posted @ commondreams.org [from the S.F.Chronicle]
Marijuana Advocates Play it Straight in DC
'Pothead' stigma makes lawmakers wary, lobbyists know
by Marc Sandalow
WASHINGTON -- Hundreds of suit-and-tie-clad marijuana advocates feasted on chicken Kiev and Petite Sirah on Capitol Hill on Wednesday night in what may have been the most button-down gathering of pot enthusiasts in history.
The music was contemporary jazz, not reggae. The dessert was a caramel parfait with chocolate drizzle, not Oreos. And the featured Cheech and Chong video was a snippet of a documentary on actor Tommy Chong's recent imprisonment.
The event, a strictly nonsmoking affair that drew members of Congress, a prominent television talk show host, and seasoned Washington operatives, was a mainstream coming-out of sorts for the Marijuana Policy Project, the nation's pre-eminent marijuana lobbying organization.
The sober organizers -- who insist the greatest danger associated with smoking pot is jail time -- are intent on being taken seriously in this serious town.
"We decided from the outset, no scrungie beards. No ponytails. We'd be mainstream and professional. We'd try to look like Republicans as much as we could," said Rob Kampia, the group's executive director who got a significant haircut when he helped found the group 10 years ago. "I don't mind having short hair if it can help change the world.''
Neither Congress nor the Justice Department has shown much sympathy for the organization's agenda of legalizing the use of medicinal marijuana and reducing penalties for recreational use. A study released this week found that nearly half of all federal drug arrests were for marijuana.
"We try to make it very clear that we are not pro-marijuana,'' said Steve Fox, the Marijuana Policy Project's clean-cut director of government affairs. "We are anti-jail. We are not out there celebrating marijuana use. We're just saying it's insane to send people to jail for making the personal choice of using marijuana.''
The organization has worked hard to be taken seriously on Capitol Hill, where lobbyists representing the alcohol, tobacco and pharmaceutical industries are familiar, but where the pot lobby is still making itself known.
Fox recalled the start of a meeting with a member of Congress, in which a senior aide opened the member's door and announced: "The potheads are here.''
In order to bridge the gap with lawmakers, the group distributed $50,000 in campaign contributions to members of Congress during the last election -- a sure way to make friends in Washington -- and Wednesday night honored Rep. Sam Farr, D-Carmel, for his work promoting legislation in Congress.
"Often people joke about marijuana, but due process and respecting state laws is a serious issue," Farr said. "Beyond that, I think it's high time the federal government recognized that one of the best ways to prevent recreational use of a drug is to let doctors prescribe it in closely regulated ways.'' Farr was joined at the gala by Reps. Barney Frank, D-Mass., Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, and Linda Sanchez, D-Lakewood (Los Angeles County).
Intellectually, it's very easy,'' Frank said of convincing his colleagues. "Politically, it's hard.''
Nearly 100 million Americans have tried marijuana, according to estimates by the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, and nearly 15 million use it regularly. Still, its mention rarely fails to draw snickers in Washington, forcing lobbyists to be vigilant about cleaning up their act.
A column in Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper, noted that Farr and Sanchez were expected at Wednesday night's gala and suggested that they might be forgiven if they were spotted giggling and munching cookies the following day in the halls of Congress.
"The puns and jokes deter members of Congress from embracing the issue,'' said Eric Sterling, one of the group's founders and the president of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation. "They are genuinely afraid of the issue.
"The Marijuana Policy Project from day one has been very professional in its presentation. There is an insistence at not having people come in tie-dye shirts, and there won't be pot smoking. It's a serious issue that deserves to be taken seriously.''
Among the group's top legislative authorities is a bill to bar the Justice Department from spending money to raid and prosecute pot-using patients and caregivers in states such as California where voters have approved the use of medical marijuana. They are also seeking to overturn rules that forbid students with marijuana convictions from receiving college loans.
"We've come a long way,'' Kampia told the gathering. "But we're not blind to the fact that the members of Congress who have to get elected every few years are reluctant to work with an organization with the 'm-word' in the title.''
Though most of the support comes from Democrats, there are nearly two dozen Republicans who consistently support the group's agenda on libertarian grounds.
"My position is that people ought to make their own decision on almost anything if it doesn't hurt anybody else,'' said Rep. Ron Paul, a Texas Republican who said his support for medicinal marijuana had not cost him votes in his "conservative, Bible-belt district.''
"Perceptions on the House floor are very different from the perceptions around the country,'' Paul said.
Television talk show host Montel Williams, who spent years speaking out against drug use at high schools, has been vocal in his support for medical marijuana, which he uses regularly.
Williams, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1999, said he had tried many legal painkillers, which left him in a stupor and still in pain. Then, at his doctor's recommendation, he tried pot, which worked.
"It's been a hard day, a real hard day,'' Williams told the dinner crowd, breaking into tears. "I've been chasing my pain all day.''
Williams described the nation's refusal to legalize medicinal marijuana as "so simple, it's ignorant.''
The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, which describes marijuana as a "greenish-gray mixture of the dried shredded elves, stems, seeds, and flowers of the hemp plant,'' takes a less upbeat view. The government Web site describes impaired cognitive functions from smoking marijuana and says the drug can impair memory and learning skills, lead to addiction and increase the risk of cancer.
The Marijuana Policy Project has 18 full-time staffers in Washington, one in San Francisco and another in Los Angeles. It boasts 17,000 dues-paying members and more than 150,000 e-mail subscribers and has an annual budget of more than $2.5 billion.
At Wednesday night's event, just one man sported dreadlocks in crowded ballroom three blocks from the Capitol. There were no marijuana leaf banners or signs of paraphernalia. And not a wisp of smoke.
Still, the references to the less serious sides of pot smoking were inevitable.
When Frank asked to speak early in the program so he could get home, Kampia explained to the crowd: "If we're not following the agenda, it's not that we're stoned. We're being accommodating.''
Full Version: Marijuana Advocates Play It Straight In Dc
posted @ www.commondreams.org/newswire.htm
June 2, 2005
CONTACT: Marijuana Policy Project
Bruce Mirken, MPP Director of Communications, 202-543-7972
or 415-668-6403
Milton Friedman, 500+ Economists Call for Marijuana Regulation Debate as New Report Estimates Savings
New Report Projects $10-14 Billion Annual Savings and Revenues
BOSTON -- June 2 --In a report released today, Dr. Jeffrey Miron, visiting professor of economics at Harvard University, estimates that replacing marijuana prohibition with a system of taxation and regulation similar to that used for alcoholic beverages would produce combined savings and tax revenues of between $10 billion and $14 billion per year. In response, a group of more than 500 distinguished economists -- led by Nobel Prize-winner Dr. Milton Friedman -- released an open letter to President Bush and other public officials calling for "an open and honest debate about marijuana prohibition," adding, "We believe such a debate will favor a regime in which marijuana is legal but taxed and regulated like other goods."
Using data from a variety of federal and state government sources, Miron's paper, "The Budgetary Implications of Marijuana Prohibition," concludes:
**Replacing marijuana prohibition with a system of legal regulation would save approximately $7.7 billion in government expenditures on prohibition enforcement-$2.4 billion at the federal level and $5.3 billion at the state and local levels.
**Revenue from taxation of marijuana sales would range from $2.4 billion per year if marijuana were taxed like ordinary consumer goods to $6.2 billion if it were taxed like alcohol or tobacco.
These estimates may be conservative. Because available data is incomplete, assumptions necessary to produce national estimates inevitably allow for some variation up or down. For example, Miron's report does not include estimates for certain potential savings -- such as the likelihood of fewer criminal justice referrals of marijuana offenders to drug treatment and reduced prison costs stemming from persons on parole or probation being reincarcerated after positive urine tests for marijuana. In addition, Miron based his figure for corrections costs stemming from marijuana prohibition on an estimate that one percent of state prisoners are imprisoned for marijuana- related offenses. A report released May 18 by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy put the figure at 1.6 percent, acknowledging that tens of thousands of Americans are incarcerated in state or federal prisons for marijuana offenses.
While Miron notes that many factors beyond costs and tax revenues would need to be considered in evaluating possible changes in marijuana laws, he said, "These budgetary impacts should be included in any rational debate about marijuana policy."
Those impacts are considerable, according to officials of the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, D.C. For example, $14 billion in annual combined annual savings and revenues would cover the securing of all "loose nukes" in the former Soviet Union (estimated by former Assistant Secretary of Defense Lawrence Korb at $30 billion) in less than three years. Just one year's savings would cover the full cost of anti-terrorism port security measures required by the Maritime Transportation Security Act of 2002. The Coast Guard has estimated these costs, covering 3,150 port facilities and 9,200 vessels, at $7.3 billion total.
