MarijuanaNews.com : More Stupid Prohibitionist Tricks: Orwell Died Before Cliff Kincaid Was Born, But He Knew Him All Too Well.

Posted July 3, 2005
Analysis by Richard Cowan

One of the purposes of
MarijuanaNews.com is to document the workings of prohibitionism. Last week there
was another installment in the great “medical marijuana scam” scam.

One prohibitionist
organization put out an expensive press release, and another helped tout it.
See

How the Prohibitionist Funding Racket Really Works Shown As Califano Shills for
DEA and NIDA.

But
there is also a “back-story” here, because of my correspondence with one of the
players that I thought that I should share with you. On one level this is just
plain silly, and I have covered this ground before.
To make things even weirder, the event in question
dates back to 1993, years before George Soros became involved in funding
anti-prohibitionist causes.

But for anyone who is new to the debate, it
offers an insight into the way the huge prohibitionist propaganda mechanism
works. Also, it is important to note that law enforcement and public funding
have played a role in this farce.
See

California Narks Lie to Justify Disobeying Prop 215. And They Lie About Me In
The Process.

As I have long argued,
prohibitionism is an international ideology. Most of its adherents are perfectly
sincere. And perfectly delusional. They live in a closed world in which most of
them read only prohibitionist sources. At the top of the idea chain, ideologies
are simply the elements of a political philosophy. At the bottom of this chain,
ideologies are a substitute for thinking, and people like Cliff Kincaid serve it
out like mess hall workers who provide the intellectual equivalent of “comfort
food.” No chewing required.

One of the key differences
between prohibitionist and anti-prohibitionist web sites is that we quote the
prohibitionists in context and provide links to prohibitionist sources. We
want our readers to know what the prohibitionists are actually
saying.
From 2001, see

What the Prohibitionists Are Saying About Medical Marijuana. Briefs Filed In
Opposition to Medical Necessity Defense. 3 Items. Have Your Anti-Emetics Handy.

and

Handling and Reporting Of Medical Marijuana Issue In
Berkeley
Gives Insight Into How Marijuana Prohibition Really Works — 4 Items

Indeed, that is the source of
one of the greatest advantage that we have over the prohibitionists. We know
what they are saying, but they have to make up what they think that we must be
saying.

Hannah Arendt explained that
advantage when she wrote, “The trouble with lying and deceiving is that their
efficiency depends entirely upon a clear notion of the truth that the liar and
deceiver wishes to hide. In this sense, truth, even if it does not prevail in
public, possesses an ineradicable primacy over all falsehoods.”

The motto of
MarijuanaNews.com,
“Freedom has nothing to fear from the truth” is not just a philosophy, it is a
political reality.

Then there are groups like the hilariously miss-named Accuracy in the Media (AIM.org),
a group that appeals to conservative tribalism. They make Rush Limbaugh and Ann
Coulter look mushy. Welcome to the world of delusional prohibitionism.

Video Exposes Medical Marijuana as Hoax
By Cliff Kincaid | June 30, 2005

http://www.aim.org/aim_column/3818_0_3_0_C/

Rhode Island Governor Donald L. Carcieri has vetoed a
“medical marijuana”
bill, saying it would encourage marijuana use and criminal activity. His
veto comes as an anti-drug group has released dramatic
video footage of a
marijuana activist declaring that he uses dope for a health problem that he
doesn’t really have. The bottom line for this activist, Ed Rosenthal, is
that “I like to get high. Marijuana is fun.” The video
has the potential of
dealing a major blow to the “medical marijuana” movement, largely funded by
billionaire George Soros.

The video footage, posted at the website

www.sorosmonitor.com, gives the lie
to the claim that we often see in the media that smoking marijuana is a
legitimate medical treatment for people with diseases. Rosenthal, who was
associated with High Times magazine for many years, is shown speaking to
dozens of marijuana activists. “With all the talk about medical marijuana, I
have to tell you that I also use marijuana medically (laughter),” he says.
“I have a latent glaucoma, which has never been diagnosed (more laughter).
And the reason why it has never been diagnosed is because I’ve been treating
it (laughter)SBut there is a reason why I do use it. And that is because I
like to get high. (cheers, applause). Marijuana is fun.”

