23 Jun 2013

Why It’s Time To Legalize Marijuana

posted in: Cannabis News | 0

After decades of wasted resources, clogged courtrooms and a shift in public perception, let’s end the war on weed

Sometime this year, if it hasn’t happened already, the millionth Canadian will be arrested for marijuana possession, Dana Larsen estimates.  The indefatigable B.C.-based activist for pot legalization is thinking of marking the occasion with a special ceremony.  True, it will be impossible to know exactly who the millionth person is, but with the Conservative government’s amped-up war on drugs, it won’t be hard to find a nominee.  As Larsen notes, the war on drugs in Canada is mostly a war on marijuana, “and most of that is a war on marijuana users.”

The numbers bear him out.  Since the Tories came to power in 2006, and slammed the door on the previous Liberal government’s muddled plans to reduce or decriminalize marijuana penalties, arrests for pot possession have jumped 41 per cent.  In those six years, police reported more than 405,000 marijuana-related arrests, roughly equivalent to the populations of Regina and Saskatoon combined.

In the statistic-driven world of policing, pot users are the low-hanging fruit, says Larsen, director of Sensible BC, a non-profit group organizing to put marijuana decriminalization on a provincial referendum ballot in 2014.  “We’re seeing crime drop across Canada.  [Police] feel they’ve got nothing better to do.  You can throw a rock and find a marijuana user,” he says over coffee in his Burnaby home.  “It’s very easy to do.”

But is it the right thing to do? Most certainly that’s the view of the federal government, which has been unshakable in its belief that pot users are criminals, and that such criminals need arresting if Canada is to be a safer place.  The message hasn’t changed though Canada’s crime rate has plummeted to its lowest level in 40 years.  “It depends on which type of crime you’re talking about,” Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said in an interview with the Globe and Mail, a typical defence of the Conservative’s omnibus crime bill, which includes new mandatory minimum sentences for some drug crimes.  “Among other things, child sexual offences, those crimes are going up.  Drug crimes are going up, and so, again, much of what the Safe Streets and Communities Act was focused on was child sexual offences and drug crimes.”

The minister is correct if one takes a cursory look at the statistics.  Two of the largest one-year increases in police-reported crimes in 2011 were a 40 per cent jump in child pornography cases ( 3,100 incidents ), and a seven per cent hike ( to 61,406 arrests ) for pot possession.  Taken together, all marijuana offences-possession, growing and trafficking-accounted for a record 78,000 arrests in 2011, or 69 per cent of all drug offences.  Simple pot possession represented 54 per cent of every drug crime that police managed to uncover.  This is more phony war than calamity, waged by a government determined to save us from a cannabis crisis of its own making.  To have the minister imply a moral equivalency between child sexual abuse and carrying a couple of joints in your jeans underscores the emotionalism clouding the issue: reason enough to look at why marijuana is illegal in the first place.

The Conservative hard line is increasingly out of step with its citizenry, and with the shifting mood in the United States, where two states-Colorado and Washington-have already legalized recreational use, where others have reduced penalties to a misdemeanour ticket and where many, like California, have such lax rules on medical marijuana that one is reminded of the “medicinal alcohol” that drugstores peddled with a wink during a previous failed experiment with prohibition.

In late May, the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition added its voice to the debate with a sweeping report, “Getting to Tomorrow,” calling for the decriminalization of all currently illegal drugs, the regulation and taxation of cannabis and the expansion of treatment and harm-reduction programs.  The coalition of drug policy experts, affiliated with the Centre for Applied Research in Mental Health and Addiction at Simon Fraser University, calls the increasing emphasis on drug criminalization under the Conservatives an “overwhelming failure.” The high marijuana use by Canadian minors is just one unintended consequence of current drug laws, it concludes.  “Prohibition abdicated responsibility for regulating drug markets to organized crime and abandons public health measures like age restrictions and dosing controls.”

There’s growing consensus, at least outside the Conservative cabinet room, that it’s time to take a hard look at tossing out a marijuana prohibition that dates back to 1923-a Canadian law that has succeeded in criminalizing successive generations, clogging the courts, wasting taxpayer resources and enriching gangsters, while failing to dampen demand for a plant that, by objective measures, is far more benign than alcohol or tobacco.

Why is marijuana illegal?

Well, Maclean’s must take a measure of responsibility.  Back in the 1920s one of its high-profile correspondents was Emily Murphy, the Alberta magistrate, suffragette and virulent anti-drug crusader, who frequently wrote under the pen name Janey Canuck.  She wrote a lurid series of articles for the magazine that were later compiled and expanded in her 1922 book, The Black Candle – you’ll find an excerpt from this book at the end of this piece.  She raged against “Negro” drug dealers and Chinese opium peddlers “of fishy blood” out to control and debase the white race.

Much of her wrath was directed at narcotics and the plight of the addict, but she also waged a hyperbolic attack against the evils of smoking marijuana-then little-known and little-used recreationally, although the hemp plant had been a medicinal staple in teas and tinctures.  Quoting uncritically the view of the Los Angeles police chief of the day, she reported: “Persons using this narcotic smoke the dried leaves of the plant, which has the effect of driving them completely insane.  The addict loses all sense of moral responsibility.  Addicts to this drug, while under its influence, are immune to pain, and could be severely injured without having any realization of their condition.  While in this condition they become raving maniacs and are liable to kill or indulge in any form of violence to other persons using the most savage methods of cruelty without, as said before, any sense of moral responsibility.”

In 1923, a year after The Black Candle’s release, Canada became one of the first countries in the world to outlaw cannabis, giving it the same status as opium and other narcotics.  It’s impossible to know what influence Murphy’s writing had on the decision because there was no public or parliamentary debate.  As noted by a 2002 Canadian Senate committee report, “Cannabis: Our Position for a Canadian Public Policy”: “Early drug legislation was largely based on a moral panic, racist sentiment and a notorious absence of debate.”

The Senate report, like the royal commission on the nonmedical use of drugs chaired by Gerald LeDain in the early 1970s, concluded that the criminalization of cannabis had no scientific basis, but its use by adolescents should be discouraged.  The LeDain reports, between 1970-73, were ahead of their time-to their detriment.  Commissioners generated reams of studies on all drug use and held cross-country hearings ( even recording John Lennon’s pro-pot views during an in-camera session in Montreal ).  LeDain recommended the repeal of cannabis prohibition, stating “the costs to a significant number of individuals, the majority of whom are young people, and to society generally, of a policy of prohibition of simple possession are not justified by the potential for harm.” Even in a counterculture era of love beads and Trudeaumania the recommendations went nowhere.

Obscurity also befell the 2002 Senate report 30 years later.  The senators recommended legalization, as well as amnesty for past convictions, adding: “We are able to categorically state that, used in moderation, cannabis in itself poses very little danger to users and to society as a whole, but specific types of use represent risks to users,” especially the “tiny minority” of adolescents who are heavy users.  Generally, though, the greater harm was not in cannabis use, the senators said, but in the after-effects of the criminal penalties.

Both reports vanished in a puff of smoke, while 90 years on Emily Murphy endures.  She is celebrated in a statue on Parliament Hill for her leading role among the Famous Five, who fought in the courts and were ultimately successful in having women recognized as “persons” under the law.  And she endures in the spirit of Canada’s marijuana laws, which continue to reflect some of her hysterical views.  Blame political cowardice, the fear of being labelled “soft on crime.” As a correspondent to the British medical journal The Lancet said of the slow pace of change for drug prohibition internationally: “bad policy is still good politics.”

Putting emotions, fears and rhetoric aside, the case for legalizing personal use of cannabis hangs on addressing two key questions.  What is the cost and social impact of marijuana prohibition? And what are the risks to public health, to social order and personal safety of unleashing on Canada a vice that has been prohibited for some 90 years?

The cost of prohibition

Estimates vary wildly on the cost impact of marijuana use and of enforcement.  Back in 2002 the Senate report pegged the annual cost of cannabis to law enforcement and the justice system at $300 million to $500 million.  The costs of enforcing criminalization, the report concluded, “are disproportionately high given the drug’s social and health consequences.”

Neil Boyd, a criminology professor at Simon Fraser University, concludes in a new study financed by Sensible BC that the annual police- and court-related costs of enforcing marijuana possession in B.C.  alone is “reasonably and conservatively” estimated at $10.5 million per year.  B.C.  has the highest police-reported rate of cannabis offences of any province, and rising: 19,400 in 2011.  Of those, almost 16,600 were for possession, leading to almost 3,800 charges, double the number in 2005.  As arrests increase, Boyd estimates costs will hit $18.8 million within five years.  Added to that will be the cost of jailing people under new mandatory minimum sentences included in the Safe Streets and Communities Act.

