Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Where Links Lead Us
I sent myself away from my own blog! I was checking some links from my last copy and paste article and got steered to some really good videos, a great piece on The Blues Brothers and a very important blog, aptly named The Very Important Blog. I got lost reading this blog. It seemed so...I don't know...important.
A friend once suggested that it was a very bad thing to put links on your website (blog). He claimed that people would click and go away. Obviously, this is true in part, I just did it to myself. But, I came back. I copy links to sites, photos and vids to a text document. It's kinda' like a diary of where I was and what I saw. If I found interest in a site I'd go back.
With this blog I have no qualms of people clicking away and getting lost elsewhere. If they started their cyber journey on my blog, cool. Maybe that's where they often start their journey. That's cooler. We all gotta' start somewhere. Very little of what you see here is original. It'd be a cyber sin to pretend otherwise. I surf about and share. It's not like I am selling something and want you to stay and shop.
My goal is to share what I find interesting out there. I am a sieve. A filter. If I were writing a resume I might say "researcher". So with that all off my chest, here are some links for you to go get lost in.
The Very Important Blog
Vintage Chevy Chase Video
Reefer Madnessesque FOX News Report
A Very Funny News Report
Happy surfing, my friends.....
A friend once suggested that it was a very bad thing to put links on your website (blog). He claimed that people would click and go away. Obviously, this is true in part, I just did it to myself. But, I came back. I copy links to sites, photos and vids to a text document. It's kinda' like a diary of where I was and what I saw. If I found interest in a site I'd go back.
With this blog I have no qualms of people clicking away and getting lost elsewhere. If they started their cyber journey on my blog, cool. Maybe that's where they often start their journey. That's cooler. We all gotta' start somewhere. Very little of what you see here is original. It'd be a cyber sin to pretend otherwise. I surf about and share. It's not like I am selling something and want you to stay and shop.
My goal is to share what I find interesting out there. I am a sieve. A filter. If I were writing a resume I might say "researcher". So with that all off my chest, here are some links for you to go get lost in.
The Very Important Blog
Vintage Chevy Chase Video
Reefer Madnessesque FOX News Report
A Very Funny News Report
Happy surfing, my friends.....
Famous Potheads and The Tommy Chong Song
While following links from the last article I found the Very Important Potheads website. That was interesting enough. Then I clicked on a .gif to hear the Tommy Chong Bong Song. How could I NOT share this?
Click pic for The Tommy Chong Bong Song
Click pic for The Tommy Chong Bong Song
Why Has Marijuana Remained Illegal for Over 70 Years?
Why Has Marijuana Remained Illegal for Over 70 Years?
06/23/09 | OpposingViews.com | Sean T. McAllister
Last week Breckenridge Colorado joined the growing chorus of municipalities across America seeking to create a sensible cannabis policy (one, that in principle, is similar to that of alcohol in the recognition between acceptable, responsible adult use and abuse). Even though Colorado is already one of the 13 states that have decriminalized possession amounts of cannabis, following Denver’s lead, Breckenridge voters will soon be asked to make cannabis both a lowest law enforcement priority and the ‘penalty’ for possessing it– nothing. Nada. No fine, no criminal record.
A bright and enthusiastic lawyer with a young and growing family in Breckenridge is one of the chief advocates for this initiative, and in an ongoing ‘The Law and Marijuana‘ series of essays submitted by attorneys from the NORML Legal Committee to be exclusively published by the organization, Sean McAllister opines about why he thinks cannabis prohibition has lasted over 70 years.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Marijuana remains illegal even though public attitudes are clearly changing on this topic. It is illegal even though 100 million Americans have smoked it and suffered little if any negative side effects. It is illegal even though 40% or more of Americans currently support legalization. It is illegal even though it is not physically addictive; you cannot overdose on marijuana; and the dependency rate of marijuana is lower than alcohol.
Marijuana remains illegal even though prohibition is incredibly expensive. The federal government spends at least $10 billion per year specifically on marijuana prohibition. Approximately 60,000 people are in prisons in America on marijuana violations only. If all 15-25 million Americans who smoke marijuana monthly were imprisoned, the country would spend $365 billion per year to incarcerate these people. Considering the country could reap approximately $6.2 billion per year if marijuana were taxed and regulated like alcohol, the war on marijuana easily costs somewhere in the neighborhood of $20 billion per year.
Marijuana remains illegal even though prohibition has miserably failed. After 35 years of a war on drugs largely targeting marijuana, the same number of high school students now say marijuana is easy to get and they had used it as answered those question in the affirmative in 1975. It remains illegal even though the Obama administration has declared an end to the “war on drugs,” while at the same time laughing off marijuana legalization.
Marijuana prohibition continues even though it empowers Mexican drug cartels. Approximately 60-70% of the profit of Mexican drug cartels comes from marijuana sales. If marijuana were taxed and regulated, this black market would virtually disappear, Mexican drug cartels would be much weaker, and our border would be much more secure.
Despite these facts, most politicians continue support marijuana prohibition. Commission after commission and newspaper editorial board after board may endorse marijuana legalization, but it continues to be ignored in state capitals. Grassroots activism does a great job keeping this issue in the press, but politicians continue to ignore it. Few politicians see it in their narrow interests of reelection to come out in favor of legalization of marijuana.
What follows is a brief analysis of some of the factors that continue to propagate the inertia of marijuana prohibition:
Facts don’t matter
When it comes to marijuana, statistics don’t seem to matter. Costs don’t matter. As noted above, no matter how many billions per year it costs to enforce marijuana prohibition, there seems to be no cost too high to prohibit it. Prohibitionist seem to be saying that there is no cost to high to attempt to limit marijuana use.
Overall use and teen use is lower in countries that have legalized (Amsterdam) or fully decriminalized marijuana (Portugal, Spain, Britain) than in the United States. There is no real evidence that marijuana is a gateway drug (in fact research shows that marijuana is largely a terminus drug - meaning people use nothing more than marijuana throughout their lives).
In Colorado alone, 13,000 people are arrested every year on marijuana charges. Another few hundred are in prison on marijuana charges. In total, Colorado spends around $85 million dollars per year on marijuana prohibition. If Colorado taxed and regulated marijuana, the net gain for the state coffers would be $150 million per year.
None of this seems to matter to those in favor of prohibition. Instead, the debate turns on value judgments and justifications not tried to any empirical data. While those favoring legalization should continue to insist that we deal with empirical data, facts alone will not legalize marijuana.
Prohibition is a hangover of the 60s culture war
By far the greatest impediments to living in a world where marijuana is not criminalized are the left over stereotypes and culture wars from the 1960s and 70s. Those where the decades when the counterculture made widespread marijuana use synonymous with alternative lifestyles and an implicit rejection of mainstream traditional American values.
The classic narrative of drug use in America is that while it may have started out as an innocent and idealized behavior in the 60s, the 70s and early 80s saw the “drug culture” deteriorate into a narcissistic world of selfishness and excess. The irresponsibility of some early users saddled the next several generations with the general notion that marijuana users were not good citizens and their lifestyles did not produce healthy communities and families. Simply put, prohibitionist have succeeded in branding marijuana users as irresponsible and not serious. That perception must change, even if it means more people “coming out of the closet” and showing that marijuana use can occur in conjunction with healthy, intelligent lifestyles.
Marijuana Prohibition Criminalizes Youth and Leads to Skewed Electoral Results
The classic pattern of marijuana use is that people begin experiment with marijuana near the end of high school. Experimentation steadily tappers off through their late 20s and for most people by their mid-30s, marijuana use is a rare or nonexistent experience. As people acquire more responsibility (marriage, children, mortgage), they find less room in their lives for marijuana.
This trend also explains why political change is so hard. As marijuana withers from adults’ habits, they are less likely to pursue or advocate for reform. By a person’s mid-30s, he or she has already quit using marijuana so they have no incentive to seek its legalization. This leads to the general atmosphere of marijuana reform, which is that too few people remain directly affected throughout their lifetimes so as to care about changing marijuana laws. Those that continue to “care,” perhaps care too much and are seen as radicals by the establishment. The reform movement needs to engage past users to help change marijuana laws.
Free rider problem and Selective Enforcement
For those that will continue to use marijuana throughout their lifetime (perhaps 6%-10% of users), there also is little incentive to advocate for legalization. As few as 2 in 100 people ever suffer criminal justice sanctions as a consequence of their marijuana use. Because so few stakeholders feel the effects of prohibition, those with the most at stake in legalization are not in the streets demanding change. The difference between the gay rights movement and marijuana proponents is that by advocating for marijuana rights people immediately subject themselves to criminal prosecution – something no longer possible for gay activists.
Related to the free rider problem is the low stakes involved in most marijuana arrests. With the exception of a few states in the deep south and Utah, in most places marijuana arrests result in a small fine and perhaps community service and/or drug counseling. The popular stereotype that our prisons are filled with people who only smoked marijuana cigarettes is not accurate. Small time users generally do not go to jail, but cultivators and distributors do. Therefore, the lack of serious sanctions has also deflated the potential movement against injustice because the stakes are so small. Why would a doctor or lawyer risk his or her reputation seeking to legalize marijuana when the sanctions are already so slight? Again, these free riders need to be convinced that advocating for marijuana legalization is a “gateway issue” to reforming the larger failed drug war and that they may not avoid prosecution forever.
Inability to have an honest discussion about drugs – lack of acknowledgment of responsible use
Another barrier to societal acceptance of marijuana is the inability to have an honest dialogue about the potential positive benefits of marijuana use. Universally, when drugs and marijuana are discussed in public, the frame of debate is that marijuana use is a self-destructive and unhealthy activity. There is little public acknowledgment that for millions of people occasional and responsible marijuana use has greatly enhanced their lives, such as by making a walk in nature powerfully introspective, by resulting in riotous laughter, or by making their sex lives more fulfilling. Instead, those who are usually the most outspoken about marijuana’s positive aspects tend to preach in a manner that makes marijuana use out to be an unmitigated good, refusing to acknowledge any negative consequences of abuse. The message of legalization must be that while legalization may marginally increase some irresponsible behavior, the savings from ending the war on marijuana will far outstrip any harms.
Just say no is an easy message for parents
Parents have always had a hard time discussing drug use with their children. Many parents are conflicted on this issue because a large percentage of parents once experimented with marijuana. Keeping marijuana illegal gives parents an unassailable reason why their kids should not use it: because it is illegal. The simplicity and utility of prohibition is a major reason that many parents passively support it, even if they privately don’t believe marijuana is harmful. Parents need to be shown alternative methods for keeping their children away from marijuana, such as science based drug education.
A long term minority without a constitutional right protecting them
The main Constitutional defense to marijuana prosecution is that it violates rights to privacy under the 5th and 14th Amendment. Unfortunately, other than Alaska, most experts believe that state privacy rights are not strong enough to protect marijuana use in your own home. There are no other significant constitutional guarantees that can be expected to protect marijuana users. Unlike racial minorities or gays and lesbians, it is unlikely that marijuana users can seek refuge in Constitutional clauses for their activities. With only 15-25 million regular users, about 10%-15% of all adults in America, it is unlikely that a majority of American adults will ever use marijuana on a regular basis as long as it is illegal. Without a constitutional right to protect them, it is unlikely they will be able to muster electoral majorities in the next 10-15 years to end their persecution.
Discomfort with Freedom
Despite America being the “land of the free and home of the brave,” in practice there appears to be a significant resistance and discomfort with giving people the freedom to make potentially bad choices. Regardless of how many can use marijuana safely or responsibly, if some abuse it, many will oppose legalizing it. This inherent discomfort with the actual practice of freedom is a major cultural hurdle to legalization.
