Government Shows No Compassion for Medical Pot Consumption

By Patrick McCartney and Paul A. Lee, AlterNet. Posted June 16, 2007.


More than ten years after California's Compassionate Use Act was passed by voters, state and local officials are still collaborating with federal law enforcement to undermine it.

On the morning of January 13, 2004, Tehama County prosecutor Lynn Strom unexpectedly announced that the state of California was dropping charges against Cynthia Blake and David Davidson for possessing and growing cannabis with the intent to distribute. While the two medical marijuana patients waited in the courtroom, Strom and the defense attorneys disappeared inside the judge's chambers to discuss the motion to dismiss. Moments later, more than a dozen sheriff's deputies pounced on the hapless couple, handcuffed them, and shoved them into an unmarked police car waiting outside the courthouse in the Sacramento Valley town of Corning. They were already en route to jail in Sacramento when Strom informed their lawyers that the state was bowing out because the Feds were taking over the case.

It was a devastating blow for Blake, a retired Federal Reserve employee, and her sweetheart, Davidson, a retail shop owner. Both in their early fifties, they were booked on federal drug charges and transferred to the jurisdiction of the Eastern District office of US Attorney McGregor Scott. If convicted, they each faced a mandatory minimum of ten years to life in prison for exercising a right they thought they had gained with the 1996 passage of Proposition 215, the California ballot measure that legalized cannabis for medical purposes.

Both had a physician's recommendation to ease their ailments with marijuana, and neither had a criminal history. They had been tending three dozen pot plants in a remote garden, which they shared with other patients; their attorneys insist that no money had exchanged hands for the herb. But none of this would matter in federal court, which treated all marijuana as equally illicit, making no exceptions even for the seriously ill.

The well-coordinated Blake-Davidson hand-off was not the first time local authorities in California had turned over a medical marijuana case to federal authorities. But it is perhaps the most dramatic example of ongoing, secret collusion between various levels of government to prevent the implementation of the Compassionate Use Act, as Proposition 215 was called on the ballot.

For the past ten years, state and local officials sworn to uphold the state ballot measure have instead proven to be willing -- sometimes eager -- accomplices in a concerted U.S. attack on a state law. Now, a half year past its tenth birthday, the landmark California law remains under siege.
Within days after Prop 215 was enacted in the fall of 1996, top California law enforcement officials huddled privately with America's drug war high command in Washington, DC, where they plotted to sabotage a voter initiative they were unable to defeat at the ballot box.

On Dec. 3, 1996, in Sacramento, 300 district attorneys, police chiefs, sheriffs, and narcotics officers attended an "Emergency All Zones Meeting," at which they were advised, basically, to continue arresting and prosecuting as before. Then-Attorney-General Dan Lungren and his deputies maintained that the new law did not shield marijuana suspects from arrest but merely provided them with an "affirmative defense" to invoke at a trial. Under Lungren's "narrow interpretation," local narcotics officers could exercise unilateral power in deciding if med-pot growers had more plants than they, the officers, believed justified by their medical condition.

Enforcement of the Compassionate Use Act varied dramatically across California's 58 counties. Where ballot support was strongest, especially in the San Francisco Bay Area, patients could obtain locally issued ID cards and purchase their medicine from storefront dispensaries that had begun opening even before Prop 215 passed. But beyond an hour or so drive from San Francisco, in the Other California -- Red-State California, as it were -- local police and prosecutors conducted a reign of terror against patients and caregivers that went largely unnoticed by the state's metropolitan press corps.

Operating with federal anti-marijuana grants that increased by 50 percent in the first five years after passage of Prop 215, a dozen regional task forces worked with DEA and IRS partners to target marijuana growers regardless of medical use. "Prop. 215 might fly in San Francisco, but not here," a Placer County deputy told the target of a 1998 arrest and prosecution.

Nowhere did local authorities repress medical users more than in the Eastern District, the sprawling federal court district spanning California's San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys and the Sierra Nevada, where Blake and Davidson faced charges.

Drug War strategists had pegged physicians as the weakest link in the med cannabis supply chain. Gen. Barry McCaffrey, Clinton's drug czar, took aim at the doctors first, threatening to revoke the licenses of those who approved cannabis use by patients. A group of physicians and patients, with help from the ACLU and the Drug Policy Alliance, promptly sued the U.S. government on free speech and privacy grounds. The suit, called Conant v. McCaffrey, resulted in a federal injunction issued on First Amendment grounds upholding the doctors' right to discuss cannabis as a treatment option.

So the Feds passed the baton to the California Attorney General's office, via its agents in the state medical board's enforcement division, to crack down on physicians specializing in cannabis consultations. Despite specific language in Proposition 215 exempting doctors from retaliation by state officials, the Medical Board launched legal proceedings against several physicians based on evidence gathered by local undercover narcs who feigned symptoms to obtain a medical recommendation.

Unable to gag the doctors, the Clinton administration paid for anti-marijuana advertising and filed federal civil actions against a half dozen cannabis dispensaries in Northern California. It was the opening salvo of a seesaw legal battle, which culminated in a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court decision against the Oakland Cannabis Buyer's Cooperative (OCBC) in April 2001. As a result, some of the six clubs stopped selling medical marijuana, but others remained in business in open defiance of federal law.

The OCBC ruling gave the Bush administration its first chance to escalate the federal assault on California's fledgling medical marijuana infrastructure. Assisted by local narcotics units, the Ashcroft Justice Department went after dispensaries, medicinal grow-ops and high-profile activists up and down the state.

Federal agents may have overreached when they raided the Santa Cruz cannabis hospice led by Valerie and Mike Corral. Elderly disabled patients were handcuffed to their beds, while men in paramilitary gear tore apart their gardens and living quarters. Local officials rallied behind the patient collective, openly distributing marijuana on the steps of City Hall the day after the heavy-handed bust in September 2002. This was followed by another public-relations fiasco a few months later, when Americans for Safe Access, a newly formed grassroots organization, convinced Bay Area jurors to denounce their own guilty verdict in the federal trial of cannabis cultivation expert Ed Rosenthal, who ended up with a one-day sentence.

Suddenly, it seemed like the government's bare-knuckled crusade against medicinal cannabis was foundering. Optimism increased among California med-pot activists, who were buoyed by several federal and state court rulings in 2003. In December, the Ninth Circuit U.S. Appeals Court ruled in favor of Angel Raich and Diane Monson, two California women who had sued the Justice Department for the right to use medical marijuana.

But just as the momentum appeared to shift in favor of the med-pot cause, the federal government launched a concerted rollback effort. Leading the rollback has been McGregor Scott, who was appointed by President George W. Bush to head the U.S. Eastern District, one of four federal jurisdictions in California, in March 2003.

Scott was known to medical marijuana activists as the overzealous Shasta County DA who prosecuted Rick Levin, a disabled contractor who had been cultivating for personal medical use. (Levin prevailed.) But Scott's elevation to U.S. attorney was welcomed by California law enforcement officials. "It's going to be nice to have a U.S. attorney who has a local perspective," said Sacramento District Attorney Jan Scully.

Scott had been active in the California District Attorneys Association (CDAA). A board member for three years, he also chaired the CDAA small counties committee. When he assumed his new office, Scott appointed the CDAA's veteran executive director, Lawrence Brown, as his chief assistant. Brown, who hired his successor at the CDAA, would become Scott's point-man on medical marijuana.
Scott promptly met with the district attorneys of all 34 counties in the Eastern District to lay out the federal position on medical marijuana and other issues. He also sought to influence the state medical board. Joan Jerzak, the chief of the board's enforcement division, acknowledged at an August 2003 meeting that she had conferred with Scott regarding medical marijuana, and that he wanted a closer working relationship. "A management group will probably be the interface," Jerzak said as she asked the board not to reformulate its policy on medical marijuana until the Supreme Court ruled in the Raich case.

A key development was the October 2003 enactment by California lawmakers -- after 11th hour concessions to the state Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement -- of Senate Bill 420. SB 420 was written to "clarify" Prop 215 and protect patients from law enforcement's arrest-first policies. Sponsored by Sen. John Vasconcellos, the bill set a statewide minimum number of permissible plants and ordered counties to issue ID cards to qualified patients to shield them from arrest. The new statute also created more protection for caregivers, allowing them reasonable compensation for their time and services, and gave groups of patients the right to grow and distribute as collectives or cooperatives.

Although the California District Attorneys Association made sure SB 420 prohibited anyone from making a profit from pot, entrepreneurs opened more than 100 new storefront dispensaries within a year, many in previously unthinkable locations. Medical cannabis users in many rural communities came out of the closet. They started new patient groups or allied with statewide groups, and spoke out on behalf of public access to cannabis at storefront dispensaries before city councils and boards of supervisors.

SB 420 set the stage for the current battle over the proliferation of patient-run dispensaries. For the first time, local elected officials in scores of cities and counties were forced to take a stand on the issue, as increasing numbers of activists applied for permits to open dispensaries and local law enforcement objected -- or lobbied for preemptive moratoria and prohibitions. More than 100 California jurisdictions have proceeded to ban dispensaries, but another three dozen have expressly allowed and regulated the storefront distribution of medical marijuana.

SB 420 was the ultimate product of a task force created by Vasconcellos and Attorney General Bill Lockyer, a Democrat elected in 1998 to succeed the unpopular Lungren (who got only 39 percent running for governor against Gray Davis). Although Lockyer said he had voted for Prop 215 -- and would submit an amicus brief supporting Raich -- he was unwilling to rein in hostile local officials. Responding to an August 2000 plea for uniform county standards by the North State Sheriffs Association ("...the law desperately needs clarification"), Lockyer declined to issue new plant and possession guidelines, washing his hands of how local jurisdictions should act.

California police and prosecutors opposed to medical marijuana turned away from the state's top lawyer for advice about medical marijuana and instead looked to the state's private law enforcement associations. If ordered by a court to return pot to a defendant, "I have the counsel for the California Sheriff's Association telling me I'm committing a felony," remarked El Dorado Sheriff Jeff Neves at a meeting with patient advocates. In 2002, Yuba Sheriff Virginia Black had the California State Sheriffs Association ask other sheriffs to write letters to Ashcroft and DEA Administrator Asa Hutchinson asking them to "resolve" the conflict between state and federal law. ("I urge you to contact your local DEA office," Hutchinson replied.) The same year, Martin Mayer, general counsel of the California State Sheriffs Association, issued an alert following a California Supreme Court ruling that overturned the conviction of Myron Mower, a 31-year-old blind diabetic arrested in his hospital room. "Does this mean that law enforcement should no longer arrest one in possession of marijuana if, for example, he or she has a note, letter, or prescription from a doctor?" Mayer asked, before declaring: "Absolutely not!"

At its 2005 Summer Conference, the California District Attorneys Association secretly issued a new opinion about SB 420 in a closed executive session. While the CDAA had inserted language in SB 420 prohibiting cooperatives from making a profit, now the CDAA went a step further and told the state's district attorneys that no money could change hands when a cooperative distributed medicine to a patient.

If SB 420 had opened a Pandora's box of neighborhood marijuana dispensaries, the U.S. Supreme Court's June 2005 decision in Gonzales v. Raich gave federal authorities a powerful tool in their effort to close it. While the 6-3 decision against Angel Raich and Diane Monson -- whose medical cannabis had been grown and consumed within California -- did not overturn the law created by Prop 215, the justices reaffirmed the federal government's authority to enforce federal law.

On August 1, 2005, McGregor Scott sent a letter to all California's district attorneys, sheriffs and police chiefs interpreting the Supreme Court decision. Local law enforcement had asked the U.S. Attorney's office for "possible enforcement action against 'medical marijuana' dispensaries," Scott stated, before citing the CDAA summer conference opinion as proof that the dispensaries violate California as well as federal law. Scott encouraged local agencies to first consult with their own district attorney regarding the potential for local prosecution. He also attached a copy of an article about SB 420 that ran in the Prosecutor's Brief, a quarterly CDAA publication.

Scott's anti-cannabis campaign set the stage for increased cooperation with local prosecutors, who have transferred a number of difficult medical marijuana cases to federal authorities, especially in the Eastern District. Armed with Scott's letter and the secret CDAA opinion, law enforcement opposed the opening of new dispensaries and pushed city councils and county supervisors to enact moratorium ordinances. The California Police Chiefs Association lobbied officials with the League of California Cities, and on a few occasions DEA agents or a DEA counsel attended city council meetings at the invitation of local police.

Relocated to the foothills of El Dorado County, McGregor Scott took a personal interest in the public discussion of a marijuana dispensary ordinance in the gold-rush town of Placerville, the county seat. After watching public-access television coverage of a city council hearing, Scott phoned the town manager, John Driscoll, to commiserate. The U.S. attorney told him the advocates who spoke at the meeting were simply in it for the money, Driscoll reported to associates.

In 2005 San Diego county supervisors refused to authorize the patient ID program mandated by SB 420, and filed suit to overturn the law. In December '06, the state Supreme Court rejected this suit (which was joined by two other counties) and upheld California's law permitting the use of marijuana for medical purposes. San Diego Country officials have appealed the decision, and the case is pending.

Today there are 200,000 authorized medical marijuana users in California, which is the only state (among twelve that have legalized medical marijuana) with a significant aboveground pot business. Thirty-three of 58 counties have initiated ID card programs. But an ID card doesn't prevent searches of med-pot patients by local and state law enforcement officers, who still target medical marijuana providers and users in California, where doctors who recommend cannabis do so at their own risk.

Hardly a week goes by without another raid against med-pot dispensaries by the DEA in cahoots with unreconstructed drug warriors in one county or another. Southern California has been hit particularly hard in recent months with anti-med-pot sweeps in San Diego, the Los Angeles area, Bakersfield, Palm Springs, Morro Bay, Riverside and Orange County, and dozens of other cities.

Activists and patients hope the San Diego lawsuit and subsequent raids will be the last gasp of an ultimately futile effort to snuff out California's burgeoning medical marijuana scene, which continues to gain momentum. There are currently almost 400 med-pot storefronts and delivery services unevenly distributed throughout the state -- with 200 concentrated in the LA area. In North Hollywood alone, there are more pot clubs than Starbucks.

In April '07, the state Board of Equalization served notice that sellers of medical marijuana must pay state and local sales tax - a stipulation not applied to conventional pharmaceuticals. But the state has yet to meet its responsibilities by establishing commonsense rules and procedures to protect those involved in prescribing and distributing marijuana to the sick.

Thus far, there has been little decisive action from Attorney Gen. Jerry Brown and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who persist in deferring to recalcitrant state and local law enforcement, which have been adamantly opposed to any legal sale of marijuana, even nonprofit exchanges, since the passage of the Compassionate Use Act. Even today, the California Narcotics Officers Association features on its website a position paper asserting: "There is no justification for using marijuana as a medicine."

As the drug warriors wage their war of attrition against medical marijuana, the human toll continues to rise. Facing the prospects of a decade in federal prison, David Davidson left Cynthia Blake and is now a fugitive. She agreed to plead guilty to a single felony that carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in custody. Prosecutors offered leniency provided she testify against Davidson and reveal her erstwhile partner's whereabouts. In September, Blake was sentenced to 18 months in federal custody.

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Government Shows No Compassion for Medical Pot Consumption

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SO WHAT'S NEW??? They don't care about compassion cause... they have none, or maybe they don't care because they're sitting so pretty they don't have any REAL ramifications, for not giving a shit!

That's the whole problem... we need to feed them ramifications every damn day, even if we have to shove it down their heartless-infested-lined throats!

Looking for Relief, More Time By Leo Greene
CN Source: Daily Bulletin June 17, 2007 Calif.  

Leo's Story: Marijuana protects the nerves and dramatically slows the progression of ALS and other fatal neurological disorders, according to reputable studies. I point this out as a reminder and to provide a voice for those of us caught in the middle of what seems like an intensifying marijuana war.

Narcotics agents are busting pot farms left and right. The DEA has been raiding medical-marijuana dispensaries up and down the state. And the U.S. Attorney's Office has been filing criminal charges against medical- marijuana providers.
Continued...cannabisnews/23087

2 Farmers Suing DEA Over Right To Grow Hemp By Donna Leinwand
CN Source: USA Today June 17, 2007 North Dakota  

Two North Dakota farmers who want to grow hemp are filing a federal lawsuit today to challenge the Drug Enforcement Administration's ban on the plant that is the same species that produces marijuana.

Hemp can be imported from Canada, Europe and China, but growing hemp in the USA is illegal, the DEA says. "Hemp is marijuana," DEA spokesman Garrison Courtney says. "There's no distinguishing feature between marijuana and hemp."
Continued...usatoday/hempsuit



"Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could."
--William F. Buckley Jr

Government Shows No Compassion for Medical Pot
By Patrick McCartney and Paul A. Lee, AlterNet 
CN Source: AlterNet June 16, 2007 California  
On the morning of January 13, 2004, Tehama County prosecutor Lynn Strom unexpectedly announced that the state of California was dropping charges against Cynthia Blake and David Davidson for possessing and growing cannabis with the intent to distribute. While the two medical marijuana patients waited in the courtroom, Strom and the defense attorneys disappeared inside the judge's chambers to discuss the motion to dismiss. Moments later, more than a dozen sheriff's deputies pounced on the hapless couple, handcuffed them, and shoved them into an unmarked police car waiting outside the courthouse in the Sacramento Valley town of Corning. They were already en route to jail in Sacramento when Strom informed their lawyers that the state was bowing out because the Feds were taking over the case.
Continued...cannabisnews/23083

In an editorial in its May 1 issue, William F. Buckley, Jr.'s National Review commented on the case of Jimmy Montgomery, a paraplegic sentenced to 10 years in Oklahoma prisons for less than 2 ounces of marijuana. NR noted that former deputy drug czar John P. Walters criticized ABC News for reporting on the Montgomery case. Walters showed no concern for Montgomery but rather complained, "Apparently ABC couldn't find a grandmother on death row for carrying a roach clip..." NR observes that "something is seriously wrong with a drug policy that condones such treatment -- a point that the drug warriors tacitly acknowledge by changing the subject."
Continued...~olsen/NORML/WEEKLY/95-04-20.html

Hypocrisy & Double Standards

"There is a point at which the law becomes immoral and unethical. That point is reached when it becomes a cloak for the cowardice that dares not stand up against blatant violations of justice. A state that supresses all freedom of speech, and which by imposing the most terrible punishments, treats each and every attempt at criticism, however morally justified, and every suggestion for improvement as plotting to high treason, is a state that breaks an unwritten law."
--Kurt Huber [The head of White Rose], killed by the Nazis in 1943

Marijuana Bills Caught Up in Legislature By Cara Matthews
CN Source: Press & Sun Bulletin June 18, 2007 Albany, NY  
The GOP-controlled Senate and Democrat-dominated Assembly have bills to allow marijuana use for serious illnesses, but they disagree on how it would be dispensed and there may not be enough time or will to reach a compromise this session. "It boils down to how you control it, both in production and distribution," Sen. Vincent Leibell, R-Patterson and the bill's sponsor in his house, said Monday.
Continued...cannabisnews/23092



Medical Marijuana Law Gains Momentum in Albany, New York

Keeping Your Head Straight By Jeremiah Horrigan
CN Source: Times Herald-Record June 18, 2007 New York  
Asked to comment on the state Assembly's approval of a grow-your-own medical marijuana bill, Republican Assemblywoman Annie Rabbitt of Greenwood Lake told The Times Herald-Record last week "I'm against it because I think it is a mind-altering substance." I was having my morning cup of decaf, trying to figure out how best to get through another day without altering my mind.
Continued...cannabisnews/23090


June 18, 2007

More stupidity in government. Canada telling doctors how much marijuana they can prescribe -- limiting it to five grams a day. "We don't need no stinking doctors to advise us on dosage. We're the government."


Health Canada Orders Doctors to Keep Medical Marijuana Doses Under 5 Grams

The Bush administration is concerned that we don't have enough people in jail for long enough in this country, so they're pushing for more mandatory sentences as part of a Republican crime legislation package as a campaign issue for 2008. So expect a bunch of tough on drugs/crime rhetoric in the campaign, with the Republicans calling for more outrageous sentences and the Democrats whimpering "Me, too."



Science: Another victim of the drug war
Sunday, June 17, 2007

Is Your Politician a CREEP? from Ethan Nadelmann
DPA alerts@actioncenter.drugpolicy.org June 15, 2007

Do your elected officials get a little crazy around election time? Do they seem worried that they haven't done enough to win voters' trust and ensure another term? They might be suffering from Chronic Re-Election Paranoia (CREEP).

Maybe they've been taking Incarcerex .



Incarcerex relieves election-related anxieties. It creates the illusion that politicians are improving voters' lives by locking up people who violate drug laws.

It's a fast-acting, simplistic solution, but it has serious side effects that you should know about.
Learn more about CREEP , and find out whether your elected official has an Incarcerex problem.

Watch the video.
Thank you

To Contact or Make a Donation by Mail
Drug Policy Alliance
70 West 36th Street, 16th Floor
New York, NY 10018
jirwin@drugpolicy.org

Green Aid Medical Marijuana Legal Defense and Education Fund
Drug War Facts
Americans for Safe Access

New York Times Magazine cover story focuses on pain medication
The cover article in this Sunday's New York Times Magazine is huge. Very powerful piece by Tina Rosenberg about the issue of pain management and how the drug war has interfered with proper medical procedures. If you have access to the Sunday paper, pick one up this week to reward them for running it. Or write them a letter.
You can read it now online: Doctor or Drug Pusher



"We the People are the rightful master of both congress and the courts - not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution."
--Abraham Lincoln

Rell Vetoes Bill To Legalize Medical Marijuana
CN Source: Associated Press June 19, 2007 Hartford, CT
Gov. M. Jodi Rell vetoed a bill Tuesday that would have legalized medicinal marijuana, acknowledging she struggled with the decision. "I am not unfamiliar with the incredible pain and heartbreak associated with battling cancer," Rell, a Republican, wrote in her veto letter. "I have spoken and met with dozens of people on this issue, all of whom have presented their positions passionately and articulately.
Continued...cannabisnews/23095

Rell Vetoes Bill To Legalize Medical Marijuana
CN Source: Hartford Courant June 19, 2007 Connecticut



The War on Medical Marijuana By Paul Krassner
CN Source: Huffington Post June 19, 2007 Santa Cruz, CA  
Anthropologists of the future will look back upon these times as incredibly barbaric. One such example is medical marijuana, which is already legal in a dozen states, yet prohibited--and trumped--by federal law. New York and Connectictut are next in line. The New York Times recently editorialized, "Although there are other prescriptions that are designed to relieve pain and nausea and there is concern about the health effects of smoking marijuana, there are some truly ill people who find peace only that way."
Continued...cannabisnews/23094



Medical Marijuana: New York is Waiting To Inhale By Tom Precious
CN Source: Buffalo News June 19, 2007 Albany, NY
Joel Peacock, a registered member of the Conservative Party, has little use for liberal politicians. “I’m as far from liberal as you’re ever going to get,” the 57- year-old Buffalo construction inspector said. Yet Peacock said he hopes state lawmakers in Albany this week will pass a bill legalizing marijuana for certain medical uses.
Continued...cannabisnews/23093

Measure Falls With Connecticut Governor’s Veto By Matthew J. Malone
CN Source: New York Times Stamford, Conn. June 19, 2007  
After struggling with what was described as one of the most difficult decisions in her three-year tenure, Gov. M. Jodi Rell vetoed a measure today that would have legalized the use of marijuana for certain medical conditions. In a statement, Mrs. Rell, a breast cancer survivor, said, “I completely sympathize with the well-intentioned goal of alleviating pain and suffering, but legal alternatives are available.”
Continued...cannabisnews/23097

Rell Delivers Veto On Bill To Allow For Marijuana By Ted Mann
CN Source: The Day June 20, 2007 Hartford, CT

"Cannabis can be used on an episodic but continual basis without evidence of social or psychic dysfunction. In many users the term dependence with its obvious connotations, probably is mis-applied... The chief opposition to the drug rests on a moral and political, and not toxicologic, foundation".
The USA Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy 1987

Drugwar Lies Linked to Schizophrenia

Medical Marijuana Users Need Protection By Damon Agnos
CN Source: Spokesman-Review February 03, 2007 Seattle, WA

Prosecuting Sharon Tracy and monitoring her through the department of corrections is probably not the way most taxpayers want their money spent. And, as the court pointed out, it is clearly not what Washington voters had in mind when they voted for Washington's medical marijuana initiative.

Those voters recognized that protecting people like Sharon Tracy from prosecution and jail time is a matter of compassion, common sense and fiscal responsibility.

However, law enforcement and the courts have had difficulty honoring the voters' will. Time and again, the people whom the law was meant to protect find themselves in handcuffs or worse.

A Centralia man, the caretaker for a muscular dystrophy patient, was arrested and prosecuted for possessing that patient's medical marijuana (which was then confiscated) – even though the law explicitly allows him to do so.

A Bremerton woman who has lupus and a doctor's recommendation for medical marijuana was arrested and prosecuted for possessing a pipe with nothing but marijuana residue in it.

There are stories like these all across Washington...
Continued...cannabisnews/22593

"Having reviewed all the material available to us we find ourselves in agreement with the conclusion reached by the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission appointed by the Government of India (1893-94) and the New York Mayor's Committee (1944 - LaGuardia) that the long-term consumption of cannabis in moderate doses has no harmful effects" "the long-asserted dangers of cannabis are exaggerated and that the related law is socially damaging, if not unworkable"
--1968 UK ROYAL COMMISSION, THE WOOTTON REPORT

CannaCare is Not The Problem

Roger Mentch
Wed Aug 16 2006 (Updated 08/18/06)

Persecution of Registered Medical Marijuana Provider Continues

Compassionate caregiver, Roger Mentch, was arrested and jailed in August of last year--again for cultivating and selling medical marijuana through his California-registered medical marijuana dispensary, the Hemporium, to medical marijuana patients. He reports he was held for 7 days in jail on a probation violation hold. Not satisfied, the Marijuana Enforcement Team then went to a second judge (Almquist) and got a search warrant, tore up his entire crop, and destroyed it.

