While your argument concerning pharmaceutical companies is very valid, and you should add plant genetics companies to that as well; your argument that prison labor pools produce anything that is available to consumers is outright false. Per federal labor laws, prison manufacturing cannot be used to produce goods sold on a commercial market, unless they are paid a “competitive wage” as it is unfair to the general labor pool. So far the only state to circumvent that is Oregon which pays a realistic wage to these laborers and then takes a vast majority of it for housing and food. Michigan has made an attempt at it, but was victim to a class action and ultimately lost in the federal court of appeals.

I kinda turned on by the ‘wierd orgies” and “wild parties”. Makes me wanna take a toke :)

Not according to Steve Fraser and Joshua B. Freeman who stated:

Prisoners, whose ranks increasingly consist of those for whom the legitimate economy has found no use, now make up a virtual brigade within the reserve army of the unemployed whose ranks have ballooned along with the U.S. incarceration rate. The Corrections Corporation of America and GEO, two prison privatizers, along with a third smaller operator, G4S (formerly Wackenhut), sell inmate labor at subminimum wages to Fortune 500 corporations like Chevron, Bank of America, AT&T, and IBM. These companies can, in most states, lease factories in prisons or prisoners to work on the outside. All told, nearly a million prisoners are now making office furniture, working in call centers, fabricating body armor, taking hotel reservations, working in slaughterhouses, or manufacturing textiles, shoes, and clothing, while getting paid somewhere between 93 cents and $4.73 per day.

Locking Down an American Workforce
Prison Labor as the Past — and Future — of American “Free-Market” Capitalism

Not to negate big pharma’s role but there is a beer and wine industry component too. They have long lobbied against legalization of marijuana and absinthe. Guess they don’t much like green things…which sorta doesn’t make sense in light of their love for money.

You missed EmptyWheel’s post for FDL (in the archives) on prison-made components for the war-making industry: “They Won’t Even Create Jobs in the Military-Industrial Complex Anymore,” By: emptywheel Tuesday March 8, 2011 1:49 pm. Yes we are right down there with China and its 1,000 laogai.

Here’s another version of the Freeman analysis that speakingupnow linked to.

If you think there’s any law left in the U.S. you are sadly mistaken.

I like the way the was-ernment thinks that big pharma should just be given control and private profits from a medicine that belongs to everyone. It fits with only blonds can be beauty queens, rich people are obviously smarter than poor people, etc etc

Thanks Samantha Colon. It is as I thought, with a slight variation, i.e., I thought PhRMA wanted to preserve market for existing drugs. I was unaware that they are trying to pillize mj.

Lest we forget, O had secret meetings with PhRMA (think Cheney & oil corps) right after he took office. PhRMA owns him.

great first post, sam — tweeted with thanks

Your argument skirts the eventual good vs bad paradigm; are drugs bad for America? As a Constitutionalist, a nation which asks its youth to fight in stupid wars has no moral high ground to prohibit pot use and distribution. Our Government spent millions studying the short and longterm effects of THC at UC Med Center in SF (mid 70s)… finally deep-sixing the results which failed to provide any negative results other than excessive munchies and mildly antisocial behavior. The ‘chronics’ had better chess, pinball and table tennis skills with a buzz than without! In our alcohol legal nation, alcohol kills, pot does not…period. Our lying two-faced government now has Lord Obama, the legalization back stabber, promising on the campaign trail that federal resources ‘shall never be used’ to harass legal state distribution and infrastructure for medical, state approved pot users/growers… big mistake to lie.

Oh yeah– it’s a sneaky multi-national effort making bank and involving several central governments, besides the US, and which is why I wrote this, this and this. Rrrrar!

Absinthe can be bought in the US now. It has the weird, supposedly psychoactive component removed though. It’s like a higher proof anisette, but somewhat bitter, and not sweet. Very unpleasant actually, and expensive. Try it once, then get back to your knitting.

Most adults (and certainly those of a certain age) have been around many pot smokers and alcohol drinkers in their lives. You are much more likely to run into an “angry and mean” alcohol drinker than pot smoker.

Thanks. I hadn’t seen those as this is not a topic on the top of my list. Don’t know if you’ve checked recently, but your final link has one of those red clocked image/video signs.

PhRMA is also the reason the U.S. doesn’t do the sensible thing with the Afghan poppy crop, which is buy it & turn it into pain killers. Cheaper than fancy drugs with fewer side effects, I am told.

