"The unlimited space of the Wed allowed the Mercury News to move forward into a whole new kind of journalism," Microsoft's Encarta encyclopedia would later write of "Dark Alliance." "The Mercury News used...the Web to let intelligent readers review the source materials and draw their own conclusions. This step, far beyond the traditional role of newspapers, attracted attention and readers from all over the world."

When the story broke it created an intenational underground sensation, largely untouched by the mainstream media. The website got half a million page views the first day which rose steadily to over a million hits per day, as talk radio stations across the country sensationalized the story and encouraged listeners to view the website and the evidence that was compiled there.

When the mainstream press finally did touch the story it began with a disinformation hit-piece in the Washington Post by Walter Pincus. It was later discovered through an older article in the San Jose Mercury News Archives, that Pincus had previous affiliation with the CIA and even engaged in domestic spying on US Citizens for the CIA: "How I Traveled Abroad On CIA Subsidy," San Jose Mercury, 18 February 1967, p. 14. Pincus has a "journalistic" history of writing articles in support of the CIA, like he did with Philip Agee after his book CIA Diary.

Gary Webb (August 31, 1955 – December 10, 2004) was a Pulitzer prize-winning American investigative journalist.

Webb was best known for his 1996 "Dark Alliance" series of articles written for the San Jose Mercury News and later published as a book. In the three-part series, Webb investigated Nicaraguans linked to the CIA-backed Contras who had allegedly smuggled cocaine into the U.S. Their smuggled cocaine was distributed as crack cocaine in Los Angeles, with the profits funneled back to the Contras. Webb also documented and proved that this influx of Nicaraguan-supplied cocaine sparked, and significantly fueled, the widespread crack cocaine epidemic that swept through many U.S. cities during the 1980s. According to fact and evidence provided by Webb, the CIA was aware of the cocaine transactions and the large shipments of drugs into the U.S. by Contra personnel. Webb showed how the Reagan administration shielded inner-city drug dealers from prosecution in order to raise money for the Contras, especially after Congress passed the Boland Amendment, which prohibited direct Contra funding.

Webb's reporting generated fierce controversy, and the San Jose Mercury News backed away from the story, effectively ending Webb's career as a mainstream media journalist. In 2004, Webb was found dead from two gunshot wounds to the head, which the coroner's office judged a suicide. Though he was criticized and outcast from the mainstream journalism community, his reportage was eventually vindicated as many of his findings have since been validated: since Webb's death, both the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune have defended his "Dark Alliance" series. Renowned journalist and former Webb colleague Al Giordano states that "the CIA’s internal investigation by Inspector General Frederick Hitz vindicated much of Gary’s reporting" and observes that despite the campaign against Webb, "the government eventually admitted to more than Gary had initially reported" over the years.

Drugs:

This section is to discuss drug related conspiracies, and to provide in-depth information on drugs, what they are, where they come from, how they get here, why people use them, and who benefits at every stage of the game.

Definition:

Bio-Chemical Definition:

Essentially, a drug is a chemical which in some way mimics natural chemicals within the body but is slightly different and thus has a slightly altered effect. For instance psychoactive drugs mimic very closely chemicals within the human brain. LSD for example is the perfect size and shape to fit into neuroreceptors of your brain and block certain message from being sent. All psychoactive drugs are classified according to their affected neurotransmitter systems

The Worlds leading expert on drugs

Alexander Shulgin:

Alexander Shulgin discovered, synthesized, and bioassayed over 230 psychoactive compounds. He is a consultant on drugs for the FDA and has been granted immunity from drug laws for research purposes (seeing as he knows more about drugs than anyone in the Government).

The CIA, Drug Trafficking and American Politics: The Political Economy of War

The follow Article was written by Bi0hazardx

An explanation of how the pharmeceutical companies are patenting cannibinoid derivatives fully understanding their receptor's crucial role in brain and body chemistry, and simultaneously undercutting Marijuana as a medically useless drug, in order to keep the plant (which people can grow themselves) illegal, so it will force people to buy prescription medications based on cannibis derivative research chemicals.

