Personal Marijuana Use

Marijuana Charge From 25 Years Ago Prevents Man From Coaching Little League

There is just no limit to how stupid our society can become thanks to drug prohibition:

A Bourne, Mass., man with a decades-old marijuana-possession charge on his record was recently banned from coaching youth sports after the town started conducting criminal-background checks, the Cape Cod Times reported Sept. 4.

Gary Hapenny, 46, pled guilty to misdemeanor marijuana possession in 1982 and paid a $62 fine. But the town of Bourne bars anyone with a narcotics-related offense from using town facilities, lumping people like Hapenny in with murders, rapists, kidnappers, and child molesters. [Join Together]

Maybe this is Gary Hapenny's fault for trying to live a normal life in a town run by idiots. Unsurprisingly, it appears that his marijuana use 25 years ago hasnât affected his coaching ability today:

David Rondeau, the head coach of Hapenny's football team, said, "Gary's been coaching football with me for the last two years, and the parents and kids love himâ¦"

That's the drug war for you: shielding children from people they love based on arbitrary criteria born from irrational prejudices. Why take the time to judge someone based on their character when you can just run their name through a database?

The lesson here is that we must always use our brains when making policy. If you try to protect children without thinking, you'll end up hurting them. Rules must bear some relationship to their intended purpose, lest they should become an obstacle to the healthy functioning of our society.

This may seem a small matter when stacked against the drug war's daily transgressions. But it serves to illustrate how drug prohibition is so much worse than the sum of its parts. It consists of a million injustices, both large and small, that destroy vital relationships and collectively rot our culture. It is hard to imagine something more mindless and insane than banning a Little League coach over a misdemeanor pot arrest from 1982, but we needn't use our imaginations here. If nothing else, the drug war can be counted upon to deliver new calamities of escalating stupidity with each passing day.

The Hypocrisy of Marijuana Critics Who Take Money From Beer Companies

On one day, the Denver City Council can be found panicking over a marijuana initiative that "sends the wrong message":

City Council members each took turns bashing Citizens for a Safer Denverâs ballot initiative to make marijuana the cityâs lowest law enforcement priority. The City Council unanimously agreed that the measure either sends the wrong message to the community or will be unenforceable. Voters will decide on the measure this November. [Denver Daily News]

On another, it can be found renewing a sponsorship deal with Coors Brewing Company:

A group that is calling for the Denver Police Department to make marijuana its lowest enforcement priority yesterday called for the City Council to hold a public hearing concerning a bill that would renew the cityâs partnership with Coors Brewing Company.
â¦

âOnce and for all, the Council needs to explain why it is necessary to punish adults for using marijuana in order to send the right message to children, yet somehow itâs no problem to have our city officially partner with an alcohol company to promote alcohol use to all who attend these events, including children,â said Mason Tvert, executive director of Citizens for a Safer Denver.

Good question, Mason. City Council President Michael Hancock, a vehement marijuana opponent, explains:

"It's not that weâre promoting the alcohol as much as weâre promoting the lesser burden on the taxpayer by receiving financial resources."

Well, that just makes so much sense. Oddly, however, Hancock's own argument becomes unintelligible to him when framed in the context of marijuana. See, Michael, it's not that we're promoting marijuana as much as we're promoting the lesser burden on everyone by not waging a brutal stupid war on each other everyday.

The rank hypocrisy of opposition to marijuana reform is seldom revealed with such brilliant transparency. The defective mental processes at work here are truly a marvel of modern psychology.

Don't Smoke Pot in Your Car

Listen up hippies: smoking pot in your car is for jerks. Here's what will eventually happen to you if you insist on doing this:

An off-duty Sioux Falls police officer called other officers Thursday after he pulled up next to a car in which a man was smoking a marijuana pipe while driving, police spokesman Loren McManus said.
â¦

"As a matter of fact, (the pipe) was still warm when they found it," he said. [Argus-Leader]

Marijuana enthusiasts are fond of claiming that the drug doesn't actually impact your driving ability to any significant extent. I think it depends on your experience level, but literally getting high behind the wheel is just stupid no matter who you are. For one thing, the more comfortable you are with marijuana, the more you'll hate having to pee in a cup every 30 days for a year (or worse).

