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Marijuana Policy Project has launched a TV ad campaign in support of taxing and regulating marijuana in California:



Unfortunately, while the ad will appear on several networks, KABC in Los Angeles and KGO and KNTV in San Francisco actually rejected it:

At KABC in L.A., the ad was rejected for purportedly encouraging marijuana smoking. [MPP's Bruce] Mirken spoke to station manager Arnie Kleiner, who didn't return a call from the Huffington Post. "His feeling wasn't that the ad was promoting a change in the law, but that it was promoting marijuana smoking," said Mirken, adding that Kleiner told him, "I'm not going to advocate the smoking of marijuana. Marijuana is illegal." [Huffington Post]

As anyone viewing the ad can plainly see, it doesn’t endorse marijuana smoking in any way. The ad argues that the existing marijuana industry could be used to generate much-needed revenue for the state, which has nothing to do with whether or not one happens to personally like marijuana or think it's a good thing for people to do. The kneejerk assertion that all efforts to reform marijuana laws are equivalent to an endorsement of drug use is really as intellectually barren an argument as you'll ever find in the marijuana policy debate. It's a desperate cop-out and an instant indicator that you're dealing with someone whose comprehension of the issue is not fully formed.

Similarly, the argument that you can’t talk about changing marijuana laws because "marijuana is illegal" is just a paralyzing absurdity. Even the Governor of California is interested is debating marijuana legalization, so obviously the existence of current marijuana laws does not create an invisible barrier to intelligent discourse about public policy.

Fortunately, the marijuana debate has progressed to a point at which such petty obstructions serve only to embarrass those responsible. A recent poll shows that 56% of Californians support marijuana legalization, thus any public entity that endeavors to conceal or trivialize the argument takes a substantial risk of alienating its own patrons.

Nevertheless, the ad will air on many stations in California and it's thrilling to see the reform argument marketed to the mainstream. The Governor asked for a debate and that's exactly what he's going to get.

Check out Subway's new "Be Yourself" ad featuring Michael Phelps:



The ad concludes "You can always be yourself at Subway." The whole thing is a brilliantly veiled reference to the backlash against Kellogg's that emerged when they dropped Phelps for smoking pot. Better yet, Subway has launched a new promotional website at Subwayfreshbuzz.com. You see what they're doing, right?

The new campaign is already generating tons of press coverage, including positive reactions to the ad's apparent reference to the infamous marijuana incident. It's a brilliant maneuver by Subway and, hopefully, an early indicator that corporate America is finally learning that it makes more sense to wink at pot culture than risk alienating it.

Once again, I'm humbled by the immeasurable impact of the Michael Phelps marijuana saga. I'm seeing discussion of the Kellogg's boycott reemerging in comment threads around the web today and I don't think one can easily exaggerate what a major event that was, and still is, for our cause. Along with the intense and heavily-publicized popularity of marijuana reform questions on the President's website, it's becoming widely understood that marijuana culture has a tremendous and now powerfully intimidating web presence.

In the age of viral web marketing and online-everything, the visible web presence of marijuana culture becomes a potent weapon that's now reshaping the debate right before our eyes. For fear of offending us, the President and his drug czar can scarcely utter more than a vague sentence in defense of our marijuana laws. Meanwhile, the mainstream press is hustling marijuana stories like dimebags in a city park. And Subway is celebrating freedom of personal choice in a new ad campaign featuring the world's most famous marijuana user.

The war remains, but the battlefield has changed. I can smell it, like the aroma of fresh baked bread wafting free from the entrance of the Subway down the block from our office, which I might just visit tomorrow for the first time in a while.

South Dakota's most well-known marijuana legalization advocate, Bob Newland, was sentenced yesterday to a year in the Pennington County Jail with all but 45 days suspended for felony marijuana possession--a little less than four ounces. Once he does his time, he'll be on probation for a year. Newland can, I suppose, consider himself fortunate. According to the South Dakota Department of Corrections, there are currently six people imprisoned for possession of less than half a pound and seven for more than half but less than one pound, as well as 14 doing time for distribution of less than an ounce and another 25 doing time for distribution of less than a pound.

