The Big Lie

Source: Sun Chronicle (Attleboro, MA)
Author: Ned Bristol
Note: Ned Bristol is a member of the editorial board of The Sun Chronicle
and a former editor of the newspaper.


A LOT SPENT TO STOP POT

The DA's office spared no expense in the drug investigation. "Operation Night Out" included wire-tapping, aerial reconnaissance and managing an informant on the inside.

The investigation was started by state police detectives in the office of Bristol County District Attorney Samuel Sutter but then mushroomed. Sutter brought in the State Police Special Services Operations unit, federal authorities from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, a Rhode Island drug task force staffed by multiple agencies, and additional Massachusetts state police from the Plymouth County district attorney's office. Since this investigation focused on a couple of businesses in North Attleboro, local police also had a role to play.

Imagine what all this undercover work, involving numerous police officers and a state police helicopter equipped with high-tech surveillance equipment, cost the district attorney's office. It must be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and that doesn't even count the prosecutions to come.

So, what did the six-month investigation yield? Not a lot: five arrests, a little marijuana, a few weapons, recovery of $37,000 and elimination of a couple of marijuana growing operations.

Was it worth it? It's too soon to tell since the cases haven't gone to court, but the charges so far don't amount to much. Two men with ties to the Attleboros pleaded innocent to drug conspiracy and possession of marijuana with intent to distribute.

Also arrested were a Bellingham man and a Marion couple who were allegedly growing pot. DA Sutter said the investigation is continuing and more arrests could be made.

The investigation was dubbed Operation Night Out because the local men who were arrested own Celebrity Limousine and Entourage Limousine on Route 1. Four of their vehicles were confiscated. Sutter said limos were used to deliver marijuana.

Note that none of the charges involve any drugs other than marijuana, which seems strange since the DA's office referred to "illegal distribution of narcotics." In any case, it's all about pot for now; this in a state that decriminalized pot possession two years ago.

Obviously the law doesn't apply to drug dealing, but the pot has to come from somewhere. Hence there are going to be marijuana growing operations and middlemen who seek to profit from the marijuana market.

New England is the most liberal part of the country when it comes to tolerance of marijuana use. The Massachusetts decriminalization law came about because of a voter initiative in 2008. Bills have been filed to go a step further and legalize pot here.

Rhode Island has a medical marijuana law. ( One of those charged in North Attleboro was licensed in Rhode Island to grow and use marijuana for back pain, according to his lawyer. ) Rhode Island recently began licensing marijuana dispensaries.

Maine and Vermont have medical marijuana laws. Maine has also decriminalized pot possession. The governor of Connecticut supports decriminalization as part of a corrections reform package. New Hampshire doesn't have such laws but bills are under consideration in the legislature there.

Similar laws are found in about a third of the states across the country. The Obama administration, meanwhile, has said that it opposes decriminalization but isn't going to fight medicinal use of marijuana.

It was in 1972 that a special commission appointed by President Richard Nixon recommended decriminalization of marijuana. That idea went nowhere and after almost 40 years the United States still hasn't come to grips with the marijuana "problem."

Thus we end up with investigations like "Operation Night Out," expensive undercover operations financed by the taxpayers. Maybe DA Sutter should instead take a day off, at least until he can come up with something more substantial than this investigation has produced so far.

Arizona Republic stokes fear of pot zombies

By "Radical" Russ Belville


Some people might cheat the medical marijuana system to smoke pot! They'll pay the state fees and shop at taxed dispensaries! And we won't be able to lock them up and pay their food, clothing, and shelter costs! Horrors!


When you follow the reporting on marijuana reform issues every day for three years, you get a feel for the way reporters and editors can slant a story. Today the Arizona Medical Marijuana Program went online… literally, as in, the only way you can apply for the program is online, they do not accept paper applications, phone calls, or walk-ins. This is quite a significant development as it is the only medical marijuana state of fifteen that has a mandatory online registration.

The Associated Press and reporter Amanda Lee Meyers reported that as their lede (the opening paragraph in a news report that gives you the who, what, where, when, and how) and follow-up paragraphs:

Arizonans to begin applying for medical marijuana today

(Arizona Capitol-Times / AP) Arizona’s medical marijuana program is hitting a milestone Thursday as patients start turning in applications for the drug to help treat cancer and other diseases in what officials believe is the only completely electronic application system in the country.

Since the application for a medical marijuana card is electronic, anyone hoping to apply in person or by phone with the Arizona Department of Health Services will be turned away. And if there are any kinks in the online system, they also will need to report the problem online.

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Think of what you take away from those – treating cancer and diseases, only online system.

The shorter version of the AP story is showing up in other news outlets:

Arizonans to begin applying for medical marijuana

(San Jose Mercury News) PHOENIX—Medical marijuana is online in Arizona.

Beginning Thursday morning, patients can begin applying to get the drug to help treat cancer and other diseases.

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Same basic info – treat cancer and diseases, online system.

