June 29, 2009
Editorial
Two Meals and Not Always Square
With budgets tight, states and local governments have been looking at prisons — and prison food — as a place to save money. Three days a week, Georgia now serves inmates only two meals. And across the country, there have been increasing reports of substandard food. This is inhumane. Adequate meals should be a nonnegotiable part of a civilized penal system. It is also bad policy. Researchers have found a connection between poor food quality and discipline problems and violence.
Georgia has nevertheless decided to save on staff costs by serving just two meals on Friday, as it already did on Saturday and Sunday. The state says it gives prisoners the same number of calories on days when one meal is skipped. Even if it does — and some prisoners’ advocates are skeptical — it can be oppressive to go so long without eating.
In Alabama earlier this year, a federal judge ordered the Morgan County sheriff locked up in his own jail for contempt for failing to adequately feed his inmates. Alabama allows sheriffs to keep food money they do not spend, and the sheriff reportedly pocketed more than $200,000 over three years.
Prisoners’ rights advocates say they are receiving an increasing number of complaints from inmates nationwide who report being served spoiled or inedible food or inadequate portions. Earlier this year, a riot at Reeves County Detention Center in Texas caused heavy damage to a prison building. Inmates said it was prompted in part by poor food.
Cutbacks in food could violate inmates’ constitutional rights, notes Elizabeth Alexander, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project, if they create a substantial risk of serious harm — a particular concern for inmates with diabetes and other illnesses.
If states and localities want to save money on corrections, they should reduce their prison and jail populations. The United States, which has less than 5 percent of the world’s population, has almost one-quarter of its prisoners. Many are in for nonviolent crimes that could be punished in more constructive, and less costly, ways. If governments decide to put inmates behind bars, they have to give them adequate food — which means no less than three healthy meals a day.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Supreme Court: Strip Search of 13 year old Girl Illegal from Associated Press
Court says strip search of Ariz. teenager illegal
By JESSE J. HOLLAND, Associated Press Writer Jesse J. Holland, Associated Press Writer – 5 mins ago
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court said Thursday school officials acted illegally when they strip-searched of an Arizona teenage girl looking for prescription-strength ibuprofen.
In an 8-1 ruling, the justices said that school officials violated the Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches when ordered Savana Redding to remove her clothes and shake out her underwear.
Redding was 13 when Safford Middle School officials in rural eastern Arizona conducted the search. They were looking for pills — the equivalent of two Advils. The district bans prescription and over-the-counter drugs and the school was acting on a tip from another student.
The school's search of Redding's backpack and outer clothes was permissible, the court said. But the justices said that officials went too far when they asked to search her underwear.
A 1985 Supreme Court decision that dealt with searching a student's purse has found that school officials need only reasonable suspicions, not probable cause. But the court also warned against a search that is "excessively intrusive."
"What was missing from the suspected facts that pointed to Savana was any indication of danger to the students from the power of the drugs or their quantity, and any reason to suppose that Savana was carrying pills in her underwear," Justice David Souter wrote in the majority opinion. "We think that the combination of these deficiencies was fatal to finding the search reasonable."
Redding said she was pleased with the court's decision. "I'm pretty excited about it, because that's what I wanted," she said. "I wanted to keep it from happening to anybody else."
"The court's decision sends a clear signal to school officials that they can strip search students only in the most extraordinary situations," added her lawyer, Adam Wolf of the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation.
In a dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas found the search legal and said the court previously had given school officials "considerable leeway" under the Fourth Amendment in school settings.
Officials had searched the girl's backpack and found nothing, Thomas said. "It was eminently reasonable to conclude the backpack was empty because Redding was secreting the pills in a place she thought no one would look," Thomas said.
Thomas warned that the majority's decision could backfire. "Redding would not have been the first person to conceal pills in her undergarments," he said. "Nor will she be the last after today's decision, which announces the safest place to secrete contraband in school."
The court also ruled the officials cannot be held liable in a lawsuit for the search. Different judges around the nation have come to different conclusions about immunity for school officials in strip searches, which leads the Supreme Court to "counsel doubt that we were sufficiently clear in the prior statement of law," Souter said.
