Transcript

Cultural Baggage July 11, 2010

Broadcasting on the Drug Truth Network, this is Cultural Baggage.

“It’s not only inhumane, it is really fundamentally Un-American.”

“No more! Drug War!” “No more! Drug War!” “No more! Drug War!” “No more! Drug War!”

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My Name is Dean Becker. I don’t condone or encourage the use of any drugs, legal or illegal. I report the unvarnished truth about the pharmaceutical, banking, prison and judicial nightmare that feeds on Eternal Drug War.

(Sheep baaing.)

(Baaing) Marijuana…. kills thousands… of our kids… every day. Drugs… are just bad. Mmmm… Ok?

Dean Becker: Is that how it will forever be? Are we to follow along like sheep forever? I don’t much think so and certainly not the way things are starting to pan out across America and around the world. People are beginning to recognize the utter futility, the fabrication that is this set of drug laws.

We’re gonna do a first day, a first time ever, we’ve had two other radio hosts to join us. We have from up Washington way, Mr. Adam Assenberg and we have from Indiana way, Mr. Casper Leitch. So, let’s go ahead and bring on Adam first, so folks can pick your voice out and know which part of the conversation you are. Hello Adam.

Adam Assenberg: Hello, Dean. How are you today?

Dean Becker: I’m good, my friend. Briefly, if you will, tell us about your radio programs.

Adam Assenberg: Well, as you may know and some of your listeners may know, my wife and I were thrown out of our subsidized home a few years ago and I went ahead, went to court on it. In federal court they ruled that since I was poor, I didn’t have a right to have my case heard. KRFP 92.5FM out in Marshall, Idaho, picked up my family’s story, about how I was my own lawyer in the case. It turned around and let me be a voice in the medical marijuana war, as well as the Drug War in general, as to how our government is lying to us.

Dean Becker: Alright, and then again, joining us from Indiana, Mr. Casper Leitch. Hello Sir.

Casper Leitch: Well, I have a little radio show called “Time4hemp Live” on American Freedom Radio all around the world and on AM/FM stations all across America, every Monday through Friday from eleven to midnight, Central Standard Time.

I got involved doing this type of work by working with Jack Harris. I was working in Jack’s office and we were doing the California Hemp Initiative and we needed a way to raise the voice of the marijuana movement. So, I went down and started Time4hemp on community cable.

It was the first television series ever in the history of TV broadcasting that put marijuana in a great light, as its main topic. So, I became the father of marijuana TV and later took the show to internet in 2007, podcasting. Now I’m heard on amricanfreedomradio.com, Monday through Friday and doing what I can to make the voice hard to ignore.

Dean Becker: I wanted to say this; I’ve been lucky enough to be on Adam’s show and to be on “Time4hemp”, Casper’s show. It’s good to kind of cross-pollinate, if you will, in this regard because we get to share more ideas that maybe our home listeners haven’t heard before. I want to come back to you, Adam. Your situation, you live in a medical marijuana state, do you not?

Adam Assenberg: Yes, I do.

Dean Becker: There are – I don’t know, there’s ever changing currents. In nearly every state the legislature takes a different look, the police have a different say, everything is always kind of in turmoil. We need to fine tune and go more in the direction that I think, California is taking, to actually tax and regulate and get to actually controlling the distribution of these drugs. Let’s go first to you, Adam.

Adam Assenberg: We most certainly do, Dean. You know, one thing I discovered over this last week. I’ve been doing a lot of odd jobs and stuff for a dear friend of mine, named Steve Serege and he took my Dronabinol pills – and for those who don’t know that’s synthetic marijuana pills, the generic brand of them and he weighed them on a scale. He discovered out of a breakdown, if you were to pay for the Dronabinol pills the same as you do for marijuana, you’d be paying $83 an ounce for the Dronabinol pills.

Dean Becker: How much again?

Adam Assenberg: $83 a gram, I mean. I apologize, that’s $83 dollars a gram for Dronabinol pills.