For the Arizona Republic, however, the lede of the story isn’t about the opening of the country’s first e-medical marijuana state program. It’s a piece by Mary K. Reinhart warning of the impending hordes of pot zombies roaming the streets of Phoenix in search of sttrraaiinns… sttrraaiinns!!!

Arizona’s medical-marijuana law takes effect
Health officials are concerned about certification mills

(Arizona Republic) Arizona’s medical-marijuana law takes effect today, but patients already have been lining up to pay hundreds of dollars in some cases for pot recommendations from clinics that opened in recent weeks for just that purpose.

Health officials are concerned that so-called certification mills could quickly turn a medical program into a recreational one, but they have limited recourse.

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The “pot zombies” is a shorthand reference for the frame employed by prohibitionists to portray medical marijuana as rife with abuse. You hear it in their “only 3% of medical pot users have cancer and AIDS” rhetoric and when they complain about “all those young healthy men” who are seen frequenting dispensaries. You also hear it when they use the word “pot”. Check those first two excerpts above and you’ll find “marijuana” and “drug”, but not “pot”. (To be fair, the Capitol-Times and the Republic stories both use the word “pot” four times in the entirety of the articles, but three of those in the Capitol-Times story are references to “pot shops”.)

Consider for a moment that we aren’t talking about cannabis. Suppose Astra-Zeneca comes out with a brand new pill, let’s call it Curezitol. Curezitol can treat symptoms of nausea, pain, spasticity, seizures, glaucoma, wasting, anxiety, depression, loss of libido, inflammation, digestion, lesions, cancers, infections, and more. Curezitol’s common side effects are red eyes, dry mouth, and euphoria and its rare worst side effects are anxiety or panic, paranoia, and racing heart. Curezitol is non-habit-forming with low risk of dependence and absolutely non-toxic. Best of all, Astra-Zeneca sells Curezitol in pill form for a very reasonable price or they’ll sell you a Home Curezitol Kit and you can manufacture your own Curezitol for pennies on the dollar.

Would Curezitol not quickly become the most popular and best-selling prescription on the market? Would doctors not get flooded with requests from patients for a prescription for Curezitol? So why is it so shocking when a medical marijuana state provides a legal way for people to use cannabis and that state’s registry grows into the tens of thousands?

The “pot zombies” frame depends on the demonization of the non-medical cannabis user. It maintains the idea of cannabis as “medicine of last resort”, a drug so dangerous and unpredictable that we must try all manner of addictive and toxic pharmaceuticals first… and then only if none of them have the desired effect do we dare allow people to try this inconsistent, impure, smoked herb… and then only for those suffering the most wretched agony and soon to meet the Grim Reaper!

The way we flip the frame is portraying cannabis as “medicine of first resort”. If I suffer from pain, why wouldn’t I take safer non-toxic cannabis instead of addictive toxic opiates? If I suffer from insomnia, why wouldn’t I wind down with some relaxing cannabis instead of an Ambien that could lead to sleep-driving? If I’m puking from nausea, why wouldn’t I inhale cannabis smoke or vapor instead of trying to swallow and keep down a pill and wait 45 minutes for it to take effect? With so few and such mild side effects, low risk of dependence, and non-toxicity, why wouldn’t cannabis be the first thing we try for a whole host of ailments?

Reinhart’s story in the Arizona Republic makes only a passing reference to “The online-only application” and the rest of the entire story is scare quotes from the DHS Director Will Humble warning about “a handful of physicians writing casual recommendations [exploding] the program.” The director of the Arizona Medical Board says doctors are “arriving at the answer before they’ve even met the patient.” An owner of a chain of brick-and-mortar clinics complains carpetbagging clinics are “putting doctors in a hotel room and not even giving you a physical.”

The other re-framing is to pivot on the idea of the “abuse” itself as “compliance”. Large numbers of patients on a registry are a sign of a program successfully serving people who are eager to be compliant with the law. Many of these patients are people who have been illegally using cannabis medically for years and now they are coming above ground. Former clandestine cannabis users are now registering with the state and complying with the law. Money they used to spend in untaxed and unregulated markets are now providing revenue and new jobs through specialty clinics and a dispensary industry.

Might someone who is purely a “recreational” cannabis user end up with a medical marijuana card? Certainly, as there is no bureaucratic system that cannot be gamed. But Arizona’s law is not California’s law and has within it strict regulations regarding qualifying conditions that must be documented in medical records. The rare exception who games the system will still be a current cannabis consumer who has visited a doctor, registered with the state, paid fees, and taken his underground purchases to a taxed and regulated market. He will have agreed to a 2.5 ounce possession limit that would only have been a likely misdemeanor with probation and a drug treatment sentence anyway, so now our law enforcement and judicial system would be burdened with him.

ty for your work on posting these articals.as for the zombies our gov has produced a nation of them.

