Show Me the Facts

Hey everyone,

I’ve been keeping up with those of you who have been e-mailing me, but for all others who may be wondering where I have been, let me just say that I’m sorry for waiting this long to check in.

For those of you familiar with me, I am a private person and do not want to get into too many details about my personal life. What I will say, however, is that quite recently I lost two very important people in my life and–combined with other stresses in my life–it made me want to just take a break from all the arguing (though I love it so much) and just focus what little extra time I have in a given week on myself.

With the holiday now passed (though another looming on the horizon), and the semester nearly at an end, I will be back into gear getting things fixed up around here — including a forum, which was also a casualty of recent circumstance.

So for those of you who missed me, I will be back soon. For those of you who didn’t notice… aww. =P

Yours,
Eric

So lately I’ve seen a lot of popularity and parodies of the now-famous iPhone, “There’s an app for that” commercial. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, click the link and go check it out first.

While I was watching it, a light bulb clicked on for a marijuana-related parody that I call, “Marijuana – There’s a Strain for That!”

If you enjoy it, please share it! Aside from the entertainment factor, I think this really makes a point about how versatile marijuana truly is.

Nearly two months ago I was fortunate enough to afford a trip down to the THC Expo hosted at the LA Convention Center in Los Angeles, California. At first, I debated whether or not I should go but after I received some feedback from a friend who went, it sounded like something too good to miss.

In the end, I had an amazing time. I met a wonderful assortment of marijuana activists, entrepreneurs, and plain ol’ enthusiasts. The spoils of my adventure came as an assortment of stickers, fliers, binders, pins, pens, and a few personal souvenirs.

The first thing I did when I got home was begin to go through my photos (I took nearly a thousand) and find the ones that best represented the show, then start writing while everything was fresh in my mind. It took a couple days, but I spent hours and hours writing the post only to have WordPress glitch out, refresh, and delete the entire draft.

Thankfully, the event was fun enough that I still vividly remember everything I wanted to talk about… I just need to exercise these fingers again to share it with you guys. It will be pretty long, so I will chunk it into two parts.

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You heard it correct, folks. Some of you may have already known it was the site’s second birthday yesterday; mainly because I forgot to pay my domain bill and the site was down for most of yesterday. Whoops.

Two years ago, my goal was fairly simple: I wanted to create a website that would offer a professional, non-stereotyped source for debunking prohibition myths. It wasn’t until nearly a year later that I actually found direction for how I wanted to take the site and began updating as much as possible.

Though I started the site with simple intentions, I have really been inspired to strive for something more after my interactions with various people within the community. While my focus will remain on debating prohibitionists and providing medical studies as well as information on medical marijuana, I have decided to go forward with the forum idea mentioned previously.

As much as I was hoping to not have to spend too much out-of-pocket to get it running, it looks like I’ll have to dip a bit deeper into my matress to pick up the difference. A special thanks to those of you who have already donated or even those of you who sincerely would have if you could afford it, and I mean that (it’s the thought that counts). I will still keep the donations widget up in case anyone wants to donate after the fact.

Starting tomorrow, I’m going to be on the look out for a good price on a vBulletin license and hope to get it up and running within the month. My goal is to make it easier for the SMtF community to exchange ideas, share stories, and even help me out by offering research and links to manipulative prohibitionists .

What happened to me, you ask? Well, for those of you familiar with the site I really don’t like to give details about my personal life but I feel you deserve some sort of explanation for my absence. In short, I was hit with the perfect storm of summer events including a wedding, birthdays, summer school, etc. On top of that, as I said before, I am a poor college student that capitalizes on the summer to try and make money.

But fear not, for the storm has subsided and I am back to entertain all you folks with my marijuana related ramblings. Though I am currently back in school, I am going to reserve chunks of time each week to do updates, post articles, and write rebuttals; barring extreme circumstances, there shouldn’t be anything to stop me.

Looking forward to picking up where I left off!

Sincerely,
Eric

I have long believed that the best discussions and debates I’ve ever watched were on PBS. This follows that rule. The one comment I have to add is decriminalization is not the answer as it does not allow a market to be made surrounding marijuana in this country. It needs to be legalized and utilized. I also don’t agree with the ladies’ comment regarding “making it very expensive”. If you go through the hassle of legalization, putting an artificially inflated price tag on it will only make a nice cosey space for the underground markets to still exist.

Hey everyone,

I wanted to post and apologize for being so quiet lately. Lately I have been spending much of my time doing freelance jobs to pay the bills (I usually load up during the summer), helping a friend plan a wedding coming up very soon, and other miscellaneous errands that have fallen on my lap lately.

I spent literally several hours putting together a post (with pictures) about my experience at this year’s THC Expo only to have WordPress glitch out and delete the draft. Needless to say, it felt like a kick in the face now that I have to redo it (I always find it hard to redo something I felt was great the first time). I will remake it, however, as I met many great individuals that I promised I’d mention on the site.

