• Focus Alerts

    #415 Canada’s Prince Of Pot Becomes A Marijuana Martyr

    Date: Wed, 30 Sep 2009
    Subject: #415 Canada’s Prince Of Pot Becomes A Marijuana Martyr

    CANADA’S PRINCE OF POT BECOMES A MARIJUANA MARTYR

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

    DrugSense FOCUS Alert #415 – Wednesday, 30 September 2009

    Former DEA administrator Karen Tandy in a press release on the day of
    Marc Emery’s arrest, July 29th, 2005, stated:

    “Today’s DEA arrest of Marc Scott Emery, publisher of Cannabis Culture
    magazine, and the founder of a marijuana legalization group, is a
    significant blow not only to the marijuana trafficking trade in the
    U.S. and Canada, but also to the marijuana legalization movement….
    Drug legalization lobbyists now have one less pot of money to rely
    on.”

    Philanthropist Marc Emery funneled millions of dollars in resources
    and funds to the marijuana legalization movement on both sides of the
    border.

    The Vancouver Sun’s columnist Ian Mulgrew covers what is happening to
    Marc and why below.

    Monday, September 28th marks another infamous event in the history of
    the efforts to suppress the cannabis culture.

    To read current and future press items about Marc please use this
    link: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Marc+Emery

    Your letters to the editor are always helpful.

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

    Pubdate: Mon, 28 Sep 2009

    Source: Vancouver Sun (CN BC)

    Copyright: 2009 The Vancouver Sun

    Contact: http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/letters.html

    Author: Ian Mulgrew, Vancouver Sun

    PRINCE OF POT’S SENTENCE REEKS OF INJUSTICE AND MOCKS OUR SOVEREIGNTY

    Emery’s Jail Term Longer Than for Some Violent Crimes

    After two decades as Canada’s Prince of Pot, Marc Emery will surrender
    himself today in B.C. Supreme Court and become the country’s first
    Marijuana Martyr.

    Emery will begin serving what could be as long as five years behind
    bars as Uncle Sam’s prisoner for a crime that in Canada would have
    earned him at most a month in the local hoosegow.

    It is a legal tragedy that in my opinion marks the capitulation of our
    sovereignty and underscores the hypocrisy around cannabis.

    Emery hasn’t even visited America but he was arrested in July 2005 at
    the request of a Republican administration that abhorred his politics.

    He is being handed over to a foreign government for an activity we are
    loath to prosecute because we don’t think selling seeds is a major
    problem.

    There are at least a score of seed-sellers downtown and many, many
    more such retail outlets across the country.

    In the days ahead, once the federal justice minister signs the
    extradition papers, Emery will be frog-marched south to Seattle where
    his plea bargain will be rubber-stamped and he will be sent to a U.S.
    penitentiary.

    For comparison, consider that the B.C. Court of Appeal last year said
    a one-month jail sentence plus probation was appropriate punishment
    for drug and money-laundering offences of this ilk.

    The last time Emery was convicted in Canada of selling pot seeds, back
    in 1998, he was given a $2,000 fine.

    In July, his co-accused Michelle Rainey and Greg Williams were given
    two years probation for conspiracy to manufacture marijuana.

    They were indicted along with Emery for their role in what the
    authorities described as a $3-million-a-year business.

    Rainey, 38, worked for Emery from 1998 to 2005, helping him operate
    the B.C. Marijuana Party and his mail-order business.

    The 54-year-old Williams took phone orders.

    Emery flouted the law for more than a decade and every year he sent
    his seed catalogue to politicians of every stripe. He ran in federal,
    provincial and civic elections promoting his pro-cannabis platform.

    He championed legal marijuana at parliamentary hearings, on national
    television, at celebrity conferences, in his own magazine, Cannabis
    Culture, and on his own Internet channel, Pot TV.

    Health Canada even recommended medical marijuana patients buy their
    seeds from his company.

    From 1998 until his arrest, Emery even paid provincial and federal
    taxes as a “marijuana seed vendor” totalling nearly $600,000.

    He was targeted because of his success, targeted as surely as pot
    comic Tommy Chong — who spent nearly a year in U.S. jail because his
    son ran a company selling glass pipes.

    Emery challenged a law he disagrees with using exactly the
    non-violent, democratic processes we urge our children to embrace and
    of which we are so proud.

    “The same seeds I sold are being sold right in America,” Emery
    complained. “The people in California are doing it the same way I did
    so there’s a terrible hypocrisy at work here.”

    He’s right.

    Emery recently wrapped up a 30-city “farewell tour” of speaking
    engagements across Canada.

    And, he’s banking on the transfer agreement that allows Canadians
    convicted and jailed in America to serve their time here and take
    advantage of our very liberal early-release laws.

    If that happened, he could be out within a few years. But Ottawa has
    regularly rejected drug offenders for the program and I doubt Emery
    will find any sympathy.

    I suspect he’s likely to moulder in a violent, overcrowded U.S. jail
    for probably his full five-year sentence.

    “I’m going to do more time than many violent, repeat offenders,” he
    noted.

    “There isn’t a single victim in my case, no one who can stand up and
    say, ‘I was hurt by Marc Emery.’ No one.”

    He’s right again.

    Emery is facing more jail time than corporate criminals who defraud
    widows and orphans and longer incarceration than violent offenders who
    leave their victims dead or in wheelchairs.

    Whatever else you may think of him — and I know he rankles many —
    what is happening to him today mocks our independence and our ideal of
    justice.

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

    Prepared by: Richard Lake, Senior Editor www.mapinc.org

    =.

  • Focus Alerts

    #414 How Pot Became Legal

    Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2009
    Subject: #414 How Pot Became Legal

    HOW POT BECAME LEGAL

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

    DrugSense FOCUS Alert #414 – Friday, 18 September 2009

    Marijuana specific magazines have been around, and come and gone,
    since Michael R. Aldrich, Ph.D., published the first magazine “The
    Marijuana Review” in the early 1970s. These magazines reach an
    audience which believes marijuana should be legal.

    It is when mainstream magazines publish articles which may lead those
    skeptical about legalization to become legalization supporters that
    reform progress is made.

    On the news stands now and until September 28th is a good example, the
    current issue of Fortune. You may read the article as printed at
    http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v09/n872/a03.html The dozen photos and
    three graphics with the article may make it worth buying. Please
    consider writing a LTE to the magazine.

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

    Source: Fortune (US)

    Page: 140

    Cover: article, title “Is Pot Already Legal”

    Copyright: 2009 Time Inc.

    Contact: [email protected]

    Author: Roger Parloff

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

    The Following Are Paragraphs Excerpted From the Article.

    When Irvin Rosenfeld, 56, picks me up at the Fort Lauderdale airport,
    his SUV reeks of marijuana. The vice president for sales at a local
    brokerage firm, Rosenfeld has been smoking 10 to 12 marijuana
    cigarettes a day for 38 years, he says.

    That’s probably unusual in itself, but what makes Rosenfeld
    exceptional is that for the past 27 years, he has been copping his
    weed directly from the United States government.

    Every 25 days Rosenfeld goes to a pharmacy and picks up a tin of 300
    federally grown and rolled cigarettes that have been sent there for
    him by the National Institute of Drug Abuse ( NIDA ), acting with
    approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

    [snip]

    The acceptance of medical marijuana has implications that extend far
    beyond helping those suffering from life-threatening diseases. It is
    one of several factors — including demographic changes, the financial
    crisis, and the widely perceived failure of the war on drugs —
    reopening the country’s 40-year-old on-again, off-again shouting match
    over whether marijuana should be legalized.

    This article is not another polemic about why it should or shouldn’t
    be. Today, in any case, the pertinent question is whether it already
    has been — at least on a local-option basis. We’re referring to a
    cultural phenomenon that has been evolving for the past 15 years,
    topped off by a crucial policy reversal that was quietly instituted by
    President Barack Obama in February.

    [snip]

    As a result, in most of California’s coastal metropolitan areas,
    marijuana is effectively legal today. Any resident older than 18 who
    gets a note from a doctor can lawfully buy the stuff, and doctors
    seemingly eager to write such notes, typically in exchange for a $200
    consultation fee, advertise in newspapers and on websites.

    There are an estimated 300,000 to 400,000 medical marijuana patients
    in the state now, and the figure is rapidly growing.

    More astonishingly, there are about 700 medical marijuana dispensaries
    now operating in California openly distributing the drug.

    [snip]

    Marijuana activists thought they were close to legalization once
    before. From 1973 to 1978 activists won decriminalization in 11
    states. (“Decriminalization” is a grab-bag term but usually refers to
    schemes under which first-time possession of small quantities of
    marijuana becomes a noncriminal violation, akin to a parking ticket.
    Decriminalization falls short of legalization, in that sale and
    distribution remain serious felonies.)

    In 1977, President Jimmy Carter endorsed a federal decriminalization
    bill. But the bill went nowhere, and soon the movement was all but
    obliterated by the return swing of the cultural pendulum, now known as
    the Reagan Revolution. There would be no new state or federal
    marijuana reforms for the next 16 years.

    “Here’s what’s different now,” asserts Ethan Nadelmann, the head of
    the Drug Policy Alliance, which favors marijuana legalization on a
    tax-and-regulate model. “First, in the late 1970s no more than 30% of
    the American public supported making marijuana legal. Now it’s
    breaking 40%.”

    That jump reflects an important demographic change, Nadelmann notes.
    “Back then there was a whole older generation of Americans who didn’t
    know the difference between marijuana and heroin,” he says. “Now that
    generation is mostly gone. The people in power are baby boomers, a
    majority of whom actually smoked marijuana.”