Said Mentch, "they wiped my computer, seized my phone, and tried to destroy my life." Mentch is also an in-home caregiver for two patients, including one who is suffering from advanced cancer. He has kept a low profile on this case, hoping it would be dismissed. At a hearing last Wednesday (August 9), the D.A. declined to do that.
Continued...indybay/18297986

"Medicines often produce side effects. Sometimes they are physically unpleasant. Cannabis too has discomforting side effects, but these are not physical they are political"
--The Economist March 28th 1992

The Drug War Refugees

A Pox On Bush Pot Policy By Paul Koretz
CN Source: WeHoNews.com February 01, 2007 West Hollywood, CA  

Just when we thought they couldn't go any lower...

Another inhumane action by the Bush Administration? I guess I shouldn’t have been so surprised. This is the same President who lied to get us into the disastrous war in Iraq for his own purposes, and whose use of torture has embarrassed us in the eyes of the world.
Continued...cannabisnews/22589

NORML's Weekly News Bulletin - June 21, 2007

Connecticut: Governor’s Veto Means Arrest, Jail For State’s Medi-Pot Patients
June 21, 2007 - Hartford, CT, USA

Under state law, Gov. Rell had the option of allowing HB 6715 to become law without her signature.

According to a 2004 University of Connecticut poll, 83 percent of state voters support the use of medical cannabis when authorized by a physician.

Veto Lacks Compassion
CN Source: The Day June 21, 2007 Hartford, CT 

For Ill, Medical Marijuana Ought To Be Obtainable
CN Source: Daily Bulletin June 21, 2007 California 
We can't say it any better than Leo said it. Still, it bears repeating. Leo, of course, is Leo Greene, our colleague and friend who is battling ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease. He has been chronicling his thoughts and feelings as he confronts his illness in an award-winning series of columns and videos called "Leo's Story." In Sunday's installment, he made the case for the use of medical marijuana to fight his terminal disease. It could buy him time, he wrote:
Continued...cannabisnews/23102

Senate Overrides Veto of Medical Marijuana Law By Jim Baron
CN Source: Woonsocket Call June 21, 2007 Providence, RI  
With the 29-4 vote in the Senate Tuesday to override Gov. Donald Carcieri's veto, there is just one more hurdle to clear before Rhode Island's medical marijuana law is made permanent. The House of Representatives has yet to schedule a vote to override the governor's veto, but leaders in that chamber, where the bill to lift the one-year "sunset" provision in the current law passed by a wide margin, said it would be done before the legislature adjourns for the year.
Continued...cannabisnews/23101

SWAT Team Use Is Out of Control in This Country



Stephanie Landa, the definition of injustice

Feds Jail Elderly Medical Cannabis Caregiver By Luke Thomas
CN Source: Fog City Journal January 05, 2007 San Francisco  
An elderly woman began a 41-month jail sentence in federal prison yesterday after turning herself in to federal authorities. Stephanie Landa, 60 and a mother, began her sentence at noon following an 11:00 a.m press conference outside the San Francisco federal building. In July, 2003, on advice of counsel, Landa plead guilty to a charge of 'maintaining a place for the manufacturing of marijuana' and was subsequently sentenced by Federal Judge William Alsup to 41-months in federal prison.


Stephanie Landa shown making signs in support of the California state medical marijuana law, Prop 215, to mark ten years since the historic voter mandate. She is one of three people who believed they had permission to grow medical marijuana in San Francisco but their information was apparently turned over to the DEA by a renegade City narcotics agent. Her co-defendants, husband Tim Kikuchi and actor Kevin Gage, are both serving federal prison time for their efforts to provide for the medical needs of qualified patients. Federal law does not respect the wishes of the voters in this situation, and DEA raids have occurred at dispensaries and gardens throughout the state.

Pot War in Brooklyn! By Matthew Lysiak
CN Source: Brooklyn Paper June 21, 2007 New York  
It’s the dude versus the narc. Two Brooklyn lawmakers — one a former Soviet engineer, the other a former police officer — are hashing it out over a bill to make marijuana legal for medicinal use. Assemblyman Alec Brook-Krasny (D–Coney Island) and state Sen. Marty Golden (R–Bay Ridge) have pushed themselves to the front of the debate, only days after the Assembly passed the legislation.
Continued...cannabisnews/23105

Boucher Relieved By Marijuana Bill By Jared Newman
CN Source: Wilton Villager June 21, 2007 Wilton, CT  
When the state House of Representatives was discussing a bill that would allow medical use of marijuana, Rep. Toni Boucher, R-143, argued against it for hours, reading from over 100 pages of her own research. Eventually she had to cut herself off, lest she lose votes from people who already agreed with her. "I had another four or five hours in me," she said in an interview.
Continued...cannabisnews/23105



Thursday, June 21, 2007

Drug Czar - fuzzy statistics, fuzzier conclusions, all in the name of job security (his)

The Drug Czar's latest "report" on teens, drugs and violence is the usual mishmash of distorted statistics and implied conclusions not drawn from the data, all in an attempt to scare people.

Today ONDCP released a new Special Report showing that teens who use drugs are more likely to engage in violent and delinquent behavior and join gangs. Early use of marijuana--the most commonly used drug among teens--is a warning sign for later gang involvement.

Of course, when the Drug Czar brings out the big guns of the numbers to support his conclusions, it all sounds scary, unless you actually look at it. Now I haven't even looked at any of the original data he's drawing from, but check out this one that he promotes:

Nearly one in six teens (17%) who got into serious fights at school or work in the past year report using drugs;

However, if you look at the 2007 Monitoring the Future report, you see that the percentages of any teens who used drugs in the past year are: 8th grade (14.8%), 10th grade (28.7%), and 12th grade (36.5%). So to say that 17% of teens who got into serious fights report using drugs is not a particularly alarming thing. (In fact, it appears by these numbers that teens who use drugs are actually less likely to get into serious fights.)

But this is, of course, standard operating procedure for the Czar of Lying.

For more on how stupid this all is, see Scott Morgan's excellent posts: Pete Gets off the Couch and Joins a Gang and Marijuana Doesn't Cause Gang Membership, but the Drug War Does.

Radley's busy

Radley Balko's doing some great stuff.

Today, he's testifying "as part of House Crime Subcommittee Chairman Bobby Scott's 'Crime Summit.' ... topic is the militarization of domestic police departments."

There's nobody better to talk about that subject. And on July 19th he's been invited to testify at hearings on the Kathryn Johnston raid.

It's really wonderful to see the House even discussing these subjects (and that somebody had the brains to invite Radley).

Also check out his column on videotaping the policy.

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Brian Bennett challenges the drug policy reform establishment again with The Catch-22 of Drug Law Reform

The so-called Drug Czar uses his so-called "blog" to brag Governor of Connecticut Vetoes So-Called "Medical" Marijuana Bill. He's particularly good at being smug at taxpayer expense about the prospect of sick people suffering. It's a talent.

Scientists from the Pontificia Catholic University in Quito, Ecuador claim that our aerial spraying in Colombia is damaging the DNA of Ecuadorians living near the Colombian border (makes you wonder what it's doing to the Colombians).

William A. Collins in the East Texas Review: Some wars aren't meant to be won

Never mind that none of this works. It's not meant to work. It's meant to promote heroic political figures, to protect wasteful prison jobs and contractors, and to keep poor people away from the dreaded voting booth. [...] The "Drug War," like the "Terror War," has value in its own right. We can't simply end it. Jobs and votes are at stake. For many, winning the "war" would be a true calamity.

I'm guessing Mark Kleiman has the right take on the Giuliani campaign chair being arrested for cocaine.

Do rules hamper remedies for pain? by Kyung M. Song in the Seattle Times [from May, but worth reading]



Grant Krieger jailed without cannabis medication today!!!
kanman 06-18-2007

Grant Krieger jailed without cannabis medication today by Alberta provincial court Judge William Pepler!

Due to the corrections system refusal to allow Grant cannabis medication Judge William Pepler was going to extend the time for Grant to go to prison 15 more days.

Grant was ordered to turn himself in on July 3 / 07 between 9:00 AM and 12:00 noon.

Grant was ordered to try to obtain and Health Canada exemption. He visited 2 medical clinics and was not able to obtain the required doctors signature. No surprise here!

An adjournment was called and Grant's lawyer (John Hooker) had a private meeting with the prosecutor.

After the adjournment back in front of the Judge William Pepler John Hooker asked the judge to allow Grant to serve his 4 month sentence on weekends.

The judge refused and jailed Grant on the spot!

As always Grant did have a quarter pound of cannabis medication with him which he was not allowed to keep with him.

CBC did some TV interviews outside the court house that may be broadcast.

Calgary 420 is organizing a daily protest outside the Calgary remand center where Grant will be housed temporally.

I have new signs printed up for the protest which will be held daily until Grant Krieger is released!

Please consider joining our daily protest against this extreme cruel madness!!!
Today's protest will be at the remand center and start no later then 7:00 PM

At the very least letters of support please! All letters of support will be given to Grant when I have my daily visits with him.

Keith Fagin

keith@Calgary420.ca
(403) 863-2071
Calgary 420 Cannabis Community

P.S.
The Krieger Foundation will continue to function as always. The only change is the foundation will function with out with out Grant's presence until he is released from prison.

P.S.S
Last time Grant suffered in prison he was released after 7 days in a wheel chair due to the lack of cannabis medication.

CTV (Calgary) coverage of the June 18 / 07 Free Grant Krieger Protest.

CTV broadcast the piece due to the fact our group is asking they release Grant until they can find a way to allow him access to his legal medication.
Otherwise it would never have been broadcast at least on Calgary CTV (CFCN).

They want to move Grant to the Spy Hill prison. He has refused the move and he is still at the Calgary Remand Centre.

The real interesting development is a social worker showed up at the remand and asked Grant to sign a Health Canada MARR. Grant refused.

I want to know why they will have a government paid social worker intervene to have a doctor sign when Grant himself could not get two different doctors to sign.

Should they not have a government paid social worker intervene for the estimated one million Canadians that would benefit from medical use of cannabis too!

Debbie and I (at the very least) are contining the daily 7:00 PM protests and all the local hemp shops have posted our protest posters as of yesterday.
June 23 Saturday 12:00 noon we hope to see a lot of people show up to wave signs and make lots of noise.

The Calgary Remand Centre (122 ave and 85 street nw) is a long trip for a lot of people (for us it is 45 minutes each way) but we still need people to come out please!

The Krieger Foundation has and will continue to function as it always has.The only change is Grant is not present.

Lastly thank you all for the positive comments and letters written to the media and government (Alberta Justice Ministry).

We talk to Grant daily and we are hoping to finally get to visit him tonight right after todays daily (6:30 PM start time tonight) protest wraps up.

I have passed on the comments to Grant via phone to date and it does help lift his spirits up!

Keith

P.S.
Debbie is using a HD video camera to capture the protests and I hope to find some time soon to share them with you all.

If you are having trouble getting the video (our site's bandwidth is under a lot of pressure right now) see Google Video @ Google Video result...

Grant Kreiger Sentenced to 4 months prison time!

Pot crusder upset at Crown

Doped up system by Licia Corbella
Calgary and Edmonton Suns

Licia Corbella has written pro Grant articles in past years.

Marie Krieger busted by Pete Brady 08 Apr, 2004

Medical marijuana user's wife caught with pot


Grant Krieger and wife Marie

No Extradition for the BC3!

Marc Emery, Michelle Rainey, and Greg Williams are Canadian citizens who were heavily involved in anti-prohibition activitism in Canada for ten years. The US will attempt to extradite these three cannabis activists to the US where they face 10 years to life in US prison. The extradition hearing has been scheduled to begin on November 5th, 2007 and last for four days. full story

More updates and information can be found here , and there is discussion at the end of this thread in the CC forums.


Marc Emery, Michelle Rainey and Greg Williams

AWESOME POST's ... WOW! Good job!

CAUGHT IN THE MIDDLE by Robert Speer
MAP Source: Chico News & Review 21 Jun 2007 (CA)

After a decade of legal wrangling and more than two years in prison, med-pot pioneer Bryan Epis faces a return to prison

Today ( Thursday, June 21 ) at 9:30 a.m., Bryan Epis will walk into the Sacramento courtroom of federal District Court Judge Frank Damrell Jr., where he is scheduled to testify once again in his marijuana-cultivation case.

Epis' case began with his arrest 10 years ago almost to the day and still isn't resolved.  What started out as a small-time bust has become a legal roller-coaster ride, made Epis a hero among med-pot activists, and raised serious constitutional issues.

It all goes back to June 25, 1997, when sheriff's deputies raided Epis' home on West Francis Willard Avenue in Chico, where he was growing marijuana plants in his basement.  The pot, Epis insisted, was meant for sick people with doctors' recommendations to use marijuana under terms of California's landmark Compassionate Use Act, Proposition 215, passed in 1996.
Continued...map/v07n742a05

Bryan Epis Sentenced to Ten Years

10 years for a medical marijuana caregiver
Bryan Epis learned about the medical value of marijuana to treat his chronic pain after he was seriously injured in a car accident. When California voters overwhelmingly passed Prop 215 (Cal HS 11362.5), a law authorizing cultivation and possession of marijuana for patients and their caregivers, Brian Epis saw an opportunity to do a tremendous service. His dream was to create a legal medical marijuana dispensary that would be safe, accessible and affordable

Bryan Epis Protest Pics


Ashley Epis, 8, of Chico Calif., who is pictured on a series of billboards advocating medical marijuana, poses before one of the signs on Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2003, in Oakland, Calif. Epis' father, Bryan Epis, is currently serving a 10-year prison sentence for conspiracy to grow marijuana. The Third-grader said she agreed to be on the billboard. 'I want everybody to know that my dad is not a criminal,' she said.

Pot Advocate Sick In Jail - Family by Deborah Tetley
MAP Source: Calgary Herald 21 Jun 2007 (CN AB)

The condition of notorious medicinal marijuana crusader Grant Krieger - -- incarcerated at the Calgary Remand Centre since Monday -- is "rapidly deteriorating," according to his friends and family.

"He's having troubles getting around, he's depressed and he's in pain," said Ryan Krieger, Grant's 25-year-old son.

Ryan has not visited his father in jail and has only spoken with him by phone.

"He is under medical care because his muscles are cramping up and his mobility is diminishing.  They are trying to make him feel comfortable."

Grant Krieger, who has multiple sclerosis and uses pot to alleviate the pain, was jailed Monday after being convicted of drug trafficking in March and sentenced to four months in custody.

A provincial court judge delayed sending him to the remand centre until Monday so that Krieger, who is legally allowed to used cannabis, could arrange to take the drug into jail.

Krieger needed to acquire a federal licence allowing him to carry the pot, which required a doctor's signature.  He was denied signatures by two doctors, his lawyer told the court.
Continued...map/v07n741a02



Patients Talk About The Importance of Marijuana By John Grybos
CN Source: Legislative Gazette June 22, 2007 New York

Two men who say medical marijuana helps them deal with chronic medical conditions came to the capital to advocate for the passage of a bill, sponsored by Assembly health committee Chairman Richard Gottfried, to legalize its use for certain patients.

The bill (A.4867) passed the Assembly on June 13 and was immediately delivered to the Senate and referred to its rules committee.
Continued...cannabisnews/23109



UP FROM PROHIBITION by John McWHORTER
MAP Source: New York Sun 21 Jun 2007 (NY)

You have to go to the history section of the bookstore to find Michael Lerner's new book recounting New York during Prohibition, "Dry Manhattan." It would be more usefully displayed in Current Affairs.  Mr.  Lerner has given us not a mere academic exhumation of a bygone New York, but an uncannily accurate description of New York last week and the city's fight against drugs.

Prohibition was, of course, a dismal failure.  It didn't stop people from drinking, and, in fact, made many, attracted by the glamour of the illicit, drink more.  But worst of all, it created an ongoing war between police forces and humble working people, bringing out the worst in everybody.

Public respect for the law plummeted.  Mr.  Lerner writes, "officers increasingly accused of using excessive force, planting evidence, and conducting illegal searches and seizures." I could have opened this oped with that sentence and pulled the journalist's rhetorical trick of writing, "Does that sound like something out of today's headlines? Well, in fact, it is a description of 1921 in Michael Lerner's new book ...  "
Continued...map/v07n743a01



REEFER MADNESS COMES FULL CIRCLE by Bill Kaufmann
MAP Source: Calgary Sun 22 Jun 2007 (CN AB)

So this is what the "war on drugs" has come to.

When prohibition isn't creating and fuelling an lucrative trade, it's locking up the infirm for the crime of helping others like them, with marijuana.

And while it imprisons them, it denies them their medication.

Last Monday, Calgary Provincial Court Judge William Pepler ordered Grant Krieger incarcerated immediately, with no access to the pot the MS sufferer says has made his life liveable.

Reefer madness has come full circle.

In sentencing Krieger last March, Pepler delayed his four-month imprisonment so corrections officials could hash out a way the medicinal marijuana crusader could have his stash.

In the past three months, two physicians balked at signing a federal licence enabling Krieger to bring his dope into jail, fearing the wrath of the "justice" system even though their signatures would merely rubber-stamp what's already perfectly legal.

And no one from the province has stepped up but hey, this is Alberta where drug dealers and addicts get their just desserts.
Continued...map/v07n743a03



Tracing Marijuana To Its Roots
By The University of Alaska Fairbanks 
CN Source: YubaNet.com June 22, 2007 Alaska 

So why not pot? That was the question posed by Wooller and his fellow researchers, Tim Howe, Norma Haubenstock and Melanie Rohr. In October 2005, they wrote a proposal to the University of Alaska Foundation President’s Special Projects Fund.

Alaska Stable Isotope Facility Wooller applied for a permit from the D.E.A. to work with marijuana in his lab, he needed to find a varied supply of the drug. He went to the UAF Police Department and asked for help. After convincing a few officers that no, he was really a scientist, he got to speak with Investigator Steve Goetz and Lieutenant Syrilyn Tong, who agreed to help him out.

The key lies at the atomic level. Of particular interest to Wooller and his colleagues are the stable isotopes.

In order to get the method to that level, though, Wooller said he needs time, money and many more samples of marijuana, either from known locations or that are grown in a laboratory, such as the state crime lab, under controlled conditions.
Continued...cannabisnews/23107



D.E.A.th Deceptions

Too Late To Plant Hemp, Licensed Farmers File Suit By Sue Roesler
CN Source: Farm & Ranch GuideJune 22, 2007 Bismarck, N.D 
Two farmers licensed to grow hemp in North Dakota filed a lawsuit in federal district court this week attempting to keep the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) from charging them with a crime after they put the seed in the ground. North Dakota Rep. Dave Monson, a legislator and wheat, barley, canola and soybean grower in northeast North Dakota, and Wayne Hauge, a barley, durum, pea, lentil, black beans and chickpea grower in northwest North Dakota, filed the lawsuit that is being paid for by VoteHemp.
Continued...cannabisnews/23110

The Emperor Wears No Clothes by Jack Herer

Elkhorn Manefesto the Invisible Prohibition

Untold Story



Common Sense for Drug Policy RxG
CSDP June 23, 2007

Move Toward "Medicalization" Grows In US, Internationally

Patients, Activists Organize To Provide Safe Access To Cannabis Medicines In Spite Of DEA Opposition

Get Involved!
Organizations working on medical marijuana issues include:
The Coalition for Medical Marijuana
Americans for Safe Access
Marijuana Policy Project
NORML
Drug Policy Alliance
Voter Power

The Purple Brain: America's New Reefer Madness
By Marsha Rosenbaum and Paul Armentano, AlterNet 
CN Source: AlterNet June 23, 2007 USA
 
More than 70 years in the making, the long-awaited sequel to the notorious 1936 film, Reefer Madness has arrived. It's called The Purple Brain, and just like its unintentionally campy predecessor, its purpose is to frighten Americans about marijuana.

The particular target audience for the Feds' new production is the millions of parents who may have, without incident, experimented with marijuana in the 1970s, when they were about the same age as their children are today.
Continued...cannabisnews/23112

"Arbitrary and capricious" is legal language that was used by DEA Administrative Law Judge Francis Young in 1988 to conclude that DEA was obligated under the Controlled Substances Act to reschedule marijuana as a prescription medicine. DEA Chief Administrator Robert Bonner proceeded to arbitrarily and capriciously disregard Judge Young's well researched and reasoned decision, which the Act allowed him to do.

Drugwar Lies Linked to Schizophrenia



The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937

The history of how the Marihuana Tax Act came to be the law of the land.

For more background on the history of, and reasons for the Marihuana Tax Act, see also these related documents:

The History of the Non-Medical Use of Drugs in the United States - a speech by Professor Charles Whitebread to the California Judge's Conference - This contains a short history of the marijuana laws.

The Forbidden Fruit and the Tree of Knowledge , by Professors Richard Bonnie and Charles Whitebread - This is a more extended history of the origins of the marijuana laws.

Unraveling an American Dilemma

The Demonization of Marihuana - by John C. Lupien
Background of the supposed Anslinger-Hearst-DuPont conspiracy to outlaw marijuana in order to remove hemp as a possible competitor to their products.

Correspondence about the legal status of hemp 1930-1938

"We've got a national campaign by drug legalizers, in my view, to try and use medicinal uses of drugs and legalization of hemp as a stalking horse to get in under the radar screen."
--Gen. Barry McCaffrey - Former Drug Czar (Clinton)

Marihuana Tax Act
The full text of the Marihuana Tax Act, as passed in 1937



Medical Pot User, 47, with AIDS Sues State By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon
CN Source: Rocky Mountain News June 23, 2007 Colorado Posted by Staff on at 05:52:27 PT

An AIDS patient who says he needs to smoke marijuana every day to ease nausea from his medications is suing the state of Colorado to expand access to marijuana providers.

"My medicines are really devastating. The only thing that soothes the nausea is medical marijuana," said Damien LaGoy, 47, of Denver, who is suing the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. He was diagnosed with HIV in 1987 and hepatitis C a decade later.
Continued...cannabisnews/23111

Conference on Cannabis Sativa L.
January 14, 1937 -- Room 81 Treasury Building, 10:30 AM

Virtues' of Ganja * Legitimizing Ganja * The Ganjawar Fraud

Pot Potency? Boomers' blissfully unfazed by mere facts.

"Marijuana gives rise to insanity -- not in its users but in the policies directed against it. A nation that sentences the possessor of a single joint to life imprisonment without parole but sets a murderer free after perhaps six years is in the grips of a deep psychosis."
Eric Schlosser - Author



'Guru of Ganga' Wants New Trial By Henry K. Lee
CN Source: San Francisco Chronicle June 23, 2007 San Francisco, CA

Ed Rosenthal, the self-described "Guru of Ganja" convicted for a second time last month of violating federal drug laws by growing marijuana for medical patients, wants a new trial.

The 62-year-old cannabis cultivation expert, former High Times magazine columnist and steadfast advocate for legalizing marijuana claims U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco wrongly prohibited him from telling jurors his goal was helping the sick, not selling drugs. Continued...cannabisnews/23113



The Vindictive Persecution of Ed Rosenthal

Jury Nullification

Absorbing every ounce of this! LOVE visiting this thread, thanks!

Thanks
It seems there are way more D.E.A.th Worriers OiNkDeCePtions on a daily basis nowadaze than even Nixon and Anslinger could have prayed for... D.E.A.ception!

Medical Marijuana is No Worse Than Wine By Craig Allison
CN Source: Press Democrat June 23, 2007 California  
The medical marijuana act brought hope to many Californians -- but vague local ordinances have slowed implementation, even though 70 percent of voters approved Proposition 215.

To cut though this "hangover," Sonoma County should apply a simple risk-benefit analysis to ensure ethically and morally correct medical marijuana standards.
Continued...cannabisnews/23114


Sunday, June 24, 2007

Despicable lies

Link. Mark R. Trouville, chief of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's Miami office:

"This ain't your grandfather's or your father's marijuana," Trouville said. "This will hurt you. This will addict you. This will kill you."

Perhaps Trouville would care to tell us just how many people have been killed by marijuana, and then how many have been killed by DEA agents. The residents in Florida are in much greater danger from the DEA than from the most potent marijuana.

The Ganjawar Fraud

"Today's marijuana is also twice as strong as it was in the mid 80's."
--John Walters - Current US Drug Czar (Bush II)

Pot Potency? Boomers' blissfully unfazed by mere facts.

Safer Choice * Change The Climate



Newark's Mayor Cory Booker is fed up with the Drug War

Wow.

Booker redirects his anger at the war on drugs

This is big.

He is an angrier man now. And the focus of that anger is a public policy that he believes is ruining his city and threatening his hopes to change it.

The problem, he says, is New Jersey's tough tactics in the drug war. We are heavy on jail time and unforgiving even when prisoners finish their terms. At a time when even states like Texas are changing course, we are sticking with our failed strategy.

The result is to turn thousands of young men into economic cripples and to give the crime wave in Newark a flood of fresh recruits. Booker describes it as almost an economic genocide against African-American men in his city.

And if it doesn't change, he says, he's ready to go to jail in protest, in the tradition of the civil rights movement.

"I'm going to battle on this," the mayor says. "We're going to start doing it the gentlemanly way. And then we're going to do the civil disobedience way. Because this is absurd.

