Amidst a deadly drug prohibition war in Juarez, Mexico, a group of college students have emerged from the violence to tell their city that they've had enough. The Juarez "students are quite heroic," said Bruce Bagley, who heads the Latin American affairs department at the University of Miami. "The fact that they are standing up to the military has highlighted the fact that the military in its conduct of the war on drugs in Mexico has actually fallen into numerous human rights violations.

Tony Newman, communications director for the Drug Policy Alliance, says the debate around failed marijuana prohibition and the larger drug war arrived in a big way in 2010. He shares what he feels are some of the most significant stories from 2010 and the reasons why he's encouraged that we can start finding an exit strategy from America's longest running war.

A funny thing happened on the way to a trial in Missoula County District Court. Jurors – well, potential jurors – staged a revolt. They took the law into their own hands, as it were, and made it clear they weren’t about to convict anybody for having a couple of buds of marijuana.

UK Labour MP and former minister Bob Ainsworth has come out out strongly against drug prohibition. He proposed an “Impact Assessment of the Misuse of Drugs Act”, an “independent, evidence-based review, exploring all policy options” which was welcomed by Lib Dem MP Tom Brake. Adam Corlett, acting vice-chair of Liberal Democrats for Drug Policy Reform, explores the matter.

A rising tide of Christians not only smoke pot, but think Jesus used it. They're gaining mainstream legitimacy, challenging religious and political dogma, and sometimes going to jail for their faith in unprecedented numbers. According to pot historian Chris Bennett's chapter on "Early/Ancient History" in Dr. Julie Holland's The Pot Book, Jesus didn't smoke pot, he rubbed it on people in the form of medicinal holy oil. Bennett says a pot doctor Jesus makes more sense than a deity Jesus. The Son of God does pull a lot of lightweight miracles like treating skin lesions, stomach problems, menstrual issues, eye problems, epilepsy and asthma, all of which respond to the cannabis therapies.

The Los Angeles Times editorial board says that Gil Kerlikowske should have checked such sources as the Congressional Research Service before jumping to conclusions. An April report, issued to advise Congress on whether to loosen federal restrictions on medical marijuana, examined studies comparing teen pot smoking in states with and without medical marijuana laws and found no connection between such laws and drug use. "Concerns that medical cannabis laws send the wrong message to vulnerable groups such as adolescents seem to be unfounded," it stated. They also note that there's little evidence that continued criminalization has discouraged teen drug use, but better education might.

Two Oakland County attorneys filed a lawsuit against Bloomfield Township in an attempt to overturn local medical marijuana ordinances they say conflict with state law and make it too difficult for a registered patient to use the drug. It's the latest medical marijuana challenge in Oakland County, which has become home to a number of lawsuits and criminal cases that could shape interpretation and application of the Michigan Medical Marihuana Act of 2008 for years to come.

Paul Armentano, the deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, discusses the Drug Czar's spin on rising teen marijuana use.

After overseeing a comprehensive review of drug policy in Portugal, where possession of everything from marijuana to heroin has been decriminalized since 2001, Alex Stevens, a professor of criminal justice at the University of Kent in Britain, has a blunt rebuttal to the classic "Think of the children" line of thinking. "Criminalization of drugs is not protecting our children," he says. "In fact, it's harming our children." By any conceivable empirical metric, Portugal’s vastly liberalized drug policy has succeeded. And as Stevens argues, the most potent lesson to be learned is that the "decriminalization of drugs does not necessarily lead to increases in drug use."

Events and quotes of note from this week's drug policy events of years past.

With still two weeks left in 2010, Ciudad Juárez is setting a new record in the number of drug prohibition war killings.

Willie Nelson has long been an outspoken activist, so it was no big surprise that soon after his recent arrest for marijuana possession the country music legend and pot aficionado was calling for a national movement to end the U.S. government’s destructive crusade against cannabis. But if Nelson wants to help end pot prohibition, he can do more than inspire the push for reform -- he can help lead it. And one relatively easy way he can do so is by hosting a benefit concert next year to draw attention to the evils of the drug war, using his iconic pop culture status to raise money for those organizations and people that are working to make the dream of reform a reality. A benefit concert next year would be particularly well timed, with the question of whether to legalize pot possibly being put to Washingtonians as soon as next fall and with California and Colorado voters likely weighing in on ballot initiatives of their own in 2012.

The Washington Department of Revenue has launched a statewide effort to collect sales tax from medical marijuana dispensaries - even as some prosecutors and the Health Department maintain such dispensaries are illegal. Spokesman Mike Gowrylow said that the Revenue Department mailed letters to 90 dispensaries and related organizations on Friday, insisting that medical marijuana is not exempt from state sales tax and that dispensaries must collect that money and turn it over to the state. The letter said dispensaries must also pay the state business and occupation tax.

