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11 Jul 2013

Former Mexican President Fox Urges Legalization

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Former Mexican President Vicente Fox took his crusade to legalize marijuana to San Francisco on Monday, joining pot advocates to urge the United States and his own country to decriminalize the sale and recreational use of cannabis.

Fox met for three hours with the advocates, including Steve DeAngelo, the Oakland-based executive director of California’s largest marijuana dispensary, and former Microsoft executive Jamen Shively, who hopes to create a Seattle-based pot brand now that Washington state has legalized recreational use.

Legalization, Fox told reporters after the meeting, is the only way to end the violence of Mexican drug cartels, which he blamed on America’s war on drugs.

“The cost of the war is becoming unbearable – too high for Mexico, for Latin America and for the rest of the world,” Fox said in English.

Every day, he said, 40 young people are killed in drug-related violence.

Fox’s position on legalizing drugs has evolved over time since the days when he cooperated with U.S. efforts to tamp down production in Mexico during his 2000-2006 presidential term. He has been increasingly vocal in his opposition to current policies, backing two prior efforts to legalize marijuana in Mexico.

Mexico’s current president, Enrique Peña Nieto, has opposed legalization. But he recently said that he would consider world opinion on the matter, particularly in light of recent voter-approved initiatives to legalize marijuana in Washington state and Colorado for recreational use.

In San Francisco on Monday, Fox said he had signed on to attend and help develop an international summit later this month in Mexico to strategize a path to end marijuana prohibition.

Participants scheduled to attend the three-day meeting starting July 18 in San Cristobal include an American surgeon, the dean of Harvard’s School of Public Health and a Mexican congressman who plans to introduce a bill to legalize marijuana in Mexico this summer, Fox said.

The bill, which he expects to be introduced by Mexican lawmaker Fernando Belaunzaran, would legalize adult recreational use of marijuana, Fox said.

Support for legalizing marijuana in the United States has been growing. Nineteen states and the District of Columbia have passed medical marijuana laws, according to the pro-legalization National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. But the drug remains illegal under federal law.

Lifting the prohibition on cannabis in Mexico, however, appears to face more of an uphill battle. Mexican lawmakers have rejected previous legalization efforts and polls have shown little popular support for the idea.

But Fox promised to wage what he said was a necessary battle.

“We cannot afford more blood and the loss of more young people,” Fox said. “We must get out of the trap we are in.”

Editing by Sharon Bernstein and Eric Walsh

Source: Reuters (Wire)
Author: Ronnie Cohen
Published: July 8, 2013
Copyright: 2013 Thomson Reuters

9 Jul 2013

For Patients Like Me, Marijuana is a Necessity

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My breast cancer diagnosis at age 26 was an unwelcome and at times harrowing experience. What allowed me to endure the darkest days was the hope that my rigorous treatment — chemotherapy, surgeries and radiotherapy among them — would allow me to once again live a full and healthy life. It’s what propelled me to walk back into the hospital for more treatments.

But then came A/C: The “A” stands for Adriamycin, a drug neon red in color and injected via large syringes by oncology nurses; its apt nicknames are “red devil” and “red death.” That probably should have been the red flag that I wasn’t going to escape without being slightly worse for wear.

After each of my four biweekly infusions, I lay bedridden for four days, debilitated by severe nausea, heartburn and overall discomfort. I also suffered deep bone pain, a consequence of the Neulasta shot given to keep my white blood cell counts up. I acutely felt all of these side effects, despite being given an intravenous anti-nausea medication, taking anti-nausea tablets every few hours and heartburn medicine and a low-dose prescription narcotic for the bone pain. None of this provided me with the relief for which I longed.

Eventually, though, I was lucky enough to take a medicine that did alleviate my suffering. Not so fortunate was the fact that it came in the form of a drug illegal under federal law: cannabis.

Though cannabis for medical purposes became legal in the District (where I live) in 2010, the city-sanctioned dispensaries that can supply it are only now inching closer to opening their doors.

Nevertheless, marijuana is still banned under the Controlled Substances Act — meaning it continues to be a federal crime to possess or grow marijuana, even in the 18 states plus the District that permit it for medicinal purposes. As a Schedule I drug, cannabis is deemed to have no “accepted medical use” and to lack “safety for use under medical supervision.”

Yet marijuana was the only thing that truly quelled my stomach, provided for restful sleep and allowed me to eat and drink. I was not a cannabis smoker prior to my diagnosis, and I am not one now. I used it only during my chemotherapy treatments, which ended a few months ago. I am willing to go public with my experience because, while the tide may now be turning, there remains a stigma — and many stumbling blocks for patients who would benefit from marijuana — where there should be none.

