Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 at 6:27 pm | By: Radical Russ
(Buffalo News) Bianca Hervey, a 20-year-old college student, was returning home to her apartment in Attica when a village police officer drove up behind her, put on his flashing lights and pulled her over.
Hervey’s driver’s license, Officer Christopher Graham told her, had been suspended for failing to pay traffic tickets. He arrested her.
Graham handcuffed her, put her in the back of the police cruiser and took her to police headquarters. Her car was impounded and towed away.
At the police station, Graham handcuffed Hervey to a bench and told her she would probably spend the night in jail, Hervey said.
But then Graham offered her a way out of her problems.
Become a confidential informant for the Wyoming County Drug Task Force, he told her, and he could make the charges disappear.
Police departments throughout the country use people arrested on drug charges to inform on others. In return, their charges are reduced or dismissed.
But Hervey said she doesn’t use drugs and, having just moved from Batavia to the tiny village of Attica, doesn’t know anyone in Attica who does.
That didn’t stop her recruitment as a confidential informant.
Neither Wyoming County Sheriff Ferris Heimann, nor District Attorney Gerald Stout has a problem with how Smith’s department handled the case.
Asked about recruiting someone who said she is not part of the drug trade, Stout responded to The News: “But she agreed to do it.”
Nothing more aptly demonstrates the idiocy of prohibition than a system of law enforcement and justice that uses young people as bait. Surely nobody in the close-knit group of drug users in the tiny town of Attica, NY, is going to think twice about the new girl in town who is so desperate to buy a large amount of cocaine or pills or weed, but doesn’t seem to know which end of a joint to light.
This is even more shameful than the Rachel Hoffman case. At least Rachel was someone who hung around with a cannabis and ecstasy-using crowd. This Bianca Hervey sounds the majority of young people who, believe it or not, don’t do any drugs! When police infiltrate criminal organizations, they’ve had months of training, so why do they think they can take a young lady who doesn’t pay traffic tickets and turn her into supercop?
Monday, September 21st, 2009 at 5:40 am | By: Radical Russ
NEW YORK, Sept. 19 (UPI) — New York police allegedly found 50 pounds of marijuana in the home of a 41-year-old man who walked into a police station with a bag of pot, sources say.
Unidentified sources said Benito Barrios walked into a New York police station with a 25-pound bag of marijuana this week and allegedly claimed he found it inside a dresser at the furniture store where he works, the New York Post reported Saturday.
The sources said suspicious police soon asked to search Barrios’ home and, after receiving permission to do so, allegedly found 50 more pounds of marijuana in his back yard.
Sources offered no clues as to Barrios’ motive for turning over the initial 25-pound bag of pot Thursday.
I’ll offer a clue – rank stupidity. You know I don’t think anyone should have to spend a minute in a police station over marijuana, but if you’re going to walk into a police station with a virtual sign reading, “Hi, I’m a felon, imprison me!” and then give police permission to search your home to build the case to imprison you for fifteen years, perhaps it’s best we remove you from society before you do something harmfully stupid to yourself or others.
Thursday, September 17th, 2009 at 11:00 am | By: Radical Russ
(New York Daily News) ALBANY – Legislation sponsored by Assemblyman Richard Gottfried and Sen. Thomas Duane, both Manhattan Democrats, would make it legal for people with serious medical conditions to score limited amounts of marijuana from state-certified distributors or grow it themselves.
The bill has passed the Assembly but gone up in smoke in the Senate, where it is unlikely to win approval anytime soon.
[Marijuana Policy Project] is running the ads on WNBC-TV and local cable stations, hoping to woo key senators. The ads are also running upstate.
[New York City's] ABC, CBS and Fox affiliates harshed the group’s buzz by declining to run the ads, [MPP communication's director Bruce] Mirken added.
