Quick Hits (page 3)
Governor Signs Medical Marijuana Bill
By: Angela Potter (The Associated Press)
BALTIMORE (AP) - Refusing to bend to pressure from the Bush administration, Republican Gov. Robert Ehrlich signed a bill Thursday that reduces criminal penalties for seriously ill people who smoke marijuana.
Ehrlich is the first GOP governor to sign a bill protecting medical marijuana patients from jail, according to the Marijuana Policy Project. The Bush administration had pressed him to veto the measure.
Ehrlich had indicated his support for the bill early on as a way to help people with chronic illnesses ease their pain.
"This is a position I've had for many, many years,'' Ehrlich said Thursday. "It's not without controversy across parties, across chambers, across states, across the country.''
The new law does not legalize marijuana, but reduces the penalty to a maximum $100 fine with no jail time if defendants convince a judge they need marijuana for medical reasons. Previously, possession or use of marijuana brought penalties of up to a year in prison or a $1,000 fine.
Supporters of the legislation say smoking marijuana can ease the symptoms of serious illnesses such as cancer or AIDS and help patients suffering from nausea hold down food and medications.
Opponents, including White House drug czar John P. Walters, have objected that marijuana is a false and illegal remedy.
"It would be truly unfortunate if today's actions led, however unintentionally, to greater use or availability of dangerous drugs in Maryland," Walters said.
Eight other states - Hawaii, Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California, Colorado, Nevada and Maine - have medical marijuana laws.
In Washington, House Republicans want to move drug enforcement money from state and local police officers to federal agents in states that have legalized medical marijuana.
Click here for more Quick Hits.
Growin' Our Own (page 3)
Smuggling Weed From Missouri to San Francisco - Part 2
By: Two Dumb Shits
Click here for part 1
In this story you'll read the details of a smuggling run made by two bay area high school graduates on a commercial jet. After the graduation night party, loaded on mescaline, they drove from San Francisco to the midwest. There they picked a load of green bud "hemp," from a remote Iowa river bottom. They drove it down to the Kansas City, Missouri airport. Leaving the car there, they boarded a TWA flight and flew the midwest hemp back out to San Francisco. In Frisco, they dried it and sold it. Some went to friends and some was sold in the Haight-Ashbury area. For all the details read on:
Anyway the college in Iowa, where my brother attended, was Parson's College in Fairfield, Iowa. Day 2: we drove across the Nevada desert and into another night of darkness until we reached the high vista approaching the town of Windover. This is where you change to Mountain Time. There we pulled over for a break. After an hour and a few joints, we saw the crack of dawn over the Rocky Mountains. On mescaline it really was the crack of dawn. The sun was like a strobe light as it rose over the mountain range. There was blinding yellow light and back to darkness until the sun finally challenged the Rockies. Our eyeballs were getting big and small [like Alice] trying to adjust to this flashing sunlight. I remember looking at Jimmy's face and it appeared a green color to me.
We had a rack on the roof of Jimmy's baby blue VW bug. We had duffle bags and sleeping bags on the rack. This was not aerodynamic so our maximum speed was about 60. We had unlimited speed across this desert, but we had wind drag limits. As I look back on this it's like the movie Thirteenth Floor. Watch it, and if you're stoned, you may get the idea. Anyway we pressed on with our free weed smuggling venture as our driving force. Driving from our mountain perch in Nevada, we entered the State of Utah. No sleep. We drove past the Mormon Temple. Here in Salt Lake City, we had two choices, (Wyoming or Colorado). We stayed on I-80 and headed north to Wyoming. After Salt Lake we passed through red bluffs like I imagined would be in the Grand Canyon. Finally we entered Wyoming. A snow storm had just passed through and snow had dusted all the sage brush and chaparral. Interstate 80 gave us fantastic views of herds of antelope. These herds were about 6 to 12 antelope standing in small groups. Still, with no snow chains, we pressed on (with no sleep). We were popping mescaline every 6 hours which kept us jamming. We passed through the wide open hilly spaces of Wyoming and into Nebraska. Wyoming had long trains, pulling 4 miles of cattle cars. Nebraska is totally farming. You know, corn and stuff like that. Finally after a straight 33 hour drive on my shift from Reno, we got a motel in Odessa, Nebraska. This was sometime shortly after noon. We took some stumblers as with all the speed in our systems from the mescaline, we couldn't have otherwise slept. The next morning we got up at sunrise. We drove off again to get our free weed in the State of Iowa. Jimmy had driven about 6 hours from S.F. to Reno, and I had driven about 33 hours to Nebraska. With our new energy we drove until we got to Lincoln, Nebraska. There we ended up on a circular highway and went around Lincoln 2 times. It was amazing. Lincoln was a small city with small skyscrapers in the corn belt. You would never expect to see this city after hundreds of miles of corn fields.
