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The facts, as stated by the AP May 12:
"New Jersey forward Clifford Robinson was suspended five
games without pay by the NBA on Friday after violating terms
of the league's drug policy for the second time in two seasons.
Robinson will miss at least the rest of the Eastern Conference
semifinals. His suspension begins Friday night with Game 3 of
the Nets' series against the Miami Heat, and leaves New Jersey
without one of its possible options for defending Shaquille O'Neal.
"Robinson was also suspended
five games in February 2005 while playing for Golden State. Under
terms of last year's collective bargaining agreement, a player
would be suspended five games for a third positive test for marijuana.
The 39-year-old Robinson is a valuable reserve for the Nets.
He averaged 6.9 points in 80 games this season, his 17th in the
NBA."
Among active NBA players, Cliff
Robinson is second only to Dikembe Mutombo in age. What does
that say about his marijuana use? The league, i.e. the owners,
set him up by insisting that he only use corporate drugs to deal
with the pounding his body took. Clifford Robinson was obviously
unimpaired as an athlete. By all accounts he was friendly, intelligent,
even-tempered un-egotistical -a great teammate. He didn't like
being screamed at by PJ Carlesimo, but he handled the situation
more diplomatically than another player did a few years later.
Lot of good it did him...
Young Latrell moved to Flint
to live with his dad Who then got taken prisoner in your war
on drugs gone mad Over some marijuana they put another man away
Was that good for General Motors, was it any good for the USA?
PJ Carlesimo was the coach
at Seton Hall Never won a championship but PJ got the call to
try his style of leadershit on the players up in the pros He
was Caucasian, by the way, the players mostly Negroes
Sprewell won a fellowship to
attend the Crimson Tide Where the athletes lived segregation
camouflaged as pride He got well known for defense and always
working hard Nelson drafted him after saying "Why ever draft
a guard?"
Carlesimo in Portland for three
unpleasant years Rod Strickland and Clifford Robinson said "Let
me out of here!" And for his mediacrisy, what be PJ's fate?
A five year contract to coach Golden State
A team that was imploding since
unloading proud Tyrone Acquiring Chris Webber who did not like
Nellie's tone He asked for some changes but Nellies said "Neigh,"
Red Auerbach taught him everything he must have thought he knew
the way
Carlesimo was one of those
men who has to scream Insults at grown-ups to mold them into
"his team" He'd scowl and growl to exercise control
And on the floor he tried to make a sycophant of a man named
Bimbo Coles
Losing night after losing night
in slow descent to Hell And every day at practice coach would
denigrate Latrell Until at last Spree could not take one more
nasty crack And they grabbed him in a headlock for a momentary
payback
Then he ran off to the lockers,
then he stormed back on the floor To say just like Clifford Robinson
"I won't work for you no more!" The team all in between
'em Spree swung out for effect It was just a way of saying, "Man,
here's your disrespect."
It was just a way of trying
to show him how it feels Just a flash of honesty -it was real
And for this they tried to take his job forever and a day The
arbitrator said "No, just all season without pay."
The fans all across the dial
squealed "We been had. I can't choke my boss," the
double standard made 'em mad And attorney general Lungren who
was supposed to uphold the law Misstated the facts trying to
win a few votes more.
I hear that there's a movie
out about a mutiny led by a slave On the good ship Amistad and
Spielberg's all "How brave." Of course that was another
century and the black men nameless freight Not the celebrated
contract-locked-up property of Golden State.
Hemp for
Victory (NBA Version)
There are at least two young
billionaires in the San Francisco Bay Area with a love of hoops
and a social conscience. There's another young billionaire who
could care less about hoops but whose political wish list includes
ending the drug war. And there's George Zimmer, owner of the
Men's Wearhouse, to whom this letter is addressed. Any of them
could act on the ideas herein, which are given away free (although
your correspondent would not be adverse to a job in the "media
relations" office).
