NotaProfessor
Active member
Dude, all I get is high. I'm smoking the wrong stuff.
Those guys got me down COLD. But in my world it's hand, genitalia, and weed.
Can't be a marijuana masturbator without weed.
The Big Lie
- Thread starter vta
- Start date
Dude, all I get is high. I'm smoking the wrong stuff.
Those guys got me down COLD. But in my world it's hand, genitalia, and weed.
Can't be a marijuana masturbator without weed.
Author: Joseph Michelson, M.D., Pasadena resident
IT'S TIME FOR FEDS TO LEGALIZE MARIJUANA
Karen R., a victim of ovarian cancer, age 35, is aware of her prognosis. Dying, like birth, and every other stage of living, is difficult, she often ponders. Her chemotherapy, which offers a partial or perhaps full redemption, is arduous at best: she suffers violent nausea and vomiting during her very necessary phases of chemo: connected ( "chained" ) to an IV, her repose on the gurney is interrupted, quite quickly, by her urgent anxiety, pulling her IV alongside, to the rest room to vomit her guts out.
Lately, however, Karen avails herself of a candy bar, in between the "bag" changes on her IV pole. Her nausea interruptions are much less frequent and urgent, and she is calmer, and happier with herself... .the necessary torments of scheduled chemotherapy are so much easier to take now. "What has made the difference?" asks her anxious, but very curious fellow chemo. victim on the next gurney.
"My candy bar... ...would you like to try one?"
"Why? What is it?"
"Medical marijuana, " Karen smiles. "It makes the whole ordeal easier..."
She hands her chemo-bed-fellow her bar. "Here, take a bite. It's chocolate ..."
We live in the enlightened times of approval of medical marijuana. California, and 16 other states have approved the use of Cannabis ( marijuana ) for chronic disease, authorized by a physician, and it is especially of help to cancer patients and chemotherapy recipients. It cannot be "smoked" in the atmosphere of the chemotherapy clinics, since the ambient smoke might prove offensive to those with asthma and C.O.P.D. ( emphysema ). But it can be ingested in a variety of forms: pills, soda-pop, brownies, cookies, candy, etc.
Marijuana has a long history of use as a drug or agent of euphoria. It is documented in Chinese medical compendia from as early as 2730 B.C.E., from where it spread to India, then North Africa, which stimulated its travel by traders to Europe by 500 A.D. It was listed in various pamphlets and books of the U.S. pharmacopeia from 1840-1972 for use in "labor pains, nausea, and rheumatism." It was then considered unlawful by the government. In the 1930s the U.S.Federal Bureau of Narcotics considered marijuana dangerous and addictive. By the 1970s, the U.S. Government classified marijuana, along with heroin and LSD as class 1 drugs: having the relatively highest abuse potential and no accepted medical use.
This judgment follows on the hundreds of years acceptance and use of marijuana, peyote, and other plants of medicinal and ritual ( religious ) use by Native Americans.
In spite of this confused and confusing history, marijuana is currently made into a drug: marinol ( dronabinol ). It is legal in the Netherlands, Canada, Spain and Austria as a medicine for the amelioration of nausea and vomiting in various medical conditions, the stimulation of hunger in patients on chemotherapy regimens and with A.I.D.s who suffer "wasting" syndromes, it lowers eye pressure in patients who suffer glaucoma, and it works wonders as an analgesic -- pain reliever -- in many situations. It has also been shown to be of benefit in neurological disorders such as multiple sclerosis and Tourette's Syndrome. Unfortunately, marinol does not demonstrate as much effectiveness as other medications ( with more major side effects ) as "unrefined" marijuana. So the unorthodox means of administration of marijuana--smoking, eating, drinking: appear to be more effective than the accepted medicinal form of a simple pill. Perhaps there are elements in marijuana, over and above the simple tetra hydro cannabinol ( THC ) that contribute to its medicinal effects.
Whatever, there should be no resistance to the use of marijuana as a medication -- especially for cancer patients. An argument arises that physicians would be making these patients marijuana addicts. But they are already addicted to narcotics, and use of marijuana is also used to reduce patients' dependence on narcotics. We needn't discuss and weigh the alternatives of cocaine addiction, narcotic addiction, even alcohol addiction in terms of society costs ( altercations, deaths, DUI's, etc. ) vs. whatever minimal "costs" are attributed to marijuana.
What is needed now is for the government to recognize what our medical care-givers already recognize: the powerful, medical use of marijuana.
What is needed more is for the government to sanction and oversee the medical distribution of marijuana so that its dosage and administration is uniform. What do I mean? If I tell a patient to take an aspirin, say 300 mg. of salisylic acid, they are able to obtain 300 mg. How do we administer marijuana? Please smoke a reefer after chemo, or enjoy a candy bar during chemo?
It is time for the federal government to step up to the plate.
IT'S TIME FOR FEDS TO LEGALIZE MARIJUANA
Karen R., a victim of ovarian cancer, age 35, is aware of her prognosis. Dying, like birth, and every other stage of living, is difficult, she often ponders. Her chemotherapy, which offers a partial or perhaps full redemption, is arduous at best: she suffers violent nausea and vomiting during her very necessary phases of chemo: connected ( "chained" ) to an IV, her repose on the gurney is interrupted, quite quickly, by her urgent anxiety, pulling her IV alongside, to the rest room to vomit her guts out.
Lately, however, Karen avails herself of a candy bar, in between the "bag" changes on her IV pole. Her nausea interruptions are much less frequent and urgent, and she is calmer, and happier with herself... .the necessary torments of scheduled chemotherapy are so much easier to take now. "What has made the difference?" asks her anxious, but very curious fellow chemo. victim on the next gurney.
"My candy bar... ...would you like to try one?"
"Why? What is it?"
"Medical marijuana, " Karen smiles. "It makes the whole ordeal easier..."
She hands her chemo-bed-fellow her bar. "Here, take a bite. It's chocolate ..."
We live in the enlightened times of approval of medical marijuana. California, and 16 other states have approved the use of Cannabis ( marijuana ) for chronic disease, authorized by a physician, and it is especially of help to cancer patients and chemotherapy recipients. It cannot be "smoked" in the atmosphere of the chemotherapy clinics, since the ambient smoke might prove offensive to those with asthma and C.O.P.D. ( emphysema ). But it can be ingested in a variety of forms: pills, soda-pop, brownies, cookies, candy, etc.
Marijuana has a long history of use as a drug or agent of euphoria. It is documented in Chinese medical compendia from as early as 2730 B.C.E., from where it spread to India, then North Africa, which stimulated its travel by traders to Europe by 500 A.D. It was listed in various pamphlets and books of the U.S. pharmacopeia from 1840-1972 for use in "labor pains, nausea, and rheumatism." It was then considered unlawful by the government. In the 1930s the U.S.Federal Bureau of Narcotics considered marijuana dangerous and addictive. By the 1970s, the U.S. Government classified marijuana, along with heroin and LSD as class 1 drugs: having the relatively highest abuse potential and no accepted medical use.
This judgment follows on the hundreds of years acceptance and use of marijuana, peyote, and other plants of medicinal and ritual ( religious ) use by Native Americans.
In spite of this confused and confusing history, marijuana is currently made into a drug: marinol ( dronabinol ). It is legal in the Netherlands, Canada, Spain and Austria as a medicine for the amelioration of nausea and vomiting in various medical conditions, the stimulation of hunger in patients on chemotherapy regimens and with A.I.D.s who suffer "wasting" syndromes, it lowers eye pressure in patients who suffer glaucoma, and it works wonders as an analgesic -- pain reliever -- in many situations. It has also been shown to be of benefit in neurological disorders such as multiple sclerosis and Tourette's Syndrome. Unfortunately, marinol does not demonstrate as much effectiveness as other medications ( with more major side effects ) as "unrefined" marijuana. So the unorthodox means of administration of marijuana--smoking, eating, drinking: appear to be more effective than the accepted medicinal form of a simple pill. Perhaps there are elements in marijuana, over and above the simple tetra hydro cannabinol ( THC ) that contribute to its medicinal effects.
Whatever, there should be no resistance to the use of marijuana as a medication -- especially for cancer patients. An argument arises that physicians would be making these patients marijuana addicts. But they are already addicted to narcotics, and use of marijuana is also used to reduce patients' dependence on narcotics. We needn't discuss and weigh the alternatives of cocaine addiction, narcotic addiction, even alcohol addiction in terms of society costs ( altercations, deaths, DUI's, etc. ) vs. whatever minimal "costs" are attributed to marijuana.
What is needed now is for the government to recognize what our medical care-givers already recognize: the powerful, medical use of marijuana.
What is needed more is for the government to sanction and oversee the medical distribution of marijuana so that its dosage and administration is uniform. What do I mean? If I tell a patient to take an aspirin, say 300 mg. of salisylic acid, they are able to obtain 300 mg. How do we administer marijuana? Please smoke a reefer after chemo, or enjoy a candy bar during chemo?
It is time for the federal government to step up to the plate.
Obama Administration’s Medical Marijuana Policies Now Worse Than Bush and Clinton Policies
By "Radical" Russ Belville
When originally asked as a candidate his stand on the issue of medical marijuana, President Obama had pledged not to be “using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this issue”.
Today, four US Attorneys from the Obama Administration’s Department of Justice announced plans to “outline actions targeting the sale, distribution and cultivation of marijuana.” Sixteen dispensary owners in California have received letters giving them 45 days to shut down before the federal government shuts them down and seizes their assets
The Obama Administration’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has openly declared that the mere act of registering to use medical marijuana in accordance with state law is reason to suspend a citizen’s Second Amendment rights.
Additionally, President Obama has been using the resources of other federal departments to circumvent state laws on medical marijuana.
The Obama Administration’s Internal Revenue Service has ruled that medical marijuana dispensaries cannot deduct common business expenses, a move that cripples the ability of any business to remain viable.
The Obama Administration’s Department of Treasury has pressured banks to no longer hold accounts for medical marijuana businesses that are heavily regulated, taxed, and surveilled by the state of Colorado.
President Obama had pledged that “science and the scientific process must inform and guide decisions of my Administration on a wide range of issues, including improvement of public health”.
Yet the Obama Administration’s Drug Enforcement Administration has blocked legitimate requests from researchers to study marijuana’s medicinal effect.
The Obama Administration’s Department of Health and Human Services has rejected a Food and Drug Administration approved study of medical marijuana for treatment of post traumatic stress disorder.
President Obama has appointed the heads of all these departments. In fact, he even appointed to the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration Michele Leonhart, the acting administrator who had been appointed by President Bush.
It is by these measures that President Obama may be judged as more aggressively battling medical marijuana than the previous two administrations in the medical marijuana era. However, there is one critical difference between President Obama’s War on Medical Marijuana compared to President Bush: George W. Bush never bothered to ask us what we thought about it.
President Obama has asked the American People on nine separate occasions for suggestions on public policy. In every instance, the subject of marijuana legalization and medical marijuana support have been the top concerns cited by Americans.
President Bush never openly mocked us on the issue. Of course, if President Bush had bothered to address our medical marijuana questions, it couldn’t have been any more incoherent than President Obama’s recent response.
Full disclosure: I voted for, campaigned, fund-raised, phone-banked, and publicly spoke on behalf of the Obama Campaign in 2008 when I was still a progressive talk radio host on satellite radio. It won’t happen again. Some tell me we’re more likely to see legalization under a Democratic administration; I see two Republicans running for president espousing marijuana regulation. I see arrest graphs showing greater rise in marijuana arrests under Clinton than any president but Nixon. At this point in my childless life, I must take Keith Stroup’s words to heart and “never again vote for any politician who would treat you like a criminal”.
cosmik debris
Member
Ah the pathetic irony of it all. The great messiah of the "progressives" turns out to be rife with the hypocrisies that have afflicted all who went before.
Gitmo is bad, buuut maybe not so bad that I really wanna close it right now. These bullshit wars have to end...just as soon as I ramp this one up and start another. Gay marriage? Hell I'm all for it if they're dumb enough to gimme their votes, and I'll sue the fuck out'a any State that threatens the continued expansion of my welfare dependent and growing constituency. They can shit all over the Gays and their marriage rights bills though and I'll remain mum. Wall Street is fraught with my people, and they throw shitloads of cash at me, but they are evil, and the fact that my policies only benefit them is but a slight of hand from being made to appear as though the Republitards are really to blame all by themselves.
And now the icing on the cake. Mr. Obama and his secret committee of murderers can now decide amongst themselves who shall die and when, anywhere in the world, and the sheeple will rejoice. Killer drones...coming to your neighborhood soon, and why not? When have you ever heard of our government getting away with something and then self correcting? No, that is definitely not their way. More like continue out to the furthest fence and continue to lean on it til it too gives way...just like a cow in the pasture, and almost as smart.
The only surprise is that anyone is surprised.
Ron Paul. When you hear and see the status quo work this hard to ignore and marginalize someone, that should be the time that you go against the current and take the time to learn and listen. He may be one of the last men of integrity left in Washington. Is it any wonder that they are terrified of him?
If you doubt his sincerity check his Congressional voting record, it is unique in the annals of Congress. While you're at it take note that he neither participates in their cushy retirement plan nor their obscene medical care plan. He is also the only one in Congress to ever, never mind always, return an unused portion of his Congressional staffing allowance every year. He doesn't promote smokin' weed, but realizes that the government has no right impinging on your ability to do so.
The only question is why isn't everyone that smokes getting behind their last hope of the decade? Are that many of you tied to some tit of government hand outs. Read again. He isn't suggesting that we turn everything on its head tomorrow. His reality is actually much more measured and practical than he is given credit. He's also the last politico that you'll ever see answer a question directly and succinctly without having to constantly rephrase it and change it into something else and other.
Gitmo is bad, buuut maybe not so bad that I really wanna close it right now. These bullshit wars have to end...just as soon as I ramp this one up and start another. Gay marriage? Hell I'm all for it if they're dumb enough to gimme their votes, and I'll sue the fuck out'a any State that threatens the continued expansion of my welfare dependent and growing constituency. They can shit all over the Gays and their marriage rights bills though and I'll remain mum. Wall Street is fraught with my people, and they throw shitloads of cash at me, but they are evil, and the fact that my policies only benefit them is but a slight of hand from being made to appear as though the Republitards are really to blame all by themselves.
And now the icing on the cake. Mr. Obama and his secret committee of murderers can now decide amongst themselves who shall die and when, anywhere in the world, and the sheeple will rejoice. Killer drones...coming to your neighborhood soon, and why not? When have you ever heard of our government getting away with something and then self correcting? No, that is definitely not their way. More like continue out to the furthest fence and continue to lean on it til it too gives way...just like a cow in the pasture, and almost as smart.
The only surprise is that anyone is surprised.
Ron Paul. When you hear and see the status quo work this hard to ignore and marginalize someone, that should be the time that you go against the current and take the time to learn and listen. He may be one of the last men of integrity left in Washington. Is it any wonder that they are terrified of him?
If you doubt his sincerity check his Congressional voting record, it is unique in the annals of Congress. While you're at it take note that he neither participates in their cushy retirement plan nor their obscene medical care plan. He is also the only one in Congress to ever, never mind always, return an unused portion of his Congressional staffing allowance every year. He doesn't promote smokin' weed, but realizes that the government has no right impinging on your ability to do so.
