Local News | Cops return medical-marijuana files taken in raid — but not the pot | Seattle Times Newspaper
Seattle police returned hundreds of patient files and a computer hard drive to Martin Martinez Thursday evening, two days after they raided his University District storefront where he runs a collective and outreach group for medical-marijuana patients.

Prosecutors have told Martinez he won’t face any charges and the investigation is now closed.

“Nothing is going to happen. It’s done,” said Douglas Hiatt, Martinez’s lawyer, who went to the Seattle Police Department Thursday to pick up the files and other belongings.

But police have so far refused to return about 12 ounces of marijuana and two bongs seized during Tuesday’s bust, Hiatt said.

According to Hiatt, a police-department attorney has promised that the drugs and water pipes won’t be destroyed until Hiatt can raise the issue with King County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg or take the matter to court.

“It’s really the principle — if you have the legal right to have something, the police shouldn’t be able to take it away from you and not give it back,” Hiatt said.

I still am left wondering why the Seattle Police are involved in this marijuana bust after the people passed I-75 directing them to treat marijuana law enforcement as their lowest priority.

Local News | Seattle police seize marijuana patient files | Seattle Times Newspaper
Seattle police seized files on nearly 600 medical marijuana patients when officers searched the headquarters of a patient support group, activists said Wednesday.

The search occurred Tuesday after a nearby police bicycle officer reported the smell of marijuana. Martin Martinez, who runs the Lifevine cooperative as well as Cascadia NORML, the local chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said no one was arrested but officers seized about 12 ounces of marijuana in addition to the patient files and a computer. There were no marijuana plants growing there, Martinez said.

The police “have a heck of a lot of patient records I don’t think they should have,” said Douglas Hiatt, a Seattle attorney who specializes in medical marijuana cases. “For one thing, those records are protected under federal privacy laws. If you’re a medical marijuana patient, you don’t want the police to know who you are or where you live, and this is why - because you don’t get treated very well.”

Hiatt and Martinez said that before the search they tried to convince the officers as well as a deputy King County prosecutor there were no violations of the medical marijuana law.

Under Washington’s medical marijuana law, doctors can authorize patients to have as much as a 60-day supply of marijuana to treat symptoms of AIDS, cancer and other debilitating or chronic conditions. The law doesn’t define what a 60-day supply is, but the state Health Department proposed this month that it be defined as 24 ounces of usable pot, along with six mature plants and 18 immature plants. Marijuana remains illegal under federal law.

According to Hiatt, the seized documents included patient authorizations, full medical histories, and the names of doctors who authorized the marijuana use.

Alison Chinn Holcomb, who follows marijuana issues for the Washington state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said there doesn’t appear to be any evidence that the group was providing or growing marijuana, and no information that has been revealed thus far would seem to justify seizing the patient files.

“These are very sick people with very serious conditions, and we’re sure none of them want the nature of those conditions made available to the public or to anyone who doesn’t have a valid need for it,” she said.

I have to wonder why Seattle police are involved in a marijuana case when the city overwhelmingly passed I-75, the initiative that makes enforcement of marijuana laws the police’s lowest priority.  A cop on a bike smelled some marijuana?  Was all other crime at a stand-still at that moment?

This is another instance where law enforcement is intimidating lawful medical marijuana patients through the seizure of patient records.  We had a similar case in Oregon where the DEA subpoenaed patient records from an Oregon clinic.  That was thrown out by the presiding judge as an unreasonable seizure.

Why would they do this?  Simple - to get people afraid of putting their names “on a list”.  A 2006 Zogby poll asked people whether they would support “treating marijuana like alcohol by taxing and regulating it.”  55% of the people on the West Coast agreed with the “relax it and tax it” idea.  They know the tide is turning.  And as I go around gathering signatures for the Oregon Cannabis Tax Act, the only negative response I get from supporters of the measure is, “I don’t want to put my name down on some list!”

Drug war mayhem instills a new fear - Los Angeles Times
CIUDAD JUAREZ, MEXICO — Scooped up by gunmen as she walked near her home, 12-year-old Alexia Moreno hardly had a chance. The gangsters were driving straight into a shootout. Within minutes, she was dead, shot in the head as she cowered in the back seat.

It was two weeks before her sixth-grade graduation.

Alexia’s death in a city so accustomed to death struck a nerve because she was, in this city tortured by killings, broad-daylight gun battles and rampant kidnappings, an innocent victim.

In the last few days, the neighboring state of Sinaloa has been shocked by a wave of violence that has taken the lives of many innocents, including another 12-year-old girl. Authorities said Tuesday that more than 1,200 additional federal police were deployed to Sinaloa as part of a nationwide government offensive involving about 40,000 soldiers and 5,000 federal police officers.

