Drug WarRant

A rather strange article by Shari Roan in the Health section of the Los Angeles Times titled A bit of tarnish on marijuana’s benign reputation

Ooh, I wondered, what dire medical study has been misinterpreted just in time for the final weeks before Prop 19? What is this “bit of tarnish,” then?

But, with a $5,000-a-year habit and chronic bronchitis, she tried repeatedly to quit. About a dozen times over the years she checked in alone to a hotel in Desert Hot Springs to white-knuckle herself through nausea, sweats and tremors.

Yep. They found some crazy lady with a $5,000-a-year pot habit. That’s not tarnish, that anecdote. Guess what? I found a crazy lady who has 130 cats. Doesn’t really say much useful about whether people should be allowed to own cats.

The meat of the article, if you can call it that, was another re-hash of the litany of health concerns while trying to strike a false balance in most instances.

Even Keith Humphreys made a cameo appearance as he chucked a random straw man into the article’s murky depths.

One particularly solid bit of research was the part about cannabis and driving:

The science of marijuana becomes murky when one steps beyond addiction statistics to examine effects on health.

A series of studies conducted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration published in 1998 found that the effects of marijuana alone on driving were small or moderate, but severe when combined with alcohol.

But other studies show little impairment from a moderate dose: A 2004 study in the journal Accident, Analysis and Prevention found no increased risk of motor vehicle accidents causing traumatic injury among drivers using marijuana.

“Even after smoking, there aren’t any real deficits in driving ability that we can detect in the laboratory,” said Mitch Earleywine, an associate professor of psychology at the State University of New York at Albany who serves as an advisory board member at the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

Exactly. Other than the part about driving after drinking alcohol, it’s pretty much unanimous that marijuana and driving is not a serious issue.

Except the next line is:

The data on lung damage and smoking-related cancers are similarly mixed…

Wait. Similarly mixed? As in… not at all? Where was the mixed data on drugged driving in the article?

And then…

The data on lung damage and smoking-related cancers are similarly mixed, in part because a large portion of heavy marijuana users also smoke tobacco, which muddies the picture of marijuana’s effects.

No, the data on lung damage and smoking-related cancers are not mixed. Not unless you ignore the definitive study of its kind conducted by Tashkin at UCLA and funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. That study accounted for tobacco use, unlike the tiny study in New Zealand that the drug prohibitionists like to quote, since their own big definitive study failed to produce the cancer they hoped for.

Like I said. A strange article. Not an all bad one, as there are plenty of good points in it. But to hang it on one woman’s addiction, and then use the false balancing technique, for each point (whether there existed balance or not).

It was.

“I hear bad noise, I thought somebody breaks in,” Jakymek told NBCChicago.com. “In that time, about 20 guys came in, and they said they were looking for guns and narcotics. They tell me to go into the bathroom. … They search everything. … I was scared. I thought it was gang.”

The men who burst into the home reportedly were members of the Cook County Sheriff’s Police Gang Crimes Unit, executing a search warrant for guns and narcotics.

The raid was based on information from a confidential informant.

Yep. That’s the level of police investigation required to have 20 men invade your home.

Just another day.

According to the sheriff’s office:

“Over the last four years, our gangs and narcotics unit has served more than 500 search warrants, and it is incredibly rare that those searches have resulted in this sort of outcome.”

“Incredibly rare” is still too much. And 500 search warrants in four years is about 1 every three days. That’s too much. It’s a broken system. If you served 5,000 narcotics search warrants or 5 in the same time period, it would have no difference on the availability of drugs. All you’re doing is pushing the odds. When you reduce the amount of investigation and, in mass numbers, use violent tactics for situations that shouldn’t even be situations, it doesn’t even matter how good you are. You’re playing Russian Roulette with peoples’ lives.

Colbert discusses Prop 19 with Joseph Califano and Gary Johnson

Via Stop the Drug War. League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) of California supports Prop 19. Another good endorsement to go along with the California NAACP, the National Black Police Association, and the Latino Voters League.

“The current prohibition laws are not working for Latinos, nor for society as a whole,” said Argentina Dávila-Luévano, California LULAC State Director. “Far too many of our brothers and sisters are getting caught in the cross-fire of gang wars here in California and the cartel wars south of our border. It’s time to end prohibition, put violent, organized criminals out of business and bring marijuana under the control of the law.”

For an ugly and ignorant reaction to this news, read Dennis Romero.

Check out C-Span at 9:15 am Eastern on Saturday, October 9

Allen St. Pierre of NORML vs. former DEA head Asa Hutchinson

I’ve been invited back to C-Span to debate and discuss the topics of cannabis legalization, and specifically California’s upcoming vote on Prop. 19, a measure that if approved by the voters will effectively
legalize cannabis in America’s most important state politically and
economically.

