One of the more important missing elements in the anti-drugwar movement is the use of coordinated publicity stunts. At the grass roots level, some good stuff is going on -- for example, Howard Wooldridge of LEAP is doing a coast to coast horseback ride spreading the message that "Cops say legalize drugs." Then there is Ed Forchion, the NJ Weedman -- a guy who has sadly enough had to pack it in due to a lack of support. Ed is simply an amazing guy and true American patriot -- unfortunately, he also publicly admits that he likes to use marijuana. Ed defends himself in court -- and wins! Ed has the courage of his convictions to the extent that he actually blazed up at the Liberty Bell one Fourth of July.
Unfortunately, there just aren't enough Ed Forchion's in the world, brave enough to take that kind of stand. But what if we could come up with a stunt that would be relatively "safe" to participate in, and was something that is almost guaranteed to get attention?
What I hope to do is create a new "Boston Tea Party." Orange Pekoe is a kind of tea (it's the stuff you find in any common tea bag) -- which when burned, just happens to smell a whole lot like the fake marijuana tablets that are used to teach people what burning marijuana smells like. Frankly, to me it just smells like burning leaves, but it fits the bill for getting attention in two big ways: it is tea, and you can roll it in a joint and smoke it in public where people will assume that it is the real deal. In some places, doing that can get you arrested -- good! When people get arrested for smoking tea, that is called "news" -- and getting attention is the name of the game.
Any large gathering of people will be a great opportunity to pull off Operation Orange Pekoe. So the Million Marijuana March at first glance seems like it would be a great place to do it. There is a minor problem with that idea, though: when people are marching specifically for marijuana legalization, it just doesn't get much attention (google for it yourself -- the media has no interest). Worse yet, people expect people to be arrested for pot at such events, so it may not be as effective as a neutral celebratory event where the focus is not on drugs and where there are a large number of people: something like the 4th of July.
I think the 4th of July is a perfect time to do this for two reasons: the symbolic value, and the fact that there will be a lot of people at such events -- and a lot of potential attention. Imagine being arrested on Independence Day by smoking tea in public in the name of your independence! If we pull it off, it will absolutely make the history books. I'll be doing it -- and I hope I get arrested for it.
Obviously, the more people who participate (and the more who face society's misplaced wrath for doing so), the better off we are. And the more publicity we get in advance, the better too. So start spreading the word, Operation Orange Pekoe has been officially launched as of Sep 8, 2005. Target date Jul 4, 2006 -- it's time for another tea party!
31 comments:
In the time before the tolerance policy in the Netherlands became a reality,
The youth movement that called themselves 'Provo' invented and played the 'marihu game'.
Anything that slightly resembled marijuana or hashish, but wasn't the real deal, was 'marihu'
People packed their 'marihu' (tea, licorice candy, kitchen herbs) in alu-foil and matchboxes
and exchanged these packages in a staged suspicious manner.
Getting arrested or having your house searched because of 'marihu' would get you bonus points in the game.
The police got fed up with it quickly that 9 out of 10 times they were arresting and searching people
who turned out only to have innocent substances and who declared they were involved in playing a game.
Brian, it's my personal dream to get a legitimate television appearance, perhaps in a debate format where a Prohib is on the other side.
When the discussion turns to how dangerous pot might be and what level of public response is therefore warranted, I want to reach into my pocket and pull out a doobie.
As I hold it up, I say something like this:
"Now this is not a real marijuana cigarette, it is simply a replica.
Let's look at it. Does it appear DANGEROUS? What if I were to light it up and start inhaling it? Am I then an Instant Danger to everyone around me?
Let's try it and see."
(spark doobie and begin smoking)
"Now as you can see, no one else in the room is being harmed, especially if I exhale my smoke behind my back..."
Continue in this vein until someone (likely within 30 seconds or less) realizes it is a REAL doobie.
Likely the first objection would be, "Ummm, you can't smoke ANYTHING in this studio", followed by realization of wazzup.
Then before anyone can tackle me, I eat the doobie.