"As Milton Friedman and over 500 economists have now said, it's time for a serious debate about whether marijuana prohibition makes any sense," said Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, D.C. "We know that prohibition hasn't kept marijuana away from kids, since year after year 85% of high school seniors tell government survey-takers that marijuana is 'easy to get.' Conservatives, especially, are beginning to ask whether we're getting our money's worth or simply throwing away billions of tax dollars that might be used to protect America from real threats like those unsecured Soviet-era nukes."
Dr. Miron's full report, the open letter to public officials signed by more than 500 economists, and the full list of endorsers are available at http://www.prohibitioncosts.org.
June 2, 2005
CONTACT: Marijuana Policy Project
Bruce Mirken, MPP Director of Communications, 202-543-7972
or 415-668-6403
Milton Friedman, 500+ Economists Call for Marijuana Regulation Debate as New Report Estimates Savings
New Report Projects $10-14 Billion Annual Savings and Revenues
BOSTON -- June 2 --In a report released today, Dr. Jeffrey Miron, visiting professor of economics at Harvard University, estimates that replacing marijuana prohibition with a system of taxation and regulation similar to that used for alcoholic beverages would produce combined savings and tax revenues of between $10 billion and $14 billion per year. In response, a group of more than 500 distinguished economists -- led by Nobel Prize-winner Dr. Milton Friedman -- released an open letter to President Bush and other public officials calling for "an open and honest debate about marijuana prohibition," adding, "We believe such a debate will favor a regime in which marijuana is legal but taxed and regulated like other goods."
Using data from a variety of federal and state government sources, Miron's paper, "The Budgetary Implications of Marijuana Prohibition," concludes:
**Replacing marijuana prohibition with a system of legal regulation would save approximately $7.7 billion in government expenditures on prohibition enforcement-$2.4 billion at the federal level and $5.3 billion at the state and local levels.
**Revenue from taxation of marijuana sales would range from $2.4 billion per year if marijuana were taxed like ordinary consumer goods to $6.2 billion if it were taxed like alcohol or tobacco.
These estimates may be conservative. Because available data is incomplete, assumptions necessary to produce national estimates inevitably allow for some variation up or down. For example, Miron's report does not include estimates for certain potential savings -- such as the likelihood of fewer criminal justice referrals of marijuana offenders to drug treatment and reduced prison costs stemming from persons on parole or probation being reincarcerated after positive urine tests for marijuana. In addition, Miron based his figure for corrections costs stemming from marijuana prohibition on an estimate that one percent of state prisoners are imprisoned for marijuana- related offenses. A report released May 18 by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy put the figure at 1.6 percent, acknowledging that tens of thousands of Americans are incarcerated in state or federal prisons for marijuana offenses.
While Miron notes that many factors beyond costs and tax revenues would need to be considered in evaluating possible changes in marijuana laws, he said, "These budgetary impacts should be included in any rational debate about marijuana policy."
Those impacts are considerable, according to officials of the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, D.C. For example, $14 billion in annual combined annual savings and revenues would cover the securing of all "loose nukes" in the former Soviet Union (estimated by former Assistant Secretary of Defense Lawrence Korb at $30 billion) in less than three years. Just one year's savings would cover the full cost of anti-terrorism port security measures required by the Maritime Transportation Security Act of 2002. The Coast Guard has estimated these costs, covering 3,150 port facilities and 9,200 vessels, at $7.3 billion total.
"As Milton Friedman and over 500 economists have now said, it's time for a serious debate about whether marijuana prohibition makes any sense," said Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, D.C. "We know that prohibition hasn't kept marijuana away from kids, since year after year 85% of high school seniors tell government survey-takers that marijuana is 'easy to get.' Conservatives, especially, are beginning to ask whether we're getting our money's worth or simply throwing away billions of tax dollars that might be used to protect America from real threats like those unsecured Soviet-era nukes."
Dr. Miron's full report, the open letter to public officials signed by more than 500 economists, and the full list of endorsers are available at http://www.prohibitioncosts.org.
Despite being a non-smoker, I've found myself thinking marijuana legalization may not be an awful thing... or at least any worse then alcohol or tobacco. I myself wouldn't mind if all three were removed from society, but, knowing none of them will be, (or can be) I think it'd be more in the law's interest to allow pot with rules and taxes similar to those enforced upon cigarettes. Then, with that money, drug awareness programs could be better funded, to educate people on the dangers of all drugs, legal and otherwise.
People should be able to do what they want, while abiding by the laws society has set. A lot of people want to be allowed to smoke reefer... to their own detriment perhaps, but, if regulated like other legal drugs, it would possibly be safer, by cutting out the criminal element.
I don't know. It's a moral issue, and should be decided democratically, by a majority. But if you're going to allow some drugs in your society, perhaps this is one that should be allowed...
I just hope allowing it wouldn't turn more people on to heroin and cocaine, and other harder drugs. Not as easy an issue as some on either side of it would have you believe.
People should be able to do what they want, while abiding by the laws society has set. A lot of people want to be allowed to smoke reefer... to their own detriment perhaps, but, if regulated like other legal drugs, it would possibly be safer, by cutting out the criminal element.
I don't know. It's a moral issue, and should be decided democratically, by a majority. But if you're going to allow some drugs in your society, perhaps this is one that should be allowed...
I just hope allowing it wouldn't turn more people on to heroin and cocaine, and other harder drugs. Not as easy an issue as some on either side of it would have you believe.
I worked for the MPP during the election and here is an outline i did for them....
http://www.zdlr.net/board/index.php?showto...rmont+marijuana
http://www.zdlr.net/board/index.php?showto...rmont+marijuana
apparently the supreme court ruled medical marijuana unconstitutional.
i'm looking for a good link now
i'm looking for a good link now
Updated: 02:53 PM EDT
Supreme Court Rules Against Medicinal Use of Marijuana
By GINA HOLLAND, AP
AP
The court ruled that a state's medical marijuana laws do not supersede federal drug laws.
WASHINGTON (June 6) - Federal authorities may prosecute sick people whose doctors prescribe marijuana to ease pain, the Supreme Court ruled Monday, concluding that state laws don't protect users from a federal ban on the drug.
The decision is a stinging defeat for marijuana advocates who had successfully pushed 10 states to allow the drug's use to treat various illnesses.
Justice John Paul Stevens, writing the 6-3 decision, said that Congress could change the law to allow medical use of marijuana.
The closely watched case was an appeal by the Bush administration in a case involving two seriously ill California women who use marijuana. The court said the prosecution of pot users under the federal Controlled Substances Act was constitutional.
''I'm going to have to be prepared to be arrested,'' said Diane Monson, one of the women involved in the case.
Stevens said the court was not passing judgment on the potential medical benefits of marijuana, and he noted ''the troubling facts'' in the case. Monson's backyard crop of six marijuana plants was seized by federal agents in 2002, although the California law was on Monson's side.
In a dissent, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said that states should be allowed to set their own rules.
Justice Department spokesman John Nowacki said the department is pleased with the court's decision, but refused additional comment about whether federal prosecutors would pursue cases against people like Monson.
Under the Constitution, Congress may pass laws regulating a state's economic activity so long as it involves ''interstate commerce'' that crosses state borders. The California marijuana in question was homegrown, distributed to patients without charge and without crossing state lines.
''Our national medical system relies on proven scientific research, not popular opinion. To date, science and research have not determined that smoking marijuana is safe or effective,'' John Walters, director of National Drug Control Policy, said Monday.
Stevens said there are other legal options for patients, ''but perhaps even more important than these legal avenues is the democratic process, in which the voices of voters allied with these (California women) may one day be heard in the halls of Congress.''
California's medical marijuana law, passed by voters in 1996, allows people to grow, smoke or obtain marijuana for medical needs with a doctor's recommendation. Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont and Washington state have laws similar to California.
In those states, doctors generally can give written or oral recommendations on marijuana to patients with cancer, HIV and other serious illnesses.
''The states' core police powers have always included authority to define criminal law and to protect the health, safety, and welfare of their citizens,'' said O'Connor, who was joined in her dissent by two other states' rights advocates: Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice Clarence Thomas.
The legal question presented a dilemma for the court's conservatives, who have pushed to broaden states' rights in recent years. They earlier invalidated federal laws dealing with gun possession near schools and violence against women on the grounds the activity was too local to justify federal intrusion.
O'Connor said she would have opposed California's medical marijuana law if she were a voter or a legislator. But she said the court was overreaching to endorse ''making it a federal crime to grow small amounts of marijuana in one's own home for one's own medicinal use.''
