Incase you missed it, you can view it here.

The coverage on New Zealand TV is continuing to grow. Yesterday, Metiria Turei went on TV3′s morning news show to talk about medicinal cannabis, after Peter Davy was given 6 months home detention.

Next up, is a documentary that takes a look at the pros and cons of a change in the law.

from Throng.co.nz

Inside New Zealand: High Time? … investigates the facts and fallacies surrounding cannabis use in New Zealand and asks whether it’s time we made cannabis legal. Central to the story is Dakta Green, formerly known as Ken Morgan, who was an electorate chairman for the National Party and campaigner for Saturday Trading and Casinos before becoming an advocate for cannabis law reform.

He is leading the charge for cannabis to be legalised and has set up “The Daktory”, a warehouse in West Auckland that operates as a club for cannabis users where they can purchase and smoke the drug, as an example of how legalisation might work in the future. “The purpose of this club is to show my fellow New Zealanders that you have absolutely nothing to fear from people who are part of the cannabis culture,” says Green.

The rest of the article can be read at throng.co.nz

The documentary was filmed in part by Red Eye Productions, the valued Daktory film crew. However, they did not edit it.

Red Eye Productions have been unable to get a hold of the final cut. “The feature film will present the truth if the TV Show doesn’t,” a member told me earlier.

Image by Yair Karelic

ACTIVIST POST – Uruguay may once again prove to live up to its official motto of “liberty or death.” Already considered one of the freest countries in the world in terms of economic and political liberties, the Uruguayan government has agreed on draft legislation that will legalize possession and cultivation of marijuana for personal consumption.

According to the national newspaper El Pais:

The initiative, to be approved Tuesday 26 April by the Deputies thwart FA, allows the tree plantation, cultivation and harvesting as well as the industrialization and trade of up to eight cannabis plants per household.
Notwithstanding this, ‘be understood as quantity for personal consumption, to 25 grams of marijuana’, is set according to the Article 3…
(Persons will) Be exempt from the responsibility of ‘transport, in their possession, regardless of depositary, keeps them in stock or owns a quantity for personal consumption.’
Prior to this bill, possession of less than 25 grams of marijuana was already decriminalized in Uruguay, but the act of growing, transporting, or sharing it remained illegal. Under this bill, the government will regulate the provisions and access to seeds for cultivation.

El Argentino reported few differences between political factions indicating ensured passage of the proposed legislation:
The proposal prepared by the MPP, the Socialist Party and the New Area, which also has the support of Colorado Congressman Daniel Fernando Amado and Radio, Independent Party, is considered ‘a good first step’ for the pro-legalization groups of marijuana, but not a satisfying finish.
‘It’s an important first step. We agree that there is a need to solve a legal vacuum. But we also believe that the issue can not be exhausted here,’ said Martin Collins of Prolegal, an organization working for change in legislation on drugs in Uruguay. Collazo added that ‘any person who does not want to plant at home is entitled to purchase in the legal market, as buying alcohol or snuff today.’ In that sense, he said, ‘we must work towards the legalization of the production and marketing’ of marijuana.
Despite minor differences in the projects of organizations, any objections will not be manifested against it because ‘there are a lot of people who plant in their homes today, and run the risk of being punished for that … we ultimately want to solve this type of situation,’ said Collazo.
Uruguay, known for its economic freedom, was one of the only countries in the world to not experience a technical recession during the 2008-2009 global financial collapse. Uruguay approved industrial hemp for cultivation in 2010, and this new legislation is said to be an economic benefit as well.

The gains in personal liberty for consumption will reduce law enforcement costs and provide more access for treatment of addictions. The Archbishop of Montevideo and head priest of the Uruguayan Episcopal Conference, Nicolás Cotugno, did “not object” to the bill, if “a means to help overcome drug addiction” is included, reported El Argentino.

The new text of the bill does just that. It states that “the Executive Branch to ensure that attention and treatment will be provided to all people with an addiction to controlled substances in this Act.”

Legislators hope that this new law will provide a model for the rest of South America to bring common sense regulations to marijuana possession so it is not treated the same as crimes that actually affect society.

Pardon, dear readers, for the sporadic blogging over the last few weeks. There are many reasons why this has been so, but the main one is that I haven’t been drinking. Sure, there’s been the occasional beer here and there, catching up with old mates, but none of the long, contemplative solo drinking that fuels the really original content (moderated of course with chain-smoking rollies and puffing on the old pipe).

