Lawrence O'Donnell: Marijuana is Safer Than Alcohol.

A clear and well-reasoned argument on the hypocrisy of alcohol users condemning marijuana users when alcohol is much more dangerous and addictive. Those who call marijuana the "gateway drug" conveniently forget that most marijuana users drank alcohol well before trying the less harmful marijuana. And what about caffeine? There are a lot of people who have caffeine withdrawals.

Poll: Marijuana Legalization Support Reaches New High.

PHOTO CREDIT: "Cannabis" by M. Bartosch for Free Digital Photos

In a new poll from Gallup, a majority of Americans now support legalization of marijuana. Fifty percent now favor the end to prohibition, whereas 46% oppose it. Just last year, that support for ending prohibition was at 46%. Americans are finally seeing through the propaganda that has incorrectly labeled marijuana as a dangerous drug.

Not one person has ever over-dosed from marijuana; compare that to alcohol, and yet alcohol is as available as Starbucks coffee. Marijuana isn't physically addictive like tobacco and yet tobacco can be easily purchased at convenience stores!! Anyone who says marijuana is physically addictive is misinformed and has obviously never tried the herb. I have used marijuana throughout various times in my life and it has never been hard to stop when I wanted to.

Then there is the fact that marijuana pacifies people and therefore you just don't see the violence associated with it that you do with alcohol. Think about all the violence on the border with Mexico over drugs; sixty percent of that drug trade is in marijuana!! If we legalized it then that crime would drop drastically. Some people say that drug cartels would still have other drugs to sell but who in their right mind would oppose putting a 60% dent in their business?!!!

And, the cost to tax payers of enforcing a failed 70 year prohibition in police resources has been atrocious. That is time that the police could be chasing violent criminals and solving cold cases. In addition, we already clogging up our already crowded prisons with non-violent marijuana users and growers while pedophiles and rapists get light sentences!! The warehousing of those marijuana "offenders" also costs the tax payer ridiculous amounts of money. The money is flowing the wrong way--out of our pockets; legalization and regulation similar to alcohol could be bringing in millions (if not billions) to state and federal coffers to balance budgets and fund schools.

The last time I checked, America was a country where we have a right to personal freedom and unreasonable searches and seizures. Tax paying, law-abiding citizens should have the freedom to enjoy small amounts of marijuana in the privacy of their own homes. Whatever happened to the pursuit of happiness?!! For these, and many other reasons, marijuana should be legalized and it appears that America is ready to do it. The tipping point is upon us and now it just looks like it is being opposed by "do-gooders" who oppose it purely on religious, moral grounds. However, a religion shouldn't have the right to deny others personal freedoms; this is a country after all that allows for the practice of no religion, too. Even amongst the religious there are many who agree with legalization, so the time is now.

---The Green Man has Spoken---

Utah Attorney General Shurtleff Approves of Medical Marijuana.

Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff said he would support the legalization of medical marijuana after experiencing months of intensive cancer treatment. "Until you've experienced chemo, you can't describe exactly how it feels," he said Thursday on KSL Newsradio's Doug Wright Show. "It's kind of like having the flu because you ache all over. But it's worse than that... Everything feels awful." "They give you pills to help you with the nausea, but if you can't keep those down, then what do you do?" he said. "You just suffer. That's one of the reasons I understand why people who are going through chemo are prescribed medicinal marijuana in states where it is legal."

Green Man: Wow, if Utah's attorney general backs medical marijuana then the marijuana debate is truly making progress. Utah is one of the most conservative states, which is also home to one of the most conservative religions--Mormonism. And, Shurtleff isn't someone to ignore that easily, considering he's the top law enforcement official in the state of Utah. I must say though, as a proud Coloradan, he needs to back-off criticizing Colorado for their very progressive medical marijuana industry. He's supposed to represent the state of Utah--let Colorado decide it's own way of doing things. I doubt he'd appreciate our attorney general telling him how to run his state.