The many have always paid for the poor choices of the few. Marijuana prohibition is by definition a preemptive war which seeks to criminalize all who use marijuana because a few may abuse it. While America seems to recognizing the futility of preemptive wars, there is still a strong undercurrent of support for this type of reaction.
Discomfort with Marijuana Intoxication Compared with Alcohol
There is no principled distinction between alcohol and marijuana intoxication. The Attorney General of Colorado says that people can drink alcohol in “sub-intoxicating doses,” which seems only possible for those chronic users of alcohol who are not affected by small amounts. Of course, the mild psychedelic or psychological aspects of the marijuana are different than alcohol. The paranoia resulting from marijuana use in a small number of users is among its most common psychological negative effect. While most people experience great insight and pleasure from the use of marijuana, others experience this paranoia. The general discomfort with psychedelic or spiritual experiences related to marijuana use lead many to a conclusion that it should not be widely used. Again, this is the many paying for the negative consequences of the few.
Conclusion
Marijuana legalization is gaining steam. I believe firmly that in my lifetime it will be legal for both medical and recreational purposes. What seems necessary at this point is to build a movement of tolerance for responsible marijuana users’ rights to be left alone. This tolerance will also need to acknowledge that a small minority of people may abuse their freedom if marijuana is legalized and that society will need to deal with those negative effects. Surely all the money saved on incarceration and prohibition would cover the costs of any negative effects of legalization. Rather than spending another generation toiling under a failed system, I hope we can end this failed preemptive war on marijuana soon. However, it will not end until the reform movement addresses the above concerns and transforms the debate back into a human-centered fact-based dialogue which focuses on reasonable solutions rather than ideology
06/23/09 | OpposingViews.com | Sean T. McAllister
Last week Breckenridge Colorado joined the growing chorus of municipalities across America seeking to create a sensible cannabis policy (one, that in principle, is similar to that of alcohol in the recognition between acceptable, responsible adult use and abuse). Even though Colorado is already one of the 13 states that have decriminalized possession amounts of cannabis, following Denver’s lead, Breckenridge voters will soon be asked to make cannabis both a lowest law enforcement priority and the ‘penalty’ for possessing it– nothing. Nada. No fine, no criminal record.
A bright and enthusiastic lawyer with a young and growing family in Breckenridge is one of the chief advocates for this initiative, and in an ongoing ‘The Law and Marijuana‘ series of essays submitted by attorneys from the NORML Legal Committee to be exclusively published by the organization, Sean McAllister opines about why he thinks cannabis prohibition has lasted over 70 years.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Marijuana remains illegal even though public attitudes are clearly changing on this topic. It is illegal even though 100 million Americans have smoked it and suffered little if any negative side effects. It is illegal even though 40% or more of Americans currently support legalization. It is illegal even though it is not physically addictive; you cannot overdose on marijuana; and the dependency rate of marijuana is lower than alcohol.
Marijuana remains illegal even though prohibition is incredibly expensive. The federal government spends at least $10 billion per year specifically on marijuana prohibition. Approximately 60,000 people are in prisons in America on marijuana violations only. If all 15-25 million Americans who smoke marijuana monthly were imprisoned, the country would spend $365 billion per year to incarcerate these people. Considering the country could reap approximately $6.2 billion per year if marijuana were taxed and regulated like alcohol, the war on marijuana easily costs somewhere in the neighborhood of $20 billion per year.
Marijuana remains illegal even though prohibition has miserably failed. After 35 years of a war on drugs largely targeting marijuana, the same number of high school students now say marijuana is easy to get and they had used it as answered those question in the affirmative in 1975. It remains illegal even though the Obama administration has declared an end to the “war on drugs,” while at the same time laughing off marijuana legalization.
Marijuana prohibition continues even though it empowers Mexican drug cartels. Approximately 60-70% of the profit of Mexican drug cartels comes from marijuana sales. If marijuana were taxed and regulated, this black market would virtually disappear, Mexican drug cartels would be much weaker, and our border would be much more secure.
Despite these facts, most politicians continue support marijuana prohibition. Commission after commission and newspaper editorial board after board may endorse marijuana legalization, but it continues to be ignored in state capitals. Grassroots activism does a great job keeping this issue in the press, but politicians continue to ignore it. Few politicians see it in their narrow interests of reelection to come out in favor of legalization of marijuana.
What follows is a brief analysis of some of the factors that continue to propagate the inertia of marijuana prohibition:
Facts don’t matter
When it comes to marijuana, statistics don’t seem to matter. Costs don’t matter. As noted above, no matter how many billions per year it costs to enforce marijuana prohibition, there seems to be no cost too high to prohibit it. Prohibitionist seem to be saying that there is no cost to high to attempt to limit marijuana use.
Overall use and teen use is lower in countries that have legalized (Amsterdam) or fully decriminalized marijuana (Portugal, Spain, Britain) than in the United States. There is no real evidence that marijuana is a gateway drug (in fact research shows that marijuana is largely a terminus drug - meaning people use nothing more than marijuana throughout their lives).
In Colorado alone, 13,000 people are arrested every year on marijuana charges. Another few hundred are in prison on marijuana charges. In total, Colorado spends around $85 million dollars per year on marijuana prohibition. If Colorado taxed and regulated marijuana, the net gain for the state coffers would be $150 million per year.
None of this seems to matter to those in favor of prohibition. Instead, the debate turns on value judgments and justifications not tried to any empirical data. While those favoring legalization should continue to insist that we deal with empirical data, facts alone will not legalize marijuana.
Prohibition is a hangover of the 60s culture war
By far the greatest impediments to living in a world where marijuana is not criminalized are the left over stereotypes and culture wars from the 1960s and 70s. Those where the decades when the counterculture made widespread marijuana use synonymous with alternative lifestyles and an implicit rejection of mainstream traditional American values.
The classic narrative of drug use in America is that while it may have started out as an innocent and idealized behavior in the 60s, the 70s and early 80s saw the “drug culture” deteriorate into a narcissistic world of selfishness and excess. The irresponsibility of some early users saddled the next several generations with the general notion that marijuana users were not good citizens and their lifestyles did not produce healthy communities and families. Simply put, prohibitionist have succeeded in branding marijuana users as irresponsible and not serious. That perception must change, even if it means more people “coming out of the closet” and showing that marijuana use can occur in conjunction with healthy, intelligent lifestyles.
Marijuana Prohibition Criminalizes Youth and Leads to Skewed Electoral Results
The classic pattern of marijuana use is that people begin experiment with marijuana near the end of high school. Experimentation steadily tappers off through their late 20s and for most people by their mid-30s, marijuana use is a rare or nonexistent experience. As people acquire more responsibility (marriage, children, mortgage), they find less room in their lives for marijuana.
This trend also explains why political change is so hard. As marijuana withers from adults’ habits, they are less likely to pursue or advocate for reform. By a person’s mid-30s, he or she has already quit using marijuana so they have no incentive to seek its legalization. This leads to the general atmosphere of marijuana reform, which is that too few people remain directly affected throughout their lifetimes so as to care about changing marijuana laws. Those that continue to “care,” perhaps care too much and are seen as radicals by the establishment. The reform movement needs to engage past users to help change marijuana laws.
Free rider problem and Selective Enforcement
For those that will continue to use marijuana throughout their lifetime (perhaps 6%-10% of users), there also is little incentive to advocate for legalization. As few as 2 in 100 people ever suffer criminal justice sanctions as a consequence of their marijuana use. Because so few stakeholders feel the effects of prohibition, those with the most at stake in legalization are not in the streets demanding change. The difference between the gay rights movement and marijuana proponents is that by advocating for marijuana rights people immediately subject themselves to criminal prosecution – something no longer possible for gay activists.
Related to the free rider problem is the low stakes involved in most marijuana arrests. With the exception of a few states in the deep south and Utah, in most places marijuana arrests result in a small fine and perhaps community service and/or drug counseling. The popular stereotype that our prisons are filled with people who only smoked marijuana cigarettes is not accurate. Small time users generally do not go to jail, but cultivators and distributors do. Therefore, the lack of serious sanctions has also deflated the potential movement against injustice because the stakes are so small. Why would a doctor or lawyer risk his or her reputation seeking to legalize marijuana when the sanctions are already so slight? Again, these free riders need to be convinced that advocating for marijuana legalization is a “gateway issue” to reforming the larger failed drug war and that they may not avoid prosecution forever.
Inability to have an honest discussion about drugs – lack of acknowledgment of responsible use
Another barrier to societal acceptance of marijuana is the inability to have an honest dialogue about the potential positive benefits of marijuana use. Universally, when drugs and marijuana are discussed in public, the frame of debate is that marijuana use is a self-destructive and unhealthy activity. There is little public acknowledgment that for millions of people occasional and responsible marijuana use has greatly enhanced their lives, such as by making a walk in nature powerfully introspective, by resulting in riotous laughter, or by making their sex lives more fulfilling. Instead, those who are usually the most outspoken about marijuana’s positive aspects tend to preach in a manner that makes marijuana use out to be an unmitigated good, refusing to acknowledge any negative consequences of abuse. The message of legalization must be that while legalization may marginally increase some irresponsible behavior, the savings from ending the war on marijuana will far outstrip any harms.
Just say no is an easy message for parents
Parents have always had a hard time discussing drug use with their children. Many parents are conflicted on this issue because a large percentage of parents once experimented with marijuana. Keeping marijuana illegal gives parents an unassailable reason why their kids should not use it: because it is illegal. The simplicity and utility of prohibition is a major reason that many parents passively support it, even if they privately don’t believe marijuana is harmful. Parents need to be shown alternative methods for keeping their children away from marijuana, such as science based drug education.
A long term minority without a constitutional right protecting them
The main Constitutional defense to marijuana prosecution is that it violates rights to privacy under the 5th and 14th Amendment. Unfortunately, other than Alaska, most experts believe that state privacy rights are not strong enough to protect marijuana use in your own home. There are no other significant constitutional guarantees that can be expected to protect marijuana users. Unlike racial minorities or gays and lesbians, it is unlikely that marijuana users can seek refuge in Constitutional clauses for their activities. With only 15-25 million regular users, about 10%-15% of all adults in America, it is unlikely that a majority of American adults will ever use marijuana on a regular basis as long as it is illegal. Without a constitutional right to protect them, it is unlikely they will be able to muster electoral majorities in the next 10-15 years to end their persecution.
Discomfort with Freedom
Despite America being the “land of the free and home of the brave,” in practice there appears to be a significant resistance and discomfort with giving people the freedom to make potentially bad choices. Regardless of how many can use marijuana safely or responsibly, if some abuse it, many will oppose legalizing it. This inherent discomfort with the actual practice of freedom is a major cultural hurdle to legalization.
The many have always paid for the poor choices of the few. Marijuana prohibition is by definition a preemptive war which seeks to criminalize all who use marijuana because a few may abuse it. While America seems to recognizing the futility of preemptive wars, there is still a strong undercurrent of support for this type of reaction.
Discomfort with Marijuana Intoxication Compared with Alcohol
There is no principled distinction between alcohol and marijuana intoxication. The Attorney General of Colorado says that people can drink alcohol in “sub-intoxicating doses,” which seems only possible for those chronic users of alcohol who are not affected by small amounts. Of course, the mild psychedelic or psychological aspects of the marijuana are different than alcohol. The paranoia resulting from marijuana use in a small number of users is among its most common psychological negative effect. While most people experience great insight and pleasure from the use of marijuana, others experience this paranoia. The general discomfort with psychedelic or spiritual experiences related to marijuana use lead many to a conclusion that it should not be widely used. Again, this is the many paying for the negative consequences of the few.