The Conservatives’ National Anti-Drug Strategy, implemented in 2007, shifted drug strategy from Health Canada to the Justice Department.  Most of the $528 million budgeted for the strategy between 2012 and 2017 goes to enforcement, rather than treatment, public education or health promotion, the drug policy coalition report notes.  “Activities such as RCMP drug enforcement, drug interdiction and the use of the military in international drug control efforts [further] drive up policing, military and security budgets,” it says.

Canada has always taken a softer line on prosecuting drug offences than the U.S., which has recorded 45 million arrests since president Richard Nixon declared a war on drugs in 1971.  More than half of those in U.S.  federal prison are there for drug offences.  The Canadian drug incarceration rate is nowhere near as high.  But the government’s omnibus crime bill includes a suite of harder penalties.  It requires a six-month minimum sentence for those growing as few as six cannabis plants, with escalating minimums.  It also doubled the maximum penalty to 14 years for trafficking pot.  ( In Colorado, by contrast, it’s now legal for an adult to grow six plants for personal use or to possess up to an ounce of marijuana.  )

At the heart of the crime bill, in the government’s view, is public safety through criminal apprehension.  The party won successive elections with that as a key election plank, and the senior ministers for crime and justice see it as an inalterable mandate.  Nicholson rose in the Commons this March saying the government makes “no apology” for its tough-on-crime agenda, including its war on pot.  “Since we’ve come to office, we’ve introduced 30 pieces of legislation aimed at keeping our streets and communities safe,” he said.  Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, in response to the pot legalization votes in Colorado and Washington, has flatly stated: “We will not be decriminalizing or legalizing marijuana.” Back in 2010, Toews made it clear that public safety trumps concerns about increasing costs at a time of falling crime rates.  “Let’s not talk about statistics,” he told a Senate committee studying the omnibus crime bill.  “Let’s talk about danger,” he said.  “I want people to be sa! fe.”

But there are risks in prohibition, too.  The most obvious are the gang hits and gun battles that indeed impact the safety of Canadian streets, much of it fuelled by turf battles over the illegal drug trade.  Nor are criminal dealers prone to worry about contaminants in the product from dubious grow ops, or the age of their customers.

Canadian children and youth, in fact, are the heaviest users of cannabis in the developed world, according to a report released in April by UNICEF.  The agency, using a World Health Organization ( WHO ) survey of 15,000 Canadians, found 28 per cent of Canadian children ( aged 11, 13, and 15 ) tried marijuana in the past 12 months, the highest rate among 29 nations.  Fewer than 10 per cent admitted to being frequent users.  A Health Canada survey puts the average first use of pot at 15.7 years, and estimates the number of “youth” ( ages 15-24 ) who have tried pot at a lower 22 per cent-the same rate as a survey of Ontario high school student use by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.

UNICEF called child marijuana use a “significant concern” for reasons including possible impacts on physical and mental health as well as school performance.  Canadian youth, it speculated, believe occasional pot use is of little risk to their health, and “less risky than regular smoking of cigarettes.” UNICEF warned, however, of significant punitive risks to pot use, including expulsion from school and arrest.  It noted 4,700 Canadians between ages 12 to 17 were charged with a cannabis offence in 2006.  “Legal sanctions against young people generally lead to even worse outcomes,” the report said, “not improvements in their lives.”

Nor do Canada’s sanctions curb underage use.  Germany, Portugal, Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands are all countries where pot use has been decriminalized, legalized or liberalized, and all have rates of child cannabis use that range from one-third to more than one-half lower than in Canada.  Why Canada’s rates are higher is a bit of a mystery.  Part of it is the ready availability from dealers with no scruples about targeting youth, and the cachet of forbidden fruit-or rather, buds.  Then there’s the storm of mixed messages we send young people.  There’s the laissez-faire attitude of many parents who used pot themselves.  Then days like the annual 4/20 celebrations every April 20, when police turn a blind eye to open pot use and sale, cloud the issue of legality.  Even the federal government vilifies cannabis on one hand, while its health ministry offers a qualified endorsement of its use as a medicine.

Mason Tvert, a key strategist in Colorado’s successful legalization vote, says criminalization has created an unregulated underground market of dealers who have no compunction about selling pot to minors.  “Whether you want marijuana to be legal or not is irrelevant.  Clearly there is a need for something to change if our goal is to keep marijuana from young people,” he says in an interview with Maclean’s during a foray into the Lower Mainland to campaign on behalf of Sensible BC’s referendum plan.

If you want to see the value of regulating a legal product, combined with proof-of-age requirements and public education campaigns, look to the falling rates of cigarette smoking among young people in both the U.S.  and Canada, Tvert says.  “We didn’t have to arrest a single adult for smoking a cigarette in order to reduce teen smoking.  So why arrest adults to prevent teens from using marijuana?”

UNICEF also recommended that child pot use can be reduced more effectively with the same kind of public information campaigns and other aggressive measures used to curtail tobacco use.  Canadian children, it noted, have the third-lowest rate of tobacco smokers among 29 nations.  Remarkably, whether you use the 28 or 22 per cent estimate, more Canadian children have at least tried pot than the number who who smoke or drink heavily.  The WHO data found just four per cent of Canadian children smoke cigarettes at least once a week, and 16 per cent said they had been drunk more than twice.  It’s noteworthy, too, that tobacco, alcohol and cannabis use by Canadian children have all declined significantly since the last WHO survey in 2002.  Perhaps we underestimate the common sense of our young people-sometimes at their peril.

There are ample reasons to discourage children from the use of intoxicants at a time of formative social, physical and emotional development.  It’s noteworthy, though, that Canada’s teens have at least chosen a safer vice in pot-apart from its illegality-than either alcohol or tobacco.  As Tvert claims, backed by ample scientific data, pot is not physically addictive ( though people can become psychologically dependent ) and it is less toxic than either tobacco or alcohol.

An unfair law, unevenly applied

It was a bleak, wet night in March when 100 people gathered in a lecture hall at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby to hear an unlikely cast of speakers make the case for marijuana legalization, an event sponsored by Sensible BC.  Among the speakers was Derek Corrigan, the city mayor, who cut his teeth as a defence lawyer.  “Over the course of my career I gained an understanding of the nature of the people who were using [cannabis] and realized this was a vast cross-section of our society,” he said.  They were everyday people, not criminals, he said.  Most smoke with impunity in their homes and social circles, but it was young people, without that insulation of social respectability, whom he most often defended.  “In criminal law we used to call it the ‘I-didn’t-respect-the-officer-enough’ offence.  If you apologized enough you were unlikely to be charged,” he said.  “I found that to be reprehensible.”

Among the other speakers was lawyer Randie Long, who used to have a lucrative sideline as an hourly-paid federal prosecutor dealing with marijuana charges.  There is a corrupting influence to the war on drugs that hits far closer to home than the cartels, the gangs and the dealers, he said.  It corrupts the police and the justice system itself.  “There’s easy money available from the feds for law enforcement”-all they need are the arrests to justify it.  “The prosecutors use stats.  The cops use stats,” he said.  “Better stats mean better money.”

It’s understandable that many believe marijuana possession is quasi-legal.  In Vancouver, it all but is.  It is the stated policy of Vancouver police to place a low priority on enforcing cannabis possession charges.  But outside Vancouver, most B.C.  municipalities are patrolled by local detachments of the federal RCMP-and there, the hunt is on.  Boyd, the criminologist, has taken a hard look at the numbers.  In 2010, for instance, there were only six charges recommended by Vancouver police where marijuana possession was the only offence.  There is a “striking difference” in enforcement in areas patrolled by the RCMP, Boyd notes in his report.  The rate of all pot possession charges laid by Vancouver police in 2010 was 30 per 100,000.  In RCMP territory, it ranged from 79 per 100,000 in Richmond and 90 per 100,000 in North Vancouver to almost 300 per 100,000 in Nelson and 588 per 100,000 in Tofino.

RCMP Supt.  Brian Cantera, head of drug enforcement in the province, explained the jump in pot possession charges in B.C.  as “better work by policing the problem.” He wrote in an email to Boyd: “Despite the views of some, most Canadians do not want this drug around, as they recognize the dangers of it.  The public does not want another substance to add to the carnage on highways and other community problems.  Policing is reflective of what the public does not want.”