We checked our maps and found a remote road into Iowa. I figured that even though my brother had picked his free weed a hundred miles further east, that we would find it everywhere in Iowa. We took pictures at the "Entering Iowa" sign. Then we looked at our maps again to find some even more remote farm roads which connected south into Missouri. As you can tell, we were in the southwest corner of Iowa. After selecting our route we ended up driving down some remote Iowa gravel farm road, just a few miles from the Missouri line. After making a pass and confirming free growing marijuana we had to make a decision. We devised our plan. I had a box full of 30 gallon dark green, plastic garbage can liners. There were farmhouses every half mile or so, so we selected a creek that was at the bottom of 2 hills. At that time and place we made a quick decision that I would bail out of the running VW bug and roll down into a river bottom to pick our free weed. Jimmy was driving slow and I jumped out of the moving car. I safely rolled down into the bottom or the creek. Jimmy just kept driving with his suspicious California license plates in these remote Iowa farm lands. Once I was safely in the river bottom and out of sight, I stood up to survey all our free marijuana. In awe, I was standing in a hemp forest with thousands of 6 to 8 foot tall plants. Then I started plucking the tops off this free Iowa Hemp. Free Iowa weed was true and I knew that my year in history class would pay off. Standing in a forest of hemp, I was amazed that all of this free weed was real. As I was bagging the free marijuana buds, I heard the approaching noise from a couple of dirt bikes. I thought that maybe our out of State license plates had attracted attention or that somebody had seen me eject from the VW. At any rate, I had my green bags and I pulled out a few. As if they were blankets, I hid under these dark green bags and in the middle of this Iowa hemp forest. I tried to imagine that I was invisible under these bags and in this dense crop, but I was scared of being discovered. As the bike engines above me shut down, I could hear voices. These were the voices of 2 young boys talking as I lay, hopefully hidden. I could feel my heart pounding as I tried to stop breathing. They threw rocks around the creek bottom, a few just missing my hiding place. I laid as still as a dead man could, hoping they wouldn't climb down and discover my hiding place. It would be tragic to be in all this free weed and get busted states away from our home. After what seemed like and hour I finally heard the welcome sound of their bikes firing up and leaving. Then I rushed to finish filling 8 bags with this free hemp. Still concealed, I waited for Jimmy to return to pick me up. I moved over to and hid inside a culvert pipe dragging my estimated 300 wet pounds of free treasure.
