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Posted May 10, 2002
Coming
Out of the Cannabis Closet
(Ann Harrison, AlterNet, May 7, 2002)
Jodi James is a 34-year-old single mother of two, a Democratic
candidate for the Florida House of Representatives and a marijuana
smoker. James, who made a point of disclosing her marijuana
use at the Florida state Democratic convention, is one of
a growing number of people who believe it's time for pot smokers
to step forward and challenge their negative stereotype. .
. . Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York City, was revealed
to be a marijuana smoker . . . Other people who have voluntarily
chosen to reveal their cannabis use include Don Topping, a
professor emeritus at the University of Hawaii and Norm Kent,
an attorney from Ft. Lauderdale . . . According to Kent, healthy
cannabis smokers need to become a political constituency,
much like gays and lesbians who built a political movement
by shedding the "shame" of being homosexual. "It
is about your right to be free and make decisions without
the government telling you what you can do with your body,"
. . . The Cannabis Consumers Campaign asserts that marijuana
prohibition is based on the false presumption that pot smokers
are a detriment to society who lack a moral compass and fail
to achieve their potential. The Campaign is conducting
a survey that intends to clarify who cannabis consumers are
and how they use the plant. Norris says the Campaign will
culminate in an advertisement featuring 100 prominent cannabis
smoking celebrities who will "come out" together.
. . . Bill Maher, host of the television show Politically
Incorrect, told attendees at the NORML conference that it's
time Harrison Ford and Ted Turner stood up and acknowledged
their cannabis use. . . . Washington D.C. DEA spokesman
Will Glaspy says federal authorities that prosecute drug traffickers
will not target outspoken cannabis smokers.
Posted May 4, 2002
"A
Failed Strategy: The War on Drugs"
(Speech given by Gustavo de Greiff a former Ambassador and
Attorney General of Colombia, Special to The Narco News Bulletin)
I wish to demonstrate that the so-called war on drugs, from
a purely empirical point of view, has failed and that reason
requires a change from a repressive strategy to a strategy
of legalization, that is, the legal regulation of the production
and sale of currently prohibited drugs (fundamentally, marijuana,
cocaine and heroin). . . . The war on drugs, in its
most repressive form, began under the government of Mr. Richard
Nixon with a federal budget of $6.5 million dollars. Today,
almost twenty years later, this budget has risen to $18 billion
dollars. . . . If the repressive strategy had tendered
results we would now have:
A. Fewer land areas cultivated with plans from which the
three large prohibited drugs are extracted: cocaine, heroin
and marijuana;
B. Less availability of these drugs in consumer markets;
C. Higher prices of each of these three drugs, and;
D. Fewer consumers, habitual or hardcore as well as occasional
users.
Unfortunately, there has been no improvement in any of these
categories, as we will now see.
[Editor's Note: Detailed evidence follows in the full
text of this speech.]
Posted April 26, 2002
Junk
Science in Service of Junk Drug Policy
Study Finds that Flawed Studies of Ecstasy-Users' Brains Have
Been Exploited to Fuel the War on Drugs
(Richard Glen Boire, Alchemind Society, April 25, 2002)
After a thorough re-examination of the brain scans that have
become the centerpiece of the U.S. government-led "war
on ecstasy," New Scientist concluded "certain high-profile
studies claiming ecstasy causes lasting damage are based on
flawed brain scans." The war on ecstasy has been built
on junk science. . . . According to NIDA's website, the agency
"supports over 85 percent of the world's research on
all drugs of abuse." Which studies get funded by
NIDA, and which do not, constructs the landscape of our scientific
knowledge with regard drugs. . . . Like the Church's
hostile reaction to Galileo's telescope-based observations,
the U.S. Government today is in charge of creating, enforcing,
and policing a particular worldview with regard to psychoactive
drugs . . . Not only do prohibition-minded governments engineer
evidence to support their agenda, the "war on drugs"
is also responsible for suppressing scientific findings that
depart from the government's narrative. . . . Once we've
allowed the government to decree that certain states of mind
are authorized, and that others are unauthorized, and indeed
criminal, is it any wonder that government has also seen fit
to turn science into its slave?
