Drug WarRant

Tom Angell’s got a pretty good scoop:

Exclusive: Justice Department Admits Misleading Congress on Marijuana Vote

Justice Department officials misinformed members of Congress about the effects of a medical marijuana amendment being considered by the U.S. House of Representatives, according to an internal memo obtained by Marijuana.com.

The amendment, which lawmakers approved in May 2014 by a vote of 219-189 despite the Obama administration’s objections, is aimed at preventing the Department of Justice from spending money to interfere with the implementation of state medical cannabis laws.

But in the days leading up to the vote, department officials distributed “informal talking points” warning House members that the measure could “in effect, limit or possibly eliminate the Department’s ability to enforce federal law in recreational marijuana cases as well,” according to the document. [Emphasis added.]

This is the most bizarre thing I’ve read all week.

Suspended Cops Say Video of Them Eating Marijuana Edibles During a Raid Violated Their Privacy

You may remember this – the video was widely circulated of cops who had raided a medical marijuana place, gotten all the cameras (they thought) and then spent quite some time there eating marijuana edibles and goofing around.

Among other things, their lawsuit argues that the officers thought they had disabled all of the security cameras at Sky High Holistic and therefore had a reasonable expectation of privacy. The cops complain that the dispensary never got their permission to record them as they searched the premises.

“All police personnel present had a reasonable expectation that their conversations were no longer being recorded and the undercover officers, feeling that they were safe to do so, removed their masks,” says the complaint, which was filed in Orange County Superior Court. “Without the illegal recordings, there would have been no internal investigation of any officer.”

Wow.

John Walters. He keeps showing up. I feel like I have a long-term dysfunctional relationship with this man. It’s been so many years that this blog has had to deal with him in one way or another. After he left the ONDCP, I hoped that would be it, but he keeps popping up with the same misdirection, fractured logic, and fake moral highground.

Marijuana legalization movement makes no sense by David Murray and John P. Walters.

His material is always a good lesson for analyzing the talking points of prohibitionists.

I’ll just point out one logic dodge. You can have fun with the rest.

First he tries to avoid the clear proof that marijuana is safer than alcohol by saying that it’s improper to compare them.

Or consider the argument that marijuana is “safer to use” than alcohol. That alcohol is dangerous all acknowledge, costing the health of thousands. But the proper argument is that each intoxicant presents its own unique threats. It is not productive medically to “rank” them.

Each is unique. I see.

Now just one paragraph away…

A major dimension of alcohol damage is the sheer prevalence of use, some six times greater than the prohibited marijuana, driving up the “disease burden.” Were regulated marijuana to reach the proportions of use of alcohol, the public health impact would be staggering.

What happened to “each is unique”? Now, suddenly, without any evidence whatsoever, legalization of marijuana will cause a “staggering” public health impact because it’s just like alcohol.

Go home, John. And take Davey with you.

Oh, this is just fun.

Anti-MDMA Campaign Warns Teens About Dangers Of Feeling More Connected To Others

ROCKVILLE, MD—Explaining that most young people mistakenly believe the popular drug to be safe for recreational use, officials from the National Institute on Drug Abuse unveiled a new anti-MDMA campaign Friday warning teens about the dangers of feeling deep emotional connections to others. “Too many of our nation’s children don’t realize that even a single dose of MDMA—or Molly, as it’s known—has the devastating potential to make users feel like they’re part of one big human family, connected to all those around them by a single cosmic thread,” said NIDA spokesperson June Kessler, who noted that 13- to 18-year-olds were especially at risk of succumbing to a profound warmth and admiration toward their peers that knows no bounds.

“Teens need to know this isn’t just a benign party drug; it comes with serious consequences, and it can and will cause users to see the world from the eyes of the people standing next to them and, within minutes, realize they love them that much more for it. The only way to avoid these disastrous side effects is to stay away from Molly altogether.” Kessler added that if a sudden rush of empathy wasn’t scary enough, MDMA has also been known to cause things to look, taste, and feel exponentially better.

Awww… too bad.

This article really makes me smile.

Congress’ Summer Fling With Marijuana.
How Congress turned on the DEA and embraced weed. by James Higdon.

[…] The next day, Leonhart retired, a move Chaffetz and Cummings deemed “appropriate.” That was April.

In May, the Senate made history by voting in favor of the first pro-marijuana measure ever offered in that chamber to allow the Veterans Administration to recommend medical marijuana to veterans. Then when June rolled around, it was time for the House to pass its appropriations bill for Commerce, Justice and Science. That’s when things got interesting. The DEA got its budget cut by $23 million, had its marijuana eradication unit’s budget slashed in half and its bulk data collections program shut down. Ouch.

In short, April was a bad month for the DEA; May was historically bad; but June was arguably the DEA’s worst month since Colorado went legal 18 months ago […]

The string of setbacks, cuts and handcuffs for the DEA potentially signals a new era for the once untouchable law enforcement agency—a sign that the national reconsideration of drug policy might engulf and fundamentally alter DEA’s mission.

“The DEA is no longer sacrosanct,” Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) tells Politico. […]

But unlike such dire warnings in the past, when Congress could be assured of protecting funding for a law enforcement agency seen for decades as key to winning the War on Drugs, the shine has now clearly come off DEA—and that means the agency’s problems might just be beginning.

This has been a long time coming.

