I really think criminals deserve these beds more than cannabis consumers

Following up on “The David Evans Inequality”, I wanted to puncture another talking point of the prohibitionist.  This is the claim that we really don’t lock up anybody for marijuana in prison – it’s as rare as finding a unicorn, as Drug Czar Walters once said.

This one I’ve christened “The George Skelton Diversion” in honor of the Los Angeles Times writer who recently penned this:

Our prisons aren’t exactly bulging with people who were sent there for growing or selling grass, let alone ingesting it. Fewer than 1% of the inmates have been sentenced for marijuana or hashish crimes of any sort, according to state prison data.

They total 1,325 out of 164,156. If you do the math — each prisoner costing nearly $50,000 a year — it isn’t chump change: around $66 million. But it’s hardly noticeable in a $10-billion prison budget.

So the reader is left to believe that we only spend $66 million enforcing marijuana prohibition.  Why, that’s a 0.6% drop in the prison spending bucket!

As usual, the prohibitionist ignores the true cost to society and the marijuana consumer – the arrest itself.

Every one of California’s pot arrests require police time.  Police labs have to test baggies of weed while rape kits sit on shelves.  California pays unemployment and other benefits to workers fired only for failing a pee test.  Cops have to follow up on grow tips and rip up gardens.  People have to replace doors and belongings after cops destroy them in a raid.  Court stenographers have to be paid to transcribe trials whether defendants are convicted or acquitted.  People lose upward mobility when a marijuana conviction impedes their job ladder or education plan.

Then there are the people in prison for weed who don’t show up in the “there for weed” statistics.  If you robbed a gas station two decades ago, served your time, and are on probation when you’re caught for a joint, you can go back to prison for your robbery and it doesn’t show up as a “busted for weed” imprisonment.  If you’ve had two convictions in California your joint can be your “third strike” that puts you away.  If you kept your different strains in different bags, you can go to prison for distribution, not possession.  There are conspiracy charges where you can be imprisoned even if no weed was found and you had no major role in the trafficking of cannabis.

Besides, no matter how few people are in prison and how little it may cost, is it right?  I say one man in a cage and a dollar to house him for the “crime” of growing and using a plant is still too much.

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Hemp Headlines

1. Illinois medical marijuana bill may be voted on soon at the House, if passed, would go to governor for signature
2. Grand Rapids, Michigan, rejects the lone applicant for home growing under restrictive new restrictions
3. Boulder, Colorado, wants to limit how medical marijuana can be advertised

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• Stand-up comedian Carrie Snow, former Roseanne Show writer, discusses marijuana support in Hollywood

Radical Rant

• The 112th Congress ought to read the Constitution, especially the 18th & 21st Amendment, as well as the Commerce Clause, regarding marijuana prohibition

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• Salem, Oregon, man takes 1-year-old along on quarter pound pot deal in public parking lot.

Win a phone call from B-Real of Cypress Hill, limited edition Slightly Stoopid vaporizer, framed and autographed tour poster, and a free one-year membership to NORML!

Greetings from the Legalize It Tour! Slightly Stoopid and Cypress Hill have teamed up with the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, also known as NORML to do a fan video contest in support of Prop 19.

Prop 19 – on California’s ballot this November — would allow adults 21 and up to buy marijuana for recreational use, and cause it to be taxed just like alcohol. If passed, this would be a HUGE step forward in the fight to end marijuana prohibition. Our government can generate between $12-18 billion in tax revenue, save over $200 million in law enforcement costs, and create between 60-80k new jobs.

We need you to make a video (60 seconds or less) stating what you think California should do with the revenue generated from taxing marijuana. Upload it to YouTube and BE SURE to tag it with “YesOnProp19″ – all one word.

A pool of finalists will be selected based on which videos having the highest number of comments and views, and then the best video from those finalists will be awarded the grand prize. The grand prize winner will receive a personal phone call from B-Real of Cypress Hill, limited edition Slightly Stoopid vaporizer, framed and autographed tour poster, and a free one-year membership to NORML!

Two runner-ups will also each receive a special prize pack full of autographed t-shirts, hats, CD’s, and special edition Slightly Stoopid rolling papers and lighters. Finally, all of the grand prize and runner-up entries will be posted on our Facebook page, Cypress Hill’s Facebook page, and NORML’s Facebook page for worldwide fame!

