It seems that no presidential debate this year would be complete without denunciations of the drug laws, which, it is alleged, result in long prison terms for thousands of people, disproportionately African Americans, who are guilty only of low-level offenses, thus fueling "mass incarceration." At the last Republican debate, on Sept. 16, former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina charged that "two-thirds of the people in our prisons are there for nonviolent offenses, mostly drug-related." Apropos of former Florida governor Jeb Bush's admitted youthful marijuana use, Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) observed that "there is at least one prominent example on the stage of someone who says they smoked pot in high school, and yet the people going to jail for this are poor people, often African Americans and often Hispanics, and yet the rich kids who use drugs aren't." [continues 662 words]
My parents taught my brother and me to respect the police. We once lived on the same West Baltimore street where riots broke out after the death of Freddie Gray, whowas injured in police custody on April 12. Gray was unconscious when a police van transporting him for booking arrived at the police station. He died one week later from spinal cord injuries. Gray's death sparked protests in Baltimore and other cities. After getting a law degree, I returned to Baltimore and became an assistant state's attorney, a black female prosecutor among many white male prosecutors. That's when I began work on the assembly line that is the United States' criminal justice system, in the same office that later charged six officers in Gray's death. [continues 538 words]
When Samson Paisely entered the buds of his marijuana plant in the D.C. State Fair's first-ever marijuana competition Saturday, he wanted to pay tribute to a man who legalized another once-illicit substance. So he named the strain of marijuana "Delano," after Franklin Delano Roosevelt - the president who repealed the country's prohibition of alcohol in 1933. "If we can repeal prohibition, then surely we can smoke [marijuana] in America," said Paisely, 45, who grew the plants in his Adams Morgan home. [continues 539 words]
As Their Crops Mature, Growers Cook Up Ways to Profit From Surplus Yield In upper Northwest Washington, marijuana buds the size of zucchinis hang drying in a room once reserved for yoga. In the Shaw neighborhood, pot grown in a converted closet sits meticulously trimmed, weighed and sealed in jars. Elsewhere, from Georgetown to Capitol Hill to Congress Heights, seven-leafed weeds are flowering in bedrooms, back yards and window boxes. Welcome to the first crop of legal pot in the nation's capital - where residents may grow and possess marijuana but are still forbidden to sell it. [continues 1703 words]
Regarding the Aug. 21 editorial "The heroin emergency": Seriously ill children who are in significant pain should have access to all possibly effective prescription painkillers, and their doctors should have information about dosage, scheduling and toxicities of those painkillers. The recent Food and Drug Administration decision to approve Oxy Contin for children as young as 11 does just that - it gives their doctors better information on how to treat their pain. Drug abuse prevention is critically important. However, suggesting that seriously ill children for whom Oxy Contin is an appropriate treatment should instead suffer so that potential drug abusers are not harmed is not a fair or reasonable policy solution. Nancy Goodman, Washington The writer is executive director of Kids v. Cancer. [end]
Controlling Prescription Opioids Can Help Curb the Epidemic. NOT EVEN the federal government can solve the nation's growing heroin epidemic on its own, but it could always do more. That's probably the best way to think about the new anti-heroin initiative unveiled by the White House on Monday. A one-year, $2.5 million plan to track the flow of drugs through the Northeastern states and other "high-intensity" regions certainly can't hurt; but the White House isn't pretending that its new initiative will conquer the problem and nor should anyone else. [continues 457 words]
Regarding the Aug. 13 front-page article "When life begins in rehab": Let me get this straight: Ashley Kennedy faces no criminal charges for the agonizing pain she inflicted on her daughter, Makenzee, and when Ms. Kennedy and Makenzee are released from treatment, they will leave together. It seems that as a community we believe that addicts' criminal acts are not their fault and that their efforts to "get clean" outweigh the long-term interests of a severely injured infant who needs to find protection and stability. Sarah Willens Kass, Washington [end]
STONED A Doctor's Case for Medical Marijuana By David Casarett Current. 289 pp. $27.95 'Does medical marijuana 'work'?" That question, posed in an illuminating new book by David Casarett, a hospice physician and researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, sounds simple and turns out to be anything but. The short answer is that it depends on the symptom or problem being treated, on the physiology of the patient using it, on the mode of drug delivery (a joint? a brownie? a vapor pen? a beer?) and on various other factors. [continues 1165 words]
