High Witness Report

Albert Hoffman,

Most people that read this will never have a clue what this great mind has done for mankind.
The tormented minds of many people suffering from schizophrenia and a variety of other vicious ailments have found relief in the caring nature of this wonderful man.
I know I will never forget what he’s done for me.

Rest in peace Dr. Hoffman

102 is a pretty good run, no?

Hat tip to our brother Ed at wonderwinds.com

From Enjoy France:

Swiss LSD-discovering chemist Albert Hoffman dies

The Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann, who became world famous for discovering the mind-altering drug LSD, has died of a heart attack at his home in Basel and was 102 at the time of his death.

Hofmann first produced LSD in 1938 while he was doing research into the ergot fungus that infects cereal crops, and he experienced his first “trip” after he accidentally ingested a small quantity of the drug.

Swiss chemist Albert HofmannAlbert Hoffman thought that LSD, or “acid” as it became commonly known, could be used as a treatment for mental illness, however, it soon became a popular drug with rock musicians and many other people in the ‘60s counterculture explosion that took place.

Hoffman had been working with LSD in the Sandoz pharmaceutical laboratory a few years after he had first made it and some of the hallucinogenic substance entered his body through his fingers. After that he experienced some of its mind-bending affects.

Harvard professor Timothy Leary also became famous because of LSD when he started using the substance and going round advocating that people “turn on, tune in, drop out".

A backlash to Hoffman and Leary’s enthusiasm for LSD as a wonder drug was brought about with horror stories of what the substance did to some people who had taken it and it was made illegal in many countries from the late ‘60s onward.

Amidst the virtual stampede of Right-Wing BushCo shit heads America has been forced to endure for the last seven+ years, one particularly humorous goofball tends to get lost in the shuffle.

The Two of Clubs in the Neocon deck, Drug Czar John P. Walters…

US Drug Czar, John P Walters, is quickly gaining on Pinocchio and President Bush in the nose-length-due-to-lying category.

With Marijuana vending machines and trade schools for growers popping up out West, I’d say the ONDCP (Office of National Drug Control Policy) is getting a little nervous these days. The juggernaut that is Medical Marijuana is blowing through this country like a big, green tornado and there is no stopping it. Heroin, Meth, Pills and Cocaine are everywhere. The Drug War has been lost.
Naturally, the Federal Government, instead of embracing the inevitable, has once again chosen a path of misinformation, propaganda and outright lies in order to justify their existence.

Czar (lol) Walters, the Bush Regime Minister of Drug Paranoia, recently was caught in a couple of doozies….

Walters is the moron on your right.

The drug task force branch of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police recently debunked the ONDCP assertion that some sort of “Extreme Ecstasy” was finding it’s way across the Canadian border into the US.
Walters, no stranger to utterances of the unsubstantiated, employed the media to embark upon yet another False Drug Alarm in a effort to remain relevant.

“This extreme ecstasy is a disturbing development in what has been one of the most significant international achievements against the illicit drug trade,” Walters said.

However,

Supt. Paul Nadeau of the RCMP made the following statement…

“I shook my head when I read the release that they put out,” said Nadeau, who’s never heard of extreme ecstasy.

“That term is unknown to us, certainly in Canada, and I can tell you that I’ve spoken to law enforcement people in the U.S. and they’ve never heard of it either so it would appear that it’s a term that somebody came up with in a boardroom in Washington, D.C.”

When losing a Drug War, sometimes one must at least provide the illusion that they’re winning in order to justify the 19 Billion Dollar per year budget and their jobs.
Thus the false Ecstasy scare.

In yet another scandalous display, Walters attempted to establish that the rise in Cocaine prices in the nation was evidence that production was down….

“as a result of reduced supply, street cocaine prices over the first nine months of the year rose to an average $136.93 per pure gram at the end of September, a 44% increase from January” Walters said.

Bill Piper, director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance said it best…

“Assuming that high cocaine prices are hurting cartels is like assuming high gasoline prices are hurting oil companies,”

Fact is, there’s a very distinct reason Cocaine prices are higher (no pun intended). You can’t carry 2000lbs of blow on horseback or pack mule.
It takes GASOLINE to power the trucks, planes, cars etc that move the druggage around.
Higher gas prices mean higher prices at the grocery store, the restaurants, the everywhere.
Higher prices for drugs too.

So, no. Mr. Czar. You are not winning anything. Bush era gas prices have just made it a little more expensive to move drugs across the country. That’s why a gram of Cocaine costs 100.00 in California and 175.00 in New York. It takes more gas to get to New York, Socrates.

He also said something about Marijuana Growers being terrorists, but some lies are so intellectually void that they just aren’t worthy of comment except to say that if Drugs were legal there would be no underground, unaccounted for money.
So let’s just say that drug laws support terrorists instead.

The Drug War, as it is, is an abject failure. People go to jail, people get out of jail, drugs are everywhere, people die over the money involved, people are killed by police at wrong addresses,
Billions of dollars are being spent each year and I can get any drug I want withing six blocks of my home. In a middle class neighborhood in a conservative city.

