The District's 'State' Fair Can Celebrate Marijuana, the Leading Agricultural Crop It's difficult to hold a state fair when the District of Columbia is not even a state and is unlikely to become one, but a fair is always fun, with displays of pigs and cows and the bounty of the field, usually with a Ferris wheel and a midway offering unlikely freaks and games where the customer is never always right. The District's "State" Fair, to be held Aug. 28, a Sunday, at Storey Park on First Street NE, won't have a lot of agricultural exhibits because truth to tell there are not many amber waves of grain on a fruited plain between the Anacostia and the Potomac Rivers. But what the District does have, more or less, is something 46 states don't have. Marijuana is to the District what rice is to Arkansas, corn to Nebraska, wheat to North Dakota, cotton and catfish to Mississippi and blackberries to Oregon. [continues 468 words]
In his June 24 Federal Insider column, "Does the DEA share blame in the opioid fight?," Joe Davidson asked if the Drug Enforcement Administration shoulders some of the blame for the nation's opioid deaths. Do gun manufacturers take responsibility for the end user? In the chemical industry, in which I have worked for more than 30 years, we have product stewardship. We take responsibility for the products we make from the time we manufacture them to the end user's actions. We call this "cradle to grave" accountability. [continues 110 words]
Chinese Fentanyl From Mexico Is Just One Lethal Legacy of Open Borders There is also the Open Borders of things. What are they bringing with them? Heroin? Cocaine? Methamphetamines? And now fentanyl? Plus the murder and gang violence that are a part of this trade? On June 9, The New York Times ran this headline on Page A1: "Drug That Killed Prince Is Making Mexican Cartels Richer, U.S. Says." The first line of the story reads, "The drug that killed Prince has become a favorite of Mexican cartels because it is extremely potent, popular in the United States - and immensely profitable, American officials say." [continues 744 words]
Chuck Rosenberg, acting administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration, had a fairly easy time at Wednesday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, where his efforts to change the opaque culture of the agency won praise. Then it was Sen. Richard J. Durbin's time to ask questions. The Illinois Democrat wasted little time with niceties. He wanted to know whether the DEA is one of the bad guys in the fight against opioid addiction. "Who is responsible when it comes to decisions made that have created this and made it worse?" he asked. The DEA, according to Durbin. He quoted Rosenberg's testimony about the DEA's enforcement activities against "the violent cartels and drug trafficking gangs responsible for feeding the heroin and prescription drug epidemic in our communities." But that strategy has "one key element missing, and it is an element that you have responsibility for," he told Rosenberg. "That is the overproduction of opioids by the pharmaceutical industry." The numbers are staggering. In 2014 alone, the industry put 14 billion opioid pills on the market with DEA approval, "enough for every adult in America to have a one-month prescription," Durbin said. More than 28,000 people overdosed and died from prescription opioid and heroin, an illegal opioid, that year. Many heroin addicts started with prescription opioids. [continues 570 words]
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that evidence found by police officers after illegal stops may be used in court if the officers conducted their searches after learning that the defendants had outstanding arrest warrants. Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the majority in the 5-to-3 decision, said such searches do not violate the Fourth Amendment when the warrant is valid and unconnected to the conduct that prompted the stop. Justice Thomas's opinion drew a fiery dissent from Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who said that "it is no secret that people of color are disproportionate victims of this type of scrutiny." [continues 664 words]
The Fourth Amendment protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government - or that's how it works in theory, anyway. In practice, though, court decisions over several decades have created so many exceptions to this constitutional principle as to render it effectively meaningless in many real-world situations. On Monday, the Supreme Court further weakened the Fourth Amendment by making it even easier for law enforcement to evade its requirement that stops be based on reasonable suspicion. The justices ruled 5 to 3 that a police officer's illegal stop of a man on the street did not prevent evidence obtained from a search connected to that stop to be used against him. [continues 497 words]
