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/

Why It’s Time To Legalize Marijuana

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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

Dream of ‘Cannabis Empire’ Raises Fears, Hackles

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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

Obama Helps Nip Pot Legalization In Latin America

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President Obama helped prevent a move toward pot legalization by some Latin American leaders.  But will he be as bold against Colorado, Washington state?

Peter Bensinger, a former Drug Enforcement Administration chief, was one of eight former DEA chiefs who recently spoke out in favor of the federal government needing to nullify Colorado and Washington’s laws legalizing recreational marijuana use.  They said the Obama administration has reacted too slowly and should immediately sue to force the states to rescind the legislation.

For all the political flak that President Obama is receiving for digital surveillance of Americans, he deserves some praise for protecting Americans on another front.  His administration has helped dampen moves by some Latin American leaders to legalize marijuana in the Western Hemisphere.

The Christian Science Monitor

A meeting of the Organization of the American States ended Thursday in Guatemala without the expected “serious” discussion among the 34 nations to legalize pot.  Just last month, an OAS report recommended legalization as one alternative to the current anti-drug approaches.

The report, which called for “flexibility,” came as quite a shock to many in the region.  Polls in most of Latin America, unlike in the United States, show legalization to be unpopular.

Leaders in a few states, such as Uruguay and Guatemala, favor legalization.  Others, such as in Brazil and Peru, decidedly do not.  Yet with two states in the US ( Washington and Colorado ) having legalized recreational use of pot last year, some in Latin America saw an opening to push Mr.  Obama to bend.

Fortunately, his secretary of State, John Kerry, did not accommodate such voices at the OAS assembly.  “These challenges simply defy any simple, one-shot, Band-Aid” approach, he said.  “Drug abuse destroys lives, tears at communities of all of our countries.” Other administration officials have been working for months to squash the region’s legalization efforts.

A few Latin American leaders were more explicit than Mr.  Kerry.  “We need a policy that is anti-crime and not pro-drug,” said Alva Baptiste, St.  Lucia’s foreign minister.  And Nicaragua’s OAS envoy, Denis Moncada, said, “Replacing and weakening the public policies and strategies now in use to combat the hemispheric drug problem would end up creating dangerous voids and jeopardize the security and well-being of our citizens.” Many of the region’s drug experts say countries need to focus on rule of law, addiction treatment, and gang suppression.

Obama does need to be plain about federal intentions toward legalization in the US.  His embattled attorney general, Eric Holder, must uphold federal law by cracking down on the selling of recreational marijuana in Washington and Colorado.  If he doesn’t, the president can hardly complain about states defying aspects of his Affordable Care Act ( “Obamacare” ).

Drug-producing countries such as Mexico, Colombia, and Peru that have suffered from a military approach in the struggle against trafficking cannot be faulted for seeking different approaches.  They are right to point to the US, which is the world’s largest consumer of illicit drugs, as a major cause of their woes.  But drug trafficking is also a sign that such countries need fundamental reform to root out corruption and raise social indicators.  Both Mexico and Colombia are well along that path.

The uncertainties of legalizing pot, let alone the moral arguments against government promoting its use, call for Obama to be vigilant against legalization.  He has now done that strongly abroad.  He must do much better at home.

Source: Christian Science Monitor (US)
Copyright: 2013 The Christian Science Publishing Society
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.csmonitor.com/

Bill Maher on The Greening of America

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It’s a brave new pothead world. Until fairly recently, even a year ago, I would not have guessed that we would be at the place we are now – with 18 states legalizing medical marijuana and, according to one recent poll, a whopping 85 percent of the nation supporting medical use. For all our political rancor, it turns out, what ultimately unites us is pot. Weed is one of the few things that both hillbillies and hippies like. Rappers smoke pot, and country artists smoke pot. There’s just as much pot on Willie Nelson’s tour bus as there is on Snoop Dogg’s tour bus. Marijuana is bridging the red and blue divide and becoming a purple issue.

For those who worry that we will become a nation that sits on the couch eating Cheetos all day, relax. Smoking pot does not equal laziness. Weed was something I could always justify because it excited my brain. Some people it puts to sleep, others it turns paranoid. Some it makes creative, and we’re the lucky ones, because if it has done any damage to us, at least we have a receipt. I’ve gotten a lot of good ideas from pot. Including smoke more pot.

