Drug WarRant

Senate approves medical marijuana bill, sends it to House

A measure legalizing medical marijuana finally made it through the state Senate on Wednesday, but a major hurdle remains before it can become Illinois law.
The Senate voted 30-28 for Senate Bill 1381, giving the measure right at the 30 ‘yes’ votes needed to pass. The measure would allow doctors to prescribe cannabis to patients with diseases like AIDS and glaucoma. […]
The measure now heads to the House. At a statehouse press conference earlier in the year, Rep. Lou Lang said he was unsure how far any medical marijuana measure would get in the House.

Nice quote in the debate from Sen. Mike Jacobs (D-East Moline)

“Do you find it at all interesting that people view drugs made by man as better than drugs made by God?” Jacobs said during debate. “This is something that someone can drop in their backyard and find relief from, and there’s some of us in this chamber that would prefer Oxycontin, morphine; would prefer mommy’s little helper, uppers, downers, all-arounders.”

Elsewhere in the news, John Binny, commander of the State Line Area Narcotics
Team, a law enforcement organization serving Stephenson, Jo Daviess
and other counties in northwest Illinois and southwest Wisconsin, lectures readers about medical issues, scientific research, the proper way to conduct agricultural activities, and, apparently, logic. Logic Eliminates Medical Marijuana
With such a range of expertise, it’s hard to know how he found time to learn how to be a policeman.

Full report at Raw Story

The Democratic Party Committee Abroad, otherwise known as Democrats Abroad, passed a resolution on April 25 recommending the legalization of marijuana in all 50 states.
The news appears to have gone completely unnoticed by all mainstream outlets.
The Democrats Abroad are considered a state party by the Democratic National Committee, which affords them eight elected, voting members. They help U.S. citizens who are traveling and living outside the United States cast ballots in national elections.

So yes, this is a legitimate state party within the Democratic National Committee, now on record for the legalization of marijuana. Here’s the resolution.

WHEREAS,
The Obama Administration has wisely stopped Federal prosecution of marijuana sold for medical purposes in a manner compliant with state regulation, thus alleviating the suffering of cancer patients and others who would benefit from medical marijuana.
Only thirteen states regulate the sale of marijuana for medical purposes.
Criminalization of non-medical uses of marijuana continues to contribute needlessly to organized crime at home and abroad, illicit drug trade, overburdening of the criminal justice system, and diverts valuable criminal justice resources away from more serious crimes.
The Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy heavily criticized U.S. drug policy and called on the U.S. to decriminalize marijuana in a report coinciding with increased drug-trade violence in Mexico;
The dominant argument against liberalized marijuana regulation, the gateway theory, has been consistently disproven, most recently by a RAND Corporation study commissioned by the British Parliament;
According to a World Health Organization survey conducted in 2008, the United States of America has the highest rates of marijuana use in the world.
In the Netherlands, where adult possession and purchase of small amounts of marijuana are allowed under a regulated system, the rate of marijuana use by both teenagers and adults is lower than in the U.S.
55% of Americans believe possession of small amounts of marijuana should not be a criminal offense, according to a 2005 Gallup poll.
In the U.S., almost 90% of more than 9.5 million marijuana-related arrests since 1995 were for simple possession š not manufacture or distribution.
BE IT RESOLVED THAT
We praise the Obama administration for its bold step to make marijuana available for medical purposes,
We call upon states that do not yet provide the reasonable regulation of medical marijuana to do so as soon as possible, to alleviate suffering wherever possible.
We recommend replacing the current policy of marijuana prohibition with a taxed and regulated system modeled on how alcohol is treated in the U.S.

There are a number of versions of this AP article by David Crary article in the papers today around the country, but all of them seem to have the same defect.
They talk about American appetites for drugs, Mexican cartels profiting, and even about supply and demand, but never once mention prohibition as a factor.

The Mexican drug cartels battling viciously to expand and survive have a powerful financial incentive: Across the border to the north is a market for illegal drugs unsurpassed for its wealth, diversity and voraciousness.
Homeless heroin addicts in big cities, ”meth heads” in Midwest trailer parks, pop culture and sports stars, teens smoking marijuana with their baby boomer parents in Vermont Ö in all, 46 percent of Americans 12 and older have indulged in the often destructive national pastime of illicit drug use.
This array of consumers is providing a vast, recession-proof, apparently unending market for the Mexican gangs locked in a drug war that has killed more than 10,780 people since December 2006. No matter how much law enforcement or financial help the U.S. government provides Mexico, the basics of supply and demand prevent it from doing much good.
”The damage done by our insatiable demand for drugs is truly astounding,” said Lloyd Johnston, a University of Michigan researcher who oversees annual drug-use surveys.