Throughout the progression of cannabis research and medical legalization over the past couple decades, one of the hottest topics has continued to be the existence and purpose of cannabis dispensaries. The spotlight in media coverage seems to be fueled more by the spectacles of DEA raids than the basis for their medical existence. Despite the hundreds of scholarly research studies showing how safe and effective medical cannabis is in the treatment and prevention of over a 100 illnesses and symptoms. Each time the news airs a dispensary being raided by SWAT units at gun point the DEA engages in actions of pure hypocrisy. At the same time as the raids Pharmaceutical factories are manufacturing Marinol, A pill containing a synthetic version of the same THC that makes Cannabis a schedule 1 illegal drug. However the company producing synthetic THC has remaining untouched by raids or physical federal intervention. How can this be?

According to the DEA, a drug has to meet certain requirements to stay under Schedule 1 classification. To be Schedule 1, it cannot have a “currently accepted medical use in treatment in the U.S.” and also must lack any medical research showing “acceptable safety results”.

The US Department of Justice had already released studies on how cannabis was non- toxic and a safe medicine in 1988, when it stated that "Nearly all medicines have toxic, potentially lethal effects. But cannabis is not such a substance. There is no record in the extensive medical literature describing a proven, documented cannabis-induced fatality. In practical terms, cannabis cannot induce a lethal response as a result of drug-related toxicity.” However, the federal government still ignorantly holds the position of keeping cannabis in the schedule 1 category.

“Based upon the facts established in this record and set out above, one must reasonably conclude that there is accepted safety for use of marijuana under medical supervision.”

“To conclude otherwise, on this record, would be unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious….”

“The cannabis plant considered as a whole has a currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, there is no lack of accepted safety for use under medical supervision and it may lawfully be transferred from Schedule I to Schedule II. The judge recommends that the Administrator transfer cannabis.”

Aside from documented safety of cannabis use, there are other logical conflictions in Federal thinking and policy concerning use of synthetic THC, which itself is prescribed and acknowledged to have medicinal effects by the DEA, as it is a Schedule 3 drug. Why

is THC in cannabis categorized as schedule 1 while the same compound in a synthetic pill is Schedule 3? One of the main issues is that cannabis organically grown by patients or caregivers hurts pharmaceutical sales. Having a plant that people can grow on their own would threaten the profits and sales of big pharmaceutical companies who want to sell you THC and other cannabinoids but in pill form instead. One of the great features of grown cannabis is vaporized or smoked use will present the medical relief within minutes, which also allows patients to fine-tune their dose in real-time, rather than waiting 30 minutes for a pill to kick in. However, what is clear by lobbying actions of big pharma, is that they would rather leave things as they and continue to buy only their pills that have a patent on them. This way the research investors and pharmaceutical companies can patent their product and be the only ones able to sell it on the market for the first 20 years, something that would be impossible with just announcing that people can grow cannabis themselves for even better medical effects.

With the 6,500+ medical patents already on cannabinoids, it’s no secret that the pharmaceutical companies also realize the medical properties of cannabis and want to develop future synthesizing for new cannabinoids medicines, rather than grown cannabis, despite how many patients report better results with actual cannabis over the synthetics. Big Pharmaceutical companies have also publically donated money for increasing the penalties of cannabis possession, along side police unions, private prisons and alcohol companies who are also threatened by the cannabis industry. It looks like big pharma has cannabinoids medicines on the horizon and they are in the business of cutting out grown cannabis, such as dispensaries and rather have each patient or their insurance pay $8 three times a day for Marinol pills, or Bayers Sativex.

If synthetic THC is openly recognized as a medicine in synthetic applications, how can organic cannabis, which it is directly synthesized to mimic, be ignored just to disingenuously keep cannabis prosecutable by the DEA. What most people aren’t familiar with is that grown cannabis generally has many other cannabinoids and terpenoids that account for many of the medical properties in cannabis. Most of these different ranges of cannabinoids or terpenoids are removed from the synthetic cannabis pills, which is why many patients find that actual cannabis is much more effective. This federal dishonesty unjustly keeping cannabis schedule 1 and illegal, is partly used as leverage for raiding sick and dying patients who are taking the simple and safe production of growing medicine into their own hands – to produce an organic version and more effect version of what is legally sold by pharmaceutical companies throughout every town in America.

