Who's Involved?

There are many parties involved in the legalisation of marijuana. There is the DEA and law enforcement; marijuana dealers, growers, and buyers; and drug-related gangs, and gang-related victims. But the most influential players in this game of law defying activities are the activists; the Canadian and American citizens; and the business this sector has created, and competes with.

Marc Emery

freemarc.ca

Marc is a Canadian citizen, and a very prominent man in Canadian politics. Currently one of the most recognised marijuana activists in the country, he is the publisher of "Cannabis Culture Magazine," and "Pot-TV"; the leader of the BC Marijuana Party; the owner of Cannabis Culture Headquarters; a world famous marijuana seed retailer ("Marc Emery Direct Marijuana Seeds"); and the biggest financial supporter of the marijuana movement to date. Emery's seed retail resulted in his arrest.

Selling marijuana seeds may sound like an illegal activity, but it is not. It is so legal in fact, that doctors directed medical marijuana patients to his website to order their medication. The transaction that caused so much trouble took place when Marc Emery's cannabis seeds were ordered from the United States. The US government was outraged, and although under normal circumstances the person ordering the illegal substance would face the charges, where marijuana is concerned the laws become a little skewed. Emery was arrested in 2005 by American agents in Canada, and extradited to the US.

Statement from DEA; freemarc.ca;
 Enlarged version

Why did the Canadian government allow this and let the US government override them in such a way? This question stumps me.
I am confident that if the Canadian government had any issues with Marc Emery, they could have, and would have dealt with it themselves. Yet they didn't, and his pass time was no secret. Emery operated his business in full transparency and honesty; he went as far as to send his "Cannabis Culture Magazine" COMPLETE WITH THE MARIJUANA SEED CATALOGUE, to each member of parliament in Canada for years; as well as declaring income from his seed sales on his income tax.

Marc Emery paid over $580 000 to the federal and provincial governments between 1999 and 2005 (freemarc.ca)


Because of the monstrous injustice Emery is facing, many people wish to enable a "Treaty Transfer" and bring him home.

"The FREE MARC campaign wants the Canadian government to repatriate Marc Emery from the US federal prison system so he can serve his sentence in his home country of Canada. Marc Emery is a political prisoner, imprisoned for activism and funding the marijuana movement through marijuana seed sales." (freemarc.ca) Free Marc is a great campaign with a strong cause. I encourage you all to check out the website, http://freemarc.ca/ and get involved! It has all the information you need to contact government officials such as the Canadian Minister of Public Safety, the US Department of Justice, and Marc himself, and many other ideas. You should write for the rights of Marc Emery! I know I will!

Tommy Chong

Do you know who Tommy Chong is? If not, your parents probably do. Tommy Chong and Cheech Marin, often know as Cheech and Chong, were leaders in the counterculture movement of the 1970's. Exaggerating the "stupid stoner" stereotype, they were comedians who later came out with a series of movies, written by none other than Tommy Chong himself.
                                                                                   

"I'm [in jail] because I'm a doper comedian and I made a stupid joke about bongs being the only weapons of mass destruction that the Bush administration had found, and next thing I know I'm looking at nine months." (Tommy Chong, A/K/A Tommy Chong) What Chong is referring to is his arrest. He was arrested for "conspiring to sell paraphernalia" of a company in which he was not involved. Nice Dream Enterprises is run by Paris Chong (son of Tommy), and although this may seem like a close connection, Paris openly admits that he never indulged in his fathers ideas, as they were unrealistic, other than printing the famous Chongs' face on the bongs, of course. And for this, the US government deemed it necessary to put a budget aside for the capture of Tommy Chong. The top American criminal targets of 2003 were Osama Bin Laden, with a budget of $25 million; his two sons, budgeted $15 million each; and Tommy Chong, with a whopping $12 million of criminal activity to his name. (The Union: The Business Behind Getting High)

 They found this unobtainable man at his house. Complete with a swat team armed with automatic weapons, helicopters, dogs, DEA, the LA police and numerous news crews, the take down of this dangerous stoner went remarkably well. When ask if he was in possession of marijuana he responded: "Of course, I'm Tommy Chong." (A/K/A Tommy Chong)

Google images: Tommy Chong; A/K/A Tommy Chong

  Many were baffled by this gross waste in tax payer's dollars, and the lack of evidence to support this man's conviction. "I'm highly for it. I think as long as [the US] is on code orange, and attacks coming from not only Iraq, but North Korea are immanent, the best thing to do is bust Tommy Chong. I mean they have literally busted Cheech and Chong." (Bill Maher, CNN, A/K/A Tommy Chong)

Chong served his sentence October 8, 2003 to July 7, 2004.


