Whats sad about this is i have a friend that did 2 years in the peacecore in the highest concetrated area of AIDS and AIDS related fatality in the world. She left after that because it ate her soul and in her own words "its fucked". She lost hope because warlords and others spread rumors that America invented the AIDS virus and infected them on purpose to kill the black man and she said many people there believed it. She was in charge of AIDS education but many didnt trust her, they thought she was there to infect more people by saying its "treatment". They also all refused condoms or any other type of safe sex either because of religous reasons or again distrust but still held to their right to have sex when ever they wanted. Everyone had mistresses, men and women, multiple ones as well, that both parties knew about. She was able to get through to some but nothing seemed to change since a lot of the people that she did get through to died anyway. She use to write emails 20 pages long to me once a month (the only time she had computer access) that i saved. All with horror stories and how today she held a child in her arms while they died. She has never been the same since.

Going to two on Saturday and two on Sunday. Beyond that, I'm not sure.

By the way, "Borderland" is supposed to be based on a true horror story that happened in Mexico.

Adults didn't make these laws to protect themselves though, they were lied into it. Politicians and business interests made them to serve themselves. The one doctor from the AMA who testified before committee said they didn't agree, committee lied to the full Congress when asked about it. It's in the records.

Refer madness, addicts in the streets, and so on. Turned out little of it was true, but they were sold the lie. Try offering them honest education and a real choice and you've got a point. Do it based on hysteria and lies and you don't.

We knew it was lies, New York Mayor's Committee on Marihuana established that. Same mayor as the airport is named after, widely seen as a hero of the era. He was against alcohol prohibition then when the Hearst and other newspapers started printing horror stories about pot some included New York. He looks around and can't find what they claim, it seemed invented, so asked for his own study. Years later we got the following. We've always known, we just pretended we didn't.

http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/lag/lagmenu.htm

I posted this for you once before, I'll post it again and you can read it or not as your wish.

http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/History/whiteb1.htm

That's a history which covers from pre-prohibition until fairly recently, written by a professor of law and delivered to the annual judges conference.

Here's some of the details they used to "convince" us of it since, a collection of some of the junk science which has been tried on us over the years. The playboy one I especially though was amusing, but all were interesting.

http://www.jackherer.com/chapter15.html

A quick example. They forced Rhesus monkeys into gas masks and fed massive quantities of smoke to them in a very short time then did it again, and again, and again, and when they were done they assumed all damage was pot and ignored things like a need for oxygen. It took a freedom of information act request to even get the Government to share the methodology behind their "proof", and when they did the world laughed. Oxygen deprivation and carbon monoxide poisoning, not pot did the damage.

Does that make pot harmless? Nope. Smoke all the time and you do suffer learning impairment, the cancer scare turns out to have had little to it but it can cause bronchitis with abuse and has some other drawbacks too. Some do seem prone to mental problems being aggravated even if not caused due to it, but that's some. Not all. Too many think it's harmless though, and we know why. With all the lies they have been fed about pot they tend to assume any warning is a lie, so much else has been.

That in a nutshell is the problem with the drug war. Use went up here through the 50's-70's in spite of laws that in places could and did could offer a sentence as heavy as life for a joint. Use went up some in the Netherlands with coffee shops. Use went up worldwide in that time period. Now look at who has problems with it, and who doesn't. With them use today is half of what it is here and the kids don't seem hung up on it so much as recognize it as recreation to be had in its place and time rather than all the time. Kind of like that glass of wine, beer, or whatever else we have with meals or in front of a game rather than all the time. It isn't safe either with abuse, but it isn't a problem with casual use at home.

Today we treat all drugs the same, pot is classed with heroin and we try to convince the kids they are somehow similar. So when we manage to convince them of half of it, that they are similar, then they find we've lied about pot, what do we expect them to think about the harder drugs? They don't believe us because of the lies. It's our own damned fault.

Real facts, real regulation that separates dangerous from mild risk. Not because no harm can come from drugs, but because so much can and it's got worse without them. What I expect is not free use, it's regulated and probably as tightly as we can. We need to allow users enough access to get rid of the street dealers, but not an inch more than we have to. Trial study and science, not scare tactics and moral requirements. At this point neither I nor anyone else knows what it'll look like when we're done if we let the results lead the way, we can just guess. We need to do the work and make sure. If it's a bad idea, it never gets out of trial study, small scale use in a limited area. If good, maybe we've got a way out of some of this damage. We'll never know until we look.

