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Saturday, December 27, 2014

Nebraska Alcohol Protectionists Seek to Abuse Constitution


Scalia: an alcohol protectionist that favors abusing the 'supremacy clause' 
to support pharmacratic inquisition junk statutes against Marijuana
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/12/19/colorados-neighbors-say-theyre-spending-too-much-on-minor-pot-offenses-so-maybe-they-should-stop-prosecuting-them/

What a HUGE hypocrite Nebraska is! - From Russ Belville:

"The tiny town of Whiteclay, Nebraska, population 10, holds the distinction of being the US town with the greatest beer sales per capita of any American town. This town of 10 has four licensed off-sale beer stores that sold 3.6 million cans of beer in 2013, or almost 10,000 cans of beer per day.

How is that possible? Well, Whiteclay, you see, lies on the northern Nebraska border with South Dakota, where it directly abuts the Oglala Sioux (Lakota) Indian Nation on the Pine Ridge Reservation. And Pine Ridge has maintained absolute alcohol prohibition... [where]alcoholism affects an estimated 80 percent of their households, 60 percent of individuals, and nearly one quarter of babies born suffer from fetal alcohol syndrome.

Nebraska can’t complain that Colorado is messing up their marijuana prohibition while Nebraska is openly flouting the Lakota Nation’s alcohol prohibition. Besides, unlike a beer store in Whiteclay, some pot shop selling on the Colorado / Nebraska border isn’t fostering domestic violence, dangerous roads, cirrhosis of the liver, and birth defects." 

Saturday, December 20, 2014

The AMA and The New England Journal of Medicine Owe The World an Apology



The New England Medical Journal and organizations as the American Medical Association propagandize for the perversion of a profession that has largely relied upon illegal and immoral tactics to confuse the public about herbal based medicine, particularly confusing dilute and ultra concentrated forms of cocaine use, while shilling for tobacco cigarettes.  This has resulted in a market distortion that killed over 100 million people during the last century with the suppression of Coca, which the USDA recognized as a market threat to Tobacco, while harming health with petrochemical patent medicines known today as pharmaceuticals to say nothing about the harms of drug prohibition and the miseries caused by its enforcement.  It epitomizes a bloated profession that has bilked the public out of billions of dollars that should be sued for medical fraud and human rights violations.

From The New England Journal of Medicine review of the book Quack, Quack, Quack: The Sellers of Nostrums in Prints, Posters, Ephemera and Books by William Helfand
The popular circus showman P.T. Barnum once warned that "humbug" was everywhere in the medical profession. In Quack, Quack, Quack, William Helfand, a historian of pharmacy, proves Barnum right. A chronicle of quackery in picture and prose, Helfand's book examines the depths of medical chicanery in Western culture over the past 400 years. 
 "Quacks have been with us forever," explains Helfand. Never "static," quackery has "modified its offering to adjust to new therapeutic discoveries and new means of communication," as well as "to almost any prevailing political and regulatory system." Helfand demonstrates the adaptability of quackery with 183 fascinating images of promotional material, along with the popular and professional reactions they inspired. Mined from various archives and libraries, the images depict nostrum peddlers ranging from those found at French country fairs to those involved in the popular Indian medicine shows inspired by the North American frontier. There are quack products for addiction, such as No-To-Bac for smokers, as well as addiction-causing products such as Vin Mariani, a cocaine-based panacea. Readers will enjoy learning about Samuel Solomon's Balm of Gilead that targeted "masturbation, scrofula, and related ills" and the "Health Jolting Chair," which was advertised as a convenient exercise to preserve "the most highly prized feminine attractions." Helfand also includes musical scores such as those for the "Water Cure Polka" and "Blue Glass Gallop," which illustrate the popularity of hydropathic and light-ray treatments during the Gilded Age. Other paintings, illustrations, and title pages lampoon quacks and their "cures." One satirical cartoon from mid-19th-century England depicts a victim of an overdose of James Morison's vegetable pills with carrots, cabbage, and corn sprouting from his limbs. Although the images are instructive on their own, Helfand adds insightful commentary and, when necessary, English translations.