"I'm talking about marches. I'm talking about sit-ins at the state capitol. I'm talking about whatever it takes."

The mayor calling for civil disobedience AGAINST the drug war?

He wants to reserve prison cells for those who do violence and divert the nonviolent drug offenders into treatment programs and halfway houses.

This guy really is angry.

"The drug war is causing crime," Booker says. "It is just chewing up young black men. And it's killing Newark." [...]

He knows it'll be tough. But when he talks about it, the political smile disappears and he wears the expression of a man preparing to smash his head into a brick wall if that's what it takes.

Lucky thing. Because that wall is sturdy. And it's way past time that someone knocked it down.

You don't hear a political official talk like this very often.



"...the primary reason to outlaw marijuana is its effect on the degenerate races."
--Harry J. Anslinger - America's 1st Drug Czar (FDR - JFK)

World Anti Drugs Day

Attempts to disguise the catastrophic failure of the UN drug agencies
Tranform Drug Policy Foundation

NEWS RELEASE

On Tuesday June 26th the UN office of drugs and crime (UNODC) will celebrate annual World Anti-Drugs Day. Transform Drug Policy Foundation, the UK's leading independent centre of expertise on drug policy and law reform, condemn the UNODC for once again attempting to dress up the striking failure of its anti-drugs strategy as success, and failing to speak out against mass executions of drug offenders in China.

Transform Drug Policy Foundation spokesperson Steve Rolles said:

"In 1998 the UN drug agencies pledged to create a "Drug Free World' within ten years.

However, The UNODC's own annual world drug reports have chronicled the continued global rise in the production and use of drugs over the last decade, particularly of the most dangerous drugs, heroin and cocaine. By any measure the UNODC's policy and ten year strategy has been an abject failure, with Afghanistan opium production breaking new records, and cocaine use in Europe rising dramatically.

"But instead of reflecting on these failures and considering alternative strategies for controlling drug markets that do not involve wasting billions on futile eradication programmes and increasing militarization of the war on drugs, we just hear more tough talking and yet more announcements of new initiatives.

"This year, as they launch another initiative with the motto [OE]do drugs control your life', they should be asked why they have continually failed to condemn the practice in China of celebrating world anti-drugs day with mass executions of drug offenders. The UN Special Rapporteur on Summary or Arbitrary Executions has called on China to end the use of the death penalty for drug trafficking, yet the UNODC, who organise world anti-drugs day has never seen fit to comment on China's barbaric practices.


november

Move to Undo Higher Education Act Drug Provision Passes Senate Committee

A Lie College Students Might Want To Tell

In 1998, Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., an advocate of stringent drug laws, slipped into a House bill an amendment denying federal financial aid for college to anyone who had been convicted of either selling or possessing drugs. No congressional committee voted on the amendment. But it passed as part of the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, first enacted in 1965 to create federal financial aid for college students.

ONDCP Kicks Off Annual Summer Marijuana Scare Campaign With Report

"Reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men."

"You smoke a joint and you're likely to kill your brother."
--Harry J. Anslinger - America's 1st Drug Czar (FDR - JFK)

"Casual drug users should be taken out and shot."
--Daryl Gates - Former LAPD Chief

Law Enforcement: This Week's Corrupt Cops Stories

Supreme Court Rules Passengers Can Challenge Police Stops

"Marijuana leads to homosexuality ... and therefore to AIDS."
--Carlton Turner - Former Drug Czar (Reagan)

With Meth Labs Plunging to Near Zero, Nevada Moves to Track Cold Remedies

"Marihuana leads to pacifism and communist brainwashing"
--Harry J. Anslinger - America's 1st Drug Czar (FDR - JFK)

Iran Hangs Four for Drug Trafficking

Dubai Sentences Two More Westerners To Prison Over Infinitesimal Amounts of Drugs

Thailand's drug war

Quote:

---

Marihuana leads to pacifism and communist brainwashing

---

OMG... pleeease! This shit is getting comical to me, it's just so pathetic! "Hi, I'm Joni, I'm a communist brainwasher cause I like to smoke a weed"... geesh!

Hi Joni,
I could understand with only a newspaper and radio how the government hoodwinked the people in the 30's and 40's. Selected censorship. But today with all of the media outlets and sources of info we still have reefer madness? Me thinks many who profit on the Ganjawar keep silent. Selling out their country. I figure we either support the Ganja outlaws or we support the corporate/government traitors. Programmed news and obedient blind followers of the blind. Notice how each decade the effects of Ganja changes. In the 50's McCarthy era, while he was hooked on opium ranting about communism and blackballing thousands of innocent Americans. Blaming it on Ganja would fit the times. Like Rush Limbaugh ranting on oxy. 10 years before that with the war it was all bloodlust and murderers. Unfortunately "pathetic" is accurate.

Oregon NORML Reefer Mad Quotes

"[Marijuana] is highly intoxicating and constitutes an ever recurring problem where there are Mexicans or Spanish-Americans of the lower classes."
--New York Times - Newspaper (1933)

"Under the influence of hashish those fanatics would madly rush at their enemies, and ruthlessly massacre every one within their grasp."
--Dr. A. E. Fossier - New Orleans Medical & Surgical Journal (1931)

"I now have absolute proof that smoking even one marijuana cigarette is equal in brain damage to being on Bikini Island during an H-bomb blast."
--Ronald Reagan - Former President

War on Drugs Runs Parallel To Iraq, Vietnam Wars By Joseph Ruchalski
CN Source: Daily Reveille June 26, 2007 USA  

President Nixon's declaration that drug abuse is "public enemy number one in the United States" in 1971 launched a "war on drugs" that has raged since the war in Vietnam.

Like the war in Vietnam then and in Iraq today, this war has proven to be much more complex than a simple "red versus blue" campaign. The soldiers are sworn law enforcement officers and organized crime members playing a dangerous game of "cops and robbers." The victims are varied, some helpless, destitute, or hardened criminals themselves, but all are civilians.
Continued...cannabisnews/23123

Battle Lines: Natural Or Synthetic.. Life Or Death By Rand Clifford
CN Source: OpEdNews.com June 26, 2007 USA

Hemp is about life, renewal and future, power to The People...most everything America’s embedded fascist regime is not about. Government of, by and for corporations (CorpoGov) has us hogtied.

Corporate profits rule the priorities in a globalizing plutocracy (CorpoWorld) where the bottom line is...power to the bottom line. Corporate grip just keeps increasing, squeezing the life out of the biosphere—CorpoWorld truly is making a killing.
Continued...cannabisnews/23124

Secret Gardens By Scott J. Croteau
CN Source: Telegram & Gazette June 25, 2007 Massachusetts

From the outside, it looked like just another modest home nestled in a peaceful community. Nothing about its white shutters, vinyl siding and neatly trimmed shrubs in the front hinted at the secret within the Shrewsbury house.

Inside, walls covered with family pictures and decorations brightened the room where a television was set up in front of a couch. But in the attic was something a little different — a plant not typically found growing in the yard next to carrots and tomatoes.
Continued...cannabisnews/23116


masscann

I'm feeling THAT! And great reefer madness quotes! Thanks, my friend!

Initiative filed to repeal Oregon Medical Marijuana Act
by via list Monday Jun 25th, 2007 6:27 PM

Kevin Mannix, republican prohibitionist extraordinaire filed this anti crime initiative with the secretary of the state that cracks down on meth, sex offenders and would repeal the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act (OMMA.)

His proposal would have all cards revoked by March of 2009 and have patients have to turn to pharmaceutical synthetic cannabis substitutes. I bet he is well funded by those companies and it will take all Oregonians working together to fight this. The legality of the initiative is being examined and strategies to stop it in it's tracks being discussed but in the meantime please contact Kevin Mannix and tell him what you think and be sure to give all the facts, data, testimony of real cannabis as possible.

Contact: Kevin Mannix
2003 State Street, Salem OR 97301
Phone: (503) 364-1913 Fax: (503) 362-0513
kevin@mannixlawfirm.com

Here is the Initiative
http://www.sos.state.or.us/elections/irr/2008/104text.pdf

‘Cannabis Nurse’ "Gives Up" state docs

Christian Extremism and Terrorism In History

Serving Life for a Joint

Cover-Ups, Prevarications, Subversions & Sabotage

"The anti-marijuana campaign is a cancerous tissue of lies, undermining law enforcement, aggravating the drug problem, depriving the sick of needed help, and suckering well-intentioned conservatives and countless frightened parents."

William F. Buckley, Jr. - Writer



Protest Massive DEAth Raids in San DEAgo!
Five Arrested, Marijuana Dispensaries Raided
Medical Marijuana Profiteers Targeted
S.D. Urged To Take Stand on Medical Pot

DEAth Raids in LA

Barisone Challenges New SC Marijuana Law

Santa Barbarian's Wiley Hyena

Judge Upholds Ruling Dismissing Counties' Prop. 215 Challenge

The Clash in Colorado! "Lie a little louder Guv!"



[url=http://www.wamm.org]We are the Wo/Men's Alliance
for Medical Marijuana[/url]
WAMM grows medical marijuana at no charge for ~170 terminally ill patients

Santa Cruz to Sue Feds Over Medical Marijuana Raid
Sept. 5th 2002, Santa Cruz Sheriff's deputy negotiating with the DEA on behalf of the sick members of WAMM to release Valerie and Mike Corral in exchange for letting the U-Hauls full of their medicinal marijuana down from the garden Patients that were well enough to make it to the garden that day mourned together in a circle the loss of their medicine. 

RIP brave Dr. Tod Mikuriya
WAMM sends you a high five!



"I leave it at this, that it is outrageous to live in a society whose laws tolerate sending young people to life in prison because they grew, or distributed, a dozen ounces of marijuana. I would hope that the good offices of your vital profession would mobilize ...to recommend the legalization of the sale of most drugs, except to minors."
--William F. Buckley, Jr.

Legal Lies?
Ambushing The Pot Initiative

The Politics of Pot

Lake County Cannabis Farm


Lake County Cannabis Farm Raid

"I leave it at this, that it is outrageous to live in a society whose laws tolerate sending young people to life in prison because they grew, or distributed, a dozen ounces of marijuana. I would hope that the good offices of your vital profession would mobilize ...to recommend the legalization of the sale of most drugs, except to minors."
--William F. Buckley, Jr."

Cali`s MMP laws were written with many times more confusion and vagueness than Buckley`s quote. There have been too many people on both sides taking advantage of this.
Oregon Green Free operates on the principal of at cost medication.California MMP law is not equally applied to all jurisdictions , leaving room for creative interpretation on both sides. reigns.

All I know is KEVIN MADman/Maddix... can kiss my uhumm... you know, yeah THAT!

Medical Marijuana
CN Source: ABC News July 02, 2007 USA  

For more than 4,000 years, it was used medicinally. Then in 1942, medical marijuana was banned in the US. But that's not the end of the story. Today, patients with illnesses like cancer, AIDS, and MS say it relieves pain and reduces nausea from their meds -- and is the only thing that got them through.

Brian Klein takes three pills twice a day for HIV. He's also recovering from hepatitis C. "It was pretty devastating getting both at the same time," said Klein.
Continued...cannabisnews/23147

Reefer Madness: This Is Your Brain on Drugs By Jordan Smith
CN Source: Austin Chronicle July 02, 2007 Texas  

When in doubt, go old-school – or, at least, why not give it a shot, especially if you don't have anything – and I mean anything – else going for you? But remember: Retro isn't always hip – and when it comes to the sad, sad (and ever more sad) White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, "retro" is just plainass embarrassing.

Case in point: Now that summer is here, so is the ONDCP's latest attempt at scaring you into believing that drugs – no, rather, marijuana, is bad, bad, bad. According to the new ONDCP youth anti-drug media campaign report released by the feds this month, kids (that is youth, ages 12-17) who smoke pot are "at least" four times as likely to join a gang as their nontoking brethren. Yes! Gangs
Continued...cannabisnews/23146

How Much Pot Can a Sick Person Keep? By Curt Woodward
CN Source: Associated Press June 30, 2007 Washington State  

This fall, sober public servants will convene a series of meetings across Washington state to answer a pressing question: Just how much marijuana constitutes a two-month supply?

That may seem like an odd question for straight-laced government types to tackle. But it's a serious attempt to shore up the state's medical marijuana law, which has been around for nearly a decade without defining the "60-day supply" patients are allowed to have on hand.
Continued...cannabisnews/23142



State To Let Patients Grow Their Own Pot By Diana Del Mauro
CN Source: New Mexican June 29, 2007 New Mexico  

When lobbyists rallied this year at the Roundhouse to legalize medical marijuana, they distinctly said patients wouldn’t be growing this mind-altering herb. Rather, the state Health Department would create a secure production and distribution system — the first state to do so.

After years of failed attempts, the measure won approval, making New Mexico the 12th state with such a law.
Continued...cannabisnews/23138

Law Requires N.M. To Grow Its Own Pot   

Medical Marijuana To Be Legal Next Week in N.M.
CN Source: Associated Press June 28, 2007 Tesuque, N.M.  

Martin Walker is looking forward to the day when his marijuana smoking will be legal.
Since he was diagnosed four years ago as HIV positive, Walker has used the drug to fight the nausea that frequently grips his gut and the depression that's never far away. But the relief comes at a price: worrying that getting busted buying the illegal drug could cost him his job and forever blot his record.
Continued...cannabisnews/23137

Should the federal government prosecute medical marijuana users,
now that it has been given the OK by the Supreme Court? * 75973 responses

Yes 10%
No 89%
I'm not sure 2%

We're Still #1! America's Gulag

Forfeiture of Wife's Share of Home Is Excessive By Mark Hamblett
CN Source: New York Law Journal June 29, 2007 Connecticut  

A woman who insisted that she did not know her husband was growing marijuana in the basement of the home they had shared since 1979 should not forfeit her full half interest in the home, a federal appellate court has ruled.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday vacated a decision ordering Kathleen M. von Hofe to forfeit her interest in the couple's $248,000 Branford, Conn. home.
Continued...cannabisnews/23139

Pot Law on Hold By David Montero
CN Source: Rocky Mountain News July 04, 2007 Colorado  
For now, David Damien LaGoy can get his marijuana - thanks in large part to a judge's ruling Tuesday.

LaGoy sued the state because the registered medical marijuana provider he wanted to use, Daniel Pope, had reached the state's five-patient maximum and couldn't help him.
Continued...cannabisnews/23151

Over 100 Studies Support Medical Pot!

MI: Support Use of Medical Marijuana



Nation's Pot Penalties Called a Hodgepodge By Bob Egelko
CN Source: San Francisco Chronicle July 04, 2007 USA  

Smoke a joint in Alabama or Oregon, and you can permanently lose the right to adopt a child. Smoke one in Oklahoma, and you're ineligible ever to be a foster parent. Light up in Utah, and get a lifelong eviction notice from public housing.

Grow a marijuana plant in any one of a dozen states, including California, and you're permanently barred from receiving welfare or food stamps.
Continued...cannabisnews/23152



State Laws

Nixon Era Shafer Report Recommended Legalization

The Ganjawar Fraud

Think of the message being sent to the kids?

Food Stamps Become a Weapon in the War on Drugs

Senator, You Used To Be a Pot Head By Norman Kent
CN Source: AlterNet July 06, 2007 USA  

A letter to GOP Sen. Norm Coleman from a former college friend asking why he supports brutal drug laws when he was an avid pot smoker as a young man.

My friend Norman,

Years ago, in a lifetime far away, you did not oppose the legalization of marijuana. Years ago, in our dorm rooms at Hofstra University, you, me, Billy, your future brother-in-law, Ivan, Jonathan, Peter, Janet, Nancy and a wealth of other students smoked dope.
Continued...cannabisnews/23158


Submitted by Srinu Sonti

Bogarting Sanity in the Marijuana Wars By Kathleen Parker
CN Source: Town Hall.com July 06, 2007 Washington, DC

Colorado Judge Suspends Limit on Number of Patients
July 5, 2007 - Denver, CO, USA

On Tuesday, July 3, Chief Denver District Court Judge Larry Naves issued a temporary injunction blocking the enforcement of a rule limiting to five the number of patients to whom a caregiver can provide medical marijuana under state law.

The ruling came in a case brought by a 47 year old man suffering from AIDS and hepatitis C. The patient, Denver resident David LaGoy, had asked the state to designate one Daniel J. Pope to serve as his medical marijuana caregiver. The state had refused to permit Pope to serve in this capacity because he was already the authorized caregiver for five other patients.

In 2000, voters approved Amendment 20, the Colorado medical marijuana law, which permitted authorized caregivers to grow and provide marijuana to authorized patients. Under the law, caregivers must have "significant responsibility for managing the well-being of a patient," but no limit on the number of patients was included. The Colorado Department of Health subsequently adopted a rule limiting a caregiver to no more than five patients.

The judge said the rule was arbitrarily enacted without public input, putting patients at risk. The injunction applies to all medical marijuana patients and caregivers statewide.

This suit challenging the limitation on the number of patients a caregiver may serve was brought by NORML Legal Committee members Robert J. Corry and Sean McAllister, and Brian Vicente, the head of Sensible Colorado, a medical marijuana advocacy group in the state.

For additional information, contact Brian Vicente at Sensible Colorado at (720) 890-4247 or Keith Stroup, Esq., NORML Legal Counsel at (202) 483-5500.



* Research Banned

* Pharmaceutical Companies

Chapter 7 Therapeutic Use of Cannabis
* Asthma * Glaucoma * Tumors * Nausea/Cancer Chemotherapy * Epilepsy, Multiple Sclerosis, Back Pain & Spasms * Antibiotics & Antibacterial CBDs * Herpes, Cystic Fibrosis, Arthritis & Rheumatism * Expectorant * Sleep & Relaxation * Emphysema * Stress, Migraines * Appetite * Salivation * AIDS, Depression, Etc. * Acceptable Risks

pharm abuse vs. marijuana


Marijuana Medicine

New Mexico's Pot Connection By Brittany Bacon
CN Source: ABC News July 05, 2007 New Mexico  

New Mexico is set to become the first U.S. state to set up a cultivation and distribution system for medical marijuana, sewing the seeds of a possible showdown with federal drug enforcement authorities.

Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democratic presidential candidate, signed the "pot bill" into law this year and tasked the state's Department of Health with establishing a way to grow and distribute the crop to patients by Oct. 1. The new law may be at odds with federal law, which supersedes state laws, and tightly controls who can grow marijuana and for what purposes.
Continued...cannabisnews/23154

Update: The Drug Czar gloats about hoodwinking McClatchy into believing their misdirection and lies.

It really is pathetic. The ONDCP and UNODC throw out a lot of meaningless, contradictory and irrelevant statistics as proof that they're winning the war on drugs. And we call them on it. Clearly. Specifically. Repeatedly. So now the McClatchy papers stupidly pass on the nonsense given to them by the ONDCP and UNODC uncritically and the Drug Czar says that this proves that they were right all along. In what fantasy world?

Cannabis Medicines From Pharmaceutical History
Medical Marijuana Throughout History
Pictures of medicines that once contained cannabis or cannabis extracts

Antique Cannabis Musuem

7.4.1 -- GRIMAULT's and the Reefer Madness Era:
The author has taken great pains to avoid this subject wherever possible. Scantly clad coeds, jumping out of windows, and axe murderers (all allegedly committing their acts while under the influence of Medical Cannabis), really have no place in a book dealing with antique medicines. Unfortunately, one can't seem to get away from the subject: For unlike other antique medicines which simply died out as better medical advances came along. Medical Cannabis was Killed.

Perhaps, the following short article, from a Jamaican (NOT an American Newspaper), best helps explains the times and the reasons why Cannabis cigarettes are no longer available in drug stories today.

The Daily Gleaner [Kingston, Jamaica] Oct. 23, 1946 pg 1
American Seamen said Taking Ganja Into Australia
'To Give White Girls'
SYDNEY, October 22: Marihuana one of the world's worst drugs, which is known in United States as "Mary Warner", was being brought to Australia by American coloured seamen to give to white girls, the police prosecutor suggested in the central police court today. . . . Marihuana is known as ganja in Jamaica.

The reason I've chosen this one example, is because the very same newspaper, the Daily Gleaner (of Jamaica), was at the same time carrying large bold face ad's for Grimaults Cannabis Cigarettes. But of course, they were "Cannabis" NOT "Marihuana" cigarettes!

7.3 -- ANTI-ASTHMA CIGARETTES:
Because of our present day disgust for the tobacco industry, one is tempted to dismiss the idea of a medical (life saving) cigarette altogether. But that would be a mistake: Cannabis, in its smokable form, has been known to quickly stop full-scale asthma attacks. A medical fact that, while only scientifically proven in the late 20th Century, did not go unnoticed by 19th Century medical practitioners. To quote a major medical journal of its day:

CIGARETTES OF CANNABIS INDICA.
Medical Times and Gazette. Medical News; Oct 1870; 28, 334;
"The cigarettes of Cannabis Indica, made by Gremault, of Paris, have been found most efficient in the treatment of affections of the organs of respiration and circulation, no less than in affections of the central and peripheral nervous system. The unpleasant effects which so often follow the internal and subcutaneous use of opium and of Cannabis Indica are not produced by the cigarette. There use is recommended (1) in spinal neuroses, and epilepsy; (2) in neurosis of the sensory nerves, neuralgia of the teeth, branches of the fifth pair, the sciatic nerves; (3) neuroses of the motor nerves, spasm of the throat air passages; (4) affections of the sympathetic nerves, hysteria, and other diseases not attended with plethora, and congestion of the head, heart, or lungs. They are especially useful in asthma, peruses, spasm of the stomach and intestinal canal, nervous palpitation of the heart, and exert a quieting influence over the whole nervous system. "

ANTIDOTAL BRANDS:

Other BRAND NAME CANNABIS CIGARETTES:

Were there any other brands of pre-1937 Medical Cigarettes? The answer is Maybe. We have been able to locate the following:



CACresentMarque.jpg

CRESCENT MARQUE Cannabis Cigarettes:
The above photograph was obtained from a United Nations Publication [Bulletin on Narcotics" Vol. 3, No. 1, Jan. 1951 pp9]: The caption reads: "Marihuana (Indian Hemp) cigarettes seized in the illicit market." Which is all the information that this museum knows about the product. We do not even know if they were actual cigarettes or just empty tubes. Nor if they were used for recreational or medical purposes.

CANNADONNA (Asthma cigarettes):
This was a non-American brand of medical cigarettes (which is why we know so little about it). The label reads: "Obtainable from all chemist or Direct from Frid Stone M.R.S.V. Chemist. 9 Baker Pd Ashburton Tel, WM 2328 -- also gives great relief in catarrh, hay fever etc. This is the only asthma cigarette made especially to suit Australian conditions. Obtainable also for Pipe smoking. Directions: One to be smoked during attacks, a mixture of tobacco cannabis & belladonna." (No picture available) To our knowledge, it was never directly sold in North America, but some of them could have made their way in.

Antidotal (smoking) Uses:
Samuel Hopkins Adams, in his book "The Great American Fraud," talks about a German brand of "Hashish" cigarettes, but we suspect that he was actually talking about Grimualts.

The following is taken from the "1914/Report of investigation in the State of Texas" [Made public on April of 1917], on the subject of Marihuana along the Mexican border; -- Author: Smith, R. Publication: Washington: Dept. of Agriculture, Bureau of Chemistry:

"During this investigation I collected several samples of Cannabis Indica, both in bulk and package form . . . together with some Marihuana cigarettes which were seized by the customs officials at El Paso. I would call special attention to the two samples of the one-ounce package put out by Parke Davis and Co. of Detroit. The larger container is the more recent on the market and you will notice that the contents are in loose form convenient for smoking purposes. . . . manufacturing drug houses in the United States are putting on the market foreign Indian Hemp or Cannabis Indica in bulk or in package form, which is being sold by the retail druggists solely for smoking purposes . . . . The sale of the drug is not confined to Mexicans. American soldiers, negross , prostitutes, pimps, and a criminal class of whites in general are numbered among the users of this weed. . . . A retail drug store in San Antonia, catering exclusively to Mexican treads. . . There is no question but that it is purchased for smoking purposes. I have calls for it practically from Mexicans only, although in the last few months I have noticed several American negroes and whites of the lower class are beginning to call for it." [4]

Point being made, there must certainly must have been numerous [Brand Named] cigarettes sold in the US that contained Cannabis. Unfortunately documentation is lacking and thus we cannot state for sure.

You can't use large pics or it screws up the entire thread... Common DEA sabotage technique and I won't post after them... Please remove the wide pics... DdC

Asthmatic Cigarettes:
Many readers will be disappointed by this chapter. Although the museum has been able to document (approximately) 1,000 pre-1937 medical Cannabis products on a brand or trade name basis; We have been able to document one, and only one, smokeable product sold in North America. That's it---"Only One.

Therapeutic Use of Cannabis: Asthma

Not a surprise since it was only the minorities, sailors and musicians smoking it from the mid 1800's until the Marihuana Tax Ax in 1937. Not much incentive to mass produce cigarettes. Though throughout the world, for thousands of years people were toking with hookah's and chiloms. Lincoln supposidly toked Ganja in a corn cob pipe while jamming on a Honor harmonica.. DdC

About Cannabis and Drug Policy

Inspired by a quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln, who allegedly said, "While preparing for my debate with Mr. Douglas, I preferred to go into the woods nearby and sit on a stump with my harmonica and my pipe with my Indian hemp,"

American High Society
American High Society Linx
American High Society, a subchapter from "Hemp: Lifeline To The Future," by Chris Conrad. Dr. Burke, president of the American Historical Reference Society and a consultant for the Smithsonian Institute, counted seven early presidents as cannabis smokers: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor and Franklin Pierce. Madison once remarked that hemp gave him insight to create a new and democratic nation. Cannabis was twice as popular among American soldiers in the Mexican War as in Vietnam: Pierce wrote to his family that it was "about the only good thing" about that war.

