Friday, November 30, 2012

ABC: Legal Weed At Tipping Point



Push to Legalize Pot at 'Tipping Point,' Experts Say
abcnews.go.com
Marijuana Could Be Legal in Most States Within 10 Years, Advocates Predict
Dude, pot could be legal everywhere soon.
That's the sentiment expressed by advocates and experts in reaction to the recent votes in Washington and Colorado to legalize marijuana, which have re-energized the discussion about whether pot should be legalized once and for all in America.
"It's clear and it has been clear now for a number of years that we are at a tipping point when it comes to a majority of Americans' view toward the way we treat marijuana in this country," Paul Armentano, deputy director of the pot lobby group Norml, told ABC News.
"Whether you are looking at Gallup or Rasmussen (polls), you'll find more Americans are saying marijuana ought to be legalized and regulated in a manner similar to alcohol or tobacco rather than support the current policy," he said.
"I think it's only a matter of another two or three states following suit before the federal government realizes it doesn't have the mechanism in place to enforce prohibition, and they would most likely go ahead and leave it up to states," Armentano said.
Lobbyists and pot proponents are jumping onto what may be pot's zeitgest moment, with bills to legalize marijuana already introduced in Maine and Rhode Island, discussion of possible bills in states including Massachusetts and Vermont, and talk of ballot initiatives in California and Oregon during the next major elections.
The conversation has spread from legislative offices to major publications' editorial pages, as both the Washington Post and the Oregonian newspapers have written editorials recently endorsing pot legalization or decriminalization. The New York Daily News wrote on Monday that New York should say no to medical marijuana, but not necessarily reject legalized pot.
"That's the debate New York should have -- full legalization or nothing," the paper wrote.
And a marijuana joint graced the cover of this week's New York Magazine where a feature story covered the thriving pot industry in Humboldt County, Calif.
Now, Humboldt State University has launched the Institute for Interdisciplinary Marijuana Research, in Humboldt County, as part of the University of California system. The institute will try and answer questions about marijuana, including how the marijuana industry affects Humboldt County and the changing role of marijuana in American society.
"We can all see that nationally, public opinion has shifted," said Josh Mesiel, a sociology professor at the school and co-director of the institute.
Meisel cites data showing that in 1969, 13 percent of Americans supported legalization of marijuana. In 2010, the number was nearly half of all Americans. Twenty states have modified their laws regarding pot consumption, whether focused on decriminalization or outright legalization, he said.
"I think people are recognizing that we need to learn more about what the potential impacts are of marijuana becoming part of the mainstream," Meisel said. "It's become part of the mainstream in term of public opinion."
The sudden surge in discussions about marijuana could point toward a swift end to the prohibition on pot, according to Armentano, the legalize-pot lobbyist. He likens the movement's current status to the end of alcohol prohibition in America in the early 20th century, when the federal government decided to stop enforcing the ban on alcohol as states began to decide they would no longer prosecute people who consumed alcohol.
There are also indications that the country is not ready to treat a drug like marijuana on the same level as alcohol and tobacco. In recent years, bills to legalize pot have rejected by voters in California and Oregon, and in New York and Hawaii bills were blocked by lawmakers.
And many law enforcement groups are fighting it.
"We oppose it," said Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, the nation's largest police union. "I think the law enforcement community is universally consistent in its opposition to legalizing pot, in the interest of public safety and public health."
Pasco said his group is also against legalizing medical marijuana.
"There's no scientific or medical basis in lighting something and breathing it in. Further, you have no idea how it was handled, and it's bad for you. If you want medicine to be good for you, you get it in pill form," he said.
Is The Country at a Tipping Point for Legalizing Marijuana?
The federal government has yet to rule on how it will handle the new laws in Washington and Colorado. Growing, possessing, and buying marijuana is still against federal law, though experts doubt that the federal government has the capacity to enforce the laws in those states.
"The feds undoubtedly have the authority to shut down any institution or selling shop," explained Richard Collins, law professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder. "(But) that would leave in place the right to possess an ounce and the right to grow six plants, which I doubt the U.S. attorney has the capacity to deal with."
"They don't have the manpower to do so, the resources to do so, and the public clearly would not be supportive of them doing so," Armentano said. "It think because these votes passed with such a solid majority, I don't think the political will in D.C. permits the federal government to do so. With that said, the federal government doesn't have a whole lot of options." Collins points out that many voters in Colorado voted to approve the legalization of marijuana because it would provide an extra revenue source for the state in the form of new tax dollars. That argument is a central point of lobbyists' pitch to convince lawmakers that the regulation of the marijuana industry would be beneficial to states.
"If they do (outlaw selling shops), the existing black market would continue and the state won't get tax money, and if you ask voters why they voted for this, they say 'because it should be taxed like booze.' So if the U.S. attorney does this he'll be a really unpopular guy," Collins said.
Now, experts agree, all eyes are on the Department of Justice as it decides how to handle Washington and Colorado, and whether those states will pave the way for legal pot around the country.
"The significance is that (the votes in Washington and Colorado) are going to push up the timeline for the states and the federal government to resolve their differences," Meisel said. "I think many other states are going to be looking anxiously at this in terms of how it is resolved."

