• Focus Alerts

    #440 The American Civil Liberties Union Sued Wal-Mart

    Date: Fri, 2 Jul 2010
    Subject: #440 The American Civil Liberties Union Sued Wal-Mart

    THE AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION SUED WAL-MART

    **********************************************************************

    DrugSense FOCUS Alert #440 – Friday, 2 July 2010

    The Michigan Medical Marihuana Act protects employees from being
    disciplined for their use of medical marihuana in accordance with the
    law.

    The Act states (see http://drugsense.org/url/8mvr7sW8
    ):

    (c) If a patient or a patient’s primary caregiver demonstrates the
    patient’s medical purpose for using marihuana pursuant to this
    section, the patient and the patient’s primary caregiver shall not be
    subject to the following for the patient’s medical use of marihuana:

    (1) disciplinary action by a business or occupational or professional
    licensing board or bureau; or

    (2) forfeiture of any interest in or right to property.

    Wal-Mart’s Statement of Ethics http://ethics.walmartstores.com/Pdf/U.S_SOE.pdf
    states “If any part of this Statement of Ethics goes against local
    policies or laws, then the local policy or law must always be followed.”

    But what Wal-Mart states conflicts with what it did in the case of a
    Michigan medicinal marijuana user, Joseph Casias. Please read the
    newspaper clippings about the case at http://www.mapinc.org/people/Joseph+Casias

    Please also read the lawsuit Casias v. Wal-Mart http://www.aclu.org/files/assets/casias_complaint_6_24_10.pdf

    Letters to the Editor about this case may help. You may also consider
    calling Wal-Mart at 1-800-WM-ETHIC [1-800-963-8442] or sending an
    email to [email protected] or by completing their on line form at
    https://www.walmartethics.com/gcs/ethicsconcern

    An anonymous donor has challenged DrugSense and MAP to raise $25,000
    in new donations and/or increases in current periodic donations. Once
    the goal is achieved the donor will provide us with $25,000. Today we
    are about four fifths of the way to this very important goal. Please
    help us meet the challenge! http://www.drugsense.org/donate.htm

    **********************************************************************

    Suggestions for writing letters are at our Media Activism Center
    http://www.mapinc.org/resource/#guides

    For facts please see Medical Marijuana: http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/node/54

    **********************************************************************

    Prepared by: Richard Lake www.mapinc.org

    =.

  • Cannabis & Hemp - Hot Off The 'Net

    Bush Crony Working for Obama Seeks to Undermine Medical Marijuana Industry

    By Mason Tvert, Executive director and co-founder, SAFER

    According to an e-mail just unearthed by Complete Colorado, a Bush holdover in the U.S. Drug Czar’s office is fishing for information that links crime to the growing number of medical marijuana dispensaries in Colorado.

    The e-mail is addressed to Colorado’s chief medical officer, Ned Calonge, at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, and it appears to be authored by an Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) research assistant on behalf of former Bush (and current Obama) drug warrior Kevin Sabet.

  • Cannabis & Hemp - Hot Off The 'Net

    Marc Emery: U.S. Federal Prison Blog #5

    Free from 21 days of isolation

    By Marc Emery

    (Marc Emery’s U.S. federal prison blog #5 originally ran here on the Cannabis Culture Web site.)

    At 6:00pm on Thursday, June 24th, I was finally released from solitary confinement after three weeks of isolation.

    The Disciplinary Hearing Officer was very gracious (in so much as I was in solitary for 21 days) and agreed that the phone use infraction – the podcast to supporters that was never released – was minor in the big picture. He made it a “397” which involves no loss of good time (the discount of 15% a year on my sentence). He also said “Everyone here knows you are famous and it was a shout-out to your supporters that was not harmful, and we know you didn’t criticize the Federal Detention Centre, but you can’t do third-party political lobbying over the phone.” So lesson learned. I don’t have phone access until July 25th, but at least I can “email” Jodie through CorrLinks and have visits in person, instead of the cruel “video visits” they’ve recently designated for inmates in solitary confinement.

  • Hot Off The 'Net - What You Can Do

    Experts call for new course on illegal drugs in fight against HIV

    VIENNA (June 28, 2010): A team of experts and health organisations on Monday called for a scientific approach to illicit drugs, arguing that their criminalisation has been costly and ineffective and has fuelled a high HIV infection rate among intravenous drug users. The experts made the appeal in the lead-up to the 18th International AIDS Conference, to be held July 18-23 in the Austrian capital Vienna. They are launching a global signature drive for a declaration on a “science-based” approach to illegal drugs.

