Drug WarRant

The Sun “reports” First death by dope. A more detailed version of the article is available at the Telegraph (requires registration): Cannabis is blamed as cause of man’s death. Here are some quotes from that article:

A man of 36 is believed to have become the first person in Britain to die directly from cannabis poisoning.
Lee Maisey smoked six cannabis cigarettes a day for 11 years, an inquest heard. His death, which was registered as having been caused by cannabis toxicity, led to new warnings about the drug, which is due to be reclassified this month as a less dangerous one. …
The inquest heard that Mr Maisey had complained of a headache on Aug 22 last year. Next morning he was found dead at the house he shared with a friend, Jeffrey Saunders, in Summerhill, Pembrokeshire.
Michael Howells, the Pembrokeshire coroner, said Mr Maisey was free from disease and had not drunk alcohol for at least 48 hours. Post-mortem tests showed a high level of cannabinoids in his blood.
He recorded a verdict of death by misadventure because Mr Maisey had died while taking part in an illegal activity. The death led to a warning about the changing strength of cannabis, which is to be reduced to a Class C drug on Jan 29.

Take a close look at the description. An inquest was held and no other causes of death were evident, so the mere fact of cannabinoids in the blood was determined that it must be the cause of death. Unless someone has a more detailed version of the facts presented at this inquest, I have to believe that this does not represent a proven and documented case of death by marijuana overdose.
The article then brings out the usual group of drug warriors who don’t realize how silly they sound when they use this as justification for jailing thousands of people.

The shadow home secretary, David Davis, said last night: “This highlights what we have been saying about the effects of cannabis all along. When will people wake up to the fact that cannabis can be a harmful drug?”

OK, David. Let’s just take a little look at that. Let’s assume that it really was an overdose (the first in recorded history). Millions of people have smoked pot for thousands of years. And now that we have one death, “Ooh, look at how dangerous that is!” Harmful drug? Aspirin poisoning causes 60 deaths a year in the U.S. Catastrophic liver failure from Tylenol overdoses causes 150 deaths a year, and Viagra causes death in 5 of every 100,000 prescriptions. We’re not locking those people up, are we?
Here’s a suggestion for the shadow secretary — put a warning on packages of marijuana cigarettes suggesting that if you smoke every day, you should limit it to five.
But the thing is, I’m still not convinced that you can overdose from marijuana. Let’s take a look at a piece of a report put out by the U.S. Department of Justice Drug Enforcement Agency Administrative Judge:

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
Drug Enforcement Administration
In The Matter Of MARIJUANA RESCHEDULING PETITION
Docket No. 86-22
OPINION AND RECOMMENDED RULING, FINDINGS OF FACT, CONCLUSIONS OF LAW AND DECISION OF ADMINISTRATIVE LAW JUDGE FRANCIS L. YOUNG, Administrative Law Judge
DATED: SEPTEMBER 6, 1988
Section 8 of Judge Young’s “Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law and Decision.”

7.æ Drugs used in medicine are routinely given what is called an LD-50.æ The LD-50 rating indicates at what dosage fifty percent of test animals receiving a drug will die as a result of drug induced toxicity.æ A number of researchers have attempted to determine marijuana’s LD-50 rating in test animals, without success.æ Simply stated, researchers have been unable to give animals enough marijuana to induce death.
8.æ At present it is estimated that marijuana’s LD-50 is around 1:20,000 or 1:40,000.æ In layman terms this means that in order to induce death a marijuana smoker would have to consume 20,000 to 40,000 times as much marijuana as is contained in one marijuana cigarette.æ NIDA-supplied marijuana cigarettes weigh approximately .9 grams.æ A smoker would theoretically have to consume nearly 1,500 pounds of marijuana within about fifteen minutes to induce a lethal response.
9.æ In practical terms, marijuana cannot induce a lethal response as a result of drug-related toxicity.

Now, let’s say you believe everything the drug warriors say and think that marijuana is 30 times as potent today. How you’d smoke 6 joints a day of really potent pot is beyond me. Plus, pot smokers are able to regulate their intake. If they smoke really potent pot, they tend to smoke less. But, what the hell, let’s assume. Then it would only take 50 pounds of pot in 15 minutes.
First marijuana overdose? Yeah, right.
Update: Summary from Coroner lists “Probable Cannabis Toxicity” as medical cause of death, which tends to confirm the notion that it was a default choice rather than one based on any specific evidence other than the (duh) presence of cannabinoids.