Posted April 24, 2002
Fascist
America
Tulia And Beyond: Taking Drug Task Forces To Task
(Arianna Huffington, April 15, 2002)
Ever heard of Tulia? It's a little town in Texas that was
the scene of one of the most shameful miscarriages of justice
in modern American history . . . exposed one of the
many shadowy corners of the drug war: the power and abuses
of drug task forces. . . . But this story is about
more than one small town and one bad cop, it's about drug
task forces allowed to run wild. . . . Reports of their questionable
tactics -- particularly the use of unreliable informants and
a disturbing focus on poor, black drug users rather than big-time
dealers -- are widespread. . . . The result is a law enforcement
mindset that elevates raw numbers over justice, strip mining
anyone remotely resembling a plausible defendant from the
ranks of those least able to defend themselves against such
a well-heeled machine. . . . "These task forces,"
says Will Harrell, executive director of the Texas ACLU, "have
one motive and one motive only: to produce numbers lest they
lose their funding for the next year. But no one questions
how they go about their business." Of course, if
task force dragnets were cast more evenly, ruining the lives
not just of the poor but of bankers and brokers with a nasty
little coke habit or suburban boomer couples that haven't
shaken their taste for getting high now and then, you can
bet there would be some questioning. . . . Combined
with draconian asset forfeiture laws, the money-for-arrest
model has turned avaricious cops into drug war entrepreneurs,
all-too-willing to bend the rules in exchange for more money
and power. In a grave abuse of our treasured presumption of
innocence, forfeiture laws allow police departments to seize
and sell any property connected to illegal drugs, even if
the owner is never actually charged with a crime. . . . It's
time for Gov. Perry to join them and pardon the Tulia defendants,
and for the rest of us to take a much harder look at
the abuses being perpetrated in the name of the war on drugs.
The
brain has its own secret stash
(Carl Hall, The San Francisco Chronicle, May 20, 2001)
Even if you have never smoked a joint in your life, a cannabis-like
substance occupies a special niche in your brain . . . New
research into how these so-called "endogenous cannabinoids"
work may help scientists understand what goes on inside the
heads of those who smoke pot . . . The landmark studies, published
recently in the journals Nature and Neuron by scientists at
the University of California at San Francisco, Harvard Medical
School and Kanazawa Medical University in Japan, suggest
the brain cooks up its own marijuana-like ingredients in order
to tweak the all- important connections that link nerve cells.
. . . It's as if the brain has its own secret stash. But despite
years of research, scientists had no clear idea until now
what its purpose might be. . . . After two years of laboratory
study and frustrating dead ends, Wilson and Nicoll found that
the role of the brain's cannabis is to make the feedback system
work. Harvard researchers, working independently, found an
essentially identical role for endogenous cannabinoids in
another part of the brain, called the cerebellum, which helps
to control motor function. . . . "It's a way for a nerve
cell to adjust the gain or intensity of the information coming
into it," Nicoll said. "It turns up the amplifier,
in a way, and allows more input to get through."
These adjustments seem to have an important role in the brain's
uncanny ability to synchronize the firing of nerve cells scattered
throughout the brain, linking behavior with mood and memory
with vision or hearing. Thousands of signals thus become molded
into vast oscillations, helping the brain bind together different
aspects of perception into something we can experience as
a coherent state of mind -- a feeling of being in love, perhaps,
when we look at someone. If that's the case, the implications
for marijuana smokers seem rather profound.
Posted April 17, 2002
Drug/Terror
Ads and Kids Don't Mix
(Lynn M. Paltrow, Alternet.org, April 15, 2002)
The advertisement offers stark pictures of teenagers talking
about how they are really murderers, torturers and terrorists.
