Saturday, April 28, 2012

Senator Jeb Bradley to NH police chief: "Medical marijuana works. We know it."

By special request, from the NH Senate Health and Human Services Committee's 3/8/2012 public hearing on SB409, "relative to the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes," Committee Chair Senator Jeb Bradley responds to testimony by Enfield Police Chief Richard Crate. Despite the recalcitrant Chief Crate's refusal to compromise with reality, or Constitutionality, the committee subsequently voted 5-0 to recommend the bill's passage. The Senate agreed. As, following this hearing, has the House.



Saturday, April 21, 2012

Hemp. Why Are We Still Talking About This?

Here's what the prohibitionists keep avoiding with regard to the "broccoli vs cauliflower," "we can't tell them apart!" appearance issue of industrial hemp: it's crap. They must be high.

If you want to grow quality hemp, then your plants will be tall stalks with tiny flowers and therefore very low THC -- ideally all stalk/no bud. If you're growing pot, they'll be squat plants with large flowers and (presumably) high THC -- ideally all bud/no stalk (and let's not lose sight of the unavoidable fact that THC levels have increased directly due to the "War on People Who Use (Some) Drugs"™, for the same reason that higher-alcohol-content liquor became the bootlegger's product of choice: more bang in a smaller, more easily handled and concealable and transportable package). Anyone intent on entering either market has a considerable economic vested interest in maximizing the preferred characteristic exclusively, because the non-preferred characteristic detracts from the preferred characteristic.

The objectives of the two crops are very different. The plant-spacing of the two crops are very different. And if you were to cross-breed them (as would unavoidably happen if you tried to hide one amongst the other) in an attempt to circumvent arbitrary THC level restrictions (and also presumably attempt to split the difference in spacing requirements, as well, in your attempt to deceive), then your crop would be market-competitive -- and therefore profitable -- neither in the hemp market nor in the pot market. Your product would be rejected by your intended customers. Marketable THC and marketable fiber are incompatible and mutually exclusive -- indeed, mutually destructive. For a profitable crop, you need to pick one and actively avoid the other. The autocrats have made no attempt to debate these points. Why might that be?

Even most cops ought to be trainable to tell the difference. And even government used to understand.

Seriously. Why the hell are we still talking about this...?



Anyway, herewith, the NH Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on HB1615, "relative to industrial hemp," 4/19/2012. In toto -- it simply wasn't worth my time to excise the lone tripping opponent. (The House hearing can be found here, their Executive Session here.)

Friday, April 20, 2012

Prohibition Doesn't Work

Even when it's at least implemented compliant with the rule of law, as with the tragic and doomed 18th Amendment. There are myriad economic, social, philosophical and moral reasons for anyone willing to investigate. The drug war -- or rather, "The War on People Who Use (Some) Drugs"™ -- really has to end. Sooner rather than later.

Your ever-humble chronicler has decided he needs to cease constantly dignifying the opposition with a platform for their delusions and fetishes. Unless they say something really stupid, of course... Sometimes there simply aren't "2 sides" to an issue. Flat-earthers don't get equal time. Irrational autocratic marijuana prohibitionists don't get equal time.

That said, I'm making room here for a "startling" indictment of the systemic self-serving indoctrination perpetrated by government schools. You knew they had an agenda, right? Violence, or the threat thereof, is the only tool government has, and it's teaching the children that fear of government is the source of "society."

A wise man once said
"When the government fears the people there is liberty; when the people fear the government there is tyranny."
-Thomas Jefferson-
More recently -- perhaps even within this submissive's own young life experience -- it was restated thusly:
"People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people."
-V-


The government that you pay for has informed this budding citizen that that's nonsense. Is it? Should it be...?

So herewith, just some of the most compelling and informative of the NH Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing on HB1526, "relative to possession of less than one-half ounce of marijuana," 4/19/2012, from NHCLU Executive Director, Claire Ebel, Marijuana Policy Project Legislative Analyst Matt Simon, taxpayer Willie Brown, and Rep. Seth Cohn.



Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Abject Fear Betrayed?

Are we witnessing the nevertheless-still-malevolent death throes of a violent predator? The hysterical yet vicious last gasp? "I'll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom (or 'round the Moons of Nibia, and round the Antares Maelstrom,' if you prefer), and round perdition's flames before I give him up." The lash of the plummeting Balrog? Or perhaps 'Come back here you coward! It's only a flesh wound...!'

There's a growing palpable desperation emitting among the vile, venal, arrogant, obsessive-compulsive, micromanaging, collectivist authoritarians. Blatantly self-referential "appeals to authority." An unmistakable stench of fear that they're finally losing control over their neighbors' peaceful lives. One relatively tiny corner of their oppressive domain, to be sure, but a critical one, I believe. And they seem to agree. It permeates their very words. Clearly, the drubbing they finally took at the hands of the Senate scared the shit out of them.

They're increasingly strident and grasping, if that's even possible anymore. Incomprehensible as it may be to lovers of liberty, these people -- yes, these barbarians -- will never concede -- ever -- in what must prove an inevitably fruitless effort to hold back the tide in what is ostensibly a free country (what the hell is their definition, anyway?). The rule of law -- beginning with the letter and spirit of the Constitutions -- must win out. Self-ownership must win out. Compassion, in this particular case, must win out. A government that fundamentally understands in no uncertain terms who's running this show must win out.

SB409, "relative to the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes," now before the House Health, Human Services and Elderly Affairs Committee, 4/10/2012. I think I'm finally all "shocked out" by the utterly shameless sycophantic control freaks' wild assertions, misplaced loyalties, and general contempt for peaceful self-determination and the limited servant government of expressly enumerated delegated powers authorized to defend it. See if they've rendered you as jaded.

We'll start, though, with the good, with selected testimony from Rep Jenn Coffey, and NH Common Sense founder and current Marijuana Policy Project Legislative Analyst (and NH resident, jbtw) Matt Simon.

EDIT: Keep this in mind while enduring law enforcement's testimony...
"It’s now settled that state law enforcement officers cannot arrest medical marijuana patients or seize their medicine simply because they prefer the contrary federal law," said Joe Elford, Chief Counsel with Americans for Safe Access (ASA), the medical marijuana advocacy organization that represented the defendant Felix Kha in a case that the City of Garden Grove appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. "Perhaps, in the future local government will think twice about expending significant time and resources to defy a law that is overwhelmingly supported by the people of our state."