Marijuana legalization is the hottest topic in the media these days. MSNBC, CNBC, CNN, FOX, NatGeo, and CBS News have presented special features on marijuana business, medical marijuana, and the marijuana legalization movement. Google Trends is showing double the interest in searches and news hits for the term “marijuana legalization”. Showtime’s hit series Weeds, about a suburban mom turned pot dealer, is entering its fifth season. Everywhere you look, corporate media are happy to profit from America’s most popular herb.
Unless you want to address marijuana’s illegality and the lives that are shattered by the effects of marijuana prohibition. In that case, the corporate media cannot have anything to do with you, even if you want to pay to broadcast the message of ending adult marijuana prohibition.
Case in point: CBS. At the end of June, CBS’s new internet radio venture, ChatAboutIt.com, contacted NORML. One of our advisory board, Ann Druyan, advertised her podcast in Talkers Magazine, an industry journal for talk radio. ChatAboutIt was interested in hosting Druyan’s show, but Druyan wasn’t interested in the offer.
This is where I come in. I am a talk radio professional, having hosted my show (The Russ Belville Show) on XM Satellite Radio and AM 620 KPOJ in Portland, for almost two years. I have guest-hosted for the extremely popular Bill Press Show in Washington DC. For the past year and a half, I have hosted NORML’s Daily Audio Stash, the organization’s daily news and interviews podcast. I contacted ChatAboutIt to discuss creating a new live talk radio show dedicated to this incredibly popular phenomenon around medical marijuana and marijuana legalization called NORML SHOW LIVE.
Throughout the negotiations, the salesman from ChatAboutIt was fantastic. He joined me and NORML’s executive staff by conference call. We emphasized that we are NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. We told them that we would have advertisers involved with promoting marijuana – legally, as they are co-ops and dispensaries in California and Colorado – marijuana-themed magazines, doctors, clinics, authors, musicians, and so on. We told them we would be talking about marijuana legalization, our web page would have marijuana leaves on it, callers would be talking about marijuana, and, oh, by the way, did we mention that the show was about marijuana?
It’s all good, we were assured by the salesman. He said he’d run it all by his VP and this was fine. He said we’d own all our content and we could run all our ads. We verbally agreed this was a go and all we needed to do was to raise the $6,000 necessary to pay for the first two months of broadcast. We explained that we’d need to produce some press releases to raise the money. To be sure we weren’t saying or promoting anything in any way that CBS would not approve, we submitted our release to CBS, which did make some changes. They approved of our revised release and we posted it on the NORML Blog and front page on Wednesday.
Thursday morning I receive a call from the salesman at ChatAboutIt. “People higher up” had seen the release “on the blogs” and they “will not green light your show”.
Now, CBS has all the right in the world to decide what to put on their airwaves or cyberstreams; I’m not crying “censorship”. If they want to pass up affiliation with the most recognized brand in marijuana and a professional live call-in show dealing with the hottest topic in the media, that’s their call.
What I am crying, though, is “hypocrisy”.
See, CBS owns Showtime. That very same Showtime that’s aired for the past five years the tale of Nancy Botwin, suburban pot-dealing mom on Weeds. A show that films many scenes in the legal marijuana clinics and dispensaries in California that would be our advertisers. A show that just this year signed contracts with NORML to allow display of our trademark in the scenes where it is shown in Weeds.
And it cannot be that CBS is OK with airing a dramatic interpretation of marijuana culture, but afraid of airing a serious news program about marijuana culture. CBS News has an entire web special feature entitled “Marijuana Nation” (not-so-coincidentally the tag line of NORML SHOW LIVE) devoted to all their news coverage about marijuana dating back to Mike Wallace in 1968.
CBS will show Weeds to make money off of people who like marijuana, but won’t allow its banner advertisements for Weeds to be seen on any website trying to keep those marijuana lovers from arrest and a criminal record. CBS will pepper their news coverage and websites with cannaporn* and cannabusiness, but won’t allow a non-profit organization attempting to legalize those industries to have a voice on their networks.
Case #2: In addition to hosting NORML’s podcast and social blog, I am NORML’s Outreach Coordinator. In this position I recruit activists from all across the country (even the US Virgin Islands) to organize NORML chapters. These independent affiliates host events, gather petition signatures, and provide education to the community to counteract the anti-marijuana propaganda from the government (such as our “drug czar” recently proclaiming – in California, no less – that “Marijuana is dangerous and has no medicinal benefit.”)
