While President Obama is ignoring our calls to end adult marijuana prohibition and Google/YouTube is deeming our pleas “inappropriate” and unworthy of serious discussion like tennis, parties, and the president’s dancing ability, police in Mexico are forced to put themselves in protective custody because of the threat of assassination at the hands of the drug cartels.  For reasons that escape me, our president and congress seem to prefer that the lucrative marijuana trade is controlled by and benefits these murderous criminals.

(Los Angeles Daily News) CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico – Every one of the 2,500 police officers in this Mexican border city has been ordered to leave home and stay in a hotel after the killing of five officers by a local drug cartel.

The gang threatened a week ago to kill one policeman a day unless Police Chief Julian Leyzaola resigns.

Police spokesman Adrian Sanchez said officers were ordered to stay away from their houses after Monday’s shootout between assailants and policemen. That assault and previous attacks happened as officers were going to or from home.

The city’s government said it has secured 26 million pesos ($2 million) to house officers in hotels but did not specify how long that would last.

At least 10 banners bearing threats to Juarez’s police chief appeared around the city last week. The messages were signed by the New Juarez Cartel, an offshoot of the La Linea or Juarez Cartel, a major target of law enforcement actions in recent months.

Because I hate to miss a good internet meme…

Pepper Spray Cop at Seattle Hempfest (click for large version)

The California Federal Attorney’s recent letters condemning dispensaries Are still having repercussions in the medical marijuana dispensary industry in California. In Fontana, a town in Southern California’s San Bernardino County, the City’s police chief has taken a clue from the US attorneys and has started a similar campaign to rid his town of medical marijuana dispensaries. Fontana officials are hoping that a tough new policy that set in place, and the help of the pressure of federal attorneys will make it easier to get the doors closed on local weed shops. Police Chief Rodney Jones has mailed out 1000 notices to Fontana Retail and Commercial property owners warning them that to rent a space to a marijuana dispensary will risk the forfeiture of their property to the federal government.

Read more:

Fontana Police Send Their Own Threatening Letters to Dispensaries

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer said some things that may have clarified her position on the now-passed Proposition 203. Speaking on a few weeks ago at a conference of the Arizona Chiefs of Police, Brewer scolded the chiefs for what she says was their silence on Prop. 203 when it was being debated. Proposition 203 narrowly passed by only 4,340 votes out of 1.7 million cast. Governor Brewer said that she believes that they have a duty to speak with a unified voice on “irresponsible ballot measures that jeopardizes public safety” giving the passage of proposition 203 as “a good example where a unified voice might have prevented passage of this dreadful situation”

She went on to tell them that no one really explained to the public what the ramification were when looking at the legislation. When asked by a member of the audience whether she should have gone on the road to speak out against the measure before the election, she answered “probably so” and then went on that “Unfortunately, things were busy, I was busy,” she said about the time when she was campaigning to keep her job. But then added, “The bottom line is that once we realized that it was gaining such momentum, I stepped right up.’ She reminded them that since the measure passed she has directed the State Health Department to not accept applications for dispensary licenses.

More:

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer Clarifies Her Position on Medical Marijuana

The State Government in Western Australia announced on Sunday that they are putting into place more repressive marijuana laws that will go into effect on August 1st. Western Australia had effectively decriminalized the possession of up to 30 grams of marijuana under the previous Labor Government that set the fines for violators with tickets between $100 and $200 dollars.

More here:

Australia Moves Toward Harsher Punishments for Marijuana Crimes

I left my professional law enforcement ethics... in San Francisco...

Not only do we have to be aware of the legitimate police who are enforcing the existing marijuana laws, we also have to subject to these corrupt cops who are out there all over the country, setting up innocent people to serve their own agenda whatever that may be.   I say we take the marijuana offenders out of prison and put these jerks in!

SF Chronicle A San Francisco judge dismissed marijuana trafficking allegations Wednesday after finding a videotape contradicted officers’ account of a drug search at a suspect’s Richmond District apartment.

In the latest case in which video appeared to undermine police testimony, Superior Court Judge Gerardo Sandoval issued his dismissal order after a three-day preliminary hearing on drug dealing charges lodged against McLaren Wenzell, 23, stemming from the March 1 police search and seizure of 4 pounds of marijuana.

Sandoval cited inconsistencies in the police accounts with the videotape.

The case has strong similarities to the scandal unfolding against eight Southern Station officers, who have been reassigned from a plainclothes detail after videotapes appeared to contradict their accounts of several drug raids in a Tenderloin single room occupancy hotel.

So far, that scandal has triggered dismissal of 76 cases as well as an ongoing FBI probe.

