BLOG
Pet Mountain Lion Gets Man Arrested for Marijuana
Ok, if you're growing marijuana, don't harbor an illegal pet mountain lion: mountain lion Russell Rexrode, a 41 year old Ft. Bragg resident, has been sentenced to 180 days in jail following his conviction by a jury of felony cultivation of marijuana. Sheriff's deputy Dustin Lorenzo testified during the trial that he weighed 119 pounds of processed marijuana and 142 pounds-worth of unprocessed marijuana plants found at Rexrode's residence. Sheriff's Lieutenant Rusty Noe testified that the wholesale value of the pot was $2,400 per pound.Fish and Game Department Lieutenant Lynette Shimek testified that she led the search of Mr. Rexrode's property on Oct. 17, 2005, on the basis of evidence relating to "unlawful mountain lion possession." Superior Court judge Ron Brown presided over the case, and in addition to giving Rexrode the jail sentence, he ordered the defendant to pay $1,500 for the misdemeanor offense of having the mountain lion. [Ukiah Daily Journal]Now, I understand why someone would grow marijuana. It's medicine. It makes people happy and creative. And I understand why someone would want a mountain lion. They are majestic. But this guy pushed his luck too far. As much as many of us may wish to live in a world where you can grow weed and raise mountain lions, we just don't. And if there's one thing that's going to generate more buzz around the neighborhood than a homegrown marijuana garden, it's a lion. But here's what I want to know: how come the guy got 180 days in jail for growing pot, but only paid a $1,500 fine for the mountain lion?! It should go without saying that mountain lions are vastly more dangerous than marijuana.
Stephen Colbert's Top 7 Drug Moments
In a shameless, yet brilliant, ploy to generate web traffic, comedy Central has compiled a list of their favorite drug-themed Stephen Colbert clips. It worked on me. Here's the link.My personal favorite is when Stephen bids farewell to Marijuana Policy Project's Aaron Houston by saying "good luck destroying America." Aaron is the nicest guy you'll ever meet and the very notion that he's trying to destroy America is the perfect encapsulation of drug warrior paranoia. The fact that Colbert has created a whole satirical routine surrounding the delusional mindset of the drug war cheerleaders is testament to the complete laughingstock that group has become.
The great American Meth myth
I have been around the planet for a lot of years.I was one of the so called hippies of the 1960's that supposedly lived free and drugged daily.I won't even mention the sex except to say that it was be
If You Oppose Marijuana Laws, But Support Other Drug Laws, Read This
Pete Guither has an excellent breakdown of why our policy towards the most dangerous drugs is just as flawed as our policy towards marijuana. It's a tricky subject that can be approached many ways, but he does a great job of hitting the most important points without writing a book. I think I agree with it in its entirety.Pete's rant is enjoyable even if you already understand the argument, so go read it.
Canadian Health Minister Attacks Doctors for Supporting Safe Injection Sites
The latest outrage in Canada's heated harm reduction debate came at the hands of Health Minister Tony Clement who went off the rails by questioning the ethics of doctors who practice harm reduction:MONTREAL â The association representing Canada's doctors rapped Health Minister Tony Clement on Monday after he questioned the ethics of physicians who support the use of supervised injection sites for drug addicts.â¦"Is it ethical for health-care professionals to support the administration of drugs that are of unknown substance, or purity or potency, drugs that cannot otherwise be legally prescribed?" Clement said.He said that in any other medical setting, supervised overdoses would be considered "highly unprofessional." [Canadian Press]Canada's doctors beg to differ: The Canadian Medical Association's president responded to Clement by saying 79 per cent of members agree that safe-injection sites and harm-reduction programs work.Dr. Brian Day said sites that allow addicts to inject their own narcotics under the supervision of medical staff have been successful in curbing illegal drug use and slowing the spread of disease."We specifically take issue with the minister using that phrase," Day told reporters after Clement's speech."The minister was off base in calling into question the ethics of physicians involved in harm reduction."It's clear that this was being used as a political issue."Doctors are not politicians. They work to save lives and they are the experts on how to do that. If they all agree that existing programs are working, and some politician disagrees, then he is just wrong and he should shut up. The drug war debate is ugly and that's not gonna change anytime soon. But one thing we can do without is politicians feigning moral superiority over the doctors who are saving lives every day. That's what this is about. Harm reduction shouldn't be a political issue and if you succeed in politicizing it for the wrong reasons, people will die.
