Drug War Chronicle #799 - September 5, 2013

Administration Gives States Okay on Marijuana Legalization [FEATURE]

Attorney General Eric Holder told the governors of Colorado and Washington Thursday that the Justice Department would not -- at least for now -- block their states from implementing regimes to tax, regulate, and sell marijuana. The message was sent during a joint phone call early Thursday afternoon.

The Justice Department will take a "trust but verify" approach, a department official said. The department said it reserved the right to challenge the state legalization laws with a preemption lawsuit at a later date if necessary.

The go-ahead from Holder to the states was accompanied by a memorandum from Deputy US Attorney General James Cole to federal prosecutors laying out Justice Department concerns and priorities. If marijuana is going to be sold, the memo said, it must be tightly regulated.

"The Department's guidance in this memorandum rests on its expectation that states and local governments that have enacted laws authorizing marijuana-related conduct will implement strong and effective regulatory and enforcement systems that will address the threat those state laws could pose to public safety, public health and other law enforcement interests," the memo said. "A system adequate to that task must not only contain robust controls and procedures on paper; it must also be effective in practice."

The memo listed a number of activities that could draw federal prosecutorial attention or result in a Justice Department reassessment, including sales to minors, profits going to criminal actors, diversion to pot prohibition states, marijuana sales as a cover for other drug sales, violence and the use of firearms, drugged driving and other "adverse public health consequences," and growing marijuana on public lands.

That leaves some wiggle room for federal prosecutors, some of whom have shown a willingness to be quite aggressive in going after medical marijuana providers. But it also gives them a clear signal that legalization will, in general, be tolerated in states where voters have approved it.

In a first response from marijuana reform activists, Tom Angell of Marijuana Majority called the Justice Department's stance "a step in the right direction", but also blasted the administration for its aggressive enforcement activities against medical marijuana providers and warned that interpreting the new directive will be up to US attorneys.

"It's nice to hear that the Obama administration doesn't at this point intend to file a lawsuit to overturn the will of the voters in states that have opted to modernize their marijuana policies, but it remains to be seen how individual US attorneys will interpret the new guidance and whether they will continue their efforts to close down marijuana businesses that are operating in accordance with state law," Angell said.

"It's significant that US attorneys will no longer be able to use the size or profitability of a legal marijuana business to determine whether or not it should be a target for prosecution, but the guidelines seem to leave some leeway for the feds to continue making it hard for state-legal marijuana providers to do business," he continued.

Angell chided the administration for using cheap rhetoric about not busting pot smokers to obscure deeper issues of federal harassment of marijuana businesses.

"The administration's statement that it doesn't think busting individual users should be a priority remains meaningless, as it has never been a federal focus to go after people just for using small amounts of marijuana," he said. "The real question is whether the president will call off his federal agencies that have been on the attack and finally let legal marijuana businesses operate without harassment, or if he wants the DEA and prosecutors to keep intervening as they have throughout his presidency and thus continue forcing users to buy marijuana on the illegal market where much of the profits go to violent drug cartels and gangs."

The Marijuana Policy Project also reacted Thursday afternoon, saying it applauded the move.

"Today's announcement is a major and historic step toward ending marijuana prohibition. The Department of Justice's decision to allow implementation of the laws in Colorado and Washington is a clear signal that states are free to determine their own policies with respect to marijuana," said Dan Riffle, the group's director of federal policy.

"We applaud the Department of Justice and other federal agencies for its thoughtful approach and sensible decision," he added. "It is time for the federal government to start working with state officials to develop enforcement policies that respect state voters, as well as federal interests. The next step is for Congress to act. We need to fix our nation's broken marijuana laws and not just continue to work around them."

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Chronicle Book Review: "Our Lost Border" and "The Fight to Save Juarez"

Our Lost Border: Essays on Life Amid the Narco-Violence, Sarah Cortez and Sergio Troncoso, eds. (2013, Arte Publico Press, 290 pp., $19.95 PB)

The Fight to Save Juarez: Life in the Heart of Mexico's Drug War, Ricardo Ainslie (2013, University of Texas Press, 282 pp., $25.00 HB)

More than six years after then President Felipe Calderon unleashed the Mexican military to wage war against the country's wealthy, powerful, and murderous drug trafficking organizations -- the so-called cartels -- Calderon is gone, but the unprecedented violence unleashed by his campaign continues largely unabated. The new administration of President Enrique Pena Nieto is claiming some successes, but lauding the fact that the killings are now going on a rate of only a thousand or so a month is more a sign of how far things still have to go than have far we have come.