[Russ adds: I am shocked - shocked! - to learn that the drug war has corrupted cops in America.]

In the latest incident, three Richmond Station plainclothes officers asserted in police reports that Wenzell agreed to let them search his Richmond District apartment. Wenzell said Wednesday that he never gave the officers permission, but simply went into his unit without saying one way or other.

The officers recounted that they were answering a report of a possible marijuana grow operation inside the building on 33rd Avenue and Geary Boulevard when they encountered Wenzell as he came out of the unit.

They said that they had their stars visible outside their clothing when they talked to Wenzell, who admitted having a small amount of marijuana, showed them his prescription note and then let them in 30 seconds after he went back inside his unit.

[Russ adds: So three officers all got up on the stand and told the same testilie?  It's ironic that so many civil libertarians decry the proliferation of surveillance cameras everywhere in the public sphere, but it's the video evidence from these cameras that is protecting the civil rights of citizens from usurpation by law enforcement.  It's tragic that in many states, the citizen must rely on the chance they will have an encounter with law enforcement where there is a public surveillance cam, because privately videotaping officers on duty can get you arrested and prosecuted for interfering with law enforcement.]

Makeda Marley, 29, has pleaded guilty on a two year old case involving the manufacturing of marijuana. Last Tuesday, Makeda pleaded guilty to possession of 11 mature and three juvenile marijuana plants and tampering with evidence. According to the criminal complaint, police entered her residence on Sept 8th of 2008 after a DUI arrest.

More here:
Bob Marley’s Daughter Pleads Guilty in Cannabis Case

CORPUS CHRISTI – What was initally thought to be one of the largest marijuana plant seizures in the police department’s history turned into what amounted to a city park cleanup Thursday night.

Shortly after 8:00pm, a teen riding his bike through Waldron Park in Flour Bluff discovered what he thought were marijuana plants growing there.

Police later hauled away 300-400 medium-sized plants that they also believed was marijuana.

If fact, officers only stopped collecting the plants because it got too dark, and planned to return in the morning to look around for more.

However, after spending more than an hour removing and tagging the hundreds of plants, then hauling it all down the police department downtown, testing revealed that none of it was marijuana at all.

via Corpus Christi, TX | KRISTV.com | Marijuana Seizure Turns Into Yardwork.

Hello, 911?  I’d like to report some marijuana growing on my lawn.  Yeah, it’s a new, genetically-altered marijuana that grows really close to the ground, with a few rounded leavers and a soft yellow flower on the end.  Now, this is a seriously dangerous marijuana, because eventually, the yellow flower becomes a round white ball of fluff, and the slightest breeze will blow these deadly marijuana spores all across the neighborhood!

No, really!  My yard is teeming with this new short yellow marijuana!  The kids even have a name for it: Dandy Lion!  Everybody knows those reggae kids are always talking about lions, and you know “dandy” is just another word for “high”!  Open your eyes, man!

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Hemp Headlines

1. Colorado Census workers discover marijuana growing next door to office
2. Maine government looks at institution of dispensaries
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5. World-class indoor sprinter Ivory Williams suspended for three months for marijuana
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NORML Newsmakers

• Jen Alexander from Oregon NORML on police abuse of medical marijuana patients’ privacy rights to further anti-medical marijuana agenda

New Jersey has become the 14th medical marijuana state

Since fourteen states have legalized the use of cannabis for sick and disabled people we here at NORML have reported on numerous stories of medical users harassed, arrested, and jailed by police.  We have also reported on healthy adults in all fifty states whose lives are turned upside down by an arrest, sometimes losing student loans, jobs, children, pets, dignity, property, and freedom over a single joint, seed, or even a cannabis stem.  When we and others bring up these insane injustices to the police who are making these arrests, we often hear the platitude that “cops don’t make the laws, we just enforce the laws.”

So why do we consistently see representatives of law enforcement opposing medical marijuana, marijuana decriminalization, and marijuana legalization efforts in state legislatures?

In California, the California Narcotics Officers Association schools police officers to believe the public “have been misled… into believing there is merit to their argument that smoking marijuana is a safe and effective medicine.” This is in direct contradiction of the stated position of the American Medical Association otherwise that “short term controlled trials indicate that smoked cannabis reduces neuropathic pain, improves appetite and caloric intake especially in patients with reduced muscle mass, and may relieve spasticity and pain in patients with multiple sclerosis.”

In New Jersey, the medical marijuana law was severely curtailed when the Assembly heard the unfounded assertion by a representative of New Jersey’s Fraternal Order of Police that “I’ve heard in California there’s a lot peripheral crime around these centers [medical marijuana dispensaries], I get that from the different law enforcement agencies around the country who I have regular contact with.”  This is in direct contradiction of the findings of the Chief of the LAPD who stated: “Banks are more likely to get robbed than medical marijuana dispensaries.”  The Chief was responding to the notion that there is greater crime around dispensaries and said “I have tried to verify that because that, of course, is the mantra.  It doesn’t really bear out.”