Great thread. I, for one, am so tired of being persecuted for 45 years, so tired of hiding, so tired of being paranoid, when it's the DEA, big pharma, the government, and our President who are the real criminals. I call President Obama the biggest criminal, the biggest hypocrite of them all, as he still stands behind laws that he himself broke. Still stands behind laws that put other people in cages for doing exactly what he has done. Still stands behind laws that ruin other people's lives, while he gets to be President. I really think we need to change our ways. We have been too passive. I think we have to concentrate our protest against the Hypocrite In Chief. I think we need to bombard him with protest. Dog him throughout his billion dollar effort to remain in power. We should not let him have a press conference without challenging him. We should not let him have a "town hall" meeting without disrupting it. We should not let him speak without shouting him down. He does not deserve our respect. We need to attack his bully pulpit. We need to organize and make a whole lot more noise than we have been. After all, they are the criminals, not us. If we focus all our energy against him, maybe we will get the publicity, and result we need. Our methods have failed until every one of us can walk down the street, smoking openly. Remember, this guy still smokes cigarettes, the biggest killer drug of them all. Hopefully no one on this board who voted for O'Bama the last time will do it again.

RetroGrow said:

Great thread. I, for one, am so tired of being persecuted for 45 years, so tired of hiding, so tired of being paranoid, when it's the DEA, big pharma, the government, and our President who are the real criminals. I call President Obama the biggest criminal, the biggest hypocrite of them all, as he still stands behind laws that he himself broke. Still stands behind laws that put other people in cages for doing exactly what he has done. Still stands behind laws that ruin other people's lives, while he gets to be President. I really think we need to change our ways. We have been too passive. I think we have to concentrate our protest against the Hypocrite In Chief. I think we need to bombard him with protest. Dog him throughout his billion dollar effort to remain in power. We should not let him have a press conference without challenging him. We should not let him have a "town hall" meeting without disrupting it. We should not let him speak without shouting him down. He does not deserve our respect. We need to attack his bully pulpit. We need to organize and make a whole lot more noise than we have been. After all, they are the criminals, not us. If we focus all our energy against him, maybe we will get the publicity, and result we need. Our methods have failed until every one of us can walk down the street, smoking openly. Remember, this guy still smokes cigarettes, the biggest killer drug of them all. Hopefully no one on this board who voted for O'Bama the last time will do it again.

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Yup...we NEED a Revolution!!!

Obummer better get his Boys in step....


Author: Charles S. Johnson, Gazette State Bureau
Cited: Cotter letter to lawmakers: http://mapinc.org/url/OjoqGad0

U.S. ATTORNEY: JUSTICE DEPARTMENT CONSIDERS MEDICAL MARIJUANA TO BE ILLEGAL

HELENA -- The U.S. Justice Department will prosecute individuals and organizations involved in the business of any illegal drug, including marijuana used for medical purposes permitted under state law, Michael W. Cotter, U.S. attorney for Montana, said in a letter to top legislative leaders Wednesday.

In another development on marijuana Wednesday, Gov. Brian Schweitzer said he is likely to make some amendatory vetoes suggesting changes to the medical marijuana bill moving through the Legislature.

Senate Bill 423, by Sen. Jeff Essmann, R-Billings, is the last surviving bill to repeal Montana's medical marijuana law and enact a new one that would impose far stricter regulations and make it much tougher for people to obtain cards to use medical marijuana.

Earlier this week, Senate President Jim Peterson, R-Buffalo, and House Speaker Mike Milburn, R-Cascade, wrote Cotter to ask for his guidance as the Montana Legislature completes work on SB423.

In 2004, Montanans voted, 62 percent to 38 percent, to legalize the use of marijuana for medical purposes. Since the fall of 2009, the number of medical marijuana cardholders has skyrocketed to nearly 30,000 last month.

Cotter said the Justice Department has not reviewed the specific legislative bill. But he said the U.S. Justice Department "has stated on many occasions that Congress placed marijuana in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act ( CSA ) and as such, growing, distributing and possessing marijuana in any capacity, other than as part of a federally authorized research program, is a violation of federal law, regardless of state laws that purport to permit such activities."

Cotter went on to say, "The prosecution of individuals and organizations involved in the trade of any illegal drugs and the disruption of drug trafficking organizations is a core priority of the department."

This core priority, he said, "includes prosecution of business enterprises that unlawfully market and sell marijuana."

"While the department generally does not focus its limited resources on seriously ill individuals who use marijuana as part of a medically recommended treatment regimen consistent with applicable state law, as stated in the October 2009 Ogden Memorandum, we maintain the authority to enforce the CSA against individuals and organizations that participate in unlawful manufacturing and distribution activity involving marijuana, even if such activities are permitted under state law," Cotter said.

Cotter added, "The department's investigative and prosecutorial resources will continue to be directed toward these objectives."

In mid-March, federal law enforcement authorities raided 26 medical marijuana growing and dispensary operations in 13 Montana cities. They said they had probable cause that these businesses were engaged in large-scale trafficking.

Cotter said then that the search warrants executed were the culmination of an "18-month, multi-agency investigation into the drug trafficking activities of criminal enterprises." He said civil seizure warrants also were executed for financial institutions in Bozeman, Helena and Kalispell that sought up to $4 million.

Regarding the bill before the Legislature, Schweitzer said he probably would have some amendments when SB423 reaches him after passing both legislative houses next week.