Dear George,
Knowing that you're a big Oakland
booster, a big sports fan, and a major critic of the marijuana
prohibition, allow me to suggest a way to advance all three interests
at once. Buy the Warriors. As owner you can not only bring an
NBA title to Oakland, you can strike the biggest blow against
the Drug War since we, the voters, with your help, passed Prop
215 in '96. Here's the scenario.
One: You buy the Warriors Let's
not quibble over how many mill it's going to cost. The Men's
Wearhouse is a Fortune 500 company, is it not? And it's an investment
-the price of sports franchises keeps going up. And it's publicity.
And it's a tax write-off, I guarentee it. But that's not the
point... The point is what you can accomplish culturally and
politically and health-wise for suffering mankind.
Two: You hire a member of the
Society of Cannabis Clinicians as team doctor. Players are advised
that it's legal in California to smoke marijuana with physician
approval, and that it is recommended as an after-game relaxant
and anti-inflammatory, and as an alternative to alcohol, SSRI
anti-depressants, painkillers and sleeping pills. As you may
have read in the New York Times in 1997, 60 to 70 percent of
the players in the NBA use marijuana and/or alcohol, and more
would if they could do so legally and not jeopardize their jobs.
I guarantee it.
Three: As they become free
agents, players like Allen Iverson and Lamar Odom and Rasheed
Wallace and Chris Webber -instead of accepting humiliation and
living in low-key fear- would WANT to run with your team. I guarantee
it.
Four: You urge the owners
association to drop the demand for drug testing when the collective-bargaining
agreement is renewed with the players association. Every sports
section in the country will explain your reasoning. The radio
talk shows will reverberate with discussion of the drug war.
The A-level TV shows (Leno, etc.) will jostle each other trying
to book you. I guarantee it. Knowing he's got your backing, the
Warriors player rep can take a stand against marijuana testing.
Five: The players association,
after some serious soul searching, decides to take a stand against
testing for marijuana, not just on behalf of the players themselves
but also for millions of black and brown and white Americans
who use marijuana responsibly... This is the iffiest part of
the scenario, and we can expect the players' agents to function
as political prison guards. (They'd sooner negotiate for more
money than better working conditions.) But even if you can't
start a league-wide uprising, you can transform the Warriors
into a team of legal, up-front cannabis users. All it would take
is one owner allowing/encouraging his employees to emancipate
themselves from the gross indignity of urine-testing, and in
so doing, to help emancipate the rest of us. I guarantee it.
Six: The obvious choice for
coach is migraine sufferer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, a medicinal-cannabis
user who has spent years trying to fight his way off the NBA
blacklist and get a head coaching job. Another would be the most
durable player of his era, Robert Parrish, discarded early in
his career by the Warriors, humiliated towards the end by a marijuana-possession
charge.
Seven: The O-rena is a name
we could do without. This is to propose "The Men's Greenhouse."
Or simply, "The Oakland Garden." And Warrirors is hardly
appropriate for a team opposed to the drug war. Instead, how
about "the Bay Area Fearies?" It has a nice ring to
it, an internal rhyme. And won't it be great to see "Faeries
108, Rockets 97" crawl across the bottom of the TV screen?...
There is a whole new market that can be tapped of people here
and in other cities who will come to games or watch on TV just
to root for -or against- the Bay Area Faeries. I guarantee it.
p.s. Do you remember "the
doobie section" - a ramp at one end of the Coliseum where
Warrior fans by the hundreds used to smoke marijuana at half-time?
It flourished in the '70s, the glory years of Rick Barry and
Phil Smith (rest in peace)... The current anti-smoking laws would
prevent you from bringing back the doobie section, alas. But
you can bring an NBA championship to Oakland and challenge the
basic premise of the drug war on the level at which it needs
to be challenged.
