Political Attack On Business
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posted by Bob at Monday, March 05, 2007
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Monday, March 05, 2007
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- Mortgage Lenders Are Going Under Too!
- Vick's House
- Saint Paul landlord Headed For Jail
- Homeless through Condemnation
- Payne Raper
- Landlords and Individual Responsibility
- DEATH and Rebirth
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Minnesota Legislature / Up in smoke?
Lawmakers are considering whether to end the legal distinction that bans the sale of pot-smoking paraphernalia but allows the same merchandise to be sold for use with tobacco.
BY JOHN BREWER
Pioneer Press
One man's legal smoking accessory is another man's illegal drug paraphernalia.
But if Minnesota State Sen. Amy Koch, R-Buffalo, has her way, a bong will be a bong will be a bong.
And it will be a crime to sell, buy or use one.
"We recognize that you can smoke pot out of a pop can, an apple, a light bulb," Koch said. "We're going after the bongs."
Selling drug paraphernalia is already illegal in the state. Koch said her bill would strengthen the current law by taking away what she calls a "loophole" in the legislation.
Shop owners can sell hand pipes, one-hitters and water pipes because the state's drug paraphernalia law allows them to presume their products are being used to smoke tobacco — exclusively.
In fact, some shops say they either correct a customer's language or send them out the door if they insist on using pot vernacular.
Case in point: On a recent afternoon at Maharaja's in downtown St. Paul, where swords and collectible figurines are sold alongside Grateful Dead posters and glass pipes, a customer asked if a small pouch of the legal herb salvia divinorum would be enough for a "joint."
The clerk asked, "You mean a hand-rolled cigarette?"
Koch's new bill lists exactly what "paraphernalia" is and includes bongs, glass pipes, dugouts and one-hitters. It excludes traditional pipes, like corncob pipes and hookahs.
Koch had presented similar legislation last session, but the bill was pulled from a public safety omnibus bill at the last minute, she said.
This year, the fate of Senate File 278 is still unknown. It was referred to the Judiciary Committee in January but has not yet had a hearing. The House companion bill is also in committee.
Koch said her bill is aimed at places that sell paraphernalia, specifically the nonmetro shops that may have a selection of pipes alongside groceries or cigarettes. She knows that bigger stores, like the northwest metro's Down in the Valley chain or Maharaja's in St. Paul, could also be affected.
"I really think that, for our community, it was really the exposure to the kids," Koch said.
If the bill became law, it would go into effect Aug. 1. Violations would be considered a misdemeanor.
Storeowners React / Most head-shop owners were reluctant to talk about the new bill, but a few said they are not catering to kids. No storeowner mentioned marijuana; most said their wares are for tobacco and legal herbs. No one would allow his or her collection of pipes to be photographed.
Paula Schleis, owner of Dazy Maze Incense and More in Forest Lake, said Koch's bill goes too far.
"It's really a shame we have to deal with this again," said Schleis. "I've had my store for eight years, and I run a clean shop."
Schleis said she sells a lot of " '70s stuff," like beaded curtains, posters and jewelry, and has a back room where she keeps her tobacco accessories.
"The front of my store is open to everybody," she said. "To get into my back room, you have to be 18 years old."
Keith Covart has run the Electric Fetus music and gift store in Minneapolis since 1968. Since starting on the West Bank, he has opened stores in Duluth and St. Cloud and has seen cultural mores change regarding smoking accessories.
He said that when legislators start defining what his products are used for, "it's scary legislation."
"It's just a freedom thing," he said. "Can you smoke a cigarette and not be arrested? Where are we going?"
"If someone states that they want a bong, we say we don't have that and we ask them to leave," said Steve Hyland, who runs four Down in the Valley stores, the first of which opened in 1972.
In his 35 years in business, he has seen similar legislation come and go, he said, and even helped to form a lobbying group to fight it. This time around, there is no unified front against Koch's bill.
"Nobody seems to be concerned about this," he said. "They don't think it's going to pass. It's so vague. How do you prove it?"
Debating The Law / St. Paul City Attorney John Choi said that "proving it" — showing someone bought or sold a pipe for an illicit use — is time-consuming and extremely difficult with current laws.
"You've got to prove what was in the mind of the person selling and the person possessing," he said. "This would be a step towards addressing some of those proof issues."
At the same time, he added, inadequate resources in both his office and in law enforcement statewide would limit the number of paraphernalia cases pursued.
"I don't know if this would change anything in terms of the cases we prosecute in our office," Choi said.
Add to this the fact that selling drug paraphernalia is a misdemeanor — with a maximum of 90 days in jail and a fine of not more than $1,000 — and the bite of the bill weakens.