Yet many polls suggest what the public does not want is a prohibition on marijuana.  Last year 68 per cent of Canadians told pollster Angus Reid that the war on drugs is a “failure.” Nationally, 57 per cent said they favour legalizing pot.  In B.C., 75 per cent supported moving toward regulation and taxation of pot.  The number of B.C.  respondents who said possessing a marijuana cigarette should lead to a criminal record: 14 per cent.

Despite the zeal for enforcement, most pot arrests in Canada never result in convictions.  In 2010, just 7,500 of possession charges for all types of drugs resulted in guilty verdicts-about 10 per cent of all 74,000 possession offences.  Most possession busts never make it to trial.  Of those reaching court, more than half of the charges are stayed, withdrawn or result in acquittals.  This dismal batting average begs two questions.  Is this a wise use of police resources and court time? And what criteria selected the unlucky 10 per cent with a guilty verdict? Aside from the probability it is predominantly young males, there are no national breakdowns by income or race.  All told, pot prohibition is “ineffective and costly,” the 2002 Senate report concluded.  “Users are marginalized and exposed to discrimination by police and the criminal justice system; society sees the power and wealth of organized crime enhanced as criminals benefit from prohibition; and governments see their abi! lity to prevent at-risk use diminished.”

The human cost of prohibition

Victoria resident Myles Wilkinson was thrilled to win an all-expenses-paid trip to the Super Bowl in New Orleans this February.  But when he presented himself to U.S.  Customs agents at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport, he was refused entry to the U.S.  because of a marijuana possession conviction-from 1981.  “I had two grams of cannabis.  I paid a $50 fine,” he told CBC news.  He was 19.  “I can’t believe that this is happening, for something that happened 32 years ago.” But it can and it does, and the fact that Wilkinson’s Super Bowl contest was sponsored by a brewery adds a painful ironic twist.  Wilkinson’s predicament is sadly typical.  Canadians in their late teens to mid-20s are by far the most likely to be accused of drug offences, StatsCan reports.  They are also the least likely to be able to afford the several thousand dollar defence lawyers typically bill to fight a case that goes to trial.

As for the scale of pot use in Canada, look to the person on your left and the person on your right.  If neither of them have violated the law by smoking pot then it must be you, and probably one of the others, too.  About 40 per cent of Canadians 15 and older admitted in a 2011 Health Canada survey to have smoked pot in their lifetime.  Based on the number of Canadians 15 and older, that’s 10.4 million people.  Just nine per cent of survey respondents said they smoked pot in the last year, compared to 14 per cent in 2004.  Male past-year cannabis users outnumber females by two to one, and young people 15 to 24 are more than three times more likely to have smoked pot in the past year compared to those 25 and older.

The same phone survey of 10,000 Canadians found that the alcohol consumption of one-quarter of Canadians puts them at risk of such chronic or acute conditions as liver disease, cancers, injuries and overdoses.  If there is a crisis, it’s in that legal drug: alcohol.

Legalization and the risk to public safety

Canadians now have the luxury of looking to the social incubators of Washington state and Colorado to assess the potential risks of adding pot to the menu of legalized vices.  Critics have already predicted the outcome: a massive increase in pot use, carnage on the highways, a lost generation of underperforming stoners coughing up their cancerous lungs, Hells Angels becoming the Seagram’s of weed.

As commentator David Frum described it in a column this spring on the Daily Beast website: “A world of weaker families, absent parents, and shrivelling job opportunities is a world in which more Americans will seek a cheap and easy escape from their depressing reality.  Legalized marijuana, like legalized tobacco, will become a diversion for those who feel they have the least to lose.”

These are all legitimate, if often exaggerated, fears that must be addressed.

Will pot use increase? There’s little evidence internationally to suggest a surge in use, at least any more than it has as an easily obtainable illegal substance.  The 2002 Senate report concluded: “We have not legalized cannabis and we have one of the highest rates [of use] in the world.  Countries adopting a more liberal policy have, for the most part, rates of usage lower than ours, which stabilized after a short period of growth.”

The Netherlands, where marijuana is available in hundreds of adult-only coffee shops, is a case in point.  The 2012 United Nations World Drug Report, using its own sources, pegs the level of use there at just 7.7 per cent of those aged 15 to 64.  The U.S.  has the seventh-highest rate of pot smokers, 14.1 per cent, while Canada ranks eighth at 12.7 per cent.  Spain and Italy, which have decriminalized possession for all psychoactive drugs, are interesting contrasts.  Cannabis use in Italy is 14.6 per cent, while Spain, at 10.6 per cent, is lower than the U.S.  or Canada.

Is cannabis a gateway to harder drugs? Again the 2002 Senate report concluded after extensive study: “Thirty years’ experience in the Netherlands disproves this clearly, as do the liberal policies in Spain, Italy and Portugal,” the report said.  “And here in Canada, despite the growing increase in cannabis users [at the time of the report], we have not had a proportionate increase in users of hard drugs.” In fact, use of cocaine, speed, hallucinogens and ecstasy are all at lower rates than in 2004, the Health Canada survey reported in 2011.

The risks of drugged driving: This is undeniably an area of concern, but one we’ve lived with for decades.  Canadian law since 2008 allows police to conduct mandatory roadside assessments if drivers are suspected of drug impairment.  There isn’t yet a roadside breath or blood test for drugs, but police can require a blood test under medical supervision.  There were 1,900 drugged driving incidents in 2011-two per cent of all impaired driving offences in Canada.

Washington state has a standard of five nanograms per millilitre of blood of marijuana’s psychoactive chemical, THC, but there is not always a correlation between those levels and impairment.  “We aren’t going to arrest somebody unless there’s impairment,” Lt.  Rob Sharpe, of Washington’s State Patrol Impaired Driving Section, told the Seattle Times.

So far there has been not a spike in Washington in “green DUIs,” as they’re called.  One reason for this may be that many studies have shown that people react recklessly under influence of alcohol, and cautiously when stoned.  One admittedly small study at Israel’s Ben Gurion University found alcohol and THC were “equally detrimental” to driving abilities.  “After THC administration, subjects drove significantly slower than in the control condition,” the study found, “while after alcohol ingestion, subjects drove significantly faster.” A World Health Organization paper on the health effects of cannabis use says an impaired driver’s risk-taking is one of the greatest dangers, “which the available evidence suggests is reduced by cannabis intoxication, by contrast with alcohol intoxication, which consistently increases risk-taking.” Most certainly criminal sanctions for any form of impaired driving are necessary, as are education campaigns.

What is the health impact of pot? Expect further studies in the states where legalization has unfettered researchers.  In Canada, Gerald Thomas, an analyst with the Centre for Addictions Research of B.C., and Chris Davis, an analyst with the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse, used Health Canada data to chart the health and social costs of cannabis, tobacco and alcohol.  Their findings: tobacco-related health costs are over $800 per user; alcohol-related health costs were $165 per user; cannabis-related health costs were $20 per user.  Enforcement costs added $153 per drinker and $328 for cannabis user.  In other words, 94 per cent of the cost to society of cannabis comes from keeping it illegal.

Studies on inhaling pot smoke have yielded some surprising results.  A 2006 U.S.  study, the largest of its kind, found regular and even heavy marijuana use doesn’t cause lung cancer.  The findings among users who had smoked as many as 22,000 joints over their lives, “were against our expectations” that there’d be a link to cancer, Donald Tashkin of the University of California at Los Angeles told the Washington Post.  “What we found instead was no association at all, and even a suggestion of some protective effect.”

Another study compared lung function over 20 years between tobacco and marijuana smokers.  Tobacco smokers lost lung function but pot use had the opposite effect, marginally increasing capacity, said the study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.  Cannabinoids in marijuana smoke “have been recognized to have potential antitumour properties,” noted a 2009 study by researchers at Brown University.  A study looking at marijuana use and head and neck squamous-cell cancer found an increased risk for smokers and drinkers, while “moderate marijuana use is associated with reduced risk.” Certainly it is past time for serious and impartial study of the benefits and risks of medicinal marijuana, something that decriminalization would facilitate.

Pot as the lesser of two evils: Let’s dispense once and for all with the stereotype of the unmotivated stoner.  There are also unmotivated drunks, cigarette smokers and milk drinkers.  Studies have ruled out “the existence of the so-called amotivational syndrome,” the Senate report noted a decade ago.  Generations of pot smokers from the Boomers onward have somehow held it together, building families and careers.  Miraculously, the last three U.S.  presidents managed to lift themselves beyond their admitted marijuana use to seek the highest office in the land.  Once there, they forgot whence they came, and continued the war on drugs.