Legal efforts to shift marijuana to a different schedule under the Controlled Substances Act, thereby loosening restrictions on access to and research on the plant, have failed. The Drug Enforcement Administration’s refusal to change the drug’s classification because of a lack of “adequate and well-controlled studies proving efficacy” has been upheld. No studies of the drug have met the DEA’s criteria to prove that marijuana has an “accepted medical use.”

But a complicated process hinders marijuana studies. With cannabis on Schedule I, investigators interested in researching it must apply for a special license from the DEA and have their study approved by the Food and Drug Administration. To actually obtain the plant, researchers must then apply for access to the National Institute of Drug Abuse’s research-grade supply of the drug.

NIDA is known to refuse requests. When an agency whose mission is to bring “the power of science to bear on drug abuse and addiction” is charged with regulating who conducts research on cannabis, it’s easy to see why this is so. In a 2010 New York Times article, a spokeswoman for NIDA said that the group’s “focus is primarily on the negative consequences of marijuana use,” adding, “we generally do not fund research focused on the potential beneficial medical effects of marijuana.”

Prominent medical associations such as the American Medical Association and the American College of Physicians have called for a review of marijuana’s Schedule I status. Others, such as the Institute of Medicine, have recognized cannabis’s potential and determined that it should be further researched. Yet, the DEA’s stance remains that “smoked marijuana has not withstood the rigors of science — it is not medicine, and it is not safe.”

I tell my story to illustrate the contrary: It was the safest medicine I took over the course of my cancer treatments. Only with further research can we better understand the palliative effects of cannabis — and perhaps finally make it more accessible to the many of us who suffer chronic pain and discomfort. For us, quality of life has special meaning.

Petrides works in an administrative position at the Peace Corps. This is the second article in a series on living with cancer.

Source: Washington Post (DC)
Author: Kathryn Petrides
Published: July 8, 2013
Copyright: 2013 Washington Post Company
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/

7 Jul 2013

Pot Legalization Has Gained Rapid Favor

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It took 50 years for American attitudes about marijuana to zigzag from the paranoia of “Reefer Madness” to the excesses of Woodstock back to the hard line of “Just Say No.”

The next 25 years took the nation from Bill Clinton, who famously “didn’t inhale,” to Barack Obama, who most emphatically did.

Now, in just a few short years, public opinion has moved so dramatically toward general acceptance that even those who champion legalization are surprised at how quickly attitudes are changing and states are moving to approve the drug — for medical use and just for fun.

It is a moment in America that is rife with contradictions:

People are looking more kindly on marijuana even as science reveals more about the drug’s potential dangers, particularly for young people.

States are giving the green light to the drug in direct defiance of a federal prohibition on its use.

Exploration of the potential medical benefi t is limited by high federal hurdles to research.

Washington policymakers seem reluctant to deal with any of it.

A new approach

Richard Bonnie, a University of Virginia law professor who worked for a national commission that recommended decriminalizing marijuana in 1972, sees the public taking a big leap from prohibition to a more laissez- faire approach without full deliberation.

“It’s a remarkable story historically,” he said. “But as a matter of public policy, it’s a little worrisome.”

More than a little worrisome to those in the antidrug movement.

“We’re on this hundredmile- an- hour freight train to legalizing a third addictive substance,” said Kevin Sabet, a former drug policy adviser in the Obama administration, lumping marijuana with tobacco and alcohol.

Legalization strategist Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, likes the direction the marijuana smoke is wafting. But knows his side has considerable work yet to do.

“I’m constantly reminding my allies that marijuana is not going to legalize itself,” he said.

Where California led the charge on medical marijuana, the next chapter in this story is being written in Colorado and Washington state.

Policymakers there are grappling with all sorts of sticky issues revolving around one central question: How do you legally regulate the production, distribution, sale and use of marijuana for recreational purposes when federal law bans all of the above?

Action up in the air

The Justice Department began reviewing the matter after last November’s election. But seven months later, states still are on their own.

Both sides in the debate paid close attention when Obama said in December that “it does not make sense, from a prioritization point of view, for us to focus on recreational drug users in a state that has already said that under state law that’s legal.”

Rep. Jared Polis, a Colorado Democrat who favors legalization, predicts Washington will take a hands- off approach, based on Obama’s comments. But he’s quick to add: “We would like to see that in writing.”

