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1. Study: whites and Native Americans whose youth have the greatest drug use rates
2. San Diego landlords are given the go-ahead to evict dispensary tenants
3. K2 linked to heart attacks in young people
4. Missouri Show-Me Cannabis Regulation gets approval for signature gathering
5. Russian pilot likes getting high

Daily Toker Tunes

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

• Human Revolution – “Stolen Lives”

Cannabis Conversations

• Drug Policy Alliance Executive Director Ethan Nadelmann on Obama’s Reefer Madness

Todd’s Toker Topics

• The End of Prohibition

On today’s NORML SHOW LIVE we were thrilled to interview Dr. Ethan Nadelmann, the Executive Director of the Drug Policy Alliance, for a wide-ranging discussion of drug law reform, beginning with his recent New York Times op-ed on President Obama’s recent “Reefer Madness“.

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Author and Ethan Nadelmann, Executive Director of Drug Policy Alliance, at 2009 Albuquerque Reform Conference.

Drug Policy Alliance Executive Director Ethan Nadelmann has penned an excellent op-ed appearing in today’s New York Times entitled “Reefer Madness”.

Perhaps not since the civil rights era has law enforcement played such an aggressive role in what is essentially a cultural and political struggle. But this time the federal government is playing the bully, riding roughshod over states’ rights, not to protect vulnerable individuals but to harm them.

At the federal level, there have been few voices of protest. Senior Democrats on Capitol Hill shy away from speaking out. Republicans mostly ignore the extent to which anti-marijuana zealotry threatens core conservative values like states rights, property rights and gun ownership.

Mr. Obama briefly showed a willingness to challenge the drug-war mind-set that permeates the federal drug-control establishment. He needs to show leadership and intervene now, to encourage and defend responsible state and local regulation of medical marijuana.

Dr. Nadelmann will be our guest on Tuesday’s edition of NORML SHOW LIVE, airing at 1pm, 4pm, and 10pm Pacific on The NORML Network.

NORML Founder / Legal Counsel Keith Stroup and California NAACP Executive Director Alice Huffman (Photo: NORML Conference 2010 and David Sygall www.e-shot.com)

See Thursday Plenary Audio post for more MP3s from NORML Conference.  The Special Events RSS Feed is here.

Opening Remarks

NORML CON 2010 (FRI) 01 – Rick Steves – Marijuana The European Perspective

The New Jim Crow: Marijuana Prohibition

NORML CON 2010 (FRI) 02 – Dr. Harry Levine – Queens College, New York

NORML CON 2010 (FRI) 03 – Jasmine Tyler – Drug Policy Alliance

NORML CON 2010 (FRI) 04 – Neill Franklin – Law Enforcement Against Prohibition

NORML CON 2010 (FRI) 05 – Alice Huffman – California NAACP

NORML Women’s Alliance: Women, Cannabis and Respect

NORML CON 2010 (FRI) 06 – Marsha Rosenbaum – Drug Policy Alliance

NORML CON 2010 (FRI) 07 – Greta Gaines – Nashville Musician

California Legalization Initiative: Prop. 19’s Current Impact and Future Implications For American Marijuana Policy

NORML CON 2010 (FRI) 08 – Allen St. Pierre – Prop 19′s Current Impact and Future Implications

NORML CON 2010 (FRI) 09 – Matt Welch – Editor, Reason Magazine

NORML CON 2010 (FRI) 10 – Michael Whitney – Communications Director, FireDogLake

NORML CON 2010 (FRI) 11 – Paul Armentano – NORML Deputy Director

NORML CON 2010 (FRI) 12 – Ethan Nadelmann – Executive Director, Drug Policy Alliance

NORML CON 2010 (FRI) 13 – Prop 19 Panel Questions and Answers

Shortly after concluding the NORML National Conference, our own Keith Stroup and Rick Steves made the trip up I-5, joined by MPP’s Rob Kampia and DPA’s Ethan Nadelmann, for a seminar presented by the ACLU of Washington’s Alison Holcomb entitled, “The Future of Marijuana in Washington State”.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Some common sense from the man who wrote "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da"

(Huffington Post) For too long, the War on Drugs has been a sacrosanct undertaking that was virtually immune from criticism in the public realm. Politicians dared not disagree for fear of being stigmatized as “soft on crime.” Any activist who spoke up was dismissed as a fringe element.