The video proves that “medical marijuana” is a joke
to those on the inside
of the pro-pot movement who realize that getting the public and the media to
accept the notion that smoking marijuana alleviates health problems is a
major step down the road to complete legalization of dope. In fact, another
video excerpt shows Richard Cowan, former director of NORML (National
Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws), saying that “The key to it
[legalization] is medical access because once you have hundreds of thousands
of people using marijuana medically under medical supervision the whole scam
is going to be blown. Once there’s medical access and if we continue to do
what we have to do-and we will-then we’ll get full legalization.”

Cowan says that his reference to “scam” is a comment on the anti-marijuana
“prohibition” movement. He stands by his remarks that the widespread use of
marijuana on medical grounds “would hasten the full legalization of cannabis
for non-medical use.” He is quick to say, however, that he is not associated
with the “medical marijuana” movement funded by billionaire George Soros. “I
have never met Soros, I get no money from him, and have never sought any
personally,” he says. Cowan currently operates a pro-marijuana website.
(MarijuanaNews note: My correspondence with
Kincaid is reproduced below. Notice that he somehow forgot to mention the name
of my site, unlike sorosmonitor.com in the next sentence. Again, this is typical
of the prohibitionists. They do not want their readers to know what we are
actually saying.

However, I strongly suspect that had Kincaid provided a link to
MarijuanaNews.com, very few of his readers would actually check it out. People
who read people like Kincaid don’t want to hear or read things that they
disagree with, especially from a “pro-marijuana” website. Why should they look?
They live in a closed world with closed minds and they like it that way. He
fills a niche market for people who are happy living in their niches.)

Steven Steiner, who runs the anti-Soros website,

www.sorosmonitor.com, and
the DAMMAD (Dads and Mad Moms Against Drug Dealers) organization, was in the
National Press Club audience last October 28 when Soros was preparing to
deliver a Bush-bashing speech just a few days before the election. Steiner
walked to the podium and attempted to say a few words about his son, who had
died of a drug overdose. He was quickly surrounded and led away, where he
was thrown into a door, injured and hospitalized. His hospital bill was
$670. Steiner created his website to provide current news on the most
prominent drug legalizer in the world. He believes that “medical marijuana”
is a fraud designed to usher in full drug legalization, and that the video
he has posted on

www.sorosmonitor.com proves the case.

But will the major media report on the explosive and shocking comments on
the tape? Most of the media, several states-and 161 members of the
House-have bought into the notion that smoking marijuana somehow has medical
benefits. That was the number of House members who voted on June 15 to
prohibit the Department of Justice from spending any money arresting or
prosecuting users of “medical marijuana.” But the Steiner video is just the
latest evidence that “medical marijuana” is just a front for the illegal
drug movement and that it exploits sick people.

Six days after that House vote, federal authorities announced the results of
an investigation which determined that “medical marijuana” clubs and
dispensaries in California had been used as a cover for international drug
dealing and money laundering. The problem emerged after California voters
passed a 1996 proposition allowing the use of marijuana for so-called
medical purposes. One suspect, Enrique Chan, told an undercover agent that
if the drug traffickers got arrested and prosecuted for dealing dope they
could beat the rap by bringing in “really sick patients with cancer” who
were using marijuana and “have them sit on the stand for you.” He said that
“no jury is gonna try, is gonna convict you.” While sick people were being
cynically exploited by the dopers, Chan estimated that only about half the
people buying the marijuana actually claimed to
be sick. The rest, like Ed
Rosenthal, just wanted to get high.
(MarijuanaNews note: If he really said that, Mr.
Chan is in for a rude awakening. In a federal court there can be no mention of
anything suggesting that the use was medical, because the federal government
does not acknowledge that there is such a thing. That is what killed Peter
McWilliams, and triggered the jury rebellion in the Rosenthal case.)
See

Unequal Injustice: Rosenthal Sentenced to One Day, As Others Continue To Have
Lives Ruined By Multi-Year Sentences. Analysis by Richard Cowan
and links

The video also sheds some light on a Soros-funded
organization called the
Drug Policy Alliance. It shows Marsha Rosenbaum, director of the Drug Policy
Alliance in San Francisco, providing a rather shocking view of how to
educate children about drugs.

