Houston's Dirty Drug War

38,000 Dead in Mexico Drug War Since 2006

2011-06-30T14:59:00.001-07:00

Published on StoptheDrugWar.org (http://stopthedrugwar.org)

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Mexico Drug War Update
By psmith
Created 2011/06/22 - 6:35pm
by Phillip Smith [1], June 22, 2011, 06:35pm, (Issue #689 [2]) Posted in: Border [3]Mexican Drug War [4]News Brief [5]Police Corruption [6]Police/Suspect Altercations [7]Turf Wars [8]

Last Wednesday was a bloody day in Nuevo Leon, and last weekend was a bloody one in Michoacan. And those are just the high-lights.
by Bernd Debusmann, Jr.

Mexican drug trafficking organizations make billions each year smuggling drugs into the United States, profiting enormously from the prohibitionist drug policies of the US government. Since Mexican president Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006 and called the armed forces into the fight against the so-called cartels, prohibition-related violence has killed more than 38,000 people, including more than 15,000 last year. The increasing militarization of the drug war and the arrest or killing of dozens of high-profile drug traffickers have failed to stem the flow of drugs -- or the violence -- whatsoever. The Merida initiative, which provides $1.4 billion over three years for the US to assist the Mexican government with training, equipment and intelligence, has so far failed to make a difference. Here are a few of the latest developments in Mexico's drug war:

The profits of prohibition fuel the violence in Mexico. (Image via Wikimedia.org)Wednesday, June 15

In Nuevo Leon, a record 33 people were murdered [9] in one day. Among the dead were two bodyguards of State Governor Rodrigo Medina who were kidnapped, murdered, and mutilated. The previous daily high in the state was 18, which included 14 inmates killed in a jailhouse fire that had been deliberately set.

Friday, June 17

In Nuevo Leon, 26 police officers were detained [10] for their involvement in the murder of the two bodyguards of Gov. Medina on Wednesday.

In Matamoros, the leader of Los Zetas, Heriberto Lazcano "Z-3" was reported killed [11] after a series of ferocious gun battles in the city with the rival Gulf Cartel. Mexican and American authorities have both denied that Lazcano is dead, and question why he would personally be leading attacks on the Gulf Cartel stronghold of Matamoros, across the border from Brownsville, Texas.

Sunday, June 19

In Michoacan, at least 23 people were executed over the weekend [12] by the Knights Templar drug trafficking organization. President Calderon was in the state capital of Morelia at the time attending a U-17 soccer game between Mexico and North Korea. The Knights Templar had announced the coming murders via banner on Friday. On Saturday, nine people were found dead in three different locations, each containing three bodies.

The Knights Templar is an off-shoot of La Familia Michoacana, and has vowed to wage war on the opposing faction of LFM led by El Chango Mendez (captured Tuesday -- see below) and his allies in Los Zetas.

Monday, June 20

In Veracruz, a journalist was gunned down along with his wife and 21-year old son. [13] Miguel Angel Lopez Velasco, 55, was an editor, crime reporter and columnist for the local Notiver newspaper. At around 5:30am on Monday, heavily armed gunmen kicked down the door to his home and gunned down everyone inside.

Also in Veracruz, seven municipal police officers were [14] arrested in connection with the death of a Mexican Marine who was found dead on June 11 near the Tuxpan River. He was one of three Marines who were recently kidnapped and murdered in Mexico. The Marines have been on the forefront of Mexico's war on drug cartels and have conducted missions against high-profile targets such as Arturo Beltran Leyva, who was killed in December 2009.

Tuesday, June 21

In Cosio, Aguascalientes, the leader of La Familia Michoacana was captured [15] by police at a highway checkpoint. Jose de Jesus Mendez Varga, 50, also known as "El Chango" -- the Monkey -- had been in command of the LFM organization since it broke up into rival factions after its previous leader, Nazario Moreno, was killed in fierce clashes with federal forces in December 2010. On Wednesday Mexican authorities said that US law enforcement played a key role in his capture.

In Ciudad Juarez, at least seven people were murdered. [16] In one incident, a bag containing the head and dismembered body parts of a man was left outside a church. In a different part of the city, three men were gunned down inside a home in the southeast part of the city.

In the town of Cuahtemoc in the nearly lawless Chihuahuan sierra, authorities announced that eight people were found [17] murdered there on June 18.

In Mexico City, Salvadoran president Mauricio Funes said [18] after a meeting with President Calderon that the Zetas have been sending scouting missions to El Salvador to see whether they can purchase weapons from corrupt police and military officials.

Editor's Note: We cannot accurately tally the drug prohibition-related killings in Mexico at this time. El Universal, the only Mexican newspaper that was doing so on a regular basis, has stopped. We will have to rely on official pronouncements on the death toll, and will report them when they happen. Below are the numbers through the end of last year. With more than 1,400 reported dead in April alone, this year's toll could well exceed last year's. As of this month, we believe the total death toll has surpassed 38,000.]

Total Body Count for 2010: 15,273

Total Body Count for 2009: (approx.) 9,600

Total Body Count for 2008 (approx.): 5,400

Total Body Count for 2007 (approx): 4,300

Total Body Count for Calderon's drug war through 2010: 34,883

Mexico.BorderMexican Drug WarNews BriefPolice CorruptionPolice/Suspect AltercationsTurf Wars
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Jimmy Carter in the NY Times

2011-06-23T16:41:00.000-07:00

June 16, 2011
Call Off the Global Drug War By JIMMY CARTER
Atlanta

IN an extraordinary new initiative announced earlier this month, the Global Commission on Drug Policy has made some courageous and profoundly important recommendations in a report on how to bring more effective control over the illicit drug trade. The commission includes the former presidents or prime ministers of five countries, a former secretary general of the United Nations, human rights leaders, and business and government leaders, including Richard Branson, George P. Shultz and Paul A. Volcker.

The report describes the total failure of the present global antidrug effort, and in particular America’s “war on drugs,” which was declared 40 years ago today. It notes that the global consumption of opiates has increased 34.5 percent, cocaine 27 percent and cannabis 8.5 percent from 1998 to 2008. Its primary recommendations are to substitute treatment for imprisonment for people who use drugs but do no harm to others, and to concentrate more coordinated international effort on combating violent criminal organizations rather than nonviolent, low-level offenders.

These recommendations are compatible with United States drug policy from three decades ago. In a message to Congress in 1977, I said the country should decriminalize the possession of less than an ounce of marijuana, with a full program of treatment for addicts. I also cautioned against filling our prisons with young people who were no threat to society, and summarized by saying: “Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself.”

These ideas were widely accepted at the time. But in the 1980s President Ronald Reagan and Congress began to shift from balanced drug policies, including the treatment and rehabilitation of addicts, toward futile efforts to control drug imports from foreign countries.

This approach entailed an enormous expenditure of resources and the dependence on police and military forces to reduce the foreign cultivation of marijuana, coca and opium poppy and the production of cocaine and heroin. One result has been a terrible escalation in drug-related violence, corruption and gross violations of human rights in a growing number of Latin American countries.

The commission’s facts and arguments are persuasive. It recommends that governments be encouraged to experiment “with models of legal regulation of drugs ... that are designed to undermine the power of organized crime and safeguard the health and security of their citizens.” For effective examples, they can look to policies that have shown promising results in Europe, Australia and other places.

But they probably won’t turn to the United States for advice. Drug policies here are more punitive and counterproductive than in other democracies, and have brought about an explosion in prison populations. At the end of 1980, just before I left office, 500,000 people were incarcerated in America; at the end of 2009 the number was nearly 2.3 million. There are 743 people in prison for every 100,000 Americans, a higher portion than in any other country and seven times as great as in Europe. Some 7.2 million people are either in prison or on probation or parole — more than 3 percent of all American adults!

Some of this increase has been caused by mandatory minimum sentencing and “three strikes you’re out” laws. But about three-quarters of new admissions to state prisons are for nonviolent crimes. And the single greatest cause of prison population growth has been the war on drugs, with the number of people incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses increasing more than twelvefold since 1980.

Not only has this excessive punishment destroyed the lives of millions of young people and their families (disproportionately minorities), but it is wreaking havoc on state and local budgets. Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger pointed out that, in 1980, 10 percent of his state’s budget went to higher education and 3 percent to prisons; in 2010, almost 11 percent went to prisons and only 7.5 percent to higher education.

Maybe the increased tax burden on wealthy citizens necessary to pay for the war on drugs will help to bring about a reform of America’s drug policies. At least the recommendations of the Global Commission will give some cover to political leaders who wish to do what is right.

A few years ago I worked side by side for four months with a group of prison inmates, who were learning the building trade, to renovate some public buildings in my hometown of Plains, Ga. They were intelligent and dedicated young men, each preparing for a productive life after the completion of his sentence. More than half of them were in prison for drug-related crimes, and would have been better off in college or trade school.

To help such men remain valuable members of society, and to make drug policies more humane and more effective, the American government should support and enact the reforms laid out by the Global Commission on Drug Policy.

Jimmy Carter, the 39th president, is the founder of the Carter Center and the winner of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize.

Mexico Drug War Update - Calderon Kills 36,000 of His Own People

2011-02-24T11:42:00.000-08:00

Published on StoptheDrugWar.org (http://stopthedrugwar.org)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mexico Drug War Update
By psmith
Created 2011/02/23 - 9:22pm
by Phillip Smith by Bernd Debusmann, Jr.

Mexican drug trafficking organizations make billions each year smuggling drugs into the United States, profiting enormously from the prohibitionist drug policies of the US government. Since Mexican president Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006 and called the armed forces into the fight against the so-called cartels, prohibition-related violence has killed more than 35,000 people, including more than 15,000 last year. The increasing militarization of the drug war and the arrest of dozens of high-profile drug traffickers have failed to stem the flow of drugs -- or the violence -- whatsoever. The Merida initiative, which provides $1.4 billion over three years for the US to assist the Mexican government with training, equipment and intelligence, has so far failed to make a difference. Here are a few of the latest developments in Mexico's drug war:

Cash generated by drug prohibition buys lots of guns in Mexico (Image via Wikimedia)Thursday, February 10

In Ciudad Juarez, 18 people were killed [9] in several incidents in the city. In one incident, gunmen attacked a bar, firing indiscriminately and killing six waitresses, a man dressed as a woman and another unidentified individual. It has been suggested by some that the incident is an example of "social cleansing" conducted by armed groups in the city. In another incident, a man was killed when being shot over 100 times by men armed with automatic rifles.

Friday, February 11

At the US-Mexico border at Nogales, a smuggling tunnel was discovered [10] by Border Patrol agents. The tunnel was hand dug and appears to still have been under construction.

Saturday, February 12

In Acapulco, a second-grader was executed [11] after being allegedly picked up by a car full of armed men. A note was left with the body suggesting that the boy was killed because his mother was an informant and for "stealing husbands."

In Guadalajara, armed men used automatic weapons and grenades [12] to attack a crowded nightclub. Six people were killed and at least 37 were wounded. It was later reported that three of the dead may have been Venezuelan nationals and one was a Colombian national. The reasons for the attack remain unclear.

Sunday, February 13

In Tamaulipas, 18 cartel gunmen were killed [13] during a series of armed clashes between criminal organizations. The battles, which took place primarily on the Matamoros-Ciudad Victoria highway, were almost certainly between the Gulf Cartel and their former enforcers of the Zetas Organization.

In Ciudad Juarez, ten people were murdered [14] across the city. In one incident, four young men were gunned down leaving a soccer game. Reports indicate that the attacking gunmen in that incident were all young men, no older than 20 years of age.

In Monterrey, the head of Nuevo Leon's security and intelligence agency [15] was killed. Homero Salcido Trevino, 40, was traveling home Sunday night when gunmen kidnapped him and drove him to a central area of Monterrey, where he was shot and his body left in the backseat. The car was then set aflame.

Monday, February 14

Near Ciudad Juarez, the body of the brother of a murdered activist [16] was found in a drainage ditch near a military checkpoint. The body is that of Elias Reyes, whose sister, Josefina Reyes, a social activist who sought to investigate the murder of women in the city, was murdered in January. Elias Reyes had been missing since being abducted by gunmen along with his sister and sister-in-law. A child and the Reyes Salazar siblings' mother were released by the gunmen.

Tuesday, February 15

In San Luis Potosi, two American Immigration and Customs Enforcement (agents) were ambushed [17] by heavily armed gunmen. Jaime Zapata, 32, died while a second agent, Victor Avila, was wounded and remains hospitalized. It is whether the gunmen had actively been seeking out the Americans. SUV's are highly-prized by the cartels, so a possibility exists that this was a carjacking incident gone wrong.

President Obama later called the Zapata family to offer his condolences.

Wednesday, February 16

In Washington, a special task force was formed [18] to investigate the incident in which the ICE agents were shot. US investigators -- whose total number may reach the dozens -- began arriving in Mexico.

Thursday, February 17

In Ciudad Juarez, at least 15 people were killed. [19] Two police officers were killed in two different shooting incidents. The killings came the same day as a large group of government officials were in the city to report on one year of the Todos Somos Juarez plan, which was formed after 16 young people were killed at a party. On Thursday, they reported that overall crime in Juarez was down 45%.

In Arizona, nine people were arrested for allegedly being part of an arms smuggling network [20] which shipped weapons to Mexico. During the operation, which also took place in Texas and inside Mexico, police seized some 300 weapons including assault rifles. Another seven defendants were previously charged and are awaiting trial.

Friday, February 18

In Ciudad Juarez, twenty people were murdered [21] in a series of violent incidents across the city. The dead include at least three pairs of couples and a member of the state police intelligence service. In one instance, a man and woman were shot dead in a home after it was stormed by at least three car loads of heavily armed gunmen, who used a truck to ram through the front gate of the home.

In Nuevo Leon, eight gunmen were killed [22] during a series of firefights with the army.

Saturday, February 19

In Acapulco, at least twelve taxi drivers or passengers were gunned down [23] in a series of incidents across the city. The motives remain unclear. Taxi drivers in the area are sometimes recruited by cartels to traffic and move narcotics.

In Ciudad Juarez, at least 19 people were killed [24] on Saturday, bringing the number of murders to almost 40 in a 48-hour period.

In Reynosa, President Calderon announced that at least four additional battalions will be deployed [25] to Mexico's northern border. Calderon's comments came during an Army Day speech at a nearby military base.

In Torreon, Coahuila, five people were killed when gunmen opened fire inside two bars. [26] A sixth person died the next day. At least eight others were wounded, including a two-year old girl whose mother was killed. Witnesses said that at least one individual returned fire and was then taken into police custody.

Tuesday, February 22

In an interview published Tuesday in Mexico City, President Calderon said that the United States is not doing enough to help Mexico [27], especially in stemming the number of American-bought weapons headed south into Mexico. He also criticized the way the Mexican government was characterized in documents made public by WikiLeaks, saying that US-Mexico relations were strained by the contents of the leaks.

In Guerrero, Mexican marines seized 72 sticks of commercial explosives [28] at an armed camp in a rural area of the state near the border with Michoacan. The marines also found assault rifles, grenades and a small of marijuana.

In nearby Acapulco, the bodies of seven men were discovered. Three of the bodies were mutilated and dumped on a main highway leading to a tourist area. One of the other bodies found was half-buried and decapitated. Mexican media report that notes threatening a local army officer were left with some of the bodies.

In Mazatlan, two people were shot dead within earshot of foreign tourists at a hotel.

Wednesday, February 23

In Acapulco, three bodies were discovered [29] inside a taxi. One male victim had been decapitated. The taxi had been stolen earlier in the day.

In Mexico City, the Mexican Defense Department announced [30] that one individual suspected of participating in last week's attack on two US ICE agents has been detained by Mexican forces. They did not name the individual or say where he was captured. Jose "El Mamito" Rejon, a high-ranking Zeta and former Mexican army corporal, has been named by various sources as likely having participated or ordered the attack, but it is unclear if Rejon is the man in custody.

Total Body Count for the last two weeks: 297

Total Body Count for the Year: 1,175

Total Body Count for 2010: 15,273

Total Body Count for 2009: 9,600

Total Body Count for 2008 (approx.): 5,400

Total Body Count for 2007 (approx): 4,300

Total Body Count for Calderon’s drug war through 2010: 34,849

Total Body Count for Calderon’s drug war to date: 36,024

Mexico.BorderMexican Drug WarNews BriefPolice/Suspect AltercationsTurf WarsViolence
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Dirty Cop Stories: Three for Texas!

2011-01-09T16:07:00.000-08:00

THIS WEEK'S CORRUPT COPS STORIES
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/2011/jan/05/weeks_corrupt_cops_stories

It's a Texas trifecta this week, plus a Nashville cop buying guns for the cartels, an ATF agent with sticky fingers, and an upstate New York cop with several bad habits. Let's get to it:

former police officer Jaime Beas, pleaded guilty to working with the ZetasIn Nashville, Tennessee, a former Nashville police officer was found guilty December 20 of lying when purchasing weapons he intended to smuggle to Guatemala. Edwin Ronal Morales was one of five people indicted in 2009 on charges of conspiring to illegal purchase weapons to be smuggled to Guatemalan drug traffickers. He was found guilty of two count of making false statement for falsely representing himself as the actual buyer when he was really giving the guns to a codefendant to be smuggled out of the country. He faces up to 10 years in prison on each count.

In Beaumont, Texas, two Beaumont police officers pleaded guilty December 22 to misdemeanor charges of tampering with government records for leaving a confidential informant's name out of statements and testimony. Officers Brad Bealieu and Eric Heilman also had their peace officer's licenses suspended for six months.

In Cleveland, Ohio, a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms agent pleaded guilty December 22 to stealing money in an October drug raid. ATF Agent Steven Campbell was part of team raiding a marijuana dealer in nearby Lyndhurst when he began stuffing cash into his pockets. A DEA agent on the raid turned him in. When confronted, Campbell insisted the only cash he had was his, but when he struggled to resist being handcuffed, $46,000 fell out of his pockets.

In McAllen, Texas, a former Pharr police officer pleaded guilty December 22 to being on the payroll of the Mexican drug cartel the Zetas. Former officer Jaime Beas, 33, had been arrested in a July sting in which he thought he was trading cocaine for high-powered weapons and body armor destined for the Zetas. He lived in a house owned by a Zetas member. The house and four luxury cars were seized by authorities. He pleaded guilty to an organized crime charge.

In McAllen, Texas, a former McAllen police officer was sentenced December 21 to 27 years in federal prison for drug trafficking conspiracy. Former officer Francisco Meza-Rojas had led a group that smuggled cocaine and pot into the Rio Grande Valley, but after being arrested in 2006 broke out of jail and fled to Mexico until he was arrested in July. He had pleaded guilty earlier this year to conspiracy to possess cocaine and marijuana with intent to distribute.

In Niagara Falls, New York, a former Niagara Falls police officer was sentenced December 22 to nearly 14 years in prison for tipping off drug dealers to police investigations, buying crack cocaine on duty, and groping a woman he had pulled over. Former officer Ryan Warme had pleaded guilty in April to three felonies in exchange for a 10-year sentence, but got additional time added on after admitting threatening a prisoner who was set to testify against. He pleaded guilty to deprivation of civil rights under color of law, using and carrying his Niagara Falls Police Department-issued pistol during a drug transaction and conspiracy to distribute more than five grams of crack cocaine.

In Shakopee, Minnesota, a former Carver County sheriff's detective was sentenced December 28 to six months in jail for stealing methamphetamine from the department's evidence vault in Chaska. Daniel Kahlow, an 18-year-veteran, went down after authorities noticed the drugs had been tampered with and saw him entering the vault in a surveillance video. He admitted ripping off the meth for his personal use and told investigators he had been smoking meth for about a year. Kahlow copped a plea to second-degree possession of meth. He begins serving his sentence this month.
Drug War Issues Police Corruption

This Weeks Dirty Cops - Austin, TX from Drug War Chronicle

2010-08-20T12:29:00.000-07:00

In Austin, Texas, a former Austin police officer was convicted Tuesday of giving crack cocaine to a man who was the boyfriend of a prostitute he knew. Scott Lando, 48, was convicted of delivery of a controlled substance. He also faces charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and prostitution. The crack incident took place in 2006. He was fired in 2008. He is out on bail.

Texas Now Prosecuting TWO Medical Marijuana Patients from Drug War Chronicle

2010-08-20T12:20:00.000-07:00

By psmith
Created 2010/08/18 - 11:51pm
by Phillip Smith [1], August 18, 2010, 11:51pm

Two extreme cases from Texas demonstrate why legislation to protect medical marijuana patients there is badly needed.
Asthmatic medical marijuana patient Chris Diaz sits in jail in Brownwood, Texas, facing up to life in prison for a half ounce of marijuana and three grams of hash. Quadraplegic medical marijuana patient Chris Cain may be joining Diaz behind bars in Beaumont, Texas, after he goes to trial next week. When it comes to medical marijuana, Texas isn't California (or even Rhode Island), and don't you forget it, boy!

seat of injustice
Chris Diaz is learning that the hard way. He was supposedly pulled over for an expired license tag (his defenders say the tag was not expired) while en route from Amarillo to Austin, and according to the DPS trooper's report, would not produce a drivers' license or proof of insurance. He was then arrested for failure to identify, and during a subsequent search, police found a small amount of hashish on his person. A search of the vehicle then turned up additional hash and marijuana in a pill bottle from a California medical marijuana provider. Now, Diaz is facing up to life in prison [11] after being indicted by a Brown County grand jury. He is charged with possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver, a first-degree felony in the Lone Star State.

Under Texas law, possession of less than two ounces of marijuana is a Class B misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail, while possession of hashish is either a state jail felony punishable by up to two years for less than a gram, or a second-class felony punishable by up to 20 years if less than four grams, although probation is also possible.

But because police allegedly read a text message on Diaz's seized cell phone advising a friend that he had some great hash and asking if he wanted any, he was instead indicted on the trafficking charge, punishable by up to life in prison. He remains behind bars -- without his medicine -- on a $40,000 cash bond.

Diaz was diagnosed with asthma just before he turned three, his mother, Rhonda Martin said. "He was on medications ever since. He used a nebulizer, all kinds of inhalers, Albuteral, Advair. He stopped taking them when he was 14 because he didn't like the effects," she recalled. "He said the steroids made him feel agitated and wouldn't take those chemical medications anymore."

While the family was aware of medical marijuana, it was only when Diaz fell ill during a family vacation in California and was hospitalized in intensive care that they first learned about medical marijuana for the treatment of asthma. "We were put in touch with a doctor there, and he recommended it. It was his recommendation Chris was carrying," said Martin.

Neither Brown County prosecutors nor Diaz's court-appointed public defender had responded to Chronicle requests for comment by press time.

Diaz and some of his strongest supporters, including his mother, consider themselves "sovereign citizens," and have a web site, I Am Sovereign [12], in which they argue their case and attempt to win support for Diaz. But that set of beliefs, which precludes carrying government-issued identification, is also complicating things for Diaz. "Failure to identify" was the first charge he faced, and he was searched and the cannabis was found subsequent to being charged with that. Similarly, the authorities' lack of any records or ID for Diaz played a role in the setting of the high bail.

He's not having an easy time of it in jail, said Martin. "He is not receiving any medical attention. He eats only organic food, but he's not getting that. He was assaulted last Sunday by a jailer when he asked for medication. The jailer got in his face and started screaming and pushing him. Chris didn't react. He is a peaceful man."

"The reality is that this kid is in jail for having medical marijuana and is looking at life in prison," said Stephen Betzen, director of the Texas Coalition for Compassionate Care [13], which is lobbying for a medical marijuana bill next year in the state legislature. "You've got to be kidding me. You don't give drug addicts life in prison, so why would you do that to a patient with a legitimate recommendation from another state?"

Chris CainBetzen also had real issues with Diaz being stopped in the first place. "The fact of the matter is that Chris was driving home to Austin with legal plates," he said. "The cops lied and said they were expired. Not only did they lie to pull him over, they took a kid with no record and charged him with a life sentence offense for three grams of hash. The people who are perpetrating this need to be brought to justice and their victims need to be released from jail," said Betzen. "You can't just pull people over because they're brown or from California and begin to search them. There's a whole amendment about that."

"I'm surprised somebody is facing a life sentence for basically half an ounce," said Kris Hermes, spokesman for the medical marijuana support group Americans for Safe Access [14]. "But in states that don't have medical marijuana laws, authorities are free to arrest and prosecute regardless of whether it is being used medicinally."

Meanwhile, over in Hardin County in East Texas, Chris Cain [15], 39, will be rolling his wheelchair to court next week, where the quadriplegic faces a jail sentence for possessing less than two ounces of medical marijuana. Cain, who was paralyzed in a diving accident as a teenager, has been an outspoken medical marijuana advocate for a decade.

He was arrested in 2005 when the Hardin County Sheriff's Office raided his home with the assistance of two helicopters, seized three joints, and threw him in jail. He wound up on probation, but could not use his medicine.

"Within six weeks, the spasticity was so bad he was developing bed sores," said Betzen, so he started using again. "The cops would come by every two weeks to see if he was healthy enough to go to jail."

Now, he faces trial again for possession. "They actually want to put him in jail," exclaimed Betzen. "The sheriff there really has a vendetta against him."

While Texas certainly needs to enter the 21st Century when it comes to medical marijuana, the problem is larger than the Lone Star State, said Hermes. "It's critical that we develop a federal medical marijuana law so that people are not treated differently in Texas than in California, and patients who need this medicine in Texas should be allowed to use it with fear of arrest and prosecution. Americans for Safe Access is committed not only to encouraging states to pass medical marijuana laws irrespective of federal policy, but also to push the federal government to develop a policy that will treat patients equitably no matter where in the US they live."

DOJ Foot Dragging on Prison Rape from Huffington Post

2010-08-17T15:24:00.000-07:00

Focus on the Family, George Soros's Open Society Policy Center, the American Conservative Union and the American Civil Liberties Union are all furious with Attorney General Eric Holder -- and amazingly enough, it's about the same thing.

The incitement for such an unusual alliance is the Justice Department's failure to act in the face of a challenge to fundamental human dignity: The ongoing, almost commonplace rape of prisoners at the hands of other prisoners or prison guards.

Estimates based on a 2007 DOJ survey of inmates suggest that more than 60,000 prisoners -- or about 1 in 20 -- are sexually assaulted each year.

A law passed in 2003 created an independent commission to develop national standards to address the problem. The commission issued its exhaustive report in June 2009. And the attorney general was required by law to enact new standards by June 23, 2010.

That was nearly two months ago.

In a June letter June, Holder expressed his "regret" that he would not be able to meet Congress's deadline. He explained that the working group he commissioned -- which represents 13 different Justice Department offices and the Department of Homeland Security -- is moving as fast as it can.

So on Tuesday, the unusual coalition gathered at the National Press Club to demand faster action.

Prison rape continues because "the system looks the other way," said David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union. And now the regulations are lagging "because this is not at the top of anybody's agenda."

But the net effect is that Holder "is asking for time so that another 60,000 can be raped," Keene said.

"We can't tolerate the attitude that it is inconvenient to do what's necessary to stop the problem today, before we rack up thousands of more victims," said Margaret Winter, associate director of the ACLU's National Prison Project.

"When you look at the political spectrum that's represented at the podium here this morning, you realize that there is something very fundamental at stake here, a question of the most fundamental human dignity, human rights and constitutional rights," Winter said.

The message for Holder: "You've had long enough. The recommendations are there. The recommendations are obvious. And they need to be put in place," said Barrett Duke, an official with the Southern Baptist Convention.

What makes this such an important issue for conservative evangelical Christians?

"We believe in law and order," Duke said. "We expect law and order everywhere." There's also the matter of moral failing. Our leaders "have failed to fulfill the responsibilities that have been entrusted to them," Duke said.

Tim Goeglein, spokesman for Focus on the Family, said his group's position on the issues is prompted "by the sanctity of every human life."

"The fact that people are not safe in our prisons ... is a scandal, that's a stain on our honor," said Pat Nolan, vice president of the Prison Fellowship and a former member of the independent commission. (See his blog post.)

Nolan noted that prisoners are "stripped of all ability to defend themselves" as they have no choice over who to associate with, or where, or when -- and they "can't arm themselves to defend themselves."

Bill Mefford, civil rights director for the United Methodist Church, said the issue is important to the "thousands and thousands" of churchgoers who minister in prisons. "They are seeing and witnessing firsthand the brokenness of the system and the way it impacts human lives," he said.

Holder, he said, should "stop dragging his feet, and stop listening to people who are trying to protect their turf."

Lovisa Stannow, executive director of Just Detention International, said there is nothing inevitable or innate about prison rape. "Prison rape is basically a management problem," she said. The proof is that the rate of rape varies widely from state to state and from prison to prison.

A Justice Department spokeswoman on Tuesday said that a proposed rule will be sent to the White House's Office of Management and Budget "in the fall." Hannah August wrote in an e-mail: "We are working hard not only to draft the standards, but also to ensure that the standards are successful after they're put into place. We want to be a force multiplier, enabling best practices to gain recognition and enabling correctional systems with less experience to benefit from the prior efforts of other jurisdictions. It is unacceptable for anyone in the care of our country's correctional facilities to be sexually assaulted, and we are working diligently towards eliminating such abuse."

In Hill testimony in March, Holder described the pushback he's getting, much of it related to the fact that no additional funding comes with the new rules. "When I speak to wardens, when I speak to people who run local jails, when I speak to people who run state facilities, they look at me and they say 'Eric, how are we supposed to do this?' If we are going to segregate people, build new facilities, do training, how are we supposed to do this? And that is what we are trying to work out, ways in which we can follow the dictates of the statute and do something that is going to be meaningful, not something that is simply going to be a show thing, something that is going to have a measurable impact."

Central to the commission's recommendation is the call for independent, outside monitoring of prisons. "Unfortunately, there is concern that the attorney general will backpedal on this key part," said Amy Fettig, staff attorney with the ACLU National Prison Project.

Mexico Drug War Update from Drug War Chronicle

2010-07-30T15:23:00.000-07:00

Mexico Drug War Update
July 28, 2010, 09:58pm, (Issue #642)

by Bernd Debusmann, Jr.

Mexican drug trafficking organizations make billions each year smuggling drugs into the United States, profiting enormously from the prohibitionist drug policies of the US government. Since Mexican president Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006 and called the armed forces into the fight against the so-called cartels, prohibition-related violence has killed nearly 25,000 people (the Mexican attorney general put the death toll at 24,826 on earlier this month), with a death toll of nearly 8,000 in 2009 and over 6,000 so far in 2010. The increasing militarization of the drug war and the arrest of dozens of high-profile drug traffickers have failed to stem the flow of drugs -- or the violence -- whatsoever. The Merida initiative, which provides $1.4 billion over three years for the US to assist the Mexican government with training, equipment and intelligence, has so far failed to make a difference. Here are a few of the latest developments in Mexico's drug war:

In San Diego, Federal authorities announced criminal charges against 43 members of the Tijuana-based Arellano-Felix Organization. 31 of the 43 men are in custody, 27 of them having been arrested in the United States. Among the arrested men was Jesus Quinones Marques, the director of international liaison for the Baja California attorney general's office. He is accused of attempting to plant information about murders in local newspapers in an attempt to blame rival gangs.

Saturday, July 24

In Ciudad Juarez, the murder rate passed 6,000 since January 1st, 2008. As of Saturday, there had been 235 murders in July, and 1,645 so far in 2010. In 2009, there were 2,754 and 1,623 in 2008. On Saturday, 10 people were killed in several incidents in the city. Four of the dead were killed when gunmen attacked a barbershop, and another three were killed in an attack on a house.

Sunday, July 25

Mexicans officials now claim that gunmen who committed a massacre last week in Torreon were let out of the prison at night to carry out drug-related killings. The prisoners are thought to be involved in at least three mass shootings in Torreon this year, killing a total of 35 people. Ballistics testing has also indicated that the weapons were those of prison guards, who lent them to the hit men.

