Douglas Greene's 1st TV Appearance on the Morton Downey Jr. Show July 4, 1988

Douglas Greene
b March 13, 1967-June 4, 2019

July 4, 1988 appearance with Ron Paul and Dana Beal on The Morton Downey Jr. Show

Dana Beal, Doug Greene with Lisa Sliwa at right, 

July 4, 1988 Morton Downey Jr. Show

It was 1987.

1986 had brought the the great new bi-partisan U.S. escalation of the 75+ year old "drug war".


Seizing upon the fatal overdose (cocaine) of Len Bias, a University of Maryland student and draft pick of the Boston Celtics in 1986, and in an orchestrated response to newspaper hyperbole, the bipartisan government of President Ronald Reagan and U.S. Speaker of the House William O'Neil, with rashly promoted legislation to further escalate the long-running drug war (started up during the years leading up to the start of World War I largely for the sake of making the world markets safer for cigarettes), by a so-called Anti Drug Abuse Act of 1986.

This spurred the entry of a bunch of us into the protest movement against the drug war.

We included Doug Greene and yours truly, meeting other more established protesters, and threading our way into a variety of venues.  Greene, lived in Cedarhurst, N.Y., on Long Island near the eastern edge of Queens, was an NYU under-graduate in psychology, and involved with the Libertarian Party. I was from New Rochelle, N.Y. in southeastern Westchester County, and was an incoming 1st year student at University of Bridgeport School of Law student, recently inspired to research the war on cocaine, as well as researching the story of the longest used and favorably regarded cocaine containing product prior to the start of the drug war- Vin Mariani and its creator Angelo Francois Mariani.

Doug and I met at a Libertarian Party event in White Plains N.Y. in April 1988.

I vividly recollect seeing him that first time with his name-badge, and immediately recognizing his name from an article he authored for the (now defunct) newsletter "Burning Issues" written and published by R.B. Wilks - an energetic anti-drug war female activist and for a time girlfriend of Libertarian Party activist (and former member of Young Americans for Freedom) Don Meinshausen.  His article against the drug war made the rarely made much needed point that the self perpetuating problem is not "drugs" but rather prohibitionist policies banning a substance in any and all forms without regard to potency/concentration, with the dynamics meaning safer, dilute, guaranteed low potency options are eliminated and replaced with infinitely riskier higher concentration/wildly variable potency.  Hence, Greene then advocated for legalizing Opium and Coca leaf, providing a welcome contrast to the standard group thought of thinking of "heroin" and "cocaine" concentrated white powders.

His name's irony was immediate and comforting. 

Doug Greene, born March 13, 1967.  A man with a surname suggestive of his public stance for green plant drugs - Cannabis, Opium and Coca - as well as his advocacy of veganism.  And born a mere 3 months before the release of that Monkees song "Pleasant Valley Sunday" with its line "Mr. Greene, he's so serene, he's got a TV in every room"  - a prophetic description of a Mr. Greene into having the newest level of computer/operating system.

Greene interned that year at the Drug Policy Foundation, working under Arnold Trebach and Kevin Zeese. We both attended the 1988 NORML convention, held in a hotel on Wisconsin Avenue in upper Georgetown, Washington D.C.  And later that summer, Greene first introduced me to that most colorful personality and political protester long headquartered at 9 Bleeker in Manhattan, Dana Beal.  A longtime drug war opponent - he has a recording of him calling out George McGovern on the issue back in 1972 - Beal holds annual pro marijuana legalization marches the earliest Saturday in May; and he has his own approach to the drug war: highlighting its absurdity via his advocacy of the use of Iboga plant root bark alkaloid Ibogaine as a drug-addiction interrupter, as discovered by his longtime friend Howard Lotsoff in 1962, who tried Ibogaine and found his physical addiction to Heroin had vanished.

Greene and Beal would get seen to the world by getting on an episode of that unforgettably late 1980s icon of "trash-talk" television- The Morton Downey Jr. Show, named for its host.

The show was started by WWOR of Secaucas, New Jersey, and first aired October 19, 1987.

It was textbook "trash-talk" - host with panelists and audience, with questions/statements from the latter permitted. It combined a variety of elements of "audience" shows from those devoted to matters as personal soap opera stories with its vast arrays of family feuds, into a show addressing political issues, with a design to provide a platform for dissident views, but in an arena so stacked as to have them effectively silenced with the moderator encouraged a raucous audience to chant the establishment mode of thought, regarding persons with ideas contra.  The show's early ratings successes lead to it being taken on national syndication in 1988.

Hmm, allow a platform for a few dissidents, but in a sort of arena where rather than their ideas receiving a fair and just consideration, instead are met with the most simplistic ridicule, representing that of the powers that be be here presented as the popular opinion that they seek to perpetuate.

Of course include those espousing status quo views.  For instance, Lisa Sliwa (Evers), then wife of the founder of the citizen vigilante organization the Guardian Angels, Curtis Sliwa.

The episode that Greene and Beal appeared was that of July 4, 1988, featuring - as its best known speaker that day - Ron Paul, Congressman from Texas..

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/andrewkaczynski/ron-pauls-1998-appearance-on-the-morton-downey-jr


See the following link at 18:30- 20.20
Doug Greene and Dana Beal July 1988 Morton Downey Jr. Show

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxXwKPLZyVs

Ibogaine For Afghanistan

A fund-raiser for a clinic in Kabul, Afghanistan, with Dana Beal

About the frauduant 'Occupy' movement - Aron Black

busted by Ibogaine activist Dana Beal

No secret money- unless it involves payment for my time DNC whore

https://www.facebook.com/groups/143405647913/

About Ibogaine, DeBlasio & NYC's heroin crisis, Aaron Black just wrote:

"I am swamped and can not take on anything else unless it involves payment for my time. I donate too much of my time as it is and don't see this as a political gamechanger. I don't know enough about this drug and can't push something I am not well informed about. Furthermore, I don't have the time to study. Sorry, but that's where I stand on this."

Dana Beal replied:

"I can explain it in 15 minutes. Let me give you a one page summary at least. DeBlasio got back to ME. I mean, there's a heroin crisis on the front page of the NYTIMES, we have a single dose cure. What's complicated about that? It's like medical marijuana, except no one takes it to get high--just to detox. Ask Colin Moynihan if it's for real, or Aton Edwards. Ask Eric Williams or Paul DeRienzo. REPORTERS, dude."

Please enlighten Aaron Black.

FreidaPeople Stat wrote:

Aaron Black is not enlightenable. He is not the type looking for actual progress. He's a terrible guy who should not be trusted. He should be thrown out of town, not lauded as a leader.How is it that a guy who comes from out of state supporting rape culture in a very personal way (I'll expand in this in person any time), pays creepy men to participate in activism seemingly to turn away others, supports, works and lives with men who harm women becomes the political go-to guy? Really? Fuck everybody if you accept this ass and make him more important rather than defrocking him. Fuck the left if this is what it boils down to. An old, white boy network of the very worst sort.

Free Dana Beal

Ibogaine anti addiction activist
currently incarcerated and up for parole



Free Dana Beal! Founder of the Global Marijuana March. Great letter. Some history of Dana's activism. Please share! Thanks to all the great people helping Dana out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Kuby
http://cannabis.wikia.com/wiki/Dana_Beal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dana_Beal
https://www.facebook.com/groups/143405647913

 Dana wrote the following model letter for early parole.  He wrote:  "No two letters should be exactly the same, but the contents of the last paragraph should go in each one."