"They're moving to a 'grow-your-own' ( marijuana system )," Schweitzer said. "It does concern me. I don't know if it will end up being 2,000 patients or 30,000 patients growing their own."

He said that would make it harder to regulate than having a smaller number of producers growing for more people.

"We have some ideas that we think will make it better," Schweitzer said.

PRES. OBAMA’S REPORT CARD ON MEDICAL CANNABIS

F

Click here for the full ASA report

BiG H3rB Tr3E said:

43 raids in the 2+ years obama has been in office. shit thats like 1 day of raids under bush....

and his initials are BHO....

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Bush is long gone. This is not a dem rep thing. It is about all politicians who represent the people deceiving the people.

You read all the time of gang violence related to drugs in Mexico. But how many drug bust do you read about there. Fact is without US drug money the Mexican economy would collapse. The present administration is afraid that collapse will spill over to the US economy and be a political nightmare. Sure you read about cartel leaders being busted but most of them are over the hill and have been replaced already. We spend hundreds of millions in federal money in the war on drugs and most major bust in the US are started by local and state law enforcement that call in the DA that takes the credit. It is all about cash flow and global economics. With everybody profiting except for the American people.

How about next year on 420 buy nothin do nothin thats not cannibis related? All the folk with 'real' jobs plan for it.Nobody thinks us growers work anyway- It's that or revolution n I don't see us all gettin off the couch.
Great postings

ijim said:

You read all the time of gang violence related to drugs in Mexico. But how many drug bust do you read about there. Fact is without US drug money the Mexican economy would collapse. The present administration is afraid that collapse will spill over to the US economy and be a political nightmare. Sure you read about cartel leaders being busted but most of them are over the hill and have been replaced already. We spend hundreds of millions in federal money in the war on drugs and most major bust in the US are started by local and state law enforcement that call in the DA that takes the credit. It is all about cash flow and global economics. With everybody profiting except for the American people.

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You gotta look at it and laugh.

My guess is there are at least a dozen Mexican schwag farmers that log into ICmag regularly to get their giggles from all their haters growing domestic pounds and complaining about the imported tons.

Their main profit doesn't come from growing. It comes from delivery.

That's what growers aren't grasping about brokers and dispensaries.

Its a job to supply the shit as much as it is to grow the shit.

MEXICO MAY EVENTUALLY JUST SAY NO

Something remarkable happened in Mexico this month. Tens of thousands of Mexicans gathered in the main squares of cities across the country to demand an end to the "war on drugs." In the Zocalo, in the heart of Mexico City, they chanted "no more blood," and many called for the resignation of President Felipe Calderon, who launched the current war by deploying the army against the drug cartels in late 2006.

Some 35,000 people in Mexico have been killed in drug-related violence since then. Even as the crowds chanted, news came in of another 59 bodies discovered in mass graves in Tamaulipas state. In the words of poet-journalist Javier Sicilia, who inspired the demonstrations after his own son was killed, the war is "tearing apart the fabric of the nation."

But what does he know? In fact, the United States and Mexico are on the brink of winning the war on drugs. We know that because Michele Leonhart, the head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, said so on the very same day, at an international conference in Cancun. "It may seem contradictory, but the unfortunate level of violence is a sign of success in the fight against drugs," she said.

She presumably means that all the Mexican drug-traffickers will be dead soon, and that nobody else will be tempted by the easy money to take the place of those who are killed. Americans will then stop using drugs because they simply aren't available, or at worst they will be so scarce and expensive that only the very rich can afford them. And we'll all live happily ever after ( except the very rich, of course ).

True, drugs in the United States have become cheaper, stronger and more easily available over the past 40 years, despite annual claims by the DEA that victory is at hand. To go on doing the same thing every year for 40 years, while expecting that next time will have a different outcome, is sometimes seen as evidence of insanity, but we shouldn't be judgmental. We could, however, try to be rational.

Former Mexican president Vicente Fox has been doing well on the rationality front recently. Last August he wrote in his blog: "We should consider legalizing the production, sale and distribution of drugs. Legalization does not mean that drugs are good. 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."

This would mean that Mexican drug-users could get any drugs they want, of course. Just like now. The only differences would be that the drugs, being state-regulated and taxed, might cost slightly more, and that there would be fewer deaths from impurities and overdoses. But it wouldn't actually break the power of the cartels so long as drugs remain illegal in the huge U.S. market.

Former Colombian president Cesar Gaviria addressed this issue head-on in a recent interview with Time magazine: "U.S. drug policy has failed. So please, change it. Don't force us to sacrifice thousands of lives for a strategy that doesn't work simply because American politicians lack the courage to change course." Well said -- but why did these men not act when they had the power?

Because they were afraid of the American reaction. The United States has repeatedly made it clear that it will inflict grievous economic pain on any Latin American country that defects from its war against drugs. That is becoming an empty threat, however, for U.S. economic power is nothing like it used to be, even in Latin America.