Speaking of Colorado, we will have a proposal on the ballot next year on whether to legalize marijuana in the state. I think it has a real chance of succeeding, so if you want to see marijuana legalized and believe in the personal freedom to use it then please consider donating 5, 10, 20 dollars to the campaign. SAFER is a well known, established and respected cannabis organization here in Colorado; they successfully got small amounts of marijuana legalized in Denver city limits.

You might say, "Well, why should I help Colorado legalize it when I don't live there?" Understandable question. But, consider this--if Colorado legalizes it then it will create an example and momentum for others states to follow suit. Especially, if California also legalizes next year; as they have a ballot measure that will be on the '12 ballot, as well. Marijuana was given to us by Mother Earth and has medicinal and spiritual properties for a reason--it's meant to be used. Mother Nature has given us everything we need in nature.

It's amazing to me that we're fine with prescribing highly-addictive opium based pills for people for everything from a back ache to blue balls but marijuana is more dangerous? Despite it's known benefits and lack of side effects??? Bullshit. It's less addictive than alcohol, and yet, people see it as worse than the opium based pills they hand out like candy!! True story. I was raised in a very naive, conservative, Mormon household and wasn't allowed to sexually explore myself (or anyone else for that matter). So, I would get blue balls, but I didn't know what they were, so suspecting a serious problem "down there" I went to the emergency room!! Yep, and the doctor just told me about blue balls and gave me VICODIN!!!

Good god!! Handing out Vicodin to a 20 year old kid??? Why don't you just give me a heroin needle and a gun!! "Here kid, get hooked on a heroin derivative, but stay away from that natural herb over there, it's the "devil's weed!!" No one dies from marijuana use, whereas car crashes, hepatitis, firearms, Tylenol (acetaminophen) over-dose, alcohol over-dose and homocide deaths are numerous!! Those are based on 2007 numbers. Unlike most drugs, if you ingest a high amount of marijuana, you just get tired and sleep, but no over-dose. It's virtually impossible to over-dose. You'd have to eat a couple hay-bails worth of the stuff to get anywhere close to dying--and who the hell is going to do that?!! You'd vomit well before finishing all that weed. Suicide killed 34,598 people in 2007--marijuana? Zero!! The hysteria and lack of education on the true nature of marijuana is astounding--even still. We have to keep pushing for our freedom to use this substance responsibly, and educate the masses.

~The Green Man has Spoken~

Groups Offers $10k to Dispprove Claim that Marijuana is Safer than Alcohol.

The Safer Texas Campaign is offering $10,000 to anyone in Texas who can prove that three statements claiming marijuana is safer than alcohol are incorrect. The three statements are:

1. Alcohol is significantly more toxic than marijuana, making death by overdose far more likely with alcohol.

2. The health effects from long-term alcohol consumption cause tens of thousands of more deaths in the U.S. annually than the health effects from the long-term consumption of marijuana.

3. Violent crime committed by individuals intoxicated by alcohol is far more prevalent in the U.S. than violent crime committed by individuals intoxicated by marijuana only.

"We are confident that this $10,000 will not be claimed," said Safer Texas Campaign manager Craig Johnson, when he posed the challenge.

Green Man: It's basically impossible to overdose on marijuana. You'd have to ingest it by the ton in order for an overdose to occur--and it simply isn't realistic to believe someone would do such a thing. As for number two, there aren't the numbers of people dying from marijuana related effects like alcohol. I know many old hippies who've been using marijuana since the 60s and are in perfect health. Lastly, marijuana isn't a drug that makes one aggressive. It makes people relax, laugh and calm. I can't tell you how many times I've seen fights break out from people drinking alcohol but in all the people I've seen ingest marijuana--nothing. Committing a crime is the last thing on someone's mind after using pot.

They are too relaxed to get off the couch let alone to commit a crime. People on marijuana are peaceful and often get into deep discussions on how to make the world a better place. I've never heard of a domestic violence crime break out from marijuana consumption, whereas with alcohol it's all too common. Alcohol is a drug that often makes people aggressive, unruly and rude. People who use marijuana are super polite because it makes you feel chill and mellow.