State of Nebraska Board of Parole
PO Box 94754
Lincoln, NE 68509-4754

[date]

Dear Sir or Madam:

I have read that due to prison overcrowding, you have a program of early parole (furlough) for non-violent offenders and inmates with health problems.  I think Irvin Dana Beal should be at the top of your list.  He's had two heart attacks in the past 18 months, including full cardiac arrest on September 27, 2011when he was clinically dead for 4 minutes, followed by 6 days in an induced coma, followed by a double bypass.  His hospital bill was almost a quarter of a million dollars, a bill Iowa County, WI only partially dodged by granting him emergency appeal bond.  (They still had to pay $114,000.)  On February 24, 2012, he had a second heart attack; the stent cost WI DOC another $50,000.

Beal is currently incarcerated in Nebraska for providing medical marijuana to patients with serious life-threatening conditions in Michigan, NYC, and Washington, D.C. -- mostly people with AIDS.  The prosecutor refused to admit that even though their provider was arrested, the seriously ill continue to need their medicine, and also that Beal was a sick man taking care of other, even sicker people.

Ironically, Beal is not only a founder of the medical marijuana movement, but a longtime AIDS activist who worked in the '90s with the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) on the first broad spectrum treatment for addiction to methamphetamine, cocaine, opiate, alcohol , and cigarettes -- ibogaine.  Just last Fall, NIDA appropriated $5 million to develop its own, synthetic iboga congener, 18-methoxycoronaridine (18-MC).  Beal has devoted half his life to a cure for drug addiction.  If you give him a furlough, he's ready to use his exhaustive knowledge of FDA regulations, addiction medicine, and personal ties at NIDA Medications Development to secure funding and help the Nebraska DOC and University of Nebraska set up Phase I and Phase II clinical trails of 18-MC for interruption of addiction to methamphetamine, crack, opiates, and alcohol -- thereby solving your prison overcrowding problem.  Instead of confining Beal, you should be utilizing this resource.   Enforced inactivity is nowhere near as bad as the punishment inflicted on Nebraska taxpayers because you're not using the only known pharmacotherapy for crystal meth.

Respectfully,
[signature]

[print name and
address]

Dana Beal Letter - November 18, 2012

Faces sentencing (nevermind that he's committed no real crime) December 10, 2012

November 18, 2012

Dear Nancy,

As you probably heard, I'm getting 130-150 days credit toward the time I spent in Wisconsin solely on my Nebraska detainer, which gives me 13 months to 13 months, 20 days credit for time served. All they have to do is give me 2-3 years like the driver of the van and I'm automatically paroled the day I'm sentenced, although they'll have to go through the formalities during that 80 days I'll have left until I'm released February 27th in Wisconsin.

The only wrinkle is that my probation officer in Wahoo, Suzanne Kusy, had at least given some thought to 3-5 before I told her I was doing 2 years, 8-1/2 months, on Wisconsin parole anyway - so why not recommend concurrent probation? I'd actually be under supervision much longer than the additional 4 or 5 months I'd get until automatic release on the 3-5. (You do half of 3.) I laid out the whole plan to get work release in Wisconsin if I'm eligible under the 2-3 (the last 6 months) for work release here, but the questionnaire I was supposed to fill out and give her was delayed in the mail, so she set an appointment for Wednesday morning the 14th, and never showed. The prosecutor may have grabbed her instead; I don't think Scott Tinglehoff will sit still for probation.

So it becomes really important to have Marsha Rummel and 2 or 3 other Madison elected officials to send letters to Suzanne Kusy and Judge Mary Gilbride (c/o Glenn Shapiro) asking for the same kind of sentence, so I get moved to Oakhill Correctional in Oregon, Wisconsin, spend my days at the heroin task force office setting up an Ibogaine Outcomes Study, and get my hernia operation at St. Mary's in Madison. (I could also wait around here to get approved for work release after sentencing, but then I lose part of the 80 days left on my Wisconsin sentence, so I might not be able to get much done.) That'd be a drag, because the election of Tammy Baldwin as U.S. Senator makes our little Outcome Study potentially crucial. A little background:

In June of 2010, Missouri State Rep. John Callahan of South St. Louis, Missouri introduced a methamphetamine treatment research bill in the U.S. House of Representatives. While ibogaine is best known for treating heroin, it happens to be the ONLY thing for crystal meth -- GDNF (glial-derived neurotropic factor) regenerates dopamine neurons, etc. And I just so happened to have key activists close to two congresswomen sitting on the sub-committee with jurisdiction: Ben Masel in Tammy Baldwin's district in Madison and the Heartland Cafe folks in Jan Schakowsky's Northside Chicago district. All we had to do was get ibogaine into the sub-committee's report.

So I got the article in the Omaha World-Herald. But by the time Keegan Hamilton's article came out in thirty Village Voice syndicate weeklies, the tea party had taken the House, and through Tammy and Jan were still on the sub-committee, any appropriation to fund research evaporated.

So we came up with Plan B: Have Tammy circulate a letter in Congress for members to sign asking the head of the DEA how ibogaine, a drug with no abuse potential, can be Schedule I when the Statute explicitly requires "a high potential for abuse". I was on my way to Ben's to finalize the letter when I was busted 45 miles west of Madison. Then, while I was in jail, Ben died of cancer, and it gradually dawned on me the key to ibogaine in Wisconsin is their heroin problem. Once I was back on the street after my heart attack, we didn't make it to Tammy's office until mid-December.

She was in full campaign mode, so we only got to see an aide, who said that if we sent it ourselves, they'd monitor the response - not the same thing as members of Congress signing and sending it. (Right around that time, nine members signed onto a letter denouncing the crackdown on marijuana dispensaries). A couple of weeks later I was re-sentenced, and though I was able to get an ibogaine segment on Madison Channel 15 (with me in it) on February 23rd, by that time I was locked down and no one knew how to follow up. (Which is why I need to be out on work release).

So the election of Tammy Baldwin to the seat Ben Masel once ran for (and got 14% of the vote against Herb Kohl) suddenly makes our little Outcome Study make-or-break. You see, Marsha is friends with Tammy. Alfred McCoy (Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia - I gave him a copy of The Ibogaine Story) does readings at Rainbow Books in Madison. If we get some success stories and create a buzz among Tammy's peers, a U.S. Senator could put a hold on the DEA (like Kohl did over harassment of pain management specialists) until she gets some answers on re-scheduling. And re-scheduling will generate enthusiasm among researchers, philanthropic funding (think Bill and Melinda Gates), and FDA approval for clinical research. Ben's ex-roommate has a U. of Wisconsin Madison lab ready to treat the first twenty junkies if someone comes up with $150,000.

So it all comes back to getting me out on work release. The prosecutors already telegraphed what they're going to say three times when I tried to get my passport back: I'm a marijuana kingpin and right before I was arrested I went around the world dealing drugs. Plus I got busted again not because PWA's (People With AIDS) lives were t risk from moldy weed, but because I think ibogaine and medical marijuana are above the law. We have to bring Marie Cotter over from New Zealand on December 6th and have her and a friend from Madison do an interview comparing the ibogaine situation over in New Zealand vs. here, with Paul Hammel of the Omaha World-Herald, for publication December 8th or 9th. I've already written to him about how Marie is coming halfway around the world to testify that I was in New Zealand getting ibogaine legalized and saving her son from crystal meth/certain death.

