Wanted GANJA JON: For smelling like weed at the Kwik-E-Mart.

Five Southern Oregon police from the City of Roseburg and Douglas County took their time and five patrol cars out of action last night to investigate the crime of the century:  Three young men smelled like weed at the convenience store!  And one of them was slightly brown-skinned!

The engineer and intern for NORML SHOW LIVE, Ganja Jon and Wiz Kaliko are traveling down to Northern California along with our British pal Greg, a.k.a. Cannabis Cure UK.  I’ve dubbed them “Red Team 6″, in a mash-up homage to Star Trek and the Navy SEALS, and they are on their way to retrieve more donated studio gear and fundraising for NORML from the Bay Area.

While in Southern Oregon, they all took on some work harvesting and trimming for a large medical marijuana garden.  A few hours later, they’re ready to travel, right after a quick stop at the local convenience store for road munchies.

Wanted CANNABIS CURE UK (left) and WIZ KALIKO (right): For being an alien and being off-white, respectively

Inside the convenience store are a couple of cops.  They overhear discussions of California, smell the odor of freshly trimmed marijuana, and the next thing Red Team 6 knows, there are five patrol cars, from both City of Roseburg and Douglas County, and five police detaining and questioning our three heroes.

The police apparently singled out Kaliko, who is ethnically Hawaiian, to exit the car for questioning, even though he was not the driver, Jon was.  The propaganda in the State of Jefferson is thick with references to illegal Mexican immigrants growing pot in the forests; did Southern Oregon cops racially profile Kaliko?  Jon says the police actions make it seem pretty obvious.  Ironic, as well, as some illegal aliens have non-brown skin, speak with non-Spanish accents, and frequent convenience stores.

While the police are surrounding the car and searching it, despite Jon’s repeated refusal to allow a search, a thin young blond woman stumbles out of the convenience store, seemingly drunk, and gets into the driver’s seat and drives off.  Jon tells me the city cops said something about that lady doing something far worse than the boys, but the county cops were certain they were breaking up a huge smuggling operation.  ”Smells like you’ve got forty pounds in here!” one sheriff’s deputy exclaims when sniffing the car’s interior.  Who needs K-9′s when your human cops have such keen olfactory ability to detect the weight of illegal drugs by smell?

The police realized they’d bitten off more than they could chew when all three passengers knew their civil rights, didn’t answer a whole bunch of questions, refused searches, and had an Oregon attorney certified for the US Supreme Court on the cell phone.  Their subsequent searches, which the cops claimed was legal due to “probable cause”, turned up a whopping gram of cannabis.  Then, even the consolation prize of writing a $100 ticket was snatched from The Man when Jon produced his OMMP medical marijuana card, making that gram (and up to 24 ounces) legal for Jon to transport out of public view.  Jon says the cops were not pleased.

Jon is a Roseburg native and he estimates that may have been all the cops on duty late on a Sunday night in that little town.  For the prospect of a large marijuana bust, an entire town’s law enforcement detained, delayed, frightened, harassed, embarrassed, searched, and accused three young men, two of whom are medical users for severe conditions, one of whom is legally protected for that medical use, based on the “probable cause” of a skunky smell and the mention of “California”.  And if those three hadn’t been some of the best-educated young people on the issues of civil rights with an all-star criminal defense attorney on speed dial, they could have been sitting in a cell right now.

Oh… the drunk blond woman?  Don’t know what became of her.  I’ll be watching the City of Roseburg and Douglas County Sheriff patrol reports.

P.S. If you’re saying, “But, they coulda had forty pounds of weed!” then you still don’t get it.

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Hemp Headlines

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1. Rhode Island Gov. Chafee puts hold on licensing of dispensaries following US Attorney’s threatening letter
2. Peter Lewis considering investment in passing medical marijuana in Ohio
3. Cannabis Karri covers the nutritional value of hemp as we begin Hemp History Week
4. Northern California dispensary is firebombed by two suspects

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• Roots Monday: Morgan Davis – “Reefer Smoking Man (Live)”

Cannabis Conversations

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Radical Rant

• Montana’s SB 423 “Repeal Lite” turns patients into criminals

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1. New Jersey selects the six contractors to run their medical marijuana dispensary system
2. Spokane dispensary owners press city council to clarify rules on operations after Shupe conviction
3. Feds directing Northern California banks to investigate “suspicious” transactions from medical marijuana industry

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• electric Tuesday: Caiti – “Smoke”

Cannabis Conversations

• Chris Goldstein from FreedomIsGreen.com, NORML NJ, CMMNJ, and Philly NORML with updates on New Jersey’s fledgling medical marijuana program

Radical Rant

• Introduction to The NORML Network

(Rolling Stone) Thanks to the ambiguous wording of Proposition 215, the 1996 ballot initiative that allows for the possession and cultivation (but not the distribution or sale) of medical marijuana in California, the weed business has expanded exponentially over the past decade. Most of the medical pot in California is sold through dispensaries: Some, in cities like Oakland, are massive places that see hundreds, even thousands, of patients every day, whereas in Los Angeles, storefront pot clubs — up to 1,000 of them by some estimates — have crept into mini-malls and commercial strips all across the city. This has so embarrassed the L.A. City Council that, in January, it passed an ordinance that could slash the number of shops to 70. All told, the state’s annual marijuana crop is estimated by some to be worth about $14 billion, “dwarfing,” in the words of a recent Associated Press story, “any other sector of the state’s agricultural economy.”