So, if we're going to allow alcohol then marijuana should be allowed as well. It's so frustrating, yet somewhat hilarious that the same politicians who cowardly stand in the way of legalization of marijuana due to fear of not being re-elected are also the same people who guzzle gallons of liquor in their off time. No one thinks anything of it and the same should be true of marijuana.

It simply isn't the drug that it's been demonized to be during the past 70 years. All that "Just say no" crap and "Reefer Madness" videos from the 50s are pure propaganda. Pot doesn't make you go insane like those ridiculous old black and white films they showed in health classes in school. I doesn't belong in the class of hard drugs with cocaine, crack, meth and heroin. It belongs in the same class as alcohol despite it being less of a problem for society than booze.

In other news, a recent poll in my home state of Colorado shows that a majority supports legalizing marijuana.

~The Green Man has Spoken~

Former Surgeon General: Legalize Marijuana.

Former US Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders told CNN's Don Lemon Sunday that she supports the legalization of marijuana. "Marijuana is not addictive -- not physically addictive anyway," Elders added. "Nobody says that marijuana causes violence. As we know alcohol can cause much more aggressiveness.

You aren't as likely to hurt someone from using marijuana as you are from using alcohol." "I think we consume far more dangerous drugs that are legal: cigarette smoking, nicotine and alcohol," Elders told the New York Times on Friday. "I feel they cause much more devastating effects physically. We need to lift the prohibition on marijuana."

Green Man: If Surgeon Generals (along with numerous doctors who prescribe it medicinally) bolster the claims that marijuana is a relatively benign drug then why are we letting politicians and police officers decided the fate of marijuana? I much more value the opinions of doctors when it comes to things that one ingests into the body. I don't trust a politician to give me a straight answer any more than a criminal. Anyone who has tried marijuana knows that it's not a substance that's going to drive you insane, cause you to die from an overdose or make you want to go on a drug using spree to try every other drug out there. That's the "gateway drug" propaganda--that once you use marijuana you wanna try heroin and the other hard drugs.

There are a couple of ways to answer this distortion: 1). Have you seen how kids react to sugar? If we're going to label something a gateway drug then it would have to be sugar. It's a chemical that gives you a "buzz" and yet we don't outlaw it. The same goes for caffeine, which can cause headaches, irritability and drowsiness due to caffeine withdrawal. If you drink enough of it you might as well be doing cocaine!! It has that same "speedy buzz" effect. And why don't we say tobacco is the gateway drug? It's ridiculously addictive and bad for your health. Then there's everyone's favorite drug--alcohol.

Funny how no one says drinking a few beers after work leads to wanting to try harder stuff like heroin or crack. Why? Because the "gateway effect" is something that applies to people who already have an "addictive personality." This means that they are already predisposed to addiction whether it's an classical "drug" or shopping, sex, porn, eating, exercise, work, etc.

Another aspect to the marijuana legalization debate that gets me frustrated is when people who have never used it claim to know all about it. And looking it up on WebMD isn't the same because a lot of doctors simply don't have experience with it. Also, WebMD is a company (like a lot of companies) that seems too cautious to list anything positive about the drug--Just like politicians. A lot of corporations take the non-controversial route of towing the prohibition line because they cowardly don't want to get criticism for "rocking the boat" of the status quo. Other doctors fear that their support of marijuana would jeopardize their practice as a trusted doctor.

It's time to stop listening to politicians about medical and bodily issues--not the least reason being that they have special interests to promote such as the alcohol and tobacco lobbies that don't want to compete with marijuana. It's interesting how everyone is for personal freedom and the free market until it comes to something they personally disagree with. I'm tired of listening to hypocrites, the self-righteous, and personally appointed "morality police" about what we should and shouldn't do with our lives. What ever happened to America: land of the free???

