Friday, October 2nd, 2009 at 8:02 pm | By: Radical Russ
(Wall Street Journal) A schism has emerged among California’s pot-legalization advocates. On one side are those pushing to get a proposition to voters quickly, including activists such as Richard Lee, who last month began collecting signatures to put a pot-legalization measure on the state’s November 2010 ballot.
California NORML's Dale Gieringer says "wait 'til 2012"...
On the other side is a go-slow camp calling for a 2012 vote, including activists like Dale Gieringer, director of the California chapter of the National Organization to Reform Marijuana Laws, or Norml. “I do think it will take a few more years for us to develop a proposal that voters will be comfortable with,” said Mr. Gieringer.
...but Oaksterdam University's Richard Lee bets $1,000,000 on 2010.
The 2010 ballot proponents say there is no time like the present, because California’s economic mess gives pot legalization an urgent fiscal appeal. Taxing pot could help reverse cuts in spending to education, health care and other services enacted this year, said Mr. Lee, who along with fellow activist Jeff Jones is gathering signatures for a 2010 measure. “We’re the answer for all of the things on the news,” Mr. Lee said.
Go-slow advocates say Mr. Lee’s camp doesn’t understand the California electorate and the subtle strategies of exploiting election cycles. “The demographics are clearly much better in 2012, and victory would therefore be much easier,” said Aaron Smith, California policy director of the Marijuana Policy Project, a national pot-advocacy group. “You have the younger, more progressive voters that get out in the presidential elections.”
I understand Aaron’s and Dale’s thinking: more young and progressive people come out for a presidential election year like 2012 than will come out for a mid-term election cycle like 2010. (Maybe MPP learned that lesson with a 39% legalization loss in the mid-term elections of 2002 and a 44% loss in mid-term 2006 in Nevada. Of course, their Alaska legalization failed with 44% in presidential year 2004, so maybe it really doesn’t matter.)
However, I’m with Richard Lee on the timing. We are in the perfect storm for legalization:
the floundering economy, especially in California, has voters desperate for revenue – shouldn’t we strike while that iron is hot, or at least before the economy improves?
the Mexican drug war is scaring the hell out of folks on the border; how many more Mexican civilians, cops, and officials get tortured and murdered while we wait for “the right time”?
the acceptance of medical marijuana nationally has not yet experienced a major backlash – but will it if the Wild West California dispensary atmosphere has three more years to generate negative headlines?
Whether Lee’s initiative is the right one for 2010 is still worth debating. But I don’t think the timing is wrong at all. You put marijuana legalization on the ballot with enough money to push it in the media and you’ll see a youth turnout unprecedented for a mid-term election. The regular political rules don’t apply to marijuana.
Monday, September 21st, 2009 at 8:55 pm | By: Radical Russ
Show 004: Three special episodes live from NORML National Conference!
NORML’s new talk radio program, NORML SHOW LIVE, will be streaming for three days at the 2009 NORML National Conference, “Yes We Cannabis”, live from the Grand Hyatt Hotel in San Francisco. These special three-hour episodes will be available at live.norml.org at the following special times and archived for download later just fifteen minutes after broadcast:
Thursday, September 24
11:00am – 2:00pm Pacific Time
Friday, September 25
11:00am – 2:00pm Pacific Time
Saturday, September 26
3:00pm – 6:00pm Pacific Time
The show will be hosted by “Radical” Russ Belville, but with very limited commercial interruption and the occasional narration. After the shows broadcast remotely in the difficult wireless environment of Portland’s Kelley Point Park and the noisy backstage of the Boston Freedom Rally, Russ is excited to present an indoor event that will take its audio directly from the conference PA system.
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Tuesday, August 11th, 2009 at 4:01 pm | By: Radical Russ
(IndyBay) As California considers how to reduce prison spending, it has overlooked releasing non-violent marijuana prisoners in favor of car thieves.
Later this month, the legislature will be debating a plan by Gov. Schwarzenegger to reduce $1.2 billion in prison spending as part of the state’s budget deal. Last week, a federal court ordered the state to eliminate 44,000 inmates over the next two years to reduce overcrowding.