Alan Hopper, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney, said that local and state officers handle 99 percent of marijuana prosecutions and must still follow any state laws that protect patients. ''This is probably not going to change a lot for individual medical marijuana patients,'' he said.
The case concerned two Californians, Monson and Angel Raich. The two had sued then-U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, asking for a court order letting them smoke, grow or obtain marijuana without fear of arrest, home raids or other intrusion by federal authorities.
Raich, an Oakland woman suffering from ailments including scoliosis, a brain tumor, chronic nausea, fatigue and pain, smokes marijuana every few hours. She said she was partly paralyzed until she started smoking pot. Monson, an accountant who lives near Oroville, Calif., has degenerative spine disease and grows her own marijuana plants in her backyard.
In the court's main decision, Stevens raised concerns about abuse of marijuana laws. ''Our cases have taught us that there are some unscrupulous physicians who overprescribe when it is sufficiently profitable to do so,'' he said.
The case is Gonzales v. Raich, 03-1454.
AP-NY-06-06-05 14:45 EDT
Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.
Supreme Court Rules Against Medicinal Use of Marijuana
By GINA HOLLAND, AP
AP
The court ruled that a state's medical marijuana laws do not supersede federal drug laws.
WASHINGTON (June 6) - Federal authorities may prosecute sick people whose doctors prescribe marijuana to ease pain, the Supreme Court ruled Monday, concluding that state laws don't protect users from a federal ban on the drug.
The decision is a stinging defeat for marijuana advocates who had successfully pushed 10 states to allow the drug's use to treat various illnesses.
Justice John Paul Stevens, writing the 6-3 decision, said that Congress could change the law to allow medical use of marijuana.
The closely watched case was an appeal by the Bush administration in a case involving two seriously ill California women who use marijuana. The court said the prosecution of pot users under the federal Controlled Substances Act was constitutional.
''I'm going to have to be prepared to be arrested,'' said Diane Monson, one of the women involved in the case.
Stevens said the court was not passing judgment on the potential medical benefits of marijuana, and he noted ''the troubling facts'' in the case. Monson's backyard crop of six marijuana plants was seized by federal agents in 2002, although the California law was on Monson's side.
In a dissent, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said that states should be allowed to set their own rules.
Justice Department spokesman John Nowacki said the department is pleased with the court's decision, but refused additional comment about whether federal prosecutors would pursue cases against people like Monson.
Under the Constitution, Congress may pass laws regulating a state's economic activity so long as it involves ''interstate commerce'' that crosses state borders. The California marijuana in question was homegrown, distributed to patients without charge and without crossing state lines.
''Our national medical system relies on proven scientific research, not popular opinion. To date, science and research have not determined that smoking marijuana is safe or effective,'' John Walters, director of National Drug Control Policy, said Monday.
Stevens said there are other legal options for patients, ''but perhaps even more important than these legal avenues is the democratic process, in which the voices of voters allied with these (California women) may one day be heard in the halls of Congress.''
California's medical marijuana law, passed by voters in 1996, allows people to grow, smoke or obtain marijuana for medical needs with a doctor's recommendation. Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont and Washington state have laws similar to California.
In those states, doctors generally can give written or oral recommendations on marijuana to patients with cancer, HIV and other serious illnesses.
''The states' core police powers have always included authority to define criminal law and to protect the health, safety, and welfare of their citizens,'' said O'Connor, who was joined in her dissent by two other states' rights advocates: Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice Clarence Thomas.
The legal question presented a dilemma for the court's conservatives, who have pushed to broaden states' rights in recent years. They earlier invalidated federal laws dealing with gun possession near schools and violence against women on the grounds the activity was too local to justify federal intrusion.
O'Connor said she would have opposed California's medical marijuana law if she were a voter or a legislator. But she said the court was overreaching to endorse ''making it a federal crime to grow small amounts of marijuana in one's own home for one's own medicinal use.''
Alan Hopper, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney, said that local and state officers handle 99 percent of marijuana prosecutions and must still follow any state laws that protect patients. ''This is probably not going to change a lot for individual medical marijuana patients,'' he said.
The case concerned two Californians, Monson and Angel Raich. The two had sued then-U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, asking for a court order letting them smoke, grow or obtain marijuana without fear of arrest, home raids or other intrusion by federal authorities.
Raich, an Oakland woman suffering from ailments including scoliosis, a brain tumor, chronic nausea, fatigue and pain, smokes marijuana every few hours. She said she was partly paralyzed until she started smoking pot. Monson, an accountant who lives near Oroville, Calif., has degenerative spine disease and grows her own marijuana plants in her backyard.
In the court's main decision, Stevens raised concerns about abuse of marijuana laws. ''Our cases have taught us that there are some unscrupulous physicians who overprescribe when it is sufficiently profitable to do so,'' he said.
The case is Gonzales v. Raich, 03-1454.
AP-NY-06-06-05 14:45 EDT
Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.
"I worked for the MPP during the election" - excellent.
As for the ruling....... As disgusting as it is predictable......
As for the ruling....... As disgusting as it is predictable......
congress still has the ball and states rights limitations scare the gun nuts and often see the marijuana issue as the first step to federal gun control.
so the gun nuts may help out the stoners.
i'm just scared of the stoned gun nuts!!!
so the gun nuts may help out the stoners.
i'm just scared of the stoned gun nuts!!!
lol....guess we have to take what we can get....[and learn to duck].....
can you imagine shooting a gun while stoned?
B-Real always floored me with his gun/weed polarity.
He's smoking stuff that would make you forget which way to point it!
B-Real always floored me with his gun/weed polarity.
He's smoking stuff that would make you forget which way to point it!
"the court was overreaching to endorse making it a federal crime to grow small amounts of marijuana in one's own home for one's own medicinal use."
-Sandra Day O'Connor
-Sandra Day O'Connor
posted @ truthout.org
Plaintiffs in Medical Marijuana Case Defying Supreme Court Ruling
By David Kravets
The Associated Press
Tuesday 07 June 2005
San Francisco - The two women who sued the Bush administration in hopes of keeping their medical marijuana supplies said they'll defy the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling and continue to smoke pot.
"I'm going to have to be prepared to be arrested," said Diane Monson, an accountant who smokes marijuana several times a day to relieve her pain from degenerative spine disease.
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that federal authorities may prosecute people using doctor-recommended pot, concluding that medical marijuana laws in California and nine other states don't make such users immune from federal laws against marijuana possession.
Monson, 48, was recommended marijuana by her doctor in 1997 after standard prescription drugs didn't work or made her sleepy. She grows it in the yard of her home near Oroville, Calif., about 70 miles north of Sacramento. "I'm way disappointed. There are so many people that need cannabis," she said.
Fifty-six percent of California voters approved the nation's first so-called medical marijuana law in 1996, allowing patients to smoke and grow marijuana with a doctor's recommendation. Other states followed, including Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont and Washington state.
In 2001, the Supreme Court ruled against medical marijuana clubs that argued for a legal exception when patients can demonstrate a "medical necessity" for the drug. That forced the Oakland supplier of the other plaintiff, Angel Raich, to close.
Raich and Monson sued Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' predecessor, John Ashcroft, because they feared their supplies of medical marijuana might dry up. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in San Francisco, ordered the Bush administration to refrain from prosecuting the pair, including Raich's suppliers. Monday's Supreme Court decision reverses that order.
All of which leaves them with few options other than to take their chances and continue smoking and ingesting marijuana, the women said.
"If I stop using cannabis, unfortunately, I would die," said Raich, who inhaled marijuana after Monday's ruling in her house in Oakland, using a machine that fills a plastic bag with pot vapors. She estimates her marijuana intake to be about 9 pounds a year.
Raich, 39, suffers from scoliosis, a brain tumor, chronic nausea and other problems. She said she uses marijuana every few waking hours, on the advice of her doctor, who said dozens of other medications were of little help.
"This is the only way that I have to combat my suffering and to deal with my illness," said the mother of two, ages 16 and 19.
And if federal authorities do try to arrest her, she said she may seek refuge outside the United States. "If I need to leave the country, I will if that time comes," Raich said.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Calif. AG: Don't Panic over Pot Ruling
The Associated Press
Monday 06 June 2005
San Francisco - Oregon stopped issuing medical marijuana cards after Monday's Supreme Court ruling, but people could apparently still get pot with a doctor's prescription there and in nine other states. And nobody in law enforcement appeared eager to make headlines arresting ailing patients.
"People shouldn't panic. There aren't going to be many changes," California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said. "Nothing is different today than it was two days ago, in terms of real-world impact."