Dean Becker: Well, that’s even more expensive than that K2.

Adam Assenberg: Yes it is and these are tax payer’s dollars when people are on medical coupons that’s taken out of the state budgets.

Dean Becker: Now let’s go to Casper Leitch. Your thoughts?

Casper Leitch: Well, I’ve been having some on going debates on my broadcast. We had Jodie Emery and Bruce Cain, first debated. Then we had Dennis Peron and Annette Shaw do it a second time and Chris Conrad had a nice a debate with a dispensary owner, that I can’t think of this name right now, that’s really bad on Friday night. We still have Paul Stanford coming on with J. Craig Canada on Monday night and I am trying very hard to be an unbiased journalist, so I’m trying to reserve from making any outwardly comment about it until after the debates are done.

Dean Becker: I understand that’s tough sledding as far as trying to be unbiased. I once moderated a debate between the two District Attorney candidates here and it was hard going’ I’ll tell you that. Now, Adam –

Casper Leitch: Well, my point of view, the trump card is: “Stop arresting”. I do think that all of the debating, I guess I’m kind of showing my hand. It’s silly because if you’re going to have that debate, why don’t you have it in front of the jailhouse while they are hauling people in, minute after minute for the convictions that they’re going to be facing. Tell them that it’s not a big enough garden.

Tell them that the points are just not right because we really do need to end this War on Drugs. If Prop 19 were to pass, I think the big step in making that happen finally all across the nation and around the world. I’m still trying to reserve making any public comment about it (laughs).

Dean Becker: Well, yes, you’ve got to hold off there for a little while. Hold off there, Casper. Now, Adam, I was going to ask you, I’m kind of proud of the fact that your station up there in Moscow, Idaho is one of those caring the Drug Truth Network programs. Are they still airing Cultural Baggage?

Adam Assenberg: Yes, as a matter of fact, a half hour before I go ahead and come in at five o’ clock to do my show. We go ahead and air your show of the Cultural Baggage and then in the very first half hour of my show, I go ahead and air your Century of Lies.

Dean Becker: Well, that’s just making me smile. Thanks. Thank you for continuing that, Adam. You know guys, I think the situation is that more and more prestigious newspapers are starting to have editorials that are really hitting, not below the belt, but just crippling the idea that this prohibition has a valid basis.

Adam Assenberg: Well, you know Dean, I’d like to add something as to what Casper had to say.

Dean Becker: Please, go ahead.

Adam Assenberg: By the way, I have a lot of respect for Casper. He’s done wonderful work.

Dean Becker: Indeed.

Adam Assenberg: What I’d like to say is that, even for those opponents of Proposition 19 that don’t agree with everything that’s in this, by the time everything is said and done, when you’re at that voting booth, are you going to go ahead and say, no, you don’t want this legalized for the people or are you going to eventually pull that handle and say yes?

You want your voice added to those who are tired of this prohibition, that are tired of locking people up over this simple plant, when the government has lied to us so much. Let’s go ahead and get this legal and then work out the bugs later so that way people stop getting arrested.

Dean Becker: I was just going to throw in the thought that people think California is liberal and nobody gets busted but nothing could be further from the truth. Each year they still arrest about sixty thousand people for mostly just for minor possession. Again, it’s not a whole lot by California’s standards but anyway. Your thoughts about that. Casper Leitch?

Casper Leitch: Yes and I want to echo all of the statements that people have been saying here recently, just exactly what we just heard, that it is quite a statement. How can you say no in the voting booth to this? I mean, you are just basically continuing the arrests and you’re just continuing the prohibition. People are concerned that we are only just feeding the bear, well, that’s true with all products.

We want to treat it just like liquor. Well, pay taxes on it. You have to be old enough, You got to have an ID. If you’re under aged and someone gives it to you, the person who gave it to you is in trouble. Jeez, that’s just how it is. It’s called growing up. In a majority of the marijuana movement they act like, “More. I want more or I’m not going to vote for it” and it’s like, “Dude, get over it.”

