Marijuana, the Religious Right, and Pat Robertson's Sudden Bout of Extreme Sensibility

Salem-News.com Marijuana Coverage

Comments Leave a comment on this story.

All comments and messages are approved by people and self promotional links or unacceptable comments are denied.

Hokulani Cheneviere December 26, 2010 5:01 pm (Pacific time)

Hawaii has its own Tommy Chong/Marc Emery kind of political prisoner. Busted for a mere 2 pounds, Reverend Roger Christie has been held WITHOUT bail since July 8th, denied 5 times now, for running a Cannabis ministry as well as dispensing MMJ to card carrying patients here (Hawaii has NO dispensaries provisions). The Judge and Ninth Circuit Court continue to declare Rev. Christie "a danger to the community". Meanwhile, murderers, pedophiles and rapists get out on bail. The US Constitution is shredded when this is done to a US citizen who has harmed NO one. He is surely a political prisoner, since the State of Hawaii allowed Rev. Christie to operate his ministry openly, right on the main street of Hilo, Hawaii for over 10 years.
And like Tommy Chong, the DEA used their trickery when they raided him 4 months prior without arrest, and then told him to "CARRY ON"!
Meanwhile they planted electronic bugs in the ministry and nailed him on "verbage". They did the SWAT thing with the automatic rifles and hauled him away on a huge cargo plane and shut him down and put a muzzle on him. I am sure this cost the taxpayers millions upon millions of dollars.
They cannot have the TRUTH about this plant infecting more minds now, can they? So, spend millions of our dollars to shut him up? Sounds like money well spent, don't ya think?
Where are the victims in this "CRIME"? Who is Reverend Christie a danger to? Would it be the 50 year old woman with Stage 4 ovarian or would it be the 40 year old with MS? Or is it the sincere spiritual seeker wanting to worship as they believe with the use of the Cannabis sacrament believing they are protected by the First Amendment?
Cannabis IS an ancient entheogen (God spirit within) which has been used for multiple purposes that pre-date human history. Everyone knows about Rastafarians but did you know that Cannabis has been used in ALL the major religions at one time or another? The Holy Anointing Oil recipe given to Moses from GOD? Exodus 30:23? Go read "The Living Torah" and see for yourself the main ingredient in this holy oil. It is NOT sweet calumus but Keneh bosm! There is a vast suppressed history of this plant, used in all the major religions. Canadian author and scholar and author, Chris Bennett would be the Go-TO guy for everything you ever wanted to know about religious use of this plant.
Now if more religious leaders could grow a pair like Pat, then there is a chance WE THE PEOPLE can finally emerge out of this Dark AGE of Reefer Madness. Mahalo nui loa to Pat Robertson. He sure got my attention!

jsknow December 26, 2010 10:51 am (Pacific time)

Why is the most useful plant known, a plant that has never killed anyone, illegal? It’s illegal because corporations fear competition from superior, safer and more environmentally friendly hemp products and because the Government loves to oppress jail and steal from the people! Alcohol, tobacco, petroleum, cotton, timber, chemical and pharmaceutical companies, just to name a few all see marijuana as unwanted competition.

The laws prohibiting marijuana are NOT a result of any harm from marijuana. They are the result of racism, lies and greed. Read the well documented proof of that and a lot more marijuana TRUTH in these two articles: “MARIJUANA AND HEMP THE UNTOLD STORY, Thomas J. Bouril” and “WHY IS MARIJUANA ILLEGAL, Pete Guither”, click the links to those articles on this webpage:
Internet Explorer web browser: http://jsknow.angelfire.com/home
All Other Browsers: http://jsknow.angelfire.com/index.html

Anonymous December 26, 2010 4:41 pm (Pacific time)

Hallelujah there is a god.

malcolm kyle December 26, 2010 2:49 am (Pacific time)

If you support prohibition then you are NOT a conservative.
Conservative principles, quite clearly, ARE:

1) Limited, locally controlled government.
2) Individual liberty coupled with personal responsibility.
3) Free enterprise.
4) A strong national defense.
5) Fiscal responsibility.

