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Hemp Headlines

Brought to you by Cannabis Fantastic

1. Arizona’s medical marijuana law goes into effect with online-only applications
2. Florida Supreme Court rules drug dogs can’t be used to sniff people’s homes without a warrant
3. San Diego city council approves restrictive dispensary zoning regulations
4. Alabama mother faces ten years in prison for positive THC test in newborn
5. Oregon man’s pocketknife in carry-on leads to TSA bust for medical marijuana

Daily Toker Tunes

Brought to you by John Doe Radio.com

• Groovin’ Thursday: Tatanka – “My Permission”

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition Speaker’s Corner

• Sean Dunagan, former Senior DEA Intelligence Agent

Radical Rant

• Arizona Republic stokes fear of successful medical marijuana program

Don't blame me! I'm evolved to smell things and please humans.

In an analysis of three years worth of data from suburban Chicago, the Chicago Tribune discovers that only 44% of all roadside searches following a K-9 alert for cannabis or drugs turned up any cannabis or drugs or paraphernalia.  Shockingly but not surprisingly, that success rate drops to 27% for Hispanic drivers.

We are using the drug dog alert to justify a warrantless search that turns up no crime 56% of the time and the justification is “clearly” a crime once happened there?

Then there is that bias of the dog to react to the master’s unintentional cues that we told you about:

(Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center) But even advocates for the use of drug-sniffing dogs agree with experts who say many dog-and-officer teams are poorly trained and prone to false alerts that lead to unjustified searches. Leading a dog around a car too many times or spending too long examining a vehicle, for example, can cause a dog to give a signal for drugs where there are none, experts said.

Plus the lack of any sort of legal standard for performance and accuracy:

The dog teams are not held to any statutory standard of performance in Illinois or most other states, experts and dog handlers said, though private groups offer certification for the canines.

Add to that what some consider to be not so unintentional cues based in racial profiling:

Civil rights advocates and Latino activists say the findings support complaints that police unfairly target Hispanic drivers for invasive and embarrassing roadside vehicle searches.

The state’s data — in which drivers and officers aren’t identified — show that the average false alert led to a stop lasting nearly a half-hour. One Crystal Lake search led to a three-hour stop for a Hispanic man in 2007. He was stopped for a license plate/registration violation, according to the data.

Dogs do not have the human failings that have led to the targeting of minorities, but [Virginia Martinez, a Chicago-based staff attorney for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund,] worries that an officer’s bias can translate through the dog leash. She fears drug-sniffing dogs are another tool to justify roadside searches of innocent drivers, the unfair consequences of what she called “driving while Mexican.”

Well, gentlemen, we didn't find any pot, but we did find six stale French fries, two empty pop cans, a novelty stripper ballpoint pen, and almost nine dollars in change, mostly pennies. But my dog thinks you smell like Bob Marley's ass, so we're taking your car to impound for further search. Officer Jenkins ate your fries, we recycled the cans, and you can get your ninety cents in change back at the station.

Police justify these failing grades and racially-biased figures by pointing out their dogs’ noses are so sensitive that they are often detecting the residue of cannabis or drugs even as the suspects have no actual cannabis or drugs on them.

Dog-handling officers and trainers argue the canine teams’ accuracy shouldn’t be measured in the number of alerts that turn up drugs. They said the scent of drugs or paraphernalia can linger in a car after drugs are used or sold, and the dogs’ noses are so sensitive they can pick up residue from drugs that can no longer be found in a car.

Since September 2008, Deputy Jeremy Bruketta has handled Sage, one of the McHenry County department’s two drug-sniffing German shepherds. Officers sometimes come up empty-handed in searches of vehicles that clearly once contained drugs, he said, recalling a traffic stop in which a man, reeking of pot, had a marijuana stem stuck to his shirt but no drugs were found in the car.

[Alex] Rothacker, who works with some 60 area police dogs and handlers at TOPS Kennels in Grayslake, rubbed a bag of marijuana against a cinder block in the wall. Two German shepherds he trained alerted on the block with little hesitation, earning sessions of play with handlers who control the dogs’ beloved chew toys.

That’s your defense?!?  Your dogs are alerting and you’re throwing people’s stuff out of their cars on the side of the freeway because maybe somebody just smells like a crime?  Somebody might have had pot on them when they were in the car, so the driver needs to stand on the side of the road as the rubberneckers stream by passing judgment while two or three police cars arrive to dismantle the Hyundai?