Gun battles interrupt traffic in the middle of the day along Triumph of the Republic Boulevard and the city’s other main drags; corpses, sometimes mutilated or headless, turn up at shopping centers and fast-food joints; hospitals come under machine-gun fire. Ominous voices break into emergency-frequency radio traffic, warning paramedics not to pick up bodies, journalists not to approach the scene.

Nearly a third of Mexico’s drug-related killings in this record year have been registered in Juarez and its surroundings.

Take last month, for example: In one not particularly unusual weekend, 17 people, including a journalist, were killed; the sister-in-law of a U.S. congressman was kidnapped; and a dozen businesses were set ablaze after receiving threats.

The month before that, Juarez’s top police commander resigned and fled after his second- and third-in-command were assassinated along with a dozen or so other officers, some named on a hit list.

Last year’s police commander was arrested in February on charges of attempting to smuggle a ton of marijuana into the U.S. through El Paso. He pleaded guilty in a U.S. court. Reyes said the police are being overhauled and screened in an effort to remove the corrupt and the drug users among them.

Up to 20% of the police force is corrupt and will be fired, said a senior official who requested anonymity because the purge is ongoing.

Innocent Mexicans are dying daily and law enforcement is crumbling all along the Mexican border as the Sinaloa and Juarez cartels fight it out for control over the trafficking of mostly marijuana into the United States.  Mostly low-grade marijuana that any cannabis connoisseur would turn down even if it were free.  The kind of marijuana that would never be able to compete against the top domestically-grown marijuana in the US.

You know what you never read about, at least in the past eighty years?  12-year-old girls shot to death in a turf war between rival bootleggers.  Marijuana never killed anybody, but marijuana prohibition is a serial killer.

John Carnevale: The Failure of the Office of National Drug Control Policy
As an insider in the nation’s war against drugs, I spent almost fifteen years in the executive office of the President. Eleven of these years were in the Office of National Drug Control Policy where I served four of the nation’s so-called drug czars…

In the latest 2008 National Drug Control Strategy, the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) — the federal executive office agency charged with shaping this nation’s national drug control strategy — claims that America has reached a turning point in the war on drugs. In reality, we have little reason to believe a significant change has occurred. …

In the 1980’s, the United States essentially focused on supply reduction, largely in response to a cocaine epidemic, and with the belief that source and transit zone interdiction was the most effective means of reducing drug use in the United States. By the 1990’s we had learned that interdiction was a relatively ineffective way of reducing drug use — and expensive besides. So we focused our efforts on demand reduction. Now, at the beginning of the new millennium we have…inexplicably…come to believe again that source and transit zone interdiction is an effective way to reduce drug use in America. There is no evidence to support this belief. And it is all the more surprising that we have refocused our efforts in this way at a time when many of the major drugs of abuse — including marijuana, methamphetamine, and controlled pharmaceuticals, are produced domestically.

One of the most maddening things about the drug war is how the same government that extols the virtues of American capitalism, the people that preface their remarks about high gas prices with the mantra of “supply and demand”, the ones who preach about “the invisible hand of the marketplace” — they just can’t apply that idea to the market for drugs.  So long as there is demand someone will step up to supply.

That’s what they taught me in Econ 101.  If there is demand, there will be supply.  If you lessen supply, that does not lessen demand, it creates scarcity which creates higher prices which generates more profit which makes it easier for the suppliers to satisfy demand.  The idea was to get the price of drugs so high that nobody could afford them, but the opposite has happened; drug price has plummeted and drug purity has skyrocketed.  Except for pot, that price has doubled, which then just leads dealers to grow their own in suburban grow houses to benefit from the higher profits.

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ReviewJournal.com - News - Officer in deadly crash held; tests reveal marijuana in blood
An off-duty sergeant with the Nevada Highway Patrol had marijuana in his system when he crashed a pickup and triggered an accident that left a woman dead last month, Las Vegas police said Tuesday.

Sgt. Edward Lattin, 46, was arrested and booked Tuesday afternoon into the Clark County Detention Center after he turned himself in. He’s charged with one felony count of drug-related driving under the influence resulting in death, police said.

Police accuse Lattin of causing the death of 49-year-old Ying Warren in a three-car accident that happened June 11 near Rainbow Boulevard and Hacienda Avenue. Two other accident victims were taken to University Medical Center where they were treated and released.

Police took a sample of Lattin’s blood on the day of the accident. A blood test determined that marijuana was in his system, police said.

Daniel Burns, spokesman for the Nevada Department of Public Safety, said Lattin has been placed on administrative leave with pay pending an internal investigation.

Gary Peck, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, said Lattin deserves due process.

“Just because you have the presence of THC or marijuana in your system, that does not mean you were high on marijuana,” Peck said. “It could be you had marijuana in your system that you smoked six days before. It stays in your system a long time.”

