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Canada's Greens push for legal pot
Federal Green Party deputy leader Adriane Carr is recommending the legalization of marijuana and making drugs a medical issue; the first party to do so since the liberals chickened out on decriminalization.
Pot linked to bad teeth
I tried in vain to get the story from the paper, but try to call up Yesterday's news. This is junk science at it's best. Reports from Toronto have found that pot smokers that use at least once a week are more than three times as likely to get periodontal disease.
80% of Drug Policy Experts Oppose the Drug War
What happens when a diverse group of drug policy experts from throughout North America convene to discuss solutions to the world drug problem? They begin by agreeing that the drug war must end.Beyond 2008 is a worldwide forum sponsored by the United Nations to solicit expert testimony evaluating the UN's international drug strategy. The north American conference, which just concluded in Vancouver, brought together an impressive coalition of AIDS organizations, public health groups, human rights advocates, treatment specialists, former police officers, substance abuse researchers, academics, government officials, and others.Perhaps unintentionally, the UN had created an unprecedented opportunity for a broad coalition of interested parties to articulate their consensus that the time for drug policy reform has come. As long as the U.S-style "war on drugs" continues, criminals will control what drugs are sold, how much they cost, how deadly those drugs are, and how young their customers will be.That was the message delivered yesterday by Jack Cole, a retired New Jersey police officer who spent 26 years making arrests in connection with "billions of dollars in cocaine and heroin" as well as other drugs. [The Province]Surprised to find themselves outnumbered and outclassed, the drug warriors in attendance struggled to retain their composure. Some failed:Cole's message at the conference drew criticism from Dr. Kevin Sabet, a former speechwriter for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, who is now with Project: Sundial (Supporting United Nations Drug Initiatives and Legislation).Sabet criticized the Vancouver forum for being made up "80 per cent" by "people who all agree with each other." The observation that the experts are lined up against him is easily the most accurate claim ever made by this former speechwriter for the Drug Czar. It is typical of the authoritarian drug warrior mindset to conclude that this overwhelming consensus undermines the event's credibility rather than his own. But this was no hempfest. This was a UN forum featuring respected experts with vast experience and impressive credentials. Their motives could not be impugned. Their agenda could not have been more transparent. They are the voices of everything that is true and real in the drug war debate and their consensus is a force that cannot be dismissed with the flippant pothead jokes and statistical shell-games we've come to expect from the likes of Kevin Sabet.The drug policy reform consensus is a value statement reached through contemplation not naivety, compassion not selfishness, research not rhetoric, and hope not surrender. That our arguments are increasingly visible in any serious drug policy discussion is no coincidence or conspiracy. We'll fill every room, large or small, until peace is restored and this terrible war is banished into the bowels of history where it belongs.Update: Kevin Sabet disagrees substantially with what I've written. His response is available here.
United Nations Listens to the Drug Advocacy movement
Today I listened as a coalition of advocates and a few naysayers made their case to a UN representative at the Wosk Center for Dialogue at the downtown SFU campus.This morning the Province newspaper headline read: "War on Drugs a Dismal Failure." Evidently, the message was coming through loud and clear.
You Can Go to Jail For 27 Years For Selling Marijuana
Famed NY Giants kicker Lawrence Tynes won't get to celebrate his Super Bowl victory with his brother. As The New York Times reports, Mark Tynes is serving 27 years in prison for selling pot."I'm not embarrassed about it," Lawrence Tynes said. "Everyone has skeletons in the closet or whatever. You could go in that locker room and find 50 other stories probably similar to mine. Heâs my brother. I love him. He made some bad choices. Rightfully so, he should be punished. But the extent of the punishment, to me, is ridiculous."So how do you catch 27 years for a marijuana crime? Prior convictions don't help, but it seems that refusing to rat out other people was the biggest factor here:But Mark Tynes had a record, including felony convictions for possession. And he "paid a heavy penalty for refusing to cooperate," a managing assistant United States attorney told The Pensacola (Fla.) News Journal after sentencing. The others cooperated fully. They became government witnesses. Lawrence Tynes watched as each testified against his brother.And as tragic as it is to think that selling a relatively harmless substance like marijuana can land someone in prison for decades, consider also that Tynes story never would have been told had his brother not kicked the field goal that put the Giants in the Super Bowl. Whether they are sitting behind bars or merely sitting around after losing aid for college, the victims of America's brutal war on marijuana typically suffer in silence, injured and marginalized by laws far more potent and destructive than the drug they prohibit.
