Well, well, well… Look who was PRO-medical marijuana—actually went out on a limb for it—way back before he wanted to behead people and cut off their hands for possessing it…

Here’s what Newt Gingrich wrote to the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1982:

Legal Status of Marijuana

To the Editor:

The American Medical Association’s Council on Scientific Affairs should be commended for its report, “Marijuana: Its Health Hazards and Therapeutic Potential” (1981;246:1823). Not only does the report outline evidence of marijuana’s potential harms, but it distinguishes this concern from the legitimate issue of marijuana’s important medical benefits. All too often the hysteria that attends public debate over marijuana’s social abuse compromises a clear appreciation for this critical distinction.

Since 1978, 32 states have abandoned the federal prohibition to recognize legislatively marijuana’s important medical properties. Federal law, however, continues to define marijuana as a drug “with no accepted medical use,” and federal agencies continue to prohibit physician-patient access to marijuana. This outdated federal prohibition is corrupting the intent of the state laws and depriving thousands of glaucoma and cancer patients of the medical care promised them by their state legislatures.

On Sept 16, 1981, Representative Stewart McKinney and I introduced legislation designed to end bureaucratic interference in the use of marijuana as a medicant. We believe licensed physicians are competent to employ marijuana, and patients have a right to obtain marijuana legally, under medical supervision, from a regulated source. The medical prohibition does not prevent seriously ill patients from employing marijuana; it simply deprives them of medical supervision and access to a regulated medical substance. Physicians are often forced to choose between their ethical responsibilities to the patient and their legal liabilities to federal bureaucrats.

Representative McKinney and I hope the Council will take a close and careful look at this issue. Federal policies do not reflect a factual or balanced assessment of marijuana’s use as a medicant. The Council, by thoroughly investigating the available materials, might well discover that its own assessment of marijuana’s therapeutic value has, in the past, been more than slightly shaded by federal policies that are less than neutral

Newt Gingrich
House of Representatives
Washington, DC

Fourteen years later, as House Speaker, this same hypocritical piece-of-shit would introduce the Drug Importer Death Penalty Act of 1996, which called for executing any person caught importing just an ounce or two of high-grade marijuana (“100 usual doses” is how it was written in the legislation, which obviously didn’t pass).

What’s more, when challenged about his own admitted use of marijuana in the past, Gingrich had this to say to Wall Street Journal reporter Hilary Stout:

“That was a sign we were alive and in graduate school in that era. See, when I smoked pot it was illegal, but not immoral. Now, it is illegal AND immoral. The law didn’t change, only the morality… That’s why you get to go to jail and I don’t.”

“Okay for thee, but not for me,” sez rich, well-fed white guy. Thanks for the succinct explanation, mean old man!

Now, if you’re looking to make sense of this stuff don’t even try. He’s a Republican, ‘nuff said.

Here’s what Gingrich said at a fundraiser for fellow Georgia GOP pol Rep. Charlie Norwood in 1995:

“If you import a commercial quantity of illegal drugs, it is because you have made the personal decision that you are prepared to get rich by destroying our children. I have made the decision that I love our children enough that we will kill you if you do this.”

“I have decided”???

Imagine this asshole being allowed to decide anything of importance!

Gingrich, unable to help himself, continued:

“The first time we execute 27 or 30 or 35 people at one time, and they go around Colombia and France and Thailand and Mexico, and they say, ‘Hi, would you like to carry some drugs into the U.S.?’ the price of carrying drugs will have gone up dramatically.”

Ethan Nadlemann, the executive director of Drug Policy Action, a bipartisan advocacy group for ending the drug war called Gingrich “basically a nightmare” when it comes to drug policy issues. “For a guy who’s supposed to be an intellectual and intelligent, the quality of the argumentation on his part is embarrassing.”

As one wag quipped on the topic of Drug Importer Death Penalty Act of 1996 at The People’s Forum:

Fortunately didn’t pass. His other proposed acts, the Serial Adultery Death Penalty Act and the Congressional Influence Peddling Death Penalty Act, unfortunately failed as well. And he reportedly killed the Fat Loudmouth Pandering Pseudo-Intellectual Death Penalty Act before it could be introduced.

Republicans whine and Republicans bitch/Our rich are too poor and our poor are too rich.

Below, Newt Gingrich shooting his big mouth off about the drug war and how the US should emulate Singapore(!) on The O’Reilly Factor as “Papa Bear” nods with approval.
 

 
Thank you Mr. Michael Backes of Sacramento, CA!

“That’s why you get to go to jail and I don’t.”

The world revolves around Newt, that’s why He would be the best president this country has ever had, or ever will have.  If only we deserved Him.  If only you puny, puny humans had the cranial capacity to understand that.

As a jaded leftist, cowed into voting for Obama in ‘8 because of my remorse about W’s 2000 “victory”, I would like to note for the record that Obama opposes medical marijuana too!  Obama is easily as much of a hypocrite on this issue as Newt.  Candidate Obama opposed raids on medicinal users or caregivers, but President Obama’s U.S. attorneys raided dispensaries in 2011.  I may reluctantly vote for him again in 2012, but I am getting tired of independent media outlets stuck in the Nader-Syndrome (the Vietnam syndrome of leftist reporting) in which we’re afraid to be too critical of our liberal, jingo-ist pres because the Newts of the world are “worse.” Don’t get me wrong, I am a fan of Richard Metzger, but I’m starting to wonder if all of us shouldn’t direct our ire at the democrats again (for a change.)

