Home

Drug War Chronicle

comprehensive coverage of the War on Drugs since 1997

South Dakota Medical Marijuana Defense Bill Defeated

by Phillip Smith, February 05, 2013, 05:03pm, (Issue #770)
Posted in:

A bill that would have allowed South Dakotans charged with misdemeanor marijuana possession to mount a medical necessity defense was defeated Tuesday in the state legislature. The bill died on a 7-6 vote in the Health and Human Services Committee.

More accurately, it was "deferred to the 41st day" of the legislative session. The session only has 40 days.

The bill, House Bill 1227, would have allowed people caught with less than two ounces of marijuana to mount a medical necessity defense against either a pot possession charge or the state's unique ingestion for the purposes of intoxication charge. It provided for such a defense to be mounted if "a competent medical authority" has recommended its palliative use or if its use is known to be palliative for a given condition.

The defeat in Pierre only adds to the state's reputation as one of the most medical marijuana-unfriendly in the country. Medical marijuana bills have been introduced repeatedly there since 2001, but never go anywhere, and the state has the dubious distinction of being the first to defeat an initiative legalizing medical marijuana and the only one to do it twice, in 2006 and 2010.

"If you talk to drug users, nine times out of 10 they started with marijuana first," said Rep. Melissa Magstadt (R-Watertown), reiterating the long discredited gateway theory. The registered nurse also cited opposition to the bill from the state's medical and nursing associations.

"This is about being compassionate to our folks," said Sen. Karen Soli (D-Sioux Falls). "When I first heard of this, I thought no way. I'm not in favor of legalizing marijuana," she added. "It's quite a surprise to me I'm going to vote for this."

The bill's sponsors, Rep. Dan Kaiser (R-Aberdeen), a police officer, and Sen. Craig Tiezen (R- Rapid City), a retired police chief, testified before the committee last week. They told legislators the bill would not legalize marijuana or allow for advance doctor's recommendations, but would allow someone charged with possession to argue in court that they needed it for medical reasons and present evidence to make their case, with the final decision in the hands of the trial judge.

The South Dakota Supreme Court in 2003 rejected the use of the medical marijuana necessity defense in the case of a wheelchair-bound man. This bill would have made the defense available as part of state law.

Pierre, SD
United States
See map: Google Maps

Look Out, New York, It's Credico For Mayor! [FEATURE]

by Phillip Smith, February 05, 2013, 02:45pm, (Issue #770)
Posted in:

New York City has earned itself the sobriquet of Marijuana Arrest Capital of the World, with tens of thousands of minor pot possession arrests every year -- mostly of young men of color -- generated in good part by the city's equally infamous stop-and-frisk policing, again aimed primarily at the city's young and non-white residents. There's a man running an outsider campaign for the mayor's office there this year who wants to end all that.

Randy Credico during 2010 Senate campaign
Veteran Big Apple civil rights, social justice, Occupy Wall Street (OWS), and drug reform activist Randy Credico, who also doubles as a professional comedian, is mounting an insurgent campaign for the Democratic Party mayoral nomination, and he wants to end the city's drug war and a whole lot more, and he wants to do it now.

The inventively funny, yet deadly serious, agitprop artist has an ambitious 17-point program for his first day in office, with promises that range from going after "the biggest criminals in our city" -- the Wall Street bankers -- and reforming the city's tax code to favor the poor to rolling back privatization of city schools and reforming various city agencies.

But just beneath banksters and taxes is a vow to begin reining in the NYPD by firing Police Commissioner Ray Kelly (to be replaced with Frank Serpico) and "abolishing the NYPD’s unconstitutional policies of racial profiling, stop and frisk, domestic spying, entrapment, and its infamous (albeit unadmitted) 'quota system.'"

Central to that policing reform plank, Credico says, is reclassifying the smoking and carrying of marijuana as no longer an arrestable offense. He also vows to fire any officer who lies or perjures himself on the stand, and to bar the use of "no-knock" warrants and stun grenades "except in the case of legitimate terrorist attack."

And he wants to replace the city's Special Narcotics Office with a Harm Reduction Office, whose leadership he has offered to Drug Policy Alliance head Ethan Nadelmann. He also vows to shut down the Rikers Island prison and turn it into a treatment center and education facility with a state of the art library, and to nominate law professor Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color-blindness, to run it.

That's quite a tall order for a first day in office, but Credico says he's up for it.

"I plan to stay up for 24 hours and get all that stuff done," he told the Chronicle.

Of course, first he has to win the Democratic Party nomination and then win the general election, and that's a pretty tall order, too. There is a bevy of candidates (polling data at the link as well) running for a shot at the prestigious post, and he is facing stiff establishment opposition in the primary, most notably from Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and the as yet officially undeclared city council Speaker Christine Quinn, who leads the other Democrats in early polls, but is in a close race with "undecided."

The Republican race includes a handful of announced or potential candidates led by former Metropolitan Transit Authority head Joseph Lhota (who still trails "undecided" by a large margin) and NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly, who is as yet unannounced. The Libertarians may also field a candidate this year, possibly former "Manhattan madam" and gubernatorial candidate Kristin Davis, and we can't forget the Rent Is Too Damn High Party, either.

"The GOP has a rich guy who just jumped in, and the Democrats have a six-pack of hacks, all getting money from the real estate interests and Wall Street and none of whom will talk about the issues," Credico explained. "The Democrats are all doing the Schumer act -- just talking about the middle class, not the poor, the homeless, the division between the rich and poor, not about drug policy. This city is virtually a police state right now."

Credico has a remedy for that: Elect him.

"I will get rid of Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, who is a combination of J. Edgar Hoover and Joseph Fouche, Napoleon's dreaded head of the secret police. Everyone is afraid of him. He's got the Red Squads going; they were infiltrating groups at Occupy Wall Street. Kelly is doing all these joint operations with the feds under the guise of fighting terrorism, and this city is crawling with undercover cops -- FBI, DEA, AFT, all running joint task forces with the NYPD. They've foiled 14 plots, all hatched by the NYPD. Ray Kelly has way too much power," the veteran activist said flatly.

"There is a lot of money not only in the prison industrial complex, but also the police industrial complex," Credico noted. "They have asset forfeiture and lots of new schemes, tons of undercover agents, who are really there to beat up on the black community. They infiltrate, demonize, and destroy lives, and this has to stop."

Credico has been active in the Occupy Wall Street moving, having been arrested five times by the NYPD, but before that, he was active in the city's minority communities for years, working to reform the Rockefeller drug laws with the William Moses Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice (in between stints flying out to Tulia, Texas, to deal with the bogus mass arrests of black men on drug charges there), and fighting stop-and-frisk. He currently is taking time out of his days to attend hearings in the criminal trial of the NYPD officer who shot and killed unarmed 18-year-old Ramarley Graham in his own bathroom as he was flushing a bag of weed down the toilet.

"I go to every one of the court dates and sit right next to his mother," he said. "This cop invaded Ramarley's house and shot him in the head for weed, but it's not an isolated incident. No cops go to jail for killing a black person, but a spit on a cop and you can go to jail for years. This is just one cop -- and he's like the Lt. Calley of the NYPD. [Editor's Note: Calley was the sole US Army officer convicted of a crime in the Vietnam War My Lai massacre.] It's not an isolated incident; it's the policy, the same policy that killed Ramarley Graham and Sean Bell and Amador Diallou. So many people have been killed by the NYPD, and it's not just the guys on the street; it's a brutal force."

Marijuana could also be a wedge issue for him, Credico said.

"I'm a committed pot smoker, and I think it should be legal, and I'm the only candidate saying it should be legal. Of course, it's up to the state legislature to do that, but I would direct the NYPD not to enforce those laws and particularly not to arrest anyone."

Under current state law, pot possession is decriminalized, but beginning with Mayor Rudy Giuliani, the NYPD had a policy of turning what should have been tickets for possession into misdemeanors by either reaching in someone's pocket and removing the baggie or intimidating the person into revealing it himself, thus elevating the offense from an infraction to the misdemeanor of "public possession." Under increasing pressure over the tactic, Commissioner Kelly last year issued an order for it to stop, and arrests have declined somewhat, but still remain at unacceptably high levels.

In 2011, there were some 50,000 marijuana possession arrests in the city, nearly 80% of them of people of color. Nearly one-quarter (12,000) were youth aged 16 to 19, and of those, 94% had no prior criminal records.

And it's not just marijuana, Credico said.

"There should be no more prosecutions for drug possession," he said. "They should be going after the real criminals, the guys on Wall Street. They don't have to go up to Harlem and Washington Heights, the real big barracudas are right down here."

The city's criminal justice system is rotten to the core, he said.

"This is like Tulia, this is like the South," he moaned. "The criminal justice system here is a black box where blacks and Latinos go in and disappear into the penal system. The cops are white, the judges are white, the prosecutors are white -- only the Bronx has a rainbow coalition of prosecutors -- the rest are white, and they're going after black people in this city."

Many of those busted ended up in Rikers Island or the Tombs, often after first spending hours or days crammed into precinct holding cells.

"Rikers Island is like Alcatraz for poor people on minor drug offenses," said Credico. "It's all Mickey Mouse; there's no Hannibal Lectors there. They need to turn it into a university for poor people. And no one is talking about the Tombs. I've been there. There are lots of junkies in there going through withdrawals, filthy toilets, people penned in like cattle. No one will talk about that, or about the hundreds of precincts with their holding cells."

Unsurprisingly, Credico doesn't think much of his establishment opposition.

"Christine Quinn is Bloomberg in drag wearing a red wig," he declared, "and de Blasio supported stop-and-frisk. He was also Hillary's hit man when she was running for the Senate, and derailed Grandpa Munster Al Lewis's campaign then."

Lhota, who has recently made noises about legalizing marijuana, "looks like a weed head," Credico snorted. "But I actually smoke it."

Now, Credico has to go through the process of qualifying as a Democratic candidate, smiting his foes within the party, and then taking on the Republican challenger in the general election. His first official campaign task will be to complete a month-long signature-gathering drive in late spring to qualify for the primary.

"I'll be on talk shows -- people all over the place are asking for interviews -- making some ads and some YouTube videos, and they'll be interesting and funny. It will be a very entertaining campaign. We have buttons coming out soon, we have the web site, there are people who will be putting ads in the Nation," he explained.

"Drug reformers are interested in my campaign, and I've got tons of volunteers from the stop-and-frisk campaigns and people from OWS," he said. "I'm getting a lot of attention right now."

