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Hemp Headlines

1. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signs SB 1449, decriminalizing possession of up to one ounce of marijuana for adults
2. Great Falls, Montana, enacts ban of marijuana dispensaries; activists plan lawsuit for abridging patient rights
3. Colorado medical marijuana enforcement issues memo that dispensaries should not honor doctor’s recommendations if they are less than 35 days old.

Daily Toker Tunes

Brought to you by Eric Smokesbud

• Rockin’ Friday: The Reverend Horton Heat – “Marijuana”

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

• HIGH TIMES 10th Annual Stony Awards Winners
• Steve Bloom & Shirley Halperin in LA for signings on “Reefer Movie Madness”
• SF Giants fans start hawking “Let Timmy Smoke!” t-shirts for two-time Cy Young winner and pot enthusiast Tim Lincecum

Radical Rant

• Why California’s decriminalization makes voting for Prop 19 even better

(California NORML) Sacramento, Sept 30th: A bill to downgrade the possession of one ounce or less of marijuana from a misdemeanor to an infraction was signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The bill, SB 1449 by Sen. Mark Leno, will spare petty pot offenders the necessity for a court appearance and criminal arrest record while saving the state millions of dollars in court and prosecution expenses. The bill treats petty possession like a traffic ticket punishable by a simple $100 fine and no arrest record.

“Gov. Schwarzenegger deserves credit for sparing the state’s taxpayers the cost of prosecuting minor pot offenders,” said California NORML director Dale Gieringer, “Californians increasingly recognize that the war on marijuana is a waste of law enforcement resources.”

In his signing statement, the Governor said he opposes decriminalization of recreational use of marijuana and opposes Prop 19, but “in this time of drastic budget cuts, prosecutors, defense attorneys, law enforcement and the courts cannot afford to expend limited resources” prosecuting petty pot offenses.

Massachusetts decriminalized in 2008 and now California decriminalizes in 2010.  This is, of course, fantastic news and I’ll admit I did not expect Arnold to sign this.  I think his explanation of the economic reasons may be only part of the story.  I’m betting this was signed with an eye toward lessening the support for Prop 19.  Now the opponents of Prop 19 (prohibitionists and traitors alike) can say, “We’ve already decriminalized it, that will save us money and save small-time marijuana users a criminal record, so we don’t need to take the drastic step of legalization.”

Here’s why they’re wrong.

These people stand in solidarity with Steve Cooley, Bonnie Dumanis, and the California Narcotics Officers Association.

The Stoners Against Legalization crowd have kept in their rhetoric a point that we don’t really need Prop 19, because it only allows you to carry up to an ounce, and that isn’t even an arrestable offense.  They’ve even speculated that the California government was intending on passing this decriminalization bill, so even the misdemeanor you get when you’re not arrested for under an ounce would go away.  The illogic here is the idea that you should prefer getting a $100 infraction ticket rather than no harassment at all for your less-than-an-ounce.

But keep in mind that when decrim goes into effect on January 1, marijuana is only a infraction, but that means that is still against the law.  This means cops still have probable cause to go after that less-than-an-ounce in your pocket so they can write you that ticket.  That means if they find more than an ounce, its a misdemeanor with a $500 fine and six months in jail.

After Prop 19 passes, possession of up to an ounce outside the home is LAWFUL.  As in, “not even an infraction”.  That means that there is no probable cause to search you and harass you based on the sight or smell of marijuana.  No more using the sight of your joint or the K-9 unit sniffing your weed as a pretext to begin harrassing you and fishing for another reason to bust you.

Even if you are caught outside your home with more than an ounce, then Prop 19 also helps you where decriminalization does not, because you get “an affirmative defense that the cannabis was reasonably related to his or her personal consumption.”

Also, this decriminalization is an ounce anywhere, including your home.  Under Prop 19, you are LAWFULLY allowed to possess at the site of your garden “results of any harvest”, which is all the weed you ever grew in twenty-five square feet of space.  Dennis Peron’s attorney J. David Nick speculates he could easily defend 200 pounds in a home under this language.

Let’s not forget that the bill Schwarzenegger signed does nothing for you if you’re growing a marijuana plant – that’s still a felony.  The site of a leaf through your window, seeds and stems in your trash, purchases from indoor gardening stores gleaned by tracking your car with GPS without your knowledge, are all still probable causes to bust you. After Prop 19, you could have 31 five gallon buckets worth of marijuana plants in your home and the fact that you have isn’t a probable cause to begin harassing you.

"Dragonfly de la Luz" says she is not this Stephanie Taylor. We regret the mistake and apologize for besmirching Stephanie Taylor.

The decrim bill that Stephanie Taylor and others are probably cheering right now, thinking it guts one of the pro-Prop 19 talking points, actually does a good job of gutting two of their anti-Prop 19 talking points, specifically:

2. SMOKING CANNABIS IN PUBLIC (LEGAL UNDER PROP. 215) WILL BE PROHIBITED (with no exemption for medical marijuana patients).