The only question is why isn't everyone that smokes getting behind their last hope of the decade? Are that many of you tied to some tit of government hand outs. Read again. He isn't suggesting that we turn everything on its head tomorrow. His reality is actually much more measured and practical than he is given credit. He's also the last politico that you'll ever see answer a question directly and succinctly without having to constantly rephrase it and change it into something else and other.
Up in smoke: Obama's promise to medical marijuana users
Dave Stancliff/For the Times-Standard
Remember how President Obama assured us he would work with the states who enacted medical marijuana laws when he campaigned for the presidency?
He sure was blowing smoke on that one, wasn't he?
”The Obama administration really is more aggressive than the administration of his predecessor,” said Americans for Safe Access (ASA) spokesman Kris Hermes in a recent interview.
The vast difference between Obama's promises and what his administration is doing against medical marijuana has shocked many who voted for him. The “bringer of change” dangled some hope to states that approved medical marijuana, thereby snagging many votes. Obama clearly forgot what he had promised the states and the people living there after he got elected.
Obama's war on medical marijuana is escalating, and he's blatantly trashing his promises. Incredible as it may seem, his administration has stated, “There are no medicinal properties in marijuana.” Not only is that a ridiculous thing to say, it's a lie.
In the last 20 years, numerous independent studies and research done at universities across the country have revealed an ever-increasing number of medical applications for marijuana. Yet the Obama administration refuses to conduct any research on its own that might prove marijuana has medicinal properties.
Instead, they've chosen to conduct a search-and-destroy mission in California to eliminate state-approved pot dispensaries.
A reign of terror intended to send a message. It doesn't matter that they take away people's medicine and their way to get it safely.
”We're not at war with people in this country,” Obama's drug czar Gil Kerlikowske told The Wall Street Journal in May. I beg to differ. The raids on medical marijuana dispensaries have actually increased under Obama's watch.
The DEA propaganda machine tells the public marijuana has no medical qualities and is as dangerous as heroin. These outright lies are easily disproved by current and past research.
Over the past eight months, Obama has become arguably the worst president in U.S. history regarding medical marijuana. The most recent example is what happened to Northstone Organics, a Mendocino collective. They are the perfect example of cooperating with state law enforcement. The nonprofit has been featured on Frontline (The Pot Republic) and was a pioneer for Mendocino County's “zip-tie” program.
The feds raided them anyway. California NORML Coordinator Dale Gieringer denounced the raid as a “shameful and despicable” attack on California's most successful legally regulated marijuana cultivation program.
Escalating the war, U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy says she'll go after any marijuana advertising in the media. On Sept. 21, Obama's ATF issued an open letter saying gun shops cannot sell guns to medical marijuana patients -- or people who are known to be addicted to drugs other than alcohol or tobacco, ironically enough.
Despite a previous Department Of Justice memo that targeting medical marijuana is an inefficient use of time and resources, four California-based U.S. Attorneys and their staffs have vowed an aggressive new crackdown on medical marijuana operations throughout the state.
After Obama's inauguration, Attorney General Eric Holder said federal prosecutors would not enforce action against patients or providers who adhered to state law. Six months later, the new policy was officially articulated in the landmark Ogden memo: “Prosecution of individuals with cancer or other serious illnesses who use marijuana as part of a recommended treatment regimen consistent with applicable state law, or those caregivers in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state law who provide such individuals with marijuana, is unlikely to be an efficient use of limited federal resources.”
What happened? Why the rabid all-out assault now? Either Obama has a short memory, or he's been lying all along and waiting for an opportunity to step up the senseless war on marijuana. Also, look at the ties between Big Pharma (opposed to marijuana legislation for competition reasons) and the Obama administration.
As Obama campaigns for his second term, one thing stands out to me: He's an expert flip-flopper when it comes to political expediency.
What you can do about this senseless war is to urge your representative to co-sponsor HR1983, a bill forcing the feds to stop their raids on state-approved medical marijuana programs.
As It Stands, I suspect Obama (a former pot smoker) is going to have to answer to a large block of medical marijuana users who vote in 2012.
Dave Stancliff is a retired newspaper editor and publisher who writes this column for the Times-Standard. Comments can be sent to [email protected] or to www.davesblogcentral.com.
Dave Stancliff/For the Times-Standard
Remember how President Obama assured us he would work with the states who enacted medical marijuana laws when he campaigned for the presidency?
He sure was blowing smoke on that one, wasn't he?
”The Obama administration really is more aggressive than the administration of his predecessor,” said Americans for Safe Access (ASA) spokesman Kris Hermes in a recent interview.
The vast difference between Obama's promises and what his administration is doing against medical marijuana has shocked many who voted for him. The “bringer of change” dangled some hope to states that approved medical marijuana, thereby snagging many votes. Obama clearly forgot what he had promised the states and the people living there after he got elected.
Obama's war on medical marijuana is escalating, and he's blatantly trashing his promises. Incredible as it may seem, his administration has stated, “There are no medicinal properties in marijuana.” Not only is that a ridiculous thing to say, it's a lie.
In the last 20 years, numerous independent studies and research done at universities across the country have revealed an ever-increasing number of medical applications for marijuana. Yet the Obama administration refuses to conduct any research on its own that might prove marijuana has medicinal properties.
Instead, they've chosen to conduct a search-and-destroy mission in California to eliminate state-approved pot dispensaries.
A reign of terror intended to send a message. It doesn't matter that they take away people's medicine and their way to get it safely.
”We're not at war with people in this country,” Obama's drug czar Gil Kerlikowske told The Wall Street Journal in May. I beg to differ. The raids on medical marijuana dispensaries have actually increased under Obama's watch.
The DEA propaganda machine tells the public marijuana has no medical qualities and is as dangerous as heroin. These outright lies are easily disproved by current and past research.
Over the past eight months, Obama has become arguably the worst president in U.S. history regarding medical marijuana. The most recent example is what happened to Northstone Organics, a Mendocino collective. They are the perfect example of cooperating with state law enforcement. The nonprofit has been featured on Frontline (The Pot Republic) and was a pioneer for Mendocino County's “zip-tie” program.
The feds raided them anyway. California NORML Coordinator Dale Gieringer denounced the raid as a “shameful and despicable” attack on California's most successful legally regulated marijuana cultivation program.
Escalating the war, U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy says she'll go after any marijuana advertising in the media. On Sept. 21, Obama's ATF issued an open letter saying gun shops cannot sell guns to medical marijuana patients -- or people who are known to be addicted to drugs other than alcohol or tobacco, ironically enough.
Despite a previous Department Of Justice memo that targeting medical marijuana is an inefficient use of time and resources, four California-based U.S. Attorneys and their staffs have vowed an aggressive new crackdown on medical marijuana operations throughout the state.
After Obama's inauguration, Attorney General Eric Holder said federal prosecutors would not enforce action against patients or providers who adhered to state law. Six months later, the new policy was officially articulated in the landmark Ogden memo: “Prosecution of individuals with cancer or other serious illnesses who use marijuana as part of a recommended treatment regimen consistent with applicable state law, or those caregivers in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state law who provide such individuals with marijuana, is unlikely to be an efficient use of limited federal resources.”
What happened? Why the rabid all-out assault now? Either Obama has a short memory, or he's been lying all along and waiting for an opportunity to step up the senseless war on marijuana. Also, look at the ties between Big Pharma (opposed to marijuana legislation for competition reasons) and the Obama administration.
As Obama campaigns for his second term, one thing stands out to me: He's an expert flip-flopper when it comes to political expediency.
What you can do about this senseless war is to urge your representative to co-sponsor HR1983, a bill forcing the feds to stop their raids on state-approved medical marijuana programs.
As It Stands, I suspect Obama (a former pot smoker) is going to have to answer to a large block of medical marijuana users who vote in 2012.
Dave Stancliff is a retired newspaper editor and publisher who writes this column for the Times-Standard. Comments can be sent to [email protected] or to www.davesblogcentral.com.
Reefer Madness
By Ethan Nadelmann
Source: New York Times
medical USA -- Marijuana is now legal under state law for medical purposes in 16 states and the District of Columbia, encompassing nearly one-third of the American population. More than 1,000 dispensaries provide medical marijuana; many are well regulated by state and local law and pay substantial taxes. But though more than 70 percent of Americans support legalizing medical marijuana, any use of marijuana remains illegal under federal law.
When he ran for president, Barack Obama defended the medical use of marijuana and said that he would not use Justice Department resources to override state laws on the issue. He appeared to make good on this commitment in October 2009, when the Justice Department directed federal prosecutors not to focus their efforts on “individuals whose actions are in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws providing for the medical use of marijuana.”
But over the past year, federal authorities appear to have done everything in their power to undermine state and local regulation of medical marijuana and to create uncertainty, fear and confusion among those in the industry. The president needs to reassert himself to ensure that his original policy is implemented.
The Treasury Department has forced banks to close accounts of medical marijuana businesses operating legally under state law. The Internal Revenue Service has required dispensary owners to pay punitive taxes required of no other businesses. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives recently ruled that state-sanctioned medical marijuana patients can not purchase firearms.
United States attorneys have also sent letters to local officials, coinciding with the adoption or implementation of state medical marijuana regulatory legislation, stressing their authority to prosecute all marijuana offenses. Prosecutors have threatened to seize the property of landlords and put them behind bars for renting to marijuana dispensaries. The United States attorney in San Diego, Laura E. Duffy, has promised to start targeting media outlets that run dispensaries’ ads.
President Obama has not publicly announced a shift in his views on medical marijuana, but his administration seems to be declaring one by fiat. The head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, Michele M. Leonhart, a Bush appointee re-nominated by Mr. Obama, has exercised her discretionary authority to retain marijuana’s classification as a Schedule I drug with “no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.” And the pronouncements on marijuana, medical and otherwise, from Mr. Obama’s top drug policy adviser, R. Gil Kerlikowske, have been indistinguishable from those of Mr. Bush’s.
None of this makes any sense in terms of public safety, health or fiscal policy. Apart from its value to patients, medical marijuana plays an increasingly important role in local economies, transforming previously illegal jobs into legal ones and creating many new jobs as well, contributing to local tax bases and stimulating new economic activity. Federal crackdowns will not stop the trade in marijuana; they will only push it back underground and hurt those patients least able to navigate illicit markets.
Perhaps not since the civil rights era has law enforcement played such an aggressive role in what is essentially a cultural and political struggle. But this time the federal government is playing the bully, riding roughshod over states’ rights, not to protect vulnerable individuals but to harm them.
At the federal level, there have been few voices of protest. Senior Democrats on Capitol Hill shy away from speaking out. Republicans mostly ignore the extent to which anti-marijuana zealotry threatens core conservative values like states rights, property rights and gun ownership.
Mr. Obama briefly showed a willingness to challenge the drug-war mind-set that permeates the federal drug-control establishment. He needs to show leadership and intervene now, to encourage and defend responsible state and local regulation of medical marijuana.
Ethan Nadelmann is the executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance.
By Ethan Nadelmann
Source: New York Times
medical USA -- Marijuana is now legal under state law for medical purposes in 16 states and the District of Columbia, encompassing nearly one-third of the American population. More than 1,000 dispensaries provide medical marijuana; many are well regulated by state and local law and pay substantial taxes. But though more than 70 percent of Americans support legalizing medical marijuana, any use of marijuana remains illegal under federal law.
When he ran for president, Barack Obama defended the medical use of marijuana and said that he would not use Justice Department resources to override state laws on the issue. He appeared to make good on this commitment in October 2009, when the Justice Department directed federal prosecutors not to focus their efforts on “individuals whose actions are in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws providing for the medical use of marijuana.”
But over the past year, federal authorities appear to have done everything in their power to undermine state and local regulation of medical marijuana and to create uncertainty, fear and confusion among those in the industry. The president needs to reassert himself to ensure that his original policy is implemented.
The Treasury Department has forced banks to close accounts of medical marijuana businesses operating legally under state law. The Internal Revenue Service has required dispensary owners to pay punitive taxes required of no other businesses. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives recently ruled that state-sanctioned medical marijuana patients can not purchase firearms.
United States attorneys have also sent letters to local officials, coinciding with the adoption or implementation of state medical marijuana regulatory legislation, stressing their authority to prosecute all marijuana offenses. Prosecutors have threatened to seize the property of landlords and put them behind bars for renting to marijuana dispensaries. The United States attorney in San Diego, Laura E. Duffy, has promised to start targeting media outlets that run dispensaries’ ads.
President Obama has not publicly announced a shift in his views on medical marijuana, but his administration seems to be declaring one by fiat. The head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, Michele M. Leonhart, a Bush appointee re-nominated by Mr. Obama, has exercised her discretionary authority to retain marijuana’s classification as a Schedule I drug with “no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.” And the pronouncements on marijuana, medical and otherwise, from Mr. Obama’s top drug policy adviser, R. Gil Kerlikowske, have been indistinguishable from those of Mr. Bush’s.
None of this makes any sense in terms of public safety, health or fiscal policy. Apart from its value to patients, medical marijuana plays an increasingly important role in local economies, transforming previously illegal jobs into legal ones and creating many new jobs as well, contributing to local tax bases and stimulating new economic activity. Federal crackdowns will not stop the trade in marijuana; they will only push it back underground and hurt those patients least able to navigate illicit markets.
Perhaps not since the civil rights era has law enforcement played such an aggressive role in what is essentially a cultural and political struggle. But this time the federal government is playing the bully, riding roughshod over states’ rights, not to protect vulnerable individuals but to harm them.
At the federal level, there have been few voices of protest. Senior Democrats on Capitol Hill shy away from speaking out. Republicans mostly ignore the extent to which anti-marijuana zealotry threatens core conservative values like states rights, property rights and gun ownership.
Mr. Obama briefly showed a willingness to challenge the drug-war mind-set that permeates the federal drug-control establishment. He needs to show leadership and intervene now, to encourage and defend responsible state and local regulation of medical marijuana.
Ethan Nadelmann is the executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance.
“Study” on marijuana and driving isn’t really a study, but is loaded with propaganda
by Dr. Joe McSherry
Wikipedia defines propaganda as “present[ing] information primarily to influence an audience. Propaganda is often biased, with facts selectively presented (thus possibly lying by omission) to encourage a particular synthesis, or uses loaded messages to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented. The desired result is a change of the attitude toward the subject in the target audience to further a political, or other type of agenda.”
“Marijuana Use and Motor Vehicle Crashes”1 is a typical example of propaganda funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and, ultimately, us, the taxpayers. NIDA, which does not consider finding good things about illegal drugs part of its mandate, funds studies to look for harmful effects of illegal drugs, including cannabis. This is not research but statistical manipulation (meta-analysis) of selected prior research articles. The only science involved was described in the original articles.
In this case, Dr. Li’s article starts with the observation that the federal government considers cannabis to have “no currently accepted medical use,” in contrast with “16 states and the District of Columbia [which] have enacted legislation to decriminalize medical marijuana [cannabis].” The authors do acknowledge there are lots of articles on medical use (the U.S. Government, incidentally, owns a patent on medical uses as well as a monopoly on the availability of cannabis for research). The discussion of medical cannabis and legalization do not impact driving but are the target of this article.