The federal government doesn’t go after potsmoking cancer patients or grandmas with glaucoma. But it also has made clear that people who are in the business of growing, selling and distributing marijuana on a large scale are subject to potential prosecution for violations of the Controlled Substances Act — even in states that have legalized medical use.

There’s a political calculus for the president, or any other politician, in all of this.

Younger people, who tend to vote more Democratic, are more supportive of legalizing marijuana, as are people in the West, where the libertarian streak runs strong.

Despite increasing public acceptance of marijuana overall, politicians know there are complications that could come with commercializing an addictive substance. Opponents of pot are particularly worried that legalization will result in increased use by young people.

Sabet frames the conundrum for Obama: “Do you want to be the president that stops a popular cause, especially a cause that’s popular within your own party? Or do you want to be the president that enables youth drug use that will have ramifi cations down the road?”

Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA)
Copyright: 2013 Associated Press
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.mercurynews.com/
Authors: Nancy Benac and Alicia A. Caldwell, Associated Press

6 Jul 2013

Flying High on The Fourth

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The flag flying over the Capitol on the Fourth of July might look like your typical Old Glory. But you probably won’t notice the fibers that make it special. It’s believed to be the first hemp flag to flutter over the dome since the government began outlawing marijuana’s less-recreational cousin back in the 1930s.

Colorado hemp advocate Michael Bowman is the man responsible for getting the flag, made from Colorado-raised hemp and screen-printed with the Stars and Stripes, up there.

He cooked up the idea while lobbying Congress this year to include pro-hemp measures in the massive farm bill. That legislation failed last month, of course, but the seed of the hemp flag had been planted.

Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) gave Bowman an assist with the details, which included working with the Capitol’s flag office. (The flag program allows people to buy flags flown over the Capitol, so they rotate in new Old Glories nearly every day.)

“It’s a powerful symbol,” Bowman says, adding that the red, white and blue flying over the Capitol is a reminder of the role that hemp played in the founding and early days of the country. Betsy Ross’s flag was made of hemp, he notes, and Colonial settlers even paid their taxes in the crop, which was used for all kinds of goods, from rope to fabric to paper. Those Conestoga wagons heading west were covered in canvas fashioned from hemp fibers.

So, he thought having it fly on America’s birthday seemed pretty appropriate.

After its Capitol flight, the flag will make its way back to Colorado, where it will fly over the state capitol building in Denver. After that, Bowman is sending it on a tour of statehouses in states where legislation is pending that would legalize hemp. One of the first up: Vermont.

And while advocates are quick to point out that hemp lacks the THC content beloved by stoners, this will still be one high-flying flag.

Source: Washington Post (DC)
Author: Al Kamen
Published: July 3, 2013
Copyright: 2013 Washington Post Company
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/

5 Jul 2013

Senate OKs Bill to Legalize Medical Pot Shops

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Seeking to make it easier for medical pot users to get their medicine and harder for the black market to get its hands on Oregon weed, the state Senate on Wednesday approved a bill that would legalize and license marijuana shops.

Under current Oregon law, nearly 55,000 cardholders must grow the drug themselves or designate someone to grow it for them. Medical pot users say dispensaries are needed, to give them a reliable place to get their medicine.

Medical marijuana dispensaries that exist now operate without oversight and run the risk of being shut down by law enforcement. Some counties have taken a hands-off approach and allowed the establishments to remain open. But dispensaries in other counties have been raided by police and forced to close.

Another major concern of Oregon’s medical pot program is that the weed supposedly intended for medical marijuana patients is getting sold on the black market.

Architects of the bill passed on Wednesday say it will give cardholders certainty that they can acquire their medicine, and that it is safe. They also hope the bill will keep excess pot from being siphoned off to the black market.

“This is a great way to impose a standard that will keep that from occurring,” said Sen. Floyd Prozanksi, D-Eugene.

The bill, which passed 18-12, would establish a licensing system under the Oregon Medical Marijuana Program to regulate the medicinal pot retail industry. This would bring the estimated 200 lounges, collectives and cafes already in operation under the purview of state law.

Opponents say the bill doesn’t go far enough to stop what they see as abuses to the state’s medical marijuana program. And some lawmakers have argued that authorizing dispensaries is a slippery slope to legalizing marijuana for recreational use.

The bill would authorize growers to legally sell their excess pot to medical marijuana establishments that connect patients with their medicine. Growers could only charge for the cost of supplies and utilities.

