Two marijuana proponents convicted of possession (reject, elder, creation, religion)

[Druidus]

I read them not a lot of sources for the studies in them.

Hmm? This is one of the website's sources:

Sources
1) Marijuana and Health, Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, 1982. Note: the Committee on Substance Abuse and Habitual Behavior of the "Marijuana and Health" study had its part of the final report suppressed when it reviewed the evidence and recommended that possession of small amounts of marijuana should no longer be a crime (TIME magazine, July 19, 1982). The two JAMA studies are: Co, B.T., Goodwin, D.W., Gado, M., Mikhael, M., and Hill, S.Y.: "Absence of cerebral atrophy in chronic cannabis users", JAMA, 237:1229-1230, 1977; and, Kuehnle, J., Mendelson, J.H., Davis, K.R., and New, P.F.J.: "Computed tomographic examination of heavy marijuana smokers", JAMA, 237:1231-1232, 1977.

2) See Marijuana and Health, ibid., for information on this research. See also, Marijuana Reconsidered (1978) by Dr. Lester Grinspoon.

3) The Dutch experience is written up in "The Economics of Legalizing Drugs", by Richard J. Dennis, The Atlantic Monthly, Vol 266, No. 5, Nov 1990, p. 130. See "A Comparison of Marijuana Users and Non-users" by Norman Zinberg and Andrew Weil (1971) for the negative correlation between use of marijuana and use of alcohol. The 1993 Rand Corporation study is "The Effect of Marijuana Decriminalization on Hospital Emergency Room Episodes: 1975 - 1978" by Karyn E. Model.

4) See a review of studies and their methodology in "Marijuana and Immunity", Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, Vol 20(1), Jan-Mar 1988. Studies showing stimulation of the immune system: Kaklamani, et al., "Hashish smoking and T- lymphocytes", 1978; Kalofoutis et al., "The significance of lymphocyte lipid changes after smoking hashish", 1978. The 1988 study: Wallace, J.M., Tashkin, D.P., Oishi, J.S., Barbers, R.G., "Peripheral Blood Lymphocyte Subpopulations and Mitogen Responsiveness in Tobacco and Marijuana Smokers", 1988, Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, ibid.

5) The 90% figure comes from Health Consequences of Smoking: Nicotine Addiction, Surgeon General's Report, 1988. In Health magazine in an article entitled, "Hooked, Not Hooked" by Deborah Franklin (pp. 39-52), compares the addictiveness of various drugs and ranks marijuana below caffeine. For current information on cannabis drinks see Working Men and Ganja: Marijuana Use in Rural Jamaica by M. C. Dreher, Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1982, ISBN 0-89727-025-8. For information on cannabis and actual cancer risk, see Marijuana and Health, ibid.

6) For a survey of studies relating to cannabis and highway accidents see "Marijuana, Driving and Accident Safety", by Dale Gieringer, Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, ibid. The effect of decriminalization on highway accidents is analyzed in "Do Youths Substitute Alcohol and Marijuana? Some Econometric Evidence" by Frank J. Chaloupka and Adit Laixuthai, Nov. 1992, University of Illinois at Chicago.

7) For information about the Partnership ad, see Jack Herer's book, The Emperor Wears No Clothes, 1990, p. 74. See also "Hard Sell in the Drug War", The Nation, March 9, 1992, by Cynthia Cotts, which reveals that the Partnership receives a large percentage of its advertising budget from alcohol, tobacco, and pharmaceutical companies and is thus disposed toward exaggerating the risks of marijuana while downplaying the risks of legal drugs. For information on memory and the alpha brainwave enhancement effect, see "Marijuana, Memory, and Perception", by R. L. Dornbush, M.D., M. Fink, M.D., and A. M. Freedman, M.D., presented at the 124th annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, May 3-7, 1971.

8) See "Cannabis 1988, Old Drug New Dangers, The Potency Question" by Tod H Mikuriya, M.D. and Michael Aldrich, Ph.D., Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, ibid.

9) See Marijuana and Health, ibid. Also see "Marijuana, Memory, and Perception", ibid.

10) The fat solubility of cannabinoids and certain vitamins is well known. See Marijuana and Health, ibid. For some information on vitamin A, see "The A Team" in Scientific American, Vol 264, No. 2, February 1991, p. 16.

11) See "Too Many Rodent Carcinogens: Mitogenesis Increases Mutagenesis", Bruce N. Ames and Lois Swirsky Gold, Science, Vol 249, 31 August 1990, p. 971.

