[UPDATE: Sorry, test over. It only took us a half hour to find out how bad my connection sounded. However, it was with this cheapo headset I use for Skype. I will be back tomorrow early with the full pro setup to see if it will pass. If not, we'll be back at the home studio. Thanks everyone who helped us test. -- "R"R]

I’m down here in North Portland at the World Famous Oregon NORML Cannabis Café. I’ve got the new 4G wireless connection which has been stellar in tests so far. But tonight I need to run a 2.5 hour test and I need to test multiple callers, just to put the system through a stress test.

So I’m here, at the café, testing the BlogTalkRadio platform from 7pm to 9:30pm tonight (Pacific Time, of course). It’s a test show, so nobody can hear it over the intertubes, but you can call in if you know the secret number (347-994-1810). Cannabis Karri should be along sometime as well. It won’t be a real “show”, we’ll just be hanging out and doing what you do at a cannabis café.

If you want to just sit and listen to the sounds of cannabis café and my rambling, go ahead and call in. If you want to chat, just press 1 at any time and it will signal me on the switchboard.

For extra good measure to test the wireless, I’m also streaming the gamecast of my beloved Boise State Broncos. So don’t be surprised if I suddenly yell “Touchdown!”

(Jessica Corry – Huffington Post) Denver is a city in love with its newspapers. Even in 2009, many residents still cling to the scent and grime of fresh newspaper print. But as the recent loss of the city’s beloved Rocky Mountain News still lingers, the focus now turns to saving the publications remaining. In an ironic twist of fate worthy of its own front page feature, essential revenue could come from the most unlikely of sources. Marijuana.

Denver’s top alternative weekly, Westword, gets it. On both sides of its most recent edition’s back cover, 32 medical marijuana dispensaries advertised their services. In addition, in the publication’s “alternative healing” section, nearly nine additional pages were packed with similar plugs.

While the Denver Post has run a series of front page stories over the last month chronicling the brewing debate over how or whether to increase regulations on dispensaries, it has been slower getting into the advertising game, running quarter page ads from a handful of dispensaries, with plans to expand advertising access through a special section devoted to dispensaries and other alternative health outlets.

While most of American business is mired in a rut, for medical marijuana providers in California and Colorado, business is booming.  But it’s not just the sales of marijuana that provide jobs and tax revenue to the state.  There are also all the construction, advertising, rent, utilities, and other expenses these businesses pay that creates jobs for others.  At Oregon’s Cannabis Café, which doesn’t sell any cannabis at all, they are doing the same amount of business in a day that used to take all week to generate, and that’s just the sales of café food and beverages.  The café also charges a monthly membership fee and a cover charge minimum at the door.

This is why I always scoff at estimates of money to be made from legalization of cannabis.  I believe those estimates are extraordinarily conservatove and don’t even begin to factor in all the ancillary industries that will be formed to support the legal cannabis market.  The increase in sales of Ziploc baggies alone could bring enough tax revenue to hire more teachers and cops or fix some roads.

Why, it was just yesterday that I was telling you…

(DEA) Exposing the Myth of Smoked Medical Marijuana

Q. Does marijuana have any medical value?

…The American Medical Association recommends that marijuana remain a Schedule I controlled substance.

And now today when you go to that same link…

Q. Does marijuana have any medical value?

And the AMA reference is gone.  Congrats to the folks at LEAP who spearheaded the campaign to harass the DEA about it.  (Though if you want to believe it was the fast response of the loyal frontline battle grunts in the War on (Certain American Citizens Using Non-Pharmaceutical, Non-Alcoholic, Tobacco-Free) Drugs™ known as “Stashers” that provided the “bump” that put the DEA over the edge, well, I’m not going to disabuse you of that notion.  Whatever keeps you writing to your government is fine with me.)

But the rest of the document needs some serious fixing, too…

…The Institute of Medicine conducted a comprehensive study in 1999 to assess the potential health benefits of marijuana and its constituent cannabinoids. The study concluded that smoking marijuana is not recommended for the treatment of any disease condition. In addition, there are more effective medications currently available. For those reasons, the Institute of Medicine concluded that there is little future in smoked marijuana as a medically approved medication.