Under the bill, medical marijuana retailers would pay $4,000 a year to remain registered. Owners would have to pass criminal background checks, document the marijuana coming into their establishments and verify it’s from state-registered growers. The bill also requires testing all marijuana batches for pesticides, molds and mildews.

A legislative report estimates there will be 225 state-licensed dispensaries in the next two years if the bill is approved.

The bill would also prohibit medical marijuana retail outlets from operating within 1,000 feet of each other or a school. And they would have to operate in agricultural, industrial or commercial areas.

Supporters of the bill include Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum and the League of Oregon Cities.

In a letter endorsing the bill, the organization wrote: “While there are a number of divergent viewpoints on medical marijuana among Oregon’s cities, there is a common need to ensure that those providing medical marijuana do so in a responsible manner.”

A Senate committee modified the bill last week to satisfy concerns raised by some district attorneys who initially opposed the bill. Among other changes, the revised bill would tighten a restriction prohibiting people convicted of certain drug crimes from running a medical marijuana dispensary. The district attorneys are now neutral on the bill.

The legislation now goes to the House, which approved an earlier version of the bill but must agree to the Senate’s changes. A vote is expected this weekend.

Source: Associated Press (Wire)
Author: Lauren Gambino, The Associated Press
Published: July 4, 2013
Copyright: 2013 The Associated Press

4 Jul 2013

Marijuana’s March Toward Mainstream Confounds Feds

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It took 50 years for American attitudes about marijuana to zigzag from the paranoia of “Reefer Madness” to the excesses of Woodstock back to the hard line of “Just Say No.”

The next 25 years took the nation from Bill Clinton, who famously “didn’t inhale,” to Barack Obama, who most emphatically did.

And now, in just a few short years, public opinion has moved so dramatically toward general acceptance that even those who champion legalization are surprised at how quickly attitudes are changing and states are moving to approve the drug – for medical use and just for fun.

It is a moment in America that is rife with contradictions:

People are looking more kindly on marijuana even as science reveals more about the drug’s potential dangers, particularly for young people.

States are giving the green light to the drug in direct defiance of a federal prohibition on its use.

Exploration of the potential medical benefit is limited by high federal hurdles to research.

Washington policymakers seem reluctant to deal with any of it.

“It’s a remarkable story historically,” he said. “But as a matter of public policy, it’s a little worrisome. It’s intriguing, it’s interesting, it’s good that liberalization is occurring, but it is a little worrisome.”

More than a little worrisome to those in the anti-drug movement.

“We’re on this hundred-mile-an-hour freight train to legalizing a third addictive substance,” said Kevin Sabet, a former drug policy adviser in the Obama administration, lumping marijuana with tobacco and alcohol.

Legalization strategist Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, likes the direction the marijuana smoke is wafting. But he knows his side has considerable work yet to do.

“I’m constantly reminding my allies that marijuana is not going to legalize itself,” he said.

Eighteen states and the District of Columbia have legalized the use of marijuana for medical purposes since California voters made the first move in 1996. Voters in Colorado and Washington state took the next step last year and approved pot for recreational use. Alaska is likely to vote on the same question in 2014, and a few other states are expected to put recreational use on the ballot in 2016.

Nearly half of adults have tried marijuana, 12 percent of them in the past year, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center. More teenagers now say t hey smoke marijuana than ordinary cigarettes.

Fifty-two percent of adults favor legalizing marijuana, up 11 percentage points just since 2010, according to Pew. Sixty percent think Washington shouldn’t enforce federal laws against marijuana in states that have approved its use. Seventy-two percent think government efforts to enforce marijuana laws cost more than they’re worth.

“By Election Day 2016, we expect to see at least seven states where marijuana is legal and being regulated like alcohol,” said Mason Tvert, a spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project, a national legalization group.

Where California led the charge on medical marijuana, the next chapter in this story is being written in Colorado and Washington state.

Policymakers there are struggling with all sorts of sticky issues revolving around one central question: How do you legally regulate the production, distribution, sale and use of marijuana for recreational purposes when federal law bans all of the above?

How do you tax it? What quality control standards do you set? How do you protect children while giving grownups the go-ahead to light up? What about driving under the influence? Can growers take business tax deductions? Who can grow pot, and how much? Where can you use it? Can cities opt out? Can workers be fired for smoking marijuana when they’re off duty? What about taking pot out of state? The list goes on.

The Justice Department began reviewing the matter after last November’s election and repeatedly has promised to respond soon. But seven months later, states still are on their own, left to parse every passing comment from the department and President Obama.