But in another respect, Newland is not so lucky. He has basically been stripped of his First Amendment right to advocate for marijuana legalization while he is on probation. As the Associated Press reported:

A longtime South Dakota supporter of legalized marijuana has been sentenced to serve 45 days in jail for possessing the illegal drug.

Authorities say Bob Newland of Hermosa was found with four bags of marijuana, a scale and $385 in cash when he was stopped for speeding in March.

He pleaded guilty in May to a possession charge under a plea agreement in which prosecutors agreed to drop a more serious charge of possession with intent to distribute.

Newland will be on probation for the rest of the year following his jail term. During his probation, he is barred from publicly advocating the legalization of marijuana for medicinal purposes.

Newland, understandably, is not inclined to challenge the probation condition. There's something about staring at the walls of a jail cell that does that to a guy. But that doesn't mean others shouldn't raise a stink about this arguably unconstititional sentence.

I'll be looking into this and will have a Chronicle story about it on Friday.

The Washington Post has a long and rather glowing examination of Virginia Senator Jim Webb's effort to reform U.S. drug policy and the criminal justice system:

"I am, at bottom, a writer," he says, invoking his default response. "I start with a theme, rather than a plot." Webb wants to shape a plotline that, with each turn of the page, draws America closer to reinventing its criminal justice system. Questioning why the United States locks up so many of its youths, why its prisons swell with disease and atrocities while fundamental social problems persist in its streets, has earned Webb lavish praise as a politician unafraid to be smeared as soft on crime. And when a law-and-order type as rock-ribbed as Webb expresses willingness to consider legalizing or decriminalizing drugs, excitement follows.  

Indeed it does. The whole article is worth reading, as it really captures the energy that's beginning to build behind Webb's efforts. There's nothing surprising about this to anyone who's been paying attention to the drug policy debate that has been escalating for years and erupting in recent months.

Still, even The Washington Post itself has been slow to grasp the potency of Webb's call for reform. Last December, The Post published a similarly lengthy account of Jim Webb's quest to reform criminal justice policies, but that article portrayed him as a crazy idealist stepping into political hot water:

"It is a gamble for Webb, a fiery and cerebral Democrat from a staunchly law-and-order state."

"…as the country struggles with two wars overseas and an ailing economy, overflowing prisons are the last thing on many lawmakers' minds."

"…Webb has never been one to rely on polls or political indicators to guide his way."

"Some say Webb's go-it-alone approach could come back to haunt him."

And yet The Post is now reporting that Webb's efforts are gaining support, including "encouraging signals" from Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy and even President Obama. The Post's earlier suggestion that Webb's efforts could alienate him were based on the same "soft-on-crime" political theory that we've been hearing for two decades now. The second they got wind of Webb's criminal justice reform proposal, they interviewed a bunch of people about what a maverick he is and how his ideas are so unique. The whole thing reeked of the implication that only a strange politician would care about improving our criminal justice system.

To be fair, yes, Jim Webb is a bit of a maverick and clearly his plan is unique. I don't fault The Post for making Webb's personality part of the story. But it didn't make sense to frame criminal justice reform as a fringe idea and it's not at all surprising that The Post is now forced to concede Webb's political savvy. Obama spoke on the campaign trail about "shifting the model" in the war on drugs, and while that was hardly the defining issue of his candidacy, it was utterly uncontroversial throughout the campaign. It's a simple fact that criminal justice reform, including discussion of reexamining drug laws, is a perfectly legitimate and mainstream political topic that any politician can approach without inviting any consequential backlash.