Well, these must have been some pretty controversial ads, right? Were there pot leaves flying all around as a cartoon dog and cartoon infant sing the praises of a “Bag of Weed”, as the New York City Fox affiliate showed when they aired the “Family Guy 420″ episode? Did it feature a teenager smoking pot as the New York City ABC affiliate showed when they aired an episode of Desperate Housewives? Was there an island dedicated to growing huge fields of marijuana as the New York City CBS affiliate showed when they aired an episode of Numb3rs?
Let’s take a look at these crazy hippie pothead dope smokin’ counterculture offensive advertisements, shall we?
Wednesday, August 12th, 2009 at 12:03 pm | By: Radical Russ
(Times Union) ALBANY — Most lobbyists come to the Capitol with a briefcase, a position paper and a cellphone. At least one arrived with a pot plant, and for this she must answer.
Abigail Storm-Eggink, 58, doesn’t deny she’s the owner of the two 18-inch plants cops took from her in separate incidents recently. One was confiscated by the Albany Police Department on June 30 as she carried it down Pearl Street on her way to the Capitol, where the Kingston woman and her 71-year-old husband, Dan Eggink, have been coming regularly for 14 months — including the past 10 weeks straight, five days a week — to protest pot laws.
For two days, Storm-Eggink and her husband had paraded outside the government complex with the weed. But on July 3, according to a court document, after she brought it inside and used it as a visual aid while confronting senators in the corridors, she was charged by State Police with unlawful possession of a controlled substance as soon as she stepped out onto the landing on State Street.
Storm-Eggink hopes to use the trial before City Court Judge Rachel Kretser to make a larger case based on the First Amendment, religious freedom and what she sees as the inalienable right to the bounty of the land — including marijuana. Storm-Eggink, who plans to represent herself, is to appear Friday morning on the charges.
Huge mistake. Never try to represent yourself in a trial. Besides, experienced constitutional law experts have been trying to press the First Amendment religious use of cannabis argument for years and have not been successful. Not that I don’t agree with Storm-Eggink – I absolutely believe we have an inalienable right to the bounty of the land and that the only reason the Founders didn’t explicitly enshrine that right in the Constitution they were drafting on hemp paper is that they could never imagined that some future government would ban the most important crop in the colonies (just as they never could have imagined fully automatic assault weapons, but that’s a discussion for another blog). I think there is actually a stronger constitutional argument to be made for personal privacy and sovereignty based on the arguments that protect birth control use and a woman’s right to choose reproductive health options… but I’m no lawyer.
Dan Eggink says he wishes his first wife, who died of cancer in 1977, had been able to use the oils from cannabis. He’s convinced the herbal treatment kills cancer cells. (Needless to say, this theory falls well outside conventional medicine.)
Eggink says he and his wife “are on a mission from God — like the Blues Brothers.”
Sen. Marty Golden, R-Brooklyn, a former New York City police officer who was seriously injured during a drug bust, said he hopes Storm-Eggink gets the book thrown at her.
“You can advocate for anything in this state, but when you start to bring in samples that are illegal, then it’s illegal,” he said. “I hope she gets the max.”
Sen. Hugh Farley, R-Niskayuna, a business law professor, said the pot activists don’t bother him, and he considers them “kind of funny.”"They weren’t obnoxious; they weren’t in your face,” he said. “Every time we came out of conference they tended to be there. I don’t think they were taken seriously by anybody; I don’t think their issue is taken seriously by anyone. In my judgment they were just trying to get attention.”
Everyone knows that if you want to be taken seriously in Albany, you don’t bring pot plants and compare yourself to the Blues Brothers. You bring high paid lobbyists in $3,000 suits and offer campaign contributions.
Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 at 3:20 pm | By: Radical Russ
Gosh, if only there were a quick an easy way to simultaneously raise revenues and cut law enforcement and prison costs, with the additional benefit of protecting children and creating new jobs. I’ll sit here and try to think of that solution; in the meantime, check out this story from the New York Times:
COCOA, Fla. — A year ago, the Brevard County Schools ran a robust summer program here, with dozens of schools bustling with teachers and some 14,000 children practicing multiplication, reading Harry Potter and studying Spanish verbs, all at no cost to parents.
