Saturday night, the Senate passed an omnibus spending bill, averting a government shutdown and keeping the government open through September 2015 once signed into law. In a rare moment of compromise, Congressional Democrats and Republicans were able to piece together a $1.1 trillion spending package that pays for many things on President Barack Obama's priority list. Topping headlines was the bill's targeting of the Dodd-Frank law, which aimed to curb some of Wall Street's riskiest trading, and its allowing of wealthy donors to contribute hundreds of thousands of dollars to lawmakers. [continues 379 words]
Several decades from now, when historians look back at the beginning of the end of the expensive, wasteful and tragic American War on Drugs, Jesse Snodgrass may very well be mentioned prominently. It shouldn't be that way, of course. An autistic 17-year-old student at Chaparral High School in Southern California should never have been swallowed up by the American anti-drug industrial complex, but he was. Want some dollars and cents figures? The drug war is big business; bigger than U.S. Steel, as Hyman Roth would say. The federal government spent $15 billion in 2010 on the War on Drugs, according to the Office of National Drug Control Policy. That's about $500 per second. State and local governments spent at least another $25 billion in 2010. [continues 372 words]
Several decades from now, when historians look back at the beginning of the end of the expensive, wasteful and tragic American War on Drugs, Jesse Snodgrass may very well be mentioned prominently. It shouldn't be that way, of course. An autistic 17-year-old student at Chaparral High School in Southern California should never have been swallowed up by the American anti-drug industrial complex, but he was. Want some dollars and cents figures? The drug war is big business; bigger than U.S. Steel, as Hyman Roth would say. The federal government spent $15 billion in 2010 on the War on Drugs, according to the Office of National Drug Control Policy. That's about $500 per second. State and local governments spent at least another $25 billion in 2010. [continues 586 words]
A Holtsville couple ran a heroin enterprise for at least a year out of the home they shared with up to 10 children until it was broken last month, Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota said Wednesday. [name redacted], 27, and her husband, [name redacted], 57, ran the drug ring from their Holtsville home, which served as the "main distribution point" for pickups by dealers from Holbrook and at least six other Suffolk communities, authorities said. "They participated, they encouraged and they sold to addicts whose lives were being destroyed . . . " Spota said at a news conference. "They destroyed the lives of the families of these addicts, and, of course, the people of Suffolk County were also suffering." [continues 483 words]
To the Editor: President Barack Obama must be ignorant of the facts, or just made a stupid statement when he said recently that marijuana is no more dangerous than alcohol. This is ludicrous. His own Office of National Drug Control Policy says that there are more carcinogens in marijuana smoke than tobacco smoke. Studies have shown that men in their 20s and 30s can have permanent brain damage, poor memory and reduced I.Q. after smoking marijuana. We've spent billions of taxpayer dollars warning our youth on the dangers of drugs, and these efforts have been undercut by the president's comments. [continues 63 words]
To the Editor: I'd like to thank the Herald for reaffirming its support for reducing marijuana penalties in New Hampshire. All five other New England states have removed their criminal penalties for simple possession of marijuana, and voters overwhelmingly agree that New Hampshire should do so as well. However, I felt it was necessary to respond to the Herald's use of the term "brain-cell-killing" in its editorial (Jan. 3, "Legalizing recreational pot can wait"). There is, in fact, no currently accepted scientific evidence showing that marijuana use kills brain cells. By contrast, there is a great deal of evidence showing that heavy alcohol use causes permanent brain damage. [continues 116 words]
Congress Wants Added Penalties for the Farms, Which Cause Environmental Harm. WASHINGTON - Scientists have likened the illegal marijuana-growing operations in remote areas of the West to leaking chemical-weapons stockpiles, with the heavy use of fertilizers and pesticides posing risks to the environment, including to waterways and wildlife. In response, Congress is moving to toughen the penalties for cultivating pot on federal land. The Senate recently approved a measure that would add - on top of the sentence for illegally growing marijuana - up to 10 years of prison time for those cultivating the drug on federal land. The measure, a little-noticed addition to the immigration overhaul bill, also calls for new penalties for environmental damage such as that caused by the use of toxic chemicals. [continues 580 words]
The American Civil Liberties Union's report ("The War on Marijuana in Black and White: Billions of Dollars Wasted on Racially Biased Arrests" www.aclu.org/marijuana) confirms what many suspected: Arrests for marijuana possession are wasteful, destructive and marred by racial bias. The report examined marijuana arrest rates nationally and documents that while there were pronounced racial disparities 10 years ago - the problem has become significantly worse. Over the last 20 years police have turned much of their zeal for fighting the misguided "War on Drugs" toward the enforcement of marijuana laws - which, disproportionately, has been a war on people of color. State and local police have aggressively enforced marijuana laws selectively against black people, ensnaring hundreds of thousands of people in the criminal justice system at tremendous human and financial cost. [continues 484 words]
Last week the American Civil Liberties Union issued a report ("The War on Marijuana in Black and White: Billions of Dollars Wasted on Racially Biased Arrests" www.aclu.org/marijuana) confirming what everyone suspected: marijuana possession arrests are wasteful, destructive and marred by racial bias. The report, the first ever examining state and county marijuana arrest rates nationally by race, documents that while there were pronounced racial disparities in marijuana arrests 10 years ago the problem has become significantly worse. Over the last twenty years, in communities across the country, police have turned much of their zeal for fighting the misguided "War on Drugs" towards the enforcement of marijuana laws and that has disproportionately been a war on people of color. State and local police have aggressively enforced marijuana laws selectively against black people, ensnaring hundreds of thousands of people in the criminal justice system. [continues 516 words]