Peck and Allen Lichtenstein, general counsel for Nevada’s ACLU, said the state law is flawed because it can convict people who’ve used marijuana for driving while impaired even though that might not be the case. Under the law, it is illegal to drive with slight amounts of marijuana in the body.

On the one hand, Peck is right and just because Sgt. Lattin had marijuana metabolites in his blood doesn’t mean he was intoxicated at the time of the accident, though [Paul Armentano writes to tell me that if they were looking at his blood, it would be for THC, not THC metabolites.  Still, that is no indication of “impairment” without knowing the concentration of THC and his particular tolerance for it.]  Witnesses at the scene describe Lattin as seemingly intoxicated.

But on the other hand, Nevada is one of the states with per se drugged driving statutes.  That means if they can detect even the tiniest bit of drugs in your system, you are legally intoxicated with respect to driving, even if you could juggle three tennis balls while tap dancing and singing the Catalina Magdelena Loopensteiner Wallendiner song (damn, your drunk tests are hard!)

And Sgt. Lattin, don’t you know that marijuana is illegal?  I read no mention of your medical use of cannabis, which is protected in Nevada (yet creates the fascinating conundrum of people who can legally use marijuana as medicine, but then could never legally drive).  Once again, I wonder just how many cannabis consumers lives you’ve impacted arresting them for what you’re doing on the sly.

Man Arrested For Unlawful Photography | TriCities
Nearly everyone carries a cell phone and it’s hard to find one without that camera feature. It’s convenient when you want to take that impromptu photo, but a Tri-Cities area man ended up behind bars after snapping a shot of a Johnson County sheriff’s deputy during a traffic stop.

The cell phone photographer says the arrest was intimidation, but the deputy says he feared for his life.

“Here’s a guy who takes me out of the car and arrests me in front of my kids. For what? To take a picture of a police officer?” said Scott Conover.

A Johnson County sheriff’s deputy arrested Scott Conover for unlawful photography.

“He says you took a picture of me. It’s illegal to take a picture of a law enforcement officer,” said Conover.

Conover took a picture of a sheriff’s deputy on the side of the road on a traffic stop. Conover was stunned by the charge.

“This is a public highway,” said Conover.

And it was not a place where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy as Tennessee code states. The deputy also asked Conover to delete the picture three times.

“He said if you don’t give it to me, you’re going to jail,” said Conover.

The American Civil Liberties Union would not comment on Conover’s case without fully reviewing the allegations, but told us there is no law that prohibits anyone from taking photographs in public areas, even of police. Taking photos is protected by the First Amendment. Conover is ordered to appear in a Johnson County court on August 6th.

Look, officer, if Angelina Jolie has to fight though a throng* of paparazzi because they have a First Amendment right to take her picture, then you, a public servant in a public place, can be photographed, too.  As you’re so fond of saying to us, “if you’re not doing anything wrong, you don’t have anything to hide,” right?

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NJ Transit cop faces marijuana charges- NJ.com
An NJ Transit police sergeant was arrested last week after authorities found 4 pounds of marijuana in the back seat of his vehicle in Newark, according to a State Police spokesman.

Sgt. Barrington Williams, 46, was off duty when he was apprehended about 11 p.m. Thursday night at Ivy and Bayard streets, near the Irvington border, State Police Capt. Al Della Fave said. The arrest followed an ongoing investigation, he said.

Troopers with the State Police’s “street gang north unit” smelled marijuana coming from Williams’ vehicle and observed three plastic bags of the drug in his 1992 Honda Accord, according to Della Fave.

Williams was charged with possession of a controlled dangerous substance with intent to distribute, illegal possession of a handgun (because he had his service revolver with him during the incident) and official misconduct, Della Fave said. He was jailed before being released on $50,000 bail with a 10 percent cash option.

Penny Bassett Hackett, an NJ Transit spokeswoman, said Williams has been suspended without pay from his $87,000-a-year post. She said he is a 13-year department veteran assigned to the region that includes Hoboken, Jersey City and Secaucus.

Now of course I don’t think anyone should be going to jail for marijuana, not even a crooked cop.  What I wonder, though, is with an $87,000 job, what sort of financial incentive did he have for trafficking weed?  And I always wonder in these cases how many cannabis consumers’ lives he’s wrecked in his thirteen years of enforcing marijuana prohibition?

Prohibition corrupts police, it did back in the 20s and 30s, it does so today, from the lowly New Jersey Transit cop all the way up to the military and governments of Columbia and Mexico.  When half the people believe that a law isn’t just, it’s time to change that law.

Executions for Drug Crimes Are Resumed in Indonesia - NYTimes.com
JAKARTA, Indonesia — This country has resumed executions for serious drug crimes after a four-year hiatus, and Indonesia’s attorney general has warned drug offenders on death row that their executions may now be accelerated.

