(KETV) SAUNDERS COUNTY, Neb. — Police officers in Ashland, Neb., seized 150 pounds of marijuana during a traffic stop Wednesday night on Highway 6.

The seizure was the largest in Saunders County history, said Ashland police.

He said the incident started when police stopped [a] conversion van driving erratically. When the officer approached the van and saw several bags of marijuana in plain view, he called for assistance, police said.

[Ashland Police Chief Mark] Powell said multiple agencies responded to that call. The drugs were in duffel bags found throughout the vehicle, police said.

Three men in the van were Christopher Ryan, Irvin Dana Beal and James Statzer.

All three are being held in Saunders County Jail and are suspected of drug possession with intent to deliver, officers said. They all face charges of possession with intent to deliver.

Beal is a political activist who has advocated for marijuana legalization in the U.S.

Authorities said Ryan and Statzer are being held on $100,000 bond each. Beal is being held on $500,000 bond.

Yes, it is the word of a police officer, but if indeed there were bags of marijuana “in plain view”, then add this story to our pile of Stupid Stoner Stories.

Few stories I’ve written have generated as much firestorm as this one.  Check out the coverage on CelebStoner, where I’m being called “an asshole” (three times), “Smellville”, “a fool”, and being threatened with an assault-by-pie.

I even received a phone call from a New York activist who I met at the NORML CON last week.  He was at least civil and explained to me that Beal has been providing very low-cost marijuana (”$3-$7 per gram”… that’s still $85 to $200 per ounce) for medical patients on the East Coast.  So I apologize for any insinuation that Beal was making a luxury living as a weed dealer charging prohibition profits to average pot consumers.

What I’m upset about isn’t necessarily Beal in particular, but the general issue of a “record bust” of a prominent activist returning from NORML CON.  Every day I beat back prohibitionists who say that medical marijuana, especially in California, is being abused by criminals that are hiding behind the lax statutes to cover their interstate trafficking.  The average reader doesn’t know Beal has a history of altruism and support of desperately sick people; they just see “150lbs of marijuana” being trafficked by one of our own coming back from an activist conference in California.  They see a “legalizer” and assume he’s getting rich by drug dealing and it taints the message we’re all trying to deliver.

Whatever you think about the bust and my opinion of it, let’s talk about it this Saturday on NORML SHOW LIVE.

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Dana Beal (immediately to right of Madeline Martinez in red) at Russ Belville's "Tools for Activists" breakout panel at NORML CON 2009

(CelebStoner) New York marijuana activist Dana Beal has been arrested again in the Midwest, this time with 150 pounds of pot. Nebraska police apprehended Beal and two others in a van on Wednesday in Ashland near Interstate 80 (just West of Omaha) after the vehicle was stopped for driving erratically. Bail was set at $500,000.

Beal was last seen in San Francisco at the NORML Conference. Presumably, he was driving back from California when the bust took place.

The Cures Not Wars founder has had numerous run-ins with the law, the most recent of which came last June when Illinois authorities confiscated a small amount of marijuana and $150,000 from him. This past May, Beal pled guilty to the pot charge and paid a fine, but the cash was not returned.

Beal organizes the annual Global Marijuana March each May.

Dana Beal was in the front row of my break-out session Saturday at NORML CON. Before we started he asked for a moment to address the attendees regarding the Worldwide Marijuana March.

It was my first opportunity to meet him and thank him personally for the march. It was at the Portland March in 2005 where I first met Madeline Martinez and this whole crazy career of mine started into motion.

One hundred fifty pounds of cannabis, huh? Unless that’s personal use for a lifetime, it looks like Dana was trying to make a living off of prohibition. When you’re a high-profile activist, a trafficking bust like this doesn’t really help the cause much. It kinda erodes the moral high ground to be rallying to end prohibition because it gives young people a criminal record on the one hand, but then profiting from the black market excise tax those young people will pay to buy marijuana on the other hand.

I hope everything goes well for Dana; he is a very nice gentleman and I’d like a chance to see him again someday.

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[More fantastic reporting from MrSpof, especially below the fold.  -- "R"R]

WASHINGTON – Federal agents have rounded up 755 suspects in a wide-ranging crackdown on a Mexican drug cartel operating inside the United States, Attorney General Eric Holder announced Wednesday.

