The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) was saddened to receive news of the passing of David Crosby, who joined NORML’s Advisory Board in 2018.

“David Crosby was a genuine American original and an outspoken advocate for ending our nation’s failed war on cannabis consumers. We were ecstatic to have him join NORML’s Advisory Board in 2018 and have him lend his platform and voice to the ongoing fight for cannabis freedom after a lifetime of personal advocacy,” stated NORML Executive Director Erik Altieri, “NORML extends our sincerest condolences to David’s family, friends, and fans. He will be missed, but there is no question he leaves behind an indelible mark on the social and cultural landscape.”

Upon formally joining NORML’s Advisory Board in 2018, Crosby himself stated:

“I’d like cannabis to be legal everywhere. I knew people who were in jail for years over a couple of joints, and it’s just not right. I feel a responsibility to stick up for people who have been jailed for it unfairly, and that is why I’m partnering with NORML to lend my name and talents to help end our multi-decade failure that is prohibition. Bottom line is: It should be legal and people shouldn’t be going to jail for it, and I want to reinforce that to the degree that I can.”

Rest in Power, David.

Related:

If I Could Only Remember My Name is — in my opinion — one his best recordings, and woefully under appreciated — wfw

And Sen. Joe Manchin wants to help them!

Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit. Social Security is totally funded by the payroll tax levied on employer and employee. If you reduce the outgo of Social Security, that money would not go into the general fund to reduce the deficit. It would go into the Social Security Trust Fund. So Social Security has nothing to do with balancing a budget or erasing or growing the deficit. — Former President Ronald Reagan

Sen. Joe Manchin provoked outrage Wednesday by suggesting congressional Democrats should agree to pursue changes to Social Security as part of a debt ceiling agreement with Republicans, an idea one advocacy group condemned as “negotiating with legislative terrorists.”

In an interview on Fox Business—conducted at the annual gathering of corporate and political elites in Davos, Switzerland—the West Virginia Democrat said that “we have a debt problem” and argued members of both parties should “work together” on solutions. The senator singled out Social Security, even though the program can’t by law add to long-term deficits…

White House torches House GOP for ‘handing the keys’ to purveyors of ‘dangerous conspiracy theories’

The White House criticized House Republican leadership over their reinstatement of two controversial members, Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Paul Gosar (R-AZ), to assignments on the House Oversight Committee, in a statement released to NBC News on Wednesday.

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Trump dead-enders in a race to the bottom

Marjorie Taylor Greene says she was ‘attacked’ by ‘insane’ woman in restaurant

Deranged dingbat says no plane involved in 9-11 Pentagon Attack

Analysis: Adult-Use Legalization Associated with Less Alcohol Abuse, No Increase in Psychosis

Minneapolis, MN: Residents of states where cannabis is legal do not possess elevated rates of psychosis, and they are also less likely to exhibit symptoms of alcohol abuse, according to longitudinal data published in the journal Psychological Medicine.

A team of researchers affiliated with the University of Minnesota and the University of Colorado assessed the relationship between adult-use cannabis legalization and psychosocial functioning in a cohort of 240 pairs of identical twins. One twin resided in a jurisdiction where adult-use cannabis sales were legally permitted, while the other lived in a state where marijuana was criminally prohibited. 

Investigators reported that legalization was associated with a slight uptick in the frequency with which subjects reported consuming cannabis – a finding consistent with prior studies. However, they also reported that those in legalization states were less likely to engage in behaviors associated with problematic alcohol use. That finding is consistent with prior data indicating the use of cannabis is associated with a decrease in the amount of alcohol consumed by individuals seeking alcohol treatment.

Authors further reported that legalization was not positively correlated with increased incidences of psychosis, substance abuse disorder, or other adverse outcomes. 

They concluded: “Recreational cannabis legalization causes increases in mean cannabis frequency and residents of recreational states have fewer recent symptoms of AUD [alcohol use disorder]. Broadly speaking, our co-twin control and differential vulnerability results suggest that the impacts of recreational cannabis legalization on psychiatric and psychosocial outcomes are otherwise minimal. … Both sets of results are reassuring with respect to public health concerns around recreational cannabis legalization.”

Although the use of cannabis and other controlled substances tends to be more common among those with psychotic illnesses, studies indicate that lifetime incidences of marijuana-induced psychosis are relatively rare among those who do not already have a prior diagnosis of a psychiatric disease. According to one recently published study, fewer than one-half of one percent of cannabis consumers had ever reported experiencing psychotic symptoms requiring medical intervention – a percentage that is lower than the rate associated with alcohol.

A substantial number of rank and file republicans still support the traitor, Donald Trump, and his treasonous allies. –wfw

After watching a clip of Rep. Jim Jordan on Fox News on Sunday, former Republican Party advisor Tara Setmayer went on an extensive rant about the Ohio Republican who will soon chair the House Judicial Committee.

During her appearance on MSNBC’s “The Sunday Show,” Setmayer made a point of noting that the GOP lawmaker is likely being investigated by the DOJ and that his committee will be overseeing their work.

“I want to remind people who Jim Jordan is,” Setmayer told host Jonathan Capehart. “Jim Jordan is potentially under investigation by the Department of Justice. He is now about to become the chairman of the Judiciary Committee which has direct oversight of the Department of Justice; there’s something incredibly wrong with that.”

“Jim Jordan was an insurrectionist,” she charged. “He was one the people in those backdoor deals with Rudy Giuliani and all those others to overturn the fair election in this country. He now has the power of the gavel, of the oversight committee for the Department of Justice. This is what people have voted into power.”