PRICELESS TELEVISION for the ages.
When they try to lay some kind of 'destroying evidence' charge on me, I'll of course tell them they're wacky and that I was just fooling around with some Orange Pekoe tea leaves...
"Geesh, can't you guys tell the difference"
I then take my municipal citation for smoking inside a building and hurry home to download the video to the world.
....the stuff that dreams are made of....
Steve
Hey Bri.
Howm grone J here.
Nice Idea!
I will do it on the 4ht anyway, although it is just another day of the week.
I smoke in public here, walk down the street to the super market 2 blocks away. wave to the neighbors while cupping th edoober, but exhaling pot smoke.
I hope a lot of people do it!
This is just the kind of thing that will get attention, but only if people make a stink about it after they get arrested also.
I have learned that burning dry avocado leaves smells the same, but that is true for a lot of burning leaves.
I can't get this thing to let me comment on each of the above individually -- so I guess I have to settle for a mass response.
at any rate, to anonymous who posted about the provos -- thanks indeed! that's kind of how i would like to see this all play out. if we have people engaging in such civil disobedience it should help us greatly.
for steve heath:
you da man! that's an awesome idea and i believe exactly the kind of thing we need to be doing. hell, if we can light tobacco on fire and inhale the smoke and we can pickle ourselves unconscious with a liquid intoxicant, then we ought ot be able to smoke an intoxicant.
what the hell is wrong with people?
yo howm grone!
i don't think we can get away with strolling down ze boulevard while blazing a fattie in america -- not yet anyway, but i've done the same myself in your home stomping ground of nyc.
what i'm really after is a *massive* event -- planned ahead of time and known to the media. but obviously, not everyone has the balls to blatantly spark up a real one in public. at least, not yet.
to michael:
i will indeed have to read up on the provos.
my idea is to have a *massive* number of people torching up fake doobies at the same time all over the country -- and part of the deal is that people will likely get arrested -- i hope i'm one of them!
to help minimize the successful persecution of someone participating in operation orange pekoe, and get around the "copy cat" laws, it will be important that *no one* actually make *any* claims about what it is that they are doing.
they shouldn't pretend to be smoking real marijuana -- they should just spark up as naturally as possible -- like they are lighting a cigarette. no attempt should be made to claim that one is smoking marijuana -- that's what will be assumed -- but if you make no overt effort to convince anyone you are smoking marijuana, then it seems silly that you could be convicted under one of the "look alike" laws. (obviously it's a bit silly that people are arrested for doing things to themselves at all, but that's a whole other can of worms.)
the best defense is a good offense -- and if we can get a large number of people doing this as part of the operation, i think we can at least achieve one small victory. then we can do it again, and again, and again -- for how ever long it takes.
personally, i look forard to being arrested -- if a police officer asks what i'm smoking, i'll just smile and say "orange pekoe." i will make no claim to be smoking marijuana -- and given that the act of lighting a paper tube filled with just about anything other than marijuana is *legal* i'm convinced that we will have a media field day if significant numbers of people are arrested.
Great idea Brian on Operation Orange Pekoe. If we could have a nationwide protest with every user lighting up at once, that'd be quite a feat. If someone can get interviewed for a tv show or something to get the word out it'd help. We should be proud of what we're doing and give Bush something to whine about. Our country was founded on individual liberties and this could be a great way to stick it to the man.
hi gman, thanks for weighing in!
i'm doing my damndest to get attention (having quite a bit of success actually), but there seems to be a really strong aversion in the drug reform "movement" to being associated with people who actually do use drugs.
norml at least doesn't discriminate against pot smokers, but who's the poster child for them trying to help get attention? apparently, nobody.
i think operation orange pekoe is the kind of thing that norml and other reform groups should be coming up with and putting into action -- or at the least helping provide some publicity for. i've contacted all the various groups and told them my plan, but all i hear is cricket noise.
oh well, that's why i started doing what i'm doing -- we need to take *action*
so help me spread the word about what's going on and about operation orange pekoe -- i'm doing it with or without the "leaders" getting involved.