The high court ruled 6-3 that people who smoke marijuana because their doctors recommend it to ease pain can be prosecuted for violating federal drug laws.
The ruling does not strike down medical marijuana laws in California, Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont or Washington state. State and local authorities in most of those states said they have no interest in arresting people who smoke pot for medical reasons.
It remains to be seen whether the federal Drug Enforcement Administration is planning a crackdown. The Justice Department was not commenting.
In Oregon, where more than 10,000 residents hold medical marijuana cards, state officials said they would temporarily stop issuing cards to sick people and issued a reminder to cardholders that federal prosecution has always been a possibility.
"Today's decision clarifies the federal government's authority," said Kevin Neely, a spokesman for the state attorney general.
It was not clear how the decision would affect the more than 1,700 Oregon doctors who have signed patient applications for medicinal marijuana.
Oregon state Sen. Alan Bates, also a doctor, said he will temporarily stop writing authorizations for patients to get marijuana cards.
"I won't approve any more until I know what's going on," the Democrat said. "I don't want to do anything to get patients arrested or in trouble."
Medical marijuana dispensaries have proliferated despite a 2001 Supreme Court ruling that rejected the "medical necessity" defense in marijuana cases.
Paul Armentano of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws said arrests of ailing patients have been rare, but the government has arrested more than 60 people in medical marijuana raids since September 2001.
Most of those arrests have been in California -- the first state to allow medical marijuana, in 1996. On Monday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has previously supported use of pot by sick people, said only: "It is now up to Congress to provide clarity."
Still, the ruling makes Valerie Corral nervous. Corral operates a 150-plant pot farm in Santa Cruz County, providing marijuana for free to about 165 seriously ill members. Her farm was raided by the DEA in 2002. The high court's decision "leaves us protecting ourselves from a government that should be protecting us," she said.
It was "business as usual" at the San Francisco health department, spokeswoman Eileen Shields said. The county issues medical marijuana identification cards, valid for two years, to residents with a doctor's prescription. Currently, 8,200 residents have the cards.
In Colorado, where 668 people hold certificates that let them use and grow marijuana for pain relief under a constitutional amendment voters approved in 2000, federal prosecutors will continue to focus on large drug rings, but if investigators come across marijuana in the possession of certified state users, they will seize it -- just as they have always done, said Jeff Dorschner, a U.S. Attorney's spokesman.
In Montana, the 119 residents who paid $200 to get on the state's confidential registry won't face state prosecution, said state Attorney General Mike McGrath. He said the state is not obligated to help federal authorities prosecute people following state law.
In Nevada, medicinal pot users are already warned that the state law offers no protections from federal prosecution, Attorney General Brian Sandoval said.
Plaintiffs in Medical Marijuana Case Defying Supreme Court Ruling
By David Kravets
The Associated Press
Tuesday 07 June 2005
San Francisco - The two women who sued the Bush administration in hopes of keeping their medical marijuana supplies said they'll defy the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling and continue to smoke pot.
"I'm going to have to be prepared to be arrested," said Diane Monson, an accountant who smokes marijuana several times a day to relieve her pain from degenerative spine disease.
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that federal authorities may prosecute people using doctor-recommended pot, concluding that medical marijuana laws in California and nine other states don't make such users immune from federal laws against marijuana possession.
Monson, 48, was recommended marijuana by her doctor in 1997 after standard prescription drugs didn't work or made her sleepy. She grows it in the yard of her home near Oroville, Calif., about 70 miles north of Sacramento. "I'm way disappointed. There are so many people that need cannabis," she said.
Fifty-six percent of California voters approved the nation's first so-called medical marijuana law in 1996, allowing patients to smoke and grow marijuana with a doctor's recommendation. Other states followed, including Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont and Washington state.
In 2001, the Supreme Court ruled against medical marijuana clubs that argued for a legal exception when patients can demonstrate a "medical necessity" for the drug. That forced the Oakland supplier of the other plaintiff, Angel Raich, to close.
Raich and Monson sued Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' predecessor, John Ashcroft, because they feared their supplies of medical marijuana might dry up. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in San Francisco, ordered the Bush administration to refrain from prosecuting the pair, including Raich's suppliers. Monday's Supreme Court decision reverses that order.
All of which leaves them with few options other than to take their chances and continue smoking and ingesting marijuana, the women said.
"If I stop using cannabis, unfortunately, I would die," said Raich, who inhaled marijuana after Monday's ruling in her house in Oakland, using a machine that fills a plastic bag with pot vapors. She estimates her marijuana intake to be about 9 pounds a year.
Raich, 39, suffers from scoliosis, a brain tumor, chronic nausea and other problems. She said she uses marijuana every few waking hours, on the advice of her doctor, who said dozens of other medications were of little help.
"This is the only way that I have to combat my suffering and to deal with my illness," said the mother of two, ages 16 and 19.
And if federal authorities do try to arrest her, she said she may seek refuge outside the United States. "If I need to leave the country, I will if that time comes," Raich said.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Calif. AG: Don't Panic over Pot Ruling
The Associated Press
Monday 06 June 2005
San Francisco - Oregon stopped issuing medical marijuana cards after Monday's Supreme Court ruling, but people could apparently still get pot with a doctor's prescription there and in nine other states. And nobody in law enforcement appeared eager to make headlines arresting ailing patients.
"People shouldn't panic. There aren't going to be many changes," California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said. "Nothing is different today than it was two days ago, in terms of real-world impact."
The high court ruled 6-3 that people who smoke marijuana because their doctors recommend it to ease pain can be prosecuted for violating federal drug laws.
The ruling does not strike down medical marijuana laws in California, Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont or Washington state. State and local authorities in most of those states said they have no interest in arresting people who smoke pot for medical reasons.
It remains to be seen whether the federal Drug Enforcement Administration is planning a crackdown. The Justice Department was not commenting.
In Oregon, where more than 10,000 residents hold medical marijuana cards, state officials said they would temporarily stop issuing cards to sick people and issued a reminder to cardholders that federal prosecution has always been a possibility.
"Today's decision clarifies the federal government's authority," said Kevin Neely, a spokesman for the state attorney general.
It was not clear how the decision would affect the more than 1,700 Oregon doctors who have signed patient applications for medicinal marijuana.
Oregon state Sen. Alan Bates, also a doctor, said he will temporarily stop writing authorizations for patients to get marijuana cards.
"I won't approve any more until I know what's going on," the Democrat said. "I don't want to do anything to get patients arrested or in trouble."
Medical marijuana dispensaries have proliferated despite a 2001 Supreme Court ruling that rejected the "medical necessity" defense in marijuana cases.
Paul Armentano of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws said arrests of ailing patients have been rare, but the government has arrested more than 60 people in medical marijuana raids since September 2001.
Most of those arrests have been in California -- the first state to allow medical marijuana, in 1996. On Monday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has previously supported use of pot by sick people, said only: "It is now up to Congress to provide clarity."
Still, the ruling makes Valerie Corral nervous. Corral operates a 150-plant pot farm in Santa Cruz County, providing marijuana for free to about 165 seriously ill members. Her farm was raided by the DEA in 2002. The high court's decision "leaves us protecting ourselves from a government that should be protecting us," she said.
It was "business as usual" at the San Francisco health department, spokeswoman Eileen Shields said. The county issues medical marijuana identification cards, valid for two years, to residents with a doctor's prescription. Currently, 8,200 residents have the cards.
In Colorado, where 668 people hold certificates that let them use and grow marijuana for pain relief under a constitutional amendment voters approved in 2000, federal prosecutors will continue to focus on large drug rings, but if investigators come across marijuana in the possession of certified state users, they will seize it -- just as they have always done, said Jeff Dorschner, a U.S. Attorney's spokesman.
In Montana, the 119 residents who paid $200 to get on the state's confidential registry won't face state prosecution, said state Attorney General Mike McGrath. He said the state is not obligated to help federal authorities prosecute people following state law.
In Nevada, medicinal pot users are already warned that the state law offers no protections from federal prosecution, Attorney General Brian Sandoval said.
War on Crime, Not on Drugs
By Norm Stamper, AlterNet. Posted June 15, 2005.
In an excerpt from his new book, 'Breaking Rank,' a former police chief describes how America is losing its fight against drugs -- and why we should consider decriminalization.
Editor's Note: The following excerpt is reprinted with permission from "Breaking Rank: A Top Cop's Expose of the Dark Side of American Policing (Nation Books, 2005).
I say it’s time to withdraw the troops in the war on drugs.