Former Drug Enforcement Administration chief and Republican congressman from Arkansas Asa Hutchinson has stepped up to argue in favor of the status quo and continuing into a ninth decade of Cannabis Prohibition.

The live interview is scheduled to broadcast Saturday morning (10/9/10) on C-Span TV, 9:15am – 10:00am (eastern…sorry west coasters!). Like most C-Span shows, the public is invited to ask questions or make short
commentary.

To watch online, go to: http://www.c-span.org/Watch/C-SPAN.aspx

This C-Span interview is likely the result of the Wall Street Journal
publishing an unprecedented jointly signed letter earlier this week by
every previous DEA administrator predictably calling for the Obama
administration to actively oppose politically viable cannabis legalization
voter initiatives in places like California (just the way they did).

Is the body politic (and the mainstream media that has so aptly aided and
abetted these technocrats’ blatant disregard for democracy, science,
compassion and common sense) really, really nervous about the cataclysmic blow that California voters are about to level on a self-evidently failed federal government public policy—another ‘war’ lost by government?

What do you think?

See you on the TV and kind regards,

-Allen St. Pierre
Executive Director
NORML

Some of the stuff that comes out in the circus of the upcoming Prop 19 vote is just amazing.

Scott Erickson writes in the Daily Caller: If pot is legalized, government will distort the market for it

What many in the drug legalization crowd fail to recognize is that government, in its infinite wisdom, will ultimately distort this newly legitimate marketplace to such a degree that it will render the perceived benefits of its creation insignificant. In its zeal to capitalize on what it sees as a major new source of revenue, government will popularize marijuana use among the general public and, through overzealous taxation and regulation, fail to reduce the aforementioned black market and all of its attendant criminality.

Case in point: California’s Proposition 19, while not setting a uniform standard for taxation of marijuana across the state, will allow individual localities the leeway to set their own standards of taxation on the sale and cultivation of marijuana. If Proposition 19 and Measure C — a related measure linked to the passage of Prop 19 — pass, localities will be able to tax marijuana at rates upwards of ten percent.

While Proposition 19 would make the possession and recreational use of marijuana legal in California, levying a ten percent tax on those selling it lawfully, coupled with a host of other fees related to its cultivation, will increase its cost to such a degree that many pot smokers will simply continue to buy their weed from sources unencumbered by the state’s regulations, e.g. drug dealers.

This does not bode well for the proposition that legalizing “harmless” drugs such as marijuana will lessen the prevalence of illicit drug dealers.

Upwards of 10 percent? You’re kidding. California’s sales tax is 8.25%. 10 percent is nothing. At a 10 percent tax, there’s no way that the black market could compete. Plus, the fact is, consumers prefer to purchase legally and are willing to pay quite a significant premium to do so.

So localities would have quite a bit of leeway in adding taxes. Their biggest concern will be competition from other localities. If one town raises taxes too high, the neighboring town with lower cannabis taxes will benefit from greater sales.

Keith Humphreys has apparently decided to go all out with this bizarre rant about dead tobacco consumers.

It apparently goes like this:

• Tobacco companies cause 40,000 deaths per year from cigarette smoking; therefore, don’t legalize marijuana.

Apparently, part of this strange equation involves big businesses that are unhappy with the low numbers of consumers that they’ve killed and want to increase that number. They will then hijack the legal marijuana business, make everyone want to buy an inferior product through advertising, and poison the product so that people, who have never died from marijuana, will start dropping dead all over the place.

To Keith (in an otherwise good post), it’s like big business is worse than the combination of Mexican Drug Cartels and Al Qaeda.

The other possible outcome is that AG Holder (and note this is rank speculation, I have not discussed this with him and have no idea what he will decide in the end) does not intervene at all. In that case the coming years will see either Big Tobacco having a line of lucrative, well-marketed cannabis products, or, a new industry created that more or less conducts itself like Big Tobacco.

and that links to…

“This law hands another product to market to tobacco companies or creates a doppelganger that will lobby with them,” Humphreys said. “I don’t want to see some 16-year-old kid who smokes a joint have his life ruined, but . . . this law is not just legalized use, it’s legalized corporate ownership [and] legalized marketing.”

Humphreys predicts that tobacco companies, which have been poised and ready to accept cannabis into their product line since the 1970s, will align their aggressive marketing tactics and billions of dollars in lobbying power to gain control of cannabis in California.

“It’s taken us 40 years to bring tobacco companies even modestly to heel, and tobacco still kills 40,000 people per year,” he said. “How about let’s show we can regulate one industry that sells an addictive plant before we take on another.”

What a scary concept: “legalized corporate ownership [and] legalized marketing.” That sounds like something that some kind of Capitalist Society might have. Not like a nice benign Nanny State that tells its citizens what’s best for them, and that sends armed and hooded peacemakers through the front door of their homes to make sure they don’t do something that’s bad for them.