However, a draft of the Administration’s plan by the Department of Corrections budget office makes no mention of marijuana or other non-violent drug prisoners. Instead, it proposes raising the felony threshold for crimes such as grand theft, writing bad checks and receiving stolen property. This would make it a misdemeanor instead of a felony to steal an automobile valued at less than $2,500.
In contrast, current laws make it a felony to sell a single joint or grow a single marijuana plant. Over the years, the state has repeatedly rejected proposals to reduce marijuana penalties. The Governor has indicated his opposition to Tom Ammiano’s bill AB 390 that would eliminate pot prisoners by legalizing, regulating and taxing marijuana.
The Governor’s message seems to be, “Don’t tax pot, steal a car,” comments Cal NORML director Dale Gieringer.
To help cut prison spending, California NORML is calling on the legislature to reduce penalties for marijuana sales and cultivation from mandatory felonies to optional misdemeanors. “If the state needs to eliminate prisoners, non-violent marijuana crimes are a good place to start,” says Gieringer.
As of December 31, 2008, California had 1,538 marijuana felons in state prison, 15 times as many as in 1980. Another 30,000 prisoners are serving time for non-violent drug offenses, 12,000 of them for simple possession. The Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates that one year of incarceration costs the state an average of $49,000.
Misdemeanors such as assaults, thefts and burglaries will no longer be prosecuted in Contra Costa County because of budget cuts, the county’s top prosecutor said Tuesday.
People who are suspected of misdemeanor drug crimes, break minor traffic laws, shoplift, trespass or commit misdemeanor vandalism will also be in the clear. Those crimes won’t be prosecuted, either.
The changes are needed to help eliminate a $1.9 million budget deficit in the district attorney’s office for this fiscal year. By month’s end, six deputy district attorneys will be laid off, and 11 more will have to be let go by the end of the year, Kochly said.
Isn’t it amazing that even in times of dire economic need, California’s politicians are still more fearful of the threat to public order from non-violent marijuana users and growers than car thieves, stolen goods fencers, check kiters, shoplifters, vandals, trespassers, traffic scofflaws, and people who assault other people?
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California NORML Coordinator and NORML Board’s Dale Gieringer on Oakland’s new medical marijuana tax and the explosive growth of the Los Angeles dispensary scene.
Mile High NORML’s Scott Greene on starting a brand new NORML chapter and having to staff a booth on three days’ notice at Red Rocks for the Blazed and Confused Tour.
Friday, July 24th, 2009 at 5:06 pm | By: Radical Russ
SC Gov. Mark Sanford, Republican... everywhere but on FOX
I do my level best to keep my personal politics out of this blog. Republicans and Democrats have both been staunch foes of marijuana legalization, and the ideological bases of both the Republican and Democratic parties tend to favor marijuana legalization (liberals from a “social justice” angle; libertarians from a “personal privacy” angle). (Democrats have been incrementally better on the issue, though, much in the same way drowning someone and calling it “waterboarding” is incrementally more humane than the ancient Greeks burning prisoners alive using “the brazen bull“.)
Former Rep. Mark Foley, Republican... everywhere but on FOX
But when it comes to FOX “News”, their agenda is so transparent and their reporting is so biased that I attack them not from a political perspective, but a journalistic one. This is the network that has repeatedly referred to Republicans as Democrats (e.g. Rep. Mark Foley ["D"-FL] and Gov. Mark Foley ["D"-SC]) in their chyrons when Republicans are caught in a sexual scandal.
So when FOX News is questioning the California Board of Equalization’s $1.4 billion estimate of tax revenue from Assem. Tom Ammiano [D-San Francisco... really!], it’s best that you put on your waders to read through it… talk about your brazen bull!
To reach that amount, the board apparently relied on a source that relied on a source that misquoted a book that misquoted a study, all involving a hazy mix of out-of-date numbers, high margins of error and complete guesswork that could be a mere $700 million off the mark.
