The Big Lie

[vta]

Life In Prison For Cannabis

COVINGTON, La. — After getting probation three times for marijuana convictions in New Orleans, a man moved out of the city — and landed a life prison sentence the fourth time around.

Cornell Hood II was sentenced Thursday in Covington as a repeat offender following his conviction on a charge of attempting to possess and distribute marijuana.

According to The Times-Picayune, Hood moved from New Orleans after he pleaded guilty in 2009 to two marijuana-related charges and received five years of probation. In 2005, he received his first strike — and five years of probation — after pleading guilty in New Orleans to possessing and intending to distribute marijuana.

Authorities said Hood's probation officer found about two pounds of marijuana during a routine visit to Hood's Slidell-area home on Sept. 27. Prosecutors charged him with possession with intent to distribute marijuana.

At Hood's one-day trial, the state's evidence included a digital scale and about a dozen bags that had contained marijuana before being seized from the house. Deputies also found $1,600 in cash and a student-loan application with Hood's name on it inside of a night stand.

A jury deliberated for less than two hours and convicted Hood of a reduced charge, which usually carries no more than 15 years' imprisonment. But Assistant District Attorney Nick Noriea Jr. then used Hood's past convictions on Thursday to argue that he was a career criminal.

Drug offenders in Louisiana are subject to life imprisonment after being convicted three or more times of a crime that carries a maximum sentence exceeding 10 years

 

[SpasticGramps]

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....

Is it getting harder to carry Obama's water?

 

[mofeta]

Another good article on the current administration's love of government control, and aversion to liberty.

 

[vta]

Obama's medial marijuana campaign promises


The following are a sampling of medical marijuana promises made by President Barack Obama when he was asking for your vote. Today, he's allowing his Justice Department to attack medical marijuana. It's an unjust episode of bait and switch. — Wayne Laugesen

Quotes from the campaign trail

“My attitude is if the science and the doctors suggest that the best palliative care and the way to relieve pain and suffering is medical marijuana then that’s something I’m open to because there’s no difference between that and morphine when it comes to just giving people relief from pain. But I want to do it under strict guidelines. I want it prescribed in the same way that other painkillers or palliative drugs are prescribed.” — November 24, 2007 town hall meeting in Iowa

“I would not have the Justice Department prosecuting and raiding medical marijuana users. It’s not a good use of our resources.” — August 21, 2007, event in Nashua, New Hampshire

“I don’t think that should be a top priority of us, raiding people who are using ... medical marijuana. With all the things we’ve got to worry about, and our Justice Department should be doing, that probably shouldn’t be a high priority.” — June 2, 2007, town hall meeting in Laconia, New Hampshire

“You know, it’s really not a good use of Justice Department resources.” — responding to whether the federal government should stop medical marijuana raids, August 13, 2007, town hall meeting in Nashua, New Hampshire

“The Justice Department going after sick individuals using [marijuana] as a palliative instead of going after serious criminals makes no sense.” — July 21, 2007, town hall meeting in Manchester, New Hampshire

 

[vta]

Author: Wayne Laugesen, For the editorial board

FEDS MAY KILL MEDICAL MARIJUANA

Bait and Switch Will Hurt Colorado

A pending federal crackdown on Colorado's medical marijuana patients and wellness providers will destroy livelihoods, hurt the economy and cost Colorado Springs and El Paso County precious new tax revenues. The Obama administration is backing off its principled state's rights approach to medical marijuana, just as it has abandoned other promises of hope and change.

Colorado voters amended the state constitution in 2000 to allow the buying, selling and use of medical marijuana. Today's thriving medical marijuana trade, which has freed patients from underground drug dealers, didn't take off until Obama took office and directed Attorney General Eric Holder to announce new formal guidelines for federal prosecutors in medical marijuana states. An Oct. 19, 2009 memo by Deputy Attorney General David Ogden told United States attorneys that they "should not focus federal resources in your States on individuals whose actions are in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws providing for the medical use of marijuana."

In Colorado, the memo meant federal respect for Amendment 20, which allows the doctor-recommended use of marijuana for an assortment of medical conditions including "severe pain." It allows for the "acquisition, possession, production, use, or transportation" of medical marijuana.

The memo represented a significant departure from the Bush administration's refusal to acknowledge Amendment 20 and other state marijuana laws. It represented tangible change, brought to us by a president who promised change. Holder told reporters the new guideline was consistent with promises made by Obama during the campaign. One such promise:

"I would not have the Justice Department prosecuting and raiding medical marijuana users. It's not a good use of our resources." - Obama, at an Aug. 21, 2007 campaign event in Nashua, N.H.