That's partly due to the recent near-collapse of the U.S. economy, but it's also the result of the rapid growth of the Latin American countries. Mexico, for example, is a rising industrial power with tens of millions of educated middle-class people and an economy that's growing at seven per cent a year. It can now say no to Washington without being crushed.

Ending the war on drugs in Mexico would not instantly stop the killing, most of which is between cartels competing for control of the routes by which drugs transit Mexico on their way to the United States. But just ending the army's involvement would greatly lower the level of violence, and legalizing drugs in Mexico would diminish the epidemic of corruption, too. You don't need to bribe officials if the drug trade is legal.

The current wave of demonstrations against the drug war is only a start. The policy won't change so long as Calderon is president, for too many people have been killed for him to repudiate it now. But by the end of 2012 he will be gone, and his successor, from whichever party, will be free to change the policy. One of these days, Mexico will just say 'no'.

ijim said:

You read all the time of gang violence related to drugs in Mexico. But how many drug bust do you read about there. Fact is without US drug money the Mexican economy would collapse. The present administration is afraid that collapse will spill over to the US economy and be a political nightmare. Sure you read about cartel leaders being busted but most of them are over the hill and have been replaced already. We spend hundreds of millions in federal money in the war on drugs and most major bust in the US are started by local and state law enforcement that call in the DA that takes the credit. It is all about cash flow and global economics. With everybody profiting except for the American people.

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You are a little over the top there. Mexico has a bunch of problems but verging on the brink of economic collapse is not one of them, might want to look closer to home for 14.5 trillion of that.

There is NO FUCKING "WE" there are groups of THEM but there is no WE. You and I don't bbq together, you and I don't choose to support the Mexican or USA war on drugs.

This thread is FULL of the dumbshit done by pigs world wide, but the vast majority of the retardation is from the US.

The TRUTH is NO country would collapse if drugs were legalized, but fuck head governments would have a way less controllable populace.

Author: Daniel Robelo
Note: Daniel Robelo is a research associate for the Drug Policy Alliance in Berkeley, California

CHILDREN ARE HARMED, NOT HELPED, BY UNWINNABLE DRUG WAR

After forty years and a trillion dollars, supporters of the drug war still claim that any discussion of legalization sends the "wrong message" to children.

The truth, as seen in news from Mexico ever day, is that the drug war itself is killing children. And the message we send by not discussing alternatives is one of cruel indifference.

According to reports by The Washington Post and Associated Press, at least 1,000 boys and girls have been murdered since Mexican President Felipe Calderon took office and unleashed the army against drug traffickers - with the ready support of the United States. Tens of thousands more have been orphaned; so many in Chihuahua that the state government has set up a special fund to care for them.

Including these young victims, over 37,000 people have been killed since late 2006 in violence caused by drug prohibition in Mexico - similar to what the U.S. experienced during alcohol Prohibition, but far more deadly. Many have been migrants, like those found in mass graves which, as I write, continue to be unearthed in Tamaulipas and Durango; most have been young men and women just entering adulthood.

There's another way the drug war is ruining the lives of Mexico's young people: the emergence of something akin to the phenomenon of child-soldiers in other conflict-stricken countries. Children as young as 14 are being forced or recruited into criminal activities ranging from serving as lookouts to hit men ( "hit boys" to be precise ). Kids are also being recruited by paramilitary organizations and private security companies. This tragic development is fueled by a lack of economic and educational opportunities in many Mexican communities, where live some 7 million youth who are referred to as "ni-ni's" ( short for the Spanish phrase "ni estudian ni trabajan", or hopeless youngsters that can "neither work nor go to school" ). So-called ni-ni's are easy recruits for jobs in the drug trade, as long as prohibition ensures such dangerous employment pays far more than the few other available options.

The trauma created by this violence is so pervasive that, in a drawing contest in Michoacan to celebrate Mexico's bicentennial, 90% of children's submissions instead were depictions of brutal killings and atrocities.

In the face of these child murders - or, for survivors, this death of innocence - the U.S. and Mexican governments remain unapologetic and unashamed in keeping their destructive course. New DEA head Michele Leonhart, echoing Presidents Obama and Calderon, even has the audacity to claim these murders are a "sign of success."

Her hollow words pay insult to those who have lost sons and daughters. Javier Sicilia, whose son, Juan Francisco, was murdered along with six other young people on March 28, described his family's suffering in heartrending terms. "The pain...has no name, because it is fruit of something that does not belong in nature - the death of a child is always unnatural and that's why it has no name: I don't know if it is orphan or widow...it is simply and painfully nothing."

In an open letter to the criminals who murdered his son, as well as the politicians of Mexico, Mr. Sicilia demanded an end to this unwinnable war and a respect for innocent lives. His courage has catalyzed a protest movement across Mexico that is only growing stronger, with massive national marches against the drug war planned for May 8. U.S. citizens of conscience should express their support.

But Mr. Sicilia pleaded with us for more than that. He called for the legalization of drugs to stop the violence that is devouring Mexico's youth, writing, "We have to subject them to the ferocious laws of the market and treat their consumption as a public health matter."

