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1. Mexican drug war update
2. Fontana Sheriff sends threat letters to dispensary landlords
3. MedMJ advocates protest Obama’s San Francisco visit
4. Colombia’s president calls for global drug legalization

Daily Toker Tunes

Electric Tuesday: Brought to you by Cannabis Cure UK – the reform podcast for the United Kingdom

• Glebstar – “Breed”

Todd’s Toker Topics

• Hypocrisy

Behind the Headlines with NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano

• On Russia TV discussing DEA efforts to reclassify plant THC for Big Pharma

Radical Rant

• Stephen DeAngelo of Harborside points fingers of blame for federal crackdown, except at mirrors

Not all of the 1200% increase of Oxycontin production went to Rush Limbaugh.

This latest post on Alternet comes as a follow-up to my post on the increase of workplace drug test positives for oxycodone.  Remember, when your government tells you we need a Drug-Free America and we must protect the public from dangerous drugs abuse, they only mean the drugs whose dealers and manufacturers don’t make huge campaign contributions.

(Alternet) The pharmaceutical companies that make Oxycodone and its two dozen generic equivalents — such as Endocodone, Oxyfast and Percocet — are required by law to present an annual application to the Office of Diversion Control seeking approval for a quota of the drug’s annual production. Should a company desire to manufacture more than the previous year, it must request an increase — and the DEA must approve.

In 1997, a year after prescription drugmaker Purdue Pharma first brought Oxycontin (the first branded version of Oxycodone) to market, the total production quota approved by the Office of Diversion Control was 8.3 tons. By 2011, it had risen to 105 tons, an officially sanctioned 1,200 percent increase over the same period that saw Oxycodone emerge as what Haislip calls “the Cadillac of America’s prescription drug abuse crisis.”

When I was in Orlando, the college kids of University of Central Florida told me about the “pill mill” epidemic referred to in this report.  The way they described it, it sounded like the image our opponents paint of medical marijuana in California.  ”Yeah, you can go to a shady little fake clinic,” one young man told me, “complain about pain, get a script from a shady doc, and get yourself 500 OxyContin pills, no problem.”  Another told me of a friend of his who gets the OxyContin to sell so he can buy the ridiculously overpriced marijuana in Florida.

What’s incredibly disturbing to me is the reporter asking the DEA about the skyrocketing abuse rates of oxycodone and whether dialing down the quota, as was done with amphetamines in the 1970s and quaaludes in the 1980s, might help reduce the abuse of these powerful synthetic opioids.  The answer from DEA supervisory special agent Gary Boggs, was basically that we have to pump out enough oxy for all the recreational users so the medical users can have enough access!

“What you have to understand,” Boggs replied, “is that you do have legitimate patients and they’re fishing from the same pond that the illegitimate patients are fishing from, so you have to be cautious not to restrict the quota to the point that when the legitimate parties go to the pool, all the fish haven’t been taken out by the illegitimate parties.”

Can you imagine the reaction we’d get in the medical marijuana states if we said, “Gee, we have to plant 96 trees per medical garden that harvest over a pound each so that the legal medical marijuana patients will have enough left over after illegal pot smokers get theirs!”

And this is partially why the Obama Administration is initiating a crackdown on medical marijuana businesses – their ability to shape policy in Washington if they are well-funded and organized:

The Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) employs more lobbyists in Washington than there are members of Congress.  Since 2007, the group has spent more than $20 million annually on lobbying in Washington to see that its interests are protected.

That influence is felt in the offices of the DEA, says [Gene Haislip, retired DEA agent from the office of diversion control].

“For a DEA official to put his or her neck on the line to block a company’s requested quota increase takes an awful lot of guts and a lot of hard work, particularly if that company is supporting members of Congress who have the power to block the agency’s funding,” he said.

All the big-name pharmaceutical companies that make Oxycodone products — including, but not limited to, Pfizer, Purdue Pharma and Endo Pharmaceuticals — are members of PhRMA. They also spend additional millions lobbying annually for their own specific interests. And they are the biggest donors to a national a nonprofit organization known as the American Pain Foundation. According to the organization’s most recent annual report, the American Pain Foundation had a budget of roughly $5 million for 2010. Endo Pharmaceuticals, the maker of a variety of Oxycodone-based painkillers including Percocet, gave more than $1 million. Pfizer and Purdue donated between $100,000 and a half-million last year.

And PhRMA can’t have us pesky medical marijuana meddlers exposing hard science about cannabis’s superior pain killing properties and people using medical marijuana to wean themselves off the products they’ve spent $20,000,000 to protect and promote.  They can’t have the $5,000,000 they’ve spent on creating the need and marketing the solution to pain turning more people to cannabis instead of opioids.  So they’re going to have their servants – on both sides of the aisle – see to it that doesn’t happen.

