Drug WarRant

Via Allen St. Pierre comes this fascinating OpEd from John McKay, the prosecutor who indicted Marc Emery (and a former law enforcement official). Marijuana’s true potency and why the law should change

I DON’T smoke pot. And I pretty much think people who do are idiots.

This certainly includes Marc Emery, the self-styled “Prince of Pot” from Canada whom I indicted in 2005 […]

As Emery’s prosecutor and a former federal law-enforcement official, however, I’m not afraid to say out loud what most of my former colleagues know is true: Our marijuana policy is dangerous and wrong and should be changed through the legislative process to better protect the public safety. […]

• First, we need to honestly and courageously examine the true public-safety danger posed by criminalizing a drug used by millions and millions of Americans who ignore the law. Marijuana prohibition has failed — it’s time for a new policy crafted by informed policymakers with the help of those in law enforcement who have risked their lives battling pot-purveying drug cartels and gangs.

• Second, let’s talk about marijuana policy responsibly and with an eye toward sound science, not myth. We can start by acknowledging that our 1930s-era marijuana prohibition was overkill from the beginning and should be decoupled from any debate about “legalizing drugs.” We should study and disclose the findings of the real health risks of prolonged use, including its influence and effect on juveniles.

• Third, we should give serious consideration to heavy regulation and taxation of the marijuana industry (an industry that is very real and dangerously underground). We should limit pot’s content of the active ingredient THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), regulate its sale to adults who are dumb enough to want it and maintain criminal penalties for sales, possession or use by minors, drivers and boaters.

Pretty strong legalization words for someone who despises marijuana as much as he does.

…

Speaking of Marc Emery, Eric Sterling found something interesting: The Sentencing Memorandum filed by the U.S. Justice Department (Jenny A. Durkan and Todd Greenberg) on August 31, which included this rather unusual statement:

The government’s case was investigated and prosecuted without regard for Emery’s personal politics, his political agenda, or the ways in which he chose to spend the proceeds of his drug crimes.

Yeah, right.

A little defensive sounding. And pretty dramatically at odds with the public statement made by then head of the DEA Karen P. Tandy:

Today’s DEA arrest of Marc Scott Emery, publisher of Cannabis Culture Magazine, and the founder of a marijuana legalization group — is a significant blow not only to the marijuana trafficking trade in the U.S. and Canada, but also to the marijuana legalization movement.

His marijuana trade and propagandist marijuana magazine have generated nearly $5 million a year in profits that bolstered his trafficking efforts, but those have gone up in smoke today.

Emery and his organization had been designated as one of the Attorney General’s most wanted international drug trafficking organizational targets — one of only 46 in the world and the only one from Canada.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars of Emery’s illicit profits are known to have been channeled to marijuana legalization groups active in the United States and Canada. Drug legalization lobbyists now have one less pot of money to rely on.

Washington Post: California’s Prop 19, on legalizing marijuana, could end Mexico’s drug war by Héctor Aguilar Camín and Jorge G. Castañeda

Perspective from Mexico that packs a wallop.

Proposition 19 changes this calculation. For Mexico, California is almost the whole enchilada: Our overall trade with the largest state of the union is huge, an immense number of Californians are of Mexican origin, and an enormous proportion of American visitors to Mexico come from California. Passage of Prop 19 would therefore flip the terms of the debate about drug policy: If California legalizes marijuana, will it be viable for our country to continue hunting down drug lords in Tijuana? Will Wild West-style shootouts to stop Mexican cannabis from crossing the border make any sense when, just over that border, the local 7-Eleven sells pot?

The prospect of California legalizing marijuana coincides with an increasingly animated debate about legalization in Mexico. […]

In addition, legalizing marijuana would free up both human and financial resources for Mexico to push back against the scourges that are often, if not always correctly, attributed to drug traffickers and that constitute Mexicans’ real bane: kidnapping, extortion, vehicle theft, home assaults, highway robbery and gunfights between gangs that leave far too many innocent bystanders dead and wounded. Before Mexico’s current war on drugs started, in late 2006, the country’s crime rate was low and dropping. Freed from the demands of the war on drugs, Mexico could return its energies to again reducing violent crime. […]

Our president will be able to say to yours: “We have paid an enormous price for a war that a majority of the citizens of your most populous and trend-setting state reject. Why don’t we work together, producer and consumer nations alike, to draw a road map leading us away from the equivalent of Prohibition, before we all regret our short-sightedness?”

Copies of this article’s headline with excerpts should probably be heavily distributed in California.

Chief justice nominee blocks school drug tests

In a ruling by California’s chief justice nominee, a state appeals court has barred a school district from drug testing all students in extracurricular activities such as choir, the school band and Future Farmers of America. […]

the Third District Court of Appeal in Sacramento said Thursday that the California Constitution’s guarantee of privacy is more protective of individual rights than the U.S. Constitution and may prohibit the drug screening. […]

“The district has not shown a specialized need to target students participating in (the activities) for drug and alcohol testing,” Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye said in the 3-0 ruling.

She said there was no evidence of a drug problem among students in programs like choir and Future Farmers of America, and little or no evidence that testing them would serve any useful purpose.

Nice to see a little sanity out there.

Governor Jan Brewer — this is the woman who said that most illegal immigrants are smuggling drugs, and who opposed medical marijuana because it’s a gateway drug.

These were her opening remarks. She wasn’t even responding to anything.

Almost painful to watch.

