Personal Marijuana Use

As a child, my folks took me to see the magnificent trees in Sequoia National Park and I'll never forget it as long as I live. It's a precious ecosystem, housing the largest trees in the world as well as countless other unique plant-life not found anywhere else on earth. Not surprisingly, it's also a great place to grow marijuana and that could soon become its downfall:

In Sequoia National Park, $1 million has been spent since 2006 on marijuana plantation cleanup alone, and the damage done to Crystal Cave will be felt for years to come, said the park spokeswoman, Adrienne Freeman.

"We are continually discovering new species in that cave, and we are letting Mexican cartels threaten to wipe that out," she said. [CNN]

She's damn right we're letting them do it. We've surrendered the fate of irreplaceable national treasures to these drug traffickers, simply because we won't allow responsible Americans to produce their own marijuana on private property. The consequences of our failure are catastrophic, yet the solution is painfully simple.

It's really amazing to watch the police, the forest service, and the press just cringing and whining about this awful problem, without uttering a word about how we're going to save our forests from imminent destruction. They seriously don’t have a clue. You can read any of the dozens of recently published stories on this topic without seeing anyone even attempt to figure it out. Their only idea is to keep pulling up pot plants, as the growers plant ever more to ensure that some survive.

Fortunately, there exists one perfect solution to this problem. And it offers far more than the salvation of our precious wilderness. When we fix our marijuana laws, I guarantee you, we will solve problems we didn’t even know we had.

The panic over escalating outdoor marijuana cultivation just climbed about five notches on the absurdity scale. I feel bad for laughing because there's nothing funny about racial profiling or our failed marijuana policy, but it's just so ridiculous I can't help myself:

DENVER - A federal warning to beware of campers in national forests who eat tortillas, drink Tecate beer and play Spanish music because they could be armed marijuana growers is racial profiling, an advocate for Hispanic rights said Friday.

The warnings were issued Wednesday by the U.S. Forest Service, which is investigating how much marijuana is being illegally cultivated in Colorado's national forests following the recent discovery of more than 14,000 plants in Pike National Forest.

"That's discriminatory, and it puts Hispanic campers in danger," said Polly Baca, co-chairwoman of the Colorado Latino Forum. [AP]

No kidding. It also puts me in danger, being that it's only been a month since I last enjoyed tortillas and Mexican beer on a camping trip. The whole thing is so preposterous one scarcely knows where to begin:

Marvink Correa, spokesman for the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, said federal officials are painting an unfair stereotype of Hispanics.

"When I go camping, I'll be sure to play nothing but Bruce Springsteen," he said.

He's sort of joking, but this is a seriously messed up situation. The government can't go around telling everyone to watch out for folks who play Spanish music outdoors. That kind of hysteria has a tendency to get innocent people hurt. Campgrounds are already filled with paranoid drunken weirdos and they definitely don't need any encouragement to start flipping out on each other.

The whole stupid war on marijuana in this country started as an ill-conceived xenophobic attack on Mexican culture and it seems we've now come full-circle. This is a disaster and it wouldn’t be happening if our marijuana policy weren't such a mind-bending theater of idiocy and intolerance. If we don't want Mexicans – or anyone else – growing pot in our national parks, then the only solution is to let the American people grow their own marijuana on private property.

In a 2-1 decision last Friday, the Alberta Court of Appeals ruled that Calgary police violated Canadian privacy protections when they persuaded a utility company to attach a device to create a record of electricity usage in a home where they suspected marijuana was being grown. The case is Crown vs. Gomboc. Daniel James Gomboc was arrested and convicted of marijuana cultivation after Calgary police on another call noticed his home showed signs that a marijuana grow was taking place. After spotting suggestive evidence, Calgary police then went to the utility provider Enmax without a warrant and persuaded it to attach a digital recording amp-meter (DRA) to Gomboc's home. The meter monitored Gomboc's power usage for five days, and police used the results to obtain the search warrant that resulted in his arrest and subsequent conviction. Gomboc appealed his conviction, arguing that the warrantless use of the DRA violated his privacy rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Alberta appeals court agreed, overturning his conviction and ordering a new trial. That new trial will take place without any of the evidence seized under the search warrant based on the DRA information. "It has been famously said that 'the state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation,'" wrote Justice Peter Martin. "The actual prohibition is much broader: in our society, absent exigent circumstances, the state has no business in the homes of the nation without invitation or judicial authorization." Martin added that the expectation of privacy extends beyond the simple information-gathering on the timing and amount of electricity used to the behavior of utility companies. "It is also objectively reasonable to expect that the utility would not be co-opted by the police to gather additional information of interest only to police," wrote Martin. "Indeed, I expect that the reasonable, informed citizen would be gravely concerned, and would object to the state being allowed to use a utility to spy on a homeowner in this way." The decision could be a precedent that will lead to more reversals, Gomboc's attorney, Charlie Stewart, told the Calgary Herald. "It's interesting to think of all the people who have pleaded guilty or been convicted under these circumstances," said Stewart. "It's a question of the legitimacy of the search."