Conclusion
Marijuana legalization is gaining steam. I believe firmly that in my lifetime it will be legal for both medical and recreational purposes. What seems necessary at this point is to build a movement of tolerance for responsible marijuana users’ rights to be left alone. This tolerance will also need to acknowledge that a small minority of people may abuse their freedom if marijuana is legalized and that society will need to deal with those negative effects. Surely all the money saved on incarceration and prohibition would cover the costs of any negative effects of legalization. Rather than spending another generation toiling under a failed system, I hope we can end this failed preemptive war on marijuana soon. However, it will not end until the reform movement addresses the above concerns and transforms the debate back into a human-centered fact-based dialogue which focuses on reasonable solutions rather than ideology
Monday, June 8, 2009
Pot-Smoking Student Attracts World Attention
Pot-Smoking Student Attracts World Attention
Posted: 4:49 pm PDT June 5, 2009
GIG HARBOR, Wash. -- A South Sound high school student who smoked marijuana while giving a school presentation about legalizing the drug is getting words of support -- and criticism -- from around the world.The student, 17-year-old Ian Barry, is seen in a video posted on YouTube lighting up a joint and smoking it during an assembly of 150 students Tuesday at Peninsula High School. He was arrested and suspended afterward.Speaking with KIRO 7 Eyewitness News reporter Kevin McCarty, Barry said he decided to smoke long before he gave the speech."I thought about the consequences and talked to teachers, so I knew what was going to happen," he said.He spoke to KIRO 7 by phone, saying he couldn't meet in person because his license had been taken away by his parents.Thousands of bloggers have posted words of support online, and Barry's essay -- a lengthy, extensively researched history of American marijuana laws -- drew thousands of viewers Friday to KIROTV.com. The original story that McCarty first broke on KIROTV.com contains hundreds of comments, positive and negative.Barry is a hero to some fellow students, whether they agree with his politics or not."He had a lot of guts to do that, and I think it's really cool," said student Alice Rowson.Barry told McCarty that the act was about making a point, not getting attention."Whether you agree with me or not that marijuana should be legal, I hope you see and respect that I stood on principle and stood up for something I believe in," Barry said.Marc Emery will serve time on pot charge
Marijuana activist to give up extradition fight to U.S. in exchange for guilty plea
6/5/09|The Province| by Cheryl Chan, The Province
Marc Emery, Canada's most well-known pot activist, will serve time in an American prison after giving up on a four-year extradition battle on three drug-related charges.
Emery, nicknamed The Prince of Pot, said he will plead guilty to one charge of conspiracy to manufacture marijuana as part of a plea bargain with the U.S. District Attorney's Office in Washington state.
"My lawyer has been convincing me for the last four years that extradition will be the final outcome," said Emery yesterday at Cannabis Cafe, his bustling West Hastings store.
Marc Emery has reached a plea agreement with the U.S. District Attorney.
He is dropping his battle against extradition and pleads guilty to one charge of drug distribution.
Here he is interviewed with his wife Jodie at the Cannabis Cafe in Vancouver.
Emery, 51, said lawyer Ian Donaldson told him he's never seen the Canadian government refuse an American extradition request.
"He said, 'If you fight this and you're extradited, you'll face three charges -- two of which have mandatory minimums of 10 years.'"
An extradition hearing scheduled this week in B.C. Supreme Court was adjourned.
The drug charges stem from a joint U.S-Canadian investigation into Emery's Vancouver-based mail-order business, which was busted in 2005 for selling marijuana seeds to U.S. customers.
Emery was also charged with conspiracy to distribute marijuana and conspiracy to engage in money laundering, but those charges will be dropped in exchange for the guilty plea, which will be lodged at a Seattle courthouse this summer.
The U.S. is expected to push for a six- to eight-year sentence, said Emery, who plans to ask for a term of zero to five years and a transfer to a Canadian prison -- a move the Americans don't oppose, he said.
Emery's two co-accused, Michelle Rainey and Gregory Williams, pleaded guilty last month to conspiracy to manufacture marijuana and are expected to receive a two-year probationary term to be served in Canada.
According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, Emery -- who it considers to be among the world's top 50 drug traffickers -- has sold millions of cannabis seeds to the U.S., which made up 75 per cent of his customer base.
Emery, who has run unsuccessfully in municipal, provincial and federal politics over the years, said he's being made a political scapegoat, pointing out that there are over a dozen seed sellers in B.C. and over 100 in Canada who aren't wanted by U.S. authorities.
"Nobody else has been sought out for extradition or punishment . . . except me because I'm political, mouthy and arrogant about it. I'm hoping it makes Canadians upset that Americans can come by and pluck out one of their country's leading activists for political purposes."
Emery said he's resigned himself to the idea of jail.
"I'm prepared to take what comes," he said.
6/5/09|The Province| by Cheryl Chan, The Province
Marc Emery, Canada's most well-known pot activist, will serve time in an American prison after giving up on a four-year extradition battle on three drug-related charges.
Emery, nicknamed The Prince of Pot, said he will plead guilty to one charge of conspiracy to manufacture marijuana as part of a plea bargain with the U.S. District Attorney's Office in Washington state.
"My lawyer has been convincing me for the last four years that extradition will be the final outcome," said Emery yesterday at Cannabis Cafe, his bustling West Hastings store.
Marc Emery has reached a plea agreement with the U.S. District Attorney.
He is dropping his battle against extradition and pleads guilty to one charge of drug distribution.
Here he is interviewed with his wife Jodie at the Cannabis Cafe in Vancouver.
Emery, 51, said lawyer Ian Donaldson told him he's never seen the Canadian government refuse an American extradition request.
"He said, 'If you fight this and you're extradited, you'll face three charges -- two of which have mandatory minimums of 10 years.'"
An extradition hearing scheduled this week in B.C. Supreme Court was adjourned.
The drug charges stem from a joint U.S-Canadian investigation into Emery's Vancouver-based mail-order business, which was busted in 2005 for selling marijuana seeds to U.S. customers.
Emery was also charged with conspiracy to distribute marijuana and conspiracy to engage in money laundering, but those charges will be dropped in exchange for the guilty plea, which will be lodged at a Seattle courthouse this summer.
The U.S. is expected to push for a six- to eight-year sentence, said Emery, who plans to ask for a term of zero to five years and a transfer to a Canadian prison -- a move the Americans don't oppose, he said.
Emery's two co-accused, Michelle Rainey and Gregory Williams, pleaded guilty last month to conspiracy to manufacture marijuana and are expected to receive a two-year probationary term to be served in Canada.
According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, Emery -- who it considers to be among the world's top 50 drug traffickers -- has sold millions of cannabis seeds to the U.S., which made up 75 per cent of his customer base.
Emery, who has run unsuccessfully in municipal, provincial and federal politics over the years, said he's being made a political scapegoat, pointing out that there are over a dozen seed sellers in B.C. and over 100 in Canada who aren't wanted by U.S. authorities.
"Nobody else has been sought out for extradition or punishment . . . except me because I'm political, mouthy and arrogant about it. I'm hoping it makes Canadians upset that Americans can come by and pluck out one of their country's leading activists for political purposes."
Emery said he's resigned himself to the idea of jail.
"I'm prepared to take what comes," he said.
Monday, June 1, 2009
Court challenge aims to legalize all cannabis use
Advocates say previous rule a 'mockery'
Shannon Kari, National Post
Published: Monday, June 01, 2009
Medical marijuana advocates are planning a court challenge aimed at legalizing all cannabis use, in response to the latest restrictions announced by Health Canada.
The federal government announced last week that it would allow designated producers to grow marijuana for as many as two medical users, instead of a maximum of one, permitted under the old regulations.
The previous rules were ruled unconstitutional by a Federal Court of Canada judge in January, 2008, because they did not provide for a sufficient legal supply of cannabis for medical users without having to use the black market.
Health Canada appealed unsuccessfully to the Federal Court of Appeal and Supreme Court, which refused in April to hear the case.
It was the eighth time in the past decade that Health Canada has lost in court trying to uphold its medical marijuana policies and regulations, each time over restrictions on supply.
The federal government's decision to allow producers to grow for no more than two users is a "mockery" of the courts, said lawyer Ron Marzel, who was part of the successful Federal Court challenge to the previous regulations.
The most recent restrictions for medical producers that were struck down were virtually identical to ones that were found to be previously unconstitutional by the Ontario Court of Appeal. The rules "create an alliance between the government and the black market," to supply "the necessary product" wrote the appeal court in October, 2003.
One option for medical users is to go back to the Federal Court to ask it to find that the two-to-one ratio is also invalid.
However, the response from Health Canada would likely be to start another round of appeals in court, observed Mr. Marzel.
"It is time for the vicious cycle to end. It means we have to take it to the next level, to show the government it cannot thumb its nose at our courts," said Mr. Marzel.
The lawyer explained that he is organizing a court challenge this summer on behalf of a number of people in Ontario facing marijuana trafficking charges, and has asked that all charges be dismissed.
If he is successful, it would effectively mean that there is no prohibition on possessing or producing marijuana, for medical or recreational use.
"This is the only way. The courts have repeatedly given the government time to come up with a workable solution. They didn't do it. Health Canada has brought this upon itself," suggested Mr. Marzel.
For several months in Ontario in 2003 there was no valid prohibition against simple possession of marijuana, as a result of a Superior Court decision related to the flaws in the medical marijuana regulations.
Similar arguments will be made by Mr. Marzel in asking a court to strike down all prohibitions, unless Health Canada enacts regulations that allow for a legitimate supply for medical users.
Shannon Kari, National Post
Published: Monday, June 01, 2009
Medical marijuana advocates are planning a court challenge aimed at legalizing all cannabis use, in response to the latest restrictions announced by Health Canada.
The federal government announced last week that it would allow designated producers to grow marijuana for as many as two medical users, instead of a maximum of one, permitted under the old regulations.
The previous rules were ruled unconstitutional by a Federal Court of Canada judge in January, 2008, because they did not provide for a sufficient legal supply of cannabis for medical users without having to use the black market.
Health Canada appealed unsuccessfully to the Federal Court of Appeal and Supreme Court, which refused in April to hear the case.
It was the eighth time in the past decade that Health Canada has lost in court trying to uphold its medical marijuana policies and regulations, each time over restrictions on supply.
The federal government's decision to allow producers to grow for no more than two users is a "mockery" of the courts, said lawyer Ron Marzel, who was part of the successful Federal Court challenge to the previous regulations.
The most recent restrictions for medical producers that were struck down were virtually identical to ones that were found to be previously unconstitutional by the Ontario Court of Appeal. The rules "create an alliance between the government and the black market," to supply "the necessary product" wrote the appeal court in October, 2003.
One option for medical users is to go back to the Federal Court to ask it to find that the two-to-one ratio is also invalid.
However, the response from Health Canada would likely be to start another round of appeals in court, observed Mr. Marzel.
"It is time for the vicious cycle to end. It means we have to take it to the next level, to show the government it cannot thumb its nose at our courts," said Mr. Marzel.
The lawyer explained that he is organizing a court challenge this summer on behalf of a number of people in Ontario facing marijuana trafficking charges, and has asked that all charges be dismissed.
If he is successful, it would effectively mean that there is no prohibition on possessing or producing marijuana, for medical or recreational use.
"This is the only way. The courts have repeatedly given the government time to come up with a workable solution. They didn't do it. Health Canada has brought this upon itself," suggested Mr. Marzel.
For several months in Ontario in 2003 there was no valid prohibition against simple possession of marijuana, as a result of a Superior Court decision related to the flaws in the medical marijuana regulations.
Similar arguments will be made by Mr. Marzel in asking a court to strike down all prohibitions, unless Health Canada enacts regulations that allow for a legitimate supply for medical users.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
The True Adventures and Misadventures of the Black Tuna.