The Hashish Club




Outlawing Common Sense





Kathmandu and the Black Prince



and if dobbies weren't around they always has hash...

DEA sabotage, WTF??? I have a widescreen computer so I don't see it the way you do! I tried to edit, but it's too late!

Thanks for the heads-up though! NOW I KNOW!

Patients Seeking Pot Relief Blocked by Dopey Law By Dave Shiflett
CN Source: Bloomberg.com July 09, 2007 USA  

Reefer madness can still be hazardous to your health.

That's the message of ``In Pot We Trust,'' a Showtime documentary airing tonight at 8:30 p.m. New York time.

The show makes a persuasive case that marijuana provides some patients a degree of relief they can't get from standard medications and should be legally available.
Continued...cannabisnews/23165

IN POT WE TRUST
PROVOCATIVE DOCUMENTARY TAKES AN IN-DEPTH LOOK AT THE CONTROVERSY SURROUNDING MEDICAL MARIJUANA PREMIERES JULY 9th ON SHOWTIME.


12/28/05 - Ganga Globe Nominees Announced
The Showtime series "Weeds," featuring Emmy-winner Mary Louise Parker as a suburban mom who deals pot for a living

VERY IMPORTANT POTHEADS
Debunking Myths About Marijuana

BUSH FAMILY VALUES: DRUGS, ALCOHOL, AND MORE DRUGS

The Marijuana Pipe Dream by Joshua Minton
When Will We Finally Concede The War on Drugs?

The Government says that we are losing the War on Drugs. Do you know what that implies? That means there is a war being fought and people on drugs are winning it! What's that tell you about drugs right there? There's some smart creative people on that side; they're winning a war and they're fucked up!
--The Prophet William Melvin Hicks 1961-1994--

Smoked Out By Eric Barton
CN Source: Pitch July 09, 2007 California  

If there’s one thing Jacqueline Patterson has learned about living in California, it’s that they have better salad dressing. It costs $30, but a bottle of her favorite dressing comes packed full of pot. “It tastes good, too,” she says.

The dressing comes from one of California’s marijuana clubs, which supply weed for people who use it for medicinal purposes. Patterson moved to California from Kansas City back in February.
Continued...cannabisnews/23164

High Above the Law By Eric Barton 
Published: June 8, 2006

She has cerebral palsy, four kids and loads of debt. Meet the unofficial spokeswoman for marijuana legalization.


Patterson with her younger children: 4-year-old Ulysses and 2-year-old Fiona.

Monday, July 9, 2007


Random Student Drug Tests Put In Doubt -- looks like Tennessee may believe more in the privacy of its citizens than the Federal government. We're increasingly needing the states to save us from the United States.

The Drug War's Collateral Damage -- a nice OpEd by Silja J.A. Talvi, based on the recent report from the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics.

Pot Documentary Has Local Filmmaker On A Roll -- sounds interesting. Hope it gets some major distribution.

Which reminds me...

I tried to order Damage Done: The Drug War Odyssey , which is now available on DVD, and although I wanted to buy it, they wouldn't send it to me because I live in the United States. If anyone has a contact that could get me a copy to review, let me know.

If you're looking for something to do during my vacation, try writing a letter.
There's a good new focus alert at MAPinc. -- Common Sense Marijuana Policy

Editorial: Marijuana Still a Growing Risk on Public Lands
CN Source: Record Searchlight July 08, 2007 California  

The great outdoors is filled with hazards, and north state residents can grow jaded after repeatedly hearing the warnings about heat, ticks, hungry mountain lions, zealously protective mama bears, poison oak and slippery rocks.

But one red flag retains its power to shock -- Forest Service alerts to watch out for illegal marijuana plantations and the armed men guarding them on our public lands.
Continued...cannabisnews/23163


michellerainey

Editorial: Give Protection To Patients Who Need Marijuana
CN Source: Star-Bulletin July 08, 2007 Hawaii
 
State laws allowing medical use of marijuana have been on the books for nearly a decade but have been hampered by federal attempts to undermine them.

The number of patients has dwindled as they have become subject to arrest and physicians have grown reluctant to prescribe pot. Legislation that should have been enacted this year is needed to protect patients using marijuana and physicians prescribing it.
Continued...cannabisnews/23162

Make drugs legal and regulate like mad By MICHAEL LAWS
Sunday Star Times (New Zealand) Jul 07 2007

One of the worst things about parenthood is the instinctual wisdom that some day, somehow, somewhere, something will go wrong with your kids.

If you're lucky it will be a broken arm playing on the jungle gym or the adventure course. If you're really lucky, it will be that they get dropped by their intended date before the big ball. And if you're ultra-lucky, it will be that they fail their driving licence and so void any future discussion as to vehicular independence.

Or you could be like Al Gore or Paul Holmes or any number of normal parents everywhere, and have a kid who gets hooked on the wrong crowd, at the wrong place and ends up charged with having the wrong drugs.

No parent wants a dopehead for a son or daughter. But the reality is that many middle-aged and middle-class mums and dads are living exactly that reality. That no matter the private schools and piano lessons, the overseas and ski trips, their child has opted to be obliterated.

They expected this behaviour from the brown kids who went to the low decile schools and whose idea of travel was a bus into town. And they worked to insulate their kids from exactly those people who they perceived as druggies or dropkicks.

So why has the kid been caught with cannabis? The daughter potted with P, or the son with enough illegal pharmaceuticals to be indicted for supply?

There can be only one of two answers.

Bad kid. Or bad parent. There are no other options and neither provides a palatable reply.

Kids do drugs for the same reason that Ed climbed Everest: because they are there.
Continued...stuff/nz/4120095a22678

Take the fun and frisson out of dabbling with drugs. Make them legal.
--Michael Laws

Dr. Todd Mikuriya Discusses Medical Marijuana
Jul 06 2007  

Antique Cannabis Musuem

Santa Barbara Loses Legal Effort To Dump Pot Law
CN Source: Associated Press July 10, 2007 Santa Barbara, Calif.  

A judge on Tuesday threw out a City Council challenge to a voter initiative that made busting adults for marijuana crimes the lowest priority for police.

Superior Court Judge Thomas Anderle dismissed a lawsuit the city filed against Heather Poet, who sponsored the initiative passed last November.
Continued...cannabisnews/23168

Santa Barbarian's Wiley Hyena
Meeting behind closed doors last week, the Santa Barbara City Council voted 4-3 to simultaneously implement Measure P, the pot initiative approved by two-thirds of city voters in November, and to challenge its constitutionality in court.

Because of this, Santa Barbara will be the first city in California to challenge the legality of a spate of statewide measures designed to undermine public and legal support for the war on drugs.

NORML Ganja Initiative Interviews
Measure P Santa Barbara-  Lara Cassell  MP3



Armed U.S. cops in Canada?
YOUR ACTION IS NEEDED TO STOP IT!
Canadian sovereignty could "erode" if non-Canadian police officers are allowed to carry guns into Canada without a permit, says Niagara Falls native and Toronto litigation lawyer Alex Colangelo. The federal government is proposing relaxed rules for foreign law enforcement officers who carry weapons into Canada while on duty. full story/cannabisculture/5031



Giuliani Blasts Medical Marijuana Supporters
CN Source: Associated Press July 10, 2007 Concord, N.H.  

Presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani said Tuesday that people who want to legalize marijuana for medical purposes really just want to make the drug available to all.

"I believe the effort to try and make marijuana available for medical uses is really a way to legalize it. There's no reason for it," the former New York mayor said during a town hall-style meeting at New Hampshire Technical Institute.
Continued...cannabisnews/23167

Vultures Funding Giuliani

"They were voting for billions of dollars for Africa, and they didn’t know that Bush’s friends – now when I say Bush’s friends – you have to understand, the biggest single “Vulture Fund”, the biggest predator is, uh, operations owned by a guy named Paul Singer, who is the number one donor for George Bush and the Republican Party in New York. He’s also the big fund-raiser, he’s raising 10 million dollars for Rudy Giuliani. This isn’t the sidelight for this guy, this is the only way he makes money. So George Bush has to know that his big money is basically coming from kickbacks, from money taken from aid for Africa."
--GREG PALAST June 11th, 2007

Excerpt of Greg Palast's BBC report on "Vulture Funds"
(Click for full report)


X-New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani talking to a yellow-shirted VM

Attention Federally Authorized Medical Cannabis Users

We Want to Hear From You!

In 1999, Canada initiated one of the world's first medical marijuana programs. The program is operated by the Marihuana Medical Access Division (MMAD) and run in accordance with the Marihuana Medical Access Regulations (MMAR). A team of independent researchers (not connected to Health Canada or other governmental institutions) requests your assistance in conducting a survey that should take about 20 minutes to complete.

The Mythology of "BC Bud"
IMPORTANT: The term "BC Bud" does not refer to any specific strain of marijuana. It's just a general term referring to marijuana that's grown in British Columbia.

BC Bud's "reputation for high potency" is mostly the result of campaigns by politicians in the United States.
There's no question there's quality marijuana being grown in B.C. but to assert that this marijuana is somehow different than the marijuana that's being grown throughout the U.S. is absurd. There's plenty of marijuana grown in the US that is just as good as that grown in BC. But that's NOT what US Drug Czar John Walters wants people to know.

That's why it's very important for him to portray Canadian marijuana as somehow different than US marijuana, as though it's some new drug. "It's not your father's marijuana" is also one of his favorite soundbites. [see: "Not Your Father's Marijuana" Canard Again Exposed -- This Time by DEA.
Continued...themythofbcbud


US Drug Czar John Walters

White House Drug Czar Highlights MJ Cultivation
CN Source: News Blaze July 10, 2007 California  

John P. Walters, Director of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) and President George W. Bush's "Drug Czar," will be in Shasta County, California this Thursday, July 12, 2007, to conduct a marijuana eradication site visit as well as to attend the kickoff of a Federal, State and local law enforcement marijuana eradication initiative, Operation Alesia, a three-tiered marijuana eradication initiative coordinated by the California National Guard's Counterdrug Taskforce and the Shasta County Sheriff's Office.
Continued...cannabisnews/23166

Drug Czar's Office "Obsessed" With Marijuana

Eradicated Marijuana Is 98 Percent Ditchweed



High Crimes? By Stone Phillips
CN Source: Dateline NBC February 21, 2003

Pot Group Sues To Make Feds Eat Words By Matthew Hirsch
CN Source: Cal Law July 11, 2007 California  

Medical marijuana advocates and federal prosecutors have never agreed on whether the drug has medical value. Now, an Oakland, Calif.-based advocacy group wants a court order that would force the feds to see it their way.

Americans for Safe Access is trying to use a little-known Clinton-era law to make federal agencies take back statements about marijuana -- for example, that pot has "no currently accepted medical use." The group says this "misinformation" costs it time and money to refute.
Continued...cannabisnews/23174

Americans For Safe Access

Medical Marijuana Activists Cite Little-Known Law

U.S. Is Sued Over Position on Marijuana

TAKE ACTION

Tell Your Representative to Vote to Stop Federal Raids!

It's time to stop wasting taxpayer dollars on raiding state-licensed patients and providers. Congress can do it. The Hinchey-Rohrabacher amendment to the Commerce-Justice-State appropriations bill instructs the Department of Justice to use its money wisely and specifically prohibits the Department from using appropriated funds to conduct raids or otherwise prevent the various states from implementing laws that authorize the therapeutic use of cannabis. Contact your member of Congress today!



Good Medicine By Paul Armentano
CN Source: Hartford Courant July 11, 2007 Connecticut  

When Gov. M. Jodi Rell vetoed legislation last month that would have allowed citizens with debilitating medical conditions to use medical cannabis under their doctor's supervision, she alleged that there was no proof of pot's therapeutic effectiveness and that legal alternatives are available by prescription. Now, a just-released clinical trial by researchers at Columbia University in New York is making the governor's statements ring hollow.
Continued...cannabisnews/23169

Doctor Sees Cannabis as Legitimate Medicine By Paul Boerger
CN Source: Mount Shasta Herald July 11, 2007 California  

While the benefits of medical marijuana are a subject of debate, one medical doctor who has strong feelings on the subject claims to have thousands of patients in Siskiyou County.

Dr. Philip Denney, who has practices in Sacramento and Redding, says there is no question that cannabis is medicine, and he recommends it for patients suffering from a variety of ailments, including chronic pain, muscle conditions such as muscle spasms, depression, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Bipolar Affective Disorder.
Continued...cannabisnews/23172

Opinions on Medical Marijuana are Diverse By Paul Boerger
CN Source: Mount Shasta Herald July 11, 2007 California  

The question of whether marijuana, also known as cannabis, has medical benefits engenders a wide range of often opposing opinions. The federal government denies there is any medical benefit, while some doctors' associations support its use. Other organizations say the issue needs more study.

The US Food and Drug Administration, the agency responsible for testing and approving drug products for the country, says marijuana is not FDA approved for any medical treatment and supports its classification by the Drug Enforcement Administration as a Schedule I drug, along with heroin and opium. Continued...cannabisnews/23171

The powers not delegated to...
DWR Via the ACLU: July 10, 2007 SANTA BARBARA, CA

The American Civil Liberties Union applauded today's ruling by a California Superior Court judge to uphold a voter-enacted initiative that directs police to focus resources on serious crime by making marijuana use the lowest law enforcement priority. Citing California's ban on lawsuits that punish public participation in the political process, the court dismissed the city of Santa Barbara's challenge of the law, known as Measure P, which was brought against Heather Poet because she was the proponent of the challenged initiative.

"Today's ruling is a major victory for the democratic process and a resounding affirmation of voters' right to de-prioritize marijuana enforcement," said Adam Wolf, an attorney with the ACLU Drug Law Reform Project, which represented Poet in the proceedings. "The people of Santa Barbara would rather local law enforcement focus on combating serious crime than policing marijuana use. Today's ruling confirms that the voters can make this fundamentally local decision about their community's safety."

In addition to finding that the city of Santa Barbara's suit against Poet arose from "her constitutional right to participate in the process of formulating laws" and ran afoul of California's ban on strategic lawsuits against public participation ("SLAPP"), the court held that neither state nor federal law precludes localities like Santa Barbara from prioritizing the enforcement of certain criminal offenses, including the de-prioritization of marijuana offenses.

As the ruling states, "Nothing in [Measure P] prohibits enforcement of state law...Police officers can still arrest those who violate drug possession laws in their presence. The voters have simply instructed them that they have higher priority work to do."

And here's the kicker in the ruling:

"Santa Barbara is free to decline to enforce federal criminal statutes. It is up to the federal government to enforce its laws. Indeed, the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the federal government from impressing 'into its service -- and at no cost to itself -- the police officers of the 50 States.'"

Wow! A court ruling that actually recognizes the existence of the 10th Amendment*. That's exciting!

Now maybe the voters in Santa Barbara can penalize (at the voting booths) those petty officials who wasted the town's money trying to avoid fulfilling the will of the people.

* Just a reminder...

Amendment X: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

"The 10th Amendment says all powers not relegated to the federal government are reserved to the states or to the people. Nowhere does it say that a goddamn tsar will be in charge of my medical care and interfere between me and my doctor. If anybody in Philadelphia in the 18th Century had suggested putting something like that in the Constitution, they would have been considered a raving lunatic. This Constitution was not created to establish a tsarist tyranny, it was established to create a free society!"
- Robert Anton Wilson, speaking on the steps of Santa Cruz City Hall, September 2002, at an event held in response to a Drug Enforcement Agency raid on the "W.A.M.M.".



Alison Myrden - MS Patient - Sativex Info. etc.
Source: jonilynn2u Tue Jul 10 2007 Happy Four Twenty!

GW and Otsuka Enter Into Global Cannabinoid Research Collaboration
09 Jul 2007

GW Pharmaceuticals plc and Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. today announce that they have signed a global cannabinoid research collaboration in the field of Central Nervous System (CNS) and oncology in order to research, develop and commercialize a range of candidate cannabinoid products.

LONDON, UK and TOKYO, Japan | July 9, 2007 | GW Pharmaceuticals plc (.. GWP) and Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. today announce that they have signed a global cannabinoid research collaboration in the field of Central Nervous System (CNS) and oncology in order to research, develop and commercialize a range of candidate cannabinoid products.

The research collaboration agreement follows the signature in February 2007 of an exclusive license and development agreement between GW and Otsuka to develop and market Sativex®, GW's lead product, in the United States.

The cannabinoid research collaboration has an initial term of three years, during which Otsuka will make available a research fund of $9 million, which may be increased from time to time by Otsuka, to cover research activities carried out by GW and its scientific collaborators under this agreement.
Continued...pipelinereview/13043/109



Oregon's Medical Marijuana Law Under Attack!
Please help Voter Power protect Oregon’s patients.

Right-wing Republican Kevin Mannix has filed an initiative that would abolish Oregon's Medical Marijuana Program, instantly making criminals of over 16,000 sick Oregon patients. Mannix, an insurance defense attorney and former chairperson of Oregon's Republican Party, even plans a tax-payer-funded-gift to the pharmaceutical industry by requiring the state of Oregon to purchase less-effective perscription drugs, like Marinol, for Oregon's medical marijuana patients, who he intends to treat like criminals.

This terrible initiative has national implications because if the right-wing Republicans, insurance companies, and Big Pharma manage to dismantle the Oregon Medical Marijuana Program, they will be emboldened to kill the programs of all of the other medical marijuana states. This is an important time for our movement and all of us, especially sick patients, need us to move forward, not back to a time where grandmothers stricken with glaucoma and cancer are treated as drug dealers.

Please tell Kevin Mannix that you oppose his plan to treat Oregon's sick patients like criminals by contacting him at:
Kevin Mannix 2003 State Street, Salem OR 97301
Phone: (503) 364-1913 Fax: (503) 362-0513

Voter Power intends to stop this right-wing, authoritarian Republican, but we need your help.

Please join Voter Power by sending a contributions (anything will help) to:
Voter Power PO Box 3586 Portland, OR 97208

IT SAYS, IN PART: "g. replaces the Medical Marijuana Act with a more medically appropriate Marijuana Derivative and Synthetic Cannabinoid Prescription Program to focus help on those with legitimate needs"

The full text of Kevin Mannix's Act (pdf)

Oregon, Cannabis Law Reform


VOTER POWER.org

Shasta County Pot Eradication Operation Begins
CN Source: Mount Shasta Herald July 11, 2007 California

President Bush's so-called “drug czar,” John P. Walters, is scheduled to be in Shasta County Thursday to participate in the launch of Operation Alesia, a multi-agency marijuana eradication operation on public lands that began this Monday.

Seventeen local, state and federal agencies are participating in Operation Alesia, which has the stated goal of “education, eradication and reclamation of marijuana cultivation sites on public lands” in Shasta County, according to a press release from the Shasta-Trinity National Forest office in Redding.
Continued...cannabisnews/23173

Say No To Green Harvest & C.A.M.P.

The Ganjawar Fraud...

Aerial School on MJ Teaches How To Spot Plants

Public Testimony of NORML
Opposing U.S. Domestic Cannabis Eradication Program

Conclusion

The NORML Foundation opposes the DEA's Domestic Cannabis Eradication Suppression Program, and further opposes the "aerial directed spraying" of herbicides from low flying aircraft. The program almost exclusively eradicates ditchweed which presents no threat to public safety.

The DEA demonstrates no evidence that the American public wishes to spend millions of dollars annually eliminating this plant, and in fact, many farmers and state legislatures express interest in growing nonpsychoactive hemp for agricultural and research purposes.

In addition, the aerial application of herbicides to eliminate ditchweed poses a demonstrated threat to the general public and wildlife through contamination of ground water, surface water, air and soil, and the elimination of many animals' natural habitat.

It is ironic that the same plant so zealously targeted by this program is now cultivated by farmers in various Western nations for commercial purposes. Only in America do federal law enforcement continue to place public safety at risk and our tax dollars to waste eliminating this proven worldwide cash crop.
Public Comments of Paul Armentano
Director of Publications
The NORML Foundation



Dow\Monsanto Spraying Ditchweed Devastate Midwest Game Birds

Eradicated Marijuana Is 98 Percent Ditchweed


THE REEFER MADNESS ERA
The newspaper ad on the left is an original that run in 1936; the one on the right run during the second world war (1945) in the San Francisco Chronicle. Note the minor changes (probable made by the San Francisco movie house owner) to the women's attire. However, both can be said to be originals.

Congressional hearings on the DEA and medicine this morning
DWR: Thursday, July 12, 2007 Via Alexander DeLuca

"The DEA's Regulation of Medicine"
July 12, 2007 - 10:00 AM
2237 Rayburn House Office Building
House Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security

There will be a live webcast of the hearings -- 10 am Eastern.

Witness list:

Joseph T. Rannazzisi
Deputy Assistant Administrator, Office of Diversion Control United States Drug Enforcement Administration, United States Department of Justice Washington, DC

David Murray
Director of Counter Drug Technology, ONDCP, The White House Washington, DC

Edward J. Heiden Ph.D.
Heiden Associates Inc., Washington, DC

Valerie Corral
Founder of WAMM, Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana Davenport, CA

Siobhan Reynolds
President, Pain Relief Network, Santa Fe, NM

John Flannery
Attorney, Campbell, Miller, Zimmerman, PC, and Author of Pain in America and How the Government Makes it Worse Leesburg, VA

Update: Video feeds appear to not be working. Prepared testimony is available here (click on the witness' name to read their testimony). I've glanced at Rannazzisi's and Murray's so far and they're pretty horrible. Murray just talks about medical marijuana (smoked). I'll be taking a closer look at his nonsense for you a little later.


The Raid On WAMMs Garden Sept. 5, 2002

Pointing out the Drug Czar's role in encouraging illicit activity
DWR: Wednesday, July 11, 2007

I like this approach by the MPP in pre-empting the Drug Czar's photo op:

Drug Czar's CA Photo-Op Can't Hide Failure of Marijuana Policies, MPP Charges

REDDING, CALIFORNIA -- White House Drug Czar John Walters' Thursday marijuana "eradication" photo-op in Shasta County will only underline the utter failure of current U.S. marijuana policies, officials at the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) charged today. [...]

"The drug czar will tout his expensive eradication adventures and hope nobody notices that they've actually helped the illicit marijuana industry thrive," said Bruce Mirken, MPP's San Francisco-based director of communications. "Eradication has simply boosted profits and pushed growers to more remote locations." [...]

"Walters denounces marijuana growing in national forests and other public lands, but the very 'eradication' efforts he champions are what drive marijuana producers into sensitive wilderness areas," Mirken said. "There's a reason you never hear about clandestine vineyards hidden in national parks and forests. If we regulated marijuana as we do wine, the problem Walters denounces so vehemently would disappear overnight."

Yep.
Walters has, for years, tried to pass himself off as caring for the environment, but the truth is plain to see. The policies he has promoted have been responsible for immense damage, and he needs to be held accountable.

Drug War Victims


PENDULUM SWING: The court's string of rulings limiting federal power took a turn with its recent decision on medical marijuana laws. Above, a federal agent raids a San Francisco medicinal marijuana club June 22. (JUSTIN SULLIVAN / GETTY IMAGES)

Dark Green By Stett Holbrook


Photographs by Felipe Buitrago
South Bay raid: California's Campaign Against Marijuana Production (CAMP) is a multiagency task force that flies helicopters all over the state looking for pot groves and chops them down. They've found plenty of work in Santa Clara County over the last two decades.

'Drug War' Opponents Blast White House Policy By Susan Jones
CN Source: CNSNews.com February 26, 2002

Drug Czar Gives Warning By Dylan Darling
CN Source: Record Searchlight July 13, 2007 California  

The nation's top anti-drug official said people need to overcome their "reefer blindness" and see that illicit marijuana gardens are a terrorist threat to the public's health and safety, as well as to the environment.

John P. Walters, President Bush's drug czar, said the people who plant and tend the gardens are terrorists who wouldn't hesitate to help other terrorists get into the country with the aim of causing mass casualties. Walters made the comments at a Thursday press conference that provided an update on the "Operation Alesia" marijuana-eradication effort.
Continued...cannabisnews/23176

Shasta County Pot Eradication Operation Begins

White House Drug Czar Highlights MJ Cultivation

D.E.A.th Deceptions

Drug War = Terrorism
Thoughtful observers around the world have realized that — contrary to claims put forth by the U.S. government — illicit drugs are only linked to terrorists because they are illegal. The Ottawa Citizen summed up the argument eloquently in the editorial below.

How terrorists profit from drugs March 21, 2002



Libertarian Party - Drug War

Drug Czar Accused of Supporting Terror

New Low in the War on Drugs - A. Huffington

White House Anti-Drug Ads Super Bowloney

No matter how you try and spin it, supply side drug enforcement doesn't work, it is actively counterproductive.
Transform Drug Policy Foundation

Bush signs bill on terror prosecution
10/18/2006 By NEDRA PICKLER The Associated Press

Civil libertarians and leading Democrats decried the law as a violation of American values.

"one of the worst civil liberties measures ever enacted in American history."
The American Civil Liberties Union

"We will look back on this day as a stain on our nation's history."

"It allows the government to seize individuals on American soil and detain them indefinitely
with no opportunity to challenge their detention in court."

"The new law would permit an individual to be convicted on the basis of coerced testimony and even allow someone convicted under these rules to be put to death."
Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold

Terror bill targets Americans By Bruce Ackerman
Special to the Los Angeles Times

Buried in the complex Senate compromise legislation, which authorizes the president to seize American citizens as enemy combatants, even if they have never left the United States. And once thrown into military prison, they cannot expect a trial by their peers or any other of the normal protections of the Bill of Rights.