In my work with Flex Your Rights, I've heard so many horror stories about people getting arrested this way that I could never count them. For anyone who doesnât already know this, the smell of marijuana automatically gives police probable cause to search your vehicle. You will be arrested for anything and everything that might be in your car.

So, whether you're Willie Nelson or my friend Peter, just wait 'til you get where you're going (depending, of course, where that is).*

*This public service announcement has been brought to you by StopTheDrugWar.org, a division of the international conspiracy to legalize drugs.

David Murray Lies About Steve Kubby's Position on Medical Marijuana

Via DrugWarRant, here's a glimpse at the brilliant methods of ONDCP Chief Scientist David Murray.

First, recall Steve Kubby's brief imprisonment last year. Due to his unique medical condition, many people were concerned that Kubby might not survive being denied access to medical marijuana while in jail. He survived thanks to Marinol and said this about the experience:

"During that time I experienced excruciating pain, a vicious high blood-pressure crisis, passed blood in my urine and I lost 33 pounds. However, there was also good news. I learned that Marinol is an acceptable, if not ideal, substitute for whole cannabis in treating my otherwise fatal disease. Now I am a free man and I am profoundly grateful to be alive and to have friends and supporters such as you."

Testifying before Congress last week, David Murray then twisted Kubby's statement into a pretzel, casting it as a complete reversal of his position on medical marijuana in general:

Founding proponents of medical marijuana in the United States have reversed their key positions of support for medical marijuana. [...] Steve Kubby, another Co-founder of medical marijuana in California stated in a letter to supporters on April 14th, 2006 that "Marinol is an acceptable, if not ideal, substitute for whole cannabis in treating my otherwise fatal disease."

Steve Kubby was just glad to be alive. He lost 33 pounds. He was pissing blood. If that sounds like an endorsement of Marinol as an alternative to whole cannabis, your name must be David Murray. The guy gets caught lying every time he opens his mouth, but this is obscene and disgusting, even by Murray's rock-bottom standards.

It would serve the U.S. Congress well to understand that David Murray does things like this. His claim that Steve Kubby changed his position on medical marijuana is a perfect example of the boundless dishonestly of which he is capable, and in fact specializes in.

This is the typical behavior that can be expected from the very Serious, Scientific, and Responsible people at the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Don't bother asking why it is necessary for them to lie shamelessly about what Steve Kubby has said. They lie to our elected representatives only because they care about us. So we should be grateful that they are as good at lying as they are, lest we should be legally allowed to select medicines based on our experience rather than theirs.

Rudy Hates Pot Smokers (Especially Black and Brown Ones) More Than He Likes Effective Policing

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani has gotten a lot of criticism this week for his comments rejecting medical marijuana and suggesting that its advocates are actually stalking horses for marijuana legalization. But his antipathy for marijuana goes far beyond simply rejecting its therapeutic applications and opens a window into what a Giuliani marijuana policy might look like. During Giuliani's years in office in the 1990s and into this decade, the number of marijuana arrests shot through the roof, rising from a few hundred before Giulani took office to more than 51,000 in 2000. At that point, thanks to Giulani's "zero tolerance" or "broken windows" approach to policing, New York City accounted for nearly 10% of all marijuana arrests in the country. But it wasn't that Giulani just hated pot smokers; the results of his marijuana policy show starkly that his ire was aimed at pot smokers of a certain color--and it wasn't white. As an analysis of city pot arrests between the early 1980s and the early 2000s showed, as marijuana busts shot upward during Rudy's reign, the arrests shifted from the wealthy, central areas of the city to the cities poor, black and Hispanic neighborhoods. As the authors of that study noted, "these arrests, which increased throughout the 1990's to reach a peak of 51,000 in 2000, do not seem to be primarily serving the goals of 'quality-of-life' policing - which aims to penalize even minor criminal offenses in highly public locations - anymore." Not only did the mass marijuana arrests not appear to be related to claimed decreases in violent crime, they appeared to be related to increases in violent crime, according to another researcher, Bernard Harcourt, commenting on the report:

New York Cityâs psychedelic experiment with misdemeanor MPV [marijuana possession violation] arrestsâalong with all the associated detentions, convictions, and additional incarcerationsârepresents a tremendously expensive policing intervention. As Golub et al. [authors of the original research] document well, the focus on MPV has had a significant disparate impact on African-American and Hispanic residents. Our study further shows that there is no good evidence that it contributed to combating serious crime in the city. If anything, it has had the reverse effect. As a result, the NYPD policy of misdemeanor MPV arrests represents an extremely poor trade-off of scarce law enforcement resources, imposing significant opportunity costs on society in light of the growing body of empirical research that highlights policing approaches that do appear to be successful in reducing serious crime. Our findings, building on those of Golub et al., make clear that these are not trade-offs in which we should be engaging.

So, not only did Giulani's mass marijuana arrest policy target racial minorities, it also hampered effective crime-fighting in the city. Can you imagine a President Giulani sitting in the White House and ordering something similar on a nationwide basis? It would certainly be a boon for the jail, drug testing, drug treatment, and other drug war-dependent industries, but I hope we are not at a point as a nation where we say "what's good for the prison-industrial complex is good for America." I'll be writing more about Giulani, his crime-fighting career, and what a Giulani presidency might mean for America's criminal justice system next week. But I have to wonder if what America needs now is a Prosecutor in Chief.

Home State Blues, or What's an Itinerant Activist To Do?

Your itinerant Drug War Chronicle has been bouncing around North America for the last few years, spending significant amounts of time in Washington state, British Columbia, Mexico, Northern California, and my home state, South Dakota. The traveling is nice, but Iâve felt politically homeless, as if my presence anywhere were too fleeting for me to be able to do local or state-level politics, and thatâs a frustration. So, as much as I would rather be elsewhere, Iâm thinking I need to hunker down here in Dakotaland and try to get something done. It is not friendly territory. South Dakota is the only state where voters rejected an initiative to allow the medicinal use of marijuana. Although it was a close vote, 52% to 48%, it was still a loss. Medical marijuana bills (introduced by an acquaintance of mine) early in the decade went nowhere. The state has one of the fastest growing prison populations right now, thanks largely to its approach to methamphetamine use. Marijuana possession is routinely punished by $500 fines, and there is a good chance of jail time, too. (In fact, you may be better off being convicted of drunk driving, if my local court records are any indication.) And, most hideously of all, South Dakota is the only state I know of that has an âinternal possessionâ law. That means when the police arrest you with a joint, they make you submit to a urine test, then charge you with an additional offense if you test positive. South Dakota judges also routinely sign drug search warrants that include forced drug tests. I know one gentleman currently serving a five-year prison sentence for âinternal possessionâ of methamphetamine metabolites, and no, it wasnât a plea bargain. That was the only charge they had. South Dakotaâs drug reform community (which can probably be counted on the fingers of one hand) seems beaten down, but I think Iâm going to reach out and see if I canât get anyone interested in a four-pronged drug reform legislative package: Hemp. Our neighbors in North Dakota have passed a bill allowing farmers to grow hemp and are currently suing the DEA to force it out of the way. South Dakota farmers would like to make profits, too. Medical marijuana. Yeah, we lost a close one last year, and itâs never been able to get any traction in the legislature. But I think we should make them deal with it again. Our neighbors in Montana seem to be surviving medical marijuana. Marijuana decriminalization. Does South Dakota really think pot possession is more serious than drunk driving? Does the legislature understand the lifelong impact of pot conviction on its constituents? Our neighbors in Nebraska decriminalized pot back in the 1970s, and the cornfields are still standing. Repeal of the internal possession laws. Criminalizing someone for the content of his blood or urine is just wrong. Winning any of these will be an uphill battle, and perhaps even linking hemp to broader drug reform issues would spell its doom here. But I think itâs every good activistâs responsibility to do what he can to slow down the drug war juggernaut, so Iâm going to give it a shot. What are you doing in your state?