A Cop is Dead Because An Informant Mistook Japanese Maple Trees For Marijuana
This is one of those stories that is simultaneously so unbelievable and yet nauseatingly familiar that you just know our deeply flawed drug laws are behind it.Ryan Frederick is an amateur gardener who grows tomatoes and Japanese maple trees, which look like marijuana. An informant told police there was pot growing at the residence and a warrant was issued. Frederick, who had been burglarized earlier in the week, mistook the police for thieves and sought to defend his home by firing on the unexpected intruders. Police officer Jarrod Shivers was killed.Now, as we learned in the strikingly similar case of Cory Maye, law-enforcement does not take kindly to people defending their homes during mistaken drug raids. Ryan Frederick has been charged with first-degree murder on the theory that he knew the intruders were police and fired on them anyway.Frederick had no criminal record and no marijuana plants. The informant was just wrong. Although a few joints were found in the home, it just doesnât make much sense to contend that Frederick would provoke a shoot-out with police over a misdemeanor. Nonetheless, he's being prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and can only hope the jury understands the horrible situation he's been placed in.This is still a developing story, but at this point it seems pretty clear that the only reason this raid ever happened is that some idiot mistook Japanese Maple trees for marijuana. That's all it took. There are no safeguards built into the drug war to prevent this type of thing. If you call in a suspected marijuana grow, you are assumed to be a botanist capable of accurately identifying plants. Police will even risk their lives to investigate your idiotic claims.Prosecuting Ryan Frederick for murder will do nothing to curb the inevitable result of continuing to raid homes based on informant testimony. This is all just one more injustice stacked atop a precarious edifice. Like Cory Maye, Ryan Frederick is lucky to even be alive, which begs the question of how many dead innocent people would have been unfairly charged with attempted cop-murder if they'd been fortunate enough to even survive the raid.Much more at The Agitator and DrugWarRant.
Heading Down Mexico Way
On Friday, once this week's Chronicle has been put to bed, I hop in the pick-up and head for Mexico for a month or so of on-the-scene reporting on the drug war south of the border. If all goes according to plan, I'll be spending a week in Nuevo Laredo, Reynosa, and Matamoros, the major Rio Grande Valley border towns on the Mexican side, where the Mexican government sent in the army a couple of weeks ago. After that, it's a week in Mexico City to talk to politicians, marijuana activists, academics, drug treatment workers, and others in the Mexican capital. Then, I'll head to the beaches of Oaxaca for a weekend, then up the Pacific Coast, stopping in the mountains above Acapulco to talk to poppy farmers, human rights observers, and whoever else I can find. A few hundred miles further north, in Sinaloa, I'll be trying to make contact with pot farmers, as well as seeing what the impact of the Sinaloa Cartel is on the ground in its home state. I will also, of course, be making a pilgrimage to the shrine of San Juan Malverde, patron saint of drug traffickers, on the outskirts of Culicacan. And then it's back toward Gringolandia, with a few days on the Tijuana side of the border, provided I have any money left by then. In the meantime, I'd like to share with you something that appeared last week but that got little attention. It's an analysis of drug situation in Mexico from Austin-based Strategic Forecasting, Inc, and it's pretty grim. Titled The Geopolitics of Dope, the analysis is a steadfastly realistic look at what drug warrior can hope to accomplish fighting the cartels. You should read the whole thing--it's very, very chewy--but here are the last few paragraphs: The cartelâs supply chain is embedded in the huge legal bilateral trade between the United States and Mexico. Remember that Mexico exports $198 billion to the United States and â according to the Mexican Economy Ministry â $1.6 billion to Japan and $1.7 billion to China, its next biggest markets. Mexico is just behind Canada as a U.S. trading partner and is a huge market running both ways. Disrupting the drug trade cannot be done without disrupting this other trade. With that much trade going on, you are not going to find the drugs. It isnât going to happen. Police action, or action within each countryâs legal procedures and protections, will not succeed. The cartelsâ ability to evade, corrupt and absorb the losses is simply too great. Another solution is to allow easy access to the drug market for other producers, flooding the market, reducing the cost and eliminating the economic incentive and technical advantage of the cartel. That would mean legalizing drugs. That is simply not going to happen in the United States. It is a political impossibility. This leaves the option of treating the issue as a military rather than police action. That would mean attacking the cartels as if they were a military force rather than a criminal group. It would mean that procedural rules would not be in place, and that the cartels would be treated as an enemy army. Leaving aside the complexities of U.S.