In Nuevo Leon, at least 51 bodies were discovered by authorities after a three-day excavation of a mass grave. The grave site spanned a 7-acre area, and most of the dead seem to be men between 20 and 50, many of them tattooed. Similar mass graves have been found in Tamaulipas, Guerrero and Quintana Roo in recent months.

Monday, July 26

In Guerrero, six men were found dead inside a car near the town of Chilpancingo. A sign reading, "This will happen to all rapists, extortionists and kidnappers. Attentively, the New Cartel of the Sierra," was left with the bodies. Authorities are now investigating this previously unheard of organization. The car was reportedly taken from its owner after he was stopped and hijacked on a road.

In Sinaloa, two men were ambushed and killed by gunmen in Culiacan. The men -- Jose Antonio and Luis Alberto Vega Heras -- were the son and nephew of a known high-ranking member of the Sinaloa Cartel, known as El Gaucho. Additionally, two other men were killed in the city. Killings were also reported in Morelos, Jalisco, and Chihuahua, including at least five in Ciudad Juarez.

In the Laguna region of Durango and Coahuila, four journalists went missing after being kidnapped by an unknown group. Two were cameramen from Televisa, one was a reporter for Multimedios television, and one a reporter for El Vespertino. Three were kidnapped Monday at around noon and the fourth on Monday night.

Tuesday, July 27

In Durango, eight severed heads were found left in pairs along a highway. In Puebla, three federal agents were killed by gunmen during a firefight. A relative of the Governor-Elect was assassinated in Parral, Chihuaha. In Tamaulipas, the army claimed to have captured nine Guatemalan citizens during operations against drug gangs.

Wednesday, July 28

In Ciudad Juarez, two severed heads were discovered in coolers with the bodies left nearby. Along with the bodies were left notes which read "I'm a kidnapper and extortionist. I'm an Azteca" and "I do carjackings and work for La Linea and the Aztecas." The Aztecas are a street gang affiliated with the Juarez Cartel, and La Linea is the enforcement wing of the Juarez Cartel.

Total Body Count for the Week: 236

Total Body Count for the Year: 6,671

Read the previous Mexico Drug War Update here.

Latin America: Mexico Drug War Update from Drug War Chronicle

2010-07-09T15:17:00.000-07:00

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Latin America: Mexico Drug War Update
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from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #639, 7/9/10
by Bernd Debusmann, Jr.

Mexican drug trafficking organizations make billions each year smuggling drugs into the United States, profiting enormously from the prohibitionist drug policies of the US government. Since Mexican president Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006 and called the armed forces into the fight against the so-called cartels, prohibition-related violence has killed an estimated 23,000 people, with a death toll of nearly 8,000 in 2009 and over 5,000 so far in 2010. The increasing militarization of the drug war and the arrest of dozens of high-profile drug traffickers have failed to stem the flow of drugs -- or the violence -- whatsoever. The Merida initiative, which provides $1.4 billion over three years for the US to assist the Mexican government with training, equipment and intelligence, has so far failed to make a difference. Here are a few of the latest developments in Mexico's drug war:

Monday, June 28
In Sinaloa, a well-known musician was shot dead by unidentified gunmen. Sergio Vega, 40, was driving to a concert when he was intercepted and murdered just hours after having gone on the radio to deny reports that he had been killed. Vega was known to sing "narco-corridos" or drug ballads. Several other musicians of this genre have been killed in Mexico in recent years. Some are known to take commissions from drug-traffickers to write songs about them, or otherwise be involved in the drug business.

In Tamaulipas, a candidate for governor and four others were killed after his motorcade was ambushed. Borderlandbeat.com reported that the attackers used clone military vehicles and were dressed in fake Marine uniforms. Rodolfo Torre Cantu, 46, was the PRI candidate and a frontrunner. He was later replaced by his brother. The Torre killing is the most significant political assassination since the 1994 murder of presidential candidate Luis Colosio. There has been significant violence in Tamaulipas in recent months as the Zetas fight their former employers, the Gulf Cartel.

Thursday, July 1

In a remote area near Nogales, Sonora 21 people were killed during a battle between rival groups of drug-traffickers. The incident began after a convoy of 50 vehicles was ambushed by rivals near the village of Tubutuma. One of the groups was apparently allied to Sinaloa Cartel boss Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, while the other was comprised of a mixed force of gunmen loyal to Hector Beltran-Leyva and the Zetas Organization. It is unclear who ambushed whom, but BorderReporter.com has reported that the Sinaloa Cartel gunmen took the brunt of the casualties.

In Nogales proper, two burnt heads were found hanging on a fence near just outside a cemetery. A handwritten note from one gang threatening another was left at the scene, but it was unclear if this is related to the Tubutuma ambush.

Friday, July 2

In Ciudad Juarez, Mexican officials announced the capture of a key suspect in the March murder of a US consulate employee, her husband, and a third-Mexican national. The suspect, Jesus Ernesto Chavez, is reported to be a senior leader in the Aztecas gang, which provides enforcers for the Juarez Cartel. He has since claimed that he ordered the killing of the consulate employee because she provided visas to rivals. However, US authorities have disputed this claim, saying there are no indications that the killings were due to the employee's job, and that she did not even work in the section which provided visas.

Saturday, July 3

In Ciudad Juarez, at least 15 people were killed in incidents across the city. In one shooting, a 90-year old man was killed by a stray bullet as he stood near a house which was attacked by a group of armed men. Three others (apparently the targets) were also killed. In another incident, four people were killed at a truck repair company's offices.

Tuesday, July 6

In Sinaloa, three decapitated heads were found on the hood of a car near the town of Angostura. The bodies were found inside the car.

In Tamaulipas, police arrested a bodyguard who worked for the governor on allegations that he also worked for a drug cartel. The guard, Ismael Ortega Galicia, has been named by the US Treasury department as being a part of either the Zetas or the Gulf Cartel.

Thursday, July 8

In Los Mochis, Sinaloa, armed men stormed a police facility and took back several vehicles which had been confiscated by the authorities in recent operations. At least 10 gunmen took part in the raid, including some who drove a multi-level car-carrier to take the vehicles away. Hours earlier, gunmen in the area also raided a municipal police facility and rescued three men who were being detained there.

Total Body Count Since Last Update: 520

Total Body Count for the Year: 5,971

Penalties for Colorado Drug Possession Decrease Under New Law from Drug War Chronicle

2010-05-31T09:07:00.000-07:00

Sentencing: Penalties for Some Colorado Drug Possession Decrease Under New Law
from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #634, 5/28/10

Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter (D) Tuesday signed into law a package of criminal justice reform bills, including one that will reduce penalties for some drug possession offenses, one that will give judges increased discretion in sentencing, and one that will broaden parole eligibility. Of the 10 bills in the package, six were based on recommendations from the Colorado Commission on Criminal Justice, which Ritter formed in 2007 to try to get a grip on skyrocketing criminal justice and corrections costs.

"Our criminal justice system is tasked with one of the most important responsibilities in our society -- maintaining public safety and protecting communities," said Gov. Ritter, who served as Denver's district attorney for 12 years before becoming governor. "What we have created here in Colorado, particularly the past few years, is a system that is tough on crime and smart on crime. We can do both. We are doing both, because public safety is not a zero-sum game. Certainly, we can always do better. We can always make improvements. And that's what we are doing here today by signing this legislation into law."

HB 1352 reduces the penalty for the illegal use of drugs (excluding marijuana, which is already decriminalized) from a felony to a misdemeanor and removes the word "possess" from the statute regarding drug sales and manufacture. It also reduces the penalties for the simple possession of most drugs from a felony to a misdemeanor.

But not all drugs. Possession of Rohypnol, ketamine, or methamphetamine would remain a felony punishable by up to six years in prison. The misdemeanor possessors of other drugs, including heroin and cocaine, would face only 18 months.

But the bill also increases penalties for drug sales and manufacturing offenses to 12 years. Those convicted of importing drugs into the state or using guns face up to 48 years, and anyone convicted of supplying marijuana to someone younger than 15 faces a mandatory minimum four years.

Still, the bill commits $1.5 million in expected savings in prison costs to treatment and rehabilitation. Overall, the changes in sentencing, probation, and parole in the package are expected to save the state $3.6 million a year.

HB 1338, sponsored by Sen. Pat Steadman, allows judges to exercise more discretion in sentencing by allowing them to sentence some two-time felons to probation instead of prison. The provision does not apply to those whose prior felonies were specified violent crimes or offenses against children.

"HB 1338 restores judicial discretion in sentencing certain nonviolent offenders to probation rather than prison. This bill saves money and saves lives," Sen. Pat Steadman said.

HB 1360 allows community punishment instead of re-imprisonment for people on parole for low-level, nonviolent crimes who commit technical parole violations, such as a dirty drug test, missing an appointment, or moving without reporting the move.

"It saves the state millions of dollars by providing more intermediate sanctions for technical parole violators," said bill cosponsor Rep. Sal Pace. "These programs not only save the state money, but more importantly they are proven though research to reduce recidivism rates. That means fewer crimes, fewer victims and greater cost savings in the future."

Prohibition: Drug War is a Failure, Associated Press Reports from the Drug War Chronicle

2010-05-15T09:50:00.000-07:00

Prohibition: Drug War is a Failure, Associated Press Reports
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/632/associated_press_AP_declares_drug_war_failure

In a major, broad-ranging report released Thursday, the Associated Press declared that "After 40 Years, $1 Trillion, US War on Drugs Has Failed to Meet Any of Its Goals." The report notes that after four decades of prohibitionist drug enforcement, "Drug use is rampant and violence is even more brutal and widespread."

The AP even got drug czar Gil Kerlikowske to agree. "In the grand scheme, it has not been successful," Kerlikowske said. "Forty years later, the concern about drugs and drug problems is, if anything, magnified, intensified."

The AP pointedly notes that despite official acknowledgments that the policy has been a flop, the Obama administration's federal drug budget continues to increase spending on law enforcement and interdiction and that the budget's broad contours are essentially identical to those of the Bush administration.

Here, according to the AP, is where some of that trillion dollars worth of policy disaster went:

$20 billion to fight the drug gangs in their home countries. In Colombia, for example, the United States spent more than $6 billion, while coca cultivation increased and trafficking moved to Mexico -- and the violence along with it.
$33 billion in marketing "Just Say No"-style messages to America's youth and other prevention programs. High school students report the same rates of illegal drug use as they did in 1970, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says drug overdoses have "risen steadily" since the early 1970s to more than 20,000 last year.
$49 billion for law enforcement along America's borders to cut off the flow of illegal drugs. This year, 25 million Americans will snort, swallow, inject and smoke illicit drugs, about 10 million more than in 1970, with the bulk of those drugs imported from Mexico.
$121 billion to arrest more than 37 million nonviolent drug offenders, about 10 million of them for possession of marijuana. Studies show that jail time tends to increase drug abuse.
$450 billion to lock those people up in federal prisons alone. Last year, half of all federal prisoners in the US were serving sentences for drug offenses. [Editor's Note: This $450 billion dollar figure for federal drug war prisoners appears erroneous on the high side. According to Department of Justice budget figures, funding for the Bureau of Prisons, as well as courthouse security programs, was set at $9 billion for the coming fiscal year.]
The AP notes that, even adjusted for inflation, the federal drug war budget is 31 times what Richard Nixon asked for in his first federal drug budget.

Harvard University economist Jeffrey Miron told the AP that spending money for more police and soldiers only leads to more homicides. "Current policy is not having an effect of reducing drug use," Miron said, "but it's costing the public a fortune."

"President Obama's newly released drug war budget is essentially the same as Bush's, with roughly twice as much money going to the criminal justice system as to treatment and prevention," said Bill Piper, director of national affairs for the nonprofit Drug Policy Alliance. "This despite Obama's statements on the campaign trail that drug use should be treated as a health issue, not a criminal justice issue."

"For the first time ever, the nation has before it an administration that views the drug issue first and foremost through the lens of the public health mandate," said economist and drug policy expert John Carnevale, who served three administrations and four drug czars. "Yet... it appears that this historic policy stride has some problems with its supporting budget."

Of the record $15.5 billion Obama is requesting for the drug war for 2011, about two thirds of it is destined for law enforcement, eradication, and interdiction. About one-third will go for prevention and treatment.

The AP did manage to find one person to stick up for the drug war: former Bush administration drug czar John Walters, who insisted society would be worse if today if not for the drug war. "To say that all the things that have been done in the war on drugs haven't made any difference is ridiculous," Walters said. "It destroys everything we've done. It's saying all the people involved in law enforcement, treatment and prevention have been wasting their time. It's saying all these people's work is misguided."

Uh, yeah, John, that's what it's saying.

Latin America: Mexico Drug War Update from Drug War Chronicle

2010-05-10T15:55:00.000-07:00

Latin America: Mexico Drug War Update
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/631/mexico_drug_war_update

by Bernd Debusmann, Jr.

Mexican drug trafficking organizations make billions each year smuggling drugs into the United States, profiting enormously from the prohibitionist drug policies of the US government. Since Mexican president Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006 and called the armed forces into the fight against the so-called cartels, prohibition-related violence has killed over 19,000 people, with a death toll of nearly 8,000 in 2009 and over 3,000 so far in 2010. The increasing militarization of the drug war and the arrest of several high-profile drug traffickers have failed to stem the flow of drugs -- or the violence -- whatsoever. The Merida initiative, which provides $1.4 billion over three years for the US to assist the Mexican government with training, equipment and intelligence, has so far failed to make a difference. Here are a few of the latest developments in Mexico's drug war:

Saturday, May 1

In Miguel Aleman, Tamaulipas, three people, including a man and woman were found dead in a car on a rural highway outside the city. The incident came just hours after two grenade attacks occurred in Reynosa's red light district. One of the grenades exploded near a police station in Reynosa's "zone of tolerance," where prostitution and retail-level drug trafficking are allowed to flourish. Earlier in the week, police closed a bridge to allow them to clear explosives that had been left there.

Sunday, May 2

In Chihuahua, 24 people were murdered over the weekend in various parts of the state. Eight of the killings occurred in Ciudad Juarez, ten occurred in the city of Chihuahua, five in Cuauhtémoc, one in the town of Parral. The five men killed in Cuauhtémoc were killed after gunmen entered a bar and opened fire. All the dead were young males between the ages of 18 and 25. According to Chihuahua State attorney general spokesman Carlos Gonzalez, most of the killings are believed to be related to the ongoing struggle between the Sinaloa and Juarez Cartels for control of the Juarez drug trafficking corridor.

Monday, May 3

In Acapulco, gunmen shot and killed eight men as they played soccer in the early afternoon. The gunmen, who arrived in a convoy of 14 vehicles, were reportedly opening fire throughout the neighborhood for some 40 minutes, terrorizing the local population. In addition to the five men who were left dead on the soccer field, three of the bodies were picked up and taken away by the gunmen. The Acapulco area has seen an upswing in violence over the last few months as rival factions of the Beltran-Leyva cartel fight each other for the leadership of the organization.

In Nuevo Leon, a mother and her daughter were killed and disappeared after being caught in a gun battle between suspected rival drug trafficking groups. The incident was reported by the woman's husband, who claims that the car in which the family was traveling was caught in a firefight on the highway. The car was struck by several bullets, killing the woman and the child. The husband was wounded, but managed to take refuge in a nearby house. When he returned to his vehicle, the bodies of his wife and daughter had vanished.

In Sinaloa, four people were killed in different incidents across the state. In one incident, the bullet riddled bodies of two men were found on the side of the Culiacan-Las Brisas highway. In another incident, an unidentified man was killed after gunmen ambushed him as he drove in the Emiliano Zapata neighborhood of Culiacan.

Tuesday, May 4

In Tabasco, three women were killed in a parking lot in the municipality of Cardenas. The three women, none of whom have been identified, were beaten and abused before being killed.

Wednesday, May 5

In Mexico, El Universal reported that it is now estimated that there are 35 illegal firearms for every one policeman in the country. This figure comes from reports from Oxfam, Amnesty International, and the Collective for Security, Democracy and Human Rights. According to these figures, there are now at least 15 million illegal firearms in Mexico, and 426,800 federal, local, and state law enforcement officers.

In Cuernavaca, a new cartel claimed responsibility for the ambush of a high ranking police official in the city last Monday. The Cartel de Pacifico Sur (CPS) left signs on several bridges and overpasses in the city, claiming that they carried out the attack on Preventive Police Special Operations chief Jose Luis Arragon, which killed a woman who was riding in the car with him. Little is known about the relatively new CPS Cartel, but it is thought to be a faction of the Beltran-Leyva Cartel, which was left leaderless in December after Mexican naval commandos killed boss Arturo Beltran-Leyva. Many of the signs left by the group threaten American-born trafficker Edgar Valdez Villareal, aka "El Barbie", who is currently battling Hector Beltran-Leyva for control of the organization.

In Durango, a high-ranking police official was ambushed and killed by a group of armed men on highway 66. A bodyguard was also killed in the attack.

[Editor's Note: Due to a glitch last week at El Universal, on whose body count we rely, the running total was misreported. This week's total reflects the accurate number.]

Total Body Count for the Week: 109

Total Body Count for the Year: 3,233

Total Body Count since Calderon took office: 19,560

Obama's First National Drug Strategy from Drug War Chronicle

2010-05-10T15:48:00.000-07:00

Obama's First National Drug Strategy -- The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/631/2010_obama_national_drug_control_strategy_good_bad_ugly

A leaked draft of the overdue 2010 National Drug Strategy was published by Newsweek over the weekend, and it reveals some positive shifts away from Bush-era drug policy paradigms and toward more progressive and pragmatic approaches. But there is a lot of continuity as well, and despite the Obama administration's rhetorical shift away from the "war on drugs," the drug war juggernaut is still rolling along.

That doesn't quite jibe with Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP -- the drug czar's office) director Gil Kerlikowske's words when he announced in April 2009 that the phrase "war on drugs" was no longer in favor. "Regardless of how you try to explain to people it's a 'war on drugs' or a 'war on a product,' people see a war as a war on them. We're not at war with people in this country."

The leak was reported by long-time Washington insider and Newsweek columnist Michael Isikoff, who mentioned it almost off-handedly in a piece asserting "The White House Drug Czar's Diminished Status." Isikoff asserted in the piece that the unveiling of the strategy had been delayed because Kerlikowske didn't have the clout to get President Obama to schedule a joint appearance to release it. His office had been downgraded from cabinet level, Isikoff noted.

That sparked an angry retort from UCLA professor Mark Kleiman, a burr under the saddle to prohibitionists and anti-prohibitionists alike for his heterodox views on drug policy. In a blog post, Kleiman seemed personally offended at the leak, twice referring to the leaker as "a jerk," defending the new drug strategy as innovative if bound by interagency politics, and deriding Isikoff's article as "gossipy."

Kleiman also suggested strongly that the leaker was none other than former John Walters on the basis of an editing mark on the document that had his name on it. But Walters has not confirmed that, and others have point out it could have been a current staffer who is using the same computer Walters used while in office.

On the plus side, the draft strategy embraces some harm reduction programs, such as needle exchanges and the use of naloxone to prevent overdoses, although without ever uttering the words "harm reduction." There is also a renewed emphasis on prevention and treatment, with slight spending increases. But again reality fails to live up to rhetoric, with overall federal drug control spending maintaining the long-lived 2:1 ration in spending for law enforcement, eradication, and interdiction versus that for treatment and prevention.

The strategy also promotes alternatives to incarceration, such drug courts, community courts and the like and for the first time hints that it recognizes the harms that can be caused by the punitive approach to drug policy. And it explicitly calls for reform of the sentencing disparity for crack and powder cocaine offenses.

It sets a number of measurable goals related to reducing drug use. By 2015, ONDCP vows to cut last month drug use by young adults by 10% and cut last month use by teens, lifetime use by 8th graders, and the number of chronic drug users by 15%.

The 2010 goals of a 15% reduction reflect diminishing expectations after years of more ambitious drug use reduction goals followed by the drug policy establishment's inability to achieve them. That could inoculate the Obama administration from the kind of criticism faced by the Clinton administration back in the 1990s when it did set much more ambitious goals.

The Clinton administration's 1998 National Drug Control Strategy called for a "ten-year conceptual framework to reduce drug use and drug availability by 50%." That didn't happen. That strategy put the number of drug users at 13.5 million, but instead of decreasing, according to the 2008 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse and Health, by 2007 the number of drug users was at 20.1 million.

While Clinton took criticism from Republicans that his goals were not ambitious enough -- Newt Gingrich said we should just wipe out drugs -- the Bush administration set similar goals, and achieved similarly modest results. The Bush administration's 2002 National Drug Control Strategy sought a 25% reduction in drug use by both teenagers and adults within five years. While teen drug use declined from 11.6% in 2002 to 9.3% in 2007, then drug czar Walters missed his goal. He did less well with adult use almost unchanged, at 6.3% in 2000 and 5.9% in 2007.

The draft strategy, however, remains wedded to law enforcement, eradication, and interdiction, calls for strong federal support for local drug task forces, and explicitly rejects marijuana legalization. It also seeks to make drugged driving a top priority, which would be especially problematic if the administration adopts per se zero tolerance measures (meaning the presence of any metabolites of a controlled substance could result in a driver's arrest whether he was actually impaired or not).

Still, while the draft strategy is definitely a mixed bag, a pair of keen observers of ONDCP and federal drug policy pronounced themselves fairly pleased overall. While still heavy on the law enforcement side, the first Obama national drug strategy is a far cry from the propaganda-driven documents of Bush era drug czar John Walters.

The Good

"This is somewhat of a surprise, because for the first time they have included reducing the funds associated with the drug war in their strategy, although not in a big way, they're calling for reform of the crack/powder cocaine sentencing disparity, and they are calling for the reform of laws that penalize people," said Bill Piper, national affairs director for the Drug Policy Alliance. "This is the first time they've included anything recognizing that some of our policies are creating harm," he added.

"The stuff about syringe exchange and naloxone for overdose prevention is pretty good. It's the first time they've embraced any part of harm reduction, even though they don't use that name," Piper noted.

"I'm also impressed with the section on alternatives to incarceration," said Piper. "They basically said most drug users don't belong in jail, and a lot of dealers don't, either. It's still wedded to the criminal justice system, but it's good that they looked at so many different things -- drug courts, community courts, Operation Highpoint (warning dealers to desist instead of just arresting them as a means of breaking up open-air drug markets), programs for veterans. They seem interested in finding out what works, which is an evidence-based approach that had been lacking in previous strategies."

The Status Quo

"Drug war reformers have eagerly been waiting the release of President Obama's first National Drug Control Strategy," noted Matthew Robinson, professor of Government and Justice Studies at Appalachian State University and coauthor (with Renee Scherlen) of "Lies, Damned Lies, and Drug War Statistics: A Critical Analysis of Claims Made by the ONDCP." "Would it put Obama's and Kerlikowske's words into action, or would it be more of the same in terms of federal drug control policy? The answer is yes. And no. There is real, meaningful, exciting change proposed in the 2010 Strategy. But there's a lot of the status quo, too," he said.

"The first sentence of the Strategy hints at status quo approaches to federal drug control policy; it announces 'a blueprint for reducing illicit drug use and its harmful consequences in America,'" Robinson said. "That ONDCP will still focus on drug use (as opposed to abuse) is unfortunate, for the fact remains that most drug use is normal, recreational, pro-social, and even beneficial to users; it does not usually lead to bad outcomes for users, including abuse or addiction," he said.

"Just like under the leadership of Director John Walters, Kerlikowske's ONDCP characterizes its drug control approaches as 'balanced,' yet FY 2011 federal drug control spending is still imbalanced in favor of supply side measures (64%), while the demand side measures of treatment and prevention will only receive 36% of the budget," Robinson pointed out. "In FY 2010, the percentages were 65% and 35%, respectively. Perhaps when Barack Obama said 'Change we can believe in,' what he really meant was 'Change you can believe in, one percentage point at a time.'"

There is also much of the status quo in funding levels, Robinson said. "There will also be plenty of drug war funding left in this 'non-war on drugs.' For example, FY 2011 federal drug control spending includes $3.8 billion for the Department of Homeland Security (which includes Customs and Border Protection spending), more than $3.4 billion for the Department of Justice (which includes Drug Enforcement Agency spending), and nearly $1.6 billion for the Department of Defense (which includes military spending). Thus, the drug war will continue on under President Obama even if White House officials do not refer to federal drug control policy as a 'war on drugs,'" he noted.

The Bad

"ONDCP repeatedly stresses the importance of reducing supply of drugs into the United States through crop eradication and interdiction efforts, international collaboration, disruption of drug smuggling organizations, and so forth," Robinson noted. "It still promotes efforts like Plan Colombia, the Southwest Border Counternarcotics Strategy, and many other similar programs aimed at eradicating drugs in foreign countries and preventing them from entering the United States. The bottom line here is that the 'non war on drugs' will still look and feel like a war on drugs under President Obama, especially to citizens of the foreign nations where the United States does the bulk of its drug war fighting."

"They are still wedded to interdiction and eradication," said Piper. "There is no recognition that they aren't very effective and do more harm than good. Coming only a couple of weeks after the drug czar testified under oath that eradication in Colombia and Afghanistan and elsewhere had no impact on the availability of drugs in the US, to then put out a strategy embracing what he said was least effective is quite disturbing."

"The ringing endorsement of per se standards for drugged driving is potentially troubling," said Piper. "It looks a lot like zero tolerance. We have to look at this also in the context of new performance measures, which are missing from the draft. In the introduction, they talk about setting goals for reducing drug use and that they went to set other performance measures, such as for reducing drug overdoses and drugged driving. If they actually say they're going to reduce drugged driving by such and such an amount with a certain number of years, that will be more important. We'll have to see what makes it into the final draft."

"They took a gratuitous shot at marijuana reform," Piper noted. "It was unfortunate they felt the need to bash something that half of Americans support and to do it in the way they did, listing a litany of Reefer Madness allegations and connecting marijuana to virtually every problem in America. That was really unfortunate."

More Good

There are some changes in spending priorities. "Spending on prevention will grow 13.4% from FY 2010 to FY 2011, while spending on treatment will grow 3.7%," Robinson noted. "The growth in treatment is surprisingly small given that ONDCP notes that 90% of people who need treatment do not receive it. Increases are much smaller for spending on interdiction (an increase of 2.4%), domestic law enforcement (an increase of 1.9%), and international spending (an increase of 0.9%). This is evidence of a shift in federal drug control strategy under President Obama; there will be a greater effort to prevent drug use in the first place as well as treat those that become addicted to drugs than there ever was under President Bush."

Robinson also lauded the Obama administration for more clarity in the strategy than was evident under either Clinton or Bush. "Obama's first Strategy clearly states its guiding principles, each of which is followed by a specific set of actions to be initiated and implemented over time to achieve goals and objectives related to its principles. Of course, this is Obama's first Strategy, so in subsequent years, there will be more data presented for evaluation purposes, and it should become easier to decipher the ideology that will drive the 'non war on drugs' under President Obama," he said.

But he suggested that ideology still plays too big a role. "ONDCP hints at its ideology when it claims that programs such as 'interdiction, anti-trafficking initiatives, drug crop reduction, intelligence sharing and partner nation capacity building... have proven effective in the past.' It offers almost no evidence that this is the case other than some very limited, short-term data on potential cocaine production in Colombia. ONDCP claims it is declining, yet only offers data from 2007 to 2008. Kerlikowske's ONDCP seems ready to accept the dominant drug war ideology of Walters that supply side measures work -- even when long-term data show they do not."

Robinson also lauded ONDCP's apparent revelation that drug addiction is a disease. "Obama's first strategy embraces a new approach to achieving federal drug control goals of 'reducing illicit drug consumption' and 'reducing the consequences of illicit drug use in the United States,' one that is evidence-based and public health oriented," Robinson said. "ONDCP recognizes that drug addiction is a disease and it specifies that federal drug control policy should be assisted by parties in all of the systems that relate to drug use and abuse, including families, schools, communities, faith-based organizations, the medical profession, and so forth. This is certainly a change from the Bush Administration, which repeatedly characterized drug use as a moral or personal failing."

While the Obama drug strategy may have its faults, said Robinson, it is a qualitative improvement over Bush era drug strategies. "Under the Bush Administration, ONDCP came across as downright dismissive of data, evidence, and science, unless it was used to generate fear and increased punitive responses to drug-related behaviors. Honestly, there is very little of this in Obama's first strategy, aside from the usual drugs produce crime, disorder, family disruption, illness, addiction, death, and terrorism argument that has for so long been employed by ONDCP," he said. "Instead, the Strategy is hopeful in tone and lays out dozens of concrete programs and policies that aim to prevent drug use among young people (through public education programs, mentoring initiatives, increasing collaboration between public health and safety organizations); treat adults who have developed drug abuse and addiction problems (though screening and intervention by medical personnel, increased investments in addiction treatment, new treatment medications); and, for the first time, invest heavily in recovery efforts that are restorative in nature and aimed at giving addicts a new lease on life," he noted.

"ONDCP also seems to suddenly have a better grasp on why the vast majority of people who need treatment do not get it," said Robinson. "Under Walters, ONDCP claimed that drug users were in denial and needed to be compassionately coerced to seek treatment. In the 2010 Strategy, ONDCP outlines numerous problems with delivery of treatment services including problems with the nation's health care systems generally. The 2010 Strategy seems so much better informed about the realities of drug treatment than previous Strategy reports," he added.

"The strategy also repeatedly calls for meaningful change in areas such as alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent, low-level drug offenders; drug testing in courts (and schools, unfortunately, in spite of data showing it is ineffective); and reentry programs for inmates who need help finding jobs and places to live upon release from prison or jail. ONDCP also implicitly acknowledges that that federal drug control policy imposes costs on families (including the break-up of families), and shows with real data that costs are greater economically for imprisonment of mothers and foster care for their children than family-based treatment," Robinson noted.

"ONDCP makes the case that we are wasting a lot of money dealing with the consequences of drug use and abuse when this money would be better spent preventing use and abuse in the first place. Drug policy reformers will embrace this claim," Robinson predicted.

"The strategy also calls for a renewed emphasis on prescription drug abuse, which it calls 'the fastest growing drug problem in the United States,'" Robinson pointed out. "Here, as in the past, ONDCP suggests regulation is the answer because prescription drugs have legitimate uses that should not be restricted merely because some people use them illegally. And, as in the past, ONDCP does not consider this approach for marijuana, which also has legitimate medicinal users in spite of the fact that some people use it illegally," he said.

The Verdict

"President Obama's first National Drug Control Strategy offers real, meaningful, exciting change," Robinson summed up. "Whether this change amounts to 'change we can believe in' will be debated by drug policy reformers. For those who support demand side measures, many will embrace the 2010 Strategy and call for even greater funding for prevention and treatment. For those who support harm reduction measures such as needled exchange, methadone maintenance and so forth, there will be celebration. Yet, for those who support real alternatives to federal drug control policy such as legalization or decriminalization, all will be disappointed. And even if Obama officials will not refer to its drug control policies as a 'war on drugs,' they still amount to just that."

Two Pasadena Narcotics Officers Indicted from Houston Chronicle

2010-05-01T10:13:00.000-07:00

Two Pasadena narcotics officers indicted
By BRIAN ROGERS Copyright 2010 Houston Chronicle

April 29, 2010, 2:16PM
Two Pasadena police officers have been suspended with pay after being indicted on charges stemming from two separate incidents involving narcotics investigations.

Raymond Garivey, 39, was indicted on two counts of filing a false report, a class B misdemeanor, court records show.

He is accused of lying to a Harris County prosecutor by denying the existence a witness in a case. The witness, according to the Pasadena Police Department, had given information leading Garivey to arrest a suspect in possession of a large quantity of cocaine.

David Leal, 35, was indicted on two 2nd degree felony charges of tampering with a government record.

