(The Oregonian – “Seeing through the smoke” editorial) It’s about time someone took action on the increasing number of medical marijuana dispensaries. The dispensaries are ignoring both the law and the will of Oregonians, who voted in November to defeat Measure 74, which would have legalized state-regulated dispensaries.

Of course, technical violations of the law may not really be the issue here. The original medical marijuana law was full of flaws. Lawmakers who are inclined to try to fix it could start with age restrictions on who can hold a card. Right now, anyone, including teenagers, can apply. A study done by Oregon Partnership found, for example, that 35 percent of students at Wilson High School and 46 percent at Marshall High School knew someone with a card.

Holton has done a good job in pointing to the proliferation of marijuana dispensaries, which may help nip it in the bud, so to speak. But, if Oregon is to continue allowing medical marijuana, then, at least, legislators must work harder to tighten up the rules.

Shame on the Oregonian for parroting the baseless “What About the Children?!?” scare tactic of US Attorney Holton and the majority of Oregon law enforcement. “35 percent of students at Wilson High School and 46 percent at Marshall High School knew someone with a card.” Knew a fellow student or knew someone with an OMMP card? A friend’s parent? A local store clerk? Their own parent? Their parent’s friends? The Oregonian cleverly places the stat in the context of implying high schools are overrun with cardholding minor students.

Unlike the Oregonian editorial board, I check sources (I work for NORML: I have to.) The survey they refer to was addressed at a Marshall High community town hall meeting. The poll was conducted by students as part of a project called “SMASH” in a “confidential, random, peer-to-peer” survey – meaning one high school kid asking another high school kid. We have no control group, no control for confounding variables, not even a mention of the survey size or the randomness of those polled (maybe the SMASH kids are more likely to “randomly” speak to their friend, for instance, or stood in the hall and talked to anyone passing by who would answer.)

But besides all the methodological issues arising from trusting the polling data of high school kids talking to their friends, it’s important to note what their survey actually said:

PERCEPTION: Students surveyed believed that 8 out of 10 students smoke marijuana

REALITY: 7 out of 10 students DO NOT smoke marijuana

Kids surveyed thought 77.3% of others were smoking marijuana.  76.07% of kids never smoked marijuana, another 12.27% smoked it once or twice a month.  So, kids think 3 out of 4 other kids smoke pot when 3 out of 4 kids actually don’t.  Where, oh, where could the kids be getting the message that youth cannabis smoking is out of control, when, in fact, Oregon’s 12th grade monthly cannabis use rates have declined 14% (before | after) since 1999, when medical marijuana got underway in Oregon.

One could argue that when authority figures are telling kids youth pot smoking is rampant, kids believe “everyone’s doing it” and that peer pressure makes them more likely to want to try it.

REALITY: Almost 1 in 2 students surveyed knows someone who has a medical marijuana card.

Do you know anyone who is prescribed* medical marijuana? 46.63% YES

*Nobody is prescribed medical marijuana; it is “recommended”. Federal prohibition forbids “prescription” of marijuana.

Another REALITY? Of the 40,000 registered medical marijuana patients in Oregon, less than fifty are under the age of 18. That’s one-eighth of one percent of all patients in Oregon. I’ve met one minor on the program in all my six years working with patients in Oregon – a 16-year-old young man with a painful congenital disorder accompanied by his very clean-cut white-bread middle-class non-pot-smoking parents who only allow him to use medicated edibles; no smoking. There simply is no crisis of youth marijuana smoking in Oregon and certainly not one that can be attributed to a medical marijuana program with very strict requirements for qualification.

If the Oregonian is really concerned about the children, these existing cannabis clubs provide much more protection than the unregulated market they and US Attorney Holton seem to be advocating. I’ve visited a number of these clubs and each one – despite me being very well-known to them as a marijuana advocate at the national level – required that I show my Oregon ID and valid medical marijuana program card prior to entry.

US Attorney Holton and 33/34 county D.A.’s would like to you to believe that teens can walk into the state OMMP, complain about a headache, get an OMMP card, walk into a cannabis club and walk out with a pound and a half of marijuana. The truth is that the card is much more difficult to get here and the over 3,000 doctors who have recommended cannabis as medicine in Oregon are especially stringent in reviewing the records of minors for medical marijuana qualification.