Within the book's brief 50 pages of text, Helfand defines "quack" as "a pejorative term" used by members of the established medical community to disparage "irregulars" who ignore or reject medical orthodoxy. Along with their status as outsiders, quacks, Helfand explains, possess certain characteristics that signify their trade. These often undereducated and itinerant doctors and druggists engage in aggressive advertising, exaggerating the effectiveness of their abilities or products.

Perhaps most important, quacks have proved themselves to be talented entertainers capable of wowing audiences with enthralling theatrics and bombastic rhetoric. Yet Helfand concedes that although regular and irregular doctors differ in style, they share many similarities, particularly since irregulars frequently imitate certain features of orthodoxy, such as medical jargon, in order to establish legitimacy or respectability. The boundary between regulars and irregulars was never clear. In fact, "in unsophisticated times," says Helfand, "the results of treatment might well have ended the same." Helfand's suggestion that quackery and irregular medicine were synonymous represents one shortcoming of the book. Were all irregulars quacks? Certainly not. For example, aspects of hydropathic and homeopathic medicine, both featured in the book, gained greater acceptance among mainstream physicians in the 20th century. Helfand ignores the emergence of osteopathic and chiropractic medicine, both of which the American Medical Association dismissed as quackery for decades. Had Helfand accepted conscious deceit as the essence of quackery, his definition would have been tighter. However, as he correctly points out, conscious deceit is difficult to prove. Overall, Quack, Quack, Quack is an enlightening and enjoyable book suitable for academics, health care professionals, and the general public alike. The images, many of which are in color, reveal in an entertaining format the long-standing tradition of quackery in Western medicine. "Despite what we do," concludes Helfand, "the quacks and their nostrums will be with us forever." I hope that there will be more books like this one to chart their development as we go. Eric Juhnke, Ph.D.
Copyright © 2003 Massachusetts Medical Society. All rights reserved. The New England Journal of Medicine is a registered trademark of the MMS.
About The New England Medical Journal's advertisements for Tobacco cigarettes:

http://nyamcenterforhistory.org/2014/02/21/more-doctors-smoke-camels/
More Doctors Smoke Camels
Posted on February 21, 2014 by nyamhistorymed       

By Johanna Goldberg, Information Services Librarian, with Andrew Gordon, Systems Librarian

This is part of an intermittent series of blogs featuring advertisements from medical journals. You can find the entire series here.

From the 1930s into the 1950s, medical journals—including the Journal of the American Medical Association and the New England Journal of Medicine—ran advertisements for cigarettes.1,2 The New York State Journal of Medicine alone published 600 pages of cigarette advertisements spanning more than two decades, starting in 1933.3 Around the same time, advertising agencies created campaigns featuring physicians; these continued until 1954, as concerns about the negative health effects of smoking grew.

Presented chronologically below are some of the cigarette advertisements—and one cigarette paraphernalia‎ ad—that appeared in medical journals during the 20-year period. Note especially the 1945 series of ads that ran in several medical journals, including the Medical Woman’s Journal, celebrating the work of war doctors and suggesting that a Camel cigarette could be a welcome break.

Notable, too, is that the earliest ad shown here—printed in Preventive Medicine in 1937—comes from a New York Academy of Medicine publication.

