The Worst Sex Work Laws of My Lifetime

The Trump administration is abandoning abandoning Jeff Sessions crusade announced crackdown on recently legalized marijuana because..it has shifted all energy into destroying prostitution in America. While relaxing on the weed laws relieves some of us so that we can medicate while being persecuted, the final fall of the Backpage empire definitely leaves us feeling the same familiar hopelessness that the Trump administration always brings with his stupid grin and photo with his signature on a big bill to destroy your environment, your livelihood your future...Perhaps Stormy Daniel’s is one of our only hopes in this dark dark era of anti sex, fucked over privacy, fucked over freedom of labor choice and outright confiscation of adult autonomy. This is the worst tsunami of change to sex worker laws that I may have seen in my lifetime. There have been some pretty dark times but Trump has not yet disappointed in taking things to a whole new level of shitholeness. Bush and 911 were fairly dark times, and I was younger and more idealistic then, so the fall would have been harder. This, however certainly effects sex workers in ways that none of us have ever seen or prepared for in previous decades. We now have no outlets to advertise and can be busted for the trafficking if you work with a driver, drive a friend to work, or share screened clients and receive a fee for doing so. Before we had to actually get caught in a sting. Now it feels like we live in Sweden and are trying to work under similarly impossible laws.

Apparently, if you had turned in your passport to be verified by Eros, which was just raided in September 2017 you can be banned from even entering the U.S, banned from traveling as a tourist to places like Canada and Japan if the passport has some sort of prostitution ban that has global reach. I read an announcement from a sex worker who entered the U.S and was caught at the border and slapped with a 10 year ban from entering America as a result of some alert on her passport. “What’s Eros for?” the border security asked. Heart and jaw drop on the floor. Many sex workers were hoping that Backpage owners would continue to fight as they always have been but I think finally they were worn thin and just decided to plead guilty and start doing their sentences. They were charged guilty in CA for money laundering and guilty for trafficking in Texas. They did not try to fight it, they pleaded guilty and started there sentence as soon as BP was seized. No Larry Flynt type of victory was going to ensue in 2018 for the Backpage owners, they had been fighting this fight for years already.

If you are wondering if it was all Trump’s doing alone, you are wrong. "In case anyone is wondering who should be president in 2020 based solely on the FOSTA/SESTA vote, it's Barbara Lee, the east bay rep, who voted no. Voted no on the War In Afghanistan in 2001. We used to say "Barbara Lee speaks for me" back then. Guess it's still true.

Not: 
Bernie Sanders
Cory Booker
Elizabeth Warren
Kamala Harris
Kristen Gillabrand
Maxine Waters 
Jimmy Gomez basically every other democrat (except Ron Wyden and 10 other house dems) who all voted Yes"

How Can Medical Marijuana help with the Opioid Abuse and Mortality?

I am a stoner of 20 years with a medical marijuana prescription. While I admittedly smoke for recreational use, there was a string of five or so years that I used marijuana as an antidepressant and I identified as being “chemically depressed.” I tried to get prescribed “real antidepressants” but I was evaluated as not qualified by my local LGBTQ medical clinic. I don’t “have depression” but I do smoke to feel less depressed at times, if that makes sense. It is excellent medicine for me, but I have learned quite well how to use medicines to my advantage. Other people are not naturally introspective, or critical of their doctors or the system and unfortunately many are in situations or states of being not able to control well what is best for their body, mind and souls, which is why there are doctors, lawyers and police officers enlisted to take care of that for those that fall short of solid decision making. The enforcers of your choices are not always right, kind or ethical but what can you do if you can’t do? Nothing. Exactly. The recent Fentanyl overdose problem has created an unforeseen crisis that luckily many of my former heroin/opiate addict friends missed. B was one of them. B is a good friend of mine who is a daily user of cannabis wax and other psychotropics that he calls “plant medicines.” He chose to live in California, a state with legal access to cannabis specifically because he once lived in Ohio and had a wicked painkiller addiction problem. It was plant medicines like Ayauasca that was the gateway that helped him to kick his habit but he and I would agree that it isn’t any substance or plant or pill that can heal you if you are prone to addiction or abuse, it has to do with a desire to change your life and patterns. Some choose Ayuasca for this, others choose 12 step programs. Ayuasca and other plant medicines are illegal and probably won’t see the light of a brick and mortar dispensary with a neon sign in the window like your local medical MJ store but I find that plant medicine retreats were getting quite hip and pretty easy to find access to, even through Facebook event invites! Medical cannabis is for those on the alternative non clean and sober recovery plan and it works out great for a lot of people. Recent research has shown to reveal significant reduction in opioid prescription rates in Kentucky, Minnesota and Illinois. Worldwide studies have conferred in Israel and Mexico who were regular opioid presribed patients reduced usage where cannabis was legal or medical. CC, another former trusted opioid user friend who doesn’t use weed at all tells me,“Opioids are always going to be necessary for higher duty hardcore pain, people too often champion one at the expense of the other when there are so many kinds of pain and so many different kinds of individuals with different needs.” As a habitual weed user, I fully agree and understand this well as I’ve certainly moaned,”I NEED SOMETHING FUCKING STRONGER!!” while in unbearable pain because, if you smoke weed everyday, smoking more weed when you are have some sudden major injury is not going to cut it at all. Going back to the famous but simplified rat park study, in regards to emotional pain needs being met, I think cannabis works better for this type of pain than opioids, but I don't claim to represent all humans or all rats in the park. It’s about giving patients options and trusting that they can make choices. This sounds quite simple but its not, because there will always be some people who don’t like to or simply are unable to make sound or conscious choices at all.