For a jaw-dropping illustration of drug enforcement’s financial costs, take a look at DrugSense.org’s Drug War Clock. To the tune of $600 a second, taxpayers are financing this war. For the year 2004 the figure added up to over $20 billion, and that’s just for federal enforcement alone. You can add another $22 to $24 billion for state and local drug law enforcement, and even more billions for U. S. drug interdiction work on the international scene. We’re talking well over $50 billion a year to finance America’s war on drugs.
Think of this war’s real casualties: tens of thousands of otherwise innocent Americans incarcerated, many for 20 years, some for life; families ripped apart; drug traffickers and blameless bystanders shot dead on city streets; narcotics officers assassinated here and abroad, with prosecutors, judges, and elected officials in Latin America gunned down for their courageous stands against the cartels; and all those dollars spent on federal, state, and local cops, courts, prosecutors, prisons, probation, parole, and pee-in-the-bottle programs. Even federal aid to bribe distant nations to stop feeding our habit.
“Plan Colombia” was hatched under the last year of the Clinton administration to wage America’s drug war on Colombian soil. Costing over $1.3 billion ($800 million going to the military), the plan sought to “eradicate” that nation’s coca and heroin poppy plants (Colombia supplied 95 percent of America’s cocaine). The chemical used was the herbicide glyphosate, which when sprayed on crops does untold damage to the environment. When sprayed on water supplies or unprotected people, it causes a host of serious to fatal medical problems.
Similar efforts in Peru and Bolivia have reduced production only temporarily, and always at high cost: recall that the Peruvian Air Force, on the strength of mistaken U.S. drug intelligence, shot down a civilian aircraft carrying an American missionary and her infant daughter in April of 2001.
In Afghanistan, the Bush administration supported the Taliban to the tune of $125 million in foreign aid, plus another $43 million for enforcing its ostensible ban on poppy production—right up until September 10, 2001. (As Robert Scheer makes clear in his May 22, 2001 column in the Los Angeles Times—“Bush’s Faustian Deal With the Taliban”—the president knew all along that the Taliban was hiding Osama bin Laden.)
Today, Afghanistan’s drug lords give the country’s warlords (when they’re not one and the same) a run for their money. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) in the summer of 2004 issued a scathing report citing the phenomenal growth in Afghan poppy production—and the Bush administration’s failure to monitor its own anti-drug aid. The United Nations estimates the value of the 2004 crop at $2.2 billion, with production up 40 percent, breaking all records for a single year.
According to Peter Rodman of the Pentagon (BBC News, September 24, 2004), “…profits from the production of illegal narcotics flow into coffers of warlord militias, corrupt government officials, and extremist forces.”
The United States has, through its war on drugs, fostered political instability, official corruption, and health and environmental disasters around the globe. In truth, the U.S.-sponsored international "War on Drugs" is a war on poor people, most of them subsistence farmers caught in a dangerous no-win situation.
***
Another casualty of the drug war: the reputation of individual police officers, individual departments, and the entire system of American law enforcement. If you aspire to be a “crooked” cop, drugs are clearly the way to go. The availability, street value, and illegality of drugs form a sweet temptation to character-challenged cops, many of whom wind up shaking down street dealers, converting drugs for their own use, or selling them.
Almost all of the major police corruption scandals of the last several decades have had their roots in drug enforcement. We’ve seen robbery, extortion, drug dealing, drug stealing, drug use, false arrests, perjury, throw-down guns, and murder. And these are the good guys?
There isn’t an unscathed police department in the country. New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Washington, D.C., Memphis, Miami, Oakland, Dallas, Kansas City—all have recently suffered stunning police drug scandals. You won’t find a single major city in the country that has not fired or arrested at least one of its own for some drug-related offense in the past few years, including San Diego and Seattle…
Tulia, Tex. offers another example of a cop—and a system—gone bad. Tom Coleman, an ex-police officer, was hired by the federally-funded Texas Panhandle Regional Narcotics Trafficking Taskforce to conduct undercover narcotics operations in Tulia in 1998. In 1999, Coleman arrested 46 people -- 39 of them black. He put dozens of “drug peddlers” behind bars—for 60, 90, 434 years (we’re talking Texas here).
The only problem? Coleman made up the charges. He manufactured evidence. Working alone, he never wore a wire, never taped a conversation, never dusted the plastic bags he “scored” for fingerprints. He testified in court that he wrote his notes of drug transactions on his leg. Who was this Tom Coleman?
A 1997 background investigation revealed that he’d been disciplined in a previous law enforcement job, that he had “disciplinary” and “possible mental problems,” that he “needed constant supervision, had a bad temper and would tend to run to his mother for help.”
According to New York Times reporter Adam Liptak, Coleman had “run up bad debts in another law enforcement job before leaving town abruptly in the middle of a shift…. Eight months into the undercover investigation, Coleman’s supervisors received a warrant calling for his arrest for stealing gasoline. They arrested him, let him out on bond and allowed him to make restitution for the gas and other debts of $7,000. The undercover investigation then continued.”
In August of 2003, Governor Rick Perry pardoned 35 of the people Coleman sent to prison, 31 of them black.
Thousands of drug cases have been dismissed throughout the country in just the past few years because of similar police malfeasance. Spurred on by federal financial incentives, departments exert tremendous pressure on narcotics units and individual narcs to make a lot of busts, impound a lot of dope, and seize as much of a drug-trafficker’s assets as possible.
***
Just how prevalent is drug use in America? In 1975, according to the Monitoring the Future Survey, 87 percent of high school seniors reported that it was “easy” or “fairly easy” to buy marijuana. At the dawn of the new century, and millions of arrests later, the figure is at 90.4 percent.
The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse reported in 1998 that high school students found it a lot easier to score pot than to purchase beer. In 1988, Congress set a goal of a “drug-free America by 1995.” Yet, according to research of the Drug Policy Foundation in Washington, D.C. (which in 2000 merged with the George Soros-funded Lindesmith/Drug Policy Research Institute to form the widely respected Drug Policy Institute), the number of Americans who have used illegal drugs stands at 77 million and counting. That’s a lot of enemies.
Not that the war on drugs hasn’t taken prisoners. The Department of Justice reports that of the huge increases in federal and state prison populations during the ‘80s and ‘90s (from 139 per 100,000 residents in 1980, to 476 per 100,000 in 2002), the vast majority are for drug convictions. The FBI reports that 580,900 Americans were arrested on drug charges in 1980. By 1999 that annual figure had ballooned to 1,532,200. Today there are more arrests for drug offenses than for murder, manslaughter, forcible rape, and aggravated assault combined.
Nowhere is this misguided campaign waged more mindlessly than in New York. The “Rockefeller Drug Laws” call for life in prison for first-time offenders convicted of possessing four ounces, or selling two ounces, of a controlled substance. The result? The state’s prison system is filled to the gills with drug offenders, most of them convicted of minor offenses, most of them nonviolent, taking up 18,300 of its beds.
By any standard, the United States has lost its war on drugs. Criminalizing drug use—for which there is, was, and always will be an insatiable appetite—has been a colossal mistake, wasting vast sums of money, and adding to the misery of millions of Americans.
The solution? Decriminalization. (Not “legalization,” which would take government out of the picture altogether—and doom desperately-needed drug reform.) Decriminalization means you take the crime out of the use of drugs, but preserve government’s right—and responsibility—to regulate the field.
How would it work? If I were the new (and literal) Drug Czar, I would have private companies compete for licenses to cultivate, harvest, manufacture, package, and peddle drugs. I’d create a new federal regulatory agency (with no apologies to libertarians and neo-cons) to: (1) set and enforce standards of sanitation, potency, and purity; (2) ban advertising; (3) impose taxes, fees, and fines to be used for drug abuse prevention and treatment, and to cover the costs of administering the new regulatory agency; and (4) police the industry much as alcoholic beverage control agencies operate in the states.
But I wouldn’t stop there: I’d put all of those truly frightening, explosion-prone, toxic meth labs out of business—today; make sure that no one was deprived of methadone or other medical treatment for addiction or abuse; establish free needle exchange programs and permit pharmacy sales of sterile, non-prescription needles in every city; and require random, mandatory drug testing for those workers whose judgment and mental alertness are essential to public safety—cops, firefighters, soldiers, airline pilots, bus drivers, ferry boat operators, train engineers, et al. (Not part of the et al are brain surgeons, mental health counselors, and countless others whose sensitive work, if botched, would generally not jeopardize public safety.)
...I would insist on the enforcement of existing criminal laws and policies against street dealing, furnishing to minors, driving under the influence, or invoking drug influence as a criminal defense.
