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pain. The effects of Medicinal Marijuana vary with its strength and dosage and with the state of mind of the user. Typically, small doses result in a feeling of well-being. The intoxication lasts two to three hours, but accompanying effects on motor control last much longer. 
Amsterdam to Experiment With New Kinds of Cannabis Cafes
Under a plan announced over the weekend, the city of Amsterdam is to experiment with different rules for cannabis coffee shops. While the city under Mayor Job Cohen has moved to shut down some shops in the past, Cohen is considered a friend of the Dutch experiment in marijuana sales and consumption. The move is a measure aimed at dampening criticism that the coffee shops are a public nuisance. Foes complain that customers hang out outside the coffee shops, thus somehow threatening their quality of life.
Under the plan, the city will experiment by trying new types of coffee shops. One would offer pot or hash that must be consumed on premises; the other would offer to-go sales only, providing a place where marijuana can be bought, but not used. The plan will not go into effect until problems surrounding coffee shops are first documented in detail. Since that hasn't happened yet, any changes will start next year at the earliest. The move comes amidst a broad campaign by coffee shop opponents to lower their number and restrict access to Dutch citizens only. |
Paraphernalia: Florida Legislature Passes Bill Banning Bong Sales
In a move aimed directly at marijuana smokers and the vendors who supply them with their pipes and bongs, the Florida legislature has passed a bill that will make it illegal to sell drug paraphernalia in most head shops. The bong bill, HB 187, passed the Senate earlier and was approved unanimously in a House floor vote on Wednesday. It now awaits signature by Gov. Charlie Christ. Under the bill, only shops where the sale of tobacco products and accessories constitute 75% of income or shops where the sale of pipes and bongs constitutes less than 25% of income will be allowed to sell a long list of smoking devices. These include pipes of any material, water pipes, carburetion tubes and devices, chamber pipes, carburetor pipes, electric pipes, air-driven pipes, chillums, bongs, and ice pipes or chillers.
Violation of the law would be a misdemeanor. Offenders could face up to a year in jail. If signed by the governor, the law would go into effect on July 1. Head shop owners tried to organize to fight back, even creating a web site, Kill Bill 187, in a vain bid to block the bill. Jay Work, the owner of Grateful J's Grateful Deadhead Shop in Margate and a second shop in Boca Raton, led the fight. "Shop owners, small-business owners are being thrown under the bus here," he told the Broward Palm Beach New Times. "They're saying that if I sell a $4,000 piece of art at my store, that I have to sell $12,000 worth of cigarettes. I'm not sure who that helps," Work says. "They're saying basically you can sell this stuff -- we're just going to make it really hard." While drug paraphernalia is already illegal in Florida, pipes that could be used to smoke tobacco are legal to make, own, buy, and sell. They only become paraphernalia if they are used to do something illegal. But this bill attempts to circumvent the law with its restrictions on sales, Work said. "The pipe itself is just a pipe," Work says. "The pipes I sell are harmless unless you take the pipe outside and beat someone over the head with it." "I've been fighting the pipe industry for the longest, because it is all a part of the drug trade and the criminal enterprise that we know exists and destroys neighborhoods, families and order in our society," said sponsor Rep. Darryl Rouson (D-Tampa Bay) earlier this month. "When was the last time you stopped at a red light and saw someone smoking a hit of tobacco out of one of these one-shooters or water pipes?" he told NBC Miami. Rouson, a self-described former crackhead, has gone after paraphernalia in the past, too. Last year, he proposed a bill that would have imposed an extra sales tax on smoking paraphernalia to pay for DARE programs that were facing cuts. "Florida has a conscience and an awareness that marijuana and the smoking and ingesting of it is not healthy for an individual, nor is it healthy for public safety and the order in society," Rouson added.
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Dutch Coffee Shop Owner Fined $10 Million Euros for Having Too Big a Stash
A Dutch court Thursday fined a Terneuzen cannabis coffee shop owner $10 million Euros (more than $13 million US dollars), after convicting him and 15 others, including former employees, of drug trafficking and involvement in a criminal organization because the coffee shop's stash exceeded what is allowed by Dutch law. Coffee shop owner Meddy Willemsen took the financial hit after police found more than 440 pounds of marijuana at his Checkpoint coffee shop in raids in 2007 and 2008. Dutch law allows coffee shops to have no more than 500 grams (slightly more than one pound) on hand at any given time.
But Checkpoint, near the Belgian border, was reportedly serving up to 3,000 customers a day at its peak. If each customer bought the allowed five grams, that would add up to 15,000 grams. If Checkpoint were to have complied with Dutch law, it would have had to have had someone bringing it a fresh pound of pot every few minutes. The case is illustrative of the "backdoor problem," where, while Holland allows for the sale of marijuana at coffee shops, it has not adequately allowed for them to be supplied. As a result, supplying the coffee houses has become part of a $3 billion a year illicit cannabis cultivation industry that is increasingly infested by organized crime elements. Still, the court said Willemsen got off lucky. He would have had to pay an even larger fine if Middelburg municipal authorities had not turned a blind eye to his activities."Checkpoint could not have expanded as much as it did without collaboration from the municipality of Middelburg," it said. "Also, the police never warned that the coffee shop had to scale down." The Checkpoint case is being widely viewed as a test case for cracking down on large-scale border coffee shops that cater to a largely foreign clientele. The verdict is undoubtedly sending chills down the spines of other large border town coffee shop owners. Willemsen better have sold a whole bunch of pot while his shop was open. He certainly has a huge fine to pay now. |
American Drug War Economics
"Dear CDIA Members and Citizens of Colorado, February 17th 2010................ So begins the letter from Lt. Ernie Martinez, President of the Colorado Drug Investigators Association (CDIA), which he circulated in late August 2006, just after Amendment 44 -- the statewide initiative to remove all penalties for adult marijuana possession -- qualified for the ballot in Colorado. (CLICK HERE to download Lt. Martinez's entire letter and the attached information.) Lt. Martinez and the CDIA have not slowed down in their fight to ensure they can continue arresting and harrassing marijuana consumers and producers. The CDIA continues to lobby against medical marijuana in hopes of wiping out the state's medical marijuana dispensaries, and Lt. Martinez continues to obstruct progress in Denver from his seat on the Denver Marijuana Policy Review Panel appointed by Mayor John Hickenlooper. As you might recall, this mayoral panel is tasked with implementing the ordinance approved by voters in 2007, which designated marijuana possession the city's lowest law enforcement priority, to the "greatest extent possible." Yet Lt. Martinez was the most publicly vocal opponent against that initiative, so it's not surprising he has no intention of fulfilling the panel's mission. Moreover, his views on marijuana are reprehensible and entirely out of line with Denver voters -- who he actually compares to "a cancer"! Why would Mayor Hickenlooper appoint such a anti-marijuana crusader to fill a role on a panel working to reduce marijuana arrests and prosecutions in the city? It's time we ask him, hold him accountable, and call on him to rectify his poor decision of appointing Lt. Martinez. CLICK HERE or visit http://tinyurl.com/ycwpljn to send Mayor Hickenlooper a message calling on him to replace Lt. Martinez on the Denver Marijuana Policy Review Panel, and to let him know those who support marijuana policy reform are not a cancer... we are Colorado! It takes less than a minute to take action and encourage others to do so, as well. Even if you don't live in Colorado, we hope you will still take action and let Mayor Hickenlooper know that people around the nation are watching Denver and Colorado, and pulling for them to set a good example of how marijuana ought to be treated in our society. Mayor Hickenlooper is now running for governor in Colorado, where internal polling has found that about half of likely Colorado voters support making marijuana legal and regulating it like alcohol. And in his hometown of Denver, where voters have repeatedly made their position on this issue clear, about two-thirds of likely voters support an end to Marijuana Prohibition. The people of Colorado want to see progress on marijuana policy reform. Should he be elected, will he represent them? Or will he make equally counterproductive appointments at the state level? After all, the information distributed by Lt. Martinez and the CDIA is not just inaccurate and intentionally disingenuous, but also potentially dangerous. They clearly accept the widespread use of alcohol, and they want to ensure adults are not able to use marijuana, which according to all objective research, is a far less harmful substance. Apparently they are more interested maintaining Marijuana Prohibition than maintaining public safety. Along with Lt. Martinez's malicious letter was a document titled, "The Truth About Marijuana: Fact vs. Fiction," which includes such gems as:
Fiction: This nation's drug policy has failed. It is time to try something new like legalizing small amounts of marijuana.
FACT: Marijuana use has been the cause of deaths from accidents, disease and recently possible toxicity.
Fiction: Being under the influence of marijuana is safer than being under the influence of alcohol.
FACT: Sobriety is the only safe alternative to being under the influence of alcohol. (CLICK HERE to download Lt. Martinez's entire letter and the attached information.) If you find these "facts" and "fictions" as ridiculous as we do, please CLICK HERE or visit http://tinyurl.com/ycwpljn and take action. Tell Mayor (and potential future governor) Hickenlooper that appointees like Lt. Ernie Martinez are unnacceptable, and so are his absurd anti-marijuana rhetoric and lobbying activity. It's time for him to end the obstruction of progress when it comes to marijuana policy reform or explain why he will not. |
Professor David Nutt attacks ministers over ‘failure’ on alcohol
Alcohol is the “gateway drug” that remains the greatest threat to society, and the Government’s failure to address the problem epitomises its disregard for scientific evidence, Professor David Nutt said yesterday. Professor Nutt said that the comparison he made between the harm caused by alcohol and Ecstasy, which led to his dismissal as head of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, was incontrovertible. He questioned the Government’s arbitrary approach to the assessment and control of harmful substances, and how ministers might think “When I say alcohol is more dangerous than Ecstasy, cannabis and LSD, I mean it, and the council means it,” Professor Nutt said. “The Government has to wake up to this time bomb and the health risks of alcohol. Across the political spectrum everyone knows that alcohol is the biggest killer.” Professor Nutt said he felt that alcohol prices could be raised to triple the price at which some drinks were sold, with taxation the most obvious way of achieving this. He compared the treatment of his expertise to that of the Chief Medical Officer’s report on alcohol abuse. Earlier this year Sir Liam Donaldson found his recommendations for a minimum price per unit of alcohol, based on several scientific studies, dismissed by Downing Street the day before it was published. Professor Nutt added that his comments did not belittle issues surrounding drugs such as Ecstasy, LSD and cannabis, but offered essential context. “You can’t have a debate about drugs in a vacuum,” he said. “It’s like medieval debates about angels on heads of pins. “If alcohol was discovered tomorrow it would definitely be illegal. It’s a dangerous drug — there’s no doubt about that. There is an issue about understanding that it’s alcohol that will kill people’s kids, not Ecstasy.” The pharmacologist said that the row over his advice and his dismissal threatened important research that it was carrying out on the club drug ketamine and “spice”, a herbal tobacco laced with potent psychoactive drugs that is becoming a serious problem. The council was also exploring the issue of “poly-drug use” and how combining one drug with another, such as alcohol, might heighten risks. “There’s a large body of research going on which will be jeopardised,” he said. Professor Nutt, speaking at the Science Media Centre in London, said that scientists who advised politicians on the dangers of drugs should be as independent as the officials who set interest rates, and called for the council to be remodelled “along the lines of the Bank of England”, which had responsibility for making decisions outside of government. When asked about the advisory council’s future, he said: “I think it is, frankly, fatally flawed. People want to know if scientists are saying what they want to say or whether it’s what the Government wants them to say. It should be reformed with a new structure with a much clearer demarcation of the reporting lines. I don’t think it should report to a single minister, but to Parliament or a panel of ministers.” Professor Nutt said that he had been approached by philanthropists offering to support a breakaway alternative to the advisory council, should it collapse. One supporter had made a “pretty credible” offer to underwrite a project at a cost of £150,000 a year. Asked whether he was serious, Professor Nutt said: “Of course, unless things are sorted. Someone’s got to give independent scientific advice.” He was dismissed after views he expressed in a lecture were published in a paper last week by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at King’s College London. He argued that Ecstasy and LSD were less harmful than alcohol and cigarettes, and criticised the Government’s decision to upgrade the legal classification of cannabis from C to B. One of his most controversial statements was that taking Ecstasy was no more risky than horse-riding. Professor Nutt stood by the comments that had got him into trouble. “You’ve got to tell the truth,” he said. “Of course I have regrets about the way the Government has treated me.” He said that many of his former colleagues could resign when they met Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, for talks next Tuesday. Professor Nutt also attacked the Conservatives’ drug policy. “The Tories have been making a lot of old-fashioned statements about ‘Get ’em off, lock ’em up and keep ’em clean’ approaches to drug abuse,” he said. “I think that could be very dangerous. There is evidence that, in a society where you have abstinence-based approaches, death rates go up. We need a balanced approach to drug treatments. You can’t say one size fits all.” |
that giving alcohol a harm ranking was a distraction.
Dubai Court Sentences Woman to Life for Selling a Joint
A court in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, has sentenced a young woman to life in prison for selling a joint to an undercover officer and possessing 16 more weighing a total of 19 grams. According to the UAE news site 7 Days, the unnamed Tanzanian citizen in her 20s was caught after police received a tip she was running a "drug den" in the Diera area of Dubai. An Emirati police officer told the Dubai Court of First Instance that they had been tipped in December that the woman was selling drugs from her apartment. "Our sources informed us that she used her flat in Deira area of Dubai as a drugs den and she was trading with customers there," the Emirati officer said. "We sent an undercover policeman to her flat and he bought a cigarette for dhs30. She was possessing many cigarettes full with marijuana and she confessed to us that she used to sell them for dhs30 each." That converts to about $8.10. At the same per joint rate, the young woman's entire stash would be worth less than $130. The woman also tested positive for unspecified drugs. That alone is enough to get you imprisoned in the UAE, which has snared not only its own citizens but also unwary travelers passing through Dubai International Airport, who with depressing regularity receive four-year prison sentences for a positive drug test or possession of even the tiniest detectable traces of drugs. The young woman had denied all charges. Her lawyer has vowed to appeal, but barring a successful appeal or pardon, she would not be eligible to be released and deported for at least 25 years. Dubai court officials were fine with that. "The law orders us to sentence anyone trading with any amount of drugs to life in jail. Even if the amount is a few grams, it's still trading," one told 7 News. "This verdict is sending out a clear message to anyone trading with drugs that this business can ruin your life." Or, more accurately, the Dubai courts can. |
Britain Could Save $20 Billion a Year by Legalizing Drugs, Study Finds
A regime where currently illicit drugs are regulated and legalized would provide numerous benefits to Britain, not the least of which would be up to $20 billion a year in savings to government, crime victims, and drug users, according to a comprehensive comparison of the costs of drug prohibition and drug legalization. The figure comes from A Comparison of the Cost-effectiveness of Prohibition and Regulation, a report released Wednesday by the British drug reform group the Transform Drug Policy Foundation. The group says it is the first time anyone in Britain has attempted an across-the-board comparison of the differing approaches to drug use and sales. According to official British policy, policies or programs should be assessed by a cost-benefit analysis or impact assessment, but that has never been done with drug prohibition. Instead of evidence-based policies, the British government has relied on mere assertion to justify maintaining prohibition and to argue that the harms of legalization would outweigh its benefits. Now, Transform is calling the government's bluff. According to its analysis, which examined criminal justice, drug treatment, crime, and other social costs, a regime of regulated legalization would accrue large savings over the current prohibitionist policy. Transform postulated four different legalization scenarios based on drug use levels declining by half, staying the same, increasing by half, and doubling. Even under the worst case scenario, with drug use doubling under legalization, Britain would still see annual savings of $6.7 billion. Under the best case scenario, the savings would approach $20 billion annually. "The conclusion is that regulating the drugs market is a dramatically more cost-effective policy than prohibition and that moving from prohibition to regulated drugs markets in England and Wales would provide a net saving to taxpayers, victims of crime, communities, the criminal justice system and drug users," Transform found. |
Failed Drug War Policies in Mexico? Let's Try More of the Same
Mexico and its wave of prohibition-related violence were front and center in Washington this week as the Obama administration unveiled its "comprehensive response and commitment" to US-Mexico border security and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton traveled to Mexico to preach renewed support in the fight against the powerful drug trafficking organizations, but also to enunciate a mea culpa for the US role in the bloody situation. More than 9,000 people -- including more than 600 police and soldiers -- have been killed in prohibition-related violence in Mexico since President Felipe Calderon sent out the Mexican armed forces to subdue the cartels at the beginning of 2007, with the pace of killing accelerating last year and early this year. Now, some 45,000 Mexican army troops are part of the campaign, including more than 8,000 that are currently occupying Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, which has seen some of the highest levels of violence anywhere in the country. More than 1,600 were killed there last year, and more than a hundred so far this year.Calderon intervened in ongoing rivalries between various trafficking organizations, helping to turn what had been turf wars for valuable drug smuggling franchises into a multi-sided battle pitching the cartels against each other and Mexican police and soldiers. The prize is a cross-border smuggling fortune estimated at anywhere between $10 billion and $40 billion and based on Americans' insatiable appetite for the drugs it loves to hate (or hates to love). On Tuesday, the White House presented its plan to secure the border, including the disbursement of $700 million in previously authorized Plan Merida assistance to Mexico, ramped up enforcement on the US side of the border, and an increased emphasis on demand reduction in the US. The Plan Merida aid will provide surveillance and information technologies, training for rule of law and justice reform, assistance to Mexican prosecutors in crafting effective witness protection programs, and five helicopters for the Mexican Army and Air Force and a surveillance aircraft for the Mexican Navy. Here in the US, the Department of Homeland Security is bringing its numerous resources to bear, including doubling Border Enforcement Security Task Forces, tripling the number of DHS intelligence analysts working the border, beefing up Immigration and Customs Enforcement staff in Mexico, bringing more surveillance technology to ports of entry, bringing more drug dogs to the border, and targeting flows of guns and money south as well as drugs north. The DEA is adding 16 new agents on the border to its current 1,170 already there and forming four new Mobile Enforcement Teams to go after Mexican meth traffickers, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms is moving 100 agents to the border and continuing its program of tracing guns used in drug cartel violence. Even the FBI is getting in on the act by forming a Southwest Intelligence Group to act as a clearinghouse for all FBI activities involving Mexico. "The whole package we announced today is not only about enforcement and stopping the flow of drugs into the United States and helping Mexico against these very brutal cartels, but it includes money for more drug courts and reduction in demand," Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said in an interview Tuesday. "So, we look forward to working on the demand side as well as the supply side, but I'll tell you, where the Department of Homeland Security is concerned, it's all about border safety and security and making sure that spillover violence does not erupt in our own country." Secretary of State Clinton sang much the same tune in Mexico this week, but also bluntly accepted US responsibility for the violence, saying that decades of US anti-drug policies have been a failure and that US demand for drugs drove the trade. "Clearly what we've been doing has not worked," Clinton told reporters on her plane at the start of her two-day trip. "Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade," she added. "Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the deaths of police, of soldiers and civilians." Clinton's visit came as the chorus calling for change in US prohibitionist drug policies is growing louder. Last month, former presidents of Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico called on the US to radically reassess its drug policies, and increasing concern over the violence in Mexico and its spillover in US border states is only turning up the volume of the calls for legalization. Law enforcement on the border wants much more help -- Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) has called for 1,000 more agents or even National Guard troops -- but Zapata County (Texas) Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez, Jr., head of the Southwestern Border Sheriff's Association, said the administration move was a start. "The plan the president announced is a help," said Gonzalez. "But we still haven't seen the plan that was supposed to be in place last year." Gonzalez's remote Zapata County has not seen much spillover from the violence across the river, but that's not the case elsewhere, the sheriff said. "As chairman of the association, I hear regularly from my colleagues that what we are seeing is spillover that has been going on for some time -- extortions, kidnapping, robberies. What we're concerned with now is that with the squeeze on in Mexico, there will be even more spillover here." While security officials and law enforcement were talking more drug war, other observers doubted that the initiative would have much impact on the cartels and could make an intractable problem even worse. But they also saw an opportunity to advance the cause of ending America's reliance on drug prohibition as the primary approach to drug use. "This is not a major departure from what was budgeted under the Bush administration," said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance. "The most important assistance the US can provide is intelligence-related assets, as in Colombia in the 1980s and 1990s -- CIA or NSA-type information that helps the Mexicans target the most violent and powerful of the traffickers. Providing financial assistance to help pay local police more is also helpful, but beefing up the border is largely symbolic and is responding to both legitimate concerns as well as media and political hysteria around this. This is not a departure, not a major new initiative." "The biggest problem in all this is that Calderon's policies have thrown gasoline on the fire," said Sanho Tree, drug policy analyst for the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC. "It was utterly foolish of Calderon to get in the middle of a cartel turf war. Those people are all about making money, and the violence isn't going to decline until the cartels reach a modus vivendi among themselves. There are rumors they are trying to do that; they want the killing to stop so they can get back to business." Neither should we take much comfort in Mexico's ability to occasionally kill or capture a leading cartel figure, said Tree. "It's like killing Al Qaeda's number three man," he laughed grimly. "All it means is someone below him is going to move up, or there will be a struggle to see who replaces him." For Tree, the situation in Mexico is taking on the ominous aspect of Colombia in the 1990s, where the breakdown of public security led to vigilantism and death squad activity, the predecessors of the Colombian paramilitaries. "When people became to realize the state was powerless to stop prohibition-related violence, it opened the door for other criminal activities, including kidnapping, and what makes this really dangerous is that now the ability of the state to protect individuals comes into question." But Tree also noted that the situation in Mexico is forcing American media and policymakers to at least address calls for drug legalization. "This is doing what Colombia and Afghanistan couldn't do, which is to bring the violence of prohibition right to our door step and rub our faces in it," said Tree. "Calderon got in between some hornets' nests with a fly swatter, and now people in both countries have to make a choice. Mexicans supported this at first, but when they realized this isn't ending but is instead getting worse, they asked why he picked this fight." "I'm worried about the militarization of the border and the assumption that that will fix this," said Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs in Washington, DC. "On the other hand, it seems to be causing a growing crescendo of people wanting to talk about drug legalization. It's as if a critical mass has been arrived at. The recent statement by the three Latin American presidents was a voltaic shock to get the discussion going, and with the violence in Mexico, one has to acknowledge that a preponderance of the evidence shows the present model for drug control is not working. Even though there is a huge, formidable self-interested drug prohibition lobby, the logic of legalization is becoming so compelling it becomes all but impossible not to address it." That political space to discuss legalization is changing things, Birns said. "Organizations like my own, which were timorous about taking on this issue now feel much more at ease with the clear recognition that everything else has failed. The possibility of legalization has to be seriously reviewed, inspected, and debated now." Nadelmann suggested the current crisis could and should open debate about effective demand reduction strategies. "If we want to help Mexico by reducing demand, and want to give the notion more than lip service, then we have to remove the ideological inhibitions that limit our ability to effectively reduce demand," he said. "A small number of drug users consume a significant portion of all drugs. The traditional answer is to get more serious about drug treatment and rehab, but it could also mean providing addicts with legal sources of the drugs they are consuming. We know it works with heroin; the same approach deserves to be tried with cocaine and meth." "The other thing we can do," Nadelmann argued, "is to move in the direction of legalizing marijuana. We know have 40% of Americans in favor of it, and it's approaching 50% out West. This is the first time a furor over drug-related violence has been so powerfully linked with marijuana prohibition. That mere fact that so many law enforcement people are saying it lends it credibility. This is putting the notion of marijuana legalization as a partial solution to prohibition-related violence on the edge of the mainstream political discussion in the US. With the Ammiano bill in California, Barney Frank's bill waiting to be introduced, Sen. Webb pushing for his commission, the conversation is really bubbling up now." And so it goes. As the prohibition-related violence in Mexico continues and as the US appears to be heading down the reflexive path of fighting drug war failure with more drug war, the prohibitionist consensus grows ever more brittle. It's a shame that so many Mexicans have to die to get us to shift the direction of our dialogue on drugs. |
Pot Prohibition Causes Harm While Not Achieving Goals 'struth'
Marijuana prohibition has not achieved its goals, but has inflicted significant costs on society and individuals, a pair of University of Washington researchers concluded in a report released last week. And all for naught, they suggest, because decriminalizing pot or deprioritizing marijuana law enforcement does not appear to lead to higher levels of marijuana use. The report, The Consequences and Costs of Marijuana Prohibition, was written by sociologist Katherine Beckett and geographer Steve Herbert, both associate professors in the University of Washington's Law, Societies, and Justice Program. Using data analysis and in-depth interviews, they compared the fiscal, public safety, and human costs of marijuana prohibition.The scholarly duo found that the domestic portion of the federal drug control budget more than doubled in the 1990s, to more than $9.5 billion in 2001, with marijuana arrests accounting for nearly all the increase in drug arrests in that decade. With some 28,000 people imprisoned on marijuana charges in state or federal prison, that's an additional $600 million a year in incarceration costs borne by state and federal governments. Despite the spike in marijuana arrests in recent years -- now more than 800,000 a year -- marijuana prohibition has signally failed to produce the desired results. Instead, the researchers found, the price of pot has dropped, the average potency has increased, as has availability, and use rates have often increased despite escalating enforcement. "The report finds that the 'war on marijuana' is quite costly in both financial and human terms, and the prohibition of marijuana has not measurably reduced its use. This is a clear call for us to reconsider our laws and policies on marijuana," said Alison Holcomb, ACLU of Washington drug policy director. What does not cause marijuana use rates to increase, said the researchers, are reformist policies. Areas that have decriminalized simple possession, deprioritized marijuana law enforcement, or that allow for medical marijuana have not seen increases in use rates, they found. |
"public nuisances non-Dutch pot buyers"
The mayors of the Dutch border towns of Roosendaal and Bergen op Zoom confirmed Thursday that they will shut down all marijuana selling coffee shops in their towns by September 16. They said that by closing the coffee shops they hoped to end the public nuisances created by an influx of some 25,000 non-Dutch pot buyers a week. Because of more repressive laws in neighboring countries such
 as France and Germany, Dutch coffee shops have been a favorite haunt of pot seekers in northwestern Europe. But the huge numbers of foreigners coming to the border towns has created traffic, public order, and other problems. Mayors of other border towns have responded with plans to move coffee houses from city centers to the outskirts.
The conservative Dutch national coalition government, while desiring to see an end to the coffee shops, has committed to taking no action until after new elections in 2010. That leaves the regulatory field to the mayors. An attorney for coffee shop owners said there was little he could do until coffee shops are actually closed down. "But if you want to change drug policy, you first need to discuss it nationally and also check EU law if you want to discourage European tourists," said Harrie Nieland. |
California Assemblyman Introduces Landmark Bill to Legalize, Tax, and Regulate Marijuana
California Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) told a press conference in his home town Monday he had introduced a bill that would create a system of taxed and regulated legal marijuana sales and production. If the bill were to pass, California would become the first Under the bill, AB 390, the state would license producers and distributors, who would pay an excise tax of $50 per ounce, or about $1 per joint. Anyone 21 or over could then purchase marijuana from a licensed distributor. The bill also would allow any adult to grow up to 10 plants for personal, non-commercial use. The bill would not alter California's medical marijuana law.
Ironically it was California which passed the nation's first marijuana prohibition bill, in 1913, according to a history compiled by Drug WarRant's Peter Guither. Federal marijuana prohibition was enacted in 1937. As currently written, the taxation and regulation aspects of AB 390 would not go into effect until six months after federal marijuana laws were changed, but the removal of marijuana as a controlled substance under California law would go into effect upon passage of the bill. That is likely to change. "We've just come through a torturous budget process in this state, and the marijuana industry in California is $14 billion going up in smoke," said Ammiano. "We need to capture some of that. This would also allow us to save money on law enforcement, incarceration, and even the environment." According to research done by the state Board of Equalization, which handles taxes for the state, legalizing and taxing marijuana sales would generate about $1.3 billion in tax revenues a year. "This is a responsible measure for prioritizing law enforcement," the board's Betty Yee told the assembled media. "These numbers are a credible new estimate."
"It's ironic that the largest cash crop in the state is not being taxed," said Oakland City Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan. "We need to devote our law enforcement resources to violent crime. We're losing the war. It's time for regulation and fiscal responsibility." "This bill is a winning proposition for California's taxpayers," said Dale Gieringer of California NORML (CANORML). "In this time of economic crisis, it makes no sense for California to be wasting money on marijuana prohibition, when we could be reaping tax benefits from a legal, regulated market instead." It also comes at a time when support for marijuana legalization on the West Coast has gained majority status. In a Zogby International poll released last week, 58% of West Coast respondents said they favored taxing and regulating marijuana. "This is indicative of what an important moment we are at," said Bruce Mirken, communications director for the Marijuana Policy Project. "This week, we saw Dan Walters, a middle of the road columnist for the Sacramento Bee do a column saying now is the time to do this. The Los Angeles Times said it was time for the feds to rethink this. There is a growing sense that Ammiano has captured that the way we've been dealing with marijuana since 1937 doesn't make a bit of sense and rethinking is required." "This is landmark legislation," said Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). "There has never been a legalization bill in the history of marijuana law reform. This is the first such bill."But, St. Pierre revealed, before summer is here, at least two more states will see similar bills. "California is leading the country in the discussion, but it won't be by itself. By June, there will be 45 or 50 million people having a discussion about legalizing marijuana -- not decrim, not medical, not lowest law enforcement priority, but marijuana legalization." "I think with the introduction of this bill, we have reaching the tipping point in the discussion about marijuana," said St. Pierre. "When the largest state in the nation, facing crushing economic times, is forced to review the festering situation of all that untaxed marijuana and it already has the example of retail access through the dispensaries, the discussion has changed." "You don't know "I think this is the beginning of the end," said Southern California legalization activist Clifford Shaffer, creator of the Let Us Pay Taxes web site, which pleads "Take our Money Please," purportedly on behalf of the California marijuana industry. "A number of factors have come together, such as public education, the obvious failure of the drug war, and the economy, and they are producing a 'perfect storm' for reform. We will see big changes in the coming year and this bill is a good start," Shaffer predicted. Acceptable progress this year, said Mirken, would be for the bill to move forward at all. "A good year would be getting a couple of committee hearings and though a couple of committees, laying the groundwork for actual passage in a year or two. The conversation was long overdue, but it has now been engaged." "I'm not so naïve as to think it will pass this year," agreed CANORML's Gieringer. "I think the conflict with federal law will pose problems with law enforcement for sure, and we know the governor always supports law enforcement. This is the opening shot in a process that could take several years to work out, but we have now opened the debate. For all the years I've been dealing with this issue, politicians have been afraid to say anything more than medical marijuana or decriminalization, but as long as you don't move beyond decrim, you still get all the problems of prohibition," he argued. "It's essential to get past decriminalization; it keeps the problems of prohibition and doesn't bring any revenue to the state," Gieringer continued. "We need a viable solution, not some half-baked one that wouldn't solve the problems. And I think we're close to having a majority here in California. I know we have majority support in Oakland, San Francisco, and other parts of Northern California. I think we're getting there." It's been 96 years since California passed that first marijuana prohibition law. Can prohibition be ended before it enters its second century? Thanks to Assemblyman Ammiano's AB 390, we can dream that maybe it just might. |
state in the nation to break so decisively with decades of pot prohibition.