Furthermore, these clubs pull the patient community away from the unregulated market’s back alleys, parking lots, and apartment living rooms. There is nothing that a prohibition profiteer hates more than regulated legal competition. Legality removes the prohibition risk tariff, drives down prices, and improves access and quality for patients. It creates jobs in the community, controls the distribution of cannabis far better than prohibition, contributes local tax revenue, and protects patients from unscrupulous growers taking advantage of their desperate need for medicine they can’t just buy at Walgreen’s or CVS.

If the Oregon county D.A.s outside of Multnomah are lacking for better things to do than harass sick and disabled adults trying to be legal consumers in a state with no legal retailers, perhaps they could work on the 72.4% of sex crimes and 80.4% of property crimes that didn’t lead to an arrest in 2009 in Oregon.

Russ Belville, OMMP Caregiver
Outreach Coordinator & Talk Radio Host
National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws
Portland, Oregon

WASHINGTON (CNN) — A former middle-school student who was strip-searched by school officials looking for ibuprofen pain medication won a partial victory of her Supreme Court appeal Thursday in a case testing the discretion of officials to ensure classroom safety.

Redding was an eighth-grade honor student in 2003, with no history of disciplinary problems at Safford Middle School, about 127 miles from Tucson, Arizona.

During an investigation into pills found at the school, a student told the vice principal that Redding had given her prescription-strength 400-milligram ibuprofen pills.

The school had a near-zero-tolerance policy for all prescription and over-the-counter medication, including the ibuprofen, without prior written permission.

Redding was pulled from class by Vice Principal Kerry Wilson, escorted to an office and confronted with the evidence. The girl denied the accusations.

A search of Redding’s backpack found nothing. A strip search was conducted by Wilson’s assistant and a school nurse, both females.

Redding was ordered to strip to her underwear and to pull on the elastic of the underwear, so any hidden pills might fall out, according to court records. No drugs were found.

“The strip search was the most humiliating experience I have ever had,” Redding said in an affidavit. “I held my head down so that they could not see that I was about to cry.”

The decision was 8-1.  Justice Clarence Thomas thought the Constitution doesn’t really cover the “preservation of order, discipline and safety in public schools”, so if you want to strip-search 13-year-old girls at school, the Founding Fathers would have been cool with that.  Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens thought the girl should be able to sue the school administrators who humiliated her, but the rest of the court decided that up til now it hasn’t been very clear how much protection the Constitution gives 13-year-old schoolgirls from strip searches, so the administrators couldn’t be reasonably expected to know they couldn’t just do that (if I’m reading SCOTUSblog’s analysis correctly).

So, from now on, there will be more protection for 13-year-old girls in school to not be expected to strip to their panties for school officials – not police, a freakin’ vice principal’s assistant and a school nurse! - when a teenage snitch lies about them holding drugs.  But all you 13-year-old girls who were strip-searched, you have no recourse.

I don’t suppose anybody ever considered just calling the girls’ parents.  ”Hello, Mrs. Redding? We have a tip your daughter may be holding prescription ibuprofen in violation of our zero-tolerance policy.  Can you come down to the school, please?”  No, wait, excuse me, I forgot, we’re talking about drugs; there’s no room for common sense here!  What am I thinking?  I just expected someone who takes seriously the phrase “zero tolerance” to show common sense.

An Eisenhower Elementary School student found seeds and a green, leafy substance in another boy’s possession last Friday. The student told a teacher, who then contacted police to verify the questionable substance.

Oklahoma City Police Sargeant Jennifer Wardlow said, “When offiers arrived, they spoke with school administrators who did confirm that they have found a substance they believe to be marijuana on an eight-year-old student.”

Sargeant Wardlow said, “The student was not cited. The administration decided that it was in the best interest of the child to simply notify the parents and suspend the child. The child has been suspended.”

Because the school year is almost over, suspension for the boy will end on the last day of school, which is Friday, May 29, 2009.

via Eight Year Old With Marijuana | KSBI-TV | News.

The amount of marijuana found, according to reports, was 250 milligrams, and that’s including the weight of the seeds found.  I’ve probably got that much weed amongst the lint in my pockets.

I’m not making light of the kid caught with pot.  Children shouldn’t have or use marijuana, unless prescribed by a doctor.  If this was some of his parents’ weed, the parents need to do a better job locking up their stash.  But if he didn’t get it from his parents, then he got it from another student or found it somewhere, and at no point did anyone ever check his or the other student’s or the original purchaser’s ID.

I’m also a bit disturbed that the kid is getting a ten-day suspension from school.  It is just the last weeks of the school year and there’s probably not much going on, but how is this boy helped by getting a ten day head start on summer vacation?

