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Drug Arrests Top 1.6 Million Last Year Despite Small Drop
Despite more than a decade of reformist pressures, the drug war juggernaut continues to roll along, as the FBI's most recent arrest numbers show.
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Chronicle
Latest News
Sending a Meth Message, Does It Work?
For the second year, graphic television ads showing actors portraying pathetic and physically damaged drug addicts remind people about the danger of methamphetamine -- but does the scary message work? "It does not prevent future use. They're not effective," Jeanne Y. Ohta, executive director of the Drug Policy Forum of Hawaii, says of the frightening TV commercial prepared by the Hawaii Meth Project.
Chronicle
Royal Palace, Cambodia (wikimedia.org)
Cambodia Opens First Methadone Clinic
Cambodia has been criticized for its inhumane drug treatment centers, but is winning praise for opening its first methadone clinic.
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T-Mobile Hit With Lawsuit for Blocking Marijuana Texts
T-Mobile "did not approve" of a company called EZ Texting, which does business with a website, WeedMaps.com, that provides information on the location of legal medical marijuana dispensaries in California. Today, EZ Texting sued T-Mobile in the U.S. District Court in New York City. EZ Texting says that on Sept. 10th, T-Mobile began "unlawful blocking" of its 313131 text service, which it offers to business and non-profits to help get their message to the public.
Chronicle
Eric Schneiderman
Rockefeller Repeal Leader Wins NY Democratic AG Nomination
A state senator with progressive drug policy stances has won the Democratic nomination for attorney general in New York.
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Arizona Health Department Preps for Medical Marijuana Passage
Polls show strong support for passage of Proposition 203, and the executive director of the Arizona Department of Health Services is putting processes into place to regulate what could become a new industry in the state.
In The Trenches
PROTEST (9/22): No Life in Prison for Medical Marijuana! (Action Alert)
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Parrot Used as Lookout by Drug Traffickers Taken in by Police
This is proof that, under prohibition, traffickers will pretty much do anything. Lorenzo the parrot was taken into police custody in Colombia after he was found warning members of a drug trafficking organization that they were in danger of being caught. Lorenzo has been handed over to environmental authorities, who claim he is one of about 1700 parrots seized after being trained to act as lookouts for drug traffickers.
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Lawsuit Filed in Camden Police Drug Planting Scheme
Drug prohibition has long been corrupting law enforcement in many ways. Now, the ACLU has taken Camden County and New Jersey officials to federal court on behalf of a man who spent more than a year in jail on drug charges, which were dismissed after the cops who arrested him were charged with planting evidence on him and many others.
In The Trenches
MPP Insider Newsletter Volume 1, Issue 8
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Marijuana prohibition has once again been proven to be a failure by our own government with the release of two reports this week. While the FBI's Uniform Crime Report showed marijuana arrests rising to 858,408 in 2009, the National Survey on Drug Use and Health indicated an eight percent rise in marijuana use among Americans. Given this kind of clear evidence that marijuana prohibition is not stopping marijuana use, why does our government want to continue to enforce policies aimed at arresting marijuana users? 
In what some may argue is a telling sign of their fear, the California Beer and Beverage Distributors made a $10,000 contribution to a committee opposing California's Prop. 19, a ballot initiative to tax and regulate marijuana in California. The alcohol lobby joins a large part of the state's law enforcement in opposing the bill, which could bring in more than $1 billion in revenue for the state. It would seem that having a safe alternative to alcohol and preventing the arrests of thousands of Californians each year just doesn't seem to be a priority for these groups. 
Kenneth Wells, a 57-year-old St. Charles man with no criminal record who was facing 5-15 years in prison for felony marijuana cultivation charges, has had the charges against him dropped. Mr. Wells suffers from chronic seizures and had been using marijuana to treat his symptoms with his doctor's recommendation. Although it was ruled that his doctor could not testify on his behalf, the charges were dropped when the prosecution determined it would be difficult to keep the details of his condition from the jury. 
In what can only be described as a step back for patients in Rhode Island, the health department there announced that it had rejected all 15 applications to open the state's first medical marijuana compassion centers. Among reasons cited for the rejections were that some applications had exceeded the allowable page limit. Setting and following guidelines can certainly be important in a process such as this, but should Rhode Island really be disqualifying applicants for being thorough? 
Marijuana Policy Project executive director Rob Kampia recently wrote a piece featured in the Huffington Post looking at how we frame the issue of medical marijuana policy reform in America. Rob points out that we have been successful not by promoting marijuana's safety or efficacy as medicine to many people, but rather because we've focused on what this issue is really about: compassion for people. 
In January 2003, 19-year-old Webster Alexander of Alabama received a 26-year prison sentence for selling $350 of marijuana within three miles of a school.Latest News
Growing Pains: R.I. Medical Marijuana Growers, Patients Double in a Year
Since legislation was passed in 2006 creating a medical marijuana program, Rhode Island has seen rapid growth in the number of people legally permitted to use medical marijuana to cope with a host of medical maladies, including chronic pain, anxiety, hypertension and nausea. There are now 2,250 patients in the program and 1,656 caregivers, or those permitted to grow up to 24 marijuana plants for designated patients. Thatâs more than double the numbers from a year ago.
