And… we only report on busts when they are really big, really silly, really interesting, or like this case, if they involve the very young or the very old.

In Illnois, a 74-year-old Oklahoma man is facing felony marijuana trafficking and delivery charges after a traffic stop in Troy, Illinois. A state trooper pulled over the man for improper lane usage on interstate 55. After searching his vehicle, officers found three bundles of marijuana inside a stack of plywood, when they were removed and weighed, the 74-year-old man was charged with 77 pounds of mariuana.

He is currently being held on a $250,000 bail and is being held in a Madision County Jail.

External Links:

http://www.bnd.com/2012/01/14/2015234/74-year-old-man-caught-with-77.html

Seventy years ago today, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, a day President Roosevelt said, “would live in infamy”. The next day, Congress declared war* and America, which had been reticent to get involved with foreign wars just a generation after “the Great War”, was at war in the Pacific, and days later, in Europe as well.

My grandfather was a part of that “Greatest Generation” and fought in the Pacific.  He’s passed on years ago, but I always remember him when this day comes around.  As a child, I saw his sergeant’s uniform, clean and pressed, hanging in a plastic bag in his closet.  That was as much as I knew about his involvement in World War II; unlike some men who never see war, he didn’t talk about it much.

My friends often kid me that I can find a marijuana angle in any news story.  Today is no different.  On December 7, 1941, cannabis had been federally prohibited for four years already.  Most states had begun eradicating and prohibiting cannabis even before 1937.  A nation founded by hemp farmers, whose first hemp plantations were sewn in 1611, had criminalized hemp farming for the first time in its history.  It hadn’t much effect; American farmers had long since switched to corn, wheat, soy, and other more profitable crops.  Hemp was cheap enough to get from overseas farmers and plenty of modern new synthetic fibers made from bountiful and cheap petroleum were too much competition for hemp in most cases.

Except warfare.  Ocean warfare require battleships and they require rigging that withstands rot, seawater, and is extremely strong, something only hemp robe and canvas can provide.  It was just a few months after Pearl Harbor that the Japanese had captured the Philippines, and with it, our primary source of illegal-to-produce-in-America hemp, so desperately needed for ships engaged in the Pacific theater.  So in the summer of 1942, America mustered up a little Hemp for Victory!

Click here to view the embedded video.

The tale of the first US Hemp for Victory mill in Polo, Illinois:

The hemp mill program was assigned to the Department of Agriculture. The program for planting and processing the hemp plant was directed by the Commodity Credit Corporation. There were to be forty-two mills in the Midwest, eleven of which were to be in Illinois. The plant in Polo, Illinois, was to be the pilot mill for the entire program. It was the first of its kind.

The Polo Hemp Mill, which began operation on November 20, 1943, consisted of mill buildings, a dryer, storage buildings, and a boiler house. The overall cost was $350,000.

At first, farmers were reluctant to raise hemp because they knew nothing about it. They feared a labor shortage at harvest time and also feared that hemp prices would be lower than those of corn prices. To acquaint the farmers with raising hemp, meetings were held at the Polo High School. The farmers were reassured that the necessary equipment would be provided for every one hundred acres of hemp. The farmers in the area then joined in the attempt to produce the fiber crop, something entirely new to the area’s agriculture.

The first carload of Kentucky hemp seed arrived in Polo in April 1943. Farmers were soon busy planting. The hemp seed was drilled into prepared ground between oats and corn planting. Soil which is suitable for growing corn is usually suitable for raising hemp.

Of course, after World War II, there was no more need for Hemp for Victory.  Oil was still cheap and plentiful and so was overseas hemp.  It’s sad that it takes something of the magnitude of a world war to return us to our hemp heritage.  Let’s hope it doesn’t take climate catastrophe to bring back the next return.

And thanks, Grandpa, for your service.

* Remember that quaint little part of the Constitution?

Chicago Alderman are lining up to support a plan to decriminalize personal possession of marijuana, defined as ten grams (~1/3rd oz).  The proposed ordinance would be replacing arrests and jail with a $200 fine that could raise $7 million a year for the cash-strapped Windy City.

As reported by Associated Press, the proponent of the measure, Chicago Alderman Danny Solis will introduce the ordinance tomorrow.  The idea already has the backing of Alderman Willie Cochran, a former Chicago police officer.

“In these trying times of the economy, we could really use the revenue generated by fines versus Arrests,” Solis said. “And each (arrest) means police officers are spending an inordinate amount of time outside the neighborhoods, inside the district offices doing paperwork.”

“I support it because people are getting arrested, going into court and judges are … dismissing (the cases) and releasing them all anyway,” Cochran said.

According to the Cook County Clerk of the Circuit Court, 87% of misdemeanor possession cases are dismissed at trial.  Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle noted that the city spent $78 million on marijuana arrests.