The ad originally ran during the Super Bowl, costing taxpayers
3.5 million dollars, as part of a publicity campaign linking
American youth who have tried illegal drugs with funding for
terrorism. . . . The ad not only failed to convey any coherent
message regarding drugs, but it instead seemed to frighten
them, making it appear that the threat of terrorism -- so
close to their actual home -- comes somehow from American
teenagers. . . . The ad frightened me as well, making
me wonder why ABC would run such deceptive and scary material
on a children's channel. . . . During the next commercial
break, there was another ad about drugs, but this one, in
contrast to the earlier ad, celebrated them. In this ad, a
pharmaceutical company was pushing the drug Zoloft . . . The
two ads thus send contradictory messages here, as well, with
one suggesting that self-medicating for these problems is
a form of terrorism and the other arguing that it is simply
a matter of informed consumerism. . . . Although we had planned
to watch the other scheduled comedies on the ABC Family channel
that week, we decided to rent movies and read aloud instead.
I would rather not have my children watch TV ads that
promote and laud some drug users while different ads -- funded
by our government, no less -- spread misinformation and teach
intolerance and prejudice against other drug users.
Posted April 11, 2002
Young
Activists Battle The Prison Industrial Complex
(Nathan Cullerton, Wire Tap, April 9,2002)
Chino is a youth organizer working for the New York Prison
Moratorium Project (PMP), a non-profit dedicated to fighting
prison expansion and the debilitating effects of the prison
industrial complex. She is working to educate and
organize youth in poor communities of color. . . . [The Prison
Industrial Complex is] a marriage of public and private interests
working together to institutionalize repressive policies,
enforcement practices, activities, and culture that target,
control and exploit poor communities of color and rural communities,
youth of color, women, immigrants and the lesbian and transgendered
communities, among others. . . . "Hip-Hop is a
valuable tool of resistance because it is so much a part of
the Black and Latino community... It can be used for
good or for bad, and the question is really 'how are we gonna
use it?' Culture has always been part of struggle, and
we need to use Hip-Hop culture as a weapon, as a tool of resistance."
. . . With an annual budget of around $260,000, and only 5
permanent staff members, Chino and the PMP have been remarkably
successful at raising awareness of, and opposition to, the
Prison Industrial Complex.
Posted April 10, 2002
Mayor's
Pot Quip Turns Up in Ads
(Jessica Kowal, Newsday.com, April 9, 2002)
The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws
Foundation, or NORML, invoked the mayor's one-time praise
for pot in a $500,000 pro-decriminalization print ad campaign
that rolled out today. . . . Bloomberg was still a mayoral
candidate when New York magazine last year asked him whether
he had ever inhaled from a marijuana joint. . . . Came his
reply: "You bet I did. And I enjoyed it."
[PDF
version of the ad] [Button
and email campaign]
Posted April 8, 2002
CCLE
Fights Government's Forced-Drugging of Dentist in Federal
Court
(Alchemind Society, April 8, 2002)
asking the court to reconsider its recent decision permitting
the government to continue forcibly injecting a St. Louis
dentist with mind-altering drugs. . . . The CCLE's legal brief
argues that the government's forced-drugging of Dr. Sell,
is an unconstitutional violation of his fundamental right
to cognitive liberty and freedom of thought, a right protected
by the First Amendment. "By altering a person's mind
with the forced administration of drugs, the government commits
an act of cognitive censorship and mental manipulation, an
action even more offensive to democratic principles than the
censorship of speech," argues the brief. . . . "Dr.
Sell is innocent until proven guilty, and is under no obligation
to think the way the government wants him to think. His mind
is his own, not the government's." . . . Ironically,
the government's insistence that Dr. Sell can be forcibly
administered mind-altering drugs, is diametrically opposed
to its "just say no" policy with respect to other
mind-altering drugs. . . . "The only thing consistent
here is the government's astonishingly arrogant assertion
that it has the power to determine which mind states and types
of thinking are allowed and which it can prohibit or coerce."