-Mexican relations, cartels flourish by being hard to distinguish from the general population. This strategy not only would turn the cartels into a guerrilla force, it would treat northern Mexico as hostile occupied territory. Donât even think of that possibility, absent a draft under which college-age Americans from upper-middle-class families would be sent to patrol Mexico â and be killed and wounded. The United States does not need a Gaza Strip on its southern border, so this wonât happen. The current efforts by the Mexican government might impede the various gangs, but they wonât break the cartel system. The supply chain along the border is simply too diffuse and too plastic. It shifts too easily under pressure. The border canât be sealed, and the level of economic activity shields smuggling too well. Farmers in Mexico canât be persuaded to stop growing illegal drugs for the same reason that Bolivians and Afghans canât. Market demand is too high and alternatives too bleak. The Mexican supply chain is too robust â and too profitable â to break easily. The likely course is a multigenerational pattern of instability along the border. More important, there will be a substantial transfer of wealth from the United States to Mexico in return for an intrinsically low-cost consumable product â drugs. This will be one of the sources of capital that will build the Mexican economy, which today is 14th largest in the world. The accumulation of drug money is and will continue finding its way into the Mexican economy, creating a pool of investment capital. The children and grandchildren of the Zetas will be running banks, running for president, building art museums and telling amusing anecdotes about how grandpa made his money running blow into Nuevo Laredo. It will also destabilize the U.S. Southwest while grandpa makes his pile. As is frequently the case, it is a problem for which there are no good solutions, or for which the solution is one without real support. This is the situation the Bush administration wants to throw $1.4 billion at in the next couple of years. Maybe it and Congress should be reading Strategic Forecasting analyses, too.
the methadone quandry
I'm sure most are familiar with my low opinion of the use of methadone maintenance. I fully agree that methadone is effective and useful in many areas but if the plan is to maintain a person on a narcotic, why would you use methadone? Heroin is a far more benign and user friendly drug and it gives its user what they want.
How many drug dealers does it take to supply a 10,000-person community? Or, is Twiggs County, Georgia, the latest Tulia?
Pete Guither over at Drug WarRant has spotted a report on what looks to be a suspiciously large number of drug busts -- 17, with 11 more warrants pending, all following a six-month undercover investigation -- in the sparsely populated Twiggs County in Georgia. Twiggs has 10,184 residents, at latest count -- the largest city, Jeffersonville, boasts a mere 1,028 residents. The county is so small, in terms of its population, that there is exactly one auto repair shop. Which raises the question, can a county that small really support 28 drug dealers? The same question came up in the Tulia scandal, where about 46 people, almost all of them black, were convicted and imprisoned for drug dealing based on the testimony of a rogue cop, who as it turns out had made it all up. Many of the names listed in the indictment have an African American sound to them. Comments from local officials also raise questions about the operation's timing. In issue #520 of the Chronicle, we reported that Congress had substantially cut funding for the federal grant programs that support these kinds of task forces and that law enforcement organizations were engaged in a massive lobbying/media campaign to try to get the funding back. Twiggs police clearly had that situation in mind when they spoke with the press: Officials, however, are concerned about the future of such major operations. Special agent Martin Zon of the GBI's state drug task force said federal funding for the task force has been cut by nearly 70 percent in the newest budget. Once it takes effect in July, the budget cuts could hamper law enforcement efforts in the drug war. "We've been a recipient of these funds for many years, and in December we learned that these grants would be cut drastically," Zon said. "Our budget was cut by 70 percent, which cuts our ability to fulfill requests from places like Twiggs." Mitchum said he's also concerned that he may not have certain state resources to call upon in the future. "The task force is a big help to departments our size," he said. "We use their equipment, their personnel, their expertise. We wouldn't want to see their funding cut. It's really important they keep it." If it is a case of law enforcement busting people as taxpayer-funded lobbying for funding, it would be nothing new -- Pete pointed out such a case in Kentucky last year, and I noted a 2006 press release from the California Attorney General's office that directly admitted it, in a previous blog post on that topic. There are other examples, too.
NEEDS a Good Doctor A.S.A.P....