Anyone who...
"purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States."

Bush signs interrogation bill October 17, 2006

President says law will save lives; opponents fear erosion of values.

Surrounded by members of his Cabinet and legislators, Mr. Bush signed the changes into law during a White House ceremony as more than 100 protesters stood outside in the rain chanting slogans denouncing the measure as a violation of fundamental American traditions.

The legislation gives legal protection to CIA agents who have used harsh techniques to force suspected terrorists to describe their plans...

Judge to Nullify Election Results

"BREAKING: California Judge To Rule County Must Rehold Election After Diebold Touch-Screen Election Records Destroyed by County Officials"

County Had Refused to Allow Public Examination of Electronic Votes and Audit Logs on Diebold Voting Systems After 'Numerous Machine Malfunctions' in Medical Marijuana Election...In Breaking News late this afternoon, we find yet another reason why Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, usually touch-screen) voting systems are incompatible with democracy: When an election held on them is contested, the machines themselves --- which are said to hold the ballots internally --- cannot be used in another election until the contest is settled.

Well it is quite apparent he does not partake. Oh the bad karma that is after john walters, the alzheimers has already set in. I'm convinced he is Insane. This is Puppypower the terrorist saying czar walters is not human.

In Pot We Trust
DWR: Pete Guither Saturday, July 14, 2007
I just watched "In Pot We Trust" on Showtime. Powerful documentary, written, directed and produced by Star Price. Be prepared to be pissed off at the government again if you watch it. There are the charlatans like Joseph Califano, and the true drug war believers like the marijuana eradication officer, but you'll also see some real people -- people like Irv Rosenfeld, and several other fascinating medical marijuana patients.



Judge Rules CANADA's Pot Laws are UNCONSTITUTIONAL
A Toronto judge has ruled that Canada's pot possession laws are unconstitutional after a man argued the country's medicinal marijuana regulations are flawed. The 29-year-old Toronto resident had been charged with possession of about 3.5 grams or roughly $45 dollars worth of marijuana.
full story:cc/

"How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don't think."
-- Adolf Hitler

John Walters pulls out the TERROR card again.
DWR: Friday, July 13, 2007

Doesn't he realize how much this approach backfired in the Superbowl ad?

Drug czar gives warning
Federal official calls marijuana growers dangerous terrorists [...]

John P. Walters, President Bush's drug czar, said the people who plant and tend the gardens are terrorists who wouldn't hesitate to help other terrorists get into the country with the aim of causing mass casualties. Walters made the comments at a Thursday press conference that provided an update on the "Operation Alesia" marijuana-eradication effort.

"Don't buy drugs. They fund violence and terror," he said.

And, of course, the drug czar's office calls this a good story on their "blog" (to them, the more outrageous the lies that they can get a reporter to print, the better a story it is).

Mass casualties? Is he drunk? Or just drunk with power?

Government Shows No Compassion for Medical Pot

"Not only are we here to protect the public from vicious criminals in the street but also to protect the public from harmful ideas."
--Robert Ingersoll - Former DEA Director (1972)



Drug Czar John Walters says Marijuana Growers are TERRORISTS!
The nation's top anti-drug official said people need to overcome their "reefer blindness" and see that illicit marijuana gardens are a terrorist threat to the public's health and safety, as well as to the environment. John P. Walters, President Bush's drug czar, said the people who plant and tend the gardens are terrorists who wouldn't hesitate to help other terrorists get into the country with the aim of causing mass casualties. full story:cc/5035

Ideas are more powerful than guns.
We would not let our enemies have guns,
why should we let them have ideas.
--Joseph Stalin

analysis
CN: observer on July 13, 2007



DEA Threatens Forfeiture of Los Angeles Compassion Clubs
In an attack on access to medical marijuana in the nation's second largest city, the LA DEA office has mailed notices to landlords of Prop 215 co-ops warning them that they are liable to forfeiture and criminal penalties for allowing medical marijuana facilities on their property. full story:cc/5034

Seize This

"My disease makes it very hard for me to move. My biggest fear is that the police will come to arrest me for my medicine, tell me to raise my arms, and then when i can't do it, they'll shoot me."
--Cathy Jordan, Florida activist with Lou Gehrig's disease



ACTION ALERT: Hinchey Medical Marijuana Amendment 2007
In June 2005, the US Supreme Court, unfortunately, upheld the power of the federal government to ban medical marijuana. This month (probably next week, mid-July 2007) Congress will vote on an amendment that if passed would give patients the protection the court has denied. There might not be another Congressional vote on medical marijuana until next year, so your emails and phone calls are critically needed right now. full story:cc/5032

"Each time a (person) stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others... he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current that sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."
-- Robert F. Kennedy

Part of the Solution or Problem? gif

Data Quality Act, part 3,826

I really admire the tenacity and patience of Americans for Safe Access (ASA) in their dealings with HHS and the Data Quality Act complaint.

For those who have been with me for years, you know about this story quite well. For others, a quick recap is in order. The Data Quality Act is a government regulation that allows groups and individuals to submit a complaint that a government agency is disseminating inaccurate information and get it corrected.

Well, for years, Health and Human Services (and the FDA) has been disseminating information that marijuana has no medical value or use. It's harder to get much more inaccurate than that. So ASA put in a complaint and asked that the information be changed. Under the law, the agency is supposed to respond in 60 days.

* October 6, 2004: Original complaint filed (good, I thought -- HHS will have to correct its information by the end of the year. Right.)
* December 1, 2004. HHS says it needs more time. (Note: You can read all the letters here )
* February 2, 2005. HHS says it needs more time.
* April 5, 2005. HHS says it needs more time.
* April 20, 2005. HHS claims that it doesn't really need to respond.
* May 19, 2005. ASA appeals the non-response.
* July 28, 2005. HHS says it needs more time to respond to the appeal.
* October 5, 2005. HHS says it needs more time.
* December 8, 2005. HHS says it needs more time.
* February 7, 2006. HHS says it needs more time.
* April 12, 2006. HHS says it needs more time.
* April 20, 2006. FDA comes out with its nonsense declaration about marijuana not being medicine.
* May 2, 2006. ASA sends a letter threatening to sue if HHS continues to delay.
* July 12, 2006. HHS denies the appeal (by avoiding the question)
* February 21, 2007: ASA files lawsuit .
* May 25, 2007. Government files motion to dismiss claiming that the courts don't have jurisdiction and that ASA doesn't have standing.
* June 21, 2007. ASA responds

And finally, yesterday, ASA got to actually give oral arguments in a district court (arguments on the motion to dismiss, of course, but it's still a step forward) I don't know about you, but I'm exhausted (and I haven't done anything except report it to you).

And that's exactly what the government wants. They want us to get so frustrated by the obfuscation and obstruction that we'll give up. But we won't.

This is why the police have lost credibility and lost the cooperation of the citizens.



An 8-year-old girl is on a trip with her grandfather (who is also her best friend). The grandfather is killed, crushed under his truck while trying to fix it, leaving the poor girl alone in the cab. Finally the police are taking the distraught girl home, but when they get inside the house, they arrest the family on marijuana charges. It was Washington State and they had a doctor's prescription, but that didn't matter to the police.

Katha Pollitt has an excellent response to the Libby commutation in the Nation: Pardon whom?

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. Language Log does what the Supreme Court failed to do -- actually look at the structure of the phrase "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" -- and demonstrates that the Justices don't know what they're saying.

Rita has a drug war poem over at StoptheDrugWar. Don't forget to send me your poetry submissions.

Drug War Chronicle - Issue #493 - 7/13/07

* Medical Marijuana -- A Progress Report
* This Week's Corrupt Cops Stories
* Medical Marijuana: Rudy Giuliani Just Says No
* Barry Beyerstein: "We Have Lost One of the Best"
* Appeal * This Week in History * Speakeasy * Web Scan
* Feedback * Job Opportunity * Announcement

* Drug War Chronicle Book Review: "High Society" by Jophes Califona
"How Substance Abuse Ravages America and What to Do About It"
* We Want Pardons: Petition to Save Bush's Legacy
Persuading Him to Pardon Thousands of Nonviolent Drug Offenders...
* The Drug Debate: American Mayors Urge
"A New Bottom Line" and a Public Health Approach for Drug Policy
* Marijuana: California Superior Court
Upholds Santa Barbara's "Lowest Enforcement Priority" Law
* Drug Testing: Tennessee Supreme Court
Holds Off-Duty Marijuana Use No Reason to Deny Workman's Comp Claim
* Canada: A Majority Favors Marijuana Legalization, But...
Arrests Are Rising

"We can have justice
whenever those who have not been injured by injustice
are as outraged by it as those who have been."
--Solon (594 B.C.)

Saturday, July 14, 2007


A government gone amuck - threatening to seize the buildings of law-abiding landords in Los Angeles

Via Cannabis Culture Magazine, it appears that the DEA has threatened asset forfeiture against the building owners where medical marijuana dispensaries are housed in Los Angeles! This is an extremely chilling step, and a tactic designed to get the landlords, in fear of losing all their property, to act as agents of the DEA and evict the dispensaries.

Here's the letter they're sending: Continued...salon/0002762

Forfeiture Endangers Americans Rights (F.E.A.R.)

The Spring 2007 edition of Justice Policy Journal features a 31 page treatise by Jared Shoemaker titled:
Civil Asset Forfeiture: Why Law Enforcement Has Changed its Motto from "To Serve and Protect" to "Show Me the Money"

Abstract:
Despite its failure to achieve its desired objectives, the War on Drugs continues on into a fourth decade with disastrous effects and extensive collateral damage. The current article explores civil asset forfeiture as one motivation that keeps the current drug policy intact. Specifically, it advances the premise that the current state of civil asset forfeiture law creates goal displacement that motivates law enforcement agencies to implement drug enforcement strategies that aggressively pursue civil asset forfeitures as a means of supplementing their budgets rather than as a legitimate tool for decreasing the supply of illicit drugs.

Asset Forfeiture Abuse

Auction Action by Judy Osburn
"Police seized vehicles" exclaimed the advertisements for the Labor Day weekend auction. Four FEAR activists arrived at United Public Auctions in Upland, California early Saturday morning in time for the 7 a.m. auction preview. We intended to alert bidders that their own car could easily be forfeited under the unfair laws by which the vehicles up for auction were seized.


Seize This

Misdemeanor possession... Confiscate her home!!!

Drug War Roadshow & Plunder in Souderville

Medical Marijuana Outlets May Be Closed By Dan Abendschein
CN Source: Whittier Daily News July 14, 2007 California
 
County medical marijuana dispensaries are at risk of being shut down since landlords received a letter from a federal agency telling them they could lose their property or face up to 20 years in prison.

"Federal law allows for the seizure of assets, including real property, which have been used in conjunction with the distribution of controlled substances," states the Drug Enforcement Administration letter, which was sent out last week in Los Angeles County.
Continued...cannabisnews/23177


March 8, 2005
Kentucky Vehicle Enforcement Receives $258,000 Asset Forfeiture Money From the DEA For Recent Cash Seizure

Judge Chides Officials on Blocked Vote Recount By Ian Hoffman,
CN Source: San Mateo County Times July 14, 2007 California
Faced with accusations of lying, destroying public records and other chicanery, Alameda County officials — facing a lawsuit over their handling of a hotly contested election recount — instead protested to a state judge on Friday that they were victims of misunderstandings, bad decisions and their own ignorance of the multimillion-dollar machines used to conduct elections.
Continued...cannabisnews/23179

Is Truth a Casualty of the Drug War?
The Public Service Advertisements ran in 2002-2007, focusing on misinformation in the drug war. Advertisements from 1999 and PSAs from 2000 and 2001.

The Blue Ribbon Report Richard Nixon Chose to Bury. In 1972, Richard Nixon appointed former Republican Pennsylvania Governor Raymond Shafer to head a National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse. The conclusions of that report were not what the President wanted.

Camera-ready copy of this PSA available in Portable Document Format (PDF).


On Sept. 23, 2002, Mike and Valerie Corral's medical marijuana hospice near Santa Cruz, CA, was raided just before dawn by federal agents.

Judge Keeps Door Open for WAMM's Marijuana Case By Sean Aronson
CN Source: Santa Cruz Sentinel July 14, 2007 San Jose, CA  
 
A Santa Cruz marijuana collective raided by federal agents in 2002 made its case for the right to grow medical pot in court Friday. Though no ruling was issued, supporters of the group, Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana, said they're encouraged by the judge's response.

U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel heard arguments on the federal government's motion to dismiss the suit, which alleges the raid five years ago at WAMM's Davenport garden was outside the law, given the legality of medical marijuana in California. The county and city of Santa Cruz are signed on as plaintiffs in the suit.
Continued...cannabisnews/23178


Cannabis MD Reports

Cilia in our lungs
#1430743 - Sat Jul 14 2007
Our lungs have little hairs in them called cilia that act like tiny brooms to push dirt particles and mucus out of our lungs and into our throat. Cigarette smoke & nicotine paralyzes the cilia, allowing dirt into our lung. Does the smoke from MJ paralyze our cilia like cigarette smoke?

Reply: davidmalmolevine
#1430775 - Sat Jul 14 2007

No.

I attended the 1st National Clinical Conference on Medical Marijuana in Iowa in 1998. Arguably the most learned man on the subject of the effects of smoke on the lungs is named Donald Tashkin, Professor of Medicine, Division of Pulmonary & Critical Care, at UCLA. He spoke for almost an hour at the Conference, showing slides of smoke-browned lungs.

He showed how marijuana smoke seems to push pollutants towards the outer lining of the lungs. His presentation did not portray marijuana smoke as harmless, but there was no solid evidence of disease associated with the browning of the lungs' outer lining. Donald Tashkin has conducted the most extensive research involving the largest number of long-term marijuana-only smokers, as well as multi-drug smokers--marijuana, tobacco, cocaine, and other substances, for several decades.

His critique of marijuana smoke was completely non-committal. (Considering the government is his largest source of funding, there is little doubt why his lecture at the first medical cannabis conference was short and unsupportive.) When Dr. Tashkin finished his speech, he did not wait to answer questions. He grabbed his materials and bolted for the door. I raced after him and stopped him on the steps outside the conference hall. I showed him the passages I had written about his research in The New Prescription.

I stood there and watched him read everything I had written about his work. He agreed that my synopsis was correct. Then I asked him the $64,000 question. I said, "Do you know of any cases of marijuana-only smokers who had lung cancer?" He said "Yes, there is one." Then he smiled, explaining,

"He was sixteen years old." We both smiled, knowing a teenager could not possibly have sufficient exposure to marijuana smoke to cause lung cancer--his cancer was clearly due to some other cause.

Cannabis and Lung Cancer by Martin Martinez

No Link Between Marijuana Use and Lung Cancer

"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism"
-- Thomas Jefferson

Monday, July 16, 2007


The Hinchey amendment could be coming to a vote this week, so contact your representative (some options for doing so are in the alert at the top of the page).

David Murray is not only desperate, he's really reaching in his lies to support his arguments. In his testimony before Congress last week, he said:

Founding proponents of medical marijuana in the United States have reversed their key positions of support for medical marijuana. [...] Steve Kubby, another Co-founder of medical marijuana in California stated in a letter to supporters on April 14th, 2006 that "Marinol is an acceptable, if not ideal, substitute for whole cannabis in treating my otherwise fatal disease."

Kubby was surprised to learn of his supposed change in view, to say the least.

Learn how they work. This piece on workplace drug and alcohol abuse is a prime example of the prohibitionist tactics that get swallowed wholesale by the media. Note the mis-use of statistics. In particular, you'll see that problem drinking is defined but problem drug use is not (merely using illicit drugs is considered abuse). Also note that there is absolutely no attempt to connect either with actually being impaired on the job. This is an outright attempt to sell drug testing. Period.

DEA spokeswoman Sarah Pullen says that the letters to landlords "should not be viewed as a threat." In addition to my letter of response, I may need to send her a dictionary.

Paul Armentano talks about a forthcoming study that demonstrates what we've known for some time -- that whole marijuana is demonstrably better than Marinol at treating HIV/AIDS-related weight and appetite lose.

Pain Doctor William Hurwitz received a much lighter sentence (less than 5 years) than the first time around (25 years). Given what he's already served, he could be out in a couple of years.

Judge rules Canada's pot possession laws unconstitutional. This kind of thing used to happen fairly often in Canada. It's fun to see it happening again.

How To Murder A Medical-Marijuana Political Prisoner
FILED 01/18/00

Over just three days in jail, Kubby suffered a series of classic hypertensive crises. He could have had a crippling stroke, or died from cardiac arrest. And the police knew all about his condition.


Steve and Michele Kubby with 'Anna Boyce, RN', Founders of the American Medical Marijuana Association.

"Marinol, the synthetic THC marketed in the States, "In a recent study, the scientists gave patients 20 mg of Marinol by mouth to see if it increased their appetite. Not only could they not detect much appetite-increasing effect, but they learned the interesting fact that, in one-third of people who take Marinol by mouth, you have no blood levels at all. The drug is so poorly bio-available it's surprising that it got onto the market. There may well be some reason to believe that there are individuals in our government who are interested in getting Marinol on the market to diminish the pressure for marijuana smokers."
At the 10th International Conference on Drug Policy, 1996, USA John P Morgan MD, Professor of Pharmacology, City University of New York Medical School


And so it happened that when the paramilitary North Tahoe Task Force (above) raided Kubby's home on Jan. 19, they found plenty of notices posted in clear view on the premises, entitled ATTENTION LAW ENFORCEMENT, that detailed the nature of his illness, his legally authorized use of marijuana for it, and the likely consequences for him of incarceration without medication. It will be interesting to see, then, what defenses these officers may raise in answer to Kubby's allegations of attempted murder.



Arrests For Pot are Excessive By Sheryl McCarthy
CN Source: Newsday July 16, 2007 New York  

I call it an epidemic of marijuana arrests. New York City has been on a binge of marijuana arrests for the last 10 years." "I would call it a dragnet."

These are the conclusions of Harry Levine, a professor of sociology at Queens College, and Deborah Small, director of Break the Chains, a nonprofit drug policy reform group and a longtime advocate of changing the city's drug policies.
Continued...cannabisnews/23182

Marijuana: the law vs. 12 million people
Life magazine Oct 31, 1969 . 25-35

* One way or the other it all goes up in smoke
* For the long-distance runner who got caught - a 20-year sentence
* A bust at gunpoint and an armed search at sunset
* Should it be legalized? Soon we will know.


This bust was the climax of a bigtime smuggling case that began with an informer's tip. Agents depend heavily on informers --their "snitch or "little finger"-- who ply a dangerous, $100-a-sqeal trade.

The Medical Marijuana Debate: Pro By Jessica Peck Corry
CN Source: Denver Post July 15, 2007 Colorado  

If you are sick or dying in Colorado, you can legally smoke marijuana. It's a fact that law enforcement and elected officials are less than eager for you to know.

Sadly, six years after the state's voters overwhelmingly passed a constitutional amendment allowing the use of medical marijuana, there is an intolerable disrespect of the will of the people - and the sick and dying - by those in our government.
Continued...cannabisnews/23181

"Medicines often produce side effects. Sometimes they are physically unpleasant. Cannabis too has discomforting side effects, but these are not physical they are political"
-- The Economist March 28th 1992

Virtues' of Ganja

Alcohol-Marijuana Equalization Initiative
WHEREAS, according to the National Institutes of Health, an average
of 317 Americans die annually as the result of alcohol overdoses; and
WHEREAS, there has never been even a single fatal marijuana overdose
recorded in the medical literature, as noted by the British Medical Journal in
September 2003; and
WHEREAS, according to U.S. Department of Justice, “About 3 million
crimes occur each year in which victims perceive the offender to have been
drinking at the time of the offense. Among those victims who provided
information about the offender’s use of alcohol, about 35% of the
victimizations involved an offender who had been drinking”; and WHEREAS, extensive research, documented in official reports by the
British government's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs and the Canadian Senate Special Committee on Illegal Drugs, among others, shows that -- unlike
alcohol -- marijuana use is not generally a cause of violence or aggressive
behavior and in fact tends to reduce violence and aggression;
WHEREAS, it is the intent of this ordinance to have the private adult use
and possession of marijuana treated in the same manner as the private adult
use and possession of alcohol;
NOW, THEREFORE,
BE IT ENACTED BY THE COUNCIL OF THE CITY AND COUNTY OF DENVER



"We.. say that on the medical evidence available, moderate indulgence in cannabis has little ill-effect on health, and that decisions to ban or legalise cannabis should be based on other considerations."
-- The Lancet, November 14 1998

The Medical Marijuana Debate: Con By John Cooke
CN Source: Denver Post July 15, 2007 Colorado  

In 2000, Colorado voters approved Article XVIII of the Colorado Constitution legalizing medical marijuana. For more than six years, Coloradans and law enforcement have suffered the consequences of an ill-conceived and confusing referendum.

Unfortunately, the ballot measure passed because the proponents of medical marijuana played upon people's compassions and emotions and not scientific medical research.
Continued...cannabisnews/23180

"All propaganda must be so popular and on such an intellectual level, that even the most stupid of those towards whom it is directed will understand it. Therefore, the intellectual level of the propaganda must be lower the larger the number of people who are to be influenced by it. Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way around, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise."
-- Benito Mussolini contributing to the "London Sunday Express," December 8, 1935

"...the primary reason to outlaw marijuana is its effect on the degenerate races. Reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men. [Marijuana is taken by] musicians. And I'm not speaking about good musicians, but the jazz type... You smoke a joint and you're likely to kill your brother. Marihuana leads to pacifism and communist brainwashing. Marijuana is the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind. Marijuana is an addictive drug which produces in its users insanity, criminality, and death."
-- Harry J. Anslinger - America's 1st Drug Czar (FDR - JFK)

The Ganjawar Fraud

"Cannabis is remarkably safe. Although not harmless, it is surely less toxic than most of the conventional medicines it could replace if it were legally available. Despite its use by millions of people over thousands of years, cannabis has never caused an overdose death."
Testimony of Professor Lester Grinspoon, M.D.
Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, before the Crime Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, D.C., October 1, 1997

"Marijuana Use and Mortality" April 1997 American Journal of Public Health".
"Relatively few adverse clinical effects from the chronic use of marijuana have been documented in humans. However, the criminalization of marijuana use may itself be a health hazard, since it may expose the users to violence and criminal activity."
The Kaiser Permanente study

Drugwar Lies Linked to Schizophrenia

"Cannabis can be used on an episodic but continual basis without evidence of social or psychic dysfunction. In many users the term dependence with its obvious connotations, probably is mis-applied... The chief opposition to the drug rests on a moral and political, and not toxicologic, foundation".
The USA Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy 1987

PDFA - Slickly Packaged Lies.

"The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this."
Albert Eistein: My First Impression of the U.S.A., 1921

"Marijuana does not lead to physical dependency, although some evidence indicates that the heavy, long-term users may develop a psychological dependence on the drug"
The Shafer Commission of 1970

30 Years After Nixon's Marijuana Commission Advocated Decriminalization
Report Findings Are Still Valid
Nixon Never Read His Own Report, President Bush Should

"I want a Goddamn strong statement on marijuana, I mean one that just tears the ass out of them. You know, it's a funny thing, every one of the bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana is Jewish. [S]oft-headed psychiatrists who work in places like NIMH (National Institute for Mental Health) favor marijuana because they're probably all on the stuff themselves."
Richard Nixon - Former President

Nixon Commission Report Advising Decriminalization of Marijuana



"Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself"
President Jimmy Carter 1976

What the WHO doesn't want you to know about cannabis
Marijuana Special Report (New Scientist, 21. Februar 1998)
Health officials in Geneva have suppressed the publication of a politically sensitive analysis that confirms what ageing hippies have known for decades: cannabis is safer than alcohol or tobacco.

"Congress should definitely consider decriminalizing possession of marijuana... We should concentrate on prosecuting the rapists and burglars who are a menace to society."
U.S. Representative Dan Quayle, March 1977

Elkhorn Manefesto

"A California man decapitated his best friend while under the spell of the smoke."
Newsweek - Magazine (1937)

"[Marijuana] is highly intoxicating and constitutes an ever recurring problem where there are Mexicans or Spanish-Americans of the lower classes."
New York Times - Newspaper (1933)

"Marihuana makes fiends of boys in thirty days -- Hashish goads users to bloodlust."
William Randolph Hearst - Newspaper Tycoon (1936)

U.S. GOVT. COVERS UP MARIJUANA CANCER CURE!

"Having reviewed all the material available to us we find ourselves in agreement with the conclusion reached by the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission appointed by the Government of India (1893-94) and the New York Mayor's Committee (1944 - LaGuardia) that the long-term consumption of cannabis in moderate doses has no harmful effects" "the long-asserted dangers of cannabis are exaggerated and that the related law is socially damaging, if not unworkable"
1968 UK ROYAL COMMISSION, THE WOOTTON REPORT

Cannabis Shrinks Tumors: Government Knew in 74
The DEA quickly shut down the Virginia study and all further cannabis/tumor research, according to Jack Herer, who reports on the events in his book, The Emperor Wears No Clothes.  In 1976, President Gerald Ford put an end to all public cannabis research and granted exclusive research rights to major pharmaceutical companies, who set out -- unsuccessfully -- to develop synthetic forms of THC that would deliver all the medical benefits without the "high."

