Drug WarRant

Links to all the testimony from the California legalization hearing.

Parents wake up and decide that they may not be so happy after all with having someone watch their child pee.

More Evidence That Vaporization Works by Bruce Mirken

The article also provides some new practical information on vaporization, suggesting that a temperature of 230 degrees Celsius is ideal, and that using smaller amounts of marijuana in the vaporizer produces more vapor, but does not extract THC more efficiently, so there is no apparent gain in using an amount less than about half a gram at a time.

Pot Is More Mainstream Than Ever, So Why Is Legalization Still Taboo? by Steve Wishnia

More members of Congress have publicly questioned whether President Barack Obama was born in Hawaii than have endorsed legalizing marijuana.

Sad.

To win that support, St. Pierre says, the legalization movement needs to sustain grassroots activism and become more multiracial instead of being almost all-white and mainly male. Advancing legalization would also need the support of charismatic politicians early in their careers, as “it’s impossible to flip a 50- or 60-year-old alpha male in Washington.” […]

“We have not achieved the political legitimacy of the gay and lesbian community,” he concludes. “As long as 0.1 percent of cannabis consumers are involved with their own liberation, reform is unlikely.” If just 1 percent of the nation’s estimated 36 million pot smokers would get involved, he says, that would be a constituency of 360,000 activists.

How’s that big fence working?

SAN MIGUEL, Ariz. — A pickup truck in Mexico pulls up to the 5-foot vehicle barriers that make up part of the multibillion-dollar border fence. A retractable ramp is extended from the truck, forming a bridge up and over the barriers.

Then, a second pickup — this one loaded with a ton of marijuana — rolls over the bridge and into the U.S.

With gadgetry such as custom-built ramps as well as ultralight planes, false doors and good old-fashioned duct tape, smugglers have demonstrated unbounded creativity when it comes to sneaking drugs across the Mexican border. And the U.S. government acknowledges there is only so much it can do to stop the flow. [AP]

Thought so.

DEA to the elderly: be sure to schedule your pain for times of the day when we allow pain medication to be distributed.

DrugSense Weekly – a weekly review of the most interesting or relevant articles in the press and on the web related to drug policy reform.

Drug War Chronicle – weekly update of drug war news and analysis from Stop the Drug War.org.

Shootingthe Messenger

The UK’s chief drugs adviser has been sacked by Home Secretary Alan Johnson, after criticising government policies.

Professor David Nutt, head of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, criticised the decision to reclassify cannabis to Class B from C.

What I really love is the reason given by the home secretary:

“I cannot have public confusion between scientific advice and policy and have therefore lost confidence in your ability to advise me as chair of the ACMD.

“I would therefore ask you to step down from the Council with immediate effect.”

Got that? Can’t have “science” mucking up the policy we’ve decided we want. Those pesky facts keep getting in the way of our bad policy.

Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne said the decision to sack the adviser had been “disgraceful”.

“What is the point of having independent scientific advice if as soon as you get some advice that you don’t like, you sack the person who has given it to you?” he said.

Mr Huhne said if the government did not want to take expert scientific advice, it might as well have “a committee of tabloid newspaper editors to advise on drugs policy”.

I thought that’s what they had — although it seemed to me like there was just one: the editor of the Daily Mail.

In other news across the pond (and yes, this is actually reported in the Mail), it seems that British police got themselves a pretty new asset forfeiture law a few years back, and, wanting to cash in like their American counterparts have been doing regularly in the war on drugs, decided to take this law to lengths undreamt of…

After being turned down at least once by a judge and shopping around for one that didn’t know enough about the law and would give them the warrant, they raided a series of public safe deposit vaults at once, and broke open all 6,717 safe deposit boxes, taking all the cash (53 million pounds), jewelry, and lots of other valuables. They then assumed that all were the result of illegal activities and required the owners to prove otherwise.

Some of the contents just vanished in the procedural maze, never to be seen again.

One goldsmith from north London fought for over a year to get his £40,000 cash and valuables back, then claimed it was not all there. He has now filed an official complaint.

‘The police kept saying, “Why have you got all this cash?” and I showed them my books.’

His premises were raided twice, the second time by 20 officers.
‘They found nothing because I had done nothing and eventually this summer, everything was returned to me. But £10,000 was gone – and my wife’s diamond earrings.’

