‘The Department of Justice today issued a memo on federal marijuana enforcement policy announcing a return to the rule of law and the rescission of previous guidance documents. Since the passage of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) in 1970, Congress has generally prohibited the cultivation, distribution, and possession of marijuana.
In the memorandum, Attorney General Jeff Sessions directs all U.S. Attorneys to enforce the laws enacted by Congress and to follow well-established principles when pursuing prosecutions related to marijuana activities. This return to the rule of law is also a return of trust and local control to federal prosecutors who know where and how to deploy Justice Department resources most effectively to reduce violent crime, stem the tide of the drug crisis, and dismantle criminal gangs.
“It is the mission of the Department of Justice to enforce the laws of the United States, and the previous issuance of guidance undermines the rule of law and the ability of our local, state, tribal, and federal law enforcement partners to carry out this mission,” said Attorney General Jeff Sessions. “Therefore, today’s memo on federal marijuana enforcement simply directs all U.S. Attorneys to use previously established prosecutorial principles that provide them all the necessary tools to disrupt criminal organizations, tackle the growing drug crisis, and thwart violent crime across our country.”
(Vacating Eric Holder’s sorta hands-off w/ exceptions.)
Yeppers, Jeffers, good job! Fight violent cannabis users and criminal organizations with this crazy thinking. And your new directive comes close on the heels of California’s becoming the ninth state to legalize recreational cannabis. Twenty-nine states have already approved medical marijuana. Gonna be a real vote getter for your boss, ain’t it?
The growing drug crisis? And here we’d been led to falsely believe that the crisis is opioids!
From wsws.org, Nov 2017:
“A criminal role in the growing opioid epidemic is being played by the US pharmaceuticals industry, which has flooded impoverished communities with highly addictive opioid painkiller drugs. A report last month by the CDC found that in 10 states more than 50 percent of deaths due to opioids, a class of drugs that includes heroin, were caused by the prescription drug fentanyl. Fentanyl is a highly addictive painkiller that is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine, and which has been marketed over the years in patches, sprays and even lollipops.
US drug companies, working through lobbyists and influential members of Congress, have repeatedly blocked attempts to strengthen federal oversight of opioid sales. A report on the news program “60 Minutes” last month exposed the bipartisan push, led by Republican congressman Tom Marino, to block the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) from halting unusually large shipments of opioids, which culminated in the passage of the 2016 Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act, which was signed into law by Obama.”
Now most coverage on Jeffrey’s Reefer Madness claim that no one knows Herr Trump’s feelings on cannabis, but let’s jump back in time to Ellen Brown’s June 2016 round-up on cannabis and its medical efficacies:
“Republican candidate Donald Trump says we are losing badly in the war on drugs, and that to win that war all drugs need to be legalized.”
But then, he changes his mind a lot, doesn’t he. Or loses his mind, what.ev.er. But back to Ellen Brown of the Public Banking Institute:
“Boosting trade in the new marijuana market is not a good reason for decriminalizing it, of course, if it actually poses a grave danger to health. But there have been no recorded deaths from cannabis overdose in the US. Not that the herb can’t have problematic effects, but the hazards pale compared to alcohol (30,000 deaths annually) and to patented pharmaceuticals, which are now the leading cause of death from drug overdose. Prescription drugs taken as directed are estimated to kill 100,000 Americans per year.
Behind the War on Weed: Taking Down the World’s Largest Agricultural Crop
“The greatest threat to health posed by marijuana seems to come from its criminalization. Today over 50 percent of inmates in federal prison are there for drug offenses, and marijuana tops the list. Cannabis cannot legally be grown in the US even as hemp, a form with very low psychoactivity. Why not? The answer seems to have more to do with economic competition and racism than with health.” [a long snip about Nixon’s War on Drugs, Harry Anslinger, called “the father of the war on weed,” the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, both with quotes. Anslinger’s are especially openly racist, such as “marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others”, while Nixon’s are more on the order of ‘racialist’.
“Competitor or Attractive New Market for the Pharmaceutical Industry?
The documented medical use of cannabis goes back two thousand years, but the Schedule I ban has seriously hampered medical research. Despite that obstacle, cannabis has now been shown to have significant therapeutic value for a wide range of medical conditions, including cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, glaucoma, lung disease, anxiety, muscle spasms, hepatitis C, inflammatory bowel disease, and arthritis pain.
New research has also revealed the mechanism for these wide-ranging effects. It seems the active pharmacological components of the plant mimic chemicals produced naturally by the body called endocannabinoids. These chemicals are responsible for keeping critical biological functions in balance, including sleep, appetite, the immune system, and pain. When stress throws those functions off, the endocannabinoids move in to restore balance.