It would also, the board said, lead to a 50% decrease in retail prices.
if you're at the tipping point until you've gone past it, but we could be," said Mirken. "Nobody imagines it's going to get done overnight, but we've suddenly reached the point where it's no longer a fringe issue, and that's huge."
New Hampshire Legislator Introduces Decriminalization Bill
New Hampshire state Rep. Steven Lindsey (D) Tuesday introduced a bill that would decriminalize the possession of less than an ounce of marijuana. Under the bill, HB 555, persons over the age of 18 would face no more than a $100 fine. Simple possession would also be decriminalized for minors, but they would be subjected to community service and a drug awareness program at their own expense or face a $1,000 fine. The New Hampshire House passed a similar measure last year. It died in the state Senate. Under current New Hampshire law, possession of up to an ounce is a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail. Rep. Lindsey called current law "draconian" during a Tuesday hearing. Thirteen states have decriminalized the possession of small amounts of marijuana, most of them in the 1970s. But Nevada did it in 2001 and fellow New England state Massachusetts did it last November. State legislatures in Vermont and Washington are also dealing with decrim bills this year. |
This is the Year New York's Rockefeller Drug Laws Will Be Repealed
For more than 35 years, New York state has had the dubious distinction of having some of the country's worst drug laws, the Rockefeller drug laws passed in 1973. While pressure has mounted in the past decade to repeal those draconian laws, the reforms made to them in 2004 and 2005 have proven disappointing. But now, in what could be a perfect storm for reform, all the pieces for doing away with the Rockefeller drug laws appear to be falling into place. But it hasn't happened yet -- no bills have even been filed -- and there is opposition to real reform, mostly from district attorneys, representatives whose upstate districts depend on prisons as a jobs program, and the law enforcement establishment. Those folks may latch onto pseudo-reforms as a means of blocking real reform. Their handbook could be the State Sentencing Commission report issued this week. That report, commissioned by Gov. Paterson last year, calls for marginal reforms in sentencing and parole, as well as limited judicial discretion, but leaves too much power in the hands of prosecutors, said reform advocates. "The Sentencing Commission proposal was positive in that it would return some judicial discretion in limited cases," said Caitlin Dunklee, coordinator of the Rockefeller repeal coalition Drop the Rock. "But we hope and will press for more sweeping and meaningful reform of the Rockefeller laws. This report was the product of a commission composed of many prosecutors and corrections people, and it does not go far enough." "I can't believe at this particular moment that they would put this out," said Gabriel Sayegh of the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) New York state office. "Not only does it not include real reforms to the Rockefeller Drug Laws, but it takes a step backward," Sayegh continued. "The commission acted as though the political climate we're in is not happening. It's like they drafted this thing from a cave." DPA wants judicial discretion and treatment programs, which are included in the Sentencing Commission report, Sayegh said. "The problem is that when you dig into the details of the recommendations, what they are actually saying is that their version of judicial discretion, expanding treatment, and expanding diversion opportunities are all crafted out of the prosecutorial perspective. Prosecutors would maintain their leading roles and their diversion criteria would eliminate half the people from even being considering for it. That's the substance of our objections to the report," Sayegh said. While Sayegh criticized Gov. Paterson for allowing the commission to "continue with its bumbling," he also took heart from Paterson's non-response to the report's release. "Paterson was going to hold a public event around the release, but that got changed to a press conference, and then even that got cancelled," he noted. "We see that as a good sign, an indication that he will not lend his backing to this report." Instead, Sayegh said, a much better starting point would be the report issued two weeks ago by Assembly leader Sheldon Silver, Breaking New York's Addiction to Prison: Reforming New York's Rockefeller Drug Laws. In that report, Silver laid out the "principles" of reform:
Partial reforms like those achieved in 2004 and 2005 are not going to cut it, said Caitlan Dunklee. "The reforms in 2004 and 2005 failed across the board... the only positive thing about them was that a few hundred people got to go home to their families, but they failed to address the underlying inequities of the Rockefeller drug laws. Specifically, they failed to return any discretion to judges, perpetuating the one size fits all justice that has led to huge levels of incarceration in New York." The 2004 and 2005 reforms can be judged by their fruits. According to a Drop the Rock 2008 fact sheet, 5,657 people were sent to prison in 2004 for nonviolent drug offenses. That number increased to 5,835 in 2005, 6,039 in 2006, and 6,148 in 2007. About 40% of drug offenders behind bars in New York, some 5,300 people, are doing time simply for drug possession. And more than half of all drug offenders behind bars are doing time for the lowest level drug felonies, which involve only tiny amount of drugs. For example, it takes only a half-gram of cocaine to be charged with a Class D possession felony. More than 1,200 people are currently locked up for that offense. So, is 2009 the year that real reform (or outright repeal) of the Rockefeller drug laws will happen? DPA thinks so, and held a conference two weeks ago to help make it happen. New Directions for New York: A Public Health and Safety Approach to Drug Policy brought together numerous drug policy stakeholders in an effort to break the grasp of the criminal justice template on drug policy. "This was the first time in state history where we had stakeholders ranging from the Medical Society of New York to needle exchange providers to people who actively use injection drugs and do outreach to reduce HIV to academics, prosecutors, and elected officials," said Sayegh. Although New York has good drug policy programs -- harm reduction offices, overdose prevention strategies in place -- the overall discussion is still framed too much by the criminal justice perspective, Sayegh said. "There is an apparatus in place to lead the charge for more progressive drug policies, but the discussion is framed by the Rockefeller laws," he said. "At this conference, stakeholders who are focused on the Rockefeller laws met with groups who focus on treatment, harm reduction, and medical research. We used the four-pillars approach pioneered by Vancouver, which for many people was a new concept. This allowed them to look at drug policy and reform from a new conceptual perspective, and that's part of what will bring about change." Sayegh is guardedly optimistic about the prospects for reform this year. "In the past, we hadn't been able to move forward because the prosecutors controlled the language and logic of the debate," he noted. "But now, we can provide the legislature with new language and a new framework, the logic of public health, not criminal justice. This will make the legislature much more willing to move on reform proposals. Who doesn't like public health?" "I'm very optimistic," said Drop the Rock's Dunklee. "I think we'll see a progressive piece of legislation get passed this year that will include meaningful restoration of judicial discretion in drug cases. Hopefully, it will also include an expansion of funding for alternative to incarceration programs like job training and drug treatment." Not everyone was so sanguine. "I'm optimistic that something will happen, but I don't think its going to be as profound as everyone would like," said Randy Credico of the William Moses Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice, which has been part of the Rockefeller repeal effort for years. "That's because there is no street movement anymore, not a lot of grassroots pressure. While mobilizations in 2004 and 2005 put tens of thousands of people on the street calling for reform, the minor reforms achieved then took the steam out of the mass movement, Credico argued. "Some people thought incremental change would work then," he said, "but we said it's better to get no loaf than half a loaf. That way, the pressure would remain and build. But we got half a loaf, and four years later, all these guys are still in jail and all the air has gone out of the movement." "And it's not just the Rockefeller drug laws -- we need to completely overhaul the criminal justice system, from sentencing to the appointment of judges to judge-shopping by prosecutors to racial profiling to banning stop and frisk searches. People need to focus on the overall criminal justice system, or just as many people will be going to prison as we have now." Drop the Rock's Dunklee begged to differ with Credico over the state of the mass movement for reform. "Drop the Rock is the statewide campaign for repeal, and we haven't gone away," she said. "There is a movement. The 25,000 signatures we've gathered on our petition for repeal is a sign of that. Last year, we took more than 300 people up to Albany, and we will do it again this year." Still, Dunklee conceded, the partial reforms of 2004 and 2005 did take a lot of air out of the movement. "The media spun that like they were real reforms, and that did weaken the movement," she said. "But in terms of movement building, we still find it easy to organize around this issue because people are so pissed off. I think there is still a lot of energy there." That energy will be needed in the coming months. While New York's budget mess will occupy legislators for the next few weeks, they will eventually turn to the Rockefeller law reforms. No bills have been filed yet, but they are expected shortly. And hearings are set for May. This year's battle to repeal the Rockefeller drug laws is just getting underway. |
Surgeon General Nominee Gupta Hates Marijuana, Sort of Supports Medical Use
Drug reformers busily poring over the tea leaves in an effort to discern the drug policy intentions of the incoming Obama administration have found little solace in the announcement that it will nominate Dr. Sanjay Gupta for the position of surgeon general. One of America's most famous doctors, Gupta is a neurosurgeon who also doubles as a correspondent for CNN and CBS News. The Obama administration offer came after a two-hour meeting between Gupta and Obama in Chicago in November. At that meeting, Obama told Gupta he would have an expanded role in providing health policy advice and would be the highest-profile surgeon general in history. Gupta has a history in health policy. He served as a White House fellow in the 1990s, writing speeches and advising Hillary Clinton on health policy issues. He is also an accomplished, telegenic communicator. While he has received criticism from some quarters for being too friendly with big pharmaceutical companies and from others for wrongly accusing filmmaker Michael Moore of falsehoods in his documentary "Sicko," it is his old-school views on marijuana that are raising hackles in drug reform circles. Most famously, in a November 2006 editorial in Time magazine, Gupta, while acknowledging marijuana's medical benefits for some patients, went on to repeat a raft of long-debunked anti-marijuana myths as reasons for opposing marijuana reform initiatives on the ballot in Nevada and Colorado that week. In Gupta's words:
Whether Gupta if confirmed will support medical marijuana -- as opposed to mere THC-based pharmaceuticals such as Marinol -- or do good for drug policy reform in other ways, remains to be seen. And he did demonstrate a willingness to acknowledge some of the arguments made by the other side. But his apparent blindness to the harm caused to marijuana users by arrest and incarceration is not a great first sign. Change we can believe in for drug policy? Only time will tell. |
"Maybe it's because I was born a couple of months after Woodstock and wasn't around when marijuana was as common as iPods are today, but I'm constantly amazed that after all these years -- and all the wars on drugs and all the public-service announcements -- nearly 15 million Americans still use marijuana at least once a month. California and 10 other states have already decriminalized marijuana for medical use. Two states -- Colorado and Nevada -- are considering ballot initiatives that would legalize up to an ounce of pot for personal use by people 21 and older, whether or not there is a medical need.
RADICAL ALTERNATIVES PROPOSED FOR CANNABIS CONTROLS
What should we do to minimise the harm cannabis can cause to the health and welfare of users and to society at large? The answer, according to a report by a group of prominent academics and government advisers, is to change the law to allow the state to prepare and distribute the drug for recreational use. This controversial proposal comes from a commission assembled by the Beckley Foundation, a British charity dedicated to exploring the science of psychoactive substances. "The damage done by prohibition is worse than from the substance itself," says Amanda Feilding, the founder of the Beckley Foundation. The Beckley commission's ideas will be aired in March at a meeting in Vienna, Austria, of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs. The UNCND will report to a meeting of the UN general assembly later this year that will set international policy on drug control for the decade to come. Marijuana is now the world's most widely used illicit drug. The latest figures from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime ( UNODC ) indicate that in 2006-7 some 166 million people aged 15 or above, or 3.9 per cent of this age group, used it regularly. Just 1 per cent of the world population uses other illegal drugs. Cannabis use is particularly widespread in rich countries. Around 40 per cent of Americans and one-third of Australians say they have tried it. The evidence assembled by the Beckley commission left it in no doubt that cannabis damages the health of heavy users, especially those who start as teenagers. Such users are at increased risk of suffering from psychosis, and lung and heart disorders. They are also more likely to drop out of school early, be involved in traffic accidents, and be poor parents ( see "How bad is it?" ). The report also found evidence that cannabis may act as a "gateway drug", increasing the likelihood that users will go on to try more damaging drugs such as heroin or cocaine. The report details a sharp rise in the potency of marijuana, with levels of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol ( THC ) - the chemical that gets cannabis users "stoned" - typically double to treble what they were a decade ago. This, it says, is partly the result of a switch to growing the plant indoors under continuous lighting. Potent varieties, sometimes known as "skunk" or "sinsemilla", now make up 80 per cent of the market in the UK and the Netherlands according to a report published by the UK home office. These varieties also lack a compound called cannabidiol found in other cannabis strains, which when present may help prevent THC triggering psychotic episodes. About 9 per cent of regular cannabis users become dependent - experiencing withdrawal if they stop using - and suffer ill health as a result of their drug use, the Beckley authors say. Despite the undoubted dangers associated with marijuana, the Beckley report concludes that it is far less harmful to users and to society in general than other illicit drugs such as heroin and cocaine, and far less damaging than the legal drugs tobacco and alcohol. There have been only two documented deaths from marijuana overdose, the report notes. This contrasts with 200,000 deaths from all causes each year attributed to other illegal drugs, 2.5 million deaths annually related to alcohol and 5 million to smoking. Because possession of cannabis is illegal, its harmful consequences extend beyond possible damage to immediate health, the Beckley report points out. In particular, users are at risk of punishment and acquiring a criminal record. "If you don't think being arrested is a harm, you are unpersuadable," says criminologist Peter Reuter of the University of Maryland, a co-author of the report. "In the US, 750,000 people were arrested in 2006, and I think that's a substantial harm." The report recommends that marijuana should be sold legally, subject to strict standards to ensure it is not strong enough to cause psychological problems. This, it says, would allow a strict age bar to be imposed that would prevent children from buying it, and put the criminal gangs who peddle it out of business. Cannabis buyers would not be offered other drugs by the licensed dealers, removing this as a possible route of progression from cannabis to other drugs. The framework for drug laws worldwide is now set by the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, which has been signed by the overwhelming majority of nations. Though the convention requires that all signatories make possession of cannabis illegal, some have experimented with decriminalisation. The Netherlands, for example, no longer arrests and punishes people found to have small amounts of cannabis, though large-scale supply remains illegal and in the hands of criminal gangs. The legalisation proposed by the Beckley group is likely to face strong opposition in Vienna both from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime and from many governments. The fear is that easing up on cannabis will undermine the whole international effort to combat recreational drug use. "Cannabis is the most vulnerable point of the whole multilateral edifice," Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the UNODC, said in a speech in March 2008. The US has set its face firmly against any move towards legalisation, fearing that this would produce a nation of dope-heads. A document launched in July 2008 by the US Office of National Drug Control Policy ( ONDCP ) declared marijuana to be "the greatest cause of illegal drug abuse". Dave Murray, head of research at the ONDCP, told New Scientist that strict enforcement of anti-drug laws had helped cut teenage use of marijuana by 25 per cent between 2001 and 2008. In the absence of prohibition, it would have been difficult to achieve that," he says. By contrast, the Beckley authors, among others, argue that punishment does not reduce cannabis use and itself causes harm. Their view is backed by a study in 2000 by Simon Lenton of the National Drug Research Institute in Perth, Western Australia, which compared what happened to people in Western Australia, where cannabis possession attracts a criminal conviction and penalty, with those in South Australia who were given non-punitive infringement notices. He found that 32 per cent of those "criminalised" reported adverse employment consequences compared with 2 per cent of "infringers". The criminalised users were also far more likely to be involved in crime again, and to suffer housing and relationship problems. Feilding accepts that there may be few takers in Vienna for her group's proposals. But the mere fact that an alternative to the strict prohibition of cannabis will even be considered is a breakthrough in itself, she says. HOW BAD IS IT? The most damaging of the possible ill effects of cannabis use is psychosis. "You're 40 per cent more likely to get psychotic disturbances if you're a user from early life," says Les Iverson at the University of Oxford, who is a member of the UK government's Advisory Committee on the Misuse of Drugs ( ACMD ). He points out, however, that cannabis is not necessarily the cause in all these cases. Dave Murray, head of research at the US Office of National Drug Control Policy, says that in the US the rise in strength and market dominance of potent marijuana strains has paralleled a rise in emergency hospital admissions of people suffering psychoses after cannabis use. Another worry with cannabis is that it is a "gateway" drug encouraging use of more damaging substances. Murray says that cannabis users who start young are between 9 and 15 times as likely to become heroin or cocaine users. "We can't say one causes the other, but there's a strong correlation," he notes. There is also the danger of traffic accidents: cannabis intoxication raises a driver's risk of crashing by 1.3 to 3 times. By contrast, alcohol intoxication raises the accident risk by up to 15 times. About 9 per cent of regular cannabis users become dependent, compared with 32 per cent of tobacco smokers, 23 per cent of heroin users, 17 per cent of cocaine users and 15 per cent of those drinking alcohol. Respiratory and lung cancer risks are also raised for cannabis users, and they can sustain damage to verbal learning ability, memory and attention. According to the Beckley report, permanent changes in receptors of the hippocampus, prefrontal cortex and cerebellum have been seen in heavy cannabis users. There are also links between early cannabis use and poor school performance. Whether this is a result of cannabis itself, or because they share some other common cause, such as poverty, is not known. Overall, an analysis of 20 drugs by David Nutt at the University of Bristol, UK, who chairs the ACMD, rated cannabis as the 11th most harmful drug, well behind alcohol and tobacco. |
"it is better to legalize them to keep them under control"
Under existing Dutch policy, licensed marijuana coffee shops can sell their wares to consumers, but have no legal means of obtaining those wares. That snag in the cannabis supply system is known as the "backdoor problem:" Marijuana can legally exit the coffee houses via the front door, but must enter illegally through the backdoor. The backdoor problem has existed for years, but now things seem to be coming to a head. Dutch mayors meeting at a weekend "Cannabis Summit" are seeking to solve the backdoor problem, as well as address the conservative governing coalition's efforts to restrict or even shut down the famous coffee houses. The number of coffee shops has dwindled slowly but steadily under the conservative government, with more slated to be forced to close in the next two years. On Saturday, the leader of the governing Christian Democratic Party, Pieter van Geel, said all the coffee shops should be closed.
The summit was called by Maastricht Lord Mayor Gerd Leers last week after the More than three-quarters of the 40 mayors in attendance agreed that marijuana should be grown under license for wholesale purchase by the coffee houses and, ultimately, retail sale to consumers. But while there is broad agreement on licensing grows, just how they would come about remains a matter of contention. According to Dutch News, Eindhoven Mayor Rob van Gijzel and his city council are prepared to operate their own grow as a "monitored pilot scheme" to see if licensed growing reduces drug-related crime. The Tilburg city council said it wanted to start a "cannabis market garden" to supply local shops. But Amsterdam Lord Mayor Job Cohen told London's Telegraph newspaper that while he was in "full support" of the coffee shop system, Eindhoven's plan to involve the city council in marijuana growing was going "a little too far." Instead, he said he would prefer to see licensed private growers closely monitored by the police. "While I don't agree with the idea of councilors actually growing cannabis in plots near their town halls, a positive development has been that our government has now said it will take a close look at the issue of where the cannabis should come from. We could see the problem of the two doors -- legal front door for customers, illegal back door for supplies -- being resolved soon." In fact, said Cohen, the entire trade should just be legalized. "Look what happened during prohibition years in America and how criminals took over and look at Belgium, France and Britain where soft drugs are not legal but are available and are a part of the criminal world," he said. "We can't avoid them, so it is better to legalize them to keep them under control." On Sunday, Health Minister Ab Klink somewhat surprisingly said that while the licensed grow plan in Eindhoven would conflict with the policy of the conservative ruling coalition, he was prepared to look closely at the plan and discuss it with the rest of the cabinet. While the Christian Democrats and Christian Unity parties are opposed to legal production for the coffee shops, the coalition's Labor Party has called for parliamentary debate on the issue. The forces of drug reform are mobilizing, too. The Netherlands Drug Policy Foundation, the European umbrella reform group ENCOD, and Amsterdam's Cannabis College have organized the first Netherlands Cannabis Tribunal in the Hague on Monday and Tuesday. A centerpiece event should be the planned debate between Christian Democratic Party spokesperson Cisca Joldersma, and Hans van Duijn, LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition} member and former president of the Dutch Police Association. |
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Obama's Appointees Raise Questions in the Drug Reform Community
Like other interest groups, the drug reform movement has the Obama transition under a microscope, searching for clues on the new administration's intentions as it scrutinizes those appointments for positions that are going to be key to advancing the cause. Some of the Obama transition team's early moves have some drug reformers sounding alarm bells, but other reformers -- not so much. Drug reformers were not particularly enthralled with Obama's vice-president selection, Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE), who made a career authoring drug war legislation. Biden can rightfully claim to be the father of the drug czar's office, he was a big fan of harsh sentencing laws, he crafted the horrid RAVE Act. Never encountering a "drug problem" that couldn't be fixed with another federal criminal law, Biden most recently authored a bill that would criminalize being on board a home-made submarine carrying drugs.
While Biden may have begun to see the light in recent years -- he is author of one of the best bills seeking to address the crack/powder cocaine sentencing disparity (which he helped create) -- drug reformers remain deeply suspicious of a man who built a political power base on the shoulders of the assembled ranks of law enforcement. Nor did the appointment of Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) as White House chief of staff alleviate concerns. While the sharp-elbowed political operative has not been a leading drug warrior, neither has he shied from using drug war discourse as a weapon against his political foes. One oft-cited example of Emanuel's penchant for drug war rhetoric came a decade ago, when he defended the Clinton administration's unconstitutional effort to punish physicians who recommended medical marijuana to patients. "We are going to continue to find ways within the administration to fight legalization and the notion of legalization," he said in an interview. "We're against the message that [California's medical marijuana initiative] sends to children," Emanuel demagogued. (Emanuel, now a member of Congress, did vote for the pro-medical marijuana Hinchey amendment in July of last year.) This week's announcement that former Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder would be nominated for the Attorney General post did little to allay mounting fears that Obama was filling key positions for drug policy with Clinton-era drug war holdovers. Some were quick to point to Holder's time as US Attorney for the District of Columbia, when he pushed through changes in DC's marijuana laws that made sales a felony instead of a misdemeanor. As the Washington Post reported:
That same year, he told the Washington Times he was considering proposing a mandatory-minimum 18-month sentence for any marijuana sales. That, at least, didn't happen. Drug reformers took some small solace, however, from Holder's comments on mandatory minimum sentencing in a 1999 interview. Responding to a question about whether it was time to review mandatory minimums, Holder said:
With drug war cheerleaders like Biden and Emanuel and professional drug warriors like Holder being invited to join the Obama team, drug reformers are understandably skittish. But most are taking a wait and see attitude, even as they bemoan some of Obama's choices. "Some of the appointments, such as Holder, are certainly concerning," said Bruce Mirken, communications director for the Marijuana Policy Project. "There is some problematic stuff in the past, yes, but people do change and learn. Who would have thought that a drug warrior like Bob Barr would end up as a Libertarian?" Mirken asked. "I don't think that because somebody said or did something we disagreed with a decade ago, he is necessarily bound to those same positions now, but we will be watching closely. If the time comes to freak out, we will, but it's premature to freak out now." The reform community should not be freaking out, agreed Eric Sterling, who served as counsel to the House Judiciary Committee in the 1980s and now heads the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation. Instead, it should be trying to flex its muscles. "I think the reform community is way overreacting and, more importantly, not taking the initiative," he said "Reform leaders ought to be asking themselves what letters they've written to President-elect Obama, what letters to the editor they've penned, what op-eds they've submitted. Is the movement doing anything other than passively reacting?" he asked. "Our movement has been under such assault for the past eight years that we're really out of practice in being effective political actors," Sterling argued. "I just contacted [the left-leaning magazine] In These Times suggesting an article about taxing marijuana as a way to prevent the lay-off of public employees. Our movement should be reaching out to people like the public employee unions, maybe buying ads saying 'No teacher should be fired until the legislature tells us how many legal marijuana could pay for.'" "What you can say about Emanuel and these other people is that they are political and will respond to pressure," said Sterling. "If Emanuel thought our issues were good politics, he would be standing on the ramparts, but it's not good politics because we haven't made it good politics. It's not enough to mobilize the drug reform aficionados, we have to be working with much more powerful organizations and interest groups around issues they care about. The dire situation with the economy right now and the lack of revenues for state and local governments is a tremendous opportunity for us, exactly like 1933 in that sense. What did they do then? They ended Prohibition and taxed alcohol." Marijuana does not enjoy the same cultural favor that alcohol did, Sterling noted, but that can be overcome. "We need to frame the issue in very stark economic terms. We need to be asking who is going to teach our kids? How are we going to pay for teachers? If the state taxing marijuana is the only way to pay for teachers, should we do it? That marijuana isn't going anywhere. It's still going to be smoked, whether we tax it or not. Why don't we benefit from it?" "Drug policy reform has its work cut out for it," said Kevin Zeese, a long-time reformer who doubts either major party is ready for fundamental change. "The best we can hope for is a little benign neglect, and that they not continue to waste law enforcement resources on medical marijuana providers in states that allow it." Given the plateful of problems facing the incoming administration and the state of the drug reform movement, a big push on drug policy on the federal level is unlikely, Zeese argued. "We should be working locally to continue to build momentum and a real movement," he said, suggesting that "benign neglect" could come into play. "If the reform movement continues to push state and local initiatives, I think the Obama administration will stay out of those conflicts. I don't think we'll see the drug czar flying off to different states to campaign against initiatives, and that would be a good thing." A big push for drug reform is not only unlikely, it may be unwise at this time, Zeese suggested. "The caution Obama brings to the job, and Biden and Emanuel's histories present some room for us to maneuver, but it may be best not to poke the sleeping bear with a stick. We don't want to wake up the criminal justice advocates in the federal government. Benign neglect is better than abuse. Perhaps we should just work under the radar and allow their political caution to work for us, instead of against us." While Zeese could tick off the bad drug policy stances of some of Obama's newly-forming inner circle, he suggested that those stances were based more on political calculations than ideological enthusiasm. "As chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Biden aligned himself with police and prosecutors -- that is his criminal justice base, that's where the power and safety is. Emanuel was a clear architect of the crime control acts under Clinton that increased police numbers and lengthened sentences. But both these guys are essentially political animals and will take what looks like a hard line to neutralize an issue." One area that could be an early indicator of the Obama administration's drug reform proclivities is the ongoing DEA raids against California medical marijuana providers. Obama vowed during the campaign to halt those raids. But the big news there could be that there is no news. "We expect that Obama will keep his promise about ending the raids in California," said MPP's Mirken. "There are plenty of reasons for him to do so, including Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, and Michigan -- all states that had gone Republican, but that he carried. Whatever else you think about Obama and his team, they can count, and it's hard for me to imagine that they think it is in their interest to continue a war against a quarter of the country, most of whom voted for him," he said. "That doesn't have to happen in dramatic fashion, you don't have to hold a press conference, it could just be something that happens quietly," said Mirken. "It may be awhile before anyone really sees for sure that a change has occurred. And that's fine -- we don't need a press conference as long as he stops arresting patients and caregivers." "Obama is no doubt already thinking about a second term and doesn't want to make drug policy reform an issue of conflict with Republicans," said Zeese. "He will play it safe, but there is some opportunity for us there, and I think ending the raids is one of the things he could make happen. He'd prefer not to have medical marijuana patients and advocates angry at him in places like California and Oregon." "I think he will stop the raids," said Sterling. "I don't see how the raids are helpful to him unless the Republicans are able to gin up some anger about providers, so it would be wise to stay low-key and continue to work with state and local officials so it is not controversial at the local level. But if it becomes controversial, and the Republicans are able to make it an issue, then Obama will be against us. We need to stay under the radar on this right now." While reformers watch to see what does and doesn't happen regarding the DEA raids -- will they just quietly vanish into that long good night? -- there is still plenty of work to do, said Sterling. "We have to build the movement. We keep seeing the same 300 people at the conferences, maybe 1,000 if you're talking about the harm reduction conferences. No one is going door to door in the black community talking about how the drug war is undermining public safety and its relationship with the police. No one is talking to the unions. We've done well on the education part of our issue, but we haven't done well in developing a political power base, and until we do that, we won't get reform."
Drug Policy Links Why Lou Dobbs Should Support Marijuana Legalization The MERP Project http://www.newagecitizen.com/ReLegalization01.htm Bruce W. Cain Discusses the MERP Model, for Marijuana Relegalization, with "Sense and Sensimilla" Video Biography of Bruce W. Cain The "Hemp Song" by Bruce W. Cain "Rainbow Farm" and instrumental dedicated to Tom Crosslin who was How Continuing the Drug War could make Nuclear Terrorism a Reality |
Barack Obama on Medical Marijuana and Drug Policy
"I would not have the Justice Department prosecuting and raiding medical marijuana users. It's not a good use of our resources."
"The Justice Department going after sick individuals using this as a palliative instead of going after serious criminals makes no sense."
"I think that we need to rethink and decriminalize our marijuana laws. But I'm not somebody who believes in legalization of marijuana. What I do believe is that we need to rethink how we are operating in the drug wars, and I think that currently we are not doing a good job."
