Medical marijuana returns to Congress
Representative Maurice Hinchey’s amendment to the Science-State-Justice-Commerce Appropriations bill for 2007 will come up for a vote soon. Let your representatives know you support it!
The amendment will forbid the Department of Justice (which includes the FBI and the DEA) from using any of their money to arrest patients who are using medical marijuana in accordance with the laws of their state. There are eleven states that allow patients to use marijuana under the advice of their doctors.
That includes here in California, where federal law enforcement caused Peter McWilliams’ death; he had been using medical marijuana to keep his AIDS medicines down; after the federal government arrested him, McWilliams choked to death for lack of a medicine that was and is legal under California law.
- Peter McWilliams’ Death
- From “an American hero” to “prisoner of the drug war”, Peter McWilliams’ death sent shock waves of bipartisan outrage throughout the early web.
- Maurice Hinchey
- “Maurice D. Hinchey is a progressive Democrat representing New York’s 22nd Congressional District, which spans eight counties from the Hudson Valley to the Finger Lakes region.”
- Take Action: Hinchey Medical Marijuana Amendment 2007
- “This month (probably next week, mid-July, 2007), Congress will vote on an amendment that if passed would give patients the protection the court has denied. There might not be another Congressional vote on medical marijuana until next year, so your emails and phone calls are critically needed right now.”
- Medical Marijuana
- “Numerous published studies suggest that marijuana has medical value in treating patients with serious illnesses such as AIDS, glaucoma, cancer, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, and chronic pain. In 1999, the Institute of Medicine, in the most comprehensive study of medical marijuana’s efficacy to date, concluded, ‘Nausea, appetite loss, pain and anxiety… all can be mitigated by marijuana.’”
More prohibition
- Learning from alcohol prohibition
- If the people against ending drug prohibition had been around in the thirties, we would never have ended the prohibition of beer and cocktails, because of the dangers of pure alcohol and bathtub gin. One of the lessons of the alcohol prohibition era is that we don’t have to go from banning everything to allowing everything. There is a middle ground.
- Progressives ruin a different kind of race in New Jersey
- As a potential triple-crown winner prepares for the third race of the Triple Crown, it’s almost impossible to place a bet in Atlantic City, NJ.
- U.S. homicide rate compared to gun control measures
- Extrano’s Alley lists the U.S. homicide rate from 1885 to 1940, and somebody else puts it into a chart.
- The Great Illusion: An Informal History of Prohibition
- Herbert Asbury’s book has to rank as one of the greatest arguments ever written against the drug war; this book about alcohol prohibition chronicles and forecasts all of the problems with modern prohibition that we see today.
- Cannabis Britannica
- Subtitled “Empire, Trade, and Prohibition”, this is an in-depth history of how prohibition came about in Britain, and ends up describing how marijuana prohibition came to the forefront of international attempts to ban opium.
- 26 more pages with the topic prohibition, and other related pages