If it isn’t clear enough, the hypocrisy deepens. If the DEA’s willful ignorance to the hundreds of peer reviewed scientific articles is their only tactic. It still conflict’s their own federal actions, given that the US Government has been approving prescribed grown medical cannabis use since 1977, overtime reaching a total of 14 US patients. These patients were given grown organic cannabis by the US Gov, which is the same classification as the cannabis in the dispensaries that are being raided. If that wasn’t enough the US Government continues to grow the cannabis that was distributed to the 14 federal patients, while at the same time raiding dispensaries for offering the same

plant to other patients. This stance alone is a precedent that the U.S. government has and currently acknowledges the medical applications of cannabis, making it’s schedule 1 classification ‘impossible’ by definition. As with the current medical movement, the U.S. government’s made its decisions on the medical cannabis program based on peer reviewed scientific articles, the same ones they are purposely ignoring today – just to keep DEA funding and asset grabs that are allowed when cannabis is Schedule 1. Part of the reasons for the DEA lies and propaganda It usually doesn’t go over well to ask a department, especially the DEA to close up a section of its shop and stop paying their payroll. Nor is it popular to those who depend on federal assets for them to stop seizing the billions in assets the DEA gets from raids of dispensaries and grows. Even though the scientific evidence points towards rational reasons why the DEA’s medical cannabis raids are no longer needed - most organizations risking termination would usually respond with a similar storyline. One that frames an argument creating reasons why they are still needed, by over-exaggerating the threats and severity of the issue at hand. In the case of the DEA and cannabis, they fall back to the same rhetoric and talking points that got them anti-pot funding and support in the past.

As we have seen this hypocrisy can turn into an almost propagandist and yellow journalism move by the DEA. The result is by no means a healthy environment for truth or the sick patients who are prohibited from access to safe medicine they had been prescribed. However, it’s not unexpected that the DEA would completely ignore evidence showing cannabis as a medicine. They are in a rock in a hard place with their stance of willful ignorance, because they cannot escape the past and current actions of the US government – which has been prescribing organic cannabis while acknowledging it as safe medicine since the 70’s.

So who else is trying to step to the plate to stop the DEA’s deceit that directly results in the suffering of patients who could benefit greatly from grown medical cannabis? In 2009, the prestigious American Medical Association (AMA) voted to overturn its decade’s old anti-pot position, calling for the DEA to remove Cannabis from it’s unjust schedule 1 classification. The AMA pointed out that, decades of recent research has shown, just as the DOJ’s research in 1988 did, that cannabis is very useful in medical applications, and well within the safety requirements of accepted medicines. They found in general cannabis tends to have much lower toxicity levels than the medicines its used to replace. To further examine the safety of extremely large quantities of medical cannabis consumption, a review of all the cannabis research in the past 20 years was looked after caring out a 13 year long study. It analyzed the long term effects heavy cannabis might have on the brain and cognition. They concluded that the difference in brain ability between subjects with continued heavy use over 13 years compared to subjects who never used cannabis were surprisingly small and barely relevant in real life situations.

(Quote from researchers who did the study on the WebMd Article) "I suppose we expected to see some differences in people who were heavy users, but in fact the differences were very minimal."

"This finding enables us to see a marginal level of safety" Says Grant. "If we barely find this effect in long-term heavy users, then we are unlikely to see deleterious side effects in individuals who receive cannabis for a short time in a medical setting, which would be safer than what is practiced by street users."

When medicine is scientifically shown to work well in treatments and is approved for use by the AMA: as a community we would generally expect that locations would be established to help provide medicine to patients within state laws, just as pharmacies operate with prescription pills. The reason cannabis in a plant form cannot be sold in pharmacies is due to its schedule 1 federal classification which forbids it be ‘prescribed’ at all. In essence, the federal ban on cannabis at pharmacies is what led to the formation of dispensaries in the first place. Finally allowing approved medical marijuana state programs a means to offer patients medicine as soon as they get a recommendation from a doctor.