But this year Florida’s budget crisis has gutted summer school. Brevard classrooms are shuttered, and students like 11-year-old Uvenka Jean-Baptiste, whose mother works in a nursing home, are spending their summer days at home, surfing television channels or loitering at a mall.
Nearly every school system in Florida has eviscerated or eliminated summer school this year, and officials are reporting sweeping cuts in states from North Carolina and Delaware to California and Washington. The cuts have come as states across the country are struggling to approve budgets, and California’s governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, declared a fiscal state of emergency on Wednesday.
In Florida and California, for example, government revenues have fallen so precipitously that, even after receiving federal stimulus dollars, local officials have been forced to make deep cuts to school budgets. Officials in many other states, considering summer school a frill, despite research showing it can narrow the achievement gap between poor and affluent children, have spent their stimulus money elsewhere.
In Los Angeles, where school officials are still working to remove hundreds of millions of dollars from a $5.5 billion annual budget, they cut $34 million last month by canceling summer school for all elementary and middle school children except the disabled. That left 150,000 students without summer classes, and parents scrambling for child care.
Dang, I had just about almost figured out how we could raise state tax revenues and eliminate wasteful government spending with just one small policy change, but then I was distracted by a phone call from my weed-dealing friend who just bought a new Jet-Ski and the red police D.A.R.E. Corvette driving down the street.
Sunday, June 21st, 2009 at 2:20 pm | By: Radical Russ
I’ve always said that medical marijuana is a beautiful thing. Â If I believe that all people have a right to use cannabis, then of course sick people have the same right and should be given the first place in line.
I’ve also said that I hate the line “I’m a patient, not a criminal” because that defines me, the healthy person, as a criminal. Â I cannot accept that a medical marijuana user sharing a joint with me equals a “patient” and a “criminal”. Â It’s the same joint, so how is my relative healthiness a crime?
Medical marijuana is a double-edged sword to me. Â It has been invaluable in opening up people’s minds about cannabis and its uses. Â It has afforded the kind of political victories for legalization that no other strategy has (and sorry, medical folks who dislike “legalizers”, medical marijuana is legalization.) Â It has, without a doubt, saved tens of thousands of lives and made hundreds of thousands of lives more bearable.
However, I fear that the medical marijuana strategy may have outlived its usefulness.  The medical marijuana bills this year in Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, New Hampshire, and now an Arizona initiative are becoming more restrictive.  After a dozen years of medical marijuana success, defined as “the sky didn’t fall when we legalized marijuana for sick people”, bills and initiatives should be getting more relaxed, not stricter; more inclusive, not less; and more conditions covered, not fewer.  With polls consistently showing mainstream support increasing in states with medical marijuana and holding steady in the states without, medical marijuana bills and initiatives should be getting better, not worse.
What I fear is that the public’s mindset is moving from “marijuana is a deadly addictive gateway drug whose users should be punished” to “marijuana is a powerful medicine that should be used only under strict controls and supervision”. Â The most recent bills take away the right of a patient to grow their own medicine, substituting instead requirements that medicine come only from dispensaries over which the state maintains a monopoly. Â They’ve pared down the list of “qualifying conditions” to the point where only the gravest ill, the terminal cases with less than six month to live, who’ve tried and had no success with all the other pharmaceutical drugs, only they have any access. Â This upcoming Arizona initiative will even electronically track how much medical cannabis a patient purchases and require criminal background checks and fingerprinting that will be forwarded to the FBI!