"We're not going to be shutting anyone down as a result of this law," Choi said.
Tom Walsh, spokesman for the St. Paul Police Department, praised the bill.
"I think the more difficult we make access to those kinds of things, the better our opportunity to keep people from using those controlled substances," he said.
Allen St. Pierre, the executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said drug paraphernalia statutes don't have much impact, mainly because they make illegal just a handful of things people could use to smoke marijuana.
In fact, Koch's bill makes no mention of what St. Pierre called the fastest-growing segment of the paraphernalia business: vaporizers.
"If they went and took out the things identified as paraphernalia, it would still leave dozens of legal products," he said.
Robert Vaughn, a Nashville, Tenn.-based defense attorney, has heard all the arguments for and against paraphernalia.
He has represented clients in 35 states since 1981, he said, in trials that stem mainly from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's introduction of a model paraphernalia law in 1979.
"Anything can be drug paraphernalia, and nothing has to be" under current law, he said.
"Drug paraphernalia is bounded only by the imagination of the drug user."
John Brewer can be reached at 651-228-2093, or at jbrewer@pioneerpress.com.
Oh no, the sky is falling.... No more bongs at the Electric Fetus, what ever shall we do? The state must immediately brace for the economic fallout from the layoffs in the headshop industry. I blame Al Quida
These are some of the businesses that have fell victim to political ambitions.
Gun Shops
Head Shops
Pawn Shops
Book stores
Corner Grocery
Massage parlours
Bars
All legal businesses demonized for political gain.
10:58, you forgot Rental Property Investors.
So your upset because now you will have to walk/drive farther to get a bong, a massage, doritos from the corner store (gotta have doritos after quaility bong time), a gun to rob the bong store, or to get to some rental property? I gotta be honest with you, your complaint makes less sense than Bill Dahn or Sharon Anderson at a Aramaic language symposium
12:42, there should be a law requiring every household to have a gun. Not to protect them from criminals, but, from an aggressive government chieseling away our rights over the actions of a few bad apples.
Add hemp and tobacco to the list of industrys the government attacks for profit and political gain.
A man named Jack Herr wrote a book titled "The Emperor Wears No Cloths", if you can prove the facts in his book to be false he will give you $150,000. A book about the conspiracy's and lies perpetrated by our government so a few in government and connected with government could profit from the probation of marijuana.
What a bloody JOKE! I smoke my herb from a KILLARNEY by Peters of Dublin..
It is a high end tobacco pipe that looks a lot like the one Sherlock Holmes is portrayed with.
Smoke it driving right down the bloody road in front of the bobbies.
2:39 said- A man named Jack Herr wrote a book titled "The Emperor Wears No Cloths", if you can prove the facts in his book to be false he will give you $150,000. A book about the conspiracy's and lies perpetrated by our government so a few in government and connected with government could profit from the probation of marijuana.
2:39, that is prohibition. Don't any of you people here have an education?
Tom Walsh Saint Paul Police Dept.
"I think the more difficult we make access to those kinds of things, the better our opportunity to keep people from using those controlled substances," he said.
Tom that is incredibly small thinking. All these products are easily made from common materials easily accessible from hardware stores. And fact is many kids make their own pipes.
You Dems need to get out of bed with each other. The smell of your sex stinks.
Also, these large water pipes are used by Hindus and others for legitimate reasons.
Dave Thune stole my bong, and Susan Gaerner hid it in the insulation that RAP put in my house. Then Jim Scheibel put formaldehyde in my bongwater. The black helecopters with Dean Barkley and his rolling papers are circling over my house as we speak, and Jesse wants to trade Greatful Dead bootlegs with Leslie Davis
Bill Bong
The Bong of a New Era
billbong.blogspot.com
Your just breaking my heart. You didn't support me when Dave Thune voted to demolish my home with no good reason, so I am not going to support you now that he wants to take away your bong.
3:01
Republicans have been in control for almost a decade at every level and all we got is more poverty, less taxes from the rich, more illegal immigration, more abortions, more unemployment, more bankruptcies, more war (with no recovered WMDs), more terrorists, more college debt, more imminent domain, and more government corruption.
And you're worried about the smell of sex between Democrats?
And not to forget, with all those "mores" we also got a LOT MORE slumlords.