Forget the promises and the instruction to U.S. attorneys. Medical marijuana is going the way of the pledges to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, to end aggressive foreign intervention and to undo abuses in the Patriot Act.

Colorado Attorney General John Suthers, who fights medical marijuana even though he pledged to uphold the state constitution, asked U.S. Attorney John Walsh to clarify the federal Justice Department's position on medical marijuana after the state Legislature approved new regulations for the trade. In a July 26 letter to Suthers, Walsh said the Justice Department plans to "vigorously" enforce federal marijuana laws "against individuals and organizations that participate in the unlawful manufacturing and distribution activity involving marijuana, even if such activities are permitted under state law."

Dennis Burke, the U.S. attorney for Arizona, sent a memo Monday warning Arizona state health officials about the state's new medical marijuana act. He told Arizona officials of Justice Department plans to crush medical marijuana, despite the state's law. The letter says his office "will continue to vigorously prosecute individuals and organizations that participate in unlawful manufacturing, distribution and marketing activity involving marijuana, even if such activities are permitted under state law."

That means Obama's campaign promises and the 2009 memo - directing Burke, Walsh and other U.S. attorneys to "not focus federal resources in your States" on medical marijuana patients - mean nothing. Obama has shown his tolerance for rogue Justice Department employees who simply don't approve of his "state's rights" approach to medical marijuana laws. He appears too weak to force his U.S. attorneys to comply.

It's a bait and switch that stands to devastate the lives of small-business owners, their employees, their investors and patients who trusted Obama and found a way off of destructive, liver-rotting, hard-narcotic pain medications. It's a position that will only re-enrich and empower the criminal marijuana underground, which obeys no rules and pays no taxes. It stands to eliminate a substantial new source of tax revenue that has been a godsend to cities and counties throughout the great recession. With the potential demise of medical marijuana - which Obama promised to protect - it is impossible to distinguish this president from George W. Bush.


See full Ogden memo http://mapinc.org/url/Zm1UC2iR

Read Amendment 20 http://www.nationalfamilies.org/guide/colorado20-full.html

See Obama promises to protect medical marijuana http://ubin.cc/jeBJOH

See full John Walsh letter http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site36/2011/0427/20110427_121943_pot.pdf

See full Dennis Burke letter http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site36/2011/0427/20110427_121943_pot.pdf

 

[Hash Zeppelin]

I cant wait till all these anti drug ass holes just die from old age.

 

[Hydrosun]

Is it getting harder to carry Obama's water?

Much fucking harder, that guy is a pit-bull only wish he were not supporting the establishment.

 

[rives]

I wonder how the constituents in Arizona feel about these assholes enforcing federal law that contradicts a vote by the majority of the people, yet they can get no help from the federal government on the illegal immigration mess which really is a federal responsibility.

 

[resinryder]

I wonder how the constituents in Arizona feel about these assholes enforcing federal law that contradicts a vote by the majority of the people, yet they can get no help from the federal government on the illegal immigration mess which really is a federal responsibility.

Is that the same fed gov that gave gun shop owners the ok to sell ak47's and 50 cal rifles to straw buyers to pass on to cartel members?

Selective enforcement. Pretty much sums it up.

 

[vta]

The 5 Worst States to Get Busted With Pot
via Alternet.org


1. Oklahoma — Lawmakers in the Sooner State made headlines this spring when legislators voted 119 to 20 in favor of House Bill 1798, which enhances the state sentencing guidelines for hash manufacturing to a minimum of two years in jail and a maximum penalty of life in prison. (Mary Fallin, the state’s first-ever female governor, signed the measure into law in April; it takes effect on November 1, 2011.) But longtime Oklahoma observers were hardly surprised at lawmakers’ latest “life for pot” plan. After all, state law already allows judges to hand out life sentences for those convicted of cannabis cultivation or for the sale of a single dime-bag.

2. Texas — On an annual basis, no state arrests and criminally prosecutes more of its citizens for pot than does Texas. Marijuana arrests comprise over half of all annual arrests in the Lone Star State. It is easy to see why. In 2009, more than 97 percent of all Texas marijuana arrests — over 77,000 people — were for possession only. Those convicted face up to 180 days in jail and a $2,000 fine, even upon a first conviction.