We have to get in our four key witnesses: Marie, Alan, Sheila, and Mike - by boxing in the Drug Warriors so that if they block our Outcome Study in Madison to draw the line against medical marijuana, our supporters will feel cheated and at lest one U.S. Senator will be outraged that our witnesses were not allowed to testify.

If an article comes out Saturday morning, December 8th, laying out the situation and asking in effect why I can't just get the same 2-3 as Chris Ryan, I won't have to come back here and get out August 4th.

I'd better get out - the medical staff here has their marching orders, and the nurse, whose name I didn't get, tells me I'm perfectly stable. The growth on my back is getting bigger, but she won't order a biopsy, and there will be no hernia operations. It might disturb the judge. Copy this letter to our media list, and put it up on Facebook.

Thanks,
Dana #5567

Irvin Dana Beal #5567
PO Box 22800
Lincoln, NE 68542
---------------------------------------------------------------

November 21, 2012

Dear Nancy,

It's happening again. After walking 'round the yard for 45 minutes, I came in, lay down on my bed, coughed just once -- and got the worst, most excruciating stab of pain that you can imagine in my right hernial sac. I immediately wrote nurse Flynn (whose name I got this morning when I signed their form corresponding to the HIPAA form), telling her the problem is back. When she lanced my finger after I slammed it in the door, she told me she thought I was stable, and seemed inclined to economize on elective surgeries for inmates. The clear implication was that they're going to report that I'm perfectly fit to do whatever sentence Scott Tinglehoff wants to give me.

When I got here I wrote a "kite" (as in "go fly a kite!") letter telling the medical staff that the Sheriff's error in not moving me here September 4th meant that I was liable to miss surgery in Madison with Dr. Dave DeAngeles at St. Mary's. So that they would have to do it instead. They wrote back: "Your county is responsible for your care and any referral would need to be approved." Then when I saw Flynn, she said barring a strangulated hernia, they don't fix hernias. What bothers me is that when this happened in April, it was when I moved one leg to get off the bed. So I laid on my back all summer, pushing in my hernias, and nurse Michelle said my constipation was my own fault for not exercising more. It only started feeling tender again recently. This time I way lying on my back and coughed - once. I cough a lot, so if this is going to happen every time, I'm in trouble.

I'm going to tell Suzanne Kusy that she needs to work it out to get me to Oakhill [Correctional Institution in Oregon, WI] and the surgeon who's competent. Not the butcher at Fox Lake who went into an inmate's scrotum three times looking for the hernia that was plainly hanging out of his abdominal wall above the pubic bone. Plus we have elected officials in Madison who can pester the DOC to move me and pay for the surgery.

Tell Marsha Rummel this makes it doubly important to write to Suzanne Kusy and Judge Gilbride (c/o Glenn Shapiro), mentioning the need for this operation besides the work release. Add this to the letter I just sent you when you cc it to Corey, Colin, etc. and email it to Glenn. We should have gone to federal court already, or this wouldn't be happening.

Make certain Suzanne Kusy gets my book even if you have to send her your copy. And the video disc from R.J.

Yours,

 

Dana #5567

Dana Beal Aug 9 letter to Judge Mary Gilbride

Judge Mary Gilbride
Saunders District Court
387 N. Chestnut Street
Wahoo, NE 68066-1869
August 9, 2012

Your Honor:

At my initial appearance on April 23rd, you directed the jail administration to treat me as someone who had had, in the previous 7 months, two heart attacks including full cardiac arrest, a double bypass and a stent put in. They took me out of a cell where I had no way of signaling if I were in distress, but since that time the nursing staff here has disregarded your directive in several respects.

I am in receipt of a list of meds from my surgeon Dr. Kantamneni and cardiologist Dr. Mnuk of St. Mary’s Hospital in Madison, WI that includes melatonin. As I’ve been tormented by insomnia all of my adult life, I took melatonin on an as-needed basis before my heart attacks. The nursing staff here is defying the MDs in Madison, saying it is “not our policy to hand out sleep aids.” But melatonin is not Benadryl. It is a naturally occurring pineal substance that must be supplemented as we age because without it, we die a lot sooner. It is at least as important as an antioxidant and to combat stress for someone who has had a heart attack as it is to induce sleep.

Simple sleep deprivation leads to deterioration of health and is a standard tactic of law enforcement for coercing confessions and totalitarian regimes for breaking down dissidents. It is banned under the Geneva Convention. Melatonin is responsible for REM sleep. Rats jolted with electricity upon onset of REM suffer collapse of the their immune systems and toxic shock from normally benign intestinal micro-organisms.

Nurse Michelle says I should walk in circles around the mod, but I have acute double hernias at the bottom of my abdomen. The one on the right began to give me sharp, stabbing pains in early April that have subsided since I spend all my time on my back, reading, with the hernias pushed in. Glenn Shapiro is in receipt of a letter addressed to you from surgeon David DeAngeles of St. Mary’s Hospital saying I need an operation ASAP. I tried to get it just before I came here, but the local surgeon in Fox Lake had just botched a surgery on another inmate with an identical condition and there was no time to go back to Madison.

I’m willing to wait so the Wisconsin DOC can pay for surgery by someone I trust, but Nurse Michelle insists on giving orders she knows cannot be followed. A clue to her perspective is her response on the matter of my diet:

 The only concession to my special needs is soy milk, which is a life-saver, because I used to get symptoms of congestive heart failure (which I thought was asthma from lactose intolerance) every morning after consuming milk at the Iowa Co. Jail prior to my first, big heart attack. In the interval before the Feb. 24th episode that necessitated the stent, I continued to eat eggs, lots of melted cheese on toasted bagels and pizza. My bloodwork showed my cholesterol was too high, and I was switched from simvastatin to Lipitor. But the doctor at Dodge (intake prison) put me back on simvastatin and I concurred, because Lipitor almost killed a friend of mine. And since the stent, I’ve been fanatical about no fat, no sugar, no salt. My bloodwork probably reflects that, and my blood pressure is normal. If you delete egg yokes, cheese and potato chips from the skimpy diet here, though, there’s not enough to eat. And commissary is all sweets. So I asked, not for anything outside the ordinary fare, but just that they replace things I can’t eat with extra helpings of veggies and oatmeal that I can eat. Nurse Michelle said: “If I do it for you, I have to do it for everyone.”

Well, everyone didn’t just have two heart attacks, including one where my heart stopped so long they had to put me in an induced coma for 6 days! The staff actually discontinued my fish oil with the excuse that it’s not a prescription drug, when the doctor definitely ordered it! It took 2 months of intense negotiating just to get them to accept it from a pharmacy with me paying. I’d be willing to swap food with other inmates, but that’s against jail rules, and I’d already been written up for bleeding. Because my father and maternal grandfather died of stroke at 65 (I’m 65), after my stent, Dr. Jeff Kamlet recommended I go on Plavix, and Dodge put me on clopidogrel (generic Plavix). The only problem is, if I scratch the psoriasis in my ear, it can bleed.