While talking a good game about how his administration is going to pursue a different path from that of his predecessor, Pena Nieto has in fact largely maintained Calderon's policies. The military is still out in the field fighting cartel gunmen, the government still shouts out with pride whenever it captures a top capo (and it has captured three in the past six weeks), and Pena Nieto's plan for a national gendarmerie to replace the soldiers is busily vanishing before our eyes.

Rhetorical flourishes notwithstanding, it still looks much like the same old Mexican drug war, even if it isn't garnering the attention north of the border that it did last year. The reason for that lack of attention now may not be nefarious. Last year was a presidential election year in both countries. For the US electorate, that meant the border and the Mexican drug war was an issue; for the Mexicans, the drug war came to define Calderon's tenure. Now, the elections are over and attention (at least north of the border) has turned elsewhere.

But for the people who actually live on the border, the issue isn't going away. And even if the violence, the corruption, and the criminality miraculously vanished tomorrow, the scars -- physical and psychological -- remain. Too many people have died, too many communities have been devastated, too many decapitated heads have been left in too many places. Local economies have been devastated, long-time cross-border ties, familial and otherwise, disrupted.

At best, one can say that Rio Grande Valley Mexican border towns like Ciudad Juarez, Nuevo Laredo, Reynosa, and Matamoros have already been through the worst of the conflagration -- like a forest after a wild fire, most of the combustible fuel is gone. The scores have largely been settled on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande: The Sinaloa Cartel has severely weakened its rival Juarez Cartel, the Zetas have nearly eliminated the Gulf Cartel. While only a couple of years ago, Juarez and the other valley cities were ground zero for the Mexican drug war, the fire has moved on, to place like Michoacan, Durango, and Chihuaha City.(Although, after these recent captures of cartel leaders, things could flare up again as rival underlings scramble to replace them and rival cartels scramble to take advantage.)

In The Fight to Save Juarez, psychoanalyst and multi-media documentarian Ricardo Ainslie details life in El Paso's sister city during the worst of the cartel violence, relying on a quite impressive series of interviews with then Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz, human rights workers, state and federal government officials, cartel gun molls, and ordinary citizens. Ainslie provides a smart, detailed, and fascinating look at a city devastated by anarchic violence and the winking complicity that accompanied it.

One of his most striking achievements is to narrate the outbreak of war between the Juarez Cartel and the encroaching Sinaloans, and to locate the opening of hostilities squarely in the ranks of the Juarez municipal police. Ainslie makes painfully clear how corrupted the department was, with a high proportion of its membership doing double duty as La Linea, the strong-armed enforcers and executioners for the Juarez Cartel. It was those guys who were targeted by the Sinaloa Cartel, first with exemplary executions, then with invitations to switch sides, then with more executions of those police who refused their offer. And the gang war was on.

Ainslie deftly navigates the intricacies of state (not so much, thanks to a corrupted Chihuahua governor), local, and federal efforts to do something about the savagery and about the police department. The bloodletting in Juarez, already festering in the national imagination, became Mexico's issue number one after the massacre of neighborhood youth at a party in Villas de Salvarcar by cartel gun men, and Ainslie was there as Calderon and his ministers were forced to come to Juarez and take the heat for the results of their policies.

Ainslie brings nuance and subtlety to his reporting, illuminating political rivalries and the interplay of different levels of government, as well as the human suffering and economic disruptions involved. The Fight to Save Juarez clears away much of the murkiness surrounding what went on in Juarez during those bloody years beginning in 2008, and places the struggle there in the context of a society where just about everyone is complicit in one way or another in the gravy train that is the Mexican drug trade.

