I wish they would just go ahead and legalize recreational use nationwide.
As someone who binge drank a lot from ~16yo to 22yo, I can't imagine what kind of lunacy causes someone to think alcohol is safer or more acceptable than marijuana use. Maybe the people behind propaganda didn't like how marijuana can make people less social and more eccentric, but since drinking alcohol is seen as a way of socializing and camaraderie, it's acceptable?
The older I get the less I like alcohol. Hangovers suck. I was (un)lucky enough to have a bad lifetime case of acid reflux/GERD which is exacerbated by alcohol, so between that and not liking the hangovers, I generally can't imagine being an alcoholic. But alcohol ruins a lot of lives. I don't know how many lives marijuana ruins, except maybe out of laziness or lack of motivation.
The modern drug war was designed to be a cudgel aimed at political enemies, not a public health effort. Quoth Nixon's advisor John Ehrlichman:
> The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.
That's the best you're going to find, some journalist's reminiscence twenty-some years after the fact. So I would caution anyone to be wary of whipping that quote out to make a point.
As far as I can tell, all roads lead back to that one Harper's article. I haven't bothered to try and find the book the author said he was working on. The quote is poorly-sourced enough for me to just not use it, and golly-gee-willickers is it a convenient one now that the quoted is long dead and buried. (EDIT: I will point out that I want to believe the quote is real, or close to it. It certainly doesn't strain credulity to imagine Erlichman saying that. Which is all the more reason to be skeptical. <g>)
Yea I am amazed this quote continually keeps coming up. As user GatorD42 pointed out when this was brought up before:
>...Baum claims Ehrlichman said that to him in 1994 while he was researching for a book he published in 1996 about the drug war. He didn't include the quote in that book, but instead published it in 2012 and again in 2016, after Ehrlichman had died (in 1999).
This is an amazing and explosive quote - if Baum had included it in his book in 1996 I am sure it would have garnered a great deal of attention for the book. Instead Baum did not include it in his book, but instead would wait for decades later when Ehrlichman was no longer around to dispute it.
At any rate, if the quote was actually said by Ehrlichman, it doesn't actually describe the drug polices of the Nixon administration. While Nixon is remembered for "war on drugs", the actual substance of his policies seem to be different than what people think it was:
>...I have been fortunate over the years to discuss the distorted memory of Nixon's drug policies with almost all of his key advisors as well as with historians. Their consensus is that because he was dramatically expanding the U.S. treatment system (by 350% in just 18 months!) and cutting criminal penalties, he had to reassure his right wing that he hadn’t gone soft. So he laid on some of the toughest anti-drug rhetoric in history, including making a White House speech declaring a “war on drugs” and calling drugs “public enemy number one”. It worked so well as cover that many people remember that “tough” press event and forget that what Nixon did at it was introduce not a general or a cop or a preacher to be his drug policy chief but…a medical doctor (Jerry Jaffe, a sweet, bookish man who had longish hair and sideburns and often wore the Mickey Mouse tie his kids had given him).
>..."Enforcement must be coupled with a rational approach to the reclamation of the drug user himself," Nixon told Congress in 1971. "We must rehabilitate the drug user if we are to eliminate drug abuse and all the antisocial activities that flow from drug abuse."
>The numbers back this up. According to the federal government's budget numbers for anti-drug programs, the "demand" side of the war on drugs (treatment, education, and prevention) consistently got more funding during Nixon's time in office (1969 to 1974) than the "supply" side (law enforcement and interdiction).
>Historically, this is a commitment for treating drugs as a public health issue that the federal government has not replicated since the 1970s. (Although President Barack Obama's budget proposal would, for the first time in decades, put a majority of anti-drug spending on the demand side once again.) ...
You can try to rehabilitate nixon as much as you want, but even if he was a Nice Guy™, the facts are that the war on drugs was designed by racists (e.g. Harry Anslinger), and along with imprisoning many generations of people of color, it was weaponized specifically and pointedly against people who challenged the establishment.
> Yea I am amazed this quote continually keeps coming up.
People on the Internet are extremely pro-drug. People like to believe things that confirm their priors, and since nearly no one on the Internet is against marijuana legalization, the quote does normally go unchallenged.
I think that's a reductive reading - the war on drugs and in particular as it relates to marijuana has been under a lot of scrutiny. And public acceptance of marijuana is steadily growing.
This more suggests to me that a critical analysis of the criminalization of marijuana has tended toward a verdict of "folly" (in the best case scenario) or "targeted mode of oppression" (in the worst).
Reading that as implicitly pro-drug is simplistic in my view.
Having a smart phone and a Facebook account does not constitute being on the Internet. In many ways, AOL users were closer to being Internet users than most people are now.
To play devils advocate, if I don’t have a Facebook/Twitter/IG/Reddit account, and I am unaware of what’s going on and being discussed on social media, am I really “on the internet”?
I was really talking about people who never stray outside of the walled garden of Facebook. In the case of someone who never enters the walled garden, but partakes of the web, email, and other such applications, I would say they are on the Internet.