Edit: Removed gratuitous and inappropriate remark on my part about what she did or did not ingest prior to the debate.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein To Chair No On Prop 19

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic former mayor of San Francisco, will co-chair the campaign to defeat Proposition 19, the marijuana legalization initiative on the ballot in November, according to a press release today.

Her co-chair will be L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca.

Mexican Cartel leaders wouldn’t comment on the record, but privately expressed gratitude for her efforts, and noted how much they get a kick out of being on the same team as the California sheriffs.

“In less than two hours, liquor will be declared illegal by decree of the distinguished gentlemen of our nation’s Congress. [raises glass] To those beautiful ignorant bastards!” (“hear, hear!”)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KfUNiFlo4c

Via Radley, and yes, I may need to fire up my DVR as well.

(I am constantly amazed by the fact that some people seem to have a hard time relating drug prohibition with the earlier one in terms of its destruction and corruption… It’s so incredibly obvious! )

DEA announces “historic victory” in the war on drugs

And what exactly is this historic victory?

The San Antonio Police Department has “hit the jackpot.” Today, the Drug Enforcement Administration in San Antonio handed over the largest ever drug forfeiture checks to local law enforcement.

Wednesday, DEA Special Agent Mauricio Fernandez awarded nearly $800 thousand dollars to the San Antonio Police Department. […]

The DEA also wrote a check for more than $3 million dollars to the McMullen County Sheriff’s Office.

See, that’s one of the great things about war. Sure, there’s the killing of the children, and the raping of the women, and the burning of the village, which is all fine, but then… you get to do the looting.

And this is some really good looting… $800,000.00 — $3,000,000.00

The other great thing about loot is that it helps cement the loyalty of the troops. After being rewarded so handsomely, they’ll be the first to volunteer to attack villagers the next time. They’re not going to be swayed by local politicians, or referenda, or public opinion, or… laws.

Their first and only allegiance will be to the provider of all that loot — their benefactor, the DEA.

They’ll be a lot like the Trashcan Man in Steven King’s The Stand…

My life for you! … bumpity bumpity bump…

Via TalkLeft comes a list of the “Top 100 Women in Weed” (compiled by Skunk magazine and listed at CelebStoner) Pleased to see that Jeralyn made the list.

The list is a combination of activists and celebrities who have publicly come out in support of cannabis and/or cannabis law reform.

I’m not a big fan of the word “weed,” but I understand that for a very large portion of the cannabis aficionado crowd, it’s the bee’s knees, it’s hep, and it’s where it’s at.

The original list came in at 114, and then CelebStoner noted an additional critical group that should have been on the list, and I can still see some important omissions (including some very amazing women in the U.S. SSDP ranks).

So I guess the point can be made that this is another area where we have made great strides. To have problems narrowing down the list of public and powerful female activists to 100 in a reform field that has often been dominated by males says something about how that reform field has grown.

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Speaking of changes in the look of the reform field, it’s worth reading Ethan Nadelmann’s piece in The Nation: The Next Frontier Of Drug Policy Reform

The [sentencing disparity] victory also showed that traditional civil rights leaders are finally beginning to prioritize criminal justice reform. Black support for the late-’80s drug war helped legitimize the policies that led to the incarceration of millions of young African-Americans. The dawning realization of what they had wrought led the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Representative Charlie Rangel and then–SCLC president Joseph Lowery to start calling for reform of the crack/powder disparity in the early 1990s — but it never became a priority for them, the NAACP, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights or the CBC. […]

Change is clearly afoot. Black legislators are often at the forefront of sentencing and other drug policy reform efforts in state capitals. Michelle Alexander’s powerful new book, The New Jim Crow, in which she calls out civil rights organizations for failing to grasp that the drug war is accomplishing what Jim Crow once did, is stirring up much-needed debate. And the endorsement of California’s marijuana legalization initiative, Proposition 19, by both Alice Huffman, the influential head of the California NAACP, and the National Black Police Association proves that courageous leadership is possible.

This is an extraordinarily positive, and probably necessary, development.

Shepard Smith: “Are you kidding me? Compared to Oxycontin and Percocet, the side effects of marijuana are serious?”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSyBAacofkM

Study shows cannabis relieves nerve pain. Gee. Yet another piece of science that will be ignored by our government.

An article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal slams the federal government for its efforts to shut down Insite in downtown Vancouver, Canada’s only safe injection site for drug addicts. […]

“We’ve concluded after reviewing the evidence that Insite is doing what it’s supposed to be doing, and furthermore that we’re very concerned that the federal government has misled on the science,” said Dr. Michael Rachlis, a professor of health policy at the University of Toronto.

Surprise, surprise. Another case where the activists have pushed for research and trials and the science has been rejected by a government.

I’ll bet a beer that most of you would have no problem finding a gin and tonic, if booze was illegal today.

Guys like Al Capone would see to that. Big Al, they say, was knocking down $60 million per year in the late 1920s from alcohol alone, during a period when our government brain trust decided the best way to get people to sober up was to pass an 18th Amendment banning the sale, transportation and manufacturing of alcohol in America.

Big Al wasn’t that smart, but he was smart enough to know a sucker when he saw one and Uncle Sam was the biggest sucker of all.

Unfortunately, Uncle Sam doesn’t learn from his mistakes…

My trusty MacBook Pro, which some of you helped me purchase, and which has been doing a wonderful job serving as my blogging platform for the last four years, has come down with a fatal hard drive failure. I’ve got it in to the shop in the hopes that I can keep it alive a while longer with a replacement hard drive. I still have access to other computers, but blogging is going to be a little less convenient than usual for a bit.

This is an open thread.