Thank God we have Keith Humphreys here in the states to protect us from the horrors of consumer choice.

If you haven’t donated to Prop 19 yet, you still have time (see the link above), and you’ll be in some pretty darned good company.

Why We Donated $100,000 to Prop 19

I am President and co-owner of Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps, a 60-year-old company founded by my German-Jewish grandfather, Emanuel Bronner in 1948. Our family and over 60 employees in California produce the best-selling natural brand of soap in the United States. We use certified organic and fair trade vegetable oils, including non-drug hemp seed oil to super-fat the soaps for smoother lather and moisturizing after-feel. […]

Dr. Bronner’s buys 20 tons of hemp oil for our soaps from Canada annually. For nearly ten years the Bronner family has financially supported bringing back non-drug industrial hemp farming in the US as an environmentally sustainable crop that can be made into a wide variety of products including food, cosmetics, clothing, building materials and more.

I have decided to personally give a $75,000 donation to Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP) for “Get Out the Vote” efforts to pass Prop 19 in California, the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010. Adam Eidinger and Alan Amsterdam, co-founders of Capitol Hemp Clothing and Accessories, have donated an additional $25,000 as well. Dr. Bronner’s will also provide the company’s promotional fire truck to “sound the alarm” on college campuses across California. We hope to mobilize younger voters who are the primary victims of the war on cannabis who know first-hand the lies of cannabis prohibition.

There’s a number of incredible stories in this one statement.

• One is the donation of $100,000, ten times what the alcohol distributors gave to the other side.
• One is the fact that the primary need for Dr. Bronner’s is industrial hemp, but he’s willing to put his money there for the sake of the future, even though this bill won’t directly do anything for the industrial hemp problem.
• And one is the fact of the heavy involvement of SSDP in campaigning for Prop 19. These young people are our future, and under the terms of the Prop 19 law that they are working hard to pass, they won’t even be able to smoke pot legally. Instead of whining about it like some of the anti-Prop-19 potheads, these young people know that the important thing is to change the paradigm — to stop prohibition. That’s the first step is breaking the beast, and then, eventually, we’ll find a way to treat those of an age to be sent off to die in wars as though they were human beings.

… but that’s not all!

Facebook’s Sean Parker Outdoes Moskovitz With $100K For Marijuana Bill

Sean Parker, co-founder of Facebook and Napster, has joined his former colleague Dustin Moskovitz by cutting a large check towards the legalization of marijuana.

Not to be outdone by America’s youngest billionaire Moskovitz, who gave $70,000 to California’s Proposition 19, Parker has donated $100,000 to the ballot initiative that would make it legal to possess the drug for personal use.

That’s right. The two founders of Facebook… $170,000. Not bad.

According to Sasha Horwitz, the New Media Coordinator for Proposition 19:

Founding fathers of the biggest social networking site in the world, Parker and Moskovitz’s contributions represent another sign that political influence in California is skewing younger and in the direction of Silicon Valley. The next wave in political organizing will begin with youth, and that may mean it will be born online. Parker and Moskovitz’s technical leadership taps into the generational shift in attitudes toward the failed drug war, which costs the state hundreds of millions of dollars each year.

…goes to Maia Szalavitz, in a very interesting analysis in Time Magazine: Prop 19 Analysis: Will Marijuana Legalization Increase Use?

Many questions remain about what will happen if Proposition 19 passes, but the only result I can unequivocally predict is that drug policy debates will finally become less theoretical — and much more interesting.

The case for legalizing marijuana by Gary Mason

There was a time, particularly when my children were young, when I wasn’t sure legalizing pot was such a good idea. But that old-school approach doesn’t hold up any more. The fact is, the war on marijuana has done far more harm than the substance itself. And every reason for legalizing it in the U.S. applies to Canada as well.

If I were to sum up one of our biggest challenges, it is helping people distinguish between the harms of (legal and illegal) drug misuse and the harms of drug prohibition.

There is justifiable fear and terror around the drug trade. Everyday we read and hear about the bloody drug war in Mexico that has taken the lives of at least 28,000 people in a little over three years. We see and hear about shootings, murders and violence in our cities because of the drug trade.

For too long, people have associated the violence with the drugs themselves, rather than the policy of prohibition.

Some very good stuff in there, and a nice job of laying out the options (although the “Fight it out in the courts” paragraph is a glib throwaway that shows a complete lack of understanding of Constitutional law).

Personally, I think Obama will follow the “Make some examples” option, just enough to make it appear that he’s tough, while trying to paint the “examples” as being distributors of drugs to kids, so as not to overly enrage the general pot-smoking population.

As Tom Angell from “Yes on 19” put it when I spoke to him, “If the president wants to further demoralize his base, stepping in and overturning the will of the voters of California on marijuana reform would be a great way to do that.”

This is an open thread.