Lies by omission: Dr. Li, et al. reference an article by Dr. DP Tashkin on the harmful effects on the respiratory system caused by cannabis use, written in 1987. Follow up research by Tashkin designed to find the harmful effects on the respiratory system, and published in 2007,2 did not find cannabis to be associated with harmful effects. The 2007 article was omitted.
In another example, Dr. Li, et al. reference an article by Dr. K.I. Bolla published in 2002 to document the “host of adverse effects” of long-term cannabis use. This was another NIDA article. With careful reading, including a review of data published separately online, one learns that when subjects were stratified by IQ, the below average persons who used more cannabis performed less well. The above average IQ persons who used more cannabis performed better. One could conclude from the article that chess players who test negative for cannabis use might be advised on the increased accuracy associated with cannabis use. The authors only dwelt on the below average users studied, omitting the Carl Sagans in their study.
Dr. Li, et al. declare “[t]he only study that failed to detect a significant association between marijuana use and crash risk was a small case-control study conducted in Thailand … .” The authors, however, omit the conclusions of one of the articles from which the meta-analysis is constructed. Dr. KL Movig,3 the author of one of the nine source articles, studied the effects on driving of alcohol and other sedatives, amphetamines, opiates, cocaine, and cannabis, as well as combinations of these. What was found was the combination of drugs is the greatest hazard. No rocket science there — if your judgment is trashed by alcohol and you add a sedative or stimulant you are not going to be a safe driver. “[D]rug use, especially alcohol, benzodiazepines and multiple drug use and drug–alcohol combinations, among vehicle drivers increases the risk for a road trauma accident requiring hospitalization … No increased risk for road trauma was found for drivers exposed to cannabis.” Lying through omission.
The other articles combine apples and oranges, and each stands on the quality of research presented. The meta-analysis is a smoothie. Emphasizing the author’s position on this, the discussion ends as the introduction began, confounding medical cannabis use with recreational use and implying states with medical marijuana laws should see an increase in marijuana-related automobile accidents.
NIDA tried to connect smoking hazards of tobacco with smoking cannabis and failed. This article attempts to connect the hazards of drunk driving with drivers who use cannabis at any time, whether for recreational or medical purposes. Taxpayers should insist that the government not only end the war on drugs but also eliminate NIDA. After all, NIDA controls all the cannabis for research, and the DEA prevents approval of any alternative source of cannabis. Yet, NIDA has refused to provide marijuana to FDA-approved studies on the medical benefits of cannabis. Finally, the propaganda produced by NIDA is used by opponents of medical marijuana as a political tool. The ONDCP also substitutes NIDA propaganda for the science on cannabis, so that it can refuse to consider policy changes to allow medical cannabis or legalization, as occurred last week with the response to the “We the People” petition to the White House signed by 50,000 citizens. Eliminating NIDA, the DEA, and the ONDCP will provide savings to the federal budget. And that is a fact.
1 Mu-Chen Li, Joanne E. Brady, Charles J. DiMaggio, Arielle R. Lusardi, Keane Y. Tzong, and Guohua Li. “Marijuana Use and Motor Vehicle Crashes.” Epidemiologic Reviews (2011): mxr017v1-mxr017.
2 Hashibe M, Morgenstern H, Cui Y, Tashkin DP, Zhang ZF, Cozen W, Mack TM, Greenland S. “Marijuana use and the risk of lung and upper aerodigestive tract cancers: results of a population-based case-control study.” Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev. October 2006, 15(10): 1829-34.
3 K.L.L. Movig, M.P.M. Mathijssen , P.H.A. Nagel , T. van Egmond, J.J. de Gier, H.G.M. Leufkens, A.C.G. Egberts. “Psychoactive substance use and the risk of motor vehicle accidents.” Accident Analysis and Prevention 36 (2004): 631–636. [An excellent source on the risks of driving with alcohol and drugs.]
If you have a science-based question about marijuana, email it to us at [email protected], and it may be answered in our upcoming “Ask Dr. McSherry” feature.
by Dr. Joe McSherry
Wikipedia defines propaganda as “present[ing] information primarily to influence an audience. Propaganda is often biased, with facts selectively presented (thus possibly lying by omission) to encourage a particular synthesis, or uses loaded messages to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented. The desired result is a change of the attitude toward the subject in the target audience to further a political, or other type of agenda.”
“Marijuana Use and Motor Vehicle Crashes”1 is a typical example of propaganda funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and, ultimately, us, the taxpayers. NIDA, which does not consider finding good things about illegal drugs part of its mandate, funds studies to look for harmful effects of illegal drugs, including cannabis. This is not research but statistical manipulation (meta-analysis) of selected prior research articles. The only science involved was described in the original articles.
In this case, Dr. Li’s article starts with the observation that the federal government considers cannabis to have “no currently accepted medical use,” in contrast with “16 states and the District of Columbia [which] have enacted legislation to decriminalize medical marijuana [cannabis].” The authors do acknowledge there are lots of articles on medical use (the U.S. Government, incidentally, owns a patent on medical uses as well as a monopoly on the availability of cannabis for research). The discussion of medical cannabis and legalization do not impact driving but are the target of this article.
Lies by omission: Dr. Li, et al. reference an article by Dr. DP Tashkin on the harmful effects on the respiratory system caused by cannabis use, written in 1987. Follow up research by Tashkin designed to find the harmful effects on the respiratory system, and published in 2007,2 did not find cannabis to be associated with harmful effects. The 2007 article was omitted.
In another example, Dr. Li, et al. reference an article by Dr. K.I. Bolla published in 2002 to document the “host of adverse effects” of long-term cannabis use. This was another NIDA article. With careful reading, including a review of data published separately online, one learns that when subjects were stratified by IQ, the below average persons who used more cannabis performed less well. The above average IQ persons who used more cannabis performed better. One could conclude from the article that chess players who test negative for cannabis use might be advised on the increased accuracy associated with cannabis use. The authors only dwelt on the below average users studied, omitting the Carl Sagans in their study.
Dr. Li, et al. declare “[t]he only study that failed to detect a significant association between marijuana use and crash risk was a small case-control study conducted in Thailand … .” The authors, however, omit the conclusions of one of the articles from which the meta-analysis is constructed. Dr. KL Movig,3 the author of one of the nine source articles, studied the effects on driving of alcohol and other sedatives, amphetamines, opiates, cocaine, and cannabis, as well as combinations of these. What was found was the combination of drugs is the greatest hazard. No rocket science there — if your judgment is trashed by alcohol and you add a sedative or stimulant you are not going to be a safe driver. “[D]rug use, especially alcohol, benzodiazepines and multiple drug use and drug–alcohol combinations, among vehicle drivers increases the risk for a road trauma accident requiring hospitalization … No increased risk for road trauma was found for drivers exposed to cannabis.” Lying through omission.
The other articles combine apples and oranges, and each stands on the quality of research presented. The meta-analysis is a smoothie. Emphasizing the author’s position on this, the discussion ends as the introduction began, confounding medical cannabis use with recreational use and implying states with medical marijuana laws should see an increase in marijuana-related automobile accidents.
NIDA tried to connect smoking hazards of tobacco with smoking cannabis and failed. This article attempts to connect the hazards of drunk driving with drivers who use cannabis at any time, whether for recreational or medical purposes. Taxpayers should insist that the government not only end the war on drugs but also eliminate NIDA. After all, NIDA controls all the cannabis for research, and the DEA prevents approval of any alternative source of cannabis. Yet, NIDA has refused to provide marijuana to FDA-approved studies on the medical benefits of cannabis. Finally, the propaganda produced by NIDA is used by opponents of medical marijuana as a political tool. The ONDCP also substitutes NIDA propaganda for the science on cannabis, so that it can refuse to consider policy changes to allow medical cannabis or legalization, as occurred last week with the response to the “We the People” petition to the White House signed by 50,000 citizens. Eliminating NIDA, the DEA, and the ONDCP will provide savings to the federal budget. And that is a fact.
1 Mu-Chen Li, Joanne E. Brady, Charles J. DiMaggio, Arielle R. Lusardi, Keane Y. Tzong, and Guohua Li. “Marijuana Use and Motor Vehicle Crashes.” Epidemiologic Reviews (2011): mxr017v1-mxr017.
2 Hashibe M, Morgenstern H, Cui Y, Tashkin DP, Zhang ZF, Cozen W, Mack TM, Greenland S. “Marijuana use and the risk of lung and upper aerodigestive tract cancers: results of a population-based case-control study.” Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev. October 2006, 15(10): 1829-34.
3 K.L.L. Movig, M.P.M. Mathijssen , P.H.A. Nagel , T. van Egmond, J.J. de Gier, H.G.M. Leufkens, A.C.G. Egberts. “Psychoactive substance use and the risk of motor vehicle accidents.” Accident Analysis and Prevention 36 (2004): 631–636. [An excellent source on the risks of driving with alcohol and drugs.]
If you have a science-based question about marijuana, email it to us at [email protected], and it may be answered in our upcoming “Ask Dr. McSherry” feature.
Source: Record Searchlight (Redding, CA)
Author: Doug Bennett
WHAT THE NEW POLICE STATE LOOKS LIKE
Tuesday evening something important happened in Redding. Maybe the largest crowd ever gathered at our Redding City Council Chambers for an exercise in democracy. The issue: medical marijuana and the collectives that provide it to local patients. There had been a large rally in front of the building in support of the collectives hoping to persuade council members to keep them open to serve their members. When the doors were opened, the enthusiastic crowd filled the room and overflowed into the Community Room. Many filled out speaker cards to comment.
As I sat waiting to speak, listening to the city attorney, Rick Duvernay, give his version of medical marijuana law, I noticed an unusual number of police officers in the room, maybe 10 or 12 officers, including a pair parked on the stairs to the podium. I had never seen that sort of police presence in the chambers before. When my turn to speak came, I presented some thoughts on the legal situation and asked the council to exercise prudence and wait for the law to settle in the Pack case before taking any action. I returned to my seat to listen to the rest of the comments, and in a few minutes, a woman sat in the vacant chair next to me.
She seemed a little nervous when she asked if she could read the paper I had my notes on. She asked how she could be allowed to speak, and I gave her one of the speaker cards I had in my pocket and lent her my pen. She filled it out with a little help and took it to the clerk. Now she was in the queue to speak, ready to participate in local government, probably for the first time in her life.
As others spoke, she used the back of my notes to write her own notes on what she wanted to say. She was nervous about speaking, as I think all of us are our first time. Her hands were shaking as she wrote, yet she managed a whole page of thoughts on the issue.
Eventually a tall man in his late 50s came to the podium to talk about how medical marijuana had helped him overcome his addiction to prescribed opiates. He seemed a man who had a lot of passion about the benefits of marijuana and was naturally very animated. As he talked, I noticed he had something in his hands; I thought they might be his car keys. Also the two police officers behind him became more agitated, moving closer and to either side of him.
As the man's time ran out, he kept talking, as many people do. Maybe he didn't understand the system of lights and sounds used as timers, who knows? About 20 seconds into his overtime period, the two officers grabbed the man by his arms and took him into a small exit corridor adjacent to the council chambers. He had made no threats. He had exhibited no aggressive behavior toward anyone, and didn't resist the officers. The police then blocked off the exit and all doors into the corridor, so no one could witness what they were doing.
Needless to say, many people were shocked by this, and there was a cry from the audience of "What happened to Free Speech?" I was upset by all of this, and when the last speaker was done, I asked the council for a chance to address the situation. I am not sure exactly what I said, because I so outraged by what I had just witnessed. The crux of it was that the police presence and use of force was unprecedented and unnecessary. I think I included a rebuke directed at the new police chief.
What I do know is that police presence should not affect the First Amendment rights of citizens, and the Redding police did not do themselves or us a service by their actions. More importantly, the woman who had so many concerns and thoughts to share never spoke.
Creating a police state is not the answer to our problems. And "preventive" law enforcement, as Roger Moore, police spokesman, called it, is not the American way.
Author: Doug Bennett
WHAT THE NEW POLICE STATE LOOKS LIKE
Tuesday evening something important happened in Redding. Maybe the largest crowd ever gathered at our Redding City Council Chambers for an exercise in democracy. The issue: medical marijuana and the collectives that provide it to local patients. There had been a large rally in front of the building in support of the collectives hoping to persuade council members to keep them open to serve their members. When the doors were opened, the enthusiastic crowd filled the room and overflowed into the Community Room. Many filled out speaker cards to comment.
As I sat waiting to speak, listening to the city attorney, Rick Duvernay, give his version of medical marijuana law, I noticed an unusual number of police officers in the room, maybe 10 or 12 officers, including a pair parked on the stairs to the podium. I had never seen that sort of police presence in the chambers before. When my turn to speak came, I presented some thoughts on the legal situation and asked the council to exercise prudence and wait for the law to settle in the Pack case before taking any action. I returned to my seat to listen to the rest of the comments, and in a few minutes, a woman sat in the vacant chair next to me.
She seemed a little nervous when she asked if she could read the paper I had my notes on. She asked how she could be allowed to speak, and I gave her one of the speaker cards I had in my pocket and lent her my pen. She filled it out with a little help and took it to the clerk. Now she was in the queue to speak, ready to participate in local government, probably for the first time in her life.
As others spoke, she used the back of my notes to write her own notes on what she wanted to say. She was nervous about speaking, as I think all of us are our first time. Her hands were shaking as she wrote, yet she managed a whole page of thoughts on the issue.
Eventually a tall man in his late 50s came to the podium to talk about how medical marijuana had helped him overcome his addiction to prescribed opiates. He seemed a man who had a lot of passion about the benefits of marijuana and was naturally very animated. As he talked, I noticed he had something in his hands; I thought they might be his car keys. Also the two police officers behind him became more agitated, moving closer and to either side of him.
As the man's time ran out, he kept talking, as many people do. Maybe he didn't understand the system of lights and sounds used as timers, who knows? About 20 seconds into his overtime period, the two officers grabbed the man by his arms and took him into a small exit corridor adjacent to the council chambers. He had made no threats. He had exhibited no aggressive behavior toward anyone, and didn't resist the officers. The police then blocked off the exit and all doors into the corridor, so no one could witness what they were doing.
Needless to say, many people were shocked by this, and there was a cry from the audience of "What happened to Free Speech?" I was upset by all of this, and when the last speaker was done, I asked the council for a chance to address the situation. I am not sure exactly what I said, because I so outraged by what I had just witnessed. The crux of it was that the police presence and use of force was unprecedented and unnecessary. I think I included a rebuke directed at the new police chief.
What I do know is that police presence should not affect the First Amendment rights of citizens, and the Redding police did not do themselves or us a service by their actions. More importantly, the woman who had so many concerns and thoughts to share never spoke.
Creating a police state is not the answer to our problems. And "preventive" law enforcement, as Roger Moore, police spokesman, called it, is not the American way.
Source: Times & Transcript (Moncton, CN NK)
Author: Gwynne Dyer
Note: Gwynne Dyer writes on international affairs and is published in
45 newspapers around the world. He resides in London, England.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)
IS A CEASEFIRE PENDING IN THE 'WAR ON DRUGS?'