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Members of Congress: Quit Taking People To Jail For Weed

Marijuana Advocates Find Champions In Congress

by Lucia Graves
Source: HuffingtonPost.com



After Washington and Colorado passed measures legalizing the recreational use of marijuana, members of Congress are asking that the federal government respect state laws.

Reps. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.) and Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) were among the 18 members of Congress to sign a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and Drug Enforcement Administrator Michele Leonhart on Friday requesting that states be permitted to function as “laboratories of democracy.” An excerpt from the letter:

The people of Colorado and Washington have decided that marijuana ought to be regulated like alcohol, with strong and efficient regulation of production, retail sales and distribution, coupled with strict laws against underage use and driving while intoxicated. The voters chose to eliminate the illegal marijuana market controlled by cartels and criminals and recognized the disproportionate impact that marijuana has on minorities. These states have chosen to move from a drug policy that spends millions of dollars turning ordinary Americans into criminals toward one that will tightly regulate the use of marijuana while raising tax revenue to support cash-strapped state and local governments. We believe this approach embraces the goals of existing federal marijuana law: to stop international trafficking, deter domestic organized criminal organizations, stop violence associated with the drug trade and protect children.
While we recognize that other states have chosen a different path, and further understand that the federal government has an important role to play in protecting against interstate shipments of marijuana leaving Colorado and Washington, we ask that your departments take no action against anyone who acts in compliance with the laws of Colorado, Washington and any other states that choose to regulate marijuana for medicinal or personal use. The voters of these states chose, by a substantial margin, to forge a new and effective policy with respect to marijuana. The tide of public opinion is changing both at the ballot box and in state legislatures across the country. We believe that the collective judgment of voters and state lawmakers must be respected.

The missive comes after Reps. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Ron Paul (R-Texas) sent a similar letter to the White House urging President Barack Obama to "respect the wishes of voters in Colorado and Washington," and Reps. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) and Mike Coffman (R-Colo.) drafted legislation exempting states with their own marijuana laws from the Controlled Substances Act.

Paul and Frank, ardent supporters of marijuana legalization who in 2011 introduced legislation to lift the federal ban on marijuana, are retiring from Congress at the end of the year.

Friday, November 16, 2012

End Cannabis Prohibition Now

Obama and the Marijuana Legalization Initiatives
by Ethan Nadelmann
source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ethan-nadelmann/obama-and-marijuana-legal_b_2133049.html





On Election Day, Washington State and Colorado became the first two states in the country -- and indeed the first political jurisdictions anywhere in the world -- to approve legally regulating marijuana like alcohol.


It would be a mistake to call these ballot initiative victories "pro-pot." Most of those who voted in favor don't use marijuana; indeed many don't like it at all and have never used it. What moved them was the realization that it made more sense to regulate, tax and control marijuana than to keep wasting money and resources trying to enforce an unenforceable prohibition.


Whether or not the two state governments move forward with regulating marijuana like alcohol will depend on two things: how the Obama administration, federal prosecutors and police agencies respond; and the extent to which the states' senior elected officials commit to implementing the will of the people. The fact that federal laws explicitly criminalize marijuana transactions, and that the federal government can continue to enforce those laws, means that federal authorities could effectively block the initiatives from being fully implemented. But there are also good reasons why the Obama administration should, and may, allow state governments to proceed as voters have demanded.