For more information on the history of cigarette advertising, including the use of medical professionals in ads, visit SRITA, Stanford Research into the Impact of Tobacco Advertising.
The New England Medical Journal articles mentioning Vin Mariani
http://www.nejm.org/search?q=vin+mariani
Original Article Digital Archive
   
Original ArticleDigital Archive
…closed.) Evening pulse 108, temperature 100°. Tsvo semi-solid movements of the bosvels in the afternoon. Midnight pulse 98, temperature 99.(1°. Vin Mariani in half-ounce doses was given instead of whiskey. March 11th. Pulse 104, temperature 99.8°. Vomited two ounces of flaxseed tea as soon as it svas…
  • May 5, 1898
  • BRIGHAM C.B.
  • Boston Med Surg J 1898; 138:415-419
  • Original ArticleDigital Archive
    …two months since the operation upon the mastoid. The patient is taking nourishment every three hours, and is retaining it. She takes coca wine, Vin Mariani, two-ounces three times a day. She continues to improve, to take solid food and to go about the hospital. Her weight increased. In a few weeks after…
    • November 17, 1892
    • JOHN ROOSA D.B.ST.
    • Boston Med Surg J 1892; 127:470-473
  • Medical ProgressDigital Archive
    …affections. Drs. Colin, Fauvel, Gazeau, Rabuteau, and Cintrât bear witness to the value of this medicinal agent, especially in the form of vin de coca Mariani, in tonsillitis, albuminuria, and diabetes. Dr. Fauvel especially speaks of its beneficial effect in a peculiar form of rebellious granular pharyngitis…
    • September 26, 1878
    • AMORY R.
    • Boston Med Surg J 1878; 99:397-402
   
Book Review
…the North American frontier. There are quack products for addiction, such as No-To-Bac for smokers, as well as addiction-causing products such as Vin Mariani, a cocaine-based panacea. Readers will enjoy learning about Samuel Solomon's Balm of Gilead that targeted "masturbation, scrofula, and related ills…
  • October 16, 2003
  • Juhnke E.
  • N Engl J Med 2003; 349:1580
  • Free Full Text


Book Review
…many ailments and for the treatment of alcoholics and opium addicts. Cocaine made its appearance in the patent medicines of the time, including Vin Mariani and Coca Cola. During this time, many reports were published in the medical literature describing the untoward effects of cocaine. Many physicians…
  • June 7, 1990
  • Swift R.M.
  • N Engl J Med 1990; 322:1677
  • Free Full Text

Vin Mariani was created in 1863 and first sold by 1865.  It was made with an alcohol based infusion of Coca leaves dissolved in French red wine, and contained about 6 milligrams of cocaine alkaloid per fluid ounce.  A version called Elixir Mariani was fortified with small amounts of added isolated cocaine alkaloid.

The New England Medical Journal was first published in  1812.  The above three articles, published in 1878, 1892 and 1898 are the only mentions of Vin Mariani in their articles prior to the 1914 Harrison 'Narcotics' Act that show in a search of their web site archive.

The subsequent two articles published in 1990 and 2003 are the only ones likewise found to mention Vin Mariani after 1914.

After several decades of use, Vin Mariani was so described in Paris, by Mesureur, the French Ex-Minister of Commerce, and the current (in 1910) Director of Hygiene and Public Health, who approved and signed the French government's radical poster campaign against alcoholism:

“The dangers of alcoholism would be avoided if no other stimulant were taken for mental or physical trials than that offered by the generous."
The over lap in the popular use of opiates and alcohol, and that of opiates, alcohol and tobacco, brought about situations where coca’s use in combating the use of the first two led to the discovery of its efficacy in combating use of the third, with these being regarded favorably according to the account by Dr. Liberman and Villeneuve
“I have also employed it in cases, happily rare in our army, of chronic alcoholism resulting from the abuse of brandy, absinthe or strong liquors. The produced all the excitement sought by drinkers, but had at the same time a sedative influence on their nervous systems. I have frequently seen hardened drinkers renounce their fatal habit and return to a healthy condition." "I have also used to save smokers of exaggerated habits, from nicotinism. A few glasses of taken in small doses, either pure or mixed with water, acted as a substitute for pipes and cigars, because the smokers found in it the cerebral excitement which they sought in tobacco, wholly preserving their intellectual faculties."

