Personal Marijuana Use

We've been over this before, but as Marc Emery begins his journey through the American criminal justice system, I want to make sure everyone understands exactly why this is happening. It isn't because he sold lots of pot seeds and mailed them to customers in the United States. He did that, but it isn't what got him in trouble. Marc Emery was targeted for his marijuana reform advocacy and former DEA Administrator Karen Tandy even bragged about it:

"Today's arrest of Mark (sic) Scott Emery, publisher of Cannabis Culture magazine and the founder of a marijuana legalization group, is a significant blow not only to the marijuana trafficking trade in the U.S. and Canada, but also to the marijuana legalization movement."
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"Hundreds of thousands of dollars of Emery's illicit profits are known to have been channeled to marijuana legalization groups active in the United States and Canada. Drug legalization lobbyists now have one less pot of money to rely on." [Seattle Post-Intelligencer]

It's important to remember this and not get caught up on the fact that, ya know, Marc Emery sold massive amounts of marijuana seeds to Americans. This is absolutely not about selling seeds. As Paul Armentano helpfully points out, you can still order marijuana seeds from Canada. Easily.

All we've accomplished is carving out a bigger market share for Emery's competitors, so there really isn’t even any debate to be had about whether the substance of the specific criminal charges had anything to do with the decision to extradite him and keep him in an American prison for several years at the expense of U.S. taxpayers.

Today, Marc Emery's persecution provides nothing other than an ugly monument to the divisive drug war politics of the Bush era. This is the legacy that John Walters and Karen Tandy leave behind (remember it was Tandy who took down Tommy Chong as well) and it won't soon be possible for us to forget the infinitely vindictive and infantile behavior that characterized the bosses of Bush's drug war.

Yet, I truly believe that the attack on Marc Emery is symptomatic of the very same unhinged, frothing hysteria that has ultimately brought great shame on its authors and irrevocably reframed the drug war debate around the world. Bush's drug warriors destroyed their own credibility by constantly trying to get their names in the paper and, in the process, dealt a tremendous blow to everything they stood for. By the time Marc Emery is released from prison, this will probably be a lot more obvious to everyone than it is today.

Marc Emery is no longer a free man. Canada's Prince of Pot was taken into custody today. He turned himself in at the BC Supreme Court in Vancouver, and is now jailed in Vancouver awaiting imminent extradition to the US, where he is set to plead guilty to one count of marijuana distribution for selling pot seeds over the Internet. Emery is expected to be sentenced to five years in federal prison in the US for his seed sales. He sold millions of seeds in the decade prior to his 2005 arrest and became a leading hemispheric advocate for marijuana legalization, using the profits from his seed sales to fund reformers across the continent. He also called out then drug czar John Walters for lying about marijuana and interfering in Canadian domestic politics, leading then DEA head Karen Tandy to issue this press release lauding his arrest as a blow to the legalization movement:

Today's DEA arrest of Marc Scott Emery, publisher of Cannabis Culture Magazine, and the founder of a marijuana legalization group -- is a signficant blow not only to the marijuana trafficking trade in the U.S. and Canada, but also to the marijuana legalization movement. His marijuana trade and propagandist marijuana magazine have generated nearly $5 million a year in profits that bolstered his trafficking efforts, but those have gone up in smoke today. Emery and his organization had been designated as one of the Attorney General's most wanted international drug trafficking organizational targets -- one of only 46 in the world and the only one from Canada. Hundreds of thousands of dollars of Emery's illicit profits are known to have been channeled to marijuana legalization groups active in the United States and Canda. Drug legalization lobbyists now have one less pot of money to rely on.

Can you say politically motivated? I knew you could. One American attorney familiar with his case told me this weekend that Emery could have fought the prosecution and sought to have shown that it was unlawfully politically motivated, but that Emery and his Canadian legal team didn't want to take that risk. That's understandable, given that Emery was looking at decades or even life in prison if he lost. Now, America's legions of unknown marijuana martyrs are being joined by one very big name. Let's hope that Emery's unjust imprisonment turns a spotlight on the hideousness of a US federal legal system that turns a blind eye to torture but cages a man for selling pot seeds. The Vancouver Sun's Ian Mulgrew sums it up nicely in an op-ed piece entitled Marc Emery's Sentence Reeks of Injustice and Mocks Our Sovreignty:

After two decades as Canada's Prince of Pot, Marc Emery will surrender himself today in B.C. Supreme Court and become the country's first Marijuana Martyr. Emery will begin serving what could be as long as five years behind bars as Uncle Sam's prisoner for a crime that in Canada would have earned him at most a month in the local hoosegow. It is a legal tragedy that in my opinion marks the capitulation of our sovereignty and underscores the hypocrisy around cannabis. Emery hasn't even visited America but he was arrested in July 2005 at the request of a Republican administration that abhorred his politics. He is being handed over to a foreign government for an activity we are loath to prosecute because we don't think selling seeds is a major problem. There are at least a score of seed-sellers downtown and many, many more such retail outlets across the country. In the days ahead, once the federal justice minister signs the extradition papers, Emery will be frog-marched south to Seattle where his plea bargain will be rubber-stamped and he will be sent to a U.S. penitentiary. For comparison, consider that the B.C. Court of Appeal last year said a one-month jail sentence plus probation was appropriate punishment for drug and money-laundering offences of this ilk. The last time Emery was convicted in Canada of selling pot seeds, back in 1998, he was given a $2,000 fine.

There's more at the link above, but you get the gist. Mulgrew, of course, is right on the money. The Canadian government has shamefully failed to protect one of its citizens from the crazed drug war machine south of the border, and the US government is shamelessly imprisoning yet another non-violent pot person--this time mainly to shut him up. We should demand that Marc Emery and all other marijuana prisoners be immediately released. Short of that, we should, as Emery requests, demand that he be allowed to serve his time at home in a Canadian prison.

Police in Texas just made a remarkable discovery that could potentially turn the domestic marijuana industry upside down. Although a recent drug raid only turned up a single marijuana plant, officers determined that it is the most valuable marijuana ever reported. According to Sheriff Thomas Kerss, this type of marijuana has a street value of $6,000 per ounce!

That's some very impressive pot. According to the government's own data, collected by the National Drug Intelligence Center, high-grade marijuana prices top out at around $7,500 per pound in high-value markets. That's around $470 an ounce. Similarly, the marijuana magazine High Times estimates the average price of high-grade marijuana at $428 per ounce in August 2009.

As you can see, the marijuana just discovered in Texas is more than 12 times as valuable as anything currently on the market. Even the hippies at High Times have never heard of anything like this, but maybe that's because the police are doing such a good job keeping it off the streets.

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Or maybe the police lied about how much it's worth. After finding only one little pot plant in a big dramatic drug raid, they wildly inflated the value of their drug seizure in order to make newspaper headlines. It's happened before, although this is by far the most laughably outrageous marijuana price ever claimed by police in the three years I've been documenting this behavior.

At $6,000 an ounce, that would mean one little joint costs $200. A dimebag would be invisible to the naked eye. It just doesn’t make sense, which is why I refuse to believe it's an honest mistake when cops say stuff like this. Narcotics investigators buy drugs all the time so they can arrest people for selling to them. They know the market well and if their estimates come out all crazy, it's because they're trying to impress people with the fruits of their filthy labor.

But the stupidity doesn’t end there. Lying about the value of marijuana rather obviously encourages people to grow it. If these guys really gave a damn about "winning" the war on drugs, they wouldn’t be running around in the middle of an economic crisis telling people you can make thousands of dollars from a single marijuana plant. Nonsense like that could quickly blow up in your face.

Unless, of course, the people who get paid a good salary and benefits to bust marijuana growers actually want more people to do it. Say it ain't so.

Update: I just heard back from KRTE9 News and the online version of the story has been corrected to say $6,000 per pound, which makes a lot more sense. I'm told that "the DEA mistakenly told the sheriff 6,th an oz," which is pretty weird. That means multiple law enforcement agencies were involved in disseminating this number and no one noticed how absurd it was?

I'll take their word for it that someone just screwed up here, which is what a couple readers suggested to me as well. But please understand that this is hardly the first time I've encountered police claiming ridiculous marijuana prices that artificially inflated the value of their drug seizures. Whether it's done deliberately or not, this behavior serves to misinform the public and shouldn’t be tolerated.

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As a teenager I used to listen to Dr. Drew's Loveline radio show every night. I learned a lot about sex and drugs that I was better off hearing on the radio than finding out the hard way and I'll always be grateful for that. But I gotta say, I liked Dr. Drew a lot better when he was co-hosting with Adam Carolla, as opposed to the, um, drug czar.