Credico, of course, is a long-shot, but even if he doesn't become the next mayor of New York, to the degree that his campaign shines a light on the problems in the city's criminal justice system and forces other candidates to address them, he will be judged a success.

(This article was published by StoptheDrugWar.org's lobbying arm, the Drug Reform Coordination Network, which also shares the cost of maintaining this web site. DRCNet Foundation takes no positions on candidates for public office, in compliance with section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, and does not pay for reporting that could be interpreted or misinterpreted as doing so.)

New York City, NY
United States
See map: Google Maps

"Should the Drinking Age Be Lowered from 21 to a Younger Age?," on ProCon.org

by David Borden, February 04, 2013, 07:10pm, (Issue #770)
Posted in:

Did you know the drinking age is an example of continuing societal debate over how best to regulate legal drugs? Read what different thinkers have to say, at "drinkingage.procon.org," part of the ProCon.org family.

This is the fifth in a six-part series of ProCon.org teasers being published in Drug War Chronicle. Keep tuning in to the Chronicle for more important facts from ProCon.org the next several weeks, or sign up for ProCon.org's email list or RSS feed. Read last week's Chronicle ProCon.org highlight piece here.

ProCon.org is a web site promoting critical thinking, education, and informed citizenship by presenting controversial issues in a straightforward, nonpartisan primarily pro-con format.

Poll: Feds Should Leave Legal Marijuana States Alone

by Phillip Smith, February 01, 2013, 06:23pm, (Issue #770)
Posted in:

Strong majorities of Americans believe people should be able to use, grow, and sell marijuana in states where it is legal, according to a new Reason Foundation-Rupe poll. Nearly three out of four (72%) said pot smokers should not be arrested in those states, more than two-thirds (68%) said the federal government should not arrest growers in those states, and nearly two-thirds (64%) said it should not arrest sellers.

The poll comes in the wake of last November's marijuana legalization victories in Colorado and Washington and as the Obama administration contemplates its response. Marijuana remains illegal under federal law.

The poll consisted of a representative sample of 1,000 American adults interviewed by telephone, half by landline and half by cell phone. It has a margin of error of +/- 3.8%.It was conducted between January 17 and 21.

Although it is Republicans who typically make states' rights or federalist arguments, Republicans had the highest level of support for federal interference in states that have legalized marijuana. In all three cases -- using, growing, or selling marijuana -- independents and Democrats were more likely to say the federal government should not interfere.

The poll also asked two questions about marijuana legalization, one about whether it should be treated like alcohol and one about whether it should be legalized for recreational use. While the two questions are essentially identical, they generated slightly different responses, showing yet again that marijuana legalization is on the cusp of majority acceptance (and that the phrasing of polling questions matters).

Some 53% agreed that marijuana should be treated like alcohol, but only 47% agreed that recreational use should be legalized. Majorities of Democrats (57%) and independents (58%), but not Republicans (35%), agreed with "like alcohol," while only a majority of independents (59%) supported legalization for recreational use, with support at only 46% for Democrats and 25% among Republicans.

Gender and age differences also remained. Support for legalization was higher among men (52%) than women (42%), and there was majority support for legalization among all age groups except people over 65, two-thirds of whom opposed it.

Mitch McConnell Endorses Kentucky Hemp Bill

by Phillip Smith, February 01, 2013, 12:14am, (Issue #770)
Posted in:

In a statement last Thursday, Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the minority leader in the US Senate, endorsed pending legislation in his home state that seeks to reintroduce industrial hemp cultivation there. The bill already has the support of the state's other US senator, Rand Paul, and Agricultural Commissioner James Comer, who were instrumental in bringing McConnell on board.

Is it sunrise for industrial hemp in Kentucky? (votehemp.org)
"After long discussions with Senator Rand Paul and Commissioner James Comer on the economic benefits of industrialized hemp, I am convinced that allowing its production will be a positive development for Kentucky's farm families and economy," McConnell said. "The utilization of hemp to produce everything from clothing to paper is real, and if there is a capacity to center a new domestic industry in Kentucky that will create jobs in these difficult economic times, that sounds like a good thing to me."

But McConnell first had to be reassured that industrial hemp wouldn't somehow turn into recreational marijuana. Comer apparently managed the trick.

"Commissioner Comer has assured me that his office is committed to pursuing industrialized hemp production in a way that does not compromise Kentucky law enforcement's marijuana eradication efforts or in any way promote illegal drug use," McConnell said.

In a statement of his own last Thursday, Comer expressed enormous gratitude for McConnell's support.

"When the most powerful Republican in the country calls to discuss your issue, that's a good day on the job," Comer said. "Leader McConnell's support adds immeasurable strength to our efforts to bring good jobs to Kentucky."

The hemp bill, Senate Bill 50, sponsored by Sen. Paul Hornback (R-Shelbyville), would direct the state Agriculture Department to create a program for licensing industrial hemp producers, but would not go into effect until there is a change in federal law, which bans the production -- but not the importation -- of industrial hemp.

In addition to both US senators, the bill has also garnered the support of two of the state's six US representatives, US Reps. John Yarmuth (D) and Thomas Massie (R). The two congressmen, Sen. Paul, and Commissioner Comer will all testify in favor of the bill.

"Our federal delegation is showing tremendous leadership," Comer said. "They recognize this is not a partisan issue. It's about jobs. And we will continue to push forward to make sure Kentucky is first in line for them."

State legislative leaders are also firmly backing the bill. Senate Majority Leader Damon Thayer (R-Georgetown) joined Sen. Hornback in convincing the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce to endorse the bill. It did so Wednesday.

The bill gets a hearing in the Senate Agriculture Committee on February 11.

Frankfort, KY
United States
See map: Google Maps

Colombia Set to Decriminalize Ecstasy, Meth

by Phillip Smith, January 31, 2013, 06:29pm, (Issue #770)
Posted in:

Colombian Minister for Justice and Law Ruth Stella Correa said last Wednesday that the government will propose decriminalizing the possession of small amounts of synthetic drugs, such as ecstasy and methamphetamine, according to local press accounts. She added that a drug policy advisory commission would revise the country's drug law and present the proposal to congress.

Ecstasy tablets (wikimedia.org)
Correa's remarks came as she announced the formation of the advisory commission.

Currently in Colombia, people are not prosecuted for the possession of small amounts of marijuana and cocaine. She said the proposal would extend that protection to users of synthetic drugs like methamphetamine and ecstasy.

"The proposal aims to standardize the amount of drugs already permitted, while also allowing an equivalent quantity of synthetic drugs," she said. "We have to accept that Colombia is a consumer country -- this is also our reality -- and being a consumer country, we can't just throw drug users in jail, but we must look after them. I don't see the risk in establishing a personal use amount of synthetic drugs, since we are only trying to clarify things to achieve treatment for addicts and users, not to send them to prison."

Colombian constitutional court rulings have established a right to possess personal use amounts of drugs, but the government has not established what those personal use amounts of synthetic drugs are. The advisory commission will do that. The government of President Santos has also embarked on a more than rhetorical shift toward a public health approach to drug use, and Correa emphasized that in her remarks.

"We are convinced that drug policy should be designed with a holistic approach, involving families, the education system, the public health specialists, development practitioners and community leaders," she said.

Not everyone agrees with the move. Former President Alvaro Uribe, who tried repeatedly to undo those Colombian court rulings legalizing drug possession, came out swiftly against including the synthetics.

"With this personal use amount, what they are doing is validating the actions of the dealers and not taking them to prison, nor are they taking the addicts to the hospital," he complained. Decriminalizing the synthetics would only "further enslave the youth and drug more assassins to kill more people," he claimed.

Bogota
Colombia

Caswell Motel Case Marks a Victory Against Federal Forfeiture Abuse [FEATURE]

by , January 31, 2013, 09:34am, (Issue #769)
Posted in:

special to Drug War Chronicle by investigative journalist Clarence Walker, cwalkerinvestigate@gmail.com

In a major victory for property rights advocates, a federal judge in Massachusetts last week struck down a scheme by federal prosecutors to seize a motel owned by the Caswell family on rundown Main Street in Tewksbury. The ruling in US v. 434 Main Street, Tewksbury, Massachusetts should make it more difficult for the government to seize a person's property if third parties committed criminal offenses on that property without the property owner's knowledge.

The ruling reinforced longstanding complaints that the use of asset forfeiture statutes -- both federal and state -- is so broad as to be tantamount to an abuse of power. Under such laws, prosecutors file civil actions seeking to seize the property of accused criminals as the fruits of crime, but they often result in citizens being deprived of their property without ever being convicted of a crime, sometimes even without ever having been arrested.

"People better wake up to what's going on with the government taking property under this federal civil forfeiture law," said Russ Caswell, 69, longtime owner of the Caswell Motel. "I was never charged with a crime and I never participated in no drug crimes on my property," he told the Chronicle Sunday. "Neither did the police tell me that my business was a problem, plus we often reported to police about criminal activity on the premises, but they still tried to take my property. I am thankful to God and my attorneys that this nightmare is over."

The Caswell Motel isn't the Hilton -- like countless thousands of other low-end motels on gritty streets across the country, it offers rooms by the week, and its clientele includes itinerant construction workers, traveling salesmen, the just-up-from-homeless, and, yes, the occasional drug user or peddler.

US Attorney Carmen Ortiz had sought to seize the Motel Caswell from the Caswell family under the theory that the motel allegedly facilitated drug crimes. The government provided evidence of 15 drug-related incidents between 1994 and 2008, rousing US Magistrate Judith Dein to note tartly in her opinion that "it should be noted that during this 14 year period, the Motel Caswell rented out approximately 196,000 rooms."

Dein found that Caswell "did not know the guests involved in the drug crimes, did not know of their anticipated criminal behavior at the time they registered as guests, and did not know of the drug crimes while they were occurring."

The government argued that the Caswells had failed to cooperate with police to alleviate drug problems at the property, but Dein cited numerous examples of the motel's cooperation with Tewksbury Police, and also noted that "there is no contention in this case that anyone from the Caswell family has been involved in any criminal activity either at the Motel or elsewhere. It is undisputed that they are a law-abiding family. Mr. Caswell testified that he had never been charged with any crime in his life."

Then Dein blistered the prosecution.

"It is rather remarkable," she wrote, "in this court's view, for the Government to argue in this case that the Property owner should lose his property for failure to undertake some undefined steps in an effort to prevent crime, while putting on evidence that the police drove through the Property routinely, knew the Property owner's identity and that he lived next door to the Motel, and never contacted him in an effort to work together to control crime at the Property. No comparable cases have been cited by the parties, and none have been found. Having failed to notify Mr. Caswell that he had a significant problem, and having failed to take any steps to advise him on what to do, the Government's resolution of the crime problem should not be to simply take his Property."

