DEA Warnings Counter City's Compassionate Care Tradition, Mayor Asserts

OAKLAND -- Mayor Ron Dellums has asked a long-time former colleague, U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., to investigate the federal Drug Enforcement Administration's use of "threatening letters" to target medical cannabis dispensaries throughout California, including at least one in Oakland.

The DEA has sent hundreds of letters to people who own property on which cannabis dispensaries are operating. A DEA official called the notices a "courtesy" even though they threaten landlords with imprisonment and property forfeiture.

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Cancer Opens One's Eyes to the Many Facets of Marijuana.

Ahh, cancer. One learns so much from being diagnosed with a death-sentence disease. Of course, 95% of it is stuff you would rather not know, but that other 5% is downright interesting. For example, "America's Next Top Model" is much more fun to watch when you've lost 15 pounds without trying. During chemotherapy, vanilla smells good, but vanilla wafers taste disgusting. And eyelashes really do have a purpose; without them, my eyes are a dust magnet.

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Barely a year into its existence, the county needle exchange program has drawn high praise from the Board of Supervisors, including a rare public apology from Chairman Jerry Lenthall, a former police sergeant who had expressed reservations about the service.

"The culture I came from saw the death and destruction from needles," Lenthall told Public Health Director Greg Thomas last week. "You walked the walk. I owe you a public apology." Lenthall only reluctantly supported the program in a unanimous supervisory vote.

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MERCED -- Merced County officials passed an ordinance this week permanently banning medical marijuana dispensaries across the unincorporated county.

The Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to support the ordinance, which mirrors ordinances adopted by the cities of Modesto, Ceres, Merced, Patterson, Atwater and Los Banos. Many other cities have moratoriums on dispensaries.

Though there are no marijuana dispensaries in Merced County, officials said during the board meeting that dispensaries have been troublesome in other communities. Besides attracting crime, they can lower property values, disrupt nearby businesses and increase illegal drug use and demands on police, county planning officials said.

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The kids (most of them) are all right (mostly). Twenty-first century American teenagers may be pudgier than in the past, but they're less likely to abuse drugs, get drunk, smoke, commit a violent crime or get pregnant.

The annual Monitoring the Future survey reported generally good news for eighth-, 10th- and 12th-graders. In particular, eighth-graders are making wiser health choices.

In 1996, 21 percent of eighth-graders were smokers; that's dropped to 7 percent. Meanwhile, disapproval of smoking has soared.

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The Commission Is Trying to Get Out From Under a Court Order for Reform. Critics Say the New Policy Is Invasive and Won't Work.

The Los Angeles Police Commission approved a plan Thursday to require hundreds of anti-gang and narcotics officers to disclose detailed information about their personal finances, triggering an immediate court challenge by the police officers union and a debate at City Hall over whether to overrule the panel.

At issue in the rapidly intensifying dispute is what LAPD Chief William J. Bratton and the five-member commission hope will be one of the final pieces of a broad reform campaign that began after the Rampart corruption scandal and has kept the department under federal oversight since 2000.

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A Conceited Proposal

If audacious times call for audacious measures, then I'm sorry to report that no one in City Hall is willing to put their money where my mouth is. After watching the Santa Barbara City Council deliberate two weeks ago over a new ordinance to regulate the how, where, and when of medical marijuana dispensaries, I was struck more by what wasn't said than by what was. It was a conspicuous case of the dog that didn't bark, the other shoe that never dropped.

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It's Hard to See How Combing Through Police Officers' Finances Would Be a Useful Tool for Fighting Corruption.

The Los Angeles Police Department recently entered its eighth year under a federal consent decree that imposes strict mandates on operations and record keeping. The LAPD has modernized its procedures to root out corruption and purge from its ranks a Rampart-era culture of excessive force and false arrest. Full compliance with the decree is within reach, and it is tempting to urge the Police Commission to finish the job today by completing one final piece -- requiring full disclosure of personal and family finances by those officers in specialized units who in theory could be bribed because of greed or financial distress.

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Gang and Narcotics Officers Won't Stand for a Financial Snooping Requirement.

Violent crime is down in L.A. by 7.8%, property crime by 3.4%. That's the good news. The bad news is that, as of this morning, up to 800 gang and narcotics officers who helped make that drop possible are deciding whether to leave their jobs -- all because of the inability of a federal judge to make a sensible decision.

Here's the deal. According to the provisions of the federal consent decree, LAPD officers at the rank of lieutenant or below who work in either gang or narcotics details have to sign disclosure agreements documenting all their personal finances and giving the department access to their financial records. The idea is to ensure that these officers are not stealing money, drugs or other "valuable contraband." The provision has never been enforced -- until now.

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For years, when Janet Seaboyer sought relief from her frequent bouts of anxiety, she went to the Compassionate Center of Santa Barbara and ordered from a marijuana menu that featured chocolate pecan truffles and cannabis strains with names like Purple Urkle and Sweet and Sour. But the Compassionate Center shut down at the end of October, and the 54-year-old Ms. Seaboyer -- who says she has suffered from epilepsy since childhood -- is considering going back to clandestine street purchasing. "I wouldn't want to, but if I have no other choice that's what I'd have to do," she says. Californians legalized marijuana for medical use in 1996 when they passed Proposition 215. But a recent crackdown in this Southern California enclave and elsewhere in the state by the federal Drug Enforcement Administration has forced a number of dispensaries out of business and highlighted the awkward tension between state and federal laws.

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Some 500 LAPD gang and narcotics officers are threatening to retire or change jobs if the city follows through on a proposal forcing them to reveal their personal finances, union officials said.