I was contacted by the tour manager for the “Blazed and Confused” Tour. The artists performing in the most pro-marijuana concert of the summer are Mickey Avalon, Bob Marley’s son Stephen Marley, San Diego rockers Slightly Stoopid, and Snoop Dogg, probably the most recognizable person alive associated with marijuana aside from Willie Nelson. They, particularly Slightly Stoopid, wanted NORML chapters to host marijuana information tables for the concerts and offered us the opportunity for free.
I combed through my chapter listings and got them NORML booths for over half the shows. At the show in Portland I got to interview Miles from Slightly Stoopid and wander around backstage. The props for the Stoopid show were two massive five foot skulls with pot leaves on the forehead. Snoop’s show featured a huge backdrop reading “Tales from the Crip” and marijuana leaves were all around. Everyone performing at or attending this concert was very pro-marijuana legalization.
Yet this morning I’m contacted by the tour people who tell me they need to cancel the booth we have scheduled for the show last Saturday in Orlando. It seems the venue is the Hard Rock, and “because they are a Universal owned company they are much more conservative than your typical venue.”
This Universal, of course, is NBC Universal, the parent company to the MSNBC and CNBC networks that reported their highest ratings ever for their marijuana-themed news reports on the burgeoning cannabis business in California. The same NBC Universal that is happy to sell you Cheech & Chong’s Next Movie, Dazed & Confused, and Half Baked on DVD. The same NBC Universal that has no problem allowing Snoop Dogg to get the crowd at the Hard Rock in Orlando to chant “Legalize It”, but somehow can’t let a couple of college kids in NORML T-shirts hand out educational fliers about why we should legalize it.
Case #3: Another marijuana legalization organization, Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), produced an excellent TV ad calling for passage of a bill to tax and regulate cannabis for adults. The governor had recently called for an open debate about legalization and MPP created this thirty second ad to begin that debate:
Certainly a sober and non-sensational way to debate the issue. Yet when MPP offered the ad to California stations, Los Angeles’ KABC (ABC) and KTTV (FOX), San Francisco’s KGO (ABC), and San Jose’s KNTV (NBC) refused to accept the ad. KNTV said their standards department wouldn’t approve the ad. KGO issued an official “no comment.” KABC and KTTV didn’t even bother give the courtesy of a “no comment” – they would not respond to MPP’s inquiries.
I’ve detailed NBC’s and CBS’s profiting from cannabis culture. You’d think ABC, being a part of the Walt Disney Corporation, would generally shy away from profiting from cannabis culture. But a little digging shows they own Miramax films, which this year released Adventureland, a comedy about teenagers smoking and dealing weed while working at an amusement park and in 2001 offered Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back, the adventures of two inveterate stoners who wrote a stoner comic book. FOX for eight years aired That 70’s Show, a ratings hit whose signature sight gag was teenagers sitting in a smoke-filled basement passing around a joint or bong (never seen, however), with the camera focusing on each character as they “passed the dutchie on the left hand side”.
So it is OK for the corporate parents of CBS, NBC, ABC, and FOX to profit from movies and TV shows that satirize marijuana culture, but they have a “standards and practices” problem with their broadcast affiliates showing 30 seconds of a 38-year-old woman suggesting we should tax and regulate marijuana.
Keep in mind in these cases, we are talking about one part of the big media company raking in huge profits with shows about the marijuana community, while another part of the big media company refuses the free educational fliers, paid advertisements, and pay-to-play broadcasts BY AND FOR the marijuana community. Marijuana is the modern day minstrel show – we’re allowed on the air as long as we keep on our “greenface”, shuck and jive (or would it be “smoke and pass”?), and never forget our proper place.
By the way, the NORML SHOW LIVE mentioned in Case #1 will still be going on the air, as promised, on Labor Day Weekend. Unlike CBS, we keep our promises to our customers. The money raised will go into promotions and producing our show through the facilities of BlogTalkRadio.com, which was happy to accept our business, and quite frankly, offers us a better production technology at one-sixth the price. Tune in every Saturday Night at 9pm Eastern for two hours of intelligent discussion about marijuana legalization.
