this.. i wonder if she is aware of how retarded she is being and has to abide by some kind of protocol of sorts...

welcome to america, we give power only to those who devote their a healthy portion of their life to achieving it (what's the worst that could happen?).

If the planet earth is scientifically proven to be round beyond doubt, they would still say it was flat!

-C'mon guys, these people are impossible. They have their agenda, and will maintain it untill it does not serve them. So far keeping populations dumbed down is working for them though!

Someone posted this in the comments @ http://freethoughtblogs....-on-recreational-drugs/:

http://en.wikipedia.org/...Anti-legalization_Policy


lolololol!

I wished he would have asked "is alcohol less addictive than marijuana? Does alcohol cause less harm than marijuana?"

Seriously why is alcohol legal and marijuana not. It's easily proven that alcohol causes more harm to a society than MJ so why aren't people just straight up asking that question? I don't necessarily agree with the argument that "they can't make money from it" or "they make too much from drug busts".

Snozz you can call it whatever you want, calculated? Okay.

Stupid is, is stupid does.

If I am missing a huge part of what is going on then lucky me. I have seen enough of this pathetic drug war and the pathetic Judicial branch of government who runs it. There is nothing that can be said that justifies our president allowing the BS to continue.

stupid or calculated, it doesnt matter its wrong.

This Huffpost article gives a bit more detail than simply the YouTube video.

Simply put, Michele Leonhart is a travesty and an embarrassment. She is not simply a DEA Admin, but the CHIEF of the DEA. Another example of how shameless the toadies and puppets of big brother have gotten since they realize that the public tends not to call them on it these days. (Like when we let Geithner deal with the economic collapse that he himself was involved in manufacturing instead of putting him and his drinking buddies in Federal Prison.)

The younger generation is pretty meek at this point. Someone like this would not have been allowed to continue in office when Gen X or the Baby Boomers were in college.

@Ice House:

What Snoz seems to be saying, and what I will say directly is that this system and its apparent stupidity is carefully and intelligently designed to profit certain people. Obama is not responsible, not one of the robber barons & bankers who really profits, nor is he stupid. He is a sellout and a bit of a tool, but it is impossible to get where he is and not be.

You seem to think he is stacking the government with his illiterate friends and cronies. This is a ludicrous proposition. He is not some ridiculous hip-hop star who hooks up everyone in his posse. He is simply the guy the powers that be hired to do the job they wanted to have done, and distract the populace from the continuing drift to the right by his being the first black president, a total stoner growing up, and relatively cool by politician standards.

The real question when people like you want to lay all of our problems at Obama's feet is do you honestly think things would have been better with McCain & Palin? You think their DEA Administrators would have been friendlier to psychotropics? You think McCain would have filled his cabinet with geniuses, or even people who don't act quite so dumb... he picked Sarah Palin for chrissake.

And now, the question in our idiotic, moronic two-party collaboration system... our corporatocracy with faux democratic trimmings... is do you think voting for Mitt Romney will make anything better? You think Mitt's drug policy (as a teetotaling Mormon who thinks coffee is a strong drug) will be better than 2nd term, nothing to lose, former pothead, "Choom Gang" burner Obama?

The powers that be just might throw us all a bone and let marijuana legalization happen... if only to keep us dazed and confused so we don't freak out while they finish looting our national wealth, and destroying our other freedoms.

Ice House, I didn't mean any offense, I'm sorry if my words bothered you.

I'm just saying that when people have created a system whereby they make billions of dollars off of criminalizing substances and erecting a prison-industrial complex, it strikes me that they're not stupid. Similarly with the corporatocracy.

It's entirely unjustified and atrocious...it wrecks countless lives, pushes people to slave labor, breaks up families at gunpoint...just to name a few 'side-effects' of this machinery. But if we write it off as stupid, then I feel it becomes harder to address the full scale of the problem. Surely you can understand the follies of underestimating a cold, calculating enemy as merely dumb or ignorant. In labeling it/them as "dumb", all one has to do is say, "Oh, these idiots don't understand the way things are, if we could only get some smarter people in their place, we could fix this." Imo, this leads to a perpetual inability to cut to and deal with the root of the problem. That's all I was saying...it's something I feel to be an important distinction.

I think videos like this are great for exposing the unflinching immobility of the system and opening people's eyes to it, but in order to do that, a thorough analysis/explanation helps significantly to deprogram people.

While you can't lay all the blame on obama, he did appoint this shit for brains dea administrator. And its a codified law that the dea is going to oppose ANY legalization efforts, medicinal, for health/saftey, or just for the blatant logic of doing so. Since the president/congress both have the power to change these laws, they should be the focus of public criticism. While leonhart is guilty of spreading propaganda, and shares as much blame as the countless others before her that perpetuated this BS, i think the one who should be blamed here is our representatives and the president.

If obama can't man up and do the right thing, because he's afraid of the political repercussions of doing so, perhaps causing him to lose his re-election, he's no better than the rest of those pathetic lackeys sucking the corporate tit to get elected to their positions.

Kinda like his pandering to the gay/latino community RIGHT before his election. Politicians, obama especially are only concerned with keeping the power they are given. They are not there to help/fix/progress America, thats just a bunch of BS they say to get elected. Just like Guantanamo, illegal drone warfare, the surveillance state, etc. He has the power to change that, but not the balls/integrity to accept the political fallout associated with doing so. He likes his power, and is more concerned with keeping it than being a good leader or working to help get us out of this tangled mess we all share responsibility for getting into like he says he's doing, and its just the republicans holding America hostage. I call BS on that claim, especially when he chooses to invoke executive privilege when it suits his political needs.