Dean Becker: Indeed. Indeed. Now, I just looked in my e-mail box before I came to the station today and the topic was: Legalize Therapeutic Use in Pennsylvania. That hasn’t happened but they are talking about it. This is, I think indicative of that progress we’re talking about, right?

Casper Leitch: Yes, it is.

Dean Becker: I’ll move on here, down to the next one, “Can the GOP Quit Weed Whacking?”, that’s from the Orange County Register. You know, they don’t have anything bit a stick. They got no information, no backing, no data, no science. It’s just whacking. You know? Your thoughts there, Casper?

Casper Leitch: Well, you’re absolutely right, after working in Jack Kerry’s office for three years, I can certainly tell you the number of reports and research data that came over Jack’s desk and my desk. We observed all kinds of scientists and doctors working in laboratories to study this plant and it’s effect on the human body and different types of medical aspects that we had to contend with as we grow older.

It’s just overwhelming, after you realize it. Then, on top of that, we already know from government standards what it could do for fuel production and clothing production and job production and you just look at congress and you just look at the senate and you think, “Why are you playing the American public for stupid? Oh, I know why. It’s for the money in your bank accounts. That’s why”.

So, it’s really frustrating to know the Truth and understand every of aspect of this plant and to see it outlawed like it is. It’s just, it’s why I’m an activist. I just can’t keep my mouth shut about it.

Dean Becker: I appreciate that Casper. Once again folks, this is the Cultural Baggage Show. This is your host Dean Becker. We have with us Mr. Adam Assenberg, he another radio host based out of Moscow, Idaho.

We also have a Mr. Casper Leitch who hosts a five days per week radio show now, Time4Hemp. I wanted to jump to another story. It was a letter to the editor, published by, written by Robert Sharpe, Drug War Threatens Our Nation’s Integrity. Now, that kind of goes right in line with what you’re saying there Casper.

Casper Leitch: Well, yes, because it shows kind of how stupid we are, by shooting ourselves in the foot.

Dean Becker: With a machine gun.

Casper Leitch: That’s right. With the Gulf and Dead Sea that’s growing out there on a daily basis and the enormous number years it’s gong to take to clean it and all the jobs that have been wiped out. They’re still saying down there we want to “Drill, baby, drill” did you look at the “Spill, baby, spill?”

If we had spilled that fuel and it had been bio-degradable from a variety of plants including hemp, we wouldn’t have had a spill like that. It would not have been a danger to Mother Nature or ourselves. So, I mean we’re looking at the headlines and we know the Truth and yet our paid politicians are willing to send us down the river for some dollars in their bank account. That really sets me off.

Dean Becker: Ok, now I wanted to go to Adam Assenberg. Adam, now without giving details, you’ve been helping some folks in the trade. Am I right or can we talk about that?

Adam Assenberg: Yes, I have.

Dean Becker: Tell us what you can.

Adam Assenberg: Well, basically I am just tired of seeing people that have cancer, glaucoma, AIDS and many other symptoms and no one tells these people. I mean, it really bothers me that a lot of these so called care centers, these collectives are charging people street prices for the medicines.

So, whenever I can, I find someone who is a legal patient, beyond question, that has their paperwork. I see to it that I go ahead and point them to where they can get their medicine for free. So, that way they’re not having to pay and decide, “Do I pay my electric or do I go ahead and get out of pain?

Dean Becker: Yeah. I tell you what guys. I want you to hang with me. I’ve got this little piece here it runs about almost three minutes. Get you a drink of water or something but I want you to comment on it because this will be our next topic of discussion.

We’re going to number twelve here Laura. Laura, our fine engineer, Ms. Laura Slavin. She’s the hardest working person here at the mothership of the Drug Truth Network. Let’s go ahead and share that with the listeners.

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What if Cannabis Cured Cancer?: a film by Lynn Richmond, narrated by Peter Coyote.