* Cannaporn is the news specials that like to show lots and lots of pictures of big green sticky buds and the people smoking them, usually the same stock footage they’ve run for years with the most stereotypical “stoner” types they can find, lots of pictures of bongs and tie dyes, some b-roll from a music festival, or body-armored police helicoptering in to chop down marijuana plants, while intoning the reefer madness du jour about increased potency, psychosis, or clandestine cartel grows and violence that wouldn’t exist in a legal market. In other words, not what you will find on NORML SHOW LIVE.
WOW, make sure everyone in the world knows this. Once they realize the same people who bad mouth it run showtime its over, its over. PROPAGANDA 101 WOW
What still bothers me the most about their attempts is that they seem to work. I have lost count of the number of people I have to slowly explain who NORML is to. Each time it is people who should have at least run into the group’s name somewhere in the mix.
Top responses are:
Who?
I thought they went out in the 80’s.
Waste of time if *I’ve* never heard of them.
That’s what still bugs me. That people love their blinders and any, and I do mean any, level of help they get in keeping them on is more time the prohibitionists get to further their goals.
Though I do have to say the worse responses I’ve gotten are always in relation to how NORML could stay “in business” and how they were surprised “they’d let something like that continue …” I think Penn and Teller probably would cover it best with their faith arguments. Most of these people seriously believe now and no amount of “truth” is going to sway that faith.
I’m not sure how we can defeat the DEA,FBI,ONDCP,and their 14 billion dollar budget. The old saying of you eat an elephant one bite at a time seems to apply. I think our best chance still lies with legal businesses that collect taxes. Once the government gets their hands on the new tax money they are not willing to let go. The more tax revenue legal hemp businesses produce the better are chances. The more the big networks can make of stories about cannabis the more you will see it on TV. They now live for the next big story (M.Jacksons death etc) We need to come up with a story that is made for TV.
They sure didn’t mind playing the clip of the governor calling for a debate. But refuse to go further. hmmmmm.
CBS is lame losing advertisers like The Oracle suggested. think of Howard Stern how many advertisers were lost under is career. but think of all the revenue he is bringing in with advertisers that came to him. CBS is too much of a bitch to show Saving Private Ryan (uncut) because of another Lame Organization the FCC. which I consider to be a movie based on Historic events that shouldn’t be censored what so ever. Legalize it! And these anti marijuana commercials, are u kidding me? if they’re gonna show that crap on TV be scientific and factual about it you lame pricks.
The greed and hypocrasy in this country is just sickening. Dont get me wrong, profit is needed, but there are limit we should impose on those of hypocrasy. When I see evidents of this ,I inform whom ever I can and do my best to…yes ..boycot those involved.
Keeping pressure on our leaders and corporation all involved in hypocracy and greed will go a long way over time to end prohibition ,and in general as our leaders are concerned, end waste on all levels as well as the WOD’s.
I think also,as some of you have pointed out, those that coulda ,shoulda, will wish they had early in this game. Of course ,as the ball gets rollin, they will all be happily jumpin on the band wagon.
Three points to ponder.
1) Blazed and Confused.
The skulls with pot leaves. Skulla are generally associated with necromania and death in general. When people see a skull, they think of death. Surely, when they see a skull with a pot leaf, they will associate marijuana with death also.
2) Slightly Stoopid.
Again, by association, people will couple weed with being “slightly stupid”.
IMHO, this sure looks like a counterproductive way to promote marijuana legalisation.
3) “Weeds”
Anyone who watches tv should be able to see that advertizers use sexy ladies to sell almost any product. In that picture, Mary Louise Parker could be anybody’s poster girl for selling weed legally.
How are we, the proponents of legalised weed, ever going to prove that weed IS NOT dangerous if we ourselves depict it alongside images of death and destruction? It seems to me that Showtime is doing more for our cause than we are.
[Russ ponders: Hmm. I think you make a decent observation regarding the Slightly Stoopid show, but only if we are holding rock bands and concerts up as the standard bearers for legalization. I’m not trying to say that entertainment vehicles need to be the perfect representatives for legalization. Heck, I’ve watched Weeds (1st season) and I like Snoop Dogg and Slightly Stoopid tunes. I adore Cheech & Chong, Half Baked, and Dazed and Confused.
The point, though, was the hypocrisy of profiting from the entertainment of stoners, but refusing to allow a serious voice of those “standard bearers” a place on the airwaves. In that respect, Slightly Stoopid has done more promotion of legalization than any of these networks by simply allowing NORML chapters to present educational tables for free at their shows.]