But John Walters is winning! He needs another Billion or three of our tax dollars!!

The only thing that changes is the excuses, and then only to make the words rhyme.

As much as I loath this particular cast of characters in The US Supreme Court, they have managed to render a rare, intelligent decision. Untying the hands of judges by waylaying the mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines is a huge step in the right direction when it comes to the arcane Drug Laws this nation suffers under...

Mandatory Minimums. A sad testimony to a nation and a government blinded by their own fear of the unknown. The result of a Right-Wing propaganda campaign that dates back to the early 1900s, the Drug War and the mindless, soulless, detestable abuse it's caused Americans to suffer has never, ever addressed the underlying issues that cause people to use and abuse.
It has never recognized even the dramatic differences between drugs and drug offenders.
The mandatory minimums have been in effect since 1984 when congress so foolishly and irresponsibly began this farce.

No distinction has been made between a decent person who fell into the unyielding cycle of drug abuse and the slimeball that would kill over a kilo of idiot powder. No distinction has ever been made between those who abuse and are in need of help, and those that self-medicate, know exactly what they're doing, and don't want to hear your shit.

Long prison sentences do not ever reduce drug related crime. They never have and never will. The cause of drug related crime is criminalization, so how could they?
Our prisons are filled with people that were sentenced under mandatory minimum guidelines. And there they sit, in the pen doing all the drugs they want.
There is no "rehabilitation". There is no "correction". There is no logic involved with locking some dude that gets high up for twenty years. What does it accomplish other than to produce yet another institutionalized, disenfranchised, pissed-off-at-the-world convict who now has no social skills, no chance at meaningful employment, and no idea what to do with their life?

The trend seems to be (thankfully) lighter, alternative sentencing and attempts, mostly futile, at rehabilitation.

If the corrections industry actually wanted to help a person that's gone too far find their way, they would build treatment facilities faster than they build prisons. It only takes about 30 to 90 days to dry someone out. After that, with meaningful support and education (not the idiots at probation and parole), a person that wants to regain control will have the best chance. I say "regain control" because there is no cut and run from drug addiction. You can only do your drugs instead of letting your drugs do you.

Now, with judges being empowered to consider that a person dealing drugs can have a wide variety of reasons for doing so, we may wind up seeing a little compassion in sentencing. Judges aren't perfect, but they're smarter than politicians. I'll take my chances with a judge anytime over being fodder for a DA with ambitions.
There is the dealer that deals because he's greedy, the dealer that deals because he's too stupid or lazy or both to work, the dealer that knows that due to criminalization, he can get rich dealing faster than he can get rich working. Then there's the dealer that just deals to afford his own stash. Or the guy that has a parent in a nursing home and has to pay for care. Or any one of the millions of people that deal a little to friends to supplement their meager income.
Do we include them with the greedy and stupid? The gov't does.

Now aside from this remarkably sensible ruling, I find it equally amazing that the court seemed to follow the assertions and advice of the The House Judiciary Committee which is chaired by the great congressman John Conyers...

"When the penalties for drug possession were set, the punishment for crack was set higher because lawmakers believed crack was a more dangerous drug -- and associated with more violent behavior -- than powdered cocaine. Research has shown that there is no real difference in the potential dangers of crack or powdered cocaine. There is, however, a difference in the type of user that favors the two drugs: Because of its much-lower street price, crack is associated with poor, minority and urban users, while powder cocaine tends to be favored by more affluent users.

Over 80 percent of those convicted on crack cocaine charges are black. These nonviolent drug offenders would be better served by a drug treatment facility but are, instead, sentenced to long sentences -- overcrowding prisons and running up a prison expense tab that is now in the billions".

Interesting. The most conservanoid SCOTUS we've had in decades and finally some progress (no matter how small) is made in the pure, Iraqesque madness that is the Drug War and the accompanying hysteria.

Somewhere it has to stop. As a nation, we have more people incarcerated than any other country on earth. Most of those minor drug offenders. The only result of the prison time is misery for offender and family and tax payer alike.

The SCOTUS has opened a door that has long needed opening. It took courage to do that.
With the exception of those two tools, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, the 7-2 decision was a good step forward.

Let's hope it doesn't stop there.

For those who don’t know, Robin Prosser was a champion of Medical Marijuana rights and a person who suffered tremendously due to opposition of Medi Pot.
An incredibly talented and compassionate lady and leader, Robin never gave up the fight until she just got tired of suffering. Now, as a martyr, we will fight on in her name.

Remember this name, Medical Marijuana opponents. That’s you, Harold Ford Jr. That’s you Bill Clinton, George Bush, Religiofascist Fundis, DEA Terrorists, ONDCP, Republicans, Blue Dogs and Puritan activists. You are the ones that killed this fine person. Suicide is one thing, driving someone to suicide is murder.