Charges against Leal focus on written statements in official documents about the circumstances surrounding Leal’s arrest of a suspect found with about three pounds of marijuana, according to the police department.

Both incidents were investigated by the Harris County District Attorney’s Office and Pasadena police internal affairs. Their cases were taken directly to the grand jury by prosecutors from the office’s public integrity division.

brian.rogers@chron.com

First Drug User Union Forms in San Francisco from Drug War Chronicle

2010-05-01T10:09:00.000-07:00

First Drug User Union Forms in San Francisco
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/630/san_francisco_drug_user_union
Thanks to the on-the-ground efforts of local harm reductionists and the funding largesse of the Drug Policy Alliance, San Francisco is now the home of only the second drug user union in the United States. The nascent effort is just getting off the ground, but plans to follow in the footsteps of Canada's Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU) and the New York City VOCAL drug user union affiliated with the NYC Aids Housing Network.

While self-identified drug user unions are rare in the US, they have a history dating back to the Dutch "junkiebund" of the 1970s. The movement is currently spreading internationally, with affiliates of the International Network of People Who Use Drugs (INPUD) operating in Europe, North America, South America, and Asia. And while medical marijuana patients did not refer to themselves as drug users, they have done similar organizing based on their use of the weed.

"We gave a $35,000 grant to the Harm Reduction Therapy Center to organize drug users in San Francisco, said Laura Thomas, DPA California state deputy director. "It is an annual grant, and future funding depends on HRTC re-applying for the funds. We have funded VOCAL in New York for several years."

DPA sees drug user groups as a key component in efforts to reduce the harms of both drug use and prohibitionist drug policies, said Thomas. "We hope that drug users in San Francisco will have a voice in policy decisions that affect them," she said. "We hope that they will become an active and organized part of efforts to reduce the harm related to both drugs and the war on drugs in San Francisco. The group is still in the process of forming and determining what their priority issues are, so I can't speak for what they are going to be working on."

"While we haven't quite chosen our main campaign, we've been talking about what we would ideally like San Francisco to look like, about having a safe place to inject, and about having a safe place to consume other drugs, too," said Alexandra Goldman, the organizer for the group. "Within a couple of months, we will choose our first official campaign," she vowed.

"We are also interested in working to decrease the stigma, both within and outside the drug using community," Goldman added. "We're trying to work with health care providers to make it a more positive experience. Our people tend to wait until they are very seriously ill because they are not treated very well. In our meetings, I'm hearing about how people don't get the prescribed pain medications they need because the doctors don't like them."

The group has already been active, joining in protests against the city's proposed ordinance barring people from sitting or lying on public sidewalks. Homeless people in neighborhoods like Haight-Asbury have roused the ire of business owners with their presence, but activists say they have no place to go and should not be criminalized.

The SF Drug User Union participation in the sit/lie protests makes sense given that many of its members are homeless and that its meetings are generally being held in homeless drop-in centers in the Tenderloin and the Mission. The group boasts about 25 members, with an emerging core group of 10 or 12, but is looking to expand by working with lower income communities and people involved in local harm reduction networks.

"We plan to be active consumers, giving our opinions and our voice on issues and policies that affect us," said Isaac Jackson, the other paid staffer for the union. "People are already asking us for our expertise."

So who can join the union? Anyone who identifies as a drug user, past or present, organizers said. Defining members in that manner allows people to get active without necessarily outing themselves as current users.

"There is no piss test to get into this group," said Jackson. "We have heroin users, speed users, people who drink, pot smokers. Some people think pot's not a big issue, but anyone who wants to work with us, we say 'right on.' We support the legalization campaign and we support medical marijuana. That's a success story, and so is needle exchange, and we'll be trying to learn from those."

The only rule at meetings is no drug dealing, said Jackson. "We don't want people to deal drugs at the meeting or endanger other people in the group by that kind of activity, but if people are carrying, so what? Some people have showed up tweaking. We don't want to say they can't come because they're too high. We want people to feel welcome whatever their level of sobriety."

Forming a drug user union in San Francisco has been an idea that's been batted around for at least a couple of years, but it took some cold, hard cash to make it happen. "There were some attempts to organize drug users in the past, and I was involved in those, but they didn't stick because people had other jobs," said Goldman. "But once that Drug Policy Alliance grant came in, I got hired in November and we had our first meetings in February."

"I worked at a small health agency working with homeless people with substance use here in the Tenderloin, and was also working with some people with the Youth Homeless Alliance in the Haight," said Jackson. "A lot of people said we ought to do something like VANDU. We had a conference here a couple of years ago to try to jump-start a safe injection site, but that was mostly health care providers, not drug users."

San Francisco has one of the highest rates of drug use per capita in the country, Jackson noted. "Since there is so much civil disobedience going on already -- the laws are wrong, when you have thousands of people doing something for a long period of time, it's like passive civil disobedience -- there was an opportunity there to give drug users a voice in a more organized way. We're consumers of all these services -- treatment, law enforcement, the whole drug industrial complex -- we're consumers and have no voice. The time was right for it to start here."

San Francisco organizers took advantage of last fall's DPA conference to learn from existing drug user groups on the continent. "I met with Ann Livingston from VANDU and I got in touch with some of the folks from VOCAL," Goldman said. "They work on stuff around syringe exchange, trying to pass statewide ordinances to keep police from hassling people with needles, things like that. And, of course, they're subject to the same ridiculous drug laws we are."

"Drug user groups such as VOCAL in New York, VANDU in Vancouver, and hopefully this group in San Francisco play an important role in drug policy change and ending the war on drugs," Thomas said. "Drug users are usually the people most directly affected by bad drug policies, and the least likely to have a voice in debates. Drug users as active participants in the political process also helps reduce the stigma that is attached to drug use and makes people reconsider their prejudices about what they think 'drug users' are like. The drug policy reform conversation can only benefit from the active participation of drug user groups."

Separate drug user union meetings are taking place every three weeks in the Tenderloin and Mission districts. For more information about joining the union, send an email to sf.users.union@gmail.com.

Drug Czar Gets Grilled on "New Directions in Drug Policy" from Drug war Chronicle

2010-04-16T16:06:00.000-07:00

Drug Czar Gets Grilled on "New Directions in Drug Policy" By Skeptical Solons, Activists, and Academics

Gil Kerlikowske, head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP -- the drug czar's office), testified on Capitol Hill Wednesday that the Obama administration is seeking "a new direction in drug policy," but was challenged both by lawmakers and by a panel of academics and activists on the point during the same hearing. The action took place at a hearing of the House Domestic Policy Subcommittee in which the ONDCP drug budget and the forthcoming 2010 National Drug Strategy were the topics at hand.

The hearing comes in the wake of various drug policy reforms enacted by the Obama administration, including a Justice Department policy memo directing US attorneys and the DEA to lay off medical marijuana in states where it is legal, the removal of the federal ban on needle exchange funding, and administration support for ending or reducing the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine offenders.

But it also comes in the wake of the announcement of the ONDCP 2011 drug budget, which at $15.5 billion is up more than $500 million from this year. While treatment and prevention programs got a 6.5% funding increase, supply reduction (law enforcement, interdiction, and eradication) continues to account for almost exactly the same percentage of the overall budget -- 64%--as it did in the Bush administration. Only 36% is earmarked for demand reduction (prevention and treatment).

Citing health care costs from drug use and rising drug overdose death figures, the nation "needs to discard the idea that enforcement alone can eliminate our nation's drug problem," Kerlikowske said. "Only through a comprehensive and balanced approach -- combining tough, but fair, enforcement with robust prevention and treatment efforts -- will we be successful in stemming both the demand for and supply of illegal drugs in our country."

So far, at least, when it comes to reconfiguring US drug control efforts, Kerlikowske and the Obama administration are talking the talk, but they're not walking the walk. That was the contention of subcommittee chair Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) and several of the session's panelists.

"Supply side spending has not been effective," said Kucinich, challenging the budget breakdown.

"Supply side spending is important for a host of reasons, whether we're talking about eradication or our international partners where drugs are flowing," replied the drug czar.

"Where's the evidence?" Kucinich demanded. "Describe with statistics what evidence you have that this approach is effective."

Kerlikowske was reduced to citing the case of Colombia, where security and safety of the citizenry has increased. But he failed to mention that despite about $4 billion in US anti-drug aid in the past decade, Colombian coca and cocaine production remain at high levels.

"What parts of your budget are most effective?" asked Kucinich.

"The most cost-effective approaches would be prevention and treatment," said Kerlikowske.

"What percentage is supply and what percentage is demand oriented?" asked Rep. Jim Jordan (D-OH).

"It leans much more toward supply, toward interdiction and enforcement," Kerlikowske conceded.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) was more old school, demanding a tougher response to Mexico's wave of prohibition-related violence and questioning the decision not to eradicate opium in Afghanistan. "The Southwest border is critical. I would hope the administration would give you the resources you need for a Plan Colombia on steroids," said Issa.

"There is no eradication program in Afghanistan," Issa complained. "I was in areas we did control and we did nothing about eradication."

"I don't think anyone is comfortable seeing US forces among the poppy fields," Kerlikowske replied. "Ambassador Holbrooke has taken great pains to explain the rationale for that," he added, alluding to Holbrooke's winning argument that eradication would push poppy farming peasants into the hands of the Taliban.

"The effectiveness of eradication seems to be near zero, which is very interesting from a policy point of view," interjected Rep. Bill Foster (D-IL).

Kucinich challenged Kerlikowske about harm reduction. "At the UN, you said the US supported many interventions, but you said that, 'We do not use the phrase harm reduction.' You are silent on both syringe exchange programs and the issue of harm reduction interventions generally," he noted. "Do you acknowledge that these interventions can be effective in reducing death and disease, does your budget proposed to fund intervention programs that have demonstrated positive results in drug overdose deaths, and what is the basis of your belief that the term harm reduction implies promotion of drug use?"

Kerlikowske barely responded. "We don't use the term harm reduction because it is in the eye of the beholder," he said. "People talk about it as if it were legalization, but personally, I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about whether to put a definition on it."

When challenged by Kucinich specifically about needle exchange programs, Kerlikowske conceded that they can be effective. "If they are part of a comprehensive drug reduction effort, they make a lot of sense," he said.

The grilling of Kerlikowske took up the first hour of the two-hour session. The second hour consisted of testimony from Drug Policy Alliance executive director Ethan Nadelmann, Brookings Institute foreign policy fellow and drugs and counterinsurgency expert Vanda Felbab-Brown, former ONDCP employee and drug policy analyst John Carnevale, and University of Maryland drug policy expert Peter Reuter. It didn't get any better for drug policy orthodoxy.

"Let me be frank," said Nadelmann as he began his testimony. "We regard US drug policy as a colossal failure, a gross violation of human rights and common sense," he said, citing the all too familiar statistics about arrests, incarceration, the spread of HIV/AIDS, and drug overdose deaths. "All of these are an egregious violation of fundamental American values."

"Congress and the Obama administration have broken with the costly and failed drug war strategies of the past in some important ways," Nadelmann. "But the continuing emphasis on interdiction and law enforcement in the federal drug war budget suggest that ONDCP is far more wedded to the failures of the past than to any new vision for the future. I urge this committee to hold ONDCP and federal drug policy accountable to new criteria that focus on reductions in the death, disease, crime and suffering associated with both drugs and drug prohibition."

Nadelmann identified four problems with current drug strategy:

The drug war's flawed performance measures;
The lop-sided ratio between supply and demand spending in the national drug budget;
The lack of innovation in the drug czar's proposed strategies;
The administration's failure to adequately evaluate drug policies.
"They want to move toward a public health model that focuses on reducing demand for drugs, but no drug policy will succeed unless there are the resources to implement it," said Carnevale. "Past budgets emphasizing supply reduction failed to produce results, and our drug policy stalled -- there has been no change in overall drug use in this decade."

Carnevale noted that the 2011 ONDCP budget gave the largest percentage increase to prevention and treatment, but that its priorities were still skewed toward supply reduction. "The budget continues to over-allocate funds where they are least effective, in interdiction and source country programs."

"The drug trade poses multiple and serious threats, ranging from threats to security and the legal economy to threats to legality and political processes," said Felbab-Brown, "but millions of people depend on the illegal drug trade for a livelihood. There is no hope supply-side policies can disrupt the global drug trade."

Felbab-Brown said she was "encouraged" that the Obama administration had shifted toward a state-building approach in Afghanistan, but that she had concerns about how policy is being operationalized there. "We need to adopt the right approach to sequencing eradication in Afghanistan," she said. "Alternative livelihoods and state-building need to be comprehensive, well-funded, and long-lasting, and not focused on replacing the poppy crop."

"Eradication in Afghanistan has little effect on domestic supply and reduction," said Kucinich. "Should these kinds of programs be funded?"

"I am quite convinced that spending money for eradication, especially aerial eradication, is not effective," replied Carnevale. "The point of eradication in Colombia was to reduce the amount of drugs coming into the US, but I see no such effect."

"We're dealing with global commodity markets," said Nadelmann. "If one source is knocked out, someone else will pop up. What's missing is any sort of strategic analysis or planning. If you accept that these drugs are going to be produced, you need to manage it to reduce the harms."

"The history of the last 20 years of the cocaine and heroin trade shows how much mobility there is in cultivation and trafficking," said Reuter. "What we do has a predictable effect. When we pushed down on trafficking in Florida, that lead to increases in Mexico. The evidence is striking that all we are doing is moving the trade."

Times are changing in Washington. What was once unassailable drug war orthodoxy is not under direct assault, and not just from activists and academics, but among members of Congress itself. But while the drug czar talks the happy talk about "new directions in drug policy," the Obama administration -- with some notable exceptions -- looks to still have a drug policy on cruise control.

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/628/drug_czar_ondcp_kerlikowske_testimony_nadelmann_felbab_brown_carnavale_reuter_kucinich

Ex-Offenders and the Vote from NY Times

2010-03-22T11:31:00.000-07:00

March 22, 2010

Editorial
Ex-Offenders and the Vote
Millions of ex-offenders who have been released from prison are denied the right to vote. That undercuts efforts to reintegrate former prisoners into mainstream society. And it goes against one of democracy’s most fundamental principles: that governments should rule with the consent of the governed.

Congress held hearings last week on a bill, the Democracy Restoration Act, that would allow released ex-felons to vote in federal elections. It would also require the states, which administer elections, to give them appropriate notice that this right has been restored.

Voting rights are largely set by state law, and many states prohibit people who have been convicted of crimes from voting in state and federal elections.

Currently, about four million Americans who have been released from prison are disenfranchised in federal elections by laws barring people with felony convictions from voting.

Many of the laws disenfranchising former criminals date back to the post-Civil War era and were used to prevent freed slaves from voting. These laws still have a significant racial impact. About 13 percent of black men in this country are denied the right to vote by criminal disenfranchisement laws, more than seven times the rate for the population as a whole.

There is no good reason to deny former prisoners the vote. Once they are back in the community — paying taxes, working, raising families — they have the same concerns as other voters, and they should have the same say in who represents them.

Disenfranchisement laws also work against efforts to help released prisoners turn their lives around. Denying the vote to ex-offenders, who have paid their debt, continues to brand them as criminals, setting them apart from the society they should be rejoining.

Although elections are generally considered state matters, the federal government has a proud tradition of enacting laws, like the Voting Rights Act of 1965, when states wrongly deprive some of their citizens of the franchise. For reasons of both principle and sensible social policy, Congress should step in and give ex-offenders the right to vote.

Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Mexican Drug Kingpin Sentenced to 25 Years in Secret Hearing in Houston from New York Times

2010-02-26T14:48:00.000-08:00

February 25, 2010
Mexican Drug Kingpin Sentenced to 25 Years in Secret Hearing
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
HOUSTON — One of the most brutal and feared drug kingpins in Mexican history was sentenced this week to 25 years in prison during a highly secretive hearing here that was closed to the public to protect the lives of everyone involved, according to a court transcript unsealed Thursday.

Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, the head of the Gulf Cartel, which controls much of the cocaine traffic across the border in South Texas, has agreed to cooperate with the federal government, according to the transcript. Mr. Cárdenas pleaded guilty to five counts in a lengthy indictment, including drug dealing, money laundering and the attempted murder and assault of federal agents. He also forfeited $50 million in assets.

The sentencing took place in a federal courtroom in Houston behind locked doors and armed guards before Judge Hilda G. Tagle, who granted the government’s request to bar the public. Only two members of Mr. Cárdenas’s family and a handful of federal agents were present.

Judges often seal particular documents in drug and terrorism trials to protect informants or continuing investigations, but it is highly unusual to seal a sentencing hearing for security reasons.

“I apologize to my country, Mexico, to the United States of America, my family, to my wife especially, my children, for all the mistakes I made,” Mr. Cárdenas, 42, said in court. He added, “I am remorseful.”

Judge Tagle said people she had encountered whose lives had been ruined by the drug trade and the violence it generated had weighed heavily in her mind in deciding whether to accept the prosecutor’s recommendation of 25 years.

“Kidnappings, extortion, gun battles in the streets, a desperate economy, innocence lost — that is your legacy to your country, to our communities on both sides of the border, and to society,” the judge told Mr. Cárdenas, according to the transcript.

Before his arrest in Mexico in March 2003, Mr. Cárdenas ran a small empire of drug smugglers and gunmen in his home state, Tamaulipas, moving tons of cocaine every year into the United States. Law enforcement authorities on both sides of the border said he was famed for vicious violence against his enemies and for recruiting former military commandos to serve as his gunmen, known as Zetas.

Even from his Mexican jail cell, he continued to oversee the cartel’s operations, law enforcement officials say. But in 2007, President Felipe Calderón of Mexico, having begun an offensive against drug dealers, broke with policy and extradited Mr. Cárdenas along with 14 other major figures from the Mexican underworld.

Since then, Mr. Cárdenas has been cooperating with the United States authorities, as his organization has been weakened by arrests and by a lack of strong leadership at the top, experts on Mexican drug cartels said.

The Zetas, meanwhile, have broken off and became a separate criminal operation that now controls the lucrative crossing at Laredo, Tex. In recent weeks, there have been a series of gun battles between the Zetas and the remnants of Mr. Cárdenas’s organization in towns along the Texas border as they vie for turf.

“Ever since he’s been in the United States, he’s been cooperating,” said George W. Grayson, a professor at the College of William & Mary who studies the Mexican cartels. “He may be more inclined to talk about the Zetas given the hammer-and-tong conflict between them and the Gulf Cartel.”

The sentencing and the two years of legal maneuvering before it were handled with the utmost secrecy. At the request of prosecutors, Judge Tagle sealed dozens of documents in the case, from those related to Mr. Cárdenas’s plea agreement to descriptions of his assets.

The final hearing on Wednesday was not even put on the court’s docket until hours after it was over. In the transcript, the judge explained that the United States Marshals Service had asked to keep the public from witnessing the hearing because it would jeopardize the safety of Mr. Cárdenas. The threat was never explained in court, and the affidavit requesting the unusual level of secrecy was itself sealed.

Judge Tagle agreed to the request, saying there was a good chance, if she opened the hearing, that “the defendant, court personnel, United States marshal personnel, other courthouse personnel and the general public will be placed in imminent danger.”

Several experts on criminal law said it was extremely rare for a judge to bar the public from the sentencing of an organized crime figure. It is more often the case that a judge will seal some documents related to a criminal’s plea agreement on the theory it could upend an investigation.

And in some cases, a judge will close a sentencing hearing if the defendant is going to talk about his cooperation with investigators. But even in cases involving terrorists and American mobsters, most sentencing proceedings are public.

Rachel Marcus contributed reporting.

Why Mexico's Drug War May Become Its Iraq from Time Magazine

2010-02-22T09:42:00.000-08:00

Feb. 21, 2010
Why Mexico's Drug War May Become Its Iraq
By Ioan Grillo / Mexico City

The no-nonsense government ads flash onto prime-time Mexican TV between soccer games and steamy soap operas. Bullet-filled corpses are shown sprawled on the concrete; ski-masked special forces are seen storming down residential streets; and bearded bulky capos are dragged before the cameras in handcuffs. "Today these killers are behind bars," says a booming voice-over. "We work using force for your security."

But while the spots boast of victories and progress, a rising chorus of voices across Mexico is complaining that the military approach to Mexico's crime problem is not bearing fruit. Leftists and human-rights groups have slammed the central role of the army and paramilitary police since President Felipe Calderón took office in 2006 and ordered 50,000 troops to fight the drug gangs. But in recent weeks, critics have been joined by some of the government's key allies, including members of Calderón's conservative National Action Party, regional business lobbies and the Roman Catholic Church. Such pressure could affect how the President sees through the drug war during the second half of his term, which ends in 2012. (See the siege of Ciudad Juarez.)

Most criticism centers on the relentless gang-related violence, which has only worsened, even as thousands of traffickers are jailed or extradited to the U.S. In total, there have been more than 16,000 murders that appear to be drug related since Calderón kicked off the crackdown, with this January being the bloodiest month yet. Doubters now say soldiers may be inflaming the gang killings rather than diminishing them. "Security is not directly or principally related to the ability to use force, the number of police officers, the degree of militarization or the purchasing of weapons," the Mexican bishops conference said in a Feb. 15 letter to the government. "With the passage of time, the participation of the armed forces in the fight against organized crime has provoked uncertainty in the population." (See pictures from inside Mexico's drug tunnels.)

Others argue that the violence has mushroomed because the army is directing its attacks at certain cartels, a tactic that only strengthens the rivals of those gangs. Representative Manuel Clouthier, who hails from a prominent National Action Party family, lashed out in a series of interviews this week that the omnipotent Sinaloa cartel of his native state has not been targeted. "In some places they have hit the gangsters. But in my state, everyone can see that the bad guys are being allowed to work," he told TIME. "There is a mafia cabal of criminals, politicians and businessmen and it has simply not been touched." Much of the bloodshed in Mexico is blamed on the efforts of this Sinaloa cartel to expand into new territories. Party leaders and officials swiftly hit back, saying that all criminal groups have been equally attacked.

There are also signs the Mexican public is losing its stomach for the fight. A Feb. 15 survey by Buendía & Laredo found that 50% of respondents thought the government offensive against drug traffickers has made the country more dangerous, while only 21% thought it had made it safer. Another 20% said it had had no effect and 9% gave no comment. Half of respondents also said they personally felt threatened by criminal violence, up from 35% who said they felt threatened in a 2008 survey.

These doubts come as the U.S. continues to throw its weight behind the campaign. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano signed an agreement for enhanced cooperation in the Mexican capital this week, declaring that "the collaboration between Mexico and the United States has never been stronger." The latest accord follows a hike in funding for the so-called Mérida Initiative to beef up Mexican security forces. In total, the U.S. has pledged $1.6 billion worth of equipment and training for its neighbor, including eight Black Hawk and 13 Bell helicopters for Mexico's army and federal police.

Whatever the criticism, Calderón himself insists that he will not steer away from his military strategy. Since taking power, he has identified with the fight against cartels as his personal battle more than any other Mexican President, breaking with tradition to don a green army uniform in one address to frontline soldiers. On Feb. 19, he went to the top military school to praise the efforts of the troops. "To confront these criminals without scruples, the presence of the armed forces has been and is fundamental," he said. It would also be tough for Calderón to send the soldiers back to the barracks while the violence is worsening for fear it would concede a defeat. This quandary has led critics here to regularly compare the conflict to the Iraq war in Bush's second term; it is a war in which the President cannot claim victory, cannot pull out of, and which only gets worse.

Read "Drug-Dealing for Jesus: Mexico's Evangelical Narcos."

See pictures of Mexico's drug wars.

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14 Legal Medical Marijuana States

2010-02-19T12:07:00.000-08:00

14 Legal Medical Marijuana States
Laws, Fees, and Possession Limits
I. Fourteen states have enacted laws that legalized medical marijuana: State Year Passed How Passed
(Yes Vote) ID Card Fee Possession Limit Accepts other states' registry ID cards?
1. Alaska 1998 Ballot Measure 8 (58%) $25/$20 1 oz usable; 6 plants (3 mature, 3 immature) Unknown *
2. California 1996 Proposition 215 (56%) $66/$33 8 oz usable; 18 plants (6 mature, 12 immature)** No
3. Colorado 2000 Ballot Amendment 20 (54%) $90 2 oz usable; 6 plants (3 mature, 3 immature) No
4. Hawaii 2000 Senate Bill 862 (32-18 House; 13-12 Senate) $25 3 oz usable; 7 plants (3 mature, 4 immature) No
5. Maine 1999 Ballot Question 2 (61%) *** 2.5 oz usable; 6 plants Yes
6. Michigan 2008 Proposal 1 (63%) $100/$25 2.5 oz usable; 12 plants Yes
7. Montana 2004 Initiative 148 (62%) $25/$10 1 oz usable; 6 plants Yes
8. Nevada 2000 Ballot Question 9 (65%) $150 + 1 oz usable; 7 plants (3 mature, 4 immature) No
10. New Jersey 2010 Senate Bill 119 (48-14 House; 25-13 Senate) **** 2 oz usable Unknown
9. New Mexico 2007 Senate Bill 523 (36-31 House; 32-3 Senate) $0 6 oz usable; 16 plants (4 mature, 12 immature) No
11. Oregon 1998 Ballot Measure 67 (55%) $100/$20 24 oz usable; 24 plants (6 mature, 18 immature) No
12. Rhode Island 2006 Senate Bill 0710 (52-10 House; 33-1 Senate) $75/$10 2.5 oz usable; 12 plants Yes
13. Vermont 2004 Senate Bill 76 (22-7) HB 645 (82-59) $50 2 oz usable; 9 plants (2 mature, 7 immature) No
14. Washington 1998 Initiative 692 (59%) ***** 24 oz usable; 15 plants No

[Editor's note: All 14 states require proof of residency to be considered a qualifying patient for medical marijuana use. Karen O'Keefe, JD, Director of State Policies for Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), told ProCon.org in a Jan. 19, 2010 email that "Patients and their caregivers can cultivate in 13 of the 14 states. Home cultivation is not allowed in New Jersey and a special license is required in New Mexico."]

II. Two states have passed laws that, although favorable towards medical marijuana,
did not legalize its use:

State Year Passed Provision
1. Arizona 1996 Allows physicians to prescribe marijuana (federal law prohibits physicians from prescribing Schedule I drugs)
2. Maryland 2003 Allows medical use defense in court

I. State Laws That Legalized Medical Marijuana Use
State Program Details Contact and Other Info
1. Alaska Ballot Measure 8 -- Approved Nov. 3, 1998 by 58% of voters
Effective: Mar. 4, 1999
Removed state-level criminal penalties on the use, possession and cultivation of marijuana by patients who possess written documentation from their physician advising that they "might benefit from the medical use of marijuana."

Approved Conditions: Cachexia, cancer, chronic pain, epilepsy and other disorders characterized by seizures, glaucoma, HIV or AIDS, multiple sclerosis and other disorders characterized by muscle spasticity, and nausea. Other conditions are subject to approval by the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services.

Possession/Cultivation: Patients (or their primary caregivers) may legally possess no more than one ounce of usable marijuana, and may cultivate no more than six marijuana plants, of which no more than three may be mature. The law establishes a confidential state-run patient registry that issues identification cards to qualifying patients.

Amended: Senate Bill 94
Effective: June 2, 1999

Mandates all patients seeking legal protection under this act to enroll in the state patient registry and possess a valid identification card. Patients not enrolled in the registry will no longer be able to argue the "affirmative defense of medical necessity" if they are arrested on marijuana charges.

Update: Alaska Statute Title 17 Chapter 37 (36 KB)

Creates a confidential statewide registry of medical marijuana patients and caregivers and establishes identification card.
Alaska Bureau of Vital Statistics
Marijuana Registry
P.O. Box 110699
Juneau, AK 99811-0699
Phone: 907-465-5423
BVSSpecialServices@health.state.ak.us

AK Marijuana Registry Online

Information provided by the state on sources for medical marijuana:
None found

Fee:
$25 new application/$20 renewal

Accepts other states' registry ID cards?
Unknown *[Editor's Note: Four phone calls made Jan. 5-8, 2010 and an email sent on Jan. 6, 2010 by ProCon.org to the Alaska Marijuana Registry have not yet been returned and the information is not available on the state's website (as of Jan. 11, 2010).]

Registration:
Mandatory

2. California Ballot Proposition 215 -- Approved Nov. 5, 1996 by 56% of voters
Effective: Nov. 6, 1996
Removes state-level criminal penalties on the use, possession and cultivation of marijuana by patients who possess a "written or oral recommendation" from their physician that he or she "would benefit from medical marijuana." Patients diagnosed with any debilitating illness where the medical use of marijuana has been "deemed appropriate and has been recommended by a physician" are afforded legal protection under this act.

Approved Conditions: AIDS, anorexia, arthritis, cachexia, cancer, chronic pain, glaucoma, migraine, persistent muscle spasms, including spasms associated with multiple sclerosis, seizures, including seizures associated with epilepsy, severe nausea; Other chronic or persistent medical symptoms.

Amended: Senate Bill 420 (70 KB)
Effective: Jan. 1, 2004

Imposes statewide guidelines outlining how much medicinal marijuana patients may grow and possess.

Possession/Cultivation: Qualified patients and their primary caregivers may possess no more than eight ounces of dried marijuana and/or six mature (or 12 immature) marijuana plants. However, S.B. 420 allows patients to possess larger amounts of marijuana when recommended by a physician. The legislation also allows counties and municipalities to approve and/or maintain local ordinances permitting patients to possess larger quantities of medicinal pot than allowed under the new state guidelines.

S.B. 420 also grants implied legal protection to the state's medicinal marijuana dispensaries, stating, "Qualified patients, persons with valid identification cards, and the designated primary caregivers of qualified patients ... who associate within the state of California in order collectively or cooperatively to cultivate marijuana for medical purposes, shall not solely on the basis of that fact be subject to state criminal sanctions."

**[Editor's Note: On Jan. 21, 2010, the California Supreme Court affirmed the May 22, 2008 Second District Court of Appeals ruling that the possession limits set by SB 420 violate the California constitution because the voter-approved Prop. 215 can only be amended by the voters. As of Dec. 22, 2009, the California Medical Marijuana Program was still operating under the guidelines in SB 420 because it had not received instruction otherwise, according to program representative Paula Sahleen-Buckingham in a phone interview with ProCon.org. We have not yet confirmed how the Jan. 21, 2010 ruling will affect the implementation of the medical marijuana program in California.]

Attorney General's Guidelines:
On Aug. 25, 2008, California Attorney General Jerry Brown issued guidelines for law enforcement and medical marijuana patients to clarify the state's laws. Read more about the guidelines here.
California Department of Public Health
Office of County Health Services
Attention: Medical Marijuana Program Unit
MS 5203
P.O. Box 997377
Sacramento, CA 95899-7377
Phone: 916-552-8600
Fax: 916-440-5591

mmpinfo@dhs.ca.gov

CA Medical Marijuana Program
Guidelines for the Security and Non-diversion of Marijuana Grown for Medical Use (55 KB)

Information provided by the state on sources for medical marijuana:
"Dispensaries, growing collectives, etc., are licensed through local city or county business ordinances and the regulatory authority lies with the State Attorney General's Office. Their number is 1-800-952-5225." (accessed Jan. 11, 2010)

Fee:
$66 non Medi-Cal / $33 Medi-Cal, plus additional county fees (varies by location)

Accepts other states' registry ID cards?
No

Registration:
Voluntary

3. Colorado Ballot Amendment 20 -- Approved Nov. 7, 2000 by 54% of voters
Effective: June 1, 2001
Removes state-level criminal penalties on the use, possession and cultivation of marijuana by patients who possess written documentation from their physician affirming that he or she suffers from a debilitating condition and advising that they "might benefit from the medical use of marijuana." (Patients must possess this documentation prior to an arrest.)

