Republicans Kill Medical Marijuana Provision for Veterans
We had a victory yesterday with the continuation of Rohrabacher-Farr but today had a setback:
Republicans on the House Rules Committee successfully stopped Veterans Affairs doctors from being allowed to recommend medical marijuana in states where the treatment is legal.
The “Veterans Equal Access” amendment will not move to debate on the House floor. GOP lawmakers wouldn’t allow it to be included in the House’s proposed VA funding bill for next year, effectively killing it.
http://www.alternet.org/drugs/republicans-kill-medical-marijuana-provision-veterans
= new reply since forum marked as read
(Obviously sarcasm)
Cannabis has been found on the Asian steppes, in pipes and funerary stuff, that carbon dates back millennia before Christ.
Fast forward to the seventh century: Mohammad outlaws alcohol. Marijuana isn't alcohol, obviously, which is why to this day it's so culturally attached with so many Muslim cultures (anyone who tells you it, or any other drug, is absolutely forbidden under Islam is being disingenuous, because under a strict reading, the Holy Koran only mentions alcohol, one of the many reasons Iran has a heroin problem worse than ours).
Anyway, the Moors were Muslim and had lots of weed. Still do 
. Isabella decides to celebrate the ethnic cleansing of Moors and Jews by sending Columbus to find new people to ethnically cleanse (weird hobbies these Renaissance people had, and so cultured!). Lots of Jews and Moors go with them, bringing their weed. Turns out that Catholicism kind of sucked for the natives, what with the murder and slavery, but in addition to growing hemp, they grew cannabis, so that made it slightly more tolerable. Enough that they started smoking it before church services, hence the name "marijuana," which was apparently a nickname for the Virgin Mary in 16th century Spain.
The Spanish weren't having any of THAT nonsense (no fun in church! otherwise you can't love Jesus!), but what were they going to do? Murder everyone and import new slaves from Africa?
Yeah. But, as it turns out, the new Afro-Caribbean slaves enjoyed smoking marijuana as much as everybody else. In the early 1800s, supplemental to slavery, Mississippi brought in Mexican farm workers (the more things change, am I right?). The Afro-Caribe people, free Haitian and otherwise, begin trading heavily through New Orleans.
So, gradually, pot begins its migration up the river and through the South, spread by the Dreaded Minorities. Nobody really gave a shit, though, because they were minorities and it was 1890. Black and/or Latino culture was irrevocably changed. As more and more white people were exposed to cannabis (and other drugs, for that matter), and Prohibition was more and more popular with the great grandchildren of Puritans, more and more laws were passed. Jazz music and jungle drums!
(Side note: I read somewhere that the estimated per capital of American opiate addicts is higher now than when opiates were OTC. No idea if that's true, but seems believable)
Eventually, under Nixon, they said explicitly it was illegal because of hippies and negros and keeping those groups down, but for centuries before that, at least in the New World, the Devil's Tobacco culture, legality, and all of that jazz was inextricably tied to race.
I keep seeing all of these ads about "Vet support" - give to help, etc., and it is a very NOBLE cause.
I get pissed that we need non-governmental/private groups to do what the government should be doing to honor those that gave so much (won't even go into how they should not have been there in the first place).
SUPPORT YOUR COUNTRY - but don't count on your country supporting you when you get back. 
usually under a concern for budget battles.
But this SHOULD NOT be about budget - it should be about caring for those that gave for our country!
But these F**kKING Pugs don't give a S**T about that - they care about the MIC (remember, Ike warned us about it!), you know, the "Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld War Machine" (think Halliburton) and the Kochs ("Preserve the 1%!"
.