Understood. I was really asking because I have deactivated my Facebook account several months ago and had deactivated my IG. I re-activated IG, but I broke the habit of compulsively scrolling the feed and rarely open the app these days.
All that aside, now that I'm not really "on social media", I feel quite disconnected with the world sometimes. Unless I speak to them directly, it's hard to keep track of what any of my friends or acquaintances are doing in life: who's having kids? who's in a new relationship? who got married? who moved to the city? who had a major career change?
Granted, not everyone posts these kinds of details, in fact most of my feed in a network of ~850 persons was dominated by a handful of heavy posters/social media addicts. Even so, occasionally seeing something from someone I otherwise would not talk to was a small window into their lives and kept me slightly aware of things. Sometimes it's people commenting on news I wouldn't otherwise see, sometimes it's pictures of kids..
All that said, the compulsive scrolling action and concern over my own internet identity became a bit much for me, so I'm still inactive on FB.
You can find the source via audio clip from a netflix special called "13TH", which is about racial injustice and the prison system, I'm almost certain this was quoted in the documentary.
EDIT:
It's about 18 minutes into the documentary, but I'm finding out their source is Harpers.
Pure Food and Drug Act did not criminalize cannabis and heroin, it merely said products containing them needed to be labeled as such. They were still available without a prescription.
I can’t imagine how any drugs like heroin or cocaine could have been sold OTC (although they were). It just seems like something that addictive that makes you feel amazing would cause problems damn well near instantly.
That’s what I was thinking but he did say “modern drug war”. But I was really thinking of earlier propaganda adverts and such although I didn’t know it was as early as 1906.
The Nixon White House used its illegality to discredit political opponents and drum up support in their base. When
and how it became illegal is irrelevant (even though, ironically enough, the original motivation was still politically and racially motivated against Mexicans).
No one who has data thinks it’s safer and I don’t think anyone on the political level really cares that much. Mj prohibition is ultimately racially and politically motivated and entangled with political image as well as a lot of funding for enforcement and incarceration.
Most likely we will move beyond its insanity but it’ll take time.
> Mj prohibition is ultimately racially and politically motivated
On the other side of the equation, there's also the (much more charitable) point that we tried banning alcohol and it didn't work. It has a substantially larger cultural purchase, so banning it is naturally more expensive -- both in terms of the cost of enforcement and the number of upset people whose habits you've made illegal.
Marijuana might become impossible to ban if its use keeps climbing, but it certainly wasn't in the 20th century.
>I don't know how many lives marijuana ruins, except maybe out of laziness or lack of motivation.
Depending on your definition of 'ruin'- a lot.
As a counterpoint - alcohol consumption is in most cases self-limiting, for the reasons you describe. Your body tells you in fairly clear terms that you're imbibing poison. Most people learn not to over-indulge, particularly as their tolerance drops off towards the end of their 20s.
Marijuana, however, is more subtle. You won't have a raging headache the next day - but you will be slower, less motivated, and less socially skilled. These negative effects are not painful, and depending on how demanding your daily activities are, possibly imperceptible. If you're an intelligent person stuck in a boring situation, it might even make your experience more tolerable. And, because weed makes you lazy and weed is a lazy solution to boredom, it traps people in a vicious cycle. They're not lying in the gutter, blacking out or vomiting, so they think they're doing fine; but their life devolves into doing a boring job to pay the bills, and smoking weed to make themselves stupid to relieve the boredom. They never hit "rock bottom" in the alcoholic sense, so they circle the drain for the rest of their lives.
It's not "cool" these days to say the marijuana is a dangerous drug that ruins lives - ridiculous over-the-top propaganda saw to that. But it is, and our "cultural antibodies" need to catch up to the new reality of legal weed. I've definitely known a few people for whom alcohol became a visible, functional problem - but I've known at least dozens of people who could have achieved so much more if only they'd managed to tear themselves away from weed's anesthesia.
None of this is to say that banning is the answer to anything. But the right of legal weed comes with the responsibility of owning up to its problems.
To be fair, they could also be excommunicated, divorced, socially ostracized, and made unemployable everywhere, not just government jobs. So it's not quite as absurd as your presentation makes it seem. Anyone with a secret is potentially vulnerable to blackmail.
Re: AR/GERD, have you tried "intermittent fasting" of the 16:8 variety (that is: no fasting days; just, limiting food to a small e.g. 8 hour window)?
My parents developed later-life GERD and I believe I was starting to. Started IF for other reasons and the GERD-like symptoms more or less vanished for me. I think part of that is the necessary gap between last-food-intake and becoming horizontal for sleep... which is now a few hours minimum...
My symptoms started at 19 (30 now) and I have not been off PPIs since then. IF and raised bed helps. Some weeks the symptoms are under control, some weeks they get worse.
Maybe a relic policy of racist era is more appropriate. I would think today’s lawmakers are more likely to oppose mj because they see it as something lazy hippies and stoner kids do rather than a tool to oppress minorities.