What Ainslie does not do is question drug prohibition. For him, drug prohibition is simply a given, and the answers to Mexico's problems with prohibition-related violence and corruption must come from somewhere other than reevaluating the drug laws. That said, his reporting is still a valuable contribution to understanding the realities of Mexico's drug war.

Similarly, the essays in Our Lost Border generally do not question drug prohibition. What they do do, with uneven degrees of success, is bring life in a war zone home at a very personal level. Whether is it Richard Mora lamenting the loss of the Tijuana of his youth or Diego Osorno writing about the wholesale abandonment of a Rio Grande Valley town to warring cartel factions in "The Battle for Ciudad Mier," these Mexican and Mexican-American writers describe a cherished past vanquished by a bloody, horrifying present.

And Our Lost Border is bilingual, the essays appearing in both Spanish and English. That is appropriate and even symbolic; Mexico's drug war isn't just Mexico's. As Americans, we own it, too, and for border Mexican-Americans or even as Anglos with cross-border ties, this isn't about violence in a distant land, this is about the binational community, friends, and family.

Neither of these books even pretends to be an anti-prohibitionist manifesto. But that's okay. They both help us achieve a richer, deeper understanding of what is going on on the border in the name of the drug war. We can draw our own conclusions.

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Mexico's New Drug War Looks Like the Old Drug War

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto came into office in December vowing to break with his predecessor's reliance on the Mexican military to fight the so-called drug cartels. He said he wanted to concentrate on lowering crime and increasing public security instead of making high-profile busts or killings of cartel leaders, and he said he would create a militarized national police force to replace the military in drug fighting.

But Pena Nieto announced last week that the new militarized national police force has been shrunk from 40,000 to 5,000, with his government citing concerns from civil society that the initiative should go through the legislature. And his administration clarified that only 1,400 members had so far been recruited, and the "national gendarmarie" would not take the field until July 2014.

Meanwhile, even though the government has been touting a 20% reduction in the number of drug war killings, the blood-letting continues at the rate of about a thousand dead a month, and the military continues to be deeply involved. The number of dead in Mexico's drug war since Felipe Calderon called in the military six years ago is now somewhere north of 80,000, with additional tens of thousands "disappeared."

And while the government has said it was shifting its focus from going after cartel leaders to reducing crime, it has scored three major victories against cartel capos in the last six weeks. Authorities detained Zetas cartel kingpin Miguel Angel Trevino, alias "Z-40," on July 15, followed by Gulf cartel leader Mario Ramirez Trevino on August 17, and over the weekend, they managed to roll up "Ugly Betty," otherwise known as Alberto Carillo Fuentes, the head of the battered Juarez Cartel.

The Juarez Cartel had fought, and apparently lost, a nasty turf war with the Sinaloa Cartel, but remains a player in the country's drug trade. While the capture of leaders of the Zetas, the Gulf Cartel, and the Juarez Cartel are significant, critics worry that their removal from the playing field will result in more violence as underlings fight to replace them.

The Mexican public is demonstrating mixed feelings over Pena Nieto's version of the drug war. According to an El Universal poll conducted last week, almost half thought that drug war violence had increased. Some 49% of respondents said it had, up nine points from February, while only 25% thought security had improved and another 25% thought things were about the same.

Still, only 34% said they thought Pena Nieto's strategy had made the country less safe, down from the 53% recorded in May 2012, during the last months of the Calderon presidency. And 59% said they had seen evidence of a new strategy, compared to 24% saying they saw no difference.

When it comes to restoring order and public safety, Mexicans were split on how to do it. Only 10% wanted more arrests and trials of cartel bosses, while 24% wanted to see the cartels smashed, and 27% said the priority should be to lower the violence.

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Pot Apocalypse Looms, Marijuana Foes Warn

Not everybody is happy with Thursday's Justice Department announcement that it would not interfere with taxed, regulated, and legalized marijuana in Colorado and Washington. While the announcement was greeted with accolades (and some questions) by the drug policy reform community, opponents of marijuana law reform were up in arms and prophesying hellfire and damnation.

