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Hemp Headlines

1. PING Golf threatens to move their Phoenix factory if a proposed dispensary is opened up nearby
2. Medical marijuana market now rivaling sales of Viagra
3. DEA claims (once again) record seizures of marijuana plants

Daily Toker Tunes

Brought to you by John Doe Radio.com

• Groovin’ Thursday – Asher Roth – “Nothing You Can’t Do”

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition Speaker’s Corner

• Michael J Hansen from Las Vegas, former border patrol, on Mexican drug war, immigration, and the need to legalize marijuana

Radical Rant

• Drug court forced rehab is a gilded cage AND What has NORML done for you lately?

Here’s the official report from the latest raids in Montana.  If you needed any more evidence that our marijuana prohibition is nothing more than an elaborate job creation program for cops, prisons, and rehabs, just check out this list of law enforcement organizations that participated in shutting down the storefronts of caregivers in Montana:

(KXLF Butte) Agencies involved in the investigation include the Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations, the Internal Revenue Service, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Environmental Protection Agency-Criminal Investigation Division, U.S. Customs and Border Protection-Border Patrol, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. These federal agencies were assisted by the Montana Division of Criminal Investigations, and local High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area task forces, the Northwest Drug Task Force, the Kalispell Police Department, the Flathead County Sheriff’s Office, the Missoula Police Department, the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office, the Missoula High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) Task Force, the Great Falls Police Department, the Cascade County Sheriff’s Office, the Central Montana Drug Task Force, the Billings Police Department, the Yellowstone County Sheriff’s Office, the Eastern Montana High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) Task Force, the Dillon Police Department, the Beaverhead County Sheriff’s Office, the Park County Sheriff’s Office, the Bozeman Police Department, the Gallatin County Sheriff’s Office, the Missouri River Drug Task Force, the Helena Police Department, the Lewis & Clark Sheriff’s Office, and the Eastern Montana Drug Task Force – Miles City.

Here is the reason why all these cops were hard at work for eighteen months.  However, there was a problem in transcribing the news release – some of the release was mysteriously redacted.  So I took the liberty of putting the missing words back into the copy, which you can identify by the emphasis:

The businesses that provide medicine to sick people that were targeted were believed to be in violation of the Controlled Substances Act, the release states.

“Specifically, it is alleged in the search warrants, civil seizure warrants and related documents that the premises or property identified were involved in some or all of the following violations of federal law: manufacture of marijuana medicine for sick people in accordance with state law and possession with intent to distribute marijuana medicine to sick people, and distribution of marijuana medicine to sick people in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841, conspiracy to commit the offenses of manufacture of marijuana medicine for sick people, possession with intent to distribute marijuana medicine to sick people and distribution of marijuana medicine to sick people in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 846, structuring or assisting in structuring any transaction to evade currency reporting requirements or causing or attempting to cause a domestic financial institution to fail to file Currency Transaction Reports in violation of 31 U.S.C. §§ 5324(a)(1) and (3),” the release states.

The reason those emphasized words have been redacted is to get the caregivers on trial used to the fact they can’t say those words in federal court.  There is no medical marijuana.  There is no medicine.  There are no patients and caregivers.  All those cancer patients and compassionate farmers are just felons to the feds.

So I can see why DEA, ICE, IRS, ATFE, FBI, EPA, and OSHA* are involved.  Why do we have all those county cops involved in enforcing federal law?  Those search warrants are all alleging violations of federal law, not state law.  State and local cops aren’t obliged to enforce federal laws.  They have to make the choice to assist.

Montanans, how do you feel about your tax dollars being wasted to prosecute caregivers and patients

*Interesting anagram: DEATH AIRBASE? A COFFEE I SIP.

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Hemp Headlines

1. Willie Nelson busted for six ounces of weed at Sierra Blanca, Texas Border Patrol checkpoint
2. Idaho Moms 4 Marijuana publicly smoke marijuana on Boise streets in civil disobedience action
3. SOMMER Task Force brags about marijuana eradication efforts that cost $600,000

Daily Toker Tunes

Brought to you by Cannabis Fantastic

• Roots Monday: Trixie Smith – “Hit that Jive, Jack”

NORML Newsmakers

• Montana NORML’s Executive Director John Masterson on the series of bad news stories in medical marijuana leading to a legislator backlash

Radical Rant

• NJ Gov. Chris Christie’s stonewalling of medical marijuana means people suffer

Willie Nelson - America's Most Wanted

(Rolling Stone) Willie Nelson was arrested [Saturday] at a border patrol checkpoint in Sierra Blanca, Texas after agents reportedly found 6 ounces of marijuana on his tour bus. Mickey Raphael, Nelson’s longtime harmonica player, tells Rolling Stone that the singer, who posted a $2,500 bond was freed by 1:30 p.m. yesterday, is in good spirits. “He said he feels great — he lost six ounces.”

