Drug WarRant

Lee Rosenberg makes sure we continue the important discussion of the nuances of cannabis and impaired driving in a post that discusses both what’s happening in Washington, and his own experiences driving.

It’s well-written and worth reading. I know we’ve had quite a few similar discussions here, and it will be a tricky battle that we’ll continue to have as we work through legalization.

A critical part of the discussion, as Lee notes, is that there are fundamental differences between alcohol and cannabis impairment, and attempts to treat them, or measure them, the same way will not serve the goal of public safety.

The point of my story wasn’t to argue that stoned driving is good or bad, but to recognize that the issue is a lot more complicated than many people initially assume. From a regulatory standpoint, doing things that have worked or been accepted for drunk driving may not be the correct approach at all for stoned driving.

Teenage sports star hanged himself over 50p worth of cannabis

Edward Thornber, 17, played lacrosse for England and planned to teach it in the US, an inquest heard.

But he feared a court appearance would ruin his American dream after he was caught smoking cannabis on holiday in Newquay, Cornwall.
He originally accepted a warning, which would not mean a criminal record.

But his case was put in the wrong file by cops. They sent him a court summons, which should have gone to his parents because of his age.
Edward’s body was found at a park near his home in Didsbury, Manchester. The summons was found nearby.

Coroner Nigel Meadows said: “Young people are particularly vulnerable.” Verdict: Suicide

Now this tragedy is merely a single anecdotal item and it can’t be fully laid at the feet of prohibition — the police screwed up, and young people are often susceptible to feeling things are hopeless when they are not.

However, this is an example, a data point, of millions of people whose lives have been ruined, or dramatically damaged, by the criminal prohibition of cannabis, even though they did not go to prison.

So when someone says to you “Why are you so concerned? Hardly anyone goes to prison for pot,” you should tell them about the people who lost their financial aid, their careers, their children, their possessions, or their lives due to criminal prohibition.

The Economist has always been better than most on drug policy, and this piece – Illegal Drugs: The Great Experiment – is really outstanding.

The Economist has long argued that prohibition is illiberal in principle and harmful in practice, and that the least-bad way of dealing with drugs is to legalise and regulate their production and consumption. But we recognise that it takes a brave politician to face down the moral panic that surrounds the issue. This new thinking, though limited, is therefore welcome. Legalising consumption allows drug use and addiction (by no means the same thing) to be treated as the public-health issues they are. That in turn means applying the principle of harm reduction, for example by providing clean needles to addicts to prevent the spread of HIV.

But decriminalising consumption does nothing to break the grip of gangsters over the drug business. For that to happen, production and distribution also need to be legalised. That is why the experiment under way in the United States is so important. Colorado and Washington now have the chance to create a legal but regulated market in marijuana, similar to those for tobacco or alcohol.

[…]

One immediate consequence is that the United States will be in breach of the UN Convention. Good. It should now join Latin American governments in an effort to reform that outdated document to allow signatories room to experiment. Imposing a failed policy on everybody benefits nobody.

Read the whole thing.

In yet another boneheaded ruling – this time unanimously – the Supreme Court has ruled that mistakes made by dogs in the field don’t count and that police have no interest in going on fishing expeditions in your car.

Wow.

We cannot depend on the Supreme Court for protecting citizens at all when it comes to the drug war. All we can do is make them irrelevant by legalizing drugs.

Jacob Sullum does a fine job of discussing 3 myths that Justice Elena Kagan and the rest of the Court accepted without… thought.

That’s the intriguing question posed by John Ford in Marijuana Legalization: Why the Pot Business Needs Unions to Survive

Though the image of straight-laced hard-working blue-collar labor collaborating with hippy stoners doesn’t quite seem to match up, it is actually a match made in heaven. Labor union memberships have been flagging for some time, and they are in desperate need of a growth industry to latch on to. Meanwhile, marijuana dispensaries have both a branding problem (lacking legitimacy) and a lobbying problem (inability to organize), both of which unions can be of great help.

Another seemingly contradictory aspect of this situation is that labor is courting business owners, as opposed to fighting them. The simple explanation is that unions need new blood, and marijuana dispensaries are a fairly easy industry to work with. True to their hippy stereotype, trust-busting is not really something most dispensary owners are all that interested in. Plus, hundreds of thousands of new (labor) jobs, and billions of dollars, could be added to this industry in the next decade if legalization continues to reach new states and the federal government gives in on the issue. That’s a lot of new union dues to collect.

Drug policy reform has faced some uphill battles because of other unions (law enforcement, prison, etc.). Might be useful to have some of that organization on our side.

It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.