This live web chat is so painfully boring and redundant you can guess where I found the link. But at least they had the guts to sort of vaguely pretend to respond to a marijuana legalization question:

shortpumppreppy: There is so much public buzz in favor of the legalization of marijuana, how can I keep my teens from being swayed?

Director Kerlikowske: I think that the biggest influence on young people is often the parents or the caregiver in the house. If they stress the risks and dangers of drugs, regardless of what the discussion in the media might be about marijuana being legalized, they will have more influence than what happens on a news report that night. The marijuana today has a very high content of THC, which is the psychoactive component in marijuana, and it can have very serious effects on adolescents. The research on this is very clear.

Dr. Drew: Once again the Director and I agree. Not only that, but addiction to cannabis is probably the most common one I deal with today. Make no mistake about it. In addition, I would urge parents to ask their children to move away from the idea that there are "good" drugs and "bad" drugs; let the legal process do that.

Let the what? Yeah, who needs doctors anyway when we can let lawyers tell us what drugs we need. I agree that it's dumb for parents to lump all drugs into one of two extreme categories. But it's even dumber when the government does that.

Maybe Dr. Drew is hinting at the idea that the harms of drugs are circumstantial rather than purely pharmacological, which would be a valid observation. If he'd actually said that, it would've been his most interesting and helpful contribution to the entire conversation. But it also would have confused the living hell out of the drug czar, whose appalling cluelessness about drugs is probably the reason Dr. Drew was brought in to begin with.

Nobody opposes marijuana legalization except more than those who personally profit from prohibition. That much is easy to understand. What's not so easily understood are the arguments they use:

[El Centro Police Chief] McGinley says if pot is legalized in California, it will be a devastating blow to a battle law enforcement has been fighting for years.
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McGinley says the move would turn back the clock, and take away all the time and effort law enforcement has spent educating people on the dangers of drugs. [KSWT 13 News]

Actually, that time and effort is already gone. And I love how he uses the term "educating" as a euphemism for smashing down doors, handcuffing people and taking them to jail.

Still, if you think about it, his argument really strikes at the heart of why law enforcement tends to instinctively oppose fixing our drug laws. They've been "educating" the hell out of everyone for decades and hurting an awful lot of people in the process. It would be supremely embarrassing if it suddenly became clear to everyone that legalization actually works a lot better.

UPDATE: Seven of the eight shops in the two towns are closed as of today. The eight remains open, but says it is selling only coffee. Six Dutch border town cannabis coffee shop owners seeking to block local authorities from shutting them down lost a court battle last Friday. A judge in Breda in the southern Netherlands ruled that the coffee shop owners had chosen the wrong judicial venue for their challenge of the ban. The coffee shop owners are challenging a decision by the mayors of Roosendaal and Bergen-op-Zoom, both near the Belgian border, to close all eight coffee shops in their communities in a bid to stop “drug tourism.” An estimated 25,000 foreigners pour into the two towns each week to take advantage of the Dutch policy that tolerates retail marijuana sales. They are blamed for causing problems ranging from public urination to traffic congestion to hard drug dealing. Under the ban, the coffee shops could stay open and serve alcohol, but could not sell marijuana. If they continued to sell marijuana, they could be punished with a five-year closure. The lawyer representing the coffee house owners, Harry Nieland, said Tuesday that his clients had not yet decided whether they would abide by the ban on marijuana sales or challenge it. The ban by the mayors comes as the Dutch government wrestles with how to reduce or eliminate the number of foreigners coming to Holland from more repressive neighboring countries to buy marijuana. Last week, a leaked letter from three Dutch ministers suggested the government would seek a “members only” policy for the coffee houses. Under European Union law, countries cannot discriminate by nationality, so the Dutch cannot ban foreigners from becoming coffee house members. But the Dutch government wants to subvert the law by requiring that marijuana be purchased only with credit cards issued by Dutch banks.

Remember a couple weeks ago when the U.S. Forest Service warned campers to watch out for people who drink Tecate, eat tortillas, and listen to Spanish music because they might be dangerous marijuana growers? Yeah, they're kinda backtracking on that one a little bit:

Denver, Colo., September 14, 2009 – On Sept. 2, U.S. Forest Service Rocky Mountain Regional Forester Rick Cables and members of his organization met with 17 Hispanic community leaders, representing a variety of Hispanic organizations in Colorado, to issue an apology for regrettable references used during an Aug. 26 briefing to news media concerning illegal marijuana cultivation activities on national forests in Colorado. [Dept. of Agriculture]

The Forest Service says they've "learned some valuable lessons from this experience," presumably including why you shouldn't try to scare the hell out of everyone with wildly racist public announcements. What they did was absolutely crazy. Apologies and regrets won't change the fact that they carelessly insulted millions of people in a deranged fit of drug war delirium.

