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• Colorado Legalization Effort Comes up 2400 Valid Signatures Short
• Washington State Bill Asking Government To Reclassify Marijuana Moves Forward
• Ballot Measures Competing for Funds from Big Backers
• Firefighters Mistake Butane Hash Oil Extraction Equipment for Pipe Bomb
• “Fast and Furious” Program Sparks Lawsuit and House Hearing for the Attorney General

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Rockin’ Friday: Brought to you by Urb Thrasher from Urb Age Designs

• Lionize – “Superczar”

Legislative Update with NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano

• ALABAMA: The Michael Phillips Compassionate Care Act (HB 25) which seeks to enact legal protections for authorized medical marijuana patients, has been marked for reintroduction in the Alabama Legislature for the session starting on February 7th. It is currently assigned to the House Committee on Health. A separate medical cannabis bill, House Bill 66, has also been prefiled in the House and is also before to the House Committee on Health, while a third measure that seeks to reduce penalties on adult cannabis possession is anticipated to be introduced shortly. You can learn more about these efforts via NORML’s ‘Take Action Center’ here.
• INDIANA: Senate lawmakers heard testimony on Tuesday, January 24, in favor of legislation, SB 347, to decriminalize marijuana possession penalties in Indiana. Lawmakers on Senate Committee on Corrections, Criminal, and Civil Matters did not vote on the measure. Therefore, there is still time for constituents to contact their Senate members and encourage them to support marijuana law reform. You can do so via NORML’s ‘Take Action Center’ here. A separate House measure, HB 1370, that seeks to legalize the use of cannabis for medicinal purposes, is pending before the House Committee on Public Policy.
• KANSAS: House Bill 2330, which seeks to enact legal protections for authorized medical marijuana patients, was heard by the House Committee on Health and Human Services on Tuesday, January 24th. You can read media coverage of the hearing here and here. You can track the progress of this measure and contact your state elected officials regarding HB 2330here.
• NEW HAMPSHIRE: Members of the House Criminal Justice Committee heard testimony on Thursday, January 25, in favor of House Bill 1705, which seeks to allow adults age 21 or over to use marijuana legally in their home. The measure also seeks to establish a regulated cannabis market governing the wholesale production and sale of marijuana. Non-commercial transactions involving less than one ounce of cannabis would not be subject to state taxation or regulation under the measure. You can watch clips from the hearing here and you can contact your elected officials in support of the measure here.
• The House Criminal Justice Committee is also scheduled to hear testimony this Thursday in favor of separate legislation, HB 1526, which seeks reduce the penalties on minor marijuana possession offenses (up to one ounce) from a criminal misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in jail and a $2,000 fine to a nominal monetary penalty of no more than $100.00. To contact your House representative regarding HB 1526, please visit NORML’s ‘Take Action Center’ here.
• VIRGINIA: Legislation seeking to establish a joint study committee to investigate the fiscal impact of regulating the production and sale of marijuana to adults 21 and over is anticipated to be heard by the Virginia House Committee on Rules as soon as this Thursday. You can read NORML’s published op/eds in support of this measure here and here. To learn more aboutHouse Joint Resolution 140, please visit Virginia NORML or contact your state officials here.

NORML Newsmakers

• Mark Pedersen from Sensible Missouri and Show-Me Cannabis Regulation

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1. Huge Study Shows Smoking Cannabis Doesn’t Harm Lung Function
2. Michigan MMJ Clinic Owner Acquited on Charges of Buying Votes
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• Irie Wednesday: Rebelution – “Change the System”

Cannabis Science with Dr. Mitch Earleywine

• Paul Armentano on the marijuana and lung function study
• Michael Krawitz on the latest studies of marijuana for PTSD

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1. Supreme Court May Look at Florida Dog Sniffing Case
2. Colorado Asks the Feds to Reschedule Marijuana

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Electric Tuesday: Brought to you by Cannabis Cure UK – the reform podcast for the United Kingdom

• Jamaster A – Funky Jump Bee

Behind the Headlines with NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano

• The Top Ten Events in Marijuana in 2011

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1. Kalamazoo MI and Tacoma WA pass lowest-law enforcement priority measures
2. Solano Cty CA passes medical marijuana tax
3. Washington State passes private liquor sales
4. Supreme Court to hear case of police warrantless use of GPS tracking on a suspect’s car

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Irie Wednesday: Brought to you by NorCalPurps in the California Bay Area

• Collie Budz – “Herb Tree”

Behind the Headlines with NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano

• New study shows synergistic effect of cannabinoid vaporization in conjunction with opioid pain management

Radical Rant

• The Top Corporate Federal Sponsors (Who Don’t Want Marijuana Legalized)