This is a true account of the life of America's most written about marijuana smuggler. Between the accounts of his smuggling adventures, Robert tells his life story. Life as a member of "The South St. Gang", his years as an actor, a famous pitchman, a successful entrepreneur in America and England, Bull Fighter in Spain, TV producer, smuggling pilot, big game fisherman, and the celebrities and villains he met along the way. The last section of the book deals with his twenty-nine years in federal prisons. From the infamous Super-Max at Marion Illinois to Camp Fed in Florida, he takes the reader on a tour of the federal prison system and introduces him to the convicts.
On May 1, 1979 President Jimmy Carter's Attorney General, Griffin Bell, called a press conference in the nation's capital to announce the arrest and indictment of the Black Tunas. A gang of marijuana smugglers led by Robert Platshorn and his two partners Robby Meinster and Big Gene Myers. Bell called the Tunas the "slickest, most sophisticated pot smugglers of the 70's." He told the gathered reporters that the Tunas used a fleet of aircraft, and five yachts, to smuggle over a half-million pounds of Columbian marijuana into the United States in a six month period. Later, the DEA would claim the Tunas brought in anywhere from one million to three million pounds of high-grade grass and made over three hundred million dollars.
Twenty nine years later, the official DEA website still has a picture of the gold medallion they claim Black Tuna gang members wore as "a talisman and symbol of their membership in this smuggling group." They do not mention that no trace was ever found of the fleet of aircraft, the five yachts, or any fraction of the alleged three hundred million dollars. Now, after twenty-nine years in federal prison, Robert Platshorn, better known as The Black Tuna, breaks his silence and tells the true story of Americs' longest serving marijuana prisoner. From his first toke to his last ton, Platshorn accounts for every pound, every penny, every plane and every yacht, including a few that the government never knew about.
Meet the Black Tunas. Robby, Bobby, Big Gene and Chip's Army. The pilots, Captain Rivers ex CIA, El Gigante former NFL player, Captain Beercan famous soldier of fortune, Reverend Birchinal who could fly anything with wings, and Stealing Steve. The mariners, Captains Randy, Crunch, Tico, and Elm. Their crews, Barry the Stoner, Marty, and the Outlaws.
The South Street Gang. Robby, Bobby, Cooky Baumholtz, Pretty Boy Levine, Tony Ordile, Alfred and Pedro.
The Colombians. Raul Davila, El Loco, Julio, Chino, Johnny, Roger the Dodger, Louis the Louse and the Colombian Army, Navy, and Secret Police.
The Other Important Characters. Marcy the Yenta, Redd Foxx, Frank Sinatra, Donald Trump, Baron Rothschild, Red Dillon, Sunny Franchise, Joe Louis, The Queen of England, Prince Charles, Lynn Redgrave, Sir John Drage, Sir Donald Duck (for real), Astrid the Jewitch, Baron Von Putlich, The Rolling Stones, Ahmed Boob, Archie Morris the king of the Boardwalk, Footy, Benny the Bed Shaker, the Mad Swede, Scratch, and the Colombo brothers.
Randy Responds
Let me start by saying I am not a writer. I once thought I was but realized I am just a guy who writes.
I really enjoyed reading that last article. I'll be reading more about The Black Tuna guy. I liked the other views as well, except one. I got to one paragraph and moved on to the next, thinking I should have done it sooner. Here it is:
"If healthy pilots can’t respond effectively in the cockpit 24 hours after smoking a low-grade marijuana cigarette, do we really want our kids transported to and from school by a school bus driver who smoked one or two joints the night before? How do we ensure the cop on the beat, who’s carrying a badge and gun, hasn’t smoked marijuana 24 hours before entering onto duty once the drug is legal? And what about those pilots?" - Whatshisname from previous post.
How many crashes were there from pilots who didn't smoke pot? How many from ones who had "just a bracer" of whiskey pre-flight or half a bottle the night before, "without reservations?"
How many pot related school bus accidents have you heard about in your community? How many non-pot related? And, isn't pot illegal? Then why are the police smoking up?
There. I already spent too much time on that guy. Skip him and read the rest. One thing came to mind. What I really want is to be able to grow my own plant(s). Maybe 10 to keep a constant supply. When they talk about taxation and government control, I still see a 6 month mandatory for growing even 1 plant. How else will they keep a majority of smokers from growing their own?
As far as school kids go. I don't think they drink as much until university or college. Is pot more detrimental to studies than say, Xbox or Sony? If decriminalized, perhaps more kids would be open about their pot use. Perhaps more parents could use it as a tool to increase attention at school. "If you want to toke and play Xbox AFTER school, you better get your grades up."
Maybe. That is where we stand. That is where we stand on many issues. Lots of maybees not enough let's see. I look around and see failure in many places. We complain about politicians, lawyers, the legal system and a sundry of issues that we just perpetuate with each election. Maybe we need a BIG CHANGE. Maybe we need a whole new breed.
I am not a conspiracy theorist or anything, but I do read many an espionage novel that sprs many wnat-ifs. So what if "those really in control" decided that marijuana was worth much more to them legalized than not. What if word came down that pot was good? Would all the laws change overnight? Do we have those puppet masters? If so, they are the ones pro-legalizationists need to ne going after.
end of ramble..........................
Cheers,
Randy
I really enjoyed reading that last article. I'll be reading more about The Black Tuna guy. I liked the other views as well, except one. I got to one paragraph and moved on to the next, thinking I should have done it sooner. Here it is:
"If healthy pilots can’t respond effectively in the cockpit 24 hours after smoking a low-grade marijuana cigarette, do we really want our kids transported to and from school by a school bus driver who smoked one or two joints the night before? How do we ensure the cop on the beat, who’s carrying a badge and gun, hasn’t smoked marijuana 24 hours before entering onto duty once the drug is legal? And what about those pilots?" - Whatshisname from previous post.
How many crashes were there from pilots who didn't smoke pot? How many from ones who had "just a bracer" of whiskey pre-flight or half a bottle the night before, "without reservations?"
How many pot related school bus accidents have you heard about in your community? How many non-pot related? And, isn't pot illegal? Then why are the police smoking up?
There. I already spent too much time on that guy. Skip him and read the rest. One thing came to mind. What I really want is to be able to grow my own plant(s). Maybe 10 to keep a constant supply. When they talk about taxation and government control, I still see a 6 month mandatory for growing even 1 plant. How else will they keep a majority of smokers from growing their own?
As far as school kids go. I don't think they drink as much until university or college. Is pot more detrimental to studies than say, Xbox or Sony? If decriminalized, perhaps more kids would be open about their pot use. Perhaps more parents could use it as a tool to increase attention at school. "If you want to toke and play Xbox AFTER school, you better get your grades up."
Maybe. That is where we stand. That is where we stand on many issues. Lots of maybees not enough let's see. I look around and see failure in many places. We complain about politicians, lawyers, the legal system and a sundry of issues that we just perpetuate with each election. Maybe we need a BIG CHANGE. Maybe we need a whole new breed.
I am not a conspiracy theorist or anything, but I do read many an espionage novel that sprs many wnat-ifs. So what if "those really in control" decided that marijuana was worth much more to them legalized than not. What if word came down that pot was good? Would all the laws change overnight? Do we have those puppet masters? If so, they are the ones pro-legalizationists need to ne going after.
end of ramble..........................
Cheers,
Randy
What Would Happen if Marijuana Were Decriminalized? A Freakonomics Quorum.
What Would Happen if Marijuana Were Decriminalized? A Freakonomics Quorum
5/22/09|New York Times Blogs| by Stephen J. Dubner
Two years ago we ran a quorum debating the pros and cons of decriminalizing marijuana. Since then, a largely theoretical debate has moved quite substantially toward the realm of reality, with a growing number of states and municipalities having changed their laws. The details from place to place vary greatly and are very much a patchwork; the most prominent state to make a move is Massachusetts. The California legislature, meanwhile, is wondering whether marijuana could save its economy — which, as we read just this morning, is badly in need of saving.
Although President Obama doesn’t seem interested, arguments in favor of decriminalization are popping up everywhere, from the Law Enforcement Against Prohibition platform to the senior thesis of a graduating economics major at Brown named Max Chaiken, which finds that “a legally taxed and regulated marijuana market could generate upwards of $200 billion annually in excise tax revenues for the federal government … [which] would be enough to fund Medicaid.”
So we asked a group of people — Paul Armentano, Mike Braun, Joel W. Hay, Jeffrey Miron, and Robert Platshorn — to think about a national decriminalization of marijuana (unlikely, let’s be honest) and answer the following: What would be some of the most powerful economic, social, and criminal-justice effects?
Here are their answers. As you will see, consensus on this issue is now — and will probably always remain — elusive.
------------------------------------
Joel W. Hay is professor of Pharmaceutical Economics and Policy in the School of Pharmacy at the University of Southern California.
With all of our current problems, Americans do not need more marijuana. Pot combines mind-altering and judgment-clouding qualities (like alcohol) with carcinogenic, respiratory, and second-hand smoke qualities (like tobacco); it is emphatically not a safe or benign substance. Daily pot smokers have a 30 percent increased risk of accidents, and one study found that more emergency-department trauma admissions were associated with pot use than alcohol. We don’t need hundreds of billions of dollars in new medical-care costs, traffic and other accident costs, reduced worker productivity, and lower educational achievements in an increasingly competitive global marketplace.
It is ironic that the public health community, who so vociferously decries the dangers of tobacco with reams of scientific evidence, falls strangely silent when voters in state after state are encouraged by the pot lobby to legalize marijuana specifically as a “medical therapy.” There isn’t a shred of scientific evidence that marijuana is safe and effective for any medical condition. Moreover, THC, the active ingredient of pot, has been approved by the FDA and on the market in capsule form since 1985. As a further irony, while the Obama administration has put $1.1 billion behind scientific comparative effectiveness research to demonstrate whether medical treatments actually work, his Attorney General has decided to downplay federal prosecutions in California of medical marijuana distributors and users, apparently because state voters trump science when it comes to making medical policy for mind-altering substances.
It is a fallacy that pot legalization will provide badly needed state and federal revenue through taxation of decriminalized marijuana. A California Assembly decriminalization bill is currently being promoted as a $1 billion pot-tax cure for the state’s fiscal headaches. The problem with this logic, as alcohol and tobacco clearly demonstrate, is that economic costs will increase by amounts far greater than any possible revenue gains. Tobacco taxes only cover about 20 percent of tobacco-related costs, and alcohol taxes only cover about 10 percent of alcohol-related costs. Raising taxes on either tobacco or alcohol enough to merely cover their medical costs and other detrimental effects would create flourishing black markets in these commodities. Raising marijuana taxes high enough to cover medical and other costs associated with legalized pot use will mean both more potheads and continued marijuana narco-trafficking.
The final argument against decriminalization is that it would create powerful and legal marijuana business interests who then become entrenched in the system, contributing to politicians, advertising to consumers, and pushing for even more liberal drug laws. Alcohol and tobacco are safe as long as their business interests contribute to pot legalization, and marijuana will be safe after decriminalization as long as their merchants contribute to the inevitable next round of political campaigns to legalize heroin and cocaine.
------------------------------------
Robert Platshorn (a.k.a. The Black Tuna) is a former marijuana smuggler and was the leader of one of the largest marijuana-trafficking organizations in the 1970’s.
“I’m not against all wars, I’m against dumb wars.” – Barack Obama
On May 2, 1979, a New York Times headline read “$300 Million Drug Ring Reported Cracked in Florida.” The “ring” consisted of my two partners and myself. We hadn’t made 10 percent of that, but the government had reasons for turning a couple of small fish into “The Black Tuna Gang.” Those were the early days of the DEA, and they needed to justify their mission and their budget.
