Drug WarRant

Via Cannabis News:

Colorado — University of Colorado students this week approved a measure that asks officials to ease up on marijuana penalties.

The referendum, put forth by the Boulder-based group Safer Alternative For Enjoyable Recreation, asks that university officials make sanctions for marijuana use no more severe than they are for comparable alcohol violations.

The students have put their finger on an essential question that has been unanswered by prohibitionists — “Why are penalties for marijuana harsher than those for alcohol, when alcohol is the more dangerous substance?”
School officials say they won’t be bound by the outcome. That’s going to cause a conflict.

Libby at Last One Speaks scooped me big time with the rumor that Andrea Barthwell has been hired by G.W. Pharmaceuticals to lobby for approval of its cannabis-plant extracts in the U.S.
No problem for Andrea’s new-found flexible viewpoints.
Libby’s got the right idea when she says:

I have a feeling the prohibitionists are brewing this new strategy of keeping the plant illegal by vilifying the innocuous buzz so they can control the market with derivatives and chemical synthetics. They’ve known for decades the plant is safe but they couldn’t figure out how to keep people from obtaining the drug on their own by growing it. This lets them work both sides of the fence.

That’s certainly been the plan for the pharmaceutical companies — keep medical marijuana illegal while they patent every possible derivitive.

Lots has been happening in Texas, all covered extremely well by Scott at Grits for Breakfast, including some remarkable efforts towards restructuring low-level marijuana penalties, an attempt to ban so-called “consent searches”, going after rogue task forces and lots more.
Could this be a sign that a historical independent streak in Texans is re-surfacing? It is a conflicted state – conservative, but with libertarian underpinning – home of both Tom Delay and Ron Paul. It’ll be interesting to watch. And Grits is the place to watch it.

Absolutely horrible legislation is going through Congress. Please take a moment to email your Representative and Senators. (Via TalkLeft)

Congressman James Sensenbrenner has launched his next assault on freedom. The full House Judiciary Committee is set to vote as early as next week on H.R. 1528, which creates a new group of mandatory miniumum penalties for non-violent drug offenses, including a five year penalty for passing a joint to someone who’s been in drug treatment.

That’s right: Passing a joint to someone who used to be in drug treatment will land you in federal prison for a minimum of five years.

The “Defending America’s Most Vulnerable: Safe Access to Drug Treatment and Child Protection Act of 2005” (H.R. 1528) was introduced by House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) on April 6, and it has already passed out of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security.

Senselessbrenner has been after this for a while (I mentioned an earlier version of this bill last year).
The list of atrocities in this bill are unbelievable. Here are a couple of examples:

• 10-year sentence for a second offense of distributing marijuana to a person under 21. (this would include one 20-year-old college student giving a joint to another 20-year old college student)
• Three-year mandatory minimum for parents who witness or learn about drug trafficking activities, targeting or even near their children, if they do not report it to law enforcement authorities within 24 hours and do not provide full assistance investigating, apprehending, and prosecuting the offender.
• Increase to five years the federal mandatory minimum sentence for the sale of a controlled substance within 1,000 feet of a school, college, public library, drug treatment facility (or any place where drug treatment, including classes, are held), or private or public daycare facilities – in short, almost anywhere in cities across the U.S.
• Punishes defendants for the “relevant conduct” of co-conspirators that occurred BEFORE the defendant joined the conspiracy.

There’s much more. Read TalkLeft’s full post.
Please act now.

A Palm Bay, Florida man was at work when a tornado came and ripped off the roof of his home. That’s pretty bad luck. Unfortunately, the lack of roof exposed the 54 marijuana plants in his bedroom, which were noticed by the emergency crews looking for injured victims. Police arrested him at work.
Now he’s got no marijuana plants, no roof (and probably no job).
The unlucky man’s name? Geoffrey Crook (I think it’s time to change it.)
Link.

Of course, the headline to this post isn’t really true, but if we were to use the tactics of the Drug Czar, that is what we’d say.
Particularly given this news from Canada (you know, the place where they have that Super Pot — the crack cocaine of marijuana — that Walters says is destroying our citizens):

Ottawa, Ontario: Lifetime cannabis users are likely to be single, well
educated, and earning an above average salary, according to a recent survey
of 13,900 Canadians conducted by Health Canada and the Canadian Executive
Council on Addictions.

Approximately 45 percent of the Canadian population over age 15 reported
having used cannabis during their lifetime – up from 23 percent in 1989, the
survey reported. Lifetime cannabis use increased with education and income.
Among those with some post-secondary education, 52 percent reported having
used cannabis. By comparison, among those without a high school degree,
only 35 percent reported having tried cannabis. In addition, 55 percent of
those respondents with a “high income adequacy” said they had used cannabis,
as opposed to only 43 percent of those with a “low income adequacy.”

Among those who reported consuming cannabis, most said that they used it
infrequently and did not “experienc[e] serious harm due to their cannabis
use.”

So no, this news doesn’t say that smoking pot causes a better education or a higher income, but it does make it pretty hard to support a whole lot of the things that drug warriors claim.
Via NORML. Full text available here (pdf).

In another trial, in another part of the world, a female student faces a possible sentence of death by firing squad for a marijuana offense, when it’s quite possible that baggage handlers used her luggage (without her knowledge) to do the smuggling.
Sickening.

Could have been worse — prosecutors asked for life — but this is essentially a life sentence. At TalkLeft.

Virginia medical doctor William Hurwitz was sentenced to 25 years in a federal prison today for over-prescribing pain medication.

It’s time to get federal police out of the business of deciding our medical treatment. States and the medical community should handle this, not national law enforcement.
Here’s hoping that Raich v. Ashcroft can be a step in that direction.

Link

NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim April 14, 2005, as National D.A.R.E. Day.

Hasn’t anybody told him?
I think yesterday was National Flat Earth Day.

In Thailand:

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra yesterday launched his government’s third war on drugs with the Office of Narcotics Control Board (ONCB) setting a target for Thailand to be free of illegal drug production by the end of this year. …

Ah, those wonderful drug-free goals. Remember them? The U.S. used to have a goal of drug free America by the year 2000 (just in case you haven’t been following along, it didn’t happen). Of course, prohibition ended up causing more problems (including contributing to a younger initiation in drug use). So now we have a goal of reducing teen drug use by 10%.
Back to Thailand. So how did their first two wars go?

The first war on drugs in 2003 resulted in the killings of over 2,500 drug suspects. Police claimed traffickers were killing each other to sever any links to themselves.

However, local and foreign human rights organisations accused the authorities of a secret campaign of summary execution of suspects, charging that many innocent people were killed on the basis of hearsay.

Well, there’s 2,500 people who won’t be doing any more drugs. I guess the Prime Minister would consider that a successful war.

Mr Thaksin, however, refused to admit any failure and launched a second war in October last year. But he released no statistics this time round.

Oops. No statistics for Drug War II. Not a good sign. Usually if you win a war, you like to brag about it, not suddenly go quiet and then declare a third war.
So let’s see how the drug smugglers have reacted to these wars:

Despite the increased suppression of the trade, Thailand is still attractive to many drug smugglers due to its higher retail prices …

Yep, Thailand has made itself very attractive for drug smuggling because of its harsh prohibition tactics. Prices have gone up (while demand is inelastic) and now smugglers can make a huge profit for a small amount of drugs. It’s the get rich quick opportunity for the bold or violent international criminal — made possible by Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
That’s how the black market works.