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1. Mexican drug war update
2. Fontana Sheriff sends threat letters to dispensary landlords
3. MedMJ advocates protest Obama’s San Francisco visit
4. Colombia’s president calls for global drug legalization

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Electric Tuesday: Brought to you by Cannabis Cure UK – the reform podcast for the United Kingdom

• Glebstar – “Breed”

Todd’s Toker Topics

• Hypocrisy

Behind the Headlines with NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano

• On Russia TV discussing DEA efforts to reclassify plant THC for Big Pharma

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• Stephen DeAngelo of Harborside points fingers of blame for federal crackdown, except at mirrors

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1. NYPD cop testifies that planting drugs on innocent people is routine procedure
2. California crackdown on medical marijuana being felt
3. Fort Collins Colorado may ban medical marijuana dispensaries
4. Arizona researcher blasts NIDA for blocking medmj for PTSD study

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• Groovin’ Thursday: Elite – “Gone”

Behind the Headlines with NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano

• On Tenther Radio discussing the federal crackdown on medical marijuana

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• DEA allowed a 1200% increase in oxycodone manufacturing during the medical marijuana era

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” – Gandhi (kinda)

Paul Armentano, NORML’s Deputy Director, and Paul Kuhn, from the NORML Board, co-wrote an op-ed for marijuana legalization in Tennessee’s largest newspaper.  Usually when NORML composes these things we might get a response from “Parents United for Safe Healthy Youth” (or some-such anti-legalization group) but the Drug Czar’s office ignores us.

Apparently we’re now in the “they fight you” stage, because a deputy director at the ONDCP, David Mineta, took the time to rebut our op-ed.  You can tell how desperate the prohibitionists are in the age of Google to maintain the fear-mongering over cannabis right out of the gate:

Proponents of marijuana legalization often argue it will do everything from fixing our economy to ending violent crime (“Marijuana legalization bill offers safer alternative,” Tennessee Voices, Aug. 15). Yet, the science is clear: Marijuana use is not a benign drug and it is harmful to public health and safety.

I agree: marijuana use is not a benign drug.  Marijuana may be fairly benign drug, marijuana use may be a relatively benign act, but I know my verbs from my nouns.  (Is this the level of writing accepted at Berkeley these days?)  The stilted construction of the second sentence is only bested by the two strawman arguments in the first.  Nobody says it will “fix” the economy or “end” violent crime, but that legalization will help in those goals.  Kinda like how the drug czar always tells us that drug abuse is something that never goes away but prohibition will help in those goals.

After the strawmen are introduced, we dive right into the Reefer Madness lies (I’ll count them for you):

Decades of scientific study, including research from the prestigious National Institutes of Health, show marijuana use is associated with addiction (1), treatment admissions among young people (2), fatal drugged driving accidents (3), and visits to emergency rooms (4). Data also reveal that marijuana potency has almost tripled in the past 20 years (5). This is especially troubling for use among teens because the earlier a person begins to use drugs, the more likely they are to develop a more serious abuse and addiction problem later in life (6).

(1) According to the prestigious National Institutes for Health, the dependency rate for first-time users of cannabis is about 9%.  For alcohol it is 15% and for tobacco it is 32%.  So, we’re making booze and cigs prohibited soon, right?

(2) Treatment admissions are fueled by an ever-rising number of drug courts, which sentence young people caught with cannabis to a rehab many of them don’t need or want.  A majority (57%) of admissions to rehab for cannabis are due to the criminal justice system; only 15% are self-admissions.  Over a third (37%) of cannabis rehab admissions hadn’t used any cannabis in the month prior to rehab.

(3) When you test the blood or urine of people who have been in fatal accidents and discover THC or its metabolites, what you’ve learned is that many people use cannabis.  Since metabolites stay in the urine for days or weeks and THC in the blood stays for hours or days, we aren’t learning a thing about cannabis’ culpability in accidents.  We don’t even know if the cannabis driver’s death was due to the other driver in a crash abusing meth or cocaine or heroin, since in many cases those metabolites are eliminated by the time the driver is tested.

(4) Ditto for emergency rooms – if you’re admitted for a broken leg from playing touch football and the pee test shows you smoked weed last weekend, that’s counted as a “marijuana-related emergency room admission.”

(5) Average potency of seized cannabis has varied over the years but has steadily increased.  The average now is about twice that of twenty years ago.  However, the inference that more potent marijuana equals greater addictive potential is another fallacy.  It would be like saying people who drink wine are more likely to become alcoholics than beer drinkers.  More potent pot means you get the same high with less pot, that’s all, or if you smoke more, you fall asleep.  It’s not like alcohol where a beer drunk is friendly and a tequila drunk is mean (generalizing).

