The Ethics of The Death Penalty

Ethics is the basis for intelligence on a spiritual level. If one sees an issue and assumes no moral responsibility, either he is naïve, like Linda Pastan in her poem called Ethics, or he has no moral compass. I define moral compass as: one’s inner conscience telling them the difference between right and wrong.

A person’s moral compass is often clear because many decisions we make on a daily basis are clear cut; for instance: Last night, a guy behind me on line for cheese steaks, was talking on the cell phone about inappropriate topics and being too loud about it in front of children and everybody else in line. I had options: I could have hit him in the face, in which case he’d stop saying inappropriate things in front of children and I may get a moment satisfaction that I hit a jerk, but he also might have hit back, he could have shot me, etc. The point is, in most cases, when and where it can easily be avoided, violence is not an option.

The shades of gray enter the equation when we talk about things more complicated than a daily issue and it is here that both sides seem to have the intelligent and logical moral decision, even though both sides can be proven wrong. Our moral compasses become tricky when it comes to the issues that have good points on both sides, because the intelligent answer is not as blatant and/or obvious as it is with, “Should I hit this asshole or not?”

In her poem on Ethics, Pastan even puts it to us that sometimes, only our experiences can guide us towards a strong feeling either way, on issues that do not normally apply to us.

In my last paper, I got comfortable being able to say things that I normally keep inside due to their personal nature and I hope to be able to do the same with this paper. It is in this respect that I give the example of abortion.

If you asked me back in high school what I thought on this topic, I’d tell you I find it horrifying to think about killing a child, especially one that is my own. I know that there are those out there who argue that a child isn’t actually living until 8-10 weeks (when it starts to look like a human being and not like a salamander), when their heart is beating, when they develop a body shape, or whatever but when you’ve gotten that little pee stick that tells you that you’ve created a living thing. When this happens, it doesn’t matter if it’s living or not, you get a feeling in your heart that cannot be described in words. Also, it’s not only in your heart; it resonates through your body like the eulogy of a mother or father. I haven’t lost my parents yet but I have lost a grandfather who I was very close with and the fact that I never got to say goodbye was the same guttural feeling I got as when I killed my potential child.

It’s very easy to say a good writer is supposed to be able to argue both sides but when you’ve had a feeling like that and have went through it anyway, it becomes incredibly difficult to be able to say truthfully, you find people who go through with abortions, are abhorrent.

When I was at the clinic, I didn’t want to have my girlfriend abort the baby. In all honesty, I wanted her to keep it, but she told me that it was not the time for it and that it would ruin our lives and that was the end. I didn’t need reassurance of this at any point because my job was to be there for her, to hold her hand and tell her she was making the right decision; to stand by her and her initial feelings so that she wouldn’t be conflicted, confused or be caused any more stress than she had to be. I did it without batting an eyelash because that’s what a good person does.

Morally, was it the right decision? Maybe, maybe not, but it was a hard one to make and one that would cause us both to face a lot of emotions and physical feelings. That’s why I can never agree with a person who stands outside one of those clinics with pictures of dead babies and angry looks on their faces putting a political spin on a very personal decision. Even someone who thinks they have the right to say anything about a woman’s right to choose at home, is in my opinion, unqualified for the life of community.

So as you can see, choosing a moral issue to argue the opposite on is a difficult process. It may seem unnecessary that I write two pages on my decision process but I feel it is necessary for the emphasis that to argue the opposite side makes for a lesser perspective than one that I have experienced.

In lieu of the fact, that I can’t argue abortion, I have chosen to argue capital punishment. Many believe that capital punishment is immoral and wrong. I am not one of these people but I will seek to explain why they feel this way and argue for the immorality of capital punishment.

The systems in place in the United States today to put prisoners to death are lethal injection, electrocution, the gas chamber, firing squad, and hanging. Some of the immorality in these methods is obvious but some are more humane than others.