Rosenbaum says, “I think first drugs are inherently neither hard nor soft,
good nor bad. Another assumption has to be that total abstinence from drug
use, even if that’s what we want, is unrealistic. Controlled drug use is
possible. The first thing I would assign is Andrew Weil’s book Chocolate to
Morphine, which is a classic. It simply outlines pretty much every drug kids
come across. And talks about not good drugs not bad drugs, relationships
with drugs. He describes them. And I think that’s how we need to
start. Finally, and probably most radical, I think a goal of harm-reduction
education would be to utilize positive role models. I think it would be very
useful in a drug education program for people with non-problematic drug
experience to talk to them. All the time my friend Craig Reinarman is always
saying, you know, why is it that they always bring in addicts to talk to
kids about drugs. It’s like bringing someone in who failed at it to tell
them how to do it or how not to do it. That just doesn’t make any
sense. What if we had people who had used drugs for a long time in a
controlled rational way-didn’t get into trouble with drugs-to impart some of
this information to kids-how they could do that.”

At first, when I asked Rosenbaum for a comment on these remarks, she said
that I did not have permission to use or quote them. When I replied that I
wasn’t seeking permission but only wanted her further comment or
clarification, she called back to say that “If these are my words, I must
have said them a long time ago. I’d like to think I’m more articulate now. I
can’t remember the context.” On the matter of using “controlled” drug users
as role models for kids, she asked, “Are you sure I said those words?” In
any case, she said that her perspective has “evolved” and she has “learned a
lot.” She added, “That particular quote is not what I would want to say at
this particular moment.”

Rosenbaum said her position is that young people “need to be given
comprehensive science-based information” about drugs because they “make
their own decisions, despite our best efforts.”

On her website, devoted to a “reality-based” approach to drug education, she
features a letter to her own son Johnny about illegal drugs. Rosenbaum urges
him to abstain. But if he doesn’t abstain and chooses to “experiment,” she
recommends that he learn as much as he can “and use common sense.” She adds,
“And please, Johnny, use moderation.”

Rosenbaum spoke to AIM after delivering a “Teens and Drugs” presentation at
the national conference of the PTA.

(MarijuanaNews note: Now here is my correspondence
with Cliff Kincaid.)

From:

Cliff Kincaid
To:

cowan@marijuananews.com
Sent: Saturday, June 18, 2005 5:51 AM
Subject: Questions About Taped Comments

Mr. Cowan: a video tape has been provided to Accuracy
in Media showing you making the following comments about the medical marijuana
issue. I want to check to see if these are indeed your comments and if the
implication of your statement is that widespread use of medical marijuana will
lead to marijuana legalization. I would like to know when these comments were
made and at what forum before I quote from them or release them. Do you still
stand by them? Thank you for your review of this matter:

Cowan on tape: “The key to
it is medical access because once you have hundreds of thousands of people using
marijuana medically under medical supervision the whole scam is going to be
blown…once there’s medical access and if we continue to do what we have to do –
and we will – then we’ll get full legalization.”

Thank you. Cliff Kincaid, editor, AIM.

My response:
From:

cowan@marijuananews.com
To:

Cliff Kincaid
Sent: Saturday, June 18, 2005 5:07 PM
Subject: Re: Questions About Taped Comments

Dear Mr. Kincaid:

Thanks for asking. Your are the first prohibitionist
ever to enquire about that tape before citing it as
proof that medical cannabis is just a “scam” to legalize all drugs for
small children.

Of course, I am familiar enough with your writing on the
subject to know that you seem to have already concluded that to be the case.