"We think these differences of opinion from our own are substantial enough to require immunity for the school officials in this case," Souter said.
The justices also said the lower courts would have to determine whether the Safford United School District No. 1 could be held liable.
A schoolmate had accused Redding, then an eighth-grade student, of giving her pills.
The school's vice principal, Kerry Wilson, took Redding to his office to search her backpack. When nothing was found, Redding was taken to a nurse's office where she says she was ordered to take off her shirt and pants. Redding said they then told her to move her bra to the side and to stretch her underwear waistband, exposing her breasts and pelvic area. No pills were found.
A federal magistrate dismissed a suit by Redding and her mother, April. An appeals panel agreed that the search didn't violate her rights. But last July, a full panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found the search was "an invasion of constitutional rights" and that Wilson could be found personally liable.
Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented from the portion of the ruling saying that Wilson could not be held financially liable.
"Wilson's treatment of Redding was abusive and it was not reasonable for him to believe that the law permitted it," Ginsburg said.
The case is Safford Unified School District v. April Redding, 08-479.
Prison Rape from Houston Chronicle
Commentary
Jails must take measures to stop prisoner sex abuse
By JAMIE FELLNER
June 24, 2009, 8:39PM
“I’m afraid to go to sleep, to shower or just about anything else. I am afraid that when I am doing these things, I might die at any time. Please, sir, help me.”
For years, we have been shocked by stories of the abuse — much of it sexual — of security detainees in U.S. custody in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.
But prisoners are not just abused overseas. Rape and sexual violence are all too frequent here in our own backyard.
If America is to reclaim its moral authority as a defender of human rights and dignity, it must start at home.
The plea quoted above came from Rodney Hulin, who was just 16 when he entered a Texas prison to serve an eight-year sentence for setting fire to a neighborhood dumpster. He was five feet two inches tall and weighed 125 pounds.
Rodney was raped almost immediately by his fellow inmates. After receiving medical treatment for tears in his rectum, he was returned to the same unit where he had been raped and where he continued to be raped. Prison officials refused his requests for protective custody. According to his parents, he was told that he needed to “grow up.”
In response to Rodney’s story and many like his of prison rape by other inmates or by staff, Congress passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act in 2003. PREA established, among other initiatives, the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission. For the past four years I have had the privilege to serve as one of the commissioners.
We were charged with undertaking a comprehensive legal and factual study of the impact of prison sexual abuse on individuals, governments, communities and social institutions. Our mandate was to develop zero-tolerance national standards to prevent sexual abuse in prisons, jails, lockups, juvenile, immigration and community correction facilities. As the Supreme Court eloquently stated fifteen years ago in Farmer v. Brennan, sexual abuse is “not part of the penalty that criminal offenders pay for their offenses against society.”
Fixing the problem starts with determining why prison rape occurs. The answer does not lie solely with the perpetrators. Rape is committed by individuals, but it becomes systematic and widespread when officials deny its significance as a psychologically and physically devastating abuse that undercuts the very purpose of imprisonment.
The commission learned from corrections officials, survivors of rape, advocates and academics that prisons become rife with rape only when officials fail to take rape seriously and do not institute sensible measures to prevent and punish it.
The commission’s work also confirmed that some prisoners are more at risk of sexual abuse than others. For example, among men, the young, small, physically or mentally ill, or those who appear to be homosexual or transgendered are more at risk of inmate on inmate abuse than others.
Officials know this — but all too often in the past they have failed to use their knowledge to ensure vulnerable prisoners receive special protection.
We must educate both inmates and staff about the high costs of sexual abuse and train them on how to recognize and prevent sex crimes in correctional facilities. Inmates should know that they do not have to bargain sexual favors for privileges from staff. They should know that if they report threats of sexual abuse by staff or other inmates that their reports will be taken seriously and investigated, and they will be protected from retaliation by the perpetrators.
Most important, both staff and prisoners must know that rape and abuse are never appropriate or permissible.