3. Florida — According to a 2009 state-by-state analysis by researcher and former NORML Director Jon Gettman, no other state routinely punishes minor marijuana more severely than does the Sunshine State. Under Florida law, marijuana possession of 20 grams or less (about two-thirds of an ounce) is a criminal misdemeanor punishable by up to one-year imprisonment and a $1,000 fine. Marijuana possession over 20 grams, as well as the cultivation of even a single pot plant, are defined by law as felony offenses – punishable by up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine. In recent years, state lawmakers have revisited the state’s marijuana penalties – in each case electing to enhance Florida’s already toughest-in-the-nation criminal punishments.

4. Louisiana — In Louisiana, multi-decade (or even life) sentences for repeat pot offenders are hardly a rare occurrence. Under Louisiana law, a second pot possession conviction is classified as a felony offense, punishable by up to five years in prison. Three-time offenders face up to 20 years in prison. According to a 2008 expose published in New Orleans City Business online, district attorneys are not hesitant to “target small-time marijuana users, sometimes caught with less than a gram of pot, and threaten them with lengthy prison sentences.”

5. Arizona — Forty years ago virtually every state in the nation defined marijuana possession as a felony offense. Today, only one state, Arizona, treats first-time pot possession in such an archaic and punitive manner. Under Arizona law, even minor marijuana possession offenses may be prosecuted as felony crimes, punishable by up to 18 months in jail and a $150,000 fine. According to Jon Gettman’s 2009 analysis only Florida consistently treats minor marijuana possession cases more severely.

 

[vta]

We won't go after state-legal medical marijuana. No, wait, I meant, we WILL.

ACLU to Confront Obama on Medical Marijuana

By CannaBob

The Obama administration has appeared to have flip flopped on it’s position on Medical Marijuana. Let’s see if he responds.

mlive.com The American Civil Liberties Union is asking the Obama administration to clarify its policy on medical marijuana following apparent inconsistencies in recent months. In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, the ACLU sought assurance the government would keep its promise not to arrest and prosecute workers who are complying with the law in states where medical marijuana is legal.

Any use of marijuana is prohibited under federal law. In 2008, Michigan voted to legalize medical marijuana, joining more than a dozen other states. In 2009, the Obama administration said it would not seek to arrest and prosecute users and suppliers who were operating within state law.

However, the administration appears to have changed its position. Recent warning letters from U.S. attorneys are prompting some states to reconsider medical marijuana policies. An Associated Press report quotes one such letter:

We maintain the authority to enforce (federal law) vigorously against individuals and organizations that participate in unlawful manufacturing and distribution activity involving marijuana, even if such activities are permitted under state law.

 

[vta]

Author: Fred Gardner


FIVE YEARS FOR WHAT CRIME?

Marian "Mollie" Fry, MD, and her husband Dale Schafer, an attorney, turned themselves to U.S. marshals Monday, May 2. They were taken to the Sacramento County jail, where they are awaiting transfer to federal prisons. They have begun serving five-year terms -ostensibly for the crime of Cannabis cultivation ( growing plants ), but actually for the crime of political organizing ( educating people ).

Mollie Fry is a founding member of the Society of Cannabis Clinicians, the group organized by Tod Mikuriya, MD, in 2000 to enable doctors entering the field to share and publish findings and observations - and defend themselves against persecution. Law enforcement at the state and federal levels had loudly opposed Proposition 215, the measure enacted by voters in 1996, and has curtailed its implementation ever since.

Fry, 54, is a breast cancer survivor. She will be going to the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, which is in visiting distance for the kids and grandkids. Schafer, who turns 57 this month, will be sent Taft, near Bakersfield. His looming concern is medical care - he's a hemophiliac with severely painful, blood-swollen joints, and is currently taking high doses of morphine and other analgesics.

I asked Dale how he was going to be spending his last week-end of freedom. He said, "Hugging my family."

Mollie and Dale raised five kids who are now grown-ups - Heather, 35, and Jeremy, 34, from Dale's first marriage, and Jeffrey, 24, Carol, 20, and Tyler, 18, from their union. Heather and Jeremy have kids, 10 and 11. Carol is going to have a baby in October. The extended family, minus mama and papa - which is what the grandkids call Mollie and Dale - will be together in the house in the foothills west of Auburn.

"We've got to keep paying the bills while our parents are gone," says Heather. "The government took all their savings, everything but the house." An insurance policy has been paying the mortgage ( $3,500/month ) since 2007, when Mollie stopped practicing due to disability. Dale doesn't think the company will use her imprisonment as an excuse to stop paying, but he lined up a lawyer just in case.