Sure, there were definitely illegal items in some of the boxes (cocaine, etc.) But it’s now looking like the vast majority was seized from innocent victims of the police raid.

Of the 6,717 boxes targeted by detectives in the biggest raid in the Met’s history, just over half were occupied. And of those that were full, 2,838 boxes were now handed back, a figure that represents 80 per cent of the number of boxes seized.

Eight out of ten box owners were provably innocent. Taylor said: ‘Of the £53 million in cash that the police took, £20 million has also been given back and £33 million is now being referred to as “under investigation”, of which only £2.83 million has been confiscated or forfeited by the courts.

Many of the innocent victims had the resources to retain very good lawyers.

In fact, the operation may end up costing the taxpayer a fortune. Rize has certainly helped put a number of hard-line criminals behind bars, but at what cost?

And, of course, it’s not just a financial cost. There is the huge cost in the lack of confidence in a government that can step in and steal your stuff whenever they want.

Via Radley’s tweet, here is what some prohibitionists apparently think is a good argument for continuing prohibition.

Joint Cause Commercial from Wil Wells on Vimeo.

Seriously? That’s the best you’ve got?

This is from CADFY (Community Alliances for Drug Free Youth), who have this gem of a response regarding the relative dangers of marijuana and alcohol…

The pro-legalization supporters will say:

“Marijuana is safer than alcohol, yet it’s illegal.”

The truth:

• If we applied that standard, alcohol would be illegal and crack-cocaine would be legal, since alcohol use trumps all other drugs with respect to its contribution to violent crime.
• Alcohol, unlike marijuana or any other illegal drug, has a long, wide-spread history of use in Western culture, dating back to the Old Testament and Ancient Rome.
• Yes, marijuana has been used for a while, but not in a broad, wide-spread manner like alcohol.

Wow.

Here’s the group at a press conference prior to the California hearings on legalization. This looks like the cast of extras in a Mel Brooks movie.

Untitled from Wil Wells on Vimeo.

Note that they’re all wearing the “Seriously?” buttons.

After the recent appearance on ABC, where George Will mentioned that he thought legalization of marijuana is in process in the U.S., he has written a new column which is in papers all over the country: A bit of reality on drug use

It’s supposedly about Kerlikowske, but it’s broader than that. Not a whole lot that’s directly quotable, but Will’s quotes from The Economist magazine, and his references to tobacco and alcohol (along with failures of prohibition in various areas), make it clear that reform is the answer.

An historic event yesterday

No tie-dye was on display at a standing-room only hearing held by a California lawmaker on Wednesday in a bid to get his marijuana legalization bill taken seriously.

Instead, suits and sober discussion were the rule at the state Capitol as Assemblyman Tom Ammiano presided over what his office said was the first legislative consideration of the issue since California banned the drug in 1913.

I don’t know what’s going to happen with this bill, and I still think that it’s a long shot, but there’s never been a better time for it.

And even though this is obviously true, it was nice to see it mentioned…

Legal experts on both sides also agreed at the informational hearing that nothing in current federal law can prevent California from stripping criminal penalties for marijuana from its own books.

“If California decides to legalize marijuana, there’s nothing in the Constitution that stands in its way,” said Tamar Todd, a staff attorney for the pro-legalization Drug Policy Alliance.

This particular article did have a couple of annoying notes, one of which came from the Rand Corporation’s embarrassing Rosalie Pacula.

Rosalie Pacula, director of drug policy research at the nonpartisan Rand Corp., said data on the economics of marijuana were “insufficient on which to base any sound policy.”

Now, since we’ve had no modern version of legalization, that’s true enough, but that’s not a very good reason for continuing on a destructive path.

She continues…

Pacula said a failed effort in Canada to increase taxes on cigarettes showed that unless taxes had a minimal effect on prevailing prices, “you create the economic incentive for the black market to remain.”

There is a significant difference between nature and scope of the black market caused by high taxes and the black market caused by prohibition. Any “economist” who fails to note that is either stupid or willfully attempting to deceive their audience.

Note: I’ve written about Pacula before, more than once.

Back to yesterday’s event… Paul Armentano provides the testimony he gave at the hearing.

Also, YouTube video of James P. Gray’s testimony.