Consider, too, the opinion of retired Seattle police chief Norm Stamper, one of many who convinced a solid majority of voters in Washington state last November to endorse legalization.  “I strongly believe-and most people agree-that our laws should punish people who do harm to others,” he writes in the foreword to the 2009 bestseller Marijuana is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink? “But by banning the use of marijuana and punishing individuals who merely possess the substance, it is difficult to see what harm we are trying to prevent.  It bears repeating: from my own work and the experiences of other members of the law enforcement community, it is abundantly clear that marijuana is rarely, if ever, the cause of harmfully disruptive or violent behaviour.  In fact, I would go so far as to say that marijuana use often helps to tamp down tensions where they otherwise might exist.”

As for pot’s health impact, Stamper concurs with the thesis of the book: study after study finds pot far less toxic and addictive than booze.  “By prohibiting marijuana we are steering people toward a substance that far too many people already abuse, namely alcohol.  Can marijuana be abused? Of course,” he says.  But “it is a much safer product for social and recreational use than alcohol.”

Mason Tvert, a co-author of the Marijuana is Safer book, notes multiple studies show it is impossible to consume enough weed to overdose, yet as a teen he had to be rushed unconscious by ambulance to hospital to have his stomach pumped after drinking a near-lethal amount of alcohol.  “We know alcohol kills brain cells without a doubt,” he says.  “That’s what a hangover is, it’s like the funeral procession for your brain cells.”

Tvert, very much a showman in the early days of the legalization campaign in Colorado, hammered relentlessly on the “benign” nature of pot, compared to alcohol.  His organization sponsored a billboard featuring a bikini-clad beauty, mimicking the usual approach to peddling beer.  In this case, though, the message was: “Marijuana: No hangovers.  No violence.  No carbs!”

Tvert went so far as to call anti-legalization opponent John Hickenlooper, then mayor of Denver, “a drug dealer” because he ran a successful brew pub.  Now, Tvert notes with sweet irony, Hickenlooper is governor, tasked with implementing the regime for legalized weed.

The rewards of legalization

Stop the Violence B.C.-a coalition of public health officials, academics, current and former politicians-is trying to take the emotion out of the legalization debate by building science-based counter-arguments to enforcement.  One of its member studies concludes B.C.  would reap $500 million a year in taxation and licensing revenues from a liquor-control-board style of government regulation and sale.

While some see those numbers as unduly optimistic, both Washington and Colorado are looking at lower enforcement costs and a revenue bonanza from taxation and regulation.  An impact analysis for Colorado, with a population slightly larger than British Columbia, predicts a $12-million saving in enforcement costs in the first year, rising to $40 million “as courts and prisons adapt to fewer and fewer violators.” It predicts combined savings and new revenue of $60 million, “with a potential for this number to double after 2017.”

In the U.S., so far, the Obama administration has shown no inclination to use federal drug laws to trump the state initiatives.  Dana Larsen is banking on a similar response from Ottawa, should Sensible BC manage to get quasi-legalization passed in a September 2014 referendum.  The bar is set high.  They need to gather, over a 90-day span this fall, signatures from 10 per cent of the registered voters in every one of B.C.’s 85 electoral districts to force a referendum-just as voters rallied to kill the Harmonized Sales Tax, against the wishes of the federal government.  The vote, should it go ahead, would seek to amend the Police Act, instructing departments not to enforce cannabis possession.  It would be the first step, says Larsen, to a national repeal of prohibition.

Would the federal government go to war with a province to protect a 90-year-old law built on myths, fears and hysteria; a law that crushed the ambitions of countless thousands of young people; a law that millions violate when it suits their purpose? Likely, but it would be one hell of a fight.  After the legalization vote was decided in Washington last November, the Seattle Police Department posted a humourous online guide to pot use, entitled Marijwhatnow? Yes, it said, those over 21 can carry an ounce of pot.  No, you can’t smoke it in public.  Will Seattle police help federal investigations of marijuana use in the state? Not a chance.  There was, between the lines, a palpable relief that they no longer had to play bad cops to a bad law.  Marijwhatnow? ended with a clip from Lord of the Rings.  Gandalf and Bilbo are smoking a pipe.  “Gandalf, my friend,” says Bilbo, “this will be a night to remember.”

Perhaps one day Canadians will be as lucky.

Source: Maclean’s Magazine (Canada)
Copyright: 2013 Maclean Hunter Publishing Ltd.
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.macleans.ca/
Author: Ken MacQueen

22 Jun 2013

U.S. House of Representatives Votes to Legalize Industrial Hemp

posted in: Industrial Hemp | 0

 

 

WhiteHouse

The U.S. House of Representatives voted 225-200 on June 20 to legalize the industrial farming of hemp fiber. Hemp is the same species as the marijuana plant, and its fiber has been used to create clothing, paper, and other industrial products for thousands of years; however, it has been listed as a “controlled substance” since the beginning of the drug war in the United States. Unlike marijuana varieties of the plant, hemp is not bred to create high quantities of the drug THC.

The amendment’s sponsor, Jared Polis (D-Colo.), noted in congressional debate that “George Washington and Thomas Jefferson grew hemp. The first American flag was made of hemp. And today, U.S. retailers sell over $300 million worth of goods containing hemp — but all of that hemp is imported, since farmers can’t grow it here. The federal government should clarify that states should have the ability to regulate academic and agriculture research of industrial hemp without fear of federal interference. Hemp is not marijuana, and at the very least, we should allow our universities — the greatest in the world — to research the potential benefits and downsides of this important agricultural commodity.”

The 225-200 vote included 62 Republican votes for the Polis amendment, many of whom were members of Justin Amash’s Republican Liberty Caucus or representatives from farm states. But most Republicans opposed the amendment, claiming it would make the drug war more difficult. “When you plant hemp alongside marijuana, you can’t tell the difference,” Representative Steve King (R-Iowa) said in congressional debate on the amendment to the Federal Agriculture Reform and Risk Management Act of 2013.

“This is not about a drugs bill. This is about jobs,” Representative Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) countered King in House floor debate June 20. Massie, a key House Republican ally of Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky and a member of the Republican Liberty Caucus, opposes marijuana legalization but had signed on as a cosponsor of the Polis amendment.

The amendment would take industrial hemp off the controlled substances list if it meets the following classification: “The term ‘industrial hemp’ means the plant Cannabis sativa L. and any part of such plant, whether growing or not, with a delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol concentration of not more than 0.3 percent on a dry weight basis.” The amendment would allow industrial farming of hemp “if a person grows or processes Cannabis sativa L. for purposes of making industrial hemp in accordance with State law.” Most states have passed laws legalizing industrial hemp, in whole or in part, but federal prohibitions have kept the plant from legal cultivation.

However, the annual agricultural authorization bill subsequently went down to defeat in the House by a vote of 195 to 234. Sponsors of the amendment hope that it will be revised in conference committee, where it has strong support from both Kentucky senators, Rand Paul and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

The legislation, originally offered as the bill H.R. 525, was sponsored by Jared Polis (D-Colo.) and Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), who represent states where voters recently considered ballot measures that legalized marijuana within their states, a fact King pointed out in House floor debate. Voters in Colorado and Washington approved the ballot measures in 2012, but voters in Oregon rejected a ballot measure that would have legalized cultivation of marijuana.

Recent polls have indicated that most Americans want legalization of marijuana, as well as hemp. Though support for marijuana legalization is by only a slim majority of the public, there’s a larger divide among age groups, with younger voters more heavily favoring legalization.

None of the debate on the amendment related to the constitutional authority of Congress to ban substances. Nor did any congressman reference the first time Congress banned a drug — alcohol. At that time, Congress followed proper constitutional protocol to amend the U.S. Constitution first, giving it the legitimate power to ban alcohol (i.e., the 18th Amendment). No comparable constitutional amendment has been passed for hemp, marijuana, raw milk, or any other substance prohibited by the federal government.

21 Jun 2013

Marijuana Crops in California Threaten Forests

posted in: Cannabis News | 0

It took the death of a small, rare member of the weasel family to focus the attention of Northern California’s marijuana growers on the impact that their huge and expanding activities were having on the environment.

The animal, a Pacific fisher, had been poisoned by an anticoagulant in rat poisons like d-Con. Since then, six other poisoned fishers have been found. Two endangered spotted owls tested positive. Mourad W. Gabriel, a scientist at the University of California, Davis, concluded that the contamination began when marijuana growers in deep forests spread d-Con to protect their plants from wood rats.