In December, Obama said in an interview that “it does not make sense, from a prioritization point of view, for us to focus on recreational drug users in a state that has already said that under state law that’s legal.”

Source: Republican & Herald (PA)
Copyright: 2013 Associated Press
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://republicanherald.com
Author: Alicia A. Caldwell and Nancy Benac, Associated Press

2 Jul 2013

Legalizing MJ is Hard Regulating Pot is Harder

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It’s not every day that a former Microsoft executive holds a press conference to announce his new venture into the exciting and profitable world of drug dealing. But that’s exactly what happened earlier this month when Jamen Shively, a former Microsoft corporate strategy manager, announced that he wants to create the equivalent of Starbucks in the newly legalized pot industry in Washington state.

All this is happening at the same time that the Washington State Liquor Control Board is looking to finalize rules on the new, legal marijuana industry. And one of the major debates right now among board members is how much they ought to prevent or encourage the kind of market consolidation in which a few firms dominate the whole industry.

As Chris Marr of the Liquor Control Board argued, “How do you prevent a Microsoft millionaire from getting this idea and deciding that — playing by the rules — they’re going to dominate the market?” And if that is the concern, what can economics inform us about how this new market should be set up?

To provide some background, voters in Washington state passed Initiative 502 last fall in a general ballot, creating a statewide legal market in pot. Unlike Colorado, which has passed a bill to expand its medical marijuana industry and make pot legally available to everyone, Washington is folding pot under regulations for the liquor industry. As such, the Washington Liquor Board has regulatory control over the new marijuana industry.

As with alcohol, a marijuana firm is classified as a producer, processor or retailer. The first question, therefore, is how aggressively regulators should try to check the market power of front-line sellers. As of now, if there is excess demand for licenses, which cost $1,000 each, they will be subject to lottery. Licenses can’t be traded in a secondary market, and it is possible that the regulators will cap the number of licenses per holder.

The law also requires regulation for public safety and public health. As with the tobacco industry, voters don’t want firms marketing and selling pot to underage users. And public health officials are concerned about companies marketing to “problem users” who would like to quit or reduce their usage but find themselves unable to.

If that’s the case, then perhaps having pot dealers with large market power is a good idea. Economists usually consider monopolists a problem because they produce too little of a product and charge too much for it, earning substantial profits. But that could be a good thing for the pot industry. Safe profit margins mean that a firm might be less likely to compete on price for every potential consumer — and also much more likely to follow the law.

Yet people involved with the Washington law have two main responses to this. The first is that firms with market power could go outside the market and use their extensive profits and influence to exert political power.

“The idea is to prevent the retail industry from becoming so large that they have enough wealth and power to roll over anyone trying to enforce, expand or update the public-health-focused rules that are designed to protect the public’s health and safety,” says Roger Roffman, a University of Washington professor and author of the forthcoming book “Marijuana Nation.”

Second, consolidated firms may that they themselves pose threats to public health. “If a firm has market power, the profits they get from selling above market costs means that they can have a bigger marketing department,” says UCLA public policy professor Mark Kleiman. “In the real world, spending here will increase their market share by creating additional problem users. This, combined with lobbying efforts that will rival the alcohol industry in terms of avoiding taxes and adjusting the rules, is a major problem.”

A third argument comes from University of Chicago economics professor E. Glen Weyl. He argues that “long-term players who have market power have an incentive to get people addicted. A monopolist, in particular, has a big incentive to advertise to get people addicted over the long-term, as they are sure to reap all those rewards.” If a marijuana firm has a monopoly, then the financial gains of turning someone into a heavy, problem user of a product (rather than a specific brand) will all go to that firm. A market with smaller, fragmented firms with greater turnover would be a check on this dynamic.

Both Weyl and Kleiman argue that Washington should consider bolder ideas to regulate the industry. Weyl suggests some sort of mandatory turnover policy to discourage firms from turning people into problem users. Another possibility, which Kleiman considers, is to create a state-run nonprofit retail firm that has no interest in creating problem users or expanding the market. (Given that pot is still illegal at the federal level, this isn’t likely to happen).

Market consolidation is also an issue when it comes to a firm’s vertical structure. Under Washington state law, if a firm is a retailer, it can’t be a producer as well as a processor. This is meant to fragment the vertical chain of production, and it contrasts with Colorado’s system, in which dealers are required to grow 70 percent of what they sell (as that is how the medical marijuana system works).