What if someone were to rub freshly harvested buds on state representatives’, police captains’, and city councilpersons’ personal cars, and at random on luxury cars in jewelry store parking lots?  Eh, don’t bother – the police are never going to send a K-9 unit out to check those cars out in the first place.

Cops Plant Drugs On Suspect – Watch more Funny Videos

We don’t make the laws, we just enforce them. Sometimes we enforce laws that were never broken. Sometimes we let our dogs bite you even if you’re compliant and we plant criminal evidence on you, but hey, it’s all in a day’s work of protecting and serving the public.  And as always, we protect and serve the public equally, without regard to race.

These are your local police.  These are your local police on prohibition.  Any questions?

“They shot through the door in front of screaming children that were begging them to let the dog out and she was cowering in there,” said homeowner Corina Amato, “They shot through the door and she ran upstairs in the bedroom, and they went up there and pumped AK47 shots into her in my bedroom.”

“This is the bullet hole where they shot my dog,” said Amato’s boyfriend, Rick Johnson, as he pointed to a splintered hole in the bedroom’s wood floor, “There was a pile of guts and blood right up underneath the bed.”

Police destroyed the front door, and now the couple must nail up pieces of plywood to secure their home… or what’s left of it.

The living room is unlivable, the bedroom furniture—splintered and the office has been turned upside down, not to mention tearing holes in the walls, shattering the porcelain bathroom and ripping apart the music room.

The search turned up plenty of herbs Amato had growing in her sunroom, but not the one a confidential informant suggested they would find—marijuana.

This could be you.  A “confidential informant” — a snitch — often will tell police what they want to hear in exchange for leniency for their own crimes.  The police, following the standard operating procedure, will approach your home as if you are Tony Montana from Scarface, lying in wait for the police with a few of your “little friends”.  They’re armed to the teeth and armored against the attack they have been trained to believe you will engage once they burst through your door late at night without knocking.  They will destroy your property, smash your TV, slash your furniture, break your electronics, and ruin your home, so they can impress upon you that you are a no good drug dealer and they’ve made your drug dealer life miserable.  And God help you if you have a dog, even if it’s a black lab or a dachsund or a chihuahua, because they are trained to believe all dogs are pit bulls or rottweilers ready to attack police and must be shot immediately, if not to protect themselves, then to impress upon you no good drug dealer types that they have the power to kill and next time it might be your wife instead of your dog.

This is how, in the Land of the Free, we deal with our fellow free citizens suspected of planting the wrong herb indoors.  We don’t even need proof; the word of a criminal is reason enough to spend your tax dollars on a violent and destructive urban military assault on your castle.

The final line of the story is most amusing:

No one has been charged, and the department has neither apologized nor offered any restitution for killing their dog or trashing their home.

Apology?  Restitution?  For what? In the police’s eyes, they did nothing wrong.  They followed standard procedure in enforcing prohibition laws.  The snitch may have made a mistake, but not the cops.  How could they have known there would be no contraband unless they broke all the furniture, tore holes in the walls, and destroyed the bathroom to be sure it wasn’t hidden?  So what if two innocent people had their home destroyed and their beloved pet murdered in front of their terrified children?  That’s the unavoidable cost of fighting the Drug War; there’s always collateral damage in a war.

My fantasy hope is that when these cops who kill dogs go to hell, Cerberus is waiting for them with the ghosts of all the slain canines and all cops’ scrotums smell and taste like peanut butter for eternity.

Official Stash Dog Roscotelli "Smelly Felly" "Semicolon Puckerbutt" "Nutstomper Boobsquisher" Gomez-Sanchez-Rodriguez-Ramirez Coltrane , and the ONLY green thing he cares about, The Ball V*.

I’ve only recently become a dog-person. I fell in dog-love with Roscoe, the Jack Russell terrier, a couple of years ago, and since then I can’t imagine living my life without him. When my wife takes him out of town, I miss him more than her (only because I can call, email, and text her – I’m not a cad!)

