<Starlon> • The Marijuana Argument

The Marijuana Argument

According to the medical association, "Marijuana use has serious and far-reaching health consequences that go far beyond the short-term high. It can cause mental health problems, such as increased anxiety, panic attacks and depression, and lung damage. In addition, marijuana can lead to impaired judgment and, as a result, risky behaviors such as dangerous driving, unprotected sex and increased delinquent behavior." - http://cannabisnews.com/news/14/thread14171.shtml

"There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana usage. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others." Harry Anslinger, U.S. Commissioner of Narcotics, testifying to Congress on why marijuana should be made illegal, 1937. (Marijuana Tax Act, signed Aug. 2, 1937; effective Oct. 1, 1937.)

Notice any similarities? "Impaired judgments"

The only anxiety you get is over the fact that it's illegal to smoke pot. It's intensified by the high. And you only experience it during the high, unless you're a rare case. It's certainly not a widespread problem across marijuana smokers.

Again, you're doing something illegal. That plays hard on your psyche. I've never had a panic attack. If it causes a panic attack in people, those people should avoid it. It's certainly not a widespread problem, and it certainly doesn't warrant shooting down innocent missionaries thinking they're trafficking marijuana. And it doesn't warrant raiding legal medical marijuana dispensaries or the patients. That critically ill cancer patient has more on her mind than a panic attack. She's certainly no criminal. She just wants to feel better. It's down right inhumane to deny her that.

Whoa now, don't go saying marijuana's making me depressed. Did you know any anti-depressant can possibly make some people more depressed? This is something a psychiatrist should be monitoring. No, they only solidify the fact that marijuana is an anti-depressant.

Government needs to run studies on the federal medical marijuana patients. They ignore these patients, and would rather they shrivel up and die than constantly haunt them with their good health. Saying "It's toxic to your lungs." when there's a gang of fine, healthy subjects under their needle, yet refuse to evaluate them. You're not convincing me to stop using marijuana. You're only making me realize how cruel you can be. Here's Irv Rosenfeld, longest living federal marijuana patient - someone the government doesn't want you to know.

Below are quotes from Oregon NORML's website. You have to realize this is all promoted by bigotry, which really shows people's true colors who are against herbal remedies for patients.

REEFER MADNESS: "Marijuana leads to homosexuality ... and therefore to AIDS."

Carlton Turner - Former Drug Czar (Reagan)

REEFER MADNESS: "Casual drug users should be taken out and shot."

Daryl Gates - Former LAPD Chief

REEFER MADNESS: "Under the influence of hashish those fanatics would madly rush at their enemies, and ruthlessly massacre every one within their grasp."

Dr. A. E. Fossier - New Orleans Medical & Surgical Journal (1931)

REEFER MADNESS: "Persons using this narcotic [marijuana] smoke the dried leaves of the plant, which has the effect of driving them completely insane. The addict loses all sense of moral responsibility. Addicts to this drug, while under its influence, are immune to pain, and could be injured without having any realization of their condition."

Emily Murphy - Canadian Prohibitionist (1923)

REEFER MADNESS: "While in this condition [high on marijuana] they become raving maniacs and are liable to kill or indulge in any form of violence to other persons, using the most savage methods of cruelty without, as said before, any sense of moral responsibility. . . . If this drug is indulged in to any great extent, it ends in the untimely death of its addict."

Emily Murphy - Canadian Prohibitionist (1923)

REEFER MADNESS: "The voters in this country should not be expected to decide which medicines are safe and effective."

Gen. Barry McCaffrey - Former Drug Czar (Bush I)

REEFER MADNESS: "...the primary reason to outlaw marijuana is its effect on the degenerate races."

Harry J. Anslinger - America's 1st Drug Czar (FDR - JFK)

REEFER MADNESS: "How many murders, suicides, robberies, criminal assaults, holdups, burglaries and deeds of maniacal insanity it causes each year, especially among the young, can only be conjectured... No one knows, when he places a marijuana cigarette to his lips, whether he will become a joyous reveller in a musical heaven, a mad insensate, a calm philosopher, or a murderer..."

Harry J. Anslinger - America's 1st Drug Czar (FDR - JFK)

REEFER MADNESS: "I wish I could show you what a small marihuana cigarette can do to one of our degenerate Spanish-speaking residents. That's why our problem is so great; the greatest percentage of our population is composed of Spanish-speaking persons, most of who are low mentally, because of social and racial conditions." - quoting Floyd K. Baskette.

Harry J. Anslinger - America's 1st Drug Czar (FDR - JFK)

REEFER MADNESS: "If the hideous monster Frankenstein came face to face with the monster of marijuana he would drop dead of fright."

Harry J. Anslinger - America's 1st Drug Czar (FDR - JFK)

REEFER MADNESS: "Marihuana leads to pacifism and communist brainwashing"

Harry J. Anslinger - America's 1st Drug Czar (FDR - JFK)

REEFER MADNESS: "Marijuana is an addictive drug which produces in its users insanity, criminality, and death."