Legalization is another one of those issues, like gay marriage, that drives the Tea Bag people crazy. That Leave It to Beaver black-and-white 1950s image that Mitt Romney fit into so well is going away, and one big reason is marijuana. Bill Clinton once said, “If you look back on the Sixties and think there was more good than harm, you’re probably a Democrat. If you think there was more harm than good, you’re probably a Republican.” Well, for those people who loved the Fifties, pot played a huge role in the cultural revolution that they detest.

The Next Seven States to Legalize Pot: http://www.cannabisnews.org/the-next-seven-states-to-legalize-pot/2012/12/20/

Republicans have always been an uneasy alliance of Jesus freaks, gun nuts, generic obese suburbanites and the super-rich, but what binds them is this idea that life was perfect in Appleton, Wisconsin, in 1958. As soon as President Obama was elected, this visual of a black guy who liked smoking pot walking into the White House was too much. Whenever you hear them say, “I want my country back” – from what? Did Blackmanistan invade us? They may want it back, but that America is gone forever.

Of course, there’s a big economic incentive to legalizing marijuana. More than a decade ago, there was a county in Georgia where the people fired the sheriff because he was busting pot farmers. The crop was their lifeblood, so they got rid of the hardass and elected a sheriff who pledged to look the other way. That’s the kind of sea change that’s happening in America right now. If 40 years of abject failure of the War on Drugs has taught us anything, it’s that the customer base is large, strong and loyal. So as in everything, money talks. And money is there to be made. There’s no going back. We’ve reached the tipping point, legal marijuana is here to stay – it’s just a matter of how fast it will happen across the country.

This story is from the June 20th, 2013 issue of Rolling Stone.

Newshawk: John Tyler
Source: Rolling Stone (US)
Author: Bill Maher
Published: June 10, 2013
Copyright: 2013 Straight Arrow Publishers Company, L.P.
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.rollingstone.com/

Five Myths About Legalizing Marijuana

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With 16 states having decriminalized or legalized cannabis for non-medical use and eight more heading toward some kind of legalization, federal prohibition’s days seem numbered. You might wonder what America will look like when marijuana is in the corner store and at the farmers market. In three years spent researching that question, I found some ideas about the plant that just don’t hold up.

1. If pot is legal, more people will use it.

As drug policy undergoes big changes, I’ve been watching rates of youth cannabis use with interest. As it is for most fathers, the well-being of my family is the most important thing in my life. Whether you like the plant or not, as with alcohol, only adults should be allowed to partake of intoxicating substances. But youth cannabis use is near its highest level ever in the United States. When I spoke at a California high school recently and asked, “Who thinks cannabis is easier to obtain than alcohol?,” nearly every hand shot up.

In Portugal, by contrast, youth rates fell from 2002 to 2006, after all drugs were legalized there in 2001. Similarly, a 2011 Brown University-led study of middle and high school students in Rhode Island found no increases in adolescent use after the state legalized medical marijuana in 2006.

As for adult use, the numbers are mixed. A 2011 University of California at Berkeley study, for example, showed a slight increase in adult use with de facto legalization in the Netherlands (though the rate was still lower than in the United States). Yet that study and one in 2009 found Dutch rates to be slightly lower than the European average. When the United States’ 40-year-long war on marijuana ends, the country is not going to turn into a Cheech and Chong movie. It is, however, going to see the transfer of as much as 50 percent of cartel profits to the taxable economy.

2. Law enforcement officials oppose legalization.

It is true that many law enforcement lobby groups don’t want to end America’s most expensive war (which has cost $1 trillion and counting), but that’s because they’re the reason it’s so expensive. In 2010, two-thirds of federal spending on the drug war, $10 billion, went toward law enforcement and interdiction.

But law enforcement rank and file know the truth about the drug war’s profligate and ineffective spending, says former Los Angeles deputy police chief Stephen Downing, one of 5,000 public safety professionals who make up the group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. “Most law enforcers find it difficult not to recognize the many harms caused by our current drug laws,” he wrote to me in an e-mail. Those harms include, according to a new ACLU report, marijuana-possession arrests that are skewed heavily toward minorities.