The board appears to have based its 16-million-ounce guess on a problematic “study” conducted by the founder of a pot-growing university in Oakland and by the director of California’s branch of NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.
But after only a quick look, those numbers went up in smoke. The NORML report based some of its figures on a book called “The Science of Marijuana,” which in turn appears to have misquoted an annual study of regular smokers conducted at music festivals and pot rallies in Britain.
The book says the study found that daily marijuana users smoke about 2 ounces a month (56 grams), but the study actually found that they used just over an ounce a month (34.25 grams).
I went straight to the source, California NORML Coordinator and study author Dale Gieringer, who notes:
The weights in the British report are referring to “resin” (i.e. hashish), not marijuana. The report goes on to note that in terms of herbal cannabis, consumption is higher, averaging 57 g (=two ounces) per month. These are the numbers we used in estimating total California consumption at 1 million pounds per year.
For the record, this number is actually on the low side compared to other estimates. For example, using a similar methodology as ourselves, the ONDCP estimated total US consumption at 4,270 metric tons in 2000. Apportioning this by California’s share of the population (12%), this works out to 1.13 million pounds per year in the state.
Using a different methodology, ONDCP calculated that the total amount of marijuana available in the U.S. at 4,777 – 16,731 m.t. of domestic production plus 4,581 to 7,135 m.t. of foreign imports, or 9.358 to 23,866 m.t. total per year . This would work out to 2.5- 6.3 million pounds per year in California!
It is clearly difficult to come up with accurate projections of marijuana consumption. Hard data are difficult to come by due to marijuana’s current illegal status. Nonetheless, the figures cited by NORML and the state Board of Equalization are if anything on the conservative side compared to other government estimates.
So remember, whenever you hear a “fact” on FOX “News”, make sure you apply some common sense and a little Googling. This is the same “news” organization that is trying to convince you that only one out of six guns used in the Mexican drug war come from America, when it is probably closer to six out of ten. Who here really thinks that legalization and taxation of marijuana in California is actually going to cost California money? Now, who here thinks they will be raking in money hand over fist?
Friday, July 24th, 2009 at 10:20 am | By: Radical Russ
(Wall Street Journal) Still, at a time of deep recession, the med-pot business is attracting career switchers. Mr. Werner was the sales manager of a Chrysler dealership, and dismayed with the collapse of car sales. He had a doctor’s recommendation to smoke pot, for pain from a spinal condition. One day a car-dealer friend, Bill Shofner, who also had a pot recommendation (for migraines), suggested: Why not become pot vendors?
Each invested $40,000. Following state guidelines, they set up as a nonprofit, called Lake Forest Community Collective, from which they would draw salaries.
It is on the second floor of a strip mall in the Los Angeles suburb of Lake Forest that also houses Mexican restaurants and a Peet’s Coffee shop. A customer first encounters a brightly lit front room with a security window and an Obama poster, then is buzzed into a vestibule with an ATM. Beyond that is a spotless room with glass cases displaying pot in pill bottles.
Scribbled on a board are prices, from $10 to $25 a gram, for different strains: Sour Diesel, Purple Urkel, Bubba Hash. Sour Diesel is popular, says a volunteer, and “really potent.”
This still is a far cry from, say, Amsterdam, where pot remains illegal but authorities are so tolerant that pot is available in coffeehouses.
In California, pot sales, legal and illegal, are estimated to total $14 billion a year. Medical marijuana makes up maybe an eighth of that, says Dale Gieringer, director of the state’s chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. He estimates the state has three million pot smokers, including 350,000 with doctors’ recommendations.
Hmm. Drawing salaries. Selling marijuana at $283.50 to $708.74 per ounce. Now, my old weed dealer used to tell me that the reason an ounce cost the same as gold (at the time) is because the guy growing it and selling it is risking his freedom. But these weed dealers aren’t facing that risk from state or local authorities and apparently now not from federal authorities. So now is the justification for ridiculously expensive plant material the overhead of the storefront and employee’s salaries and benefits?