First up on the list is lethal injection. Lethal injection is a relatively new method of execution. Gaining popularity as recently as the 20th century, lethal injection was brought about as an alternative to electrocution, hanging, a firing squad, the gas chamber and beheading a subject. Lethal injection is the number one form of capital punishment in the United States today being utilized in 36 states, excluding being the preferred execution method of our federal government.

In the process of lethal injection, 3 drugs are utilized to kill a condemned prisoner. The first of these drugs is Sodium thiopental. Sodium thiopental is, according to wikipedia, “an ultra-short action barbiturate.” It acts as an anesthetic to render a prisoner unconscious within minutes. This is given to make sure that the condemned doesn’t feel pain as he dies. The typical doses of this drug are 2-5 grams which is about 3 times the dose that medical professionals use in assisted suicide. This drug was primarily used for inducing comas which according to research can mean that the body is inactive while certain parts of the brain are still operational. If a person was in a coma but still had an active part of his brain during this procedure, he would suffer silently while parts of his body shut down. In its self, thiopental can cause respiratory depression and vascular collapse. Unlike the next drug in the cycle, it is not considered to be non-depolarizing so with such a high dose in the body, it is possible that the brain does not shut down but simply loses consciousness and the body collapses before any of the other drugs can be administered. The purpose of using such a high dose is to make sure the person is out but suppose the displacement into the body happens quicker in an active substance abuser and the body breaks down while they are still conscious enough to feel it but not enough to cry out in pain. Many who are opposed to this procedure site just that and research showed on certain patients of one correctional facility that the amount of this drug in an inmates system, during the execution was less than the amount that is used in an open heart surgery.

The second ingredient in the cocktail is a drug called Pancuronium. According to my research, this chemical is non-depolarizing which means that it does not cause changes in a cells membrane potential and/or it does not have the possibility of affecting the electrical impulses passed between cells in the body. What it does do is relax the muscles, causing “complete fast and sustained paralysis of the skeletal striated muscles, including the diaphragm and the rest of the respiratory muscles.” The problem with this chemical is, if the person is not knocked out from the barbiturate, Sodium thiopental, and many prisoners who have been on lots of different drugs including small to large doses of barbiturates for recreational use, this person will suffer death from asphyxiation in 15-30 seconds and it would be an extremely terrifying way to die.

If they make it through the dose of Pancuronium, without dying of asphyxiation, they have to suffer the third drug in the cocktail, potassium chloride. The third drug in the cocktail, potassium chloride, stops the heart muscle and causes death by cardiac arrest. People in the medical community know this death as hyperkalemia or an excess of potassium. It causes cardiac arrest and can kill prisoners affectively in minutes especially with the amount given but in the folly of this system, as researchers have found, it is possible that not enough of this drug takes effect and the person’s heart slows down while he is paralyzed and he simply cannot scream out in pain, although he is feeling it.

The three drugs mixed outside the body can cause precipitation or “formation of a solid in a solution during a chemical reaction.” If a person’s circulatory system does not move quick enough, and these drugs especially the very first one can slow the circulation of the body, then is there not the possibility that precipitation could occur inside the body causing solids and a painful build up inside the prisoner himself. This would definitely fall within the realm of cruel and unusual punishment.

Also the drugs are monitored by prison guard officials as opposed to health care professionals. The risk of mistakes and errors while administering a carefully scientific treatment is greatly increased. For instance, any one of these three being placed in the wrong order or too much or too little of the drugs or the wrong drugs being put in the system can result in an incredibly painful way to die. If a person is not completely under because thiopental is a short acting barbiturate then he may be paralyzed but still in a great amount of pain even though he can’t tell us that.

Resistance to the drugs is a factor, as well as the screw-ups that can occur in the order these drugs are given or the amounts that they are given. Research conducted by the university of Miami suggested that in certain cases the amount of thiopental in a prisoners system at the time of death was less than the amount used in a common surgery. They were awake to feel their lungs stop responding as they suffocated alive.