Jeffrey has gone to work for the CannaCare dispensary in Sacramento, and feels grateful to have a job. Jeremy is going to be traveling with a country-jazz band. "They've got a big bus and gigs lined up throughout the south," according to Dale. "He can't get wait to hit the road. I told him, 'If that's your dream, man, jump on it and do it. If you don't do it right now..."

* * *

Mollie Fry says proudly that there have been doctors in her family since the Civil War. Her mother, a research psychiatrist, died of breast cancer at age 42. Mollie, then 13, started using cannabis to deal with her grief. It didn't impair her academically. She graduated from UC Irvine School of Medicine in 1985 and did an internship at UC Davis in psychiatry. She switched to family practice when she began practicing in Lodi in '87. It wasn't until 1999 that she became a cannabis consultant - a decision stemming from her own illness.

In December, 1997, an exploratory procedure ( which Mollie had insisted on against the advice of an oncologist ) revealed a malignancy that had spread to three lymph nodes. Her breasts were removed and she underwent extensive radiation treatment. She used cannabis to deal with the nausea and anxiety. "It was hard to get," Dale says, which is why he grew a few plants in their garden in the summer of '98.

Dale had observed the medical use of marijuana first-hand when he was in the Navy, a lanky 19-year old assigned to Oak Knoll Hospital. He has indelible memories of assisting surgeons trying to "perfect" the stumps of sailors whose limbs had been amputated en route from Vietnam. "People who were in radiation therapy would go down the back hallway to smoke," he remembered. "We knew that it was the only thing that helped."

Dale worked in Kaiser emergency rooms to put himself through college and law school. "I wasn't naive, I knew that marijuana had medical benefits," he says, "But it wasn't until Mollie got cancer that I really started digging into what Prop 215 was all about."

It's difficult to picture now - now that doctors willing to issue cannabis recommendations are advertising in the media - but when Prop 215 passed there was only one physician proclaiming his willingness to approve cannabis use for conditions other than AIDS or cancer: Tod Mikuriya, a Berkeley-based psychiatrist. As of 1999 the number was not in double digits, although demand was enormous. Most pot smokers were embarrassed or afraid to ask their regular doctors for letters of approval, and most doctors were unwilling to write them. Some were afraid of getting in trouble with the medical board or the DEA and jeopardizing their livelihoods. Others were too conscientious to recommend use of a medicine they had learned nothing about in medical school and couldn't discuss in terms of proper dosage, side effects, etc..

Bobby Eisenberg, an acquaintance whose son played on a Little League team that Dale coached, put him in touch with Tod. "Mollie called him and he invited us to visit him." Dale recounted. "We saw his office, then visited him at home. I started reading everything I could find on medical marijuana because I wanted to know how to advise people to do it right. And the cops wouldn't tell me. Nobody will tell you to this day how to do it right. That's the problem. They want you go to go out and fuck up and then come and arrest you. Every other law that the government passes, they tell you how to make it work. They won't tell you. They want to keep it that way, they want everybody to be afraid, to be afraid that if there's a slight change, they could go down."

In the summer of '99, Dale and Mollie opened adjoining offices in a small foothills town called Cool. She did Cannabis consultations, he advised patients of their rights. They were growing 20 plants on their property when two El Dorado County Sheriff's deputies paid a visit. The next day, Dale says,

"Mollie called the head narcotics detective, Tim McNulty. She told him, 'Don't waste your money snooping around. I've had cancer, I'm growing pot, and we want to talk to you about it. Get up here.'

"McNulty came to the house and I took him up to the garden. I used to represent cops. I thought they trusted me. I talk their language pretty well. He took a look at our paperwork and said it looked fine. He even said I was a good grower! But he made a request that Mollie wasn't willing to grant. He said, 'You should help us separate the 18-year-old skateboarders from the people with cancer.' Mollie said 'I'm a doctor, not a cop. I'm willing to see people and determine if they're qualified. I'll do my job, you do yours.'"

Dale and Mollie felt confident that their medical/legal practices were appropriate under Prop 215. In addition to seeing patients in Cool, they leased space in Oakland and Lake Tahoe to conduct one-day-a-week clinics ( again following Mikuriya's practice model ). In Tahoe they met a young couple, Paul Maggy and Tracy Coggins, who came to work for them as office managers. Maggy was facing a cultivation charge from a 900-plant grow - which is not something Mollie and Dale held against him. During the seven months he would work for them, Maggy helped them grow marijuana ( they grew 43 plants in 2000 ) and in distributing the surplus to patients of Mollie's.