"Decades from now, the Obama administration will be remembered for undoing years of progress in reducing youth drug use in America," Dr. Paul Chabot of the Coalition for a Drug Free California said in a statement. "This president will be remembered for many failures, but none as large as this one, which will lead to massive youth drug use, destruction of community values, increased addiction and crime rates."

Chabot is also the the coauthor, along with Richard Morgan, of "The Eternal Battle Against Evil: A Comprehensive Strategy to Fight Terrorists, Drug Cartels, Pirates, Gangs, and Organized Crime," and the coalition web site also hawks Morgan's "Soros: The Drug Lord. Pricking the Bubble of American Supremacy."

While Chabot, with his Anslingerian fulminations and Manichean thinking, represents old school Reefer Madness-style prohibitionism, the new school prohibitionists aren't too pleased either.

"We can look forward to more drugged driving accidents, more school drop-outs, and poorer health outcomes as a new Big Marijuana industry targeting kids and minorities emerges to fuel the flames," warned former US Rep. Patrick Kennedy in a statement issued by Project SAM (Smart About Marijuana), a neo-prohibitionist organization that couches its policy aims amid public health concerns.

"This is disappointing, but it is only the first chapter in the long story about marijuana legalization in the US. In many ways, this will quicken the realization among people that more marijuana is never good for any community," said Project SAM cofounder and director Kevin Sabet.

Project SAM warned that after the Obama administration instructed prosecutors to go easy on medical marijuana in 2009, "public health consequences soared" and called on the federal government to fund "robust data monitoring systems" to track those alleged consequences.

"In Colorado, we've seen an explosion of consequences among kids as a result of the new industry that emerged around so-called medical marijuana after 2009," remarked Christian Thurstone, SAM Board Member and Denver Health treatment provider. "We now have to prepare the floodgates."

Just what will come through those floodgates, though, is unclear. Reform advocates point to 2011 data showing that youth marijuana use declined in Colorado since the state adopted its system of regulated dispensaries in 2009.

The taxpayer-funded Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America (CADCA) also weighed in with disappointment, doom, and gloom.

"The Department of Justice announced that it will not sue to block the implementation of laws in Colorado and Washington that legalize marijuana, despite the fact that these laws are in conflict with federal law," said CADCA head Gen. Arthur Dean in a statement. "CADCA and its more than 5,000 community coalitions across the country have been anticipating a response from the administration that would reaffirm the federal law and slow down this freight train. Instead, this decision sends a message to our citizens, youth, communities, states, and the international community at large that the enforcement of federal law related to marijuana is not a priority."

"The fact remains that smoked marijuana is not medicine, it has damaging effects on the developing adolescent brain, and can be addictive, as evidenced by the fact that 1 in 6 youth who use it will become addicted," Dean claimed, adding that the country is in "a growing crisis" as marijuana law reforms take hold. "The nation looks to our Justice Department to uphold and enforce federal laws. CADCA is disappointed in the Justice Department's decision to abdicate its legal right in this instance. We remain gravely concerned that we as a nation are turning a blind eye to the serious public health and public safety threats associated with widespread marijuana use."

Despite the bitter disappointment of the prohibitionists, marijuana law reform is moving forward, and the momentum is only likely to accelerate in the years to come. We may see in a few years if their dire warnings are correct -- if the country is still standing, that is.

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Cops Cry Foul Over Holder Marijuana Policy Move

Organized law enforcement has some problems with Attorney General Holder's announcement last week that the Justice Department would not seek to block Colorado and Washington from implementing their marijuana legalization laws. In a joint letter last Friday, the leaders of seven major law enforcement groups expressed "extreme disappointment" with the move.

Those law enforcement groups are the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the Major County Sheriff's Association, the National Sheriff's Association, the Major Cities Chief's Association, the Association of State Criminal Investigative Agencies, the National Narcotics Officers' Associations Coalition, and the Police Executive Review Foundation.

While law enforcement has long argued that its role is to enforce the law, not set policy, the police associations clearly felt they should have had input in the Justice Department's decision-making process.