    [snip]

    “I think the next five or six years are going to be incredibly
    exciting for this issue,” says Stroup, who founded the National
    Organization to Reform Marijuana Laws 39 years ago. “I honestly
    believe we’ll stop arresting individual smokers in almost all states
    and start to see the first one or two states experiment with a
    legalization bill.”

    Although Stroup originally wanted the “R” in NORML to stand for
    “Repeal,” he was later talked into softening it to “Reform” by cooler,
    more politically savvy advisers. Now he thinks society might finally
    be closing in on his original goal.

    Could be. Just watch out for those swinging pendulums.

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

    PLEASE SEND US A COPY OF YOUR LETTER

    Please post copies of your letters to the sent letter list (
    [email protected] ) if you are subscribed.

    Subscribing to the Sent LTE list will help you to review other sent
    LTEs and perhaps come up with new ideas or approaches.

    To subscribe to the Sent LTE mailing list see

    http://www.mapinc.org/lists/index.htm#form

    Suggestions for writing LTEs are at our Media Activism
    Center

    http://www.mapinc.org/resource/#guides

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

    Prepared by: Richard Lake, Senior Editor www.mapinc.org

    =.

  • Focus Alerts

    #413 Prohibition’s Failed – Time For A New Drugs Policy

    Date: Sun, 6 Sep 2009
    Subject: #413 Prohibition’s Failed – Time For A New Drugs Policy

    PROHIBITION’S FAILED – TIME FOR A NEW DRUGS POLICY

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

    DrugSense FOCUS Alert #413 – Sunday, 6 September 2009

    One of the top ten British Sunday newspapers, The Observer, published
    four items of interest today. The Observer is the UK’s only full-color
    Sunday newspaper and has an audited readership of about 1,374,000.

    Below is today’s editorial. The OPED by Fernando Henrique Cardoso is
    at http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v09.n840.a08.html The Latin American
    Commission on Drugs and Democracy website is at http://drugsanddemocracy.org/

    Gaby Hinsliff, political editor for The Observer, wrote a separate
    article “Former President of Brazil Says Hardline War on Drugs ‘Has
    Failed'” http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v09.n840.a09.html which also
    is about the Cardoso OPED.

    Not as directly related as the three items above is an article by Ed
    Vulliamy writing from Tijuana “Is America Ready to Admit Defeat in Its
    40-Year War on Drugs?” http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v09.n840.a06.html

    Each Observer item, or some or all taken together, are worthy of your
    letter to the editor. The Observer website lists their email address
    for letters as [email protected]

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

    Source: Observer, The (UK)

    Copyright: 2009 Guardian News and Media Limited

    Contact: [email protected]

    PROHIBITION’S FAILED. TIME FOR A NEW DRUGS POLICY

    IN JUNE 1971, US President Richard Nixon declared a “war on drugs”.
    Drugs won.

    The policy of deploying the full might of the state against the
    production, supply and consumption of illegal drugs has not worked.
    Pretty much anyone in the developed world who wants to take illicit
    substances can buy them. Those purchases fund a multibillion dollar
    global industry that has enriched mighty criminal cartels, for whom
    law enforcement agencies are mostly just a nuisance, rarely a threat.
    Meanwhile, the terrible harm that drug dependency does to individuals
    and societies has not been reduced. Demand and supply flourish.

    “It is time to admit the obvious,” writes Fernando Henrique Cardoso,
    former president of Brazil, in the Observer today. “The ‘war on drugs’
    has failed.”

    Earlier this year, Mr Cardoso co-chaired the Latin American Commission
    on Drugs and Democracy with former presidents of Colombia and Mexico.
    They endorsed a collective shift in policy from repression of drug use
    to harm reduction. Last month, Argentina’s supreme court declared the
    prosecution of individuals for the possession of small amounts of
    drugs to be unconstitutional. Colombia’s constitutional court came to
    a similar conclusion in 1994.

    The trend towards decriminalisation in Latin America is born of
    desperation. The continent is the world’s largest exporter of cocaine
    and marijuana. Its economies and criminal justice systems have been
    corrupted by the trade; in some areas the power of the drug gangs
    rivals that of the state. Something had to change.

    Something must change also in the countries that buy Latin America’s
    biggest export. In Britain, more than half a million people aged 16-24
    took cocaine last year, according to Home Office statistics. More than
    a third of all Britons aged 16-59 have taken drugs at some point in
    their lives; one in 10 in the last year.

    Not all of those people are a menace to society. Most of them are not
    even a menace to themselves. Most who take drugs in their youth stop
    later on. A generation that has grown up with normalised recreational
    drug use now occupies the commanding heights of business, media and
    politics. They might not take drugs themselves, but they are not
    morally outraged by them.

    That is a significant cultural change. The political fixation on drugs
    prohibition really took hold in the west in the 1960s as much from
    moral panic about a subversive counterculture as from analysis of the
    harm caused by particular drugs.

    Since then, the law has tried to maintain a distinction between
    reputable and disreputable substances that neither users nor medical
    research recognise. Scientific attempts to classify drugs in terms of
    the harm they do to the body and society routinely place tobacco and
    alcohol ahead of cannabis and ecstasy. The point is not that the wrong
    drugs are banned, but that the law is nonsense to anyone with real
    knowledge of the substances involved.

    One point of general agreement is that heroin is the big problem. It
    is highly addictive and those who are dependent up to 300,000 in
    Britain tend to commit a lot of crime to fund their habit. But then it
    is hard to tell how much of the problem is contained by prohibition
    and how much caused by it.

    Leaving gangsters in charge of supply ensures that addicts get a more
    toxic product and get ever more ensnared in criminality.

    Those arguments do not prove that the solution lies in legalisation,
    or even just decriminalisation. But as Mr Cardoso argues: “Continuing
    the drugs war with more of the same is ludicrous.”

    The entire framework of the debate must change. In Britain, we operate
    with laws that start from the premise that drug use is inherently
    morally wrong, and then seek ways to stop it. Instead we must start by
    evaluating the harm that drug use does, and then look for the best
    ways to alleviate it; and we must have the courage to follow that
    logic wherever it leads.

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

    PLEASE SEND US A COPY OF YOUR LETTER

    Please post copies of your letters to the sent letter list (
    [email protected] ) if you are subscribed.

    Subscribing to the Sent LTE list will help you to review other sent
    LTEs and perhaps come up with new ideas or approaches.

    To subscribe to the Sent LTE mailing list see

    http://www.mapinc.org/lists/index.htm#form

    Suggestions for writing LTEs are at our Media Activism
    Center

    http://www.mapinc.org/resource/#guides

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

    Prepared by: Richard Lake, Senior Editor www.mapinc.org

    =.

  • Focus Alerts

    #412 Decriminalization – A Better Approach?

    Date: Sun, 30 Aug 2009
    Subject: #412 Decriminalization – A Better Approach?

    DECRIMINALIZATION – A BETTER APPROACH?

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

    DrugSense FOCUS Alert #412 – Sunday, 30 August 2009

    Alan Bock in today’s column discusses the impact of decriminalization
    of drugs in Mexico and Portugal. He then shows the United States
    failing in it’s drug war efforts and concludes that decriminalization
    is not a complete solution.

    Glenn Greenwald’s White Paper “Drug Decriminalization in Portugal:
    Lessons for Creating Fair and Successful Drug Policies” may be
    obtained from http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10080

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

    Pubdate: Sun, 30 Aug 2009

    Source: The Orange County Register

    Copyright: 2009 The Orange County Register

    Contact: [email protected]

    Author: Alan Bock, Sr. editorial writer, The Orange County Register

    IN DRUG-RAVAGED MEXICO, A NEW APPROACH

    Mexico on Aug. 21 officially decriminalized possession and use of
    small amounts of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and other drugs.
    Specifically, a police search that turns up a half-gram of cocaine
    (about four lines) five grams of marijuana (about four cigarettes), 50
    milligrams of heroin, 40 milligrams of methamphetamines or 0.015
    milligrams of LSD will not bring any jail time.

    This might seem counterintuitive, given that Mexico is in the throes
    of a real, live shooting (and torturing and decapitating) drug war
    that has seen the deaths of 12,000 people since 2006. If Mexico has
    been getting serious about trying to stop drug trafficking and
    disassemble the vicious cartels that supply drugs, why “send the
    message” that possession of small amounts of drugs is OK? Doesn’t that
    undermine the larger anti-drugs effort?

    Aside from the fact that police and prosecutors in practice seldom
    send small-time drug users to jail, given the resources required to do
    so, there are reasons to hope, based on experience in other countries,
    the decriminalization just might reduce the prevalence of drug usage
    and help society get a better handle on drug addiction and related
    problems, such as deaths due to drug overdose and transmission of AIDS
    and other infectious diseases through dirty needles.

    Indeed, there is considerable evidence, though it falls short of a
    straight-line cause-and-effect relationship, that the more heavily a
    country criminalizes the use of drugs, the greater the usage of those
    drugs is.

    It is important to make a distinction between decriminalization and
    legalization. Under decriminalization possession and use of certain
    drugs is still illegal, but evidence of such usage is handled
    administratively rather than through the criminal courts system.

    Being caught with drugs therefore does not create a criminal record,
    with the symbolic and concrete impact this can have on peoples’ lives.
    It turns out that under such a regime more drug users, freed of the
    fear of a prison sentence or the stigma of a criminal record, seek
    treatment, which is usually recommended and in some cases mandatory
    for those caught repeatedly.

