This is a compendium of videos on Drug Policy that you can watch by just clicking on each selection within the document. Bruce W. Cain provides some commentary with reference to his Model for Marijuana Re-Legalization known as the MERP Model. The MERP Model would allow untaxed, unregulated "self cultivation" by all adult Americans over 18. Hours of videos to watch.
More films will be added soon. But the first movie I'm posting, "The Union: The Business Behind Getting High," is important in that it exposes why the "medical growers" are not likely to be initial proponents of the MERP Model because they will ultimately loose most, if not all of their profit from growing "medicinally." On the other hand the consumer benefits much more from MERPs "self cultivation" model because they will always have the option to grow it for FREE rather than for $300 to $500 an ounce from "Government Marijuana Dispensaries."
I have annotated each film to point out what I find most compelling about each. Obviously anyone can simply watch these movies from their laptops etc. But what I am hoping is that activists will port these movies from their laptops to their "big screen" TV's so that groups of activists can catch a buzz, watch the movies and then discuss their significance. I think it is very important that every activist has a good grounding in the history that has led to our current state of drug prohibition.
You can also watch all of my YouTube videos on the MERP Model right here:
This 2 hour film focuses on the big picture of the Drug War: how the international Banking System is dependent on Drug Prohibition and how the Prison Industrial Complex has implemented a new form of slavery to profit from it. This is a must see for all Americans. If you don't have time to watch the entire film please, at least, watch the following excerpt:
This will certainly always be on my top 100 Marijuana Policy Videos. It starts with a very succinct review of the history of Marijuana Prohibition and then goes on to document the utter greed of both law enforcement and the illicit Marijuana growing industry. It perfectly illustrates why the MERP Model needs to be implemented immediately.
Lisa "Dinga" Ling provides the typical corporate media propaganda. As with coverage by other national "reporters" (Lou Dobbs, Anderson Cooper etc.) this film refuses to address the fact that without prohibition we could all grow our Marijuana for free and the "greater good" would immediately be served. The only thing that makes an ounce of Marijuana worth $300 to $500 an ounce is the fact that is is still illegal. Once legal we can all grow it for free outside or for about $25 and ounce under lights indoors.
Most importantly Re-Legalization, under the MERP Model, would immediately destroy the Mexican Drug Cartels which surprisingly derive 70% of their US profits from the illicit sale of Marijuana. It also has an interview with Marc Emery who has yet to support the MERP Model. I have made it quite clear to Marc that if he supports MERP I will do everything in my power to make sure Obama immediately grants Marc clemency so he can remain in Canada with his beautiful wife in British Columbia.
The Hemp Revolution This is the first in a series of videos that gives a great comprehensive review of the history of Marijuana (e.g., Cannabis) and human culture.
History of Weed from the Showtime Series "Weeds" This is the first in a series of videos from the producers of the show "Weeds." It is done in an animated fashion and highlights many interesting developments over the few millennia and gives the year that each occurred.
Hemp for Victory United States Department of Agriculture, 1942 Hemp for Victory is an educational film promoting hemp farming in the United States.
Jack Herer can be credited with digging this film out of the government archives. Herer can also be credited with adding the word "hemp" to the lexicon of terms referring to the industrial and agricultural uses of hemp.
This History Channel video focuses on the Opiates which were instrumental in the first prohibitions on drugs in the United States. I highly recommend, at least, watching the last 10 minutes where it is explained how taxes and regulation were used to make an "end run" around the US Constitution. The same strategy is now being used to control, and insure profit to the elite, as Marijuana inevitably becomes legal due to the fact that over 50% of Americans now support Legalization.
If you don't get a chance to watch this video please, at least, read the transcript of the last 10 minutes. This is very illuminating:
People were incredibly frustrated by the end of the 19th century because there were great fears as to how big the addict population was. There were certainly sensational stories in all the newspapers which indicated that upper members of society were smoking hashish, were smoking opium, were shooting morphine. People were really beginning to look to the government to straighten the mess out frankly. So legislation to control drugs became, at the time, the only answer.
Congress first reduced drug use by requiring manufactures to label ingredients on drug products in 1906. But still opiates are everywhere from mail order to dose happy doctors. Finally in 1914 Congress debates a law to regulate opiate use and availability. Ironically the law emerges out of compliance with a new international treaty forged by Christian missionaries to ban the opium trade.
What has long stood in the way of making a domestic law is the law itself. The Constitution guarantees the right to use whatever drug one wants, much to the despair of the anti-drug lobby.
What they really wanted to do was prohibit drugs but they couldn’t because a federal prohibition on drugs would be unconstitutional for at least two reasons. One was states rights. The Constitution reserved that right, they believed, to the states. Another was the invasion of the personal space by the government. They believed that the government did not have the right to tell people what they could put into their own bodies.
Congressman Francis Burton Harrison engineers a way around the Constitution with "drug regulation" based on taxation. For the first 140 years of our country included the right to ingest all of the drugs that you wish. Only in 1914 did that change. And the change is probably the most radical public policy change in the history of the United States.
The Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914 is the first step in making drugs illegal nation wide. Under the new law, to use an opiate, you must be a patient. To sell or prescribe it you must get a license and pay a tax. And not every one is granted a license. Its at the governments discression. The phrase "illegal possession" -- a term unknown before the Harrison Act -- becomes a part of the new language of drug law and a new precedent for drug enforcement agents to send people to jail.