As fewer and fewer patients qualify for medical cannabis under new, tighter laws, pharmaceutical companies continue to derive and patent cannabinoid compounds and prepare them for dose-regulated delivery by spray, inhaler, cream, and pill. Â They’ve used their lobbying power for decades to oppose nature’s finest medicine, the biggest threat to their market for benzodiazepenes, NSAIDs, and opioids, because they couldn’t slap a bar code and a 250,000% markup on pot. Â Soon they will be able to provide all these patients with all the benefits of medical cannabis, but without the pesky “high” and the ability to thwart their profits by growing it themselves.
(Huffington Post) According to USA Today in 2005, there were 1,274 registered pharmaceutical lobbyists in Washington, D.C. — more than two for every member of Congress. In 2003, $143 million was spent on lobbying activities by the Pharmaceutical industry. There are more lobbyists from pharmaceutical than any other industry trying to bend legislators’ ears.
This is big business, and that means that your health care is not in the hands of people who really want to help you, but in the hands of people who view you as a market.
Caveat emptor. You expect to beware in a used car lot. But buying a lemon auto is not nearly as likely to kill you as prescription medicine. Approximately 43,000 people died in car crashes in the U.S. in 2004, and the rate has been declining every year since. 100,000 people die in the U.S. every year from properly prescribed and properly administered prescription drugs, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association. The Florida Medical Examiners concluded that three times more people die from prescription medicine as die from illegal drugs.
What I fear is dispensaries becoming pharmacies and cannabis becoming another pharmaceutical and those lobbyists turning that $143 million toward enacting horribly restrictive medical marijuana laws that preserve their profits by banning home growing. Â Medical marijuana is beginning to steer marijuana law reform toward treating cannabis like codeine and away from treating cannabis like Coors Light. Â Whether you and I are busted because we’re “dopers smoking an illegal drug” or because we’re “recreational prescription cannabis abusers”, we’re still busted.
The beauty of medical marijuana is that people can cheaply and easily care for themselves. Â That’s also threatening to the health care model as it is run today, because cannabis violates that need for the middlemen and bureaucracy to receive treatment. Â I don’t need to see the doctor every so often to have him re-approve my prescription and I don’t need to see the pharmacist to fill it up. Â I can grow it and use it when I need it. Â It can’t kill me so I can’t take too much. Â It can’t addict me so I don’t need supervision. Â It doesn’t alter my perceptions and actions to the point that I need strict regulation. Â (In a sense I liken it to Martin Luther nailing up his protest of the Catholic Church to the church door on Halloween of 1517 – we don’t need intermediaries, we can find our salvation ourselves!)
But now we’re seeing these new bills and initiatives requiring more visits with the doctor, requiring the cannabis to come from dispensaries, and strictly documenting how much is to be used. Â Cannabis is being forced to fit into the paradigm of health care for profit with all the intermediaries, bureaucracy, markups, and restrictions. Â Once it is locked into the health insurance – pharmaceutical – medical complex, legalization for you and me will be farther away than ever.
This is why I think the next eighteen months are crucial in marijuana law reform. Â We’ve never had higher support for legalization, in part due to the economy. Â A state needs to break through with legalization for you and me, before the economy begins to recover, before cannabis pharmaceuticals gain widespread approval, before a half-dozen more states enact increasingly restrictive medical marijuana laws, and before cannabis becomes so ingrained in the public’s mind as a medicine that we can’t get them to accept it as a social intoxicant.
Friday, June 19th, 2009 at 11:20 am | By: Radical Russ
A Stony Point man accused of trafficking marijuana through the mail has been arrested a second time, authorities said.
Acting on a warrant, officers searched the Wayne Avenue home of Dennis Dillon, 65, on Wednesday. They reported finding three ounces of marijuana and more than $56,000. He was charged with fourth-degree criminal possession of marijuana.
Stony Point detectives discovered in November that Dillon was sending weekly FedEx packages to an address in Ohio, using a fake name and return address, police said.
He was charged then with selling marijuana. He pleaded guilty last month to a reduced charge of third-degree criminal possession of marijuana.