So with Dennis Kucinich getting only 1.3% of the delegates in Iowa, is Drug WarRant changing its endorsement? No, I am not.
Kucinich is still in the race and still has, by far, the best position on medical marijuana, marijuana decriminalization and the drug war in general. Every day that he remains in the race is another chance for drug policy reform to have a stronger role in the future. And Dennis plans to remain keep going till the convention:

“This is the beginning of the campaign,” said Kucinich. “We’ve got 49 states left to go. The media had long ago predicted the winner of the entire process and even the loser of the general election, and tonight’s caucuses have the pundits scratching their collective scalps in bewilderment. I moved from ninth place to fifth and won delegates despite the 15 percent threshold.

Kerry’s surprise lead in Iowa is interesting, given that Granite Staters graded him with an A- regarding medical marijuana (see yesterday’s post), and I’m pleased that he’s taken a strong stand in favor of University of Massachusetts’ application to manufacture marijuana for FDA-approved medical marijuana research, but NORML gives him a neutral grade in all areas, and some of his position papers on crime and drugs are questionable, and although some former prosecutors have turned toward drug policy reform, I’m not yet completely convinced that Kerry has.
So please continue to support Kucinich (Democrats) and Ashby (Republicans). There’s lots of time before the conventions, and the more we can keep drug policy reform in discussion the better.
I can’t wait to see how well the Granite Staters continue to do in raising the medical marijuana issue in New Hampshire! Check out the MPP television ad that starts airing today in New Hampshire, highlighting four Democratic presidential contenders’ refusal to stop federal arrests of cancer and AIDS patients using medical marijuana.

Here’s the deal:

1. GRAMNET – the Grand, Routt and Moffat Narcotics Enforcement Team (which included a DEA agent) raided a Hayden, Colorado home in mid-October.
2. They seize two ounces of marijuana and some pipes.
3. It turns out Don Nord is a medical marijuana user and that was his medicine (legal in Colorado).
4. Charges are dropped, and the judge orders the marijuana returned
5. The officers had given the marijuana to the DEA, and the DEA refused to return it.
6. The judge cited the officers for contempt and directed them to appear in court at 1:30 pm February 2 “to show why they should not be punished for defying the court order.” So now…
7. The U.S. Attorney’s office will use taxpayer money and send lawyers to defend the DEA agent against the contempt citation.

So a federal officer goes into a man’s home in Colorado, in violation of state law, and probably in violation of the U.S. constitution, steals 2 ounces of a man’s medicine, keeps it, refuses to return it when ordered by a judge, and then gets us to provide a federal attorney to defend him.

(Story via Cannabis News. Earlier coverage available at Walter in Denver.)

Is there nobody with a sense of decency or democracy overseeing these morons? Certainly not the DEA Director, or the DEA Deputy Administrator, or the Drug Czar, or the Attorney General, or the President. It’s time to throw them all out and try some new idiots.

Friday in the New York Daily News, hack A.M. Rosenthal gives us I Kicked the Habit.

I was only a youngster at the time, but I still remember, to the precise moment, the day many decades ago when some rich kids who lived near a lush New York public garden offered some friends and me a fistful of smokes. Their cigarettes turned out to be marijuana – strong enough to twist a life. Or ruin it. …

I turned out to be a short-time pot addict. I cannot testify now how much I smoked or for how long or what those few days of smoking pot did to me. All I remember is that I smoked until I vomited. …

From the beginning of the foreign assignments, I saw the brown marijuana stubs of my sons and their friends, particularly in New Delhi, the capital of India. I, of course, had long ago quit using marijuana and spent a considerable amount of time shouting at my sons when I thought they were still puffing away. It is a good technique. …

Why am I writing this column? I keep asking myself. Probing myself even just a little, I understand that it is because I never hear my friends or the people at dinner tables talk about drugs, except sometimes as if it were funsy entertainment. I hope that they will talk with each other more often and more deeply, beginning right away.

Drugs must be faced. Let’s face them with the law. And most important of all, let’s face them with love for our children.

This article comes via Hit and Run, and the commments there are entertaining. Most are trying to decide whether A.M. just fabricated the whole story or actually smoked oregano that made him throw up. Others were less generous.
Just reading his editorial makes you realize how around the bend he is, but if you want to know more, check out my earlier article: A.M. Rosenthal, Drug War Stooge.

