* Patrick has acknowledged being treated for cocaine use during his teenage years, and admitted that he abused drugs and alcohol while he was a student at Providence College. 

* Patrick assaulting a security guard at an airport checkpoint in 2000. He paid an undisclosed civil settlement to the alleged victim almost two years later. 

 * Also in 2000, Atlantic Navigation Company of Mystic, Connecticut, claimed that a boat they rented to Patrick Kennedy was found abandoned off Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, with US$28,000 worth of damage.

* In 2003, Kennedy was criticized for saying "I have never worked a f***ing day in my life"

* On May 4, 2006, Patrick crashed his automobile into a barricade on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. A Capitol Police official said the congressman had appeared intoxicated, but Kennedy claimed that he was merely disoriented from prescription medications Ambien and Phenergan. Anonymous sources are alleged to have seen Kennedy drinking at the nearby Hawk & Dove bar prior to the accident.

* On May 5, 2006, Kennedy admitted that he had an addiction to prescription medication and announced he would be re-admitting himself to a drug-rehabilitation facility at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota where he has sought treatment for prior addictions. He has stated that he has no recollection of the car crash. 

* On Friday, June 12, 2009, Kennedy again announced that he "has checked into a medical facility for treatment".  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_J._Kennedy#Personal_issues_and_incidents 

"what we do want to do is send a clear message: Marijuana use is a bad choice"

We should definitely question the validity of this statement, because according to the CDC alcohol causes 80,000 deaths every year while marijuana causes none.

Marijuana is a significantly milder, safer and less addictive alternative to alcohol and we could prevent a lot of harm in society by letting people choose marijuana instead of alcohol.

Is marijuana use a "bad choice"? Compared to perpetual sobriety the answer is we really don't know, compared to alcohol the answer is absolutely NOT!

Anybody who would Champion the argument that the abuse of almost anything is good for one's health has a losing argument, however, I wonder how these Champions of the SAM-movement to STOP marijuana legalization feel about Our Federal Constitution for self-government by "WE, the people"?  The Constitution's Eighteen Enumerated Powers confers NO (nata) federal legislative jurisdictional authority for Congress to enact a federal criminal statute that would PROHIBIT, FORBID, or make it UNLAWFUL or a "federal-crime" for any person at random to buy, sell, use, or abuse, rope, poison, razor-blades, cocaine, heroin, marijuana, or controlled substances, whatever they are now or ever will be.  "WE, the people" of these United States are a sovereign people and the Constitution does not authorize the federal government to take-away Our right to abuse ourselves or intentionally jump from tall buidings or bridges to commit suicide or pull a weed and bake brownies or smoke the weed without an Amendment to the Constitution and the good news is, the Ninety-First Congress didn't!

For over 40 years, in a manner that can only be called "imperium-Emporium", the Executive and Judicial Branch of the Government of the United States have arbitrarily arrested, prosecuted, adjudicated, convicted, and taken-away the life, liberty, and property, of hundreds of thousands of men and women, and then imprisoned them for a combined millions of years for conduct admitted or found to be; "[i]n violation of Title 21, United States Code, Section 841(a)(1)" in the most repugnant FRAUD ever conducted by a government against its Own People in the History of the World and still worse, the "movers and shakers" in Washington know it!

There is not now, nor can there ever be, without Amendment, any Congressional enacted federal criminal statute signed into Public Law by the President of the United States that would prescribe a punishment for any person at random to buy, sell, use, or abuse, melons, marijuana, cabbage, cocaine, hot-dogs, heroin, or "controlled subtances"!  WANNA BET?  I do!    

These guys don't realize decriminalizing marijuana will leave the black-market, criminals, and all the bad things involved in marijuana in place. As far as driving, any DUI law must prove the driver was impaired. Other wise this is just a back door possession law.

Jay Fleming

LEAP Speaker

get the pills outta your system befor you in the same breath talk about cannabis!