See?  The AMA in 2009 recognizes “smoked cannabis reduces neuropathic pain, improves appetite and caloric intake especially in patients with reduced muscle mass, and may relieve spasticity and pain in patients with multiple sclerosis.” So the DEA removes that current reference and replaces it with a contrary reference from a decade ago.  (I often win arguments this way, like my trivia contest where I guessed there were nine planets, the 49′ers had the most Super Bowl trophies, and Bill Clinton was the president.)

But it is nice to know that the DEA recognizes that decade-old reference from the Institute of Medicine’s 1999 Study: Marijuana and Medicine, Assessing the Science Base.  For it, too, recognizes the “Scientific data indicate the potential therapeutic value of cannabinoid drugs, primarily THC, for pain relief, control of nausea and vomiting, and appetite stimulation”.  It also rebukes the DEA’s statement that “smoking marijuana is not recommended for the treatment of any disease condition” when the study concludes, “for certain patients, such as the terminally ill or those with debilitating symptoms, the long-term risks [of smoked marijuana] are not of great concern.”

It’s nice that the DEA cites the 1999 IOM study, especially when they claim:

Q. Is marijuana a gateway drug?

* Yes. Among marijuana’s most harmful consequences is its role in leading to the use of other illegal drugs like heroin and cocaine.

…while the IOM study says, “There is no conclusive evidence that the drug effects of marijuana are causally linked to the subsequent abuse of other illicit drugs.”

…In other studies, smoked marijuana has been shown to cause a variety of health problems, including cancer, respiratory problems, increased heart rate, loss of motor skills, and increased heart rate.

And not only that, I also hear it can cause increased heart rate.  But not cancer; in fact, cannabis users show a reduced risk of head, neck, and lung cancers compared to non-using controls.  And not respiratory problems, at least not seriously debilitating problems like emphysema and COPD.  And not a loss of motor skills in any permanent or even long-lasting way.  Sure, you don’t smoke a blunt and then go see how well you’ll do on the driver’s test, but a couple of hours later and you’re no worse to drive than anybody else.  But I do hear that it can cause an increased heart rate… an increase about the same as walking up a flight of stairs.

…It’s also important to realize that the campaign to allow marijuana to be used as medicine is a tactical maneuver in an overall strategy to completely legalize all drugs. …. The New York Times interviewed Ethan Nadelman, [when asked] “Will it help lead toward marijuana legaization?” Mr. Nadelman said: “I hope so.”

I’m not sure what “legaization” is, but maybe there is a shortage of “L’s” at the DEA.  Anyway, let’s look at this tactical maneuver.  According to the DEA, Ethan Nadelmann and the rest of us “legaizers” are following this strategy:

1. Scenario: All (currently illicit) drugs are illegal.
2. Goal: Legalize all (currently illicit) drugs.
3. Tactic: Convince voters that they should make one (currently illicit) drug available to very sick or disabled people under very strict conditions.
4. Premise: Once voters are accustomed to sick people using one drug, they’ll decide that all people should be able to use all drugs.

How exactly does that work?  How is it that Joe Q. Public sees a cancer patient smoking a joint and decides, “You know, if they put up an initiative to put meth-flavored lollipops in the 7-Eleven, I’ll vote for it!”

The very notion that medical marijuana is a “Trojan horse” is both an insult to the public’s intelligence and an endorsement of the legalization we seek!  Are they really suggesting that the only way they can keep the public from rejecting prohibition as a policy is to make sure people in pain don’t smoke pot?  The fact that they think a public exposed to a non-punitive, regulatory solution to drug control will be inexorably drawn to more of those non-punitive regulatory solutions for more people and other drugs just shows you how bankrupt prohibitionist ideology is!  They can’t support it with reason, they can only support it through the barrel of a cop’s gun.

In the face of growing calls to tax and regulate marijuana, the prohibitionists are left with few tools in their rhetorical arsenal.  One talking point they’ve trotted out lately goes something like this:

Why not tax pot and alleviate the financial burden of our cities and states? We tax alcohol sales and it earns billions. “The latest studies show that the U.S. collects about $8 billion yearly in taxes from alcohol.” However, this is not the end of the story. “The problem is, the total cost to the U.S. in 2008 due to alcohol-related problems was $185 billion, and the government pays about 38% of that cost (about $72 billion), all due to consequences of alcohol consumption, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse & Alcoholism.”