Wait a minute. You live in “Stony Point”, a town of 14,000, and you’ve been busted for mailing weed last year and you decide it’s a good idea to go ahead and use the same courier to commit the same crime just a few months later? That’s not stupid, that’s masochistic and ironic. Normally I’d say that if pot were legal, people wouldn’t have to send it to each other by FedEx, but when you’re sending out weekly packages, you’re not “helping a friend in need”, you’re operating an interstate criminal enterprise whose profits are derived from the risk that leads to 872,000 marijuana arrests per year and tens of thousands of marijuana prisoners in jail. Some people actually have to work for bosses and endure commutes to make $56,000 in a year.
Monday, June 15th, 2009 at 3:20 pm | By: Radical Russ
Because, after all, if you want to talk about medical marijuana, the first people you should interview are police chiefs and sheriffs. Just like when there is a serial killer on the loose, you want to talk to an oncologist.
(Post-Journal.com) Currently, New York State politicians are considering a piece of legislation (S-4041A) that would legalize marijuana for medicinal use in accordance with the recommendations of a medical professional, and different people have different opinions about that.
Jamestown Police Chief Rex Rater discussed the issue with The Post-Journal recently, and said that although he is against the general legalization of marijuana, he may be open to the idea of medically prescribed marijuana use.
“I philosophically object to the overall legalization of marijuana and believe that decriminalization has gone as far as it should,” Rater said. “But if I had a terminally ill loved one who had a limited time left on this Earth, and the doctor told me that it would ease their pain, I would not object. I’m not a doctor and don’t know if it would help, but if the doctor told me it would, I’d support it.”
What?!? Â A police chief willing to listen to the medical professionals regarding use of marijuana for pain?
Chautauqua County Sheriff Joe Gerace said that he isn’t in favor of medical marijuana, and he believes that there are better alternatives available to ill people.
“My gut reaction is that there are other substances which are FDA approved which are a better tool than giving someone pot,” he said. “I just don’t believe it is a good idea.”
My gut reaction is that you’ve never had to use medical cannabis for a gut reaction and that you’ve never heard of FDA-approved Vioxx. Â But thanks for sharing the mountain of pharmacological and medical knowledge you built in the police academy.
Monday, May 11th, 2009 at 10:20 am | By: Radical Russ
An Akron woman has been charged with endangering the welfare of a child after a sheriff’s deputy reported she had taken her baby to a party early Friday where people were smoking marijuana, Erie County sheriff’s officials said.
Would there be endangerment charges if she took her baby to a party where alcohol was consumed? What if there were no marijuana or alcohol, but people were smoking cigarettes?
The only real danger from marijuana use
No studies have shown any hazard from secondhand marijuana smoke, but plenty have shown damage from secondhand tobacco smoke; that baby is in greater danger in the tobacco-filled room. Marijuana smokers (at least in my experience) tend to be peaceful and relaxed, whereas alcohol parties are almost guaranteed to end up with a fight or something broken; that baby is in greater danger in the alcohol-filled room.
Oh, wait, I forgot. In an alcohol-filled or tobacco-filled room, body-armored assault-weapon-armed law-enforcement aren’t likely to break down the door, throw in loud flash-bang grenades that could permanently damage a baby’s hearing, and shoot and kill the mother while the baby is in her arms.
Thursday, May 7th, 2009 at 3:20 pm | By: Dudemaster
[This story gets an A+ for irony for being from Hempstead - a colonial name given to a homestead for hemp farming. --"R"R]
HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. (WPIX) — When Desmond Kelly strolled into First District Court in Hempstead Wednesday to deal with a motor vehicle violation he probably expected to pay a fine and go home, but things “blazed” out of control.
Nassau District Attorney spokesman Eric Phillips said when the judge asked Kelly to see the summons issued to him in regards to the violation, the Inwood man pulled it out of his pocket and – inadvertently – a small bag of marijuana came out as well. To make matters worse, the baggie fell right on top of the court officer’s shoe.