First, keep in mind that no one needs to do anything right away. The provisions legalizing personal possession of up to an ounce of marijuana, and (in the case of Colorado) also allowing the cultivation of up to six plants in the privacy of one's home, will become state law once the initiatives are certified in coming weeks. But those provisions, while contrary to federal law, are unlikely to excite the attentions of federal authorities, who will be more concerned with how the states propose to regulate larger scale production and distribution. The Colorado government, however, has until July 1, and the Washington State government until the end of next year, to issue a statewide regulatory plan. That affords plenty of time for consultation and dialogue.


Second, senior state officials, including Colorado's Governor Hickenlooper and Attorney General Suthers, as well as Washington's newly elected governor, Jay Inslee, and attorney general, Bob Ferguson, have all said that they will work to uphold the new laws, notwithstanding their pre-Election Day opposition. The two incoming officials in Washington may also be moved by the fact that the marijuana reform initiative garnered more votes than either of them did.


Third, whereas Attorney General Eric Holder warned California voters in October 2010 that the federal government would not allow the marijuana legalization initiative on the ballot at the time to be implemented if it won (which it did not), no such warning was forthcoming this year. Former drug czars and DEA chiefs banded together to urge Holder to speak out again, but both he and President Obama remained silent, perhaps influenced by polls showing strong support for marijuana legalization among young and independent voters in the swing state of Colorado and elsewhere.


Fourth, the Obama administration's actions, vis a vis the 18 states that have legalized medical marijuana, offers important insights. Federal prosecutors have acted most aggressively in those states, like Montana and California, which failed to adopt statewide regulation of the emerging industry, and have exercised the greatest restraint in places like New Mexico, Maine and Colorado, where state government is deeply engaged. President Obama has not entirely reneged on the pledge he made as a candidate in 2008, and reiterated as president in 2009, that the federal government would refrain from prosecuting medical marijuana providers operating legally under state law. He has the authority to declare a similar policy of restraint regarding the new laws in Colorado and Washington.


Fifth, in my conversations with foreign leaders, major Democratic Party donors and senior political advisers who have discussed drug policy with the president over the past year, all say that Obama seems inclined to pursue further reform of drug policies in a second term. Nothing dramatic, to be sure, but there's a sense that he and those close to him get it -- and will say and do things in a second term that they didn't during the first.


Will federal prosecutors and police agents continue to repeat the mantra that "it's all illegal under federal law" and that the federal Controlled Substances Act trumps all state laws? Yes, of course. But they're up against a powerful host of arguments that also demand deference. These new laws were passed by voter initiatives, which represent the clearest expressions of the will of the people. The final tallies were consistent with public opinion polls earlier in the year, before anyone had spent a penny on political advertising. Voters clearly knew what they were voting for.


Effectively implemented, the new laws could offer fiscal benefits in terms of reducing criminal justice costs and increasing tax revenues, public safety benefits in terms of transforming a criminal, underground market into a legally regulated above-ground part of local economies, and public health benefits in terms of regulating the quality and potency of substances consumed by millions of Americans. They also, it must be said, advance the cause of freedom.


"It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system," Justice Louis D. Brandeis wrote (in dissent) in 1932, "that a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country." Not one but two courageous states have chosen to serve in this way. President Obama should do everything in his power to allow them to do it right.


Ethan Nadelmann is the founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance.



Follow Ethan Nadelmann on Twitter: www.twitter.com/EthanNadelmann

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Could ending cannabis prohibition be unstoppable at this point?



Legal Pot Could Be Contagious

Jacob Sullum|Nov. 14, 2012 7:00 am

source: http://reason.com/archives/2012/11/14/legal-pot-could-be-contagious

Shortly before the House of Representatives approved a federal ban on marijuana in 1937, the Republican minority leader, Bertrand Snell of New York, confessed, "I do not know anything about the bill." The Democratic majority leader, Sam Rayburn of Texas, educated him. "It has something to do with something that is called marihuana," Rayburn said. "I believe it is a narcotic of some kind."

Seventy-five years, millions of arrests, and billions of dollars later, we are still living with the consequences of that ignorant, ill-considered decision, which nationalized a policy that punishes peaceful people and squanders taxpayer money in a blind vendetta against a plant. Last week voters in Colorado and Washington opted out of this crazy cannabicidal crusade by approving ballot initiatives that will set up experiments from which the rest of the country can learn—assuming the federal government lets them run.

Both initiatives abolish penalties for adults 21 or older who possess up to an ounce of marijuana and for state-licensed growers and sellers who follow regulations that are supposed to be adopted during the next year or so. Pot prohibitionists such as Asa Hutchinson, former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), argue that allowing marijuana sales violates the Controlled Substances Act and therefore the Constitution, which makes valid acts of Congress "the supreme law of the land."