In other words, if we “legalized” marijuana, the damage caused by all the rampant stoners would cost us more than the pot taxes would bring in.

Of course the argument is silly on its face; alcohol use causes serious health problems, violence, and auto wrecks, so it naturally costs society more than it brings in.  Cannabis use is relatively safe and as I’ve argued before, 22 million of us are using it now, so if there is any social cost, why not at least bring in some tax revenue instead of none?

So today I was very happy to see Paul Armentano’s latest piece on the NORML Blog regarding a Canadian study of social costs of cannabis vs. alcohol and tobacco, which concluded:

In terms of costs per user: tobacco-related health costs are over $800 per user, alcohol-related health costs are much lower at $165 per user, and cannabis-related health costs are the lowest at $20 per user. On the enforcement side, costs for cannabis are the highest at $328 per user—94% of social costs for cannabis are linked to enforcement. Enforcement costs per user for alcohol are about half those for cannabis ($153), while enforcement costs for tobacco are very low.

Now that’s Canada, so our US numbers may vary a bit, especially when we’re talking about health care costs.  But in the title of his post, Paul asked me to “do the math”.  So here it is:

• Prohibited Cannabis: Total Cost to Society = (22,000,000 Annual Users * $20) + (22,000,000 Annual Users * $328) = $7,656,000,000

When cannabis is relegalized, that doesn’t mean the $328/user enforcement costs go completely away.  I don’t think they’d be as high as alcohol but not as low as tobacco.  Let’s split the difference and say it ends up costing $75/user in cannabis enforcement costs.

• Relegalized Cannabis (Low Estimate): TCS = (22M * $20) + (22M * $75) = $2,090,000,000

Let’s also imagine that cannabis enforcement does cost as much as alcohol, unreasonable as that may sound:

• Relegalized Cannabis (High Estimate): TCS = (22M * $20) + (22M * $153) = $3,806,000,000

For David H. Kerr and the other prohibitionists’ theory about legal cannabis costing society more than prohibited cannabis, there has to be enough increase in use and users to make up between $5.6 and $3.8 billion dollars in cost.  In the Low Estimate, a cannabis user costs society $95/user; in the High Estimate, $173/user.  So between 22 and 58 million more people would have to smoke cannabis in the US, at rates comparable to the current usage rates, for legal cannabis to cost as much as what we spend on prohibiting it.  That means a 100% to 263% increase in annual user population, or 44 to 80 million annual users, or between 18% and 32% of all US adults.

Now currently, only about 9% of US adults use cannabis annually.  So imagine a room with 25 adults in it.  Right now, about 2 of those adults will smoke pot this year.  Under relegalization, about 2 to 6 more would have to start smoking pot for the TCS to break even.

Then we’d have to consider what happens under a substitution effect; that is, would alcohol and tobacco users lower their use of those substances if they have the choice of legal cannabis?  The alcohol user costs us $318 per year and the tobacco user costs us $800 per year.  Under the Low Estimate, three drinkers are worth close to ten tokers and two smokers are worth close to seventeen tokers; under the High Estimate, the ratios are about 1:2 and 2:9.  If just 1% of the 162.5 million annual drinkers and 70 million annual smokers quit and took up cannabis instead, that’s a savings of over a billion dollars in health and enforcement costs, or another 3.9 to 10 million new tokers we could afford over the 2.3 million new ex-smoker/drinker tokers we’ve added.

In other words, in order for legal cannabis to cost society more than illegal cannabis, a whole hell of a lot more people will have to be smoking it, and that’s even under grossly inflated estimates of legal marijuana’s enforcement costs.

Some days you wake up and the media gods have given you a priceless gift beyond measure…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Cheech & Tommy hit the road this winter!

(CheechandChongTour.com) Cheech & Chong: Get It Legal is the follow-up to their hugely successful reunion tour, Cheech & Chong: Light Up America, where they performed together for the first time in over 25 years. The pop culture duo performed for more than 100 audiences and quickly became one of the most sought after shows of 2008-2009. Additionally, their performance in San Antonio, Texas was filmed by the Weinstein Company and will be released as Cheech and Chong’s: Hey Watch This on 4/20 of next year.