Since marijuana prohibition drives the drug war, these huge costs would end when federal cannabis law changes. Sheriff Tom Allman in Mendocino County, Calif., helped permit, inspect and protect local cannabis farmers in 2010 and 2011. When I asked him why, he said: “This county has problems: domestic violence, meth, poverty. Marijuana isn’t even in the top 10. I want it off the front pages so I can deal with the real issues.”

3. Getting high would be the top revenue generator for the cannabis plant.

I called both of my U.S. senators’ offices to support inserting a provision into this year’s farm bill to legalize hemp for domestic cultivation. Based on my research on industrial cannabis, commonly called hemp, I’m staggered by the potential of this plant, which is not the variety you smoke.

In Canada, where 90 percent of the crop is bought by U.S. consumers, the government researches the best varieties for its hemp farmers, rather than refusing to issue them permits, as the United States tends to do. In a research facility in Manitoba, I saw a tractor whose body was made entirely of hemp fiber and binding. BMW and Dodgeuse hemp fibers in their door panels, and homes whose insulation and wall paneling are made partially of hemp represent a fast-growing trend in the European construction industry.

Jack Noel, who co-authored a 2012 industrial hemp task force report for the New Mexico Department of Agriculture, says that “within 10 years of the end of the war on drugs, we’ll see a $50 billion domestic hemp industry.” That’s bigger than the $40 billion some economists predict smoked cannabis would bring in.

Foods such as cereal and salad dressing are the biggest U.S. markets for hemp today, but industrial cannabis has the brightest future in the energy sector, where a Kentucky utility is planning to grow hemp for biomass energy.

4. Big Tobacco and Big Alcohol would control the legal cannabis industry.

In 1978, the Carter administration changed alcohol regulations to allow for microbreweries. Today the craft-beer market is worth $10.2 billion annually. The top-shelf cannabis farmers in California’s Emerald Triangle realize this potential. “We’re creating an international brand, like champagne and Parmigiano cheese,” says Tomas Balogh, co-founder of the Emerald Growers Association in Humboldt, Calif. Get ready for the bud and breakfast.

When America’s 100 million cannabis aficionados (17 million regular partakers) are freed from dealers, some are going to pick up a six-pack of joints at the corner store before heading to a barbecue, and others are going to seek out organically grown heirloom strains for their vegetable dip.

As Balogh puts it: “When people ask me if the small farmer or the big corporation will benefit from the end of prohibition, I say, ‘Both.’ The cannabis industry is already decentralized and farmer-owned. It’s up to consumers to keep it that way.” So Big Alcohol might control the corner store, but not the fine-wine shop or the farmers’ market.

5. In the heartland, legalization is a political nonstarter.

President Obama, in an interview last December, for the first time took seriously a question about the legalization of cannabis. He said that he didn’t yet support it but that he had “bigger fish to fry” than harassing Colorado and Washington.

In Colorado in 2012, 40 percent of Republican voters chose to legalize cannabis, and a greater share of Coloradans voted for legalization than voted for Obama.

In Arizona, a pretty conservative and silver state, 56 percent of those in a poll last month supported regulating cannabis for personal use. Maybe fiscal conservatives know about the $35 billion in annual nationwide tax savings that ending prohibition would bring. In Illinois, 63 percent of voters support medicinal marijuana, and they’re likely to get it. Even 60 percent of Kentuckians favor medical cannabis.

I’m not surprised. I live in a conservative valley in New Mexico. Yet as a woman in line at the post office recently told me: “It’s pills that killed my cousin. Fightin’ pot just keeps those dang cartels in business.”

Doug Fine is the author of “Too High to Fail: Cannabis and the New Green Economic Revolution,” in which he followed one legal medicinal cannabis plant from farm to patient.

Source: Washington Post (DC)
Author: Doug Fine
Published: June 7, 2013
Copyright: 2013 Washington Post Company
Contact: [email protected]

It’s Time To End Failed War On Marijuana

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Marijuana has become the drug of choice for police departments nationwide — a trend that is playing out with serious consequences here in Brown County.