But the Supremacy Clause applies only to laws that Congress has the authority to pass, and the ban on marijuana has never had a solid constitutional basis. If alcohol prohibition required a constitutional amendment, how could Congress, less than two decades later, enact marijuana prohibition by statute?

The initial pretext was the one the Supreme Court used this year to uphold the federal mandate requiring Americans to buy government-approved health insurance: The law, dubbed the Marihuana Tax Act, was dressed up as a revenue measure. By the time the ban was incorporated into the Controlled Substances Act in 1970, Congress had a new excuse: It was exercising its authority to "regulate commerce…among the several states."

Seven years ago, the Supreme Court concluded, preposterously, that Congress is regulating interstate commerce even when it authorizes the arrest of a cancer patient who uses homegrown marijuana for medical purposes in compliance with state law. But states indisputably remain free to say what is and is not a crime under their own laws, and that is what Colorado and Washington are doing.

Whether or not it tries to block marijuana legalization in the courts, the Obama administration can raid state-legal pot shops, as it has done with medical marijuana dispensaries. It can use asset forfeiture as an intimidation tactic against landlords and threaten banks that accept deposits from pot businesses with money laundering charges. The Internal Revenue Service can make life difficult for pot sellers by disallowing their business expenses.

The one thing federal drug warriors cannot do, judging from their track record even when they have the full cooperation of state and local law enforcement agencies, is suppress the business entirely, let alone arrest a significant percentage of people who grow pot for themselves and their friends (as Colorado's initiative allows). According to the FBI, there were 758,000 marijuana arrests nationwide last year, the vast majority for possession. The DEA was responsible for about 1 percent of them.

Given their limited resources, the feds may yet see the wisdom, if not the constitutional imperative, of letting Colorado and Washington go their own way. Last year a Gallup poll put national support for marijuana legalization at 50 percent—the highest level ever recorded. Brian Vicente, co-director of the campaign for Colorado's legalization initiative, hopes last week's historic votes "will send a message to the federal government that they need to back off entirely and let states engage in the responsible regulation of marijuana."

Hard-line drug warriors like Hutchinson are keen to prevent that from happening—not because they fear it will be disastrous but because they fear it won't be.

Saturday, November 10, 2012

The Atlantic: Will Obama keep taking people to jail for weed?


Will Obama Let Washington and Colorado Keep Their Legal Pot?


JORDAN WEISSMANN - Jordan Weissmann is an associate editor at The Atlantic. He has written for a number of publications, including The Washington Post and The National Law Journal.