(6) It’s true, the percentage of hard drug users who started with cannabis, alcohol, and tobacco is much greater than those who started with hard drugs.  That’s as meaningful as saying the percentage of people in the Hell’s Angels who rode a bicycle as kids is much greater than those who started on a Harley.  It doesn’t mean bicycles lead to biker gangs any more than cannabis leads to heroin.  The “gateway theory” has been disproved by that same prestigious National Institutes for Health report that Mineta cites above.

Would marijuana legalization make Tennessee healthier or safer? One needs to look no further than Tennessee’s current painful experience with prescription drug abuse. In Tennessee, prescription drugs are legal, regulated, and taxed — and yet rates of the abuse of pain relievers in the state exceed the national average by more than 10 percent.

So…. because Tennessee has a problem with people abusing toxic, addictive, legal prescription drugs, we need to make sure we lock ‘em in a cage if they use a non-toxic, non-addictive medicinal herb?  Is this an argument for making prescription drugs illegal?  The Drug Czar’s office is getting very desperate if the way they defend keeping marijuana in Schedule I is that they can’t control the Schedule II and III drugs.

Nationally, someone dies from an unintentional drug overdose — driven in large part by prescription drug abuse — on average every 19 minutes. What would America look like if we had just as many people using marijuana as we currently have smoking cigarettes, abusing alcohol, and abusing prescription drugs? The bottom line is that laws that control substances have had a real and lasting effect on keeping drug use rates relatively low. They keep prices higher which helps hold use rates relatively low. Moreover, other addictive substances like alcohol and tobacco, which are already legal and taxed, cost much more in social costs than the revenue they generate.

Considering that some people would substitute marijuana for alcohol, tobacco, and prescription drugs, I think America would look a whole lot better.  The bottom line is that Mineta equates all marijuana use with abuse, as he does tobacco use.  ”Using marijuana” and “smoking cigarettes” are equated with “abusing alcohol” and “abusing prescription drugs”, implying that alcohol and prescriptions have legitimate and acceptable uses.

Now consider Mineta’s point that prohibition keeps drug prices high.  It’s not true; in inflation-adjusted 1981 dollars, heroin is 81% cheaper, meth is 57% cheaper, cocaine is 80% cheaper, and crack is 60% cheaper.  Only cannabis is more expensive; it costs 86% more now than 1981.  So, prohibition has made the safest substance more expensive and it has acted as a price support for weed dealers and Mexican drug lords.  It hasn’t stopped anyone from accessing cannabis; 1-in-3 young adults toke annually, 1-in-8 toke weekly, and 80+% of teenagers say cannabis is easy to access.

Finally, alcohol and tobacco tax revenues don’t cover alcohol and tobacco’s social costs because… wait for it… alcohol and tobacco are toxic, addictive, and harmful to your organs.  If there are social costs from cannabis – a big “if” and a small amount – we are recovering zero in tax revenue to offset it and spending billions in a futile attempt to stop it.

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1. San Diego licenses its first regulated dispensary
2. Mexican police burning the harvest of largest-ever discovered pot farm
3. Arizona cannabis clubs opening up to fill demand since governor is blocking dispensaries
4. Western Australia creating harsh new penalties for personal marijuana use

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• Roots Monday: Bone Thugs N Harmony – “The Weed Song”

Behind the Headlines with NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano

• Presentation as part of Activist Panel at Medical Cannabis Cup in San Francisco

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• Does Cannabis Enhance Creativity?

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1. Rep. Diane Sands calls for federal government to “de-list” cannabis like they have gray wolves.
2. California bills to protect workplace rights facing difficulties
3. Connecticut lawmaker calls out governor’s support of decrim bill because gov’s son has drug problem

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• Electric Tuesday: Symphony of Science – “Ode to the Brain”

Behind the Headlines with NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano

• Facebook refuses ads to promote “Marijuana is Safer”, despite Facebook soliciting for the ads after book’s page gets 500,000 likes

BREAKING NEWS

• Connecticut House, Senate pass decrim bill, governor’s signature expected

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1. Illinois House rejects medical marijuana bill by 53-61 vote
2. Judge upholds the gun rights of Rhode Island medical marijuana patients
3. Maine legislature rejects marijuana legalization measure

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• Electric Tuesday: Exnotic – “Weeed”

Behind the Headlines with NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano

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• The Relative Safety of Cannabis and Cannabinoids

Radical Rant

• Kentucky v. King decision, Supreme Court rules 8-1 that cops can break down your door if they smell pot and hear “scurrying”