Like those generals who used to discover that nuclear weapons were not a good thing about 20 minutes after they took off their uniforms and started collecting their pensions, we have had a parade of former presidents who knew that the war on drugs was a bad thing - but only mentioned it after they were already ex-presidents. Now, at last, we have one who is saying it out loud while he is still in office.
President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia, the country that has suffered even more than Mexico from the drug wars, is an honest and serious man. He is also very brave, because any political leader who advocates the legalization of narcotic drugs will become a prime target of the prohibition industry. He has chosen to do it anyway.
"We are basically still thinking within the same framework as we have done for the past 40 years," he told The Observer in a recent interview in Bogota. "A new approach should try and take away the violent profit that comes with drug trafficking . . . If that means legalizing ( drugs ) . . . then I will welcome it."
Santos has no intention of becoming a kamikaze politician: "What I won't do is become the vanguard of that movement ( to legalize drugs ) because then I will be crucified. But I would gladly participate in those discussions, because we are the country that's still suffering most . . . from the high consumption in the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe in general."
There are no such discussions, of course. Santos is being disingenuous about this; he is really trying to start a serious international debate on drug legalization, not to join one. But the time may be ripe for such a debate, because it is now almost universally acknowledged ( outside of political circles ) that the "war on drugs" has been an extremely bloody failure.
Twenty years ago Milton Friedman, a Nobel Prize winner, the most influential economist of the 20th century, and an icon of the right, said: "If you look at the drug war from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug cartel." It is only because the government makes the drugs illegal that the criminal cartel has a highly profitable monopoly on meeting the demand.
Milton Friedman also said: "Government never has any right to interfere with an individual for that individual's own good. The case for prohibiting drugs is exactly as strong and as weak as the case for prohibiting people from over-eating. We all know that over-eating causes more deaths than drugs do." But there are a quarter-million Americans in jail for possessing or selling drugs. Nobody is in jail for producing, marketing or eating junk food.
Friedman was right, of course, but 40 years of the war on drugs have also shown that arguments based on logic, natural justice, or history ( the obvious parallel with alcohol prohibition in the U.S. in the 1920s and early 30s ) have very little effect on policy in the main drug-importing nations. Many politicians there know that the war on drugs is futile and stupid, but the political cost of leaving the herd and saying so out loud is too high.
The political leaders who are starting to say that it's time to end the war and legalize the drugs are almost all in the producer nations, where the damage has been far graver than in the drug-importing countries. In practice, therefore, they are almost all Latin American leaders - but even there they have waited until they left office to make their views known.
Former Mexican president Vicente Fox supported the U.S.-led war on drugs when he was in office in 2000-2006, but more recently he has condemned it as an unmitigated disaster. "We should consider legalizing the production, sale and distribution of drugs," he wrote on his blog. "Radical prohibition strategies have never worked."
"Legalization does not mean that drugs are good," Fox added, "but we have to see it as a strategy to weaken and break the economic system that allows cartels to make huge profits, which in turn increases their power and capacity to corrupt."
Naturally, Fox only said all that when he was no longer president, because otherwise the United States would have punished Mexico severely for stepping out of line. In the same spirit, former presidents Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil, Cesar Gaviria of Colombia and Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico made a joint public statement that drug prohibition had failed in 2009 - after they had all left office.
But gradually Latin American leaders are losing their fear of Washington. Last year Mexican President Felipe Calderon called for a debate on the legalization of the drug trade, although he carefully stressed that he himself was against the idea. ( Then why did you bring it up, Felipe? ) And now President Santos of Colombia has come out, still cautiously, to say that he would consider legalizing not only marijuana but cocaine.
The international discussion on legalization that Santos wants will not start tomorrow, or even next year, but common sense on drugs is finally getting the upper hand over ignorance, fear and dogmatism. And cash-strapped governments will eventually realize how much the balance sheet could be improved by taxing legalized drug consumption rather than wasting hundreds of billions in a futile attempt to reduce consumption.
Author: Gwynne Dyer
Note: Gwynne Dyer writes on international affairs and is published in
45 newspapers around the world. He resides in London, England.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)
IS A CEASEFIRE PENDING IN THE 'WAR ON DRUGS?'
Like those generals who used to discover that nuclear weapons were not a good thing about 20 minutes after they took off their uniforms and started collecting their pensions, we have had a parade of former presidents who knew that the war on drugs was a bad thing - but only mentioned it after they were already ex-presidents. Now, at last, we have one who is saying it out loud while he is still in office.
President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia, the country that has suffered even more than Mexico from the drug wars, is an honest and serious man. He is also very brave, because any political leader who advocates the legalization of narcotic drugs will become a prime target of the prohibition industry. He has chosen to do it anyway.
"We are basically still thinking within the same framework as we have done for the past 40 years," he told The Observer in a recent interview in Bogota. "A new approach should try and take away the violent profit that comes with drug trafficking . . . If that means legalizing ( drugs ) . . . then I will welcome it."
Santos has no intention of becoming a kamikaze politician: "What I won't do is become the vanguard of that movement ( to legalize drugs ) because then I will be crucified. But I would gladly participate in those discussions, because we are the country that's still suffering most . . . from the high consumption in the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe in general."
There are no such discussions, of course. Santos is being disingenuous about this; he is really trying to start a serious international debate on drug legalization, not to join one. But the time may be ripe for such a debate, because it is now almost universally acknowledged ( outside of political circles ) that the "war on drugs" has been an extremely bloody failure.
Twenty years ago Milton Friedman, a Nobel Prize winner, the most influential economist of the 20th century, and an icon of the right, said: "If you look at the drug war from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug cartel." It is only because the government makes the drugs illegal that the criminal cartel has a highly profitable monopoly on meeting the demand.
Milton Friedman also said: "Government never has any right to interfere with an individual for that individual's own good. The case for prohibiting drugs is exactly as strong and as weak as the case for prohibiting people from over-eating. We all know that over-eating causes more deaths than drugs do." But there are a quarter-million Americans in jail for possessing or selling drugs. Nobody is in jail for producing, marketing or eating junk food.
Friedman was right, of course, but 40 years of the war on drugs have also shown that arguments based on logic, natural justice, or history ( the obvious parallel with alcohol prohibition in the U.S. in the 1920s and early 30s ) have very little effect on policy in the main drug-importing nations. Many politicians there know that the war on drugs is futile and stupid, but the political cost of leaving the herd and saying so out loud is too high.
The political leaders who are starting to say that it's time to end the war and legalize the drugs are almost all in the producer nations, where the damage has been far graver than in the drug-importing countries. In practice, therefore, they are almost all Latin American leaders - but even there they have waited until they left office to make their views known.
Former Mexican president Vicente Fox supported the U.S.-led war on drugs when he was in office in 2000-2006, but more recently he has condemned it as an unmitigated disaster. "We should consider legalizing the production, sale and distribution of drugs," he wrote on his blog. "Radical prohibition strategies have never worked."
"Legalization does not mean that drugs are good," Fox added, "but we have to see it as a strategy to weaken and break the economic system that allows cartels to make huge profits, which in turn increases their power and capacity to corrupt."
Naturally, Fox only said all that when he was no longer president, because otherwise the United States would have punished Mexico severely for stepping out of line. In the same spirit, former presidents Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil, Cesar Gaviria of Colombia and Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico made a joint public statement that drug prohibition had failed in 2009 - after they had all left office.
But gradually Latin American leaders are losing their fear of Washington. Last year Mexican President Felipe Calderon called for a debate on the legalization of the drug trade, although he carefully stressed that he himself was against the idea. ( Then why did you bring it up, Felipe? ) And now President Santos of Colombia has come out, still cautiously, to say that he would consider legalizing not only marijuana but cocaine.
The international discussion on legalization that Santos wants will not start tomorrow, or even next year, but common sense on drugs is finally getting the upper hand over ignorance, fear and dogmatism. And cash-strapped governments will eventually realize how much the balance sheet could be improved by taxing legalized drug consumption rather than wasting hundreds of billions in a futile attempt to reduce consumption.
"Legalization does not mean that drugs are good," Fox added, "but we have to see it as a strategy to weaken and break the economic system that allows cartels to make huge profits, which in turn increases their power and capacity to corrupt."
wise words
wise words
Tories’ crime legislation turns teens sharing marijuana into ‘organized criminals’
By Chris Cobb, The Ottawa Citizen
Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/T...ed+criminals/5733869/story.html#ixzz1eZPWMJq4
He’s an 18-year-old the law defines as a man.
He comes from a solid middle-class family. He’s a smart, hard-working person with great potential and he’s never been in trouble with the law.
Like millions of Canadians teenagers before him, and at least a quarter of his contemporaries, he’s going through a marijuana phase: something that reliable justice statistics show he will eventually grow out of, just as many police officers, politicians, doctors, teachers and lawyers grew out of.
But times are about to change in Stephen Harper’s Canada.
Under new Conservative crime legislation, this 18-year-old man might never get the chance to reach his professional goals, legal specialists say. Instead, he’ll get a brutal two-year education in a federal penitentiary.
That’s because the young man occasionally does what many in his circle do — swaps small amounts of marijuana with friends.
As he’s walking down a neighbourhood street one night, a police officer spots him hand a couple of joints to a friend.
The two teenagers hadn’t thought about it, but they’re near a school — wherever they go in their urban neighbourhood they’re near a school. It’s night and the school’s closed but that’s no excuse.
The 18-year-old gives some lip to the officer who takes him to the police station and charges him with trafficking. His friend didn’t pay for the marijuana or give him anything in return. No matter. It’s still trafficking under the Criminal Code of Canada.
When the case eventually gets to court, the Crown prosecutor presents the evidence, which is irrefutable, and the judge has no choice but to sentence the 18-year-old to two years in a penitentiary. It’s the mandatory minimum sentence for someone caught trafficking “near” a school or “near” a place where children might gather.
The judge hates not having discretion to consider extenuating circumstances, but the government has given him no choice.
When the young man emerges from prison at the age of 20, he’s carrying the physical and psychological baggage of being incarcerated with hardened criminals and he has a criminal record.
Under the Conservative government’s Safe Streets and Communities Act currently making its way through Parliament, it is probable — some say inevitable — that young Canadian men and women with otherwise unblemished characters will be jailed and branded criminals by their government.
The Conservative government says the new anti-drug measures and changes to the Youth Criminal Justice Act — the most controversial of nine pieces of crime legislation — will crack down on organized crime, keep drugs away from children and make streets safer.
“By moving quickly to reintroduce and pass the Safe Streets and Communities Act, we are fulfilling our promise to Canadians by taking action to protect families, stand up for victims and hold criminals accountable,” Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said when he reintroduced the bill in September.
But a long line of critics say much of the legislation is an expensive recipe for failure.
“It is badly drafted legislation,” says University of Toronto criminologist Anthony Doob. “The government has a role to make good laws and this isn’t good law. We should penalize according to the harm caused and I don’t think that the 18-year-old who gives his 17-year-old friend marijuana deserves a penitentiary sentence. How did kids sharing marijuana suddenly become organized criminals?”
After a recent House of Commons justice and human rights committee hearing into the legislation, Quebec Defence Lawyers Association vice-president Joelle Roy used the example of an 18-year-old going to a rave and being arrested for giving an ecstasy pill to a friend.
“It can happen to you, or me or to our children and even to their children,” she said, with a nod toward Conservative MPs on the committee.
“I see it every day in court. The judge sees in front of him a good kid of 18 years who goes to school and comes from a good family and now he has to send that young man to penitentiary for two years for one ecstasy pill. It makes no sense. The kid isn’t a criminal, but when he comes out he probably will be.”
Mandatory minimum sentences are an attack on the freedom and independence of the justice system, said Roy.
“People who commit crimes time after time will be sentenced for those crimes. We have a system and it works. The government says they want so much to help victims, so why don’t they take that money they will use to build more jails and put it into programs for victims? Canada is a very, very safe country. Why is this government doing this?”
The answer, says pollster Frank Graves, is complicated but lies partly with a politically-shrewd government appealing to its base and to an aging population that craves moral certainty. And, unlike the majority of young Canadians, they vote.
“They tend to be anti-intellectual, anti-science and with little interest in debating the evidence or listening to expert opinion,” says Graves. “Many simply want people who do bad things to be severely punished whether it makes streets safer or not.”
The majority of Canadians still favours measures that prevent crime rather than punish it, but the gap has been narrowing since 9/11, adds Graves.
“But Canadians are still remarkably progressive when it comes to issues of marijuana (more than 70 per cent support decriminalization), same-sex marriage and abortion, and are becoming more so.
“So this may well be the first majority government that achieved its victory with issues on which the majority of Canadians disagree,” he adds.
“That includes tough-on-crime legislation, the F-35 jet purchase, climate change, and scrapping the long gun registry. The majority is opposed, but the majority is scattered and not tightly alloyed around the issues.”
The drug legislation will ensnare a disproportionate number of young people, especially those from minority communities, predicts veteran NDP MP Joe Comartin, who until recently was a justice committee member.
“The fundamental flaw with this legislation is that it is drafted from the perspective of a sleazy, organized drug pusher and ignores the reality that a good deal of drug trading is among kids coming out of the same economic class and same ethno-cultural communities.
“When I watch Rob Nicholson answering questions about this in the House,” says the former criminal lawyer, “he clearly doesn’t understand how easy it is to convict someone of trafficking. You don’t even have to be selling it — if you’re giving it away to friends and families, you’re trafficking.”
Only pressure from the provinces will have any influence on whether the legislation is amended before it becomes law, adds Comartin.
Or maybe not.
Quebec Justice Minister Jean-Marc Fournier made an impassioned plea to the Conservative majority on the justice committee to freeze what is an extraordinarily rapid fast-tracking of the legislation and consult with the provinces.
The legislation, especially as it impacts young offenders, is “soft” crime, he said. “What we want is a sustainable protection of the public,” he said.
After 40 years of working on the rehabilitation of troubled youth, Quebec has become a much-admired international model, said Fournier, adding emphatically that Quebec will not pay a penny of the millions of dollars it will cost to implement the new legislation.
Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty won’t pay either. “It’s easy for the federal government to pass new laws dealing with crime but if there are new costs associated with those laws that have to borne by taxpayers in the province of Ontario, I expect that the feds would pick up that tab,” he said.
In response, Prime Minister Stephen Harper seemed unimpressed and urged the provinces to do their constitutional duty.
Other provinces, including New Brunswick and Manitoba, favour the legislation, although neither has said how it intends to pay the extra cost.
The lineup of individuals and groups opposed or concerned about the legislation in its current form is long and varied: The Canadian Bar Association, the Quebec Defence Lawyers Association, the Canadian Association of Crown Counsel, the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers, Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy, and the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network. And although they do not speak publicly except from the bench, judges deeply dislike mandatory sentencing.
“For young people whose substance use does not constitute a full addiction, incarceration will be the only option under this bill,” the Students for Sensible Drug Policy told MPs in a brief. “This proposed legislation does not recognize the wide spectrum of reasons why people use drugs. Those young people now branded with the stigma and criminal record as a ‘drug dealer’ will have their future employment opportunities further reduced — the opposite of a successful rehabilitation effort.”
