• Ralph Nader, the Libertarian Party, the Constitution Party, and the Green Party will all substantially increase their raw vote totals over 2004.
• Ron Paul received 2.2% in Montanna and 0.5% in Louisiana. Third place in both.
• Ron Paul kept his districts House seat.
• Few of the Ron Paul candidates won. Lamborn of Colorado 5th District and McClintock of California 4th District. It’s been questioned however whether Lamborn is an actual RP backed candidate.
• Maine rejects sales taxes and medical claim fees to fund state health program.
• South Dakota voted not to ban abortion.
• Massachusetts decrims marijuana.
• Michigan voted to allow medical marijuana.
• Washington voted to allow for allowing some terminally ill adults to obtain lethal prescriptions.
• Arizona shot down requiring revocation of business licenses of any employer who knowingly hires illegal aliens.
• Colorado fails to define human life as beginning at fertilization.
• Nebraska bans discrimination and preferential treatment by the State.

Let me include the bad:

• Few of the Ron Paul candidates won. Lamborn of Colorado 5th District and McClintock of California 4th District. It’s been questioned however whether Lamborn is an actual RP backed candidate.
• Colorado fails to ban discrimination and preferential treatment by the state.
• Colorado fails to prohibit mandatory union membership and mandatory union dues.
• Arizona bans same sex marriage.
• Arizona shot down requiring that a majority of all registered voters approve any initiative with spending or tax increases.
• Arkansas bans unmarried cohabitating couples from adopting or being foster parents.
• California establishes the nation’s first comprehensive farm animal rights law.
• California shot down expanding treatment programs for nonviolent drug offenders. (better then prison IMO)
• California banned same sex marriage.
• Florida bans same sex marriage.
• Massachusetts overwhelmingly rejects getting rid of state income tax.
• Massachusetts bans dog racing.
• Montana provides government funded health insurance coverage for as many as 30,000 uninsured children.
• North Dakota votes against reducing or eliminating income tax.
• Oregon votes against requiring that teacher pay and job security be linked directly to classroom performance.

Just received this in my mailbox from Cheryl Aichele of or on behalf of Friends of Charles C. Lynch

FREE CHARLES LYNCH 8am Court Support 11am PROTEST
Body: Americans for Safe Access (ASA) members and friends will be providing court support and protesting for medical cannabis provider Charles Lynch on Monday, October 6, in Los Angeles. Mr. Lynch was convicted in federal court earlier this month of operating a medical cannabis dispensing collective and faces decades in federal prison. We need to show our support for Charles and his family as his attorneys ask for a new trial. We also need to let federal officials and local representatives know that Californians will not tolerate federal interference or local cooperation with DEA raids.

What: Free Charles Lynch - Court Support & Rally

When: 8:00 AM Courtroom #10, 11:00 AM in front of Courthouse, Monday, October 6, 2008

Where: 312 N. Spring St. (at Temple St.
) in downtown Los Angeles

For public transit information, visit http://www. metro. net/riding_metro/default. htm

Join us on Saturday, August 16, for a the LA-ASA meeting to start planning! The meeting is at 1:00 PM at the patient ID Center, located at 470 S. san Vicente Blvd., in Los Angeles.
Get a map and details at http://www. ASAaction. org

Invite your friends and loved ones to the meeting and protest!
Don Duncan
ASA California Campaign Director
Americans for Safe Access (ASA) is the largest national member-based organization of patients, medical professionals, scientists and concerned citizens promoting safe and legal access to cannabis for therapeutic use and research.

Little early to be advertising the actual rally/protest but it’s good to see them planning. I wish them the best of luck. The Charles Lynch case is horrible and if you can make it out to show your support I urge you to do so.

Not nearly as good as I had hoped. Didn’t push the issue as much as he normally does.

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Should medical marijuana be kept from minors at all costs? Why is it that pharmacists can dispense amphetamines without getting busted, but legal operators who dispense medical marijuana face prison time? Why do armed federal agents persist in raiding California?

With its sun, surf and small town atmosphere, California’s San Louis Obispo County is a good place to grow up. Seventeen-year-old Owen Beck played football and soccer for a local high school, but one day his thoughts abruptly turned away from sports and school. Doctors told Owen he had bone cancer, and would have to begin chemotherapy right away.

The young athlete suffered another blow—doctors would have to amputate his leg to try to keep the cancer from spreading. Chemotherapy attacked Owen’s cancer and his body, leaving him bald, gaunt, and vomiting the food he needed to recover. The amputation introduced Owen to a bizarre, new agony called phantom pain, and although doctors gave him powerful medication, nothing helped.

But might a new kind of pharmacy offer new hope? A medical marijuana dispensary had recently opened in the nearby city of Morro Bay. More than a decade earlier, California voters legalized medical marijuana and Morro Bay’s mayor and Chamber of Commerce held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the dispensary, and its owner Charlie Lynch.