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Many are pessimistic. But here's the case for optimism.
615_Marijuana_Reuters.jpg
(Reuters)
The marijuana reform movement made history this week, when voters in Colorado and Washington passed ballot initiatives legalizing the possession and sale of cannabis for purely recreational use. As our newly re-elected vice president might put it, this was a big f***ing deal in the world of drug policy. The new laws would treat marijuana much like alcohol and tobacco, setting the stage for a large scale, tightly regulated, and generously taxed commercial industry worth some untold millions of dollars. Simply put, these would be the most lax marijuana laws in the world -- smack dab in the middle of the country that invented the modern drug war.
The big question now is: Will Obama let it happen?
OBAMA AND POT: A COMPLICATED RELATIONSHIP
While our president may be famous for saying he inhaled as a teenager ("because that was the point") marijuana is still very much banned under federal law. It's designated as a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, just like other oh-so-not-legal drugs as LSD and heroin. After essentially promising to defer to state law on medical marijuana early in the Obama administration, the Justice Department has, by some accounts, lowered the boom. According to Americans for Safe Access, the Drug Enforcement Administration has raided at least 200 cannabis dispensaries since 2009 and prosecutors have brought more than 60 indictments against medical marijuana providers.
"There's no question that Obama's the worst president on medical marijuana," Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project, told Rolling Stone earlier this year. "He's gone from first to worst."
Some believe Obama's tough-on-pot stance suggests the feds might stop Washington and Colorado from setting up legal sales. After all, the initiatives don't even offer any pretense about medicating cancer. They simply make it legal to buy pot from a licensed distributor, then light up.
"Once these states actually try to implement these laws, we will see an effort by the feds to shut it down," Kevin Sabet, a former senior drug policy adviser to the president, told NBC News. "We can only guess now what exactly that would look like. But the recent U.S. attorney actions against medical marijuana portends an aggressive effort to stop state-sponsored growing and selling at the outset."
NO 'MAJOR CRACKDOWN'
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the backers of the Washington and Colorado initiatives are more optimistic. Their message, which I heard versions of in three interviews, boiled down to this: There hasn't actually been a national crackdown on medical marijuana, and with the right steps, there might not be a crackdown on commercial marijuana, either.
In this telling, the recent flurry of raids and prosecutions against cannabis providers is not a sign that the administration intends to smother the medical marijuana industry in its cradle. Instead, it's been a response to the rapid growth of dispensaries in states like California, where ambiguous weed law leads to abuses.
"The federal government could go in and arrest everybody and indict everybody for distributing marijuana," said Alison Holcomb, the campaign director for New Approach Washington, which steered its state's legalization initiative. "They're not doing that."
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CALIFORNIA AND COLORADO
On paper at least, there have been two major turning points in the Obama administration's medical marijuana policy. In October of 2009, Deputy Attorney General James Ogden issued a memoprosecutors should not spend time and resources hunting after medical marijuana patients or their "caregivers," as long as they stayed "in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws." For growers and dispensaries, this was a green light to do business.
But even after the Ogden memo, there were still dozens of raids in Colorado, California, Michigan, Montana, and Nevada. Federal prosecutors sent letters to the governors of New Jersey and Washington advising them that state employees could end up in legal trouble just for giving licenses to medical marijuana businesses.
But the big pivot, the one that set the pro-pot community on edge, didn't come until June 2011, when Justice released a new memo that narrowed the definition of "caregiver." The new definition only applied to individuals, and excluded "commercial operations cultivating, selling or distributing marijuana." The Huffington Post's Ryan Grimm called it a "warning shot to medical marijuana shops," and the following months seem to prove him right. The raids intensified, and other agencies, including the IRS, jumped into the fray.
The federal squeeze has mostly focused on California, whose medical marijuana statute is so vague that prosecutors have much more leeway to crack down on providers under the pretense that they're breaking state and federal law. In Colorado, the law is clearer and the crackdowns are far fewer. Colorado has more medical pot dispensaries than Starbucks locations, but the most the U.S. Attorney's Office has done is to ask 60 to move farther away from schools. "States that had the most well-developed, politically grounded, statewide regulation of marijuana thrived the best," Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, said.*
THE ROAD TO LEGAL MARIJUANA
The hope is that, if Washington and Colorado set up smart laws with well defined bounds, federal prosecutors will decide to leave legal recreational marijuana alone, just like they mostly have with medical marijuana. Will that theory hold up? We'll find out in the coming year or so, as state regulators figure out their game plan. But the good news for pot fans is this: In 2010 Attorney General Eric Holder officially opposed California's initiative to legalize recreational marijuana. This time around, he was silent.
Then again, it also happened to be a presidential election year, and Colorado was a swing state. Of course Obama wasn't going to intervene. Now that he's been reelected, and two states want to adopt drug laws more liberal than the Netherlands, the president might not be so mellow. But Colorado and Washington can hope.
_________________________________
*In another interview, Brian Vicente, an attorney and co-director of Colorado's Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, expressed a similar sentiment: "That's the one thing that sort of differentiates Colorado -- we've had a transparent state regulatory infrastructure for several years. We believe that because of those state controls, the DEA has been much more hands off."
source: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/11/will-obama-let-washington-and-colorado-keep-their-legal-pot/264962/

Thursday, November 8, 2012

CNN: The end of taking people to jail for weed?