The resumption follows a decision last year by Indonesia’s Constitutional Court that upheld the death penalty for serious drug offenses.

Two Nigerians convicted of drug trafficking were the first to be executed for drug crimes after the long break. The two, Samuel Iwachekwu Okoye and Hansen Anthony Nwaliosa, were put to death on June 26.

All executions in Indonesia are by firing squad. Prisoners are taken to a field to stand in front of 12 men who each fire one shot aimed at the chest. If that barrage does not kill the prisoner, a commander stands ready to fire a point-blank shot to the head.

…Last October, the Constitutional Court ruled that a constitutional amendment upholding the right to life did not apply to capital punishment. The court added that the right to life had to be balanced against the rights of the victims of drug trafficking.

Indonesia executed the two Nigerians on the International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, as a message to those trafficking drugs through the country.

Indonesia is fighting an epidemic of drug abuse. Its population of 238 million includes an estimated 18 million addicts, according to the Ministry of Health.

I’d be interested to know who the Ministry of Health counts as “addicts”, because we’re talking about 7.5% of the population (probably more if we factor out children, since it’s mostly the teen and young adult population we’re talking about.)  Here in the US, where we have no death penalty for drug trafficking, government surveys show 20 million Americans used any illicit drug in the past month.  You couldn’t call them all addicts, though, considering only 9½ million used something other than marijuana. I’ll bet what Indonesia are calling addicts are mostly just users.

Even if we go with the Indonesian figure of 7.5% of their population, it’s interesting to note the US figure of past-month drug users is 8.3%, and that’s only 8.3% of the population aged 12 and over.  So even with a death penalty for drug trafficking, Indonesia has about the same rate of drug users as the United States.

Officers, dogs searching for two suspects who fled deadly pot raid in Saratoga hills - San Jose Mercury News
In a wild turn of events in what was expected to be a routine pot farm eradication today, state and local officers encountered three armed men, killing one and chasing two through heavily wooded canyons in the Saratoga hills.

Dozens of officers and three K-9 dog teams were still searching in the evening for the two men in a wooded area near Peach Hill and Villa Montalvo.

Only the sketchiest picture of what happened during the raid was available because the officers involved in the shooting were still being interviewed: Deputies and state drug officers saw the three armed men when they hiked into the pot farm, shots were fired and one man was killed.

“We don’t know who shot who and who shot first,” said Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Lt. Dalia Rodriguez. “We won’t know that until we get the ballistics tests back; it could very well be a cross fire.”

After the shooting, the sheriff’s department activated its emergency response team, which drew in officers from several other police agencies, including San Jose, Palo Alto, Los Altos, Mountain View and California Fish & Game.

The alert brought 80 officers to the scene, who secured the area and started searching for the two men.

“I didn’t expect somebody was going to get killed,” Stone said. “But that’s the way it happens with these guys. They hear somebody coming and they bolt off.”

Today’s fatal shooting during a raid on a Santa Cruz Mountains pot farm is the second in recent years.

In 2005, Armando Quintana Aguilar, 33, of East Palo Alto was shot and killed by Santa Clara County sheriff deputies in an exchange of gunfire after authorities raided a marijuana farm above Los Gatos.

A state Fish and Game warden was also shot in the legs during the incident.

In 2005, CAMP (California’s “Campaign Against Marijuana Planting”) uprooted 540,989 plants and killed a man.  In 2006, CAMP uprooted 1,675,681 plants.  In 2008, they’ve killed another man and certainly uprooted another few million plants.  And yet, about 2.3 million Californians still regularly smoke pot!  And people still plant millions of plants illegally on public and private land!

You know what you never find growing illegally on public or private land?  Hops, grapes, and tobacco.  Nobody ever gets shot garding a hops plantation, a tobacco farm, or vineyard.

FOXNews.com - Maryland State Trooper Charged With Growing Marijuana - Local News | News Articles | National News | US News
WOODSBORO, Md. — A Maryland state trooper has been charged with manufacturing a controlled substance after police found a cultivated marijuana plant growing outside his home.

State Police spokesman Gregory Shipley says Trooper First Class Steven Spoonire was suspended without pay after his arrest Wednesday night. The 36-year-old trooper is a 16-year veteran road patrol officer, working out of Westminster.

Shipley says the plant, less than 2 feet tall, was found growing just outside the back door of a house in Woodsboro where Spoonire lives with his wife and two stepchildren. He says investigators also found marijuana seeds and drug paraphernalia inside the home.

Spoonire is also charged with possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia. He was released on his own recognizance.

Now the question is, just how many cannabis consumers did this guy bust in his 16 years of patrolling?  They should all be released on their own recognizance, too.