The federal magistrate then flatly dismissed the government's case. "The Government has failed to meet its burden of establishing that the Motel is subject to forfeiture," Dein found. "In addition, this Court concludes that the Claimant has met his burden of proving that he is the innocent owner of the Property."

Attorneys and asset forfeiture critics applauded the decision. Darpana Sheth, a Virginia-based pro-bono attorney who assisted with the defense of the Caswell Motel called the verdict "very important" and said it could have wider implications if other judicial districts and lawyers pick up on it.

"This decision will make it tougher for the government to initiate forfeiture proceedings or file complaints based on the actions of third parties," she said.

http://stopthedrugwar.org/files/scott-bullock.jpg
Scott Bullock (ij.org)
"This is a complete victory for the Caswell family and for the protection of private property rights," said attorney Scott Bullock, after Dein's ruling. Bullock, who represented the family, is a senior attorney for the Institute for Justice (IJ), a Virginia-based public interest law firm specializing in fighting federal and state forfeiture abuse nationwide.

Caswell definitely needed the Institute's help, his family's limited resources having been eaten up in earlier stages of their battle with a relentless federal prosecutor.
 

"After running out of money after spending over $100,000, my local attorney discovered the Institute for Justice on the Internet," said Caswell."Had it not been for the Institute representing me pro-bono, I would have lost the motel and my livelihood."

While the Institute is a bulwark of the fight against asset forfeiture abuses, it is perhaps best known for its David vs. Goliath victory over billionaire Donald Trump in an Atlantic City eminent domain case in the 1990s. In that case, the Institute successfully represented a property owner whose land Trump wanted for a parking lot for his casino and hotel, blocking Trump's plan and saving the property.

The Caswell Motel case also opened a window on unsavory practices around asset forfeiture and raised questions of "policing for profit." Although Caswell attorneys argued -- and the court agreed -- that the family had cooperated with police to alleviate the drug problem, someone tipped the DEA to a potential target. The property had an estimated value of between $1.5 million and $1.8 million. Through the federal asset forfeiture "Equitable Sharing Program," state and local law enforcement agencies involved would have received 80% of the value of the Caswell property, with the feds reaping the other 20%.

"What the government did amounted to a grab for quick cash under the guise of civil forfeiture," said attorney Larry Salzman, another IJ attorney.

The workings of the asset forfeiture machine were partially revealed in the deposition of Vincent Kelly, DEA Special Agent in the New England office asset forfeiture unit. He testified under oath that his job was to look for high-dollar property with no mortgage to be forfeited. Kelly explained clearly how he checked the Registry of Deeds "to find out who owns the property and how much equity is on the property." Then, the DEA would contact local police to see how many drug arrests or other serious crimes been committed on the property.

Kelly said it was DEA policy to deal only with property worth at least $50,000.00. With Caswell Motel's worth between $1.5 and $1.8 million dollars, it was ripe for forfeiture since many drug arrests had occurred there.

In another sign that the motel had been the target of selective prosecution, defense attorneys and the Lowell Sun also uncovered evidence that at one point, narcotic officers and police made more arrests on the premises of Walmart, IHop, and Home Depot, nearby businesses also located off I-95 on Main Street. From 2010-2012, the attorneys said 19 drug arrests were made at Caswell Motel, with 24 drug arrests on Walmart's premises, 14 at Home Depot and five each at Applebee's and Burger King. But those are all deep-pocketed corporations with legions of lawyers; the Caswell family and its motel was not.

The Caswell Motel case is only an especially egregious example of asset forfeiture abuses. For years, attorneys, community activists, and advocacy groups, such as Forfeiture Endangers Americans Rights (FEAR) and Americans for Forfeiture Reform have been fighting to reign in such prosecutorial misconduct, and some progress has been made.

Some states implemented higher burdens of proof for police to seize property or acted to reduce the incentive to police for profit by directing that all or some seized funds go to the state general fund or education fund -- not straight into police coffers. And some states require an actual conviction before civil asset forfeiture can proceed.

But facing increasingly tougher standards and regulations, state and local law enforcement have learned to hand their cases over to the feds, ensuring that the cops get their cut under the equitable sharing program, but in effect robbing state governments of funds that should have gone to them. According to a Cato Institute study, as of 2008, the Justice Department's forfeiture fund reached $3.1 billion, with less than 20% of property seized coming from cases where the owners were prosecuted.

At the federal level, things are a bit better than they used to be, but it clear that room for abuse still exists, as the Caswell case demonstrates. Prior to federal asset forfeiture reform legislation passed in 2000, seizures could be made on mere suspicion that the property was involved in a crime. Once that happened, the property owner had to prove by a "preponderance of evidence" that the property was not involved in a crime.

Ironically, it was the attempted seizure of another motel, the Red Carpet Inn in Houston, Texas, that helped lead the way to passage of the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000. In that case, the feds seized the motel in 1998, claiming it was a "drug haven."

Like Caswell, Red Carpet owner Jason Brice had complied with police by hiring security and allowing police to patrol his property, and had spent thousands of dollars to comply with law enforcement demands that the motel discourage drug dealing. But when Brice balked at raising room rates and then revoked permission for police to patrol the property, the feds moved in with a civil forfeiture claim. Brice won in court, but only after years of stress and hundreds of thousands of dollars in attorneys' fees.

Led by then Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL) and inspired by cases like that of the Red Carpet Inn, Congress finally acted in 2000, passing the first effort to rein in asset forfeiture abuse at the federal level. The reforms include the "innocent owner" defense that Caswell successfully used in its trial.

But the civil asset forfeiture machine that grew out of Ronald Reagan's 1980s drug war keeps on humming. When the Department of Justice's Asset Forfeiture Fund to split seized goods with local and state law enforcement started in 1986, it took in $93.7 million. Last year, it took in $1.5 billion. That is a real and continuing incentive to pervert policing in pursuit of profits.

"It's like stealing your property in a hold-up without a gun," summed up Russ Caswell. "It goes back to our founding fathers. What happened to me was so un-American."

Someone needs to tell US Attorney Ortiz, who has not yet given up the fight for the Caswell Motel. On Tuesday, her office said "we are weighing our options with respect to appeal." They have until March 15 to file, and until then, Russ Caswell and his motel still aren't in the clear.

Did You Know? "Incarcerated Felon Population in the US by Type of Crime Committed, 1974-2008," on ProCon.org

by David Borden, January 30, 2013, 09:04pm, (Issue #769)
Posted in:

Did you know that drug cases accounted for nearly a quarter of all people incarcerated for felonies as of 2008, and more than half of all federal felony incarcerations? Read the details in "Incarcerated Felon Population in the US by Type of Crime Committed, 1974-2008," on the web site felonvoting.procon.org, part of the ProCon.org family.

This is the fourth in a six-part series of ProCon.org teasers being published in Drug War Chronicle. Keep tuning in to the Chronicle for more important facts from ProCon.org the next several weeks, or sign up for ProCon.org's email list or RSS feed. Read last week's Chronicle ProCon.org highlight piece here.

ProCon.org is a web site promoting critical thinking, education, and informed citizenship by presenting controversial issues in a straightforward, nonpartisan primarily pro-con format.

Medical Marijuana Update

by Phillip Smith, January 30, 2013, 08:48pm, (Issue #769)
Posted in:

The agonizingly slow pace of implementing medical marijuana laws is causing problems in several states, while in California, the never-ending battles continue. Let's get to it:

Arizona

Last Thursday, dispensary operators asked lawmakers to crack down on compassion clubs, unregulated businesses that seek a "fee" from patients who seek to obtain medical marijuana. There are no provisions for the clubs in the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act, but they have popped up statewide as patients waited for the opening of dispensaries, which were delayed because of prolonged legal battles between medical marijuana advocates and recalcitrant state and county officials. At a news conference outside the State Capitol, dispensary owners and medical marijuana patients joined with advocates to ask that police, prosecutors and legislators target the unregulated clubs so patients receive their medication in a controlled and secure environment.

Last Friday, Maricopa County appealed to the state Supreme Court to decide whether federal drug laws preempt the state's medical marijuana law. The move comes after a Maricopa County Superior Court judge ruled last month that federal drug laws don't stand in the way of public officials implementing Arizona's law.

On Tuesday, Tempe police raided two compassion clubs, arresting the owner. The cops hit Top Shelf Hydro College after purchasing "large amounts" of marijuana there. The name of the other club wasn't mentioned. The clubs are not permitted under state law, but have sprung up as advocates became frustrated waiting for dispensaries to open. Arizona voters approved medical marijuana in November 2010.

California

Last Thursday, US Attorney for Northern California Melinda Haag canceled a public appearance after hearing that she would be met by demonstrators. She canceled her appearance at Golden Gate University "at the last minute" after medical marijuana supporters announced plans to picket her talk. Three days later, at the California NORML conference, Rep. Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) took aim at the unpopular prosecutor, saying "I'm sorry to hear a house fell on her sister," a not-so-veiled reference to the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz.

On Monday, LA medical marijuana activists said they would support a city council dispensary initiative instead of moving forward with their own similar one. Representatives for Americans for Safe Access, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union and the Greater Los Angeles Collectives Alliance announced that they plan to campaign on behalf of the city’s proposal, which the city council is expected to vote this week to place on the ballot. That measure would only allow shops that opened before a 2007 moratorium to operate. Another initiative, also going to the voters, would allow most of the 500 or so currently existing dispensaries to stay open.

On Tuesday, Butte County released draft cultivation rules. The new draft ordinance includes a six mature plant limit on county parcels between .4 and 1.5 acres and an 18 mature plant limit on parcels between 1.5 and 3 acres, among other things. A public hearing is set for February 12.

Also on Tuesday, the San Diego city council voted not to drop pending dispensary cases as Mayor Bob Filner ordered earlier this month, but will instead maintain the status quo until he introduces a new ordinance to regulate them within 30 days. City officials said a zoning ordinance similar to one adopted by the council in 2011 would be brought up for discussion. But that measure triggered a successful petition drive to repeal it.

Massachusetts

Last Wednesday, the Malden city council approved an ordinance restricting the location of medical marijuana businesses. They cannot operate in commercial or residential areas, just industrial ones.