(Audio from the film)

This group of chemicals has significant anti-tumor properties.
Cannabis can kill cancer cells in many cases.
They have anti-tumoral effects.
There is nothing else that impacts on so many of our illnesses.
We know it kills cancer cells with out hurting the non-transformed cells

Narrator (Peter Coyote): In recent years the hemp plant has been proven to be anti-inflammatory, anti-spasmodic and anti-bacterial. It can treat depression, traumatic stress syndrome, chronic pain, glaucoma, migraines, multiple sclerosis, Tourettes, nausea and a host of other ailments without the unwanted side effects of pharmaceutical drugs.

In the 1800’s medical journals published more than a hundred articles on the therapeutic use of the drug, then know as cannabis indica, or Indian Hemp. Cannabis was often prescribed by doctors and was part of every medical bag right through the early part of the century. It was a popular treatment for labor pains, asthma, rheumatism and nervous disorders. It was even given to cranky babies to get them to stop crying.

Dozens of major studies have been published in the last few years that indicate that the chemicals in cannabis in the lab and in animals have a significant affect on fighting almost all major cancers. Including: brain, breast, prostate, lung, thyroid, colon, skin, pituitary, melanoma and leukemia cancers. They do this by promoting the death of cancer cells that have forgotten how to die, as well as reduction in their crucial blood supply while leaving healthy cells untouched.

Dr. Robert Melamine PhD (from the University of Colorado): There’s nothing else that impacts on so many of our illnesses. You see, when I talk about these AIDS related illnesses. We’re all aging but we don’t all come down with cardiovascular disease. We don’t all come down with autoimmune disease. We don’t all come down with cognitive dysfunction. We don’t all come down with cancer but the chances are we’re going to come down with one of them, alright?

Here we have this one drug that’s able to help us, holistically, with our biochemistry to restore balance. Cannabis can kill cancer cells in many cases. People are not aware of that. They think cancer, cannabis, anti-nausea.

There are multiple mechanisms of action identified by which cannabis kill cancer cells.

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Dean Becker: Alright. Lynn, the director of, Can Cannabis Cured Cancer?,will be our guest, on July 25th on the Cultural Baggage show. I hope you’ll join us then.

We have with us on the phone Mr. Adam Assenberg and Mr. Casper Leitch, fellow radio hosts. Gentlemen, you heard that cut, talking about cancer curing properties of cannabis. Let’s go first to you Adam, your response?

Adam Assenberg: That doesn’t surprise me at all. I have, in my lawsuit that I did with the government, done all kinds of research that tried to show that they’ve known for years marijuana actually helps with cancers. Marijuana actually has many kinds of medical benefits and the government turns around, throws away and tries to ignore.

Look at the Schaffer report, back in the Nixon era. There have been many evident reports, but when the government cannot show that it’s bad for you. They ditch the reports.

Dean Becker: That was Adam Assenberg. I want to go now to Casper Leitch and get his response to that, to that thought that cannabis may kill cancer.

Casper Leitch: Well, see now, I wish that it was able to be on TV so people could see the sarcasm and draws coming at them but I laugh in a sad way because as the report stated we’re all going to come down with those and that includes the politicians who sit there year after year dealt with legislation to keep it outlawed, so that the oil companies could get rich. Yet, when they so desperately need the medications for their own life, to save them and to prolong them, they won’t have access to them either.

So from that point of view and also being in the marijuana movement for twenty years, sometime after screaming for twenty years to everybody around you, “You know we’re going to run out of fuel. You know we’re destroying the planet. You know this plant is good for us. You know medically we need this. You know if we smoke it, that the chemical in our brain that becomes active after being dormant. You know”. And they say, “Oh well, yeah, oh we know. We’ve heard it. Oh yeah, well, we know”. Yet they still vote these people into office and sometimes you think, “Well, you’re getting what you deserve”.

The next generation isn’t and we need to think about that generation, as well. We need to take open doors that can be used to find medical treatments for cancer and to make this planet last longer. So, even though those people who have sat there and voted against these plants deserve all the havoc of not having it can wreak upon one’s life.