In Maryland, the potential sentence for manufacture of less than 50lbs. of a controlled substance is 5 years and a $15,000 fine.  And Woodsboro is just a sliver of a town outside of Washington, DC, with one little school (according to Google Earth) and almost all its homes within 1000′ of it (see map after jump).  Trooper Spoonire better hope that his house isn’t in that 1000′ circle or he’s subject to 20 years and a $20,000 fine.

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Medical IDs for Marijuana Wait for Ruling - Health - redOrbit
Jul. 9–Fresno County officials want a state appeals court to rule on identification cards for medical marijuana users before deciding whether the county should start distributing them.

The state started asking counties to issue ID cards to medical marijuana users in 2005, nearly a decade after voters approved such use in a statewide initiative.

Forty of the state’s 58 counties issue ID cards, which certify that a doctor has prescribed the drug.

Several medical marijuana users on Tuesday asked Fresno County supervisors to issue the cards. Some of them said they’ve been needlessly detained by law enforcement officials, while others said they fear arrest.

Dawn Nolan of Fresno said she has been using marijuana following a 2002 crash with a drunken driver. Now disabled, Nolan worries about driving home after purchasing marijuana in Tulare County. “I don’t want to see anyone arrested for something they need,” she said.

But Sheriff Margaret Mims asked supervisors to hold off on a decision until the appeals court rules. She said issuing the cards might encourage medical marijuana users to drive under the influence of the drug.

Now that’s an interesting criticism - If you give someone an identification card it will lead to DUIs.  Here in Oregon, we have a statewide mandatory registration card system and over 20,000 registered patients.  In 1998, when the program started, Oregon had 538 driving fatalities, 233 were alcohol-related.  In 2006, those numbers had dropped to 477 driving fatalities, with 177 alcohol-related.  In 1998 there were a total of 22,578 DUII arrests in Oregon; in 2005 the number had dropped to 19,521.  There are no statistics specifically for DUIMJ that I could find, but if giving 20,000 people medical marijuana ID cards is leading to more DUIIs and deaths, then DUIIs and deaths from alcohol must have dramatically plummeted.

Raw Replay - Revisiting History
WKRN News 2 reports that “the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation is investigating after video shot from inside a Mount Joliet patrol car shows an officer choking a suspect.”

In the video, the officer has both hands around the neck of the suspect and is telling him to “stick your tongue out.” The suspect, James Anders, then passes out.

According to WKRN, “The incident began with a traffic stop. Officer Cosby said he smelled burning marijuana, ordered Anders out of the car and told him to spit out something he had in his mouth. … Cosby didn’t find any marijuana in Anders’ mouth but did find a small bag of the drug inside his car.”

Anders was arrested on charges of possessing marijuana, resisting arrest, and tampering with evidence. The charges were later dismissed because of the police officer’s behavior. Cosby was reprimanded and the tape was handed over to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.

This video is from WKRN News 2, broadcast July 1, 2008.

In the video you can hear the officer say, “It’s for your own good to prevent you from having an overdose.”  Well, thank goodness we have cops choking people to the point of unconsciousness to protect them from the non-existent danger of overdosing on a mouthful of marijuana!  The cop knew that the man had weed on him from the smell of the marijuana and he had no reason to suspect the man was trying to swallow any other drugs.  The cop just wanted an easier arrest and more charges, but ended up finding nothing in his mouth and then loses the whole case for misconduct.

Your tax dollars hard at work.

FRESNO, Calif. — The Fresno County Board of Supervisors will conduct a public hearing on the local implementation of the statewide Medical Marijuana Identification Card Program, 9 a.m., July 8, in the County Board Chambers in the Hall of Records at 2281 Tulare St.

Although 40 California counties have implemented the program – including Merced, Tulare, Inyo and San Benito as well as Los Angeles, Orange and Kern – Fresno has yet to act.

Aaron Smith, California organizer for the Marijuana Policy Project, noted that the program – mandated by a state law that went into effect in 2004 – benefits law enforcement by removing the burden of verifying patient documentation from officers on the street. The ID card provides a means for local peace officers to easily identify bona fide medical marijuana patients during enforcement stops.

“We are merely calling on the Board of Supervisors to follow existing state law so that suffering patients like Diana do not have to live in fear of false arrest at the expense of local taxpayers,” Smith said. “It is the duty of the county’s leaders to protect their most vulnerable citizens and to make the jobs of local law enforcement easier by providing them with all the tools available. This program is a major step in the right direction.”

To help educate the community about this and other medical marijuana issues facing Fresno, MPP will host a free screening of the award-winning medical marijuana documentary “Waiting to Inhale,” followed by a panel discussion, July 7, at 7 p.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church at 2672 E. Alluvial Ave., in Clovis.

I’m coming at you from Oregon, where our medical marijuana law requires an ID card for all patients, caregivers (I’m one), and growers.  California has mandated that all counties offer an ID card program, but participation in the program is optional.