That news has helped growers acknowledge, reluctantly, what their antagonists in law enforcement have long maintained: like industrial logging before it, the booming business of marijuana is a threat to forests whose looming dark redwoods preside over vibrant ecosystems.

Hilltops have been leveled to make room for the crop. Bulldozers start landslides on erosion-prone mountainsides. Road and dam construction clogs some streams with dislodged soil. Others are bled dry by diversions. Little water is left for salmon whose populations have been decimated by logging.

And local and state jurisdictions’ ability to deal with the problem has been hobbled by, among other things, the drug’s murky legal status. It is approved by the state for medical uses but still illegal under federal law, leading to a patchwork of growers. Some operate within state rules, while others operate totally outside the law.

The environmental damage may not be as extensive as that caused by the 19th-century diking of the Humboldt estuary here, or 20th-century clear-cut logging, but the romantic outlaw drug has become a destructive juggernaut, experts agree.

“In my career I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Stormer Feiler, a scientist with California’s North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board. “Since 2007 the amount of unregulated activities has exploded.” He added, “They are grading the mountaintops now, so it affects the whole watershed below.”

Scott Bauer, of the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, said, “I went out on a site yesterday where there was an active water diversion providing water to 15 different groups of people or individuals,” many of them growers. “The stream is going to dry up this year.”

While it is hard to find data on such an industry, Anthony Silvaggio, a sociology lecturer at Humboldt State University, pointed to anecdotal evidence in a Google Earth virtual “flyover” he made of the industrial farm plots and the damage they cause. The video was later enhanced and distributed by Mother Jones magazine.

Brad Job’s territory as a federal Bureau of Land Management officer includes public lands favored, he said, by Mexican drug cartels whose environmental practices are the most destructive. “The watershed was already lying on the ground bleeding,” Mr. Job said. “The people who divert water in the summer are kicking it in the stomach.”

That water is crucial to restoring local runs of imperiled Coho salmon, Chinook salmon and steelhead, which swam up Eel River tributaries by the tens of thousands before the logging era. Scott Greacen, executive director of Friends of the Eel River, said, “It’s not weed that drove the Coho to the brink of extinction, but it may kick it over the edge.” By various estimates, each plant needs at least one gallon and as much as six gallons of water during a season.

The idea that the counterculture’s crop of choice is bad for the environment has gone down hard here. Marijuana is an economic staple, particularly in Humboldt County’s rural southern end, called SoHum. Jennifer Budwig, the vice president of a local bank, estimated last year that marijuana infused more than $415 million into the county’s annual economic activity, one-quarter of the total.

For the professed hippies who moved here decades ago, marijuana farming combines defiance of society’s strictures, shared communal values and a steady income. “Marijuana has had a framework that started in the 1930s with jazz musicians,” said Gregg Gold, a psychology professor at Humboldt State University. “It’s a cultural icon of resistance to authority.”

“In 2013,” he added, “you’re asking that we reframe it in people’s minds as just another agribusiness. That’s a huge shift.”

It is a thriving agribusiness. Derek Roy, a special agent enforcing endangered species protections for the National Marine Fisheries Service, said, “These grow sites continue to get larger and larger.” Things took off after 1996, when California decriminalized the use of medical marijuana, Mr. Roy said.

The older farmers say that as the fierce antidrug campaigns waned and the medical marijuana market developed, newcomers arrived eager to cash in, particularly in the past decade, according to two growers who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

“There is a gold rush,” Mr. Greacen said. “And it’s a race to the bottom in terms of environmental impacts.”

Now that Colorado and Washington voters have approved the recreational use of the drug, there is a widespread belief that the days of high prices for marijuana are nearly over.

As Mikal Jakubal, a resident of SoHum who is directing a documentary film about Humboldt County’s marijuana business, puts it, “Everyone thinks, ‘This might be the last good year.’ ” That helps fuel the willy-nilly expansion of cultivation, the tearing up of hillsides and the diversions that dry out creeks.

The worst damage is on public lands. There, extensive plantings are surrounded by d-Con-laced tuna and sardine cans placed around perimeters by the dozens, Dr. Gabriel said. Mr. Job of the land management bureau said these illegal operations have 70,000 to 100,000 plants; they are believed to be the work of Mexican drug cartels.

But small farmers have an impact, too. Mr. Bauer of the State Fish and Wildlife Department said that when he found the water diversion last week and asked those responsible about it, “these people we met with were pointing a finger all over the watershed, saying: ‘We’re not that big. There are bigger people out there.’ ”

Federal environmental agents, including Mr. Roy and Mr. Job, have brought two cases to the United States attorney’s office in San Francisco. The office declined to prosecute a case last year, they said. A new one is under review. But, they said, manpower for enforcement is limited.

Given federal prohibitions against profiting from marijuana, county officials have a limited toolbox. “We have land-use authority, that’s it,” said Mark Lovelace, a Humboldt County supervisor. He chafes at the county’s inability to establish a system of permits, for fear of running afoul of federal law. His board did just pass a resolution asking local businesses not to sell d-Con. (A representative of Reckitt Benckiser, which makes the poison, wrote a letter of protest.)

Mr. Lovelace and others contend that legalizing marijuana would open the door to regulation and put the brakes on environmental abuses.

In the meantime, the industry has begun to police itself. Some growers have benefited from a program run by a local nonprofit organization, Sanctuary Forest, that subsidizes the installation of tanks that can store water in the winter, when it is plentiful, for use in dry months.

“There may be people who grow pot in our group,” said Tasha McKee, executive director of Sanctuary Forest. “I’m sure there are. We don’t ask that question.”

A local group, the Emerald Growers Association, recently produced a handbook on sustainable practices.

“There is an identity crisis going on right now,” said Gary Graham Hughes, executive director of the Environmental Protection Information Center in Arcata. “The people who are really involved with this industry are trying to understand what their responsibilities are.”

A version of this article appeared in print on June 21, 2013, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Marijuana Crops in California Threaten Forests and Wildlife.

Source: New York Times (NY)
Author: Felicity Barringer
Published: June 21, 2013
Copyright: 2013 The New York Times Company
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/

21 Jun 2013

Marijuana fed pork becoming highly successful

posted in: Industrial Hemp | 0

 

 

SEATTLE, Washington (KING) – It’s a different kind of head shop found just down the stairs from the Pike Place market.

It’s the BB Ranch selling something that’s even better than bacon. It’s marijuana fed pork.

“The pig farmer has been feeding them marijuana for the last two and a half months of their life and they’ve been happy as hell,” said William Von Schneidau, owner of the butcher shop.

This is all thanks the voters of Washington who legalized marijuana in the last election. That’s when Von Schneidau saw the opportunity wasn’t just blowing smoke.

“And then all of a sudden marijuana, you know, became legal a few months ago and somehow, I don’t know how, I met the commercial growers and they needed to get rid of some of their stuff. So rather than going into the compost pile we said, ‘Lets try it out.’ So here we go,” said he said.

The pigs are raised in a farm about an hour outside of Seattle. In fact, these pigs are on the rock star diet. The mix contains drugs and alcohol, the booze coming by way of the spent grains from Woodinville’s Project V Vodka.

The pot pigs grow to be extra fat and really happy according to the farmer who wants to be anonymous.

Here’s the tough part of the story. The pigs love eating weed, and what gives me pleasure is BBQ pork.

So I brought some pot pork belly to my buddy Steve Freeman at Celtic Cowboy BBQ in Edmonds. And we decided to smoke it.

Steve rubbed the belly, which is basically the part that bacon comes from, with spices and tossed it into the smoker for about 45 minuets. He then seared it on a skillet.

Steve says the results are stunning.

“That’s some pretty happy pork right there. He’s done a good job with that. I really like that,” he said.

And that takes us back to the happiest farm in Washington. Yes, the pigs will become BBQ one day.

But if you gotta go, why not go out on a high.

CONTINUE READING/VIDEO….

20 Jun 2013

Dream of ‘Cannabis Empire’ Raises Fears, Hackles

posted in: Cannabis News | 0

For the activists who led the effort to legalize recreational marijuana in Washington state last fall, Jamen Shively was one of their biggest fears: an aspiring pot profiteer whose unabashed dreams of building a cannabis empire might attract unwanted attention from the federal government or a backlash that could slow the marijuana reform movement across the country.

With visionary zeal, the 45-year-old former Microsoft manager described his plans to a conference room packed with reporters and supporters last month, saying he was tired of waiting for a green light from the Obama administration, which still hasn’t said how it will respond to the legalization of recreational pot in Washington and Colorado. Shively vowed to quickly raise $10 million and eventually build his company, Diego Pellicer, into an international pot powerhouse.