Approved Conditions: Cancer, glaucoma, HIV/AIDS positive, cachexia; severe pain; severe nausea; seizures, including those that are characteristic of epilepsy; or persistent muscle spasms, including those that are characteristic of multiple sclerosis. Other conditions are subject to approval by the Colorado Board of Health.

Possession/Cultivation: A patient or a primary caregiver who has been issued a Medical Marijuana Registry identification card may possess no more than two ounces of a usable form of marijuana and not more than six marijuana plants, with three or fewer being mature, flowering plants that are producing a usable form of marijuana.

Patients who do not join the registry or possess greater amounts of marijuana than allowed by law may argue the "affirmative defense of medical necessity" if they are arrested on marijuana charges.

Not Amended
Medical Marijuana Registry
Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment
HSVR-ADM2-A1
4300 Cherry Creek Drive South
Denver, CO 80246-1530
Phone: 303-692-2184
medical.marijuana@state.co.us

CO Medical Marijuana Registry

Information provided by the state on sources for medical marijuana:
"The Colorado Medical Marijuana amendment, statutes and regulations are silent on the issue of dispensaries. While the Registry is aware that a number of such businesses have been established across the state, we do not have a formal relationship with them." (accessed Jan. 11, 2010)

Fee:
$90

Accepts other states' registry ID cards?
No

Registration:
Voluntary

4. Hawaii Senate Bill 862 -- Signed into law by Gov. Ben Cayetano on June 14, 2000
Approved: By House, 32-18; by Senate 13-12
Effective: Dec. 28, 2000
Removes state-level criminal penalties on the use, possession and cultivation of marijuana by patients who possess a signed statement from their physician affirming that he or she suffers from a debilitating condition and that the "potential benefits of medical use of marijuana would likely outweigh the health risks." The law establishes a mandatory, confidential state-run patient registry that issues identification cards to qualifying patients.

Approved conditions: Cancer, glaucoma, positive status for HIV/AIDS; A chronic or debilitating disease or medical condition or its treatment that produces cachexia or wasting syndrome, severe pain, severe nausea, seizures, including those characteristic of epilepsy, or severe and persistent muscle spasms, including those characteristic of multiple sclerosis or Crohn's disease. Other conditions are subject to approval by the Hawaii Department of Health.

Possession/Cultivation: The amount of marijuana that may be possessed jointly between the qualifying patient and the primary caregiver is an "adequate supply," which shall not exceed three mature marijuana plants, four immature marijuana plants, and one ounce of usable marijuana per each mature plant.

Not Amended
Narcotics Enforcement Division
3375 Koapaka Street, Suite D-100
Honolulu, HI 96819
Phone: 808-837-8470
Fax: 808-837-8474
HI Medical Marijuana Application info

Information provided by the state on sources for medical marijuana:
"Hawaii law does not authorize any person or entity to sell or dispense marijuana... Hawaii law authorizes the medical use of marijuana, it does not authorize the distribution of marijuana (Dispensaries) other than the transfer from a qualifying patient's primary caregiver to the qualifying patient." (accessed Jan. 11, 2010)

Fee:
$25

Accepts other states' registry ID cards?
No

Registration:
Mandatory

5. Maine Ballot Question 2 -- Approved Nov. 2, 1999 by 61% of voters
Effective: Dec. 22, 1999
Removes state-level criminal penalties on the use, possession and cultivation of marijuana by patients who possess an oral or written "professional opinion" from their physician that he or she "might benefit from the medical use of marijuana." The law does not establish a state-run patient registry.

Approved diagnosis: epilepsy and other disorders characterized by seizures; glaucoma; multiple sclerosis and other disorders characterized by muscle spasticity; and nausea or vomiting as a result of AIDS or cancer chemotherapy.

Possession/Cultivation: Patients (or their primary caregivers) may legally possess no more than one and one-quarter (1.25) ounces of usable marijuana, and may cultivate no more than six marijuana plants, of which no more than three may be mature. Those patients who possess greater amounts of marijuana than allowed by law are afforded a "simple defense" to a charge of marijuana possession.

Amended: Senate Bill 611
Effective: Signed into law on Apr. 2, 2002

Increases the amount of useable marijuana a person may possess from one and one-quarter (1.25) ounces to two and one-half (2.5) ounces.

Amended: Question 5 (135 KB) -- Approved Nov. 3, 2009 by 59% of voters

List of approved conditions changed to include cancer, glaucoma, HIV, acquired immune deficiency syndrome, hepatitis C, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Crohn's disease, Alzheimer's, nail-patella syndrome, chronic intractable pain, cachexia or wasting syndrome, severe nausea, seizures (epilepsy), severe and persistent muscle spasms, and multiple sclerosis.

Instructs the Department of Health and Human Services to establish a registry identification program for patients and caregivers. Stipulates provisions for the operation of nonprofit dispensaries.
Question 5, approved by voters (59%) on Nov. 3, 2009, requires the state's Department of Health and Human Services to establish a registration program within 120 days.
Information provided by the state on sources for medical marijuana:
State licensing program in task force phase (as of Jan. 11, 2009)

Fee:
***No state registration program has been established

Accepts other states' registry ID cards?
Yes, but only for the conditions approved in Maine

Registration:
Program not yet established

6. Michigan Proposal 1 (60 KB) "Michigan Medical Marihuana Act" -- Approved by 63% of voters on Nov. 4, 2008
Approved: Nov. 4, 2008
Effective: Dec. 4, 2008
Approved Conditions: Approved for treatment of debilitating medical conditions, defined as cancer, glaucoma, HIV, AIDS, hepatitis C, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Crohn's disease, agitation of Alzheimer's disease, nail patella, cachexia or wasting syndrome, severe and chronic pain, severe nausea, seizures, epilepsy, muscle spasms, and multiple sclerosis.

Possession/Cultivation: Patients may possess up to two and one-half (2.5) ounces of usable marijuana and twelve marijuana plants kept in an enclosed, locked facility. The twelve plants may be kept by the patient only if he or she has not specified a primary caregiver to cultivate the marijuana for him or her.

Michigan Medical Marihuana Program (MMMP)
Bureau of Health Professions, Department of Community Health
611 W. Ottawa St.
Lansing, MI 48933
Phone: 517-373-0395

bhpinfo@michigan.gov

MI Medical Marihuana Program
Information provided by the state on sources for medical marijuana:
"The MMMP is not a resource for the growing process and does not have information to give to patients." (accessed Jan. 11, 2010)

Fee:
$100 new or renewal application / $25 Medicaid patients

Accepts other states' registry ID cards?
Yes

Registration:
Mandatory

7. Montana Initiative 148 (76 KB) -- Approved by 62% of voters on Nov. 2, 2004
Effective: Nov. 2, 2004
Approved Conditions: Cancer, glaucoma, or positive status for HIV/AIDS, or the treatment of these conditions; a chronic or debilitating disease or medical condition or its treatment that produces cachexia or wasting syndrome, severe or chronic pain, severe nausea, seizures, including seizures caused by epilepsy, or severe or persistent muscle spasms, including spasms caused by multiple sclerosis or Chrohn's disease; or any other medical condition or treatment for a medical condition adopted by the department by rule.

Possession/Cultivation: A qualifying patient and a qualifying patient's caregiver may each possess six marijuana plants and one ounce of usable marijuana. "Usable marijuana" means the dried leaves and flowers of marijuana and any mixture or preparation of marijuana.

Not Amended
Medical Marijuana Program
Montana Department of Health and Human Services
Licensure Bureau
2401 Colonial Drive, 2nd Floor
P.O. Box 202953
Helena, MT 59620-2953
Phone: 406-444-2676
medical.marijuana@state.co.us

MT Medical Marijuana Program

Information provided by the state on sources for medical marijuana:
"The Medical Marijuana Act... allows a patient or caregiver to grow up to six plants or possess up to one ounce of usable marijuana. The department cannot give advice or referrals on how to obtain a supply of marijuana... State law is silent on where grow sites can be located." (accessed Jan. 11, 2010)

Fee:
$25 new application/$10 renewal
(reduced from $50 as of Oct. 1, 2009)

Accepts other states' registry ID cards?
Yes

Registration:
Mandatory

8. Nevada Ballot Question 9 -- Approved Nov. 7, 2000 by 65% of voters
Effective: Oct. 1, 2001
Removes state-level criminal penalties on the use, possession and cultivation of marijuana by patients who have "written documentation" from their physician that marijuana may alleviate his or her condition.

Approved Conditions: AIDS; cancer; glaucoma; and any medical condition or treatment to a medical condition that produces cachexia, persistent muscle spasms or seizures, severe nausea or pain. Other conditions are subject to approval by the health division of the state Department of Human Resources.

Possession/Cultivation: Patients (or their primary caregivers) may legally possess no more than one ounce of usable marijuana, three mature plants, and four immature plants.

Registry: The law establishes a confidential state-run patient registry that issues identification cards to qualifying patients. Patients who do not join the registry or possess greater amounts of marijuana than allowed by law may argue the "affirmative defense of medical necessity" if they are arrested on marijuana charges. Legislators added a preamble to the legislation stating, "[T]he state of Nevada as a sovereign state has the duty to carry out the will of the people of this state and regulate the health, medical practices and well-being of those people in a manner that respects their personal decisions concerning the relief of suffering through the medical use of marijuana." A separate provision requires the Nevada School of Medicine to "aggressively" seek federal permission to establish a state-run medical marijuana distribution program.

Amended: Assembly Bill 453 (25 KB)
Effective: Oct. 1, 2001

Created a state registry for patients prescribed the drug by a licensed physician and the Department of Motor Vehicles would issue identification cards. No state money will be used for the program, which will be funded entirely by donations.
Nevada State Health Division
1000 E William Street
Suite 209
Carson City, Nevada 89701
Phone: 775-687-7594
Fax: 775-687-7595

NV Medical Marijuana Program (NMMP)

Information provided by the state on sources for medical marijuana:
"The NMMP is not a resource for the growing process and does not have information to give to patients."

Fee:
$150, plus $15-42 in additional related costs

Accepts other states' registry ID cards?
No

Registration:
Mandatory

10. New Jersey Senate Bill 119 (175 KB)
Approved: Jan. 11, 2010 by House, 48-14; by Senate, 25-13
Signed into law by Gov. Jon Corzine on Jan. 18, 2010
Effective: Six months from enactment
Protects "patients who use marijuana to alleviate suffering from debilitating medical conditions, as well as their physicians, primary caregivers, and those who are authorized to produce marijuana for medical purposes" from "arrest, prosecution, property forfeiture, and criminal and other penalties."

Also provides for the creation of alternative treatment centers, "at least two each in the northern, central, and souther regions of the state. The first two centers issued a permit in each region shall be nonprofit entities, and centers subsequently issued permits may be nonprofit or for-profit entities."

Approved Conditions: Seizure disorder, including epilepsy, intractable skeletal muscular spasticity, glaucoma; severe or chronic pain, severe nausea or vomiting, cachexia, or wasting syndrome resulting from HIV/AIDS or cancer; amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's Disease), multiple sclerosis, terminal cancer, muscular dystrophy, or inflammatory bowel disease, including Crohn’s disease; terminal illness, if the physician has determined a prognosis of less than 12 months of life or any other medical condition or its treatment that is approved by the Department of Health and Senior Services.

Possession/Cultivation: Physicians determine how much marijuana a patient needs and give written instructions to be presented to an alternative treatment center. The maximum amount for a 30-day period is two ounces.
S119 becomes effective six months after the law was enacted on Jan. 18, 2010. The program will be run by the Department of Health and Senior Services.
Information provided by the state on sources for medical marijuana:
The state will accept applications for alternative treatment centers, and approve a minimum of six.

Fee:
****Fee will be determined when the registration program is established

Accepts other states' registry ID cards?
Unknown

Registration:
Program not yet established

9. New Mexico Senate Bill 523 (71 KB) "The Lynn and Erin Compassionate Use Act"
Approved: Mar. 13, 2007 by House, 36-31; by Senate, 32-3
Effective: July 1, 2007
Removes state-level criminal penalties on the use and possession of marijuana by patients "in a regulated system for alleviating symptoms caused by debilitating medical conditions and their medical treatments." The New Mexico Department of Health designated to administer the program and register patients, caregivers, and providers.

Approved Conditions: The 15 current qualifying conditions for medical cannabis are: severe chronic pain, painful peripheral neuropathy, intractable nausea/vomiting, severe anorexia/cachexia, hepatitis C infection, Crohn's disease, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease), cancer, glaucoma, multiple sclerosis, damage to the nervous tissue of the spinal cord with intractable spasticity, epilepsy, HIV/AIDS, and hospice patients.

Possession/Cultivation: Patients have the right to possess up to six ounces of usable cannabis, four mature plants and 12 seedlings. Usable cannabis is defined as dried leaves and flowers; it does not include seeds, stalks or roots. A primary caregiver may provide services to a maximum of four qualified patients under the Medical Cannabis Program.
New Mexico Department of Health
1190 St. Francis Drive
P.O. Box 26110
Santa Fe, NM 87502-6110
Phone: 505-827-2321
medical.cannabis@state.nm.us

NM Medical Cannabis Program

Information provided by the state on sources for medical marijuana:
"Patients can apply for a license to produce their own medical cannabis... Once a patient is approved we provide them with information about how to contact the licensed producers to receive medical cannabis." (accessed Jan. 11, 2010)

Fee:
$0

Accepts other states' registry ID cards?
No

Registration:
Mandatory

11. Oregon Ballot Measure 67 -- Approved by 55% of voters on Nov. 3, 1998
Effective: Dec. 3, 1998
Removes state-level criminal penalties on the use, possession and cultivation of marijuana by patients who possess a signed recommendation from their physician stating that marijuana "may mitigate" his or her debilitating symptoms.

Approved Conditions: Cancer, glaucoma, positive status for HIV/AIDS, or treatment for these conditions; A medical condition or treatment for a medical condition that produces cachexia, severe pain, severe nausea, seizures, including seizures caused by epilepsy, or persistent muscle spasms, including spasms caused by multiple sclerosis. Other conditions are subject to approval by the Health Division of the Oregon Department of Human Resources.

Possession/Cultivation: A registry identification cardholder or the designated primary caregiver of the cardholder may possess up to six mature marijuana plants and 24 ounces of usable marijuana. A registry identification cardholder and the designated primary caregiver of the cardholder may possess a combined total of up to 18 marijuana seedlings. (per Oregon Revised Statutes ORS 475.300 -- ORS 475.346) (52 KB)

Amended: Senate Bill 1085 (52 KB)
Effective: Jan. 1, 2006

State-qualified patients who possess cannabis in amounts exceeding the new state guidelines will no longer retain the ability to argue an "affirmative defense" of medical necessity at trial. Patients who fail to register with the state, but who possess medical cannabis in amounts compliant with state law, still retain the ability to raise an "affirmative defense" at trial.

The law also redefines "mature plants" to include only those cannabis plants that are more than 12 inches in height and diameter, and establish a state-registry for those authorized to produce medical cannabis to qualified patients.

Amended: House Bill 3052
Effective: July 21, 1999

Mandates that patients (or their caregivers) may only cultivate marijuana in one location, and requires that patients must be diagnosed by their physicians at least 12 months prior to an arrest in order to present an "affirmative defense." This bill also states that law enforcement officials who seize marijuana from a patient pending trial do not have to keep those plants alive. Last year the Oregon Board of Health approved agitation due to Alzheimer’s disease to the list of debilitating conditions qualifying for legal protection.

In August 2001, program administrators filed established temporary procedures further defining the relationship between physicians and patients. The new rule defines attending physician as "a physician who has established a physician/patient relationship with the patient;... is primarily responsible for the care and treatment of the patients;... has reviewed a patient’s medical records at the patient’s request, has conducted a thorough physical examination of the patient, has provided a treatment plan and/or follow-up care, and has documented these activities in a patient file."
Oregon Department of Human Services
Medical Marijuana Program
PO Box 14450
Portland, OR 97293-0450
Phone: 971-673-1234
Fax: 971-673-1278
OR Medical Marijuana Program (OMMP)

Information provided by the state on sources for medical marijuana:
"The OMMP is not a resource for the growing process and does not have information to give to patients." (accessed Jan. 11, 2010)

Fee:
$100 for new applications and renewals, $20 for applicants enrolled in the Oregon Health Plan or who receive federal Supplementary Social Security Income or monthly food stamp benefits

Accepts other states' registry ID cards?
No

Registration:
Mandatory

12. Rhode Island Senate Bill 0710 -- Approved by state House and Senate, vetoed by the Governor. Veto was over-ridden by House and Senate.

Timeline:
June 24, 2005: passed the House 52 to 10
June 28, 2005: passed the State Senate 33 to 1
June 29, 2005: Gov. Carcieri vetoed the bill
June 30, 2005: Senate overrode the veto 28-6
Jan. 3, 2006: House overrode the veto 59-13 to pass the Edward O. Hawkins and Thomas C. Slater Medical Marijuana Act (48 KB) (Public Laws 05-442 and 05-443)
June 21, 2007: Amended by Senate Bill 791 (SB 791) (30 KB)
Effective: Jan. 3, 2006
Approved Conditions: Cancer, glaucoma, positive status for HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis C, or the treatment of these conditions; A chronic or debilitating disease or medical condition or its treatment that produces cachexia or wasting syndrome; severe, debilitating, chronic pain; severe nausea; seizures, including but not limited to, those characteristic of epilepsy; or severe and persistent muscle spasms, including but not limited to, those characteristic of multiple sclerosis or Crohn’s disease; or agitation of Alzheimer's Disease; or any other medical condition or its treatment approved by the state Department of Health.

If you have a medical marijuana registry identification card from any other state, U.S. territory, or the District of Columbia you may use it in Rhode Island. It has the same force and effect as a card issued by the Rhode Island Department of Health.

Possession/Cultivation: Limits the amount of marijuana that can be possessed and grown to up to 12 marijuana plants or 2.5 ounces of cultivated marijuana. Primary caregivers may not possess an amount of marijuana in excess of 24 marijuana plants and five ounces of usable marijuana for qualifying patients to whom he or she is connected through the Department's registration process.

Amended: H5359 (70 KB) - The Edward O. Hawkins and Thomas C. Slater Medical Marijuana Act (substituted for the original bill)

Timeline:

May 20, 2009: passed the House 63-5
June 6, 2009: passed the State Senate 31-2
June 12, 2009: Gov. Carcieri vetoed the bill (60 KB)
June 16, 2009: Senate overrode the veto 35-3
June 16, 2009: House overrode the veto 67-0

Effective: June 16, 2009

Allows the creation of compassion centers, which may acquire, possess, cultivate, manufacture, deliver, transfer, transport, supply, or dispense marijuana, or related supplies and educational materials, to registered qualifying patients and their registered primary caregivers.

Rhode Island Department of Health
Office of Health Professions Regulation, Room 104
3 Capitol Hill
Providence, RI 02908-5097
Phone: 401-222-2828

RI Medical Marijuana Program (MMP)

Information provided by the state on sources for medical marijuana:
"The MMP is not a resource for marijuana and does not have information to give to patients related to the supply of marijuana." (accessed Jan. 11, 2010)

Fee:
$75/$10 for applicants on Medicaid or Supplemental Security Income (SSI)

Accepts other states' registry ID cards?
Yes, but only for the conditions approved in Rhode Island

Registration:
Mandatory

13. Vermont Senate Bill 76 (45 KB) -- Approved 22-7; House Bill 645 (41 KB) -- Approved 82-59
"Act Relating to Marijuana Use by Persons with Severe Illness" (Sec. 1. 18 V.S.A. chapter 86 (41 KB) passed by the General Assembly) Gov. James Douglas (R), allowed the act to pass into law unsigned on May 26, 2004
Effective: July 1, 2004
Amended: Senate Bill 00007 (65 KB)
Effective: May 30, 2007

Approved Conditions: Cancer, AIDS, positive status for HIV, multiple sclerosis, or the treatment of these conditions if the disease or the treatment results in severe, persistent, and intractable symptoms; or a disease, medical condition, or its treatment that is chronic, debilitating and produces severe, persistent, and one or more of the following intractable symptoms: cachexia or wasting syndrome, severe pain or nausea or seizures.

Possession/Cultivation: No more than two mature marijuana plants, seven immature plants, and two ounces of usable marijuana may be collectively possessed between the registered patient and the patient’s registered caregiver. A marijuana plant shall be considered mature when male or female flower buds are readily observed on the plant by unaided visual examination. Until this sexual differentiation has taken place, a marijuana plant will be considered immature.
Marijuana Registry
Department of Public Safety
103 South Main Street
Waterbury, Vermont 05671
Phone: 802-241-5115

VT Marijuana Registry Program

Information provided by the state on sources for medical marijuana:
"The Marijuana Registry is neither a source for marijuana nor can the Registry provide information to patients on how to obtain marijuana." (accessed Jan. 11, 2010)

Fee:
$50

Accepts other states' registry ID cards?
No

Registration:
Mandatory

14. Washington Chapter 69.51A RCW (4KB) Ballot Initiative I-692 -- Approved by 59% of voters on Nov. 3, 1998
Effective: Nov. 3, 1998
Removes state-level criminal penalties on the use, possession and cultivation of marijuana by patients who possess "valid documentation" from their physician affirming that he or she suffers from a debilitating condition and that the "potential benefits of the medical use of marijuana would likely outweigh the health risks."

Approved Conditions: Cachexia; cancer; HIV or AIDS; epilepsy; glaucoma; intractable pain (defined as pain unrelieved by standard treatment or medications); and multiple sclerosis. Other conditions are subject to approval by the Washington Board of Health.

Possession/Cultivation: Patients (or their primary caregivers) may legally possess or cultivate no more than a 60-day supply of marijuana. The law does not establish a state-run patient registry.

Amended: Senate Bill 6032 (29 KB)
Effective: 2007 (rules being defined by Legislature with a July 1, 2008 due date)

Amended: Final Rule (123 KB) based on Significant Analysis (370 KB)
Effective: Nov. 2, 2008

Approved Conditions: Added Crohn's disease, Hepatitis C with debilitating nausea or intractable pain, diseases, including anorexia, which result in nausea, vomiting, wasting, appetite loss, cramping, seizures, muscle spasms, or spasticity, when those conditions are unrelieved by standard treatments or medications.

Possession/Cultivation: A qualifying patient and designated provider may possess a total of no more than twenty-four ounces of usable marijuana, and no more than fifteen plants. This quantity became the state's official "60-day supply" on Nov. 2, 2008.

[Editor's Note: On Jan. 21, 2010, the Supreme Court of the State of Washington ruled that Ballot Initiative "I-692 did not legalize marijuana, but rather provided an authorized user with an affirmative defense if the user shows compliance with the requirements for medical marijuana possession." State v. Fry (125 KB)

ProCon.org contacted the Washington Department of Health to ask whether it had received any instructions in light of this ruling. Kristi Weeks, Director of Policy and Legislation, stated the following in a Jan. 25, 2010 email response to ProCon.org:

"The Department of Health has a limited role related to medical marijuana in the state of Washington. Specifically, we were directed by the Legislature to determine the amount of a 60 day supply and conduct a study of issues related to access to medical marijuana. Both of these tasks have been completed. We have maintained the medical marijuana webpage for the convenience of the public.

The department has not received 'any instructions' in light of State v. Fry. That case does not change the law or affect the 60 day supply. Chapter 69.51A RCW, as confirmed in Fry, provides an affirmative defense to prosecution for possession of marijuana for qualifying patients and caregivers."]
Department of Health
PO Box 47866
Olympia, WA 98504-7866
Phone: 360-236-4700
Fax: 360-236-4768
MedicalMarijuana@doh.wa.gov

WA Medical Marijuana website

Information provided by the state on sources for medical marijuana:
"The law allows a qualifying patient or designated provider to grow medical marijuana. It is not legal to buy or sell it. The law does not allow dispensaries." (accessed Jan. 11, 2010)

Fee:
*****No state registration program has been established

Accepts other states' registry ID cards?
No

Registration:
None

[Editor's Note: Karen O'Keefe, JD provided the following information in a Jan. 11, 2010 email to ProCon.org about registering as a medical marijuana patient in states that have identification card programs:
"Affirmative defenses, which protect from conviction but not arrest, are or may be available in several states even if the patient doesn't have an ID card: Rhode Island, Montana, Michigan, Colorado, Maine, Nevada, and Oregon. Hawaii also has a separate 'choice of evils' defense. In California, ID cards are voluntary, but they offer the strongest legal protection.

The states with no protection unless you're registered are: Alaska (except for that even non-medical use is protected in one's home due to the state constitutional right to privacy); Vermont, New Mexico, and New Jersey."]

For more information about upcoming medical marijuana laws, visit our page on the 12 States with Pending Legislation or Ballot Measures to Legalize Medical Marijuana.

II. Other State Medical Marijuana Laws

State Program Details Contact Info
1. Arizona Ballot Proposition 200 -- Approved by 65% of voters on Nov. 5, 1996
Effective: Dec. 6, 1996 [Not Active]
Measure changed sentencing for drug offenders, requiring those who commit violent crimes to serve full sentences without parole, and diverting non-violent drug offenders into treatment. Prop 200 also permitted doctors to prescribe schedule I controlled substances, including marijuana, to treat a disease or to relieve pain and suffering in seriously ill and terminally ill patients. Under federal law, however, marijuana is considered an illegal drug and physicians are prohibited from writing prescriptions for illegal drugs. The use of the word "prescribe" instead of "recommend" is the reason that Prop 200 is not considered to make medical marijuana legal in Arizona.

Not Amended: House Bill 2518, which was signed by the governor on Apr. 21, 1997, sought to repeal Proposition 200’s medical marijuana provision by requiring the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to first approve marijuana before allowing state physicians to prescribe it. The bill was placed on the Nov. 3, 1998 ballot as a referendum, where voters rejected it by a vote of 57% to 43%.
No state program, no contact info
2. Maryland Senate Bill 502 (72 KB), The "Darrell Putman" Bill -- Resolution #0756-2003 -- Approved in the state senate by a vote of 29-17. Signed into law by Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr. on May 22, 2003
Effective: Oct. 1, 2003
The law allows defendants being prosecuted for the use or possession of marijuana to introduce evidence of medical necessity and physician approval, to be considered by the court as a mitigating factor. If the court finds that the case involves medical necessity, the maximum penalty that the court may impose is a fine not exceeding $100. The law, however, does not protect users of medical marijuana from arrest or establish a registry program.

Not Amended
No state program, no contact info

Last updated on: 1/26/2010 3:09 PM PST

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California Tax and Regulate Marijuana Initiative from Drug war Chronicle

2010-02-01T10:03:00.000-08:00

Legalization: California Tax and Regulate Marijuana Initiative Hands in Signatures
Drug War Chronicle, Issue #618, 1/29/10

The Oakland-based activists behind the Tax and Regulate Cannabis 2010 California marijuana legalization initiative Thursday handed in more than 700,000 signatures Thursday at county courthouses across the state. That number is well in excess of the 434,000 valid signatures needed to place the measure on the November ballot.

Richard Lee (courtesy cannabisculture.com)Advanced by medical marijuana entrepreneur and Oaksterdam University founder Richard Lee, the initiative would allow adults over 21 to possess up to one ounce of marijuana and have a grow space of up to 25 square feet without fear of criminal penalty. By local option, counties or municipalities could choose to tax and regulate commercial marijuana production and sales.

The initiative is one of at least three legalization initiatives being circulated in California this year, but it is the best financed and the only one to turn in signatures yet. A legalization bill passed an Assembly committee vote earlier this month before dying for the session. An April Field poll found support for legalization in California at 56%.

In an afternoon conference call Thursday, Lee and initiative campaign chief consultant Doug Linney said they hoped to raise around $10 million for the coming months. "We're working with Blue State Digital, Obama's internet team," said Lee. "If we get a little bit from a lot of people, we can raise that amount."

"We hope to raise $10 to $15 million to get our message to the voters," said Linney. "Between the cannabis industry -- it is California's number one cash crop -- and the national appeal of a movement like this, we're confident we can generate that money."

Nearly 80,000 Californians were arrested on marijuana charges in 2008, nearly 80% of them for misdemeanor possession.

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In Drug War, Tribe Feels Invaded by Both Sides from The New York Times

2010-01-25T09:23:00.000-08:00

January 25, 2010
War Without Borders
In Drug War, Tribe Feels Invaded by Both Sides
By ERIK ECKHOLM
SELLS, Ariz. — An eerie hush settles in at sundown on the Tohono O’odham Nation, which straddles 75 miles of border with Mexico.

Few residents leave their homes. The roads crawl with the trucks of Border Patrol agents, who stop unfamiliar vehicles, scrutinize back roads for footprints and hike into the desert wilds to intercept smugglers carrying marijuana on their backs and droves of migrants trying to make it north.

By the bad luck of geography, the only large Indian reservation on the embattled border is caught in the middle, emerging as a major transit point for drugs as well as people.

A long-insular tribe of 28,000 people and its culture are paying a steep price: the land is swarming with outsiders, residents are afraid to walk in the hallowed desert, and some members, lured by drug cartel cash in a place with high unemployment, are ending up in prison.

“People will knock on your door, flash a wad of money and ask if you can drive this bale of marijuana up north,” said Marla Henry, 38, chairwoman of Chukut Kuk district, which covers much of the border zone.

The tightening of border security to the east and west, which started in the 1990s and intensified after the Sept. 11 attacks, funneled more drug traffic through the Tohono O’odham reservation, federal officials said, and especially more marijuana, which is hard to slip through vehicle crossings because of its bulk.

A record 319,000 pounds of marijuana were seized on the reservation in 2009, up from 201,000 pounds the previous year, along with small amounts of cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine.

Hundreds of tribal members have been prosecuted in federal, state or tribal courts for smuggling drugs or humans, taking offers that reach $5,000 for storing marijuana or transporting it across the reservation. In a few families, both parents have been sent to prison, leaving grandparents to raise the children.

“People are afraid that if they say no, they’ll be threatened by the cartel,” Ms. Henry said.

If residents of remote villages tried to call the police, she said, help might not arrive for two hours or more.

At the same time, some residents are angry at the intrusion of hundreds of federal agents, including some who stay for a week at a time on bases in remote parts of the reservation. The surge in agents who cruise the roads has meant more checkpoints and tighter controls on a border that tribal members, 1,500 of whom live in Mexico, once freely crossed.

The once-placid reservation feels like a “militarized zone,” said Ned Norris Jr., the tribal chairman, who also says the tribe must cooperate to stem the cartels. “Drug smuggling is a problem we didn’t create, but now we’re having to deal with the consequences.”

Many residents say they live in fear of the smugglers and hordes of migrants who lurk around their homes, and also of being subjected to a humiliating search by federal agents.

The elderly avoid the desert, even in the daytime, because they might stumble upon a cache of marijuana or drug “mules” hiding in desert washes until dark.

“We can’t even go out to collect wood for the stove,” said Verna Miguel, 63, who was traumatized three years ago when a group of migrants forced her to stop on a road, beat her and stole her vehicle.

“We’ve always picked saguaro fruits and cholla buds,” Ms. Miguel said, using such desert products for consumption and rituals. “But now we don’t dare do that.”

Until recently, the reservation’s international border was porous, defended by three strands of barbed wire. Over the last two years, it has been lined with metal posts and Normandy-style barriers to stop the trucks that used to barrel through and head for Phoenix.

Federal officials describe the rise in drug seizures on the reservation as a sign of growing success on what had long been a vulnerable section of border. Barriers and surveillance have forced most of the smugglers to enter on foot rather than in vehicles and spend hours or days sneaking through the reservation, making them more vulnerable to detection, said Agent Robert Gilbert, chief of the Tucson sector of the Border Patrol.

But the large busts, here and elsewhere on the border, are also a measure of the continued trade and profits reaped by the cartels.