I haven’t been drinking because I have moved out of the Hobbit Hole in Wellington and into the Daktory in Auckland. The Daktory is New Zealand’s first cannabis clubrooms. Like Te Whiti and Tohu’s little experiment in Parihaka before it was crushed by the armed constabulary back in the nineteenth century, the Daktory forbids alcohol. So here I am, perched at a mate’s place’s balcony overlooking Great North Road with all the basic blogging ingredients; a view, a bottle of red wine, a full stash box, and a pack of duty free tobacco. Let’s go.

As long time readers will know, I have been hassling for some small time to reform NZ’s stupid, archaic, disproportionate, hypocritical drug laws. I have reached the conclusion that hell will freeze over before our poll-driven, majoritarian politicians lift a finger to change these bad laws persecuting a vulnerable minority.

It is hard to pinpoint the exact straw that broke the camels’ back; Operations Lime, Bitters, Cobra, the never-ending arrests of pot users and home growers. Or perhaps it was NZ Customs seizing all vaporisers imported into NZ not long after I gave evidence to the Health select committee demonstrating one:

Vaporisers are one of the most effective harm minimisation tools for consuming cannabis. Because THC and other cannabinoids evaporate at a lower temperature to plant material, a vaporiser allows users to grab the medicine without the tar and burnt plant material entering their lungs. Absorbtion within the lungs is quicker than mouth sprays such as Sativex, and therefore dosage can be moderated much more accurately.

Vaporisers are to cannabis users what the Needle Exchange Program is to heroin users. Even rabid former drug czar Chairman Jim Anderton supported legislation in favour of the Needle Exchange. And Customs won’t let these vaporisers in at all. Customs’ reasons for doing so are wrong-headed and contradictory, but it is too expensive appealing to the courts when faced with the bureaucratic legal monolith of NZ Customs that makes dealing with ACC look like a box of chocolates.

It’s all part of the rolling maul to allegedly eliminate drug use by removing utensils. There’s a bill floating through parliament right now that will eliminate them even more by banning the sale of pipes, bongs, and parts thereof. Let them smoke joints and buckies, eh. That’s some screwy version of harm minimisation right there.

Speak of the devil. Here’s a TV3 puff piece on pipes at the dairy, complete with an interview with the empty shell known as Jim Anderton. Pipes help remove tar and other toxins from smoke on the way to the lungs. Pipes aren’t as effective as vapes, but they’re a crapload safer for users than an unfiltered joint.

That journo wouldn’t know harm minimisation if it jabbed them with a dirty needle or a Hepatitis B joint. Fortunately for TV3, they manage to balance this rubbish out with this raw footage interview with the Police’s Detective Senior Sergeant Chris Cahill, who seems both reasonable and clued up. I’d buy that cop a beer to bend his ear.

While vanilla politicians such as John Key, Judith Collins and Simon Power continue to arrest my people, invade their homes, steal their assets, and generally ruin thousands of lives every year whilst blowing hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on cops, choppers, courts, the clink and whatever other social costs of useless prohibition, I have had enough. It is time for some civil disobedience as well.

So here I am living at the Daktory in New Lynn, New Zealand’s first cannabis club. The Daktory provides a friendly supervised environment for its members whilst funding cannabis law reform. Hey, it’s not as if Lion Nathan or Vodafone will sponsor the cause. In the two years the Daktory has been operating, there has been no fights. It has maintained a self-regulating etiquette based on the internationally accepted AHOJ-G criteria (pdf):

The sale of cannabis is illegal, yet coffee shops are tolerated in their sale of cannabis, if they adhere to certain criteria: no advertising, no sale of hard drugs, not selling to persons under the age of 18, not causing public nuisance and not selling more than 5 grams per transaction.

I have never found a place in my life as supportive as the Daktory. It’s the Whanau Ora of NZ cannabis culture. I am with my people. Time will tell if the cops bring the hammer down on us here at the Daktory, like they are already trying to do with Switched On Gardener and Operation Lime. Dakta Green is facing trial later this year for charges trumped up during a fortnight of police harassment back in 2009. I’m assisting in his defence.

Alas, I must go. I am not only blogging, but also babysitting. Daughter of Madame J is 10 years old. I have just told her that when I was her age, the police used to arrest gay people, raid gay bars and lock its patrons up in prison. Her jaw just dropped. It’s amazing how intolerant this country once was, and still is. We hope for a change towards a more tolerant society, but in the meantime I’m living like it’s legal. Wish me luck.

Cross-posted from here.

Two ideologically diverse advocates on Wednesday echoed an earlier call by a coalition of drug-policy reform groups by condemning a series of recent raids by the Drug Enforcement Administration on medical marijuana collectives operating legally under state law.

The Tenth Amendment Center, a group that advocates for states’ rights, and Jane Hamsher, the publisher of Firedoglake.com, called on the DEA to respect duly adopted state medical marijuana laws and immediately end those raids.