hell, if you can make the time, send an email to some of the reform groups, or maybe even magazines like high times and cannabis culture and tell them to get on board with our new tea party.
thanks,
b
GOT HYDRO?
after we win, i *will* open a gourmet cannabis store -- until then i can't help you.
and "hydro" is a meaningless term -- it has nothing to do with the *type* of marijuana, it is just the name of a technique to grow plants without soil.
in short, calling one's product "hydro" is currently merely a simple means of causing people to pay more than they should.
once it's legal, you'll actually be able to know what you're paying for.
b
narcotics dogs are trained to react to odor, not to physical evidence.
If a dog indicates the presence of drugs but no drugs are found, that doesn't mean that drugs or anything associated with drugs hasn't been there before.
Odors, especially marijuana odors, permeate their surroundings and linger there, Griffin said. "We can wrap a towel around a sealed baggie of marijuana, come back a few hours later and take the towel off the baggie. If we hide the towel, the dog will find it," Griffin said, "even the odor of drugs in the backpack doesn't mean drugs were ever there.
*Maybe fido needs more smells to locate during high school locker sniffs.... towels could be the answer*
that *is* a cool idea -- but it doesn't really shake things up much. for that technique to be useful requires that drug snifing dogs will be in a known place so you can put a towel or other odor carrying material where a dog can find it.
the idea for orange pekoe though, is to have *humans* smell burning plant material that they think must be pot, and much more importantly, to take the *anonymity* out of the equation.
as long as we are forced to hide in the shadows, nothing will be accomplished. it's time to take it to the next level and get *visible* -- we won't gain our rights without actively and visibly seeking them.
the towel idea, or similar things like dropping small bits of "shake" here and there, can be fun, but it really won't *change* anything.
we need to make this a *people* issue.
b
spreading the word is certainly what it's all about, and the internet makes it incredibly easy to do so. i like your "myspace" idea, and as you point out, we need to have people in various places helping out.
my contention is that there are a *lot* of people out there willing to do stuff like this, and it is indeed essential to have them if we are to succeed. they only need to be fired up and encouraged to participate in something they think will be successful.
my plate is full building the weapons from the government's data on my site, so if you step up to the plate and head up coordinating and building something on "myspace" i'll add a link to it on my site and also one from here.
we *can* do this -- and if we ever want to see marijuana legal, we MUST do things like this to generate some positive attention.
thanks for helping out.
b
I commend you for your efforts, but you will never kill this demon or its progeny...let's explore this premise... Unfortunately, the roots of the drug trade are firmly planted in the soil of the US government and many multi-national corporations. What is going on here is that these organizations, (most notably the CIA), are turning monsterous tax-free profits from the drug trade. The CIA started it in Vietnam, (actually Cambodia & Thailand), ferrying out heroin in body bags containing the remains of dead soldiers. Then there is Air America, the ex-officio "airline" of the CIA, which also transported heroin & heroin base from the Golden Triangle in Thailand to be shipped out to the USA. The profits were staggering, and helped support the CIAs so-called "Black-Ops", (covert operations that are not sanctioned by the Congress, in other words, operations that the CIA undertook by itself, answerable to nobody) This continues today. Iran Contra was just the tip of the iceberg. After a while other Corporate Organizations with ties to the CIA, (Most notably Wackenhut Security), got into the game. Wackenhuts Corporate Board of Directors reads like a Who's Who of CIA Spooks, and their sympathizers. When Vietnam ended, these people turned to Central and South America to continue their drug dealing/profiteering. Everyone thinks that guys like Pablo Escobar and Manuel Noreiga set themselves up in the drug trade-nothing could be further from the truth. Our government created these monsters...Example: Geo. Bush Sr. set Noriega up as the go-between for cocaine shipments to the US through Mexico by way of Panama when he was the Director of the CIA. Only when Noreiga double-crossed Bush & Co., (Noreiga set up a Cocaine pipeline through Cuba w/ Fidel Castro to Miami via the so-called Mariel Boat People, which were in fact, trained smugglers, not political prisoners. This effectively cut BushCo out of the picture and the Profits, as well)So, to regain his stranglehold on the cocaine traffic, Bush Sr., now President, sent US troops into Panama to remove Noreiga from power, and set up their own puppet to reclaim their illict business. It worked, and the US populace was once again duped. The "War on Drugs" is really nothing more than a wildly expensive Dog and