We must legalize marijuana for everyone, even those of us deemed too healthy to smoke weed. Marijuana is becoming institutionalized in California as something you must pay a doctor to get a permission slip to overpay a dispensary to get. If you don’t play that game and grow your own or buy street weed, you might get to pay an attorney and a drug court. Oakland has set a precedent for 1.8% taxation on marijuana. Will these entrepreneurs and governments make more money on one-eighth of the consumers buying over-priced weed, or more on all of the consumers buying farmer’s market-priced weed?
Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 at 12:20 pm | By: Radical Russ
(Press-Democrat)UKIAH — State marijuana eradication teams are arriving on the North Coast today, two weeks earlier than usual.
The early start is expected to yield yet another record confiscation of pot plants, Gregory said. Local officials already are reporting higher seizures this year.
Statewide last year, federal, state and local officers who make up CAMP seized 2.9 million plants worth an estimated $11.6 billion. A separate federal effort last year bumped up the number of plants seized in California to 5.2 million.
The ever increasing numbers have confounded even marijuana advocates.
The price of marijuana has remained stable at about $300 an ounce, indicating there’s been little or no change in local supply and demand, said Dale Gieringer, of NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.
He said immigration crackdowns along the Mexican border have induced Mexican nationals to grow pot in California for distribution elsewhere in the United States rather than try to smuggle marijuana across the border.
Yet another waste of effort paid for by the taxpayers of California while tens of thousands of prisoners will be set free because there isn’t enough money in the budget to house them all. If you are eliminating $11.6 billion worth of marijuana from the market and it doesn’t cause the market price to budge one cent, that should tell you that your efforts are futile.
However, don’t let the 2.9 million plants = $11.6 billion fool you. Most – 96%-98%, depending on year – of the marijuana eradicated by the government is feral hemp, a ditchweed with such low THC content it won’t get you high.
Cannabis Culture called US NORML Executive Director Allen St Pierre and discovered the unthinkable: the US federal government is responsible for growing more outdoor weed than even the most green-thumbed gang of ganja lovers.
“In past years, hemp stock makes up almost 96% of the cannabis eradicated,” explained St Pierre. “It’s actually ditch-weed left over from the World War II crop that the US government grew for the war effort. They often claim it’s recreational, but it isn’t.”
Ironically, says St Pierre, the government is still hemp’s best farmer today.
“They will come for these crops with two or three helicopters, hauling large, rubber mesh bags with two and half to four tons of material that has largely gone to seed. On the way to the burn pit, 10 or 20 miles away, thousands of seeds drop out of the bags, and police literally seed their own jobs for the next year. Then they burn the hemp and take pictures for the media, claiming to have taken millions of joints off the streets. It’s a big dog and pony show.”
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Monday, May 4th, 2009 at 10:20 am | By: Radical Russ
In an unpublished opinion, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reaffirmed the 10-year mandatory minimum sentence of Bryan Epis on charges of conspiracy to manufacture marijuana. Epis’ attorney, Brenda Grantland, says she will appeal for an en banc rehearing of the ruling by the full Ninth Circuit.
Epis was the first California medical marijuana patient to be prosecuted on federal charges. He was arrested in 1997, shortly after the passage of Prop. 215, while growing for a Chico patients’ group. He was sentenced to 10 years for conspiring to grow over 1,000 plants (from a succession of grows, some of them never planted) in his Chico home.
Epis’s attorney, Brenda Grantland, appealed his sentence to the Ninth Circuit on various grounds, including egregious prosecutorial misconduct, improper cross examination, improper denial of safety-valve relief from the mandatory minimum, and the unclarity of the law at the time of his arrest. The panel did not bother to hold an oral hearing, but issued an 11-page ruling denying the appeal. The panel included the infamous Judge Jay Bybee, recently indicted as an international war criminal by Spain for having authored the DOJ’s notorious torture memos. Bybee was appointed before knowledge of his advocacy of illegal conduct by government agents became public.
