What a Wild World We live in

Fox News Host Calls For Jailing Missouri SWAT Cops Over Botched Pot Raid

Judge Andrew Napolitano, host of Fox News.com’s Freedom Watch, has long been on the right side of the war on drugs, and his scathing critique of the deplorable police actions in Columbia, Missouri is no exception.

(To recap for those who have not yet seen the video: under the cover of darkness, a team of militarized SWAT agents enter a family home and immediately engage in gunfire — killing one of two family dogs and wounding the other — and likely inflicting lifelong trauma to the family’s seven-year-old son. Police ultimately seized a small amount of marijuana residue and associated paraphernalia, which resulted in a misdemeanor charge and a $300 fine.)

In fact, Napolitano’s very first question to befuddled Columbia Mayor Bob McDavid is: “When are the cops who did this going to be arrested and put in jail where they belong?” It’s a valid question that, not surprisingly, leaves the new mayor speechless.

In less than a week nearly one-million people have watched the graphic and sickening footage from Columbia. It has, quite understandably, inspired public outrage and, apparently, some welcome changes in police procedure.

Yet as NORML Outreach Coordinator Russ Belville astutely points out on today’s edition of the NORML Stash blog, none of these minor amendments to protocol in any way gets to the heart of the problem, and that is this: Police and politicians still “accept the premise that this level of force is appropriate to keep people from using marijuana.” Ultimately, this societal mentality must change.

That is why, while on the one hand NORML (obviously) supports cannabis medicalization and decriminalization efforts, we also recognize that these efforts fall woefully short for many Americans. In short, the only way to fully protect all our citizens from these kinds of abhorrent events is through the legalization and regulation of marijuana for all adults. Help us make this a reality.

Stop the violence. Join NORML.

Need a transplant? Give up medical pot.

Jim Klahr needs a new liver. And he wants to take medical marijuana to help with the nausea he fights every morning as he battles hepatitis and cirrhosis. He says his body can’t tolerate most drugs that physicians have prescribed for his symptoms, but pot does the trick.

Southeast Portland resident Klahr has a medical marijuana card, but he hasn’t smoked since 2004, because Oregon Health & Science University, the state’s only liver transplant center, won’t provide organs for people with marijuana compounds in their blood, even if the patients are medical marijuana cardholders. Klahr is on the OHSU transplant waiting list.

Mike Seely, OHSU’s director of transplant and procurement services, cites two reasons for the transplant policy. First, he says, federal rules trump state law. OHSU is part of a consortium with the Portland Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and federal law does not recognize medicinal marijuana. OHSU could be in danger with federal authorities if it allowed marijuana users to receive organs.

Seely says that, in addition, transplant doctors are afraid of a fungal infection occurring in patients who smoke marijuana.

John Niemitz, manager of transplant services for Legacy Health System, Oregon’s other transplant center, says Legacy maintains a similar policy. Niemitz cites the infection risk and adds that “there is a risk of altered consciousness,” which might interfere with a patient’s ability to follow a rigorous post-transplant regimen of medications and appointments.

Niemitz doesn’t think Legacy’s transplant policy is costing lives, as marijuana activists claim. He says that as far as he knows, every cardholder Legacy has dealt with has been willing to give up their medical marijuana as the price of getting a transplanted organ.

“People have found that pretty reasonable,” Niemtiz says.

But some medical ethicists and transplant surgeons aren’t so sure.

The little research that has been done on the question of marijuana and transplants does not appear to show that marijuana does any harm, say surgeons at the University of Michigan Medical Center, where much of that research has been conducted.

Years ago, Michigan surgeons discovered about 10 percent of transplant patients had marijuana compounds in their blood. The surgeons provided livers to many of the marijuana smokers anyway and then followed them post-surgery and found that they did as well as non-smoking patients.

Michael Englesbe, a University of Michigan surgeon involved with the study, says the research has had an impact on transplant decisions there. Now, each potential recipient is considered as an individual, Englesbe says, and marijuana does not rule anyone out. The critical question is whether potential recipients — dope smokers or not — will take good care of themselves and their organs.

I just took 7 amazing res hits

i’m really high.

my shirts on backwards.

and i’m still in pajamas.

oh shit i almost forgot, my hairs in an afro right now.

MGMT - SOMEONE’S MISSING. …on repeat.