But recently, I discovered just how much that’s changing–and that’s how I came to speak out on behalf of an extraordinary organization called the Drug Policy Alliance.

I learned of DPA, as they’re known, while reading what once might have been the unlikeliest of places for a thoughtful discussion of the Drug War — the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal.

It featured an op-ed that dared to say in print — in a thoughtful, meticulous argument — what everyone who has seriously looked at the issue has known for years: the War on Drugs is an absolute failure whose cost to society is increasingly unbearable and absolutely unjustifiable.

The author of that piece is a former Princeton professor turned activist named Ethan Nadelmann, who runs DPA. I was so impressed by his argument that I began reading up on the group.

It’s nice to have the feeling that a mainstream movement for drug law reform is building. Welcome on board the bandwagon, Sting! Seems like only yesterday that rock music superstars were running in fear of Tipper Gore’s Parents Music Resource Center and filming PSA’s for “RAD – Rock Against Drugs”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I still think the late Sam Kinison had the best commentary on the whole “Rock Against Drugs” phenomenon:

Download audio file (Comedy-Sam-Kinison-Rock-Against-Drugs.mp3)

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Download audio file (NORML_Daily_AudioStash_2009-11-12.mp3)

Cannabis Conversations

• Ethan Nadelmann: Highlights of Opening Remarks at DPA Reform Conference in Albuquerque, NM.

Daily Toker Tunes

• Groovin’ Thursday: What the Science – “Higher (feat. Tiffany Paige)”

Cannabis Conversations

• Aaron Houston, MPP Federal Lobbyist, on Mexican drug cartel influence in small town America
• Lorenzo Jones, A Better Way Foundation, on the progress of reform in Connecticut
• Whitney Taylor, former campaign director, on new civil fines for “public consumption” following passage of her Massachusetts’ Question 2 decrim measure
• Karen O’Keefe, MPP State Programs Director, on new medical marijuana bills that take away right to home grow or restrict qualifying conditions

What impact would it have on African-Americans?  Well, first off, it might mean that not 1-in-3 black men would be under correctional supervision (prison, parole, probation) and there might be more young black men in college than prison.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In “Marijuana Crosses the Placenta“, John tortures the language he’s named after with fine writing like this:

Effects on the fetus, though scientifically difficult to evaluate, for a variety of reasons, the detection of metabolites in meconium establishes fetal drug exposure. The effects on the babies after birth is obvious.

Judging from his various cut’n'pastes from scientific articles I doubt he understands, I think his argument is that women who smoke a lot of pot while pregnant risk harming their babies, so we should lock them up.  Wait’ll he sees the statistics on fetal alcohol syndrome!

In “Who Populates the Prison System“, John claims to debunk the idea pushed by “pro-drug advocates and their financial backers (Soros, Sperling, et al.)” that the prisons are filled with non-violent marijuana possessors:

# The massive numbers of people in prison for marijuana, are / were smugglers and distributors.

# These skewed facts ignore that when a person actually is incarcerated for simple possession, invariably it’s because they’ve cooperated and been allowed to plead to a lesser charge!

John doesn’t understand, though, that a “smuggler/distributor” of marijuana can be a pot possessor who made the mistake of keeping his two separate strains in two separate baggies, or keeps Ziploc sandwich baggies in his home, or owns a postal scale, or grew more than one plant, or keeps a legal firearm.  He also doesn’t realize that folks on parole or probation who get busted for possession technically go back to prison for their original crime, not the pot possession, so they don’t show up in statistics as pot prisoners.  But it is refreshing to see him admit that there are “massive numbers of people in prison for marijuana” as he beats up his strawman.