Also last Wednesday, the Peabody city council voted to ban dispensaries. The unanimous vote came after Mayor Ted Bettencourt worried aloud that the dispensaries would send the wrong message to Peabody youth. It becomes the eighth town in the state to ban dispensaries.

Michigan

On Wednesday, the state appeals court ruled that patients can give small amounts of marijuana to other patients without breaking the law. The appeals court agreed with a Barry County judge who had dismissed charges against Tony Green after he provided less than 2 ½ ounces of medical marijuana to Al Thornton in November 2011. Both were qualified patients. The appeals court ruled in 2011 that sales are illegal; that case is pending before the state Supreme Court.

New Jersey

Last Thursday, a Superior Court judge refused to appoint a monitor to supervise the state's stalled medical marijuana program, instead sending the case to the Appellate Division. Two patients had sued the state Department of Health last year, saying they were denied medication because the department took nearly three years to get the program under way. Their lawyers sought a monitor and court orders compelling corrective action. Now they will have to seek results from the appellate court.

Washington

Last Thursday, the Longview city council passed zoning restrictions on collective gardens. The measure passed by the council restricts them to the Mint Farm Industrial Park and an area along Industrial Way. The city has a moratorium on the gardens, but it expires in March, and without the zoning restrictions, people would have been able to plant gardens anywhere after the moratorium expired.

Welfare Drug Testing Bill Moving in Virginia

by Phillip Smith, January 30, 2013, 06:43pm, (Issue #769)
Posted in:

A Republican-backed bill that would subject welfare recipients to drug testing has passed a second committee vote and now heads for the Senate floor. The bill was approved in the Senate Rehabilitation and Social Services Committee earlier this month and passed out of the Senate Finance Committee Tuesday on a 10-5 vote.

The bill, Senate Bill 721, would require all 14,500 participants in the state's welfare-to-work program to undergo preliminary screening to assess their likelihood of drug use. Those flagged as potential drug users would then be tested by the Department of Social Services.

Failing a drug test would result in loss of benefits for a year, as would refusing to take one. But benefits could be reinstated if the person undergoes drug treatment. That provision was added in hopes of making the bill more palatable to the House, where a similar measure died last year.

"It's been toned down quite a bit from the original thing. "If there's welfare recipients using, we can help them with their addiction," said Sen. Frank Wagner (R-Virginia Beach) who sits on the Finance Committee. "You're hoping welfare payments are going to support families and not to purchase narcotics," he said in remarks reported by the Washington Examiner.

But opponents of the legislation said drug testing welfare recipients stigmatizes poor people and unfairly targets them while not aiming at other recipients of government largesse, such as students who receive college tuition grants, small businesses that get economic assistance, or legislators who get their paychecks from the state.

"Why are Republicans so suspicious of poor people? It begs the question," said Sen. Louise Lucas (D-Portsmouth). "This is insulting. The fact is, very few of those who qualify for temporary public assistance use illegal drugs."

Virginia is one of at least a dozen states where bills mandating drug testing for public benefits recipients have been filed so far this year. That number is likely to increase as the legislative season gears up. Last year, about two dozen such bills were filed, but only one in Georgia passed.

Florida had passed a welfare drug testing bill in 2011, but it has been put on hold by a federal court judge while she considers whether to rule it unconstitutional as a suspicionless search under the Fourth Amendment. Georgia, too, has put its bill on hold pending that decision.

The Virginia bill, however, seeks to avoid that constitutional problem by adding the preliminary step of screening in order to have a "reasonable suspicion" as the basis for the drug testing.

Richmond, VA
United States
See map: Google Maps

Czech Parliament Approves Medical Marijuana

by Phillip Smith, January 30, 2013, 06:05pm, (Issue #769)
Posted in:

The Czech Senate Wednesday approved a bill allowing for the medical use of marijuana by an overwhelming margin of 67-2. The measure had already passed the lower house of parliament.

The bill passed with support from all the political parties represented in the parliament. Newly-elected Czech President Milos Zeman is expected to sign it into law.

But while medical marijuana advocates are pleased that their government has moved to legalize the use of the herb for medicinal purposes, they are less happy with a provision that says only imported marijuana will be allowed to be sold for the first year "to ensure standards." That will make medical marijuana too expensive while enriching the black market and the few companies that will be selected as official traders of it.

"It's legal, pharmaceutical and economic corruption," said Dusan Dvorak, a medical-cannabis activist who leads the nonprofit organization Marijuana is Medicine. "The result of the law should be access to cannabis for research and medical uses. But the real result is that it won't be made available, it'll be more expensive, it'll bolster the black market and the mafia," he told the Wall Street Journal's Emerging Europe blog.

"For a long time I've supported enabling the medical use of cannabis… but I have to say that I'm very disappointed by what we've got on the table today," said Alena Gajduskova, the first-deputy Chairwoman of the Senate, who voted in favor of the bill despite reservations. "These medicines are proven; they're very efficient but shouldn't be a luxury good. That is completely unacceptable."

Gajduskova suggested that a solution would be to allow the country's "grandmother growers," who already have plants growing on their balconies and in their gardens to legally grow the plants, or at least remove the threat of criminal prosecution.

"A small amount of [marijuana] for personal use isn't criminalized, so if we're able to tolerate that, I don't see why we couldn't tolerate the senior 'grandmother growers' [for medical use]. And from the position of the Union of Patients of the Czech Republic, we'll work towards that goal," she said.

The Czech Republic is one of the most marijuana-friendly countries in Europe. Pot remains illegal, but in 2010, lawmakers removed all penalties for possession of up to a half ounce and cultivation of five or fewer plants. The following year, the government approved the use of medications using marijuana derivatives.

But it sounds like it still has some work to do on creating a viable medical marijuana distribution system.

Prague
Czech Republic

New Hampshire Marijuana Legalization Bill Filed

by Phillip Smith, January 30, 2013, 05:25pm, (Issue #769)
Posted in:

A bipartisan group of five legislators has introduced legislation to legalize marijuana possession in New Hampshire.

The bill, House Bill 492, would legalize the possession of up to an ounce by adults 21 and over and allow the cultivation of a limited number of plants by adults. It would also allow for licensed and regulated marijuana commerce.

The measure has majority support in the state, but just barely. A Public Policy Polling survey earlier this month found 53% supported changing state law to regulate marijuana alike alcohol, with 37% opposed.

The Granite State is only one of at least six states where legislators have filed or will file marijuana legalization bills this year. The others are Hawaii, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

Concord, NH
United States
See map: Google Maps

This Week's Corrupt Cops Stories

by Phillip Smith, January 29, 2013, 06:28pm, (Issue #769)
Posted in:

Narcs gone bad, evidence gone missing, cops gone over to the other side, and another jailer in trouble. Just another week in the drug war. Let's get to it:

In Pontiac, Michigan, prosecutors have dismissed 16 drug cases after an investigation determined a deputy on the county's narcotics enforcement team falsified a search warrant and lied under oath. Deputy Marc Ferguson, 47, a 24-year law enforcement veteran who was fired in December, opened a shipping container without a warrant in June 2011 and discovered 78 pounds of marijuana. He then resealed the container and sought a search warrant from a Pontiac magistrate, signing a sworn affidavit under oath that asked for permission to open the container. Ferguson later denied on the witness stand that he opened the container without a warrant. Drug charges against the defendant in that case were dropped in September, and since then, prosecutors have been sifting through other cases involving Ferguson and have dismissed 15 more in which he was central to the investigation. No word yet on any possible perjury charges.

In Quantico, Virginia, the town's acting police chief and sole other full-time officer resigned last Tuesday in the wake of an audit that found the department had missing drugs, guns, and cash. At least $1,080 in cash was missing from the evidence room, along with an unknown quantity of marijuana and four handguns. Acting Police Chief Howard Castle and Officer Daryl Robinson resigned at a city council meeting. Three of the four handguns have been recovered, and the state continues to investigate. The town has also ordered polygraph tests for its department, which includes four certified volunteer officers.

In South Lake Tahoe, California, a former South Lake Tahoe police officer was arrested last Thursday on charges he tipped off drug traffickers to upcoming busts, tampered with witnesses, and had sex with underage students at a Lake Tahoe high school. John "Johnny" Poland had been on administrative leave for the past year after an investigation that began in March 2010, when he was observed associating with suspects tied to a plot to kill a gang investigator on the police force. He is accused of engaging in sexual conduct with a 17-year-old high school student when he was school resource officer from 2003 to 2006, and since then, engaging in a pattern of behavior using his position of power to groom underage girls for sex, leak confidential police information to gang members and intimidate potential witnesses. His charges include two counts for corruptly persuading a person to alter, destroy or conceal an object's integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding, and attempting to do so; and three counts for corruptly persuading another person with the intent to influence the testimony of any person in an official proceeding, and attempting to do so. He is portrayed as being in a love triangle with the girlfriend of a gang leader and as making calls on his personal cell phone to methamphetamine dealers before execution of federal search warrants. At last report, he was being held without bail in the Sacramento County Jail.

In Putnamville, Indiana, a Putnamville jail guard was arrested last Saturday for smuggling drugs in to an inmate. Andreas Kirby, 20, went down after setting off the alarm on a metal detector at work at the jail, and after being interviewed by a police officer, surrendered three packages that were concealed in his groin area. He is charged with trafficking with an inmate, possession of cocaine, possession of marijuana, and two counts of possession of a controlled substance. He had only been on the job since September.

In Houston, two Houston police officers were arrested Sunday on charges they took bribes and allowed cocaine to be smuggled and distributed in the Houston area. Officers Emerson Canizales and Michael Miceli allegedly conspired in December to possess cocaine and received payments of $1,000 each for providing protection. They are charged with conspiracy to possess cocaine with intent to distribute and accepting bribes for protection services.

NCAA to Tighten Up Marijuana Testing, But Reduce Penalties

by Phillip Smith, January 28, 2013, 08:27pm, (Issue #769)
Posted in:

The NCAA is reducing the threshold for a positive result for marijuana, meaning that student athletes who smoke pot are more likely to be caught. At the same time, however, it is recommending reducing the penalty for those testing positive for marijuana.

NCAA game, North Carolina v. Michigan State, 2005 (courtesy Haaron755 on Wikimedia.org)
The testing threshold will drop from 15 nanograms per milliliter of blood to five nanograms in order to "more accurately identify usage among student athletes," the group's Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sport announced last Friday.

The lower marijuana threshold will go into effect on August 1 and would require a season-long suspension from athletic activities, the same penalty for those athletes caught using performance-enhancing drugs. The CSMAS is recommending that the penalty for positive marijuana tests be lowered to a half-season suspension because it doesn't consider the herb to be a performance-enhancing drug, but that change won't come into effect until August 2014.