(Hat tips to Drug Policy Alliance for the headline, which was their 2nd subhead, and California NORML for some of the list of grievances…)

"If you inhaled in New York City, today you might be Barry the Drug Criminal"

When originally asked as a candidate his stand on the issue of medical marijuana, President Obama had pledged not to be “using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this issue”.

Today, four US Attorneys from the Obama Administration’s Department of Justice announced plans to “outline actions targeting the sale, distribution and cultivation of marijuana.”  Sixteen dispensary owners in California have received letters giving them 45 days to shut down before the federal government shuts them down and seizes their assets

The Obama Administration’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has openly declared that the mere act of registering to use medical marijuana in accordance with state law is reason to suspend a citizen’s Second Amendment rights.

Additionally, President Obama has been using the resources of other federal departments to circumvent state laws on medical marijuana.

The Obama Administration’s Internal Revenue Service has ruled that medical marijuana dispensaries cannot deduct common business expenses, a move that cripples the ability of any business to remain viable.

The Obama Administration’s Department of Treasury has pressured banks to no longer hold accounts for medical marijuana businesses that are heavily regulated, taxed, and surveilled by the state of Colorado.

President Obama had pledged that “science and the scientific process must inform and guide decisions of my Administration on a wide range of issues, including improvement of public health”.

Yet the Obama Administration’s Drug Enforcement Administration has blocked legitimate requests from researchers to study marijuana’s medicinal effect.

The Obama Administration’s Department of Health and Human Services has rejected a Food and Drug Administration approved study of medical marijuana for treatment of post traumatic stress disorder.

President Obama has appointed the heads of all these departments.  In fact, he even appointed to the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration Michele Leonhart, the acting administrator who had been appointed by President Bush.

It is by these measures that President Obama may be judged as more aggressively battling medical marijuana than the previous two administrations in the medical marijuana era.  However, there is one critical difference between President Obama’s War on Medical Marijuana compared to President Bush:  George W. Bush never bothered to ask us what we thought about it.

President Obama has asked the American People on nine separate occasions for suggestions on public policy.  In every instance, the subject of marijuana legalization and medical marijuana support have been the top concerns cited by Americans.

President Bush never openly mocked us on the issue.  Of course, if President Bush had bothered to address our medical marijuana questions, it couldn’t have been any more incoherent than President Obama’s recent response.

Full disclosure: I voted for, campaigned, fund-raised, phone-banked, and publicly spoke on behalf of the Obama Campaign in 2008 when I was still a progressive talk radio host on satellite radio.  It won’t happen again.  Some tell me we’re more likely to see legalization under a Democratic administration; I see two Republicans running for president espousing marijuana regulation.  I see arrest graphs showing greater rise in marijuana arrests under Clinton than any president but Nixon. At this point in my childless life, I must take Keith Stroup’s words to heart and “never again vote for any politician who would treat you like a criminal”.

“But I don’t smoke pot, so why should I care whether it is legalized or not?”

(MyFOXDetroit) Ramsey Tossa is a lot of things. He’s a U.S. citizen, a retired military translator and a proud father. But a criminal, he’s not. Still, he says he was treated like one Tuesday morning around 2:00 a.m. when he woke up to find DEA agents banging loudly on the door.

“As soon as I opened the door, somebody grabbed me and took me outside and put me on the grass,” Tossa said. “The first thing I thought was they were terrorists who want to kill me because I served in Iraq.”

Well, technically, Ramsey, they are terrorists.  You feel pretty terrorized, don’t you?

The DEA says the person they were looking for is actually the landlord’s son. He uses that house as his address.

DEA Agents Raid Wrong House in Sterling Heights: MyFoxDETROIT.com

Some people will hear this story and think, “Well, we just need to do a better job making sure the DEA gets the right addresses”, not even considering that even a guy who does have marijuana in his own home doesn’t deserve to have his door bust down at two in the morning and his family traumatized.

It's not the plant... it's who is profiting from it!

UPDATE: Paul Armentano confirms that the author of the quoted East Bay Express piece has jumped the gun with this pronouncement.  There may be 55 companies that want to produce the generic Marinol using naturally-extracted THC, but that would still have to come from Dr. El Sohly’s farm at U. Miss.  See the comments section for more explanation.  I apologize for the mis-hype.

Remember the saying, “It’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you?”  Well, is a conspiracy theory about Big Pharma takeover of medical marijuana still a conspiracy when you have evidence?