    The country that has most completely instituted a decriminalization
    regime is Portugal, which on July 1, 2001, decriminalized all drugs,
    including cocaine and heroin. Constitutional lawyer and Salon.com
    commentator Glenn Greenwald did a comprehensive study of the effects
    of decriminalization in Portugal earlier this year, and found that the
    drug abuse situation for most previously illicit drugs, including
    overdose deaths and disease transmission, had improved significantly,
    compared with the predecriminalization period and compared with other
    EU countries.

    In Portugal the consumption, possession and acquisition of drugs
    amounting to a 10-day supply for an average user is an administrative
    offense. Trafficking, defined as possessing more than a 10-day supply,
    is still punished through the criminal law. Those caught with small
    amounts of drugs are referred to what is called a Dissuasion
    Commission, which has wide discretion as to whether to impose a fine
    or other penalty. While the commissions cannot impose mandatory
    treatment, they can make suspension of a fine conditional on entering
    treatment.

    Users found to be addicts can be subject to a wider range of sanction,
    including suspension of the right to practice a licensed profession
    and a ban on visiting high-risk locales or associating with certain
    individuals. But the emphasis is on treatment.

    One might suppose that decriminalization was instituted because
    authorities had developed a laissez-faire attitude toward drug use. In
    fact, as Greenwald writes, “the political impetus for
    decriminalization was the fact that drug abuse – both in itself and
    its accompanying pathologies – was an uncontrollable social problem.”
    Drug usage, drug deaths and drug-related disease all skyrocketed
    during the 1990s under criminalization. A commission convened in 1998
    came up with decriminalization as the most effective strategy to get
    these pathologies under control.

    Most EU countries have adopted more harm-reduction-oriented policies
    than the U.S. has, including several that have depenalized (no jail
    time) marijuana possession. But Portugal is the only country that has
    gone all the way to decriminalization.

    Some predicted a dramatic increase in drug usage and “drug tourism.”
    Paulo Portas of the conservative Popular Party said: “There will be
    planeloads of students heading for [Portugal] to smoke marijuana and
    take a lot worse, knowing we won’t put them in jail. We promise sun,
    beaches and any drug you want.” Didn’t happen. Since decriminalization
    roughly 95 percent of those cited for drug offenses have been Portuguese.

    In fact, the results have been dramatic – in the other direction.
    Since decriminalization lifetime prevalence rates (any consumption
    over a lifetime) have decreased, especially for the critical
    adolescent-young-adult population cohort. For 13-15-year-olds the rate
    decreased from 14.1 percent in 2001 to 10.6 percent in 2006. For
    16-18-year-olds, the lifetime prevalence rate, which had increased
    from 14.1 percent in 1995 to 27.6 percent in 2001, fell to 21.6
    percent in 2006. Perhaps most significantly, heroin use, which
    officials felt was the most socially destructive drug, fell from 2.5
    percent to 1.8 percent from 1999-2005.

    The number of drug-related HIV and AIDS cases has declined
    substantially every year, as have Hepatitis B and C infections and
    drug-related mortality rates.

    When compared with the rest of the EU, usage rates in Portugal, which
    had been among the highest in Europe, are now among the lowest.
    Portugal now has the lowest lifetime prevalence for cannabis
    (marijuana) usage in Europe, 8.2 percent, while in Europe generally it
    is 25 percent. Portugal has a lifetime rate of 1.6 percent for
    cocaine, compared to 4 percent for Europe generally.

    For whatever bundle of reasons, we should start getting accustomed to
    the idea that harsh anti-drugs laws are often correlated with a
    worsening of drug problems and decriminalization with bringing them
    into manageable bounds. Mr. Greenwald cites a 2008 survey of 17
    countries showing that the U.S. had by far the highest level of
    cocaine use over a lifetime (16.2 percent to second-place New
    Zealand’s 4.3 percent) and the highest level of cannabis use. As
    Greenwald writes, “stringent criminalization laws do not produce lower
    drug usage, and some data suggest the opposite may be true.”

    Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the pro-reform Drug Policy
    Alliance, told me that while Mexico’s move is encouraging, it would be
    a mistake to expect the results to replicate Portugal’s exactly.
    Portugal prepared the ground with a thorough commission report and
    achieved commitment from law enforcement, while Mexico decriminalized
    smaller amounts, still has a culture of corruption, and may be less
    prepared to implement the new law, especially when it comes to
    offering treatment.

    I would add that Mexico makes no provision for acquisition of drugs,
    which is likely to leave the black market largely undisturbed and
    still powerful. Decriminalization combined with a determination to end
    trafficking can leave users still dependent on the black market as is
    still the case for all too many medical patients in California. The
    way to undermine a black market is to allow a white market to emerge.

    Nonetheless, Mexico’s move, combined with a court decision in
    Argentina last week that will have a similar impact on small-time
    users, has the potential to put a significant dent in the religion of
    prohibitionism. Now if we can just get politicians in the U.S. to pay
    attention.

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

    Prepared by: Richard Lake, Senior Editor www.mapinc.org

    =.

  • Focus Alerts

    #411 Tide Turns In Favour Of Drug Reform

    Date: Thu, 27 Aug 2009
    Subject: #411 Tide Turns In Favour Of Drug Reform

    TIDE TURNS IN FAVOUR OF DRUG REFORM

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

    DrugSense FOCUS Alert #411 – Thursday, 27 August 2009

    Some DrugSense FOCUS Alerts are produced because of targets worthy of
    letters to the editor.

    Others because a news clipping is worthy of the attention of a wider
    audience – like the OPED below by Doctor Alex Wodak.

    More information about the work of Doctor Wodak appears on the
    International Harm Reduction Association website on this page
    http://www.ihra.net/HistoryandFounders#AlexWodak

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

    Source: Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)

    Copyright: 2009 The Sydney Morning Herald

    Contact: [email protected]

    Author: Alex Wodak

    Note: Alex Wodak is director of the Alcohol and Drug Service at St
    Vincent’s Hospital.

    TIDE TURNS IN FAVOUR OF DRUG REFORM

    One hundred years ago, the US convened the International Opium
    Conference. This meeting of 13 nations in Shanghai was the beginning
    of global drug prohibition.

    Prohibition slowly became one of the most universally applied policies
    in the world. But a century on, international support for this blanket
    drug policy is slowly but inexorably unravelling.

    In January, Barack Obama became the third US president in a row to
    admit to consumption of cannabis. Bill Clinton had admitted using
    cannabis but denied ever inhaling it. George Bush was taped saying in
    private he would never admit in public to having used cannabis. When
    Obama was asked whether he had inhaled cannabis, he said: “Of course.
    That was the whole point.”

    Obama has candidly discussed his drug use. “Pot had helped, and booze;
    maybe a little blow [cocaine] when you could afford it.” He has also
    admitted the “war on drugs is an utter failure” and called for more
    focus on a public health approach.

    In February, a Latin American drug policy commission similarly
    concluded that the “drug war is a failure”. It recommended breaking
    the “taboo on open debate including about cannabis decriminalisation”.
    The same month, an American diplomat said the US supported
    needle-exchange programs to help reduce the transmission of HIV and
    other blood-borne diseases, and supported using medication to treat
    those addicted to opiates.

    In March, the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs met in
    Vienna as the culmination of a 10-year review of global drug policy. A
    “political declaration” was issued which, at the urging of the US,
    excluded the phrase “harm reduction”. This omission caused a split in
    the fragile international consensus on drug policy and resulted in 26
    countries, including Australia, demanding explicit support for harm
    reduction in a footnote.

    In April, Michel Kazatchkine, of the Global Fund to Fight Aids,
    Tuberculosis and Malaria, argued in favour of decriminalising illicit
    drugs to allow efforts to halt the spread of HIV to succeed. The same
    month, a national Zogby poll in the US provided evidence of changing
    opinion on the legalisation of cannabis: 52 per cent supported
    cannabis becoming legal, taxed and regulated.

    In May there was movement on several fronts. The Governor of
    California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, said: “I think it’s not time for
    [legalisation], but I think it’s time for a debate.” He was supported
    by a number of other American politicians, while Vicente Fox, a former
    Mexican president, said he was not yet convinced it was the solution
    but asked: “Why not discuss it?” The Colombian Vice-President,
    Francisco Santos Calderon, is already convinced. “The only way you can
    really solve the problem [is] if you legalise it totally.”

    Obama’s drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, the director of the Office of
    National Drug Control Policy, said he wanted to banish the idea of
    fighting a “war on drugs”, while the United Nations Secretary-General,
    Ban Ki-moon, said criminal sanctions on same-sex sex, commercial sex
    and drug injections were barriers for HIV treatment services. “Those
    behaviours should be decriminalised, and people addicted to drugs
    should receive health services for the treatment of their addiction,”
    he said.

    In Germany, the federal parliament voted 63 per cent in favour to
    allow heroin prescription treatment.

    In July, the Economic and Social Council, a UN body more senior than
    the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, approved a resolution requiring
    national governments to provide “services for injecting drug users in
    all settings, including prisons” and harm reduction programs such as
    needle syringe programs and substitution treatment for heroin users.
    This month, Mexico removed criminal sanctions for possessing any
    illicit drug in small quantities while Argentina is making similar
    changes for cannabis.

    Portugal, Spain and Italy had earlier dropped criminal sanctions for
    possessing small amounts of any illicit drug, while the Netherlands
    and Germany have achieved the same effect by changing policing policy.

