Attorney for San Jose Cannabis Buyers Collective who has been litigating marijuana cases for 18 years analyzes Prop 19 and finds that the fears expressed by the medical marijuana community to be completely unfounded.
Let’s Make Marijuana Boring by James P. Gray.
Holland’s and Portugal’s experience will shed light on what will happen when Proposition 19 passes. Holland decriminalized marijuana possession and use for those 16 and older in the early 1970s, and several years ago, the minister of health was quoted as saying that they have only half the marijuana usage, per capita, as we do in our country — both for adults and teenagers! “We have succeeded in making pot boring,” he said.
Of course, our country glamorizes marijuana by making it illegal, and also by having such obscene profit motives in getting others to sell it to you, your neighbors and your children. And you will also note that today young adults are not selling Jim Beam bourbon or Marlboro cigarettes to each other on their high school campuses. But they are selling marijuana to each other all the time.
Headline of the year: Florida Man Says Cocaine In His Butt Isn’t His
Butt jokes aside, here’s the part that really annoyed me:
He then told the two deputies to search his car.
What does it take for people to realize that consenting to a search is the stupidest thing anyone can do?
This is an open thread.
Excellent article on crack
If prop 19 passes and the sky doesn’t fall, it will make the argument for the rest of the drugs a bit easier. Especially if we find MJ gets boring and usage goes down after a few years.
When Pete mentions that Cali will be the only place in the entire world that will allow a legal(albeit small) Cannabis garden, he is correct. For a short while it will be.
Each Cali property, each piece of real estate will have a magical attribute that no other piece of property in the entire world has. A legal cannabis garden.
When you let that roll around the brain case for a moment you soon realize that each piece of Cali real estate is priceless. Literally.
The only place on the planet the property owner can legally grow the kind bud. There won’t be an unsold piece of Cali real estate left. “California here we come!!”
Until Oregon and Washington figure it out.
Too much fun!
If a property owner leases out 25 sq ft plots with chain link enclosures for each plot it could bring out a lot of pot gardens on his land. It would look like a storage complex with no buildings,just chain link cages.
What does it take for people to realize that consenting to a search is the stupidest thing anyone can do?
I’ve had this conversation with my girlfriend a bunch of times. She thinks that if you’re “innocent” you should consent to search — shows you have nothing to hide or something. The fact of the matter is that there’s absolutely nothing you can gain by consenting to search, no matter what items or substances may or may not be found.
I believe the law states a 5X5 plot per parcel which would eleminate multiple plots per parcel, for recreational.
@Rhayader, please have your girlfriend watch Why You Should Refuse Police Searches from Flex Your Rights and if she has more time watch their whole four part series 10 Rules for Dealing with Police. She may very well be “innocent†but what about the person who rented the apartment or owned the house before you? What about stuff your friends do that you don’t know about? Same with you car. That beer can and 9mm pistol that they forgot under your driver’s seat can play havoc with your life.
As a child of a Public Defender, I can attest that the police are not your friends. Never consent to a search no matter how innocent you are. (I grew up listening to an almost daily rant from my father about how cops always lie on the witness stand. It make him crazy.)
Never consent to a search. The officer might say he’ll call for backup and search dogs it is probably a bluff. If you haven’t seen the ACLU produced video “Busted:The Citizen’s Guide to Police Encounters” do check it out. The tubes of interwebs is bound to have it somewhere.
Whoops the video is titled “Busted:The Citizen’s Guide to Surviving Police Encounters.”
alaskans are the first to have legal pot gardens — they’ve had them since 1974. for some strange reason nobody decided to move there.
Pete, I’ll bet you’ve never looked directly into the eyes of a cop who wanted to search your home because he was arresting you for a bogus charge because your mugshot got included in a photo lineup and you were picked as the perp as a result. Meanwhile you are thinking about the 92 plant grow you have underway in one of the bedrooms of the house he wants to search. Even though you know that you have an ironclad alibi for the accusation of holding up a Subway sub shop, for some reason deep down inside you really want to let the cop search. Well ‘want to’ is probably the wrong word, ‘feel compelled to allow’ is likely more accurate. Its a fucking horror show as far as the feelings that start running through your mind on top of the fact that you were likely trained at a very young age to defer to police and do what they tell you to do.
Yes indeed the above happened to me in 1992. Ironically my alibi was being in my court ordered drug rehab in a scheduled therapy session 40 or 50 miles from the scene of the crime. So getting busted for growing pot got my mugshot in the photo lineup and it also made it ‘easy’ to get the prosecutor to nolle prosequi the charge. But there wasn’t anything easy about telling the cop he couldn’t search my home so that he could ‘get that nine off the streets.’ The ‘nine’ he referred to was a 9 millimeter semiautomatic pistol that was allegedly used in the alleged robbery that I was alleged to have committed. Quite frankly the cop was literally less than a minute or two away from getting me to break and give the consent to search when he gave up. This was over 3 months since the robbery occurred so he had no exigent circumstances or probable cause to suppose that I still had the gun even if it actually had been my crime. He also seemed to be misinformed about the 4th amendment because he kept pounding on the door of my home to get somebody else who lived there to give him permission. Umm, no Mr Police someone who lives with me can’t waive my 4th Amendment protection for my private space in the home.