Over the past year, President Obama, while grappling with his own attempts at economic stimulus and job creation, has reportedly looked to Franklin Roosevelt’s handling of the Great Depression for inspiration. Repeal of Prohibition is not normally listed as a New Deal jobs program. Still, it happened in 1933, when unemployment had soared to nearly 25 percent, the high point of the Depression. Certainly repeal had some positive economic effects. Alfred Vernon Dalrymple, the National Prohibition Director — the drug czar of his day — predicted in Time magazine that repeal would mean “putting hundreds of thousands of men back to work and…hundreds of thousands of dollars of new business.” And FDR himself — who, in 1937, would be the first president to make marijuana illegal — argued in a 1932 campaign speech in Sea Girt, New Jersey, that “our tax burden would not be so heavy nor the forms that it takes so objectionable if some reasonable proportion of the unaccounted millions now paid to those whose business had been reared upon this stupendous blunder could be made available for the expense of government.”

The article is long and a very enjoyable read that takes a look at the growers, trimmers, and economy of the “Emerald Triangle” of Northern California and the fledgling cannabusiness scene in Michigan

The contrasting cultures along our wonderful amber waves of grain are tremendous. From the hills of Northern California, past the bayous of the South to the smell of the Atlantic Ocean; our laws and culture couldn’t be more amusingly different.

From Mendicino County,

Ukiah Daily Journal Staff
A Sacramento resident was sentenced to 19 years of state prison on Friday by Judge Ron Brown in connection with a 2007 marijuana robbery in Willits.

Qwando Lecharles Tremble, 26, was convicted of residential robbery with use of a firearm, residential burglary, transportation of marijuana, with extra charges of having served a prior prison term, and a “strike” for a prior robbery.

According to the Mendocino County District Attorney’s Office report, in July of 2007 Tremble was in Willits with two companions, Jodi Dutra and Lonnie McClain, looking for marijuana to purchase. The trio was at the home of an acquaintance of Dutra’s when another man arrived with five pounds of marijuana the owner wanted to sell for $4,000 per pound.

Instead of money, Tremble then pulled a pistol from a carry bag and took the marijuana at gunpoint from the possession of the two men. Tremble, Dutra and McClain then escaped with the marijuana.

At a jury trial held in early April, McClain was acquitted, but Tremble was convicted on all counts. Dutra pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit robbery and child endangerment and currently faces a five-year prison term.

Deputy District Attorney Katherine Houston prosecuted Tremble’s case while Al Kubanis served as attorney for the defense.

Tremble must serve 85 percent of the sentence before being eligible for parole

In some states, they would have prosecuted both for possession, seized the home of those who grew it, taken the children away, seized everyone’s cars, and given everyone 20 years. But in Mendocino county, they treat the home robbery as a “Home Robbery”.

With the exception of those 13 states with Medical Marijuana laws, it is still illegal to grow or possess marijuana. If this family had lived in a state where they weren’t protected, then it’s likely they would not have called police and these dangerous armed felons would still be on the street.

Washington – — Concern about a potential failed state – not Pakistan, not Somalia, but California’s neighbor Mexico – is mounting in Washington as an all-out war involving 45,000 Mexican military personnel fails to quell rising drug violence that is spilling from such Mexican cities as Tijuana into the United States.

An estimated 6,290 drug-related murders occurred in Mexico last year, six times the standard definition of a civil war, said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a leading scholar on the issue at the Brookings Institution.

Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, described beheadings of Mexican mayors and police chiefs and said Mexican drug gangs have infiltrated the cannabis fields on both public and private lands in Northern California. He said Mexican villagers are kidnapped and smuggled into the northern coastal forests to grow pot, leaving environmental wreckage in their wake.

He said a timber company employee had been held at gunpoint by a Mexican gang, and he worried that hikers could be threatened. There also have been gang confrontations with firefighters.

“This isn’t your ’60s hippie growing a little pot on the back 40 to get through winter,” Thompson said.

Unlike past battles over immigration, Mexico’s current problems are blamed increasingly on the United States: its enormous demand for illegal drugs and its availability of military-style weapons, including bazookas and grenade launchers, that are smuggled to Mexico and used to match or overwhelm the Mexican military.