Pure hipocracy.

First of all, please watch your language.

Second of all, both parties are to blame as they're all knee-deep in this and making bank off of it. You can rail against Democrats and it would be right to do so...you can rail against Republicans and you would be right to do so. Obama has launched an unprecedented assault on civil liberties...George W. Bush started two illegal wars against sovereign nations...both continued the "War on [some people who use certain] Drugs...we can go back through history and deconstruct every prohibitionist president, to what end?

The way the game of politics is played, pandering and fundraising are key. Hippocracy is inherent in such a system. Neither candidate in any election of the past half-century has held the interests of "the people" in their minds or actions, they serve those who hold the real power in our society. In the words of John Dewey, "...politics is the shadow cast on society by big business."

We see that they are all playing this "game" and that those at the top of the system are benefiting from the incarceration, enslavement and pain wrought upon the people from whom they supposedly derive their power and yet, they could not care less because doing so generates vast sums of money for them.

So what? We can rail about it all day...week...year. We can lay out the facts and the scientific papers and everything else. Many people have and we see clearly that drug prohibition is political rather than scientific in nature. You could make the case that things are slowly moving in a positive direction as attitudes are shifting and younger people are getting older and wave upon wave of scientific, economic and social study shows that prohibition creates more ills than it solves, but how long will we have to wait?

With regards to gay rights, Harvey Milk said "Gay people, we will not win our rights by staying silently in our closets...We are coming out." Imo, until we "come out", as "drug users", as citizens, as human beings and step up to demand recognition of our inherent human rights, we can't expect anything from the politicians, and even once we do, there will be long battles/struggles for recognition.

So...what are you doing about it?

My God... How... Who... Why...

She acts extremely stupid but no one can be that dumb and have a high position in the DEA.

What she is doing is towing the line and laying down what her masters want. Drugs are bad mkay.

Yes. Like it or not, that's the way it is.

And there's not much citizens can do. And solutions that go straight to the point easily sound quixotic, no matter how reasonable...





This analogy I liked. Made me think. Although seems that, if we take a look at the drug laws, the stakes are higher. And the monolitic attitude of the governments is global. Even when the sodomy laws in the US could make hard for an homosexual man live there, it was not so bad. In the worst of cases, he could move to other countries.

As illegal drug users and activists, seems that we can openly defend and research and try to enlighten people providing good information by publishing it (mostly) but as long as people keeps being busted for possession, consumption or elaboration, we are like an apparently straight man who publicly defends gays, yet he is unable to give his male partner a public kiss without fear. Which one would be our public kiss? All the ones I can think are pretty much self-immolation acts.

And AGAIN she gets grilled, this time by Rep. Steve Cohen. this one is REALLY good!

Rep. Steve Cohen Grills DEA Administration

I want to move far away into the woods whenever I see crap like this. How can a human being be so stupid and naive?

He was on a roll. Sucks about "the gentleman's time has expired" -- she got saved by the bell.

She has a job to do, and however in disagreement we are, thats the job. She has to answer the questions in a way that reflects the DEA. If she said "NO, marijuana is not as addictive or damaging as heroin" that would be like a cop busting in your house to raid your Pot Farm and then later on saying you know what, I'm just gonna give you a warning.

It is her JOB. Im not saying i agree with it what I am saying is this.

What makes her seem stupid is that she doesnt have any good answers to the questions they are asking. Not at all because she doesn't know the ANSWER. When I say "good answer", a good answer would be one that Supports the view of the entire DEA and the federal laws it supports of course she knows there isnt any evidence that marijuana causes as much harm as other drugs, but she doesnt know what to say. Thats what makes her dumb.

I loved that analogy as well.

You can come out as a drug user and openly defend drug use. Doesnt mean we have to smoke (kiss) while protesting. The only thing i see that could effect us is if somehow they started raiding the peoples houses that were protesting for drug freedom. I doubt this would happen. We SHOULD have an occupy movement for entheogens. We should be demanding that if damaging drugs like cigarettes and alcohol are available, then why are marijuana and psychadelics banned from use? We SHOULD be protesting the prohibitions we do not agree on!

Only problem is, I have a job. I have to goto that job. My life is fairly comfortable and marijuana being illegal isnt destroying my life yet. So unfortunately I am not motivated enough to do much about it. Which is the same reason why people are not rioting the streets right now about pot.

Although i bet if anyone could rally an Occupy-DMT it would be this community. Would be awesome!

agents of law enforcement are not typically educated in pharmacology, hence shulgin's rant of police "educating" children on the so-called "dangers" of drugs. theirs is really a crusade against competition to big pharma, because lawmakers are the whores of big pharma lobbyists, which are by nature, conservative.

plus, they built a whole legal industry, a perpetual-revolving door of revenue, around the
prohibition of compounds which big brother asserts will destroy the fabric of society (the status quo).

I could ask you the same question, but I'd rather not. Worry about what your doing about it and not what i'm doing about it. If you must know i vote for the candidate that represents my interests and not the lesser of two evils.

As far as my point, i was trying to say it is obamas fault. Its every president/congress person who does not/has not taken the initiative and fix the problem. So you can't say he's not to blame when he has the power to but won't fix the problem for political reasons. If he did legalize cannabis/drugs and it cost him re-election, so what. By that time most people would see how much better off we are without prohibition and legalization would be generally accepted by the public at large.

And yes, both parties are to blame and for the most part the whole system has been hijacked.

She's stupid and naive for being a part of the DEA's "agenda" anyways.