I don’t promote other blogs very often, and I probably should do a better job of reminding people about some of the excellent drug policy reform blogs out there, so I’m feeling a bit embarrassed about giving a link to Marijuana News, which is really quite new, having started up this month.

But when a blog that young can come up with writing like this…

George Soros tells us we should legalize marijuana altogther for our pleasure. Its less harmful than tobacco and alcohol. Are we as a society that gullable? The damages caused by alcohol and tobacco is unfathomable and yet we are seriously considering adding another substance to the list.

Is our society heading towards a true Sci-fi/Thriller existence, where everyone is stonned while the puppetiers control our lives?

… and it has a comments section… How can I resist?

How often do we get the intense pleasure of finding a prohibitionist with a comments section? Sure, this blogger is anonymous, but still…

Now, please, please, please don’t ruin the fun for everyone else and scare him/her away with heavy-handed vitriol. Keep it to light banter if you can.

I was reading an interesting post over at Dr. Tom O’Connell: Pot Prohibition’s Ultimate Absurdity

…how could a policy as ludicrous and destructive as marijuana prohibition have been endorsed by the whole world? The answer turns out to be critically important, embarrassing, and even more absurd than the policy itself.

In 1937, the “reefer madness” fantasy of a single uneducated bureaucrat named Harry Jacob Anslinger, with a big assist from the Hearst Newspaper chain, became the basis of a deceptive tax law that had the net effect of subjecting all the products of the hemp plant to criminal prohibition. The excuse used to justify that legislative sleight-of-hand was both highly imaginative and totally bereft of pharmacological validation, even by the comparatively primitive standards of 1937. Most notably missing was any clinical research on the effects of either inhaled or orally ingested cannabis on humans; nor were there any economic or demographic data on the use of what was then a legal product listed in the US Pharmacopeia.

The whole post is a good read, and pretty much lays the entire thing at the feet of Anslinger (aided by Hearst, et al, of course).

So it got me thinking… and I thought I’d get my loyal readers involved:

1. Would marijuana be illegal today if it wasn’t for Anslinger?
2. If you could go back in time and talk with him (and maybe show him something?), what would you do/say? (no violence, now)
3. (Particularly for the science fiction fans…) If marijuana had not been made illegal at the federal level, how would the world be different today?

Via ASA: Medical Marijuana “Truth in Trials” Bill Introduced in House

U.S. Representative Sam Farr (D-CA), and a bipartisan group of his colleagues, re-introduced the “Truth in Trials” bill in the U.S. House of Representatives today.

The “Truth in Trials” Act establishes an affirmative defense for individuals who are authorized to use and provide medical cannabis in accordance with state and local law. Under the provisions of the bill, patients and their caregivers would be permitted to introduce evidence for the court’s consideration which may demonstrate compliance with a state medical marijuana law.

Ask your U.S. Representative to become a cosponsor of the “Truth in Trials” Act.

Via MPP: Calif. Assembly Weighs Legalizing Marijuana, 1st Time Since 1913

On Wednesday, the California Assembly Public Safety Committee will hold a historic hearing on the implications of taxing and regulating marijuana similarly to alcoholic beverages.

The informational hearing marks the first time California’s legislature has considered ending marijuana prohibition since California first banned marijuana in 1913.

Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco), chair of the committee, is author of AB 390, the Marijuana Control, Regulation, and Education Act. A press conference will precede the hearing.

The following people will speak at the press conference: Assemblyman Tom Ammiano; Aaron Smith, Marijuana Policy Project; Stephen Gutwillig, Drug Policy Alliance; and Dale Gieringer, California NORML.

We’re seeing all sorts of shifts in the media on drug policy, as talk of legalization has almost become the norm. That may be causing confusion among some editorial staffs.

It certainly seems that way with yesterday’s editorial in the Washington Post. It’s a prime example of something that looks like it was written by a committee… that was arguing.

THE JUSTICE Department announced last week that it would not prosecute patients who legally obtain marijuana from licensed dispensaries in the 13 states that allow medicinal use. The decision is both sensible and potentially problematic.

People suffering from HIV/AIDS, cancer, multiple sclerosis and other serious ailments should not be harassed or live in fear if they abide by the laws of their state to obtain a drug that may provide relief from such symptoms as pain and nausea. Neither should those who strictly follow legal standards in dispensing marijuana from state-licensed shops. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is right to focus federal resources primarily on large-scale illegal traffickers.