In a bid to stop the flow of tens of thousands of Belgian, French, and German marijuana consumers into Dutch border town cannabis coffee shops, the Dutch government announced this week that is investing 150,000 Euros ($213,000) in a pilot membership card program for coffee shop clients in Maastricht. The program was first proposed earlier this year by Maastricht Mayor Gerd Leers. The foreign marijuana consumers have caused various public safety and public nuisance problems, from congested automobile traffic to public urination and attracting street drug dealers. At least two other Limburg province border towns, Roosendaal and Bergen op Zoom, have responded to the problem by saying they will close down all their coffee shops. Under the membership card scheme, only card-carrying coffee shop members could purchase cannabis, and purchased would be limited to three or five grams a day. Such a move would presumably deflate the number of "impulse" drug tourists. There are about 700 cannabis coffee shops in Holland. While the Dutch federal government is hostile toward them, it has committed not to act against them before the 2010 elections. That leaves efforts to reduce their numbers or otherwise restrict them in the hands of local officials. The federal government is also spending about $7 million for various local councils to address various problems associated with coffee shops, where users can purchase up to five grams of cannabis without fear of arrest. Ministers want to reduce the number of large coffee shops and reduce the involvement of organized crime. But that latter problem is largely an artifact of Holland's half-baked approach to marijuana. While the Dutch allow the possession and sale of small amounts of cannabis through the coffee shop system, they have made no provision for a regulated supply of cannabis for the coffee shops, leaving it to the black market.

Each August, like clockwork, you can expect to see announcements like this one about the success of this year's marijuana eradication efforts:

According to the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting, a multiagency task force managed by the state’s Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement, this year is already one for the record books. In more than 425 raids since late June, some 3.4 million plants have been seized, up from 2.9 million all of last year. And, officials note, they still have roughly a month and a half before the campaign expires with the end of harvest season. [NYT]

So, if more marijuana is seized each year, what does that mean? It means there's more marijuana every year. The harder you try to stop people from growing marijuana in the forest, the more marijuana they will plant. It's a very simple and predictable routine, such that one could easily republish last year's news coverage of this same phenomenon without changing a word and no one would know the difference.

The only variable in this equation is the finite acreage of our forests, which will eventually be destroyed under a policy that serves to increase rather than eliminate the practice of illicit outdoor marijuana cultivation.

Actually, come to think of it, there's a second variable here: our marijuana laws. If we changed them to allow personal marijuana growing on private property, then nobody would grow pot in virtually inaccessible patches of fragile wilderness. How many more harvest season eradication records will be set before that reality begins to sink in?

One of the most pernicious lies in the marijuana debate is that police aren't aggressively working to arrest people for small amounts of pot. They are. Although there are parts of the country where marijuana is a low priority for police, there are also places like New York City, where police have developed finely tuned mechanisms for arresting and convicting as many minor marijuana offenders as humanly possible.

What makes New York City's epic war on marijuana so remarkable is not just the staggering number of arrests (more than any other city on earth), but the despicable methods that are used to achieve that result. First, police must work their way around the fact that 1) possession of small amounts of marijuana is decriminalized in New York and 2) the 4th Amendment forbids searching people against their will without evidence of a crime.

Basically, the program consists of stopping large numbers of people (primarily young black and Hispanic men) for no reason and then saying this:

"We're going to have to search you. If you have anything illegal you should show it to us now. If we find something when we search you, you'll have to spend the night in jail. But if you show us what you have now, maybe we can just give you a ticket. And if it’s nothing but a little weed, maybe we can let you go. So if you’ve got anything you’re not supposed to have, take it out and show it now.”

When police say this, the young people usually take out their small amount of marijuana and hand it over. Their marijuana is now "open to public view." And that – having a bit of pot out and open to be seen – technically makes it a crime, a fingerprintable offense. And for cooperating with the police, the young people are handcuffed and jailed. [Alternet]

Amazingly, you're not actually guilty of a crime until you attempt to cooperate with police. It is literally the act of showing them your stash that is a violation of the law and everything they say up until that point is designed to trick you into doing that. As is so often the case, policing in the war on drugs consists of tricking people into breaking the law so that the law can then be enforced.