    It is now clear that support for a drug policy heavily reliant on law
    enforcement is dwindling in Western Europe, the US and South America,
    while support for harm reduction and drug law reform is growing.
    Sooner or later this debate will start again in Australia.

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

    Prepared by: Richard Lake, Senior Editor www.mapinc.org

    =.

  • Focus Alerts

    #410 Why It’s Time To End The War On Drugs

    Date: Tue, 4 Aug 2009
    Subject: #410 Why It’s Time To End The War On Drugs

    WHY IT’S TIME TO END THE WAR ON DRUGS

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

    DrugSense FOCUS Alert #410 – Tuesday, 3 August 2009

    There are many good books available about various aspects of the War
    on Drugs. Short read summaries printed by newspapers are less common.

    Below is a column printed this past weekend in the Financial Times
    Weekend Magazine.

    As a 501(c)3 educational non-profit the Media Awareness Project and
    DrugSense seeks to educate our audience about the War on Drugs — in
    addition to it’s well known news clipping service.

    It is why we post to MAP some of the best articles from web only
    sources like AlterNet, the Huffington Post, Reason Online and Salon –
    items marked with Web: in the subject line.

    Each Friday evening we distribute our on-line DrugSense Weekly which
    includes the Hot Off The ‘Net section. The section points to a variety
    web-only information – an average of about 10 links each week.

    Each week the current issue may be accessed at http://www.drugsense.org/current.htm

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

    Pubdate: Sat, 1 Aug 2009

    Source: Financial Times Weekend Magazine (UK)

    Copyright: The Financial Times Limited 2009

    Contact: [email protected]

    Author: Matthew Engel

    Note: Matthew Engel is a regular contributor to FT Weekend Magazine

    WHY IT’S TIME TO END THE WAR ON DRUGS

    Carlisle Racecourse, near the border between England and Scotland, is
    not usually regarded as one of the world’s great centres of
    progressive thought. It is not even one of the great centres of
    British horse racing. But in a hospitality room there in June, the
    director of public health for Cumbria, Professor John Ashton, startled
    a room full of local delegates at a conference entitled “Tackling
    Drugs, Changing Lives” by calling for total legalisation. “The war on
    drugs has failed,” he said. “We need to think differently.” He said
    that heroin, and everything else now banned, should be available over
    the counter in chemists’ shops.

    At any rate, he certainly startled the reporter from the Carlisle News
    & Star who made a splendid splash with the story, giving just a
    paragraph to the counter-argument from Detective Superintendent Paul
    Carter of Cumbria Police. “Class A drugs destroy the fabric of
    people’s lives,” he responded. “We have to do everything we can to get
    people away from drugs like heroin and cocaine.” Well, “Cop Backs Drug
    Laws” hardly sounds like news, does it? But actually it is Carter who
    seems increasingly out of step.

    For decades many academics and professionals have regarded the current
    blanket prohibition on recreational drugs (though not alcohol or
    tobacco) as absurd, counter-productive and destructive. But there has
    never been any political imperative for change, and a thousand reasons
    to do nothing.

    For nearly 40 years, since the habits established in the 1960s took
    root in society, there has been a stand-off. Across the free world,
    and most of the unfree, anyone seriously interested in smoking,
    snorting, swallowing or injecting illegal substances can acquire the
    wherewithal with a little effort, and proceed without much fear of
    retribution, particularly if they are wealthy enough. Police and
    politicians say they are interested in punishing the suppliers and not
    the users. This is an intellectual nonsense, but it has suited
    everyone who matters. The drug users don’t care; governments have felt
    no pressure to attempt a politically dangerous reform; and above all
    it suits the international gangsters who control the drug business,
    which offers massive rewards and for them minimal risks.

    But 2009 has seen a change: among the academics and professionals who
    study this issue, from Carlisle Racecourse to the think-tanks of
    Washington, there is growing sense that reform is possible and
    increasingly urgent. The argument is not that drug use is A Good
    Thing. It is that the collateral damage caused by the so-called war on
    drugs has now reached catastrophic proportions. And even some
    politicians have started to think this might be worth discussing. The
    biggest single reason (as with so much else this year) is the Obama
    Effect. In one way, this may be short-lived since the president’s
    reputation will eventually be tarnished by reality. But the chief
    barrier to reform has been that the international agreements barring
    the drugs trade have been enforced primarily by threats of retaliation
    from the White House.

    Obama is the third successive president believed to have used illegal
    drugs: Bill Clinton famously did not inhale; in a conversation that
    was secretly taped when he was governor of Texas, George W. Bush
    didn’t deny that he had smoked marijuana or used cocaine; Obama has
    admitted using both dope and “a little blow”. Unlike the other two, he
    is also on record as favouring decriminalisation of cannabis and more
    generally addressing the problem. The president having other
    preoccupations, there is no sign of him proposing the Do What The Hell
    You Like Bill to Congress any time soon. There is every sign that the
    blanket ban on other people’s initiatives has been partially lifted.

    Obama has also come to power amid a growing sense of alarm about the
    US prison population. Nearly four million Americans are either
    physically in jail (including almost 5 per cent of all black males) or
    under some form of state or federal jurisdiction. About 20 per cent of
    these are listed as having committed drug offences. But this must be a
    gross underestimate of reality. I recently asked a British judge what
    percentage of the defendants in his court were there for drugs-related
    crimes: not just direct breaches of the drug laws, but also crimes
    committed by those whose behaviour was affected by drug use or who
    were trying to obtain money to buy them. He thought for a moment then
    said: “Sixty per cent. And most of the rest involve alcohol.” We may
    assume that, in the more drug-pervasive American culture, the figure
    would be higher than this.

    At the same time, Americans have seen on the nightly news the brutal
    wars between -Mexican drug gangs reach their border. And afterwards
    they have watched The Wire, which has given them a serious dose of
    daily inner city reality. Some observers see the collective shrug that
    greeted the admission of dope-smoking by the Olympic swimming hero
    Michael Phelps as a sign that attitudes are changing in middle America.

    What would be less clear to TV watchers is the extent to which, under
    harsh and prescriptive sentencing guidelines, the wrong criminals are
    locked up. According to Sanho Tree of the Institute for Policy
    Studies in Washington: “There have been judges who’ve been literally
    in tears because they have been forced to sentence girlfriends of
    low-level dealers to 20 years. Perhaps they fielded a call for their
    boyfriends. And then the kingpin walks out in six months depending on
    how much information they’ve given.”

    . . .

    Attitudes are certainly changing elsewhere. Several countries,
    especially in South America, are starting to flirt with liberalisation
    Portugal decriminalised all drug use in 2001 and the policy is said to
    have widespread acceptance. Now the former president of Brazil,
    Fernando Henrique Cardoso, has called for the decriminalisation of
    cocaine and says that many serving politicians quietly agree with him.

    The South American shift ties in with a growing belief that the
    US-backed policy of coca eradication has been useless if the crop
    disappears from one remote valley, it pops up in another. Meanwhile,
    the once trumpeted poppy-eradication mission in Afghanistan is
    increasingly perceived as a strategy that could strengthen the Taliban
    by curbing overproduction. “We’re fighting over minimally processed
    agricultural commodities,” says Tree. “Heroin, cocaine and marijuana
    are incredibly cheap to produce. There is an inexhaustible resource of
    poor farmers to grow these crops and an undiminished supply of
    consumers. The more we increase law enforcement the greater the
    risk-reward for the traffickers. It’s an exercise in futility.”

    Tree is by no means a lone voice in the Washington policy nexus. Jim
    Webb, -the Democratic senator for Virginia, said in April that the
    issue of marijuana legalisation should be “on the table”. There is
    interest too from rightwing libertarians such as the Texas congressman
    and sometime presidential candidate Ron Paul. Indeed a leading
    pro-reform voice in Washington is the Cato Institute, usually
    associated with the Republicans. And the campaign is backed by
    well-organised pressure groups.

    It is hard to find coherent advocates on the other side of the
    argument. On the web, I came across Drug Watch International, based in
    Omaha, promising “current information … to counter drug advocacy
    propaganda”. The lead item on its site dates from 2002. I did track
    down its president, Dr John Coleman, formerly an undercover agent at
    what is now the Drug Enforcement Administration. He proved an amiable
    interviewee who offered me an intriguingly contrarian defence of the
    American alcohol prohibition years: unpopular though the law was,
    —drink-related diseases fell. The drug prohibition, he felt, also
    worked.

    “In the US, the levels of drug use in most categories are lower than
    in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. There’s a lot of social change, a lot of
    ageing out,” he said. “We have a more intelligent law enforcement
    system. The confiscation laws are very effective. I don’t think we
    should be surprised if public policies work. We do have drug problems,
    I’m not minimising them. But if we ignore the progress we’ve made,
    we’re short-changing ourselves.”

    It is the practical men who seem most disposed to support the status
    quo. The most eloquent I discovered was back in Carlisle – Paul
    Carter, the cop at the racecourse conference. “I joined the police 28
    years ago and I went to the deaths of many young people who had
    overdosed on heroin, particularly, and each one is an utter tragedy. I
    think there are fewer now and that we are beginning to make a difference.

    “There’s a cycle of life when you’re on heroin when you’re either
    asleep or not aware of what’s going on around you. If society
    sanctioned that effect on another generation, what does that say about
    us all?”

    The policy wonks arguing for change have not, as a rule, attended a
    dead body in a dingy flat, but the macro-argument tends to lead in
    another direction even among senior police officers like Norm
    Stamper, the former police chief of Seattle, who told The New York
    Times: “We’ve spent a -trillion dollars prosecuting the war on drugs.
    What do we have to show for it? Drugs are more readily available, at
    lower prices and higher levels of potency. It’s a dismal failure.”