Richard Elliott, executive director of the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, says prison, where unsafe drug use is rampant, is the worse place for young drug addicts.
“This is exactly what we should not be doing as a matter of sound public policy,” he says. “Instead of spending hundreds of millions to house people in prisons, think of what that money could do if it was put into expanding access to voluntary treatment in the community. It would pay enormous dividends for public health and individual well-being.”
Incarcerating people for relatively minor marijuana offences is “cracking a nut with a sledgehammer,” adds Elliott.
“Do we really need to throw young people in jail for this?“ he says. “I’m sure the majority of Canadians don’t feel that this kind of activity warrants a criminal record or imprisonment. Why make the vast majority of your population potential criminals for sharing marijuana plants. Where is the sense of proportion?”
Ottawa police officers who are part of a program of interaction with area high school students say they see little evidence that drugs are a major problem, and when school authorities do find marijuana it is in small quantities.
Ottawa Carleton District School Board trustee Cathy Curry says kids need to be punished when they break the law but incarceration is “simplistic.”
“It isn’t taking into consideration what happens in real life,” she says. “Trustees and educators across Canada have learned that there is so much change going on in the teenage brain that they aren’t always as capable of making good decisions as they were when they were 10 and 11. Any parent of teenagers understands that. There are times when your teenager is like someone you’ve never met before.”
The legislation has vocal supporters and almost all of the current round of committee hearings have included victims of horrendous crime and leaders of police associations.
Line Lacasse, a Laval mother whose son Sébastien was brutally beaten and stabbed to death by youth gang in 2004.
“They were 10 young people with no respect for human life,” she told the committee. “If your child was killed in this way you would vote for this bill. We have a life sentence when we lose a loved one. There are no serious consequences for these crimes.”
Quebec Justice Minister Fournier, and others opposed to the increased incarceration of young people, say nothing in the legislation will prevent similar crimes from occurring and accused the government of using high-profile tragedies to justify draconian punishments.
Strong opposition from federal and provincial prosecutors and defence lawyers who say the new laws will cripple an already overloaded court system, and from prison guards who argue that more overcrowding will make prisons more dangerous for inmates and guards, appears to be having no effect.
There is no incentive for the government to backtrack, says pollster Frank Graves
“They have a majority in the Commons and Senate, a neophyte official Opposition whose talent is jockeying for the leadership, a humbled Liberal party and a public that’s sick of politics and isn’t paying attention. And this is a government that clearly signalled its intentions during the last election.
“The likelihood any opposition will stop this is close to zero.”
By Chris Cobb, The Ottawa Citizen
Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/T...ed+criminals/5733869/story.html#ixzz1eZPWMJq4
He’s an 18-year-old the law defines as a man.
He comes from a solid middle-class family. He’s a smart, hard-working person with great potential and he’s never been in trouble with the law.
Like millions of Canadians teenagers before him, and at least a quarter of his contemporaries, he’s going through a marijuana phase: something that reliable justice statistics show he will eventually grow out of, just as many police officers, politicians, doctors, teachers and lawyers grew out of.
But times are about to change in Stephen Harper’s Canada.
Under new Conservative crime legislation, this 18-year-old man might never get the chance to reach his professional goals, legal specialists say. Instead, he’ll get a brutal two-year education in a federal penitentiary.
That’s because the young man occasionally does what many in his circle do — swaps small amounts of marijuana with friends.
As he’s walking down a neighbourhood street one night, a police officer spots him hand a couple of joints to a friend.
The two teenagers hadn’t thought about it, but they’re near a school — wherever they go in their urban neighbourhood they’re near a school. It’s night and the school’s closed but that’s no excuse.
The 18-year-old gives some lip to the officer who takes him to the police station and charges him with trafficking. His friend didn’t pay for the marijuana or give him anything in return. No matter. It’s still trafficking under the Criminal Code of Canada.
When the case eventually gets to court, the Crown prosecutor presents the evidence, which is irrefutable, and the judge has no choice but to sentence the 18-year-old to two years in a penitentiary. It’s the mandatory minimum sentence for someone caught trafficking “near” a school or “near” a place where children might gather.
The judge hates not having discretion to consider extenuating circumstances, but the government has given him no choice.
When the young man emerges from prison at the age of 20, he’s carrying the physical and psychological baggage of being incarcerated with hardened criminals and he has a criminal record.
Under the Conservative government’s Safe Streets and Communities Act currently making its way through Parliament, it is probable — some say inevitable — that young Canadian men and women with otherwise unblemished characters will be jailed and branded criminals by their government.
The Conservative government says the new anti-drug measures and changes to the Youth Criminal Justice Act — the most controversial of nine pieces of crime legislation — will crack down on organized crime, keep drugs away from children and make streets safer.
“By moving quickly to reintroduce and pass the Safe Streets and Communities Act, we are fulfilling our promise to Canadians by taking action to protect families, stand up for victims and hold criminals accountable,” Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said when he reintroduced the bill in September.
But a long line of critics say much of the legislation is an expensive recipe for failure.
“It is badly drafted legislation,” says University of Toronto criminologist Anthony Doob. “The government has a role to make good laws and this isn’t good law. We should penalize according to the harm caused and I don’t think that the 18-year-old who gives his 17-year-old friend marijuana deserves a penitentiary sentence. How did kids sharing marijuana suddenly become organized criminals?”
After a recent House of Commons justice and human rights committee hearing into the legislation, Quebec Defence Lawyers Association vice-president Joelle Roy used the example of an 18-year-old going to a rave and being arrested for giving an ecstasy pill to a friend.
“It can happen to you, or me or to our children and even to their children,” she said, with a nod toward Conservative MPs on the committee.
“I see it every day in court. The judge sees in front of him a good kid of 18 years who goes to school and comes from a good family and now he has to send that young man to penitentiary for two years for one ecstasy pill. It makes no sense. The kid isn’t a criminal, but when he comes out he probably will be.”
Mandatory minimum sentences are an attack on the freedom and independence of the justice system, said Roy.
“People who commit crimes time after time will be sentenced for those crimes. We have a system and it works. The government says they want so much to help victims, so why don’t they take that money they will use to build more jails and put it into programs for victims? Canada is a very, very safe country. Why is this government doing this?”
The answer, says pollster Frank Graves, is complicated but lies partly with a politically-shrewd government appealing to its base and to an aging population that craves moral certainty. And, unlike the majority of young Canadians, they vote.
“They tend to be anti-intellectual, anti-science and with little interest in debating the evidence or listening to expert opinion,” says Graves. “Many simply want people who do bad things to be severely punished whether it makes streets safer or not.”
The majority of Canadians still favours measures that prevent crime rather than punish it, but the gap has been narrowing since 9/11, adds Graves.
“But Canadians are still remarkably progressive when it comes to issues of marijuana (more than 70 per cent support decriminalization), same-sex marriage and abortion, and are becoming more so.
“So this may well be the first majority government that achieved its victory with issues on which the majority of Canadians disagree,” he adds.
“That includes tough-on-crime legislation, the F-35 jet purchase, climate change, and scrapping the long gun registry. The majority is opposed, but the majority is scattered and not tightly alloyed around the issues.”
The drug legislation will ensnare a disproportionate number of young people, especially those from minority communities, predicts veteran NDP MP Joe Comartin, who until recently was a justice committee member.
“The fundamental flaw with this legislation is that it is drafted from the perspective of a sleazy, organized drug pusher and ignores the reality that a good deal of drug trading is among kids coming out of the same economic class and same ethno-cultural communities.
“When I watch Rob Nicholson answering questions about this in the House,” says the former criminal lawyer, “he clearly doesn’t understand how easy it is to convict someone of trafficking. You don’t even have to be selling it — if you’re giving it away to friends and families, you’re trafficking.”
Only pressure from the provinces will have any influence on whether the legislation is amended before it becomes law, adds Comartin.
Or maybe not.
Quebec Justice Minister Jean-Marc Fournier made an impassioned plea to the Conservative majority on the justice committee to freeze what is an extraordinarily rapid fast-tracking of the legislation and consult with the provinces.
The legislation, especially as it impacts young offenders, is “soft” crime, he said. “What we want is a sustainable protection of the public,” he said.
After 40 years of working on the rehabilitation of troubled youth, Quebec has become a much-admired international model, said Fournier, adding emphatically that Quebec will not pay a penny of the millions of dollars it will cost to implement the new legislation.
Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty won’t pay either. “It’s easy for the federal government to pass new laws dealing with crime but if there are new costs associated with those laws that have to borne by taxpayers in the province of Ontario, I expect that the feds would pick up that tab,” he said.
In response, Prime Minister Stephen Harper seemed unimpressed and urged the provinces to do their constitutional duty.
Other provinces, including New Brunswick and Manitoba, favour the legislation, although neither has said how it intends to pay the extra cost.
The lineup of individuals and groups opposed or concerned about the legislation in its current form is long and varied: The Canadian Bar Association, the Quebec Defence Lawyers Association, the Canadian Association of Crown Counsel, the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers, Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy, and the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network. And although they do not speak publicly except from the bench, judges deeply dislike mandatory sentencing.
“For young people whose substance use does not constitute a full addiction, incarceration will be the only option under this bill,” the Students for Sensible Drug Policy told MPs in a brief. “This proposed legislation does not recognize the wide spectrum of reasons why people use drugs. Those young people now branded with the stigma and criminal record as a ‘drug dealer’ will have their future employment opportunities further reduced — the opposite of a successful rehabilitation effort.”
Richard Elliott, executive director of the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, says prison, where unsafe drug use is rampant, is the worse place for young drug addicts.
“This is exactly what we should not be doing as a matter of sound public policy,” he says. “Instead of spending hundreds of millions to house people in prisons, think of what that money could do if it was put into expanding access to voluntary treatment in the community. It would pay enormous dividends for public health and individual well-being.”
Incarcerating people for relatively minor marijuana offences is “cracking a nut with a sledgehammer,” adds Elliott.
“Do we really need to throw young people in jail for this?“ he says. “I’m sure the majority of Canadians don’t feel that this kind of activity warrants a criminal record or imprisonment. Why make the vast majority of your population potential criminals for sharing marijuana plants. Where is the sense of proportion?”
Ottawa police officers who are part of a program of interaction with area high school students say they see little evidence that drugs are a major problem, and when school authorities do find marijuana it is in small quantities.
Ottawa Carleton District School Board trustee Cathy Curry says kids need to be punished when they break the law but incarceration is “simplistic.”
“It isn’t taking into consideration what happens in real life,” she says. “Trustees and educators across Canada have learned that there is so much change going on in the teenage brain that they aren’t always as capable of making good decisions as they were when they were 10 and 11. Any parent of teenagers understands that. There are times when your teenager is like someone you’ve never met before.”
The legislation has vocal supporters and almost all of the current round of committee hearings have included victims of horrendous crime and leaders of police associations.
Line Lacasse, a Laval mother whose son Sébastien was brutally beaten and stabbed to death by youth gang in 2004.
“They were 10 young people with no respect for human life,” she told the committee. “If your child was killed in this way you would vote for this bill. We have a life sentence when we lose a loved one. There are no serious consequences for these crimes.”
Quebec Justice Minister Fournier, and others opposed to the increased incarceration of young people, say nothing in the legislation will prevent similar crimes from occurring and accused the government of using high-profile tragedies to justify draconian punishments.
Strong opposition from federal and provincial prosecutors and defence lawyers who say the new laws will cripple an already overloaded court system, and from prison guards who argue that more overcrowding will make prisons more dangerous for inmates and guards, appears to be having no effect.
There is no incentive for the government to backtrack, says pollster Frank Graves
“They have a majority in the Commons and Senate, a neophyte official Opposition whose talent is jockeying for the leadership, a humbled Liberal party and a public that’s sick of politics and isn’t paying attention. And this is a government that clearly signalled its intentions during the last election.
“The likelihood any opposition will stop this is close to zero.”
I sometimes get the impression that conservative lawmakers consider opportunity a finite resource. Oh, anybody can institute policies that raise all boats but that means helping the poor and everybody knows they're just lazy. Much better to help fat cats who've already proven they're far too greedy for lazy tendencies.
What better way to mitigate this potential pool of success? Finger them as the very members of society we don't want to be successful - drug abusers.
To roughly 50% of the electorate, weed is still considered as illegal (for good reason.) What better way to divide the electorate?
What better way to mitigate this potential pool of success? Finger them as the very members of society we don't want to be successful - drug abusers.
To roughly 50% of the electorate, weed is still considered as illegal (for good reason.) What better way to divide the electorate?
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA)
Author: Ted Galen Carpenter, Senior Fellow, Cato Institute and the
author of the forthcoming "The Fire Next Door: Mexico's Drug Violence
and the Danger to America."
VIOLENCE TESTS U.S. PROHIBITION
Nearly five years ago, Mexico's president, Felipe Calderon, declared war on the country's powerful and vicious drug cartels. His strategy of using the military against them initially enjoyed widespread domestic popularity, as well as Washington's strong support, but it has failed to yield results. Some 42,000 people have perished in the resulting violence, and the cartels seem more powerful than ever.
The Mexican people are increasingly disenchanted with the drug war, and influential political figures are urging a different approach. Some say the government should negotiate a truce with the cartels. Others, most notably Calderon's predecessor, Vicente Fox, are bolder, advocating drug legalization to deprive the criminal enterprises of their vast black-market profits.
Unquestionably, the current prohibitionist strategy is not working, and it has produced horrific unintended consequences. Mexico's carnage has reached the point where even respected analysts worry that the country could become a failed state. And leaders in the United States and Central America fear Mexico's chaos is posing a serious threat to its neighbors.
The first concern is the less immediate one. There are powerful barriers to Mexico's failure as a state, including a stable political system with three significant parties, a sizable legal business community with a major stake in preventing chaos, and the extremely influential Catholic Church. Those institutions are not about to cede the country to the drug cartels.
Still, there is plenty to worry about. The government's writ is shaky and eroding in several important regions. That is especially true of the area along the U.S. border, through which the most valuable drug trafficking routes pass. Cities such as Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez have become full-blown war zones, as has the entire state of Tamaulipas, directly south of Brownsville, Texas.
Even previously peaceful areas have been convulsed by battles among the cartels and between them and the government. Mexico's leading industrial center, Monterrey, once hailed as perhaps the most peaceful city in Latin America, is now a major front in the drug war. The principal tourist meccas are no longer untouched, either. Acapulco has experienced several wild gun battles in broad daylight, and the cartel presence is so pronounced that residents sarcastically refer to the city as Narcopulco.
There are as yet only limited instances of Mexico's violence seeping into the United States, but its spread southward, into Central America, is already a reality. The cartels have become entrenched in most of the region's countries, and they control vast swaths of its territory. Guatemala had to declare a state of siege along its Mexican border, and the leaders of Honduras and El Salvador warn that their countries are also in grave danger. Central America, off Washington's security radar since the end of the Cold War, is on the verge of making a dramatic reappearance.
The United States, as the principal market for illegal drugs, faces a crucial choice as the turbulence mounts in Mexico and Central America. Illegal drugs constitute a $300 billion-a-year global industry, and the Mexican cartels account for $30 billion to $65 billion of that. Those vast revenues enable the cartels to bribe, intimidate, or kill their opponents almost at will.