One of the most immediate and intrinsically valuable aspects of Webb's effort is precisely that it serves as a mechanism for illustrating the importance of this discussion. I don't doubt that it will become controversial (if our drug policy truly faces due scrutiny as Webb intends), but by the time that happens, he will have firmly established the principle that debating criminal justice policies is a relevant and necessary exercise at this moment in American politics. If we can reach a point at which the media coverage is focused on the issue, rather than the personality quirks of Jim Webb himself, that's when we'll know his efforts are paying off.

Mike Gray's superb book Drug Crazy: How We Got into this Mess & How We Can Get Out is now available for free online. Mike is best known as screenwriter of the classic film The China Syndrome, though Drug Crazy has become a classic in its own right. It's the first book I recommend to folks who are new to drug policy reform, but it's also a fascinating read even if you've been following these issues for a long time.

I've you haven't read it yet, this is the perfect opportunity.

Remember two years ago when some scientists announced that marijuana causes psychosis and the press, along with the entire nation of Great Britain, went borderline psycho just from thinking about it?

Well, Paul Armentano at NORML reports that a new study has proven that the whole thing was just a bunch of crazy talk:

“[T]he expected rise in diagnoses of schizophrenia and psychoses did not occur over a 10 year period. This study does not therefore support the specific causal link between cannabis use and incidence of psychotic disorders. … This concurs with other reports indicating that increases in population cannabis use have not been followed by increases in psychotic incidence.”

In non-sciency terms, this means that when rates of marijuana use go up, rates of mental illness do not. Therefore, we can conclude that marijuana apparently doesn't cause anyone to develop psychosis who otherwise wouldn’t have.

It's really a shame that this now-debunked junk science about marijuana and psychosis led the British government to increase penalties for marijuana. But, as we know all too well, fits of ignorance and distortion are causally linked to an increased risk of bad drug legislation.

Following the Supreme Court's recent decision that school officials violated the 4th Amendment when they strip-searched a 13-year-old girl, another similar lawsuit has been filed and the story is equally sickening:

According to the complaint, the incident began when the bus arrived at the school and two employees boarded it in order to resolve a dispute in which the girls were not involved. The employees "smelled what they thought was marijuana," the complaint states, and five girls seated at the back of the bus, including Gaither and S.C., were detained and searched.
…
During an interrogation that lasted the entire school day, and after being denied repeated requests to call their parents, the girls were required to "remove their shoes and socks, unbuckle their belts, unbutton their pants, and unzip their pants," the complaint says. They also had their "waistlines physically touched and searched" by a male employee while their pants were undone, and were made to "lift up their bras while their shirts remained on and jump up and down."

The searches were all performed behind closed doors and without the presence of police offices or female staff, the suit says. No marijuana was found. [Courthouse News]

The whole thing is so perverse and disturbing, it really ought to be examined in criminal court as well as civil. By the time a group of teenage girls was ordered lift their bras and hop up and down, it wasn't just a drug search anymore. This was something much sicker than that. But you can thank decades of propaganda-fueled marijuana hysteria for creating the environment in which school officials think they can get away with stuff like this.

On the heels of its successful effort to allow medical marijuana dispensaries, the Rhode Island Senate has voted to launch a comprehensive study of marijuana laws in general. They'll seek to answer these questions, among others:

Whether and to what extent Rhode Island youth have access to marijuana despite current laws prohibiting its use;  

Whether adults' use of marijuana has decreased since marijuana became illegal in Rhode Island in 1918;  
 
Whether the current system of marijuana prohibition has created violence in the state of Rhode Island against users or among those who sell marijuana;  
 
Whether the proceeds from the sales of marijuana are funding organized crime, including drug cartels;

The costs associated with the current policies prohibiting marijuana sales and possession, including law enforcement, judicial, public defender, and corrections costs;

Whether there have been cases of corruption related to marijuana law enforcement;

The experience of individuals and families sentenced for violating marijuana laws;

The experience of states and European countries, such as California, Massachusetts and the Netherlands, which have decriminalized the sale and use of marijuana;

Hmm, I think I can tackle this one: Yes, No, Yes, Yes, Enormous, You don't even want to know, Heartbreaking, Impressive.