A financial-disclosure proposal set to be considered by the five-member civilian police commission Thursday would be the last major hurdle to comply with a seven-year old federal consent decree meant to root out police corruption.

Under the proposal, all gang and narcotics officers with the rank of lieutenant or below must provide a detailed list of their finances including all their properties, past-due credit card debts, outside income, stocks, bonds and checking accounts.

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Re "DEA alerts pot-store landlords / Letters warn of penalties for leasing to marijuana dispensaries," Dec. 15: When the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration shuts down all the cannabis dispensaries in California, despite Proposition 215 being approved overwhelmingly by the public in 1996, do the agents think everyone will stop using cannabis?

Many patients are helped in so many ways. And, you know what else, people? It works! And, it is cheaper and safer than other medications. HA!

When they close down the dispensaries, they make us all illegal. Is that what they want? Cannabis is the biggest cash crop in the United States. It isn't going away; neither are the users.

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The Issue Of Regulating Marijuana Grow Houses And Clinics Returns To The Arcata City Council Tonight.

City staff is requesting the council provide direction in preparing draft standards for personal marijuana growing in residential zones based on Senate Bill 420 guidelines and one Proposition 215 recommendation per residence, according to a staff report.

Once standards are established, staff is recommending they be incorporated into the draft land-use code through a public hearing process before the Planning Commission and then taken to the City Council for adoption.

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3 Sonora Arrests Come As Seizures Of Candy-Flavored Drugs Reported Nationwide

During a drug bust earlier this month, Tuolumne County sheriff's narcotics detectives discovered 2.35 ounces of methamphetamine in small plastic baggies hidden inside a shaving cream can and a vehicle starting fluid can. Both had false bottoms.

The detectives arrested three people on Dec. 3 at a home on Cherokee Road in Sonora and later determined that the meth was individually packaged to be sold, according to sheriff's officials.

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Federal and State Lockups Will Release Perhaps Thousands of Inmates Next Year. L.A. County Should Prepare.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission corrected a subtle injustice last week when it decided to retroactively reduce the sentences of inmates imprisoned for using or selling crack cocaine, making those terms correspond more closely with powder cocaine sentences. When justice is vindicated, even late in the process, it's a victory for everyone. But the victory isn't free.

Several thousand federal inmates currently behind bars on crack convictions will be eligible for release beginning in March -- and some of them could be coming to a street near you. It is pleasant to imagine those people arriving home free of their addictions, fully trained for readily available jobs, rehabilitated by prison and ready to contribute to their communities. It is pleasant -- but a fantasy.

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Widow of Aldous Huxley Preserved His Legacy

Laura Archera Huxley, a lay therapist, author and widow of Aldous Huxley, who shared his vision of human potential and devoted the nearly five decades since his death to preserving his legacy and helping others -- particularly children -- achieve happiness, died Thursday at her home in the Hollywood Hills. She was 96.

The cause was cancer, said Dan Hirsch, a longtime friend.

Huxley met her husband in 1948, 16 years after his anti-utopian novel "Brave New World" had established him as a formidable thinker, writer and social critic. She married him in 1956, a year after the death of his first wife, and over the next seven years was his muse and partner in the explorations of consciousness that helped to spark the psychedelic movement of the 1960s.

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Re "Justices OK latitude on sentencing," Dec. 11

Finally, the Supreme Court has positively reacted to the cruelty of a bad sentencing law that has been tossed around between legislatures and the courts for 20 years. In that time, an alarming number of people's lives have been destroyed by racially discriminatory crack-cocaine laws that disproportionately sentenced people of color. However, the decision to give judges more power to use sentencing discretion is only a first step in correcting these clearly draconian laws that were constructed because of the politics of the drug war. I hope it sends a clear message to prosecutors that mandatory minimum sentences are a part of an archaic judicial structure that needs to be overhauled in the name of justice.

Anthony Papa

Communications Specialist

Drug Policy Alliance

New York

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This is regarding Niki Payne's outstanding column: "New pot raids call for new leadership" In the Dec. 12 issue of the Daily Forty-Niner.

Beyond just the use of marijuana as medicine, why do so many of our politicians want to keep a natural herb that has never been documented to kill a single person, a criminalized substance? Why do apparently intelligent people want to arrest and jail other people who use or sell an easy-to-grow weed?

Perhaps to understand their position, we should study the history of U.S. alcohol prohibition. The notorious gangster Al Capone made most of his illegally obtained money from alcohol prohibition. Capone often bragged that he "owned" the city of Chicago. Obviously, he didn't own all of the city of Chicago; however, he had most, or all, of the politicians and police who ran the city on his payroll.

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I hope Niki Payne is right in her Dec. 11 Daily Forty-Niner article about Barack Obama's potential for leadership.

With the exception of Dennis Kucinich on the left and Ron Paul on the right, drug policy reform is conspicuously absent from the presidential campaign. Most candidates are all too willing to jail citizens for consensual vices they themselves once engaged in.

After allegedly not inhaling, [former Pres. Bill] Clinton went out of his way to prove his tough-on-some-drugs credentials. An admitted former problem-drinker and alleged illicit drug user, Bush has gone so far to as to arrest cancer and AIDS patients in states with voter-approved medical marijuana laws.

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As a friend of presidents and hobnobber with governors, David Fleming makes an unlikely insurgent against the War on Drugs.

He's been dubbed by a local business weekly as "The Valley's Most Powerful Person," chairs the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce and doles out dollars to charity by the millions.

He works for one of the world's largest law firms. He can preach for hours about business tax, government reform and transportation.

With his immaculate white shirts, slicked-back hair and easy familiarity with powerful people, Fleming embodies The Man.

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