Consequently, if someone chose to take a drug, anything they did under its effects would be 100 percent their responsibility... If they rob a bank, drive high, furnish drugs (including alcohol) to a minor, smack their neighbor upside the head, slip Ecstasy into their date’s drink, they should be arrested, charged, and prosecuted. If convicted, they should be forced to pay a fair but painful price for their criminal irresponsibility. Moreover, if they’ve injured or killed someone in the process, they should be slapped with civil damages. I’ve never understood defense attorneys who argue, “Gee, your honor, my client was so loaded she didn’t know what she was doing.”
***
But what of the undeniable harm caused by drugs? Wouldn’t decriminalization make things worse? Who knows? We’re too scared to approach the subject in a calm, open, levelheaded manner. But, I’ll tell you what I think would happen: there would be a slight increase in drug use, and no measurable increase in drug abuse. Experiences in Portugal and the Netherlands suggest that decriminalization does not portend a mad rush for drugs among the currently abstemious…
Handled properly, decriminalization would improve the overall health—physical, emotional, and financial—of our society and our neighborhoods.
How? For starters, it would put illicit traffickers out of business; their obscene, untaxed profits evaporating overnight. Dealers and runners and mules and nine-year-old lookouts would be off street corners, and out of the line of fire. It would take much of the fun out of being a gang member (gang-banging being synonymous these days with drug dealing, “markets” synonymous with “turf”). Firearms employed in the expansion and protection of drug markets would go quiet—a welcome change for peace-loving citizens, and the nation’s cops. Drug raids on the wrong house would be a thing of the past.
And since most junkies finance their addiction by breaking into your home, stealing your car, or mugging you on the street, crimes like burglary, robbery, auto theft, and car prowl would drop. A lot. Justice Department studies linking patterns of property crime and drug use suggest a reduction of 35 to 50 percent in those crimes alone.
Decriminalization would arguably wipe out at least one variety of structural racism, as well as class discrimination. A sad but safe generalization: poor blacks smoke cheap crack, upscale whites snort the spendy powdered version of cocaine. And who goes to jail, for longer periods of time? Blacks, of course. Nowhere is this more evident than in Texas where, according to the Justice Policy Institute, blacks are incarcerated at a rate 63 percent higher than the national rate…for blacks!
(Nationally, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 12 percent of all African American men between the ages of 20 and 34 are in prison, versus1.6 percent of white men). More than half of these African Americans are in prison for nonviolent offenses, mostly drug-related. Needless to say, this same group is grossly underrepresented in drug treatment programs.
***
...Where do we find the money to treat addiction and other drug abuse problems when tens of millions of Americans can’t even get basic health insurance, insulin, heart meds or cancer drugs at affordable prices? Law enforcement officials at every level—federal, state, and local—know the answer, and it scares them to death: take it from them, the cops.
Use the money now being squandered on drug enforcement, domestically and internationally, to finance a fresh, new public policy that educates, regulates, medicates, and rehabilitates.
***
Opposition to decriminalization runs so deep among law enforcers that many refuse even to talk about it. And they’ll do their best to shut you up if you so much as mention it… [But] not everyone is frightened of the First Amendment. Many Americans are speaking up, demanding a new, workable approach to the drug problem.
An October, 2002 Time/CNN poll showed that 72 percent of Americans already believe there should be no jail time for possessing small amounts of pot, and 80 percent support medical marijuana programs; (maybe that’s because 47 percent of them had used the weed).
When, as chief of the Seattle Police Department, I made my views on drugs known at a conference of mayors from Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia, the response was overwhelmingly positive. In presentations I made to business groups throughout Southern California in the early nineties, the typical reaction was, ‘Why can’t our government see the folly of the drug war? It’s just plain bad business, a gigantic waste of taxpayer money.’
A handful of politicians and even a police chief or two do favor decriminalization. I know this because they whisper endorsements in the privacy of their offices or over an adult beverage after a drug conference. Why don’t they speak up? They’re scared. They think they’ll be voted out of office or forced to turn in their badges.
But they “misunderestimate” the wisdom, the common sense of their constituencies. Americans want to see their tax dollars spent on prevention and enforcement of predatory crimes, crimes that frighten them, take money out of their pockets, restrict their freedoms and cause them to change the way they live.
Norm Stamper began his law enforcement career in San Diego in 1966, as a beat cop. In 1994, he was named chief of the Seattle Police Department. He retired in 2000.
[for more on what the drug 'war' funds, check this out as well: CIA ]
By Norm Stamper, AlterNet. Posted June 15, 2005.
In an excerpt from his new book, 'Breaking Rank,' a former police chief describes how America is losing its fight against drugs -- and why we should consider decriminalization.
Editor's Note: The following excerpt is reprinted with permission from "Breaking Rank: A Top Cop's Expose of the Dark Side of American Policing (Nation Books, 2005).
I say it’s time to withdraw the troops in the war on drugs.
For a jaw-dropping illustration of drug enforcement’s financial costs, take a look at DrugSense.org’s Drug War Clock. To the tune of $600 a second, taxpayers are financing this war. For the year 2004 the figure added up to over $20 billion, and that’s just for federal enforcement alone. You can add another $22 to $24 billion for state and local drug law enforcement, and even more billions for U. S. drug interdiction work on the international scene. We’re talking well over $50 billion a year to finance America’s war on drugs.
Think of this war’s real casualties: tens of thousands of otherwise innocent Americans incarcerated, many for 20 years, some for life; families ripped apart; drug traffickers and blameless bystanders shot dead on city streets; narcotics officers assassinated here and abroad, with prosecutors, judges, and elected officials in Latin America gunned down for their courageous stands against the cartels; and all those dollars spent on federal, state, and local cops, courts, prosecutors, prisons, probation, parole, and pee-in-the-bottle programs. Even federal aid to bribe distant nations to stop feeding our habit.
“Plan Colombia” was hatched under the last year of the Clinton administration to wage America’s drug war on Colombian soil. Costing over $1.3 billion ($800 million going to the military), the plan sought to “eradicate” that nation’s coca and heroin poppy plants (Colombia supplied 95 percent of America’s cocaine). The chemical used was the herbicide glyphosate, which when sprayed on crops does untold damage to the environment. When sprayed on water supplies or unprotected people, it causes a host of serious to fatal medical problems.
Similar efforts in Peru and Bolivia have reduced production only temporarily, and always at high cost: recall that the Peruvian Air Force, on the strength of mistaken U.S. drug intelligence, shot down a civilian aircraft carrying an American missionary and her infant daughter in April of 2001.
In Afghanistan, the Bush administration supported the Taliban to the tune of $125 million in foreign aid, plus another $43 million for enforcing its ostensible ban on poppy production—right up until September 10, 2001. (As Robert Scheer makes clear in his May 22, 2001 column in the Los Angeles Times—“Bush’s Faustian Deal With the Taliban”—the president knew all along that the Taliban was hiding Osama bin Laden.)
Today, Afghanistan’s drug lords give the country’s warlords (when they’re not one and the same) a run for their money. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) in the summer of 2004 issued a scathing report citing the phenomenal growth in Afghan poppy production—and the Bush administration’s failure to monitor its own anti-drug aid. The United Nations estimates the value of the 2004 crop at $2.2 billion, with production up 40 percent, breaking all records for a single year.
According to Peter Rodman of the Pentagon (BBC News, September 24, 2004), “…profits from the production of illegal narcotics flow into coffers of warlord militias, corrupt government officials, and extremist forces.”
The United States has, through its war on drugs, fostered political instability, official corruption, and health and environmental disasters around the globe. In truth, the U.S.-sponsored international "War on Drugs" is a war on poor people, most of them subsistence farmers caught in a dangerous no-win situation.
***
Another casualty of the drug war: the reputation of individual police officers, individual departments, and the entire system of American law enforcement. If you aspire to be a “crooked” cop, drugs are clearly the way to go. The availability, street value, and illegality of drugs form a sweet temptation to character-challenged cops, many of whom wind up shaking down street dealers, converting drugs for their own use, or selling them.
Almost all of the major police corruption scandals of the last several decades have had their roots in drug enforcement. We’ve seen robbery, extortion, drug dealing, drug stealing, drug use, false arrests, perjury, throw-down guns, and murder. And these are the good guys?