Here are the rules: Everyone who enters must be at least 18 years old and a US resident. Additionally, all videos MUST have the tag “YesOnProp19″ so we can find your entry on YouTube! Contest ends 9/1/2010.

For more information on Prop 19, check out the links below:

NORML.org
TaxCannabis.org
Register to VOTE by Oct. 18th

Click here to view the embedded video.

(Huffington Post) A transpartisan coalition of prosecutors, judges, cops, students, bloggers and political operatives on both sides of the aisle launched a campaign Tuesday to bring an end to marijuana prohibition, focusing on ballot initiatives in 2010 and 2012. The campaign, “Just Say Now,” gets its name from Nancy Reagan’s iconic anti-drug slogan from the 1980s that has become synonymous with the government’s black-and-white approach to drug policy.

“The stars are aligning in a very interesting way with Tea Party activists, who are generally libertarian,” said Aaron Houston, head of Students for Sensible Drug Policy, on a conference call Tuesday afternoon announcing the formation of the coalition. “On the right and left it’s a very popular issue.”

The campaign will be backing marijuana initiatives in 2010 in Arizona, Oregon, California, Colorado and South Dakota. The group will back initiatives in Nevada and elsewhere in 2012.

Bruce Fein, a member of the coalition, was Ronald Reagan’s associate deputy attorney general and is a prominent civil libertarian. “This is a fundamental issue of states’ rights,” said Fein.

A lead organizer of the campaign, Jane Hamsher, founder of Firedoglake.com, went on CNN Monday night to challenge existing notions about marijuana prohibition.

Can you think of another issue where you’ll find liberal bloggers and former Reagan staffers in agreement?  Where conservative stalwarts like the late Milton Friedman and William Buckley support the same position as Alice Huffman and the California NAACP?  Where “Tea Partiers” and “Netroots Nation” have a similar view?  Where a libertarian favorite like Rep. Ron Paul and openly gay liberal Rep. Barney Frank find common ground?  Where some former cops and the people they’ve busted agree the bust was unjust and unnecessary?

It’s beginning to feel like the only one who don’t support sensible marijuana law reforms are the people who represent The People.

(The Denver Channel) DENVER — Two Denver elementary schools were put on temporary lockdown Wednesday morning after an armed robbery at a medical marijuana dispensary.

Munroe Elementary and Castro Elementary were locked down after shots were reported fired at The Healthy Choice Wellness Center, at 3005 W.Gill Place in southwest Denver. The lockdown was lifted shortly before noon.

According to a co-owner of the business, two people tried to rob the dispensary and shots were fired.

Three people were transported to the hospital with unknown injuries.

One of the robbers was arrested and a second robber is still being sought.

I can hear the reefer mad prohibitionists now, wailing about how the dispensaries bring crime and violence to the neighborhood and My God, What About the Children!?!

Why do people commit robbery?  In this case, they were either desperate for money or desperate for marijuana.

If they were desperate for money, they could’ve robbed a bank or a convenience store, and nobody would complain that we shouldn’t open banks and stores near schools.  They robbed a dispensary because it is flush with money, because marijuana prohibition keeps the price of marijuana artificially high.

If they were desperate for marijuana, either for themselves or for resale, then once again, it is the prohibition of marijuana that makes its theft a lucrative option and its acquisition more difficult for healthy people.

This is the backlash I fear on the path from medical marijuana to legalization.  For years we’ve been told drugs create violence, corruption, and death.  We know it is the prohibition, not the drugs, that is the cause (prohibit sugar and you’d see sugar gangs and sugar wars), but that point is missed by most of the public.

So when a violent armed robbery occurs in a dispensary, it’s their opportunity to say, “See, we legalized marijuana just a little bit and look what happened!  We told you drugs cause violence and crime!”  Where prohibition’s social harms had been blamed on the drug itself, now there’s the risk of the harms being blamed on the effort to legalize the drugs.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Of course, this is comedy from Reason.TV, but it does make a huge point.  The cost of our favorite herb is artificially high due to its prohibition.  When we make our local, state and federal governments re-legalize marijuana, the price we pay for it will come closer to the cost of production.

Click here to view the embedded video.

What are you waiting for?  Write that letter to your government officials.  This includes your local government.  Comment on those ”reefer mad” news articles and educate the masses.  Don’t just sit there on your couch and wonder when… Do something and make it so… Now!