> The New York Civil Liberties Union today released an analysis of the NYPD’s 2012 stop-and-frisk data showing that the stop-and-frisk program’s stark racial disparities and ineffectiveness in recovering illegal guns continued last year despite a decline in the overall number of stops.
It was back when it was banned, partially due to intentional propaganda (which is why Americans use the Spanish word for it, rather than cannabis). A quick read through the wiki page of Harry Anslinger, first commissioner of the Federal Narcotics Bureau and one of the main architects of reefer madness, will give you a good overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_J._Anslinger
The drugs were connotated with blacks and Mexicans. Those connotations were racist.
Later on, those connotations influenced lawmakers and policy was effected by it. This created racist policy.
Many of these racist lawmakers died. Others became less public about their racism.
Today, those policies still affect blacks and Mexicans more than whites, even though drug usage is similar. Therefore, the policies are still racist.
Thus if one supports the policies, one supports a racist act. Semantic arguments over whether that makes the person who supports them "racist" are moot. They're still supporting something that's racist.
The original intention is irrelevant for today. If a good law was originally passed for racist reasons that is no reason to abolish it. (Not saying that drug prohibition is good.)
> Today, those policies still affect blacks and Mexicans more than whites, even though drug usage is similar. Therefore, the policies are still racist.
Just because a policy does affect a certain group more doesn't mean that the supporters of the policy are against the group. For example, Blacks are more affected by laws against murder, but that doesn't mean that those who support laws against murder are racist.
This simply is untrue unless you operate in temporal vacuums. The intention has affected and currently affects public perception and legislation even today. What you suggest is similar to people who argue that there was a clean slate after abolition or even the civil Rights acts.
> You: that doesn't mean that those who support laws against murder are racist.
> Me: Whether or not they are racist is moot
You're completely missing the point I was making. So much so that I would ask you re-read what I said. I don't care if today's folks aren't "technically" racist. It's clear the laws' impact and original intention were, and that should be enough to question their efficacy. Furthermore your analogy is completely ludicrous. No one thinks someone should go unpunished for murder.
Your phrasing makes it seem like you're more concerned with something being called racist, than you are addressing historical acts of racism. And that is pretty odd to me.
Maybe, but one could certainly infer it from all of your posts in this topic, including the effort you undertook in another post to defend the success of alcohol prohibition.
> Last year, the NYPD stopped and interrogated people 532,911 times, a 448-percent increase in street stops since 2002 – when police recorded 97,296 stops during Mayor Bloomberg’s first year in office. Nine out of 10 of people stopped were innocent, meaning they were neither arrested nor ticketed. About 87 percent were black or Latino. White people accounted for only about 10 percent of stops.
It is indeed ridiculous. I've personally stopped drinking alcohol at all. There is simply no good reason to imbibe a poison that makes me sleep worse and feel worse the next day. I've stopped using other drugs too, but there are several that I would use over alcohol.
But alcohol is a huge industry. There just isn't any money in other poisons.
Here's a link to a discussion about a paper you might be very interested in - basically a supplement with 100% OTC ingredients had 100% efficacy in eliminating GERD
> As someone who binge drank a lot from ~16yo to 22yo, I can't imagine what kind of lunacy causes someone to think alcohol is safer or more acceptable than marijuana use.
"I enjoy beer and it's never done me any harm"
"I don't have a problem with beer, I only use it socially"
"I'm not like those... druggies"
I agree. Hangovers suck terribly. give me a nice slow, sleepy morning of last night's weed fading out any time.
> I was (un)lucky enough to have a bad lifetime case of acid reflux/GERD
Have you seen your physician about this and/or do you have it under control?
If not - try this. I am not a doctor, so this is just friendly advice, but it worked for me. Where it came from is my wife had a friend who had basically the same issue, and she was a hypochodriac to boot - her doctor basically recommended the same thing, though. So - when my GERD became bad, my wife had me try this - and so far, it has worked great. No more waking up in the middle of the night choking and thinking you're having a heart attack, or at worst unable to breath because you aspirated acid into your throat and/or lungs...
When you wake up - before you eat, take one each of:
Do the same in the evening, before you eat dinner. Also, eat dinner earlier (5-6pm - I was in the habit of eating closer to bedtime, which made things worse).
You're also supposed to avoid drinking alcohol with these - I've never had a problem having an occasional beer or alcoholic beverage long after I took them, but ymmv (and I know you said you don't drink anymore - but I'm relating this in case others want to try it out). If in doubt, don't drink anything alcoholic.
These amounts may seem large, but they are (supposedly) no where near the limits of what a doctor can prescribe (it's like ibuprofen - OTC is 200mg tablets, but prescription levels are upwards of 2400mg max per day, depending on your weight - and you also have to have blood work done at that level, too). I currently take two of each pill, mainly because I prefer my diet as-is (I'm a stubborn fella).
If that still seems like too much - then just do the same regimen of the first two pills, twice a day. That's what I did for a few years, then my symptoms started to return. My wife suggested adding the third, I did - and things got better.