A Pregnant Heroin Addict Passes on Her Struggle After a month of painful withdrawal that bunched her body into a tight ball, after tremors and diarrhea and sleeplessness and difficulty eating, Makenzee Kennedy went home to her bed in a drug rehab facility to celebrate a milestone: turning 2 months old. She lives there for now with her mother, 31-year-old Ashley Kennedy, who is 11 years into her on-again, off-again struggle with heroin addiction. If all goes well, Makenzee will never again see the inside of Mount Washington Pediatric Hospital, where she was weaned off drugs through intensive, round-the-clock care. "It's not my first time trying to stop," Ashley Kennedy acknowledged as she bottle-fed Makenzee. "It's my last time now. I don't want to touch another drug after putting my baby through this." In communities across the nation, the collateral damage of the heroin epidemic is rippling through the health-care system. The rate of hepatitis C is skyrocketing, fueled by needle sharing among addicts. Experts worry that an upturn in HIV rates may not be far behind. And the rate of fatal heroin overdoses has quadrupled over the past 10 years. In Baltimore, nearly two-thirds of the 302 overdose deaths last year were caused by heroin. "We have a very serious issue in the U.S. right now in terms of the use of heroin and other opiate agents," said Alan Spitzer, senior vice president at Mednax, which provides maternal and newborn medical services to hospitals. [continues 1209 words]
Legalization Manifests Itself in Tasting Parties and Shrugged Shoulders About 30 party guests wearing suits and summer dresses mingled in the candlelit back yard of a small, private home in the Forest Hills neighborhood in Northwest Washington and snacked on hors d'oeuvres to the sound of jazz. Instead of cocktails, they sipped gourmet coffee and tea infused with marijuana. In the kitchen, servers poured hot and iced drinks for the tasting party. They were showcasing products from House of Jane, a California-based company that sells cannabis-infused beverages. Jane's Brew C-Cups were on display in the living room, stacked on a table alongside similarly branded coasters. [continues 1405 words]
Don Winslow, novelist and conscientious objector to America's longest "war," was skeptical when he was in Washington on a recent Sunday morning. This was shortly after news broke about the escape, from one of Mexico's "maximum-security" prisons, of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, head of the Sinaloa drug cartel. Guzman reportedly disappeared through a tunnel almost a mile long and built solely for his escape. Asked about this, Winslow, his fork poised over an omelet, dryly said he thinks Guzman might actually have driven away from the prison's front gate in a Lincoln Town Car. What might seem like cynicism could be Winslow's realism. [continues 647 words]
This month, President Obama commuted the long sentences of 46 federal prisoners convicted of drug crimes, and over the next fewdays he laid out his vision for criminal justice reform in speeches to the NAACP and at the El Reno Federal Correctional Institution in Oklahoma. Prison reformers hailed these events as important steps forward in the effort to rein in the sprawling U.S. prison system. I don't think they should be so happy. Obama's speeches, unfortunately, explicitly emphasized one of the most problematic myths standing in theway of true penal reform, and the commutations implicitly did the same. In all three instances, Obama suggested that we can scale back incarceration by focusing solely on nonviolent offenders. [continues 725 words]
Commuting sentences isn't about the law. It's about mercy, writes reform advocate Dennis Cauchon. President Obama's historic visit to a federal prison on Thursday shows that his head and his heart are in the right place on criminal justice reform. As he said a few days earlier, "Mass incarceration makes our country worse off, and we need to do something about it." The president overhauled the clemency process in April 2014 to much fanfare. He said that he wanted more worthy applications on his desk and that he was ready to act aggressively to approve them. But it's hard to square that rhetoric, andthe compassion Obama demonstrated by meeting with prisoners this past week, with Monday's miserly announcement that he'd granted clemency to 46 people. [continues 1336 words]
The High Taking Over Streets Is So Variable, It's Hard to Stop or Treat The man in the Mickey Mouse shirt was clinging to a light pole on H Street NE when police showed up, and then he dropped his pants. Another man near Eastern Market was laughing so hard that paramedics had trouble keeping him on a stretcher. A third, whom police found prancing through Capitol Hill, started kicking and screaming when eight police and fire officials tried to restrain him. [continues 1862 words]
