Nigel Duara The Associated Press.
Eugene, Oregon. Sometime after midnight on a moonlit rural Oregon highway, a state trooper checking a car he had just pulled over found less than an ounce of pot on one passenger: a chatty 72-year -old women blind in one eye.
She insisted the weed was legal and approved by the U.S. Government.
The trooper and his supervisor were doubtful. But after a series of calls to the U.S. attorney's office, the Drug Enforcement Administration and her physician, the troopers handed back her pot.
For the past three decades, Uncle Sam has been providing a handful of patients with some of the highest-grade marijuana around. the program grew out of a 1976 court settlement that created the country's first legal pot smoker.
Advocates for legalizing marijuana or treating it as a medicine say the program is a glaring contradiction in the nation's 40-year war on drugs---maintaining the federal ban on pot while at teh same time supplying it.
Government officials say there is no contradiction.(what a fucking bunch of liars and who are these assholes..???) The program is no longer accepting new patients, and public health authorities have concluded that there was no scientific value to it. Steven Gust if the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse told The Associated Press.(how can they do that with a straight face?)
At one point 14 people were getting government pot. Now there are 4 left.
The government has continued to supply the marijuana "for compassionate reasons," Gust said. (Compassionate reasons?...yeah, since they are so well known for their compassion)
One of the recipients is Elvy Musikka, the Oregon woman. A vocal marijuana advocate, Musikka relies on the pot to keep her glaucoma under control. She entered the program in 1988 and said that her experience with marijuana is proof that it works as a medicine.
they "wont acknowledge the fact that I do not have even have one aspirin in this house," she said, leaning back on her couch, glass bong cradled in her hand. "I have no pain."
Marijuana is getting a look from states around the country considering calls to repeal decades-old marijuana prohibition laws. There are 16 states that have medical marijuana programs. In the three West Coast states, advocates are readying tax-and-sell or other legalization programs.
In 1976, a federal judge ruled that the Food and Drug Administration had to provide Robert Randall of Washington, D.C., with marijuana because of his glaucoma---no other drug could effectively combat his condition. Randall became the nation's first legal pot smoker since the drug's prohibition.
Eventually, the government created it's program as part of a comprise over Randall's care in 1978, long before a single state passed a medical marijuana law. What followed were petitions from people such as Musikka to join the program.
President George H.W. bush's administration, getting tough on crime and drugs, stopped accepting new patients in 1992. Many of the patients who had qualified had AIDS, and they were dying.
The four patients remaining in the program estimate they have received a total of 584 pounds from the federal government over the years.On the street, that would be worth more than $500,000.
All of the marijuana comes from the University of Mississippi, where it is grown, harvested and stored.
Dr. Mahmoud ElSohy, who directs the operation said the marijuana was a small part of the crop the university has been growing since 1968 for all cannabis research in the U.S.(what research? who's smoking it?..What is the research?...damn, I hope it's not them furry little guinea pigs or mice)
The marijuana is sent from Mississippi to a tightly controlled North Carolina lab, where is is rolled into cigarettes. And every month, steel tins with white labels are sent off. Packed inside each is a half-pound of marijuana rolled into 300 perfectly wrapped joints. (does a machine do it? or are they hand rolled?)
The 3 other people in the program range in ages and does of marijuana provided to them, but all consider themselves an endangered species that, once extinct, can be brushed aside by a federal government that pretends they don't exist.
All 4 have become crusaders for the marijuana-legalization movement.
Irv Rosenfeld, a financial adviser in Fort Lauderdale, Fla, has been in the program since November 1982. His condition produces painful bone tumors, but he said marijuana has replaced prescription painkillers.
HOLY FUCKME. Ok...this story by itself is interesting enough..but read the one below it..talk about a bunch of fucking hypocrites. I think this is the biggest crock of shit I have ever heard of.
And I've lived in Texas most of my life and I'm very well acquainted with crocks of shit.
5 comments:
Mary J Wanna was made illegal in the 1930's largely by governmental influence from DuPont, who wanted their new artificial fibers used instead of natural ones.
The only protest came from the bird feed industry, and you can still find sterilized pot seeds in bird feed today.
One acre of hemp provides the same amount of fiber as 10 acres of trees, and the hemp will grow every year while the trees take 20 or more.
United States Governmental stupidity continues today.
I meant to say 'pulp fiber' instead of just fiber. It's what is used to make many products, like paper.
Nuts. It's one hell of a lot less harmful than most of the drugs legally bought over the counter.
I'd rather weed was legal and oxy wasn't..
the original Levi's were made from hemp.
The government should worry less about regulating people and more about regulating them-fucking-selves. If people want to smoke pot, let them fucking smoke pot. If they want to marry each other, let them. If they want to end an unwanted pregnancy, give 'er. They hide behind democracy, piss on our heads and tell us it's raining.
OMG...I'm one minute away from having one of those skull and crossbones - Death To Taxes bumper stickers!
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