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Friday, August 31, 2012

Mitt Romney's Selective Compassion


 
Ted and Pat Oparowski, citing Romney's compassion of visiting their young son with cancer.
The boy died.
 
http://www.boston.com/news/local/vermont/articles/2012/08/31/vt_couple_says_romney_helped_ill_son_before_death/

MONTPELIER, Vt.—A Vermont couple says they're grateful to Mitt Romney for helping them and their terminally ill son decades ago when he was suffering from cancer.
 
Speaking Thursday at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., Ted and Pat Oparowski, of Randolph, tenderly recalled how Romney befriended their 14-year-old son David as he was dying of cancer in the late 1970s.
 
Pat Oparowski said they would "be ever grateful to Mitt for his love and concern."
 
She said Romney, who they knew through their church in Massachusetts, spent time in the hospital with their son, helped the boy write a will and bought him fireworks that were eventually set off in Maine.
 
She said Romney also gave the boy's eulogy at his funeral.
 
Here un-cited is the issue of freedom of medicine and diet.   What about Romney's stance at our freedom of medicine and diet in chosing whatever agents we can afford for treating cancer?  Whether some pharmaceuticle.  Or some plant.
 
 




Consider the use of Cannabis Oil for treating cancer as promoted in the video- Run From the Cure


 
 
Considering all of the Republican Party lip service to fiscal sanity, is not it strange they are so in favor of continuing the big government boondoogle of drug prohibition against people growing their own medicinal plants, for the sake of a price-market support-protection for more expensive synthetic pharmaceuticel (patentable) drugs?

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Missing the Opportunity




O'Reilly makes a valuable mis-step/half-truth, which Nadelmann neglects to answer

"cocaine and meth incapacitate" (3:23)

Nadelmann could have at least mentioned the interply of pharmakokenetics and prohibition's iron law regarding Opiates and Cocaine in shifting markets to infinitely more concentrated forms of drugs and more problematic modes of drug taking.   For instance cocaine is a stimulant alkaloid found in small amounts in Coca leaves, as are caffeine and nicotine respectively in Coffee/other beverages and Tobacco.  But how much of the later two are consumed in white powder form, essentially unmeasured, of unstandardized potency, and in modes of taking that invite overdosing leading to the very incapacitation O'Reilly cites.   Do a tiny line of cocaine hci or chrystal meth and perhaps one is still within a range of enhancement -- aka a milder effect not interfering with life but rather the role of a gentle uplift.  But do a slightly larger amount, and they do interfere, like with cocaine crossing the threashold to where one does not want to hear music, and prefer to be alone or silent.   And they are easy to over-do in these concentrated forms.   So why Mr. Reilly do you insist upon a scheme that makes Opiates and cocaine only available in their dangerous forms, and which only really bans the safe forms?  

Imagine replacing Coffee with white powder caffeine.   Imagine replacing Coffee drinking with caffeine powder sniffing - or smoking or shooting.   Look at the caffeine overdose stories of those that have killd themselves with recklessly large doses of white powder caffeine, akin to BLAST.


http://www.possessedbycaffeine.com/2011/07/blast-caffeine-powder.html
 
Why is it ok to make cocaine powder and crack highly proftable and inefficent uses of police resources, while really banning only the safe and effective products such as VIN MARIANI?

Why is it ok to ban Coca/VIN MARIANI?


http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/12/us-drugs-un-bolivia-idUSBRE82B0QH20120312

 
 
 
Yet it is ok to permit the mass sales of cigarettes and other Tobacco products.  Nevermind that they are more physically addictive than heroin, and are most chronically deleterious, taking nearly half a million lives every year in the U.S., and over 6 million annually word-wide.

Especially so.  Why are these Tobacco products and alcohol the two classes of substances EXEMPTED from ingrediant retail labeling?   The initial 1906 U.S. Food and Drugs Act was predicated upon labeling some drugs, such as opiates and cocaine - but not others such as caffeine and nicotine.  Indeed it exempted Tobacco from its regulatory jurisdiction, by limiting such to substances listed in the U.S. Pharmacopeia which de-listed Tobacco in 1905, nevermind that this regulatory authority was vested with the U.S. Department of AGRICULTURE.   Wow!  the USDA gets to ban anything it declares as deleterious to health, yet could not regulate Tobacco- and apparantly was never challenged in a suit over this denial of equal protection under the law.  

Coca is the safest stimulant.

Tobacco is the most dangerous.

