Drug WarRant

We’ve seen numerous articles about the votes emboldening other countries.

Jeralyn at TalkLeft has an excellent article about Colorado Representatives drafting bills to keep the feds out of state marijuana laws: CO Reps to Introduce Bill on Marijuana to Protect Amendment 64

Rep. Diana DeGette says she is putting the final touches on a bill that would amend the preemption section of federal drug law to add a clause that excludes state marijuana laws. The Denver Post, in an editorial, applauds her for taking action and for urging the Justice Department to “show restraint.” Reps. Jared Polis and Ed Perlmutter are also working, with DeGette and independently, on federal bills that would allow Amendment 64 to proceed, rather than waiting for an answer from D.O.J.

Jeralyn also points out passages in the U.S. Attorney’s manual that are extremely relevant to prosecutorial decisions as they may relate to going after marijuana offenses:

Nature and Seriousness of Offense. It is important that limited Federal resources not be wasted in prosecuting inconsequential cases or cases in which the violation is only technical. Thus, in determining whether a substantial Federal interest exists that requires prosecution, the attorney for the government should consider the nature and seriousness of the offense involved. A number of factors may be relevant. One factor that is obviously of primary importance is the actual or potential impact of the offense on the community….

The impact of an offense on the community in which it is committed can be measured in several ways…. In assessing the seriousness of the offense in these terms, the prosecutor may properly weigh such questions as….what the public attitude is toward prosecution under the circumstances of the case. The public may be indifferent, or even opposed, to enforcement of the controlling statute whether on substantive grounds, or because of a history of non-enforcement, or because the offense involves essentially a minor matter of private concern.

Unlikely allies behind marijuana votes in Washington, Colorado

What transpired in Colorado and Washington were disciplined efforts that forged alliances between liberals and tea party conservatives, often using public health arguments to advance their cause.

Proponents and analysts said both states benefited from existing medical marijuana statutes, money from national liberalization supporters and a sometimes disorganized opposition.

Thought it might be worth opening up this up given discussions we’ve had here in the past.

Every year, elementary students are encouraged to do the most bizarre activities in furtherance of the DEA-glorifying Red Ribbon week. Here’s another one: Creating a drug-free message, which includes things like “crazy sock day with a reminder to ‘Sock Out Drugs!'”

I particularly loved the door-decorating contest with the winner “Toadily Against Drugs!”… particularly when you consider the psychoactive properties of the substance in the glands of many toads.

Link

The irony for the U.S. government is that Mexico, and the rest of the world, now has a U.S. precedent to cite when creating blueprints for a post-Drug War world.

“Now we are not like madmen in the desert,” Jorge Hernández, president of the Collective for an Integral Drug Policy and legalization advocate, told Time. “This transforms the debate.”

The votes in Washington and Colorado have world-wide significance.

Jim Corbett of USA Today Sports put out the most clueless piece today regarding the legalization of marijuana in Colorado and Washington, with assistance from Lindsay Jones and Jeff Zillgitt of USA Today Sports: Amendments don’t change leagues’ stances on marijuana

Now there’s one huge glaring omission in the entire article that completely invalidates any meaning. As you read some quotes from the article, I’m going to supply the missing element for you in pictures.

NBA spokesman Mike Bass told USA TODAY Sports that the amendments won’t impact the league’s substance-abuse policy: “Marijuana is a prohibited substance under our collectively bargained anti-drug program,” he said.

So, the message is simple: No matter what state law says, light up a joint and a sports career can go up in smoke. […]

Former Broncos tight end Shannon Sharpe, a member of the Hall of Fame, told USA TODAY Sports that loosening the league and NFLPA’s collectively bargained substance abuse policy that mandates suspensions for using the drug won’t change any time soon because it sends the wrong message.

“That will never happen. Not in our lifetime, because of the way kids follow what NFL players do,” said Sharpe, a CBS analyst. “If you look at Little League football, kids who play want to wear the pink towels and shoes for breast cancer awareness … they follow everything the big guys do.

“The voters have spoken in Colorado. They don’t think to a certain degree, the amount is a big deal. They voted and said so. But I don’t see the NFL, basketball or baseball condoning it.” […]

“There are a lot of things that are legal outside of the NFL — Ephedera, Adderal. There are certain things you can take as a normal citizen walking around the street that are legal,” Sharpe said. “It sends the wrong message.”

Cannabis legalisation in Washington and Colorado: A game changer at Transform Drug Policy Foundation Blog

Thirdly, there is the clash with international law. The new Colorado and Washington legislation puts the states in clear breach of the general obligation of the 1961 UN drug convention requiring the criminalisation of non-medical supply and use. The US, perhaps ironically now, has historically been the biggest cheerleader for such prohibitions on the global stage. A complete U-turn from this position isn’t realistic, but it will be interesting to see whether, at the international level, they at least tone down their “tough on drugs” rhetoric now that they themselves are the first to do the previously unthinkable.

