[Courtesy of Just Say Know]
JUST SAY KNOW appreciates and commends the efforts of the drug policy reform organizations below and we thank them for their contributions to our drug policy reform work. Please visit their websites and support them to the best of your ability.
Marijuana Policy Project is the largest marijuana policy reform organization in the United States.
NORML: Since its founding in 1970, NORML has provided a voice in the public policy debate for those Americans who oppose marijuana prohibition and favor an end to the practice of arresting marijuana smokers. Email: [email protected]
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Just Say Know
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Just Say Know works on your behalf toward drug policy reform, preserving and re-instating your legal rights. Since cannabis offences account for approximately half of all drug arrests, we believe taking away the ability of criminals to profit from cannabis will be an important initial step in drug policy reform. How? Just like it was done with alcohol, remove the prohibition and regulate legal adult use. As soon as alcohol prohibition ended, the crime and violence caused by alcohol prohibition ended. The year alcohol prohibition was repealed violent crime fell by sixty five percent. Drug policy and enforcement tactics are out of control and removing your rights at an alarming rate. Your financial contributions are greatly appreciated. To make a donation reply to this message with âdonationâ in the subject line and an associate will contact you by return email. If you wish to remain anonymous you can. Donations of any size are greatly appreciated. Thank you for your consideration. Donât hesitate to contact us by replying to this message, we appreciate your comments, questions and concerns. Together we will make a difference!
The drug war is being used as an excuse to remove your Constitutional rights, steal your property, waste 69 billion tax dollars per year and a long list of other harms to citizens and society. Thereâs a mountain of evidence supporting the need for policy reform that will make citizens, their family, their livelihood and their property more secure. The right; to freedom of religion, free speech, a free press, to keep and bear arms, to be secure in your person, house, papers and effects against unreasonable search and seizure, to life, liberty and property, to be protected from having your property taken by the government without due process of law and without just compensation, to confront the witnesses against you, to be protected from excessive bail, excessive fines, cruel and unusual punishment, to vote and other Constitutional rights have been denied to millions of Americans in the name of the drug war.
Feature Story:
This week we look at: FREEDOM OF THE PRESS
YOUR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS DENIED BY THE DRUG WAR
In the next few weeks weâll be looking at several Constitutional rights and how the drug war has been used to remove them.
While we were interviewing for this article we heard some disturbing and unexpected comments. Things like, âConstitutional rights?, theyâre already a thing of the past.â, âWeâre living in a police state right now.â, â Decades ago the president of Russia said the USA would become Communist without a shot being fired, it looks like he may have been right.â, Weâre not a democracy or a Republic, weâre a Communist state pretending to be a Republic with a little pretense of Democracy thrown in to keep up the smokescreen.â, âWe may not be Communist yet but weâre a Socialist country in my opinionâ.
Then we ran across this very disturbing web page; http://www.freedom-of-speech.net/FirstAmendmentGoesTooFar.htm and we began to realize the public has been so inundated with laws that remove or reduce our Constitutional rights and news stories that sound like giving up our rights is the proper course of action for patriotic Americans that the notion we donât need these rights or that we were given to much freedom by our founding fathers is fast becoming the mindset of the majority.
Our focus is the drug war and how itâs being used to remove our Constitutional rights but keep your eye on the war on terror too. Every time you turn around weâre giving up another right in the name of another noble cause. Donât go off the deep end, September 11, 2001 and all the other terrorist actions against us need to be dealt with. Our point is instead of just dealing with the problem, we were lead to believe we needed to declare war and give up our Constitutional rights for the cause. Do you see any similarities between the drug war and the war on terror? Think about it. Neither has a clear definition of victory. Neither has a defined individual, country or invading army that weâre trying to defeat. There is no definitive plan of action. Yet just few people have been able to cause the entire country to give up many of our Constitutional rights and spend well over a trillion tax dollars fighting these wars. Wars like these could go on forever.
Weâre getting conditioned to believe we need to be at war every time we have a problem. Any time a country is at war itâs expected that security will tighten, so these noble sounding wars condition us to expect to live under martial law. We clearly have let the true spirit of the USA slip away more than we ever thought possible in just the last few years. Itâs now expected that youâre going to have to submit to an illegal search of your body in order to get a job. By the way, a lot more than illegal drug use can be revealed through the search or your body matter, things like tobacco use, prescription drugs you use legally that imply certain health conditions and many other health conditions you might prefer to keep confidential. If a company discovers something they consider undesirable they hire someone else.
