>> ^kronosposeidon:

But how are we supposed to help the private prison industry if we can't pack dope offenders like sardines into their overcrowded convict warehouses? And how are we supposed to help our pharmaceutical industries when they can't patent a weed? And how are we supposed to help our beer, wine, and distilled spirits industries when there's a new legal competitor on the market?
Pro-marijuana = anti-business, and
Anti-business = anti-American, ∴
Pro-marijuana = anti-American
Why do dopers hate America?


The weed industry will eventually have enough money to buy more "representation" in congress, just don't expect them to push hard for people's right to grow at home (bad for business).

You're most welcome, and I'm glad you enjoyed our little routine. Blankfist and I are going to be the next Abbott & Costello. The next Martin & Lewis. The next Siegrfried & Roy.
Wait, not the last one.

In reply to this comment by Duckman33:
Thanks for the Quality! And the conversation that followed it. LOL

In reply to this comment by kronosposeidon:
But how are we supposed to help the private prison industry if we can't pack dope offenders like sardines into their overcrowded convict warehouses? And how are we supposed to help our pharmaceutical industries when they can't patent a weed? And how are we supposed to help our beer, wine, and distilled spirits industries when there's a new legal competitor on the market?

Pro-marijuana = anti-business, and
Anti-business = anti-American, ∴
Pro-marijuana = anti-American

Why do dopers hate America?

Thanks for the Quality! And the conversation that followed it. LOL

In reply to this comment by kronosposeidon:
But how are we supposed to help the private prison industry if we can't pack dope offenders like sardines into their overcrowded convict warehouses? And how are we supposed to help our pharmaceutical industries when they can't patent a weed? And how are we supposed to help our beer, wine, and distilled spirits industries when there's a new legal competitor on the market?

Pro-marijuana = anti-business, and
Anti-business = anti-American, ∴
Pro-marijuana = anti-American

Why do dopers hate America?

But how are we supposed to help the private prison industry if we can't pack dope offenders like sardines into their overcrowded convict warehouses? And how are we supposed to help our pharmaceutical industries when they can't patent a weed? And how are we supposed to help our beer, wine, and distilled spirits industries when there's a new legal competitor on the market?

Pro-marijuana = anti-business, and
Anti-business = anti-American, ∴
Pro-marijuana = anti-American

Why do dopers hate America?

And more to the point, big pharma is only indirectly related. It is akin to yellow mustard sales in relation to spicy mustard sales. If you can't get yellow mustard, then most likely spicy mustard may go up. That is an indirect relationship. Conversely, the illegality of drugs directly affects all those other groups. In addition, in other talks, he mentions big pharma as they do, as you mention, indirectly benefit from the illegality of drugs. His views, if you do more digging than just this video, are more in line with a centrist position as he does advocate high taxation which is a depart from a more libertarian philosophy.


>> ^entr0py:

>> ^Taint:
This guy must be from the right wing since he manages to make a list of who profits from illicit drugs without citing private industry!
Sure, drug dealers, the government, and terrorists, but certainly not an unkind word toward our precious corporate America!
Dow chemicals, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and etc etc. The companies who fill up your commercial breaks with people wandering wistfully through fields with vacant smiles on their faces. Sure you could vaporize some marijuana harmlessly to combat your crippling depression, but then we'd lose the billion dollar industry of selling you laboratory created pills to do the same thing.
Funny thing about a weed is that it takes virtually no skill to grow some of it, and thus makes a difficult product to package and sell. For Judge Gray here to make his comprehensive list without including the people who stand the MOST to lose from removing prohibition is either amazingly narrow or entirely suspect.

I never know what I should make of claims like that. Pharmaceutical companies often cherry pick the studies that show efficacy, and ignore the ones that don't, especially when it comes to anti-depressants. But I would expect pot supporters to do the same. Meta analysis of available studies doesn't seem to show any clear consensus.
It seems like the biggest problem is the lack of double-blind, placebo controlled, studies set up to prescribe marijuana to non-users as a treatment for depression. All I've ever seen are observational studies, and those can only show correlation. It would take proper experiments to begin to demonstrate causality.