That means the NCAA could see a spike in one-year suspensions for pot as the new, tighter threshold goes into effect, but the move to reduce penalties lags behind.

CSMAS explained that marijuana had not been part of athletic drug testing until after some Olympic snow boarders tested positive for it after the 1998 games and embarrassed Olympic officials:

"At that time, there was no penalty for a positive marijuana test, but many in the Olympic family were embarrassed about the test results. This led to placing marijuana on the in-competition list of banned drugs," the panel said on its web site. "Many scientists and clinicians have debated whether marijuana is truly performance enhancing. Indeed, John Fahey, the president of the World Anti-Doping Agency, recently acknowledged that many scientists believe that the current marijuana criteria need to be amended, and he further stated that this matter will be considered in a review process."

If marijuana is not a performance-enhancing drug, why should athletes be penalized for using it? CSMAS is glad you asked:

"The World Anti-Doping Agency lists three reasons for drug testing in sport: (1) to prevent cheating through the use of performance-enhancing substances and methods; (2) to deter athletes from ingesting substances that may harm the athlete’s health; and (3) to deter athletes from ingesting substances or engaging in doping methods that are contrary to the spirit of sport," the group explained. "Whereas the CSMAS rightly focused on the fact that marijuana and other street drugs are not performance enhancing, the committee also recognizes that the universe of sport is special, and the student-athlete is obliged to embrace the spirit of sport. We do not believe that student-athletes should be ingesting marijuana and other street drugs, and we believe that a combination of penalties coupled with behavioral intervention is the most balanced approach to this issue."

And does this mean an athlete who smoked a joint a month before the big bowl game could test positive for marijuana and face penalties from the NCAA?

"Yes," said CSMAS.

Indianapolis, IN
United States
See map: Google Maps

FDA Panel Wants Tighter Control over Pain Pills

by Phillip Smith, January 28, 2013, 05:50pm, (Issue #769)
Posted in:

A US Food and Drug Administration advisory panel voted last Friday to recommend that popular pain relievers containing the opioid hydrocodone be moved from Schedule III to Schedule II of the Controlled Substances Act. Popular prescription drugs containing hydrocodone include Vicodin and Lortab.

That would put Lortab and Vicodin in the same schedule as morphine and Oyxcontin, which contains oxycodone.

If the FDA agrees with its advisory panel and reschedules hydrocodone, pain patients using the drug will have to go the doctor's office to get prescriptions written twice as frequently as now. Schedule III drugs can be prescribed for up to six months at a time, while Schedule II drugs can only be prescribed for three months without another visit to the doctor.

The FDA has for years resisted efforts to tighten controls over hydrocodone, saying it could limit patients' access to pain medicine, but as overdose deaths and addiction rates from prescription pain relievers have jumped in recent years, pressure has been mounting on the agency. The agency is acting now after receiving a request from the DEA to consider rescheduling.

The advisory panel's 19-10 vote received mixed reviews from experts consulted by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

Andrew Kolodny, a psychiatrist and addiction specialist who heads Physicians for Responsible Opiate Prescribing lauded the vote, saying it will lead to fewer people getting addicted to opiates.

"Doctors have had a false sense of security (about prescribing the drugs)," said Kolodny. "This is a clear message that hydrocodone is addictive," he told the Wisconsin newspaper.

"It seemed pretty clear to me that the preponderance of the evidence supported rescheduling," said Peter Kaboli, associate professor at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine.

But Jan Chambers, president of the National Fibromyalgia and Chronic Pain Association, said she voted against the proposal because she has heard so much from family members of people who have committed suicide because they are in such pain.

"Millions of people don't have access to the pain specialist or the doctors who can prescribe these Schedule III drugs," she said.

And Lynn Webster, president-elect of the American Academy of Pain Medicine, said putting tighter controls on hydrocodone will reduce prescribing and abuse, but worried about the impact on pain patients.

"I hope chronic pain patients and acute pain patients don't suffer as a result," said Webster, who spoke at the panel hearing but was not a panel member.

The FDA has not said when it will make a final decision on the issue. Now, the FDA and the National Institutes of Health must make a recommendation to the assistant secretary for health, who will make a final recommendation to the DEA.

Washington, DC
United States
See map: Google Maps

It Looks Like 2016 for a Marijuana Legalization Bid in California [FEATURE]

by Phillip Smith, January 28, 2013, 01:31pm, (Issue #769)
Posted in:

If the first day of the California NORML state conference is any indication, most of the major players in Golden State marijuana law reform are lining up behind the idea of waiting until 2016 to try another legalization initiative there. They have some good reasons, but not everybody's happy with that, and some heart-rending reasons why that's the case were also on display as California marijuana activists gathered in San Francisco for day one of the two-day event.

Stephen Gutwillig, Dale Gieringer, Paul Armentano
Richard Lee's groundbreaking Proposition 19 garnered 46.5% of the vote in the 2010 off-year election, and no marijuana legalization initiative campaigns managed to make it onto the ballot last year, although several groups tried. Meanwhile, Colorado and Washington beat California to the Promised Land, becoming the first states to legalize marijuana in last November's election.

Now, California activists are eager to make their state the next to legalize, but crafty movement strategists are counseling patience -- and trying to build their forces in the meantime. The Prop 19 campaign made a strong beginning, bringing in elements of organized labor and the black and Hispanic communities, as well as dissident law enforcement voices, to help form a coalition that came close, but didn't quite make it.

As CANORML deputy director Ellen Komp reminded the audience at a Saturday morning panel on what comes next for marijuana law reform, the people behind the Proposition 19 campaign have formed the core of the California Coalition for Cannabis Policy Reform in a bid to forge unity among the state's diverse, multi-sided, and sometimes fractious marijuana community -- and to encourage new voices to join the struggle.

For the Marijuana Policy Project, California is a big prize, but only part of a broader national strategy, and one that should most likely wait for 2016, said the group's executive director, Rob Kampia, as he explained its plan to push legalization bills in state legislatures in four states (Hawaii, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont) this year and beyond, but not pushing legalization initiatives anywhere but Alaska in 2014.

MPP is envisioning a big legalization initiative push in 2016 instead, setting its sights on seven states, including California, when the presidential election pumps up the vote. (The others are Arizona, Massachusetts, Maine, Montana, Nevada, and Oregon.)

"There's a big demographic difference between 2014 and 2016," said Kampia. "If we do 2016, it's ours to lose."

The Drug Policy Alliance, another major player with access to the big-time funding that can turn an initiative into a winner, also seemed to be looking to 2016.

"It's up to us how, where, and when marijuana prohibition will end," Steve Gutwillig, a DPA deputy executive director and former California state director told the full house at the Ft. Mason Conference Center, "but the presumption is 2016, more than 2014. We need to run a unified campaign, we need to build the base and do alliance-building among people who are already convinced."

spontaneous fundraiser for Daisy Bram
Those positions are in line with the thinking of long-time CANORML head Dale Gieringer, who has long argued that initiatives fare better in presidential election years.

Even some of the proponents of the competing initiatives from last year are, while not exactly enthusiastic about waiting for 2016, are seemingly resigned to it.

Steve Collette, who was a proponent of the Regulate Marijuana Like Wine initiative, told the Chronicle he would prefer 2014, but could get behind 2016, too, while Sebastopol attorney Omar Figueroa, coauthor of the Repeal Cannabis Prohibition Act initiative, implied in his remarks in a later panel that he, too, was resigned to waiting for 2016.

Noting the confused state of California's medical marijuana laws -- "Nobody knows what the laws are!" -- Figueroa argued for either legislative action or a 2014 medical marijuana initiative "until a legalization initiative in 2016."

Not everyone was as ready to give up on 2014 just yet. Displeased grumblings were heard in the hallways, and an earnest advocate for the Herer-ite California Cannabis Hemp Initiative 2014 took advantage of a post-panel question-and-answer opportunity to declaim in support of it.

The most powerful and visceral opposition to waiting came in the form of Daisy Bram, a mother of three young children and legal medical marijuana grower. Bram became a symbol of the cruelty of pot prohibition last year, when local authorities in rural Butte County raided her grow, seized her children and place them in foster care, and filed criminal charges against her.

Despite being counseled to comply with the demands of Child Protective Services officials in order to secure the return of her children, one of whom was quite literally torn from her arms, Bram fought back and eventually won the return of children. But just this past week, it happened again. Another raid in another county -- although led by the same investigator -- has resulted in new criminal charges and her children once again being taken by the state.

Omar Figueroa, Michael Levinsohn, Daisy Bram
"My kids need you," she told the hushed crowd. "If it were legal, they wouldn't have my kids."

Daisy Bram doesn't want to wait until 2016 for marijuana to be legalized, she wants it yesterday, and she wants justice, and, most of all, she wants her children back in her arms. Her brief presentation at a panel Saturday afternoon was chilling, impassioned, and powerful, and visibly moved many in the audience.

[Update: CANORML reported Wednesday that at a family court appearance the previous day in her Tehama County case, the state authorities who are already seized her children seized her personal vehicle, a 2002 Ford Explorer, which they claim was the proceeds of crime.]

And while California is a state where just about anyone can get a medical marijuana card and possession of under an ounce is decriminalized, the case of Daisy Bram makes the uncomfortable point that marijuana prohibition continues to exact a real toll on real people, including the innocent. It's not just mothers labeled child abusers because the grow pot; it's also fathers denied visitation, patients thrown out of public housing, workers who must choose between their medicine and their jobs.

It's a bit easier to be sanguine about waiting until 2016 when you're not the one being bitten by those lingering vestiges of prohibition. As Komp put it when introducing Bram, until there is legalization, "there is a lot of human rights work to be done."

San Francisco, CA
United States
See map: Google Maps

Oregon Bill Would Make Cigarettes Controlled Substances

by Phillip Smith, January 24, 2013, 05:36pm, (Issue #769)
Posted in:

An Oregon lawmaker has introduced a bill that would make cigarettes a Schedule III controlled substance. That means it would be illegal to possess or distribute cigarettes without a doctor's prescription.

Rep. Mitch Greenlick (osea.org)
Other Oregon Schedule III drugs include ketamine, LSD, and anabolic steroids.

Sponsored by Rep. Mitch Greenlick (D-Portland), the bill, House Bill 2077, would make violations a Class A misdemeanor with a maximum penalty of up to one year in prison, a $6,250 fine, or both. The same penalty would apply to both possession and distribution.

