For Immediate Release: February 17, 2011

Contact: Kris Hermes at 510-251-1856 or [email protected]

Medical Marijuana Patient Advocates Hold First-of-Its-Kind Virtual Nationwide Conference

Hundreds of activists in more than 20 cities will engage in skills-building and strategic planning

Oakland, CA -- As the issue of medical marijuana heats up across the country, leading patient advocacy group Americans for Safe Access (ASA) will hold a two-day interactive, virtual "Boot Camp" February 19-20 to train hundreds of U.S.-based activists in skills-building and strategic planning.

This first of its kind nationwide conference on medical marijuana will be conducted in more than 20 cities in 9 states, including Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Melbourne, Portland, Sacramento, San Diego, and Washington, D.C.

ASA has held numerous trainings over its 9-year history, but this will be the group's first decentralized virtual conference in an attempt to better reach patient advocates, building greater breadth and depth in the medical marijuana movement. "I think it¹s really important for people to understand that they are the power," said U.S. Representative Sam Farr (D-CA) in a promotional video for the conference. "Government is lent to us and you hold the power toŠchange the laws of this land," continued Representative Farr.

"If you want to change things, all you have to do is get involved."

Conference participants will be trained in outreach and recruitment, coalition building, leadership development, lobbying public officials, organizing protests and rallies, and working with the media. Once trained, patient advocates will have greater skills with which to develop strategies for protecting and expanding patients¹ rights, as well as adopting medical marijuana policies in states without such laws. "Activists across the country are clamoring for the skills to bring about change at the local and federal level," said ASA Executive Director Steph Sherer. "This historic conference is an attempt to satisfy that demand and to build a stronger medical marijuana movement in the U.S."

From grappling with local regulatory ordinances to passing new state medical marijuana laws, the work of patient advocates has been challenging and ongoing. Literally hundreds of local governments in medical marijuana states are deliberating land use laws that dictate how patients can cultivate and obtain their medicine. More than a dozen state governments are also currently considering new statewide medical marijuana laws. "'The ASA Activist Boot Camp' will provide patient advocates with the skill-set and road map to address these political challenges," continued Sherer.

As the country's largest grassroots medical marijuana organization with more than 50,000 members in all 50 states, ASA is also using this conference to help push for a meaningful federal policy. Based on a conviction that Americans deserve the right to choose their own form of health care treatment whether they live in California or Florida, ASA is providing activists with the tools to bring about equal rights for all of the country's sickest and most vulnerable citizens.

Further information:

Promotional video clip with U.S. Representative Sam Farr:

http://www.medicalmarijuana411.com/2011/02/10/join-americans-for-safe-access-for-a-national-call-to-action/

ASA Boot Camp flyer:

http://AmericansForSafeAccess.org/downloads/ASA_Boot_Camp.pdf

 ASA Boot Camp registration info:

http://AmericansForSafeAccess.org/ActivistBootCamp

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Tell Congress to cut funding for the drug war!

Email Your Representative

Dear Friends,

I need your help to talk some sense into Congress. While they preach fiscal responsibility, they want to keep giving piles of money to state and local governments to prioritize low-level drug arrests – especially for marijuana possession. Even worse, they want to put the cost on the nation's credit card. You and I will be paying off this foolishness for decades to come if we don't act now.

Tell Congress: No more money for failed drug policies.

As I write this, Congress is working on a new federal budget. Right now we have a unique opportunity to cut the funding that helps keep the drug war alive at the local level. If we can get enough people to email Congress, I'm hopeful that we can cut spending, reduce marijuana arrests, and push states to embrace drug policy reform. It would be a three-for-one victory.

Please take a minute to write Congress and tell them to stop spending your tax money on the failed war on drugs.

Sincerely,

Bill Piper
Director, Office of National Affairs
Drug Policy Alliance

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: February 9, 2011

CONTACT: Jacob Hunter at 604.803.4085 or [email protected], or Kirk Tousaw at [email protected]

Beyond Prohibition Foundation Commends Liberal Party of Canada for Opposing Bill S-10

Today the Liberal Party of Canada announced that it would vote down Bill S-10, a cornerstone of the Harper Conservative’s incarceration agenda, which would have imposed mandatory jail sentences on non-violent minor drug offenders. The Beyond Prohibition Foundation commends the Liberal Party for standing up to Mr. Harper’s false “soft on crime” slurs and defeating this dangerous, enormously expensive and ideologically-driven legislation.

“We are extremely pleased that the Liberal Party has made its decision on the basis of evidence,” noted Kirk Tousaw, Executive Director of the Foundation, “This punishment plan would not have reduced crime, nor would it have made Canadian safer from the influence of gangs. In fact, the Foundation has long argued that the evidence is clear that ramping up a war on drugs has the perverse effect of making drugs more available, cheaper and more potent while simultaneously increasing the profitability and violent tendencies of organized criminals. Today the Liberal Party of Canada decided to be smart on crime.”

The legislation had previously been the subject of intense criticism during two rounds of testimony before committees of the Senate and House of Commons. Experts from Canada, the United States and abroad testified that other jurisdictions using mandatory jail terms have worse crime and drug problems than Canada, and that these experiments have been expensive failures. Despite this, the Harper Conservatives have been pushing for the legislation for years.