Pony show to give the US citizens a warm fuzzy feeling that something is being done to keep little Johnny from snorting his first nose-full of Coke...Bullshit. They want Johnny to pack his snout and give them his allowance money. They don't give a damn about the collateral damage it causes, because the American Taxpayer has to foot the bill for Johnnys rehab, not them. They keep ALL the money they get from "The Trade". These people are not about to kill the Goose That Laid The Golden Egg, either. These are the guys that create the lies and rumors about drugs. These are the guys that scare the crap out of Mr. & Mrs. Two-Car Garage on the 11 O'Clock news, showing horrible drug stories, gang murders, and all the shitty fallout from their nefarious greed. (and if you think that the "5th Estate" (the media) is immune from being controlled by these people, you're blind as well as stupid-they can and do anything that they want)I wish you well, and hope you can put a dent in this big enough to arouse the publics outrage-only then will the plug get pulled on this monster in our country.
thanks for weighing in.
i see you are well versed in the "conspiracy" aspects of the drug war -- sorry, i don't buy any of it. i am not saying that there isn't some level of corruption involved, but i am saying that such corruption is *not* going to stop us from ending the drug war.
to stop the drug war only requires that "mr & mrs two car garage" be un-brainwashed. doing that is what i'm here for, and i've found that simply building pictures out of the government's very own data and then showing them to people is a really simple way to get them to understand what is going on.
drugs are here to stay, their use is normalizing in our society (http://www.briancbennett.com/charts/big-pic/index.htm), and the drug users aren't causing much of a problem after all.
you can bullshit some of the people some of the time, but i'm making it harder than ever to bullshit them about the drug war. and using the government's own data!
we need *millions* of people to start paying attention and caring. all i can do is make it easier, so i do.
b
Has anyone tried inhaling this stuff? Or are we supposed to skip that part? Btw, great site. I think your main site ( http://www.briancbennett.com/ ) may be the best source for drug war information on the net. However, I wish the presentation was more friendly. The front page is organizationally a bit of a mess and not really good for presenting to the average person.
Do you have a page anywhere that has a comprehensive series of arguments that might convince the average person to support drug war reform? I don't think we can do this with smokers alone.
hi dave,
i actually have inhaled tea -- but i don't recommend it for anyone else! it certainly won't give you a buzz, and it is a bit on the harsh side -- but it will work fine for "operation orange pekoe.".
i'm glad you like my site, and it is indeed my goal for it to be the absolute best such resource on the web (and the best in the world).
i appreciate your feedback on the site and layout. the short answer is that i'm always working on improving it and adding more and more content, and i will indeed be putting together a comprehensive guide for the average person to effectively argue the case to put an end to the drug war.
unfortunately, i am a "one man army" with no funding and no staff -- so it's taking a bit of time to pull everything together. i had to first concentrate on simply accumulating and graphing out all of the government's data ('cause no one else had done it), and that was a huge undertaking all by itself. to see just how deep and broad the material on the site is, have a look at this: http://www.briancbennett.com/pagelist.htm
the workload is absolutely staggering, but i am more than qualified to get the job done. the big brick wall is time -- and time means money. i've completely exhausted my own financial resources, so now i need to raise enough money to buy the time to do the work.
hell, with 26 million past year pot smokers out there, if even only one in ten sent me a dollar, i could quit taking donations and have plenty of time to get the job done.
thanks for helping!
regards,
brian
I made a new years resolution after midnight on the first (so it was really the second). "To convince as many eligible American voters as possible that they do not have a moral right to prevent other Americans from smoking marijuana." I don't normally make resolutions, but I thought it would be fun to make an unusual one (relative to losing weight or exercising more). Since then I've been reading material on the web excessively. I've been rethinking whether or not legalizing marijuana alone is a good starting point (the alternative being across the board legalization). I was also thinking about making my own site and launching some sort of campaign myself because I didn't really like anything I had seen so far. Then yesterday I think it was, I stumbled upon this place (via a Google search for "War on Drugs" I think). I no longer feel the need to make my own site. Although I'm considering a brief formal presentation as a reference point for my specific arguments with a portal to more comprehensive sites such as this one.