Prohibition is simply driving commerce underground, creating enormous black-market profits that attract the most ruthless criminal elements. Whether Washington stays or abandons its prohibitionist course will certainly influence countries around the world.
Legalizing drugs is a controversial idea, and even its supporters concede that it's not a panacea. But Vicente Fox puts it well: "Radical prohibition strategies have never worked." People should consider legalization, Fox argues, "as a strategy to strike at and break the economic structure that allows gangs to generate huge profits in their trade, which feeds corruption and increases their areas of power."
It is time for a reasoned debate about alternative strategies to deal with the growing turmoil south of the border. The current approach has failed, and the fire of drug-related violence is threatening to consume our neighbor's home and endanger our own.
Author: Ted Galen Carpenter, Senior Fellow, Cato Institute and the
author of the forthcoming "The Fire Next Door: Mexico's Drug Violence
and the Danger to America."
VIOLENCE TESTS U.S. PROHIBITION
Nearly five years ago, Mexico's president, Felipe Calderon, declared war on the country's powerful and vicious drug cartels. His strategy of using the military against them initially enjoyed widespread domestic popularity, as well as Washington's strong support, but it has failed to yield results. Some 42,000 people have perished in the resulting violence, and the cartels seem more powerful than ever.
The Mexican people are increasingly disenchanted with the drug war, and influential political figures are urging a different approach. Some say the government should negotiate a truce with the cartels. Others, most notably Calderon's predecessor, Vicente Fox, are bolder, advocating drug legalization to deprive the criminal enterprises of their vast black-market profits.
Unquestionably, the current prohibitionist strategy is not working, and it has produced horrific unintended consequences. Mexico's carnage has reached the point where even respected analysts worry that the country could become a failed state. And leaders in the United States and Central America fear Mexico's chaos is posing a serious threat to its neighbors.
The first concern is the less immediate one. There are powerful barriers to Mexico's failure as a state, including a stable political system with three significant parties, a sizable legal business community with a major stake in preventing chaos, and the extremely influential Catholic Church. Those institutions are not about to cede the country to the drug cartels.
Still, there is plenty to worry about. The government's writ is shaky and eroding in several important regions. That is especially true of the area along the U.S. border, through which the most valuable drug trafficking routes pass. Cities such as Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez have become full-blown war zones, as has the entire state of Tamaulipas, directly south of Brownsville, Texas.
Even previously peaceful areas have been convulsed by battles among the cartels and between them and the government. Mexico's leading industrial center, Monterrey, once hailed as perhaps the most peaceful city in Latin America, is now a major front in the drug war. The principal tourist meccas are no longer untouched, either. Acapulco has experienced several wild gun battles in broad daylight, and the cartel presence is so pronounced that residents sarcastically refer to the city as Narcopulco.
There are as yet only limited instances of Mexico's violence seeping into the United States, but its spread southward, into Central America, is already a reality. The cartels have become entrenched in most of the region's countries, and they control vast swaths of its territory. Guatemala had to declare a state of siege along its Mexican border, and the leaders of Honduras and El Salvador warn that their countries are also in grave danger. Central America, off Washington's security radar since the end of the Cold War, is on the verge of making a dramatic reappearance.
The United States, as the principal market for illegal drugs, faces a crucial choice as the turbulence mounts in Mexico and Central America. Illegal drugs constitute a $300 billion-a-year global industry, and the Mexican cartels account for $30 billion to $65 billion of that. Those vast revenues enable the cartels to bribe, intimidate, or kill their opponents almost at will.
Prohibition is simply driving commerce underground, creating enormous black-market profits that attract the most ruthless criminal elements. Whether Washington stays or abandons its prohibitionist course will certainly influence countries around the world.
Legalizing drugs is a controversial idea, and even its supporters concede that it's not a panacea. But Vicente Fox puts it well: "Radical prohibition strategies have never worked." People should consider legalization, Fox argues, "as a strategy to strike at and break the economic structure that allows gangs to generate huge profits in their trade, which feeds corruption and increases their areas of power."
It is time for a reasoned debate about alternative strategies to deal with the growing turmoil south of the border. The current approach has failed, and the fire of drug-related violence is threatening to consume our neighbor's home and endanger our own.
Author: Glenn Garvin
Cited: http://leap.cc/
IN WAR ON DRUGS, DISSENT "UNPATRIOTIC"
I owe Kyle Vogt an apology. A former military policeman, he's now a member of a group called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, or LEAP, a group of former cops, prosecutors and judges that supports ending the war on drugs.
When I interviewed Vogt for a column earlier this year, everything he said about the high cost and low results of the war on drugs made perfect sense. But he made one claim which, though I smiled politely, I didn't believe and didn't use in my column: that dozens and dozens of drug cops have contacted LEAP to express their support.
"They're afraid," Vogt said. "Any policeman who says he thinks drugs should be legalized gets fired." In civil-liberties-conscious America, patrolled by attack squadrons of ACLU lawyers? Get real, buddy, I thought. The war on drugs does enough damage without piling on with paranoid delusions.
But in the war on drugs, the line between paranoia and reality turns out to be a thin one indeed. Over the weekend, The New York Times carried a story on Bryan Gonzalez, a young agent fired by the U.S. Border Patrol. Grounds for dismissal: Gonzalez told another agent that legalizing marijuana would save lives both in the United States and Mexico. And he mentioned LEAP.
When the other agent reported the conversation to his superiors, it triggered an internal affairs investigation that ended with an official letter dismissing Gonzalez for holding "personal views that were contrary to core characteristics of Border Patrol Agents, which are patriotism, dedication and esprit de corps."
For starters, that sentence is a flat-out lie. The Border Patrol's "core values," according to its own web page, are serving the American public "with vigilance, integrity and professionalism." There's not a single word about patriotism, dedication or esprit de corps.
But what if there was? Since when is it unpatriotic to advocate a change in the U.S. criminal code? If Gonzalez had told his fellow Border Patrol agent that he thought prison terms for drug smugglers should be doubled, would that have been unpatriotic, too?
Gonzalez did not light up a joint or bring a pan of Alice B. Toklas brownies to work. He did not let a drug smuggler go. He did not even sell guns to the Sinaloa Cartel. ( Though, to be fair, that's apparently not a firing offense in the Obama administration. ) All he did was express an opinion.
But, as Kyle Vogt tried to tell me, having the wrong opinion about the war on drugs is enough to get you fired from a law-enforcement job these days:
* Last month, former Arizona probation officer Joe Miller filed suit to get his job back after being fired for signing a letter in support of a ballot initiative ( in another state! ) to legalize personal use of marijuana.
* Jonathan Wender, a sergeant in the Mountlake Terrace, Washington, police department, was fired for supporting the decriminalization of marijuana. He won a court case that got him an $815,000 settlement plus his job back, but decided to quit anyway.
* Canada, which hosted so many American draft dodgers trying to stay out of the war in Vietnam, is apparently taking a less tolerant view of dissent from its own war on drugs. When city officials in Victoria, British Columbia, invited local cop David Bratzer to give a speech outlining his support for legalization, Bratzer's chief canceled it, then warned him not to criticize drug laws while within the city limits.
Clearly, the war on drugs has escalated to a war on talking about the war on drugs.
I'm sorry I doubted Vogt. As the old joke goes, even paranoids have real enemies. Though nobody's laughing at this one.
Cited: http://leap.cc/
IN WAR ON DRUGS, DISSENT "UNPATRIOTIC"
I owe Kyle Vogt an apology. A former military policeman, he's now a member of a group called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, or LEAP, a group of former cops, prosecutors and judges that supports ending the war on drugs.
When I interviewed Vogt for a column earlier this year, everything he said about the high cost and low results of the war on drugs made perfect sense. But he made one claim which, though I smiled politely, I didn't believe and didn't use in my column: that dozens and dozens of drug cops have contacted LEAP to express their support.
"They're afraid," Vogt said. "Any policeman who says he thinks drugs should be legalized gets fired." In civil-liberties-conscious America, patrolled by attack squadrons of ACLU lawyers? Get real, buddy, I thought. The war on drugs does enough damage without piling on with paranoid delusions.
But in the war on drugs, the line between paranoia and reality turns out to be a thin one indeed. Over the weekend, The New York Times carried a story on Bryan Gonzalez, a young agent fired by the U.S. Border Patrol. Grounds for dismissal: Gonzalez told another agent that legalizing marijuana would save lives both in the United States and Mexico. And he mentioned LEAP.
When the other agent reported the conversation to his superiors, it triggered an internal affairs investigation that ended with an official letter dismissing Gonzalez for holding "personal views that were contrary to core characteristics of Border Patrol Agents, which are patriotism, dedication and esprit de corps."
For starters, that sentence is a flat-out lie. The Border Patrol's "core values," according to its own web page, are serving the American public "with vigilance, integrity and professionalism." There's not a single word about patriotism, dedication or esprit de corps.
But what if there was? Since when is it unpatriotic to advocate a change in the U.S. criminal code? If Gonzalez had told his fellow Border Patrol agent that he thought prison terms for drug smugglers should be doubled, would that have been unpatriotic, too?
Gonzalez did not light up a joint or bring a pan of Alice B. Toklas brownies to work. He did not let a drug smuggler go. He did not even sell guns to the Sinaloa Cartel. ( Though, to be fair, that's apparently not a firing offense in the Obama administration. ) All he did was express an opinion.
But, as Kyle Vogt tried to tell me, having the wrong opinion about the war on drugs is enough to get you fired from a law-enforcement job these days:
* Last month, former Arizona probation officer Joe Miller filed suit to get his job back after being fired for signing a letter in support of a ballot initiative ( in another state! ) to legalize personal use of marijuana.
* Jonathan Wender, a sergeant in the Mountlake Terrace, Washington, police department, was fired for supporting the decriminalization of marijuana. He won a court case that got him an $815,000 settlement plus his job back, but decided to quit anyway.
* Canada, which hosted so many American draft dodgers trying to stay out of the war in Vietnam, is apparently taking a less tolerant view of dissent from its own war on drugs. When city officials in Victoria, British Columbia, invited local cop David Bratzer to give a speech outlining his support for legalization, Bratzer's chief canceled it, then warned him not to criticize drug laws while within the city limits.
Clearly, the war on drugs has escalated to a war on talking about the war on drugs.
I'm sorry I doubted Vogt. As the old joke goes, even paranoids have real enemies. Though nobody's laughing at this one.
President Obama's Puzzling Silence on MJ Policy
By Neal Peirce, Syndicated Columnist
Source: Seattle Times
cannabis Washington -- "Dance with the One that Brought You" is the title of a well-known song. But the Urban Dictionary offers a deeper meaning: "The principle that someone should pay proper fealty to those who have gone out of their way to look after them."
Barack Obama should pay attention. In 2008, young voters were enthused and turned out for him by the millions. But now? The campus/youth enthusiasm factor has declined sharply. The deficiency seriously imperils Obama's re-election effort.
There's one issue, though, that might reignite youthful enthusiasm. That issue is marijuana — partly its medical use, but especially Americans' right to recreational use free of potential arrest and possible prison time.
Today's grim reality is that police continue to arrest youth for marijuana possession by the hundreds of thousands. But each arrest is a red flag of danger, threatening life prospects for a young man or woman suddenly saddled with a permanent "drug arrest" record that's easily located by employers, landlords, schools, credit agencies and banks.
Small wonder then that 62 percent of young Americans (ages 18 to 29) now favor legalizing marijuana, as a Gallup poll reported.
And it's not just youth these days. Gallup this year found 50 percent nationwide support for legalizing marijuana use — the most ever, up from a measly 12 percent in 1969 to 30 percent in 2000 and 40 percent in 2009.
A ballot measure to legalize, regulate and tax marijuana received 46.5 percent of the vote in California last year.
Parallel measures are likely to be on the 2012 ballots in Colorado and Washington. Odd political bedfellows — Reps. Barney Frank, D-Mass., and Ron Paul, R-Texas — recently introduced a legalization bill and now have 19 co-sponsors. Paul even gets applause advocating legalization in Republican presidential debates.
But what about President Obama? In 2004 he endorsed marijuana decriminalization. He was candid about his early pot use and in 2006 told a group of magazine editors: "When I was a kid, I inhaled, frequently." By his run for president in 2008, he was slipping away from decriminalization but at least talked of a "public health" approach, emphasizing drug treatment instead of prison, giving drug-reform advocates hope for a new day in national policy.
But Obama as president has been a clear disappointment to reform forces. In White House-initiated electronic town halls, respondents — heavily weighted to original Obama supporters — have repeatedly put marijuana at the top of their issue lists. But the White House has either laughed off or provided dismissive retorts.
Obama's Drug Policy Office claims the drug war is over, replaced by a focus on shrinking demand, "innovative, compassionate and evidence-based drug policies." But Obama has not once singled out marijuana — a substance arguably far less harmful to the human body than alcohol — for special consideration. Nor has he spoken to the harm to youth caused by 800,000 yearly arrests. Or moved to stem the billions of dollars a year spent on marijuana-related arrests.
This is clearly not the "change" Obama's enthusiastic supporters of 2008 expected. And it's deeply ironic. Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance notes that if local police departments had been enforcing marijuana laws as harshly in the early 1980s as many do today, "there's a good chance a young Columbia student named Barack Obama could have been picked up — and not be in the White House today."
Nadelmann suggests that both the White House Drug Policy Office and the Justice Department enforcement divisions have been "co-opted" by holdover appointees deeply invested in anti-marijuana rhetoric and "let's just bust them" drug enforcement.
Facing the 2012 election, Obama is not likely to advocate, suddenly, marijuana decriminalization. But he could announce that it's time for a serious national dialogue on the issue, and that it will be a hallmark of his second term. He could express his dismay that 800,000 people, mostly young (and heavily black and Hispanic), are being arrested each year for marijuana possession — even as 50 percent of Americans favor legalization. He could focus on the massive costs of enforcement, the deep social costs of imprisonment. Let all America, youth included, join in the debate, he could urge.
A new openness to marijuana reform could help to reignite, on campuses and among high numbers of young people, the hope for "change" that really means something. Perhaps even prospects for the president's own re-election.
Neal Peirce's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times.
By Neal Peirce, Syndicated Columnist
Source: Seattle Times
cannabis Washington -- "Dance with the One that Brought You" is the title of a well-known song. But the Urban Dictionary offers a deeper meaning: "The principle that someone should pay proper fealty to those who have gone out of their way to look after them."
Barack Obama should pay attention. In 2008, young voters were enthused and turned out for him by the millions. But now? The campus/youth enthusiasm factor has declined sharply. The deficiency seriously imperils Obama's re-election effort.
There's one issue, though, that might reignite youthful enthusiasm. That issue is marijuana — partly its medical use, but especially Americans' right to recreational use free of potential arrest and possible prison time.
Today's grim reality is that police continue to arrest youth for marijuana possession by the hundreds of thousands. But each arrest is a red flag of danger, threatening life prospects for a young man or woman suddenly saddled with a permanent "drug arrest" record that's easily located by employers, landlords, schools, credit agencies and banks.
Small wonder then that 62 percent of young Americans (ages 18 to 29) now favor legalizing marijuana, as a Gallup poll reported.