    . . .

    The drug laws were dingy from the start: Congress made marijuana
    illegal in 1937 after a farcical debate, due to pressure from -western
    farmers who wanted their Mexican labourers to work harder. The user
    community keeps discovering “legal highs”, governments promptly ban
    them whereupon their popularity increases.

    In Britain, there is something close to despair among academics about
    the political process. Drugs are classified A, B and C, allegedly
    according to the degree of harm. But the theory ignores the immutable
    constitutional provision that laws are subject to the approval of the
    editor of the Daily Mail. Cannabis was downgraded from B to C and then
    back again, to meet the government’s political needs; this had no
    effect on either suppliers or users.

    Ecstasy (which alarms the Mail) is deemed a class A drug, the most
    dangerous rating, although – according to a major study published by
    The Lancet in 2007- it ranks 18th in degree of harm among 20
    well-known substances, ahead only of poppers and khat (both legal) and
    well behind alcohol and tobacco (ditto). “We’re supposed to have
    evidence-led policy formulation,” says Mike Levi, professor of
    criminology at Cardiff University, “but it often doesn’t happen in the
    drugs area.”

    At the conferences Levi attends, the argument has shifted. “The
    question of a more rational drug policy is certainly being debated.
    There aren’t many old-fashioned zealots for the old methods of drug
    control even in the police, who are more open to change than recent
    home secretaries. But however good an idea it might be in the abstract
    it would take a more mature political and media conversation about it
    before it is likely to happen. Always keep ahold of nurse, for fear of
    finding something worse, that’s where we are now.”

    In Britain, with its top-down system of government, a notionally
    left-of-centre but illiberal administration and a hysterical press,
    reform is improbable, although Gordon Brown recently had a brief
    meeting with Danny Kushlick, from the pro-legalisation group
    Transform. But there is a new atmosphere in the US, where the change
    in emphasis in Washington is enough to allow initiatives to come from
    below. Already, dope-smoking is de facto legal in California thanks to
    the lifting of the ban on medical marijuana. Purchase requires a
    prescription – but anyone who wants a joint but can’t find a
    Californian medic who thinks it will help backache just isn’t trying.
    This system may well spread.

    Strangely, all this is happening just as Holland, the country that has
    been out on a limb for years with its coffee-shop culture, is
    beginning to row backwards. Once again, though, it may well be an
    anomaly. The Dutch are starting to tire of their exceptionalism and
    the drugs tourism that has resulted, just as they have tired of their
    liberal immigration policies. And the coffee shops have fallen foul of
    the indoor-smoking taboo.

    Drug use generally in Holland seems to be low. But then you can prove
    almost anything with selective use of drug statistics: it is also low
    in Sweden, which is surprisingly stern. The main source for these
    stats is the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, which maintains a huge
    bureaucracy to fight the drug problem, or at least to collect
    astonishingly detailed statistics: 3.8 per cent of Scots aged 15-64
    use cocaine every year; 21.5 per cent of the same cohort of Ghanaians
    use cannabis; opium prices in the Phongsaly and Huaphanh provinces of
    Laos range between $556 and $744 per kilo … You might think that,
    knowing all this, they might be able to do something.

    The UNODC’s executive director, Antonio Maria Costa, has been the
    chief proponent of continued prohibitionism. But, even as he
    introduced his 2009 report which, as ever, trumpeted evidence of
    success, he seemed a little rattled, repeating the new White House
    line about treatment rather than enforcement while warning that
    legalisation would be “a historic -mistake”. He went on: “Proponents
    of legalisation can’t have it both ways. A free market for drugs would
    unleash a drug epidemic, while a regulated one would create a parallel
    criminal market. Illicit drugs pose a danger to health. That’s why
    drugs are, and must remain, controlled.”

    . . .

    Of course drugs need to be controlled, just as alcohol, tobacco,
    firearms, prescription drugs, food additives and indeed UN bureaucrats
    with massive budgets need to be controlled. But the whole point is
    that illicit drugs are not controlled. The international -pretence of
    prohibition sees to that. One of the major arguments advanced for
    continuing the ban on -cannabis is that the currently available
    strains of the drug do not offer the gentle highs of the hippie years
    but are intensively cultivated and far more potent, with potentially
    serious psychological effects. The analysis is correct, according to
    my stoner friends. But the logic is 180 degrees wrong. Imagine a total
    ban on tobacco, which is no longer so unthinkable. Among the
    consequences would be an immediate return to the unfiltered
    full-strength gaspers of the 1950s, just as American alcohol
    prohibition produced moonshine. One benign -consequence of drug
    legalisation would be that users would have a guarantee of quality and
    strength/mildness: an end to heroin flavoured with brick dust (many
    believe adulteration is the real killer), and the type of -marijuana
    they actually want.

    But the case for legalisation is not about allowing baby-boom couples
    to enjoy a joint after a dinner party without drawing the curtains or
    being obliged to visit a dodgy bloke called Dave. Decriminalisation or
    even legalising cannabis on its own would achieve little. Something
    more radical is required. The crucial issue concerns the supply chain:
    the way prohibition has enriched and empowered gangsters, corrupt
    officials and indeed wholly corrupt narco-states across the planet. It
    was a point made -eloquently by the Russian economist Lev Timofeev,
    when interviewed by Misha Glenny for his book about global organised
    crime, McMafia. -“Prohibiting a market does not mean destroying it,”
    Timofeev said. What it means is placing a “dynamically developing
    market under the total control of criminal corporations”. He called
    the present situation a threat to world civilisation, which
    international public opinion had failed to grasp.

    Proper reform means legitimising production and supply, precisely so
    it can be controlled. Would it unleash a drug epidemic worse than the
    one we now have? Well, it would be an unusual child of the 1960s who
    did not mark the moment with a celebratory joint. But the novelty
    would soon wear off. And from then on, the places where it is easiest
    to obtain drugs would no longer be the inside of jails and inner-city
    school playgrounds.

    Imagine a situation – as John Ashton started to do at Carlisle
    Racecourse – where all drugs were sold in pharmacies licensed for the
    purpose. Taxation could be set at a level that brought in revenue but
    still made illegal dealing uncompetitive. For the more dangerous and
    addictive drugs there would be compulsory medical supervision.
    Identity checks and strict record-keeping would be required. There
    would be laws (which could actually be enforced) against advertising,
    adulteration, use in public, driving under the influence and supply to
    minors.

    In what way would that be worse than the present situation?

    [sidebar]

    4000BC

    Sumerian text refers to the poppy as “hul gil”, “plant of
    joy”

    2727BC

    First recorded use of cannabis in Chinese medicine

    c. 0AD

    Psychotropic effects of cannabis mentioned in Chinese
    texts

    1569

    First medical account of the coca plant

    c. 1660

    Thomas Sydenham, “the father of English medicine”, standardises
    laudanum tincture of opium as a cure-all

    1800 Napoleon bans his troops in Egypt from following the local custom
    of smoking hashish

    1860

    Opium trade legalised in China after the end of the second opium
    war

    1884

    Freud recommends cocaine for various ailments

    1886 John S. Pemberton invents Coca-Cola, containing cocaine and
    caffeine

    1903

    Cocaine removed from Coca-Cola

    1909 US bans import of opium for non-medical uses

    1912

    Opiates banned internationally under Hague Convention

    1914

    US regulates use of cocaine

    1915

    Utah becomes first US state to ban cannabis

    1920

    Opiates and cocaine banned in UK

    1922 Diary of a Drug Fiend is published, a fictional account of
    addiction

    1928 Recreational use of cannabis banned in UK

    1936

    Film Reefer Madness is released

    1937

    US effectively bans cannabis

    1966

    LSD banned in UK

    1967

    “Legalise Pot” rally held in Hyde Park

    1977

    Ecstasy banned in UK

    1980s

    US starts funding coca crop eradication in South America

    1984

    US first lady Nancy Reagan begins “Just Say No” campaign

    Mid-1980s

    Crack cocaine becomes widespread in US cities

    1992

    Bill Clinton says he smoked marijuana, but did not
    inhale

    1993

    Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar dies in a police shoot-out in
    Medellin, Colombia. Four years earlier, Forbes magazine had listed him
    as the seventh-richest person in the world, with a personal fortune
    close to $25bn

    1998

    UN secretary-general Kofi Annan announces 10-year plan for real
    progress to eliminate drug cultivation

    2001

    Portugal decriminalises drug use

    2004

    UK government downgrades cannabis from class B to class C, making it
    officially less harmful

    2009

    UK restores cannabis to class B, against the recommendations of its
    scientific advisers

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

    Prepared by: Richard Lake, Senior Editor www.mapinc.org

    =.

  • Focus Alerts

    #409 Marijuana … Has No Medicinal Benefit – Kerlikowske

    Date: Sun, 2 Aug 2009
    Subject: #409 Marijuana … Has No Medicinal Benefit – Kerlikowske

    MARIJUANA … HAS NO MEDICINAL BENEFIT – KERLIKOWSKE

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

    DrugSense FOCUS Alert #409 – Sunday, 2 August 2009

    On the 23rd of July The Fresno Bee http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v09/n000/a144.html
    quoted our drug czar:

    “Marijuana is dangerous and has no medicinal benefit,” Kerlikowske
    said in downtown Fresno while discussing Operation SOS – Save Our
    Sierra – a multiagency effort to eradicate marijuana in eastern Fresno
    County.

    Since then the remark has spread to other newspapers.

    Syndicated columnist Froma Harrop wrote a column which has appeared in
    newspapers from the East Coast to Hawaii which quotes Kerlikowske’s
    remarks. Today it was printed in a Georgia newspaper, below.

    Any time a newspaper prints anything which mentions drug czar Gil
    Kerlikowske the item is likely to be a worthy target for a letter to
    the editor.

    Bookmark this page to spot the articles and opinion items
    http://www.mapinc.org/people/Kerlikowske

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

    Pubdate: Sun, 2 Aug 2009

    Source: Athens Banner-Herald (GA)

    Copyright: 2009 The Providence Journal Company

    Contact: http://www.onlineathens.com/feedback.shtml

    Author: Froma Harrop

    OBAMA BLOWING SMOKE ON MARIJUANA

    The popular TV series “Weeds” is about a widowed suburban mother who
    deals pot to preserve her family’s cushy California dream. Not a few
    Californians would like to see the theme writ large for their state.

    California has legalized medical marijuana, its cannabis crop is
    valued at $17 billion a year, and people there smoke pot openly. But
    the state can’t collect a penny of revenues from the enormous enterprise.

    As California faced budget Armageddon, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
    called for “a debate” on the potential of tapping marijuana as a
    source of tax revenues. That’s all he can do, because federal law
    still criminalizes marijuana use.

    Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron already has calculated the sort of
    revenues California and other states could see were marijuana taxed
    like cigarettes and alcohol. California’s taxes would easily top $100
    million a year.

    But that’s the least of it. Miron puts California’s costs of enforcing
    the marijuana ban – policing, the courts, jail time – at $981 million
    a year.

    Nationally, legalizing marijuana would save $7.7 billion a year on
    drug-war spending, according to Miron. And government could raise $6.2
    billion annually in tax revenues.

    A vain hope rose that President Obama’s naming of Gil Kerlikowske as
    drug czar would lead to a more rational and humane policy on drugs. As
    Seattle’s police chief, Kerlikowske oversaw the city’s annual Hempfest
    (a giant and mellow smoke-in) without bothering the celebrants.

    But Kerlikowske announced this month that “marijuana is dangerous and
    has no medicinal benefit.” And to end any idea that the hip, liberal
    Obama administration would ease up on pot, he added, “Legalization is
    not in the president’s vocabulary, and it’s not in mine.”

    Obama readily admits having used marijuana in his youth (in addition
    to cocaine). And each year, many thousands of Americans are arrested
    and their lives ruined for doing what he did. Does Obama get to be
    president only because he wasn’t caught?

    Miron is a libertarian who sees all drug prohibition as interfering
    with people’s private lives. But he well understands the politics that
    stop politicians from taking the no-brainer position on marijuana.

    “Democrats know that the potheads are going to vote for them anyway,”
    he told me, “and the people on the other side who care about this
    stuff know that this is really a big deal.” If marijuana were
    legalized, and the sky didn’t fall in, many drug laws would crack.

    In previous economic downturns, state and local governments had turned
    to casinos and other gambling for revenues. These tough times may push
    legislators to ease their umbrage over additional “sinful” activities.

    If they want to tax marijuana, they’ll have to legalize it. But even
    the lesser step of decriminalization – whereby people may possess
    marijuana but not sell it – would save the billions of dollars spent
    going after users.

    Selling the public on expanded gambling and legalized marijuana
    require different arguments. For one thing, marijuana never was part
    of the official culture. But it does have an advantage over gambling
    as a revenue source: It doesn’t compete with other taxed businesses.
    Casinos take entertainment dollars away from restaurants, amusement
    parks and movie theaters. Legal marijuana would take business away
    from foreign drug gangs.

    A bill to “tax and regulate” marijuana like alcohol now before the
    California legislature has strong support. But it’s not going anywhere
    as long as “legalization” is not in Obama’s vocabulary. The word
    “hypocrisy” apparently has made the cut.

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

    Please post copies of your letters to the sent letter list (
    [email protected] ) if you are subscribed.

    Subscribing to the Sent LTE list will help you to review other sent
    LTEs and perhaps come up with new ideas or approaches.

    To subscribe to the Sent LTE mailing list see

    http://www.mapinc.org/lists/index.htm#form

    Suggestions for writing LTEs are at our Media Activism
    Center

    http://www.mapinc.org/resource/#guides

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

    Prepared by: Richard Lake, Senior Editor www.mapinc.org

    =.

  • Focus Alerts

    #408 Mendocino County Marijuana

    Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2009
    Subject: #408 Mendocino County Marijuana

    MENDOCINO COUNTY MARIJUANA

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

    DrugSense FOCUS Alert #408 – Monday, 27 July 2009

    Last week we distributed an alert about the Wall Street Journal front
    page article “With ‘Med Pot’ Raids Halted, Selling Grass Grows
    Greener” http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v09/n731/a02.html

    Today readers of the Washington Post, including the folks on Capitol
    Hill, may read an article about marijuana in California.

    In the first half of this year MAP has archived 782 news clippings
    about California marijuana. In the first half of last year it was 437.
    The increased interest in what is happening with the marijuana issue
    in California is real.

    The Post writes on it’s website “Letters must be fewer than 200 words
    and exclusive to The Washington Post. They may not have been
    submitted, posted to, or published by any other media. They must
    include the writer’s home address, e-mail address, and home and
    business telephone numbers.” 200 words is the average published
    letter length. However, longer well written letters have been published.

    News items about marijuana in California may be found at
    http://www.mapinc.org/find?115

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

    Pubdate: Mon, 27 Jul 2009

    Source: Washington Post (DC)

    Page: C01

    Copyright: 2009 The Washington Post Company

    Contact: [email protected]

    Author: Karl Vick, Washington Post Staff Writer

    Suddenly Righteous Dudes

    MENDOCINO COUNTY, FAMOUSLY LAID BACK, RECONSIDERS ITS STANCE ON MARIJUANA

    FORT BRAGG, Calif. — The steel-haired old hippies who grow the finest
    marijuana in the world began taking over Mendocino County four decades
    ago.

    “Going back to the ’60s, early ’70s in Mendocino County, land was
    cheap,” said Tony Craver, twice elected sheriff, now retired.
    “Thirty-five hundred square miles, only three population centers, very
    little law enforcement. . . . The hippies, if you will, moved in and
    started growing pot. The hippies became the establishment.”

    Democratic government serves at the consent of the governed; in this
    jurisdiction, enforcement of marijuana laws would be lax at best. A
    “grow” became an accepted component of the homesteads established by
    the back-to-the-land transplants who made their way across the Golden
    Gate Bridge, past the vineyards of Sonoma and into the woods. At Area
    101, a club named for the highway lined with billboards for
    hydroponics and fertilizer, December brings the Emerald Cup, a public
    competition for the “best bud” in the county, if not the world.

    “It’s so a part of Mendocino County,” said K.C. Meadows, managing
    editor of the Ukiah Daily Journal. “There are fairly large businesses
    in this town that got their start with marijuana money. And that’s
    okay with people.”

    How, then, to explain what happened to arrests here last year? Pot
    busts up 60 percent.

    And what could account for the vote to roll back the nation’s first
    law ordering police to make enforcement of marijuana laws their very
    lowest priority?

    A paradox indeed: The clampdown was set in motion by the entire state
    of California barreling down the path Mendocino blazed. In a Rube
    Goldberg sequence of cause and effect, growing acceptance of marijuana
    elsewhere in the Golden State unleashed a confluence of demand,
    tolerance and legal ambiguity rooted in political cowardice.

    The result set in motion forces that seriously harshed the mellow here
    and brought the “war on drugs” to the one place in America it had
    never really reached.

    * * *

    Pebbles Trippet arrived in Mendocino in 1970, escaping the drug laws
    of New York state. “California beckoned,” said Trippet, an activist,
    columnist and grower who has been heard to ask, “Can I pay you in bud?”

    The year she arrived, Congress passed the Controlled Substance Act,
    which ranked all drugs by capacity for harm. Marijuana landed
    alongside PCP and heroin on “Schedule 1,” a ranking even the
    establishment found reason to revisit just two years later. A
    commission appointed by President Richard Nixon recommended lightening
    up.

    “Damn near puked,” Nixon said of this on the White House tapes, where
    he was heard ordering up a pot law “that just tears the [posterior]
    out of them.” Meaning the longhaired, antiwar, free-love
    counterculture that was as much the object of the original war on
    drugs as any substance was.

    But in the years ahead more and more Americans sampled marijuana, and
    the republic remained standing. Then doctors defied the premise of the
    Schedule 1 holding of “no medicinal value” by reporting that marijuana
    alleviated conditions from glaucoma to asthma.

    Today, Trippet, 66, is president of the Mendocino Medical Marijuana
    Patients Union, a title that tidily sums up the current state of play
    on the issue: In 1996 California’s voters passed Proposition 215,
    legalizing pot for medical use.

    Lawmakers in Sacramento took a few years to gauge the politics of the
    required implementing legislation. When they finally did, it was a
    wink: They decreed in 2003 that marijuana could be used to treat “any
    . . . illness.”

    And if that wasn’t clear enough, the bill was numbered SB420 — 420
    being a code phrase in the pot subculture. 420 Magazine competes with
    High Times.

    In May, the U.S. Supreme Court endorsed the new reality: Anyone with a
    doctor’s card can smoke dope. What remains woefully unclear is where
    they are supposed to find it. Mendocino was an obvious place to look.

    In 2001, two years before the wink from Sacramento, Mendocino
    residents approved Measure G, permitting the holder of a medical card
    to grow 25 plants.

    It was a strong signal to city dwellers hard-pressed for the space to
    grow their own. Indeed, the county’s growers were superbly positioned.
    Aside from the let-it-grow culture, the high-end strains originally
    cultivated in Mendocino became the preferred stock for the storefront
    “dispensaries” that began opening elsewhere in the state.

    “Things just took off,” Trippet said. “Just about everyone felt they
    could grow. By then it was half the county. Now it’s probably
    two-thirds.”

    The money was easy. At the service window of a dispensary, patients
    page through binders of bagged snippets of Purple Kush and Train Reck.
    The tag says $50 for an eighth of an ounce. Growers could expect
    $4,000 for a pound, and get four harvests a year, growing indoors.

    “What a difference a couple of years make!” proclaimed the emcee at
    the Emerald Cup. “We all have medical permits. Everyone grows in the
    full sun. Marijuana is blooming right into mainstream America. The
    judging gets harder every year. And it’s only going to get better!”

    But it didn’t.

    * * *

    As growers lost sight of limits, things somehow got worse. The money
    changed people.

    Now some growers planted in town, considered declasse because
    flowering buds put up a powerful stink. In Ukiah, the county seat, a
    man was shot after climbing into a fenced pot patch. Another suffered
    a heart attack halfway over.

    “It’s a huge problem in our schools,” said Meredith Lintott, the
    district attorney. “Children come in reeking of marijuana.”

    Worse, outsiders poured in, some armed. In September, three carloads
    of men aged 18 to 24 arrived from Sacramento carrying guns, radios and
    pruning shears. They had read about Mendocino in High Times. Home
    invasions rose to 40 from 24 the previous year.

    None of this was the Mendocino way. Mexican cartels grow pot in
    Northern California, but off in the national forests in huge grows
    that produce inferior herb. Locals brought a specific sensibility to
    their work, one in the spirit of the “New Settlers” who produced the
    nation’s first organic commercial wine, at Frey Vineyards, and the
    first organic microbrew, at Ukiah Brewing Co.

    The outsiders, “these are people who had no pride of ownership,” said
    Tom Allman, who was elected sheriff amid the tumult. “They don’t care
    what they do to our land. A guy with a Caterpillar took off tops of
    two hills. . . . This is where government has to step in and do
    compliance checks.”

    “I think after 2007, people started to look around and say, you know
    what? This isn’t great the way it is going down,” said Scott Zeramby,
    who runs a small garden supply store in Fort Bragg. “We’ve all seen it
    go from back-to-the-landers, where people wanted to get away from it
    all, to people who came here to get it all. Property values got so
    high, the only way you could afford it was to break the law.”

    And so, in November, a measure passed to scale back Mendocino’s legal
    limit to the state’s suggested six-plant minimum. The sheriff sensed a
    mandate. Tips rolled in, and deputies saddled up.

    On Feb. 20, they busted the younger sister of a student shot dead at
    Kent State in 1970. Allison Krause was the young woman who said of the
    flowers in the barrels of the National Guardsmen who would shoot her
    and four others: “Flowers are better than bullets.”

    “I thought this was a community that was forward-thinking, progressive
    — that thought marijuana was a good thing!” said Laurel Krause, who
    was accused of having too many plants.

    Her doctor’s card recommended pot to alleviate post-traumatic stress
    disorder occasioned by Allison’s death.

    The social dynamics of small towns played a role in the backlash.
    Krause, who arrived from Silicon Valley, counts as an outsider. Her 24
    plants grew under lights in a shipping container — outsized PG&E
    bills are a reliable tip-off to cultivation — but it vented onto the
    land of a neighbor, who called the sheriff.

    “They’d be growing 75 plants in their back yard,” Craver said. “It’d
    be stinking — and it does in the summer, while your neighbor’s trying
    to have a barbecue.”

    But there are greater forces at work as well. When state lawmakers
    legalized medical marijuana, they left the supply chain in the
    shadows. Drug dealers got to call themselves dispensary operators. But
    what were growers?

    Baffled.

    “When you come out, you have confused notions about what’s possible,”
    said Trippet, who grew 100 plants on her property a couple of years
    ago, but is down to 60 out of prudence. “You’re not used to working at
    this end of the envelope. Many didn’t know about the limits.”

    Jerry Brown, known as Gov. Moonbeam in the ’80s, is California’s
    attorney general. His office last year took a stab at the open
    question of supply, publishing guidelines for enforcement of SB420.
    The guidelines hewed to the notion that suppliers of medical marijuana
    are “caregivers” and allowed “patients” to organize themselves as
    collectives.

    “The AG’s new guidelines basically require the industry be vertically
    integrated. And to do that, you’ve got to get big. And that comes with
    risks,” said a Fort Bragg resident, hollow-eyed from lack of sleep
    after her arrest. She was swept up with her boyfriend’s huge grow,
    taken down even though it was supplying dispensaries.

    “I wouldn’t have gotten involved if I didn’t think it was legal,” she
    said.

    A San Francisco Assembly member, Tom Ammiano, has introduced a bill
    taking what he calls the logical next step: legalizing marijuana,
    regulating it and taxing it. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger urged a
    serious debate, now unfolding in the state’s media.

    “If everybody doesn’t do it together — state, federal, county — it
    doesn’t work,” said Zeramby, the garden shop owner. “The communities
    with the most liberal standards are going to be inundated with the
    most opportunistic people.”

    Legalization might well serve the consumer. “There is no way it costs
    $3,000 to $4,000 a pound to cultivate marijuana,” said Keith Faulder,
    a former prosecutor who now defends pot cases in Ukiah. “These are the
    costs of keeping it underground.”

    Growers, however, may well prefer the status quo, even with the risks.
    That would put them in a rare alliance with the police and prosecutors
    who back in 1996 campaigned against Proposition 215, warning against
    precisely what has come to pass.

    “It’s going, definitely, in a direction that I don’t believe in,” said
    Ron Brooks, president of the National Narcotics Officers’
    Associations’ Coalition. His last, best case against: “Even if it’s no
    worse than alcohol, we all know of people who lost their livelihood
    and their lives. Why would we admit legal respectability to another
    powerful drug?”

    In Mendocino, though, the quest is only for the clarity ducked by
    lawmakers, and emerging from courts at a pace that does little to help
    Sheriff Allman. Constituents pepper him with questions.

    Down at the courthouse, the district attorney sighs.

    “It’s extremely confusing, even for those who work in it every single
    day,” Lintott said. “Clearly when the law was passed the cover was
    cancer, glaucoma — real distinct health issues. We’re not there anymore.”

    She sagged a bit behind her desk.

    “Quite frankly, I might benefit from a card. This is a high-stress
    job. It would probably do me good to go home and smoke some pot in the
    evening.”

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

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    =.

  • Focus Alerts

    #407 California Marijuana In The News

    Date: Fri, 24 Jul 2009
    Subject: #407 California Marijuana In The News

    CALIFORNIA MARIJUANA IN THE NEWS

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

    DrugSense FOCUS Alert #407 – Friday, 24 July 2009

    Thursday’s front page article in the Wall Street Journal is a worthy
    target for your letters to the editor.

    The newspaper is know for printing letters in response to articles, as
    illustrated by the seven letters printed in response to this
    editorial: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v98/n439/a04.html Perhaps
    this DrugSense Focus Alert will not result in a similar boxed
    collection of letters but if letters are not sent the newspaper will
    not have good letters to select from.

    Sources for facts for your letter may be found at http://www.drugwarfacts.org/
    and http://medicalmarijuana.procon.org/

    We note that the lobbyist for the California Peace Officers’
    Association trots out the same old propaganda. Perhaps he is not aware
    that HighWire Press provides links to the studies in peer-reviewed
    medical journals about the medicinal value of cannabinoids on an
    almost daily basis. HighWire Press is a division of the Stanford
    University Libraries. For more information see http://highwire.stanford.edu/about/

    News items about marijuana in California may be found at
    http://www.mapinc.org/find?115

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

    Pubdate: Thu, 23 Jul 2009

    Source: Wall Street Journal (US)

    Page: Front Page

    Copyright: 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

    Contact: [email protected]

    Authors: Justin Scheck and Stu Woo

    WITH ‘MED POT’ RAIDS HALTED, SELLING GRASS GROWS GREENER

    LAKE FOREST, Calif. — Sellers of marijuana as a medicine here don’t
    fret about raids any more. They’ve stopped stressing over where to
    hide their stash or how to move it unseen.

    Now their concerns involve the state Board of Equalization, which
    collects sales tax and requires a retailer ID number. Or city planning
    offices, which insist that staircases comply with the Americans With
    Disabilities Act. Then there is marketing strategy, which can mean
    paying to be a “featured dispensary” on a Web site for pot smokers.

    After years in the shadows, medical marijuana in California is
    aspiring to crack the commercial mainstream.

    “I want to do everything I can to run this as a legitimate business,”
    says Jan Werner, 55 years old, who invested in a pot store in a
    shopping mall after 36 years as a car salesman.

    State voters decreed back in 1996 that Californians had a right to use
    marijuana for any illness — from cancer to anorexia to any other
    condition it might help. But supplying “med pot” remained risky. The
    ballot measure didn’t specify who could sell it or how. The state
    provided few guidelines, leaving local governments to impose a
    patchwork of restrictions. Above all, because pot possession remained
    illegal under U.S. law, sellers had to worry about federal raids.