He sits in a chair beside me as I type up news stories for the Stash.  Around 10am he makes me take him outside to pee, forcing me to disconnect from The Borg for a while, probably keeping me somewhat more physically and mentally healthy.  Around 1pm, we walk to the park with The Ball* and have our Noontime Dog Fun event.  Around 5pm he needs to go out again and forces me to take another break, otherwise I could literally be in front of the computer from 6am-8pm straight (and have done so many times… not healthy!)

So I was amused when a Stasher sent me a link to DogNews.com’s magazine, Volume 25, Issue 17, dated April 24, 2009, page 58, and an article by Shaun Coen called “Off the Leash: Marijuana and Dogs”:

But should the effort to legalize marijuana ever see the light of day, what would be the effect on our canine companions? We know that second hand smoke can cause lung and nasal cancer in dogs, as well as breathing problems, salivation, diarrhea, vomiting and cardiac abnormalities. What would happen to man’s best friends should they be exposed to not only tobacco smoke, but marijuana smoke as well?

Uh, since tobacco smoke causes cancer and lung disease in humans and marijuana smoke does not, I’d suppose that marijuana smoke doesn’t seriously hurt dogs, either.

And what if our curious canine friends decided to eat a stash of hash?

Then we put him in his timeout box and sternly say, “Bad dog!”

The signs of a dog that has inhaled or ingested marijuana may include incoordination and listlessness along with dilated pupils, slow heart rate, and sometimes urinary incontinence.

…and riding around in a van with four teenagers trying to solve mysteries for Scooby snacks.

During a study done in 2002, 250 cases of marijuana ingestion were reported to the ASPCA, resulting in two deaths. It’s harder to know what the mental damage may be to dogs under the influence of marijuana but it’s believed that they will become fearful and scared because they don’t know what’s happening…

Oh, I love it when people play sloppy with the studies.  There was, indeed, a 2002 peer-reviewed paper entitled “Marijuana exposure in animals” by Caroline W. Donaldson, DVM.  It does confirm that a dog should not eat cannabis:

According to the ASPCA APCC Database, the most common side effects of marijuana toxicosis are depression, ataxia, and bradycardia. Other signs include agitation, vocalization, vomiting, diarrhea, hypersalivation, tachycardia, hypothermia, mydriasis, urinary incontinence, seizures, and coma.

But also notes:

An LD50 (the amount for a dose that will kill half of those who take it) has not been established in dogs or cats. Research in dogs and monkeys showed that oral doses of delta 9-THC and delta 8-THC ranging from 3,000 to 9,000 mg/kg were not lethal, and all dogs recovered within 24 hours of ingestion.

3-9g/kg means a dog like Roscoe, who weighs 10kg, eating one to three ounces — of oral THC at 100% potency, like Marinol pills, not one to three ounces of new-and-improved 10% THC “super-pot”.  And the kicker:

Out of more than 250 cases of accidental marijuana ingestion reported to the ASPCA APCC, two deaths were reported. In one cat, exposure to multiple agents was possible, and the results of a gross necropsy revealed that the animal probably died of complications of cardiomyopathy. The second death reported was a horse with signs attributed to colic, but a gross necropsy was not done. The prognosis is favorable for symptomatic animals with no secondary complications, such as aspiration pneumonia. With supportive care, these animals usually recover within 72 hours.

So the “two deaths” the author refers to, implying they are deaths of dogs from cannabis ingestion, are actually a cat and a horse with other serious health problems.  Is this guy auditioning for a job at the (Non-Alcoholic, Non-Pharmaceutical, Non-Tobacco) Drug Free America Foundation?

In the same study, the author reports that no veterinarians surveyed had ever filed an animal abuse complaint when someone brings in a stoned dog.  She also notes that veterinarians often have trouble getting the owners to tell them their dog had eaten cannabis, since possession of it is a crime.  If the vet doesn’t know the true cause, she may proceed as if the dog had ingested a serious toxin, like antifreeze, and the treatment for that may cause more harm to the dog than the cannabis did!

Bottom line: Pot’s not good for your dog, but it’s not going to seriously hurt him. Personal note: I think people who purposefully get their pets high for amusement sake are being cruel.  Owning a Jack Russell is a high; they’re like Red Bull with fur.  Pets are great the way they are; no need to alter them (aside from the whole spay/neuter part).