The second form of capital punishment is electrocution. Electrocution, also known as the electric chair or simply “the chair,” is utilized in 6 of the United States today with Oklahoma and Illinois keeping it as an option, should lethal injection be judged unconstitutional. This method of execution is utilized only in the United States; though it was used briefly in the Philippines in 1924 and 1976. As recently as 2008, the Nebraska Supreme court found the electric chair to be “cruel and unusual punishment” and removed it as a method of execution in Nebraska altogether. Currently it’s only used as a secondary method of execution because Nebraska was the last state to be using it as the primary method of execution.

Like lethal injection, the electric chair works in stages. Varying levels of electricity are sent through the condemned’s body until that person is dead.

The first wave of electricity is supposed to cause unconsciousness and brain death, the second was supposed to cause damage to the vital organs and an over stimulation of the heart, resulting in death.

Being that the electric chair is an elective procedure today, or one that a prisoner has to request rather than is subjected to without the choice between that and lethal injection, there are few dissentions to this procedure. The risks to this procedure are obvious because of the extreme cases that have been observed when it has been utilized. In Florida, there was a case where flames shot forth from the head of a prisoner named Pedro Medina and that was 1997. In 1999 Allen Lee Davis, convicted of murder was executed via the electric chair and his face was bruised and bloodied so much so that the pictures made their way to the internet and Florida’s primary execution method was changed to lethal injection, permanently, as of 2008.

Next up on the list is the gas chamber. The gas chamber is currently used in 3 states as a secondary execution method.

The Gas chamber uses one of 3 gases. These are hydrogen cyanide, carbon dioxide or carbon monoxide. Through a process of dipping potassium cyanide into a concentrated batch of sulfuric acid, HCN or hydrogen cyanide is created and the prisoner most commonly undergoes convulsions and/or excessive drooling before he finally dies. The last person to be executed by means of the gas chamber was in 1999.

As it is a secondary execution method, there are, once again, few dissentions. We know it to be cruel and unusual punishment because in 1994 a federal judge declared the gas chamber, “cruel and unusual punishment,” even though it’s used as a secondary method only by choice of the condemned today.

The last two methods of execution are firing squad and hanging.

Hanging is currently a secondary option in Washington and New Hampshire. All other states have discontinued the practice as archaic or outdated. The problems with hanging are immense and the risk of losing the head in the long drop is only the least of the problems with the execution method. The most notable problem with this method is that if the neck does not break and the head stays on, it can take a person a while to die of asphyxiation due to hanging. As has been noted previously in this paper though, secondary methods of execution like hanging are on their way out and have been for some time. The best read from a death penalty abolitionist on the topic was written by a man named Clinton Duffy who served as warden of San Quinton prison between 1940 and 1952. His memoir is entitled Eighty Eight Men and Two Women.

The firing squad option is utilized today in only Oklahoma and Utah. It was found to be cruel and unusual because when firing squads were prevalent in every state, the practice was supposed to be that one man on the squad had a blank so that each man on the firing squad had the peace of mind that his bullet might not have been one used to kill but on January 17, 1977 a prisoner at Utah state prison named Gary Gilmore was sentenced to die in front of a firing squad and his brother found that all five bullets were live through examining his brother’s shirt. The result was that most states banned the practice. As of today, 3 remaining inmates have the choice of death by firing squad and after they make their choices, it is likely this method of execution will be phased out of existence for all time. Only as a back up, will it be practiced again, and it will be kept as a back up only for times of war.

So as you can see, most methods of execution are already being phased out with the main methods of execution still around, dwindling. Lethal injection holds a strong place in execution methods and is still all to prevalent today but Alaska, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia, Wisconsin, the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands have no death penalty statute. As the masses begin to say that to kill a prisoner is wrong because America sucks at performing it, are they right?

