wars, animal cruelty, feminism, domestic violence, sexual abuse, poverty, exploitation and starvation, to name a few. You may even be right about that. Everybody is entitled to their opinion. But I do believe that drug prohibition in general and cannabis prohibition in particular is a blind spot for many people in our world. I would point to the recent Michael Phelps debacle to illustrate this point, as well as the ongoing raids of medical marijuana dispensaries in the US, no-knock raids and the upcoming targetting of the opium farmers in Afghanistan.

The world has many problems and the deadly drug policy imposed and maintained by the various governments of the world should be a concern and a mainstream issue.  But it’s not.  If you see a media story about drugs, often it’s to demonize pot-smokers or to legitimize the drug war.  Very few people have a strong opinion in favor of cannabis.  The ones that do are shy about mentioning it (myself included.) There aren’t enough people out there, especially in Saskatoon, that are working to educate the public about the harms caused by prohibiting cannabis.  Not to mention, all the people that remain in the dark about the health benefits that many people experience due to their medicinal use.

Cannabis is the underdog and I always root for the little guy.

Happy Birthday to Me,

Happy Birthday to Me,

Happy Biiiiiirthday to Meeeeeee-eeeee!

Happy Birthday to Meeeeee!

And many more.

One year closer to death, as my old man always says.  Now have some cake!  I don’t feel like complaining about the stupid drug laws today.

Even though my man Barry Obamanated the global gag rule, and thus the beautiful phrase “Obamanate” was born, Barry continues to dis my favorite plant. Mr. President promised that the federal raids of medical marijuana clubs would stop under his watch. But since the inauguration, two clubs have been raided in California. That really sucks.

But on a much brighter note, I am in the middle of organizing the Worldwide Marijuana March and I am happy to say that there is a lot of interest in this annual event. It’s much better than Christmas.

Give the Dutch a Peace Prize for their achievement in minimizing drug use in its’ citizens while refusing to wage a war on drugs. Despite pressure internationally to get tough on drugs and close down the coffee shops, somehow the Dutch have wisely been able to keep their cannabis cafes operational. There are far fewer drug users, prisoners, and drug overdoses in the Netherlands. We would be wise to follow in their footsteps. Unfortunately, things are not looking good on the drug policy reform front. Obama smacked down all those activists that submitted the suggestion to the change.gov site “legalize medicinal and recreational use of marijuana”. Barry has already let me down and he isn’t even in office yet. I hope that he will at the very least see to it that the 13 states that have legalized medicinal cannabis are left alone. The federal raids on the state medicinal cannabis facilities are the stuff of George Orwell’s worst nightmare. Big Brother swooping in with guns acting out no-knock raids to keep little old ladies from smoking pot to ease their aches and pains. It just isn’t right.

But on a more positive note, the weather is going to be fabulous. My phone keeps telling me that it will be plus temperatures this weekend, which means that my eldest child will drag me out to the countryside to ride gluestick AKA Corby. I am sooooo looking forward to it. WOO HOO!

I know that you were waiting on the edge of your seat for me to resume my Friday 4:20 posts, after my two week hiatus due to my extremely intense and serious reasons for not updating my blog.  So here you go, you drug policy reform buffs.

This weeks’ Friday 4:20 post concerns the man that I named my blackberry after, President-elect Barack Obama.  You may have heard of him and you may think that he is the saviour of the universe, depending on which political views you espouse.  There are only two ways to think, conservative or liberal.  If you are not one of us, you must be one of them.  Rightwing nutjob or leftwing moonbat.

The man that Obama has put forward to be the United States Chief Medical Officer, also known as the surgeon general, in not a man who is friendly towards reforming the drug laws in general and the pot laws in particular.  I swear that Sanjay Gupta employs the same reefer madness speech-writers as John Walters.  But don’t take my word for it.  Alternet has the real scoop. He did pen an atrocious article for Time magazine explaining Why I Would Vote No On Pot. Just go on over there and take a look at some of that reefer madness. He believes all the Drug Czar talking points, that pot does not have medical value or should be a drug of last resort, even when it is the safest and best choice. He also believes that it has all the cancer-causing properties of tobacco, even when studies have never shown that smoking pot causes cancer.

Oh Barry, how could you go ahead and get this loon for a Surgeon General! The pot people are going to have to keep waiting for their saviour. The best we can hope for is that they will at least stop the federal raids on medical marijuana growers and distributors. After all, medical marijuana is legal in 13 states as of the Presidential election. All the Federal drug warriors have to do is nothing and things will get better!

The world’s oldest drug bust happened 2700 years too late. All the criminals that perpetrated this crime are long dead! As a science nerd I found this story via the Discovery channel website very interesting. Also, check out the pics.  The burial site was probably of a shaman, and certainly a person of high status in the community.   He was buried with all the things that he needed for the afterlife, his archery equipment and his horse bridle as well as his stash.

I wonder what they will bury me with when I die.  Probably my family will follow my explicit instructions and have my corpse incinerated.  It would be a terrible waste to bury me with a stash of someone’s fine homegrown.  Obviously I am happy to see scientific evidence in favor of the ancient use of cannabis, I just hate to see something so great go to waste.

I have been incredibly busy for the past few weeks and I have had no time to blog.  By the time I am done being a mom and a school board employee, there isn’t much time left over for intellectual pursuits, if in fact this blog could be considered intellectual.  This greatly annoys me, as I find blogging a very worthwhile past-time.  It’s a good thing for Friday 4:20.  Since I started this blog, it has been a weekly commitment that I have managed to keep, even if it means putting it off until the last minute.  I will have to start thinking of this blog as an important job that needs to be done, like making the kids do their paper route or any other household chore.  Chores never end!  I don’t want to feed the dog or vacuum the floor.  It will just get messed up again.

Also, today as the last day of school for two weeks.  I am so glad.  I really need a break.  It seemed like every day for the last two weeks I had to go to a party or take the kids shopping or something.  Christmas is stressful, even when you have two children who love the holiday, because it means more stuff for them.  As if they didn’t have enough already.  No matter what we do over the Christmas holidays I will be enjoying having the days off.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!  Yes, I said Merry Christmas, even though I don’t believe in God.  Take that, you soldiers in the War on Christmas.