Well, Harkin is a bit of a boob. As one of his former constitchency, I'm aware of that sure enough.

I recently read a study, and I'm sorry I can't cite it because I have to hit the shower and get to work, but there's new research that shows that marijuana activates some of the same brain regions as nicotine and heroine. Other studies suggest that quitting pot is as hard as quitting smoking.

I quit smoking pot about a year or a little more ago when my wife and I decided to have a baby. I found it pretty tough. I found it tougher to lay off the cigarettes. In fact I just fell off the cigarette wagon, and I'm trying to stay back on it. In my experience, then, it's much harder to resist nicotine than pot. Yet I think that may have a lot to do with how easy it is to get tobacco.

I dunno. YMMV, but I think it's time to reexamine these claims about pot being nonaddictive. The government is often full of it, bandying old false claims, but the same is often true of pro-dope folks too.

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Well, hopefully you sent something like this back to him in reply. You really should set the senator straight on the issue.

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drug warriors have no problem with the amount of dangerous psychoactive drugs kids get put on these days by THEIR DOCTORS (ritalin and a litany of ssris)?? (its a rhetorical question...i already know the answer...BIG PHARMA - that's why)...

if one ACTUALLY looks at the REAL well constructed and well executed studies...pot is (to quote Marijuana as Medicine: Assessing the Science Base) is NO MORE DANGEROUS than coffee...so, either it should be legal or we need to reevaluate our relationship with caffeine. (which by the way was almost made illegal in the 1930s along with marijuana).

i think part of the reason is the gubment would rather have us be afraid, drunk, sleep deprived and violent than content, high, well rested and loving...the former feeds the (current) system.

and just for the record...i've had a harder time quitting COFFEE than either cigarettes or pot.

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There's almost no withdrawal to be measured. Its just not like tobacco or benzos or heroin/opiates. It is just not.

Habituation, a psychological dependence has as much to do with a person's personal issues and personality as with any sort of physiological process. Crack is a great example of this.

You can go without pot regularly. I do.

I get pissed off because there isn't one half-decent reason I should be without pot if I want is, save for the utter stupidity of politicians and the overwhelming mean-spirited greediness of corporations.

Not one reason. My main issue when I am out of pot - or have to not smoke because I have to PEE to get a friggin' job - is indignation.

People who STILL support this or believe it are just stupid.

There is stupidity in their brains where real knowledge should be.

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is a huge part of the highly-emotionalized propaganda that the GOP feeds to the MSM to keep the rational discussion of reform off-track and to keep the STUPID fearful of drug dealers prowling the school yards trying to sell heroin to children.

It's an ugly piece of psychological manipulation and it works beautifully.

Why are lies more popular than facts?

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...allows the government to collect twice concerning all their dealings with drugs. They get paid for being soldiers in the WoD, and they get paid again when they unload that which they seized.

Do we really think they would vote themselves out of a cash cow situation like that?

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Dear XXXX:

Thank you for contacting me. I am always glad to hear from you.

Alcohol is often the drug singled out for legalization. However, alcohol is not the recreational drug that many believe it to be. In a study completed by the Drug Abuse Warning Network, the number of alcohol related emergencies has nearly reached the level of cocaine related emergencies. As this statistic indicates, alcohol use often has fatal consequences.

I was deeply troubled when I learned of another recent study which found that nearly one-third of all eighth graders had tried alcohol. As the father of two daughters, it greatly disturbs me that children are exposed to alcohol at such a young age. I am concerned that legalization of this drug will only increase the number of children who gain access to its harmful effects.

The victims of the drug war are many -- the small child whose parents are so addicted to alcohol that they sell everything including perhaps their own children to obtain a fix; the police officer’s family which must now learn to cope with the loss of their loved one as a result of a violent alcohol bust gone awry. These are the people I think of when I say that alcohol poses a significant threat to the security of this nation.

Legalizing alcohol is equivalent to declaring surrender in the war on drugs. However we may differ in tactics, I am hopeful that we can work together to fight alcohol in our communities and to make Iowa alcohol free.

Again, thanks for sharing your views with me. Please don’t hesitate to let me know how you feel on any issue that concerns you.

Sincerely,

Tom Harkin

United States Senator

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You will never see government employees (NOTE: it’s important to understand a basic principle: governments don’t exist – only government employees exist. If you’re a believer in the slogan “This is a nation of laws, not people…” you should stop reading right here. Go vote for Senator Harkin [or his opponent] next time he comes up for the apparition of “election”) – you will seldom see government employees of the rank of Senator who will not give great and enthusiastic support to the “War on Drugs” (along with a number of other “wars” too numerous to mention here). Well, I think Ron Paul might be an exception, but he’s only a congressman. An exceptional congressman at that.