More Reefer Madness Yellow Journalism in Australia

More Australian Reefer Madness Journalism Yesterday, we published a newsbrief about the Australian media frenzy over "super dope", but the yellow journalism about marijuana coming from Down Under just keeps coming. Early in the week, it was the "super dope" scare, where the Aussies whipped themselves into a frenzy over kind bud. By late in the week, there was a new wave of hysterical marijuana reporting, this time centering on people who have both indoor marijuana grow operations and children. "Children in Drug Den Danger!" screamed the Daily Telegraph in an article about raids on two Sydney homes where parents were growing pot:

SIX children aged as young as five have been forced to live and sleep within metres of toxic chemicals and cancer-causing cannabis plants - all because their parents wanted a quick dollar.

Whoa! "Cancer-causing cannabis plants"!?!?!? This is just simply absurd. As far as I know, no one, not even Harry Anslinger, has ever claimed that a growing marijuana plant is carcinogenic. I suspect this is merely bad reporting; as the Australian AP reported in its account of the raids, the equally silly Kids Allegedly Forced to Sleep Near Mum's Toxic Pot:

South West Metropolitan Region Commander, Acting Assistant Commissioner Frank Mennilli, said the raids followed tip-offs from the public. "Hydro houses pose significant risk and it appalls me that anyone would have such a disregard for safety that they would jeopardise the lives of children," Mr Mennilli said. "We've gone into some of these homes where young children â one even on a ventilator â are sleeping only metres away from these plants and carcinogenic contaminants. "In all these homes the electricity supplies have been illegally and dangerously diverted, posing a huge risk of fire â endangering the lives of those inside and people living in neighbouring homes."

Ah, it's not the plants that are carcinogenic; it's those darned "contaminants." It appears the "contaminants" referred to here are nothing more than the chemical fertilizers used to make the plants grow faster. As Mennilli put it in the Daily Telegraph story, "So not only do you have the odour from the plants but also you have the chemicals used in relation to the growth of these plants. The "highly toxic" chemical fertilizers are so dangerous they are sold in nurseries and greenhouses and Walmarts and K-Marts across the land. They are so dangerous, they are used by millions of little old gardeners without a second thought. Now, you probably don't want your kid drinking the stuff or making Kool-Aid out of powdered fertilizer, but fertilizer is fertilizer. It's no more dangerous when used to grow marijuana than it is when used to grow tomatoes. The Australian media should be ashamed of itself. It not only uncritically accepts police statements at face value; it then runs with them to the point of simply making shit up. "Cancer-causing cannabis plants," indeed! "Toxic chemicals," oh my! I will give Mennilli and the media accounts props for mentioning the risk of fire from improperly wired, illegally obtained electricity. You can start a fire trying to do that. But even the fire hazard is a function of prohibition, not marijuana. People steal electricity not because it's cheaper, but because they wish to avoid being busted by cops monitoring their electrical use.