Harry J. Anslinger - America's 1st Drug Czar (FDR - JFK)

REEFER MADNESS: "Marijuana is the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind."

Harry J. Anslinger - America's 1st Drug Czar (FDR - JFK)

REEFER MADNESS: "Reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men."

Harry J. Anslinger - America's 1st Drug Czar (FDR - JFK)

REEFER MADNESS: "There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos, and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz, and swing, result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and any others."

Harry J. Anslinger - America's 1st Drug Czar (FDR - JFK)

REEFER MADNESS: "You smoke a joint and you're likely to kill your brother."

Harry J. Anslinger - America's 1st Drug Czar (FDR - JFK)

REEFER MADNESS: "[Marijuana is taken by] musicians. And I'm not speaking about good musicians, but the jazz type..."

Harry J. Anslinger - America's 1st Drug Czar (FDR - JFK)

REEFER MADNESS: "Today's marijuana is also twice as strong as it was in the mid 80's."

John Walters - Current US Drug Czar (Bush II)

REEFER MADNESS: "The message for teens is clear . today's pernicious pot is not your parent's pot. The THC potency in marijuana seized in the 1970s, when marijuana use was most prevalent, was less than one percent; today such potency levels have climbed to 8.8 percent."

Joseph A. Califano, Jr. - Head of Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA)

REEFER MADNESS: "[Marijuana] is highly intoxicating and constitutes an ever recurring problem where there are Mexicans or Spanish-Americans of the lower classes."

New York Times - Newspaper (1933)

REEFER MADNESS: "A California man decapitated his best friend while under the spell of the smoke."

Newsweek - Magazine (1937)

REEFER MADNESS: "I want a Goddamn strong statement on marijuana, I mean one that just tears the ass out of them. You know, it's a funny thing, every one of the bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana is Jewish."

Richard M. Nixon - Former President

REEFER MADNESS: "You have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this all while not appearing to." (about the War on Drugs to Chief of Staff, H. R. Haldeman, according to Halderman's diaries)

Richard M. Nixon - Former President

REEFER MADNESS: "[S]oft-headed psychiatrists who work in places like NIMH (National Institute for Mental Health) favor marijuana because they're probably all on the stuff themselves."

Richard M. Nixon - Former President

REEFER MADNESS: "Not only are we here to protect the public from vicious criminals in the street but also to protect the public from harmful ideas."

Robert Ingersoll - Former DEA Director (1972)

REEFER MADNESS: "I now have absolute proof that smoking even one marijuana cigarette is equal in brain damage to being on Bikini Island during an H-bomb blast."

Ronald Reagan - Former President

REEFER MADNESS: "Marihuana produces a wide variety of symptoms in the user, including hilarity, swooning, and sexual excitement ... it often makes the smoker vicious, with a desire to fight and kill."

Scientific American - Magazine (1936)

REEFER MADNESS: "In some districts, inhabited by Latin Americans, Filipinos, Spaniards and Negroes, half the violent crimes are attributed to marijuana craze. Dr. Lee Rice of San Antonio reports that eighty per cent of all the murders committed by Mexicans are done while the killers are drugged by marijuana."

The Christian Century (newspaper) - 1938

REEFER MADNESS: "Marijuana causes people to lose their memory and lose their energy, and it makes them stupid... It is the last thing that one would want to see happen on or around a university or state capital.... And people who are casual about drugs ought to realize that a lot of people are dying in America."

William Bennett - Former Drug Czar (Bush I)

"Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could."

William F. Buckley, Jr. - Writer

REEFER MADNESS: "Marihuana influences Negroes to to look at white people in the eye, step on white men's shadows and look at a white woman twice."

William Randolph Hearst - Newspaper Tycoon (1936)

REEFER MADNESS: "Marihuana is a short cut to the insane asylum. Smoke marihuana cigarettes for a month and what was once your brain will be nothing but a storehouse of horrid specters. Hasheesh makes a murderer who kills for the love of killing out of the mildest mannered man who ever laughed at the idea that any habit could ever get him...."

William Randolph Hearst - Newspaper Tycoon (1936)

REEFER MADNESS: "Marihuana makes fiends of boys in thirty days -- Hashish goads users to bloodlust."

William Randolph Hearst - Newspaper Tycoon (1936)

REEFER MADNESS: "Users of marijuana become STIMULATED as they inhale the drug and are LIKELY TO DO ANYTHING. Most crimes of violence in this section, especially in country districts are laid to users of that drug."

William Randolph Hearst - Newspaper Tycoon (1936)

REEFER MADNESS: "Was it marijuana, the new Mexican drug, that nerved the murderous arm of Clara Phillips when she hammered out her victim's life in Los Angeles?... THREE-FOURTHS OF THE CRIMES of violence in this country today are committed by DOPE SLAVES -- that is a matter of cold record."

William Randolph Hearst - Newspaper Tycoon (1936)

Some day we'll look back and feel ashamed for criminalizing patients, just like we feel shame for slavery. We'll look back and realize how terrible the black market once was, and how we allowed it to exist.