How can we the people hold the federal Government to the standards set forth by the people(?) when you can't sue the Govt, due to it's workers are protected? So,....... You don't re-elect the same stick in the mud people who get reelected each and every year and expect or even hope they going to change. Change is not in their vocabulary! We need B. Smith, T. Jones, A. Johnson, NOT, P. Kennedy who has had how many arrests and is addicted to how many illegal items? 

 Guys like kennedy and kevin sabet are out of touch with reality.But that aside the bottom line is they simply do not give a shit,its all about money,remember great great gramps or whoever he was the alcohol smuggler,yea he was really concerned about nothing but money.They are hipoctates plain and simple.

What they reallly do is make me sick to my stomach.

Man i have heard a lot of crap pertaining to Marijuana,these people that r against MJ seem to not know anything about it,while most of us have smoke for 25yrs or more and r healthy,check my liver to a drinker's anytime,and the people that want it legal r mostly not hell raiser's like the people that drink,Dig this they wanted their alcohol so dam bad that they killed a lot of peopleto get it,until the gov'mt had enuff of the killin.Only then they past it as legal with no stipulation's at all like driving while drunk as a skunk and people still die from that devil's piss,everyday,but u people accept that as normal i don't get it just as cigarettes kill to every dam day,and ur ok with that well im not,outlaw alcohol and cigarettes then i will lay my pipe down forever,and u know i can do it,u can't u would be sick withdrawals out the ass,would i have any no sir none,so check facts and be logical instead of stupid,,,

this is stupid,,,

Recall what happens to rats when they are backed into a  corner. Now, imagine the rats were already insane to begin with. Now you have the prohibs pegged perfectly.

The BS, the lies, the ivory-tower sophistries, the prohibs could get away with it so long as they were able to stay out of the limelight. If the raving prohib loons could be kept out of sight, and a facade of rationality maintained, the public didn't bother. And it helped that many voters were of an age and mindset to believe anything the Gub'mint said as Gospel, and swallowed prohib BS uncritically, and voted for pols who repeated the lies.

But that generation is passing, and a new one, experienced in the truth regarding cannabis and other drugs, and resentful of the intelligence-insulting lies told it by officialdom, has come into its' own. And one of its' first acts as a generation was to vote for cannabis legalization.

The importance of this cannot be underestimated. The generation that was targeted for an intensive literally-from-the-cradle propaganda onslaught designed to make them little Pavlovian drug-averse robots...turned around and spat in the face of their tormenters, and voted for relegalization. Make no mistake: <i>what happened Election Day was  a 'vote of no confidence' in the DrugWar, <b>a vote cast by those for whom it was ostensibly fought</b></i>

The DrugWar has lost its' legitimacy in the eyes of those who now have the economic, social and political power to end it. In short, that generation has called "BULLSH-T!" on a national policy that only favors a demonstrable - and IDENTIFIABLE - minority that has gotten fat, dumb and happy riding the DrugWar gravy train.

The worm has finally turned. And the more the prohibs are backed into a corner, the crazier they'll get, the carefully crafted PR mask will crack. More and more of the public will see behind the facade; they'll  see and hear the barely-hidden authoritarian "Do as I say, not as I do!" foundation of the DrugWar...and those who profit from that mindset, having incorporated it themselves. You can imagine the electorate's response might be, come next election cycle. A thought which, I am quite sure, is keeping the lights on very late at ONDCP, DEA, etc.

Long, rambling barely coherent analogy about college loans or whatever, he goes so far off topic to make his analogy it loses the reader's interest.  He keeps implying that no one can really use marijuana responsibly and those who "think" they can are deluding themselves, then he adds insult to injury with the whole "but even if those few people can use it responsibly, they should just be happy with public opinion being more tolerant of them now."

SMART is anything but.