"Marijuana leads to homosexuality ... and therefore to AIDS."
Carlton Turner - Former Drug Czar (Reagan)

"Casual drug users should be taken out and shot."
Daryl Gates - Former LAPD Chief

"Under the influence of hashish those fanatics would madly rush at their enemies, and ruthlessly massacre every one within their grasp."
Dr. A. E. Fossier - New Orleans Medical & Surgical Journal (1931)

"I now have absolute proof that smoking even one marijuana cigarette is equal in brain damage to being on Bikini Island during an H-bomb blast."
Ronald Reagan - Former President



Emperor Wears No Clothes by Jack Herer
1936: DuPont obtains a patent license to manufacture synthetic "plastic fibers" from German industrial giant I.G. Farben Corporation. The patent license is obtained as part Germany's reparation payments to the United States after World War I. A few years later, I.G. Farben manufactures deadly Zyklon-B gas, used in Nazi death camps to murder millions of Jews (along with many homosexuals and drug users). DuPont owned and financed approximately 30% of Hitler's I.G. Corps, the military-industrial backbone of the fascist Third Reich.

The Politics of Pot

Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1894
Panama Canal Zone Report, 1925
LaGuardia Commission Report, 1944
LaGardia sub-committee of New York 1944
Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics. Jaffe Goodman Gillman 1965
1968 UK ROYAL COMMISSION, THE WOOTTON REPORT
Jamaican Study 1970
The Shafer Commission of 1970-3
US Jamaican Study 1974
Jamaican Studies (1968-74, 1975)
The Coptic Study (1981)
Testimony of Professor Lester Grinspoon, M.D.
The Kaiser Permanente study
The USA Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy 1987
The Economist March 28th 1992
Proven : Cannabis is a safe medicine by Ian Williams Goddard 1997
The Lancet, vol 352, number 9140, November 14 1998

"Marijuana gives rise to insanity -- not in its users but in the policies directed against it. A nation that sentences the possessor of a single joint to life imprisonment without parole but sets a murderer free after perhaps six years is in the grips of a deep psychosis."
-- Eric Schlosser - Author --

Editorial: New Challenges for Medical Marijuana
CN Source: Los Angeles Times July 19, 2007 Washington, DC  

The Drug Enforcement Administration has notified more than 150 Los Angeles property owners that their fortunes and their sacred honor are forfeit to the state. What crime must a landlady commit to deserve this punishment?

Renting to a tenant who operates a medical marijuana dispensary. The DEA sent out letters last week notifying owners that they stand to lose their properties and face 20 years in prison for allowing their buildings to be used for "unlawfully … distributing or using a controlled substance."
Continued...cannabisnews/23191

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Why Is Marijuana Still Illegal? by James W. Harris

Marijuana was legal in America right up to the mid-1930s, when a lurid, racist propaganda campaign of claptrap and lies conned Congress into outlawing it. The ban didn't make sense then, and it makes even less sense today.

Politicians showing off. Rogers Secures $23 Million to Fight Drugs Of course, that's our money he secured.

When a United States Senator doesn't know that shooting drug suspects in the back is wrong, it's no wonder our country's in such a mess.

Editorial in Ontario: We're Not Dopes

Perhaps it is time to seriously consider decriminalizing a recreational drug that one-in-six Canadians from age 15 to 64 used in 2004.

If dope truly was for dopes, then this country wouldn't be able to function with such high usage rates. But we're doing just fine.



Feds Target Owners Renting To Pot Dispensaries By Eric Bailey
CN Source: New Mexican July 17, 2007 Los Angeles, CA 

Raising the stakes in the federal government’s war against medical marijuana, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has warned more than 150 Los Angeles landlords that they risk arrest and the loss of their property if they continue renting to cannabis dispensaries.

The two-page letter dispatched last week by Timothy J. Landrum, DEA special agent in charge of the Los Angeles office, has whipped up worries among landlords and dispensary operators in a region that has seen a proliferation of the businesses in the past two years.
Continued...cannabisnews/23183

House Oversight Committee Calls Taylor Back By Michael Roston
CN Source: Raw Story July 17, 2007 Washington, DC 

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) has asked Sara Taylor, the former top aide to Karl Rove in the White House, to return to Capitol Hill for a deposition next week.

Taylor complied with a Congressional subpoena and appeared last week before the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify in the investigation of the firing of 8 US Attorneys. Now, Waxman is suggesting that Taylor might be implicated in politicizing government programs that Waxman has called 'historically nonpartisan.'
Continued...cannabisnews/23184

Politicians Need To Debate Drug Laws By Nick Coleman
CN Source: Star-Tribune July 17, 2007 Minnesota  

Eighty million Americans have smoked marijuana, including me. I tried it five or six times, only because I am a slow learner. I am allergic to weeds. Nothing kills an illicit high faster than a sneezing fit.

But there are worse things than being allergic to marijuana. You could be allergic to common sense.
Continued...cannabisnews/23186

The Marijuana Lobbyist By Betsy Rothstein
CN Source: The Hill July 17, 2007 Washington, DC 

So this is how he is: The chief lobbyist for the Marijuana Policy Project has short, clean-cut blond hair, and wears crisp, dark suits and conservative red-and-blue patterned ties. There is not a hint of dope pusher about him. He’s 28, married with three children, and possesses a boyish face, easy laugh and driven demeanor. He doesn’t even have a tattoo.

And his office? Downtown Geekville. His desk is neat and tidy. Volumes of Riddick’s Senate Procedure and Deschler-Brown Precedents of the U.S. House of Representatives are displayed prominently on it. Like other buttoned-up lobbyists, he dines at locales such as Bistro Bis, The Monocle and Sonoma.
Continued...cannabisnews/23185

DDc please take the time to read the cilia in our lungs thread the info you quoted from david is not entirely true.
Dr. Taskin says that cilia are impaired in the same interview.

Canada:red tape thwarts patient access to medpot
norml page

"DDc please take the time to read the cilia in our lungs thread the info you quoted from david is not entirely true."

I don't know about that. If there is any impairment of the cilia at all,

1) ... it isn't enough to cause cancer, or emphysema, or "brown lung" disease like smoking tobacco does.

2) ... it may also be the heat, not the cannabis, that damages the cilia.

3) ... the use of "sinsemillia, a potent form, has fewer of the pulmonary effects Dr. Tashkin describes than standard varieties." Grinspoon, March 25, 1994, NYT

&

"By simply replacing the low-potency government marijuana used in this study with high-potency (10-12% THC) sinsemilla, smokers could potentially obtain a fivefold reduction in tars while still achieving the same high." - California NORML reports, Oct. 1995, p. 4



It appears that Dr. Tashkin is using people who use street pot or government pot for his studies. I bet he's not studying those who just smoke the good stuff.

Hillary Clinton Pledges to End Medical Marijuana Raids; McCain Flip-Flops
Edited by: Michael Hess
BBSNews Tuesday, July 17 2007 MANCHESTER, NEW HAMPSHIRE (GSMM)

U.S.'s Second Largest Cancer Charity Calls for Legal Medical Marijuana
Access as Candidates Weigh Support

Two prominent presidential contenders have moved in opposite directions on the issue of federal attacks on medical marijuana patients, as America's second largest cancer charity, the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, came out strongly for protection of medical marijuana patients. Democratic frontrunner Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) called for an end to federal raids in states where medical use of marijuana is legal, while Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) backtracked on an earlier promise to end the raids.

During a Manchester campaign on July 13, Len Epstein, a volunteer for Granite Staters for Medical Marijuana (GSMM), told Sen. Clinton, "Twelve states allow medical marijuana, but the Bush administration continues to raid patients," to which she responded, "Yes, I know. It's terrible." Epstein then asked, "Would you stop the federal raids?" Sen. Clinton responded firmly, "Yes, I will."

The following day in Claremont, Sen. McCain held a town hall meeting at which he was asked about his stance on medical marijuana. When asked in April about ending the medical marijuana raids, McCain had responded, "I will let states decide that issue.
Continued...bbsnews/20070717133158914



Editorial: Why Should the Drug Czar's Office Even Exist?

In Spreading Scandal Over White House Political Operations
Feature: House Panel Head Accuses Drug Czar's Office of Electioneering

Pain Doctor and Patient Advocates Get a Congressional Hearing? Finally

Medical Marijuana: DEA, ONDCP Take Flak on Dispensary Raids
Research Obstacles in House Committee Hearing

ONDCP Claims Steve Kubby Has Changed His Mind
Kubby Says No Way!

Britain to Review Marijuana's Classification
Could Be Moved Back to Tougher Drug Schedule


lamarihuana

Lost political causes By William Buckley
Published March 24, 2000

In pursuit of truth and justice in California By William Buckley
Published Nov. 23, 1999

The federal narcomaniacs decided, at some point, to move in on the California scene.

Background: In l996, a plebiscite was conducted. Proposition 215 ruled that a Californian could take marijuana if counseled to do so for reasons of health by his doctor.

That would seem a reasonable decision, by a self-governing state. But it ran athwart a federal ruling. It is that marijuana is a proscribed substance and that its use under any circumstances is therefore unlawful.

California, then, became the legal battleground. And the feds walked into a quandary when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit last September authorized a cannabis club in Oakland to resume providing marijuana to patients where there was medical necessity. In such cases, said this honorable court, medical necessity could be used as a defense against a court injunction obtained by the Washington narcs.

What apparently happened in the past fortnight was a policy decision to force the hand not only of California, but of the 9th Circuit. Judge George H. King of Los Angeles was given two indictments to try: Peter McWilliams, an author, publisher and poet (and a personal friend), and Todd McCormick, an entrepreneur.

McWilliams and McCormick were charged with conspiring to manufacture marijuana, which indeed is exactly what they did, growing 6,000 plants. The design, said the defense, was to make these plants available to the cannabis clubs to pass the drug along as authorized by Proposition 215.
Continued...ecplegalize/84

There isn't much point in undertaking to defend yourself if the reasons why you acted as you did you are prohibited to bring up.

Obviously the high command of Narcs Inc. feared that the temptation would be felt by the jury to "nullify.

So the fate of Peter McWilliams and of Todd McCormick is in the hands of Judge King. Perhaps the cool thing for him to do is delay a ruling for a few months, and just let Peter McWilliams die.
-- William Buckley
Universal Press Syndicate: 4520
Main St., Kansas City, Mo. 64111

Welcome to The Peter McWilliams Homepage

A website in memory of author Peter McWilliams ( 1950 - 2000 )

PeterMcWilliams.org Archive

Murder of Peter McWilliams

Why Was Peter McWilliams Murdered? by Paul Krassner

"In March 1996, I opened the door to death and stared the Grim Reaper in the face. There was a pause. Then he suddenly smiled and said, 'Enjoy yourself! It's later than you think."
-- Peter McWilliams, from his essay Joy is Good

Sorry DdC....your name is Ddc I see.

I will not post more cilia info here as that is not what this post is for, I will continue it on the cilia thread.
cilia in the lungs

I only posted Taskin because that is your evidence, which you continue to use despite calling silly. If its good enough for Grinspoon its good enough for me. I will not post other supportive prohibitionist studies that support this. Taskin is good becaue it is balanced, but if people only want to post the good part of that quote than they have an propagenda.

And I already said the dangers of street cannabis and I never said lung cancer. I will not have these pages fill with propaganda and cherry picked info because then you lose all credibility. Cannabis is not entirely harmless, but it is one of the most harmless. Tobacco is harmful even in its natural form but less so, yes, and it is hard to tell because people never lived past 40's often anyways back then. Nicotene is one of the most poisonous plants known to man.

The harm is in the burned leaf even if you remove all molds, metals etc...to what extent I don't know...

Tashkin is only as good as his research material allows. Since the government DEA only approves their own Ganja that is full of sticks and stems or anticdotal evidence from the streets. It is not science. It is propaganda. Even with the schwagg he had to report no cancer or lung damage. But that does not make the claim it is bad for you or cilia is harmed. Same as when you jump in the water. Your hair gets wet and matty and sticks to your head. But it will dry and be the same as ever. If the cilia is affected during the toking it obviously goes back to normal or we would have actual real life victims. Tashkin is a fascist looking for problems. paid to find problems. Same as the NIDA. 60,000 tests and not one for medicinal qualities. All to find something bad. After 60,000 test they still haven't a clue or have they any evidence out side of this gutter science you keep dragging up. Bring me a human not a narks theory.
DdC

Virginia_Resner R.I.P. Activist Against Drug War Injustice

Virginia Resner, a great activist who worked tirelessly to put a human face on the injustice of the Drug War, succumbed to a five and a half year battle with breast cancer at age 60 on July 18, 2007

Virginia first became involved in drug policy reform in 1991. Unbeknownst to her, her companion Steven Faulkner had engaged in a plan to sell drugs. Coming home to find federal agents in her San Francisco residence on a warrantless search for evidence to use against him became her wake-up call. Through Faulkner’s arrest, prosecution, and 5-year mandatory minimum sentence as a first-time non-violent, drug offender, she quickly learned about the excesses of the Drug War.
Continued...drugpolicy/resner

Human Rights and the Drug War
Dedicated to the nonviolent prisoners of the US Drug War, to their families, and to all who work for their freedom and to restore respect for all Human Rights. The Human Rights and the Drug War project was launched in 1995 as Human Rights 95 (HR95).

GREEN-AID NEWS

WeedBay.Net
This just in: From Mikki Norris

A memorial service for our dear friend and colleague, Virginia Resner (who passed away earlier this week), will be held on Tuesday, July 31, 2007 at 1:00 PM at Temple Emanu-El, Martin Meyer Sanctuary, at 2 Lake Street (located on the corner of Lake and Arguello Streets), San Francisco, CA 94118.

Her family requests that donations in Virginia Resner’s name to be made to Coming Home Hospice, Green Aid: Medical Marijuana Education and Legal Defense Fund, Inc., and to programs at Temple Emanu-El.

A second gathering to celebrate Virginia’s life is being planned for Sunday, September 30, 2007. Details to come.



Call Congress Today about Key Medical Marijuana Vote July 23, 2007

Pro Pot Law Holds No Sway By Tracie Dungan  
CN Source: Arkansas Democrat-Gazette July 23, 2007 Eureka Springs, Arkansas  

A pro-marijuana initiative approved by Eureka Springs voters in November has had no impact on how police handle arrests for misdemeanor possession, city officials say.

Voters passed an ordinance directing police and prosecutors to make possession of less than an ounce of marijuana a low law-enforcement priority. Under Arkansas law, such possession is a Class A misdemeanor, which is punishable by up to a year in jail and a $ 1, 000 fine.

Eureka Springs Mayor Dani Wilson contends there’s been no change. “The misconception here is that everybody thought when this thing passed that it was OK to run around with marijuana — it’s not,” she said. Police Chief Earl Hyatt said there are several reasons the ballot measure’s success hasn’t changed things.
Continued...cannabisnews/23196

Pot Laws Do More Harm Than Good
Prince George Free Press

Activists march for medicinal marijuana use29 Eyewitness News (CA)

Austin Freedom Fest
Start: 2007/08/10 - 12:00pm End: 2007/08/10 - 11:59pm Benefit concert supporting MPP, NORML and WAMM, featuring Willie Nelson . . .

Medical Marijuana
DEA, ONDCP Take Flak on Dispensary Raids,
Research Obstacles in House Committee Hearing



Medical Pot Stores' Profits Questioned By Dan Abendschein  
CN Source: Whittier Daily News July 24, 2007 California  

The recent busts of medical marijuana dispensaries have raised questions about the revenue the operations collect. Four dispensaries last week were accused of operating as "super-sized retail drug-dealing centers," turning tremendous profits and accepting questionable doctor's recommendations.
The dispensaries were investigated by the Drug Enforcement Administration, which can charge them with violating federal drug laws, regardless of whether or not they make a profit.

However, the agency claims dispensaries it went after last week were operating as for-profit operations, which may not be permitted by state laws that set guidelines for growing, possessing, and distributing medical marijuana.
Two of the busted dispensaries, the "Yellow House" and West Hollywood Compassionate Caregivers, are located in Los Angeles. The other two are in Corona, in Riverside County, and Morro Bay on the Central Coast. Continued...cannabisnews/23197

DEA announces medical cannabis arrests in Bakersfield, Morro Bay, Corona, Los Angeles. Owners charged with profiteering. (Jul 16-17, 2007)

Attorney Jeremy Blank reports:
jmoran on July 23, 2007

In exchange for SD NORML's agreement not to pursue attorney's fees claims against Merced County, which intervened in the San Diego v. San Diego NORML case, we were able to negotiate a revised Sheriff's Medical Marijuana Policy in that county, a final copy of which is attached.

Merced's policy is an exemplary model of what a MMJ policy should be.

* It provides that patients will be protected from arrest if they have a State ID card and are within SB 420 limits. It adds that "No deputy shall refuse to accept a properly issued ID card" unless there is reasonable cause to believe it is fraudulent.

* Patients are also protected if they provide...
(1) ID showing California residency and
(2) a written physician's recommendation.

* Caregivers must give proof that they are responsible for the patient's health, housing or safety, and provide proof of the personal knowledge of the patient's needs and physician's recommendation.

* All marijuana is to be left in the possession of legal patients & caregivers. Marijuana that is taken in evidence for a criminal case will be returned only on court order.

Thanks to Jeremy Blank for negotiating this. Across California, law enforcement is being forced to come to terms with 215.

D. Gieringer, Cal NORML
2215-R Market St. #278, San Francisco CA 94114
canorml@igc.org - - FAX (510) 849-3974
LA Office: 8749 Holloway Dr, W. Hollywood 90069

Mendocino Co. Supervisors urge legalization, taxation and regulation of marijuana.

* CA bill to relieve medical cannabis dispensaries of back sales taxes (SB 529 - Migden).


NORML launches ad campaign in San Francisco

FOR THOSE INTERESTED IN SUING THE POLICE...
Richard Zuckerman July 23, 2007

In Heck v. Humphrey, U.S. (1994), the United States Supreme Court created an odious policy which requires the criminal conviction to be vacated as a precondition to suing for damages, even after the convict is no longer in custody.

On July 5, 2007, www.judiciary.state.nj.us posted the unpublished Appellate Division opinion upholding the dismissal of my lawsuit because the municipal court conviction has not been vacated under Heck v. Humphrey.
Continued...cannabisnews/thread23196


november.org

Another Outrage: 13-Year Sentence for Medical Marijuana Grower
Speakeasy Main Scott Morgan 02/06/2007

Dustin Costa, whose case we've discussed here and here, received a 13-year sentence in federal court today (sorry, no link).

We're told that the judge wasn't thrilled about the sentence. Unfortunately, even judges become helpless bystanders when the Justice Department uses federal law to target medical providers operating legally under California's Proposition 215.

Costa's prosecution signals a return to the Justice Department's controversial practice of lying to jurors and painting medical providers as common street dealers.
Are you watching this, Dennis Kucinich?



Never so proud of a Judge
Christen-Mitchell July 23, 2007

I was in court last week to have my probation modified to allow use under the Colorado medical marijuana laws. A constitutional amendment has effectively separated medicinal use from criminal penalties.

The neo-con D.A., using something similar to Alberto Gonzales justice and American military intelligence(none), slandered my Doctor and asserted that I had no illness.
Never have I been so proud of a judge. Every sentence she spoke was in defense of my right to self medicate.

It is very difficult to find justice in a courtroom. It is a thrill to see. A continuation was ordered, but I look forward to the first legal joint of my life after more that 40 years of being an enemy of the police-state.
Cannabem Liberemus


november.org

URGENT!
Stop DEA Medical Marijuana Raids!
Congress Votes on "Hinchey" This Week!
In June 2005, the US Supreme Court unfortunately upheld the power of the federal government to ban medical marijuana. However, this week Congress will vote on an amendment that, if passed, would give patients the protection the court has denied. There might not be another Congressional vote on medical marijuana until next year, so your emails and phone calls are critically needed right now! It's very easy to do. Continued...cannabisculture/5032



Hinchey amendment may be coming up for a vote today.
(to prevent federal harassment in states with medical marijuana laws)

Jacob Sullum reminds us why we should care.

U.S. House Expected To Vote on Marijuana Amendment By Uthayla Abdullah
CN Source: Columbia Missourian July 25, 2007 Columbia, MO  

While living in California, David Sapp was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. His doctors prescribed various medicines to help control pain and spasms in his hands and body, but they were either not helpful or their side effects were too severe.

“Once, I fell asleep in court,” said Sapp, who practiced law in California for 15 years.
Continued...cannabisnews/23200

Viets Promotes Federal Action on Medical Pot By Jason Rosenbaum
CN Source: Columbia Daily Tribune July 25, 2007 Missouri  

A Columbia attorney is calling on U.S. Rep. Kenny Hulshof, R-Columbia, to support a congressional measure halting federal prosecution of people who use medical marijuana when the use complies with state law.

Twelve states allow the use of marijuana with a doctor’s prescription. Attorney Dan Viets, local chapter president of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said Congress would vote either today or later this week on a provision in a budget bill known as the Hinchey Amendment.
Continued...cannabisnews/23199



"If a ruler hearken to lies, all his servants are wicked."
--Prov.29:12

The DEA encourages and suborns perjury
DWR: Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Radley Balko has the latest from the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

The decision by U.S. Attorney Greg White to release a woman from prison and drop charges against two men could be the tip of the iceberg in a federal perjury investigation.

Dozens of convictions and pending cases in which DEA agent Lee Lucas investigated and Jerrell Bray was paid for information will come under scrutiny, several lawyers said Monday.

Bray told police in May that he made up testimony and lied on the witness stand in several drug cases.

Lying in criminal trials. From an agency in the Justice department.

But wait, you say -- this is just an individual agent (Lee Lucas) working with an informant who lied. How can I infer blanket statements about the entire DEA?

Because the attitude about doing whatever it takes to get a conviction (including lying) goes all the way to the top.

I wrote about the current Deputy Administrator of the DEA (Michele Leonhart) almost four years ago when she was nominated. The story was about her, and also about super-snitch Andrew Chambers, who was also guilty of perjury in criminal trials, though he was never punished for it and instead received over $2 million from the DEA.

Here are some excerpts:

For years, some prosecutors and many defense attorneys had expressed concerns about Chambers' perjury. In 1993 in California, a 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruling agreed that Chambers lied on the stand. In 1995, the 8th U.S. Court of Appeals in St. Louis added its voice: "The record, however, clearly demonstrates that Chambers did in fact perjure himself . . ."

The DEA protected Chambers repeatedly, and avoided notifying prosecutors and defense attorneys about Chambers' past. At one point, the Drug Enforcement Agency and Justice Department lawyers stonewalled for 17 months, fighting a public defender who was trying to examine the contents of DEA's background check on Chambers.

Later, Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Wolf stated that it was clear that the drug agents never put any damaging reports into Chambers' file -- even though DEA regulations require it.

Finally, the DEA conducted an internal review of Chambers' career, and although there was some talk of reprimanding DEA supervisors, the report was never made completely public, and the DEA refused to agree to stop using Chambers. [...]

The most startling statement in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch investigation of Andrew Chambers was from Michele Leonhart:

"The only criticism (of Chambers) I've ever heard is what defense attorneys will characterize as perjury or a lie on the stand."

She continued by saying that once prosecutors check him out, they'll agree with his admirers in DEA that he's "an outstanding testifier."

That's the key. To an agent like Leonhart, getting the bust and getting the conviction is all that matters. The testimony is good if it leads to a successful conclusion (from her perspective). Why nitpick about the truth?

After all, this is war, right? Anything goes in war. Lie, cheat, steal, suspend the constitution, ... kill.

The entire drug war apparatus in this country needs to be completely dismantled, and something resembling America put back in its place.



Karl Rove and John Walters are Stealing Your Cash from Bill Piper
Drug Policy Alliance July 18, 2007



Take Action! Send a Message

For years President Bush has wasted taxpayer money on drug war programs that even his own analysts have concluded are ineffective. Now we know why.

A recent Congressional investigation found that the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) used taxpayer money to boost support for Republican candidates in 2006. U.S. Drug Czar John Walters and his deputies traveled to almost 20 events with vulnerable Republican members of Congress in the months prior to the election.

The taxpayer-financed trips were orchestrated by President Bush's political advisors and often combined with the announcement of federal grants or actions that made the Republican candidates look good in their districts. Karl Rove commended ONDCP officials for "going above and beyond the call of duty" in making "surrogate appearances" in "the god awful places we sent them."

Those "god awful places" included cities like South Bend, Indiana, my hometown.

At the same time Walters was spending taxpayer money campaigning on behalf of vulnerable Republicans, President Bush was increasing funding for Walters' favorite programs, the anti-marijuana ad campaign and the student drug testing program. This kind of I'll-scratch-your-back-if-you-scratch-mine arrangement is outrageous, even by Washington standards!
Continued...drugpolicy.2.31997

U.S. drug czar lacks credibility By MINDELLE JACOBS
CM: Edmonton Sun March 2, 2007 Canada

Who is the United States Drug Czar?
DWR: August 27, 2003

Who is the United States Drug Czar? John P. Walters, Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). He received his training working with a former drug czar turned gambler, William Bennett (they also wrote a book together, sort of a fantasy novel called "Body Count.")

What is a czar?
We turn to the dictionary:

czar: A male monarch or emperor, especially one of the emperors who ruled Russia until the revolution of 1917.
Hmmm... let's look further...

czar: autocrat
autocrat: a ruler having unlimited power; despot
despot: a person who wields power oppressively; a tyrant.
tyrant: an oppressive, harsh, arbitrary person

What is a drug czar?

A harsh and oppressive person, who arbitrarily wields power to determine what Americans must believe about some drugs.

So what does he do?

It is his job to spend taxpayer money to tell pot smokers that they are terrorists. It is his job to ignore science and distort facts. It is his job to campaign against local elections. It is his job to threaten Canada for considering enlightened laws. It is his job to justify a failed government policy.

He has some assistants called "Component Deputy Directors".



MPP Declares War on Drug Czar's Illegal Campaigning
Marijuana Policy Project - Press Releases 2002 Washington, D.C .