And they must know that there are consequences. Staff who rape inmates should be fired and criminally prosecuted. Inmates who rape other inmates should also be punished, including through criminal prosecution.
All too often, perpetrators are allowed to simply walk away, as in the recent case of a principal at a Texas correctional school who subjected his charges to long-term and repeated abuse. He resigned quietly and became principal at a charter school in another part of the state.
Or the penalties amount to no more than a slap on the wrist: the punishment of the prison sergeant who raped a Colorado inmate for five months in 2006 and brutally sodomized her was only sixty days in a county jail and five years of probation.
The national standards that the commission has developed will lead to the prevention, detection and punishment of prisoner sexual abuse. I look forward to the attorney general promulgating final rules based on the standards within the next year.
Unfortunately, it will be too late for Rodney Hulin. After 75 days in prison, he hanged himself.
Fellner is senior counsel for the U.S. division of Human Rights Watch and a member of the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission.
Jails must take measures to stop prisoner sex abuse
By JAMIE FELLNER
June 24, 2009, 8:39PM
“I’m afraid to go to sleep, to shower or just about anything else. I am afraid that when I am doing these things, I might die at any time. Please, sir, help me.”
For years, we have been shocked by stories of the abuse — much of it sexual — of security detainees in U.S. custody in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.
But prisoners are not just abused overseas. Rape and sexual violence are all too frequent here in our own backyard.
If America is to reclaim its moral authority as a defender of human rights and dignity, it must start at home.
The plea quoted above came from Rodney Hulin, who was just 16 when he entered a Texas prison to serve an eight-year sentence for setting fire to a neighborhood dumpster. He was five feet two inches tall and weighed 125 pounds.
Rodney was raped almost immediately by his fellow inmates. After receiving medical treatment for tears in his rectum, he was returned to the same unit where he had been raped and where he continued to be raped. Prison officials refused his requests for protective custody. According to his parents, he was told that he needed to “grow up.”
In response to Rodney’s story and many like his of prison rape by other inmates or by staff, Congress passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act in 2003. PREA established, among other initiatives, the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission. For the past four years I have had the privilege to serve as one of the commissioners.
We were charged with undertaking a comprehensive legal and factual study of the impact of prison sexual abuse on individuals, governments, communities and social institutions. Our mandate was to develop zero-tolerance national standards to prevent sexual abuse in prisons, jails, lockups, juvenile, immigration and community correction facilities. As the Supreme Court eloquently stated fifteen years ago in Farmer v. Brennan, sexual abuse is “not part of the penalty that criminal offenders pay for their offenses against society.”
Fixing the problem starts with determining why prison rape occurs. The answer does not lie solely with the perpetrators. Rape is committed by individuals, but it becomes systematic and widespread when officials deny its significance as a psychologically and physically devastating abuse that undercuts the very purpose of imprisonment.
The commission learned from corrections officials, survivors of rape, advocates and academics that prisons become rife with rape only when officials fail to take rape seriously and do not institute sensible measures to prevent and punish it.
The commission’s work also confirmed that some prisoners are more at risk of sexual abuse than others. For example, among men, the young, small, physically or mentally ill, or those who appear to be homosexual or transgendered are more at risk of inmate on inmate abuse than others.
Officials know this — but all too often in the past they have failed to use their knowledge to ensure vulnerable prisoners receive special protection.
We must educate both inmates and staff about the high costs of sexual abuse and train them on how to recognize and prevent sex crimes in correctional facilities. Inmates should know that they do not have to bargain sexual favors for privileges from staff. They should know that if they report threats of sexual abuse by staff or other inmates that their reports will be taken seriously and investigated, and they will be protected from retaliation by the perpetrators.
Most important, both staff and prisoners must know that rape and abuse are never appropriate or permissible.
And they must know that there are consequences. Staff who rape inmates should be fired and criminally prosecuted. Inmates who rape other inmates should also be punished, including through criminal prosecution.
All too often, perpetrators are allowed to simply walk away, as in the recent case of a principal at a Texas correctional school who subjected his charges to long-term and repeated abuse. He resigned quietly and became principal at a charter school in another part of the state.