Raphael says Nelson, 77, was traveling without his band from California, where he spent the Thanksgiving holiday, to Austin, TX, where he owns a ranch. The El Paso Times reports that agents at a checkpoint searched his bus, called the Honeysuckle Rose III, at 9 a.m. Nelson admitted the pot was his and was taken to the local Hudspeth County jail.

“It’s kind of surprising, but I mean we treat him like anybody else,” Hudspeth County Sherriff Arvin West told the newspaper. “He could get 180 days in county jail,” the sheriff added. “If he does, I’m going to make him cook and clean.”

Is this what we’ve come to in our reefer madness?  You want to give 77-year-old Willie Nelson six months in jailbird stripes?  Wasn’t it just a little while ago we were holding 72-year-old Tommy Chong in a cell for selling bongs on the internet?  How’d that work out?  Oh, yes, you took a Canadian comedian who had never really been very serious about marijuana law reform and forged him into a strongly outspoken activist, leading to the Cheech & Chong reunion and the “Get it Legal” tour.

Now your bust of Willie Nelson has energized his supporters and once again brought into sharp focus the insanity of marijuana’s illegality.  In correspondence with our friend Steve Bloom at Celebstoner.com, Willie calls for a new political movement:

“There’s the Tea Party. How about the Teapot Party? Our motto: We lean a little to the left.  Tax it, regulate it and legalize it,” Nelson continued in his email to CelebStoner. “And stop the border wars over drugs. Why should the drug lords make all the money? Thousands of lives will be saved.”

The “Teapot Party” Facebook page now has over 7,800 supporters and climbing.  Willie Nelson and Tommy Chong, still touring in their seventies, still vibrant and sharp, are the best advertisement for the safety of marijuana.  You don’t meet many septuagenarian crackheads, junkies, and tweekers, do you?

Willie was busted at a Border Patrol checkpoint.  These checkpoints are ostensibly used to fight illegal immigration and terrorist threats.  But since the Supreme Court has ruled that suspicionless roadside drug checkpoints are unconstitutional, these border patrol checkpoints are the prohibitionist’s backdoor loophole for catching travelling cannabis consumers.

Willie’s checkpoint was 30 miles from the border, which might sound confusing… shouldn’t a border patrol checkpoint be, say, at the border?  Nope, in fact, these checkpoints can be up to 100 miles away from the Mexican or Canadian borders.  That means federal police could set up a roadblock in Anaheim, Tucson, Seattle, or Cleveland, just to name a few non-border cities, and search your car without probable cause to believe you’re committing any crime.  The 100-mile zone from the Canadian and Mexican borders means there is almost 750,000 square miles in America where the federal cops can ignore your Constitutional rights simply because you chose to travel.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Hemp Headlines

1. Kansas still looking to ban fake marijuana, meanwhile police and FDA bust local shop for selling “K2″ incense
2. New York poll shows 71% overall support for medical marijuana, 55% among Republicans
3. Update: Scottish landlords asked to sniff out grower tenants
4. Update: California cannabis cookie man who dropped trou on a plane
5. Update: Mexico border town seizes 12,000 lbs. of marijuana in 48 hours.

Daily Toker Tunes

Brought to you by Johnny Reeferseed & the High Rollers

• Rockin’ Friday: Captain Smokes & The Shotguns – “Smoking Gets You Higher”

CelebStoner.com Entertainment Report with Steve Bloom, co-author of Pot Culture: The A-Z Guide to Stoner Language and Life

• Look at past two Super Bowl Superstar Stoners: Santonio Holmes and Plaxico Burress
• The Dirtball joins the Kottonmouth Kings
• Sarah Silverman, our favorite female CelebStoner comedian, drops more 420 references on the third season of her Comedy Central show

Cannabis Conversations

BROWNSVILLE (My San Antonio) — The Texas Department of Public Safety last month warned parents of Mexican gang recruitment and the Border Patrol is continuing a “scare and awe” campaign highlighting the risks, including torture and death, of cartel employment that seems to promise street status and easy money.

Laredo police have caught youths as young as 13 in cars full of marijuana still wet from the riverbank, he said, and the geography of the city is obvious enough to know where marijuana in that amount is coming from.

