A by-election will be held on November 20 in Mana electorate. Maryjane represented at the TVNZ7 Back Benchers by-election special.

Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party candidate Julian Crawford launched his campaign with an appearance on the Dakta Green hour and later on Back Benchers.

Speaking privately with Richard Nixon in 1971, the late Art Linkletter offered this view on the use of marijuana versus alcohol. “When people smoke marijuana, they smoke it to get high. In every case, when most people drink, they drink to be sociable.”

“That’s right, that’s right,” Nixon agreed. “A person does not drink to get drunk A person drinks to have fun.”

The following year Linkletter announced that he had reversed his position on pot, concluding instead that the drug’s social harms were not significant enough to warrant its criminal prohibition. Nixon however stayed the course — launching the so-called “war” on drugs, a social policy that now results in the arrest of more than 800,000 Americans each year for violating marijuana laws.

Read the rest of the article at alternet.org

Bucking the recommendation of their executive board, delegates to the Washington State Democratic Convention endorsed I-1068 (the marijuana legalization initiative) with 62 percent “yes” vote (314 to 185). The executive board had given no recommendation on the initiative because “the committee was even more split than the delegates,” according to State Vice Chair Sharon Smith.

The endorsement of the State Democratic Party may be too late to ensure marijuana legalization is on the ballot this November. A petition with signatures from at least 241,153 registered voters must be submitted by July 2nd, just five days from now in order to put I-1068 on the ballot.

The truly grassroots organization Sensible Washington has run a very strong signature gathering campaign to promote I-1068. However due to limited funding they may fall short of the requisite number of signatures. The task of running a true grassroots petition campaign in Washington State as opposed to a professional signature gathering operation, has been strongly hampered by the state’s ridiculous restriction preventing petitions from being printed on a standard 8.5 x 11 inch office paper (PDF).

That the marijuana legalization initiative was endorsed by the State Democratic Party is a good sign that it may get on the ballot in 2012 with a broad campaign working to gather signatures. It’s more likely to happen if the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act 0f 2010 passes in California this November, setting a precedent for Washington State.

More importantly this may be another very positive sign that marijuana’s legal status is finally moving away from being some weird moralistic taboo to becoming just another political/policy question to be debated on its merits. Does it make sense to maintain a law so universally violated that it has been broken by both our current and at least one former President of the United States?

Some of you may have noticed the site went down for about a day. We had some server issues which have been resolved. The site is also running on the new version of WordPress, so expect a few new things around the site in the coming weeks!

Jody Emery (via cannabisculture.com): Marc is currently in SeaTac Federal Detention Center, or SeaTac FDC, and has access to the federal prisoner “email” system CorrLinks.

To send Marc mail or money in prison, which will make his sentence much more bearable, please click here for the mailing address and other information.

From Marc Emery – May 22nd, 2010

The radio here mentions the rally downtown in Seattle every 15 minutes. On a request line at 4.20 pm , a caller called in and requested “My request is FREE MARC EMERY!” You guys are doing great!

The food is dubious and meat, but at this point, I am unconcerned. I eat it up. I’m reading a book on the horrible prisons & appalling history of black convict leasing in the old south. Good book. Halfway done.

My cellmate is Oliver, a Jewish Iranian Canadian charged with having guns, but his story is greatly misunderstood so far. He has never been in jail before and genuinely had no criminal intent, but Iranian & guns has Homeland Security on him. He’s a licensed gun dealer but he will need some time to get it all sorted out. He lacks a caring, loving support system like I have because he has frittered his life in some respects, but was an orphan without parents so his life is rootless and challenged.

A fellow I treated as a patient at my Ibogaine Clinic is actually here, of all things. Most people here are Mexican and African-American so they don’t know much or anything about me, but its still fine. Because I am out of my cell from 6 am to 10 pm, its way different and way preferable than North Fraser. I’m sleeping better because when I get up at 6 am, and do exercises & read and play dominoes and cards, by 11 pm, I’m tired! There is no outside of any kind that I’ve seen here, but I’m unconcerned.

As long as I maintain my health and you are safe & sound and doing your activism, I am happy. Plus I really like the email thing here.

So tell me about your rally. And what you are going to eat today, or have eaten! You cannot be getting ill or unwell from lack of proper food.

Because your money arrived, I am getting headphones, radio (which is how people hear the TV’s here, which is clever actually, so there is no sound except on your headphones, and there are several different stations on at any given time “on the range” as there are no TVs in the cell (which I like), tuna, proper razor & razor blades, and all the stuff I need.

On June 8 I will get proper running shoes because I walk 30 – 50 laps around this place every day on the 2nd level walkways. I will write a visual sketch of my range in the next few days. You can only spend $320 a month on “commissary” but it renews itself for me on June 8, so that’s fine. For example, my 300 phone minutes are 300 minutes from today till June 7, so that’s actually 19 minutes a day, so I may call you twice a day or save the minutes and do one long call for you & Jeremiah for Prison Podcast. After June 7, that is June 8 – July 7, its 300 minutes over 30 days, only 10 minutes a day.

Thank Vivian McPeak and Paul Stanford for their efforts on my behalf. Their rally here is getting coverage. I was in the Seattle News yesterday, the inmates all read that (that read newspapers). It also announced today’s rally.

Everyone is here for drugs that I have spoken to so far, everyone. A lot of failed urine tests, breaches of probation, trafficking, etc. Its almost all drugs. I am friends with a number already, including a nice black gentleman named Robert who I enjoy playing dominoes with. There is no racial tension here, nor any tension or potential violence here, so far, but we are not cooped up in cells for 18-20 hours daily like North Fraser was, so it ought to be less tense!

The computer set up is a clunky keyboard and email program. It costs 5 cents for every 10 minutes or so, but that’s a deal for me because the value is great to be able to do this and not phone, because for us, just 10 minutes of communication daily would be hard.

Tell me all about your rally!!!! And any cool articles from the news! Love you! Can’t wait to hear back! Isn’t this great!? It makes me so happy to know you are excelling and are safe & surrounded by our friends, allies & loved ones. Don’t forget to give me the email addresses of our friends, like Kirk, and Chris Goodwin, and our friends at work. The form will arrive probably Thursday for the visitation. Remember to return it with passport photocopy AND marriage certificate photocopy.

Can’t wait to hear from you. Do you have the mailing address here? Next email I will give it to you just in case.

Love * LOVE * Adore* Worship You * Best thing ever to happen to me! * I am so blessed to have you in my loving corner. Thank you family for being awesome to me. I am not unhappy at all with all the love I get, no kidding, and when I return, we will be unbeatable and travel the world and visit with our people across the globe. Its going to be great, Mrs. Emery …. BECAUSE of YOU and ME and all our supporters, friends, and family! I have so much to be grateful for! Excited to be alive when I have you to dream about all day. And dreams do come true! And will!

Your civil rights activist boo,
Marc
xxx

The US is thinking about dealing with drug abuse as a medical issue, says Martha Mendoza

fter 40 years, the United States’ war on drugs has cost US$1 trillion ($1.5 trillion) and hundreds of thousands of lives, and for what? Drug use is rampant and violence even more brutal and widespread.

Even US drug czar Gil Kerlikowske concedes the strategy hasn’t worked.

“In the grand scheme, it has not been successful,” Kerlikowske said. “Forty years later, the concern about drugs and drug problems is, if anything, magnified, intensified.”

President Barack Obama has promised to “reduce drug use and the great damage it causes” with a new national policy that he says treats drug use more as a public health issue and focuses on prevention and treatment.

Nevertheless, his administration has increased spending on interdiction and law enforcement to record levels in dollar and percentage terms; this year, they account for US$10 billion of his US$15.5 billion drug-control budget.

Kerlikowske, who co-ordinates all federal anti-drug policies, says it will take time for the spending to match the rhetoric.

“Nothing happens overnight,” he said. “We’ve never worked the drug problem holistically.

We’ll arrest the drug dealer, but we leave the addiction.”

In 1970, hippies were smoking pot and dropping acid. Soldiers were coming home from Vietnam hooked on heroin. Embattled President Richard Nixon seized on a new war he thought he could win.

“Public enemy No 1 in the United States is drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive,” he said.

His first drug-fighting budget was US$100 million. Now it’s US$15.1 billion, 31 times Nixon’s amount even when adjusted for inflation.

Using Freedom of Information Act requests, archival records, federal budgets and dozens of interviews with leaders and analysts, AP tracked where that money went, and found that the United States repeatedly increased budgets for programmes that did little to stop the flow of drugs.

Harvard University economist Jeffrey Miron says the only sure thing taxpayers get for more spending on police and soldiers is more homicides.

“Current policy is not having an effect on reducing drug use,” Miron said, “but it’s costing the public a fortune.”

From the beginning, lawmakers debated fiercely whether law enforcement – no matter how well funded and well trained – could ever defeat the drug problem.

Then-Alaska Senator Mike Gravel, who had his doubts, has since watched his worst fears come to pass.