So for 29 years I lived in 11 prisons, costing you millions, as America’s longest-serving non-violent prisoner of the War on Weed. When Feds kicked in my door, I’d been retired from smuggling for two years. My ice cream and food concessions employed about 50 people. My Miami auto auction, body shop, and barbershop employed another 40. Good jobs and serious tax dollars — all gone in an instant, not to mention my freedom, my wife and children, and the life savings of my parents, who paid for years of fruitless appeals.
What was accomplished? The War on Weed that started in the 1970’s discouraged pot smuggling by small timers like me, and filled the void with drug cartels far more interested in the lucrative cocaine trade. Big profits bred violence, enough to make Miami the U.S. murder capital. Today, we see that same prohibition-fueled violence along our Mexican border.
Legalizing marijuana would deprive this dangerous black market of profits and relieve a ridiculous burden on taxpayers; it would allow police to focus on serious crime instead of arresting more than 800,000 Americans every year for pot at a cost to taxpayers of at least $14 billion, according to “The Budgetary Effects of Marijuana Prohibition,” which was endorsed by Milton Friedman and more than 500 other economists. One man, Harry Anslinger, was almost singlehandedly responsible for outlawing marijuana. Admitting in private it was harmless, he wanted to create a powerful tool to control “deviant minorities.” Our for-profit prison system continues that work.
So, based on lies and distortions, we demonized a plant that’s proven effective in treating chronic pain, glaucoma, MS, arthritis, and the effects of chemotherapy, AIDS-wasting syndrome, and other chronic illnesses. Studies in at least five countries have shown marijuana to slow and often reverse the growth of cancer cells. All this from a plant less toxic than aspirin and less habit-forming than coffee or wine.
That’s why I’m working with the NORML and others on a new campaign called Geezers for Medical Weed. I have high hopes that the Obama administration will soon realize that for more than 70 years, the War on Marijuana has indeed been America’s dumbest war.
------------------------------------
Jeffrey A. Miron is the director of undergraduate studies at Harvard University’s economics department.
Marijuana legalization would mean repeal of federal and state laws that ban production, distribution, and possession. Legalized marijuana would likely be subject to the kind of regulation and taxation that currently applies to alcohol and tobacco — e.g., sin taxes and age restrictions — but it would otherwise be no different under the law than an espresso at Starbucks.
Legalizing marijuana would produce important benefits for the United States.
Legalization would allow people who use marijuana, without harm to themselves or others, to do so without fear of arrest or incarceration. This is exactly what occurs now for alcohol and tobacco.
Legalization would reduce violence. In underground markets, participants cannot resolve their disputes with lawyers, courts, or advertising, so they employ violence instead. Violence was common in the alcohol industry during alcohol prohibition, but not before or after; in gambling markets before state and federal governments legalized most forms of gambling; and in prostitution markets where prohibition forces these underground. Legalization would also reduce corruption, since producers and consumers would have no reason to bribe police, judges, and politicians.
Legalization would allow the medical community to evaluate marijuana’s medicinal effects without interference from law enforcement. Considerable evidence suggests marijuana has important medical uses, but prohibition has made controlled, double-blind studies all but impossible.
Legalization would diminish restrictions on civil liberties. Crimes like robbery or assault generate a victim who complains to the police, but neither party to a marijuana transaction wants to alert authorities. Thus police use intrusive tactics like warrantless searches or undercover buys, and the victimless nature of marijuana “crime” encourages racial profiling.
Legalization would increase respect for the law. No matter how draconian the penalties and how extensive the enforcement, many people produce and use marijuana. Thus everyone learns that laws are for suckers.
Legalization would benefit the public purse. My research indicates that legalization would save federal and state budgets approximately $13 billion in enforcement costs and allow collection of about $7 billion in tax revenues, assuming marijuana were taxed like alcohol and tobacco.
One thing legalization would not do is produce a major increase in marijuana use; existing evidence suggests prohibition has only a modest impact. Alcohol consumption declined moderately but not dramatically during alcohol prohibition, for example.
A second thing legalization would not do is eliminate the bulk of violence, crime, and corruption induced by drug prohibition, since much of that relates to cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine. To achieve the full benefits of legalization, policy must legalize all drugs.
Marijuana legalization is thus not a panacea; rather, it is a significant step in the direction of saner drug policy.
------------------------------------
Paul Armentano is deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) and co-author of the forthcoming book Marijuana Is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink?.
Last November, U.S. law enforcement made its 20 millionth marijuana arrest since 1965. Yet today, almost 90 percent of teens report that pot is “fairly easy” or “very easy” to obtain, and nearly one out of two graduating high-school seniors admit to having tried it.
Clearly it’s time to try another approach.
The enforcement of marijuana prohibition is an archaic, overly punitive, and ineffective policy that carries with it a staggering array of social and economic costs. According to the FBI, in 2007 police made a record 873,00 marijuana arrests — 9 out of 10 of them for pot possession, not trafficking, cultivation, or sale. A disproportionate number of those arrested were African Americans and Hispanic males. Some 75 percent of those arrested were under age 30. In short, our criminal justice policies are alienating millions of otherwise law-abiding citizens while creating widespread disrespect for the rule of law among minorities and young people.
It’s also costing us money we can no longer afford. According to Harvard University economist Jeffrey Miron, it costs taxpayers at least $7 billion per year to pay for the arrest and prosecution of pot offenders. Taxpayers pay another $1 billion per year to house the estimated 50,000 state and federal inmates serving time for pot, according to data derived from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Conversely, a recent George Mason University report estimates that taxing the production and sale of marijuana in a manner similar to alcohol could potentially raise $31 billion in new revenue while reallocating existing police and prosecutorial resources toward more serious crimes. In California alone, data provided by the State Board of Equalization and Taxation — which has endorsed legalizing the adult use of cannabis — estimates that regulating pot would yield over $1.3 billion annually in new state tax revenue.
This policy would have the added benefit of removing the production and trafficking of pot out of the hands of drug cartels and other criminal entrepreneurs and placing it under the control of state-licensed establishments — which would operate in accordance to government regulations and community standards.
Naturally, critics of this alternative inevitably argue that such a policy would increase Americans’ use of pot — an outcome that they believe negates the social, economic, and criminal justice benefits that would be associated with regulating cannabis like booze. NORML disagrees on both counts.
First, the use of pot by adults is objectively safer to the individual, and to society as a whole, than the use of either alcohol or tobacco, whereas the continued criminal prohibition of pot causes innumerable and far greater harms.
Further, the great irony of our existing policy is that nearly half of all Americans — including our nation’s three most recently elected U.S. presidents — have used, and many continue to use, pot despite the imposition of prohibition. Would this percentage be even higher if marijuana were legalized? Possibly, but not likely.
As noted in the opening paragraph, almost every U.S. teen (or adult for that matter) can already access pot if he or she wants to. Yet despite this practically unfettered access — many surveys now indicate that it’s harder for young people to acquire booze than weed — many Americans choose never to try marijuana, and most are not regular users. Similarly, in the Netherlands, where the sale and use of marijuana is legal to those over age 18, the use of pot by the Dutch is far less common than in America. In short, the use of marijuana is not for everybody — or even most people — and that fact is not going to change, regardless of American pot policy.
------------------------------------
Mike Braun recently retired from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) as the Assistant Administrator and Chief of Operations.
In 1975, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that an adult’s possession of marijuana for personal consumption in the home was legal. Although the ruling applied only to persons 19 and over, teen consumption of the drug skyrocketed. A 1988 University of Alaska study found that the state’s 12- to 17-year-olds used marijuana at more than twice the national average for their age group. School equivalency test scores plummeted, as work place accidents, insurance rates and drugged-driving accidents went through the roof. Alaska’s residents voted to recriminalize possession of marijuana in 1990, demonstrating their belief that legalization and increased use was too high a price to pay.
In 1985, Stanford University conducted a study of airline pilots who each consumed a low grade marijuana cigarette before entering a flight simulator involving a stressful, yet recoverable scenario. The test resulted in numerous crashes. More alarming was the fact that the pilots again crashed the simulator in the same scenario a full 24 hours after last consuming marijuana, when they all showed no outward signs of intoxication, reported feeling “no residual effects” from the drug, and each also stated they had “no reservations” about flying! Part of the problem with marijuana is that Delta 9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana that gives the user his or her high, is absorbed into the fatty tissues of the body where it remains for at least several days, and can continue to have an adverse impact on one’s ability to act capably under stress days after the drug was last ingested.
If healthy pilots can’t respond effectively in the cockpit 24 hours after smoking a low-grade marijuana cigarette, do we really want our kids transported to and from school by a school bus driver who smoked one or two joints the night before? How do we ensure the cop on the beat, who’s carrying a badge and gun, hasn’t smoked marijuana 24 hours before entering onto duty once the drug is legal? And what about those pilots?
Marijuana legalization advocates love to say that we can tax the sale of the drug and generate revenue to cover all the costs associated with legalization, but a few more questions need to be asked.
Will the taxes pay for the significant increases in health and casualty insurance the experts tell us will be levied if marijuana is legalized? Is the government going to hand out free marijuana to those who can’t afford it? If so, who pays for that? Is it O.K. with you if the government or corporate America opens a marijuana distribution center in your neighborhood, or should they only establish them in the economically depressed areas of town? Which government agency will be responsible for rigorous testing to ensure that marijuana sold in the marketplace meets the strictest of consumer standards and is free of pesticides and drugs such as LSD and PCP? Which government agency is going to be responsible for taxing your next-door neighbor when he starts growing marijuana in his back yard, adjacent to your prized roses, of course? What happens when the taxes on marijuana become so excessive from covering all the ancillary costs of legalization that the vast majority of users simply grow the product themselves? Then who will pay for all of this?
I can’t help but ask a couple final questions. What’s the legal age limit we attach to marijuana use? Is it 18; is it 21? And what do we do about the predatory narcotics traffickers who shift every “ounce” of their undivided and merciless attention to those under the authorized age limit once the drug is legalized? Folks, all we need to do is educate ourselves, ask the tough questions, and apply common sense and logic when making a decision on this issue. Most hard-working taxpayers with kids like me will come up with the same answer, which is no to legalization.
----------
5/22/09|New York Times Blogs| by Stephen J. Dubner
Two years ago we ran a quorum debating the pros and cons of decriminalizing marijuana. Since then, a largely theoretical debate has moved quite substantially toward the realm of reality, with a growing number of states and municipalities having changed their laws. The details from place to place vary greatly and are very much a patchwork; the most prominent state to make a move is Massachusetts. The California legislature, meanwhile, is wondering whether marijuana could save its economy — which, as we read just this morning, is badly in need of saving.
Although President Obama doesn’t seem interested, arguments in favor of decriminalization are popping up everywhere, from the Law Enforcement Against Prohibition platform to the senior thesis of a graduating economics major at Brown named Max Chaiken, which finds that “a legally taxed and regulated marijuana market could generate upwards of $200 billion annually in excise tax revenues for the federal government … [which] would be enough to fund Medicaid.”
So we asked a group of people — Paul Armentano, Mike Braun, Joel W. Hay, Jeffrey Miron, and Robert Platshorn — to think about a national decriminalization of marijuana (unlikely, let’s be honest) and answer the following: What would be some of the most powerful economic, social, and criminal-justice effects?
Here are their answers. As you will see, consensus on this issue is now — and will probably always remain — elusive.
------------------------------------
Joel W. Hay is professor of Pharmaceutical Economics and Policy in the School of Pharmacy at the University of Southern California.
With all of our current problems, Americans do not need more marijuana. Pot combines mind-altering and judgment-clouding qualities (like alcohol) with carcinogenic, respiratory, and second-hand smoke qualities (like tobacco); it is emphatically not a safe or benign substance. Daily pot smokers have a 30 percent increased risk of accidents, and one study found that more emergency-department trauma admissions were associated with pot use than alcohol. We don’t need hundreds of billions of dollars in new medical-care costs, traffic and other accident costs, reduced worker productivity, and lower educational achievements in an increasingly competitive global marketplace.