Why the hell is Coca illegal and Tobacco legal?  

Who decided that we had to ban Coca so that people could not go to the trouble of chemically processing it into concentrated cocaine, so that they no long had the option of Coca products, but only concentrated cocaine and Tobacco products?

What was the social costs of the 20th century ban on Coca and this protection of Tobacco and cigarettes?  Given their overlapping uses, the fact that the U.S.D.A. was exploring the feasibility of growing Coca in the U.S., that the U.S. had taken control of the Panama Canal project in 1903 to be completed in 1914 that would have significently shortened Coca supply lines from Peru to North Atlantic markets, and the U.S.D.A.'s stated concern specifically over the use of coca as a 'Tobacco Habit Cure', the drug war was anything other than about protecting the public's health.

That's a crime that's got to end.

Sadly, drug policy reform organizations as the Drug Policy Foundation now Drug Policy Alliance act fearful of addressing this point.

They act in defference to protecting existing markets, as part of Ira Glasser's 300 Year time frame to go as slow as possible, such as down-selling "harm reduction" as clean needles and safer crack pipes, bit don't talk about the parent plant drugs of Opium and Coca- nevermind their listing in the 1914 U.S. Harrison Narcotics Tax Act.  It is as if they were being yoked, perhaps in part by being feed some exceptionally questionable advice.

Drug War Cigarette Mercantilism
http://southmallblogger.blogspot.com/2012/08/drug-war-cigarette-mercantilism.html

 

Sunday, August 19, 2012

The Upcoming Norm

Another Jury Revolts Against Marijuana Laws, "They felt marijuana should be legalized."
by Scott Morgan, August 16, 2012, 10:42pm

Jacob Sullum shares this incredible story from a defense attorney in Kansas.

I had a jury trial this morning on level 3 possession with intent MJ, level 4 possession drug paraphernalia and level 10 no drug tax stamp.

During voir dire, my almost all white, middle-class, middle-aged jury went into full rebellion against the prosecutor stating that they wouldn't convict even if the client's guilt was proven beyond a reasonable doubt -- almost all of them!

They felt marijuana should be legalized, what he does with it is his own business and that the jails are already full of people for this silly charge.

Then, when the potential jurors found out that the State wanted him to pay taxes on illegal drugs, they went nuts.

One woman from the back said how stupid this was and why are we even here wasting our time. A "suit" from the front said this was the most ridiculous thing he'd ever heard.

The prosecutor ended up dismissing the case. Judge gave me a dismissal with prejudice. I'm still laughing my ass off over this one. I have NEVER seen a full on mutiny by an entire jury pool before. Easiest win ever! In so many ways, the drug war's own exploding unpopularity is poised to become its downfall.

Events like this aren't the norm (yet), but the mere threat of insurrection in the courtroom is already an important check against prosecutorial overreach in the war on drugs (in case you were wondering why so many medical marijuana raids never lead to criminal charges). As the polls continue to turn in favor of reform, the refusal of juries to convict marijuana offenders could quickly become a brutal burden for these drug war boneheads to bear. It's about damn time.

Saturday, August 18, 2012

Dana Beal Aug 9 letter to Judge Mary Gilbride





Judge Mary Gilbride
Saunders District Court
387 N. Chestnut Street
Wahoo, NE 68066-1869
August 9, 2012

Your Honor:

At my initial appearance on April 23rd, you directed the jail administration to treat me as someone who had had, in the previous 7 months, two heart attacks including full cardiac arrest, a double bypass and a stent put in. They took me out of a cell where I had no way of signaling if I were in distress, but since that time the nursing staff here has disregarded your directive in several respects.

I am in receipt of a list of meds from my surgeon Dr. Kantamneni and cardiologist Dr. Mnuk of St. Mary’s Hospital in Madison, WI that includes melatonin. As I’ve been tormented by insomnia all of my adult life, I took melatonin on an as-needed basis before my heart attacks. The nursing staff here is defying the MDs in Madison, saying it is “not our policy to hand out sleep aids.” But melatonin is not Benadryl. It is a naturally occurring pineal substance that must be supplemented as we age because without it, we die a lot sooner. It is at least as important as an antioxidant and to combat stress for someone who has had a heart attack as it is to induce sleep.

Simple sleep deprivation leads to deterioration of health and is a standard tactic of law enforcement for coercing confessions and totalitarian regimes for breaking down dissidents. It is banned under the Geneva Convention. Melatonin is responsible for REM sleep. Rats jolted with electricity upon onset of REM suffer collapse of the their immune systems and toxic shock from normally benign intestinal micro-organisms.