Finally Someone is Blaming Prohibition!
Todayâs Wall Street Journal features a piece by Mary Anastasia OâGrady entitled âMexico pays the price of prohibition.â In a time where the media continues to blame drugs as the problem it is refreshing to see an article that goes to the root of the problem in the headline. OâGrady makes clear and concise points in regards to the 4,909 people that have been killed since Mexican President Felipe Calderonâs offensive against organized crime started two years ago,For perspective on how violent Mexico has become, consider that the total number of Americans killed in Iraq since March 2003 is 4,142.The article continues on to link other aspects of Mexicoâs war on drugs to the overall issues effecting our southern neighbor. As this column has pointed out many times, one reason that security has so deteriorated in the past decade is the demand in the U.S. for illegal narcotics, and the U.S. government's crackdown on the Caribbean trafficking route. Mexican cartels have risen up to serve the U.S. market, and their earnings have made them rich and well-armed.The column clearly recognizes the basic concepts of supply and demand when speaking on financial realities of how much cash is being pumped into Mexican cartels on the border, while falling short of saying the only way to fix this major problem is to legalize drugs. OâGrady goes on to close the piece with a quote from former U.S. Foreign Service Officer Laurence Kerr.America has been in Mexico's shoes: flush with the bounty of illegal liquor sales, organized crime thoroughly penetrated the U.S. justice system during Prohibition. As long as Americans willingly bury Mexican drug traffickers in greenbacks, progress in constraining the trade is likely to be limited." Regrettably, Mexico's institutional reform will also be limited and the death toll will keep climbing.
$600,000 dollar government theft and more Tory mudslinging
A man who had the bad judgment to grow marijuana on his own property,lost that property to a voracious crown with an appetite for easy money.Since the passing of the assets forfeiture act,the governme
If the Drug War Works, Why Did Teen Access to Marijuana Increase This Year?
Today, the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) released a new study that perfectly demolishes one of the central myths underlying the war on drugs. The National Survey on American Attitudes on Substance Abuse shows that youth access to marijuana has increased significantly in the past year:According to the report, half of the 16- and 17-year-olds surveyed said their peers use marijuana more than tobacco. More teens say itâs easier to acquire marijuana than beer. And thereâs a 35% increase from last year in the number of teens who say they can buy marijuana within an hour and a 14% increase in the number of teens who say they can find it in a day. [MPP]It almost speaks for itself. Nothing could more directly obliterate the false notion that the war on marijuana is reducing youth access. Just days ago, the drug czar stood on a California mountaintop proudly pronouncing the importance of marijuana eradication. He's bent over backwards to explain that reductions in youth marijuana use provide proof that the war on marijuana is working. What then can be said about marijuana's ever-increasing availability to young people? Rather obviously, recent declines in youth marijuana use owe nothing to the brutal and controversial tactics the drug czar is duty-bound to defend. After another year of dead dogs, dead informants and dead cops, marijuana is more available to our children than ever before. If fewer of them are using, then that is because they don't feel like it, not because they don't know where to get any. Of course, the drug war supporters at CASA must have realized how badly their data reflects on marijuana prohibition, so they cooked up one the most embarrassingly backwards statistics possible:Teens who can obtain marijuana readily are more likely to use it. Forty-five percent of teens who say they can get marijuana in an hour or less have used the drug, compared to 10 percent of those teens who say it would take them a day to get it and less than one percent of teens who say they would be unable to get it.Oh, mercy. Is it really necessary to explain that teens who smoke marijuana are more likely to know where to buy it? This is just a crime against the scientific method, a pathetic face-saving ruse to defend marijuana prohibition within a report that unintentionally â yet transparently -- humiliates the drug war status quo.Today, the drug war's failure to keep drugs out of the hands of our young people has been revealed in stark, unambiguous terms. No, the debate won't end here, but it is moments like this that cause one drug warrior after another, after another to jump ship and admit that the whole thing is just a monumental travesty.