In this period Mollie encountered Attorney General Bill Lockyer at a VFW fundraiser and told him about her practice. "Lockyer said 'Okay, go for it,'" according to Mollie, "'but be low-key.' He said something to imply, not that I should hide, but that I should be discreet. Maybe that was the word he used... But the problem was, I had staff and office rents, and how do you let patients know that you're available without advertising?"

Dale arranged a meeting with Dave De Alba, the senior assistant AG whom Lockyer had put in charge of medical marijuana cases, trying to confirm that Mollie's procedures were legal under state law. The only thing DeAlba advised doing differently, Dale says, was "stay the hell away from Tod. He said that Tod is targeted, and that Tod is a problem. We ignored that, of course, because we liked and respected Tod."

As for federal law, Dale was relying on a 1999 ruling by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in the U.S. v. Oakland Cannabis Buyers Co-op case that made "medical necessity" a possible defense for marijuana distribution. Dale says he told the deputies who inspected his grow in 2000 and again in 2001 that any surplus would go patients, and they told him that as long as the plant total was below 100, the feds would not take notice.

In July of 2001 Dale -increasingly convinced that marijuana was safe and effective medicine- announced that he was running for District Attorney of El Dorado County. In September the DEA raided his property, confiscating 34 plants and 6,000 patients' files. In November he got 15% of the vote for DA.

Mollie recalls the raid:

"I was going to bed with a migraine headache and they came running up my driveway with their guns in their riot uniforms. I opened my arms and said, 'I entirely submit. You are welcome in my home.' And they still forced me to the ground and handcuffed me for two hours. My hands turned white. I was so cold, my hands were shaking... So they moved me into the trailer. Then I had to change our granddaughter's shitty diaper while in handcuffs. I couldn't quite wipe... I said to the agent, 'It's so hard having five children and a baby to take care of and cancer...' And she looked at me and said, 'You have cancer?' And I go, 'Of course I have cancer, why the hell do you think I'm doing this?

"Not even the staff that raided me and was abusing me knew the truth."

Neither Mollie nor Dale was indicted then, but the DEA notified Fry that her prescription-writing privileges would be revoked because "It is inconsistent with the public interest for a DEA registered practitioner to live in a residence wherein large quantities of a controlled substance are being stored, cultivated, manufactured and/or processed for distribution and/or sale. In addition, it is inconsistent with the public interest for a DEA registered practitioner to be engaged in the illegal sale of a Schedule I controlled substance such as marijuana at the practioner's registered location."

It wasn't until June 22, 2005 -two weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Raich case that an individual's right to use marijuana as medicine under California law was superseded by the federal prohibition - that Fry and Schafer were indicted. The charge was conspiracy to grow ( "manufacture" ) and distribute marijuana between August '99 and September '01. Because they had grown more than 100 plants in this period, they were facing five-year mandatory minimums. Dale says he was completely blindsided by the feds basing their charges on a cumulative three-year total.

The US attorney offered a deal that would have meant 18 months in prison for Schafer and no prison time for Fry. "But if she couldn't practice and I was gone," Dale says, "we would have gone bankrupt and lost the house. So we said 'Thanks but no thanks.'"

A 10-day trial was held in August 2007. Schafer was represented by Tony Serra, Fry by Laurence Lichter. Opening arguments hadn't concluded before Judge Frank Damrell instructed the jury that any references to the medical use of marijuana were irrelevant under federal law, and that they absolutely had to abide by his instructions. Damrell also forbade the defense from citing their belief that "medical necessity" on the part of patients justified marijuana production and sales. ( In 2003 the U.S. Supreme Court had overruled the 9th Circuit's recognition of "medical necessity" as a defense in the Oakland CBC case. )

Paul Maggy was the star prosecution witness. He had gone to prison in connection with his earlier grow op, and been released after serving 13 months of a five-year term in exchange for his testimony. Maggy swore that on behalf of Mollie and Dale he had sold processed marijuana, clones, and "starter kits" consisting of lights, plant nutrients and clones.