“The Foundation knew that the Conservatives would not listen to expert advice and, therefore, we made a strategic decision early on to appeal to the Liberal Party,” explained Jacob Hunter, the Foundation’s Policy Director. “We believed that the Liberals would understand that making economically and socially smart decisions with Canadian’s tax dollars would be a political benefit, not a liability. Everyone knew that Mr. Harper would attempt to fool Canadians with ‘soft on crime’ rhetoric but the Foundation believes that our citizens are smarter than that. We are very pleased the Liberal Party agrees.”

Earlier this week, the government refused to tell the House how much its incarceration agenda would cost Canadians. “Mr. Harper tried to use fear to sell Canadians on a multi-billion dollar legislative boondoggle by hiding the costs and falsely describing it as targeting only major criminals.

Instead, it would have almost exclusively punished non-violent small time drug offenders. Now that the legislation appears doomed, we urge all Parliamentarians to conduct a comprehensive cost/benefit analysis of drug prohibition. Its time to reject the failed approaches of the past and, instead, to work toward putting criminals out of business by ending the war on drugs,” Tousaw continued.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: February 8, 2011

CONTACT: ACLU [1] Will Matthews, ACLU National at (212) 549-2582 or 2666; [email protected] [2] Sandra Hernandez, ACLU of Southern California at (213) 977-5252; [email protected]

ACLU Witnesses Brutal Beating Of Los Angeles County Jail Inmate By Sheriff’s Deputies

Attack Underscores Need For Systemic Reform And Decrease In Jail’s Population

LOS ANGELES - February 8 - The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Southern California (ACLU/SC) today condemned a recent brutal beating by two Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies of a detainee at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility, part of the county jail system.

The violent attack January 24 on James Parker, detained on a non-violent marijuana charge, was witnessed by ACLU/SC’s Esther Lim, who is assigned to monitor all county jails.

“We believe Mr. Parker’s beating is not an isolated incident,” said Hector Villagra, incoming Executive Director of the ACLU/SC. “Rather, it highlights the rampant violence that continues to plague the county’s jails, and demands court intervention to protect detainees from brutal attacks and retaliation. That the ACLU/SC monitor witnessed a brutal attack in plain sight is alarming and can only lead us to conclude detainees are subject to even greater cruelty when no one is looking.”

The beating was made public Monday in a sworn statement submitted in federal court by Lim, who watched through a glass window as deputies repeatedly punched, kneed and tasered Parker while he was lying motionless on the floor.

“Mr. Parker looked like he was a mannequin that was being used as a punching bag,” Lim says in her statement. “I thought he was knocked out, or perhaps even dead.”

Lim hit the glass divider hoping to get the deputies’ attention and stop the attack, but the officers continued to punch and taser Parker.

“Mr. Parker was not fighting with the deputies,” Lim says in her statement, adding he “was not trying to kick, hit or otherwise fight with the deputies.”

Yet deputies continued to order him to “stop resisting” and “stop fighting,” while simultaneously punching and kneeing his limp body repeatedly and tasering him multiple times.

The deputies then wrote in a jail log that Parker had been fighting and resisting, in complete contradiction to what the ACLU witnessed.

“This kind of brutal beating is unacceptable,” said Peter Eliasberg, ACLU/SC managing attorney. “We are also very concerned that shortly after the beating the sheriff’s department issued a log report contradicting what witnesses, including our monitor, saw. The report claims Parker was resisting and fighting with deputies. That is blatantly false.”

Parker now faces charges for allegedly assaulting the very deputies who beat him.

Lim’s statement, along with that of another witness to the beating, was filed Monday in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, to bolster a motion the ACLU filed in November seeking a federal court order prohibiting jail deputies from retaliating against prisoners through violence or threats.

The ACLU first sued Los Angeles County and its sheriff on behalf of all detainees in the county’s jail system in 1975, charging the conditions of their confinement violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Many remedial orders have been issued over the years in the case, Rutherford v. Block. But the systemic problems plaguing the system have recently become so acute the ACLU in December asked U.S. District Court Judge Dean D. Pregerson to order a new trial in the case based on “an escalating crisis of deputy violence, abuse and inmate suicides” at Men’s Central Jail, another of the system’s facilities. The ACLU contends the problems plaguing the jail system can only be fixed by finding alternatives to incarceration like drug treatment and community-based programs for the low-level, non-violent offenders and detainees with serious mental illnesses that comprise the vast majority of the system’s population, and seeks to prove the jail’s population can be safely, rapidly and radically reduced with existing resources and at great savings to county taxpayers.

A report released by the ACLU in September painted a stark picture of unacceptable levels of violence in the jails, including reports of deputies beating handcuffed detainees, injuring some so badly that they ended up in intensive care. The report also showed retaliation against inmates to be an acute problem. Several prisoners have been severely punished for meeting with representatives of the ACLU, which is the court-appointed monitor of conditions inside L.A.'s county jails.

“The reign of terror we’re uncovering in the Los Angeles County jails is unmatched by any of the hyper-violent prisons and jails across the country we have investigated,” said Margaret Winter, Associate Director of the ACLU National Prison Project. “The brutality there is so blatant and routine that the deputies carried out a vicious beating in full view of a court-appointed monitor. The court needs to take immediate action to ensure the protection of prisoners.”

A copy of the ACLU’s sworn statement, as well as that of the beating’s other witness, is available online at:

http://www.aclu.org/prisoners-rights/declarations-esther-lim-and-christopher-brown-regarding-january-24-2011-beating-twi[4]

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