We must heed his call - or at least have the courage and respect to discuss it. Drug prohibition has claimed an unacceptable number of our southern neighbors--and now their children. A major first step would be to legalize marijuana, which is the leading source of profit for cartels that prey on Mexican children and terrorize Mexican society.

Because the real "wrong message" is letting children die and communities be destroyed by refusing to put all options on the table.

Source: Milford Daily News, The (MA)
Author: Richard Evans
Note: Richard M. Evans is a Northampton lawyer and the author of
H1371, the Cannabis Regulation and Taxation Act. He blogs at www.cantaxreg.com.


100 YEARS OF MARIJUANA PROHIBITION

One hundred years ago today, Massachusetts Governor Eugene Foss signed into law Chapter 372 of the Acts of 1911, "An act relative to the issuance of search warrants for hypnotic drugs and the arrest of those present." Since then, marijuana has been illegal in Massachusetts, although the voters reduced possession of a small amount to a civil infraction in 2008. Remarkably, the 1911 law was the first state prohibition of marijuana in the United States.

Despite a century of ever-zealous enforcement and thunderous propaganda at taxpayer expense, marijuana inextricably permeates our culture. Its cultivation, commerce and use have proven ineradicable. We have tried mightily and we have failed to extirpate it. If anyone, anywhere, believes that spending more money on marijuana enforcement will drive out pot, let that person come forward and tell us plainly what it will take to make that happen, how much it will cost, and where the money will come from.

The futility of enforcement, however, is not the urgent reason to legalize it. The reason is that prohibition has become a destructive force in our society.

Most perniciously, marijuana prohibition provides the tools and the excuses for the oppression of minorities. No historian denies that the early drug laws were conceived for that purpose, and today's grotesquely disproportionate incarceration rate of African-Americans proves that the drug laws have shamefully accomplished that purpose.

Prohibition divides us. Getting caught with pot, or the fear of getting caught, divides parents and teens, employers and employees, friends, neighbors, colleagues, doctors and patients, and citizens and the police. That divisiveness weakens us as we face colossal challenges like a sick economy, the insolvency of states and municipalities, climate change and our addiction to imported oil. As long as cannabis remains illegal, it cannot be a part of the solution to those colossal challenges.

Take the economy. Montana, a state with a population one-sixth of ours, has seen medical marijuana alone create 1,400 new jobs. Extrapolate for Massachusetts. Legalization - meaning a regulated and taxed market for medical and non-medical consumers - will create new jobs and business opportunities in agriculture, horticulture, equipment manufacture and supply, construction, real estate, finance, and retail, once we no longer have to be afraid.

Consider the insolvency of states and municipalities. Last year, the California Board of Equalization estimated that taxing the commercial cannabis industry, at a rate of $50 per ounce, would raise between $990 million and $1.4 billion. Proportionally, that's around $200 million in new revenue for the Bay State.

To overcome our addiction to oil, can we ignore the amazing promise and versatility of hemp as a clean, renewable energy source, and as the raw material for thousands of products, reducing deforestation while replacing chemical-intensive cotton and environmentally destructive petroleum?

In 1930, 10 years into national Prohibition, Massachusetts voters legalized alcohol, ceding to the feds the cost of liquor enforcement. History proved them prescient, as with repeal in 1933, bootleggers quit or went legit, violent crime plummeted, and a significant new source of revenue presented itself to the legislature.

Our immediate challenge is not to legalize cannabis, but to legalize serious talk about it, without smirks and snickers. How legalization can best protect public health and safety, and discourage abuse, and how to tax the substance, are issues not just for politicians, but for everyone. Legalization is no longer for stoners; it's for taxpayers, entrepreneurs and grandparents, horrified at the likely state of the planet on which their grandchildren will grow up.

Let the debate begin now, lest another hundred years go by.

Source: Metro Times (Detroit, MI)
Author: John Sinclair


WHAT WAR HAS WROUGHT

The War on Drugs: When the Solution Is Worse Than the Problem

The cover story by News Editor Curt Guyette in last week's Metro Times turned the spotlight on a particularly odious episode in the annals of the local law enforcement community, spelling out the terms of an unholy collusion between a paid narcotics informer and the Inkster Police Department, the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office and a Wayne County circuit court judge to use perjured testimony in their zealous effort to convict an accused drug smuggler fingered by the snitch.

Everything about this case stinks, but the worst part is that the extensive illegal conduct by these local minions of the War on Drugs perfectly exemplifies the methodology of persecution practiced throughout the contemporary law enforcement industry.

Only the most nave, cynical or deluded among us can subscribe to the pervasive mythology of drug police, prosecutors and judges as fearless warriors valiantly fighting a depraved horde of heartless pushers and evil dope fiends whose anti-social pursuit of self-gratification by getting high threatens to destroy the American way of life and everything it stands for.

The War on Drugs has served primarily to construct a police state apparatus basically unchecked in its pursuit of power and control over elements of our society deemed undesirable and detrimental to the economic and cultural forces that shape and direct our national life.