A Mormon just believes

This seemingly blasphemous play called The Book of Mormon cleaned up at the Tony Awards with 9 awards including best musical.

"Like it’s closest relatives, 'The Producers' and 'Avenue Q,' it’s meant to be offensive, but here’s the thing: It’s really great that this won. The past decade or so of Broadway has become less and less original and more and more based on movies. People don’t want to invest in something they aren’t sure of, so if they have a choice between 'Rocky' the musical and something unknown, 'Rocky' will win every time.

'Mormon' has a lot going for it: catchy music, an irreverent story, and most importantly, a well-known creative team. Honestly, 'South Park' is probably what gave the show the boost it needed to succeed. But the story is original and smart and funny, and that’s what American musical theater has traditionally been. It’s a nice change."

Quoted from - http://www.autostraddle.com/the-2011-tony-awards-were-really-gay-93441/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tggtPHDmrR8&feature=player_embedded#at=245

The Rantings and Ravings of a Madman (an article)

It's always the gift of the writer to spin his best webs of enchantment when he's trashed out of his skull because everybody likes to read the ravings of a mad man. The talent is learning to fuction better in said states. A trashy town and a back alley bar aren't the best way to do that, but when you find yourself face down in the gutter, it seems like a perfectly reasonable time to write about Don Quixote or Alice. Tripped out on a million different substances, that create colors like a lightbright, interchanging reality to a series of pixels that can be manipulated by the users mind, is a great way to have a million stories to tell and no way to tell them.

Isn't it strange, how sometimes the story one's trying to tell are deep within their ravings of lunacy? Lewis Caroll smokes opium and writes about a catapillar that does the same, while an old sea salt like Ernest Hemingway who lived in the Florida keys writes about an old man, in a fishing boat out in the sea. Then he blows his brains out. That story made me want to blow my brains out at points, so I feel his pain. I got the message. Fishing is incredibly long and drawn out and has very little payback. It makes you want to put a twelve gage between your eyes and pull the trigger; I get it now.

Some authors don't even try to disguise their stories like John Steinbeck who wrote, "Travels With Charley" which was a true story about him and his dog. Bill Bryson can tell a fantastic story with his book, "Into The Woods."

Still other authors, like Tim O'Brien and Jean Sheppard tell true life stories that either slightly resemble their own lives or are complete fabrications of something that associates with their own lives in no way, shape or form. I suppose that's true freedom for a writer; to totally escape their own reality; but damned I'd be if F. Scott Fitzgerald wasn't a rich playboy and J. D. Salenger an emo shut in.

The truth of the matter is most likely this: sometimes insanity and the loss of ones minds lead them back to themselves and sometimes it leads them into some other direction that matters very little to reality's floundering norms. In any case, they're all a bunch of crazy people, or they just wouldn't be that good.

Internet Porn and Girlfriends

So I happened to be doing what every man does on a daily basis (looking at porn) and I noticed that in the corner of the screen, there was a tab that said, "Is this your girlfriend? Let us know."

Well, of course, this got me excited and laughing because what do they do if it is your girlfriend? First off, my mind ran with ideas. There was one of two options: either they publicize this fact and go haha, look at the dumb ass getting cheated on, or they remove the post.

So, I found a good video and decided to try clicking the button. When clicking on the button, it put up the URL, asked for an explanation and asked for my e-mail. So I filled in every field except the e-mail and submitted the post. The video was not taken down immediately and I got to enjoy watching it again and again.

So, I suppose the moral is, if your girl cheats on you and you catch her online, people are still going to watch her video.

Over and over again... Sucks to be you.

A Web-Based Solution to Getting Your Gifts.

In a capitalistic economy, trade is constant. People search for the best deal, the quickest way to get something or the least hassle. We hurry to the store on Black Friday because we think that all the deals happen on that day, at that store and you can’t find deals anywhere else but we would be wrong.

