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LA’s Sheriff Baca Stirs Fear Against Marijuana Days Before The Election
All through the George W. Bush administration, Americans were fed a steady diet of fear, strategically orchestrated by Bush and Cheney to promote their political agenda. Americans were scared into supporting war. They were frightened into buying masking tape. They were jolted by elevated color codes. They were unnerved about flying on planes. And much much more...
For eight long years Bush and Cheney were masters of mania, preying on a nervous nation through well-timed machinations. What coincidence that terrorist threats would arise before elections and critical legislation. Even Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al Zawahiri would broadcast messages that helped push G.W.'s platform.
Using unjustified fear is an abuse of governance. Sadly for Los Angeles, Lee Baca, its Sheriff of twelve years who is running unopposed in this election, is employing the same fear tactics as George Bush and Dick Cheney.
Mere days before California's November 2nd election, whose ballot includes Proposition 19, which if passed, would regulate, control and tax marijuana, Sheriff Baca is using free broadcast media to strike fear in voters against the Proposition he vehemently opposes.
As Baca's luck would have it, Halloween arrives just two days before the November 2nd election. To frighten voters against Prop 19, Baca ordered his sheriffs to confiscate marijuana edibles from legal dispensaries and remove them from circulation so they're not distributed to trick-or-treaters on Halloween. Baca then used the confiscated edibles as part of his free anti-Prop 19 broadcast media blitz.
Are Baca's actions ethical - or even legal? Is it legal and ethical to confiscate vendor's merchandise and then use it as a vehicle for free media air time to push a political agenda - an obvious political agenda the Sheriff refuses to admit?
Here's one of the videos showing the confiscated edibles and fear tactics Baca is using:
LA sheriff's warn of pot-laced treats from 89.3 KPCC on Vimeo.
Ten days ago there was an incident of three boys in Huntington Beach, California, who were admitted to the hospital after ingesting marijuana cookies. The ingestion was accidental after a parent failed to put the cookies away. Of course that was a serious oversight, and thankfully the boys are okay.
But let's get real here. Every home has dangers. Homes can contain medications, alcoholic beverages, toxic cleaning agents, sharp cutlery, swimming pools, balconies, staircases, bunk beds, bathtubs, hot stoves, storage bins, razors, sharp tools, lethal weapons like rifles and handguns and, tragically, abusive adults. Left unattended and unmonitored, myriad calamities can happen. Edible pot may come in attractive packages, but as long as it's properly stored, there's no more danger than that which exists already in most homes. And truthfully, there is still not a single reported case of anyone dying from pot.
California is broke. It needs revenue. And it needs to move into the 21st century with legitimate legislation. If Sheriff Lee Baca and Dianne Feinstein and the others who oppose Prop 19 want to keep California from moving forward, they do significantly more harm to the state than legalizing marijuana. America is sliding backward in every area. We're a laughing stock to the world for sacrificing progression for regression. Not legalizing marijuana is as absurd as not using every available resource to push forward a clean, green economy.
If Baca doesn't want to smoke pot, he doesn't have to. If Baca doesn't want to eat edibles, he doesn't have to. But that's no reason to use underhanded tactics to prevent wise legislation from passing - legislation that will generate income California desperately needs.
Baca, himself, with an annual salary of $284,183, doesn't suffer from lack of income. He suffers from lack of wisdom.
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Excellent article, btw.
If Baca's only gripe is with respect to protecting children, then what he's doing is fine, [for now], but not indefinitely. The "not indefinitely" part is explained a little further below, preceding the first excerpt from the above article.
If people could be trusted to not give these treats to children, then Baca shouldn't be confiscating these. But, while possibly most marijuana consumers would not give anything "laced" with marijuana or THC to children who are trick-or-treating on Halloween, some probably would and this might leave someone like Baca with really no choice, [temporarily].
Another way of handling the situation is to ban the selling of these types of treats over Halloween weekend or even for the week leading up to Halloween. I'd even accept the whole month of October. Or just do away with these treats altogether; besides good brownies and cookies made with hash or marijuana (a personal preference). And instead of giving those treats to children, you can just fed-ex them to me.