Another Top Drug War Official Calls for Legalization
Julian Critchley was director of the British Cabinet's anti-drug office, where he worked with the British drug tsar to coordinate the nation's drug policy. Now he's come forward to unmask the fraudulent underpinnings of the drug war bureaucracy, simultaneously acknowledging the failure of the war on drugs, while also revealing the hypocrisy of countless officials who carried out policies they personally didn't believe in.His words now expose the harsh reality that even top "anti-drug" officials privately agree that the drug war is a costly failure:"I think what was truly depressing about my time in UKADCU was that the overwhelming majority of professionals I met, including those from the police, the health service, government and voluntary sectors held the same view : the illegality of drugs causes far more problems for society and the individual than it solves. Yet publicly, all those intelligent, knowledgeable people were forced to repeat the nonsensical mantra that the Government would be 'tough on drugs', even though they all knew that the Government's policy was actually causing harm." [Guardian]Critchley isn't the first top drug warrior to come forward in favor of reform, but his scathing indictment of the ideological fraud carried out by those maintaining the drug war infrastructure is truly remarkable:I recall a conversation I had with a No 10 policy advisor about a series of Whitehall-wide announcements in which we were to emphasise the shift of resources to treatment and highlighting successes in prevention and education. She asked me whether we couldn't arrange for a drugs bust in Brighton at the same time, or a boat speeding down the Thames to catch smugglers. For that advisor, what worked mattered considerably less than what would play well in the Daily Mail. The tragedy of our drugs policy is that it is dictated by tabloid irrationality, and not by reference to evidence. [BBC]Does that sound familiar? This is just the reality of the modern war on drugs both here and abroad. While a committed few may still cling in desperation to the drug war's fractured legacy, the continuation of unambiguously disastrous policies owes a great deal to the perverted political calculations of countless cynical bureaucrats. A sensationalist press then markets these false philosophies to the public, fueling widespread hysteria and confusion. It is within that vast cauldron of selfishness and incompetence that our drug policies have been sustained against all odds.But today it has been revealed that the interests of the people were jettisoned willfully and maliciously by those who swore an oath to defend the public interest. Time will tell whether that narrative may soon embed itself within the broader debate. This is the story of the true values and beliefs of the great drug war generals and it must not be forgotten when those same individuals inevitably return to demand further sacrifices in honor of their despicable war.
Stephen Colbert's Latest Outrageous Attack on Medical Marijuana
He just can't help himself. It's hilarious, of course, but it's disturbing to consider that Colbert's facetious rants really aren't any more absurd than the typical government propaganda that emerges from the Drug Czar's office. Colbert is joking, but even if he weren't, we could at least stop paying for cable. This garbage, on the other hand is paid for with our tax dollars whether we like it or not. And it isnât nearly as funny, either.