So for those of you sending me e-mails saying you miss me, and for others sharing nice comments… I really appreciate it. But fear not! These are the last couple weeks of me being extremely busy. Soon it will be back to arguing with prohibitionists and providing fact-filled rebuttals that I’m sure many of you miss .

Sincerely,
Eric

Dear Readers,

My immediate goal for this website was to create a repository of information and articles aiding the marijuana legalization fight. As of the writing of this post, over 41,000 unique individuals have visited this site since March ‘09 and, needless to say, I hope to keep this momentum going.

One suggestion I have heard from readers on numerous occasions was the request for some sort of forum to help grow a community of fact-minded individuals to chat, discuss, share articles, opinions, information, etc. The consensus is that if I do start a forum, I should consider using a product like vBulletin and vBSEO to really help bring more traffic to the website and offer a quality community experience.

The problem is that vBulletin* costs $180 for a license, and vBSEO comes in at $149 for a license. Slightly better news is that used-licenses can be purchased for around $200 for both vBulletin and vBSEO if you look in the right place. While I have been able to keep this site running out of pocket thus far, I just do not have the personal budget to afford the costs of the license (even at the discounted used rate).

While I may not be able to afford it myself, I believe if there are enough of you out there willing to pitch in (or “chipin” in this case), we can pool together the needed funds to purchase at minimum the forum license, and hopefully enough for the vBSEO license as well. A good, trusted friend of mine has volunteered to handle the fund and has set up a ChipIn.com account that should make it a bit easier to orgnize everything.

You may be wondering, “What’s in it for me?” And that is a very fair question.

Other than the benefit of helping ShowMetheFacts.org reach a larger audience, I will offer “VIP Memberships” (a fancy title letting others know you helped pay for the forum + access to additional forums) to anyone who donates $10 or more. If you have any other suggestions of things I can offer, let me know.

Thanks so much for all of your support and please share this with any of your friends who may want to support SMtF.

Sincerely,
Eric

*For those of you wondering why I do not use another forum, or a free forum, I have used many various forum scripts over the years and while each one has its own benefit, I have only been comfortable with vBulletin and find myself having better results when using it.

Hey guys, not much of a news post due to how late it is, but I just got word that you can officially pre-order “The Union” as of now on Amazon.com:

http://www.amazon.com/Union-Business-Behind-Getting-High/dp/B0025XUTKQ

I’ll make a proper update in the morning =)

By popular demand (i.e. by request of a lovely young lady, @ericaschenker), here is my Pro/Con of the legalization of Marijuana for #marimonday:

Pros:

• Lower taxes
• More money for public utilities, education, transportation, etc.
• Vast reduction in organized crime (as marijuana is currently the life-blood of their organization)
• Increased compassion for individuals unable to afford health insurance or proprietary pharmaceutical prescriptions.
• Vast decrease in availability to minors and children via regulatory obstacles and destruction of black-markets.
• Thousands of new jobs created in the hemp industry
• Ripple effect of the new “gardening hobby” would be felt in stores across the nation
• Reduction in need for foreign oil by replacing many petroleum based products with hemp based products (plastics, oils, etc.)
• Reduction of environmental pollutants as Hemp phases out Cotton for many products (hemp does not require nasty pesticides but can create products more durable and equally soft as cotton).
• Reduction in deforestation as hemp can create more, better paper in less space multiple times in a year.
• Respect for law as a whole will improve as millions of good Americans are no longer labeled a “criminal”.

Cons:

• Law enforcement agencies, such as DEA, will lose large chunks of funding
• Certain corporations will be forced to compete with a very cheap, versatile natural resource (pharmaceuticals, lumber, cotton, and petroleum industries, for example)
• International laws would need to be revised, addressed, and changed to reflect the new legalization of marijuana
• Private Prison industry would lose many of its inmates and thus much of its profits.
• It would be nearly impossible to keep Strawberry PopTarts in stock at any convenience store across America.

Recently, I was made aware of a crowdsourcing attempt for a policy statement by Adriel Hampton, a hopeful congressional candidate in Northern California, regarding the Drug War. While I have never written anything for any one political individual, the prospect of writing something that could so directly affect our flawed laws was quite appealing.

The following is my submission for Mr. Hampton’s policy statement about the Drug War (specifically marijuana). While I am aware that most policy statements adhere strictly to descriptions of policy, I feel that marijuana is a very dense issue with a very intricate history. A history that must be taken into account if we are going to make an educated decision about an important issue.

You can vote on my submission here (it is titled “Legalization of Cannabis for the Good of our Citizens”) and read it below.

If you enjoy it, feel free to let @adrielhampton know on twitter.

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