There isn’t an unscathed police department in the country. New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Washington, D.C., Memphis, Miami, Oakland, Dallas, Kansas City—all have recently suffered stunning police drug scandals. You won’t find a single major city in the country that has not fired or arrested at least one of its own for some drug-related offense in the past few years, including San Diego and Seattle…
Tulia, Tex. offers another example of a cop—and a system—gone bad. Tom Coleman, an ex-police officer, was hired by the federally-funded Texas Panhandle Regional Narcotics Trafficking Taskforce to conduct undercover narcotics operations in Tulia in 1998. In 1999, Coleman arrested 46 people -- 39 of them black. He put dozens of “drug peddlers” behind bars—for 60, 90, 434 years (we’re talking Texas here).
The only problem? Coleman made up the charges. He manufactured evidence. Working alone, he never wore a wire, never taped a conversation, never dusted the plastic bags he “scored” for fingerprints. He testified in court that he wrote his notes of drug transactions on his leg. Who was this Tom Coleman?
A 1997 background investigation revealed that he’d been disciplined in a previous law enforcement job, that he had “disciplinary” and “possible mental problems,” that he “needed constant supervision, had a bad temper and would tend to run to his mother for help.”
According to New York Times reporter Adam Liptak, Coleman had “run up bad debts in another law enforcement job before leaving town abruptly in the middle of a shift…. Eight months into the undercover investigation, Coleman’s supervisors received a warrant calling for his arrest for stealing gasoline. They arrested him, let him out on bond and allowed him to make restitution for the gas and other debts of $7,000. The undercover investigation then continued.”
In August of 2003, Governor Rick Perry pardoned 35 of the people Coleman sent to prison, 31 of them black.
Thousands of drug cases have been dismissed throughout the country in just the past few years because of similar police malfeasance. Spurred on by federal financial incentives, departments exert tremendous pressure on narcotics units and individual narcs to make a lot of busts, impound a lot of dope, and seize as much of a drug-trafficker’s assets as possible.
***
Just how prevalent is drug use in America? In 1975, according to the Monitoring the Future Survey, 87 percent of high school seniors reported that it was “easy” or “fairly easy” to buy marijuana. At the dawn of the new century, and millions of arrests later, the figure is at 90.4 percent.
The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse reported in 1998 that high school students found it a lot easier to score pot than to purchase beer. In 1988, Congress set a goal of a “drug-free America by 1995.” Yet, according to research of the Drug Policy Foundation in Washington, D.C. (which in 2000 merged with the George Soros-funded Lindesmith/Drug Policy Research Institute to form the widely respected Drug Policy Institute), the number of Americans who have used illegal drugs stands at 77 million and counting. That’s a lot of enemies.
Not that the war on drugs hasn’t taken prisoners. The Department of Justice reports that of the huge increases in federal and state prison populations during the ‘80s and ‘90s (from 139 per 100,000 residents in 1980, to 476 per 100,000 in 2002), the vast majority are for drug convictions. The FBI reports that 580,900 Americans were arrested on drug charges in 1980. By 1999 that annual figure had ballooned to 1,532,200. Today there are more arrests for drug offenses than for murder, manslaughter, forcible rape, and aggravated assault combined.
Nowhere is this misguided campaign waged more mindlessly than in New York. The “Rockefeller Drug Laws” call for life in prison for first-time offenders convicted of possessing four ounces, or selling two ounces, of a controlled substance. The result? The state’s prison system is filled to the gills with drug offenders, most of them convicted of minor offenses, most of them nonviolent, taking up 18,300 of its beds.
By any standard, the United States has lost its war on drugs. Criminalizing drug use—for which there is, was, and always will be an insatiable appetite—has been a colossal mistake, wasting vast sums of money, and adding to the misery of millions of Americans.
The solution? Decriminalization. (Not “legalization,” which would take government out of the picture altogether—and doom desperately-needed drug reform.) Decriminalization means you take the crime out of the use of drugs, but preserve government’s right—and responsibility—to regulate the field.
How would it work? If I were the new (and literal) Drug Czar, I would have private companies compete for licenses to cultivate, harvest, manufacture, package, and peddle drugs. I’d create a new federal regulatory agency (with no apologies to libertarians and neo-cons) to: (1) set and enforce standards of sanitation, potency, and purity; (2) ban advertising; (3) impose taxes, fees, and fines to be used for drug abuse prevention and treatment, and to cover the costs of administering the new regulatory agency; and (4) police the industry much as alcoholic beverage control agencies operate in the states.
But I wouldn’t stop there: I’d put all of those truly frightening, explosion-prone, toxic meth labs out of business—today; make sure that no one was deprived of methadone or other medical treatment for addiction or abuse; establish free needle exchange programs and permit pharmacy sales of sterile, non-prescription needles in every city; and require random, mandatory drug testing for those workers whose judgment and mental alertness are essential to public safety—cops, firefighters, soldiers, airline pilots, bus drivers, ferry boat operators, train engineers, et al. (Not part of the et al are brain surgeons, mental health counselors, and countless others whose sensitive work, if botched, would generally not jeopardize public safety.)
...I would insist on the enforcement of existing criminal laws and policies against street dealing, furnishing to minors, driving under the influence, or invoking drug influence as a criminal defense.
Consequently, if someone chose to take a drug, anything they did under its effects would be 100 percent their responsibility... If they rob a bank, drive high, furnish drugs (including alcohol) to a minor, smack their neighbor upside the head, slip Ecstasy into their date’s drink, they should be arrested, charged, and prosecuted. If convicted, they should be forced to pay a fair but painful price for their criminal irresponsibility. Moreover, if they’ve injured or killed someone in the process, they should be slapped with civil damages. I’ve never understood defense attorneys who argue, “Gee, your honor, my client was so loaded she didn’t know what she was doing.”
***
But what of the undeniable harm caused by drugs? Wouldn’t decriminalization make things worse? Who knows? We’re too scared to approach the subject in a calm, open, levelheaded manner. But, I’ll tell you what I think would happen: there would be a slight increase in drug use, and no measurable increase in drug abuse. Experiences in Portugal and the Netherlands suggest that decriminalization does not portend a mad rush for drugs among the currently abstemious…
Handled properly, decriminalization would improve the overall health—physical, emotional, and financial—of our society and our neighborhoods.
How? For starters, it would put illicit traffickers out of business; their obscene, untaxed profits evaporating overnight. Dealers and runners and mules and nine-year-old lookouts would be off street corners, and out of the line of fire. It would take much of the fun out of being a gang member (gang-banging being synonymous these days with drug dealing, “markets” synonymous with “turf”). Firearms employed in the expansion and protection of drug markets would go quiet—a welcome change for peace-loving citizens, and the nation’s cops. Drug raids on the wrong house would be a thing of the past.
And since most junkies finance their addiction by breaking into your home, stealing your car, or mugging you on the street, crimes like burglary, robbery, auto theft, and car prowl would drop. A lot. Justice Department studies linking patterns of property crime and drug use suggest a reduction of 35 to 50 percent in those crimes alone.
Decriminalization would arguably wipe out at least one variety of structural racism, as well as class discrimination. A sad but safe generalization: poor blacks smoke cheap crack, upscale whites snort the spendy powdered version of cocaine. And who goes to jail, for longer periods of time? Blacks, of course. Nowhere is this more evident than in Texas where, according to the Justice Policy Institute, blacks are incarcerated at a rate 63 percent higher than the national rate…for blacks!
(Nationally, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 12 percent of all African American men between the ages of 20 and 34 are in prison, versus1.6 percent of white men). More than half of these African Americans are in prison for nonviolent offenses, mostly drug-related. Needless to say, this same group is grossly underrepresented in drug treatment programs.
***
...Where do we find the money to treat addiction and other drug abuse problems when tens of millions of Americans can’t even get basic health insurance, insulin, heart meds or cancer drugs at affordable prices? Law enforcement officials at every level—federal, state, and local—know the answer, and it scares them to death: take it from them, the cops.
Use the money now being squandered on drug enforcement, domestically and internationally, to finance a fresh, new public policy that educates, regulates, medicates, and rehabilitates.
***
Opposition to decriminalization runs so deep among law enforcers that many refuse even to talk about it. And they’ll do their best to shut you up if you so much as mention it… [But] not everyone is frightened of the First Amendment. Many Americans are speaking up, demanding a new, workable approach to the drug problem.
An October, 2002 Time/CNN poll showed that 72 percent of Americans already believe there should be no jail time for possessing small amounts of pot, and 80 percent support medical marijuana programs; (maybe that’s because 47 percent of them had used the weed).
When, as chief of the Seattle Police Department, I made my views on drugs known at a conference of mayors from Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia, the response was overwhelmingly positive. In presentations I made to business groups throughout Southern California in the early nineties, the typical reaction was, ‘Why can’t our government see the folly of the drug war? It’s just plain bad business, a gigantic waste of taxpayer money.’