Many politicians overlook how essential it is to have dispensaries for the medical community. For patients that just got a doctor recommendation and are in serious pain or are currently dealing with illnesses, it’s not practical to expect them to wait 4 months before they can legally get any medicine from their own grow or a caregiver. If they want to choose a caregiver the caregiver generally has to wait over a month before they are approved to grow plants for the patient, which would then take months to finish. Think of the outrage at a doctor’s office if the doctor said he has a medicine that would effectively treat your condition, but you would have to wait months before you could actually fill the prescription. This is of course assuming that the production of grown medicine is successful, which isn’t always the case for inexperience growers, generally those who would just be getting their medical recommendation. Without dispensaries this same waiting period is applied to those who want to learn to grow their own medicine. They are still left untreated for months without locations that follow state law to provide a selection of grown cannabis. People must also take into account that a lot of patients are far too sick to grow their own medicine or can become increasingly sick and ruin an upcoming crop, leaving them without medicine for months. Just as with the Aloe Vera and healthy foods, individuals should be allowed to grow their own, but there should also be retail locations to purchase it, so that the medicine is consistently available to the patients going through suffering. One of the most important elements in approved treatments is having consistent access the medicine used in the treatment. One of the most valuable aspects of a dispensary is that it allows patients to try out a variety of different cannabis effects and treatments found between thousands of different strains. The range of different cannabis effects and genetics is so large that trying out proper phenotypes of 20 strains offers variety way-beyond what most patients could try with their plant counts limits. The brilliance of dispensaries offering large varieties of different strains with different medical effects is that the dispensaries generally have clones of the exact genetic varieties they sell. This way patient’s can grow the exact genetics the got from a dispensary forever, based on which strains they find works best for their conditions.

What will it take for the DEA to even acknowledge the hundreds of studies showing time and time again the effective medical applications of cannabis, even studies carried out by our own government?

In a nut shell, investors won’t put money towards research unless they can patent and have control of selling the product afterwards, including medicine such as cannabis. Is it the American way to block and arrest people from helping support themselves like many have done growing their own food? We see the media cover how important self sufficiency is in a recession with ways to conserve food and produce things yourself, why is cannabis blacklisted from being considered on this list, especially with its medical benefits. Many people are having trouble paying for medical treatment as it is and as a result leave huge debts to their family members after passing away. If people are willing to work and build things themselves, shouldn’t they have the option to choose whether they buy a medical plant like Aloe Vera from a store or grow it in their own backyard where they usually get better result? Would it be right for the government to treat Aloe Vera just as it treats cannabis, making growing the plant illegal and only allowing people to buy it from patented products sold in a store? What if the same argument was made for food, should we have the right to grow our own food and sell it in markets? Or should we be forced to only rely on buying genetically modified food and make organically grown food illegal? These hypothetical examples magnify the sheer insanity of the schedule 1 classification of medical cannabis and patients and dispensaries ability to produce their own within state laws.

By hypothetically looking at how ridiculous it would be to treat other plants as they do cannabis, it becomes clear that whether these unjust laws are kept due to ignorance or political lobbying, they are unfounded in reality and leave thousands of patients suffering in pain daily throughout the world. It’s time for the DEA to address the truth of the matter, rather than hide behind old propaganda talking points. We as a country must hold them responsible and embrace the absolute need for empathy of those sick and suffering. Many of us have had family members die, much to early, from cancer and many other illnesses that cannabis can effective treat. Why should anyone block a safe and effective medicine from those who direly need it, in reality this really is what’s criminal about medical cannabis remaining federally illegal. The feds should embrace the consensus from hundreds of studies showing how safe cannabis is compared to the majority of the other prescribed drugs on the market. As a country we need to follow the advice of the US Supreme Court Ruling from 1988, by removing Cannabis from schedule 1 classification immediately, so that its medical applications can be acknowledged nation- wide.