Obama's hot button - his priority is his wife and children - the protection of his family. The Secret service people who protect his wife and daughters are first cousins to the jail industrial bureaucracy. He is not going to cross those people. Obama is not a dude shooting hoops in the yard. He is from Harvard.

All marijuana use is medicinal. Mild anxiety and stress are treated with a smoke every day. So is insomnia and appetite loss from chemotherapy. but the issue has been demonized by the jail industrial complex, those who make money incarcerating 800,000 poor kids every year, though it is the tax payers who ultimately foot the bill.

With legal pot and standardized nationwide regulations, the tax revenue would amount to 50 billion dollars a year which should be earmarked for free medical education for doctors, dentists, nurses and all related personal. That will sell! 

Legal pot means 50 thousand shops for dispensing, having a smoke and a bite to eat and a sweet drink on the premises, creating 400-500 thousand new jobs, empty storefronts filled, and those many fresh taxpayers. Imagine a kid without an employment history working in the front window, cleaning bagging and wearing surgical gloves rolling blunts. His dream job!

What could be wrong with that? I asked Michael Stephen Lev in son the black listed write-in candidate for president did he smoke dope. He answered, "First an inflation issue. If these dopes want to lay around - out of circulation - burning their money - let them. On the issue do I smoke dope. I smoke every dope within ear shot. Stupid people burn up whenever I talk."

http://michaelslevinson.com

The "DRUG WAR" was started by "tricky Dickie" after his commission told him cannabis should not be criminalized. He told us that it was the most dangerous drug around. That was a lie, and so the drug war was a lie. So now the truth is out stop arresting almost a million folks each year. Lets all understand Stop the lies and legalize

The Federal Government is in the clutches of the tobacco industry which may be spending ten times as much on unseen lobbying as on the campaign donations which are listed.  If say, Boehner has already received $340,000, how many times that are  R. J. Reynolds and Philip Morris  investing in the salaries of their representatives  Fish and Gates respectively, who schmooze with the Speaker and his staff, and what are these "advisers" telling the Speaker to do about Medical Marijuana, dispensaries, legalization etc.?

Ariana Huffington ripped off all of her free-lancers. You should post elsewhere, Scott.

The Federal Government is feeling the heat! 'My Policy right of wrong' is the creedo of the Feds. They are actually enabling illegal dung er drug lords who are the scum of the earth. Things will get worse and we, who love the drug that it is IMPOSSIBLE to OD on ( is it really a drug?), will prevail. If we as a Society must prohibit something, then that should be We the People prohibiting our elected representatives from selling the Nations debt. We must intellectually find the gateway that gets into the heads of the prohibitive fools and beat them with overwhelming force! 

Is it possible that legally speaking, marijuana is NOT even a drug? This can be based upon the facts that: It is impossible to overdose on unadulterated marijuana and no one has died from unadulterated marijuana. How can it possibly be considered a Schedule I Drug (Addictive with NO medical value) when it is therapeutic and it's 'addictive' properties have ben compared to an an addiction to luxury. Come on legal eagles get in the game!

maybe the administration is being strongarmed by house repugs.. who are in a position to refuse to raise the debt limit or pass a budget unless o'bumble agrees to painful political concessions...remember that only 15 states have medical marijuana..and the other 35 states spoke in no unambiguous terms last november...IMAO..the novembers shellacking was more than anything else a rebuke against what those 35 states saw as the administrations' allowing marijuana proliferation...

"This is not to say money is everything in politics."

Yes. It is.

Good job Scott, great that HuffPost gives you that platform. It reaches lots of folks, including politicians (at least those interested enough to check the wind once in a while). It's a vehicle for reaching people who may not have got the message. And it's influence on the MSM can't be ignored either.

Arianna doesn't have 'free lancers' to rip off. She has bloggers. Free lancers go to agencies and networks to SELL their work. Free lancers ALSO do the work with out knowing whether they'll get a paycheck, but that's not important.

Too many readers, it'd be foolish to ignore.