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Schoharie County health director Amy Gildemeister, who enforced state and federal COVID mandates, has long been opposed by anti-maskers, and anti-vaxxers, including Republican Assemblyman Chris Tague, who, like most republican politicians, toes the GOP party line.

The Schoharie County Board of Supervisors has forced her out of her job. Also, the board removed Fulton Town Supervisor, Phil Skowfoe, from the Public Health Committee for failing to support the board”s initial decision by calling for a re-vote. It appears that they — like their counterparts in the nation’s capitol — are without shame.— wfw

Schoharie County health director forced out following COVID-19 conflicts, as reported by the Times Union (Albany, NY).

SCHOHARIE — Simmering tensions between Schoharie public health experts and county legislators came to a head last month, resulting in the ouster of the county’s top public health official — creating a leadership void as the county grapples with a surge in the respiratory disease being experienced nationwide.

Schoharie County health director Amy Gildemeister joins the many public health leaders across the U.S. who have resigned or been forced out in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.

On the state level, more than half of New York’s 57 county health officials — 29 in total — have retired or left their jobs since 2020, according to data collected by public health advocates.

Gildemeister — who was hired in 2014 during a period of upheaval for the agency for the largely rural county — was unanimously recommended for a six-year term by the seven-member county Board of Health last month. However, the Schoharie Board of Supervisors, the county’s legislative body, opted not to renew her $94,700 annual salary at a December meeting, the Times Journal first reported.

“It is what it is,” she said Tuesday in an interview. “I feel that we have done excellent work. I feel that the work we have done has saved lives.”

Gildemeister, who holds a doctorate in environmental health science from the University of Michigan, has “qualifications that are beyond reproach,” her critics acquiesced during a board meeting Tuesday night. 

Board chairman Bill Federice alleged the results of an investigation led to the decision — but refused to provide specifics, calling it a “personnel” matter.

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Related

Recently elected House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) praising the traitor,Donald Trump, on the two-year anniversary of the insurrection.

Trump ally, Elise Stefanik, endorsed by 76 Schoharie County elected officials

A wish for 2023: Seeing Donald Trump convicted and sentenced to rot away for life in a prison cell. — Doug Thompson

Related

Trump gets one vote after being nominated for house speaker

Thom Hartman raises the question: When Will Republican Voters Wake Up to Their Own Oppression? — wfw

When will Republican voters figure out how badly they’re getting screwed by Republican politicians? 

— Desperate workers struggle with soaring rents (courtesy of Republican-donor hedge funds); 
— lack of healthcare (12 GOP-controlled states still refuse to expand Medicaid for under-$15,000/year workers) is literally killing Americans; 
— wages have flatlined since Reagan declared war on workers in 1981 while the merely rich have become the morbidly rich; 
— Americans pay 10 times as much as Canadians for some drugs because Republicans block any effort to bring competition to that marketplace; 
— at the same time Trump and his GOP buddies in the House and Senate borrowed $1.7 trillion to fund a tax giveaway to his billionaire buddies, student debt passed the $1.7 trillion mark… 

Yet somehow the “conservative” base voters never seem to figure it out. Why?

Most Republican voters don’t think much about it, but there are two very distinct layers to the GOP. It’s like a pyramid with a capstone at the very top.  

The vast base of the pyramid are the white voters who Richard Nixon invited into the party after the Democrats embraced racial equality in 1964/1965 with the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.

They mostly live in all-white neighborhoods, attend all-white churches, and send their kids to all-white schools. While most aren’t the Confederate-flag-toting “out and open” racists like the folks who showed up at the Capitol on January 6th, they’re nonetheless “uncomfortable” with nonwhite people. It’s their “culture,” they’ll tell you.

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Alternet reports that people who worked for — and gave their unquestioning support to the traitor, Donald Trump — are now whinging because no-one wants to give them a job. And that raises the question: why should anyone hire these self-serving scum? — wfw

‘I’m so mad and upset’: Former White House aides ‘angry’ that Jan. 6 made them ‘unemployable’

Newly released records from the Jan. 6 committee expose a text message conversation between Julie Radford, Ivanka Trump’s former aide, and Hope Hicks, a former White House political advisor. In the message conversation, the two aides reveal their candid reactions to Donald Trump’s handling of the insurrection, CNN reports.

Hicks, who previously served as Trump’s communications director, wrote that any Trump staffers who “didn’t have jobs lined up will be perpetually unemployed.” She continued, “I’m so mad and upset. We all look like domestic terrorists now.”

Referring to Trump’s targeting of then-Vice President Mike Pence after he refused to help Trump overturn the election, Hicks also said in the texts, “Attacking the VP? Wtf is wrong with him?”

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Related

Lies, damn lies, and more such crap from Republicans

I have no doubt that these self-righteous butt wipes patted themselves on the back for a job well done — wfw

A dying US cancer patient used cannabis to ease pain. His hospital called the police

‘You’d think they would have shown compassion’: patient’s son decries Kansas police who issued citation as father suffered

Hospital staff in Kansas called the police on a man dying of cancer who was using cannabis products to cope with his symptoms, in an incident that has since sparked outrage and renewed calls to rethink the state’s strict cannabis laws.

The encounter took place in mid-December, when police in the city of Hays say two officers showed up at the cancer patient’s hospital room to issue him a citation for a drug violation. Police also took away a vaping device and cannabis product that hospital staff had already confiscated.

While the police department later dropped the citation, which would have required the cancer patient to appear in court, reports of the incident fueled debate over the continued criminalization of cannabis in Kansas, one of the three US states that has not legalized the product in any context.

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Related

Record Number of Scientific Papers Published About Cannabis in 2022