Finally Jimmy drove back as I recognized the sound of his stinger exhaust system. This was a very different sound than the local farm boy's motor bikes. I strained my ears to see if I could hear the bikes following him. This unpleasant sound I never heard. Jimmy stopped at on the road above the culvert pipe and I threw the our 8 bags of free Iowa hemp under the hood. If I remember correctly, we were near Route 2. As we drove a few miles further, we saw one farmer driving a hay baler, rolling up bales of this hemp. Must be cattle feed we thought. Immediately we headed for the nearby Missouri state line, as we wanted to cross the state line jurisdiction from Iowa. This was the old jurisdiction trick used by bank robbers in the 1930s. Once in the State of Missouri we felt safe, as we believed that it would be a major law enforcement effort to stop us across the state line. We were still on old farm roads when we reached Missouri. We stopped and took out the 8 bags of Iowa hemp. Outside the car I sprayed Hartz Mountain Dog Off on the outside of the 8 bags. We then re-bagged our free marijuana, with the dog off bags on the inside. These bags we placed into our empty luggage, and out of sight. Then we re-loaded the luggage bags into the VW bug and drove off for the Kansas City, Airport. This was a few hours drive, but we knew that we had scored some valuable green treasure. We bragged to each other about all our plans and how they had worked out. We tried to estimate how much dry weed we would have and how much summer vacation money we would end up with. All the Iowa free marijuana stories I had heard about from my brother were true. Thus far our free marijuana trip had been a success.
Shortly before arriving in Kansas City, we changed our cross county travel clothes into suits and ties. We wanted to look very respectable and straight for our commercial jet trip back to San Francisco. We passed the TWA repair facility and finally arrived at the Kansas City terminal. Until we got there we didn't know if the airport was in the State of Kansas or Missouri. The airport is in Missouri - I know this from experience. After parking the VW, we bought our one way tickets to San Francisco. We had interconnecting flight to Los Angeles and then onto San Francisco. On the flight we had carry on bags full of weed and the rest went in the belly of a big TWA jet. In those days there were no X-ray machines and it was wide open. We even fooled the stewardess (or else she was just cool) and ordered a few drinks. In our suits and ties, we looked like perfect (straight) young gentlemen. We had about an hour layover in LA. We were sitting in the lobby when Jimmy realized that he had forgotten to get his carry-on bag of weed off the jet. When I asked him where it was he got into a shock-like state. We asked a janitor about how to get his bag off. This kind man said he would have to get the jet-way key to open the hallway to the plane. While we sweated waiting, he finally returned in a few minutes with the key. Jimmy went with him onto the jet and recovered the leather handbag with about 40 pounds of wet smelly decomposing Iowa grass. What a dumb mistake and what a relief to get the bag back. Finally our flight to San Francisco was announced and we boarded this jet with our carry on bags full of smelly weed. We met a man from London who was visiting his brother in San Jose. He offered us jobs to paint the red phone booths in London. We got his phone number for our future trip to London.
Arriving at SFO, my brother picked us up. We went to his place and fired up his oven. We dried all the free marijuana in his oven. We called our friends who were tipped off about our trip. Although skeptical, they came over and gave us $2,500 for most of the bud. With the rest my brother drove us up to Haight-Ashbury where we became street dealers for a few hours. We had almost $4,000 cash when we left SFO on one way tickets back to pick up the VW bug parked in Kansas City. Two days in San Francisco, and now flush with cash, we were flying back to Missouri. We had no contraband, but we had our profits from the green treasure. History class planning was a real success, and we were on our tour of the midwest and down to New Orleans.
Read part 3 next month for the rest of the story.
Click here for more Growin' Our Own.
Pipeline (page 3)
I'm Addicted To Pot (You're Addicted To Sugar)
By: Jeff Jarvis
I smoke pot. I like the way it makes me feel. Relaxed. Introspective. Ebullient. There is a creative ease about the euphoria that I find irresistible. Call me an addict if you wish. I understand. It makes some people feel better to have a scapedonkey upon which they can pin the tail of their own predilections.
You're an addict too. You probably consume generous amounts of refined grains and sugars daily. Those products might be made from something that started out as food, but now they are just legal speed. Don't want to buy that? Feed a three year old a tall glass of Kool-Aid and a bowl of Cap'n Crunch. Store your breakables first.
Do you love coffee? Yum. Do you use tobacco? Perhaps you drink a beer or two after work. Know any cola addicts? Are you a workaholic or a religious zealot? Got chocolate on the brain? Do you yell or argue frequently? Must you tan? Surf the 'net? Have lots of sex? Spend hours a day in front of the tube?