Edited to clarify the carbon monoxide poisoning point on pot.

True, Micheal Moore is a sensationalist and he relies heavily on emotion to sway the audience into his point of view. I was also hoping that he might momentarily talk about the shortcomings of socialized healthcare. I'm always extremely suspicious when a docuementary exclusively presents one side of a story.

However

I don't think you can argue that the healthcare system in the U.S. isn't FUBAR. I am completely perplexed as to why our gov. thinks that allowing corporations decide who gets healthcare and who doesn't is a good idea. It almost makes me sick to hear about insurance companies having record profits when you also hear about the horror stories of the suddenly uninsured. True, if we socialize healthcare we'll pick up the tab in taxes, but we already pay an assload for our private system so whats the diff.

I'm not advocating a full-on French socialist system to come do my laundry, but I do feel that leaving our nations most unfortunate hang out to dry and allowing profit hungry corporations to decide who gets care is an excellent example of the fact that capitalism isn't a pure, golden system that always insures the best care for its consumers (its hard for someone to switch to a competing healthcare company after they are dead).

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

That's cool. Love the in-joke on the back. Something about in-jokes and t-shirts go really well together, I think because it gives people something to ask about.

We're still chasing out T-shirt maker. We would like to get real silk-screen ones on high-*quality tee's because we've heard lots of horror stories on the instant print-on-demand, Cafe Press types.

The downside of the silk screen ones is that you have have to pre-order a "printing run". We don't mind splashing out for that, but you also have to estimate the size distributions as well for your pre-order. I think we will assume 20%XL 30%L 30%M 20%S

We've pretty much decided against cafe press. There have been a lot of horror stories about them in the past. I would be willing to get a bunch of these screen printed and then shipped out if we could be assured that we had enough buyers to cover the costs. I'll make some calls on monday and figure out how much a batch of these would cost and then set up some sort of purchase agreement form. We would probably be taking payments through paypal. I personally dislike white t's and would probably rather see it on a gray or something like that. Anyone else have any opinions on the matter?

I dont see where he was treated badly, the person he was talking to did his job, spoke politely, and was trying to keep a customer. Im not saying more people shouldnt speak out like this. But this guy was was treated like a saint compared to most "horror stories". And the fact the poor guy he talked to was fired for this is sad.

ah, the Big Dig. Our corporate headquarters are in Bedford, MA not too far from Boston. We've heard plenty of horror stories from our partners up there!

"Serious miss allocation of military resources."-Saving Private Ryan Us military occupation force, i think not our military is trained to kill, let the UN occupy land. Wait!! We went to war with out the UN's consent feeding them false information about Weapons of Mass Destruction. That is why Colin Powell quit his post, if you still believe we need to be there then we should at least give the troops the proper equipment. Still riding in half ass vehicles (Marine First Recon rode in the vehicles with no doors, and plywood for armor, the same shit that the rangers had to deal with in Somalia) Ive heard horror stories about army occupation forces not getting their proper flak vests, most are buying theirs from soldier of fortune magazine advertisements.

On another note, any one here know about that 80% of the forces over there in Iraq are private military operators (Mercenaries) they are mostly called "Shadow." They are hired by our government, and most of them are so well equipped that our uniformed troops sometimes mistake them for the enemy.

The majority of the opposition that our occupying force is fighting are Chechen Muslim Zealots, and they are much better trained than the average middle eastern Zealot. They fought the soviets, and the Union of Russia since the 1800, the capital of Chechnya has changed its name at three times.

In short should have never been there, although Saddam is gone thats great, but get them out. Bring em home, next time just send an assassin because i don't see a difference here.

I hope that the next president has enough testicular fortitude to do stand up to "them" our government doesn't seem to be running its checks and balances very well. I cant see how many Americans would love to send their children, husbands, brothers, sisters, and best friends off to a desert to fight some one else's war. I hope that congress has enough gall to act before we get into a sh*t storm, this is way to late.