The bill directs the state Board of Pharmacy to "adopt rules to classify nicotine as a Schedule III controlled substance." It would also require people involved in tobacco transactions keep records and to "forward the records to the State Police if directed to do so by the department." Failure to do so would also be a Class A misdemeanor.

The bill had a first reading last week and has now been referred to the Judiciary Committee.

Eugene, OR
United States
See map: Google Maps

StoptheDrugWar.org Internships: Legislative, Writing/Research, Web, IT, Admin/Finance, Communications

by David Borden, January 24, 2013, 11:21am, (Issue #768)

http://stopthedrugwar.org/files/stopsign-200px.jpg
StoptheDrugWar.org works for an end to drug prohibition worldwide and an end to the "drug war" in its current form. We believe that much of the harm commonly attributed to "drugs" is really the result of placing drugs in a criminal environment. We believe the global drug war has fueled violence, civil instability, and public health crises; and that the currently prevalent arrest- and punishment-based policies toward drugs are unjust. Please visit our web site, and please read more about us.

We are seeking Legislative, Writing/Research, Web Content, Information Technology, and Admin/Finance interns (potentially still this semester, depending on your interests, definitely for the summer). Communications may also be applicable to current organizational projects. Preference will be given to applicants with some demonstrated experience the relevant fields, and to applicants in the Washington, DC area. However, consideration will also be given to enthusiasm for drug policy and criminal justice reform.

Note that StoptheDrugWar.org internships are unpaid. We reimburse for metro fare. Please also note that the organization has functioned as a "virtual office" environment since spring 2011. Staff will meet with interns on a regular basis during the semester, and can be available to meet and work together on a weekly or even daily basis, but this will happen in places like coffee shops or campuses.

In order to help our interns forge ties with the larger community, we are organizing intern networking social hours with other organizations in drug policy and justice reform. We are also arranging tours of the DC courts and possibly jail, and public health and other programs that have bearing on drug policy. Interns are also welcome to join us at the frequent legislative working group meetings that take place on our issues here in Washington.

Please send cover letter, resume, and any supporting material you'd like to include, to StoptheDrugWar.org executive director David Borden, at borden@drcnet.org. (We recommend using a return receipt to ensure your emails are not blocked by any filters.) Thank you, and we look forward to hearing from you. Information on our specific intern positions follows below.

Legislative

Legislative interns will help, and in some cases play a leading role, on the following organizational projects:

  • Bill and vote tracking, at the federal and state level, including write-ups for our web site's legislative center (possibly in collaboration with Writing interns);
  • Creating action alerts on current legislation and other advocacy priorities, to be distributed through our web site and email list (possibly in collaboration with Writing and Web Content interns); and
  • Coalition outreach to secure partners for organizational sign-on letters to Congress.

Interns may also join us at working group meetings on issues including but not limited to sentencing reform, drug policy including marijuana law reform; collateral consequences of criminal convictions; and reinvigorating the presidential clemency/pardon system. Spanish-language skills may be useful.

Writing/Research

Writing/Research interns will have the following opportunities:

  • Assist Drug War Chronicle editor Phillip S. Smith with ongoing article collection and research for feature articles on our web site (which are frequently reprinted on major news sites such as alternet.org).
  • Assist with research on special topics, the goal of which is the publication of special reports. Likely projects include but are not necessarily limited to follow-up research on US drug war killings (see our recent report here); procuring drug arrest data and possibly arrest reports from various jurisdictions for various months and years, to evaluate the results of recent policy reforms, particularly for marijuana.
  • Bill and vote tracking, at the federal and state level, including write-ups for our web site's legislative center (possibly in collaboration with Legislative interns);
  • Creating action alerts on current legislation and other advocacy priorities, to be distributed through our web site and email list (possibly in collaboration with Legislative interns);
  • Updating an archive of SWAT raids and other paramilitarized policing activity that went wrong (possibly in collaboration with Web Content interns); and
  • Assisting with updating or creating various special sections of our web site (possibly in collaboration with Web Content interns).

Interns with Spanish-language skills may be involved with reporting on the Mexican drug war.

Web Content

Web Content interns will assist with the following work:

  • Daily link and other content postings;
  • Development or maintenance of special sections of our web site (possibly in collaboration with Writing interns); and
  • General social media work, including a number special social media projects.

We may also initiate an informal web video series, for which intern assistance would be invaluable, but this has not been decided yet.

Information Technology

IT interns will assist with the following projects:

  • Backend web site programming, primarily involving streamlining of our donations processing system;
  • Server migration to a "cloud" arrangement;
  • Security including PCI compliance;
  • Selection and set up of needed software and services; and
  • Database-related projects.

Admin/Finance

Admin & Finance interns may assist with the following organizational needs, among others:

  • Bookkeeping;
  • Nonprofit accounting including intra-company allocations and 990 preparation;
  • Budget & cash flow analysis;
  • Membership administration;
  • Database work.

Admin & finance interns will gain familiarity with a significant range of nonprofits' administrative activities, and depending on schedule may have the opportunity to sit in on portions of board discussions or meetings with advisors.

Communications

As noted above, communications skills are applicable to a number of facets of our work this semester, and communications majors are encouraged to apply. We have not listed communications as a separate internship this semester, because we have not decided whether to engage in specific outreach efforts to mainstream media this semester. Along with the possibility that we will do so, other work of relevance to communications can be found in our Legislative, Writing, and Web Content internships.

Thank you for considering an internship with our organization. We look forward to hearing from you.

DC Appeals Court Denies Marijuana Rescheduling [FEATURE]

by Phillip Smith, January 23, 2013, 10:00pm, (Issue #768)
Posted in:

In a ruling Tuesday, the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit denied a petition seeking to reschedule marijuana. The court held that while petitioners had presented some evidence of marijuana's medical efficacy, there was not enough to override the federal government's decision to place marijuana on Schedule I, the most restrictive classification.

E. Barrett Prettyman US Courthouse and William B. Bryant Annex
Schedule I drugs, which also include heroin, LSD, and ecstasy, are those that are considered to have no medical use and a high potential for abuse. Marijuana was placed in Schedule I when Congress passed the Controlled Substances Act in 1970, and the DEA and FDA have consistently refused efforts to reschedule it.

The ruling came in Americans for Safe Access v. Drug Enforcement Administration. It comes more than 10 years after the Coalition for Rescheduling Cannabis, led by Jon Gettman, originally filed its petition in October 2002 and 40 years after NORML first filed a petition seeking to reschedule the herb. The Coalition petition was denied in 2011, after ASA sued the Obama administration for delaying its response. The current appeal was the first time in two decades that a federal court has reviewed the issue of whether there exists adequate scientific evidence to reschedule marijuana.

The first challenge for petitioners was that of standing to sue. The presence of disabled Air Force veteran and Veterans for Medical Cannabis Access member Michael Krawitz among the petitioners provided that standing. Krawitz, who has tussled with the Department of Veterans Affairs over his use of medical marijuana, "has suffered injury-in-fact because he must shoulder a financial cost for services he would otherwise obtain for free of charge from the VA" and thus has standing to sue, the court held.

But that was just the threshold question. On the substantive issue of rescheduling marijuana, the court came down squarely on the side of the federal government.

"The question before the court is not whether marijuana could have some medical benefits," wrote Senior Circuit Court Judge Harry Edwards for the majority. "Rather, the limited question that we address is whether the DEA’s decision declining to initiate proceedings to reschedule marijuana under the CSA was arbitrary and capricious… On the record before us, we hold that the DEA’s denial of the rescheduling petition survives review under the deferential arbitrary and capricious standard. The petition asks the DEA to reclassify marijuana as a Schedule III, IV, or V drug, which, under the terms of the CSA, requires a 'currently accepted medical use.' The DEA's regulations… define 'currently accepted medical use' to require, inter alia, 'adequate and well-controlled studies proving efficacy.' … We defer to the agency’s interpretation of these regulations and find that substantial evidence supports its determination that such studies do not exist."

"The court says the DEA didn't act arbitrarily and capriciously, but if that wasn't arbitrary and capricious, I'm going back to the dictionary," said a frustrated Krawitz. "This is an issue with 70% supporting change, yet nothing happens. We have a handful of champions in Congress, but where is one person in the federal government who represents us? How can there be so little integrity at the National Institutes for Health and the FDA, where they are supposed to be there to protect our interests?"

"We're stuck in a Catch-22 -- the DEA is saying that marijuana needs FDA approval to be removed from Schedule I, but at the same time they are obstructing that very research," said Tamar Todd, senior staff attorney for the Drug Policy Alliance. "While there is a plethora of scientific evidence establishing marijuana's safety and efficacy, the specific clinical trials necessary to gain FDA approval have long been obstructed by the federal government itself."

"It's more of the same from the federal courts. I'm disappointed, but not surprised," said Dale Gieringer, longtime head of California NORML. "There has been a long line of court decisions affirming the federal government's dictatorial power to make arbitrary decisions about drugs. Ironically, this decision comes on the same day as the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Women in this country have the right to terminate the live of their fetuses, but not to smoke a joint."

"To deny that sufficient evidence is lacking on the medical efficacy of marijuana is to ignore a mountain of well-documented studies that conclude otherwise," said Joe Elford, Chief Counsel with Americans for Safe Access (ASA), which appealed the denial of the rescheduling petition in January of last year. "The Court has unfortunately agreed with the Obama Administration's unreasonably raised bar on what qualifies as an 'adequate and well-controlled' study, thereby continuing their game of 'Gotcha.'"

ASA said it will seek an en banc review of the decision by the full DC Circuit and will go to the Supreme Court if necessary. The group said it will argue that the Obama administration has acted "arbitrarily and capriciously" by shifting its definition of what constitutes "medical efficacy." The administration now argues that Stage II and III clinical trials are necessary to show efficacy, while ASA contends that the more than 200 peer-reviewed studies it cited in legal briefs in the case meet the standard.

"The Obama Administration's legal efforts will keep marijuana out of reach for millions of qualified patients who would benefit from its use," said Elford. "It's time for President Obama to change his harmful policy with regard to medical marijuana and treat this as a public health issue, something entirely within the capability and authority of the executive office."

While ASA pursues its appeals in the courts, it is also trying to turn up the heat on Congress and the administration. With rescheduling through the courts blocked -- at least pending a favorable ruling on appeal -- that is where the action will be.

"I'm not optimistic that the courts are going to change their position," said Gieringer. "That means we will have to put pressure on the administration or Congress to do it."