Colorful writing with strong statements that lead… nowhere. And again, all of the pieces of the puzzle are there, they just fail to put it together.
For example:

”It’s a drug dealer’s dream Ö sell it in a place where he can make the most money for the risk taken,” said Dr. H. Westley Clark, director of the federal Center for Substance Abuse Treatment. […]
”When the U.S. government turns up the pressure a lot, then is when you see a return to the old formula of saying [to Americans], ‘You also have corruption, you consume the drugs, you’re the biggest drug consumer in the world,’ ” said Jose Luis Pineyro, a sociologist at Mexico’s Autonomous Metropolitan University. […]
”People say, ‘It’s easier for me to get pot than to buy a beer,’ ” said Barbara Cimaglio, deputy commissioner of the state Health Department’s Division of Alcohol and Drug Abuse Programs.

Hello??? Every part of this article points to prohibition, and yet prohibition is never mentioned, let alone what might happen if prohibition were changed or eliminated.
This is irresponsible reporting. Even worse, it’s stupid reporting.
Imagine a sports reporter covering a baseball game, say between the Cubs and the Cardinals, that ended up with the Cubs winning 35-2. He goes on about how each of the Cubs had at least 3 hits (including the pitcher) and how incredibly great they all are at hitting. But he never once mentions the Cardinals’ pitching (or the fact that none of the regular pitchers were even at the ball park having all come down with the flu). He’d probably lose his job as a sports reporter.
And yet, the major newswires do this all the time when it comes to reporting the drug war.

ABUELHAWA v. UNITED STATES
In this case, the defendant purchased a misdemeanor amount of drugs and was arrested. But then the prosecutors decided to pile on — since he had used a cell phone to contact the seller, they charged him with facilitating the sale (a felony). That’s right, they charged him with facilitating his own purchase.
Fortunately, the Supreme Court saw that as just plain silly.
Departing Justice Souter noted:

Where a transaction like a sale necessarily presupposes two parties with specific roles, it would be odd to speak of one party as facilitating the conduct of the other. A buyer does not just make a sale easier; he makes the sale possible. No buyer, no sale; the buyer‰s part is already implied by the term ‹sale,Š and the word ‹facilitateŠ adds nothing. We would not say that the borrower facilitates the bank loan.

Thanks to The Criminal Lawyer, which does a nice job of discussing the decision and has more on it, including this scathing indictment of the prosecutors:

Judgment. It‰s something we require of our prosecutors. They have people‰s lives, liberty and reputations at stake. They have victims who need justice. They work within a system that relies on them to do the right thing. So it is imperative that they have the uncommon sense to do, not what is technically allowable, but what is actually appropriate.
Not every prosecutor lives up to the challenge, of course. But lately the feds have been showing a remarkable lack of judgment. This case is just one of many in recent years where federal prosecutors have committed forehead-smacking acts of WTF.
So we have to aská WTF? Seriously. Federal prosecutors have a well-deserved reputation for being bright, dedicated, hard-working and sensible. But in case after case lately, federal prosecutors have made colossal boners of bad judgment. What‰s going on? Did we change how we hire people? Did the pool of applicants change? Did the internal culture change? We‰d like to know.

Sonia Sotomayor is to be nominated to replace Justice Souter on the Supreme Court.
As far as I can tell, she seems to be a very capable choice. She is intelligent, worked hard to achieve what she has, and she has been a prosecutor, private litigator, trial judge, and appellate judge.
I do not, however, have any real idea how she would lean on drug war-related issues, including the 4th Amendment. I’ve glanced through ScotusBlog’s analysis of her decisions, but it hasn’t shed any particular light so far.
Thoughts?

Like any independent country should have to fight for that right…
Time Magazine has a pretty good article about the battle between the INCB/UN/US and the Andean nations who have used a natural and healthful plant for thousands of years — coca.

The latest affront, they say, is a recommendation this month from the UN’s drug enforcement watchdog, the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), that Bolivia and Peru criminalize the practice of chewing coca and drinking its tea. The move has provoked widespread anger and street protests in the two countries, especially among the majority indigenous populations. For them, coca has been a cultural cornerstone for 3,000 years, as much a part of daily life as coffee in the U.S.

This is not bad for Time. While it gives more credulity to the INCB and the U.S. than they deserve, the article does point out the shortcomings in their arguments, and shows Peru and Bolivia as the reasonable ones in this debate.