According to Bobby Eisenberg, whose account of the trial is trustworthy, "Several patients were brought in to testify that they'd purchased their marijuana from Dr. Fry or her staff. Jody Bollinger testified that she purchased a half ounce of medicine from Mike Harvey with a check made out to Schafer for $40. Keep in mind the going rate for a half ounce of bud is closer to $200. Harvey testified that some patients received their medical marijuana for free; in some cases they paid only $10 delivery charge.

"Another patient, Jeff Teshera, a convicted robber, got leniency for testifying that Fry examined him on Nov. 30, 1999, and that she and Heather Schafer then sold him marijuana. It turned out that Heather Schafer had given birth to her daughter on Nov. 29 and that Mollie was with her at UC Davis on the 30th, all day. Dr. Fry had her Physician's assistant, Rob Poseley, working in clinic on the 30th and he testified that he, and not Dr. Fry, had examined Teshera. No marijuana was sold.

"El Dorado County sheriff's deputy Bob Ashworth told the jury that he had deceived Fry and Schafer for over a year and a half leading them to believe that everything they were doing was legal under state law and safe, given federal policies. He observed their marijuana gardens in 1999, counting 20 plants and in 2000 when he counted 43 plants. He spoke with Schafer on the phone numerous times, right up until a few days before the raid on September 28, 2001, with assurances that everything was fine. It turned out that El Dorado County deputies were working hand in hand with the DEA and the prosecutor to entrap Fry and Schafer throughout the investigation.

"Jacob DuCharme had been employed by Fry and Schafer just after Paul Maggy had been hired. Jake wanted to testify that he and his wife had been unwilling to work for Fry and Schafer because Maggy and his girlfriend, Coggins, were up to no good. The DuCharmes knew that Maggy and Coggins were out to sell marijuana to Fry's patients without Fry's knowledge. DuCharme was silenced by prosecution objections. He never got to say that Fry and Schafer had gone to great lengths to insure that everyone in the office understood and upheld the law in California. The jury never heard the truth."

The Real Crime

Why did federal prosecutors add up plant counts from three years of cultivation to push the total over 100? Why were they so bent on making Mollie Fry and Dale Schafer face mandatory-minimum sentences? Why were Mollie and Dale a much more important target than Maggy, the freed informer, who had grown 900 plants and had numerous other offenses on his record?

Because unlike Maggy, Mollie and Dale were political organizers.

Anybody who joins a movement or a party has been organized by another person or persons. Being organized ( in the sense I mean it ) is not the same as being moved by a speech or a leaflet ( no matter how briliiant the orator or writer ). It involves a closer, more direct connection. There's always a person who confirms your inclination to throw in with the group, or convinces you by example or explanation that the cause is in your interests. That's what Mollie Fry and other MDs following Mikuriya's leadership did with their patients - they organized them. They did more than define the patient's pain ( emotional and/or physical ) in medical terms, they enabled the patient to tell the truth about their illegal drug use, i.e., their subversive behavior.

Mollie Fry and her colleagues have helped organize hundreds of thousands of legal medical marijuana users in California. This was the insight of Phil Denney, MD, a neighbor of Mollie's. A brief conversation with her at the mailbox in 1999 led Denney to get into the field, too.

 

[SpasticGramps]

The 5 Worst States to Get Busted With Pot
via Alternet.org

2. Texas — On an annual basis, no state arrests and criminally prosecutes more of its citizens for pot than does Texas. Marijuana arrests comprise over half of all annual arrests in the Lone Star State. It is easy to see why. In 2009, more than 97 percent of all Texas marijuana arrests — over 77,000 people — were for possession only. Those convicted face up to 180 days in jail and a $2,000 fine, even upon a first conviction.


4. Louisiana — In Louisiana, multi-decade (or even life) sentences for repeat pot offenders are hardly a rare occurrence. Under Louisiana law, a second pot possession conviction is classified as a felony offense, punishable by up to five years in prison. Three-time offenders face up to 20 years in prison. According to a 2008 expose published in New Orleans City Business online, district attorneys are not hesitant to “target small-time marijuana users, sometimes caught with less than a gram of pot, and threaten them with lengthy prison sentences.”

Got to give a shout out to my two states. #2 and #4. Welcome to the Dirty South. Epi-center of the police state. Lots of people in cages down here.

 

[vta]

Author: Randy Alcorn, Right on Target


MOVING TOWARD ANOTHER POLICE STATE

Since President Nixon declared war on drugs 37 years ago, there has been a steady slaughter of innocent citizens due to mistaken drug raids conducted by heavily armed gangs of police amped up on adrenaline.