Even if there isn’t much of a change in the US’s posturing about drugs in international forums, the hypocrisy of demanding that other nations carry on enforcing prohibition while they themselves are retreating from it, could be enough to encourage a range of countries to start agitating for reform. What is to stop the Netherlands, for example, from finally solving its “back door problem” and legally regulating production and supply to its cannabis coffee shops, which have for decades operated in a quasi-legal paradox. Change is already well under way in Latin America, and the developments in Colorado and Washington will only help the region’s case for the need to explore alternatives to the war on drugs.

Finally, while drug policy reformers – particularly those in the US who did such an incredible job mobilising support – should all be delighted that these measures have passed, we should refrain being smug about these victories. Although this news adds to the stream of positive developments over the past couple of years, there is still a long way to go.

What Tuesday’s Marijuana Victories Mean for the War on Drugs by Erik Kain in Forbes.

I asked Marijuana Majority’s Tom Angell if the success in those states signifies a shift away from medical marijuana arguments toward full legalization. Not exactly, he told me.

“I think the two-track model will continue for some time with activists leading efforts to legalize marijuana in places where polling suggests significant support, while advocates in other places try for the somewhat easier win of allowing medical marijuana and at least getting ill people off the battlefield of the “war on drugs.””

U.S. votes to legalize pot may encourage Latin American challenges to drug war by Tim Johnson

Others who push for global decriminalization of marijuana laws also said that U.S. efforts to pressure foreign nations over marijuana would weaken.

“It really is a game changer. It places the U.S. in a very different place,” said Kasia Malinowska-Sempruch, the director of the global drug-policy program of the Open Society Foundation, a New York-based group funded by liberal financier George Soros. “This clearly says the paradigm is shifting.”

Jelsma said that if U.S. states such as Colorado and Washington could impose a regime of control on marijuana that didn’t cause usage to soar, “it could mark a snowball effect on Latin America.”

Among those unhappy with moves to legalize marijuana are likely to be Mexican organized-crime groups, which earn billions of dollars a year smuggling pot to the United States. A study published last month by the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness, a nonpartisan research center that examines the effects of globalization, said that as much as a third of crime groups’ revenue came from smuggling pot.

Next Mexican administration: US legal marijuana vote changes ‘rules of the game’ in drug war – Associated Press

Alejandro Hope, now an analyst at the Mexican Competitiveness Institute, added that a key factor would be the reaction by the U.S. federal government to the votes. A strong federal crackdown on legalized pot could negate all but the smallest effects on Mexico’s cartels, he said.

Hope said a flourishing legal pot market in Colorado could reduce Mexican cartels’ estimated annual income from roughly $6 billion to about $4.6 billion.

If U.S. states start developing a marijuana industry, “This will not be a super-lucrative business proposition for a criminal enterprise,” Hope said. “This will not be a cash cow.”

The loss of income to cartels might lead them to branch into other criminal activities at home like kidnapping, Hope said, but he said such crimes were much more difficult to carry out than marijuana smuggling, so he considered that relatively unlikely.

He said he believed it was more likely the loss of income would force cartels to shrink and even cut into their smuggling of other drugs, because they have been using income from marijuana smuggling to pay the costs of other illegal operations, such as bribes to officials.
“It might produce a reduction in cocaine and heroin smuggling if the effect was large enough,” Hope said. “… How much, and in what directions, beats me at this point.”

Victory for Pot Means Beginning of the End of Our Crazy Drug War – Martin Lee at the Daily Beast takes us on a brief walk through the history of cannabis prohibition.

With the voters in Washington and Colorado legalizing marijuana, Martin A. Lee argues that the war on pot may be over—and good riddance to decades of bad science, scare-mongering, and harsh laws.

Residents of Colorado and Washington made history on Election Day by voting to legalize the adult use of marijuana. For a country punch-drunk on decades of anti-marijuana hysteria, it felt like a momentary jolt of sobriety. It might even go down as a long-term game-changer. The passage of Amendment 64 in Colorado and Initiative 502 in Washington could herald the beginning of the end of marijuana prohibition nationwide.

Some of the network media have been trying to cover the legalization of marijuana in Colorado and Washington and clearly are in catch-up mode, not really knowing how to talk about it. And they’re completely thrown by the fact that the DOJ, for the most part, isn’t coming right out and commenting. So they’re all forced to turn to… Kevin Sabet.

Check out this ABC piece by Christing NG: Marijuana Legalization Celebrations May be Premature, Lawmakers and Experts Say.

The experts on what the federal government will do appear to be… Kevin Sabet.

“I think this is the beginning of the conversation on legalization, not the end,” former Obama Drug Policy Advisor Dr. Kevin Sabet told ABCNews.com today.

“When you have the governors of both states [opposing it] as well as the president and Congress, who has already determined that marijuana is illegal, this is not going to be a walk in the park for marijuana enthusiasts,” Sabet said. […]

Even though the measures have passed, they are likely to meet legal challenges very quickly.

Sabet predicted that the federal government would find a way to make clear that the passage of the amendments violates federal law and they won’t “take this lying down.”

“I wouldn’t advise anyone to toke up just yet. This is going to be caught up in the courts. This is a to-be-determined situation,” Sabet said. “The government has multiple avenues. They can wait until it’s implemented, take action before it’s implemented, reiterate what federal law is, send warning letters.”