The existence of the Internet gives me great hope. It feels like we could finally accomplish something if it's got the right juice behind it. I've been trying to dream up things like your tea party. For example, I was thinking we could settle on some sort of ribbon (a green, anti-drugwar ribbon) for the backs of cars and try to get as many sane people as possible to use them. Anything that might eventually get some mainstream media attention so we can get the data into the public eye. I've also been writing randomly on my newly minted blog (linked through my profile) crystalizing my thoughts. My latest post is a potential regulation scheme for completely legalized drugs (since the kneejerk reaction is that across the board legalization is insane).
I've also been collaborating with a fellow named Harry Stottle on various ideas. One thing he's been talking about making is a "table of risk". This would be a comprehensive table showing the risk of death (and if possible serious injury) for various activities (scaled to percents based on the number of people who partake in the activity; not just raw numbers). I could probably assemble half the table just from the readily available data on this site.
I should also mention that I understand the enormous task it must have been to tabulate all that data. Even if you're efficent with a computer (as I am, being a computer science grad student with extensive PC experience). Maybe you should register the domain antidrugwarczar.org and try to further popularize the idea that you are filling a position that needs funding! Have you been working on this full time from savings (or other part-time work)? I'll ask anyone who supports the effort to donate what they can (after taking a look around and realizing that you are a worth cause).
Anyway, I'm committed to trying to make a difference. If you think I can help directly with the site in some significant way, let me know. I tend to make a lot of free time for myself even though I oughta devote more to my dissertation. I'm especially big on free time during the video game off-season.
hi dave,
i'm really glad you found my site through a google search -- like you, i am a computer geek, and my specialty is distributed search and retrieval. i named my site the way i did in part to make it show up when people search for "the anti-drug" (the pdfa's tag line). it wasn't too difficult for me to ensure that other drug related search terms would lead people to my site. it's been working rather well.
i've checked out your blog -- it's excellent! and i've actually contacted harry stottle myself. there are many of us kindred spirits out there and the internet is a great way for those of us who are "screaming in the wilderness" to find each other.
now, of course, the pertinent question is "what do we do?" clearly, we are among those interested in putting an end to the drug war. to me, it boils down to winning the hearts and minds of a populace that has been brainwashed since birth about the use of various drugs.
doing that becomes a matter of getting people to pay attention in the first place, and then having gained their attention, to convince them that a) we have no "right" to punish another person for the acts they direct upon themselves or with willing others, and b) that the data all indicate we have absolutely no reason to do so either.
we have a huge job ahead of us, and the key is to alter the dialogue. part of my work toward that end is to demonstrate to people that most of what they hear in terms of statistics about the "damages" caused to society by drug use is completely irrelevant in practical terms.
my favorite example at the moment is emergency room marijuana mentions. when people hear about them from the government, it is along the lines of "marijuana mentions now exceed those for heroin." but, what people need to know about such things is not the raw numbers of mentions for the drugs -- what they need to know is how the number of drug mentions compares to the number of hospital visits, and (more importantly, i believe) how many actual users of said drugs end up in the emergency room and "mention" it.
clearly, marijuana mentions is a ridiculously inconsequential statistic -- and people need to know that. the same thing applies to all of the other stats being quoted -- there is no context in which people can observe how utterly inconsequential the stats actually are.
in answer to your question about how i've been able to pay the price to do the work on the site: i quit my job, and spent all of my savings so that i could have the time to do the work. sadly, i no longer have the financial resources to devote the time that is required to do the work. indeed, i've had to sell my home and am returning to full time employment.