“The cartels use the profit from marijuana to purchase cocaine in Colombia and Peru and the ingredients for meth and heroin from other regions,” said Elizabeth W. Kempshall, special agent in charge of the Arizona office of the Drug Enforcement Administration. “So marijuana is the catalyst for the rest of the drug trade.”

The drug smugglers, mainly working for the Sinaloa Cartel, officials said, place scouts for days at a time on mountainsides, with night-vision goggles to monitor movements of the Border Patrol. The scouts communicate with Mexican or Indian guides using cellphones or two-way radios with rolling codes that cannot be intercepted, said Sgt. David Cray of the tribal police force, which has spent major amounts of money on border issues. During the day, the scouts hide in caves or under camouflage.

The Border Patrol has its own spotters and trucks with infrared video cameras that detect heat miles away. The tribe has agreed to electronic surveillance towers that in coming years will make a “virtual fence” across their lands.

Many agents spend their nights “cutting for sign,” a tracker’s term, making slow drives on dirt roads in search of footprints.

One recent chilly night, a Border Patrol spotter detected eight white dots on his screen moving steadily north, not meandering the way cows or wild mules do. With a laser beam he fixed their coordinates at a spot five miles from his mountaintop post.

Two agents in four-wheel-drive vehicles set out over a rutted ranch track, then hiked through half a mile of mesquite, cholla and prickly pear to intercept the group. Six escaped, but two Mexican men were captured with seven burlap packs, each filled with 50 pounds of marijuana that sells wholesale for $500 or more per pound.

For the agents, it was a good night’s work. “This is what we live for, stopping drugs,” said an agent who hiked in shortly after the bust to help bring in the smugglers and the contraband.

But many tribal members see the federal presence as a mixed blessing at best.

Ofelia Rivas, 53, of Meneger’s Dam Village is an Indian rights advocate and a rare border resident who agreed to speak to a reporter. She said that most families in border villages, including her own, had had a relative imprisoned for drug offenses, but that such individuals should not be blamed for the lack of legal jobs. Ms. Rivas has criticized tribal leaders for acquiescing to what she calls an oppressive federal occupation.

Federal law officials praise the tribe for its cooperation, and the Border Patrol has fielded community relations officers to minimize frictions.

Even Mr. Norris, the tribal chairman, said he had been stopped and questioned. “Quite frankly, the people are getting sick of it,” he said of the heavy outside presence. But he added that the smuggling was beyond the tribe’s ability to control.

“I hope in my lifetime we can go back to the way it used to be,” Mr. Norris said, “where people could go and walk in the daylight on our own land.”

Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

This Week's Corrupt Cops from Drug War Chronicle

2010-01-15T10:08:00.000-08:00

from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #616, 1/15/10
A sticky-fingering, meth-snorting cop goes away for awhile, and a trio of jail guards get in trouble. Let's get to it:

In Glendora, California, a former Glendora police officer was sentenced Tuesday to six months in jail, three years of probation, and a 24-month drug rehabilitation program after pleading no contest to grand theft and methamphetamine possession charges. Timothy Radogna, 34, was arrested in May in an "integrity sting" after superiors received reports he was failing to book drugs and cash into evidence. Police left meth and $1,000 in cash in a bait car, and Radogna took the bait. He could have gotten up to nine years.

In Beaumont, Texas, a former Texas Department of Corrections guard pleaded guilty Monday to trying to smuggle drugs and a cell phone into the Stiles Unit in his lunchbox. Eric Talmore, 25, copped pleas to bribery and having a prohibited substance in a correctional facility. He got busted with tobacco in his socks, rolling papers in his underwear, and marijuana and a cell phone hidden inside a container of fried rice. He faces up to 30 years in prison when sentenced on February 16, but his attorney is asking for probation.

In Manchester, Kentucky, a Clay County Detention Center guard was arrested Sunday on charges she smuggled drugs to inmates in the jail. Guard Dawn Hayes, 31, fell prey to an undercover investigation by the County Sheriff's Office, taking drugs to be smuggled into the jail from a confidential informant. Hayes is currently residing at her place of employment.

In Chesterton, Indiana, an Indiana State Prison guard was arrested January 2 for trying to smuggle tobacco and marijuana into the prison. Barb Roseborough, a nine-year veteran, got caught when prison staff found a package wrapped in electrical tape hidden in the lining of her bag as she reported for work. A second package was later found hidden on her person. She has been charged with trafficking with an offender and felony marijuana possession. She faces from two to eight years on the first count and up to three years on the second. At last report, she was being held at the LaPorte County Jail.

PERMISSION to reprint or redistribute any or all of the contents of Drug War Chronicle (formerly The Week Online with DRCNet) is hereby granted. We ask that any use of these materials include proper credit and, where appropriate, a link to one or more of our web sites. If your publication customarily pays for publication, DRCNet requests checks payable to the organization. If your publication does not pay for materials, you are free to use the materials gratis. In all cases, we request notification for our records, including physical copies where material has appeared in print. Contact: StoptheDrugWar.org: the Drug Reform Coordination Network, P.O. Box 18402, Washington, DC 20036, (202) 293-8340 (voice), (202) 293-8344 (fax), e-mail drcnet@drcnet.org. Thank you.

Articles of a purely educational nature in Drug War Chronicle appear courtesy of the DRCNet Foundation, unless otherwise noted.

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McGwire Admits That He Used Steroids from New York Times

2010-01-12T11:00:00.000-08:00

January 12, 2010
McGwire Admits That He Used Steroids
By TYLER KEPNER
Mark McGwire, whose inflated statistics and refusal to address his past came to symbolize a synthetic era in baseball history, acknowledged on Monday that he used steroids through the 1990s.

McGwire has been out of baseball since retiring after the 2001 season, making few public appearances besides his infamous performance before Congress in 2005, when he dodged questions about steroid use. He starts next month as the hitting coach for the St. Louis Cardinals, and said he needed to make the admission to move forward.

“It’s something I’m certainly not proud of,” he said in an interview with The New York Times. “I’m certainly sorry for having done it. Someday, somehow, somewhere I knew I’d probably have to talk about this. I guess the steppingstone was being offered the hitting-coach job with the Cardinals. At that time, I said, ‘I need to come clean about this.’ ”

It was an orchestrated confession by McGwire, who first released a statement to The Associated Press, then conducted one-on-one interviews with several news outlets, including The Times. He also gave his first televised interview on the subject — to Bob Costas on the MLB Network.

McGwire and the Chicago Cubs’ Sammy Sosa captivated baseball in the summer of 1998 as they chased Roger Maris’s record of 61 home runs in a season. McGwire was the first to pass Maris and finished with a record of 70, the high point of a four-year stretch in which he bashed 245 home runs.

In the Costas interview, in which his voice cracked and his eyes watered several times, McGwire said he called Pat Maris, Roger Maris’s widow, on Monday and apologized.

“I think she was shocked that I called her,” McGwire said. “I felt that I needed to do that. They’ve been great supporters of mine. She was disappointed, and she has every right to be. I couldn’t tell her how so sorry I was.”

Still, McGwire told Costas he “absolutely” could have broken the record without using steroids, pointing to his home run prowess going back to Little League. “That’s why it’s the most regrettable thing I’ve ever done in my life,” McGwire said.

McGwire denied that he routinely injected steroids with Jose Canseco, his former Oakland teammate, as Canseco claimed in his 2005 book, “Juiced.” McGwire said he briefly tried steroids after the 1989 season but did not begin using them regularly until the winter after the 1993 season, when he was mired in a painful period of his career that included repeated trips to the disabled list, partly because of injuries to both heels.

During that time, he said, he began using steroids regularly. He told Costas that the drugs were readily available at gyms and that he took them orally and by injection. But he said he did not remember the name of the drugs.

In The Times interview, McGwire also cited health factors, saying: “In the winter of ’93, ’94, it was brought to my attention, ‘Have you ever thought of steroids or HGH; it can help speed up the healing process of injuries.’ ”

McGwire recalled a conversation with his father in 1996, when he was sidelined with another heel injury. “I remember telling him, ‘I want to retire,’ ” he told The Times. “ ‘I want to get away.’ At the time I knew my swing was developing, but I couldn’t get away from the injuries. I seriously thought about retiring, but my dad talked me out of it.”

McGwire kept playing but said he took steroids so he could stay on the field.

“I used very, very low dosages,” he said. “There’s no way I wanted to look like Lou Ferrigno or Arnold Schwarzenegger.”

He added: “I don’t want to use it as a crutch, but there was no drug testing. I didn’t use it for strength. I used it to help me recover from injuries.”

McGwire said he called Cardinals Manager Tony La Russa and Commissioner Bud Selig on Monday to tell them about his admission. In an interview with ESPN, La Russa defended the Athletics’ and Cardinals’ training programs as “100 percent legit” and said McGwire worked hard in the weight room.

“I didn’t know anything,” La Russa said of McGwire’s drug use. “Mark and I never confronted it, and he never told me until this morning.”

Selig said in a statement that he was pleased McGwire had “confronted his use of performance-enhancing substances as a player,” and said that the steroid era had come to an end.

“The use of steroids and amphetamines amongst today’s players has greatly subsided and is virtually nonexistent, as our testing results have shown,” Selig said. “The so-called steroid era — a reference that is resented by the many players who played in that era and never touched the substances — is clearly a thing of the past, and Mark’s admission today is another step in the right direction.”

McGwire’s refusal to talk about the past before Congress in 2005 subjected him to widespread ridicule, but he told Costas that he actually wanted to come clean at that point. He said his lawyers warned him he could subject himself to prosecution or a grand jury hearing if he admitted using steroids, although as users, rather than traffickers, athletes have rarely been charged in cases involving performance-enhancing drugs.

“My lawyers were downstairs trying to get immunity for me,” McGwire said. “I wanted to talk. I kept telling myself, ‘I want to get this off my chest.’ Well, we didn’t get immunity. So here I am in a situation, where I have two scenarios: a possible prosecution or possible grand-jury testimony.”

McGwire continued: “Well, you know what happens when there’s a prosecution? They bring in your whole family, they bring in your whole friends, they bring in ex-teammates, coaches, anybody that’s surrounding you. How the heck am I going to bring those people in for some stupid act that I did? So you know what I did? We agreed to not talk about the past. And it was not enjoyable to do that.”

McGwire said he was devastated to hear the moans in the room when he repeatedly declined to talk about his steroid use. But he said he had to protect his friends and family, based on the legal guidance he received.

“I was not going to lie,” McGwire added. “I wanted to tell the truth.”

Since then, McGwire has been roundly rejected by Hall of Fame voters despite having the best ratio of home runs to at-bats in baseball history, with one homer per 10.6 at-bats. He is tied with another admitted steroids user, Alex Rodriguez, for eighth on the career home run list, with 583.

In four appearances on the ballot, McGwire has never collected more than 25 percent of the voters. Candidates need 75 percent for election. Some voters, like Tom Haudricourt of The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, had said they would not consider voting for McGwire until he addressed his past.

“I think his vote totals will go up now, but I’ve got to think about it,” Haudricourt said. “Should we be voting guys in who admit to doing it? The sticky wicket just got stickier.”

McGwire said he had not been in exile, but had simply been enjoying retirement and starting a family. He said that no family members had ever directly asked if he had used steroids, and that he first told his father on Sunday.

“It hasn’t been easy,” he said. “I’m sure I’ll get through it. It’s just something I look back now and it’s so regrettable, so ridiculous.”

Karen Crouse contributed reporting.

Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Corrupt Cops: Texas Trifecta for Christmas from Drug War Chronicle

2009-12-29T11:28:00.000-08:00

from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #614, 12/29/09
It's a Texas trifecta for Christmas, plus an Alabama jail guard. Let's get to it:

If we can't keep drugs out of the prisons, how can we keep them out of the country?In San Antonio, the FBI is investigating the Bexar County Sheriff's Department's narcotics unit over allegations that some deputies unlawfully took evidence or stole money and property from people they detained or arrested. The probe has been going on for two years and has expanded from allegations of civil rights violations into investigating deputies who appear to be living beyond their means. Among accusations aimed at some members of the dope squad are that they used excessive force and threats and that they shook people down at apartment complexes where they worked private security jobs. The investigation began when a childhood friend of one of the deputies was arrested in Arkansas with 15 pounds of cocaine, and the deputy intervened, filing a report claiming the man was his informant. He wasn't.

In Kerrville, Texas, the former 198th District DA was indicted December 17 for misusing asset forfeiture funds. Former DA Ron Sutton is charged with two counts of misapplication of fiduciary property. The Sutton indictment comes after District Judge Karl Prohl resigned in September after a defense attorney complained to the Texas Commission on Judicial Conduct that Prohl was being biased in the DA's favor because he was benefitting from the DA's largesse with seized funds. Prohl had received $14,500 in checks from Sutton for training, equipment, and to attend a conference, as well as part of another $21,000 check for conferences in Hawaii, and a $6,000 check to cover per diem expenses during those same conferences. As presiding judge, Prohl approved all expenditures from the asset forfeiture fund. Prohl agreed to resign his judgeship "in lieu of disciplinary action" by the commission.

In Lubbock, Texas, a former chief deputy sheriff pleaded guilty December 20 for his role in a methamphetamine trafficking ring. Former Hockley County chief deputy Gordon Bohannon, 53, copped to conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine and now faces up to 10 years in federal prison. He was one of 28 people named in a July indictment alleging a motorcycle gang was running cash to Modesto, California, and returning to West Texas with the speed. Also indicted was another Hockley County deputy, Jose Jesus Quintanilla, who pleaded guilty last month to misprision of a felony. Both deputies provided information to the bikers that hindered efforts to shut down the ring.

In Guntersville, Alabama, a Marshall County jail guard was arrested Wednesday on drug charges. Guard Jeremy Wade Sanders, 32, was being held at his place of employment on charges of marijuana possession, attempt to promote prison contraband, and attempt to commit controlled substance crime.

PERMISSION to reprint or redistribute any or all of the contents of Drug War Chronicle (formerly The Week Online with DRCNet) is hereby granted. We ask that any use of these materials include proper credit and, where appropriate, a link to one or more of our web sites. If your publication customarily pays for publication, DRCNet requests checks payable to the organization. If your publication does not pay for materials, you are free to use the materials gratis. In all cases, we request notification for our records, including physical copies where material has appeared in print. Contact: StoptheDrugWar.org: the Drug Reform Coordination Network, P.O. Box 18402, Washington, DC 20036, (202) 293-8340 (voice), (202) 293-8344 (fax), e-mail drcnet@drcnet.org. Thank you.

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More U.S. States Weigh Marijuana Reform

2009-12-28T10:29:00.000-08:00

High expectations? States weigh marijuana reform
By RACHEL LA CORTE, Associated Press Writer Rachel La Corte, Associated Press Writer
Mon Dec 28, 9:39 am ET

OLYMPIA, Wash. – Washington is one of four states where measures to legalize and regulate marijuana have been introduced, and about two dozen other states are considering bills ranging from medical marijuana to decriminalizing possession of small amounts of the herb.

"In terms of state legislatures, this is far and away the most active year that we've ever seen," said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the New York-based Drug Policy Alliance, which supports reforming marijuana laws.

Nadelmann said that while legalization efforts are not likely to get much traction in state capitals anytime soon, the fact that there is such an increase of activity "is elevating the level of public discourse on this issue and legitimizing it."

"I would say that we are close to the tipping point," he said. "At this point they are still seen as symbolic bills to get the conversation going, but at least the conversation can be a serious one."

Opponents of relaxing marijuana laws aren't happy with any conversation on the topic, other than keeping the drug illegal.

"There's no upside to it in any manner other than for those people who want to smoke pot," said Travis Kuykendall, head of the West Texas High Intensity Drug-Trafficking Area office in El Paso, Texas. "There's nothing for society in it, there's nothing good for the country in it, there's nothing for the good of the economy in it."

Legalization bills were introduced in California and Massachusetts earlier this year, and this month, New Hampshire and Washington state prefiled bills in advance of their legislative sessions that begin in January. Marijuana is illegal under federal law, but guidelines have been loosened on federal prosecution of medical marijuana under the Obama administration.

Even so, marijuana reform legislation remains a tough sell in some places. In the South, for example, only Mississippi and North Carolina have decriminalization laws on the books.

"It's a social and cultural thing," said Bruce Mirken, spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project, a Washington, D.C.-based marijuana advocacy group. "There are some parts of the country where social attitudes are just a little more cautious and conservative."

Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson, a Seattle Democrat who is sponsoring the legalization bill in Washington state, said that she "wanted to start a strong conversation about the pros and cons of legalizing marijuana."

Under her bill, marijuana would be sold in Washington state's 160 state-run liquor stores, and customers, 21 and older, would pay a tax of 15 percent per gram. The measure would dedicate most of the money raised for substance abuse prevention and treatment, which is facing potential cuts in the state budget. Dickerson said the measure could eventually bring in as much to state coffers as alcohol does, more than $300 million a year.

"Our state is facing a huge financial deficit and deficits are projected for a few more years," Dickerson said, referring to the projected $2.6 billion hole lawmakers will need to fill next year. "We need to look at revenue and see what might be possible."

Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said that tough economic times across the country have lawmakers looking at everything, and may lead even more states to eventually consider the potential tax value of pot.

"The bean counters are now reporting back to their elected officials how much money is being left off the table," he said, adding that billions of dollars worth of pot is going untaxed.

Ron Brooks, president of the National Narcotics Officers' Associations' Coalition, said that he feared that, if legalized, marijuana would contribute to more highway accidents and deaths, as well as a potential increase in health care costs for those who smoke it.

State lawmakers, he said, need to ask themselves "if they believe we really will make all that revenue, and even if we did, will it be worth the suffering, the loss of opportunities, the chronic illness or death that would occur?"

Legalization isn't the only measure lawmakers across the country are weighing. About two dozen states, including Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Wisconsin, are considering bills ranging from medical marijuana to decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana, St. Pierre said. Washington state is among the states that are considering decriminalization, with a bill that would reclassify adult possession of marijuana from a crime with jail time to a civil infraction with a $100 penalty.

Fourteen states, including Washington state, already have medical marijuana laws, and 13 have decriminalization laws on the books, St. Pierre said. About two dozen cities across the country, including Seattle, make marijuana offenses a low law-enforcement priority.

Marijuana advocates said that while increased activity in the statehouse is heartening, change most likely will come at the ballot box through voter-driven initiatives.

"Inevitably, the politicians are going to be behind the curve on this stuff," Nadelmann said, noting that almost all of the medical marijuana laws came about by initiative.

This month, a group campaigning to put a marijuana legalization measure before California voters said it had enough signatures to qualify for the 2010 ballot.

That proposal would legalize possession of up to one ounce of marijuana for adults 21 and older. Residents could cultivate marijuana gardens up to 25 square feet. City and county governments would determine whether to permit and tax marijuana sales within their boundaries. And in Nevada earlier this month, backers of a move to legalize marijuana there filed paperwork creating an advocacy group aimed at qualifying an initiative for the 2012 election.

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6,487 Dead Americans By: John H. Richardson from Esquire.com

2009-12-25T19:07:00.000-08:00

A Radical Solution to End the Drug War: Legalize Everything
One cop straight out of The Wire crunches the numbers with Esquire.com's political columnist to discover that America's prohibition of narcotics may be costing more lives than Mexico's — and nearly enough dollars for universal health care. So why not repeal our drug laws? Because cops are making money off them, too.

By: John H. Richardson

We've heard a lot about the terrible death toll Mexico has suffered during the drug war — over 11,000 souls so far. This helps to account for the startling lack of controversy that greeted last week's news that Mexico had suddenly decriminalized drugs — not just marijuana but also cocaine, LSD, and heroin. In place of the outrage and threats that U.S. officials expressed when Mexico tried to decriminalize in 2006 was a mild statement, from our new drug czar, that we are going to take a "wait and see" approach.

Still, we've heard nothing about the American death toll. Isn't that strange? So far as I can tell, nobody has even tried to come up with a number.

Until now. I've done some rough math, and this is what I found:

6,487.

To repeat, that's 6,487 dead Americans. Throw in overdoses and the cost of this country's paralyzing drug laws is closer to 15,000 lives.

I'm basing these numbers on an interview with a high-ranking former narcotics officer named Neill Franklin. A member of the Maryland State Police for 32 years, Franklin eventually rose to the position of commander in Maryland's Bureau of Drug Enforcement. As he puts it, he was a classic "good soldier" in the drug war.

Franklin's turning point came in October of 2000. "I lost a very, very close friend of mine, a narcotics agent for Maryland State Police," he says. "His name was Ed Toatley. He was assassinated outside of Washington, D.C., trying to make a drug deal in a park. He had a wife, he had three kids. I had just spoken to him a couple of weeks prior to him getting assigned to this particular deal — he was finally going to bring this guy down, and lo and behold the guy kills him."

That got Franklin thinking. "I started doing the research and asking the questions: What progress are we making on this thing? And it turns out that not only are we losing kids who are in the game, but we are losing communities and fellow cops. We had lost a number of police officers in Baltimore alone."

Another turning point was 2002, when Angela Dawson and her five kids were murdered in East Baltimore by drug dealers she had been tying to keep from doing business in front of her house. "They fire-bombed the house late one night and the whole family perished," Franklin remembers.

So he started brooding on the drug war's body count. "Baltimore is a city of just a hair over 600,000 people. Our annual homicide rate was fluctuating between 240 and 300 every year for decades. Think about that: 240 to 300 homicides annually, and 75 percent to 80 percent are drug related. It's either gangs that are using drugs to support operations, or territorial disputes among drug dealers, or people just getting caught in the line of fire. And Baltimore is a small city compared to others," Franklin notes. "So we're not talking a handful of homicides; we're talking about the majority of the homicides in any city in the U.S. So if you add those cities up — just lowball it, take just 50 percent — I guarantee you, you'll find the numbers are quite similar to what they have in Mexico."

I took his advice. In 2007, the last year for which hard numbers are available, 16,425 people were murdered. Since our most recent Census said that 79 percent of the country is urban, I cut out the rural Americans — although there's plenty of drug use there, too — and came up with 12,975 urban homicides. Low-balling that number at 50 percent, I arrived at a rough estimate of 6,487 drug deaths. Using 75 percent, the toll rises to 9,731.

"And now we've got the cartel gangs coming up from Mexico," Franklin reminds me. "They're in over 130 cities in the U.S. already, and it's not going to get better."

Why Regulating Legal Drugs Fixes the Dead-Body Problem
Neill Franklin's solution is radical: "You have to take the money out of it. Many people talk about legalization and decriminalize — it's still illegal, but you're just not sending as many people to jail, especially for the nonviolent offenses. However, the money is still being made in the illegal sales, so you still have the drug wars. It's prohibition that's killing our people. That's why people are dying."

"So," I ask, "you want to legalize everything?"

"Yes. But I like to put it like this: I want regulation of everything. Because right now, I think they're confusing prohibition with regulation. What I'm talking about is applying standards — quality control, just like alcohol. We should have learned our lesson during alcohol prohibitions — we repealed the Eighteenth Amendment and applied standards of sale and manufacture, so it has to be a certain quality and you can't sell it to just anybody, and you still go to jail if you sell it to the wrong people. So, among other things, you'll also reduce overdoses — the majority of the overdoses we have is people who don't know what they're getting or buying because the purity level fluctuates. In addition, people are afraid to get help because they don't want to go jail, so they let their friends die."

So let's add overdoses to our death toll. In 2005, recent Senate testimony shows, 22,400 Americans died of drug overdoses. Leaving aside prescription drugs and counting only the 39 percent of overdoses attributed to cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamines, I count another 8,736 deaths.

That brings us to 15,223 Americans dead from the drug war.

But what about the argument that drugs will spread like wildfire if we don't keep bringing down the hammer?

"First, there's no concrete study to support such a belief — it's all completely speculation," Franklin insists. "So in my left hand I have all this speculation about what may happen to addiction rates, and then I look at my other hand and I see all these dead bodies that are actually fact, not speculation. And you're going to ask me to weigh the two? Second, if the addiction rate does go up, I'm going to have a lot of live addicts that I can cure. The direction we're going in now, I've got a lot of dead bodies."

I told Franklin I was surprised to hear a cop express so much sympathy for drug addicts. Even pro-drug types don't do that much. "I do have sympathy," he says. "What they're dealing with is a health issue, not a criminal issue. And as long as you treat it as a criminal issue, we're treating the symptom and not the cause."

Why Cleaning Up the Justice System Solves the Wasted-Money Problem
Last year, Franklin went public with his conclusions by joining a group called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. Since then he's made it his business to talk to other cops about the subject, and he's been surprised by another discovery: "I find that 95 percent of my law-enforcement friends agree that we have to take a different direction, but they're not sure what direction that is — and probably 60 percent to 65 percent agree that we should legalize."

And why, exactly, don't we hear about a possibly overwhelming majority of police wanting to legalize — not just decriminalize, but legalize — major narcotics?

"Selfish reasons," he says. "There is a lot of money to be made in law enforcement. If we were to legalize, you could get rid of one third of every law-enforcement agency in this country."

Really? One third?

"And give back all the federal funds too. That's why very seldom will you see a police chief step forward and say, 'Yeah, we need to do this.'"

I made a stab at crunching those numbers, too. In 2003, America's local police budgets (PDF) were $43 billion dollars. A third of that: $12.9 billion. Add another $9 billion in domestic and international law enforcement (PDF) and the number rises to $21.9 billion.

Then consider America's prisons, the problems with which we've discussed here time and again. "The prison population is off the hook in this country," Franklin says. "In 1993, at the height of apartheid in South Africa, the incarceration of black males was 870 per 100,000. In 2004 in the U.S., for every 100,000 people we are sending 4,919 black males to prison. And the majority of those are for nonviolent drug offenses. But we'd rather send people to prison than give them information and treatment."

So... our federal prison budget in 2007 was $6.3 billion, and 55 percent of the prisoners were there for drug offenses. The total state-prison budget for the U.S. in 2007 was $49 billion, according to this study from the Pew Foundation, which found that "at least" 44 states had gone into the red to incarcerate their citizens. Using the same 55 percent number — which is probably low — we arrive at a rough total of the prison expenses associated with the drug war: $30.4 billion.

"I know jails are a big business and keep lot of people employed," Franklin says, "but it doesn't make it right."

To review, using what seem to be very conservative numbers, our first unofficial tally of the drug war in the United States is staggering:

15,223 dead and $52.3 billion spent each year — which is, incidentally, almost enough to pay for universal health care.

"We've got serious constitutional issues involved, too," Franklin adds. "Improper search and seizure is occurring every day..."

But I'll save that for another column.

Find this article at: http://www.esquire.com/the-side/richardson-report/drug-war-facts-090109

The Numbers Don't Add Up in Mexico's Drug War

2009-12-25T18:58:00.000-08:00

The Numbers Don't Add Up in Mexico's Drug War

Posted by Kristin Bricker - November 29, 2009 at 10:35 pm Drug Seizures are Down; Drug Production, Executions, Disappearances, and Human Rights Abuses are Up

Just a week before Mexican president Felipe Calderon completes half of his six-year term, La Jornada reports that 16,500 extrajudicial executions have occurred during his administration. 6,500 of those executions have occurred in 2009, according to La Jornada’s sources in Calderon’s cabinet.

These latest numbers mean that 2009 will be another record-breaking year in Calderon’s drug war. In just three years in office, Calderon has surpassed his predecessor Vicente Fox’s narco-murder rate for his entire term in office. It is estimated that there were anywhere between 9,000 and 13,000 drug-related murders during Fox’s six-year term. Calderon has also beaten his own record: with one month left in the year, 2009’s 6,500 executions thus far have already surpassed last year’s 6,262.

The new numbers published by La Jornada suggest that the government had previously underreported drug war deaths. The government had previously reported 2,477 deaths in 2007 and 6,262 deaths in 2008, for a grand total of 8,739 deaths in 2007 and 2008. For the official numbers to have now reached 16,500 over the course of Calderon’s administration as sources within his own cabinet now claim, 7,761 people would have had to die in 2009, not the 6,500 that his cabinet claims. That’s a discrepancy of over 1,000 executions.

The discrepancy wouldn’t lie in mafia-related disappearances (that is, where someone is kidnapped and never reappears); the government counts those separately. 3,160 people have disappeared over the course of Calderon’s administration so far. For reference, it is estimated that 95 people disappeared during Vicente Fox’s entire six-year term.

Drug Seizures Down

The skyrocketing violence in Mexico can’t even be justified by the drug war’s quantitative results. According to the US government’s International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), drug seizures have decreased since Calderon began his war on drugs, and drug production is on the rise.

The first graph below shows heroin and opium seizures in Mexico from 2006-2008 as reported in the INCSR. Calderon deployed the first soldiers in the war on drugs in December 2006, meaning that the overwhelming majority of the results reported in 2006 occurred under the mandate of his predecessor Vicente Fox. Therefore, 2006 is presented as a base value. 2008 is the most recent year data is available from the INCSR.

The chart shows that heroin seizures have fallen steadily since Calderon declared all-out war on drugs. Opium gum seizures showed a drastic spike in 2007, the first full year of Calderon’s war, but fell by nearly half in 2008. Opium poppy eradication showed a significant dip in 2007, and even though it rose slightly in 2008, it did not recover to its 2006 levels.

As the chart below shows, marijuana seizures and eradication have also fallen. Seizures rose slightly in 2007, but they have since fallen below their 2006 numbers. According to the INCSR, marijuana eradication has experienced a steady decline since 2003; Calderon’s war has done nothing to stem this trend.

The US State Department’s Merida Initiative spending plan, published last year, suggested that if drug seizures were to decline, as is occurring now, it could signal that Calderon is winning the war on drugs. According to the spending plan:

With additional resources devoted to interdiction efforts across Mexico, it is natural to expect an initial increase in the amounts of illicit materials (drugs, weapons, bulk cash, and other contraband) seized. However, it is important to note that should these efforts prove successful, it is likely that seizures will - at some undetermined point - decrease as criminal organizations weaken and trafficking routes are disrupted.
So could reduced seizure levels mean that Calderon's strategy has weakened drug trafficking organizations to the point that their industry has been significantly disrupted as the Merida Initiative spending plan suggests? Absolutely not. As the chart below shows, the INCSR reports that drug production levels in Mexico have increased across the board since Calderon began his war on drugs. (Drug production data for 2007 is not available.)

In other words, according to the US State Department, which prepares the INCSR and is responsible for overseeing the Merida Initiative, drug seizure and eradication is on the decline in Mexico, and drug production is on the rise. This means that since Calderon began his war on drugs, more Mexican drugs are on the market, not less.

Human Rights Abuses Increase

While executions are on the rise, drug seizures are down, and drug production is up, Mexico is also experiencing an alarming increase in human rights abuses perpetrated by government agents—particularly the army—in Calderon’s war on drugs. As Mexican human rights organizations have noted, human rights violations committed by members of the armed forces have increased six-fold over the past two years. This statistic is based on complaints received by the Mexican government’s official National Human Rights Commission (CNDH).

No Mas Abusos (No More Abuses), a joint project of the Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Center, the Fundar Center for Analysis and Investigation, and Amnesty International’s Mexico Section, monitors human rights abuses committed by soldiers, police, and other government agents. No Mas Abusos tracked human rights complaints received by the CNDH over the past few years. Its results are as follows:

Year, Number of Complaints, and Percentage

No Mas Abusos notes that human rights complaints filed with the CNDH “doubled from 2006 to 2007, and increased by over 330% in 2008 in relation to the previous year. The pattern that the complaints received in the first six months of 2009 demonstrate, which allows us to estimate the tendency for the entire year, indicate that [in 2009] we will see another significant increase in human rights complaints.” No Mas Abusos notes that, “It should be pointed out that the data presented in this edition of the No Mas Abusos bulletin only represents a partial percentage of the total number of victims of military abuses in the whole country.” This is because the data is based on complaints received by the CNDH, a government agency, and not all abuses result in formal complaints, either due to fear of retaliation of a lack of faith in the efficacy of filing complaints with the CNDH.