Correct Blogs are: www.billdahn.blogspot.com and www.sharon4council.blogspot.com plus many others
Candidates Ward (2) Sharon lifted the pic's of David Thune's House
The Harrassment from Thune comes from his Bogus Police and Fire Endorsements, www.sharon-mn-ecf.blogspot.com
While reducing drug use, especially amongst minors, is a laudable goal, it will never be accomplished by eliminating paraphernalia or with law enforcement and criminalizing drug use. The Rand Corporation did a federally funded study a few years back and determined that reducing drug use through law enforcement was 7 times more expensive than through drug treatment, yet treatment isn't even mentioned as a possible solution.
It implies we should be stopping supply into our nation and increasing police presence in poor neighborhoods where drug sales are more common. Yet we have tried to reduce supply abroad (see Plan Columbia) and we have criminalized the poor community (1/3 black males is in prison or getting out of prison). The reality is, we have tried to reduce drug use and supply through arrest and incarcerate policies for 30 years now, yet drug usage statistics have remained fairly consistent, yet drug purity has increased and prices have declined.
Yet if the police are more successful, drugs become more expensive, thus more profitable. This is simple economics, folks.
The federal government's budget for drug enforcement has mushroomed from $69 million to close to $100 billion today, we have 2.1 million Americans living in cages, and no progress seems statistically visible from these current and previous efforts.
Progress is visible! The more people the governemnt ciminalizes, the more police, judges, jails, courts, social workers, moms needing welfare,etc. The name of the game is control. The left can't take over like a communist regime would cause they can't get our guns away from us, so they do it with the law and never having to fire a shot. Just take away one freedom after another, and they do it with laws that they know either won't work, or they hold someone eles responsible for something they have no control over.....like the housing issues that are fraquently discussed here.
While the particulars of your argument are correct, the substance is not. Government has no intention of ever wanting things or lives to be better. If they did they would use the common sense God gave them and devise a plan that works. Instead they pick us off one at a time....quite often to the cheering of the masses who are quite happy to sacrifice your rights and freedoms as long as it doesn't affect them at all. And in the process the government gets control over your life and your money.
It's getting to the point where I am embarrassed to be an American.
BILL BONG, someone must be concerned about Bill running for City Council.
I told Bill how to win the ward.:-)
All he has to do is go door to door in ward 2 with my news letter and his campaign flier and he will be the next Councilman in Ward 2.
Bill knows he may need some assistance as Councilman. Maybe he would call on Leslie Davis. :-) Or me! :-)
Now don't consider this an endorsement from me of Bill. Remember my friend Sharon is running in Ward 2 also. I wish the best of luck to both of them.
It is no secret among historians that the war on drugs was racist since its inception. The first official mention of Cannabis by a public official was made by the District Attorney and Public Safety Commisioners in New Orleans from 1910-1930 stating that marijuana's insidious evil influence apparently manifested itself in making the "darkies" think they were as good as "white men." The most telling historical data on the drug war's racism is found in the notes of Harry Anslinger, the founder of the modern day DEA, known as the Bureau of Narcotics in those days. In his memoirs, Anslinger ordered his agents to keep files on many African American Jazz musicians such as Thelonius Monk, Louis Armstrong, Les Brown, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Jimmy Dorsey, Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton, and Andre Kostelanetz, all people we think of as musical innovators today. The only thing that stopped Anslinger's plan to arrest all African American Jazz musicians was the Secretary of the Treasury Foley disaproving of Anslinger's plan.
SCOOTS IS GOING DOWN!!! CHENEY'S NEXT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ST.PAUL OFFICIALS TO FOLLOW!!!!!!!!!
7:26,
Here is a brief summary of the real forces behind hemp prohibition. In the 20's DuPont developed a chemical to enable the processing of pulp wood into paper. Big shots like Randolph Hearst and many politicians bought stock in this chemical.
Hearst using his vast media emperor and these renegade politicians for profit, waged a propaganda war on hemp. They used the ignorance of the people to pass laws prohibiting the production and sale of hemp.
They even went as far as to use the race card to misinform a ignorant public.Black men rape white women while smoking pot.
When I was a kid they showed us the "Reefer Madness" film in school to deter us from smoking pot. The movie can be found in the humour section of most video stores today.
Read Jack Herr's book "The Emporoer Wears No Cloths".
In this case we lost a whole industry. HEMP..
The USS Constitution (Old Iron Side) was outfitted with over 40 tons of hemp, sails of Hemp, hemp rope, the sailors shoes were of hemp, there was hemp oil for the lamps and more.
It's all about money
(Unknown source)- The prohibition of domestic hemp growth is about what everything is about in this country. It's about money. The drug war is big business huge business. If hemp cultivation were legalized, there would be an awful lot of DEA agents out of a job.