Inflammation is a common trigger of the disease process in a broad range of degenerative ailments. Stress triggers inflammation, and cannabis relieves both inflammation and stress. THC, the primary psychoactive component of the plant, has been found to have twenty times the anti-inflammatory power of aspirin and twice that of hydrocortisone.
CBD, the most-studied non-psychoactive component, also comes with an impressive list of therapeutic uses, including against cancer and as a super-antibiotic. CBD has been shown to kill “superbugs” that are resistant to currently available drugs. This is a major medical breakthrough, since for some serious diseases antibiotics have reached the end of their usefulness.”
“Although the movement for marijuana legalization is a decades-old grassroots effort, the big money behind the recent push has come from a few very wealthy individuals with links to Monsanto, the world’s largest seed company and producer of genetically modified seeds.
In May of this year, Bayer AG, the giant German chemical and pharmaceutical company, made a bid to buy Monsanto. Both companies are said to be working on a cannabis-based extract.”
But the merger seems not to have happened yet, but it likely will, imo, in the spirit of The Prez’s MAGA! But her ’working on a cannabis-based extract’ link goes to:
William Engdahl’s March 2014 ‘The Connection Between The Legalization Of Marijuana In Uruguay, Monsanto And George Soros’
“Soros is also an important shareholder of Monsanto, the world’s largest producer of genetically modified seeds. And here it gets interesting.
Monsanto and Gencannabis?
Studies show that Monsanto without much fanfare conducts research projects on the active ingredient in marijuana, namely THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), in order to genetically manipulate the plant. David Watson of the Dutch company Hortapharm has since 1990 created the world’s largest collection of Cannabis seed varieties. In 1998, the British firm GW Pharmaceuticals signed an agreement with Hortapharm that gives GW Pharma the rights to use the Hortapharm cannabis for their research.
In 2003 the German Bayer AG then signed an agreement with GW Pharmaceuticals for joint research on a cannabis-based extract. In 2007, Bayer AG agreed to an exchange of technology with … Monsanto, both according to exchange the results of their research. Thus Monsanto has discreet access to the work of the cannabis plant and its genetic modification. In 2009 GW Pharmaceuticals announced that it had succeeded in genetically altering a cannabis plant and patented a new breed of cannabis
.Since the cultivation of cannabis plants in Uruguay is allowed, one can easily imagine that Monsanto sees a huge new market that the Group is able to control just with patented cannabis seeds such as today is happening on the market for soybeans. Uruguay’s President Mujica has made it clear he wants a unique genetic code for cannabis in his country in order to “keep the black market under control.”
Genetically modified cannabis seeds from Monsanto would grant such control.”
Indeed it would.
CBcentral.org has a lot of facts on CBDs, plus a cornucopia of information on the efficacy of cannabidiol on medical conditions, (right sidebar) including:
“Autism Spectrum Disorders or ASD are prevalent in many children in the United States, affecting one in every 68 children. ASD covers a wide range of conditions including Asperger Syndrome, Autism and Pervasive Developmental Disorder. ASD is just one of the medical conditions that have a considerable impact to the behavioral dysfunction and neurological development of a child, once he or she reaches the age of 3.”
But sure,Beauregard, let’s just focus on William Randolph Hurst’s production as a hedge against the dangers of hemp v. his desires to become the King of Plastics!
Hopeless insanity! Murder! Suicide!
But let’s fill those prisons with darkies (Sir Sessions of the ‘I used to admire the KKK until I found out that they smoke marijuana’ fame), and fook all of those 60%-ers in Amerika who favor legalization; again: a real vote-getter for your boss. Fook states’ rights except when they fit your agenda! Forget that it’s a multi-billion dollar a year capitalist enterprise, and all those millions of jobs.jobs.jobs. and tax revenues! Because: violence and gangs!
Guess it never occurred to your pea brain that legalization means uh…gangs wouldn’t have to ‘deal it’, did it? And that cannabis helps wean folks off opioids, Sir MJ-is-as-bad-as-heroin?
Oooof and tiddley-pom; and how could I almost have forgotten this?
‘WHO (World Health Organization): Medical marijuana is not addictive, shouldn’t be a scheduled drug’ (The report is here, pdf, 27 pages on Cannabidiol, CBDs)
Given the dearth of studies, they did at least mention:
“There is also evidence that CBD may be a useful treatment for a number of other medical conditions. However, this research is considerably less advanced than for treatment of epilepsy. For most indications, there is only pre-clinical evidence, while for some there is a combination of pre-clinical and limited clinical evidence. The range of conditions for which CBD has been assessed is diverse, consistent with its neuroprotective, antiepileptic, hypoxia-ischemia, anxiolytic, antipsychotic, analgesic, anti-inflammatory, anti-asthmatic, and antitumor properties.[37, 50, 67] The evidence for CBD’s various therapeutic applications was recently reviewed by Pisanti et al (2017), refer to Table 1.”