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The Prospects for Drug Reform in Obama's Washington The political landscape in Washington, DC, is undergoing a dramatic shift as the Democratic tide rolls in, and, after eight years of drug war status quo under the Republicans, drug reformers are now hoping the change in administrations will lead to positive changes in federal drug policies. As with every other aspect of federal policy, groups interested in criminal justice and drug policy reform are coming out of the woodwork with their own recommendations for Obama and the Democratic Congress. This week, we will look at some of those proposals and attempt to assess the prospects for real change. One of the most comprehensive criminal justice reform proposals, of which drug-related reform is only a small part, comes from a nonpartisan consortium of organizations and individuals coordinated by the Constitution Project, including groups such as the Sentencing Project, Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM), and the Open Society Policy Center. The set of proposals, Smart on Crime: Recommendations for the Next Administration and Congress, includes the following recommendations:
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has also issued a set of recommendations, Actions for Restoring America: How to Begin Repairing the Damage to Freedom in America Under Bush, which include some drug reform provisions:
Looking to the south, the Latin America Working Group, a coalition of nonprofit groups, has issued a petition urging Obama "to build a just policy towards Latin America and the Caribbean that unites us with our neighbors." Included in its proposals are:
The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) has some suggestions as well. As NORML's Paul Armentano wrote last week on Alternet:
Clearly, the drug reform community and its allies see the change of administrations as an opportunity to advance the cause. The question is how receptive will the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress be to drug reform efforts. "We've examined Obama's record and his statements, and 90% of it is good," said David Borden, executive director of StoptheDrugWar.org (publisher of this newsletter). "But we don't know what he intends to do in office. There is an enormous amount of good he can do," Borden said, mentioning opening up funding for needle exchange programs, US Attorney appointments, and stopping DEA raids on medical marijuana providers. "Will Obama make some attempt to actualize the progressive drug reform positions he has taken? He has a lot on his plate, and drug policy reform has tended to be the first thing dropped by left-leaning politicians." There will be some early indicators of administration interest in drug reform, said Bill Piper, national affairs director for the Drug Policy Alliance. "We will be watching to see if he issues an executive order stopping the DEA raids; that would be a huge sign," he said. "He could also repeal the needle exchange funding ban. The congressional ban would still be in place, but that would show some great leadership. If they started taking on drug policy issues in the first 100 days, that would be a great sign, but I don't think people should expect that. There are many other issues, and it's going to take awhile just to clean up Bush's mess. I'm optimistic, but I don't expect big changes to come quickly." "We are hoping to see a new direction," said Nkechi Taifa, senior policy analyst for civil and criminal justice reform for the Open Society Policy Center. "We couldn't have a better scenario with the incoming vice president having sponsored the one-to-one crack/powder bill in the Senate and the incoming president being a sponsor. And we have a situation in Congress, and particularly in the Senate, where there is bipartisan interest in sentencing reform. Both sides of the aisle want some sort of movement on this, it's been studied and vetted, and now Congress needs to do the right thing. It's time to get smart on crime, and this is not a radical agenda. As far as I'm concerned, fixing the crack/powder disparity is the compromise, and elimination of mandatory minimums is what really needs to be on the agenda." "With the Smart on Crime proposals, we tried to focus on what was feasible," said the Sentencing Project's Kara Gotsch. "These are items where we think we are likely to get support, where the community has demonstrated support, or where there has been legislation proposed to deal with these issues. It prioritizes the issues we think are most likely to move, and crack sentencing reform is on that list." The marijuana reform groups are more narrowly focused, of course, but they, too are looking for positive change. "Obama has made it very clear on the campaign trail that he disagrees with the use of federal agencies to undo medical marijuana laws in states that have passed them," said Dan Bernath, a spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project. "He has vowed to stop that. Obama seems to be someone who values facts and reasoned decision-making. If he applies that to marijuana policy, that could be a good thing. While the list of possible drug reforms is long and varied, it is also notable for what has not been included. Only NORML even mentions marijuana decriminalization, and no one is talking about ending the drug war -- only making it a bit kinder and gentler. The L-word remains unutterable. "While we're optimistic about reducing the harms of prohibition, legalization is not something that I think they will take on," said Piper. "But any movement toward drug reform is good. If we can begin to shift to a more health-oriented approach, that will change how Americans think about this issue and create a space where regulation can be discussed in a a rational manner. Now, because of our moralist criminal justice framework, it is difficult to have a sane discussion about legalization." "We didn't talk that much about legalization," said Gotsch in reference to the Smart on Crime proposals. "A lot of organizations involved have more ambitious goals, but that wouldn't get the kind of reaction we want. There just isn't the political support yet for legalization, even of marijuana." "We should be talking about legalization, yes," said StoptheDrugWar.org's Borden, "but should we be talking about it in communications to the new president who has shown no sign of supporting it? Not necessarily. We must push the envelope, but if we push it too far in lobbying communications to national leadership, we risk losing their attention." "I do think it would be a mistake to blend that kind of caution into ideological caution over what we are willing to talk about at all," Borden continued. "I think we should be talking about legalization, it's just a question of when and where," he argued. Talking legalization is premature, said Eric Sterling, formerly counsel to the US House Judiciary Committee and now president of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation. "What we are not yet doing as a movement is building upon our successes," he said. "We just saw medical marijuana win overwhelmingly in Michigan and decriminalization in Massachusetts, but the nation's commentariat has not picked up on it, and our movement has not been sufficiently aggressive in getting those votes translated into the political discourse. We haven't broken out of the making fun phase of marijuana policy yet." Sterling pointed in particular to the medical marijuana issue. "Everyone recognizes that the state-federal conflict on medical marijuana is a major impediment, and we have 26 senators representing medical marijuana states, but not a single senator has introduced a medical marijuana bill," he said. "It's an obvious area for legislative activity in the Senate, but it hasn't happened. This suggests that we as a movement still lack the political muscle even on something as uncontroversial as the medical use of marijuana." Even the apparent obvious targets for reform, such as the crack/powder sentencing disparity, are going to require a lot of work, said Sterling. "It will continue to be a struggle," he said. "The best crack bill was Biden's, cosponsored by Obama and Clinton, but I'm not sure who is going to pick that up this year. The sentencing reform community continues to struggle to frame the issue as effective law enforcement, and I think it's only on those terms that we can win." Reformers also face the reality that the politics of crime continues to be a sensitive issue for the majority Democrats, Sterling said. "Crime is an issue members are frightened about, and it's an area where Republicans traditionally feel they have the upper ground. The Democrats are going to be reluctant to open themselves up to attack in areas where there is not a strong political upside. On many issues, Congress acts when there is a clear universe of allies who will benefit and who are pushing for action. I don't know if we are there yet." Change is the mantra of the Obama administration, and change is what the drug reform community is hoping for. Now, the community must act to ensure that change happens, and that the right changes happen. |
Paul Flynn a voice of reason
Libdem MP Tom Brake - one reason not to vote Libdem.Posted in November 10th, 2008
by UKCIA in News and comment
Politicians are probably the reason most people don’t vote. They have a very bad reputation which is well deserved and no-where is this more apparent than when politicians talk about drugs. Whereas most people who try drugs enjoy them - even if they don’t end as hopeless addicts - the politicians who dabble almost never do. Almost uniquely amongst the population politicans are persuaded by the law never to touch them again and worse are grateful for that. They are mostly hypercritical of course and few of us really believe their piety. Perhaps a dislike of drugs is a premorbid indication* of an emerging political career? So we have a dire situation in the UK where both the major parties, Labour and Conservative are trying to “out tough” each other when it comes to drug laws, with both of them believing in and promoting a system of prohibition despite all the evidence showing it doesn’t work (see last weeks blog). Drugs policy for the two main parties is a matter of faith, not of evidence. With a few notable exceptions come hell or high water - or even the most compelling of studies - it looks like politicians will have to be dragged kicking and screaming into some kind of law reform. So it has always been a relief to know that at least one fairly major party - the Lib Dems - have a more enlightened view regarding drugs law reform and of cannabis law reform in particular. A quick google for “libdems drugs” takes you to a document on the libdem national website entitled “Honesty, Realism, Responsibility” which reads like a breath of fresh air. Here we have major UK political party facing up to the realities of drug law prohibition and suggesting new ways forward.
and
Note the bolded text about home growing of a small number of plants. Notonly that, but in 2001 the national conference voted in favour of cannabis legalisation, as the BBC reported at the time
So for a party that supports drug law reform vote Libdem then? Well, no, not now it seems. Sadly the Libdems have politicians and as with all politicians it seems that when it comes to drug law reform, despite the evidence, despite the parties stated intentions, they can’t be trusted. At least one Libdem politician sees brownie points in being “tough on drugs”. So it was that the Libdem Tom Brake - MP for Carshalton in Surrey - has introduced a 10 minute rule bill in Parliament to try to ban the sale of Cannabis seeds, which just proves that the Libdems are not to be trusted in that they say one thing and do something completely different. This is all a part of MP Tom Brake’s personal campaign against his local headshop, to which end he’s set up a facebook page to promote this bit of non-libdem policy. You can find this grubby little page for yourself, UKCIA isn’t going to link to it because it doesn’t give you the opportunity to be critical. So what is the problem with banning seeds? well, if, as the Libdems claim, they want to build a policy based on harm reduction and proper control of the drugs market (especially for cannabis) then controlling the seed trade is the way to do it. If you are seriously concerned about the availability of certain strains (remember the skunk panic) then you need to control what strains are available and you do that by controlling the seed trade. Forcing it underground won’t stop seeds being available and certainly won’t affect major crim-ops who grow from cuttings anyway, all it’ll do is make it harder for small scale home growers to buy seeds of known type. The internet will ensure the trade continues, but banning will simply remove one of the few options for control that still exist and will make it all just a bit more risky and uncertain. Remember, the libdems claim they don’t want to target home growers of small numbers of plants. Interestingly one of the most outspoken supporters of Brake’s idea is Chief Constable Tim Hollis, who we quoted in last weeks blog as saying:
Only to add
Belief overriding evidence as always with these people, as well as logic being in short supply. Tim Hollis being one of the leading voices calling for reclassification to B, the only effect of which is to increase the rate of prosecution of small-time users. But probably and most importantly what, we ask, is the point of a national party membership voting quite clearly for a certain policy, the party publishing intelligent documents like “Honesty, Realism, Responsibility” if nasty bits of work like Brake can go off and do something totally different in the name of the party? Do the Libdems not stand for anything or do they allow their MP’s to make things up as they go along? There’s probably no point in mailing the MP himself, he’s unlikely to take any such representation seriously, but if you’re bored you can tell him what you think of him here Probably better is to contact the party itself nationally by e-mail, or phone them on 020 7222 7999. Let them know that you support drug law reform and oppose Brakes personal campaign. Ask them why, if they allow their MP’s to do this sort of thing, should you ever vote Libdem again? ———————– *A “Premorbid indication” is a term used by doctors to describe a symptom or trait which shows before the illness develops. |
Who Will the Next Drug Czar Be?
With Tuesday's election now behind us, and the incoming Obama administration turning its attention to filling all those cabinet and White House posts, speculation is already starting about who will replace outgoing drug czar John Walters as head of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). Actually, the speculation began even before the election was over. On October 31, the Washington insider news organization Politico reported that Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton was on the short list to replace Walters. In fact, Bratton was the only name on the list.
It was an interesting, if not particularly inspiring, call. As police chief in Los Angeles, Bratton has not been a serious foe of medical marijuana, but in his earlier incarnation as New York City police commissioner in the mid-1990s, his NYPD arrested tens But surveying Bratton's career for how he might behave as drug czar is already an exercise in futility. The Los Angeles Times reported yesterday that Bratton has said he is not heading for Washington to replace Walters. "That is not something I am seeking, it's not something I have been approached about," Bratton said. "No reason to leave Los Angeles -- they pay me very well." So now, it's back to the drawing board for drug czar speculators. Drug War Chronicle will be touching base with various people in the next week to try to get a better handle on who may end up running federal drug policy, or whether we even need a drug czar. Stay tuned. |
of thousands of people a year for petty marijuana offenses, subjecting them to an average 24-hour stay in the city's stinking jails before arraignment. Bratton is also an advocate of the "broken windows" model of policing, which in the mutated form it took in New York under his and Rudy Giuliani's leadership insists that the way to control serious crime is to control not-so-serious crime -- despite rumors of privately-held reformist views on Bratton's part, New York City's marijuana arrest rate increased by a whopping factor of ten, and have yet to decrease again.
POTTY! It's illegal to grow your own cannabis, but you CAN buy seeds and planting kit online..SUPER-strength cannabis seeds and the equipment to grow them are being OPENLY sold on the web— despite the fact it is ILLEGAL to grow the drug in Britain. There are NO plans to close the legal loophole even though the “skunk” is linked to severe mental illness and even murders. In the UK it is forbidden to grow cannabis but NOT to sell the seeds. |
"repeat marijuana possession offenders will face more severe sanctions, struth"
When marijuana is rescheduled from a Class C to a more serious Class B drug in Britain on January 26, repeat marijuana possession offenders will face more severe sanctions, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith announced Monday. Marijuana had been down-scheduled to Class C in 2004, but the Labor government ignored the advice of its drug policy panel, the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, and moved to reschedule it earlier this year. The move came against a background of sensational British tabloid press reports on marijuana-induced madness and more down-to-earth concerns about links between teen marijuana use and a slightly increased incidence of schizophrenia, especially with "skunk," the apparent British name for any high-quality marijuana. Although teen marijuana use has decreased since 2004, the British are in the throes of a full-blown reefer madness. Reports of "cannabis factories" being raided and hooligans blaming pot for their crimes are staples in the press. According to Home Secretary Smith, first-time pot possessors will continue to receive warnings, as is the practice with marijuana under Class B, but second-time offenders will be hit with a $138 fine and third-time offenders will be arrested. It's for your own good, she said. "While cannabis has always been illegal, reclassifying it to a Class B drug reinforces our message to everyone that it is harmful and should not be taken. Fewer people are taking cannabis, but it is crucial that this trend continues. I am extremely concerned about the use of stronger strains of cannabis, such as skunk, and the harm they can cause to mental health," she said. "This is the next step towards toughening up our enforcement response -- to ensure that repeat offenders know that we are serious about tackling the danger that the drug poses to individuals, and in turn communities," Smith continued. "We need to act now to protect future generations." The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) had supported the reclassification and welcomed the new penalties. "There is evidence of increasing harms to community safety associated with criminal behavior around the cultivation, distribution and the use of cannabis," said Tim Hollis, the ACPO Lead on Drugs. "While enforcement alone will not provide the total solution to a crime that is a global problem, this will act as a deterrent, along with better education about the impact of drugs. Where cannabis use is repeated or where there are aggravating circumstances locally, officers will take a harder line on enforcement and escalate their response accordingly. Every encounter at street level provides intelligence and helps us to act against the criminal gangs who seek to profit from cannabis production and distribution." But while the new penalties sound tough enough, there is a loophole, the London Times reported. According to the Times, warnings for a first possession offense will not be recorded on the national police computer, making it difficult for police to verify if someone was a first- or second-time offender, particularly if the person was caught by different police forces. Even with the apparent loophole, the move won no kudos from Danny Kushlick of the Transform Drug Policy Foundation. He told the Times the rescheduling of marijuana was little more than "populist posturing," adding, "Escalating penalties for possession only serve to further marginalize and criminalize millions of otherwise law-abiding people." Home Secretary Smith has admitted smoking pot herself as a university student. She did not say whether she should have been warned, fined, or arrested, nor did she say whether she would have benefitted from being busted for her offense. |
Video Review: "Prince of Pot: The US v. Marc Emery,"
Let me say right up front that Marc Emery sometimes pays me money to write articles for his magazine, Cannabis Culture, so I am not a completely disinterested observer. That said, "Prince of Pot" director Nick Wilson has done a superb job of explaining who Emery is, where he came from, and what he is all about -- and in tying Emery's trajectory to the larger issues of marijuana prohibition, the drug war in general, and Canadian acquiescence to US-style prohibitionist drug policies. I assume that anyone reading these words already knows who Marc Emery is: Canada's most vocal advocate of marijuana legalization, founder of the BC Marijuana Party, publisher of Cannabis Culture magazine, operator of POT-TV, and former proprietor of the Marc Emery Seed Company. Emery made lots of money with his seed company, and plowed much of it back into the marijuana legalization movement, not only in Canada, but also bankrolling activists in the US Marijuana Party south of the border and putting some loonies (Canadian nickname for their one-dollar coin) into various Global Marijuana Marches. For Emery, the seed company was merely a means to an end, a method of raising money to subvert marijuana prohibition, or, as he nicely put it, to overgrow the government. But all that came to a crashing halt three years ago, when Emery and two of his employees, Michelle Rainey and Greg Williams, were indicted by a federal grand jury in Seattle on marijuana trafficking charges for his seed sales. Now, the Vancouver 3, as they have come to be known, face up to life in prison in the US if and when they are extradited. The documentary, which is available from Journeyman Productions, opens with some vintage Emery, addressing the crowd at a pro-legalization, anti-extradition rally in Vancouver, the headquarters of his operation. "The DEA says I am responsible for 1.1 million pounds of pot," he said to cheers from the crowd. "I would be happy to believe that. That's the problem -- the DEA and I agree on the facts." "Prince of Pot" follows Emery's career from his beginnings as an Ontario bookstore owner who loathed stoners, but came to embrace their cause as he fought the Canadian government's censorship of "drug-related" magazines like High Times. Early on, Emery displayed the same qualities that propelled his meteoric rise to the heights of the pot legalization movement: a libertarian sensibility, "an ego that takes up 40% of his body weight," as one observer put it, an aggressive, abrasive personality, a penchant for the publicity stunt, and a mouth that never stops working. The documentary also shows that Emery's exhibitionism isn't limited to the sphere of the political. Early on, viewers are treated to a shot of Emery's backside as he gets out of bed, and another scene shows him naked on a Vancouver nude beach being anointed with cannabis oil by his young wife Jodie in an experiment to see whether it could have an impact on "any cancerous or pre-cancerous cells." (No word on how that turned out.) But if Marc Emery's ass is on the screen, it's also on the line, and this is where "Prince of Pot" really shines. The documentary makers interviewed the unrepentant US attorney in Seattle who indicted him and a Seattle DEA agent who justified the bust, and confronted DEA head Karen Tandy at a 2006 international DEA conference in Montreal. "Prince of Pot" hones in with precision accuracy on Tandy's post-bust press release where she bragged about how Emery's arrest was "a blow to the legalization movement." That press release may be Emery's best long-shot chance at avoiding extradition because it provides evidence that his prosecution was politically motivated. All of the feds, of course, deny that was the case, but, in tracing Emery's career, his succession of trivial arrests by Canadian authorities, and growing US frustration with Canada's seeming indifference to his activities, the documentarians make a strong case that Marc Emery was busted not because he sold seeds, but because he was a burr under the saddle of Washington. The documentary also features a strong cast of Canadian supporters, including former Vancouver Mayor Larry Campbell ("The drug czar is an idiot"), Vancouver East MP Libby Davies, Toronto attorney Alan Young, Ottawa attorney and criminal justice professor Eugene Oscapella ("Why should we emulate the failed drug policies of the United States?"). Vancouver activist David Malmo-Levine, shown smoking a foot-long joint at one point, makes a compelling observation, too: "They want to send him to prison for life," he exclaims, recounting the DEA's argument about the harm Emery has caused by promoting marijuana production. "What harm? Show me the bodies," he demands. "There has to be at least one body if they want to send him away for life. There has to be at least one person who suffered more than bronchitis." Washington state marijuana defense attorney Douglas Hiatt's brief appearance is also powerful and worth noting. Visibly angry at the injustice of the marijuana laws, Hiatt lashes out at prosecutors and the DEA. "If the DEA wants to talk about destroying families," he growls, "they can talk to me about the families they've destroyed for trying to use medical marijuana. The only thing I see ruining people's lives is the government's policies," Hiatt spits out. His righteous wrath is refreshing. At one point in the documentary, film-maker Wilson says that for him, "It's not about seeds, it's about sovereignty." From the Canadian perspective, he's right, of course, but it's really about marijuana prohibition, and Wilson does a wonderful job of sketching its history and ugly current reality. At the end, the documentary speculates about a possible deal for Emery to serve a shorter prison term in the US. That didn't happen. Neither did a proposed deal that would have seen charges dropped against Rainey and Williams and Emery serving a few years in a Canadian prison. Now, it's back to fighting extradition, and given that the decision to extradite is ultimately a political one made by the Justice Minister and given that the Canadian federal government is in bed with the US on drug policy, extradition remains the most likely outcome. In a touching scene, Emery and his wife argue over whether he will serve his cause by martyring himself, something he seems determined to do. I have personally counseled him otherwise. I suggested that he become the marijuana movement's Osama bin Laden. No, not that he blow up DEA headquarters, but that he escape to a hidden cave complex somewhere in the Canadian Rockies and bedevil his enemies with communiques from his hidden sanctuary. I, for one, would rather see Marc Emery figuratively flipping the bird to the US government than disappearing, like so many others have, into the American gulag. Check out this documentary. It's a good one. It'll give you goose bumps at some points, make you want to cry at some, and make you want to cheer at others. |
The Human Cost of Marijuana Prohibition, Part 2
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War on Marijuana Failing Despite Drug Czar's Happy Talk, New Reports Find
The White House Office on National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP -- the drug czar's office) has failed on its own terms when it comes to marijuana policy, according to a pair of reports examining government data by a noted marijuana researcher. It has not significantly reduced marijuana consumption despite constantly increasing annual arrest numbers and ongoing propaganda campaigns, while at the same time it twists and distorts figures on people in More broadly, there were 35.7 million annual illicit drug users in the United States in 2007, 14.4% of the population. Of all illicit drug users, 41% used only marijuana. Another 29% used marijuana and at least one other illicit drug, while 30% used other illicit drugs, but not marijuana. "The Bush Administration has failed to reduce or control marijuana use in the United States," Gettman concluded. "Marginal changes in marijuana and other drug use have been distorted to support false claims that incremental progress in reducing marijuana and other drug use has been achieved. Marijuana use is fundamentally the same as when the Bush Administration took office and illicit drug use overall has increased. Drug use data do not support Bush Administration claims that its policies have had a significant impact on illicit drug use in the United States." The stability -- not reduction -- in marijuana use comes despite at least 127 different anti-marijuana TV, radio, and print ads by ONDCP, in addition to at least 34 press releases focused mainly on marijuana and at least 50 reports from ONDCP or other government agencies on marijuana or anti-marijuana campaigns. For ONDCP head John Walters, slight reductions in teen marijuana use meant that "teens are getting the message about the harms of marijuana and are changing their behavior -- for the better, as he noted in a September 2007 press release. Still, he was forced to admit in the next breath that "youth abuse of prescription drugs remains a troubling concern." Similarly, in a July press release, Walters called for an "intervention" against adult marijuana use, and tried to define the pot experience as he did so. "Marijuana is the blindspot of drug policy," said Walters. "Baby Boomers have this perception that marijuana is about fun and freedom. It isn't. It's about dependency, disease, and dysfunction. As the data released today reveal, marijuana is a much bigger part of our Nation's addiction problem than most people realize. While teen marijuana use is down sharply [sic], adult use, with all the social, economic, and health consequences that go along with it, will not improve until we start being more honest with ourselves about the seriousness of this drug. Too many of us are in denial, and it is time for an intervention." "The government's own statistics demolish the White House drug czar's claims of success in his obsessive war on marijuana," said Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) in Washington, DC. "The most intense war on marijuana since 'Reefer Madness,' including record numbers of arrests every year since 2003, has wasted billions of dollars and produced nothing except pain and ruined lives." If ONDCP has failed to reduce marijuana use, it has been quite successful in driving up the number of people forced into drug treatment for marijuana use. The problem is that many of the people seeking treatment for "marijuana dependency" aren't dependent and don't need treatment. The percentage of admissions in which marijuana was the primary substance of abuse referred by the criminal justice system increased from 48% in 1992 to 58% in 2006. But less than half (45%) of admissions met the criteria for dependence established by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychological Association. "Increases in drug treatment admissions for marijuana, often cited by officials as evidence that marijuana is dangerously addictive, are driven by criminal justice policies rather than medical diagnosis," Gettman noted. "These policies increase public "In thousands of cases, taxpayers appear to be funding treatment for non-addicts whose only problem is that they got caught with marijuana," said Gettman. Based on the official data, Gettman also found that ONDCP had demonstrably failed to meet its 2002 two-year goal of a 10% reduction in drug use by teens and by adults or its five-year goal of a 25% reduction in drug use among those two groups. Teen drug use did decline, but by less than ONDCP goals. There was a 7% population reduction in current illegal drug use from 2002 to 2004, and a 16% reduction from 2002 to 2007. But among adults, while the population of current illegal drug users fell 1.5% from 2002 to 2004, it actually increased 4.8% from 2002 to 2007. That increase in adult use of illicit drugs was due to the use of opioid pain relievers, according to the national use survey. And so goes the war on America's most popular illicit drug. While the drug czar rails against pot, the kids and the adults are turning to pain pills. That's progress? |
costs for providing drug treatment services and reduce funds for and availability of treatment of more serious drug problems."Your tax dollars are paying for unnecessary drug treatment for marijuana users. Government programs will pay for drug treatment in 62% of admissions where marijuana is the primary drug of abuse, and 60% of marijuana treatment admissions referred by the criminal justice system.
Marijuana Less Harmful Than Alcohol or Tobacco, Says British Drug Think-Tank
Smoking marijuana is less harmful than smoking cigarettes or drinking alcohol, said the British think-thank the Beckley Foundation in a report announced Thursday. (The report is not online -- it will be published by Oxford University Press -- but see the foundation's Cannabis Commission web page for its outlines.) "Although cannabis can have a negative impact on health, including mental health, in terms of relative harms it is considerably less harmful than alcohol or tobacco," said the report. "Many of the harms associated with cannabis use are the result of prohibition itself, particularly the social harms arising from arrest and imprisonment," it said. The report comes as the British government is moving to reschedule marijuana from a Class C drug to a more heavily-punished Class B drug. British officials have expressed great concern over the potency of marijuana, especially "skunk," which is apparently their generic name for any high-potency, home-grown weed, and its links to mental health problems in some users. Rescheduling marijuana is the wrong way to go, said the foundation. "It is only through a regulated market that we can better protect young people from the ever more potent forms of dope," it said. Now, we will see if the British government pays any attention. So far, it has resolutely ignored repeated reports finding that marijuana should be a Class C drug, or even legalized and regulated. |
Drug Dogs Don't Have ESP, or What's Wrong with Judges Today?
This week I write an editorial that could be written almost any week. What's wrong with judges today? In Washington, a state where medical marijuana is legal, a judge decided that it isn't. That's technically not what happened, but for all intents and purposes it really is. Judge Anna Laurie convicted patient Robert Dalton for marijuana In Sarasota County, Florida, a judge threw away the exclusionary rule for no good reason. A drug dog with the sheriff's office, Zuul, comes up with false positives in vehicles he sniffs half of the time. Judge Charles Roberts ruled that was good enough to justify police searching a vehicle -- but for a very special reason. Judge Roberts was swayed by the state's argument that every time they didn't find drugs, someone in the car admitted to using or possessing drugs in the recent past. What?!?!?!?!? Along with the clear fishiness of the claim, what does past drug use, even recent, have to do with a drug dog's ability to tell whether drugs are in a car in the present? It would make more sense to argue that police were succeeding in profiling likely drug possessors, and that catching them with drugs actually in the car half of the time is a good enough percentage to justify a search. I would disagree with both those arguments -- partly because it would imply a 100% profiling success rate, which is not very likely, partly because I don't think 50% is good enough -- but it would make more sense than the argument actually used. In effect the police and prosecutors attributed a "sixth sense" to their drug dog, beyond the sense of smell, enabling the dog to sense which cars don't have drugs in them, but whose owners have used drugs. But dogs don't have extra-sensory perception -- at least the law does not consider them to -- and a sitting judge should be able to recognize when an argument so obviously doesn't make sense. So what is it that can cause an adult judge to play doctor, or to tacitly endorse a theory of canine "ESP"? Maybe it's that the war on drugs is spectacularly illogical in and of itself, but as judges they get immersed in it each day. To maintain a logical state of mind during drug cases would require judges to consciously acknowledge the corruption of the system they serve in, and the extent to which the law has turned them into perpetrators or at least enablers of injustice, a reality anyone might repress. And one thing gone wrong in the mind leads to another. I'm not sure if that is really what's wrong with judges today, but something is wrong for all of this to be happening. Enough of overreaching, enough of twisted logic or no logic, enough of corrupted standards and intellectual integrity tossed to the wind. Judges need to stand up for truth and reason, and do so now, or they abdicate their status as arbiters of morality and justice. Wearing a robe to work and carrying a gavel isn't enough. |
growing, because she didn't agree with Dalton's doctor's decision to recommend marijuana to him. Where did Judge Laurie go to medical school? How incredibly arrogant of her to play doctor. And how atrocious too -- Dalton, not a well man, could get up to six months in jail. As his attorney told the press, no patient in Washington is safe, if judges will behave that way.
Irish Judge Balks at Unquantified Drugged Driving Test
An Irish judge last Friday threw out drugged driving charges against a young driver, saying that a positive result for marijuana in his urine sample was not specific enough to allow him to conclude that the driver was indeed impaired. Judge Kevin Kilrane of the Ballyshannon District Court in Donegal also criticized the Road Safety Medical Bureau for failing to test for the level of drug intoxication in its drug tests. Peter Gillen That wasn't enough for Judge Kilrane to find Gillen guilty of drugged driving, which carries a harsh penalty of an automatic four-year loss of one's drivers' license. The mere presence of marijuana in Gillen's system did not show he was impaired, the judge said. "The defendant could have been stoned out of his mind or he might have had a trace element only," Kilrane said. "At best, all you have is suspicion, and suspicion is not enough." The evidence was "too thin" to convict he said, as he dismissed the charge. Kilrane scolded the Road Safety Medical Bureau for only testing for the presence of marijuana and not quantifying the amount present. "It is not the fault of the gardaí," he said. "It is the fault of the bureau that does not give a concentration of drugs." US states that have "zero tolerance" drugged driving laws operate on the same standard criticized by the Irish jurist. In such jurisdictions, the mere presence of marijuana or its metabolites is sufficient to garner a conviction, without the need to show actual impairment. |
was pulled over shortly after 4:00am for driving erratically, and Garda Officer Sean Flynn described him as "very shocked, unsteady, and very agitated" upon being stopped. Gillen tested negative on a breath test for alcohol, but Flynn arrested him on suspicion of drugged driving, and a urine sample Gillen provided soon after came up positive for marijuana.