Why doesn’t PhRMA prevent states from legalizing medical mj? Seems like it would be pretty cheap to buy state pols and nip the process in the bud.

“Weird orgies. Wild parties. Unleashed passions.”

Cool. How do we sign up?

Marinol, a synthetic THC preparation, is legal as a prescription pill.

Relative cost?

On edit: One of the lines from your link says that smoking is an ineffective way to deliver a med. Why is that? From what little I remember about biology, smoking would seem to be more effective bc the active ingredient goes from your lungs directly into your blood, as opposed to going thru the much more complicated digestive system route.

You wish.

It’s more like laughter, munchies and sleepiness.

No hangover though.

You’re supposed to pour it over a sugar cube through a slotted spoon. I prefer Pernod to it, and I prefer Chartreuse to Pernod. If Chartreuse was cheap, I’d use it for hair tonic.

mj puts me to sleep. Which is the major reason I’m not interested in this topic except as yet another insight to how dysfunctional the U.S. political sys is.

Relative to the going street price of pot, or what? Here’s something about the costs of legal prescription meds (scroll & scroll & scroll).

Click that image link for me, eCAHN, and see where it goes.

I never click on warning messages.

From your wiki link & relevant to my added Qs:

Later, in the 1970s, a synthetic version of THC was produced and approved for use in the United States as the drug Marinol. It was delivered as a capsule, to be swallowed. Patients complained that the violent nausea associated with chemotherapy made swallowing capsules difficult. Further, along with ingested cannabis, capsules are harder to dose-titrate accurately than smoked cannabis because their onset of action is so much slower. Smoking has remained the route of choice for many patients because its onset of action provides almost immediate relief from symptoms and because that fast onset greatly simplifies titration. For these reasons, and because of the difficulties arising from the way cannabinoids are metabolized after being ingested, oral dosing is probably the least satisfactory route for cannabis administration.

Look at my caption.

Don’t you get the same message?

Replacement for Dice in Monopoly Due To Rationing During World War II (from Wikimedia Commons)

I don’t read the passage that contains “ineffective” as narrowly as you. Nonetheless, it’s propaganda and loaded with lies about the FDA’s scientific rigor (the FDA’s approval of Bayer’s honeybee-killing nicotine based herbicide or fungicide or pesticide, a glaring example).

Try it once, then get back to your knitting.

Should I be offended by that little bit of attitude?

Go to http://commons.wikimedia.org and type in “monopoly spinner.”

I don’t understand your comment. I didn’t editorialize or read anything narrowly as you type. I merely quoted from your wiki link.

I also don’t understand your sentence about FDA rigor. What is your antecedent to your “it’s”?

Why?

“… oral dosing is probably the least satisfactory route for cannabis administration.”

Eating and ingesting THC (pot or hash) takes longer for the onset of the high, but it’s longer lasting and can be more intense (euphoric). Smoking is nearly immediate, but that might also be on account of some O2 displacement in the brain from holding the smoke down for a long time like you’re supposed to do.

The dot gov’s paragraph doesn’t say that smoking mj is ineffective, and I don’t think it implies that. The “ineffective” statement refers to all the stuff the FDA won’t approve. My it’s's antecedent is “the passage”.

I know a little about the bee thing you mentioned, and it’s much more complicated than neonicotinides, FDA, Monsanto buying up research that purports to show a link betw neonics & CCD. For example, industrial bees are completely physically stressed by being carted around the country on 18-wheelers, fed nothing but GM corn syrup, and pollinating 300 square miles of monoculture almond trees. Like a pregnant human eating nothing but cheetos for 9 months of her pregnancy.

Think the med mj is similar. A lot more variables than have been tested for, don’t know whether chemicals that have been depillized from natural mj are valuable or not, etc. etc.

Meantime, my Occum’s razor hypothesis is go with what seems to work and don’t be dogmatic.

We know FDA is in chem corp pockets, so wouldn’t trust anything they pronounce at all. WRT smoking vs. pills, for those who need it, go with what works for you and what you can afford. Without O locking you up in his PIC for slave labor. Well maybe you’d get meds but no guaranty.

(WRT beez, CCD is not a problem for hobbyists like me or small natural beekeepers, so we keep away from using chemicals in the vicinity as much as we can. They can’t be good and we aren’t monocultural industrial farmers.)

Thank you.

Not exactly sure what service I’ve performed that deserves thanks, but you are welcome.

Don’t worry about it– that’s the address of the original Wikimedia Commons image which should appear as it did when the post went live.

I was just trying to alert you that something had gone awry in case you were interested in trying to get it fixed.