Or the penalties amount to no more than a slap on the wrist: the punishment of the prison sergeant who raped a Colorado inmate for five months in 2006 and brutally sodomized her was only sixty days in a county jail and five years of probation.
The national standards that the commission has developed will lead to the prevention, detection and punishment of prisoner sexual abuse. I look forward to the attorney general promulgating final rules based on the standards within the next year.
Unfortunately, it will be too late for Rodney Hulin. After 75 days in prison, he hanged himself.
Fellner is senior counsel for the U.S. division of Human Rights Watch and a member of the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Is it time to legalize pot? from Seattle Times
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
More are asking: Is it time to legalize pot?
By Seattle Times news services
The savage drug war in Mexico. Crumbling state budgets. Weariness with current drug policy. The election of a president who said, "I inhaled."
These are reasons why many proponents of legalized marijuana have unprecedented optimism.
"This is the first time I feel like the wind is at my back and not in my face," said the Drug Policy Alliance's Ethan Nadelmann, a veteran of the legalize-marijuana movement.
Considered one of the least harmful illegal drugs, marijuana accounts for more than 40 percent of drug arrests nationally and consumes a vast amount of law enforcement's time and money.
According to Harvard University economist Jeffrey Miron, legalization could save the nation at least $7.7 billion in law-enforcement costs and generate more than $6 billion in revenue if taxed like cigarettes and alcohol.
The latest federal data show more than 100 million Americans have tried the drug and that more than 14 million used it in the previous month.
Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard says that U.S. demand is a key factor in the Mexican drug war.
"The violence that we see in Mexico is fueled 65 percent to 70 percent by the trade in one drug: marijuana," he said. "I've called for at least a rational discussion as to what our country can do to take the profit out of that."
Marijuana activists doubt nationwide decriminalization is imminent, but they anticipate fast-paced change on the state level.
"For the most part, what we've seen over the past 20 years has been incremental," said Norm Stamper, a former Seattle police chief now active with Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. "What we've seen in the past six months is an explosion of activity, fresh thinking, bold statements and penetrating questions."
Examples:
• Numerous political leaders, including California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and former Mexican presidents, have suggested the time is right for open debate on legalization.
• Lawmakers in at least three states are considering joining Washington and 12 other states that have legalized pot for medical purposes. Massachusetts last fall decriminalized possession of an ounce or less of pot, becoming the latest of a dozen states that have taken such action. (Seattle voters in 2003 approved a ballot measure making marijuana possession the lowest law-enforcement priority.)
• In Congress, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, and Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., are among several lawmakers contending that decriminalization should be studied as part of an examination of what they deem to be failed U.S. drug policy. "Nothing should be off the table," Webb said.
• A recent ABC News/Washington Post poll found that 46 percent of Americans favor legalizing small amounts of pot for personal use, up from 22 percent in 1997. In California last month, a statewide Field Poll for the first time found 56 percent of voters supporting legalization.
"I've never seen a ... phone survey that showed more than half of adults favoring legalization. I've certainly never seen a governor putting forth the idea of debating the issue, much less an actual bill," said Robert MacCoun, a University of California, Berkeley, public-policy professor. "It's a comfort zone for politicians we didn't have 10 years ago."
The Field Poll — and California's ever-more-desperate search for revenue to address its $24.3 billion budget deficit — is fueling a drive to put the first major statewide initiative to legalize marijuana for personal use on the November 2010 ballot. The initiative calls for legalization of small amounts of marijuana for personal possession for adults 21 and older and would allow individual cities and counties the option of regulating sales and cultivation of the drug.
Other legislative efforts in California also are beginning to gain traction, including a special July election in Oakland to create a category for cannabis taxes and hearings this fall on an Assembly bill to legalize marijuana in a manner similar to alcohol — taxing sales to adults while barring possession by anyone younger than 21.
In Oakland, Measure F would make the city the first to establish a new business tax rate for "cannabis businesses," instead of the general tax rate now used.