News of the World in the UK is reporting that Olympic swimming sensation Michael Phelps is one of us!

THIS is the astonishing picture which could destroy the career of the greatest competitor in Olympic history.

In our exclusive photo Michael Phelps, who won a record EIGHT gold medals for swimming at the Beijing games last summer, draws from a bong.

And after sporting chiefs announced laws which mean four-year bans for drug-taking, Phelps’ dreams of adding to his overall 14 gold medal tally at the 2012 games in London could already be OVER.

Those dreams seemed the last thing on his mind when he puffed from the bong during two days of partying with students last November, a quiet time in the swimming calendar when athletes would not expect to get tested for drugs.

As he basked in his hero status, Phelps knocked back beers and shots of spirits. And when a student offered him the glass bong engraved with red writing, he did not hesitate, says our source.

Our source said: “You could tell Michael had smoked before. He grabbed the bong and a lighter and knew exactly what to do.

“He looked just as natural with a bong in his hands as he does swimming in the pool. He was the gold medal winner of bong hits. Michael ended up getting a little paranoid, though, because before too long he looked like he was nervous and ran out of the place.”

The US Olympics Committee, who have pledged to clamp down on drug use, refused to comment, as did USA Swimming and Phelps’ coach Bob Bowman.

More surprising still was the World Anti-Doping Agency’s refusal to comment, given that they introduced the four-year ban on sport’s drug users.

Spokesman Clifford Bloxham offered us an extraordinary deal not to publish our story, saying Phelps would become our columnist for three years, host events and get his sponsors to advertise with us.

In return, he asked that we kill Phelps’ bong picture. Bloxham said: “It’s seeing if something potentially very negative for Michael could turn into something very positive for the News of the World.”

So, you wanna explain to me how marijuana smoking will make one a lethargic, unmotivated loser who will never get anywhere in life?  This should be fun, watching sponsors and Olympic and USA Swimming officials trip all over themselves.  I expect to see a special exemption or a sudden new rule that lets firt time offenders skate with some sort of class and community service.  Does anybody really think they are going to end Michael Phelps’ career, the greatest Olympian ever, and a huge marketing and endorsement cash cow, for a picture of him doing something that isn’t even criminal in thirteen states?

A divided US appeals court has ruled an Arizona school violated the constitutional rights of a 13-year-old student by conducting a strip search for ibuprofen.

Suspecting that a student had violated a policy against prescription or over-the-counter drugs without permission, public school officials in Safford, Arizona, ordered a search of Savana Redding.

A school nurse had her remove her clothes, including her bra, and shake her underwear to see if Ms Redding was hiding anything.

The 2003 search, prompted by a tip from another girl, did not find ibuprofen, which is found in common medications like Advil and Motrin to treat pain like cramps and headaches.

Higher doses require a prescription.

Previous court decisions ruled the school did not violate the US Constitution’s Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures because officials have a legitimate interest in protecting students from prescription drugs.

The 6-5 ruling by a panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday overturned an earlier decision, setting out its reasoning in an extensive 75-page ruling with many details on the complications of eighth grade life.

“Directing a 13-year-old girl to remove her clothes, partially revealing her breasts and pelvic area, for allegedly possessing ibuprofen, an infraction that poses an imminent danger to no one, and which could be handled by keeping her in the principal’s office until a parent arrived or simply sending her home, was excessively intrusive,” Justice Kim McLane Wardlaw wrote for the majority.

The majority found flaws in the school’s logic that a tip from another student justified the action.

“The self-serving statement of a cornered teenager facing significant punishment does not meet the heavy burden necessary to justify a search accurately described by the 7th Circuit as ‘demeaning, dehumanizing, undignified, humiliating, terrifying, unpleasant [and] embarrassing’.

“And all this to find prescription-strength ibuprofen pills.

“No legal decision cited to us, or that we could find, permitted a strip search to discover substances regularly available over-the-counter at any convenience store throughout the United States.”

A 6-5 decision!  This poor 13-year-old girl was one judge away from having to fight all the way to the Supreme Court!  When people confront me about my drug war activism, they often ask if I hadn’t thought of “better” causes (climate change, voting machines, poverty, AIDS, whatever) to put my efforts into.  Then I show them cases like this, where the demonization of drugs has led to such alarmist conditioning among school faculty and frightened parents that people actually think it is reasonable to strip-search an adolescent girl on the mere accusation from another student, all over a legal drug!