Call Congress This Afternoon to Protect State Marijuana Laws!

Please call your member of Congress this afternoon to ask for a YES vote on the McClintock-Polis amendment. Our system will look up who your representative is, based on your address, and will provide the phone number. Here are a few points you can make, if you get into discussion with the staff:

• The McClintock-Polis Amendment will only apply in states that have adopted marijuana law reforms.
• Today people who are acting in compliance with their states' marijuana laws remain at risk of federal prosecution -- a large and growing number of ordinary businesspersons and citizens.
• The amendment doesn't require states to legalize marijuana, nor will it impact on any state's ability to enforce their own marijuana laws
• There is substantial support across a range of the political spectrum for allowing states to set their own marijuana policies, including legalization -- even from people who themselves don't support legalization in their own states.

Visit http://capwiz.com/drcnet/callalert/index.tt?alertid=66234626 to take action now!

(Welcome back to our one-time intern Jimi Devine, who has graciously volunteered his time to support our blog.)

Louisiana State Capitol

Today the Louisiana legislature' House Health and Welfare Committee will hear a medical marijuana bill brought forward by Republican State Senator Fred Mills, a man who formerly served as head of the Louisiana Board of Pharmacy. Mills spent the last year working with law enforcement to make it past a committee and organizations that had held it back in the past.

According to Northeast Louisiana media outlet The News Star, major revisions have been made with support from the Louisiana Sheriffs Association, they include:

• Prescribed marijuana would be taken in a form other than smoking it, perhaps in a pill.
• The state Agriculture Department would be in charge of growing marijuana to be used for medical purposes.
• Dispensing pharmacies -- ten, at this point -- would be required to meet certain conditions.
• The bill would "sunset," or be reviewed on Jan. 1, 2020, giving lawmakers pause to determine if the changes to state law were beneficial. If the bill proves ineffective, the law could be corrected or ended.
• The Louisiana Board of Pharmacy would adopt rules about dispensing medical marijuana.

This session the bill made it through the Senate Health and Welfare Committee that halted its progress in 2014, and then passed the full senate with two thirds in support. On when he takes it before the house Mills noted, "I'm hoping for a repeat performance from the Senate."

While the bill is very restrictive, but it would reinforce national trends on the medical use of marijuana in Louisiana. Hopefully leading to a more inclusive law in the future.

The sentencing reform bills look to reduce the penalties associated with a marijuana conviction in the state. Currently a third marijuana possession conviction could lead to a baffling 20 year sentence.

According to NOLA.com, the bill authored by New Orleans State Senator J.P. Morrell,

"reduces the maximum penalty for possession from 20 years in prison to eight, raises the threshold for a felony-level possession charge and adds a second-chance provision for first-time offenders."

Penalties would still be much more severe than their counterparts in other states, but first time offenders would have one opportunity to expunge their record after two years without a conviction. The bill would also reclassify a second offense from a felony to misdemeanor for quantities between fourteen grams and two and a half pounds.

The bill is projected to save Louisiana $17 million over the first five years. This would cover the $900,000 a year in wasteful spending on corrections highlighted by the Office of State Inspector General with $13 million to spare.

NOLA.com columnist Jarvis DaBerry noted,

"Such a bill does two important things. First, it establishes that a person with a small amount of weed isn't a real threat to the public. Second, and perhaps more importantly, the bill would keep such a conviction from haunting a person forever."

The second bill authored by Rep. Austin Badon would push major reforms, but is not as big a shift as the one presented by Morrell. Badon' bill would see those committing a third offense jailed five years, as opposed to the two year sentence in Morell' bill. It also does not include the possibility of conviction being expunged for first time offenders.

UPDATE: On Thursday Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal said he would sign the bills if passed by the house and senate. In regards to the sentencing bill he told the Shreveport Times, 

"We've said all along we're fine with the idea of providing rehabilitation and treatment for nonviolent drug offenders. I think this bill does that. That's good for those offenders, that is good for taxpayers. So again, that's another one of those bills that if it got to our desk we'd sign that."

