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Thanks to a tip from our friends at LEAP, I reported on Tuesday about Iowa Senator Charles Grassley offering an amendment to Senator Jim Webb’s prison reform bill that forbids the commission from recommending the legalization of marijuana or even studying what effect legalization might have on society.  Well, thanks once again to the Tom Angell, blogging for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, we now have audio of Senator Grassley defending this censorship of science, even as he talks about putting “all options on the table.”  (Catch the audio on tonight’s Stash.)

QUESTION: I hear there was an amendment to a bill tomorrow that would legally prevent some of the government’s top advisers from — according to some of the memos we’ve seen — even discussing the idea of legalizing or decriminalizing drugs.

Can you talk a little bit about that? I understand that you pulled that amendment, but, nonetheless, I wanted to ask you what your intent is with that.

GRASSLEY: Well, my intent on that amendment isn’t any different than any other amendments that are coming up. The Congress is setting up a commission to study certain things. And the commission is a — is an arm of Congress, because Congress doesn’t have time to review some of these laws.

And — and — and the point is, for them to do what we tell them to do. And one of the things that I was anticipating telling them not to do is to — to recommend or study the legalization of drugs.

Their — their program would be what we tell it it is. …

Senator Webb wants to understand why we have 5% of the world’s population but 25% of the world’s imprisoned.  Sen. Webb understands that the War on (Certain American Citizens Using Non-Pharmaceutical, Non-Alcoholic, Tobacco-Free) Drugs™ has a lot to do with it.  Sen. Webb understands that discussion of marijuana legalization must be on the table. I’m not sure which concept is more misunderstood by Senator Grassley: science, democracy, free speech, or justice.  Wait, maybe it’s compassion:

QUESTION: Would your amendment have even stopped the discussion of legalized marijuana for medical purposes?

GRASSLEY: I think that would not — let’s see. Yes, the extent to which it would be decriminalization, the answer is yes.

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Check out the thirty-minute interview with our Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, Gil Kerlikowske, on National Public Radio.  What’s telling to me isn’t the Drug Czar’s typical lies and spin, but that every single caller to the program but one was so intelligently disagreeing with him.  Here’s a sample:

MARY (Caller): Good afternoon. I wanted to just pass on, as someone who is a social worker, who’s in the field, I work with both the homeless population, as well as people in both active addiction and in recovery and have seen what hard drugs have done and the damage that they have done to the lives of any number of my clients. Having said that, and having seen that, I think we really must look at the way we’re handling marijuana in this country. A lot of the clients that I have dealt with, the repercussions from them have not been from the use of the drug. It has been from the illegality of the drug. It exposes them to criminal elements they wouldn’t otherwise have been around. It exposes them to harder drugs they wouldn’t ordinarily have been around. And I think if we continue to handle it the way we handle it, we’re just – we’re not going to make any progress on any of it unless we really sit back and, as a country, go, okay, what’s the primary concern here?

Read the rest of this entry by clicking here

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Lou Dog, from Suburban Noize recording group the Kottonmouth Kings, has been named the new assistant director for the Los Angeles chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML).

“I am proud of the appointment and I am prepared to continue lending my energy and resources towards the advancement of the cause,” commented Lou Dog.

The Kottonmouth Kings have been on the frontlines fighting for the legalization of marijuana for over a decade. The group has been acknowledged for their never-ending commitment to spreading awareness and understanding about the plant, marijuana.

The group had previously helped organize a demonstration at the U.S. Federal Building, alongside other pro-cannabis organizations, to protest the federal prosecution of pot users under the federal Controlled Substances Act. The event attracted national media attention and challenged the Bush Administration’s “War on Drugs”.

You can hear Lou on the Oct 26 edition of the Stash as he was on the panel with Tommy Chong and B Real at the Cypress Hill Smokeout.

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(Change.org Criminal Justice) Advocates for marijuana reform frequently argue that the drug should be legalized because it’s safe. This is generally true, and I support legalization for this and many other reasons. But when it comes to driving and safety, legalization advocates often go a step too far — claiming that driving under the influence of marijuana is not dangerous and that marijuana causes zero deaths each year. These misleading arguments are harming the reform movement.

In the next couple of paragraphs the author calls out the authors of “Marijuana is Safer”, so I’ll leave that to Paul Armentano to cover.  I’ve never claimed that driving under the influence of marijuana is not dangerous, though I have pointed out how it is safer than driving under the influence of alcohol or driving while text-messaging.

I also am increasingly perturbed by a society that thinks nothing of parking lots at bars and .08 BAC laws having zero tolerance for the notion of cannabis-using drivers.  The fact that we have a per se standard of .08 BAC for alcohol-using drivers means that at below .08 BAC, the state has to prove you were actually too impaired to drive, not simply that you’d been drinking.  We tolerate the idea that a big guy like me (6′0″ 260lbs.) might be able to drink one beer and be OK to drive, but the notion of driving after one puff off a joint is unthinkable?  We tolerate people driving their cars to bars for the express purpose of becoming impaired knowing full well that not 100% of them have designated drivers, but were supposed to worry that legalizing pot will lead to blood on the highways?

So, I want to say to the commenters who frequently write here and elsewhere that driving under the influence of marijuana is not risky: you’re wrong. Not only are you wrong, but you’re spreading a dangerous myth that could cause deadly accidents and will hurt the chances for marijuana reform in the United States. To those who cite that stat that alcohol causes 75,000 deaths each year in the U.S. and marijuana causes zero: you’re wrong, too. Marijuana causes far, far fewer deaths than alcohol (maybe 0.1%) , but the number is not zero. Fatal accidents like this one and this one confirm that.