Their kids don’t and so really need to think about down the road. This planet is really one big room we’re living in. Until we learn how to keep it clean, we’re all going to die from the pollution that we’re putting in it.

Dean Becker: Thank you, Casper Leitch. I checked my mailbox before when I got to the station today. There’s a June edition here of the American Nurse, the official publication of the American Nurses Association, the above the fold story about exploring the science of medical Marijuana. A quick read from it:

“Medical marijuana has long been recognized and its use legalized in fourteen states where its efficacy with cancer, pain, glaucoma, spasticity associated with multiple sclerosis and other conditions. New and ongoing research including studies presented at the recent conference shows it can help with pain associated with endometriosis and other women’s health issues and including post traumatic stress disorder.”

I mean, this thing is plant is so versatile. We could talk about hemp all day. We could talk about hemp all week. The fact of the matter is, as was indicated, it helps to balance our systems. It’s not a cure all but it does help us get back in balance. Let’s go to Adam Assenberg.

Adam Assenberg: It most certainly does and we are scaring politicians. You know, when the people go ahead and start winning, politicians try to change history. That’s the way it’s been throughout the ages. Right now we have a Lt. Governor in Washington State that is supporting these pamphlets, Marijuana: Fact or Fiction, and in the pamphlets it talks all about the dangers of marijuana and all kinds of other stuff, even says in the pamphlets that we’ve never had a Drug War (laughing).

Dean Becker: (laughing) Adam, I want to ask you. That is the name of your show, is it not? Marijuana: Fact or Fiction?

Adam Assenberg: Yes. Most certainly it is.

Dean Becker: Are they going after you or it is just—

Adam Assenberg: No, I just think it’s a twist on the words that the Lt. Governor decided when he was sponsoring these pamphlets but I just think it’s so comical, that they’re saying that we’ve never had a Drug War.

Dean Becker: (laughing): Not a drug Czar…

Adam Assenberg: In all of these pamphlets there’s not one bit of scientific backing on anything they’re saying. It should have been “Politicians against the Public” it should have been the title of the pamphlets.

Dean Becker: Was it just a bunch of quotes from DAs and judges and prosecutors?

Adam Assenberg: Yes, and from the Office of National Drug Control Policies. It stated all these different kinds of organizations in the pamphlets but when you go to follow the money and find out who the financial backing is, it all relates back to the Office of National Drug Control Policies.

Dean Becker: I want to ask you guys. I have, over the years, numerous times, contacted the Drug Czar’s office, going to the ONDCP and the DEA trying to get the heads of those offices to come on my radio show and they always say, “We don’t have time right now. This is a busy week. Call us back next month”. When the fact is that can be done by the phone in five or ten minutes.

Casper Leitch: I hate to interrupt. Here’s what I’ve been told.

Dean Becker: Go ahead.

Casper Leitch: A friend of ours, Steve Hager has an ongoing debate with the former head of the DEA, right?

Dean Becker: Yes.

Casper Leitch: You know who I’m talking about right?

Dean Becker: I’ve heard of them. Yes.

Casper Leitch: They go around debating. They had a mutual agreement with themselves that neither will trump the other because otherwise the guy won’t go out and debate Hager because he’ll look stupid.

It’s also been pointed out to me by people at NORMAL and at High Times, they won’t talk about marijuana because the problem is, when they go to use facts, all of the facts point to reasons why we should end prohibition and end the War on Drugs. Anything that comes out against ending the prohibition, I’m always suspect of because it’s not based on fact.

That’s what’s blowing my mind about this plant. The more I learn about it, the more I learn. It’s better for our bodies. It’s better for our minds. It’s better for our blood. It’s better for our planet. It’s better for our animals. It’s better for our sky. It’s like the Creator knew what the Creator was doing when the Creator put this plant alongside us to use while here.

That’s why they won’t do it because they know that we have facts. We have facts that even they themselves have put together from World War II findings, from Bulletin 404 and we can use their own research against them.