No matter how many lies they tell, no matter how many lives they rip apart, the brave soldiers in the war on drugs wake up everyday in a country where marijuana is part of a healthy lifestyle for millions of responsible adults:

In 2002, 94.9 million Americans admitted having used marijuana at some point in their lives. In 2008, that figure had grown to 102.4 million. In percentage terms, that’s an increase from 40.4 percent in 2002 to 40.6 percent in 2008 – unchanged, statistically speaking. [MPP]

For all the insulting, outlandish, and just plain stupid propaganda that the drug czar's office has been shoving down our throats, nothing has changed. Nothing, that is, except public support for legalization, which continues to climb.

The drug czar hasn't said a word about the latest data on drug use rates, and it's fitting that the smartest strategic move to come from that office in a long time was the decision to just keep their mouths shut for once.

In a letter leaked to Dutch media, three key Dutch ministers wrote that the government wants to maintain the country’s famous cannabis coffee shop system, but that they should be “members only” so they will no longer attract foreign “drug tourists.” The ministers of justice, home affairs, and health wrote that reducing drug tourism and reducing the number of coffee shops would help reduce crime and public nuisances associated with them. Border town coffee shops in particular have been inundated with pot smokers from neighboring countries with more repressive policies, hordes of which have led to complaints of everything from traffic congestion to public urination to other drug dealing. The other criminality associated with the coffee shops comes from Holland’s half-baked policy of tolerance of retail cannabis sales and possession while continuing to prohibit the licit growing of cannabis to supply those shops. While the government was expected to issue a position paper on changing the coffee shop policy later this fall, Tuesday’s leaked letter provides a clear indication of where the government is heading: toward “members only” coffee shops. While discriminating by nationality within the European Union would violate EU law, it appears the Dutch government will try to bar foreigners by requiring a Dutch bank card to purchase cannabis. According to the letter, the ministers are also open to experimenting with allowing coffee shops to stock larger quantities of the herb. Currently, shops can keep only 500 grams on hand, resulting in a network of drug runners scurrying about Dutch cities and towns with fresh cannabis supplies.

Arizona’s law protecting religious freedom does not apply to a man convicted of smoking marijuana while driving, the state Supreme Court ruled Monday. The ruling came in Arizona v. Hardesty. In that case, Daniel Hardesty was arrested while driving in Yavapai County and charged with marijuana possession. At trial, he testified that he was a member of the Church of Cognizance, an Arizona-based religion that says it embraces neo-Zoroastrian tenets and uses marijuana for spiritual enlightenment. He argued that Arizona’s 1999 law limiting the state’s ability to "burden the exercise of religion" meant he could not be prosecuted because he was exercising his religious beliefs. The trial judge disagreed, and Hardesty was convicted. He appealed to the state Supreme Court, and has now lost there, too. In a unanimous opinion, the justices held that while the state religious freedom law mandates restrictions on religious practices only if it shows a compelling interest and that the restrictions must be the "least restrictive means of furthering that interest," the state does have a compelling interest in regulating marijuana use and Hardesty’s claim that the Church of Cognizance allows him to use marijuana anywhere or any time, including driving, made it clear that the "least restrictive means" was an outright ban on marijuana. Chief Justice Rebecca White Berch, who authored the opinion, made a distinction between federal laws that allow Native American Church members to use peyote without fear of prosecution under state law and the religious freedom claim made by Hardesty. There was an "obvious difference" between the two situations, Berch said. "Members of the Native American Church assert only the religious right to use peyote in limited sacramental rights. Hardesty asserts the right to use marijuana whenever he pleases, including while driving,'' she wrote. Monday’s ruling was the second defeat in as many years for the church. Last year, church founders Dan and Mary Quaintance were convicted of marijuana possession and conspiracy to distribute marijuana after being stopped with 172 pounds of pot in New Mexico. A federal judge in New Mexico rejected their religious freedom arguments. Dan Quaintance is currently serving a five year prison sentence, and Mary Quaintance is doing two to three years.