LEAP Barred From Asian-American Cops Meeting in Virginia
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), the 10,000-strong organization of police, judges, prosecutors, DEA and FBI agents, and others calling for an end to drug prohibition, was declared persona non grata at the conference of the National Asian Peace Officers Association (NAPOA) in Crystal City, Virginia, on Tuesday. LEAP member Howard Wooldridge--best known as the guy in the cowboy hat with the "Cops Say Legalize Drugs" t-shirt--was forced to remove himself and his booth from the conference after federal agents there complained about his presence, LEAP said in a Wednesday press release. According to the press release: "Acting under pressure from unnamed federal officials, Reagan Fong, president of the NAPOA, insisted on the immediate removal of LEAP from the conference vendor roster. It appears that some of the event's other exhibitors took exception to the LEAP message and put pressure on the event organizer to expel LEAP from the event." Wooldridge reported that federal agency representatives, including DEA, Federal Air Marshals, and the Coast Guard had vendor booths at the conference. On Monday, Wooldridge visited the DEA booth and described the DEA agent there as "decidedly unhappy" with having to hear an opposing viewpoint. Although NAPOA head Fong has not yet responded to LEAP requests for clarification and rectification, LEAP believes he took the action at the request of the DEA agent. LEAP is asking for an apology and demanding that Fong reveal the identity of the agent who leaned on him. "We ask that Mr. Fong identify the individual, agency or group that lobbied for our eviction from the event," LEAP said. "If this was an independent effort then he or she was acting outside the scope of authority and should receive administrative punishment for unprofessional actions. If this action was sanctioned by upper level management then the managers need to explain their behavior in an open forum. If this was sanctioned official action by the US government it is a serious matter which requires serious and immediate attention." |
Why Hasn't Denver's Police Chief Been Fired for Violating Marijuana Laws?
This week saw an unusual and encouraging move taken by the Hawaii County Council (the "Big Island"). Advocates seeking the deprioritization of marijuana law enforcement, and the continued rejection by the county of federal marijuana eradication grants, tried but didn't quite manage to gather a sufficient number of signatures to get their initiative on the ballot this November. As it turned out, it was a sufficient number. The council, very uncharacteristically for such bodies, used its discretion to place the question on the ballot anyway. They thought it was important for people to have a chance to vote on this idea, and instead of protesting and resisting as governments have done in any number of places, they actually used their power to help it along. Shift Nevertheless, city police continue to invoke state law to justify their flouting of the law that the voters who pay their salaries passed, and the city continues to allow them to do it. I understand that legal technicalities mean that police who don't cooperate with the statute can't be arrested for it. But if Denver has democracy, why hasn't the police chief who bears guilt for this continuing offense at least been fired? Also this week, a panel required by the law -- the Marijuana Policy Review Panel, modeled after one that monitor's marijuana arrests in Seattle -- recommended that Denver police not do marijuana posession arrests during the Democratic National Convention coming up. Officials, not surprisingly given all that's preceded, have had discouraging words regarding their willingness to take the recommendation. But why should the recommendation even be necessary? It's the law, passed by the voters two times. Shame on them yet again. And it's not like the panel only has marijuana reformers on it. According to the authorizing legislation: "The Panel shall consist of one at-large member of the Denver City Council; two residents of the City of Denver, as selected by the petitioner committee that initiated this ordinance; one drug/alcohol abuse prevention counselor; one member of the Denver Metro Domestic Violence Fatality Review Committee who is not also a member of law enforcement; one representative of the Denver Police Department; three criminal defense attorneys, one of whom shall be a public defender; one representative of the Denver County District Attorney’s Office; and one representative of the Denver City Attorney’s Office." Time will tell whether Big Island voters take the same wise step that Denver's voters have. But unlike in Denver, Hawaii County's leaders appear to respect their constituents. That bodes well for the policy's prospects if it does get the voters go-ahead. Deprioritization of marijuana enforcement is only one small step toward undoing the hideously destructive war on drugs. But it's a step nonetheless. Unfortunately, Denver officialdom won't take that step willingly, despite law that now requires them to do so. Instead they will have to be dragged there kicking and screaming. Better that than letting the arrests go on, with people who never hurt anybody getting dragged off in handcuffs every day. |
eastward across an ocean and two mountain ranges, one sees a different display of the use, or abuse, of power. In Denver, voters have passed marijuana reform initiatives
'New Labour government played to a tabloid audience in setting drug policy'
The man who was once responsible for coordinating the British government's drug policy now says drug legalization would be preferable to the current prohibitionist-style approach embraced by successive British governments. Julian Critchley, former director of the UK Anti-Drugs Coordination Unit in the Cabinet Office, said that his views were shared by "the overwhelming majority" of professionals in the field, but that the New Labour government played to a tabloid audience in setting drug policy, instead looking at the evidence for what worked and what didn't. As director of the coordination unit, Critchley reported to then drug czar Keith Hellawell. The defection of such a high level player is yet another blow to Britain's prohibitionist drug policies, most recently scored as failing in a report from the UK Drug Policy Commission. It was in response to an online discussion of that report that Critchley took his stand. Critchley first announced his change of heart during a BBC web site discussion on drug policy (see comment #73), then, after the Transform Drug Policy Foundation's Steve Rolles dug up and blogged about Critchley's comments Wednesday, exciting a British media frenzy, Critchley elaborated on them in The Independent on Thursday. During his time with the anti-drug unit, "it became apparent to me that the available evidence pointed very clearly to the fact that enforcement and supply-side interventions were largely pointless. They have no significant, lasting impact on the availability, affordability or use of drugs," Critchley wrote on the BBC blog on July 30. "It seems apparent to me that wishing drug use away is folly," he continued. "The only sensible cause of action is to minimize the damage caused to society by individuals' drugs choices. What harms society is the illegality of drugs and all the costs associated with that. There is no doubt at all that the benefits to society of the fall in crime as a result of legalization would be dramatic," he argued. "The argument always put forward against this is that there would be a commensurate increase in drug use as a result of legalization. This, it seems to me, is a bogus point : tobacco is a legal drug, whose use is declining, and precisely because it is legal, its users are far more amenable to Government control, education programs and taxation than they would be, were it illegal. Studies suggest that the market is already almost saturated, and anyone who wishes to purchase the drug of their choice, anywhere in the UK, can already do so. The idea that many people are holding back solely because of a law which they know is already unenforceable is simply ridiculous." Hear, hear! But is anyone in the Gordon Brown government listening? Or are they busy trying to figure out what will sell with Daily Mail readers? |
Joplin, Missouri, Decrim Initiative in Final Signature-Gathering Push Organizers of a Joplin, Missouri, initiative that would decriminalize possession of up to 35 grams of marijuana are in a sprint to the wire in a last-minute bid to get the necessary number of signatures to get the measure on the November ballot. During the initial signature-gathering phase, canvassers gathered more than the required number of signatures, but many of them turned out not to be registered Joplin voters. Now the group has a 10-day window from August 5 until August 15 to come up with more valid signatures. Organized by Sensible Joplin, the initiative would amend a city ordinance to make simple possession a civil infraction with a maximum $250 fine. That would remove the threat of a criminal record and all its collateral consequences from marijuana smokers and would save Joplin law enforcement resources currently being wasted on low-level pot busts, organizers argue. To get on the ballot, the initiative needs 4,656 valid signatures, or roughly 15% of Joplin voters. Sensible Joplin originally turned in more than 5,600 signatures, but only 3,623 were valid. That means the group needs an additional 1,033 valid signatures in the next two weeks. Organizers said it could be done. "It's definitely a workable situation," Kelly Maddy, president of Sensible Joplin and Joplin NORML told the Joplin Globe this week. "We still feel really good that we have a fighting chance to get this thing on the ballot." |
'police cannot arrest passengers simply for being in a car that smells of marijuana'
The Washington Supreme Court ruled July 17 that police cannot arrest passengers simply for being in a car that smells of marijuana. The unanimous decision overturned a 29-year-old precedent allowing police to search or arrest passengers if they smelled pot near a car. The case, State v. Grande, began with a 2006 traffic stop in Skagit County. Driver Lacee Hurley and passenger Jeremy Grande were arrested by a state trooper during a traffic stop after he smelled pot coming from their car. The trooper searched the pair, finding a pipe and a small amount of pot on Grande. Both were charged with drug offenses. At a pretrial hearing, Grande's judge ruled there was no specific probable cause for his arrest and suppressed the evidence. But the Skagit County Superior Court overturned that ruling, citing a 1979 appellate court ruling saying the smell of pot smoke coming from a car was probable cause to arrest all the occupants. But the state Supreme Court said federal case law since 1979 has eroded the legal footing of that decision. Officers need additional evidence that each passenger broke the law, the court held. "Our cases have strongly and rightfully protected our constitution's protection of individual privacy. The protections... do not fade away or disappear within the confines of an automobile," Justice Charles Johnson wrote for the court. "We hold that the smell of marijuana in the general area where an individual is located is insufficient, without more, to support probable cause for arrest. Where no other evidence exists linking the passenger to any criminal activity, an arrest of the passenger on the suspicion of possession of illegal substances, and any subsequent searches, is invalid and an unconstitutional invasion of that individual's right to privacy," the opinion concluded. The ruling won quick praise from drug reformers and civil libertarians. "As a general statement, it's a step back from the direction that our government has been going as we're veering into a sort of surveillance society," Alison Holcomb of the American Civil Liberties Union's Washington chapter told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. "It strikes me as refreshing that the court has reaffirmed the values that our constitution calls for." Seattle Hempfest organizer Vivian McPeak told the newspaper it was not uncommon for people to be arrested, jailed, stigmatized, and have their property seized simply for being in a vehicle with someone carrying or smoking pot. "A lot of people have gone down because of these vehicle offenses," he said. "Being in a car used to be one of those wrong-place, wrong-time kind of situations." Grande's attorney, David Zuckerman, cheered the ruling, but added it was "unfortunate" it took so long to overturn previous state case law on drug-smell arrests. "I think it's led to an awful lot of innocent people getting handcuffed by the side of the road just because they happened to be in a car that smells of marijuana," Zuckerman said. |
Vested Interests of Prohibition part one: The Police
Drug prohibition has been a fact of life in the United States for roughly a century now. While it was ostensibly designed to protect American citizens from the dangers of drug use, it now has a momentum of its own, independent of that original goal, at which it has failed spectacularly. As the prohibitionist response to drug use and sales deepened over the decades, then intensified even more with the bipartisan drug war of the Reagan era, prohibition and its enforcement have created a constellation of groups, industries, and professions that have grown wealthy and powerful feeding at the drug war trough. By virtue of their dependence on the continuation of drug prohibition, such groups -- whether law enforcement, the prison-industrial complex, the drug treatment industry, the drug testing industry, the drug testing-evading industry, the legal profession, among others -- can be fairly said to have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. While the fact that such groups are, in one way or another, profiting from prohibition, does necessarily negate the sincerity of their positions, it does serve to call into question whether some among them continue to adhere to drug prohibition because they really believe in it, or merely because they gain from it. In what will be an occasional series of reports on "The Vested Interests of Prohibition," we will be examining just who profits, how, by how much, and how much influence they have on the political decision-making process. This week we begin with a group so obvious it sometimes vanishes into the background, as if it were just part of the way things are in this world. That is the American law enforcement establishment. That's right, the cops, the PO-lice. The Man makes a pretty penny off the drug war. How much? In an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times earlier this month, long-time drug war critic Orange County (California) Superior Court Judge James Gray put the figure at $69 billion a year worldwide for the past 40 years, for a total of $2.5 trillion spent on drug prohibition. In written testimony presented before a hearing of the Congressional Joint Economic Committee last month, University of Maryland drug policy analyst Peter Reuter, more conservatively put combined current state, federal, and local drug policy spending at $40 billion a year, with roughly 70-75% going for law enforcement. In either case, it's a whole lot of taxpayer money. And for what? Despite years of harsher and harsher drug law enforcement, despite drug arrests per year approaching the two million mark, despite imprisoning half a million Americans who didn't do anything to anybody, despite all the billions of dollars spent ostensibly to stop drug use, the US continues to be the world's leading junkie. That point was hit home yet again earlier this month when researchers examining World Health Organization data found the US had the planet's highest cannabis use rates (more than twice those of cannabis-friendly Holland) and the world's highest cocaine use rates. (See related feature story this issue.) By just about any measure, drug prohibition and drug law enforcement have failed at their stated goal: reducing drug use in America. Yet in general, American law enforcement has never met a drug law reform it liked, and never met a harsh new law it didn't. The current, almost hysterical, campaign around restoring the Justice Action Grants (JAG or Byrne grant) program cuts imposed by the Bush administration in a rare fit of fiscal responsibility is a case in point. The Byrne grant program, which primarily funds those scandal-plagued multi-jurisdictional anti-drug law enforcement task forces, has been criticized by everyone from the ACLU to the GAO as wasteful, ineffective, and ridden with abuses, yet the law enforcement community has mobilized a powerful lobbying offensive to restore those funds. Now, after yet another year where congressional Democrats, fearful of being seen as "soft on crime," scurried to smooth law enforcement's ruffled feathers, the Byrne grant program is set to receive $550 million next year, a huge $350 million increase over this year's reduced -- but not zeroed out -- levels. "The law enforcement lobby is enormously powerful," said Eric Sterling, former counsel to the House Judiciary Committee, who now heads the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation. "Law enforcement unions are extremely important in endorsements for state and local elections, especially in primary elections." When it comes to Washington, rank-and-file organizations like the Fraternal Order of Police are joined by a whole slew of national management organizations, such as the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the National Sheriff's Association, the National District Attorneys Association, and the National Narcotics Officers Associations Coalition. On occasion, as is the case with the campaign to restore the Byrne grants, groups like the National Association of County Officials (which includes sheriffs) lead the charge for law enforcement. "All of these groups are very powerful, and members of Congress are loath to be criticized by them or vote against them," said Sterling. "Without a doubt, the war on drugs creates a lot of jobs for law enforcement and various aspects of the war on drugs create huge profits for law enforcement," said Bill Piper, national affairs director and Capitol Hill lobbyist for the Drug Policy Alliance. "With those revenues, they can employ more police and continue to expand their turf. The law enforcement lobby is very strong and effective," said Piper. "No one wants to deny them what they want. The Democrats are terrified of them, and most Republicans, too. Everyone just wants to go back to their district and say they're tough on drugs. The law enforcement drug war lobby is a train that is very, very difficult to stop." Faced with those solemn line-ups of men in blue, American flags fluttering behind them, most politicians would rather comply with the demands of law enforcement than not, whether at the state, local, or federal level. And that's fine with police, who have become habituated to a steady infusion of drug war money. "Law enforcement at all levels of government has become dependent on the drug war, which in turn is predicated on drug prohibition," said former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper, who joined the anti-prohibitionist group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) shortly after his retirement. "They are addicted to the revenue streams that have become predictable and necessary for the day-to-day operations of departments all across the country," he continued. "State and local governments get anti-crime funding from the federal government, and there are line-items dedicated to things like those regional narcotics task forces," Stamper said. "It wasn't a whole lot of money at first, but over the years we are now talking billions of dollars." It isn't just departments that benefit from prosecuting the drug war, individual police officers can and do, too. "Both police departments and individual officers have a strong vested interest in maintaining prohibition," said Sterling as he related the story of his ride-along with Montgomery County, Maryland, police a few years ago. After cruising suburban malls and byways for a few hours one cold December night, Sterling and the officer he accompanied got a call that an officer needed back-up. The officer needing back-up was accompanied by Sterling's then assistant, Tyler Smith, who, when Sterling's car arrived, told him that his (Smith's) cop had pulled over nine cars and convinced four of their drivers to consent to drug searches. In the present case, the officer had scored. The three young men in the car he had pulled over consented to a search, and he found a pipe in the car and a few specks of marijuana in one young man's pocket. By now four different police cars were on the scene. "Now, all four officers are witnesses," Sterling noted. "That means every time there's a court proceeding, they go down to the courthouse and collect three hours overtime pay. They're almost always immediately excused, but they still get the pay. That's four cops getting paid for one cop's bust, so they have an enormous personal stake in backing up the one gung-ho cop who's out there trolling for busts. Collars for dollars is what they call it," Sterling related. "I think we need to take into account the fact that individual officers at all levels are character challenged and profit personally from prohibition," said Stamper. "It's also generally easy police work," Sterling noted. "You start in a position of strength and assertion, you're not arriving at a scene of conflict, you're not stopping a robbery or responding to a gun call; it's a relatively safe form of police activity. You get to notch an arrest, and that makes it look like you're being productive." And despite repeated police protestations to the contrary, enforcing the drug laws is just not that dangerous. Every year, the National Police Officers Memorial puts out a list of the officers who died in the line of duty. Every year, out of the one or two or three hundred killed, barely a handful died enforcing the drug laws. And those dead officers are all too often used by their peers as poster-children for increased drug law enforcement. But if law enforcement profits handsomely with taxpayer dollars at the state or federal level as it pursues the chimera of drug war success, it has another important prohibition-related revenue stream to tap into: asset forfeitures. Every Monday, the Wall Street Journal publishes official DEA legal notices of seizures as required by law. On the Monday of June 30, the legal notice consisted of 3 1/4 pages of tiny four-point type representing hundreds of seizures for that week alone. According to the US Justice Department, federal law enforcement agencies alone seized $1.6 billion -- mainly in cash -- last year alone. That's up three-fold from the $567 million seized in 2003. But that figure doesn't include hundreds of millions of dollars more the feds got as their share of seizures by states, nor does it include the unknown hundreds of millions of dollars more seized by state and local agencies and handled under state asset forfeiture laws. Last year, Texas agencies alone seized more than $125 million. "Revenue from forfeited assets represents a particularly unconscionable source of funds, particularly when police agencies set out to make busts to create additional funding for themselves," Stamper said. "Even if the money is going to agencies and not into the pockets of individual cops, you still develop that mentality that we're enforcing the law in order to make money. That's not how it's supposed to be," he said. "Unfortunately, there are many departments that see this as a useful way to deter drug use, even though there is no evidence to support that," said Sterling. "Still, they can justify taking private property as serving an important law enforcement purpose, but there are many accounts of departments that are almost entirely self-funded by the proceeds," he said. "If Byrne is cut back or zeroed out, and the police agency is fortunate enough to have an interstate highway to patrol, they are in a position to target vehicles and go fishing for dollars," he noted. "These revenue streams, whether it's Byrne grants or seized cash, create dependency in the departments that rely on them," said Stamper, "and that makes it less and less likely that the police in your community are going to be critical and analytical in questioning their ways of doing business. Does prohibition work, does it produce positive results? The answer is no and no. We have a situation where we are actually doing harm in the name of law enforcement, and it's deep harm, this notion that prohibition is workable. Drug law enforcement is funded at obscene levels, and this is money that could be used for things that do work, like drug abuse prevention and treatment," the ex-chief continued. "It's safe to say that American law enforcement has developed an addiction to the monies it gets from drug prohibition." |
Hashish Growers Fight Police in "Greece's Colombia" Three Greek police officers taking part in a raid on a hashish plantation were ambushed and shot by suspected growers armed with AK-47s Sunday night, leaving one officer in critical condition with a head wound. The attack took place in the village of Malades on the Greek island of Crete, about nine miles from Heraklion, the island's largest city. Sunday's shooting is the second serious attack by hash growers against police on the island in seven months. Last November, three police officers were shot and wounded when their convoy was headed to the village of Zoniana, just west of Heraklion. The Greek government responded with a massive police sweep and house-to-house searches. Police arrested 16 people in connection with the ambush and a series of bank robberies, but recovered few of the heavy weapons believed to have been used in that assault. Crete has a longstanding tradition of gun-ownership, and weapons remain readily available despite police efforts to crack down. Marijuana growing is rife in remote mountain villages on the island. Marijuana growers and dealers routinely take pot-shots at police helicopters or vehicles patrolling their area, prompting the Greek media to refer to the region as a "Greek Colombia" and a "state within a state," according to Agence France-Presse. Local officials in Crete are often accused of protecting growers and traffickers, the agency noted. As was the case after the Zoniana ambush, Greek police responded this week with another manhunt. Greek Police head Vassilis Tsiatouras ordered a contingent of police from Athens to the scene, including Greek SWAT teams, members of the criminology service, officers of the police drugs squad, and members of the homicide force. In all likelihood, their search will reach the same inconclusive results as before. |
"Coffee shops will be treated in the same manner as other catering businesses,"
A ban on tobacco smoking in public places in Holland has the country's famous marijuana coffee shops worried. Due to go intoeffect July 1, the ban does not apply to pot smoke, but because many European cannabis consumers mix tobacco into their joints, coffee house owners fear they are going to lose customers. After July 1, anyone smoking a Euro-style joint laced with tobacco in a coffee house will be violating the law. The Dutch coffee shop association lobbied hard to win an exemption, but to no avail. "Coffee shops will be treated in the same manner as other catering businesses," Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkanende, a foe of the coffee shops, said last week. "It would have been wrong to move towards a smoke-free catering industry and then make an exception for coffee shops. People would not have understood that." That's not going over well with tobacco and coffee shop industry representatives interviewed this week by London's The Independent. They decried the paradoxical situation the new law will create and warned that it could hurt business. That may already be happening. A Dutch industry publication cited by The Independent says the number of coffee shops for sale has jumped almost 25% because of the impending tobacco ban. "The new rule is nonsense," said Willem Panders, of the Dutch tobacco traders' union. "It will be almost impossible to enforce because how are you going to check if someone is smoking cannabis mixed with tobacco, or pure cannabis?" "In a cafe you come to drink something. In a restaurant you come to eat. But when you come to a coffee shop you come to smoke, so smoking has to be allowed in a coffee shop," argued Marc Jacobsen, a representative of the coffee shop owners association. The new rules are "absurd," said Sandy Lambrecht, manager of the Bulldog coffee shop on Amsterdam's Leidesplein. "You come to a coffee shop to smoke, after all -- it's ridiculous that we have to comply. The new rules are meant to protect employees like me, but the point is that we chose to work here." While in some countries, bar and club owners have responded to bans by creating glassed-off smoking sections or outdoor patio smoking areas, many Dutch coffee shops are crammed into tiny premises with little space indoors and no access to outdoor space. The Bulldog is among the coffee houses with room to accommodate tobacco smokers. "We're now having to build a new section in our coffee-shop with a glass partition and special air filters for those who choose to smoke non-pure cannabis," said Lambrecht. "It's a shame as it will change the very congenial ambience in here -- half of our customers will be shut off behind a glass wall. Our customers will grumble, that's for sure." For the Dutch Health Minister, Ab Klink, putting a crimp in coffee house business is just frosting on the anti-tobacco cake. "A positive side effect of the smoking ban," he said, "may be that consumers who spend the whole day hanging out in coffee shops will find other things to do." |
Scottish Parliament Think-Tank Calls for Prescription Heroin, A think-tank established by the Scottish parliament and tasked with looking at new approaches to drug policy has issued a report calling for radical changes in the way Scotland deals with the damage of drug and alcohol use. Parliament asked the think-tank, the Scottish Futures Forum, to determine how the country could cut the damage in half by 2025. The forum's report, Approaches to Drugs and Alcohol in Scotland: A Question of Architecture, landed like a stink-bomb in the middle of the ongoing Scottish debate over drug policy, which in recent months has been dominated by calls for a renewed "tough" approach to drug use and trafficking. It recommended that all substance use, including legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco, should be subsumed under a single policy dominated by a public health approach and was harshly critical of over-reliance on the criminal justice system to reduce the harms caused by substance use. "Historically, we have seen, in particular, drug use mainly as a justice issue," the report noted. "This is mistaken and alcohol and drugs should be seen predominantly as a health, lifestyle and social issue to be considered along with smoking, obesity and other lifestyle challenges. The current level of enforcement activity tackling low level use of illegal drugs may not be the most effective deployment of enforcement resources and is likely to fail in reducing drug and alcohol related damage by half by 2025. It should be recognized that sending people to prison for low-level alcohol and drug-related crime is unproductive and probably unsustainable." Instead of current policies, Scotland should shift to evidence-based policies emphasizing a public health approach, the forum said. Such policies would include consideration of safe injection sites to reduce the spread of infectious disease, prescribing of heroin to addicts, and the taxation and regulation of marijuana. More resources should go to prevention and treatment of substance abuse, as opposed to law enforcement, the forum said. The Scottish government was not pleased, and a spokesman ruled out any quick establishment of safe injection sites. "There are complex legal and ethical issues around consumption rooms that cannot be easily resolved," the spokesman said. As for prescribing heroin, Scotland will "wait and see" how pilot programs in England are working out, he said. Scottish Conservatives were appalled, with Tory leader Annabel Goldie calling safe injection sites "shooting galleries" and saying they and marijuana legalization were ideas out of the past. But Liberal Democrats were more open. Their spokeswoman, Margaret Smith, said: "Drugs misuse is a global problem and if other countries have developed new and radical solutions, then it is sensible to consider them for use in Scotland." |
Hawaii County Council Rejects "Green Harvest" Eradication Program By the narrowest of margins, the Aloha State's Big Island Hawaii County Council has rejected a state and federally funded marijuana eradication program known as "Green Harvest." The action came during a council meeting last week, when the council tied 4-4 on whether to continue to support the widely criticized program. The tie vote meant the motion to accept the funding failed. "Green Harvest" began in Hawaii three decades ago and has been controversial ever since. Many residents opposed the program, saying low-flying helicopters searching for pot fields disrupted rural life and invaded their privacy. Others argued that the program has done little to eradicate marijuana and even promoted the use of other, more dangerous drugs. By the 1990s, council members heeding public complaints began expressing reservations about the helicopter missions. In 2000, they rejected $265,000 in federal eradication funds, two-thirds of the program's money that year. But the following year, they once again accepted the full amount offered. But last week's vote means the council will say "no thanks" to $441,000 in state and federal funds for "Green Harvest." It also means the county will save the $53,000 from its own budget that would have been its share of the operation's financial burden. Last month, the council had narrowly approved "Green Harvest" on a 5-3 vote, but that vote had to be redone because the council failed to publish the legislation in local newspapers, as required by law. That provided the opportunity for Councilman Angel Pilago to change his vote and kill the program. "This will have long-term impacts," Pilago said. "When we institute programs we, the county government, need to look at if they are detrimental to people's rights and the health and safety of the community. That's what we do," he told the Associated Press after the vote. "It's about home rule," he said. "The county must be assertive and aggressive and not defer certain powers to the state and federal governments. We must not cede those powers." Pilago is running for mayor of Hawaii County, and his vote on "Green Harvest," as well as his support for a lowest law enforcement priority initiative currently underway there, could help him draw a contrast between himself and incumbent Mayor Harry Kim, who is a "Green Harvest" supporter. "My position is no secret," Kim told the AP. "I support eradication, as long as it's done in a way that is not harmful to people who should not be harmed, as far as noise and catchment systems and all those concerns. I'm against all drugs. Marijuana is an illegal drug." |
New Mexico's Medical Marijuana Law Is Working
After an exhausting seven-year struggle, New Mexico joined the ranks of the medical marijuana states last year. As of July 1, the New Mexico Medical Cannabis Program will be a year old, but while parts of the program are well underway -- patients are registering and obtaining ID cards -- the state law's innovative system of state-licensed production and distribution of medical marijuana is stalled in the regulatory process, with no end in sight anytime soon. Under the New Mexico law, the Lynn and Erin Compassionate Use Act, patients suffering from a narrowly circumscribed set of illnesses -- cancer, glaucoma, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, spinal cord damage with intractable plasticity, and HIV/AIDS -- can, with a doctor's recommendation and upon registration with the program, legally possess and use up to six ounces of marijuana, four mature plants, and three seedlings. The law also calls for a medical advisory board to determine whether other conditions should be added to the list. Some 147 patients have registered with the state as of Wednesday, said Melissa Milam, head of the Medical Cannabis Program. "We're the little program that could," she said. "We just keep plugging along." "The patients are really excited to get their ID cards and have some legal protections," agreed Reena Szczepanski, head for the Drug Policy Alliance New Mexico office, who has been intimately involved in the passage and implementation of the law. "The Department of Health and the Medical Cannabis Program are doing a great job of working with the patients, and it's been very thoughtfully implemented in terms of registration and the medical advisory board," she said. But the law also provides for designated caregivers to be able to grow for patients and for a system of state licensing of production and distribution. Although the law called for the Department of Health to promulgate regulations for production and distribution by last October 1, that hasn't happened yet. As a result, the provisions for caregivers and licensed production and distribution have not gone into effect. That means patients must either grow their own medicine or procure it on the black market. The Department of Health finally promulgated draft regulations in December and held a public hearing on them on January 14. Those draft rules provided for "five different kinds of licensed producers: a qualified patient, a caregiver, an association of persons, a private entity, or a state owned and/or operated facility." Based on the input it got in the hearing process, the department has been crafting a revised draft of the regulations ever since. "We're still working on that rule," said Deb Busemeyer, spokesperson for the Department of Health. "We held a public hearing and received written and oral comments, and we made some revisions, and it looks like we'll probably hold another public hearing to let people comment on our revisions." Busemeyer was vague on a timeline, offering only that she expects a hearing "some time this year" and resolutely declining to predict when the regulations on production and distribution would actually be implemented. But he department is committed to crafting the production and distribution regulations, Busemeyer said. "The governor was really clear -- this is an important program, and he wants us to figure out how to implement the law. We've been working on hard on this, we believe in this program, we're not dropping it by any means, but we want a good strong law with the right kind of rules, so we're taking our time," she said. Still, Busemeyer conceded that the delay was hard on patients. "They still have to get it the same way patients do in those other medical marijuana states," she said. "The biggest source of dissatisfaction among patients is where do you get it?" said Szczepanski. "It's the same situation as in so many other medical marijuana states. That's why the legislature was keen on the state-licensed distribution system; the intention was that New Mexico would be different." It may well turn out to be different, but the question is when. "I'm concerned that we don't have a date for when the rest of the regulations are coming out," said Szczepanski. "I don't have any reason to believe they won't implement it, but I'd like to know the time frame." Although Szczepanski bemoaned delays in drafting the regulations, she said she is glad the department is holding another public hearing. "My understanding is that they are working on significant changes to the regs, and we are pleased to have a formal opportunity to have input," she said. "If there are drastic changes from the first draft, it's better to have another hearing." While each of the five sorts of licensed producers and distributors envisioned in the first draft of the regulations has its advantages, there is a strong argument to be made for including a state-owned or -operated component, said Szczepanski. "We are a largely rural state and we have to be concerned about equality of access," she noted. "New Mexico has public health offices scattered around the state, and we have a Department of Agriculture at our state university that knows how to grow things. The possible downside to a single supplier is that if it's producing poor quality medicine or not delivering a range of products, what do you do?" The best solution would be to have a mix of licensees as envisioned in the first draft regulations, Szczepanski agued. "Having a variety of options is important for patients. If you're in a small town with a public health office and only using for a short time, that might work for you. But if you live in Albuquerque and have a chronic condition with specific health needs, you might want other options. We have to do what's best for the patients," she said. While Szczepanski chafed at the delays, she saw no sinister forces at work. "The feds pushed back against us when we were in the legislature, but I haven't heard any rumblings at all about any pressure from Washington," she said. "Our local opponents have also been very quiet. There's nothing for them to glom onto to; there have been no scandals or abuses or outrages. The program is working and the patients have their cards and are protected," she said. But they still need help growing their medicine while the Department of Health ponders the regulations. The department could take interim steps to ease their plight, said Szczepanski. "If the department is going to wait much longer to produce the production and distribution regulations, they need to start certifying caregivers immediately," she said. "The department says it doesn't have the authority to do that until the regs are published, and we're not looking for hasty action, but the caregiver regulations could be done now. There are already applications pending." |
"Once again we see mixed messages going out about drugs,"
Last week, the British government announced it was returning marijuana to Class B drug status, signaling an end to the four-year experiment that saw the herb downgraded to a less serious Class C drug. That meant marijuana sellers could theoretically face up to 14 years in prison. Under guidelines issued Monday by the Sentencing Guidelines Council, however, it appears that many pot sellers will face no more than low-level sanctions. For the first time in four years, the Sentencing Guidelines Council has promulgated a range of sentencing options for every offense that can be dealt with at a magistrate's court. Under the new guidelines, marijuana users who grow their own stash and occasionally provide marijuana to friends could be punished with only a fine or probation. Even those who supply larger amounts of marijuana or other drugs to share with a small circle of friends could receive probation, according to the guidelines. For small-scale growing or sales of marijuana, the top end punishment in magistrate's court under the guidelines is 12 weeks in custody, but that sentence would be imposed only if there were aggravating factors. Commercial cultivation or large-scale sales offenses would be handled in the more serious Crown Court, where stiffer penalties are applied. Opposition Conservatives were quick to pounce on the apparent contradiction between the government's announced hard line and the sentencing council's guidelines. "Once again we see mixed messages going out about drugs," said Tory justice affairs spokesman Nick Herbert in a Monday statement. "Just as the government finally admits that they got it wrong when they lowered the classification of cannabis, these guidelines would see most dealers receive weak and often poorly enforced community sentences." But despite the posturing of the Tories, the sentencing council's guidelines seem in line with the recommendations of the government's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, which opposed the reclassification. |
Global Marijuana Day Demonstrations Meet Repression in Handful of Cities
Saturday was the first Saturday in May, which for more than 30 years has been marked by marches and demonstrations in support of marijuana legalization. Known alternately as the Million Marijuana March, International Marijuana Day, or the Global Marijuana March, this year's commemoration saw marches or protests in more than 200 cities across the globe. Most went over without problems or controversy, whether large or small, Some 10,000 people marched and toked in Toronto without significant problems, and thousands more celebrated in Mexico City's Alameda Central. In New York City, hundreds of people braved soggy weather in the annual march. Even smaller protests, like those in Rapid City, South Dakota, and Raleigh, North Carolina, came off without a hitch.