Regarding the July 12 editorial "Weeding out synthetic drugs" : The use of so-called synthetic marijuana is an unintended side effect of the war on natural marijuana. Consumers are turning to potentially toxic drugs, made in China and sold as research chemicals before being repackaged as incense for retail sale in the United States. A punitive criminal justice system incentivizes use. These chemicals cannot be detected by standard drug tests. Some people use synthetic drugs to escape detection. Cracking down on retail sales will drive users to the Internet, where dangerous synthetic highs are readily available. A better solution is to legalize retail marijuana sales and stop drug testing for marijuana. [continues 63 words]
The President Visits a Federal Prison and Makes a Strong Case for Sentencing Reform. PRESIDENT OBAMA went somewhere Thursday that, according to the White House, no other sitting president ever has: a federal prison. His point was that no advanced society should be comfortable with the way this country punishes crime. The nation locks up too many people for too long, and it too often treats them poorly behind bars. In part because of Mr. Obama-but also because of a strong left-right alliance that includes the Koch brothers, the American Civil Liberties Union and others in between- change could come very soon. If, that is, Congress acts. [continues 491 words]
The difficulty in testing synthetic drugs is slowing the prosecution of suspects accused of possessing or selling the chemically engineered substances, even as authorities blame them for a spike in violence and overdoses, according to District officials. Prosecutors with the U.S. attorney's office have been unable to charge a number of people recently arrested, and many of them have had to be released while officials await test results, city and federal officials said. Police said they hope to charge them once testing is completed. [continues 930 words]
The Pot Head's Argument for Health Benefits Goes Up in Smoke Celebrating the medical benefits, if any, of marijuana has been an effective ruse to win social acceptance for getting high. This was thoroughly predictable, and now it's clear that the organized pot heads have been blowing smoke at us. This is the preliminary conclusion of a new wideranging study of the effects of medical pot. The rush toward legalization, like most whoring after new things, is likely doing considerably more harm than miniscule good. [continues 532 words]
The District's mayor has signed into law harsh new penalties for stores found selling synthetic marijuana in order to prevent an epidemic from taking hold in nation's capital the way crack cocaine once held D.C. streets hostage. The law grants Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier immediate authority to shutter businesses found selling synthetic marijuana for up to 96 hours and gives the mayor authority to fine businesses $10,000. "We don't want to go back to the crack cocaine days of what happens when people are addicted to dangerous drugs," said Chief Lanier after D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser signed the bill into law Friday. [continues 514 words]
A New D.C. Law Gives Police the Means to Combat Dangerous Substances. NEARLY A dozen people were rushed to the hospital after a mass drug overdose at a D.C. homeless shelter last month. A woman was accused of abandoning a 10-month-old baby on a busy D.C. street. A seemingly crazed 18-year-old allegedly stabbed to death a man on a Metro train July 4. Authorities say the common denominator in these incidents was the use of synthetic drugs. Emergency legislation to deal with the rising use of the dangerous substances comes none too soon. [continues 342 words]
A Medical Extract Offers Relief for Epileptic Children Imagine the following scenario: You have a son or daughter who suffers from epilepsy. Seizures wrack your child's body every day. Some days, he or she endures a dozen or more seizures. The condition prevents your child from going to school, from eating normally, from having friends. It also exacts a toll on you and your family. You cannot leave your child alone for any extended period of time, and certain activities, such as sports games, road trips or visits to the movie theater, are off limits. [continues 788 words]
"FBI drug agent risked all to feed heroin habit" [front page, June 29] was remarkable in that this disgraced felon showed no remorse for his crimes. As a former FBI executive who retired from the Washington field office and a former superintendent of detectives for the Metropolitan Police Department, I find Matthew Lowry's criminal conduct outrageous. The FBI motto is "Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity." Mr. Lowry's actions were disloyal, cowardly and dishonorable to his country, the FBI, his family, the citizens of the District of Columbia and, lastly, himself. [continues 72 words]