Don't let anybody tell you we're not waging a war on marijuana users in America. That's exactly what we're doing and that's why marijuana policy reform has nothing do with people wanting to get high. This is about justice, human rights, and common sense. To jettison these principles because of marijuana is an act of unfathomable lunacy.

Opponents of marijuana reform often try to act like it's already no big deal. They say no one really gets in much trouble for it and it's not a top priority for police. It's a pretty desperate and counterintuitive strategy. It's also total bullshit:

(AP) — TIGARD, Ore. - The Tigard Police Department has ended a sex-for-marijuana Internet sting because officers posting the online ads posed as promiscuous women, not prostitutes.
…
The officers posting the Craigslist ads posed as women willing to a have casual sexual encounter with men who had marijuana. No cash was involved. When the men showed up for the encounter, they were charged with prostitution and delivery of drugs.

Defense attorneys say the program was entrapment.

Ya think? I couldn't ask for a better example of police taking advantage of people in order to put them in jail. The whole thing is perverted and I'm not talking about the people who responded to the ad.

This story should be posted on every police department bulletin board in the country with "DON'T DO STUFF LIKE THIS" scrawled across the top of the page. Remember before the drug war, when the police officer's job was to prevent bad things from happening to people? Now we've got cops who think the best use of their time (and our money) is to trick people into breaking the law and then ruining their lives.

When we talk about ending the drug war, it's not because we want more freedom to take drugs. It's because we want to take away any incentive our police have to do stupid and insane crap like this.

ABC News has one of those classic pot propaganda pieces that relies on anecdotal accounts to sound the alarm about marijuana addiction. We learn the sad stories of a couple people who smoked way too much pot for way too long and ended up unhappy. Meanwhile, buried within all of this is the one relevant statistic that puts it all in perspective:

About 40 percent of all Americans aged 12 and older -- about 94 million -- have tried marijuana at least once, according to a 2003 survey by the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA). Of those, about 3.6 million were daily users.

Overwhelmingly, people who try marijuana don't get "addicted" to it. They also don't go on to try harder drugs. They don’t get lung cancer, or psychosis, or any of the other horrible outcomes that are so commonly and shamelessly associated with America's most popular illegal drug.

Yet according to ABC News, marijuana is dangerously addictive, and worse still, it's the legalization movement's fault that people don't know how bad it is:

Since the 1970s, when marijuana was the symbol of political protest, the risks of marijuana dependency have been clouded by the legalization debate and long-held beliefs that the illicit drug is harmless.

Nonsense. The reason so many people think marijuana is safe is because they've tried it and it was safe.

Update: If you'd like to read some more about this ABC News story and why it's bad, then this post is for you.

Dr. Jocelyn Elders ignited a firestorm when she proposed studying the merits of drug legalization while serving as Surgeon General under President Clinton. It was a bold move back then and she's still eager to speak out in favor of reform:

You’re also a vocal proponent of medical marijuana. Why?

I have been speaking out about it for a long time. I’m a member of the board of advisors of a medical marijuana group. To me, it’s not nearly as toxic for our bodies as tobacco or alcohol. It should be legalized. As far as we know, it doesn’t cause lung cancer, it doesn’t cause people to go out and drive drunk and commit crimes. If it helps reduce the nausea and vomiting and reduce leg cramps, make patients feel better, what’s wrong with that? We should make it available to people who need it. I feel if people want marijuana, they could get a prescription. Then we can tax it and know who is getting it. I don’t think it is a drug that is doing harm to this country. By arresting people, putting them in jail for crimes related to marijuana, we’re spending millions on drug enforcement and it causes more problems. Young people are convicted of a crime, they can’t get money to go to school, we have over 2 million prisoners and many related to drug use—it is a vicious cycle and one we created. [New America Media]

She gets it. In fact, she got it a long time ago.

Russ Belville shares the fascinating story of some "higher ups" at CBS pulling the plug on a NORML radio show that was about to go on the air. The whole thing is magnificently absurd considering that CBS owns Showtime, home of the hit series Weeds.

If CBS has a problem with marijuana, then they really shouldn’t be out there making money by sensationalizing it. Boy, it would really suck for CBS if word got out among Weeds viewers that the show's corporate owners have some kind of problem with debating marijuana laws.