Another related economic issue is the location of pot retailers. The law in Washington, as currently structured, requires pot retailers to be at least 1,000 feet away from a school, day-care facility, playground, teen arcade game center, recreation center, transit center or library. Though this may sound minor, in practice it means that it will be very difficult to put pot retailers in dense population spaces. Retailers might be limited to industrial or largely depopulated areas.

That could force what economists who study spatial models of economies call the agglomeration model — as when certain kinds of restaurants all cluster together to create an area people go to for certain goods. As Weyl notes, “often ethnic restaurants cluster into neighborhoods so that people can find the best places, creating ethnic neighborhoods. Do we want a ‘pot town’ to grow up in our cities? Perhaps not, but that is the logical consequence of forcing dealers away from a convenience model.”

Kleiman thinks the main issue with regard to pot retailers’ ultimate location has more to do with advertising and discretion than anything else. “An alcoholic trying to quit drinking will pass by alcohol in bars, billboards and grocery stores. That person uses up a lot of emotional energy always having to say no.” Instead of focusing on 1,000 feet within certain buildings, the bigger issue Kleiman emphasizes is whether storefronts and signs aggressively advertise their product.

It’s important to get these issues right because they interact with the three background constraints on this new market. The first is the black market, while the second is the legal medical marijuana market. For some reason, the medical marijuana market won’t be taxed, while the new legal market will be taxed around 25 percent. (The black market is, of course, not taxed at all.)

Note that if the price goes too high, or if the location restrictions prove too inconvenient, pot consumers might just stick with medical marijuana or the black market. State lawmakers are currently trying to get the medical marijuana market folded under the same regulations that the Liquor Board is creating for the legal pot market, and Mark Kleiman notes that police may need to escalate crackdowns on illegal distribution as they legalize the market.

A third constraint is the federal government, which enforces laws that still make pot illegal. If legalization is seen as a disaster, it is possible that the federal government will move to shut down the process by preempting state law. But even if it doesn’t, background laws will probably hurt the scale and efficiency of pot retailers.

As Jack Finlaw explains, since marijuana is banned at the federal level, new pot retailers “often cannot conduct their businesses through banks. They also cannot deduct business expenses from their federal taxes.” It is possible the normal interactions between businesses that allow them to thrive — things like having a legal bank account — won’t be immediately available.

Markets are constructed through laws and regulations, and the market for pot that is being created in Washington state is no exception. The regulators see how the consolidated alcohol industry is able to avoid taxation and accountability and are determined to avoid these problems in the new pot industry. Thus this market may help economists understand a crucial role of regulations that has lapsed in recent decades: the role of government in curbing the excess power of the private sector.

Mike Konczal is a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, where he focuses on financial regulation, inequality and unemployment. He writes a weekly column for Wonkblog.

Source: Washington Post (DC)
Author: Mike Konczal
Published: June 29, 2013
Copyright: 2013 Washington Post Company
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/

29 Jun 2013

Five Reasons Cops Want to Legalize Marijuana

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Most people don’t think “cops” when they think about who supports marijuana legalization. Police are, after all, the ones cuffing stoners, and law enforcement groups have a long history of lobbying against marijuana policy reform. Many see this as a major factor in preventing the federal government from recognizing that a historic majority of Americans – 52 percent – favors legalizing weed.

But the landscape is changing fast. Today, a growing number of cops are part of America’s “marijuana majority.” Members of the non-profit group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) say that loosening our pot policy wouldn’t necessarily condone drug use, but control it, while helping cops to achieve their ultimate goal of increasing public safety. Here are the five biggest reasons why even cops are starting to say, “Legalize It!”

1. It’s about public safety.

While marijuana is a relatively harmless drug, the black market associated with it can cause significant harm. Much like the prohibition of alcohol, marijuana’s illegality does not erase the profit incentive – instead, it establishes a risky, unregulated market in which violence and intimidation are used to settle disputes.

“When we ended the prohibition of alcohol, Al Capone was out of work the next day,” says Stephen Downing, Los Angeles’ former Deputy Chief of Police. “Our drug policy is really anti-public safety and pro-cartel, pro-street gang, because it keeps them in business.”

Marijuana trafficking represents a significant chunk of business for black-market cartels. Though the exact percentage of cartel profits from pot is disputed, lowball estimates fall at around 20 percent.

“During my time on the border, I saw literally tons of marijuana come over the border from Mexico,” says Jamie Haase, a former special agent in the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement division. “Competition over the profits to be made from this illicit industry has led to the deaths of tens of thousands of individuals in that country, and an ever-increasing amount of violence spilling over into the United States, where the Justice Department estimates Mexican cartels now operate in more than 1,000 American cities.”

