Personal Marijuana Use

I try really hard to avoid name-calling on this blog, but the morons at MPAA just broke my streak:

When it comes to the MPAA, Universal is finding that things aren't simple.

The group's Classification and Ratings Appeals Board on Wednesday denied the studio's appeal of an R rating for its new Nancy Meyers romantic comedy "It's Complicated," throwing a potential marketing hurdle in the film's path.

The MPAA's ruling cited "some drug content and sexuality" for the film about a love triangle among upper-middle-class suburbanites. Those familiar with the board hearing said the inclusion of a scene featuring "pot-smoking with no bad consequences" was key to the decision. [LA Times]

So what do they want to see? Meryl Streep's hair catching fire? Steve Martin choking on a taco? Maybe the reason nothing bad happened to the pot-smoking characters in the movie is because bad things almost never happen to people who smoke pot (except getting arrested or otherwise stigmatized by self-righteous nutjobs like the MPAA).

Seriously, you can show these people 90 minutes of machine-gun fire and they'll give you a PG-13 any day of the week as long as the people killing each other don't get naked or use excessively foul language. Fortunately, MPAA's panic at the site of a little recreational marijuana use is so wildly out of proportion that it's generating an incredulous response from the press. Indeed, the story wouldn’t even be in the news if it weren't widely regarded as transparently stupid and crazy.

I think 2009 will likely go down as the year when it finally became impossible to vilify casual marijuana use without getting laughed at by almost everyone.

Anyone can dream up dumb reasons for keeping marijuana illegal, but it takes guts to equate pot prohibition with the survival of Western civilization. Mary Grabar at Pajamas Media shows us how it's done:

The sanction for alcohol use has lasted for millennia. It has become part of our rituals at meals, celebrations, and religious services. That is a large part of why Prohibition failed.

Marijuana, in contrast, has always been counter-cultural in the West. Every toke symbolizes a thumb in the eye of Western values. So it follows that in order to maintain our culture, we need to criminalize this drug.

The prohibition against marijuana is one brick in the foundation of our society.

You know, marijuana has only been illegal for 72 years. This isn’t a brick in the foundation of anything. Marijuana's prohibition was born out of absurd racist demagoguery, and the counter-culture that subsequently emerged was a symptom of prohibition, not a justification for it.

Ironically, Garbar is trying to fan the flames of what she sees as a massive culture war over marijuana, yet as the comments indicate, she can't even get her own conservative readership to buy into it.

No matter how you frame it, most people still struggle with the concept that marijuana laws are enforced unfairly. I don't see what's so complicated about this:

Even though surveys show they are part of the demographic group that makes the heaviest use of pot, white people in New York are the least likely to be arrested for it.

Last year, black New Yorkers were seven times more likely than whites to be arrested for marijuana possession and no more serious crime. Latinos were four times more likely. [NYT]

You can't explain away a gaping disparity like that. This is not just a matter of cultural differences in marijuana using behavior. White people smoke herb in the streets of New York, too. There is no bigger factor at play here than the discretionary choices police make about who to approach and investigate. It really is that simple and that unfair.

But just because it's racist doesn’t mean it's bad, says the city:

Mr. Bloomberg’s chief criminal justice aide, John Feinblatt, declined to discuss the city’s approach to marijuana arrests, or the findings of the study. But through a spokesman, he issued a statement maintaining the pot arrests have helped drive down violent crime.

Even if I believed that stopping a million people a year in the streets of New York is necessary to drive down violent crime, that still doesn’t mean you have to arrest them when marijuana is discovered. None of this even begins to make any sense, and it comes as no surprise that city officials are loathe to attempt an explanation for it.

If you want to reduce violent crime, try legalizing marijuana so there's one less thing to fight over.