I can easily forego my vice without withdrawal. Your addiction may not be so kind. I was a nicotine addict in my youth and I couldn't skip a day without suffering acutely. Eschewing pot is a cakewalk. I occasionally travel and I'm too paranoid to smuggle, so I go without. Other times my tenuous hooks into the black market go dry, and I experience enforced abstinence. Boo hoo. Thank God I can always count on Starbucks to fix me up with a double shot of espresso!
Some people play video games incessantly. Some shoot hoops. Others read pulpy romance novels, or solve crossword puzzles.
Me? I like to burn a bowl of sticky green cannabis flowers and explore physics, math, and philosophy. Do you know that the relationship between light speed, velocity, rest mass, relativistic mass, and momentum, is completely described by a simple right triangle? That rocks.
I'm a high school dropout. I got bored with control issues and egressed without finishing tenth grade. I couldn't afford college, so I taught myself how to write software, and I've made a decent living. Millions of bargain hunters and tens of thousands of classified and display advertisers rely on my computer programs. My code runs at publishing companies in some of the largest cities in America; it has been assembling press-ready shopping guide pages for many years now. Much of it was written while I was stoned. Who says pot makes you stupid?
Unfortunately, we live in a culture where people are judged by news bite instead of merit. The TV news graphic juxtaposes a pot leaf with a syringe, a line or two of white powder, some pills, and a pistol. Pay attention from now on, folks. Smiley Anchorperson laces the report with the ubiquitous word 'drugs,' even though the substance relevant to the story is crack or heroin or crystal meth. How's that for accuracy in journalism?
Do you know that more than fifteen thousand Americans die annually from taking legal over-the-counter painkillers? Do you know that legal alcohol, tobacco, and obesity combine to snuff thousands and thousands of human lives every day? And do you know that, in all of recorded history, there has never been a single death attributed to marijuana use? Not even one! Ask the naysayers to show you a body. They can't. All they can do is quote the number of chemicals found in pot smoke. I wonder if they realize how many chemicals they ingest when they eat a charbroiled steak, snarf a slice of pizza, or chug down a cold glass of municipal drinking water. It's all sleight of hand and misdirection.
Take a close look at Drug War commercials, which you fund with your tax dollars. If you pay attention, you will notice that there are rarely any references given where you may verify the 'facts' which have been presented. This is because they are not presenting very many facts. Want to piss off a drug soldier? Start asking direct questions. Challenge assumptions. Demand proof.
Honest researchers may investigate and draw their own conclusions. Much data can be obtained from the United States government itself--in exchange for some effort on your part--but you won't find these data advertised by the Drug Tsar, the D.E.A., the F.D.A., the Partnership for a Drug Free America, or by anybody else whose title, power, or income, depends on keeping the bloody war alive.
Your government spends your money to tell you blatant lies about drugs of all kinds--then it pours you a shot of whiskey.
I have associates who like to go drinking. Sometimes they drink too much and get stupid. Why isn't anyone surprised to learn about another bar fight--frequently involving a knife or a gun--followed by an ambulance ride, or a six-foot hole? Smoke too much pot and the worst you'll do is order a giant pepperoni--if you can stop giggling long enough to enunciate.
How is it that one hand of public policy fuels mayhem with legal alcohol--a known gateway to violence--while the other hand drags peaceful munch mouths off to Drug War internment?
It makes me cry.
So go ahead and call me an addict, or a pot head, or the devil. I don't care. Indulge yourself! Judgment and bigotry make some people feel especially good. And isn't feeling good what addiction is all about?
[Ed. note: Article courtesy of the Free Weed Club. Check them out! Great people.]
Click here for more Pipeline.
Josephine's Reptile Nail & Body Wrap - for information, write to:
P.O. Box 2536
Sun Valley, Idaho, 83353