2. Cops want to focus on crimes that hurt real victims.

In the past decade, police made more than 7 million marijuana arrests, 88 percent of them for possession alone. In 2010, states spent $3.6 billion enforcing the war on pot, with blacks nearly four times as likely as whites to be arrested. That’s a lot of police time and resources wasted, says former Seattle Chief of Police Norm Stamper, who had an “aha moment” about marijuana policy while working for the San Diego Police Department in the late 1960s.

“I had arrested a 19-year-old in his parents’ home for the possession of a very small quantity of marijuana, and put him in the backseat of a caged police car, after having kicked down his door,” recalls Stamper. While driving the prisoner to jail, he says, “I realized, mainly, that I could have been doing real police work, but instead I’m going to be out of service for several hours impounding the weed, impounding him, and writing arrest, impound, and narcotics reports. I was away from the people I had been hired to serve and in no position to stop a reckless drunk driver swerving all over the road, or to respond to a burglary in progress, or intervene in domestic violence situation.”

Cops have limited resources, and spending them on marijuana arrests will inevitably divert them from other policing. Adds Stamper, “In short, making a marijuana arrest for a simple possession case was no longer, for me, real police work.”

3. Cops want strong relationships with the communities they serve.

Baltimore narcotics veteran Neil Franklin says the prevalence of marijuana arrests, especially among communities of color, creates a “hostile environment” between police and the communities they serve. “Marijuana is the number one reason right now that police use to search people in this country,” he says. “The odor of marijuana alone gives a police officers probable cause to search you, your person, your car, or your home.”

Legalizing pot, says Franklin, could lead to “hundreds of thousands of fewer negative police and citizen contacts across this country. That’s a hell of an opportunity for law enforcement to rebuild some bridges in our communities – mainly our poor, black and Latino communities.”

Franklin adds that this would increase citizens’ trust in police, making them more likely to communicate and help solve more serious crimes. Building mutual respect would also protect cops on the job. Adds Franklin, “Too many police officers are killed or injured serving the War on Drugs as opposed to protecting and serving their communities.”

4. The war on pot encourages bad – and even illegal – police practices.

Downing says that monetary incentives for drug arrests, like asset forfeiture and federal grants, encourage an attitude where police will make drug arrests by any means necessary, from militarized SWAT raids to paid informants who admit to lying. “The overall effect is that we are losing ground in terms of the traditional peace officer role of protecting public safety, and morphing our local police officers into federal drug warriors,” Downing says.

Quotas and pressure for officers to make drug arrests – which profit police departments via federal funding and asset forfeiture – also encourage routine violations of the Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches and seizures. The NYPD, for example, stops and sometimes frisks well over 500,000 people a year, the vast majority of them youths of color – the basis for a pending federal lawsuit challenging the policy on constitutional grounds. While New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has defended stop-and-frisk as a way to get guns off the street, in fact, it’s more often used to arrest kids with small amounts of weed. Stamper adds that legalization would allow police officers “to see young adults not as criminals, but members of their community” – and start respecting those young people’s civil liberties.

5. Cops want to stop kids from abusing drugs.

Marijuana’s illegality has done very little to stop its use. A recent survey by the National Institutes of Health found that 36 percent of high school seniors had smoked marijuana in the past year. Legalization would most likely involve age restrictions on marijuana purchases, while at the same time providing quality control over product. “The only way we can effectively control drugs is to create a regulatory system for all of them,” says Stamper.

“If you are truly a proponent of public safety, if you truly want safer communities, then it’s a no-brainer that we have to end drug prohibition and treat [marijuana] as a health issue, like we did with tobacco,” says Franklin. “Education and treatment is the most effective and cost-efficient way to reduce drug use.”

On the other hand, adds Franklin, “If you support a current system of drug prohibition, then you support the very same thing that the cartel and neighborhood gangs support. You might as well be standing next to them, shaking hands. Because they don’t want an end to prohibition, either.”

Source: Rolling Stone (US)
Author: Kristen Gwynne
Published: June 27, 2013
Copyright: 2013 Straight Arrow Publishers Company, L.P.
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.rollingstone.com/

28 Jun 2013

Google Quietly Giving Aid To Marijuana Activists

posted in: Cannabis News | 0

Cancer patients who Google the words “chemotherapy nausea” today get a host of advertisements for treatment, including pills, skin patches and folk remedies used to prevent vomiting. Next month, however, the same search will turn up an ad for something a bit more controversial: medical marijuana.