“We had an amazing time last year reconnecting with each other and our fans in a way that felt like it was part of our DNA, we were meant to be together,” said Cheech Marin. “In 2010 we are looking forward to doing more classic material that people haven’t seen for years and years, performing more of our songs and introducing some new bits. We’ve had material brewing separately for the past 25 years,” said Tommy Chong.

The Cheech & Chong: Get It Legal tour is scheduled to make 17 stops across North America including Boulder, Indianapolis, Baltimore, Bellingham, Portland, Santa Barbara, Tampa, Minneapolis, Rockford, Detroit, Louisville, DC, Bakersfield, Phoenix, and Fort Worth with Canadian stops in Regina, and Saskatoon. Additional dates to be announced soon. Chong’s wife and comedy partner, Shelby Chong, will open all dates on the tour as well as DJ-Joey Mojo. Fan club members will have access to presale tickets beginning November 17th at CheechandChongTour.com.

(Washington Post) A federal survey of Americans’ drug use shows that [Joe Lee, a 62-year-old, and his friends] are not the only baby boomers approaching the age of retirement much as they departed the Age of Aquarius — with an occasional case of the munchies. The government’s most recent survey showed that the share of marijuana users ages 50 to 59 increased from 5.1 percent in 2002 to almost 10 percent in 2007.

Some of those users are empty-nesters, returning to the drug decades after their pot habits gave way to raising children and building careers. Others, like Lee, have kept using pot all along, researchers said.

[O]lder marijuana users say they are living evidence that smoking pot does not preclude a normal life, and more older smokers seem more comfortable than at any point since their teen years with going public — a tribute, they say, to a big boost in public tolerance of marijuana use.

“I don’t think more people in their 50s are smoking marijuana. I think we are just more comfortable talking about it,” said Rick Steves, who writes travel guidebooks and hosts a public TV series on travel. At 54, the clean-cut guru of mass-market European tourism has begun to present himself as the hard-working, successful face of the longtime smoker.

“Even my pastor knows I smoke pot,” said Steves, who was recently named Lutheran activist of the year for his work on international poverty relief.

One older smoker who doesn’t mind outing herself is Florence Siegel, an 88-year-old artist from New York who has been smoking regularly since her early 50s. That’s when the family’s pediatrician suggested they try marijuana together to see “what the kids were so excited about.” The pediatrician didn’t feel a thing. Siegel said she never stopped.

Now her routine is to sit in her favorite chair each evening, listen to Bach and take a few hits from one of her many pipes. Marijuana boosts her creativity and helps with joint pain that has come with aging, she said.

Siegel smokes occasionally with her daughter Loren Siegel, 64, a recently retired lawyer. But does her 93-year-old husband ever join her?

“Oh, no,” she said. “Well, only very rarely.”

I know some sixty-, seventy- and eighty-year-olds who occasionally use cannabis, and some who still drink coffee, and a few who even still use alcohol and tobacco.  I can’t say that I’ve met one yet who was an active cocaine, heroin, or methamphetamine user.

There is a joke in medical marijuana circles that “after forty, all use is medical.”  There is a certain grain of truth to that, though.  Even as I approach age 42, I can feel pain in my knees and back that never used to bother me before.  When you think of the things marijuana can be used to treat – arthritis, chronic pain, Alzheimer’s, cancer, and so on – it seems to be a natural fit for many seniors who’d prefer an herbal remedy over a handful of increasingly expensive pills.

Click here to view the embedded video.

