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Semanal: Blogueando en el Bar Clandestino

“El <em>blog</em> del fiscal de la droga debería ser utilizado para el bien, no el mal”, “Casa Blanca dice que redadas contra la marihuana medicinal terminarán”, “Es posible que enjuicien a Michael Phelps por calada de narguile”, “Ryan Frederick es declarado culpable de homicidio culposo”, “El asesinato de los perros de Cheye Calvo es una historia que no desaparece”, “Juicio de Ryan Frederick va al jurado”, “Siguen las redadas contra la marihuana medicinal, es tiempo de que Obama actúe”, “Crece el apoyo a la legalización de la marihuana en Estados Unidos”, “La calada de narguile de que todo el mundo oyó hablar”, “¿Qué le pasó al <em>blog</em> del fiscal de la droga?”, “Los antecedentes de Joe Biden en las políticas de drogas – Revisión”, “Investigación de marihuana medicinal ha tomado una nueva dirección este siglo”, “Equipo SWAT georgiano de Comarca de Gwinnett la malogra a lo grande”, “La peligrosa distorsión de los estándares médicos de la lucha contra la droga”.
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Threatdown

No,not Stephen Colbert,B.C.Premier Gordon(Gordo)Campbell.He took the 6 shootings and 4 deaths in a single week and did the same thing every politician has done since the inception of the gang life sty
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There are so Many People in Jail, They Literally Don’t fit

The criminal justice system in California is rapidly approaching a breaking point:

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - A special panel of federal judges tentatively ruled Monday that California must release tens of thousands of inmates to relieve overcrowding.

The judges said no other solution will improve conditions so poor that inmates die regularly of suicides or lack of proper care.
…
"There are simply too many prisoners for the existing capacity," they wrote. "Evidence offered at trial was overwhelmingly to the effect that overcrowding is the primary cause of the unconstitutional conditions that have been found to exist in the California prisons." [AP]

Passing harsh laws, capturing offenders and convicting people of crimes is the easy part. What a lot of people don’t get is that the process doesn’t end there. You have to actually do something with the people you’ve decided to remove from society. Keeping massive populations behind bars for years at a time is phenomenally expensive, even if you do an appallingly poor job of it.

It’s utterly disgusting that our drug laws condemn these people to a living hell, all because drugs are supposedly bad for your physical and emotional health. The treatment of our prisoners is disgraceful and the legions of prison-state profiteers who lobby for more jails and tougher laws seldom receive the recognition they deserve in the hierarchy of scum-sucking subspecies destroying our society.

The prison industry will not stop. These people have already created an unbelievable mess and they will fight for more laws and funding no matter how much worse it gets. When human beings start getting sick and dying in our jails, someone outside the criminal justice industry has to intervene, otherwise nothing will be done about it. It shouldn’t even be necessary for judges to compel better prison conditions, but of course it is.

Fortunately, the one inevitable boundary that exists here is the fact that there is simply nothing left to spend on keeping more people in prison. The incarceration industry can’t print its own money. It’s a shame that we couldn’t stall the escalation of our massive prison population with appeals to logic and compassion, but if it takes bankruptcy to abate this then so be it.
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In The Trenches

Press Release: Medical Marijuana Bill Passes Senate Committee in Bipartisan Vote, 8-3

Minnesota Cares logo

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE   
FEBRUARY 11, 2009

Medical Marijuana Bill Passes Senate Committee in Bipartisan Vote, 8-3

CONTACT: Former Rep. Chris DeLaForest (R-Andover)......................................................(763) 439-1178

ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA -- Minnesota's medical marijuana bill, S.F. 97, cleared its first major hurdle this afternoon, passing the Senate Health, Housing and Family Security Committee in a bipartisan vote of 8 to 3. The committee received spoken and written testimony from a number of patients and family members describing the relief provided by medical marijuana when conventional treatments had failed.

    "I believe this will be the year medical marijuana becomes law in Minnesota," said Sen. Steve Murphy (DFL-Red Wing), a sponsor of the bill. "We've seen now from the experiences of 13 states -- one-quarter of the country -- that these laws work well, and that the dire warnings of opponents simply don't come true. The voters understand that there is no reason to subject suffering patients to arrest and jail for using a doctor-recommended medicine."

    One of those testifying was Joni Whiting of Jordan, a disabled Vietnam veteran who had strongly disapproved of marijuana use until her daughter was diagnosed with melanoma and began suffering unbearable nausea and pain from the treatments. "I was opposed to marijuana," Whiting said, "but the nausea my daughter suffered from the chemotherapy was so bad she lost a lot of weight, and the pills the doctor prescribed didn't help -- including Marinol, the THC pill. Marijuana allowed her to eat and also helped ease her pain, and she looked better than I'd seen her in months. I would have rather spent the rest of my life in prison than have denied her the medicine that kept her pain at bay and allowed her to live 89 more days."

    "I'm pleased to co-author this important legislation that will empower doctors and patients while protecting sick and dying Minnesotans from the threat of criminal prosecution," said Sen. Debbie Johnson (R-Ham Lake). "Most FDA-approved drugs assist in managing short-term pain.  Chronically ill and terminal patients need alternatives. Medical marijuana is one of those alternatives."

    Written testimony from patients and others is available at http://www.minnesotacares.org/Health_Housing_and_Family_Security_Committee_Testimony.htm.

    Thirteen states, including one-quarter of the U.S. population, now permit medical use of marijuana under state law. The newest such law was enacted by Michigan voters last November, passing with a record-setting 63 percent "yes" vote. Medical organizations which have recognized marijuana's medical uses include the American Public Health Association, American Nurses Association, American Academy of HIV Medicine, and American College of Physicians, which noted "marijuana's proven efficacy at treating certain symptoms and its relatively low toxicity," in a statement issued last year.

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In The Trenches

Ethan Nadelmann Statement: Latin American Commission Co-Chaired by 3 Former Presidents Releases Report Calling Drug War Failure

For Immediate Release: February 11, 2009 Contact: Tony Newman (646)335-5384 The Latin-American Commission on Drugs and Democracy (co-chaired by former presidents, Fernando Henrique Cardoso (Brazil), César Gaviria (Colombia) and Ernesto Zedillo (Mexico)) Releases Groundbreaking Report: Says Drug War is a Failure and Calls for “Breaking the Taboo” on Open and Honest Debate Statement by Ethan Nadelmann, Executive Director of the Drug Policy Alliance, Who Presented to the Commission’s Meeting in Bogota, Colombia in September 2008 “This report (www.drugsanddemocracy.org ) represents a major leap forward in the global drug policy debate. It’s not the first high-level commission to call the drug war a failure, nor is it the first time any Latin American leader has criticized the prohibitionist approach to global drug control. But it is the first time that such a distinguished group of Latin Americans, including three highly regarded ex-presidents, have gone so far in their critique of U.S. and global drug policy and recommendations for what needs to be done. This report breaks new ground in many ways, placing itself at the cutting edge of current debates on the future of global drug control policy. This is evident in its call for a “paradigm shift,” in its recognition of the important role of “harm reduction” precepts and policies, in its push for decriminalization of cannabis, in its critique of “the criminalization of consumption,” and, most importantly, in its conclusion that: ‘The deepening of the debate concerning the policies on drug consumption must be grounded on a rigorous evaluation of the impact of the diverse alternatives to the prohibitionist strategy that are being tested in different countries, focusing on the reduction of individual and social harm.’