The change comes courtesy of the charitable unit of Google, which last week gifted a Michigan medical marijuana advocacy group $120,000 worth of its services. As part of the grant, the group, Michigan Compassion, will be able to promote medical marijuana use through Google’s popular AdWords platform — the plain-text advertisements that pop up to the right side of any given search result.

Michigan Compassion does not sell marijuana but connects patients and growers, and it says the ads will appear alongside searches likely to be made by chemotherapy patients.

“The goal is to link the negative effects of chemotherapy and the positive effects of cannabis,” Amish Parikh, vice-president of Michigan Compassion, told The Huffington Post.

The ads’ value is small in the scheme of Google’s AdWords program, which brings in over $40 billion per year in revenue, but they represent a change for the Mountain View, Calif. firm, which has a strict policy against hosting ads for marijuana-related searches.

Google’s new generosity toward marijuana advocates fits neatly in Silicon Valley, however, where tech companies and their employees have been quietly contributing to cannabis activism, an area attorney involved in the marijuana legalization movement told The Huffington Post.

“They’re not the ones coming to the city council meetings to protest, but they quietly send in their donations,” attorney Lauren Vazquez said. “And they’re definitely consuming the cannabis,” she added.

A spokeswoman for Google declined to comment on whether the grant made to Michigan Compassion meant the company was taking an advocacy position in favor of medical marijuana.

AdWords has a policy against allowing advertisements for drugs and drug paraphernalia, but is allowing the Michigan Compassion ads since the organization does not directly supply such products. Google does not allow advertisers to link their ads to searches with words like “cannabis” and “marijuana.”

The spokeswoman said the ads would not appear in web searches done by those using a “family safe” filter, and text would show up only in states where medical marijuana is legal. (While legal for medical use in 19 states and the District of Columbia, possessing marijuana for any purpose remains a federal crime.)

It’s been noted before that the culture inside California tech companies is highly supportive of marijuana use, with on-the-job drug testing extremely rare. According to a Businessweek article on the topic earlier this year, the city of San Jose, where many industry workers live, has more than 100 pot clinics, and it’s considered normal for programmers to soothe the stress of long days hunched over a computer with a visit to one of those retailers.

“I think Silicon Valley is very supportive,” said Michigan Compassion’s Parikh. “There’s a lot of testing the waters, though.”

LinkedIn, the professional social networking company also based in Mountain View, is providing Michigan Compassion with free services to help reach potential donors and board members, according to Parikh.

An email requesting comment from LinkedIn was not returned.

Michigan Compassion has also received donated equipment and software from other tech companies channeled through San Francisco-based TechSoup Global. And Vertical Response, an email marketing firm also based in San Francisco, provided the group with several thousand dollars’ worth of free marketing technology.

A spokeswoman for Vertical Response, Connie Sung Moyle, said Michigan Compassion was not given a grant specifically due to the nature of its work but as a result of its non-profit status. Moyle said Vertical Response has provided in-kind donations to some 2,600 charities since 2005. “We don’t really discriminate either way as long as what they’re doing is above the law,” she said.

Source: Huffington Post (NY)
Author: Eleazar David Melendez
Published: June 27, 2013
Copyright: 2013 HuffingtonPost.com, LLC
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

27 Jun 2013

Medical Cannabis Legalized in New Hampshire

posted in: Cannabis News | 0

With just one day left to pass it this session, the New Hampshire Legislature has given final approval to a measure aimed at legalizing medical marijuana – including state licensed dispensaries.

After much back anmedical-marijuana-symbold forth between the House and Senate, HB 573 has finally made it through – Governor Maggie Hassan will sign the legislation at any time, stating prior to its passage that: “I encourage the full legislature to pass this compromise so I can sign this legislation into law”.

“This legislation has been a long time coming and is a much-needed victory for those with serious illnesses who find significant relief in medical marijuana,” said Matt Simon, a legislative analyst for the Marijuana Policy Project.

Once signed, the law will go into effect immediately, and a commission will begin the process of establishing a dispensary system. Patients will be allowed to possess up to 2 ounces, and dispensaries will be allowed up to 80 ounces and 80 plants (with 160 seedlings), plus an additional three plants, 12 seedlings and 6 ounces for every patient who designates the dispensary as their primary access point.

The measure mandates that at least two licenses must be issued for dispensaries within the first 18 months of the law’s passage.

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