>> ^Taint:

This guy must be from the right wing since he manages to make a list of who profits from illicit drugs without citing private industry!
Sure, drug dealers, the government, and terrorists, but certainly not an unkind word toward our precious corporate America!
Dow chemicals, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and etc etc. The companies who fill up your commercial breaks with people wandering wistfully through fields with vacant smiles on their faces. Sure you could vaporize some marijuana harmlessly to combat your crippling depression, but then we'd lose the billion dollar industry of selling you laboratory created pills to do the same thing.
Funny thing about a weed is that it takes virtually no skill to grow some of it, and thus makes a difficult product to package and sell. For Judge Gray here to make his comprehensive list without including the people who stand the MOST to lose from removing prohibition is either amazingly narrow or entirely suspect.


I never know what I should make of claims like that. Pharmaceutical companies often cherry pick the studies that show efficacy, and ignore the ones that don't, especially when it comes to anti-depressants. But I would expect pot supporters to do the same. Meta analysis of available studies doesn't seem to show any clear consensus.

It seems like the biggest problem is the lack of double-blind, placebo controlled, studies set up to prescribe marijuana to non-users as a treatment for depression. All I've ever seen are observational studies, and those can only show correlation. It would take proper experiments to begin to demonstrate causality.

My list

1: Pharmaceutical Industry
2: Textile Industry
3. Religion Industry
4. Psychiatry Industry
5. Tobacco Industry
6. Alcohol Industry
7. Private Prison Industry
8. Gangs/Blackmarket drug industry
9. Military Industry/Neocons - by denying revenue to Anti-American forces in South America and The Middle East

Is ScaifeTV's list similar?

In reply to this comment by blankfist:
Hey butterbean, thought you might enjoy this from those corporatist scalawags at reason.tv:

http://videosift.com/video/Judge-Jim-Gray-Six-Groups-Who-Profit-From-Drug-Prohibition

Isn't "butterbean" just terribly southern sounding?

I'd be surprised if the corporate state would ever legalize marijuana outright. I'm predicting we will soon start seeing marijuana based pharmaceuticals approved by the FDA and sold at a premium.

Who is head of the FDA? Monsanto, of course! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_R._Taylor

I have an extremely awesome Doctor. I'm going to tell you about him.

He's an old country doctor who decided to move back to civilization to be close to his grandchildren before he dies. He doesn't accept any insurance, he charges $40 for an office visit, he has a deal worked out with a lab to give his patients extremely reasonable lab fees (for MOST lab work he can charge $30), he was a young doctor in vietnam, he's old and experienced enough to know how to do things without a lot of bells and whistles and very very conservatively, he tries his best to only prescribe generic medications (if any at all if he can avoid it because he despises what the pharmaceutical companies have become), for the $40 which comes out of your pocket - he will not overbook his schedule and spend a significant amount of time with you so you can both understand your health and your lifestyle and how those are related, if you are very sick and do not have $40 or can not afford any needed lab work - he will do what he can to work with you.

I asked him once about his odd practices and he guffawed at me and said that the insurance companies "dick me over first, so they can dick him over next". apparently, he thinks making an industry gambling on whether or not people will get ill is a terrible scam and then making the gambler, the bookie is a fucking fraud. he thinks socialized medicine won't work in this country, not because it's inherently evil but because "the people who make the plans don't do shit but give rimjobs to the people who have all the money, and the people who have all the money are only concerned with getting more of it".

so i kind of think this is an excellent way of doing things. i know it's a libertarian way of doing things. and doesn't help me if i need to go to the hospital. but if i can afford preventative care, have a physician to talk to me like i'm a human being about my lifestyle how to control it and how that translates into good health, and i can afford to go to the doctor when i get sick instead of letting it turn into pneumonia, then my chances of needing the hospital drop dramatically.

in short, i fucking looooove this man. i think he should teach med school and imbue his students with his experience, confidence, reason and utter lack of greed.

....Big Oil, The Pharmaceutical Industry, The Banking Industry, The Insurance Industry, The Military Industrial Complex....

Jimmy lived with his mother, suffered from acute social awkwardness in normal situations, but tonight at the Celtics' Game bereft of his usual dosage of pharmaceutical inhibitors he was king.

>> ^NetRunner:

I'm still waiting for someone to join Glenn Beck, and defend the righteousness of letting the house burn down.
If you're not willing to go that far, even for "deadbeats" who can't pay, then what are we really talking about?
Instead of taxing everyone, and serving everyone, we serve everyone, but make people have to opt-in to paying $75/yr, or else run the risk of getting slapped with a bill of several thousand dollars if their house catches fire?
Does that really strike people as a superior method of financing fire departments?