Assemblyman Tom Ammiano contends his bill would generate up to $1.3 billion in revenue.
"People who initially were very skeptical — as the polls come in, as the budget situation gets worse — are having a second look," the San Francisco Democrat said. "Maybe these issues that have been treated as wedge issues aren't anymore. People know the drug war has failed."
A new tone also has sounded more frequently in Congress.
Kucinich has noted that both President Obama and former President Clinton acknowledged trying marijuana.
"Apparently that didn't stop them from achieving their goals in life," Kucinich said. "We need to come at this from a point of science and research and not from mythologies or fears."
Gil Kerlikowske, former Seattle police chief and now head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, has suggested scrapping the "war on drugs" label and placing more emphasis on treatment and prevention. Attorney General Eric Holder has said federal authorities no longer will raid medical-marijuana facilities.
As for Obama, activists don't expect him to embrace legalization at this point.
"Obama's got two wars, an economic disaster. We have to realize they're not going to put this on the front burner right now," said Allen St. Pierre, executive director of NORML, or the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. "But every measurable metric out there is swinging our way."
Nonetheless, many opponents of legalization remain firm in their convictions.
"We're opposed to legalization or decriminalization of marijuana. We think it's the wrong message to send our youth," said Russell Laine, police chief in Algonquin, Ill., and president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police.
The Drug Enforcement Agency also remains on record against legalization and medical marijuana, which it contends has no scientific justification.
Legalization proponents acknowledge that pot use by adolescents is a major problem, but contend that decriminalizing and regulating the drug would improve matters by shifting efforts away from criminal gangs.
"The notion that we have to keep something completely banned for adults to keep it away from kids doesn't hold up," said Bruce Mirken, communications director of the Marijuana Policy Project.
Compiled from The Associated Press, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Contra Costa Times and Seattle Times archives
Copyright © 2009 The Seattle Times Company
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Monday, June 22, 2009
Mexico Bill to Decriminalize Drug Possession in Small Amounts Calderon will Sign from The Seattle Times
Monday, June 22, 2009 - Page updated at 12:00 AM
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President Felipe Calderón proposed the drug legislation.
About the billUsers caught with small amounts of drugs clearly intended for "personal and immediate use" would not be criminally prosecuted. Instead, they would be told of available clinics and encouraged to enter a rehabilitation program. Among the most common substances, permitted amounts would be five grams of marijuana, 500 milligrams of cocaine, 40 milligrams of methamphetamine and 50 milligrams of heroin.
Los Angeles Times
Mexico expected to enact liberalized drug law
By Tracy Wilkinson
Los Angeles Times
MEXICO CITY — Will Mexican cities become Latin Amsterdams, flooded by drug users seeking penalty-free tokes and toots?
That is the fear, if somewhat overstated, of some Mexican officials, especially in northern border states that serve as a mecca for underage U.S. drinkers.
The Mexican legislature has voted quietly to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and other drugs. Past efforts have proved highly controversial, most recently three years ago, but President Felipe Calderón is expected to sign the bill into law this time.
There has been less protest this time around, in part because there hasn't been much publicity.
Some critics have suggested easing the punishment on drug possession sends the wrong message at a time when Calderón is waging a bloody war on major narcotics traffickers. But Calderón proposed the decriminalization legislation.
His reasoning: It makes sense to distinguish between small-time users and big-time dealers, while re-targeting major crime-fighting resources away from the former and toward the latter and their drug-lord bosses.
"The important thing is ... that consumers are not treated as criminals," said Rafael Ruiz Mena, secretary general of the National Institute of Penal Sciences. "It is a public-health problem, not a penal problem."
The legislation was approved at the height of a swine-flu outbreak in Mexico that dominated the public's — and the world's — attention. Meeting at times behind closed doors — the better to prevent the spread of disease, officials said — the lower and upper houses of Congress passed the bill in late April. It awaits Calderón's signature.
Three years ago, in May 2006, then-President Vicente Fox, from Calderón's conservative National Action Party (PAN), vetoed a similar bill that he initially had supported. Fox backed down only under pressure from Washington, D.C., where the Bush administration complained that decriminalization for even small amounts could increase drug use.