This is owing to the DILUTE concentration of the cocaine within a fluid base, with cocaine absorbed relatively slowly.  Also, with cocaine as not only a CNS stimulant but as well an anesthetic, so drinking such a cocaine containing fluid would provide an anesthetic inhabiter effect numbing appetite and hence appetite for more, thus guarding against excessive drinking by providing a strong feeling of fullness from within the GI tract.  Such an anesthetic inhibitor effect of course would be absent with any of the other means of taking cocaine, particularly the more concentrated modes of sniffed cocaine hci, let along injecting it or smoking it in concentrated form as 'crack'.

Nonetheless, rather than explain any of this to its readers, The New England Medical Journal simply follows AMA derived patent medicine propaganda to smear Vin Mariani as somehow 'addictive' and curiously does so in the same breath as smearing the idea of a product for curing Tobacco addiction as so-called 'quackery'.

Such a juxtaposition of smearing reeks as a 'Freudian slip' in light of The New England Medical Journal's longstanding enshrinement of Tobacco cigarette advertisements, and the USDA-AMA circular 1910 'concern' over the use of Coca products as a 'Tobacco habit cure'.


http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/drug-war-promotes-drug-abuse-over-drug.html
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/drug-warriors-ignore-pharmacokinetics.html
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/how-narcs-created-crack-richard-cowan.html
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/drug-warriors-ignore-history-of-coca.html
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-evil-prohibition-to-promote.html
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/criminal-mercantilism-public-health.html














Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Today Is the 100th Anniversary of Woodrow Wilson Signing the Harrison 'Narcotics' Act


to pervert opiates and cocaine into concentrated drugs via a criminal scheme to protect synthetic patent - pharmaceutical - medications and Virginia Bright leaf cigarettes






Woodrow Wilson signing Federal Reserve Act
(no picture on the Internet of him signing the Harrison 'Narcotics' Act)

http://www.drugpolicy.org/blog/today-100th-anniversary-harrison-narcotics-tax-act?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DPANNews+%28Drug+Policy+Alliance+News+and+Alerts%29


http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-evil-prohibition-to-promote.html

Virginia Bright Leaf cigarette ad in medical journal highlighting the despicable alliance between big pharma and big tobacco









Rep. Andy Harris Pharma Conflict of Interest

The 'Republican' Congressman from Maryland who is insisting upon maintaining the unconstitutional and immoral ban on Marijuana has a pharmaceutical connection:


http://www.attn.com/stories/463/one-congressman-just-ruined-legalized-marijuana-dc-everyone-heres-why


"Shortly after his success in blocking the District voters' will, several media outlets revealed a serious conflict of interest involved in his stance on marijuana reform. It came to light that Harris' third largest campaign donor is the pharmaceutical corporation Emergent BioSolutions, based in Rockville, Maryland. One of Emergent's products is epsil, "a fast-acting treatment that reduces the pain associated with oral mucositis," which is a common complication of chemotherapy from cancer treatment. Marijuana has been recognized formally in a number of states as having immense therapeutic potential for cancer patients. In fact, in states where medical marijuana has legalized, the number of pharmaceutical pain killers prescribed has dropped significantly. The congressman has not explicitly addressed this issue, but it is now clear Harris has not disclosed an important conflict of interest surrounding his recent activity against marijuana reform." 

Harris is an anesthesiologist- a class of doctors with access to some strange drugs as PCP and Ketamine.  Perhaps he was imbibing, and became a victim of demonic possession?


Friday, December 12, 2014

Prohibitionist GUILT

- for protecting more intrinsically dangerous substances from safer substances, and for perverting safer substances into more dangerous forms

from Facebook:

Malcom Kyle Every single prohibitionist is drenched in blood. Blood from forcing people to chose alcohol and nicotine over a far safer alternative. Blood from forcing the ill and dying to use killer prescription drugs instead of marijuana. And blood from forcing people to buy from violent black market criminals.

Douglas Andrew Willinger As well as blood from perverting Opium and Coca into CONCENTRATED opiates and cocaine taken in CONCENTRATED doses. Imagine affecting caffeine or nicotine use as done with cocaine.