Owen’s parents knew the idea of giving medical marijuana to a 17-year-old strikes many people as scandalous. Local Sheriff Pat Hedges even asserts that allowing medical marijuana is “not in the best interest of a community that prides itself on providing a healthy, family environment.”

But the Becks weren’t concerned about what other people thought; they were focused on helping their son. So with a written doctor recommendation in hand, they purchased medical marijuana for their teenage son. The new medication eased Owen’s pain and nausea like nothing else had, and the Becks grew fond of Charlie Lynch, who would sometimes refuse payment because, says Steve Beck, “He was just a compassionate kind of a guy.”

But one day, Owen’s life took another abrupt turn. Federal agents and local sheriff deputies raided Charlie Lynch’s dispensary, and seized nearly everything inside, including Owen’s medicine. “He had a prescription from a doctor at Stanford, and they took his stuff!” says Debbie Beck. Federal agents cuffed Lynch, and put him behind bars. Even though state and local laws allow for it, medical marijuana is still illegal under federal law. And because he had clients like Owen who were under age 21, Charlie Lynch faces heightened penalties. In California the average first-degree murder serves 20 years behind bars; Charlie Lynch could face a sentence as long as 100 years in prison.

The trial of Charlie Lynch begins this July.

http://www.townhall.com/…

The other day, reading the New York Post’s popular Page Six gossip page, I was surprised to find a picture of me, followed by the lines: “ABC’S John Stossel wants the government to stop interfering with your right to get high. The crowd went silent at his call to legalize hard drugs”.

I had attended a Marijuana Policy Project event celebrating the New York State Assembly’s passage of a medical-marijuana bill. (The bill hasn’t passed the Senate.) I told the audience I thought it pathetic that the mere half passage of a bill to allow sick people to try a possible remedy would merit such a celebration. Of course medical marijuana should be legal. For adults, everything should be legal. I’m amazed that the health police are so smug in their opposition.

After years of reporting on the drug war, I’m convinced that this “war” does more harm than any drug.

Independent of that harm, adults ought to own our own bodies, so it’s not intellectually honest to argue that “only marijuana” should be legal — and only for certain sick people approved by the state. Every drug should be legal.

“How could you say such a ridiculous thing?” asked my assistant. “Heroin and cocaine have a permanent effect. If you do crack just once, you are automatically hooked. Legal hard drugs would create many more addicts. And that leads to more violence, homelessness, out-of-wedlock births, etc!”

Her diatribe is a good summary of the drug warriors’ arguments. Most Americans probably agree with what she said.

But what most Americans believe is wrong.

Myth No. 1: Heroin and cocaine have a permanent effect.

Truth: There is no evidence of that.

In the 1980s, the press reported that “crack babies” were “permanently damaged.” Rolling Stone, citing one study of just 23 babies, claimed that crack babies “were oblivious to affection, automatons.”

It simply wasn’t true. There is no proof that crack babies do worse than anyone else in later life.

Myth No. 2: If you do crack once, you are hooked.

Truth: Look at the numbers — 15 percent of young adults have tried crack, but only 2 percent used it in the last month. If crack is so addictive, why do most people who’ve tried it no longer use it?

People once said heroin was nearly impossible to quit, but during the Vietnam War, thousands of soldiers became addicted, and when they returned home, 85 percent quit within one year.

People have free will. Most who use drugs eventually wise up and stop.

And most people who use drugs habitually live perfectly responsible lives, as Jacob Sullum pointed out in “Saying Yes”.

Myth No. 3: Drugs cause crime.

Truth: The drug war causes the crime.

Few drug users hurt or rob people because they are high. Most of the crime occurs because the drugs are illegal and available only through a black market. Drug sellers arm themselves and form gangs because they cannot ask the police to protect their persons and property.

In turn, some buyers steal to pay the high black-market prices. The government says heroin, cocaine and nicotine are similarly addictive, and about half the people who both smoke cigarettes and use cocaine say smoking is at least as strong an urge. But no one robs convenience stores for Marlboros.

Alcohol prohibition created Al Capone and the Mafia. Drug prohibition is worse. It’s corrupting whole countries and financing terrorism.

The Post wrote, “Stossel admitted his own 22-year-old daughter doesn’t think [legalization] is a good idea.”

But that’s not what she said. My daughter argued that legal cocaine would probably lead to more cocaine use. And therefore probably abuse.

I’m not so sure.

Banning drugs certainly hasn’t kept young people from getting them. We can’t even keep these drugs out of prisons. How do we expect to keep them out of America?

But let’s assume my daughter is right, that legalization would lead to more experimentation and more addiction. I still say: Legal is better.

While drugs harm many, the drug war’s black market harms more.

And most importantly, in a free country, adults should have the right to harm themselves.

He may be preaching to the choir but it’s still nice to have a man like him in his position. I nearly went to the MPP event last week and it saddens me that those who did go paused when he advocated full drug re-legalization. Must not have been many libertarians there.