I guess I don’t understand why Californians would not want a mandatory, statewide ID card system.  I hear the complaint, “I don’t want to be on some government list!”  Well, do you have a Social Security Number?  Then you’re already on a government list!

I can’t tell you how much of a relief it was the first time my caregiver card meant something to me.  I was transporting two fairly-bushy four-foot plants to one of our cardholder meetings.  They were covered with thin white plastic garbage bags, but with the light streaming through you could make out the silhouette of some fine Oregon cannabis.

I looked into my rearview and there was one of Portland’s finest tailing me.  I got that initial adrenaline rush all us stoners get when there is suddenly a cop driving behind you, especially when you’re carrying ounces of ganja.  Then I remembered, “Hey, I’ve got a caregiver card.  If he pulls be over, I just show him my license, registration, insurance, and caregiver card and I’m driving away scot-free!”  The panic subsided.  The cop never pulled me over.  But that feeling of relief definitely trumps any sort of paranoid thought I ever had about being on some “gub’mint list”.

A Stash reader sent me a tip to this conversation going on at Officer.com.  It’s a message board for law enforcement types.  Let’s see what those who protect and serve have to say about marijuana prohibition…

Decriminalization of marijuana - Police Forums & Law Enforcement Forums @ Officer.com
Theres a bill in my states senate(NH), that will turn possession of smaller amounts of herb into a violation offense for first timers. Violations in this state are punishable by up to $1000 fines, no jail time.

My true feeling in this issue is I think I support it. Marijuana use is prevalent in my state and when someone is arrested for it they usually get a fine and no jail time. Unfortunately, the cost to the state/tax payers for having the evidence scientifically verified, the time the officer takes in paper work, the time the prosecutor takes to prepare the case and then the court time on top of this adds up to more then what the fine usually is. Then the person arrested usually continues using anyways.

Sometimes I wish the state would legalize and tax the heck out of it, wiping out the dealers and the money going out of the country to what ever operations are growing it. So instead of spending billions on marijuana education/prevention and prosecuting, the country would go into the black on this issue. It feels so useless when you take a dealer from the area, and two more pop in there place. The people that want to buy seem to find someone else thats willing to sell it when their dealer goes in for time.

I know the downfalls or worries of marijuana use possibly leading to harder drugs, but I know from my own experience I would rather deal with a stoned person than a drunk. They seem so peaceful, happy, paranoid, and just about always passive

Don’t worry, officer, everybody knows that “marijuana gateway drug” stuff is nonsense.  The only gateway is forcing a law-abiding cannabis consumer to purchase from a drug dealer who has other products to sell, too.  Odd, this police officer seems perfectly reasonable.  Let’s dig deeper, shall we?

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Government releases list of items seized in drug raids | The Eureka Reporter
A week after marijuana, cash and weapons were seized from nearly 30 locations in Humboldt and Mendocino counties, a laundry list of those items has been released by a federal government agency.

Federal Bureau of Investigations Special Agent Joseph Schadler said Tuesday that nearly 16,000 pot plants, nearly $200,000 in cash, 53 guns, two vehicles, five generators, a trailer and five all-terrain vehicles were seized from the grow houses, homes and a nearly 2,000-acre land parcel between both counties that were searched last week.

About 450 federal, state and local law enforcement personnel working what was dubbed “Operation Southern Sweep” targeted an alleged commercial marijuana growing and dealing operation that’s been under investigation since early 2006.

No charges have yet been filed against any suspects and besides a man who was arrested June 24 on suspicion of assaulting a federal agent during the execution of the search warrants, no one has been arrested. The man has since been released and isn’t facing charges, Schadler said.

“We’re in the truth-finding business,” the FBI special agent said. “If we collect evidence and there’s nothing there, nobody will be charged. I don’t suspect that will be the case, but that’s always a possibility.”

450 law enforcement agents from multiple agencies… wow, that’s got to cost a whole bunch, I imagine.  Plus add in all that helicopter time, various support vehicles, and all the ancillary expenses like cataloging and storing evidence.  And after all of that time and effort, no arrests and no charges.

I wonder how else we could have spent that government time and money in Northern California this week?

The U.S. Forest Service did not meet its own deadline to have 252 fully staffed fire engines available statewide by June 22, leaving Inland forests potentially shorthanded going into the summer.

As of Monday, more than a week after that target date, the agency remained 29 engines short of that goal, or almost 12 percent, spokesman John Heil said. He could provide no explanation.

“We’re not prepared to get into that now,” Heil said, noting that the agency was busy battling hundreds of fires in California.

Cities and counties all over the state have sent fire engines and crews to battle the blazes in Northern and Central California.

The fires, sparked by thousands of lightning strikes, covered more than 334,000 acres, primarily in the north half of the state, he said.

To help fight the blazes and fill the void left by unavailable engines, many Southern California-based Forest Service engines have been sent north, leaving area forests with fewer resources.