Likewise imagine doing to alcohol what we do with opiates in medicine, eliminating beverages in favor of concentrated pills and injections, and adulterating with Tylenol to discourage-punish users.

http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/criminal-mercantilism-public-health.html


http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2010/12/top-anti-researcher-180.html

http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2011/01/drug-statutes-infinitely-worse-than.html

http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/how-narcs-created-crack-richard-cowan.html

http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/drug-warriors-ignore-pharmacokinetics.html

http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/drug-warriors-ignore-history-of-coca.html

http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2013/01/stop-overlooking-opium.html

http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-evil-prohibition-to-promote.html

Thursday, December 4, 2014

Criminal 'Defense' Attorneys May Include Our Biggest Traitors to Drug Policy Reform

From the comments section of an article 'Beyond Marijuana- Legalize All Drugs' By Froma Harrop

http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20141002/OPINION04/141009894#

An exchange with a criminal 'defense' attorney that says "I don't even want to hear the synthetic vs. natural argument because it's just plain stupid" , and elsewhere "I'm a criminal defense attorney who has handled literally thousands of pounds worth of marijuana cases, most of that weight being Mexican pot pulled off I-40" - makes a living leaching off the public and clients via processing countless drug cases.  He is potentially dependent upon the other drugs remaining illegal.

Avatar




Alcohol is legal. We're talking about illegal drugs. Alcohol does cause enormous harms in this country though, no doubt about that. If I had a nickle for every time I heard a victim/witness/family member in a case talk about what a great guy the defendant is until he starts drinking and gets stupid and mean I would have a whole lot of nickels. I have never once heard that about pot. Most of the battery cases we see in court involved drunk people beating on each other or innocent people. It causes so much stupid and harmful conduct. It's behind most violent crimes, a lot of sex crimes, so much harmful conduct where intentional or reckless conduct causes injuries or deaths and/or property damage or puts others at great risk of serious harm. If it was a new drug there is no way it would be legal.

But of course alcohol is not new. It's widely used. It's popular and has been since ancient times . Marijuana is also a popular drug now and has been for decades. It is not as popular as alcohol and never will be, but it is too popular to ban with any success and not such a threat that it makes any sense at all to continue trying to keep up this ban that costs us a fortune, stops nothing, doesn't do a lick of good, but causes all sorts of harm. The market for it is massive. Government data shows that over half of all American adults under 65 have used it. Over half the kids growing up today will eventually use it, as has occurred for several decades now. It's everywhere, super easy to obtain. The laws against it are unpopular and widely ignored. Most everybody who wants to smoke pot is already doing so. It is just long past time to regulate this entirely unregulated multi-billion dollar industry.







You completely neglect how prohibition makes drugs into dangers via banning the drugs and any mixtures containing such. Cocaine and opiates are perfectly safe as legal drugs when used as such DILUTELY. Don't you remember the original Coca Cola? Try researching subjects as Opium, Coca leaves, and Vin Mariani see my blog 'Freedom of Medicine and Diet'. Support languishes because groups as the Drug Policy Alliance have neglected the issue have not held a Coca panel for instance since 1995 when they were the DPF.


 Avatar
 




Are they really safe diluted? I don't know that. How much do they have to be diluted to make them safe? What's to stop people from "undiluting" them, from concentrating them? You'll love this, but I was 100% for putting pseudo ephedrine behind pharmacy counters. That cut the number of kitchen meth labs way way down in my state. I was a public defender back then and we went from getting several new meth lab cases a month down to a handful a year. This cut down on problem use and addiction and child neglect and all sorts of other problems. We didn't have all of these people getting so much nearly free meth, and getting their friends, siblings, cousins, etc., in on the game helping gather pills, scrape red phosphorous off of matchbook strike pads, and all the other things all the hangers on would be doing to get their free dope.