A Medical Extract Offers Relief for Epileptic Children Imagine the following scenario: You have a son or daughter who suffers from epilepsy. Seizures wrack your child's body every day. Some days, he or she endures a dozen or more seizures. The condition prevents your child from going to school, from eating normally, from having friends. It also exacts a toll on you and your family. You cannot leave your child alone for any extended period of time, and certain activities, such as sports games, road trips or visits to the movie theater, are off limits. [continues 783 words]
He Was Stealing Seized Evidence Even As Agency Was Hailing His Work "How do you tell someone you've idolized your entire life that you're a heroin addict?" Matthew Lowry, who kept his addiction hidden from his father and others Matthew Lowry was out of pills and getting desperate. The doctor who prescribed pain medication to ease his chronic and painful inflammation of the intestines had disappeared. He went to clinics, but his wife had begun questioning the bills. He was shaking, sweating, tired. [continues 2360 words]
D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser vowed Monday to crack down hard on suppliers of synthetic drugs after a surge in overdoses sent dozens of people to area hospitals in the past month. Bowser (D) plans to introduce emergency legislation this week that would give the D.C. police chief authority to shut down any business found selling the drugs for a period of 96 hours while police investigate. The legislation would also institute a "two-strike rule," allowing the police chief to shut down two-time offenders for a period of up to 30 days, coupled with a $10,000 fine-five times as much as the current penalty. The District's Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs would then move to permanently revoke a store's license, Bowser said Monday at a news conference outside Sasha Bruce Youthwork, an organization that works with at-risk and homeless youths. [continues 659 words]
Residents' Responses Range From Praise to Skepticism Citing disappearing open-air drug markets and new ways narcotics are being sold, D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier says she wants her detectives to concentrate on suppliers and not streetcorner busts that have long been a staple of policing across the country. The strategy shift, outlined at a community meeting Thursday, will eliminate most of the plainclothes operations police have used for decades to target outdoor drug sales, magnets for drive-by shootings and other violence. Coming at a tense moment in the nation's relations between police and the public, it could also ease confrontations involving officers not immediately identifiable as law enforcement. It is an admission that some tactics - which were viewed by some critics as heavyhanded even when the crack epidemic sparked record numbers of homicides - no longer make sense amid a decline in fatal shootings and the availability of synthetic narcotics sold over the Internet, through social media and in convenience stores. "Our main goal is the supply," Lanier told about three dozen residents at the community forum in Northeast Washington. "We don't want to focus police efforts on just people who are addicted. We want to be focusing on the people who are bringing the stuff in." In an interview, she added: "Our criminal environment is changing rapidly. We have to keep up." The plan would eliminate District vice squads - each with about 20 detectives and supervisors - and shift higher-level investigations to the centralized Narcotics and Special Investigations Division. [continues 834 words]
House Budget Plan Would Continue Ban on Sales but Not Roll Back Legalization House Republicans advanced a budget plan Thursday that would prevent legal sales of marijuana in the District until at least 2017. Advocates for legalization, however, called it a victory. What the Republican budget does not do yet is roll back Initiative 71, the voter-approved measure from November that legalized pot for recreational use in the nation's capital. Since early this year, D.C. residents have been allowed to possess, grow and, in the privacy of their own homes, smoke marijuana. [continues 779 words]
Regarding the June 7Metro article "Pot-smoking parents: What about the kids?": Parents can reconcile personal marijuana consumption with its effects on children with three tools: science to understand how marijuana harms the developing adolescent brain and can be addictive in some people; a clear understanding of the law, including the differences between federal and state laws and between legalization and decriminalization; and strategies to have age-appropriate, effective communication with their children that acknowledges some laws have not caught up with science. [continues 120 words]