The latest is the case of a 26-year-old ex-Marine, Jose Guerena, who had served two tours of duty in Iraq. He was shot to death in his Tucson home last month during a drug raid by a police SWAT team.

Guerena reacted to the home invasion as many would -- to protect his family, he reached for his gun. The police shot him multiple times as his wife and 2-year-old son hid in a closet.

He was left to bleed to death, as police refused to call paramedics until an hour after the shooting. His gun was found to be set on safety. He had not fired a round. No illegal drugs were found in his house.

As of this writing, Pima County law enforcement has have yet to provide an explanation for this legal homicide.

And, now thanks to a recent Supreme Court ruling, police can conduct such home invasions without the need of a search warrant. Yes, now if the drug Gestapo smells or believes it smells marijuana emanating from your home, it can bust down your door and ransack your house looking for banned drugs.

Don't resist. Not only might police pump you full of lead, but also many states have now made it a crime for citizens to resist police home invasions, even when the police have the wrong address.

In a twisted irony, the same Supreme Court that supports the erosion of civil rights to conduct the war on drugs, now rules it unconstitutionally cruel to overcrowd prisons, even though the overcrowding is due to the war on drugs.

So much real crime is a product of the prohibition on drugs. Limited law enforcement resources should be focused on protecting the public from real crime, rather than generating it by criminalizing victimless personal choices like drug use.

The Global Commission on Drug Policy, led by an array of eminent world leaders, recently condemned the global war on drugs as a costly failure, and called upon the U.S. and other nations to end it.

If all drugs were legal, what would happen? Would our nation incur more harm and expense than it does now by foolishly pursuing the failed policy of prohibition? Would millions of people rush out and become addicts?

Those who want to use these drugs can get them easily enough already. Many more who need or want analgesics get the legal variety through their doctors.

As a society, we might be better off having those who self-medicate with alcohol switch to THC. I've never seen a belligerent stoner, but I have seen plenty of belligerent drunks.

Have more of us been hurt by people who sell drugs, or by people who wrecked our economy by selling bogus mortgages? Why aren't SWAT teams busting down the doors of Wall Street bankers and ransacking their homes to find evidence of wrongdoing? If the law, no matter how questionable, must be honored, why don't we honor our immigration laws with the same enthusiastic dedication that we enforce our drug laws?

The war on drugs continues because of two reasons -- power and money. The drug warriors on both sides have a vested interest in keeping drugs illegal. As with any war, civilians are caught in the crossfire.

But what is most depressing about the war on drugs, and now the war on terror, is that we are turning our police into thugs and becoming just another police state. America has always been the fortress of freedom and now it is effectively a police state.

There is nowhere left to go to escape authoritarian oppression.

 

[ijim]

Next year before the elections Obama will again talk of freedom and rights for the American people. As we continue to be thrown out of our homes, harassed by creditors, incarcerated at record rates and our families torn apart. Obama will point to the strength of our corporations and the economic index. And tell us that we are on the verge to being great again. The man has no qualms at all about speaking down to the people. I was fooled once but never again.

 

[Hydrosun]

Got to give a shout out to my two states. #2 and #4. Welcome to the Dirty South. Epi-center of the police state. Lots of people in cages down here.

I've visited all 5 but have only smoked in AZ. Been drunk out of my mind in LA, TX, and FL, but that is good and christian like OK was just lame and a drive through place Glad to know that I break the toughest cannabis laws in the nation, go fuck yourself AZ

 

[vta]

JIMMY CARTER: TIME TO RETHINK WAR ON DRUGS

Former President Jimmy Carter wants the U.S. to rethink its decades-long war on drugs by shifting the focus from incarcerating drug users to treating them and refocusing international efforts on combating violent criminal organizations, he writes in an op-ed in The New York Times.

Carter's recommendations stem from the Global Commission on Drug Policy, a group that brings together former presidents and prime ministers of five countries, former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, and other human rights, business, and government leaders.

"The commission's facts and arguments are persuasive. It recommends that governments be encouraged to experiment 'with models of legal regulation of drugs... that are designed to undermine the power of organized crime and safeguard the health and security of their citizens,'" Carter writes. He notes that such policies have been effectively implemented in some European countries and Australia, among other places.