* I’m serious about The Ball.  This is a green plastic ball with orange-wedge-like grooves studded with soft nubs and a half-inch diameter hole through the center through which a rope was once attached.  The rope, of course, becomes Jack Russell floss in a matter of minutes, but The Ball is what he really wants, anyway.  He can get a good grip in the wedges and the nubs work to massage his teeth and gums.  He fricken LOVES The Ball (even more than The Kong… that’s another story).  So much that this is actually The Ball V, as The Balls I, II, III, and IV have all been lost and he steadfastly refuses to get excited about any other spheroid of any size, shape, material, or configuration.  The Ball costs $15, and I’ve only been able to find them at one particular Petco that’s way out of my neighborhood.

“You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.”

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Letter from a Birmingham Jail
April 16, 1963

Today our nation honors what would’ve been this week the eightieth birthday of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., on the eve of the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama as the 44th president of these United States.  I was sixty-four days old when an assassin’s bullet cut down Dr. King in the prime of his life.  Today I am six-hundred forty days older than Dr. King when he was killed.  Tomorrow I will see something few people my age and older thought we’d ever see, yet something Dr. King had dreamed from the start.

There remains a grave injustice to be battled, the most unjust of laws to be disobeyed, a law that by its definition is not rooted in eternal law and natural law: the man made code that declares nature itself to be illegal, the prohibition on cannabis.  Yet when I mention marijuana law reform in the context of the great civil rights struggles in America, so many are quick to dismiss me with snickers of derision.  ”You just want pot legal so you can get high!” is a common refrain.

Marijuana law reform is a civil rights struggle.  I will not attempt to equate this struggle to those of minorities, women, or gays and lesbians; however, there are some parallels among our fight and theirs and, indeed, some threads of drug law injustice are woven directly into the struggles of these groups.  The prohibition of drugs was one of the tools of oppression – the “Negroes” for their cocaine, the “Chinamen” for their opium, and the Mexicans for their marihuana.  It remains so today – while people use drugs at about the same rate regardless of race, African-Americans and Hispanics are disproportionately arrested, convicted, and serve longer sentences for drug use than white people.

Aside from the racist nature of the origins and applications, cannabis prohibition itself is an unjust law.  First consider that it isn’t merely against the law to possess, cultivate, traffic, buy, and consume marijuana – it is against the law to be marijuana.  Federal and state law enforcement spend millions of dollars and thousands of hours flying helicopters attempting to spot cannabis growing out in the wild.  Ninety-eight percent of what is seized is known as “feral hemp”, which is wild ditchweed with unsmokably-low levels of THC.  Officials rip up and destroy every plant they see whether it is owned or tended by any human, whether or not it could possibly intoxicate any human.   Logically, then, the ultimate goal of marijuana prohibition is not to simply stop humans from using it for intoxication, but to eradicate the species cannabis sativa L. from the earth!

Think of that: our official policy is the extinction of a species of life.  Certainly that’s not entirely new.  We’re dedicated to the extinction of all manner of microscopic life, after all, but that is a justifiable policy for self-preservation – we kill bugs that kill us.  I cannot think of another plant or animal we treat like cannabis.  Deadly plants like nightshade and belladonna are legal, annoying plants like poison ivy and poison oak are legal, even intoxicating plants like coca and poppy are legal when cultivated for prescription medications.  But the cannabis plant, the plant that cannot kill you is completely illegal*.  The plant that can provide the food, clothing, shelter, and medicine humans need to survive is illegal.  Nature itself is illegal.  How much more contrary to eternal law and natural law could this unjust prohibition law be?

The fight against cannabis prohibition, against this unjust law, is a civil rights fight.  This declaration will offend some people who will point to four centuries of slavery and Jim Crow, to lynchings and cross burnings, and to beatings and firehoses and condemn my declaration as making light of the plight of those who were truly oppressed.  I do not make light of those struggles, but I also recognize that civil rights are not a zero sum game and the degree and manner in which one is being oppressed are not what make the fight against oppression a just one.  Dr. King dreamed of a day when children would be judged by not by the color of their skin but the content of their character; I dream of a day when workers are judged not by the metabolites in their urine but the quality of their work.