Currently, it is perfectly legal under Prop. 215 for anyone to freely medicate wherever cigarette smoking is allowed. But Prop. 19 would eliminate that hard-won freedom.

3. SMOKING CANNABIS WHILE YOUR OWN CHILDREN ARE IN THE HOUSE (LEGAL UNDER PROP. 215) COULD BE PROHIBITED (with no exemption for patients who medicate at home).

What is meant by “space” and “present”? If you smoke in your den while your child sleeps in her bedroom, is that smoking in the same “space” (home) where minors are “present”? If you light up on the back patio and kids happen to be playing soccer next door, are you in the same “space” where minors are “present”? What if your high-grade homegrown wafts into the hallway of your apartment building while children are passing by? Are you smoking in a “space” where minors are “present”? Is “present” the same house? The same room? Wafting distance? Yes? No? Maybe? Depends? Not good enough.

Not anymore.  Never mind that Prop 19 doesn’t change Prop 215 at all and patients will still be able to medicate publicly and around kids if necessary.  Even if you’re not a patient and Stephanie’s crazy interpretation of smoking pot in the same “space” where a minor is “present” really means “being in the same room as the consumer, the same house, the same apartment building, or within wafting distance”, you would now just get a $100 infraction ticket.  Even if you’re not a patient and you’re caught smoking in public you would now just get a $100 infraction ticket.

So don’t let the bone Schwarzenegger just threw you dissuade you from supporting Prop 19 this November 2nd.  Enacting just decriminalization still leaves marijuana illegal.  Prop 19 makes marijuana LAWFUL.

This has been an amazing year for drug policy reform legislation in California! Thanks to the hard work of our staff, allies, advocates, and supporters, five bills DPA supports made it through the Legislature and are on the Governor’s desk right now, awaiting his signature or veto.

Please use this link to tell Governor Schwarzenegger to do the right thing for common sense drug policy in California. We’re asking him to sign two syringe access bills, a bill making marijuana possession an infraction, and two overdose death prevention bills, and to veto a bad bill restricting medical cannabis dispensaries.

Our website will generate letters on the bills you indicate, and we’ll send them to the Governor for you. He has until the end of this month to decide on all of them.

Please forward this message to your networks. We need the Governor to hear from as many people as possible! Thank you for doing your part for common-sense drug policy reform in California!

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Hemp Headlines

1. Drug Czar Kerlikowske: I meant “smoked marijuana” is dangerous and has no medicinal value
2. GA Rep. Tommy Benton replies to constituent letter concerning “caning” for marijuana users
3. Gov. Schwarzenegger’s prison plan: Jail the potheads, let car thieves go free
4. The Top Five States with Most Marijuana Use

California Marijuana Report with Eric Brenner

• A look at the California Gubernatorial Race and candidates’ stand on marijuana legalization
• Music from Buddy Miles

Daily Toker Tunes by Marijuana Music Awards . com

• Variety Tuesday – ‘The Last Soul’ by Sticky Mouse

Government at Work

• Claire Sauer from the League of Women Voters in Southeast Connecticut on their plans to objectively examine the policy of marijuana decriminalization.

Click here to view the embedded video.

(Huffington Post) Three television stations in San Francisco and Los Angeles have rejected an ad promoting the legalization and taxation of marijuana, set to run on consenting stations and cable networks in the state beginning Wednesday.

Two ABC affiliates joined one NBC station in the decision to reject the spots. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, meanwhile, has called for a debate on legalizing marijuana.

“I think it’s time for a debate,” he said in May. “And I think that we ought to study very carefully what other countries are doing that have legalized marijuana and other drugs, what affect it had on those countries, and are they happy with that decision.”

KABC in Los Angeles and KGO and KNTV in San Francisco apparently aren’t interested in such a debate. “How can you debate it if they won’t air both sides?” wondered Bruce Mirken, a spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project, which is behind the ad buy that he called “modest but not trivial.”

(Rolling Stone) Political pressure to end the War on Drugs is building in surprising quarters. In recent months, three distinct rationales have converged to convince a growing number of politicians – including many on the center-right – to seriously consider the benefits of legalizing marijuana.

For Webb, a Democrat from Virginia who served as secretary of the Navy under President Reagan, it’s a crisis of incarceration. “Incarcerated drug offenders have soared 1,200 percent since 1980,” the senator says. “Yet the illegal-drug industry and the flow of drugs have remained undiminished.” For Schwarzenegger, who says it is “time for a debate” about legalization, it’s a crisis of cost: A bill in the California legislature to legalize and tax cannabis – the state’s largest cash crop – would provide more than $1 billion annually to balance the state’s busted budget. And for Terry Goddard, the attorney general of Arizona, it’s a crisis of violence: With Baghdad levels of bloodshed raging in Tijuana and other border towns, legalization would deprive Mexican cartels of as much as 65 percent of their illegal income. “Much of the carnage in Mexico is financed because of profits from marijuana,” Goddard told reporters in April. Last month, a Zogby poll that presented all three rationales found, for the first time ever, that a majority of Americans – 52 percent – say they support decriminalizing marijuana.