I’m thinking that rather than belittling people who do break and give consent isn’t likely a productive strategy. It may be stupid in the extreme to give permission in that situation, but it isn’t fucking easy to say no to a persistent cop, not by a long shot. I can certainly empathize with anyone who does give consent. The thing that gave me the mettle to say no was the 2 previous years of volunteering for NORML which had given me the understanding that I could refuse such a search. There was no search ‘incident to arrest’ because I knew they were coming for me even though I had no clue why. I knew they were coming because my house mate had spoken to them earlier in the day and told me there was a uniform and a plain clothes cop together and at that time in that place that combination meant only one thing, that there was an arrest warrant for the person they were seeking. So I sat in my TV room with the outside door open so I could see when they came around the corner and approaching my home. When they came over the hill I stepped outside and locked myself out of the house and notified them that I was surrendering myself. Not having keys to get past the locked door prevented them from testi-lying that I had actually given consent. He did try all 3 entrance doors to see if one was unlocked. Again, I had the information necessary to hold out as long as I did. I don’t think a lot of people aren’t even aware of a cops right to search incident to arrest in the areas around the arrested person.
That last part makes me want to ask is how de we know that all these consent searches were actually consented to? Am I to believe that no cop has ever just fabricated consent in a situation like that? Yes your Honor, he said ‘search all you want, Ive got nothing to hide’. If I had ended up giving the consent you certainly would be correct in describing my decision as stupid, but I really don’t think that attitude is productive. If my response was ‘you don’t have a clue what it’s like to be in that situation’ I would also be correct. When I think a person has no clue for the premise they’re using to belittle me I basically shut down as think you should just go fuck yourself. Well, at least if assuming that the consent wasn’t fiction spun from whole cloth by the cop.
As hard as that incident was I had one other cop ask for consent to search, this time my car after I had been pulled over for speeding on the Interstate. Refusing consent here was remarkably easy, the cop didn’t seem to care one way or the other. This cop was a 180 degree different than the first because asked ‘do you mind if I search your car to make sure there’s no…’ to which I said ‘I’d rather not’ and he responded ‘Oh. OK here’s your ticket try to slow down in the future. You’re free to go.’ But that time refusing was just on principle, I actually didn’t have anything I didn’t want found in my car that day. 9 MPH over the speed limit what a menace that is the the highways of America. If it hadn’t happened hundreds of miles from home I think I would have challenged that ticket because my little hunka hunka burning junk that I was driving at the time just didn’t have the capability of going as fast as he claimed. It was physically impossible to get that thing going more than 71 or 72 MPH. Actually, I still have that pile of scrap metal and it’s still impossible to get it to go 79 MPH. Toyota Corolla, voted one of the slowest cars on US highways, second only to the Toyota Camry. Maybe it’s why they last so long.
http://www.articlealley.com/article_1450324_31.html
http://tinyurl.com/e8pmf
…
This was in my email box and I finally had time (and internet access) to open it.
You had asked a few posts back Pete what are each of going to do. This is my calling and between finding a job and living my life this has priority.
We have internet now and a phone. Give me a couple of weeks and the stress of the enormous move we made will all be a memory and not a concern any longer.
……….
Over 50% of Washington voters are in favor of legalizing cannabis!
In the article titled “Prediction: Washington State will end marijuana prohibition in 26 months”, Rob Kampia of the national Marijuana Policy Project describes how Washington will be one of the first states to legalize marijuana.
The buzz in the press on legalizing marijuana in Washington is becoming constant. Last week, the Seattle Times published an editorial titled “Pot heads towards legalizationâ€.
Sensible Washington saw at Hempfest how fired up people are. Cannabis enthusiats signed up by the thousands to be a part of our campaign. This is the fire that’s behind building our green army of activists to pass an initiative in 2011. Every year that cannabis prohibition persists, 15,000 more people are arrested. We the people do not tolerate this kind of abuse.
What does all this media attention tell us?
Clearly, it’s universally agreed upon that now is the time to finally end marijuana prohibition, even if some activists disagree on tactics and timing. It also tells us that Sensible Washington has pushed the issue into the national spotlight with our initial I-1068 campaign and rapidly expanding grass-roots build-up for 2011. Since you are Sensible Washington, let me just say good job!
The Sensible Washington grass-roots campaign is thriving amidst all of this public discussion and we will work to ensure it continues.