(FOX 12 Oregon) OREGON CITY, Ore. — An Oregon City man was held at gunpoint and his three children were locked in a closet after three intruders invaded their home in search of medical marijuana.

At about 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, the man heard someone knocking on his front door and proclaiming that his girlfriend had just sideswiped their vehicle, according to Oregon City police. When the man answered the door, three masked men, at least one of them armed with a handgun, rushed through the door, police said.

The victim said the three men ransacked the home, demanded money and took about 1 1/2 pounds of marijuana. At one point, the victim’s 12-year-old daughter witnessed her father on the floor while one of the intruders held a gun to his head, police said.

No one was injured during the robbery, but police said the children were shaken up by the home invasion.

The victim told police it was the first marijuana grow he had harvested.

How do the invaders know the man has a girlfriend?  If you’re a complete stranger, a criminal staking out a suspected treasure trove of medical marijuana, and you see a man, a woman, and three children living there, don’t you assume a female leaving the home around morning commute time is a wife?

Loose lips cause rips. I’m betting these criminals know someone who knows this man.  Who stages a home invasion at 8:30am on a weekday?  Who takes such a risk without knowing there is medical marijuana available within?  I don’t mean to play “blame the victim” in this case, but to whom did the victim brag about his first marijuana harvest?  Did he take precautions to eliminate the smell from harvest time?  Did he make public the fact that he is a medical marijuana patient and grower?

Of course our opponents are quick to condemn the victim for having a pound and a half of marijuana in his home in the first place.  They condemn the medical marijuana law that supposedly puts people like the victim and his children at risk.  To them I say that the criminals are to blame, not the patient and not the marijuana.  Criminals commit violent acts to steal valuable goods for resale on the black market.  The victim’s home could have been invaded over a collection of fine art or gold coins; it’s the value of the theft that attracts the criminals, not the nature of the item stolen.

Marijuana prohibition is the only thing that could make it worth enough money to break into someone’s home to steal a weed.  That prohibition also prevents legitimate medical patients from reliably buying small amounts of marijuana, so they tend to hoard large amounts to get through crop failures and seizures.  That prohibition also creates a lucrative black market where stolen weed can be trafficked.  That prohibition also prevents non-medical users from buying marijuana legitimately so they will support a black market.

Or to but it more succinctly: I’ve never heard of three masked men breaking into someone’s home at gunpoint to steal Budweiser.

(Guardian UK) Law enforcers on the west coast of the US and in the middle states straddled by the foothills of the Appalachian mountains are reporting a common trend. It is boom time for marijuana cultivation, and much of the incentive they say is to beat the recession.

Ed Shemelya, who leads the marijuana eradication programme in the Appalachia region, says a new type of grower is emerging wholly different to the family cartels that have cultivated the drug for generations. “We are seeing a lot more individuals who wouldn’t normally be growing marijuana. They are not your professionals.”

Shemelya puts it down to the dire economy in this part of America. The region is almost entirely dependant for jobs on coal mining, which has suffered severely from the recession.

“People are growing marijuana to supplement their income or support themselves in poor economic times. This is about economic necessity,” he said.

I often wonder how much of the continuance of marijuana prohibition rests on our government’s inability to provide a living wage to the poor.  Prohibition is already a jobs program for cops, lawyers, prosecutors, judges, and prison guards, but how much is it a de facto jobs program for the urban poor in our inner cities and our rural poor in places like Appalachia?  If marijuana were re-legalized, just how high would the unemployment rate rise as unskilled young men in the cities lose their under-the-table weed dealing income?  How bad would the already crippling poverty in Appalachia be without clandestine marijuana growing?

Some people complain about government programs that act as a “redistribution of wealth” from the rich to the poor.  But what is prohibition, if not a Robin Hood that takes the money from the suburban kids and urban professionals who can afford $300-$450 per ounce and gives it to the urban kids and rural folks who are so desperately poor they must risk incarceration to make a decent living?

(Summit Daily News) BOULDER — Boulder County Caregivers offers 16 glass jars of marijuana with names like Skinny Pineapple and Early Pearl Maui, priced at $375 to $420 an ounce. There are marijuana capsules and snacks made with cannabis butter, such as rice crispy treats.

Russian palladium today is trading at $250 – $262 per ounce.  It is the softest of the platinum group metals and is used in things like catalytic converters, cell phones, and computers.  It is a fairly rare material which must be laboriously mined underground.  Somehow this valuable useful rare earth metal costs less for the men and machinery to dig up, smelt, process, pack, and ship overseas than the flowers of a locally-grown bush.