We need not leave the comfort of our homes and get lost in the crowds, only to end up with half of what we want and more than we bargained for; unless our goal is to improve store commerce and increase fat cat cash flow. We have the power to rise above that with our computers.

Online shopping began in 1979 and was invented by a man named Michael Aldrich who lived in the United Kingdom. His system was a B2B (Business To Business) system that connected a modified 26” color television screen to a “real-time transaction processing computer via a domestic telephone line.” The internet would not be invented until the 1980’s but after Thomson Holidays’ online shopping system of 1981 and Gateshead’s SIS/Tesco in 1984, the first online shopper was ready to make a purchase. In May of 1984, Mrs. Jane Snowball of Gateshead, England became the first person in history to do just that.

In 2006, E-commerce product sales totaled $146.4 billion in the United States alone, accounting for 6% of the retail products sold in the country. Consumers also purchased $18.3 billion in clothes, accounting for 10% of the domestic market.

These facts give the history but the real reason for buying online lies in the user. Online products give bargaining power to the consumer because they enjoy a wider choice than they do at any store; they give the supplier power because the supplier doesn’t have the overhead cost of running a store, meaning lowered prices and higher customer volume is a norm.

Online shopping also increases commoditization, which means that when we have access to the lowest price around, the products become cheaper because unless the services are better, we can look for the lowest cost and get the same product for less.

The online experience means getting what you want faster, cheaper, and with businesses competing for consumers and not the other way around.

We already use these services for many other things without realizing it. Google gets paid every time we click on a website and we get the information we need as well. As a student, I know all of us have used Wikipedia.org for projects and other information; in fact, I used Wikipedia and several other sites just to write this paper.

So if we are using online services for most things already, when it comes to doing shopping, why don’t we use them as well? The dissensions to online shopping seem almost idiotic but I prefer to think of them as naïve.

Many say that if we started shopping online, we would never leave the house but that’s not true. If we shopped online at times like Christmas, we’d simply emancipate ourselves to ski, hike, visit with family members, build fires, toast marshmallows and whatever else we enjoy doing around the holidays. Without the hassle of the traffic, if we decided to go to the mall, we could enjoy shopping at leisure instead of the frantic shopping that we suffer today.

Some might say that if people began shopping online, local businesses would see a decline in profits resulting in many of them going out of business but many local businesses already sell online. Barnes and Noble has an online site to buy books, as does Borders Books. Best Buy has an online site as well as CompUSA and Circuit City. If you prefer Radio Shack, they’re online too. Car Dealerships have been online since the days of Thomson Holiday and Enterprise Rent-A-Car will deliver a car, you rented online, to your house.

With all these stores to choose from, going from one to another becomes as short as, “click.” Gas prices are through the roof and walking around all day just to lose your money to a marked up copy of Dickens wastes your time unnecessarily. The online community grows every day and why shouldn’t it when you don’t need to move to visit a mall bigger than the Mall of America?

So as we can see, most businesses are online. Our trips to the store are not necessary unless we need groceries or perishables; so, this season, save some cash, improve your selection, give your car and feet the day off, spend that extra time, that you haven’t had, with your loved ones and order your gifts online.

HBO Pitch: Confessions Of an Economic Hitman

“We were standing at the window in the office we shared, looking out at the stagnant canal that would pass the PLN building. A young woman was bathing in its foul waters, attempting to retain some semblance of modesty by loosely draping a sarong around her otherwise naked body. “They’ll try to convince you that this economy is going to skyrocket,” he said…A movement up the canal caught my attention. An elderly man had descended the bank, dropped his pants, and squatted at the edge of the water to answer nature’s call. The young woman saw him but was undeterred; she continued bathing.”

This is the world that John Perkins saw in his book published in 2003. He justified it, he denied it, he even went as far as to write a book titled “The World as you Dream it” but as Perkins recalls while he drove down a dirt road in Ecuador with the Shuar tribe what they said, “ ‘The world as you dream it [?]’ … ‘Change that dream.’”