Abe Rosenthal,
Drug Warrior
Abe Rosenthal, whose obituaries
last week made copious reference to his "fierce drive,"
"outmaneuvering his rivals," etc., wrote a hysterical
op-ed piece entitled "While We Slept" that the NY Times
ran nine days after Prop 215 passed (11/15/96). As the title
suggests, the East Coast Drug Warriors had assumed that an initiative
to legalize marijuana in California had no chance of winning
-that Attorney General Dan Lungren, leader of the No-on-215 campaign,
had the situation well in hand, and that the masses, having absorbed
a lifetime of war-on-drugs propaganda, were not about to tell
the government to change course. Rosenthal's piece rested on
and reiterated a false assumption: that the outcome was a result
of George Soros paying for Yes-on-215 ads.
"'Drug money'' used to
mean just one thing -- the fortunes manipulated by drug criminals.
Last week, while America slept, it took on one more meaning:
the gobs of money contributed by a few rich Americans determined
to put across state ballot-propositions that would widen the
use of narcotics, and without penalty...
"The California proposition
allows marijuana to be grown and used by anybody who has an oral
''recommendation'' from a doctor that it would be beneficial
in treating ''any illness that marijuana provides relief for.''
No penalties for using or growing marijuana and none for the
oral ''caregivers.''
"Drug legalizers and drug
fighters both know that the most important instrument America
has in persuading children not to use narcotics has been strong
social and parental disapproval. Both know that creeping legalization
will eliminate those influences against drugs, goodbye. [sic]
"Both know that neither
proposition could have carried except for the money behind it
-- particularly George Soros's money. Mr. Soros is a financier.
He gave hundreds of millions to philanthropy. Now he gives money
to drug legalization, by whatever euphemism his beneficiaries
call it.
"Joseph A. Califano Jr.,
president of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse
at Columbia University, said that out-of-state money ''bamboozled''
California ...with misleading advertising. Gen. Barry McCaffrey,
the director of U.S. drug policy, said these bankrollers should
be ashamed of themselves."
Rosenthal's false analysis
in the Times was self-reenforcing, and to this day it is widely
assumed that the Soros-funded ad campaign was a crucial factor
in Prop 215's success. It wasn't. What's true is that Soros's
funding of a professional signature drive in the first quarter
of '96 was crucial to the measure making the ballot. But even
before that point, a poll by David Binder showed, California
voters favored legalizing marijuana for medical use by a 60-40
margin. The No-on-215 campaign didn't raise a big ad budget because
Lungren didn't think he needed one. He directed the Bureau of
Narcotics to raid and close Dennis Peron's San Francisco Buyers
Club on Aug. 4, 1996, which was the biggest story in the state
and drove home what the zealous prosecutor considered his key
point: that the author of Prop 215 was a gay pot dealer from
San Francisco with a criminal record as long as your arm.
The raid on Dennis's clubsinspired
the great Garry Trudeau to do a week of pro-cannabis buyers'
club Doonesbury strips. Lungren responded with a letter urging
California publishers not to run the strips, which he released
at a press conference, making him a target of mockery. Trudeau
weighed in with another week of strips in October, at which point
the Yes-on-215 poll numbers stopped a slow slide and rose agaijn.
The three Soros-funded TV spots, developed by Santa Monica campaign
consultant Bill Zimmerman, were well done and undoubtedly swayed
some voters in Southern California. But they were not decisive
by any means. The total budget was less than $1 million, most
of Soros's contribution having gone to the signature drive.
Abe Rosenthal distorted the
facts to serve his Prohibitionist purpose in this instance, and
this instance typified his relationship to the truth. He personified
the New York Times at its worst. I met him once in an elevator
in the Hilton Hotel on Michigan Ave in Chicago as the anti-war
protests were building outside. During a ride to the eighth floor
we had what the Times used to call "a full and frank exchange
of views."
Fred Gardner is the editor of O'Shaughnessy's
Journal of the California Cannabis Research Medical Group. He
can be reached at: fred@plebesite.com
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