But in a relative handful of locations, local authorities responded with repression against the exercise of free speech on marijuana law reform. In Brazil, marches in a number of cities were blocked by court orders; in Belgium, police arrested activists on questionable grounds; in Russia, authorities quashed demonstrations; and in Australia, heavy-handed law enforcement led to numerous arrests and the closing of landmark venues at Nimbin, but failed to dampen spirits. Here are some reports from the Global Marijuana March trouble spots: Brazil: According to reports compiled by StoptheDrugWar.org translator and Sao Paulo resident Martin Aranguri, judges in nine Brazilian cities -- São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, Brasília, Belo Horizonte, Cuiabá, Curitiba, João Pessoa, and Fortaleza -- blocked planned marches as "apology" for the crime of drug use. In four other Brazilian cities -- Vitória, Porto Alegre, Florianópolis, and Recife -- marches went on as planned. The Brazilian judges fell in line behind the arguments of officials like Sao Paulo prosecutor Marcelo Luiz Barone, who told CBN Radio, "If I encourage someone to use drugs, I am practicing a behavior as criminal as drug trafficking." Similarly, the Rio de Janeiro attorney general's office argued that "the situation offered as a pacific political demonstration camouflages an action for the diffusion of drug use, which is a crime". Brazilian activists didn't take the bans lying down. In São Paulo, under strong police presence, nearly 200 people gathered to protest the judicial gag on freedom of speech. They were told not to walk, otherwise they would be arrested. "What can't happen is a walk, if they stay put, there's no problem", said Major Wanderley Rodrigues of the São Paulo Military Police in in comments reported by the newspaper Folha de São Paulo on Sunday. That is exactly what people did: a "parada", which in Portuguese means a parade, but also "stopped." In all, authorities arrested 20 people across the country.  As Brazilian organizers complained, "the drug trade was never really debated by Brazilian society, which is what makes it possible for things to continue to be this way: see the murders committed by the BOPE (Special Police Operations Squad) on Rio's hills." Perhaps now, with the attention focused on the issue by the march bans, that will start to change.
Belgium: Despite Belgian laws allowing citizens to grow a single marijuana plant for personal use, police in Antwerp Saturday arrested four members of Trekt Uw Plant (Grow Your Plant) as they attempted to publicly plant a single marijuana seed each. According to Trekt Uw Plant member Joep Oomen, a Belgian citizen and coordinator of the European Coalition for Just and Effective Drug Policies (ENCOD), "Four members of Trekt Uw Plant were arrested on the accusation that they planted a cannabis seed. A little later some others were arrested because they were protesting against the initial arrests. Today thankfully, everyone is safe and free. After six hours of detention and interrogation, the marijuana march could continue and was visited by 150 people," Oomen wrote. "Books, T-shirts and flyers have all been confiscated, as well as 84 cannabis seeds, and four people were found with (each less than the officially tolerated 3 grams) cannabis on them," Oomen continued. "The police action seems to be politically motivated by the lord mayor of Antwerp, Patrick Janssens (also known as El Kapoen), who apparently ordered this directly without consulting the prosecutor nor the public order section of the Antwerp police force, who had initially given us permission to realize the event knowing perfectly well what we were going to do: plant a seed of one cannabis plant for each member of the Trekt Uw Plant association." Police manhandled the arrestees, and the arrests and mistreatment provoked a reaction from the crowd, Oomen reported. "The march, which was not intended as a blow in, or open air cannabis consumption room [or a smoke-in, as we would call it in the US], became a blow-in after the intervention of the police, as a natural consequence of the fact that people came together on that place and the police fear of for further escalation." (More Antwerp demo pictures can be found online here.) Russia: Heavy-handed authorities once again quashed Global Marijuana March activities, although not as brutally as they did last year, when several attendees were arrested and beaten by police. According to a report from the Moscow-based Legalize Cannabis League published by the British marijuana news agency Cannazine, activists sought to prevent a replay of last year by announcing there would be no march this year, only a meeting at the "Friendship of Nations" fountain at the All-Russia Exhibition Center. "As soon as the statement was published we received an aggressive reaction from the Federal Service of Drug Control (Russian DEA analog)," the activists reported. Russian authorities denounced the event as intolerable. "Legalization of cannabis as a drug is out of the question," said FSDC spokesman Alander Mikhailov in an interview with Russian media. "This theme mustn't be discussed at all. Such actions are the grossest breach of the peace and hooliganism. This is a spring provocation to which the bodies of internal affairs and psychiatrists should react." Russian police backed up their tough talk with tough action on Saturday, the activists reported: "When we arrived at the 'Friendship of Nations,' we found out that the fountain was blocked by forces of OMON and metal fences. Members of OMON and plain-clothes special police pulled from the crowd everybody who seemed suspicious to them no matter if it was a Rastafarian, a punk, an emo or just a long-haired guy. In a few minutes eight persons were arrested without any reasons. Some of them knew nothing about the action and came to the All-Russia Exhibition Centre just to have fun on the holiday. All the journalists who managed to film the arrests were forced to erase their videos and photos under threat of arrest and/or spoiling their cameras." A few minutes later, as it became apparent police were about to make more arrests, the author of this report tried to get away: "I was lucky to reach the exit from the All-Russia Exhibition Centre when the heel of a non-uniformed person stopped me. Two seconds of free-fall -- and I was lying on the ground. As I wasn't able to stand up myself the members of OMON began to beat me. I don't remember the moment I got to the military bus. The left side of my body was injured but the men in the bus denied me in any medical assistance. I could receive some help only in the police station." After some 15 activists were detained for two hours, they discovered why they had been arrested. "The reason for our detention was that the FSDC just wanted to speak to us about the harms of drug and any actions devoted to their legalization," the activist wrote. "It sounded very funny and absolutely illegal. After three hours at the police station, all of us were released from custody without any claims, fees or protocols and could continue the Cannabis Walk." But the effects of Saturday's events will linger. "As a result of this amiable drug education lesson with the representatives of law I now have a fracture of a clavicle and several less painful but much more effective injuries -- a good illustration of their methods of leading discussion as well as a good occasion for further legal struggle," the Russian activist wrote. Australia: The annual Mardi Grass festival in Nimbin took place on schedule for the 16th straight year, but not without a heavy police riot squad presence, numerous arrests, a preemptive April Fool's Day raid, and the preemptive closure of two Nimbin icons, the Hemp Museum and the Hemp Bar, on the suspicion that marijuana had been sold there in the past. Still, some 15,000 people showed up to enjoy themselves and support marijuana legalization. Police reported a total of 85 people either cautioned or charged with minor drug offenses at the festival, with an additional 42 people caught by drug-sniffing dogs outside the township. Of those, 38 received cautions. Police also cautioned "hundreds" of people for drinking in alcohol-free zones and arrested eight people for drunk driving after subjecting more than 2,500 people to random breath tests. Organizers complained that police crackdowns on pot had led to an increase in alcohol and hard drug use at the festival, but added that the law enforcement operation had only advanced the cause. "It was a great Mardi Grass regardless, and we want to thank the New South Wales Police for reinvigorating interest in cannabis law reform," Help End Marijuana Prohibition (HEMP) Embassy spokesman Michael Balderstone told the Echo News. "Oppressions bring out the true believers, and we heartily thank the hundreds of volunteers, both local and international, who missed much of the festival to create it for the rest of us." Recalcitrant local authorities may attempt to repress marijuana legalization activities, whether in Rio or Moscow, Antwerp or Nimbin. But in each instance where they have attempted to silence the cries for drug war justice, they seem only to have raised the profile of the issue. |
"We need public education, not public flagellation." Whatever politicians and the police might try to tell you, cannabis is not really a "controlled drug" in any meaningful use of the term "Controlled". Because it's an illegal drug there are no controls over the trade whatsoever and if you don't control the trade in a substance, you can't claim to control that substance. For example, in recent years there have been many claims of increased strength or potency (are they the same thing?) but there is scant information to to base such claims on because proper records of "street" cannabis based on statistically valid sampling methods have never been done. Of course, if cannabis were legal we would know the strength, not from surveys of what's on sale but because it could be properly regulated at the point of production. It would say how strong it was on the packet.
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Section 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms
In a ruling last Friday, the Canadian Supreme Court held that the use of drug-sniffing dogs in a random search of an Ontario school was unconstitutional. The decision should result in an end to random drug dog searches across the country -- except at borders and airports, where customs officials have free reign. The court held that the use of a drug-sniffing dog without particularized suspicion violated Section 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which governs what constitutes reasonable search and seizure.The case began in 2002, when police visited St. Patrick's High School in Sarnia, in the southwestern part of the province. Police confined students to their classrooms, while taking their backpacks to an empty gym. The dog alerted on one backpack, and one youth who was identified only by his initials was subsequently charged with possession of marijuana and psychedelic mushrooms. Police admitted they had no search warrant nor even a tip that drugs were present at the school. Instead, they said, they were responding to a long-standing open invitation from school officials. The trial judge in the case granted a motion to exclude the seized drugs as evidence and acquitted the youth. Prosecutors appealed, but the Ontario Court of Appeal in 2004 upheld the trial judge, saying the sniffing of backpacks by the drug dog amounted to "a warrantless, random search with the entire student body held in detention." Crown lawyers argued unsuccessfully that being sniffed by a drug dog does not constitute a search. Odors in the public air are not private, and a drug dog detecting contraband by smell should be viewed as similar to police officers detecting an odor in the air, they argued. That argument would have flown in the United States, where the Supreme Court has okayed the use of drug dogs in random searches, saying a drug dog sniff did not amount to a search. But it didn't fly in the Canadian courts. Now, police will not be able to conduct random searches with drug dogs in public places, such as churches, schools, and shopping malls. |
'pointless'... and that marijuana should just be legalized'
Hans van Duijn, head of the Dutch police union, told Radio Netherlands Wednesday that the struggle to arrest marijuana growers and providers was pointless and that marijuana should just be legalized. Under Dutch practice, the sale and consumption of small amounts of marijuana are illegal but tolerated, while police continue to seek to arrest the people who supply the coffee shops where the weed is sold, as well as people who are growing or selling outside the coffee house system. But attempting to arrest growers and suppliers detracts from police ability to deal with other, more serious, crime issues, van Duijn said. Unfortunately, the retiring union head added, Dutch politicians are reluctant to consider that possibility because of international pressure. They are "sticking their heads in the sand," he said. Van Duijn also called for letting hard-core drug addicts use drugs under supervision. He said that is the only effective way to fight crime. Meanwhile, the substitute lord mayor of Terneuzen, a city of 60,000 close to the Belgian border, has called for a pilot program for legal marijuana cultivation. Access to a legal supply of marijuana would solve the "backdoor problem" for the Dutch, wherein coffee shops can sell the weed, but no one can legally provide it for them. Substitute Lord Mayor Co Van Schaik told the Dutch news source PZC it was time for such a program. |
"the role of the reactionary British press in setting marijuana policy should be an object lesson" DrugWarChronicles April 11th 2008 |
With British Prime Minister Gordon Brown poised to reclassify marijuana as a more serious drug subject to stiffer penalties, the United Kingdom appears to be in the grip of an outbreak of Reefer Madness that would make Harry Anslinger blush. Fueled by the country's widely-read tabloid press and used by opposition Conservatives as a club with which to beat Brown's Labor government, the marijuana moral panic is a key element in what appears almost certain to be Brown's retreat from marijuana law reform. If, as is widely expected,
 Brown actually does order marijuana reclassified from Class C to Class B, which would mean a return to routine arrests for simple possession and an increase in penalties for trafficking, he will be ignoring the recommendation of the government's own drug policy-setting panel, the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), which has called for marijuana to remain Class C. Instead, Brown will be siding with law enforcement, concerned moms, and the mental health-drug treatment complex, all of whom are loudly howling that the drug is so dangerous it must be reclassified.
The British tabloid press, exemplified by the Daily Mail, has become a leading actor in the debate over reclassification, breathlessly reporting scary story after scary story about marijuana and its effects, particularly on youth. Here are just a handful of recent Daily Mail Reefer Madness headlines: "Son twisted by skunk knifed father 23 times," "How cannabis made me a monster," "Escaped prisoner killed man while high on skunk cannabis," "Boys on skunk butchered a grandmother," and "Teen who butchered two friends was addicted to skunk cannabis." In another article, "How my perfect son became crazed after smoking cannabis," the Mail consults an unhappy mother whose child ran into problems smoking weed. Last fall, the Mail was warning of "deadly skunk." While the Mail's preoccupation with skunk, a decades-old indica-sativa hybrid, is novel, it has also been hitting some more familiar themes. In an article headlined "Cannabis: A deadly habit as easy for children to pick up as a bag of crisps," after blaming marijuana for the problems of British youth culture and prohibition-related violence, the Mail breathlessly reports that skunk isn't your father's marijuana.
While such yellow journalism from the likes of the tabloid press is no surprise, even the venerable Times of London is feeling the effects of skunk fever. Under the headline Cannabis: 'just three drags on a skunk joint will induce paranoia', the Times managed to find and highlight a gentleman named Gerard who doesn't like that particularly variety of pot:
As Britain's pro-cannabis reform media outlet Cannazine noted, "As a result of Gerard's personal experience with cannabis, The Times published a story to Google News which will ultimately go on to form part of the over-all anti-cannabis diatribe we are all subjected to daily. Is there any wonder at all why the world has such a confused view of what is really a hugely important social issue within the UK?" Fortunately for British pot-smokers, smoking high-potency strains is not likely to turn them into mental patients or psycho-killers, said Dr. Mitch Earleywine -- and it may even be better for them than smoking low-potency weed. "The tacit assumption that increased potency translates into greater danger from the drug is untrue," he said. "In fact, marijuana with greater amounts of THC may is probably less hazardous than weaker cannabis. Stronger cannabis leads to smoking smaller amounts. Smoking smaller quantities could provide some protection against the health problems normally associated with inhaling smoke. Smokers may take smaller, shorter puffs when using more potent marijuana. Smoking less may decrease the amount of tars and noxious gases inhaled, limiting the risk for mouth, throat, and lung damage. Obviously, avoiding smoke completely would eliminate these problems," he said, suggesting that eating cannabis may be an alternative. While marijuana potency has increased over the years, claims of dramatic potency increases "suffered from exaggeration or misinformation," said Earleywine. The same could be said about claimed links between marijuana and schizophrenia, he suggested. "The obvious stuff, that pot doesn't cause schizophrenia but schizophrenics like pot, tends to apply here," he said. "The longitudinal studies often do a great job of assessing psychosis at the end of the period but a poor job of assessing symptoms at the beginning of the study. There are now about five longitudinal studies suggesting increases in 'psychotic disorders' or 'schizophrenic spectrum disorders' in folks who are heavy users of cannabis very early in life. There are also six studies to show more symptoms of schizo-typal personality disorder in cannabis users. Note that none of these are full-blown schizophrenia, the rare, disabling disorder that affects about 1% of the population," he said. "The best argument against this idea comes from work showing that schizophrenia affects 1% of the population in every country and across every era, regardless of how much cannabis was used at the time or up to ten years before," Earleywine added. For California court-certified cannabis cultivation expert Chris Conrad, the British obsession with skunk is somewhat mystifying. "Skunk is just another hybrid cannabis strain," he said. "It was developed by Dave Watson, and I believe it is 75% sativa and 25% indica with a strong aromatic flavor, hence the name. There is also 'Super Skunk' that adds more indica, which is what differentiates it from regular skunk. But the name and any alleged "skunk effect" are not related in any reality-based way, because that same effect is derived from all hybrid strains." While scoffing at the sensationalized claims of skunk's powers, Conrad pointed to one real, but minor, risk associating with using high-potency marijuana. "Individuals with low blood sugar, low blood pressure and a tendency toward fainting may pass out after smoking a few hits of very strong cannabis, usually indica strains grown indoors. That's it. The only danger seems to be bumping your head if you fall over." If the British press wanted to warn readers of real potential problems with high-potency marijuana, it would tell them to be careful around strong cannabis if they have low blood pressure and/or a history of fainting, said Conrad. "But instead of responsibly advising the public that certain individuals who are easily identified by their medical history should be careful to sit down when they smoke very strong cannabis -- the media instead uses this to fan fears, glamorize the drug war and sell newspapers without even bothering to give their readers the only useful information they need to know about the topic. Somebody should be fired for allowing them to publish lies like they have been doing. Shame on them." "We are in the middle of a full-blown Reefer Madness moral panic," said Steve Rolles of the Transform Drug Policy Foundation. "It is, of course, political -- opponents of the government are attacking it using the 2004 reclassification as a basis. Any bad things that happen involving cannabis can be blamed on the government, and any research that illustrates cannabis harms used to show how weak and irresponsible the government is. The government is on the verge of caving into the pressure, rather than arguing the case for the policy," he noted. And while the Daily Mail is a tabloid (a rough American equivalent would be the New York Post), it is influential, Rolles said. "It influences the government because it is read by a large number of floating voters who switched from Tory to Labor and will potentially switch back," he argued. The Daily Mail is a political actor in opposition to the Labor government, Rolles noted. "The Mail despises the government for various reasons -- mostly to do with its editor who is a reactionary-right moral authoritarian with a classic conservative view of a traditional Britain under attack from various wicked modern cultural forces." The Daily Mail's Reefer Madness reporting serves the political ends of the Conservatives, Rolles explained. "Their home affairs spokesman, David Davis, is like a drug war jack in the box, popping up at every opportunity and deploying one of a selection of set phrases linking all of the above; government being weak, sending out the wrong message, cannabis harms, reclassification being the cause of all the problems, and his solution -- ignore the ACMD, reclassify, and most absurdly; 'secure our borders'. It's fear mongering and sound-tough drug war idiocy on a quite epic scale." But that idiocy will most likely be sufficient to sway the Labor government into moving resolutely backwards on marijuana policy. For American readers in particular, for whom such reporting seems like something out of the 1930s, the role of the reactionary British press in setting marijuana policy should be an object lesson. |
"The Mail has a disproportional impact on politicians because of its reader demographic and correspondingly has a disproportional impact on the news agenda and general popular political discourse. The memes about cannabis harms -- particularly mental illness and young people, the potent new 'skunk', links to violent crime -- and the fact that reclassification, and by implication the government, are responsible for it all are very much perpetuated by the Mail. It's the old story about the Government 'sending out messages' to young people," he said.
NO DEAL: Ottawa Rejects Prince of Pot’s Plea Deal With U.S. This means Marc Emery will NOT be going to prison for the minimum 5-year term that has been previously reported. |
Israeli Anti-Drug Campaign Links Marijuana Use to Terrorism
American drug czar John Walters would be proud. Tearing a page from his "pot smoking supports terrorism" playbook, the Israeli Anti-Drug Authority this week launched a new campaign featuring Lebanese Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, in hopes of deterring Israelis from smoking marijuana. The campaign includes a poster showing Nasrallah emerging genie-like from a bong. Beneath the image, the text reads: "Hezbollah is clearly planning to flood Israel with narcotics. Narcotics pose a strategic threat to Israeli society. Whoever uses narcotics is giving a hand to the next terrorist attack."
The new campaign, with its linkage of marijuana and terrorism, comes just a week after senior Israeli security sources told Israeli media that Hezbollah, which fought Israel to a stand-off in the summer of 2006, is planning to flood the country with drugs in an effort to harm its citizens. That same day, Israeli police and IDF troops seized the largest shipment of heroin ever confiscated on the border with Lebanon, some 60 pounds. Lebanese hash has been a staple of the Israeli drug scene for decades, but no one is growing opium there. The heroin most likely came on a long journey from the valleys of Afghanistan. But if Israel is really concerned about local potheads putting money in Hezbollah's hands, it could solve that problem by allowing domestic, regulated cultivation of cannabis. |
Pot smokers will be able to continue to toke in peace in Holland
As of July 1, it will be illegal to light up a cigarette in restaurants, hotels, bars, and coffeeshops in Holland, but the smoking ban does not apply to joints constructed solely of marijuana. According to NIS News, Dutch Health Minister Ab Klink sent a letter to that effect to the Lower House Under the tobacco ban, smoking tobacco in bars and other public accommodations will be allowed only in closed off areas where no service is provided. But the Tobacco Act applies only to the smoking of products wholly or partially made of tobacco. Pot smokers who roll their joints without adding tobacco will be able to continue to toke in peace in Holland. But many Dutch and other European marijuana aficionados are accustomed to rolling their joints with tobacco. In his letter, Klink said he does not expect that marijuana smokers will switch en masse to non-tobacco-laced joints, but he will arrange a study to see whether the smoking habits of coffee shop customers change as a result of the new law. |
Wednesday.
California: Dr. Molly Fry Sentenced to Five Years
A federal judge in Sacramento sentenced Dr. Marion "Mollie" Fry and her companion, attorney Dale Schafer, to five years in federal prison for conspiring to grow and distribute marijuana on March 19. Fry, who used marijuana herself in connection with radical breast cancer surgery, and Schafer, who used it for back pain and a dangerous form of hemophilia, also provided marijuana to patients under California's Compassionate Use Act. But
 the Justice Department prosecuted the couple under the federal marijuana laws, leaving US District Judge Frank Damrell Jr. no choice but to impose the mandatory minimum five-year prison sentenced required under the law because they had more than 100 plants. "It is a sad day, a terrible day," Damrell said during sentencing, adding that if it were up to him, the punishment would have been less. But he also criticized Fry and Schafer for refusing to accept a plea bargain that could have left them free. "You had the opportunity to resolve this case, but you wanted to soldier on, knowing that your kid would be left behind," he told the couple. In a departure from normal practice on the federal bench and to the delight of supporters who packed the courtroom, Judge Damrell granted the pair bail, so they will remain free while their case is appealed. Damrell, who is also presiding over the Bryan Epis case and has granted him bail too, said the exceptional circumstances of the case create "serious issues that need to be decided by an appellate court." Among those, he noted, are Fry and Schafer's claim they were entrapped. |
Czech Republic to decriminalize the possession of up to 20 joints
The Czech Republic will decriminalize the possession of up to 20 joints, a gram of hashish, or up to three marijuana plants, according to a report from the Czech news site iDNES . Under Czech law, possession of "more than a small amount of drugs" is a criminal offense punishable by up to five years in prison. But Czechs are among the most prolific of European pot-smokers, and pressure has been mounting for years for an adjustment in the law. Now, the vague "more than a small amount" has been codified. Also included in the decrim measure is possession of up to a half-gram of methamphetamine. "Several European countries have similar rules. It is good to say somewhere that you will not face prosecution for a single hemp plant," Viktor Mravcík, head of the Czech National Focal Point for Drugs and Drug Addiction, told iDNES. This change in the Czech penal code will bring the law into line with prevailing practice. According to Czech police, who had issued their own limits on minor drug possession (which were ignored by the courts), only about one-fifth of people caught growing marijuana plants were prosecuted in 2006. The rest only paid fines. "We already have our own criteria on what we consider a crime," Bretislav Brejcha, an officer at the national anti-drug headquarters NPDC, told iDNES. The police limits "are quite similar to the new regulation, therefore we don't mind it at all," Brejcha added. |
Dutch government to review tolerance of Marijuana use.