Actually, I have never seen the video or what I was
absolutely certain was an accurate transcript of what were extemporaneous
remarks, but I think that – except for the ellipsis – the version you cite is
probably correct, as far as it goes. However, as you know, context determines
meaning.

Does the tape also show me saying in the next sentence,
“I mean what we know
is that marijuana prohibition is the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on the
American people…”?

Over the last several years I have cited several
instances in which other versions of my remarks were used to create the
impression that I had actually called our own position as “scam” – which would
be an odd political gaffe by people as diabolically clever as we obviously are.
(Of course, if I really were so evil that I would use
dying people as pawns – and stupid enough to boast about it in public – that
still would not prove that medical cannabis is a scam… just that I am
particularly evil and stupid.)

Below there are a few links to my website,
MarijuanaNews.com, in which I have addressed the odd life of this “quote” over
the last few years. In the meantime, so there will be no misunderstanding, here
is a brief outline of my views.

I have never made any secret of my support for the
full legalization of cannabis, subject to regulations similar to those for
tobacco and over-the-counter drugs. I think that anyone over 18 should be
allowed to buy it and use it, and they should be held accountable for any
consequences of its misuse. (I do not think that cannabis is “harmless” but
neither is being arrested.)

Until cannabis is fully legal, as described above, I
am in favor of exempting medical use from prohibition by means of state and/or
federal laws written for that purpose. Naturally, inasmuch as I am in favor of
full legalization, I would have the medical exemption interpreted as broadly
as possible, because I would put the patients’ needs ahead of the needs of the
prohibition that I oppose. (All control systems “leak.”)

Yes, as my remarks in the tape make clear, I do think
that having cannabis widely used under medical supervision would hasten the
full legalization of cannabis for non-medical use. But why?

First, it will prove that cannabis does help large numbers of people for whom
legal pharmaceuticals are either ineffective or dangerous, thereby proving
that the prohibitionists, not the anti-prohibitionists, have been lying to the
American people.

Second, it will prove that cannabis is far less dangerous than almost all
legal drugs, medical or recreational, thereby proving that the
prohibitionists, not the anti-prohibitionists, have been lying to the American
people.

On the other hand, if cannabis is as dangerous or medically useless as you
think it is, clinical observation should prove that you are correct. That
would hardly help the drive for legalization, even though it is NOT based on
the assumption that cannabis is “harmless.” After all, it is clinical
observations that lead to the recall of FDA approved drugs. Most prescription
and over-the-counter drugs can be very dangerous under some circumstances, but
they still have medical value. Consequently, medical use does not prove that
something is “safe” enough for general use. In fact, it may prove exactly the
opposite.

Finally, I really do believe that cannabis
prohibition is the greatest fraud – or “scam” – ever perpetrated on the
American people, and I think that it is perpetuated by the continual violation
of the Commandment against giving false evidence.

As my last point implies, I am also a Christian. I have
observed that the enforcement of the drug war generally, and particularly as
applied to sick and dying medical cannabis users, is completely inconsistent
with the teachings of Jesus. He healed the sick; he didn’t raid their gardens
and handcuff them, as the DEA did in Santa Cruz, to cite just one instance.

In September of 2002, DEA agents raided a Santa Cruz
cooperative hospice/farm and cut down plants its members had grown for their own
use. DEA spokesman Richard Meyer said, “(W)e see them as victims of their
traffickers.”

Suzanne Pheil, a partially paralyzed post-polio patient
was handcuffed in her bed by the DEA. She said “We are not the victims of drug
traffickers - we are victims of the DEA…. With a gun to my head the DEA stole
the medicine that over 250 sick and dying people worked to grow.”

Presumably, you see them as victims of George Soros –
and me. (By the way, I have never met Soros. I get no money from him, and have
never sought any personally.)

What would Jesus do? Indeed, what would George
Washington or Thomas Jefferson – or Barry Goldwater (for whom I proudly cast my
first vote) – have done?