– Aren’t the major broadcast-networks
forbidden by,
(written and / or unwritten),
FCC license-stipulations
from showing cannabis in a
“positive-light” and / or
advocating re-legalization?!?
(Unless portrayed “realized legalization”
fails like a Gilligan’s Island rescue-plan…
i.e. “Weekend at Burnzies” Simpsons episode,
Family Guy, “Episode 420”, etcetera, etc…)
They are still making fun of weed.
#52 Jerry D. Moler Says:
August 4th, 2009 at 5:42 am
“…They now live for the next big story (M.Jacksons death etc) We need to come up with a story that is made for TV.”
RE: Jerry,
– A very apt “made for TV” story, I think,
would be one demonstrating marijuana’s
relative safety-profile comparative to
the prescription drugs TYPICALLY-responsible
for celeb-O.D. deaths,
especially of celebs that were vocally anti-pot,
(such as Elvis Presley),
or that had religious beliefs preventing them
from utilizing a safer,(yet outlawed),
God-Given botanical-medicine,
(the irony of Michael Jackson’s
untimely death!).
BTW:
– How much pot did Anna Nicole Smith
smoke, before it killed her???
NONE!!!
What does this all matter? Overall we got nearly state run media, and very nearly state run medicine. Police are out of control and so is our federal governmnt. Obama and his henchmen dont care about legalization because they are too busy tryin to get a police state in effect. You dumbasses! The gov dont want to free us they want us to be chained and subserviant. Do any of you actually think they care about our freedoms? If you do, you are a moron. See yall in the red, white, and blue gulags!!
Matter of fact when i see commentors that seem to have hope for the future in regards to more freedom i get very sad. They pretty much got control of medicine and the media and more. As the Harvard professor learned you cant even sass a pig without arrest. They are advertising for a shit-ton of internment guards on the natinal guard place. Also my friends in the marines and he says the building the wierdest things. Buses that are converted for prisoner transport. Civilian transport. Our transport.
It would be great if the media wants to wash away the anti-marijuana propaganda, but the “Marijuana Stamp Act of 1937” and “The Control Substance Act of 1970” still haunts the American public.
I sent this email to the ONDCP.
Could you please help me understand
>why marijuana has no medical value but the government has been issuing
>it for years to a hand full of patients? Also, there are alternative
>drugs out that mimic the compounds of marijuana, how could this be if
>there were no medical values. My point is your office should take a
>different approach when dealing with marijuana. Most of the public
>knows this information, so statements put out by your office sound
>discreditable based on the available information. Thank’s Mike Davis
Here is their response:
Thank you for contacting ONDCP.
We appreciate you taking the time to share your comments with us.
Your comments have been noted.
What constitutes safe and effective medicine should continue to be
based upon reviews of the appropriate science by the Food and Drug
Administration (FDA). Medical evidence does not support the efficacy
of smoked marijuana for medical purposes. ONDCP will continue to work
closely with other stakeholders to review law, science, and medicine
to refine the Administration’s marijuana enforcement policy.
Following is some specific information and resources concerning
medical marijuana:
On April 20th, 2006, the FDA issued an advisory concluding that no
sound scientific studies have supported medical use of smoked
marijuana for treatment in the United States, and no animal or human
data support the safety or efficacy of smoked marijuana for general
medical use.
There are alternative FDA-approved medications in existence for
treatment of many of the proposed uses of smoked marijuana. For
example, a prescription drug, Marinol, is currently available to
anyone with a doctor’s prescription. Marinol contains THC, the active
ingredient in marijuana, and has been approved for some of the same
uses as medicinal marijuana
[Russ responds: Notice it is always “smoked marijuana”. The only harms they can find have to do with the delivery system. The ONDCP will not hear about vaporization, edibles, tinctures, or balms. Regardless, there is plenty of medical evidence to support that even smoked marijuana has medical efficacy. The final sentence, saying Marinol is approved for similar uses as “medicinal marijuana”, blows their cover – why would Marinol be approved for something “smoked marijuana” has no medical effect upon?
I’d also like to point out that the FDA reviewed the “appropriate science” on Thalidomide, Phen-fen, and Vioxx and approved those drugs as safe and effective, drugs that caused infinitely more deaths and deformities than smoked marijuana ever did.]
Unite friends. Keep up the good fight!