And it's not just youth these days. Gallup this year found 50 percent nationwide support for legalizing marijuana use — the most ever, up from a measly 12 percent in 1969 to 30 percent in 2000 and 40 percent in 2009.
A ballot measure to legalize, regulate and tax marijuana received 46.5 percent of the vote in California last year.
Parallel measures are likely to be on the 2012 ballots in Colorado and Washington. Odd political bedfellows — Reps. Barney Frank, D-Mass., and Ron Paul, R-Texas — recently introduced a legalization bill and now have 19 co-sponsors. Paul even gets applause advocating legalization in Republican presidential debates.
But what about President Obama? In 2004 he endorsed marijuana decriminalization. He was candid about his early pot use and in 2006 told a group of magazine editors: "When I was a kid, I inhaled, frequently." By his run for president in 2008, he was slipping away from decriminalization but at least talked of a "public health" approach, emphasizing drug treatment instead of prison, giving drug-reform advocates hope for a new day in national policy.
But Obama as president has been a clear disappointment to reform forces. In White House-initiated electronic town halls, respondents — heavily weighted to original Obama supporters — have repeatedly put marijuana at the top of their issue lists. But the White House has either laughed off or provided dismissive retorts.
Obama's Drug Policy Office claims the drug war is over, replaced by a focus on shrinking demand, "innovative, compassionate and evidence-based drug policies." But Obama has not once singled out marijuana — a substance arguably far less harmful to the human body than alcohol — for special consideration. Nor has he spoken to the harm to youth caused by 800,000 yearly arrests. Or moved to stem the billions of dollars a year spent on marijuana-related arrests.
This is clearly not the "change" Obama's enthusiastic supporters of 2008 expected. And it's deeply ironic. Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance notes that if local police departments had been enforcing marijuana laws as harshly in the early 1980s as many do today, "there's a good chance a young Columbia student named Barack Obama could have been picked up — and not be in the White House today."
Nadelmann suggests that both the White House Drug Policy Office and the Justice Department enforcement divisions have been "co-opted" by holdover appointees deeply invested in anti-marijuana rhetoric and "let's just bust them" drug enforcement.
Facing the 2012 election, Obama is not likely to advocate, suddenly, marijuana decriminalization. But he could announce that it's time for a serious national dialogue on the issue, and that it will be a hallmark of his second term. He could express his dismay that 800,000 people, mostly young (and heavily black and Hispanic), are being arrested each year for marijuana possession — even as 50 percent of Americans favor legalization. He could focus on the massive costs of enforcement, the deep social costs of imprisonment. Let all America, youth included, join in the debate, he could urge.
A new openness to marijuana reform could help to reignite, on campuses and among high numbers of young people, the hope for "change" that really means something. Perhaps even prospects for the president's own re-election.
Neal Peirce's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times.
Author: Bill Barble, Mail Tribune
http://www.mailtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20111218/NEWS/112180323
LEGALIZE POT: IT'LL DRY UP DRUG CARTELS' MARKET, SAVE FORESTS
Sheriff Mike Winters frowned as he showed a reporter a stack of photographs documenting Mexican drug cartels' marijuana-growing operations on federal land in Southern Oregon. The photos showed filthy camps, nitrogen-loaded chemical fertilizers, garbage tumbling into a stream.
"These grow sites are a disaster for the public," Winters said. "You can't believe what you see until you get into one."
It was the first time in memory a Republican has fretted so about the environment.
Of course, there is a sure-fire way to end the reach of drug gangs into Oregon's forests: End pot prohibition. Just declare defeat in the pot theater of the War on Drugs and move on.
This has been clear to a growing number people for a long time, but now it's truly an idea whose time has come. In a Gallup poll in October, 50 percent of Americans said pot should be legal, up from 46 percent last year. Forty-six percent favored keeping it illegal.
It's been trending this way for more than 40 years. In 1969, 12 percent of Americans favored legalizing pot, and 84 percent were opposed. The legalize-it sentiment hit the mid-20s in the conservative 1980s, passed 30 percent in 2000 and was 40 percent in 2009.
That's for recreational use. With medical marijuana it isn't even close. More than 70 percent of Americans favor it.
And the really bad news for those who still think cannabis is the devil's weed is that the margin for legalization is bound to increase. Opposition was highest among those older than 65. Support was highest among those under 30. The only region in the country where a majority does not favor legalization is the South.
Cannabis is the third-most popular drug in America, trailing only alcohol and tobacco, both of which are infinitely more harmful. More than 100 million Americans 'fess up to having used pot, and an estimated 20 million or so have used it in the past month. Some states have decriminalized possession of small amounts for personal use, and more than a dozen have legalized it for medical purposes. The benefits for cancer, glaucoma, AIDS and other conditions have been well-documented, and it doesn't exhibit the toxicity of many of the common drugs in your medicine cabinet.
Nor is support for ending prohibition confined to aging hippies, dropouts, college kids and drug abusers. Former U.S. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders has called for legalization, as has former Mexican President Vicente Fox.
In June, U.S. Reps. Barney Frank and Ron Paul introduced a bill to end federal prohibition and remove pot from the FDA's Schedule 1 list ( which is supposed to be for drugs that have no medical value, have a high risk of abuse and are extremely harmful, such as meth and heroin ). The odd couple -- one of our most liberal politicians and one of our most conservative -- shows the breadth of anti-prohibition sentiment.
Paul is not alone on the Right. Conservative economist Milton Friedman, one of the chief architects of the "Reagan Revolution" and more than any other single person the father of the anti-regulatory fever ( or at least its theoretical basis ) that's gripped the federal government for the last three decades, is a strong advocate for legalization.
"There is no logical basis for the prohibition of marijuana," Friedman has written. "It's absolutely disgraceful to think of picking up a 22-year-old for smoking pot. More disgraceful is the denial of marijuana for medical purposes."
Friedman was just one of more than 500 economists from around the U.S. who endorsed a Harvard Economist's 2005 report on the costs of marijuana prohibition. The report said the U.S. would save almost $8 billion a year by ending prohibition -- most of that at the state and local level -- and could gain more than $6 billion a year in new tax revenue.
The Obama administration has been negative -- or at best ambivalent -- toward legalization proposals, and the feds are still spending millions busting medical marijuana growers. Legalization advocates, in turn, have noted that in the polls, pot is more popular than Obama.
The majority of the law enforcement community remains pro-prohibition for now, but a growing number of cops, such as former Seattle Chief of Police Norm Stamper, and Neill Franklin, a retired Baltimore, Md., narcotics officer, have joined the legalization movement.
"Legalizing these drugs will make our streets safer by reducing the crime and violence associated with their trade," said Stamper, the director of the anti-prohibition organization Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, "just as when we re-legalized alcohol."
His reference was to the prohibition of alcohol nearly a century ago, which enriched the Mob and didn't stop anybody from drinking. Our prohibition -- the "war on drugs" created by President Richard Nixon in 1969, when the view of pot was unrealistically negative -- has led to millions of arrests ( more than 800,000 in 2009 ), the waste of more than $1 trillion, and thousands of lives lost to the violence that accompanies any prohibition by making it a bonanza for bad guys. It's also enriched multiple generations of mobsters.
The net result? Pot is more plentiful than ever. Any cop, or any kid on the street, will tell you that. Our ancestors tried prohibition and got the message that enough was enough after just 14 years. We're at 42 years and counting. It's time to move on.
http://www.mailtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20111218/NEWS/112180323
LEGALIZE POT: IT'LL DRY UP DRUG CARTELS' MARKET, SAVE FORESTS
Sheriff Mike Winters frowned as he showed a reporter a stack of photographs documenting Mexican drug cartels' marijuana-growing operations on federal land in Southern Oregon. The photos showed filthy camps, nitrogen-loaded chemical fertilizers, garbage tumbling into a stream.
"These grow sites are a disaster for the public," Winters said. "You can't believe what you see until you get into one."
It was the first time in memory a Republican has fretted so about the environment.
Of course, there is a sure-fire way to end the reach of drug gangs into Oregon's forests: End pot prohibition. Just declare defeat in the pot theater of the War on Drugs and move on.
This has been clear to a growing number people for a long time, but now it's truly an idea whose time has come. In a Gallup poll in October, 50 percent of Americans said pot should be legal, up from 46 percent last year. Forty-six percent favored keeping it illegal.
It's been trending this way for more than 40 years. In 1969, 12 percent of Americans favored legalizing pot, and 84 percent were opposed. The legalize-it sentiment hit the mid-20s in the conservative 1980s, passed 30 percent in 2000 and was 40 percent in 2009.
That's for recreational use. With medical marijuana it isn't even close. More than 70 percent of Americans favor it.
And the really bad news for those who still think cannabis is the devil's weed is that the margin for legalization is bound to increase. Opposition was highest among those older than 65. Support was highest among those under 30. The only region in the country where a majority does not favor legalization is the South.
Cannabis is the third-most popular drug in America, trailing only alcohol and tobacco, both of which are infinitely more harmful. More than 100 million Americans 'fess up to having used pot, and an estimated 20 million or so have used it in the past month. Some states have decriminalized possession of small amounts for personal use, and more than a dozen have legalized it for medical purposes. The benefits for cancer, glaucoma, AIDS and other conditions have been well-documented, and it doesn't exhibit the toxicity of many of the common drugs in your medicine cabinet.
Nor is support for ending prohibition confined to aging hippies, dropouts, college kids and drug abusers. Former U.S. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders has called for legalization, as has former Mexican President Vicente Fox.
In June, U.S. Reps. Barney Frank and Ron Paul introduced a bill to end federal prohibition and remove pot from the FDA's Schedule 1 list ( which is supposed to be for drugs that have no medical value, have a high risk of abuse and are extremely harmful, such as meth and heroin ). The odd couple -- one of our most liberal politicians and one of our most conservative -- shows the breadth of anti-prohibition sentiment.
Paul is not alone on the Right. Conservative economist Milton Friedman, one of the chief architects of the "Reagan Revolution" and more than any other single person the father of the anti-regulatory fever ( or at least its theoretical basis ) that's gripped the federal government for the last three decades, is a strong advocate for legalization.
"There is no logical basis for the prohibition of marijuana," Friedman has written. "It's absolutely disgraceful to think of picking up a 22-year-old for smoking pot. More disgraceful is the denial of marijuana for medical purposes."
Friedman was just one of more than 500 economists from around the U.S. who endorsed a Harvard Economist's 2005 report on the costs of marijuana prohibition. The report said the U.S. would save almost $8 billion a year by ending prohibition -- most of that at the state and local level -- and could gain more than $6 billion a year in new tax revenue.
The Obama administration has been negative -- or at best ambivalent -- toward legalization proposals, and the feds are still spending millions busting medical marijuana growers. Legalization advocates, in turn, have noted that in the polls, pot is more popular than Obama.
The majority of the law enforcement community remains pro-prohibition for now, but a growing number of cops, such as former Seattle Chief of Police Norm Stamper, and Neill Franklin, a retired Baltimore, Md., narcotics officer, have joined the legalization movement.
"Legalizing these drugs will make our streets safer by reducing the crime and violence associated with their trade," said Stamper, the director of the anti-prohibition organization Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, "just as when we re-legalized alcohol."
His reference was to the prohibition of alcohol nearly a century ago, which enriched the Mob and didn't stop anybody from drinking. Our prohibition -- the "war on drugs" created by President Richard Nixon in 1969, when the view of pot was unrealistically negative -- has led to millions of arrests ( more than 800,000 in 2009 ), the waste of more than $1 trillion, and thousands of lives lost to the violence that accompanies any prohibition by making it a bonanza for bad guys. It's also enriched multiple generations of mobsters.
The net result? Pot is more plentiful than ever. Any cop, or any kid on the street, will tell you that. Our ancestors tried prohibition and got the message that enough was enough after just 14 years. We're at 42 years and counting. It's time to move on.
Source: New York Times (NY)
Author: Paul Butler
Note: Paul Butler, a former federal prosecutor, is a professor of law
at George Washington University and the author of "Let's Get Free: A
Hip-Hop Theory of Justice."
JURORS NEED TO KNOW THAT THEY CAN SAY NO
IF you are ever on a jury in a marijuana case, I recommend that you vote "not guilty" - even if you think the defendant actually smoked pot, or sold it to another consenting adult. As a juror, you have this power under the Bill of Rights; if you exercise it, you become part of a proud tradition of American jurors who helped make our laws fairer.
The information I have just provided - about a constitutional doctrine called "jury nullification" - is absolutely true. But if federal prosecutors in New York get their way, telling the truth to potential jurors could result in a six-month prison sentence.
Earlier this year, prosecutors charged Julian P. Heicklen, a retired chemistry professor, with jury tampering because he stood outside the federal courthouse in Manhattan providing information about jury nullification to passers-by. Given that I have been recommending nullification for nonviolent drug cases since 1995 - in such forums as The Yale Law Journal, "60 Minutes" and YouTube - I guess I, too, have committed a crime.
The prosecutors who charged Mr. Heicklen said that "advocacy of jury nullification, directed as it is to jurors, would be both criminal and without constitutional protections no matter where it occurred." The prosecutors in this case are wrong. The First Amendment exists to protect speech like this - honest information that the government prefers citizens not know.
Laws against jury tampering are intended to deter people from threatening or intimidating jurors. To contort these laws to justify punishing Mr. Heicklen, whose court-appointed counsel describe him as "a shabby old man distributing his silly leaflets from the sidewalk outside a courthouse," is not only unconstitutional but unpatriotic. Jury nullification is not new; its proponents have included John Hancock and John Adams.
The doctrine is premised on the idea that ordinary citizens, not government officials, should have the final say as to whether a person should be punished. As Adams put it, it is each juror's "duty" to vote based on his or her "own best understanding, judgment and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court."
In 1895, the Supreme Court ruled that jurors had no right, during trials, to be told about nullification. The court did not say that jurors didn't have the power, or that they couldn't be told about it, but only that judges were not required to instruct them on it during a trial. Since then, it's been up to scholars like me, and activists like Mr. Heicklen, to get the word out.
Nullification has been credited with helping to end alcohol prohibition and laws that criminalized gay sex. Last year, Montana prosecutors were forced to offer a defendant in a marijuana case a favorable plea bargain after so many potential jurors said they would nullify that the judge didn't think he could find enough jurors to hear the case. ( Prosecutors now say they will remember the actions of those jurors when they consider whether to charge other people with marijuana crimes. )
There have been unfortunate instances of nullification. Racist juries in the South, for example, refused to convict people who committed violent acts against civil-rights activists, and nullification has been used in cases involving the use of excessive force by the police. But nullification is like any other democratic power; some people may try to misuse it, but that does not mean it should be taken away from everyone else.
How one feels about jury nullification ultimately depends on how much confidence one has in the jury system. Based on my experience, I trust jurors a lot. I first became interested in nullification when I prosecuted low-level drug crimes in Washington in 1990. Jurors here, who were predominantly African-American, nullified regularly because they were concerned about racially selective enforcement of the law.