Posted April 7, 2002
A Cannabis Odyssey - Dr. Lester
Grinspoon Says the Emperor Has No Clothes
[Editor's Note: The following excerpts are from a speech Dr.
Lester Grinspoon made to the 2001 NORML conference. As a result
of exercising his right of free speech, Dr. Grinspoon is now
defending his right to continue practicing medicine against
an attack by the Drug Free America Foundation. Dr. Grinspoon
is a Professor Emeritus at Harvard University.]
("A Cannabis Odyssey" by Lester Grinspoon, M.D.,
is from the Journal
of Cognitive Liberties, Vol. III, No. 1 (2002) - other
essays and departments in this volume include "Tainted
Thinking," "2001: A Year in the Life of Marijuana
Prohibition," "Liberty and LSD" by John Perry
Barlow, "Santo Daime Ruling," "Drugs and Decision-Making
in the European Union," a conference calendar, book reviews,
and "The Entheogen Law Reporter.")
A Cannabis Odyssey
(Dr. Lester Grinspoon, Journal of Cognitive Liberties III(1))
"Cannabinophobia has been responsible for the arrest
of over twelve million US citizens . . . another instance
of the "madness of crowds." . . . what I though
I understood was largely based on myths, old and new, I realized
how little my training in science and medicine had protected
me against this misinformation. . . . I questioned whether
the almost ubiquitous belief that marijuana was an exceedingly
harmful drug was supported by substantial data to be found
in scientific and medical literature. . . . so much of
the misinformation and myths about this drug had their origins
in the gaudy writings of the French Romantic Literary Movement
. . . It was fascinating to learn that much of the mythology
about cannabis that was being promulgated by the US government
had its origins in these writings. . . . it had become inescapably
clear that marijuana's harmfulness lay in the social and legal
consequences of our firmly held misbeliefs. . . . I was 44
years old in 1972 when I experienced this first marijuana
high. Because I have found it both so useful and benign I
have used it ever since. I have used it as a recreational
drug, as a medicine, and as an enhancer of some capacities.
. . . only practiced cannabis users appreciate some of
the other ways in which it can be useful. It has been
so useful to me that I cannot help but wonder how much difference
it would have made had I begun to use it at a younger age.
. . . I cannot possibly convey the breadth of things it helps
me to appreciate, to think about, to gain new insights into.
. . . Cannabis can also be used as a catalyst to the generation
of new ideas. Experienced cannabis users know that under
its influence new ideas flow more readily than they do in
the straight state. . . . [Under the influence of cannabis
I came up with the original idea for] “The Harvard Mental
Health Letter,” which soon achieved considerable success
as an esteemed mental health publication and a steady source
of income to the Harvard Medical School Department of Psychiatry.
. . . The overwhelming preponderance of funding, research,
writing, political activity, and legislation have been centered
on the question of its harmfulness. The 65 year old debate
has never been concerned with its non-medicinal uses. . .
It is estimated that 76 million Americans have used cannabis
and more than 10 million use it regularly. . . From the
time I began my studies of marijuana, 12 million citizens
of this country have been arrested for marijuana offenses.
. . . 88% of them for possession. . . many have lost valued
possessions and served time in prisons . . . most users, understandably,
do not want to stand up and be counted. . . People who make
claims about its usefulness run the risk of being derided
as vestigial hippies. . . It is unfortunate that those who,
from personal experience, are aware of its usefulness are
so reluctant to be public about it. I believe it would
be good for the country if more people in business, academic,
and professional worlds were knows to be marijuana users.
The government has been able to pursue its policies of
persecution and prosecution largely because of the widespread
false belief that cannabis smokers are irresponsible and socially
marginal people. That lie is unfortunately perpetuated when
those who know better remain silent. . . . When the many
people of substance and accomplishment who use cannabis "come
out," it will contribute much to the diminution of cannabinophobia.
