"Dear President Trump: If You Want To Cut Healthcare Costs & Stem The Opiate Death Spiral, Legalize Marijuana" | Zero Hedge

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-03-01/dear-president-trump-if-you-want-cut-healthcare-costs-stem-opiate-death-spiral-legal

Via Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,

You say you want bold solutions that unite us: start by fully legalizing marijuana.

If there is anything the left and right, progressives and conservatives, and everyone in between can agree on, it's ending the counter-productive, destructive "war on drugs" that has generated crime and violence, a "we're number one in Gulags" prison complex and pushed people into harder, far more dangerous drugs (see chart of "legal" opioid deaths below).

Dear President Trump: if you're truly serious about lowering healthcare costs and stemming the rising tide of opioid addictions and death, then fully legalize marijuana via executive order now.

The usual justifications for continuing the criminalization of marijuana have moved from threadbare to completely disconnected from reality. We're told that marijuana is surrounded by violence--well duh--the violence is the direct consequence of Prohibition.

What happened when alcohol was prohibited? Crime and violence exploded around the production and distribution of the outlawed drug. What was peaceful when legal becomes violent when outlawed. This is so obvious, yet we have "leaders" who are blind to the dynamic.

By outlawing medical marijuana, we have pushed everyone with chronic pain into extremely addictive and increasingly deadly "legal" opiates. This is the height of insanity: outlaw natural substances with pain management potential while legalizing highly addictive and often deadly synthetic opiates.

Legalizing marijuana would eliminate the violence, lower the costs of operating the Drug War Gulag and lower healthcare costs by reducing the dependence on addictive opiates for pain management. Yes, there are circumstances that require opiates--but does it make sense to make opiates the next step above over-the-counter pain relievers?

The social, human and financial costs of the opiate pandemic are skyrocketing. Adding marijuana products to the spectrum of choices would reduce these costs and the death toll. Regardless of whatever critics may claim about the negative effects of marijuana, the truth is death by marijuana overdose is essentially non-existent.

Compare that to the tens of thousands of deaths caused by "legal" opiates and the millions of lives destroyed by the "war on drugs" and its American Gulag. While those benefiting from operating the "war on drugs" and the American Gulag propagandize a completely false pathway from marijuana to opiates, the reality is grandmothers are benefiting from medical marijuana and it is the sick-care/Big Pharma cartels that are the pathway to opiate addiction and death.

Dear President Trump: you say you want bold solutions that unite us: start by fully legalizing marijuana. Listen to your young advisors and those in law enforcement who see the counterproductive insanity of the "war on marijuana" first-hand. Listen to the elderly who are benefiting from medical marijuana.

Do the right thing and fully legalize marijuana. It's time to move beyond addled fictions and deal with the ugly realities of a system that actively promotes "legal" opiate addiction and death while outlawing marijuana.

~~~

Part of the job description for the president of the united states, is to enforce the law, you know, things like gold and silver shall be coined for monetary purposes, the government was not delegated the authority to re-delegate tasks, there shall be no direct tax/poll tax, or the government was not delegated the task of telling people what they can or cannot consume. Just a few fundamental things to consider..

You know when performance is lacking, like the way an animal is sick, or old, or incapable in some way, and starts falling to the back of the herd, it becomes a target for predators..

~~~

AG Sessions Accused Of Lying To Congress Over Contact With Russian Ambassador | Zero Hedge

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-03-01/ag-sessions-accused-lying-congress-over-contact-russian-ambassador

Just when you thought the 'Russians-did-it' meme was fading, WaPo reporters manage to find DoJ officials who say then-Senator Jeff Sessions spoke twice last year with Russia’s ambassador to the United States - encounters he did not disclose when asked about possible contacts with Moscow during his confirmation hearing to become attorney general.

At his Jan. 10 Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing, Sessions was asked by Sen. Al Franken, a Minnesota Democrat, what he would do if he learned of any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russian government in the course of the 2016 campaign.

“I’m not aware of any of those activities,” he responded.

He added: “I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I did not have communications with the Russians.”

And now, as The Hill reports that according to The Washington Post report, President Trump's attorney general, Jeff Sessions, spoke twice with Russia's ambassador to the United States while Trump was on the campaign trail.

Justice Department officials said one of the meetings was a private conversation between Sessions and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in Sessions's office. The private meeting reportedly took place during the same time intelligence officials have said Russia was interfering with the U.S. presidential election through a hacking campaign.

Officials said Sessions did not consider the conversations relevant to the lawmakers’ questions and did not remember in detail what he discussed with Kislyak.

“There was absolutely nothing misleading about his answer,” said Sarah Isgur Flores, Sessions’s spokeswoman.

A Sessions spokeswoman said Sessions was acting as a member of the Armed Services Committee, not as a Trump surrogate, when he spoke with the ambassador, and was not trying to mislead senators when he said during his confirmation hearing that he had not had contacts with Moscow. She added that Sessions last year had more than 25 conversations with foreign ambassadors as a senior member of the Armed Services Committee, including the British, Korean, Japanese, Polish, Indian, Chinese, Canadian, Australian and German ambassadors, in addition to Kislyak.

When asked to comment on Sessions’s contacts with Kislyak, Franken said in a statement to The Washington Post on Wednesday:

“If it’s true that Attorney General Sessions met with the Russian ambassador in the midst of the campaign, then I am very troubled that his response to my questioning during his confirmation hearing was, at best, misleading.

Franken added: “It is now clearer than ever that the attorney general cannot, in good faith, oversee an investigation at the Department of Justice and the FBI of the Trump-Russia connection, and he must recuse himself immediately.”

And just like that, the "russians-did-it" meme is back on top of the news cycle into the weekend.

We leave it to WaPo to conclude (with the narrative of choice)...

The previously undisclosed discussions could fuel new congressional calls for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Russia’s alleged role in the 2016 presidential election. As attorney general, Sessions oversees the Justice Department and the FBI, which have been leading investigations into Russian meddling and any links to Trump’s associates. He has so far resisted calls to recuse himself.

We suspect Trump will tweet-splode again soon on the back of this - so much for the conciliatory "end the small-thinking" tone he called for in his congressional address.