~The Green Man has Spoken~

Alcohol Lobbyists Fighting Marijuana Freedom in California. Don't Let Them Decide for You!!

Typical corporate lobbying bullshit to prevent competition. These people talk a good game about the free market but when it comes to straight up competing on a level playing field they do everything in their power to stack the deck in their favor. It's no longer capitalism based on democracy. It's corporatism based on the power and money being in the hands of just a few "Robber Baron" type tycoons.

According to a recently filed campaign finance report, the campaign to defeat a marijuana legalization initiative in California is receiving substantial funding from the alcohol industry. Now marijuana advocates are fighting back, calling on the opposition campaign to explain why it is working with Big Alcohol to keep marijuana illegal. But why does the No on Prop. 19 campaign share? Big Alcohol's goal of an alcohol-only society? It seems odd that a group that purports to be committed to enhancing public safety wants to ensure Californians can only drink and cannot use marijuana as a safer recreational alternative.

After all, every objective study on marijuana has concluded that it is far safer than alcohol to the user and society. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, alcohol use alone contributes to more than 35,000 deaths each year -- including several hundred from overdoses -- whereas marijuana use does not contribute to any deaths and has never resulted in a fatal overdose in history.

Green Man: If you live in California and support marijuana freedom then don't sit this election out thinking there will be more than enough supporters that will vote. We need everyone, single, vote we can get out on election day. It's time to take the power of medicine back into the hands of the common man and return to the days when marijuana was seen as a sacrament and a great, healing, divine, herb.

~The Green Man has Spoken~

Marijuana: The Miracle Drug.

As some of you know, my primary spiritual belief system is that of Zen Buddhism and part of that belief involves rebirth. Awhile back, I went to see a highly respected and trusted psychic who was recommended by my equally respected and credible psychologist. Anyway, she told me that in one of my past lives I was a Native American shaman who lived into his 90s. And that before that I was a shaman/medicine man in Africa. Those are both cultures that I really identity with but especially Africa. Plus, I have always been one who has spent countless days up high in the pine forests and meadows of the high rocky mountains. I am also one who respects all living things on planet Earth. As well as someone who has been curious about and attracted to natural remedies and plant life. I use to grind up flowers with water in with other plant matter when I was a kid. I was just having fun but isn't that interesting that I was subconsciously doing something that shamans have done for eons? I even spent a couple years selling vitamins and herbs to people looking for alternative therapies. I developed an extensive library of knowledge both in my mind and piled up on one of my many book shelves. So, anyway, I certainly feel a connection to the role of shamans.

So it shouldn't come as a surprise that I, The Green Man support the legalization of marijuana and certainly believe in its medicinal use. I don't know of any other drug that has so many benefits to it and thus why I call it a miracle drug. I personally use it to be a quick acting anti-depressant when I'm feeling suicidally depressed from my mental illness. As well as an anti-inflammatory for my fibromyalgia, which eases my aches and pains quicker and more effectively than a handful of Advil. And nothing tops the stomach pain easing effects of marijuana. When I get the flu I don't reach for Pepto Bismal, which makes me gag or choking on half a bottle of those chalky Tums tablets. I go straight for the pot because it works instantly and lasts long. Plus, it relaxes the stomach muscles to help ease that tight, uncomfortable feeling that comes with stomach sickness. Also, it often flat-out shuts down nausea.

Let me be very clear up front, I do not recommend everyone with a mental illness smoke marijuana but it's long past due that the mental health community recognize it as a potentially beneficial drug for some. Especially when it comes to folks with major depression and tendencies toward chronic suicidal thinking and planning. Suicidal impulses hit me like a storm that explodes around you within minutes and before you can realize what is happening you are fighting to stay alive.