The Dutch government will undertake a review of its 30-year-old policy of pragmatic tolerance of marijuana use and possession and regulated -- although still illegal -- marijuana sales, Dutch News reported last week. Christian Democratic Health Minister Ab Klink agreed to undertake the review at the behest of parliamentarians concerned that the easy availability of the weed is leading to increases in youth drug abuse. That same day, Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin also signaled that he wants to crack down on marijuana growing and criminalize the "grow shops" that provide seeds, lights, and other specialized growing equipment to marijuana cultivators. While the Dutch tolerate marijuana possession and sales, marijuana growing remains illegal and growers are subject to arrest. Although the Netherlands has become famous for its tolerant approach to soft drugs and other vices, such as prostitution, the conservative Christian Democratic government has been trying to reverse the situation. It has reduced the number of coffee shops that sell marijuana, particularly near schools, and it is considering various measures to limit "drug tourism," including the fingerprinting of foreign coffee house customers. This week, the city of Maastricht failed in a bid to relocate some of its coffee shops to areas on the edge of the city. Every day, around a thousand foreigners, mainly neighboring Germans and Belgians, visit the city to buy marijuana, and the city had hoped to reduce congestion in its center by moving some of the shops to "coffee corners" on the edge of town. But a Dutch judge ruled Tuesday that the city had not provided sufficient grounds for granting building permits for the new coffee shops. The ruling came after neighboring local councils complained that Maastricht's move would simply shift the problems of congestion and associated crime in their direction. Still, according to reports compiled by Expatica , an English-language Dutch news service, Maastricht remains undeterred. In response to the ruling, the mayor has already placed "portocabins" near the new locations. |
'same old same old'
President Bush and Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) head John Walters rolled out the 2008 US National Drug Control Strategy over the weekend. While the administration used the strategy to defend its policies and make some claims of victories in the war on drugs, critics called the strategy misguided, dishonest, and an exercise in propaganda. George Bush with drug czar Walters, December 2007 "Today, my administration is releasing our 2008 National Drug Control Strategy," President Bush said in his weekly Saturday radio address. "This report lays out the methods we are using to  combat drug abuse in America. And it highlights the hopeful progress we're making in the fight against addiction. Overall, an estimated 860,000 fewer young people in America are using drugs today than when we began these efforts."The administration drug strategy has three key elements, Bush said: disrupting supplies, reducing demand, and providing treatment. "Our drug control strategy will continue all three elements of this successful approach," he said. "It will also target a growing problem -- the abuse of prescription drugs by youth." The administration's drug strategy is working, claimed Bush and ONDCP, citing declines in youth marijuana, methamphetamine, and Ecstasy use. The strategy also pointed to short-term declines in cocaine and methamphetamine purity and availability, but acknowledged an increase in the misuse of prescription drugs. "Teen drug abuse is down sharply, and this will provide lasting benefits to our nation, since we know that most adults who get caught in addiction begin with use as teens," said Walters. "But there are still too many of our friends, our family members, our coworkers and our neighbors who are becoming lost in the maze of addiction. We need to find whatever ways we can to create a turning point in their lives -- a turning point that leads to recovery." "Prescription drugs provide tremendous benefits to our nation," said Walters, "but when misused or abused they can lead to addiction, and worse. We are working with leaders in Congress to modernize our laws to address the problem of 'rogue online pharmacies' which skirt around the safeguards of legitimate medical practice and prescriptions. Prescription drug abuse is an area of serious concern, and we are now focusing our nation's supply, demand, and prevention policies with the goal of seeing the same reductions that we have achieved for illegal 'street' drugs." But despite new emphases like that on prescription drugs, the 2008 strategy is largely more of the same old drug policies. It touts programs like the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign, random drug testing of students and workers, drug courts, and continued interdiction, eradication, and domestic law enforcement. And critics call even its claims of success into question. "This isn't a strategy, it's a grab bag," said Doug McVay, research analyst for Common Sense for Drug Policy . "Anything they can spin as positive, they do. All in all, it's mainly a cute little propaganda piece. And what it obscures is the sad fact that they have gone back to that same old two-to-one spending ratio that favors law enforcement over prevention and treatment." In an analysis by Appalachian State University criminal justice professor Matthew Robinson, coauthor of "Lies, Damned Lies, and Drug War Statistics: A Critical Analysis of Claims Made by the Office of National Drug Control Policy," Robinson dissects the strategy and finds it wanting on many grounds. Although teen marijuana and other illicit drug is indeed down during the Bush administration, prescription drug abuse is up, as the strategy acknowledges. That makes it difficult for the administration to honestly claim that teen drug use is down, Robinson suggested. "Since this is the same time during which youth use of various drugs fell, is it possible youth began using more non-medical pain relievers as a form of drug substitution? ONDCP provides no evidence to assess this possibility," Robinson noted. "In the 2008 Strategy, ONDCP still does not consider the possibility that young drug users have not really stopped using illicit drugs like LSD, Ecstasy or meth, but instead have merely switched to more readily available prescription drugs. If true, this would suggest drug replacement rather than successful prevention." Similarly, ONDCP's claim that drug use is down is the result of cherry-picking statistics, Robinson argued. While claiming success in reducing overall drug use, ONDCP only provides numbers on teen drug use -- not adult drug use. "It is dishonest of ONDCP to claim success in meeting its goals of reducing drug use by 10% and 25% over two and five years, respectively, when ONDCP is only assessing drug use trends for young people and not adults," Robinson pointed out. "How can we know if ONDCP's efforts work when we are only shown data on youth drug trends and not adult drug trends?" "ONDCP likes to play goofy with the math," said Allen St. Pierre, executive director of NORML . "NORML has been looking at these things for 30 years now, and they never achieve their stated goals. These guys have a $23 billion a year budget. If they were in corporate America, they would have been fired for incompetence." The strategy's claim that it is balancing treatment, prevention, and law enforcement is also belied by the hard numbers, Robinson wrote. Despite budgetary sleight of hand beginning in 2003 that makes the proportion of drug war spending devoted to treatment and prevention appear larger than it really is, the treatment and prevention share of the budget continues to decline, with law enforcement -- the drug war -- garnering 65.2% of the overall budget next year, up from 56% in 2003. "Unfortunately for ONDCP and our nation, research shows that the most effective and cost-effective drug reduction approaches are demand side approaches such as prevention and treatment," Robinson noted, adding that research has shown both treatment and prevention provide more bang for the buck than spending on law enforcement. "Most of the money in ONDCP's FY 2009 drug war budget is truly intended for 'fighting' the drug war, not for those efforts that are more cost-effective and efficacious -- preventing drug use and drug abuse and for healing drug abusers through treatment." For NORML's St. Pierre, the strategy's section on medical marijuana was especially offensive. Titled "The Medical Marijuana Movement: Manipulation Not Medicine," the boxed section had little to do with policy but much to do with politics. It attacked medical marijuana, suggesting that each California patient was receiving 41 joints a day, and cited San Diego police complaining about nuisances around dispensaries. "The section in there about medical marijuana is utterly gratuitous," said St. Pierre. "It doesn't have anything to do with the drug strategy; it is essentially just bullet talking points. And it is just downright silly. They try to say there are only 13,000 medical marijuana patients in California when we know the real number is probably ten times that. There are almost 19,000 patients in Oregon. It is utterly disingenuous of ONDCP to base its California numbers on a patient registry there, when there is no statewide registry." ONDCP might have talked to other police departments in California that are not hostile to medical marijuana, unlike the San Diego police, who cooperated with federal agents to raid dispensaries there, said St. Pierre. "Did they talk to police in San Francisco or Los Angeles or even Modesto?" he asked. "Again, it looks like they are cherry-picking." The drug strategy is 79 pages packed with figures, charts, and assertions. This article has only skimmed the surface of the claims and counterclaims around it. Readers who want to dig deeper are invited to read both the strategy and Robinson's analysis for more detail. In the meantime, Robinson donned his professor's cap and tried to come up with a letter grade for the drug czar's effort. "I might give them a D for effort because the report is well-documented and has lots of pretty graphs in it," said Robinson, "but overall, it's just dishonest, so I would have to give them an F," he concluded. To earn a passing grade, the drug strategy would have to be revamped, Robinson said. "It would need to clearly state the goals and budget of the drug war, and then it would report data on each of the goals, all the relevant data on drug use trends for every drug and age group, and data on availability, price, and purity for drug seizures. It would also present information on the cost of the drug war, including law enforcement and incarceration costs; deaths and illnesses associated with drugs, and data on crime and violence. It would have to be much more comprehensive, with all available data reported and long-term trend analyses," Robinson said. |
'Gangstas better watch out, Hippies better stock up' The Drug Czar has had enough of the multi-billion dollar marijuana market, so he's decided to try even harder to stop it: MEXICO CITY — Marijuana is now the biggest source of income for Mexico's drug  cartels and the U.S. is committed to cracking down harder on traffickers, U.S. drug czar John Walters said Thursday."We're trying to increase the force with which we're attacking this problem," Walters said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "This is a focus because of the overlooked importance marijuana has in the violence." Previously, you see, the Drug Czar was just trying really hard. But now he's gonna try really extra super 110% hard. It sounds like his strategy so far consists of issuing some sort of edict to prosecutors, probably by email, asking that they please put more people in prison for pot: He added that the U.S. is "looking at additional ways in which we can have a stronger prosecutorial response," including requests for more funding and personnel. So the Drug Czar, confronted with the failure of everything we've been doing for decades, will now request more funding to continue the same wasteful, destructive, redundant charade. Marijuana-related violence is one of the most unlikely and counterintuitive phenomena in human history, and yet it has become commonplace thanks to drug prohibition and its infinitely corrupting influence. The only remaining question is how many more declarations of redoubled drug war our nation's Drug Czars can pronounce before being pushed off their proverbial podium. |
Queensland Passes Tough New Drug Law
The parliament of Queensland last week passed a bill last week that will increase penalties for the possession, manufacture, or trafficking of Ecstasy (MDMA) and PMA (paramethoxyamphetamine or "Death") by rescheduling them as Schedule 1 drugs, the most serious classification under the Australian state's drug classification scheme. The bill also increases the penalties for a number of other drugs and precursors and has provisions to criminalize the possession of analogues to the drugs banned by the state. Under the new law, maximum penalties for the possession, manufacture, or sale of Ecstasy and PMA will increase from 20 to 25 years. The Drug Misuse Amendment Bill of 2007 will be a "serious deterrent" to drug abuse, said Queensland Attorney-General and Minister for Justice Kerry Shine. "We are determined to fight the increase in drug use in our society and these laws provide a serious deterrent to anyone thinking of becoming involved in the illegal drug trade," he said, according to Sydney Morning Herald . "New offences have been created for the supply and production of substances such as pseudoephedrine and for the possession of equipment used in the production of dangerous drugs such as pill presses," he said. Under the new law, possession of such items can garner a prison sentence of up to 15 years. "We have also introduced a new concept called 'analogue' which means that drugs not named in the Drugs Misuse Act, but which have a similar structure pharmacological effect, will attract the same penalties as drugs that are in it," Shine noted. While enforcement of the new drug laws will undoubtedly lead to more people doing more prison time in Queensland, the bill claimed that the cost of implementation will be "nil." It also addressed concerns about the liberty interests of Queensland residents, saying: "Whilst it could be said that these amendments will affect the rights and liberties of individuals by increasing penalties it should be noted that the penalties are maximum penalties, not mandatory penalties and will not have retrospective effect." |
Maximum penalties for the possession, manufacture, or sale of Valium, Sarapax, steroids, Rohypnol, and ephedrine will increase to 20 years imprisonment. Previously, the maximum penalty for their supply or trafficking was five years jail while possession carried a maximum of two years imprisonment.
"Drug War Draft"
Background Largely due to the unpopular war in Iraq, the U.S. Military is having trouble meeting its recruiting goals. To make up for the enlistment shortcomings, the Bush administration has loosened restrictions and is granting more so-called "character waivers" to allow more people with drug convictions to sign up. Meanwhile, President Bush and some of his friends in Congress support a law that has prevented 200,000 aspiring students from getting the financial aid they need to afford college just because they have drug convictions (most often for misdemeanor marijuana possession). Of course, young people should be able to serve our country in whatever way they think they best can - whether by going to college and becoming a doctor or a lawyer, or by enlisting in the armed services. But the "Drug War Draft" created by the Aid Elimination Penalty limits opportunities and forces countless young people out of school and into the military to fight a war they may not agree with. Eerily, the Pentagon-commissioned RAND report Recruiting Youth in the College Market ( PDF ) states: "The [armed] services might be able to significantly expand their pool of potential recruits by adopting policies that target youth who plan to go to college..." Take action now and tell Congress to overturn misguided Drug War policies that target youth! Visit our main campaign page on the HEA Aid Elimination Penalty for more info. FAST FACTS: * 200,000 students have been denied education opportunities since the Aid Elimination Penalty was added to the Higher Education Act in 1998. * 18 percent of Army recruits in Fiscal Year 2007 year needed waivers for past criminal behavior, according to the Military Times. * More than 350 prominent education, addiction recovery, civil rights, and religious organization have called on Congress to overturn the aid elimination penalty. * More information about the Aid Elimination Penalty can be found at http://www.ssdp.org/campaigns/hea/ NEWS HITS: Military Times - "Chu: Some lawmakers would need moral waiver" http://www.militarytimes.com/news/2007/10/military_chu_congressmarijuana_071010w/ Military Times - "More Army recruits have criminal past" http://www.militarytimes.com/news/2007/10/ap_armyrecruits_071010/ New York Times - Editorial: "Cutting College Aid, and Fostering Crime" http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/20/opinion/20wed4.html |
The US War On Drugs has reached a feverishly insane level Maine, USA - An Aroostook County man convicted on more than a dozen charges including drug smuggling, money laundering and Social Security fraud was sentenced Tuesday, January 22nd, to life in federal prison. Michael Pelletier, 56, of St. David also was ordered to repay the nearly $84,000 in Social Security payments he had received over a 30-year period and to forfeit the more than $4.8 million he earned from trafficking in marijuana. |
"Abuse of cannabis puts 500 a week in hospital"
"Abuse of cannabis puts 500 a week in hospital" - So claimed the Daily Telegraph on January 11th, as we would expect from the likes of The Telegraph of course, this was simply untrue. In a scathing but unpublished letter to the paper, Drugscope tried to set the facts right: "The front-page headline on Friday's Daily Telegraph ( Abuse of cannabis puts 500 a week in hospital, 11/01/08 ) misrepresents figures given by Dawn Primarolo, Minister of State for Public Health, in her response to a Parliamentary Question this week. We have ascertained that the figures supplied by the Minister do not relate to actual hospital admissions; the source of the figures, the National Drug Treatment Monitoring System (NDTMS) does not collect data on hospital admissions and this was evident in the Minister's response. The figures instead relate to those who have come forward to community-based drug treatment services seeking some form of help, advice or treatment relating to their use of cannabis. DrugScope understands that even if ‘treatment' consists of no more than an informal chat with a drug worker, this would still have been recorded in the statistics quoted by the Minister. Some of those clients may of course have gone on to receive treatment in hospital for conditions relating to their use of cannabis. However, figures provided to DrugScope by the Department of Health reveal that rather than 500 hospital admissions a week, the figure was nearer 14 per week (in 2006/07) for individuals with a primary diagnosis of mental health problems due to the use of cannabis. This is 14 admissions too many, but still way below the figure quoted by your correspondent. In addition, the number of hospital admissions in 2006/07 with this diagnosis (750) was lower than in 2005/06 (946) - and it should be noted that the same individual could have been admitted to hospital more than once in any one year. The Full Drugscope press release here |
German Police Use Grow Shop Customer Lists in Massive Marijuana Garden Busts
German police Monday unleashed a massive crackdown on marijuana growers, raiding more than 200 gardens in an effort that involved police forces from 16 regional states and some 1,500 police investigators. There is no word yet on the number of arrests. According to the Times of London , the trigger for the raids was the increasing popularity But also arousing the concern of German authorities was what they described as increasing interest among Dutch marijuana traders in growing outside the Netherlands, where the conservative national government has been trying to move the country away from its decades-long policy of pragmatic tolerance of the herb. "In the old days, hash farmers were almost always on the Dutch side of the border, but since the Netherlands got tougher we have been saddled with the problem," Ulrich Schulze of the Essen Customs and excise authority told the paper. Although marijuana remains illegal in Germany, German police typically treat it with some tolerance, although that varies from state to state. German police are generally stretched to thin to control marijuana grows, Schulze said, but they could resort to using helicopters to look for outdoor grows. But most German grows are indoors. |
All this over some pot plants
Chesapeake, Virginia, Police Detective Jarrod Shivers was killed by a bullet fired through a door as he attempted to break it down during a raid on a suspected marijuana grow operation on January 17. Shivers was a veteran narcotic detective and SWAT team member whose specialty was "breaching" doors during drug raids. The home's resident, Ryan Frederick, was arrested in the shooting. As Drug War Chronicle noted in a recent review of drug war-related law enforcement deaths last year , making drug arrests is not an extraordinarily risky endeavor -- only one officer died doing a drug raid last year, and the total number killed doing any drug enforcement was five. But there are risks, especially when police rely on dynamic forced entries, as appears to have been the case in Chesapeake. While police said they did a " knock and announce " before entering the home, one local press account said Shivers " died doing his specialty -- breaking down doors " -- when he was shot. Police had obtained a search warrant based on information from a confidential informant that "the marijuana was growing in portable shelters with a hydroponic system," according to local press reports . This week, police announced they had indeed seized marijuana and growing equipment, though without explaining why they waited five days to say so. Shivers was buried on Tuesday. The alleged shooter, Frederick, remains in jail. He is now charged with first degree murder.
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Emery to Accept Canadian Prison Time on US Charges
Marc Emery, Canada's most well-known marijuana activist, has reached a tentative plea bargain agreement with US federal prosecutors who charged him and two associates as drug dealers for selling marijuana seeds to customers in the US. Emery, Michelle Rainey, and Greg Williams had all faced a minimum Emery said the deal was contingent on the dropping of charges against Rainey and Williams. Assistant US Attorney Todd Greenberg in Seattle, where Emery was indicted in 2005, has so far declined to comment on the plea agreement. An extradition hearing is still set for Monday in Vancouver, he noted. Selling marijuana seeds is illegal under Canadian law, but seed shops flourish, and the last conviction was against Emery in 1998. He was fined $2,000. Since then, he ran a well-publicized seed business, paying more than $600,000 in Canadian income taxes on his business until he was shut down when arrested by Canadian authorities at the behest of the US in 2005. A flamboyant character who founded the BC Marijuana Party, Emery ran for elective office on numerous occasions, published Cannabis Culture magazine , and had his own Internet TV network, Pot TV . An avid critic of marijuana prohibition who thumbed his nose at US authorities, Emery was ultimately too juicy a target for American drug warriors to resist. Indeed, after his arrest in 2005, then DEA administrator Karen Tandy gloated about it -- and helped Emery make his case that his bust was politically motivated. "Today's DEA arrest of Marc Scott Emery, publisher of Cannabis Culture magazine, and the founder of a marijuana legalization group -- "Hundreds of thousands of dollars of Emery's illicit profits are known to have been channeled to marijuana legalization groups active in the United States and Canada. Drug legalization lobbyists now have one less pot of money to rely on." Despite Tandy's loose-lipped remarks, Greenberg told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer last week that it was merely another criminal investigation. "His politics and the marijuana legalization movement in general have nothing to do with the charges in this case or with why the charges were brought," Greenberg said. The apparent plea deal has sparked a considerable amount of angst in the Canadian press, with various columnists and editorialists chiding the Canadian government for not fighting to block Emery's extradition, not changing the country's marijuana seed selling laws to fit the reality of non-enforcement (or vice versa), and allowing the Americans to do their dirty work for them in getting rid of an irritating gadfly. While the plea deal is not yet official, one thing is certain: We have not heard the last of Marc Emery. |
is a significant blow not only to the marijuana trafficking trade in the US and Canada, but also the marijuana legalization movement," she said in a statement that caused consternation in the Seattle federal criminal justice establishment.
Ohio SWAT Team Kills Woman, Wounds Toddler in Drug Raid
In the latest example of overzealous policing gone fatally awry, a member of a Lima, Ohio, police SWAT team shot and killed a young mother and wounded the child she was holding in her arms during a raid aimed at the woman's boyfriend, who was alleged to be selling drugs from the residence. Tarika Wilson, 26, was killed last Friday in an upstairs bedroom, shot twice by Lima police Sgt. Joseph Chevalia. Her one-year-old son, Sincere, was also shot, as were two pit bulls at the house. The child lost his left index finger, but his injuries are not life-threatening. One of the pit bulls was killed. In the week since the incident, Lima police have failed to provide any details on what led up to the shooting, except to say they were executing a drug search warrant for Wilson's boyfriend, Anthony Terry. Terry was arrested at the scene and charged with possession of crack cocaine, which, along with marijuana, was found at the house. Lima police did, however, engage in some preemptive apologetics. "This is a terrible situation that resulted from a very dangerous situation that occurs when a high-risk search warrant is executed," Lima Police Chief George Garlock said. Garlock did not explain what made the search warrant "high-risk," nor did he explain why he sent a SWAT team to raid a home where officers knew children were present. In addition to her one-year-old, Wilson was the mother of five other children between 3 and 8 who lived at the house. Officers tossed at least one stun grenade before charging the residence, but that explosion took place outside because officers knew children were present. "Because of the possibility that we had children in there, they were not lobbed inside," Garlock said. Lima police have turned the investigation of the incident over to the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation because the shooting involved a Lima police officer. That investigation is expected to take several weeks. By mid-week, the FBI announced that it was joining the investigation. But angry family and community members are not waiting for answers. A crowd of more than 300 people marched with family members from a community center to the home where the killing took place to express their outrage and from there to the police station. "Remember that baby who is in a hospital and that woman laying on a slab being dissected because the Lima police overstepped their bounds," Brenda Johnson, executive director of the community center, told the crowd before the march began. Ms. Johnson said it was reckless for police to raid a home with so many children inside. "This time it was someone else's child," she said. "Next time it could be your child, your grandchild." According to next door neighbor and Wilson cousin Junior Cook, police "broke down the door and started shooting." He also denied that Terry sold drugs from the house. "No one ever came and knocked on that door or bought drugs there," Cook said. "Not all the police are bad. Some of them have children," Pastor Arnold Manley of Pilgrim Rest Baptist Church told the crowd. "But the majority of the ones in Lima are." Residents and community activists have vowed to march every Saturday until justice is done. On Monday, more than 200 of them showed up at a heated meeting with police officials and the city council to demand action. "The man who shot her, he's not a suspect? What if that was me?" shouted Quintel Wilson, the victim's brother. "Where would I be? Locked up. No bond! Victim is the word here." "We're going to see that justice is done," said Bishop Richard Cox, an official with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Councilman Tommy Pitts, chair of the council's safety services committee, said Lima police have long targeted blacks. "This comes as no surprise to me," he said about the shooting. That the resort to heavily-armed, paramilitarized SWAT teams to do routine drug search warrants can result in civilian fatalities should come as no surprise to anyone who follows their use. In 2006, Cato Institute analyst Radley Balko produced an authoritative report on the topic, Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America , that showed dozens of cases of people killed or brutalized during such raids. The raids continue despite little sign of public support for them. StoptheDrugWar.org (publisher of this newsletter) last October commissioned a Zogby poll that found that two-thirds oppose the use of SWAT-style teams in routine drug raids . Now, from Ohio, comes one more reason to oppose them. |
Congress Just Says No to Anti-Drug Propaganda It looks like Congress will be giving Drug Czar John Walters a big lump of coal for Christmas this year. A major congressional spending bill slashes funding for anti-drug advertising down to $60 million for next year, a 40% reduction from this year's $99 million. Try as he might to spin the failure of his advertising campaign, For those who've been paying attention, it comes as no surprise that Congress is defunding the Drug Czar's propaganda campaign. A report by the Government Accountability Office not only found that the ads are ineffective, but actually concluded that kids who saw them were slightly more likely to try drugs! Unfortunately, there's nothing you can do to make the Drug Czar understand that his ads are crap. Literally, the simple act of criticizing the ads actually makes him think they're working. Look what he said about this just last week : I find it somewhat amusing that pro-pot activists lobby every year to cut funding for this program - they must be worried that it's working too well! Really? So according to the Drug Czar, anyone who opposes the ads is a pro-pot activist who is afraid that they work too well. But in real life, the ad budget is getting torn to shreds by the U.S. Congress because they know the program sucks. |
Mr. Costa Meets the Opposition
The 2007 International Drug Policy Reform Conference in New Orleans kicked off with a bang Thursday as Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime , told a boisterous and sometimes combative audience of drug reformers that while a drug-free world is probably not attainable, it is almost certainly desirable, and that he would continue to work toward that goal. Antonio Maria Costa (courtesy DrugWarRant.com Costa, who as head of the UNODC is the leading cheerleader for the global drug prohibition regime and chief chider of governments UNODC believes are not making sufficient efforts in the war on drugs, is the highest placed drug war figure to ever address a drug reform conference. But while his attendance could mark the beginning of a broader dialog on global drug policy, at various points Thursday it seemed more like a dialog of the deaf. His remarks came on the opening morning of the three-day conference hosted by the Drug Policy Alliance , and co-hosted by Students for Sensible Drug Policy , the Marijuana Policy Project , Law Enforcement Against Prohibition , the American Civil Liberties Union , the Harm Reduction Coalition , and the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation . With more than a thousand attendees, the joint 2007 conference is the largest drug reform conference ever. "A drug-free world is not a slogan I use," Costa told the opening morning crowd. "It is an aspiration, not an operational target, much as one aspires to eliminate poverty or hunger or disease." While Costa flatly rejected drug legalization, he also suggested that drug law enforcement was not the ultimate "solution" to drug use and the drug trade. Even if all the drugs produced around the world this year could be eradicated, he said, they would be planted again next year -- and if farmers in Colombia or Afghanistan didn't want to plant them, farmers somewhere else would. "While law enforcement is necessary, it is not sufficient," he told the crowd. The answer, Costa argued, is not on the supply side but the demand side. "Lowering demand is the necessary condition to make drug policy realistic and sustainable," he said, adding that that could be achieved by "prevention, harm reduction, and treatment, combined with comprehensive health programs." Then the top global anti-drug bureaucrat took on the topic of legalization. "Some people say drug use is a personal choice and nobody else's business," he said, as the room erupted with sustained applause. The room quickly quieted, however, as Costa continued: "I have some problems with this. First, this is a health issue. Drug abuse is a disease affecting the brain, triggered by individual vulnerability," he suggested, as scattered hissing and booing broke out. "Drugs are not dangerous because they are illegal, they are illegal because they are dangerous," Costa bravely soldiered on, only to be met with a crescendo of boos. Costa also addressed the argument that drug prohibition creates violence, if only obliquely. "You say prohibition creates violence and crime by creating a lucrative black market, so legalize drugs to defeat organized crime. I agree with you, but this is not only an economic argument," he maintained. "Legalization will increase the damage done to individuals and society." For Costa, there are no drug users, only "addicts" who need help. "Why do we have these ideological debates about drug addiction?" he complained. "People aren't divided about treating tuberculosis or AIDS." Careful to repeatedly mention that he supported harm reduction as well as prevention and treatment, Costa called on the audience to join him as an "extremist of the center" in an effort to destroy demand for drugs. "We all want to help the farmers and the drug addicts and reduce the crime and violence," he said. "Let us build on this common ground to build a safer and healthier world." Costa's positions did not go unchallenged. Immediately following him at the podium was Kasia Malinowska-Sempruch, Director of the International Harm Reduction Development program at the Open Society Institute, who went through a litany of repression of drug users: ranging from Russia, where police often block them from gaining access to health care; to China, where police wait outside needle exchanges and arrest people on the way out; to Thailand, where authorities killed thousands of suspected drug users in 2003; to India, where throwing users in cages passes as drug treatment; and Kazakhstan, where female users are subjected to body searches and forced to engage in sex acts to get their seized drugs back. "When you look at the UNODC report on drug treatment in India," she noted, "those people in the cages are going to be counted. There are no standards for what is drug treatment; the numbers are self-reported." Costa took even more flak at a lunchtime question and answer session immediately following the presentation. As attendees eager to see the exchange packed the room past capacity, a cavalcade of drug policy reformers and scholars took aim at the UNODC head and his arguments. "This is a healthy opening," said UC Santa Cruz sociologist Craig Reinarman, who praised Costa for his fortitude in coming to the conference and his charm in making his case. "If you're wrong on most of the arguments, it helps if you're charming." Reinarman challenged Costa on his prescription to deal with drug users by subjecting them to drug treatment. "We agree on making treatment available to all who want it, but the vast majority of people who use illicit drugs do not become addicts who need treatment. The idea that you will treat people who don't have a disease flies in the face of everything I know about medicine," Reinarman said. He also attacked Costa's claim that reducing supply would reduce demand and the problems attendant with drug use. "The availability of drugs is not correlated with drug problems," he said, citing the case of the Netherlands. "It is surrounded by countries with far more restrictive prohibitionist policies that also have higher figures for use, addiction, overdose deaths, and the like. The notion that there is a correlation between repressive drug policies and use levels is just not borne out by the facts." Wealthy San Francisco libertarian John Gilmore reproved Costa for talking treatment while continuing to endorse repression of drug use. "We don't prosecute diabetics," he noted. Costa did not respond. "Most of what you said flew in the face of reality," chided Pat O'Hare, executive director of the International Harm Reduction Association , who took special umbrage at Costa's repeated call for tackling the problem through reducing demand. "We don't know how to reduce demand," he said bluntly. "I want regulation; right now, we have almost no control. I'm prepared to accept slightly more drug use, but a load less harm." Again, Costa failed to respond directly, although he grew increasingly testy. In response to a query about medical marijuana, he almost sneered: "I don't believe in buying joints," he said. "You don't need to lick mold to get penicillin," he said, eliciting groans and jeers from the crowd. To charges that the global prohibition regime he cheerleads is financing terrorism and political violence around the globe, Costa agreed that indeed groups like the FARC in Colombia and the Taliban in Afghanistan were profiting from the black market drug trade. "The best response is to quit buying that stuff," was the solution he proffered, a response that brought laughter and jeers. And with that, the UN's head drug-fighter was gone, off to catch a plane for New York as the conference attendees collectively took a deep breath and scratched their heads. Whether Costa was persuaded to see the errors of his ways remains to be seen, and, given his performance Thursday, that seems most unlikely. But the fact that the top global drug-fighter felt it necessary to enter the lion's den and take on the pride suggests that the movement is making progress. As that old agitator Mahatma Gandhi once said, "First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." |
John McCain's Awful Response to a Cop Who Wants to End the Drug War
When NH police officer and LEAP speaker Bradley Jardis confronted John McCain last week, demanding an explanation for the ongoing failure of the drug war, McCain's response was just unbelievable: McCain acknowledges that too many first time offenders are serving time, but he otherwise delivers a defense of the drug war that is as banal and incoherent as any such discussion could ever be. I won't bother to categorically refute the mountainous absurdities contained herein. Instead, I've transcribed McCain's marvelous distinction between drugs and alcohol, which should be etched in stone as a timeless embodiment of the rank idiocy that defines the modern war on drugs: Look, I've heard the comparison between drugs and alcohol. I think most experts would say that in moderation, one or two drinks of alcohol does not have an effect on one's judgment, mental acuity, or their physical abilities. I think most experts would say that the first ingestion of drugs leads to mind-altering and other experiences, other effects, and can lead over time to serious, serious problems.
This is what John McCain chose to lead with. This, for McCain, was the strong central point that explains why the drug war is necessary. And it is just so transparently stupid and wrong.* When the curtain is pulled back, perfect cluelessness is revealed to be the single unifying principle that binds the drug war philosophy together. That is why McCain nearly falls to pieces when confronted by someone with real firsthand experience waging the war he so clumsily defends. Most drug war supporters are not qualified to discuss this topic even briefly. If you ask them a smart question about the drug war, their answer will come out something like this: It's been suggested to me that it is actually necessary to explain that alcohol is a drug. Maybe it is, so here goes: It's a drug. It produces a powerful intoxicated state commonly referred to as "drunkenness," in which one's judgment can become impaired along with the ability to operate heavy machinery. John McCain ought to know that alcohol is a drug. I think he just wasn't prepared for the question and said the first thing that popped into his head. It is typical for defenders of the drug war to begin their argument by issuing wildly false generalizations.
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"three key myths" that drive criminal justice policy,
The United States, home of the world's largest prison population, both per capita and in real terms, could save $20 billion a year and cut that population in half by adopting a handful of systemic reforms, including decriminalizing drug possession, said a prestigious group of social scientists in a report released Monday. Noting that the US prison population had grown eightfold since 1970, steadily The report, Unlocking America was released by the JFA Institute, a Washington, DC, research organization that studies issues related to corrections and penal populations. It was authored by eight prominent criminologists and James Austin, president of JFA. The massive increase in imprisonment in the past four decades has had little impact on crime, but has imposed substantial costs on society -- and on offenders and their families, the report found. "Our contemporary laws and justice system practices exacerbate the crime problem, unnecessarily damage the lives of millions of people (and) waste tens of billions of dollars each year," it said. Referring to President Bush's pardon of disgraced former White House aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the report noted: Those people are the victims of what the authors described as "three key myths" that drive criminal justice policy: That there are "career criminals" who can be identified and imprisoned to reduce crime, that tougher penalties are needed to protect the public from "dangerous criminals," and that tougher penalties will deter criminals. The authors devote extensive space to debunking those policy-driving misconceptions. "The system is almost feeding on itself now. It takes years and years and years to get out of this system and we do not see any positive impact on the crime rates," Austin, a coauthor of the report, told a news conference. A more humane, less expensive, and greatly reduced prison system could be achieved by enacting four fundamental reforms, the report concluded. They are:
Regarding decriminalizing drug offenses, the report noted: "In recent years, behaviors have been criminalized that are not dangerous and pose little if any threat to others. A The drug war is futile and has nasty collateral consequences, the report concluded. "Every time a dealer is taken out of Better than a prison-filling policy of prohibition, would be a regulatory approach to drugs, the report said. "Regulatory approaches, such as are now used for drugs that are not illegal should be given serious consideration. The success of recent referenda in several states allowing medical use of marijuana suggests that the public opinion may be changing." Public opinion would change even faster if more people read this report. It is a scathing indictment of a failed and inhumane set of criminal justice and drug policies. $20 billion a year in savings from adopting the suggested reforms is easily quantifiable; the reduction in human suffering by reducing the prison population in half, while equally significant, is not so easily measured. |
increasing whether crimes rates were going up or down, the report called US prisons a "self-fueling system." 
"President Bush was right. A prison sentence for Lewis "Scooter" Libby was excessive -- so too was the long three year probation term. But while he was at it, President Bush should have commuted the sentences of hundreds of thousands of Americans who each year have also received prison sentences for crimes that pose little if any danger or harm to our society." 
large group of people are currently serving time for behaviors that have been criminalized to protect people from themselves. Their offenses involved the consent of all immediate parties to the transaction. Common examples in American history have included abortion, gambling, illicit sexual conduct that does not involve coercion (e.g., prostitution and, until recently, homosexual activity), and the sale and possession of recreational drugs. According to the US Department of Justice, approximately 30-40% of all current prison admissions involve crimes that have no direct or obvious victim other than the perpetrator. The drug category constitutes the largest offense category, with 31% of all prison admissions resulting from such crimes."
