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In The Trenches

MPP Seeks Help Gathering Signatures in Missoula--they need 11,000 in three weeks

Here's the text of the email they sent out today: Help urgently needed to put marijuana initiative on Missoula County ballot Marijuana Policy Project grant recipient Citizens for Responsible Crime Policy (CRCP) only has three weeks remaining to collect signatures for an initiative that would urge Missoula County law enforcement officers to make adult marijuana offenses the county’s lowest law enforcement priority, and they still need 11,000 more signatures!
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The Ever-Changing Coming In the Chronicle This Week

So it goes. No word yet on either the South Dakota medical marijuana lawsuit or whether the Portland initiative made the ballot (although I'm hearing disquieting rumblings on the latter), which were going to be some of my features this week. So I'm now shifting gears and attempting to pull enough material together for two more probable features: The NATO takeover in southern Afghanistan (European politicians are beginning to murmur about the Senlis proposal as NATO troops start getting killed in larger numbers) and the call for a rational drug classification system in Britain.
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Mother Nature Implicated in Massive Marijuana Grow-Op

Your tax dollars at work:

From the The Norman Transcript
A call from a concerned farmer in southeast Norman led Cleveland County Sheriff's Department deputies and Norman police officers to a field of 8,889 "wild" marijuana plants growing on private property early Monday morning. The plants ranged in size from 3 feet to 9 feet tall and would have a street value of up to $1,000 each, or around $8 million total, if allowed to grow and be harvested in the coming months, said Captain Doug Blaine, of the Cleveland County Sheriff's Department.

Now I’m not surprised about the plants. Feral hemp, also known as ditchweed, is indigenous to the region. The shocker here is that these officers, in a fit of unbelievable idiocy, actually attempted to place a street value on it. Ditchweed doesn’t get you high! It’s as worthless as the dirt it was yanked from.

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Structural Change Also Needed to Stop Drug Trade Violence in Besieged Community

Following the life-without-parole murder convictions of three ringleaders of the Chester, Pennsylvania "Boyle Street Boys," an editorial in the DelcoTimes called on the community to "unite to defeat the criminals." The operation sounds pretty ugly. According to the editorialist, Andre Cooper and brothers Jamain and Vincent Williams ran a lucrative cocaine operation in the Highland Gardens section of Chester until 2003 and "[f]or years... depended on the "Snitch & Die" mentality to ensure the silence of those who witnessed their illegal drug and weapons business... One of their murder victims was a teenage drug dealer whom the gang members suspected of being a police informant... Another was a federal witness, a 33-year-old mother of two, who was executed in her sister’s car the day before she was going to testify against gang members. Her own cousins were among those who plotted her killing."
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Coming in the Chronicle this week

I've been down with pneumonia, so I haven't talked to my sources yet this week, but I think I will be writing about a lawsuit filed against South Dakota's attorney general over the ballot summary language with which he is describing the state's medical marijuana initiative. And again, I await word from Portland on whether that city's "lowest law enforcement priority" initiative makes the ballot. I'm sure there is another story or two that'll break this week, and I've already got a bunch of other interesting items ready to go.
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You Can Put Your Weed in it

I’ve seen these before, but never in the news:

From the Coventry Evening Telegram:

Drug users will be able to dump their illegal stashes without getting in trouble before they enter a massive dance festival near Stratford this weekend. Warwickshire Police will again have an amnesty zone just before the entrance of Global Gathering at Long Marston airfield.

But why would anyone do that?

In The Trenches

Seattle Hempfest Sues City and Art Museum

NEWS RELEASE July 31, 2006 Contact: Dominic Holden ­ (206) 877-2240 Vivian McPeak ­ (206) 295-7258 Event backers file suit against City; Seattle Art Museum, Olympic Sculpture Park named Permit application unprocessed, sculpture park construction plans violate law, organizers say SEATTLE ­ The Seattle Hempfest is filing suit Monday in King County Superior Court against City officials Ken Bounds, the Parks Department Superintendent, and Virginia Swanson, the Special Events Committee Chair, to compel the officials to create safe access to Myrtle Edwards Park and issue a Special Event Permit in time for the August 2006 event.
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Push Down, Pop Up Even Worse

An article this morning in the Daily Journal in northeast Mississippi reports that efforts to restrict purchase of the chemical components of methamphetamine have caused a reduction in the number of meth labs in Lee County. But don't get too excited: there's just as much meth available in the county now as before. Now, though, it's imported, and the stuff is worse -- it's crystal meth, also known as ice, and according to Sheriff Jim Johnson it's a lot more potent than the stuff people are making locally.
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New DrugScience.org Web Site Released

July 31, 2006 For Immediate Release: The DrugScience.org web site (www.drugscience.org) has been revised, redesigned, and developed in a showcase on science and the marijuana issue. Now DrugScience is set to introduce features in political science to supplement its longstanding archives on the cannabis rescheduling petition and the recent history of marijuana research. The redesigned DrugScience.org is the home of the Cannabis Rescheduling Petition and background on the Coalition for Rescheduling Cannabis. The content of both the 1995 and the 2002 Rescheduling Petitions are available in easily accessible html, along with considerable background and archival materials including the original evaluations of THC and Marijuana by HHS prior to the historic hearings before Judge Francis Young in the 1980s. Created by Jon Gettman, DrugScience presents material on the history of rescheduling efforts as well as detailed explanations of the scientific research behind the legal and medical arguments for medical cannabis. The segmented presentation of the material from the two rescheduling petitions provides a rich source of subject matter to link to in various contexts, such as a short explanation why cannabis has low toxicity or a review of the Gateway Theory, all accessible through browsing the contents of the petitions or use of our powerful search engine.
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Belgian "Draw Up Your Plant" Campaign for Cannabis Regulation

“The Flemish Institute for Alcohol and Drugs Questions” and our cannabis association “Draw Up Your Plant” agree on a specific problem: Belgian cannabis law is creating legal insecurity for Civil society. Draw Up Your Plant organized a very successful press moment on Thursday Juli 27. “The mother plant, seeds and clones” were the subject of our action this time. We showed the planting of the seed to grow a mother plant that'll provide clones for the Draw Up Your Plant plantation.
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Another Sad Shooting Death in the Projects

A several part story by Audra Burch in the Miami Herald Sunday discussed the shooting death of nine-year old Sherdavia Jenkins, her life before it and her family in the aftermath. Jenkins was a bystander, playing with a brother and sister and friend, when she was struck down by a stray bullet in "an open space between two buildings that police say became a shooting gallery for a smalltime drug peddler and a street tough." It's the kind of tragic story that is tragically too common to always make the papers.
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They Should Put Surveillance Cameras in Police Stations

From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

The Allegheny County district attorney's office has launched an investigation into what happened to $4,000 that Glassport police failed to return to a local bar owner when drug charges against him were dropped. "The fact that money was seized and placed in an evidence locker and turned up missing is unacceptable," said district attorney's office spokesman Mike Manko.

I agree, but I’d go a step further and call it a crime. Grand larceny to be specific. Of course, Glassport officers think it’s just a procedural problem: