Date: Sat, 2 Aug 2008
Subject: #379 California’s Medicinal Marijuana In The News

CALIFORNIA’S MEDICINAL MARIJUANA IN THE NEWS

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DrugSense FOCUS Alert #379 – Saturday, 2 August 2008

Today the Los Angeles Times printed a column about the latest Drug
Enforcement Administration raid of an area medicinal marijuana
dispensary. This follows Friday’s article about the raid MAP posted at
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v08.n745.a02.html

The country’s fourth largest circulation newspaper is always a worthy
target for letters to the editor. The newspaper provides instructions
for writing letters to the editor at http://drugsense.org/url/bc7El3Yo

The past week has also see three California Court of Appeals decisions
that impact California’s medicinal marijuana laws. Newspaper reports
have focused on various aspects of the decisions. The decisions are on
line at

http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/opinions/documents/B196483.PDF

http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/opinions/documents/D050333.PDF

http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/opinions/documents/C056881.PDF

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Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/bc7El3Yo

Pubdate: Sat, 2 Aug 2008
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2008 Los Angeles Times
Author: Sandy Banks

POT DISPENSARY RAIDS PUT TACTICS IN QUESTION

I don’t know what the flak-jacketed federal agents expected to find
during their commando-style raid Thursday on the Organica Collective,
a pot dispensary with such a mellow vibe that its business card
features a dove and a cross, and a promise to provide “the best
quality, price and selection of medical marijuana on the Westside.”

Drug Enforcement Administration agents cut open a safe and hauled off
boxes of records, a pair of flat screen monitors listing available
varieties of weed, and the contents of an ATM. The place was left a
mess, with receipts dumped on the floor and empty bottles and vials
scattered around.

And they frightened the customers and employees by storming in “in
full combat gear,” customer Clyde Carey told Times reporter Tami
Abdollah, “like literally an episode of ’24’ when they bust in on a
terrorist cell.”

One employee was so angry when he was uncuffed after four hours, he
likened the raid to being “robbed by a bunch of thugs downtown.” Then
he scrounged around and found a bud of marijuana the agents had
missed, stuffed it in a bong, took a puff and calmed down.

The feds didn’t say what made them target Organica, a warehouse
operation on a industrial stretch of Washington Boulevard, not far
from Venice Beach and across the street from Starbucks, the supplier
of choice for caffeine addicts. DEA spokeswoman Sarah Pullen told me
Friday that she can’t comment because the warrant is under seal.

Maybe it was the 74 strains of marijuana Organica lists for sale on
the giant flat screens in its lobby. Or the bongs scattered around its
“smoking lounge,” where customers can test the product. Or the outdoor
garden, where a few marijuana seedlings seem to have taken root among
the vegetables. Or that the business has been growing so fast, dozens
of new “patients” sign up each week.

Any of those would be red flags to me.

“I’m not sure what to make of it all right now,” Organica employee
Abby Boles told me on Friday by phone from Venice Beach. The
dispensary reopened for business, she said, but she was taking a day
off to recover.

Boles, 23, has worked at Organica for eight months. She was at the
counter Thursday weighing out a gram of Purple Kush for a customer
when the raid began.

“It’s been like a hidden sanctuary in the chaos of Los Angeles,” she
said. But now, “I’m leaning toward liking it less.”

She doesn’t know whether neighbors or others complained about the shop
or its operations.

“We haven’t had any robberies or crime problems,” she said. “Our
clientele is not sketchy people. . . . It’s cancer patients, hippie
types, people you wouldn’t expect to go in there. Business sort of
people. Our security guard isn’t even armed!”

She said the agents confiscated 50 pounds of marijuana.

“That’s $100,000 of inventory,” she said.

Boles asked what I thought was a logical question: Why, when medical
marijuana distribution is legal in California, did federal agents
burst in “and just take all of our stuff?”

It’s simple: Even though Californians voted to make marijuana
available to people with medical needs, federal law still makes it a
crime to grow, sell or smoke the weed. Two appellate court decisions
in California said federal laws don’t take priority, but that hasn’t
stopped federal authorities.

I’m sure there are some dispensaries that ought to be shut down. They
have made a cash cow out of the “compassionate use” decree and ignored
rules aimed at protecting teens. Last year, federal officials indicted
a dispensary owner who reportedly made more than $1.7 million in
marijuana sales a month, and a doctor accused of writing
recommendations for minors.

The feds aren’t going after patients or employees, but trying to put
the squeeze on growers and the owners of dispensaries, to blunt the
growth of California’s burgeoning marijuana industry.

I think an orderly crackdown is overdue. I’ve visited several
dispensaries and have seen too many healthy-looking young people go in
and out. But I’ve also heard from too many seriously ill patients who
lost safe sources of pain relief when their dispensaries were shut
down indiscriminately.

Compassion aside, is that any way to treat an industry that generates
$100 million in tax revenue each year, in a state so broke that some
government workers now make minimum wage?

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

Additional suggestions for writing LTEs are at our Media Activism Center:

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

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PLEASE SEND US A COPY OF YOUR LETTER

Please post a copy of your letter or report your action to the sent
letter list ( [email protected] ) if you are subscribed, or by
emailing a copy to [email protected] if you are not subscribed. Your
letter will then be forwarded to the list so others may learn from
your efforts.

Subscribing to the Sent LTE list ( [email protected] ) will help you
to review other sent LTEs and perhaps come up with new ideas or
approaches as well as keeping others aware of your important writing
efforts.

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Prepared by: The MAP Media Activism Team www.mapinc.org/resource

=.

Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2008
Subject: #378 Insite Works

INSITE WORKS

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DrugSense FOCUS Alert #378 – Monday, 28 July 2008

Today Canada’s second largest national newspaper reprinted from the
Canadian version of Reader’s Digest two opposing viewpoints about
Insite, Canada’s supervised injection site.

The future of Insite is in doubt. Your letters to the editor will help
keep the issue in front of the Canadian public. The National Post has
printed letters as long as 250 words. The average printed letter is
about 135 words in length.

Canadians may also wish to contact their MP to express their
views.

You may read much more about the Insite debate here
http://www.mapinc.org/topic/Insite

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

Contact: [email protected]

Pubdate: Mon, 28 Jul 2008
Source: National Post (Canada)
Copyright: 2008 The Reader’s Digest Canada Magazines Limited.
Reprinted by permission from the August 2008 issue of Reader’s Digest.
Author: Anne Mullens

INSITE WORKS

By Giving Drug Addicts a Sterile Syringe and a Warm Place to Shoot Up,
Are We Saving Lives or Condoning Substance Abuse?

To illuminate the double standard surrounding “harm reduction,” Dr.
Stephen Hwang, a medical researcher and associate professor of
medicine at the University of Toronto, offers the following scenario:

Suppose that an innovative but controversial intervention is launched
to reduce complications of Type 2 Diabetes, and 7,000 subjects take
part in a trial. Researchers, funded by Health Canada to study the
intervention’s effectiveness, find that while not curing diabetes, the
intervention improves health, reduces infections and prevents
premature deaths — with no adverse effects. The findings are
published in the world’s leading medical journals.

But the federal government deems the findings inconclusive and says
the only acceptable therapies for diabetes are those that either
prevent or cure the condition — even though no such therapies exist.
Columnists, community leaders and national organizations expound that
the intervention “enables” bad lifestyle choices, and that without the
dire complications of diabetes, people with the condition would eat
more, exercise less and become increasingly obese. And those who
didn’t have diabetes would forgo healthy diets and exercise because
they’d no longer fear the disease. The government considers banning
the intervention.

Sound far-fetched? Not, says Hwang, if you replace the word diabetes
with drug addiction, and the word intervention with Insite, the
safe-injection site pilot project that began in Vancouver’s Downtown
Eastside in 2003. Insite has allowed addicts to inject drugs under
secure, clean conditions, and all under the supervision of a nurse.

“I wanted people to see how hypocritical we are in the way that we
treat two chronic conditions that have a lot of associated harms,”
says Hwang. A specialist in inner-city medicine, he wrote the diabetes
scenario for the peer-reviewed online journal Open Medicine, arguing
that when it comes to drug abuse, ideology trumps science in a way
that would not be tolerated with other chronic health conditions.
Hwang’s treatise was endorsed by more than 130 prominent Canadian
scientists, doctors and public-health professionals.

Think there’s a huge difference between drug addiction and diabetes?
There isn’t, says Hwang: Both arise through a complex mix of
predisposed genetic and environmental factors — triggered by
lifestyle choices, behaviour and bad luck — that result in disorders
of body chemistry. Both have potentially severe complications, such
as infections or premature death, that can be reduced with good
medical care. Just as some addicts can kick their addictions, some
people with diabetes, through weight loss, gastric bypass surgery or
extreme exercise, can eliminate their symptoms and their need for
medication — though drug-free addicts and insulin-free diabetics
both risk relapse. Yet do we refuse to treat the health complications
of people with diabetes who cannot wean themselves off medication? Never.

“A heroin addict needs heroin as much as a diabetic needs insulin,”
says Norm Stamper, a former chief of the Seattle police department.
“That need is real. It is physiological.” After witnessing the failure
of the United States’ strict “war on drugs” to stem narcotic use and
its associated problems, Stamper is now a leading advocate of
safe-injection sites, methadone-treatment, needle-exchange and other
harm reduction programs that aim to refocus efforts from policing to
medical management.

Here’s what more than 20 studies –all by independent evaluators,
published in prominent journals — have found: Insite has reduced
instances of needle sharing and drug injecting in public places, and
there has been a decrease in the amount of injection related litter.
In the Insite neighbourhood, there have been no increases in drug
trafficking or assaults, and instances of vehicle break-ins and car
theft have decreased. Despite almost 900 overdose events at Insite —
a common hazard of drug use — no overdose deaths have occurred at the
facility, compared with an average of 60 a year in Metro Vancouver.
Additionally, since Insite began, the number of drug addicts who have
entered detox programs, addiction counselling and drug-addiction
treatment has increased by over 30%.

Dr. Perry Kendall, the B. C. Health Officer, says opposition to Insite
is not based on evidence of effectiveness but on the notion that drug
addicts have made bad choices and must change or live with their fate.
“The belief,” he says, “is that if health providers remove or lessen
the harms of addicts’ behaviour, addicts won’t hit bottom and
therefore won’t have the motivation to go clean.”

“The issue is not whether the addict would be better off without his
addiction–of course he would–but whether we are going to abandon
him to illness or death if he is unable to give it up,” says Dr.
Gabor Mate, who has served as staff physician at Insite and is the
author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with
Addiction. Mate’s book is a must-read for those who reject harm
reduction as “coddling” drug addicts or who believe “Just Say No” is
a realistic policy. In his book, Mate shows his patients’ struggles
and demons, how they became addicts and how they found a way out. The
book illustrates a central premise of HR: accepting those with drug
addictions and trying to move them along the continuum to better
health — keeping them alive and well long enough to have a chance to
quit later.

Some who were once adamantly against Insite have come to support it.
One such person is George Chow, former president of the Chinese
Benevolent Association of Vancouver. Chow successfully ran for city
councillor on a ticket of rejecting Insite — the centre was on China
town’s doorstep — gathering some 18,000 signatures from the Chinese
community. Yet, after Insite had been in operation for three years, he
changed his mind. “I am keenly aware of the debate surrounding
[Insite]. But I am pleased to say that the initial fears of the
community — a potential increase in crime and public disorder — have
not materialized,” Chow wrote in a letter to Prime Minister Stephen
Harper in the fall of 2007.

If only more of us were willing to change our positions based on
evidence, we might finally begin to make progress against this
terrible affliction called drug addiction.

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

Contact: [email protected]

Pubdate: Mon, 28 Jul 2008
Source: National Post (Canada)
Copyright: 2008 The Reader’s Digest Canada Magazines Limited.
Reprinted by permission from the August 2008 issue of Reader’s Digest.
Author: Barbara Kay

THE SOLUTION IS ABSTINENCE

By Giving Drug Addicts a Sterile Syringe and a Warm Place to Shoot Up,
Are We Saving Lives or Condoning Substance Abuse?

Prevention, treatment, enforcement: These traditional policies were
announced in 2007 as the pillars that would uphold Canada’s National
Anti-drug Strategy. Pointedly excluded from the government’s plan is
the continued reliance on harm resistance, the philosophical darling
of liberal stakeholders in addiction management. Designed as a fourth
pillar to focus on public health and order rather than usage
reduction, harm reduction is defensible as a handmaid to a balanced
portfolio of approaches, supplementing treatment and prevention. But
in Vancouver, it has emerged in the last decade as a free-standing
pillar, now teetering under an unwieldy social burden it cannot sustain.

Harm reduction’s social laboratory is the municipal quagmire of
Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Here, the mentally ill, the culturally
uprooted and the psychologically dysfunctional appease their demons in
a squalid cycle of illicit-drug torpor and crime. Drug consumption is
high — nearly a third of the 16,000 residents are addicts — but
evidence of faith in the drug abuser’s power to reclaim his portion of
the human estate is low. Funding allocations approved by a series of
mayors speak volumes about priorities. Money abounds for needles,
crack-pipe kits and opiate-giveaway trials, but extended waiting lists
for long-term rehabilitation centres attest to a scarcity of available
beds.

Insite — the first public facility in North America where addicts can
legally inject illicit drugs under professional supervision — started
up in 2003. In keeping with harm reduction’s non-judgemental ideology,
Insite’s detox resources were made available only to those who asked
for them. It’s just as well that few have done so, since there are
only 12 detox beds for several hundred daily inject ors. And because
they wouldn’t have been using Insite, the neighbourhood’s 5,000
crack-smoking addicts have been denied even that faint hope of
breaking the vicious cycle.

Harm reduction-friendly researchers claim success for Insite. But
observers of addicts in crisis demur: Dr. Stan de Vlaming, former head
of addiction services at Vancouver’s St. Paul’s Hospital– the main
provider of hospital services to Downtown Eastside residents — says,
“The people who refer to Insite as a ‘safe injection site’ are
perpetuating a dangerous misunderstanding. There is nothing safe about
repeated daily injections that bypass a person’s normal defence
systems.” He notes that from 2002 — one year prior to Insite’s
inauguration — to 2005, the number of hospital days utilized for
infectious complications directly attributable to injecting had
escalated from 16,042 to 18,848. Moreover, after evaluating the
most-cited harm reduction studies, Garth Davies, assistant professor
at Simon Fraser University’s School of Criminology, also was
unconvinced. In his article A Critical Evaluation of the Effects of
Safe Injection Facilities, published in the Journal of Global Drug
Policy and Practice, Davies concluded that “all claims regarding the
benefits of harm reduction remain open to question.”

Many people who find themselves up close and personal with addicts
–law enforcers, judges, treatment professionals, ministering
volunteers — see the human wreckage that human wreckage perpetuates.
Retired Vancouver policeman Al Arsenault patrolled the “chemical
gulag” of the Downtown Eastside for more than half of his 27 years on
the job. He calls Insite — and the needle-exchange program, in
particular –an “abject and utter failure.” If injectors were
responsible enough to return needles, he observes, they wouldn’t be in
the Downtown Eastside. Ironically, the program has augmented the
presence of used needles in the area. Arsenault wryly sums up the
experiment: “The rich get treatment, the poor get harm reduction.”

Pastor Gloria Kieler concurs. She has ministered to addicts since 1984
and deplores “the total disregard for those addicted persons
desperately wanting to escape the Downtown Eastside.” Rehabilitation
is the solution she tirelessly urges, acknowledging facilities can’t
spring up where there is no moral impetus to build them.

Advocates of harm reduction continue to push the drug-normalization
envelope. Through a volunteer-based research trial for addicts —
overseen by the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority, among other
agencies — chronic addiction substitution treatment is poised to
offer addicts prescriptions-on-demand for the consumption of legal
opiates such as Dilaudid (hydromorphone hydrochloride) — virtually a
heroin clone. And selected hard-drug users who “do not benefit from
methadone maintenance therapy” — as explained on the Canadian
Institutes of Health Research Web page on this topic — have
participated in the North American Opiate Medication Initiative, where
they were given heroin daily, setting the bar for the addicts’ moral
agency even lower.

Harm reduction proponents seem to view addiction as an incurable
disease — and addicts as victims not only unaccountable for, but
entitled to, their “lifestyles.” Do militants truly believe that the
war on drugs is lost, and that containment of crime and of
needle-based Hepatitis C, HIV and AIDS is the best society can hope
for?

Harm reduction is therefore the opposite pole to the traditional
abstinence model, which insists that, while the war against the dark
side of human nature can never be won completely, partial victory is
preferable to surrender. Abstinence initiatives have proven to be
effective over the long term. A consistent and persistent message that
cigarettes are unhealthy and would not be socially tolerated cut the
number of youth experimenting with tobacco by half between 1994 and
2004. And the anti-drunk driving campaign has cut the incidence of
drunk driving by 65% since 1981.

Successfully recovered addicts are harm reduction’s harshest critics.
Saskatchewan MLA Serge Le-Clerc reversed a lifetime of drug-related
dysfunction and crime following an inspirational encounter with a
prison Samaritan. LeClerc earned two university degrees while behind
bars and has become a passionate crusader for preventive drug
education in schools. He is contemptuous of harm reduction, under
whose rubric he would still be an addict. “The disease model negates
choice, but there is no one who is beyond redemption,” he says. In
fact, according to the Portage Rehabilitation Centre in Elora, Ont.,
at six months following discharge from their facility, there’s a
nearly 86% decrease in drug use among adolescents and a 92% decrease
for young adults.

Ironically, as Vancouver’s infatuation with harm reduction waxes, some
critics are concluding that the program was a costly mistake.
Amsterdam, one of harm reduction’s earliest adopters, is mired in
squalor from escalating usage and attendant drug-related evils. Dozens
of European cities, including Athens, Stockholm and Oslo, have signed
a declaration against drugs — including using safe-injection sites as
a surreptitious way to try to legalize drugs. And all but renouncing
harm reduction outright, Sweden instituted compulsory drug treatment
in a limited number of cases and criminalized the purchase of sex. The
country now boasts some of Europe’s lowest drug-related rates of
crime, disease and social problems.

We cannot take pride in a society that chooses to accompany an addict
to the abyss; only in a society that pulls him back from it. True
compassion is expressed through prevention and treatment. It is time
to end the false compassion of harm reduction.

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

Additional suggestions for writing LTEs are at our Media Activism Center:

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

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PLEASE SEND US A COPY OF YOUR LETTER

Please post a copy of your letter or report your action to the sent
letter list ( [email protected] ) if you are subscribed, or by
emailing a copy to [email protected] if you are not subscribed. Your
letter will then be forwarded to the list so others may learn from
your efforts.

Subscribing to the Sent LTE list ( [email protected] ) will help you
to review other sent LTEs and perhaps come up with new ideas or
approaches as well as keeping others aware of your important writing
efforts.

To subscribe to the Sent LTE mailing list see http://www.mapinc.org/lists/index.htm#form

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

Prepared by: The MAP Media Activism Team www.mapinc.org/resource

=.

Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2008
Subject: #377 DEA Agent Does Dallas Wrong

DEA AGENT DOES DALLAS WRONG

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DrugSense FOCUS Alert #377 – Tuesday, 22 July 2008

This morning the special agent in charge of the Dallas Field Division
of the Drug Enforcement Administration, James Capra, delivered the
polemic below to the over a million readers of the Dallas Morning News.

The polemic is a response to the OPED ‘War on Drugs Undermines the
Safety of Our Children’ http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v08/n694/a07.html

The Dallas Morning News suggests that letters to the editor be under
200 words. The average published letter is 165 words.

Every letter sent to the newspaper is important. Even letters that are
not printed send a message to the Dallas Morning News editorial board.

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

Contact: http://www.dallasnews.com/cgi-bin/lettertoed.cgi

Pubdate: Tue, 22 Jul 2008
Source: Dallas Morning News (TX)
Copyright: 2008 The Dallas Morning News, Inc.
Author: James Capra

LEGALIZING POT IN NO WAY MAKES US SAFER

The column last week by the local CEO of Mothers Against Teen Violence
once again highlights the misguided understanding and myths about
marijuana legalization. Joy Strickland is on point when she writes,
“every child deserves a safe and supportive home, school and
community.” But how does decriminalizing marijuana ensure that this
will happen?

There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that legalization or
decriminalization would reduce crime in our communities. However,
ample evidence suggests that such action would result in more users
and health costs.

Many advocates of decriminalization or legalization consistently point
to The Netherlands and other European nations as an effective model
for nirvana-like drug control. But these statements border on fantasy.
Officials in The Netherlands blame the rise in crime in the past
several years on their lax drug policy. Addicts are blamed for 80
percent of all property crime, and Amsterdam’s burglary rate a few
years ago was twice the rate of Newark, N.J.

The Dutch National Committee on Drug Prevention stated that marijuana
use among students increased 250 percent in eight years. Most Dutch
towns have adopted a zero-tolerance policy toward coffee shops that
sell marijuana due to growing opposition to the idea that it is a
relatively innocent soft drug. The Dutch have instituted new policies
requiring 27 coffee shops in Rotterdam that sell marijuana within 200
meters of schools to close down by 2009.

The other myth intimated by Ms. Strickland is that the prisons are
filled with drug users, in particular, marijuana users. This is an
illusion that has been perpetuated by drug advocacy groups seeking to
relax or abolish our marijuana laws.

The vast majority of inmates in state and federal prison for marijuana
offenses have been found guilty of much more than simple possession.
Some were convicted for drug trafficking and some for marijuana
possession along with one or more other offenses. Also never mentioned
is that many of those serving time for marijuana have plea-bargained
down to possession in order to avoid prosecution on much more serious
charges. Most criminals are repeat offenders with a lengthy history of
other crimes.

For Ms. Strickland to suggest that she “is not aware of one single
death directly caused by marijuana” or that it “is irrational to lock
up an individual because of what he chooses to put into to his own
body” as justification to decriminalize is disturbing logic. Ongoing
scientific research continues to prove the harmful effects of
marijuana on the body. More young people seek treatment for marijuana
abuse than for any other substance.

In addition, many serious motor vehicle accidents and fatalities have
occurred where the drivers have been charged with being under the
influence of marijuana.

The United States has had tremendous success in our fight against drug
use and abuse:

. According to the most recent survey, 860,000 fewer teenagers are
using illicit drugs now than in 2001 a 24 percent decline.

. Between 2001 and 2007, marijuana use by teens dropped by 25 percent.
Methamphetamine use by teens plummeted 64 percent. The current use of
Ecstasy has been slashed by 54 percent.

. Overall, drug use among workers is at its lowest levels in 19 years.
Since 1988, positive work place drug tests have fallen by 72 percent,
from 13.6 percent in 1988 to 3.8 percent in 2007.

We would do well to continue our comprehensive drug enforcement
strategy, to ensure that the next generation of Americans are free
from the trappings of drug use and abuse and that they are afforded
the blessings of liberty that are rightfully theirs. Legalizing or
decriminalizing marijuana would hamper this progress and cause great
harm to our schools and neighborhood communities.

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

Additional suggestions for writing LTEs are at our Media Activism Center:

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

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PLEASE SEND US A COPY OF YOUR LETTER

Please post a copy of your letter or report your action to the sent
letter list ( [email protected] ) if you are subscribed, or by
emailing a copy to [email protected] if you are not subscribed. Your
letter will then be forwarded to the list so others may learn from
your efforts.

Subscribing to the Sent LTE list ( [email protected] ) will help you
to review other sent LTEs and perhaps come up with new ideas or
approaches as well as keeping others aware of your important writing
efforts.

To subscribe to the Sent LTE mailing list see http://www.mapinc.org/lists/index.htm#form

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

Prepared by: The MAP Media Activism Team www.mapinc.org/resource

=.

Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2008
Subject: #376 Legalization In Disguise

LEGALIZATION IN DISGUISE

********************PLEASE COPY AND DISTRIBUTE************************

DrugSense FOCUS Alert #376 – Saturday, 19 July 2008

The Globe and Mail is the leading Canadian national newspaper –
available everywhere in Canada. With a circulation of about two
million copies the newspaper reaches an audience which is about seven
times larger as a share of the population than that of the largest
United States newspaper, USA Today.

Today the Globe and Mail printed the fourth column, below, of a series
started last Saturday authored by columnist Margaret Wente.

The first column of the series, titled ‘They’re Sick of Watching
People Die’ is at www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v08/n668/a05.html

The second ‘We Still Await the Scientific Proof of Harm Reduction’s
Success’ www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v08/n683/a02.html

The third ‘Europe’s Approach to Drugs Is More Enlightened … It’s
Tougher’ www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v08/n687/a03.html

Letters to the editor should address either the column below or the
entire series.

Letters published by the Globe and Mail are short and pointed. The
average printed letter is about 100 words. Printed letters that exceed
200 words are very rare.

Every letter sent to the newspaper is important. Even letters that are
not printed send a message to the Globe and Mail editorial board.

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

Contact: [email protected]

Pubdate: Sat, 19 Jul 2008
Source: Globe and Mail (Canada)
Copyright: 2008 The Globe and Mail Company
Author: Margaret Wente

LEGALIZATION IN DISGUISE

VANCOUVER – Billy Weselowski has seen it all, and he hates what he
sees on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. “You can’t go a block without a
bicycle pulling up and giving you all the syringes you want,” he
growls. Mr. Weselowski knows this world all too well. He grew up here.
His childhood was a nightmare of violence and abuse. At 13, he blacked
out from booze for the first time, and quickly wound up on the
streets. He injected, snorted, stole, pimped women, stabbed men and
became an accomplished felon. He was the hardest of the hard core.

Today, he runs rehab programs for drug addicts that borrow from the
tough-love model of AA. He has successfully treated thousands of
people, using an approach that emphasizes structure, personal
responsibility and abstinence.

But this approach to addiction is deeply out of fashion. The experts
who make drug policy, allocate public money, dispense research funds,
advise politicians and push for reform aren’t interested in hearing
from people like him. Instead, they’re interested in “harm reduction”
– which, among other things, means giving people all the syringes they
want.

In Mr. Weselowski’s view, harm reduction is a farce. “They’re killing
people by the truckload,” he says.

Canada’s official drug policy is known as the Four Pillars approach:
prevention, treatment, harm reduction and enforcement. In practice,
prevention and treatment have been neglected, while harm-reduction
measures have steadily gained ground. Free needle and methadone
programs are now widespread. (The term “needle exchange” is obsolete;
needles are now handed out by the boxful.) Hundreds of addicts a day
visit Vancouver’s supervised injection site, which has become ground
zero in an angry war of words.

Yet, harm reduction remains the orthodoxy of the day. “The supervised
injection site is beyond questioning,” says one Vancouver resident.
“You are branded unprogressive, unfeeling and everything else ‘un’ if
you criticize it.”

David Marsh, the Vancouver region’s medical director for addictions,
says harm-reduction policies are often misunderstood. “Essentially,
harm reductions are interventions that help reduce the harms
associated with drug use, without necessarily requiring that drug use
be decreased or stopped.” They are a compassionate way to help the
most addicted and marginalized of them all, to tide them over until
they’re able and willing to seek help. “It’s part of Canadian
tradition not to turn our backs to people at their lowest.”

Harm-reduction advocates now rule the drug policy establishment. They
dominate Health Canada, addiction research centres, drug policy
groups, and the public health services of local governments. Nowhere
is this more true than B.C., where social attitudes toward drugs are
the most liberal in Canada. Public officials have fought tenaciously
for the supervised injection site. For some, it represents a crucial
step toward a far more sweeping form of harm reduction –
legalization.

Many harm-reduction advocates believe the real harms are done by drug
laws, not drugs. Prohibition is impossible, prevention is futile, and
abstinence is unattainable for many. Therefore, if we stop
criminalizing drugs, we’ll get rid of most of the drug problems – the
international gangs, the billions wasted on interdiction and
enforcement, the crimes committed by addicts who need drug money, the
imprisonment for petty drug crimes, and so on.

It’s an attractive theory, at least on paper. Drug-law reformers have
ideological allies around the world, in think tanks and at major
universities. Among them is financier George Soros. Because of his
deep pockets, he’s been called the Daddy Warbucks of drug
legalization.

All of this is spicy stuff. Harm reduction is a hot research field
that attracts major money and offers major career opportunities. At
Vancouver’s international drug conference last year, no one was
interested in reactionary things like 12-step programs, rehab or recovery.

The noisy marijuana lobby provides a lot of fuel for this crusade,
despite the fact that pot is not the issue. Marijuana use is not what
creates the lion’s share of crime, public disorder, massive costs to
the health system, and ruined lives. The real problem is hard drugs,
especially cocaine.

Vancouver’s last three mayors have been outspoken advocates for
legalizing marijuana (and the source of a certain civic pride for
Vancouverites). The current one, Sam Sullivan, has called for medical
versions of hard drugs to be available to addicts. The city’s official
drug policy calls for the federal government to legalize marijuana,
and also to review its prohibition policies for other illegal drugs.

Three years ago, B.C.’s public health officers – the same ones who’ve
cracked down on smoking – released a detailed report calling for
“government controlled supply” for formerly illegal drugs.
“Harm-reduction strategies have not been as effective as possible due
to their implementation within the prohibition model.” It laid out an
ambitious model for “post-prohibition harm reduction,” where the
government, guided by its wise public health officers, would supervise
the production and distribution of legal heroin and crack.

Cuckoo? Not so much. Top health officials in B.C. already endorse the
use of medical heroin, and a trial program has just wound up. Some of
them belong to groups lobbying for legalization, and least one
influential official is a vocal advocate for the benefits of
psychedelic drug use.

Not surprisingly, the group that runs Insite, Vancouver’s
safe-injection site, stridently opposes current drug laws, as does the
publicly funded drug users’ lobby, VANDU. These two groups are
notorious for the noisy lengths they go to in order to silence their
critics. They’re also good at high-profile PR stunts, such as the
recent demonstration on Parliament Hill where they planted 868 wooden
crosses to symbolize the 868 people who overdosed at Insite.

“Insite was about people dying – friends and neighbours!” spokesman
Mark Townsend told me in an interview. In fact, the research found
that Insite averts around one overdose death a year, not 868. When
asked about this discrepancy, Mr. Townsend brushed it off as irrelevant.

Given the current government in Ottawa, it’s unlikely that the push
for legalization will make headway any time soon. There’s also another
obstacle: the public. Health officials have faced citizen revolts in
cities where people don’t want free needles passed out in their
neighbourhoods.

Sadly, all this theatre has deprived Canadians of a genuine debate
over drug policy. The question isn’t whether Insite is good or bad.
The question is what steps we can take that really will reduce the
harm drugs do.

Despite the shouting, it’s not too hard to guess where the moderate
majority stands on drugs. They don’t want people prosecuted for
smoking a little weed. (After all, plenty of them do it, too.) But
hard drugs are different. We don’t want to decriminalize them. But we
also don’t want to punish addicts by throwing them in jail. We want a
humane drug policy that will help them get better – and if that means
giving them a choice between rehab or jail, then maybe that’s okay.

So maybe what we need is not more Insites but more Billy Weselowskis –
people who can give drug addicts a shot at dignity and a life. Mr.
Weselowski knows that even hard-core junkies can recover. After all,
he did. “We help get them connected to a spark of hope inside their
soul.”

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

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PLEASE SEND US A COPY OF YOUR LETTER

Please post a copy of your letter or report your action to the sent
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emailing a copy to [email protected] if you are not subscribed. Your
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your efforts.

Subscribing to the Sent LTE list ( [email protected] ) will help you
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Prepared by: The MAP Media Activism Team www.mapinc.org/resource

=.

Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008
Subject: #375 Get-Tough Policies Cause More Crime

GET-TOUGH POLICIES CAUSE MORE CRIME

********************PLEASE COPY AND DISTRIBUTE************************

DrugSense FOCUS Alert #375 – Sunday, 11 July 2008

The Sunday Detroit Free Press reaches nearly 1.7 million readers
through-out Michigan.

Please write a letter to the editor about the editorial below. Letters
the newspaper prints are short, averaging only 115 words.

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

Contact: [email protected]

Pubdate: Sun, 13 Jul 2008
Source: Detroit Free Press (MI)
Copyright: 2008 Detroit Free Press

GET-TOUGH POLICIES CAUSE MORE CRIME, DENY INMATES A FUTURE

U.S. taxpayers spend at least $60 billion a year on a growing body of
state and federal prisons, county jails and local lockups. With jail
and prison populations that have increased nearly eightfold over the
past 35 years, the United States has become the world’s leading jailer.

More than one in every 100 U.S. adults is locked up — and 5 million
more are on probation or parole. At any given time, one in 32 adults
is under the supervision of the criminal justice system.

Tough-on-crime policies, not increases in crime, are mostly
responsible. Mandatory drug sentences, three-strike and so-called
truth-in-sentencing laws, as well as high recidivism rates, have
created our Incarceration Nation. Even so, violent crime rates are
higher than when the nation’s prison building boom started more than
three decades ago.

It’s time to reverse failed sentencing policies, restore certain
social and legal rights for ex-felons, and slow the revolving doors of
the penal system with better re-entry, education and training
programs. Fully funding the Second Chance Act, which provides money
for state and federal re-entry programs, would keep more ex-inmates
out of prison.

Criminal justice reforms are critical to the health of the nation’s
cities, and they must become part of the next president’s urban
agenda. Most of the more than 600,000 people a year leaving U.S.
prisons and jails return to disadvantaged urban neighborhoods. They go
home poorly educated, lacking job skills, and socially and legally
disabled by felony records.

Going to prison has become a norm in certain big-city neighborhoods,
even a rite of passage. While mass incarceration has aimed to reduce
crime, it has actually increased it by breaking up social networks and
removing financial and emotional support from families and
communities. Nearly half of the 2.3 million adults locked up are
African Americans, who make up less than 13% of the U.S. population. A
stunning one in nine black males between the ages of 20-34 is behind
bars.

Felony convictions, whether or not they carried prison sentences,
attach lifetime penalities to tens of millions of Americans. Roughly
1.8 million people in Michigan, for example, have criminal records, or
nearly one in four adults. Most are felony offenders, with all that
entails for future prospects. These staggering statistics hold true
for the nation as a whole, with more than 55 million people with
criminal records.

Kansas Sets an Example

Nationwide, nearly two of three offenders who get out of prison go
back. Reducing recidivism is one of the best, and least controversial,
ways to lower the prison population. With bipartisan support, many
states are developing programs to help released inmates find jobs,
housing and treatment. Such efforts have helped Kansas become one of
the few states to lower prison populations, from a high of 9,181 in
2004 to 8,671 today.

Low-risk offenders in Kansas who violate parole conditions are no
longer automatically sent back to prison. Instead, many are supervised
and assisted in the community at a fraction of the cost.

Carlis Rogers, 23, was released in December, after serving 2 1/2 years
on a drug possession charge. During a traffic stop in January, a
police officer discovered a small amount of cocaine in the glove
compartment of a car he was driving but didn’t own. Rogers said he
didn’t know the drugs were there, but the incident would have, five
years ago, resulted in revocation.

Instead, Rogers was assigned in February to a day reporting center in
Wichita, one of two such programs in Kansas run under contract by
Colorado-based BI Inc. The centers, supervising 140 offenders at a
time, are part of a successful effort by the Kansas Department of
Corrections to keep low-risk offenders in the community, despite
parole violations.

Parolees like Rogers are assigned to the reporting centers for six to
nine months. The intense supervision includes curfews, electronic GPS
monitoring, mandatory reporting three to six days a week, random drug
tests, community service projects, group therapy sessions, and help
with substance abuse, mental health and employment problems. Most
offenders also work or attend school full-time.

“If you come into this with an open mind, you can really get something
out of it,” Rogers said after a group session on critical thinking.

The center helped Rogers get enrolled in a local community college and
line up financial aid. He’s taking a 12-week aero structure technician
course in sheet metal work. After he earns a certificate this month,
he’ll make about $15 an hour in Wichita’s thriving aircraft industry.

Even more important, Rogers is learning to think about his decisions.
“I can choose to do something to go back to prison or not,” he said.

New Ways of Thinking

In Kansas, more offenders are choosing to stay out of
prison.

Five years ago, an average of 203 parolees were sent back to prison
each month. By last year, the number dropped to 103 a month — and the
improvement was not due to lax enforcement. The number of absconders
and parolees with convictions for new crimes has also dropped. “People
posing significant risk to the community still go back to prison,”
said Kent Sisson, a regional parole director. “But we think that,
historically, a lot of folks we sent back to prison weren’t posing
that kind of risk.”

Kansas also started re-entry programs two years ago that helped reduce
recidivism from 60% to less than 45%. The number of parolees going
back to prison for parole violations has dropped from 3,100 in 2000 to
less than 1,300 last year.

Twelve to 18 months before they’re released, high-risk inmates meet
with employers, housing providers, social service agencies and medical
providers. They also meet with cognitive specialists that emphasize
personal responsibility and self-control.

The aim is to help inmates on their way out develop new ways of
thinking, as well as line up housing, social services, education and
jobs.

Kansas has hired a business developer to inform employers about the
advantages of hiring ex-offenders, including federal tax credits. It
also has drug and alcohol specialists who help assess substance abuse
problems and coordinate community treatment, and a housing specialist
to work with landlords who might not otherwise rent to parolees. Too
often, parolees have been virtually forced to return to housing that
puts them near criminal activity.

All parole officers are now trained in so-called motivational
interviewing techniques that help them get inmates to think through
problems, develop goals and make better choices. A few parole officers
derisively called the change “hug a thug,” but most understand that
the new approach works.

The department has set up accountability panels made up of corrections
staff and community members, including ex-inmates, who meet with
offenders upon release and during parole. The panel provides tough
talk, when needed, but also celebrates successes.

“That’s something corrections isn’t known for,” said Sally Frey, a
Kansas re-entry director. “But as human beings, we’re motivated more
by reward than punishment.”

Private Industry Helps

Private industry programs in Kansas also better prepare inmates for
freedom, easing budget problems that would otherwise increase idleness
and jeopardize vocational programs in the state’s eight prisons, said
Rodney Crawford, director of Kansas Correctional Industries.

Nearly 30 companies employ more than 800 inmates — 530 of them in
leased shops and factories inside prisons. Most inmates in private
industry programs make prevailing wages of up to $12 an hour, and all
make at least the federal minimum wage of $5.85 an hour. That compares
to other prison jobs that pay as little as 40 cents a day, and no more
than 60 cents an hour.

Industry jobs inside Kansas prisons include embroidering sportswear,
cut-and-sew leather products and cabinet manufacturing.

The state deducts 25% of the wages for room and board and 5% for
restitution. Another 10% is set aside for a mandatory savings account.
Inmates often leave prison with more than $10,000, which enables them
to secure housing and get a solid start.

For some inmates, private industry jobs start careers.

Scott Whiteman, now 36, started working as a welder at Henke
Manufacturing in Leavenworth eight years ago as a minimum-security
inmate, making snow removal equipment for minimum wage.

When he finished a seven-year stretch for aggravated robbery in 2003,
Whiteman continued working at Henke as a welder, roughly doubling his
pay. He was recently promoted to supervisor over 20 welders, doubling
his pay again.

“Working and keeping up your child support make you feel responsible,”
he said. “When you get out, you want to keep that feeling. The only
way to do it is to keep working.”

For other offenders like Carl Mitchell, 41, with long prison sentences
in front of them, working provides a way to pay for college courses,
support families and sharpen job skills. Convicted of rape, Mitchell
might not get out before 2029.

“This is more like a normal life and it motivates you to be
responsible,” said Mitchell, who earns $6.12 an hour as a finisher in
a garment embroidery and print screen shop run by Impact Design Inc.
The company employs more than 300 inmates at Lansing Correctional Facility.

Tight Budgets Force Solutions

Mass incarceration has created economic and human costs the nation can
no longer afford. Michigan spends $2 billion a year on corrections, or
20% of its general fund. It is one of four states spending more on
corrections than higher education.

Community supervision and treatment, allowing offenders to continue to
support their families, work best for many low-risk and drug offenders
and cost a fraction of the $30,000 a year each prison inmate costs.
Health care costs for some inmates can total hundreds of thousands of
dollars. Severely sick and dying inmates who pose no risk should be
released.

Mandatory sentencing policies, including three strikes laws, have
imposed unreasonably harsh sentences on many nonviolent offenders and
ought to be repealed, as should disparities between crack and powder
cocaine sentencing. States and cities must remove some of the barriers
to employment, housing and education faced by the tens of millions of
people with felony convictions. The good news is that budget pressures
are forcing other states, including Michigan, to take steps to control
their prison populations.

Unacceptably high incarceration rates tear at the nation’s social
fabric and divert money from education, health care, transportation
and other needs. It’s time to build a more rational, cost-effective
and humane criminal justice system.

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

Additional suggestions for writing LTEs are at our Media Activism Center:

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

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PLEASE SEND US A COPY OF YOUR LETTER

Please post a copy of your letter or report your action to the sent
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emailing a copy to [email protected] if you are not subscribed. Your
letter will then be forwarded to the list so others may learn from
your efforts.

Subscribing to the Sent LTE list ( [email protected] ) will help you
to review other sent LTEs and perhaps come up with new ideas or
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Prepared by: The MAP Media Activism Team www.mapinc.org/resource

=.

Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2008
Subject: #374 Too Many Prisoners

TOO MANY PRISONERS

********************PLEASE COPY AND DISTRIBUTE************************

DrugSense FOCUS Alert #374 – Friday, 11 July 2008

Washington Post editorials are read by a large majority of federal
elected officials and their staff who work inside the D.C. beltway.

Please write a letter to the editor about the editorial below. The
average published letter the newspaper prints is about 200 words.
About one in ten letters printed is in the 300 word range.

Even if your letter is not printed, every letter sent sends a signal
to the Washington Post editorial board that you think this issue is
important.

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

Contact: [email protected]

Pubdate: Fri, 11 Jul 2008
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Page: A16
Copyright: 2008 The Washington Post Company

TOO MANY PRISONERS

States Should Stop Warehousing Nonviolent Offenders.

TWO REPORTS by the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics
show that the rate of growth in the prison and jail populations of the
United States has slowed slightly but that the country still has the
dubious distinction of being the largest jailer in the world. As of
June 30, 2007, the country held roughly 2.3 million people behind
bars, either in local or state jails or in federal prisons.

The cost of housing and caring for inmates has been astronomical, an
estimated $55 billion annual expense for taxpayers, according to the
Pew Center on the States. The bloated number of inmates has been
particularly painful for states, some of which have been forced to cut
spending for higher education to fund corrections programs. As a
result, California is considering an overhaul of its prison policies,
as are Kentucky, Mississippi, Rhode Island and South Carolina.

This fiscal crisis should be a wake-up call for all states. Tough
sentences for murder, rape and the like are unquestionably necessary
and contributed to a drop in such crimes over the past two decades.
But prisons should be focused on holding the most dangerous criminals
rather than on warehousing nonviolent, first-time offenders.

States should consider, as New Jersey is, redirecting nonviolent,
first-time drug offenders to rehabilitation programs. Like California,
states should also debate early release for the most well-behaved
inmates who have no violence in their records — an approach that
provides an incentive for good behavior. And states should consider
reducing harsh penalties for nonviolent drug offenses. Some states are
considering eliminating parole and thus saving the cost of employing
agents to provide the supervision. They should be careful; oversight
of recently released prisoners can be critical in keeping them on track.

On a national level, Congress should continue to press ahead with
legislation to reduce the sentencing disparity between convictions for
crack and powder cocaine; the guidelines call for a person convicted
of possessing five grams of crack cocaine to serve the same mandatory
minimum sentence as someone caught with 500 grams of powder cocaine.
The disparity has, among other things, led to a disproportionate
number of African Americans behind bars for possession of relatively
small quantities of cocaine. Modest reductions in the federal
sentencing guidelines for crack have brought some balance to the
penalties, but more needs to be done.

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

Additional suggestions for writing LTEs are at our Media Activism Center:

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

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PLEASE SEND US A COPY OF YOUR LETTER

Please post a copy of your letter or report your action to the sent
letter list ( [email protected] ) if you are subscribed, or by
emailing a copy to [email protected] if you are not subscribed. Your
letter will then be forwarded to the list so others may learn from
your efforts.

Subscribing to the Sent LTE list ( [email protected] ) will help you
to review other sent LTEs and perhaps come up with new ideas or
approaches as well as keeping others aware of your important writing
efforts.

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Prepared by: The MAP Media Activism Team www.mapinc.org/resource

=.

Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2008
Subject: #373 Please Contact Your Congressperson

PLEASE CONTACT YOUR CONGRESSPERSON

********************PLEASE COPY AND DISTRIBUTE************************

DrugSense FOCUS Alert #373 – Tuesday, 8 July 2008

The OPED below — or as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer calls it, a
‘guest column’ — illustrates something any successful letter writer
can do — write an OPED for your local newspaper. OPEDs are simply
longer than letters. This one is 582 words. OPEDs are usually in the
600 to 800 word range. It is best to contact your target newspaper if
you wish to write an OPED for their instructions on size and to see if
they would be interested in the OPED you wish to submit.

If you wish to write a letter to the editor in response to this OPED
please note that the newspaper very rarely prints letters from out of
state people. The average letter printed is about 200 words in length.

Please let your Congressperson know your opinion about the
Hinchey-Rohrabacher amendment. You may use this House of
Representatives webform https://forms.house.gov/wyr/welcome.shtml Or
you may use the webform which may be accessed from the Marijuana
Policy Project’s home page at http://www.mpp.org/

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

Contact: [email protected]

Source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer (WA)
Copyright: 2008 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Authors: Allison Bigelow and Gregory Carter

MEDICAL MARIJUANA IS NEEDED BY SERIOUSLY ILL PATIENTS

The federal government is waging war on some of our most vulnerable
citizens, who Washington voters have acted to protect. Soon, our
congressional representatives will have the chance to stand up for
those people — seriously ill patients who need medical marijuana.

This is an issue we both know personally. One of us is a physician and
researcher specializing in rehabilitation medicine and neuromuscular
diseases such as ALS (“Lou Gehrig’s disease”). The other is a cancer
survivor who got through the nausea and vomiting caused by
chemotherapy with the help of marijuana, and who has again found
relief with marijuana from the chronic pain caused by injuries in a
car accident.

We have seen that medical marijuana safely helps some patients who get
no relief from conventional medications. Washington voters did the
right thing when we passed our medical marijuana law a decade ago. A
dozen states now have similar laws, and none have been repealed.

Meanwhile, medical community support continues to solidify. New
studies have documented marijuana’s ability to relieve nerve pain
caused by HIV/AIDS, multiple sclerosis and other conditions. In
February, the American College of Physicians — representing 124,000
oncologists, neurologists and other doctors of internal medicine —
released a position paper declaring that the scientific evidence
“supports the use of medical marijuana in certain conditions.”

The ACP specifically called on the federal government to reclassify
marijuana to permit medical use, but our government simply refuses.
Federal officials have arrested patients and caregivers who were
following state medical marijuana laws, and could make more such
arrests any time.

That’s why Congress must act.

In its 2005 case, Gonzales v. Raich, the U.S. Supreme Court punted the
issue to Congress. The court declined to change the status quo, under
which patients protected by state law can still face federal
prosecution. But Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the majority,
went out of his way to note that patients Angel Raich and Diane Monson
had made “strong arguments that they will suffer irreparable harm,
because, despite a congressional finding to the contrary, marijuana
does have valid therapeutic purposes.” He pointedly expressing hope
that Raich, Monson and their supporters “may one day be heard in the
halls of Congress.”

That chance will come this month.

When the appropriations bill that funds the Justice Department reaches
the House floor, an amendment will be offered that seeks to bar the
department from using any of its money to attack medical marijuana
patients in states where medical use is legal. Called the
Hinchey-Rohrabacher amendment after sponsors Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y.,
and Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., the amendment has been proposed in
each of the past several sessions and has steadily gained support.

Washington’s representatives have been oddly inconsistent. Reps. Jay
Inslee and Jim McDermott have been supporters every year, while Dave
Reichert has voted no since he joined Congress in 2005. Reps. Rick
Larsen, Norm Dicks and Adam Smith have all voted yes at least twice,
but Larsen switched to no in 2005 and Smith voted no last year.

Perhaps they remember how well “I voted for it before I voted against
it” worked for Sen. John Kerry in 2004.

But the tide is turning. The medical community is increasingly united,
and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama says
it’s time to end the federal war on state medical marijuana laws.

That’s encouraging, but we don’t need to wait for a new president.
Washington’s congressional representatives should stand up for
Washington patients and support the Hinchey-Rohrabacher amendment.

***

Allison Bigelow lives in Clear Lake. Gregory Carter, M.D., M.S., is
specialist in electrodiagnostic and neuromuscular medicine and a
professor on the clinical faculty of the University of Washington
School of Medicine.

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

Additional suggestions for writing LTEs are at our Media Activism Center:

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

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PLEASE SEND US A COPY OF YOUR LETTER

Please post a copy of your letter or report your action to the sent
letter list ( [email protected] ) if you are subscribed, or by
emailing a copy to [email protected] if you are not subscribed. Your
letter will then be forwarded to the list so others may learn from
your efforts.

Subscribing to the Sent LTE list ( [email protected] ) will help you
to review other sent LTEs and perhaps come up with new ideas or
approaches as well as keeping others aware of your important writing
efforts.

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

Prepared by: The MAP Media Activism Team www.mapinc.org/resource

=.

Date: Sun, 6 Jul 2008
Subject: #372 A Marijuana Decriminalization Initiative

A MARIJUANA DECRIMINALIZATION INITIATIVE

********************PLEASE COPY AND DISTRIBUTE************************

DrugSense FOCUS Alert #372 – Sunday, 6 July 2008

On November 4th Massachusetts voters will have the chance to pass a
ballot initiative decriminalizing the possession of small amounts of
marijuana — removing the threat of jail time for possessing an ounce
or less of marijuana for personal use.

In response to the announcement that the initiative will be on the
ballot a columnist for Boston’s tabloid newspaper wrote the column
below which was printed today.

Letters to the editor of the Boston Herald need to be short and well
written – under 200 words. The average printed letter is about 120
words in length.

Please also support the initiative. For details visit
http://sensiblemarijuanapolicy.org/

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

Contact: [email protected]

Pubdate: Sun, 6 Jul 2008
Source: Boston Herald (MA)
Copyright: 2008 The Boston Herald, Inc
Author: Howie Carr

SENSIBLE POT A HALF-BAKED POLICY, DUDE

Marijuana makes you stupid. It’s as simple as that.

And now in Massachusetts, we are going to have a ballot question that
asks the following: Do you really want to make it even easier than it
already is to get stupid, and stay stupid?

Yes, the Bong Brigade is on the march again. They want to put the high
back into high school, the truckin’ back in truck stops, the joint
back in all those joint legislative committees. Stand by to see
stoners at the Stone Zoo, potheads in Marblehead. The grass is always
greener in Greenfield, dude.

If you liked HempFest on the Boston Common every September, you’re
going to love legalized marijuana.

This one’s, like, totally for Jerry Garcia!

This year, the front group is something called the Committee for
Sensible Marijuana Policy, and it’s pushing a Sensible State Marijuana
Policy. Its flacks are available for media interviews to discuss their
“sensible policy.”

Organizers include the usual “concerned citizens,” with a few token
“former law enforcement professionals” thrown in. Their goal is to use
the initiative to abolish criminal penalties for less than an ounce of
marijuana or, to use their preferred word, hemp, as in, “Dude, did you
know, like, George Washington’s army used hemp when it was fighting
in, uh, like, was it the Civil War, man?”

The sensible group’s press release sounds like it was written after
watching a “Dragnet 1967” marathon on TVLand. Harmless people, we are
told, “are arrested, booked, entered into the Criminal Offender Record
Information (CORI) system, resulting in a possible sentence of up to
six months in jail and a $500 fine.”

Key word: possible.

Do you know how difficult it is to actually be thrown in jail around
here? You can lie under oath and obstruct justice, and you don’t have
to do a day in the can – am I right Tom Finneran?

Pot charges are usually meaningless add-ons, like piling a
driving-to-endanger on top on an OUI, or like Neil Entwistle being
charged with possession of an unregistered handgun. The potheads say
7,500 marijuana citations make it onto the CORI system every year. But
how many of those Class B controlled-substance convictions are added
to someone’s CORI record along with more serious raps like, say, for
possession of Class D controlled substances (cocaine) with intent to
distribute?

The ganja-guys then cite the alleged “collateral damage” of this CORI
indignity: “inability to find employment, obtain housing and receive a
college loan.”

Please. The reason stoners can’t find employment is because they’re
too wasted. They forgot to turn on the alarm clock. They went out for
a smoke break and never returned. They missed the bus, man. They can’t
“obtain housing” because they can’t get it together to ever leave
mom’s rent-free basement.

Unless you’re in the cop’s face when you light up – like they do at
HempFest – you face almost zero chance of getting arrested.

Decriminalizing pot doesn’t seem like a big deal, I’ll grant you.
After the courts decreed Adam and Eve are going to be Adam and Steve,
bringing Cheech & Chong along for the ride amounts to little more than
a footnote.

But the problem with this ballot question is, it will lead to more pot
smoking, which this society needs like . . . like, fill in the blank,
dude. How can the same health pests who loathe tobacco not care a whit
about a different debilitating drug that you have to ingest into your
lungs in the form of smoke?

The fact is, once you make something legal, even if it’s just de
facto, it’s easier to get. Pot does fry your brain. On my radio show,
I can tell a stoner within 10 seconds.

They . . . talk . . . slow. They mention “hemp.” They talk about
“thousands” of political prisoners locked up for pot. And since their
vocabulary is so stunted, because their memories are shot, they keep
repeating the same words over and over again.

Sensible . . . sensible . . . sensible.

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

Additional suggestions for writing LTEs are at our Media Activism Center:

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

Or contact MAP’s Media Activism Facilitator for tips on how to write
LTEs that are printed.

[email protected]

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

PLEASE SEND US A COPY OF YOUR LETTER

Please post a copy of your letter or report your action to the sent
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E-mailing a copy directly to [email protected] if you are not
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may learn from your efforts.

Subscribing to the Sent LTE list ( [email protected] ) will help you
to review other sent LTEs and perhaps come up with new ideas or
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Prepared by: The MAP Media Activism Team www.mapinc.org/resource

=.

Date: Sat, 5 Jul 2008
Subject: #371 This Is The U.S. On Drugs – A LA Times OPED

THIS IS THE U.S. ON DRUGS – A LA TIMES OPED

********************PLEASE COPY AND DISTRIBUTE************************

DrugSense FOCUS Alert #371 – Saturday, 5 July 2008

Today the Los Angeles Times printed the OPED below.

The Times wrote about the authors “David W. Fleming, a lawyer, is the
chairman of the Los Angeles County Business Federation and immediate
past chairman of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce. James P.
Gray is a judge of the Orange County Superior Court.”

The blunt indictment of the U.S. war on drugs printed in the fourth
largest circulation newspaper is a worthy target for letters to the
editor. Letters the paper prints typically run 150 words or less.

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

Contacts:
Email: [email protected]
Webform: http://drugsense.org/url/bc7El3Yo

Pubdate: Sat, 5 Jul 2008
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2008 Los Angeles Times
Authors: David W. Fleming and James P. Gray

THIS IS THE U.S. ON DRUGS

Only Cops and Crooks Have Benefited From $2.5 Trillion Spent Fighting
Trafficking.

The United States’ so-called war on drugs brings to mind the old
saying that if you find yourself trapped in a deep hole, stop digging.
Yet, last week, the Senate approved an aid package to combat drug
trafficking in Mexico and Central America, with a record $400 million
going to Mexico and $65 million to Central America.

The United States has been spending $69 billion a year worldwide for
the last 40 years, for a total of $2.5 trillion, on drug prohibition
— with little to show for it. Is anyone actually benefiting from this
war? Six groups come to mind.

The first group are the drug lords in nations such as Colombia,
Afghanistan and Mexico, as well as those in the United States. They
are making billions of dollars every year — tax free.

The second group are the street gangs that infest many of our cities
and neighborhoods, whose main source of income is the sale of illegal
drugs.

Third are those people in government who are paid well to fight the
first two groups. Their powers and bureaucratic fiefdoms grow larger
with each tax dollar spent to fund this massive program that has been
proved not to work.

Fourth are the politicians who get elected and reelected by talking
tough — not smart, just tough — about drugs and crime. But the
tougher we get in prosecuting nonviolent drug crimes, the softer we
get in the prosecution of everything else because of the limited
resources to fund the criminal justice system.

The fifth group are people who make money from increased crime. They
include those who build prisons and those who staff them. The prison
guards union is one of the strongest lobbying groups in California
today, and its ranks continue to grow.

And last are the terrorist groups worldwide that are principally
financed by the sale of illegal drugs.

Who are the losers in this war? Literally everyone else, especially
our children.

Today, there are more drugs on our streets at cheaper prices than ever
before. There are more than 1.2 million people behind bars in the
U.S., and a large percentage of them for nonviolent drug usage. Under
our failed drug policy, it is easier for young people to obtain
illegal drugs than a six-pack of beer. Why? Because the sellers of
illegal drugs don’t ask kids for IDs. As soon as we outlaw a
substance, we abandon our ability to regulate and control the
marketing of that substance.

After we came to our senses and repealed alcohol prohibition,
homicides dropped by 60% and continued to decline until World War II.
Today’s murder rates would likely again plummet if we ended drug
prohibition.

So what is the answer? Start by removing criminal penalties for
marijuana, just as we did for alcohol. If we were to do this,
according to state budget figures, California alone would save more
than $1 billion annually, which we now spend in a futile effort to
eradicate marijuana use and to jail nonviolent users. Is it any wonder
that marijuana has become the largest cash crop in California?

We could generate billions of dollars by taxing the stuff, just as we
do with tobacco and alcohol.

We should also reclassify most Schedule I drugs (drugs that the
federal government alleges have no medicinal value, including
marijuana and heroin) as Schedule II drugs (which require a
prescription), with the government regulating their production,
overseeing their potency, controlling their distribution and allowing
licensed professionals (physicians, psychiatrists, psychologists,
etc.) to prescribe them. This course of action would acknowledge that
medical issues, such as drug addiction, are best left under the
supervision of medical doctors instead of police officers.

The mission of the criminal justice system should always be to protect
us from one another and not from ourselves. That means that drug users
who drive a motor vehicle or commit other crimes while under the
influence of these drugs would continue to be held criminally
responsible for their actions, with strict penalties. But that said,
the system should not be used to protect us from ourselves.

Ending drug prohibition, taxing and regulating drugs and spending tax
dollars to treat addiction and dependency are the approaches that many
of the world’s industrialized countries are taking. Those approaches
are ones that work.

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

Additional suggestions for writing LTEs are at our Media Activism Center:

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

Or contact MAP’s Media Activism Facilitator for tips on how to write
LTEs that are printed.

[email protected]

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

PLEASE SEND US A COPY OF YOUR LETTER

Please post a copy of your letter or report your action to the sent
letter list ( [email protected] ) if you are subscribed, or by
E-mailing a copy directly to [email protected] if you are not
subscribed. Your letter will then be forwarded to the list so others
may learn from your efforts.

Subscribing to the Sent LTE list ( [email protected] ) will help you
to review other sent LTEs and perhaps come up with new ideas or
approaches as well as keeping others aware of your important writing
efforts.

To subscribe to the Sent LTE mailing list see

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

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

Prepared by: The MAP Media Activism Team www.mapinc.org/resource

=.