While parts of the Northern California forest are burning down, 450 government agents were sneaking around other parts of those forests to rip up cannabis plants.

Nation & World | 24-ounce limit proposed for medical marijuana | Seattle Times Newspaper
Patients authorized to possess or grow marijuana for medical reasons under Washington law would be limited to 24 ounces of harvested marijuana, plus six mature plants and 18 immature plants, according to an official draft rule filed by the state Department of Health today.

The filing of the draft rule starts a rule-making process and a public-comment period. A hearing has been scheduled for Aug. 25 in Tumwater, Thurston County.

The draft reduces amounts earlier considered by the health department and revealed in a “talking points” memo used to brief Gov. Christine Gregoire in February. Health-department officials said in the February memo that they planned to recommend 35 ounces of harvested marijuana plus 100 square feet of plant-growing area.

Gregoire’s staff told health-department officials the amount appeared to be on the high side, and that law enforcement and medical providers should be consulted. The health department convened an advisory panel consisting mainly of law-enforcement officials and a single doctor — a public-health HIV/AIDS expert who does not care for patients directly.

Law-enforcement officials have said their main concern is being able to distinguish legitimate patients from those who are hiding behind the law to grow and sell large amounts of marijuana. They said they consider 3 ounces a reasonable amount for the 60-day supply specified in Washington’s law, passed by voters in 1998.

That law allows patients with certain chronic, fatal or debilitating diseases to possess a 60-day supply with a doctor’s authorization.

The 24-ounce limit would put Washington State in line with Oregon’s medical marijuana limit.  I also am glad to see Washington moving toward defining a plant-canopy limit rather than a plant-count limit.  There are so many varieties of marijuana and so many growing methods that the harvest from one person’s six plants could be far greater than another person’s plants.  Or as an attorney at the Aspen NORML Legal Seminar remarked, “It’s like asking how much does ten dogs weigh?”  Someone could harvest at their plant limit, but be way under or way over their dried medicine possession limit.

Anything would be better than the ambiguous 60-day supply, especially with law enforcement putting on their stethoscopes and declaring that a patient only needs three ounces for two months.

Town Finds Drug Agent Is Really an Impostor - NYTimes.com
GERALD, Mo. — Like so many rural communities in the country’s middle, this tiny town had wrestled for years with the woes of methamphetamine. Then, several months ago, a federal agent showed up.

Busts began. Houses were ransacked. People, in handcuffs on their front lawns, named names. To some, like Mayor Otis Schulte, who considers the county around Gerald, population 1,171, “a meth capital of the United States,” the drug scourge seemed to be fading at last.

Those whose homes were searched, though, grumbled about a peculiar change in what they understood, from television mainly, to be the law.

They said the agent, a man some had come to know as “Sergeant Bill,” boasted that he did not need search warrants to enter their homes because he worked for the federal government.

I know after all of this USA PATRIOT Act and FISA wrangling by the administration and congress it can be difficult to remember exactly what tiny shreds of the 4th Amendment we still have in place, but I think “search warrants to physically enter homes” still applies.

But after a reporter for the local weekly newspaper made a few calls about that claim, Gerald’s anti-drug campaign abruptly unraveled after less than five months. Sergeant Bill, it turned out, was no federal agent, but Bill A. Jakob, an unemployed former trucking company owner, a former security guard, a former wedding-performing minister, a former small-town cop from 23 miles down the road.

Mr. Jakob, 36, is now the subject of a criminal investigation by federal authorities, and is likely to face charges related to impersonating a law enforcement officer, his lawyer said.

The strange adventures of Sergeant Bill have led to the firing of three of the town’s five police officers, left the outcome of a string of drug arrests in doubt, prompted multimillion-dollar federal civil rights lawsuits by at least 17 plaintiffs and stirred up a political battle, including a petition seeking the impeachment of Mr. Schulte, over who is to blame for the mess.

And the questions keep coming. How did Mr. Jakob wander into town and apparently leave the mayor, the aldermen and pretty much everyone else he met thinking that he was a federal agent delivered from Washington to help barrel into peoples’ homes and clean up Gerald’s drug problem? And why would anyone — receiving no pay and with no known connection to little Gerald, 70 miles from St. Louis and not even a county seat — want to carry off such a time-consuming ruse in the first place?

Why?  Because people of small character and low self-worth enjoy playing tough guy.  It’s the same guy who would go to great extremes as a kid to bully other kids.  This “Sergeant Bill” pleaded guilty to misdemeanor sexual abuse of a teen girl when he was 22 (another type of bullying), has failed in his business pursuits, and has played small-town cop before, but never long enough to have been state certified.  He’s a puffed-up loser who gets his kicks thinking he’s some vigilante superhero ridding the world of the drug scourge.  He needs to feel superior and righteous and what better underclass to bully than the reviled meth zombies?  He’s just another pompous, arrogant, self-aggrandizing, cruel, mendacious, predatory, sanctimonious, reprobate drug warrior - who failed to qualify for a badge first.