Our government now supports torture in the form of water boarding as an acceptable method of interrogation. I can almost hear many of you thinking, âYeah but thatâs just in cases of national security and to protect us from terrorists⦠or the bad guysâ. Can you see how the press inundating us with propaganda is effecting the thinking of a large percentage of our population? Trust me, if torture is an acceptable interrogation method for an enemy of the state and the state decides youâre its enemy, you better learn to hold your breath and get over your fear of being tied to a table with a towel over your face and someone in an American uniform poring water on the towel. Think back a few years, if youâve had enough birthdays you can remember when government agents dressed in black military uniforms and throwing grenades in citizenâs homes in the middle of the night and swarms of government agents rushing in with machine guns, tear gas and vicious dogs was something youâd only have related to Nazi Germany. Just a few years ago when a police officer made an arrest they simply told the person they were under arrest and if they offered no resistance, they cuffed the suspect and put them in the back of a police car. In most cases they even spoke to the suspect in a polite tone of voice. Have you taken a good look at the real life documentary police shows and news on TV lately? You often see suspects offering no resistance thrown to the ground by a swarm of officers, usually followed by an officerâs knee shoved into their back or the side of their face and their arms snatched violently behind them while the officers scream at the top of their lungs. Donât get us wrong we support the police but we believe these tactics are illegal when there is no resistance, yet you see it all the time and no one ever seems to say anything. As far as we know weâre still presumed innocent unless proven guilty in court, arenât we? Or was that right removed without us hearing about it?
Where do you think the Nazis got all the soldiers that carried out the murder and torture of millions of innocent people? Prior to Hitlerâs propaganda they were mostly law abiding citizens who would have never thought of doing such things. The press is a very powerful tool and when used to promote hysteria and evil propaganda it can bring about mindsets completely contrary to human respect, let alone kindness.
Here in Florida thereâs a bill at the state level being considered right now that would allow police officers to photograph âevidenceâ of âcrimesâ and then destroy that private property in the course of an arrest and use the pictures later as evidence in court. Doesnât that sound like the police are deciding youâre guilt and initiating your punishment prior to your trial?
I hope each of you will visit our website and click on âInspirationâ in the site map. Lee Iacocca will surely get your attention with what he has to say about our state of affairs and our leaders.
Think back to your days in American history class when you realized the stranglehold of tyranny the colonists were living under that caused them to get fed up and decide freedom was worth fighting for. If you havenât read the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights lately visit our web site and click on tools in the site map for a quick link. Donât just think about it really read them, and while your reading picture the situations that caused those documents to be written and ask yourself if you think things have gotten better or worse since those righteous documents were penned.
One of the greatest freedoms we have is a free press, we still have at least a form of it or we wouldnât be able to write the constructive criticisms youâre reading right now but you almost never hear things like this in the mainstream media. There was a story in the national news last week about yet another drug bust. It was praising the war on drugs. The problems with the drug war are almost never mentioned just the supposed victories of drug busts. The very next commercial was paid for with your tax dollars and placed by the drug Czar. By the way, is it just us or do some of you remember when the term âCzarâ was only used to refer to a Russian leader. Take a look at this web page; http://www.freepress.net/news/4134 and ask yourself if this is what our government should be engaged in. The propaganda the drug Czar is putting out, the amount of money being spent and the tactics being used through the media by our governmentâs drug prohibitionists hardly resemble a free society.
The facts speak for themselves, the drug war is an utter failure. The percentage of people in the USA addicted to drugs has not diminished one bit after over 90 years of drug prohibition. Our children are in more jeopardy because prohibition puts control of illegal drugs in the hands of gangsters who often donât mind selling to children. Addicts are being forced into criminal acts to support their habits at black market prices and even if they want to work their being forced out of the opportunity. Instead of our children looking up to legitimate business people and other legitimate professionals as their role models they often believe being an illegal drug dealer is the only hope they have of bettering their financial situation. Access to clean needles is being denied, so AIDS and Hepatitis are being spread in epidemic proportions. Instead of regulated drugs being sold to adults with pharmaceutical quality theyâre bought from street dealers and are not consistent in purity or potency, so they often cause overdoses, poisoning and other problems. The inflated prices and tax free profits caused by prohibition attract gangsters, terrorists and every form of greedy person into the drug trade. Someone is arrested every 17 seconds in this country on drug charges. Weâre the number 1 country in the world when it comes to citizens in jail or prison and roughly half our arrests and prisoners are the result of non-violent drug charges. Even Communist China which has far more people doesnât have as many people as we do behind bars here in âthe land of the freeâ. The unfortunate masses who get a drug conviction on their permanent record or just arrested on a drug charge, which will show up on criminal background checks forever even if theyâre not convicted, will be shunned from most decent jobs, so more and more of the population is forced to either take a low paying job or get into crime. All our politicians seem to know how to do is âget tough on crimeâ and pass laws which incarcerate and saddle with criminal records even more of the population. âDrug relatedâ crime is exacerbated by prohibition and would be almost non existent if drug prohibition and the profits it makes available to gangsters was removed. (The year alcohol prohibition was repealed, violent crime fell by 65 percent.) Our drug prohibition methods canât even keep drugs out of prisons where there is reportedly a multi million dollar per year illegal drug trade. Innocent citizens and even children are being killed by paranoid drug law enforcers who seem to think thereâs a heavily armed kingpin anywhere thereâs even a hint of illegal drugs. Even when evidence is presented that proves the problems and devastation of the drug war beyond a shadow of a doubt, the majority of our elected representatives and the mass media stand proudly and proclaim what a wonderful job the war on drugs is doing. You never hear about any progress being made in the percentage of our population addicted to drugs because there isnât any, that percentage has remained the same (1.3%) it attained shortly after the âPure Food and Drug Act of 1906â, which was not a drug criminalizing Act but among other requirements mandated proper labeling and therefore was largely an educational measure. All you ever hear is how many people are arrested or incarcerated and how many tons of drugs were confiscated which has absolutely no positive effect.