“Look what happened. It’s an ongoing tragedy that has cost us a trillion dollars. It has loaded our jails and it has destabilised countries like Mexico and Colombia,” he said.

In 1970, proponents said beefed-up law enforcement could effectively seal the southern US border and stop drugs from coming in.

Since then, the US used patrols, checkpoints, sniffer dogs, cameras, motion detectors, heat sensors, drone aircraft – and even put up more than 1600km of steel beam, concrete walls and heavy mesh stretching from California to Texas.

None of that has stopped the drugs.

The Office of National Drug Control Policy says about 330 tonnes of cocaine, 20 tonnes of heroin and 110 tonnes of methamphetamine are sold in the US every year – almost all of it brought in across the borders. Even more marijuana is sold, but it’s hard to know how much of that is grown domestically, including vast fields run by Mexican drug cartels in US national parks.

The dealers who are caught have overwhelmed justice systems in the US and elsewhere. US prosecutors declined to file charges in 7482 drug cases last year, mostly because they simply didn’t have the time. That’s about one out of every four drug cases.

In Mexico, traffickers exploit a broken justice system. Investigators often fail to collect convincing evidence – and are sometimes assassinated when they do.

In prison, in the US or Mexico, traffickers continue to operate, ordering assassinations and arranging distribution of their product even from solitary confinement in Texas and California. In Mexico, prisoners can sometimes even buy their way out.

The violence spans Mexico.

In Ciudad Juarez, the epicentre of drug violence in Mexico, 2600 people were killed last year in cartel-related violence, making the city of one million across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, one of the world’s deadliest. Not a single person was prosecuted for homicide related to organised crime.

And then there’s the money.

The US$320 billion annual global drug industry now accounts for 1 per cent of all commerce on the planet.

A full 10 per cent of Mexico’s economy is built on drug proceeds – US$25 billion smuggled in from the US every year, of which US25c of each US$100 smuggled is seized at the border.

Thus there’s no incentive for the kind of financial reform that could tame the cartels.

“For every drug dealer you put in jail or kill, there’s a line-up to replace him because the money is just so good,” says Walter McCay, who heads the nonprofit Centre for Professional Police Certification in Mexico City.

McCay is one of the 13,000 members of Medford, Massachusetts-based Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a group of cops, judges, prosecutors, prison wardens and others who want to legalise and regulate all drugs.

A decade ago, no politician who wanted to keep his job would breathe a word about legalisation, but a consensus is growing across the country that at least marijuana will someday be regulated and sold like tobacco and alcohol.

California voters decide in November whether to legalise marijuana and South Dakota will vote a little earlier on whether to allow medical uses of marijuana, already permitted in California and 13 other states.

The Obama administration says it won’t target marijuana dispensaries if they comply with state laws.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon says if America wants to fix the drug problem, it needs to do something about Americans’ unquenching thirst for illegal drugs.

Kerlikowske agrees and Obama has committed to doing just that.

And yet both countries continue to spend the bulk of their drug budgets on law enforcement rather than treatment and prevention.

“President Obama’s newly released drug war budget is essentially the same as Bush’s, with roughly twice as much money going to the criminal justice system as to treatment and prevention,” said Bill Piper, director of national affairs for the non-profit Drug Policy Alliance.

“This despite Obama’s statements on the campaign trail that drug use should be treated as a health issue, not a criminal justice issue.”

Kerlikowske, who wishes people would stop calling it a “war” on drugs, frequently talks about one of the most valuable tools they’ve found, in which doctors screen for drug abuse during routine medical examinations. That programme would get a mere US$7.2 million under Obama’s budget.

“People will say that’s not enough. They’ll say the drug budget hasn’t shifted as much as it should have and, granted, I don’t disagree with that,” Kerlikowske said.

“We would like to do more in that direction.”

Fifteen years ago, when the government began telling doctors to ask their patients about their drug use during routine medical exams, it described the programme as one of the most proven ways to intervene early with would-be addicts.

“Nothing happens overnight,” Kerlikowske said.

So why persist with costly programmes that don’t work?

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says: “Look, this is something that is worth fighting for because drug addiction is about fighting for somebody’s life, a young child’s life, a teenager’s life, their ability to be a successful and productive adult.

“If you think about it in those terms … you realise the stakes are too high to let go.”

- AP

Image from today’s rally in Auckland for Marc Emery and the Lime Raids.

I hope those of you who watch this video aren’t as prone to raging as I am, I had to restrain myself from putting a hole in my computer screen after listening to Brian Darling lay down the gateway theory, and run the argument around in circles without actually stating or sighting any facts.