“My personal view is, it’s us who is more responsible than Mexico,” said Sidney Weintraub, a leading Latin American scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “We’re providing profits of about $25 billion to the drug cartels. That’s a lot of money.”

About 40 percent of the drug sales are marijuana, he said. “We imprison more people for marijuana than any other drug. What we have to do is change our policy and decriminalize marijuana. I don’t think we can do much unless we cut back on the money. As long as they have all that money, Mexico is in a largely hopeless situation.”

It’s beginning to look like the only thing we produce and export anymore in America is destabilization and violence in other countries.  Our government has pledged another $1.4 Billion (or 12.2 cannadays) to Mexico to help combat the drug gangs, because if there’s one thing we’ve learned from the drug war, it’s if what you’re doing isn’t working, do more of it with greater firepower.

America likes to smoke pot.  No matter how sophisticated your Army, you cannot fight the laws of supply and demand.  We want it and if you’d let us use it, buy it, and grow it, there would be no customers for Mexican drug gangs.  America can grow some mighty fine domestic marijuana.

On Canadian radio today, I was asked, “Well, wouldn’t the criminal gangs turn to pushing harder drugs and other crimes?”

“Yes,” I replied, “sure, that’s what criminals do – they make their living committing crimes.  However, criminals, just like our government, are subject to the laws of supply and demand.  60% of these violent drug gangs’ money comes from marijuana because Americans like marijuana.  Gangs can try to push more coke, meth, and heroin, but who’s going to be buying?”

In fact, I’d argue that a legal marijuana market in America would reduce the demand for coke, meth, and heroin, just as the end of Prohibition in the ’30s brought people back to beer and reduced demand for hard liquor.

Don’t forget to tune into cable channel CNBC tonight at 9pm ET (replay 1am ET) for Marijuana Inc, a look at Northern California’s billion-dollar marijuana crop.  You can even click on their online poll, where decriminalization is enjoying 97% support.

California several years ago started allowing residents to grow small amounts of marijuana for personal medicinal use. But no court has definitively ruled what constitutes a small amount, and then there’s one other complication: Growing any marijuana remains illegal under federal law.

Most of Regan’s interview subjects, who don’t mind showing their faces or wares on national television, seem unbothered by the potential for prosecution.

Nor do her interviews with law enforcement officials suggest much cause for concern. The main response of the marijuana police, local and federal, is frustration that they can do so little about an enterprise that some officials figure may in some way involve up to 60% of county residents.

Without marijuana farming, Regan’s sources all agree, the county’s economy would implode.

“Marijuana Inc.” adds up to a solid special with a well-supported and inescapable conclusion: The commerce is unlikely to change and the law has only a slim chance of doing more than containing the most violence-prone offenders.

When it comes to marijuana, a whole lot of people voted some time ago to just say yes.

via CNBC ‘Marijuana Inc.’ lifts the lid on weed business.

While it may not be traded on Wall Street any time soon, marijuana has become a booming cash crop. CNBC’s Trish Regan goes behind the scenes to explore the inner workings of this secretive industry, focusing on Northern California’s “Emerald Triangle,” now the marijuana capital of the U.S. In this scenic pocket of America, the pot business, much of it legal under state law, now makes up as much as two-thirds of the local economy.

via Marijuana Inc: Inside America’s Pot Industry, Business, Domestic Production, Government, Drug, Medicine, Economy, Profit – CNBC.com.

Thus begins the intro for the CNBC official page on their “Marijuana Inc” documentary premiering this Tuesday Thursday (unless a plane crashes in a river, of course).  Let’s freep their online poll, “Do you favor the decriminalization of marijuana use?”, though at this writing, we’re already ahead 97.5% – 2.5%!

New to DVD today is Humboldt County, an introspective character piece by novice writer/director duo, Darren Grodsky and Danny Jacobs (both also act in the film). The film follows disenchanted medical student, Peter (Jeremy Strong), as he spends a summer lost within the confines of a marijuana commune hidden deep in the backwoods of Northern California. via DVD Review: Humboldt County – LAist: Los Angeles News, Food, Arts & Events.

Darren and Danny joined us as interview guests in the Sep 26, 2008 Stash.  I really loved this movie and my wife watched it for the first time last week and loved it, too.  This is not a “crazy dope comedy”, so if you’re looking for that, go rent Pineapple Express or Harold & Kumar.  This is a movie that explores the essence of the cannabis community as Peter exits “Babylon” and experiences the interaction of the Humboldt family – “fish out of water” tale.  This film features some of the most realistic depictions of pot farmer characters I’ve seen in a long time.

And besides, it’s got that lady from Six Feet Under (Frances Conroy) and the doctor from Deadwood (Brad Dourif), two of my all-time favorite HBO shows, so you know the acting is good.

Click here to view the embedded video.