Make that Monsanto buying up research that purports to show a link betw GM crops an CCD.

Yes and thank you. I’ll see if I can do something about that. :-)

My ref about Bayer and their neonicotinoids pesticide is that the FDA approved the use even though the FDA had sufficient information to refuse the use approval, plus the information the FDA had was sufficient for the FDA to ban Bayer’s product, but the FDA pretended it had no such information.

The Bayer product has a decades-long half life, will stay in the soil, leach into the water everywhere, and eventually affect everything, killing or making extinct the vulnerable.

Then it might be banned.

The way that they get around the fair wage clause is that they are making products that are not available on a consumer market, or providing services(which are not covered at all by the law). the end products may be on a consumer market, but for the prisoners do not make those products, they make components of those products or they are not finished goods that can be considered consumer products. i.e. textiles, clothing and other products that are contracted/sold to government agencies. I have firsthand court experience in dealing with the Michigan class action suit, and the arguments that were made from both sides.

My property had an apple orchard on it from prolly late 1800s until trees died 60-100 years later. I refuse to test the soil for DDT, and nicotine (nicotine was ingredient in pesticides long before neonics, which I assume are to nics like neocons are to cons, i.e. latter are former on steroids). I do what I can but I am not a miracle worker.

Prisoners have been known to take telephone orders for retailers. Collecting credit card #s in the process. What could possibly go wrong with that.

And may I presume that, in your world of law, since order taking is not the mfg of a product, the law does not prohibit it?

In my personal opinion, pharmaceutical companies are major part of what is wrong with society today. Here is an early example of what they have done to the US: During the early 20th century many scientists worked on and eventually discovered a way to culture and distribute antibiotics, but in the same time period Russian scientists discovered bacteriophages which later led to discovery of virophages. These Russian discoveries were far superior to antibiotics, but they were a cure and people wanted to make money so they were shoved under the rug for most of the world. Russia used these cultures until the introduction of democracy, after which American pharmaceutical companies started distributing their products. As a result their hospitalization rate has increased tenfold in the past 8 years.

The law does not address services, since it was implemented when prisoners had very little contact with the outside world. Admittedly it is a defective law, but it is there and just like any other law, it can be circumvented.

don’t forget the power of the DEA and their hold over the Congress/Obama..He is terrible…yes I know Mitt sucks but I am not voting for either clown!

In any event we are presently witness to the sixth extinction of Earth’s life forms. It was our destiny to be here when it would be happening and our fate to know about it.

Nice. Thanks.

My econ contribution to that is that in the U.S., PhRMA CPI (consumer price index) rose less rapidly than overall inflation until 1981, when Waxman got generic drug legislation passed. In one of the most outstanding laws of the unintended outcomes, PhRMA prices have risen more rapidly than overall inflation ever since bc Waxman legie showed that PhRMA had pricing power that they didn’t previously realize.

Thanks Henry.

You got ‘em rolling, Sam! Hot topic.

If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.

However, I do agree that the increase in prison population is a direct result of the United States policy with respect to illicit drugs. I’m guilty of having broken said law, but I accepted the consequences, should I get caught. I don’t care if I get busted with a joint. It was worth it.

The states are within their rights to contract prisoners to do whatever labor they assign. I hate to say it, but you know.. If you break the law, you’ll pay the price should you get caught. That’s just the way it is.

Again, if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.

Do you have a source for this information? I’d be interested in reviewing them. I won’t call you out and say you’re a bullshitter, but if what you’re saying is factual, I would LOVE to read your sources.

Thanks, Sam. I would add some random thoughts:

As long as cannabis is illegal, so is hemp. So there are other industries such as paper and cotton and corn (ethanol, cooking oil) that have an interest in maintaining prohibition.

Cannabis is classified as a Schedule I drug – no recognized medical use. To the best of my knowledge, Marinol/THC is classified as Schedule III – known medical uses. Go figure.

THC is to cannabis as cocaine is to coca. Once the active ingredient is segregated from its natural state, it just ain’t the same.

And the political reality: Obama doesn’t need Congress to change the law. He has the authority to reschedule cannabis to Schedule III and take it off of DOJ radar.

Marijuanna is good for lots of aliments, depression for one, alcoholism for another, but there are big players in the way of legalization,e.g., BigPharma, private prisons, law enforcement (overtime, high tech cop toys, disributors, and suppliers. The last of which includes national governments, e.g. Mexico etc. There’s just too much money to be lost if grass were legal.