Legalization is also backed by a growing number of veteran drug warriors. “The War on Drugs is a constantly expanding and self-perpetuating policy disaster,” says Jack Cole, a former undercover narcotics agent who now serves as president of a group called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, which includes hundreds of former drug agents, police officers and judges. “If all drugs were legal and regulated we could have exactly the same demand for drugs in the U.S., but there wouldn’t be any killings. Mexico’s 7,500 deaths since the beginning of last year – all those murders just wouldn’t exist.”

Recent calls by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and others to study the legalization of marijuana as a way of boosting tax revenues are “irresponsible” and send a dangerous message, the chairman of the board of the drug abuse education program D.A.R.E., prominent Los Angeles attorney Louis “Skip” Miller, said today. “Marijuana is a dangerous drug with numerous demonstrable ill effects on health,” Mr. Miller added.

It seems as though DARE is contesting having a debate!! This means they have NO intention of actually providing any reasonable or substantive argument, they simply start blasting away using the same old Reefer Madness arguments that have been raised for years.

I don’t know about you, but I value Science over Politics and I DARE the organization DARE to debate the issues honestly.

But, let’s examine their argument piece by piece.

But it is completely irresponsible to suggest that the legalization of a dangerous drug could be a way to help us out of the budget mess we’re in. Such comments send entirely the wrong message, especially to young people who face a difficult enough time resisting the pressure of peers and others to try drugs.”

Oh My God, it’s all about the kids!! Well, if this were true, then DARE would be supporting legalization in a model that provides a vendor, lock, key, and ID method of limiting access to children. Next:

“Let’s be clear, Marijuana is not benign. Scientific studies have decisively documented marijuana’s harmful effects on the body’s cardiovascular system, brain and respiratory functions. Despite what you might hear from the pro-legalization side, marijuana use can cause cancer and does impair judgment.”

Isn’t it sad when the opposition has to invent an argument to support their claim? The studies they are referring to don’t prove a HARMFUL connection to the cardiovascular system, brain, or respiratory functions. In fact, the studies show positive connections between Cannabis and your body, not negative ones. Although, doctors seem to agree that continued SMOKING Cannabis may lead to emphysema, no link between Cannabis and Cancer has yet to be proven (other than chemicals in Cannabis have been proven to smother or stifle cancer cells). [Sorry, Dudemaster, but even the emphysema is something that cannabis hasn't been shown to cause.  Regular chronic smokers may develop coughing, wheezing, and bronchitis, but links to emphysema, lung cancer, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, have been disproven. -- "R"R]

“It has been shown to cause an immediate rise in the heart beat by 20-30 beats per minute along with an increase in blood pressure, thus increasing the workload of the heart. Marijuana is an irritant to the lungs and contains proportionally more carcinogens than tobacco smoke. It is associated with increased incidence of cancer of the head and neck area and lungs. It works on the brain, causing short- and long-term memory loss and impairing judgment, and it affects the sensations of taste and smell. One of its more pernicious effects is that it reduces inhibitions and can lead a person under the influence of marijuana to try even more harmful substances.”

Can you believe they even throw in the “Gateway Theory” in the last sentence?  [Or the exact opposite of current research, which shows no link between cannabis use and head, neck, mouth, and lung cancer, or that there is no long-term memory loss and short-term memory is affected only while intoxicated. -- "R"R]

DARE is just another prohibition pushing organization, what I call a “self licking ice cream cone”. Their agenda, and the agenda of all Marijuana Prohibitionists have pitted the people in this country against their government and have empowered evil cartels that have killed more people in the last two years than we’ve lost soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Let’s remind DARE that Marijuana is NON-TOXIC, and their entire argument is based on lies and slick marketing campaigns, NOT SCIENCE!

Let’s educate DARE, contact them today and let them know what you think about the reefer madness lies they are propagating. http://list.dare.org/contact/

Q: What is your stance on the legalization, cultivation, and regulation of marijuana in the state of California?

A: I like the law that we have in place. And I don’t believe in legalizing marijuana, but I’m always open for the debate because there are people that feel differently. And I said I’m always interested in debating any of these issues because there’s always different ways of looking at it. And I think it would be interesting to see the information that is available, if there’s any information available, of well countries are doing that have legalized marijuana. But I don’t think that information is available, and I’d want us to see that.

But I believe in the law, the way the law is right now, and I think it’s worked very well for the state of California. And I think it would be a mistake to just go and legalize something that we don’t believe in just because it would produce an extra billion dollars in revenues. And I think we just have to learn how to live within our means rather than trying to do things we really don’t want to do.

Q: New polls actually show that more than half of Californians support legalizing marijuana. So would that sway your stance on it whatsoever in this open debate that you’re calling for? Would it sway your opinion?

A: Well, it could very well go on an initiative one day, where they ask the voters directly, that could very well be. And if the voters make that decision, that’s fine. But I think it is very important for us to make certain decisions not just because they would bring in some extra money, and I think this is why people have been talking about that in California, to go in that direction, and to start debating that issue. Because it would produce, as they say, $1.3 billion, $1.4 billion extra revenues.

It’s no surprise that when Gov. Schwarzenegger called for a discussion on the legalization of marijuana it would be seen as a call to arms for prohibitionists. For Sonoma County, the usual suspects are taking their places.

“I think we need another drug like we need a hole in the head,” Sonoma County Sheriff’s Capt. Matt McCaffrey said.
The societal costs of having more people using drugs would exceed the tax benefits, he said.

“A lot of the money would be going to the ills caused by this drug,” in much the same way alcohol taxes don’t cover the costs of problems caused by alcohol consumption, he said.

It’d help if you remember the “we don’t need another drug” argument. It’s the first new talking point that you will be hearing from the prohibitionists. It stands the prohibitionist argument of “this drug is so bad we HAVE to outlaw it” on it’s head. Since marijuana is so much safer than currently legal drugs, we should legalize it right now. When law enforcement gets a place at the FDA’s approval panel for new drugs, I’ll take what they have to say about the harm of marijuana more seriously. I’m sure that when Purdue Pharma introduced “Oxycontin” the dear Sheriff didn’t say a word.

The second point the good Sheriff makes is that the ills of legalization of marijuana will outstrip the revenue it generates. With 18 million marijuana users per year, the cost of marijuana use is already baked in. Other countries (Gov. Schwarzenegger’s criteria) only saw a slight increase (around 5%) in the use of ADULTS who grew up with prohibition.

Sonoma County District Attorney Stephan Passalacqua said he’d be willing to participate in discussions about legalization. But he questioned whether now is the time.

“I don’t think on an important topic like this it can be done when we’re facing a deficit at our doorsteps,” he said. “At this point it serves as a needless distraction to Sacramento.”

The DA needs money today and removing a source of billable income isn’t the tune he wants to hear. Lightening his workload is a needless distraction, and is outright dangerous to his future as an elected official. When a DA needs to up his conviction rate, or show he’s one tough dude he needs a bus load of pot smokers to incarcerate (for a mandatory long time). He’d spend months or years tracking down robberies before he could get a mere handful of convictions. It’s not time now, and it’s never a good time for the DA to discuss marijuana legalization.

Next up: “What about the children?”

“It would contribute to greater abuse” by children if it’s freely available to adults, said Sonoma County schools Superintendent Carl Wong.

Children living on the marijuana-rich North Coast already use marijuana at a higher rate than elsewhere, said Lynn Garric, the director of Sonoma County’s Safe Schools Program.

A survey conducted by the group ranked Sonoma County fourth in the state in student marijuana use. Marin County students reported the highest use, followed by Mendocino and Humboldt counties, she said.

The survey showed that 30 percent of Sonoma County eleventh-graders had used marijuana in the month preceding the survey. The state average was 16 percent.

“We have to be careful about impacts on children,” she said.

So a survey created, funded, and conducted by Sonoma County’s Safe Schools Program found an alarming usage rate amongst the county’s eleventh graders, forgive me if I’m not shocked. Black market dealers don’t ask for ID and don’t care who’s buying, and that goes for any product, from guns to unpasteurized milk. It’s the black market that feeds drugs to our children, in the free market your drugstore doesn’t sell to minors because it’d get shut down and lose all that wonderful revenue.

When the debate is joined by the prohibitionists, they will trot out every skewed study, every frightening headline, every pot horror story to defeat you. Don’t let them get away with sentencing 800,000 Americans every year to a tour of our incarceration system, get prepared, get motivated, get active.

“We are starting to see a real change,” said Ellen Komp, a Humboldt County-based spokeswoman with the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

Komp said the price of marijuana from the North Coast likely would remain high, much like premier wines from the region. She envisions “tasting” rooms, which could boost tourism and bring relief to the North Coast’s battered economy.

I think I’ll order an eighth of Mendocino’s finest Sour Diesel and a tumbler of Maker’s Mark…

In case you missed it, Paul Armantano has a great piece about this unexpected good news. It’s very notable that the anchor begins to put very pointed questions to the prohibitionist that was brought on to “debate” Rob Kampia.

If you live in CA, be sure to drop Arnold a line at NORML take action page.