The Czech cabinet Monday approved a Justice Ministry proposal that sets personal use quantity limits for illicit drugs under a penal code revision that decriminalizes drug possession in the Czech Republic. The law and its quantity limits will take effect on January 1. The Czech government had approved the decriminalization law late last year, but failed to set precise quantities covered by it, instead leaving it to police and prosecutors to determine what constituted a “larger than small” amount of drugs. The resulting confusion--and the prosecution of some small-scale marijuana growers as drug traffickers--led the government to adopt more precise criteria. Under the new law, possession of less than the following amounts of illicit drugs will not be a criminal offense: Marijuana 15 grams (or five plants) Hashish 5 grams Magic mushrooms 40 pieces Peyote 5 plants LSD 5 tablets Ecstasy 4 tablets Amphetamine 2 grams Methamphetamine 2 grams Heroin 1.5 grams Coca 5 plants Cocaine 1 gram Possession of “larger than a small amount” of marijuana can result in a jail sentence of up to one year. For other illicit drugs, the sentence is two years. Trafficking offenses carry stiffer sentences. Justice Minister Daniela Kovarova said that the ministry had originally proposed decriminalizing the possession of up to two grams of hard drugs, but decided that limits being imposed by courts this year were appropriate. "The government finally decided that it would stick to the current court practice and drafted a table based on these limits," Kovarova said. The Czech Republic now joins Portugal as a European country that has decriminalized drug possession.

I just can't possibly tell you emphatically enough, if you're approached by police, DO NOT ATTEMPT TO EAT YOUR STASH:



It's just chilling to watch this young man struggle for his life. The tasing certainly didn’t help either, but I'm not ready to join the ranks of commenters I've seen around the web who are calling this a murder. From what I can see, the officers did as they were trained and it's just a shame that police are now encouraged to zap anyone who struggles with them. It's unclear to me whether the tasing contributed to the choking and/or whether some of Grande's resistance was caused by his inability to breathe.

What is clear as day, however, is that Andrew Grande would still be alive today if it weren't a crime to possess marijuana. As long as police continue to arrest and criminally charge marijuana users, there will be no end to tragedies like this one. It may be easy for some to blame Grande's panic-induced actions for his death, but that's only half the story. If fear of our drug laws leads people to take such risks, then there is something wrong with our drug laws.

The leaders of the war on drugs are constantly claiming that they are only trying to help people like Andrew Grande. The drug czar upon taking office exclaimed, "we're not at war with people in this country," and he might even genuinely believe that to be true. But such assurances are worthless as long as people are so intimidated that they'd sooner risk choking to death than receive the sort of "help" our drug policy is known for.

An Alternet story about the DEA's continuing failure to update their website in accordance with the AMA's new position on medical marijuana seems to have gotten results. DEA made another update here, noting the new position and replacing bad info.   

Also at Alternet, 10 Signs the Failed Drug War Is Finally Ending by Tony Newman. This has been an incredible year for drug policy reform and Tony's piece was published before this week's incredible news on Capitol Hill.

An outrageous medical marijuana prosecution in New Jersey. It's really time to get this legislation passed.

A new poll finds 53% support for legalizing marijuana. Other interesting stuff in there too.

The worst anti-marijuana editorial I've seen in awhile. The dude even mixes up North and South Korea.

Drug war robots! I've been warning about this for years now. It's just a matter of time before the cartels build robots too (if they haven't already). 

And finally, Prisoner dupes guards, grows pot in cell. Seriously. He told them it was tomatoes. And he only got busted because another inmate ratted him out. Although I suppose it would have caught up with him eventually, because at some point the guards might notice that he doesn’t ever seem to have any tomatoes.