 

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I am the sole individual that will provide for federal legalization of marijuana. You see, everyone has taken the exact opposite approach to the reform effort, and only I can provide the American people with the true technique of legalizing marijuana nationally. 

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You see, I am the only one that can bring about change. I am the only individual that can make a difference in public perception. I am the only person in America that can positively influence our congressmen. I am the only one who can educate my community on the realities of marijuana from both a recreational and medicinal perspective. I alone, am the Marijuana Messiah. And let me tell you why. Because I don't rely on "others", such as congressmen, state representatives, policy institutes, or any other organization to express my views on issues I am deeply concerned about.

If each and everyone of you felt and acted the way I do, than we wouldn't have any issue whatsoever in legalizing marijuana because each and everyone of us are Marijuana Messiahs. We don't need congress critters to pass laws. These petty differences concerning legalization have no merit. There is no fight when we act collectively and pass laws through ballot initiatives. The issue of legalization is about freedom. With an issue as important as freedom, this becomes everyone's issue. Freedom to use a medicine proven to benefit a vast segment of our population. Freedom to use an herb recreationally proven safe and harmless. Freedom to make sound, fact based decisions in our lives. 

This is America, and we can vote in any election, state and federal, to pass new laws without restrictions. Everyone who believes in freedom, whether you use marijuana or not, should vote for legalization. Everyone who believes in freedom can become a Marijuana Messiah. Legalization is about one principle that each and every American has embedded deep in our minds, hearts and souls from the day we are born: FREEDOM! 

Become the Marijuana Messiah in your community today, and realize the true power of the people through real "collective bargaining".

Warmest Regards, 

 

Your Friendly Neighborhood Marijuana Messiah

 

Considering Attorney General's earlier comments on medical cannabis it seems the Justice Department ought to invest a little time into rescheduling marijuana as a schedule 2 substance. If he is concerned about keeping the cops busy he could outlaw tobacco while he is at it. How can a "developed" society have such an obvious contradiction where a relatively safe drug is outlawed while poisons like alcohol and tobacco are legal commodities?

Bigger buffer zones will be needed to disenfranchise law enforcement from its fixation on medical marijuana.  Prohibition has been their exclusive little game for way too long. The baffled and beaten agents of destruction appear addicted to busting easy scores. Good times there are not forgotten.

The 90 raids on dispensaries so far during the Obama administration make it clear that a multiple, statewide legalization of marijuana is required to protect medical marijuana dispensaries from incursions by invading prohibitionist barbarians.  That is the message that’s been received, if not intended, from its point of origin within the federal drug agencies. 

Expanding the size of the stage through legalization diminishes certain actors on that stage, the actors in this case being the ONDCP/DEA enterprise.  The feds know they can’t be everywhere all the time.  They know they won’t operate effectively without the cooperation of prohibitionist state law enforcement.  They’ll also need local jurors willing to convict people for marijuana in federal courts.  The federal courts already struggle with a legal system clogged by too many cases and too few federal judges.  Add millions of marijuana cases to the federal court system and it will have an epileptic seizure.

Prohibitionism’s message is clear: legalize cannabis to save medical marijuana dispensaries.  It would have been far more civilized to just come out and say it in the first place.  Save time and grief.  Being forced to infer it from 90 robotically-minded DEA grab-and-run operations conducted against peaceful and beneficial medical dispensaries proves that prohibitionists have no class whatsoever. 

Giordano

If it take a lobbist to get anything done lets get some lobbists! There are plenty of smokers in this state medical and recreational why not start  a campaign to hire our own lobbists and beat them at their own game.

I still think the main issue with prop 19 was recreational smokers to a great degree couldnt step away from the bong long enough to go vote. I believe those of us who are medical cannabis users are much more involved and informed than many recreational smokers are. i spoke to many many people before and after the election and those who were honest after the election didnt bother to go vote. trying to motivate smokers is like herding cats!  

hes schizophrenic

schizophrenic in fact