But you might find yourself needing a higher dose after a few years, which is why I take two of each. As I note below, I started with the first two, then doubled up, then added the third. That's been working for me.
Note that this won't make things perfect. You can change your diet to help, of course, the frequency you eat, your portions, etc - all of that helps too. Also, drink a lot of water vs other liquids - that's a big help overall. But I can tell you that it should help you to sleep better at night, and make you feel better overall.
Finally - if you notice anything weird while on this regimen, then see your doctor. Really, all you need to do is check the whites of your eyes - if things start tinging yellow, then your liver and kidneys are being stressed hard, and you'll want to back off and drink a ton of water of course (and maybe see your doctor too). If you're in decent health otherwise with no major issues, your body can take a lot before you keel over (I mean, seriously - look at how much drug abusers put their bodies thru - the body is actually insanely resilient).
Now - I'm probably going to be chastised for being facile about this advice and such - so again, this is only offered knowing what it's like having extreme GERD and not wanting others to be in the same pain. So again - if you are at all unsure about this advice, talk to your doctor about it if you aren't already under the care of a physician.
But the truth is, they're going to tell you the same thing:
1. Eat less, exercise more
2. Stay away from spicy and fatty foods
3. Stop smoking
4. No caffeine
5. Lose weight
6. Take one or more pills I've already mentioned
That's the absolute truth - other than #6, it's like their mantra or something. I'm not saying it's bad advice - I'm just saying it should be "common sense" advice. It's also, imho, advice that takes some of the fun out of livin' - so take it all in moderation, too. None of us are getting out of this alive. Might as well have some fun before the end.
The Famotidine and Ranitidine are in the same class of drugs (H2 blockers) and you are probably not getting much benefits over just taking a single one.
You should definitely discuss this with your doctor.
Hi, I have had gerd since 19 and am 30 now. My brother is a doctor so I keep him aware goings-on, but I have seen other doctors when it got real bad. I have needed to take Prilosec or nexium since I was first prescribed 10 years ago. Maybe I destroyed my esophageal sphincter with the binge drinking as a teen. Idk. I had an endoscopy in my mid-20s and they didn’t find anything besides mild irritation.
Thanks for the tips, I definitely need to start double-dosing PPIs (again). I only recently started taking famotidine. I’m not sure if Ranitidine is effective for me. Tagamet right? I have not noticed any changes from Tagamet or famotidine, actually, but I guess everything together has synergistic effects.
With respect to your daily medications, did your physician sign-off on this for _that_ duration (a few years)? From what I’ve heard these medications were not supposed to be taken for longer than a few weeks at a time.
I’m asking out of curiosity and as a near-chronic sufferer of reflux. It seems that anything other than room temperature water gives me indigestion.
>That's of course hard to do with how socially accepted it is.
Or maybe it has been tried before, and people saw what an utter disaster it was (the prohibition era). To which you might say that the war on drugs has been a similar disaster, and I will fully agree with you on this.
Prohibition was somewhat successful. If it has lasted longer it would probably have become even more effective, since culture could change.
> Second, alcohol consumption declined dramatically during Prohibition. Cirrhosis death rates for men were 29.5 per 100,000 in 1911 and 10.7 in 1929. Admissions to state mental hospitals for alcoholic psychosis declined from 10.1 per 100,000 in 1919 to 4.7 in 1928.
> Arrests for public drunkennness and disorderly conduct declined 50 percent between 1916 and 1922. For the population as a whole, the best estimates are that consumption of alcohol declined by 30 percent to 50 percent.
> Third, violent crime did not increase dramatically during Prohibition. Homicide rates rose dramatically from 1900 to 1910 but remained roughly constant during Prohibition's 14 year rule. Organized crime may have become more visible and lurid during Prohibition, but it existed before and after.
> Fourth, following the repeal of Prohibition, alcohol consumption increased. Today, alcohol is estimated to be the cause of more than 23,000 motor vehicle deaths and is implicated in more than half of the nation's 20,000 homicides. In contrast, drugs have not yet been persuasively linked to highway fatalities and are believed to account for 10 percent to 20 percent of homicides.
Hm. I was thinking things that have an outsized effects on innocent bystanders (e.g. drunk drivers) and innocuous enough that both youth involvement and advertising are generally banned.
I'd say tax it the way Scands, Aussies and Kiwis do (perhaps even more, plus put each use on your medical record (in NZ you are already bumped down in wait list if you are alcoholic + need a liver transplant).
Additionally, for opioid, I think it should be possible to create tamper-proof cartridges that only release when get correct key signature from master device that tracks your usage (and identity via smartphone). Many opioid users claim drug is safe minus overdoses and purity issues that care caused by it's illegal status.
The problem of all of this - it's trivial to grow marijuana or produce alcohol (or order fentanyl from China via darknet). It's already cheaper to get stoned in NZ than drink (or smoke cigarettes). Not sure we should be put up a fight here after all. If we can't decrease use via economics, then at least there should be accountability for your abuse (not an issue for countries like US with no socialised health care).