Beginning January 1, possession of up to 15 grams of marijuana or up to five marijuana plants will not be a punishable offense in the Czech Republic. Likewise, people will be able to possess up to 40 hallucinogenic mushrooms. The limits were announced Tuesday after they were decided on by the cabinet. Late last year, the Czech parliament approved a new penal code that specified no punishment for the possession of “small amounts” of drugs. But the code did not specify just what constituted a “small amount,” with the result that police sometimes charged people, especially home pot growers with more serious offenses. The task of formalizing those limits has been taken up by the Justice Ministry, which submits its proposals to the cabinet. The ministry has also proposed setting the “small amount” limits for ecstasy at four tablets and for hashish at five grams. Similarly, people could possess up to two grams of methamphetamine without fear of punishment. The cabinet will consider those proposals in two weeks. Possession of amounts greater than “small amounts,” but less than those assumed to indicate drug trafficking, will result of prison sentences of up to one year for marijuana and up to two years for other drugs. According to the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction‘s latest annual report, Czechs are among Europe’s leading pot smokers. Among young Czechs (age 16 to 34), 22% toke up at least once a year. The European average was 16%.

As the Dutch federal government ponders its next moves in its campaign against the country’s famous cannabis coffee shops, the mayor of Amsterdam is advising against a one-size-fits-all policy. The needs of major cities are different from those of border towns, and policy needs to reflect those differences, Mayor Job Cohen said. Cohen’s remarks came in a letter sent Friday to Interior Minister Guusje ter Horst. In it, Cohen argued that Amsterdam differs markedly from border towns, which are tightening up on coffee shops in the face of an influx of drug tourists from more repressive neighboring countries. Tourists in Amsterdam behave differently than the border town shoppers, he said. "Tourists in Amsterdam usually visit the capital for several days and, in addition to many other activities, sometimes also go to a coffee shop," Cohen wrote. Cohen also staked out a position against requiring membership to be able to buy marijuana at a coffee shop. That has been a proposal floated by the national government. And Cohen rejected as ineffective a ban on coffee shops with 250 yards of schools. Underage age youth are already barred from entering coffee shops, he noted, adding that most teens usually have third parties procure their drugs for them.

The Tax and Regulate Cannabis 2010 initiative, sponsored by Oakland medical marijuana entrepreneur Richard Lee, has laid off its paid signature gatherers, saying they already have sufficient signatures to qualify for the November 2010 ballot. Lee told the Chronicle this afternoon that more than 650,000 signatures have been turned in, and that he expects an additional 50,000 or so to dribble in in the coming weeks. Precisely 433,971 valid signatures of registered California voters are required for an initiative to be approved for the ballot. That leaves Lee and the initiative a substantial cushion of about a quarter-million signatures to make up for any invalid signatures. The campaign will wait to turn in signatures until January 15. If they were turned in this month, the initiative would appear on the June ballot, not the November ballot. Lee wants the initiative on the latter. Lee's initiative, which would allow individuals up to 25 square feet to grow their own and would allow counties and municipalities to opt to tax and regulate marijuana sales on a local basis, is controversial. Some national figures believe it is premature and risks going down in flames at the polls, thus setting the movement back, while some California activists believe it does not go far enough and does not entice voters with potential revenues for the crisis-ridden state budget. But it will be on the November 2010 ballot, provided the signatures are certified by election officials in February. It may not be the only legalization initiative on the ballot. At least two other signature-gathering campaigns for competing initiatives are under way.

Miami Herald has the story of a pot deal that went horribly wrong:

An argument over marijuana inside a Hialeah apartment Tuesday left one man dead, one wounded and a third under arrest, police said.

Really awful stuff. One guy thought he was gonna get robbed, pulled a gun and everything went crazy from there. You couldn't possibly keep track of how often things like this are happening.

And I can just picture the anti-drug crowd crowing, "and you want to legalize this stuff?" You're damn right we do. We want to decide who sells and where they'll be located. We can keep this business out of apartment buildings filled with children and put it in a safe place instead. Until that happens, you can never know when or where the next violent tragedy will occur. Currently, it's being sold in all the wrong places by all the wrong people. We can fix that. Easily.

Fortunately, the folks at The Miami Herald seem to be on the right track here. Right next to the story is a poll asking "Do you think legalizing marijuana would reduce crime?" So far 75% say yes, and maybe you guys can help bring that number up even higher. It's a good sign that the press is beginning to make that connection. There's no better time to discuss legalization than when lives are lost over a bag of marijuana.