Drug WarRant

“bullet” It’s nice to know that we’re not the only place that does really stupid drug war stuff.
In Manila, authorities were spray-painting warnings on the houses of suspected drug “personalities.” This generated some criticism from human rights advocates (you think?). So…

Rosales explained that instead of spray-painting warnings on the houses of the suspected drug personalities, authorities will instead mark the words “This is a drug-free home” on the houses of residents proven to be free from substance abuse.

What are they trying to do? Recreate Exodus 12 and passover?
“bullet” BC Court rules medical marijuana program unconstitutional

Justice Marvyn Koenigsberg gave Ottawa a year to fix the medical-marijuana access regulations so compassion clubs or producers can get together and run a common marijuana-growing operation.
At the moment, the federal government restricts any licensed grower to supplying only one licensed user and prohibits more than three growers from pooling resources.
Both those restrictions are unconstitutional, Koenigsberg said.

“bullet” Kellogg is dropping Michael Phelps. There are a lot of good cereals available from General Mills and Post (plus, in this economy, generic and store brand substitutes are a great idea).
“bullet” Oh, and you know that Sheriff Lott who wants to prosecute Phelps for being in a picture with a glass tube? This is him.
“bullet” Phelps given meaningless 3 month suspension

“This is not a situation where any anti-doping rule was violated, but we decided to send a strong message to Michael because he disappointed so many people”

“bullet” Sumo wrestler kicked out for marijuana use

“bullet” Atrios

Watching a reporter make Michael Phelps grovel it occurs to me that the media really are about 10 years behind the country on so many issues.

“bullet” New York Sentencing Commission released a report calling for reforms to New York’s notoriously harsh Rockefeller drug laws. The fact that reforms are being called for is a good thing. But indications are that it’s a pretty weak effort:

[Drug Policy Alliance’s Gabriel Sayegh rejected the report as a “damn paperweight” that basically “rearranges the deck chairs on the Titanic at a cost of half a billion dollars to New Yorkers.” […]

“Not only does it not include real reforms to the Rockefeller Drug Laws, but it takes a step backward,” Sayegh continued. “The commission acted as though the political climate we’re in is not happening. It’s like they drafted this thing from a cave.”

“bullet” “drcnet”

Mindy Herrick has taught at Roberts Elementary for 17 years. She sounds like one of most incredible and inspirational teachers ever. In 2006-7, she was teacher of the year for the entire school district. Read the article and you’ll find the amazing stuff about her just continues and continues.
The School District decided (for no reason) to check on teachers and drugs, so they brought in a drug sniffing dog to the teacher’s parking log. The dog alerted to one car. Nothing there. The dog alerted to a second car. Nothing there. The dog alerted to a third car. Mindy’s. They searched her car and found a baggie with two Xanax pills….
Yeah, I’m thinking the same thing. The dog makes two false ID’s on other cars and then manages to smell two bills in a plastic bag inside a car? Right. Sounds more like the dog gave the police 3 free searches.
Mindy says she doesn’t know where the pills came from (other people drive her car) and she passed a drug test and a lie detector test and asked to have the bag checked for fingerprints to prove that she never touched it.
But for now, Mindy isn’t allowed to teach, and she has been charged with possession of a controlled substance within 1,000 feet of a school and could get 10 years if convicted.

Herrick‰s classroom door is covered with kids‰ drawings. ‹We love you, Ms. Herrick!Š says one with a big heart. In big letters, another declares, ‹We miss you!Š

It’s, you know, for the kids.

Because you need to talk about other things, too.
What do you want to talk about regarding drug policy that doesn’t involve the President or administration?

Well, the White House didn’t say that exactly, but read between the lines…
In today’s Washington Times

The White House said it expects those kinds of raids to end once Mr. Obama nominates someone to take charge of DEA, which is still run by Bush administration holdovers.
‹The president believes that federal resources should not be used to circumvent state laws, and as he continues to appoint senior leadership to fill out the ranks of the federal government, he expects them to review their policies with that in mind,” White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said.

Bruce Mirken says:

While more ringing language might have been nice, the intent is clear enough: Hey DEA, the president says it‰s time to stop attacking the sick. Got it?

According to a California NORML press release:

While the DEA continues to stage medical marijuana raids in California, nearly three-quarters of voters think President Obama should honor his campaign pledge to end the raids, according to a poll of 1,053 likely voters by Zogby International.
In a question sponsored by NORML, voters were asked: During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama said he would stop federal raids against medical marijuana providers in the 13 states where medical marijuana has become legal. Should President Obama keep his word to end such raids?
Response:

• Yes – 72%
• No – 21%
• Not sure – 7%.

Yes votes outnumbered No by over 2 to 1 in all geographic, political, and demographic groups. The poll, conducted Jan 29-31, had a margin error of +/-3.1%.

The question is, of course, designed to encourage a “Yes” vote (that’s not unusual in commissioned polls), but it’s still an impressive number and very useful to make a good point.

If you’re attacked by cops, that is.
The verdict is in on the Ryan Frederick case.

The jury deliberated over two days before convicting Frederick of voluntary manslaughter and finding him not guilty of more serious homicide offenses, including capital murder. […]
The jury also convicted Frederick of simple marijuana possession, which carries a penalty of up to 30 days in jail and a fine. The jury acquitted him of a more serious manufacturing and distribution charge.

As always, the best place for all the info on this case is The Agitator.

Yes, there have been a lot of ridiculous columns by entertainment and sports journalists about how Michale Phelps “shames us all” for his horrible action in taking a bong hit, but it’s been entertaining to me to read the comments to most of these articles and see the journalists being torn a new one by the public.
Some of them have been quite astonished that their readers weren’t supporting them in their ritual condemnation of Phelps. Hilarious.
Here’s a couple of delightful instances where the writers got it right.
Andrew Stuttaford at National Review Online’s the corner

Look, I don’t blame Michael Phelps for apologizing. He has a living to earn, so he did what he had to do.