What the government essentially did was criminalize conduct of maybe 100 to 200 thousand people who were using opiates after passage of the Harrison Narcotics Act. Within a few years after the passage of the, supposedly revenue issue, treasury agents (federal agents) working with local police managed to shut down all of the drug clinics. The religious groups and the federal cops had no intention of letting the drug users be viewed as patients. They were criminals. They were evil, immoral people. They had to be locked up.
The Harrison Act dramatically reduces the medical consumption of opiates by restricting access to them. Gone are mail order catalogs because there is no confirmation, as required by law, that the opiate is used medicinally. Over time the law, promoted by public opinion, evolves into out right prohibition.
Heroin, in particular, is singled out. Heroin was thought to cause people to commit crimes just because they took the heroin. Then of course there is the cause of people committing crimes just to get the heroin.
The Harrison Tax Act creates criminals out of users and addicts. But the most frequently arrested by the creation of the new law controlling opiates are medical doctors. Ten thousand had been arrested within the first 5 years of the laws passage.
The basis of the arrests is the language in the law that states "opiates can only be prescribed in the due course of medical treatment. That phrase results in thousands of doctors going to jail. so controversial and unclear is the interpretation of that phrase that the law comes up before the Supreme Court.
In the 1920s the Supreme Court Case, known as Webb, said that this dispensation of these drugs to patients for maintenance purposes -- that is for maintaining addicts -- was not a legitimate practice of medicine and therefore was not permitted by the act. This is how drug prohibition began. Steven Duke
Heroin, in the 1920's, is stigmatized forever. By 1923 half of the prisoners at Leavenworth Texas are in jail for federal drug violations. The Treasury Department, determined to rid society of heroin, decides on harsher controls. In 1925 heroin is totally banned and permanently removed from medical use.
Heroin becomes very lucrative for underworld bosses. Most famous is Lucky Luciano. He masterminds one of the most lucrative smuggling operations in history.
He really begins to set up the French Connection. The opium is grown in Turkey. It's moved by the Mafia to the Corsicans’ in Marseille, where the heroin processing plants are. It is then imported into the United States.
The United States government combats the problem by pressuring the governments of Turkey and France to crack down on Heroin production. But the demand for Heroin assures that there will be a supply.
It's what we call the sausage effect. You squeeze one end of the sausage and it blows up at the other end. So they close down the French Connection and then it moves to the Golden Triangle (e.g., Laos and Cambodia) and Burma and then that begins to get attacked. And gradually that it kind of worn down and then it moves to Columbia. And they get one cartel in Columbia. And then they get another Cartel in Columbia. And then it moves to Mexico. And it has even moved into our own country. So what you find is you have this ongoing demand for millions of Americans who are willing, for what ever reason, to spend billions of dollars, for these substances.
By 1956 contempt for heroin sparks laws for compulsory prison sentences. First time offenders are sentenced to between 2 and 5 years: second timers 5 to 10 years. Third times 10 to 30 years. But the laws fail to stem the tide for heroin use.
In 1970 heroin use skyrockets but no one knows why. It even reaches American GI's in Viet Nam. Faced with a drug crisis, that could undermine the war and an explosion in the use of LSD and Marijuana, President Richard Nixon acts.
He abolishes the old drug control system based on taxation and reinvents the drug laws. Dangerous drugs are banned outright or controlled for medical use. Next he appoints John R Bartels to head the newly formed Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to solve the problem.
JOHN BARTELS, DEA Administrator '73-'75
And this became a very big issue and the President and the Administration were deeply concerned that Heroin was going to take out the American troops from Viet Nam. So the thing that happened to the 1st Drug Czar, when he got in office, was to be put on a plane and sent to Saigon. He didn't go to the streets of America, he went to the streets of Saigon. And the step that was taken, which was really dramatic, was named operation "Golden Flow" which had to do with the first wide spread use of urine testing. And what happened is the administration developed a system whereby if you were going to leave Viet Nam you were going to have to take a drug test. If you were positive you will not be able to leave Viet Nam. You will have to stay here and go through a rehab until you are clean.
Since the battles of Alexander the fruits of the poppy have relieved the suffering of war. But today it is the cause of war: the War on Drugs. What was once sacred and hailed as miraculous is now taboo in a modern world. We have seen the dark side of Opium, Morphine and Heroin. Jonathan Spence, Yale University Cliff Schaffer Patricia Tice, Strong Museum, Rochester NY Musto, "The American Disease"
Please send the link to activists throughout the planet. The translation bar should allow this to be read in any language. The 5-Point Strategy for Marijuana Re-Legalization should be easy to implement in any country throughout the planet. I encourage all groups celebrating the Global Marijuana March to make the immediate implementation of the MERP Model a primary focus of the event.
Call President Obama and your Representatives and demand:
(1) Immediate clemency for Marc Emery and
(2) Immediate implementation of the MERP Model through an Emergency
Session of Congress, similar to what was used to pass the TARP Bailout
on October 3rd, 2008
President:
U.S. Senate switchboard:
202-224-3121
U.S. House switchboard:
(202) 225-3121
The President:
Comments: 202-456-1111.
Switchboard: 202-456-1414
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