Secret agents
CBC Newsworld did a story tonite about undercover cops and the things they can do to make an arrest.Canadian law enforcement uses American DEA agents because they are allowed to do whatever it takes t
Bob Barr Condemns Violent, Dog-Murdering Drug Raid
Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr is the first presidential hopeful to speak out regarding the brutal drug raid in Berwyn Heights, MD that resulted in the death of the mayor's two dogs:The former Republican Congressman from Georgia released a statement on his presidential campaign website about the July 29 Prince George's police and sheriff's raid on the home of Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo.â¦The raid, he wrote, "illustrates how the drug war threatens the liberties of all Americans."He said he believed that law enforcement has become more arrogant and less accountable, usually with very little public attention, and promises that as president, he will improve the situation."As president I will ensure that federal law enforcement agencies set a good example for the rest of the country," he said. "In a Barr administration, government officials will never forget that it is a free people they are protecting." [Washington Post]I'm still getting used to hearing words like these from former drug warrior Bob Barr, but I'll take it. Barr, despite his unfortunate history, is now speaking out against abusive drug war policing with a vigor unmatched, or even attempted, by the major party candidates. Unfortunately, we can be reasonably sure we wonât hear a word about this from Obama or McCain. Sure, it is an ugly national controversy with a fairly obvious right and wrong side. And yes, a careful statement promising to defend the rights of innocent, everyday people against government abuse would be politically safe, in and of itself. After all, there's nothing anti-police about standing up for professionalism in law-enforcement. But implicit in all this is the central question of how far we as a society are willing to push the limits of peace and freedom in the name of a war on drugs that has already exhausted many of us to the point of unrestrained bitterness. It's a conversation that can't be avoided once Cheye Calvo's name is spoken and one which the major party candidates remain hesitant to explore. Their silence becomes increasingly hard to explain as it becomes steadily more apparent each day that the drug war blood bath sometimes doesn't discriminate as well as it's supposed to.(This blog post was published by StoptheDrugWar.org's lobbying arm, the Drug Reform Coordination Network, which also shares the cost of maintaining this web site. DRCNet Foundation takes no positions on candidates for public office, in compliance with section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, and does not pay for reporting that could be interpreted or misinterpreted as doing so.)
Mexican Cartels Have Begun Kidnapping Americans
The more "progress" Mexico makes in its U.S.-funded war on drugs, the more of this sort of thing we can look forward to:TIJUANA, Mexico, Aug 12 (Reuters) - American businesswoman Veronica was stepping out of her car in California when two men forced her into the passenger seat at gunpoint, pushed her teenage daughter into the back and drove them into Mexico.Taking advantage of lax Mexican security at the San Diego border, and with U.S. authorities focused mainly on those entering the United States, the kidnappers took the two women to Tijuana in January and held them for a month before their family paid a $100,000 ransom.â¦An unintended consequence of Mexican efforts to weaken drug gangs, drug traffickers around Tijuana are turning to abducting U.S. citizens and residents in southern California and holding them in Mexico as a new way to get funds, U.S. and Mexican authorities say. [Reuters]This is precisely why there is no such thing as progress in the drug war. The enemy doesnât give a f$%k about anything. The harder you push, the harder they push back. New criminal opportunities emerge within the culture of violence and corruption the drug war produces and we haven't seen a fraction of the brutality that's in store for Mexican and American citizens if our governments insist on fighting this out in the streets.The concept is simple: the harder we try to win the drug war, the greater the crime and violence we must endure. There is no threshold to be crossed, no day of reckoning for the warlords we've nurtured and empowered by placing an infinite tax-free economy in their icy death grip.Just watch as violence against Americans leads to calls for more drug war funding, which in turn leads to more violence against Americans. The drug war itself is the coal that sustains this raging fire and anyone preferring to believe otherwise should probably just go ahead and turn off their TV.
The Real Reason SWAT Teams Kill Dogs and People
In the wake of the acquittal of the Lima, Ohio, SWAT team member who killed Tarika Wilson -- and with DC-area local Mayor Cheye Calvo pressing the issue of SWAT raids following the killing of his two dogs -- it bears reminding what the root cause was of both these horrible events and of many others -- a stupid, reckless, cowboy mentality, in which law enforcers who are supposed to be protecting us think it's fun and games until someone loses an eye (or a life). I've posted the following graphic before, but I'm posting it again, because it says it all. It appeared at the top of the Lima SWAT team's web page prior to the Wilson killing, before they took it down: Any questions?