But it's important to see that rescheduling is not an end in itself, but a means, said Gieringer.

"Rescheduling in itself would accomplish very little in the real world," he pointed out. "It would not end the federal-state conflict on marijuana, and even if it were rescheduled, there is still no FDA-approved supply. All of the marijuana out there today would still be an illegal controlled substance without FDA approval."

Marijuana policy reform is not just about real world effects; it is also about perceptions, and rescheduling marijuana would have been something of a game changer, as Gieringer noted.

"Symbolically, of course, it would have been huge," he said. "It would open the way for prescriptions and help unblock research -- the controls on Schedule II drugs are not nearly as fearsome. Still, rescheduling would have been a baby step, but a lot of other stuff has to happen, and that requires an act of Congress, and I haven't seen any sign of that."

But the federal courts have so far made clear that they will defer to Congress and the executive branch on these issues. That means that's where the battle will have to be won.

Washington, DC
United States
See map: Google Maps

Is It Time for Another DC Marijuana Initiative? [FEATURE]

by Phillip Smith, January 23, 2013, 09:54pm, (Issue #768)
Posted in:

In the wake of the legalization victories in Colorado and Washington last November, and medical marijuana in Massachusetts, activists are talking about where the next marijuana reform campaigns should be waged and what they should attempt to do. One document that has gotten some discussion is from the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), listing seven states where it would be working to legalize marijuana next. The list includes possible tax and regulate initiatives in Alaska, California, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada and Oregon.

DC's partial diamond (map from census.gov)
Absent from the list is one jurisdiction that would also appear ripe for a legalization initiative: Washington, DC. The nation's capital has several things going for it.

DC has the initiative process, and activists used it to great effect in passing medical marijuana with 69% of the vote in 1998 (even if, thanks to Congressional action and the glacial pace of the DC government it has taken 15 years to implement it). The District is also overwhelmingly liberal; Obama won with 91% of the vote in November.

Unlike large states like California, the District is small in size and population and would not require a huge expenditure of resources to gather enough signatures to make the ballot. Similarly, it is a relatively small media market, meaning TV advertising would be in reach of all but the most ill-funded campaign.

Last, but not least, it is the nation's capital. A successful initiative in Washington, DC, would reverberate not only around the country, but around the world, particularly an initiative that enacted legalization..

MPP may not have included the District in its "to do" list, but that doesn't mean the organization isn't watching, said the organization's director of governmental relations, Steve Fox.

"[DC] is being discussed," said Fox. "When you look at the places where an initiative would be possible, the District stands out. One reason we didn't mention it is that it’s a jurisdiction where we're not necessarily looking at tax and regulate, but there are options to do less, such as a decriminalization initiative."

The problem of congressional interference is cause for concern, though, Fox said.

"DC certainly is ripe for some kind of reform, but we also have to be cognizant of the fact that it is unique in that it has congressional oversight," Fox said. "With the medical marijuana system finally getting off the ground, we don't necessarily want to ruffle any feathers by attempting to do anything too bold. When the medical marijuana initiative passed in 1998 and Congress wanted to mess with it, they ended up having a provision something along the lines of DC not being able to spend any funds to lower or reduce penalties related to any schedule I or II substances. If Congress thought DC was going too far too fast, it could block DC from spending any money for reforms of Schedule I substances."

Doing DC would be tempting, said Fox, but again worried about moving too fast for Congress.

"There would certainly be value in passing something in the District," he mused. "You would be making a statement that a strongly Democratic-leaning jurisdiction thinks marijuana should be regulated like alcohol, but that might not be big news to a lot of people. The real impact and real value would be to actually have a regulated market in operation, and members of Congress could see that the sky isn't falling. We've waited 15 years to show Congress you can have medical marijuana dispensaries up and running and serving patients and the public good, and we want to make sure Congress has a chance to absorb that reality."

"As a longtime DC resident, I've always thought of the District as low-hanging fruit," said Allen St. Pierre, executive director of NORML, who expressed interest in an initiative. "The media market is limited, and there is an overwhelmingly liberal population. But we don't even have a NORML chapter here, and I see little impetus in the reform community."

But things are happening in the District, according to long-time activist Adam Eidinger, co-owner of the Capitol Hemp Emporium until it was forced to close under law enforcement pressure last year. Eidinger told the Chronicle that both legalization and medical marijuana activists were meeting to plot potential courses of action, including either a legalization initiative or an initiative to expand medical marijuana rights.

"We're thinking 2014," said Eidinger, "but while I think this is a no-brainer, it has to be poll tested. We're not going to go for it if it polls less than 65%. "We will poll medical as well as legalization and see what the difference is. I know some of our friends wouldn't support legalization, but would support a patients' rights initiative that would give them the right to grow limited amounts, more rights to use outside the home, and more flexibility on dispensaries. This isn't California; DC is super strict on medical marijuana, and the patients here are going to be AIDS patients and cancer sufferers."

Test polling will happen soon, he said.

Eidinger, who also runs a media consulting firm, also saw the potential for a media coup. "This is a great place to do it for the public relations value," he said.

MPP's Fox said the group was looking for a few good people.

"As MPP did in Colorado and with medical marijuana in Arkansas, what we look for are committed and competent people on the ground who are able to do this kind of work," Fox said. "We're looking to support good people. I coordinate ballot initiatives, and I'm in DC, and so are other activists. I would be happy to work with local activists to craft something."

"The symbolism alone would probably be worth it," said St. Pierre. "It probably wouldn't cost more than $15,000 or $20,000 to get it done. This is a low cost project with a huge potential upside."

If recent comments from DC elected officials are any indication, further marijuana law reform is only going to come through the initiative process. While one city council candidate, Paul Zuckerberg, is running on a platform that includes decriminalization, the mayor and other top officials have made clear they are not interested in going further.

"I'm not prepared at this stage to support the decriminalization of any drugs at this point," Mayor Vincent Gray said earlier this month. "Look at the most abused substance in our society, and it's probably alcohol. People do abuse, irrespective of whether it's legal or not."

Police Chief Cathy Lanier also expressed unease, although her comments did suggest she drew a line between marijuana and other drugs.

"I know the legalization of marijuana is in large debate around the country, whether it be medical marijuana or just straight-out legalization of marijuana. That's one issue," Lanier said. "But I think when you talk about some of these other drugs that are extremely dangerous -- PCP, for example -- to say that we should decriminalize that and just allow people to have that without any penalty in the community would just be devastating."

With the DC council unlikely to advance reform, that leaves the field open to potential initiative campaigns. The District is most likely ripe for the picking, if anyone decides to go that route.

Washington, DC
United States
See map: Google Maps

Medical Marijuana Update

by Phillip Smith, January 23, 2013, 06:27pm, (Issue #768)
Posted in:

An important federal court ruling, medical marijuana bills start popping up in the states, more providers get prosecuted, and LA continues to stumble toward a resolution of its dispensary issue. Let's get to it:

National

On Tuesday, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a petition to reschedule marijuana.The nearly 11-year-old petition had been rejected by the DEA, and the appeals court upheld that decision. While attorneys for petitioners say they will appeal -- to the Supreme Court if necessary -- advocates are now turning their attention to Congress and the administration.

California

Last Wednesday, the state Supreme Court denied review of a landmark medical marijuana case, People v. Jackson. In that case, the Fourth District Court of Appeals had overturned the conviction of San Diego dispensary operator Jovan Jackson and established a clear defense for Jackson and others like him who are prosecuted in state court. The Fourth District court had held that in mounting a defense at trial, "Jackson was only required to produce evidence which would create a reasonable doubt as to whether the defense provided by the [Medical Marijuana Program Act] had been established." The court further held that, "the collective or cooperative association required by the act need not include active participation by all members in the cultivation process but may be limited to financial support by way of marijuana purchases from the organization. Thus, contrary to the trial court's ruling, the large membership of Jackson's collective, very few of whom participated in the actual cultivation process, did not, as a matter of law, prevent Jackson from presenting an MMPA defense."

Last Friday, a Stockton dispensary operator pleaded guilty in federal court to marijuana manufacturing and distribution charges. Lynn Farrell Smith, 62, was a co-owner of a half dozen Stockton and Sacramento-area dispensaries and grew marijuana at a Stockton warehouse to supply the stores. Prosecutors said he made millions while hiding under the cover of the state's medical marijuana laws.

On Tuesday, the LA city council voted to put two medical marijuana initiatives on the May ballot. The two must come up for a second vote next week, when the council considers its own third initiative. One initiative would allow about 100 dispensaries to remain open; the other would allow most of the estimated 500 dispensaries currently operating in the city to remain open.

Also on Tuesday, the Antioch city council voted to ban dispensaries. The ban passed on a 3-2 vote after city staff told the council it had concerns about burglaries and robberies at dispensaries and over the sale of illegal drugs to youngsters.

Connecticut

Last Wednesday, state officials handed in draft regulations for in-state cultivation and sale of medical marijuana to Gov. Dan Malloy (D). The draft rules include nuts-and-bolts guidelines for growers, doctors, patients obtaining medical certificates and even the disposal of unused marijuana, which could be turned in to local police. If the regulation process proceeds smoothly, dispensaries could be operating by late this year or early next year.

Iowa

Last Wednesday, Rep. Bruce Hunter (D-Des Moines) introduced a medical marijuana bill. The bill, House File 22, would allow Iowans with debilitating medical conditions to obtain and use marijuana without fear of arrest. It would also create a dispensary system.

Montana

Last Thursday, a medical marijuana worker was sentenced to four years in federal prison for his involvement with Montana Cannabis, which was raided by the DEA as part of 2011's statewide sweep of dispensaries. Dan Nichols had done construction and worked as a night watchman at the dispensary. Several other Montana Cannabis operators have already been sentenced to federal prison, including 68-year-old Richard Flor, who died there.

Also last Thursday, a medical marijuana provider was convicted in federal court of "conspiracy to manufacture and distribute marijuana" and "possession with intent to distribute marijuana," but was acquitted of another felony, possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug-related crime. Former Montana Grizzlies quarterback Jason Washington claimed to be in compliance with Montana's medical marijuana law but, as is typical with such federal cases, defendants like Washington are routinely denied a defense. He is facing a 5-year mandatory minimum sentence, up to 40 years in prison, and more than $10 million in fines and forfeitures.

Also last Thursday, a district court judge issued a second injunction blocking implementation of SB 423, the law passed by the state legislature that effectively gutted the state's voter-approved medical marijuana law. Judge James Reynolds had ordered a similar injunction last year, but was reversed by the state Supreme Court. After hearing new testimony, he issued a more thorough ruling last Thursday.

