Update to Cannabis FOIA Request, seems like more stonewalling but not sure. We are drudging along. I can tell you that these documents will be made public for everyone to see. I would love for the gov to kill me over a stupid plant--that would give my life meaning /s

66  2016-08-31 by 911bodysnatchers322

Here is the update from last time

The nice lady who didn't call me back called me late today, so she's off the hook. I had spoken to another person this morning and she gave me the reference number of my FOIA request REF 20167072 and recommended I contact S

She sent me this

I received your voicemail. I am sorry you had problems with our online request form. We did receive and log your request. We recently sent you a letter explaining that the FOIA is for seeking copies of records – not for asking for answers to questions. Therefore, we cannot respond to your request as written. If you wish to receive copies of FDA records, please let me know and we will process that request under FOIA. Sincerely,

To which I replied

Thank you S. I want to have a copy of all records related to the decision that cannabis was of no medical value. Please provide those for me per my FOIA or tell me to make another FOIA request. If you can't fulfill that request because you don't know which documents those are, I am asking you if you could please find out (as a person and employee of FDA not as part of the FOIA process) which documents I will be asking for, so that I can properly ask for those documents.

What I'm getting at is that the information about those documents and decisions is not on the FDA website, because if it were I would not be FOIA requesting for them. If I knew which documents to ask for, surely I would have done so by now. I'm not trying to make a failing FOIA request, especially since I've made 8 successful requests of 8 other agencies.

Thanks in advance.

You should also know that I am writing an article not only about this information I will eventually receive, but about the FOIA process itself, and the obstacles I have come across. In the spirit of full disclosure, I will be informing the public about the friendliness, forthcomingness, and ease with which the US government divulges information we have a right to know because we funded said activity through taxes. Thanks again,


Then she immediately replied:

Hi C. We can log your email below as a new request. You will receive an acknowledgment letter by mail. Again, I am sorry for the problems you had with the online form but we did get the request and we did respond to let you know that your request, as written, was not actually even a FOIA request because it did not ask for records.


Then I immediately replied

I feel like you're not really understanding my difficulties with this request. I am telling you I don't know what those documents are. Therefore I'm going to revise my FOIA request. I want ALL FDA documents containing the words "cannabis" or "marijuana" or "marihuana". I know this is a valid request because it's database search of all responding documents.

Just send them all to me, no matter how many. I would not ask for so many documents, had the FDA attempted to fulfill my original requests in earnest to limit that resultset to something reasonable. Please let me know if this goes over a budget of 1000 dollars to prepare them for me, either digitally or by print. Because of the expense, I'm going to request you send them certified, which I will also pay for.

Thank you for your continued help and kind cooperation.


To which she responded

Your previous email was fine - I didn't ask for more clarification. But if you prefer me to log your more recent email, but that's what I will do.


To which I immediately responded

Hi S, Yes please do log that last email. However you want to fulfill either the last request or the one before that that did not require clarification is acceptable to me.

27 comments

I like how you clearly laid out that you are not an employee and not familiar with the process and she doesn't shed any light to what would make it easier. Ha. I love it.

It's not just that. I've made 8 successful FOIA requests and one failing request. The failing request was the request for info on myself from the CIA. They did respond, they said, we cannot confirm nor deny that we do or do not have or that the material you request does or does not exist. The other agencies responded immediately with good answers.

So the FDA is being very officious here. It's clear what I'm asking for. Documentation related to the decision that 'cannabis has no medical value', at every point in history that was made. Since they are acting like "officious meat robots" --- "I'm sorry I do not understand your command, Hal" then I just asked them to send me ALL DOCUMENTS at the FDA containing the words 'cannabis', 'marijuana' or 'marihuana'

I asked for the same thing for 2000 to present...waiting for a response.

Glad someones doing the real leg work. Props

[deleted]

:) Yvw. I'll keep trying. But never underestimate their ability to not give us information we paid for. #rememberAaronSwartz

You can ask for "cannabis sativa L.", all other plants are subspecies to it. Also, try hemp.

The government isn't known for doing studies on cannabis, it's known for not doing them. The few that were done encouraged the government to make it very difficult to do more (unless you are planning on killing all the subjects brain cells with carbon monoxide and blame it on THC).

I just said all documents with the word cannabis / marijuana / marihuana within it. Keep in mind, they did not use the botanical name in the 70s, they used the latinized spelling 'marihuana', then 'marijuana' then cannabis so I want to see it all. It could potentially be thousands of pages, but that's ok. I've got a big budget for this and I'm planning on scanning and making the PDF available worldwide. I'm going to send copies directly to abby martin first of all, and also the same attorney group I used to initiate a class action against apple computer in the mid 2000s for some 32M dollars over their overheating 12" aluminum powerbook that resulted in my getting something like $4.56 compensation. Lol. But it was gratifying that I did that. It's funny if they had respected me more and replaced my powerbook per their agreement with me, instead of holding it for 3 weeks, returning it with greasy hairspray on it and a note saying it didn't have a problem (it did, it was overheating and shuttingoff), then a $2500 mistake wouldn't have cost them 32M

I've been watching you for awhile. I like your style.

Thank you.

Good luck.

Thanks. I need all the luck I can get with these guys.

Why is that, isn't there sticky indica too? the stickiest of the ickiest?