A person I know routinely flies with ~1 lbs of marijuana in his checked luggage as well as edibles and vape products, all just for personal use. He flies internationally to and from the States and no one ever says anything to him. Even flying into other countries where there’s no rec marijuana. It’s insane.
Correct. The entry card you fill out on the plane literally has "DEATH FOR DRUG TRAFFICKERS UNDER SINGAPORE LAW" in red letters on the back. Easily verified by a web search.[1] Flying in with a pound of Marijuana to any country where it isn't legal is an incredibly bad idea, in parts of the world it may be suicidal.
1 lbs for personal use?? How long is this person traveling for, because even an everyday smoker would have a hard time using a whole pound of weed in addition to vapes and edibles on a trip. That’s 454 grams of weed, they would need to be getting high like 24/7.
I know some serious smokers who will burn an ounce in three days. I don't know how or why they'd want to smoke that much weed but they do. And I smoke every day, though not heavily. Just a few bowls after work.
At that level of consumption it would make a lot more sense to step up to concentrates both logistically (higher THC/volume and has less odor) and better for his lungs.
There was a section on a British news program this morning (Today on Radio 4) that said that UK subjects that invest in US Cannabis companies (even ones that are legal in their states) could be prosecuted in the UK under the Proceeds of Crime act. This applies even if the companies were held in a fund.
I think there are lots of grey areas when it comes to legal Marijuana.
It's technically always illegal everywhere in the US since it is illegal federally. Just because some states have made it legal doesn't mean the Federal law doesn't apply. Not that I agree with or support that, but I believe that is the law. State laws can't override Federal laws.
The law enforcement you might run into on a flight would be an Air Marshal, and they are Federal agents, not local PD or State, so they would be enforcing Federal laws.
State laws can absolutely override federal laws, at least in theory. It's called nullification [1].
There was a full-fledged constitutional crisis over it in 1832 when South Carolina issued an ordinance declaring the Jackson administration's tarrifs unconstitutional [2].
The similiarities between the Jackson and Trump administration continue to astound. And Jackson ended up on the 20.
> Courts at the state and federal level, including the U.S. Supreme Court, repeatedly have rejected the theory of nullification.[2] The courts have decided that under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, federal law is superior to state law, and that under Article III of the Constitution, the federal judiciary has the final power to interpret the Constitution. Therefore, the power to make final decisions about the constitutionality of federal laws lies with the federal courts, not the states, and the states do not have the power to nullify federal laws.
> Between 1798 and the beginning of the Civil War in 1861, several states threatened or attempted nullification of various federal laws. None of these efforts were legally upheld. The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions were rejected by the other states. The Supreme Court rejected nullification attempts in a series of decisions in the 19th century, including Ableman v. Booth, which rejected Wisconsin's attempt to nullify the Fugitive Slave Act. The Civil War ended most nullification efforts.
> In the 1950s, southern states attempted to use nullification and interposition to prevent integration of their schools. These attempts failed when the Supreme Court again rejected nullification in Cooper v. Aaron, explicitly holding that the states may not nullify federal law.
I wouldn't say they absolutely can since every attempt to do this so far has failed in the courts. It seems like a pretty flimsy theory since the Constitution explicitly says otherwise.
Sure, but that doesn't meant that federal offices and federal courts, paid by the federal government, can't or won't convict you for violating them. And your only recourse would be appeal to federal courts--unless the state militia is going to break you out of prison.
Slavery isn't just illegal, any law permitting it would be unconstitutional by the 13th Amendment. Federal anti-slavery laws couldn't be a target for nullification, which relies in theory on the state's belief that the federal law is unconstitutional.
Pilot here. IIRC the moment an aircraft leaves the ground it leaves local jurisdiction and enters federal airspace and federal jurisdiction. So even if you're flying between two location in the same state where cannabis is legal you still have to travel through a jurisdiction where it's illegal.
I suppose this rules out cannabis drone deliveries too :)
If a flight from Los Angeles to San Francisco (both in legal California, over one hundred miles from any land that is not California) is diverted to Kansas City, we've got bigger problems than someone carrying a few joints in their luggage.
The aircraft could end up landing at one of several Air Force bases along the way, where it definitely is illegal. But I cannot imagine the legal process whereby someone is actually charged for possession because their flight had an emergency landing still within the state of California. The court would have to be a military court, and I don't know the process by which a civilian would end up tried in a court that has jurisdiction over an AF base. The court matters because the DA and prosecutor decide who to charge.
I don't believe civilians can be sent to a court martial in general (although I could certainly be wrong). The few times I was aware that a civilian got in trouble on post, the local police come pick up the civilian (if they need to be held) and it's tried in a civilian court.
They probably sell hijabs in the airport so I wouldn't worry about it too much.
However, here in the United States the TSA and cops have shown that they have no problem enforcing the laws against passengers who became criminals due circumstances outside their control.