Though he promised a “cautious and measured” expansion, Shively’s approach nevertheless contrasted with that of state regulators who want to avoid repeating the national experience with Big Tobacco and Big Alcohol, industries that profited wildly on addiction and abuse. Mark Kleiman, who heads the team hired to be Washington’s official marijuana consultant, responded on his blog: “It was inevitable that the legalization of cannabis would attract a certain number of insensate greedheads to the industry.”

Shively’s ambitions – “We are Big Marijuana,” he proclaimed – don’t merely raise questions about what marijuana legalization might look like in the long run and whether large corporations will come to dominate. He also risks getting himself indicted.

The Justice Department has said while it doesn’t intend to prosecute sick people for using marijuana, it will go after those who try to get rich from commercial sales. It hasn’t said yet whether it will sue to block Washington and Colorado from licensing pot growers, processors and stores.

The legalization votes in Washington and Colorado have created a fever for cannabis-related investing, to an extent. Conferences have focused on the parameters for legally investing in “ancillary businesses” – those that supply equipment needed by pot grows, for example – without financing the actual production or distribution of marijuana, which remains illegal under federal law.

Shively isn’t skirting the edges of the nascent industry, but diving right in, in a way that few other entrepreneurs are. Some companies that make high-end marijuana-infused products, such as Colorado-based Dixie Elixirs, are planning to make their brands available in other states, but it’s not clear anyone else is taking steps to create a pot empire.

“Developing a national brand in an industry in which it is illegal to move the core product across state lines presents some serious logistical challenges,” said Betty Aldworth, deputy director of the National Cannabis Industry Association.

Diego Pellicer’s business plan estimates $120,000 of pure profit per month, per recreational pot store. Shively said he plans dozens of stores in Washington and Colorado.

At the May 30 news conference, Shively announced Diego’s first corporate deal – an arrangement with a Seattle medical marijuana company called the Northwest Patient Resource Center. He said Diego would be starting in the medical marijuana market in Washington and Colorado, and then transitioning some dispensaries to recreational pot stores once the states begin issuing licenses.

Shively said the arrangement was “not in violation of either federal or state law,” but it was troubling enough to one of the dispensary company owners that he’s walking away from the deal – and the company he helped found – because he fears it puts everyone involved at risk of federal prosecution.

“I’m not an activist. I’m just a businessman,” said the part-owner, Thomas Jun, a 42-year-old father of three. “I can’t afford to do any federal time.”

According to Shively, Diego Pellicer has acquired the option to buy Northwest Patient Resource Center, but does not actually own it. That’s what gives Diego Pellicer some protection and allows it to position itself for the time when more states legalize pot and Congress changes federal laws, he said. No marijuana will be moved interstate.

“We don’t touch cannabis. We don’t have ownership of cannabis,” he said. “It’s not a perfect insulation or buffer, but it’s the best possible mechanism that we can come up with.”

Through his lawyer, Douglas Hiatt, Jun provided the AP with internal company documents, including a draft of the $1.6 million agreement dated May 30. The deal directs monthly payments of up to $50,000 from Diego be used to “to further develop and enhance NWPRC’s customer locations and to otherwise grow its business as currently conducted.” Former federal prosecutors say that could be seen as a conspiracy to violate federal law.

“It certainly would make me nervous to be involved in anything like this,” said Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law School-Los Angeles and a former assistant U.S. attorney.

Shively called the draft provided to AP “an obsolete document,” but declined to provide further details. He also declined to discuss a $10,000 check he wrote to the dispensary company May 27.

The deal highlights the tension between the varying degrees of acceptance of marijuana by the states and the outright prohibition by the federal government, which makes banking and other business functions problematic. For example, beyond the growing and sale of marijuana constituting federal crimes, the movement of money related to marijuana sales likely constitutes money laundering.

Dixie Elixirs won’t be directly involved in the growing, processing or sale of pot in multiple states, said Tripp Keber, its managing director. Instead, it will license its technical know-how and recipes to people in Washington or elsewhere who want to produce products under the Dixie Elixirs brand – and try to avoid the attention of federal prosecutors by adhering to state laws.

“Big public federal indictments are going to do the industry a disservice,” Keber said.

If Shively’s model is endorsed by the regulators writing rules for Washington’s pot industry, “then we would be increasing the risk of intervention by the federal government,” said Alison Holcomb, the Seattle lawyer who drafted Washington’s law.

Shively said investors are advised that the company and those involved could face federal prosecution. A copy of Diego’s business plan includes 11 bullet points listing risks the company faces. None specifically suggests those involved could be prosecuted.

Source: Associated Press (Wire)
Author: Gene Johnson, Associated Press
Published: June 17, 2013
Copyright: 2013 The Associated Press

20 Jun 2013

Medical Pot Laws Get Tougher

posted in: Cannabis News | 0

Backers of medical-marijuana bills are proposing tighter restrictions on the drug to allay opponents’ fears of widespread use, a shift that is helping such legislation advance in additional states.

Illinois and New Hampshire are poised to pass some of the strictest medical-marijuana laws in the nation. They would join New Jersey, Connecticut and Delaware in banning patients from growing their own pot, increasing oversight on commercial growers and distributors, and restricting doctors from prescribing the drug for general pain.

The new restrictions are a far cry from the laws passed in the late 1990s, including in California, Colorado and Oregon, which were more ambiguous and, in some cases, made acquiring medical-marijuana prescriptions relatively simple.

In Colorado, for example, of the roughly 107,000 residents approved to use medical marijuana, pain is the qualifying condition for more than 100,000 of them. And in California, medical-marijuana prescriptions have become relatively common, as doctors can prescribe the drug for any illness “for which marijuana provides relief.”

“It’s clear that if I had proposed a California-type law, I would’ve had no chance of passing it,” said Illinois Rep. Lou Lang, the Democratic sponsor of the medical-marijuana bill now on the desk of Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn, a Democrat who says he is “very open-minded” about the bill.

Even in Canada, where medical marijuana has been legal since 2001, officials are pulling back. On Wednesday, the country is scheduled to publish rules that will soon ban patients from growing the drug at home.

The tighter state regulations appease some conservative lawmakers and governors hesitant to appear soft on crime, experts said, while still satisfying most medical-marijuana advocates, including patients and doctors.

From 1996 to 2008, the first 13 states to legalize medical marijuana allowed patients to grow the plant themselves and doctors to prescribe the drug for general pain, according to the Marijuana Policy Project, which tracks and advocates for medical-marijuana laws.

If Illinois and New Hampshire pass their laws as expected—becoming the 19th and 20th states to do so—five of the seven most recent medical-marijuana states would ban home cultivation and exclude or limit pain as a qualifying condition.

“There is suspicion about medical marijuana that it’s a foot in the door to full legalization,” said Sam Kamin, a law professor at the University of Denver. The new laws enable politicians to tell skeptical voters that “what we really want is sincere, well-regulated medical marijuana.”

Yet that suspicion isn’t without merit. In Colorado and Washington, two of the first states to allow medical marijuana, voters legalized recreational pot use in November. The states are setting up rules so retailers can begin selling the drug to anyone 21 and older next year.

Supporters of the Illinois bill say it would be the toughest such law in the nation—a claim used by proponents of similar bills elsewhere. The law would exclude minors, ban patients from growing their own pot and authorize doctors to prescribe the drug only for 33 serious medical conditions, including cancer, glaucoma and HIV/AIDS.

The Illinois bill would also give law-enforcement the authority to access to 24-hour surveillance video of the state’s licensed growers and revoke the driver’s license of any marijuana patient who refuses to undergo a sobriety test during a traffic stop.

The Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police said that though the bill could be worse, it opposes it. “It’s a lesser of two evils, maybe, but something we’re still fighting against,” said John Kennedy, the association’s director.

In New Hampshire, a conference committee reconciled the House and Senate versions of a medical-marijuana bill on Tuesday, bowing to demands from Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan, including that patients cannot grow their own pot. The governor said she would sign it.

In New York, the legislature’s lower house recently passed a medical-marijuana bill. Aiming to get it through the more conservative Senate, this year’s bill is significantly more restrictive than past versions.

“We’re aiming for a very tightly regulated piece of legislation, which really will be the toughest in the nation,” said a sponsor of the bill, Democratic Sen. Diane Savino.