Laws don’t change, but morality does… Jesus, what a scary man he is. He make 1984 sound like a vacation world.

Nuke WAS a visionary after all! Consider…

“If you import a commercial quantity of illegal drugs, it is because you have made the personal decision that you are prepared to get rich”

In other words, he was willing to use the death penalty in order to protect a proposed legal marijuana trade within the US! That’s some right-wing thinking that might have attracted some converts! (“Those damn Mexicans! Eating into our profits with their cheap pot!”)

@yippee!

The Newts of this country ARE much, much worse. Defensive voting is an unavoidable reality in America and the older I get the more I accept that this is unlikely to change for some time.

Please don’t mistake the fact that I (rather obviously) hate Republicans to mean that I root for the other team.

I don’t like many Democrats at all, trust me. I find Obama much, much better than Bush, but that’s saying very, very little (I think he’s a very intelligent man, but he sees the world in very different terms than I do. Most of his center-right policies aren’t even half-measures as far as I am concerned).

The ONLY reason I vote for Democrats is so that Republicans don’t get into office (with the exception that I have had two Congresswomen in a row who I’ve like a lot in my district in Hollywood. I’ve voted for them with pleasure).

The thing to do is to get all of the Republicans out of office, and *then* primary the shit out of the Democrats after that. First things first, get rid of the authoritarian types, then and only then will it be possible to have clarity on just how shitty the Democrats really are. As demographics doom the GOP to a permanent minority party, third parties will gradually start to emerge, but that could take 2-3 decades. A lot of older GOP voters will have to croak first.

It would have been self-defeating, for instance, for anyone with a lick of sense to “direct their ire” at Harry Reid when Sharron Angle was the alternative in Nevada in 2010. I don’t want someone NUTS in the Senate, but Reid? Like I care otherwise. What the fuck has he done for me?

Democrats? Fuck them. It’s just that the alternative is impossible to contemplate with anything other than dread.

Richard wrote…

“First things first, get rid of the authoritarian types, then and only then will it be possible to have clarity on just how shitty the Democrats really are.”

Absolutely. In fact, once the Repugs are dead and buried then rightwing voters will have the perfect rightwing party waiting for them: The Dems. Perhaps then we can start growing an actual leftish party that supports a more European-style view of social benefit versus commerce.

Everyone says the Repubs will be worse, but I’m unconvinced. When Obama changed his slogan from “Hope” to “Hope you don’t get indefinately detained” the jig was pretty much up. Wall-to-wall wars, a shrinking middle class, and the erosion of individual freedoms—Ronald Reagan only wished he were so bold. Vote 3rd party and force the Dems to go liberal to regain their lost votes. If numbskulls like the Tea Party can change their party, why can’t we change ours?

I’m sure it says more about me than anything, but I had to do a double take at that Time cover - the ‘crutch’ (visual entendre?) handle sure looked at first glance like a roach…

if we had drug laws like Singapore it means Rush Limbaugh would’ve been sent to jail for his hillbilly heroin habit

Cxoto wrote…

“if we had drug laws like Singapore it means Rush Limbaugh would’ve been sent to jail for his hillbilly heroin habit”

Oh, going to jail would be the least of Limburger’s problems in a Singaporean-style justice system. He definitely would have been caned, with the flesh torn from his back in thick stripes (they wake you up again if you pass out). Someone else will know if he’d also be executed.

Newt’s personal life says a lot about the man and his abilities to be stable and loyal.
I have made a humorous video that I believe shows how his wives must have felt about his loyalties. You may see it at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQSsMRe6BJE
Hope you enjoy!

Newt Gingrich makes me as nauseous as the next person, but regarding the “...That’s why you get to go to jail and I don’t” quote - this guy ...

http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/about-that-gingrich-marijuana-quote/

... did some research and found that the quote seems to have been made up.  The referenced WSJ article certainly isn’t flattering, but the quote isn’t there.

Newt Gingrich sloughs off enough pure evil ectoplasm on a daily basis - recorded and broadcast on network television - to doom himself as a presidential candidate.  We don’t need to weaken the strong arguments against this pig by propagating false stories.

Can we please cut it out with acting like Obama did anything to put us in this mess? It disgusts me that people are turning on him because he hasn’t been able to shovel 8 years of shit off America’s driveway in under 3 years. He needs at least 6, and like Clinton, we will be back on top by around year 6, and the America will be a better place and in a perfect postion for the Republicans to screw up again by year 8.

He’s gotten rid of the terrorists. He has had no scandals other than the disgustingly racist one only disgustingly racist people started about his birth certificate. No non-white person has had to deal with these stone age values these despicable pieces of human garbage have spouted and tried to bully him with. Let him work. If you vote Republican you are killing America, simple.

It’s gonna be hilarious when government finally fully legalizes and regulates marijuana and potheads inadvertently fix the economy though, cant wait for that!

If you need to quit smoking marijuana for a drug test, you’re not alone.  Check out your options at www.marijuanaoutofyoursystem.com