. . . [Nobel prize winner, Richard] Feynman, by courageously
acknowledging his ongoing use of marijuana, won the respect
and appreciation of many and the enmity of others. . . . only
those who actually use cannabis can teach us how useful it
is.
Posted April 4, 2002
President Nixon's opinion about
Jews and drugs
(from the transcript of a taped conversation in the White
House)
“You know, it's a funny thing, every one of the bastards
that are out for legalizing marijuana is Jewish. What the
Christ is the matter with the Jews, Bob? I suppose it's because
most of them are psychiatrists.”
— Richard M. Nixon, former President of the United
States of America
[Editor's Note: While the ignorance that is so evident in
the above quotation is actually laughable, we should bear
in mind the fact that it is universally agreed that Nixon
was far more intelligent than His
Fraudulency, George W. Bush.]
Posted April 3, 2002
Rethinking
Drug Courts
(Melissa Hostetler, FrictionMagazine.com, March 9, 2002)
Developed to punish addicts with treatment rather than prison,
the media's coverage of the criminal justice system turned
social worker has been laudable to say the least. . . . though
the argument for treatment-based drug courts seems convincing
there are many who are starting to question whether or not
the drug court movement is the panacea of good will everyone
says it is. . . . the drug court epidemic has spread to nearly
every state, adding up to more than 800 drug courts nationwide
either operating or in the planning stages. . . . drug courts
not only don't accomplish their goals but they may be widening
the criminal justice net, increasing costs to the system,
taking treatment slots away from voluntary, community-based
programs, and blurring the traditional roles of judges, prosecutors,
and defense attorneys. . . . "Drug courts are just the
latest Band-Aid we have tried to apply over the deep wound
of our schizophrenia about drugs," says Denver, Colo.
Judge Morris B. Hoffman. "Drug courts themselves have
become a kind of institutional narcotic upon which the entire
criminal justice system is becoming increasingly dependent."
. . . California, home to more than 100 drug courts, also
saw drug arrests for possession only offenses increase from
40 percent of all drug arrests to 53 percent in the past ten
years. . . . "All we know is that drug courts have not
resulted in fewer people sentenced to prison for drug possession
offenses in California," says Dan Macalair of the Justice
Policy Institute. "In fact, the evidence is just the
opposite." . . . Though the idea may be a noble and humane
one -- helping people and keeping them out of prison -- critics
say it is wrong to treat these problems as diseases and then
punish offenders in a system where no one is working for the
offenders themselves.
Ancestors
'used drugs to survive'
(BBC News Online, 30 March, 2002)
Mind-altering drugs may be so popular because they were once
used by our ancestors to survive, two leading anthropologists
have argued. . . . Dr Roger Sullivan, of the University of
Auckland, and Edward Hagen, of the University of California
at Santa Barbara, say there is plenty of evidence that humans
have sought out so-called psychotropic drugs over millions
of years. . . . Archaeological evidence shows that drug use
was widespread in ancient cultures. . . . Betel nut, for example,
was chewed at least 13,000 years ago in Timor, to the north
of Australia. Artefacts date the use of coca in Ecuador to
at least 5,000 years ago. . . . Dr Sullivan and Dr Hagen believe
that eating psychotropic plants may also have played an important
role in helping the brain to function properly.
Posted March 26, 2002
U.S. Government given green light
to terrorize the poor and elderly
Court
OKs Public Housing Drug Ban
(USAToday, Mar 26, 2002)
The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that government agencies can
use aggressive eviction policies to get rid of drug users
in public housing. . . . Justices, without dissent, said they
had no problem with a federal law that allows entire families
to be evicted from public housing for the drug use by one
member. . . . The ruling affects anyone who lives in public
housing. Senior citizens groups argued that the elderly would
be hurt the most. More than 1.7 million families headed by
people over age 61 live in government-subsidized housing.