Some laws are so restrictive that getting the drug to those who need it has been difficult, advocates say. In New Jersey, only one dispensary has opened since its law passed in 2009, in part due to tight restrictions, including that the first six shops be nonprofit. So far, just 126 of the nearly 1,000 approved patients are obtaining marijuana legally, the state said.

Mike Miceli, a 32-year-old auto technician in Jackson, N.J., said marijuana is the only drug that puts his painful Crohn’s disease into remission. After being put on a waiting list for months, he drove in March to Maine, where pot dispensaries accept prescriptions from other states. Then, last month, Mr. Miceli was arrested during a traffic stop for possession of marijuana, despite his medical-marijuana card, and faces up to two years in jail.

Mr. Miceli said his attorney is optimistic the court will accept his medical-marijuana prescription as a legal defense, but he still will owe thousands of dollars in legal fees.

Source: Wall Street Journal (US)
Author: Jack Nicas
Published: June 19, 2013
Copyright: 2013 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.wsj.com/

18 Jun 2013

North Shore Home To First Pro-Pot Billboard

posted in: Cannabis News | 0

The Sensible BC campaign for marijuana reform launched an ad campaign in West Vancouver for a province-wide cannabis referendum

A quarter-million commuters crossing the North Shore this week will have likely noticed the new greenery along Marine Drive near the Lions Gate Bridge.

It’s not in the bushes or trees but rather, um, higher.

The new ad campaign for marijuana legal reform was launched Monday by the folks at Sensible BC.

Their electronic billboard ad lighting up the border between North and West Vancouver features a giant cannabis leaf on a blue background and the words “Join the Sensible BC Marijuana Referendum campaign.”

It’s right now the only ad of its kind from the group promoting a fall referendum on the policing of marijuana in B.C.  But depending on the response it garners, it likely won’t be the last.

“If things go well, we’ll get other billboards in other cities and regions around the province,” said Sensible BC director Dana Larsen in an interview with The Outlook this week.  “It’s not specific that we’re necessarily targeting West Van more than anywhere else, but it’s a high-traffic area and a lot of folks go through there on their way to other places and we wanted to get some excitement and some interest in our campaign.”

While the campaign doesn’t actually begin in earnest until September, it’s of a kind that requires significant public awareness about its intentions beforehand if it’s to see any kind of success.

Similar to the successful Fight HST campaign of yesteryear, Larsen and his Sensible BC colleagues will have 90 days to sign up approximately 400,000 British Columbians – 10 per cent of voters from each provincial riding – to their Sensible Policing Act petition which aims to stop police in B.C.  from searching or arresting otherwise law-abiding citizens in possession of any amount of marijuana.

“Obviously that’s a monumental effort and it’s only ever been done once before, by the anti-HST campaign,” Larsen said.

If the campaign proves successful, a province-wide referendum to decriminalize marijuana and implement the Sensible Policing Act will be held in 2014.

Because drug laws in Canada are under federal jurisdiction, the Sensible Policing Act would go a step further than telling B.C.  police to stand down on marijuana offences.  The second part of the act would also call upon the federal government to either remove cannabis from the federal Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, or to give B.C.  a Section 56 “scientific exemption” to explore legally taxing and regulating marijuana use within the province.

Sensible BC already has teams of volunteers canvassing B.C.  communities for supporters, including in North Vancouver.  By September, they hope to have about 2,000 volunteers to fan out across the province and gather signatures.

“This campaign got started on my credit cards and certainly those are still maxed out,” Larsen said.  But since getting off the ground last year, the campaign has received generous donations from across Canada, most notably, perhaps, from longtime pot activist and last year’s lottery jackpot winner, Bob Erb of Terrace, who is using some of his $25-million winnings to match dollar-for-dollar every donation to the Sensible BC campaign, on top of his own lump contribution.

Larsen said the roughly half-million-dollar referendum campaign is also getting logistical help from a few of the former Fight HST folks.

“I’ve met with them a few times,” Larsen said, indicating a few of the Fight HST leaders and online organizers.  In fact, anyone who visits the Fight HST website today – admittedly, few British Columbians still are – will see a Sensible BC registration button right at the top of the homepage.

“Also, when I go and speak, people often show up and say, ‘I helped get signatures for the HST campaign and I want to help you guys,’” Larsen said.

As for his own motives in sparking and carrying the torch for marijuana reform in this province, Larsen said the reasons are manifold.

“The cannabis issue touches on many areas of social policy; whether it’s health care and medical marijuana access, whether it’s the environment and the benefits of growing industrial hemp, whether it’s our budget and the amount of money we’re wasting on prohibition and the amount of money we could be generating from tax revenue, or whether it’s civil liberties and policing…  all these things I think will be greatly benefited by changing the marijuana laws,” he said.

Source: Outlook, The (CN BC)
Copyright: 2013 Black Press
Website: http://www.bclocalnews.com/greater_vancouver/northshoreoutlook/
Author: Todd Coyne

18 Jun 2013

Dream of ‘Cannabis Empire’ Raises Fears, Hackles

posted in: Cannabis News | 0

For the activists who led the effort to legalize recreational marijuana in Washington state last fall, Jamen Shively was one of their biggest fears: an aspiring pot profiteer whose unabashed dreams of building a cannabis empire might attract unwanted attention from the federal government or a backlash that could slow the marijuana reform movement across the country.

With visionary zeal, the 45-year-old former Microsoft manager described his plans to a conference room packed with reporters and supporters last month, saying he was tired of waiting for a green light from the Obama administration, which still hasn’t said how it will respond to the legalization of recreational pot in Washington and Colorado. Shively vowed to quickly raise $10 million and eventually build his company, Diego Pellicer, into an international pot powerhouse.

Though he promised a “cautious and measured” expansion, Shively’s approach nevertheless contrasted with that of state regulators who want to avoid repeating the national experience with Big Tobacco and Big Alcohol, industries that profited wildly on addiction and abuse. Mark Kleiman, who heads the team hired to be Washington’s official marijuana consultant, responded on his blog: “It was inevitable that the legalization of cannabis would attract a certain number of insensate greedheads to the industry.”

Shively’s ambitions – “We are Big Marijuana,” he proclaimed – don’t merely raise questions about what marijuana legalization might look like in the long run and whether large corporations will come to dominate. He also risks getting himself indicted.

The Justice Department has said while it doesn’t intend to prosecute sick people for using marijuana, it will go after those who try to get rich from commercial sales. It hasn’t said yet whether it will sue to block Washington and Colorado from licensing pot growers, processors and stores.

The legalization votes in Washington and Colorado have created a fever for cannabis-related investing, to an extent. Conferences have focused on the parameters for legally investing in “ancillary businesses” – those that supply equipment needed by pot grows, for example – without financing the actual production or distribution of marijuana, which remains illegal under federal law.

Shively isn’t skirting the edges of the nascent industry, but diving right in, in a way that few other entrepreneurs are. Some companies that make high-end marijuana-infused products, such as Colorado-based Dixie Elixirs, are planning to make their brands available in other states, but it’s not clear anyone else is taking steps to create a pot empire.

“Developing a national brand in an industry in which it is illegal to move the core product across state lines presents some serious logistical challenges,” said Betty Aldworth, deputy director of the National Cannabis Industry Association.

Diego Pellicer’s business plan estimates $120,000 of pure profit per month, per recreational pot store. Shively said he plans dozens of stores in Washington and Colorado.

At the May 30 news conference, Shively announced Diego’s first corporate deal – an arrangement with a Seattle medical marijuana company called the Northwest Patient Resource Center. He said Diego would be starting in the medical marijuana market in Washington and Colorado, and then transitioning some dispensaries to recreational pot stores once the states begin issuing licenses.

Shively said the arrangement was “not in violation of either federal or state law,” but it was troubling enough to one of the dispensary company owners that he’s walking away from the deal – and the company he helped found – because he fears it puts everyone involved at risk of federal prosecution.

“I’m not an activist. I’m just a businessman,” said the part-owner, Thomas Jun, a 42-year-old father of three. “I can’t afford to do any federal time.”

According to Shively, Diego Pellicer has acquired the option to buy Northwest Patient Resource Center, but does not actually own it. That’s what gives Diego Pellicer some protection and allows it to position itself for the time when more states legalize pot and Congress changes federal laws, he said. No marijuana will be moved interstate.

“We don’t touch cannabis. We don’t have ownership of cannabis,” he said. “It’s not a perfect insulation or buffer, but it’s the best possible mechanism that we can come up with.”