California, by some estimates, has as many as 350,000 medical marijuana patients -- yet only a tiny fraction has signed on to a state ID card program meant to protect them from arrest or seizure of their medicine. That doesn't appear likely to change, say marijuana advocates, patients and some county health officials who administer the program locally, as the cost of the cards can't compete with privately issued cards or even doctors' recommendations. When the state created the program in 2003 and launched it two years later, officials figured 100,000 patients would sign on for the optional cards, but the state issued just 12,659 to patients and caregivers last fiscal year.

The Philadelphia Inquirer's editorial board opines that many government officials are finally admitting the prohibitionist war on drugs is a costly failure, and that the United States has spent at least $1 trillion on the war on drugs, but the streets of Kensington prove it hasn't worked.

Farmers growing marijuana in remote Mexican mountains are adopting techniques pioneered in the United States to produce more potent pot and boost profits. Even as hundreds of troops fan out across Sinaloa ripping up marijuana fields by hand, drug trafficking organizations are one step ahead of the government’s efforts, helping to stifle President Felipe Calderon’s army-led prohibitionist battle against the drug traffickers.

Warning about the worsening drug prohibition situation in Kyrgyzstan and an actual war between drug trafficking organizations in Tajikistan, Russia’s Federal Anti-Drug Service's Viktor Ivanov has called for a special meeting of the UN Security Council on Afghan drug trafficking.

U.S. diplomats accused Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega’s government of taking bribes from drug traffickers in exchange for freeing suspects, in cables released by Wikileaks. The Nicaraguan Consulate in Washington declined to comment, deferring to the Foreign Ministry, which didn’t respond to a request for comment. Government representatives in Managua couldn’t be reached. The State Department didn’t respond to a request for comment on the cable.

Ethan Nadelmann, founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, opines that prospects for reforming drug policy have never been so good, as the persistent failure and negative consequences of drug war policies, combined with budgetary woes and generational change, are mainstreaming reformist ideas once considered taboo.

Medical marijuana is legal in 15 states and the District of Columbia. It's popularity is attracting attention from hedge fund managers and venture capitalists, not to mention a whole new batch of entrepreneurs.

New Jersey's Senate may vote Monday to defy Gov. Chris Christie over his proposed strict medical marijuana regulations. The vote is scheduled even though Christie and the state Assembly's prime sponsor of medical marijuana struck a deal on regulations last week.

 

 

Among the 90-some pages of draft rules and procedures for Colorado’s medical marijuana industry unveiled earlier this week by the Colorado Department of Revenue's Medical Marijuana Advisory Board is one that makes some patients particularly nervous. It's a plan for a massive new database of MMJ patients who enroll in the Medical Marijuana Registry -- and it will be available to law enforcement agencies round the clock. "This patient and medicine tracking database is a clear violation of Article XVIII, Section 14 of Constitution, Colorado's Medical Marijuana Amendment, which requires that the health agency maintain a confidential registry of patients, which can only be accessed by law enforcement for the purpose of determining whether a person who has been detained is a member of the Registry," said The Cannabis Therapy Institute in a press release.

An eight-month-old infant was fatally wounded after being caught in the crossfire during a gun battle between police and drug traffickers, authorities and police said. The baby was shot during a gunfight in the town of Apatzingan in the western Mexican state of Michoacan.

ACC is a group of board-certified doctors who openly support medical marijuana for qualified patients. ACC's Dr. Edgar Suter stressed that not everybody who sends their information for an evaluation will qualify for medical marijuana, and he's only writing recommendations for patients that he believes, after a full examination, are truly qualified candidates. "We take, I think, great pains to care for the patient and honor the law," Suter says. "We're bending over backwards to make our process fair for everybody."

A man Mexican prosecutors say is one of the country's most-wanted drug kingpins has collected a salary from the Mexican school system for years, according to official documents, showing the ability of fugitives to draw support from the very government charged with capturing them. Servando "La Tuta" Gómez, a reputed leader and spokesman for the La Familia drug trafficking organization, held a tenured position at an elementary school in the central state of Michoacán and has received paychecks for 15 years.

CONTACT: Rep. Jason Lorber, 802-863-9429 or [email protected]

Certain Treasure Valley businesses think they've created an exception to the ban by tweaking the chemicals found in Spice, but law enforcement says, "not so fast." Officers went into a couple businesses, seized samples, and sent those off for testing. Results are not back yet but according to the Idaho Office of Drug Policy, the sellers could be charged.

Recreational users of marijuana are seeing price cuts on the street thanks to the growing number of states that have approved the drug for medicinal use. The price of cannabis, of course, varies wildly — depending on the strain purchased, its potency and the parts of the plant. Top quality pot in New York, for example, costs nearly $442 per ounce, while low quality is just $161, according to one website that tracks costs, PriceofWeed.com. On the whole, though, prices have been dropping nationwide over the past three to four years.

 

Last month's greater-than-anticipated electoral gains by the Republican Party of Texas could be interpreted as the death knell for any advance of medical marijuana laws in the 82nd legislative session. But advocates for an affirmative defense bill — including those who earlier this year named Democrats as the most likely sponsors — are holding fast to hopes that the specter of an ever-encroaching government will resonate with Tea Party and like-minded lawmakers when the session convenes in January.