These people have a vested interest in keeping Walgreen’s, Super Value, etc., out of the contest for the billions and billions of dollars involved in the drug trade and prohibition and “law enforcement” thereof. Mr. Harkin needs those drug pushers and dealers and distributors and importers right where they are – so he and his colleagues can “fight the War on Drugs”. His daughters are fairly well protected and insulated.

Few will disagree that alcohol is a far more harmful drug than marijuana. But alcohol prohibition was ended not because of gang violence or the desire to “Win the War on Alcohol” (politicians hadn’t coined that distinguished slogan in 1933). Alcohol prohibition ended out of the need to broaden the tax base due to the depression -- and to launch the “New Deal” delusion to overcome the first wave of inherent problems with a Federal Reserve, Central Bank, and resulting Fiat Money. Stand by for the second wave.

We ain’t seen nothin’ yet, I’m afraid. But who knows – perhaps before the US “dollar” collapses completely, government employees might actually “legalize” marijuana and other drugs as a last-ditch effort to “Save Our Country as We Know It”. Because most employees of civil government (I’m talking Senators, Congressmen, Governors, Presidents, etc.) are not so stupid that they don’t understand they could “Win The War On Drugs” tomorrow morning if they would allow legitimate retailers to market drugs. Plus they could regulate them and tax them.

The billion-dollar dog-and-pony show (and the multi-trillion dollar spin-offs) being played for “The Voters” in 2008 needs underwriting from somewhere. “Grass-Roots Support”? Not likely.

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Point number three of the senator's letter is a real non-sequitor. If marijuana were legalized, there would be no violent drug busts of marijuana users or dealers; hence no dead cops and no mourning families.
The greatest danger to marijuana use appears not to be that users might die or sell their children, but that they might go to prison, or be forced to pay a fine or go to "rehabilitation." If marijuana were legal, these problems would disappear.

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What seems to be overlooked here is the simple fact that anything a person finds enjoyable has the potential to 'addict' them given all the endorphins and other neurochemicals that a person can come to depend on for an emotional "lift". Gambling and sex are two more such activities offering the 'joy of neurotransmitters'. Of course it's absolutely ridiculous to claim "gateway" effects or other addiction-hysteria nonsense that law-enforcement unions and agencies have long been consciously misleading the public about.
Ever since Repeal they've known how dependent they are on drug prohibition for federal funding. A situation not unlike the defense industry and it's dependence on Pentagon hawks for the defense contracts necessary for their survival.
In short, drugs have long served the very same purpose for the police unions that WMDs served to get the War On Terror underway for the Defense industry. War on Drugs, War on Terror. Both open-ended wars with one purpose: keeping the conservative, militant/paranoid segment of mankind's sociobiological profile relevant in a world now dominated by changes that take place at such a rate that an immediate need for reasoning minds among our leadership are essential.

And it is becoming increasingly obvious that the right-wing, reactionary, non-thinking among portion of mankind is now becoming a dire threat to the existence of our own species....if not the very planet.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
History of the Right

Their approach to life once served as a stabilizing counter-balance to others among us that were given greater access to the abilities newly exercised by man's rapidly evolving brain. These 'modern men' would have been urging exploration, trying new ways of doing old tasks, and basically acting like the curious animal that we are. But as they were doing these new things or travelling to new places, they would also have been bringing risks down on their individual tribes.

Natural selection would likely therefore leave a significant portion of the population with minds that were to remain disinterested, incurious, and fearful of strangers. These ones would have been content to simply gather more food whenever it can be gotten. This segment could be 'added' to the population by simply selecting for members that limit their use of our newly emergent higher brain functions. Empathy is clearly a trait that evolved very recently in the overall development of our brain given it's lowered presence among those who we now describe as "right-wingers".

Yet others among these poor souls would remain locked in their lower-brain using "gut-feelings" only. This necessitated their need to have guides for anything requiring independent thought. They must construct the world they live in by taking their morals prefabricated for them from religions, their social behaviour from civil codified laws. They get their sense of purpose from authority figures, a tendency that has been misused greatly by some who understand their weakness but lack empathy themselves. I'm describing the right-wing, religious conservative of course.

And that is where we find ourselves today. Not only has this group not been "unselected for" now that their purpose has vanished, but their militancy and endless 'food' gathering-turned-money fetish has now allowed them to jump out in front while the rest of us were busy taking stock of this new world. Technological leaps like the agricultural revolution or the alphabet and number systems that quickly followed due a need to record the excess grain now grown, these are just a few of the events that now have us many millenia out of step with our socio-genetic evolution. We have to make the adjustment ourselves somehow, since we obviously cant wait around for Mother Nature to catch up to the flow that comes out of our minds.

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