The Drug Enforcement Administration was created by President Richard Nixon through an Executive Order [on] July [1,] 1973 in order to establish a single unified command to combat “an all-out global war on the drug menace.” At its outset, the DEA had 1,470 Special Agents and a budget of less than $75 million. Furthermore, in 1974, the DEA had 43 foreign offices in 31 countries. Today, the DEA has 5,235 Special Agents, a budget of more than $2.3 billion and 86 foreign offices in 62 countries.

So the DEA turns thirty-five this week. That deserves a special celebration.  Let’s bust out our handy-dandy calculator and the official government stats.  Time to play Rate the DEA!

Today the DEA has twice the offices in twice the countries with four times the manpower than when it started thirty-five years ago.  In 1973, the DEA had $0.075 billion to work with; today you have $2.3 billion.  That’s an increase of 3,067%, or a dramatic thirty-fold increase.  Just what have the American People received for this $31.4 billion dollar, thirty-five year investment?

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This reporting courtesy of Loretta Nall with Alabamians for Compassionate Care.  You can follow this story ate her blog, NallForGovernor.blogspot.com.

On March 3, 2008 John Alexander Rochester, son of 40th Circuit Court Judge John Rochester, was arrested at the Ashland City Park in Ashland, AL for possession of meth, first degree possession of marijuana, trafficking cocaine, possession of paraphernalia, distribution of a controlled substance and possession of a controlled substance.

Judge Rochester is legendary for harshly sentencing drug offenders who are unfortunate enough to find themselves in his courtroom.  And Judge Rochester always drug tests defendants before the trial. Lines them up like cattle and demands their bodily fluids in hopes of bypassing that pesky thing known as a trial by jury.

Judge Rochester doesn’t believe in drug treatment before prison. In fact, one of his favorite sayings is, “There’s a SAP program in prison” whenever a lawyer asks that their client be allowed to attend treatment. SAP stands for substance abuse program.

John Alexander Rochester spent 20 days in the Ashland jail and was then bonded out by his mother for a total of $20,000 and whisked away to treatment in Mississippi to await the next convening of the grand jury in Clay County.

The judge who set the bonds is Judge George C. Simpson, the district court Judge in Clay County, which means he is subordinate to Judge Rochester and good friends with him to boot. …In at least two cases John Alexander Rochester’s bond was half (or less) what other people charged with the same crime had to pay.

Additionally, John Alexander Rochester should have enhancements added to his sentence because he was selling drugs at the city park… The only catch is that the prosecutor has to ask that these additional penalties be imposed.

And the reason I have to post edited portions of an email sent to me by Loretta, rather than linking and pasting from an Alabama media story on John Alexander Rochester, is because the media in Alabama have all but been silent on the story of a prominent judge’s son being busted near children in a park on multiple felony charges involving trafficking and three different drugs.

1 arrested in beachside grow house sting | floridatoday.com | FLORIDA TODAY
One man is being held at the Brevard County jail this afternoon after Brevard County Sheriff’s Office agents armed with search warrants uncovered four grow houses on Merritt Island, Satellite Beach and Indialantic.

Sheriff’s spokesman Andrew Walters said David Tobias, age and address unavailable, was charged early today after search warrants were served on three suspected grow houses. Walters said the investigation stemmed from a resident’s complaint about a week ago of suspicious activity at one of the homes involved.

In the course of the investigation, sheriff’s agents found there was another grow house Tobias is accused of operating in Indialantic. The home at 370 Rio Lane is owned by owned by Stephen Blythe, who is a candidate for a congressional seat held by Rep. Dave Weldon, who is not seeking re-election.

Contacted this afternoon by FLORIDA TODAY, Blythe said he was surprised, and had not heard from authorities.

Walters said the investigation is ongoing and other arrests are pending. No charges are pending against Blythe, but others may be charged in the course of the investigation.

Blythe said he was renting the property out to a James McJunkin. It doesn’t appear McJunkin lives in the home, authorities said. Walters said the layout is consistent with the other grow houses with the equipment and materials involved.

“I guess anybody can get caught up in this,” Blythe said. “Anybody who has a rental property.”

Agents seized several vehicles, including a Chevy Chevelle registered to Tobias parked in the garage of the home owned by Blythe.

This story follows the passage of the new Florida grow house law that makes it a second-degree felony to grow 25 or more plants in a home. But also included in the law is a “third-degree felony punishable by up to five years in prison to own a house where marijuana is being cultivated, packaged and distributed.” Apparently the prosecutors don’t see the need to charge the Florida Democratic Congressional Candidate with a third-degree felony.

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