And how will the DEA pressure those Attorneys General for cannabis search and seizures permissions? Remember “Bruce Dixon at Black Agenda Report had recently steered readers to newly procured FOIAed documents that he called ‘a smoking gun’ in the DEA manuals of ‘parallel reconstruction’ of phony chains of evidence that began with NSA and likely other security state acronym agencies funneled to law enforcement agencies”? I wrote a bit of it up in 2014. Think that’s over? Nah. They’re the Good Guys!
DEA reTweet:
Good on them!
But it does turn out that Beauregard has an opioid policy of sorts, if you can parse the word salad of it. I can’t.
davidly
Greyson Smythe
LeMoyne
juliania2
ohiobarbarian
stephenadavis1
wendyedavis
café babylon 
I’ve been asking around a bit about possible effects of Senator Secesh’s policies in the local market. people are hopeful, esp w/the new Calif vote. and something like $300 million in revenue has been added to the State economy. I get all Ronny Raygun/Ayn Rand stupid when I hear that, since MJ is taxed at every node, point, hub, burb & blurp of its production in this state, stifling the job creators & Dagnabbitey Taggerts of the pot economy. guess what? AG Secesh could care less about market distortions & all that capitalist drivel, lost revenues, lost efficiencies (e.g., in palliative care), etc., etc. or that “consent of the governed” democratic enlightened malarkey. everybody wants but won’t get.
oh yeah, someone did say, “don’t think Obama wasn’t raiding stuff.”
now more than ever: KEEP DOPE ALIVE
amen, keep dope alive. when both rec and medical MJ were proposed in CO, taxes!!! were the biggest selling point. oh, sure, tax it so high that there’s *still* a black market, you buffoons. i was trying to remember when i’d covered some of the obomba-era raids cuz i that last reefer madness graphic was already in my media files here.
but alas, all i could kick up was one squib in this post: ‘Trumpista Policy Part II: “Drugs”, march, 2017
“Aha: when I’d first read at Reuters that WH spox Sean Spicer had announced that Herr Trump might ‘ramp up’ enforcement of federal cannabis laws especially in states in which recreational marijuana is legal, setting up an (ahem) conflict with those states’ laws, this category of decades’ worth of victims of the failed ‘drug wars’ would be convenient bed-fillers.”
“Reuters also wrote that Obama’s administration largely looked the other way, but not in CA and other states. He’d declared it something like: “It’s not one of our priorities”. i know i had more about that in some other ‘police state’ post. guess one was oregon, likely WA, too.
https://cafe-babylon.net/2017/03/01/trumpista-policy-part-ii-drugs/
oh, blush, blush, an triple blush. i just looked in my very incomplete police state category, and what did i find? ‘Beauregard Goes Full-Tilt Racist Reefer Madness’, march 2017.
““On Thursday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a memo ordering Justice Department staff to charge criminal suspects – specifically low-level, non-violent drug offenders – with the most severe crime possible and pursue the toughest sentences allowed, rolling back progress made under the Obama administration.
The two-page memo, released to the public Friday morning, requires federal prosecutors to pursue the toughest possible charges and sentences against suspects. “It is core principle that prosecutors should charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offense,” he wrote. “This policy confirms our responsibility to enforce the law, is moral and just, and produces consistency.”, rollingstone.com
“Now the ‘inconsistent previous policy’ refers to former AG Eric Holder’s memo which had advised federal prosecutors to use their discretion when building a case against non-violent drug offenders, as a way to reserve harsh mandatory minimum sentences only for violent or high-level drug crimes. Now I’m not entirely sure how much his ‘advisement’ had taken, especially in California, but on Sept. 3, 2013, David Downs at sfgate.com called bullshit the disconnect between ‘policy’ and ‘local reality’”, etc.
y’all are gonna laugh me off the internet any day now…it also has boots riley’s ‘strange arithmetic’ which i just added to the OP. arrrgggh.
https://cafe-babylon.net/2017/05/17/beauregard-goes-full-tilt-racist-reefer-madness/
If full decriminalization ever makes it past the threat of expedient partisan endangerment, I imagine the black market could be conveniently tolerated under the rubric “the public option”.
lol and my stars: brilliant, davidly. oh, and jason did finally take the time to describe what’s goin’ on in his camp last evening. hella piece of writing, as well.