There was an interesting case where a guy was on a flight from Utah to Pennsylvania with a gun. He was transporting it exactly the way you're supposed to when flying (declared at check-in, unloaded in a locked container, non-TSA approved locks) when his flight got diverted to New Jersey. Due to an airline mixup, he had to get his luggage and re-check it before getting on a later flight to his final destination. However by taking possession of his suitcase without applying for a New Jersey gun license he was committing a felony. After he went to check his bag and declared that it contained a firearm, the TSA called the port authority and he got arrested. Normally when people in NY/NJ get arrested for trying to check a firearm at the airport they take a plea deal but this guy ended up spending some time in jail (although the prosecutor let the case go after four months).
I skimmed the case [1] and it looks like most of this is correct, except that his flight was not diverted to NJ. He was scheduled to fly from Utah to MN to NJ to PA. The reason he had to recheck his bag is that he missed his NJ to PA connection, so his luggage was taken out and he had to recheck it. This wouldn't have happened if he'd made the connection in the first place.
This doesn't change the insanity of this story much, except that if you're going to fly with a firearm, you should probably check the gun laws in the states where you're planning to have layovers.
Lastly, the guy spent only a few days in jail before making bail (still crazy to spend any time whatsoever), and it took years for him to get his gun/ammo back.
You left out the key reason for his arrest and the only reason he couldn’t get it dropped.
He left the airport and stayed in a hotel overnight.
>They argued, among other things, that probable cause existed for the arrest because § 926A was inapplicable, given Revell's overnight stay in New Jersey
My understanding is that 926A only applies when you're physically in a vehicle, so even if he picked his luggage up from baggage claim and immediately walked over to check it in he would still be in violation. If he had been able to get a bus to Pennsylvania, he would've been breaking the law while he carried his bag to the bus since New Jersey still considers it "readily accessible" in a locked container.
That's international, not domestic. International airport zones are very weird spaces, because they are not technically part of the destination country, and fall under a variety of international treaties.
I think that dog in Denver is perma-stoned from years of sniffing the green. I know many, many people that fly out of Denver with pot. Like an obscene number of people.
If a flight from LA to San Francisco is diverted to somewhere weed is not legal... then wouldn't a person carrying weed only be breaking the law in the very rare event the plane is actually diverted?
If the flight goes as planned, the person (and their weed) never left California.
i.e. 99.999% percent of the time, they're not breaking the law.
It says it right afterwards because they have federal gambling licenses, they don't want federally illegal substances.
> regularly do cocaine.
Illegally doing drugs is different and has been done in Vegas for just about forever, but they don't want federally illegal substances out in the open. I'm sure they would confiscate your coke if they found it too.
I don't recall having ever purchased an alcoholic beverage while at a gaming table, despite having consumed many. Want to guess why that is, and where casinos really make their money?
Sorry, to clarify, I meant they make money selling alcohol, so they don't want people using alternatives they they aren't selling (cocaine doesn't count, because it tends to make people drink like a fish and also blow all their cash gambling).
I do this too, but I think some people say carry-on is safer. Since they believe there is no risk facing any harsher punishment than having to throw it away, having it in carry is better because it won't mean your checked bag gets diverted or held back for additional searches that results in it not making your flight.
So I fly with it regularly (live in CA, visit family in WA and ATL, etc.), and I always put it in my carry-on. I've done this for maybe 30 or so flights, and have only had my bag searched twice. The first time, TSA pulled some edibles out, looked the bag over, then kept digging for the water bottle I'd forgot I left in my bag. The second time (vape pen and a couple of joints), same thing, but they were searching for a jar of jam that my wife put in the bag. Each time, they returned the cannabis products to my bag without hesitation. That's so stereotypically TSA for you - water and marionberry jam are hazards, but you can have that Schedule 1 controlled substance.
My thought process with it being in my carry-on is that I don't have to worry about the "what ifs" in my bag getting pulled for inspection when I'm not around, and I do my research to see what local PD has said about it at each airport before I fly out of them. If they're largely "cool" with it, I'd rather be there when someone finds it so that I can say, "Look, my bad, let's toss it out, yeah?". I also make sure that if I'm traveling to where it's not legal (ie Atlanta), I only bring enough for me to use up during the duration of my trip. I'm sure it'd be "fine" for me to travel with it through TSA in ATL since they're not actively looking for it, but the risk of local PD getting involved is just not worth the reward when it's just a five hour flight until I can toke up in the comfort of my own home.
Always give them something interesting to find first, to make their search seem worthwhile.
John Waters described how Divine would smuggle marijuana in her artificial vagina, which she would check in her luggage at the top. Once they found that, they'd decide they didn't need to search any more, without looking inside.
On Divine Getting Through Airport Security As A Drag Queen
Finding Divine's false tits in his luggage, Airport Security] would slam it back shut. He'd have his cheater on the top — his fake vagina — and [Divine] said he could come through customs with pot, they'd see the cheater and go, "Oh! Oh!" He would put the cheater right on top [in] his suitcase. Divine's cheater is at Wesleyan University at the Film Archives. Clint Eastwood's is too. No, Clint Eastwood is in the same place with me and I said to Clint Eastwood, "Y'know, just think, Divine's cheater and Dirty Harry's police badge will rest together forever!"