(East Bay Express) The Drug Enforcement Administration told Legalization Nation in an e-mail last week that 55 unnamed companies now hold licenses to grow cannabis in the United States, a fact that contradicts the widespread belief that there is only one legal pot farm in America, operated under the DEA for research purposes. It appears as if the upswing in federally approved pot farming is about feeding the need of pharmaceutical companies who want to produce a generic version of THC pill Marinol and at least one other cannabis-based pill for a wide variety of new uses.

In other words, if big corporations grow dope with the government and put it in a pill, it’s medicine. But if you grow it at home or at a city-permitted pot farm and then put it in a vaporizer, it’s a felony.

It’s a weird piece of news that comes at a strange and contradictory time for the drug war. As US attorneys send threatening letters to states and cities, including Oakland, warning them against “commercial cultivation” of marijuana, the DEA is quietly handing out licenses for commercial cultivation.

NORML’s Paul Armentano has informed us about the end of the patent on Marinol and how these drug companies want to create similar pills with THC extracted from natural sources rather than synthetic ones, which are more expensive.  ”Natural sources” are raw cannabis plants, of course.  Silly Stoners Against Legalization, it was never Big Tobacco you had to worry about from legalization of pot, it was Big Pharma you had to worry about from medicalization of pot.

In 2002, the Coalition for Rescheduling Cannabis submitted a petition to request that marijuana be reclassified, but they have never received an answer. Today, they filed a lawsuit in the Washington DC Circuit Court asking for President Obama’s administration to respond to the petition. The groups represented in the coalition are Americans for Safe Access, Patients out of Time and several individually named patients. What they filed today was a “writ of mandamus.” They say the government’s unreasonable delay in giving them an answer is in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act. A writ of mandamus is a request to legally protect the rights of someone suffering a grievance and denied a legal right. The coalition is asking for the administration to respond within 60 days.

Note that a previous petition to reschedule cannabis filed by NORML in 1972 went unanswered for 22 years before being denied. The writ of mandamus also argues that cannabis is not a dangerous drug, and that there is evidence of its therapeutic benefits. This would create a weak point in the defense for the schedule one classification of cannabis since by definition, a schedule one substance has no medicinal value. In fact, in regard to the 1972 NORML petition, in 1988 the DEA’s own Administrative Law Judge Francis Young stated that, “Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man.” He recommended “the Administrator transfer marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule II to make it available as a legal medicine.” Nevertheless, DEA Administrator John Lawn rejected Young’s recommendation. Since then, the American Medical Association and the American College of Physicians have called upon the government to review the scheduling of marijuana.

The Coalition’s lawsuit is basically forcing the government’s hand, so to speak. A formal rejection of their petition would allow the group to go to court to challenge the DEA’s assertion that marijuana has no medical value.

Read more from the original source:

Lawsuit Demands Feds Respond: Marijuana as a Schedule II Drug?

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Hemp Headlines

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1. DEA raids at least five dispensaries in Spokane, Washington
2. The ACLU takes up the appeal of Joseph Casias, the Wal-Mart worker fired for medical marijuana use
3. Today marks the 100-year anniversary of the nation’s first statewide pot ban in Massachusetts

Daily Toker Tunes

Brought to you by Urb Thrasher from Urb Age Designs

• Rockin’ Friday: Double Jack – “Free”

NORML Newsmakers

• Kevin Oliver from Washington NORML recorded live yesterday at the THC Pharmacy being raided by DEA
• Steph Sherer from Americans for Safe Access

(Reuters) – Federal agents executed search warrants at several Detroit area locations on Tuesday including a medical marijuana facility owned by a businessman who also owns a long-closed auto plant that has become a symbol of Detroit’s decline.

The Drug Enforcement Administration, state and local law enforcement agencies conducted the searches at offices in northwest suburban Detroit, Andrew Eiseman, group supervisor for the DEA in Detroit, said.

California, check.  Nevada, check.  Montana, check.  Michigan, check.  Because, apparently, our federal law enforcement officials don’t have “violent crimes and potential terrorism… to deal with” anymore.

Barack Obama, 2008: “When it comes to medical marijuana, I have more of a practical view than anything else,” the Senator explained. “My attitude is that if it’s an issue of doctors prescribing medical marijuana as a treatment for glaucoma or as a cancer treatment, I think that should be appropriate because there really is no difference between that and a doctor prescribing morphine or anything else. …

“What I’m not going to be doing is using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this issue simply because I want folks to be investigating violent crimes and potential terrorism. We’ve got a lot of things for our law enforcement officers to deal with.”