Across the country, crime has fallen, but incarceration rates remain at near record levels. Last year, the New York City police made 50,000 arrests just for marijuana possession. Because prosecutors have discretion over whether to charge a suspect, and for what offense, they have more power than judges over the outcome of a case. They tend to throw the book at defendants, to compel them to plead guilty in return for less harsh sentences. In some jurisdictions, like Washington, prosecutors have responded to jurors who are fed up with their draconian tactics by lobbying lawmakers to take away the right to a jury trial in drug cases. That is precisely the kind of power grab that the Constitution's framers were so concerned about.
In October, the Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, asked at a Senate hearing about the role of juries in checking governmental power, seemed open to the notion that jurors "can ignore the law" if the law "is producing a terrible result." He added: "I'm a big fan of the jury." I'm a big fan, too. I would respectfully suggest that if the prosecutors in New York bring fair cases, they won't have to worry about jury nullification. Dropping the case against Mr. Heicklen would let citizens know that they are as committed to justice, and to free speech, as they are to locking people up.
Author: Paul Butler
Note: Paul Butler, a former federal prosecutor, is a professor of law
at George Washington University and the author of "Let's Get Free: A
Hip-Hop Theory of Justice."
JURORS NEED TO KNOW THAT THEY CAN SAY NO
IF you are ever on a jury in a marijuana case, I recommend that you vote "not guilty" - even if you think the defendant actually smoked pot, or sold it to another consenting adult. As a juror, you have this power under the Bill of Rights; if you exercise it, you become part of a proud tradition of American jurors who helped make our laws fairer.
The information I have just provided - about a constitutional doctrine called "jury nullification" - is absolutely true. But if federal prosecutors in New York get their way, telling the truth to potential jurors could result in a six-month prison sentence.
Earlier this year, prosecutors charged Julian P. Heicklen, a retired chemistry professor, with jury tampering because he stood outside the federal courthouse in Manhattan providing information about jury nullification to passers-by. Given that I have been recommending nullification for nonviolent drug cases since 1995 - in such forums as The Yale Law Journal, "60 Minutes" and YouTube - I guess I, too, have committed a crime.
The prosecutors who charged Mr. Heicklen said that "advocacy of jury nullification, directed as it is to jurors, would be both criminal and without constitutional protections no matter where it occurred." The prosecutors in this case are wrong. The First Amendment exists to protect speech like this - honest information that the government prefers citizens not know.
Laws against jury tampering are intended to deter people from threatening or intimidating jurors. To contort these laws to justify punishing Mr. Heicklen, whose court-appointed counsel describe him as "a shabby old man distributing his silly leaflets from the sidewalk outside a courthouse," is not only unconstitutional but unpatriotic. Jury nullification is not new; its proponents have included John Hancock and John Adams.
The doctrine is premised on the idea that ordinary citizens, not government officials, should have the final say as to whether a person should be punished. As Adams put it, it is each juror's "duty" to vote based on his or her "own best understanding, judgment and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court."
In 1895, the Supreme Court ruled that jurors had no right, during trials, to be told about nullification. The court did not say that jurors didn't have the power, or that they couldn't be told about it, but only that judges were not required to instruct them on it during a trial. Since then, it's been up to scholars like me, and activists like Mr. Heicklen, to get the word out.
Nullification has been credited with helping to end alcohol prohibition and laws that criminalized gay sex. Last year, Montana prosecutors were forced to offer a defendant in a marijuana case a favorable plea bargain after so many potential jurors said they would nullify that the judge didn't think he could find enough jurors to hear the case. ( Prosecutors now say they will remember the actions of those jurors when they consider whether to charge other people with marijuana crimes. )
There have been unfortunate instances of nullification. Racist juries in the South, for example, refused to convict people who committed violent acts against civil-rights activists, and nullification has been used in cases involving the use of excessive force by the police. But nullification is like any other democratic power; some people may try to misuse it, but that does not mean it should be taken away from everyone else.
How one feels about jury nullification ultimately depends on how much confidence one has in the jury system. Based on my experience, I trust jurors a lot. I first became interested in nullification when I prosecuted low-level drug crimes in Washington in 1990. Jurors here, who were predominantly African-American, nullified regularly because they were concerned about racially selective enforcement of the law.
Across the country, crime has fallen, but incarceration rates remain at near record levels. Last year, the New York City police made 50,000 arrests just for marijuana possession. Because prosecutors have discretion over whether to charge a suspect, and for what offense, they have more power than judges over the outcome of a case. They tend to throw the book at defendants, to compel them to plead guilty in return for less harsh sentences. In some jurisdictions, like Washington, prosecutors have responded to jurors who are fed up with their draconian tactics by lobbying lawmakers to take away the right to a jury trial in drug cases. That is precisely the kind of power grab that the Constitution's framers were so concerned about.
In October, the Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, asked at a Senate hearing about the role of juries in checking governmental power, seemed open to the notion that jurors "can ignore the law" if the law "is producing a terrible result." He added: "I'm a big fan of the jury." I'm a big fan, too. I would respectfully suggest that if the prosecutors in New York bring fair cases, they won't have to worry about jury nullification. Dropping the case against Mr. Heicklen would let citizens know that they are as committed to justice, and to free speech, as they are to locking people up.
LEAP Pushes Back Against Federal Threats to Colorado's Medical Marijuana Program
Posted by LEAP
Today Colorado-based and national representatives of LEAP sent a stern letter to U.S. Attorney John Walsh, pushing back against his recent threats to medical marijuana centers that operate legally under state and local law.
January 23, 2012
Dear U.S. Attorney John Walsh:
As fellow law-enforcement colleagues vitally interested in the health and well-being of children, we must respectfully register our fundamental objection to your recent issuance of 23 letters threatening state-legal Colorado Medical Marijuana Centers and their landlords with civil, criminal and forfeiture sanctions. That you would justify this action on the basis of the locations in question being too close to schools for your liking (compliance with state and local law notwithstanding) is ironic and highlights the failure of the very federal marijuana prohibition policy that underlies the threats in your letter, as we’ll explain.
Certainly, you must be aware that the voters of Colorado and the Colorado legislature – like the voters and lawmakers of 16 other states – have made it abundantly clear that marijuana is medicine for many people and for many ailments, and that its use and provision to patients should be allowed under the law.
Almost two years ago, in a bipartisan fashion, the Colorado Senate and House of Representatives enacted a strict dual licensing system for Medical Marijuana Centers that requires a license by the local and state government. All the businesses you have targeted are operating with approval from their local governments and the state of Colorado.
For you to join maverick prosecutors in California, Montana, Rhode Island, Washington and other states in going out of your way to short-circuit the will of the people and their elected representatives and to place obstacles between patients and their medicine is short-sighted and inimical to the public health, safety and welfare. Your actions bring law-enforcement into disrepute with the spoken will of the voters and their state representatives.
No law prohibits the location of a physician’s office, hospital or pharmacy within 1,000 feet of a school. So, why would you exercise your prosecutorial discretion in such a way so as to make life more difficult for certain patients and their caregivers in Colorado? It’s not as if these actions will do anything to reduce the illegal trade in marijuana – near schools or otherwise. Expect quite the opposite.
Those of us who have been working on the front lines to enforce – and reform – the drug laws in this country for years have frequently heard about medical marijuana patients who had to hit the streets to find the doctor-recommended medicine they needed. The medical marijuana centers in Colorado have provided patients like this a safe alternative and have reduced marijuana distribution on the streets. You are doing a disservice to the state of Colorado by using your discretionary prosecutorial power to undermine state and local regulations in a manner that will likely increase the underground distribution of marijuana.
You seek to put medicine outside the reach of sick people in the name of law enforcement and federal legal superiority under the guise of a minimum 1,000-foot separation between a school and medicine.
Instead, please recognize that the longstanding policy of prohibition itself – which we, like you, were once charged with enforcing – has made schools and parks the focal point for drug distribution, drug information and drug requisition.
We can blame marijuana prohibition for the fact that the federal Monitoring the Future study found that a whopping 82% of high school seniors say that it would be “fairly easy” or “very easy” to get their hands on marijuana. Sixty-nine percent of tenth graders report the same thing. Prohibition-empowered drug dealers within our schools are responsible, not licensed and regulated dispensaries. Studies from Brown University and elsewhere show that state medical marijuana laws have not led to increases in teenage marijuana use rates compared to states without legal medical marijuana. Any federal actions to expand the reach of marijuana prohibition and close down Medical Marijuana Centers in Colorado will not be good for public safety, they won’t be good for kids and they certainly won’t help patients.
Prosecutorial discretion is broad but not without limits, such as good reason, thoughtfulness, judgment and a rational relationship to the public health, safety and welfare, not to mention the will of the people of the State of Colorado. Please consider the full consequences of following through on your recent letters before any further action by your office on this matter.
Sincerely,
Neill Franklin
Executive Director
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition
Leonard Frieling
Former Municipal Court Judge, Lafayette, Colorado
Practicing Criminal Defense Attorney, Boulder, Colorado
Tony Ryan
Retired Lieutenant Police Officer, Denver Colorado
Posted by LEAP
Today Colorado-based and national representatives of LEAP sent a stern letter to U.S. Attorney John Walsh, pushing back against his recent threats to medical marijuana centers that operate legally under state and local law.
January 23, 2012
Dear U.S. Attorney John Walsh:
As fellow law-enforcement colleagues vitally interested in the health and well-being of children, we must respectfully register our fundamental objection to your recent issuance of 23 letters threatening state-legal Colorado Medical Marijuana Centers and their landlords with civil, criminal and forfeiture sanctions. That you would justify this action on the basis of the locations in question being too close to schools for your liking (compliance with state and local law notwithstanding) is ironic and highlights the failure of the very federal marijuana prohibition policy that underlies the threats in your letter, as we’ll explain.
Certainly, you must be aware that the voters of Colorado and the Colorado legislature – like the voters and lawmakers of 16 other states – have made it abundantly clear that marijuana is medicine for many people and for many ailments, and that its use and provision to patients should be allowed under the law.
Almost two years ago, in a bipartisan fashion, the Colorado Senate and House of Representatives enacted a strict dual licensing system for Medical Marijuana Centers that requires a license by the local and state government. All the businesses you have targeted are operating with approval from their local governments and the state of Colorado.
For you to join maverick prosecutors in California, Montana, Rhode Island, Washington and other states in going out of your way to short-circuit the will of the people and their elected representatives and to place obstacles between patients and their medicine is short-sighted and inimical to the public health, safety and welfare. Your actions bring law-enforcement into disrepute with the spoken will of the voters and their state representatives.
No law prohibits the location of a physician’s office, hospital or pharmacy within 1,000 feet of a school. So, why would you exercise your prosecutorial discretion in such a way so as to make life more difficult for certain patients and their caregivers in Colorado? It’s not as if these actions will do anything to reduce the illegal trade in marijuana – near schools or otherwise. Expect quite the opposite.
Those of us who have been working on the front lines to enforce – and reform – the drug laws in this country for years have frequently heard about medical marijuana patients who had to hit the streets to find the doctor-recommended medicine they needed. The medical marijuana centers in Colorado have provided patients like this a safe alternative and have reduced marijuana distribution on the streets. You are doing a disservice to the state of Colorado by using your discretionary prosecutorial power to undermine state and local regulations in a manner that will likely increase the underground distribution of marijuana.
You seek to put medicine outside the reach of sick people in the name of law enforcement and federal legal superiority under the guise of a minimum 1,000-foot separation between a school and medicine.
Instead, please recognize that the longstanding policy of prohibition itself – which we, like you, were once charged with enforcing – has made schools and parks the focal point for drug distribution, drug information and drug requisition.
We can blame marijuana prohibition for the fact that the federal Monitoring the Future study found that a whopping 82% of high school seniors say that it would be “fairly easy” or “very easy” to get their hands on marijuana. Sixty-nine percent of tenth graders report the same thing. Prohibition-empowered drug dealers within our schools are responsible, not licensed and regulated dispensaries. Studies from Brown University and elsewhere show that state medical marijuana laws have not led to increases in teenage marijuana use rates compared to states without legal medical marijuana. Any federal actions to expand the reach of marijuana prohibition and close down Medical Marijuana Centers in Colorado will not be good for public safety, they won’t be good for kids and they certainly won’t help patients.
Prosecutorial discretion is broad but not without limits, such as good reason, thoughtfulness, judgment and a rational relationship to the public health, safety and welfare, not to mention the will of the people of the State of Colorado. Please consider the full consequences of following through on your recent letters before any further action by your office on this matter.
Sincerely,
Neill Franklin
Executive Director
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition
Leonard Frieling
Former Municipal Court Judge, Lafayette, Colorado
Practicing Criminal Defense Attorney, Boulder, Colorado
Tony Ryan
Retired Lieutenant Police Officer, Denver Colorado
Same ol....
Surprise! Joe Biden Says Something Dumb
by Dan Riffle
March 6, 2012
Our vice president has a long and storied history of eyebrow-raising and indecipherable comments – “Bidenisms” as they’re known – and he had another doozy to offer yesterday. Speaking to a group of Latin American leaders, who have grown increasingly emboldened in their calls for legalization of marijuana and other drugs due to the deaths of tens of thousands of their citizens at the hands of powerful, murderous drug cartels, Biden offered this: “It warrants a discussion. It’s totally legitimate for this to be raised. It’s worth discussing … but there is no possibility that the Obama-Biden administration will change its policy on legalization.”
Huh? Why bother having the discussion if you’re only going to listen to your half of it? That’s like a judge presiding over a criminal trial even though he’s already sentenced the defendant. Call off your research and pack up your “totally legitimate” policy arguments, this administration won’t be listening to any of it. For an administration that claims it wants to put science before ideology and politics when it comes to drug policy, this seems to indicate there is “no possibility” there will be a change in policy no matter how much scientific research is done. At least legalization is in his vocabulary, I suppose.
Of course, what’s important here is that, whether the administration is listening or not, this conversation is happening. More and more people, including influential heads of state, are joining our side and calling for the end of marijuana prohibition. Voters in Colorado and Washington state will have a chance to join them this November, and if the polls are right, the administration will hear them loud and clear.
Surprise! Joe Biden Says Something Dumb
by Dan Riffle
March 6, 2012
Our vice president has a long and storied history of eyebrow-raising and indecipherable comments – “Bidenisms” as they’re known – and he had another doozy to offer yesterday. Speaking to a group of Latin American leaders, who have grown increasingly emboldened in their calls for legalization of marijuana and other drugs due to the deaths of tens of thousands of their citizens at the hands of powerful, murderous drug cartels, Biden offered this: “It warrants a discussion. It’s totally legitimate for this to be raised. It’s worth discussing … but there is no possibility that the Obama-Biden administration will change its policy on legalization.”
Huh? Why bother having the discussion if you’re only going to listen to your half of it? That’s like a judge presiding over a criminal trial even though he’s already sentenced the defendant. Call off your research and pack up your “totally legitimate” policy arguments, this administration won’t be listening to any of it. For an administration that claims it wants to put science before ideology and politics when it comes to drug policy, this seems to indicate there is “no possibility” there will be a change in policy no matter how much scientific research is done. At least legalization is in his vocabulary, I suppose.
Of course, what’s important here is that, whether the administration is listening or not, this conversation is happening. More and more people, including influential heads of state, are joining our side and calling for the end of marijuana prohibition. Voters in Colorado and Washington state will have a chance to join them this November, and if the polls are right, the administration will hear them loud and clear.