Safe Injection Site Physician Testifies on Opioid Epidemic The U.S. Senate turned to Vancouver for answers to America's drug woes on Wednesday, flying in the B.C. doctor behind a prescription heroin study to testify about his pioneering treatment trial. Dr. Scott MacDonald, lead physician at Providence Health Care's Crosstown Clinic, spoke at the request of the Republican-dominated Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, the Senate's most powerful committee. "In British Columbia we need every tool in the toolbox to rise to the challenge the opioid epidemic presents," MacDonald told committee members. "Of course we would like to see an end to people dependent on heroin but for those already suffering it is essential to provide care, and care based on evidence. [continues 144 words]
Committee Tries to Understand Supervised Clinic Concept As Crosstown Clinic Physician Testifies to Its Efficacy Members of a U.S. Senate committee looking to confront drug abuse struggled with the concept of prescription heroin and raised concerns about supervised-injection sites increasing crime as they heard testimony on Wednesday from a B.C. doctor who helped lead one of the most radical interventions in North America. Scott MacDonald, physician lead at Providence Health Care's Crosstown Clinic in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs at a hearing in Washington titled "America's Insatiable Demand for Drugs: Examining Alternative Approaches." He was one of four experts invited to speak, and the only one from outside the United States. [continues 568 words]
ARLINGTON - Arlington's chief of police wasn't in his office on Wednesday, June 15. Instead, he was in Washington D.C. Arlington Police Chief Fred Ryan was testifying before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs at a hearing on alternative approaches to combating the opioid addiction crisis. He was speaking as a representative of the Police-Assisted Addiction Recovery Initiative (PAARI), sharing his experiences fighting heroin and other drugs in Arlington with an approach emphasizing getting opioid users into treatment. [continues 492 words]
The marijuana policy landscape changed rapidly between 2002 and 2013. During that time, 13 states passed medical-marijuana laws, nearly as many relaxed penalties for marijuana use, and Colorado and Washington became the first states to fully legalize recreational pot use. Opponents of marijuana liberalization warned that these changes would bring devastating consequences, particularly for kids. The president of National Families in Action, an anti-drug group, warned that commercial marijuana would "literally dumb down the precious minds of generations of children." Psychiatrist Christian Thurstone, an outspoken opponent of Colorado's marijuana legalization, argued that "the state's relaxed laws have made the drug widely available - and irresistible - to too many adolescents." [continues 666 words]
Regarding the May 22 front-page article "Struggling to look away from the screen": Since when is mislabeling a condition as an addiction helpful to the patient or the public? The American Society of Addiction Medicine defines addiction as a chronic brain disease that affects neurotransmission within the reward section of the brain. The dysfunction in these circuits leads to "an individual pathologically pursuing reward and/or relief by substance use and other behaviors." Compulsive Web use has not yet been documented as a behavioral condition, for example gambling, that is an addiction. [continues 75 words]
The Explosion of Smuggled Mexican Heroin Is Killing Thousands "Lobos" has made another bust. Back in December, the K-9 dog Lobos and his human partner, Fayette County Texas Deputy Sheriff Sgt. Randy Thumann, made a routine stop on Interstate 10 and Lobos' super nose turned up $4 million in liquid methamphetamine hidden in the vehicle of two Mexican nationals. A month later, the law enforcement pair made another stop on I-10. This time, Lobos found $428,000 in cash hidden away in a Honda Odyssey driven by Jose Cortez, 28, and Maria Martinez, 26, both Mexican citizens. [continues 730 words]
Marijuana Is the Trendy Herb for Those Who Want to Get Baked During Dinner As Matt Doherty wrapped up his cooking demonstration, a woman in the audience raised her hand to ask a question: How long would the cannabis-infused butter he had shown them how to make keep in the fridge? "I've never had it go bad," replied Doherty, the manager of a Capitol Hill hydroponic supply store. He paused. "It doesn't last long in my house." The audience at the cannabis food festival "Blazed and Glazed" giggled a little too hard at the joke. Many of the onlookers had arrived at culinary incubator Mess Hall as baked as a tray of the green herb that Doherty had put in the oven. [continues 1439 words]