Formal Complaint to be Announced at Dec. 4 Press Conference

On Wednesday, December, the Marijuana Policy Project will file a formal "complaint of possible prohibited personnel practice" with the federal Office of Special Counsel, charging White House Drug Czar John Walters with violating federal law by using "his official authority and influence for the purpose of ... affecting the result of an election" specifically, the election that included Question9, MPP's Nevada marijuana initiative.

MPP's Executive Director Robert Kampia and Director of Government Relations Steve Fox will discuss the complaint at a noon press conference on December. At that time, MPP will also release a letter to the Nevada Secretary of State's office alleging that John Walters illegally campaigned against Question9 without properly reporting his activities to the state, as required by Nevada's campaign finance law.

"During the fall campaign, John Walters declared war on the law and war on the truth," Kampia said. "Today, on behalf of U.S. taxpayers including the 5,000 who contributed to our campaign we are declaring war on the drug czar for his illegal and dishonest activities. In filing this official complaint, we are calling for the removal of John Walters from office for gross violations of the Hatch Act."

The Hatch Act, originally enacted in 1939, bars federal employees from carrying out certain campaign-related activities."Walters has committed numerous crimes against the taxpayers," Kampia added. "He used his official authority to affect the outcome of the Question9 election, as well as other state drug policy initiatives, in plain violation of the Hatch Act. Because none of this activity was properly reported as campaign contributions, he is in equally plain violation of Nevada campaign finance laws.

Walters conducted a campaign of lies against Question9, using the taxpayers' money to spread misinformation."

What: Press conference to announce the filing of a formal complaint with the federal Office of Special Counsel, charging Drug Czar John Walters with illegal campaigning against Nevada's Question9

Who: MPP's Executive Director Robert Kampia and Director of Government Relations Steve Fox When: Wednesday, December 4, at noon

Where: National Press Club, Peter Lisagor Room, 529-14thSt. NW, Washington, D.C.

The Marijuana Policy Project works to minimize the harm associated with marijuana both the consumption of marijuana and the laws that are intended to prohibit such use. MPP believes that the greatest harm associated with marijuana is imprisonment. To this end, MPP focuses on removing criminal penalties for marijuana use, with a particular emphasis on making marijuana medically available to seriously ill people who have the approval of their doctors. Date: 12/2/2002

Updates: Marijuana Policy Project - War on Drug Czar

The Empire Turns Its Guns On The Citizenry
CM: Ferre Jul 07, 2007 Amsterdam

Today 17,000 local police forces are equipped with such military equipment as Blackhawk helicopters, machine guns, grenade launchers, battering rams, explosives, chemical sprays, body armor, night vision, rappelling gear, and armored vehicles. Some have tanks. In 1999, the New York Times reported that a retired police chief in New Haven, Conn., told the newspaper, "I was offered tanks, bazookas, anything I wanted." Balko reports that in 1997, for example, police departments received 1.2 million pieces of military equipment.

With local police forces now armed beyond the standard of U.S. heavy infantry, police forces have been retrained "to vaporize, not Mirandize," to use a phrase from Reagan administration Defense official Lawrence Korb. This leaves the public at the mercy of brutal actions based on bad police information from paid informers.
Continued...rense/75emp

Bob Marley speaking about herb and rights U2b

Pot Raid Ruled Illegal By Glenda Anderson
CN Source: Press Democrat December 20, 2006 California  

A 32,500-plant medical marijuana garden grown in plain sight along a Lake County highway in 2004 cannot be used as evidence in a federal case against high-profile marijuana activist Charles "Eddy" Lepp, a federal judge has ruled.

"The biggest bust in the history of the DEA (U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration) just did go up in smoke," Lepp said.
Continued...cannabisnews/cannabisnews/22.22464

Sanctuary City?

Pot-Growing Woman, 60, Reports To Prison

Truth: the Anti-Drugwar
Brought to you as a public service by Brian C. Bennett

It's Not About Legalizing Drugs -- It's About Correcting a Terrible Mistake

Thank you for stopping by. What you'll find here is the easiest to use and most complete collection of official government data, historic media reporting, and above all else, better contexts to create a more accurate and complete picture about drug use and its impacts on our society. I use only the best, most accurate and most complete US Government source data available. The claims being made in the drug war debate can only be properly evaluated if the underlying data can be easily found and examined. So here it is: look at it, use it, and tell other people about what you learn.
Continued...briancbennett.com

The Anti-Drugwar Czar

Catch-22 of Drug Law Reform
Brian C. Bennett June 18, 2007

Those who are working for reform of our nation's drug laws are out-moneyed, out-gunned, and out-numbered by those waging it. Clearly, the citizens have no prayer of ever out-gunning the government, and the vast majority of drug reformers are actually un-paid volunteers.

Interest in putting an end to the drug war is nowhere near as widespread as it needs to be, thus the money that is available is quite limited, and in no case will ever be likely to number in the tens of billions of dollars spent annually by our government to continue waging the war itself.

If enough people cared, then certainly more money could be available. Clearly, then, we need to get more people to care about the drug war and then become pissed off enough to help do something about it.
Continued...antidrugwarczar/2007/06

Drug Crazy: by Mike Gray
How We Got into This Mess and How We Can Get Out

Marijuana: The Forbidden Medicine
Index of Medical Conditions Addressed
Shared Comments and Observations

Smaller haul in Nelson cannabis raids
CM:Ferre org link: stuff.co Feb 18, 2007 NZ
Some cannabis plants seized in the operation would be kept for evidence and the rest would be incinerated at an undisclosed location, Mr Savage said.


official undisclosed location...

Look how far we've come
DWR: Thursday, July 26, 2007

My very first post as a blogger, back on July 27, 2003, was about an amendment to get the federal government out of states' medical marijuana laws, sponsored by Maurice Hinchey.

Back then, I marveled at such nonsense as this from John Mica:

"We also heard here that the medical use of marijuana will relieve pain. Well, I can say also from chairing that subcommittee that that is not the case. In fact, anything that we do to encourage use, whether for this purpose or other purposes, will not relieve pain, it will cause pain. Certainly, I am sure if someone smoked enough marijuana or took enough crack or enough heroin or methamphetamines, they would not have any pain."

and this gem from sado-moralist Mark Souder:

"This is about when Congress passed a law under the Constitution that said in interstate commerce, which narcotics move across interstate commerce, which was not a liberal interpretation of that clause but a strict interpretation of that clause from a conservative perspective, all except the more anarcho-libertarians, as we used to call them, believe that in drug laws the Federal Government historically has had the right to enforce a Federal law."

The amendment, of course, lost. And now I have covered the Hinchey amendment 5 times. During that time, we have written countless letters to Representatives, done extensive lobbying, and changed the leadership party in the House.

Just look how far we've come in those 5 votes...



(Here's the breakdown of this year's vote.) At this rate, the Hinchey amendment will pass sometime around mid-July in the year 2027, and I'll have a party in the retirement home.

Congress. What a bunch of spineless, hopeless, un-American nitwits.

Tomorrow, however, I'm planning on celebrating anyway. It'll be my 4 year blogiversary. And there's a lot we have accomplished in that time.

Two More Pot Shops Close Down By Jason Kotowski
CN Source: Bakersfield Californian July 26, 2007 California
 
A battle is being waged in Kern County between the federal government and advocates for medical marijuana. Right now, the feds are pummeling the competition.

Two more medical marijuana dispensaries closed Tuesday, leaving the county with only one operating dispensary, said Doug McAfee, president of the Bakersfield chapter of NORML, a pro-legalization group. The closures come just over a week after a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration raid shut down Nature's Medicinal Cooperative in Oildale.
Continued...cannabisnews/23206

Urban Geography Rules Pot-Club Politics By Ken Garcia   
CN Source: San Francisco Examiner July 26, 2007 San Francisco

You don’t have to be an aficionado of hookah pipes to understand that when it comes to pot clubs in San Francisco, not all neighborhoods are created equal.

That explains the preponderance of cannabis service centers in the Mission district, the Haight and South of Market and a dearth of “pharmacies’’ in the parts of San Francisco where most people actually reside.
Continued...cannabisnews/23205

5 Held in Raid on Pot Stores By Steve Hymon
CN Source: Los Angeles Times July 25, 2007 Los Angeles, CA

The gap between state and federal drug laws became apparent again Wednesday when federal agents raided 10 local medical marijuana facilities only minutes after the Los Angeles City Council placed a moratorium on new facilities so rules could be drafted to better regulate them.
The ban is for one year, but the council can extend it for another year.
Continued...cannabisnews/23204

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.
-- C.S. Lewis, in "The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment,"
an essay from "God In The Dock

DEA Targets Landlords in Pot Battle By William M. Welch   
CN Source: USA Today July 25, 2007 Los Angeles, CA
 
The U.S. Justice Department is unleashing a potent new weapon in its battle against California's hundreds of medical pot clinics, threatening landlords with arrest and property seizures for renting to tenants who flout federal drug laws.

Intensifying its crackdown on pot sales that are legal under California law but illegal under U.S. law, agents of the Drug Enforcement Agency executed search warrants Wednesday in raids on 10 marijuana dispensaries across Los Angeles.
Continued...cannabisnews/23203

TH

DEA Raids Pot Clinics in LA County By Andrew Glazer
CN Source: Associated Press July 25, 2007 Los Angeles, CA  

U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents raided 10 medical marijuana clinics Wednesday just as city leaders backed a measure calling for an end to the federal government's crackdown on the dispensaries.

Federal officials made five arrests and seized large quantities of marijuana and cash after serving clinics in Los Angeles County with search warrants, said DEA spokeswoman Sarah Pullen. She refused to disclose the clinics' locations and other details.
Continued...cannabisnews/23202

Whenever the offense inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigor of penal law is obliged to give way to the common feelings of mankind.
-- Edward Gibbon,
"The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," 1776

Congressional Scrutiny of DEA Reaches Fever Pitch
CN Source: ACLU July 25, 2007 Washington, DC  

The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to vote today on an amendment that would prohibit the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) from raiding and arresting medical marijuana patients and providers in states that have made medical marijuana legal under state law.

The "Hinchey Amendment," offered by U.S. House of Representatives member Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) during consideration of the Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations bill, would prevent the U.S. Department of Justice from spending funds to interfere with medical marijuana in any state that has authorized medical marijuana use.
Continued...cannabisnews/23201

"A single glass of wine will impair your driving more than smoking a joint. And under certain test conditions, the complex way alcohol and cannabis combine to affect driving behaviour suggests that someone who has taken both may drive less recklessly than a person who is simply drunk". "
--New Scientist March 2002

'Murder Weed'

The Drug War Refugees

DEAth Lies & LAPDog Perversions...

"Casual drug users should be taken out and shot."
--Daryl (DARE) Gates - Former LAPD Chief

Fascism 101: Federal Marijuana Monopoly Challenged

Propaganda Czar

Unaccountable, Unauditable & Out of Control

Protest Massive DEAth Raids

The Banality of Evil – Canadian Style
Canada Rejects Steve Tuck’s Request for “Pre-Removal Risk Assessment”
Adding Insult To Injury. We Will Appeal, Of Course.

The Ganjawar and the The Rez

Change in Colombian drug war coming?

Yeah, the Free Mexican Air Force is flyin' tonight

"The anti-marijuana campaign is a cancerous tissue of lies, undermining law enforcement, aggravating the drug problem, depriving the sick of needed help, and suckering well-intentioned conservatives and countless frightened parents."
-William F. Buckley, Jr. - Writer-

Kathmandu and the Black Prince

Just What The Jewish Doctor Ordered?

Vultures Funding Giuliani

"Marihuana leads to pacifism and communist brainwashing." "Reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men." "...the primary reason to outlaw marijuana is its effect on the degenerate races."
--Harry J. Anslinger - America's 1st Drug Czar

"Thank you Miss Rosa"

Prejudice: Marijuana and Jim Crow Laws

The Racist Ganjawar

House Nixes Medical Pot Amendment By Josh Richman
CN Source: Oakland Tribune July 26, 2007 California  

The House again has rejected an amendment to protect medical marijuana patients from federal prosecution, the fifth such vote in as many years. But while the amendment continued its trend of picking up a few votes each year, half of the House's freshman Democrats opposed it Wednesday _ including Jerry McNerney, D-Pleasanton.

``I have spoken to many law enforcement officials concerned about the effect of drug use on our communities, particularly in San Joaquin County. The problem is real,'' McNerney said in a statement issued Thursday.
Continued...cannabisnews/23209

Crackdown Activates Search for Options By David Olson
CN Source: Press-Enterprise July 27, 2007 California

U.S. House Votes Down Change To End Federal Raids By Jewels Phraner
CN Source: Columbia Missourian July 27, 2007 Washington, DC



Medical Marijuana Backers Say They'll Fight On By Will Dunham
CN Source: Reuters July 26, 2007 Washington, DC  

Backers of a measure to stop the U.S. government from blocking the use of medical marijuana in states that allow it vowed on Thursday to press on with their fight despite losing another congressional vote.

The U.S. House of Representatives late on Wednesday defeated a measure that would have blocked the federal law on a vote of 262-165. It attracted the most votes it has ever gotten, but for the fifth straight year fell far short of passage.
Continued...cannabisnews/23208


Virtues' of Ganja

Local Doctors To Have Say in Marijuana Program
CN Source: New Mexican July 27, 2007 New Mexico  

Two Santa Fe physicians have been appointed to an eight-member medical-advisory committee that will help guide the Health Department’s new Medical Cannabis Program.

Dr. Timothy Lopez, an oncologist at the Cancer Institute of New Mexico, and Dr. William Johnson, a psychiatrist at Su Vida, will serve on the advisory committee with Dr. Erin Bouquin, a family-medicine physician at Los Alamos National Laboratory; Dr. Elaine Edmonds, a neurologist in Albuquerque; Dr. Eve Elting, an internal-medicine physician in Truth or Consequences; Dr. Eve Espey, a gynecologist in Albuquerque; Dr. Mitchell Simson, an internal-medicine physician in Albuquerque; and Dr. Karla Thornton, an infectious-disease specialist in Albuquerque.
Continued...cannabisnews/23212

CN Source: NORML July 26, 2007 Washington, DC, USA

Congress Votes To Continue Prosecution Of State-Authorized Medi-Pot Patients -- 165 House members – the most ever – vote to end federal raids in California, 11 other states.

State-authorized patients and their caregivers who possess or use medical cannabis will continue to be subject to federal arrest and prosecution, after the House of Representatives rejected a proposed amendment that sought to limit the US Justice Department’s ability to federally prosecute patients and caregivers who are compliant with state medical marijuana laws.
Continued...norml/7313

Final vote tallies for the Hinchey/Rohrabacher medical marijuana amendment are available online at: clerk.house.gov/evs/2007/roll733

NORML To Offer First-Ever "Sensible Amsterdam" Tour
July 26, 2007 - Washington, DC, USA

Join NORML and CSTravel on a guided tour of Amsterdam" and learn what "genuine freedom looks like"

To reserve your place on NORML’s 2008 "Sensible Amsterdam" freedom tour, please visit: cstravel.org/dest/destinations

Media inquiries should be directed to Allen St. Pierre, NORML Executive Director, at (202) 483-5500.



Drugwar Lies Linked to Schizophrenia

"All propaganda must be so popular and on such an intellectual level, that even the most stupid of those towards whom it is directed will understand it. Therefore, the intellectual level of the propaganda must be lower the larger the number of people who are to be influenced by it."

"Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way around, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise."
From Benito Mussolini
contributing to the "London Sunday Express," December 8, 1935

Pot And Psychosis: Possible Link? By Kathleen Doheny 
CN Source: WebMD July 26, 2007



Propaganda entry
DWR: Friday, July 27, 2007
Oh, this one is a gem -- it comes from Fiona Macrae and Emily Andrews in the Daily Mail (UK).

The headline:
Smoking just one cannabis joint raises danger of mental illness by 40%

The Anslinger elements are astonishing. Note the certainty of health danger, the promotion of increased criminalization, and.... YES! We have maniac marijuana killers!!!
Continued...DWR:a2377

"A California man decapitated his best friend while under the spell of the smoke."
--Newsweek - Magazine (1937)

disclaimer
CN: greenmed July 26, 2007

"The research was funded by the U.K. Department of Health. Two co-authors were invited experts on the government’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs Cannabis Review in 2005; some co-authors received research money or other fees from pharmaceutical companies, including consultation on antipsychotic medication."

Pot may hike risk of psychosis, research finds
CN: Hope July 26, 2007

Plus a poll...asking whether you believe it or not.

"You smoke a joint and you're likely to kill your brother."
--Harry J. Anslinger - 1st Drug Czar

Fox news
CN: freewillks July 26, 2007

Two of the authors of the study were invited experts on the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs Cannabis Review in 2005. Several authors reported being paid to attend drug company-sponsored meetings related to marijuana, and one received consulting fees from companies that make antipsychotic medications.



Official Questions Linking Pot with Schizophrenia By Nancy Pasternack
CN Source: Santa Cruz Sentinel December 01, 2005
Mention a causal link between pot smoke and paranoid thoughts, and you may elicit a knowing chuckle from Santa Cruz's recreational drug users. But bring up a recent flurry of studies that link marijuana use to schizophrenia, and the buzz wears off quickly. "There's a lot of bamboozling going on here," says Valerie Corral, founder of the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana. Corral has a decidedly nonrecreational approach to both the drug and the political issues surrounding it.
Continued...cannabisnews/21347

"Marijuana leads to homosexuality ... and therefore to AIDS."
--Carlton Turner - Former Reagan Drug Czar who made a fortune on urine. Mandatory drug testing of all employeesof corps. receiving government contracts...

Cannabis 'could reverse psychosis'

THE OFFICIAL STORY: DEBUNKING "GUTTER SCIENCE"
After 15 days of taking testimony and more than a year's legal deliberation, DEA Administrative Law Judge Francis L. Young formally urged the DEA to allow doctors to prescribe marijuana.

In a September 1988 judgement, he ruled: "The evidence in this record clearly shows that marijuana has been accepted as capable of relieving the distress of great numbers of very ill people, and doing so with safety under medical supervision

. . . It would be unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious for the DEA to continue to stand between those sufferers and the benefits of this substance in light of the evidence in this record. In strict medical terms, marijuana is far safer than many foods we commonly consume marijuana in its natural form is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man."



Dr. Heath/Tulane Study, 1974
The Hype: Brain Damage and Dead Monkeys

In 1974, California Governor Ronald Reagan was asked about decriminalizing marijuana. After producing the Heath/Tulane University study, the so-called "Great Communicator" proclaimed, "The most reliable scientific sources say permanent brain damage is one of the inevitable results of the use of marijuana." (L.A. Times)

The Facts: Suffocation of Research Animals

As reported in Playboy, the Heath "Voodoo" Research methodology involved strapping Rhesus monkeys into a chair and pumping them with equivalent of 63 Colombian strength joints in "five minutes, through gas masks," losing no smoke.

Now, in 1999, 17 years have passed and not a single word of Dr. Heath's or Dr. Nahas' research has been verified! But their studies are still hauled out by the Partnership for a Drug Free America, the Drug Enforcement Administration, city and state narcotics bureaus, plus politicians and, in virtually all public instances, held up as scientific proof of the dangers of marijuana.



The Ganjawar Fraud...

March 20, 1997, Sydney, Australia
"The health of long-term marijuana users is virtually no different than that of the general population, according to the latest findings by the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre in Australia.

The study, which involved interviews with 268 marijuana smokers and 31 non-using partners and family members, is one of the first ever conducted in Australia to determine the effects of long-term marijuana use.

Its findings were reported by the Sydney Morning Herald last month. "We don't see evidence of high psychological disturbance among the [long- term users,]" said chief investigator David Reilly. "The results seem unremarkable; the exceptional thing is that the respondents are unexceptional."

Psychosis, Hype And Baloney

"Today's marijuana is also twice as strong as it was in the mid 80's."
--John Walters - Current US Drug Czar (Bush II)

"Reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men. ...the primary reason to outlaw marijuana is its effect on the degenerate races. Marihuana leads to pacifism and communist brainwashing"
--Harry J. Anslinger - America's 1st Drug Czar (FDR - JFK)

Some Studies the Feds Don't Talk About

Schaeffer: A Neuropsychological Evaluation; A Case History
"...I.Q.'s of Zion Coptics increased after they began to use ganga"

The Coptic Study (1981)
"No Harm to Human Brain or Intelligence"

Continued...MJ & MENTAL HEALTH Resources


FLUOXETINE - ORAL (flew-OX-eh-teen)
COMMON BRAND NAME(S): Prozac, Sarafem
Symptoms of an allergic reaction include: rash, itching, swelling, dizziness, trouble breathing. If you notice other effects not listed above, contact your doctor or pharmacist.



A century of lies condemn U.S. citizens to 100 million man-years in prison.   Autocrats forbid religious sacrament and prohibit  a miraculous medicine. Corporate greed robs the planet and threatens the masses, until... Patriots rally millions of believers!

Study: No Marijuana Link To Schizophrenia

Are People with Schizophrenia Drawn to Smoking Pot

Marijuana-Like Drugs Could Treat Schizophrenia, Study Suggests
May 20, 1999 - Irvine, CA, USA

Researchers at the University of California, Irvine, speculated that the body may be producing higher amounts of the chemical, called anandamide, to fight the disease, "Our findings of high levels of anandamide in these patients does indicate that [it] plays an important role in the development of the disease," Daniele Piomelli, an associate professor of pharmacology at UCI, said. He noted that "many schizophrenics smoke marijuana and claim it eases some of their symptoms.



A single joint of cannabis raises the risk of schizophrenia by more than 40 per cent, a disturbing study warns. The Government-commissioned report has also found that taking the drug regularly more than doubles the risk of serious mental illness. Overall, cannabis could be to blame for one in seven cases of schizophrenia and other life-shattering mental illness, the Lancet reports. The grim statistics - the latest to link teenage cannabis use with mental illness in later life - come only days after Gordon Brown ordered a review of the decision to downgrade cannabis to class C, the least serious category. The Prime Minister is said to have a 'personal instinct' that the change should be reversed, with more arrests and stiffer penalties for users. Cannabis has been implicated in a string of vicious killings, including the recent stabbing of fashion designer Lucy Braham.
FIONA MACRAE and EMILY ANDREWS



Poppycock! Reefer Mad idiot Profiteers!

Your Drug War Lies are Killing People! by DdC
Cannabis has never killed by overdose as Booze and Pharmaceuticals have... in the thousands of years of use... in hundreds of countries not one life! Mentally ill aren't stupid. They know Ganja makes them feel better so more Schiz' use it instead of what the liars push for profit. Shame on such old rehashed Gutter Science and Yellow Journalism!

In conclusion ...

Feds Value Ideology Over Compassion By Bob Cuddy
CN Source: Tribune July 29, 2007 California Posted by Staff on at 09:26:31 PT
 
Cancer-stricken folks on the Central Coast have been saved from the perils of the evil weed marijuana, thanks to the single-minded battle against the pernicious plant by our ever-vigilant federal government.

Of course, those who were using the herb said they needed it to reduce pain and other symptoms from cancer, glaucoma and other ailments.
Continued...cannabisnews/23219

Deputies Employ New Tactic To Weed Out Growers By Jennifer Squires
CN Source: Santa Cruz Sentinel July 29, 2007 Santa Cruz, CA  

A Happy Valley man claiming to be a self-employed landscaper has actually been dealing thousands of dollars worth of pot, sheriff's narcotics deputies suspect, and investigators are trying to use money laundering charges to pin down their case.

The deputies' tactics, which involve watching the suspect to see if he's really employed as he says he is and watching how money moves in and out of his bank account, come as more marijuana growers claim they are doing nothing wrong since state law permits marijuana use for medicinal purposes.
Continued...cannabisnews/23218

Suit Over Pot's 'Benefit' Stumbles By Matthew Hirsch
CN Source: Recorder July 28, 2007 California  

An Oakland, Calif. based nonprofit can't put the federal government on trial for saying that marijuana has no medical use -- but it might get to challenge the government for blowing deadlines, a federal judge in California ruled last week.

Americans for Safe Access sued in February after two federal agencies refused to alter government-published statements saying marijuana has "no currently accepted medical use in the United States."
Continued...cannabisnews/23217

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful,,,they never stop thinking of ways to harm our country and neither do we" --G W Bush

Backers of Medical Marijuana Protest Raids
July 27, 2007

Medical Marijuana Supporters Demonstrate at City Hall
July 27, 2007

DWR: This seems to indicate that the ASA data quality act lawsuit has run into a dead end. I need to read more, though to see if that's true.

A.S.A. Sues D.E.A.th Jul 12 2007

Americans For Safe Access

“At stake in this debate is who should be deciding what is best for patients. Should it be the patients themselves, the doctors, or should it be arbitrarily somebody in the federal government?”
--Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-NY)
Hinchey-Rohrabacher-Farr-Paul medical marijuana amendment



Support Patients in Alabama by Supporting HB 206

Los Angeles City Council Votes to End Federal DEA Medical Marijuana Raids Meanwhile, DEA intensifies effort with raids today on at least 6 dispensaries in the city
Read More »safeaccessnow/4877

California Legal Tip of the Month
Monthly legal tips to help inform California patients and providers of their legal rights.

D.E.A.th Raids in LA

Don't Get Too High on Pot Ruling
NOW Magazine, 26 Jul 2007

Internal audit reveals feds banking on legal limbo to obstruct medpot reforms. 