the best way to help the cause is to do exactly what you are doing: learning everything you can about what's really going on and spreading the word to others. helping me directly is (unfortunately) mostly a matter of finances -- which you have already helped with, but i really need to raise some serious cash to devote my attention to the work full time.
getting others to care enough to want to help is my mission: we have to give people a reason to care, a belief that their efforts will matter, and an easy way to contribute and participate.
the drug war is a big ugly problem, and from what i've observed, i have some unique and valuable contributions to make in helping to put an end to it. the extent to which i can accomplish even more is constrained by my availability -- i simply need the time to do the work. and of course, i'm trying to put it all out there "for free" so other people can benefit from the work.
for the near term, i will work on building my anti drugwar strategy -- i hope that will convince people that we do indeed have a chance to fix this mess, and that i am capable of leading the way forward. here's the overview: http://www.briancbennett.com/strategy/overview.htm
at the moment though, i am in the process of moving. after we're settled in our new place, i will start churning out the rest of the strategy, and even put some new material here on my blog. i have a lot of stuff in process -- but precious little time.
brian
"doing that becomes a matter of getting people to pay attention in the first place, and then having gained their attention, to convince them that a) we have no "right" to punish another person for the acts they direct upon themselves or with willing others, and b) that the data all indicate we have absolutely no reason to do so either."
I like this statement. It should get people to pay attention.
I'm worried that if people read things like this first though, there will be no convincing them:
http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/ongoing/marijuana.html
When people read all of that, they may forget that they shouldn't infringe on the freedom of other free people. And they may not notice that a number of those claims are spurious. Fortunately, spurious claims are a great opportunity to discredit the opposition. I'm particulary interested in addressing the last two sections at that link which attempt to instill fear that high people are so dangerous to other people that we can't allow them to get high (yet we only regulate alcohol). So far, this is the most rigorous defense of prohibition I've seen on the net. Funny that it comes from the government rather than a private source.
By the way, thanks for the comment on my blog. Speaking of that, I made some significant modifications to my template to make my blog more comment and permalink friendly. I also noticed that your template (and Harry's) do not have a sidebar section for links. You don't even have a live link from your blog to your site If you're interested, I'd be happy to modify the scribe template for you to make it a bit more functional. I offered to do the same for Harry, but he didn't seem that interested and so I haven't done so yet.
Good luck with the move. That's always a pain.
dave,
would you be kind enough to send me an email so that we can continue this correspondence via that medium?
to address the claims made by the government is nowhere near as daunting a task as they would like to believe. it's a matter of using the data in conjunction with the appropriate context. it's all smoke and mirrors once you start really looking into it.
b
I've come to realise that as well as the points you mention, drug prohibition frustrates legitimate medical and pharmacological research.
If these drugs were legalised and allowed to be developed like medical drugs are, the side-effects of use could be reduced, compensating for the likely increase in use.
You would have to restrict the amount of R&D and production of recreational drugs allowed by any one company though, so this doesn't divert Big Pharma companies from medical drugs.
Also, several currently illegal drugs (e.g. MDMA and LSD) were used medicinally before blanket prohibition put an end to that. (see article below)
As a biology student, it seems absurd to me to restrict research into chemicals used recreationally, and yet, in my next lab session, we're going to be using *cyanide*.
Yes, that's right, cyanide. We're allowed to work with lethal poisons, but "Stay the hell away from the drugs, kids!".
Finally, although I have never taken drugs, I have a list of dangerous and stupid stuff i've done that's as long as my arm!
Should BASE jumping on private property or making a bonfire be illegal for example?
My biggest ethical problem with drugs is the criminality involved in the supply chain.
If I grew a cannabis plant in my cupboard for my own use only, then where would the victim be? Nobody would get hurt in gang wars over it.
(I'm from the UK by the way. Nice site.)
If you want to email me, use fakermeister@gmail.com and put the word "prohibition" in the title.
Thanks.