12) Cannabis and alcohol toxicity is compared in Marijuana Reconsidered, ibid., p. 227. Yearly alcohol overdoses was taken from "Drug Prohibition in the United States: Costs, Consequences, and Alternatives" by Ethan A. Nadelmann, Science, Vol 245, 1 September 1989, p. 943. -- paul hager hagerp@moose.cs.indiana.edu "The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason." -- Thomas Paine, _The Age of Reason_

[Bright-ness' Shadow]

Gentlemen,

The topic from the article in ReligiousNewsBlog is the conviction of two who claimed marijauana smoking was part of their religious expression.

Comments in the thread should be directed to opinion surrounding the law in regards to religious practise.

Bob

[huajiro]

You can feel free to smoke pot around me, I kind of like the light-headedness

[Druidus]

If it is part of their religion then it definately should be fine. The government shouldn't interfere in religion.

[Bright-ness' Shadow]

http://www.lectlaw.com/files/drg28.htm

The Smith case began as an unemployment compensation dispute involving
Alfred Smith, a Native American employee of a private drug and alcohol
rehabilitation facility. Smith was fired and denied unemployment
benefits after acknowledging he had ingested the peyote sacrament during
a traditional religious ceremony of the Native American Church. The
Oregon Employment Division believed that the State had a compelling
interest in proscribing the use of certain drugs pursuant to a
controlled substance law.

Smith filed a case disputing the denial of unemployment benefits and
questioning the constitutionality of the controlled substance law as it
applied to his religious practice. Following protracted litigation, the
Oregon Supreme Court ruled that the prohibition on the sacramental use
of peyote violated the free exercise clause of the First Amendment.

The U.S. Supreme Court reversed, holding that the free exercise clause
of the First Amendment did not prohibit the State of Oregon from banning
the sacramental use of peyote through its general criminal prohibition
laws, or from denying unemployment benefits to persons dismissed from
their jobs for such religiously inspired use. In an opinion written by
Justice Scalia (joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justices White,
Stevens, and Kennedy), the Court discarded the long-standing compelling
interest test, holding that facially neutral laws of general
applicability that burden the free exercise of religion require no
special justification to satisfy free exercise scrutiny. Finally, the
Court asserted that the free exercise of religion may be protected
through the political process. According to the majority, its inability
to find constitutional protection for religiously inspired action
burdened by generally applicable laws does not mean statutory exemptions
to such laws are not permitted or even desired. However, the majority
noted:

It may fairly be said that leaving accommodation to the political
process will place at a relative disadvantage those religious practices
that are not widely engaged in; but that unavoidable consequence of
democratic government must be preferred to a system in which each
conscience is a law unto itself or in which judges weight the social
importance of all laws against the centrality of all religious beliefs.

To reach its decision, the majority had to strain its reading of the
First Amendment and ignore years of precedent in which the compelling
government interest test was applied in a variety of circumstances. In
a strongly worded concurrence, Justice O'Connor took sharp issue with
the Court's abandonment of the compelling government interest test.
Justice O'Connor reviewed the Court's precedents and found that they
confirmed that the compelling interest standard is the appropriate means
to protect the religious liberty guaranteed by the First Amendment:

To say that a person's right to free exercise has been burdened, of
course, does not mean that he has an absolute right to engage in the
conduct. Under our established First Amendment jurisprudence, we have
recognized that the freedom to act, unlike the freedom to believe,
cannot be absolute. Instead, we have respected both the First
Amendment's express textual mandate and the governmental interest in
regulation of conduct by requiring the government to justify any
substantial burden on religiously motivated conduct by a compelling
state interest and by means narrowly tailored to achieve that interest.

This controversial decision by a divided Court has been heavily
criticized by constitutional law scholars, religious leaders, and civil
libertarians. In 1993, Congress overturned portions of the Smith
decision by enacting the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993
(RFRA), Pub. L. 103-141, 107 Stat 1488 (42 U.S.C. 2OOObb et seq.,).

However, RFRA left open the question of whether the reinstated
compelling government interest test would provide adequate legal
protection for the traditional religious use of peyote by American
Indians--the precise religious practice at issue in Smith. As President
Clinton emphasized when he signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act
on November 16, 1993:

[wizanda]

Officaly announced in 1980 by the hebrew university the annointing oil should contain cannabis
It was mistranslated the word is kaneh bosem which has been translated as sweet cane or reed when it should be cannabis
The annointing oil when made correctly heals it is also holy
so cannabis need to be legalised as it is part of many religious belief systems as a teacher plant especaily the bible
there is a site called http://www.thc-ministry.net/ with testimonials of people healed by cannabis oil