To me it's not righteousness. To me it's an unfortunate situation that some have decided to politicize. It's a shame this happened, but why are people like you hellbent on using this as justification for more taxes and more government services? Why stop at fire departments? Why not move to have government take over every service imaginable and wipe out business altogether?

Or is it just those that purport to save lives? Then maybe government should be in the business of creating pharmaceutical products? Creating and building hospitals? All ambulatory services should be made public because the private ones are doing such a terrible job as is, right? Good nutrition and exercise are important for our health, so maybe the good government can set strict nutritional requirements, compulsory exercise programs, and maybe even take over the entire farming industry?

Maybe we should pretend Socialism didn't work with the Soviet model and give it another go! Why? Because we're saving lives/for the children/to stop terrorism, etc.

Cato Institute:

Established: 1977
Founders: Edward Crane and Charles G. Koch
President: Edward Crane

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/cato-institute

Cato Institute was founded by Ed Crane with a $500,000 grant from Charles Koch, a chemical and petroleum heir who was active with Crane in the Libertarian Party.

Cato's corporate sponsors include: Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, Bell Atlantic Network Services, BellSouth Corporation, Digital Equipment Corporation, GTE Corporation, Microsoft Corporation, Netscape Communications Corporation, NYNEX Corporation, Sun Microsystems, Viacom International, American Express, Chase Manhattan Bank, Chemical Bank, Citicorp/Citibank, Commonwealth Fund, Prudential Securities and Salomon Brothers. Energy conglomerates include: Chevron Companies, Exxon Company, Shell Oil Company and Tenneco Gas, as well as the American Petroleum Institute, Amoco Foundation and Atlantic Richfield Foundation. Cato's pharmaceutical donors include Eli Lilly & Company, Merck & Company and Pfizer, Inc.

Other non-Bush Administration alumni include former board members: Rupert Murdoch and Theodore J. Forstmann, also founding chairman of Empower America, now FreedomWorks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreedomWorks

>> ^coolhund:

They dont actually keep us sick, but they keep us close.
For example here in Germany its much more profitable to dish out cheap drugs than to actually try to heal with other options.
Some, not all, exploit this. Its actually common knowledge. For example dentists use low quality fillings so that people have to come more often or doctors use drugs first on any case, so they can get more money from the patient.
I have to say its mainly here in Germany because of our 2-class health system which has many holes, but I could very well imagine its not much different elsewhere.
For example the 2-class system allows doctors to treat one of the class with significantly less effective methods, because the effective methods are more expensive. Also they arent allowed to treat too many people of the lower class. Well they are allowed, but they only get money for a certain number. If they exceed that number they dont get money for the ones that are over that number. So they try to stall them until a new months starts or just give them drugs that wont help (they get money for prescribing drugs).
That has nothing to do with doctors trying to heal people. Its all about the money.
You just have to look at the sheer numbers of pharmacies in this country. Even in very small towns its common that there are 3-5 of them in the same street. They make a lot of money from these practices.
If there is a possibility to exploit something and get money from it, people WILL use those exploits.
Oh and I didnt get that from the Internet, I got it from personal experience in both classes, statistics that are openly available plus my brother actually works in a pharmaceutical firm.


Everything in the below stated comment is a product of a shitty system, not shitty doctors. Blame your politicians.

They dont actually keep us sick, but they keep us close.
For example here in Germany its much more profitable to dish out cheap drugs than to actually try to heal with other options.
Some, not all, exploit this. Its actually common knowledge. For example dentists use low quality fillings so that people have to come more often or doctors use drugs first on any case, so they can get more money from the patient.
I have to say its mainly here in Germany because of our 2-class health system which has many holes, but I could very well imagine its not much different elsewhere.
For example the 2-class system allows doctors to treat one of the class with significantly less effective methods, because the effective methods are more expensive. Also they arent allowed to treat too many people of the lower class. Well they are allowed, but they only get money for a certain number. If they exceed that number they dont get money for the ones that are over that number. So they try to stall them until a new months starts or just give them drugs that wont help (they get money for prescribing drugs).
That has nothing to do with doctors trying to heal people. Its all about the money.

You just have to look at the sheer numbers of pharmacies in this country. Even in very small towns its common that there are 3-5 of them in the same street. They make a lot of money from these practices.

If there is a possibility to exploit something and get money from it, people WILL use those exploits.
Oh and I didnt get that from the Internet, I got it from personal experience in both classes, statistics that are openly available plus my brother actually works in a pharmaceutical firm.