One day my elbow itched, I scratched it, and it wouldn’t stop bleeding for 4 hours. I showed it to Officer Jones, who’s an EMT, and he “gave me a direct order” to hold a wad of toilet paper on it ’til it stopped. But I don’t scab right, and every time I moved even a bit, it pulled off the semi-clotted blood. Forty-five minutes later I was bleeding at the dinner table. I threw the now-bloody wad of toilet paper into the waste basket behind me, next to the sink, and got a fresh wad. Still bleeding. I don’t have HIV or hep C, but it distressed the other inmates when I attempted to airdry it so the scab wouldn’t pull off. Finally another inmate gave me a small bandage (also against regulations) which reduced the bleeding to an ooze. But mea culpa! I should have flushed the toilet paper. An inmate with mental problems, one Marchinsky, with a history in a previous mod of hazing one particular inmate and manufacturing evidence against him (by urinating on the back of the toilet), fished a little piece of toilet paper out of the wastebasket and put it on the counter immediately adjacent. Someone else noticed it, raised a ruckus, and blamed me. But if I’d set it on the counter and a piece of the outside had stuck there, it would have been quite bloody. This piece had only a little stain on one edge, like it had been plucked up by someone who didn’t want to touch the blood.

I threw it away, thought nothing of it because it left no stain. Jones came in, bought into the idea I was at fault, and was having me spray and sanitize the counter, when I pointed to the bandage and said: “But what are you going to do about this? It’s still oozing.” He threw me in handcuffs. On the way to intake I said, “This is a medical situation, not a disciplinary problem.” He put me in a cell, but at least he gave me a paper towel. After 35 minutes of clamping the paper towel on the bandage, it finally stopped oozing.

Even though I’d done nothing wrong, I apologized, and sure enough, two days later, Jones had written me up for “refusing a direct order,” “failure to maintain sanitation,” and “disturbing the peace.” Glenn Shapiro has the complaint. It says I stopped oozing in 10 minutes. But I was watching the clock because I was due to make a phone call, and I know it took 30. I opted for a hearing, got a witness to Marchinsky faking evidence against another inmate, and asked that they review the tape to see who actually left the square of toilet paper on the counter. The hearing officer informed me he was dropping the charges anyway because it was “too much trouble” to review the tape. He did let it into the record that Jones could’ve taken me out and bandaged me up to begin with. The next morning I had the only coronary distress I’ve had since I got here, an episode of racing heartbeat.

The one dicey thing about my clotting problem is that the combination of meds I’m on tends to give me impacted stool, and I’ve had bleeding from that. They put me on Metamucil, which helped. Then they changed my Senna to docusate sodium, which Dodge had discontinued because it was ineffective. I got the Senna back with the fish oil, but not before I got a hemorrhoid. I hate to think what would happen if I got a bleeding hemorrhoid and it wouldn’t stop. And trying to force the stool out makes my right hernia hurt. I just got another twinge.

The sole object for the nursing staff seems to have been to get me to pay for my non-prescription meds myself. Nurse Michelle actually withheld the Tinactin (tolnaftate) for my foot fungus so I’d have to buy it off commissary, claiming the Wisconsin DOC might be smuggling drugs into Saunders County in the depleted tube. The fungus I have is not athlete’s foot. It’s the kind that lodges under your toenails; tolnaftate only gets it in the callouses. I can’t get rid of it unless they give me Lamisil, which they’ve refused to do. Instead of a short shower every day, which causes fungus flare-up, I have to take a long hot shower every other morning and soap my feet multiple times. But that way I can soften my beard, shave by touch in the shower, and not cut myself, so I don’t bleed.

To me, the important issues are melatonin, food, and the hernia operation, but not so important I’ll pack it in and waive my rights to a proper sentencing hearing with witnesses who can establish that the only national conspiracy I’m involved in is the medical marijuana movement, and the only international dimension is the ibogaine movement. St. Mary’s says I still have the atherosclerosis, that I’m going to have the heart problem for the rest of my life. Nothing settled in one place seems to carry over to the next place. Judge Van De Hey furloughs me after the first heart attack, then re-instates most of my sentence Dec. 29th. and a month and a half later, I have another heart attack. Special diet right after the stent, at Dodge, followed by the same thing as everyone else at Fox Lake, but at least with lots of veggies, followed by stuff I can’t eat here, where they act like I never even had heart attacks. Which begs the question: If I can’t even get proper health care in a situation that’s under the control of a judge, what will happen at the next place, where my only recourse is to sue in Federal court?

Yours truly,

I. Dana Beal, inmate #6669

Typed for Mr. Beal and mailed to Judge Gilbride by Nancy J. Allen, August 15, 2012

Aug 27 Dana Beal Nebraska Trial Scheduled

New trial date set for Dana's bench (no jury) trial: Monday, August 27, 2012.
From the Nebraska court calender:
Beal,Irvin,D, 08/27/2012 8:30AM 01
Trial to Court State v. Irvin D Beal CR090000091

http://www.nebraska.gov/courts/calendar/index.cgi

Dana's contact info in jail as of April 20, 2012

By Nancy J. Allen in FREE DANA BEAL FREE OURSELVES (Files) · Edit Doc

Dana's trial in Nebraska for transport of medical marijuana is scheduled to begin on August 27, 2012. He needs financial support and support in the form of letters to be written to Judge Mary Gilbride and to be mailed to his attorney, Glenn Shapiro. (Do not mail them to the judge.)
Please write those letters of support for Dana ASAP. "They" are not allowing a medical marijuana defense, so those letters are extremely important! They will be used as a "proffer", i.e. evidence not permitted at trial that is entered into the record, to be used at appeal.

If the judge gets a thousand letters, "they'll" HAVE to take it seriously, one would think!
The letters should attest to the validity of medical marijuana (write about your own personal experiences or those of friends and family). Also write about Dana's history of helping suffering people.

In September, 2011, while awaiting transfer from jail to prison in Wisconsin after pleading guilty and being sentenced on a similar charge, Dana had a heart attack, which resulted in double-bypass open heart surgery. One week after returning to prison this past February, he had another heart attack and a stent had to be placed. He has other serious medical issues which are not being addressed in prison.

Irvin Dana Beal ID # 6669
Saunders County Jail
387 North Chestnut Street, Suite 4
Wahoo, NE 68066

402-443-8167 - main jail number
402-443-5660 - front desk/visitation

COURT DATES:

Monday, August 27, 2012 at 9:30 am CDT, Room 1: TRIAL in Nebraska is scheduled to begin.


From the Nebraska court calender:
Beal,Irvin,D, 08/27/2012 8:30AM 01
Trial to Court State v. Irvin D Beal CR090000091

http://www.nebraska.gov/courts/calendar/index.cgi

Dana needs people to go and support him.
Details will be posted as we get them. Stay tuned...

LETTERS OF SUPPORT:

Write the letter to:

Judge Mary Gilbride
Saunders District Court
387 North Chestnut Street
Wahoo, Nebraska 68066

Then put the date.

The salutation is "Your Honor:".

Sign it "Respectfully" or "Respectfully Yours".
Then write your signature.
Underneath your signature, print your name and address.

Mail the letter to:

Glenn Shapiro, Attorney at Law
Schaefer and Shapiro, LLP
1001 Farnam Street, Suite 300
Omaha, NE 68102

Mail it Certified, no return receipt, and track it on the USPS (United States Post Office) website. That way you know whether or not it got delivered to Mr. Shapiro. If it did not, re-send your letter, please.