So far, so good. Nice support for leaving medical marijuana patients in those states alone. Next paragraph takes an odd turn.

Yet this policy shift leaves significant questions unaddressed, including whether the Justice Department’s decision essentially constitutes a first step toward legalizing marijuana. Such an immense policy decision should not be ushered in surreptitiously, but should be tackled head-on, with a full-throated public debate about the possible benefits and consequences.

Unaddressed? No, the policy memo and all the follow-ups from the administration were clear — the policy doesn’t even begin to legalize medical marijuana on a federal level, let alone legalizing marijuana in general. There is no surreptitious effort on the part of the federal government to legalize marijuana without a debate. The public’s been debating it and has been slowly and laboriously dragging the politicians into the right direction for years.

Now the editorial goes back to medical marijuana.

More information — good old-fashioned scientific information — is needed before the federal government or more states formally endorse marijuana smoking for medicinal use. The Institute of Medicine, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, in 1999 published what is widely considered to be the most comprehensive study; it was decidedly mixed, listing the many possible drawbacks of smoking marijuana, including respiratory problems, while noting that such use seemed to provide some patients with relief not obtained from pills containing marijuana’s active ingredients.

We’ve had all sorts of good old-fashioned scientific information since the 1999 report, including the fact that (gasp!) it’s actually possible to ingest marijuana without smoking it. Besides, the federal government and the states don’t need to formally endorse medical marijuana. They only need to stop preventing doctors from treating patients.

More recently, Dr. Peter J. Cohen, an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, noted in a 2009 law review article that reputable studies released in the past few years showed that patients with AIDS and hepatitis C experienced reduced pain and nausea and were better able to tolerate traditional treatment as a result of smoking marijuana. Yet these preliminary results — as Dr. Cohen points out — have not been subjected to rigorous testing by the Food and Drug Administration. The reason: A manufacturer must submit the drug for review before the FDA will tackle the assignment. So far, no such “manufacturer” has come forward.

Uh, yeah. The FDA is not a proper route for marijuana since it’s a plant and there’s no payoff for a single company to go through the expense of FDA approval. So in other words, the good old-fashioned science that you say need to happen has been happening, but the federal government has been unable or unwilling to handle it.

The medical marijuana controversy may be moot in the near future because of a drug known as Sativex, a spray mist approved for conditional use in Canada and the United Kingdom that delivers the active ingredients found in marijuana. If cleared by the FDA, patients will have some confidence that it is safe and effective. Patients have the right to know if the same can be said about smoked marijuana.

Sativex is not a drug that delivers the active ingredients found in marijuana. Sativex is marijuana, simply extracted into liquid form. If the FDA clears that, it’s going to be pretty hard for them to keep the hard line against the plant.

Hey, it’s not a bad editorial for the Washington Post. And it makes a lot of the right noises about the directions we should be headed. But I was definitely amused by their confusion.

After years of UK governments studiously ignoring every scientific report about drug policy, a home affairs select committee hearing, chaired by Keith Vaz, turned to the real expert: Amy Winehouse’s dad.

Marina Hyde has a very amusing take on it at the Guardian:

In light of this week’s efforts, Vaz can only be a hologram sent from the future specifically to plunge early 21st-century Britons into shame at the rancid state of their politics. OK, deeper shame.

On Tuesday, this mission took the form of inviting Amy Winehouse’s father to give evidence before his committee’s hearing into the cocaine trade – about which Mr Winehouse immediately confirmed he knew nothing. A cabbie by profession, he appeared to have been elevated to the status of expert witness on the basis of his daughter’s heroin addiction, and his fronting of a forthcoming documentary.

This is how politicians work. Side-shows and distractions. And Marina notes how similar it is to the antics of U.S. politicians…

In the US this practice has long been out of hand. The rot began in 1985 when Jane Fonda, Sally Field and Sissy Spacek were called as expert witnesses before a congressional hearing entitled The Plight of the Family Farmer. They’d all played farm wives in movies, you see. Forced to pick the nadir of such “expert” appearances, I’d cite Elmo from Sesame Street appearing before a house committee on children’s education. According to one congressman: “Elmo, in many ways, speaks for children everywhere.” No. Elmo is made of fun-fur.

A fun piece that’s also sad in its truth.