Sorry, but you will never convince me that drugs like heroin and meth need to be legal. I've dealt with so many addicted to the hard stuff, seen so many lives ruined, so much harm done. I think we can and should try to reduce the harms that we cause trying to prohibit these drugs. But I would fight legalizing these drugs, as would most everybody else. Your position is supported by a tiny minority of Americans. That's not going to change. Support for legalizing the hard stuff is not growing, and will not grow much. The best you can hope for is less drug war and more treating this as a health issue. That's just reality and I suggest taking a dose or two of that and focusing your efforts on reducing drug war harms rather than on legalizing all drugs, which will never happen.






Research the topics Opium, Coca leaves, Coca and Vin Mariani on my blog 'Freedom of Medicine and Diet' and elsewhere. If you really support what we are doing with prohibiting cocaine and opiates than propose the same for caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol. As addictive and reinforcing the latter two are, how many are distilling them into grain alcohol suppositories or shooting or smoking Black Leaf 40? Meth however is a synthetic chemical and way more toxic- but by lumping it with the others you are further demonstrating a severe case of tunnel vision- which is what the perpetrators of prohibition and its benificiaries of court personal, police and drug treatment want- to continue to make money so perversely.

 




Douglass, you are the one who suffers from tunnel vision. I am a pragmatic realist. You are a zealot. We aren't going to ban alcohol or nicotine because we can't. We tried with alcohol. It is too ingrained in our culture and too easy to make. It is a hard drug. It causes enormous problems. Nicotine is incredibly addictive and kills those who use it. Neither bring in enough tax revenues to cover the costs that society incurs from them, but it would cost way more to try to ban them, and we'd still have the costs from the use we couldn't stop. Hardly anyone uses drugs like heroin and meth (and I don't even want to hear the synthetic vs. natural argument because it's just plain stupid).

You're wasting your time and mine. I have work to do. You could be better utilizing your time rather than chasing a pipe dream. It ain't gonna happen. We are never going to legalize all drugs. Support for that languishes at below 10% even though support for legalizing marijuana has climbed to over 50% from 12% back in 1969. People realize how bad drugs like meth and heroin are for society. Not only are they incredibly addictive like nicotine (or more so), but they contribute to crime, child neglect, loss of productivity, crazy behavior, etc., and just cause our communities enormous problems. Alcohol does a lot of the same even though it's not as horribly addictive as heroin, but alcohol is here to stay. There's no making it go away or even putting an appreciable dent in use.

So no, I'm not going to support banning alcohol or nicotine, and I'm not going to support legalizing meth and heroin and cocaine either. I've dealt with enough people addicted to those drugs and seen enough harms caused by addicts to know that we don't want to risk having several times as many using these drugs that so few use today. You wouldn't even be able to find heroin in my town. I've handled thousands of pounds worth of drug cases, countless drug cases here, and we just don't see heroin here. The last thing I want is for some store to be selling it because while most would be smart enough to leave it alone some would buy it and before long we'd have a bunch of heroin addicts we see in court over and over again when we have none now. No thanks.

 





Stay ignorant of the facts and continue to leach off the tax payer with your criminal "defense" practice.

People like you do not care about the truth, but ONLY about leaching off of people with your NON defense of people, only defense of an evil status quo that has killed 100 million people via the market distorting of lying about cocaine - safer than caffeine and nicotine when used as such with the criminal ban on Coca that was pushed by the USDA-AMA-APha.

"(and I don't even want to hear the synthetic vs. natural argument because it's just plain stupid)"

You have zero credibility.

http://freedomofmedicineanddie...

There is NO justification for the ban on Coca nor Opium, and if the statutes had any legitimacy they would merely be targeting highly concentrated substances. Please stop pretending to be a reformer. Your idiot-logy is a sick joke that simply serves to en-richen big Tobacco, alcohol, coffee and countless leaches in law enforcement, treatment and of course criminal defense. Continue to keep your head stuck in the sand about God's gifts of Coca and Opium - you WANT to remain selectively ignorant so you can leach off the taxpayers and your clients.