It’s Monday, May 12th, and it’s 4:20 somewhere in the world. I’m your host, “Radical” Russ Belville.
Don’t forget to your Congress at 202-224-3121, and tell your representative to support Barney Frank’s HR5843 bill that would legalize marijuana for personal use. Ending prohibition starts with you!
For our Political Activism day today we’re heading on down to California to speak with Dale Geiringer, the Executive Director of California NORML. Dale’s got some updates on an upcoming vote to restrict marijuana growing in Mendocino county and the status of a bill to protect medical marijuana patients in the workplace.
For our musical break today I’m giving Cannabis Karri a break because today is my youngest brother’s 25th birthday. So today Josh Belville, my non-cannabis smoking little brother, is our featured artist and I’m playing the song he wrote because of a specific request from me, his pothead oldest brother, for a groovy tune about weed smoking. Josh comes through for all of us with a dance song called “Get Stoned Together.”
To conclude our Stash we go across the continent to Rhode Island to speak with Jesse Stout from the Rhode Island Patients Advocacy Coalition. Jesse’s got updates on the twin bills in the House and Senate that would legalize medical marijuana dispensaries in the state.
And remember, if you are a business or non-profit who’d like your message heard on the Daily Audio Stash or the NORML Weekly News, you can advertise with us. We have rates for every budget and a 10% discount for non-profits. You can target your message to the focused audience of enlightened cannabis consumers you’re looking for. With over 28,000 daily downloads and hundreds of thousands of embedded players on websites worldwide, advertising with NORML is the most effective way of reaching your potential customers. Just send us an email at stash ‘at’ norml.org and we’ll have you on the air in no time.
So sit back and relax with a good friend and your favorite strain, it’s time for your NORML Daily Audio Stash.
Hey Stashers, “Radical” Russ here. Welcome to Monday, May 12, 2008, or as I like to call it, my youngest brother’s 25th birthday! Yes, that cute chubby baby on the left is all grown up now, and as his oldest brother, it is my job to publicly embarrass, er, I mean, support my brother in all his endeavors.
Josh is incredibly talented, and that’s not just a proud big bro talking. He’s soon to graduate Boise State University as a theater arts major. He’s a gifted actor, director, and playwright in addition to being a talented singer/songwriter and guitarist. To the best of my knowledge, Josh isn’t a cannabis consumer, but as I was checking out his music on MySpace, I told him that someday he needed to write me a song about weed so I could promote him on the Stash.
Two days later Josh knocked out a demo on his four-track recorder. It’s this cute little disco-ish tune called “Get Stoned Together”, and he plays the guitar, bass, and cheesy keyboards as well as programming the drum machine and singing all the vocals. It helps fill the gap left by the lack of marijuana love songs - there are lots of songs about loving weed, but few about loving someone by sharing weed.
Enjoy the demo. Josh is moving here to Portland in the summer, and we’ll be collaborating on this song and others (I play bass, my cousin plays drums, and his mom has a great recording studio). We’ll let you know when the finished product is ready!
American nonchalance about drug use stands in sharp contrast to what is happening across the border in Mexico. There lawmen are taking heavy casualties in a showdown with drug-running crime syndicates. On Thursday the chief of the Mexican federal police, Edgar Millán Gómez, was assassinated by men waiting for him when he came home, becoming the latest and most prominent victim of the syndicates.
It’s no secret that the narcotics trade is like a roach infestation. If you see one shipment or dealer, you can be sure that there are many others that go undetected. The signs of an infestation are everywhere, making a joke of their 40-year claim that any day now they will wipe out American drug use.
Yet if prohibitionists should find this lack of results troubling, imagine how Mexico must view it. That country doesn’t even produce cocaine, but it became a transit route to the U.S. when enforcers had some success in curtailing supplies coming through the Caribbean in the late 1990s.
That success didn’t change the U.S. appetite for the mind-altering substances. Instead, drugs started flowing over land routes and Mexican cartels took charge. Now they are rumored to be in control of most of the traffic from the Andes northward. A U.S.-Mexican joint assessment estimates that more than $10 billion in cash from drug sales flow from the U.S. to Mexico every year.
The upshot: Americans underwrite Mexico’s vicious organized crime syndicates. The gringos get their drugs and the Mexican mafia gets weapons, technology and the means to buy off or intimidate anyone who gets in their way. Caught in the middle is a poor country striving to develop sound institutions for law enforcement.
Most of the drug-related killings since [Mexican President Felipe] Calderón took office seem to be a result of battles between rival cartels. Still, the escalating violence is troubling. The official death toll attributable to organized crime since the Calderón crackdown began now stands at 3,995. Of that, 1,170 have died this year.
Especially alarming are the number of assassinations among military personnel and municipal, state and federal police officers. The total is 439 for the 17 months and 109 so far this year. Many of these victims have been ordinary police officers whose refusal to be bought off or back off cost them their lives.
But as the murder of police chief Millan makes clear, high rank offers no safety. Two weeks before he was gunned down, Roberto Velasco, the head of the organized crime division of the federal police, was shot in the head. Eleven federal law enforcement agents have been killed in ambushes and executions in the last four weeks alone.
If U.S. law enforcement agencies were losing their finest at such a rate, you can bet Americans would give greater thought to the violence generated by high demand and prohibition. Our friends in Mexico deserve equal consideration.
Here in America, one of the saddest consequences of the War on (Certain American Citizens Using Non-Pharmaceutical, Non-Alcoholic, Tobacco-Free) Drugs is the erosion of support for law enforcement in the eyes of the young. Older folks tell me of a day when they knew the beat cop who patrolled their neighborhood and young people would turn to that officer in times of trouble. Now, people my age and younger have a distrust for police, especially in minority neighborhoods, seeing law enforcement officers as “them” against “us”.
No responsible cannabis consumer with any sense hates police. In fact, most of us would prefer to be able to call police in times of crisis and not fear being caught with the so-called “controlled” substance that would land us prison time. It is unknown how many burglaries or assaults go unreported because the victim is a marijuana user afraid of punishment, but anecdotally I can relate many such occurrences from my friends and family.
Also, we want police and the public to be safe as well. We see no reason why a peace officer needs to put his or her life on the line busting marijuana growers who must protect their crops with guns, since growers can’t turn to police or courts to handle marijuana thefts. We see no reason why the public should face the danger of serious crimes not being responded to because an officer is too busy busting a young person with a baggie of pot.
All marijuana prohibition does is takes a popular activity and adds in violence, profit, and corruption, while not decreasing the popular activity one iota.
Next president might be gentler on pot clubs
Ever since California voters became the first in the nation to legalize medical marijuana in 1996, the state has faced unyielding opposition from the federal government, which insists it has the power to prohibit a drug it considers useless and dangerous.
That could all change with the next presidential election.
As the candidates prepare for a May 20 primary in Oregon, one of 12 states with a California-style law, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois has become an increasingly firm advocate of ending federal intervention and letting states make their own rules when it comes to medical marijuana.
His Democratic rival, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, is less explicit, recently softening a pledge she made early in the campaign to halt federal raids in states with medical marijuana laws. But she has expressed none of the hostility that marked the response of her husband’s administration to California’s initiative, Proposition 215.
Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the Republican nominee-in-waiting, has gone back and forth on the issue - promising a medical marijuana patient at one campaign stop that seriously ill patients would never face arrest under a McCain administration, but ultimately endorsing the Bush administration’s policy of federal raids and prosecutions.
Senator Obama seems to understand that there is legitimate medical use for marijuana, comparing doctor-prescribed morphine to doctor-recommended marijuana. Senator Clinton seems to have waffled a bit, saying first that the DEA raids in medical marijuana states should end, but later saying instead that DEA raids shouldn’t be a “high priority”, which leaves the possibility open that the DEA raids would be a priority to some lesser extent. She also seems unaware of marijuana’s proven medicinal benefits, calling for more research despite the dozens of studies that have confirmed marijuana as medicine. And Senator McCain has flip-flopped numerous times on this issue, telling one patient he’d never be arrested for using medical marijuana, but then stating that he would not end DEA raids in medical marijuana states.
While the pro-marijuana lobby will vigorously refute this fact, citing selective bits of information from inconclusive research, they fail to mention that many professional medical organizations, including those representing the patients proponents say need it the most (the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, the American Academy of Ophthalmology, and the American Cancer Society) do not support the medical use of marijuana.
Currently, medical researchers and scientists are conducting studies to determine if certain properties of marijuana may be suitable for medical treatment of illnesses or ailments, which can be refined for safe pharmaceutical distribution. One such drug, Marinol, is currently available in pill form.
Strange, isn’t it, how the free plant with 14% THC is a “dangerous drug”, but a 100% THC pill costing $20 a pop and making profit for a pharmaceutical company is “suitable for medical treatment of illnesses or ailments.” Turns out that the pill isn’t as useful as the raw plant as well, as the pill lacks cannabidiol, flavinoids, and terpenoids.
A 1999 landmark study of the Institute of Medicine found there is only anecdotal information on the medical benefits of smoked marijuana for some ailments, such as muscle spasticity.
For other ailments, such as epilepsy and glaucoma, the study found no evidence of medical value and did not endorse further research.
This study concluded that there is little future in smoked marijuana as a medically approved medication because of the dangers of smoking a substance that contains many harmful substances.
Dangers which don’t exist when cannabis is vaporized, or eaten, or given sublingually as a tincture.
Marijuana is also an addictive drug. According to the Minnesota Department of Human Services, 7,784 people who reported marijuana as their primary substance of abuse received addiction treatment in 2007. That was 16 percent of all treatment admissions in our state last year.
Because close to 7,784 people were sentenced by a court to drug treatment when caught with cannabis. Only 7.3% of people who personally seek drug treatment (as opposed to being forced into it) are there for cannabis use. Of all the people in treatment for cannabis, only 16.6% put themselves there.
We are not the bad guys. Our goal is to protect, not exploit our citizens. We are united in our belief that passage of this legislation will have negative consequences on our communities, our youth and all our citizens. We are out in front telling you that this legislation is bad public policy. If you don’t believe us, then just ask our colleagues in California or Oregon about the problems “medical marijuana” has caused for them. They will be glad to tell you.
Law enforcement needs to look beyond their years of inculcation to the cult of reefer madness to realize that we have all been lied to about marijuana and its users for over seventy years now. Legalization for all users, healthy and sick, is the only rational public policy. Bushman’s belief essentially boils down to, “Sorry, cancer and AIDS patients should suffer because some healthy person might try to get high.” Well, I mean, high from the wrong drug, of course; I doubt Bushman has a problem with Minnesotans who drink vodka and wishes to return to alcohol prohibition.
Rachel Morningstar Hoffman, 23, a 2007 Florida State University graduate, was found dead in rural Taylor County early Friday after two men suspected in her kidnapping and robbery led investigators to her body. Murder charges are pending, according to the Tallahassee Police Department.
Hoffman was last seen Wednesday night near Forestmeadows Park while attempting to assist TPD vice investigators by buying drugs and a gun from two men.
When Hoffman agreed to help police, she was facing multiple felony charges and was in a diversion program after being caught with more than 20 grams of marijuana, Chief Dennis Jones said in a news conference Friday.
Hoffman was facing charges of possession of ecstasy with intent to sell, possession of a controlled substance with intent to sell, maintaining a drug house and possession of drug paraphernalia, Jones said.
She agreed to buy 1,500 pills of ecstasy, 2 ounces of cocaine or crack cocaine and a gun from two men, Andrea J. Green and Deneilo Bradshaw, Jones said.
TPD spokesman David McCranie would not say whether Hoffman was wearing a wire, but another of Hoffman’s friends, Shaina Hale, recalls Hoffman saying that police wanted her to do so. Police did not say why Hoffman was doing the bust, but McCranie said she was not coerced and helped willingly.
Hale and other friends said they think police scared Hoffman into thinking she was going to spend years in prison for the felony charges if she didn’t become an informant.
Here at NORML we have a saying that marijuana is not fatal, but its prohibition can be. Paramilitary SWAT raids terrorize and sometimes kill cannabis users, and sometimes non-users when officers accidentally get the wrong address on a warrant. Or, as in this case, a cannabis user is “flipped” into becoming an informant in order to avoid lengthy prison time.
In this case, we have a young woman who was caught twice with less than one ounce of cannabis and some ecstasy pills. Police then press her to give the names of these two dealers and to go make a deal, trying to parlay the “little fish” pot dealer into a “bigger fish” coke dealer. Now, do you think these guys might figure something is up when a small-time marijuana and club-drug user suddenly wants to get a gun, some coke and dealer-amounts of pills? And to meet in a public park?
The most shameful thing is the Tallahassee police trying to pin the blame of her death on her shoulders because she left the park, not because they put a naive young woman into a high-stakes drug sting and then lost her when she left with the two coke dealers:
Join NORML In Berkeley For Our 2008 National Conference Register Today To Take Advantage Of Discounted Rates; Congress Fails To Adopt Appropriations Bill - No Opportunity to Vote on Hinchey-Rohrabacher Amendment; California: Medical Pot Statute Does Not Conflict With Federal Anti-Drug Laws; San Diego Supervisors To Appeal Ruling; interview with SSDP's Kris Krane
Members Of Congress Demand An End To Federal Pot Possession Arrests; National MS Society Makes Recommendations Regarding Therapeutic Use Of Cannabis; The Tragic Death Of Rachel Hoffman -- And The Tragedy That Is Pot Prohibition; Interview with Rep. Barney Frank.
Pot Compound Enhances Efficacy Of Anti-Cancer Agents, Study Says; California: Nonviolent Offender Rehabilitation Act Qualifies For November Ballot; New Orleans: District Attorney Charging Minor Pot Offenders With Felonies; Kelly Maddy on Joplin MO Decrim Effort.
John Wesley Hall, president-elect of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, describes the case precendent in roadside traffic stops and search and seizure.
Seattle, Washington attorney Doug Hiatt explains the latest medical use issues in Washington State, including denial of transplant organs for medmj patients.