I have had chronic Pain for about 5 years now. I am a male only 38--but feel like 78--pretty much every day! My doctor has prescribed me M./S. Contin (a long acting pill that takes 4 hours to start working). So I have to set my alarm 4 hours before I have to get up so I can shower and shave etc...not a good life at all, robbing me of a lot of things I used to do and loved doing!!! The M.S. Contin DOES get to the point where it HAS to be increased to be affective again. But my doctor constantly makes excuses (NOT really valid ones) to keep me at my present dose...even though I have been on the SAME dose for 2 years now and it does NOT work nearly as well now! It seems that doctors here in Toronto, Ontario WILL provide pain relief...get you addicted to it...but NOT increase the dose...which HAS TO BE INCREASED, in order to STILL be able to enjoy LIFE like you/I had been doing before the Pain. Does ANYONE know of ANY doctor in Toronto that would and will understand the NEED to increase (ONLY when needed and/or signs showing the need for an increase in the dose itself). I have a great managerial position and LOVE my job....but when the Pain is present it takes away my need to be able to work efficiently, and it shows. Also--one of the worst--NOT being able to say * Yes or No * to invites, for the next day, or ANY day, because you do NOT know what the Pain will be like. Please...if anyone knows of an understanding doctor in Toronto...I WILL be forever grateful!!!
The Hinchey Amendment
Voting to preserve and protect state medical marijuana laws should be a no-brainer for our elected representatives. It amazes me that its even an issue. The Hinchey Amendment has been voted on every summer starting in 2003, and will likely be voted on again next summer, probably in July. Would you like to make a difference regarding this and other drug laws? Iâm the spokesman for a group of business owners, professionals, and individual voters building a grassroots movement to target federal, state and local lawmakers for the purpose of promoting medical, agricultural, industrial, environmental, economic and recreational marijuana policy reform and minimize the harm of laws prohibiting drug use. We solicit support such as memberships, donations, media exposure, visits to representatives offices, letters to representatives, phone calls to representatives and email to representatives. With your help weâll educate the public, political and financial supporters and our government representatives about the benefits of marijuana and other drug issues to initiate drug policy changes designed to remove
Media Overload
You may recall the piece I did over the phony baby drug smugglers at federal prisons story.Today the story, which began as a top of the line ion scan that showed some contact with speed, has now morphed into a seizure of drugs in a baby's diaper (never happened) to drugs seized and a baby in peril from drug addicted and uncaring parents.
CAKE: Official Music Video of the Pain Relief Network...
"Stickshifts and Safety Belts" + "Love You Madly" See also: Verified Petition for Temporary Restraining Order (PDF) - PRN Sues Kan. State Med. Board to Protect Abandonded Patients
Nevermind, Barack Obama Wants to Arrest Marijuana Users After All
For one brief glorious moment, we thought Barack Obama supported marijuana decriminalization. He said so in 2004 and his campaign reiterated it yesterday, only to subsequently retreat and pledge support for current marijuana laws. At first, Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said that the candidate had "always" supported decriminalizing marijuana, suggesting his 2004 statement was correct. Then after the Times posted copies of the video on its Web site today, his campaign reversed course and declared he does not support eliminating criminal penalties for marijuana possession and use."If you're convicted of a crime, you should be punished, but that we are sending far too many first-time, non-violent drug users to prison for very long periods of time, and that we should rethink those laws," Vietor said. The spokesman blamed confusion over the meaning of decriminalization for the conflicting answers. [Washington Times]Indeed, as Pete Guither notes, no one is really sure what "decriminalization" actually means, which likely explains the Obama campaign's ultimate unwillingness to be associated with the term. And that tells you everything you need to know about why meaningful debate of our marijuana laws is continuously excluded from mainstream politics. Since the relevant vocabulary words have no universally accepted definition, candidates attempting to discuss marijuana would be forced to use entire sentences or even paragraphs to express their opinions. This is not something they will do voluntarily. Note, for example, that everything we know about the major candidates' drug policy positions has emerged as a result of someone explicitly asking them. The tortured evolution of Obama's views on marijuana occurred only because this information was demanded of him. First, Bill Maher forced Chris Dodd to discuss the issue, resulting in Dodd's endorsement of marijuana decrim. Then, Tim Russert asked other democratic contenders whether they disagreed with Dodd. The front-runners sheepishly raised their hands in opposition to even mild marijuana reform. Finally, when the Washington Times forced Obama to clarify his conflicting positions, Obama's campaign briefly endorsed reform before finally concluding that they opposed decrim even though they're still not sure what it is.The conventional wisdom among my colleagues seems to be that Obama "gets" the drug war issue. Everything he says and does can be attributed to his presidential aspirations, I'm told, and we should be grateful that he at least flirts with criminal justice reform. That's fine as far as it goes, but I continue to question the fundamental political wisdom of refusing to talk about marijuana. It's an issue people care about. It's an issue that gets headlines. And it's an issue that's been handled about as poorly as one could possibly imagine for a long long time.I believe that marijuana reform, properly and passionately framed by an eloquent and viable candidate, could prove to be far less toxic than the brilliant campaign strategists in Washington D.C. collectively assume. And it is nauseating to consider that this terrible war on marijuana users owes its survival as much to a flawed political calculus as to the actual beliefs and convictions of those who sustain it.