The June 7 front-page article "Against his better judgment," about mandatory minimum sentencing in drug cases, quoted U.S. District Judge Mark Bennett telling a defendant, "My hands are tied on your sentence. I'm sorry." The article failed to note that there is an actor in the system whose hands aren't tied: the federal prosecutor. Federal prosecutors have the discretion to pursue lesser charges in these cases but choose not to. Why would the prosecutor agree only to a plea bargain that carried a 10-year mandatory minimum for a defendant? How does he or she respond to the judge's criticism? Why was such a decision made in light of the Justice Department's August 2013 directive to assistant U.S. attorneys not to pursue charges bearing mandatory minimums against first-time nonviolent offenders? An examination of this case or sentencing in general should not overlook the immense power prosecutors have to alleviate the injustice of mandatory minimum sentencing or to perpetuate it. Brian A. Dupre, Washington [end]
Many Uncertain About Navigating the 'New Normal' Like the parent of any toddler and kindergartner, Jared wants to keep certain things out of reach. Liquor is stored out of sight in a cupboard. The household cleaners are safely kept behind childproof locks. And the marijuana is stashed high on a shelf in a fireproof lockbox. Evenings fall into a familiar routine. Family dinner. Baths. Then, after their daughters are snuggled in for the night, Jared slips out onto the back deck of their District apartment and a now-legal bowl of marijuana. [continues 1623 words]
In her May 31 Sunday Opinion commentary, "Caught in the drug trade," Danielle Allen proposed decriminalizing marijuana and other illegal drugs as a matter of justice because drug prohibition laws are administered inequitably. This reminds me of T.S. Eliot's line, "The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason." Even if drug prohibition were administered equitably, it would still be a costly folly, as we should have learned many years ago with alcohol prohibition. Alcohol and tobacco are as addictive and harmful as any of the prohibited drugs. An enlightened policy would legalize, regulate, tax and educate. Prohibition serves only to establish a criminal enterprise that breeds violence and tends to corrupt law enforcement. We spend some $50 billion a year to maintain this futile policy. If we would do the right thing, we would eliminate a great deal of corruption and violence while tapping a significant source of revenue. Stan Namovicz, Takoma Park [end]
The new visibility of police violence toward African Americans has stoked public debate about policing: What about body cameras? Should we reform police training? Perhaps we should go slow on all that military gear? I find it almost impossible to sit through any of this while the underlying issue goes unaddressed: It's the drug economy, stupid. It's well past time to legalize marijuana. But it's also time to consider decriminalizing nonviolent crimes involving other drugs, or at least to reclassify lower-level, nonviolent offenses as misdemeanors. We should also expunge felony convictions for many classes of nonviolent drug offenses - those involving marijuana but for other drugs, too - to re-enfranchise, economically and politically, those who have staffed the drug trade. [continues 922 words]
People with Alzheimer's disease - especially those in the District - should be aware of a 2014 article in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease that found that THC, the psychoactive component in marijuana, at low doses, "may slow or halt the progression of Alzheimer's disease." Since District residents can legally obtain medical marijuana for conditions with a doctor's approval, and considering the lack of effective treatments for Alzheimer's and marijuana's relative safety compared with many pharmaceuticals, it is an option worth considering. Richard Kennedy, Lorton The writer is a member of the steering committee of Safe Access-DC, an organization that advocates for access to medical marijuana. [end]
If you live in the District or one of the 23 states that have legalized marijuana and you work for the federal government, think twice before lighting a joint. Pot is still illegal for you. New guidance Wednesday from the Office of Personnel Management is unambiguous and stern. Federal workforce rules remain unchanged for the roughly 4.1 million federal employees and military personnel across the United States. The U.S. government still considers marijuana an illegal drug, and possessing or using it is a crime. [continues 439 words]
Venezuela is afflicted with the world's highest inflation, its second highest murder rate and crippling shortages of food, medicine and basic consumer goods. Its authoritarian government is holding some 70 political prisoners, including the mayor of Caracas and senior opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, and stands accused by human rights groups of illegal detentions, torture and repression of independent media. All of that is now pretty well known, and it is finally beginning to gain some attention from Latin American leaders who for years did their best to appease or ignore Hugo Chavez and his "Bolivarian Revolution." What's less understood is the complicating factor that will make any political change or economic reconstruction in this failing state far more difficult: The Chavez regime, headed since his demise by Nicolas Maduro, harbors not just a clique of crackpot socialists, but also one of the world's biggest drug cartels. [continues 651 words]