While Louisiana debates the direction of their sentencing procedures, I'll leave you with another quote from Jarvis DeBerry on the subject:

"Here's a prediction: Sooner or later, we're going to look back at what Louisiana has doing to folks caught with marijuana, and we're going to be just as shocked those sentences had our officials' blessing."

 

Earlier this year we noted here that the Republican-controlled House of Representatives had enacted two pro-medical marijuana amendments. One of them, the long-fought for Hinchey-Rohrabacher amendment, bars the US Dept. of Justice (parent agency of the DEA) from using taxpayer funds from interfering with state medical marijuana laws. The other allows banks to accept deposits from marijuana businesses in states where it is legal (any type of state legality, not just medical).

What will this mean on the ground? It should mean that DEA and other branches of the Dept. of Justice can no longer threaten medical marijuana providers (or more theoretically, patients) with arrest or prosecution, and that landlords should no longer face the threat of asset forfeiture for property being rented to medical marijuana businesses. But the precise language, which focuses on states' implementating medical marijuana systems, could be argued as applying more narrowly, giving reassurance to state officials about their participation but not going further. Another concern is that a prosecutor could argue, for example, that a given marijuana business is not operating in strict accordance with a state's law. Our perspective in the movement is that that determination should be up to state authorities, not federal, but that's not necessarily the perspective of federal law enforcement. Those are some reasons why it remains to be seen just how thoroughly and reliably the protections that the new law provides will turn out to be, and these questions are being debated right now.

Where there's the most pessimism is about whether the new law will halt medical marijuana prosecutions that are already underway, but we'll see. In the past the administration has allowed such prosecutions to continue, but the administration's stance on marijuana policy, criminal justice in general, and their willingness to take concrete actions, has markedly increased during the last two years, so perhaps there is hope.

The CRomnibus also includes language barring the District of Columbia from enacting marijuana reform legislation. On its face that would seem to block Initiative 71 from going into effect, the measure passed by nearly 70% of voters that legalizes possession and home growing of marijuana in the District. But that also isn't clear. Advocates have pointed out that the language doesn't explicitly block Initiative 71, which normally is the action that Congress is required to take if it doesn't want DC legislation to go forward. Because DC has already enacted the measure, and because it only removes penalties and doesn't have a regulatory component (which DC initiatives can't have), that will hopefully mean that the law can change in January after the Congressional review period expires, assuming Congress doesn't take another vote to explicitly block it. One question may be whether transmitting the measure to Congress, as the process requires, would count as an expenditure of funds as defined in the language (though I haven't seen anyone else bring that up yet). According to several Democratic representatives including minority leader Nancy Pelosi, Congress's legislative intent was to allow the initiative to become law, but only to block a bill advanced by a committee of the DC City Council last month to establish a regulatory and taxation system with marijuana stores in the District.

Along with that gray lining, it should be noted that the banking issue, which as far as I can tell is unaddressed by the CRomnibus, is a really huge problem for the marijuana industry. Some consider it an even bigger problem than prosecutions. An attempt by the administration in February to establish safe harbor procedures for banks to take marijuana money has elicited only extremely slight movement on the part of banks, who mostly want to see clarity in federal statutes, not just a policy. So there is a pressing need to pass that second of the House's pro-medical marijuana amendments too.

Still, we have seen an amazing and historic victory this weekend. Whatever the legislation does or doesn't achieve in concrete help for medical marijuana defendants, businesses and patients right now, it clearly eases the way for further legislative progress on the issue. Mostly I think it will depend on whether the new Congress is able to do business at all. If they can, I will not be surprised to see even the Republican-controlled House and Senate to pass banking. And I expect to see bills to fully move medical marijuana into the realm of legality to see substantially increased support from both sides of the aisle.

Today is International Overdose Awareness Day. Click here for an event listing. (Click here for info on the vigil being held by our friends at the Harm Reduction Action Center in Denver.)

Phil reviewed Dean's book last night.

I was also on Dean's radio show last week talking about my two new papers; check out the audio or transcript of the interview, which also featured Judge James P. Gray.

Cut that funding!

The vote could come as soon as tonight or tomorrow, MPP says.