Hey, Chicago, if you’re looking to make a buck off pot smokers and direct scarce police resources away from marijuana arrests, how about convincing lawmakers in Springfield to legalize marijuana?  Then you can collect a tax on us without having to catch us with pot!

Marijuana prohibition makes life more dangerous for all of us – even those who don’t smoke pot.

We tell story after story of the crime inherent in an unregulated market.  Dealers shoot other dealers over turf.  Deals go bad and consumers are killed.  Rippers come to steal the marijuana grown and harvested by others because it is so profitable and because what is the victim going to do, call the cops?

In this recent case in Chicago, the victim did:

A man who called police to report being robbed of two pounds of marijuana and a laptop was arrested himself early Thursday after police found narcotics in his Lincoln Park apartment.

Police were called to the Fullerton address at 12:40 a.m. because [the arrested man] and a 19-year-old man had reported being robbed of their marijuana and a laptop, [police] said.

The 19-year-old said he’d been hit over the head with a bottle and suffered a cut to his back during the robbery, [police] said.

[The first man], who reported being punched, refused medical attention and was arrested when they found him in possession of narcotics, [police] said.

Some people will read this and think “What did they expect, getting involved with two pounds of pot?”  These are the same kind of people who will question the dress of a rape victim.  Whether it was two grams or two pounds, do you feel safer knowing that someone in your apartment building can be beaten in their home in the middle of the night and have no recourse to police?

Consider that the next young man who reads this article may learn a lesson and decide he needs to get some guns to protect himself and his two pounds in the apartment.  Then consider what leads someone to hoard two pounds of pot is its profitability due to its scarcity.  People don’t hoard cases of tequila and nobody busts into their apartments to steal it.

Then consider that even the casual consumer at that two gram level could be a crime victim; thieves may want their home electronics, jewelry, and other valuables.  Does that consumer call the cops and risk the detection of some contraband in his home?

Finally, consider that you may be the victim of a crime.  Does your pot-smoking neighbor call the police, knowing he may be called on to answer some questions about that funny smell coming from his door?

Eleven percent of American adults will smoke pot this year and over 6% will consume cannabis this month.  Can we really be safe as a society where 25 million of us are criminals loathe to cooperate and interact with police?

Three out of four people who've tried marijuana are white, but whites only make up one out of four people serving time for marijuana.

(Chicago Reader) Chicago police made tens of thousands of arrests in 2009 and 2010 for marijuana possession, including 47,400 in which that misdemeanor was the most serious charge. So how egregious are the racial discrepancies?• Of those arrested, 78 percent were black, 17 percent were Hispanic, and 5 percent were white.

• In those years 4,255 people pleaded or were found guilty of low-level marijuana possession after being arrested in Chicago: 89 percent were black, 9 percent were Hispanic, and 2 percent were white.

• The racial gap was slightly smaller for all of Cook County, which is less diverse than the city: countywide 76 percent of the 6,303 who were convicted or pleaded guilty were black, 10 percent were Hispanic, and 14 percent were white.

• Blacks accounted for most of the marijuana convictions and guilty pleas out of every police district in Chicago except three on the northwest side: Shakespeare (which is in Logan Square and West Town), Albany Park, and Jefferson Park. Hispanics ranked first in each of these areas.

• After Chicago, the most pot convictions and guilty pleas came out of west suburban Maywood, followed by Bellwood (west), Evanston (north), Cicero (west), and Harvey (south).

• The street value of the pot found on the convicted offenders, according to our sample of case files, was anywhere from $2 to $170. The average was $55.

This is no anomaly.  Our activists at PhillyNORML dug into the stats and found 80% of marijuana possession arrests were African-Americans.  Dr. Harry Levine from Queens College found 86% of New York City’s marijuana arrests were minorities.  Drug Policy Alliance looked at all of California and found in the 25 most-populated areas, blacks were arrested at two-to-four-times the rate of whites for marijuana.

Learn more about how marijuana prohibition is racist by design – I recommend Michelle Alexander’s incredible book, The New Jim Crow: How the War on Drugs Gave Birth to a Permanent American Undercaste, which reveals some shocking statistics like…

• There are more African Americans under correctional control today — in prison or jail, on probation or parole — than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.

• As of 2004, more African American men were disenfranchised (due to felon disenfranchisement laws) than in 1870, the year the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified, prohibiting laws that explicitly deny the right to vote on the basis of race.

• If you take into account prisoners, a large majority of African American men in some urban areas have been labeled felons for life. (In the Chicago area, the figure is nearly 80%.) These men are part of a growing undercaste — not class, caste — permanently relegated, by law, to a second-class status. They can be denied the right to vote, automatically excluded from juries, and legally discriminated against in employment, housing, access to education, and public benefits, much as their grandparents and great-grandparents were during the Jim Crow era.

(Beacon-News) The Compassionate Use of Medical Cannabis Act, House Bill 30, failed to pass the House last week, 53-61, with four voting present.