Customs and Border Protection officers in El Paso last March stopped eight juvenile drug smugglers, five of them U.S. citizens, with a total of 388 pounds of marijuana and 4.8 pounds of cocaine, prompting a news release warning that “traffickers will employ any and all types of people in their drug smuggling attempts.”

Since there’s no youth offender program in the federal courts, a 16-year-old caught trying to bring 200 pounds of marijuana over an international bridge will likely wind up in the state’s juvenile system, among thousands of cases heard each year by his county’s state district judges. Most records will be sealed.

Hey, young teen, likely black or Latino, has your mother or father been laid off recently?  Do you need some money to help your family pay the bills in this economic downturn?  If you’re lucky, maybe you can get a job at a fast food joint paying minimum wage.  Maybe you can get some backbreaking field work.  Or maybe you can “move a little product” and make twenty times the money doing one-fifth of the work of either of those jobs.

What do you think the border teen is going to choose?  It’s a win-win for everyone involved; the teenager makes big quick money and keeps the bills paid for the family, the drug gangs get cheap labor to do the job that has the highest arrest risk and lowest correctional expense.

You know who doesn’t hire American teenagers to transport and sell their products?  Beer, wine, and liquor manufacturers.

BROWNSVILLE – A lawsuit alleging Federal Express Corp. employees knowingly loaded 800 pounds of marijuana onto a truck may be moved to federal court in Brownsville.

A Nueces County man’s lawsuit against the company could be moved to federal court if plaintiff Reynaldo Garza does not contest the action, according to court documents filed Tuesday.

Garza alleges that while he was working as a driver for a company contracted by Federal Express, employees of Federal Express loaded 800 pounds of marijuana into the cargo area of his truck even though they smelled the odor of the illicit drug coming from the boxes.

The loading of the truck occurred in June 2007 at the Harlingen airport, said Garza’s Corpus Christi attorney, Robert Zamora.

Narcotics detector dogs sniffed out the load of drugs when Garza reached the U.S. Border Patrol’s Sarita checkpoint, Zamora said. Garza was arrested and charged with drug offenses.

Zamora said his client simply thought he was delivering boxes.

via Man challenges Federal Express in marijuana case | federal, express, garza – Local News – Valley Morning Star.

So many questions:

How does Garza know the eight hundred pounds of marijuana were so easy to smell unless he smelled it himself?

How are Federal Express employees expected to know what a box of marijuana smells like?  Is this part of orientation training?

Who in the world is shipping 800 lbs. of marijuana via FedEx?  And was it really 800 lbs., or was that what was left after the FedEx employees loaded it into the truck and kept some for themselves?

How does one get a job loading trucks for Federal Express?

96% of BEST drug seizures at the Mexican border are marijuana

(Counterpunch.org) DHS says the new initiative will be based on a “risk-based decision-making process.” All the various DHS initiatives that are part of its SBI umbrella program contend that they are “risk-based.” DHS contends it is protecting the homeland against “dangerous goods and people.”

In practice, however, its array of border control and immigration enforcement programs casts a wide net—with most of the arrests being immigration violators and drug law offenders rather than dangerous criminals. Marijuana leads, by far, the list of illegal drugs seized, even though there is widening consensus, even in the criminal justice community, that marijuana is not a “dangerous good,” especially when compared with cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamines.

The achievements of the existing [Border Enforcement Security Taskforce] BEST teams don’t support ICE declarations that their investigation and prosecutions are “risk-based.” The existing 95 members of BEST teams in the Southwest were responsible for 1,000 criminal arrests in 2008, but most of its arrests—1,256—were for administrative violations, presumably transgressions of immigration law. Marijuana seizures topped the list of drugs confiscated. BEST seized 42,400 lbs. of marijuana, 1,803 lbs. of cocaine, and 66 lbs. of heroin.

Do you feel safer now?  When President Nixon declared the war on drugs, one of the first programs on the Mexican border was “Operation Intercept“.  Then, too, the idea was that we’d stop those Mexicans from supplying weed to our youth.  The massive crackdown was called off after Mexican officials complained about how badly this backed up legitimate business traffic at the border.

In this case, it’s not just business traffic inconveniences to worry about, it’s potential terrorists and explosive or radioactive materials we’re worried about.  Every time border cops have to spend time busting truckloads of pot is an opportunity for a terrorist to go unnoticed.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Don’t forget these Border Patrol thugs are now conducting operations within 100 miles of the border.  This is how our government is going to protect us from the scourge of Mexican trafficking of marijuana that Americans want to smoke and cheap labor that Americans want to hire.  Is this how President Obama plans to “crack down” on drug use in America?