It's a subspecies. Think of cannabis sativa L. as canine: indica is a black lab and sativa is a golden retriever, both are canines.

I don't know about all this. I'm in NC where its' illegal. I just know when I was colorado, chiba chews were boss and blueberry was the best--absolute--best strain imo with no exception. Some debated with me saying sour diesel kush was better but they were much more advanced users who didn't get paranoia

so did you lie before or are you trying to blow your pot smoke up my ass?

What?

"cannabis sativa L.", all other plants are subspecies to it.

.

isn't there sticky indica too

.

It's a subspecies

I've repeated myself twice. I gave the exact same answer two times. The second time, I tried to explain what it meant.

Thank you for the ongoing updates. Best Reddit saga yet. Still waiting on no responsive documents though.

Do you have a bitcoin address for donations?

Not yet--I didn't think to do that. And I'm flattered that you would ask. I'll tell you what, if you would like to donate to me, please donate on my behalf to the following alt media peoples, as they are my influencers that I personally support. In other words, it's just going to go back out to them evenually:

Also, although I don't agree with a very small 5% of what this filmmaker says, a lot of her research is good. She made the 911 documentary tour-de-force 'ring of power' and I saw it for free on youtube so I fee she needs some compensation.

http://www.helpfreetheearth.com/donate-contact.html

Thanks for all you do. I'll spread my coin around a bit amongst them.

Fuck yeah, so many good ones. I think I will donate to the Mae Brussell archive, Corbett Report and Gnostic Media.

Good post, btw. I would love to see some of successful requests. Anything interesting? Or is all the good stuff redacted?

Cheers

Hey u/911bodysnatchers322 just listened to a THC episode the other day with I think Robert Guffey (been binging lately but think it was that episode) where he talks about doing a FOIA request. He got a friend time send a "sane" letter asking for info and he send a slightly rambling "crazy" letter asking for the same stuff. The government told the sane letter they had no information on whatever the topic was and they sent pages and pages to the "crazy guy".

Could it be worth getting someone else to send a less meticulous letter in parallel and see if they get a better response? Just a thought.

Hope all is well

[removed]

No one needs to die. Jail for the rest of their lives is good enough. Maybe we can make them spend at least as long as Chelsea Manning standing in solitary during their stay. Actually, no. Triple it.


You have to go through this to raise awareness of the corruption. That's what this is about. It's not about having stuff to present in court, it's about having stuff to present in court for civil cases AND to show everyone what the FDA is. It's basically a means to show the world with physical evidence that they are corrupt and cannot be trusted. If you can't trust the FDA to protect you from harm going into your bodies, then this undermines a huge trust in the government. That's the aim, btw. Because they fucking started it and declared war against humanity. Now it's time to fight back. They can consider this sedition but keep in mind, this woudl be fighting them with their own weapons--their own documentation and their inability to be honest.

So if they want to lock me up for being honest and show how they aren't, they can go rigtht the fuck ahead. If they want to lock me up for pointing out their hypocrisies, ok they can do that too. I'm immune to their bullshit now and I claim the right under natural law and the absence of actual constittutional law under cog governance to do as I wilt and that includes trash talking people who are being fundamentally immoral with your tax money and with your mind and mental heatlth. (you still don't believe me about cog governance making constitutional law (and thereby all laws) irrelevant, don't you?)

I think everyone here would do well to understand that there are no laws that are legal now and thats why hillary isn't in jail and neither is obama and the cia hasn't been dissolved. This is the most corrupt, asinine, draconian, terrible, illegitimate government in the history of known civilization. And most importantly: it's illegal by it's own contrivances and mathematical proofs of language. You can't have a public institution that is of the people, for the people and by the people that has speciial privilege that is not similarly granted to the public. Public is public. Therefore we have constitutional avoidance of the cia, which means theres no constitution. This means theres no law. So if you're obeying a law, thats because youv'e been entrained into legal adherence as a pavlovian social response to a past situation in which laws were relevant. Either that, or there is 'secret' law that only pertains to cia. However, since cia is public, the argument stands that that implies they aren't public and therefore they can be declared an enemy of the state, since they've taken actions against US citizens in contravention of US const. law. Or it's the case that the 'secret law' is illegitimate because it violates 'public sovereignty' which is the fundamental basis of the legitimacy of the US constitution.

That's a really legal contortion of a simple concept: you can't have your cake and eat it to. Unless you're a freemason. Then you can have that cake delivered by a naked and bloodied 8 yr old and when you're done eating him there's leftover cake for the boys in blue.

Fucking beautiful. You hit the nail on the head. Thank you for your efforts, OP. Just relocated to Tulsa, OK recently and we're currently fighting to have at least medical marijuana legalized. Managed to succeed with petition in hopes of getting it on the November ballot this year. But, of course, the attorney general did all he could to ensure it wouldn't actually reach the ballot for another 2 years. It's all a fucking game. Thank you for digging up the materials to prove this and God bless.

Fucking beautiful. You hit the nail on the head. Thank you for your efforts, OP. Just relocated to Tulsa, OK recently and we're currently fighting to have at least medical marijuana legalized. Managed to succeed with petition in hopes of getting it on the November ballot this year. But, of course, the attorney general did all he could to ensure it wouldn't actually reach the ballot for another 2 years. It's all a fucking game. Thank you for digging up the materials to prove this and God bless.