If anyone has a good model letter to post, that may facilitate the writing of more letters.

MAIL:

LETTERS and MONEY may be put in the same envelope.
Be sure to write your full name and return address on the envelope.
Money must be in the form of a POSTAL MONEY ORDER.
DO NOT SEND bank money orders or cashier's checks!
Mail money "Certified", so you can track it on the computer on the USPS (United States Postal Service) website and know it got delivered. (You don't need to get a return receipt.)

BOOKS must come directly from the publisher or a bookseller. They must be new. The receipt, including all charges, must be in the package, so do not send them as a gift or the receipt will not include the price, tax, shipping and handling. Books from the Amazon.com store will include the receipt. Check with other vendors selling through Amazon before ordering. Many do not ship to prisons.

No violence, nudity, or any other subject matter you think a prison would not allow.
Keep in mind that you want him to actually receive what you're sending!

First class mail will automatically be forwarded to another jail or prison for one year. (If he's released, then he has to provide the forwarding address to them.) Magazines and books will be forwarded for 60 days.

PHONE CALLS:

Calls are limited to 15 minutes each. They are recorded.

The phones are on from 8:00 am until 10:30 pm Central Time, except during inmate counts and meals.

Securus is the phone provider.

To contribute to Dana's Securus phone account, which allows him to call any number on his call list:

Go to:
http://www.securustech.net/
--> "Inmate Debit Account"

Click on:
"Fund Your Inmate's Account Now"

Find an inmate:
Search by Inmate Name
Irvin Beal
NE (Nebraska)
Saunders County Jail; Wahoo

Select the inmate you want to fund:
Beal, Irvin Dana; #6669; Saunders County Jail; Wahoo

You may put in between $25 and $100 at any given time.
There is a $6.95 set-up fee.
Therefore, you will be charged between $31.95 and $106.95, depending on how much you put into the account.

Calls from the jail to NY cost 60 cents per minute with a $2.50 connection fee.
Therefore, one 15-minute call costs $11.50, or $46 for four 15-minute calls.

$31.95 will buy Dana two 15-minute calls to NY, leaving $2.00 in the account.
$106.95 will buy Dana eight 15-minute calls to NY plus one 9-minute call to NY.

If you wish to put money into Dana's account by phone, call customer service 24/7 at:

800-844-6591
Press 3 to fund an inmate's account. You will be placed on hold for customer service.
The customer service rep will ask the name of the jail (Saunders County Jail) and the name (Irvin Dana Beal).
Then you tell the rep how much you want to put into the account ($25 to $100) and give your credit card information.

This is also the number to call if you have any problems with putting money into Dana's account, online.

CONTRIBUTIONS FOR DANA'S LEGAL EXPENSES:

1. WISCONSIN
Bryon Walker, Attorney at Law
PO Box 10
La Farge, WI 54639

2. NEBRASKA
Glenn Shapiro, Attorney at Law
Schaefer and Shapiro, LLP
1001 Farnam Street, Suite 300
Omaha, NE 68102

Thank you very much!

Dana Beal- Setting the Record Straight

Setting the Record Straight


Posted on Facebook by Nancy J. Allen in FREE DANA BEAL FREE OURSELVES ·

First are the links to the two articles written by Paul Hammel in June, 2012 for the Omaha World-Herald regarding Dana's case in Nebraska, followed by Dana's response:

"Marijuana Advocate in a Tough Fight" - June 12, 2012
 
http://www.omaha.com/article/20120612/NEWS97/706129933/0
 
Court Rejects Medicinal Marijuana Argument" - June 20, 2012
 
http://www.omaha.com/article/20120620/NEWS/706219997/1690
 
"Setting the Record Straight" by Dana Beal - June 29, 2012

Dear Paul [Hammel]:
 
Thanks for the article, but as always, a few little inconsistencies crept into your well-intentioned coverage. Most important, our understanding with the Manhattan DA’s office does not allow for a dispensary. We meet in the apartments, which change every week, of patient “hosts.” Hosts get their medicine for free. Dennis Brennan was one such host. Given the threat of ongoing federal prohibition or outright theft, this “Tupperware Party model” is very useful for all the medical marijuana states that do not allow dispensaries but do allow patients to form support groups to grow or buy in bulk.
 
A related point is that much of the medicine in both seizures was destined for Michigan, which now has more than 100,000 registered patients, and Washington, DC, which is still working out its regulations. As I pointed out, when you take the amount seized in Ashland and divide it by the number of patients, that’s less than a gram per patient. With only twelve marijuana plants allowed per patient, there’s never enough medicine and availability is seasonal. I was bringing fresh, green medical grade marijuana weeks before harvest, and it was priced to sell at $4-6 a gram, not the $10, $15, and $20 a gram you find in most dispensaries. Also, dispensaries fall in a gray area in Michigan law and in 2009, none had been established yet. We were hoping to spread the “Tupperware Party model” to Michigan, where I grew up and where my mother, sister, and two brothers still live.
 
You also glossed over the point that marijuana is not just a painkiller, like opiates. Down regulation of glutamate makes it an anti-inflammatory, which is the reason it’s good against a host of conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis. Glutamate dysfunction is involved in carcinogenesis, which is the reason cancers tend to feel hot to the touch. Painting them with pure oil of cannabis (Rick Simpson’s oil) shrinks skin cancers. Smoked or vaporized medical marijuana probably helps keep you from developing cancer to begin with. My co-defendant in Wisconsin, Lance Ramer, was a medical marijuana patient. After 90 days of confinement where he was denied his medicine, he was urinating blood from a galloping bladder cancer. Iowa County had to release him with time served because they didn’t want to pay for a second operation.
 
These effects may also be related to cannabinoid inhibition of the AIDS virus (study of SIV in chimps, June-July 2011). The first antiretroviral, AZT, was an anti-cancer drug originally shelved because of toxicity concerns. One of the reasons I am choosing a stipulated bench trial is to establish the fact that pot doesn’t just give you the munchies, it fights AIDS wasting by cutting viral load, perhaps by affecting viral replication like a protease inhibitor. This is tremendously important to countries in Africa that cannot afford the “AIDS cocktail” of meds, where “slim disease” kills millions. If we can get these very conservative governments to opt out of the US/UN drug war, everyone can afford to grow a plant in their yard. Ibogaine fits into all this because I have never gone to a medical marijuana conference that didn’t feature a patient getting up and complaining how difficult it was to get off his prescription opiates once he found out all he needed for his particular condition was medical marijuana.
 
Ibogaine eliminates medical addiction to opiates in 48 hours. We can send people abroad for ibogaine treatment because it is usually only taken once. The thing that makes changing the law so urgent regarding medical marijuana is that patients are going to need the medicine every day for the rest of their lives. Ibogaine, on the other hand, is only technically illegal, and is almost never prosecuted. In the only recent case involving one dose of ibogaine seized from Dimitri Mugianis, DEA agents apologized to him after viewing his film “I’m Dangerous With Love” and the U.S. prosecutor dropped the case upon being informed Dimitri was mounting a religious defense.
 
You also omitted mentioning the much safer, supposedly nonhallucinogenic “18 MC” (synthetic ibogaine), which in animals is especially effective for nicotine – and is completely legal.
 