“This story MUST be told. We live in a time of terrible crisis and tremendous opportunity. The story of this particular economic hit man is the story of how we got to where we are and why we currently face crises that seem insurmountable. This story must be told because only by understanding our past mistakes will we be able to take advantage of our future opportunities… Most importantly, this story must be told because today, for the first time in history, one nation has the ability, the money, and the power to change all this. It is the nation where I was born and the one I served as an EHM: the United States of America.”

You gentlemen and ladies here at HBO must consider making this book into a TV movie that millions will watch just so that this story can be told.

With the help of an all-star cast such as politically inclined actor, George Clooney as John Perkins and Jennifer Connolly as Claudine, We plan to take the silver screen by storm. In our movie, Enrique Ingelicas explains to Perkins about the alternatives to war and silent imperialism as Omar Torrijos. Oded Fehr plays Farhad, teaching Perkins about the Middle East and even saving him from certain Annihilation as Iran falls. Rip Torn plays Howard Parker who proves to be Perkins wisest teacher showing him that capitalism may make things cozy in America but the world outside of our own back yards is one we may never want to see.

Real clips of the invasion of Panama and our presidents Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush are shown through out the film. The signing of the treaty of the canal can only be broken down by the real pictures of carnage in Panama after the American invasion for that same treaty to be destroyed. The hostage situation in Iran with Black Hawk down can be shown to show the people what Hollywood has already shown them in the recent movie Black Hawk Down.

Perkins in this film adapted from the book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man goes from Ecuador to Indonesia, to Panama, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and back to Ecuador to drive the final nail into his proverbial coffin of guilt into doing the right thing.

His point at the end of the book is that many people will go through the same thing he does but because of the wall of lies and deception into doing “the right thing” they won’t know the truth from the lies.

At the end of the book he has a daughter with his new wife, years after he divorces his first wife Ann for mutual differences of opinion, named Paula. He tells us that he believes it is his duty to build a world for her, or at least help shape one where she doesn’t have to live with the mistakes and purposeful problems set in motion by those who came before her.

He says at the end of the book, “The EHMs had failed. The jackals had failed. So young men and women were sent to kill and die among the desert sands.” The paragraph goes on to explain what this would mean for the royal house of Saud but I think we all know this means much more to the American people and to see how all this came about is one of the things that Americans are now eating up as they come to grips with the fact that their government may not have their best interests in mind. We get distracted with all the things on TV and with what the media giants like CNN put on the air to tell us that it’s all ok and we’re beating back the oppressors but really all they’re doing is putting on another type of football game for us to say, “touch down in Iraq!” Perkins writes, “We who live in the most powerful nation history has ever known must stop worrying so much about the outcome of soap operas, football games, quarterly balance sheets, and the daily Dow Jones averages and must instead reevaluate who we are and where we want our children to end up. The alternative to stopping to ask ourselves the important questions is simply too dangerous.”

So ask yourselves these questions you patrons of justice. Will you let the truth go untold and let your children and their children remain unaware of those atrocities committed in the name of freedom, in the name of their country, the greatest and most powerful country on the earth, to fill the pockets of the corporotocracy or will you lend the only help you can in the fight for liberty and democracy around the world by letting the truth be known and telling this story of one man’s faults and eventual confessions to these deeds? Will you like Perkins, struggle with the truth or be as Paul Revere and ride bravely into that night to alert the people that their oppressors have arrived? You alone hold the key to making this movie but the truth is already out there in a book; the confessions of the Economic Hit Man have been leaked and no press in the world can stop the truth short of simply calling Perkins a fanatic. Words are the most powerful thing to deter future injustices and Perkins has shown us that with his novel. He has told us the story of his life that he lived and we cannot deny him the fact that he was there when these things happened. The fire is burning brightly for the masses and like the light of heaven; it is our destiny now to be drawn towards that light and right those wrongs. Either way, the truth is coming out and we all are busy telling it so join us and together we may find a light, a way, and a path towards what is right and what is just. Until then, I await the decision of a few good men willing to tell the tale.