The bill would have established a three-year pilot program to allow people with debilitating medical conditions, including cancer, AIDS, multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy, and severe fibromyalgia, to purchase up to 2.5 ounces of marijuana from registered non-profit dispensaries every two weeks.

Sad to see four representatives just vote “present” and not take a position.  Had they voted yes, it’s a 57-61 and we just need to flip three of those “noes” to get it to pass.  Especially when we’re talking about a pilot program that would have had to have been voted on in three years to remain in place, so even if it didn’t turn out as they had expected, they could have just let it die after three years.

After the failed vote, the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Lou Lang, Democrat from Skokie, postponed consideration of the bill, which means it could be brought back to the floor for another vote in the future. During discussion on the bill, Lang repeatedly pointed to the House gallery where disabled Army veteran, Jim Champion, of Somonauk – who has multiple sclerosis and uses marijuana to treat his symptoms — was seated.

“The question is are we going to make Jim Champion a criminal?” Lang said.

“At night when I sleep, my knees grind together, and I almost end up turning into a ball. I wake up in the morning and take my pills, and they do nothing,” Champion said. “I take three puffs off a cannabis cigarette, and I am able to separate my legs. I am able to basically get ready in the morning.”

Jim’s my champion for standing up for medical marijuana in Illinois and refusing to back down even after this latest roadblock.

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Hemp Headlines

Brought to you by Cannabis Fantastic

1. Toronto Marijuana March draws 25,000 people
2. Louisiana man gets life in prison for fourth pot conviction
3. Montana activists pressing initiative to prevent implementation of SB 423
4. Colorado DUID bill is back and looks poised for passage
5. Michigan dispensary owners who sold to undercover cops with patient cards facing drug trafficking trial
6. Illinois medical marijuana bill stalls in House

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Hemp Headlines

1. Illinois House Committee forwards medical marijuana bill on 6-5 vote
2. New Jersey doctor busted for growing 58 plants, smoked “30 joints a day”
3. Hawai’i Senate passes five pro-marijuana bills with near unanimity

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New Jersey - The (No Medical Marijuana) Garden State - coming soon to a state near you!

In 2010, New Jersey passed the first medical marijuana law that did not allow the patient to grow their own low-cost medicine, instead requiring them to pay street prices for cannabis sold through dispensaries.

The District of Columbia followed suit when setting up their rules, despite the fact that the initiative that passed by 69% back in 1998 allowed an “exemption for cultivation [which] shall apply only to marijuana specifically grown to provide a medical supply for a patient.”

Marijuana Policy Project then wrote Arizona’s new law which forbids home cultivation if the patient lives within 25 miles of a dispensary.  The reasoning given was that the dispensaries would need to be guaranteed a clientele in order to remain viable.

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So imagine you’re a 70-year-old glaucoma patient in Phoenix living on SSI.  A friend donates to you a small closet grow and you’re producing a few ounces for yourself at about $12.50/ounce.  Next month, an entrepreneur applies for and is approved to open a dispensary 18 miles away from your rent-subsidized apartment.  Your choices are to move seven miles farther away on your fixed SSI income and keep growing or to sell your grow equipment and start buying those $300 ounces at the dispensary that you can only get to after a lengthy bus ride.  Don’t worry, nobody on the bus or at the stop in your bad neighborhood will smell the ounces of weed on you as you bring them home every couple of weeks (you’re not allowed to stock up – two ounces per fortnight only).  Because we want to be sure a place that sells marijuana in a storefront doesn’t go out of business, since marijuana is such hard commodity to market.

We at NORML had warned that continued focus on medical without an eye toward full legalization would eventually lead to a “box canyon” where opponents say, “Oh, you want medical marijuana?  All right, we’ll make it medical. You don’t grow your own Vicodin, do you?” and begin to eliminate home growing provisions, the only protection cannabis consumers have against government and/or corporate overpricing, strain degradation, and pharmaceuticalization of cannabis into pills, sprays, and inhalers that will make possession of raw plant material by patients just as criminal as it is now for non-patients.

Two current medical marijuana states, New Mexico and Montana, face efforts to outright repeal medical marijuana.  Two current medical marijuana states, Arizona and New Jersey, don’t allow for home cultivation.  Now, New Hampshire, Delaware, Idaho, Maryland, and New York have medical marijuana proposals that forbid home grows and require street-price dispensary shopping.  Proposals in Connecticut, Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and West Virginia would be similar to the current thirteen medical marijuana states that allow registered home cultivation.

NORML supports all these proposals, because what kind of pro-marijuana organization could oppose protecting patients from arrest for marijuana possession, even if they had to buy it at a dispensary?  At least the dispensary is clean and safe and reliable and tested and secure compared to the streets.  But we remind all supporters of medical marijuana that only through legalization for the healthy will you ever get reasonable prices, peace of mind, and avoid the eventual box canyon the DEA and FDA want to steer you into.

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.