In “Losing Our Youth to Depression“, John explains that marijuana doesn’t treat depression, it causes depression:

The marijuana user is in a constant state of depression interspersed with “short bursts of feeling almost normal again.” The user, when he’s reached out and achieved that “high,” he has a temporary reprieve from that constant, marijuana-induced state of depression, but it returns as the “high” fades.

That’s the cause, the scenario . . . ; users seek, the non-depressed state, they perceive as a “high”. They’re wrong; it’s the state they were in before – it’s the absence of depression. Over and over, they’re drawn into the ‘fog of marijuana addiction’ which has caused them to perceive it wrongly. The user has unknowingly, only taken a step down a rung, on the ladder of normalcy!

So I’ll bet when John learns that the suicidal/homicidal Columbine shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, and just about every high-profile school shooting you can name in the past twenty years involved depressed teens who were prescribed SSRI anti-depressants, he’ll be eager to pump out a few columns about how we should be locking up people in possession of Paxil, Effexor, Celexa, Prozac, Zoloft, Luvox, Anafranil, Lexapro, Wellbutrin, etc.

In “Addiction to cannabis and mental disorders“, John reveals the insidious evil of marijuana – the “potheads” are seducing our youth into their debauched lifestyle (I guess we’ve been borrowing strategy from the “gay agenda”):

The most convincing reason why potheads must remain criminals, why marijuana must remain illegal, is their targeting of children. That behavior in and of itself reveals that they suffer from a deep psychological insufficiency, a need to draw children into becoming like them – whether it’s a need to justify their own beliefs or some other motivation, it doesn’t matter! They’re damaging future generations and doing so intentionally.

You know who’s targeting children, John?  Pot dealers who aren’t required to check IDs, a million of whom are teenagers themselves.  You know who else targeted children?  Alcohol and tobacco companies with their “Budweiser Frogs” and “Joe Camel”, but since those drugs are legal, we were able to set strong advertising restrictions on those products, create effective anti-youth drinking and smoking educational campaigns, and reduced teen drinking and smoking to the lowest levels ever recorded.

In “What is wrong with smoking marijuana for medicinal purposes“, John cites a video of “Nathan Edelman” (he means Drug Policy Alliance’s Ethan Nadelmann), which is actually video of former NORML Director Richard Cowan taken way out of context to illustrate our alleged secret agenda of telling pot smokers to lie about how marijuana helps them medically so we can legalize all drugs (and, naturally, recruit the children into our debauched lifestyle).

When considering at this question, one must take into account two related issues: 1) that the whole plan to make marijuana legal was published in “High Times.” They issued a call, compelling users to come forward saying that pot helped their suffering.

And there’s another part: 2) that a survey showed that medical marijuana cardholders had been smoking pot for an average of 17 years! That in itself, brings the whole system under more suspicion – - – for what if, marijuana does cause one to think their “medicine” helps their condition when it is instead, actually causing or contributing to it?

Then, there’s two further question that needs to be asked:

1) What weed is smoked without the particulate matter, tars, and (over 400 chemical compounds in the smoke) not causing harm? The doctor’s oath is “First, do no harm.”

2) If people who were already breaking the law using an illicit drug for 17 years before the system allowed this pseudo-legal use, do they have the credibility to allow us to believe this actually helps?

If you were nauseous, in chronic pain, spastic, prone to seizures, or were losing your eyesight to glaucoma, and you smoked a joint 17 years ago and found it helped you medically, would you choose to live in misery for another 17 years until it became legal to use, just so you could have some credibility in John English’s view?

You can read more of my responses to John English in the comments sections of his articles in the hyperlinks above.  Feel free to leave some of your own comments, too.