Trayvon Martin's Ganja Use Irrelevant

Scientist: Trayvon Martin's Marijuana Use Had Nothing to Do with the Night He Died
A researcher at Columbia University debunks some of George Zimmerman's attorneys' flawed logic.
By Kristen Gwynne, AlterNet - Friday, July 12 2013



Associate professor of psychology at Columbia University Dr. Carl Hart writes in the New York Times why the small amounts of marijuana found in Trayvon Martin's body are irrelevant to George Zimmerman's murder trial. Dr. Hart, who has a new book out called High Price: A Neuroscientist's Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society, explains how his research and expertise make it clear that Martin's marijuana use had nothing to do with the night Zimmerman shot and killed him.

Zimmerman's lawyers have attempted to argue that Martin's pot-smoking may have made him "agressive" and "paranoid," but Hart says that logic is seriously flawed. Here's why:

As a neuropsychopharmacologist who has spent 15 years studying the neurophysiological, psychological and behavioral effects of marijuana, I find this line of reasoning laughable. The toxicology exam, which was conducted the morning after Mr. Martin was killed, found a mere 1.5 nanograms per milliliter of blood of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, in his body. This strongly suggests he had not ingested marijuana for at least 24 hours. This is also far below the THC levels that I have found necessary, in my experimental research on dozens of subjects, to induce intoxication: between 40 and 400 nanograms per milliliter. In fact, his THC levels were significantly lower than the sober, baseline levels of about 14 nanograms per milliliter of many of my patients, who are daily users. Mr. Martin could not have been intoxicated with marijuana at the time of the shooting; the amount of THC found in his system was too low for it to have had any meaningful effect on him.

Some observers of the case note that the toxicology test also found 7.3 nanograms per milliliter of THC-COOH, one of the main metabolic byproducts formed as the liver breaks down THC. But these metabolites of marijuana have no psychoactive properties, and they have no effect on behavior. They can also remain in the body, like THC itself, for up to four weeks. This is why their presence does not reveal when — or exactly how much of — the drug was used.

- Read the entire article at AlterNet.

Blacks, Bias and Marijuana:
Did Drug Stigma Contribute to Trayvon Martin’s Death?
Maia Szalavitz, TIME Mar 27 2012

A news report claims that the 17-year-old Florida boy's killer thought he looked "drugged out and suspicious."



Does Weed Turbocharge Outside The Box Thinking?
The Many Different Faces Of Cannabis In America

Reverse stereotyping is almost as bad. The point is Ganja won't "make" you do anything you aren't intent on doing. True as with soccer fans it mellows out more than booze firing up people. But if you are a deranged killer, smoking a doobie probably won't stop you doing what you're comfortable with. Most of the publics knowledge of cannabis either comes from antidotal stories of good times or reefer madness to keep prohibition tossing money at corporations. So no, it did not cause this tragedy. Racism, gun idoltery and reefer madness did. The Fitz Hugh Ludlow hypertext library has several mostly fictional stories about the Hashish asssassins and Anslingers own Gore Files with cut out articles of murder and gruesome violence he listed under cannabis use.

When they came for our first amendment rights, oh its just stoners. When they came for our second amendment rights. Oh "they" shouldn't carry guns. When they came for our 3rd amendment, to live in our homes and eat our food and smoke our pot, then turn us in. Undercover domestic soldiers busting down our 4th amendment. Shooting mother holding their babies and grannies in their nightgowns. Dogs to check seat belts and our 5th amendment already decided by the Supreme Court with Leary v US saying it was an infringement. Nixon simply changed the title and added hemp and medicinal never included in the UnConstitutional Marihuana Tax Act. The 10th amendment was gone after Anslinger federalized the Ganjawar and although nothing was designated to the feds by the Constitution, leaving it in the authority of the states. Then after Raich v Gonzales the Supremes decided over reasonable amounts or exchanges was considered commerce under the jurisdiction of the feds IRS. There was never an amendment as with the 18th banning sales of booze. Nonetheless the CSA was passed and enforced after Nixon to this day. Rejecting science and pushing more gossip. So its not surprising the public may have gotten the impression that Ganja can cause violence.

☮ "Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way around, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise."
From Benito Mussolini, December 8, 1935
contributing to the "London Sunday Express,"

Now They're Coming For The 1st?
High Court Upholds Chicago Park-Use Permit
No Free Speech or Right to Assemble

Marijuana laws new tool to ban gun ownership
The Obama administration has a zero tolerance policy on enforcing federal drug laws, White House drug czar Gil Kerlikowske recently told the National Press Club. So why should gun-owners be paying attention?