Regarding the May 18 Wonkblog excerpt "How the IRS seized a man's life savings without ever charging him with a crime": The Internal Revenue Service got a court order to seize Lyndon McLellan's bank account in a "civil forfeiture" action. No crime was alleged, just a pattern of suspicious actions-making bank deposits of less than $10,000. The article mentioned other civil forfeitures involving assets seized during traffic stops, on the premise that the assets might be tied to illicit activities. Why would law enforcement officers do such things? Clearly, the issue is not the solving of crime. Is it policy? Are there quotas? Do police and the government view all citizens as crooks - some caught, the rest guilty but not yet nailed? [continues 69 words]
The city is missing out on tax revenue. As the May 18 front-page article "Legal pot in the District is a boon for illegal dealers" reported, D.C. voters' determination to legalize marijuana possession through Initiative 71 is having significant unintended consequences. Because residents can legally use and possess marijuana but can't legally buy it, the illegal drug trade has increased and the city is missing out on the tax revenue it would receive if the sales were regulated. [continues 170 words]
Not long ago, a man who had covertly dealt pot in the nation's capital for three decades approached a young political operative at a birthday party in a downtown Washington steakhouse. He was about to test a fresh marketing strategy to take advantage of the District's peculiar new marijuana law, which allows people to possess and privately consume the drug but provides them no way to legally buy it for recreational use. Those contradictions have created a surge in demand and new opportunities for illicit pot purveyors. [continues 1614 words]
The first two steps toward uplifting young black men are simple: Stop killing them and stop locking them in prison for nonviolent offenses. Subsequent steps are harder, but no real progress can be made until the basic right to life and liberty is secured. If anything positive is to come of Freddie Gray's death and the Baltimore rioting that ensued, let it be a new and cleareyed focus on these fundamental issues of daily life for millions of Americans. Central to the crisis is "zero-tolerance" or "broken windows" policing, which basically involves cracking down on minor offenses in the hope of reducing major crime as well. Whether this strategy works is the subject of two arguments whose right answers can only be inferred, not proved. [continues 648 words]
Twice a week at the office of Patrick Fasusi, District residents line up to ask the pain specialist to approve their use of medical marijuana. For most, the brief wait in the lobby is longer than their consultation. As marijuana, which became legal for recreational use in the nation's capital in February, continues to morph from contraband to commonplace, Fasusi's clinic is a window into the ease with which some residents have been buying officially sanctioned pot for more than two years. [continues 1704 words]
Regarding the March 27 Politics & the Nation Digest item "Governor authorizes needle exchanges": With two Midwestern governors - Mike Pence (R) of Indiana and Steve Beshear (D) of Kentucky - recently supporting syringe-exchange programs in some fashion, it is a good time for Congress to repeal the federal ban that prohibits states from using federal prevention dollars to make sterile syringes available to reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C. This ban has cost thousands of lives and millions of dollars. Repealing it would reduce federal healthcare expenditures and give states greater flexibility. Decades of peer-reviewed studies have conclusively shown that syringe-exchange programs save lives without increasing drug use. States should be free to use prevention money on these effective services if they want. Bill Piper, Washington The writer is director for national affairs of the Drug Policy Alliance. [end]
Prison Terms Were Set Under Guidelines Now Deemed Too Harsh President Obama on Tuesday commuted the sentences of 22 drug offenders, the largest batch of prisoners to be granted early release under his administration as it steps up an overhaul of the nation's criminal justice system. The early release of federal inmates is part of a sweeping effort to reduce the enormous costs of overcrowded prisons and address drug sentences handed down under old guidelines U.S. officials now view as too harsh. Obama had previously commuted the sentences of eight prisoners under the new Justice Department-led initiative; tens of thousands more are seeking to have their cases reviewed. [continues 638 words]