"It is unacceptable that the Department of Justice did not consult our organizations -- whose members will be directly impacted -- for meaningful input ahead of this important decision," the cops wrote. "Our organizations were given notice just thirty minutes before the official announcement was made public and were not given the adequate forum ahead of time to express our concerns with the Department's conclusion on this matter. Simply 'checking the box' by alerting law enforcement officials right before a decision is announced is not enough and certainly does not show an understanding of the value the Federal, state, local and tribal law enforcement partnerships bring to the Department of Justice and the public safety discussion."

Beyond their issues with process, the law enforcement groups made it clear that they did not agree with the policy decision. The sky would fall if people could buy and smoke pot legally, the cops warned.

"The decision by the Department ignores the connections between marijuana use and violent crime, the potential trafficking problems that could be created across state and local boundaries as a result of legalization, and the potential economic and social costs that could be incurred," they wrote. "Communities have been crippled by drug abuse and addiction, stifling economic productivity. Specifically, marijuana's harmful effects can include episodes of depression, suicidal thoughts, attention deficit issues, and marijuana has also been documented as a gateway to other drugs of abuse."

As if that were not enough, the cops also warned of "grave unintended consequences, including a reversal of the declining crime rates" of the past decades. But they didn't explain how allowing for legal marijuana sales in Colorado and Washington would cause crime to increase.

For the cops, though, the bottom line was not enforcing the law, but setting policy.

"Marijuana is illegal under Federal law and should remain that way," they wrote. "While we certainly understand that discretion plays a role in decisions to prosecute individual cases, the failure of the Department of Justice to challenge state policies that clearly contradict Federal law is both unacceptable and unprecedented. The failure of the Federal government to act in this matter is an open invitation to other states to legalize marijuana in defiance of federal law."

Maybe law enforcement should just go back to enforcing the laws, not trying to write them.

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DEA Using Massive AT&T Phone Records Database

For at least six years, the DEA has had access to a massive AT&T database of phone call records dating back to 1987, the New York Times reported Sunday. According to the report, the DEA pays AT&T to place company employees in DEA offices around the country, where they supply DEA agents with phone data in compliance with federal subpoenas.

The program, known as the Hemisphere Project, is not limited to AT&T calls. It also covers data for any carrier using an AT&T switch and picks up 4 billion calls a day, according to the Times.

It only came to light because a Washington peace activist filed a FOIA lawsuit seeking information from West Coast law enforcement agencies, and one of them included training slides from the Office of National Drug Control Policy. The slides, which included a power point presentation, were marked "law enforcement sensitive."

They revealed not only the existence of the Hemisphere Project, but also efforts to keep it secret.

"All requestors are instructed to never refer to Hemisphere in any official document," one slide said.

The exposure of Hemisphere comes at a time when concern over government surveillance technologies is high, as revelations from former NSA employee Edward Snowden and his interlocutors about the extent of spying continue to appear on a regular basis. While NSA spying is ostensibly directed at foreign terrorists, it has also provided surveillance information to the DEA for use not in terrorism investigations, but in criminal ones.

Federal officials told the Times that the Hemisphere Project was no big deal, saying it has been useful in finding drug dealers who frequently discard cell phones and it uses investigative techniques that have been employed for decades and present no new privacy issues.

Privacy and civil liberties advocates begged to differ.

The Hemisphere Project "certainly raises profound privacy concerns," ACLU deputy legal director Jameel Jaffer told the Times. "I'd speculate that one reason for the secrecy of the program is that it would be very hard to justify it to the public or the courts," he said. And while he acknowledged that the database remained in AT&T's possession, "the integration of government agents into the process means there are serious Fourth Amendment concerns."

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North Carolina Legislature Overrides Drug Test Bill Veto

North Carolina's Republican Gov. Pat McCrory last month vetoed a welfare drug testing bill championed by his own party in the legislature, saying it was "a recipe for government overreach and unnecessary government intrusion" and "not a smart way to combat drug abuse." But this week, the legislature managed to override that veto.

In votes in the General Assembly Tuesday and the Senate Wednesday, the Republican-controlled legislature chose to move forward with the drug tests, which will require some welfare applicants to pay out of their own pockets for drug testing before they can receive benefits.