It is ironic that the public health community, who so vociferously decries the dangers of tobacco with reams of scientific evidence, falls strangely silent when voters in state after state are encouraged by the pot lobby to legalize marijuana specifically as a “medical therapy.” There isn’t a shred of scientific evidence that marijuana is safe and effective for any medical condition. Moreover, THC, the active ingredient of pot, has been approved by the FDA and on the market in capsule form since 1985. As a further irony, while the Obama administration has put $1.1 billion behind scientific comparative effectiveness research to demonstrate whether medical treatments actually work, his Attorney General has decided to downplay federal prosecutions in California of medical marijuana distributors and users, apparently because state voters trump science when it comes to making medical policy for mind-altering substances.
It is a fallacy that pot legalization will provide badly needed state and federal revenue through taxation of decriminalized marijuana. A California Assembly decriminalization bill is currently being promoted as a $1 billion pot-tax cure for the state’s fiscal headaches. The problem with this logic, as alcohol and tobacco clearly demonstrate, is that economic costs will increase by amounts far greater than any possible revenue gains. Tobacco taxes only cover about 20 percent of tobacco-related costs, and alcohol taxes only cover about 10 percent of alcohol-related costs. Raising taxes on either tobacco or alcohol enough to merely cover their medical costs and other detrimental effects would create flourishing black markets in these commodities. Raising marijuana taxes high enough to cover medical and other costs associated with legalized pot use will mean both more potheads and continued marijuana narco-trafficking.
The final argument against decriminalization is that it would create powerful and legal marijuana business interests who then become entrenched in the system, contributing to politicians, advertising to consumers, and pushing for even more liberal drug laws. Alcohol and tobacco are safe as long as their business interests contribute to pot legalization, and marijuana will be safe after decriminalization as long as their merchants contribute to the inevitable next round of political campaigns to legalize heroin and cocaine.
------------------------------------
Robert Platshorn (a.k.a. The Black Tuna) is a former marijuana smuggler and was the leader of one of the largest marijuana-trafficking organizations in the 1970’s.
“I’m not against all wars, I’m against dumb wars.” – Barack Obama
On May 2, 1979, a New York Times headline read “$300 Million Drug Ring Reported Cracked in Florida.” The “ring” consisted of my two partners and myself. We hadn’t made 10 percent of that, but the government had reasons for turning a couple of small fish into “The Black Tuna Gang.” Those were the early days of the DEA, and they needed to justify their mission and their budget.
So for 29 years I lived in 11 prisons, costing you millions, as America’s longest-serving non-violent prisoner of the War on Weed. When Feds kicked in my door, I’d been retired from smuggling for two years. My ice cream and food concessions employed about 50 people. My Miami auto auction, body shop, and barbershop employed another 40. Good jobs and serious tax dollars — all gone in an instant, not to mention my freedom, my wife and children, and the life savings of my parents, who paid for years of fruitless appeals.
What was accomplished? The War on Weed that started in the 1970’s discouraged pot smuggling by small timers like me, and filled the void with drug cartels far more interested in the lucrative cocaine trade. Big profits bred violence, enough to make Miami the U.S. murder capital. Today, we see that same prohibition-fueled violence along our Mexican border.
Legalizing marijuana would deprive this dangerous black market of profits and relieve a ridiculous burden on taxpayers; it would allow police to focus on serious crime instead of arresting more than 800,000 Americans every year for pot at a cost to taxpayers of at least $14 billion, according to “The Budgetary Effects of Marijuana Prohibition,” which was endorsed by Milton Friedman and more than 500 other economists. One man, Harry Anslinger, was almost singlehandedly responsible for outlawing marijuana. Admitting in private it was harmless, he wanted to create a powerful tool to control “deviant minorities.” Our for-profit prison system continues that work.
So, based on lies and distortions, we demonized a plant that’s proven effective in treating chronic pain, glaucoma, MS, arthritis, and the effects of chemotherapy, AIDS-wasting syndrome, and other chronic illnesses. Studies in at least five countries have shown marijuana to slow and often reverse the growth of cancer cells. All this from a plant less toxic than aspirin and less habit-forming than coffee or wine.
That’s why I’m working with the NORML and others on a new campaign called Geezers for Medical Weed. I have high hopes that the Obama administration will soon realize that for more than 70 years, the War on Marijuana has indeed been America’s dumbest war.
------------------------------------
Jeffrey A. Miron is the director of undergraduate studies at Harvard University’s economics department.
Marijuana legalization would mean repeal of federal and state laws that ban production, distribution, and possession. Legalized marijuana would likely be subject to the kind of regulation and taxation that currently applies to alcohol and tobacco — e.g., sin taxes and age restrictions — but it would otherwise be no different under the law than an espresso at Starbucks.
Legalizing marijuana would produce important benefits for the United States.
Legalization would allow people who use marijuana, without harm to themselves or others, to do so without fear of arrest or incarceration. This is exactly what occurs now for alcohol and tobacco.
Legalization would reduce violence. In underground markets, participants cannot resolve their disputes with lawyers, courts, or advertising, so they employ violence instead. Violence was common in the alcohol industry during alcohol prohibition, but not before or after; in gambling markets before state and federal governments legalized most forms of gambling; and in prostitution markets where prohibition forces these underground. Legalization would also reduce corruption, since producers and consumers would have no reason to bribe police, judges, and politicians.
Legalization would allow the medical community to evaluate marijuana’s medicinal effects without interference from law enforcement. Considerable evidence suggests marijuana has important medical uses, but prohibition has made controlled, double-blind studies all but impossible.
Legalization would diminish restrictions on civil liberties. Crimes like robbery or assault generate a victim who complains to the police, but neither party to a marijuana transaction wants to alert authorities. Thus police use intrusive tactics like warrantless searches or undercover buys, and the victimless nature of marijuana “crime” encourages racial profiling.
Legalization would increase respect for the law. No matter how draconian the penalties and how extensive the enforcement, many people produce and use marijuana. Thus everyone learns that laws are for suckers.
Legalization would benefit the public purse. My research indicates that legalization would save federal and state budgets approximately $13 billion in enforcement costs and allow collection of about $7 billion in tax revenues, assuming marijuana were taxed like alcohol and tobacco.
One thing legalization would not do is produce a major increase in marijuana use; existing evidence suggests prohibition has only a modest impact. Alcohol consumption declined moderately but not dramatically during alcohol prohibition, for example.
A second thing legalization would not do is eliminate the bulk of violence, crime, and corruption induced by drug prohibition, since much of that relates to cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine. To achieve the full benefits of legalization, policy must legalize all drugs.
Marijuana legalization is thus not a panacea; rather, it is a significant step in the direction of saner drug policy.
------------------------------------
Paul Armentano is deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) and co-author of the forthcoming book Marijuana Is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink?.
Last November, U.S. law enforcement made its 20 millionth marijuana arrest since 1965. Yet today, almost 90 percent of teens report that pot is “fairly easy” or “very easy” to obtain, and nearly one out of two graduating high-school seniors admit to having tried it.
Clearly it’s time to try another approach.
The enforcement of marijuana prohibition is an archaic, overly punitive, and ineffective policy that carries with it a staggering array of social and economic costs. According to the FBI, in 2007 police made a record 873,00 marijuana arrests — 9 out of 10 of them for pot possession, not trafficking, cultivation, or sale. A disproportionate number of those arrested were African Americans and Hispanic males. Some 75 percent of those arrested were under age 30. In short, our criminal justice policies are alienating millions of otherwise law-abiding citizens while creating widespread disrespect for the rule of law among minorities and young people.
It’s also costing us money we can no longer afford. According to Harvard University economist Jeffrey Miron, it costs taxpayers at least $7 billion per year to pay for the arrest and prosecution of pot offenders. Taxpayers pay another $1 billion per year to house the estimated 50,000 state and federal inmates serving time for pot, according to data derived from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Conversely, a recent George Mason University report estimates that taxing the production and sale of marijuana in a manner similar to alcohol could potentially raise $31 billion in new revenue while reallocating existing police and prosecutorial resources toward more serious crimes. In California alone, data provided by the State Board of Equalization and Taxation — which has endorsed legalizing the adult use of cannabis — estimates that regulating pot would yield over $1.3 billion annually in new state tax revenue.
This policy would have the added benefit of removing the production and trafficking of pot out of the hands of drug cartels and other criminal entrepreneurs and placing it under the control of state-licensed establishments — which would operate in accordance to government regulations and community standards.
Naturally, critics of this alternative inevitably argue that such a policy would increase Americans’ use of pot — an outcome that they believe negates the social, economic, and criminal justice benefits that would be associated with regulating cannabis like booze. NORML disagrees on both counts.
First, the use of pot by adults is objectively safer to the individual, and to society as a whole, than the use of either alcohol or tobacco, whereas the continued criminal prohibition of pot causes innumerable and far greater harms.
Further, the great irony of our existing policy is that nearly half of all Americans — including our nation’s three most recently elected U.S. presidents — have used, and many continue to use, pot despite the imposition of prohibition. Would this percentage be even higher if marijuana were legalized? Possibly, but not likely.
As noted in the opening paragraph, almost every U.S. teen (or adult for that matter) can already access pot if he or she wants to. Yet despite this practically unfettered access — many surveys now indicate that it’s harder for young people to acquire booze than weed — many Americans choose never to try marijuana, and most are not regular users. Similarly, in the Netherlands, where the sale and use of marijuana is legal to those over age 18, the use of pot by the Dutch is far less common than in America. In short, the use of marijuana is not for everybody — or even most people — and that fact is not going to change, regardless of American pot policy.
------------------------------------
Mike Braun recently retired from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) as the Assistant Administrator and Chief of Operations.
In 1975, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that an adult’s possession of marijuana for personal consumption in the home was legal. Although the ruling applied only to persons 19 and over, teen consumption of the drug skyrocketed. A 1988 University of Alaska study found that the state’s 12- to 17-year-olds used marijuana at more than twice the national average for their age group. School equivalency test scores plummeted, as work place accidents, insurance rates and drugged-driving accidents went through the roof. Alaska’s residents voted to recriminalize possession of marijuana in 1990, demonstrating their belief that legalization and increased use was too high a price to pay.
In 1985, Stanford University conducted a study of airline pilots who each consumed a low grade marijuana cigarette before entering a flight simulator involving a stressful, yet recoverable scenario. The test resulted in numerous crashes. More alarming was the fact that the pilots again crashed the simulator in the same scenario a full 24 hours after last consuming marijuana, when they all showed no outward signs of intoxication, reported feeling “no residual effects” from the drug, and each also stated they had “no reservations” about flying! Part of the problem with marijuana is that Delta 9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana that gives the user his or her high, is absorbed into the fatty tissues of the body where it remains for at least several days, and can continue to have an adverse impact on one’s ability to act capably under stress days after the drug was last ingested.
If healthy pilots can’t respond effectively in the cockpit 24 hours after smoking a low-grade marijuana cigarette, do we really want our kids transported to and from school by a school bus driver who smoked one or two joints the night before? How do we ensure the cop on the beat, who’s carrying a badge and gun, hasn’t smoked marijuana 24 hours before entering onto duty once the drug is legal? And what about those pilots?
Marijuana legalization advocates love to say that we can tax the sale of the drug and generate revenue to cover all the costs associated with legalization, but a few more questions need to be asked.