Link

The Dutch Justice Ministry reports it was forced to close down eight prisons, which will result in some 1,200 penal system staff members being laid off.
During the 1990s, the Netherlands was faced with a lack of prison capacities, but now it has virtually no prisoners.
Some 12,000 prisoners are serving their sentence at Dutch prisons, while there is room for 14,000, which is why deputy Justice Minister Nebahat Albayrak announced the closure of eight correctional institutions, saying that everyone who will lose their job because of this move would be taken care of.
The Ministry assessed that the crime rates would continue to drop in the Netherlands and it is negotiating with Belgium regarding taking on a part of its criminals as it recorded an increase of crime rates.

Those poor prison workers.
Fortunately, here in the U.S., we have over 2 million prisoners, and lots of taxpayer supported prison jobs.

For years there has been a national push to get schools to implement suspicion-less random drug testing for those in extra-curricular activities, supported by grants from the federal government, and promoted heavily by the Drug Czar’s office.
This is not only wrong, but it’s a stupid policy — one that is likely to be counter-productive.
Basically the view of the schools has been: We must institute a policy that is expensive, demeans students, infringes on their rights, has been empirically proven not to work, and makes no sense… and we’ll do it for the children.
Fortunately, not all schools are falling for it.
Here’s a school that’s attempting to implement testing, but at least has come to part of their senses.

Initially, the committee had focused on developing a random drug testing policy for students involved in extracurricular activities, such as athletics, band and school clubs.
Of late, though, the committee has suspended that angle.
“Essentially, we felt that policy would not bring the ends that we were looking for,” said Brown.
Pursuing that form of a policy would only allow a limited number of students to be tested, he said.
And the students most in danger of falling victim to drug abuse are often those uninvolved in extracurricular activities, thus exempting them from drug testing, he said.
“We’re not getting help to those most desperately in need,” he said.
As an alternative, Brown said, the committee is exploring a more focused, “suspicion-based” testing program.
The focus will now be on “fringe” students perceived to be in danger.
Brown said that assessment would be backed up by certain statutory criteria, such as attendance and discipline records.

While it’s still likely to end up too broad, at least this is a step in the right direction – clear documented suspicion-based criteria that doesn’t penalize the average student for being involved (and importantly, doesn’t inculcate in students the notion that submitting to suspicion-less humiliation is a normal part of citizenship).
I’d like to think that the Caldwell County school district has heard some of the critiques given by drug policy reformers about suspicion-less drug testing.

I didn’t even know if I wanted to tackle this one (it can be tiring hitting the same points over and over), but it’s a major editorial and it needs to be taken down a peg.
Christian Science Monitor Editorial Board: Legalize marijuana? Not so fast.

The push toward full legalization is a well-organized, Internet-savvy campaign, generously funded by a few billionaires, including George Soros.

Thanks for the compliments — yes, we’re definitely internet-savvy, much more so than our opponents. And then, yes, that generously funded swipe. Sure, all the funding that drug policy reform groups get is generous. But compared to the entire federal budget aimed at promoting prohibition? It is mere peanuts.
Now the Monitor takes aim at marijuana itself.

A harmless drug? Supporters of legalization often claim that no one has died of a pot overdose, and that it has beneficial effects in alleviating suffering from certain diseases.
True, marijuana cannot directly kill its user in the way that alcohol or a drug like heroin can. And activists claim that it may ease symptoms for certain patients — though it has not been endorsed by the major medical associations representing those patients, and the Food and Drug Administration disputes its value.
Rosalie Pacula, codirector of the Rand Drug Policy Research Center, poses this question: “If pot is relatively harmless, why are we seeing more than 100,000 hospitalizations a year” for marijuana use?
Emergency-room admissions where marijuana is the primary substance involved increased by 164 percent from 1995 to 2002 — faster than for other drugs, according to the Drug Abuse Warning Network.

First of all, why does Rand continue to employ this lying embarrassment — Rosalie Pacula? She makes Rand look like some third-rate political action group rather than a research institution. This isn’t the first time she’s blatantly lied to promote marijuana prohibition.
We are NOT seeing 100,000 hospitalizations a year for marijuana use. That is an outright lie.
Radical Russ over at NORML stash takes Pacula on:

The way Rosalie puts it, you‰d think 100,000 people were running into the ER and screaming, ‹Quick, doctor! I need help! I‰ve taken marijuana and I think I‰m going to die!Š (in four years of doing this, I‰ve only heard one such caseá)
But the fact is that these DAWN statistics just survey the drugs people admit to using or what is detected in their body when they are admitted to the emergency room. DAWN doesn‰t measure the cause of why someone‰s in the hospital. If you smoked a joint, went to a restaurant, sat down for dinner and had the server accidentally drop scalding hot coffee in your lap, and you went to the hospital for the burns, and when asked, admitted you had smoked a joint that day, cha-ching, that‰s a ‹marijuana [as] the primary substance involvedŠ in that admission. You might as well say iPods are harmful, because the number of people admitted to hospitals that own an iPod has skyrocketed since 1995.

