US

by OWEN LEI / KING 5 News

 

"Mike" - not his real name - keeps his secret in the basement, a moisture-controlled greenhouse, with more than 70 marijuana plants.

 

It's why police came here Thursday on a tip.

 

"They served the search warrant under the suspicion there was marijuana being grown here," he said.

 

They were right, but they quickly backed off. Tacked on the doors and the walls, they found legal paperwork for all four patients living or using this medicinal marijuana co-op.

By Ron Brynaert, RawStory

 

"Every man got to legalize it, and don't criticize it," Reggae legend Peter Tosh sang in 1976.

 

While US support for marijuana legalization may never hit the "every man" level -- at least not publicly, that is -- two recent national polls definitely show that it is growing higher and higher.

 

"Americans are evenly divided over whether marijuana should be legalized in the United States, but most expect it to happen within the next decade," a Rasmussen Reports press release states.

 

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Adults nationally shows 43% believe marijuana should be legalized. But 42% think it should remain an illegal drug. Another 15% are not sure.

By. Marijuana Policy Project

 

Major news! The Department of Veterans Affairs has formally announced that patients being treated at V.A. facilities will be allowed to use medical marijuana if they live in one of the 14 states where it is legal.

 

This historic development was trumpeted over the weekend in a front-page New York Times story that quoted MPP’s Steve Fox. “We now have a branch of the federal government accepting marijuana as a legal medicine,” Steve told the Times, adding that the department needs to make its guidelines clear to patients and V.A. officials nationwide.

 

Under the policy, V.A. doctors still won’t be allowed to recommend marijuana to patients, but legal medical marijuana users will not be automatically precluded from pain management programs. Previously, many veterans believed they could lose access to prescription pain medications if they were found to be using medical marijuana, and some—including an Army veteran interviewed by The Times—were even told they needed to choose between medical marijuana and other pain medications. This latest policy clarification should prevent similar future incidents.

By. The Economist

 

IN 2000 four Americans were charged with importing lobster tails in plastic bags rather than cardboard boxes, in violation of a Honduran regulation that Honduras no longer enforces. They had fallen foul of the Lacey Act, which bars Americans from breaking foreign rules when hunting or fishing. The original intent was to prevent Americans from, say, poaching elephants in Kenya. But it has been interpreted to mean that they must abide by every footling wildlife regulation on Earth. The lobstermen had no idea they were breaking the law. Yet three of them got eight years apiece. Two are still in jail.

 

America is different from the rest of the world in lots of ways, many of them good. One of the bad ones is its willingness to lock up its citizens (see our briefing). One American adult in 100 festers behind bars (with the rate rising to one in nine for young black men). Its imprisoned population, at 2.3m, exceeds that of 15 of its states. No other rich country is nearly as punitive as the Land of the Free. The rate of incarceration is a fifth of America’s level in Britain, a ninth in Germany and a twelfth in Japan.

By. Steve Elliot, Toke of the Town

 

Either you support the failed Drug War party line, or your opinion isn't welcome. That seems to be the policy at a U.S. government-sponsored substance treatment conference in Chicago next week. Innovative solutions like legalization aren't even allowed at the table.

 

A group of police officers, judges and prosecutors who support legalizing and regulating drugs is crying foul after a federal agency reneged on a contract that gave the law enforcers a booth to share their anti-prohibition views at the Chicago conference.

 

After accepting registration payment from Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) at first told the police group that its booth was being cancelled at the National Conference on Women, Addiction and Recovery "because of overbooking and space concerns."

By Kate McLean, Bay Citizen

 

The Oakland City Council Tuesday voted in favor of a controversial proposal to permit giant medical marijuana-growing factories, but new questions are emerging about how these entities will fit into the state’s medical marijuana laws. The warehouses will be the first of their kind in California, and some say they could usher in an era of mechanized cannabis production and make Oakland ground zero for large-scale pot cultivation.

 

But the facilities, which could generate much more medical marijuana than Bay Area residents consume, have drawn criticism for their size and potential to supply cannabis to dispensaries throughout the state.

 

“It’s arguably legal under state law,” said Dale Gieringer, director of California NORML. “Depending on how they structure it, it’s also arguably illegal under state law.”

by Scott Morgan

 

Skip Miller is the chairman of DARE America and, as you might guess, he's terrified of what could happen if marijuana becomes legal:

 

Do we really want to make it easier to get stoned?

 

Cut through the smoke and that's really what California voters will be deciding in November with Proposition 19, which would make this the only state to fully legalize marijuana — a drug with proven negative health consequences.

…

The concern with marijuana is not based on my personal disapproval or bias but upon what science tells us about the drug's effects. The science is clear: Marijuana is associated with physical and mental illness, poor motor performance and cognitive impairment. [San Jose Mercury News]

 

So according to Skip Miller, science compels us to keep marijuana illegal. Yet, as SAFER points out, his website takes a very different tone when it comes to alcohol:

 

Take a minute and think how often adults drink alcohol: a cold beer at a baseball game, a glass of Chardonnay with a piece of broiled fish, a gin and tonic on a warm day. Social drinking is an acceptable and pleasurable activity for millions of Americans. It relaxes you, curbs stress, and chases away inhibitions… [DARE.org]

by Joel Connelly

 

Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe their country has a serious drug abuse problem, but 65 percent think the federal government's "War on Drugs" has been a failure, according to a new national Angus Reid poll.

 

Low marks for the "War on Drugs" cross party lines, with 63 percent of Democrats and 64 percent of Republicans and 70 percent of Independents picking the option of failure. Just 8 percent believe the anti-drug war is a success.

 

The poll of 1,003 American adults, taken July 14 and 15, shows that the public is drawing a distinction between marijuana and other drugs.

 

A total of 52 percent supported the legalization of marijuana. Just 8 percent would support legalization of heroin or powder cocaine or Methamphetamines.

 

Initiatives approving of marijuana for medical uses have passed in Washington and other Western states. California will vote on full legalization this November, although federal law continues to prohibit possession of cannabis.

By. Leonard Pitts Jr. The Spokesman-Review

 

Ron Allen probably thinks Alice Huffman has been smoking something.

 

Huffman, president of the California Conference of the NAACP, recently declared support for an initiative that, if passed by voters in November, will decriminalize the use and possession of marijuana. Huffman sees it as a civil rights issue.

 

In response, Bishop Allen, founder of a religious social activism group called the International Faith-Based Coalition, has come out swinging. “Why would the state NAACP advocate for blacks to stay high?” he demanded last week at a news conference in Sacramento. “It’s going to cause crime to go up. There will be more drug babies.” Allen wants Huffman to resign.

By Felisa Cardona, The Denver Post

 

Marijuana-legalization advocates cheered the upcoming departure of federal agent Jeffrey D. Sweetin because, they said, they believe his views are not in line with the will of Colorado voters who legalized the drug for medicinal purposes.

 

The outspoken special agent in charge of Denver's Drug Enforcement Administration understands that he became the "face" of anti-legalization in Colorado, but says his exit doesn't mean the fight over marijuana is over.

 

"The person who takes my place is going to have the same mission I have," Sweetin said.

 

DEA agents are sworn to uphold the constitution, and marijuana remains illegal under federal law, he said.