As long as no less than 10 individual sectors of big business are making huge amounts of cash by marijuana being illegal, markets such as the housing market, perscription drugs, police and law enforcement, our prison system even are all businesses now, and not locking up people for marijuana drastically reduces their profit margins. The TV stations and their other markets are just another pirate plundering from the people who want to make an adult decision to smoke pot. We will not see pot legalized in the next 3 years because our president is a hypocrite, not to say McCain would of done any better, and he chooses to not address the issue at all. Sad times we live in.
The Mass Media is just a megaphone for the corporations that made cannabis illegal in the first place. Monsanto, Dupont, Merck and Exxon Mobil own the media and tell them what to say. The Prison industrial complex and their police force also make the majority of their money off of non-violent cannabis arrests. The TV says so, so they must be right! I think at this rate we’ll overcome in 2109! Same old Babylon here friends.
Russ responds:
‘Notice it is always “smoked marijuana”.
The only harms they can find have to do
with the delivery system.
The ONDCP will not hear about vaporization, edibles, tinctures, or balms.
RE: Russ,
– How many of us letter-writers to goverment-agencies,
elected representatives, etc,
SPECIFICALLY-MENTION
these SMOKELESS methods BEFOREHAND???
(And thus killing pot-prohibs’ FAVORITE
Thought-terminating cliché
before it’s ever uttered / written as a reply.)
As far as I am concerned…the main stream media, the mouthpiece for the new world order corporate-tocracy, along with the on/off-shore criminal banksters…along with any of those 535 who think the constitution/working for “we the people” is a thing of the past…need to be tried for treason…traitors to personal freedoms of the American people. MSM…mouthpiece for the status quo…pushing an agenda…controlling the debate…I’m not seeing much change here. Time to turn off the TV. Start thinking about how/where you spend $$$…If enough of us choose not to participate in their lies, propaganda, fears…(wishful thinking)….maybe this federal government will just go away…hahahaha
Just one look at the prohibition of alcohol. Look a little familiar? Crime and death in the streets. Not to mention the “easier” creation of organized crime. Unfortunately, legalization will probably never happen because of many reasons. Beginning with all the money to be had with this so called, “War on Drugs”. What a joke. Another legal way to imprison MANY people in the guise of “protecting” the people. The only people this protects is the bad guys by giving them an outlet for making extreme amounts of money. Let’s not forget the SUPER wealthy prison unions, and powerful police who, by the way, receives massive amounts of money from the gov. to “house” these “hardcore criminals” that just smoke pot. Ha Ha. How laughable. What is really sad is the majority of the public believes ALL of this “spoon fed” garbage the Gov. wants you to believe. In short I personally know many people with problems created by the use of alcohol and tobacco. Are these “Illegal”? Of course not. Why you might ask? Ask your local representative. They are more then happy to line there “pockets”, oops, I mean war-chests with the money they receive from the respective lobbyists. Is anyone giving them money to end violence and pain caused by this so called “Drug War”? I would have to say “NO”. Until we can pay our way out of all this hardship created by the same people who say, “were doing this to help”, we are all just going to have to hunker down and continue to fight this war ourselves the best we can. The only way to end this war is to “Legalize”.
Just a side note: I know some Growers for Dispensaries, and(by association) Dispensary owners here in California. Who really DON’T want legalization because it will hurt there “BOTTOM LINE”. Now how can we expect TV to allow HONEST debate when we can’t even trust the one’s who wanted “legalization” of medical marijuana just so they can line there pockets with “over priced” product? We have GREED on the “inside” who would like nothing else but to continue selling a $1.60per .05g unit for over $6.00+ a .05g unit. Do we “honestly” think we a a shot with a new(growing more powerful daily) roadblock?
Russ: Thank you a Trillion Times for the responses to poster’s comments. Your doing this really adds value to the experience and has made my day and probably others. It’s important to know that NORML is hearing what we say. And I realize all comments cannot be answered.
……………………
#44 Chris: Whoa! thanks for sharing that tid bit!
[Russ responds: You’re quite welcome.]
Last night I was watching a movie on MTV about a Rap artist and when the guy pulled out a bag of weed from his jacket all I see was a blurred spot. What a joke and it’s really funny to see how far these prohibition loving people are willing to go to blindside the public about marijuana. I say to hell with ABC, NBC, CBS & Fox networks, they are being controlled by the prohibitions anyway. They won’t even show what other countries are doing with Hemp and how they are benefiting from it. I can’t believe that this country is smart enough to put a man on the moon, but dumb enough to believe that Marijuana can kill anyone.