The Monitor continues…

Research results over the past decade link frequent marijuana use to several serious mental health problems, with youth particularly at risk.

Was that with legal marijuana or illegal marijuana? Were there age restrictions? How large a percent of the population? Can you prove causation? Ahhh, you don’t want to talk about that, do you?

And the British Lung Foundation finds that smoking three to four joints is the equivalent of 20 tobacco cigarettes.

Wait a second! Studies have shown that smoking marijuana doesn’t lead to lung cancer. Is the British Lung Foundation claiming that smoking 20 tobacco cigarettes won’t lead to lung cancer? Interesting.

While marijuana is not addictive in the way that a drug like crack-cocaine is, heavy use can lead to dependence — defined by the same criteria as for other drugs. About half of those who use pot daily become dependent for some period of time, writes Kevin Sabet, in the 2006 book, “Pot Politics”

Sounds ominous. But it’s completely ridiculous. You could as well say:

While video games are not addictive in the way that a drug like crack-cocaine is, heavy use can lead to dependence – defined by the same criteria as for other drugs. About half of those who play video games daily become dependent for some period of time… While chocolate milk is not addictive in the way that a drug like crack-cocaine is, heavy use can lead to dependence – defined by the same criteria as for other drugs. About half of those who drink chocolate milk daily become dependent for some period of time…

Just as valid.

He adds that physicians in Britain and the Netherlands — both countries that have experience with relaxed marijuana laws — are seeing withdrawal symptoms among heavy marijuana users that are similar to those of cocaine and heroin addicts. This has been confirmed in the lab with monkeys.

Now that’s just hilarious.

Dr. Smallwood, I believe that marijuana user may have just exhibited a symptom similar to that of a cocaine or heroin addict.
Blimy, Dr. Van Wijk, you may be right, but I can’t tell for sure. Let’s go to the lab and ask the monkeys.

Similar symptoms? What does that mean?

Today’s marijuana is also much more potent than in the hippie days of yesteryear.

Ah, those hippie days of yesteryear when we smoked stems. Didn’t anybody watch
Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In? Somebody on the writing staff back then had to have had some pretty potent pot.

But that doesn’t change what’s always been known about even casual use of this drug: It distorts perception, reduces motor skills, and affects alertness.

That’s kind of the point.
The Monitor goes on to some of the other stale arguments brought up in recent days…

• Legalization of marijuana wouldn’t help Mexico because the cartels would still have the other drugs. Yep, no point in reducing their income at all, unless we can reduce all of it at once. That’s nonsensical.
• Nobody’s really in jail for marijuana possession so there’s no need to legalize it. Since most of those apprehended don’t go to jail, it can’t really be that much of a bother to them. More nonsense — just ask those who have lost financial aid, jobs, children, homes, cars, etc., etc.
• It’s unlikely that we’ll raise $1.3 billion in taxes from legalization, so why bother? Besides, the black market will undercut it and so you won’t reduce the black market (yeah, like the black market for avoiding cigarette taxes is as violent as the black market for illegal drugs.)

A government could attempt to eliminate the black market altogether by making marijuana incredibly cheap (Dr. Pacula at the RAND Organization says today’s black market price is about four times what it would be if pot were completely legalized). But then use would skyrocket and teens (though barred) could buy it with their lunch money.

Lunch money. Yeah, that’s a nice one. Why don’t you try something like “babies will be able trade their mashed peas for it”? And that skyrocketing use? Care to cite some proof?

Indeed, legalizing marijuana is bound to increase use simply because of availability. Legalization advocates say “not so” and point to the Netherlands and its legal marijuana “coffee shops.” Indeed, after the Dutch de facto legalized the drug in 1976, use stayed about the same for adults and youth. But it took off after 1984, growing by 300 percent over the next decade or so. Experts attribute this to commercialization (sound like alcohol?), and also society’s view of the drug as normal š which took a while to set in.

Experts? Commercialization? Coffee shops? Care to mention that rates are still well below the U.S.?