The ibogaine clinic mentioned in your story is not located in NYC, but in Agua Prieta, Mexico, opposite Douglas, Arizona. We were hoping to get a dedicated wing of a new hospital under construction there with the money that was seized in Mattoon, Illinois. Agua Prieta is a relative oasis of calm for a Mexican border city. We can still do treatments there; the problem has been finding staffing while keeping the price of treatment in the $2000-3000 range. Unfortunately the price of treatment has ballooned lately at many other clinics – still a steal compared to conventional rehab, such as $1000 a day for Hazelden, which might as well be the moon for anybody but the rich. And Hazelden's treatment doesn’t work. Ibogaine works, but many people relapse and require retreatment. So having a place people can drive to from Nebraska instead of flying to Puerto Vallarta or Cancun is a boon for people who desperately need something effective for drugs, alcohol and nicotine.
 
We also have a clinic charging $2000 in Toronto, but no one with a criminal record can get into Canada - which excludes the kid I already bumped into in here who found out about ibogaine on his own and just needed referral to affordable treatment for his heroin cravings. (Have the prosecutor and the judge in this case really thought through the consequences of locking me up with hundreds of people who need ibogaine treatment? Since they contend that a law that excuses killing someone in self-defense doesn’t cover the non-violent provision of life-saving medicine to sick people, I guess not.) Your readers can locate the cheapest, safest ibogaine treatment appropriate for their particular situation by calling the Yippie! Museum café at 212-677-5918.
 
A related issue left out of your story is the utility of medical marijuana as a maintenance drug after ibogaine treatment. Among my private patients were many ibogaine-treated ex-addicts who kept on the straight and narrow with medical cannabis. They are much less likely to relapse than those who drink. Somehow, after a little too much alcohol, a bag of heroin can seem like a really great idea. We now have a study, on the other hand, showing that cannabis fights cocaine craving - and White House Drug Czar Kerlikowske is now waffling on the “Gateway Effect” of the Just Say No era. Both ibogaine and medical marijuana work much better for a number of conditions than conventional drugs that were developed for a completely different indication. Readers should go to YouTube for “Sam’s Story” about an autistic child doing much better on medical marijuana than the heavy anti-psychotic meds he was on before. It breaks my heart to think of all the autistic children who could be helped by the “safest therapeutically active substance known to man.”
 
Finally, I recommend to you the story of my friend and former journalist for the New York Post, Mark Stamey. Mark broke the story of the Central Park cave man, but working long, grueling hours for Rupert Murdoch, he fell asleep at the wheel, crashed and woke up the second time with major head trauma and a permanent seizure disorder. The heartless New York Post fired him so they wouldn’t have to pay for his medical care. None of his conventional meds stopped the grand mal seizures. His girlfriend had to drive him up from Florida so that he could get the only thing that worked. And yes, I am proud I could furnish him with adequate medical grade marijuana for $900 to $1400 a pound. Now he has relocated to California.
 
It’s unfair to admit the testimony of the original arresting officer in my case, who was fired in western Nebraska for lying to a federal judge in a cocaine seizure, when no jury will get to hear from Mark, or the lady in a wheelchair with MS, or the man with AIDS who kept himself alive for 30 years on nothing but medical marijuana – no AZT, no drug cocktail. [underline added]
 
On Sept. 27, 2011, during my first heart attack, I actually died for a couple of minutes. I feel Almighty God brought me back because He still has things for me to do. When I was 13, and JFK was running for president, I got to shake his hand. He was a medical marijuana patient – smoked it for back pain. In 1962 he removed Harry Anslinger, the man who made marijuana illegal in 1937, from direct day-to-day supervision of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, for going after Alfred Lindesmith and other “political enemies”.*
 
When I was 16, I hitchhiked to Washington and stood just next to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial for the “I Have a Dream” speech. So I have been blessed. We are offering ibogaine treatments for the worst addicts in Omaha, Lincoln, and Wahoo – who have failed every other treatment – as a community service alternative to confinement. But if I have to be imprisoned for following my conscience, I am there with Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi. I may well die in prison of “natural causes.” But at least I don’t have to take an assassin’s bullet.
 
Yours,
 
I. Dana Beal
 
* Anslinger was kicked upstairs to the UN, where he passed the Single Convention international treaty against pot.

Dana Beal - Legal Necessity

The sheer injustice of banning safer substances for the sake of protecting more dangerous ones demands these prohibitions be nullified.  A legislative failure to respect basic liberties is no requirment upon the judiciary to follow suit, as our oath is not to the legislature but to the U.S. Constitution.

- some future judge

This was the basic defense offerered by Dana Beal's legal counsel, which was rejected by Judge Mary C. Gilbrite
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Necessity+defense

A defense asserted by a criminal or civil defendant that he or she had no choice but to break the law.


The necessity defense has long been recognized as Common Law and has also been made part of most states' statutory law. Although no federal statute acknowledges the defense, the Supreme Court has recognized it as part of the common law. The rationale behind the necessity defense is that sometimes, in a particular situation, a technical breach of the law is more advantageous to society than the consequence of strict adherence to the law. The defense is often used successfully in cases that involve a Trespass on property to save a person's life or property. It also has been used, with varying degrees of success, in cases involving more complex questions.


Almost all common-law and statutory definitions of the necessity defense include the following elements: (1) the defendant acted to avoid a significant risk of harm; (2) no adequate lawful means could have been used to escape the harm; and (3) the harm avoided was greater than that caused by breaking the law. Some jurisdictions require in addition that the harm must have been imminent and that the action taken must have been reasonably expected to avoid the imminent danger. All these elements mirror the principles on which the defense of necessity was founded: first, that the highest social value is not always achieved by blind adherence to the law; second, that it is unjust to punish those who technically violate the letter of the law when they are acting to promote or achieve a higher social value than would be served by strict adherence to the law; and third, that it is in society's best interest to promote the greatest good and to encourage people to seek to achieve the greatest good, even if doing so necessitates a technical breach of the law.


The defense of necessity is considered a justification defense, as compared with an excuse defense such as duress. An action that is harmful but praiseworthy is justified, whereas an action that is harmful but ought to be forgiven may be excused. Rather than focusing on the actor's state of mind, as would be done with an excuse defense, the court with a necessity defense focuses on the value of the act. No court has ever accepted a defense of necessity to justify killing a person to protect property.


Most states that have codified the necessity defense make it available only if the defendant's value choice has not been specifically contradicted by the state legislature. For example, in 1993 the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court rejected the necessity defense of two people who were prosecuted for operating a needle-exchange program that was intended to reduce the transmission of AIDS through the sharing of contaminated hypodermic needles (Massachusetts v. Leno, 415 Mass. 835, 616 N.E.2d 453). Their actions violated a state law prohibiting the distribution of hypodermic needles without a physician's prescription. In rejecting the defense, the court held that the situation posed no clear and imminent danger. The court reasoned that citizens who disagree with the legislature's policy are not without remedy, as they can seek to have the law changed through popular initiative.