Arenât reducing and preventing the use of substances that truly harm people and society and the prevention and ending of truly harmful drug addiction the real goals? Locking people up, confiscating tons of drugs, removing Constitutional rights, drug testing, removing the ability of users to be employed, taking away college funds, stealing cash money from innocent citizens just because they carry or possess cash, taking away public housing and other civil services designed to help people get on their feet or any of the other ever growing long list of punitive consequences our elected representatives have put in place does neither. Itâs way past time to implement methods which have proven to get results and to date the only measurable positive progress has been through honest drug education and medical treatment for addiction.
Rational arguments about drug education and treatment being much less harmful to society and much less expensive than the war on drugs are being shouted down using your tax dollars and pro-drug war advertizing. The ill effects of the drug war are devastating and being promoted by the prohibitionists use of the press. Those of us trying to show documented proof that education and medical treatment are far better policies often feel like we need a crowbar to pry a donation out of the wallets of those who claim to support these views. Is a reasonable monthly donation or even a one time donation to promote positive policy change to much to ask? This is the most vital issue facing our country. Every citizen is being hurt by the drug war in one way or another. There are no exceptions. A mountain of tax dollars that could be put to beneficial use is being wasted on the drug war. Together we will make a difference but only if we all pull together. We urge you to click reply and type âdonationâ in the subject line. Weâll email you the information you need to donate. If you want to remain anonymous you can. If your financial situation is just to tight to make a donation right now at least forward this message to all your associates, it may be that some of them can contribute. We also need people willing to do some of the clerical and presentation work, so if you can help with that, please let us know. A few hours of volunteer work a month would be a huge asset, so reply to this message and let us know if youâre able to help in those areas. All of you should take a couple of minutes a month and let your elected representatives know you support education and treatment and disapprove of criminalizing and incarcerating non-violent drug users and non-violent people with drug addictions.
Here are a few links you might want to check out. Some talk about the press, some express that hope does exist but all are worth reading. As you read them consider how you can best help implement the much needed changes regarding our 90 plus year old war on drugs. Some of these articles date back a few years, we wanted our readers to realize drug policy reform is not a new idea and itâs growing as time passes.
http://archive.salon.com/news/feature/2000/10/11/tulia/index.html?source=search&aim=/news/feature
http://freepress.org/columns/display/2/2000/600
http://www.drugpolicy.org/news/pressroom/pressrelease/pr022505.cfm
http://cannabisnews.com/news/5/thread5657.shtml
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ciadrugs/McKinney_Banamex.html
http://archive.salon.com/news/feature/2000/08/10/drug_war/index.html?source=search&aim=/news/feature
Be sure to click âIssues Need Your Immediate Attentionâ on our home page and use the links to locate and email your representatives about the Hinchey-Rohrabacher medical marijuana amendment which will prohibit the Department of Justice from using any funds to interfere with state medical marijuana laws.
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Its time to take action! Contact your elected representatives and tell them to end the drug war. You can look up your representatives by visiting our website and clicking âToolsâ in the site map.
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This country is still governed by the people but if you sit around waiting on someone else, it may be you that ends up losing life, liberty, freedom, property and more, it may be you that gets shot by the government, it may be your children, money, livelihood or property that get taken away. These things donât just happen to drug users. Thanks to the drug war private property is being confiscated with no evidence and no legal recourse. If you think this is a fairytale or only happens by mistake, or is a rare occurrence go here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/snitch/readings/hidden.html and read what happened to the innocent people mentioned in that story.
Visit our website and click âLearn About Drug War Victimsâ on our home page and read about more of the human tragedies caused by drug prohibition, many of the people needlessly harmed in those stories are innocent of any wrong doing.
"Anyone concerned about the failure of our $69 billion-a-year War on Drugs should watch this 12-minute program. You will meet front line, ranking police officers who give us a devastating report on why it cannot work. It is a must-see for any journalist or public official dealing with this issue."-- Walter Cronkite, commenting on a video produced by âLEAPâ Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. We think itâs a must see for every voter in the country too. If you havenât seen it yet take a few minutes and view it now using this link: http://www.leap.cc/cms/index.php?name=Content&pid=28
You can get a wealth of information by visiting our web site and clicking âWeb Linksâ in the site map.
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