This is yet another superb effort from RI legislators and it really sets the standard for how public representatives ought to be examining these laws. These are central questions that, if answered honestly, will drive a stake through the heart of marijuana prohibition once and for all.

This letter in the Montgomery Advertiser is a mind-numbing illustration of the vivid imaginations that local anti-drug activists can frequently be found to possess:

Assume the government legalizes pot. It will be taxed (federal and state) and regulated for THC content. Do drug cartels just fold their tent? Hardly. Simply offer a more potent product at a lower cost -- tax-free, of course. Higher THC content is the goal of all serious pot smokers -- check out any issue of High Times, or the myriad of Internet sites offering more potent seeds.

Note to prohibitionists: the second you find yourself arguing that no one will buy legal pot, you've gone off the rails badly. If you wanna talk about the advertisers in High Times, what about the ones that make money hand over fist selling legal herbs that merely look like pot? Legal pot will be an extremely popular product among people who like pot. You don't have to worry about that.

And if you find yourself arguing that drug cartels can stay in business despite sudden widespread competition by simply improving their product and lowering their prices, maybe you should stop to consider how ridiculous that sounds. If they do that, they'll go broke overnight, hence you just accidentally stumbled across the exact reason why legalizing marijuana will annihilate the black market for pot.

It really shouldn’t be necessary to explain that drug cartels thrive on astronomical black market inflation. Everything they are and everything they do revolves around the massive drug monopoly that prohibition bestows upon them. If you take that away, they are nothing.

But if the fundamentals of black market economics continue to escape anyone, I suppose we could always just agree to legalize potent pot as well.

I wrote about the Will Foster case in the Chronicle last week. Here's a brief summary: Foster had a small medical marijuana garden in Tulsa that was raided in 2005. Two years later, he was sentenced to an insane 93 YEARS in prison. Only after a publicity campaign in which DRCNet played a vital role was he resentenced to merely 20 years, and after being twice denied parole, he was paroled to California.

Although Oklahoma thought Foster should be on parole until 2011, California decided he didn't need any more state supervision and released him from parole after three years. That wasn't punitive enough for Oklahoma. Although Foster had left the Bible Belt state behind with no intention of ever returning, Oklahoma parole officials issued a parole violation warrant for his extradition to serve out the remainder of his sentence. When Foster had to show ID in a police encounter, the warrant popped up, and he was jailed. Desperate, Foster filed a writ of habeas corpus and won! A California judge ruled the warrant invalid, and Foster was a free man again.

But not for long. It's thirst for vengeance still unslaked, the state of Oklahoma issued yet another parole violation warrant for Foster's extradition because he refused to agree to an extension of his parole to 2015--four years past the original Oklahoma parole date. Then he got raided in California, thanks to bad information from an informant with an axe to grind. Foster had a legal medical marijuana grow, but it took a hard-headed Sonoma County prosecutor more than a year to drop charges, and Foster has been jailed the whole time.

Now that the charges have been dropped, Foster still isn't free because Oklahoma still wants him back. Extradition warrants have been signed by the governors of both states, and he was days away from being extradited in shackles when he filed a new habeas writ this week. Filing the writ will stop him from being sent back to Oklahoma, but it also means he's stuck in jail for the foreseeable future. The writ is a legal strategy; his real best hope is to get one of those governors to rescind the extradition order.

You can help. Click on this link to find out how to write the governors. I think a campaign of letters to the editor of Oklahoma papers might help, too. Those letters might ask why Oklahoma wants to continue to spend valuable tax dollars to persecute a harmless man whose only crime was to try to get some relief for his ailments--and who has no intention of ever returning there.

...So, anyway, I went to see Will at the Sonoma County Jail Saturday night. But I didn't get in. The steel-toes in my footwear set off the metal detector, and I quickly found out such apparel was a security risk. Who knew? I'll go back later this week. I guess I'll wear sandals.

In the meantime, there are letters waiting to be written. Keyboard commandos, saddle up!