End the "War on Drugs"
42 years | $2.5 Trillion | 45 million arrests

NOT BAD for a FRAUD!  WAKE UP AMERICA!  Do you honestly believe that without a constitutional amendment, the central government of the United States has legal and constitutional authority to arrest, prosecute, and imprison any person at random for pulling a weed and smoking it, well, do you?  If you do, then WHY pray tell, does it take an amendment to the Constitution to enable 18 year olds, women, and African Americans to vote, and WHY pray tell, would it take an amendment to the Constitution to make it a federal-crime to burn the American flag when the American flag stands for the right to burn it or to make it LAWFUL or UNLAWFUL for folks of the same sex to marry?  The World is full of "choices" and "WE, the sovereigns" have a constitutional right to buy, sell, use, or abuse, alcohol, tobacco, heroin, cocaine, marijuana, hallucinates, ketchup, mustard, diets, and Christmas trees, the choice is ours to make!  WAKE UP SHEEPLE, BEFORE ITS TOO LATE!!!

I don't know if they'll print it, but I submitted following at CNN under the Frum article:

"Mr. Sabet [i.e. Frum, I was to dumb to read carefully] makes many good points about financialization and cleverization of the economy and society, which make “simple-minded” hands-on workerly individuals (like sort of me) disadvantaged compared to a bureaucratically gifted elite with an “attention-span” which tolerates boringly tedious procedural minutiae.

"I wish he would examine some of the technical traps that would-be cannabis users have been falling into– such as the hot burning overdose monoxide cigarette papers “smoking” fallacy, and investigate safe moderate use procedures now available such as the vaporizer, the e-cigarette (models designed for ingesting cannabinoids instead of nicotine) and the simple method of vaporizing with a one-hitter (hold the flame far enough away that a 25-mg serving of cannabis in a screened mini-pipe is bathed in 385F heat but not ignited). To say “cannabis itself” is to blame for traffic accidents or drug addiction (cigarettes 435,000 deaths a year, alcohol 80,000) is too simple-minded even for me.

"The SAM agenda may be sincere but it plays into the hands of the tobacco industry which does not want its HIGH PROFIT cigarette format to crash under accusations originating among cannabis users who got wise to the “joint”. So blame the cannabis and just don’t try it.

I just signed the petition but may I suggest that it's actually a good thing to have this group out there because they expose the fallacy in the argument for prohibition. 

Kennedy is likely a weak minded, highly religious person who lacks any self responsibility.  This Kennedy probably has little self control and abuses everything in his life.  People like Kennedy should not be doing marijuana, nor anything else a normal, responsible human would.  Stick this guy on a plane and send him to North Korea.

Their stance is basically that people, in general, are dumb... and that we needed to be protected from our stupidity?  This is the same bogus line of reasoning that led to idiotic legislature like banning Big Gulp sized soft drinks in New York.  So, stuffing a bunch of calories down your throat is a bad choice... so make all bad choices illegal?  SMART's position in this debate is downright insulting... every American should feel insulted, whether you're against prohibition or for.

First off, correction, I've been calling it SMART the last few posts, apparently the organization is named SAM. My bad.

Second off... This guy is an ass... read his rebuttals to a couple replies to his CNN article:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/01/10/don-t-legalize-marijuana-the-case-for-more-paternalism-in-america.html

His stance on most everything is the "anti-popular" stance.  He supports the Big Gulp ban.. he wants strict gun control... he literally thinks that most Americans are too stupid and should have less freedom because they're not smart enough to handle those freedoms.

This is about as un-American a core belief as I've ever heard.  I seriously want to write a letter to this loser admonishing his position on all political matters.  I think this boy was dropped on the head as a baby.

 Thank God you all have come out against this mad attack on us again  . I thank each and everyone who has given a comment as to this issue  , together we shall show these prohibitionist  type person how really crule they are and how there will is to continue plundering for there own gain  , in refusing  regulation in working in concert with the government agency state side   is otter madness  and nothing more then an attack on all of us  Kennedy  as a politician is over  alone with his  son of S.A.M devil  club  we all know what S.A.M really stand for  but i can not put it up here as i would lose right to print  figure it out  ??? anyhow  this group can kiss my A*% and if you ever show face in Massachusetts   I will be there and vocal 