The court officer then yelled out “you’re under arrest” and according to Phillips, the packed courtroom let out a collective gasp. Court officials then charged and arraigned Kelly, 28, for marijuana possession.
This is one of the most boneheaded stupid idiotic mistakes someone could possibly make. Although, if cannabis were legal (as it should be), then nobody would have taken notice. Could you imagine the headline?
“Man drops something out of his pocket and picked it up!”
Not very newsworthy is it.
I’m sure that President Obama is still laughing. Someone pass him something to drink to treat his cotton mouth.
RevRayGreen: MASS TWEET THIS -@ChuckGrassley Truth is Chuck you follow Nixon's CSA full of reefer sadness. btw Chuck, Marijuana is not a drug.
RevRayGreen: @ChuckGrassley http://bit.ly/55Ejsi Truth is Chuck you follow Nixon's CSA full of reefer madness. btw Chuck, Marijuana is not a drug.
SneakerPimp: one last thing Puff puff pass to any one who wants it
SneakerPimp: i wanna here about the imminent MiniSpof sounds like time for some
SneakerPimp: im estatic and excited for NSL today.
SneakerPimp: mountain time wake n bake
SneakerPimp: oh yea also wake n bake
SneakerPimp: its central im high as a kite everybody
SneakerPimp: ill grab that WUD
WakeUpDead: @Russ, I dont think that wireless is going to work out for the show, it was choppy and studdered just like last week. Hardline may be the only way. Puff [...]
WakeUpDead: A MINI Spof, Lock up your Weed, in 18 years that is. Really Man congrats! Greatest days of my life when my kids were born, hell yeh, great news [...]
BenJaMin: Late night Stash!!!
SneakerPimp: heres a bong rip for spof
RevRayGreen: errr test over....
RevRayGreen: on hold..
RevRayGreen: @RR I'll try and lob a call to you.....
SneakerPimp: where is the first field of cannabis gonna be?
SneakerPimp: !
Radical Russ: Breaking News: MrSpof's wife's water just broke! A MiniSpof is imminent!
SneakerPimp: oh russ its not my fault that i dont understand choppy word:stoned:
SneakerPimp: @Mrspof congratulations tell us all about it tommrow
Radical Russ: OK, test over. Sorry. Only needed a half hour. Be back tomorrow afternoon.
slash5city: don't forget to watch CCS live on u-stream 8 pm west
thaistik: Local Crime Stoppers notice.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Pot shop burglars sought
Crime Stoppers is looking for information on the suspects who police say burglarized a medical marijuana dispensary and stole cash, drugs [...]
American Medical Association Calls For Scientific Review Of Marijuana's Prohibitive Status; Dutch Marijuana Use Lower Than European Average, Study Says […]
"Truth In Trials Act" Reintroduced In Congress; Maine: Voters Approve Medical Marijuana Dispensaries Measure; Colorado: Breckenridge Voters Overwhelmingly Decide To End Pot Penalties. […]
Some of the nation’s top athletes discuss why today's pros are turning to cannabis — and away from alcohol and painkillers — off the field, and question why pro sports leagues are continuing to sanction those who do. Moderator: Steve Bloom, Author, Pot Culture; editor, celebstoner.com * Toby Grear, MMA fighter * Sean Neumann, Documentary Filmm […]
Cannabis Law Reform's Missing Link: Law Enforcement Former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper; LEAP and NORML Advisory Board; Author of Breaking Rank Putting the Mexican Cartels Out of Business Mexican drug cartels now employ over 100,000 soldiers and are responsible for nearly ten thousand deaths per year. Their largest source of income is marijuana. […]
Police coercing non-drug using citizens into working as drug snitches
sounds like time for some 
mountain time wake n bake 
don't forget to watch CCS live on u-stream 8 pm west 
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