“The federal government is only authorized to exercise those powers that ‘We The People’ delegated to it in the Constitution,” said Michael Boldin, founder of the Tenth Amendment Center. “It is especially egregious when these laws are used to justify raids in states where the use and distribution of cannabis is expressly allowed by law.”

“How many hundreds of thousands of people are going to be arrested before We The People say ‘enough is enough’?” Boldin asked. “The time to end this unconstitutional, immoral, and costly federal war on people is now.”

Under the “leadership” of acting administrator Michele Leonhart, the DEA has staged medical marijuana raids in apparent disregard of Attorney General Eric Holder’s directive to respect state medical marijuana laws.

Most recently, DEA agents flouted a pioneering Mendocino County, California ordinance to regulate medical marijuana cultivation by raiding the very first grower to register with the sheriff. Joy Greenfield, 69, had paid more than $1,000 for a permit to cultivate 99 plants in a collective garden that had been inspected and approved by the local sheriff.

Told that Greenfield had the support of the sheriff, the DEA agent in charge responded by saying, “I don’t care what the sheriff says.”

The DEA’s conduct is inconsistent with an October 2009 Department of Justice memo directing officials not to prosecute individuals “whose actions are in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws providing for the medical use of marijuana.”

“At least 73 percent of Americans support medical marijuana, according to recent polls, and its use has been made legal in 14 states plus the District of Columbia,” said Jane Hamsher, publisher of progressive political blog and advocacy group Firedoglake.com.

“Attorney General Eric Holder was crystal clear last year when he directed officials within his department not to waste federal resources interfering with state medical marijuana laws,” Hamsher said. “Yet throughout the tenure of President Obama’s administration, the DEA’s raids have continued in a manner wholly inconsistent with the spirit of that directive.”

“What part of ‘not a priority does Michele Leonhart not understand?” Hamsher asked.

“We are pleased that opposition to the DEA’s over-aggressive behavior is spreading across the political spectrum,” said Steve Fox, director of government relations for the Marijuana Policy Project.

“The agency is defiantly sending agents on missions to destroy the private property of citizens who are in full compliance with state medical marijuana laws,” Fox said. “In doing so, the DEA is intentionally undermining the will of state voters and lawmakers who have acted to ensure that medical marijuana patients are no longer treated as criminals.”

“Such acts are not just an insult to advocates of medical marijuana — but also demonstrate a desire to flaunt the power of the federal government in a manner that denies states the right to pass and carry out laws in the best interest of its own citizens,” Fox said.

Based largely upon these recent raids, a coalition of drug policy organizations — including MPP, NORML, California NORML, the Drug Policy Alliance, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), and Students for Sensible Drug Policy — last week called on President Obama to withdraw the nomination of Leonhart to be the permanent head of the DEA.

• Prop 19 PPP
• Support 52%
• Oppose 36%

This is the largest margin of support we have seen from recent polling on Prop 19. Interestingly, the poll found support among African Americans to be extremely high. From PPP blog:

Democrats are more likely to throw their support behind the prop than Republicans. 62% of Democrats, 37% of Republicans and 55% of Independents support Prop 19.

African-Americans are the strongest supporters of Prop 19; 68:32, followed by Whites who support it 53:37.

Those are surprisingly high numbers among African Americans. A SurveyUSA poll from earlier this month had African Americans on average about as likely to support Prop 19 as whites. Significantly, a small percentage of African Americans said they were certain to oppose it.

Read more of this article at elections.firedoglake.com

By: Jon Walker Wednesday July 21, 2010 10:01 pm

According to a new Angus Reid Public Opinion poll (PDF), American adults overwhelmingly believe the “War on Drugs” has been a failure: 65 percent of adults describe it that way, while only eight percent call it a success and 27 percent are not sure. After several decades, billions of dollars spent and hundreds of thousands of arrests as part of the War on Drugs, illegal drugs remain easily available throughout the nation. It’s no surprise Americans say the policy has failed.

With so many Americans viewing the War on Drugs as a policy failure, they’re now open to legalizing the most common and safest of illegal substances, marijuana.

Even more interesting, the poll finds that 52 percent of American adults either strongly or moderately support legalization of marijuana. A majority of Democrats, 57 percent, and independents, 59 percent, support it. Only 38 percent of Republicans do. The poll finds extremely little support for legalizing any other illegal drug, such as ecstasy or cocaine.

Angus Reid, a Canada-based international polling firm, was very accurate in the 2008 Canadian federal election. This poll was an online survey of 1003 American adults with a margin of error of 3.1 percent, conducted on July 14 and 15.

Even if a slim majority of all American adults supports marijuana legalization, it is likely there is not yet majority support for legalization among that all-important group of individuals: those who will cast a ballot this November. It is important to note that the poll was of all adults. As a group, all American adults tend to be noticeably younger and more liberal than “registered voters.” The group of “likely voters,” those who are expected to vote on Election Day, is, on average, older and less liberal. This discrepancy of opinion between all adults and the small subset of adults who normally vote is why registration and turnout will be so critical to the fate of Proposition 19 in California.

Original Article: http://elections.firedoglake.com/

Three may not seem like a high number, but it represents the most public support that legalization has garnered from a single state’s delegation — and it signals the effect that ballot initiatives can have on advancing the public debate over marijuana policy. Many of the rest of the Democrats in the delegation said they were open to supporting it. The state’s chapter of the NAACP has also come out in favor of it.

The three Democrats to tell HuffPost that they’ll vote yes – Reps. George Miller, Barbara Lee and Pete Stark — represent Bay Area districts and are the first federal legislators to publicly back Proposition 19. Another Democrat, Mike Honda, who represents Silicon Valley, which owes much to consciousness-expanding drugs, said he was leaning toward voting yes. “It’s like driving or drinking: We have a certain age, then you have that privilege and if you abuse it you lose it. I don’t think this is any different, just like other kinds of legalized behavior,” said Honda.

One Republican, the libertarian-leaning Dana Rohrabacher, who represents parts of Huntington Beach and Long Beach, said the he was initially planning to endorse the proposition, but thinks it doesn’t go far enough to protect employers. “I would say in principle I would vote yes but you always have to read the fine print,” he said. “I read into it and it was more than simply preventing people from going to jail. It was that nobody could use that as a criteria for hiring and firing… If somebody wants to hire just non-smokers or non-drinkers that’s his or her personal prerogative as far as I’m concerned.”

Rohrabacher said that if a bill similar to the proposition in California came to the House floor, but didn’t include the employer language, he’d vote for it.

HuffPost quizzed each member of the California delegation, but perhaps the most unlikely negative response came from Rep. Lynn Woolsey, a Democrat who represents Marin and Sonoma Counties and is co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. No polling has been done specific to her district, but Woolsey’s opposition would put her in a dwindling minority in Northern California.

In a statement, Woolsey emphasized her support of medical marijuana. “Marijuana use is increasing among today’s youth, and as a mother and a grandmother, I am concerned by any initiative that might contribute to increased substance abuse,” she said. “While I am not convinced that legalization of marijuana is appropriate at this time, I do believe that doctors should be permitted to prescribe marijuana for patients suffering from cancer, AIDS, glaucoma, spastic disorders, and other debilitating diseases. I’m an original cosponsor of H.R. 2835, the Medical Marijuana Patient Protection Act, which would prevent federal laws from restricting the production, distribution, and use of medical marijuana.”

Article continues at www.huffingtonpost.com

by: Michael Whitney, Monday June 28 (elections.firedoglake.com)

Yes on 19 Marijuana Legalization Campaign Poster from 1972. (Bolerium Books/LA Weekly)

While California confirmed its state’s marijuana legalization initiative would be on the November ballot months ago, today the state assigned proposition numbers to this year’s slate of initiatives. Get used to hearing about Proposition 19, which is where you’ll get to vote to legalize marijuana in California.

The state restarts the counter for proposition numbers every ten years, last doing so in 2008 (hence why gay marriage was Prop 8 in 2009). While it’s inevitable proposition numbers will be reused, the LA Weekly notes a strange coincidence in the legalization initiative’s number. When pot legalization was on the ballot in 1972, it was also Proposition 19.

The Secretary of State’s office says it was a coincidence. But you can’t put anything past the people who named the state’s medical marijuana bill SB 420.

Anyway, if you still have your Prop. 19 buttons and posters, you won’t have to go buy new ones.

As you can probably tell, Prop. 19 failed in 1972. In fact, it wasn’t close. According to Ballotpedia, the measure went down by a vote of 66.5% to 33.5%. We’ll see in November how much attitudes have changed in the intervening 38 years.

The latest LA Times poll found 49% of Californians support marijuana legalization, with 41% opposed in May. Earlier that month, the Public Policy Institute found the state evenly split, with 48% supporting to 49% opposing.

I just really hope this year’s campaign can produce some equally awesome posters like the one here from the 1972 Prop 19 campaign for legalization.

Pot isn’t the only issue on which Californians will vote in November. Jon Walker has a rundown of the 10 initiatives on the ballot for Golden State voters.