A Stasher wrote to me asking how he should respond when someone who knows you’re a stoner makes a smart-ass comment that denigrates your use of cannabis.  The example would be if someone at your work or school or club said something like, “Hey, Russ, what are you gonna do this weekend, smoke a lot of pot and get high?”

Here’s one snappy answer to a stupid pot question I might throw down:

“No, actually I was going to write a paper this weekend on how the last five presidential elections have been won by a former pot smoker (Clinton, Clinton, Bush, Bush, Obama), and how in two of the last three elections, both major party candidates were former pot smokers (Bush/Gore, Bush/Kerry), and how the largest state in America and the largest city in America are run by former pot smokers (California’s Schwarzenegger and New York City’s Bloomberg).”

*with apologies to MAD Magazine

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Hilarious letter from an activist…

Dear LAPD,

According to the SC sheriff he is considering prosecuting Michael Phelps for photos taken of him smoking marijuana and an admission that he did something wrong.  http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/02/03/sheriff.phelps.marijuana/index.html

Arnold Schwarzenegger has been on camera several times and a simple Google search can bring photo evidence of him using marijuana several times. He is even interviewed a time or two in which he admitted to smoking pot, an illegal activity.  Are you also investigating this matter to bring charges against him for violating State law for recreational use?

Of course not!  But it gives me a great idea for another one of our fun interactive Stash projects.  I’m calling it:

Operation Arresting Hypocrisy

Here’s the deal.  Find the address of your city police chief, county sheriff, state cops, and/or attorney general.  Do some research and find a city, county, or state official who has publicly admitted marijuana use.  Send the appropriate official the following letter, or something like it, with hyperlinks to mainstream media about the official’s admittance to marijuana use:

Dear _______,

The recent incident involving Olympic gold-medal swimmer Michael Phelps and his admission to illegal marijuana use has gotten my attention.  Children look to public figures like Phelps to be a positive role model, and the photograph of Phelps smoking marijuana sends a message to children that a person can use marijuana and still be a very successful person in life.

The sheriff of South Carolina county where Phelps illegally used marijuana is considering prosecution of Phelps, given that he has admitted to a crime.  I believe the laws of this country should be applied fairly to all persons, regardless of their status, wealth, fame, or power.

It is with this respect for fair application of the law that you use the power of your office to begin an investigation and prosecution of __________ for admitting to the crime of smoking marijuana.  While Phelps gained prominence through hard work and natural talent, our elected officials gain prominence only by the assent of the people.  Therefore, acceptance of marijuana use by our elected officials is tacit approval of their use by society.  Which sends the louder message to children that marijuana use is normal and acceptable: not prosecuting a young talented athlete or not prosecuting someone approved of my the people?

I’m sure that enforcement of our laws is your highest priority and that you enforce the laws on marijuana equally whether the user is an Olympic athlete, elected official, or young minority youth on the street corner.

I look forward to your reply on this matter.

If they reply to you, send it on in here to the Stash and we’ll just revel in the fun of listening to law enforcement try to justify hypocrisy. –”R”R

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New sin taxes are likely going to be part of the solution to [California's] financial woes. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed a nickel-per-drink alcohol tax increase last year. More recently, Assemblyman Tom Torlakson, D-Antioch, introduced legislation to tack on an additional $2.10 per pack in cigarette taxes. Yet marijuana, California’s largest cash crop, is completely untaxed.

The marijuana crop is valued at $13.8 billion annually – nearly double the value of our vegetable and grape crops combined. Our state is the nation’s top marijuana producer. Indeed, the average annual value of our marijuana crop is more than the combined value of wheat and cotton produced in the entire United States.

According to government surveys, 14.5 million Americans use marijuana at least monthly but both the producers and consumers of this crop escape paying any taxes whatsoever on it. While precise figures are impossible given the illicit nature of the market, it is reasonable to suggest that California could easily collect at least $1.5 billion and maybe as much as $4 billion annually in additional tax revenue, if we took marijuana out of the criminal underground and taxed and regulated it, similar to how handle beer, wine and tobacco.

I always wonder if the figures on taxing marijuana are based on its current black market value?  Marijuana costs $400/ounce, multiply by how many tons people consume in a year, multiply by some decimal tax figure and voilá, you get $4 billion.

But if marijuana were legal, wouldn’t you be able to grow it in big open fields and employ modern farming and harvest techniques and technology?  Would legal weed really cost $400/ounce, or would it be priced more like alfalfa?  Or, since people are accustomed to paying $400/ounce, would the price remain about the same?

Read the rest of this entry by clicking here

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States ponder early release for prisoners – Economy in Turmoil- msnbc.com
NEW YORK – Their budgets in crisis, governors, legislators and prison officials across the nation are making or considering policy changes that will likely remove tens of thousands of offenders from prisons and parole supervision.