He has harsh criticism for the U.S. policies toward drug users, which he says have focused on futile attempts to control foreign drug imports and imprisonment of nonviolent offenders, causing the U.S. prison population to balloon. Carter writes that when he left office in 1980, only 500,000 people were in jail, a number that rose to nearly 2.3 million by the end of 2009, or roughly 743 people in prison per every 100,000 Americans. Three-quarters of new incarcerations are for nonviolent crimes, including nonviolent drug offenses, a number that has increased 12 times over since 1980.

"Not only has this excessive punishment destroyed the lives of millions of young people and their families ( disproportionately minorities ), but it is wreaking havoc on state and local budgets," Carter writes, pointing to California as an example. Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has noted that 11 percent of his state's budget goes to prisons, as compared to 7.5 percent for higher education; in 1980 those figures were 3 percent and 10 percent, respectively.

 

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Author: Jimmy Carter
Note: Jimmy Carter, the 39th president, is the founder of the Carter Center
and the winner of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize.


CALL OFF THE GLOBAL DRUG WAR



IN an extraordinary new initiative announced earlier this month, the Global Commission on Drug Policy has made some courageous and profoundly important recommendations in a report on how to bring more effective control over the illicit drug trade. The commission includes the former presidents or prime ministers of five countries, a former secretary general of the United Nations, human rights leaders, and business and government leaders, including Richard Branson, George P. Shultz and Paul A. Volcker.

The report describes the total failure of the present global antidrug effort, and in particular America's "war on drugs," which was declared 40 years ago today. It notes that the global consumption of opiates has increased 34.5 percent, cocaine 27 percent and cannabis 8.5 percent from 1998 to 2008. Its primary recommendations are to substitute treatment for imprisonment for people who use drugs but do no harm to others, and to concentrate more coordinated international effort on combating violent criminal organizations rather than nonviolent, low-level offenders.

These recommendations are compatible with United States drug policy from three decades ago. In a message to Congress in 1977, I said the country should decriminalize the possession of less than an ounce of marijuana, with a full program of treatment for addicts. I also cautioned against filling our prisons with young people who were no threat to society, and summarized by saying: "Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself."

These ideas were widely accepted at the time. But in the 1980s President Ronald Reagan and Congress began to shift from balanced drug policies, including the treatment and rehabilitation of addicts, toward futile efforts to control drug imports from foreign countries.

This approach entailed an enormous expenditure of resources and the dependence on police and military forces to reduce the foreign cultivation of marijuana, coca and opium poppy and the production of cocaine and heroin. One result has been a terrible escalation in drug-related violence, corruption and gross violations of human rights in a growing number of Latin American countries.

The commission's facts and arguments are persuasive. It recommends that governments be encouraged to experiment "with models of legal regulation of drugs ... that are designed to undermine the power of organized crime and safeguard the health and security of their citizens." For effective examples, they can look to policies that have shown promising results in Europe, Australia and other places.

But they probably won't turn to the United States for advice. Drug policies here are more punitive and counterproductive than in other democracies, and have brought about an explosion in prison populations. At the end of 1980, just before I left office, 500,000 people were incarcerated in America; at the end of 2009 the number was nearly 2.3 million. There are 743 people in prison for every 100,000 Americans, a higher portion than in any other country and seven times as great as in Europe. Some 7.2 million people are either in prison or on probation or parole -- more than 3 percent of all American adults!

Some of this increase has been caused by mandatory minimum sentencing and "three strikes you're out" laws. But about three-quarters of new admissions to state prisons are for nonviolent crimes. And the single greatest cause of prison population growth has been the war on drugs, with the number of people incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses increasing more than twelvefold since 1980.

Not only has this excessive punishment destroyed the lives of millions of young people and their families ( disproportionately minorities ), but it is wreaking havoc on state and local budgets. Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger pointed out that, in 1980, 10 percent of his state's budget went to higher education and 3 percent to prisons; in 2010, almost 11 percent went to prisons and only 7.5 percent to higher education.

Maybe the increased tax burden on wealthy citizens necessary to pay for the war on drugs will help to bring about a reform of America's drug policies. At least the recommendations of the Global Commission will give some cover to political leaders who wish to do what is right.

A few years ago I worked side by side for four months with a group of prison inmates, who were learning the building trade, to renovate some public buildings in my hometown of Plains, Ga. They were intelligent and dedicated young men, each preparing for a productive life after the completion of his sentence. More than half of them were in prison for drug-related crimes, and would have been better off in college or trade school.

To help such men remain valuable members of society, and to make drug policies more humane and more effective, the American government should support and enact the reforms laid out by the Global Commission on Drug Policy.

 

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