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Month: October 2016

DEA Delays ‘Unprecedented’ Ban On Kratom Amid Popular Protest & Government Pushback

Posted in Archive, Journalism, and MintPress News

The Drug Enforcement Agency has delayed the implementation of its ban on kratom, a plant-based treatment for depression, anxiety, chronic pain and addiction that originated in Southeast Asia but has gained widespread popularity in the United States.

Although the DEA has abandoned the emergency scheduling decision announced on Aug. 30, the agency says it still plans to classify kratom as a Schedule I drug, alongside substances like heroin, cocaine, and even marijuana, which the federal government claims have no medical benefits.

“We have determined that it represents an imminent hazard, so we’re not going to drag our feet very long,” DEA spokesman Russ Baer said on Sept. 30, the day the ban was supposed to go into effect. “It’s not a matter of if, it’s just a matter of when.”

From Facebook To The DEA, Industrial Hemp Industry Growth Stumped By War on Drugs

Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News

America’s burgeoning hemp industry faces significant barriers that can only be torn down by the full legalization of this potentially lucrative crop.

Hemp was once one of America’s essential crops, grown by presidents and cash croppers alike, and wars were fought over access to this valuable commodity. It became illegal to grow hemp in the United States with the passage of the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. The federal law bans all forms of the cannabis plant, even though industrial hemp has very low levels of THC, the main active ingredient in cannabis that’s grown for recreational or medicinal use.

The 2014 Farm Bill reopened the door to legal hemp cultivation by allowing states which had legalized industrial hemp to license farmers to grow the plant for research purposes, including market research. But many aspects of federal regulation and law surrounding hemp remain “opaque” and confusing, according to John Ryan, founder and director of Ananda Hemp. A subsidiary of the Australian hemp company EcoFibre Industries, Ananda Hemp is growing hundreds of acres of hemp in Kentucky and Tennessee.

Why Veterans With PTSD Are Turning To Cannabis

Posted in Journalism, and The Establishment

When Dr. Sue Sisley, a lifelong Republican, was just beginning her residency at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Phoenix, she refused to believe her patients when they told her about the healing potential of cannabis.

“I’ve always been interested in cannabis as a social justice issue and a matter of public policy, but I was never able to embrace it as medicine until these veterans really taught me how,” Sisley told me.

Sisley was “highly dismissive and judgmental” of marijuana at first but, over time, as more and more veterans shared their experiences, she started to accept its therapeutic potential.

Now, not only does she regularly treat multiple conditions by prescribing legal medical cannabis as an Arizona-based family physician, she’s part of a team involved in the first government-funded study to examine the effectiveness of cannabis in treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in vets.

Dakota Access Pipeline ‘Water Protectors’ Block Construction Despite National Guard Blockade, Police Harassment & Arrests

Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News

Amid near continuous harassment and frequent arrests by police, members of over 300 Native American tribes gathered on native land in North Dakota continue to block construction on the Dakota Access pipeline.

“It’s a matter of minutes from when they’re called that they show up and you see constant harassment of people going back and forth to camp,” said Remy, a Diné artist and organizer at the encampment on Standing Rock Sioux territory, known as Oceti Sakowin Camp.

“It shows how close the ties are between the Dakota Access pipeline and law enforcement.”

Kashmir & Palestine: Both Occupied, Both Victims Of The Military-Industrial Complex

Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News

Although their homelands are separated by almost 2,500 miles, Palestinians and Kashmiris share a struggle for liberation and the right to self-determination against occupying forces backed by the might of the American military-industrial complex.

While the shrinking Palestinian homeland dwindles in size among Israel’s ever-expanding illegal settlements, Kashmir is caught on the border between India and Pakistan, both of which would lay claim to the land despite members of the Kashmiri ethnic group supporting independence.

The Kashmiri have been in the middle of three wars between India and Pakistan since the British partition of the region in 1947. In one of the biggest parallels between their mutual struggles against colonialism, Palestinians have spent the last 68 years resisting the displacement caused by the British-mandated creation of Israel. Like Palestinians,Kashmiris are treated as second-class citizens in their own land, which has become one of the most intensely militarized borders in the world.

In an Aug. 24 opinion piece for Al-Jazeera, geopolitical analyst Goldie Osuri explained:

Mainstream Media Ignores Mass Hunger & Work Strikes By Prisoners Nationwide

Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News

As hunger strikes and sporadic work stoppages continue at prisons across the country, the historic prison movement and the brutal retaliation inmates have faced because of it remain largely unreported in the mainstream media.

The media blackout continues even though tens of thousands of inmates are believed to have taken part in the ongoing strike, and a shift of guards at Holman Correctional Facility in Alabama also refused to work on Sept. 24.

“It’s interesting that the foreign press has been better to us,” said Azzurra Crispino, media co-chair of the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, part of the Industrial Workers of the World union, which is supporting the strike. Inmates can join the IWW for free, regardless of their prison work status.