. . . "It is not absurd that a local housing authority
may sometimes evict a tenant who had no knowledge of drug-related
activity," Rehnquist wrote. . . . He said that even if
tenants were unaware of the drug use, they could still be
held responsible for not controlling narcotics crime of family
members.
Posted March 20, 2002
More
terrorist activity in the U.S. - Forced Drugging OK'd By Federal
Court
(The Alchemind Society, March 19, 2002)
Defendants can be forcibly drugged even though they haven't
been convicted of any charges and pose no danger to themselves
or others. That's the ruling issued March 7, 2002, by the
Federal Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in the case
of United States v. Charles Thomas Sell. The 2 - 1 split decision
establishes government power to forcibly medicate a person
with mind altering drugs even before trial.
Posted March 17, 2002
Cannabis
cafes set to open all around Britain as law changes
(Anthony Browne, The Observer, March 17, 2002)
More than a dozen Dutch-style cannabis cafés are being
planned from Brighton to Glasgow in a major movement across
the country. They range from converted warehouses to upmarket
cafés in London with budgets of £250,000. . .
. campaigners are setting up coffee shops confident that such
a move is now all but inevitable. Last week the Liberal Democrats
became the first mainstream party to adopt a policy of legalising
the drug. . . . The cannabis entrepreneurs setting up the
coffee shops include an affluent retired businessman, an internet
pioneer and a wheelchair-bound victim of multiple sclerosis
living on disability benefits. . . . Britain's first cannabis
coffee shop in Stockport, which has been raided by police
three times since opening last September. However, repeated
mass protests made the police back off, and the coffee shop
still attracts around 200 people a day. . . . Other coffee
shops are set to follow in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Cumbria, Liverpool,
Rhyl, Anglesey, Milton Keynes, Braintree, Brighton, Taunton,
Worthing, and Lambeth and Hoxton in London. Britain is on
course to follow the Netherlands in having a public cannabis
café culture.
Breaking
the Chains: People of Color and the War on Drugs
Evening of Thursday, September 26 through Saturday, September
28, 2002.
Hyatt Regency Los Angeles at Macy's Plaza
711 South Hope Street
Los Angeles, CA
The
Drug Policy Alliance (formerly the Lindesmith Center-Drug
Policy Foundation) is proud to announce a groundbreaking event
that will address the grievous impacts of the war on drugs
on people of color. Conference participants will learn about
the discriminatory history of punitive drug policies, alternatives
to current policy, and how to advocate for positive change.
Posted March 15, 2002
Government
Admits Spying on Drug Reformers
(Richard Glen Boire, Alchemind Society, March 15, 2002)
According to a report issued by the National Drug Intelligence
Center (NDIC) in December 2001 and recently made available
on the NDIC website, the government has been monitoring 52
Web sites in search of individuals and groups who use the
Internet to "promote or facilitate the production, use,
and sale of MDMA, GHB, and LSD." . . . Sites monitored
included those operated by what the report calls "Drug-culture
advocates" which it defines as individuals or groups
"chiefly interested in expanding the size of the community
to both legitimize their activity and increase pressure on
lawmakers to change or abolish drug control laws." (Id.
at p. 3.) Also monitored were "Advocates of an
expanded freedom of expression," which the report
defines as "purveyors of information with yet another
agenda. These individuals and groups publish information on
the Internet to push the boundaries of self-expression and
the First Amendment. . . . The fact that the majority of the
sites monitored by the government likely advocate public policy
positions which are opposed to the government's drug prohibition
policy, raises the question of whether the NDIC study is actually
an effort by the Department of Justice (of which the NDIC
is a component) to silence drug reform advocates, by making
them fear criminal prosecution for information posted on their
web sites.