    But in February, the Justice Department said it would adhere to
    President Barack Obama’s campaign statement that federal agents no
    longer would target med-pot dealers who comply with state law. Since
    then, vendors who had kept a low profile have begun to expand, and
    entrepreneurs who had avoided cannabis have begun to invest.

    Some now are using traditional business practices like political
    lobbying and supply-chain consolidation. Others are seeking capital or
    offering investment banking for pot purveyors. In Oakland, a school
    offers courses such as “Cannabusiness 102” and calls itself Oaksterdam
    University, after the pot-friendly Dutch city. As shops proliferate,
    there are even signs the nascent industry could be heading for another
    familiar business phenomenon: the bubble.

    Medical use of pot now is legal in 13 states. It is also facing some
    resistance. New Hampshire’s Democratic governor, John Lynch, vetoed a
    med-pot bill this month, citing inadequate safeguards. Los Angeles,
    which passed a moratorium on new dispensaries in 2007, is trying to
    close a loophole that has led to an explosion of new ones.

    John Lovell, a lobbyist for the California Peace Officers’
    Association, objects to “the notion that marijuana is safe and can be
    used for any and all purposes to heal any and all ailments,” adding:
    “There are 34 different elements in marijuana smoke that are shared
    with tobacco.” He and others also complain about the ease with which
    patients can get pot recommendations from certain doctors.

    Still, at a time of deep recession, the med-pot business is attracting
    career switchers. Mr. Werner was the sales manager of a Chrysler
    dealership, and dismayed with the collapse of car sales. He had a
    doctor’s recommendation to smoke pot, for pain from a spinal
    condition. One day a car-dealer friend, Bill Shofner, who also had a
    pot recommendation (for migraines), suggested: Why not become pot vendors?

    The mellowing of federal regulations for selling medical marijuana has
    created a crop of pot entrepreneurs with dreams of taking their
    homegrown businesses into the stock market. Justin Scheck and Stu Woo
    report from California.

    Each invested $40,000. Following state guidelines, they set up as a
    nonprofit, called Lake Forest Community Collective, from which they
    would draw salaries.

    It is on the second floor of a strip mall in the Los Angeles suburb of
    Lake Forest that also houses Mexican restaurants and a Peet’s Coffee
    shop. A customer first encounters a brightly lit front room with a
    security window and an Obama poster, then is buzzed into a vestibule
    with an ATM. Beyond that is a spotless room with glass cases
    displaying pot in pill bottles.

    Scribbled on a board are prices, from $10 to $25 a gram, for different
    strains: Sour Diesel, Purple Urkel, Bubba Hash. Sour Diesel is
    popular, says a volunteer, and “really potent.”

    This still is a far cry from, say, Amsterdam, where pot remains
    illegal but authorities are so tolerant that pot is available in
    coffeehouses.

    In California, pot sales, legal and illegal, are estimated to total
    $14 billion a year. Medical marijuana makes up maybe an eighth of
    that, says Dale Gieringer, director of the state’s chapter of the
    National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. He estimates
    the state has three million pot smokers, including 350,000 with
    doctors’ recommendations.

    The state taxes med-pot sales, and on Tuesday, the city of Oakland
    added its own special tax.

    In Lake Forest, Messrs. Werner and Shofner pay about $4,000 for a
    pound of marijuana, retailing it for about $6,000. They don’t break
    even yet, the two say.

    The business is a little like selling cars in one way, Mr. Shofner
    says: The longer they hold their stock, the less it is worth. Aging
    marijuana loses both potency and weight.

    Med-pot sellers say they generally avoid marijuana from Mexican
    cartels; the risks are higher and the quality is lower. Messrs. Werner
    and Shofner say they at first bought largely from far-northern
    California, where clandestine growers also supply the underground market.

    For reasons of cost and consistency, they have been taking fuller
    control of the supply chain. A few months ago they gave money to
    members of their collective for grow lamps and other equipment, and
    now they get much of their supply from them. “It’s like McDonald’s”
    making deals with potato farmers, Mr. Werner says.

    Some vendors are toying with another familiar business model: vertical
    integration. In pot, that means growing as well as dealing. This was a
    risky approach when a federal raid could cost an owner his pot, his
    computers and maybe even his liberty. Now, one Los Angeles-area
    med-pot vendor says he has acquired land in Northern California and
    begun to grow his own.

    Mr. Werner and his partner recently decided to expand. They signed
    leases for two new outlets.

    They also have lost their wariness of advertising. The proliferation
    of dealers makes promotion essential. The two now pay several hundred
    dollars a month for ads on Web sites like Weedmaps.com, which helps
    people find medical pot.

    Justin Hartfield, who started Weedmaps, says it has grown quickly to
    about $20,000 in monthly revenue, half from ads.

    The rest comes from referring people to doctors who recommend pot. Mr.
    Hartfield bills the doctors $20 for each patient he sends them. The
    American Medical Association ethics code says payment for referrals is
    unethical. Mr. Hartfield says the doctors are keenly aware of the
    ethics issue and consider their payments not to be fees for referral
    but “advertising fees that change every month.”

    Shane Stuart, 23, says he used to buy weed from street dealers but in
    February saw an online ad for a pot-friendly doctor. He realized then,
    he says, that medical marijuana was becoming more mainstream and
    having a pot ID card wouldn’t hurt him with employers. He came away
    from a $200 doctor visit with a note recommending pot for pain from a
    hyperextended knee.

    Mr. Hartfield, the Weedmaps impresario, has a doctor’s recommendation
    for marijuana “to ease my anxiety and help with my insomnia.” Mr.
    Hartfield says the med-pot system is really just a way of legalizing
    marijuana for anyone who wants to smoke. He says his anxiety/insomnia
    isn’t really serious enough to require treatment. “I’m fine. I don’t
    really have it,” he says. “The medical system is a total farce. I’m an
    example of that. It just needs to be legal.”

    Med-pot advocates say marijuana can ease chronic pain, spur appetite
    in anorexics or chemotherapy patients, and relieve eyeball pressure in
    glaucoma patients. The law voters approved in 1996 listed several
    conditions that might be helped but said so long as a doctor
    recommended pot, all “seriously ill Californians” had a right to it
    for “any…illness for which marijuana provides relief.”

    David Allen, a former Mississippi heart surgeon, last month opened a
    general practice in Sacramento and listed himself on a Web site as a
    pot-friendly doctor. Marijuana, says Dr. Allen, 57, “helps the common
    conditions that affect every human being — for instance, anxiety,
    depression, insomnia and anorexia” — and can relieve certain
    arthritis symptoms and muscle-spasm conditions.

    Still, he says, many of his patients are people who already used pot
    but just wanted a doctor’s recommendation to avoid legal trouble. “If
    I was to deny them, I would put them at more risk, and I’d be hurting
    society by doing this as well,” he says. “Cannabis is safer than aspirin.”

    Dr. Allen smokes pot for insomnia, anxiety and stress. He says he quit
    heart surgery because what he does now is more lucrative. He says he
    doesn’t pay for referrals, a practice he considers unethical.

    As the business matures, ancillary ventures are springing up. In
    Oakland, OD Media manages advertising and branding for about a dozen
    pot clients. An Oakland lawyer, James Anthony, and three partners have
    started a firm called Harborside Management Associates to give dealers
    business advice. A pot activist named Richard Cowan has opened what he
    envisions as an investment bank for pot-related businesses, called
    General Marijuana.

    Mr. Cowan is also chief financial officer of Cannabis Science Inc.,
    which is trying to market a pot lozenge for nonsmokers. It was founded
    by Steve Kubby, a longtime medical-marijuana advocate who a decade ago
    was acquitted of a pot-growing charge but briefly jailed for having
    illegal mushrooms in his home. Mr. Kubby says there is “no more
    alternative culture” at the company, which went public in March and
    has hired a former pharmaceutical-industry scientist to try to win
    Food and Drug Administration approval for the lozenge. Mr. Kubby left
    as CEO this month in a dispute with the board.

    Part of the opposition medical marijuana continues to face is rooted
    in concern that unsavory characters from the illegal-drugs business
    will get involved. The city attorney of Lake Forest, where Messrs.
    Werner and Shofner have their store, recently sent a letter to the
    landlords of pot dispensaries asking them to evict tenants. Mr.
    Shofner says he reached a settlement with his landlord to stay.

    To defend their interests, some pot proprietors are hiring lobbyists.
    Messrs. Shofner and Werner pay consulting fees to Ryan Michaels, a
    political organizer with an expertise in med-pot compliance issues.

    There are signs medical pot’s increasing business legitimacy is
    crowding the market. A 20-mile stretch of Ventura Boulevard in the San
    Fernando Valley now has close to 100 places to buy. “So many
    dispensaries have come along, the prices are dropping,” says one
    operator, Calvin Frye. Two years ago, his least expensive pot was
    about $60 for an eighth of an ounce. Now it is $45.

    Across the country, a med-pot bill is working its way through New
    York’s state legislature. If it makes it, entrepreneurs are getting
    ready.

    Larry Lodi, a 49-year-old Little League umpire from Long Island, spent
    two days at Oaksterdam University in May, learning the fine points of
    cultivation and distribution. Mr. Lodi envisions a business that would
    link the growers and the sellers of medical marijuana. “I want to be
    the middleman,” he says.

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

    PLEASE SEND US A COPY OF YOUR LETTER

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    [email protected] ) if you are subscribed.

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    LTEs and perhaps come up with new ideas or approaches.

    To subscribe to the Sent LTE mailing list see

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    Center

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

    Prepared by: Richard Lake, Senior Editor www.mapinc.org

    =.