Nurse Michelle says I should walk in circles around the mod, but I have acute double hernias at the bottom of my abdomen. The one on the right began to give me sharp, stabbing pains in early April that have subsided since I spend all my time on my back, reading, with the hernias pushed in. Glenn Shapiro is in receipt of a letter addressed to you from surgeon David DeAngeles of St. Mary’s Hospital saying I need an operation ASAP. I tried to get it just before I came here, but the local surgeon in Fox Lake had just botched a surgery on another inmate with an identical condition and there was no time to go back to Madison.

I’m willing to wait so the Wisconsin DOC can pay for surgery by someone I trust, but Nurse Michelle insists on giving orders she knows cannot be followed. A clue to her perspective is her response on the matter of my diet:

 The only concession to my special needs is soy milk, which is a life-saver, because I used to get symptoms of congestive heart failure (which I thought was asthma from lactose intolerance) every morning after consuming milk at the Iowa Co. Jail prior to my first, big heart attack. In the interval before the Feb. 24th episode that necessitated the stent, I continued to eat eggs, lots of melted cheese on toasted bagels and pizza. My bloodwork showed my cholesterol was too high, and I was switched from simvastatin to Lipitor. But the doctor at Dodge (intake prison) put me back on simvastatin and I concurred, because Lipitor almost killed a friend of mine. And since the stent, I’ve been fanatical about no fat, no sugar, no salt. My bloodwork probably reflects that, and my blood pressure is normal. If you delete egg yokes, cheese and potato chips from the skimpy diet here, though, there’s not enough to eat. And commissary is all sweets. So I asked, not for anything outside the ordinary fare, but just that they replace things I can’t eat with extra helpings of veggies and oatmeal that I can eat. Nurse Michelle said: “If I do it for you, I have to do it for everyone.”

Well, everyone didn’t just have two heart attacks, including one where my heart stopped so long they had to put me in an induced coma for 6 days! The staff actually discontinued my fish oil with the excuse that it’s not a prescription drug, when the doctor definitely ordered it! It took 2 months of intense negotiating just to get them to accept it from a pharmacy with me paying. I’d be willing to swap food with other inmates, but that’s against jail rules, and I’d already been written up for bleeding. Because my father and maternal grandfather died of stroke at 65 (I’m 65), after my stent, Dr. Jeff Kamlet recommended I go on Plavix, and Dodge put me on clopidogrel (generic Plavix). The only problem is, if I scratch the psoriasis in my ear, it can bleed.

One day my elbow itched, I scratched it, and it wouldn’t stop bleeding for 4 hours. I showed it to Officer Jones, who’s an EMT, and he “gave me a direct order” to hold a wad of toilet paper on it ’til it stopped. But I don’t scab right, and every time I moved even a bit, it pulled off the semi-clotted blood. Forty-five minutes later I was bleeding at the dinner table. I threw the now-bloody wad of toilet paper into the waste basket behind me, next to the sink, and got a fresh wad. Still bleeding. I don’t have HIV or hep C, but it distressed the other inmates when I attempted to airdry it so the scab wouldn’t pull off. Finally another inmate gave me a small bandage (also against regulations) which reduced the bleeding to an ooze. But mea culpa! I should have flushed the toilet paper. An inmate with mental problems, one Marchinsky, with a history in a previous mod of hazing one particular inmate and manufacturing evidence against him (by urinating on the back of the toilet), fished a little piece of toilet paper out of the wastebasket and put it on the counter immediately adjacent. Someone else noticed it, raised a ruckus, and blamed me. But if I’d set it on the counter and a piece of the outside had stuck there, it would have been quite bloody. This piece had only a little stain on one edge, like it had been plucked up by someone who didn’t want to touch the blood.

I threw it away, thought nothing of it because it left no stain. Jones came in, bought into the idea I was at fault, and was having me spray and sanitize the counter, when I pointed to the bandage and said: “But what are you going to do about this? It’s still oozing.” He threw me in handcuffs. On the way to intake I said, “This is a medical situation, not a disciplinary problem.” He put me in a cell, but at least he gave me a paper towel. After 35 minutes of clamping the paper towel on the bandage, it finally stopped oozing.