Through his lawyer, Douglas Hiatt, Jun provided the AP with internal company documents, including a draft of the $1.6 million agreement dated May 30. The deal directs monthly payments of up to $50,000 from Diego be used to “to further develop and enhance NWPRC’s customer locations and to otherwise grow its business as currently conducted.” Former federal prosecutors say that could be seen as a conspiracy to violate federal law.

“It certainly would make me nervous to be involved in anything like this,” said Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law School-Los Angeles and a former assistant U.S. attorney.

Shively called the draft provided to AP “an obsolete document,” but declined to provide further details. He also declined to discuss a $10,000 check he wrote to the dispensary company May 27.

The deal highlights the tension between the varying degrees of acceptance of marijuana by the states and the outright prohibition by the federal government, which makes banking and other business functions problematic. For example, beyond the growing and sale of marijuana constituting federal crimes, the movement of money related to marijuana sales likely constitutes money laundering.

Dixie Elixirs won’t be directly involved in the growing, processing or sale of pot in multiple states, said Tripp Keber, its managing director. Instead, it will license its technical know-how and recipes to people in Washington or elsewhere who want to produce products under the Dixie Elixirs brand – and try to avoid the attention of federal prosecutors by adhering to state laws.

“Big public federal indictments are going to do the industry a disservice,” Keber said.

If Shively’s model is endorsed by the regulators writing rules for Washington’s pot industry, “then we would be increasing the risk of intervention by the federal government,” said Alison Holcomb, the Seattle lawyer who drafted Washington’s law.

Shively said investors are advised that the company and those involved could face federal prosecution. A copy of Diego’s business plan includes 11 bullet points listing risks the company faces. None specifically suggests those involved could be prosecuted.

Source: Associated Press (Wire)
Author: Gene Johnson, Associated Press
Published: June 17, 2013
Copyright: 2013 The Associated Press

18 Jun 2013

Pot More Dangerous Than You Know

posted in: Cannabis News | 0

With the recent article published on May 12, 2013, “Mont.  goes its own way on pot,” it seems like the perfect opportunity to provide some clarifying facts about marijuana.

There is no scientific basis for using smoked marijuana as a medicine, no sound scientific studies supporting the medical use of marijuana for treatment in the United States, and no animal or human data supporting the safety or effectiveness of marijuana for general medical use.  The Food and Drug Administration ruled that smoked marijuana does not meet the modern standards of medicine in the United States.  Marijuana is NOT approved nor endorsed by the FDA, the American Medical Association, the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, the American Glaucoma Society, the American Academy of Ophthalmology, the American Cancer Society or the American Pediatric Society.  The National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine has concluded that smoked marijuana should “not be recommended for medical use.”

Marijuana has over 500 components ( THC, CBD, etc.  ) that have been proven to increase the risk of cancer, lung damage, and poor pregnancy outcomes.  In comparison, most prescription medication contains a single compound in a standardized dosage.

The use of marijuana under the guise of “medicine” has given rise to numerous problems:

Affected youth drug use patterns.

States with “medical” marijuana laws had marijuana abuse/dependence rates almost double the states without such laws.

There is a direct correlation between “medical” marijuana and decreases in perception of harm and social disapproval.

Individuals who begin using the drug in their teens have approximately a one-in-six chance of developing marijuana dependence.  In fact, children and teens are six times likelier to be in treatment for marijuana than for all other illegal drugs combined.

Addiction rates among 12- to 17-year-olds are among the highest levels nationally in states that have “medical marijuana” programs.

Marijuana use negatively impacts adolescent brain development.  A recent study found that those who used cannabis heavily in their teens and continued through adulthood showed a permanent drop in IQ of eight points.  A loss of eight IQ points could drop a person of average intelligence into the lowest third of the intelligence range.

“Medical” marijuana could negatively impact employability.  More than 6,000 companies nationwide and scores of industries and professions require a pre-employment drug test.

Twenty percent of crashes in the U.S.  are caused by drugged driving.  Marijuana is the most prevalent illegal drug detected in impaired drivers, fatally injured drivers, and motor vehicle crash victims.

States that have fully implemented “medical” marijuana programs, to include dispensaries, are experiencing public safety issues.  They have seen first-hand that dispensaries lead to increased crime and adversely affect the quality of life in their communities.

The total overall costs of substance abuse in the U.S., including loss of productivity, health and crime-related costs exceed $600 billion annually.  This includes approximately $235 billion for alcohol, $193 billion for tobacco, and $181 billion for illicit drugs.

Marijuana is much more powerful today than it was 30 years ago, and so are its mind-altering effects.  Average THC levels rose from less than 1 percent in the mid-1970s to more than 6 percent in 2002.  Sinsemilla potency increased in the past two decades from 6 percent to more than 13 percent, with some samples containing THC levels of up to 33 percent.

Legalizing marijuana would significantly decrease the price of the drug and could result in an up to 50 percent increase in use.  This can have widespread ramifications in areas such as adolescent brain development, the academic achievement of our nation’s youth, employability, highway and public safety, as well as the economy.

The average “medical” marijuana user is a 32-year-old white male with a history of alcohol, cocaine and meth use, but NO history of a life-threatening illness.

Marijuana is not a harmless natural compound.  The “medical marijuana” movement is a well-developed strategic plan to dupe the common man into believing that an illicit, illegal drug, with no proven medical benefit, should be used as medicine.  Take a stand.  Become better informed.  Help the efforts to make our community a safe, healthy, drug free community.

Source: Montana Standard (Butte, MT)
Copyright: 2013 Montana Standard
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.mtstandard.com/
Author: Pat Prendergast

15 Jun 2013

Lawyer Takes On Feds Over New Pot Rules

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Abbotsford lawyer John Conroy is undertaking a legal battle against new changes to the federal government’s medical marijuana program.

On Monday, Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq announced some of the anticipated changes to the program, which includes banning individual home-based medicinal grow-ops in favour of larger government licenced producers.

The new regulations mean sick or disabled people or their legal proxies with licences will no long be able to grow their own marijuana, said Conroy.

The price of marijuana from the large producers will cost people up to four times as much as producing their own, said Conroy.

The government estimates under the new program medical pot will be sold for $8 to $10 a gram while individuals grew their own for between $1 to $4, said Conroy.

The price increase will limit some sick individuals, many on a low income, from being able to buy marijuana for their conditions.

There is legal precedent that individuals with medical conditions with a doctor’s authorization have a Constitutional right to reasonable access to medical marijuana, said Conroy.

Under the old program, those that couldn’t afford dispensary or black market prices grew their own marijuana, something they won’t be able to do in the future.

Conroy expects to launch a Constitutional challenge on behalf of a coalition of medical marijuana users fighting the problematic aspects of the proposed regulations.

“Basically, we’re saying these people’s constitutional rights are being impaired by what’s being proposed,” said Conroy.

“At one time they could produce cannabis for themselves as there was no other program to provide it.  But a program that’s out of reach is akin to having no program at all.”

The group, MMAR DPL/ PPL Coalition Against Repeal, says it has 3,400 members across Canada.

Conroy said his firm has collected 1,000 victim impact statements so far.

The lawsuit aims to prevent some or all of the new regulations from coming into force, or to maintain the status quo until there’s some guarantee that all patients have reasonable access to medical marijuana.

Failing that, Conroy may also take up a class action lawsuit to compensate individuals who have invested resources and borne the costs of growing their own pot over the last decade.

On Monday, Aglukkaq agreed there must be reasonable access to legal marijuana for medical purposes.

But the government believes it must be done in a controlled manner to protect public safety, she said.

Since starting in 2001, the government’s medical marijuana program has grown exponentially, from less than 500 authorized persons to over 30,000 currently.

The rapid growth of those producing medical marijuana, often in private homes, had consequences for public health and safety, said Aglukkaq.

“These changes will strengthen the safety of Canadian communities, while making sure patients can access what they need to treat serious illnesses,” she said.

Municipal fire and bylaw authorities have long argued that home-based medical marijuana grows can pose fire safety problems or health problems due to mold.

Police point to the dangers of grow rips and the lack of enforcement to ensure licensed growers aren’t producing more than they need for the illegal market.

Under the new provisions, patients will have access to quality-controlled marijuana produced under sanitary conditions, said the minister.

But Conroy noted that individuals that grew or developed specific strains of marijuana for their particular medical conditions will be out of luck.

Litigation will get underway sometime after September and before March 2014 when the new regulations go into effect, he said.

The details on the federal government’s new Marihuana for Medical Purposes Regulations come out June 19.

Source: Abbotsford Times (CN BC)
Copyright: 2013 The Abbotsford Times
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.abbotsfordtimes.com/
Author: Rochelle Baker

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