Consider this: of the one-and-a-half billion cannabis plants found and destroyed by U.S. drug agents between 1993 and 1997, only fourteen million were marijuana. That's 0.9 percent. That means that 99.1 percent were low-THC hemp. Legalizing hemp would translate to laying off 99.1 percent of all agents of the War on Marijuana, 99.1 percent fewer guns, helicopters, automobiles, flack jackets, etc. That's a lot of money in government contracts.
Hemp is a plant that can naturally and sustainably provide many products presently available only from corporate giants like DuPont, International Paper, Texaco, BASF and the like. They could lose billions if hemp was grown in the United States for fiber, paper, fuel, and plastics. They have millions of dollars to back anti-hemp propaganda. They sponsor programs like D.A.R.E. and The Partnership for a Drug-Free America that equate hemp's cousin marijuana with deadly drugs like heroin and methamphetamine to prevent Americans from learning the truth. The cannabis leaf has even become the poster child for the drug war. Corporate-backed programs such as D.A.R.E. and The Partnership for a Drug-Free America are teaching our children that this incredible Earth-friendly plant is as dangerous as heroin and methamphetamine. These corporations slander cannabis while promoting themselves as lovers and supporters of the environment. They run TV commercials that would have us believe that they are environmental activists with deceptive claims and scenes of pristine streams and forests. But what they really do is clear-cut pristine rainforests, poison our air with ozone-depleting greenhouse gases, and produce tons of toxic chemicals that end up in our drinking water.
Hemp's comeback is in our hands
So how do we change it all? What can we do to show the multinational mega-corporations that we care about our environment even if they don't?
Remember, it's all about money. If we continue to buy the same old products from the same old companies that have gotten us into this mess, we can expect more of the same destruction. But, we can affect positive change by buying products produced from sustainable sources by environmentally responsible companies.
Of all the sustainable sources for consumer products, hemp is uniquely suited to provide the widest variety of life's necessities and comforts. In this way, hemp is nature's gift to humanity.
It is a proven fact, habitual marijuana use contributes to testicular atrophy and decreased sperm production. End result = fewer pothead offspring. Smoke up losers!
7:24, does you whole life revolve around a negitive attitude? It sure appears to be that way everytime you respond on the discussion of a topic. The end result is your post has no valid information to society. Get a LIFE!
Bill Expected to Receive Full Senate Vote Within a Month
SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS — Members of the Illinois Senate Public Health Committee passed a medical marijuana bill, 6–4, after receiving written and oral testimony from medical professionals, patients, and policy experts today.
S.B. 650, introduced by Sen. John Cullerton (D-Chicago), is one of about a dozen medical marijuana bills currently under consideration by state legislatures across the country. Medical marijuana policy experts said they expect the bill, which would protect from arrest seriously ill patients who use medical marijuana with a doctor's recommendation, to go to the Senate floor for a full vote within a month.
Committee members heard testimony from multiple sclerosis patient and Illinois Drug Education and Legislative (IDEAL) Reform board member Julie Falco of Chicago. They also considered written testimony from several other patients and experts, including registered nurse and multiple sclerosis patient Gretchen Steele of Coulterville, and psychiatrist Dr. Zulima Hurtado of Round Lake Park, who argued that her experience treating patients indicated medical choices are best left between doctors and patients.
"Medical treatment as a whole should be a choice between a doctor and the patient," she wrote. "The operative word being choice."
A registered nurse, Steele testified that medical marijuana was able to effectively and safely treat her symptoms when other more dangerous drugs failed.
"I can tell you from firsthand experience that marijuana works better to control the spasticity, neuropathic pain, and tremors than do any of the myriad prescription medications that I currently take," she wrote to the committee. "The fact that it is perfectly legal for my doctors to prescribe morphine, OxyCodone, diazepam, hydrocodone, and other drugs that are not only highly addictive but have many unpleasant side effects, yet it remains illegal to recommend marijuana, is beyond reasoning."
Although federal law makes patients who use doctor-recommended medical marijuana criminals, 11 states have effective laws protecting patients for whom serious research proves the medicine is safe and effective, including those suffering from symptoms associated with life-threatening diseases such as cancer, HIV/AIDS, multiple sclerosis, and hepatitis C.
"Today, committee members made a sensible, compassionate decision to square the state's laws with the facts about medical marijuana," said Karen O'Keefe, MPP assistant director of state policies. "Thanks to them, seriously ill patients here may soon be able to focus on fighting their debilitating symptoms, and not on the fear of arrest and jail for simply following their doctor's treatment regimen."
http://www.mpp.org/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=glKZLeMQIsG&b=1157875&ct=3625035
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