Marijuana (Cannabis):

“Marijuana, while chemically distinct from the foregoing, is also considered as a hallucinogen.” Although any man who tells you that he’s seeing shit on the weed he’s got, you should ask him where he got it from. That shit may not be weed.

“Pharmacologically, it is not a narcotic although its control under the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937- and later laws- is somewhat similar to the control imposed on narcotics.” It’s also bullshit. Now you got to have a stamp that the government never made to get your weed? I’ll tell you why they never made any stamps, they were all too god damn baked. “Also, like narcotic law enforcement, marijuana law enforcement is handled by the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs as well as certain state and local law enforcement agencies.” Let’s be honest, if republicans really believed in a free market economy, they’d see that this drug, although intoxicating and stupefying, is not dangerous. In addition to that, it’s one of the biggest cash crops on the entire planet that actually is safe enough to be a healthy alternative to alcohol, tobacco, and certain seriously dangerous pharmacological remedies that are not yet properly proven to guarantee results. The Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs in addition to local law enforcement? Seems like a lot to take down some pot-heads. The most dangerous thing about the drug is the people selling it. Why not eliminate them and take over the game? Democrats are about freedom and social programming and republicans are about free market, together, they have the capacity to regulate marijuana while letting the people of America make millions off a non-lethal drug.

“According to the Commission on Narcotic Drugs of the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations, Marijuana abuse is more geographically widespread than abuse of any other dangerous drug.” First off, to die from Marijuana, you have to smoke at least 3 times your body weight in weed. My lungs would quit and I’d fall asleep at about a pound of it. So, marijuana is not a dangerous drug. The fact that it’s the most widely used drug means people are probably not dying from it and the benefits outweigh the consequences. It also proves that governments around the planet can not stop people from using it, they can only nip at their feet by cutting off their sources every once and a while and ruining a good time. Like the guy at the bar who has to tell the story of how his sister died from a drunk driver when everybody’s at the bar drinking. Government opinion and regulation of this plant make about as much difference as their opinion and regulation of prescription medication or alcohol; two much more dangerous drugs that people abuse and actually die from left and right. In addition to that, what’s considered abuse? I consider abuse when a person is paralyzed by their addiction. Marijuana addicts, and I do know a few, tend to bounce right out of it when they can’t afford it. It’s a psychological addiction but not one that warrants cause for concern. If it was really abused by that many people, we’d have a much higher population worldwide, getting nothing done and this is not that time in our history. “Widely encountered in the Americas, Africa, Southeast Asia and the Middle East, It is known as bhang or ganja in India, Hashish in the Middle East, dagga in South Africa and maconha or djamba in South America.” First of all, I don’t know or care about all the names weed goes by but I do know that Hashish is not straight weed. It is a chemical concentration of THC through a process of breaking down the oils from the plant and adding those pure THC oils to already potent weed. Get your facts straight.

