WASHINGTON, D.C. - Spurred by the recent Interior Department decision to block the use of federal irrigation water to cultivate marijuana, the four U.S. senators from Washington and Colorado want the White House to direct federal agencies to adopt uniform guidelines impacting recreational pot. In a letter Monday to White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, the lawmakers said the water ruling conflicts with earlier guidelines issued by the Justice and Treasury departments that seek to enforce the federal ban on marijuana only selectively. [continues 392 words]
U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert on Tuesday introduced a bill to ban the use of welfare-benefit cards at stores selling marijuana, adding them to a prohibited list that includes casinos, liquor stores, strip clubs and tattoo parlors. Reichert, a Republican from Auburn, joined 11 other lawmakers in sponsoring the Preserving Welfare for Needs Not Weed Act. The bill would prevent low-income recipients of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) benefits from using their cards to buy pot, or to withdraw cash from ATMs inside such stores. [continues 207 words]
7 in Congress Sign Letter Protection Sought From Federal Prosecution WASHINGTON - Seven congressional Democrats from Washington are pressing the U.S. Department of Justice to honor the state's new recreational-marijuana law - the delegation's first collective public statement on the issue. In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder released Tuesday, the Democrats urged quick action by the agency to assure pot users and sellers they won't be "penalized by the federal government for activities legal under state law." [continues 318 words]
Backers Bemoan Lack of Action Others Press to Square Law With Feds WASHINGTON - It's been seven months since Washington voters legalized recreational marijuana in defiance of federal law - and contrary to the personal beliefs of most of the state's representatives in Congress. Just four of the delegation's 12 members have acknowledged voting for last year's Initiative 502 to permit adults to possess small amounts of pot. Among those opposed were Rep. Dave Reichert of Auburn, a former King County sheriff, who said he was "dead set" against legalization, and Sen. Patty Murray, who previously voted against the successful 1998 state initiative for medical marijuana. [continues 1074 words]
WASHINGTON - Washington state's new marijuana-legalization law, which takes effect Thursday, is a direct affront to federal drug policy. So does Dave Reichert - the King County sheriff-turned-congressman - think users still should be subject to arrest by federal agents? He isn't saying. Neither is Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Spokane, the highest-ranking Republican woman in Congress. And Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, both of whom personally opposed making recreational pot legal, haven't exactly been at the forefront of trying to resolve the legal limbo. [continues 592 words]
WASHINGTON - Republican U.S. Senate hopeful Michael Baumgartner on Wednesday endorsed Initiative 502 to legalize retail sales of pot, calling the war on the illicit drug a matter of national security. The freshman state senator, who is challenging Democrat Maria Cantwell, worked several years ago for a State Department program in Afghanistan to help farmers grow wheat instead of opium poppies. He said his experience in Helmand province - and watching the U.S.-funded efforts to eradicate Mexican drug cartels - convinced him criminalizing marijuana for adults only enriches traffickers and takes law enforcement efforts from pursuing organized crime. [continues 137 words]
The Seattle Times Political Team Explores National, State and Local Politics. WASHINGTON -- They are two former Seattle police chiefs on opposing sides of the debate on legalizing drugs. And on Tuesday, Norm Stamper walked to the office of the nation's "drug czar" Gil Kerlikowske in Washington, D.C., to deliver a critical report on the Obama administration's failure to pull the plug on war on drugs. Stamper appeared at the National Press Club at a news conference of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), a national group which favors regulating sales of all illicit drugs, including marijuana, heroin and cocaine. Kerlikowske, who succeeded Stamper as Seattle's top cop in 2000, opposes legalization. [continues 341 words]
Hempfest celebrates all things cannabis, but that didn't stop strollers and toddlers Saturday from outnumbering aging hippies. In fact, the marijuana "protestival" that began 16 years ago in Seattle has acquired a patina of convention, with vendors peddling organic doughnuts and fretting about an influx of cheaper water pipes ("Don't call it a bong") from China and India. That's not to equate Hempfest with, say, Bumbershoot. Probably nowhere else in Seattle could festivalgoers festoon themselves with $3 fake marijuana leis or inhale the aroma of chicken gyro mingled with pot smoke. And reporters likely won't find anywhere else so many outspoken people who decline to give their names ("You never know what kind of list you might end up on"). [continues 387 words]
Recreational marijuana smokers are no more likely to develop oral cancer than nonusers, a new study led by the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center says. The latest findings contradict a 1999 California study that implicated regular pot smoking as having markedly higher risks for head and neck cancers. While not conclusive, the findings by "The Hutch," located in Seattle, suggest that cancers of the mouth should rank low among the known health hazards of marijuana use. Oral cancer "probably shouldn't be one of the things people should worry about when they decide whether to smoke marijuana," said Stephen Schwartz, a member of Fred Hutchinson's public-health sciences division and the study's senior author. "Our study found no relationship between marijuana and cancer." [continues 411 words]
Alarmed by a sharp increase in the use of narcotic painkillers by injured workers, the state Department of Labor and Industries is urging doctors to curtail their prescriptions for powerful opiates such as OxyContin and methadone. In a letter mailed yesterday to 10,000 doctors in the Northwest, the department warns of "potentially serious problems that may arise" when noncancer patients take long-acting opiates for chronic pain. The agency said it has identified 40 to 60 accidental-overdose deaths between 1995 and 2003 among injured Washington workers who took too many narcotic painkillers or painkillers mixed with other drugs. Most of the deaths occurred since 1999, after Labor and Industries began paying for opiates for chronic-pain patients who were hurt on the job. [continues 728 words]