    “As scientists, we are committed to raising our collective voice to promote evidence-based approaches to illicit drug policy that start by recognizing that addiction is a medical condition, not a crime,” Julio Montaner, conference chairman and president of the International AIDS Society, said in a statement.

    The failure by law enforcement to prevent the availability of illegal drugs where there is demand “is now unambiguous,” the so- called Vienna Declaration says. The declaration – drafted by 32 medical doctors and leading specialists – appeals to governments, the United Nations and other international organisations to review the effectiveness of current drug policies, increase “evidence-based” drug addiction treatments and abolish compulsory drug treatments that violate human rights.
    The declaration also calls for an increase in funding for drug treatment and “harm reduction” measures.

    The consequences of failed drug-enforcement efforts are manifold, the declaration says, pointing to HIV epidemics fuelled by the unavailability of sterile needles, HIV outbreaks among prisoners and record incarceration rates in many countries.

    The massive market for illicit drugs, worth some 320 billion dollars annually, has also destabilised entire countries, such as Colombia, Mexico and Afghanistan. Outside sub-Saharan Africa, intravenous drug use accounts for roughly one in three new cases of HIV, the declaration says. In some areas where HIV is spreading most rapidly, such as Eastern Europe and Central Asia, as many as 80% of those infected with HIV are intravenous drug users.

    Alternative approaches to illicit drug use – such as those implemented in the Netherlands, Portugal, Switzerland and other countries – have proven effective, conference organisers said

  • Hot Off The 'Net - International

    Drug and Health

    June 26 marks International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking. According to World Drug Report 2010 by the UN, drug use is shifting towards new drugs and new markets. To better understand the current situation on drug use around the world, we have ….

    Guests:

    Jack Cole, Executive director of LEAP, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition
    Prof. Dr. Liu Renwen，Director of the Department of Criminal Law with Law Institute of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
    Prof. Lu Lin, Director of National Institute of Drug Dependence, Peking University Health Science Center

  • Cannabis & Hemp

    Police Look For Links In Pot-Shop Killings

    Owners, customers and neighbors of marijuana dispensaries are wary in the wake of two slayings.

    By Joel Rubin and Paloma Esquivel, Los Angeles Times

    June 26, 2010

    The killings of two pot dispensary workers just five hours and five miles apart — one shot in Echo Park, the other apparently stabbed in Hollywood — triggered a police investigation Friday to determine whether they were linked and rattled medical marijuana advocates.

    Two senior Los Angeles Police officials who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the ongoing investigation said Thursday’s slayings appear to be unrelated. But the sheriff and district attorney said their brutality suggests the work of violent gangs.

    The homicides could revive the debate over whether dispensaries make their neighborhoods unsafe, but police could recall only one other slaying at a dispensary. Thursday’s killings occurred as the city is trying to shut down about 400 illegal dispensaries and exert control over approved outlets.

    Police said dispensaries are lucrative targets. “They have a lot of cash,” LAPD Deputy Chief David Doan said at a news conference. “That’s what’s attractive. Any business that does a lot of cash business has that risk.”

  • Hot Off The 'Net - International

    UN, Western Nations Complicit in Drug Of…

    UN, Western Nations Complicit in Drug Offender Executions, Report Says

    from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #638, 6/25/10

    With the United Nations’ International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking set for tomorrow, the timing couldn’t be better for a new report from the International Harm Reduction Association (IHRA) decrying the complicity of Western governments and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in international drug control efforts that result in the execution of drug offenders.

    Tehran Take what happened in China on global anti-drug day 2008 as a case in point. As has been its wont in the past, the Chinese government used the occasion to execute numerous drug offenders, including Han Yongwan, a regional trafficker who had been arrested by police in Laos and later extradited to China. Han had been arrested thanks to the East Asian Border Liaison Office program, initiated by UNODC in 1993, and chiefly funded by the United Kingdom (24%), the United States (24%), Japan (24%), and Australia (10%). Other funders included the European Commission (3%), Sweden (3%), Canada (2%), and UNAIDS (5%).

    Although the European Commission and nearly all of the donor nations reject the death penalty, the funding of programs like the East Asian Border Liaison Office means that those governments and organizations are complicit, if inadvertently, in the application of the death penalty to drug offenders, the IHRA found in a report issued this week, Complicity or Abolition? The Death Penalty and International Support for Drug Enforcement.