CannabisLink.ca

* CN ON: Editorial: It's The Great Marijuana Debate, The Daily Press, (28 Jul 2007)
* CN SN: Regina Police Mum On Herb, Regina Leader-Post, (28 Jul 2007)
* CN BC: LTE: Vancouver Has To Clean Up Before The Olympics, Vancouver Sun, (28 Jul 2007)
* CN AB: Opium Poppy Plants Seized, Calgary Herald, (27 Jul 2007)
* CN ON: LTE: Marijuana Hazards, Ottawa Citizen, (28 Jul 2007)
* CN MB: Candidates Challenged to Take Drug Test, Winnipeg Free Press, (26 Jul 2007)
* CN ON: Editorial: Inspectors Needed Now, Ottawa Sun, (27 Jul 2007)
* CN ON: Column: The Scary Science of Marijuana, Ottawa Citizen, (26 Jul 2007)

MEDICAL INFORMATION SITES



“A vote yes on Hinchey-Rohrabacher is a vote to respect the intent of our founding fathers, and respect the rights of people at the state level to make the criminal law under which they and their families will live. It reinforces rules surrounding the patient-doctor relationship and it is in contrast to emotional posturing and federal power grabs and bureaucratic arrogance, which is really at the heart of the opposition.”
--Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA)
Hinchey-Rohrabacher-Farr-Paul medical marijuana amendment

Drug Sense Weekly -- get your round-up of the news.
DWR: Saturday, July 28, 2007

Drug Warriors are the real threat to Americans

Our government has created a black market in which a common weed, cannabis, is worth more than its weight in gold. This artificially created, incredibly lucrative market is responsible for the violence and death associated with much of the drug dealing around the world.

The problems associated with marijuana didn't exist prior to the 1930s, when our government made the plant illegal. To solve this problem of its own fabrication, our government created an army of paramilitary drug warriors, armed them with military weapons and equipment, and unleashed them on us.

If drug czar Walters is looking for "armed, dangerous, violent criminal terrorists," he need look no further than the drug warriors that he and others of his ilk have created. It's time to address the real terrorist threat, and demand that our government end this war against its own people.

The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937
The history of how the Marihuana Tax Act came to be the law of the land.



"It's those Jewish Bastards Out for Legalizing!"
--Richard M. Nixon

35th Year Since the 1972 Nixon Commission Report Advising Decriminalization of Marijuana.

70 Years of Reefer Madness 1937 - 2007

This has already made the rounds pretty quickly. It's hard to get more outrageous.

Tampa's Mark O'Hara was released from prison this week. He was serving a 25-year sentence for possession of 58 Vicodin tablets. Prosecutors acknowledge he wasn't selling the drug. They acknowledge that he had a prescription for it.[...]

This is simply stunning. The man was sentenced to 25 years for possessing 58 pills for which he had a legal prescription.

Prosecutors then argued--and the trial court agreed--that the jury was not allowed to consider the fact that O'Hara had a prescription because Florida statutes governing painkillers don't allow for a "prescription defense,"[...]

O'Hara is free after an appellate court rightly deemed the trial "absurd" and tossed out the verdict. Prosecutors are apparently still considering what to do next.



“I had a dear friend named James Mitchell, Jr. He was a navy seal, he fought in Vietnam. He got pancreatic cancer. He lived in Bethesda, Maryland. A 210 pound strapping man that you would want on your side in a fight and I’ve had on my side in a fight, this country had on its side in a fight, the Vietnam War. And when he had pancreatic cancer he smoked marijuana. And his 88 year old Irish catholic mother said to me ‘thank god for the marijuana, it’s the only thing that makes him smile or eat’ - and I watched that man go down to 115 pounds and die... I ask you to pass this [amendment] and allow states to have rights and people to have some relief in their dying days.”
--Congressman Steve Cohen (D-TN)
Hinchey-Rohrabacher-Farr-Paul medical marijuana amendment

Sam Stone: Collateral Damage

Drug War Chronicle - Issue #495 - 7/27/07

* Feature: Minor Gains in Bid to Get Congress to Block Federal Raids on Medical Marijuana Patients, Providers
* Feature: DEA Raids Ten Los Angeles Dispensaries Same Day City Council Asks It To Butt Out
* Analysis: Who Voted for Medical Marijuana This Time? Breakdown by Vote, Party, and Changes from '06
* Memorial: San Francisco Drug War Activist Virginia Resner
* First Amendment: Freaked Out Feds Indict Pair for Posting Flyers Naming Snitch
* Weekly: Blogging @ the Speakeasy
* Law Enforcement: This Week's Corrupt Cops Stories
* Criminal Justice: Green Party Leaders Call For Radical Reforms
* Europe: British Cabinet Full of Former Marijuana Users
* Southeast Asia: Singapore Gives Treatment Option to Marijuana, Cocaine Users
* Australia: National Green Party Abandons Drug Legalization Position
* Europe: Dutch Police Grumble About Home Grows
* Weekly: This Week in History

Ilya Somin at Volokh has an interesting post on Fred Thompson's endorsement of reducing the federal government's role in certain areas of law enforcement, noting the gaping hole:

However, there is a major elephant in this federalism room that Thompson doesn't mention. He is right to note the massive growth in the federal prison population over the last 20 years, but fails to point out that most of that growth is due to the War on Drugs.



Fred Thompson: Champion of Stoners and Crackheads
by John Campanelli Thu Jul 26, 2007

Fred Dalton Thompson worked as a lawyer who argued against the government's authority to regulate drug paraphernalia or to search a boat packed with 14 tons of marijuana.

In August 1981, Thompson, on First Amendment grounds, urged the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down an Illinois village's ordinance designed to protect children from marijuana by requiring merchants to get a license to sell drug paraphernalia or pro-marijuana literature.

In his appeal, he derided a U.S. Customs officer as "inexperienced" and tried to challenge that officer's right to search a boat on which 28,000 pounds of marijuana was found.

Fred Thompson believes the government has no right to search a boat packed with 14 tons of marijuana headed for the streets America and to your neighborhood.

And Fred Thompson thinks it should be legal to sell bongs and crackpipes to your children.

--Daily Kos Comments

Officially, Thompson and his aides declined to answer questions about his legal work on the grounds that he is not a declared candidate. Privately, his advisers said they are acutely aware that GOP opponents could try to paint Thompson as too liberal, based on his legal work, his support from the trial lawyers' lobby and his votes on liability legislation that conflicted with those of most Republicans.

Thomson has been a lifelong foreign-domestic lobbyist with a trophy wife who is 4 years younger than his own daughter! Thats all!! Thomson is also well known for being a very lazy person.. Bush version 2.0! By the way, why John Solomon did not cover the following?

* Thomson's work as a foreign and domestic lobbyist
* How Thompson was vigorously lobbying for legislation to deregulate the Savings and Loan industry in 80's. The deregulation that ensued gave the thrifts the freedom to invest in risky  speculations and gamble away the savings of U.S. consumers.
* How Thompson Spied For Nixon During Watergate Hearings.
* How he has been a Tobacco Shill



What happens to your mind when you smoke some bad reporting

Of course, we all know that the bizarre propaganda item I posted yesterday (Smoking just one cannabis joint raises danger of mental illness by 40%) is inflammatory nonsense.

There wasn't an ounce of legitimate reporting in that story, and just about every media source that has picked it up has been infected by junk reporting as well (even though many of them, later on in the piece, indicate that there is no real evidence of any causation at all).

"The researchers said they couldn't prove that marijuana use itself increases the risk of psychosis, a category of several disorders with schizophrenia being the most commonly known.

There could be something else about marijuana users, "like their tendency to use other drugs or certain personality traits, that could be causing the psychoses," Zammit said."

Daksya gave it to us straight in comments:

To clarify: 1. This isn't an original study. It's a review or more precisely, a meta-analysis of existing studies. Regarding psychosis, 7 longitudinal observational studies are pooled to generate the odds ratio of 1.41 i.e. the 40% increase in risk.
Continued...

Of course, that's too much actual science for most reporting, and it doesn't provide anything flashy and scary, so they go with nonsense.

And naturally, there are idiots out there who want to believe it.

Here's one that I found who was particularly amusing at Blogs 4 Brownback. This guy lays out the stuff from the Daily Mail as gospel with his added comments...
Continued...DWR/28



Update: Mark Kleiman responds to the hysteria nicely:

If cannabis caused schizophrenia, we ought to see rates of schizophrenia correlated with rates of cannabis use, both across countries and over time. [...]

So far, there is exactly zero cross-section or cohort evidence showing a link between cannabis and schizophrenia.[...]

But the null hypothesis doesn't make headlines, so I doubt we'll hear much about cohort effects in the press.

Four years
DWR: Friday, July 27, 2007

Today Drug WarRant turns four years old.

Congress Votes Against Patients
drugpolicynews July 26, 2007

Last night, the U.S. House of Representatives again thumbed its nose at compassion and common sense by rejecting the Hinchey-Rohrabacher-Farr-Paul amendment, which would have prohibited the federal government from undermining state medical marijuana laws. If enacted it would have put a stop to the federal raids on patients and caregivers in California and other states.

If enacted it would have put a stop to the federal raids on patients and caregivers in California and other states. The final vote was 165 for / 262 against. This is 2 more "yes" votes than a similar amendment received last year and a sign that support for medical marijuana is slowly growing in Congress. 150 Democrats (65% of voting Democrats) and 15 Republicans (8% of voting Republicans) voted for the amendment.
Continued...drugpolicy/patients

Please take a few minutes today to thank or spank your Representative for how he or she voted on this important amendment. Sending a message in your own words or making a phone call will have the strongest possible impact:

1) Find out how your Representative voted. If you're not sure who your Representative is, find out by entering your zip code at the top of the page.

2) Use this directory to go to your Representative's website where you can find information on writing, e-mailing, or calling your Representative.

If your Representative voted for the Hinchey-Rohrabacher-Farr-Paul medical marijuana amendment to the CJS spending bill, thank them for standing up for compassion and the will of the voters.

If your Representative voted against the amendment, express your disappointment and encourage your Representative to vote for the amendment next year. (Note: even if they voted against the amendment, it’s important to be polite when expressing your disappointment, so that they consider your views in the future).

"I’m optimistic that we will change federal marijuana laws in coming years. All we need to do is pass medical marijuana in more states, get more voters to contract their members of Congress, and continue to educate the American people on this issue."
--Bill Piper, Drug Policy Alliance
Director, Office of National Affairs
70 West 36th Street, 16th Floor
New York, NY 10018


EvolveFISH

"The greatest enemy of the truth is very often not the lie-- delierate, contrived, and dishonest, but the myth persistent, peruasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."
--John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963)

Is the Nation's Marijuana Policy Misguided? By Russell Goldman
CN Source: ABC News August 01, 2007 USA

Since the Marijuana Tax Act - the first anti-marijuana federal law - was signed by President Roosevelt 70 years ago Thursday, the debate over the drug's effects, dangers and criminalization has raged unabated.

The Bush administration has made marijuana its prime target in the war on drugs, spending billions of dollars on education campaigns and law enforcement activities. Critics, however, contend that the war on pot has allowed for the proliferation of other more dangerous drugs like methamphetamine and crack cocaine.
Continued...cannabisnews/23227

Reefer Inanity: Never Trust the Media on Pot By Maia Szalavitz
CN Source: Huffington Post July 30, 2007 USA  

Watching the media cover marijuana is fascinating, offering deep insight into conventional wisdom, bias and failure to properly place science in context. The coverage of a new study claiming that marijuana increases the risk of later psychotic illnesses like schizophrenia by 40% displays many of these flaws.

What are the key questions reporters writing about such a study needs to ask? First, can the research prove causality? Most of the reporting here, to its credit, establishes at some point that it cannot,though you have to read pretty far down in some of it to understand this.
Continued...cannabisnews/23220

How The Canadian Media Import Counterfeit News From The States.
The Drug Czar Lies and Even The Best Papers Don’t Check the Facts.
Posted by Richard Cowan on 2005-03-17 16:20:00
“But it is time to acknowledge that the nation's news organizations have played a large and unappetizing role in deceiving the public….”— The New York Times

Front Page Fantasy: The New York Times Pushes Fact Free Journalism
Supposedly About “BC Bud”
Posted by Richard Cowan on 2005-03-17 16:20:00
This article was cited in the Canadian Parliament as proof that Canada cannot even decriminalize cannabis because of US opposition, “causing costly cross-border delays.” Lies have consequences, which is why people lie.

Bad research makes headlines

Anti-pot propaganda 14 Mar, 2005
US feds are addicted to making up fake anti-pot news.



Insanity is doing the same old thing over and over again and expecting a different result...
--Bill Clinton

Media Marijuana Mania Part Duh By Maia Szalavitz
CN Source: Huffington Post July 31, 2007 USA
 
Ok, this is getting really tiresome. Earlier this week, I debunked media coverage that claimed that marijuana increases risk of schizophrenia by 40% -- but none of the media bothered to mention that despite massive increases in marijuana use, schizophrenia rates have not increased.

Comes now a new study claiming that one joint is as bad for your lungs as five cigarettes. Comes now another flood of "reporting " that fails, once again, to raise and answer the question readers are most likely to consider when they read the story.
Continued...cannabisnews/23225

Filthy Rotten System Jul 20 2007

No cancer or bronchial problems with using Ganja. The female flower tops of the Ganja plant. And very few in America smoke pure tobacco, they smoke cigarettes. A totally different subject with totally different problems. Organic Tobacco has been used by Native Americans, Egyptians and Turkish for hundreds of years without any cancer or lung problems.

Only when the Chemical Ag Biz started spraying the crops in the 30's and the ad agency push with Ronnie Rayguns. Adding flavors and fregrance and hundreds of unatural ingredients did we even start seeing cancer associated with cigarettes. Still not with smoking tobacco, only with the adulterated products. Can't tax nature. Flame retardants, preservatives and burn enhancers lit and sucked into the lungs seems to be a likely problem.

These poisons are not added to organic tobacco products or Ganja, so the comparison is false. Not added to many discussions scapegoating the tobacco farmers either. Leaving the multi-national petrochem corporations off the hook. The left is silent building a new prohibition to cash in on as Nixon rekindled from Anslinger in the war on some other "bad" plants.

Then you have the expectorant factor with Ganja, so even if you smoke American cigarettes with the chemicals. It will be coughed up before it can settle and cause damage. ... DdC

ALL CLEAR: An interview with Dr. Donald Tashkin 2006-08-17
In this exclusive HIGH TIMES interview, Dr. Donald Tashkin, the UCLA lung specialist behind one of the most comprehensive cannabis/lung cancer studies in history, explains how his research has failed to link marijuana use to lung cancer.

No Link Between Marijuana Use and Lung Cancer

Lung Cleaner & Expectorant

Cannabis is the best natural expectorant to clear the human lungs of smog, dust,
and the phlegm associated with tobacco use.

Marijuana smoke effectively dilates the airways of the lungs, the bronchi, opening them to allow more oxygen into the lungs.

It is also the best natural dilator of the tiny airways of the lungs, the bronchial tubes—making cannabis the best overall bronchial dilator for 80% of the population.
(the remaining 20% sometimes show minor negative reactions)


ACTUAL PARTNERSHIP
FOR A DRUG FREE AMERICA POSTER CIRCA 1974

More bad reporting (excerpted)
DWR: Monday, July 30, 2007

It really is pathetic the way the drug czar is forced to look for damaged goods in the press to get excited about in its "blog."

Buried near the end, they do finally look at another perspective

Professor Tim Kirkham, a psychologist at Liverpool University, argued: "Cannabis has been used safely for many thousands of years," and says there have been "concerted efforts to demonise the drug's use." Dr Trevor Turner, former vice president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, says: "I don't think it causes mental illness. I have never seen a case of so-called cannabis psychosis."

Dame Ruth Runciman, the chair of UK Drug Policy Centre who set in motion the downgrading of cannabis, disputes that the drug of today is any different to the weed that Ms Smith would have toked back in early 1980s.

"How do you know it's stronger?" she said, adding: "There is indubitably some skunk that is stronger about the place, but the evidence has been hugely exaggerated and does not support such an alarmist view... Cannabis as Class C is exactly where it should be."

Of course, the drug czar isn't interested in that part of the story. Nor are the reporters interested in any kind of factual balance. They're looking for the reefer madness -- it sells papers. So they lead with the bad reporting.



Getting Busted for Pot Can Cost Your Right to Vote By Silja J.A. Talvi
CN Source: AlterNet July 31, 2007 USA  

Once you've been arrested for the harsh anti-marijuana laws on the books, you can be denied everything from food stamps to voting rights to the right to adopt a child.

When a person is sent to prison for the first time on a drug-related felony charge, there is little chance that he or she will be told about the "collateral consequences" of their sentence
Continued...cannabisnews/23221

DEA implements US police state

The 3-Minute Interview with Michael Goldstein By Adam Martin   
CN Source: San Francisco Examiner July 31, 2007 San Francisco

Last week, Michael Goldstein, a 53-year-old progressive activist, was elected as one of two co-chairs to steer the newly formed Marijuana Offenses Oversight Committee.

The committee was formed as part of a law that officially made marijuana infractions the lowest priority of law enforcement in San Francisco. Goldstein, former president of the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, said he became interested in San Francisco politics back in the late 1970s.
Continued...cannabisnews/23224

Drug War Police Tactics Endanger Innocent Citizens

Santa Cruz Lowest Priority Initiative

Santa Cruz Low LEO Initiative Headed to Ballot!

Santa Cruz Marijuana Measure Could Face Challenges?
Barisone Challenges New Marijuana Law
Santa Barbarian's Wiley Hyena

Virtues' of Ganja


saferchoice

Medipot Harassment Lets Illicit Use Thrive By Thomas Elias   
CN Source: Auburn Journal July 31, 2007 California

There's something almost idiotic about the obviously confused and misguided way in which federal authorities are trying to enforce anti-marijuana laws in California today.

Nothing better illustrates this than the headlines that appeared together in newspapers this spring and summer about numerous pot raids in middle-class neighborhoods across the state and those about the second trial of medical marijuana activist Ed Rosenthal of Oakland, an author sometimes known as the "guru of ganja."
Continued...cannabisnews/23223

Marijuana Laws Have To Change By Gerald Ensley   
CN Source: Tallahassee Democrat July 31, 2007 USA

The insanity continues. Last week, law-enforcement officials busted two local marijuana-growing operations. They arrested two men growing more than 80 plants in the Apalachicola National Forest and one man growing more than 730 in Gadsden County.

The cops were just doing their job, enforcing the law. But that's the problem: We continue to ban marijuana even as people continue to smoke it.
Continued...cannabisnews/23222



Why Don't More Republicans Oppose The DEA's Raids? By Jacob Sullum
CN Source: Town Hall.com July 31, 2007 Washington, DC

Last week, the Los Angeles City Council voted for a measure that asked the federal government to stop harassing medical marijuana users in California. Minutes later, the Drug Enforcement Administration raided 10 medical marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles County.

The disrespect for local judgments on local matters could not have been starker. Determined to maintain anti-drug orthodoxy, the DEA is running wild in the laboratories of democracy, smashing experiments in reform and injuring innocent bystanders.
Continued...cannabisnews/23226

Conservatives Argument for Legalization


Junior Johnson quickly became famous for his hardcharging, daring, aggressive style, applying what he had learned on the backroads of Wilkes County North Carolina running whiskey. Johnson was known for his power slide technique, in which he would keep on the gas through the turns and turn the wheel hard, sliding without ever slowing down. It worked for him running moonshine, and it worked for him on the race track. Johnson was out of racing in 1956 and 1957 due to his prison sentence

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

I have often said that the leadership in the African American community need to speak up more against the drug war. Well, here's the Reverend Jesse Jackson.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson speaks out in Pleas on Larry King for Lohan, But What About Other Drug Offenders?

Radley Balko has an update on the death of innocent Issac Singletary at the hands of cops for protecting his own property.

Bill Conroy has coverage and questions about corruption and the disappearance of federal funds in the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) program.

And now for something completely different: DEAsy Pickings. Operation Low-Hanging Fruit, indeed.

If you're looking for more news, check out The Speakeasy -- They've got a number of good posts there.



Direct Action

Phillip Smith is also doing some navel-gazing today in his post: Taking it to the Drug Warriors -- Is it Time for Direct Action?

You know, a guy gets tired fighting for decades for the right to do something which should be our right anyway. Yeah, I know the litany: We've got to play the game...if you don't like the law, change it...the political process is slow...we can't be impatient...we have to educate politicians and cultivate law enforcement....blah blah blah.

Well, in the face of the no-progress Hinchey-Rohrabacher vote and the continuing defiance of the will of California voters by the DEA, not to mention all the other drug war horrors, I'm prepared to once again make inciteful (if not insightful) calls for direct action against these downpressors.
Continued...dwr/salon/a2381

Sick and Tired of Begging...

Providing people with the tools to be self-advocates

Regular readers of Drug WarRant probably assume that the main blog page is the most visited. It's not.

I've recently started tracking site information with Google analytics and some of it is quite interesting. In the past month, the top four visited pages on this site were:

* 51.67% -- Why is Marijuana Illegal?

* 31.40% -- Drug WarRant

* 2.86% -- Drug War Victims

* 1.39% -- Bong Hits 4 Jesus

Help Prevent the BC3 From Extradition With Just One Phone Call!
There is a way you can help us with just a phone call! Call the Justice Minister of Canada, Robert Nicholson, and leave a message saying he should not committ Marc Emery, Michelle Rainey, or Greg Williams to extradition! (613) 957-4222 ...
We urgently need people worldwide to voice their opposition! full story:cc/5039

No Extradition for the BC3!


Marc Emery, Michelle Rainey, and Greg Williams are Canadian citizens who were heavily involved in anti-prohibition activitism for over ten years. The United States Justice Department and DEA want Canada's government to extradite these three political activists to face 10 years up to life in US prison! The extradition hearing has been scheduled to begin on November 5th, 2007.


bcmarijuanaparty


pot.tv

More Shoddy Reefer Madness Reporting
DWR: Wednesday, August 1, 2007

Steve at Transform takes on the recent rash of media madness with More shoddy reefer madness reporting of cannabis risks

When you are in the midst of a fully fledged media cannabis panic, as we currently seem to be, you can be quite sure that any new research on the drug:

* will be pounced upon by lazy journalists
* will be trawled for any vaguely shocking sounding statistics (by non-scientists and non-statisticians)
* will have these statistics spun into sexy 'shock' headlines
* will have any negative findings, statistical ambiguity, commentary on confounding factors/ context / significance etc conveniently glossed over
* will see politicians responding to the media coverage of the research rather than the research itself *insert daft quote from David Davis*



Radley Balko: FBI to Congress: Murder, Wrongful Imprisonment May Be Necessary to Preserve Drug Investigations

Assistant Director of the FBI Directorate of Intelligence Wayne Murphy in testimony before Congress....

The context: Lundgren and Delahunt have cited incidents in the past in which the FBI has covered up evidence that its confidential drug informants have committed violent crimes (including murder) in order to protect their identities, so that they could continue providing the bureau with information. They've cited other incidents, including the case above, in which the FBI has hidden exculpatory evidence, and allowed innocent people to go to prison. Lundgren and Delahunt want Murphy to assure them that the FBI has instituted policies to ensure that these sorts of incidents won't happen again--that murderers won't be protected and innocent people sent to prison in order to preserve drug investigations.

Remarkably, Murphy refuses to make such assurances.

This kind of attitude on the part of public servants is the reason why the Stop Snitchin movement is gaining steam.

In the context of the latest medical marijuana raids in California, Jacob Sullum explores the positions of the Presidential candidates in this area and finds the Republican field, for the most part, lacking: Spliff Split.

He has an interesting conclusion:

These partisan tendencies do not mean Democrats have greater respect for the division of powers between the federal government and the states. When it suits them, they're happy to support federal involvement in policy areas the Constitution leaves to the states. It's just that Democrats are, by and large, more comfortable with the therapeutic use of cannabis than Republicans are.

It's hard to find a logical explanation for this split. Republicans, conservatives especially, are traditionally critical of overly cautious regulators who prevent people from using drugs that could relieve their suffering safely and effectively. They have a record of supporting the freedom to use herbal home remedies without unreasonable bureaucratic interference.

The prevailing Republican stance on medical marijuana, which is at odds with what most Americans tell pollsters they think about the issue, can be understood only in light of the connotations that cannabis acquired as a result of its accidental association with the 1960s counterculture. In fighting a symbol of their opponents' principles, conservatives have sacrificed their own.



Commercial locksmith?
DWR: Tuesday, July 31, 2007

So the feds had another massive raid yesterday serving a warrant...

Federal law enforcement agents raided [...] home in Girdwood on Monday, hauling off undisclosed items from inside and taking extensive pictures and video. [...]

Neighbors said agents showed up between 11 a.m. and noon and that a commercial locksmith was called to open the front door.

Locksmith? When did they start using locksmiths? Feds know what a locksmith is? And that a locksmith isn't a battering ram? Where's the tank knocking down the door? Where's the 4 a.m. surprise raid with flash-bombs and shooting the dog?

Oh, I see -- this is simply a corrupt U.S. senator who is suspected of violating his oath to the Constitution, committing high crimes and misdemeanors, and stealing millions of dollars from taxpayers, not some dangerous pot smoker.

Report incidents of drug war propaganda



Authorities Seize Assets of Medical Marijuana Club

The Los Angeles Police Department and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency seized the assets of a Berkeley marijuana club Tuesday, following a raid of its sister club in Los Angeles. The Berkeley Patients Group, one of three medical marijuana clubs in Berkeley, serves about 3,000 people in the East Bay. Medical marijuana is against federal law but California, under Proposition 215, allows dispensaries to operate.

Berkeley Patients Group
The Berkeley Patients Group (BPG) is dedicated to providing safe and affordable access to medical cannabis (marijuana) for patients who are recovering from or living with AIDS, cancer, multiple sclerosis, chronic pain, and other serious illnesses.