Is the Drug War Worth It?

The drug war in Mexico is a failure by all measures: security, human rights, and drug interdiction.

The Mexican government, on some level, seems to be realizing this. It announced in July that it would scale back the military’s involvement in day-to-day policing activities in Ciudad Juarez. Up until that point, Ciudad Juarez was “the Calderon-style laboratory for combating criminal organizations,” with soldiers taking over the majority of policing activities from local police. It was an experiment that went terribly wrong.

In July, the Chihuahua state Secretary of Public Security, Víctor Valencia de los Santos, and federal Public Security Secretary Genaro García Luna made the decision to scale back the military’s role in Ciudad Juarez because “the thousands of soldiers and municipal police have not done anything other than march through the whole city daily, and that surveillance strategy has not produced results other than ‘it winds up being too expensive in terms of gasoline and diesel consumption alone.’ All that in addition to the costs of feeding and housing the troops that come from other parts of the country.”

But now the military’s role in Ciudad Juarez won’t just be scaled back: Juarez’s Board of Regents has decided to remove the military entirely from the city. La Jornada reports: “Leopoldo Canizales of the Institutional Revolution Party (PRI) said that a study of the Military’s cost-effectiveness in no way favors the soldiers. The expected results have not been delivered because crime, murders, kidnappings, extortion, car thievery, and other crimes continue to increase.” According to local officials, in just eight months the city government has spent well over $14.5 million pesos ($1.3 million dollars) to sustain the military occupation. Furthermore, over a thousand complaints have been filed against soldiers and federal police in Juarez alone since January 2008; the majority of the complaints are for property damage and bodily harm. Faced with these facts, the Board of Regents decided to not renew the city’s contract with the defense department.

The drug war’s utter failure has led Mexico’s former Secretary of Foreign Relations, Jorge G. Castañeda, to call on the government “to reestablish the tacit modus vivendi agreement [a truce based on an agreement to disagree] that it had with the drug cartels because the policy of total confrontation with those organizations has not succeeded in stopping the violence,” reports El Universal.

Nonetheless, the drug war wages full-force in other parts of Mexico, and the United States government has not taken concrete actions to change the course of its involvement in Mexico’s drug war. The Obama administration will fully fund the military-heavy Merida Initiative, a plan conceived by Calderon and former US president George W. Bush to wage war on organized crime in Mexico. US Ambassador to Mexico Carlos Pascual announced that the US plans to continue funding the Initiative past its 2010 expiration date, but without its controversial name.

Chihuahua state congressman Victor Quintana argues that the US continues to wage and fund a failed war because it doesn’t have to suffer the consequences like Mexico does: "The United States doesn't feel the effects, because it has a hypocritical position. It is one of the biggest drug markets and at the same time one of the biggest sources of drug traffickers' weapons, and it doesn't pay the costs of that. It only enjoys the benefits of money laundering and drug trafficking.

"

International Drug Policy Developments

2009-12-18T16:31:00.000-08:00

The Year on Drugs 2009: International Drug Policy Developments
Medical Marijuana: Congress Finally Lets District of Columbia Go for It
Appeal: Did You Know That We Are WINNING?
West Coast Weed Wars: Legalizing Legislators Come Out Swinging
Latin America: Mexico Drug War Update
Law Enforcement: This Week's Corrupt Cops Stories
Medical Marijuana: New Jersey Patient Acquitted of Most Serious Charge, Convicted of Others
Medical Marijuana: Wisconsin Bill Gets Public Hearing
Search and Seizure: Ohio Supreme Court Rules Police Need Warrant to Search Cell Phones
Europe: Czech Government Announces Decriminalization Quantities -- Law Goes Into Effect New Year's Day
The Caribbean: Jamaica Lawmakers Calls for Ganja Decriminalization
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The Year on Drugs 2009: International Drug Policy Developments
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from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #613, 12/18/09
As 2009 winds to a close, we review the global year in drug policy. There were a number of events of global significance -- the trend toward decriminalization of drug possession in Europe and Latin America, the slow spread of heroin maintenance therapy, the frontal assault on global prohibitionist orthodoxy at the UN -- as well as new developments in ongoing drug-policy related struggles from the poppy fields of Afghanistan to the cannabis cafes of Amsterdam.

This review can't cover everything -- it's a big world, and there's a lot happening in drug policy these days. Among the items worth at least mentioning in passing: Israel's embrace of medical marijuana, Canada's flirtation with mandatory minimum sentences for marijuana growers (still in process, and amended to be less harmful by the Canadian Senate), the continuing resort to the death penalty for drug offenses in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, the bemusing link between cannabis and schizophrenia apparently at work only in some Commonwealth countries, the Andean drug war (unchanged in its essential outlines this year), and the rise of poor West African nations as favored smugglers' destinations.

What about Mexico? There is one glaring omission here, but there is a reason for that: In the third year of Mexican President Felipe Calderon's offensive against the so-called drug cartels, the violence is more intense and destabilizing than ever. What is happening in Mexico is certainly a drug policy-related phenomenon of global significance, but this year, with more than a billion US dollars in the anti-drug aid pipeline, beefed up border security, official acknowledgement that insatiable American appetites play a crucial role, and growing public and political concern about the violence on the border, we will examine the Mexican drug war in the context of US domestic drug policy issues. Look for it to be among the Top 10 domestic drug policy stories in our feature next issue.

With that as a caveat, here are this year's biggest global drug policy developments:

Afghanistan: War on Drugs, Meet War on Terror

Afghan opiumEight years after the US and NATO forces invaded and occupied Afghanistan, driving the Taliban from power, the Taliban have returned with a vengeance, fueled by revenues from the country's primary cash crop: opium. Western estimates of Taliban income from the poppy and heroin trade are in the hundreds of millions of dollars annually, which buys a lot of shiny new weapons for the resurgent insurgents.

This year has been the bloodiest yet for Western occupiers, with 495 US and NATO forces killed this year, according to iCasualties.org. Part of the uptick in violence can be attributed to the Taliban's opium wealth, but the decision by US and NATO forces to move aggressively into the Taliban's eastern and southern heartlands, especially Helmand and Kandahar provinces, has also led to increased fighting and higher casualties.

In June, President Obama, adhering to his election campaign vows if not the wishes of his some of his most ardent supporters, moved to directly confront the drug trade, sending 20,000 troops into Helmand to take on the Taliban and allied traffickers. But while that looked like more of the same, just weeks later, the US announced a major shift in its anti-drug policy in Afghanistan when US envoy Richard Holbrooke announced the US would no longer participate in poppy eradication campaigns. That was a startling, reality-driven break from previous US policy in Afghanistan, as well as with current US policies against coca production in Colombia and Peru.

Instead of persecuting poverty-stricken opium-growing peasants, the US and NATO would concentrate on drug manufacturers and traffickers, but only those linked to the Taliban -- not those linked to the corrupt and illegitimate (after this fall's fraudulent election fiasco) regime of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The US beefed up the in-country DEA contingent and even came up with a "hit list" of some 50 Afghan traffickers linked to the Taliban.

This fall, fighting has been intense in southern and eastern Afghanistan, as well as across the border in Pakistan, and now, the first of President Obama's promised 30,000-troop escalation is headed precisely for Helmand, where one of its first assignments will be to take and hold a major Taliban trafficking center. The war on drugs and the war on terror will continue to collide in Afghanistan, but now, at least, the imperatives of the war on terror have forced a historic shift in US anti-drug policy, at least in Afghanistan.

Latin American Leaders Call for a Drug Policy Paradigm Shift

Commission panel, former President of Colombia Cesar Gaviria on left (courtesy comunidadsegura.org)In February, a blue-ribbon panel of Latin American leaders, including former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo, and former Colombian President Cesar Gaviria issued a report and statement saying the US-led war on drugs has failed and it is time to consider new policies, particularly treating drug use as a public health matter and decriminalizing marijuana possession.

The report, Drugs and Democracy: Toward a Paradigm Shift, is the work of the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy, which also includes prominent writers Paulo Coelho, Mario Vargas Llosa, Sergio Ramírez and Tomás Eloy Martínez as well as leading scholars, media members and politicians.

Latin America is the leading exporter of both cocaine and marijuana. As such, it has faced the ravages of heavy-handed American anti-drug interventions, such as Plan Colombia and earlier efforts to destroy the Bolivian coca crop, as well as the violence of drug trafficking organizations and politico-military formations of the left and right that have grown wealthy off the black market bonanza. And while the region's level of drug consumption has historically been low, it is on the rise.

"The main reason we organized this commission is because the available evidence indicates the war on drugs is a failed war," said Cardoso at a February press conference in Rio de Janeiro to announce the report. "We need a different paradigm to cope with the problem of drugs. The power of organized crime is undermining the very foundations of democracy in some Latin American countries. We must acknowledge that these policies have failed and we must break the taboo that prevents us from discussing different strategies."

''Global Marijuana Day'' demonstration in Mexico City, May 2008The report garnered considerable attention, not only in the US and Latin America, but worldwide, and it set the tone for a very reformist year in Latin America.

Mexico Decriminalizes Drug Possession

In May, Mexico decriminalized the possession of small amounts of illicit drugs, including up to five grams of marijuana, a fifth-gram of ecstasy and methamphetamine, a tenth-gram of heroin, and a half-gram of cocaine. The new law closely resembled a 2006 decriminalization bill that had passed the legislature only to die in the face of US protests. There were no US protests this time.

With the Mexican government's action, drug decriminalization has now reached the very borders of the US.

But, according to well-placed observers, the Mexican decriminalization is a case of two steps forward, one step back. In addition to decriminalizing possession of very small amounts of drugs, the new law grants drug enforcement powers to state and local police forces that they never had before. That could mean an increase in the arrests and prosecution of retail-level drug sellers. Still, the long-term political ramifications could be helpful; as one observer noted, "the headline will read that Mexico decriminalized drugs."

Argentina Decriminalizes Marijuana Possession, Laws Against Possessing Other Drugs Tremble

Supreme Court of ArgentinaWhile Mexico decriminalized through the legislative process, Argentina is doing it through the courts. In a series of cases dating back to 2006, Argentine judges have grown increasingly skeptical of arguments for criminalizing drug use. In the spring, judges in Buenos Aires threw out marijuana cultivation charges against a defendant, saying the plants were for personal use, and the following month, a federal appeals court threw out ecstasy possession charges against a group of defendants, again saying the drugs were for personal use. In both cases, the courts cited a 2006 Argentine Supreme Court ruling that it was the burden of the state "to demonstrate unequivocally that the drugs were not for personal use." In the ecstasy case, the appeals court held that the portion of the country's drug law regarding drug possession must be declared unconstitutional.

In August, the Supreme Court did just that, using another marijuana possession case to rule that the section of the country's drug law that criminalizes drug possession is unconstitutional.While the ruling referred only to marijuana possession, the portion of the law it threw out makes no distinction among drugs.

Imprisoning people absent harm to others violates constitutional protections, a unanimous court held. "Each individual adult is responsible for making decisions freely about their desired lifestyle without state interference," their ruling said. "Private conduct is allowed unless it constitutes a real danger or causes damage to property or the rights of others. The state cannot establish morality."

"It is significant that the ruling was unanimous," said Martin Jelsma, coordinator of the Drugs and Democracy program at the Transnational Institute, which has worked closely with Latin American activists and politicians on drug reform issues. "It confirms the paradigm shift visible throughout the continent, which recognizes that drug use should be treated as a public health matter instead of, as in the past, when all involved, including users, were seen as criminals."

UN's Global Anti-Drug Bureaucracy Meets Organized Resistance

demonstration at the UN drug meeting, ViennaIt wasn't like this a decade ago, the last time the UN General Assembly Special Session on drugs took place. This year, for the first time, the UN's global anti-drug bureaucracy ran into organized resistance when its Committee on Narcotic Drugs (CND) met in March in Vienna. Not only did a large contingent of drug reform, human rights, and public health NGOs show up to challenge global prohibitionist orthodoxy, they were joined by a number of European and Latin American countries showing serious signs of defecting from the half-century old prohibitionist consensus.

In the end, the CND issued a political statement and plan of action that largely reaffirmed existing prohibitionist policies and ignored harm reduction, but with some victories for reformers both substantive and symbolic. For one, the US delegation finally removed its objection to needle exchanges.

But if the global anti-drug bureaucracies ignored their critics in their report, they were impossible to ignore in Vienna. Demonstrations took place outside the meeting hall, and Bolivian President Evo Morales brandished then chewed coca leaves as he demanded that his country's sacred plant be removed from the list of proscribed substances.

Even UN Office on Drugs and Crime head Antonio Maria Costa was forced to publicly acknowledge the failures and unintended consequences of prohibition. In his address opening the session, Costa bravely argued that "drugs are not harmful because they are controlled; they are controlled because they are harmful," but was forced to concede that prohibition had created a dire situation in some places. "When mafias can buy elections, candidates, political parties, in a word, power, the consequences can only be highly destabilizing" he said. "While ghettoes burn, West Africa is under attack, drug cartels threaten Central America and drug money penetrates bankrupt financial institutions."

All the more reason to challenge prohibitionism and its consequences. After this year, the global anti-drug bureaucracy knows that not only is its long-held consensus under assault, it is beginning to crack.

Czech Republic Decriminalizes Drug Possession, Finally Sets Quantity Limits

Czech marijuana reform demonstration, 2005 (courtesy Michal Vlk)Following in Portugal's footsteps, authorities in the Czech Republic voted late last year to decriminalize the possession of "smaller than large amounts" of drugs. But that term was vague, leaving its interpretation up to police and prosecutors and resulting in situations where people like personal marijuana growers were being charged as traffickers.

This month, Czech authorities formalized "smaller than large amounts." The new guidelines mean Czechs will suffer neither arrest nor prosecution for up to 15 grams or five marijuana plants, five grams of hashish, 40 magic mushroom segments, five peyote plants, five LSD tablets, four ecstasy tablets, two grams of amphetamine or methamphetamine, 1.5 grams of heroin, five coca plants, or one gram of cocaine.

The new quantity rules go into effect on January 1.

Science vs. Politics in Great Britain

The British Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) is an official body charged with providing evidence-based analysis of drug policy issues for the British Home Office. Tensions between the ACMD and the Labor government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown had been on the rise since it rejected the ACMD's recommendation that marijuana, which had been down-scheduled from a Class B to a Class C (least harmful) drug under Brown's predecessor, Tony Blair, remain at Class C. The government instead up-scheduled it back to Class B.

David NuttThe ACMD was slighted again in February, when it recommended that ecstasy be down-scheduled from Class A (most harmful) to Class B, only to have the Home Office reject that recommendation the same day. ACMD head Professor David Nutt also drew heated criticism from the Home Office -- as well as Britain's horsey set -- for heretically suggesting that ecstasy was safer than horse-riding. Nutt was forced to apologize for his remarks.

After a relatively quiet summer, the clash between drug science and drug politics exploded anew when Home Secretary Alan Johnson fired Nutt in late October for again criticizing the government's refusal to follow the science-based recommendations of the panel. That firing caused a huge fire storm of protest, including the resignations of at least six ACMD members, and was splashed across newspaper front pages for weeks.

Now, the credibility of the Labor government and its adherence to evidence-based policy-making have been called into serious doubt, as it becomes clear that Home Office drug scheduling decisions are driven by a political calculus, not a scientific one. And if the Home Office thought firing Nutt was going to make him go away, it was sadly mistaken. Nutt is maintaining a high public profile and is vowing to set up his own independent drug panel.

Whither Holland's Cannabis Coffee Shops?

downstairs of a Maastricht coffee shop (courtesy Wikimedia)This year has seen the long-running battle over the Netherland's famous cannabis coffee shops continue to escalate. Under the Dutch policy of "gedogen," or pragmatic tolerance, marijuana remains technically illegal in Holland, but the sale and possession of small amounts is tolerated and even regulated.

But that tolerant policy is not a favorite of the conservative coalition national government, and it has created a number of problems. "Drug tourism," as the influx of border town marijuana buyers from more repressive neighboring countries is known, has led to everything from traffic jams to public urination to lurking hard-drug peddlers.

And Holland's halfway approach to marijuana policy -- it does not allow for the regulated provision of marijuana to the coffee houses -- has led to the "backdoor problem," in which coffee shop proprietors must rely on criminal-by-definition suppliers to provide them with their product. That provides additional ammunition for the anti-coffee shop crowd.

The conservative coalition government, however, is split on how best to rein in the coffee shops and has promised not to take action at the national level until after the 2010 elections. That has left the field to local authorities, and they have responded.

In March, the "drug tourism" problem resulted in the announcement by the mayors of Roosendaal and Bergen op Zoom that they would close all the coffee shops in their towns by September. In May, the mayors of the eight towns in the border province of Limburg announced coffee shops would be "members only." In August, the Dutch government announced it was providing more than $200,000 for a pilot "members only" program in the border town of Maastricht. Court challenges from coffee shop owners have so far failed to stop any of this.

Meanwhile, in Amsterdam, an urban renewal plan unveiled in May called for a reduction in coffee shops there from 226 to 192, with a 50% reduction in the number of coffee shops in the central Red Light District. But just last week, Amsterdam Mayor Job Cohen fought back, saying that national coffee house policy should not be based solely on border "drug tourism" concerns, that he opposed the "members only" option, and that he rejected a ban on coffee houses within 250 yards of schools.

Holland's marijuana coffee shops have been around for more than 30 years now, but as was made clear this year, they will continue to be a battle front between the forces of Dutch conservatism and Dutch liberal pragmatism.

Heroin Maintenance Continues to Spread

maintenance programs can make heroin addiction cleaner and saferThis year saw a continuation of the slow spread of heroin maintenance programs for severely addicted users unamenable to other forms of drug treatment. At the beginning of the year, permanent or pilot heroin prescription programs were in place in Britain, the Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland.

Denmark joined the club in February and Germany came aboard in June. These moves come after Switzerland voted in a popular referendum last year to move from a pilot to a permanent heroin maintenance program, based on favorable results from the pilot program.

Canada is about to join the club, too. After the success of the three-year North American Opiate Maintenance Initiative (NAOMI) in Vancouver, Canadian researchers are moving forward with SALOME (the Study to Assess Long-term Opiate Maintenance), a pilot heroin maintenance program set for Vancouver and Montreal. But as of late last month, Montreal's participation was a question mark after Quebec authorities said they would not pay their share of program costs.

Despite lingering political distaste for heroin by prescription, the body of evidence demonstrating its efficacy -- in terms of users' quality of life, public health, and public safety -- continues to grow. There has even been some discussion of bringing a heroin maintenance pilot program to the US. Dr. Peter Reuter, the renowned University of Maryland drug policy expert, authored a study this summer about the possibility of a pilot program in Baltimore.

There is an old saw about not being able to turn an ocean liner on a dime. That's certainly true when it comes to changing drug policies for the better at the national or international level. But each year, it seems that more progress is being made. Let's see what 2010 brings.

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Texas cuts costs amid prison reform

2009-12-15T12:55:00.000-08:00

Texas cuts costs amid prison reform
New treatment programs credited as prison population slows
By CINDY HORSWELL
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Dec. 15, 2009, 9:24AM
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Print Share Del.icio.usDiggTwitterYahoo! BuzzFacebookStumbleUponTexas has a long-standing reputation, branded in the culture of the Old West, as a state that is tough on crime.

Since the 1990s, the Lone Star state has been locking up criminals at an incredible rate. But housing all those Texas prisoners — which state authorities say once grew to equal the size of the entire federal prison system — was costly.

Now, Texas has a new swagger that comes from a recently released U.S. Justice Department report showing the growth of the state's prison population is slowing to the extent that three new prisons slated for construction have been scrapped. At the same time, the state is becoming the unlikely new role model for a prison reform movement spreading across the country.

State Rep. Jerry Madden, R-Plano, and state Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, worked across partisan lines to implement the “reinvestment movement” in 2007, which they say is just starting to show results. The program invests state funds in drug, alcohol and mental health programs to treat offenders rather than just prisons to house them.

“Texas is showing the rest of the country that if you look at research you can find ways to cut costs and crime at the same time,” said Adam Gelb, director of the Pew Center's public safety performance project, a nonprofit think tank. “Just this week the work that Texas has done was featured prominently at the national conference on state legislatures in San Diego. States are learning that they just can't build their way out of crime.”

Tony Fabelo, research director for the Justice Center for the Council of State Governments, helped Texas develop its program and is pleased to see the prison population stabilizing.

According to the Justice Department's national report on prisons released this week, the number of admissions to Texas prisons increased by 0.4 percent in 2008, which is much lower than the average increase of 3 percent that had occurred since 2000. The Texas Department of Corrections also reports that its cellblocks are being vacated so quickly that the prison population has stopped growing altogether and instead declined by 1,050 inmates from 2008 through this monthto 155,076.

Reversing a trend
Bill Sabol, a U.S. Justice Department statistician who wrote the report, said Texas was also one of two states showing the biggest drop in imprisonment rates. The number of people imprisoned per 100,000 population decreased by 30, going from 669 to 639 per 100,000.

Yet the number of people incarcerated in Texas still far exceeds the national average of 504 per 100,000 population, he added.

If these reforms keep progressing according to plan, Madden said, “We will not need to build another prison for five years.”

That reverses the trend that began in the 1980s. Between 1985 and 2005, the state prison population grew 300 percent and Texas spent $2.3 billion adding 108,000 beds.

But by 2005, Texas had reached a turning point: Either spend half a billion dollars to house 17,000 new prisoners or spend less than half that amount to reduce the prison population through treatment programs.

The result was 10,000 beds were set aside for substance abuse and mental programs for probationers, parolees and prisoners,

“The research showed that our prisons were being overwhelmed by those who could receive alternative treatment to incarceration and therefore preserve our resources for the dangerous violent offender,” Madden said.

He noted drastic cuts had been made to community-based treatment facilities by the 2003 Legislature. By 2006 more than 2,000 adults were on waiting lists.

Other changes were also made, such as setting a maximum limit for parole caseloads so that parolees had adequate supervision and investing in a program that partners nurses with low-income mothers to teach childcare skills.

Parole violations drop
What worried some critics was that crime might have a resurgence under these “feel-good” measures, said Marsha McLane, Madden's policy director. “But a lot of times offenders would much rather select a stint in jail rather than going through treatment and follow-up,” she said. “The key is getting the right person in treatment, not the violent offenders.”

The results have been promising. The state reports a dramatic 25 percent drop in parole violators being returned to prison while the number of those being paroled has increased by 3 percent.

“We've made a marked improvement in the re-entry of people released from prison,” Madden said.

He added that county jails are now no longer being used to house prisoners for the state as used to occur.

At the same time, communities across the state have been safer: The Texas Department of Public Safety reported major crime decreased by 3 percent in 2008.

Madden, who overcame stiff competition in his last re-election bid by an opponent who criticized him for being soft on crime, hopes to see funding for these treatment programs continue.

“We're a proud people who don't like change,” Madden said. “But now being tough and smart on crime is a better utilization of the taxpayer dollar.”

cindy.horswell@chron.com

Prosecution: No More Crack Pipe Felonies for Houston

2009-12-13T11:57:00.000-08:00

from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #612, 12/11/09

Beginning January 1, prosecutors in Harris County, Texas, will no longer file felony drug charges against people found with less than one one-hundredth of a gram of illegal drugs. Currently in Houston, people caught with trace amounts of drug or holding crack pipes with drug traces are routinely charged with felonies.

But under a new policy promulgated by Harris County District Attorney Pat Lykos, police are instructed to instead issue Class C misdemeanor tickets to people caught in possession of crack pipes or trace amounts of drugs. That means arrestees will face only a $500 fine, not the up to two years in state jail mandated by the felony charge.

The cops are not happy. "It ties the hands of the officers who are making crack pipe cases against burglars and thieves," said Gary Blankinship, president of the Houston Police Officers' Union. "A crack pipe is not used for anything but smoking crack by a crack head. Crack heads, by and large, are also thieves and burglars. They're out there committing crimes," he told the Houston Chronicle.

But Lykos told the Chronicle there were good reasons to change the policy. Less than one-hundredth of a gram of a drug is not enough for more than one drug test, and defense attorneys often want to run their own tests, she said.

The policy change also "gives us more of an ability to focus on the violent offenses and the complex offenses," she added. "When you have finite resources, you have to make decisions, and this decision is a plus all around."

Last year, Harris County prosecutors filed 46,000 felony cases, with 13,713, or nearly 30%, for possession of less than a gram of controlled substances. It is difficult to say how many of those would not have been charged as felonies under the new policy because most were charged only as possession of less than a gram.

While police are grumbling, defense attorneys are beaming. "It's a smart move and it's an efficient move and it lets us get down to the business of handling criminal cases of a more serious magnitude," Nicole Deborde, president-elect of the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association, told the Chronicle.

Right and Left Join Forces on Criminal Justice from New York Times

2009-11-24T12:08:00.000-08:00

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November 24, 2009
Right and Left Join Forces on Criminal Justice
By ADAM LIPTAK
WASHINGTON — In the next several months, the Supreme Court will decide at least a half-dozen cases about the rights of people accused of crimes involving drugs, sex and corruption. Civil liberties groups and associations of defense lawyers have lined up on the side of the accused.
But so have conservative, libertarian and business groups. Their briefs and public statements are signs of an emerging consensus on the right that the criminal justice system is an aspect of big government that must be contained.
The development represents a sharp break with tough-on-crime policies associated with the Republican Party since the Nixon administration.
“It’s a remarkable phenomenon,” said Norman L. Reimer, executive director of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. “The left and the right have bent to the point where they are now in agreement on many issues. In the area of criminal justice, the whole idea of less government, less intrusion, less regulation has taken hold.”
Edwin Meese III, who was known as a fervent supporter of law and order as attorney general in the Reagan administration, now spends much of his time criticizing what he calls the astounding number and vagueness of federal criminal laws.
Mr. Meese once referred to the American Civil Liberties Union as part of the “criminals’ lobby.” These days, he said, “in terms of working with the A.C.L.U., if they want to join us, we’re happy to have them.”
Dick Thornburgh, who succeeded Mr. Meese as attorney general under President Ronald Reagan and stayed on under President George Bush, echoed that sentiment in Congressional testimony in July.
“The problem of overcriminalization is truly one of those issues upon which a wide variety of constituencies can agree,” Mr. Thornburgh said. “Witness the broad and strong support from such varied groups as the Heritage Foundation, the Washington Legal Foundation, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the A.B.A., the Cato Institute, the Federalist Society and the A.C.L.U.”
In an interview at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research group where he is a fellow, Mr. Meese said the “liberal ideas of extending the power of the state” were to blame for an out-of-control criminal justice system. “Our tradition has always been,” he said, “to construe criminal laws narrowly to protect people from the power of the state.”
There are, the foundation says, more than 4,400 criminal offenses in the federal code, many of them lacking a requirement that prosecutors prove traditional kinds of criminal intent.
“It’s a violation of federal law to give a false weather report,” Mr. Meese said. “People get put in jail for importing lobsters.”
Such so-called overcriminalization is at the heart of the conservative critique of crime policy. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce made the point in a recent friend-of-the-court brief about a federal law often used to prosecute corporate executives and politicians. The law, which makes it a crime for officials to defraud their employers of “honest services,” is, the brief said, both “unintelligible” and “used to target a staggeringly broad swath of behavior.”
The Supreme Court will hear three cases concerning the honest-services law this term, indicating an exceptional interest in the topic.
Harvey A. Silverglate, a left-wing civil liberties lawyer in Boston, says he has been surprised and delighted by the reception that his new book, “Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent,” has gotten in conservative circles. (A Heritage Foundation official offered this reporter a copy.)
The book argues that federal criminal law is so comprehensive and vague that all Americans violate it every day, meaning prosecutors can indict anyone at all.
“Libertarians and the civil liberties left have always had some common ground on these issues,” said Radley Balko, a senior editor at Reason, a libertarian magazine. “The more vocal presence of conservatives on overcriminalization issues is really what’s new.”
Several strands of conservatism have merged in objecting to aspects of the criminal justice system. Some conservatives are suspicious of all government power, while others insist that the federal government has been intruding into matters the Constitution reserves to the states.
In January, for instance, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in United States v. Comstock, about whether Congress has the constitutional power to authorize the continued confinement of people convicted of sex crimes after they have completed their criminal sentences.
Then there are conservatives who worry about government seizure of private property said to have been used to facilitate crimes, an issue raised in Alvarez v. Smith, which was argued in October.
“A joint on a yacht, and the whole thing is forfeited,” said Paul Cassell, a law professor at the University of Utah and a former federal judge appointed by President George W. Bush.
Some religious groups object to prison policies that appear to ignore the possibility of rehabilitation and redemption, and fiscal conservatives are concerned about the cost of maintaining the world’s largest prison population.
“Conservatives now recognize the economic consequences of a criminal justice leviathan,” said Erik Luna, a law professor at Washington and Lee University.
The roots of the conservative re-examination of crime policy might also be found in the jurisprudence of Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. The two justices, joined by liberal colleagues, have said the original meaning of the Constitution required them to rule against the government in, among other areas, the rights of criminal defendants to confront witnesses.
“Scalia and Thomas are vanguards of an understanding by the modern right that its distrust of government extends all the way to the criminal justice system,” said Douglas A. Berman, a law professor at Ohio State University.
The court will hear another confrontation clause case, Briscoe v. Virginia, in January. It is a sequel to a decision in June that prosecutors may not use crime lab reports without live testimony from the analysts who prepared them.
The conservative re-evaluation of crime policy is not universal, of course. Two notable exceptions to the trend, said Timothy Lynch, director of the Cato Institute’s criminal justice project, are Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.
“Roberts and Alito are coming down consistently on the side of the government in these criminal justice cases,” Mr. Lynch said.
Some scholars are skeptical about conservatives’ timing and motives, noting that their voices are rising during a Democratic administration and amid demands for accountability for the economic crisis.
“The Justice Department now acts as a kind of counterweight to corporate power,” said Frank O. Bowman, a law professor at the University of Missouri. “On the other side is an alliance between two strands of conservative thinking, the libertarian point of view and the corporate wing of the Republican Party.”
Mr. Meese acknowledged that the current climate was not the ideal one for his point of view. “We picked by accident a time,” he said, “when it was not a very popular topic in light of corporate frauds.”
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Steps being taken to help Harris County mental health inmates

2009-11-22T17:56:00.000-08:00

Steps being taken to help Harris County mental health inmates
by Alex Sanz
Posted on November 22, 2009 at 6:55 PM
Updated today at 6:55 PM

HOUSTON -- The head of the Harris County Judicial Mental Health Task Force is expected to present sweeping recommendations on how to help mental health inmates at the Harris County Jail in a report to be presented to county commissioners in December.
Among the recommendations crafted by the prominent Houston attorney George Parnham is a reintegration center where inmates with mental health problems can be transitioned back into society.
Harris County, he said, needed to provide inmates with case managers to help them secure employment, housing and social services. The process would begin at the Harris County Jail and eventually move to a stand-alone facility.
"The Harris County Jail is the largest mental health facility probably in the state of Texas and ranks, I'm sure, in the top ten in the United States," he said. "It is, without question, a warehouse whereby we just stack beds and put people that are mentally ill in them. It's something that touches everybody. Either directly or indirectly. And people have to become aware of it."
There are as many as 10,000 inmates, on any given day, at the Harris County Jail. About 20 percent have a history of mental problems. Statistics show the vast majority of them will reoffend and end up back in jail.
"We're [finally] talking about it," said Parnham, who spent much of the past year working with the mental health task force at the request of Sheriff Adrian Garcia. "There are systems in place in the county jail that answer some of these issues but we're not going to let go of this."
Final cost estimates had not been finalized but Parnham said the proposed reintegration center would ease jail overcrowding and become a model for other law enforcement agencies in Texas.