The avenue the federal government will choose remains to be seen, Sabet said, especially since the passage is unprecedented.

“If you look back, the only precedent is the medical marijuana situation,” he said.

In 2005, the Supreme Court by an 8-0 margin struck down a California law that legalized medical marijuana in the state. The Court said Congress had the power to criminalize marijuana under the Commerce Clause.

He said that it may take a state’s move toward implementation to spur the federal government into intervening.

“I think you’re going to see very soon a response from the administration,” he said. “It’s completely premature for any legalization advocate to be celebrating at this point.” […]

When asked if the federal government may try to quickly quash the amendments as a way to prevent a potential future domino effect of other states following in the footsteps of Colorado and Washington, Sabet said a failed legalization could actually set the movement back.

“A lot is going to ride on what happens next in these two states.” he said. “This very well may backfire because if this does not turn out so well, if implementation does not happen, the donors and millionaires that donated for this to happen may pause when doing it in other states.”

“I think people should just pause before celebrating this,” Sabet said. “The story is just beginning.”

What’s that – something like a dozen paragraphs out of a not particularly long story dedicated to total speculation by a former employee of the federal government about what the federal government will do.

And I’ve seen this in a number of articles. I asked Christine why she devoted so much time to this, but she hasn’t responded yet.

I asked another reporter why he depended on Kevin Sabet quotes and he told me: “I too would like some answers from the DOJ but in the absence of that we have to give our readers some idea of how they might be leaning.”

But the question is, how does Kevin know how they’re leaning? Why couldn’t the reporter give the basic facts of the federal-state conflict without having to turn to someone who appears to be nothing more than a media whore looking for more attention?

I asked Kevin if he was being paid to speak for the federal government or whether he just enjoyed making stuff up? He said he wouldn’t answer me unless I took back some of the things I’ve said about him in the past…. I decided I didn’t really need to know the answer that bad.

The thing is, good reporting can be done.

• The Denver Post managed to talk to people who will actually be involved: Colorado officials seek clarity after passage of marijuana measure
• Dominic Holden talked directly to Seattle police: Seattle Cops on Pot: “People Can Expect No Enforcement on Possession”

Update: Stop the Drug War has done a follow-up of this blog post: Fast Talking Has Started

Norm Stamper has a good little piece in the Huffington Post: Washington State to the ‘Other’ Washington: Look But Don’t Touch

We now respectfully invite the federal government to look at, indeed to study our decision and its implementation. But we also ask the feds to keep their hands off our new law.

For years, decades, federal officials have snubbed science, avoided honest conversation, refused to debate the issues. With the administration (and Congress) rejecting calls to examine the economic, moral, and social costs of marijuana prohibition, the smartest thing it can do now is to monitor our incubator baby, give it a chance to survive and become a model for how to end an obscenely expensive and failed drug war.

It’s a good sentiment and a logical one — after all, what government that actually cared about the general welfare of its population wouldn’t look at this as a learning opportunity? But then, our federal government has not been particularly interested in logic or the general welfare.

The DOJ has been remarkably mute on the subject, choosing to let loose-cannon Kevin Sabet act as unofficial spokesperson for the federal government and anti-legalization.

However, if our experience with medical marijuana is any indication, then we can expect the DEA and the U.S. Attorneys to be gearing up for the confrontation.

So now is the time to consider strategies…

What seems to be pretty much a given is that the DEA will not go after consumers. They simply don’t have the staff to do it. 99% of possession arrests are by state and local police — if they’re not doing it under the new law (and they certainly better not be), then the feds can’t do much about it.

So, as with medical marijuana, they’ll go after the big suppliers. That’s almost impossible to defend against — the government’s ability to seize property and the visibility of large suppliers makes it easy picking.

So, to the extent possible, the smart thing would be to push for a lot of small suppliers — make it hard for the DEA to go after them and less of a loss if they do.

Pot Trucks

Perhaps the legal marijuana industry can take a page from the Food Truck fad. Create a fleet of pot trucks that can park in towns in regular parking spots and sell from the truck. Keep only one day’s supply on the truck. No land to seize and no valuable buildings. They could even sell food from the trucks.

If the DEA starts seizing trucks, go to the bike vendors. It would be quite a sight to see the DEA trying to chase these down.

Obviously all these things have to be worked out with the language of the state laws and it probably won’t be that simple.

But the point is that it should be possible to get creative and come up with ways to make it prohibitively difficult for the federal government to interfere (or embarrassing PR). That may mean that it’ll also be harder for anyone to make big profits — but that’s OK to me if it means getting a workable legal system in place and driving the federal government out of local enforcement.

Just for fun, we’ll throw in a little video of Halle Berry bugging Jay Leno about smoking pot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ScKWTssKZY&sns=em

And for election geeks out there, this is a fascinating interactive chart showing the various paths to electoral victory for Obama and Romney.

(There’s a perverse part of me that would be intrigued by seeing an electoral tie caused by Gary Johnson.)

Let’s hope Americans make the right choice tomorrow – by legalizing cannabis in the Catholic Herald(!)