I can get a wholesale ounce of Spanish Saffron today for $89.95 wholesale, which sells for a suggested $129.95 retail.  Saffron is the individual threads of the saffron flower which must be hand-picked.  It grows mostly in Iran and Spain and each flower produces only three threads.  It takes 75,000 flowers to produce a pound.  Somehow, this valuable useful rare flower costs less for the men to harvest, handpick tiny threads from each individual flower, dry and vacuum pack, and ship overseas than the flowers of a locally-grown bush.

One of the rarest and most expensive cognacs in the world is France’s Remy Martin Cognac Black Pearl Louis XIII.  It is made from a 100-year-old fruit brandy and aged in a single barrel that is several centuries old. It sells for $28,000 for a 1.75l bottle, or about $464 per ounce.  Somehow, this valuable rare historical luxury liquor costs just a little more for the men to ferment, bottle, and ship overseas than the flowers of a locally-grown bush.

The total is expected to rise to 15,000 by year’s end, according to the state health department, which blames the rapid increase on patient confidentiality guarantees and federal plans to stop raiding medical marijuana operations, which the U.S. government considers illegal.

“Blames” the rapid increase?  Shouldn’t that be “credits” the rapid increase?  Why is it that when businesses have rapid growth, that’s “growing the economy”, and when government programs have rapid growth, that’s “serving the people”, but when medical marijuana patient rolls rise, that’s “abuse of the system”?

Since December, the average patient age in Colorado has dropped from 42 to 24, raising more questions about abuses.

Yeah, because younger people don’t get glaucoma, cancer, HIV/AIDS, multiple sclerosis, migraines, fibromyalgia, etc.  Before the dispensaries, what point was there in registering?  The older patient and the younger patient would both be growing their own or buying it on the black market.  Older patients would be more likely to want to protect their possessions and family and be in better position to pay the fee to the state to be legal.  If the average age is down, then it is just normalizing to where it should be without artificial barriers like being forced to buy in an illegal market.

Leigh’s waiting room could be found in a dentist’s office, save for coffee-table reading material that includes a copy of High Times and a Timothy Leary book. Spice jars feature samples of marijuana available for sale. All sales are by appointment only, and Leigh’s business collects about $10,000 in sales tax a month.

Leigh’s patients are mainly middle-aged women with multiple sclerosis and men coping with hepatitis C. One employee said he takes tincture drops to help prevent seizures. A customer, a jiujitsu coach, said he uses it to treat pain from four surgeries and regular fights.

Today Leigh, a self-described soccer and karate mom, has seven employees, offers health insurance and plans to add 401(k) benefits. She worries federal agents might raid her business, even though the Obama administration says the government will stop targeting medical marijuana operations that are in line with state law.

These are good things and don’t think that I oppose dispensaries, because I don’t.  If two people want to engage in commerce and agree to ridiculous prices for an herb, I’ll support that to my dying day.  What I have a problem with is that it seems that the black market prices and profits are becoming the de facto standard for what people envision from a legal marijuana market.  My old weed dealer used to tell me it was the risk of prosecution that justified his outlaw untaxed profits.  Now that marijuana is semi-legal in Colorado and California and the feds have backed off, those people making the profits don’t have that risk.

So, then, the high prices and profits must exist because of the risk the rest of us non-medical users and growers and sellers are taking due to marijuana prohibition.  The people buying and selling with impunity are profiting from the arrests that ruin the lives of the rest of us and keep the price of a weed at luxury cognac levels.

Cheerleaders of this capitalism tell me that with more dispensaries come more competition and thus, lower prices.  With 70 Colorado dispensaries and over 700 California dispensaries, how much longer before that competition factor kicks in?

Here’s my fear: prohibited marijuana supports a myriad of industries and it won’t become legal until those industries can shape legal marijuana into a system where they can continue to make money.  “Locking people up” becomes “drug courts” and “mandatory rehab”.  “Medical marijuana” becomes “Sativex” or some inhaler.  “The guy” who has the hook-up becomes “the doctor” who makes recommendations.  “The dealer” becomes “the dispensary”.  Nothing changes but the names as cannabis consumers continue to be fleeced for a plant product that should cost as much as grapes or strawberries.  Or at least as cheap as saffron.