While the House vote was historic, it will be only a symbolic victory unless the Senate also joins in. Passage of the DEA defunding by the Congress (and the presumed signature of the bill by the president) would, on the other hand, have real world consequences--for the better. 

Stay tuned for what could be a very well-deserved slap in the face for the DEA. Even if the measure fails in the Senate, it should provide a heads-up to the agency that there is growing dissatisfaction with it on the Hill. But we don't want to settle for that; we want the DEA handcuffed when it comes to medical marijuana.

There were three several other votes, though, that are important to know about. One of them, which passed, is a mean-spirited amendment to block the clemency initiative that Pres. Obama and AG Holder are taking. If it becomes law it will seek to prevent the administration from transferring staff temporarily to increase the Pardon Attorney Office's capacity. There was another good amendment that passed, though, by Rep. Steve Cohen, which shifts $5 millions of DEA funding, to spend it instead on grants to state and local police agencies to help them reduce the backlog in rape testing kits. Cohen sponsored another amendment that didn't get passed, which have shifted three times as much money from the DEA to the Legal Services Corporation.

We have info, including how every member of Congress voted, online here. There's a zipcode lookup form you can use, a the top of the page, to identify your own US Representatives and how they voted.

Update: There were more relevant votes than I'd realized when I wrote this. One of them had to do with hemp. We'll add them as able.

It's a done deal. A UPS truck delivered more than 250 pounds of hemp seed to the Kentucky Department of Agriculture this afternoon. It took a lawsuit and a lot of political pressure on DEA head Michele Leonhart, but the agency has backed away from its initial refusal to allow the seeds to be imported.

Hemp seeds will soon be sprouting in Kentucky (votehemp.org)

That prompted an intense and angry reaction from state officials, who promptly sued the DEA, the Justice Department, and Customs in federal court, and from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who just happens to be from Kentucky. It's not clear exactly what went down, but after two Wednesday meetings, the DEA started singing a different tune.

One meeting brought together lawyers for the federal government and the state of Kentucky before a federal judge; the other was face-to-face between McConnell and Leonhart. By the end of the day Wednesday, the DEA had backed down.

The DEA just ain't getting no respect these days. Leonhart was recently chastised by her boss, Attorney General Eric Holder, over her remarks before Congress dissing the administration's moves to reduce the reliance on mandatory minimum sentencing, the Drug Policy Alliance is calling for her head, and drug expert Mark Kleiman is  suggesting maybe it's time to disband the agency. Couldn't happen to a more deserving set of folks. 

Uruguay will formally unveil the regulations for its legal marijuana commerce next week, although the broad outlines are already known. The stuff will be genetically tracked from seed to sale and beyond, it'll see for less than a buck a gram, and registered consumers will only be able to buy 40 grams a month.

Jose "Pepe" Mujica. Not exactly Captain Cannabis. (wikimedia.org)

In that interview, Mujica, a former leftist guerrilla who spent years in prison during the time of military dictatorship in the 1970s, made clear that he's no hipster.

"We don't go along with the idea that marijuana is benign, poetic and surrounded by virtues. No addiction is good," he said. "We aren't going to promote smoke fests, bohemianism, all this stuff they try to pass off as innocuous when it isn't. They'll label us elderly reactionaries. But this isn't a policy that seeks to expand marijuana consumption. What it aims to do is keep it all within reason, and not allow it to become an illness."

Well, with all due respect, Mr. Mujica, you sound like an elderly reactionary. This is a guy who has never smoked pot, and it shows. Referring to marijuana use as an addiction puts him in the company of mad scientists like NIDA head Dr. Nora Volkow and the professional prohibitionists of Project SAM, and spouting platitudes like "no addiction is good" manages to conflate being physically addicted to things like heroin and prescription opiates to habitually puffing a pot pipe or having a cup of coffee first thing every morning.

Mujica also took some gratuitous pot shots at Colorado's legalization regime and at medical marijuana in the US. Uruguay's system will be superior to Colorado's, he said, because Colorado doesn't track pot after it is purchased.