Barack Obama Comes Out in Favor of Marijuana Decriminalization [Updated]
For the first time since his presidential bid began, the Obama Campaign has clarified the Senator's position on marijuana: stop arresting people for it. The announcement comes as a bit of a surprise after Obama recently raised his hand in opposition to marijuana decrim at a recent democratic debate. Seeking to paint him as a flip-flopper, The Washington Times dug up footage of a 2004 appearance in which Obama said this:"I think we need to rethink and decriminalize our marijuana laws," Mr. Obama told an audience during a debate at Northwestern University in 2004. Obama's campaign is now standing by this earlier statement, claiming that the Senator has "always" supported marijuana decriminalization. This actually makes sense, because Obama's apparent opposition to decrim during the debate was triggered by a badly worded question from Tim Russert. As I said at the time, this all goes to show how a cheap soundbite approach to the marijuana discussion trivializes the issue and obscures any real difference of opinion.Fortunately, now that Obama's position has been made perfectly clear, we face the possibility of a full-on marijuana debate between front-running presidential candidates. It could begin as soon as this evening during Obama's long-anticipated one-on-one face off with Hillary Clinton. Absent that, an Obama nomination would guarantee republican attacks on the marijuana issue, inevitably sucking this discussion into the political mainstream where it belongs.Jacob Sullum argues correctly that decrim is a remarkably soft position by drug reform standards, but that fact will surely be lost on the blood-thirsty political attack machine that will be directed at Obama if he receives the democratic nomination. And I for one welcome every last nasty morsel of it, lest the debate over recreational marijuana use in America should be excluded entirely from presidential politics yet again. Weak as it may be, Obama's is the best position on the marijuana issue taken by a viable presidential candidate since Jimmy Carter.Update: Tragically, the Obama campaign has now reversed its position on decrim. Most of the above can be disregarded entirely.
Judge Judy is Insane
I watched the Judge Judy show today and she told one of her "early days" stories. I know she's proud of the fact that lawyers would move Heaven and Earth to appear in front of anyone else; that's OK. If you're a bitch and you're proud of it, so be it.
Berkeley City Council Tells DEA to Stay Out
Entire cities are revolting against the DEA's cruel attacks against medical marijuana: Berkeley City Council members unanimously approved a resolution last night to declare Berkeley a sanctuary for medicinal marijuana in the event of federal interference with dispensaries.The resolution, which was received with overwhelming support and applause from the audience, opposes attempts by the Drug Enforcement Administration to conduct raids on medical marijuana dispensaries in Berkeley, and urges city, county and state departments to not cooperate in the event that a raid occurs.By claiming itself as a sanctuary, Berkeley have committed to ensuring that residents are provided access to medicinal marijuana if dispensaries in the city are shut down. [Daily Californian]In the 10 years since Proposition 215 legalized medical marijuana in California, public support for patients has just continued to grow. While the Drug Czar and the DEA struggle to portray medical access as some sort of obscene disaster, the people actually living among medical marijuana patients and providers are saying the opposite and they're saying it loudly.Medical access to marijuana is good public policy. After 10 years, nothing could be more obvious.
Are Racist Cops Better Organized Than We Thought?