A handful of politicians and even a police chief or two do favor decriminalization. I know this because they whisper endorsements in the privacy of their offices or over an adult beverage after a drug conference. Why don’t they speak up? They’re scared. They think they’ll be voted out of office or forced to turn in their badges.
But they “misunderestimate” the wisdom, the common sense of their constituencies. Americans want to see their tax dollars spent on prevention and enforcement of predatory crimes, crimes that frighten them, take money out of their pockets, restrict their freedoms and cause them to change the way they live.
Norm Stamper began his law enforcement career in San Diego in 1966, as a beat cop. In 1994, he was named chief of the Seattle Police Department. He retired in 2000.
[for more on what the drug 'war' funds, check this out as well: CIA ]
From @ CounterPunch
June 17, 2005
Medical Marijuana
Is Jury Nullification the Next Step?
By CLAY CONRAD
Since the June 6 Supreme Court decision in Gonzalez v. Raich, medical marijuana supporters have largely determined to focus on lobbying congress. While Raich did not overturn state medical marijuana laws in the eleven states that have them (Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont and Washington), it did permit the federal government to arrest medical marijuana patients in those states. (State medical marijuana bills exempt qualified patients who use cannabis medicinally from state criminal penalties.)
Congress is expected to vote later this month on a bipartisan amendment sponsored by Reps. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) and Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) that would prohibit the federal government from spending taxpayers' dollars to prosecute patients who comply with their state's medical marijuana laws. Yet Congress has refused to pass a similar bill before, and has by all appearances only moved further towards intolerance in the interim. It seems a stretch to believe that this Congress will act to protect medical marijuana patients.
In some areas, particularly the San Francisco/Oakland area of Northern California, it seems likely that jury nullification may be an increasing threat in federal marijuana cases. In 2003, jurors revolted after convicting Ed Rosenthal of growing 100 pounds or more of marijuana in a highly disputed San Francisco federal case. The jury was outraged that they had not been informed that Rosenthal was growing the marijuana for distribution to medical dispensaries. Juror Marney Craig, a 58 year old Marin County property manager, labeled the trial "a cruel charade." "It is the most horrible mistake I have ever made," she said. "I feel like we were sheep, we were manipulated."
The foreman, Charles Sackett, said, "I fail to understand how evidence and testimony that is pertinent, imperative and representative to state government policy, as well as doctor and patient rights, and indeed your own family, are irrelevant to this case."
Following Rosenthal's conviction, five of the jurors joined Rosenthal on the steps of the Federal Courthouse, denouncing their own verdict, saying they had been manipulated and misdirected, and demanding that Rosenthal receive a new trial. Not surprisingly, the trial court judge, Charles Breyer (brother of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Steven Breyer) refused to consider the jurors protests or grant a new trial. However, in the glare of negative publicity, Judge Breyer eventually gave Rosenthal - whom the federal government wanted to send to prison for six and a half years - a startling one-day sentence.
The Rosenthal jurors convicted without being aware of their nullification prerogative. However, the Rosenthal case made the issue of jury nullification a front page item - and cast it in a positive light. Articles on the jury revolt, often including statements by Sackett and others that jury nullification would play a large rule in future trials, were carried by the New York Times, Newsday, the Washington Post, Reuters, the San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner, Oakland Tribune, the Chicago Tribune, the Associated Press and elsewhere. The jurors themselves appeared on numerous nationally televised news broadcasts.
Will medical marijuana advocates, such as Americans for Safe Access, NORML and Green-Aid, find that educating the jury pool in their nullification prerogative is their only way to defeat the Federal efforts to steam-roller their home-grown velvet revolution? It wouldn't be an unreasonable choice. Particularly in Northern California, it would be difficult to imagine putting together a jury of 12 people without including at least one medical marijuana supporter. Such a person could simply refuse to convict - claiming to find the evidence unconvincing - and avoid a conviction. Any acquittals and/or hung juries would successfully announce to other potential jurors that they simply did not have to convict. In short, a few recalcitrant "stealth" jurors could cut government prosecution efforts off at the knees.
Moreover, should jurors decide not to convict in cases of this sort, Congress might be spurred on to finally pass a law exempting state-authorized medical marijuana patients from prosecution. The acquittal of John Peter Zenger paved the way for the reform of English libel law, and as the acquittals of abused women in "burning bed" cases paved the way for battered woman syndrome defenses, have shown that jury nullification can foreshadow dramatic changes in the law.
Independent jurors could force a change in the way our drug laws treat seriously ill people who smoke marijuana to relieve suffering and prolong their lives. And I don't think you have to be stoned to think that such a change is long overdue.
Clay Conrad currently serves as Chairman of the American Jury Institute. He can be reached at weaselaw@aol.com
June 17, 2005
Medical Marijuana
Is Jury Nullification the Next Step?
By CLAY CONRAD
Since the June 6 Supreme Court decision in Gonzalez v. Raich, medical marijuana supporters have largely determined to focus on lobbying congress. While Raich did not overturn state medical marijuana laws in the eleven states that have them (Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont and Washington), it did permit the federal government to arrest medical marijuana patients in those states. (State medical marijuana bills exempt qualified patients who use cannabis medicinally from state criminal penalties.)
Congress is expected to vote later this month on a bipartisan amendment sponsored by Reps. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) and Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) that would prohibit the federal government from spending taxpayers' dollars to prosecute patients who comply with their state's medical marijuana laws. Yet Congress has refused to pass a similar bill before, and has by all appearances only moved further towards intolerance in the interim. It seems a stretch to believe that this Congress will act to protect medical marijuana patients.
In some areas, particularly the San Francisco/Oakland area of Northern California, it seems likely that jury nullification may be an increasing threat in federal marijuana cases. In 2003, jurors revolted after convicting Ed Rosenthal of growing 100 pounds or more of marijuana in a highly disputed San Francisco federal case. The jury was outraged that they had not been informed that Rosenthal was growing the marijuana for distribution to medical dispensaries. Juror Marney Craig, a 58 year old Marin County property manager, labeled the trial "a cruel charade." "It is the most horrible mistake I have ever made," she said. "I feel like we were sheep, we were manipulated."
The foreman, Charles Sackett, said, "I fail to understand how evidence and testimony that is pertinent, imperative and representative to state government policy, as well as doctor and patient rights, and indeed your own family, are irrelevant to this case."
Following Rosenthal's conviction, five of the jurors joined Rosenthal on the steps of the Federal Courthouse, denouncing their own verdict, saying they had been manipulated and misdirected, and demanding that Rosenthal receive a new trial. Not surprisingly, the trial court judge, Charles Breyer (brother of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Steven Breyer) refused to consider the jurors protests or grant a new trial. However, in the glare of negative publicity, Judge Breyer eventually gave Rosenthal - whom the federal government wanted to send to prison for six and a half years - a startling one-day sentence.
The Rosenthal jurors convicted without being aware of their nullification prerogative. However, the Rosenthal case made the issue of jury nullification a front page item - and cast it in a positive light. Articles on the jury revolt, often including statements by Sackett and others that jury nullification would play a large rule in future trials, were carried by the New York Times, Newsday, the Washington Post, Reuters, the San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner, Oakland Tribune, the Chicago Tribune, the Associated Press and elsewhere. The jurors themselves appeared on numerous nationally televised news broadcasts.
Will medical marijuana advocates, such as Americans for Safe Access, NORML and Green-Aid, find that educating the jury pool in their nullification prerogative is their only way to defeat the Federal efforts to steam-roller their home-grown velvet revolution? It wouldn't be an unreasonable choice. Particularly in Northern California, it would be difficult to imagine putting together a jury of 12 people without including at least one medical marijuana supporter. Such a person could simply refuse to convict - claiming to find the evidence unconvincing - and avoid a conviction. Any acquittals and/or hung juries would successfully announce to other potential jurors that they simply did not have to convict. In short, a few recalcitrant "stealth" jurors could cut government prosecution efforts off at the knees.
Moreover, should jurors decide not to convict in cases of this sort, Congress might be spurred on to finally pass a law exempting state-authorized medical marijuana patients from prosecution. The acquittal of John Peter Zenger paved the way for the reform of English libel law, and as the acquittals of abused women in "burning bed" cases paved the way for battered woman syndrome defenses, have shown that jury nullification can foreshadow dramatic changes in the law.
Independent jurors could force a change in the way our drug laws treat seriously ill people who smoke marijuana to relieve suffering and prolong their lives. And I don't think you have to be stoned to think that such a change is long overdue.
Clay Conrad currently serves as Chairman of the American Jury Institute. He can be reached at weaselaw@aol.com
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