That marijuana makes people sick is something I've never heard of and I've known many consumers. Causing some people to lose their ability to concentrate on school work is something I've come across maybe two or three times, so with extremely few people; a very small percentage of people I've known to have consumed marijuana and/or hashish. By far most all consumers I've known had no problems with consuming marijuana, as well as hashish, and it's been benificial in multiple ways. It helped me with school when I was bored and didn't want to be there, as well as helping to relax when stressed, to laugh more easily, and to sleep when unable to sleep. It helps plenty of people with digestion, creativity, health problems. A few of the consumers I've known were asthmatics and they greatly benifited from consuming. But it also helps para- and quadraplegics, people with chronic ailments that are painful, and so on.
There was an article published over the past few years or so. It was about some Quakers, or maybe Mormons, or Presbytarians or ..., of the US who went to Australia and they bought some brownies that were made with either marijuana or hashish as an ingredient. They thought that they had possibly gotten food poisoning after getting a little dizzy, so they went to a hospital and found out that they didn't get sick after all. They only got a little "buzz". And I don't recall the article having said anything about these Americans, who evidently had never consumed marijuana or hashish, before, having complained about getting truly sick. They just got a little dizzy and this frightened them.
Marijuana is not a dangerous natural drug and medicine at all, but it's possible that some people might be allergic to it. That's no reason for illegalization though. If it was, then we indeed would have to illegalize almost everything people presently and legally consume in order to have integral law-making.
And while I think it's okay to protect children from unsuspectingly being fed treats containing marijuana or THC, what's to stop people from making hash or marijuana brownies (or cookies) and giving these to children for Halloween treats? Some children may have been taught by parents or adult guardians to not accept any treats that aren't securely enclosed in store-bought packages, but I would've had a difficult time passing up on home-baked brownies and cookies when I was a child; as well as today.
Also, what is there to really prevent adults from buying liquor and giving some to children?
Law enforcement can't control against everything people can do that they shouldn't do. Just as there are laws against selling liquor to minors and giving liquor to minors unless they're your own children or in the company of people of adult age when drinking, the state can also legislate that marijuana dispensaries and their customers can't legally give any of the products purchased there to children. So what Baca is doing to protect children, if that is his real and sole motive in confiscating the Halloween treats, should be treated like with liquor. Are the police going to confiscate the liquor in liquor stores? I don't think so.
Anyway, the above article by Linda Milazzo says that Baca is totally against legalization and/or decriminalization of marijuana, and the rest of this post is for my view about this. It's also a little about whether marijuana, f.e., should be legalized or decriminalized, and I'm for legalization, as explained somewhere below.
Baca perhaps is an example of the kind of LA "police officer" Michael/Mike C. Ruppert has been talking about for many years while doing so at risk to his life. As he's said over all of these years, the LAPD is full of corrupt "officers" and they're very much into profiting from the trafficking of illegalized drugs. Legalizing them would take away all of these profits that these corrupt cops make. And if Baca is indeed a Sheriff, then he must surely know about this "dark side" of LA "law" enforcement.
No honest, intelligent and competent police officer of any large or medium-sized city or town in the US ignores the fact that legalization and/or decriminalization would be greatly benificial for society. No honest and competent officer is without realizing that there is no really valid reason for making the drugs illegal, especially when liquor, when over-consumed, and it doesn't take much to reach that point, is among the very worst and is legal.
Those who demand that the illegalization be maintained are extremely suspect and surely [most] of them are criminally motivated. There are some ignorant officers in law enforcement, but the ignorance with respect to marijuana probably is only when they are juniors; not experienced, "seasoned" cops.
So I believe that Baca probably, if not surely, is among the corrupt and hypocritical group. If he was an honest, especially honest, intelligent and competent cop, then he wouldn't be Sheriff, a "chief law enforcement officer". Surely no honest, intelligent, knowledgeable and competent cops will be put in chief law enforcement positions. They'd be kept in low ranks so that they could be kept out of the way of "business". High-ranking cops are vetted by criminal economic elites before being put in high positions of so-called law enforcement.
It's also possible that Baca truly is ignorant and that he truly believes that marijuana should be illegal. He might be an ignorant religious "conservative", say, or f.e. These people will also satisfy the criminal elites, for then they have a "good face" to mask their racket(s) with. It'd make him a very incompetent officer for high ranks and this is another "curse" on society; but he would at least be non-criminally motivated, just very ignorant, as well as very negligent with respect to [democracy], et cetera.
There are such ignorant people, I believe; maybe anyway. But I find it extremely implausible that a law enforcement official who's made it to the ranks of chief, which surely takes years in the force, would be ignorant of the extreme criminality in the LAPD and many, if not most, other police departments.
