hempy
12-28-2005, 08:54 AM
by: Cliff Kincaid
The George Soros-funded campaign to legalize marijuana has run into a problem. Joseph Smith, convicted and sentenced to death for the abduction, rape and murder of 11-year-old Carlie Brucia, has been exposed as a pothead.
In an unsuccessful ploy to spare his life, his attorneys argued that he was a drug addict, used drugs on the occasion of the Brucia murder, and began his involvement with drugs by smoking marijuana. It looks like marijuana didn't have many "medical benefits" in this case.
It is fascinating to examine how little attention Smith's career as a drug-addicted pothead has received. The case itself has gotten enormous publicity, of course, and some reports have noted that his lawyers tried to get the jurors to avoid use of the death penalty on the ground that he was using either heroin or cocaine when he destroyed the little girl's life. But we could find only a few accounts about his use of the "soft" drug, marijuana, that we have repeatedly been told has no relation to one's use of harder drugs later in life. We found only a few stories about the killer's pot connection in some outlets in Florida, where the trial took place.
Those reports mentioned that Smith's attorneys presented Dr. Katie McQueen, a physician and lecturer in drug addiction at the Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, who testified that Smith's substance abuse history started with alcohol and marijuana use before he was a teen and then experimentation with cocaine and heroin in his teenage years.
This should have been big news. We are increasingly told by the major media that marijuana can make people feel better and can cure various diseases. Here was a case which links marijuana to a vicious murder.
In a related matter, despite claims from the Soros-funded Drug Policy Alliance that marijuana has many "medical benefits," a new study has found that heavy marijuana use damages adolescent brains and may facilitate mental disorders. The study was presented at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America.
Reuters news agency distributed a story about the research, noting that the study found that young people who regularly smoke marijuana "risk damaging a key brain pathway associated with language development and some predisposed to schizophrenia may contract the illness early." The study was based on brain scans.
More bad news for the pothead lobby has come from researchers at North Shore University Hospital-Long Island Jewish Healthcare System. A story carried by Newsday and the Kansas City Star are warning that marijuana "could be the match that ignites a genetic vulnerability to schizophrenia." They said that a teenage brain on pot "looks frighteningly similar to the brains of adolescents with schizophrenia."
The National Institute on Drug Abuse estimates that roughly 3 million Americans aged 12 and older use marijuana on a daily or almost daily basis.
The George Soros-funded campaign to legalize marijuana has run into a problem. Joseph Smith, convicted and sentenced to death for the abduction, rape and murder of 11-year-old Carlie Brucia, has been exposed as a pothead.
In an unsuccessful ploy to spare his life, his attorneys argued that he was a drug addict, used drugs on the occasion of the Brucia murder, and began his involvement with drugs by smoking marijuana. It looks like marijuana didn't have many "medical benefits" in this case.
It is fascinating to examine how little attention Smith's career as a drug-addicted pothead has received. The case itself has gotten enormous publicity, of course, and some reports have noted that his lawyers tried to get the jurors to avoid use of the death penalty on the ground that he was using either heroin or cocaine when he destroyed the little girl's life. But we could find only a few accounts about his use of the "soft" drug, marijuana, that we have repeatedly been told has no relation to one's use of harder drugs later in life. We found only a few stories about the killer's pot connection in some outlets in Florida, where the trial took place.
Those reports mentioned that Smith's attorneys presented Dr. Katie McQueen, a physician and lecturer in drug addiction at the Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, who testified that Smith's substance abuse history started with alcohol and marijuana use before he was a teen and then experimentation with cocaine and heroin in his teenage years.
This should have been big news. We are increasingly told by the major media that marijuana can make people feel better and can cure various diseases. Here was a case which links marijuana to a vicious murder.
In a related matter, despite claims from the Soros-funded Drug Policy Alliance that marijuana has many "medical benefits," a new study has found that heavy marijuana use damages adolescent brains and may facilitate mental disorders. The study was presented at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America.
Reuters news agency distributed a story about the research, noting that the study found that young people who regularly smoke marijuana "risk damaging a key brain pathway associated with language development and some predisposed to schizophrenia may contract the illness early." The study was based on brain scans.
More bad news for the pothead lobby has come from researchers at North Shore University Hospital-Long Island Jewish Healthcare System. A story carried by Newsday and the Kansas City Star are warning that marijuana "could be the match that ignites a genetic vulnerability to schizophrenia." They said that a teenage brain on pot "looks frighteningly similar to the brains of adolescents with schizophrenia."
The National Institute on Drug Abuse estimates that roughly 3 million Americans aged 12 and older use marijuana on a daily or almost daily basis.