It’s always funny to me how one or two stories of people being helped by medical marijuana are just anecdotes that don’t scientifically prove anything, but one or two stories of a person pleading guilty to a fatal marijuana DUI wreck proves how dangerous marijuana and driving are.

The author, I believe, is purposefully excluding the context under which most of us say “marijuana never killed anyone”.  I am always referring to marijuana being non-toxic and incapable of overdose.  I try to be careful and only cite the 35,000 alcohol deaths from chronic conditions like the 18,000 whose livers fail or the 4,500 who suffer strokes and heart attacks or the 2,200 who get cancer.  I try not to include the 40,000 whose alcohol use causes acute conditions like the 14,000 who wreck their car, boat, or plane or the 19,000 who fall, commit suicide, or are murdered, or the 2,200 who freeze, burn, or drown.

If we want to include all of the ways in which marijuana might lead to death of its users, then, indeed, it is false to say nobody ever died from marijuana.  First we’d have to add in all the people who’ve been shot by police, murdered by dealers, or died choking on their own vomit due to lack of medical marijuana in a prison cell.  We’d have to include people like the two drivers in the examples above, plus all the people who fell off a cliff because they tripped while stoned and the people who die of a heart attack from the obesity they got from the munchies.  As you admit, that number is still probably 0.1% the deaths compared to alcohol under all conditions, which is why we are also careful to say marijuana is not harmless, but it is far less harmful than alcohol and tobacco.  (Even that percentage is high, I think, as that would be 75 pot-related deaths per year.)

To show that we’re serious about responsible reform, marijuana reformers need to take a stand against driving under the influence of pot. Each of us can do our part.

Fine, I’ll take that stand: if your consumption of marijuana has led you to be as impaired as someone with a blood-alcohol content of 0.08 or above, do not drive a car.  If you’re at a public event, wait to drive for as long as they force the beer drinkers to wait before you get behind the wheel.

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(B) If you had asked him two weeks ago, Zach Brown would have said he didn’t think marijuana legalization would happen in his lifetime.

Things have quickly changed. Brown, the president of the University of Maryland, College Park chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, now is optimistic the country will see significant change in perhaps two decades.

“It seems up until this point, we’ve been working against the wind in a way, pushing our goals to hard opposition,” Brown said. “But there’s now a rapid growth of support. The winds have changed, and we’re riding with them now.”

It’s an exciting time for marijuana advocates, and Brown, a 19-year-old sophomore and Eagle Scout, feels even more motivated to push his cause.

I wonder if there are Boy Scout merit badges for joint rolling?    Seriously, though, what a great opening to this article in Baltimore’s alt-weekly, the B.  Good work, Zach, and all you NORML Terps, and thanks for showing that even Eagle Scouts think marijuana prohibition is wrong.

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Jessica is also one of our trail blazing women involved with the new NORML Women’s Project, to be announced soon.

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Advocates of reforming marijuana laws will convene in Columbia Nov. 7, according to a news release from organizers Dan Viets and Sean Randall.

The conference of Missouri NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) seeks to educate attendees about the negative effects of marijuana prohibition and to increase public awareness and support of medical marijuana legislation in Missouri, the news release said.

Rep. Kate Meniners of Kansas City will introduce The Missouri Medical Marijuana Bill in the upcoming legislative session, the release said. If approved, it would protect patients from criminal arrest and prosecution who use medical marijuana with recommendations of their physician, the news release said.

Presentations throughout the day will address a variety of topics, including community organizing, firsthand stories of people using marijuana for medical purposes. Paul Armentano, deputy director of national NORML, will be the keynote speaker. He will speak about the safety and effectiveness of medical marijuana in comparison to other prescription and over-the-counter medications at 6 p.m.

The conference takes place at the Ellis Library Auditorium on the University of Missouri campus. It is free and open to the public. For more information, including a schedule, go to www.joplin-norml.org.

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(Union Leader) EPPING – A local police officer who claims he has been targeted because of his involvement with a group that wants to legalize drugs has been suspended from the force.

Officer Bradley Jardis said he was told Monday that he was being suspended with pay pending an investigation.

Police Chief Gregory Dodge would not comment on the suspension, but Jardis said he believes it resulted from his decision to go public with disciplinary action taken against him in July and claims that he has been ridiculed by certain Epping police personnel because he’s a member of an international organization called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.

According to a letter from the town’s attorney, Philip Petis, the police chief adamantly disagrees that Jardis’ involvement with LEAP has anything to do with the disciplinary action.

Still, Jardis claims trouble began brewing in February when he was featured in a story in the New Hampshire Sunday News about his involvement with LEAP.

Three days after the story ran, Jardis wrote a letter to Lt. Michael Wallace asking that he be “protected from unlawful harassment” by Gallagher, who was then his supervisor. He claimed that on the day after the article came out, Gallagher referred to him as a “dark rain cloud over this place.”

I grew up in a dysfunctional family.  My dad was an alcoholic and a drug addict.  As I went through various “Al-Anon” type treatments as a teenager, I was taught that dysfunctional families revolve around the addict and they all try to cover for him and protect the family secret.  If one family member exposes the secret, it is that family member, not the addict, who is vilified and shunned by the family.

Such is the nature of your average police force, a dysfunctional family addicted to the War on (Certain American Citizens Using Non-Pharmaceutical, Non-Alcoholic, Tobacco-Free) Drugs™.  So long as they all march in lockstep and protect the secret – in this case the addiction to the easy arrests that pad police résumés and the asset forfeiture that lines their pockets – the family continues on, maintaining the façade of normalcy.  But if one cop steps out of line and declares the drug war to be ineffective, cruel, inhumane, and unAmerican, he is a black sheep to be castigated, mocked, and shunned.

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