Mary Beth Buchanan, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, who oversaw a recent FBI raid of fundraisers close to Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), told local reporters after the November election that she did not plan to voluntarily resign.

Buchanan had held top political jobs in the Bush Justice Department, where she directed the office of violence against women and led the unit that oversees the nation’s U.S. attorneys. She is a member of the conservative Federalist Society legal group and cultivated close connections to former senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), an advocate for antiabortion and Christian groups.

via – The Washington Post “How Obama Will Handle U.S. Attorney Posts Still Unclear”

You may remember District Attorney Buchanan oversaw Operation Pipe Dreams which was a $12 million dollar law enforcement operation targeted at individuals conducting online sales of water pipes and other devices that could be considered drug paraphernalia. The investigation resulted in 55 individuals being charged, most notably Tommy Chong.

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The owners of a California company that sold products to help people cheat on drug tests recently pleaded guilty in federal court in Pittsburgh to charges of conspiracy to sell drug paraphernalia. The federal charges claim that the owners of Puck Technology of Signal Hill, California, defrauded the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, which is tasked with overseeing federal workplace drug testing programs.

Puck Technology was accused of using the Internet to sell products designed to cheat federally mandated drug tests. The company manufactured the Whizzinator, a male prosthetic urinating device, and another product, Number 1, a urinating device made for both men and women, to customers in Pennsylvania. For use with these products, the company also sold synthetic urine intended to be passed off as a test-taker’s real urine. Federal prosecutors brought the charges after ordering one of each product and having them shipped to Pennsylvania.

Sentencing is scheduled for February 20, 2009. Each of the two men faces a maximum total sentence of 8 years in prison, a fine of $500,000, or both.

via Execs Plead Guilty After Accused of Helping Workers Cheat Drug Tests .

That was the infamous Mary Beth Buchanan in Pennsylvania, the woman who took down Tommy Chong for selling bongs.  She’s also been a fierce anti-porn crusader as well, having gone so far as to prosecute a woman for writing naughty stories - no pictures, just words.  So it seems only natural that her two favorite vices should come together in a case involving dildos used to beat drug metabolite tests.

Of course, this prosecution will have as much affect on the use of smuggled clean pee and fake penises to beat workplace drug metabolite tests as much as Operation Pipe Dreams affected the nationwide use of bongs to smoke marijuana.

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The libertarian magazine Reason will be featuring an excellent piece on drug paraphernalia laws in its February issue.  I had never stopped to consider it, but laws against drug paraphernalia are like laws against pornography.

A few weeks before Barack Obama was elected president, Mary Beth Buchanan, the U.S.  attorney for western Pennsylvania, filed criminal charges against the makers of the Whizzinator, a fake penis used to deliver clean urine for drug tests.  …

It was fitting that one of Buchanan’s last prosecutions before the election involved drug paraphernalia disguised as a penis.  Taking up causes championed by the Bush administration in response to the demands of social conservatives, she has shown a conspicuous enthusiasm for attacking both paraphernalia and pornography, areas that were of little interest to the Clinton administration and are not likely to be high priorities under President Obama.  …

It’s no coincidence that Buchanan and her former bosses, John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales, are known for worrying about pornography as well as drug devices.  At bottom, both kinds of prosecutions aim to punish offensive speech.  Just as pornography implicitly endorses recreational sex, drug paraphernalia implicitly endorses recreational drug use.  Both are an affront to the moral values of the officials who choose to crack down on them. 

Like obscenity prosecutions, paraphernalia cases often target people for conduct they believed was legal.  The law in both areas is fuzzy, and drug paraphernalia, like obscenity, tends to be judged by the “I know it when I see it” method.  When they go beyond gut reactions, police and prosecutors often focus on the expression of opinions about drug use or the drug laws: A pipe is more likely to be deemed illegal, for example, if it is sold next to High Times or a “Legalize It” T-shirt.  It makes a kind of perverse sense that antiprohibitionist speech can earn you a conviction on paraphernalia charges, since it was the message sent by drug paraphernalia that led governments to ban it in the first place. 

via NORML.ORG US: Bongs Away!.

It is a long read, but very worthwhile.

Related posts

• Whizzinator makers to be sentenced Friday, face 8 years, half-mil fines (3)
• US District Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan Refuses to Resign (6)
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Buchanan doesn’t plan to step down as U.S. attorney
Despite a new administration coming into power, U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan said she plans to stick around.