Those who don’t learn from history…

Marijuana legalization bill may threaten fabulous Prohibition II profits by Paul Carpenter

The next time they designed such a system, the gangsters and their allies were more clever. With Prohibition II, they skillfully made Americans believe the war on drugs was in the public’s interest.

The consequences of Prohibition II, which targets drugs other than alcohol, have been exactly the same as those of Prohibition I, including bloodshed and the widespread corruption of public officials. The main difference is that the cabal has been far more effective in keeping it going.

The Drug Laws That Changed How We Punish by Brian Mann

Persico, the aide who helped push through Rockefeller’s drug laws, says new scrutiny for the policy is overdue.

“I concluded very early that this was a failure. It’s filling up the prisons, first-time offenders,” Persico says. “This was obviously unjust — and not just unjust, it was unwise; it was ineffective.”

This debate is far from over. Supporters of mandatory minimums say the policy has helped reduce crime in some cities, including New York, and they point to modest declines in the use of some drugs, particularly cocaine. Persico says Rockefeller himself never expressed any second thoughts or reservations about the policy that carries his name.

This account of Mayor Bloomberg’s opposition to legalizing marijuana sure seems to indicate that he’s trying for the record.

Bloomberg: I Oppose Legalizing Marijuana

Bloomberg says he opposes legalizing marijuana because it’s stronger than it used to be. He added that if marijuana were legal, those dealers would just start selling something else, like cocaine.

Senator Ron Wyden has just introduced the Senate companion bill to H.R. 525, the Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2013, today.

The original cosponsors are:

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR)
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY)
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR)
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) – Yes, the Senate Republican Minority Leader

Press Release from Senator Wyden

This is actually looking kind of real.

The House version, introduced by Thomas Maassie (R-KY), already has 28 cosponsors:
Amash, Justin [R-MI3]
Benishek, Dan [R-MI1]
Blumenauer, Earl [D-OR3]
Bonamici, Suzanne [D-OR1]
Campbell, John [R-CA45]
Clay, Lacy [D-MO1]
Cohen, Steve [D-TN9]
DeFazio, Peter [D-OR4]
Ellison, Keith [D-MN5]
Farr, Sam [D-CA20]
Grijalva, Raúl [D-AZ3]
Hanna, Richard [R-NY22]
Lee, Barbara [D-CA13]
McClintock, Tom [R-CA4]
McDermott, Jim [D-WA7]
Miller, George [D-CA11]
Moran, James “Jim” [D-VA8]
Nadler, Jerrold [D-NY10]
Norton, Eleanor [D-DC0]
Peterson, Collin [D-MN7]
Pingree, Chellie [D-ME1]
Pocan, Mark [D-WI2]
Polis, Jared [D-CO2]
Rohrabacher, Dana [R-CA48]
Schakowsky, Janice “Jan” [D-IL9]
Schrader, Kurt [D-OR5]
Yarmuth, John [D-KY3]
Yoho, Ted [R-FL3]

Some concern has been expressed regarding this ThinkProgress piece

Federal prosecutors will crack down on recreational marijuana dispensaries and growers even in states where they are legal, U.S. drug czar Gil Kerlikowske told a Canadian news magazine this week. The statement appears to be the first from a federal official to state explicitly that the federal government will prosecute dispensaries and producers once they are licensed in Washington and Colorado.

This makes it seem like it’s some kind of official government pronouncement, but I think that’s really reading too much into the statement.

Sure, it’s not hard to imagine our government being so pathetically dysfunctional as to have the President duck the question, the AG unable to discuss it frankly with the Governors of the states involved, and then have Kerlikowske announce it to a Canadian magazine.

But in reality, if you read the actual interview, I don’t think the Drug Czar has any more of a clue than you or I and is just frustrated.

After all, this is the same interview in which he slammed the administration:

“The administration has not done a particularly good job of, one, talking about marijuana as a public health issue, and number two, talking about what can be done and where we should be headed on our drug policy.”

The Drug Czar has very little real power or information. He is primarily a propagandist, there to oppose legalization (as required by law), deflect criticisms of the government’s war on drugs, and wrap up our completely corrupt drug policies in pretty paper by talking about the focus on treatment and our move toward some mythical “third way.”

He has no idea what the U.S. Attorneys will do.

Strong smell of marijuana reported inside Colorado Capitol Wednesday morning

A strong smell of marijuana was reported inside the Colorado Capitol Wednesday morning, 7NEWS Reporter Russell Haythorn confirmed.

The entire Senate chamber smelled like marijuana, said Doug Schepman, Communications Director for the Senate Democrats.

Senate President John Morse cracked up fellow lawmakers during the session by asking: “Do you smell marijuana in here, or is it just me?”

On the recording of the morning’s proceedings, Morse can be heard asking, “If the Sergeants would please douse all the doobies in the area.”