Will the taxes pay for the significant increases in health and casualty insurance the experts tell us will be levied if marijuana is legalized? Is the government going to hand out free marijuana to those who can’t afford it? If so, who pays for that? Is it O.K. with you if the government or corporate America opens a marijuana distribution center in your neighborhood, or should they only establish them in the economically depressed areas of town? Which government agency will be responsible for rigorous testing to ensure that marijuana sold in the marketplace meets the strictest of consumer standards and is free of pesticides and drugs such as LSD and PCP? Which government agency is going to be responsible for taxing your next-door neighbor when he starts growing marijuana in his back yard, adjacent to your prized roses, of course? What happens when the taxes on marijuana become so excessive from covering all the ancillary costs of legalization that the vast majority of users simply grow the product themselves? Then who will pay for all of this?
I can’t help but ask a couple final questions. What’s the legal age limit we attach to marijuana use? Is it 18; is it 21? And what do we do about the predatory narcotics traffickers who shift every “ounce” of their undivided and merciless attention to those under the authorized age limit once the drug is legalized? Folks, all we need to do is educate ourselves, ask the tough questions, and apply common sense and logic when making a decision on this issue. Most hard-working taxpayers with kids like me will come up with the same answer, which is no to legalization.
----------
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London Ontario Collectors Research
It has nothing to do with pot, but might be fun to ponder while buzzed.
London Ontario Collectors Research
It has nothing to do with pot, but might be fun to ponder while buzzed.
Friday, May 22, 2009
10 reasons why we need to decriminalize drugs
10 reasons why we need to decriminalize drugs
5/21/09|NOW Magazine| by Enzo Di Matteo
1. Drug laws are unconstitutional.
Yeah, you’re reading right. Courts at every level have ruled on the fact that drug use and addiction are health issues, not legal infractions. It’s image-conscious politicians who have chosen to wilfully ignore those rulings. Yet the courts have been unwilling to hold lawmakers accountable. It’s a vicious circle – a conspiracy even.
It’s not clear how marijuana even got on the list of prohibited drugs back in 1923. It mysteriously appeared on the schedule without a debate in Parliament.
2. Drug laws are rooted in racism.
Drug use has been used to demonize whole races of people. From musings about “lazy” Hispanic migrant farm workers partaking of the weed to Chinese opium dens and the accusation by suffragist Emily Murphy – she claimed pot smoking renders users “completely insane… raving maniacs liable to kill” – the earliest drug laws were sold as solutions to a crime problem created by blacks and browns. The ripple effects are being felt today. The 1995 Commission on Systemic Racism in the Justice System identified a continued pattern of racism in drug enforcement: blacks are 27 times more likely to end up in jail to await trial on drug charges than whites, and three times more likely to be charged with trafficking than whites.
3. Drug laws = war, corruption and terrorism.
Think the war in Afghanistan is about the Taliban and al Qaeda? You’re only half right. The war on drugs and the war on terror are often one and the same.
The propaganda fed us by the self-interested, i.e., cops and politicians, is that drug use is what fuels the drug trade. Reality check: smart policy-makers know it’s prohibition that creates the black market that makes the drug trade so lucrative. See Colombia, where the illegal cocaine trade has fuelled a five-decade civil war. And what about 9/11?
According to a report by John Thompson of the Mackenzie Institute, money from drugs is “probably the single biggest money earner” for Muslim fundamentalists.
4. Drug laws encourage the spread of disease.
Nearly two-thirds of offenders entering the federal corrections system have drug abuse problems. Sending addicts to jail on minor drug charges is a death sentence for many. The spread of HIV/AIDS and other diseases like hep C only accelerates behind bars.
About 15 per cent of the jail population reports injecting heroin or cocaine behind bars. Former inmates say they’ve seen as many as 40 fellow inmates sharing one needle. If that isn’t a recipe.... The feds’ proposed mandatory minimum drug sentences would only jail more people who shouldn’t be there and increase the spread of disease, says the Canadian HIV/AIDS Network.
5. Drug laws are compromising our sovereignty.
DEA agents stationed in Canada, U.S. drug czars threatening trade sanctions for all that BC bud making it over the border.
The U.S. propaganda machine hasn’t stopped snorting about our liberal enforcement of drug laws.
Blame our own lawmakers for pushing the big lie that we can’t reform our drug laws because international conventions keep us tied to the will of other countries (read the U.S). Canada is under no obligation to continue criminal prohibition of drug use. The stated goal of Canada’s Drug Strategy is to reduce harm. The feds have been lying to us.
6. Drug laws have been a complete failure.
Alcohol, tobacco, illegal drugs and certain prescription drugs are linked to more than 47,000 deaths and many thousands more injuries and disabilities every year in Canada, according to the Health Officers Council of British Columbia paper Regulation Of Psychoactive Substances In Canada: Seeking A Coherent Public Health Approach. That’s not counting the $40 billion blown every year on what the report terms “inadequate, inappropriate and ineffective regulation.” Bottom line: we’re blowing it.
7. Drug laws are killing the economy.
The feds estimate total sale of drugs in Canada at about $18 billion annually. BC’s annual marijuana crop alone, if valued at retail street prices and sold by the cigarette, is worth more than $7 billion annually, according to a 2004 study by the Fraser Institute. That’s bigger than mining, logging, manufacturing, construction and agriculture in that province. Do the math. Canada spends $2.3 billion on enforcement every year and another $1.1 in health care costs directly related to illegal drug use – when $1 spent on treatment will achieve the same reduction of flow of cocaine as $7.3 spent on enforcement.
8. Drug laws amount to cruel and unusual punishment.
Sending people to jail for the relatively benign act of taking drugs, a victimless “crime,” only exposes them to physical and other forms of abuse behind bars. Now the Harper Tories want to introduce new mandatory minimum sentencing that will only fill prisons with more small-time addicts. Prison admission trends for drug offences are showing dramatic increases. Ontario’s crime rate is comparable to Quebec’s, but our incarceration rate is about one-third higher.
9. Drug laws are not reducing drug use.
Governments are slowly coming around to the view. Portugal’s experiment with decriminalization, which started almost a decade ago, has resulted in decreased drug use among teens and a marked reduction in HIV/AIDS infections caused by the sharing of contaminated needles. Portugal’s rate of lifetime marijuana use in people over 15 is now the lowest in the EU: 10 per cent. The EU seems to be coming around on decrim. More than a dozen countries have agreed on a draft resolution urging the UN and its member states to establish a “system for the legal control and regulation of the production, sale and consumption of substances which are currently illegal.”
10. The majority of Canadians oppose drug laws.
Calls to end prohibition aren’t just coming from weed advocates. The Globe and Ottawa Citizen called for the decriminalization of drugs more than a decade ago. The right-wing Fraser Institute has advocated legalization, calling the war on drugs a “complete failure.” A majority of Canadians support the legalization of pot, according to an Angus Reid poll last year. More than 90 per cent believe it should be legal for medical purposes. The powers that be are messing with the will of the people.
5/21/09|NOW Magazine| by Enzo Di Matteo
1. Drug laws are unconstitutional.
Yeah, you’re reading right. Courts at every level have ruled on the fact that drug use and addiction are health issues, not legal infractions. It’s image-conscious politicians who have chosen to wilfully ignore those rulings. Yet the courts have been unwilling to hold lawmakers accountable. It’s a vicious circle – a conspiracy even.
It’s not clear how marijuana even got on the list of prohibited drugs back in 1923. It mysteriously appeared on the schedule without a debate in Parliament.
2. Drug laws are rooted in racism.
Drug use has been used to demonize whole races of people. From musings about “lazy” Hispanic migrant farm workers partaking of the weed to Chinese opium dens and the accusation by suffragist Emily Murphy – she claimed pot smoking renders users “completely insane… raving maniacs liable to kill” – the earliest drug laws were sold as solutions to a crime problem created by blacks and browns. The ripple effects are being felt today. The 1995 Commission on Systemic Racism in the Justice System identified a continued pattern of racism in drug enforcement: blacks are 27 times more likely to end up in jail to await trial on drug charges than whites, and three times more likely to be charged with trafficking than whites.
3. Drug laws = war, corruption and terrorism.
Think the war in Afghanistan is about the Taliban and al Qaeda? You’re only half right. The war on drugs and the war on terror are often one and the same.
The propaganda fed us by the self-interested, i.e., cops and politicians, is that drug use is what fuels the drug trade. Reality check: smart policy-makers know it’s prohibition that creates the black market that makes the drug trade so lucrative. See Colombia, where the illegal cocaine trade has fuelled a five-decade civil war. And what about 9/11?
According to a report by John Thompson of the Mackenzie Institute, money from drugs is “probably the single biggest money earner” for Muslim fundamentalists.
4. Drug laws encourage the spread of disease.
Nearly two-thirds of offenders entering the federal corrections system have drug abuse problems. Sending addicts to jail on minor drug charges is a death sentence for many. The spread of HIV/AIDS and other diseases like hep C only accelerates behind bars.
About 15 per cent of the jail population reports injecting heroin or cocaine behind bars. Former inmates say they’ve seen as many as 40 fellow inmates sharing one needle. If that isn’t a recipe.... The feds’ proposed mandatory minimum drug sentences would only jail more people who shouldn’t be there and increase the spread of disease, says the Canadian HIV/AIDS Network.
5. Drug laws are compromising our sovereignty.
DEA agents stationed in Canada, U.S. drug czars threatening trade sanctions for all that BC bud making it over the border.
The U.S. propaganda machine hasn’t stopped snorting about our liberal enforcement of drug laws.
Blame our own lawmakers for pushing the big lie that we can’t reform our drug laws because international conventions keep us tied to the will of other countries (read the U.S). Canada is under no obligation to continue criminal prohibition of drug use. The stated goal of Canada’s Drug Strategy is to reduce harm. The feds have been lying to us.
6. Drug laws have been a complete failure.
Alcohol, tobacco, illegal drugs and certain prescription drugs are linked to more than 47,000 deaths and many thousands more injuries and disabilities every year in Canada, according to the Health Officers Council of British Columbia paper Regulation Of Psychoactive Substances In Canada: Seeking A Coherent Public Health Approach. That’s not counting the $40 billion blown every year on what the report terms “inadequate, inappropriate and ineffective regulation.” Bottom line: we’re blowing it.
7. Drug laws are killing the economy.
The feds estimate total sale of drugs in Canada at about $18 billion annually. BC’s annual marijuana crop alone, if valued at retail street prices and sold by the cigarette, is worth more than $7 billion annually, according to a 2004 study by the Fraser Institute. That’s bigger than mining, logging, manufacturing, construction and agriculture in that province. Do the math. Canada spends $2.3 billion on enforcement every year and another $1.1 in health care costs directly related to illegal drug use – when $1 spent on treatment will achieve the same reduction of flow of cocaine as $7.3 spent on enforcement.
8. Drug laws amount to cruel and unusual punishment.
Sending people to jail for the relatively benign act of taking drugs, a victimless “crime,” only exposes them to physical and other forms of abuse behind bars. Now the Harper Tories want to introduce new mandatory minimum sentencing that will only fill prisons with more small-time addicts. Prison admission trends for drug offences are showing dramatic increases. Ontario’s crime rate is comparable to Quebec’s, but our incarceration rate is about one-third higher.
9. Drug laws are not reducing drug use.
Governments are slowly coming around to the view. Portugal’s experiment with decriminalization, which started almost a decade ago, has resulted in decreased drug use among teens and a marked reduction in HIV/AIDS infections caused by the sharing of contaminated needles. Portugal’s rate of lifetime marijuana use in people over 15 is now the lowest in the EU: 10 per cent. The EU seems to be coming around on decrim. More than a dozen countries have agreed on a draft resolution urging the UN and its member states to establish a “system for the legal control and regulation of the production, sale and consumption of substances which are currently illegal.”