According to a new report released Tuesday by the American Civil Liberties Union, police have turned much of their zeal for fighting the failed War on Drugs toward the enforcement of marijuana laws in communities across Wisconsin and the country.

In 2010, cops in Wisconsin busted someone for having marijuana once every 28 minutes. The majority of these arrests are happening in communities of color. Despite roughly comparable usage rates, blacks in Wisconsin are nearly six times more likely than whites to be arrested for marijuana possession.

These racial disparities are particularly bad in Brown County. Compared to other Wisconsin counties with more than 300,000 residents, in 2010 Brown had the third-highest rate of racial disparity for marijuana possession arrests.

Black people in Brown County are more than seven times more likely than whites to be arrested for the same offense — even though blacks constitute only 2.2 percent of Brown County’s population.

And across Wisconsin, these disparities are only getting worse. Between 2001 and 2010, racial disparities in marijuana possession arrests soared more than 150 percent. Only two other states in the nation had higher increases during this period.

The aggressive enforcement of marijuana possession laws in Wisconsin needlessly ensnares thousands of people in the criminal justice system, crowds our jails, diverts precious police resources away from focusing on serious crimes, and wastes millions of taxpayer dollars. In 2010 alone, Wisconsin blew as much as $73.1 million enforcing marijuana laws.

Legalizing, taxing and regulating marijuana in Wisconsin would end racially biased enforcement. Taxing and regulating marijuana would also save millions of dollars currently spent on enforcement while raising millions more in revenue, which could be invested in community and public health programs, including drug treatment.

Barring legalization, state legislators should work with law enforcement to de-penalize marijuana possession by removing all civil and criminal penalties. Low-level marijuana possession should be decriminalized to a civil offense, and prosecutors should focus on more serious offenses.

Brown County police departments can take action by reforming policing practices, including ending racial profiling, unconstitutional stops, frisks, searches, and programs that create incentives for officers to make low-level drug arrests.

This is an issue of racial justice, fiscal responsibility and common sense. What’s happening in Brown County, all over Wisconsin and across the nation proves that it’s time to end the failed War on Marijuana.

Source: Green Bay Press-Gazette (WI)
Copyright: 2013 Green Bay Press-Gazette
Website: http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/
Author: Chris Ahmuty

Pot Potential

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Maybe marijuana isn’t all that bad.  A story titled “Marijuana waste helps turn pot-eating pigs into tasty pork roast” caught the attention last Tuesday, as it described how a five-acre farm north of Seattle has discovered how using weed waste into pig food could potentially revolutionize the hog industry and increase per pig profits.

The article went on to point out pigs who were supplemented with the “herbal remedy” ended up 20 to 30 pounds heavier than other pigs in the same litter, in turn creating more revenue for its owners.

Just as with the perceived positive impact of pot-smoking in the pork processing industry, if other countries and industries got on board with a law allowing grass-smoking, perhaps the pot puffing people would potentially create other particular positives for the general population ( I hope you enjoyed the alliteration ): – First off, there would be no one happier than the Cheetos’ cheetah.

After all these years of ( attempting to ) keeping his recreational activities hidden, Chester the Cheetah will finally be able to achieve his lifelong dream of being pictured on a chips bag holding a finely-wrapped toque rather than a cheesy snack.

And, just like modern-day athletes ‘coming out of the closet’ motivates their peers to do the same, Chester ‘emerging from the smoke’ may motivate cartoon-mates to follow.

It would explain why the Pillsbury Dough Boy continues to laugh every time a finger is wedged in to his belly ( when any normal being would have likely snapped like Tiger Woods’ ex by now ).  Toucan Sam’s exploits and continuous flight attempts resulting in him soaring straight in to a tree would suddenly make sense ( don’t puff and pilot ).  After various featured Wheaties’ box athletes have tested positive for some kind of drug or steroid, it would only seem fitting the wheatie character followed suit ( perhaps there’s more to being a champion than simply one’s breakfast ).  And Tony, c’mon, those Frosted Flakes are good, but ar! e they really that Grrrrrrrrreat!? ( guess it depends on who yo! ur dealer is ).  – Any business stalking food could forget about the ‘poor economy’.  Grocery stores could expect evening hordes of half-hazed, red-eyed residents slowly filing into their store with zombie-like precision and intelligence with only three thoughts on the mind: cookies, chips and pizzas.