 Massvocals

"...the essence of tyranny is the enforcement of stupid laws,”
---Edmund Burke 
 

rListen folks, all the above comments have been correct and to the point, however, all we're doing is preaching to the choir.  We're all on board here.  What we need to do is talk to other people.  Talk to our parents, spouse, children, grandchildren, members of our churches, work mates, anyone who will listen.  Write our members of Congress, our local newspapers and become evangilists for the cause of ending prohibition in all it's forms.  If we don't try to convert the nonbelievers to our cause, what good are we?  I am always trying to turn the tide of opinion in our favor, and have had a small measure of success.  If we all do it, we can get rid of the rascals inpairing our freedoms so many people have died to protect.

if your on a jury for any type of pot offense... refuse to convict... all it takes is one juror ... its how the Volstead act became a footnote in history and its how we the people should deal with this poor public policy debate... If we refuse to convict for any pot offenses then lawmakers will be forced to act...

pass to along to anybody who will listen... make it viral...

If you make it happen in this way, this war on us will be over ...because WE say it is...

http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_22357044/marijuana-debate-isnt-just-legalization-vs-incarceration

Another editoral by these SAM goons.  I'm beginning to think SAM stands for "Secret Alliance to Marijuana", because their position in this debate is so absurd, it will just serve to turn more and more people who read it towards legalization.  After all, their primary argument is how stupid the American people are!

We can't handle because we're not smart enough!  That's the message of SAM.

This reminds me of the Steppenwolf tune. Self-righteous Sam, the government rep on a TV discussion panel, outlines his objections to marijuana legalization: "Well, it's evil, wicked, mean and nasty. And it will ruin our fair country. It will hook your Sue and Johnny. All will pay who disagree with me." Now, over 40 years later, we get these same arguments repackaged and sold to us by another SAM trying to sound cool. Same insanity sported by the same kind of self-righteous people. "Please give up, you've already lost the fight alright."

Ol` Patrick Kennedy , haha , looks like the assistant to the Vice President of the Paul Ryan Fan Club . This is beyond ridiculous . Almost psychedelic in nature . A Kennedy as a Cannabis expert . A drunk , pilled up Kennedy at that . Psychopath anyone ?

First off, there is nothing called marijuana. That was a made up name applied to cannabis to move it away from the plant used for rope manufacturing. After the lobbyist "convinced" the politicians to outlaw it on the grounds it would make a person insane as well as a bunch of other negative things, the government used this law to outlaw hemp since it is genetically the same plant less the "get high" part. This supposedly was to benefit DuPont chemical as they had supposedly come up with a crude oil based extract oil for use in oil based paint. Hemp seed oil had been used in it since who knows when. All of those 100 plus year old building that still have the original paint on them was hemp oil based paint. Of course, the new oil version wore out in just a few years requiring everything to be repainted every so many years.

     The use of marijuana has a lite "addiction" to it because if you run out of it, you miss the relaxing effects and good feeling you get from using it, but it is nothing like the withdrawal from hard drugs, alcohol, nor tobacco. A couple of times over a period of two or three days of missing it is about the extent of the "addiction" - less distress than being out of coffee. all of this other stuff is total bullshit likely imagined by people who have never even used cannabis. If you have never used it, you need not be lying to people by acting like you know about the effects and withdrawal form it. I agree it is something that should not be given to kids just because they do not know what they are doing with it. And I am sure that there may be a few people that are allergic to it or who do not enjoy the effects of it but everything grow anywhere has the same few reactions. I would say that if you have never tried it, wait to form an opinion for a year or two and watch the results of people using legal cannabis before you listen to the trash talkers. I expect great and wonderful things to be discovered using this plant.

Kevin Sabet and David Frum are deliriously happy their Project SAM scam finally has some name recognition now that Patrick Kennedy is on board.   It’s also clear three stooges always work better on stage than a mere two stooges.

Frum and Sabet may even believe that hanging out with a Kennedy is going to rescue them from the lowest depths of bureaucratic and social malaise, offering them a step up the social ladder, maybe even marriage to a Kennedy woman.  They would be wrong to believe that.

Patrick Kennedy is playing his professional victim card, something that’s incompatible with supporting a tyranny.  Victimage is supposed to eliminate tyrannies such as prohibition, not sustain them. 