But with less than a month to go before critical midterm elections in which his party is struggling to maintain control of the legislature, Calderón cannot afford to be seen as bowing to the United States, analysts say.
The Obama administration also has not publicly objected to the legislation, even though Michele Leonhart, acting director of the Drug Enforcement Administration said in April that legalization of drugs "would be a failed law-enforcement strategy for both the U.S. and Mexico."
So Calderón is expected to sign the bill into law, political observers say. Calderón's office did not comment.
Mexican government officials stress they are talking about decriminalization, not legalization. Until now, courts decided on a case-by-case basis whether and how to punish first-time drug-use offenders. And standard criteria for quantities hadn't existed.
Mexico is woefully underequipped to handle a booming drug-abuse problem.
The country for decades was a transit point for cocaine, marijuana and other drugs headed to the United States. But domestic consumption has soared more recently. A 2007 government study found the number of "addicts" in Mexico doubled in the previous five years.
Drug abuse has worsened, in part, because some of the big cartels pay their people with cocaine, marijuana or other such substances.
Clinics and other institutions that specialize in treatment and prevention have not kept up with the trend. The government is building 310 centers to improve care, but experts say that is not enough.
The legislation has received criticism from religious leaders and several officials of northern border states, who fear that so-called "drug tourists" will begin flocking to towns and cities already besieged by violence.
Mary Ellen Hernandez, director of the Rio Grande Safe Communities Coalition in El Paso, Texas, across the border from the blood-soaked Mexican city of Ciudad Juárez, said she worried decriminalization would lure Americans into a drug world they aren't prepared for and increase violence on both sides of the border.
"Already, the drugs that don't come over into the U.S. are being handed out by dealers to younger and younger children [in Mexico], 8-, 9-, 10-year-olds, hooking them," said Hernandez, whose agency specializes in drug prevention. "And then [the youths] steal to feed the habit."
Except for a relatively few voices, however, there has been minimal protest over the bill, and some praise.
Luciano Pascoe, vice president of the small left-wing Social Democratic Party (PSD), said the legislation was a positive "first step" that helped "shatter the stigma that consumers are criminals."
Copyright © 2009 The Seattle Times Company
Friday, June 19, 2009
Rep. Barney Frank's Bill for Marijuana Law Reform from Drug War Chrinicle
Drug War Chronicle - world’s leading drug policy newsletter
Medical Marijuana: Barney Frank Introduces Federal Bill to Get DEA Out, Reschedule as Medicine
from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #590, 6/19/09
Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) introduced legislation Monday that would reschedule marijuana as a Schedule II drug and eliminate federal authority to prosecute medical marijuana patients and providers in states where it is legal. Titled the Medical Marijuana Patient Protection Act (HR 2835), the bill currently has 16 sponsors and has been sent to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
Barney FrankFrank introduced similar legislation in the last two Congresses, but the bills never got a committee vote or even a hearing. Advocates hope that with a Democratically-controlled Congress and a president who has at least given lip service to medical marijuana, Congress this year will prove to be friendlier ground.
"We are encouraged by the federal government's willingness to address this issue and to bring about a more sensible and humane policy on medical marijuana," said Caren Woodson, government affairs director for Americans for Safe Access. "It's time to recognize marijuana's medical efficacy, and to develop a comprehensive plan that will provide access to medical marijuana and protection for the hundreds of thousands of sick Americans that benefit from its use."
When it comes to reining in the feds, the bill would bar the use of the Controlled Substances Act or the Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act for prohibiting or restricting doctors from prescribing marijuana and patients, caregivers, and co-ops or dispensaries from using, possessing, transporting or growing marijuana in accordance with state law.
The Obama administration has pledged to not use Justice Department resources to go after medical marijuana patients and providers in states where it is legal. Still, the DEA has continued to target medical marijuana providers, prosecutors continue to file drug charges against providers acting in accord with state laws, and federal judges continue to sentence medical marijuana providers who followed state laws, but were convicted under federal drug laws.