10. The majority of Canadians oppose drug laws.
Calls to end prohibition aren’t just coming from weed advocates. The Globe and Ottawa Citizen called for the decriminalization of drugs more than a decade ago. The right-wing Fraser Institute has advocated legalization, calling the war on drugs a “complete failure.” A majority of Canadians support the legalization of pot, according to an Angus Reid poll last year. More than 90 per cent believe it should be legal for medical purposes. The powers that be are messing with the will of the people.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Legalize it? Medical evidence on marijuana blows both ways.
Legalize it? Medical evidence on marijuana blows both ways
5/17/09|Sacramento Bee| by Sam McManis
Sparked anew by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's call for the state to study the legalization of marijuana, both sides in the smoldering pot debate point to research to bolster their positions.
Such recitation of conflicting marijuana studies can be manipulated and selected buffet-style to serve whatever political and health agenda is being touted.
Even governmental findings can be contradictory. In 1999, for instance, the Office of National Drug Control Policy asked the Institute of Medicine to review evidence. The institute found that, "except for the harms associated with smoking, the adverse effects of marijuana use are within the range of effects tolerated for other medications."
Yet in 2006, the Food and Drug Administration ruled that marijuana has no health benefits and has known and proven harms. It is classified a Schedule 1 drug – the highest risk of addiction – in the Controlled Substances Act.
Wading through the medical literature, though, makes those conclusions less cut and dried.
"When I was a resident in Kaiser in San Francisco in 1978, I gave a lecture to physicians on marijuana, and I remember my conclusion at that time was that you can find in the literature whatever you were looking for," says Dr. Donald Abrams, a University of California, San Francisco, oncologist and leading medical marijuana researcher. " 'Marijuana is good for asthma.' 'Marijuana's bad for asthma.' 'Marijuana causes schizophrenia.' 'Marijuana (decreases) schizophrenia.' And, you know, the evidence is still like that."
There are many factors, of course. As noted by UCLA pulmonologist Dr. Donald Tashkin, who has studied marijuana's effects on the lungs for three decades, "That's just the nature of medical science. You have to deal with variability. The population studied may be different or the methods used to study may differ."
Yet when the arguments for legalization of marijuana, both for medicinal and recreational use, are put forth, solid medical science often gets clouded in an ideological haze.
"Although we like to say we separate politics from science, with medical marijuana, that's really difficult," Abrams says. "It depends on who does the study, where it's published and what their agenda is."
Bearing in mind those caveats, here is a look at the research on marijuana's effect in areas critical to health.
Lungs
UCLA's Tashkin studied heavy marijuana smokers to determine whether the use led to increased risk of lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD. He had hypothesized that there would be a definitive link between cancer and marijuana smoking, yet the results proved otherwise.
"What we found instead was no association and even a suggestion of some protective effect," says Tashkin, whose research was the largest case-control study ever conducted. The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health.
Tobacco smokers in the study had as much as a 21-fold increase in lung cancer risk. Cigarette smokers, too, developed COPD more often in the study, and researchers found that marijuana did not impair lung function. Tashkin, supported by other research, concluded that the active ingredient tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, has an "anti- tumoral effect" in which "cells die earlier before they age enough to develop mutations that might lead to lung cancer."
However, the smoke from marijuana did swell the airways and lead to a greater risk of chronic bronchitis.
"Early on, when our research appeared as if there would be a negative impact on lung health, I was opposed to legalization because I thought it would lead to increased use and that would lead to increased health effects," Tashkin says.
"But at this point, I'd be in favor of legalization. I wouldn't encourage anybody to smoke any substances, because of the potential for harm. But I don't think it should be stigmatized as an illegal substance.
"Tobacco smoking causes far more harm. And in terms of an intoxicant, alcohol causes far more harm."
Cognitive function
A 2006 study in the journal Neurology found that speed of thinking, attention and verbal fluency were affected as much as 70 percent by long-term heavy use (four or more joints per week).
But a 2003 review of literature in the Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society found that marijuana smoking had a "small effect" on memory in longtime users.
However, users had no lasting effects in reaction time, attention or verbal function.
"Surprisingly, we saw very little evidence of deleterious effects," Dr. Igor Grant, researcher at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine, said in a statement.
Other studies: A 2002 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that heavy users did worse on recall memory tests. A 2006 study in Greece showed users had slower mental-processing speed than the control group.
Then again, a 2007 study at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, published in Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, found that students who smoked marijuana had better grades than those who used only tobacco or those who did not smoke any substance.
In terms of brain development, a 2000 study in the Journal of Addictive Diseases found changes in brain structure in those who started using marijuana before age 17 but not in those who started at an older age.
A 2009 Children's Hospital of Philadelphia study used brain imaging to show that heavy adolescent users are more likely to have disrupted brain development in regions involving memory, attention, decision making and language.
But a 2008 Ohio State University study found that marijuana can reduce brain inflammation and perhaps reduce memory impairment that could delay Alzheimer's disease.
Psychosis
Yes, there is an increased risk in psychotic behavior and long-term risk of mental illness from marijuana use, according to a 2007 review of literature commissioned by Great Britain's Department of Health and published in the Lancet.
But the risk is small, because the risk of developing psychosis in the general population is 3 percent over a lifetime and rises to 5 percent for marijuana users, lead researcher Stanley Zammit told the Los Angeles Times. "So 95 percent of the people are not going to get psychotic, even if they smoke on a daily basis," he told the paper.
In 2005, New Zealand researchers studied a group of people with a gene variant the researchers believe predisposes that group to developing psychosis. Those in the group who smoked marijuana as teens had a tenfold increase in risk of psychosis than those who abstained.
Depression
A study published in 2001 in the American Journal of Psychiatry followed nearly 2,000 adults over 15 years. It found that marijuana users who had no symptoms of depression at the start were four times more likely than non-users of developing symptoms during that time frame.
In 2008, the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy stated that early marijuana use could increase the likelihood of mental illness by as much as 40 percent later in life.
However, researchers at McGill University in Montreal in 2007 reported in the Journal of Neuroscience that THC in low doses actually serves as an antidepressant similar to Prozac, producing serotonin. At higher doses, however, they found it could lead not only to depression but psychotic episodes.
5/17/09|Sacramento Bee| by Sam McManis
Sparked anew by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's call for the state to study the legalization of marijuana, both sides in the smoldering pot debate point to research to bolster their positions.
Such recitation of conflicting marijuana studies can be manipulated and selected buffet-style to serve whatever political and health agenda is being touted.
Even governmental findings can be contradictory. In 1999, for instance, the Office of National Drug Control Policy asked the Institute of Medicine to review evidence. The institute found that, "except for the harms associated with smoking, the adverse effects of marijuana use are within the range of effects tolerated for other medications."
Yet in 2006, the Food and Drug Administration ruled that marijuana has no health benefits and has known and proven harms. It is classified a Schedule 1 drug – the highest risk of addiction – in the Controlled Substances Act.
Wading through the medical literature, though, makes those conclusions less cut and dried.
"When I was a resident in Kaiser in San Francisco in 1978, I gave a lecture to physicians on marijuana, and I remember my conclusion at that time was that you can find in the literature whatever you were looking for," says Dr. Donald Abrams, a University of California, San Francisco, oncologist and leading medical marijuana researcher. " 'Marijuana is good for asthma.' 'Marijuana's bad for asthma.' 'Marijuana causes schizophrenia.' 'Marijuana (decreases) schizophrenia.' And, you know, the evidence is still like that."
There are many factors, of course. As noted by UCLA pulmonologist Dr. Donald Tashkin, who has studied marijuana's effects on the lungs for three decades, "That's just the nature of medical science. You have to deal with variability. The population studied may be different or the methods used to study may differ."
Yet when the arguments for legalization of marijuana, both for medicinal and recreational use, are put forth, solid medical science often gets clouded in an ideological haze.
"Although we like to say we separate politics from science, with medical marijuana, that's really difficult," Abrams says. "It depends on who does the study, where it's published and what their agenda is."
Bearing in mind those caveats, here is a look at the research on marijuana's effect in areas critical to health.
Lungs
UCLA's Tashkin studied heavy marijuana smokers to determine whether the use led to increased risk of lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD. He had hypothesized that there would be a definitive link between cancer and marijuana smoking, yet the results proved otherwise.
"What we found instead was no association and even a suggestion of some protective effect," says Tashkin, whose research was the largest case-control study ever conducted. The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health.
Tobacco smokers in the study had as much as a 21-fold increase in lung cancer risk. Cigarette smokers, too, developed COPD more often in the study, and researchers found that marijuana did not impair lung function. Tashkin, supported by other research, concluded that the active ingredient tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, has an "anti- tumoral effect" in which "cells die earlier before they age enough to develop mutations that might lead to lung cancer."
However, the smoke from marijuana did swell the airways and lead to a greater risk of chronic bronchitis.
"Early on, when our research appeared as if there would be a negative impact on lung health, I was opposed to legalization because I thought it would lead to increased use and that would lead to increased health effects," Tashkin says.
"But at this point, I'd be in favor of legalization. I wouldn't encourage anybody to smoke any substances, because of the potential for harm. But I don't think it should be stigmatized as an illegal substance.
"Tobacco smoking causes far more harm. And in terms of an intoxicant, alcohol causes far more harm."
Cognitive function
A 2006 study in the journal Neurology found that speed of thinking, attention and verbal fluency were affected as much as 70 percent by long-term heavy use (four or more joints per week).
But a 2003 review of literature in the Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society found that marijuana smoking had a "small effect" on memory in longtime users.
However, users had no lasting effects in reaction time, attention or verbal function.
"Surprisingly, we saw very little evidence of deleterious effects," Dr. Igor Grant, researcher at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine, said in a statement.
Other studies: A 2002 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that heavy users did worse on recall memory tests. A 2006 study in Greece showed users had slower mental-processing speed than the control group.
Then again, a 2007 study at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, published in Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, found that students who smoked marijuana had better grades than those who used only tobacco or those who did not smoke any substance.
In terms of brain development, a 2000 study in the Journal of Addictive Diseases found changes in brain structure in those who started using marijuana before age 17 but not in those who started at an older age.
A 2009 Children's Hospital of Philadelphia study used brain imaging to show that heavy adolescent users are more likely to have disrupted brain development in regions involving memory, attention, decision making and language.
But a 2008 Ohio State University study found that marijuana can reduce brain inflammation and perhaps reduce memory impairment that could delay Alzheimer's disease.
Psychosis
Yes, there is an increased risk in psychotic behavior and long-term risk of mental illness from marijuana use, according to a 2007 review of literature commissioned by Great Britain's Department of Health and published in the Lancet.
But the risk is small, because the risk of developing psychosis in the general population is 3 percent over a lifetime and rises to 5 percent for marijuana users, lead researcher Stanley Zammit told the Los Angeles Times. "So 95 percent of the people are not going to get psychotic, even if they smoke on a daily basis," he told the paper.
In 2005, New Zealand researchers studied a group of people with a gene variant the researchers believe predisposes that group to developing psychosis. Those in the group who smoked marijuana as teens had a tenfold increase in risk of psychosis than those who abstained.
Depression
A study published in 2001 in the American Journal of Psychiatry followed nearly 2,000 adults over 15 years. It found that marijuana users who had no symptoms of depression at the start were four times more likely than non-users of developing symptoms during that time frame.
In 2008, the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy stated that early marijuana use could increase the likelihood of mental illness by as much as 40 percent later in life.
However, researchers at McGill University in Montreal in 2007 reported in the Journal of Neuroscience that THC in low doses actually serves as an antidepressant similar to Prozac, producing serotonin. At higher doses, however, they found it could lead not only to depression but psychotic episodes.
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About Me
- 420-friendly
- I am a single dad. I like playing on the computer. I smoke pot. I am slowly becoming a legalization activist. I am an open book, but only if you ask.
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