By involving himself, Kennedy guarantees his own infamy, as do all anti-liberals who support tyrants.  He cannot see that prohibition is sinking, that anyone tied to the bad ship prohibition is going down with it.  

As victims go, young Patrick is as much a drug war victim as any other drug user.  Had the truth about marijuana and other drugs been more forthcoming from the government, had weed been more obtainable, Patrick might otherwise have preferred to stick with illegal marijuana, while avoiding legal alcohol and the legal Big Pharma drugs that got him into so much trouble.

Just about everywhere you read about the hoodwinks this week, it's obvious that most people get it and aren't going to tolerate their golddigging charades. The great thing is that everyone is speaking up and that's what it's going to take to make changes.

Of course the prohibitionists will fight to the end but the end is now near.

Let's keep the pressure on. We need to end this BS drug testing and demonization and get on with our lives. Use the  NORML and MPP websites to tell this government that you want the drug war to END.

http://capwiz.com/norml2/officials/congress/?district=10&lvl=C&azip=18801&state=PA 

https://secure2.convio.net/mpp/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=415 

I run a daily search for Marijuana on Google, with Advanced Search option "last 24 hours."  Every now and then, doing this search finds something amusing to read.. because of how bad it is.  This is one of them...

http://www.rightwingnews.com/culture/a-thoughtful-look-at-the-marijuana-legalization-trend/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rightwingnews%2FhGmL+(Right+Wing+News)

I find it hilarious that they lay it on so THICK in that article.  Almost every single "fact" presented there is disputed by at least some study out there.. it's every single stereotypical bit of anti-weed propaganda we've come to know and love, all rolled up into an idiotic, opinion-infested, supra-biased lie-fest... and the best part? Almost anyone who's smoked weed at least once in their life will immediately recognize that the article is full of lies.  That's how much she stretches the truth.

Can these people just roll over and go to bed already?  Legalization shouldn't be stopped.. the Sentate Judicial committee agrees... I mean just look marijuana arrests surpass all violent crime arrests.. COMBINED!  That is DISGUSTING.. It fills me with rage and hatred... fuck the war on drugs.. shit will end now or later, but the end is most certainly coming.  There will be plenty more funny stoner movies and hip hop songs promoting weed in the near future to ensure even if WE dont' win somehow, the generations to come will be more and more accepting until we finally shut down this bullshit war on drugs FOREVER.

T_T

http://blog.norml.org/2013/01/22/federal-court-of-appeals-denies-petition-to-reschedule-marijuana/

We were all expecting this outcome, of course, but still stings a little.  For all the progress drugreformers have made.. they still have a long way to go.

Did that catch your eye? This is all Patrick wants; free, wide-spread PR to get his name out there and possibly advance his own agenda. And tying your name to a highly debated issue like marijuana legalization is just the way to do it. He has no qualifications. He's a Kennedy, and thinks that will get him somewhere.

Why you people take so much time and effort to write about a drug addict

retarded stupid piece of crap like this ass hole!!!!!!!!!

The more states that legalize,the more panic and knee jerk reaction we will see from the prohibitionists.Sounding reasonable is a different tactic for these people.I guess the fact that they have no real good argument for the maintaining of this prohibition undercuts the hard line stance they held for so many years?It doesn't change the fact that treatment for cannabis is the backbone of the treatment industry.It's the reason for the drug courts that have sprung up around the country,which feed the treatment centers with pot smoking kids.It might be better than a straight shot to prison but it's patently dishonest and very costly.There has to be treatment available to anyone who needs it and they should be able to go whenever the need arises.Sending kids who get caught smoking a joint to mandatory treatment with the threat of prison if they don't find the cure,and this isn't an idle threat,is just wrong.There are places where addicts are put on waiting lists while cannabis smoking kids are taking spaces that they just do not require.The real reason they love to treat cannabis addiction is because of the great cure rate.Possibly because there was no disease in the first place?Heroin addicts,on the other hand,and meth addicts as well have at least a 50% chance of failure.Of this 50% a large number will fall off the wagon within a year.No wonder the industry would rather pad their successes with cannabis smokers who suffer no withdrawal and have little trouble staying clean for the term of their probation.