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Medical Marijuana: Barney Frank Introduces Federal Bill to Get DEA Out, Reschedule as Medicine
from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #590, 6/19/09
Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) introduced legislation Monday that would reschedule marijuana as a Schedule II drug and eliminate federal authority to prosecute medical marijuana patients and providers in states where it is legal. Titled the Medical Marijuana Patient Protection Act (HR 2835), the bill currently has 16 sponsors and has been sent to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
Barney FrankFrank introduced similar legislation in the last two Congresses, but the bills never got a committee vote or even a hearing. Advocates hope that with a Democratically-controlled Congress and a president who has at least given lip service to medical marijuana, Congress this year will prove to be friendlier ground.
"We are encouraged by the federal government's willingness to address this issue and to bring about a more sensible and humane policy on medical marijuana," said Caren Woodson, government affairs director for Americans for Safe Access. "It's time to recognize marijuana's medical efficacy, and to develop a comprehensive plan that will provide access to medical marijuana and protection for the hundreds of thousands of sick Americans that benefit from its use."
When it comes to reining in the feds, the bill would bar the use of the Controlled Substances Act or the Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act for prohibiting or restricting doctors from prescribing marijuana and patients, caregivers, and co-ops or dispensaries from using, possessing, transporting or growing marijuana in accordance with state law.
The Obama administration has pledged to not use Justice Department resources to go after medical marijuana patients and providers in states where it is legal. Still, the DEA has continued to target medical marijuana providers, prosecutors continue to file drug charges against providers acting in accord with state laws, and federal judges continue to sentence medical marijuana providers who followed state laws, but were convicted under federal drug laws.
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Kind Bud Crack Down? from Drug war Chronicle
from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #590, 6/19/09
Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL) Monday introduced a bill that would dramatically increase prison sentences for marijuana trafficking offenses if the pot in question had THC levels over 15%. Warning Monday that "kush super-marijuana" had invaded the Chicago suburbs, Kirk is calling for prison sentences of up to 25 years for trafficking even small quantities of the kind bud.
Mark KirkUnder current federal law, the manufacture, distribution, import and export, and possession with intent to distribute fewer than 50 kilograms or 50 plants is punishable by up to five years in federal prison, a $250,000 individual fine and $1 million group fine. Kirk's bill, the High-Potency Marijuana Sentencing Enhancement Act (HR 2828) increases the maximum fines for high-potency pot to $1 million for an individual and $5 million for a group, as well as increasing the maximum prison sentence five-fold. A second offense would double the fines and increase the maximum sentence to 35 years.
In a press release announcing the bill, Kirk warned of "zombie-like" pot smokers stumbling around the Chicago suburbs. "According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, more than 25 million individuals age 12 and older used marijuana in 2007 -- significantly more than any other drug," he said. "That's why Kush and other high-potency marijuana strains are so worrying. Local law enforcement reports that Kush users are 'zombie-like' because of the extreme THC levels. Drug dealers know they can make as much money selling Kush as cocaine but without the heavier sentences that accompany crack and cocaine trafficking. Higher fines and longer sentences aren't the total solution to our nation's drug problem. But our laws should keep pace with advances in the strength and cash-value of high-THC marijuana. If you can make as much money selling pot as cocaine, you should face the same penalties."
Rep. Kirk appears to have swallowed the assumption that higher-potency marijuana is somehow more harmful than lower-potency pot, an old bromide dating back to former drug czar John Walters' "it's not your father's marijuana." But marijuana users say they adjust dosages to achieve the desired effect by smoking smaller amounts of more potent varieties. A user might smoke an entire blunt of low-potency Mexican brick weed, but only a couple of tokes of more potent pot, just as an alcohol user might chug down a 40-ounce bottle of malt liquor, but only a few ounces of more potent distilled spirits.
Further, kush is only one of a number of different strains of high-potency marijuana now available on the market. Many of those strains will produce potency levels of 15% or higher, much to the pleasure of marijuana connoisseurs.