Other judges on the panel were Hawkins (a former federal prosecutor), and Rawlinson. Epis’ supporters expressed shock at the opinion. “This is as
an egregious miscarriage of justice with no conceivable benefit to the public,” said California NORML coordinator Dale Gieringer, “Bryan Epis believed he was acting lawfully. To imprison him for 10 years is the kind of sentence one might expect only from judges who countenance torture.”
The opinion, dated April 08, 2009, may be viewed at: http://www.canorml.org/temp/Epis_opinion.pdf
Judge Bybee, just curious, in your opinion are prisoners captured in the war on drugs considered “illegal enemy combatants”? Do they get the protections of US law and the Geneva Convention? I know, it should be obvious, since he’s an American citizen on American soil in the American justice system, but after having read your infamous “torture memos”, I know you can create looking-glass legal fictions as exceptions to our Constitution, allowing us to torture humans in time of war. Not only should you be impeached from the bench and disbarred for your assault on our Constitution, you should be tried as a war criminal and locked up in Gitmo under the sadistic interrogative regime your memos helped construct.
RevRayGreen: I'll post a pic of me and my son....gimme a minute
Missippi Hippy: Guess what... I'm gonna be a new... ummmmm well, my pet piggie Ganja is in labor and they ain't mine in the same sense. See what your wife [...]
RevRayGreen: days they didn't talk back..or act disrespectful..
RevRayGreen: feel so lucky my son is 18 going 19 and my daughter 16 going on 17..relish the days that can't talk back
Urb Age: Congrats Spof thats awesome. My little Clara is about to hit 20 months. Im not the activist I used to be, but its made me a better man.
Urb Age: Heck I was gonna go up there, but just not feeling well this weekend..Dang it, I hate it when that happens..
RevRayGreen: wishing I was hanging at NORML cafe...
JohnH: Just a quick comment about tokin' and sperm motility....been tokin since age 14 and have 8 kids ranging in age from 30 to 9...(what can I say, I found 2 [...]
slash5city: really ..oprah 35 yr or more in the closet toker ...outed ....o my god !!
SneakerPimp: that would be huge news just imagen the headline
RevRayGreen: maybe Oprah smokes and keeps it on the DL...
SneakerPimp: and good afternoon
mr reuben: I could do without seeing Rob K. on tv. But Bruce and Eithan get a big thumbs up from me.
SneakerPimp: waitn for NSL and congrast for spofett.
mr reuben: I don't respect her opinion bluzguy.
Missippi Hippy: Something about the last year in a contract... folks become more ballsey... and Oprah has big ones.
Adam: Oprah won't actually go off air for over a year, 2011 sometime. Maybe with here leaving the network soon, she'll be more likely to speak out about MMJ.
Marijuana-Related Health Costs Minimal Compared To Those Of Alcohol, Tobacco; California Medical Association Says Pot Prohibition Is A "Failed Public Health Policy"; Oregon: State NORML Affiliate Opens First 'Cannabis Café'. […]
American Medical Association Calls For Scientific Review Of Marijuana's Prohibitive Status; Dutch Marijuana Use Lower Than European Average, Study Says […]
"Truth In Trials Act" Reintroduced In Congress; Maine: Voters Approve Medical Marijuana Dispensaries Measure; Colorado: Breckenridge Voters Overwhelmingly Decide To End Pot Penalties. […]
Some of the nation’s top athletes discuss why today's pros are turning to cannabis — and away from alcohol and painkillers — off the field, and question why pro sports leagues are continuing to sanction those who do. Moderator: Steve Bloom, Author, Pot Culture; editor, celebstoner.com * Toby Grear, MMA fighter * Sean Neumann, Documentary Filmm […]
Cannabis Law Reform's Missing Link: Law Enforcement Former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper; LEAP and NORML Advisory Board; Author of Breaking Rank Putting the Mexican Cartels Out of Business Mexican drug cartels now employ over 100,000 soldiers and are responsible for nearly ten thousand deaths per year. Their largest source of income is marijuana. […]
Wall Street Journal examines the 2010/2012 division among pot legalization advocates
waitn for NSL and congrast for spofett.
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