The Pacific Northwest has been spared most federal interference in their medical marijuana programs as Washington and Oregon had not engaged in very much open medical marijuana distribution for compensation.  But now with “farmer’s markets” and “cannabis clubs” and “storefront caregivers” proliferating in these states and Mr. Obama’s acquiescence (approval?) of Ms. Leonhart’s raids in now four medical marijuana states, can DEA raids in the Pacific Northwest be far behind?

This post is part of our continuing series of “Politicians on Pot“.  If you have written your elected official at the local, state, or federal level, email their response to stash@norml.org with the subject Politicians on Pot.  Visit our Politicians on Pot map and click your state to find the responses from your elected officials.  If you’d like to review all of the responses from Democrats and Republicans you can use these links. If you’d like to just review all the politicians responses, click Politicians on Pot.

Dear Robert,

Thank you for contacting me about Michele Leonhart’s nomination to be Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration. It is always good to hear from a fellow West Virginian, and I appreciate this opportunity to be in touch.

On February 2, 2010, President Obama nominated Michele Leonhart to serve as Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration. She has served as Acting Administrator since November 2007 and, before that, served as Deputy Administrator. Her nomination was reported by the Senate Judiciary Committee on a voice vote on December 1, 2010, and she was unanimously confirmed by the Senate on December 22, 2010.

The role of the Senate to confirm or not confirm nominees put forward by the President is an extremely important Constitutional duty that no Senator undertakes lightly. I assure you that prior to voting on any nominee, I carefully review their qualifications and listen closely to what you and other West Virginians have to say.  In this case, I believe that Administrator Leonhart has the right qualifications for this job and that there is a need to have stable leadership at federal agencies, especially at an agency with the important mission of combating drug trafficking.

I have heard from several West Virginians who are concerned about Ms. Leonhart’s stance on medical marijuana. The legalization of marijuana for medical purposes has fueled heated debate for years. Proponents of legalization argue that marijuana can provide therapeutic relief to individuals suffering from diseases such as cancer, AIDS, glaucoma, and neurological and movement disorders Opponents maintain that marijuana is a Schedule I controlled substance, which means it has a high potential for abuse, has no accepted medical use in the United States, and lacks accepted safety, even for use under medical supervision.

Over the years, Congress has acted to uphold federal statute by passing various measures that reaffirm marijuana’s status as a Schedule I controlled substance. Although bills have been introduced to allow doctors to prescribe marijuana for medical use in states that permit it, Congress has consistently rejected this idea on the grounds that valid clinical evidence does not exist to verify the therapeutic benefits of marijuana.

You should know that I am opposed to the recreational use of all illegal drugs. I am very proud of my long record of fighting drug abuse and crime related to it. I have voted to support harsh penalties for drug offenders and have worked hard to make funding available so our police can properly train and equip themselves for the war on drugs. I believe it is very important to punish drug offenders, help the addicted when we can, and keep drugs away from our children, and my votes in the Senate reflect those values.

At the same time, I believe that our government must enact policies that are effective, and not merely punitive, as we work to prevent drug abuse. That is why I am committed to providing treatment where it is appropriate, enforcement where it is necessary, and education in healthful choices for everyone. Rehabilitation services must be a priority in order to help those with drug addiction, which could save many lives and many families, and over time will be a bargain compared to the ravages of crime, increased health care costs, and the overwhelming costs of incarcerating so many of our state’s youth.

Thank you again for being in touch. I wish you the very best.
With Warm Regards,

Jay Rockefeller

December 21, 2010

Dear Randall,

Thank you for contacting me about the nomination of Michele Leonhart for Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). I appreciate hearing from you on this important nomination.

The Senate is tasked with reviewing the President’s nominees for various federal offices, including the DEA. It is crucial to the functioning of our federal agencies that we confirm well-qualified nominees.

The DEA is responsible for enforcing controlled substances laws and supporting programs designed to decrease the availability of illegal drugs in the United States and around the world. Michele Leonhart has served as Acting Administrator of the DEA since 2007.

Ms. Leonhart was born and raised in Minnesota. After graduating from Bemidji State University, she became a police officer in Baltimore. She served as a career DEA Special Agent, at one point running all Los Angeles field operations, before becoming Deputy Administrator in 2004.

As a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which oversees the DEA, I was able to meet Ms. Leonhart and become familiar with her policies. I also had the opportunity to question Ms. Leonhart during her recent confirmation hearing. I believe she has proven her ability to head the DEA, and I plan to support her confirmation.

I will be sure to keep your thoughts on the DEA in mind during routine oversight hearings of the administration. I also look forward to working with my colleagues in continuing to review and confirm qualified Presidential nominees.

Thank you again for contacting me, and please do not hesitate to do so again in the future on this or any other matter of concern to you.

Sincerely,

Al Franken
United States Senator