Whatever career you may choose for yourself–doctor, lawyer, teacher–let me propose an avocation to be pursued along with it. Become a dedicated fighter for civil rights. Make it a central part of your life. It will make you a better doctor, a better lawyer, a better teacher. It will enrich your spirit as nothing else possibly can. It will give you that rare sense of nobility that can only spring from love and selflessly helping your fellow man . Make a career of humanity. Commit yourself to the noble struggle for human rights. You will make a greater person of yourself, a greater nation of your country, and a finer world to live in.

— Martin Luther King, Jr. , 18th April, 1959

Although almost five times as many whites use illegal drugs as African Americans, nearly twice the number of black men and women are being put behind bars for drug offenses. At current rates, a black man has a 1 in 3 chance of going to prison during his lifetime, compared to 1 in 17 for white males.

With the Iowa Caucuses coming up, it’s a good time to review the candidates again. Today, I’d like to remind you about the Granite Staters for Medical Marijuana Voter Guide. The Granite Staters have gone through voting records (and other actions) and public speeches regarding medical marijuana and graded each of the candidates. Go to their site for detailed analysis, but here are the quick current grades. (Remember this is specifically for medical marijuana and may not reflect other drug war issues)

Dennis Kucinich	A+
Carol Moseley Braun*	A
Al Sharpton	A
John Kerry	A-
Wesley K. Clark	B+
Howard Dean	D-
Bob Graham*	D-
George W. Bush	F
John Edwards	F
Dick Gephardt	F
Joseph Lieberman	F

*dropped out

“bullet” Drug WarRant has already endorsed Dennis Kucinich for the Democratic nomination for President.
“bullet” Drug WarRant’s endorsement for the Republican nomination – Blake Ashby – is not included in the Granite Staters’ grade book, but his grade would be good:

If a doctor believes that his or her patient would benefit from the responsible use of medicinal marijuana, then that doctor should be allowed to legally prescribe it.

After I endorsed Blake, I got a nice note from him, which included:

Thanks for the positive mention for my campaign.æ This started because I was so mad, but is slowly evolving into a protest campaign.

If you’re a Republican, be sure to write in Blake Ashby’s name in your primary.
“bullet” In our Guest Rants, Gregg Brown adds some additional comment on voting and hemp, including some startlingly positive statements from Central Illinois Congressional candidates on both sides of the aisle — Republican Tim Johnson and Democrat David Gill.
“bullet” Update: NORML has its own Presidential Scorecard which includes their up/down/neutral ratings on decriminalization, medical marijuana, and the HEA provision.

The Demonized Seed by Lee Green in tomorrow’s Los Angeles Times.

As a Recreational Drug, Industrial Hemp Packs the Same Wallop as Zucchini. So Why Does the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency Continue to Deny America This Potent Resource? Call It Reefer Madness.

This article is not only one of the best overviews on Hemp I’ve seen for some time, but it’s an incredible indictment of the DEA. I’ve included some snippets from the article below, but you really should read all of it.

The article talks a little about Jack Herer, author of The Emperor Wears No Clothes: The Authoritative Historical Record of Cannabis and the Conspiracy Against Marijuana, which is where I learned tons about Hemp before I even got involved in the drug policy reform advocacy.

“How can they make the one thing that can save the world illegal?” he asks, no less astonished by this paradox now than he was three decades ago.

…snip…

If all or even most of the oft-cited claims for hemp are true, the substance may know no earthly equal among nontoxic renewable resources. If only half the claims are true, hemp’s potential as a commercial wellspring and a salve to creeping eco-damage is still immense. At worst it is more useful and diverse than most agricultural crops. Yet from the 1930s through the 1980s, many countries, influenced by U.S. policies and persuasion, banished cannabis from their farmlands. Not just marijuana, but all cannabis — the baby, the bath water, all of it.

…snip…

If an American farmer were to fill a field with this drugless crop, the government would consider him a felon. For selling his harvest he would be guilty of trafficking and would face a fine of as much as $4 million and a prison sentence of 10 years to life. Provided, of course, it is his first offense. This for a crop as harmless as rutabaga.