Sincerely,

Richard Cowan

PS – For your ad hominem file: Since it seemed
important to you to note that David Boaz is gay, well, so am I.
(From Kincaid’s blog

<http://www.aim.org/cliff_blog_entry/P2476_0_12_0/> :
January 4, 2005
Post Runs Puff Piece About Toker   Inside the Washington Post ”puff” piece
about retiring NORML head Keith Stroup <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46033-2005Jan3?language=printer>
is the following: “He loves the weed. He smokes it
nearly every night. He comes home from work, pours a glass of
chardonnay, lights up a joint and turns on the TV news.” And does he watch Dan
Rather? The NORML advisory board

<http://www.norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=5471> includes
David Boaz of Cato, Bll Mahr of HBO, and Nadine
Strossen of the ACLU. Boaz is also a member of the
Independent Gay Forum.

<http://www.indegayforum.org/> The NORML board includes   Ms. Barbara
Ehrenreich, who writes a regular column for Time.   Posted by: Cliff on Jan 04,
05 | 9:01 am | Permalink )

Also, I have smoked cannabis almost every day since
1967. I started in my native Texas when I was 27, when the penalty for
possession of any amount was life in prison. You may judge for yourself whether
it has damaged my capacity for rational discourse, but you might also note that
the threat of harsh penalties did not deter me from starting, and decades of
prohibition have not kept me from easily accessing cannabis. (By the way, I was
gay before I smoked cannabis, but did not become a Christian until after I
smoked. Could that imply that cannabis is a Pearly-gateway drug?)

Relevant links on MarijuanaNews.com:

Reading Between The Lies. New Version of An Old Lie About My Saying Medical
Cannabis Is A “Scam” May Be Clue to New Prohibitionist Party Line. Only A Few
Hundred Patients?
and

The Police Fraud. Someone Is Lying. Marking The 30th Anniversary Of An Article
in National Review. What if Don Quixote Was Right? Analysis by Richard Cowan

and

Former New York Times Managing Editor Rosenthal Denounces “False Compassion” Of
Medical Marijuana Proponents
There are more links on these pages.

If you want to ask me about any of the above, you may
call me at home in Vancouver.

(MarijuanaNews note: I should
also have provided Kincaid with this link, but failed to do so. Not that it
would have made any difference.)

My version of “Because I got high….” By Richard Cowan

Now, try to reconcile the following response from
Kincaid with what he wrote in the column above.

From:

Cliff Kincaid
To:

Richard Cowan
Sent: Saturday, June 18, 2005 4:07 PM
Subject: Re: Questions About Taped Comments
“Dear Mr. Cowan: Thank you for responding. Frankly, I
didn’t interpret your comments to mean that you were perpetrating a scam, but
that medical marijuana would confront or expose the “scam” of keeping the drug
illegal, in your view. Anyway, I appreciate your comments
and will use or quote them — and the context — as we
go forward in this debate. Also, thank you for providing the context and
the citations for where and when the comments were made. Despite my own views,
I wanted to give you the opportunity to respond because
it did appear that the tape was edited in some way and I wanted to make
sure I understood your comments and the point you were making. Thanks again.”

As I told Mr. Kincaid, if I
really were so evil that I would use dying people as pawns – and stupid enough
to boast about it in public – that still would not prove that medical cannabis
is a scam… just that I am particularly evil and stupid.

On the other hand, what is one
to make of people who lie so absurdly in order to incite state violence against
sick and dying people and then really expect it to reverse public opinion. Evil
and stupid? They don’t even rise to that level.

As is so often the case, George Orwell offers the best
insight into this mentality:
“We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then,
when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show
that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for
an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief
bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.” From his 1946
essay “In Front of Your Nose.”

Orwell died before Cliff Kincaid was born, but he knew
him all too well.

Here is an earlier example of the same thing:

A Reply To Josiah About The Medical Marijuana “Scam” — Demanding A Retraction
and an Apology October 20, 1998
and

Fooling Our Children’s Children: Lying About the Medical Marijuana Movement; Is
There Any Difference Between The Drug Czar and A Crackpot? October 18, 1998

and

An Exchange Between Josiah And The “Druggie” October 25, 1998