Download link: NORML Daily Audio Stash for 2009-07-17

Download audio file (NORML_Daily_AudioStash_2009-07-17.mp3)

Hemp Headlines

1. House Passes Bill That Allows Medical Marijuana In District Of Columbia, Needle Exchange, Vouchers
2. Boston Herald laments police inability to collect pot fines or lock up tokers
3. DEA Inadvertently Speeding Prohibition End
4. Monday hearing may determine fate of Colorado’s medical marijuana dispensaries

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

• The Tommy Chong / Michael Jackson connection
• Emmy award nominations for CelebStoners
• Stoniest summer music tours

Daily Toker Tunes by Marijuana Music Awards

• “Weed Man” – with a discussion about the use of the word “nigga” in stoner rap music.

Cannabis Conversations

• Danny Breeden, former Florida halfway house prison guard, on his new free book, Marijuana: Prison or Profit (http://MarijuanaPrisonorProfit.com)

Thumbing their noses at the state’s lax new pot law, Bay State stoners are brazenly lighting up in front of cops and then refusing to pay fines – leading some frustrated police chiefs to all but give up the fight.

Local police report widespread defiance of the six-month-old law, and a Herald review shows a vast majority of potheads cited by cops blowing off their $100 fines.

All told, a staggering 83 percent of 415 tokers cited in Boston since the law took effect in January have refused to pony up the $100, a Herald review shows.

In Braintree, 15 of 28 citations went unpaid, while in Brookline 26 of 33 blew off the fines.

Somerville Deputy Chief Paul Upton said his officers are now writing few if any citations, in part because enforcing the law costs more money than it’s worth.

“If we send an officer to court, it’s going to cost us $250,” Upton said. “We’re not getting a lot of (citations) written.”

Meanwhile, in Braintree on Monday night, police spotted a suspected perv smoking pot in a car filled with coils of rope, a pair of handcuffs and bottles of NyQuil. But they had to let the man go, even though he was awaiting trial on child sexual assault charges.

Said Deputy Chief Russell Jenkins, “Had the law not been changed, he absolutely would have been placed under arrest.”

via Pot law leaves cops high & dry – BostonHerald.com.

The Boston Herald since Day One has been opposed to the decriminalization measure in Massachusetts that was supported by almost 2 out of 3 voters.  The reason people supported Question 2 in the first place was that they felt police in the Bay State had better things to do than to haul pot smokers in front of a judge at $250 worth of an officer’s time per pop.

In the penultimate graf, we get a ridiculous and offensive implication about marijuana and pedophilia – have they been reading John English in Boston?  First of all, let’s suppose the “suspected perv” (nice journalistic integrity there) had been sitting in his car smoking a cigarette.  The police would have nothing to bust him for, as possession of rope, handcuffs, and NyQuil, even for those accused of (not proven to be) child molesters.  Is it really Chief Jenkins and the Herald’s assertion that the only way he can keep Braintree safe from child molesters is if they choose to smoke pot in public and he has the right to lock them up for it?  Does he really mean that nationwide, 872,721 marijuana smokers per year have to have their lives ruined so we can catch the four or five suspected-but-not-proven child molesters in that group?

As for this “toothless” decriminalization, are the people of Massachusetts upset about this?  Do they feel they’ve been duped, thinking they’d reap $100 for every pothead caught, and are now gnashing their teeth over all the stoners who are getting off scot-free?  The Herald asked about this in their online poll:

Is the $100 fine for smoking pot a good idea?

7% – Yes, give it a chance to work
3% – No, double the fine
19% – No, go back to it being an arrestable offense
70% – Just legalize pot and save us all the trouble

Total Votes: 3,477

Sensible pot a half-baked policy, dude – BostonHerald.com
Marijuana makes you stupid. It’s as simple as that.

And now in Massachusetts, we are going to have a ballot question that asks the following: Do you really want to make it even easier than it already is to get stupid, and stay stupid?

Yes, the Bong Brigade is on the march again. They want to put the high back into high school, the truckin’ back in truck stops, the joint back in all those joint legislative committees. Stand by to see stoners at the Stone Zoo, potheads in Marblehead. The grass is always greener in Greenfield, dude.

If you liked HempFest on the Boston Common every September, you’re going to love legalized marijuana.

This one’s, like, totally for Jerry Garcia!

Wow.  Five paragraphs of ad hominem attacks before even a description of what the ballot proposal actually is!  I really wish Carl Sagan were still alive to respond to how “marijuana makes you stupid”.  Maybe I should just go through my Rolodex of attorneys and physicians who are all very intelligent people who managed to get through law or med school even while a part of the “bong brigade”.

This year, the front group is something called the Committee for Sensible Marijuana Policy, and it’s pushing a Sensible State Marijuana Policy. Its flacks are available for media interviews to discuss their “sensible policy.”

…Pot charges are usually meaningless add-ons, like piling a driving-to-endanger on top on an OUI…. The potheads say 7,500 marijuana citations make it onto the CORI system every year. But how many of those Class B controlled-substance convictions are added to someone’s CORI record along with more serious raps like, say, for possession of Class D controlled substances (cocaine) with intent to distribute?

If the charges are so meaningless, then why add them on?  And you admit by implication that not 100% of the 7,500 marijuana citations are “add-ons”, so how do you defend a CORI entry for the less than 7,500 citizens for nothing more than smoking pot?  Oh, right, because it makes you stupid, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is now in the business of policing stupidity.

The ganja-guys then cite the alleged “collateral damage” of this CORI indignity: “inability to find employment, obtain housing and receive a college loan.”

Please. The reason stoners can’t find employment is because they’re too wasted. They forgot to turn on the alarm clock. They went out for a smoke break and never returned. They missed the bus, man. They can’t “obtain housing” because they can’t get it together to ever leave mom’s rent-free basement.

And what about the college loan?  Let me guess, “too blazed to fill out the paperwork,” right?

Somebody has been watching too much Stoners in the Mist.  Most marijuana users are just like most beer drinkers – productive, law-abiding citizens who responsibly use a recreational intoxicant.

Decriminalizing pot doesn’t seem like a big deal, I’ll grant you. After the courts decreed Adam and Eve are going to be Adam and Steve, bringing Cheech & Chong along for the ride amounts to little more than a footnote.

Nice of Howie to take a little detour from maligning marijuana users by dragging out a little bigoted homophobia.

The fact is, once you make something legal, even if it’s just de facto, it’s easier to get.

I’ve got news for you, Howie – everyone who wants to smoke marijuana already is, and nobody who doesn’t smoke marijuana is suddenly going to want to now that it will get them a fine rather than an arrest.  Is that all that’s stopping you from toking up, Howie, the fact that it is illegal?

And the statement is demonstrably false.  The United States has some of the most punitive laws regarding marijuana, yet we lead the world in marijuana use.  83.9% of 12th graders say marijuana is “fairly easy” or “very easy” to get, and 42% of them have tried it.  So you think turning marijuana from an arrest to a fine is going to make things worse than that?

Well, according to the recent WHO survey, in countries where marijuana use is more tolerated, they have lower rates of use and teen availability.  In the Netherlands, where any adult can walk into a coffeeshop and buy and smoke up to five grams of some of the most potent pot on the planet, teen and adult use is half that of America and teens find it much harder to get.

Marijuana does not make you stupid, but writing hysterical attacks against it can make you appear stupid.