“The intoxicating substance which gives marijuana its activity, generally considered to be a tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) derivative, is found primarily in a resin from the flowering tops and leaves of the female plant. The potency of marijuana varies with the geographical location in which the plant grows, time of harvest, and the plant parts used.” This makes no sense because the potency of marijuana is determined by how it’s grown and taken care of, not the time of harvest or the geographical location. Any shlub with money now a day can buy a –ponics system and grow highly potent buds wherever they choose. They have to be careful of course because the police can bust in on them at any time but it is fact that if they preen their plant, take care that it doesn’t have contact with the outside, and/or can take care of that plant to make sure its growing process is undisturbed, the buds will get more and more potent as the plant tries to get fertilized. Fluke things can happen as well; the wrong temperature, not enough light, not enough nutrition, not enough water, etc. and any of these can result in plant death or the sex of the plant to change, creating less potent buds. The female plant is not the only version of marijuana that carries THC. The male plant can carry it as well. Perhaps not in large enough doses to get you to the high that you achieve from a female but THC is part of the marijuana plant in general. “For example, hashish is stronger than American marijuana because the former contains more resin.” Hashish contains more resin because it’s not marijuana and it can be manufactured in the US or in other countries. The fact that it has more resin is due to the fact that it’s not just the plant matter its self but plant matter added to more THC to produce a product that doesn’t even look like a bud, most of the time, presenting its self in dark brown brick form. It’s like if you were to take a plant and cover it in that THC resin that is extracted from the plant and then combined back into it to make a more potent substance that is not marijuana but simply “hash.” Hashish is manufactured in the United States as well. Some manufacturers even use driers from a washer/drier combo combine with special bags to create a substance called “bubble hash,” most commonly found in the United States in Hawaii. European companies dealing in marijuana, have for a while, sold seeds and other paraphernalia via magazines and the Internet but the most common place for Americans to get their pot accessories, when they live in a state that still enforces the illegality of pot, is Canada. With the emersion of pot dispensaries in California, the government is taking its first step against independent growers but the void is filled by many legal growers and pot enthusiasts creating a range of products that can be smoked, eaten, inhaled, drank or swallowed. While some say this increases the abuse of marijuana, the facts show that this is most likely the best way to keep tabs on marijuana users and how much they use because sales can be tracked and regulated.

“Medical Use. Marijuana once had a minor place in medical practice. But because the safety and effectiveness of newer drugs so outweigh the limited utility of marijuana, it is no longer considered medically respectable in the United States.” This obviously proves the out datedness of this book. Marijuana today, is safer than it’s ever been. With the derivative, THC, being made into new forms, I.e. swallowing the pot in cookies and cakes and various other foods, inhaling the pot with a vaporizer, taking a THC pill or drinking it in a drink, the dangerous and corrosive aspects of the smoke of marijuana are almost nullified. Marijuana has been proven to treat illnesses such as glaucoma, the sickness associated with Chemo-therapy, and a dozen other mental health conditions, actually made worse by a dependency on the pharmaceutical companies’ legal, but very dangerous drugs. Many of the legal drugs that are prescribed in the United States today are sold in a sort of black market trade between friends and family. These dangerous drugs are also proven to be more of a gateway to other drugs than THC could ever hope to succeed in becoming. Marijuana has been proven to not be physically addicting and although the mental addictions, because people like the high, are present, they still affect a smaller proportion of the world than the over one thousand dangerous and yet readily available to anyone with cash, drugs in the US today. There are many illnesses out there that use marijuana as a front but for the ones that really matter (Glaucoma and the stomach pains associated with Chemo-therapy) marijuana has proven its self more effective than the drugs they used to use which had little or no effect. “In a few countries of the world (Such as India and Pakistan) it is still a local remedy.” I don’t know the countries using marijuana as a remedy still but I do know that in many countries, including the US, Marijuana is a religious sacrament, a medicinal remedy, and a cash crop producing billions of dollars in California alone.

“Abuse: Marijuana may be smoked, sniffed or ingested, but effects are experienced most quickly with smoking.” Who the hell has ever heard of sniffing weed? Like seriously are you sure we’re talking about weed and not coke? I’d imagine you could get really, really high if you made a powder out of buds like hydroponic snuff but why would you? If it could be distilled down to the level of pure THC powder, you could get really really high, but in this case, it would probably turn out white not green and it would cease to be an all natural drug. In fact, we should let the pharmaceutical companies know about it. I hear they enjoy the adulteration of natural plant-like remedies.

In any case, I'm just one voice reading a book and making fun of it. I really don't care what your opinion is, however, I hope you've gotten a few facts, a few ideas, and a few laughs. Thanks for reading.