In the meantime, I merely note that this broken wreck of a man’s failure to win any more than a pathetic fourteen Olympic gold medals (so far) is a terrifying warning of the horrific damage that cannabis can do to someone’s healthÖand a powerful reminder of just how sensible the drug laws really are.

And then, a clear must-read is Kathleen Parker in today’s Washington Post: Phelps Takes a Hit
She’s on fire:

And the law is the law. Therein lies the problem.

Our marijuana laws have been ludicrous for as long as we’ve been alive. Almost half of us (42 percent) have tried marijuana at least once, according to a report published last year in PLoS Medicine, a journal of the Public Library of Science.

The U.S., in fact, boasts the highest percentage of pot smokers among 17 nations surveyed, including The Netherlands, where cannabis clouds waft from coffeehouse windows. […]

Other better-known former tokers include our current president and a couple of previous ones, as well as a Supreme Court justice, to name just a few. A complete list would require the slaughter of several mature forests. […]

One recent ad produced by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy says: “Hey, not trying to be your mom, but there aren’t many jobs out there for potheads.” Whoa, dude, except maybe, like, president of the United States.

Once a kid realizes that pot doesn’t make him insane — or likely to become a burrito taster, as the ad further asserts — he might figure other drug information is equally false.

Thanks, Michael, for jump-starting a national conversation by taking a hit on a bong.

If it were only that easy for the rest of us…
Update: Joe Klein at Time Magazine jumps in: Legalize it, already

Kathleen Parker has the precisely correct reaction to the Michael Phelps flap. Marijuana should be legalized and taxed. It’s costing the society way too much in terms of law enforcement and hypocrisy.

“bullet” It appears that change.org is moving into its next phase and for their Legalize the Medicinal and Recreational Use of Marijuana idea, that Marijuana Policy Project will be working with them on implementation.
You can contribute suggestions, or comment on them. I find it a bit chaotic — the few really practical suggestions as to how to build a campaign are getting buried by meaningless statements of the “why isn’t the government doing anything” or “Return our Constitutional Rights” nature and a few people are dominating by posting ad nauseam.
“bullet” NORML has been running their third annual Marijuana Law Reform Ad Contest with individuals creating and submitting their own TV ads for $10,000 in prizes.
They’ve narrowed it down to the final 25 ads for you to vote on. Pick your three favorites.
It’s an interesting group. Some were handicapped by the amateurishness of the production values, and others were way too deeply buried in “the culture” to ever reach anyone who didn’t already have a bong in their hand.
But I found it difficult to finally narrow down to three. None were perfect, but 5 or 6 had some real potential.
Check them out and vote.

This site got a huge spike yesterday with 49,986 pageviews (I usually get around 2,000 a day, which is pretty respectable for a single issue blog). The reason for the spike – a very healthy Digg of my Why Is Marijuana Illegal? page.
I’m grateful for the interest, and it was a great day for it because it fed off the Michael Phelps issue as well. Additionally, there will be increased activity for the next week or so as other sites take it from Digg.
That page has had other big spikes, along with almost constant referrals from Stumbleupon. And, due in part to the efforts of some wonderful drug warrant ambassadors, links to the page show up on messageboards all over the world (the page has had visitors from over 150 countries).
In fact, Why is marijuana illegal? is by far the most visited page on this site. Since I started using Google Analytics in June, 2007, that page has accounted for over 62% of all page views (the front page of the blog runs around 19%). And since most visitors to the Why is marijuana illegal? page are unique visitors, it’s safe to say that well over one million separate individuals have read that page.
But why? I wrote that page back in December, 2003. It was intended to be interesting and informative, but never intended to be a scholarly study (it’s all sourced, but not footnoted) or original research.
Because of the difficulty in finding definitive corroboration for some of the detail, and contradictory sources, there have been controversies over certain facts (and I’ve corrected or clarified a couple of minor things over time). But the vast majority of the readers don’t care about that at all.
So why does it continue to get such an incredible response?
I’ve been trying to get a handle on it, and I’m not sure I know the answer, but I have my guesses.
You see, for most of us, while interesting, this is all old news. We know how government works and we know the history.
However I think most of these folks were raised on D.A.R.E. and other government propaganda, yet they enjoyed smoking pot and knew from first hand experience that it wasn’t the evil drug they’d been told. Without much exposure to drug policy reform, they had a contradiction they couldn’t resolve. They wanted to believe they were right about pot, but still thought that the government might have had legitimate reasons to make it illegal that they just didn’t understand.
Reading Why Is Marijuana Illegal? immediately puts to rest any notion that the government knew what it was doing when it criminalized pot. And the arbitrary and capricious of that action makes them realize that there’s no reason why marijuana couldn’t just as legitimately be made legal again someday.
And that’s a huge relief.
But that’s just my guess. What do you think? Why is it so popular?

Link

Drug Enforcement Administration agents raided at least two Westside marijuana dispensaries Tuesday, and a spokesperson defended their actions, despite President Barack Obama’s opposition to such raids. […]
Asked about Obama’s comments that he did not want to waste Justice Department resources on raiding medical marijuana shops, [DEA’s Sarah] Pullen said that “marijuana is still illegal under federal law.
“The law is still that it is illegal to possess, distribute or cultivate marijuana in any way,” she said.

Then why aren’t you out arresting individual pot smokers? And why aren’t you out arresting Irv Rosenfeld?
Notice how she avoided answering the question.
Eric Holder was just confirmed as Attorney General, so there’s now a boss over there above Michele Leonhart. I wonder what he feels about waste and misconduct?