Makes sense, but I just wanted to add one small clarification: it is decriminalized in ATL now. Not legal, but you essentially just get off with a maximum fine of $75. [0]
I'm curious as to what they would even do with an unlabeled cartridge? It could just be nicotine e-juice. I think they'd have to either object to the form of the object (no vape cartridges allowed, for example), or actually crack it open and test it for THC content. Seems like they'd be unlikely to bother with that for such a low level possession offense.
Mine aren't entirely unlabeled. Pax Era batteries are specifically made for cannabis and their pods have strain names on them. Many of the standard cartridge batteries also have brand names on them. I doubt most TSA agents would recognize something like that, but it's always possible.
It's a very different consistency and all the THC carts I've seen are all amber in color. It's just very low on anyones list of things they care about. Even the dreaded TSA
Careful with that stuff, it seems the kernel of truth in the current vaping-related illness hype is pointing toward the oil-based products commonly used for THC delivery.
Yeah - that is how it seems to be pointing; but they conflate it with all vape juice. Then again, there is that one study that found PEG/PPG juices caused certain issues.
But inhaling vaporized oil/wax always seemed a bit sketchy to me. I've never done it, but I know that pulmonary lipidosis is a thing, and that there's a warning on Vicks Vaporub for that very reason (people have inhaled it after putting it in their nose - leading to lipidosis).
It seemed reasonable to suppose that after inhaling a vapor of wax or oil, that it would/could condense back into the lungs. Over time, it would build up and become a serious issue. So now that this is confirmed - or seems to be confirmed - I think I'll pass, if I'm ever given the choice to try it out.
That still sounds like a pretty big risk. If you're just away for a few days, maybe it's easier to not take any. They can and do search checked bags, and you may have gotten lucky.
I've taken oil carts through in my carry on bag a handful of times and have only been asked about them once. I replied that they were e-cigarette cartridges and that was deemed fine. Visually, a THC and nicotine cart are indistinguishable.
It's not exactly a gray zone everywhere. I was at LAS last week, and there are green trash bins at all the entrances so that people can dispose of their pot before they enter the airport.
National Parks and National Forests are another place you cannot possess even if that park/forest is in a state where it is legal. Park rangers are federal police and the land falls under federal jurisdiction.
True. And most rec. states (at least CO) still ban the use of cannabis in their state parks but anyone in Boulder can tell you that there one of the few 'public' places you can easily consume cannabis even if it's technically 'more' illegal (federal vs local regulation).
The truth is that there is no gray zone. Marijuana, until otherwise classified by the FDA, is illegal.
Many states have decriminalized it, meaning that they have effectively nullified the federal regulations-- though not technically the legislation, as none [that I'm aware of] exists.
Like immigration, the federal government chooses to enforce (under Trump) or ignore (under Obama) sections of federal legislation and regulation as they see fit.
I'd personally feel much more comfortable if everyone was subject to the same laws, as selective enforcement can quickly lead to corruption where one group is punished, while the other is ignored.
The truth is that there is no gray zone. Marijuana, until otherwise classified by the FDA, is illegal.
Many states have decriminalized it, meaning that they have effectively nullified the federal regulations
The phrase for this situation where it's technically illegal but effectively okay is "gray zone".
The omnibus bill has effectively legallized medical marijuana in states where it is legal at the federal level, by prohibiting interference with state medical marijuana laws including a complete prohibition on prosecution. This is federal legislation.
That's all well and good but can be changed on a whim at any time. There's a pretty big difference between "legal" and "illegal, but we won't bother to enforce it". The latter is regularly abused.
Which is on a regular schedule, and subject to all manner of political gamesmanship on what is and isn't included in it. It's not as reliable as an actual distinct law, in other words, and can't be treated as such.
>he truth is that there is no gray zone. Marijuana, until otherwise classified by the FDA, is illegal.
The Federal Government was the first to pass laws allowing individuals to get marijuana for medical reasons, and they even supplied (still do to this day) it to those patients.
Very few people are even aware of this legal history at the federal level, look up the patient Irvin Rosenfeld, the Federal Government has been shipping him 300 pre-rolled joints per month since 1984.
It is very gray area indeed when the FDA says there is no valid medical use for marijuana, whereas the Federal legislature has licensed and supplied certain patients with cannabis for their medical issues for 35+ years.
If you meant “not technically through legislation”, that’s not correct. Washington, for example, legalized recreational marijuana through an initiative and legislation [1] that created a licensing and taxation system (implemented by the existing Liquor Control Board). Several states have had medical marijuana legislation for years.
Under the supremacy clause, federal law trumps that of states. States can't nullify federal law, either; there was an issue with that, too. I don't know that I agree with the precedent on this absolutely, and it might be less of a problem to start with if the feds passed very few stupid laws, but that's how it stands today. By your logic, a state can override the civil rights act of 1964.