“It doesn’t serve justice for all the U.S. attorneys to submit their resignations all at one time,” she said yesterday.

U.S. attorneys serve at the discretion of the president and may be hired and fired at will, although their appointments must be confirmed by the Senate. When a new president is elected, U.S. attorneys of both parties generally tender their resignations.

Instead, the Republican said she plans to continue her work in the Western District of Pennsylvania.

Now, we all remember Mary Beth Buchanan from her persecution prosecution of Tommy Chong for being caught in a DEA sting selling glass bongs over the internet.  Radley Balko’s been paying real close attention to some of the other notable Buchanan cases:

Soon after then-Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that fighting porn would be a priority during his tenure, Buchanan brought the first federal obscenity case in 20 years, against porn producer Extreme Associates.  She also prosecuted Karen Fletcher, believed to be the first person convicted on federal obscenity charges for distributing written material. Despite an embarassing defeat in court, Buchanan is also still pursuing charges against Pennsylvania medical examiner Dr. Cyril Wecht, a case so reeking in political opportunism that former Bush 41 Attorney General Dick Thornburgh agreed to represent Wecht, and has since publicly accused Buchanan of using her office for baseless, partisan prosecutions of Democrats.

I’ve written pretty extensively of what I think is one of Buchanan’s most outrageous cases.  It’s her prosecution of Dr. Bernard Rottschaefer, a Pennsylvania physician Buchanan put in prison for allegedly writing Oxy prescriptions in exchange for sex.  Since Rottschaeffer’s conviction, Buchanan’s case has fallen to pieces, as each of the five witnesses who testified to getting illegal prescriptions from Rottschaeffer have since been shown to have lied.  Buchanan refuses to reopen the case.  She also refuses to pursue perjury charges against her star witness, Jennifer Riggle, who explicitly conceded in letters to her boyfriend that she lied on the witness stand.

Wow, imprisoning aging hippie movie stars for selling glass, busting people for filming and writing about sex, and refusing to free a doctor falsely accused by five proven liars.  It’s a good thing there is no real crime in Western Pennsylvania for Mary Beth to worry about.  Gee, with a résumé of proven law enforcement prioritization and effectiveness like this, you’d think she was running for Drug Czar.

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Download the NORML Daily Audio Stash for 2008-05-09

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It’s Friday, May 9th and it’s 4:20 somewhere in the world! I’m your host, “Radical” Russ Belville and this is your NORML Daily Audio Stash.

Today we have an extra-special Stash for you. On Wednesday the warehouse of Spectrum Labs in Cincinnati, Ohio, was raided by federal agents – it’s our top story in our upcoming Hemp Headlines. We’ve got an interview with the owner of Spectrum Labs, Matt Stevens, who’s here to tell us about the harrowing SWAT-style raid on this purveyor of drug testing and detoxification equipment.

What’s driving the raids seems to be a personal vendetta against Tommy Chong by the US Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, Mary Beth Buchanan. I’m thrilled to tell you that Tommy Chong will be joining us to tell how the Spectrum bust is all about sending a message to him regarding the DVD the Spectrum had stored in its warehouse, a/k/a Tommy Chong, the documentary about Mary Beth Buchanan’s crusade to bust and incarcerate Tommy for internet bong sales back in 2003.

For our musical break we’re pleased to bring you music from my new friend in Tennessee, Chief Greenbud. We played a live acoustic version of this song, The Legalization Song, earlier this week. Now the Chief is back with the full studio version for your enjoyment today.

Then we wrap things up with Josh Gilbert, the director/producer/writer of the a/k/a Tommy Chong DVD, telling his side of the story about the Spectrum raids and his documentary, followed by the conclusion of our two-part interview with Tommy Chong.

Finally, don’t forget that every Saturday we’re now posting the NORML Weekend Music Stash, where you can get all of the last ten songs from our daily musical breaks in one podcast, suitable for your weekend party pleasure. If you have a band that would like to be featured on our podcast, please send us an email at stash ‘at’ norml.org.

So sit back and relax with some Labrador and enjoy your NORML Daily Audio Stash…

[Update: Whoops! The three interviews today put me under the gun and I made a couple of mistakes! Small editing gaffe in one of the stories, no big deal, but I programmed the wrong song by Chief Greenbud. You heard "Without Weed", which is a good song, too. My apologies.]

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• Whizzinator makers to be sentenced Friday, face 8 years, half-mil fines (3)
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