The Justice Department said that as part of the 21-month-long investigation, DEA and other federal agents had seized $59 million in U.S. currency; 12,535 kilograms of cocaine; more than 16,000 pounds of marijuana; more than 12 pounds of methamphetamine; approximately 8 kilograms of heroin; approximately 1.3 million pills or 500 pounds of Ecstasy; approximately 120 kilograms of MDMA powder; and more than $6.5 million in other assets, including 149 vehicles, 3 aircraft, 3 maritime vessels and 169 weapons.

via MSNBC – U.S. arrests 755 in Mexican drug cartel raids

My presumption is that the DEA expects this will make us feel that they are being successful in their War on US Citizens. Maybe this lends credence to former Drug Czar John Water’s claim that:

“If the drug effort were failing there would be no violence,” a senior U.S. official said Wednesday. There is violence “because these guys are flailing. We’re taking these guys out. The worst thing you could do is stop now.”

via The Agitator – God Help Us If We Start “Winning” the Drug War, Too

Read the rest of this entry by clicking here

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(CBS) So far, there hasn’t been much negative reaction to the photo showing Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps smoking what appeared to be marijuana. 

A few years ago, it might have ruined his career, but so far it hasn’t — perhaps a sign of changing attitudes.

The seeming lack of outrage… may reflect America’s changing attitudes towards marijuana – an estimated $30 billion dollar industry in the United States alone.

While a majority of Americans still oppose the legalization of marijuana use, a new CBS News poll shows a big swing in opinion in recent years.

Twenty-seven percent supported legalization in 1979; 41 percent support it today.

Understand that when you get “41% support legalization”, that’s over 2 out of 5 people when asked, “Should marijuana be legalized” who will say “yes.”  That’s without any explanation of how, where, when, or for whom it will be legalized, so that includes the spectrum from “fine-only possession, jail for sales, cultivation, and trafficking” to “pre-rolled joints at the convenience store”.

When you change the question to actually define what you mean by “legalization”, the numbers rise.  In a 2001 Zogby poll, ten weeks after 9/11, we found:

Read the rest of this entry by clicking here

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State Rep. Joseph Driscoll has filed legislation aimed at toughening laws against growing and selling marijuana.

Voters approved a referendum in November that decriminalized possession of less than one ounce of marijuana and imposed a $100 civil fine. Minors would also be required to take a drug-abuse counseling course. The new law took effect Jan. 1.

Driscoll, who opposed the referendum question, said nothing prevents a drug dealer from selling marijuana to a minor.

Under current law, it is a misdemeanor to sell marijuana to a minor and a felony to sell other drugs to juveniles.

Driscoll said one of his bills would lower the amount of marijuana necessary to charge a drug dealer with trafficking from 50 pounds to one pound.

Here are some of the penalties state Rep. Joseph Driscoll, D-Braintree, is proposing for marijuana growers and sellers:

• Up to five years in state prison or up to 2½ years in jail and a fine of $1,000 to $10,000.
• A prison sentence of five to 15 years for a subsequent conviction and a fine of between $1,500 and $25,000.
• A prison sentence of three to 15 years or a jail sentence of two to 2½ years and a fine of $2,500 to $25,000 for 1 to 5 pounds.
• A prison sentence of five to 20 years and a fine of $5,000 to $25,000 for 5 to 10 pounds.
• A prison sentence of to 20 years and a fine of $10,000 to $100,000 for 10 to 20 pounds.
• A prison sentence of 15 to 20 years and a fine of $50,000 to $500,000 for 30 pounds or more.
• A state prison sentence of five to 15 years and a fine of $1,000 to $25,000 for selling to a person under the age of 18.

via State rep wants stiffer penalties for pot dealers and growers – Quincy, MA – The Patriot Ledger.

The current penalty for sales or cultivation of less than 50 pounds in Massachusetts is a misdemeanor, that’s true.  But the penalty for that can be two years and $5,000.

The penalties Driscoll is proposing would make Massachusetts’ penalties even worse than Florida’s.  Florida’s got more than two-and-a-half times the population and, according to Miron, about twice the rate of cannabis consumption (2.3% in Mass. vs. 5.7% in Fla. that use cannabis).   It seems like the state that has the penalties most similar to your proposal has twice the “problem” with cannabis.

Also, Florida has much more of an issue with the so-called “grow house” phenomenon.  Have you thought about the notion that under your new proposed penalties, you incentivize one large grow-op to become ten or twenty smaller grow-ops?

All you will do with these penalties is raise the price of marijuana and increase the profits of the growers and traffickers you do not catch.  No fewer people will smoke it, no less marijuana will flow through and be grown in Massachusetts, and even more people will sell it with the attractive price supports your enhanced prohibition will create.  

When will you politicians learn that prohibition is the drug dealer’s favorite public policy?

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