This refers back to one of the items in the “Odds and Ends” post this week…

Kyle Carriker found not guilty of felony murder

WICHITA, Kan. — Jurors have reached a not guilty verdict in the murder trial of a man accused in a deadly drug deal.

Kyler Carriker was one of five men charged in the 2013 death of Ronald Betts. Specifically, Carriker was charged under the state’s felony murder rule. […]

Carriker left the courtroom and hugged his mother, former Kansas gubernatorial and Wichita mayoral candidate Jennifer Winn. She and other protesters said from the beginning, marijuana offenses should not be grouped in the same category as inherently violent felonies.

Good that the jury saw through this farce, even if the District Attorney still defends the prosecution.

Remember when former head Michele Leonhart refused to say that marijuana was less harmful than heroin?

Well, her predecessor, Acting Administrator Chuck Rosenberg, has taken a bold step toward… oafishness.

New DEA Leader: Pot Probably Not as Bad as Heroin. ‘I’m not an expert,’ he adds.

“If you want me to say that marijuana’s not dangerous, I’m not going to say that because I think it is,” Rosenberg said. “Do I think it’s as dangerous as heroin? Probably not. I’m not an expert.”

He added: “Let me say it this way: I’d rather be in a car accident going 30 miles an hour than 60 miles an hour, but I’d prefer not to be in a car accident at all.”

Now that’s leadership.

As of today, Drug WarRant has been going for 12 years, with 6,090 posts and 10s of thousands of comments (don’t have an actual number on comments, since the count on those re-started when I moved to WordPress in 2009 – 70,000 since then).

We’ve seen some great progress in those 12 years (and some things have hardly changed at all).

The thing that really makes this site special is all the commenters who hang out on the couch. Thanks to all of you!

In the “things haven’t changed at all” category: Kansas Man Facing Felony Murder Charge for Telling an Acquaintance Where He Could Find Marijuana

The felony murder rule continues to cause injustice.

Also in the things-haven’t-changed category… Sandra Bland Marijuana Smear Is Another Cheap Trick of Racist Drug War

At a news conference discussing the preliminary findings of an autopsy following Bland’s alleged suicide at the Waller County Jail in Texas last week, officials placed heavy emphasis on marijuana reported to be found in the young woman’s system.

Why this emphasis? What does this have to do with widespread demands for accountability around the circumstances of her death? Are we expected to believe the not so subtle insinuation that marijuana use played a part?

In the category of “we wouldn’t have believed this 12 years ago…

[Via Press Release]: Senate Appropriations Committee Approves Measure Intended to Ensure Marijuana Businesses Have Access to Banking Services

The amendment, offered by Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) to the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill, would prohibit the Treasury Department and its enforcement arm, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network or FinCEN, from using federal funds to punish banks that provide financial services to marijuana businesses that are operating legally under state laws.

See also: 10 Reasons Why Federal Medical Marijuana Prohibition Is About to Go Up in Smoke

Or, how about this? A ‘Drugged Driver’ Who Wasn’t Avoids Prison in Pedestrian’s Death

Then something surprising happened. Kane County State’s Attorney Joseph McMahon, after carefully considering the facts of the case, decided to drop the felony charge. “There was no evidence whatsoever of impaired driving,” McMahon told the Daily Herald. “Her THC levels were zero. The metabolite was positive. A metabolite is not what impairs someone’s ability to drive.”

Baby steps, sometimes, but real change has been happening, and it appears that maybe…

Slowly but surely, the Western world is coming down from the hallucinatory war on drugs

Slowly but surely, the Western world is coming down from the hallucinatory war on drugs. Legalisation and regulation is safer for both users and society at large. One day we will look back with amazement at the idea of handing control of potentially-dangerous markets to the most lethal gangs on earth. These small steps in Derbyshire and Durham on cannabis are one more sign of progress towards a saner world.

There’s a new app available for iOS and Android called Canary that lets you test whether or not you are in shape to drive. There’s an article about it here (though with some structural problems in the article).

It’s being connected with testing whether you’re too stoned to drive, but in reality it’s a basic test of impairment, whether from marijuana, alcohol, being too tired, or anything else.

I went ahead and downloaded it and have had fun checking it out. The four tests only take a couple minutes and really do seem to be aimed at determining if you are impaired.

First, a series of six numbers wander across the screen and twirl around one at a time. You must remember them and then properly enter the six digit number. You can’t continue until you succeed.

The second test uses the ability of the phone to detect movement. You stand still with one leg extended six inches. The test sees whether you can hold still without weaving.

Third is reaction time. A series of symbols flashes randomly across the screen and there’s one of them that you must touch every time it shows up (without touching the others).

Finally, it asks you to estimate when 20 seconds has passed.

At the end of the tests, it gives you a green, yellow, or red light based on your performance. You can also set a baseline so you can compare results against your own “sober” performance.

Of course, this is essentially the concept behind a normal field sobriety test, which determines whether you can carry out actual tasks that might be necessary to driving, rather than going on some kind of arbitrary measurement of what’s in your blood, breath, or urine that may have nothing to do with impairment.

I have this odd desire to try to get a red light on the app just to see how impaired I have to be…

Christopher Ingraham helps provide data for future speculation — These are the states that could legalize pot next

Click on the image to see it larger.

I’ve got to say, I really don’t understand Wisconsin. In general. The state that has Madison and Mazo Beach has so many contradictions. I spent every summer there growing up, and love the beauty of the state (and the cheese and brats), but the politics baffle me.