Six Democrats joined the Republicans in the Assembly, making the veto possible by a margin of just two of the needed 3/5 of elected members. Three Republican assemblymembers voted against it. In the Senate, three Democrats voted for the override, with no Republicans voting against it. Republican senators had enough votes to override the veto on their own.

The legislation, House Bill 392, will require people applying for the state's welfare and food stamp programs to undergo drug testing if social service workers determine there is reasonable suspicion they are using drugs. It will also require county workers to ensure that applicants do not have outstanding felony warrants and were not violating probation.

The votes to override were sharply criticized by civil liberties advocates.

"It's very disappointing that the legislature put so much effort into passing this cruel and constitutionally suspect bill. HB 392 does nothing to help those who test positive for drug use get treatment, but it does allow the government to conduct costly, unnecessary, and unreasonably intrusive searches of North Carolinians who seek public assistance to care for their families," said ACLU of North Carolina policy director Sarah Preston in a Wednesday statement.

"Forcing people in need to pay up front for urine tests is not only cruel but will likely deter many low-income families from even applying for assistance. Why the legislature was so adamant about passing this bill is unclear, since all available evidence shows that public aid applicants are no more likely to use drugs than the general public, and similar programs in other states have been found to be unconstitutional and fiscally wasteful," Preston pointed out.

Indeed, other states that have implemented such programs have found them costly and ineffective. In Florida, only 2% of applicants tested turned up positive, while early numbers from Utah and Oklahoma suggest similarly uninspiring results.

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Medical Marijuana Update

Federal prosecutors speak out on how the Justice Department's new stance on legalization will affect their medical marijuana prosecutions (not much), an initiative's language gets rejected for a second time in Arkansas, and much, much more. Let's get to it:

Arizona

In mid-August, two men filed suit challenging the state's prohibition on growing your own within 25 miles of a dispensary. Keith Floyd and Daniel Cassidy argued that requiring them to obtain medical marijuana from a state-regulated dispensary instead of being able to grow their own is unconstitutional and detrimental to patients' well-being. They sued after being unable to renew their cultivator status on their medical marijuana cards. When they were issued cultivator status a year ago, there were no dispensaries nearby, but now they are beginning to open up in the area.

Arkansas

Last Friday, state Attorney General Dustin McDaniel declined to certify a medical marijuana initiative. McDaniel rejected the request from Arkansans for Compassionate Care to certify the popular name and ballot title of their initiative, saying it had "ambiguities." This is the second time this year McDaniel has rejected the Compassionate Care initiative, which would allow limited home cultivation. He has already approved another medical marijuana initiative which wouldn't allow home grow. That one is sponsored by Arkansans for Responsible Medicine.

California

Last Friday, Northern California US Attorney Melinda Haag said her crackdown on medical marijuana would continue despite the Justice Department's announcement a day earlier that it would not seek to block taxed, regulated, and legalized marijuana in Colorado and Washington. Her office is studying the Justice Department's guidance to federal prosecutors, a spokesperson said, "and for the most part it appears that the cases that have been brought in this district are already in compliance with the guidelines. Therefore, we do not expect a significant change."

Nevada

Last Thursday, the State Health Department said certification for growers and dispensaries will be delayed. No certifications will happen before April 1, 2014 following a decision by the state attorney general's office.

On Tuesday, the Las Vegas city council moved toward a moratorium on business licenses for medical marijuana enterprises. A council committee approved a proposal that would enact a six-month moratorium and extend the current halt on land use, business license, or building permit applications for such businesses. The moratorium is scheduled for a vote by the full council September 18. Proponents of the prolonged delay, including bill author and Mayor Pro Tem Stavros Anthony, said it will give Las Vegas time to create its own rules to work with forthcoming state regulations, expected by the end of the year. Opponents say the issue already has been deferred by more than a decade and is only hurting those already in physical pain and criminalized for using a natural remedy.

New Jersey

Last Thursday, news came that a dispensary will open in Bellmawr in Camden County. Compassionate Sciences will open up shortly. It is one of only two dispensaries proposed for South Jersey. The other, the Compassionate Care Foundation, will open by month's end.