Remember that tomorrow is the rally in Auckland City and in many other cities around the world for Marc Emery, and the Lime Raids. Come down and show your support, I will be there along with Dakta Green, Mary Jane the Cannabus, and many other legalisation supporters. Checkout the facebook event for more details.

Original post from http://endo.tv/prohibitionist-gets-taken-to-school

“I think we’re seeing desperation on the side of law enforcement,” he says, “and I also think they can’t see the forest for the trees. They’re so sued to being in the prohibitionist mindset that they can’t possibly fathom regulating marijuana.”

According to Vicente, who spent Monday at the Capitol, “you had a coalition of law enforcement bringing a resolution for a referendum that would have explicitly destroyed dispensaries. It would have said they were illegal under state law and would have heaped all kinds of really onerous requirements on caregivers that aren’t currently in the constitution.

“They wanted to put it before the voters in November, which would have been a waste of time, because I think the voters would have soundly rejected it. But it was a very clear attempt by them to destroy the safe-access model.”

Read the rest of this article here
Source http://blogs.westword.com/

By RICHARD M. EVANS

NORTHAMPTON, Mass.

Now that an initiative to legalize marijuana is officially on the California ballot this November, President Obama should brace for a strong jolt from the west.

If the measure passes (the latest poll puts support at 56 percent), no longer will it be a crime under state law for an adult to cultivate, possess or transport a personal supply of pot. Moreover, cities and counties will be authorized to regulate and tax commercial production, distribution and sale of marijuana, subject to restrictions and protections for minors and public safety. Revenue raised by marijuana sales would go to local governments, not Sacramento. Initiatives are also in the works in Washington and Oregon.

The president’s dilemma, in confronting state repeal of prohibition, lies in that marijuana will remain prohibited under federal law. It’s not the first time something like this has happened.

In 1923, during the prohibition whose era now gets a capital P, New York repealed its alcohol-prohibition laws, shifting the burden and expense of enforcement onto federal authorities. Not only did the state gain significant savings in law- enforcement costs, but perhaps as a consequence, for the remaining 10 years of Prohibition New York City escaped the level of crime and violence that plagued some other large cities, such as Chicago and Detroit. It also explains why, in movies of the era, police are often called the “Feds.”

If California voters see marijuana prohibition as unsustainable and vote accordingly, howls will arise, most audibly from politicized public employees who see their jobs at risk. There will be the usual bleating about “sending the wrong message” to children, as if criminal-justice policy should be based on how it might be misconstrued by the immature. Moralists will sputter. Congress will bluster. It will be a splendid kerfuffle.

Faced with no local marijuana enforcement, the president’s choices are limited. He could send in armies of federal agents to patrol the streets and surveil backyards and basements. In no time, surely, the corridors of federal courthouses would fill with sad-eyed teenagers and small-time pot dealers, and already overburdened judges will roar.

Another option may be to retreat, as with medical marijuana, ordering federal police to ignore conduct that is in compliance with state law, including licensed and regulated farms, plants and shops. However, this restraint conflicts with the president’s constitutional duty to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed,” notwithstanding the stated reason for not interfering with medical marijuana was that the Feds simply do not have the resources.

The president’s best option is the last resort of scoundrels and statesmen alike: to tell the truth. He can remind the nation that marijuana was outlawed early in the last century to oppress minorities, and, shamefully, its prohibition continues to serve that function. He can deplore how the government uses the marijuana laws to insinuate itself into the personal lives of Americans, leaving millions with stained records that rule out good jobs and even an education. He can lament how it is really marijuana prohibition that “sends the wrong message” to children, by conflating the concepts of use and abuse, undermining honest drug education.

He could condemn the utter hypocrisy of outlawing marijuana, which has never killed anyone, while we regulate and tax alcohol and tobacco, both deadly, and celebrate drink as an integral part of many social rituals.

He could admit the obvious fact that marijuana has become an inextricable part of our culture, despite decades of anti-drug propaganda. He could challenge the defenders of prohibition to tell us how many more people will have to be arrested, prosecuted and punished before marijuana is extirpated from our land, and how much that will cost, and where the money will come from to pay for it.

On June 12, 1987, Ronald Reagan stood at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin and exhorted Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall.” November may well deliver an exhortation from the voters of California to tear down the wall of marijuana prohibition.

Might this be Obama’s Gorbachevian moment?

Richard M. Evans is a lawyer in Northampton and maintains the Web site www.cantaxreg.com.

source: http://www.projo.com/opinion/contributors/content/CT_pot22_04-22-10_NGI4ADE_v10.40596a2.html