[Russ responds: The blurred marijuana leaf in rap videos is always one of my favorite hilarious bits of censorship irony. “I blew away the cop with my gatt, smacked my ho’ and that was that, pouring Cristal down her neck and her back, getting ready for a booty attack…” yeah, that’s all fine, the thong-wearing models, luxury cars and boats, copious amounts of alcohol and cough-syrup-based beverages, references to murder and cop killing, but oh, heaven’s no, we can’t show the impressionable youth a hemp leaf! I can see a twisted logic in blurring out a baggie of harvested weed, a joint, a bong, a syringe, but to censor nature? That shows you how pervasive and powerful reefer madness is – that it is deemed so dangerous to let our children see images of a plant leaf! I wonder if they would blur out an opium poppy or a coca leaf?]
It’s only going to get worse before it ever gets any better..
Case #6: tonight I watched Katie Couric report on last week’s case of the SUV mother driving down the wrong way on an exit ramp on the Taconic Pkwy in NY. Katie says it was discovered that there was no medical condition that caused the accident, but the driver was twice the legal limit for blood alcohol, and of course Katie needs to mention that the driver also tested positive for marijuana. Now the lady was stupid as hell anyway, driving drunk with two kids, and she probably was freshly smoked up, because she’s such a glutton she can’t possibly be buzzed enough, but for all anybody knows either, she could have smoked that joint a day ago or a week ago. Never mind she was quite drunk, the last word in the broadcast was “marijuana.”
I guess since the ONDCP has it written that they are able to take whatever steps necessary to prevent legalization efforts, including accepting medical research results… then they could apply pressure to keep the word from getting out.
Until the NORML show hits the radio, there is a local station that does a weekely show sunday with a toll free call in number. You can find out more at http://www.drugtruth.net
Paul Armentano of NORML was the first guest.
hey whats up everyone? listen to my legalization song “FUCK YOUR NO SMOKING SIGN”
here http://www.Myspace.com/AfterDeathEmergencyRoom
LEGALIZE MY GREEN GREEN EYES!
The movies and TV shows listed are not pro-marijuana. They are rife with Reffer Madness style lies. For example, Weeds has Nancy Botwin trafficing Heroin…because Weed always leads to harder things! She also spent an episode buying from a medical clinit (to prove that these clinics are not selling medicine, just drugs) Movies like Cheech & Chong and Half Baked push the myth that marijuana will make you a stupid slacker who cannot function without marijuana (or even with it for that matter). The fact is that most Marijuana media, even the stuff made for users, is extremely biassed. If this was not the case, then the brainwashed public would not oppose legalization.
WHAT STUPID CORPORATE WANKERS!!! listen to my legalization song “FUCK YOUR NO SMOKING SIGN” here http://www.Myspace.com/AfterDeathEmergencyRoom
The concept of any prohibition comes from the definition of a sumptuary law. A sumptuary law attempts to control and divide people into classes by limiting the desires of those considered the lesser class. Generally monarch type governments use sumptuary laws to inflict class separation through prohibiting the lesser class from participating in something reserved strictly by the so called upper class royalty.
Any 4th grade student understands this country was founded on the principles of individual freedoms.” A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.” -Abraham Lincoln U.S. President. These same people pushing prohibition would be targeted for treason investigation had they been around during the founding of our country! Don’t Be fooled American people any prohibition enforcement against us is as UN-AMERICAN as Hitler!!
[Russ responds: Love the enthusiasm, but one small correction. The Lincoln prohibition quote is a hoax. According to California NORML’s Dale Gieringer: “I’ve been told that according to the Home Book of Quotations (16th edition), it was fabricated in the 1880s – apparently by anti-Prohibitionists in Atlanta courting the Negro vote. Lincoln was well-known for his temperance sympathies. According to Herbert Asbury’s “The Great Illusion,” he authored a dry law modeled on the Maine law, which was rejected by Illinois voters in a special referendum on June 4, 1855. He was also alleged to have authored and signed a total abstinence pledge in 1846. According to temperance authorities, Lincoln was reluctant to sign the 1862 whiskey tax that helped fund the Civil War, on grounds it would condone the liquor trade. According to a temperance leader who spoke with him on the day of his assassination, Lincoln predicted that the next great question after slavery would be abolition of the traffic in legalized liquor.”