Even though I’d done nothing wrong, I apologized, and sure enough, two days later, Jones had written me up for “refusing a direct order,” “failure to maintain sanitation,” and “disturbing the peace.” Glenn Shapiro has the complaint. It says I stopped oozing in 10 minutes. But I was watching the clock because I was due to make a phone call, and I know it took 30. I opted for a hearing, got a witness to Marchinsky faking evidence against another inmate, and asked that they review the tape to see who actually left the square of toilet paper on the counter. The hearing officer informed me he was dropping the charges anyway because it was “too much trouble” to review the tape. He did let it into the record that Jones could’ve taken me out and bandaged me up to begin with. The next morning I had the only coronary distress I’ve had since I got here, an episode of racing heartbeat.

The one dicey thing about my clotting problem is that the combination of meds I’m on tends to give me impacted stool, and I’ve had bleeding from that. They put me on Metamucil, which helped. Then they changed my Senna to docusate sodium, which Dodge had discontinued because it was ineffective. I got the Senna back with the fish oil, but not before I got a hemorrhoid. I hate to think what would happen if I got a bleeding hemorrhoid and it wouldn’t stop. And trying to force the stool out makes my right hernia hurt. I just got another twinge.

The sole object for the nursing staff seems to have been to get me to pay for my non-prescription meds myself. Nurse Michelle actually withheld the Tinactin (tolnaftate) for my foot fungus so I’d have to buy it off commissary, claiming the Wisconsin DOC might be smuggling drugs into Saunders County in the depleted tube. The fungus I have is not athlete’s foot. It’s the kind that lodges under your toenails; tolnaftate only gets it in the callouses. I can’t get rid of it unless they give me Lamisil, which they’ve refused to do. Instead of a short shower every day, which causes fungus flare-up, I have to take a long hot shower every other morning and soap my feet multiple times. But that way I can soften my beard, shave by touch in the shower, and not cut myself, so I don’t bleed.

To me, the important issues are melatonin, food, and the hernia operation, but not so important I’ll pack it in and waive my rights to a proper sentencing hearing with witnesses who can establish that the only national conspiracy I’m involved in is the medical marijuana movement, and the only international dimension is the ibogaine movement. St. Mary’s says I still have the atherosclerosis, that I’m going to have the heart problem for the rest of my life. Nothing settled in one place seems to carry over to the next place. Judge Van De Hey furloughs me after the first heart attack, then re-instates most of my sentence Dec. 29th. and a month and a half later, I have another heart attack. Special diet right after the stent, at Dodge, followed by the same thing as everyone else at Fox Lake, but at least with lots of veggies, followed by stuff I can’t eat here, where they act like I never even had heart attacks. Which begs the question: If I can’t even get proper health care in a situation that’s under the control of a judge, what will happen at the next place, where my only recourse is to sue in Federal court?

Yours truly,

I. Dana Beal, inmate #6669

Typed for Mr. Beal and mailed to Judge Gilbride by Nancy J. Allen, August 15, 2012

Saturday, August 11, 2012

Romney VP Paul Ryan



http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Paul_Ryan.htm/

Click here for 4 full quotes on Drugs OR background on Drugs.
  • Voted NO on more funding for Mexico to fight drugs. (Jun 2008)
  • Voted NO on military border patrols to battle drugs & terrorism. (Sep 2001)
  • Voted YES on prohibiting needle exchange & medical marijuana in DC. (Oct 1999)
  • Rated -10 by NORML, indicating a "hard-on-drugs" stance. (Dec 2006)

http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Paul_Ryan.htm/Paul_Ryan_Drugs.htm
Rated -10 by NORML, indicating a "hard-on-drugs" stance: Strongly Favors topic 19
YES on prohibiting needle exchange & medical marijuana in DC: Strongly Favors topic 19
NO on military border patrols to battle drugs & terrorism: Strongly Opposes topic 19
NO on more funding for Mexico to fight drugs: Opposes topic 19


Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Roger Pion's Resisting Terror

Police make themselves into criminal gangs for cigarette-pharma market protection


Roger Pion, vitimized by such a gang- resists by crushing their combat vehicles while sparing that of the book-keeper.


Imagine how many lives would have been saved resisting the drug 'laws' unlawful unconstitutional cigarette-pharma market protection if the people had made it clear back around 1906-1914 that they would not tolerate the Harvey Wiley - William Randolf Hearst - J.H. Covington cigarette-pharma market protection rackett of banning Vin Mariani and other Coca products, while permitting Virginia Bright Leaf cigarettes.