The end of the war on marijuana - CNN.com
CNN.com
The costs of marijuana prohibition have hindered rather than helped good decision-making, says Roger Roffman.
The costs of marijuana prohibition have hindered rather than helped good decision-making, says Roger Roffman.
Editor's note: Roger A. Roffman is a professor emeritus of social work at the University of Washington, a sponsor of I-502, and author of the forthcoming "A Marijuana Memoir."
(CNN) -- The historic measure to regulate and tax marijuana in Washington State deserves to be looked at closely as a model of how legalization ought to be designed and implemented elsewhere in America.
We've turned a significant corner with the approval of Initiative 502, which purposefully offers a true public health alternative to the criminal prohibition of pot.
For the first time in a very long time, the well-intended but failed criminal penalties to protect public health and safety will be set aside. Adults who choose to use marijuana and obtain it through legal outlets will no longer be faced with the threat of criminal sanctions. People of color will no longer face the egregious inequities in how marijuana criminal penalties are imposed. Parents, as they help prepare their children for the choices they face concerning marijuana, will no longer be hobbled by misinformation about the drug and the absence of effective supports to encourage abstinence.
"The great experiment" of alcohol prohibition became the national law in 1920. Its intentions were good, but it failed in a number of vitally important ways. In 1923, the state of New York repealed its alcohol prohibition law. Ten other states soon followed, and in 1933 national Prohibition ended.
I believe Washington state has just played that pivotal role with regard to marijuana. Moreover, by borrowing from public health model principles known to be effective, the state has offered the most compelling replacement to prohibition considered to date.
What is a public health model? In brief, it's an approach that acknowledges use of marijuana can present harms to the user and to public safety, and includes provisions to prevent or ameliorate those harms.
A public health model includes six key elements. Washington state's new law incorporates each of them.
The first is accountable oversight by an agency of government. The Washington state legalization model assigns responsibility to a state agency for writing regulations concerning how the growing, producing and selling of marijuana will occur. Among those regulations are tight limitations on advertising and the prevention of access to marijuana by minors. Then, that agency will have the authority to issue licenses to growers, producers and sellers and to enforce adherence to the rules.
The second element is a well-funded multifaceted marijuana education program that is based on science rather than ideology. Far too few Americans are sufficiently informed about marijuana's effects on health and behavior, both the positive and the negative. A key to good decision-making is possessing accurate information.
Legalized marijuana: A good idea?
Italy's home grown marijuana boom
Ballot measures: Marijuana, Obamacare
Marijuana as medicine
The third element is well-funded prevention programs widely available to all the state's geographical and demographic communities. We've learned a great deal about what knowledge, skills and community supports actually work in helping young people navigate a world in which drugs such as marijuana are readily available. Sadly, far too little funding has been devoted to putting such programs to work in our communities.
A fourth element is making treatment of marijuana dependence readily available. The new law dedicates funding to establish a statewide Marijuana Help Line. It also earmarks funding to state, county and local governments for the provision of services for those in need of help.
Evaluation of the new law's impact is the fifth element. An independent state agency will receive funding to conduct periodic assessments of how the new system affects behaviors, attitudes and knowledge. Using the findings of these evaluative studies, the state agency overseeing the pricing and taxing of marijuana can adjust those costs to maximize undercutting of the black market and deterrence of youth access to marijuana.
The sixth element is research. The new law earmarks funding to the state's two major research universities for the purpose of conducting marijuana-focused studies. As we gradually learn how to live more healthfully and safely with marijuana, the knowledge derived from those studies will inform education, prevention, treatment and refinements in the law.
In more than 40 years of research -- primarily marijuana dependence counseling interventions for adults and adolescents -- it has seemed to me that prohibition has hindered more than it has helped good decision-making. Far too many teens think smoking pot is "no big deal," greatly underestimating the risk of being derailed from social, psychological and educational attainment. Far too many adults don't take seriously enough the risk of marijuana dependence that accompanies very frequent use.
We can do better. By regulating and taxing marijuana based on a set of strong public health principles, I believe our cultural norms concerning marijuana will shift and the harms we've witnessed will greatly reduce.
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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Roger A. Roffman.

Monday, November 5, 2012

Vote to Quit Taking People to Jail for Weed. Stop cartel violence. Twofer.


US Voters Could Win The Drug War On Tuesday


Michael Kelley | Nov. 5, 2012, 12:27 PM | 3,709 | 16



DEA

It's estimated that between 40 and 70 percent of American pot is currently grown in Mexico.

Voters in Colorado, Oregon and Washington could pass measures tomorrow that would potentially cripple Mexico's drug cartels.

Sari Horwitz of Washington Post reports that the Sinaloa cartel, Mexico's oldest and most powerful, is selling a record amount of heroin and methamphetamine in Chicago as it takes its burgeoning marijuana trade to the next level.

But Amendment 64 in Colorado and I-502 in Washington—both of which currently have a majority of support among likely voters—could change all of that by making marijuana legal for persons 21-years-old and older while taxing it under a tightly regulated system similar to that for controlling hard alcohol.

The Mexican Institute for Competitiveness (IMCO), a Mexico City think-tank, published a report detailing how legalization at the state level could sink cartel revenues from drug trafficking because "one or more states could meet most of its domestic demand with domestic production."