The necessity defense has been used with sporadic and very limited success in the area of civil disobedience since the 1970s. The most common circumstances involve public protests against Abortion, Nuclear Power, and Nuclear Weapons. Virtually all abortion protesters who have tried to avail themselves of the defense have lost. The courts have reasoned that because the right to an abortion is constitutionally protected, it cannot simultaneously be a legally recognized harm justifying illegal action. In these cases the courts have also denied the defense on the basis that the criminal act of protest would not stop abortions from occurring; that the harm caused by the act was greater than the harm of abortion; and that legal means of protest, such as demonstrating outside of the clinic rather than entering the clinic or trespassing on its property, were available. Consequently, according to the courts, there was no necessity for the protesters to break the law. In the vast majority of cases in which protesters, trespassing on property, blocked the entrance to nuclear plants, the courts have denied the necessity defense on the grounds that there was no imminent danger and that the trespassing protesters could not reasonably have believed that their actions would halt the manufacture of nuclear materials (see, e.g., State v. Marley, 54 Haw. 450, 509 P.2d 1095 [Haw. 1973]). The defense has also been denied in civil disobedience cases involving protests against U.S. policy abroad, the homeless problem, lack of funding for AIDS research, harmful logging practices, prison conditions, and human and Animal Rights violations.


Necessity has been used successfully by inmates who escape from prison under certain circumstances. In Spakes v. State, 913 S.W.2d 597 (Tex. Crim. App. 1996), the highest criminal court in Texas allowed the jury to be instructed on the necessity defense before deliberating the verdict for an inmate whose three cellmates had planned an escape and threatened to slit his throat if he did not accompany them. The defendant inmate argued that because of the terribly violent crimes of which his cellmates had been convicted (one had bragged about chopping his girlfriend up with an ax), he accompanied them and escaped. Even though he made no attempt to return himself to custody when he was separated from his cellmates, the court still allowed the defense. In contrast, most jurisdictions have held that an escapee must make an attempt to surrender or report to authorities as a condition for asserting the necessity defense. These courts have reasoned that once the immediate threat is no longer present, the action of escape is no longer necessary, and consequently it should end.

----

The judge needs to look at the basic statistics concerning the substance Dana is charged with possessing with intent to distribute.:

Marijuana is what U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency Administrative Law Judge Francis L. Young declared in September 1988:

“In strict medical terms marijuana is far safer than many foods we commonly consume. For example, eating 10 raw potatoes can result in a toxic response. By comparison, it is physically impossible to eat enough marijuana to induce death. Marijuana in its natural form is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man. By any measure of rational analysis marijuana can be safely used within the supervised routine of medical care.

[DEA Administrative Law Judge - 1988]”  ― Francis L. Young -- In the matter of MARIJUANA RESCHEDULING PETITION, Docket No. 86-22; OPINION AND RECOMMENDED RULING, FINDINGS OF FACT, CONCLUSIONS OF LAW AND DECISION

The drug laws being based not upon science, are a denial of due proces and equal protection under the law.

July 4- Seize The Day!

43rd annual July 4th Smoke In - A Movement Stalled Since Summer 1971

EVENT WEBSITE: http://www.smoke-in.org/mj/

RALLY with SPEAKERS at NOON to 3 PM Lafayette Park north side of the White House

MARCH 3 PM to 4:20 PM to Constitution and 23rd

CONCERT with SPEAKERS at recreation field at Constitution and 23rd just to the north of the Lincoln Memorial from 4 PM to 9PM - I shall be at this entire event with other drug legalization activists

This is the annual July 4th Smoke In to Legalize Marijuana, in Washington D.C.at Lafayette Park immediately north of the White House, held every year since 1971.

Held annually on July 4th in Washington, D.C. for the past 43 years, this rally, march and concert is one of the oldest demonstrations advocating drug policy reform in the United States. The Smoke-In has undergone several changes since being created out of the BE-IN era of political movements. During it's history elected politicians in Washington DC have tended to view this annual demonstration as a youthful indiscretion at best, and arresting protesters at worst, and failing to engage in any meaningful compromise concerning marijuana prohibition. This is why our grass roots demonstration has an indelible appeal to the people who are having trouble getting a representative voice in their federal government's drug policy. Activists occupy and attend the Smoke-In year after year by unleashing the pride and empowerment of being a marijuana activist and will not cease until the politicians listen to and respond to their point of view. Currently the goal is to achieve equality and respect buy rescheduling marijuana at the federal level, please support this effort. Many thanks to the people involved in producing this demonstration year after year. Please support the activists who have donated their time & talent, they truly deserve credit for my dedication to the belief that some day marijuana prohibition shall end.

1971- 41 years ago- so many thought that legalization - ending the nightmare of prohibition -- was 'just around the corner'.  Yet instead a lingering status quo, with meaningful change stymied, especially with the changes for the worse in 1978 through 1986.

1986- I say take the fight beyond Marijuana, also end the prohibitions on Coca and Opium.

1987- The Drug Policy Foundation was founded in response to the this hysteria over 'drugs' and particularly cocaine ... and after 1992 drops the ball!  It makes itself more of a redundent 2nd NORML, limiting itself to Cannabis (Marijuana), plus a few "safe" things like clean needles.  Its as if injection should remain any drug's main mode of use-  distracting from rationally questioning whatever happened with natural plant drugs as Opium and Coca and others including Iboga - supressed under a drug war scheme that's all about protecting pharmaceuticals and cigarettes.

From Licit & Illicit Drugs, by Edward M. Brecher and Consumers Reports at page 230

showing upturns in cigarette use around the times of the 1906, 1914 and 1937 U.S. 'drug control laws'

2009 - Dealing with the situation with the 'Within The Beltway' stonewalling, with say a 300 year agenda as admitted by Ira Glasser at his keynote address at the DPA conference in November 2011, to eventually reduce such prohibitions - maintaining them as long as they can get away with to protect markets in pharma  -- Dana Beal and other drug policy activists smell a rat.  Hence, upon my advice, we organize the initial protest to begin seriously targeting a particular nexus of political power in Washington, D.C. long overdue in being spotlighted.

Dana Beal at 1201 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C. - see video -

the building of that powerhouse law firm Covington &Burling

Eric Holder - current U.S. Attorney General

The founders of Covington & Burling LLP foresaw the pervasive effects of the forthcoming era of federal legislation, regulation, and taxation. In 1919, they sought to create a firm in the nation's capital that could advise and represent corporations located anywhere in the nation or the world on a wide range of legal issues. Today our Washington office has over 300 lawyers representing clients according to the highest standards and fulfilling the firm's strong commitment to public service.  http://www.cov.com/washington/

On January 20, 2009, President Obama was inaugurated, and we said farewell to a number of our lawyers who answered his call to service. Among them was our partner Eric Holder, who became the Attorney General of the United States almost sixty years to the day after Dean Acheson’s swearing in as Secretary of State.  http://www.cov.com/about_the_firm/firm_history/

Obama delivered heated rhetoric, but his actions signaled different prioities. Had Obama wanted to strike real fear in the hearts of bankers, he might have appointed former special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald or some other fire-breatheras his attorney general. instead, he chose Eric Holder, a former Clinton Justice official who, after a career in government, joined the Washington, joined the Washington office of Covington & Burling, a top-tier law firm with an elite white collar defense unit. The move to Covington, and back to Justice, is an example of Washington's revolving door ritual, which, for Holder, has been lucretive- he pulled in $2.1 million as a Covington partner in 2008, and $2.5 million (including deferred compensation when he left the firm in 2009.)