William Bennett, who served as secretary of education under Ronald Reagan and director of national drug control policy (or drug czar) under George H.W. Bush, has long been known for his strong and clear articulation of conservative principles in a number of best-selling books, among them "The Book of Virtues." In "Going to Pot," he and his co-author Robert White, a managing partner in an international law firm and former assistant U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey, examine the current trendy rush to legalize the drug. "Marijuana, once considered worthy of condemnation, has in recent years become a 'medicine' legalized fully in four states, with others expected to follow." [continues 650 words]
Two days before Initiative 71 legalized possession of marijuana in the District, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, informed Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) that her decision to proceed with implementation and enforcement would be a "willful violation of the law." A Feb. 24 letter from Chaffetz and Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) contended that the language of a continuing resolution enacted by Congress in December barred the use of appropriated funds by the District to legalize marijuana, and they characterized the mayor's actions as a violation of that bar. [continues 457 words]
Suspicion and Wariness of Marijuana Legalization Abounds - Especially Among Those in Public Housing Jamal Vaughn, a mechanical engineering student, was on his aunt's stoop in Northeast Washington on a recent afternoon, his long fingers curled around a half-smoked joint. "It used to be, ' Let me see who's around,' " Vaughn, 21, said between puffs and giggles, referring to his wariness of cops who had long made this neighborhood east of the Anacostia River a hot spot for pot arrests. [continues 1825 words]
In Zealously Punishing an 11-Year-Old, Officials Exhibit Clouded Judgment. THE NEWS is full of instances in which deficits in common sense produce bad outcomes. But rarely is the deficit so clear, or the outcome so wretched, as in the case of a sixth-grade boy in Bedford County, Va., who received a year-long suspension from school for possessing a single leaf of marijuana - which, on closer inspection, turned out not to be marijuana at all. The pupil, who is 11, was enrolled in a gifted-and-talented program not far from Roanoke when an assistant principal found the leaf in his backpack in September. Leave aside the possibility - hardly remote in middle school - that the leaf may have been planted as a prank, which the boy's parents suspect is the case; the leaf was not in dried, smokable form, and there is no suggestion that the boy smoked, sold or purchased this particular leaf - or any other. [continues 369 words]
Regarding the March 20 Metro article "Bowser weighs in on 'Black America' ": If Americans are troubled by the disparity of income between African Americans and white Americans, one tactic would go a long way to reduce it: Correct the country's racist policies regarding drug crimes. White Americans consume drugs at virtually the same rate as blacks, research shows. Yet black Americans are about twice as likely to be arrested for a drug offense as whites, and they are about four times as likely as white defendants to end up in prison. [continues 59 words]
Hundreds Turn Out for Giveaway Intended to Promote Home Growing The District witnessed a massive, public drug deal Thursday - and for those involved, it was quite a bargain. With D.C. police officers looking on, hundreds of city residents lined up and then walked away from an Adams Morgan restaurant carrying baggies containing marijuana seeds. Taking advantage of a ballot measure approved last fall by voters that legalized possession of the plant, the unprecedented giveaway scattered what organizers said were thousands of pot seeds to cultivate in homes and apartments across the nation's capital. [continues 841 words]
It sounds like an idea a stoner might come up with. In Washington, D.C., it's now legal to possess marijuana, to grow it, to smoke it and to give it away. But you're not allowed to trade in it. You can give your neighbor up to an ounce, but if he gives you money or even bakes you a pie in exchange, that's illegal. The District of Columbia has legalized marijuana - but is trying not to create a market in marijuana. It's aiming for a gift economy, not unlike what you might experience at Burning Man, but permanently. [continues 1139 words]
First, a disclaimer: There is no marijuana in the beer. That's what they said. Cannabis and hops are just a lot alike. It only smells like pot. And it might taste a little like it, too. So if that's what you like - a dank, resinous pint - or if you're willing at least to try it, this could be your season at the District's DC Brau Brewing Co. Starting Tuesday - St. Patrick's Day - the brewery began tapping green-decorated kegs of its new seasonal India pale ale. The beer is dubbed "Smells Like Freedom," in what must be one of the most unusual protests in the history of the District's protracted fight for full voting rights. [continues 563 words]
Inside District of Columbia