Later in King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, he writes:

Let us consider a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal. …

I hope you are able to see the distinction I am trying to point out. In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law. …

The unjust law of marijuana prohibition is difference made legal.  The majority compels our minority to forgo our intoxicant, but does not bind itself to forgo their intoxicant.  The majority compels our minority forgo our medicine, but does not bind itself to forgo their medicine.  The majority compels our minority to forgo their religious sacrament, but does not bind itself to forgo their religious sacrament.  The majority compels our minority to forgo our source of food, fuel, and fiber, but does not bind itself to forgo their sources.

The majority may argue that they do not prohibit intoxication, medication, religious sacrament, or food, fuel, and fiber cultivation, so long as it doesn’t involve marijuana.  This to me sounds like the argument against same-sex marriage rights, that gays and lesbians are just as free to marry someone of the opposite sex as everybody else.  If we are given a right, but then proscribed from exercising that right in the manner that benefits us without a valid reason from the majority, it is not really a right.  When intoxication, medication, and sacrament are legal rights, but we are proscribed from using a demonstrably safer intoxicant, medicine, and sacrament, that is difference made legal.

No, we do not face the firehoses and the dogs and the lynchings, nor do we suffer in as great of numbers as did the African Americans Dr. King so graciously led in the years before my birth.  Our oppression is more subtle and codified into laws that restrict our housing, employment, and educational opportunities.  We do not tremble in fear of the midnight ride of white-robed vigilante Klansmen; our terror comes in the form of midnight no-knock raids of body-armored SWAT teams.

Like the civil rights struggles of the past, we work to change laws that oppress people, laws that enjoy support from the majority and are rationalized by tradition, religion, and junk science.  Unlike the civil rights struggles of the past, our constituency is an invisible group defined by lifestyle, not genetics.  That choice to use cannabis should not disqualify our fight to be treated as equals under the law.  After all, the choice to worship the God of your understanding is not genetic, it is a lifestyle choice as well, and our law recognizes that one cannot be discriminated against for that choice.  In fact, it is a bit ironic that one’s choice of God, a belief that cannot be proven by science to beneficial, is a protected right, yet one’s choice of cannabis, a plant that can be proven by science to be beneficial, is a federal crime.

The freedom to worship, of course, is an explicit right recognized by our First Amendment, but its foundation is in the inalienable rights given to us by our Creator, among them being Life, Liberty, and The Pursuit of Happiness.  If that last one – the Pursuit of Happiness – doesn’t give me the right to smoke a joint so long as I don’t affect anyone else’s Life and Liberty, then the Constitution isn’t worth the hemp paper on which it was drafted.

Also from King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, he writes:

We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.” It was “illegal” to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country’s antireligious laws.

Today’s freedom fighters are the people like Eddy Lepp and Charles Lynch, providing aid and comfort to the sick and dying by growing and supplying them with medicine, only to face the rest of their natural lives behind bars because what they did was “illegal”.

Today’s “whites-only” establishments are the “drug-free” workplaces keep cannabis users confined to low-paying part-time or temp service jobs, while the rest of the workers are allowed all the alcohol, nicotine, and prescription medications they desire.

Today’s lynchings are the Rachel Hoffmans and Jonathan Magbies who are murdered by police negligence, solely over their use of cannabis.  Today’s institutionalized discrimination is the over 20 million in my lifetime whose lives are marked with the scarlet letter of a drug conviction, affecting their child custody, government assistance, college financial aid, employment opportunities, professional licenses, voting rights, and liberty.

The prohibition of cannabis ultimately degrades human personality and is against moral law.  It is an unjust law that cannot stand, and we have a moral responsibility to disobey it.  In doing so, we express the highest respect for the law.  On this day when we recognize the greatness of Dr. Martin Luther King’s Dream, and on tomorrow, when we see part of that dream fulfilled, remember that we don’t fight to “make pot legal so you can get high”; we fight because the Pursuit of Happiness is our right and caging us for our method of pursuit is unjust.

Smoking pot is our civil right!

Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.

Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood,
Martin Luther King, Jr.

* I recognize that marijuana is legally grown at ElSohly’s lab at the University of Mississippi.  But consider that marijuana’s two purposes – to supply five people grandfathered in to the IND program and to provide marijuana for studies to prove how awful marijuana is to justify its prohibition.  In this metaphor it would be akin to saving a few vials of polio virus so you could use them to make vaccines.

The Associated Press: SWAT team kills 2 dogs in raid on Md. mayor’s home
BERWYN HEIGHTS, Md. — A SWAT team raided the home of a Washington, D.C.-area mayor, killing his two black Labrador retrievers and seizing an unopened package of marijuana delivered there.