Link to article on Albert Hofman
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/07/international/europe/07hoffman.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5070&en=c2576eff4def2ffe&ex=1138770000
(login details are user=screwer7 and password=screwer. Thanks, Bugmenot.com!)
hi vinnie,
thanks for weighing in.
i agree that all of us are screwed by the fact that pharmaceutical companies can't do legitimate research into recreational intoxicants -- but i don't think they'll abandon all their other research just to study recreational intoxicants. they're driven by profit, and will pursue all avenues for enhancing their revenue streams -- so we probably don't need to pass more laws to "keep them in line."
great points on the cyanide and BASE jumping -- hell, you can "legally" saw your own arm off for the hell of it and not be arrested for it!
i'm glad there are people like you out there who recognize the absurdity and pitfalls involved in prohibition even though you aren't using any of the "unapproved" intoxicants.
the drug war affects everyone in so many negative ways, so thanks for pointing out a couple of them. this nonsense has got to be stopped.
b
Very nice effort!
Might plug your main site on Metafilter, if you can handle the traffic.
I'm nominally a drug legalizer, but I like to be rigorous in deriving my conclusions, so I like to play devil's advocate in debates. Unfortunately, barring a few exceptions, I regret to say that many reformers seem just as loose with their logic and melodramatic with their rhetoric as the prohibitionists. You seem like someone with an analytical & detached bent who could serve as a sincere sparring partner. If you are willing, we can hold some constructive debates on some core and ancillary premises that justify our policy attitudes.
hi daksya!
i appreciate your compliments and thanks for weighing in with your own.
i welcome any and all additional traffic to my site, so if you want to mention it on metafilter, go for it! getting the word out in as many venues as possible is an important part of getting the job done -- and the internet certainly makes that a lot easier.
as to debating -- i have no problem with debate, but rather than carrying it out on my blog, i park my ass at talk.politics.drugs on usenet.
there are a great number of people who would relish such debate and make excellent sparring partners for you too. also, i'm convinced that more people look at t.p.d. than read my blog ;^)
so bring it on! i'll see you at t.p.d. (although i've recently changed isp's and need to find a new free news server by the 7th of march.
b
I'll probably post your site on Monday or Tuesday. In the meanwhile, check out my (dormant) blog for the British drugs report.
I just visited t.p.d via google and it's typical of how I remember usenet when I left it. Lot of cross-posted irrelevant topics, trolls..etc. How about a saner venue like the Drug WarRant messageboards?
i'm sorry but i don't use any groups where you have to get yet another "account" to post things.
yes, usenet does have cross-posts and trolls -- just like real life. i ignore trolls, and look at cross-posts as a way to reach the unconverted. you never know who is out there reading, but every one of them is a potential recruit to stop the war on drugs.
i'll be in t.p.d.
b
Hello! Glad to have found you. I'm linking you.
well thank you birdy, i appreciate the link.
i went to your blog and found it very interesting and well written. thanks for sharing what it's like in your world. i appreciated the "look at the patient first" story -- that simple lesson applies in so many ways to life as a whole.
for anyone else reading this, birdy is a senior in nursing school, and writes about the events, people and ethical dilemmas involved in the medical world.
you can read it here:
http://birdyrn.blogspot.com/
b
this is a truly great idea i hope the word gets sufficiently spread
with your help, it can!
b
Hempman has been on TV (arguing that to protect medical marijuana all prohibition laws have to be lifted) and is pissed that he did not think to toke up. It would have been perfect, as there was not one anti-toker in the studio, and they would have not stopped some righteous munching.
hi hempman,
thanks for weighing in. it would have been totally cool to spark up in those circumstances -- but clearly that is an act that should be taken only by those willing to take it to court if they get busted.
for most people, some type of vegetation other than cannabis is the best alternative -- as even doing that can get you arrested in some places, and that's a great reason to do it and take it to court.
hell, if everyone arrested for real marijuana actually took thir cases to trial, the criminal justice system would be completely paralyzed.
having a few "arrested for smoking tea" cases wouldn't do that, naturally, but it is a great way to help call attention to the absurdities of the drug war.
b
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