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Khwaja Gholak , Afghanistan: Amid the multiplying frustrations of the fight against narcotics in Afghanistan, the northern province of Balkh has been hailed as a rare and glowing success. |
with 12 others, and the provincial government was promised a reward of millions of dollars in development aid.
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| They Know More Than They're Willing to Admit About the Drug War
There was a notable moment, back in the early '90s, that helped inspire me to really get involved in the legalization cause. Early in her brief tenure as US Surgeon General, Dr. Joycelyn Elders asked a question about drug legalization at a public event, responding that while she wasn't sure what the ramifications of legalization would be, she believed that legalization would reduce crime, and that it should be studied. The reaction was fast and furious, and (predictably) mostly negative. Elders later described it as "the day it rained on me." Still, to me it seemed that the issue had come alive. It was a little surreal to see a member of the president's cabinet say such a thing. The debate was stimulated, even if on the political level one might take an adverse lesson. Another thing Elders said later was that more people agreed with her than were willing to admit it publicly. Lamar Alexander, a Republican from Tennessee, made some interesting comments on the floor of the Senate this week. The subject of the debate was a bill to combat illegal logging, but drugs came up by analogy. I've posted the remarks in our blog already, but they bear repeating: "The Senator from Oregon [Ron Wyden (D)] made a point that is maybe the central point here when he compared our efforts to stop illegal logging to our efforts to stop the bringing of illegal drugs into the United States. We all know the tremendous amount of effort we go to, for example, to keep cocaine out of the United States. We send millions of dollars to Colombia and to other countries and we try to stop that. But the real problem we have is we are a big, rich country, and there is a big demand for cocaine here. So no matter what we do in the other countries, the cocaine still keeps coming in, and the same with other illegal drugs. Here we have a chance to make a much bigger difference than we can with illegal drugs. We still are creating the demand problem. This is a country that accounts for 25 percent of all the wealth in the world. It is a country that perhaps buys a huge volume of illegal timber from around the world. Well, we can stop that. This is not a drug addiction, this is a business practice, and it is a practice we can stop according to the laws of this country. When we stop it, we will make an enormous difference for our country and for the other countries." Established that at least one Republican US Senator understands that the war on drugs has no chance of ever succeeding. "[T]here is a big demand for cocaine here. So no matter what we do in the other countries, the cocaine still keeps coming in." But the reason he offers for the demand is suggestive at least that attempts to eliminate demand can have limited impact at best: "[W]e are a big, rich country." People buy drugs, or some people do, because they can afford them. That's not likely to change anytime soon. And ending the poverty that plagues parts of our population -- the usual solution offered from the liberal end of the spectrum -- isn't going to end the drug problem either. Because more wealth to an extent means more drug use too, though poverty can increase the harm the drugs end up causing. Alexander didn't directly say that drugs are here to stay, but he did say that "[h]ere we have a chance to make a much bigger difference than we can with illegal drugs." And to me that statement implies that there are limits to what we can do with the demand as well. So what is the logical next link in this chain of logic? If we can't stop drug use, the question then becomes, how best do we live with it? As Dr. Elders pointed out 14 years ago this month, prohibition of drugs causes crime. To me an approach to living with drug use that causes crime makes no sense. But while I know that many US leaders understand this (based on what Elders has reported about the aftermath of the event), they seem to mostly be unwilling to say so out loud. That needs to change -- leadership doesn't always mean saying what's popular. A discussion of drugs and crime and violence that does not address the consequences of prohibition is an incomplete conversation. We who understand this need to stand up and demand a serious debate. The loss each day to our safety, our liberties, to the lives of hapless individuals whom the drug war has hit the hardest, is just too great to allow a continued whitewash. |
Senators came up to her at airports, she recounted, saying she was right and they agreed, but politically they couldn't say so. At least one politician defended her on the basis of it being important to talk about an issue where our policy is clearly not succeeding -- John Tierney from Massachusetts, if I remember correctly -- though he didn't stake out a pro-legalization position himself. But Tierney was in the rare minority. For the most part, the establishment rained on Elders -- possibly including people who knew better, and many who knew better failed to speak up at all.
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A trainee chef charged with producing cannabis has had his court case adjourned. |
Daniel Nicholson, of Carew Road, was caught out after police attended the area for a different matter and smelt the drug. They spoke to the 20-year-old and told him the property would be searched. In the wardrobe they found two plants and a strip light. The defendant was arrested and told police he had found some seeds in a bag of cannabis he had bought and decided to see if he could grow them. He admitted that some herbal cannabis found in his possession was his. He pleaded guilty to producing cannabis and possession of cannabis. Christos Christou, defending, said, "In relation to the herbal cannabis, that was for his own personal use." The case was adjourned until November 22 for pre-sentence reports. Nicholson received unconditional bail.
| Governments Are Violently Destroying Lives in the Drug War
Newsflash: California authorities are taking children away from their families because of their parents' medical marijuana. Newsflash: The US federal government imprisons thousands of people for decades over minute quantities of crack cocaine. Newsflash: Indonesia's Supreme Court says it's okay to kill drug offenders. Newsflash: Anti-drug law enforcement crackdowns are driving people away from health services and causing more of them to get Hepatitis or AIDS. And much much more. Every day, more than 4,000 drug arrests are made across the United States, their targets often getting ticketed, fined, jailed, prosecuted, sentenced, incarcerated. Arrestees can lose their cars, their homes, their livelihoods, their families, their reputations; suspects or bystanders can get shot or traumatized by no-knock raiders. Yet the drugs continue to flow and it is all for nought. The more typical newsflash in the mainstream media is when someone was arrested or a drug operation was raided or some drugs were seized. But that's not really news, it's just the background of futile activity taking place all the time. When the dust settles, another family is reeling, another mound of taxpayer money is squandered, another Constitutional right has been sabotaged and undermined. Newsflash: It's wrong to attack millions of people in the ways the drug war does, and the drug war doesn't work. Prohibition needs to end. |
| A retired lecturer who moved to the seaside in search of "the good life" was kicked to death by a thug who started pestering her in the street.
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| Why We Are Fighting to End the War on Drugs
On the frequent occasions when I am asked why I oppose the drug laws, I face a quandary -- where do I start? There are so many important reasons:
And that isn't even all of it, and it isn't a pretty picture. And so we oppose the drug laws -- so we fight for an end to prohibition, for legalization -- because of the harm and the injustice that prohibition is inflicting on so many different people in so many ways. And because we understand that freedom is not just the right to control our bodies and what we put in them, even though that ought to be enough. Because freedom is the right for all people on this earth, not having infringed the freedom of others, to walk down the street, to go about their business, to live as they choose not confined to a prison cell just because their personal behavior was not officially approved. And so for so many reasons that I almost don't know where to start -- to save the lives of the addicted, so patients can be treated, for privacy, for peace, for safety, to restore ethics to government, to end the injustices large and small -- for all these reasons and more, we seek to end drug prohibition. Our views are correct, our cause is just, and we fight for it to make this a better world for all. |
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Author Nobara Takemoto was arrested in Shinjuku Ward for illegally possessing |
cannabis, police said.
Prohibition has failed to control the use and domestic production of marijuana
News2020.com August 3rd 2007 10. Prohibition has failed to control the use and domestic production of marijuana. The government has tried to use criminal penalties to prevent marijuana use for over 75 years and yet: marijuana is now used by over 25 million people annually, cannabis is currently the largest cash crop in the United States, and marijuana is grown all over the planet. Claims that marijuana prohibition is a successful policy are ludicrous and unsupported by the facts, and the idea that marijuana will soon be eliminated from America and the rest of the world is a ridiculous fantasy. 9. Arrests for marijuana possession disproportionately affect blacks and Hispanics and reinforce the perception that law enforcement is biased and prejudiced against minorities. African-Americans account for approximately 13% of the population of the United States and about 13.5% of annual marijuana users, however, blacks also account for 26% of all marijuana arrests. Recent studies have demonstrated that blacks and Hispanics account for the majority of marijuana possession arrests in New York City, primarily for smoking marijuana in public view. Law enforcement has failed to demonstrate that marijuana laws can be enforced fairly without regard to race; far too often minorities are arrested for marijuana use while white/non-Hispanic Americans face a much lower risk of arrest. 8. A regulated, legal market in marijuana would reduce marijuana sales and use among teenagers, as well as reduce their exposure to other drugs in the illegal market. The illegality of marijuana makes it more valuable than if it were legal, providing opportunities for teenagers to make easy money selling it to their friends. If the excessive profits for marijuana sales were ended through legalization there would be less incentive for teens to sell it to one another. Teenage use of alcohol and tobacco remain serious public health problems even though those drugs are legal for adults, however, the availability of alcohol and tobacco is not made even more widespread by providing kids with economic incentives to sell either one to their friends and peers. 7. Legalized marijuana would reduce the flow of money from the American economy to international criminal gangs. Marijuana's illegality makes foreign cultivation and smuggling to the United States extremely profitable, sending billions of dollars overseas in an underground economy while diverting funds from productive economic development. 6. Marijuana's legalization would simplify the development of hemp as a valuable and diverse agricultural crop in the United States, including its development as a new bio-fuel to reduce carbon emissions. Canada and European countries have managed to support legal hemp cultivation without legalizing marijuana, but in the United States opposition to legal marijuana remains the biggest obstacle to development of industrial hemp as a valuable agricultural commodity. As US energy policy continues to embrace and promote the development of bio-fuels as an alternative to oil dependency and a way to reduce carbon emissions, it is all the more important to develop industrial hemp as a bio-fuel source - especially since use of hemp stalks as a fuel source will not increase demand and prices for food, such as corn. Legalization of marijuana will greatly simplify the regulatory burden on prospective hemp cultivation in the United States. 5. Prohibition is based on lies and disinformation. Justification of marijuana's illegality increasingly requires distortions and selective uses of the scientific record, causing harm to the credibility of teachers, law enforcement officials, and scientists throughout the country. The dangers of marijuana use have been exaggerated for almost a century and the modern scientific record does not support the reefer madness predictions of the past and present. Many claims of marijuana's danger are based on old 20th century prejudices that originated in a time when science was uncertain how marijuana produced its characteristic effects. Since the cannabinoid receptor system was discovered in the late 1980s these hysterical concerns about marijuana's dangerousness have not been confirmed with modern research. Everyone agrees that marijuana, or any other drug use such as alcohol or tobacco use, is not for children. Nonetheless, adults have demonstrated over the last several decades that marijuana can be used moderately without harmful impacts to the individual or society. 4. Marijuana is not a lethal drug and is safer than alcohol. It is established scientific fact that marijuana is not toxic to humans; marijuana overdoses are nearly impossible, and marijuana is not nearly as addictive as alcohol or tobacco. It is unfair and unjust to treat marijuana users more harshly under the law than the users of alcohol or tobacco. 3. Marijuana is too expensive for our justice system and should instead be taxed to support beneficial government programs. Law enforcement has more important responsibilities than arresting 750,000 individuals a year for marijuana possession, especially given the additional justice costs of disposing of each of these cases. Marijuana arrests make justice more expensive and less efficient in the United States, wasting jail space, clogging up court systems, and diverting time of police, attorneys, judges, and corrections officials away from violent crime, the sexual abuse of children, and terrorism. Furthermore, taxation of marijuana can provide needed and generous funding of many important criminal justice and social programs. 2. Marijuana use has positive attributes, such as its medical value and use as a recreational drug with relatively mild side effects. Many people use marijuana because they have made an informed decision that it is good for them, especially Americans suffering from a variety of serious ailments. Marijuana provides relief from pain, nausea, spasticity, and other symptoms for many individuals who have not been treated successfully with conventional medications. Many American adults prefer marijuana to the use of alcohol as a mild and moderate way to relax. Americans use marijuana because they choose to, and one of the reasons for that choice is their personal observation that the drug has a relatively low dependence liability and easy-to-manage side effects. Most marijuana users develop tolerance to many of marijuana's side effects, and those who do not, choose to stop using the drug. Marijuana use is the result of informed consent in which individuals have decided that the benefits of use outweigh the risks, especially since, for most Americans, the greatest risk of using marijuana is the relatively low risk of arrest. 1. Marijuana users are determined to stand up to the injustice of marijuana probation and accomplish legalization, no matter how long or what it takes to succeed. Despite the threat of arrests and a variety of other punishments and sanctions marijuana users have persisted in their support for legalization for over a generation. They refuse to give up their long quest for justice because they believe in the fundamental values of American society. Prohibition has failed to silence marijuana users despite its best attempts over the last generation. The issue of marijuana's legalization is a persistent issue that, like marijuana, will simply not go away. Marijuana will be legalized because marijuana users will continue to fight for it until they succeed. Editor's note: There are millions of regular pot smokers in America and millions more infrequent smokers. Smoking pot clearly has far fewer dangerous and hazardous effects on society than legal drugs such as alcohol.
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| Drug Prohibition from Colombia to Afghanistan
One of the less memorable moments in US official activity (well, fairly memorable to people like us, actually) came about five years ago when Rand Beers, then the Assistant Secretary of Following an expose by UPI, Beers recanted. "I wish to strike this sentence," he wrote. "At the time of my declaration, based on information available to me, I believed this statement to be true and correct." Quotes from intelligence experts in the article, however, cast some doubt on even that. "That statement is totally from left field. I don't know where Beers is getting that," said one. "There doesn't seem to be any evidence of FARC going to Afghanistan to train. We have never briefed anyone on that and frankly, I doubt anyone has ever alleged that in a briefing to the State Department or anyone else," said another. "My first reaction was that Rand must have misspoke," said a congressional staffer. "But when I saw the proffer signed under oath, I couldn't believe he would do that. I have no idea why he would say that." Colombia and And that's a big mistake, as numerous Afghanistan analysts have pointed out. For example, at a forum here in Washington last March , CNN terrorism analyst Peter Bergen, responding to a question I had posed him on the topic, said, "[E]radication doesn't work. There's a vast amount of academic literature showing that it just pushes the growers into the arms of the insurgents." Because of prohibition, both opium growing and opium eradication now help our enemies. It's not a success story for the prohibition policy -- but then again, what is? I hope this escalation does not include spraying -- the Ecuadorans are not the only ones to explain how reckless and inhumane the practice is. Given that it can't possibly work either -- as long as there's demand, the supply will just move around, and the Afghan farmers need the money -- there is no justification for such risks based on any legitimate hopes for success. The Karzai government has thus far resisted using chemicals, and hopefully they will continue to do so. US drug czar John Walters, however, announcing an expanded US military involvement in the opium operations this week, made an ominous sounding comment on which he would not elaborate, "We expect a more permissive environment for these operations." Given what has happened in Colombia the last several decades, given what has happened in Afghanistan -- and how it has affected us here -- is any more evidence needed of how morally and intellectually defunct is our drug war? It's time to end drug prohibition -- to legalize drugs -- and finally rescue Colombians, Afghans, and addicts here and around the world from the hell into which prohibition has plunged them. |
State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement, later a campaign advisor to John Kerry, was forced to recant a claim he had made in a sworn statement in defense of a US corporation being sued by 10,000 Ecuadorans who claimed they had poisoned them. The corporation was DynCorp, whom the State Dept. had hired to carry out aerial spraying of coca fields in Colombia. The Ecuadorans charged that chemicals from the defoliation program had blown across the border, damaging crops and livestock and causing health problems among the human population. Beers wrote, "It is believed that FARC terrorists have received training in Al Qaeda terrorist camps in Afghanistan."
Afghanistan are both in the news this week, as often happens, with the drug war playing an adverse role. In Colombia, a military official who served along the country's Caribbean coast was removed from his post; if allegations are true, profits from the illegal cocaine industry -- which exists because of drug prohibition -- tempted
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LOS ANGELES — The U.S. Justice Department is unleashing a potent new weapon in its battle against California's hundreds
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of medical pot clinics, threatening landlords with arrest and property seizures for renting to tenants who flout federal drug laws.
'the government's new drugs strategy'
Inthenews.co.uk July 25th 2007 The new home secretary Jacqui Smith has unveiled a drugs consultation period ahead of the government's new drugs strategy due to be implemented in April 2008. The current strategy ends in March next year and |
according to the government this latest consultation is the largest programme on drugs to date. Included in the provisional proposals for the strategy are a further £5.65 million for drugs education - including the Frank awareness campaign - and more treatment for drug users. Government figures suggest that drug use has dropped by 24 per cent in young people since 1998 and drug-related crime has fallen by 20 per cent.
| Why Should the Drug Czar's Office Even Exist?
The frequency of inappropriate or dishonest (or strange) behavior by the US Office of National Drug Control Policy (the drug czar's office) seems to be increasing. Last month, DRCNet Blog Editor Scott Morgan and On the honesty front, professors Robinson and Scherlen provided an embarrassment of riches in the form of their recently-released book Lies, Damn Lies, and Drug War Statistics , which documents in detail the misleading presentations of data ONDCP has made in their annual National Drug Control Strategy reports to create an appearance of an effective drug policy when in reality the policy has proven itself completely ineffective. David Murray, a high-level ONDCP official who is involved with the statistics, professed offense and indignation at a book forum hosted by the Cato Institute where he confronted the authors, artfully playing the part of an injured victim whose integrity has been unfairly maligned. The details don't support that act, of course, and Murray's most recent public statement demonstrates his true stripes. In testimony to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security last week, Murray offered as evidence against the legitimacy of medical marijuana the claim that Steve Kubby, a prominent medical marijuana advocate, had reversed his position. In a response distributed by email, Kubby vehemently denied the claim , and demonstrated how Murray had taken his words out of context to create an appearance about them that is completely false. Strange, but not the only strange words to come out of ONDCP recently. According to a news report from Redding, California : "John P. Walters, President Bush's drug czar, said the people who plant and tend the gardens are terrorists who wouldn't hesitate to help other terrorists get into the country with the aim of causing mass casualties." WHAT?? When I saw the article, my first reaction was to wonder if Walters' presentation could have been misconstrued by the reporter, as it was not a direct quote, but a description. The direct quotes from Walters were offensive enough. But this particular idea just seemed too far out to me for even Walters to be willing to go there. I emailed the reporter to ask about this, but I haven't heard back from him, so I guess I can't say for sure. But I think we should give the reporter the benefit of the doubt, absent any evidence to the contrary. And a post on ONDCP's blog links to the Redding story, and calls it a "good story," suggesting they don't consider it inaccurate. The blog post has been online and unmodified now for six days, plenty of time for the higher-ups to catch anything they considered inappropriate. Let's all agree that marijuana growers are out to make money, and therefore want most of all to remain undetected and to go about their business. Hence, they have a strong disincentive to get involved in anything that might attract attention to them, including supporting international terrorism targeting the United States. (I can't believe that even needed to be said.) ONDCP week isn't over yet, though, we still have one more really big one . On Tuesday Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Operations and Government Reform Committee, accused ONDCP of engaging in electioneering last fall by sending drug czar Walters to make public appearances with Republican Representatives and Senators who were facing tough reelection campaigns. The evidence, which involves communications between Karl Rove, former White House Director of Political Affairs Sara Taylor and ONDCP staff, seems pretty compelling to me, at first glance at least. Of course, as drug reformers we know Walters has violated the law to campaign against marijuana reform ballot initiatives many times. That's a political scandal. The policy scandal is that the agency continues to fund and lobby for programs which they know do not work. From the ad campaign and student drug testing, to Plan Colombia and the drug war as a whole, the evidence clearly shows we're not getting our money's worth, or maybe any worth. Putting that together with the nonsense constantly emanating from the agency -- misrepresentations of facts, violations of state and federal election laws, ads and quotes that can be truly wild and strange -- this seems like a good time to ask whether ONDCP should exist at all. What are we really getting from this agency that's worth keeping? Even people who agree with the drug laws ought to be taken aback at ONDCP's behavior by now. Catching ONDCP in lies or lunacy or misconduct is getting to be like shooting fish in a barrel. |
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In a recent study published in the British medical journal The Lancet, faculty at the UK's Bristol University "proposed a new framework for the classification of harmful substances, based on the actual risks to society," according an Associated Press article published Friday. The study, led by Prof. David Nutt, ranked the various One might think such talk could fuel calls for alcohol or (more likely) tobacco prohibition -- I hope not! That isn't necessarily what they are looking for -- Nutt wants more education, he said, and realism. "All drugs are dangerous, even the ones people know and love and use every day." |
commonly used drugs, and found alcohol and tobacco to be among the top ten most dangerous -- ahead of marijuana and ecstasy, though behind cocaine and heroin.
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Small town Washburn, Wisconsin, may cling to the shores of Lake Superior at the northernmost tip of the state, but it's not clinging to tough marijuana law enforcement. Last week, the Washburn City Council passed an ordinance allowing city police to issue tickets to people caught with small amounts of marijuana instead of arresting and booking them. That made Washburn only the latest Cheesehead State locality to pass a decrim ordinance -- and that distinction was short-lived. On Monday, the Two Rivers City Council passed an ordinance making possession of less than eight grams of marijuana a municipal offense. The move to municipal decrim began in the 1970s, when 15 cities, mostly college towns, adopted ordinances, according to veteran Wisconsin marijuana and civil liberties activist Ben Masel. Milwaukee moved to the scheme in the early 1990s. Also in the early 1990s, counties were given similar authority, and Walworth County, home of the Alpine Valley Music Theater, which hosted Grateful Dead tours, notoriously turned a nice profit on $454 marijuana possession citations. This year, Dane County (Madison) and Eau County prosecutors announced they would charge offenders exclusively under county ordinances rather than state law. But in other locales, that decision is left to local prosecutors. Being prosecuted under local ordinances has the benefit of leaving no criminal conviction and no loss of student aid or other benefits. But there can still be hefty penalties, and, Masel noted, a lower burden of proof for a civil infraction and no right to a jury trial. It's all good with Washburn Assistant Police Chief Jeremy Clapero, who told a local radio station the ordinance would give police flexibility in dealing with pot users. Under Wisconsin law, simple marijuana possession is a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine. Previously lacking a municipal ordinance, police had to put marijuana possessors in jail. "They were arrested on the spot and brought to jail -- they were booked into the jail and then they would be at some point released and appear in court on that charge," said Clapero. "Now there's a situation where they can get a ticket with the fine amount and released. It's not on their criminal record at that point." While Clapero said people could still be arrested under the state law, the ordinance will save police time and resources. "A situation where a person has a small or a very small amount of marijuana in their possession or in their car, this may be used instead of bringing that person to criminal court and having a criminal offense on their record for something would he be issued a city ordinance citation which is a forfeiture offense -- similar to like a speeding ticket." But don't think this means Washburn police have seen the light regarding the war on drugs. "It's not intended to say that we're not tough on drugs. We're still tough on drugs it's just gives us another avenue. We're behind just what every other agency has done, so we just kind of stepped up and did what they did." Clapero said. |
'skunk works' Defence company Lockheed Martin Corporation has lost its attempt to gain control of a web address |
currently hosting a site devoted to cannabis paraphernalia. The ruling on the .co.uk domain was an appeal from an earlier ruling.
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Drivers suspected of being high on cannabis should be asked to stand on one-leg rather than face roadside drug tests, according to a Bolton MP. Dr Brian Iddon told the Commons old-fashioned techniques were more reliable than modern "drugalysers" proposed by Tory MP Christopher Chope. Bolton South-east MP Dr Iddon said cannabis remained in the bloodstream for 30 days, so it would be impossible to prove when the drug had been taken. "It would be very unfair to detect cannabis in a person after they have driven a car, 20 days after smoking one spliff," he told fellow MPs. "Would you criminalise a person for that?" Speaking after the debate, he said: "Believe you me, standing on one leg or walking in a straight line can still detect somebody's ability to drive." Dr Iddon said More hopping... |
'questions the effectiveness of official drug education and prevention programmes'
Guardian.co.uk April 23th 2007 The courts are handing out three times as much prison time for drug offences as a decade ago but such "get tough" sentencing has done little to stem the flow of drugs on to the streets, where prices continue to fall, according to a study. |
Junior doctors call for cannabis on NHS
Theherald.co.uk April 56th 2007 Doctors in Scotland yesterday voted in favour of cannabis drugs being prescribed on the NHS to ease the suffering of patients. Members of the British Medical Association, meeting in Dundee, backed a call for change in the law to allow the use of cannabinoid medication to treat disease. Dr Andrew Thomson, a Scottish GP and leading figure in the BMA, told the association's Junior Members Forum he had watched one of his patients suffer intolerable pain from multiple sclerosis and was powerless to suggest she took cannabis for her relief because of the law. |
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Sri Lanka says it caught more drug traffickers last year largely due to tough security measures put in place by the government to counter attacks by Tamil Tiger rebels. The anit-drug authority says the number of drug-related arrests rose 69 per cent from 2005 to 47,298 last year, with most arrests for cannabis or heroin offences. Executive director Karunadasa Gamage says there were more people to conduct raids in 2006. "Drug routes were also disrupted as there were more routine security checks which slowed down supplies," he said. Officials say the increased road blocks and random checks also deterred some dealers, Full Haul.... |
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For the first time since California voters approved use of medicinal marijuana more than a decade ago, the state Board of Equalization is telling the estimated 150 to 200 retailers in California to pay sales taxes on pot.
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This is the best legal self defense book
We don't usually review books except when they're hot off the press, but we're making an exception with attorney Katya Komisaruk's "Beat the Heat." This is the best legal self defense book we've seen in some time and we think our readers need to know about it. It's a sad commentary on our society that we need books that tell us how to protect ourselves from the police.  But with the number of drug arrests each year climbing inexorably toward the two million mark, and with drug prohibition being, in our view, morally indefensible, those of us who use illicit substances (or have friends or loved ones that do) need all the protection we can get. This book will help drug users avoid arrest. I won't be shy: I think this is a good thing. Call it applying the principles of harm reduction to the US criminal justice system. While we acknowledge the possible harms drug users can incur to themselves or inflict upon others, we think the harms of being arrested, and quite possibly imprisoned, far exceed those of drug use. People who harm others can be punished under other kinds of laws than those that criminalize drugs. Anything that can throw some sand in the gears of the drug war machine is something to cheer. "Beat the Heat" throws sand in the gears of the drug war machine. It does so by teaching its readers how to exercise their basic constitutional rights. That's another sad commentary in itself. We have a prohibitionist drug policy that relies on citizens knowingly or unknowingly waiving their rights in the face of intimidating uniformed men with guns. After all, it's not like drug use or sales is a crime where there is a complaining victim. Nor do drug users or sellers normally flaunt their contraband items. The only way many drug arrests are made is by people letting the police browbeat them into doing something stupid -- like admitting they smoke pot or allowing the police to search their vehicle when they know there are illicit items within. Katya Komisaruk shows you how to exercise your rights in an easy-to-read, down-to-earth fashion, complete with illustrated scenarios where she shows you what you did wrong and what to do instead. It's not rocket science: Never talk to the police, she advises, and never consent to a search. You've got nothing to gain and plenty to lose. The police aren't talking to you to make idle chit-chat. They are investigating, looking for possible crimes, and the more you open your mouth, the greater the chances of ending up in jail. In response to police requests to talk, Komisaruk recommends this phrase: "Am I free to go?" If the answer is "yes," then go. If the answer is "no," you are already being detained or arrested. The correct answer to all further inquiries from police is: "I'm going to remain silent. I'd like to see a lawyer." And when it comes to requests to search you, your home, or your vehicle, the answer is always: "I do not consent to a search." These are basic constitutional rights, and it seems simple to exercise them. But police are experts in getting people to waive their rights. A valuable portion of "Beat the Heat" is devoted to explaining just how police get people to waive their rights -- intimidation, false friendliness, lies -- and how to avoid falling into those traps. But "Beat the Heat" is much more than just how not to get busted. It's also a primer for those who have been arrested and are now facing the tender mercies of the criminal justice system. Komarisuk covers it all, from getting out on bail to working with your lawyer to what to do if all else has failed and you're headed for prison. There's also a chapter on how to witness and accurately report police misconduct, as well as chapters on the legal rights of minors and non-citizens. Don't get me wrong: "Beat the Heat" is not written as a book to help drug users stay out of jail. Nor is it a diatribe against the drug war. It merely teaches people how to protect themselves from unnecessary arrest by knowing their rights and how to effectively exercise them. And that makes it a book that helps drug users stay out of jail. I'm all for that. There are 20 million drug users abroad in the land today. If you are one or know one, you need to get this book. Komisaruk will make it easy for you to understand what you need to do to protect yourself. |
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The current drug classification system is out-of-date because tobacco and alcohol are more dangerous than other drugs like ecstasy, according to a new report. Scientists at the Academy of Medical |
Sciences have been drawing up an alternative to the current system where many drugs switch places. Heroin and cocaine stay the same in terms of their danger, but nightclub drugs like GHB and ecstasy are downgraded because they are not as addictive or as destructive to the individual and society.
'cannabis farms uncovered in police raids in Britain has trebled in the last two years'
Metro.co.uk March 13th 2007 The amount of homegrown cannabis sold in Britain has risen nearly six-fold in ten years, a drug charity claims. About 60 per cent of the dope sold in this country has been grown on domestic cannabis farms – up from 11 per cent in 1996, figures produced by the drug information charity DrugScope show. |
'symbolic of the ills of the Texas criminal justice' Gov. Rick Perry granted a conditional pardon Friday to Tyrone Brown, a prisoner from Dallas whose extreme |
punishment has become symbolic of the ills of the Texas criminal justice system.
"I am disappointed in the attitude of the court"
Independent.co.uk March 7th 2007 A grandmother who advocates cooking with cannabis was found guilty of growing and possessing the drug by a jury who deliberated for just 15 minutes today. |
'Cancer of insurgency'
News.bbc.co.uk March 6th 2007 The United Nations says it fears that Afghanistan may grow even more poppies in 2007 - at a time when current levels are already running at record output. Poppy production rose 25% in 2006, according to the US State Department. The UN says although production of poppies, used to make heroin, has fallen in the north and centre, a sharp rise is likely in the lawless south. It also cites a dramatic increase in cannabis growing, which it describes as a new and disturbing trend.