Orange County Rep. Dana Rohrabacher Is Hoping More Colleagues Are Starting to See Things His Way. WASHINGTON - For more than a decade, conservative Orange County Rep. Dana Rohrabacher has formed an unusual alliance with liberals on an unexpected topic - the defense of marijuana. Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) and his allies have so far waged a futile effort to pass legislation that would prevent federal authorities from interfering with medical marijuana use in California and other places where pot use is permitted by state law. [continues 632 words]
St. John's, Antigua -- A prominent doctor said he would indeed prescribe medical marijuana to patients if the drug were decriminalised in Antigua & Barbuda. Sir Prince Ramsey relayed that the positives of medicinal marijuana use outweigh the negatives associated with it -- a position that he has held for the last 12 years. "It is the misuse of the drug that causes the problem. They misuse the drug by using too much and get addicted and that is the problem," the doctor said in an interview with OBSERVER Media. [continues 372 words]
St. John's Antigua- An internationally recognized drug policy reform advocate has said Antigua & Barbuda need not fear the wrath of the United States if government chooses to decriminalise small amounts of marijuana. "What it boils down to is that any country, even a small country like Antigua, can decriminalise and end the criminalisation of (cannabis) possession unilaterally, with virtually no negative feedback from other countries," Ethan Nadelmann, founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance in New York said in an exclusive interview with OBSERVER Media. [continues 399 words]
Seven men who grew up together gathered in an alley near a notorious Camden drug corner. The month before, at least two of them had celebrated a birthday with a barbecue and champagne. But this day, a squabble over drug turf erupted into an argument. The men came from at least three sets of the Bloods street gang. They were packing guns. Eventually - perhaps inevitably - bullets flew near Sixth and Royden Streets in the Lanning Square neighborhood. When the firing stopped, Robert Carstarphen, 27, was down. It wasn't the first time, his mother said. He had survived being riddled with nine bullets in 2007 and six more in 2011. [continues 1132 words]
Nearly three years have passed since House and Senate lawmakers first approved a medical marijuana bill to protect patients with debilitating illnesses in New Hampshire. That bill fell just short of becoming law in 2009, when an effort to override Gov. John Lynch's veto passed the House but failed by only two votes in the Senate. When the 2010 election resulted in Republican supermajorities in both chambers of the General Court, many felt this issue would be placed on hold for two years. [continues 382 words]
Cities Crack Down on Proliferation, Say Medical Marijuana Not So Medical STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo.--Kevin Fisher, a bartender in this laid-back ski town, thought he had hit upon the next gold rush. He and a buddy sank all their savings into opening a medical-marijuana dispensary in the summer of 2009. As the cash rolled in, they kept investing: By the owners' tally, they pumped $1.5 million into a business that now has 36 employees, a greenhouse full of cannabis and a busy pot pharmacy selling a dozen strains of weed. [continues 947 words]
People like Sherry Coffin really need to take the reefer madness blinders off. Marijuana is not a gateway drug. I choose not to use it, but I literally know thousands of people that smoke from my 15 years of schooling, work and music in this valley, and you know what they do? Relax, indoors or out, from working their tails off all week. They don't go out and rear-end your Camry, or sell dime bags to your children, or break their sister's piggy to go blast some rails of coke. Addicts of harder, more addictive drugs like meth or oxy do those things, with the choices they make while under the influence of those drugs, not marijuana. [continues 196 words]
DENVER-Colorado state regulators are putting the final touches on a fat stack of rules aimed at monitoring, recording and tracking every aspect of the booming medical-marijuana industry, from seed to sale. The regulatory system-more rigorous and comprehensive than in any other state-will likely require pot growers to place tags on every plant and train security cameras on their cultivation rooms around the clock. Cannabis dispensaries, meanwhile, will likely be required to record high-resolution video of every customer's face and photo identification and then link that footage to a computer record of each purchase. Even the moment when the dried weed is weighed for sale will have to be captured on video, according to draft regulations now being finalized. [continues 710 words]
Congratulations to Channel 4 for screening the most sensible film about drugs I've ever seen. Whether or not you believe drugs should be de-criminalised, it's blindingly obvious that if the intention of Britain's drug policies is to stop people using them, then they're absolutely not working. Angus MacQueen's calm, un-hysterical film asks the question we must all be wondering: what did the UKP1.5 billion we spent last year on fighting drugs actually achieve? [continues 196 words]
An employee recently approached Josh Ward, an executive at a Denver plumbing company, with a question he never thought he'd hear. Her husband, the employee said, is a state-registered medical marijuana patient. Could she buy his marijuana with her company-provided flexible spending account? "We were like, 'Whoa!'" Mr. Ward said. Mr. Ward did a bit of research and quickly told the employee no. Her account, funded with pretax dollars, is regulated by the Internal Revenue Service and cannot be used to purchase a drug that's illegal under federal statutes, even if Colorado treats it as a legitimate medication. [continues 1028 words]
Medical Marijuana Brands Like 'AK-47' Harsh the Mellow of Upscale Potrepreneurs DENVER - Attorney Warren Edson would like to throttle the anonymous marijuana breeder who named a potent strain of weed "Green Crack." He's not too fond, either, of those breeders who have given strains names like "Jack the Ripper," "White Widow," "AK-47" and "Trainwreck." "How can I find them and strangle them?" Mr. Edson asks. His beef: Mr. Edson is in the vanguard of an aggressive movement to make pot respectable -but decades of stoner culture keep dragging him down. [continues 953 words]