Many of you who struggle with suicidal impulses know that once it hits you, like LSD, it steadily pulls you deeper and deeper into an altered state of consciousness that you increasingly can not control. It isn't long before you are locked into what I literally refer to as a, "death spiral." Once that process starts there isn't much that can reach me let along pull me out of it without hospitalization. Except I discovered since my one and only hospitalization that smoking some pot right as that suicidal storm hits lifts me up out of that dark, powerful, destructive black hole like being plucked out of a violent sea by a coast guard helicopter. People don't take it seriously enough as a natural supplement to prescription drugs, which kill more people every year than died in the entire Vietnam War!! That's 50,000+ every year!! Plus, when I miss a prescription drug for my schizoaffective disorder it makes me vomit violently in withdrawals. Whereas if I don't do marijuana for a day or two I don't have anything like that happen. I'm not saying pot takes the place of my meds -- not at all. It simply adds to them to ease the symptoms that the prescription drugs can't hit.

There is no pill out there that I know of, which works instantaneously to pull someone out of suicidal depression how Ativan or Klonopin instantaneously can pull people out of mania (including anxiety and panic attacks). Certainly this isn't true for everyone because for some it might pull them out of suicidal thoughts but exchange it with psychosis. However, that's true for any psychological medication but that doesn't mean that just because say Lexapro doesn't work for someone that it should be banned altogether. It's clear that marijuana DOES help people with suicidal depression and that should be factored into what conditions qualify for medicinal marijuana. And for many it can also melt away anxiety and stress as well as any prescription drug but whereas the pill is made from a long list of hard to pronounce, unnatural chemicals -- Pot it all natural.

Besides, this is America and our country was founded upon personal liberties and freedoms so why is it the government's business if someone wants to smoke a joint in the privacy of their own home and laugh at cartoons? How does that hurt anyone? Sure there need to be laws preventing smoking it and driving and keeping it away from minors. However, did you know that because marijuana isn't legal and thus not regulated that it is easier for minors to get than alcohol? To buy alcohol a teen must walk into a security camera enforced store and show valid identification. Sure they can try to make a fake ID but it's difficult to do and fakes are often discovered. If a teen goes to buy illegal pot the dealer isn't going to ask for identification. He doesn't care who buys his product, thus the teens can get pot easier than alcohol. If pot was sold in a regulated store the use rates who go down.

Sure it can be abused if you smoke it all day but honestly how many people are doing that besides college kids? Another argument is that the pot today is stronger. Blah, blah, blah. Pot has NEVER, EVER led to any over-dose. You simply can't overdose on marijuana. You can smoke it all day and the worst that happens is you fall asleep and get a good night of sleep!! Wow. Soooo dangerous. The stronger pot argument is only valid if it led to overdoses but it doesn't. It simply isn't true. Sure it might cause emphysema but that's a personal decision that someone shouldn't be making for someone else. Besides you can bake marijuana into brownies and ingest it orally without running the risks of smoking. Plus now there is the vaporizing method, which is a mist that you ingest and it has been shown to be safe. That's the method I use. It's not unlike ingesting mist from those asthma pumps.

Hell, eating too much junk food leads to heart disease, diabetes and other major health problems but do we make Twinkies illegal? Alcohol leads to liver and kidney damage but we saw what prohibition of alcohol brought us in the golden age of gangsters in the 20's. And the same members of Congress that say pot should remain illegal are guzzling alcohol by the barrel full. Porn can be abused but it's legal, working can even be abused and break up marriages. Anything can be abused but does that mean we should make everything with the ability to be abused illegal? We'd have to outlaw cold medicine, mouthwash and paint solvents to name but a few things. We wouldn't be able to function as a society or leave our house!! Should we outlaw greed? Good luck. And what about the "legal drugs" that are aired non-stop on t.v. and take half the commercial time listing adverse side effects? No, I choose not to live in fear. It's time to stop demonizing marijuana and throw it in the same category as heroin, cocaine, crack and meth. Marijuana is to those other substances as B.B. guns are to AK-47's.

I find it very odd to say the least that Conservatives who are usually for personal liberties and the government butting out of a person's private life are for keeping pot illegal!! Huh?