Putting a Covington partner- he spent nearly a decade at the firm- in charge of Justice may have sent a signal to the financial community, whose marquee names are Covington clients. Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Deutsche Bank are among the institutions that pay for Covington's legal advice, some of it relating to matters before the Department of Justice. But Holder's was not the only face at Justice familiar to Covington clients. Lanny Breuer, who had co-chaired the white collar defense unit at Covington with Holder, was chosen to head the criminal division at Obama's Justice. Two other Covington lawyers followed Holder into top positions, and Holder's principle deputy, James Cole, was recruited from Bryan Cave LLP, another white shoe firm with A-list finance clients.

Justice's defenders point out that prosecuting financial crime is a complicated matter requiring the highly secialized expertise found in the white-collar defense bar. But some suggest there is the potential for conflicting interest when the departments's top practices representing the very financial institutions that Justice is supposed to be investigating. "And that's where they're going back to," says Black. "Everybody knows there is a problem with that." (Two members of Holder's team have already returned to Covington.) A spokesperson for Covington was not available for comment. (Newsweek uses the firm as outside counsel.)  http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2012/05/newsweek-on-covington-burling-eric.html

1201 Pennsylvania Avenue



Covington & Burling -- the Eric Holder law firm -- was founded by James Harry Covington

Covington & Burling is not just another law firm
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2011/10/covington-burling-is-not-just-another.html

Co Founded by James Harry Covington - a U.S. Congressman with Food and Drug Law evolution into the 1914 Harrison 'Narcotics' Act
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/08/congressman-jh-covington-name-appearing_9159.html

JH Covington Becomes Judge and UpHolds Harrison 'Narcotics' Act
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2011/10/jh-covington-upheld-harrison-narcotic.html
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2011/09/hw-wiley-jh-covington-subversion-of-1st.html

Covington & Burling Tobacco
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2011/09/tobacco-industry-httpwww.html
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/08/cig-ind-legal-coordination_27.html
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/08/1987-cig-ind-legal-coordination.html

Coca Feared by U.S.D.A. as a 'Tobacco Habit Cure'
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2011/04/coca-as-tobacco-habit-cure.html

Covington & Burling - Drug Policy Reform Bottleneck or Facilitator?
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2011/10/bottleneck-or-facilitator.html

Covington & Burling Food & Drug Practices
http://www.cov.com/practice/food_and_drug/

Covington & Burling Pharma attorney Eric Holder's Law Firm
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2009/01/holder-breuer.html
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2009/01/eric-holder-covington-burling-obama.html
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2012/04/ex-covington-burling-pharma-attorney.html
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2012/05/newsweek-on-covington-burling-eric.html

DPF Covington & Burling Legal Connection
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/drug-policy-foundation-legal-connection.html

DPF Advised by Covington & Burling Food, Drug & Insurance Attorney
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/drug-policy-foundation-advised-by-c.html

Open Invitation to Covington & Burling attorney Marialuisa Gallozzi 'assigned to take primary responsibility for advising the [Drug Policy] Foundation', with Covington & Burling long involved with organizations as DPF-DPA and Marijuana Policy Project, to speak at the Smoke In about legal activist strategies to end the 'drug war' - re-legalize plant drugs Opium and Coca as well as Marijuana and Iboga-Ibogaine.  Though useful for treating drug addictions, Iboga root bark and the isolated ibogaine alkaloid are 'schedule 1' - of a drug war not alleviating but rather perpetuating suffering.

Expose the 'drug war' as a FRAUD- in reality a criminal mercantilist pharma-cigarette 'drug war' enacted in a twisted U.S. Congress in 1914 against Opium, Coca and in 1937, Cannabis- a legal travesty further marked by the sweetheart exemption for alcoholic beverages and Tobacco products from retail ingredient labeling requirements.

Marialuisa Gallozzi of Covington & Burling

'assigned to take primary responsibility for advising the [Drug Policy] Foundation'

2012 - the year to begin the end this mega boondoggle international estrangement from common sense- of perverting useful plants as Opium and especially Coca into white power poisons of abuse for a scheme to protect pharma and cigarettes.

Let's DO IT- End the pharma-cig mercantilism before the 100th anniversary of the Harrison 'Narcotics' Act.

Angelo Francois Mariani

Vin Mariani-

the names say it all

Elixir Mariani versus regular Vin Mariani
http://atguelph.uoguelph.ca/2011/10/food-scientists-analyze-1895-vintage-bordeaux/

A Blog to Check Now and Regularly http://southmallblogger.blogspot.com/

Douglas Andrew Willinger - Angelo Francois Mariani Coca Activism
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2012/06/douglas-andrew-willinger-angelo.html

Dana Beal Protests Covington & Burling

The law firm where Eric Holder worked just prior to becoming Obama Administration U.S. Attorney General



This protest was held in early 2009. One can see the protesters marching to the Covington & Burling building at 1201 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, from Freedom Plaza (now the site of Occupy D.C.).

Dana Beal Letter to DEA's Leonhart About Ibogaine

https://www.facebook.com/notes/dana-beal/new-version-letter-to-michele-leonhart/309370972412958

To DEA Director Leonhart,

This is to let you know of public and Congressional interest in expanded research into ibogaine and its analogs, not only for treatment of addiction but for its broad spectrum antibiotic, antiviral, anti-tumor effects.

The placement of ibogaine in Schedule I discourages research, not just because of the stigma, but because of the immense practical roadblocks it puts in the way of researchers. Right now a research group at New York University that is investigating the synthetic ibogaine analog 18-MC will probably break off their work when the time comes to investigate the parent compound. It took Rockefeller University nine months just to obtain less than a gram of ibogaine.

Couldn’t you find a Schedule for ibogaine a little less restrictive than Schedule I?

Ibogaine has no abuse potential, and great potential for treatment of a number of indications that we have no good medicines for right now, including multiple scherosis, chemo-resistant cancer, parkinsons, and bipolar/binge behaviors. Clinics using ibogaine are springing up all over the world because it works so much better for abolition of narcotic withdrawal as well as craving for psycho-stimulants.

In 2005–6 ibogaine was found to express a growth factor—glia-derived-neurotropic-factor (GDNF)—that not only regenerates dopamine neurons suppressed by drugs of abuse, but back-signals to the cell nuclei to express more GDNF, establishing a benign, self-sustaining loop that obviates the need for artificial elevation of dopamine levels and persists without administration of additional ibogaine. This explains reported ibogaine efficacy against meth-amphetamine and crack cocaine — drugs against which we have no effective pharmaco-therapies right now.

Very simply, ibogaine doesn’t fall under the plain definition of Schedule I —“no accepted medical value, high potential for abuse, no safe use in treatment.” Because of aversive side-effects, it cannot be abused.

First, animals can not be trained to self-administer Ibogaine. Second, it has Sigma-two effects like thorazine or prolyxin; no one is diverting their anti-psychotic drugs to the black market. Third, if you escalate dosages (as someone binging on cocaine would) you get semi-paralysis, nausea and vomiting. Finally, if you try to do small doses daily, after about 14 days you have to quit due to insomnia and lack of concentration.

What is the statutory basis for scheduling Ibogaine in the absence of “high potential for abuse?”

Before we hold hearings, we need the outcome of more clinical research. You can help by taking the initiative and lifting the roadblock imposed by the Schedule I status of ibogaine.

All we are asking for here is some fairness, so the American people don’t have to wait another 20 years for effective treatment for addiction.