The whole "drug war" is phony, a criminal racket, and a huge racket it is; extremely profitable. Just consider all of the huge sums of money being non-taxed by government. We know for a fact that big banks and their top management are into black market business big time. BCCI evidently was shut down because of all of its laundering of drug-trafficking profits, or if not only for that reason, then neverthelss very much for that reason, among other serious crimes. Many or all large banks are similarly criminal.
According to the last that I've read, a strong majority of Americans want the prohibition law lifted or obsoleted; a considerable portion of the law anyway. Large majorities in the US and Canada want real and serious reform of these laws in order to make them just and sensible, because they're extremely corrupt and cause very serious waste of taxpayer dollars.
The CIA wants it kept illegal because it's how the CIA derives much of its funding for covert ops and "black" ops that the CIA doesn't need to account for before the Congress. And the CIA is not alone among feds in this racket. The DEA and FBI are also involved.
My view on whether Baca's actions are ethical are made clear, above, but I am not sure whether they're legal, or not. As far as I am aware, however, California legalized marijuana for medicinal purposes, a person only needs a medical prescription, and the California dispensaries are supposed to sell only to people with valid prescriptions. If all of that is true, then Baca's actions surely aren't legal, either. He might sincerely want to protect children from these Halloween treats, but he'd then be going about it the wrong way.
They're definitely not ethical actions. Nothing about the phony and for-profit "drug war" is ethical. It's extremely and thoroughly criminal, and the people behind and enforcing it [know] that they're wrong and that their phoniness is all about major racket and, therefore, untaxable illegal profits ... for them; huge profits.
If I'm right about California laws and the dispensary businesses there, then Baca did act illegally, but he'd be backed up by the feds, who work for the imperialist and economic elites. The CIA, DEA, and FBI don't want legalization. It just wouldn't be profitable for the criminals of these agencies and their elite masters.
And there's nothing novel about it. It's the "same old-same old" double standards. It's how the country is governed. And there's absolutely nothing either ethical or legal about that. The Bush family, f.e., has been into the illegal drug trafficking business since the 19th century; or certainly early 20th. I'm pretty sure it's 19th though.
Legalization vs decriminalization:
Some anti-prohibitionists want the drugs only decriminalized, instead of legalized, while others want legalization; and I guess the issue for the former group is that they don't want to be taxed. That group should give up that argument or view, for it's essential to pay taxes in order to have a reasonably functioning society. If we want public infrastructure and want it well maintained, then we have to pay taxes. If we want emergency services, fire and police, then we have to pay taxes. Et cetera. California's debt situation apparently is relatively extreme and taxation revenues from legalized marijuana apparently could or would be very benificial for the state. So I think all Californians should support state taxation on marijuana; not exaggerated, gouging taxation, but a reasonable amount, for sure. And that requires legalization.
That can happen with any prescription as well as off-the-shelf medications. What if a parent forgot to put away a bottle of Aspirin and children consumed these? Would we make these legal medications illegal? I don't think so.
And the boys at Hungtington Beach evidently did not get very sick, and what they called feeling ill may've just been some dizziness, as well as the vomiting. But it's not good to eat too many cookies at once; one or two should suffice. How many did these children eat, a half a dozen per child? They should be taught better eating manners; to not over-indulge. (sarcasm intended, but also a little seriousness)
I would venture to guess that there probably also aren't any known serious cases of sickness from consuming marijuana.
That's when meaning pure marijuana, however, for I once learned of a guy who had unsuspectingly bought "joints", aka marijuana cigarettes, that were laced with, I was told, "angel dust", which I think is aka PCP, and smoking these [blew] his mind. He had to be hospitalized, couldn't recognize his parents or family, as well as friends, anymore, and he became extremely affected mentally, having extremely harmed his mental faculties for years. He had bought the joints from some local outlaw bikers who did not warn him about the PCP. And when I grew up in Massachusetts, some friends who had older siblings several years older than we were learned about "angel dust" apparently having become popular on the west coast and that it was a very dangerous drug. This is all I know about it though.
These types of problems would not be an issue when purchasing marijuana from legal dispensaries.
Closing:
Californians would now be justified in definitely getting rid of Baca, and ilk.
And, so, I evidently and fully agree with Linda Milazzo. She didn't say anything about the corruption of the LAPD, CIA, DEA, FBI, or getting rid of Baca and ilk, but we otherwise seem to be in full agreement.