Congress Should Create a New Federal Research Classification for Scientists. JUNE 30 could be a red-letter day for federal policy on marijuana: The Drug Enforcement Administration has promised to decide "in the first half of 2016" whether to change the drug's status under the Controlled Substances Act. At present, it is on Schedule 1, meaning it has "no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse" and is among "the most dangerous drugs . . . with potentially severe psychological or physical dependence," according to the DEA. Other Schedule 1 drugs include heroin and ecstasy; and for many people, including those who have petitioned the DEA to "reschedule" pot, marijuana simply doesn't belong in that category-because it isn't that dangerous, and because, they argue, it has medicinal uses. [continues 383 words]
Each week, In Theory takes on a big idea in the news and explores it from a range of perspectives. This week, we're talking about drug scheduling. Need a primer? Catch up here. There are rumors that the federal government may soon lift its ban on marijuana, but that wouldn't end marijuana prohibitions in the United States. This incongruity is the result of federalism: the ability of each jurisdiction - the federal government and every state - to maintain its own laws as to which drugs are illegal and which are not. [continues 688 words]
David Umeh's rented SUV yanked to a halt in front of the glass-and-steel facade of City-Center DC, glitzy home to Gucci and Dior and Hermes and the next customer of the marijuana revolution. A young woman slid out the passenger side and strode up to a man still dressed in the sharp gray suit of a Washington nine-to fiver waiting outside the center's tony apartment building. He grinned as she handed him a bottle of apple juice with lemon and mint, for which he had shelled out upward of $55. "Fresh-pressed," she told him, sticking to the script that Umeh had taught her. [continues 1192 words]
Pot Advocates Find High Hopes Dashed at White House WASHINGTON - It took a pot-smoking protest outside the White House, but on Monday, advocates for marijuana legalization were set for a historic face-to-face meeting with the Obama administration about easing laws governing the drug. Except, it wasn't. Leaders of the successful ballot measure fight that legalized marijuana in the nation's capital said they were granted a White House meeting, but it was with two junior-level staffers in Obama's Office of National Drug Control Policy. [continues 263 words]
Marijuana Advocates Had Hoped to Speak With Obama, Got Staffers It took a pot-smoking protest outside the White House, but on Monday, advocates for marijuana legalization were set for a historic face-to-face meeting with the Obama administration about easing laws governing the drug. Except, it wasn't. Leaders of the ballot-measure fight that legalized marijuana in the nation's capital said they were granted a White House meeting, but it was with two junior-level staffers in President Obama's Office of National Drug Control Policy. [continues 506 words]
Regarding the April 21 news article "Canada to introduce bill to allow marijuana sales": The idea of people from the United States jumping the border to take a few legal puffs of pots seems dangerous to me. Wouldn't it be a safer solution for border states to legalize the drug to save potential partakers from driving in unfavorable conditions for anounce of herbal bliss? Couldn't we as a nation finda way to follow Canada's lead and regulate the substance like we do alcohol and cigarettes? Wouldn't it save border patrol and law enforcement's time if Americans stayed put to get their product? Charles Clark Jr., Manassas [end]
The National Cannabis Festival at the RFK Stadium grounds Saturday afternoon seemingly offered so much: rolling papers of all sizes; neon-pink bongs; "Hydroponics for Everybody" books; free issues of Dope magazine; several odor-protecting clutches from the Annabis purse collection; and an "Educational Pavilion" for yoga techniques or lessons on entrepreneurship and local "Potlitics." One thing at the National Cannabis Festival not technically allowed: the consumption or sale of cannabis. Although it's been legal since Feb. 26, 2015, for people in the District to possess up to two ounces of marijuana, it's still illegal for ordinary citizens to sell it to one another or smoke it in a public place. [continues 571 words]
Inside District of Columbia