Prince George’s County Police said Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo brought a 32-pound package of marijuana into his home that had been delivered by officers posing as delivery men. The Tuesday evening raid was conducted by county police narcotics officers and a sheriff’s office SWAT Team.

Sheriff’s office spokesman Sgt. Mario Ellis says deputies “apparently felt threatened” when they shot the dogs.

Calvo said officers entered about 7:30 p.m., first shooting 7-year-old Payton. They then pursued 4-year-old Chase, who ran away and was shot by police from behind, he said.

It takes a special kind of man to shoot a fleeing dog in the back.  Especially a black lab.  Everybody knows what a vicious reputation that breed has… if you’re a duck.  The worst thing that dog would probably have ever done to a decent human being not participating in a SWAT raid is lick him to death.

Obviously the first shot at the older dog made such a noise that the second dog was scared off.  Could you have not just fired a warning shot to scare both the dogs off?

Plainfield man sentenced for stealing Pomeranian puppy, forcing it to inhale marijuana smoke — chicagotribune.com
A Plainfield man who stole a $1,500 Pomeranian puppy and blew marijuana smoke into its face until it passed out, was sentenced Wednesday to 60 days in the DuPage County Jail.

“The bottom rung of humanity abuses animals for their amusement,” Judge John Kinsella told Emanuel Lopez, 19. “Anybody who abused animals for their own amusement has a problem.”

Lopez pleaded guilty in May to stealing the puppy on March 21 from a Petland store in Naperville. The dog was returned to the store three days later and has since been adopted.

Naperville Police Detective Richard Arsenault testified Wednesday that after stealing the dog, Lopez and some friends drove around the area, “Blowing marijuana smoke in the dog’s face until it passed out.”

OK, let’s get something straight: you do not force your animals to get stoned, period.  It is animal abuse, it is unnecessary and cruel.  There may be no real physical harm to the animal (cannabis smoke is non-toxic), but it is unnatural for an animal to breathe any sort of smoke and intoxicating their primitive brains probably stresses them out.  Besides, puppies are entertaining enough as it is, especially if you’re stoned.

On the other hand, I’d like to ask Judge Kinsella if he ever enjoys the entertainment value of the racetrack, the rodeo, or the circus.

Bills
BILL NUMBER: A3539

TITLE OF BILL : An act to amend the penal law, in relation to restricting ownership of vicious dogs

PURPOSE : To prohibit those convicted of a felony crime related to selling or possessing a controlled substance from owning or possessing a vicious dog.

SUMMARY OF PROVISIONS : Section 1: Adds a new Penal Law section 270.25 to create a crime of owning or possessing a vicious dog for those persons that have previously been convicted of a felony for selling or possessing a controlled substance. A vicious dog is one that weighs more than 20 pounds and has either been trained to physically attack persons or has exhibited a vicious disposition or propensity. The unlawful possession of a vicious dog is a class A misdemeanor.

EXISTING LAW : There is no crime now for possessing a vicious dog for drug dealers that use such dogs as weapons in the perpetration of the sale or possession of controlled substances.

JUSTIFICATION : The Penal Law prohibits convicted felons from possessing guns, knives and other dangerous instrumentalities. Since attack dogs are used commonly by drug dealers in the place of guns in the pursuit of their drug trade, the possession of these live “weapons” in place of a gun should also be criminalized. In addition, the police would be protected when arresting recidivist drug dealers. The law would also protect the general public from these dangerous animals.

You know what else we should do?  Make it a class A misdemeanor for these guys to take any martial arts classes or lift weights.  Fist fights are another way these drug dealers pursue their drug trade, right?  Police would be protected, too, since they could easily arrest such 98-lb weaklings.

This is yet another stupid salvo in the War on Drugs.  This is obviously aimed at pit bulls and rottweilers, and not so subtly at inner-city minorities, who tend to own those dogs, mainly for security and protection in the under-policed areas of poverty in which they live.  So now the ex-con who had the misfortune to be caught growing a marijuana garden, who can’t protect himself in his home with any wort of weapon, now can’t even have a trusty guard dog.

I guess they’ll have to get a nice poisonous snake for a pet… they’re still legal, right?