Mayor Calvo Says Botched Drug Raids Are Commonplace
Radley Balko points out this remark from Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo, which I think ranks among the best commentary we've heard in the press following a botched raid:"The reality is that this happens all the time in this country and disproportionally in Prince Georges county and most of the people to whom it happens donât have the community support and the platform to speak out. So I appreciate you paying attention to our condition but I hope youâll also give attention to those who may not have the same platform and voice that we have." [CNN video via Rawstory]This was broadcast nationally on CNN, which clearly takes the paramilitary drug raid controversy to a level we haven't seen previously. Unfortunately, the rise of this issue from a frequent topic at drug policy and libertarian blogs to a full-blown national concern has followed the path many of us reluctantly predicted: something horrible had to happen to an appropriate spokesperson.We knew it was just matter of time, but I wasn't expecting it to come so soon. Maybe I should have. In the short-term, we can look forward to likely reforms in Prince George's County and hopefully even at the state-level in Maryland. But what this means in the long-term is that future incidents carry greater potential to be recognized by the press as part of a disturbing pattern. Too often, botched drug raids generate obligatory local media, while the larger issue goes unaddressed. Bloody fiascos are dismissed as isolated incidents only to be forgotten and eventually repeated.Let it therefore be understood now and remembered when the time comes that there is nothing isolated or unusual about innocent people and pets being shot during poorly executed drug raids. It happens all the time and this latest controversy should provide an ample imperative for those covering such incidents in the future to connect the appropriate dots.
TV Networks Refuse to Allow Discussion of Marijuana Laws
One of the few remaining tactics for effectively defending our marijuana laws is to prevent them from even being discussed:The TV program is titled "Marijuana: It's Time for a Conversation," but it's unlikely many viewers of network stations will be talking about it.Of the three local network stations, only one agreed to run the show, produced by the American Civil Liberties Union and hosted by travel writer Rick Steves. [Seattle Times]Ack, we mustn't expose anyone to the crazy ideas of Rick Steves! Wait, isn't he that really nice Lutheran guy who hosts a popular travel show on public television? So then why should we be terrified of him?Jim Clayton, vice president and general manager at KOMO, the ABC affiliate, refused to sell time. The show, he said, promoted marijuana use."The last I checked, it's illegal," Clayton said. "We don't use our public airways to promote illegal things."Um, pardon me sir, but we're actually trying to massively reduce illegal activity. I wouldnât have thought this to be intellectually challenging, but if we were to change our marijuana laws, then it wouldn't be illegal. See? This doesnât promote illegal activity. Marijuana laws create illegal activity and we'd like to discuss that. Of course, marijuana reformers are constantly accused of childishness. We are dismissed as self-interested hippies waiving the banner of personal freedom whenever it suits us, while refusing to engage in serious conversations about empirical data and sound public policy. Yet, what can be said about those who serve as gatekeepers in the marketplace of ideas and abuse their authority by arbitrarily blocking discussion of ideas they find objectionable?In truth, it is often opponents of the reform argument who act childishly, feigning irrational concerns that simply permitting debate will somehow aggravate the drug problem. Such behavior must be recognized for what it is: a great insult to the intelligence of the public.
Cartoon: Dogs as SWAT Team Target Practice
PolitickerMD sent us a copy of their latest editorial cartoon, about the killing of two dogs by a Prince Georges County, Maryland, SWAT team: Click here for the original article. By the way, the Lima, Ohio, SWAT team, whose officer was just acquitted for the killing of Tarika Wilson and the maiming of her infant child, killed two dogs too. They shot people on one floor and dogs (pit bulls) on another. To be fair, the guy they were targeting supposedly unleashed the pit bulls on the officers who came after him downstairs. But that's no excuse -- he was defending himself from invaders of unknown nature who as far as he could tell intended to kill him -- had they not sent in a SWAT team for this minor situation, none of it would have happened at all.
new member
Just found this site and am very interested to learn of the experience of other defense counsel in this area of the law. Looking forward to the wealth of information.
Dead at 22
When a 22 year old Surrey youth left a drug house with a supply of drugs he had no idea that his life was about to be taken from him for the crime of possession of said drugs.The RCMP,who had the hous