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Dear Goldenseed As you will probably be aware the police now appear to be focusing their resources away from targeting hard drug dealers and instead hitting cannabis growers. The cannabis plant despite being downgraded to a Class C drug now appears to have been demonised beyond belief and you are more likely to hear the perils of “Skunk” than crack cocaine or heroin. Unfortunately
Yours sincerely, |
when growers are busted the police often assume that any drugs found must surely be for supplying and police “Experts” will quote yields and valuations that are completely unfounded and often unchallengeable.
'Death for Hard Drug Dealers, Legalize Marijuana'
Barre, Vermont, Mayor Thomas Lauzon's frustration with drugs and drug policy is showing, and it's making him just a touch schizophrenic. In remarks reported in the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus Saturday , Lauzon called for the death penalty for crack and heroin dealers, and in the same breath, called for the legalization of marijuana. He said he plans to ask the state legislature to adopt the death penalty and to legalize marijuana. Failing that, he said, he hopes to open to a statewide discussion about the state's drug problem, probably beginning with an April forum in Barre. Barre (pronounced "berry") is an old-time boomtown that in days gone by was known as "The Chicago of New England." Today Barre is famed as an exporter of fine, granite, graveside monuments, a distinction that earned it a "ZipUSA" feature in the October 2003 issue of National Geographic . "People who are dealing crack and dealing heroin have zero social value and should be put to death," Lauzon said. "I'm sure everyone will distance themselves from me," Lauzon said Saturday of his death-penalty call. "But if anyone tells you we're winning the war on drugs, they're lying." Saturday evening he reiterated that stance in another interview with the Times Argus. "What social value do they have? They are dealing crack and heroin to young people, knowing full well what the effects will be," the mayor said. "What purpose do they serve in society other than to destroy lives, to destroy families?" Vermont politicians reacted cautiously. State Sen. Richard Sears (D-Bennington), chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he understood Lauzon's frustration, but didn't embrace either the death penalty for dealing hard drugs or legalizing marijuana. "I think the man is very frustrated, and I understand his frustration," Sears said. "The problem in my view is we've ignored this problem until it's out of hand." Jason Gibbs, a spokesman for Gov. James Douglas, told the newspaper that while the governor was not unalterably opposed to the death penalty, he was opposed to legalizing marijuana. "He's not unalterably opposed to the death penalty, but he doesn't have any plans to introduce it. There are some circumstances he would support a death penalty, but I'm not sure this is among them," Gibbs said. "Marijuana is a gateway drug for some folks, so he would not support legalization." Lauzon said he had discussed his proposals with some legislators, but hadn't gotten very far. "They listen politely. I would like to have a statewide conversation. The conversation I'd like to start with is 'How are we doing?' Are we happy with our progress in the war on drugs? What are we doing in Vermont with regard to the war on drugs?" Lauzon said. "Maybe we start in Barre." While Lauzon's proposal for the death penalty for drug dealers is a first in recent Vermont history, his call for legalizing marijuana echoes one made last December by Windsor County States Attorney Robert Sand, who called for the legalization of marijuana and decriminalization of other drugs . And so goes the drug debate in Vermont. |
"it will be the gallows"
Thai to hang after appeal rejected The Star, Malaysia Feb 28th 2007
PUTRAJAYA: After 12 years of being convicted for drug trafficking and an unsuccessful attempt to appeal against the sentence, it will be the gallows for Thai national Wichai Onprom. Yesterday, the Federal Court dismissed his case against a decision by the Court of Appeal to uphold his death sentence for trafficking in 1.2kg of cannabis |
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The hills may no longer be alive with the sound of groovy cows, if the Swiss Agriculture Ministry means business. Piqued by the fact that quite a number of farmers are not abiding by European Union norms operational since March 2005 prohibiting the use of hemp as cattle fodder,
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the authorities have threatened to now crack down. As all those competent in Latin know, hemp belongs to the cannabis sativa family, and thus is a kissing cousin of marijuana, hashish and other dodgy delectables.
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The Czech Supreme Court has ruled that growing cannabis is not a crime, the daily Mladá fronta Dnes (MfD) writes today. A crime is committed only when a person dries the plants and produces marijuana from it, the paper says. Czech police and courts should act according to the above verdict. "Cannabis growing cannot be considered production of a drug," Supreme Court judge Eduard Teschler said of the verdict.
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"allowed to grow marijuana for research purposes"
A Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) administrative law judge ruled Monday that a professor at the University Craker first applied to the DEA for permission to grow marijuana for research purposes in 2001 and won the support of home state senators Edward Kennedy and John Kerry for the project. But for years, the DEA refused to act on the request, and in 2004, Craker and the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) sued the agency, charging it with unreasonable delays in dealing with his application. After hearings last year, the agency responded by denying his application, saying that there was no shortage of marijuana for research purposes, and Craker and his private backers were free to submit bids to compete for the marijuana-growing contract. But Craker and MAPS vehemently disagreed and sought a ruling by a DEA administrative law judge. In her Monday ruling , Judge Bittner found that Craker's bid to grow marijuana "would be in the public interest." Her opinion noted that: "There would be minimal risk of diversion of marijuana. There is currently an inadequate supply of marijuana available for research purposes... [and] competition in the provision of marijuana for such purposes is inadequate." While the decision is not definitive -- the DEA has 20 days to respond, and it may ignore the judge's findings -- Professor Craker and MAPS greeted the decision with guarded optimism. "This ruling is a victory for science, medicine and the public good," said Craker in an MAPS press release . "I hope the DEA abides by the decision and grants me the opportunity to do my job unimpeded by drug war politics." "For decades, politicians have said that marijuana has no proven medical value while scientists have been denied the ability to prove otherwise," said Rick Doblin, PhD, president and founder of MAPS. The American Civil Liberties Union Drug Law Reform Project, which helped argue the case, also pronounced itself pleased with the ruling. "For too long the DEA has inappropriately inserted politics into a regulatory process that should be left to the FDA and medical science," said Allen Hopper, an attorney with the project, in a press release . "We are pleased that the judge has recommended an end to the federal government's blockade of medical marijuana research." The DEA has refused to comment on the ruling so far, but, as noted above it is non-binding. Optimism over the ruling is tempered by the memory of DEA's administrative law Judge Francis Young's 1988 finding that marijuana is among the most benign therapeutic substances known to man. That ruling came in a bid to reschedule marijuana as a prescription medicine, but was ignored by the agency. "I hope that Administrator Tandy abides by the decision and grants me the opportunity to do my job unimpeded by drug war politics," Craker said. There is strong support for Craker and MAPS's bid to grow their own marijuana to do DEA- and FDA-approved research on the medicinal uses of marijuana. Prior to this week's ruling, organizations that had already written to DEA in favor of Prof. Craker's application included the Multiple Sclerosis Foundation, the Lymphoma Foundation of America, the National Association for Public Health Policy, the United Methodist Church, Americans for Tax Reform, the American Medical Students Association, several state nurses' associations, the Massachusetts Dept. of Public Health, Massachusetts Senators Kerry and Kennedy, 38 members of the US House of Representatives, and the California and Texas State Medical Associations, the two largest US state medical associations. |
of Massachusetts at Amherst should be allowed to grow marijuana for research purposes. The ruling is non-binding, and the decision resides ultimately in the hands of DEA head Karen Tandy, but the decision by Judge Mary Ellen Bittner paves the way for Professor Lyle Craker, a horticulturist specializing in medicinal plants, to possibly become the second authorized grower of marijuana for research purposes in the United States.
The good the bad and the totally indifferent
The Bush administration released its fiscal year 2008 budget Monday, and when it comes to drug policy, it's pretty much business as usual. According to an Office of National Drug Control Policy fact sheet , the overall federal drug control budget requested for next year is $12.91 billion, up $200 million from the $12.7 million requested this year. same old, same old again The budget includes $1.6 billion for prevention programs or, as the National Drug Strategy puts it, "stopping drug use before it starts," $3.1 billion for drug treatment ("healing America's drug users"), and $8 billion for law enforcement ("disrupting the market for illegal drugs"). This roughly two-to-one ratio between spending for law enforcement and spending for treatment and prevention is consistent with past federal drug control budgets. ONDCP highlighted increases in controversial and unproven programs, such as an increase in funding for random student drug testing to nearly $18 million, up from $7.5 million in 2007. Another controversial program seeing a budget increase is the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign, from $100 million in 2007 up to $130 million next year. Also seeing significant increases are the Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral and Treatment (SBIRT) program, which aims to promote early diagnosis of drug use and intervention by health care providers, up $11.5 million to $41.2 million in 2008, and the Drug Courts program, with its funding more than tripled from $10.1 million this year to $31.8 million next year. Funding for Plan Colombia, or as it is now officially known, the Andean Counterdrug Initiative will decline from $721 million in 2007 to $635.5 million in 2008. Funding for anti-drug efforts in Afghanistan, on the other hand, will increase from $297 million this year to $327.6 million next year. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) will see its budget increase from $1.684 billion to $1.803 billion. Similarly, the Justice Department's Organized Crime and Drug Task Force will get $509 million, up from $485 million this year. Some of the items ONDCP wasn't bragging about include cuts in funding for the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention (down 20%), the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (down 12%), and state grants under the Safe and Drug Free Schools and Communities Act, which were slashed dramatically from $346.5 million this year to a proposed $100 million next year. The budget also zeroes out completely state grants for Alcohol Use and Reduction programs. Those grants totaled $32 million this year. Also facing continuing efforts to cut its budget is the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas (HIDTA) program, with the Bush administration seeking to cut its current year budget of $224.7 million down to $220 million. And while it is not yet clear whether the Bush administration will continue its efforts to eliminate the Byrne Justice Assistance Grants program, a coalition of law enforcement lobbying groups is already urging Congress to fund it at $1.1 billion , more than double the $450 million it will get this year. The Byrne grants pay for the notorious multi-agency drug task forces running roughshod around the country, but they can also be used for prevention and treatment grants. "This is the same approach they've been using for years," said Bill Piper, director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance . "They continue to shortchange treatment and prevention and they spend most of the money on enforcement and interdiction. They continue to use sloppy accounting; for instance, ONDCP puts the overall drug budget at $12 billion, but they don't include the costs of imprisoning 100,000 federal drug offenders." "This $12 billion figure is a sham, just as the federal drug control budget has been for the past few years" said Doug McVay, research director for Common Sense for Drug Policy . "It excludes the $3 billion we're paying each year to incarcerate drug offenders, and there are hidden, black budget intelligence and military funds that go to the drug war. I'd estimate the feds are really spending more like $22 billion in drug control across the agencies." "I see they want more money for student drug testing and the anti-drug media campaign, which is a bit of a surprise given all the evidence of the failure of these programs," Piper said. "Given that they're talking about balancing the budget by 2012, it seems like they wouldn't be expanding failed programs, but they are." Efforts to restore Byrne grant funding concerned Piper. "I'm worried that the Democrats are going to restore funding to that program that funds the drug task forces," he said. "Still, some states are using the funds for reentry programs, treatment, drug courts, things like that. The $500,000 grant we got in New Mexico was a Byrne grant," Piper laughed. That grant funds a methamphetamine prevention and education program. "I think the Byrne grants should be done away with," said McVay, "and the money should be used to put police on the street to stop property crime and violent crime. As drug reformers, we have to be careful. We don't want to put ourselves in the position of telling the public we don't want enough police on the streets to keep them from getting mugged." Time will tell with the Byrne grant program, as it will with the entire 2008 Bush budget. At this point, the budget is a fantasy document, a wish list that is sure to be hacked to pieces in Congress. But it also lays out the Bush administration's position on where the nation's drug policy should go and how much we should pay for it, and the answers are down the same old path and a few billion more. |
| The California Dept of Health Services has announced a major fee hike for the state medical marijuana ID cards, from $13 to $142. This is the state's share; counties charge an additional fee. On behalf of thousands of San Francisco cannabis patients I am writing to ask if you have heard about this new outrageous policy. Patients need your help NOW more than ever. With the new local laws requiring patients to get the State I.D. card to enter MCD's and now this drastic increase in the card program by almost $150, patients will need to pay $200 for an ID card every year. This has gone far beyond preposterous. Where are patient's rights? How can patients afford to keep fighting bad policy? According to- D. Gieringer of Cal NORML, the California Dept of Health Services has announced a major fee hike for the state medical marijuana ID cards, from $13 to $142. This is the state's share; counties charge an additional fee.The increase is allegedly needed to cover the cost of the program, which has been running at a major deficit. Applications for the state card have been running far behind expectations. So far only 5,631 cards have been issued. Estimates of the actual number of Prop 215 patients run from 150,000 to 350,000. Only 23 of the state's 58 counties currently offer ID cards. Officials are hopeful that enrollment will take off once the San Diego lawsuit is settled and other, large counties come aboard, such as Los Angeles. However, the fee increase is likely to have the effect of discouraging new applicants. |
Juan Manuel Galán time for a congressional debate on drug legalization
A Colombian senator is calling for an urgent debate on alternatives to drug prohibition, and he isn't just any senator. Sen. Juan Manuel Galán, of the opposition Liberal Party, is the son of Luis Carlos Galán, who was weeks away from winning the Colombian presidency when he was gunned down by assassins from Pablo Escobar's Medellin Cartel in 1990. Juan Manuel Galán It is time for a congressional debate on drug legalization, Galán told the Associated Press in  an interview December 28. "The current repressive approach against drug trafficking hasn't worked despite the huge amounts of blood we Colombians have shed," said Galán. "It's time to look at different options, together with other drug-production nations, as a way to break the back of the drug traffickers." Drug possession is already legal in Colombia under a Colombian Supreme Court ruling, but the growing of drug crops -- coca, opium poppies, and marijuana -- is illegal, as is the drug trade. The country has received more than $4 billion is US aid -- most of it military -- to defeat the drug trade, without making a significant impact on it. Despite a massive aerial herbicide spraying campaign aimed at eradicating the crop, the US government admits that the amount of land dedicated to the coca crop grew 26% this year. While other Colombian politicians have broached the topic before, Galán possesses a particular stature on the issue because of the high esteem in which Colombians hold his father. A foe of the cartels, Luis Carlos Galán was killed as part of a campaign by Escobar to terrorize the Colombian political establishment into blocking his extradition to the US. Escobar himself was killed in 1993, but by then, dozens of political figures, judges, police, and journalists had been killed by cartel assassins. Galán senior would approve of his son's position, Juan Manuel Galán said. "I think after two decades, seeing the violent impact of drug trafficking, he would not be closed to new ideas about how to deliver a final deathblow to the drug traffickers." While the United States is likely to oppose the discussion, Galán said, "Colombia has the moral authority to lead this debate at the international level. Two decades into the drug war we continue having illegal mafias that spread violence across the country, we continue having guerrillas, we continue having paramilitaries," said Galán. "And despite it all there's no real solution in sight to the problem." But President Alvaro Uribe's Conservative government is unalterably opposed to legalization, and Galán's own Liberal Party has so far failed to back his call for a congressional debate. |
| Two people are due to appear before South Somerset |
Magistrates on Monday February 5 2007 to face drug-related charges following the discovery of cannabis at the scene of a fire in Yeovil in January 2006. Colin Andrew Vickers, aged 60, of Yeovil, has been charged with possession of cannabis. He has also been jointly charged, with Deborah Susan Vickers, aged 42, also of Yeovil, with production of cannabis and possession with intent to supply cannabis. Both were charged on December 06 2006 and have been bailed pending their court appearance.
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Yorkshire police chief campaigning for tough new drug-driving measures in the UK has condemned as "stupid" existing laws which protect users from prosecution. A drug-taking driver
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cannot be prosecuted for possession even when the drug is detected in their blood. It is then up to the police to prove their driving ability has been impaired. That has always been difficult and open to legal challenge when cases get to court so South Yorkshire Chief Constable Meredydd Hughes wants a radical new policy. Mr Hughes, who is also the Association of Chief Police Officers' lead voice on traffic issues, is trying to persuade ministers that a zero-tolerance policy should be introduced where it would be an offence to drive with any trace of an illegal drug in the bloodstream. The policy would be expected to generate an outcry from some areas of society if introduced, but Mr Hughes believes he has an unchallengeable argument. "It seems to me stupid at the moment that it is not an offence to walk around with your bloodstream full of cocaine," he said. "I think we need to look again at what constitutes criminal behaviour. "We are having regular meetings with ministers to explain the thinking behind why we would seek to change the law and are preparing a case outlining how we would see this progressed, fact:"cannabis can still be present in your system up to a month after use"
Marijuana now a low priority in SF Heather Cassell Ebar.com December 30th 2006 San Francisco joined other cities such as Oakland, Santa Monica, Santa Cruz, and Seattle that have passed similar legislation to make marijuana arrests a low |
priority in a quite move on December 1, World AIDS Day. The bill was overwhelmingly supported by the Board of Supervisors by an 8-3 vote on November 21 and passed a second vote 7-3 on November 28 before being sent to Mayor Gavin Newsom. "I feel really good about it. It's a policy that's endorsed by a majority of San Franciscans, reflecting what they feel about the issue," said Supervisor Tom Ammiano, who authored the legislation. According to Newsom's spokesman, Joe Arellano, Newsom was unable to review the legislation within the 10-day review period due to the fact that the bill arrived on his desk as he was leaving for his trip to the Philippines earlier this month. Acting mayor Supervisor Sean Elsbernd received the legislation and returned it unsigned. As a result, the bill became law automatically,
Backpacker appeals to court Thisisdorset.net December 27th 2006 The mother  of jailed Bournemouth backpacker Daisy Angus says she hopes this will be the last Christmas her daughter spends behind bars.Daisy, 26, is serving a 10-year jail sentence after being found guilty of smuggling 10kg of cannabis in a secret compartment of her suitcase. The former Littledown Leisure Centre fitness instructor was stopped by customs officers at Mumbai airport on November 8, 2002, as she caught a flight to Amsterdam on what was supposed to be her dream trip around the world. Daisy spent four years in jail before hearing of her fate and will have to serve a further six before she is freed. Her mother Nadine has just returned from India where she managed to see Daisy a couple of times during visits arranged by the British Embassy, Full Appeal......... |
'pot produced in the U.S. exceeds $35 billion'
Latimes.com December 20th 2006 SACRAMENTO — For years, activists in the marijuana legalization movement |
have claimed that cannabis is America's biggest cash crop. Now they're citing government statistics to prove it. A report released today by a marijuana public policy analyst contends that the market value of pot produced in the U.S. exceeds $35 billion — far more than the crop value of such heartland staples as corn, soybeans and hay, which are the top three legal cash crops. California is responsible for more than a third of the cannabis harvest, with an estimated production of $13.8 billion that exceeds the value of the state's grapes, vegetables and hay combined — and marijuana is the top cash crop in a dozen states, the report states. The report estimates that marijuana production has increased tenfold in the past quarter century despite an exhaustive anti-drug effort by law enforcement,
Couple guilty of giving cannabis to MS patients
Guardian.co.uk December 16th 2006 A couple who gave thousands of chocolate bars laced with cannabis to multiple sclerosis patients for |
pain relief were found guilty yesterday of conspiring to supply the drug. Mark Gibson and his wife, Lezley, who has the condition, said they would be forced to abandon their voluntary operation, which they said had helped more than 1,600 MS sufferers, after they were convicted of two counts each of conspiring to supply the drug throughout 2004 and until February 2005. Their associate Marcus Davies, who ran a post office box and a website for their organisation, Therapeutic Help From Cannabis for Multiple Sclerosis, was also found guilty. The couple made the Canna-Biz chocolate, with 2g to 3.5g of cannabis per 150g bar, in the kitchen of their home in Alston, Cumbria, and posted an estimated 33,000 bars to people with MS over six years. They told the jury at Carlisle crown court that they did not sell the treatment but instead relied on donations to cover the cost of making the bars. The court heard they only provided the chocolate to people with MS and insisted that they were given a doctor's note confirming the patient had MS before they would supply the chocolate,
Allow athletes to use cannabis
Thisislondon.co.uk December 13th 2006 Athletes at the London Olympics should be not banned for taking |
recreational drugs, the Sports Minister said today.Richard Caborn stunned MPs by suggesting cannabis should be removed from the list of banned substances for competitors.The real threat to the spirit of the 2012 Games, he said, comes from a new generation of performanceenhancing substances, such as growth hormones and genetic manipulation. Giving evidence to the Commons Science and Technology Select Committee, the minister said the police should be left to deal with athletes caught using social drugs,
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One of the feature stories in the news this week was the annual ritual of the Thanksgiving "Turkey Pardon." This year "Flyer" and "Fryer," their names chosen in an online reader poll on the White House web site, got to live out the remainder of their natural lives on a farm in rural Virginia. The Turkey Pardon, a quasi-official act of the sitting US President, has happened reliably every Thanksgiving week for nearly 60 years. Another annual occurrence has been the current President's relative disuse of his power to grant clemencies and pardons. When I first commented on the Turkey Pardons, "Stars" and "Stripes" in 2003, Bush had yet to use the power at all. Now that is no longer completely true, but it is still close to being true. According to the San Francisco Chronicle's Debra Saunders, the federal prisoner count rose steeply since 2003 -- from 150,000 to over 190,000 -- while the president has issued a mere two commutations and 97 pardons over his entire term. As a long-time vegetarian, I certainly don't oppose the turkey pardons. But when it comes to another long-time White House holiday tradition, Christmas pardons of people, George Bush has been a veritable Scrooge, if not a Grinch, and that should stop. Yet another thing that happens over and over -- something no one would dare to call a tradition, yet whose reoccurrence is plainly inevitable -- is the accidental killing in drug raids of innocent or at least nonviolent people by paramilitarized police squadrons. What happens is that SWAT teams, many of which have more or less turned into drug squads, will use incredibly aggressive tactics like battering rams or stun grenades to break into homes of suspected drug offenders. The people inside, not expecting the intrusion and not understanding it to be any different from an attack, react with mere trauma most of the time, but sometimes by dying of heart attacks or by pulling out guns in self-defense and getting shot. Sometimes the people inside get shot whether they pull out guns or not. Pardoning turkeys isn't enough -- because enough is enough.A report by the Cato Institute this year examines the problem in detail. It has been growing. Atlanta's Kathryn Johnston was the latest victim. The 92-year old opened fire on three police officers after they forced their way into her home without knocking. The officers were wounded, but returned fire on Johnston, who was killed. People are justifiably angry, many regarding Johnston's use of her weapon as justified in the circumstances, albeit tragic in where it led. Police called the incident "tragic" but that they were executing a legal warrant after an undercover officer had bought drugs at her home. Time will tell if that claim is truthful or otherwise. But even if it is, how does it justify what happened? Drug war killings by SWAT teams of people who are innocent or undeserving of it are only one of the many drug war outrages that happen over and over. In my opinion it is time to say "enough is enough." As a first step, I ask that those of you reading this, who have other drug war outrages they care about, make posts discussing them to the comment section at the bottom of this web page. (If would be great if you could log in first too, so you won't be "anonymous" and people including us at DRCNet will know how to reach you. We're going to be doing some redesign work to make that easier during the next few weeks.) Next week we will begin to talk about step two... |
Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman Dies Prominent free-market economist Milton Friedman, recipient of the 1976 Nobel Prize for Economic Science, passed away Thursday at the age of 94. Friedman was widely regarded as the leader of the Chicago School of monetary economics, which stresses the importance of the quantity of money as an instrument of government policy and as a determinant of business cycles and inflation. In addition to his scientific work, Friedman also wrote extensively on public policy, always with primary emphasis on the preservation and extension of individual freedom. Friedman's ideas hugely influenced both the Reagan administration and the Thatcher government in the early 1980s, revolutionized establishment economic thinking across the globe, and have been employed extensively by emerging economies for decades. An Open Letter to Bill Bennett In Oliver Cromwell's eloquent words, "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken" about the course you and President Bush urge us to adopt to fight drugs. The path you propose of more police, more jails, use of the military in foreign countries, harsh penalties for drug users, and a whole panoply of repressive measures can only make a bad situation worse. The drug war cannot be won by those tactics without undermining the human liberty and individual freedom that you and I cherish. You are not mistaken in believing that drugs are a scourge that is devastating our Had drugs been decriminalized 17 years ago, "crack" would never have been invented (it was invented because the high cost of illegal drugs made it profitable to provide a cheaper version) and there would today be far fewer addicts. The lives of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of innocent victims would have been saved, and not only in the U.S. The ghettos of our major cities would not be drug-and-crime-infested no-man's lands. Fewer people would be in jails, and fewer jails would have been built. Columbia, Bolivia and Peru would not be suffering from narco-terror, and we would not be distorting our foreign policy because of narco-terror. Hell would not, in the words with which Billy Sunday welcomed Prohibition, "be forever for rent," but it would be a lot emptier. Decriminalizing drugs is even more urgent now than in 1972, but we must recognize that the harm done in the interim cannot be wiped out, certainly not immediately. Postponing decriminalization will only make matters worse, and make the problem appear even more intractable. Alcohol and tobacco cause many more deaths in users than do drugs. Decriminalization would not prevent us from treating drugs as we now treat alcohol and tobacco: prohibiting sales of drugs to minors, outlawing the advertising of drugs and similar measures. Such measures could be enforced, while outright prohibition cannot be. Moreover, if even a small fraction of the money we now spend on trying to enforce drug prohibition were devoted to treatment and rehabilitation, in an atmosphere of compassion not punishment, the reduction in drug usage and in the harm done to the users could be dramatic. This plea comes from the bottom of my heart. Every friend of freedom, and I know you are one, must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence. A country in which shooting down unidentified planes "on suspicion" can be seriously considered as a drug-war tactic is not the kind of United States that either you or I want to hand on to future generations. |
society. You are not mistaken in believing that drugs are tearing asunder our social fabric, ruining the lives of many young people, and imposing heavy costs on some of the most disadvantaged among us. You are not mistaken in believing that the majority of the public share your concerns. In short, you are not mistaken in the end you seek to achieve. Your mistake is failing to recognize that the very measures you favor are a major source of the evils you deplore. Of course the problem is demand, but it is not only demand, it is demand that must operate through repressed and illegal channels. Illegality creates obscene profits that finance the murderous tactics of the drug lords; illegality leads to the corruption of law enforcement officials; illegality monopolizes the efforts of honest law forces so that they are starved for resources to fight the simpler crimes of robbery, theft and assault. Drugs are a tragedy for addicts. But criminalizing their use converts that tragedy into a disaster for society, for users and non-users alike. Our experience with the prohibition of drugs is a replay of our experience with the prohibition of alcoholic beverages. I append excerpts from a column that I wrote in 1972 on "Prohibition and Drugs." The major problem then was heroin from Marseilles; today, it is cocaine from Latin America. Today, also, the problem is far more serious than it was 17 years ago: more addicts, more innocent victims; more drug pushers, more law enforcement officials; more money spent to enforce prohibition, more money spent to circumvent prohibition.
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Italy's government has doubled the amount of cannabis people can possess without risking prosecution and announced a major overhaul of the laws on narcotics use. Causing an outcry from the centre-right opposition, but joy from campaigners for drugs liberalisation, Health Minister Livia Turco said the maximum amount of marijuana to be considered for "personal use" would be doubled to 1g in terms of its active ingredient. |
That would allow for possession of up to around 40 joints, the health ministry said.
Comment on the Transfer of Power in Congress
Drug War Chronicle has this week focused on the results of ballot measures and individual candidacies of relevance to drug policy reform. We will next week publish an in-depth analysis of the potential impact that the change of control of Congress from the Republicans to the Democrats could have on our issue, but in the meanwhile a few brief comments: First, while DRCNet is a commitedly non-partisan organization that has had both good and bad -- mostly bad -- to say about both major parties' stances on drug policy, at the present moment in time our cause or at least some politically current corners of it, has more friends on the Democratic side of the aisle. Some of them are expected to take the chairmanships of key committees:
This is not to say that the Democratic Party is a reliable ally for us by any means. After all, the terrible mandatory minimums we are living with today were enacted 20 years ago by a Democratically-controlled Congress, on the initiative of Democratic leaders. Only a few months ago Democratic Senator Charles Schumer sponsored millions of dollars of funding for opium eradication in Afghanistan, in our opinion a big mistake and unjust to the farmers who have no other effective way of feeding their families. Nevertheless, in our opinion we now have a much better fighting chance -- not yet for legalization, perhaps, but for much positive progress -- and less of a chance of seeing really bad bills go through. Sentencing reform, needle exchange, scaling back Plan Colombia funding, even medical marijuana -- could they happen? The answer is now a definite maybe. The more our forces grow, the more of you, our readers, take action, the more clout the cause will have with both Democrats and Republicans. We are at a juncture of historic possibilities in the issue, and we hope we can count on your support and participation in the months and years to come. |
is headed toward chairmanship of the subcommittee of Judiciary that deals with crime legislation.
'Big Night For Democrats'
The Democrats will take control of the House of Representatives in the US midterm elections, according to television reports. They are also hoping to take control of the the Senate as they look to limit the power of President Bush in his last two years in office. A number of US TV networks said the |
Democrats were already projected to have made the 15 gains needed to win the House of Representatives.
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Police arrested seven medical marijuana patients demanding to speak with Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) head According to Americans for Safe Access (ASA), the medical marijuana defense group that organized the action, protestors dumped 1,500 empty pill bottles in front of the hotel as a way of showing that the DEA's actions left them without their medicine. The patients refused to leave until Tandy came out to speak with them, and when she declined, they remained and were arrested. While medical marijuana was legalized by California voters a decade ago, the federal government does not recognize it and views any marijuana use as illegal. Acting with the support of San Diego County political officials and law enforcement, the DEA has effectively shut down what was a growing network of medical marijuana dispensaries serving the San Diego area. "Doctors recommend cannabis and patients use it because it works," said ASA executive director Steph Sherer. "The DEA is inflicting unnecessary suffering on tens of thousands of Americans by denying them a safe, effective medicine. It has to stop." The action may not have reined in the rogue agency, but it helped turn up the heat on Tandy, who, according to ASA California state coordinator Alex Franco, came down and apologized to the Marriot staff for the "commotion" caused by the protest and arrests. When you head an agency that is taking medicine from seriously ill people, sometimes you have to pay the price, both personally and professionally. |
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Today marks a grim anniversary in US drug policy, the enactment 20 years ago by Congress -- without hearings -- of draconian mandatory minimum sentences that have packed the federal prisons with vast numbers of low-level, nonviolent offenders serving for unjustly long periods of time. |
Brain warning in cannabis TV ad Paranoia |
is a symptom of too much cannabis. A TV advertisement warning young people of the damage cannabis can do to the brain is to be screened as part of a drugs awareness campaign. The advert,