It’s not something subject to a court. The FBI could haul in a user of state-legal marijuana and charge them with crimes in Federal court whenever they want (subject to the federal law prohibiting funds being spent on prosecution of medical marijuana in certain states).
That it isn’t happening regularly is just because the FBI/DEA and other federal agencies aren’t currently focused on it. That could change any time at the whim of an executive order from Trump.
I'd personally feel much more comfortable if white people and non-white people were subject to the same laws. Why don't we work on that selective enforcement problem?
> The truth is that there is no gray zone. Marijuana, until otherwise classified by the FDA, is illegal.
Marijuana is expressly listed in the CSA, so it needs to be reclassified by Congress, not by the FDA. In fact the FDA does not have the power to control something under the the CSA (ie, to criminalize it); that power was bizarrely given to the DEA, ostensibly to be used on an emergency basis. This is how MDMA was made illegal (and many other substances in the phenethylamine and tryptamine families).
Now, are there legal gray areas? Heck yeah there are. Some exist in the form of ongoing legal controversies. While it seems to be settled case law at this point that, even though a constitutional amendment was needed to prohibit alcohol, the same isn't true for cannabis, it's not totally unthinkable that the courts might start to accept carve-outs to this rule. Raich vs. Ashcroft wasn't a foregone conclusion when it was decided, for example. A similar case today might even go the other way, especially if the plaintiff were a state rather than an individual.
Then, there are large swaths of untested legal gray areas. For example, if the DEA tried to revoke a doctor's license again with different details (for recommending or perhaps prescribing cannabis or cannabis extracts), it's very hard to say what will happen (we have a tiny porthole of insight via Conant v. Walters, but many unanswered questions remain).
> Many states have decriminalized it, meaning that they have effectively nullified the federal regulations-- though not technically the legislation, as none [that I'm aware of] exists.
Hard to unpack this, but basically no part of this is true.
"Decriminalization" typically means that possession is not a crime, but instead is handled as a civil infraction. Several states decriminalized cannabis in the 1970s.
Legalization typically means that both possession (within certain limits) and retail sale (within certain limits) are wholly absent as a statutory offense to law. Often (but not always) this includes cultivation (within certain limits). This framework - again, called legalization, is the state of local laws in states covering about 25% of the US population.
I don't even know what you are trying to express by "not technically the legislation, as none [that I'm aware of] exists" - each state which has legalized cannabis has either passed legislation (which of course you can read online) or done so through a ballot initiative (the terms of which you can also read online). Plenty of legislation exists.
> Like immigration, the federal government chooses to enforce (under Trump) or ignore (under Obama) sections of federal legislation and regulation as they see fit.
First of all, let's not whitewash the Obama years: immigrants were brutalized, detained, and deported in huge numbers. Deportations are happening at about the same rate today; there has not been a sudden spike. Some particular populations, especially refugees seeking asylum, are treated even worse now than they were then. But the government taken a very uncivilized approach to the border since the 90s.
I'm not sure how this relates to your points about cannabis, though. Perhaps you are referring to the Obama-era directive in the justice department that no federal resources will be used to prosecute people who are complying with state medical marijuana laws?
> I'd personally feel much more comfortable if everyone was subject to the same laws, as selective enforcement can quickly lead to corruption where one group is punished, while the other is ignored.
Well, yeah. :-)
It's not just a matter of comfort; equal protection under the law is part of the bedrock of the Western legal tradition. The 14th amendment didn't invent or establish it; in fact, some of staunchest of the radical republicans insisted that congress had the authority to enforce equal protection even before its ratification.
Drug prohibition is a clear affront to equal protection; each stage of it was enacted specifically as a pretext to criminalize particular populations, and never as a public health measure.
> I don't even know what you are trying to express by "not technically the legislation, as none [that I'm aware of] exists" - each state which has legalized cannabis has either passed legislation (which of course you can read online) or done so through a ballot initiative (the terms of which you can also read online). Plenty of legislation exists.
The grandparent was referring to their claim of "effective nullification". States have passed legislation to remove state penalties for purchase/possession etc, and the federal government is being a good sport and looking the other way, but the GP says no state has passed a law that explicitly says "...and it's ok with the feds too."
No doubt because it could draw a quick legal challenge, and possibly end the effective legalisation that holds while the federal government chooses not to enforce the law.
As someone who binge drank a lot from ~16yo to 22yo, I can't imagine what kind of lunacy causes someone to think alcohol is safer or more acceptable than marijuana use. Maybe the people behind propaganda didn't like how marijuana can make people less social and more eccentric, but since drinking alcohol is seen as a way of socializing and camaraderie, it's acceptable?
The older I get the less I like alcohol. Hangovers suck. I was (un)lucky enough to have a bad lifetime case of acid reflux/GERD which is exacerbated by alcohol, so between that and not liking the hangovers, I generally can't imagine being an alcoholic. But alcohol ruins a lot of lives. I don't know how many lives marijuana ruins, except maybe out of laziness or lack of motivation.