Latest News
News Photographer Killed in Mexican Border City
Gunmen attacked two newspaper photographers Thursday in the drug prohibition-torn border city of Ciudad Juarez, killing one and seriously wounding the other. Mexican journalists are increasingly under siege from drug traffickers seeking to control the flow of information. The Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based watchdog group, said in a recent report that at least 22 Mexican journalists have been killed since December 2006, when President Felipe Calderon intensified a crackdown on drug traffickers by deploying tens of thousands of troops and federal police across the country.
Blog
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Awesome Video: SSDP Confronts Drug Czar About Legalizing Marijuana
A huge round of applause to SSDP activist Daniel Pacheco for his gutsy performance at the drug czar's press conference this morning. Just Say Now caught the whole thing on video.
Latest News
Rhode Island Medical Marijuana School Indefinitely Postponed
The New England School of Alternative Horticultural Studies â previously billed as Rhode Islandâs first medical marijuana school â has decided to cancel its inaugural class and indefinitely postpone operations over concerns that the Rhode Island Department of Health has not offered it explicit approval.
Latest News
Adios! Mexican Town's Police Force Quits Because of Danger
No mas. That's what the police force in the Mexican town of Purepero said when all 45 of it members resigned en masse. Purepero isn't the first town to experience a mass resignation of officials afraid to continue their role in the nation's prohibitionist war on drug traffickers.
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Mexico's Drug War Impacts Business
Mexico became a manufacturing mecca thanks, in part, to its inexpensive labor and proximity to the massive U.S. market. But there is a new reality on the ground in that country these days: a surge in violence tied to the prohibition-based war on drug traffickers that Mexico's President Felipe Calderon mounted after his election in 2006. The result has been a wave of kidnappings, extortion and murder that is threatening the country's economic health and causing multinationals to examine closely how they operate and invest in Mexico.
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Judge Calls for Clarity in Michigan's Medical Marijuana Law: Lawmakers Urged to Act Against Backdrop of Recent Clinic Raids
A Michigan Court of Appeals judge urged lawmakers to clarify the state's medical marijuana law, saying the "inartfully drafted" measure has resulted in confusion and arrests. The judge said the law is so confusing that users "who proceed without due caution" could "lose both their property and their liberty."
In The Trenches
Marijuana Use Increases While Arrests Approach Record Levels, Reports Show (Press Release)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
SEPTEMBER 16, 2010
Marijuana Use Increases While Arrests Approach Record Levels, Reports Show
Marijuana Now Accounts for Half of All U.S. Drug Arrests, But Enforcement Efforts Have Done Nothing to Reduce Use
CONTACT: Mike Meno, MPP director of communications …………… 202-905-2030 or 443-927-6400
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Marijuana arrests accounted for more than half of all U.S. drug arrests in 2009, while its use among Americans increased by 8 percent, according to two reports released this week by government officials.
According to the FBI’s 2009 Uniform Crime Report released yesterday, U.S. law enforcement made 858,408 arrests on marijuana charges — 88 percent of which were for possession, not sale or manufacture. Marijuana arrests peaked in 2007 at more than 872,000, and witnessed a slight dip in 2008 at 847,863.
In 2009, an American was arrested on marijuana charges every 37 seconds.
Meanwhile, an annual report released today by the National Survey on Drug Use and Health showed that 16.7 million Americans had used marijuana in the past month.
“It’s now more obvious than ever that decades of law enforcement efforts have absolutely failed to reduce marijuana’s use or availability, and that it’s simply an exercise in futility to continue arresting hundreds of thousands of Americans for using something that’s safer than alcohol,” said Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project. “Rather than criminalize millions of otherwise law-abiding citizens and waste billions of dollars that could be better spent combating violent crime and other real threats to public safety, it’s time we embrace sensible marijuana policies that would regulate marijuana the same way we do alcohol or tobacco.”
With more than 124,000 members and supporters nationwide, the Marijuana Policy Project is the largest marijuana policy reform organization in the United States. MPP believes that the best way to minimize the harm associated with marijuana is to regulate marijuana in a manner similar to alcohol. For more information, please visit www.mpp.org.
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Latest News
Marijuana Law Reform is a Civil Rights Issue (Opinion)
Alice Huffman, president of the California State NAACP, opines on the civil rights aspects of legalizing, taxing, and regulating marijuana in California. She says the California NAACP does not believe maintaining the illusion that we're winning the "war on drugs" is worth sacrificing another generation of our young men and women.
Latest News
Mexican Drug Trafficking Organizations Involved in Cocaine Surge in Australia
Drug prohibition isn't stopping Mexican drug trafficking organizations (DTOs). The Australian Crime Commission says highly sophisticated Mexican DTOs are having a significant impact on the Australian cocaine market. The surge is linked to one of the most powerful and brutal syndicates involved in the drug war in Mexico, the Sinaloa organization.