"I don't know what's more ridiculous about this," said Bruce Mirken, communications director of the Marijuana Policy Project, "Kirk's incredible scientific ignorance or the hypocrisy of a man who's taken thousands of dollars from the alcohol and tobacco industries going after marijuana."
By Wednesday afternoon, Kirk's bill had yet to pick up any cosponsors.
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Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL) Monday introduced a bill that would dramatically increase prison sentences for marijuana trafficking offenses if the pot in question had THC levels over 15%. Warning Monday that "kush super-marijuana" had invaded the Chicago suburbs, Kirk is calling for prison sentences of up to 25 years for trafficking even small quantities of the kind bud.
Mark KirkUnder current federal law, the manufacture, distribution, import and export, and possession with intent to distribute fewer than 50 kilograms or 50 plants is punishable by up to five years in federal prison, a $250,000 individual fine and $1 million group fine. Kirk's bill, the High-Potency Marijuana Sentencing Enhancement Act (HR 2828) increases the maximum fines for high-potency pot to $1 million for an individual and $5 million for a group, as well as increasing the maximum prison sentence five-fold. A second offense would double the fines and increase the maximum sentence to 35 years.
In a press release announcing the bill, Kirk warned of "zombie-like" pot smokers stumbling around the Chicago suburbs. "According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, more than 25 million individuals age 12 and older used marijuana in 2007 -- significantly more than any other drug," he said. "That's why Kush and other high-potency marijuana strains are so worrying. Local law enforcement reports that Kush users are 'zombie-like' because of the extreme THC levels. Drug dealers know they can make as much money selling Kush as cocaine but without the heavier sentences that accompany crack and cocaine trafficking. Higher fines and longer sentences aren't the total solution to our nation's drug problem. But our laws should keep pace with advances in the strength and cash-value of high-THC marijuana. If you can make as much money selling pot as cocaine, you should face the same penalties."
Rep. Kirk appears to have swallowed the assumption that higher-potency marijuana is somehow more harmful than lower-potency pot, an old bromide dating back to former drug czar John Walters' "it's not your father's marijuana." But marijuana users say they adjust dosages to achieve the desired effect by smoking smaller amounts of more potent varieties. A user might smoke an entire blunt of low-potency Mexican brick weed, but only a couple of tokes of more potent pot, just as an alcohol user might chug down a 40-ounce bottle of malt liquor, but only a few ounces of more potent distilled spirits.
Further, kush is only one of a number of different strains of high-potency marijuana now available on the market. Many of those strains will produce potency levels of 15% or higher, much to the pleasure of marijuana connoisseurs.
"I don't know what's more ridiculous about this," said Bruce Mirken, communications director of the Marijuana Policy Project, "Kirk's incredible scientific ignorance or the hypocrisy of a man who's taken thousands of dollars from the alcohol and tobacco industries going after marijuana."
By Wednesday afternoon, Kirk's bill had yet to pick up any cosponsors.
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Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Sosa Dope User Too from Associated Press/Yahoo News
Sammy Sosa reportedly failed drug test in 2003
NEW YORK – Former slugger Sammy Sosa reportedly tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug in 2003. The New York Times reported the failed test Tuesday on its Web site, citing lawyers familiar with the case. The newspaper did not identify the drug. Sosa is sixth on baseball's career home run list with 609. He has not played in the majors since 2007.
The newspaper reported Sosa is one of 104 players who tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs in a 2003 baseball survey. As part of an agreement with the players' union, the testing in 2003 was conducted to determine if it was necessary to impose mandatory random drug testing across the major leagues in 2004.
NEW YORK – Former slugger Sammy Sosa reportedly tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug in 2003. The New York Times reported the failed test Tuesday on its Web site, citing lawyers familiar with the case. The newspaper did not identify the drug. Sosa is sixth on baseball's career home run list with 609. He has not played in the majors since 2007.
The newspaper reported Sosa is one of 104 players who tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs in a 2003 baseball survey. As part of an agreement with the players' union, the testing in 2003 was conducted to determine if it was necessary to impose mandatory random drug testing across the major leagues in 2004.
Associated Press from Yahoo News June 16, 2009
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