Start with this: There's nothing intrinsically wrong with getting high. People have been getting high as long as there have been people. People get high on beer, wine, whiskey, vodka and gin without criminal sanction. They get high on pills prescribed by their doctors or purchased on the black market. And people get high on marijuana or cocaine or heroin or whatever they desire for the physical and mental effects.

People get high when they want to. They obtain the drugs they crave however and wherever they can, and if they can't buy them over the counter somewhere they will find them in the drug underworld and pay whatever price is required to get what they want. People are relentless in their pursuit of the drugs they want to get high on, and they generally devise some sort of way to make it happen despite the various obstacles thrust in their way by economic circumstances, physical dislocation and the formidable forces of law and order arrayed against them wherever they turn.

Marijuana was legal in the United States until 1937. Cocaine could be purchased over drugstore counters until well into the 20th century, and heroin wasn't really demonized until the second half of the 1940s. In passing their draconian laws against use, possession and distribution of these once-tolerated recreational substances, our federal and state legislative bodies repeatedly cited ethnic and cultural minorities as the principal offenders and feared that their example would corrupt and undermine the very fabric of American life.

Marijuana and cocaine were demonized as engines of erratic and dangerous social behavior, geeking up black men and Mexicans to commit sexual assaults on white women and making the fiends unfit to function as productive members of the work force and responsible Christian citizens. Jazz and swing musicians, poets and writers, painters and other artists were tarred with the brush of illegal drug use and tormented by the narcotics police and their burgeoning consort of rat bastards and snitches.

Illicit drug use was pretty much an underground phenomenon confined to the ranks of ethnic minorities and the bohemian element until the hippie movement erupted out of suburban America in the 1960s. Legions of white, middle-class youths turned their backs on the prescribed way of life and embraced the cultural leadership of people of color and renegade Caucasians exemplified by persons like Allen Ginsberg and Timothy Leary.

Music suddenly became central to life for millions of young white Americans - not the lily-white music of their parents, but African-American music grounded in the realities experienced by the victims of a segregated social order and charged with unprecedented emotion and human feeling. At the same time, the courage and moral authority manifested in the civil rights movement inspired hippies to dream visions of social justice, nonviolent resistance, world peace and a radical new way of life.

Black people fighting for their lives and demanding their freedom, white youth rejecting the skewed reality of their parents, refusing to fight their wars and trying to construct the world of their dreams - - these were new and dangerous challenges to the hegemony of the people in charge of America, and they demanded innovative new strategies and tactics in the struggle for continued supremacy.

The battle against the Red Menace that fueled the machinery of the forces of law and order had been raging since the end of World War I and the establishment of communism in the Soviet Union, reaching its peak in the early 1950s. American Reds were demonized as agents of the Communist International and persecuted for "un-American" political views. Their movement could be contained by the FBI and its sympathizers in commerce, industry and the courts, and culturally they posed little challenge to the prevailing orthodoxy.

But the soul power of blacks and the flower power of hippies were radically different. Both mass movements sprang from the daily lives of people who, in the first instance, had been locked out of any opportunity to share in the vast national wealth and, in the second, had been groomed to operate the oppressive machinery of the ownership class and were now refusing to follow the program.

Both movements were fueled by passion and high ideals, yearning for a social order that would promote life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and guarantee equal opportunity. This would never do: There would never be a place in the economic order for the masses of people of color in this segregated nation, and the white renegades had to be forced back into compliance with the iron rules of consumerism.

This is where the War on Drugs has its start. The phony rhetoric of the drug warriors served to divert public attention from the righteous social concerns of blacks and hippies and brand them instead as enemies of society who must be hounded, snitched on, dragged into court, locked away, stripped of their possessions and otherwise removed from real life. If they escaped arrest and prosecution for their illicit behaviors they would still live their lives in a state of fear and trembling that the narcotics police would find them out.

I'm out of space for this episode, but what I really wanted to say was that the sensational Wayne County case detailed by Curt Guyette is a compelling example of the way our legal system routinely operates as a key component in maintaining the established economic, cultural and political order. This is a rotten system, and they'll do anything to keep it in place - and never forget that the War on Drugs is a really big part of the big picture.

Like I've said here before, try to imagine a world without the War on Drugs. This would be a whole different place indeed.

Medical marijuana dispensaries on hold in Rhode Island as governor bows to federal threats

By "Radical" Russ Belville

(Providence Business News) PROVIDENCE – Gov. Lincoln D. Chafee said Monday he has put a hold on the state’s medical marijuana certificate of registration program after receiving notice that it could violate federal law.

The news comes after the U.S. attorney for the district of Rhode Island told the governor in a three-page, hand-delivered letter on Friday that the state law establishing up to three medical-marijuana centers could lead to civil and criminal prosecution.

Chafee explained that the letter “clarified” the U.S. Department of Justice’s position on medical marijuana.

“The Department of Justice previously indicated that it would not focus its limited resources on doctors and their sick patients who prescribe and use marijuana if such use was permitted by state law,” Chafee said in a news release.