Judicial Executions in Drug War from Drug war Chronicle

2009-11-20T10:10:00.000-08:00

Drug War Chronicle - world’s leading drug policy newsletter
Latin America: Former Mexican Foreigner Minister Accuses Army of Extra-Judicial Executions in Drug War
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from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #609, 11/20/09
Jorge Castañeda, Mexico's foreign minister under President Vicente Fox, said Saturday that the Mexican military is engaging in the extrajudicial execution of members of drug trafficking organizations. The frank and surprising comments came as Castañeda spoke on a panel at the 2009 International Drug Policy Reform Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Jorge Castañeda"We are having more and more 'false positives,'" Castañeda said, referring to a term used in Colombia to describe people executed by the military and then described as guerrillas killed in combat. "Here in Mexico, apparent gang war killings are in fact being carried out by the military. Every time the cartels catch the police and military infiltrators and slice them up, the army says 'We're taking out ten of yours.' The statistics say that 90% of the killings are within the cartels, but the army is engaging in these killings."
President Felipe Calderon deployed the military against the so-called cartels in December 2006. Since then, more than 15,000 people have been killed in prohibition-related violence in Mexico, including more than 6,000 so far this year. Hundreds of police and soldiers are among the dead.
In response to a question asking for documentation of his assertions, Castañeda said: "The only known incident was a town in Chihuahua where the bodies of 29 sicarios (assassins) were found, with witnesses who said this was after they were detained. The press has not wanted to investigate this."
But the military can't keep its mouth shut, Castañeda said. "They go to bars and restaurants and get drunk and talk and they are going around saying how many people they have knocked off," he reported. "The 12 military officers killed by the cartels in Michoacan -- that's why the army went out and killed a bunch of other people."
Castañeda's comments come as the US State Department is preparing the process of certifying Mexican compliance with human rights conditions as part of the $1.4 billion Plan Merida anti-drug assistance package. The bill authorizing the aid requires that portions of it be withheld if the State Department determines Mexico is not in compliance.
Castañeda also criticized President Obama for turning a blind eye to human rights violations by the Mexican military. "Obama regrettably said that the human rights violations he was most concerned with was with the victims of the drug war," the former diplomat noted.

Contact: StoptheDrugWar.org: the Drug Reform Coordination Network, P.O. Box 18402, Washington, DC 20036, (202) 293-8340 (voice), (202) 293-8344 (fax), e-mail drcnet@drcnet.org. Thank you.Articles of a purely educational nature in Drug War Chronicle appear courtesy of the DRCNet Foundation, unless otherwise noted.

Grassley Amendment Censors Mention of Legalization or Decriminalization from Drug War Chronicle

2009-11-13T15:12:00.000-08:00

from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #607, 11/6/09
Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA), an inveterate drug warrior, doesn't want to hear the L-word in Washington. This week, the corn-belt conservative offered an amendment to Senator Jim Webb's (D-VA) pending bill, the National Criminal Justice Commission Act, that would explicitly forbid any recommendations that even mention drug legalization or decriminalization.
the face of ignorance and prejudice -- US Sen. Charles GrassleyWebb, a congressional champion of criminal justice and drug law reform, introduced the bill in a bid to fix what he considers a failing, costly, and inhumane criminal justice system, including the war on drugs. Webb's bill contemplates the creation of "a commission to look at every aspect of our criminal justice system with an eye toward reshaping the process from top to bottom." That would presumably include taking a close look at the impact of drug laws.
Grassley's amendment says its purpose is "to restrict the authority of the Commission to examine policies that favor decriminalization of violations of the Controlled Substances Act or the legalization of any controlled substances." The amendment in its entirety reads as follows:
The Commission shall have no authority to make findings related to current Federal, State, and local criminal justice policies and practices or reform recommendations that involve, support, or otherwise discuss the decriminalization of any offense under the Controlled Substances Act or the legalization of any controlled substance listed under the Controlled Substances Act.
Grassley's politically bowdlerizing ploy quickly drew the ire of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP). "Senator Grassley's censorship amendment would block what Senator Webb is trying to achieve with this bill," said Jack Cole, a retired undercover narcotics detective who now heads the LEAP. "All along, Senator Webb has said that in the effort to fix our broken criminal justice system 'nothing should be off the table.' That should include the obvious solution of ending the 'drug war' as a way to solve the unintended problems caused by that failed policy."
As Grassley's amendment started to draw critical scrutiny, he attempted to defend himself. In a conference call with media this week, Grassley responded to a question about the amendment: "Well, my intent on that amendment isn't any different than any other amendments that are coming up. The Congress is setting up a commission to study certain things. And the commission is a -- is an arm of Congress, because Congress doesn't have time to review some of these laws. And -- and -- and the point is, for them to do what we tell them to do. And one of the things that I was anticipating telling them not to do is to -- to recommend or study the legalization of drugs."
When asked if his amendment would include limiting the discussion of medical marijuana, Grassley responded: "Yes, the extent to which it would be decriminalization, the answer is yes."
Grassley added that he had floated several amendments and that he would not necessarily introduce all of them. As of Thursday, he had not yet formally introduced his censorship amendment.

Mexican Drug War kills 15,000 since December 2006 from Drug War Chronicle

2009-11-13T15:07:00.000-08:00

Drug War Chronicle - world’s leading drug policy newsletter
Latin America: Mexico Drug War Update
from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #607, 11/6/09
by Bernd Debussman Jr.
Mexican drug trafficking organizations make billions each year trafficking illegal drugs into the United States, profiting enormously from the prohibitionist drug policies of the US government. Since Mexican president Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006 and called the armed forces into the fight against the so-called cartels, prohibition-related violence has killed over 12,000 people, with a death toll of over 5,800 so far in 2009. The increasing militarization of the drug war and the arrest of several high-profile drug traffickers have failed to stem the flow of drugs -- or the violence -- whatsoever. The Merida initiative, which provides $1.4 billion over three years for the US to assist the Mexican government with training, equipment and intelligence, has so far failed to make a difference. Here are a few of the latest developments in Mexico's drug war:
Ciuded Juárez (courtesy Daniel Schwen, Wikimedia)Thursday, October 29
In Guerrero, a body was found hanging from a highway overpass. The unidentified man had been shot in the head, and left with two notes with messages from "La Familia." In Ciudad Juárez, a high-ranking police intelligence official was killed when he was attacked by heavily armed gunmen as he ate in a restaurant. One policeman was killed, and the official and two bodyguards were wounded. A sign was later found taking responsibility for the attack, which was apparently ordered by "El Chapo" Guzman, the head of the Sinaloa Federation. Additionally, nine other murders were reported in Ciudad Juárez, four in Sinaloa, one in Tijuana, and four bodies found in the trunk bed of a truck in Michoacán.
Saturday, October 31
In Sonora, a well known union leader was killed along with 14 others, including four children. Margarita Montes Parra, 56, was ambushed by gunmen armed with AK-47's. It is unclear whether his death was ordered by drug traffickers or as a result of his union work. One of his sons, Adrian, was killed two years ago in what is thought to be a drug-related murder. Parra made headlines by publicly accusing the governor of Sonora of protecting his son's killers. He also accused the Veracruz state government of being complicit in drug trafficking.
Monday, November 2
Officials identified four bodies that had been found executed in an SUV in Mexico City. Three of the men had the word "kidnappers" handwritten on their body with marker, and a sign was found in the vehicle which read "for kidnapping, the boss of bosses". This is the nickname of Beltran-Levy cartel boss Arturo Beltran-Levy. There has been an increase of violence against kidnappers and petty criminals in recent months on the part of vigilantes working with drug traffickers and elements of the police. Additionally, in Tijuana, 13 suspected cartel gunmen were captured after a firefight that wounded one soldier and one gunman.
Tuesday, November 3
In the town of San Pedro Garza Garcia, near Monterrey, the mayor announced the death of a drug trafficker hours before the body was actually found. After being sworn in, Mayor Mauricio Fernandez was quoted as saying that "Black Saldana, who is apparently the one asking for my head, was found dead today in Mexico City." His announcement came 3 ½ hours before the blindfolded corpse of "Black Saldana" (otherwise identified only by his first name, Hector) was found. While at first he evaded questions about his prior knowledge of the incident, Fernandez later claimed that he had been tipped off by US officials that he was going to be targeted, and then found out about Black Saldana's death through unspecified means.
In Durango, a journalist who specialized in police matters was found dead after being kidnapped by armed men on his way to work. Alongside the body was found a note, whose contents were not revealed to the public. Vladimir Antenna Garcia, who wrote for El Tempo de Durango, is the third journalist killed in Durango this year, and the eighth journalist killed in Mexico.
In Chihuahua, 18 people were killed in a 48 hour period. Nine of these murders occurred in Ciudad Juárez. Among them was a municipal police officer who was gunned down in a hair salon where he was accompanying his wife. Additionally, in the state of Veracruz, a high-ranking member of the Zetas organization, nicknamed "El Gonzo" or "Z-20" was killed after being shot by Mexican naval personnel. Four people were arrested during the operation.
Wednesday, November 4
In the city of Chihuahua, police and soldiers shot dead a federal policeman who was driving one of three cars that failed to stop for them. The police and troops were on a joint patrol when they attempted to stop the suspicious vehicles. The three vehicles ignored orders to stop, sparking off a gun battle that left the federal agent and left another unidentified man wounded.
In Ciudad Juárez, six people were gunned down in a bar. Among them was off-duty US Air Force Staff Sgt. David Booher, who was based at Holloman Air Force base outside Alamogordo, New Mexico. The motive for the attack was unclear, but it bore all the hallmarks of a drug-related murder in Ciudad Juárez. The incident brings the number of deaths in Ciudad Juárez to 30 over the last four days. Additionally, in Garcia, Nuevo Leon, a recently appointed police chief was killed along with four of his bodyguards when they were ambushed by an unknown known of heavily armed gunmen.
Body count for the week: 111Body count for the year: 6,286Body count since December 2006: 15,000+
Read the last Mexico Drug War Update here.

Veterans Incarcerated and Ignored from Drug War Chronicle

2009-11-13T15:03:00.000-08:00

Veterans Incarcerated and Ignored When They Could Be Getting Help, Report Finds
from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #607, 11/6/09
Roughly 200,000 US veterans are in prison or jail, many of them there because of substance abuse or mental health issues, according to a new report released Wednesday. The report outlines the problem and suggests reforms that could ease the plight of American soldiers returning from the war zone and trying to make the transition back to civilian society.
VA Medical Center, Columbia, MOAccording to the report, 140,000 vets were in prison in 2004, with tens of thousands more serving time in jails. Nearly half (46%) of vets doing time in federal prison were incarcerated for drug offenses, while 15% of those in state prison were, including 5.6% doing time for simple possession. Three out five (61%) of incarcerated vets met the criteria for substance dependence or abuse.
The report, Healing a Broken System: Veterans Battling Addiction and Incarceration, comes at a critical time. With hundreds of thousands of soldiers currently deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US faces a mounting challenge in caring for returning vets.
Many are returning home damaged by their experiences. According to the report, 30% of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans report symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), traumatic brain injury, depression, mental illness, or other cognitive disability. These medical conditions, if left untreated, can contribute to problematic drug use, addiction, and fatal overdoses, as well as homelessness, suicide, and criminality, particular violations of the drug laws.
While the study mentions 200,000 vets behind bars, the number is most likely much higher. That's because owing to problems in data collection -- a problem in itself -- the last year for which hard numbers on vets behind bars is available was 2004. Since then, more than a million more vets have returned from their deployments and mustered out.
The report had its genesis about a year and a half ago, when the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) teamed up with a classroom of law students at Northeastern University in Boston to investigate the obstacles veterans were facing in obtaining adequate access to mental health and substance abuse services. In addition to a series of surprising and dramatic findings, the report also includes a list of specific recommendations about how to improve services for vets suffering mental health and substance abuse issues.
"We learned that far too many returning vets are falling victim to the war on drugs because of barriers to effective treatment," said DPA's Dan Abrahamson at a Wednesday press conference. "There are nearly a quarter million vets behind bars right now for crimes motivated in part by mental health or drug addiction problems. One third of returning vets report symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Also, vets suffer from traumatic brain injury, depression, and mental illness at higher rates than normal. All of those are contributory factors to substance abuse and drug addiction, as well as overdose, homelessness, suicide, and being arrested for a non-violent drug offense."
In the battle theater, soldiers are supposed to function despite high stress, and the military is more than willing to prescribe them whatever it takes to keep them fighting. But it's a different story when the vets come home.
"Service-related drug dependency is being talked about quite a bit in the veterans community, but is not well understood outside the military," said Tom Tarantino, an Iraq war veteran and now legislative associate for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. "The ease of obtaining prescriptions in theater is staggering," he explained. "I know crack dealers who are more discriminating about issuing drugs than some of the medics I saw in Iraq. It's alarming how many people were just given anti-depressants instead of asking whether they were really fit for duty," said the veterans' lobbyist.
"Sometimes, it's just a matter of expediency and life in a combat zone, but then you have vets coming back from an environment where meds are very loosely prescribed and they are confronted with a medical system much more stringent about issuing drugs," Tarantino explained. "And that can cause problems."
"Let's be smarter than the problem," said veterans' advocate Guy Gambill. "We can't afford not to be. We arrest too many people and incarcerate them for too long. Then the mark of a criminal record keeps them from getting jobs, housing, and other services, and then the recidivism rate goes up."
There are things that can be done, Gambill said. States can change their incarceration policies. Localities can be more proactive.
"Chicago police and the LAPD are doing front-end interventions," Gambill noted. "In LA, trained peer specialists are doing ride-alongs with the LAPD so the officers will recognize Iraq and Afghanistan war vets. In Chicago, police are doing crisis intervention training, and the first hundred of them are all Iraq and Afghanistan vets. They'll try to grab these guys at first contact and get them into treatment instead of jail. These sorts of peer-led interventions work very well. We need to catch this on the front end, so we don't have 200,000 homeless vets on the streets like we do now."
Another stumbling block is the Department of Veterans Affairs current policy on drug treatment for vets. The VA is willing to offer treatment, but not for vets behind bars.
"We need the Department of Veterans Affairs to lift their ban on drug treatment of incarcerated vets," said Tarantino. "We're pleased that the department now has a justice coordinator at every VA hospital, but they're waiting outside the prison door, not inside, when the vets need it most. This is a regulation they can change with the stroke of a pen," he said.
Yet another problem for vets, especially those with substance abuse issues, is the lack of access to proven treatments. And because the insurance provided to soldiers by the armed forces also covers their families, lack of access to treatment affects them as well.
"Vets don't qualify for substance abuse treatment unless they are diagnosed with PTSD," said Abel Moreno, a former Army sergeant who saw service in both theaters and who now works with veterans through his organization Vets 4 Vets. "We are fighting two wars at once. It's obvious PTSD exists, and it's clear there are going to be substance abuse issues. We've created a subgenre among today's vets where there is a pain pill-popping mitigation ideal. We need quantified data so we can attack this situation head on," he said.
It's not only in failing to provide drug treatment absent a PTSD diagnosis where the DOD falls down, said Dr. Bob Newman, MD, director of the Rothschild Chemical Dependency Institute at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City. "Tricare, the Department of Defense insurance plan refuses to pay for maintenance treatment of addiction with methadone or buprenorphine," he noted. "Maintenance therapy is not a new idea. It's endorsed by agencies such as NIDA, SAMHSA, the Institute of Medicine, and the World Health Organization. The US government supports this, yet DOD has an insurance plan that excludes maintenance treatment without explanation. That's outrageous," he said.
Tricare insures not only military personnel, but also their families. Tricare's refusal to pay for maintenance therapy nearly cost Teresa Bridges her daughter. Teresa's daughter, Amanda, married a soldier, Sgt. Shawn Dressler. Dressler was killed in combat shortly after the couple were wed, and Amanda retreated into a haze of Lortab and Tramitol. Tricare paid for her treatment, but after a year, her doctor noted on her records that she was being subscribed maintenance doses of Suboxone.
"Suddenly, Tricare dropped her like a hot potato," Bridges said. "Tricare believes taking Suboxone is just substituting one addictive drug for another -- at least that's what they told me. Amanda has done well on Suboxone, and if she stops taking it, she will eventually relapse. Fortunately, she is now in a temporary assistance program, but that will end after a year."
There are potential reforms that could ease the plight of returning vets, the report said. Among them are:
Changes in state and federal statutes to focus on treatment instead of incarceration for veterans who commit nonviolent drug-related offenses.
Adoption by government agencies of overdose prevention programs and policies targeting veterans who misuse substances or take prescription medications.
Significantly expanded access for veterans to medication-assisted therapies such as methadone and buprenorphine to treat opioid dependence.
"The care and feeding and support of vets is a national concern and responsibility," said Gen. Stephen Xenakis, MD, Special Adviser to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs for Staff, Warrior & Family Support . "We are looking to knit together all the various services and institutions so that the soldier who has served and come home and ends up having problems or maybe ended up incarcerated gets treatment from all the sources available."
One of the big problems, said Tarantino, is lack of hard information. He noted that the Justice Department numbers in the report are from 2004. "In 2004, there were over one million fewer vets than there are today," he said. "We don't know how many vets are behind bars right now. We have no method for tracking vets unless they interact with some social services. We need to have DOD and DOJ compare lists. We need data," he said.
Lack of coordination among agencies dealing with vets is part of the problem, said Xenakis. "We need to better configure what we're doing," he said. "Records are not shared. The Department of Justice doesn't have access to Department of Defense records. We need to get organized so we can track people over time."
That effort has the support of the Pentagon, Xenakis said. "Our leadership heartily endorses this," he said. "It is really important that this information that this information is out there now, and that we follow it with the best action plans we can create. As a country, we have a responsibility to support our vets."
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It's not just Iraq and Afghanistan vetsComment posted by War Widow on Fri, 11/06/2009 - 6:23pm
My husband, Jeffrey J. McCrea, came home from Vietnam in 1971 with one helluva drug problem (which he didn't have when he went over there). He immersed himself in the drug and alcohol lifestyle, because that was the only thing that numbed the pain. He woke up IN VIETNAM, EVERY NIGHT. In 1989, he was finally persuaded to get help. From the VA? Not on your life. He went through a former Marine combat vet's treatment center. The VA was more than willing to prescribe an endless list of medications, including methadone pills for his chronic pain following 32 surgeries on his right leg alone, not to mention at least 10 operations on other parts of his body. He was given antipsychotic drugs, antidepressants, muscle relaxants, pain medications...but nobody actually helped him process the things he'd seen over there that haunted him permanently, endlessly. He then developed epilepsy. The VA prescribed Dilantin but never checked his blood levels. On June 17, 1992, Jeff decided he couldn't face one more day in his own personal living hell; he put his .41 magnum to his head and pulled the trigger. The VA might just as well have bought him the ammo and handed him the gun. As far as I'm concerned, he died in Vietnam; it just took his body 21 years to catch up. Nobody back then acknowledged PTSD. Although it is now recognized, from what I've seen, they're not really doing a damn thing to help these vets. You'd think that with several decades of experience, somebody, somewhere would have figured out that PTSD is a lifelong sentence; these poor vets do whatever they can to cope with things in their heads that the rest of us will NEVER understand. Locking them up is NOT a solution.
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helpComment posted by sunny ranck on Sat, 11/07/2009 - 10:04am
God help us all
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VeteransforMedicalMarijuana.org V.M.M.A.Comment posted by disgruntled veteran for peace on Sat, 11/07/2009 - 4:45pm
Real help for veterans and loved ones from people who care and understand what you are going through.For goodness sake give Veterans for Medical Marijuana access a chance to really help . Strong support along with cannabis natural health is effective for pain,p.t.s.d.,cancer,you name it. Special thanks and great appreciation to all who serve and to all supporting family and friends as well. Love and peace to all.
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Israelis Have It RightComment posted by 11BravoRTOVN on Sat, 11/07/2009 - 7:00pm
While the Univ. of Haifa just came out with their "Cannabis for PTSD" study, the Israeli Army has been giving cannabis to their PTSD soldiers for some time now. Reading their stories led me to give it a try and WOW. Now, I don't "smoke." I vaporize and take only one hit during a session. Without getting high, I no longer have those "sticky," anger building thoughts. They're turned "slippery" and vanish. When my wife sees me getting edgy, she simply says, "Go to the bathroom." That's my cue that she sees it surfacing again and for me to go take a hit to calm down. And as fast as you can walk up stairs and back down stairs, the PTSD episode has passed.
We know that the VA will NEVER allow us to have medical marijuana as long as the US prescribes to the age old draconian drug laws we now have. That's why it behoves you to join the reform movement in your state as changing the states is how we change the feds. We were all children once. Now, do it for the VETS!

Push to Legalize Marijuana Gains Ground in California from New York Times

2009-10-28T09:52:00.000-07:00

October 28, 2009
Push to Legalize Marijuana Gains Ground in California
By JESSE McKINLEY
SAN FRANCISCO — These are heady times for advocates of legalized marijuana in California — and only in small part because of the newly relaxed approach of the federal government toward medical marijuana.
State lawmakers are holding a hearing on Wednesday on the effects of a bill that would legalize, tax and regulate the drug — in what would be the first such law in the United States. Tax officials estimate the legislation could bring the struggling state about $1.4 billion a year, and though the bill’s fate in the Legislature is uncertain, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, has indicated he would be open to a “robust debate” on the issue.
California voters are also taking up legalization. Three separate initiatives are being circulated for signatures to appear on the ballot next year, all of which would permit adults to possess marijuana for personal use and allow local governments to tax it. Even opponents of legalization suggest that an initiative is likely to qualify for a statewide vote.
“All of us in the movement have had the feeling that we’ve been running into the wind for years,” said James P. Gray, a retired judge in Orange County who has been outspoken in support of legalization. “Now we sense we are running with the wind.”
Proponents of the leading ballot initiative have collected nearly 300,000 signatures since late September, supporters say, easily on pace to qualify for the November 2010 general election. Richard Lee, a longtime marijuana activist who is behind the measure, says he has raised nearly $1 million to hire professionals to assist volunteers in gathering the signatures.
“Voters are ripping the petitions out of our hands,” Mr. Lee said.
That said, the bids to legalize marijuana are opposed by law enforcement groups across the state and, if successful, would undoubtedly set up a legal showdown with the federal government, which classifies marijuana as an illegal drug.
California was the first state to legalize marijuana for medical purposes, in 1996, but court after court — including the United States Supreme Court — has ruled that the federal government can continue to enforce its ban. Only this month, with the Department of Justice announcement that it would not prosecute users and providers of medical marijuana who obey state law, has that threat subsided.
But federal authorities have also made it clear that their tolerance stops at recreational use. In a memorandum on Oct. 19 outlining the medical marijuana guidelines, Deputy Attorney General David W. Ogden said marijuana was “a dangerous drug, and the illegal distribution and sale of marijuana is a serious crime,” adding that “no state can authorize violations of federal law.”
Still, Mr. Lee anticipates spending up to $20 million on a campaign to win passage of his ballot measure in California, raising some of it from the hundreds of already legal medical marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles, which have been recently fighting efforts by Los Angeles city officials to tighten restrictions on their operations.
“It’s a $2 billion industry,” Mr. Lee said of the medical marijuana sales.
Opponents said they are also preparing for a battle next year.
“I fully expect they will qualify,” said John Lovell, a Sacramento lobbyist for several groups of California law enforcement officials that oppose legalization.
Any vote would take place in a state where attitudes toward marijuana border on the schizophrenic. Last year, the state made some 78,500 arrests on felony and misdemeanors related to the drug, up from about 74,000 in 2007, according to the California attorney general.
Seizures of illegal marijuana plants, often grown by Mexican gangs on public lands in forests and parks, hit an all-time high in 2009, and last week, federal authorities announced a series of arrests in the state’s Central Valley, where homes have been converted into “indoor grows.”
At the same time, however, there are also pockets of California where marijuana can seem practically legal already. At least seven California cities have formally declared marijuana a low priority for law enforcement, with ballot measures or legislative actions. In Los Angeles, some 800 to 1,000 dispensaries of medical marijuana are in business, officials say, complete with consultants offering public relations services and “canna-business management.”
Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, a San Francisco Democrat and author of the legalization bill, said momentum for legalization has built in recent years, especially as the state’s finances have remained sour.
“A lot of people that were initially resistant or even ridiculed it have come aboard,” Mr. Ammiano said.
In Oakland, which passed a tax on medical cannabis sales in July, several people who signed a petition backing Mr. Lee’s initiative said they were motivated in part by the cost of imprisoning drug offenders and the toll of drug-related violence in Mexico.
“Personally I don’t see a way of getting it under control other than legalizing it and taxing it,” said Jim Quinn, 60, a production manager. “We’ve got to get it out of the hands of criminals both domestic and international.”
Mr. Lovell, the law enforcement lobbyist, however, said those arguments paled in comparison to the potential pitfalls of legalization, including people driving under the influence. He also questioned how much net revenue a tax like Mr. Ammiano is proposing would actually raise. “We get revenue from alcohol,” he said. “But there’s way more in social costs than we retain in revenues.”
The recent history of voter-approved drug reform laws in California is not encouraging for supporters of legalization. Last November, voters rejected a proposition that would have increased spending for drug treatment programs and loosened parole and prison requirements for drug offenders.
None of which seems to faze Mr. Lee, 47, a former roadie who founded Oaksterdam University, a medical marijuana trade school in Oakland, in 2007. Mr. Lee says he plans to use the Internet to raise money, as well as tapping out-of state sources for campaign money.
More than anything, however, Mr. Lee said he was banking on a basic shift in people’s attitudes toward the drug.
“For a lot of people,” he said, “it’s just another brand of beer.”
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Agassi Admits Using Crystal Meth from New York Times

2009-10-27T21:45:00.000-07:00

October 27, 2009
In Book, Agassi Admits Using Crystal Meth
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:43 p.m. ET
NEW YORK (AP) -- Andre Agassi's upcoming autobiography contains an admission that he used crystal meth in 1997 and lied to tennis authorities when he failed a drug test -- a result that was thrown out after he said he ''unwittingly'' took the substance.
According to an excerpt of the autobiography posted on The Times of London Web site Tuesday, the eight-time Grand Slam champion writes that he sent a letter to the ATP tour to explain the positive test, saying he accidentally drank from a soda spiked with meth by his assistant ''Slim.''
''Then I come to the central lie of the letter,'' Agassi writes. ''I say that recently I drank accidentally from one of Slim's spiked sodas, unwittingly ingesting his drugs. I ask for understanding and leniency and hastily sign it: Sincerely.
''I feel ashamed, of course. I promise myself that this lie is the end of it. The ATP reviewed the case -- and threw it out.''
The ATP did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Agassi retired in 2006. Excerpts from his autobiography, which comes out Nov. 9, are being published this week in the London newspaper, as well as Sports Illustrated and People magazines.
In a story posted on People magazine's Web site Tuesday, Agassi says: ''I can't speak to addiction, but a lot of people would say that if you're using anything as an escape, you have a problem.''
According to the Times of London Web site, Agassi writes in his book that ''Slim'' was the person who introduced him to crystal meth, dumping a small pile of powder on the coffee table.
''I snort some. I ease back on the couch and consider the Rubicon I've just crossed,'' Agassi writes.
''There is a moment of regret, followed by vast sadness. Then comes a tidal wave of euphoria that sweeps away every negative thought in my head. I've never felt so alive, so hopeful -- and I've never felt such energy.''
''I'm seized by a desperate desire to clean. I go tearing around my house, cleaning it from top to bottom. I dust the furniture. I scour the tub. I make the beds.''
Among the most successful -- and, without a doubt, one of the most popular -- tennis players in history, Agassi drew attention not just for his play, but also for his outfits, his hairstyles and his relationships with women, including a failed marriage to actress Brooke Shields.
Agassi's first major championship came at Wimbledon in 1992, and he won a gold medal at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. But by late 1997, he dropped to No. 141 in the rankings, and he was playing in tennis' equivalent of the minor leagues.
He resuscitated his career in 1998, making the biggest one-year jump into the top 10 in the history of the ATP rankings. The next season, he won the French Open to complete a career Grand Slam, then added a second career U.S. Open title en route to finishing 1999 at No. 1.
In a posting on People's Web site, Agassi says he ''was worried for a moment, but not for long,'' about how fans would react if they found out he used drugs.
''I wore my heart on my sleeve and my emotions were always written on my face. I was actually excited about telling the world the whole story,'' Agassi says.
A writer from SI first revealed the crystal meth reference on a Twitter posting Tuesday.
According to the Times of London excerpt, Agassi was walking through New York's LaGuardia airport when he got the call that he had failed a drug test.
''There is doom in his voice, as if he's going to tell me I'm dying,'' Agassi writes. ''And that's exactly what he tells me.''
''He reminds me that tennis has three classes of drug violation,'' Agassi writes. ''Performance-enhancing drugs ... would constitute a Class 1, he says, which would carry a suspension of two years. However, he adds, crystal meth would seem to be a clear case of Class 2. Recreational drugs.'' That would mean a three-month suspension.
''My name, my career, everything is now on the line. Whatever I've achieved, whatever I've worked for, might soon mean nothing. Days later I sit in a hard-backed chair, a legal pad in my lap, and write a letter to the ATP. It's filled with lies interwoven with bits of truth.''
In 2007, Martina Hingis tested positive for cocaine after a third-round exit at Wimbledon. She denied using the drug but was banned for two years. In July, Frenchman Richard Gasquet was cleared to resume playing after a 2 1/2-month ban upon persuading the International Tennis Federation's tribunal panel that he inadvertently took cocaine by kissing a woman in a nightclub.
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Public Opinion: In Gallup Poll, Support for Legalizing Marijuana Reaches All-Time High, Majority in West

2009-10-24T17:02:00.000-07:00

Drug War Chronicle - world’s leading drug policy newsletter
Public Opinion: In Gallup Poll, Support for Legalizing Marijuana Reaches All-Time High, Majority in West
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from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #605, 10/23/09
According to the most recent Gallup poll, 44% of Americans favor legalizing marijuana, while 54% oppose it. The 44% figure is the highest since Gallup began polling on the issue nearly 40 years ago.
In 1970, only 12% of respondents favored legalization. That figure climbed to 28% in 1977, then declined slightly and reached a plateau with support holding at around 25% for the next two decades. But in the past decade, public opinion has begun to shift, with support hitting 34% in 2002, 36% in 2006, and now, 44%.
Conversely, opposition to legalization is now at an all-time low. It was 84% in 1970, 66% in 1977, and around 73% for most of the Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton eras. But beginning in about 1996, opposition began to decline, dropping to 62% in 2002, 60% in 2006, and now, 54%.
A related question -- whether marijuana should be legalized and taxed to raise revenues for state governments -- won similar support levels in the Gallup poll. Some 42% of respondents said they would favor such a move in their state, while 56% were opposed. In the West, however, support for tax and legalize has gone over the top; 53% favor such an approach.
Looking at various demographic groups, support for marijuana legalization is highest among self-described liberals, at 78%. Only 26% of conservatives and 46% of moderates supported legalization. Similarly, 54% of Democrats, 49% of independents, and 28% of Republicans supported legalization.
There is also a clear generational divide. Half of those under age 50 support legalization, compared to 45% aged 50 to 64, and only 28% of seniors.
Support for legalization has swollen among certain demographic groups since the last Gallup poll on the issue in 2005. The number in favor of legalization jumped more than 10 points among women (+12), young people (+11), Democrats (+13), liberals (+15), moderates (+11), and residents of the West (+13).
If these rates of increase in support for legalization continue over the medium term, the world as we know may indeed end in 2012.