And in Oklahoma, the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics & Dangerous Drugs Control publishes a “fact sheet” on marijuana that states: “Today’s new cultivation methods are producing a drug with up to 30 percent THC, or 3,000 percent higher than the old 1960’s-1980’s available marijuana.” This is in direct contradiction to the DEA’s own figures on marijuana potency which find that today’s average cannabis seizure may have doubled in THC potency (a 100% increase, not a 3,000% increase.)  Oklahoma’s bureau doesn’t address why 30% THC marijuana is to be feared, but 100% THC Marinol pills are FDA-approved.

ABC News / Washington Post Poll on public medical marijuana support

The attitudes of most in law enforcement are also contrary to the attitudes of the public.  A recent ABC News / Washington Post poll found that support for medical marijuana is now at 81% nationwide, with a majority overall (62% nationwide) who support a system at least as open as Oregon’s OMMA where not-necessarily terminal patients can only qualify if they suffer a specific condition from a list and a majority of those who support medical marijuana (56% of the 81% who support it) supporting an open system like California’s Prop-215 where “doctors should be able to prescribe medical marijuana to anyone they think it can help”.

POLICE Magazine survey on police medical marijuana support

But according to a June 2009 survey in POLICE Magazine, even though a majority (54.6%) of police say they support medical marijuana, almost all of those who support it (88%) say it must be only under stricter regulation than we have currently in the medical marijuana states.

Support in 2009 for marijuana legalization ranged from 38%-53%, depending on the poll.

When asked about marijuana legalization overall, even for healthy adults, the American Public are also contrary to the opinions of law enforcement.  The latest Angus Reid poll is the first to show majority American support for legalization (53%), while the latest Gallup poll puts support at 44%, its best mark in forty years of polling.

POLICE Magazine survey of police opinions on legalization

But according to the same POLICE survey, marijuana legalization has less than half the support among cops than among the public they protect and serve.  Only 23% of police supported re-legalization of cannabis.

When asked why, specifically, those police who opposed re-legalization felt that way, eight in ten said that marijuana is a “gateway drug”, there was the danger of “people driving high”, and seven in ten cited the “harm to user and society”.  Longtime NORML readers know that the gateway drug theory has been debunked by the Institutes of Medicine in 1999 and every reputable study over the past ten years.  While everybody, especially NORML, discourages driving under the influence of cannabis, we understand that there are people behaving irresponsibly now and re-legalization would not encourage less responsibility, but more.  Under re-legalization, money raised from taxes could sponsor anti-stoned-driving campaigns like the ones that have successfully reduced drunk driving.

Majority of Americans believe Marijuana is Safer

As for the “harm to user and society”, POLICE readers still felt by a margin of 3-2 that alcohol was “more of a threat to the community” than marijuana.  (The survey does not record the support among police for reinstating alcohol prohibition to prevent alcohol’s “harm to user and society”, however.)  This 39% of police who believe marijuana is safer than alcohol comes closest to matching public opinion, which shows now a slim majority (51%) believe marijuana is safer than alcohol.

If marijuana users are to be punished, 3 in 4 support no more than a civil fine

While the general public is barely approaching majority support for outright marijuana legalization, the public has long held the belief that any punishment for adult marijuana possession should be a fine only.  Three out of four Americans (76%) believe that if marijuana users are to be punished, they should only be fined and not arrested and sent to jail.  Yet the POLICE Magazine survey finds that two out of three cops (65%) think it is “worth law enforcement’s time to bust marijuana users”.

Another area where police opinions differ from the public is on the issue of the murderous Mexican drug gangs that have assassinated, kidnapped, murdered, tortured, and beheaded over 15,000 Mexicans in just two years.  The Arizona Attorney General has cited that “marijuana sales make up 75 percent of the money that Mexican cartels use for other operations, including smuggling other drugs and fighting the Mexican army and police.” But in the POLICE Magazine survey, two-thirds of cops (68%) believe marijuana legalization would have no “favorable impact on problems associated with gangs and cartels.”

So do the police know something about the dangers of cannabis use that the American Medical Association, the American people, and the Arizona Attorney General do not?  A cynic might think that police are merely acting in their own best interest, protecting their source of easy statistic-padding arrests and asset forfeiture bounty, but I’m more inclined to believe many of these front-line soldiers in the War on Marijuana are acting in good faith based on terrible misinformation about cannabis.