Posted March 14, 2002
Cannabis
is given health all clear
(David Taylor, This is London)
Scientists today cleared the way for a softening of the law
on cannabis, declaring that the drug "is not associated
with major health problems for the individual or society".
. . . The Government's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs
found that while cannabis smokers can become dependent, the
drug is not as addictive as tobacco or alcohol. . . . In healthy
young people, cannabis is even said to have a similar effect
on the heart as exercise. . . . In October, Home Secretary
David Blunkett signalled his intention to downgrade cannabis
to Class C alongside steroids and some sleeping pills - meaning
that being caught with small amounts would no longer be an
arrestable offence. . . . It makes clear that alcohol is far
more damaging than cannabis to health and society at large
because it encourages risk-taking and leads to aggressive
and violent behaviour.
Posted March 4, 2002
Superbowl Drug War Ads
— “Instead of painting drug use as unpatriotic,
the U.S. government should recognize that the freedom to control
one's own consciousness is a fundamental human right.”
Dare
to Tell Your Kids the Truth about Drugs
( Sandee Burbank, Alternatives Magazine, March 1, 2002)
My parents, in their effort to 'protect' me, told me half-truths
and mistruths. How betrayed I felt when I learned that they
had not always been honest with me! This was a feeling I did
not want my own children to experience. . . . The confusion
I experienced when trying to explain the drug war to my kids
eventually led to a twenty-year involvement in drug education
and drug policy reform. . . . It wasn't until the late sixties
that I smoked marijuana after observing no ill health effects
on the marijuana users I knew. I was pleasantly surprised
as it relaxed me, but was not nearly as heavy or injurious
feeling as alcohol. At this point I started to question the
law. . . . During the '70s, I started to see negative effects
of drug use on people I cared about. My grandmother was over-medicated
on prescription drugs, a neighbor suffered cirrhosis of the
liver from excessive alcohol use, an uncle had emphyzema from
years of heavy smoking and a friend was dependent on over-the-counter
nasal inhalers. . . . Marijuana, which I knew from personal
experience was relatively mild when compared to alcohol, carried
penalties for simple possession that were Draconian. I was
astonished that the government would go so far to supposedly
protect our citizens' health from marijuana use, yet use the
taxes from the sale of other drugs with dangerous health effects
(alcohol and tobacco) to provide basic services. . . . We
chose to tell our children the truth. We told them our national
drug policy is based on bad laws and we have worked very hard
to change these laws. . . . In America, approximately 275
people die EVERY DAY from using properly administered prescription
drugs . . . Many parents, especially those who depend on jobs
in 'drug free' workplaces, live in fear of speaking the truth
to their colleagues, let alone their children. Advertisements,
paid for by US taxpayers, even encourage parents not to be
'too honest' with their children about their own past drug
use.
Posted February 27, 2002
Andrew
Weil's Latest Prescription: Take Ecstasy
'If it were legal I would certainly recommend it to a variety
of patients,' Weil said from his home in Tucson, Arizona.
'I've seen chronic pain disappear as a result of one session
with Ecstasy. I've seen allergies disappear. It gives you
a chance to experience your body without the chronic tension
that we normally impose on it. And although it doesn't teach
you to maintain that, it shows you that it's possible and
it can motivate you to find out how to make it happen …
without the drug.' . . . Weil sticks to his decades-old stance
that 'there are no bad drugs, just bad uses…The dangers
of [Ecstacy] have been greatly exaggerated. They mostly result
from taking it in foolish ways, such as taking high doses,
dancing all night and not drinking water in a hot, enclosed
space.' . . . While the media has often presented the psychoactive
drug in a manner reminiscent of the 'reefer madness' news
coverage of marijuana in the 1950's and early 1960's, Weil
is quick to point out the positive qualities of Ecstasy. .
. . Just four days after our Nov. 1 interview The Wall Street
Journal reported that the Food and Drug Administration has
approved the first study of MDMA as a treatment for people
with posttraumatic stress disorder."
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