The AP quoted Mujica as saying "it's a complete fiction what they do in Colorado," which seems to be his way of claiming that legalization there is out of control because it doesn't track individual purchasers. Well, I find it kind of creepy to think the government is keeping track of my consumption habits (like with, say, a prescription monitoring database—oops, never mind), and I have to wonder why Mujica isn't pushing for something similar for alcohol purchases in his country.

And, Mujica said, the medical marijuana laws in US states are based on "hypocrisy" because they allow people with "fake illnesses" to obtain marijuana. Well, he has something of a point there, but only to a degree. California is by far the most wide open medical marijuana state, and people do take advantage of the loosely-written law to obtain and use medical marijuana without fear of arrest.

California can remedy that by recognizing reality and just getting on with legalization, as it will almost certainly do in 2016. But the other medical marijuana states are much more restrictive, and, perversely, the more public support grows for medical marijuana, the tighter the restrictions seem to be.

So, why is Mujica being such a grumpy old man about marijuana legalization? After all, he's the guy who pushed it through in Uruguay. I think there are a couple of things going on.

First, he's a square. He's a straight, old leftist, a former revolutionary, with no experience with marijuana and no connections to the cannabis culture. He really sees this as a public health and public security problem, not as a step toward human liberation. In that sense, he's your grandpa.

But he's also moving forward with legalization in the face of strong public opposition to it in Uruguay.  In a poll last week, nearly two-thirds remained opposed to the new law, although 51% said it was better to give it a chance than to kill it at birth. I suspect many of Mujica's comments were made with that domestic audience in mind. In that sense, he's a smart politician.

And grumpy old man he may be; he's still the guy who is leading the first country to break with global pot prohibition. Adelante, companero.

Denver is pot city this weekend, with the High Times Cannabis Cup, the 4/20 rally downtown, and dozens of related musical and cultural events.

The Walking Raven marijuana retail outlet on South Broadway, aka Denver's Green Mile.

On East Colfax Avenue this morning, people wearing their Sunday attire for Easter services are outnumbered by people wearing tie-dyes, 4/20 t-shirts, and pot leaf caps heading down to today's session of the 4/20 rally (it went on yesterday as well, with thousands in attendance.

The Cannabis Cup is massive! Organizers estimate more than 30,000 people attending each day, and for blocks around the expo hall, there are masses of stoned humanity wandering to and fro. Inside, the commodification of marijuana continues at a dizzying pace, with hundreds of vendors and exhibitors hawking their wares.

I visited the Walking Raven retail outlet yesterday and interviewed the owner. Look for some of that interview to appear in a feature article later this week on the state of play in Colorado. 

I also made my first legal marijuana purchase in the United States. It was a proprietary 30% THC strain called Hong Kong Diesel. It wasn't cheap, and prices are something I want to address in that coming feature.

The parking lot at Walking Raven was notable for the plethora of out of state license plates. People are coming from all over the country to take part in and celebrate the new reality of legal weed.

I'm off to the 4/20 rally in a bit; may post something later tonight. Then I basically disappear for a couple of days as I head off across Colorado, Utah, and Nevada on my way to Northern California. Look for regular Chronicl action to recommence by Wednesday.

With Gov. Martin O'Malley's signature today on two bills passed by the legislature, Maryland decriminalized marijuana possession and becomes a full-fledged medical marijuana state.

Senate Bill 364 makes possession of less than 10 grams of marijuana a civil offense punishable by a fine of up to $100 for a first offense, up to $250 for a second offense, and up to $500 for subsequent offenses. Third-time offenders and individuals under 21 years of age will be required to undergo a clinical assessment for substance abuse disorder and a drug education program. The measure will officially go into effect on October 1.

The Marijuana Policy Project was among groups pushing for both bills, but it isn't resting on its laurels.

“It’s time for legislators to take a long, hard look at replacing marijuana prohibition with a system in which marijuana is regulated and taxed,” said MPP legislative analyst Rachelle Yeung. “Marijuana should be sold by licensed businesses, not criminals in the underground market.”

I predict that will happen in 2017, after the next two rounds of legalization initiatives start to convince legislators that they need to hop on the bandwagon.