Prohibition is actually an authoritarian War on the Constitution and all civic institutions of our great nation.

It's all about the market and cost/benefit analysis. Whether any particular drug is good, bad, or otherwise is irrelevant! As long as there is demand for any mind altering substance, there will be supply; the end! The only affect prohibiting it has is to drive the price up, increase the costs and profits, and where there is illegal profit to be made criminals and terrorists thrive.

The cost of criminalizing citizens who are using substances no more harmful than similar things that are perfectly legal like alcohol and tobacco, is not only hypocritical and futile, but also simply not worth the incredible damage it does.

Afghani farmers produce approx. 93% of the world's opium which is then, mostly, refined into street heroin then smuggled throughout Eastern and Western Europe.

Both the Taliban and the terrorists of al Qaeda derive their main income from the prohibition-inflated value of this very easily grown crop, which means that Prohibition is the "Goose that laid the golden egg" and the lifeblood of terrorists as well as drug cartels. Only those opposed, or willing to ignore this fact, want things the way they are.

See: How opium profits the Taliban: http://tinyurl.com/37mr86k

or: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW OF NARCOTICS-FUNDED TERRORIST GROUPS

According to data gathered by privacy expert Christopher Soghoian (PhD candidate at Indiana University), 85-90% of real-time surveillance of your Internet communication is wasted on prohibition enforcement.
youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpageandv=jJDCxzKmROY#t=342s
- he discusses drug related Internet wiretaps at 5min 42sec

Prohibition provides America's sworn enemies with financial "aid" and tactical "comforts". The Constitution of the United States of America defines treason as:
"Article III / Section 3. Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort."

Support for prohibition is therefor an act of treason against the Constitution, and a dire threat to the nation's civic institutions.

The Founding Fathers were not social conservatives who believed that citizens should be subordinate to any particular narrow religious moral order. That is what the whole concept of unalienable individual rights means, and sumptuary laws, especially in the form of prohibition, were something they continually warned about.

It is way past time for us all to wise up and help curtail the dangerous expansions of federal police powers, the encroachments on individual liberties, and the increasing government expenditure devoted to enforcing the unworkable and dangerous policy of drug prohibition.

To support prohibition you have to be either ignorant, stupid, brainwashed, insane or corrupt.

* The US national debt has increased at an average rate of $3,000,000000 per day since 2006. http://www.usdebtclock.org/
* The unemployment rate has increased by 7300 per day since 2008.
* The loss of manufacturing jobs has been 1400 per day since 2006.
* Without the legalized regulation of opium products Afghanistan will continue to be a bottomless pit in which to throw countless billions of tax dollars and wasted American lives.
* The hopeless situation in Afghanistan is helping to destabilize it's neighbor, Pakistan, which is a country with nuclear weapons.
* The mayhem in Mexico has deteriorated so badly that it’s bordering on farcical.

There is nothing conservative about prohibition, which enlists the most centralized state power in displacement of domestic and community roles. There is everything authoritarian and subversive about this policy which has incinerated American traditions such as Freedom and Federalism with its puritanical flames. Any person seeking to insure and not further compromise the safety of their family and of their neighbors must not only repudiate prohibition but help spearhead its abolition.

Narcotics police are an enormous, corrupt international bureaucracy … and now fund a coterie of researchers who provide them with ‘scientific support’ … fanatics who distort the legitimate research of others. … The anti-marijuana campaign is a cancerous tissue of lies, undermining law enforcement, aggravating the drug problem, depriving the sick of needed help, and suckering well-intentioned conservatives and countless frightened parents. – William F. Buckley, Commentary in The National Review, April 29, 1983, p. 495

We will always have adults who are too immature to responsibly deal with tobacco, alcohol, heroin, cocaine, meth, various prescription drugs, gambling and even food. Our answer to them should always be: "Get a Nanny, and stop turning the government into one for the rest of us!"