We swear by our very lives that we will see you all fucked one day.

On this you have our word.

SOURCE

Medical marijuana advocate kills herself
By MICHAEL MOORE of the Missoulian

Robin Prosser, a Missoula woman who struggled for a quarter century to live with the pain of an immunosuppressive disorder, tried years ago to kill herself. Last week, she tried again. This time, she succeeded.

Robin Prosser

After her earlier attempt failed, Prosser wound up in even more trouble after investigating police found marijuana in her home. She used the marijuana to help cope with pain.

That marijuana charge was eventually dropped in an agreement with the city of Missoula, and Prosser had reason to rejoice in 2004 when Montanans passed a law allowing medical use of the drug.
She was a high-profile campaigner for the Montana Medical Marijuana Act, and like others, she was dismayed when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that drug agents could still arrest sick people using marijuana, even in states that legalized its use.

The ruling came to haunt Prosser in late March, when DEA agents seized less than a half ounce of marijuana sent to her by her registered caregiver in Flathead County.

At the time, the DEA special agent in charge of the Rocky Mountain Field Division said federal agents were “protecting people from their own state laws” by seizing such shipments.

“I feel immensely let down,” Prosser would write a few months later, in a guest opinion for the Billings Gazette published July 28. “I have no safety, no protection, no help just to survive in a little less pain. I can’t even get a job due to my medical marijuana use - can’t pass a drug test.”

Federal prosecutors declined to charge Prosser, but fear spread through the system of marijuana distribution set up in the wake of the medical marijuana act. Friends said Prosser turned to other sources for marijuana, but found problems nearly everywhere she turned.

“Most recently, she had found some people who said they could get her what she needed, but it didn’t go well,” said her friend Jane Byard.

Without the relief that marijuana delivered to her, Robin Prosser killed herself at home last week. She was 50.

Prosser suffered from an autoimmune disease that gave her allergic and dangerous reactions to most pharmaceutical painkillers. So she turned to marijuana. When that was no longer available she had no where else to turn.

“She just said she couldn’t take it all anymore,” Byard said.

In her guest opinion, Prosser wrote that: “I’m 50 years old, low-income and sick. I spend most days in my apartment in bed, with no air conditioning, unable to go outside because I can’t tolerate the sun.”

Beset by financial problems, troubled by depression, unable to find a reliable source of pain relief, she took her own life three months after the piece was published.

“Give me liberty or give me death,” she wrote in July. “Maybe the next campaign ought to be for assisted-suicide laws in our state. If they will not allow me to live in peace, and a little less pain, would they help me to die, humanely?”

Before being disabled by her disease, Prosser was a concert pianist and a systems analyst. After the disease hit her, she became a tireless advocate for legalized use of marijuana in medical situations.

“She had so many difficulties, but she was a wonderful person,” Byard said. “She was kind and funny and just as smart as a whip. She was a very good friend to me, and it’s a very sad story what happened to her.”

Reporter Michael Moore can be reached at 523-5252 or by

e-mail at mmoore@missoulian.com

The magic herb does it again. It's simple. We've said it before. Those that oppose Medical Marijuana are "Pro-Suffering". The proof is undeniable, the necessity unquestionable.

Chemical in Marijuana Fights Breast Cancer

by Alice Turner 20:37, November 20th 2007

A chemical without psychoactive properties found in Cannabis sativa appears to have very good results in fighting the spread of cancer cells. The substance, cannabidiol (CBD), was found by scientists at the California Pacific Medical Centre Research Institute to inhibit a gene called Id-1, which has been linked to the spread of cancer cells and has been found in high levels in a number of types of cancer.

"Right now we have a limited range of options in treating aggressive forms of cancer," researcher Sean D. McAllister, a co-author, said in a statement. "Those treatments, such as chemotherapy, can be effective but they can also be extremely toxic and difficult for patients. This compound offers the hope of a non-toxic therapy that could achieve the same results without any of the painful side effects."

The researchers also pointed out that smoking marijuana will only lead to very low concentrations of CBD, insufficient for any real health benefit. If proven useful in clinical trials, the chemical would have to be extracted from the plant and concentrated, if it cannot be industrially synthesized.

"[...] what is exciting about this study is that if CBD can inhibit Id-1 in breast cancer cells, then it may also prove effective at stopping the spread of cancer cells in other forms of the disease, such as colon and brain or prostate cancer," said lead author Dr. Pierre-Yves Desprez.

The new research was published in the journal Molecular Cancer Therapeutics. The research is at a very early stage and further studies involving humans will be necessary to see whether CBD's beneficial effects can be replicated on patients. The current research only evaluated laboratory tests.

Currently, cancer patients usually receive chemotherapy, which has many unpleasant and dangerous side-effects such as nausea and an increased risk of infection, which can take both a physical and emotional toll. Women in the U.S. have a 1 in 8 lifetime chance of developing invasive breast cancer and a 1 in 33 chance of breast cancer causing their death, the American Cancer Society reported.

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