Chafee said he has placed a hold on the certificate of registration program, “in light of the U.S. Attorney’s articulate position on closing compassion centers, seizing proceeds and prosecuting business enterprises that market and sell medical marijuana.”

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Is there not a governor in any of the fifteen medical marijuana states who will show some leadership and challenge the federal government’s bullying? The feds don’t even acknowledge such a thing as “medical marijuana”! The US Dept. of Justice’s position is that anyone anywhere in the United States in possession of a single joint is committing a misdemeanor worth a year in prison and anyone growing a single plant is committing a felony worth five years in prison.

So merely by having a medical marijuana program, Gov. Chafee, your state is engaging in a conspiracy with hundreds of Rhode Islanders to break federal controlled substance laws.

It’s not the medical marijuana patients the feds care about; it’s the medical marijuana industry. So long as it is a husband tending a pot garden for his wife who’s a patient, it’s all fine. But if it is a businessman tending pot forests for 500 patients, then the feds can’t have it. Those businessmen might build loyal voting blocs and raise substantial money for lobbying and initiative campaigns and primary challengers. And they might show the public an example of what a well-run, tightly-controlled, safe and clean distribution system for legal marijuana would be like. Next thing you know, people start to wonder why we don’t just legalize it for healthy people, too, and raise a bunch of tax revenue.

When the feds raid these compassion centers, they don’t even bother to arrest and charge anyone! No, that would lead to a court trial and the government having to explain to a judge and some news media why drastic measures had to be taken to shut down a place where cancer patients get medicine. Instead they just bust down the doors, smash the cabinets and displays, destroy the security cams and monitors, seize the computers and cash and records, and send everyone on their way. It’s an institutionalized thuggery that would make the mafia jealous.

California Prison Guard: a better career move than a Harvard degree

By "Radical" Russ Belville



Where you see the injustice of caging humans over a plant, CCPOA sees job security


There is an old saying that says, “When you’re in a gold rush, it’s a good time to be in the pick and shovel business.” Well, when you’re in a police state, it’s a good time to be in prisoner guarding business.

(Wall Street Journal) The job might not sound glamorous, but a brochure from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitations boasts that it “has been called ‘the greatest entry-level job in California’—and for good reason. Our officers earn a great salary, and a retirement package you just can’t find in private industry. We even pay you to attend our academy.” That’s right—instead of paying more than $200,000 to attend Harvard, you could earn $3,050 a month at cadet academy.

Training only takes four months, and upon graduating you can look forward to a job with great health, dental and vision benefits and a starting base salary between $45,288 and $65,364. By comparison, Harvard grads can expect to earn $49,897 fresh out of college and $124,759 after 20 years.

As a California prison guard, you can make six figures in overtime and bonuses alone. While Harvard-educated lawyers and consultants often have to work long hours with little recompense besides Chinese take-out, prison guards receive time-and-a-half whenever they work more than 40 hours a week. One sergeant with a base salary of $81,683 collected $114,334 in overtime and $8,648 in bonuses last year, and he’s not even the highest paid.

Most Harvard grads only get three weeks of vacation each year, even after working for 20 years—and they’re often too busy to take a long trip. Prison guards, on the other hand, get seven weeks of vacation, five of them paid. If they’re too busy racking up overtime to use their vacation days, they can cash the days in when they retire. There’s no cap on how many vacation days they can cash in! Eighty officers last year cashed in over $100,000 at retirement.

The cherry on top is the defined-benefit pension. Unlike most Harvard grads working in the private sector, prison guards don’t have to delay retirement if their 401(k)s take a hit. Prison guards can retire at the age of 55 and earn 85% of their final year’s salary for the rest of their lives. They also continue to receive medical benefits.

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How much do you think those guys and gals want to vote for reforms that would lead to less people in prison? The California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA) donated $2 million to Gov. Brown’s campaign who then repaid them last month by approving the deal that allows them to cash in unlimited vacation days when they retire. What a deal! You get five paid and two unpaid weeks of vacation. Save up some of those weeks when you were only paid $45K and cash them in when you’re making $85K (yes, Gov. Brown’s deal allows them to cash out vacation days at current pay rates, not what they were worth when they accrued.)

We don’t have the entry-level living wage jobs anymore that a regular Joe can work without much education or skill, yet still provide a middle class lifestyle for his family. So we’ll let them all become poor and desperate until some of them take advantage of the only paying job they can find – selling drugs – and some others turn to theft. Then we can build prisons to lock all of them up, hire some of the rest of them to be guards at attractive middle class wages, and provide poverty-level service jobs to maintain the prisons!

Another added benefit? Many of those people we’re locking up are poor minorities from cities who would be likely to vote for more progressive drug policies and candidates that espouse them. When they are locked up they cannot vote. Furthermore, their absence from urban districts reduces their census when it comes to apportioning funds and representation and their presence in prisons in rural districts increases the population for these typically conservative districts that (naturally) support building more prisons and locking people up.

CA deserves to go bankrupt.

awesome work VTA... that is truly shocking.^^^ Very good 'gold rush' quote.. very true..
This world is in dire straights right now