That other one from Lincoln, about playing his Hohner harmonica and enjoying some herb, is bogus, too. Hohner didn’t make harmonicas until well after Lincoln’s death.]
81 Hempster4twenty……Russ
Who the hell cares…it still makes sense whether he said it or not. Common sense is common sense in anyone’s language or time. I’m often accused of being politically incorrect. The only thing you have to consider is that I have faith in the statement. Now!
do you really want to take a head count on those who agree with me?
#82 Rebel with a cause Says:
August 6th, 2009 at 7:50 pm
…do you really want to take a head count
on those who agree with me?
RE: Rebel,
I PARTIALLY-agree with you…
– Though this anti-prohibition
assertion makes perfect sense
and is worthy of OFT repeating,
false attribution of its true authorship
will only hurt the cause, weaken creditability,
and give reform-opponents more ammunition
they don’t need to have….
83 Neurogenesis1;29
Sure you’re right…but…in war your brain turn to water, runs out your ears, and noting matters. I think I’m going to pay particular attention to the war raging between conservatives and liberals. In our case, our fight, for the elimination of prohibitionists, the fight between conservative v. liberal is a lose-lose situation. We’re damned if we do, and damned if we don’t. That’s because “NO POT FOR PEOPLE” originates from a higher source than politics. It originates from “OUR TOTALITARIAN MASTER.” By the way…what credentials for creditability have the prohibs ever given us anyway. I’m going to stick with what makes sense, and if need be defend it. But you’re right. Forgive me for my complicity. We’re dealing with extremists here, and sometimes we have to fight fire with fire. Ya! I know two wrongs don’t make a right. Political strategy says “Go with the flow.” It still makes more sense than anything prohibs have to spin.
So! If Lincoln didn’t say it…hell!…I say it! How’s that for platitude…not to mention plagiarism.
83 Neurogenesis1:29 P.S. “I partially agree with you.”
Parial is O.K. We’re still on common ground…and
…half an orange is better than no orange at all…once you can touch the orange that is. I guess my very famous great uncle neurologist would say half a brain is better than no brain at all. (Chuckle).
Russ- In regards o post #81:
Thanks for the correction and the History lesson. I had NO idea. Cheesy but, like G.I. Joe cartoons and comics in the “old” days(chuckling hard) “Knowing is half the battle” lol. Anyway. Keep up the GOOD fight and hope to see you on the front lines.
First of all, I watch the show “Weeds” because I find it entertaining, and not for activism or informational purposes. Secondly, before we go bagging on Shotime for making money from pot culture without airing activist content, I would like to point out that I’ve seen “American Drug War: The Last White Hope”, “Grass”, and “AKA Tommy Chong” all on this network. Not that any of this has anything to do with CBS backing out of the show deal with NORML, but I felt I should speak up in the interest of fairness.
FAREWELL TO TELEVISION:
– Though this comment might not
be seen by too many, now that more
pressing stories are at the top-of-the-stack,
– I just have to say that watching my favorite
television-programs on the major networks
is getting next to intolerable to do,
for reason of their commercials: Pharma-
zombies gawking, full-screen, into the camera,
hawking Tylenol®, anti-depressant and sleep-meds…
(and whatever-else I’d never buy!!!).
Uggh!!! 😡
– Network tee-vee,
you have lost me, completely!!!
to Youtube, VHS and DVD!!!
Tonight on FOX…
(What I’m watching right now…
This Surprised me):
Two favorite topics-of-discussion, contained
within a crime-drama program
(examples of…):
– Deadly, man-made pharma-pseudocal,
– Excessively-punitive policies against a
God-Given spice-plant.
LIE TO ME:
“The Best Policy”
Repeat, 3/18/2009, Reality
Lightman is hired to find a corporate spy at a
pharmaceutical company and uncovers a high-level
conspiracy involving a dangerous new drug;
(Prioxx™ )
the team assists in negotiations for the release
of two Americans held captive in Yemen.
(Who happened to have an oz. of weed on them,
therefore, are facing charges for “trafficking”,
even though the pot was obviously for personal-use only…)
Credits:
Tim Roth, Kelli Williams, Brendan Hines,
Monica Raymund, Alexa Fischer