Prisons

"If you took the entire using population of all the illegal drugs combined, and you eliminated cannabis from that equation, there wouldn't be a big enough drug problem in either [Canada] or the United States to justify the massive expenditures that go towards fighting the war."

Enforcing marijuana prohibition is extremely expensive, but in the US it also has also assisted in creating a whole new business interest. In a 20 year period the US prison population has quadrupled, and private prisons are promoted as "one of the best investments you can make." I can't help but feel profiting off prisoners is bad, since this encourages arrests, and cannabis violators make easy targets. The US incarcerates at a rate of 726 people per 100 000 person population, while other countries act at a lesser rate. Japan incarcerates at a rate of 38 people per 100 000 person population. That is nearly a 700 prisoner difference. Currently, there are nearly 45 000 prisoners in state and federal prisons for marijuana violations in the US (excluding people in local and county jails).


88% of all marijuana arrests are for simple possession. (FBI - Uniform crime report, The Union)

Pharmaceuticals

"Marijuana in it's natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man." (Frances Young, DEA judge) When looking at the conflict of nature versus man, nature often wins. It is difficult to compete a man-made, chemically based product against a natural one that already has the strength to solve the problem in question. Marijuana is a threat.

Google images: Marinol; glenwoodsmith.com

Proven to benefit people suffering from glaucoma, epilepsy, muscular dystrophy, arthritis, MS, nausea, depression, anxiety, hepatitis C, cancer, chemotherapy and AIDS, marijuana is like a super drug. So why bother with man-made replacements that include synthetic compounds like Marinol and Stavex? Natural remedies cannot be patented, making it impossible for the pharmaceutical industries to profit from it. Instead they use synthetic THC (delta-9 tetra hydro cannabinol), mix in some other stuff, argue that the medication offers no high, and put it on the shelves with their wallets ready for profit. (nida.nih.gov)

Marinol claims it is "a more viable medicine [than marijuana] because there is no high." The side effects are: dizziness, exaggerated happiness, and drowsiness. Are those not the signs of a high?

This also affects doctors whether they are aware, or not. Doctors are trained against prescribing marijuana from early on as they are continuously being seduced by drug companies until they find themselves with a strong bias towards the "product of choice."

 So how could have medicinal marijuana become legal if so many are against it? There are exceptions to every rule. Somewhere people who were not blinded by capitalism, and bought out by pharmaceuticals stood up and made a difference. One of these people was Dennis Peron: http://pdr.autono.net/DennisPeron.html


Citizens

Google images: Evolution; googlyfoogly.com

People believe what they are told. Especially if the word "study" or "scientific" is involved. Yet most of what is believed to be true regarding marijuana is false. Two of the largest myths are "marijuana kills braincells" and "marijuana kills." Both of these statements are based on the Heath/Tulan study. This study claims that after smoking 30 joints a day, for 60 days, the monkeys who were being used for the study died. What they chose not to share is that instead of administering 30 joints a day for one year, as the study suggests, Dr Heath pumped 63 Colombian strength joints through a gas mask for five minutes over three months. The monkeys died of suffocation, and no studies since show any signs of braincell damage or death.

"You have to smoke something around 15 thousand joints in 20 minutes to get a toxic amount of THC. I challenge anybody to do that." (Dr Paul Hornby, PhD, The Union)


#1 killer in Canada: Tobacco cigarettes (beat out AIDS, heroin, crack, cocaine, alcohol, car accidents, fire and murder combined)

#2 killer in Canada: Alcohol (alcohol leads to 55 000 deaths a year)

"There are no deaths from cannabis use." (Dr Lester Grinspoon, MD, The Union)

The Gateway Theory: "There is no inherent psychopharmaceutical logical property of the drug which pushes one towards another drug."

104 marijuana users = 1 cocaine user = less than one heroin user

Addiction: It is true that more youth are in addiction clinics for marijuana than any other substance. If offered the choice between prison or treatment, I'd opt for the treatment. 97% of marijuana users in treatment centres have been directed to by a judge or guardian.

"The use of criminal law for the basis of public health is a wholly bad idea." (Neil Boyd, The Union)

Google images: Joints; nationalfamilies.org

(all statistics and quotation from The Union: The Business Behind Getting High, unless otherwise cited)