As America has learned with alcohol, taxes don’t begin to cover the costs to society of destroyed families, lost productivity, and ruined lives š and regulators still have not succeeded in keeping alcohol from underage drinkers.

Because marijuana behavior is just like alcohol behavior, right?

No one has figured out what the exact social costs of legalizing marijuana would be. But ephemeral taxes won’t cover them — nor should society want to encourage easier access to a drug that can lead to dependency, has health risks, and reduces alertness, to name just a few of its negative outcomes.

Well, since we don’t know what it’ll cost and whether problem use will increase at all, we should continue to spend billions of dollars arresting people who are not having a problem with marijuana and not actually address the issue of those who do. Sounds incredibly stupid.

[Parents] must let lawmakers know that legalization is not OK, and they must carry this message to their children, too. Disapproval, along with information on risk, are the most important factors in discouraging marijuana and cocaine use among high school seniors, according to the University of Michigan’s “Monitoring the Future” project on substance abuse.

Now this is really messed up. Parents should tell their children that legalization is not OK? Not that drugs are not OK, but that legalization is not OK? Wow.

Today’s youth are tomorrow’s world problem solvers — and the ones most likely to be affected if marijuana is legalized. Future generations need to be clear thinkers. For their sakes, those who oppose legalizing marijuana must become vocal, well-funded, and mainstream — before it’s too late.

Sorry, Christian Science Monitor, but it’s too late. All the clear thinkers are on our side.

I must confess to being confused by the amount of apparent surprise that has greeted Gil Kerlikowske’s recent statements that he is opposed to legalization.
Of course he is. He just got a new job – a government job that has Congressional oversight. And the job description for that new job, well, it wasn’t a handshake and a promise, it wasn’t a typed memo — no, it was written into law by Congress and specifically includes:

“… and take such actions as necessary to oppose any attempt to legalize the use of a substance (in any form) that … is listed in schedule 1…. and has not been approved for use … by the Food and Drug Administration”

So, of course he’s going to say he’s against legalization. It’s his job. I don’t know if it’s his personal view or not, but it certainly is his job to say it.
And, for the most part so far, Kerlikowske is treating the question like someone who’s job it is to answer a particular way. “Legalization isn’t in my vocabulary,” “Legalization isn’t on the plate,” “Legalization isn’t an option,” etc.
If Walters got the question, he’d go on at length with detailed plausible-sounding (but still full of crap) reasons why marijuana should remain illegal. Kerlikowske offers up weak-ass nonsense and then merely retreats into “I’m not going to talk about it.” Maybe it’s because he doesn’t have his repertoire built up yet, but it may also be that he just doesn’t care – and as long as he’s said legalization isn’t an option, he’s covered.
Take a look at this exchange again:

Q: Marijuana. Do you support legalization of marijuana?
Kerlikowske: No.
Q: And why is that?
Kerlikowske: It’s a dangerous drug.
Q: Now, why is it a dangerous drug?
Kerlikowske: It is a dangerous drug. There are numbers of calls to hotlines for people requesting help from marijuana. A number of people that have been arrested, and we test people and have data on this, that are arrested throughout the country, come in to the system with marijuana in their system, as arrests.
Q: But that’s — you were talking to me before about causality and correlation.
Kerlikowske: Right
Q: So why is — I mean, you could probably say that about sugar, caffeine, and, I don’t know, bubble gum. Maybe not bubble gum.
Kerlikowske: I would tell you this – that the legalization vocabulary doesn’t exist for me, and it certainly was made clear that it does not exist in President Obama’s vocabulary.

Doesn’t sound like a true believer to me.
If we ever want the ‘drug czar’ to stop opposing legalization, we need to change the language in Congress, and Kerlikowske could be giving us the opening to do that.
Everybody these days is calling for the discussion — yes, even politicians!
If Kerlikowske was giving compelling reasons against legalization (assuming such existed), then it could be a problem, but by merely saying “I’m not going to talk about it” (or “it’s not in my vocabulary”), he makes it obvious (or gives us the opportunity to make it obvious) that the authorizing language is preventing the discussion that everyone wants.
It’s then easy to make the case to Congress that the Director can hardly “assist in the establishment of policies, goals, objectives, and priorities for the National Drug Control Program” if he doesn’t even have all the vocabulary.
Personally, I love the “not in my vocabulary” line — it’s a great one to ridicule, and, if the one person in this country who has the most direct and specific employment reason to oppose legalization can’t get any more enthused than that, then our opposition is pretty weak.