U.S. Won’t Prosecute in States That Allow Medical Marijuana from New York Times

2009-10-20T11:11:00.000-07:00

October 20, 2009

By DAVID STOUT and SOLOMON MOORE
WASHINGTON — People who use marijuana for medical purposes and those who distribute it to them should not face federal prosecution, provided they act according to state law, the Justice Department said Monday in a directive with far-reaching political and legal implications.
In a memorandum to federal prosecutors in the 14 states that make some allowance for the use of marijuana for medical purposes, the department said that it was committed to the “efficient and rational use” of its resources and that prosecuting patients and distributors who are in “clear and unambiguous compliance” with state laws did not meet that standard.
The new stance was hardly an enthusiastic embrace of medical marijuana, or the laws that allow it in some states, but signaled clearly that the administration thought there were more important priorities for prosecutors.
“It will not be a priority to use federal resources to prosecute patients with serious illnesses or their caregivers who are complying with state laws on medical marijuana,” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said in a statement accompanying the memo, “but we will not tolerate drug traffickers who hide behind claims of compliance with state law to mask activities that are clearly illegal.”
Emphasizing that it would continue to pursue those who use the concept of medical marijuana as a ruse, the department said, “Marijuana distribution in the United States remains the single largest source of revenue for the Mexican cartels,” and pursuing the makers and sellers of illegal drugs, including marijuana, will remain a “core priority.”
The new policy was tbe laszThe (sic) politics swirling around marijuana cross ideological lines. For instance, in effectively deferring to the states on some issues involving marijuana, the Obama administration is taking what could be seen as a states’ rights stance, more commonly associated with conservatives. That was a theme that echoed on many conservative and libertarian Internet sites in the wake of Monday’s announcement.
But one prominent conservative, Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, criticized the Justice Department’s position, saying it would weaken federal enforcement of drug laws.
“By directing federal law enforcement officers to ignore federal drug laws, the administration is tacitly condoning the use of marijuana in the United States,” said Mr. Smith, the senior Republican on the House Judiciary Committee. “If we want to win the war on drugs, federal prosecutors have a responsibility to investigate and prosecute all medical marijuana dispensaries and not just those that are merely fronts for illegal marijuana distribution.”
Polls have shown for years that there is widespread public support for making marijuana available to relieve the suffering of people who are very ill. But repeated efforts in Congress to block federal prosecution of medical marijuana have fallen short, and the new policy was a sharp departure from that of the Bush administration, in which the Drug Enforcement Administration raided medical marijuana distributors even if the distributors appeared to be complying with state laws.
The new policy, which reflects positions that Mr. Obama took as a presidential candidate and that Mr. Holder laid out in March, came in a memo from David W. Ogden, the deputy attorney general, to the United States attorneys in the affected states, most notably California.
The White House sought to turn aside any impression that Mr. Obama would like other states to follow the example of the 14 that make some allowance for medical marijuana.
“I’m not going to get into what states should do,” said the president’s chief spokesman, Robert Gibbs.
Mr. Gibbs said the memo to federal prosecutors “simply adds guidelines to a decision that Attorney General Holder talked about in mid-March and has been administration policy since the beginning of this administration in January.”
The guidelines give specific examples of conduct that would causes prosecutors to look at a case involving marijuana even if a user or distributor said it was for medical use. The examples include unlawful possession or use of a firearm, sales to minors and evidence of money laundering activity.
Graham Boyd, director of the Drug Law Reform Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, called the Justice Department’s move “an enormous step in the right direction and, no doubt, a great relief to the thousands of Americans who benefit from the medical use of marijuana.”
Mr. Boyd predicted that states and cities “will have a strong incentive to create regulated, safe and sensible means of getting marijuana to patients who need it.”
The new policy follows a series of changes, including the appointment of Richard Gil Kerlikowske, a former police chief of Seattle, to be Mr. Obama’s top drug policy adviser.
Medical marijuana thrived in Seattle on Mr. Kerlikowske’s watch, and advocates of more liberal marijuana laws hoped that his appointment to the office, which he assumed in May, signaled the administration’s willingness to decriminalize medical marijuana.
Some federal law enforcement officials are opposed to the administration’s position.
Privately, some federal law enforcement officials complained that medical marijuana and marijuana being smuggled in from Mexico are one and the same, and that the Obama administration has backed away from necessary enforcement of drug laws. Agents from the D.E.A. often work alongside local police officers.
As Mr. Ogden’s memo was being made public, the Web site of the Drug Enforcement Administration outlined its position on medical marijuana: “Smoked marijuana has not withstood the rigors of science — it is not medicine and it is not safe. D.E.A. targets criminals engaged in cultivation and trafficking, not the sick and dying.”
Advocates of medical marijuana say it can reduce chronic pain, nausea and additional symptoms associated with cancer and other serious illnesses. In 1996, California became the first state to make it legal to sell marijuana to people with doctors’ prescriptions. The other states that allow some use of marijuana for medical purposes are Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.
Solomon Moore contributed reporting from Los Angeles.

Texas DA Seeks to Use Seized Funds to Defend Herself in Lawsuit Over Unlawful Seizure of Same Funds

2009-10-10T08:38:00.000-07:00

Drug War Chronicle - world’s leading drug policy newsletter
Asset Forfeiture: Texas DA Seeks to Use Seized Funds to Defend Herself in Lawsuit Over Unlawful Seizure of Same Funds
from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #603, 10/9/09
The Texas district attorney accused of participating in an egregious asset forfeiture scheme in the East Texas town of Tenaha now wants to use the very cash seized to pay for her legal defense in a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by victims of the practice. The ACLU of Texas, which, along with the national ACLU, is representing the plaintiffs in the case, filed a brief last Friday with the Texas Attorney General's office seeking to block her from doing so.
Lynda Russell is the district attorney in Shelby County, where Tenaha is located. She is accused of participating in a scheme where Tenaha police pulled over mostly African-American motorists without cause, asked them if they were carrying cash, and if they were, threaten them with being immediately jailed for money laundering or other serious crimes unless they signed over their money to authorities.
Representing a number of victims, attorneys from the ACLU of Texas and the ACLU Racial Justice Project filed a civil lawsuit in federal court in June 2008. According to the suit, more than 140 people, almost all of whom were African-American, turned over their assets to police without cause and under duress between June 2006 and June 2008. If a federal judge agrees that assets were in fact illegally seized, they should be returned to their rightful owners, whose civil rights were violated.
In one case, a mixed race couple, Jennifer Boatwright and Ronald Henderson, were stopped by a Tenaha police officer in April 2007. According to the lawsuit, they were stopped without cause, detained for some time without cause, and asked if they were carrying any cash. When they admitted they had slightly more than $6,000, a district attorney's investigator then seized it, threatening them with arrest for money laundering and the loss of their children if they refused to sign off. There was never any evidence they had committed a crime, and they were never charged with a crime.
The town mayor, the DA, the DA's investigator, the town marshal, and a town constable are all named in the lawsuit. While they claim to have acted legally under Texas asset forfeiture law, the lawsuit argues that "although they were taken under color of state law, their actions constitute abuse of authority." The suit argues that the racially discriminatory pattern of stops and searches violated both the Fourth Amendment proscription of warrantless searches and the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause.
While either the county or the state would normally be expected to pony up for the DA's legal expenses for a lawsuit filed as a result of her performance of her duties, neither has done so. That's why Russell -- with a tin ear for irony -- requested that she be allowed to use the allegedly illegally seized money stolen from motorists. She has asked the state attorney general's office for an opinion on whether using the funds for her defense violates the state's asset forfeiture law.
"It would be completely inappropriate for the district attorney to use assets which are the very subject of litigation charging her with participating in allegedly illegal activity to defend herself against these charges," said Lisa Graybill, legal director at the ACLU of Texas. "Texas has a long history of having its law enforcement officials unconstitutionally target racial minorities in the flawed and failed war on drugs and it is of paramount importance that those officials be held accountable."
"The government must account for the misconduct of officials who operate in its name," said Vanita Gupta, staff attorney with the ACLU Racial Justice Program, who represented African-American residents of Tulia, TX in high-profile litigation challenging their wrongful convictions on drug charges. "The state of Texas has seen egregious examples of racial profiling that result from poor oversight of criminal justice officials."
The ACLU of Texas is using the Tenaha case to push for asset forfeiture reform in the Lone Star State. One such bill stalled in the state legislature this year. "The misuse of asset forfeiture laws by local officials is exacerbated by inadequate oversight," said Matt Simpson, policy strategist for the group. "The legislature must squarely address these reported civil rights violations via reform of forfeiture laws that strengthen protection against unconstitutional conduct and racial profiling."
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Read William Martin's article in the October Issue of Texas Monthly!

2009-09-21T10:06:00.000-07:00

Texas High Ways

Sign by Roadhouse Relics
Why the unlikeliest of states—ours—should legalize marijuana.
by William Martin http://www.texasmonthly.com/preview/2009-10-01/feature4

Drug Arrests Decline Slightly in 2008

2009-09-19T09:46:00.000-07:00

Drug War Chronicle - world’s leading drug policy newsletter
Feature: Marijuana Arrests, All Drug Arrests Declined Slightly in 2008, FBI Reports
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from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #601, 9/18/09
The number of people arrested for drug offenses in the United States declined slightly last year, according to the FBI's Uniform Crime Report. And for the first time since 2002, the number of people arrested on marijuana charges also declined. The number of arrests for all drug offenses declined from 1,841,182 in 2007 to 1,702,537 last year, while the number of people arrested on marijuana charges dropped from 872,721 in 2007 to 847,864 last year.
( See the table from http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/arrests/ )
More people were arrested for drug offenses last year than live in the cities of Phoenix (pop. 1.55 million) or Philadelphia (pop. 1.45 million). More people were arrested for marijuana offenses than live in the cities of Jacksonville (pop. 805,000) or San Francisco (pop. 764,000). Based on the overall drug arrest figures, somebody got busted for dope every 18 seconds in 2008, and somebody got busted for pot every 37 seconds.
Last year, marijuana arrests accounted for nearly half -- 49.8% -- of all drug arrests, up slightly from the 47% in 2007. The vast majority of marijuana arrests -- 89% -- were for possession only, meaning that more than three-quarters of a million Americans got busted last year not for drug trafficking or manufacture, but as nothing more than pot consumers. In two regions of the country, the South and the Midwest, simple marijuana possession arrests accounted for more than half of all drug arrests.
Similarly, when all drug arrests are tabulated, possession arrests constituted 83.3% of the total. That means out of the 1.7 million total drug arrests, only about 300,000 were for "drug dealing" or manufacture, and 93,640 of those were for marijuana, which includes people growing even one plant or for medical reasons.
While last year's pot bust numbers represent a 3% decline from 2007, the 2008 numbers are still the second highest annual toll on record. Marijuana arrests stood at about 300,000 in 1991 before climbing sharply during the Clinton administration to more than 700,000 by 2000. During the Bush administration, annual pot arrests continued to climb, but more slowly, going over 800,000 in 2006 and reaching the all-time high of more than 872,000 in 2007.
While the trend over the past two decades has been upwards, this isn't the first year that marijuana arrests have declined over the previous year. Similar blips have happened five times since 1990.
The number of drug arrests in 2008 was about three times the number of people arrested for all violent crimes (595,000) and greater than the number of people arrested for all property crimes (1.68 million).
Defenders of the status quo eager to downplay the consequences of drug prohibition are wont to argue that many arrests aren't really arrests -- some people are ticketed or cited and released -- or that hardly anybody goes to jail, especially for marijuana. There is a small degree of truth in each argument, but being arrested on a drug charge, even a marijuana possession charge, carries serious consequences for the arrestee.
People arrested face legal fees, fines, and, quite possibly, time behind bars, even for marijuana offenses. Upon conviction, they also face a raft of collateral consequences ranging from loss of access to student loans, public housing, and other federal benefits to loss of (or inability to obtain) professional licenses, problems with employment, and loss of children to state child welfare agencies.
The 2008 arrest figures come just days after the National Survey on Drug Use and Health reported that the number of adult marijuana smokers increased from 22 million in 2007 to 22.5 million last year. The number of Americans over age 12 who admitted ever smoking marijuana was also at an all-time, both in raw numbers and as a percentage of the population. Last year, 41%, or more than 102 million Americans said they had tried marijuana.
Drug reformers were quick to use the arrest figures to call for change. "In our current economic climate, we simply cannot afford to keep arresting more than three people every minute in the failed 'war on drugs,'" said Jack Cole, a retired undercover narcotics detective who now heads Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.
Cole also warned of the collateral consequences of a drug arrest. "You can get over an addiction, but you will never get over a conviction," he said.
The pot people, revved up by a seeming seismic shift in popular attitudes now underway, were also quick on the attack. "Federal statistics released just last week indicate that larger percentages of Americans are using cannabis at the same time that police are arresting a near-record number of Americans for pot-related offenses," said Allen St. Pierre, head of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). "Present enforcement policies are costing American taxpayers tens of billions of dollars, ruining the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans, and having no impact on marijuana availability or marijuana use in this country. It is time to end this failed policy and replace prohibition with a policy of marijuana regulation, taxation, and education."
"This slight dip in the number of marijuana arrests provides a small amount of relief to the tens of millions of American marijuana consumers who have been under attack by their own government for decades," said Marijuana Policy Project executive director Rob Kampia. "It's time to stop wasting billions of tax dollars criminalizing responsible Americans for using a substance that's safer than alcohol, and to put an end to policies that simply hand this massive consumer market to unregulated criminals."
Do the slight declines in marijuana arrests or overall drug arrests mean that change is around the corner or that policing policies are becoming more enlightened? The answer is "no," said Eric Sterling, head of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation.
"The declines are so slight as to be almost insignificant," said Sterling. "What we do know is that in various law enforcement agencies around the country, they've been laying off cops. Chiefs have been getting orders from mayors and county executives to cut overtime. There are 10,000 different law enforcement agencies, and they're all facing financial trouble. These kinds of pressures reduce the number of police hours that can be devoted to these kinds of cases," he said.
The small declines in drug arrests do not represent any serious policy change, Sterling said. "If there was any significant change in policies, you wouldn't see a minor dip. If we saw a drop of a third, that would tell us there is a change in policy, but anyone who looks at these numbers and thinks they represent change is grasping at straws."
Drug prohibition mindlessly grinds on, chewing up and spitting out more than a million and a half Americans each year. It may have suffered a few hiccups because of the country's financial woes, but there is as yet no sign that anything has really changed.

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Corrupt Cops of the Drug War - one week's worth!

2009-09-11T10:54:00.001-07:00

Drug War Chronicle - world’s leading drug policy newsletter
Law Enforcement: This Week's Corrupt Cops Stories

In Nogales, Arizona, a former Immigration and Customs Enforcement supervisor was arrested last Friday for helping Mexican drug cartels move large quantities of cocaine across the border. Richard Cramer, the former agent once in charge of the Nogales ICE office, faces charges of cocaine trafficking and public corruption. DEA investigators said Cramer used his position to run database checks under the guise of drug investigations when he was really checking to ensure that drug traffickers he worked with were not snitches for law enforcement. He is being extradited to Florida, where federal prosecutors say a majority of his illegal acts occurred.
In Memphis, a Memphis police officer was arrested August 27 by FBI and DEA agents as part of the ongoing Operation Tarnished Blue, which targets corruption within the Memphis Police Department. Officer Lowell Duke, 33, faces federal charges of conspiracy to distribute cocaine and conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine. He is at least the 34th department officer or civilian employee to be arrested under Tarnished Blue and other investigations since 2003. Charges in those cases have included ticket fixing, robbery, prostitution, extortion and drug conspiracy.
In Tavares, Florida, a Lake County Correctional Institution mental health counselor was arrested September 3 on charges she brought drugs into the prison. Now former prison employee Julia Bedenbaugh, 39, is charged with possession of crack cocaine with intent to distribute. She went down when an inmate in trouble after being caught with a contraband cell phone snitched her out. Authorities found her name and P.O. Box address on the phone, seized two envelopes from the box and got a positive hit on them from a drug dog. Police then returned the packages to the P.O. Box and arrested Bedenbaugh after she picked up the packages. One contained a cell phone and charger and the other contained two cigar tubes packed with crack and wrapped in electrical tape. She is out on a $20,000 bond.
In Monongahela, Pennsylvania, a Monongahela police officer was arrested last Friday on drug and corruption charges. Officer George Langan is accused of subverting the work of a Washington County drug task force by tipping off dealers and peddling dope himself. He is the fifth Monongahela police officer arrested on corruption charges in the past year-and-a-half in what a local prosecutor called a "culture of corruption." Langan was hit with 11 counts of violating the state drug law and 23 counts of public corruption, including official oppression, evidence tampering and criminal conspiracy. Authorities said Langan had been under investigation by various bodies for the past 10 years. He has been jailed under a $500,000 bond.
In Baltimore, a Baltimore police officer was arrested September 3 for trying to shake down an undercover internal affairs investigator posing as a drug dealer. Officer Michael Sylvester, 29, was arrested after stealing $70 from the investigator. Police later recovered three small bags of cocaine from Sylvester's locker. He had recently been transferred from the Central District's Pennsylvania Avenue task force, working one of the East Coast's largest drug markets, after complaints about him extorting drug dealers surfaced. He will face theft and drug possession charges.
In Pine Bluff, Arkansas, an Arkansas state prison guard was arrested August 29 after marijuana was found in her bra as she reported for duty. Maximum Security Union guard Michelle Anderson, 26, is charged with possession of drugs with intent to deliver and possession of a weapon on prison property. She was arrested after another guard searched her and found more than an ounce of pot in her bra. Officers then searched her vehicle in the parking lot and found a handgun.
In St. Joseph, Michigan, the former head of the Benton Harbor police narcotics unit pleaded guilty Wednesday in a corruption investigation of the Benton Harbor police. Former officer Bernard Hall, 33, conspired with another, already convicted and imprisoned, officer, Andrew Collins, to falsify search warrants, obtain warrants without probable cause, embezzle funds, file false police reports, steal money and personal property, and divert seized drugs. Hall pleaded guilty to conspiracy to violate the civil rights of Benton Harbor residents. He faces up to 10 years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine. He has been in custody since his July 17 arrest. No word yet on a sentencing date.
In Bridgeton, New Jersey, a former state prison guard pleaded guilty August 31 to smuggling drugs and a syringe to an inmate at the Southern State Correctional Facility in Cumberland County. Under a plea agreement, prosecutors will recommend he do five years. The eight-year veteran will be permanently barred from public employment in the state.
In McAllen, Texas, a former Texas sheriff was sentenced September 3 to more than five years in federal prison for helping Mexican drug traffickers smuggle drugs through his county in return for cash payments. Former Starr County Sheriff Reymundo Guerra. Guerra was one of more than a dozen people indicted by a federal grand jury in Operation Carlito's Weigh, which targeted the Gulf Cartel. He pleaded guilty in May to conspiracy to distribute narcotics.
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Mexico Body Count 5000 for 2009 in Drug War

2009-09-11T10:45:00.000-07:00

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Drug War Chronicle - world’s leading drug policy newsletter
Latin America: Mexico Drug War Update
from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #600, 9/11/09
by Bernd Debusmann, Jr.
Mexican drug trafficking organizations make billions each year trafficking illegal drugs into the United States, profiting enormously from the prohibitionist drug policies of the US government. Since Mexican president Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006 and called the armed forces into the fight against the so-called cartels, prohibition-related violence has killed over 12,000 people, with a death toll of over 4,000 so far in 2009. The increasing militarization of the drug war and the arrest of several high-profile drug traffickers have failed to stem the flow of drugs -- or the violence -- whatsoever. The Merida initiative, which provides $1.4 billion over three years for the US to assist the Mexican government with training, equipment and intelligence, has so far failed to make a difference. Here are a few of the latest developments in Mexico's drug war:
Friday , September 4
- Troops arrested three suspected cartel assassins in Ciudad Juarez. The three are thought to be part of La Linea, the enforcement arm of the Juarez cartel. Between them, they are accused of having participated in 70 killings.
- A high ranking police official was gunned down in Los Mochis, Sinaloa. The commander, Ubaldo Dominguez Grijalva, was shot by at least two gunmen outside his house at 6:30 AM. Fifteen days ago, he was involved in an operation in which three suspected cartel hitmen were arrested after a firefight in Los Mochis.
Saturday , September 5
- Mexican troops captured a suspect in the September 2 killing of 17 patients in Ciudad Juarez drug rehabilitation center. The suspect, Jose Rodolfo Escajeda, is a high-ranking member of the Juarez cartel. He is also on the DEA's list of most wanted fugitives on suspicion of being involved in marijuana and cocaine trafficking to the United States.
- A former high ranking official of US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to smuggle cocaine into the US. The man, Richard P. Kramer, had previously been stationed in Mexico. He was apparently convinced by drug cartel members to retire and begin working for them directly. Kramer is accused of searching for information from law enforcement databases concerning possible informants, and with being involved in a 660 pound cocaine shipment which traveled from Panama to the United States, before being finally seized in Spain in 2007.
Sunday , September 6
- Gunmen killed a state legislative candidate, his wife, and their two children at their home in Tabasco. Authorities originally suspected that the murders were carried out by drug traffickers angered by recent arrests. Jose Francisco Fuentes Esperon, 43, a former university professor, had begun his campaign just one day prior to his murder. Mr.Esperon and his wife were both shot, while the children, ages 8 and 10, were asphyxiated.
Monday, September 7
- An arrest was made in the killing of Juan Francisco Fuentes Esperon, the state legislative candidate murdered over the weekend (see above). Police arrested several young men in what apparently was a burglary gone wrong. Interestingly, however, the Zetas drug trafficking organization took the unusual step of publicly distancing itself from the murders. The Zetas hung a banner in Villahermosa, the state capital, saying they were not involved.
- Seven people were gunned down in several separate incidents in Ciudad Juarez. Four of the victims were killed at a motel, and included an ex-US soldier who lived in El Paso and worked for the Postal Service. The men were drinking when they were attacked by heavily armed gunmen. In another incident, a man was killed and five people wounded when gunmen entered a private party and began shooting.
Tuesday, September 8
- Mexico replaced its attorney general, Eduardo Medina Mora, who had held the position for nine years. President Calderon gave no reason for the move. He is slated to be replaced by Arturo Chavez Chavez, who had previously worked for the state attorney general's office of Chihuahua, of which Ciudad Juarez is capital. He is likely to face a tough nomination battle in Mexico's congress, as the decision has been criticized because of his work in Chihuahua. During his tenure there from 1992-1996, the Juarez cartel became much stronger and the murders of hundreds of women went unsolved.
- In Veracruz, police found a headless body along with a message from drug traffickers attached to it. The body was left in the same location where two bodies (and another message from drug traffickers) were found on August 26. The note left with the body threatened extortionists and kidnappers, and may be the work of vigilante groups supported by drug traffickers or elements of the police.
- In Ciudad Juarez, a body with both arms severed was found dumped on a street. A spokesman for the regional prosecutor's office said that the victim was found with his severed arms crossed and placed on top of a cardboard sign that was left with the body. Additionally, the victim had plastic bags shoved into his mouth and his eyes were taped shut.
On another subject, two journalists from the state of Tabasco were arrested on suspicion of working for the Zetas drug trafficking organization. Newspaper correspondents Roberto Juarez and Lazaro Abreu Tejero Sanchez are accused of taking thousands of dollars from drug traffickers to withhold stories and share information from police sources. Police learned of the payments, which totaled some $4,500 a month, from a captured Zeta lieutenant.
Total reported body count for the week: 239
Total reported body count for the year: 4,955
Read last week's Mexico drug war update here.
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Ted Kennedy 1932-2009 fought for Loyalists i.e. against the War on Drugs

2009-08-27T11:55:00.000-07:00

Prison Over-Crowding in Cali from the New York Times

2009-08-27T11:46:00.000-07:00

August 27, 2009
Editorial
California Is Failing the Prison Test
The California Legislature has failed several times to change backward sentencing and parole policies that keep the state’s prisons dangerously overcrowded with too many minor offenders sent to jail for too long. These failures, which have driven up corrections costs by about 50 percent in less than a decade, came home to roost earlier this month, when a federal court ordered the state to cut the prison population significantly. Days later, an ominous riot broke out in the men’s prison in Chino.
The time for ducking this issue has clearly passed, but a reform plan approved by the State Senate after being championed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is in danger of being gutted in the Assembly. Democratic lawmakers who should know better are running scared of the prison guards’ union and of being labeled “soft on crime.”
The heart of the problem is California’s poorly designed parole system. A vast majority of states use parole to supervise serious offenders who require close monitoring. California has historically put just about everyone on parole. According to a federally backed study released last year, more people are sent to prison in California by parole officers than by the courts, and nearly half of those people go back on technical violations like missed appointments and failed drug tests.
The reform package that passed in the Senate would allow the state to focus parole efforts on serious offenders and end the costly practice of cycling people back to jail for technical violations. Under another provision, low-risk offenders like the elderly and the infirm could be removed from costly medical care in prison and sent to alternative custody nursing homes, where they would be monitored with electronic ankle bracelets. Low-risk inmates who completed college degrees or vocational programs would earn credits shortening their sentences.
This bill should have easily passed in the Assembly, which has a Democratic majority supposedly in favor of reform. But the Democrats, many of whom are running for other offices, are clearly fearful of even taking a vote that would allow a sick, 80-year-old inmate to spend what remains of his life in a nursing home wearing an ankle bracelet.
This is a low moment for Democrats in California. Those who put their parochial career interests ahead of the public good deserve to be called to account for it.
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Youth Prisons from the New York Times

2009-08-25T09:51:00.000-07:00

August 25, 2009
Editorial
New York’s Disgrace
The Justice Department has sued several state juvenile detention systems for subjecting children to neglect and abuse. The department is now threatening to sue New York for the same reasons, and rightly so. A recently completed federal investigation has documented unsafe and, in some cases, heartbreaking conditions in several New York state detention facilities.
This problem has been festering for decades. Elected officials who have ignored it will need to clean house as swiftly as possible, closing down the worst institutions and ensuring that children in custody are protected from abuse in compliance with federal law.
In an angry letter to Gov. David Paterson, the department describes a hellish environment where excessive force is commonplace and children risk serious injury — concussions, knocked-out teeth and fractured bones — for minor offenses like laughing too loudly, getting into fistfights or “sneaking an extra cookie” at snack time.
The investigators focused on four facilities — including the infamous Tryon Boys Residential Center, in upstate Fulton County, where an emotionally disturbed 15-year-old named Darryl Thompson died in 2006 after being pinned face down on the floor and held there by two grown men. Three staff members who were trained in cardiopulmonary resuscitation and required to administer it failed to do so. The medical examiner labeled the death a homicide, but the grand jury declined to indict the two men involved.
The report notes that the physical restraints used just before Darryl died have been banned in many parts of the country. But at the time of the investigation, it says, staff members in New York facilities were still being trained to use dangerous restraint techniques and used them, often at the slightest provocation.
The report further suggests that acts of violence and abuse against children have been routinely covered up. Officials fail to act in a timely fashion, or at all, when cronies are caught violating policy in dangerous ways. A 300-pound staff member who slammed a young woman to the floor, causing a concussion, is a vivid example.
The section of the letter on mentally ill children, who make up a significant part of the incarcerated population, is enough to make the reader weep. Psychiatric services, such as they are, are shamefully inadequate. Children often get several different diagnoses within the same institution, which makes it impossible to treat them effectively. Medications appear to be handed out almost at random, without proper monitoring or clear therapeutic goals. Although many detained youths have drug problems, treatment programs are in a shambles.
The Justice Department report fully vindicates Gladys Carrión, the reform-minded commissioner of New York’s Office of Children and Family Services, who assumed office in 2007. Ms. Carrión has closed many facilities, downsized others, and is working to emphasize treatment and rehabilitation instead of force.
She has faced resistance from lawmakers, who want to keep juvenile centers open in their districts at all costs, and the unions, which are committed to some of the practices the Justice Department finds unconstitutional. Her opponents must now contend with the federal government, which was bound to intervene.
The Justice Department lays out a list of steps the state must take to bring its system into compliance with federal law and basic standards of decency. For starters, it must protect children from excessive force, and provide mental health care and rehabilitative treatment. If not, the state will almost surely be sued.
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Marijuana the Answer to California's Budget Woes? from Time.com

2009-07-22T08:45:00.000-07:00

Is Marijuana the Answer to California's Budget Woes?

By TOM MCNICHOL/SAN FRANCISCO Tom Mcnichol/san Francisco 2 hrs 12 mins ago
Proponents of marijuana legalization have advanced plenty of arguments in support of their drug of choice - that marijuana is less dangerous than legal substances like cigarettes and alcohol; that pot has legitimate medical uses; that the money spent prosecuting marijuana offenses would be better used on more pressing public concerns.
While 13 states permit the limited sale of marijuana for medical use, and polls show a steady increase in the number of Americans who favor legalization, federal law still bans the cultivation, sale, or possession of marijuana. In fact, the feds still classify marijuana as a Schedule I drug, one that has no "currently accepted medical use" in the United States.
But supporters of legalization may have been handed their most convincing argument yet: the bummer economy. Advocates argue that if state or local governments could collect a tax on even a fraction of pot sales, it would help rescue cash-strapped communities. Not surprisingly, the idea is getting traction in California, home to both the nation"s largest supply of domestically grown marijuana (worth a estimated $14 billion a year) and to the country"s biggest state budget deficit (more than $26 billion).
On Monday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the California legislative leaders a tentative budget agreement to plug the state's deficit, but it would involve making sweeping cuts in education and health services, as well as taking billions from county governments. Democratic state assemblyman Tom Ammiano has introduced legislation that would let California regulate and tax the sale of marijuana. The state's proposed $50 an ounce pot tax would bring in about $1.3 billion a year in additional revenue. Ammiano"s bill was shelved this session but he expects to introduce a revised bill early next year.
If the state legislature doesn"t act, perhaps California voters will. One group is preparing to place a statewide initiative for the November 2010 ballot that would regulate and tax the sale of marijuana for Californians 21 years of age and older. Tellingly, the group spearheading the measure calls itself TaxCannabis2010.org, stressing the revenue advantages of marijuana legalization. The group hopes to collect the required 650,000 voter signatures by January to place the measure on the November 2010 ballot.
"There"s no doubt that the ground is shifting on marijuana," says Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, which promotes alternatives to the war on drugs. "The discussion about regulating and taxing marijuana now has an air of legitimacy to it that it didn"t quite have before. And the economy has given the issue a real turbo charge."
The legalization effort is getting serious consideration from surprising quarters. In May, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger publicly called for a large-scale study to determine whether to legalize and tax marijuana.
"I think it"s time for a debate," the governor said at a news conference. "I think we ought to study very carefully what other countries are doing that have legalized marijuana and other drugs."
In California, medical marijuana sales are already taxed, and some communities are looking for ways to get a bigger slice of the pot pie. Residents Oakland are currently voting in a mail-in special election that includes a measure which would make the city the first in the country to establish a new tax rate for medical marijuana businesses. If the measure passes, Oakland marijuana dispensaries, which are now charged at the general tax rate of $1.20 per $1,000 in receipts, would see that rate raised to $18 per $1,000.
A Field Poll conducted in California this spring showed 56% of the state"s registered voters in support of legalizing and taxing marijuana as a way of offsetting some of the budget deficit. Several national polls have shown that more than 45% of American adults are open to legalizing pot, about double the support a decade ago.
Even the most ardent marijuana advocates aren"t expecting nationwide legalization anytime soon. Instead, any action is likely to come on the state and local level. For now, all eyes are on cash-strapped California, where high taxes could take on an entirely new meaning.
View this article on Time.com

Prison Food Scandal from The New York Times

2009-06-29T10:35:00.000-07:00

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.

Farrah Fawcett 1947-2009 Rest In Peace

2009-06-25T09:54:00.000-07:00

Supreme Court: Strip Search of 13 year old Girl Illegal from Associated Press

2009-06-25T09:30:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-25T08:49:00.000-07:00

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.

from www.norml.org

2009-06-23T19:33:00.000-07:00

Is it time to legalize pot? from Seattle Times

2009-06-23T17:18:00.000-07:00

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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