Family allegedly forced from home by police files rare Third Amendment suit

Another "Win" For Civil Rights?

Leary v. United States

The Hypocrisy of the NFL
Police also claimed that the availability of cannabis in the Netherlands probably helped to defuse any violence. Scores of ticketless England fans gathered in coffee shops in Eindhoven, where cannabis is sold and smoked, to watch the game, greeting the defeat with mild disappointment and unusually, gentle applause. "It (cannabis) may have helped relax them," Mr Beelan added. "Even the hooligans enjoyed the party - and they told our officers. There were lots of things for fans to do and everybody had a good time."
☛Fans Too Relaxed for Fights
☛Basketball Riots in L.A., Soccer Thugs in Europe
☛Euro 2000 Soccer Violence Could Vanish in a Puff
☛Aggression and Violence in Sport
☛Cannabis Helps Keep Fans Calm

What No One Wants to Know About Marijuana
From The Natural Mind by Dr. Andrew Weil
(last half of chapter four pg. 86-97)

If a marijuana user is allowed to smoke his usual doses and then to do things he has had a chance to practice while high, he does not appear to perform any differently from someone who is not high.

☮ "How many murders, suicides, robberies, criminal assaults, holdups, burglaries and deeds of maniacal insanity it causes each year, especially among the young, can only be conjectured...No one knows, when he places a marijuana cigarette to his lips, whether he will become a joyous reveller in a musical heaven, a mad insensate, a calm philosopher, or a murderer..."
HARRY J ANSLINGER
Commissioner of the US Bureau of Narcotics 1930-1962

☮ If the hideous monster Frankenstein came face to face with the monster marihuana he would drop dead of fright. This is not an overstatement. Users of the marihuana weed are committing a large percentage of the atrocious crimes blotting the daily picture of American life. It is reducing thousands of boys to CRIMINAL INSANITY. And ONLY TWO STATES have effective laws to protect their people against it. The marihuana weed, according to Mr. Anslinger, is grown, sold and USED in every State in the Union. He charges, and rightly, that this is not a responsibility of one State, but OF ALL and of the Federal Government. American women, aroused to this DANGER, will GET ACTION. (Aah-mmmmm?)

A Roundup of Hearst's Hysterical Headlines

☮ Anslinger read into U.S. Congressional testimony (without objection) stories about coloreds with big lips, luring white women with jazz music and marijuana.
If he had bothered to check, showed at least 65-75% of all murders in the U.S. were thenand still arealcohol related.

☮ I wish I could show you what a small marihuana cigaret can do to one of our degenerate Spanish-speaking residents. That's why our problem is so great; the greatest percentage of our population is composed of Spanish-speaking persons, most of who are low mentally, because of social and racial conditions.

☮ Marihuana Makes Fiends of Boys in 30 Days; Hasheesh Goads Users to Blood-Lust" create terror of the "killer weed from Mexico." Through his relentless disinformation campaign, Hearst is credited with bringing the word "marijuana" into the English language. In addition to fueling racist attitudes toward Hispanics, Hearst papers run articles about "marijuana-crazed negroes" raping white women and playing "voodoo-satanic" jazz music.

☮ Driven insane by marijuana, these blacks -- according to accounts in Hearst-owned newspapers -- dared to step on white men's shadows, look white people directly in the eye for more than three seconds, and even laugh out loud at white people. For shame!

☮ Anslinger read an account of two Negro students at the University of Minnesota doing this to a white coed with the result of pregnancy. The
Congressmen of 1937 gasped at this and at the fact that this drug seemingly caused white women to touch or even look at a Negro.

☮ "Because Fascism is a lie, it is condemned to literary sterility. And when it is past, it will have no history, except the bloody history of murder."
- Ernest Hemingway (1898-1961)

☮ There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana usage. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others."

☮ "... the primary reason to outlaw marijuana is its effect on the degenerate races."
☮ "Marihuana is an addictive drug which produces in its users insanity, criminality, and death."
☮ "You smoke a joint and you're likely to kill your brother."
☮ "marijuana is the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind."

Thank you Miss Rosa
☛The Racist Ganjawar
☛JIM CROW 2012
☛The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment & Linx
☛Using the drug war to keep blacks from voting