Rhode Island

Last Wednesday, an existing dispensary sought permission to open up a delivery service. In its proposal to the Department of Health, Greenleaf Compassionate Care Center of Portsmouth said a delivery service will benefit the many medical marijuana patients who are homebound or have difficulties travelling. The center wants to operate daily deliveries in Newport and Bristol counties and deliveries two times a week in the rest of the state. The marijuana would be delivered by two Greenleaf employees using an unmarked car. No deliveries would be made after 5:00pm.

Vermont

On Tuesday, a draft ordinance banning dispensaries was presented in Weathersfield. The proposed ordinance would also ban "any premises where drug and tobacco paraphernalia is displayed for sale." The move was prompted not by a dispensary, but by the expansion of the Magic Mushroom head shop.

Washington

Last Thursday, Seattle US Attorney Jenny Durkan said the state's medical marijuana system was "untenable" in the light of new guidance from the Justice Department. In a statement, Durkan said that the "continued operation and proliferation of unregulated, for-profit entities outside of the state's regulatory and licensing scheme is not tenable and violates both state and federal law."

[For extensive information about the medical marijuana debate, presented in a neutral format, visit MedicalMarijuana.ProCon.org.]

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India Police to Spray Maoist Rebels' Marijuana Crops

Police in the eastern Indian state of Orissa said Friday they planned to use aerial spraying to eradicate marijuana crops cultivated by Maoists rebels, the Times of India reported. There was no mention of what agent might be used to kill the crops.

For decades, the Maoist rebels, also known as Naxalites, have waged a low-level guerrilla campaign against the Indian state beginning in West Bengal in the 1970s. Their presence has spread through eastern and southern India, and by 2006, they boasted 20,000 cadre in arms and another 50,000 in close support.

The Indian government went on the offensive against the Naxalites in 2009 and has managed to reduce the groups' presence and the number of casualties since then. But Naxalites remain an active force; in May, they attacked an Indian National Congress rally in Chhattisgarh, killing 29 people, including high ranking party members.

Police said Friday that farmers are growing marijuana at the behest of the Naxalites in remote districts where it is difficult for them to go, and that spraying would be the best option.

"Cannabis cultivation and its trade is a major source of income for Maoists. To clip their wings, we have to clampdown on cannabis cultivation," said a senior police official. "We are exploring the possibility of using aerial spray to destroy cannabis in remote areas of the state," he said.

Police, joined by excise, revenue, and forest service officers have already been eradicating pot fields, but managed to destroy only 1300 acres last year and 1500 the year before that. They said marijuana production was prevalent in Rayagada, Malkangiri, Gajapati, Kandhamal, Angul, Sambalpur and Boudh districts.

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This Week's Corrupt Cops Stories

Even corrupt cops take the Labor Day weekend off. We've only got two this week, and they're both from before the holiday, but they're doozies. Let's get to it:

In Normangee, Texas, the Normangee police chief was arrested last Wednesday on charges he was feeding information to an alleged methamphetamine trafficker. Chief Joseph Ray Navarro, 40, was arrested by state and federal law enforcement agents after running a background check on a name for a local meth dealer. The dealer has been arrested on meth distribution charges. It is unclear if the dealer then set up Navarro. He is charged with one count of intentionally exceeding authorized access to a protected computer and is looking at up to five years in federal prison and a maximum $250,000 fine.

In Jonesboro, Georgia, a Clayton County police officer was arrested last Wednesday on charges he plotted with a drug dealer to rip off another drug dealer and sell the stolen cocaine. Officer Dwayne Penn, a nine-year veteran, got caught red-handed in an FBI sting after an informant recorded meetings between him and the drug dealer with whom he plotted. They hatched a scheme to disrupt a six-kilo cocaine transfer by staging an arrest and seizing the drugs and actually went through with it, but unbeknownst to them, the FBI and DEA were watching the whole thing. He was arrested shortly thereafter and is charged with possession of cocaine with intent to distribute, attempted possession of cocaine with intent to distribute, unlawfully concealing a controlled substance, and use of a firearm in furtherance of a crime. He is now on unpaid leave and in federal custody pending a bail hearing this week.

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

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 [email protected]. (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;
• 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.

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