There would be an unequivocal growth in restaurant delivery sales, as well as requests for take-out menus ( a few puffs and things apparently start disappearing, too ).  On the negative, there would be a sudden inflation in wage expectancy for restaurant telephone operator controllers as they’d have to decipher through calls that included periods of silence, giggling, and orders that comprised not of the actual name of the food wanted but rather orders by description such as, “I’ll take this one” ( as the caller points to the menu in their home, temporarily oblivious to the fact the person they are calling can’t see what they’re looking at ), or “I had it the last time…it was that g! ood one”, or “Anything with lots of cheese on it” followed by a followup phone call request of, “Can I get extra cheese on that”.  On the positive, restaurant owners will no longer have issue with wrong orders; customers will either a ) call back giggling hysterically at the humorous prank pulled on them or b ) take the wrong order as a philosophical epiphany ( “I really did want lasagna instead of ribs.  How did they know?” ).  Delivery boys would also see a huge spike in tips ( although they would likely come in the form of hugs and compliments about how nice their uniform is ).  -The NHL could see a huge spike in revenue.

The “Crime Commissioner” Brendan Shanahan would see his job become irrelevant as dirty hits would become self-eliminated by now-perenially-positive players, and fights would reach an all-time low ( with the only altercations being spurred on by a debate of which Bob Marley song is the all-time greatest ).  Scoring would return to its golden years like in the pre-90′! s as either a ) goaltenders become complacent midway through the game wh! ile internally debating why they should stop the puck while no one else on their team is or b ) the keepers become distracted by the nacho tray sitting on the lap of a fan in the first row.  Meanwhile, all special teams play would be eliminated as the men in stripes would allow players 30 seconds to talk and hug it out rather than make anyone sit on their own in the penalty box.  -While making late-night arrests, lawmakers would no longer have to argue with citizens or worry about anyone resisting cuffs.

Training for officers will also change, as they would no longer be taught how to tackle, restrain or pursue culprits.

That training time would instead be used to ensure all recruits earn a minor in philosophy to instead cause criminals to fall in to submission through confusion or mental distraction.  Meanwhile, the COPS television show would face an all-time viewership drop as available footage of chases and violence plummets ( although show producers would likely bring the show back to relevance after revamping its storyline to resemble that of a ‘Beavis and Butthead’ script and renaming it “The Great Cornholio!” ).  Well that was fun! I’m sure this could continue on, but we’re out of space, so be sure to keep a smile on your face for the week and I’ll be sure to keep a soberly-induced smirk on mine as well.

Source: Neepawa Press, The (CN MB)
Copyright: 2013 Glacier Community Media
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.neepawapress.com/
Author: Kaiten Critchlow

Democrats Promote Bills to Loosen Restrictions on Marijuana Industry

posted in: Cannabis News 0

During a press conference on Wednesday, Democratic congressmen from Oregon, Colorado, Washington, and California announced that they will push for legislation to loosen the restrictions on state-legal marijuana businesses.

The five representatives sponsoring reforms hope to ease the burden for businesses in the cannabis industry by allowing them to file for federal tax deductions, open bank accounts, and operate without fear of property or forfeiture claims. They plan to introduce three bills — the Marijuana Businesses Access to Banking Act, the States’ Medical Marijuana Property Rights Protection Act, and an amendment to the IRS code relating to state-legal marijuana sales — and will seek to attach these measures to other legislation moving through Congress.

“These are relatively minor technical adjustments,” said Representative Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, “and in times past, things like this would find their way to be part of larger pieces of legislation.” The Hill reported that the sponsors believe the bills have “little chance at moving on their own,” but that they may make it to the president’s desk if they are included in, say, the broader farm bill being debated before Congress.

The Democratic representatives were joined by businessmen involved in the sale of legalized marijuana for the announcement. Aaron Smith of the National Cannabis Industry Association told the press, “We are asking to be taxed. We are one of the only industries in the country coming to D.C. asking, ‘Tax us, but tax us fairly.’”