The only real reason to keep this outlawed is because it’s in direct competition of the petrochemical companies. If we did not have marijuana outlawed we would not need OPEC.

Dean Becker: Ok, Adam, go ahead.

Adam Assenberg: If I may interject, as far as though petrochemicals go. That’s what that Marinol and Dronabinol, synthetic marijuana pills are made of: synthetic oil. They’re costing taxpayers $1700 a month, for ninety 10-milligram pills. Why should they legalize cannabis when they can keep raping the money off the tax payers? When we have like, say twenty or thirty thousand people in Washington State alone, that are on these pills at $1700 per patient. That’s over than four million dollars a year out of the state budget.

Dean Becker: I tell you what guys, we’re starting to run out of time here. I want to thank you both for being with us. I hope our radio networks grow, intertwine and become even bigger. I appreciate the work you guys do. I want to give you about twenty seconds a piece to talk about your show, point to your website and upcoming guests or whatever. Let’s go first to Casper Leitch.

Casper Leitch: Go to time4hemp.com for four hundred hours of free audio and video downloads that you can pass around to your friends and listen to me on americanfreedonradio.com every Monday through Friday, from eleven to midnight. Tell your friends.

Dean Becker: Alright. Casper Leitch, I look forward to my next time to visit you on Time4hemp. Now, we go to Mr. Adam Assenberg, who has Marijuana: Fact of Fiction, is his show, up there in Moscow, Idaho. Close us out there, Adam.

Adam Assenberg: Yes, please check out my show at marijuanafactorfiction.net. I have two and half years worth of my radio show on my website, as well as all of my court documents and everything else where I am fighting the government. Anyone’s welcome to call in and be on my show. I’m getting ready real soon here to have Snoop Dog and many other great people.

My show is just growing exponentially. I’m looking forward to having Dean Becker from the LEAP, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition and Drug Truth Network, on my show again. Dean, you’re a great person. Please, everybody, check out Time4hemp and check out all these great people that are fighting the government. Thank you everybody for all your help.

Dean Becker: Thank you guys. See if you can name that drug.

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(harmonica music)

(singing) The DEA’s a joker
The FDA’s a joke
The joke is on the USA
So why not take a poke?

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(game show music)

It’s time to play, Name that Drug by its Side Effect.

Runny nose, a sudden decrease in blood pressure, dizziness, fainting, severe injury, diminished semen production, ejaculatory problems, prolonged and harmful erections leading to the inability to have an erection

(gong)

Time’s up. The answer from Boering Ingelheim Laboratories: Flowmax!

It’s all urine.

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(machine and rumbling sounds)

The last bastion of the drug warriors is that using marijuana, requires you to smoke it. Vapormed out of Germany has now produced a machine that takes the smoking out of smoking marijuana. It’s called, the Volcano!

(eruption sound)

They say the vaporizing method involves permeating the herbs with hot air.

Their website: vapormed.com.
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Alright folks, I really want you to do your part to bring this Drug War to an end. Check out this week’s 420 Drug War News. We’ll have Leland Burgess speaking about the situation in Oregon. We’re going to hear more about he Russian Drug Czar from Neil Pierce a Washington Post writer, Tom Feiling, the author of Cocaine Nation. We’ll hear from Mary Jane Borden about the history of hemp and Paul Armentano talking about the tax and control and regulating marijuana.

As always, you guys have to do your part. We can stand here and speak this Truth all day long but without your help, we’re really not going to get anywhere. So check out our website. Do your part. Let’s end this madness. As I always remind you, because of prohibition, you don’t know what’s in that bag. Please be careful.

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To the Drug Truth Network listeners around the world, this is Dean Becker for Cultural Baggage and the Unvarnished Truth. This show produced at the Pacifica studios of KPFT, Houston.

Transcript provided by: Ayn Morgan of www.eigengraupress.com

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Tap dancing… on the edge of an abyss.