…snip…

The government’s motives for its attack on marijuana remain unclear. Researchers have proffered theories ranging from collusion with corporations threatened by hemp’s commercial potential to moralistic fervor and bureaucratic thirst for domain once Prohibition ended in 1933. Regardless of motives, the ensuing stigmatization, red tape, state and federal controls, punitive taxes and misconceptions about marijuana’s nature and its relationship to hemp doomed any chance that hemp would be resurrected as an agricultural crop.

…snip…

Unmoved by logic, accepted nomenclature or the realities of plant genetics, the DEA insists that all cannabis is marijuana. Does the agency also consider industrial hemp grown legally outside the U.S. to be marijuana? “Yes, we do,” says Frank Sapienza, the agency’s chief of drug and chemical evaluation. Since more than 30 other countries manage to distinguish between marijuana and industrial hemp and allow their farmers to grow hemp, one wonders what they know that the U.S. doesn’t. “I’m not going to comment on what other countries do,” Sapienza says.

…snip…

If you want to apply for a license to grow commercial hemp, you must solicit the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. The DEA consistently claims that no prohibition on hemp farming exists in this country, as if to suggest that all one need do is file the proper paperwork and make a reasonable case…

Nonetheless, the agency has rejected every application it has ever received. How many? There’s no telling–literally. The agency will say only that “the DEA does not have records of the number of applications received for such activities”–an extraordinary claim from an organization that documents every marijuana plant that it and cooperating law enforcement agencies uproot from U.S. soil.

Be sure to read it all. (Article mirrored at Freedom to Exhale).

“bullet”Last One Speaks gives us a Guardian Unlimited article which concludes that persecuting marijuana users may be un-Christian:

Jesus was almost certainly a cannabis user and an early proponent of the medicinal properties of the drug, according to a study of scriptural texts published this month. The study suggests that Jesus and his disciples used the drug to carry out miraculous healings.

“bullet”
Walter in Denver has more on Clayton Helriggle (one of our Drug War Victims)

Greene County Prosecutor Bill Schenck said he intends to meet with investigators Feb. 2 to discuss possibly reconvening a Preble County grand jury to revisit the Sept. 27, 2002, shooting death of Clayton Helriggle by a police officer.

“bullet”
Left Flank Shooters has a couple of interesting posts including this one with links to articles about heroin assisted treatment in Switzerland and Vancouver’s safer injection site, plus this one on Drug Enforcement and Crime, an excellent draft report that concludes from empirical data that drug enforcement efforts actually increase crime rather than reducing it.

It is well documented that many within government and the criminal justice system believe drug enforcement to be an effective crime control measure.[38] The empirical findings from this study stand in stark contrast to the traditional view.æ The results suggest that once you control for the effects of other determinants of crime, drug enforcement is positively (and significantly) associated with higher levels of both violent and property crime…

At a minimum, the empirical findings should raise serious questions about the effectiveness of drug enforcement as a crime control measure, and they suggest that significant social costs arise from existing approaches to drug control.

“bullet”
NORML provides this easy opportunity to tell CBS you don’t want them to run drug czar propaganda during the Super Bowl (particularly since they’ve already claimed they won’t run “controversial issue” ads).

Via NORML:

San Mateo, CA: Approximately one out of four patients suffering from
HIV has smoked marijuana within the past month to relieve symptoms of the
disease, according to clinical findings published in this month’s issue of
the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes.

Twenty-three percent of the 252 participants in the study responded
that they had smoked medicinal marijuana within the previous month.
“Reported benefits included relief from anxiety and/or depression (57%),
improved appetite (53%), increased pleasure (33%), and relief of pain
(28%),” authors stated.

A similar survey conducted in Canada and presented last November at
the Ontario HIV Treatment Network research conference concluded that 29
percent of HIV-positive Ontarians used marijuana therapeutically.

Presently, clinical trials examining the therapeutic potential of
cannabinoids in HIV patient populations are ongoing at the University of
California Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research.

According to a recently published study in the journal Annals of
Internal Medicine, use of inhaled marijuana demonstrates “no major,
short-term harmful effects and possibly some beneficial effects … in
HIV-infected patients taking protease inhibitors.”

Yep, this is the stuff that our drug czar calls a “fraud.”

More details on the story I mentioned yesterday are available from Americans for Safe Access.

In a stunning display of duplicitous double dealing, federal agents yesterday seized two medical marijuana patients from a California state courtroom after the local prosecutor lured the couple’s defense counsel into the judge’s chambers to dismiss the state charges filed against them.