We all know Judge Jim Gray is a powerful advocate for ending marijuana prohibition.  We all know David Evans is a rabid prohibitionist.  Let’s just skip to the fun parts and give you the bullet points from David Evans’ reefer madness:

(CBS News) David Evans: We cannot legalize marijuana because…

• Marijuana is far more powerful today than it was years ago… [Yes, because prohibition forces illegal producers to make the most potent product.]
• …it serves as an entry point for the use of other illegal drugs. This is known as the “gateway effect.”… [There is no "gateway effect", Institute of Medicine debunked that a decade ago and every serious study since has agreed.]
• Higher potency marijuana may be contributing to a substantial increase in the number of American teenagers in treatment for marijuana dependence…. [No, that's because of drug courts that sentence marijuana users to rehab.]
• Drug legalization advocates claim that marijuana is less dangerous than drugs like alcohol, cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine. However, studies … show that marijuana is not harmless but that it is toxic and addictive.  [Marijuana is notably non-toxic to healthy cells and organs and is not even as addictive as coffee.]
• The legalizers claim that as legalized drugs become less expensive, people will no longer need to commit crimes in order to pay for their drug use. The problem with this claim is that some drugs are already inexpensive. Marijuana, the most abused and addictive drug for young people, is very inexpensive….  [Really, you consider $10-$15/gram inexpensive for a young person?]
• Even supporters of drug legalization admit that “low prices would encourage use.” A good example of this is [crack] cocaine. … Higher levels of drug use cause increased crime, especially property crime to pay for the drugs.  [Wasn't this a discussion about marijuana?  So, then, you're saying the people who'd rob someone for money for that $400 ounce now will rob more people for that $40 ounce in the future?]
• Drug users, many of whom are unable to hold jobs, commit robberies and other crimes not only to obtain drugs, but also to purchase food, shelter, clothing and other goods and services. Even if drugs were legalized, addicts will still need to pay the rent and may resort to crime to do so.  [Uh, if marijuana is legal, marijuana users can keep their jobs or find new ones without being discriminated against for the metabolites in their urine.]
• …most violent drug related crime is committed because people are under the influence of drugs. The use of drugs changes behavior and causes criminal activity because people will do things they wouldn’t do if they were rational and free of the drug’s influence…. Cocaine-related paranoia is an example.  [Again with the cocaine!  Please, what crimes are being committed by people under the influence of marijuana, except for noodling too long on a guitar solo or not sharing the bag of Doritos?]
• If legalizing drugs will increase drug use, then drugged driving will also likely increase. Many studies show a clear correlation between drug use and motor vehicle accidents, trauma, and dangerous driving….  [If legalizing marijuana causes more people to choose it instead of alcohol, we'll have less dangerous driving!]
• Pot use among Dutch kids was very low before they “decriminalized” pot. It was about 5%. It is now approaching US levels but is still lower than the US. It has risen substantially due to the more relaxed attitude….  [Pot use among adults and teens in the Netherlands is half what it is in the US.]
• Your comment that increased pot use will not lead to more addiction is preposterous…. This argument does not work when we consider that drugs such as cocaine, heroin, and marijuana are dangerous and highly addictive.  [Cocaine and heroin are dangerous and highly addictive.  Can we please stick to talking about pot?]
• [Prohibition] keeps potential drug users from using drugs by virtue of the fear of arrest and the embarrassment of being caught.  [Right, all 22 million of us who will smoke this year are terrified, but it's not stopping us from using cannabis.]
• [Prohibition] helps drug users/addicts into treatment through the use of laws and drug courts that offer treatment as an alternative to incarceration.  [Helps drug rehabs, you mean, by providing them unaddicted people forced into rehab by courts.  Over one third of those attending marijuana rehab haven't even used cannabis in the past thirty days!]

Some other points to notice from Mr. Evans’ rants:

• He insists on calling us “legalizers”.  I call Evans a “prohibitionist” because he supports continuing the status quo of prohibition.  But to say that we support “legalization” of drugs is not semantically correct.  A “legalized” drug, as Judge Gray points out, would be something like aspirin, a substance that has no restrictions on marketing, age of use, sales, manufacture, and purchase.  We don’t call for that, we call for sensible regulations on marijuana not unlike alcohol and tobacco.  It would be more accurate to call us “regulators”.
• He must always bring drugs into the discussion – cocaine, heroin, and meth – because a discussion of the dangers of marijuana use alone doesn’t scare people anymore.
• He continues to harp on the negative consequences of drug use while ignoring the demonstrable consequences of drug money, which include corruption, violence, and terrorism.

There will be a part two to this debate on CBS News website tomorrow.

Click here to view the embedded video.