According to one of the released cables which appeared on the website of Spain's El Pais newspaper: "Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas have regularly received money to finance [his party] FSLN electoral campaigns from international drug traffickers, usually in return for ordering Sandinista judges to allow traffickers caught by the police and military to go free." Furthermore, it says: "In 1984, Daniel Ortega negotiated a deal with Colombian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar whereby Escobar received refuge for several months in Nicaragua after he had ordered the killing of the Colombian minister of justice." In return, Mr Ortega and his party, the FSLN, received large cash payments from Pablo Escobar, it adds.

New research published in The Review of Economics and Statistics shows that growing incarceration has contributed to declining marriage rates. In fact, the paper finds that about 13% of the decline in marriage since 1990 can be explained by male incarceration. About 18% percent of the decline in marriage rates among black women can be explained by incarceration. Hispanic women are also relatively disadvantaged, with about 10% of the reduction in marriage rates in that group explained by incarceration.

Vargas Llosa said, "Drugs have to be legalized and all the huge sums of money that currently are invested in their repression, should be put into treatment, prevention and education, as has been done for example in the case of tobacco, with great success."

The sheriff in Maine's easternmost county, Washington County's Sheriff Donnie Smith, is crossing swords with Maine Drug Enforcement Agency Director Roy McKinney. Smith said that the MDEA is a "rogue agency." He cited several incidents including an agent's misuse of a stun gun, $3,000 in missing drug buy money and a video that surfaced showing an agent flash his badge, drink some beer and then drive away.

A school in Colonia San Antonio was supposedly torched because school staff refused demands for payment made by drug gang extortionists. Classes were canceled indefinitely.

The Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill has major implications for UK drug laws and the potential to damage the quality of scientific advice the government (and parliament) gets, and to further dent the scientific community's confidence in the government.

Need more evidence of the futility of the war on drugs? Look no further than a WikiLeaked cable from the U.S. Embassy in Argentina released last week. It turns out that for all the happy talk about international cooperation to combat money laundering, the embassy believes some politicians may not really be interested.

Across the border from El Paso, Texas, a mass exodus triggered by a murderous prohibitionist war for drug trafficking routes into the United States has left huge swaths of Ciudad Juarez uninhabited, rocking Mexican home builders and gutting the large industrial city of its upwardly mobile working class. Residents are fleeing many towns along the Mexican border, but the migration is perhaps most acutely felt in Juarez, which until recently was among Mexico's fastest-growing cities, its industrial jobs attracting immigrants from across the country and Central America.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie struck a deal to partially rewrite his administration's proposed medical marijuana regulations, which had advocates and some lawmakers ready to revolt. Under the new plan, medical cannabis could be grown and distributed at more places than Christie originally wanted. It also would allow terminally ill patients easier access to the drug, but an unusual potency cap would remain.

The bodies of 31-year-old Camerino F. Corral and 27-year-old Lorenzo Renteria, both of Deming, New Mexico, were among 20 victims found in a mass grave in drug prohibition war-plagued Mexico.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: December 2, 2010

Hermila Garcia, 38, who became the top law enforcement officer in the town of Meoqui only two months ago, was killed as she drove to work. Her death has left some wondering if it wasn't a warning from the drug traffickers to other women, like Marisol Valles Garcia, 20, a student who became police chief of Praxedis, in the Juarez valley, also in the state of Chihuahua, home to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico's most violent drug war city.

Events and quotes of note from this week's drug policy events of years past.

Sen. Herb Kohl (D-WI) continues to express his reservations about Michelle Leonhart, the nominee to lead the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. In a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing for Leonhart on Wednesday, Kohl said he still has concerns about the DEA's policy regarding the delivery of pain medications in nursing homes. "I will not hold her nomination in the Committee today, but I do intend to hold her nomination on the Senate floor until we have made more progress towards our goal of ensuring that nursing home residents get timely access to the prescription drug care they need," Kohl told the committee.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan sued the cities of Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills and Livonia today, claiming their ordinances banning medical marijuana are in direct violation of the 2008 Michigan Medical Marihuana Act.

An Associated Press investigation casts doubt on whether the crackdown on the Sinaloa Drug Trafficking Organization caused any significant impact. It still ranks near the top of Mexico's drug gangs, most of those arrested were underlings who were swiftly replaced, and the leader remains free, along with his top commanders. The findings confirm what many critics of the prohibitionist drug war have said for years: The government is quick to boast about large arrests or drug seizures, but many of its most-publicized efforts result in little, if any, slowdown in the drug trade.

According to a study from the Center for Economic and Policy Research's senior economist John Schmitt, ex-offenders' barriers to employment lowers the nation's employment on average by 1.5 million to 1.7 million workers. Multiply that number by the average output that these workers would be putting into the economy, if they were employed, and the loss totals at least $57 billion, he said. This figure is growing as more of the hundreds of thousands of people put into jail during the prohibitionist war on drugs in the 1980s and 1990s are released.