Oklahoma

On Monday, Sen. Constance Johnson (D-Oklahoma City) filed a medical marijuana bill. The bill, Senate Bill 902, directs the medical board to develop and adopt rules allowing patients to obtain permission from their doctors to use marijuana.

South Dakota

On Wednesday, two senators said they were introducing a medical marijuana defense bill.Sen. Craig Tieszen (R-Rapid City) and Rep. Dan Kaiser (R-Aberdeen) were hoping to introduce the bill Wednesday. It would allow persons caught with two ounces or less of marijuana to argue a medical necessity defense.

Texas

Last Friday, Rep. Elliot Naishtat (D-Austin) introduced a medical marijuana affirmative defense bill. The bill, House Bill 594, would enact protections for physicians who make written or oral statements to their patients that marijuana would likely provide benefits that outweigh any risks. Patients whose doctors make such statements would be able to present evidence of the statement in court if charged with possession of marijuana and have their charges dismissed.

Washington

Last Wednesday, the Bremerton city council voted to ban collective medical marijuana gardens. Such gardens are legal under a 2011 state law, but the council sided with city attorneys, who warned that regulating and permitting the gardens might put city workers at risk from the federal government, which considers all marijuana production illegal.

Indonesian Court Gives British Grandmother Death for Drugs

by Phillip Smith, January 23, 2013, 04:15pm, (Issue #768)
Posted in:

An Indonesian court last Tuesday sentenced a British woman to death for trying to smuggle about 10 pounds of cocaine into the resort island of Bali, the anti-death penalty group Hands off Cain reported. Lindsay Sandiford, 56, cried when she heard the sentence, but had no other comment before being led back to jail.

Sandiford had been arrested upon arrival in Bali's international airport in May, when authorities found 4.8 kilograms of cocaine in the lining of her suitcase. She told authorities a criminal gang had threatened her and her children if she didn't transport the drugs, which had a street value of $2.5 million.

The practice of imposing the death penalty for drug offenses is frowned upon by the UN, which considers it a human rights violation. That stance is even embraced by th UN Office on Drugs and Crime. "UNODC advocates the abolition of the death penalty and calls upon Member States to follow international standards concerning prohibition of the death penalty for offenses of a drug-related or purely economic nature," the international agency said in 2010 report (see page eight).

While Indonesia has notoriously harsh drug laws -- it is among the nations listed by Harm Reduction International's Death Penalty Project as both having and using the death penalty for drug offenses -- Sandiford's sentence was harsher than expected.

Two other Britons charged in the case received lesser sentences (a fourth awaits sentencing), and prosecutors had recommended only 15 years in prison, but judges at the Denpasar District Court said there was no reason for a light sentence. She had damaged Bali's reputation as a tourist destination, they said.

Sandiford joins an estimated 114 other prisoners on Indonesia's death row, most of them convicted of drug offenses. At least 40 death row inmates are foreigners, including several Australians.

Since 1998, five foreigners have been executed in Indonesia, all for drug offenses. The good news is that Indonesia hasn't actually executed anyone since 2008, when 10 people went to the gallows.

Indonesia

Colombia's FARC Wants Legal Coca Cultivation

by Phillip Smith, January 23, 2013, 04:12am, (Issue #768)
Posted in:

In peace talks in Havana Tuesday, Colombia's FARC guerrillas called on the Colombian government to consider legalizing coca cultivation. The proposal was part of the FARC's broader proposal on agrarian development and land reform.

FARC negotiator Rube Zamora (pazfarc-ep.blogspot.com)
The proposal came one day after the FARC ended its self-imposed cease-fire (the Colombian government never agreed to a cease-fire during the peace talks) and launched a series of attacks on security forces, leaving at least one soldier dead.

The FARC is a socialist político-military formation that has been in rebellion against the central government in Bogota since 1964. Its military strength seems to have peaked about a decade ago, but it remains a potent forcé in some sectors of rural Colombia.

After first opposing the cultivation of coca among the peasantry, it gradually shifted to supporting and taxing it, and the group has had some involvement in the cocaine trade as well. Colombia is either the world's largest or second largest coca and cocaine producer, depending on which figures you believe. That's despite more than $7 billion in US anti-drug and counterinsurgency assistance since 1999 and massive, years-long aerial fumigation campaigns.

In its agrarian reform proposal, FARC negotiator Rube Zamora called on the government to "contemplate actions regarding the cultivation of illicit crops to transition toward substitute or alternative production or for their legalization for medicinal or therapeutic ends or cultural reasons."

More broadly, the FARC called for the creation of a "land bank" of unused or underused areas that could be distributed to landless peasants and for a more democratic method of rural planning. The land would include "latifundia," or large rural estates, confiscated from drug traffickers. The proposal marks a retreat from the previous FARC position that called for the seizure and redistribution of all latifundia.

There is no word on the Colombian government's response to the proposals. Both parties in the talks have agreed not to talk publicly about their progress. They restarted Tuesday after going on hiatus for the Christmas holidays.

Havana
Cuba

Pregnant Oklahoma Woman Seeks Medical Treatment, Is Jailed Instead, Dies

by Phillip Smith, January 22, 2013, 08:11pm, (Issue #768)
Posted in:

A pregnant Oklahoma woman who went to a hospital seeking treatment for extreme pain was instead jailed after police found pain pills on her and died in jail shortly thereafter. Jamie Lynn Russell, 33, becomes the third person to die in US domestic drug law enforcement operations so far this year.

Pauls Valley General Hospital (pvgh.net)
According to KFOR-TV News Channel 4 in Oklahoma City, Russell went to the hospital in Pauls Valley seeking help for severe abdominal pain. Hospital staff reported that Russell wouldn't cooperate and was in too much pain to even lie down, so they asked a Paul's Valley police officer to assist.

And that's when Russell's medical emergency morphed into a drug bust. The police officer found two prescription pills on her for which she did not have a prescription, so she was arrested and jailed on drug possession charges. She was found unresponsive in her cell less than two hours later.

"There is nothing my staff in the jail could've done differently," Garvin County sheriff Larry Rhodes said. "She had a medical release from the hospital stating that she was fit for incarceration," Rhodes said. "It's very regrettable for the family. My heart and prayers go out to them."

The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation has cleared the jail staff of any criminal wrongdoing.

The state medical examiner's office later confirmed that Russell died from a ruptured ecoptic pregnancy, where the embryo implants outside the uterus.

Russell's friends and family are pointing the finger at the hospital. "Jamie was seeking help; she was in extreme pain," family friend Kemper Kimberlin told KFOR. "We want to see this come to light. Something's wrong and needs to be fixed."

It may take a civil wrongful death lawsuit to find out exactly what's wrong -- and how a hospital can turn a pain-tormented woman over to police to be jailed instead of treated.

Pauls Valley, OK
United States
See map: Google Maps

Did You Know? "Doping Cases at the Olympics, 1968-2010," on ProCon.org

by David Borden, January 22, 2013, 10:35am, (Issue #768)
Posted in:

Did you know there were 127 doping cases reported at the Olympics between 1968 and 2010? Read the details in "Doping Cases at the Olympics, 1968-2010," on the web site sportsanddrugs.procon.org, part of the ProCon.org family. Also on sportsanddrugs.procon.org: "Top 10 Pros and Cons: Should performance enhancing drugs (such as steroids) be accepted in sports?", and other resources.

This is the third in a six-part series of ProCon.org teasers being published in Drug War Chronicle. Keep tuning in to the Chronicle for more important facts from ProCon.org the next several weeks, or sign up for ProCon.org's email list or RSS feed. Read last week's Chronicle ProCon.org piece here.

ProCon.org is a web site promoting critical thinking, education, and informed citizenship by presenting controversial issues in a straightforward, nonpartisan primarily pro-con format.

Drug War Issues

Criminal JusticeAsset Forfeiture, Collateral Sanctions (College Aid, Drug Taxes, Housing, Welfare), Court Rulings, Drug Courts, Due Process, Felony Disenfranchisement, Incarceration, Policing (2011 Drug War Killings, 2012 Drug War Killings, 2013 Drug War Killings, Arrests, Eradication, Informants, Interdiction, Lowest Priority Policies, Police Corruption, Police Raids, Profiling, Search and Seizure, SWAT/Paramilitarization, Task Forces, Undercover Work), Probation or Parole, Prosecution, Reentry/Rehabilitation, Sentencing (Alternatives to Incarceration, Clemency and Pardon, Crack/Powder Cocaine Disparity, Death Penalty, Decriminalization, Drug Free Zones, Mandatory Minimums, Rockefeller Drug Laws, Sentencing Guidelines)CultureArt, Celebrities, Counter-Culture, Music, Poetry/Literature, Television, TheaterDrug UseParaphernalia, ViolenceIntersecting IssuesCollateral Sanctions (College Aid, Drug Taxes, Housing, Welfare), Violence, Border, Budgets/Taxes/Economics, Business, Civil Rights, Driving, Economics, Education (College Aid), Employment, Environment, Families, Free Speech, Gun Policy, Human Rights, Immigration, Militarization, Money Laundering, Pregnancy, Privacy (Search and Seizure, Drug Testing), Race, Religion, Science, Sports, Women's IssuesMarijuana PolicyGateway Theory, Hemp, Marijuana -- Personal Use, Marijuana Industry, Medical MarijuanaMedicineMedical Marijuana, Science of Drugs, Under-treatment of PainPublic HealthAddiction, Addiction Treatment (Science of Drugs), Drug Education, Drug Prevention, Drug-Related AIDS/HIV or Hepatitis C, Harm Reduction (Methadone & Other Opiate Maintenance, Needle Exchange, Overdose Prevention, Safe Injection Sites)Source and Transit CountriesAndean Drug War, Coca, Hashish, Mexican Drug War, Opium ProductionSpecific DrugsAlcohol, Ayahuasca, Cocaine (Crack Cocaine), Ecstasy, Heroin, Ibogaine, ketamine, Khat, Marijuana (Gateway Theory, Marijuana -- Personal Use, Medical Marijuana, Hashish), Methamphetamine, Nicotine, Prescription Opiates (Fentanyl, Oxycontin), Psychedelics (LSD, Mescaline, Peyote, Salvia Divinorum), Synthetic Drugs (Mephedrone, Synthetic Cannabinoids)YouthGrade School, Post-Secondary School, Raves, Secondary School