Since the quality of U.S.-grown marijuana is much better than Mexico-grown, the IMCO figures that domestic bud from Colorado, Oregon or Washington would be cheaper everywhere in the country besides near the border.



Mexican Institute for Competitiveness

Consequently, the IMCO estimates that cartels would lose about $1.4 billion of their $2 billion revenues from marijuana, which would mean the Sinaloa cartel would lose up to half of its total income.

Furthermore, other drug exports would become less competitive as fixed costs such as bribes, and fighting rivals would remain the same.

The study notes that there is "considerable uncertainty about the effect a substantial loss of income might have on the behavior of Mexican criminal organizations and, therefore, on the security environment in Mexico."

Nevertheless, it's a potential gamechanger. The Economist puts it best: "Legalization could, in short, deal a blow to Mexico’s traffickers of a magnitude that no current policy has got close to achieving. The stoned and sober alike should bear that in mind when they cast their votes on Tuesday."

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/drug-war-legalization-marijuana-2012-11#ixzz2BPpXdOYD

Friday, November 2, 2012

UNBELIEVABLE: Police kill man over a little weed and an empty vile

THIS HAPPENS EVERY DAY IN AMERICA! STOP THE MADNESS!

source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/18/utah-video-police-kill-man-drug-raid_n_810420.html?utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false

Police Kill Man In Drug Raid Gone Wrong (VIDEO)


by Ryan Grim
Utah police shot and killed a man within seconds of storming his parents' home, video of the raid shows. The police had a warrant to search for drugs, but found only a small amount of pot and an empty vial that had apparently contained meth.

Local media report that Todd Blair, 45, was a drug addict rather than a dealer, according to friends and family.

In the video, Blair can be seen holding a golf club above his head as police smash through his door. Within seconds, without demanding Blair drop the iron or lay down, Weber-Morgan Strike Force Sgt. Troy Burnett fires three shots into him. The local prosecutor has deemed the killing justified, but his family is planning a federal lawsuit, arguing that police had plenty of alternatives.

Blair's death raises the question of why multiple heavily-armed officers were sent to raid a drug addict -- and why Weber and Morgan counties in Utah would even need a "Narcotics Strike Force." Local police forces are able to keep property they seize in drug raids, often without the necessity of a conviction, creating a perverse incentive to reinvest in military equipment and carry out additional raids.

The Salt Lake Tribune reported that the main focus of the police investigation had been Blair's roommate, who police said in the application for the warrant would destroy evidence if they weren't given authority to carry out a "no-knock" raid. But police were aware that his roommate had moved out.

Police tried to detain Blair so that he wouldn't be in the house when it was raided, but pulled over the wrong person. Despite that mistake, and despite the knowledge that the roommate had moved out, the raid on Blair was still carried out. It was hastily planned, reported the Tribune, diverting from protocol. Burnett, who shot Blair, told investigators that it is "absolutely not our standard" to carry out such a raid with as little planning as was done, according to the Tribune.

It was so hastily carried out, in fact, that police forgot the warrant. According to the Tribune, in the video it obtained an officer can be heard asking: "Did somebody grab a copy of the warrant off my desk?"

Burnett replies: "Oh, don't tell me that." He then complains to the other officers: "He doesn't have a copy of the warrant."

Minutes later, Blair would be dead. "I didn't think about saying words. I just thought about not getting hit, or slashed or whatever," Burnett told investigators, saying that he thought the golf club was "a sword or something." He also said that it did not appear to him that Blair was moving toward him, an admission that could prove crucial in a federal criminal or civil case.

The killer, Sgt. Burnett, had previously told alaw-enforcement magazine that he and fellow officers were trained to shoot quickly and at close range. Burnett had previously put the training to use by shooting and killing an armed suspect in 2008.

"Maybe a month before this [2008 shooting], we did our qualification and this kind of scenario was played out in live fire training where we had to quickly draw and fire at close range," Burnett said at the time. "It wasn't quite identical, but it was close. We were simulating taking down information and then all of a sudden had to drop it and fire quickly. I absolutely believe my training played a factor in this situation. I was always confident in my close-range shooting ability, and the ammo I'm absolutely pleased with. It did its job."

The below video of Blair's death, posted by The Salt Lake Tribune, is a graphic depiction of the type of raid that has become commonplace in the United States as a result of the militarization of local police forces.