You can help by writing letters to the editor of the Seattle Times and other publications in your area. Write about Sensible Washington, why you want to see marijuana legalized by initiative in 2011 and get our message to the voters!
You can also donate to Sensible Washington and finance our campaign to keep the pressure on and our voices heard!
Thank you.
In Solidarity,
Ezra Eickmeyer
Interim Campaign Coordinator
Sensible Washington
@ ezrydn
It says per rented or leased parcel also,with the landlords permission.
I could see it becoming a good business,to lease garden plots with security,especially close to a big city.
Even with 19’s success just around the corner, there’s still something missing.
In the US, people can drive with alcohol in their systems. Active Alcohol. The upper limit of BAC is .79. When you hit .8, you’re over the limit.
Is anyone looking into what sort of test for cannabis “activity” the LEOs are looking into? To test for metabolites would be a double standard and could possibly be struck down in courts, especially the 9th Circuit in CA.
What is everone’s thoughts on this situation? I have no problem being tested IF it isn’t a “dumpster dive.” Anyone with knowledge of lab tests to note active THC in the system?
This seems to be the next “need” on the list.
The only one mentioned recently is the one made by Philips
but we don’t have the info on whether it shows the actual
percentage of active metabolites,or what reference they would use.
Prohibition Hi-Tech Tool: Just Another Anti-Marijuana Silver Bullet?
http://blog.norml.org/2009/08/12/prohibition-hi-tech-tool-just-another-anti-marijuana-silver-bullet/
Have ranted about this because ex-DEA admin Tandy now works for Motorola and Philips is a subsidiary.
It is why Kerli is trying to convince congress and the states that drugged driving is such an issue,to get them to buy those expensive little toys.
They reportedly show recent use,but don’t know how accurate they show. A chart says that it can detect use up to 4 days,so if it cannot distinguish between 1 hr and 4 days,it would be useless to prove impaired driving.
Absolutly EZ . Im just sick of this pee test they use these days, the double standard it is. If(and when) cannabis became legal nation wide, there will have to be a new test for recent use. Not this metibolite “dumpster dive”.
“At 10 hours after smoking residual THC concentrations in the serum of occasional or even frequent users have declined to typically less than 5 ng/ml. The suggested per se limit in the range of 7–10 ng/ml safely avoids misclassiï¬cation of drivers presenting with THC residues from previous cannabis use.”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17916224
“a THC concentration in serum below 7–10 ng/mL (about 3.5–5 ng/mL whole blood) is too low to indicate an elevated accident risk. THC concentrations as high as 7 ng/mL are found in persons who smoked more than 3–4 hours ago and are not associated with impairment of driving-related skills.”
http://www.canorml.org/healthfacts/DUICreport.2005.pdf
@Firestarter Where did all of these internet trolls come from? and why is Firestarter undrgrndgirl? I guess it’s because no one will side with him and he has to make up people to support his unfounded claims.
That’s not quite right. You’re mistaken that you can’t get a DUI with a BAC of even as low as .01 The .8 ‘limit’ is a ‘per se’ limit which means that all the police have to prove is that the driver’s BAC exceeds that number. Lower than that the police have to actually prove impairment. I doubt that developing a standard test specific to cannabinoids would be hard to do. But really what they should do is to develop a video game type test and if you don’t
Did you know that the per se limit in Australia is .5 They also set up random checkpoints and test everyone who wants to pass through.
@Duncan20903
– Regarding the consent to search. You’re right. The police are very good at asking for that consent. They have years of training and know every psychological trick in the book, as well as taking advantage of their power position in the encounter. It’s not easy to resist them, perhaps even particularly when you have something to hide and have that additional fear. I shouldn’t harshly blame those who succumb. But I do want to take every opportunity to get people to realize that they should fight that urge to give in. I have seen so many bad situations where people trusted the police to be on their side and consented, as well as good stories where people stood up for their rights.
– Regarding alcohol in Australia… I was there some years ago and got stopped in a random checkpoint. In this case, they weren’t stopping everyone. They just had policemen standing out in the middle of the road and they’d point to a car and have them pull over for a quick breathalyzer test. Different Constitutional protections there. So I got stopped and had to do the breath test. The interesting thing about it was this was at 10 a.m. on a Thursday (tells you something about Aussies and their love for alcohol).
Seen this one?
Licenced patient medicates in the Canadian Parliament
Under the law, what he did was prefectly legal too. They had the Olympic Torch in the chamber last winter, so there is precedent about having lighted things there. Only tobacco use is outlawed.
BTW, Duncan, the temperance people over at MADD Canada are lobbying for similar, Australian-style random testing.
I doubt that our constitution would allow this, and I’m waiting for someone to call them out on who they actually are: a stealth police lobby group.
Oh, do you know they also hire psychics with donated funds?
You can’t make this stuff up.