This is just chilling:INSIDE the locker of a narcotics cop, Philadelphia police officials recently made a shocking discovery: A cartoon of a man, half as an officer in uniform and half as a Klansman with the words: "Blue By Day - White By Night. White Power," according to police officials.â¦Schweizer, 33, joined the force in June 1997 and makes $54,794 a year, city payroll records show. He became part of the elite Narcotics Strike Force about six years ago. As an undercover, plainclothes cop who worked day and night shifts, Schweizer was part of a surveillance team that watched drug buys and locked up hundreds of suspected drug dealers. He frequently testified in court as a witness for prosecutors. [Philadelphia Daily News]Racial disparities abound in the war on drugs, but most analysis of the drug war's disparate impact focuses on institutional bias. Rarely are we confronted with such a disturbing window into the racist mindset of an individual officer. Such beliefs render one thoroughly unqualified to carry out law-enforcement duties in any capacity and raise serious questions about this officer's past actions.More troubling, however, is the possibility that Schweizer is just the tip of the iceberg. Is he a cartoonist? Did he draw the thing himself, or is there a larger organization that produces and markets police-themed racist merchandise to a clientele of closeted white supremacist police officers? I don't know the answer, but this poster sounds like a logo for something very creepy.Of course, this is just one anecdotal incident, but when such revelations occur within an institution with such a hideously rich tradition of racial bias, it certainly doesn't feel like a coincidence. It is an unflattering portrait of our criminal justice system that adherents to such ideology are able to assimilate within it. Indeed, had he merely possessed the wisdom to keep racist cartoons out if his locker, this officer would still be hard at work filling our prisons with young black and Hispanic drug offenders.
Eric Sage Fights Back
As part of a new Drug War Chronicle occasional series on victims of the war on drugs, we told the story of Eric Sage back in November. Now, there are new developments. On his way home to Nebraska after attending the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota last summer, Sage's motorcycle was pulled over by a highway patrolman. A pick-up truck accompanying also stopped, and when the patrolmen searched that vehicle, he found one of the passengers in possession of a pipe and a small amount of marijuana. Bizarrely, the patrolman charged not only the pick-up truck passengers but also Sage with possession of paraphernalia. Unlike most people arrested on drug charges--even bogus ones--Sage refused to roll over. That prompted local prosecutors to threaten to charge him with "internal possession," a crime (so far) only in South Dakota, and a charge even less supported by the evidence (there was none) than the original paraphernalia charge. After repeated multi-hundred mile trips back to South Dakota for scheduled court hearings, Sage's charges mysteriously evaporated, with prosecutors in Pennington County lamely explaining that they had decided the charge should have been filed in another county. Sage was a free man, but his freedom wasnât free. Sage says his encounter with South Dakota justice cost him thousands of dollars, lost work days, and considerable stress. Now, he is seeking redress. On Monday, Sage and South Dakota NORML announced that he had filed complaints with several South Dakota agencies and professional standards groups regarding the actions of the prosecutors, Pennington County (Rapid City) District Attorney Glenn Brenner and Assistant DA Gina Nelson, and the highway patrolman, Trooper Dave Trautman. Sage accuses Trautman of improperly charging everyone present at the incident with possession of paraphernalia. He also accuses Trautman of concocting an arrest report long after the fact to support the new charge of internal possession. Sage accuses Assistant DA Nelson and her boss of prosecuting a case they knew was bogus and of threatening to convict him of an offense where they knew he was not guilty because he refused to plead to the original paraphernalia charge. "They mugged me," Sage said. "They cost me $4000. I had to travel to Rapid City several times, I had to hire a lawyer, I missed work. It cost me three times as much to get them to drop a bogus charge as it would have cost me to say I was guilty of something I didn't do and pay their fines. They only quit when they ran out of clubs to hit me with." Prosecutors didn't even have the courtesy to let him or his local attorney know they had finally dropped the charges, Sage said. "My lawyer called Gina Nelson several times to see if I needed to drive up on Nov. 21," he said. "She wouldn't return the calls. So when I got there, I found the charges had been dropped on the 16th. Gina had purposefully made me drive one more 500 mile round trip, for nothing." Now, we'll see if the powers that be in South Dakota will bring the same dogged determination to seeing justice done in this case as they do to going after anybody who even looks like a small-time drug offender. You can read Sage's complaints to the South Dakota Department of Public Safety, the South Dakota Bar Association Disciplinary Committee, and the Pennington County Commission here.
What Do You Think About Medical Marijuana Vending Machines?
The introduction of medical marijuana vending machines is a curious development.I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, the machines are convenient for patients and provide 24 hour service, unlike traditional dispensaries. They could provide a useful fallback for a patient who accidentally runs their medicine through the laundry after hours. With onsite security to verify doctor recommendations and prevent theft, there seems to be little potential for abuse.Still, the specter of "drug-filled vending machines" has long been raised as a red herring by the prohibitionist peanut gallery. Though the machines only serve medicial marijuana to valid patients protected under California's Prop. 215, it's easy to imagine their mere existence being cited by our opponents as evidence of a "slippery slope" towards ubiquitous marijuana distribution under the banner of medical use.Whatcha think?