Supporters of the legislation claim that it will help end the dangerous “cash only” nature of state-legal marijuana businesses as well as solving conflicts between state and federal laws on the issue.

Link: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/350273/democrats-promote-bills-loosen-restrictions-marijuana-industry-lindsey-grudnicki#comments

Source: National Review Online

Author: Lindsey Grudnicki

Blacks Are Singled Out for Marijuana Arrests

posted in: Cannabis News 0

Black Americans were nearly four times as likely as whites to be arrested on charges of marijuana possession in 2010, even though the two groups used the drug at similar rates, according to new federal data.

This disparity had grown steadily from a decade before, and in some states, including Iowa, Minnesota and Illinois, blacks were around eight times as likely to be arrested. During the same period, public attitudes toward marijuana softened and a number of states decriminalized its use. But about half of all drug arrests in 2011 were on marijuana-related charges, roughly the same portion as in 2010.

Advocates for the legalization of marijuana have criticized the Obama administration for having vocally opposed state legalization efforts and for taking a more aggressive approach than the Bush administration in closing medical marijuana dispensaries and prosecuting their owners in some states, especially Montana and California.

The new data, however, offers a more nuanced picture of marijuana enforcement on the state level. Drawn from police records from all 50 states and the District of Columbia, the report is the most comprehensive review of marijuana arrests by race and by county and is part of a report being released this week by the American Civil Liberties Union. Much of the data was also independently reviewed for The New York Times by researchers at Stanford University.

“We found that in virtually every county in the country, police have wasted taxpayer money enforcing marijuana laws in a racially biased manner,” said Ezekiel Edwards, the director of the A.C.L.U.’s Criminal Law Reform Project and the lead author of the report.

During President Obama’s first three years in office, the arrest rate for marijuana possession was about 5 percent higher than the average rate under President George W. Bush. And in 2011, marijuana use grew to about 7 percent, up from 6 percent in 2002 among Americans who said that they had used the drug in the past 30 days. Also, a majority of Americans in a Pew Research Center poll conducted in March supported legalizing marijuana.

Though there has been a shift in state laws and in popular attitudes about the drug, black and white Americans have experienced the change very differently.

“It’s pretty clear that law enforcement practices are not keeping pace with public opinion and state policies,” said Mona Lynch, a professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

She added that 13 states have in recent years passed or expanded laws decriminalizing marijuana use and that 18 states now allow it for medicinal use.

In the past year, Colorado and Washington State have legalized marijuana, leaving the Justice Department to decide how to respond to those laws because marijuana remains illegal under federal law.

The cost of drug enforcement has grown steadily over the past decade. In 2010, states spent an estimated $3.6 billion enforcing marijuana possession laws, a 30 percent increase from 10 years earlier. The increase came as many states, faced with budget shortfalls, were saving money by using alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent offenders. During the same period, arrests for most other types of crime steadily dropped.

Researchers said the growing racial disparities in marijuana arrests were especially striking because they were so consistent even across counties with large or small minority populations.

The A.C.L.U. report said that one possible reason that the racial disparity in arrests remained despite shifting state policies toward the drug is that police practices are slow to change. Federal programs like the Edward Byrne Justice Assistance Grant Program continue to provide incentives for racial profiling, the report said, by including arrest numbers in its performance measures when distributing hundreds of millions of dollars to local law enforcement each year.

Phillip Atiba Goff, a psychology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said that police departments, partly driven by a desire to increase their drug arrest statistics, can concentrate on minority or poorer neighborhoods to meet numerical goals, focusing on low-level offenses that are easier, quicker and cheaper than investigating serious felony crimes.

“Whenever federal funding agencies encourage law enforcement to meet numerical arrest goals instead of public safety goals, it will likely promote stereotype-based policing and we can expect these sorts of racial gaps,” Professor Goff said.

A version of this article appeared in print on June 4, 2013, on page A11 of the New York edition with the headline: Blacks Are Singled Out For Marijuana Arrests, Federal Data Suggests.

Source: New York Times (NY)
Author: Ian Urbina
Published: June 4, 2013
Copyright: 2013 The New York Times Company
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/

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