Sonoma County and the Future of Marijuana

Last weekend, I drove into California on US 101, the Redwood Highway, blowing past Crescent City and the Pelican Bay supermax prison as I headed south toward Sonoma County, where I will be residing for the next couple of months. The area's world-famous vineyards and wineries began appearing just south of Ukiah, and by the time I actually crossed the Sonoma County line, the vines were everywhere. When I got to my hotel in Santa Rosa, I was met with a complimentary bottle of Sonoma County wine and handed a hardcover book listing all the vineyards in the region. They offer tours and tastings, there are wine festivals and myriad events. Wine is big business in Sonoma; it is part of the local culture, and it is a celebration of the good things in life. So, why am I going on about the wineries of Sonoma County? Because this is what the marijuana industry should be like. Both wine and weed are "soft" drugs around which has grown a connoisseur culture. Both are eminently social drugs, to be shared and celebrated with friends and family. While both can be abused, neither is associated with the serious problems around hard-core alcoholism or hard drug use. Northern California's wine industry is an open, above ground, and vital part of the regional economy. It drives tourism to the area. Northern California's marijuana industry is hidden, underground, and a vital part of the regional economy. It, too, drives tourism to the area, but to a much lesser degree. If pot were to move out from the shadowsâif we were to move to a system of regulation instead of prohibitionâand we started treating marijuana growing with the respect we give wine-making, I can foresee a Northern California Marijuana Country that would parallel the wine country experience. Imagine taking off on a tour of the pot farms of Mendocino or Humboldt counties (or even Sonoma County, for that matter): You drive off the highway and through beautiful countryside, past fields of marijuana plants glistening in the sun, and through the gates of the local boutique grower's estate. The skunky odor of maturing buds fills the air. In the tasting room, workers display the estate's best, while visitors taste and contrast the varieties. (In wine tastings, the tasters spit out the wine after tasting it to avoid over-intoxication. Will pot smokers merely roll the smoke around their mouths without inhaling for similar reasons?) Marijuana is already a key part of the Northern California culture and economy. Embracing and developing the marijuana economy is only a matter of time. And the wine country model is a good and entirely appropriate path.

Charges Dismissed Against Loretta Nall; Happy 4/20 To All of Y'all!

Alabama housewife turned activist Loretta Nall is out from under the long arm of the law, with the marijuana charges against her dropped as Cannabis Nation celebrates its unofficial national holiday, 4/20. She was arrested over an alleged roach after a pro-marijuana legalization letter she wrote to the Birmingham News prompted police and officials at her daughter's school to improperly interrogate the young child. The letter and the child's statements were the basis of the search warrant that led to her arrest. She was convicted in district court in 2004 of two misdemeanor counts and given a 30-day suspended sentence. But, activist that she has become, she appealed the conviction and sought to get the evidence from the search thrown out. Today, the judge ruled that prosecutors did not respond to Nall's motion, granted her motion, and suppressed the evidence. Prosecutors responded that without the evidence the case could not continue, and the judge then dismissed the charges. After her arrest, Nall blossomed as a marijuana reform activist, founding the US Marijuana Party, doing countless appearances and interviews, writing letters to the editor, and running for governor of Alabama under the Libertarian Party banner in 2006. Now, with the order of dismissal in her hand as of this afternoon,(and posted on her blog, Nall is in a justifiably exuberant mood:

I am exquisitely pleased to announce that on April 17, 2007 my attorney informed me that the DA's office in Tallapoosa County *UNCONDITIONALLY SURRENDERED* to *ME* and will be formally withdrawing charges against me by the end of this week in the case that has dragged on for five years. Guess what that means friends and neighbors? Hidday Ho, just guess what that means! And, in the ultimate irony for the prosecution, it was finalized today on 4/20 Tallapoosa County authorities must rue the day they went after the fiery mom five years ago because while they may be done with her, she isnât done with them. The righteous reefer wrath below suggests Nall wants justiceâand she wants heads on a pike:
So, here is the beginnings of my list of demands. I want a federal investigation into the Tallapoosa County DA's office, the Tallapoosa County Narcotics Task Force, the Tallapoosa County Sheriff's Office, the Alexander City Police Department and into Judge Kim Taylor's office. I want to know how many people are in jail on bullshit charges like mine. I know that I cannot be the only one. I want the Alabama Bar Association to investigate the complaints I am in the process of filing against the DA and Deputy DA of Tallapoosa County. I'd like both E. Paul Jones and Damon Lewis's license to practice law hanging on my wall. I want them arrested, prosecuted and jailed. I have to "make an example out of them" and "send a strong message" that there will be "zero tolerance" for this kind of prosecutorial misconduct. I want [teacher] Beth Shaw charged for conspiring with the school resource officer, Eric McCain, to have me jailed, for inviting DHR workers and police officers to interrogate my children without counsel and other unbiased adults present REPEATEDLY, for filing a malicious complaint with DHR that I was starving my children, for going outside the school and telling personal friends that I was starving my children, for having a box of food with "Bell's Special Snack" written on it under her desk that she only allowed Bell to eat from, for turning notes I sent to the school about my children over to police, for making school a hostile environment for my children and for allowing my five-year-old baby to be humiliated in front of her peers. I want Beth Shaw's license to teach hanging on my wall next to the DA's law licenses. I want her house, cars and retirement account. I want her fired and barred from ever working with children ever again. That bitch needs to suffer. I want Eric McCain charged for using a letter to the editor as a way to question my daughter at school without counsel or another unbiased adult present, for conspiring with Beth Shaw to have me jailed on bogus charges, for humiliating my 5-year-old baby in front of her class, for LYING on the witness stand UNDER OATH. For fabricating this whole damn case because my letter to the editor was not in line with his views on marijuana. I want Eric McCain's badge to hang on my wall next to Beth Shaw's teaching certificate and the DA's' law licenses. If he has one of those nifty cop hats, then I want that, too. I want him barred from ever working as a police officer and from working with children ever again. And, I want him sterilized, because it is never a good idea to allow vermin to breed. I'd like them all jailed. I want pictures.
Go get 'em, Loretta! It's time for some reefer justice; in fact, it's long past time. When do we get our drug war Nuremburg? I tried calling Loretta this afternoon, but it's already past 4:20 in Alabama, so I' m assuming she is celebrating in the appropriate manner. Damn, it's just past 4:20 here now. Gotta go.

Cannabis Doesn't Cause Cancer, But It Might Cure It

When a NIDA funded study last May revealed no link between lung cancer and lifetime marijuana smoking, important questions were raised. We know that marijuana smoke contains carcinogenic compounds, thus NIDA's findings seemed to suggest that marijuana smoke somehow protects the user from its own inherently carcinogenic properties.

Via Forbes.com, new research offers more insight into this fascinating revelation and brings us closer to the conclusion we've long suspected: cannabis just might cure cancer.

Harvard University researchers have found that, in both laboratory and mouse studies, delta-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) cuts tumor growth in half in common lung cancer while impeding the cancer's ability to spread.

The compound "seems to have a suppressive effect on certain lines of cancer cells," explained Dr. Len Horovitz, a pulmonary specialist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.

According to the researchers, THC fights lung cancer by curbing epidermal growth factor (EGF), a molecule that promotes the growth and spread of particularly aggressive non-small cell lung cancers.

I once witnessed Andrea Barthwell get stumped at an ONDCP press conference when someone asked her to cite a reference for her claim that marijuana caused lung cancer. That was funny, but this much funnier.

Evidence that marijuana doesn't cause lung cancer has long consisted of the observation that marijuana smokers don't get cancer. But now you can google "marijuana+lung+cancer" and discover a list of excellent references refuting this old favorite of the prohibitionist camp. Heck, I can't even find it on the ONDCP's website anymore.

Still, it's generally been assumed that the failure of marijuana smokers to contract lung cancer was attributable to their reduced consumption compared to that of cigarette smokers. That THC actually suppresses cancerous cells is a far more exciting and promising explanation. This suggests, among other things, that administering THC to one's lungs though non-smoking methods just might be remarkably good for you.

With each passing year, the controversy surrounding medical marijuana becomes less of a debate and more of a referendum on the blind idiocy of the liars and quacks who've portrayed it as anything other than a miracle drug.

If marijuana proves capable of curing cancer, will these people finally shut up?

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