In California, faced with a projected $42 billion deficit and prison overcrowding that has triggered a federal lawsuit, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to eliminate parole for all offenders not convicted of violent or sex-related crimes, reducing the parole population by about 70,000. He also wants to divert more petty criminals to county jails and grant early release to more inmates — steps that could trim the prison population by 15,000 over the next 18 months.

In Kentucky, where the inmate population had been soaring, even some murderers and other violent offenders are benefiting from a temporary cost-saving program that has granted early release to nearly 2,000 inmates.

Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine is proposing early release of about 1,000 inmates. New York Gov. David Paterson wants early release for 1,600 inmates as well as an overhaul of the so-called Rockefeller Drug Laws that impose lengthy mandatory sentences on many nonviolent drug offenders.

Here’s an idea: how about you stop arresting so many of those non-violent drug offenders in the first place?  Based on the numbers from the FBI Uniform Crime Report for 2007:

• California arrested 289,449 people for drugs
• Kentucky arrested 11,883 people for drugs
• Virginia arrested 32,941 people for drugs
• New York arrested 61,163 people for drugs

Now if it is too scary to think about not arresting the users of all illegal drugs, let’s narrow it down to cannabis.  The FBI didn’t give me state-level breakdowns of cannabis arrests, but nationwide cannabis accounts for 47% of all drug arrests.  For the four states mentioned, that’s 185,854 cannabis arrests, and since 89% of those are possession-only arrests, that’s 165,410 otherwise law-abiding pot smokers arrested – not growers, traffickers, or dealers, just tokers.

To be fair, most of these 165,410 don’t spend much more than their booking time in a jail.  But it still takes time, money, and space to prosecute them and that begins to add up.  If these four states mentioned just taxed and regulated cannabis like Jagermeister, combined they’d raise $1.9 billion every year.  That wouldn’t completely solve these states’ budget crises, but it sure would keep a few more actual criminals behind bars.

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Schwarzenegger seeks education cuts – Sacramento Politics – California Politics | Sacramento Bee
California schools could eliminate a week of instruction and increase class sizes next year under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s new plan for solving the state’s budget crisis.  

Vowing to give schools maximum flexibility to cut costs, the proposal unveiled Wednesday also would allow districts to eliminate one of two science courses required for high school graduation.

Schwarzenegger’s plan would provide no teacher salary increases, eliminate a program providing subsidies to overhaul low-performing schools, and suspend participation in a program encouraging teachers to obtain national certification.

Students could see dramatic impacts from the governor’s proposed $2.1 billion in education cuts this fiscal year and $3.1 billion from what schools anticipated in 2009-2010.

Wow.  It is a shame that the public school students are going to have to suffer.  If only California could find a way to easily slash $981 million in police, judicial, and correctional budgets, and if only California could raise $105 million in new tax revenues, that would be more than half of the proposed $2.1 billion Schwarzenegger is cutting from education.

You can educate children or you can arrest and lock up potheads.  Your call, Guv.

[UPDATE: More “States in Crisis” news after the jump:

Read the rest of this entry by clicking here

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Governor vetoes medical marijuana bill
SACRAMENTO — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has vetoed a bill sponsored by medical marijuana advocates that would have protected most employees from being fired for testing positive for pot that they used outside the workplace with their doctor’s approval.

The measure, AB2279 by Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, would have overturned a state Supreme Court ruling in January that allowed employers to punish workers for using medical marijuana that was legalized by a state ballot measure in 1996. Under Leno’s measure, the only workers who could have been fired for using medical marijuana would have been those in safety-related or law-enforcement jobs.

In its 5-2 ruling, the Supreme Court said the initiative, Proposition 215, exempted medical marijuana patients and their caregivers from state prosecution, but wasn’t intended to limit an employer’s authority to fire workers for violating federal drug laws.

Schwarzenegger used the same rationale in his veto message Tuesday.

“I am concerned with interference in employment decisions as they relate to marijuana use,” the governor wrote. “Employment protection was not a goal of the initiative as passed by voters in 1996.”

Medical marijuana supporters disagreed.

“The intent of 215 was to treat marijuana like other legal pharmaceutical drugs,” said Dale Gieringer, a co-author of the ballot measure and California coordinator of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

Leno said he wasn’t surprised by the veto in light of the state Chamber of Commerce’s opposition to his bill. He said the court majority, and the governor, apparently presumed that “the voters who supported Prop. 215 in 1996 intended that only those medical marijuana patients who are unemployed could make use of (the law).”

Apparently it’s OK with Governor Schwarzenegger to discriminate against sick and disabled people who use legal cannabis medicine recommended by their doctor.  You can have your health, or a job, but you must choose!

But if you’re a healthy guy hoisting 300 lbs of iron over your head, it’s OK for you to smoke a joint and say “pot’s not a drug; it’s a weed”, keep your bodybuilding job, go on to become the greatest ever in your sport, transition to an acting (?) career, become a superstar, and leverage your celebrity and an Enron-engineered energy catastrophe to recall Grey Davis and get yourself elected governor of the world’s fifth-largest economy.

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